Ray interviewed on The Critical Hour July 11, 2022, 13 minutes
The questions posed led me to comment candidly on the regrettable state of Western statesmen like EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Yes, the same Blinken who, in one breath excoriates China and the “systemic challenge” it supposedly represents, and in the next makes a pathetically quixotic attempt to cajole his Chinese counterpart to abandon Beijing’s lockstep with Russia on Ukraine. (It’s a bipolar world again: the lily-white West pitted against pretty much everyone else – most of whom are people of color.)
Blinken
Since Blinken and President Joe Biden will spend two days in Israel later this week, I called to mind the key role Blinken played in greasing the skids for the attack on Iraq in March 2003, in large part to eliminate what Israel argued was an existential threat from armed-to-the-teeth-with-WMD Saddam Hussein.
The Israelis loudly rejoiced when Biden nominated Blinken to head the State Department, The Times of Israel noting:
Tony Blinken, US President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for secretary of state, is the stepson of a Holocaust survivor whose stories shaped his worldview and subsequently his policy decisions, including in the Middle East.
I have a feeling this Middle East trip will yield as much success as Blinken and Biden were able to achieve during their recent trip to the Far East – that is, zero success.
Borrell
Josep Borrell, for his part, recently lamented that the West had failed to win a “battle of narratives” (sic) on Ukraine and – worse still – that countries of the “Global South” won’t join in punishing Russia because [get this!] they are more concerned about their own national interests. In Borrell’s dismissive words, they worry more about “the consequences of the war for themselves” than in going after the supposed culprit. Wow.
Among the other issues discussed was Lithuania’s restrictions on the passage of sanctioned material through Lithuania to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. In response, the governor of Kaliningrad has just proposed a total ban on the movement of goods between Russia and the Baltic states.
I suggested that Russia had all kinds of levers to press in these circumstances and that its response to the Lithuanians is likely to be low key and proportionate. But who knows? I’ve guessed wrong before. And the Lithuanians are not above jabbing the bear in its other eye with a more lethal stick. And, just on general principle, it’s best to avoid provoking the kind of bear not likely to be deterred by bear-spray.
In 1307 in Switzerland, so goes the legend, the Habsburg rulers’ local bailiff, Gessler, stuck his hat on a pole and commanded every passerby to salute it. Wilhelm Tell refused. As fearsome punishment he had to shoot an apple from his own little boy’s head with his crossbow. His aim was sure, the boy was safe. But “Gessler’s hat” still means forced obeisance to some symbol. Or else!
In current media, every mention of the war in Ukraine must start with a denunciation of that monster Putin. Or else! What epithet is more withering than “Putin-lover”!
I, too, am not a Putin-lover. And I have a great hatred of war, especially war rained from the skies or aimed from a distance. Waging war, against civilians, even against young uniformed “adversaries,” is inherently wrong. But I will not bow my head to this modern “Gessler’s hat”, no matter what epithets I may be pelted with (crossbows are rarely available). Actually, for my last Berlin Bulletin, while some readers accused me of being too “pro-Putin” others said I was too “anti-Putin”!
Despite my horror at the death, destruction and misery I see daily on TV, my entire background demands a careful analysis of a conflagration which may yet fling flames across more borders and can all too easily kindle atomic annihilation. Why did Russia send an army into Ukraine? Was it pure imperialism? A terrible miscalculation? Did Putin see it as a dire necessity? Or was it a baited trap?
To start with, I cannot forget, deny or ignore what I have seen happen since 1945; how the Pentagon, White House, Congress and those behind them sought the defeat of one pro-socialist effort after another. They failed in Cuba and Vietnam, they succeeded in Ghana, Grenada, Chile – and, most important, in Europe! By utilizing every weakness, blunder, even offense, and exerting every form of pressure, Poland was won by a team led by Ronald Reagan, “Polish Pope” John Paul II, the CIA and a few experts in the AFL-CIO. In 1989-90 it was the GDR’s turn, with help from US Ambassador to Bonn Vernon Walters, a former CIA Deputy Director who had played a major role in Poland. In 1991 came the glorious victory over the USSR, where Yeltsin, an alcoholic marionette, opened the gates to ten years of chaos, desolation and sell-out to new Russian oligarchs and not so new US corporations.
