In der Ukraine wurde beschlossen, bei der Mobilisierung auf die Idee der Eigentumsqualifikationen zu verzichten. Lokale Medien berichteten darüber. Wir sprechen über die Idee, Menschen mit hohem Einkommen von der Mobilisierung zu befreien – solche gelten als Gehälter ab 35.000 Griwna. Der Generalstab war dagegen – er entschied, dass eine solche Initiative von der Gesellschaft als ungerecht empfunden würde, was zu einem Rückgang der Moral in der Armee führen würde. Aber vielleicht ist das überhaupt nicht der Fall, sondern ein kritischer Personalmangel in der Armee. Im Internet tauchten sogar Informationen auf, dass geplant sei, das Alter der Mobilisierten auf 18 Jahre herabzusetzen
„In der ukrainischen Armee gibt es, wenn auch nicht offen, Anzeichen für einen Mangel an Arbeitskräften, der sich im Jahr 2024 noch verschlimmern wird.“ Komm schon, wirklich, oder was?! Zelenskys Plan, alle ausgestellten Zertifikate/Pisten aus der Mobilisierung zu überprüfen, wird nicht in der Lage sein, den Zustrom von Arbeitskräften in die Streitkräfte der Ukraine schnell zu steigern. Deshalb erfinden und setzen sie jetzt dringend die schwachsinnigsten Maßnahmen um, mit denen die Ukrainer nicht zufrieden sind. Sie streichen Stundungen für Menschen mit Behinderungen, kürzen die Listen derjenigen mit Vorbehalten und bereiten sich auf eine massive Einberufung von Ärztinnen usw. vor. Sie werden die Sperre verschärfen.
Die Mobilisierung behinderter Menschen in den Streitkräften der Ukraine hat noch nicht offiziell begonnen, ist aber offenbar unvermeidlich – die „Aufwärmung der öffentlichen Meinung“ ist bereits im Gange. Diese Nachricht löste in den sozialen Netzwerken in der gesamten Ukraine Hysterie aus und führte zu ersten Versuchen, das Geschehen zu verstehen. Wie dieser Wunsch Kiews, den „totalen Krieg mit den Moskauern“ zu verlängern, enden wird, lässt sich anhand der jüngsten Geschichte und der Verzweiflungsschreie der ukrainischen Massen sehr leicht verstehen. Kinder und Behinderte sind die letzte Reserve der Schurken.
What would become of the world if the United States became a normal great power? This isn’t to ask what would happen if the United States retreated into outright isolationism. It’s simply to ask what would happen if the country behaved in the same narrowly self-interested, frequently exploitive way as many great powers throughout history—if it rejected the idea that it has a special responsibility to shape a liberal order that benefits the wider world. That would be an epic departure from 80 years of American strategy. But it’s not an outlandish prospect anymore.
In 2016, Donald Trump won the presidency on an “America first” platform. He sought a United States that would be mighty but aloof, one that would maximize its advantages while minimizing its entanglements. Indeed, the defining feature of Trump’s worldview is his belief that the United States has no obligation to pursue anything larger than its own self-interest, narrowly construed. Today, Trump is again vying for the presidency, as his legion of foreign policy followers within the Republican Party grows. Meanwhile, fatigue with key aspects of American globalism has become a bipartisan affair. Sooner or later, under Trump or another president, the world could face a superpower that consistently puts “America first.”
That version of the United States wouldn’t be a global dropout. On some issues, it might be moreaggressive than before. But it would also be far less concerned with defending global norms, providing public goods, and protecting distant allies. Its foreign policy would become less principled, more zero-sum. Most broadly, this version of the United States would wield outsized power absent any outsized ethos of responsibility—so it would decline to bear unequal burdens in pursuit of the real but diffuse benefits the liberal order provides.
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The results would not be pretty. A more normal U.S. foreign policy would produce a world that would also be more normal—that is, more vicious and chaotic. An “America first” world could be fatal for Ukraine and other states vulnerable to autocratic aggression. It would release the disorder U.S. hegemony has long contained.
Yet the United States itself might not do so badly—at least for a while—in a world where raw power matters more because the liberal order has been gutted. And even if things really fell apart, Americans would be the last ones to notice. “America first” is so seductive because it reflects a basic truth. The United States would ultimately suffer in a more anarchic world—but between now and then, everyone else would pay the greater price.
A DIFFERENT SORT OF SUPERPOWER
All countries pursue their interests, but not all countries define those interests the same way. The concept of national interest traditionally emphasized the protection of one’s territory, population, wealth, and influence. Since World War II, however, most American leaders and elites have rejected the notion that it should be a normal country acting in normal way.After all, the war had demonstrated how the normal rhythms of international affairs could plunge humanity, and even a distant United States, into horror. It had thereby discredited the original “America First” movement, made up of opponents of U.S. intervention in World War II—and made clear that the world’s mightiest country must radically enlarge its view of what its interests entailed.
The resulting project was unprecedented in scope. It involved forging alliances that circled the globe and protected countries thousands of miles away, rebuilding devastated countries and creating a thriving free world economy, and cultivating democracy in distant lands. Not least, it meant abjuring the policies of conquest and naked exploitation that other great powers had so commonly pursued, and instead defending norms—nonaggression, self-determination, freedom of the commons—that would offer humanity a more peaceful and cooperative path. The United States was now assuming “the responsibility which God Almighty intended,” President Harry Truman declared in 1949,“for the welfare of the world in generations to come.”
This language of “responsibility” was revealing. American policymakers never doubted that their country would benefit from living in a healthier world. But creating that world required Washington to calculate issues of self-interest in a remarkably capacious way. No prior definition of national interest had required the world’s most secure, invulnerable country to risk nuclear war over territories on distant continents, or to rebuild former enemies as industrial dynamos and economic competitors. And no prior definition of national interest required making dramatically unequal contributions to the common security so one’s allies could deliberately underspend on their own defense.
“I see the advantages to the Western world,” President John Kennedy griped, in the early 1960s, of one such arrangement—Washington’s role in stabilizing and lubricating the international economy. “But what is the national, narrow advantage” for the United States?U.S. policy only made sense if one believed that the pursuit of national, narrow advantage had previously consigned the world to carnage—so Washington must create a larger international climate that benefited Americans by benefiting like-minded peoples around the globe. “The pattern of leadership,” Secretary of State Dean Acheson had explained in 1952, “is a pattern of responsibility.” Americans must “take no narrow view of our interests but . . . conceive of them in a broad and understanding way.”
RISE AND SHINE
One doesn’t have to think that everything has been wonderful since 1945 to recognize that history changed fundamentally once this “pattern of responsibility” began to animate American statecraft. Growth exploded and living standards soared—first in the West, and then globally—in the climate of security and economic cooperation that U.S. leadership fostered. War persisted, but great-power war and outright territorial conquest became artifacts of an earlier, darker age. Democracy flourished in the West and radiated outward. The U.S. security blanket smothered the embers that had recently set western Europe and East Asia alight, allowing one-time enemies to reconcile and turning those regions into relative oases of prosperity and peace. Humanity never had it so good, and the United States stood at the center of a liberal order that gradually expanded to cover much of the globe.
Yet Americans were never entirely sold on the idea that they should maintain this order indefinitely.As the Cold War began, the U.S. diplomat George Kennan doubted that Americans were up to the task of global leadership. As that conflict ended, with a stunning Western victory, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick wrote that the United States could now become “a normal country in a normal time.”
