Antinuclear

Are We Back to Nuclear Brinkmanship for Good?

It’s not just Putin who has re-embraced nuclear threats. The U.S. and China are also cracking open the door.

By Michael Hirsh, a columnist for Foreign Policy.  https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/09/nuclear-brinksmanship-arms-control-jake-sullivan-putin-china-russia/

Sixty years ago this week, U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at American University that transformed the nature of the Cold War, turning the insanity of nuclear brinkmanship into the relative safety of negotiation. Coming just eight months after the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world harrowingly close to armageddon, Kennedy noted the “ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers [on earth] are the two in the most danger of devastation.”

That, he said, had to stop—not to achieve some “infinite concept of universal peace and goodwill” but rather to secure “a more practical, more attainable peace.”

In an act of political courage for the time, Kennedy then delivered a unilateral concession to Moscow, saying the United States “does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so.”

 Astonishingly, given the hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Soviet government broadcast Kennedy’s June 10, 1963, address in its entirety, and it was published by the Soviet newspapers Izvestia and Pravda. On July 25, 1963, after only 12 days of negotiations, a nuclear test ban treaty was signed.

Where is the political courage of yesteryear?

In a speech at the Arms Control Association’s annual conference on June 2, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan took a very different tack. Sullivan signaled—though he likely didn’t intend to—that there is little hope for restraining the threat of nuclear war in the foreseeable future. Sullivan conceded that there was no meaningful U.S. communication with either Russia or China, that Washington was engaging in tit-for-tat reprisals against Moscow by suspending day-to-day missile operations notification, and that the United States would continue to push for military dominance over both Russia and China for decades to come.

Sullivan, rightly blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for bringing nuclear brinkmanship back into the conventional war equation, said “the cracks in our post-Cold War nuclear foundation are substantial and they are deep.” But in the end, Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard University, told Foreign Policy, Sullivan “offered nothing, no proposals.”

To be fair, the Biden administration is already being criticized by Republicans for proposing unconditional nuclear talks with both Russia and China. Indeed, U.S. President Joe Biden is clearly avoiding what may be his biggest foreign-policy fear leading up to the 2024 presidential election: the perception of being soft on China. That sort of political pressure at home, combined with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s apparent determination to rapidly build up his nuclear capability, suggests a long-term arms race.

Yet Sullivan did little to ameliorate those fears last week. On the contrary, he announced that the United States is pursuing an arms race in order to prevent an arms race. “Together with our NATO allies, we’ve been laser-focused on modernizing the alliance’s nuclear capabilities,” Sullivan said, including “certifying our F-35 aircraft to be able to deliver modern nuclear gravity bombs. … Together, these modernization efforts will ensure our deterrent capabilities remain secure and strong as we head into the 2030s—when the United States will need to deter two near-peer nuclear powers for the first time in its history.”

Sullivan denied that he was calling for a new arms race, contending the Biden administration was taking a “better” approach rather than a “more” one. “The United States does not need to increase our nuclear forces to outnumber the combined total of our competitors in order to successfully deter them,” he said. But Sullivan was basically telling the Chinese and Russians that Washington will continue to insist on precisely what both Beijing and Moscow have said they can no longer accept: U.S. hegemony in the global system.

As a result, Bunn said, “I’m fairly worried that we have a level of hostility that is the worst since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

June 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Patrick Lawrence: Neo-Nazis in Ukraine? No, Yes, No–Yes

Stepan Bandera torchlight parade in Kiev, Jan. 1, 2020. (A1/Wikimedia Commons)

As is well-known and documented, the neo–Nazis who infest the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the AFU — among many other national institutions — have made idols of such figures as Stepan Bandera, the freakishly murderous nationalist who allied with the Nazi regime during the war.

A New York Times’ reporter’s job this week is to persuade us that all those Ukrainian soldiers wearing Nazi insignia and marching through Kiev in Klan-like torch parades are not what you think.

