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tomorrowusa · 8 months

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The apologists for Putin's Russia – both Trumpsters and tankies – say that Ukraine must "negotiate" an end of Putin's illegal invasion.

Those folks are either oblivious to Russia's recent history of negotiations or are intentionally ignoring that history for political reasons.

In the years leading up to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, diplomats lost their authority, their role reduced to echoing the Kremlin's aggressive rhetoric. BBC Russian asks former diplomats, as well as ex-Kremlin and White House insiders, how Russian diplomacy broke down.

This was four month's before the invasion.

In October 2021, US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland went to a meeting at the Russian foreign ministry in Moscow. The man across the table was Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who Ms Nuland had known for decades and always got along with. Mr Rybakov's American counterparts saw him as a practical, calm negotiator - someone they could talk to even as the two countries' relationship frayed. This time, things were different. Mr Ryabkov read Moscow's official position from a piece of paper and resisted Ms Nuland's attempts to start a discussion. Ms Nuland was shocked, according to two people who discussed the incident with her. She described Mr Ryabkov and one of his colleagues as "robots with papers", the people said (the State Department declined to comment on the incident). And outside the negotiating room, Russian diplomats were using increasingly undiplomatic language. "We spit on Western sanctions." "Let me speak. Otherwise, you will really hear what Russian Grad missiles are capable of." "Morons" - preceded by an expletive. These are all quotes from people in positions of authority at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in recent years.

If you are thinking that this doesn't sound like serious negotiating, you are entirely correct.

This attitude didn't begin in 2021, it's been ongoing since at least 2007.

The first signal that a new Cold War was beginning came in 2007 with a speech Mr Putin made to the Munich Security Conference. In a 30-minute diatribe, he accused Western countries of attempting to build a unipolar world. Russia's diplomats followed his lead. A year later, when Russia invaded Georgia, Moscow's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly swore at his UK counterpart, David Miliband, asking: "Who are you to lecture me?" Western officials still thought it was worth trying to work with Russia. In 2009, Mr Lavrov and the then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed a giant red "reset button" in relations, and the two countries seemed to be building co-operation - especially on security issues. But it soon became obvious to US officials that their Russian counterparts were simply parroting Mr Putin's growing anti-Western views, says Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor to former US President Barack Obama. Mr Rhodes recalls President Obama having breakfast with Mr Putin in 2009, accompanied by a folk orchestra. He says Mr Putin was more interested in presenting his view of the world than discussing co-operation and that the Russian leader blamed Mr Obama's predecessor, George W Bush, for betraying Russia. As the Arab Spring, the US involvement in Libya, and the Russian street protests unfolded in 2011 and 2012, Mr Putin decided that diplomacy wouldn't get him anywhere, Mr Rhodes says. "On certain issues - Ukraine in particular - I did not get the sense that [diplomats] had much influence at all," says Mr Rhodes.

The arrival of Maria Zakharova as spokesperson for Russia's Foreign Ministry in 2015 signaled another deterioration in diplomacy.

[W]ith Ms Zakharova's arrival, foreign ministry briefings became a spectacle. Ms Zakharova often yelled at reporters who asked her difficult questions and responded to criticism from other countries with insults. Her diplomatic colleagues were going the same way. Mr [Boris] Bondarev, who used to work for Moscow's mission to the UN in Geneva, recalls one meeting where Russia blocked all proposed initiatives, prompting colleagues from Switzerland to complain. "We said to them: 'Well, what's the problem? We are a great power, and you are just Switzerland!' "That's [Russian] diplomacy for you," he says.

Getting back to the eve of the invasion. (emphasis added)

Mr Bondarev recalls a dinner in Geneva in January 2022 when Mr Ryabkov, from the foreign ministry, met US officials. US First Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman hoped to avert the invasion of Ukraine through 11th-hour negotiations. "It was awful," says Mr Bondarev. "The Americans were like, 'Let's negotiate.' And instead Ryabkov starts shouting, 'We need Ukraine! We won't go anywhere without Ukraine! Take all your stuff and go back to the 1997 [Nato] borders!' Sherman is an iron lady, but I think even her jaw dropped at this. "[Ryabkov] was always very polite and really nice to talk to. And now he's banging his fist on the table and talking nonsense."

The war hasn't changed things.

Ukrainian authorities complain that Russia is once again offering ultimatums instead of compromises, such as demanding that Ukraine accepts the annexation of occupied territories. Kyiv has no intention to negotiate under such conditions, and its Western allies publicly support this decision. Russia seems set on relying on its military machine, intelligence services and geo-economic power for influence - rather than diplomacy.

Some people won't like hearing this, but the only way to end this war is militarily.

