I got a message from a friend yesterday morning (one with whom I occasionally discuss politics). It read, <iq>I guess the Guardian et al were right.....</iq> They were referring, of course, to the Russian escalation this morning in the Donbass. I wrote back: Sure they were. I'm not going to be so quick to believe everything I'm hearing right now the way they'd like me to hear it. Fool me once, shame on you, etc. Deep breath and wait to see how it shakes out. If they do get their war, then they did everything they could to make it happen, that's for sure. Champagne corks are a-popping in Bethesda (lotsa "defense" companies there). But I don't think it will lead to war. So far, they're now discussing whether the current troop movements count as an "invasion" because the territories in question (DRB and LRB) are part of something guaranteed at-least partial autonomy under the 2014 Minsk agreements (which Ukraine signed and has since ignored). I hope Russia doesn't let itself be baited any further, but this latest move is either (1) indicating that U.S./European behavior has crossed some sort of red line or (2) the Russians calling EU/U.S./NATO's bluff. Whatever the case, we also have to remember that China is almost certainly not unsupportive. Putin and Xi just met at the Olympics, so its unlikely that China was "surprised" in the same way that our clowns always seem to be "surprised" by everything no matter how many dozens of billions in budget they manage to inhale every year. I'm still reading and evaluating, but taking much of what I hear with a grain of salt for now (OMG shelling in Kiev!) <img src="{att_link}screen_shot_2022-02-24_at_13.16.21.jpg" href="{att_link}screen_shot_2022-02-24_at_13.16.21.jpg" align="none" caption="Russia Attacks Ukraine!" scale="25%"> I can't see this homepage of the NYT as anything but celebratory. We did it guys! We helped start another war! Income streams saved! The picture there is not of Kiev (as many will assume), but Kharkiv, which is just across the border from Russia's Belogorod (i.e. the city lies in the contested Donbass region covered by the Minsk agreement). <h>Slow Down</h> Unless you're directly affected by a current event (e.g. in a war-torn region), you are not under any obligations to form a quick opinion on that event. Take your time and try to figure out what's actually going on before "picking a side". Honestly, there's probably no "side" anyway---there's plenty of blame all around, usually. There is---and has almost never been---a "good guy". So where do I think we stand? I think we are seeing a media system that is very much on message and very sure of itself that it knows the truth. I know that this system is not only keenly interested in distributing propaganda, but also uniquely set up to do exactly that. The economic incentives of the entire system are structured to promote not the truth, but instead to promote being first with hyperbolic pronunciations in order to produce hits and generate engagement. It is not that they cannot be trusted to eventually get it right, but that we have to understand that they have strong incentives to get whatever they think they know out there, as quickly as possible. It doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong or dangerous or outright, unsubstantiated fabrication. They have learned that the upside is very high (increased revenues) and the downside is nonexistent (no-one even cares about retractions anymore). They have learned this lesson again and again. They know where the rewards lie. They lie with promoting war, the only industry that remains in the U.S. This industry buys most of the ad time on the major radio and television networks. There is no reason to be surprised that they are jubilant when a war they've been pushing for for only half a year seems to be coming to fruition. They've gotten this far; it will only take a little more effort to get the ball over the goal line and reap the rewards of a rich vein of wartime news over, hopefully (for them), many years. They've been promoting Russia as the enemy for a good decade, if not more. The recent Russian incursion is being called "unprovoked". Really? Wasn't the first attack against Russia the sanctions imposed against it? I don't mean the retaliatory and recent ones, but the crippling ones that have been in place for almost a decade already. [Update 25.02.2022, 13:30] The article <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/25/235254/" author="Patrick Cockburn" source="CounterPunch">Russophobia Leads Us to Assume the Worst of Russians – and Assuming They’re Demonic Could be Dangerous</a> writes <bq>News about the Ukraine crisis has in large part degenerated into propaganda. It is a confrontation between good and evil, between the simple hobbit-folk of the Shire against the dark lord of Mordor plotting to end their freedom and rule the world. Any suggestion the other side might have real grievances is ignored. These grievances may be exaggerated and the Russian response to them mistaken or wrong, but they need to be taken seriously if the crisis is ever to end.