OMNI

RUSSIA NEWSLETTER #12,
March 5, 2022

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/russia-ukraine-newsletteranthology-12.html

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology

Omnicenter.org/donate/

   No one has asked why equal time is not given to official US history and positions, perhaps because the explanation is obvious.  The US possesses, as part of its military power (greater than the next six countries combined), probably the most powerful propaganda system in all history.  A single citizen who reports contrary opinions might be guilty of whistling in the dark but is not guilty of violating the protocols of news reporting under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

   Several news reports I have seen show Putin sitting alone, conversing with one to three people at the far end of a long table.  The commentators remark about how isolated he is as autocratic ruler of Russia.  Biden always has several people with him.  But is Biden greatly less isolated than Putin?  Does he hear from the many opponents of NATO expansion, for example?  I have seldom heard any of his staff or any commentators on the news networks represent Putin’s perspectives. 

We stand, then, with About Face:
“We are in solidarity with all people who find themselves in harm's way for a war that was preventable. May all those seeking shelter and safety from all horrible violence be greeted with open arms.”   About Face: Veterans Against the War

CONTENTS (most entries received March 1-4, too many to include all): RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE FEBRUARY 23, 2022

Most of these essays discuss causes of the Ukraine-Russia War of 2022.

Introductory

Abel, Experts Warning about NATO Expansion

Mearsheimer, 2015 and 2022 Critical of the West

Mary Elise Sarotte, 2010 and 2021, BushI, Baker, Kohl, NATO, Not One Inch

Failed Minsk Agreements 2014 and 2015

Feb. 28, 2022, Putin puts Russia on nuclear alert.

UAF Faculty Panel on Ukraine and Russia

    Abel from audience challenges the mostly Cold Warrior speakers and warns of WWIII danger from NATO expansion.
Jeremy Kuzmarov:  From Brzezinsky to Biden inducing invason to bankrupt Russia

TomDispatch: JFK (Andrew Bacevich) offers advice to Biden

About Face Veterans against the War: “DemilitarizeU” Ukraine and Russia
Peace Action, Ceasefire, humanitarian aid, diplomacy

Naomi Klein, The Intercept (March 1).   A wide-ranging essay by one of our best.

Kuttab, “Ukraine, Palestine, International Law, and BDS”

Art: Russia out of Ukraine, NATO out of Existence

David Adams, “The Fall of Putin,” US and Russia will crash because of overmilitarization
Greg Coleridge (via Ellen Barfield, VFP), “War Is (Still) a Racket” this one a war over resources

Adam Schiff (via Abel), a US proxy war v. Russia.

CENTRALITY OF NATO EXPANSION IN #11
Joe Lauria, Putin’s 3,350-word Speech: NATO Is the Issue
Chris Hedges on the Economic Motives for NATO Expansion

 Art Hobson, Neutrality

 Scott Ritter, Neutrality

 Shea and Pavlova, Austria’s Neutrality

TEXTS

A FEW ISSUES FROM THE PAST

What some experts have said.

John Mearsheimer 2015 and 2022

Mary Elise Sarotte via Noam Chomsky 2010, and her new book 2021 Not One Inch

Minsk Agreements 2014 AND 2015

Dear friends,

At the link below is a Master List of top Geopolitical Experts Predicting and Warning about hostile anti-Russia NATO Expansion, most especially in Ukraine.  This war was entirely Predictable, Preventable & Provoked by the nation that started over 80% of the wars since WW2, USA.

In my informed opinion, it’s an American effort to destroy the Russian gov’t. via proxy war quagmire, just like they did in Afghanistan against the Soviets when the US armed & trained the Mujahadeen & Bin Laden. 

 The gaping, insane hole in their plan is that Russia has enough nukes to blow the world up, as do we, and even if they are able to destroy the Russian gov’t., what comes next? A balkanized array of nuclear armed territories, warlord fiefdoms, mass civil war and terrorism, as we see everywhere else USA "spreads democracy"?

Master List of experts, full references:

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592?t=sgD_hvSSM74T6cFJPO5c_g&s=19

John Mearsheimer’s 2015 and 2022 Analysis

Minsk Agreements

Video: Why is Ukraine the West's Fault?  (Distinguished Professor John Mearsheimer Predicts Ukraine Crisis in 2015).   Sept. 25, 2015.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and Co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, assesses the causes of the present Ukraine crisis, its consequences, and the best way to end it.  A key assumption is that in order to come up with the optimum plan for ending the crisis, it is essential to know what caused the crisis. Regarding the all-important question of causes, the key issue is whether Russia or the West bears primary responsibility.

Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine
For years, the political scientist has claimed that Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine is caused by Western intervention. Have recent events changed his mind?By Isaac Chotiner.  The New Yorker (March 1, 2022).  https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine

GORBACHAEV, BUSH I, BAKER, KOHL NATO UNDERSTANDING
Based considerably on analysis by MARY ELISE SAROTTE, in Hopes and Prospects (2010) Noam Chomsky summarized the promises broken by the US regarding NATO (278-80).  NATO was created to defend against the “Russian hordes” of the Warsaw Pact   When the Cold War ended and the Warsaw Pact was dissolved it was generally assumed NATO would also be dissolved, but not only had “Bush I and hissecretary of stateJames Baker promised not to expand NATO to the East” but “ Bush-Baker promised that NATO would not even fully extend to East Germany.”     Gorbachaev believed Baker’s assurances that “NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift eastward one inch from its present position” (279).  –Dick 3-4-22

A Broken Promise? | Foreign Affairs

https://www.foreignaffairs.com › articles › russia-fsu

MARY ELISE SAROTTE is Dean's Professor of History at the University of Southern California, a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, and the author of The ..
Opinion | Enlarging NATO, Expanding Confusion - The New ...
https://www.nytimes.com › opinion › 30sarotteNov 29, 2009 — Mary Elise Sarotte,
Russia's belief in Nato 'betrayal'– and why it matters today

https://www.theguardian.com › world › jan › russias-be...

Jan 12, 2022 — A new book, Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of the Cold War Stalemate, by the prize-winning historian Mary Elise Sarotte, ...

MINSK AGREEMENTS

Two failed agreements in 2014 and 2015 to end the bloody conflict over the status of Donetsk and Luhansk, 2 eastern Ukrainian provinces.

Minsk agreements - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Minsk_agreements

The Minsk agreements were a series of international agreements which sought to end the 2014 war in the 2014 Donbas region of Ukraine. The first, known as the Minsk ...

Signed: 5 September 2014

Expiry: 21 February 2022

‎Minsk Protocol · ‎Minsk II · ‎Text of the agreement · ‎Reactions
Minsk agreement: Could it be a way out of the Ukraine-Russia ...

https://www.cnn.com › 2022/02/09 › europe › minsk-agr...

Feb 10, 2022 — Moscow points to language in the Minsk Agreement that refers to "the special status of certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions" and ...
The Minsk-2 agreement | Chatham House

https://www.chathamhouse.org › 2020/05 › minsk-2-ag...May 22, 2020 — The Minsk agreements rest on two irreconcilable interpretations of Ukraine's sovereignty: is Ukraine sovereign, as Ukrainians insist, ...
Ukraine and Russia's Minsk Agreement Is a Problematic ...

https://foreignpolicy.com › 2022/02/17 › minsk-agreeme...

Feb 17, 2022 — The Minsk II agreement, so called because it replaced a prior failed attempt at a peace plan, was hashed out by negotiators from Ukraine, Russia ...
Why the Minsk Accords Failed to Bring Ukraine Peace

https://www.bloomberg.com › news › articles › why-mi...

Feb 18, 2022 — The accords sought to halt the armed conflict that broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The country's pro-Russia leader Viktor Yanukovych had ...
What is wrong with the Minsk Agreements? | openDemocracy

https://www.opendemocracy.net › odr › russia-ukraine-...

Feb 4, 2022 — The Minsk 2 peace agreements between Russia and Ukraine, intended to stop the fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine, were signed in .

This rest of this Newsletter/Anthology is arranged in chronological order by publication date of each entry.

Dick’s Reply:  Russia and the US have always been on nuclear alert, the danger of which is a chief reason why the nuclear weapons abolition movement exists. 

Honors College to Host Discussion on Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday.   Feb. 28, 2022

Twitter

Protesters hold the Ukrainian flag aloft in this Twitter photo.

Russia has boots on the ground in Ukraine. The world is watching and wondering: Why is Putin doing this? Will severe sanctions from the U.S., G-7 and EU countries work? Is peace in Europe coming to an end? The Honors College will present a panel of faculty experts who will discuss these questions and more from 5-6:30 p.m. next Tuesday, March 1, in the Honors Student Lounge. Pizza and drinks will be served.

Faculty members who will provide context and lead a question-and-answer session include:

·       Nadja Berkovich, teaching assistant professor of Russian/Russian Literature and Yiddish, Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures

·       Kelly Hammond, associate professor and historian of China and World War II, Department of History

·       Ted Holland, assistant professor and political geographer, Ukraine and Russia/USSR, Department of Geosciences

·       Trish Starks, professor and historian of the Soviet Union and Russia, Department of History

"As a historian I'm deeply disturbed by the developments in Ukraine," said Honors College Dean Lynda Coon. "The community and campus need to come together to discuss and debate the current crisis, and we've got faculty experts who can tackle this issue from many different angles."

This event is part of the Honors College Pulse discussion series, which began in 2016 following the presidential election, and was named in remembrance of victims of the Pulse nightclub shootings. Since then, it has featured conversations around the Dakota Access Pipeline Project, the legal ramifications and decisions related to hate crimes and ways to fight local hunger and poverty. 