Judy Dempsey is a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and editor in chief of Strategic Europe. At Carnegie Europe she writes:

Negotiations can only begin if Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is in a strong enough position to set the terms. Those terms are not just about restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity. They are about ensuring that Russia does not attack or threaten Kyiv again. An end to the war is about ending Russia’s imperial ambitions in this part of Europe. [ ... ] It is not enough for leaders and defense ministers to say ad nauseam that they will support Ukraine “for as long as it takes” or that Ukraine must win. How is that going to happen if the country is not provided with the essential military equipment? And if there are mutterings in some Europeans capitals and in Washington that the Ukrainian offensive has not been quick enough or effective enough, the reason is that Ukraine lacks the military support to achieve it. [ ... ] The war is a test for Europe in particular and the West in general. It is about security, conviction, and trying to uphold values based on the pursuit of democracy. Ultimately, that’s what the Ukrainians are fighting for. A fudged compromise will damage the West and appease—indeed embolden—Russia and its supporters.

Exactly. This is not just an unprovoked war against Ukraine, it's a war against the West and liberal democratic values.

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mariacollection · 2 months

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#victoria nuland #реальная жизнь #русский тамблер

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williamkergroach55 · 2 months

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How Washington sold out Ukraine to take on Moscow…

Ten years ago, former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych signed an agreement with the opposition Euromaidan to resolve Ukraine's political crisis. The very next day, the opposition tore up the agreement and seized power by force. Behind Ukraine, the American Empire wanted to take over Russia. The story of a determined war.

After months of rioting, sparked by the Euromaidan movement, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych agreed to reform the constitution, form a "government of national unity" and hold early elections in December 2014. The Ukrainian president agreed to pardon rioters and launch investigations into abuses by law enforcement agencies. The February 21 agreements aimed at ending the political crisis in Ukraine were signed by Yanukovych and opposition leaders Vitaly Klitschko (Udar Party), Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Batkivshchina) and Oleh Tiagnybok (Svoboda Nationalist Party) in the presence of German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and Eric Fournier, Director of the Continental Europe Department at the French Foreign Ministry. The day after the agreement, on February 22, 2014, the buildings of the presidential administration, the Verkhovna Rada and the Cabinet of Ministers were stormed by violent demonstrators. Maidan leaders appointed Oleksandr Turchynov as head of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, in violation of the country's constitution. Yanukovych was ousted. Speaking on television from Kharkiv, Yanukovych refused to resign: "I am a legally elected president. What is happening is blatant vandalism, banditry and a coup d'état", he declared. Nevertheless, EU leaders immediately declared that they would work with Ukraine's "new government", sweeping aside the agreements they had just secured the day before. February 2014. Yanukovych left Ukraine and fled to Russia.

Washington was behind the coup

Officially, the opposition was supported by the Europeans, but as Russian President Vladimir Putin declared in 2015, "We knew perfectly well that the real puppeteers were our American partners and friends."

In early February 2014, an intercepted conversation between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, a descendant of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on her father's side, and US Ambassador to Ukraine, now US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources since 2022, Geoffrey Pyatt, spoke of bringing opposition leader Arseniy Yatseniouk to power, and putting Tiagnybok and Klitschko "on the sidelines". Nuland dropped: "Fuck the EU…" On February 27, 2014, Yatseniouk was appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine. Klitschko became mayor of Kiev on June 5, 2014. Tiagnybok was kept out of government.

Russia was the target.

After the coup, Arseniy Yatsenyuk's government brutally repressed its political opponents, promoting an openly Russophobic agenda, and sent the army against civilians in the Donbass, opposed to the coup against legitimate President Yanukovych. Larry Johnson, a former CIA intelligence officer and State Department official, believes that the West had simply decided to take control of Russia and its formidable natural wealth. "They were looking for a long-term strategy to isolate Russia. And the key to that was to get Ukraine into NATO, into the EU, and thus isolate Russia." At least, American strategists thought they could isolate Russia.

Broken agreements

Russia had hoped to put an end to the bloodshed in the Donbass thanks to the Minsk agreements. The Minska Protocol was signed on September 5, 2014 in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, by representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), with the aim of ending the war in Donbass. The agreements called for a cessation of hostilities, the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, the release of prisoners of war and constitutional reform in Ukraine to grant autonomy to the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President François Hollande have since acknowledged that the Minsk agreements were maneuvers to buy time to arm and train the Ukrainian army. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, himself, admitted in an interview with Spiegel in February 2023 that he had never intended to observe the Minsk agreements; nor had the Euromaidan putchists intended to respect the agreements signed on February 21, 2014 with President Viktor Yanukovych.

Washington wants war.

