Cold War – praag.org

US air command moves back to Cold War bunker

The US military command that scans North America’s skies for enemy missiles and aircraft plans to move its communications gear to a Cold War-era mountain bunker, officers said.

The shift to the Cheyenne Mountain base in Colorado is designed to safeguard the command’s sensitive sensors and servers from a potential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, military officers said.

The Pentagon last week announced a $700 million contract with Raytheon Corporation to oversee the work for North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command.

Admiral William Gortney, head of NORAD and Northern Command, said that “because of the very nature of the way that Cheyenne Mountain’s built, it’s EMP-hardened.”

“And so, there’s a lot of movement to put capability into Cheyenne Mountain and to be able to communicate in there,” Gortney told reporters.

“My primary concern was… are we going to have the space inside the mountain for everybody who wants to move in there, and I’m not at liberty to discuss who’s moving in there,” he said.

The Cheyenne mountain bunker is a half-acre cavern carved into a mountain in the 1960s that was designed to withstand a Soviet nuclear attack. From inside the massive complex, airmen were poised to send warnings that could trigger the launch of nuclear missiles.

But in 2006, officials decided to move the headquarters of NORAD and US Northern Command from Cheyenne to Petersen Air Force base in Colorado Springs. The Cheyenne bunker was designated as an alternative command center if needed.

That move was touted a more efficient use of resources but had followed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of modernization work at Cheyenne carried out after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Now the Pentagon is looking at shifting communications gear to the Cheyenne bunker, officials said.

“A lot of the back office communications is being moved there,” said one defense official.

Officials said the military’s dependence on computer networks and digital communications makes it much more vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse, which can occur naturally or result from a high-altitude nuclear explosion.

Under the 10-year contract, Raytheon is supposed to deliver “sustainment” services to help the military perform “accurate, timely and unambiguous warning and attack assessment of air, missile and space threats” at the Cheyenne and Petersen bases.

Raytheon’s contract also involves unspecified work at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

How to start a war and lose an empire

By Dmitry Orlov

A year and a half I wrote an essay on how the US chooses to view Russia, titled The Image of the Enemy. I was living in Russia at the time, and, after observing the American anti-Russian rhetoric and the Russian reaction to it, I made some observations that seemed important at the time. It turns out that I managed to spot an important trend, but given the quick pace of developments since then, these observations are now woefully out of date, and so here is an update.

At that time the stakes weren’t very high yet. There was much noise around a fellow named Magnitsky, a corporate lawyer-crook who got caught and died in pretrial custody. He had been holding items for some bigger Western crooks, who were, of course, never apprehended. The Americans chose to treat this as a human rights violation and responded with the so-called “Magnitsky Act” which sanctioned certain Russian individuals who were labeled as human rights violators. Russian legislators responded with the “Dima Yakovlev Bill,” named after a Russian orphan adopted by Americans who killed him by leaving him in a locked car for nine hours. This bill banned American orphan-killing fiends from adopting any more Russian orphans. It all amounted to a silly bit of melodrama.

But what a difference a year and a half has made! Ukraine, which was at that time collapsing at about the same steady pace as it had been ever since its independence two decades ago, is now truly a defunct state, with its economy in free-fall, one region gone and two more in open rebellion, much of the country terrorized by oligarch-funded death squads, and some American-anointed puppets nominally in charge but quaking in their boots about what’s coming next. Syria and Iraq, which were then at a low simmer, have since erupted into full-blown war, with large parts of both now under the control of the Islamic Caliphate, which was formed with help from the US, was armed with US-made weapons via the Iraqis. Post-Qaddafi Libya seems to be working on establishing an Islamic Caliphate of its own. Against this backdrop of profound foreign US foreign policy failure, the US recently saw it fit to accuse Russia of having troops “on NATO’s doorstep,” as if this had nothing to do with the fact that NATO has expanded east, all the way to Russia’s borders. Unsurprisingly, US–Russia relations have now reached a point where the Russians saw it fit to issue a stern warning: further Western attempts at blackmailing them may result in a nuclear confrontation.

The American behavior throughout this succession of defeats has been remarkably consistent, with the constant element being their flat refusal to deal with reality in any way, shape or form. Just as before, in Syria the Americans are ever looking for moderate, pro-Western Islamists, who want to do what the Americans want (topple the government of Bashar al Assad) but will stop short of going on to destroy all the infidel invaders they can get their hands on. The fact that such moderate, pro-Western Islamists do not seem to exist does not affect American strategy in the region in any way.

Similarly, in Ukraine, the fact that the heavy American investment in “freedom and democracy,” or “open society,” or what have you, has produced a government dominated by fascists and a civil war is, according to the Americans, just some Russian propaganda. Parading under the banner of Hitler’s Ukrainian SS division and anointing Nazi collaborators as national heroes is just not convincing enough for them. What do these Nazis have to do to prove that they are Nazis, build some ovens and roast some Jews? Just massacring people by setting fire to a building, as they did in Odessa, or shooting unarmed civilians in the back and tossing them into mass graves, as they did in Donetsk, doesn’t seem to work. The fact that many people have refused to be ruled by Nazi thugs and have successfully resisted them has caused the Americans to label them as “pro-Russian separatists.” This, in turn, was used to blame the troubles in Ukraine on Russia, and to impose sanctions on Russia. The sanctions would be reviewed if Russia were to withdraw its troops from Ukraine. Trouble is, there are no Russian troops in Ukraine.

Note that this sort of behavior is nothing new. The Americans invaded Afghanistan because the Taleban would not relinquish Osama Bin Laden (who was a CIA operative) unless Americans produced evidence implicating him in 9/11—which did not exist. Americans invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein would not relinquish his weapons of mass destruction—which did not exist. They invaded Libya because Muammar Qaddafi would not relinquish official positions—which he did not hold. They were ready to invade Syria because Bashar al Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people—which he did not do. And now they imposed sanctions on Russia because Russia had destabilized and invaded Ukraine—which it did not do either. (The US did that.)

The sanctions against Russia have an additional sort of unreality to them, because they “boomerang” and hurt the West while giving the Russian government the impetus to do what it wanted to do all along. The sanctions infringed on the rights of a number of Russian businessmen and officials, who promptly yanked their money out of Western banks, pulled their children out of Western schools and universities, and did everything else they could to demonstrate that they are good patriotic Russians, not American lackeys. The sanctions affected a number of Russian energy companies, cutting them off from Western sources of technology and financing, but this will primarily hurt the earnings of Western energy companies while helping their Chinese competitors. There were even some threats to cut Russia off from the SWIFT system, which would have made it quite difficult to transfer funds between Russia and the West, but what these threats did instead was to give Russia the impetus to introduce its own RUSSWIFT system, which will include even Iran, neutralizing future American efforts at imposing financial restrictions.

The sanctions were meant to cause economic damage, but Western efforts at inflicting short-term economic damage on Russia are failing. Coupled with a significant drop in the price of oil, all of this was supposed to hurt Russia fiscally, but since the sanctions caused the Ruble to drop in tandem, the net result on Russia’s state finances is a wash. Oil prices are lower, but then, thanks in part to the sanctions, so is the Ruble, and since oil revenues are still largely in dollars, this means that Russia’s tax receipts are at roughly the same level at before. And since Russian oil companies earn dollars abroad but spend rubles domestically, their production budgets remain unaffected.

