The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant. - Maximilien Robespierre.

Saturday, March 12, 2022

The Russian Semi - Invasion Of Ukraine Has Caused A Financial Earthquake - Both The Old Normal And The New Normal Are Gone

 by Ian (editor) and Phil (finance expert)

Ahead of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and let's be honest here, both of us predicted it would not happen because we thought US and NATO leaders would persuade the nutters in Kiev to stop provoking Russia and respect the Minsk agreements brokered by Angela Merkel in 2014,  we forecast a rough year economically and materially for the developed world coping with the aftermath of the hoax pandemic and in the grip of an energy crisis caused by the failure of loonytoons 'green energy' policies, which together would inflict unsurvivable cost of living increases on poor and middle income families and spirallig inflation on businesses and the affluent. We also predicted the collapse of the US$ as global reserve currency,  soaring prices in gold, oil and commodity markets, monetary, a rush to cryptos, ongoing supply chain crunch, and a pandemic of that uneasy, queasy feeling one gets on hearing the sound of large amounts of shit hitting enornous fans.

The Ukraine situation has changed all that, not because it caused the stuff we forecast not to happen but because it has caused it all to happen much more quickly and to a greater extent than we thought possible. That's what you get for being naive enough to believe that for once common sense might prevail.

What just happened in the last two weeks is enormously important and misunderstood by many financial pundits and almost every mainstream media finncial journalist we have read. Only yesterday The Daily Telegraph published and article by a respected finance writer which claimed sanctions had, in one short week, brought Russia's economy to its knees.

In the comment thread under that article comment after comment praised Joe Biden and Boris Johnson because their sanctions had really put that nasty bully Putin in his place, the Russian people and  his own inner circle were turning on him. On the contrary, as we wrote on the day the first sanctions were announced, the sanctions are hitting NATO and its allies harder than Russia. Energy prices in the west will soar even higher, inflation will accelerate and now there will be food shortages to because as Russian and Ukrainian wheat, maize and oil seed exports dry up, crop yields around the world will drop dramatically because Russia, which supplies two thirds of the world's ammonium nitrate (the mmain ingredient in commercial fetilizers,) has banned exports of that mineral.

The West's action of shutting Russia out of SWIFT, , the international payments system, is also ineffectual, Russia buys little from the west and if it cannot sell its oil and other products to the west it will sell them to China and probably find plenty of agencies based in tax havens prepared to act as middlemen and channel Russian goods into western markets. Sanctions have never worked before there is no reason to think they will now. And about seven years ago Russia and China set up a financial transfer system of their own so they would not be dependent on the American - controlled SWIFT.

In short Russia, with the backing and support of China, just told the world that it is no longer going to sell its oil, gas, minerals and wheat on which many Western economies are dependent. The West in its response just said to all countries around the world: “If you have foreign exchange reserves, held in our system, they are no longer safe if we don't like your leaders.”

The US Dollar has been the reserve currency of the world since WW II. This has given the US an enormous advantage and subsidy from the rest of the world because everyone else needs to produce goods and services to obtain dollars and the US can simply produce dollars at no cost by printing them.   

Putin is now cast in the role of Charles de Gaulle who complained about the "exorbitant privilege" of the US with its dollar hegemony. The arrogant, aristocratic de Gaulle demanded gold in exchange for France's US dollar FX surpluses and this outflow forced the US to abandon the gold standard in 1971. 

Recall that post this event, gold went from $35 per ounce to $800 per ounce (23x).  Russia's move will lead to a similar move in favor of gold. Putin could see that the US fiscal and monetary situation was becoming untenable and he decided to use this to create an existential threat to the US and the world financial system. Gold may become the de facto world reserve currency but as members of the public lose confidence in government backed paper money because of the obvious incompetence of governments in managing their national economies, many people will put money into cryptocurrencies, which are based on trust it is true. 

But while governments believe that their ability to raise money through taxation cushions them against the economic realities, crypto - operators know they must be whiter than white because once they lose the trust of people who hold their crypto - currencies, they have nothing.

 by Ian (editor) and Phil (finance expert)

Ahead of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and let's be honest here, both of us predicted it would not happen because we thought US and NATO leaders would persuade the nutters in Kiev to stop provoking Russia and respect the Minsk agreements brokered by Angela Merkel in 2014,  we forecast a rough year economically and materially for the developed world coping with the aftermath of the hoax pandemic and in the grip of an energy crisis caused by the failure of loonytoons 'green energy' policies, which together would inflict unsurvivable cost of living increases on poor and middle income families and spirallig inflation on businesses and the affluent. We also predicted the collapse of the US$ as global reserve currency,  soaring prices in gold, oil and commodity markets, monetary, a rush to cryptos, ongoing supply chain crunch, and a pandemic of that uneasy, queasy feeling one gets on hearing the sound of large amounts of shit hitting enornous fans.

The Ukraine situation has changed all that, not because it caused the stuff we forecast not to happen but because it has caused it all to happen much more quickly and to a greater extent than we thought possible. That's what you get for being naive enough to believe that for once common sense might prevail.

What just happened in the last two weeks is enormously important and misunderstood by many financial pundits and almost every mainstream media finncial journalist we have read. Only yesterday The Daily Telegraph published and article by a respected finance writer which claimed sanctions had, in one short week, brought Russia's economy to its knees.

In the comment thread under that article comment after comment praised Joe Biden and Boris Johnson because their sanctions had really put that nasty bully Putin in his place, the Russian people and  his own inner circle were turning on him. On the contrary, as we wrote on the day the first sanctions were announced, the sanctions are hitting NATO and its allies harder than Russia. Energy prices in the west will soar even higher, inflation will accelerate and now there will be food shortages to because as Russian and Ukrainian wheat, maize and oil seed exports dry up, crop yields around the world will drop dramatically because Russia, which supplies two thirds of the world's ammonium nitrate (the mmain ingredient in commercial fetilizers,) has banned exports of that mineral.

The West's action of shutting Russia out of SWIFT, , the international payments system, is also ineffectual, Russia buys little from the west and if it cannot sell its oil and other products to the west it will sell them to China and probably find plenty of agencies based in tax havens prepared to act as middlemen and channel Russian goods into western markets. Sanctions have never worked before there is no reason to think they will now. And about seven years ago Russia and China set up a financial transfer system of their own so they would not be dependent on the American - controlled SWIFT.

In short Russia, with the backing and support of China, just told the world that it is no longer going to sell its oil, gas, minerals and wheat on which many Western economies are dependent. The West in its response just said to all countries around the world: “If you have foreign exchange reserves, held in our system, they are no longer safe if we don't like your leaders.”

The US Dollar has been the reserve currency of the world since WW II. This has given the US an enormous advantage and subsidy from the rest of the world because everyone else needs to produce goods and services to obtain dollars and the US can simply produce dollars at no cost by printing them.   

Putin is now cast in the role of Charles de Gaulle who complained about the "exorbitant privilege" of the US with its dollar hegemony. The arrogant, aristocratic de Gaulle demanded gold in exchange for France's US dollar FX surpluses and this outflow forced the US to abandon the gold standard in 1971. 