The United States could have refused to integrate Ukraine into NATO, refrained from conducting military exercises with Ukraine, reopened discussions with Moscow on reviving the ABM Treaty and the INF Treaty on intermediate nuclear forces. The ABM Treaty (Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) was signed in 1972 between the United States and the Soviet Union. The aim of this treaty was to limit the deployment of missile defense systems in order to discourage an arms race in this field. Both parties undertook to deploy only a limited number of missile defense systems, thus limiting the possibility of defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), signed in 1987 between the USA and the Soviet Union, prohibited the production, stockpiling and deployment of ballistic and land-based cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. This was a key element in reducing tensions during the Cold War, as it prohibited the deployment of an entire class of short- and medium-range nuclear weapons in Europe. These two treaties were seen as pillars of strategic stability between the USA and the Soviet Union, then Russia after the dissolution of the USSR. However, in 2002, under the George W. Bush administration, the United States announced its unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. The development of missile defense systems resumed. Similarly, in 2019, under Donald Trump's first term in office, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the INF Treaty. Russia announced its own withdrawal from the INF Treaty, and arms control no longer existed. President Biden repeatedly voiced his opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, claiming that it would increase Europe's energy dependence on Russia and weaken Europe's "energy security". The United States has threatened sanctions against companies and entities involved in the pipeline's construction, as well as against countries supporting the project. On February 6, 2022, at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, US President Joe Biden warned: "If Russia invaded Ukraine, there would be no Nordstream 2. We will stop it. Asked how he would go about it, he replied, "I promise you we'll be able to do it." The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines actually took place on September 26, 2022 in the Baltic Sea, resulting in major gas leaks. The first, on Nord Stream 2, was discovered southeast of the Danish island of Bornholm. Several hours later, two further leaks were discovered on Nord Stream 1 to the north-east of the island. This was a deliberate act, as traces of explosives had been found. In an article published on his blog on February 8, 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Seymour Hersh asserts that the USA and Norway are behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, citing a single anonymous source with direct knowledge of operational planning.

The Russian Bear is patient.

Russia has always been open to negotiations. Moscow has maintained a dialogue with the Poroshenko and Zelensky governments to implement the Minsk agreements in order to respect the rights of Ukraine's Russian speakers while preserving the nation's territorial integrity. Petro Poroshenko's government was in office in Ukraine from June 7, 2014 to May 20, 2019. Poroshenko was elected President of Ukraine in May 2014, succeeding Viktor Yanukovych who had fled to Russia. As for Volodymyr Zelensky's government, it has been in office since May 20, 2019. Zelensky won the Ukrainian presidential election in April 2019, succeeding Petro Poroshenko as President of Ukraine. His government was formed shortly after his presidential inauguration and remains in office to this day. The Western press is silent on the fact that, before launching the military operation in Ukraine, Moscow sought to conclude agreements with the USA and NATO to ensure common European security. Draft agreements providing for NATO guarantees against eastward expansion and for Ukraine's neutral status were deliberately ignored by Washington, Brussels and, of course, the NATO leadership.

A month after the start of the special military operation, Russian and Ukrainian representatives signed preliminary peace agreements in Istanbul in March 2022. Davyd Arakhamia, who headed the Ukrainian delegation at the March 2022 Istanbul talks with Russia, told Ukrainian TV channel 1+1 in November 2023 that Moscow was ready to end the conflict if Ukraine committed to neutrality and refused to join NATO. However, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson forced President Volodymyr Zelensky to fight to the bitter end. Ex-Prime Minister Johnson was backed by European Commission Vice-President Josep Borrell Fontelles, in April 2022, who promised hundreds of millions of euros for Kiev: "This war will be won on the battlefield", he tweeted… US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declared that Washington wanted to see "Russia weakened." The U.S. has spent over $100 billion, the European Union has given around €85 billion, to support Ukraine's military effort. The result is inconclusive.

[email protected] Source : Ekaterina Blinova https://sputnikglobe.com/20240221/euromaidan-was-part-of-wests-proxy-war-against-russia--cia-

#ukraine #russo ukrainian war #biden administration #george bush #victoria nuland #euromaidan

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kramlabs · 17 days

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#metabiota #burisma #victoria nuland #biolabs #ukraine #russia #cofer black #Sullivan and Cromwell #Nathan Wolfe

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pasparal · 1 year

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#Eric Zuesse #Ukraine #Russia #Euromaidan #Baerbock #Crimea #Victoria Nuland #NED #NATO #coup #regime change #SouthFront #Right Sector #referendum #democracy #politics #2023 #war

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thenamesofthings · 9 months

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25 Jul 23

In a little-remarked move, the Biden administration announced Monday that Victoria Nuland will take over as the acting second-in-command at the State Department. She replaces Wendy Sherman, who plans to retire at the end of this week.

Nuland’s appointment will be a boon for Russia hawks who want to turn up the heat on the Kremlin. But, for those who favor a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine, a promotion for the notoriously “undiplomatic diplomat” will be a bitter pill.