The Russians also responded by imposing some counter-sanctions, and to take some quick steps to neutralize the effect of the sanctions on them. Russia banned the import of produce from the European Union—to the horror of farmers there. Especially hurt were those EU members who are especially anti-Russian: the Baltic states, which swiftly lost a large fraction of their GDP, along with Poland. An exception is being made for Serbia, which refused to join in the sanctions. Here, the message is simple: friendships that have lasted many centuries matter; what the Americans want is not what the Americans get; and the EU is a mere piece of paper. Thus, the counter-sanctions are driving wedges between the US and the EU, and, within the EU, between Eastern Europe (which the sanctions are hurting the most) and Western Europe, and, most importantly, they drive home the simple message that the US is not Europe’s friend.

There is something else going on that is going to become more significant in the long run: Russia has taken the hint and is turning away from the West and toward the East. It is parlaying its open defiance of American attempts at world domination into trade relationships throughout the world, much of which is sick and tired of paying tribute to Washington. Russia is playing a key role in putting together an international banking system that circumvents the US dollar and the US Federal Reserve. In these efforts, over half the world’s territory and population is squarely on Russia’s side and cheering loudly. Thus, the effort to isolate Russia has produced the opposite of the intended result: it is isolating the West from the rest of the world instead.

In other ways, the sanctions are actually being helpful. The import ban on foodstuffs from EU is a positive boon to domestic agriculture while driving home a politically important point: don’t take food from the hands of those who bite you. Russia is already one of the world’s largest grain exporters, and there is no reason why it can’t become entirely self-sufficient in food. The impetus to rearm in the face of NATO encroachment on Russian borders (there are now US troops stationed in Estonia, just a short drive from Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg) is providing some needed stimulus for industrial redevelopment. This round of military spending is being planned a bit more intelligently than in the Soviet days, with eventual civilian conversion being part of the plan from the very outset. Thus, along with the world’s best jet fighters, Russia is likely to start building civilian aircraft for export and competing with Airbus and Boeing.

But this is only the beginning. The Russians seem to have finally realized to what extent the playing field has been slanted against them. They have been forced to play by Washington’s rules in two key ways: by bending to Washington’s will in order to keep their credit ratings high with the three key Western credit rating agencies, in order to secure access to Western credit; and by playing by the Western rule-book when issuing credit of their own, thus keeping domestic interest rates artificially high. The result was that US companies were able to finance their operations more cheaply, artificially making them more competitive. But now, as Russia works quickly to get out from under the US dollar, shifting trade to bilateral currency arrangements (backed by some amount of gold should trade imbalances develop) it is also looking for ways to turn the printing press to its advantage. To date, the dictat handed down from Washington has been: “We can print money all we like, but you can’t, or we will destroy you.” But this threat is ringing increasingly hollow, and Russia will no longer be using its dollar revenues to buy up US debt. One proposal currently on the table is to make it impossible to pay for Russian oil exports with anything other than rubles, by establishing two oil brokerages, one in St. Petersburg, the other, seven time zones away, in Vladivostok. Foreign oil buyers would then have to earn their petro-rubles the honest way—through bilateral trade—or, if they can’t make enough stuff that the Russians want to import, they could pay for oil with gold (while supplies last). Or the Russians could simply print rubles, and, to make sure such printing does not cause domestic inflation, they could export some inflation by playing with the oil spigot and the oil export tariffs. And if the likes of George Soros decides to attack the ruble in an effort to devalue it, Russia could defend its currency simply by printing fewer rubles for a while—no need to stockpile dollar reserves.

So far, this all seems like typical economic warfare: the Americans want to get everything they want by printing money while bombing into submission or sanctioning anyone who disobeys them, while the rest of the world attempts to resist them. But early in 2014 the situation changed. There was a US-instigated coup in Kiev, and instead of rolling over and playing dead like they were supposed to, the Russians mounted a fast and brilliantly successful campaign to regain Crimea, then successfully checkmated the junta in Kiev, preventing it from consolidating control over the remaining former Ukrainian territory by letting volunteers, weapons, equipment and humanitarian aid enter—and hundreds of thousands of refugees exit—through the strictly notional Russian-Ukrainian border, all the while avoiding direct military confrontation with NATO. Seeing all of this happening on the nightly news has awakened the Russian population from its political slumber, making it sit up and pay attention, and sending Putin’s approval rating through the roof.

The “optics” of all this, as they like to say at the White House, are rather ominous. We are coming up on the 70th anniversary of victory in World War II—a momentous occasion for Russians, who pride themselves on defeating Hitler almost single-handedly. At the same time, the US (Russia’s self-appointed arch-enemy) has taken this opportunity to reawaken and feed the monster of Nazism right on Russia’s border (inside Russia’s borders, some Russians/Ukrainians would say). This, in turn, makes the Russians remember Russia’s unique historical mission is among the nations of the world: it is to thwart all other nations’ attempts at world domination, be it Napoleonic France or Hitleresque Germany or Obamaniac America. Every century or so some nation forgets its history lessons and attacks Russia. The result is always the same: lots of corpse-studded snowdrifts, and then Russian cavalry galloping into Paris, or Russian tanks rolling into Berlin. Who knows how it will end this time around? Perhaps it will involve polite, well-armed men in green uniforms without insignia patrolling the streets of Brussels and Washington, DC. Only time will tell.

You’d think that Obama has already overplayed his hand, and should behave accordingly. His popularity at home is roughly the inverse of Putin’s, which is to say, Obama is still more popular than Ebola, but not by much. He can’t get anything at all done, no matter how pointless or futile, and his efforts to date, at home and abroad, have been pretty much a disaster. So what does this social worker turned national mascot decide to do? Well, the way the Russians see it, he has decided to declare war on Russia! In case you missed it, look up his speech before the UN General Assembly. It’s up on the White House web site. He placed Russia directly between Ebola and ISIS among the three topmost threats facing the world. Through Russian eyes his speech reads as a declaration of war.

It’s a new, mixed-mode sort of war. It’s not a total war to the death, although the US is being rather incautious by the old Cold War standards in avoiding a nuclear confrontation. It’s an information war—based on lies and unjust vilification; it’s a financial and economic war—using sanctions; it’s a political war—featuring violent overthrow of elected governments and support for hostile regimes on Russia’s borders; and it’s a military war—using ineffectual but nevertheless insulting moves such as stationing a handful of US troops in Estonia. And the goals of this war are clear: it is to undermine Russia economically, destroy it politically, dismember it geographically, and turn it into a pliant vassal state that furnishes natural resources to the West practically free of charge (with a few hand-outs to a handful of Russian oligarchs and criminal thugs who play ball). But it doesn’t look like any of that is going to happen because, you see, a lot of Russians actually get all that, and will choose leaders who will not win any popularity contests in the West but who will lead them to victory.

Given the realization that the US and Russia are, like it or not, in a state of war, no matter how opaque or muddled, people in Russia are trying to understand why this is and what it means. Obviously, the US has seen Russia as the enemy since about the time of the Revolution of 1917, if not earlier. For example, it is known that after the end of World War II America’s military planners were thinking of launching a nuclear strike against the USSR, and the only thing that held them back was the fact that they didn’t have enough bombs, meaning that Russia would have taken over all of Europe before the effects of the nuclear strikes could have deterred them from doing so (Russia had no nuclear weapons at the time, but lots of conventional forces right in the heart of Europe).