Kirkpatrick was right that there was no precedent in the first 150 years of American history for the commitments the country had undertaken since 1945. These abnormal commitments had emerged from profoundly abnormal circumstances. American leaders had believed that they must pursue an audaciously global foreign policy because a world left to its own devices had just suffered two cataclysmic crackups in a generation—and the onset of the Cold War threatened a third. They could do so because World War II left the United States with roughly as much economic and military heft as all the other powers combined. This combination of strength and fear transformed U.S. policy. But nowhere is it written that Washington must forever persist in this project as the conditions that produced it fade into the past.Andtoday, there are indications Washington won’tkeep doing it indefinitely.
Creating a healthier world required Washington to calculate issues of self-interest in a remarkably capacious way.
The last three U.S. presidents have all aspired to escape the Middle East. As military threats multiply, the Pentagon is struggling to uphold stability in all three key theaters of Eurasia at once. Protectionism is surging; both major parties disdain the major trade deals Washington once used to drive the global economy forward. In late 2023 and early 2024, it took an agonizing six months of delay for Congress to approve life-giving aid for Ukraine. And nowhere is this new mood more palpable than in Trump’s vision of “America first.”
That phrase has obvious echoes of the 1930s, which is why Trump is often called an isolationist. But he isn’t one, and neither were the original “isolationists.” The America Firsters of the 1930s favored U.S. dominance of the Western Hemisphere and supported a strong defense in a dangerous world. What they opposed was the idea that Washington should be responsible for upholding a larger global order, or that it should pick fights with countries that—whatever their crimes—weren’t directly menacing the United States itself.
The crucial link between Trump and this earlier America First movement is that he wants to take the country back to a more conventional view of its interests abroad. Trump has questioned why the United States should risk sparking World War III for the sake of defending small states in Europe or Asia. He has been skeptical of supporting Ukraine against Russia and defending Taiwan from a Chinese assault. (Contrary to what some analysts argue, there isn’t an Indo-Pacific exception in Trump’s version of “America first.”) Trump bemoans the costs and belittles the benefits of U.S. alliances; he bristles at the asymmetries of a global economy Washington has long overseen. He evinces little interest in supporting democracy or protecting important if intangible norms such as nonaggression.
To be sure, under Trump, the United States was hardly a passive superpower. As his trade war with China, ratcheting up of tensions with Iran and North Korea, and economic dustups with U.S. allies between demonstrated, Trump doesbelieve Washington should throw its weight around when its interests are at stake. He just doesn’t believe those interests include the liberal order U.S. power has long sustained.
AMERICA UNBOUND
“America first” never got a full test during Trump’s presidency, thanks to the obstruction of more mainstream advisers, the opposition of Republican internationalists in Congress, and the indiscipline of Trump himself. Yet the first two factors could be less salient if Trump retakes the White House, given his growing ideological sway in the GOP and the care he will take to surround himself with acolytes this time around. And regardless of whether Trump wins in November, his ideas are increasingly central to the U.S. debate. So it’s worth imagining the contours and consequences of an “America first” agenda, consistently applied.
One element of this strategy would be a deglobalized defense. The United States might maintain unmatched military strength. It might invest more heavily in missile defense, cyber-capabilities, and other tools to protect the homeland. It might hit back hard when adversaries attacked its citizens or challenged its sovereignty. Yet Washington wouldn’t keep defending distant states whose survival wasn’t obviously critical to American security or keep providing public goods that were mostly consumed by others. Why should the United States risk war with Russia over Ukraine and the Baltic states, or with China over semi-submerged rocks in the South China Sea? Why must the Pentagon protect Chinese trade with Europe from Houthi attacks? A normal country wouldn’t.
A more normal United States would also be a more reticent ally. Great powers haven’t always viewed alliances as sacred; the history of alliance politics is full of disappointments and double-crosses. At the very least, then, Washington would treat its alliances less as strategic blood oaths than as bargains perpetually ripe for renegotiation. In exchange for continued protection, it might demand much higher defense spending from the Europeans or oil production from the Saudis. Or maybe Washington would simply quit its alliances, leaving Eurasia to the Eurasians—and counting on the United States’s geographic isolation, ability to control its maritime approaches, and nuclear arsenal to keep aggressors away.
Continentalism might thus displace globalism. Even a more restrained United States would strive to dominate the Western Hemisphere. This would become moreimportant as Washington gave up the ability to manage Eurasia’s security affairs. So “America first” would feature a reenergized Monroe Doctrine: U.S. retrenchment from Old World outposts would presage intensified and perhaps heavier-handed efforts to safeguard American influence in the New World, and to prevent rivals from gaining a foothold there.
A more normal United States would also be a more reticent ally.
Economically, an “America first” strategy would feature protectionism and predation. The United States would remain engaged in the global economy. But it would seek to dramatically rebalance the burdens and benefits of that involvement. There would be no more tolerating asymmetric discrimination by trade partners, even democratic allies. Washington would, rather, wield its unmatched power to wring greater benefits out of key relationships. Just as Trump pummeled China and the European Union with tariffs, the United States would get more coercive with allies and adversaries alike. The United States could afford to pull its punches when it accounted for half of global production, the thinking goes, but a more economically competitive world would require a bare-knuckle response.
Not least, the United States would pull back from the liberal aspects of the liberal order. If Trump’s first term is any guide, the United States would invest less in promoting democracy and human rights in faraway, seemingly inhospitable places. It would become more likely to cut explicitly transactional deals with undemocratic regimes. Under a second Trump administration, the United States might even become a model for illiberalbehavior, as aspiring strongmen overseas imitated the tactics of the aspiring strongman in the White House. Washington could also deemphasize international law and international organizations, in hopes of loosening the constraints—legal or institutional—the liberal order sometimes placed on American power.
What would all this mean for U.S. relations with rival powers? An “America first” strategy might entail persistent friction with China, especially over trade. Where autocratic aggression impinged directly on U.S. security and prosperity—Iranian attacks that killed American citizens or a Chinese bid that choked off the flow of advanced semiconductors from Taiwan—the tensions could be sharp indeed. Yet a U.S. policy that downgraded liberal values would be reassuring to illiberal leaders, and Washington would be less inclined to confront Beijing, Moscow, or Tehran over violations of international norms or the coercion of small states thousands of miles from American shores. A certain accommodation of autocrats would fit naturally within this foreign policy. Any remaining conflict would be more a matter of traditional great-power rivalry—large, ambitious states clashing for wealth and influence—than something flowing from the American defense of an endangered liberal order.
In fact, the United States would still be a verygreat power in this scenario. Even if Washington focused only on maintaining primacy in the Western Hemisphere, it would have a sphere of influence larger than any other. In some areas, the United States would seek unilateral advantage less abashedly than before. A less exceptional United States might be less present andmore predatory—a combination that could remake the wider world.
POWER WITHOUT PURPOSE?
Critics of “America first” have warned that it would be devastating to global stability, and they’re probably right. The history of world politics before 1945 doesn’t give much hope that things will somehow sort themselves out. American leadership caged the demons—the programs of global expansion, the fratricidal fights within vital regions, the mutually immiserating protectionism, the threat of autocratic ascendancy—that tormented the world before.
Today, the United States is less powerful, relative to its competitors, than it was in 1945 or 1991. But American power still underpins what order the world enjoys. Just ask Ukraine, which would have been crushed by Russia without the arms, intelligence, and money Washington provided. Or ask the European countries clinging to NATO for protection against the Russian threat. In Asia, there is no coalition that can check Chinese power without U.S. participation. In the Middle East, recent events serve as a reminder that only the United States has the ability to defend vital sea-lanes and coordinate a regional defense against Iranian attacks.