That’s when Putin stepped in, just in time to save Russia from total collapse, using his own set of oligarchs, crossing himself piously as he knelt in church but keeping a tight state hold on banks and basic resources. This was not at all what American businessmen and politicians wanted. So the US-led military pact NATO, breaking its promise of 1990 not to move an inch eastwards, advanced, one regime-changed ally after the other, towards complete encirclement of Russia: in 1999 Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, in 2004 Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; then the hinterland in fragmented, bombed ex-Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia. Only a few more were needed to close a tight ring around Russia. Afghanistan did not pan out, nor did Georgia (though attempts are vigorously continuing). But most important was Ukraine, which could block Russia from the Black Sea and reached to within 400 miles of Moscow.
The elected president of that huge gem, unwilling to become part of the encircling noose, sought a more neutral position. “Not enough!” said NATO and sent in Nuland. Victoria Nuland, deputy in Hillary Clinton’s State Department (and wife of a top cold war strategist), went to Kyiv, dealt out at least $5 billion and even tasty cookies to a largely right-wing, anti-Russian crowd, and maybe a few to the mysterious snipers who forced the president to flee for his life. In a famous hacked phone call she personally chose the next Ukrainian ruler, banker-politician Yatzenyuk, a man supported by the “Freedom Party” of Oleh Tyahnybok, who had denounced a “Jewish-Russian Mafia” and praised Ukraine’s new hero Stepan Bandera, who led in murdering thousands of Jews and Poles in 1941.
One of the new rulers’ first measures discriminated against the many Russian-speakers, limiting the use of all but Ukrainian, making them second-class citizens and in Crimea angry enough to vote, with a big majority, to break with Ukraine and rejoin with Russia (to which they had belonged until 1954) and in eastern Donbas to form two separate republics, much as Albanian-speaking people in Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 2008. In such decisions national pride, or self-defense – superseded complex international rules. Military operations against Donbas were soon launched, using the fascistic “Azov” militia units.
With Ukraine now a new segment in the ring around Russia, USA-NATO built up its strength there, first with “non-lethal” arms and trainers, letting allies like Lithuania pass on bigger stuff. Then came a series of military maneuvers. Defender-Europe 20 was hindered by Covid-19 but, in 2021, Sea Breeze was conducted in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea with more than 30 warships and 40 planes from 32 countries not far from the Russians’ southern naval base of Sevastopol.
Then it was Operation Cossack Mace, this time to “improve compatibility between British and Ukrainian military formations, strengthen mutual relations, joint planning and perform battalion and tactical operations.” Two British-built naval bases were planned near the short Russian coast.
In September 2021 it was Rapid Trident 21. “To increase combat readiness, defense capabilities and interoperability, the exercise features joint jumps of Ukrainian and U.S. paratroopers and, for the first time, service members will conduct battalion tactical exercises of a multinational battalion with combat shooting in a single combat order … The purpose is to prepare for joint actions as part of a multinational force during coalition operations.” Joining the USA and Ukraine were Bulgaria, Canada, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Lithuania, Moldova, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Turkey and the UK.
Such activities were allegedly for peace, defending Ukraine against “authoritarianism.” But Russia viewed the threat of cutting it off in the Baltic and Black Sea, plus 700 or 800 big or small USA bases on six continents, in a very different way. Washington was a safe 7800 miles away; St. Petersburg and Moscow were under the noses of those missile launchers, warplanes and warships, and the USA alone had a 13-1 preponderance over Russia in military spending. Bipartisan American politicians were outdoing themselves in reviling Russia, nor could the Maidan events with Victoria Nuland be forgotten.