June 7, 2023, By Patrick Lawrence, Original to ScheerPost

I tell you, serving as a New York Times correspondent these days cannot be easy.

You have to convey utter nonsense to your readers while maintaining a straight face and a serious demeanor.

You have to suggest the Russians may have exploded a drone over the Kremlin, that they may have blown up their own gas pipeline, that their president is an out-of-touch psychotic, that their soldiers in Ukraine are drunkards using faulty equipment, that they attack with “human hordes” (Orientalism, anyone?) and on and on — all the while affecting the gravitas once associated with the traditional “Timesman.” You try it sometime.

………………….. now we have the case of Thomas Gibbons–Neff, a square-jawed former Marine covering the Ukraine war for the Times — strictly to the extent the Kyiv regime permits him to do so, as he explains with admirable honesty. This guy is serious times 10, he and his newspaper want us to know.  

Tom’s job this week is to persuade us that all those Ukrainian soldiers wearing Nazi insignia, idolizing Jew-murdering, Russophobic collaborators with the Third Reich, gathering ritually in Nazi-inspired cabals, marching through Kyiv in Klan-like torch parades are not what you think.

Nah, our Tom tells us. They look like neo–Nazis, they act like neo–Nazis, they dress like neo–Nazis, they profess Fascist and neo–Nazi ideologies, they wage this war with the Wehrmacht’s visceral hatred of Russians — O.K., but whyever would you think they are neo–Nazis? 

They are just regular guys. They wear the Wolfsangel, the Schwarze sonne, the black sun, the Totenkopf, or Death’s Head — all Nazi symbols — because they are proud of themselves, and these are the kinds of things proud people wear. I was just wearing mine the other day. 

The slipping and sliding starts early in “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History,” the piece Gibbons–Neff published in Monday’s editions.

He begins with three photographs of neo–Nazi Ukrainian soldiers, SS insignia plainly visible, that the Kyiv regime has posted on social media, “then quietly deleted,” since the Russian intervention began last year.

“The photographs, and their deletions,” Gibbons–Neff writes, “highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II.”

Complicated relationship with Nazi imagery? Stop right there, Mr. Semper fi.  Ukraine’s neo–Nazi problem is not about a few indiscreetly displayed images. Sorry. The Ukrainian army’s “complicated relationship” is with a century of ultra-right ideology drawn from Mussolini’s Fascism and then the German Reich.

As is well-known and documented, the neo–Nazis who infest the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the AFU — among many other national institutions — have made idols of such figures as Stepan Bandera, the freakishly murderous nationalist who allied with the Nazi regime during the war.

This history is a matter of record, as briefly outlined here, but Gibbons–Neff alludes to none of it. It’s merely a matter of poor image-making, you see. In support of this offensive whitewash, Gibbons–Neff has the nerve to quote a source from none other than Bellingcat, which was long, long back exposed as a C.I.A. and MI6 cutout and which is now supported by the Atlantic Council, the NATO–funded, spook-infested think tank based in Washington. 

“What worries me, in the Ukrainian context, is that people in Ukraine who are in leadership positions, either they don’t or they’re not willing to acknowledge and understand how these symbols are viewed outside of Ukraine,” a Bellingcat “researcher” named Michael Colborne tells Gibbons–Neff. “I think Ukrainians need to increasingly realize that these images undermine support for the country.”

[Related: Ukraine Parliament Cheers Nazi Collaborator]

Think about that. The presence of Nazi elements in the AFU is not a worry. The worry is merely whether clear signs of Nazi sympathies might cause some members of the Western alliance to decide they no longer want to support Nazi elements in the AFU.

I am reminded of that Public Broadcasting news segment last year, wherein a provincial governor is featured with a portrait of Bandera behind him. PBS simply blurred the photograph and ran the interview with another of the courageous, admirable Ukrainians to which we are regularly treated.