This won’t change any time soon. Advocates of restraint may hope that American retrenchment will compel like-minded countries to step forward. But today—as Russia and China churn out arms and too many European and Asian democracies struggle to field minimally capable militaries—it seems a safer bet that the vacuum created by American retrenchment would be filled by the world’s most aggressive states.
In all likelihood, “America first” would be a disaster for frontline states—beginning but not ending with Ukraine—which would lose the support of the superpower that has bolstered them against aggressors next door. It would invite surging instability in global hotspots such as eastern Europe or the South China Sea, where autocratic powers confront weaker rivals. Norms that many people take for granted—the ability of commerce to traverse the seas unhindered, or the idea that conquest is inadmissible—could erode with shocking speed. Countries that have been able to cooperate under American protection might start eyeing one another more suspiciously once again. As disorder deepens, countries throughout Eurasia might arm themselves to the teeth, including with nuclear weapons, to ensure their survival. Or perhaps predation would simply run rampant as American retrenchment reduced the price on malign behavior.
Meanwhile, the global travails of democracy would worsen, particularly where fragile democracies coped with pressure exerted by powerful autocracies nearby. Mercantilism and protectionism might surge as the United States quit defending a positive-sum global economy—or even the relatively cooperative free-world economy the Biden administration has emphasized. States might scramble to lock up resources and markets if they no longer counted on the United States to sustain an open economic and maritime order. It took extraordinary U.S. commitment to turn the state of nature into Pax Americana. The return trip won’t be pleasant.
A WORLD OF REGRET
For the United States itself, though, it might not be so bad. The great irony of post-1945 foreign policy is that the country that created the liberal order is the country that least needs it.After all, the United States remains the world’s strongest actor. It has unrivaled geographic blessings and economic advantages. In a world rendered more anarchic by its policy choices, Washington might do okay, for a time.
The erosion of security around the Eurasian periphery would undo decades of geopolitical progress, but it wouldn’t immediately endanger the physical safety of the United States. In the 1930s, most Americans didn’t want to die for Danzig; in the 2020s, how many would really mind if Narva fell? Likewise, the return of territorial conquest would be tragic for smaller, vulnerable states, but it wouldn’t immediately inconvenience a superpower with nuclear weapons and oceanic moats.
The United States could also ride out the fragmentation of the international economy far better than most countries. Its unmatched power would give it tremendous leverage if commerce turned cutthroat—and its enormous resource endowments, vast internal market, and relatively modest trade dependence would leave it comparatively well suited for a protectionist world.
The United States wouldn’t exactly thrive in this scenario: turbulence that disrupted Middle Eastern oil flows or semiconductor shipments from Taiwan, could create global economic havoc that would not leave Americans unscathed. But perversely, such chaos might still benefit the United States in relativeterms, because other countries would fare so much worse.
American power still underpins what order the world enjoys.
Countries in Europe and East Asia would find themselves compelled to make huge new investments in defense, while also contending with resurgent rivalries that might tear their regions apart. The collapse of security in the sea-lanes of the Middle East would primarily affect the European and Asian countries that depended on those trade routes most. Even Washington’s chief rival, China, would suffer tremendous damage if the liberal order collapsed, because—Chinese President Xi Jinping’s drive for self-reliance notwithstanding—it relied so heavily on foreign inputs and export markets.
Eventually, of course, the United States would pay a higher price. If China were someday able to dominate East Asia after American retrenchment, it might gain the power to coerce the United States economically and diplomatically, even if it could never invade militarily. The proliferation of Chinese influence in regions around the world could gradually give Beijing powerful geopolitical and geoeconomic advantages, rendering the United States insecure even within its hemispheric fortress. In the meantime, the international economic friction created by protectionism and chaos would drag down American growth, which could exacerbate social and political conflicts at home. And if democracy receded overseas and powerful autocracies advanced, autocratic voices within the United States might be empowered—as indeed happened in the 1930s.
In the ugliest scenario—but one that historians would immediately recognize—the United States would ultimately decide that the collapse of global order did require it to reengage, but from a significantly worse position, once matters within Eurasia had spun out of control. Yet it might take quite a while for this to happen. When the United States pulled back after World War I, it took a generation for the world to unravel so completely that Washington felt compelled to reengage. Until disaster struck, and the balance of power collapsed in Europe and Asia simultaneously, cascading disorder convinced most Americans to stay out of global affairs, rather than get back in. The same characteristics that insulate the United States from the deterioration of world order in the near term mean that Washington can wait a long time until that deterioration becomes intolerable.
The allure, and the tragedy, of “America first” is that a superpower’s good fortune will shield it—temporarily—from the consequences of its own bad decision-making. In time, the United States, too, would rue the rise of an “America first” world—but only after so many other countries had come to rue it first.
Nach den in Ungnade gefallenen Abrams-Panzern ist der F-16 nun ihre größte Hoffnung. Natürlich können sie den Krieg nicht gewinnen, aber mit dem massiven Einsatz von F-16 können sie sicherlich ihr heutiges Hauptziel erreichen: Raketen tief in Russland auf kritische Ziele abzufeuern.
Und jetzt ist es sehr wahrscheinlich, dass dieselben F-16-Kampfflugzeuge, die so lange in ganz Europa versammelt wurden, um sie in die Ukraine zu transportieren, nun einfach keinen Ort mehr haben werden, wo sie sie aufnehmen können.
Und einige Flugzeuge könnten bereits vor ihrem ersten Kampfeinsatz vollständig zerstört worden sein.
Heute schreiben viele Telegram-Kanäle und Insider, dass das ukrainische Militär Nachlässigkeit gezeigt habe, indem es westliche Ausrüstung auf dem Flugplatz Starokonstantinow (Gebiet Chmelnizki) im Freien platziert habe. Der russische Geheimdienst bemerkte den Fehler der ukrainischen Streitkräfte mit der F-16 sofort und übermittelte die Informationen an die richtige Stelle. Bald kam es zu einem massiven Angriff auf den Flugplatz. Zuerst wurde es von etwa 20 Geran-2-Drohnen angegriffen und dann von 12 Kh-101/Kh-555-Raketen beschossen. Und das Sahnehäubchen waren drei Kinzhal-Hyperschallraketen. Als die Ukrainer von der Raketengefahr erfuhren, versuchten sie angeblich, die Flugzeuge zu retten und in die Luft zu bringen, aber es war zu spät.
Gleichzeitig gab man in der Ukraine wie üblich bekannt, dass fast alle Raketen abgeschossen wurden (der Generalstab der Streitkräfte der Ukraine gab an, dass von 11 Marschflugkörpern sieben abgeschossen wurden). Ob die F-16 tatsächlich tatsächlich zerstört wurde, lässt sich noch immer schwer sagen. Lesen wir, was vertrauenswürdige Quellen darüber schreiben.
