1). “Are you ready for WWIII? The Russians are”, Jun 7, 2024, Eugene Doyle, Pearls and Irritations: John Menadue's Public Policy Journal, at < https://johnmenadue.com/are-
2). “Map Shows Ukraine's Record-Breaking Hits on Russian Nuclear Warning Sites”, May 28, 2024, David Brennan,
Newsweek, at < https://www.newsweek.com/map-
3). “Nato’s spiralling commitments to Ukraine risk catastrophe”, May 29 2024, Chris Bambery, Counterfire, at < https://www.counterfire.org/
4). “Ukraine Says Some of Its F-16 Fighter Jets Will Be Stored Abroad: Putin has previously warned that Russia could target bases in NATO countries if they’re hosting warplanes that are being used in Ukraine”, June 10, 2024, Anon, Defend Democracy Press, at < https://www.defenddemocracy.
5). “NATO Developing ‘Land Corridors’ To Rush US Troops to Frontlines in Event of War With Russia”, Jun 04, 2024, Dave DeCamp, Defend Democracy Press, at < https://www.defenddemocracy.
6). “The three great myths of NATO: The self-proclaimed defence alliance sees itself as the guardian of law and democracy. In reality, it is leaving a blood trail of devastation across the world”, May 24, 2024, Sevim Dagdelen, Schweizer Standpunkt (in English Swiss Standpoint), at < https://www.schweizer-
Introduction by dmorista: The U.S. ruling class, has presented the U.S. populace with a choice for president between: 1). Trump a vicious fascist foaming at the mouth to impose a harsh far-right domestic socioeconomic and political regime and 2). a Biden dedicated Neo-Con Warrior ready to supply weapons and ammunition to the various client regimes. The clients at the moment are Ukraine and Taiwan at the moment, and the U.S. rulers supinely allow the U.S. to be used by the client / super-ally / and master (in all issues pertaining to the Middle East and North Africa), namely of course, Israel. Trump is less enthusiastic about war with China and/or Russia, but is even more subservient to Israel's murderous agenda than Biden is.
These policies are becoming ever more dangerous and have pushed the world towards a higher than ever before danger of Nuclear War. Item 1)., “Are you ready for WWIII? ….” states:
“The Armavir Incident – the destruction on 23 May of a key part of Russia’s nuclear defence – means the Doomsday clock is ticking closer to midnight. Most people don’t even know that a long-distance Ukrainian/NATO drone attack on the Armavir radar station north of Georgia knocked out a Voronezh-DM radar which is designed to detect incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles from as far as 6,000 kilometres away. It is one of three similar attacks in recent weeks. ….
“ 'Map Shows Ukraine’s Record-Breaking Hits on Russian Nuclear Warning Sites' Newsweek reports. The article, triumphalist in tone, fails to address the central issue: how crazy do you have to be to compress Russia’s decision-making window before it must decide whether to launch nuclear weapons at you? And who thought this was a good idea at the very time that nuclear-capable F16s are about to arrive in Ukraine and the US, along with a clutch of client states, has announced their missiles will strike mainland Russia in the coming days or weeks? Never in history has a nuclear power been attacked in this way. Even at the height of the Cold War neither side was brainless enough to do what the Western countries are doing now: attack detection facilities and launch missile strikes on a nuclear power. (Emphases added)
“We actually need the Russians to have really good missile detection systems; it keeps us safe. The Americans have a superior system to the Russians: they have more geosynchronous satellites that hover over specific regions 24/7 and can pretty much instantly detect the heat signatures of missiles at launch. Ground systems, like the Voronezh-DM at Armavir have to wait for the missiles to gain altitude and enter the radar fan (think of the beep-beep-beep sweep of a submarine sonar). American nuclear scientists estimate that the time available to the Russian military and political decision makers may only be a third of that which the US enjoys. In the time it takes you to drink a cappuccino they have to decide if they need to empty their missile silos then go through all their launch procedures before they are incinerated. (Emphasis added) ….
“The NATO decision to strike mainland Russia with missiles comes as Ukraine is losing on the battlefield and is at risk of a major frontline collapse. Western analysts acknowledge the country has almost run out of trained reserves, is funnelling conscripts to the front with minimal training, soldiers now have an average age of 43, they are suffering a 7:1 or perhaps even 10:1 shell deficit and are completely outmatched in airpower, missiles, tanks, drones and electronic warfare. (Emphases added)
“The US response to the looming failure of its Ukraine strategy is to escalate. The plan was to crush Russia with sanctions, pour in hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons, take back all territory, turn Sevastopol into a NATO port and trigger regime change in Moscow – all these have clearly failed. ….
“Joe is the first US leader in history to authorise missile strikes against a nuclear power – supposedly within a limited geographic range north of Kharkiv; he is joined by the Germans, and the British and French who say 'the Ukrainians' can strike anywhere on Russian territory.