I hardly need remind paying-attention readers that the neo–Nazis-who-are-not-neo–Nazis were for years well-reported as simply neo–Nazis in the years after the U.S.–cultivated coup in 2014.

[Related: Caitlin Johnstone: What MSM Can No Longer Say]

The Times, The Washington Post, PBS, CNN — the whole sorry lot — ran pieces on neo–Nazi elements in the AFU and elsewhere. In March 2018, Reuters published a commentary by Jeff Cohen under the headline “Ukraine’s Neo–Nazi Problem.”

Three months later The Atlantic Council, for heaven’s sake, published a paper, also written by Cohen, titled, “Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far–Right Violence (And no, RT Didn’t Write This Headline).”

I recall, because it was so surprising coming from the council. The original head on that paper was “Ukraine’s Got a Neo–Nazi Problem,” but that version now seems lost to the blur of stealth editing. 

Then came the Russian intervention, and Poof! There are no more neo–Nazis in Ukraine.

There are only these errant images that are of no special account.

And to assert there are neo–Nazis in Ukraine — to have some semblance of memory and a capacity to judge what is before one’s eyes — “plays into Russian propaganda,” Gibbons–Neff warns us.

It is to “give fuel to his”— Vladimir Putin’s — “false claims that Ukraine must be de–Nazified.” For good measure Gibbons–Neff gets out the old Volodymyr-Zelensky-is-Jewish chestnut, as if this is proof of… of something or other.

My mind goes to that lovely Donovan lyric from the Scottish singer’s Zen enlightenment phase. Remember “There Is a Mountain?” The famous lines went, “First there is a mountain/ Then there is no mountain/ Then there is.” There were neo–Nazis in Ukraine, then there were no neo–Nazis, and now there are neo–Nazis but they aren’t neo–Nazis after all. 

………………………………….. Gibbons–Neff resolutely avoids dilating his lens such that the larger phenomenon comes into view. It all comes down to those three unfortunate insignia in those three deleted photographs.

The parades, the corridors of neo–Nazi flags, the ever-present swastikas, the reenactments of all-night SS rituals, the glorification of Nazis and Nazi collaborators, the Russophobic blood lust: Sure, it can all be explained, except that our Timesman does not go anywhere near any of this.

Gibbons–Neff resolutely avoids dilating his lens such that the larger phenomenon comes into view. It all comes down to those three unfortunate insignia in those three deleted photographs.

The parades, the corridors of neo–Nazi flags, the ever-present swastikas, the reenactments of all-night SS rituals, the glorification of Nazis and Nazi collaborators, the Russophobic blood lust: Sure, it can all be explained, except that our Timesman does not go anywhere near any of this.

“It is, of course, true that, for instance, the Azov Battalion was originally founded by neo–Nazi and far-right groups (as well as many soccer ultra-fans), which brought along with it the typical aesthetics — not only neo–Nazi insignia but also things like Pagan rituals or names like ‘The Black Corps,’ the official newspaper of Nazi Germany’s major paramilitary organization Schutzstaffel (SS).”

But worry not, readers. It is merely an aesthetic, part of a harmless, misunderstood “subculture”: 

Torchlight procession in honor of the 106 anniversary of the birthday of Stepan Bandera, Kiev, Jan. 1, 2015. (All-Ukrainian Union CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

…………………………………………….It is always interesting to ask why a piece such as this appears when it does. Dead silence for months on the neo–Nazi question, and then suddenly a long explainer that does its best to avoid explaining anything. Always interesting to ask, never easy to answer. 

It could be that a lot of stuff on these awful people is sifting out from under the carpet. Or maybe something big is on the way and this piece is preemptive. Or maybe either Gibbons–Neff or his editors saw the Ponomarenko piece as an opportunity to dispose of one of the Kyiv regime’s most embarrassing features. 

