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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JKicGkkLLw

 

Col. (ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson's last positions in government were as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff (2002-05), Associate Director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff under the directorship of Ambassador Richard N. Haass, and member of that staff responsible for East Asia and the Pacific, political-military and legislative affairs (2001-02). Before serving at the State Department, Wilkerson served 31 years in the U.S. Army. During that time, he was a member of the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College (1987 to 1989), Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93), and Director and Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia (1993-97). Wilkerson retired in 1997 and began work as an advisor to General Powell. He has also taught national security affairs at the George Washington University and is currently working on a book about the first George W. Bush administration.

 

 

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Beyond the neocon debacle to peace in Ukraine

 

    By Jeffrey D. Sachs

 

We are entering the end stage of the 30-year US neocon debacle in Ukraine. The neocon plan to surround Russia in the Black Sea region by NATO has failed. Decisions now by the US and Russia will matter enormously for peace, security, and wellbeing for the entire world.

Four events have shattered the neocon hopes for NATO enlargement eastward, to Ukraine, Georgia, and onward. The first is straightforward. Ukraine has been devastated on the battlefield, with tragic and appalling losses. Russia is winning the war of attrition, an outcome that was predictable from the start but which the neocons and mainstream media deny till today.

The second is the collapsing support in Europe for the US neocon strategy. Poland no longer speaks with Ukraine. Hungary has long opposed the neocons. Slovakia has elected an anti-neocon government. EU leaders (Macron, Meloni, Sanchez, Scholz, Sunak, and others) have disapproval ratings far higher than approvals.

The third is the cut in US financial support for Ukraine. The Republican Party grassroots, several Republican Presidential candidates, and a growing number of Republican members of Congress, oppose more spending on Ukraine. In the stop-gap bill to keep the government running, Republicans stripped away new financial support for Ukraine. The White House has called for new aid legislation, but this will be an uphill fight.

The fourth, and most urgent from Ukraine’s point of view, is the likelihood of a Russian offensive. Ukraine’s casualties are in the hundreds of thousands, and Ukraine has burned through its artillery, air defences, tanks, and others heavy weapons. Russia is likely to follow with a massive offensive.

The neocons have created utter disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine. The US political system has not yet held the neocons to account, since foreign policy is carried out with little public or Congressional scrutiny to date. Mainstream media have sided with the slogans of the neocons.

Ukraine is at risk of economic, demographic and military collapse. What should the US Government do to face this potential disaster?

Urgently, it should change course. Britain advises the US to escalate, as Britain is stuck with 19th century imperial reveries. US neocons are stuck with imperial bravado. Cooler heads urgently need to prevail.

President Joe Biden should immediately inform President Vladimir Putin that the US will end NATO enlargement eastward if the US and Russia reach a new agreement on security arrangements. By ending NATO expansion, the US can still save Ukraine from the policy debacles of the past 30 years.

Biden should agree to negotiate a security arrangement of the kind, though not precise details, of President Putin’s proposals of December 17, 2021. Biden foolishly refused to negotiate with Putin in December 2021. It’s time to negotiate now.

There are four keys to an agreement. First, as part of an overall agreement Biden should agree that NATO will not enlarge eastward, but not reverse the past NATO enlargement. NATO would of course not tolerate Russian encroachments in existing NATO states. Both Russia and the US would pledge to avoid provocations near Russia’s borders, including provocative missile placement, military exercises, and the like.

Second, the new US – Russia security agreement should cover nuclear weapons. The US unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, followed by the placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania, gravely inflamed tensions, which were further exacerbated by the US withdrawal from the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Agreement in 2019 and Russia’s suspension of the New Start Treaty in 2023. Russian leaders have repeatedly pointed to US missiles near Russia, unconstrained by the abandoned ABM Treaty, as a dire threat to Russia’s national security.

Third, Russia and Ukraine would agree on new borders, in which the overwhelmingly ethnic Russian Crimea and heavily ethnic Russian districts of eastern Ukraine would remain part of Russia. The border changes would be accompanied by security guarantees for Ukraine backed unanimously by the UN Security Council and other states such as Germany, Turkey, and India.

Fourth, as part of a settlement, the US, Russia, and EU would re-establish trade, finance, cultural exchange, and tourist relations. It’s certainly time once again to hear Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky in US and European concert halls.

Border changes are a last resort, and should be made under UN Security Council auspices. They must never be an invitation to further territorial demands, such as by Russia regarding ethnic Russians in other countries. Yet borders change, and the US has recently backed two border changes. NATO bombed Serbia for 47 days until it relinquished the Albanian-majority region of Kosovo. In 2008, the US recognised Kosovo as a sovereign nation. The US similarly backed South Sudan’s insurgency to break away from Sudan.

If Russia, Ukraine, or the US subsequently violated the new agreement, they would be challenging the rest of the world. As JFK observed, “even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.”

The US neocons carry much blame for undermining Ukraine’s 1991 borders. Russia did not claim Crimea until after the US-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Nor did Russia annex the Donbas after 2014, instead calling on Ukraine to honour the UN-backed Minsk II agreement, based on autonomy for the Donbas. The neocons preferred to arm Ukraine to retake the Donbas by force rather than grant the Donbas autonomy.

The long-term key to peace in Europe is collective security as called for by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). According to OSCE agreements, OSCE member states “will not strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States.” Neocon unilateralism undermined Europe’s collective security by pushing NATO enlargement without regard to third parties, notably Russia. Europe — including the EU, Russia, and Ukraine — needs more OSCE and less neocon unilateralism as key to lasting peace in Europe.

 

First published by COMMON DREAMS October 3, 2023

 

https://johnmenadue.com/beyond-the-neocon-debacle-to-peace-in-ukraine/

 

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Some days the Caitlin Johnstone articles just write themselves.

During her self-titled annual awards ceremony at Georgetown University on Thursday, Hillary Clinton said that the biggest obstacle to peace and security around the world is “men starting wars.”

During the Q&A segment of the event, Clinton was asked by a student, “What do you see as the biggest challenge for women, peace, and security over the next ten years?”

“Well I think the biggest challenge is men starting wars,” Clinton replied, adding, “You know, I don’t think they have enough to do.”

Which would have come across as a humorous and relatable answer, if it had come from pretty much anyone else on the entire planet.

The single strongest argument against Hillary Rodham Clinton’s suggestion that only men start wars is the career of Hillary Rodham Clinton. This is after all the same woman who chortled with delight when she found out Muammar Gaddafi had been lynched in the streets following his US-led overthrow in Libya during her tenure as secretary of state, saying “I’m sure it did” when asked if his death had anything to do with her visit to the country. The same woman who as secretary of state promoted the plan of arming extremists in Syria with the goal of toppling Damascus. The same woman who as a senator played a pivotal role in convincing the Democratic Party to support the invasion of Iraq based on lies. The same woman who as first lady said she “urged” her husband Bill Clinton to launch the bombing campaign that would leave Serbia and Kosovo covered in cluster munitions. The same woman who as a US presidential candidate advocated a no-fly zone in Syria which would have required attacks on Russian war planes who violated it, and endorsed the same brinkmanship policies in Ukraine which eventually provoked the Russian invasion.

When Tulsi Gabbard famously dubbed Clinton “the queen of warmongers” in 2019, it wasn’t just empty rhetoric. There is no woman alive who anyone could argue is more deserving of that title. If you’d have told me there was a Hillary Rodham Clinton Awards ceremony prior to my having read about it, I would have assumed it was an event where women receive trophies for killing large numbers of human beings with military violence.

It is of course true that men have been the drivers of the overwhelming majority of wars throughout the ages, but that’s just what’s so disgusting about the modern iteration of “feminism” that Hillary Clinton rode to prominence on. The girlboss “feminism” of the Hillary Clinton age has ceased to mean advancing women’s interests and ensuring that women are treated as equals to men, and has become a vapid celebration of examples of women proving that they can be just as murderous, tyrannical and abusive as any man.

That was the zeitgeist that Hillary Clinton rode her 2016 presidential campaign on, and when the American public recoiled in horror and refused to vote for her, it was spun as a victory for misogyny. It should have been spun as a victory for would-be bombing victims who live in US-targeted nations.

Hillary Clinton is all the worst things about modern liberals and the Democratic Party. She is a blood-spattered psychopath who has dedicated her life to serving all the worst impulses of the human species — imperialism, militarism, capitalism, authoritarianism, and, yes, patriarchy — wearing a grinning plastic mask of civil rights and social justice to convince people to let her in the door. 

She’s one of the creepiest things you could possibly imagine, and the sooner her and those like her are gone and forgotten, the better.

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/queen-warmonger-hillary-clinton-complains

 

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