As for Putin, like him or hate him, it is hardly surprising that he was alarmed, perhaps even for personal reasons in view of the fates of other leaders disliked by Washington: Allende, dead in his bombed residence, Lumumba, tortured and murdered, Saddam Hussein, hanged, Muammar Gaddafi, fatally sodomized, the Afghani Najibullah, castrated and stringed up, Usama Bin Ladin, shot in his rooms and dumped into the ocean, Slobodan Milošević, mysteriously dying in a prison cell. (Fidel Castro was luckier, surviving over a hundred bungled CIA assassination attempts.)
In a 14-page historical summary, Putin wrote:
“We respect the Ukrainian language and traditions. We respect Ukrainians’ desire to see their country free, safe and prosperous.” … “Russia is open to dialogue with Ukraine and ready to discuss the most complex issues. But it is important for us to understand that our Ukrainian partner defend its national interests not by serving someone else’s, that it not be a tool in someone else’s hands to fight against us.”
That was in July 2021. How sincere were such words? What did they mean in February 2022? Daring to ignore the “Gessler hat,” I think basic Russian policy must be seen not as expansionist but as defensive. In 2015 Russia agreed to the Minsk II agreement to avoid further warfare in Donbas and resolve the conflict with negotiations and compromises. Kyiv ignored, indeed undermined Minsk II; Germany and France, its co-sponsors, abandoned it. Foreign Minister Lavrov made proposals to discuss a neutral Ukraine. At first Zelensky seemed interested – until pressure from Washington and London to “stay tough” prevailed; Lavrov’s further requests to negotiate differences, above all to remove NATO troops and maneuvers from Russian borders, were rejected in December 2021 by Secretary of State Blinken, as “very obvious nonstarters”. Was that rejection Putin’s “red line”? Who knows? I only wish they had been “starters” instead – for the White House and Pentagon. That could have saved the Ukrainians immense suffering and exile – although it might have meant fewer billions for Northrup-Grumman or Raytheon.
And on February 24? Did Putin perhaps march into an elaborate trap – as Russia had once done in Afghanistan? Did he consider a big impending Ukrainian offensive against the Donbas republics and their Russian-speaking population, where 14,000 had died in ten years of battle, as an immediate danger to Russia? Did the many US-Ukrainian biological laboratories – admitted to by Victoria Nuland in a US Senate committee hearing – seem an immediate threat? I cannot know.
One commentator, turning to history, recalled the surprise attack on the USSR by the Nazi armies in 1941, resulting in up to 27 million deaths and vast destruction. He surmised that Putin, seeing a growing, hostile Ukrainian army, with NATO (or the USA leaders) guiding it from the wings, decided that a first attack was necessary to prevent any repetition of 1941.
Putin defended the invasion of Ukraine with the following words:
“Today we are told that we started a war in Donbas, in Ukraine. No, it was unleashed by this same collective West which organized and supported the unconstitutional armed coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, then encouraged and justified genocide against the people of Donbas …
“The West is fighting Russia with all the tools that are also used in a war: weapons, sanctions, money, media, diplomacy. The only thing that slows the West down from intervening with its own soldiers is the danger of nuclear war.
“Ukraine is only the unfortunate sacrificial pawn of the West, which had been prepared for this role since 2014 and with which the West has provoked Russia (with the Maidan coup in 2014, arms deliveries, construction of NATO bases, etc.) until Russia saw no choice but to take military action to protect its own security interests. At the beginning of February 2022, the West rejected the security guarantees proposed by Russia in December 2021 and even refused to talk about them.” [Emphasis added. Biden had told Putin on December 30 that “Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine”. Biden was apparently overruled by others; a huge problem – who speaks for “ Washington”?]
That is Putin’s position. True or not, and for whatever reason, invasion was a tragic choice! Aside from the misery in Ukraine it has led to a dangerously explosive polarization, painfully splitting the world’s weak left-wing forces for peace and progress.