Or maybe the larger context counts here. As mentioned in this space last week, the Times’ Steve Erlanger recently suggested from Brussels that NATO might do a postwar Germany job with Ukraine: Welcome the West of the country to the alliance and let the eastern provinces go for an indefinite period, unification the long-term objective.

Late last week Foreign Affairs ran a fantastical piece by Andriy Zagorodnyuk, formerly a Ukrainian defense minister and now, yes indeedy, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. It appeared under the headline, “To Protect Europe, Let Ukraine Join NATO—Right Now.” ……………………………………….more https://consortiumnews.com/2023/06/07/patrick-lawrence-neo-nazis-in-ukraine-no-yes-no-yes/?fbclid=IwAR2qutGUc886hz22JN9TvBgmNTXCb-dJwB1TvxPfsnvxCTT6d9yuEoeJOH8

June 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Kiev’s Long Term Plans To Blow Up The Kakhovka Dam

June 6, 2023   by Raúl Ilargi Meijer  https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2023/06/kievs-long-term-plans-to-blow-up-the-kakhovka-dam/

I had some discussion with Andrew about this article, since the December 2022 WaPo article he refers to was not the first time Kiev’s plans to blow up the dam were mentioned. There was this, for instance, 2 months earlier. Then again, Andrew is right in saying that the WaPo piece is the first where people other than Zelensky mention it. And we agree that now blaming the attack on Russia is really out of left field. Those darn Russkies keep on aiming for their own feet. And that’s the only thing(s) they can hit.

Andrew Korybko:
 
The partial destruction of the Kakhovka Dam on early Tuesday morning saw Kiev and Moscow exchange accusations about who’s to blame, but a report from the Washington Post (WaPo) in late December extends credence to the Kremlin’s version of events. Titled “Inside the Ukrainian counteroffensive that shocked Putin and reshaped the war”, its journalists quoted former commander of November’s Kherson Counteroffensive Major General Andrey Kovalchuk who shockingly admitted to planning this war crime:

“Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages. The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.”

His remark about how “the step remained a last resort” is pertinent to recall at present considering that the first phase of Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive completely failed on Monday according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Just like Ukraine launched its proxy invasion of Russia in late May to distract from its loss in the Battle of Artyomovsk, so too might does it seem to have gone through with Kovalchuk’s planned war crime to distract from this most recent embarrassment as well.

The abovementioned explanation isn’t as far-fetched as some might initially think either. After all, one of complexity theory’s precepts is that initial conditions at the onset of non-linear processes can disproportionately shape the outcome. In this context, the first failed phase of Kiev’s counteroffensive risked ruining the entire campaign, which could have prompted its planners to employ Kovalchuk’s “last resort” in order to introduce an unexpected variable into the equation that might improve their odds.

Russia had over 15 months to entrench itself in Ukraine’s former eastern and southern regions that Kiev still claims as its own through the construction of various defensive structures and associated contingency planning so as to maintain its control over those territories. It therefore follows that even the most properly supplied and thought-out counteroffensive wasn’t going to be a walk in the park contrary to the Western public’s expectations, thus explaining why the first phase just failed.

This reality check shattered whatever wishful thinking expectations Kiev might have had since it showed that the original plan of swarming the Line of Contact (LOC) entails considerable costs that reduce the chances of it succeeding unless serious happens behind the front lines to distract the Russian defenders. Therein lies the strategic reason behind partially destroying the Kakhovka Dam on Tuesday morning exactly as Kovalchuk proved late last year is possible to pull off per his own admission to WaPo.

The first of Kiev’s goals that this terrorist attack served was to prompt global concern about the safety of the Russian-controlled Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which relies on water from the now-rapidly-depleting Kakhovka Reservoir for cooling. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that there’s “no immediate nuclear safety risk”, but a latent one can’t be ruled out. Should a crisis transpire, then it could throw Russia’s defenses in northern Zaporozhye Region into chaos.