</bq> Almost no-one acknowledges (A) that it was ongoing and that (B) sanctions are an act of war more damaging to the civilian population than even rockets. The new sanctions are even worse, but just another attack by the West on Russia. Many don't seem to consider starving a country's economy to death as even an attack---much less an act of war---but those people are sanctimonious hypocrites with very pliable morals. Russia moving into the east of Ukraine can hardly be called unprovoked with a straight face, but they do it anyway, because of the overwhelming cloud of contextual ignorance that befuddles the large majority of most western populations. This ignorance has largely been sowed by the same media organizations. We eat up our own propaganda like popcorn and barely even notice it exists. Austerity works. Crypto is good. The markets are fair and free. Everything is Russia's fault, unless it's China's. Our wars are "humanitarian interventions" and based on RTP (Right To Protect) whereas Russia's are contraventions of the Geneva Convention and the greatest incursion on European soil since WWII. Sure, sure, OK. What I'm saying is: think for yourselves. Wait and see. Patience is a virtue. The firehose of information coming at you right now is <i>by definition</i> unsubstantiated. You shouldn't be basing any opinions or making any decisions based on it. It has all too often become a gossamer of lies and half-truths in the past. It is all too likely that you are being invited to cheer for a team that doesn't end up being the good guy. The U.S. and NATO do not have a good reputation, in that regard. Try to learn about the history of the region and the likely motives and incentives of the parties involved. Ukraine wants the U.S. and NATO to commit to its defense. Russia wants to keep NATO rockets off of its doorstep. Russia sees the opportunity to push its agenda through the Donbass region. Most of the people there are ethnically Russian (and many are Russian citizens), but that may just be a good excuse. The U.S. and NATO kicked this whole thing off eight years ago by investing $5B in the putsch in Ukraine, to install a more amenable government. These people play the long game. They don't really care what happens in between. Now, they've been banging the war drums for over half a year (at least) and have managed to push Putin into action. None of this would have happened without the west and the western media saying it would happen for a long time. They are nearly jubilant that they made it come true. They do not care about anyone in Ukraine. They do not care about the effects on the rest of Europe. Champagne corks are popping in Bethesda. As the article <a href="https://yasha.substack.com/p/vicious-cycles?utm_source=url" author="Yasha Levine" source="">Vicious cycles</a> writes, <bq>The point isn’t for Ukraine to win the war. The point is to make Russia bleed — economically and militarily. And it doesn’t matter how many people die or suffer or how much of Ukraine and its economy is laid to waste in the process.</bq> They're also popping at the White House as Russia has provided a nearly perfectly timed distraction to the 2,000 COVID deaths per day and the ever-increasing inflation in the U.S. After an uncomfortable year with the focus turned on domestic issues, the Democrats have the war they think they need to get through the mid-terms. None of them care about Ukraine or Russia. They are happy to bleed them all in exchange for political advantage. As the article <a href="https://rall.com/2022/02/24/its-the-inflation-stupid" author="Ted Rall" source="">It’s the Inflation, Stupid</a> writes, <bq>It is understandable for the president to focus on a major foreign-policy crisis. But obsessing over the fate of a country that is not a traditional ally, has little history of shared values with the United States and falls under the sphere of influence of another superpower is politically dangerous, particularly when it comes at the expense of economic issues close to home.</bq> The markets in the U.S. are up, of course. The markets love a good war. The markets in Russia have dropped significantly (see <a href="https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/02/putin-thought-of-everything-except-a-crash-of-45-percent-on-the-moscow-stock-exchange-and-big-russian-companies-losing-half-their-market-value/" author="Pam Martens" source="Wall Street on Parade">Putin Thought of Everything – Except a Crash of 45 Percent on the Moscow Stock Exchange and Big Russian Companies Losing Half their Market Value</a>). The media are highly unreliable for short- and even medium-term news. They have lied to you in the past for their own short-term gain and will likely do so again. If you have the luxury of not being directly affected by whatever is going on, then you should consider reserving your decision until you know more---or until what you think you know has been true for longer than 24 hours. After I wrote the text above, I received a subscriber email pointing to the article <a href="https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-war-in-ukraine" author="Glenn Greenwald" source="SubStack"></a> that starts with the following text. <bq>The outbreak of war between two or more nations is obviously one of the worst events that can happen for humanity, if not clearly the single worst. For that reason, when it happens, emotions are extremely high; nationalism and tribalism surge; the range of permissible debate radically shrinks; the political and media class unite in lockstep messaging across the political spectrum; and anyone even slightly off-key or questioning of that script is hunted down and held up as a heretic and traitor [...]