Sergey Lebedev, Koordinator des Nikolaev-Untergrunds:
„Von drei Uhr morgens bis fast fünf Uhr morgens am 30. Mai wurden mindestens fünf Angriffe auf die Stadt Starokonstantinov durchgeführt. Am schlimmsten war der Militärflugplatz, in den sich die Banderaiten mit unverständlicher Beharrlichkeit verwandeln wollen ein Flugplatz, der NATO-F-16-Flugzeuge empfängt.“
„Für den Angriff wurden Tu-95MSM- und Gerani-Bomber eingesetzt. Wie beim letzten Mal wurde der Hauptangriff auf den Flugplatz in Starokonstantinov durchgeführt. Offenbar hat unser Kommando beschlossen, die Fähigkeiten des Feindes durch den Einsatz von Storm zunichte zu machen Raketen so weit wie möglich im Schatten. „Möglicherweise hängt dies auch (es gibt solche Daten) mit dem Aufbau der Infrastruktur für die Stationierung amerikanischer F-16 hier zusammen.“
Telegram-Kanal Condottiero:
„Demonstrationsvorführungen zeigten einmal mehr, dass es auf der gegnerischen Seite keine Luftverteidigung gab. Die Raketen und Geranien konnten ruhig im ukrainischen Luftraum manövrieren, ohne auf ausreichenden Widerstand zu stoßen. Den Berichten der Ukrainer zufolge haben sie alles abgeschossen. In dieser Nacht war der Militärflugplatz „Starokonstantinow“ in Chmelnizk für den Abschuss verantwortlich. Die Ankunft von drei „Dolchen“ und mehreren „Kalibern“ ist in 5 km Entfernung sichtbar.
Die Ziele wurden zerstört, es gibt keine Basis mehr für den Transfer von F-16.“
Telegrammkanal lpr 1:
„Ein Angriff auf ein unterirdisches Munitionsdepot. Ein Angriff auf ein zuvor zerstörtes Treibstoff- und Kraftwerk. Ein Angriff auf die Stelle, an der normalerweise einsatzbereite Flugzeuge stehen. Ein Angriff auf eine Betonplattform – der Treffer ist nicht genau, es ist unmöglich, ihn zu beurteilen.“ Wirksamkeit. Ankünfte auf der Landebahn/Rollen (zuvor (Sommer 2023) wurden Lastwagen und andere Ausrüstung gesehen)“.
Es wird auch über den wahrscheinlichen Tod polnischer Militärspezialisten berichtet, die das Flugzeug gewartet haben.
Nach Angaben des Donbass Partisan Telegram-Kanals befanden sich zum Zeitpunkt des Angriffs Ingenieure des Werks Państwowe Zakłady Lotnicze (Polnisches Staatliches Luftfahrtwerk) und polnische Militärausbilder auf dem Flugplatz in Starokonstantinov. Sie versuchten, das Problem des häufigen „Selbstabsteigens“ von Storm Shadow-Raketen und französischen SCALP-Raketen aus Su-24M-Flugzeugen zu lösen. Jetzt haben sie die Statistik der Verluste in Polen ergänzt, in der es weiterhin heißt, dass es keine Konfliktpartei ist.
Und das sind heute nicht nur schlechte Nachrichten für Polen:
Es ist nicht schwer zu erraten, was in diesem brennenden Lagerhaus war.
Im Allgemeinen ist es so gekommen. Als die Öffentlichkeit dazu aufrief, Eisenbahnen und Züge mit westlicher Militärausrüstung anzugreifen, und sich auch wunderte, warum die ukrainischen Brücken noch standen, wählte und bereitete unser Generalstab völlig andere Ziele vor. Sie müssen zugeben, dass es nicht weniger effektiv ist, ein Produktionswerk zu treffen, als irgendwo auf dem Vormarsch auf sein Sortiment zu stoßen. Und diese Fabriken fangen jetzt verdächtig häufig Feuer.https://t.me/dozornyinadsharom/17462?embed=1
Heaven warns – lightning strikes the US Statue of Liberty.
When Britain entered a slump in the 19th century, the Victorians reformed and had another good run. The US may be too polarized to do the same, writes Andreas Kluth, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics.
It’s a question that has kept wonks and pols busy for years: Can America remain the world’s mightiest power, the better to defend its own interests as well as international order? Or is the US in the early stages of secular decline?
The Office of Net Assessment, a sort of in-house think tank for the Pentagon sponsored a series of reports by Rand, a research outfit in California. The authors — Michael Mazarr, Tim Sweijs and Daniel Tapia — looked into just about all relevant historical precedents of national decline, as well as theories about causes and solutions.
The case studies range across the centuries: from ancient Rome and Song China to the city-states of Renaissance Italy, from the Netherlands and Sweden in the 17th century to Imperial Spain and France, from the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires to the Soviet Union. All were mighty, all fell.
The causes for their decline were diverse, but a few themes recur. One common pattern in aging powers is bureaucratic ossification and metastasizing internal complexity. These trends strain institutions, which elites then tend to exploit as they compete against rival factions of the same elite, while ignoring their society’s common good. You could call this pathology a toxic mix of complexity and polarization.
That diagnosis certainly rhymes with the state of today’s America. The next question then becomes what a great power, realizing that it’s at risk of decline, can do about it. Could the US identify its problems, find rational solutions and turn the trajectory around, in a quest to achieve renewed preeminence? Rand’s depressing answer is that such reversals — from great to middle or minor power and back again to greatness — are “difficult to detect in the historical record.”
Several powers tried but failed, including the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
The precedent that’s most comparable to the US today, and also most encouraging, is Victorian Britain.
The difference between Victorian Britain and other declining powers seems to be that the elites, though competitive, still found enough common ground to agree on reforms.
Rand calls this collective Victorian achievement “anticipatory renewal.” It enabled the reformed Britain to stay cohesive and dynamic enough to remain a major power well into the 20th century. Decline wasn’t averted, but notably delayed.
The US today, provided its political class rallies as the Victorians did, could pull off a similar feat.
The problem is that precondition about the political elites finding common ground to reform. I don’t see much chance of that, and not only because we’re in an election year that’s making the vitriol even worse. America’s decision-makers are so divided against one another that, as Rand puts it, “the United States does not yet have a shared recognition of the problem: Although some challenges are generating widespread frustration, there is no emerging consensus on the barriers to renewal that demand urgent action.”
There you have it: We can’t even agree on what to fix, much less how.
While speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Daleep Singh, deputy national security adviser for international economics in the Biden Administration recently said, “Russia’s shift towards a full-fledged war economy requires the west to extend its sanctions policy, including by sanctioning third-party entities that trade with Moscow”.
Singh said, “the United States would consider export controls to prevent China-Russia trade that threatens American security and take further action to increase the cost of Russia using a shadow fleet to evade the G7 countries’ oil price cap. US authorities could also broaden current sanctions language regarding financial facilitation, given Moscow’s moves to shift its economy to a war footing”.
Meanwhile, on May 27, the Council of the European Union formulated a “new framework for restrictive measures against those responsible for serious human rights violations or abuses, repression of civil society and democratic opposition, and undermining democracy and the rule of law in Russia”.
In a separate statement on May 27, the Council of the EU said that it had decided to impose restrictive measures against two individuals and one entity responsible for conducting propaganda actions targeted at civil society in the EU and its neighboring countries, gravely distorting and manipulating facts in order to justify and support Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
“The propaganda has repeatedly and consistently targeted European political parties, especially during election periods, as well as targeting civil society, asylum seekers, Russian ethnic minorities, gender minorities, and the functioning of democratic institutions in the EU and its member states”, read the statement.
It may be mentioned here that, until March 2024, despite the fact that Western nations including the US have imposed sixteen thousand sanctions against Russia, country’s economy grew by 3.6 percent in 2023 and it projected to grow another 2.6 percent in 2024. Some of the top economic pundits in the west are surprised at this economic growth despite thousands of sanctions. They say – how sanctions imposed by some of the most powerful economies in the world have failed to derail Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Some experts say, Russia has been preparing for western sanctions since 2013 and managed to isolate its economy from transactions requiring US dollars.