Recall that post this event, gold went from $35 per ounce to $800 per ounce (23x).  Russia's move will lead to a similar move in favor of gold. Putin could see that the US fiscal and monetary situation was becoming untenable and he decided to use this to create an existential threat to the US and the world financial system. Gold may become the de facto world reserve currency but as members of the public lose confidence in government backed paper money because of the obvious incompetence of governments in managing their national economies, many people will put money into cryptocurrencies, which are based on trust it is true. 

But while governments believe that their ability to raise money through taxation cushions them against the economic realities, crypto - operators know they must be whiter than white because once they lose the trust of people who hold their crypto - currencies, they have nothing.

US commodity crisis to give rise to new world order, says Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar:

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We The Good Guys Versus They The Bad Guys Reporting Does Not Make Sense For The Ukraine Crisis

 

Mainstream media reporting of the conflict in Ukraine has disappointed. Perhaps I was naive to suppose that lessons might have been learned from the hits their print sales and online trafic rates took as a result of their handling the COVID pandemic by abandoning any pretence of objective and unbiased reporting and bombarding readers / viewers with a daily torrent of propaganda in support of lockdowns, social restrictions and mandatory vaccination . vaccine passports. But instead of focusing on the most obviously newsworthy aspect of the build up to and escalation of the war, Russia’s view of NATO expansion into Ukraine and even further to Georgia and Kazhakstan.

While reports coming out of Ukraine should be treated with scepticism whichever side they orignate from, stories and articles making moral judgements about which side are the good guys and who is baddie really take the business of news reporting to the level of kids playing games of Luke Skywalker's rebels versus Darth Vader and the Imperial Stormtroopers.

Despite the emotional nature of debate in this era of 'wokeness' when feelings trump logic and reason and beliefs outweigh facts, geopolitics is not a morality tale. Policies whould only ever be based on serving the strategic interests of the country you are defending. Talk of spreading European Union 'values' to Ukraine and further east into Asia is bogus, all Ukraine's new best friends are really interested in is spreading the economic and political influence To paraphrase a speech made in 1848 by British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston, there are no perpetual friends or enemies, only perpetual interests. Our interests are not only not the same as those of our adversaries in this conflict, they are not the same as those of our allies either so we either need to find a way to reconcile them in a satisfactory manner or prepare for an eventual war.

 

It may well be the case in the current conflict that while the current administration occupies The White House, Britain's interests align more closely with those of Russia than with America's or Ukraine's, yet for reasons that have more to do with virtue signalling or the desire to be one of the herd rather than a leader, Britain's current Prime Minister, along with those of France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Poland and most other European nations, along with their entire governments are going along with the line dictated from The White House and demented Joe Biden's handlers, Ukraine are the god guys in this conflict so we must support them in every way we can and Russia are the bad guys so we should do all possible to oppose then and effect regime change in Washington.

This kind of thinking is the main cause of NATO's problems with Russia since the turn of the century. For the last 30 years the U.S., and by extension NATO, have failed to acknowledge that Russia has legitimate interests in the area surrounding it. 

The Georgian conflict of 2008, which occurred after discussion of Georgia joining NATO and saw Russian troops marching into the former Soviet Republic, was a good example of this. Faced with a potential NATO member on its southern border, which like Balkan states would have provided a platform from which NATO military forces could attack, it was always likely that Russia would see the  Georgian breakaway entities of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as buffer republics with whom it could cooperate. It was Georgian entry into South Ossetia that led to the Russians crossing the border while pushing the Georgian insurgents back into their own country. It is reasonable to ask what role foreign advisors played in this conflict, given that it was an opportunity to gauge the nature and strength of the likely Russian response to any further attempt to draw certain nations it regarded as strategically threatening into the EU and NATO.

 In a 2018 speech marking the tenth anniversary of the Georgian conflict, Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev warned that an attempt by NATO to incorporate the former Soviet republic of Georgia could trigger a new, "horrible" conflict.

Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with the Kommersant daily broadcast by Russian state television that NATO's plans to eventually offer membership to Georgia are "absolutely irresponsible" and a "threat to peace."

Medvedev was Russia's president during the August 2008 war, which erupted when Georgian troops tried unsuccessfully to regain control over the Moscow-backed breakaway province of South Ossetia and Russia sent troops that routed the Georgian military in five days of fighting.

The Russian army was poised to advance on the Georgian capital, but Medvedev rolled it back, accepting a truce mediated by the European Union. (Associated Press, August 2018)

Discussion about Ukraine joining NATO was an even greater provocation to Moscow. Not only is Ukraine a large country directly bordering Russia, prior to 2014 the Russians were leasing the naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, which is the home of the Black Sea Fleet and their primary warm-water port. Although the lease was extended by another 25 years in 2010, a NATO-allied Ukraine would eventually make this position untenable for everyone given that, in the event of hostilities, NATO would certainly blockade the base. At this point, detaching Crimea from Ukraine would have become a strategic priority for Russsia, hence the 2014 referendum which achieved this without bloodshed but did not resolve the problem of a potential NATO force on Russia’s western border as NATO leaders continued their efforts to seduce the newly installed, pro - western government.

NATO forces in Ukraine have understandably always been a red line for the Russian government. The Russians regard NATO as a hostile power, a military alliance led by arch - enemy The USA. Thus NATO troops on their longest western border would be seen as an existential threat.That should have sent a message to Washington, London, Paris and the rest that after NATO and the EU had trampled on the 1993 agreement between Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin that Russia would respect the sovereignty of the former Soviet Union states and bother NATO and the EU would in return undertake not to recruit those states as members.

After NATO and the EU trampled on that agreement by granting membership to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia the Russians signalled their dissastisfaction but did nothing else. When moves were made to incorporate certain Balkan states, including Bosnia and Croatia into the alliance. With NATO already having accepted Bulgaria and Romania as members it is hardly surprising the Russian government felt there was an organised campaign to surround them with states belonging to an organisation that had been Russia's cold war enemy. More significant from an independent commentators perspective is that NATO is highly unpopular among the majority of the citizens living in the Balkan states, who remembered its brutal military onslaught during the civil wars of the 1990s in the region. Taking that into consideration and it is more difficult to dismiss Russia's fear as nationalistic paranoia.

The Balkan states encompass a region of great strategic importance, due to which it has been turned into an arena manifest with inter-imperialist contradictions and agendas. A policy of ‘divide and rule’ operated by supr - national bureaucraies including NATO, and Non - Government Organisations backed by certain billionaire financiers has been used to facilitate the creation of new and weak states such as Kosovo and North Macedonia in the Balkans. This has contributed to instability and a situation in which rivalry may again cause bloodshed in the region. Should the fragile peace break down in that way,  not only would invite further foreign interventions in the region by nations and alliances with an interest in installing or propping up governments that are servile to the expansionist agendas of globalist organisations. Russia is aware that establishment of such regimes increases the prospexts of exploitation and would bind the Balkan countries to imperialist organizations like NATO and EU.

Why, then, has the West continued to toy with the idea of expanding further into the Balkans, recruiting Ukraine and offering membership to Georgia and even Kazakhstan (which far from having a coadstline on The Atlantic, is fully and indisputably in Asia. Pursuing such policies was is bound to lead to conflict eventually. It appears that the western democracies has been hoping that continuing economic pressure via trade and financial sanctions would weaken Russia to the point that it could do nothing to oppose Ukrainian membership of NATO. But that was only ever wishful thinking, Russia has plenty of markets around the world for its grain, oil and gas, ammonium nitrate (the main ingeredient of commercial fertilizer and other resources. furthermore, has vast reserves of gold and negligible sovereign debt and is energy independent.

There has always been an element of hypocrisy in the warmongering of the US / NATO bloc: if Russia had understaken the kind of activity in Mexico as the U.S. has in Ukraine since 2014, the U.S. Army would have occupied Mexico City long ago. There would be no talk of sovereignty or democracy, only the hard reality that Russians could not be allowed to expand and strengthen their presence on the US border. And in that case Washington would be right, it is simply not acceptable in the interests national security to permit a hostile foreign power to  meddle in the internal affairs of a weaker neighbour state.

There is also a big question mark over whether further NATO expansion is beneficial to its original member states. The original strength of the alliance , when it was formed in 1949, lay in the fact that it had a limited membership agreed on the defined objective of preventing Soviet expansion in western Europe. But that was then, this is now, the geopolitical balance has shifted, creating  two problems that have been ignored by politicians and news media. First, if NATO is still a defensive alliance, who or what is it defending itself against? The knee - jerk reaction is to point at Russia but to do so implies that the existence of NATO itself casts Russia in the role of perpetual enemy, because without an enemy NATO has no reason to exist. NATO needs a bogey man to believe in, in order to scare poorly informed citizens into compliance with oppressive, globalist policies that are in fact against the interests of the people

The Russians have worked this out for themselves and concluded that their own national interests are likely to play out against a background of low-level Western hostility.

The other problem takes us back to the words of Lord Palmerston about our interests not being the same as the interests of our allies. The geopolitical interests of NATO members have changed greatly since 1952 when Turkey was admitted to the alliance despite being nowhere near the Atlantic. At the time, under the enlightened leadership of Kemal Ataturk, Turkey had rapidly become more aligned to western social values in the years since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

On top of that the country controls access to the Black Sea and its sheer size makes it a regional power. 

But  after seventy years it is hard to see how the interests of NATO members are aligned with those of Turkey. Firstly there is the question of the country's appalling record on human rights, and its genocidal campaign against the Kurds in the eastern extremity of its territory. The renewed influence of fundamentalist Islam in Turkey’s political establishment sets it at odds with its Western neighbours on important issues such as human rights, feminism and social inclusivity. 

Turkey is already a member however, it is difficult to see how the alliance could hold together when further NATO expansion risks drawing in countries whose own perception of their national interests may involve relying on NATO support for actions like that of Turkey in Kurdistan. That apart, we, or to be accurate our political leaders should consider precisely is our own security enhanced by including Georgia and Ukraine in NATO? 

While it would certainly antagonise Russia and committing us to the defence of countries which have a long track record for provoking their large neighbour. It is entirely possible that the nutters in Kiev or Tiblisi could launch a limited regional conflict anticipating that it would draw in the rest of NATO, as required by Article 5, and involve them in a direct attack on Russia.

If we take a critical and unbiased look at the current conflict it is quite possible the nutters in Kiev did provoke the Russian government beyond endurance, knowing that the USA had been itching for conflict with Moscow since the neo - con era, and felt confident that in the event of a Russian attack the west, especially the usual suspects in warmongering situations, France, UK, USA (the FUKUS axis) would leap to their defence. 

The prospect of an ever-expanding NATO carries significant risks that are not widely appreciated. While I am not defending Russia (let's be honest, when it comes to protecting their interests,they're complete bastards when anyone get in their way,), western foreign policy has contributed enormously to this crisis, and we need to accept that.  Russia has a legitimare right to protect its interests just as Britain, France, Germany have.

During this conflict and the build up to it influential figures on both sides have mouthed empty words about diplomatic solutions, but with the obvious diplomatic solution staring them in the effing face, all have talked of diplomacy then reverted to making demands of the other side that must be complied with before negotiations can begin. This is not the way to initiate negotiations. The first thing that must happen is Ukraine should be recognised as a buffer state between Russia and NATO allies, with NATO conceding that it will crease efforts to recruit Ukraine as a member and the Ukranian leadership accepting that gaining NATO back up for their future efforts to provoke Russia is just not going to happen. 

This must be settled by a formal treaty agreeing there will be no NATO membership for Ukraine and preferably no EU membership. Russia - haters will try to to argue this rewards Russia for its invasion, but given ongoing U.S./NATO provocation that refuses to even acknowledge Russian security concerns, how are the Russians to legitimately respond? 

All this is what should have been discussed in the debating chambers and committee rooms of democratic governments and reported, analysed and dissected by print and broadcast media but intsead of political debate there has been showboating as fools competed to heap ever more absurd vilifications on Vladimir Putin and Russia while presenting the thugs and clowns who govern Ukraine as only one small step below angels in the hierarchy of wonderfulness.

The way The U.S.A. and its allies casually usurp to themselves to themselves the right to meddle in the political affairsd of other nations in the 'interests of national security' (their definition of what constitutes national security being as solid as quicksand,) and then claimig the moral right to wage war on and effect regime chane in other countries which do the same do just isn’t tenable, and if it isn’t addressed honestly by the West it is inevitably going to lead to more conflict, whether armed or economic.

I have enormous sympathy for the Ukrainian people caught up in all this, and I hope that, if our homes were under attack, we’d fight with as much determination as them. But while though I acknowledge that Russia's incursion into Ukranian territory and the war they are waging on Ukranian citizens was by any standard unjustified, I do think it was inevitable. That the fer - right leaders of Ukrain have been doing over the past few years is the political equivalent of going into a pub, walking up to a mean looking, six feet six inch guy with muscles in his eyelashes, and deliberately spilling his beer. You can do that if you want to but you must expect consequences. If we in the west are going to poke the Russian bear, they will eventually hit back ... hard. Expecting them to accept the view that the West occupies the moral high gound and thus has a free hand in the Russian or Chinese sphere of interest and, eventually, in Russia itself is stupid beyond belief. We also have to ask ourselves whether the West, having displayed weakness and lack of resolve when its assumption of superiority is challenged benefits China which fot two decades has nurtured amitions of replacing the USA and the dominant global economic and military superpower. Taiwan aside, if Russia is squeezed to the point of collapse by western sanctions (unlikely as the current sanctions with hit European nations harder than Russia,) the Chinese are eagerly eyeing the vast natural resources of Siberia and eastern Russia and have the military capability of denying the West access to these resources if they choose. I doubt that the globalist wankerati in all there arrogance have thought through the likely chain of events so far ahead.

Russia and China are not natural allies, culturally they have little in common, but what they do share is a desire to run their countries as they think fit, without external interference. And they, along with Iran, have shown they can cooperate to protect themselves from outside threats if they have to.

