OMNI
US, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, cold war ii ANTHOLOGY #17
April 8, 2022
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
What’s at Stake: Like the UN Charter and the Quakers’ AFSC and FCNL, OMNI’s anthologies seek a world free of war and the threat of war. These anthologies provide views alternative to those of the US War Party (the Democrats and Republicans) and their mainstream media.
Contents of #17
Origins, CAUSES of the war
Sonja Van den Ende. Russian Perspective for Donbass republics of
Donetsk and Luhansk.
Editor of MR. Origins of New Cold War.
Jacques Baud Interviewed by Thomas Kaiser. US: Prevent German and
Russian Cooperation.
US the Biggest Spoiler, Welcomes War between Ukraine and Russia.
TeleSUR. Washington’s Role in Ukraine Jeopardizes World Stability.
Sanctions.
EU to Continue to Send Weapons to Ukraine.
Nazis in Ukraine. Putin’s Aim to De-Nazify Ukraine.
Patrick Lancaster. Ukrainian and Azov Forces.
Ukraine: Obama, Trump, Biden.
Jonathon Cook. Biden on Regime Change of War Criminal Putin.
consequences of the war
Atrocities: Bucha.
Mision Verdad, Art Hobson, Evan Bukey.
Nuclear Risks: NIRS.
Food Crisis, Hunger: Michelle Nichols, Ukrainian Farmers.
Economic War: Prabir Purkayastha on US Dollar.
PEACEFUL FUTURE?
Constructive Peace Talks Now.
Negotiations after Ceasefire: 3 Articles from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
TEXTS
ORIGINS, CAUSES OF THE WAR
Eye-Witness Report from Donbass: How the War Looks From the Russian SideBy Sonja Van den Ende, CovertAction Magazine, Apr 07, 2022.
[Followng in the tradition of the late Wilfred Burchett (1911-1983), an Australian who reported on the Korean and Vietnam Wars from the communist side, this article continues CAM’s reporting on the “other side” of the war in Ukraine, the side that is not presented in western media. Readers can balance this article with the pro-Ukrainian government stories we are fed every day and try to discern the truth for themselves.—Editors]
As the war in Ukraine rages on, I visited the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as an embedded reporter with the Russian army.
Both of the republics are the trigger of the current conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared their independence on February 24, 2022, something a lot of people were waiting for since the CIA backed coup in Ukraine of February 2014. That coup had resulted in the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and new laws forcing the Ukrainian language on Russian-speaking residents. Luhansk and Donetsk consequently voted on their independence and Ukraine attacked them, precipitating the war. […]
The post Eye-Witness Report from Donbass: How the War Looks From the Russian Side appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.
The Editors . Origins of the New Cold War and the onset of the current Russian entry into the Ukrainian civil war. Monthly Review(April 5, 2022).
April 2022 (Volume 73, Number 11).https://monthlyreview.org/2022/04/01/mr-073-11-2022-04_0/?mc_cid=f64e38021d&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
As we write these notes at the beginning of March 2022, the eight-year limited civil war in Ukraine has turned into a full-scale war. This represents a turning point in the New Cold War and a great human tragedy. By threatening global nuclear holocaust, these events are also now endangering the entire world. To understand the origins of the New Cold War and the onset of the current Russian entry into the Ukrainian civil war, it is necessary to go back to decisions associated with the creation of the New World Order made in Washington when the previous Cold War ended in 1991. | more…
“The Policy of the USA Has Always been to Prevent Germany and Russia from Cooperating More Closely” in Verein Schweizer Standpunkt by Thomas Kaiser (March 15, 2022 ). Posted Mar 31, 2022.
Empire, Inequality, State Repression, WarGermany, Russia, United StatesInterview
Historical, political and economic contexts of the war in Ukraine. Interview with Jacques Baud, conducted by Thomas Kaiser.
US ENCOURAGED UKRAINE/RUSSIA WAR to weaken Russia and for its MIC profits. Ceaseless war enriches a few and sustains the profiteering War System. Editors. Mronline.org (4-7-22).