The second goal is that the downstream areas of Kherson Region, which are divided between Kiev and Moscow, have now been flooded. Although the water might eventually recede after some time, this could complicate Russia’s defensive plans along the left bank of the Dnieper River. Taken together with the consequences connected to the first scenario, this means that a significant part of the riparian front behind the LOC could soon soften up to facilitate the next phase of Kiev’s counteroffensive.

In fact, the geographic scope of Kiev’s “unconventional softening operation” might even expand to Crimea due to the threat that Tuesday morning’s terrorist attack could pose to the peninsula’s water supply via its eponymous canal. The regional governor said that sufficient supplies remain for now but that the coming days will reveal the level of risk. While Crimea still managed to survive Kiev’s blockade of the canal for eight years, there’s no doubt that this development is disadvantageous for Russia.

The fourth strategic goal builds upon the three that were already discussed and concerns the psychological warfare component of this attack. On the foreign front, Kiev’s gaslighting that Moscow is guilty of “ecocide” was amplified by the Mainstream Media in spite of Kovalchuk’s damning admission to WaPo last December in order to maximize global pressure on Russia, while the domestic front is aimed at sowing panic in Ukraine’s former regions with the intent of further softening Russia’s defenses there.

And finally, the last strategic goal that was served by partially destroying the Kakhovka Dam is that Russia might soon be thrown into a dilemma. Kiev’s “unconventional softening operation” along the Kherson-Zaporozhye LOC could divide the Kremlin’s focus from the Belgorod-Kharkov and Donbass fronts, which could weaken one of those three and thus risk a breakthrough. The defensive situation could become even more difficult for Russia if Kiev expands the conflict by attacking Belarus and/or Moldova too.

To be absolutely clear, the military-strategic dynamics of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine still favor Russia for the time being, though that’s precisely why Kiev carried out Tuesday morning’s terrorist attack in a desperate attempt to reshape them in its favor. This assessment is based on the observation that Russia’s victory in the Battle of Artyomovsk shows that it’s able to hold its own against NATO in the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that the bloc’s chief declared in mid-February.

Furthermore, even the New York Times admitted that the West’s sanctions failed to collapse Russia’s economy and isolate it, while some of its top influencers also admitted that it’s impossible to deny the proliferation of multipolar processes in the 15 months since the special operation began. These include German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, former US National Security Council member Fiona Hill, and Goldman Sachs’ President of Global Affairs Jared Cohen.

The military-strategic dynamics described in the preceding two paragraphs will inevitably doom the West to defeat in the New Cold War’s largest proxy conflict thus far unless something major unexpectedly happens to change them, which is exactly what Kiev was trying to achieve via its latest terrorist attack. The reason why few foresaw this is because Kovalchuk admitted to WaPo last December that his side had previously planned to blow up part of the Kakhovka Dam as part of its Kherson Counteroffensive.

It therefore seemed unthinkable that Kiev would ultimately do just that over half a year later and then gaslight that Moscow was to blame when the Mainstream Media itself earlier reported the existence of Ukraine’s terrorist plans after quoting the same Major General who bragged about them at the time. Awareness of this fact doesn’t change what happened, but it can have a powerful impact on the Western public’s perceptions of this conflict, which is why WaPo’s report should be brought to their attention.

June 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

France fully nationalises debt-laden nuclear power group EDF, after its record loss last year

 EDF quits Paris stock exchange after full nationalisation. French nuclear
power group EDF (EDF.PA) returns to full state ownership on Thursday with
its de-listing from the Paris stock exchange after it suffered a record
loss last year and saw nuclear output fall to a 34-year low.

The government launched a buyout for the 16% stake it did not already own in EDF in late
2022, stumping up around 10 billion euros ($10.9 billion) to take full
control of the debt-laden operator of Europe’s largest fleet of nuclear
power plants.

 Reuters 8th June 2023

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/french-utility-giant-edfs-history-2022-07-08

June 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment