Why is the US spurning Ukraine peace deals?

 

    By Reginald Johnson

      Commentary 

 

      The question is arising now:  is the United States really interested in ending the war in Ukraine?

   Top US officials such as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have always said that the US is interested in talks with Russia and arriving at some fair agreement that would end the terrible war.

  But you have to wonder.

 Tuesday night, in an interview with ABC news, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said in terms of creating a peace deal, he was open to the idea of Ukraine not being part of NATO and that he was also open to talking with Russian President Vladimir Putin about determining the future status of the breakaway republics in the Donbass part of Ukraine.

  The comments represented a possible breakthrough for resolving the dispute between Russia and Ukraine, as the US and Ukraine have always insisted that Ukraine should be part of NATO, which is something that the Russians had vehemently opposed. His comments about the Donbass area also presented a new basis for negotiation.

  However, the Biden administration has said nothing about Zelensky’s proposal.

  Biden officials were also quiet when Putin two weeks ago said that a peace plan could come about if Ukraine agreed to a status of neutrality and not accepting NATO arms.

  The American silence on Zelensky’s comments is disturbing given the horror that is taking place in Ukraine, as Russia continues its invasion. Hundreds if not thousands of civilians have been killed, infrastructure has been destroyed, and more than 1 million refugees have been sent out of the country to escape violence.

  Russia launched its invasion after years of talks with the US and Ukraine concerning the secessionist republics went nowhere and the US kept insisting that Ukraine be allowed to enter NATO, an anti-Russian military alliance that has bases throughout Europe and missile installations in countries close to Russia, such as Poland and Romania.

  Russia made clear that Ukraine being part of NATO was a red line for them, and that they would not tolerate having an enemy military alliance with armies and bases sitting on their long border with Ukraine.

 Continued bloodshed in Eastern Ukraine, where 14,000 thousand ethnic Russians were killed in attacks by Ukrainian forces in violation of the Minsk Accords covering the region, also angered Russia.

The Ukrainian military has received billions of dollars in support from the United States in the past eight years. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
 

Russians then launched their attack on Feb 24, claiming that they had to stabilize the region and also prevent an ongoing security threat from NATO.

However, the Russians have been harshly criticized --- and justifiably --- first for launching an invasion which had no legitimate basis under international law.

Russia has also been justifiably criticized for their brutal military tactics, hitting civilian targets, including the shelling of residential areas.

Meanwhile, the US has responded with sweeping economic sanctions against Russia and an embargo against Russian oil.             

Billions more in lethal aid is also being sent to Ukraine.    

There’s no question this invasion has to end, and the fighting must stop. Lives are being lost on a massive scale and all of Europe is being destabilized.

An agreement must be reached between the principal parties --- the US and its ally Ukraine, and Russia.

There has to be compromise on both sides. Russia must withdraw its forces. But in return there must be firm guarantees in writing that Ukraine will not be part of NATO and Ukraine can’t be an arsenal filled with US weapons. There should also be some degree of autonomy granted to Donetsk and Luhansk.

 These are a achievable goals. The Russians I think, would end their operation if they got those key guarantees. Now, the head of Ukraine says he’s willing to talk about those guarantees.

But is the US willing to talk about the guarantees and bring about an agreement?  Do they want the fighting to end?

 You have to be skeptical.

One leading political figure who’s saying the US wants the war to continue is former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.

 Speaking on the Laura Ingraham show on FOX TV Tuesday night, she praised Zelensky for offering a “window of opportunity” to build a peace deal.

 “Really, he’s sending an olive branch,” she said.

Then she asked, “Why isn’t the Biden-Harris administration charging forward to take advantage of and support President Zelensky in this opening he has created in trying to bring about an end to this conflict and bring about an end to the suffering that we are seeing every single day?

 She added, “Nothing that the Biden administration has done has helped to make this situation better, to help de-escalate the situation. Which is why the only conclusion I can draw about why they have been completely silent and not engaging at all on this window of opportunity President Zelensky opened last night is that what is happening before our eyes right now is exactly what they wanted to see continued.

 “Why is that? Because it’s good for the military industrial complex, it makes politicians look tough, and really, it allows them to have this proxy war with Russia, something that Hillary Clinton laid out just recently, what the aims are, this war machine, this power elite in Washington, they want to turn Ukraine into another Afghanistan …… bleed out and kill as many Russians as possible for who knows for how long,” Gabbard said.