Global Times (March 31, 2022 ). Apr 06, 2022.
Media, State Repression, Strategy, WarEurope, Russia, Ukraine, United StatesNewswire
After the latest round of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey on Tuesday, both sides said the negotiations released positive signals. Ukraine proposed adopting neutral status in exchange for security guarantees from the international community. Russia said the country would sharply cut military activity around Kiev and Chernihiv. But……. MORE https://mronline.org/2022/04/06/u-s-biggest-spoiler-of-ukraine-situation-european-security/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=u-s-biggest-spoiler-of-ukraine-situation-european-security&mc_cid=588796d33b&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
On March 24, NATO reaffirmed it “will continue to provide further political and practical support to Ukraine” and “allies are substantially increasing their defense expenditures.” By enhancing the role of NATO, the U.S. ties Europe more firmly to its chariot; and through its dominant position, the U.S. has forced Europe to take its side by escalating crisis and even war. The ultimate goal is to constantly put Europe under its control.
While pouring cold water on the Russia-Ukraine peace talks, the U.S. is stepping up its efforts to stir the conflicts. This is in line with U.S. strategic needs. If Ukraine’s appeal for a security guarantee is met, a new model of international security guarantee will be opened up, which will mean weakening the role of the U.S. and NATO. The U.S. clearly doesn’t want to see this result. It can be said that the U.S. is the biggest spoiler of the security in the entire Europe. The U.S. is the most reluctant to see a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine.
“Washington's Role in Ukraine Jeopardizes World Stability”
Published 7 April 2022 0
"Ukraine will be further devastated. And we may move on to terminal nuclear war if we do not pursue the opportunities that exist for a negotiated settlement," Noam Chomsky said.
As the Ukrainian conflict grinds on, picturing Washington's role in the chaos is less challenging than predicting an endgame of the crisis. Since late February, the United States has continued to add fuel to the fire by delivering lethal weapons to Ukraine, goading allies into cornering Russia, and imposing massive economic sanctions on Russian institutions and enterprises.
ANOTHER ROUND OF SANCTIONS
On Wednesday, the United States imposed additional sanctions on Russia, targeting its major financial institutions and the two daughters of President Vladimir Putin. The United States will impose full blocking sanctions on Russia's largest financial institution, Sberbank, and the country's largest private bank, Alfa Bank, freezing any of the two banks' assets in the U.S. financial system and prohibiting Americans from doing business with them.
U.S. President Joe Biden will sign an executive order banning new investment in Russia by Americans no matter where they live, the factsheet said, adding the executive order aims to "ensure the enduring weakening of the Russian Federation's global competitiveness."
Since the conflict broke out in Ukraine, the United States has imposed rounds of sanctions on Russia, despite experts' warning that sanctions alone are inadequate to de-escalate the tensions and might even invite a nightmare scenario.
"For the U.S. allies in Europe, the sanctions punish them as much as predictable skyrocketing energy prices bedevil their economies now, and threaten even the very survival of the European economy," said Herman Tiu Laurel, founder of Philippine BRICS Strategic Studies.
"We should fully understand the causes and consequences of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Will the sanctions against Russia solve the problem? Will the sanctions force Russia to withdraw their troops? The answers unfortunately are No. The sanctions will only deteriorate the world economy already weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic," Wichai Kinchong Choi, senior vice president of the leading Thai bank Kasikornbank, said.
U.S. ROLE IN CRISIS
The root cause of the outbreak of the conflict is the continuous eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Putin had repeatedly warned NATO against deploying its troops and weapons to Ukraine, saying this represents a red line for Russia.
Russia's concern that NATO is expanding to its borders has never been heeded by the United States, "which is only interested in maintaining its hegemonic status in Europe, and which has been steadily retreating from that collaborative policy which the West committed itself to after the Cold War," said William Jones, Washington bureau chief of the U.S. publication Executive Intelligence Review.