I have earned myself many of the usual crop of insluts (Russian troll, Putin's rentboy, traitor etc.) for my dispassionate analysis of the Ukraine situation, but if we are to reclaim the internet from propagandists and self - appointed censors we should be clear about our own objectives. In order to persuade people to take a balanced and logical view of political adverseries rather than being led by emotions and so making themselves vulnerable to the machinations of propagandists and behavioural scientists, we must be able to understand the adversaries point of view. This is why reducing everything to good guys versus bad guys, and taking sides and hulrling insults at anybody who takes a different line is not the way to achieve lasting peace globally or to co - exist individually. We must at least try to provide a mature perspective that is not driven by the overriding need to be publicly perceived as Good People by the screeching harpies of progressivism, even if it sometimes meand playing Devil's advocate and arguing a case we do not fully agree with.

 

Sources:
Russia, NATO, Georgia
NATO The Destabiliser

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Friday, March 11, 2022

Syria - style Chemical Weapon False Flag Attacks Coming Soon To Ukraine


Life is becoming impossible for the people of Ukraine's beseiged cities - Picture: Business Insider

For two weeks now the content of mainstream media ews has been dominated by by the Russian incursion into Ukraine attack launched with the sole aim of conquering Ukraine and absorbing it back into the Russian empire, thus advancing Vladimir Putin's alleged ambition to recreated the Soviet Union. Bizarrely there is almost no mention of the fact that Russia;s action is a response to almost nine years of Western provocations.

These provocations were initiated  by a coup d'etat enginered by the deep state agencies of The USA and other NATO member states and culminated in the Euromaidan colour revolution in November 2013, which ousted the corrupt but democratically - elected administration of then-President Viktor Yanukovych. The real reason Yanukovych was overthrown was that globalist interests were miffed at his  decision to suspend an EU trade deal and move his country towards closer economic ties with Russia. 

As soon as the new US / NATO /EU sponsored, Russia hating, far-right sympathisers that made up the Western-backed post-Maidan government took office they began moves to force ethnic Russians out of Ukraine. This led Moscow to annex the Crimean Peninsula and to the predominantly ethnic Russian Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine region breaking away from Kiev’s control and declaring themselves independent republics in April 2014.

A near eight-year long civil war in Ukraine, involving Kiev-supported neo-Nazi factions such as Azov Battalion and Right Sector, and ethnic Russian guerillas in the breakaway republics have so far cost an estimated 14,000 deaths across both sides.

The Minsk Agreements between Ukrainian and Russian leaders, brokered by France and Germany for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe set out a framework within which Donetsk and Luhansk would be granted a degree of autonomy whilst still remaining under Ukrainian rule.

However the Kiev regime decided that they would not honour their side of the deal, a as well as the continuing their attacks on the ethnic Russians in Donbass, giving themselves a false sense of security based on the assumption that Ukraine would eventually be admitted as a NATO member and host weapons and troops intended to attack Russia,.Their belief that NATO membership would ultimately force Moscow to accept the genocide of ethnic Russians in Ukraine was incredibly naive. Their failure to understand the continued harassment of Russians in Ukraine would eventually provoke Moscow into launching a military intervention into its Western neighbour in order to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” the country was beyond stupid.

In the two weeks since Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border the military-industrial-complex / media narrative of the ‘Ukrainian resistance’ has made it clear that of the US and its allies is to drag Moscow into a military quagmire in the second largest country in Europe which will not help the people of Ukraine about whom the US led alliance claims, this conflict is being waged. Neither will it help the oppressed people of Ukraine's breakaway Donbas region who have been under attack by the Ukrainian government for the pas eight years. In fact the aim of the west seems only to be the creation of a war of attrition that will cripple Europe's second largest nation and a vastly important food producer with the result that living costs will soar in prosperous nations and there will be serious food shortages in many poorer nation of Africa and South East Asia.

The American led western alliance used the same ploy against the Kremlin  in 1979, at the height of the Cold War, American and European deep state agencies would bean surreptitiously arming and training Islamist fundamentalists known collectivey as the Mujahideen and including a group led by Osama Bin Laden that would later become Al Qaeda.

Years later, in an interview Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter recounted how, in 1979 drawing the USSR into a costly military intervention was a motivating factor in the activities of the CIA, MI6 and the French secret service.

Despite the current intention of the deep state and the war lobby apparently being draw the Russian Federation into an Iraq war-style mess however, there also appears to be an element who favour a far more dangerous approach. They are calling for a Libya-style no fly zone over Ukraine, with US / NATO air forces given orders to engage and shoot down Russian aircraft, which would inevitably trigger a catastrophic third world war involving the use of nuclear weapons.

Despite this clamour for a Western military intervention in Ukraine, which is getting vociferous support from people in internet comment threads who are so deluded from reading nothing but propaganda, as to believe such a war is winnable by either side, US President Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have stated unequivocally that such an act is not an option, citing the global nuclear conflict that would undoubtedly follow would result in, to use a cold war phrase, Mutually Assured Destruction.

Whatever the common sense being uttered by the current military advisers of our leaders, word on the street is the deep state elements in these military powers are already preparing to carry out a false flag operation in Ukraine, one with the intention of implicating Moscow in an act so outrageous it will be impossible to resist calls for military escalation, and to manipulate public and political opinion into supporting a NATO military intervention.

We have been here before of course, in 2017 the government of Bashar Al Assad in Syria had been involved in a six-year long conflict with Western-backed, Islamic fundamentalist irregulars armed and trained by US and allied nations. The guerillas, known as ISIS, al Nusra, ISIL and various other names were a proxy for a NATO / United Nations regime change campaign launched in response to Assad’s 2009 refusal to allow Qatar and Saudi Arabia to build a pipeline through his country, a development that would have, and was intended to undermine Russia's position as a key exporter of oil and gas to Europe..

 The funding and training of Islamic terrorists groups by the west powers, with the openly declated intention of replacing Assad’s secular Muslim government with a Western-friendly religious fundamentalist theocracy amounted to a proxy war by the American led coalition on a nation that was an ally of Russia, China and Iran.

In June 2013, after Putin had faced down the bid of Muslim sympathiser Barack Obama to create a pretext for ordering American and NATO troops into Syria, Iran and the Hezbollah group in Lebanon entered the proxy war at the request of the Syrian government, providing a key role in assisting Damascus in repelling the Western-backed terrorist campaign. This was probably one of the main reason  behind Assad's survival in office.  tide of the conflict in the Arab Republic’s favour however, come in September 2015.

The decisive factor in the defeat of the terrorists, after they had swept through the region taking control of vast swathes of Syrian, Iraqui and Kurdish territory was the delivery of Russian air support and technical advisers, again at the request of the Syrian government, enabling the targeting of terrorist strongholds with air strikes and artillery bombardment, and which allowed Damascus to retake the vast swathes of Syrian territory which had come under their control, such as the key city of Aleppo.

The Syrian regime change operation was heading for an embarrassing failure when warmongers in the anti Assad coalition finally resorted to desperate , stupid measures.