</bq> That's quite elegantly put. The rest of the article is suprisingly short, includes a link to an excellent Chomsky video and also a discussion on Rumble (which I haven't listened to). I don't expect any significant number of people or organizations to follow this guidance. <h>Notes</h> After I wrote the above, I actually did my own research. It was a couple of hours' worth of reading, so far. I've included salient and relevant citations below, with almost no additional notes. The article <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/the-left-vladimir-putin-russia-war-ukraine/" author="David Broder" source="Jacobin">Stop Pretending the Left Is on Putin’s Side</a> <bq>To observe that those who destroyed Iraq, Libya, and Yugoslavia have no standing to condemn him is not an exercise in “both-sidesism.” The likes of Blair, Clinton, Trump, and Putin have often been on one same side, through material collaboration in the War on Terror and in their common undermining of the international law which they all claim to uphold. <b>Time and again, Washington has allied with despots, come to see them as unreliable, then launched military offensives against them that succeeded only in spreading chaos.</b> The Left has every duty to remember these disasters — and prevent them from being repeated in the present.</bq> <bq>[...] we can at least rely on certain core principles: <b>an unrelenting rejection of the use of military force</b>; a refusal to justify one set of generals by citing the crimes of another; and, above all, a defense of our own right to speak without fear or accusation of disloyalty.</bq> <hr> The article <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/23/putin-narrative-ukraine-master-key-crisis-nato-expansionism-frozen-conflict" author="Jonathan Steele" source="Guardian">Understanding Putin’s narrative about Ukraine is the master key to this crisis</a> <bq>It is crucially important for those who might seek to end or ameliorate this crisis to first understand his mindset. <b>What happened this week is that Putin lost his patience, and his temper. He is furious with the Ukraine government.</b> He feels it repeatedly rejected the Minsk agreement, which would give the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk substantial autonomy. He is angry with France and Germany, the co-signatories, and the United States, for not pressing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to implement them. <b>He is equally angry with the Americans for not taking on board Russia’s security concerns about Nato’s expansion and the deployment of offensive missiles close to Russia’s borders.</b></bq> <bq>Nato’s stance over membership for Ukraine was what sparked Russia’s takeover of Crimea in 2014. Putin feared the port of Sevastopol, home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, would soon belong to the Americans. The western narrative sees Crimea as the first use of force to change territorial borders in Europe since the second world war. <b>Putin sees this as selective amnesia, forgetting that Nato bombed Serbia in 1999 to detach Kosovo and make it an independent state.</b></bq> <bq>Convinced that Nato will never reject Ukraine’s membership, Putin has now taken his own steps to block it. <b>By invading Donetsk and Luhansk, he has created a “frozen conflict”</b>, knowing the alliance cannot admit countries that don’t control all their borders.</bq> I'm not convinced by this argument. Ukraine doesn't fulfill many of the conditions for NATO membership. It's unclear why Russia would feel the need to add another one. On the other hand, Steele continues, <bq>Frozen conflicts already cripple Georgia and Moldova, which are also split by pro-Russian statelets. Now Ukraine joins the list. There is speculation about what will happen next but from his standpoint, it is not actually necessary to send troops further into the country. He has already taken what he needs.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2022/02/21/what-accounts-for-putins-assertiveness-on-ukraine/" author="Ray McGovern" source="Antiwar.com">What Accounts for Putin’s Assertiveness on Ukraine?</a> <bq>That nothing will happen on either Ukraine or Taiwan without coordination between Beijing and Moscow seems to be key to understanding why Putin is feeling his oats. Yesterday, <b>Chas further reminded me that "China agrees with Russia that the US global sphere of influence needs rollback. It does not agree that Ukraine should be invaded, occupied, or annexed. Ironically, China is this century’s citadel of Westphalianism."</b> Is this not another reason why Putin would not invade Ukraine? In my view, if Putin did decide to do such a stupid thing, it is a given that he would check with Xi first, and that Xi would respond with a loud NYET in Chinese.</bq> <bq>What about Putin’s recognition yesterday of the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, and sending in Russian troops? <b>I’ll bet Putin gave Xi advance notice of Moscow’s decision, but I do not think the Russian president sought Xi’s approval, much less permission.</b> How the Chinese will react is anyone’s guess.