In the past several weeks, U.S. politicians have flown back and forth across the Atlantic to instigate hostilities against Russia, while showing little interest in acknowledging the root cause of or brokering a political solution to the tragedy in Ukraine.
Immediately after the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, Biden announced that the United States would provide US$350 million in military aid to Ukraine. On March 16, Biden announced an additional US$800 million in security assistance to Ukraine.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Washingtons-Role-in-Ukraine-Jeopardizes-World-Stability-20220407-0007.html
RELATED:
EU to Continue to Send Weapons to Ukraine
All these moves run counter to global efforts to de-escalate the crisis and put world stability in peril. No matter which side gains the upper hand in the crisis, "the United States is the winner," said Chen Fengying, a researcher with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.
UKRAINIAN NAZIS
“Nazis in Ukraine: seeing through the fog of the information war.” Editor. Mronline.org (4-4-22).
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin undertook what he referred to as a “special military operation … to de-militarise and de-Nazify Ukraine.”
The UK government admitted to sending anti-aircraft weapons weapons to Ukrainian neo-Nazis from the white-supremacist Azov regiment of the National Guard.
1:19 PM · Apr 3, 2022·Twitter Web App, TeleSUR 4-7-22
[I stumbled upon TWITTER messages, which looked endless.]
“Ukrainian forces want to surrender and Azov forces started shooting at them – they are at war with each other.” Editor. Mronline.org (3-30-22).
U.S. Navy veteran and independent journalist, Patrick Lancaster, has been making regular reports from Ukraine since the beginning of the crisis. His reports reveal that what is happening on the ground is not what Western corporate media would have you believe.
OBAMA, TRUMP, BIDEN AND UKRAINE
“Re-visiting Russiagate in light of the Ukraine war.” Editor. mronline.org (3-30-22). Caitlin A Johnstone Blog (March 28, 2022 ).Posted Mar 29, 2022
Media, State Repression, Strategy, WarRussia, Ukraine, United StatesNewswireBarack Obama, Former president of the United States of America Donald Trump, President Vladimir Putin, Russiagate, Ukraine War
It’s hard to believe that the last president spent his term pouring weapons into Ukraine, shredding treaties with Russia and ramping up cold war escalations against Moscow which helped lead us directly to the extraordinarily dangerous situation we now find ourselves in, and yet mainstream liberals spent his entire administration screaming that he was a Kremlin puppet.
A lot of anti-empire commentary is rightly going into criticizing how the Obama administration paved the way to this conflict in Ukraine with its role in the 2014 coup and support for Kyiv’s war against Donbass separatists. But what’s getting lost in all this, largely because Trumpites have been using their mainstream numbers to loudly amplify criticisms of the role of the Obama and Biden administrations in this mess, is what happened between those two presidencies which was just as crucial in getting us here.
Though it’s been scrubbed from mainstream liberal history, it was actually the Trump administration that began the U.S. policy of arming Ukraine in the first place. Obama had refused forceful demands from neocons and liberal hawks to do so because he feared it would provoke an attack by Russia.
In a 2015 article titled “Defying Obama, Many in Congress Press to Arm Ukraine“, The New York Times reported that “So far, the Obama administration has refused to provide lethal aid, fearing that it would only escalate the bloodshed and give President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a pretext for further incursions.” MOREhttps://mronline.org/2022/03/29/re-visiting-russiagate-in-light-of-the-ukraine-war/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=re-visiting-russiagate-in-light-of-the-ukraine-war&mc_cid=f9cb4175fa&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
[Abel: Excellent analysis by journalist Jonathan Cook.]
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2022-03-30/biden-russia-regime-change/
Jonathan Cook. “Joe Biden has confirmed to Russia that the US really wants regime change.” 30 March 2022
Biden’s comment – given the US record in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere – serves Putin’s claim that his Ukraine invasion was pre-emptive.
Middle East Eye – 30 March 2022.