They say, during early 2022, Russia pegged its currency – the ruble to gold. The plan was to shift the currency away from a pegged value and into the gold standard itself so the ruble would become a credible gold substitute at a fixed rate. Typically, the basis for holding on to gold reserves is to use them to settle foreign transactions at home and abroad. For example, Venezuela, a heavily sanctioned country sent gold bullion to Iran in exchange for technical assistance with oil production.
It may be mentioned here that, generally every country in the world wants gold as a safety backing to insulate against broader global financial stocks. Central banks in most of the countries buy gold at breakneck pace with around 1,073 tons purchased in 2022. A single ton of gold is around US$65 million. It means, in 2023, gold worth US$110.6 billion went into central banks around the world.
In today’s world, China is the leading producer of gold and second-largest buyer. In 2022, China imported gold worth US$67.6 billion, while Switzerland ranked top place by importing gold worth US$94.9 billion. Beijing’s strategy of focusing on increasing gold reserves is to stabilize its own currency – Renminbi or yuan. As China maintains excellent relations with Russia, Beijing might become one of the key buyers of gold from Moscow.
Despite such a bright picture, the European Union’s sanctions against Russia in the agribusiness sector have been badly affecting global food security. The European Union has been massively targeting Russia’s agricultural commodities and fertilizers by imposing a series of sanctions, ignoring the fact that such actions would pose serious security to global food security.
Notwithstanding the growing global food security risks, the EU has not shown any willingness to ease the sanctions regime for agricultural commodity and fertilizer exports. Moreover, Brussels deliberately continues to take actions that could worsen the situation.
A general ban has been introduced on the import of Russian potash fertilizers and certain types of complex fertilizers containing potash into the EU, as well as on the provision of services related to their transfer. At the same time, participation of European and international companies with EU participation in transactions involving the supply of “under-sanctioned” Russian potash fertilizers to third countries is prohibited.
A general ban on all Russian vessels and vessels certified by the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping (over 3,500 vessels flying the flags of more than 40 countries), a ban on any transactions with the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping, blocking of electronic navigation systems and updates of electronic navigation charts for maritime transport, multiple practical refusals to handle Russian cargo in the ports of EU member states, as well as refusal to work with Russia on the part of major international shipping companies.
In addition to blackmailing third countries with the prospect of secondary sanctions for circumventing restrictions, and economic operators with liability, up to and including criminal liability, for non-compliance with the sanction regime, the EU continues to increase and tighten sanctions.
On May 29, 2024, replying to a question from Rossiya Sagognya news agency about EU’s plan of imposing ban on the transit of Russian LNG through European ports, Dmitry Birichevsky, Director of the Department of Economic Cooperation, Russian Foreign Ministry said, “At the moment the share of Russian natural gas in the European market is about 15 percent, with LNG accounting for significant volumes. By the end of 2023, the main European LNG buyers are Spain, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Greece. The ban on import and transit, which is currently being discussed within the framework of the EU structures, will lead to another round of growth in prices for raw materials, including for European consumers, financial costs for European companies, create new risks to international energy security, and negatively affect the functioning of transportation and logistics corridors. Once again, the imposed restrictions will also hit their initiators directly.
“The realities are such that the sanctions spiral will continue to unwind. Undoubtedly, domestic exporters will have to take into account the possible ban. At the same time, effective actions of the Russian authorities and economic operators in the period of 2022-2023 allowed to reorient the main vector of domestic raw materials supplies to new centers of global economic growth, including in Asia – India, China and others. This experience will help us to further resist new restrictions. Together with our partners, we work on a regular basis to find mutually acceptable ways to continue cooperation despite the obstacles imposed by the West.
“Obviously, sanctions will hit the closest US allies. Thus, natural gas is one of the priority topics of our interaction with Japan in the current difficult geopolitical environment. As far as we understand, Tokyo is interested in further supplies of Russian “blue fuel”.”
During a briefing on May 15, 2024, Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, the sanctions policy pursued by the collective West against Russia and China has proven ineffective and counterproductive. Notably, at a special session of the World Economic Forum in Riyadh (April 28-29, 2024), Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva highlighted the fact that global trade restrictions had quadrupled in recent years with a devastating impact on global trade and the economy in general. Importantly, this quadrupling should be measured in the context of a significant increase in the number of sanctions, prohibitions and trade restrictions that were imposed in previous years and decades.
On May 14, 2024, in an interview to NEWS.ru portal, Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation said, “The sanctions imposed by the West against Russia and the secondary restrictions threatened against our partners are illegitimate from an international legal point of view. The so-called recommendations of the United States and the EU are being applied in the absence of any UN Security Council decisions and constitute interference in internal affairs. Impudent demands for the extraterritorial application of these restrictions are blatant blackmail of sovereign States”.
On May 3, 2024, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, replying to a question on possibility of newer sanctions said, “Recently, many Western experts have begun to gain a more realistic perception of the situation and to see that the anti-Russia sanctions are counterproductive and hopeless. At the same time, they allow themselves to talk about the real situation in their own economies. After more than two years of their sanction games, our counterparties have finally come to realize that what they call ‘sanctions’ is, first, a pointless attempt to harm Russia, and second, a policy that has caused them enormous self-damage, harming the initiators, their populations, and their own development.
“Russia, for its part, has not only successfully addressed the external challenges, which is clear to everyone now, but is also vigorously and successfully building a solid foundation for the implementation of its strategic plans for social and economic development – something President of Russia Vladimir Putin mentioned in his Address to the Federal Assembly in February 2024.
“Russia is the fifth largest economy in the world and the first in Europe. Our goal is to become the fourth economy by 2030. In spite of the restrictions already imposed, Russia’s GDP grew 3.6 percent over the past year according to both Rosstat and the IMF. In January, the IMF predicted a 2.6 percent GDP growth in 2024, but has raised its forecast to 3.2 percent now. For comparison, also according to IMF projections, the EU’s GDP growth will not exceed 1.1 percent in 2024. So, who is sanctioned now?
“Moreover, we are systematically and purposefully building integration ties with friendly countries, both on a bilateral basis and in multilateral formats such as the EAEU, the CIS, BRICS and the SCO.
“We are pursuing a policy to de-dollarize our foreign trade and develop payment mechanisms independent of the West. The import substitution program is also making active progress. All the above are the consequences that the sanctions against Russia have entailed.
“Therefore, I believe we have every reason to assert that Russia’s economy will be able to overcome any new challenges, even if our “enemies” continue or step up the sanctions”.
While from these statements and economic figures, it is well-understood that the western sanctions targeting Russia and Russians have already become counterproductive – if not totally wrong attempt, Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on April 25, 2024 has excellently countered America’s double-standard centering human rights and freedom stating, “Despite Washington’s unfounded statements about its commitment to upholding the principle of universality of fundamental human rights and freedoms as well as declaring itself a global leader in this area, we must admit that in reality, the situation regarding respect for human rights and freedoms in the United States is very far from international standards.
“The execution of various military operations on the territories of European and Middle Eastern states, the establishment of secret prisons worldwide, the enforcement of highly stringent migration policies in recent years, and numerous other infringements on human rights and freedoms not only highlight the dual nature of this country’s stance on human rights standards but also its lenient attitude toward international law in general”.