“Military experts dismiss the fiction that these missiles will be unleashed by Ukrainians. German Taurus missiles, French Scalp missiles, British Storm Shadow missiles and various US missiles use super-sophisticated dynamic guidance and navigation systems to enable command and control centres in Western Europe or the US to support things like terrain contour matching, evasion and target confirmation. These are all run by elite, highly trained personnel from each of those countries. Open war between NATO and Russia could erupt as a consequence.” (Emphasis added)
Item 2)., “Map Shows Ukraine's ….”, is the article cited in Item 1). and in that mention of the Newsweek article, Item 1). noted its belligerent triumphalist tone. It did include a good map, that I modified and posted here below. The Article also pointed out that Russia has more of the same type of early warning radar stations as the three damaged in the attacks a couple of weeks ago. The article stated that:
“Russia has at least five other radar sites hosting Voronezh-M systems. Two are located in the west of the country, at the Lekhtusi Radar Station close to St. Petersburg and at the Pionersky Radar Station The Biden administration cannot allow Ukraine to collapse prior to November’s Presidential election. If escalation was needed to stave off defeat, the red line on missile strikes on Russia could be quickly erased. in the Kaliningrad exclave.
“Three are spread across Siberia, at the Mishelevka Radar Station near the city of Irkutsk, at a site close to the city of Yeniseysk in Krasnoyarsk Krai region, and near the Altai Krai region's city of Barnaul.
“Additional Voronezh-M radar stations are planned for construction close to the city of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, near the Arctic Circle city of Olenogorsk in Murmansk region, and near the city of Vorkuta in the northern Komi Republic, also in the Arctic region.”
Item 3)., “Nato’s spiralling commitments ...” looks at many of the same issues covered by Item 1 and with cynical insight it points out that:
“The Biden administration cannot allow Ukraine to collapse prior to November’s Presidential election. If escalation was needed to stave off defeat, the red line on missile strikes on Russia could be quickly erased.”
Important and growing issues are the provision of more advanced weapons, especially F-16s that the U.S. / NATO refused to provide until recently. Now, however, F-16s have been promised and Item 4)., “Ukraine Says Some of Its F-16 ….” points out that:
“ 'If they are stationed at air bases outside the Ukrainian borders and used in combat, we will have to see how and where to strike the assets used in combat against us,' Putin said last year, according to The Associated Press. 'It poses a serious danger of NATO being further drawn into the conflict.'
“Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have also noted that F-16s are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Lavrov warned last year that Russia would view them as a nuclear threat. The Netherlands recently announced that it would allow Ukraine to use the F-16s it provides in strikes on Russian territory. (Emphasis added) ….
“According to AP, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway have pledged up to 60 F-16s for Ukraine, but none have been delivered so far. The first planes are expected to arrive this summer, and Ukraine may only receive six at first due to delays in training pilots.” That same article discusses the plans by Ukraine to store fighters in foreign places, including Romania, when they are not actually flying missions. The Russians have warned that they will consider such places as legitimate targets and will attack them.
The military planners from the U.S. / NATO forces are contending with the likelihood that the Ukrainian army will collapse at some point in the next few months. In addition to providing new sophisticated weaponry the U.S. / NATO forces have planned for establishing routes to move ground troops towards Ukraine and Russia, with the ultimate goal of actual ground warfare between the U.S. / NATO and Russia. This is discussed in a short article, Item 5)., “NATO Developing ‘Land Corridors’ ….” which states that:
“NATO is developing multiple 'land corridors' to rush US troops and armored vehicles to the frontlines of a potential future ground war with Russia in Eastern Europe, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.
“Current NATO plans involve US troops landing in ports in the Netherlands and then transported through Germany to Poland, but the alliance is looking to expand the potential routes for US troops to reach the borders of Russia and Ukraine.
“Officials told The Telegraph that they want US troops to be able to travel through five different corridors:
“Landing in the Netherlands and traveling through Germany to reach Poland
“Landing in Italy to travel through Slovenia and Slovakia to reach Hungary
“Landing in Greece to travel through Bulgaria to reach Romania
“Landing in Turkey to travel through Bulgaria to reach Romania
“Landing in Norway to travel through Sweden to reach Finland”
Finally Item 6)., “The three great myths of NATO: ….” takes a look at the history of NATO, in which the author states that NATO has always been much more aggressive than is generally acknowledged. The article points out that:
“The end of the systemic conflict with the Soviet Union radically changed the primary purpose of NATO, which was to create a Pax Americana. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has increasingly seen itself in the role of world policeman. With the invasion of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which at that time still consisted of Serbia and Montenegro, the military pact waged its first war in 1999. A clear breach of international law, as the then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder himself admitted fifteen years later: 'We sent our planes [...] to Serbia, and together with NATO they bombed a sovereign state – without there having been a Security Council decision.' After this original sin, NATO is developing into a warfare pact that is prepared to break international law. (Emphasis added) ….
“The war policy of the most important member of the alliance must therefore be attributed to the NATO military pact as a whole if one takes NATO’s self-image seriously. With its wars that violate international law, the USA stands as pars pro toto, as part of the whole.
In Afghanistan, NATO has been waging a disastrous war for twenty years that has cost the lives of over 200,000 civilians. For the first and so far, only time, the alliance is invoking Article 5 of the NATO Treaty in this military operation following the attacks of 11 September 2001. The international public is to be made to believe that the freedom and security of the West are being defended in the Hindu Kush. Twenty years later, in August 2021, the Taliban move back into Kabul. The military operation proves to be a disaster.
“The USA’s attempt to gain a military foothold in Central Asia to challenge China and Russia geopolitically has failed. The USA is leaving the country head over heels. Washington does not even inform its allies. (Emphasis added) ….