Did US President Joe Biden say the quiet bit out loud at the weekend when he indicated that Washington wanted regime change in Moscow? It may well have looked that way to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Earlier this month, Biden accused Putin of being a “war criminal”, even though the charge drips with hypocrisy. Biden himself has played a critical role in Washington’s own historic war crimes: from ensuring Congressional authorisation of the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 to his part in the Obama administration’s expanded campaign of drone strikes across the Middle East.
Then on Saturday, Bidencharacterised Putin as a “butcher” who “cannot remain in power”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Washington officials quickly backtracked, while European allies scrambled to limit the damage of comments suggesting the US might seek to depose the leader of a rival nuclear power. Biden himself backtracked later.
But Putin has only to look to other recent examples of Washington meddling around the globe – from Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya to Syria, Iran and Venezuela – to see that regime change has regularly been front and centre of its playbook. Based on that record, why would Putin imagine his own government would fare better? MORE https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2022-03-30/biden-russia-regime-change/
Excerpt: "The goal is not to ease Ukraine’s plight, or bring the two sides to the negotiating table, but to turn it into another quagmire for Russia, draining Moscow of manpower, firepower and treasure, just as the US partially succeeded in doing in Syria – and long before that, in the Soviet era, in Afghanistan. This approach to rivals on the world stage has a long pedigree in Washington. In 1941, a few years before he became president, Harry Truman described the aim of the US in the Second World War as to bleed both Germany and Russia: “If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.”
What is emerging is a NATO war against Russia on the cheap, with Ukraine serving as the battlefield and Ukrainians paying the price. A further advantage for Washington is that it can weaken Russia militarily in Ukraine while avoiding a direct confrontation with another nuclear power. "
PART II: Some CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR AND OF WAR
Atrocities and Allegations of Atrocities
Photo deleted of corpses strewn on streets of Bucha, Ukraine. Ukraine alleges Russia was behind the killings, but the evidence does not corroborate these accusations. (Photo: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP).
“Staged Massacre in Bucha.” Orinoco Tribune by Mision Verdad (April 5, 2022 ). Posted Apr 07, 2022.
Inequality, Media, Strategy, WarRussia, UkraineNewswireBucha, Corporate Media
The city of Bucha, in Ukraine, has recently come to the attention of the U.S. and EU corporate media, for the purpose of criminalizing Russia for the supposed assassination of 300 civilians. However, the lack of evidence for these claims brings into doubt any allegations that the Russian military was involved.
After the Ukronazi regime of Volodimir Zelensky published images depicting corpses in Bucha, supposedly killed by the Russian military, in the middle of the street and in mass graves, calls have been issued for Russia to be tried internationally for war crimes.
Reuters correspondents confirmed that they had seen bodies strewn in the streets, with their hands and feet tied, as if they had been arrested.
The Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Relations Dmytro Kuleba posted a series of tweets in English with the images, and requests for the G7 countries to roll out even more “sanctions” against the Russian Federation. He called the scene a premeditated “massacre” carried out by the Kremlin and pleaded for more international military aid. “Tanks, combat aircraft, heavy air defense systems. Provide them now,” wrote Kuleba.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s minister of foreign affairs, has responded that “another attack of false claims was made in the city of Bucha, in the Kiev region, after the Russian military had already left the area, as was planned and agreed upon. A few days later, they organized a staged event there which the Ukrainian spokespeople and their western sponsors have been disseminating throughout TV channels and social media.”