A few quick reminders are in order. When Nuland was serving in the Obama administration, she had a now-infamous leaked call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. As the Maidan Uprising roiled the country, the pair of American diplomats discussed conversations with opposition leaders, and Nuland expressed support for putting Arseniy Yatseniuk into power. (Yatseniuk would become prime minister later that month, after Russia-friendly former President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country.) At one memorable point in the call, Nuland said “Fu–k the EU” in response to Europe’s softer stance on the protests.

The controversy surrounding the call — and larger implications of U.S. involvement in the ouster of Yanukovych — kicked up tensions with Russia and contributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to seize Crimea and support an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Her handing out food to demonstrators on the ground in Kyiv probably didn’t help either. Nuland, along with State Department sanctions czar Daniel Fried, then led the effort to punish Putin through sanctions. Another official at State reportedly asked Fried if “the Russians realize that the two hardest-line people in the entire U.S. government are now in a position to go after them?”

Nuland’s hawkish inclinations continued after she left the Obama administration. Back in 2020, she penned a Foreign Affairs essay entitled “Pinning Down Putin” in which she called for a permanent expansion of NATO bases in the alliance’s eastern flank, a move that would be sure to ratchet up tensions between the United States and Russia. As I’ve previously noted, Nuland also opposed the idea of a “free rollover of New START” — the only remaining agreement that limits Washington and Moscow’s nuclear weapons stockpiles — when it was set to expire in 2021.

Since returning to the State Department under President Joe Biden, she has showed little interest in a dovish turn. In an interview earlier this year, Nuland called Putin a “19th century autocrat” and justified Ukrainian attacks in Crimea, which Russia has called a red line. “If we don’t [defeat Putin], every other autocrat on this planet is going to go looking to bite off pieces of countries and destabilize the order that has largely kept us safe and prosperous for decades and decades,” she argued.

To recap, Nuland 1) was allegedly involved in a conspiracy to overthrow Ukraine’s president, 2) was definitely behind a strict sanctions regime on Russian officials, and 3) has never softened her uber-hawkish stances since. With U.S.-Russia tensions at their highest point in decades, there should be little doubt as to how her appointment would be received in Moscow.

There is, of course, some reason for hope. In the statement announcing Sherman’s retirement, the Biden administration did not give a clear indication of whether Nuland would be nominated to formally take over as deputy secretary of state. “Biden has asked Victoria Nuland to serve as Acting Deputy Secretary until our next Deputy Secretary is confirmed,” the statement said. This leaves some reason to believe that there is internal opposition to her nomination, or that the administration has someone else in mind.

#Victoria Nuland

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fffartonceaweek · 1 year

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Seymour Hersh discusses his latest scoop on Biden bombing the Nord Stream pipelines, on Radio @TheWarNerd

How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

#mark ames #seymour hersh #sy hersh #war crimes #usa #nord stram pipeline #the war nerd #war nerd radio #joe biden #antony blinken #victoria nuland #jake sullivan #cia #william burns

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reality-detective · 9 months

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Who is Victoria Nuland? 👇 Part 1

◾️In 2014, Biden oversaw the overthrow of the Ukrainian President Yanukovich.

◾️Victoria Nuland handpicked the new puppet government of Kiev - (listen to the leaked phonecall, in which they call the Mayor of Kiev, Klitschko, a "complicated electron”)

◾️Azov Battalion and other extremist fringe groups were nurtured and weaponized against Russia and Russian-speakers.

◾️Russia then took back Crimea, its historic Naval port and ONLY access to the Black Sea.

◾️Putin did not take back the Donbass then, which is now at the center of the conflict - in hope that Ukraine and its handlers would fulfil the Minsk agreements (which promised referanda in Donbass.)

#pay attention #educate yourselves #educate yourself #knowledge is power #reeducate yourself #reeducate yourselves #think for yourselves #think about it #think for yourself #do your homework #do some research #do your research #do your own research #ask yourself questions #question everything #victoria nuland #deep state stooge #deep state puppet