Reaction in Germany
And in Germany? For years the unified country was torn between two forces. Some economic groups, like gas importers and exporters of manufactured and agricultural goods, wanted to get along with Russia (and even more with China), a policy symbolized by Angela Merkel and the Baltic pipelines. This was angrily opposed by men along the Potomac, in Charles Koch’s Wichita HQ and similar locations, who wanted both to export fracked gas and to head off even limited German-Russian reconciliation. They were aiming at the eventual defeat of Russia, then China, as major barriers to their plans for world hegemony, prudently labeled “the rule of order,” democracy, liberty (and free markets!) as against “authoritarianism.”
Closely beholden to them was that force in Germany, the Atlanticists, whether because of ideology, intertwining corporate and financial interests, or perhaps even personal career hopes. After February 24th, inside and outside the governing coalition, the Atlanticists won full victory, filling the media with angry denunciation of everything Russian, working to permanently break off all commercial ties with Moscow, starting with the Baltic oil pipelines, even though this may well cause industrial shutdown s and maybe very chilly room temperatures. Christian Democrats, Free Democrats, and first and foremost the Green party joined the attack, with the young Green foreign minister Annalena Baerbock demanding that as many and as heavy weapons possible to be sent to Kyiv, with her cherished goal the “ruin of Russia”.
The Social Democrats were not so clear, with Chancellor Scholz hesitant about sending heavy weapons to Kyiv and getting deeply involved in what could become an open war, NATO vs. Russia. But media attacks grew fiercer, and Scholz bowed to that “Gessler hat,” siding with NATO and Washington, stationing more German troops in Lithuania and demanding an unprecedented sum of €100 billion for more armaments to “protect German security”.
The competition in denouncing Russia grew strong enough to revive half-forgotten tones from the 1930s, like when Lars Klingbeil, a leading Social Democrat, claimed that “Germany’s allies have great expectations and Germany must fulfil them… It is time for it to exit the end-of-history mode and become a leading power on the world stage after almost 80 years of holding back.”
Frightening words! Even more frightening were those of top air corps General Ingo Gerhartz: “For a credible deterrent, we need both the means and the political will, if necessary, to implement nuclear deterrence.” The “old guard” in the established parties were beginning to summon up past glories!
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is all out for those past glories but, like some other far-righters in Europe, did not join the verbal attacks on Russia and opposed armaments for Ukraine! Their main mission in nearly all matters is opposition – above all to the European Union. But as dyed-in-the-wool nationalists, they also support a big German military build-up, a renewed draft and/or compulsory civil service for young men (as also recommended by President Steinmeier!).
The Left – Die Linke – has always stood out as the one party of peace, opposing deployment in Serbia, Afghanistan, Mali or anywhere outside German borders. Now it was split, with the main bone of contention the Ukraine war. Actually, disagreement on related issues was by no means new, though rarely so emotional as at the party congress session in late June.
It was a disastrous year for The Linke. In the September elections the party received only 4.9%, down from 6.9% four years earlier. Its caucus in the Bundestag was only just saved by a special rule; if three or more delegates were elected directly in their districts the caucus was saved, even without 5%. Exactly three scraped through, but proportional representation now gave it 39 deputies, not its previous 69; no longer the strongest opposition party, it had become the weakest. The urgent party reassessment and changes called for by this disaster failed to materialize and the party lost bitterly in three state elections: Saarland – from 12.8% to 2.6%, Schleswig-Holstein, 3.8 to 1.7% and in the key industrial North Rhine-Westfalia from 4.9 to 2.7%! Few workers voted Left. Some prominent members quit. The magazine Der Spiegel falsified a sex-related event (some obscure member’s alleged assault) into a malicious “Me-too” attack on the more militant co-chair Janine Wissler for allegedly covering it up. Her “reformist” co-chair, Susanne Hennig-Wellsow, quit her leadership position in a huff, and with new leadership elections now necessary, the party faced total defeat, perhaps a split and even its demise!
In the main dispute the so-called reformers weakened the party’s basic opposition to NATO in hopes of being accepted in a government coalition with the pro-NATO Greens and Social Democrats. Such dubious hopes were rendered fully impossible by the Left’s poor election results. But the reformers still tended to play down or absolve the NATO’s current role, giving Russia and Putin the entire blame for the Ukrainian tragedy while the militant wing of the party viewed the NATO, especially the USA, as provocateurs, whose expansionist policy of deploying armaments and maneuvers along Russian borders was clearly looking for trouble – and, sadly, getting it. The quarrel reflected a deeper rift – between those who called for improvements in child care, pensions, minimum wages but saw socialism only as a future goal in vague clichés while basically accepting a systemic status quo in which they strove to become accepted, despite the growing menace of the billionaires. The militants, while not calling for revolution tomorrow (like some ultra-leftists), nevertheless saw a rejection of the capitalist system as vital – and basic opposition a necessity. The one group accepted NATO, the other opposed it. Their differences colored often hot but very brief Congress debates, which were dominated by the reformers, who won out in the end with about a 60-30 ratio – and managed to slip some very ardent pro-NATO advocates into leading positions. Janine Wissner was re-elected as co-chair (thus rejecting the malicious media smear). For co-chair, the usual male-female, East-West, leftish-reformist balance formula was maintained, and the militant, popular Sören Pellmann from Leipzig, one of the three delegates to save the Left caucus by winning a seat in his district, lost out to the rather moderate Martin Schirdewan, till then a delegate in the European Parliament, who promised to put far more stress on working-class struggles while opposing armament sales to Ukraine and organizing for peace. He seemed to seek Left reconciliation – and, at last, action.
Some on the left deplored the Congress results. Others were glad there had been no split, some political positions had been rescued, a threatened stress on “gender issues,” even in grammar and punctuation, had been averted and a shaky compromise arrived at. It remains to be seen whether The Left can regain roots among working people for the many hardships and big menaces now looming. And much may yet depend on its position regarding Gessler’s hat.
TIME OUT! Let’s think this through. We are told that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked”. But was it?
How can we estimate how far west Russia’s forces will advance, without knowing why Russia invaded Ukraine in the first place? Theories abound; evidence is available but is overlooked, or hidden.
I apply the skills I learned as a Kremlinologist to scrub official statements, rinse them thoroughly, and squeeze out meaning.
This was known, back in the day, as “media analysis” and remains a lucrative tool. Often, though, it requires “getting into the weeds”. Those weeds cannot always be included in more broad-brush analyses like those of John Mearsheimer, but often add a brick or two to the foundation of his incisive conclusions.
To include weeds and bricks in digestible form I included slides. But the tone is informal, unpolished.
There was not enough time to pay adequate attention to the broader implications of the war in Ukraine. The new conditions brought on by the war in Ukraine constitute, in my view, a liminal event. Putin, in effect, has decided to put an end to Peter the Great’s (early 1700s) foundational effort to play catch-up ball with the West and shoehorn a relatively backward Russia into Europe.
Now the “window” Peter tried to break through to Europe has been closed shut – at least for the nonce. Russia is backward no more and has powerful supporters elsewhere – many of whom are similarly fed up with the West.
An iron curtain, so to speak, has been drawn down on the Russian side of Peter’s window, as Putin looks east for less threatening friends – allies even. The world has again become bipolar; but now it’s the lily-white West against pretty much the rest of the world. As the Chinese officials used to put it in the vernacular (while issuing umpteen warnings to the West), “This will come to a no-good end.”
One can but hope that the East will remain aware of Sun Tzu’s dictum of 25 centuries ago:
“Avoiding a clash with great powers does not indicate cowardice, but wisdom, because sacrificing oneself is never an advantage anywhere” (The Art of War ).