Additionally the minister of defense released a statement in which he rejected Kiev’s accusations:
All of the photos and videos published by the Kiev regime which supposedly show the “crimes” committed by the Russian military in the city of Bucha, in the Kiev region, are a novel provocation… While this city was under the control of the Russian Armed Forces, not a single local resident was subject to violent actions. The Russian military delivered 452 tons of humanitarian aid to civilians in the Kiev region… During the entire period that the city was controlled by the Russian Armed Forces and even after, the local residents could freely move through the city of Bucha and use their cell phones… The exits from Bucha were not blocked off. All of the local residents had the opportunity to freely leave the city to the north, even towards Bielorrusia. At the same time, the south of the city, even the residential areas in the outskirts of the city, were bombarded for 24 hours by the Ukrainian troops with heavy artillery, tanks and various missiles… We want to stress that the Russian military left Bucha on the 30 of March, a day after the peace negotiations which took place between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey… Furthermore, on the 31 of March, the Mayor himself [of Bucha], Anatoli Fedoruk, confirmed in a video that the Russian military was no longer there and did not mention that any local residents had been arrested and shot in the street… Thus, it is no surprise that all of this so-called “evidence of crimes” in Bucha has appeared four days later, when the Ukrainian Security Service and the Ukranian TV representatives had arrived to the city… The fact that none of the bodies in the images published by Kiev were suffering from rigor mortis is especially worrisome, they lacked the pale complexion characteristic of a corpse and were not covered in coagulated blood… All of this is irrefutable proof that the photos and videos published from Bucha were produced by the Kiev regime for the western media, just like the maternity hospital from Mariupol.
In this regard, the Russian version starkly contrasts with the Ukronazi version of events, which has so aptly been spread by the western media in a new chapter of the information war against Russia. Russia’s government not only rejected the claims of the Ukrainian president, but also affirms that the massacre was “staged” and is a “provocation.”
As the Zelensky government requests that the Kremlin be judged by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, the United Kingdom has contested Russia’s calls for a new session to be held at the United Nations Security Council in order to discuss the subject, which is surprising since this would be the ideal place to put forward the demands of Ukraine’s Foreign Minister.
When the events are carefully analyzed, it becomes apparent that the Russians are much closer to the truth that the Ukrainian regime.
Proof that the Ukronazi’s staged the events MORE https://mronline.org/2022/04/07/staged-massacre-in-bucha/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=staged-massacre-in-bucha&mc_cid=4c5fc2c0d5&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
[Bucha is an example of the nationalization of information during wars by all sides. Violent wars are also propaganda wars.] Editor. Mronline.org (4-07-22).
The West has made a snap judgment about who is responsible for the massacre at the Ukrainian town of Bucha with calls for more stringent sanctions on Russia, but the question of guilt is far from decided, writes Joe Lauria.
A context for assessing right now allegations of Russian atrocities, repeated incessantly in US mainstream media, is provided by George Paulson’s reminder that the first victim of war is the truth.
Note from Art 4-7-22::
Dear friends –
Some say that we can’t know what happened in places like Bucha. There is, however, some real evidence about the Bucha executions. The problem is that some evidence supports Russian atrocities while other evidence supports Ukrainian atrocities. It should be possible to sort this out. Today’s (Thursday) NWADG Ukraine report starts on p 1 and continues on p 6. Look at the section titled “Executions Recorded.” The New York Times verified videos recording Ukrainian troops executing Russian troops following a Ukrainian ambush on a Russian column retreating from Bucha on 30 May. The report describes atrocities by a Ukrainian paramilitary unit that has apparently been doing this sort of thing since 2014. I think that any conclusion that the executions were carried out by Russians is premature, to say the least. Yet according to the same article, Biden is playing up the Bucha execution atrocities as a reason we should send military equipment to Ukraine. This might be a classic example of why we go to war, and why wars escalate. Thoughts?
Peace - Art
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The sad truth is that atrocities are committed by belligerents on both sides during wars.
This was true of the Americans in the PTO, as Phil Trapp told me many times, even though the Japanese were much more brutal - most notably in China.
In Europe both the Germans and Soviets were noted for horrific atrocities - not including the Holocaust. After D Day, Hitler sent crack SS divisions to Normandy, who regularly slaughtered Allied captives. The British, Americans, Canadians, and Poles replied in kind.
And do not forget Vietnam. [Evan Bukey is a prof. emer., History, UAF].
Nuclear Risks
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Food Crisis, Hunger
· Briefing: World hunger and the war in Ukraine
· Editor. Mronline.org (4-5-22).