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gregor-samsung · 1 year

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“ Nel novembre 2014 [Mariagrazia] Bruzzone pubblica [su La Stampa] un altro dettagliatissimo reportage: “I neo-nazi imperversano in Ucraina, ma il nazismo non è più il ‘male assoluto’ (per l’Occidente)”. Parte dal voto contrario di Ucraina, Usa e Canada all’annuale mozione dell’Onu contro l’esaltazione del nazifascismo, e traccia una mappa dei leader e gruppi neonazisti che infestano le istituzioni e le forze armate di Kiev, appoggiati dagli Usa. Purtroppo l’articolo è misteriosamente scomparso dall’archivio digitale del quotidiano torinese, oggi assai prodigo di elogi al battaglione Azov e ad altre opere pie ucraine che, prima dell’invasione, erano descritte per quello che erano: milizie neonaziste. Ma alcuni siti di controinformazione l’hanno rintracciato e pubblicato integrale. [...] Bruzzone racconta poi «l’apparente processo di ‘nazificazione’ in corso nelle scuole, come testimoniato dal tweet del presidente Poroshenko sull’addestramento militare a lezione e dall’immagine dei simboli nazisti in questa classe. Eppure il governo Usa li aiuta e li finanzia. ‘Se solo il pubblico sapesse che il governo US aiuta mostri del genere’, scrive Global Research raccontando di una delegazione Ucraina in arrivo a Washington per reclamare altri soldi e aiuti militari. In realtà armi, anche letali, ne hanno appena ricevute, in coincidenza con la recente visita a Kiev del vicepresidente Usa Joe Biden». L’autrice ipotizza uno scenario inquietante: «E se il partito Svoboda fosse solo il fronte elettorale di organizzazioni neonaziste e ultranazionaliste?… Se queste organizzazioni non fossero tanto espressione dell’opposizione ucraina quanto delle forze segretamente utilizzate dalla Nato che usano l’Ucraina come base, e non da oggi? Se a giocare un ruolo decisivo negli episodi di violenza che portarono al collasso del governo ucraino che era uscito dalle elezioni fosse questa organizzazione militare neonazista legata alla Nato?… A sostenerlo, in un post del marzo scorso rilanciato ora dal solitamente attendibile Global Research, è l’analista geopolitico F. William Engdahl, basandosi anche su fonti personali tra i quali veterani dell’intelligence americana.

Engdahl che scriveva a ridosso di quei primi eventi, ricostruiva l’accaduto, Yanukovich forzato a fuggire come un criminale, accusato di aver rifiutato l’offerta di un ingresso dell’Ucraina nella Ue preferendo un accordo con la Russia che offriva il taglio di 15 miliardi di dollari di debiti ucraini e gas a prezzi ridotti. Ricordava l’accordo di compromesso raggiunto con Yanukovich dai ministri degli Esteri di Germania, Francia e Polonia – senza gli US, prova dei diversi punti di vista e metodi europei – la telefonata in cui la Nuland spiegava al “suo” ambasciatore quale governo e quale coalizione volesse a Kiev, col famoso “Fuck the Eu”, l’Europa si fotta, appunto. E arriva al precipitare degli eventi, quel 22 febbraio, quando a piazza Indipendenza la polizia si ritirò in preda al panico, sotto il fuoco incrociato dei cecchini. Chi aveva schierato i cecchini? è la domanda finora senza risposta, si chiedeva l’autore. Secondo fonti di veterani dell’intelligence US i cecchini arrivarono dall’organizzazione militare di ultradestra conosciuta come Ukrainian National Assembly–Ukrainian People’s Self Defense [Una-Unso: una sigla legata al partito-milizia Pravyj Sektor, nda]… Il leader di Una-Unso Andriy Shkil dieci anni fa divenne il consigliere di Yulia Tymoshenko, appoggiata dagli Usa. Durante la “Rivoluzione Arancione” appoggiò il candidato pro-Nato Yushchenko contro il pro-Russia Yanukovich. Si dice anche che abbia legami stretti col Partito Nazionale Democratico in Germania (Ndp). “Dalla dissoluzione dell’Unione Sovietica nel 1991 i membri dell’organizzazione para-militare Una-Unso sono stati dietro ogni rivolta contro l’influenza russa”, afferma Engdahl. Il filo che connette le violente campagne è sempre anti-Russia. L’organizzazione, secondo le fonti di veterani dell’intelligence americana, è parte di una Gladio segreta della Nato, e non è un gruppo nazionalista come quello che viene descritto dai media occidentali… I para-militari dell’Una-Unso sarebbero stati coinvolti in ogni guerra sporca della Nato nel post-guerra fredda. Si tratta di pericolosi mercenari usati ovunque sia per combattere guerre sporche sia per incastrare la Russia, perché pretendono di essere forze speciali russe (per Wikipedia nel ’91 membri di Una-Unso avevano servito nelle forze armate sovietiche). Gli avvenimenti in Ucraina sono andati avanti secondo le linee suggerite da Engdahl (al governo Arseniy Yatsenyuk pilotato dagli Usa, forte ruolo di Svoboda), che chiudeva con una frase quasi profetica: “Il dramma non è affatto finito. In gioco c’è il futuro della Russia, le relazioni Europa-Russia e il potere globale di Washington o almeno di quella fazione che a Washington vede ulteriori guerre come primo strumento della politica”.» Nel 2016, al posto di Calabresi, arriva il turbo-atlantista Maurizio Molinari e sulla Stampa articoli del genere non ne escono più. L’Ucraina è sacra e intoccabile. Ma nel 2019, quando viene eletto Zelensky, considerato il “Grillo di Kiev” e per di più sospetto per la sua provenienza dell’Est russofono del Paese, il quotidiano di casa Agnelli lo massacra: «Come tutti i populisti, Zelensky dichiara di voler sconfiggere la classe politica al potere, definita inefficiente e corrotta». Poi invece si rivela un docile strumento in mano a Washington e la Stampa cambia linea anche su di lui. “

Marco Travaglio, Scemi di Guerra. La tragedia dell’Ucraina, la farsa dell’Italia. Un Paese pacifista preso in ostaggio dai NoPax, PaperFIRST (Il Fatto Quotidiano), febbraio 2023¹ [Libro elettronico].