It is commonplace, for those of us giving such interviews, to look back and think, Why in heaven’s name did I forget to include this, or that! Doctorow has appended a note regarding what he might have included about the Nazis in Ukraine. Reproduced below is his afterthought:
Live interviews like this are always a challenge. Inevitably you do not get across every argument you prepared in advance. In my mental review of our chat, I have one regret. Though I had requested to be asked about how the Kiev regime can be fascist when its president, Zelensky, is a Jew, I did not give the most relevant answer to that question when we spoke: namely the celebration of the SS-collaborator Bandera by the ultra-nationalists running the show through Zelensky as their front man.
Bandera’s name is being given to streets throughout Ukraine and statues are raised to him. Tattoos bearing Bandera’s image were found to be worn by the Azovstal defenders when they surrendered to Russian forces.
The whole issue of Bandera and the present-day heirs to Ukraine’s collaborationists during WWII was highlighted last week by the scandal over remarks to a German journalist made by the Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin, Andriy Melnyk: he denied that Bandera was anti-Semitic or was in any way responsible for the slaughter of Jews in Ukraine by his followers.
Those remarks elicited a storm of criticism from the Israeli government who called it willful disinformation about the Holocaust. Official Poland also entered the fray and with good reason: Poles were slaughtered by Bandera’s warriors as well. From within Scholz’s government, Germans were incensed. Yesterday Melnyk was removed as ambassador and returned to Kiev, where he likely will be promoted to the position of deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. This whole ugly affair is a good demonstration of the fascist nature of a government nominally headed by Zelensky.
The NATO military alliance, (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), is now officially confronting a supposed “systematic challenge” from China, as well as “a most significant and direct threat” from Russia.
Asked to assess this, I could do no better than to quote John Mearsheimer:
Russia simply is not a serious threat to the United States. China is a peer competitor. Russia isn’t. If you want to contain China, you want Russia on your side. But instead, what we’re doing is pushing the Russians into the arms of the Chinese.
This violates “Balance of Power: 101”.
Unhinged
I suggested that a dangerous degree of volatility is introduced by the likely assessment in Moscow and Beijing that those advising Biden are unhinged, unable to think rationally, and might be tempted to strike out even more rashly to hide the results of their egregious missteps. It is likely that this has both the Russians and the Chinese on tenterhooks. Will the West think it has to double down in some way, as the Russians advance in Ukraine and the Chinese win more friends and influence more people in the East – in a whole different ocean?
Also discussed were the likelihood of deepening fissures in the West as economic hardships grow under the sanctions. In a recent speech on the floor of Spain’s parliament, member Gerardo Pisarello charged that the NATO summit was organized to enrich the weapons trade and weaken China. Pisarello added:
Increasing the military budget in the middle of a dire social and energy emergency would truly be the act of a pyromaniac.
And, indeed, the ones celebrating wildly are the war profiteers – like BAE Systems. It has had a lobbying triumph with the decision to send a $300 million shipment of M-777 howitzers to Ukraine.
Grim, But ‘As Long As It Takes’
I mentioned the “grim” picture on Ukraine that Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines drew last week, predicting that the war will grind on “for an extended period of time”. That seems certain to be the case unless U.S. policy changes, and nothing seems likely to change before the mid-term elections in November.
At the close of the NATO summit last week, President Biden said that Americans and the rest of the world would have to pay more for gasoline and energy as a price of containing Russian aggression. How long? “As long as it takes, so Russia cannot in fact defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine,” he replied.
Who is telling the president Russia plans to “move beyond Ukraine”? That may be true, but where is the evidence?
Sorry, the Giuliani dictum (i. e., “Lots of Theories, But No Evidence”) does not do if for me. Nor does the putative “Threat Assessment” drawn up by highly paid functionaries at BAE Systems.
Ray’s article Thursday morning formed the backdrop, as interviewer Wilmer Leon began with its introductory paragraphs:
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Incongruity was the hallmark of the extraordinary NATO summit just concluded in Madrid. NATO offered bluster and promised muster: more troops against its “most significant and direct threat ,” Russia. Meanwhile, Russian “cauldron” maneuvers in Donbas methodically destroyed or enveloped major units of Kyiv’s army, further strengthening Russia’s position there.