·
· The New Cold War is rapidly heating up, with severe consequences for people around the world. Our new series, Briefings, provides the key facts on these matters of global concern.
March 29, 20225:44 PM CDTLast Updated 7 days ago
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/with-ukraine-farmers-frontlines-un-food-chief-warns-devastation-2022-03-29/
With Ukraine farmers on frontlines, U.N. food chief warns of 'devastation'By Michelle Nichols
A combine harvester machine loads grain onto a transport truck near the southern Ukranian city of Nikolaev July 7, 2013. REUTERS/Vincent Mundy/File Photo
UNITED NATIONS, March 29 (Reuters) - The U.N. food chief warned on Tuesday that the war in Ukraine was threatening to devastate the World Food Programme's efforts to feed some 125 million people globally because Ukraine had gone "from the breadbasket of the world to breadlines."
"It's not just decimating dynamically Ukraine and the region, but it will have global context impact beyond anything we've seen since World War Two," WFP Executive Director David Beasley told the 15-member United Nations Security Council.
Beasley said 50% of the grain bought by the WFP, the food-assistance branch of the United Nations, comes from Ukraine, "so you can only assume the devastation that this is going to have on our operations alone."
"The farmers are on the frontlines," he said.
Beasley added that the crisis was compounded by a lack of fertilizer products coming from Belarus and Russia.
"If you don't put fertilizer on the crops, your yield will be at least 50% diminished. So we're looking at what could be a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe in the months ahead," he told the council.
Before Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, Beasley said the WFP was already struggling with high fuel and food prices and shipping costs that was forcing it to cut rations for millions of people in places like Yemen.
Beasley warned if the conflict in Ukraine was not ended, "the world will pay a mighty price and the last thing we want to be doing as the World Food Programme is taking food from hungry children to give to starving children."
Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia rejected accusations that Moscow's actions in Ukraine had caused the "serious turbulence" in the global food market, instead blaming Western sanctions on Russia.
Russia calls its invasion a "special military operation" that aims to destroy Ukraine's military infrastructure. The 193-member U.N. General Assembly has overwhelmingly deplored Russia's "aggression" and demanded it withdraw its troops. read more
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told the council sanctions were not fueling the global food crisis.
"The responsibility for waging war on Ukraine – and for the war's effects on global food security – falls solely on President Putin," Sherman said.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Karishma Singh. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Economic War
Russia/Ukraine War and Peace, US Dollar
“Ukraine and the Global Economic War: Barbarism or Civilisation?”
Originally published: Peoples Democracy by Prabir Purkayastha (March 27, 2022 ). Posted March 30, 2022.
https://mronline.org/2022/03/30/ukraine-and-the-global-economic-war-barbarism-or-civilisation/
DOES the Ukraine war and the action of the U.S., EU, and the UK spell the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency? Even if the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine reach a 15-point peace plan, as Financial Times has reported, the fallout for the dollar still remains. For the first time, a major nuclear power and major economy were treated as a vassal state. Its $300 billion foreign exchange reserves lying with the U.S., EU and the UK were seized.
The threat to the dollar hegemony is only one part of the fallout. The other is the complex supply chains, built upon the promise of a stable trading regime based on the WTO principles, is also threatening to unravel. The U.S. is discovering that Russia is not simply a petro-state as they thought but supplies many of the critical materials that the U.S. industry and the military need. This is apart from Russia being one of the critical suppliers of wheat and fertilisers globally.
Seizing Russia’s funds means that the faith the U.S. is the world’s banker and the dollar is the global reserve currency, is in question. Why should countries maintain any trade surplus and bank it abroad if that surplus can be seized at will? The promise of a dollar as the world’s reserve currency was that all surpluses in dollars were safe. With the seizing of the Afghan central bank’s 9.5 billion dollars recently, the U.S. had shown that it considers that dollars held by another country with the U.S. central banks as a fair game. It may be an economic asset in the books for a country. But it is effectively a political liability, as the U.S. government can seize this asset at its will. This was also shown earlier in Iraq, Libya, Venezuela. Seizing Russia’s foreign exchange reserves by a handful of western countries–ex-colonial and settler-colonial states–means that the so-called rules-based order is now based on weaponising the dollar and the west’s control over the global financial system.