Antiwar Activist Abel Tomlinson’s Response to the UA Ukraine Forum

The image above (Art left, Abel right)  is from the Ukraine Russia forum at UA last night, March 1, 2022. I tried to do a livestream video, but my internet connection failed. Overall, 3 of the 4 panelists gave mostly Cold Warrior talks (excessively anti-Russia, anti-China, with virtually no criticism of the West's role in the crisis). I called them out some, and gave a shorter version of the following speech at the end during Q & A:

Stop All Wars from Ukraine to the Middle East & Stop WWIII

It is self evident that we must call for a stop to Russia’s invasion, and all the ongoing Western invasions across the Middle East as well. The Russian invasion is a war crime, just as the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a war crime, as were the dozens of US invasions and bombings of millions of mostly non-white people over the last several decades.

As you know, mainstream media is bombarding the public with endless stories about Russian invasion, and but have never done the same for endless & ongoing Western invasions of the Middle East. The same week as the Russian invasion, the U.S. carried out bombings in Somalia, the U.S.-backed Saudi dictatorship launched dozens of airstrikes in Yemen, and the U.S.-backed Israeli government bombed Syria.  

The U.S. has dropped 337,000 bombs, an average of 46 bombs per day, on the Middle East for the last 20 years, but mainstream media barely covered the horror of it.  As the Monthly Review reported, “In the (last week of February), Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC ran almost 1,300 separate stories on the Ukraine invasion, two stories on the Syria attack, one on Somalia, and none at all on the Saudi-led war on Yemen.”

Mainstream Western media never encourages mass public sympathy for victims of Western wars, and never encourages people to wave flags for Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia or Palestine.  Despite what our media tells us, we must condemn all this illegal invasion of sovereignty as well, in addition to Russia’s.

You might ask yourself why the discrepancy in media coverage?  We have the answer.  In numerous recent instances, mainstream Western media has explained their racist justification.  A great example is when a CBS news reporter said about the Russian invasion, “This isn’t a place…like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European city where you wouldn’t expect that…to happen.” 

An NBC News reporter said “these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from Ukraine…They’re Christian, they’re white, they’re very similar.”  Speaking of refugees, we must also recognize how Western nations are appropriately welcoming in Ukrainian war refugees, but in many cases are building walls or other severe barriers to the 37 million refugees that Western nations have created via their endless invasions of the Middle East.  This racist double standard is not lost on the millions of suffering non-white people.

The media is also stoking excessive hatred toward Russians, reminiscent of the pro-war propaganda run up to the Iraq War. They are using initial sympathy for Ukrainians, and twisting it into anti-Russia war fervor.  Scores of individuals and organizations are sounding increasingly bellicose, strongly supporting various forms of warfare against Russia.  Due to this, Russian artists and athletes are being unfairly punished for things their government did, being banned from participation in film festivals, sporting events, and so forth. 

But most importantly, we must recognize the strong possibility of this war escalating into a nuclear World War 3. Indeed, the Russian invasion has vastly increased the probability of world war, and the Western response has compounded that probability.  Instead of vigorously seeking serious peace talks and an understanding of Russian grievances, the West is waging wholesale economic warfare, trying to collapse most of the Russian economy, which will harm poor civilians most.  The West is also continuing to send massive arms shipments to Ukraine, and has been working on sending warplanes to the Ukrainian government.  Many top governmental officials are calling for a No Fly Zone and to kill Putin.  All this is a massive escalation toward nuclear world war and is stark raving insanity of the highest order!

As we speak, and I say this without hyperbole, we are at the most dangerous moment in human history. Even during the height of the previous Cold War, all the leaders and public understood the extreme danger of nuclear war. Today, it seems like far too many suffer from total ignorance or amnesia, and act as if going to war against Russia is acceptable. Nobody wins nuclear war!

We must recognize that there is an easy way to Stop the War, which starts by understanding what really provoked the war. If we’re honest, we must accept that this conflict started when the US broke its promise not to expand NATO forces “one inch” Eastward beyond West Germany, after the fall of USSR. Many of our nation’s foremost Russia and foreign policy experts, George Kennan, Stephen Cohen, John Mearsheimer, and many others warned us precisely about NATO expansion leading to this very conflict. Russia also explicitly warned the West for many years that there would be a severe problem if they continued pushing NATO to their doorstep, especially in Ukraine. How did the USA feel when Soviets put missiles in Cuba?

If we are serious about peace, we also must tell the truth about the violent U.S.-backed Ukraine coup in 2014, when Senator John McCain and others went to coup protests in Ukraine and proclaimed U.S. support for overthrowing Ukrainian democracy. And following that coup, the U.S. armed and supported a proxy war in that nation, including working with neo-Nazis as they waged war on ethnic minority Russians in the East, killing around 14,000 people. Interestingly, the very credible independent media watchdog journal Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) gave a great summary of what mainstream media is not telling the public.  This war did not start last week.

If we’re serious about peace and avoiding nuclear war, we must acknowledge the Western role in provoking the conflict, and call for peace negotiations for Ukraine to remain neutral in terms of NATO, and for U.S. and Russian forces and weapons to be withdrawn from Ukraine. Peace is simpler than pro-war profiteer media would like us to comprehend. 