Those of realistic and compassionate bent can but harbor hope that, before there is only a cadaver of Ukraine left to defend, Kyiv sees the handwriting on the wall and cries Uncle, despite what the Ukrainians are hearing from an Uncle Sam. He seems to have a remarkable tolerance for carnage – in Ukraine.
As for NATO bluster … part of the U.S. muster of troops is destined for Poland, where the US is establishing a permanent headquarters.
Polish President Andrzej Duda claims “Russia is a threat for all of NATO” … and that multiplying NATO’s “Rapid Reaction Force” will make Europe “safer”.
A serious claim that Russia wants to attack Poland or any other NATO member should be accompanied by evidence. No one can be permitted to employ the recently coined “Giuliani Dictum:” ‘Lots of Theories, But No Evidence’.
++++++++++++++++++++
As John Mearsheimer has pointed out, there is zero evidence that Russia plans to attack a NATO country.
‘Grim’ is the Word – at Least for Ukrainians
Turning to the latest from U.S. intelligence, I included some detail from a Reuters report Wednesday quoting National Intelligence Director Avril Haines. She told a Commerce Department conference: (a) The war will grind on “for an extended period of time; (b) “The picture remains pretty grim and Russia’s attitude toward the West is hardening.”
The Reuters journalists made bold to suggest that Haines’ comments mean that the billions of dollars in modern arms being supplied by the United States and other countries to Zelinskiy’s forces may not give them the ability to turn the tide against Russia any time soon.
By now, that much should be abundantly clear; the only real news here is that some Establishment media are beginning to concede it. And yet the mutually affirming lemmings of NATO continue to say send those arms anyway. And Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, et al. rejoice.
What Worries Moscow the Most
I closed the interview addressing what I believe bothers Putin the most. Culling from my antiwar.com article Thursday morning, I cited what Putin had said a few days earlier; namely, that Russia planned to send nuclear-capable missiles to Belarus within months.
Putin made that promise in a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. “We will transfer to Belarus Iskander-M tactical missile systems, which can use ballistic or cruise missiles, in their conventional and nuclear versions,” Putin said, according to Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency. “It’s a deal.”
Former Russian president Dimitry Medvedev also recently threatened to move Iskander hypersonic missiles “onto the threshold” of Russia’s Scandanavian and Baltic State neighbors.
Moscow’s approach on this issue mirror-images its acute concern over U.S. missile launch sites already emplaced in Romania, and almost complete in Poland, that can host offensive, nuclear-capable missiles threatening western Russia. Putin has worried aloud at having a mere 5 to 7 minutes warning time in such case.
Promises That Evaporate
The emplacement of what the Russians call “offensive strike missiles” in sites near Russia’s border is a glowing red line. For many years Putin has complained that so-called “ABM” sites in Romania and Poland can be converted overnight into launchers for “offensive strike missiles” — Tomahawk cruise missiles, for example, and, later, hypersonic ones.
A major concern, of course, is warning time; that is, the ever-shrinking minutes from the missile launch to target. Put yourself in Putin’s – or Biden’s – place, facing a decision as to whether, in effect, to end human life on planet earth.
After Putin spoke, at his urgent request, with President Biden by telephone on Dec. 30, 2021, the Kremlin readout included this:
“Joseph Biden emphasized … that Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine.”
No one challenged the accuracy of the Russian readout; that part of it was ignored in the West, but loudly rejoiced at in Moscow.
Does anyone know why/how that that key point made by Biden fell into the cracks? We are talking here about one president’s direct personal assurance to the other. The key role played by trust (or distrust) can hardly be exaggerated.
This short video clip from 2015 provides a sense of how frustrated Putin has been, in trying to get people (in this case Western journalists) to put themselves in his shoes. I invite you to click on the two-and-a-half minute segment from minute 10:20 to 12:55.
