Putin: Cross Red Line? Know What ‘Asymmetrical’ Means?

By Ray McGovern, April 22, 2021

The Critical Hour interviewed me today on my article “Putin Isn’t Bluffing on Ukraine” ((See:  https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2021/04/21/putin-isnt-bluffing-on-ukraine/ ))

The interview was 15 minutes

We cranked in some new reporting against the background of the events of recent days.

Chances are better now that the Kiev crazies (and the chickenhawks egging them on from Washington) will factor in Putin’s warning and back off, at least for a while — the more so, inasmuch as the deployment of some 100,000 Russian troops near Ukraine pretty much defined and gave flesh to “asymmetrical”. Putin said Wednesday that Russia’s response to provocations from Ukraine “will be asymmetrical, swift, and tough” and that the provocateurs “will regret what they have done in a way they have not regretted anything for a long time.”

I noted that on Wednesday morning before Putin spoke, Gennady Zyuganov told Russian news services that the upper house of the Duma (parliament) was expecting a message from President Vladimir Putin directing them to vote without delay on any legislative resolution authorizing the president to send the armed forces into action outside the borders of the Russian Federation.  Zyuganov, who is leader of the main opposition (communist) party in the Russian parliament, said he would vote for such a resolution.  During his address, Putin did not drop that shoe, apparently believing his stern warnings would suffice to rein in the crazies.  Oddly, no Western news outlet seems to have picked up on what Zyuganov said.

Just an hour or two before my interview, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced that the large military exercises near Ukraine had been completed and that he had ordered troops to return to their permanent bases by May 1.  One can still count on Russian retaliation for any further provocations from Ukraine but, Putin having made his point, such responses from Russia can be expected to be more “symmetrical”, so to speak.

Strategic Symmetrics

Strategically, the Russian military and Kremlin leaders are frequently reminded that there are crazies at the U.S. 4-Star level — beyond the military and civilian crazies in Washington and Ukraine. New weapons and deployments have reduced the time leaders need in order to distinguish between a false alarm and an actual attack. And loose talk on Twitter in the middle of Monday night by the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) adds to the things Gen. Shoigu has to worry about.

The Tweet read, in part:

We must account for the possibility of conflict leading to conditions which could very rapidly drive an adversary to consider nuclear use as their least bad option.

Writing in the U.S. Naval Institute Journal early this year, STRATCOM commander Admiral Charles A. Richard warned:

There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons,” he wrote, demanding that the United States “prepare for the conflict we prefer, instead of one we are likely to face.

If this betokens a change in U.S. strategic doctrine or policy, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin owes it to the world to have the words translated into understandable English.  Otherwise, prudence would force Gen. Shoigu and his Chinese counterpart to read Admiral Richard’s prose — and the Tweet from STRATFOR — the the most alarming light.

Incipient Sanity; More Please

Sanity from Intel Director Avril Haines: “Climate change can’t be addressed by one nation on its own.” Dare she add that lies regarding the threat from Russia/China and the HUGE carbon footprint from our military are major obstacles? Does “Threat Briefing” point to new honesty?

Ray addresses Haines’ comments, as well as Putin’s major address to the Russian Parliament, here:
https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2021/04/21/putin-isnt-bluffing-on-ukraine/

Afghanistan: ‘White Man’s Burden’ Lifted?

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.”  Kipling

Afghanistan: ‘White Man’s Burden’ Lifted?
By Ray McGovern

English poet Rudyard Kipling’s spirit may breathe a sigh of relief now that President Joe Biden has decided to end the latest March of Folly into Afghanistan. Kipling immortalized the phrase “White Man’s Burden”, used as an excuse for European-American imperialism. (And Barbara Tuchman’s, “March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, published in 1984, is a well worth reading again.)

There can be many a slip between cup and lip but, for the nonce, it does seem as though the Western White (U.S. and NATO troops) will be out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11 — leaving widespread rubble for which the countries who sent them there will be responsible, yet miserly in helping repair.

Artificial ‘Light At the End of the Tunnel’

In Afghanistan, as was the case with the war in Vietnam, U.S. generals and courtier pundits lied through their teeth. They continually lied about the progress they were making, as Craig Whitlock makes clear in excruciating detail in his Dec. 2019 Washington Post report The Afghanistan Papers A secret history of the war: At war with the truth (See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/ )

You did not have to go through the crucible of Vietnam — or wait for honest reporting from the very few like Whitlock — to discern how Americans, including some presidents, were being misled on Afghanistan. The experience of Vietnam, though, did throw rather clear deja-vu light on this latest folly and its spurious justifications.  With a modicum of experience in media analysis, it was not difficult to penetrate the deceit and piece together what was really going on.

You Can Do It Without Spies?

I am almost amused thinking back on how President Reagan’s CIA Director, Bill Casey, was astonished to learn that over 80 percent of intelligence analysis was based on open sources. When today’s journalists ask the agency’s PR unit about me, the standard answer is that, since I no longer have access to classified reporting, I cannot possibly know what is going on.

But at a time when Gen. David Petraeus prevented my former analyst colleagues from having input into decisions on the relative merits of “surging” tens of thousands more troops into Afghanistan, I did not need intelligence from sleuths, surveillance, spies, or satellites to warn President Obama 12 years ago that:

“Gallons of blood are likely to be poured unnecessarily in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan — probably over the next decade or longer.”
(See: Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President, March 28, 2009, https://consortiumnews.com/2018/04/07/welcome-to-vietnam-mr-president-3/ )

Back to Kipling

Kipling himself came to recognize the dangers — and ultimate folly — of imperialism.  He wrote:

It is not wise for the Christian white
To hustle the Asian brown;
For the Christian riles
And the Asian smiles
And weareth the Christian down.

At the end of the fight
Lies a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased;
And the epitaph drear,
A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East.

When Kipling’s only son John was killed in battle in France in 1915, Kipling saw things still more differently.  He wrote:

“If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied.”

Sadly, Kipling’s aphorism applies as aptly to the roughly 2,400 U.S. and 1,200 “coalition” troops killed in the latest March of Folly into Afghanistan — not to mention many times as many Afghans.

Still more sadly, although President Joe Biden personally knows, all too well, the generals who lied, he could not hold them accountable even if he had the courage to try. MICIMATT (the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex is in charge.