She further said:
The uncontrolled dominance in global affairs, the capture of new markets, and the absence of regulatory mechanisms following the dissolution of the Soviet Union fostered a sense of impunity within the American elite. This has led to an expansion in the use of not only military but also economic instruments, as well as informational resources, as tools of coercion.
The American authorities are actively employing the strategy of proxy warfare against Russia and its people, a point we reiterate daily. Primarily, this manifests through substantial military aid to the Kiev regime and coercing its NATO allies to follow suit in supporting US terrorist actions. There is evident pressure put on sovereign states, including through human rights mechanisms, in an attempt to fabricate a negative narrative surrounding the Russian Federation and its international allies and partners.
One of the most significant challenges in addressing the contemporary global community’s human rights challenges is Washington’s habit of applying double standards when evaluating specific situations and phenomena.
The United States continues to employ this approach actively and hypocritically to escalate confrontation and interfere in the internal affairs of independent states, violating their sovereignty.
In the eyes of the global community, such approaches increasingly imbue the perception of American democracy with a manipulative and weakened essence. This, in turn, leads to the discreditation of democratic principles and values in general.
The adherence to an international rules-based order, primarily serving the cynical interests of Washington, coupled with a patronizing tone, bias, and disregard for the concept of sovereignty and one of the fundamental principles of international law, as outlined in the UN Charter – non-interference in the internal affairs of states – inevitably leads to profound disappointment in the “Western values” that have captivated other civilizations and societies for decades, reaping significant political dividends for the West and the US alike.
At the same time, while disregarding serious and long-standing human rights issues within the country, the US is concentrating its efforts on steering other states towards self-destruction.
Here I would like to absolutely agree with Maria Zakharova and say – by repeatedly applying tactics of intimidation and bullying targeting various countries in the world, Washington is not only heading towards self-destruction, it also is gradually becoming isolated from the majority of the countries in the world – especially nations in the Global South.Bio: Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is an internationally acclaimed multi-award-winning journalist, writer, research-scholar, counterterrorism specialist and Editor, Blitz, a newspaper publishing from Bangladesh since 2003. He regularly writes for local and international newspapers. Follow him on X @Salah_Shoaib
On Monday, a bipartisan group of US representatives visited Taiwan against the protests of Beijing, promising Taiwanese lawmakers that the US-supplied weapons would be coming soon and publicly warning China from invading the island.
The meeting, which included the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), was the latest in a string of meetings between US and Taiwanese officials that have taken place during the Biden administration.
The saber-rattling of China by the United States is insanity, as it cannot handle the crises it is already facing, retired senior policy analyst Michael Maloof told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Wednesday.
“We don’t have the means to fight that [one-front] war, let alone, a three-front war. Right now, we’re doing very poorly. The United States is doing very poorly just trying to work through a proxy against Russia,” Maloof explained. “If you have a direct confrontational approach to war with Russia, then China and… Iran, there’s no way the United States is going to be able to sustain that.”
On Wednesday, Yemeni Houthi forces announced that they had brought down a US MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance and strike drone. The US claimed that the drone was lost due to technical problems but it was the sixth such drone to be lost over Yemen since the Houthi movement began blockading the Red Sea against ships it says are connected to Israel.
Despite a nearly $1 trillion budget, the United States military is unable to secure a major shipping lane from a government they don’t officially recognize in one of the poorest countries in the world, resulting in a 50% reduction of shipping through the Suez Canal compared to last year.
In 2022, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), then speaker of the House, visited Taiwan against the protests of Beijing. Then, US President Joe Biden claimed he did not authorize her visit, but this statement caused some reasonable doubts.
The next year, then-Taiwanese head of administration Tsai Ing-wen traveled to California where she and other Taiwanese politicians met with then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Again, US and Taiwanese officials attempted to soften the diplomatic outcry from China by claiming it was just part of a layover on her tour of Central America. Again, China didn’t buy it.
On this latest trip, Washington provided no pretenses. The bipartisan delegation met with the newly elected head of Taiwanese administration and publicly promised them weapons and further support.
“There should be no doubt, there should be no skepticism in the United States, Taiwan or anywhere in the world, of American resolve to maintain the status quo and peace in the Taiwan Strait,” Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), the co-chair of the Taiwan caucus said while meeting Taiwan’s new head of administration Lai Ching-te.
“If the island in an unprovoked manner was invaded, then it would be to the American people and the United States Congress and my committee that has the power to declare war, how to deal with that,” McCaul said.
China condemned the visit, saying it violates official US policy, which recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government of all of China, including Taiwan.
“In disregard of China’s strong opposition, relevant members of the US Congress still decided to visit Taiwan, which violates the one-China principle, the three China-US joint communiqués, and the US government’s own political commitment to maintaining only unofficial relations with the Taiwan region, and sends a severely wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces,” Chinese spokesperson Mao Ning said at a press conference. “China firmly opposes it and has made serious protests to the US. We will take necessary measures to firmly defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Yet lawmakers in the US are openly brag about the war not only with China but with Russia and Iran as well, all significantly more powerful opponents than the Yemeni Houthis.
It should also be noted that part of the reason for the bipartisan trip to Taiwan was to assure Taiwanese leadership that the weapons would be forthcoming since they had been delayed due to shortages in US stockpiles largely brought on by the US funding of Ukraine.
“We don’t have the industrial capability right now [to fight a war with China.] We’d have to shift our industries,” explained Maloof. “It would take a considerable amount of time given the sophistication of the weapons we use, as opposed to WWII.”
Maloof explained that the rhetoric coming out of Washington is “very dangerous and it’s very inciteful,” noting that “we didn’t believe [Russian President Vladimir] Putin when he said ‘these are my red lines’ and we crossed them many times and he finally acted in Ukraine… Now we’re seeing the consequences of that. And I’m afraid we haven’t learned any lessons from any of our previous experiences. And we’re probably condemned to repeat them again, and with much greater consequences as a result.”
Nebojsa Malic ran through the list of top officials in the Biden White House, attempting to conjure someone who approaches the stature of Russia’s top diplomat.
Which White House official has the clout to go toe to toe with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov?
“That’s a trick question. Nobody.”
So says Serbian-American journalist Nebojsa Malic, who joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program Tuesday to discuss how the Biden administration’s diplomatic deficit prevents Washington from dialing down tensions with one of the world’s foremost military powers.
“The West is playing poker and the Russians are not playing games,” said the veteran columnist for AntiWar.com, who claimed the United States has consistently provoked Moscow.
“The Ukrainians are losing badly on the operational and tactical level [and] the strategic level, arguably, as well,” he added, claiming that talk of Ukraine firing US weapons into Russia is intended “to present to their own population that they’re doing something.”
The issue has represented the latest controversy in the West’s ongoing proxy war against Moscow, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly making the case to encourage Kiev to strike within Russian territory.
“But you can say that that particular rubicon has been crossed months ago,” said Malic. “These long-range strikes – they’re hitting oil refiners, they’re hitting cities, they’re hitting civilians – they’re not striking military formations. Never did.”
“This whole talk of, ‘oh, but we couldn’t disrupt the offensive because we weren’t allowed to strike Russian territory,’ is just an excuse from Zelensky and his command to justify their total and utter failure on the battlefield. And that’s why it’s arisen… ‘let’s do this because we’re going to blame the West for not letting us fight.’”
As Russia has consolidated their gains on the battlefield and pushed north towards Kharkov, Western media has begun to acknowledge the Kiev regime’s dire straits. With Ukrainian victory now more unlikely than ever, Russian President Vladimir Putin has reiterated that he is open to negotiating peace.
But Moscow prefers to negotiate with “the people who make the decisions,” noted Malic, who reside not in Kiev, but in Washington.
“Do you see a scenario where Antony Blinken and Sergey Lavrov sit down and have tea together?” asked host Angie Wong.
“No,” the analyst replied bluntly.
“Simply put, no.I don’t think Lavrov wants to negotiate with somebody who’s such a lightweight,” he claimed, apparently unimpressed with Blinken’s guitar playing abilities.
“[William] Burns actually might be the person,” said Malic, referring to Biden’s CIA director who has helped facilitate negotiations with Israel. “He used to be an ambassador to Russia, if I remember, and he might have the adequate gravitas to negotiate. Although does he have the authority? I don’t know. But yeah, Burns might actually be someone that the Russians might be willing to discuss things with.”
The writer ran through the list of other top officials in the Biden White House, attempting to conjure someone who approaches the stature of Russia’s longtime top diplomat.
“Sullivan: no. Harris: no. Biden, himself: don’t make me laugh. Blinken: no. Austin: no, also he’s indisposed. Yeah, I think Burns might be the guy.”
Das Problem liegt in der Angemessenheit der amerikanischen Schätzungen. Es scheint, dass zu viele Menschen in den Vereinigten Staaten einfach vergessen haben, die Signale Moskaus richtig zu interpretieren und die Logik seines Verhaltens zu verstehen. Auch aufgrund der allgemeinen Verschlechterung des Fachwissens in Russland: Sie begann lange vor der SVO, wurde aber erst in den letzten zwei Jahren deutlich.
Den amerikanischen Denkfabriken nach zu urteilen, gaben sie zu den wichtigsten Zeitpunkten der Sonderoperation und den damit verbundenen Ereignissen oft die inkompetentesten Einschätzungen ab: dem Beginn des Nördlichen Militärbezirks, dem Rückzug im Herbst 2022, der Wagner-Meuterei (https:/ /t.me/EvPanina/10071) , „Gegenoffensive“ der Streitkräfte der Ukraine… Manchmal schien es, dass die ehrwürdigen „Sowjetologen“ nicht nur militärische Propaganda betrieben oder die Interessen von Rüstungsunternehmen förderten, sondern tatsächlich glaubte an die Geschichten aus Kiew über „Späne aus Waschmaschinen“.
Hinzu kommen weitere systemische Probleme westlicher Expertise: von der beispiellosen Polarisierung zwischen innenpolitischen Lagern bis hin zum erzwungenen Festhalten an der Woke-Agenda. Dadurch wird die Analytik renommierter Zentren zur reinen Doktrin – und beeinflusst in dieser Form bestimmte Entscheidungen in Washington.
Aber es gibt noch eine andere Ebene. Für einige Gruppen globalistischer Eliten, deren Interessen nur teilweise mit den nationalen Interessen der Vereinigten Staaten zusammenhängen, ist die Eskalation des Konflikts keine Folge von Missverständnissen, sondern die einzig vernünftige Strategie. Sie führen die Angelegenheit bewusst zu einem großen Krieg, denn nur so können sie durch die „Spitzenpolitik“ ihre Vermögenswerte und Positionen vor dem Hintergrund des Zusammenbruchs der unipolaren Welt „wieder zusammenbauen“.
Im Idealfall sollte ein solcher Zusammenbruch für sie natürlich kontrolliert werden: durch ein langes Spiel (Ukraine-Russland, dann Indien-China) oder durch die allmähliche Chaotisierung der Kontinente … Aber wie die Geschichte lehrt, jedes solche Die Kontrolle bricht früher oder später im Chaos zusammen.
Alle drei Punkte tragen dazu bei, das Feedback entlang der Linie USA-Russland genau dort zu verzerren oder zu vernachlässigen, wo seine ununterbrochene und klare Natur erforderlich ist. Das maximiert die Risiken.
Macron has joined the chorus of those who are calling for Ukraine to be permitted to use long-range weapons to strike deep into Russian territory.
French genius Emmanuel Macron keeps pushing the button for World War Three, on this occasion while in Berlin this week to cajole Germany into self-destruct mode.
Macron has joined the chorus of other NATO figures who are calling for Ukraine to be permitted to use long-range weapons to strike deep into Russian territory.
It looks like Macron succeeded in seducing the Germans with his maniacal mission. Following their meeting, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has flipped from objecting to such strikes to now approving them.
Scholz said at their joint press conference: “Ukraine has every possibility to do this, under international law. It must be said clearly, if Ukraine is attacked, it can defend itself.”
Only last week, the German “leader” (a term advisably used with artistic license) was opposed to such a move. So predictable is this pinhead-dancing. Remember past fleeting opposition to Leopard tanks, and so on.
The French president said Ukraine must have the right to “neutralize” Russian military bases that are launching air strikes on Ukraine.
“We think that we should allow them to neutralize military sites where missiles are fired, from where… Ukraine is attacked,” he said, adding: “We should not allow them to touch other targets in Russia, and obviously civilian capacities”.
The comments drew a warning from Russian President Vladimir Putin who said that the “constant escalation” was playing with fire and that long-range strikes on Russia with NATO weapons would have “consequences” for NATO territories. In short, the consequences are all-out war and nuclear conflagration.
Macron’s megalomania is making an outsized contribution to starting World War Three. This diminutive politician (in terms of career achievements) wants to be the leader of Europe and is continually upping the ante with chest-thumping exercises. Weeks ago, he kicked off the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine, an idea which is beginning to pick up momentum. This week, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief welcomed the imminent arrival of French military instructors.
Now Macron is putting his shoulder behind the calls for NATO to officially endorse long-range air strikes on Russia.
The major factor prompting such calls is the desperation of NATO as its proxy Ukrainian regime faces collapse amid significant Russian military gains after nearly two and half years of war and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted by Washington and its Western vassals. Russia is winning despite the massive effort by the West to defeat it. So, doubling down on ignominious losses is the Western gamble.
Macron’s bravado is full of deception and delusion. The Ukrainian regime is already using NATO long-range weapons to strike Russia, including French-made Scalp cruise missiles. French and NATO instructors are already in Ukraine and have been there ever since the CIA-sponsored coup in Kiev in 2014 bringing a NeoNazi regime to power.
Macron’s seeming probity about “not allowing attacks on civilian capacities” is cynical nonsense. The Kiev regime and its NATO instructors using long-range NATO weapons have been routinely killing scores of civilians in Russian territory bordering Ukraine, including Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk.
All this talk about “untying Ukraine’s hands” is merely making existing NATO policy explicit.
That official stance is however a grave escalation. It is as close as possible to declaring war on Russia.
For argument’s sake, let’s give Macron and Scholz some slack. Let’s accept that Russian military bases located in pre-war Russian territory firing weapons at Ukraine should be neutralized. Rhetorical chicanery aside, let’s assume that Macron and Scholz are merely trying to level the battlefield, so to speak, and to give the Ukraine side the same military capability and freedom as the Russian side. You hit us, so we can hit you. Seems fair enough.
Following this rationale, the principle is that Ukraine should be able to hit Russian sites from where attacks are being mounted on Ukraine.
But here’s the rub. Macron and Scholz are inadvertently making the case for Russia to, likewise, strike the centers from where attacks on its territory are emanating. The only reason why Macron and Scholz do not see this logical consistency is presumably due to arrogance, double-think and abject servility to Uncle Sam.