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liesmyteachertoldme · 1 year

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#russia #ukraine #elon musk #victoria nuland #coup

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theculturedmarxist · 2 years

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Here’s a joke I recently heard a Russian tell:

A Russian is on an airliner heading to the US, and the American in the seat next to him asks, “So what brings you to the US?” The Russian replies, “I’m studying the American approach to propaganda.” The American says, “What propaganda?” The Russian says, “That’s what I mean.”

If you don’t get the point, I can help. A few weeks before I heard this joke, I heard a Russian make the point explicitly: Yes, Russia’s state-controlled media is full of propaganda, but at least most Russians are aware of that and take the prevailing narrative with a grain of salt; Americans, in contrast, seem unaware that their own prevailing narratives are slanted.

I think there’s some truth to this, and I think the Ukraine war is a case in point. I don’t just mean that mainstream media’s coverage of the war is biased (though I think it is, as tends to be the case during wars). I mean this coverage exemplifies the difference between American and Russia propaganda—and so helps explain the difference, asserted by that joke, between American and Russian attitudes toward propaganda.

The main reason for this attitudinal difference, I think, isn’t that Americans are more gullible than Russians. It’s that America is a liberal democracy with a fairly complicated media ecosystem. It’s harder in this pluralistic system than in Russia for a single powerful person or institution to create a single dominant narrative. So if propaganda is going to happen here, it will have to happen less straightforwardly than in Russia, with less in the way of centralized control. And that makes it harder to pin down.

In other words: A pluralistic system, while in some ways making it more difficult for propaganda to prevail, also offers the propaganda that does prevail good camouflage.

At least, that’s my working hypothesis. One way to flesh out this hypothesis is to take a look at a DC think thank called the Institute for the Study of War.

The name may sound familiar. If you’ve been reading much about the Ukraine war, you’ve probably come across it. Reporters who draw on research from ISW often credit it.

But there are two things about the Institute for the Study of War that you may not know.

First is the extent of its influence. Since war broke out in February, ISW has been the elite media’s go-to think tank for information and analysis. Barely a day goes by that it isn’t cited by a reporter in either the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal. In the past six days—the first six days of this month—it has been cited in at least ten articles that appeared in one of those outlets.

The second thing you may not be aware of is how ideological the academic-sounding Institute for the Study of War is. It has neoconservative roots and is run and staffed by pretty extreme hawks. Over the years it has gotten funding from various corners of the arms industry—General Dynamics, Raytheon, lesser known defense contractors, and big companies, like General Motors, that aren’t known as defense contractors but do get Pentagon contracts.

Before saying more about ISW, I want to emphasize that I’m not claiming to have caught it in some capital crime. The Institute doesn’t spread untruths, even if it’s selective about the truths it promotes and tactical in how it arranges them. That’s part of my point: One reason propaganda often flies under the radar in America is that it can be subtle.

Another claim I’m not making is that ISW has exerted pivotal influence in the case of Ukraine. I’m not even saying the larger network of hawkish think tanks it’s part of has been pivotal. When a big country run by a famously ruthless autocrat invades a smaller neighbor that’s a democracy, Americans will naturally (and rightly) side with the country that got invaded and will favor giving it support. In that sense, the Institute for the Study of War, along with other voices that advocate robust military spending, has been pushing on an open door.

Still, $54 billion is a lot of money, and that’s how much aid, most of it military, the US has committed to Ukraine over the past three months. And the $40 billion of that passed by Congress in May got overwhelming support (368-57 in the House, 86-11 in the Senate)—pretty remarkable at a time when inflation is widely feared and deficit spending is widely said to be one of its causes.

Whatever you think of this aid—and, again, I consider helping a nation resist invasion a generically good cause—you can’t deny that the climate of American opinion on Ukraine is very favorable for defense contractors. I think the Institute for the Study of War is one reason for that—even if a small reason among bigger ones. And, more to the point, ISW is a case study in how influence on a wartime narrative can be exerted in barely perceptible ways.

The president and founder of the Institute for the Study of War is Kimberly Kagan, a military historian who is married to Frederick Kagan, who is also a military historian and does work for ISW. Frederick is a well-known neoconservative, though not as well-known as his brother Robert. In the 1990s, Robert Kagan, along with Bill Kristol (who is on ISW’s board), founded the Project for a New American Century, which in the view of some observers played an important role in convincing George W. Bush to invade Iraq.