--

Abel Tomlinson

OMNI Peace Action Committee, Chair

Arkansas Nonviolence Alliance, Founder

AbelTomlinson.com

Facebook | Twitter

(479)283-5762

Repeating ’70s Strategy of Grand Chess-Master Zbigniew Brzezinski: Biden Administration Appears to Have Induced Russian Invasion of Ukraine to Bankrupt Russia’s Economy and Advance Regime Change

By Jeremy Kuzmarov on March 01, 2022 11:46 am

But Will the Strategy Succeed This Time?

Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski famously bragged about having induced a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 by supporting Islamic fundamentalists with the goal of “giving the Soviets their Vietnam.”

The collateral damage of the war—the destruction of Afghanistan and growth of al-Qaeda—was inconsequential to the “grand chess-master,”^[1] who told a reporter: “what is more important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”

Brzezinski died in May 2017, but his spirit lives on in the Biden administration which appears to have followed his blueprint, substituting Afghanistan with Ukraine.

Its strategy appears to have been to induce a Russian invasion of Ukraine with the goal of bogging Russia down into a quagmire while crippling its economy through sanctions that hold the prospect of bringing Vladimir Putin down. […]

The post Repeating ’70s Strategy of Grand Chess-Master Zbigniew Brzezinski: Biden Administration Appears to Have Induced Russian Invasion of Ukraine to Bankrupt Russia’s Economy and Advance Regime Change appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/03/01/repeating-70s-strategy-of-grand-chess-master-zbigniew-brzezinski-biden-administration-appears-to-have-induced-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-to-bankrupt-russias-economy-and-advance-regime-cha/

Andrew Bacevich.  “ Jack and Joe, The Perils of Getting Tough.”  tom/Dispatch,  MARCH 1, 2022. 
[Bacevich imagines JFK giving Joe Biden advice, drawing from JFK’s store of good and bad judgments and actions.  B’s criticism of fear mongers is especially valuable today.  –D]

 …But let TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich, author most recently of After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed, take you into the netherworld on what, increasingly, seems to be a netherplanet. Tom

“Reflections from the Netherworld: Advice from JFK to President Biden.”  BY ANDREW BACEVICH

Dear Mr. President:

I send greetings from the other side — and no, I don’t mean the other side of the aisle. I refer to the place where old politicians go to make amends for their sins.

Apart from our shared Catholicism and affinity for sunglasses, I suspect you and I don’t have a lot in common. Actually, that may not quite be true. After all, your family and mine have both experienced more than our share of tragedy and you and I both did make it to the top rung of American politics.

Forgive me for being blunt, Joe — may I call you Joe? — but after more than a year in office your administration clearly needs help. Having had ample time to reflect on my own abbreviated stay in the White House, I thought I might share some things I learned, especially regarding foreign policy. Sadly, you seem intent on repeating some of my own worst mistakes. A course change is still possible, but there’s no time to waste. So please listen up.

I’m guessing that you may be familiar with this timeless text: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

I no longer have any idea what prompted my aide and speechwriter Ted Sorensen to pen those immortal words or how exactly they found their way into my inaugural address. No matter, though. People then thought it expressed some profound truth — a Zen-like aphorism with an Ivy League pedigree.

Its implicit subtext, though, totally escaped attention: If negotiations don’t yield the desired results, it’s time to get tough. And that turned out to be problematic.

Fearing Fear Itself?

Candor obliges me to admit that, politically speaking, my administration made good use of fear itself. If my run for the White House had an overarching theme, it was to scare the bejesus out of the American people. And once in office, fearmongering formed an essential part of my presidency. The famous Jack Kennedy wit and charisma was no more than a side dish meant to make the panic-inducing main course more palatable.

Here’s me at the National Press Club early in the 1960 campaign, sounding the alarm about “increasingly dangerous, unsolved, long postponed problems” that would “inevitably explode” during the next president’s watch. KABOOM! Chief among those problems, I warned, was “the growing missile gap, the rise of Communist China, the despair of the underdeveloped nations, the explosive situations in Berlin and in the Formosa [i.e., Taiwan] Strait, [and] the deterioration of NATO.”

Note the sequencing.  Item number one is that nuclear “missile gap,” with its implications of an Armageddon lurking just around the corner. It was my own invention and, if I do say so myself, a stroke of pure political genius. Of course, like the “bomber gap” that preceded it by a few years, no such missile gap actually existed. When it came to nukes and the means to deliver them, we were actually way ahead of the Soviets.

President Eisenhower knew that the missile gap was a load of malarky.  So did his vice president, Dick Nixon, the poor sap. But they couldn’t say so out loud without compromising classified intelligence.

Even today, people still treat my inaugural address — “The torch has been passed,” etc. — as if it were sacred scripture. But when it came to putting the nation on notice, the Kennedy-Sorensen fright machine really hit its stride barely a week later during my appearance before a joint session of Congress.