But why has war been declared now, and why was it declared by this social worker turned national misleader? Some keen observers mentioned his slogan “the audacity of hope,” and ventured to guess that this sort of “audaciousness” (which in Russian sounds a lot like “folly”) might be a key part of his character which makes him want to be the leader of the universe, like Napoleon or Hitler. Others looked up the campaign gibberish from his first presidential election (which got silly young Americans so fired up) and discovered that he had nice things to say about various cold warriors. Do you think Obama might perhaps be a scholar of history and a shrewd geopolitician in his own right? (That question usually gets a laugh, because most people know that he is just a chucklehead and repeats whatever his advisers tell him to say.) Hugo Chavez once called him “a hostage in the White House,” and he wasn’t too far off. So, why are his advisers so eager to go to war with Russia, right now, this year?

Is it because the US is collapsing more rapidly than most people can imagine? This line of reasoning goes like this: the American scheme of world domination through military aggression and unlimited money-printing is failing before our eyes. The public has no interest in any more “boots on the ground,” bombing campaigns do nothing to reign in militants that Americans themselves helped organize and equip, dollar hegemony is slipping away with each passing day, and the Federal Reserve is fresh out of magic bullets and faces a choice between crashing the stock market and crashing the bond market. In order to stop, or at least forestall this downward slide into financial/economic/political oblivion, the US must move quickly to undermine every competing economy in the world through whatever means it has left at its disposal, be it a bombing campaign, a revolution or a pandemic (although this last one can be a bit hard to keep under control). Russia is an obvious target, because it is the only country in the world that has had the gumption to actually show international leadership in confronting the US and wrestling it down; therefore, Russia must be punished first, to keep the others in line.

I don’t disagree with this line of reasoning, but I do want to add something to it.

First, the American offensive against Russia, along with most of the rest of the world, is about things Americans like to call “facts on the ground,” and these take time to create. The world wasn’t made in a day, and it can’t be destroyed in a day (unless you use nuclear weapons, but then there is no winning strategy for anyone, the US included). But the entire financial house of cards can be destroyed rather quickly, and here Russia can achieve a lot while risking little. Financially, Russia’s position is so solid that even the three Western credit ratings agencies don’t have the gall to downgrade Russia’s rating, sanctions notwithstanding. This is a country that is aggressively paying down its foreign debt, is running a record-high budget surplus, has a positive balance of payments, is piling up physical gold reserves, and not a month goes by that it doesn’t sign a major international trade deal (that circumvents the US dollar). In comparison, the US is a dead man walking: unless it can continue rolling over trillions of dollars in short-term debt every month at record-low interest rates, it won’t be able to pay the interest on its debt or its bills. Good-bye, welfare state, hello riots. Good-bye military contractors and federal law enforcement, hello mayhem and open borders. Now, changing “facts on the ground” requires physical actions, whereas causing a financial stampede to the exits just requires somebody to yell “Boo!” loudly and frighteningly enough.

Second, it must be understood that at this point the American ruling elite is almost entirely senile. The older ones seem actually senile in the medical sense. Take Leon Panetta, the former Defense Secretary: he’s been out flogging his new book, and he is still blaming Syria’s Bashar al Assad for gassing his own people! By now everybody else knows that that was a false flag attack, carried out by some clueless Syrian rebels with Saudi help, to be used as an excuse for the US to bomb Syria—you know, the old “weapons of mass destruction” nonsense again. (By the way, this kind of mindless, repetitive insistence on a fake rationale seems like a sure sign of senility.) That plan didn’t work because Putin and Lavrov intervened and quickly convinced Assad to give up his useless chemical weapons stockpile. The Americans were livid. So, everybody knows this story—except Panetta. You see, once an American official starts lying, he just doesn’t know how to stop. The story always starts with a lie, and, as facts emerge that contradict the initial story, they are simply ignored.

So much for the senile old guard, but what about their replacements? Well, the poster boy for the young ones is Hunter Biden, the VP’s son, who went on a hookers-and-blow tour of Ukraine last summer and inadvertently landed a seat on the board of directors of Ukraine’s largest natural gas company (which doesn’t have much gas left). He just got outed for being a coke fiend. In addition to the many pre-anointed ones, like the VP’s son, there are also many barns full of eagerly bleating Ivy League graduates who have been groomed for jobs in high places. These are Prof. Deresiewicz’s “Excellent Sheep.”

There just isn’t much that such people, young or old, can be made to respond to. International embarrassment, military defeat, humanitarian catastrophe—all these things just bounce off them and stick to you for bringing them up and being overly negative about their rose-colored view of themselves. The only hit they can actually feel is a hit to the pocketbook.

Which brings us all the way back to my first point: “Boo!”

Dmitry Orlov is currently working on a new book that will be out later this year. Orlov says, “The new book is about communities and what makes them resistant to adverse events such as financial collapse.” Orlov adds, “The U.S., as a whole, is not resistant to shocks, but some parts of America are.” You can find Dmitry Orlov at ClubOrlov.com.

The German Card

Top intelligence officers rarely reveal secret strings, pulling the nation’s political mechanism. Publication of a book like The German card. The obscure game of secret services, authored by Gerd-Helmut Komossa (Gerd-Helmut Komossa. DIE DEUTSCHE KARTE. Das verdeckte Spiel der geheimen Dienste. Ares-Verlag, Graz 2007. – 230 S.), is an exceptional occurrence. Raising very sensitive issues, the author appeals to the core of German identity that had been deliberately suppressed for decades by the United States and its allies.

The book is focused on contradictions between the United States and Germany, sometimes very strong but not supposed to be discussed in public. It was published in Austria, and its distribution in Germany may encounter certain difficulties today. Still, the very fact of its appearance indicates that the German intelligence community is increasingly dissatisfied with the role of a vassal of the United States (the definition applied to Europe by Zbigniew Brzezinski), imposed on Western Germany after World War II.

Gerd-Helmut Komossa reveals the uncomfortable truth about the post-war conditions, dictated by the US and its allies. The state treaty, dated May 21, 1949 and classified by BND as top secret, suggests restrictions of state sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany, introduced for a period until 2099. These restrictions include the provision that the winning coalition exercise complete control over Germany’s mass media and communications; that every Federal Chancellor is to sign the so-called Chancellor Act; that the gold reserve of Germany is kept under arrest.

In fact, all the German Chancellors, including the incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel, pay their first foreign visit necessarily to the United States. The whole spectrum of German political parties is supervised by a special Washington-based controlling body, while local US-licensed media serve as a more sophisticated means of brainwashing than the Nazi propagandist machine. Meanwhile, Germany’s territory is still occupied by US troops.

This astonishing picture is not a fancy concoction of a political leftist. It is drawn by a military man whose mind has accumulated the experience of several crucial stages of development of the European civilization and Germany in particular. Gen. (Ret.) Gerd-Helmut Komossa took part in World War II and later in the Cold War. Possessing huge amounts of information, he analyzes the existing mechanisms of global policy with strong criticism.

Joining the Wehrmacht in 1943 as a volunteer, Komossa served at the Eastern front. Between May 1945 and April 1949, he was a prisoner of war. In the USSR, he got acquainted with many Russians who appeared to be quite different from the image imposed by the official Nazi propaganda.

Since 1956, he served in the German Bundeswehr, re-established under certain conditions. The abovementioned secret treaty admitted that the German sovereignty is sufficient for the right to build up military forces. According to the Constitution, the troops of the Federal Republic of Germany are carrying out exceptionally defensive functions. However, the Western coalition was pursuing different goals. It needed an army in new uniforms but with the same skills as the Nazi soldiers, perfectly fighting on land, on sea and in the air, and irrecusably abiding orders. Such a type of soldier was essential not only for the occasion of possible military collision with the Soviet bloc but also for fulfilling global missions. The coalition required at least 500,000 German soldiers. In addition, the newly-built army was supposed to purchase weapons and materiel solely from the United States.

During the last two decades, Washington has been trying to force Germany into military partnership in globalistic control. However, the massive effort to get Germany involved in US operations in Somalia and Bosnia, as well as in campaigns in Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan, has brought about a reverse result, sparking a shift in approach in German strategic circles. The implicit discontent with American policy and essential difference in views on the role of the German people in current history eventually reached a critical dimension.

Since mid-1990s, the attitude of many German military to the United States, and significantly also towards NATO, has essentially changed. Though most of the German officers were not originally inclined against America, a lot of them being educated in the United States, they are now experiencing disappointment and even disgust with Washington’s policies. These officers realize that the hegemonistic policy is destined for destruction of socioeconomic systems of particular nations and whole regions, while the so-called order Washington is trying to impose is just a synonym for chaos.

Gerd-Helmut Komossa, in his former capacity of MAD (Military Counterintelligence) Director, was frequently called “a soldier with political thinking”. Today, he openly denounces the Bundeswehr’s involvement in foreign interventions, referring to the army’s constitutional duties.

Meanwhile, Washington urges Germans to go fighting. Conceding to the pressure, Berlin deployed a contingent of troops to Afghanistan. But even this was not sufficient for NATO bosses. Recently, NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer accused the Bundeswehr of idleness in military operations in the region, and insisted that Germany “increase flexibility” and expand its military mission to the southern regions of Afghanistan.

In his book, Komossa inquires whether the state of affairs when young Germans are recruited in the national army for fulfilling overseas goals for other nations, could be acceptable. The map of operations, supposed to involve German troops, far exceeds the European continent, and has nothing to do with German national interests. “Do Germans expect this from the Bundeswehr? Would they like their soldiers to be called assassins again?” he asks.

However, the United States and its allies don’t care much for moral problems. As the secret treaty is valid until 2099, Germans are supposed to go and fight where they are told to.

The German audience will require certain time to digest the shocking information disclosed by General Komossa. But eventually, the nation with a great cultural and historical tradition will hardly agree to continue tolerating the American loop on its throat for decades more.

The publication of Komossa’s “German Card” is one more proof of the world’s transformation into a multipolar system. It indicates that Germany is likely to achieve complete sovereignty without waiting for eighty years.

Anna Voronova

Losing Credibility: The IMF’s loan to Ukraine

By Michael Hudson.

In April 2014, fresh from riots in Maidan Square and the February 22 coup, and less than a month before the May 2 massacre in Odessa, the IMF approved a $17 billion loan program to Ukraine’s junta. Normal IMF practice is to lend only up to twice a country’s quote in one year. This was eight times as high.

Four months later, on August 29, just as Kiev began losing its attempt at ethnic cleansing against the eastern Donbas region, the IMF signed off on the first loan ever to a side engaged in a civil war, not to mention rife with insider capital flight and a collapsing balance of payments. Based on fictitiously trouble-free projections of the ability to pay, the loan supported Ukraine’s hernia currency long enough to enable the oligarchs’ banks to move their money quickly into Western hard-currency accounts before the hernia plunged further and was worth even fewer euros and dollars.

This loan demonstrates the degree to which the IMF is an arm of U.S. Cold War politics. Kiev used the loan for military expenses to attack the Eastern provinces, and the loan terms imposed the usual budget austerity, as if this would stabilize the country’s finances. Almost nothing will be received from the war-torn East, where basic infrastructure has been destroyed for power generation, water, hospitals and the civilian housing areas that bore the brunt of the attack. Nearly a million civilians are reported to have fled to Russia. Yet the IMF release announced: “The IMF praised the government’s commitment to economic reforms despite the ongoing conflict.”[1] A quarter of Ukraine’s exports normally are from eastern provinces, and are sold mainly to Russia. But Kiev has been bombing Donbas industry and left its coal mines without electricity.

This loan is bound to create even more dissension among IMF staff economists than broke out openly over the disastrous $47 billion loan to Greece – at that time the largest loan in IMF history – prompted a 50-page internal document leaked to the Wall Street Journal acknowledging that the IMF had “badly underestimated the damage that its prescriptions of austerity would do to Greece’s economy.” Staff economists blamed pressure from eurozone countries protecting their own “banks [that] held too much Greek government debt. … The IMF had originally projected Greece would lose 5.5% of its economic output between 2009 and 2012. The country has lost 17% in real gross domestic output instead. The plan predicted a 15% unemployment rate in 2012. It was 25%.[2]

The IMF’s Articles of Agreement forbid it to make loans to countries that clearly cannot pay, prompting its economists to complain at last year’s October 2013 annual meeting in Washington that their institution was violating its rules by making bad loans “to states unable to repay their debts.” In practice, the IMF simply advances however much a government needs to bail out its bankers and bondholders, pretending that more austerity enhances the ability to pay, not worsen it. Ukraine looks like a replay of the Greek situation with an exclamation mark! One official last year called its Debt Sustainability Analysis, “‘a joke,’ a [European] commission official described it ‘a fairy tale to put children to sleep’ and a Greek finance ministry official said it was ‘scientifically ridiculous.’”[3]

John Helmer’s Dances with Bears calculates that “of the $3.2 billion disbursed to the Ukrainian treasury by the IMF at the start of May, $3.1 billion had disappeared offshore by the middle of August.”[4]
This raises the question of whether the IMF’s loan is legally an “odious debt,” being made to a military junta and stolen by government insiders. The IMF acknowledged that the central bank was simply turning money over to the kleptocrats who run the country’s banks as part of their conglomerates (as well as funding the government’s military attack on the East, largely on behalf of the leading kleptocrats behind the Maidan coup). “The proportion of government securities and loans to banks increased from 28 percent of NBU total assets at end-2010 to 56 percent at end-April 2014.” The financial situation is getting so much worse that to stave off insolvency, Ukraine’s leading banks are reported to need another $5 billion over and above the IMF’s $17 billion commitment.

In preparation for October’s scheduled elections, the eastern provinces are in no condition to vote, and the junta has banned the Communist party as well as TV and media reporting that it does not like (mainly in the Russian language). The leading pro-war parties are polling very low even in the West (as of early September), prompting warnings of a coup by the Right Sector and allied neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists, headed by the oligarch Igor Kolomoyskyy, who fields his own private army.

A defeat in war frequently leads to regime change. The spectre of a coup is once again roaming the streets and squares of Kyiv. Surviving National Guard fighters are threatening to turn their weapons on Poroshenko. A third Maydan [Independence Square protest movement] is taking shape, which is to sweep aside the present regime. The instigators of this Maydan are militants from the punitive battalions created with Kolomoyskyy’s money. It is obvious that the oligarch is playing his game against Poroshenko. Subordinate to him Kolomoyskyy has quite a strong private army capable of carrying out a coup.[5]

IMF- and US-backed privatization plans for Ukraine

Ukraine’s main problem is that its debt is denominated in dollars and euros. There seems only one way for Ukraine to raise the foreign exchange to repay the IMF: by selling its natural resources, headed by gas rights and agricultural land. Here the shadowy figure of Kolomoyskyy resurfaces, with support from the United States. Recent Senate Bill 2277 “directs the U.S. Agency for International Development to guarantee loans for every phase of the development of oil and gas” in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.

Vice President Joe Biden’s son, R. Hunter Biden, recently was appointed to the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian oil and gas company registered in Cyprus, long a favorite for post-Soviet operators. The firm has enough influence over Kiev politics to make prospective gas-fracking lands a military objective. “Ukrainian troopers help installing shale gas production equipment near the east Ukrainian town of Slavyansk, which they bombed and shelled for the three preceding months, the Novorossiya news agency reports on its website citing local residents. Civilians protected by Ukrainian army are getting ready to install drilling rigs. More equipment is being brought in, they said, adding that the military are encircling the future extraction area.”[6]

One report notes the extent to which “pro-Russian” means opposing a gas grab:

The people of Slavyansk, which is located in the heart of the Yzovka shale gas field, staged numerous protest actions in the past against its development. They even wanted to call in a referendum on that subject. … Countries like the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and France have given up plans to develop shale gas deposits in their territories. Not only them but also all-important Germany, which two weeks ago announced it would halt shale-gas drilling for the next seven years over groundwater pollution concerns.[7]

U.S. and IMF backing seems intended to help reduce European dependence on Russian gas so as to squeeze its balance of payments. The idea is that lower gas revenues will squeeze Russia’s ability to maneuver in today’s New Cold War. But this strategy involves a potentially embarrassing U.S. alliance with Kolomoyskyy, reportedly the major owner of Burisma via his Privat Bank. He “was appointed by the coup regime to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central province of Ukraine. Kolomoysky also has been associated with the financing of brutal paramilitary forces killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.”[8] The term “ethnic Russian” is a kakaism for local protest against fracking by kleptocrats privatizing the economy’s natural resource wealth.

It will be expensive to restore power and water facilities that have been destroyed by the Kiev forces in Donetsk, which faces a cold dark winter. Kiev has stopped paying pensions and other revenue to the Eastern Ukraine, all but guaranteeing its separatism. Even before the Maidan events the local population sought to prevent gas fracking, just as Germany and other European countries have opposed it.

Also opposed is the appropriation of land and other properties by Ukrainian kleptocrats and especially foreigners such as Monsanto, which has invested in genetically engineered grain projects in Ukraine, seeing the country as Europe’s Achilles Heel when it comes to resisting GMOs. A recent report by the Oakland Institute, Walking on the West Side: the World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict, describes IMF-World Bank pressure to deregulate Ukrainian agricultural land use and promote its sale to U.S. and other foreign investors. The World Bank’s Investment Finance Corporation (IFC) has “advised the country to ‘delete provisions regarding mandatory certification of food in the listed laws of Ukraine and Government Decree,’” and “to avoid ‘unnecessary cost for businesses’” by regulations on pesticides, additives and so forth.[9]

Yet neither Russia nor many European countries accept genetically engineered foods. It would seem that the only way Ukraine can export GMO crops is if U.S. diplomats pressure Europe to drop its GMO labeling. This would drive yet another wedge between the United States and European NATO members, much as U.S. pressure to impose sanctions on Russia (“Let’s you and him fight”) has done.

U.S. stratagems to save Ukraine from having to pay its debts to Russia

The “inner contradiction” in the IMF loan is that Ukraine owes the entire amount to Russia for gas arrears and current needs as winter nears, and also for the euro loan by Russia’s sovereign wealth fund on strictly commercial terms with cross-defaults if Ukrainian debt rises above 60 percent of GDP. The U.S. Cold War response is to try to craft a legal argument to minimize payments to Russia out of IMF and NATO “reconstruction” lending. The Peterson Institute for International Economics has floated a proposal by former Treasury official Anna Gelpern to deprive Russia of legal means to enforce its claims on Ukraine. “A single measure can free up $3 billion for Ukraine,” she proposed. Britain’s Parliament might pass a law declaring the $3 billion bond negotiated by Russia’s sovereign wealth fund to be “foreign aid,” not a real commercial loan contract worthy of legal enforcement. “The United Kingdom can refuse to enforce English-law contracts for the money Russia lent,” thereby taking “away creditor remedies for default on this debt.”[10]

The problem with this ploy is that Russia’s sovereign wealth fund lent Ukraine euros with strict financial protection aimed at limiting the country’s overall debt to just 60 percent of its GDP. If debt rises above this level, Russia has the right to demand full immediate payment, triggering cross-default clauses in Ukraine’s foreign debt.

As recently as yearend 2013, Ukraine’s public debt amounted to just over 40 percent – a seemingly manageable $73 billion. But in view of the fact that Ukraine had only a B+ rating – below Russian sovereign fund normal limits of requiring at least an AA rating for bond investments – Russia acted in a prudent financial way by inserting protection clauses precisely to distinguish its investment from general purpose aid. Unlike foreign aid, Russia’s loan gives it “power to trigger a cascade of defaults under Ukraine’s other bonds and a large block of votes in any future bond restructuring. This is because all of the government’s bonds are linked among themselves. When one bond defaults, the rest can do the same.”

What the U.S. Government classifies as foreign aid also typically takes the form of loans to be repaid, and insists on matching funds in local currency, e.g. for Public Law 480 food exports. Congress insisted already during the Kennedy Administration that the U.S. balance of payments, and specifically its farm exports, must benefit from any such “aid.”[11]

Waging civil war is expensive, and Ukraine’s currency is rupturing. The black market exchange rate already is reported to have plunged by one-third. If recognized officially (once the kleptocrats have moved their money out at IMF-supported hernia rates), this would raise the country’s debt/GDP ratio to the 60 percent threshold making the debt to Russia payable immediately.

“Governments do not normally sue one another to collect their debts in national courts,” Prof. Gelpern points out. But if this should occur, the pari passu rule would prevent some debts from being annulled selectively. She therefore raises another possibility for how to prevent IMF and NATO credit from being paid to Russia for its bondholdings and gas arrears. Ukraine may claim that its debt to Russia is “odious.” This applies to situations where “an evil ruler signs contracts that burden future generations long after the ruler is deposed.” She adds that “Repudiating all debts incurred under Yanukovich would discourage lending to corrupt leaders.”

The double standard here is that instead of labeling Ukraine’s entire series of post-1991 kleptocratic governments odious, she singles out only Yanukovich, as if his predecessors and successors are not equally venal. But an even greater danger in trying to declare Ukraine’s debt “odious”: It may backfire on the United States, given its own support for military dictatorships and kleptocracies.

In contrast to IMF loans to support the kleptocrats’ banks and new Cold War asset grabs from the Eastern border provinces with Russia, Ukraine’s sale of bonds to Russia’s sovereign debt fund and its contracts signed for gas purchases were negotiated by a democratically elected government, at prices that subsidized domestic industry and also household consumption. Unlike the case with Greece, there was no removal of a national leader to prevent a public referendum from taking place over whether to approve the loan or not. If the Ukrainian debt is deemed odious, what of Eurozone loans to Ireland and Greece or U.S. loans to Argentina’s generals installed under Operation Condor? Gelpern acknowledges that Ukrainian refusal to pay the bonds by invoking the odious debt principle “is fraught with legal, political and market risks, all of which would play into Russia’s hands.” Indeed!

This leaves the most promising solution to hurt Russia to be the above-mentioned ploy for Britain’s Parliament to pass a sanctions law invalidating “the Yanukovich bonds.” Such a sanctions law would reduce Russia’s “ability to profit from selling the debt on the market” simply by denying Russia legal rights to grab Ukrainian assets. It also would destroy London as a leading global financial center.

Gelpern concludes her paper by suggesting a universal principle: that contracts “used to advance military and political objectives … should lose their claim to court enforcement.”

I love this suggestion!

It certainly would open a can of worms in view of the fact that “[t]he United Kingdom and the United States have both used military force in the past to collect debts and influence weaker countries. Is it legitimate for them to punish Russia for doing the same?” Are not the vast majority of inter-governmental debts either military or political in character?

On this logic, shouldn’t most inter-governmental debts be wiped out? Do not Gelpern’s arguments cited for not paying Russia serve even more to provide a legal basis for nullifying Ukraine’s debt to the IMF and subsequent NATO loans on terms that force it to forfeit its natural resource rights for gas and land to foreign investors?

Prof. Gelpern’s legal review is ostensibly seeking reasons to isolate Russia economically. It thus has the seemingly ironic effect of showing the legal and political difficulties in trying to achieve this. If Ukraine borrows from the IMF and/or EU, and then breaks up – with the East becoming independent – who will be obliged to pay? Certainly not the East, attacked by the military coup leaders.

So we are brought back to this month’s financial news in preparation for next month’s IMF annual meeting: Where then does the Ukrainian loan leave the IMF’s credibility?

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of The Bubble and Beyond (2012), Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971).

Michael acts as an economic advisor to governments worldwide including Iceland, Latvia and China on finance and tax law.

Footnotes

[1] Reuters, “IMF approves loan tranche for Ukraine, warns of risks,” August 29, 2014.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/29/us-ukraine-crisis-imf-idUSKBN0GT23Z20140829

[2] Matina Stevis, “IMF Admits Mistakes on Greece Bailout,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2013.

[3] Matina Stevis, “IMF and Europe Part Ways Over Bailouts,” Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2013.

[4] John Helmer, “Ukraine Takes Another $1.39 Billion from International Monetary Fund–$3 Billion in IMF Cash Already Sent Offshore–Insiders Suspected in Heist,” Dances with Bears, September 3, 2014.

[5] Marina Perevozkina and Artur Avakov, Moskovskiy Komsomolets, September 4, 2014, from Johnson’s Russia List – unlisted, September 6, 2014 #14. They add that Putin has ordered Kolomoyskyy’s property in Crimea and Moscow to be sequestered.

[6] PEU report, July 27, 2014, “USAID to Help Young Biden: The Burisma File,” citing an Economic Policy Journal article. The report adds: “Further supporting the ‘natural gas motive’ is the fact that it was Vice President Joe Biden who demanded that President Yanukovych pull back his police on Feb. 21, a move that opened the way for the neo-Nazi militias and the U.S.-backed coup. Then, just three months later, Ukraine’s largest private gas firm, Burisma Holdings, appointed Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to its board of directors.”

[7] Tyler Durden  “Biden’s son a director in shale gas firm set to drill in East Ukraine,” Truthstream Media, July 27, 2014, Zero Hedge.

[8] Robert Parry, “The Whys Behind the Ukraine Crisis,” Consortiumnews.com, September 3, 2014.

[9] Walking on the West Side: the World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict

[10] Anna Gelpern, “Debt Sanctions Can Help Ukraine and Fill a Gap in the International Financial System,” Peterson Institute for International Economics, Policy Brief PB14-20, August 2014.

[11] I provide a profuse documentation of U.S. self-interest in The Myth of Aid (Orbis Books 1970) and Super Imperialism (1972). Gelpern accuses Russia of seeking to keep Ukraine “on a short leash,” as if this is not what the IMF and indeed most financial investors do. US/NATO anti-Russian policy is filled with such double standards, and it is reflected in IMF support for Ukraine.

What the Russian ambassador to the US thinks of NATO

By David Swanson.

The Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, spoke at the University of Virginia on Tuesday evening, in an event organized by the Center for Politics, which no doubt has video of the proceedings. Kislyak was once ambassador to Belgium and to NATO.

Kislyak spoke to a packed auditorium and took, I think, well over an hour of questions. He spoke frankly, and the questions he was asked by students, professors, and other participants were polite and for the most part far more intelligent than he would have been asked on, for example, Meet the Press.

He told the audience that Russia had known there were no WMDs in Iraq, and had known that attacking Iraq would bring “great difficulties” to that country. “And look what is happening today,” he said. He made the same comment about Libya. He spoke of the U.S. and Russia working together to successfully remove chemical weapons from the Syrian government. But he warned against attacking Syria now.

There will be no new Cold War, Kislyak said, but there is now a greater divide in some ways than during the Cold War. Back then, he said, the U.S. Congress sent delegations over to meet with legislators, and the Supreme Court likewise. Now there is no contact. It’s easy in the U.S. to be anti-Russian, he said, and hard to defend Russia. He complained about U.S. economic sanctions against Russia intended to “suffocate” Russian agriculture.

Asked about “annexing” Crimea, Kislyak rejected that characterization, pointed to the armed overthrow of the Ukrainian government, and insisted that Kiev must stop bombing its own people and instead talk about federalism within Ukraine.

There were remarkably few questions put to the ambassador that seemed informed by U.S. television “news.” One was from a politics professor who insisted that Kislyak assign blame to Russia over Ukraine. Kislyak didn’t.

I always sit in the back, thinking I might leave, but Kislyak was only taking questions from the front. So I moved up and was finally called on for the last question of the evening. For an hour and a half, Kislyak had addressed war and peace and Russian-U.S. relations, but he’d never blamed the U.S. for anything in Ukraine any more than Russia. No one had uttered the word “NATO.”

So I pointed out the upcoming NATO protests. I recalled the history of Russia being told that NATO would not expand eastward. I asked Kislyak whether NATO ought to be disbanded.

The ambassador said that he had been the first Russian to “present his credentials” to NATO, and that he had “overestimated” NATO’s ability to work with Russia. He’d been disappointed by NATO actions in Serbia, he said, and Libya, by the expansion eastward, by NATO pressure on Ukraine and Poland, and by the pretense that Russia might be about to attack Poland.

“We were promised,” Kislyak said, that NATO would not expand eastward at all upon the reunification of Germany. “And now look.” NATO has declared that Ukraine and Georgia will join NATO, Kislyak pointed out, and NATO says this even while a majority of the people in Ukraine say they’re opposed.

The ambassador used the word “disappointed” a few times.

“We’ll have to take measures to assure our defense,” he said, “but we would have preferred to build on a situation with decreased presence and decreased readiness.”

International spy capital Vienna

According to a survey compiled by specialists in spying activities, Vienna, Austria, is home to more than 7,000 secret agents and spies, a number greater than any other city.

“Vienna is a stock exchange of information. We have the most liberal laws governing this activity in the world,” Gert Rene Polli, the former chief of BVT, the country’s counter-terrorism agency, said.

“It is also a nice place for spies to live and bring their families, with good education and health services after difficult postings in Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan,” Polli added.

Embassies there are overcrowded with personnel, many of whom are secret agents serving as links to their home countries. Although Vienna hosts spies from a large number of countries, US and Russian spies dominate the numbers.

It was recently revealed that a US spy working for German foreign intelligence (BND) met at least two CIA agents working at the US Embassy in Vienna since 2012. In 2010, Vienna’s airport hosted the biggest “spy swap” in history, where 14 US and Russian spies were exchanged in broad daylight.

“All the services that worked here during the Cold War have a presence in Vienna today,” Siegfried Beer, historian and head of the Austrian Center for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies (ACIPSS), said. “Between the two world wars, Vienna definitely became the center of European espionage,” he added.

Following World War II, Vienna became a battlefield for intelligence operations, competing for influence and information. At the forefront were CIA and KGB agents. After 1955, Vienna became neutral territory, but allied countries left their agents behind. Foreign intelligence agents can rest easy for now since according to law, Austria’s state police can only punish spying aimed at Austria.

As long as Vienna’s laws continue to only punish espionage against Austria, agents will continue to flock to the historically spy-friendly city.

Source: RIA Novosti

Are You Ready For Nuclear War?

By Paul Craig Roberts

Pay close attention to Steven Starr’s guest column, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons“. Washington thinks nuclear war can be won and is planning for a first strike on Russia, and perhaps China, in order to prevent any challenge to Washington’s world hegemony.

The plan is far advanced, and the implementation of the plan is underway. As I have reported previously, US strategic doctrine was changed and the role of nuclear missiles was elevated from a retaliatory role to an offensive first strike role. US anti-ballistic missile (ABM) bases have been established in Poland on Russia’s frontier, and other bases are planned. When completed Russia will be ringed with US missile bases.

Anti-ballistic missiles, known as “star wars,” are weapons designed to intercept and destroy ICBMs. In Washington’s war doctrine, the US hits Russia with a first strike, and whatever retaliatory force Russia might have remaining is prevented from reaching the US by the shield of ABMs.

The reason Washington gave for the change in war doctrine is the possibility that terrorists might obtain a nuclear weapon with which to destroy an American city. This explanation is nonsensical. Terrorists are individuals or a group of individuals, not a country with a threatening military. To use nuclear weapons against terrorists would destroy far more than the terrorists and be pointless as a drone with a conventional missile would suffice.

The reason Washington gave for the ABM base in Poland is to protect Europe from Iranian ICBMs. Washington and every European government knows that Iran has no ICBMs and that Iran has not indicated any intent to attack Europe.

No government believes Washington’s reasons. Every government realizes that Washington’s reasons are feeble attempts to hide the fact that it is creating the capability on the ground to win a nuclear war.
The Russian government understands that the change in US war doctrine and the US ABM bases on its borders are directed at Russia and are indications that Washington plans a first strike with nuclear weapons on Russia.

China has also understood that Washington has similar intentions toward China. As I reported several months ago, in response to Washington’s threat China called the world’s attention to China’s ability to destroy the US should Washington initiate such a conflict.

However, Washington believes that it can win a nuclear war with little or no damage to the US. This belief makes nuclear war likely.

As Steven Starr makes clear, this belief is based in ignorance. Nuclear war has no winner. Even if US cities were saved from retaliation by ABMs, the radiation and nuclear winter effects of the weapons that hit Russia and China would destroy the US as well.

The media, conveniently concentrated into a few hands during the corrupt Clinton regime, is complicit by ignoring the issue. The governments of Washington’s vassal states in Western and Eastern Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan are also complicit, because they accept Washington’s plan and provide the bases for implementing it. The demented Polish government has probably signed the death warrant for humanity. The US Congress is complicit, because no hearings are held about the executive branch’s plans for initiating nuclear war.

Washington has created a dangerous situation. As Russia and China are clearly threatened with a first strike, they might decide to strike first themselves. Why should Russia and China sit and await the inevitable while their adversary creates the ability to protect itself by developing its ABM shield? Once Washington completes the shield, Russia and China are certain to be attacked, unless they surrender in advance.

The 10 minute report below from Russia Today makes it clear that Washington’s secret plan for a first strike on Russia is not secret. The report also makes it clear that Washington is prepared to eliminate any European leaders who do not align with Washington.

A transcript is provided by Global Research.

Readers will ask me, “What can we do?” This is what you can do. You can shut down the Ministry of Propaganda by turning off Fox News, CNN, the BBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, by ceasing to read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times. Simply exit the official media. Do not believe one word that the government says. Do not vote. Realize that evil is concentrated in Washington. In the 21st century

Washington has destroyed in whole or part seven countries. Millions of peoples murdered, maimed, displaced, and Washington has shown no remorse whatsoever. Neither have the “christian” churches. The devastation that Washington has inflicted is portrayed as a great success. Washington prevailed.
Washington is determined to prevail, and the evil that Washington represents is leading the world to destruction.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

Obama’s $1bn pledge on European defence could provoke new Cold War

President Barack Obama has pledged up to $1bn in new US funding for European defence, reasserting Washington’s role in the region despite warnings from Russia that any military build up near its borders with eastern Europe could provoke a new arms race and a new Cold War.

The announcement at the beginning of Mr Obama’s four-day trip to Europe coincided with heavy fighting in Ukraine, where government forces launched a fresh offensive against the pro-Russian citizens.

Eastern European elites are also seeking reassurances the US will protect them from their voters.

Obama referred to this new geopolitical landscape as he flew into Warsaw. Speaking in front of four F-16 fighter jets, he said America’s commitment was particularly important now. “The security of our allies in central and eastern Europe is a cornerstone of our own security, and it is sacrosanct,” Mr Obama said.

He will ask Congress to approve $1bn in new funding, which is earmarked for training and exercises for Nato forces, military equipment, naval deployments in the Black and Baltic Seas, and an increase in the deployment of US planners and advisers in eastern Europe.

The US has already sent 150 troops to Poland and more to the Baltic states, but Mr Obama was clear that they were not trying to provoke military confrontation with Russia. “We are interested in good relations with Russia. We are not interested in threatening Russia,” he said.

Russia is deeply suspicious of any creep of Nato forces towards its borders, and Moscow’s envoy to Nato warned on Monday that new rotations of troops or a build-up of military hardware would provoke a reaction.

“All this could cast Europe back to the days of the Cold War and launch an arms race,” Alexander Grushko was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

Nato defence ministers also met in Brussels with Ukraine at the top of the agenda. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Secretary General of the military alliance, said that they would be assessing their long-term response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. He also praised America’s leadership in the crisis.

Source: The Independent

‘Another Cold War won’t happen’

Yet another Cold War will not come about and Western sanctions are not dreadful to Russia, Vyacheslav Nikonov, a member of the State Duma lower house of the Russian parliament, points out in an article published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Wednesday.

The article, which deals with Russia’s stance in the light of the situation in Ukraine and threats of sanctions from the West, has been published under the headline “A Brief Telegram: Don’t Overstrain Yourself”.

“Yet another Cold War will not happen, the times have changed. The West is not a zone of economic growth any longer. It is, rather, a zone of stagnation,” Nikonov writes in reply to the article of Michael McFaul, US former Ambassador to Moscow, published in The New York Times on Monday.

Nikonov writes that only some 30 years ago the West accounted for 80% of global GDP, whereas now they account perceptibly for less than a half. “The European Union (EU) is yet to grow for another decade to reach out again to the indicators of 2007. In a couple of years, China will become a major economy in the world, getting ahead of the United States,” the MP points out.

Touching upon possible sanctions against Russia, he maintains that in present-day conditions efforts to isolate Russia would fail. “Its isolation does not work at all, even within its closest circle G7 where far from all share the radicalism of (Barack) Obama and of his chief expert on Russia (Michael) McFaul. Exclusion of Russia from G8 only deprives the Group of the leftovers of its significance,” Nikonov is convinced.