Economists–Prabhat Patnaik, Michael Hudson–and financial experts such as Zoltan Potsar of Credit Suisse are now predicting a new regime in which the Chinese Yuan or a variant of it will emerge as the world’s new reserve currency.
Why these predictions? After the Second World War, the Bretton Woods agreement led to the dollar becoming the world’s reserve currency. It replaced the British pound and was pegged to gold, with $35 to an ounce of gold. In 1971, President Nixon removed the U.S. dollar from the gold standard, which meant that the dollar was now backed only by the U.S. government (or U.S. Treasury) guarantees. In the post-war years, the dollar as reserve currency had three things going for it. It was backed by the U.S., which was the world’s largest industrial producer; the U.S. was the pre-eminent military power even if challenged by the Soviet Union; and it was backed by West Asian oil, the largest traded commodity, being priced in dollars.
The denomination of West Asian oil, particularly of Saudi Arabia, was critical to the U.S. and was determined by its military power. The coup in Iran against Mosaddegh, the 1963 coup in Iraq, and many other political events there can be understood more easily, if we understand why oil was so important to the U.S.. This was the basis of the Carter doctrine, extending the Monroe doctrine equivalent to the Persian Gulf Region. Or what the cartoonists drew: “Our oil is under their sand”. The U.S. control over West Asian oil and its industrial and military power ensured that the dollar remained as the world’s reserve currency. MORE https://mronline.org/2022/03/30/ukraine-and-the-global-economic-war-barbarism-or-civilisation/
FUTURE FOR PEACE
Peace Talks Now
“Russia promises reduced military activity, as Ukraine proposes ‘neutral’ status at talks.” Editor. Mronline.org (4-1-22)
After the three-hour meeting in Turkey, Russia said it has decided to drastically cut back its military activity near Kiev in order for peace talks to progress. According to TASS, top Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said the talks were "constructive."
PEACE NEGOTIATIONS AFTER ARMED FORCE
The 3 following items are from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (4-7-22).
The day after the war in Ukraine ends, the US policy goal should be to assure that the circumstances that gave rise to this devastating war should never recur, says Princeton University professor Robert J. Goldston. Read more.
Nuclear arms control: Still necessary, but more difficult than ever. Some question whether arms control is even possible in the new world order that was already taking shape before Russia invaded Ukraine. And although the challenges facing future nuclear arms control are daunting, they are not impossible to meet. Read more.
Virtual Program: Ask nuclear experts your questions about the war in Ukraine. On April 11, talk with nuclear experts Francesca Giovannini, Pavel Podvig, and Manpreet Sethi as they join Lauren Sukin to discuss the impact the war in Ukraine will have on our nuclear future. Register now.
contents of russia, ukraine, new cold hot war #16 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/04/omni-us-russia-ukraine-cold-war-ii.html
TomDispatch. New Cold and Hot Wars and Swelling Military.
Four Articles via Historians for Peace 3-23-22
Stephen Krotkin, Putin in Russian History.
Alfred McCoy, Putin and Xi Jinping in Eurasia.
Juan Cole, We Shouldn’t Want a NATO No Fly Zone.
Andrew Bacevich, US v. International Order.
US Mainstream Reporting
Disinformation in Dongass
Christelle Néant, “Mariupol—Civilians Denounce the Crimes
of the Fighters of the Neo-Nazi Azov Regiment.”
Max Blumenthal, Dubious BBC Correspondent.
Andi Olluri, Another War Not Reported.
Provocations and Sanctions: “The Irony of Sanctions Against Russia”
Remembering 2014: Dongass
And the Cold War and NATO: Albright
Daniel Kovalik, “Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Signifies the End
of …Unipolar American Power”
Contents #15
END RUSSIA UKRAINE # 17