Kimberly and Frederick Kagan have cultivated close ties to the Defense Department—sometimes raising questions about whether the ties were too close. A 2012 Washington Post piece said General David Petraeus had turned the couple into “de facto senior advisers.” The Post continued:

The pro-bono relationship, which is now being scrutinized by military lawyers, yielded valuable benefits for the general and the couple. The Kagans’ proximity to Petraeus, the country’s most-famous living general, provided an incentive for defense contractors to contribute to Kim Kagan’s think tank [ISW]. For Petraeus, embracing two respected national security analysts in GOP circles helped to shore up support for the [Afghanistan] war among Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.

All of this helps explain why noted phrasemaker Mickey Kaus has called the Kagan family “the Kagan industrial complex.” Speaking of which:

Robert Kagan’s wife, Victoria Nuland, is the state department official who very publicly supported Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Revolution—the overthrow of pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych, which led Russia to seize Crimea and give military support to secessionist rebels in the Donbass. Nuland also played a behind-the-scenes role in this transition of power that, according to some of her detractors, amounted to orchestrating a coup.

And as long as we’re going down rabbit holes: The Kagan-Kristol Project for a New American Century was funded by arms makers, thanks largely to the work of Lockheed Martin executive Bruce P. Jackson, who became a director of PNAC. Jackson had earlier organized the US Committee to Expand NATO, which successfully lobbied for what its name suggests it lobbied for. Some people think NATO expansion—in particular George W. Bush’s 2008 addition of Ukraine to the list of future members—helped cause the Ukraine war, but in any event NATO expansion has over the past quarter century made lots and lots of money for Lockheed Martin and other arms makers.

But I digress. Back to the Institute for the Study of War.

ISW, like some other highly ideological think tanks, exerts its influence along two main paths: (1) explicitly opining about policies; (2) doing reporting and analysis that is ostensibly objective but may implicitly favor certain policies. For example:

As Sarah Lazare of In These Times has pointed out, in August of last year, as the US was withdrawing from Afghanistan (1) retired Gen. Jack Keane, chairman of ISW’s board, was on TV arguing against the pullout, while (2) ISW was putting out papers that didn’t explicitly oppose withdrawal but warned of various kinds of bad consequences. (Lazare notes that, at the same time, the CEO of CACI International, one of ISW’s funders, was warning on a conference call that the Afghanistan withdrawal would hurt its profits in the next fiscal year.)

In the case of the Ukraine War, ISW’s reporting and analysis activities have been extraordinary. The Institute issues daily battlefield updates, complete with maps of three regions of Ukraine that show shifts in territorial control. These summaries are intelligently and crisply written and cover a lot of ground efficiently. If I were a newspaper reporter writing about the war, I would find them appealing.

So are you ready for my big reveals about glaring bias in ISW analysis? There aren’t any! That’s part of my point: The bias imparted by ISW is subtle. Its incremental effects are barely perceptible, but they add up over time. And what they add up to, basically, is The War According to Our Side. Little shadings here and there create more or less the picture of the war that the Ukrainian government is trying to present.

Here, for example, is a paragraph from a Wall Street Journal piece last week: “Ukrainian forces in the south, near Kherson, conducted a successful counteroffensive over the weekend, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Though they were unlikely to retake more territory, they might force Russia to deploy more resources to the region.”

Wait a second! You’re calling a counteroffensive that takes no territory “successful”? Just because it “might” force Russia to redeploy forces?

Well, OK, but if that’s your criterion, shouldn’t you have called some past Russian assaults around Kharkiv that took no territory “successful”? After all, it was speculated that their purpose was to keep Ukraine from concentrating more resources in the Donbass.

No, calling a superficially unsuccessful Russian attack successful isn’t the kind of thing ISW does. The kind of thing it does is depict superficially successful Russian attacks as only mixed successes. Thus, on the day that the big story was Russia’s penetrating the perimeter of the important city of Severodonetsk, the Wall Street Journal could at least leaven that bad news with this: “Russia’s forces were so concentrated on Severodonetsk that they likely wouldn’t be able to conduct major operations elsewhere in the country, according to the Institute for the Study of War.”

Maybe so. But given that Severodonetsk is the last big obstacle to Russia’s securing control of Luhansk province—one of the two provinces Putin originally vowed to secure in the course of this war—that would seem to be meager consolation.

I’m not saying it doesn’t qualify as a silver lining of sorts. But I am saying that ISW consistently finds more Ukrainian silver linings than Russian silver linings. Way, way, way more.

It may not take much conscious effort for the crew of five ISW analysts (including Frederick Kagan) who prepare these reports to put a pro-Ukraine spin on them. To some extent the spin is structural; ISW seems to have a policy of taking battlefield reports from the Ukrainian government seriously but not taking reports from the Russian government seriously.

Among the consequences of this policy is a subtle and important one:

Since the Ukrainian government, naturally enough, isn’t eager to concede combat losses, some Russian battlefield successes aren’t very recent by the time Ukraine, and hence ISW, acknowledges them. And you don’t lead with old news! So here, for example, is the first sentence of ISW’s summary of events for May 22 (boldfaced, in keeping with ISW practice for the lead sentence of each day’s summary): “Russian forces made only minimal gains in eastern Ukraine on May 22.” And here is the sentence that is relegated to second place and isn’t boldfaced: “New reportingconfirmed thatRussian troops previously recaptured Rubizhne in northern Kharkiv Oblast, on May 19.”

Capturing a village near the city of Kharkiv seems like bigger news than not capturing any villages in the East. So why doesn’t ISW lead with that? Because it’s old news—it happened several days earlier. But back when it happened, ISW couldn’t confidently report it, because only Russia, not Ukraine, had said it happened. So newspaper reporters relying on ISW wouldn’t have become aware of this setback for Ukraine until it was too stale to bother with. This slow-motion burial of bad news happens again and again; it’s built into ISW’s methodology.

When you add up all of ISW’s little instances of spin, how much do they matter? I don’t know. (Who’s got time to even find them all, much less add them up?) Certainly if you drew a schematic diagram of American propaganda as it pertains to national security—including all the interest groups that try to impart their spin, and where their money comes from, and which media they succeed in influencing, and so on—ISW wouldn’t come close to dominating the diagram.

But that’s one of my main points. This diagram isn’t as streamlined as the Russian version would be. There are so many moving parts in American opinionmaking machinery that it’s hard to figure out what’s going on—hard to follow all the institutionally imparted biases to their roots.

Indeed—and I guess this is my other main point—it’s apparently hard to follow even a single institution’s bias to its roots. I feel pretty sure that very few readers of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Washington Post read passages attributed to the Institute for the Study of War with the grain of salt that is appropriate, given its ideology and its funding—because, for one thing, they don’t know about the ideology and the funding.

More surprisingly—and more depressingly—a lot of presumably sophisticated American journalists seem equally uninformed. At least, that’s the only explanation I have for why America’s elite media outlets routinely and uncritically relay ISW takes.

Thus, the New York Times yesterday reported: “Ukraine has retaken large parts of Severodonetsk, the Luhansk city Russia has concentrated on capturing, the Institute for the Study of War reported on Sunday. The Washington-based research group said Ukraine’s ability to push Russian troops back to the city’s eastern outskirts was more evidence of Moscow’s declining combat power.”

Now, it may well be that Moscow’s declining combat power is the explanation for any recent Ukrainian advances, and that the wind is therefore at Ukraine’s back (though this morning’s Washington Post headline—“Severodonetsk situation ‘has worsened’ for Ukraine, official says”—suggests maybe not). But if I were a reporter and I knew about ISW’s background, I don’t think I’d be relaying its conjectures unless I was balancing them with conjectures from think tanks that are considerably less hawkish.

Which, by the way, would be hard to do, because there aren’t any considerably less hawkish think tanks that provide elaborate daily analysis of the Ukraine war, in part because the less hawkish you are, the harder it is to get funding. There are no huge companies whose profits are tied directly to military restraint the way General Dynamics’s profits are tied to militarism.

That’s why if you see an op-ed on Ukraine—or Afghanistan or Iran or whatever—written by somebody at a think tank, the chances are good that the think tank has gotten money from defense contractors. And if you see a think tanker on cable news talking about those subjects, ditto. Not to mention the fact that, as Aditi Ramaswami and Andrew Perez documented in Jacobin, many talking heads who opine on the Ukraine war are getting money from the arms makers themselves (just as many Afghanistan war talking heads did).

I’m not saying the talking heads you see are shills. Think tanks don’t pay people to say things they don’t believe. Think tanks hire people who already believe things the funders of the think tanks want everyone—including you—to believe.

The sincerity with which these experts can thus profess their beliefs is one reason American propaganda is inconspicuous. Another reason is institutional diversity: different newspapers, different cable channels, different think tanks!

This much diversity is better than less diversity—one of many reasons I’d rather live in America than in Russia. Still, sometimes the diversity belies a deeper narrative unity, a unity grounded in the power of highly motivated special interests. And that’s especially true when the subject is national security.

Supporting Ukraine is a good cause. But undiscerning support is never a good policy. And it’s especially not good in the current situation—a war involving a nuclear superpower and various regional tinderboxes. So any impediments to a clear view of what’s going on in Ukraine, however subtle they may be, are things we should try to identify and overcome. And if you ask, “What impediments?” the answer is: “That’s what I mean.”

#institute for the study of war #project for a new american century #think tanks #us propaganda #ukraine conflict #isw #capitalism #raytheon #robert kagan #bill kristol #victoria nuland

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