“No man entering upon this office,” I said with a carefully calibrated mixture of grace and gravitas, “could fail to be staggered upon learning — even in this brief 10-day period — the harsh enormity of the trials through which we must pass in the next four years.” Then came a generous dose of Sorensen’s speechwriting magic:

“Each day the crises multiply. Each day their solution grows more difficult. Each day we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger, as weapons spread and hostile forces grow stronger. I feel I must inform the Congress that our analyses over the last ten days make it clear that — in each of the principal areas of crisis — the tide of events has been running out and time has not been our friend.”

For eight years, Ike had been asleep at the switch. Now, in a mere 10 days as chief executive, I had grasped the harrowing magnitude of the dangers facing the nation. Time running out! The enemy growing stronger! The hour of maximum danger approaching like a runaway freight train!

But not to worry. With a former PT-boat skipper at the helm, assisted by the likes of Mac Bundy, Bob McNamara, Max Taylor, brother Bobby, and a whole crew of Harvard graduates, the Republic was in good hands. That was my message, anyway.

Okay, Joe, now let me come clean. In the months after that, we hit a few bumps in the road. Having promised action, we did act with vigor, but in ways that may not have been particularly judicious.  (Had I lived long enough to finish my term and win a second one — that was the plan, after all — things might have been put right.)

So, yes, the CIA’s Bay of Pigs Cuban debacle of April 1961 was an epic snafu, although as much Ike’s fault as my own. Viewed in hindsight, my escalation of our military involvement in Vietnam, that distant “frontier” of the Cold War — thousands of U.S. troops test-driving the latest counterinsurgency theories — wasn’t exactly the Best and Brightest’s best idea. And the less said about my administration’s complicity in the murder of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem the better. That was not our best day either.

You didn’t know Bobby, but when my brother got a bit in his mouth, he was unstoppable. So I will admit that he got more than slightly carried away with Operation Mongoose, the failed CIA program aimed at assassinating Fidel Castro and sabotaging the Cuban Revolution.

If given the chance to do it over again, I also might think twice about ordering the deployment of 1,000 Minuteman land-based ICBMs, a classic illustration of Cold War “overkill,” driven more by domestic politics than any strategic calculus. Mind you, the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command was lobbying for 10,000 ICBMs so it could have been worse! (In the things-never-change category, I hear that your administration is quietly pursuing a $1.7-trillion upgrade of the U.S. nuclear strike force. Does that form part of your intended legacy?)

The Limits of Fear

Learn from our mistakes, Joe, but pay special attention to what we got right. Yes, fear led us to do some mighty stupid things. On occasion, though, fear became a spur to prudence and even wisdom. In fact, on two occasions overcoming fear enabled me to avert World War III. And that’s not bragging, that’s fact.

The first occurred in August 1961 when the East German government, with the approval of the Kremlin, began erecting the barrier that would become known as the Berlin Wall. The second took place in October 1962 during the famous Cuban Missile Crisis.

On the first occasion, I did nothing, which was exactly the right thing to do. Doing nothing kept the peace.

As long as East Berliners (and by extension all East Germans) could enter West Berlin and so flee to the West, that city would remain, in Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s words, “a bone in the throat” of the Communist bloc. Dividing Berlin dislodged that bone. Problem solved. Khrushchev got what he wanted and so did I. As a result, the likelihood that Berlin-induced tensions could trigger a great power conflagration eased markedly. True, the outcome might not have pleased East Berliners, but they weren’t my chief concern.

On the second occasion, I employed skills I learned from my father Joe. Whatever his reputation as an appeasement-inclined isolationist before World War II, my dad knew how to cut a deal. So while Mac, Bob, Max and the rest of the so-called ExComm were debating whether to just bomb Cuba or bomb and then invade the island, I called an end-around.

Using Bobby to open a back-channel to Khrushchev, I negotiated a secret compromise. I promised to pull U.S. nuclear missiles out of Turkey and Italy and pledged that the United States would not invade Cuba. In return, Khrushchev committed to removing Soviet offensive weapons from that island. As a result, both sides (along with the rest of humanity) got a rain check on a possible nuclear holocaust.

Let me emphasize, Joe, that the theme common to both episodes wasn’t toughness. Both times, I set aside the question of fault — the U.S. not exactly being an innocent party in either instance — in favor of identifying the terms of a resolution. That meant conceding their side had legitimate concerns we could ill-afford to ignore.

This crucially important fact got lost in the grandstanding that followed. I’ll bet you remember this comment, reputedly from my secretary of state Dean Rusk, about the negotiations with the Soviets over Cuba: “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.” That invented quote supposedly captured the essence of the showdown over Cuba. The truth, however, was that Khrushchev and I both stared into the abyss and jointly decided to back away.

As for Berlin, Ted Sorensen wrote me a great speech to give there (“Ich bin ein Berliner,” etc.).  In it, I pretended to be unhappy with the Wall, when in truth that structure allowed me to sleep well at night. And, of course, my memorable star-turn in Berlin created a precedent for several of my successors to stage their own photo-ops with the Brandenburg Gate as a backdrop. (Don’t count on Kyiv offering a similar opportunity, Joe.)