  I agree with Gabbard and add that a continuance of the Ukraine war appears to be part of a long range regime change operation directed against Russia. Bleed ‘em dry and take ‘em down.

 Afterwards, a new Boris Yeltsin can be brought in, and western capitalists can have a field day.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian people are caught in the middle, suffering and dying.

Lending credence to the theory that the US is using the Ukraine conflict to trigger regime change in Russia is that the RAND Corporation --- a think-tank which has a long history of influencing American foreign policy --- produced a report for the Pentagon in 2019 called "Overextending and Unbalancing Russia." The study basically assessed ways of bringing Russia down.

  Specifically, the report said Russia could be weakened by having to respond to a greater NATO and US military presence directed at Russia and that "providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia's greatest point of external vulnerability."

  It’s up to peace-loving people everywhere to rise up and say they won’t be party to these deadly schemes. Demand that the US respond favorably to President Zelensky’s offer, forge a real peace agreement and end this disastrous war.

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New York City: Catastrophe Looming

    

By Reginald Johnson

   

  

     NEW YORK --- The mayor of America's largest city is warning that unless hospitals in the city receive critically-needed medical supplies in the near future, people will die unnecessarily from the Coronavirus disease.

   Mayor Bill deBlasio told CNN Sunday the city has over 8,000 cases of COVID-19, a third of the total cases nationally and the “worst is yet to come.”

   But the federal government is not coming through with the level of assistance needed to deal with the crisis, he said.

  “We’re not getting shipments. We’re not getting the stuff we need,” deBlasio said. “If we don’t get more ventilators in the next 10 days,  people will die that don’t have to die.”

  Mayor deBlasio spoke as the nation continues to reel from the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. Many cities and states are on a virtual lockdown, where non-essential businesses have been shut down and residents are being largely confined to their homes, as authorities try to stop the spread of the virus.

  Leaders from different areas of the country have been complaining that hospitals in their localities are facing shortages of key medical supplies and equipment to treat patients with COVID-19. And they’re demanding that the federal government do more.

  The most vocal critic has been deBlasio, who says that the Trump administration’s piecemeal efforts to deal with the pandemic are totally inadequate. The administration has encouraged various companies to ramp up production of needed supplies and then either donate or sell them to hospitals. Governors have also been authorized to use the National Guard where necessary to help out and the Army Corps of Engineers is being brought in some cases to build more temporary hospital beds.

    But the New York mayor said Trump has to go further and invoke the Defense Production Act, which will allow him to order private companies to go full speed on manufacturing vital supplies and equipment and get them to hospitals. The law will also enable the president to get the military involved in distribution and in providing medical personnel where needed.

  “If you don’t order companies to maximize production of ventilators, surgical masks and all the things that are desperately needed, and organize that, and prioritize where it's going to go, it won't happen in time," he said.

  Mayor deBlasio said that a "full-scale mobilization of the military is needed to deal with the greatest crisis domestically since the Great Depression."
  He added that invoking the Defense Production Act and mobilizing the military are steps that presidents in the past, Republican and Democrat, would have taken by now.
  "Eisenhower would have done it, Truman would have done it, John Kennedy would have done it. Come on!"
  US Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, agreed with deBlasio's view in another interview on CNN. She said officials from hospitals in her district are predicting shortages of ventilators and beds.
  She said Trump needs to invoke the Defense Production Act immediately. 
  "We cannot wait until people are really dying in large numbers to start production, especially of more sophisticated equipment like ventilators and beds," she said. 

  

Cornering Trump

                                 

 By Reginald Johnson

  

  A campaign appears to be underway to derail the incoming presidency of Donald Trump and possibly force him from power.

   Ever since Trump won the election in a stunning upset over Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8, intelligence officials, some neo-conservatives and prominent media outlets have been demonizing Russia and at the same time raising doubts about whether Trump is too friendly with Russia to be commander-in-chief.

   Leaders of the CIA and NSA, neo-cons in Congress like Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham and editorial writers have relentlessly pushed the dubious story that Russia hacked the election, by invading the email networks of the Clinton campaign and feeding derogatory information about Clinton and her surrogates to whistleblower Julian Assange, who then released the information on the Internet.