He recalls that the EU is one-third dependent on Russia-supplied energy, whereas Russia consumes one-third of European imports. “Are the Western constituents prepared to find themselves in another deep crisis due to the expression of the will of people in Crimea? Obviously not,” Nikonov writes.

Meanwhile, in his view, efforts to turn Ukraine into a showcase of prosperity and democracy will fail.

“The EU is not in a position to help even its own members Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc. Will it be able to help Ukraine, too? No way! An Association Agreement will signify not only a loss of (Ukraine’s) ‘nezalezhnost’ (independence) but an economic collapse as well,” the MP believes.

He points out that Russia, by bringing Crimea back, “has overcome the paralysis of will, and political apathy”.
Nikonov believes that Russia will not allow drawing itself into confrontation, “which the US ex-Ambassador calls for”.

Source: ITAR-TASS

Former Polish president talks Anschluss

The Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Polish president, whose Solidarity trade union played a key role in bringing an end to the Cold War, said the world had changed and needed new ways of organising itself.

“We need to expand economic and defence co-operation and other structures to create one state from Poland and Germany in Europe,” he said.

Speaking to Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency, Lech Walesa, 69, said national boundaries were not as relevant as they once were.

“We have travelled so far in our technical advancements that we are no longer located in our own countries,” he said, adding that this required changes to geographical structures, the economy and democracy.

Although few Poles have forgotten Germany’s invasion and brutal occupation of Poland in 1939, history should not be an obstacle to unity, Walesa said. “After the war, Germany fully confessed to all its dirty tricks,” he said. “It’s necessary to is draw a line under the past, even if people did something evil. Until we do, wounds won’t heal.”

Walesa’s calls for Polish-German unity exceed his previous support for closer European solidarity.

“At the moment different ways of doing things and different systems hold us back but gradually everything will align and states will become like Lego blocks,” he said in the Itar-Tass interview.

He suggested that current international systems were now defunct, saying the United Nations and NATO were the “ideas of an old era” and “badly organised”.

The comments on German-Polish unification will further enhance the former Polish president’s reputation for making frank and sometimes unorthodox remarks.

While Walesa said Poland could bury the hatchet with Germany, the situation was different with Russia, the other great historical foe of the Poles. He urged Moscow to follow the German example and atone for its sins committed against Poland in order to lay the foundations of a good relationship.

“We are too slow in solving our problems and reaching an understanding,” he said. “We must aim to make our relations as smooth as possible, since we are fated to be neighbours.” – The Telegraph

Rugby and the Afrikaner

by Albert Brenner

You`ll find him sauntering through the streets of many a city in the West – especially in Commonwealth capitals like London, Dublin and Sydney.

And in the cities and towns of South Africa he is a common sight… the lone big Afrikaner man wearing the Springbok jersey with rightful pride. It is as if wearing the jersey of the national rugby team makes him the real Springbok player, that winner – if only for a moment.

And who can blame him? The Springboks – those gloriously sculptured athletes of a physical game perfectly suited for the rough-and-tumble Afrikaner man – are legends. They have always been one of the top two teams on the planet. It is a tremendous source of pride… for winners they are!

By wearing the Springbok jersey in public, Afrikaner men are finally receiving that positive recognition, that international ego-boost, which they have been denied ever since being blamed – by their peers in the West – for all the woes besetting blacks in South Africa.

It is, in fact, the only source of pride the Afrikaner is allowed to nurture… the sole recognition s/he may claim. For they find themselves in a socio-cultural and politico-economic environment that still regard them, their whole being, only in terms of Apartheid. Not unlike post-WWII Germans, the Afrikaner has, literally, been stripped of all his achievements – his very historical being – before Apartheid.

His unique language, Afrikaans – the third youngest Germanic language on the planet – is still being criminalized and marginalized as the “language of the oppressor” … and derided as the uncool “dumb Dutchman” language by arrogant native English-speakers in South Africa.

His legendary military prowess – as, once again, displayed in the Angolan War – has also been criminalized. Those brave young Afrikaner men – many of them 18-years old at the time – who helped win the Cold War for the West have been vilified as nothing but cruel Apartheid “killers” by the black-run ANC government… which actually rooted for the other side.

His remarkable performance and achievement in having built South Africa into the richest, most powerful and most developed country in Africa have been all but wiped from History by the black government and white liberals in the West – simply because they assume that South Africa`s blacks would have done so any case, had it not been for the “evil” Afrikaner’s Apartheid “intervention”.

Not even to speak of the Afrikaner’s incredible guts and determination for having literally pulled himself, without any help, from the ashes left by Lord Milner’s cowardly scorched-earth “warfare” during the Anglo-Boer War. A war in which the Afrikaner was outnumbered 10/1, a war that left 33 000 of his women and children dead in British concentration camps – and reduced the Afrikaner to the poorest white nation on the planet at the time.

In short; the Afrikaner’s whole historical being has suffered the same fate as his farms during Milner’s attempted genocide a century ago… except this time round it is his mind that has been scorched!

But this doesn`t bother the international community in the least. And most disturbing of all; it does not seem to bother the majority of the modern Afrikaner. Why? I mean, how come a unique people with an incredible history simply forget, as if nothing has happened?

Well, this is where rugby comes in. The recognition the (majority of the) Afrikaner gets through rugby seemingly suffices to keep him happy… even amid all the barbaric chaos in Mandelatopia.

The search for recognition (thymos) is one of the most powerful drives in the human psyche. So powerful that it has even been postulated as the motor of history, by Francis Fukuyama. His (rather trite) book, The End of History and the Last Man, had many a Western leader in hysterical glee, because it provided a utopian underpinning/validation for neo-liberalism, after the Cold War against Communism had been won.

Be that as it may; all of us crave recognition – some more (and on a larger scale) than others. The puberty-wing on the boot of a Ford Escort may be that thing which strokes your ego the most, or a beach house in Hermanus, or a Dr. title before your name, or a multi-national company that gets you invites to Davos (like Kdoos Bekker of Naspers). Whatever the size and shape of your ego, you will go through hell and high water to have it stroked. And when it finally gets stroked, you are that winner… you have craved to be for so long.

And that is exactly why Afrikaners are willing to live with a scorched mind in a lost kingdom run by “noble” savages. For winning in rugby is all the recognition he (thinks he) needs, because just like the Springboks he has never really lost. He is still the “Baas of the Plaas” in his mind.

The dastardly Old Empire Brits won the Anglo-Boer War, but they never succeeded in breaking the Afrikaner’s spirit. The Afrikaner won the Angolan War outright, even though they lost the peace, thanks to the treachery of their half-wit leaders. The Afrikaner never lost their “kingdom” to god-Mandela; they simply gave it to him – like the Springbok jersey they gave him at the closing ceremony of the 1995 RWC.

All in all, Afrikaners, as individuals, are still (on average) winners in Mandelatopia, and globally as expats – especially financially – just like their Springbok heroes and role-models.

The only problem is that rugby is a team sport, like a nation… like a civilization. Even the mighty Springboks can only remain winners, provided they play as a team. That is why fewer and fewer lone big Afrikaner men wearing Springbok jerseys will saunter pridefully through the streets of the cities of the West in the future.

Read Albert’s blog.

Lees dié rubriek in Afrikaans.