You’ll never get me to acknowledge this on the record, but in both Berlin and Cuba I opted for “appeasement” — a derogatory term for avoiding war — over confrontation. Not for a second have I ever regretted doing so.

Just Say No

You may be wondering by now what any of this has to do with you and the fix you find yourself in today. Quite a lot, I think. Hear me out.

I inherited a Cold War in full swing. You seem to be on the verge of embarking on a new cold war, with China and Russia filling in for, well, the Soviet Union and China.

I urge you to think carefully before making the leap into such an unmourned past.  Whatever your political advisers may imagine, displays of presidential toughness aren’t what our nation needs right now. You’ve extricated us from the longest war in U.S. history — a courageous and necessary decision, even if abysmally implemented. The last thing the United States needs is a new war, whether centered on Ukraine, the island of Taiwan, or anyplace in between. Military confrontation will drive a stake through the heart of your “Build Back Better” bill and kill any hopes for meaningful domestic reform. And it may also boost your predecessor’s prospects for making a comeback, a depressing thought if ever there was one.

You probably caught this recent headline in the Washington Post: “With or without war, Ukraine gives Biden a new lease on leadership.” The implication: perceived toughness on your part will pay political dividends.

Don’t believe it for a second, Joe. An armed conflict stemming from the Ukraine crisis is likely to destroy your presidency and much else besides. The same can be said about a prospective war with China. Let me be blunt: the leadership we need today is akin to what the nation needed when I steered a course away from war in Berlin and Cuba.

And please don’t fall for the latest propaganda about growing “gaps” between our own military capabilities and those of potential enemies. Take it from me, when it comes to endangering our security both China and Russia trail well behind our military-industrial-congressional complex.

“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”  A nice turn of phrase that. Damned if it doesn’t turn out to be a sentiment to govern by as well.

Joe, if I can be of any further help in these tough times, don’t hesitate to call. You know where to find me.

Sincerely,

Jack

Copyright 2022 Andrew Bacevich

Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His most recent book is After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed.

Watch Now: Ukraine - what's hype, and what's helpful

Nuclear war

Hi friends - 

From today’s NWADG, page 5.  It’s surprising that this was relegated to page 5, seeing as how we’re talking about the possible end of civilization.   The world is now in the most danger of immediate destruction it’s been in since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.  Somehow, this war fervor needs to be tamed.   

Peace - Art

Naomi Klein.  The Intercept (March 1 2022), 6:00 a.m.

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A “Make America Great Again” baseball cap rests on the knee of a person at the “Rally to Protect Our Elections” event in Phoenix, on July 24, 2021.

Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

NOSTALGIA FOR EMPIRE is what seems to drive Vladimir Putin — that and a desire to overcome the shame of punishing economic shock therapy imposed on Russia at the end of the Cold War. Nostalgia for American “greatness” is part of what drives the movement Donald Trump still leads — that and a desire to overcome the shame of having to face the villainy of white supremacy that shaped the founding of the United States and mutilates it still. Nostalgia is also what animates the Canadian truckers who occupied Ottawa for the better part of a month, wielding their red-and-white flags like a conquering army, evoking a simpler time when their consciences were undisturbed by thoughts of the bodies of Indigenous children, whose remains are still being discovered on the grounds of those genocidal institutions that once dared to call themselves “schools.”

This is not the warm and cozy nostalgia of fuzzily remembered childhood pleasures; it’s an enraged and annihilating nostalgia that clings to false memories of past glories against all mitigating evidence.

All these nostalgia-based movements and figures share a longing for something else, something which may seem unrelated but is not. A nostalgia for a time when fossil fuels could be extracted from the earth without uneasy thoughts of mass extinction, or children demanding their right to a future, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, like the one just released yesterday, that reads, in the words of United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, like an “atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” Putin, of course, leads a petrostate, one that has defiantly refused to diversify its economic dependence on oil and gas, despite the devastating effect of the commodity roller coaster on its people and despite the reality of climate change. Trump is obsessed with the easy money that fossil fuels offer and as president made climate denial a signature policy.

The Canadian truckers, for their part, not only chose idling 18-wheelers and smuggled jerry cans as their protest symbols, but the leadership of the movement is also deeply rooted in the extra-dirty oil of the Alberta tar sands. Before it was the “freedom convoy,” many of these same players staged the dress rehearsal known as United We Roll, a 2019 convoy that combined a zealous defense of oil pipelines, opposition to carbon pricing, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and explicit nostalgia for a white, Christian Canada.

Oil is a stand-in for a broader worldview.

Though petrodollars underwrite these players and forces, it’s critical to understand that oil is a stand-in for a broader worldview, a cosmology deeply entwined with Manifest Destiny and the Doctrine of Discovery, which ranked human as well as nonhuman life inside a rigid hierarchy, with white Christian men at the top. Oil, in this context, is the symbol of the extractivist mindset: not only a perceived God-given right to keep extracting fossil fuels, but also the right to keep taking whatever they want, leave poison behind, and never look back.

This is why the fast-moving climate crisis represents not just an economic threat to people invested in the extractive sectors but also a cosmological threat to the people invested in this worldview. Because climate change is the Earth telling us that nothing is free; that the age of (white, male) human “dominion” has ended; that there is no such thing as a one-way relationship comprised only of taking; that all actions have reactions. These centuries of digging and spewing are now unleashing forces that make even the sturdiest structures created by industrial societies — coastal cities, highways, oil rigs — look vulnerable and frail. And within the extractivist mindset, that is impossible to accept.

Given their common cosmologies, it should come as no surprise that Putin, Trump, and the “freedom convoys” are reaching toward one another across disparate geographies and wildly different circumstances. So Trump praises Canada’s “peaceful movement of patriotic truckers, workers, and families protesting for their most basic rights and liberties”; Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon cheer on Putin while the truckers sport their MAGA hats; Randy Hillier, a member of the Ontario Legislature who is one of the convoy’s loudest supporters, declares on Twitter that “Far more people have & will die from this shot [the Covid vaccines], than in the Russia/Ukraine war.” And how about the Ontario restaurant that last week put on its daily specials board the announcement that Putin “is not occupying Ukraine” but standing up to the Great Reset, the Satanists, and “fighting against the enslavement of humanity.”

These alliances seem deeply weird and unlikely at first. But look a little closer, and it’s clear that they are bound together by an attitude toward time, one that clings to an idealized version of the past and steadfastly refuses to face difficult truths about the future. They also share a delight in the exercise of raw power: the 18-wheeler vs. the pedestrian, the shouted manufactured reality vs. the cautious scientific report, the nuclear arsenal vs. the machine gun. This is the energy currently surging in many different spheres, starting wars, attacking seats of government, and defiantly destabilizing our planet’s life support systems. This is the ethos at the root of so many democratic crises, geopolitical crises, and the climate crisis: a violent clinging to a toxic past and a refusal to face a more entangled and interrelational future, one bounded by the limits of what people and planet can take. It is a pure expression of what the late bell hooks often described, with a playful wink, as “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” — because sometimes all the big guns are needed to describe our world accurately.

A rocket hits a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 26, 2022.  Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The most urgent political task at hand is to put enough pressure on Putin that he sees his criminal invasion of Ukraine as too great a risk to sustain. But that is only the barest of beginnings. “There is a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future on the planet,” said Hans-Otto Portner, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group that organized the landmark report released this week. If there is a uniting political task of our time, it is to provide a comprehensive response to this conflagration of toxic nostalgia. And within a modern world birthed in genocide and dispossession, that requires laying out a vision for a future where we have never been before.      MORE   THANKS TO SHELLEY Bhttps://theintercept.com/2022/03/01/war-climate-crisis-putin-trump-oil-gas/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter

I like the slogan below:   “RUSSIA OUT OF UKRAINE.   NATO OUT OF EXISTENCE.”  It’s too much for a single sign I think but might work as two neighboring protest signs.    Unfortunately, NATO is probably going to have more, not less, support after Russia’s attack.    Peace – Art

“Ukraine, Palestine, International Law, & BDS”By Jonathan Kuttab
[Kuttab appeals for an agreement that employs nonviolent BDS to stop the killing, leads to Russian withdrawal, leaves Ukraine as an independent yet neutral country, and strengthens international law “may be the closest thing to a just solution we can hope and pray for.”]

I must admit that when the Ukraine crisis began developing, I was ambivalent. It seemed that one tyrant, Putin, was eager to reassert the status of Russia as a major power with a “sphere of influence'' over its neighbors. Meanwhile, NATO and the US were unnecessarily provoking him by extending their military reach to his very doorstep. Once the Warsaw pact had been dissolved, I saw no further use for NATO, much less the efforts to extend its military power to Russia’s very doorstep. I had no interest in that type of power struggle, aside from wishing for peace and avoiding bloodshed over such imperial machinations.

Once Putin invaded his neighbors, however, I quickly changed my mind. His blatant violation of the sovereignty of his neighbor, after having previously annexed the Crimean Peninsula, his reliance on brute military force, and his total disregard for international law and its provisions is truly dangerous and required a prompt and quick response. Not a military one, I thought, but a determined assertion of the international order and, through widespread international solidarity, a means of making him pay the price for these blatant violations. In other words, Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) as nonviolent responses to Putin's aggression.

It did not help, of course, that the US has in recent years been steadily weakening international organizations and mechanisms, itself violating international law and norms with impunity. The issue for me, however, is not just rank hypocrisy and double standards. It goes much deeper than that. To live in a peaceful world requires an international order that prohibits and sanctions those who would resort to aggression and war, the invasion of neighboring countries, or the attempt to annex and acquire lands by force. Indeed, the premise of the international order following WWII was that humanity could no longer afford to live in such a world. The overwhelming death and destruction caused by our modern war machines is intolerable, and the plethora of potential disputes between the 194 countries of the world is devastating. If we allow historical claims and grievances, security interests, national pride, and the populist opportunism of unscrupulous politicians free reign, then many countries can and will find excuses to invade their neighbors—resorting to “the rules of the jungle” whereby the powerful attack and swallow up the weak with impunity.