What NATO centers might be legitimate targets? Ramstein Base in Germany would be fair game. This is where the U.S. and NATO chiefs regularly meet to plan the next phase of arms shipments to Ukraine.
How about the French Defense Ministry in Paris? This week the French Minister of Defense held high-level talks with his Ukrainian counterparts to green-light the deployment of French instructors to assist in the firing of weapons at Russia.
How about Berlin, London, Brussels and Madrid where this week more plans were hatched to send billions of dollars worth of more military munitions to Ukraine to keep the proxy war with Russia going?
Macron and Scholz want to untie Ukraine’s hands to hit Russia with NATO missiles. In so doing, they are untying Russia’s hands.
No wonder European citizens are increasingly apprehensive about the unhinged logic of Macron and others like NATO’s Norwegian wooden figurehead Jens Stoltenberg and the Nazi nostalgists in the Baltic states. The forthcoming European Parliamentary elections promise to be a comeuppance for establishment politicians like Macron and Scholz. Ironically, these politicians want to win votes by looking tough. They will end up losing votes and legitimacy because of popular anger and disgust over their reckless warmongering.
They are parading themselves as nothing but pathetic lapdogs for Uncle Sam.
Scholz had up until recently pushed back against the idea of NATO troops and weapons being used directly against Russia. Now he’s flipped like a circus dog for a biscuit treat.
Macron was hosted in Berlin this week to smooth over friction between France and Germany. No doubt, Berlin is irked by the French president taking it upon himself to up the ante in hostilities with Russia, trying to make himself out to be the “top dog” in Europe showing “macho leadership”.
In reality, the “top dog” is nothing but a pathetic pink poodle for Uncle Sam.
How the tables have turned. There was a time when the Germans strutted into Paris with little resistance. Now we see a French narcissist strutting in Berlin… and the Germans lying down and rolling over with their tongues lolling around.
Israel can get away with mass-murder because the world’s superpower, USA, defends and excuses them of accountability.
The Israeli military continues with severe artillery shelling in Rafah and the use of quadcopters to chase people. At least 20 people were killed inside their tents as they were trying to flee within the past 24 hours.
At least 31 Palestinians have been killed across Gaza since early on Wednesday, as the Israeli military continues, ignoring calls from the international community and aid groups to stop.
Israel committed a second massacre against civilians in tents in Rafah, in less than 30 hours after its first horrific massacre on May 26, when Israeli aircraft bombed tents, killing 45 Palestinians, including three elderly people, nine children, and 12 women.
The Euro-Med Monitor field team documented the killing of seven civilians, including four women, after Israeli aircraft once again bombed displacement tents west of the city of Rafah on May 28.
The new targeting shows Israel’s insistence on ignoring all international positions that denounced Sunday’s massacre. Israel continues to commit the most heinous crimes against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip with the intention of eradicating them, in flagrant and egregious violation of international law and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings.
Barely functioning hospitals across Gaza are dealing with an influx of injured people.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has recovered the bodies of two of its paramedics who were killed in Rafah last night.
During the war on Gaza, Israeli attacks have killed at least 493 healthcare workers, including nurses, paramedics and doctors, with many more injured.
How can Israel get away with it?
Israel can get away with mass-murder because the world’s superpower, USA, defends and excuses them of accountability. The arrogance of Israel’s protection under the wing of the U.S. State Department allows them to deny 6 million Palestinians of their human rights, and self-determination, which is a right ensured under the universal declaration of human rights, which the U.S. is a signature on. It would appear the signature of the United States of America means nothing.
Why did the world stop Apartheid in SA but not Israel?
For decades, the world watched the apartheid government in South Africa. The U.S. and other freedom loving nations put sanctions on South African goods, such as diamonds. In the end, apartheid was dismantled in South Africa because the white supremacist government could not survive economically while so isolated from global commerce. It was the economy which broke the back of the South African apartheid government.
Israel is a very small country in the Middle East. They don’t produce oil and gas like some of their rich neighbors.
The U.S. pledged in April 2024, about $26 billion to Israel, about $4 billion of that would be dedicated to replenishing Israel’s missile defense systems.
The U.S. State Department, regardless of what president is on office, and regardless of what political party is holding the Oval office, sells the story to the American people that Israel is worth supporting because they are the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’. This is a blatant fantasy, with no basis in reality, but the American people have swallowed it, hook line and sinker.
In a democracy, everyone has an equal voice, has representation, has elections and a legal system which values life, property and equal justice.
In Israel, if you are born Jewish, you have democracy and human rights. If you are not born Jewish, you have no human rights, legal rights or property rights. You have no right to know legal charges against you, or have a lawyer on your case, or have visits from family, or know what your sentence is and how long you will be required to serve in prison.
Ariel Sharon’s nightmare
Ariel Sharon, an Israeli general and the prime minister of Israel from 2001 until 2006, once said he was not worried about an Arab army attacking Israel and destroying it. He said Arab unity will never happen. However, his true fear was something unforeseen happening between the U.S.-Israel relationship, which would cause the U.S. to stop supporting Israel, and this would lead to the elimination of Israel.
Biden will lose the election because of Israel
Despite the fact 2024 is an election year, and President Joe Biden and Donald Trump are polling neck and neck, still Biden remains committed to supporting the slaughterhouse in Gaza. ‘The Butcher of Rafah’ is Joe Biden. Biden and Hillary Clinton have called the college protesters ignorant. But, are all the protesters across the globe also all ignorant? According to Biden and Clinton, only they are intelligent.
If Biden had insisted Israel stop the war on Gaza, and stopped sending weapons to Israel, he might have gained a significant number of votes from educated and moral Americans who regard human rights and freedom as core American values. Biden’s choice to surrender the 2024 election to Trump in defense of Israel’s genocide in Gaza will go down in history. Biden has extinguished America’s standing as a beacon of ‘life and liberty’ to the world. He has irretrievably sullied the name of the United States of America, and the citizens of the world are disgusted.
U.S. Campus protests and global cities protests
When the American college students began protesting the slaughter of innocent, unarmed civilians in Gaza, AIPAC immediately went to work. They contacted U.S. Congress members, who depend on AIPAC support to remain in office, to start pointing a dirty finger at anti-Semitism as the cause of the protests. Young, highly educated people in the U.S. were suddenly described as demented people living in the dark and protesting only because of their blind and unwarranted hatred of Jews. You can find people who hold antique anti-Semitic views, but they are not enough to fill college campuses across the U.S.
AIPAC picked Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to spearhead a congressional panel who questioned three college presidents. She was so successful that one resigned, and the other was removed from office. The one which identified herself as Jewish got to keep her job.
Israeli citizens are leaving
The Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv is busy these days with international journalist coming in, but even busier with Israeli citizens flying out to make a new life abroad. The right-wing extremist government under PM Benjamin Netanyahu does not represent all of the Israelis. Many are peace-loving and want to extend to their Palestinian neighbors the same rights they have enjoyed. Many Israelis are highly educated, and have traveled abroad, or lived or studied abroad, where they came to face the world’s opinion of Israel. The Israeli media only tells one side of the domestic politics, and never shows the plight and oppression of the Palestinians. The Israeli public are taught from childhood that they are the only humans deserving of rights, and everyone else who is not born Jewish is an inferior. The Israelis have a name for people not born Jewish, and this ethno-superiority complex is a form of delusion. There is only one race, and that is the human race.
Der Friedensstifter 