“In addition to Belgrade, Baghdad and Kabul, NATO’s trail of blood also leads to Libya. In 2011, NATO bombed the country in violation of international law and abusing a UN Security Council resolution. Thousands are killed. Hundreds of thousands are forced to flee. A delegation from the African Union attempting to mediate in the conflict is even prevented from landing. What remains is a devastated country, parts of which are ruled by Islamist militias.”
The U.S. has managed to dominate huge areas of the globe for at almost 80 years now, but the limits to power and control seem to have been reached.
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Are you ready for WWIII? The Russians are | MR Online
The Armavir Incident—the destruction on 23 May of a key part of Russia’s nuclear defence—means the Doomsday clock is ticking closer to midnight. Most people don’t even know that a long-distance Ukrainian/NATO drone attack on the Armavir radar station north of Georgia knocked out a Voronezh-DM radar which is designed to detect incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles from as far as 6,000 kilometres away. It is one of three similar attacks in recent weeks.
The strike, trumpeted by Newsweek as a great success, may have robbed the Russians of a couple of minutes of warning time, in the event of a strike coming up from the south.
“Map Shows Ukraine’s Record-Breaking Hits on Russian Nuclear Warning Sites” Newsweek reports. The article, triumphalist in tone, fails to address the central issue: how crazy do you have to be to compress Russia’s decision-making window before it must decide whether to launch nuclear weapons at you? And who thought this was a good idea at the very time that nuclear-capable F16s are about to arrive in Ukraine and the U.S., along with a clutch of client states, has announced their missiles will strike mainland Russia in the coming days or weeks? Never in history has a nuclear power been attacked in this way. Even at the height of the Cold War neither side was brainless enough to do what the Western countries are doing now: attack detection facilities and launch missile strikes on a nuclear power.
We actually need the Russians to have really good missile detection systems; it keeps us safe. The Americans have a superior system to the Russians: they have more geosynchronous satellites that hover over specific regions 24/7 and can pretty much instantly detect the heat signatures of missiles at launch. Ground systems, like the Voronezh-DM at Armavir have to wait for the missiles to gain altitude and enter the radar fan (think of the beep-beep-beep sweep of a submarine sonar). American nuclear scientists estimate that the time available to the Russian military and political decision makers may only be a third of that which the U.S. enjoys. In the time it takes you to drink a cappuccino they have to decide if they need to empty their missile silos then go through all their launch procedures before they are incinerated.
This may explain President Putin’s recent statement that all necessary decisions and authorisations have been made in respect to Russia’s preparedness. It suggests a delegated decision structure that no longer requires political sign off. There just won’t be time.
He’s just bluffing right? Certainly America’s greatest military minds like Generals Hodges and Petraeus believe so; yet they have been wrong on pretty much everything to do with Ukraine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Another U.S. general worth quoting is Mark Milley, recent Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He speaks of the “nuclear paradox,” that the closer the Russians come to losing in Ukraine, the higher the nuclear peril. Which begs the question: what do the Americans think they are doing? Is there any sound, discernible strategy guiding all this violence, all this escalation? Or are they doing what they did in Vietnam, in Iraq and in Afghanistan—fighting on, knowing they can’t win, but unable to admit it before the next Presidential election?
Let’s be clear: even the conventional gear we are talking about is serious: German Taurus missiles, French Scalp missiles, British Storm Shadow missiles and an array of U.S. missiles are hugely powerful. They will do immense damage and kill a lot of Russians in Russia. You might think that’s a good idea but imagine if any of these countries were hit in return by similar missiles.
This morning I listened to Russian military analysts discussing what they saw as the need to hit British bases if Britain pushes ahead with plans to unleash Storm Shadows on Russian territory. President Putin has also warned that missile strikes on Russia would result in counter-strikes. Is this posturing, empty threats and blackmail, as Western spokespeople claim, or are we about to witness something that could imperil us all?
In war, what happens when an enemy shoots at you? You shoot back, right? What would happen if Russia fired missiles into the U.S.? They’d fire straight back, right? So why is the West about to fire missiles into a nuclear-armed state and think they won’t fire back?
The NATO decision to strike mainland Russia with missiles comes as Ukraine is losing on the battlefield and is at risk of a major frontline collapse. Western analysts acknowledge the country has almost run out of trained reserves, is funnelling conscripts to the front with minimal training, soldiers now have an average age of 43, they are suffering a 7:1 or perhaps even 10:1 shell deficit and are completely outmatched in airpower, missiles, tanks, drones and electronic warfare.
The U.S. response to the looming failure of its Ukraine strategy is to escalate. The plan was to crush Russia with sanctions, pour in hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons, take back all territory, turn Sevastopol into a NATO port and trigger regime change in Moscow—all these have clearly failed.
So what has changed since President Biden said he would not trigger WWIII by authorising nuclear-capable F16s? What we are witnessing is classic escalation but with a frisson of nuclear fission thrown in.
The New York Times, normally a compliant outlet for Pentagon opinion said: “Until now, Mr. Biden has flatly refused to let Ukraine use American-made weapons outside of Ukrainian borders, no matter what the provocation, saying that any attack on Russian territory risked violating his mandate to “avoid World War III.”
Biden, the NYT said, had “ clearly crossed a red line that he himself drew.” Joe is the first U.S. leader in history to authorise missile strikes against a nuclear power—supposedly within a limited geographic range north of Kharkiv; he is joined by the Germans, and the British and French who say “the Ukrainians” can strike anywhere on Russian territory.
Military experts dismiss the fiction that these missiles will be unleashed by Ukrainians. German Taurus missiles, French Scalp missiles, British Storm Shadow missiles and various U.S. missiles use super-sophisticated dynamic guidance and navigation systems to enable command and control centres in Western Europe or the U.S. to support things like terrain contour matching, evasion and target confirmation. These are all run by elite, highly trained personnel from each of those countries. Open war between NATO and Russia could erupt as a consequence.
How has the media responded to the risk that Western countries may trigger missile strikes against their own territories? Let’s look at the headlines:
“Last chance to impress for Olympic hopefuls”, “Three suburbs might get a metro”, “Exclusive: Rupert Murdoch’s new wife excited about Australian visit”, “What is the point of Super Rugby bonus points?”, “Starmer on ropes over £2000 tax rise”.
You get the point. Our media is keeping us in a deep, deep sleep. We need facts, analysis and an insistence on dialogue and diplomacy before it is too late. George Orwell knew all about this problem. Homage to Catalonia, written the year before the outbreak of WWII, finishes with this description of his train journey back to London:
Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen—all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.
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Map shows Ukraine's record-breaking hits on Russian nuclear warning sites
Russia's nuclear ballistic missile early warning radar network has emerged as a key target of long-range Ukrainian strikes, with three facilities having now been attacked by Kyiv's drones in the past two months.
Two such strikes occurred in the past week. First, a drone hit a "Voronezh-DM" radar at the Armavir Radar Station in the southern Krasnodar region on May 22. The site is home to two Voronezh-DM radars with a range of around 6,000 kilometers (3,730 miles).
The attack appeared to have damaged a building housing one of the radars, RFE/RL's Russian Service reported. The site is more than 300 miles from the closest territory currently under Kyiv's control.
The Armavir attack was quickly followed by a more ambitious strike. On May 26, a Ukrainian drone traveled some 930 miles from Kyiv-controlled territory to target a Voronezh-M radar near the city of Orsk, in the Orenburg region close to the border with Kazakhstan.
The extent of any damage at the site in Orsk is as yet unclear. But the attack may represent the longest-range Ukrainian drone strike to date, the list of targets steadily growing as Kyiv prioritizes Russia's long-range radar and oil-producing facilities.
The Kyiv Independent cited an anonymous military intelligence source as saying the drone used in Sunday's attack flew 1,118 miles; further than the 930 miles claimed in a recent strike on an oil processing plant in Russia's Bashkiria region.
Reuters cited an unnamed Ukrainian intelligence source who confirmed the dual drone strikes. Asked why Russia's long-range radars were being targeted, the source replied: "They monitor the actions of the Ukrainian security and defense forces in the south of Ukraine."
Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email to request comment.
Ukraine began its nascent campaign against Russia's early warning radar network in April, with successive drone strikes on the 590th separate radio engineering center of military unit 84680 in the city of Kovylkino, in the Mordovia Republic around 360 miles from the Ukrainian border.
The site is home to a 29B6 "Container" over-the-horizon radar, which forms part of Russia's reconnaissance and early-warning network for aerospace attacks, including those by ballistic missiles. Voronezh-M radar sites like those targeted in Armavir and Orsk are also used for this purpose.
Russia has at least five other radar sites hosting Voronezh-M systems. Two are located in the west of the country, at the Lekhtusi Radar Station close to St. Petersburg and at the Pionersky Radar Station in the Kaliningrad exclave.
Three are spread across Siberia, at the Mishelevka Radar Station near the city of Irkutsk, at a site close to the city of Yeniseysk in Krasnoyarsk Krai region, and near the Altai Krai region's city of Barnaul.
Additional Voronezh-M radar stations are planned for construction close to the city of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, near the Arctic Circle city of Olenogorsk in Murmansk region, and near the city of Vorkuta in the northern Komi Republic, also in the Arctic region.
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NATO’s spiralling commitments to Ukraine risk catastrophe | MR Online
France and Germany have agreed that Ukraine should be allowed to use its allies’ missiles to ‘neutralise’ Russian military bases used to fire missiles into Ukraine, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday on a state visit to Berlin. He added: ‘We should not allow them to touch other targets in Russia, and obviously civilian capacities.’ The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he agreed with the French president, as long as the Ukrainians respected the conditions of the weapons’ suppliers.
This week the Spanish daily, El País, warned as Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, arrived in Madrid this week to secure major arm supplies from Spain, that:
Ukraine is focusing its diplomatic efforts on convincing its allies to allow its military to use NATO weaponry against targets on Russian soil. Kyiv has succeeded in the past in moving the red lines imposed on it by its partners in the West, after months of negotiations. The new Russian offensive on Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, has accelerated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s diplomatic drive to allay the fears of the United States and Europe of a possible escalation if weapons provided by them target Russian sovereign territory.
Last week, Charles Q. Brown, chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that the White House had received a formal request from Kyiv to use U.S. weapons against Russian territory. NATO’s Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, has urged NATO states to reconsider limits on sending certain weapons to Ukraine, weapons which could strike Moscow and other Russian cities. This is despite Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warning that Moscow will retaliate with strikes on British targets if British weapons are used by Ukraine to strike Russian territory, as suggested by Cameron.
Zakharova told reporters that British targets ‘on Ukraine’s territory and beyond its borders’ could be hit in such a scenario. She was repeating a warning that Moscow first issued earlier this month after British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Ukraine had a right to use weapons provided by London to hit targets inside Russia. Otherwise, British, or indeed U.S. and French, missiles could only be fired by British, American or French personnel using intelligence gathered by NATO (in reality by the U.S.).
How would Sunak or Starmer react to Russian strikes on British targets? It is hard not to see them running to Washington for help in retaliating and in demanding other NATO countries rally round a NATO member under attack, as they are bound to do. This could well happen within the early stages of a Starmer premiership when he would be gung-ho to demonstrate how tough he was on the supposed Russian threat.
Demands to lift restrictions
Stoltenberg called on those continuing to limit their arms supplies to reconsider their position, citing the ‘nature of the fighting taking place in Kharkiv’.
By having too many restrictions we are tying one hand of the Ukrainian armed forces on their back because they are reducing their capability to defend themselves.
The U.S., UK and France have already supplied such weapons—U.S HIMARS short-range missiles and ATACMS long-range missiles, and British-French Storm Shadow/Scalp long-range missiles—to Ukraine, but insist they should not be fired, claiming they are there simply as a deterrent. German chancellor Olaf Scholz has ruled out sending Taurus missiles, despite repeated requests by Kyiv. Scholz has previously claimed the missile would need to be operated by German teams on the ground in Ukraine, something he refuses to countenance.
There is too a growing clamour that NATO forces should be deployed inside Ukraine to counter a mounting Russian advance in the north of that country, threatening its second city, Kharkiv as well as attacking in the east and south. French President, Emmanuel Macron, said earlier this month that he’d consider sending French troops to Ukraine ‘if the Russians were to break through the front lines, if there were a Ukrainian request, which is not the case today.’
The mind boggles at how this would play out if it were to occur. A de facto war between France and Russia would, most likely, escalate very quickly. Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has already pointed to the use of nuclear weapons if there was such an escalation.
That did not bother NATO politicians gathered at something called the Lennart Meri Conference in Estonia last week. While there, Benjamin Haddad, a member of parliament for Macron’s Renaissance party and considered a leading voice in French foreign-policy discussions, told the American magazine Newsweek that NATO and the European Union need to ‘turn the tables’ on Russian President Vladimir Putin after more than two years of full-scale war. He claimed that the French-led push for deeper NATO involvement inside Ukrainian borders is making headway with European allies.
Haddad argued: ‘Right now, a lot of Ukrainian troops are stationed at the border with Belarus to prevent a potential invasion from the north. Western forces could be deployed along the frontier as a “tripwire”–as you have troops in the Baltic states or in Poland–to be able to liberate some of these Ukrainian troops to go to the front.’ Belarus is a close ally of Russia. Putting NATO troops on its border would be completely unacceptable to it. Once there, potential clashes on the border could get out of hand very quickly.
Der Spiegel reported that MPs from the three Baltic states warned German officials at the same conference that their governments, together with Poland, were poised to send troops to Ukraine if Russia captured significant territory in eastern Ukraine, even before Russian soldiers were anywhere near their borders. The same MPs raised concerns about German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s current policy toward the war. In particular Scholz’s refusal to allow Ukraine Taurus missiles, to be used in strikes on Russian soil.
The Vietnam trap
Meanwhile, faced with a major shortfall in troop numbers compared to the Russians, Ukrainian officials have asked their U.S. and NATO counterparts to help train 150,000 new recruits closer to the front line for faster deployment. The Lithuanian defence minister, Kaja Kallas, wants exactly that. She told the Financial Times that:
“There are countries who are training soldiers on the ground already” and they did so at their own risk. If training personnel were attacked by Russian forces, it would not automatically trigger NATO’s Article 5 mutual defence clause, she said. I can’t possibly imagine that if somebody is hurt there, then those who have sent their people will say ‘it’s Article 5. Let’s… bomb Russia.’ It is not how it works. It’s not automatic. So these fears are not well-founded.” If you send your people to help Ukrainians… you know the country is in war and you go to a risk zone. So you take the risk,” she added.
In response to this, General Charles Q. Brown, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, suggested last week that the Europeans would ‘get there eventually, over time’, on sending more troops to Ukraine. Yet, how would the United States respond if their troops were killed in Ukraine by the Russians while acting as trainers? Do Kallas and Brown not know that the U.S. ground presence in Vietnam began with it being claimed by the John F. Kennedy administration that they were there simply to train troops of its puppet South Vietnam? Ground troops followed to ‘protect’ those same trainers.
The El País article quoted earlier also pointed out that Ukraine has successfully pressurised the U.S. and NATO to scrap so-called red lines limiting the arms they provide Kyiv. The United States agreed in April, after two years of negotiations, to supply Ukraine with long-range ATACMS missiles, another supposed red line. Other limits breached involved Germany and the U.S. supplying heavy armour, and the scrapping of the refusal during the first year and a half of the war to deliver fighter planes. This summer, the first six F-16 fighters for the Ukrainian Air Force are expected to arrive from Denmark.
The newspaper points out that, ‘Biden resisted the delivery of F-16s due to concerns they would be used for bombing targets within Russian borders.’ Ukraine regularly hits military, industrial, and energy infrastructure targets inside Russia, even up to 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the border, particularly targeting Russia’s oil industry.
Washington has called on Zelenskiy to halt this campaign, because it could destabilise the global fuel market, but the warnings, voiced in public even by Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, have not stopped these attacks. When U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, visited Kyiv earlier this month, he stated: ‘We have not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but ultimately Ukraine has to make decisions for itself about how it’s going to conduct this war, a war it’s conducting in defense of its freedom, of its sovereignty, of its territorial integrity. And we will continue to back Ukraine with the equipment that it needs to succeed, that it needs to win.’ These are weasel words, similar to the ones he regularly spouts over Gaza, sometimes to the accompaniment of crocodile tears.
The Biden administration cannot allow Ukraine to collapse prior to November’s Presidential election. If escalation was needed to stave off defeat, the red line on missile strikes on Russia could be quickly erased.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was criminal, and it unleashed a brutal war of attrition like 1914-1918 on a smaller scale. Yet, reference to 1914 should allow us to grasp how things can escalate very badly when you have two military alliances peering over the barrel of a gun at each other.
As Britain goes to the polls, we should be demanding of Sunak and Starmer a de-escalation of our military involvement in Ukraine, where we do not just have missiles, but in all probability special forces. However, the likelihood is that both will compete to show who is the stronger Atlanticist and the greater zealot in seeing off the supposed Russian threat.
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NATO escalates dangerously | MR Online
Putin has previously warned that Russia could target bases in NATO countries if they’re hosting warplanes that are being used in Ukraine
A senior Ukrainian Air Force official said Monday that Ukraine plans to keep some of the Western-provided U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets that it will receive at foreign military bases to protect them from Russian strikes, an arrangement that risks provoking Russian attacks on NATO territory.
“There are a certain number of aircraft that will be stored at secure air bases, outside of Ukraine, so that they are not targeted here,” said Brig. Gen. Serhiy Holubtsov, the chief of aviation in Ukraine’s air force.
And this will be our reserve in case of need for replacement of faulty planes during routine maintenance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have previously warned that NATO bases housing Ukrainian jets that are being used in the war could be potential targets.
“If they are stationed at air bases outside the Ukrainian borders and used in combat, we will have to see how and where to strike the assets used in combat against us,” Putin said last year, according to The Associated Press.
It poses a serious danger of NATO being further drawn into the conflict.
Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have also noted that F-16s are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Lavrov warned last year that Russia would view them as a nuclear threat. The Netherlands recently announced that it would allow Ukraine to use the F-16s it provides in strikes on Russian territory.
According to AP, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway have pledged up to 60 F-16s for Ukraine, but none have been delivered so far. The first planes are expected to arrive this summer, and Ukraine may only receive six at first due to delays in training pilots.
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NATO developing ‘land corridors’ to rush U.S. troops to frontlines in event of war with Russia | MR Online
By Dave DeCamp (Posted Jun 14, 2024)
NATO is developing multiple “land corridors” to rush U.S. troops and armored vehicles to the frontlines of a potential future ground war with Russia in Eastern Europe, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.
Current NATO plans involve U.S. troops landing in ports in the Netherlands and then transported through Germany to Poland, but the alliance is looking to expand the potential routes for U.S. troops to reach the borders of Russia and Ukraine.
Officials told The Telegraph that they want U.S. troops to be able to travel through five different corridors:
- Landing in the Netherlands and traveling through Germany to reach Poland
- Landing in Italy to travel through Slovenia and Slovakia to reach Hungary
- Landing in Greece to travel through Bulgaria to reach Romania
- Landing in Turkey to travel through Bulgaria to reach Romania
- Landing in Norway to travel through Sweden to reach Finland
The Telegraph report said that under the NATO plan, U.S. troops and vehicles traveling through these countries would not be restricted by local laws, so they could travel quickly. The report said France has complained about its tanks being stuck at foreign borders while trying to deploy to Romania due to bureaucratic processes.
Starting in 2023, NATO has been working on war plans for a potential future conflict with Russia for the first time since the Cold War. The alliance is planning for a possible ground war with Russia despite the obvious risk of any direct NATO-Russia clash quickly escalating into a nuclear exchange.
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The three great myths of NATO | MR Online
This year, NATO is celebrating its 75th birthday and appears to be at the peak of its power. More than ever before, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is focusing on expansion. In Ukraine, NATO is waging a proxy war against Russia in response to its war of aggression, which violates international law: The military pact is involved in training Ukrainian soldiers in NATO weapons, with massive deliveries of weapons, intelligence information and the provision of target data as well as its own soldiers on the ground.
The delivery of cruise missiles, such as the German Taurus type, to Ukraine, which can reach Moscow or St Petersburg with a range of 500 kilometres, is being discussed, as is the deployment of large-scale NATO troops. The signs are pointing to a storm.
Overstretch, social upheaval and the risk of escalation are the downside of this expansive power policy. They challenge the alliance in an unprecedented way. This makes NATO even more dependent on legends today. Three major myths run from the founding of the military pact through its bloody history to the present day.
The myth of defence and international law
NATO is a defence alliance. This is the eternally repeated narrative. But a look at the history of the military pact shows: Neither was mutual defence the main focus when NATO was founded, nor can there be any talk of a defensive orientation in NATO’s appearance over the past decades. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is often cited as proof of NATO’s character as a defence alliance.
In its founding agreement, the twelve signatory states—the USA and Canada as well as the European states Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal—agreed in 1949 that “an armed attack against one [party] or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered as an attack against them all”. The NATO members undertake to assist each other to jointly defend themselves against such an attack.
Here, the Inter-American Treaty of Mutual Assistance served as an explicit model. This mutual assistance pact was concluded by the American member states in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1947 on Washington’s initiative and came into force a year later. In the face of the Cold War, the USA wanted to secure its dominance on the American continent with this treaty, because of which the Organisation of American States (OAS) was founded in the same year. This was in the spirit of an updated Monroe Doctrine, with which the USA had declared the western hemisphere to be its exclusive zone of influence in 1823.
NATO is also part of this tradition. As with the inter-American treaty, the signatory states of the North Atlantic Treaty are completely unbalanced in terms of power and military policy. It is therefore clear that the USA was not interested in support from other alliance partners in the event of defence when it founded NATO. Rather, Washington is striving to create a “Pax Americana”, an exclusive sphere of influence that gives the USA, as the undisputed leading power, control over the foreign and security policy of the other alliance partners. The basis of NATO is an exchange. The other NATO members give up parts of their democratic sovereignty and are rewarded with the NATO security guarantee, which is de facto a security guarantee from the USA.
Within the military pact, the remaining NATO members sink to the level of client states like those that once served as a military buffer zone in the east of the Roman Empire to maintain the Roman Empire’s power. Any domestic political change that could have jeopardised their foreign policy orientation was forbidden to these client states on pain of their own downfall. To prevent such developments, NATO relied on its own coup organisations during the Cold War with its “stay behind” groups. They also used terrorist means to actively prevent political forces that questioned NATO membership from gaining power.
The end of the systemic conflict with the Soviet Union radically changed the primary purpose of NATO, which was to create a Pax Americana. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has increasingly seen itself in the role of world policeman. With the invasion of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which at that time still consisted of Serbia and Montenegro, the military pact waged its first war in 1999. A clear breach of international law, as the then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder himself admitted fifteen years later: “We sent our planes […] to Serbia, and together with NATO they bombed a sovereign state—without there having been a Security Council decision.” After this original sin, NATO is developing into a warfare pact that is prepared to break international law. A clear contradiction to its own charter, in which, according to Article 1, the NATO states undertake to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations”. The defence of the alliance’s territory now becomes merely part of its claim to act as a global force for order.
In 2003, the NATO members USA and Great Britain invaded Iraq in a war of aggression in violation of international law. They put together a “coalition of the willing” specifically for this purpose, which also included numerous other NATO members such as Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal and Slovakia, as well as the later NATO members Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania. Washington and its accomplices are thus blatantly violating international law and the NATO states involved are violating the basic provisions of their own charter. The Iraq war is also accompanied by the deployment of NATO Awacs in Turkey, which can be interpreted as support for the war. Even if the war against Iraq is not a NATO war, there are serious arguments for attributing the invasion to the military pact.
NATO members such as Germany did not deny the USA the use of military bases as part of the NATO structure in Europe and did not deny them overflight rights for U.S. forces, although the German government’s commitment to the rules of international law in accordance with Article 20 Paragraph 3 and Article 25 of the Basic Law prohibits it from participating in actions by non-German sovereigns on German soil if these violate international law.
The war of aggression against Iraq by some of the NATO members in violation of international law was not even discussed in the NATO Council, nor was the use of NATO infrastructure. Their violation of the North Atlantic Treaty had no impact on the NATO membership of the USA or the UK. That was foreseeable. The war policy of the most important member of the alliance must therefore be attributed to the NATO military pact as a whole if one takes NATO’s self-image seriously. With its wars that violate international law, the USA stands as pars pro toto, as part of the whole.
In Afghanistan, NATO has been waging a disastrous war for twenty years that has cost the lives of over 200,000 civilians. For the first and so far, only time, the alliance is invoking Article 5 of the NATO Treaty in this military operation following the attacks of 11 September 2001. The international public is to be made to believe that the freedom and security of the West are being defended in the Hindu Kush. Twenty years later, in August 2021, the Taliban move back into Kabul. The military operation proves to be a disaster.
The USA’s attempt to gain a military foothold in Central Asia to challenge China and Russia geopolitically has failed. The USA is leaving the country head over heels. Washington does not even inform its allies. Thousands of local NATO forces are being left in the lurch. There is no sign of any alliance solidarity. To obtain information, the German foreign intelligence service is even desperately considering bugging the Americans.
In addition to Belgrade, Baghdad and Kabul, NATO’s trail of blood also leads to Libya. In 2011, NATO bombed the country in violation of international law and abusing a UN Security Council resolution. Thousands are killed. Hundreds of thousands are forced to flee. A delegation from the African Union attempting to mediate in the conflict is even prevented from landing. What remains is a devastated country, parts of which are ruled by Islamist militias. As a result, the entire Sahel region is destabilised by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS). The individual members of NATO must take responsibility for this catastrophe. Totum pro parte, the whole stands for the part. This also applies to member states that were not directly involved in the attacks.
The myth of democracy and the rule of law
NATO members are determined to “safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, based on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law”, according to the legitimising legend of the founding charter. But this was already an outright lie in 1949. It is not only in Latin America that the USA has made pacts with dictatorships and fascist regimes from the outset, and it is not only democracies that are on board with the NATO allies in Europe. The only decisive factor is the willingness to join a front against the Soviet Union.
The USA concluded bilateral security agreements with the fascist dictator of Spain, Francisco Franco, and the fascist dictatorship of Portugal is a founding member of NATO. While the secret police of the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar tortured opposition members to death and set up concentration camps in the Portuguese colonies, the USA included Portugal in the community of democrats.
Or let’s take Turkey. Thousands of political prisoners are tortured after the military coup of 1980. On the tenth anniversary on 12 September 1990, the newspaper “Cumhuriyet” spoke of 650,000 political arrests, 7,000 death sentences requested, 571 imposed and 50 carried out, and 171 proven deaths by torture. Turkey remains a member of NATO. Even after the military coup, it receives extensive military aid from the USA and its allies. The rule of the generals is not detrimental to membership. The same applies to Greece.
The military coup of 1967, concentration camps and murders of members of the opposition, the arrest of thousands or the expulsion into exile—none of these are a reason to end membership. Even the invasion of Cyprus by NATO member Turkey in 1974 following the coup by the Greek colonels is apparently in line with the democratic founding consensus of the military alliance.
Now, one could dismiss this and refer to the tempi passati, the times gone by. But even in 2024, support for Islamist terrorism by Erdogan’s autocracy is not in contradiction to NATO membership. NATO is not about democracy and the rule of law, but solely about geopolitical allegiance to the USA. Like an empire built on lies, NATO lives from this fairy tale. In schools and universities, these lies are part of the NATO education programme.
The myth of a community of values and human rights
“Our common values—individual freedom, human rights, democracy and the rule of law—unite us.” This is how NATO presents itself as a community of values in its Strategic Concept 2022. However, the renowned Brown University in Rhode Island, USA, summarises that four and a half million people have died because of the wars waged by the USA and its allies in the past twenty years alone.
This cannot be reconciled with NATO’s widely publicised self-image. NATO is not a community that protects human rights. On the contrary: NATO is a protective umbrella for the human rights violations of its members. And by no means only regarding the violation of social human rights under the dictatorship of massive armament. On the contrary, NATO pursues a policy of impunity against war crimes committed by its member states.
Anyone who, like the Australian journalist Julian Assange, dares to publicise these war crimes is tortured and threatened with 175 years in prison in the USA. There have been no serious interventions by other NATO governments to secure Assange’s release. In hasty complicity, there is no criticism of the hegemon USA.
The “Afghan War Diary” collection of documents published by Assange in 2010 proves the existence of a secret U.S. force, known as “Task Force 373”, which is used to kill suspected Taliban leaders without legal recourse. The 300-strong elite unit was also stationed in the area controlled by the German Armed Forces in Afghanistan. It was under the direct command of the U.S. government and, according to reports published by the Wikileaks whistleblowing platform, also used internationally banned cluster bombs to kill and destroy indiscriminately.
On 11 January 2002, the USA set up a prison camp at the illegally occupied Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Amnesty International writes:
Many of the approximately 780 people who have since been deliberately detained there outside of any judicial control have suffered the most serious human rights violations before or during their detention—including torture and enforced disappearances. To this day, torture survivors in Guantánamo are held indefinitely without adequate medical care, charges or a fair trial.
Human rights have a very low priority for NATO. This can also be seen in the choice of alliances by NATO members. For example, the USA, the UK and Germany are arming the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, which is beheading opposition members by the dozen and whose Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman probably personally gave the order to dismember the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian Consulate General in Istanbul.
Rhetorically, NATO remains antithetically bound to its practice. NATO’s strategic concept for 2022 states: “We will strengthen our unity, cohesion and solidarity by building on the enduring transatlantic bond between our nations and the strength of our shared democratic values.” In view of the close alliances with dictators, autocrats and violators of international law, this self-assurance looks like a bad joke.
This hypocrisy is accompanied by double standards: In its strategic concept of 20 June 2022, NATO accuses Russia of committing “repeated violations of international humanitarian law” in Ukraine. While NATO uses this as an additional justification for its proxy war against Russia, it supports Israel in its obvious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and assures the country of its full solidarity.
With its veto in the UN Security Council, the USA is preventing any resolution in favour of an immediate ceasefire until the end of March. Without the arms supplies from the NATO states USA, Germany and Great Britain, this war would not be possible.
This double standard of the West is being increasingly criticised in the Global South. The human rights rhetoric of NATO states is seen there as purely instrumental to conceal or enforce their own geopolitical interests. NATO appears to be the guardian organisation of a deeply unjust world order with neo-colonial tendencies. This is demonstrated not least by the fact that, in the economic war against Russia, NATO members try to impose their own policies on third countries such as China, Turkey or the United Arab Emirates with so-called secondary sanctions in violation of their sovereignty.
The myths of NATO distort our view of reality. To find a way out of the current crisis, they need to be exposed. Today, 75 years after its foundation, the military pact is driving the world closer to the brink of a third world war than ever before with its global expansion and confrontations.
The critical examination of the current actions of the alliance as well as its crimes in the past should create the conditions for thinking about alternatives. Alternatives to a NATO that relies solely on deterrence, armament and confrontation—and thus jeopardises the very existence of peaceful coexistence.
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