The speedy and effective international response to Russia’s invasion this time is heartening. Perhaps we can again generate the type of enthusiasm for international law and worldwide solidarity that has prevented many major wars in the last few decades.

To be sure, we still live in an imperfect world, and there are still a number of wars and localized conflagrations, but since WWII most countries have accepted international law, and there have been only three notable attempts to annex land by force of arms:

1.    Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait,

2.    Russia’s annexation of the Crimea (and now possibly Ukraine), and 

3.    Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights, as well as its threats to annex additional portions of the West Bank.

All three attempts are blatant violations of international law, no matter what excuses and justification have been offered.

It is shameful that the United States, since winning the Cold War, has been leading a retreat from such international principles, except when they have suited its own interests. It has also abused its massive military power to either circumvent the United Nations or to veto the condemnation of Israel at the United Nations Security Council, blunting and preventing international solidarity from impacting the tragic situation.

It is my hope that the current crisis and its resultant bloodshed will end soon, with a strengthening of international law and a reassertion of the principles of self-determination and democracy. I hope for a renewed commitment to finding peaceful means of resolving international disputes, as based on the principles of justice and law rather than brute military force and chauvinistic national interests. An agreement that leads to Russian withdrawal but leaves Ukraine as an independent, yet neutral country may be the closest thing to a just solution we can hope and pray for.

THE FALL OF PUTIN – A DEJA VU

Dear Friends,
I have just posted a second culture of peace blog for March, entitled :
THE FALL OF PUTIN – A DEJA VU.  You will find it at https://decade-culture-of-peace.org/blog/?p=1407 
Here’s the conclusion (D):  Putin’s days are numbered with a crashing economy, an unwinnable war and the loss of confidence of the Russian people.

I continue to believe that the American empire will crash soon because of its over-militarization of the economy and the entire American culture. But it seems that Putin’s rule in Russia will crash even sooner.

The day of reckoning of the culture of war is arriving.

In case you have not already received it, this month's CPNN bulletin is
entitled, PEACE ACTIVISTS AGAINST WAR IN UKRAINE . You may find at
https://cpnn-world.org/new/?p=26395

Thank you for your interest in the culture of peace.

David Adams

Good article about HOW war industry controls US politics.
Peace, Ellen Barfield

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: Move to Amend <info@movetoamend.org>

To: Ellen E Barfield <ellene4pj@yahoo.com>

Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022, 10:04:53 AM EST

Subject: War is (still) a Racket

From Abel ][about year 2000?]

In this video from two years ago Congressman Adam Schiff openly admits that the massive arming of Ukraine that has been going on since the 2014 US backed coup was "to fight Russia over there and not here".  The US has been using Ukraine to fight a proxy war against Russia.

Video:

https://twitter.com/AbelNTomlinson/status/1499826232246079502?t=W--J5Dwa4EhY53zjjNOhhQ&s=19  [I couldn’t open this link –D]

CENTRALITY OF NATO EXPANSION IN #11
Joe Lauria, Putin’s 3,350-word Speech: NATO Is the Issue
Chris Hedges on the Economic Motives for NATO Expansion

 Art Hobson, Neutrality

 Scott Ritter, Neutrality

 Shea and Pavlova, Austria’s Neutrality

CONTENTS RUSSIA (AND UKRAINE)NEWSLETTER #11, 2-21-22

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-russia-newsletter-11-february-24.html

Perspectives Leading to Diplomacy

Putin’s/Russia’s Thinking

   Joe Lauria, Putin’s 3,350-word Speech: NATO Is the Issue

   Chris Hedges on the Economic Motives for NATO Expansion
Minsk Agreements

    Rahman, Ukraine at Fault

    Ray McGovern, Russia and China
German-Russian Pipeline Agreement 

    Whitney, Germany and Russia, Nordstream 2 Pipeline
    George Paulson

    Art Hobson

    John Foster (author of Oil and World Politics), Nordstream,
         NATO, and Equal Security

M. K. Bhadrakumar, From Recognition of Donbass Provinces to Invasion Donbass Refugees

US’/Biden’s Thinking

   Tomlinson, War on Russia

   Hess and Davis, Sanctions as War

   “Hidden Costs of Sanctions”

   Kuzmarov, Yalta: US and Soviet Russia
   Bromwich, Mainstream Media for War

Peace Thinking

   Jack Matlock, Analysis of US and Russian Arguments

   What Could Ukraine—and US and Russia--Think? 

        Art Hobson, Neutrality

        Scott Ritter, Neutrality

        Shea and Pavlova, Austria’s Neutrality

   J. William Fulbright, Empathy, Democratic Humanism, Diplomacy

Anthology #10, 1-8-22

END RUSSIA-UKRAINE NEWSLETTER/ANTHOLOGY #12