In early April 2017, a false flag  attack with chemical weapons (chlorine gas) was launched on the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun, with western media leaping to denounce Syria's leader Assad as a war criminal within seconds of the bombs exploding. In spite of a lack of firm evidence that the attack was the work of the Assad regime, the US administration of Donald Trump launched cruise missiles strikes on a Syrian government airbase three days later.T.hough the regime-change lobby worked themselves into a state of hysteria demanding a full scale invasion, Trump stopped short of that fatal step which would have plunged the world into war.

A year later the same tactic was repeated when a poison gas attack on the the city of Douma, again  of dubious origin, resulted in the US, Britain and France launching air strikes against Syrian government targets, again stopping short of a full-scale intervention after Vladimir Putin repeated his warning that in the event of an attack on Syria Russia would give its ally full military support.

Without wishing to diminish the sheer criminality of using chemical weapons against civilians or even military personnel, the emergence of doubt about the originators of the attack remind us of how disastrous a NATO escalation of hostilities could have been. Should a similar false flag operation take place in Ukraine, perhaps also involving chemical weapons or a nuclear reactor  even a ‘limited’ strike against Russian military infrastructure would immediately place the world on an irreversible path to the most grave consequence of all – nuclear war.

Thus we should all be dismayed at rumours that certain elements among the nations and agencies supporting Ukraine in this conflict are considering a similar false flag outrage in order to force The USA,  UK and France to lead a direct military intervention to engage Russian forces on the ground and in the air in support of Ukraine and rapid escalation to the use of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately the propaganda signs suggest we are heading down the same road as in Syria, with anti Putin propaganda being ramped up just as anti - Assad was in the days preceding the alleged gas attacks there.

Only yesterday I hear on a BBC News report that Vladimir Putin "had invaded Ukraine in the same way as he invaded Estonia, Georgia and Syria. We know that the action in Georgia was not really an invasion but an incursion aimed at halting the process of Georgia's admission to NATO, I can find no evidence of any recent military action against Estonia beyond a couple of minor border incidents and as mentioned above Russian troops entered Syria in 2014 at the request of Syria's legitimate government, (whether the west likes them or not.) It was the US and NATO troops that were in Syria illegally although not in great enough numbers to be considered an invasion. However that BBC report and the way it was worded, though not important, illustrates how propaganda and misinformation are being used to ramp up support for western military involvement in Ukraine.

Aside provoking general outrage because of their indiscriminate nature and thus manipulating the public mood from opposition to the pointless death and destruction of large scale conflict to an almost bloodthirsty lust for revenge, chemical weapons are of little use strategically.  The gas attacks in Syria were a part of a disinformation campaign aimed at demonizing Assad and his regime. Experience gained in WW1 from large scale use of chemical weapons showed them to be  ineffective as offensive weapons.They’ve been used sporadically since then but were only deemed a necessary part of the military arsenal because 'the other side has them.' 

 Some people have described what took place in Syria as a crude attempt at using what were effectively swimming pool disinfecting chemicals to provide photo ops for the propaganda corps.

What hasn’t been widely reported in mainstream news is that there are a large number of biological laboratories in the Ukraine. The number reported as being under American control (26 if memory serves correctly) suggest it would be a good idea for them to be identified along with what they are working on. Ukraine is primarily an agricultural country so there could be all sorts of pathogens lurking quite legitimately in a lab that if released in an uncontrolled way could cause problems. But then, like Poland’s ‘secret CIA black site’, there’s always the possibility that something tucked away in an obscure part of a large country that nobody visits is up to something dodgy. Governments aren’t very trustworthy.


I recall that there was considerable controversy at the time over the allegations that Assad (not  Putin) had 'used chemical weapons against his own people' with scepticism being fuelled by news video of rescue workers dressed in T shirts, shorts and sandals (not a haz - mat suit insight) wandering among the wreckage tending the surprisingly healthy looking alleged victims of the alleged gas attack.
Initial reports from the Organisation for Prevention Of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)  seemed to support the official line that the Assad government was responsible for that attack, the weapons used having originated in Russia. This was debunked by a Wikileaks report which by revealing before and after versions of the report showed that the evidence and conclusions in the original had been heavily amended to bring the report into line with the US / NATO version of events which had been intended to provide justification for direct military action by US / NATO forces in Syria.
https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/
So Ed Miliband should not feel shame, he made the intelligent choice of turning away from nuclear war.Tom Harris however, should wear sackcloth for evermore for penning this idiotic driven if nothing else. Should The Pentagon succeed in dragging UK and Europe into a war with Russia it will become a nuclear war. And it's not a question of takings sides or of 'teaching that nasty bully Putin a lesson,' get real.   If you still think war with Russia would be a good idea keep repeating over and over to yourself that cold war phrase, "MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION" because  that is what the people who support war are cheerleading for.


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Europe's Depleted Gas Storage Might Not Get Refilled Ahead Of Next Winter
While mainstream news reporting of the conflict in Ukraine continues to pump out a torrent of anri - Russia, pro - war propaganda the catastropic effects of this war that could so easily have been avoided are not mentioned. Well why would warmongering governments admit they have inflicted an energy crisis, food shortages and soaring living costs on their people for no good reason ...

Putin, Macron To Hold Urgent Talks To Halt Military Escalation In Ukraine
Even though the leaders of Ukraine itself are talking down the threat of war with Russia over the breakaway region of Donbas, America and Britain are still beating the war drums and demonising Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Russia insists they have no plans to invade Ukraine and one western leader at least, France's Emmanuel Macron, seems to be listening to messages coming out of the East European trouble spot...

Germany News Mag. Spiegel Asks "Is Vladimir Putin Right?" About NATO Expansion
As the confrontation along the border between Ukraine and Russia has escalated to actual shooting with ethnic Russian rebel separatists in Donbas reporting intensified shelling and initiating a "general mobilization" of military-age males, with Moscow denying they plan to invade and Ukraine's leaders accusing US, UK and French leaders of hysteria for talking up the threat of war, Germany's leading newspaper Spiegel asks the question fundamental to the entire conflict...

While Crazy Joe Biden Claims Victory Over Russia, NATO's Expansin Plans Have Been Derailed By PutinJoe Biden (or his handlers because we all know Joe's mind is gone,) have been trying to spin reports of Russian troops withdrawing from positions close to the Ukraine border as a diplomatic victory for the USA over Putin but in the geopolitical game things are seldom what they seem to be ...

As The COVID Narratyive Crumbles War Takes Over As The Scary Monster That Keeps People In Fear
As the COVID narrative crumbles under the weight of evidence that the vaccines do not work, masks are useless and lockdowns kill more than they save a new scaremongering narrative - or a revamped old one - is emerging as the threat of war with Russia is the latest fear and panic vehicle to scare the people into compliance with tyranny. Continue reading >>>

Currency Wars - Now The Euro Challenges The Mighty Dollar
Our http://www,greenteethmm.com/currency-wars.shtmlcurrency wars feature has taken a back seat these past two years as the COVID pandemic (or propaganda pandemic as some people might say,) has pushed all other stories aside. In our opinion however, the pandemic has served as a convenient smokescreen behind which all sorts of elitist skulduggery has been going on, hidden from the view of the general population. ... Continue reading >>>

Russia - Ukraine crisis: Western foreign policy failures
Mainstream media's hyping of the threat to Ukrained posed by Russian aggression is the latest in a long line of attempts to lay blame for western foreign policy disasters at the fet of Russia. In fact had Joe Biden not started to babble about Russian aggression, talking up the threat of conflict, there would be no crisis ...