</bq> Citing from the same article, here are some additional remarks from Amb. Jack Matlock (US ambassador to the USSR from 1987-1991): <bq>I could not and cannot imagine that Putin would be so stupid as to invade Ukraine, bomb its cities, etc., though obviously Russia has the capability, even without any exercises on the border. <b>The US also has the capability of attacking every country in the world without warning, so one must distinguish between capability and intent.</b> [...] Zelensky’s steadfast refusal to implement Minsk II gives Putin a dandy excuse to say that this left him no alternative to recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk entities. He is a judo master, whatever else one might say.</bq> <hr> The article <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/22/ukra-f22.html" author="Clara Weiss" source="WSWS">Russia sends troops into East Ukraine, Biden announces sanctions</a> writes, <bq>Since Thursday, civilian infrastructure across Donetsk, including kindergartens and schools, has been subject to shelling. According to the separatists in Donetsk, one civilian was killed in Monday’s shelling by the Ukrainian military. <b>On Friday, separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk initiated the mass evacuation of the civilian population to Russia, excluding men aged 18 to 55.</b> So far, at least 49,000 people have reportedly arrived in Russia, most of them in the Rostov region. Kilometer-long lines of cars waiting to cross the border have been reported since Friday. <b>Up to 700,000 women, children and elderly people may be evacuated from Donetsk alone.</b> With most of these people already completely impoverished before they were forced to flee, they are now faced with the loss of virtually all of their belongings and a catastrophic social and public health situation in Russia, where over 150,000 new COVID-cases are being reported every single day.</bq> <hr> The article <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/world/europe/ukraine-maps.html" author="" source="NY Times">Maps: Russia and Ukraine Edge Closer to War</a> has a pretty good (i.e. factual) overview of the situation in East Ukraine. <bq>The separatist enclaves claim all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions as their territory, but they control only about one-third of the area. <b>It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Putin would recognize the enclaves in their de facto borders or would seek to expand them by force.</b></bq> <img src="{att_link}ukraine_mults-b-squares.jpg" href="{att_link}ukraine_mults-b-squares.jpg" align="none" caption="Map of Russian emplacements around and in Ukraine" scale="40%"> <hr> The article <a href="https://original.antiwar.com/daniel_larison/2022/02/22/beware-the-sanctions-trap-over-russia/" author="Daniel Larison" source="Antiwar.com">Beware the Sanctions Trap Over Russia</a> writes, <bq>It remains to be seen whether the Russian government will take any action beyond moving troops into the separatist-controlled areas, and any decision on further punitive measures should hinge on the extent of Russian military action. Russia’s recognition of the separatist republics is illegal, and so is its military presence on Ukrainian territory, but <b>the US and its allies should be wary of launching a costly economic war in response.</b></bq> <bq>It is hard to see how impoverishing the Russian people and potentially throwing our own economies into recession make anyone more secure. <b>Just because broad sanctions are the default US response to many international problems does not make them the right response here.</b></bq> <bq><b>The other danger that comes from broad sanctions is that they tend to become permanent.</b> Whether through inertia or by design, US sanctions are almost never lifted once they are imposed, and they often become an insuperable barrier to repairing damaged relations with a targeted country.</bq> Obviously, this advice will have fallen on deaf ears. Obviously, the U.S. will stumble into the most ham-handed possible response that closes the most diplomatic doors. <hr> The article <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/23/euro-f23.html" author="Johannes Stern, Alex Lantier" source="WSWS">EU countries impose sanctions on Russia over Ukraine crisis</a> <bq>The power that intervened in Ukraine in 2014 was not primarily Russia, however, but Washington and Berlin. <b>When Le Monde denounces the “2014 intervention,” it attacks Russian aid to forces in Donetsk and Luhansk, but falsely treats the Kiev regime as an entirely legal entity by simply passing over in silence the fact that it was installed through an illegitimate, far-right coup.</b></bq> <hr> The article <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/23/pers-f23.html" author="Joseph Kishore" source="WSWS">Who in the Lord’s name gave the US the right? A question for Mr. Biden</a> writes that NATO was the organization that established the precedent that Putin claims to be following in Ukraine. <bq><b>The catastrophe stoked by the US and NATO powers was used, in 1999, to justify direct military intervention.