  Proponents of this theory claim that the Russians did the hacking to help Trump win the election and ensure they got a friend in the White House. Trump has often said that he wants better relations with Russia and has questioned the value of NATO, while Clinton has expressed a more aggressive, interventionist foreign policy and, like other neo-cons, views Russia as a hostile power.

  The Russian election hacking claims claims have been widely debunked by cyber experts, Julian Assange and former distinguished members of the CIA and NSA, such as Ray McGovern and William Binney. The forensics don't add up. The truth is that the Clinton team emails were leaked by a disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter, who thought the Clinton people were rigging the primaries against Sanders.

   But the drumbeat of charges about "Russian hacking" has continued and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have uncritically accepted the conclusions by the intelligence leaders and mindlessly parrot their claims of "Russian election interference." 

    The inference in much of the discussion has been that Trump may have colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin to get the hacking done, and thereby committed treason.

 

  Trump also came under fire when intelligence officials released a  very derogatory report – largely based on hearsay from a former British intelligence agent ---  alleging that Trump had at one time cavorted with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. Officials said that if the Russians knew this they could use the information to blackmail him. The President-elect has strongly denied the claims in the “dossier,” which was contained in an appendix to a larger intelligence report on the hacking.

    The bombshell allegations --- though now widely questioned --- were released just eight days prior to Trump’s inauguration (which takes place Friday).

   The claims in the “Russian dossier” and the hacking charges leveled at Russia have put Trump on the defensive for the past number of weeks --- an unusual situation for a newly-elected president. He’s been forced to make some concessions and admit that Russia may have been behind the hacking --- which he had refused to believe before.

   It is clear that high officials of the CIA, NSA, neo-cons in Congress and in the press and top military people are angry over Trump’s pledge to open a new dialogue with Russia. They have no interest in a détente and are determined to block it.

   Their continued negative publicity campaign, centered around national security and Russia, may be aimed at creating a groundswell of doubt about Trump and ultimately to set the stage for a successful impeachment drive. The actual trigger for the impeachment would be based either on some concocted information about misconduct in office or possibly something credible, like a charge that Trump violated the Constitution by taking emoluments through his foreign-based businesses (which could happen if Trump doesn’t totally sever his ties to his various business interests).

  Author Daniel Lazare, writing in Consortium News on Jan. 14 in a piece entitled “The Scheme to Take Down Trump,” maintains that the CIA and other intelligence officials were hoping that the salacious rumors in the Russian dossier might have been enough to shame Trump and force him to step aside. Instead, the bellicose Trump blasted the report as “fake news” and said that the intelligence officials were acting like something out of “Nazi Germany.”

  “The intelligence communities’ hopes, if that’s what they were, were dashed,” Lazare wrote.

  He added, “All of which is thoroughly unprecedented by American political standards. After all, this is a country that takes endless pride in the peaceful transfer of power every four years or so. Yet here was the intelligence community attempting to short-circuit the process by engineering Trump’s removal before he even took office.”

   While the “military-intelligence complex” as Lazare calls it,  has failed so far to force Trump out, they will keep trying.

  “…that doesn’t mean they’re giving up. All it means rather, is they’ll go deeper underground. Trump may enter the White House on Jan. 20. But the big question is how long he will remain.”

  The prospect of Trump being ousted from the presidency may put a smile on the faces of Democrats and progressives, who dislike him, rightfully, for his divisive rhetoric on immigrants and regressive domestic policies. But they should be careful what they wish for.

  If Trump is impeached, Pence will take over, and his views on domestic policy are just as bad as Trump’s. His foreign policy approach is worse.

  But there’s an even bigger point. If Republicans turn on Trump to join an impeachment effort, spurred by concern over Trump’s moves to improve ties with Russia and by anger over bogus claims of Russian hacking,  it will mean that the CIA and other intelligence officials have truly succeeded in manipulating the American democratic process.

   That should be deeply troubling to everyone.

 

 

 

    

  

The Relentless Push for War

                   

                           

By Reginald Johnson

    Visiting the Pentagon shortly after the Sept. 11th terror attacks in 2001,  retired 4-star General Wesley Clark was shocked to learn from a former colleague that plans were being drawn up to invade Iraq.

   “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” Clark asked.

“I don’t know,” said his friend, another general. “I guess they don’t know what else to do,” Clark recounted, in an interview on Democracy Now.

  The general then told Clark that even though the U.S. had no information linking Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to the 911 attacks, top officials were still bent on making war.

  “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments,” he said, adding, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”

   Clark came back to see the same officer in November, and by that time the U.S. had already started bombing Afghanistan, the home base of the al-Qaeda terrorists who allegedly carried out the 911 attacks.

   “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” Clark asked.

  “Oh, it’s worse than that,” the general replied. Pulling up a piece of paper, he said, “I just got this down from upstairs --- the Secretary of Defense’s office --- today. This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

 The document, of course, was classified. A year later when Clark saw the same individual, he reminded him of the memo. The man replied, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”

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  In the 15 years since former General Clark heard the sweeping plan for regime-change abroad, the scenario has in large part become reality.

 Iraq’s government was removed by force by an American invasion and a brutal multi-year war. Libya’s government was also changed at the point of a gun in 2011  after American and NATO forces bombed the country and gave support to a group of insurgents. Long-time leader Mohamed Ghadafi was murdered and a new government formed.

  In Syria, the U.S. and its allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been working for five years to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. and the other nations have been funneling lethal aid to the insurgent coalition, which includes al-Nusra, an Qaeda spin-off, and other jihadists. U.S. planes at the same time are bombing parts of Syria, purportedly to knock out the terrorist group ISIS.

  Making the situation potentially very dangerous, is the fact that Russia is actively involved in assisting Assad, with Russian planes conducting bombing raids against rebel targets.

   The U.S. is also either engaging in or sponsoring military activity in Somalia and Sudan, in order to shape the direction of those countries.

  The effect of this succession of wars and interventions has been staggering. In the Iraq War alone, 4,400 U.S service members were killed. Another 32,000 were injured, with many military personnel having lost legs or arms, making everyday life a struggle.

 Iraqi casualties in the conflict were immense. While estimates vary, several organizations put the Iraqi death toll at over 500,000.

  According to the UN, more than 3 million Iraqis were displaced internally just in the first 3 years of the war. The infrastructure in Iraq --- prior to the war one of the mid-east’s most advanced nations --- has been decimated.

   The dollar cost of the war for the U.S. is astronomical --- $1.6 trillion --- and the figure keeps rising, as on-going costs such as veterans’ medical care, are factored in.

The war in Syria is still not over, but consider the human toll so far: between 300,000 and 500,000 Syrians killed, depending on estimates; 7 million people internally displaced; and 4 million people forced to flee the country, desperately trying to find safety in Europe and the United States.

  Considering the terrible impacts of wars and interventions perpetrated by the United States, you would think that there might be a growing consensus here that there’s been enough war, enough conflict, enough foreign “crises” and it’s time to start building bridges.

  But that’s not the case.

 While polling does show that a majority of the American people are weary of war and oppose sending more troops into hot spots like the Middle East, political and media elites and officials of the State and Defense Departments have other ideas.

 

 While Obama administration officials have talked of making a cease-fire work in Syria and finally bringing peace to that country, the reality is that they keep providing aid to the anti-government groups, and in some cases are advocating direct U.S. air attacks on the Assad forces.

 

 Recently, a so-called “dissent cable” was circulated in the State Department calling for U.S. strikes against the Syrian military as a means of ending the conflict and forcing Assad out. Signed by 51 diplomats, it was called a dissent memo since it didn’t reflect the  publicly-stated views of Secretary of State John Kerry.

  However, as national security writer Gareth Porter noted in an article in Consortium News.com on June 26 entitled “The Dissent Memo that Isn’t,”  the signers of the memo knew that Kerry --- the one-time Vietnam War critic --- has been privately advocating open military strikes against Assad’s forces since 2013. His plan for air attacks has been rejected so far by Obama.

  But should Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, win the November election, direct American attacks against Syria may become reality. Robert Parry, the editor of Consortium News who’s covered American foreign policy for 30 years, said that a Hillary Clinton administration “is expected to authorize an illegal invasion of Syria --- under the guise of establishing ‘no-fly zones’ and ‘safe zones’ which will mean the slaughter of young Syrian soldiers.”

  The publication of the memo by The New York Times coincided with the release of a report by a Washington think tank with close ties to Hillary Clinton, Porter said. The Center for New American Security (CNAS) report called for a U.S. policy to ‘threaten and execute limited strikes against the Assad regime’ and for dispatching ‘several thousand’ U.S. troops to Syria.

  The CNAS study group that wrote the report was co-chaired by CNAS co-founder Michele Flournoy, a former high-ranking Defense Department official. According to Porter, Fournoy  “is now regarded as the most likely choice for Defense Secretary in a Hillary Clinton administration.”

   Any further involvement by the U.S. in terms of bombing Assad’s forces carries the obvious risk of touching off a confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.

 But the possibility of creating a wider war with Russia --- possibly a nuclear war which could end life on the planet --- doesn’t seem to faze many foreign policy officials in Washington.

  Parry said of State Department officers: “These hawks are so eager for more war that they don’t mind risking a direct conflict with Russia, breezily dismissing the possibility of a clash with the nuclear power by saying that they are ‘not advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia.’ That’s reassuring to hear.”

  The possibility for more war also exists in another theatre --- in the  Ukraine and the Baltics.

  American leaders and their colleagues in NATO --- the anachronistic military alliance dating from the years of the Iron Curtain --- seem to be itching for a fight with Russia.

  Declaring that Russia represents some new kind of menace in Europe based on cooked-up charges of “aggression” in Crimea, U.S. and NATO military leaders have taken some unusual and highly provocative actions this year. In June, NATO undertook its largest military exercises since the end of the Cold War, with tens of thousands of soldiers from 24 countries taking part in war games in northern Poland. NATO officials said member countries had to prepare for a possible attack by Russia.

  In Romania, the U.S. and NATO recently set up an $800 million missile defense shield, which could intercept incoming missiles. NATO officials claimed the system was designed as protection against missiles from “rogue states” like Iran, but the system is really aimed at Russia, and the Russians took it as such. Russian officials said that NATO was trying to achieve “military and political containment” of their nation.

   Romania is a particularly sensitive area for Russia, since it borders the Black Sea, where the Russian naval fleet is based.

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 Many of the people who are driving the current foreign policy related to the Middle East, Russia and China as well are neo-conservatives. This group believes that the U.S. must use its power aggressively to protect its interests around the world and maintain U.S. dominance. This may include the use of  “preventive” force, to overthrow a regime deems as a problem. Such was the case with the invasion of Iraq, where Saddam Hussein was seen as an unstable and uncontrollable leader who threatened U.S. and Israeli interests in the region.

  Neo-conservatives appear to view both Russia and China as “threats” --- even though there is little hard evidence of this --- and are backing  confrontational tactics in dealing with both those nations.

   There are a number of “neo-cons,” as they are known, in the Obama administration, both in the State Department and Defense Department. There are also many neo-con voices in the media, particularly at The New York Times and Washington Post.

  The Times and the Post have run numerous editorials criticizing Russia for “aggression” in taking over Crimea in 2014 --- even though a huge majority of Crimeans voted in a referendum, understandably, to break away from the neo-fascist coup government in Ukraine and rejoin Russia. The papers have also run a number of hit pieces demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  With her Senate vote in favor of the Iraq War, her push as Secretary of State for the illegal Libya intervention and now as a presidential candidate supporting a possible military intervention in Syria, Hillary Clinton is considered closely aligned with neo-con views.

  Clinton’s pro-war views have gotten far too little attention during the election campaign. The media for the most part has steered away from asking tough questions about foreign policy and exactly what she advocates going forward.

   Her opponent, Republican Donald Trump, has raised some valid points about the failures of U.S. foreign policy and suggested we should extend an olive branch to Vladimir Putin and try to work with Russia. He’s also said we should now pull back from overseas interventions. This is a welcome approach, and should be taken seriously.

  But Trump has gotten little traction with his comments on foreign policy, due to anger over the numerous backwards positions he’s taken on domestic issues, such as immigration and the rights of Muslims.

  Trump has also undermined his case for a less confrontational foreign policy by advocating a “stronger military.” The U.S. military is already far and away the strongest on earth. The U.S. spends $600 billion a year on the military --- we don’t need to spend more or enlarge our forces.

  As the presidential election campaign proceeds, it is crucial that the media ask the hard questions of both Clinton and Trump about exactly what their foreign policy is, where they stand with respect to both Syria and Russia, and whether they would consider new military interventions.

  The stakes couldn’t be higher.

 The United States and the world can ill afford more war.