Is The Russian Threat To Invade Ukraine Real Or A Globalist Conspiracy Theory?
Continue reading >>>While Joe Biden's handlers in Washington and Boris Johnson In London talk up the threat of war should Russia invade Ukraine as they claim Moscow is preparing to do,Ukrainian leaders are dismissive, accusing the west of ramping up hysteria in a bid to divert attention from oither problems.

British Government Laundered Fake U.S. 'Intelligence' On Ukraine
The British government on Saturday accused Russia of organizing a plot to install a pro-Moscow government in Ukraine, as the Kremlin masses troops near the Ukrainian border. The U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office gave relatively little information about the intelligence unveiled Saturday other than to say that the Russian government was considering trying to make a Russia-leaning former member of Ukraine’s parliament, Yevhen Murayev, the country’s new leader. Continue reading >>>

British Government Laundered Fake U.S. 'Intelligence' On Ukraine
The British government on Saturday accused Russia of organizing a plot to install a pro-Moscow government in Ukraine, as the Kremlin masses troops near the Ukrainian border. The U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office gave relatively little information about the intelligence unveiled Saturday other than to say that the Russian government was considering trying to make a Russia-leaning former member of Ukraine’s parliament, Yevhen Murayev, the country’s new leader. Continue reading >>>

One Of The Weaker NATO Members Goes Off Message To Prevent War With Russia
Mainstream media has been singing in unison on the Ukraine crisis, just as it has been over the vastly exaggerated risks posed by the manufactured pandemic crisis. Russia bad, war good has ben the mantra throughout the last couple of weeks as the ruling elites tried to turn up the the fear-and-panic generator to eleven [...]The whole Ukraine scare is as false as the pandemic ...

Putin has got Biden over a barrel with Ukraine – and markets know it
We’ve had a number of armed kerfuffles in Europe fairly recently but these were mostly centred on The Balkans and were local affairs [...] The threatened bust up between Russia and the west over Ukraine is much more serious – potentially the worst inter-regional conflict since the cold war, with far reaching consequences for both geopolitical and economic stability if mainstream mediaeports are to believed.

Storm Clouds Gathering Over Ukraine - Or Just The Usual Geopolitical Games
25 January 2022: As the COVID-19 Killer Virus Pandemic narrative crumbles under the weight of evidence that the vaccines don't work and therefore vaccine passports are irrelevant, masks are useless, and lockdowns only trash national economies and destroy businesses, the elites are desperately looking for another scare story to distract public attention from the godawful mess they have made with their globalisation plans, green energy follies and open borders insanity.

Spanish Populists to Enter Government for First Time After Regional Deal

 

11 March 2022
Leader of far-right Vox party in Castilla y Leon, Juan Garcia Gallardo gestures as he speaks during a press conference in Valladolid on February 14, 2022, a day after the results of the regional election. - Spain's far-right party Vox is posed to enter a regional government for the first …
CESAR MANSO/AFP via Getty Images

Spanish populist-conservative party VOX is set to enter government in Castile and León following a historic deal with the conservative People’s Party (PP) that will see VOX enter its first government in the party’s history.

Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, head of the PP in Castile and León, announced on Thursday that his party had come to a deal with VOX to form the next regional government, saying the parties had reached an agreement “that allows a stable and solid government with full respect for the constitutional order and the Statute of Autonomy of Castile and León.”

Juan García-Gallardo, who headed the VOX campaign in the region, confirmed the deal stating, “We celebrate today a sensible agreement, without winners or losers. Together, with a desire for dialogue and agreement, let us make a useful legislature for the citizens. Serving Castile and León must be our way of serving Spain.”

The agreement comes weeks after the regional election in Castile and León, which was held on February 13th and saw VOX surge from just a single regional seat with 5.5 per cent of the vote in the last election in 2019, to 17.6 per cent of the vote and 13 seats.

 Continue reading >>>

 

MORE posts on Spain's political chaos:

Wednesday, March 09, 2022

Is The Russia Invasion of Ukraine a Trojan Horse for The Financial Reset?

from The Daily Expose, March 9 2022
by Patricia Harrity

Putin, it would seem, has decided to invade Ukraine as an attempt to prevent the expansion of NATO into the Russian borders. This has been an increasing threat to Russian security according to the Russian President since a Ukrainian government was formed in the aftermath of a 2014 Obama-backed coup.

When Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea region, Western nations responded with sanctions aimed at making it more difficult for Russia to transact in the U.S.-dominated global financial system, therefore Putin would have been aware that the response to the invasion of Ukraine, would be predictably the same economic sanctions.

Could this be a Strategic plan from Putin who would have known the exact outcome of his actions?

The Background

We are now coming to the close of a financial era that commenced in August 1971, which is that of the “Fiat money,” according to former Bertrand Badré chief financial officer (CFO) of the World Bank.

In 1971 President Richard Nixon suspended the convertibility of the US dollar into gold (source). This in effect ended the 25-year Bretton Woods era agreement and System which had created a collective international currency exchange regime that had been in place since the 1940s. The system required a currency peg to the U.S. dollar so fixed the dollar price to gold (source).

LIVING BEYOND OUR MEANS

The dollar was now free from the gold standard and floated against other major currencies, relieving the pressure on the global major reserve currency and was to unleash a 40-year period of leveraged debt finance, bringing with it a perceived global prosperity and higher living standards for millions of people.

It was also accompanied by bouts of inflation and crashing asset bubbles and now that the discipline to use that responsibility carefully was gone countries began living beyond their means (UK) Unsustainable Debt) (Global debt soars to 356% of GDP). 

The debt-based monetary system has an interest rate attached to your money, meaning the debt continues to increase at massively higher rates than the real money increases and according to financial expert John Titus, this results in “periodic bloodlettings. 

 

 

Continue reading >>>
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UK to end 'strategic dependence on authoritarian regimes' for energy and vital resources

 from GB News, 9 March 2022

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said the UK must accelerate NATO's modernisation and deepen cooperation on tech and cyber, with a view to ending the "strategic dependence on authoritarian regimes for our energy and for other vital resources."

She added that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been “surprised” by the “toughness” of sanctions levelled against his regime.

Speaking at a press conference with US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in Washington, she said: “Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine is causing immense pain and suffering. Yet he is not making the progress he planned.

“Since the build-up on the border, the United Kingdom and the United States have led work in the G7 and through Nato to challenge Putin’s aggression.

“Before the invasion, the United States and the UK called out his playbook of false flags, attempts to install a puppet regime in Kyiv, of fake provocations. We worked with our G7 allies to warn that he would face severe costs and a determined Ukrainian people.

“We have surprised Putin with our unity and the toughness of our sanctions, hitting the banks, the ships, the planes, the oligarchs, and the oil and gas revenues. And the brave Ukrainian people have surprised him with their determination and their leadership.

“Now is not the time to let up. Putin must fail.”

Editor's note: Fine rhetoric from Ms Truss but it would have been more credible if she had mentioned where the thinks to oil needed to fuel the UK economy might be sources if not from tyrannical regimes like Russia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Syria and other oil producing nations with regimes that fall a long way short of being squeaky clean. 


 

 

 

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We Told You So - Government-funded Report Confirms World’s Largest offshore Wind Farm is UnprofitableA report commissioned by the Norwegian government has contradicted Boris Johnson’s recent claim that offshore wind costs have fallen by 70% in a decade. The report also blows a huge hole in Johnson's grandiose pledges to the COP26 conference that offshore wind power would propel Britain to its net - zero target for Carbon Dioxide emissions well before 2050, the target set by the climate conference for achieving that target.
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If you are one of the people who still relies on mainstream media for information, the 'on - message' news reports coming from the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow this week, and during the build up to the conference, might have convinced you that the entire world (barring a few crazy conspiacy theorists,) is signed up to the 'net zero' agenda and believes that destroying the economies of the developed nations while exporting our jobs, business and prosperity to places like India and China is the only way to save the planet. Continue reading >>>

Green Dreams Menu
It may be driven by virtue signalling or self hatred but the urge to destroy civilisation in order to save the planet and the ideological agenda that drive the gree movement are too far removed from the realities of life to ever achieve their aims.

Link to this page Energy Green Dreams

Green Dreams Menu
It may be driven by virtue signalling or self hatred but the urge to destroy civilisation in order to save the planet and the ideological agenda that drive the gree movement are too far removed from the realities of life to ever achieve their aims.

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Ireland Set To Become The First Country To Totally Abandon Fossil Fuels

The Irish have a reputation for stupidity. They are, taken as a whole, no more stupid than the English, French, Germans or any other nation, I’ve known many Irish people who are highly intelligent and very well educated. My wife is Anglo – Irish, born in England to Irish parents, so I sleep next to an intelligent Irish person. But collectively the Irish do have a penchant for making incredibly bad decisions ... Continue reading

Green Energy Scam Exposed Again

9 June, 2018

This has been a terrible week for the renewable energy business.

Across the world solar energy share prices have crashed. This was caused by a sudden and unexpected decision by China, the world’s biggest solar manufacturer and user, to rein in subsidies. According to Caixin Global:
China has abruptly put the brakes on solar power subsidies, seeking to stem overcapacity in a sector that has benefited for years from government incentives.
 

Germany’s Green Energy Flops While Global Fossil Fuels Boom…

Germany, not so long ago at the politically correct centre of the world, championing the cause of free immigration and the move to clean, green, sustainable energy (two policies guaranteed to leadt to the desruction of European civilisation, is suffering a crisis of arrogance as German society descends into chaos due to the actions lawless … Continue reading
 

NATO Expansion And The Ukraine War

 by Portfolio Armour

Wednesday, Mar 09, 2022 - 10:08

From COVID to Ukraine: Media-Manufactured Consent

On The "Putin Apologist" Accusation 

Driving home from the gym Tuesday night, I saw a billboard demanding a no-fly zone over Ukraine. This, it turns out, is now a super-majority position in America, according to a recent poll, despite the near certainty that this would lead to World War III. Another example of manufactured consent at work.

One of the ways the discourse about the Ukraine war is policed is by claiming that someone who mentions NATO expansion as one of the causes of the current conflict is a "Putin apologist". Oxford-trained British researcher Noah Carl wrote a piece refuting this lazy ad hominem charge. I have posted it in full below. Before that, a quick update on our system's top names, in light of the Ukraine crisis. 

Ukraine Crisis Rewards Oil Exposure 

In my previous post (Ukraine Is Trying To Goad The U.S. Into World War III), I mentioned that our top ten securities on Monday included five oil names. Our system's gauges of stock and options market sentiment started picking up oil names well before Russia's invasion of Ukraine though. For example, these were our top ten names on January 27th. As you can see, they included the Direxion Daily S&P Oil & Gas Exp. & Prod. Bull 2x Shares ETF (GUSH) along with the oil E&P Antero Resources (AR). 

Screen capture via Portfolio Armor on 1/27/2022.

Here's how they've done since: up 6.31%, on average, versus down 3.48% for SPY, with pretty much all of our gains coming from the two oil names plus the biotech stock Intra-Cellular Therapies (ITCI). 

Now on to Dr. Noah Carl's piece. 

Authored by Dr. Noah Carl at Substack

Mentioning NATO does not make you a "Putin apologist"

 

If you venture to suggest that NATO expansion has anything to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, you will be promptly informed that you’re a “Putin apologist” or that you’re peddling “pro-Putin talking points” (or some variation on this theme). The argument seems to be that, by suggesting Putin’s invasion was motivated – even in part – by anything other than bellicose revanchism, you’re absolving him of responsibility and even undermining the war effort. However, aside from being a blatant ad-hominem (most people, though not all, consider “Putin apologism” to be a bad thing), this argument is deficient on three counts.

First, foreign policy analysts have been pointing out the risks of NATO expansion since before Putin came to power. It’s therefore very difficult to see how they could have been engaging in “Putin apologism”, unless they are somehow capable of time travel. Vladimir Putin become Prime Minister of Russia in 1999, before succeeding to the Presidency the following year. Yet as far back as 1997, Jack Matlock – US ambassador to the Soviet Union – said the following in a Congressional statement:

I consider the administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Bill Clinton’s Defence Secretary William Perry wrote in his book My Journey at the Nuclear Brink that he was so opposed to NATO enlargement in 1996 that he “considered resigning”, and that he is “not willing to concede” that the “rupture in relations with Russia would have occurred anyway”. In 1998, George Kennan – who’s been described as the “architect” of the US containment policy during the Cold War – told the journalist Thomas Friedman:

I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves.

Second, many of those who’ve expressed reservations about NATO enlargement don’t exactly fit the mould of a “Putin apologist”. I’ve already named three – two former US ambassadors and a former defence secretary. But there are plenty of others who can scarcely be accused of having pro-Putin sympathies: former Australian Prime Minister Malcom Fraser; former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates; former British ambassador to Russia Sir Roderic Lyne; and current CIA Director William Burns. They’re all in this excellent thread by Arnaud Bertrand. Even Joe Biden warned about NATO admitting the Baltic states in 1997.

If a former US ambassador (and a patriot to boot) can describe NATO enlargement as something that “would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves”, it is surely possible for others to reach similar conclusions without being stooges of the Kremlin. Now I’m sure there are some genuine “Putin apologists” in the West, and they may well go around blaming NATO for the present crisis. But to conclude that everyone who blames NATO is therefore engaged in “Putin apologism” would be an example of the “Hitler used toilet paper” fallacy. (“Oh, you use toilet paper? So did Hitler!”)