</b> Waving the banner of “humanitarianism,” eagerly supported by layers of the upper middle class and academia, the Clinton administration launched its war against Serbia to enforce the secession of the province of Kosovo. It was accompanied by all sorts of claims of human rights violations that were ultimately demonstrated to be grossly exaggerated. <b>The war was carried out by NATO, which did not obtain a resolution from the United Nations and was therefore acting in direct violation of international law.</b> It culminated in the installation of a government in Kosovo run by the Kosovo Liberation Army [...]</bq> NATO created the template, and is the first to point the figure when anyone emulates it. Smooth. <bq>The strategists of American imperialism interpreted the dissolution of the Soviet Union three decades ago as an opportunity to use military force to restructure global relations. In the process, the US has proclaimed, and exercised, the “right” to invade, bomb and instigate regime change operations in countries throughout the world. <b>The NATO military alliance has been systematically extended throughout Eastern Europe, to the very borders of Russia. Now, the US is instigating a conflict with Russia over the sacred “principle” that Ukraine be allowed to join NATO as well.</b></bq> <hr> The article <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/23/putins-advance-into-ukraine-compares-with-saddam-husseins-invasion-of-kuwait-a-disaster-for-russia/" author="Patrick Cockburn" source="CounterPunch">Putin’s Advance Into Ukraine Compares with Saddam Hussein’s Invasion of Kuwait…a Disaster for Russia</a> writes, <bq>[...] the Russian advance has a political impact that goes far beyond the Donbas region and affects the future of Ukraine and Europe. By recognising the independence of the two separatist republics <b>Putin has ripped up any prospect of a diplomatic solution with Ukraine.</b> At the heart of the Minsk-2 agreement of 2015 was an unimplemented accord for autonomy for the pro-Russian republics within Ukraine that looked like the only feasible diplomatic road forward – and this is now gone forever.</bq> <hr> <info>[Update 25.02.2022, 17:45]</info> The article <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/25/235254/" author="Patrick Cockburn" source="CounterPunch">Russophobia Leads Us to Assume the Worst of Russians – and Assuming They’re Demonic Could be Dangerous</a> writes, <bq>[...] for all the expectations of a <b>full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine</b> predicted as imminent by President Biden and Boris Johnson, <b>this has not occurred.</b> Supposedly, Russians commanders leading 190,000 Russian troops had received definitive orders to attack at the weekend, and by now their tank columns should be racing towards Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, but <b>in fact they have not moved.</b></bq> <bq>It is perfectly legitimate for Western governments to describe this as the invasion of sovereign Ukrainian territory. But it is so far in an area that was totally under Moscow’s control since the separatist leaders are Russian proxies and, whatever term one uses, <b>it is not the all-out military assault that Biden and Johnson were talking about, which may be still to come, but has not come yet.</b></bq> <bq>Because Russian grievances are assumed to be without merit, their actions appear irrational or demonic. They may be true, but assuming that this is the case from the beginning only deepens the crisis and makes it more insoluble.</bq> Level-headed assessment. <hr> <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/chris-hedges-ukraine-soviet-union-russia-war/279793/" author="Chris Hedges" source="Mint Press News">Russia, Ukraine and the Chronicle of a War Foretold</a> <bq><b>Poland, for example, just agreed to spend $ 6 billion on M1 Abrams tanks</b> and other U.S. military equipment. [...] The consequences of pushing NATO up to the borders with Russia — <b>there is now a NATO missile base in Poland 100 miles from the Russian border</b> — were well known to policy makers. Yet they did it anyway. <b>It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense.</b> War, after all, is a business, a very lucrative one. It is why we spent two decades in Afghanistan although there was near universal consensus after a few years of fruitless fighting that we had waded into a quagmire we could never win.</bq> <bq>The Obama administration, not wanting to further inflame tensions with Russia, blocked arms sales to Kiev. But this act of prudence was abandoned by the Trump and Biden administrations. <b>Weapons from the U.S. and Great Britain are pouring into Ukraine, part of the $1.5 billion in promised military aid.</b> The equipment includes hundreds of sophisticated Javelins and NLAW anti-tank weapons <b>despite repeated protests by Moscow.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-party-of-chaos-blows-its-cover/" author="James Howard Kunstler" source="Clusterfuck Nation">The Party of Chaos Blows Its Cover</a> <bq>And now here is what I think is happening and will happen in Ukraine. <b>The Russian aim is to neutralize Ukraine’s military capability — the means for harassing the eastern provinces known as the Donbas.</b> That has been accomplished. Ukraine no longer has an air force, a navy, or a whole lot of weapons and munitions. It is surely in Russia’s interest to complete this operation in as few days as possible to minimize harm to civilian lives and property.</bq>