Third, there’s a lot of evidence that NATO enlargement was a factor – arguably the most important factor – in Putin’s decision to invade. This evidence is by no means dispositive; isolating the causes of particular historical events is notoriously tricky. But I believe it’s possible to defend statements such as, “If the West had ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine, Putin would not have invaded”. Having said that, I’m willing to be convinced that I’m wrong. Some people claim that Putin always had designs on Ukraine, and would have invaded regardless of our policy; or perhaps that the only thing that would have stopped him is Ukraine joining NATO even sooner! If so, let them make their arguments without calling those of us who disagree “Putin apologists”.

 

 

So, what’s the evidence that NATO enlargement set the stage for Russia’s invasion? Much of it’s laid out in a 2014 article by John Mearsheimer titled ‘Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault’. I’ll do my best to summarise. Ukraine has always been an ethnically divided country, with mostly Ukrainian speakers in the North West, and mostly Russian speakers in the South East (see above). Prior to February of 2014, about 50% of Ukrainians favoured one party, and about 50% favoured another. The map below shows results from the 2010 election. As you can see, there’s an extremely strong relationship between ethnicity and voting.

 

Viktor Yanukovych, whose party was favoured in the Russian-speaking parts of the country, happened to win the 2010 election. So in 2010, Ukraine had a democratically elected (albeit massively corrupt) pro-Russian President. The trouble started in November 2013, when his government decided not to ratify an association agreement with the EU so that it could pursue closer economic ties with Russia. This gave rise to the Western-backed Euromaidan protests, and the eventual toppling of Yanukovych. Which in turn led to the outbreak of the war in Donbass and Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

It would be fair to say that, prior to the toppling of Yanukovych, both the West and Russia had been meddling in Ukrainian affairs – each trying to steer the country in its own direction. After this event, however, the country veered sharply away from Russia. (This was partly due to the fact that Crimea and the Donbass – the two most pro-Russian areas – had been removed from the electoral map.)

Petro Poroshenko, the man who replaced Yanukovych, announced that “we’ve decided to return to the course of NATO integration”. NATO troops began military exercises in Ukraine later that year. Then in 2019, the Constitution was amended to include joining NATO as a strategic goal. By June of 2020, Ukraine was recognised by NATO as an “Enhanced Opportunities Partner”. And in November of 2021, the US and Ukraine signed a “Charter on Strategic Partnership”, which declared that the US “supports Ukraine’s right to decide its own future foreign policy course free from outside interference, including with respect to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO”.

At the same as it was making overtures to joining NATO, the government began implementing pro-nationalist policies. The day after the toppling of Yanukovych, parliament voted to repeal a 2012 law that gave Russian and other minority languages the status of “regional languages” (allowing their use in courts, schools and other public institutions). This decision was initially vetoed by the acting President. However, the law was later ruled unconstitutional by Ukraine’s Constitutional Court. Efforts to promote Ukrainian nationalism were stepped up further under Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who assumed the Presidency in 2019. He banned pro-Russian media, and arrested the opposition leader – a gentleman named Viktor Medvedchuk, who happens to be a personal friend of Putin. (Medvedchuk stands accused of treason.)

Russian leaders have long viewed Ukraine as what Mearsheimer calls a “core strategic interest”. And they have repeatedly made this clear to their counterparts in Washington. Back in 1995, when CIA Director William Burns was working at the US embassy in Moscow, he wrote a memo stating, “Hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.” And in a later memo, sent to the US Secretary of State before NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Summit, Burns wrote:

Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.

The memo was titled ‘Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO enlargement red lines’. Burns had previously been called in by the Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and reminded of Russia’s long-standing opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine. Lavrov told Burns that “the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.” In spite of all this, NATO members at the Bucharest Summit formally agreed that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO”.

Russian opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine is particularly strong due to feelings of betrayal over earlier rounds of NATO expansion, which they had been assured by the US would not happen. While some commentators dispute the US ever promised Russia that NATO wouldn’t expand into Eastern Europe, the political scientist Joshua Shifrinson – who has studied the issue in greater detail than anyone else – comes to different conclusions. In a prize-wining 2016 article (with 185 footnotes), he notes that

during the diplomacy surrounding German reunification in 1990, the United States repeatedly offered the Soviet Union informal assurances against NATO’s future expansion into Eastern Europe. In addition to explicit discussion of a NATO non-expansion pledge in February 1990, assurances against NATO enlargement were epitomized and encapsulated in later offers to give East Germany special military status in NATO, to construct and integrate the Soviet Union into new European security institutions, and to generally recognize Soviet interests in Eastern Europe.

Shifrinson further states, “There are numerous reasons to condemn Russian behavior in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as against states in Eastern Europe, but Russia’s leaders may be telling the truth when they claim that Russian actions are driven by mistrust.” This surely helps to explain some of Putin’s remarks in his February 22nd speech, such as when he claimed “they have deceived us” and when he referred to the US as the “empire of lies”.

Of course, there are important cultural and geographic reasons why Russian leaders regard Ukraine as a “core strategic interest”. The cultural reasons are laid out in Putin’s rambling 2015 essay ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’ – which you can read for yourself. (Note: I’m not saying Putin is correct; I realise that his factual claims are heavily contested. I’m just saying that’s what he, and probably most Russian nationalists, believe.) The geographic reasons are more straightforward: Ukraine’s vast territory provides a buffer-zone between NATO’s Western Border and Russia’s major cities; and Russia requires access to its Black Sea Fleet, which is based in the port of Sevastopol in Crimea (see above).

Finally, it’s worth noting that Putin explicitly mentioned the threat of NATO expansion as the motivation for his “special military operation” in his February 22nd speech. In fact, he spends the entire first half of the speech criticising US foreign policy vis-a-vis NATO, and arguing that NATO is an aggressive not a defensive alliance. Of course, we shouldn’t take what Putin says at face value. Perhaps he was concealing the true motivations for his military aggression? But if you’re going to make this argument, you can’t rely on other things Putin has said (like his 2015 essay), since you’ve already assumed that his words can’t be trusted.

Arguing that NATO enlargement was a key motivation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not make you a “Putin apologist”. Foreign policy analysts have been pointing to the risks of NATO enlargement since before Putin came to power. And many of those analysts were bona fide American patriots (ambassadors and defence secretaries), not fringe commentators with an anti-Western axe to grind. What’s more, there’s a lot of evidence that NATO enlargement was a crucial factor in Putin’s decision-making: longstanding Russian policy with respect to Ukraine; developments in that country since 2014; and the content of Putin’s February 22nd speech.

Of course, none of this means we have to support Russia’s military aggression. So what’s the upshot? We should have followed John Mearsheimer’s advice in 2014: work with Russia to create a prosperous and neutral Ukraine, which respects minority rights. Of course, that’s no longer possible, as it’s 2022 and Russian artillery fire is raining down on Ukrainian cities. But if we want to end this conflict sooner rather than later, while minimising the risk of a devastating nuclear war, we should be pushing for some kind of settlement that accepts Ukraine won’t be a member of NATO.