How Ukraine’s Jewish President Made Peace With Neo-Nazi Paramilitaries

Alexander Rubinstein And Max Blumenthal,

The Grayzone.

March 5, 2022




https://popularresistance.org/how-ukraines-jewish-president-zelensky-made-peace-with-neo-nazi-paramilitaries-on-front-lines-of-war-with-russia/





While Western Media Deploys Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewish Heritage To Refute Accusations Of Nazi Influence In Ukraine, The President Has Ceded To Neo-Nazi Forces And Now Depends On Them As Front Line Fighters.

Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away.

Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy.

With appeals for disengagement from the frontlines firmly rejected, Zelensky melted down on camera. “I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelensky implored the fighters.

Once video of the stormy confrontation spread across Ukrainian social media channels, Zelensky became the target of an angry backlash.

Andriy Biletsky, the proudly fascist Azov Battalion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen”, vowed to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky pressed any further. Meanwhile, a parliamentarian from the party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko openly fantasized about Zelensky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.

Though Zelensky achieved a minor disengagement, the neo-Nazi paramilitaries escalated their “No Capitulation” campaign. And within months, fighting began to heat up again in Zolote, sparking a new cycle of violations of the Minsk Agreement.

By this point, Azov had been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its street vigilante wing, known as the National Corps, was deployed across the country under the watch of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and alongside the National Police. In December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament.

A full-scale conflict with Russia was approaching, and the distance between Zelensky and the extremist paramilitaries was closing fast.

This February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukrainian territory on a stated mission to “demilitarize and denazify” the country, US media embarked on a mission of its own: to deny the power of neo-Nazi paramilitaries over the country’s military and political sphere. As the US government-funded National Public Radio insisted, “Putin’s language [about denazification] is offensive and factually wrong.”

In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, US media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky, a former TV star and comedian from a Jewish background. It is a role the actor-turned-politician has eagerly assumed.

But as we will see, Zelensky has not only ceded ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrusted them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russian and Russian forces.
The President’s Jewishness As Western Media PR Device

Hours before President Putin’s February 24 speech declaring denazification as the goal of Russian operations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “asked how a people who lost eight million of its citizens fighting Nazis could support Nazism,” according to the BBC.

Raised in a non-religious Jewish family in the Soviet Union during the 1980’s, Zelensky has downplayed his heritage in the past. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked during a 2019 interview in which he declined to go into further detail about his religious background.

Today, as Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion, Zelensky is no longer ashamed to broadcast his Jewishness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he wondered aloud during a public address. For a US media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool.

A few examples of the US media’s deployment of Zelensky as a shield against allegations of rampant Nazism in Ukraine are below (see mash-up above for video):
PBS NewsHour noted Putin’s comments on denazification with a qualifier: “even though President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and his great uncles died in the Holocaust.”
On Fox & Friends, former CIA officer Dan Hoffman declared that “it’s the height of hypocrisy to call the Ukrainian nation to denazify — their president is Jewish after all.”
On MSNBC, Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner said Putin’s “terminology, outrageous and obnoxious as it is — ‘denazify’ where you’ve got frankly a Jewish president in Mr. Zelensky. This guy [Putin] is on his own kind of personal jihad to restore greater Russia.”
Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn said on Fox Business she’s “been impressed with President Zelensky and how he has stood up. And for Putin to go out there and say ‘we’re going to denazify’ and Zelensky is Jewish.”
In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Gen. John Allen denounced Putin’s use of the term, “de-Nazify” while the newsman and former Israel lobbyist shook his head in disgust. In a separate interview with Blitzer, the so-called “Ukraine whistleblower” and Ukraine-born Alexander Vindman grumbled that the claim is “patently absurd, there’s really no merit… you pointed out that Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish… the Jewish community [is] embraced. It’s central to the country and there is nothing to this Nazi narrative, this fascist narrative. It’s fabricated as a pretext.”

Behind the corporate media spin lies the complex and increasingly close relationship Zelensky’s administration has enjoyed with the neo-Nazi forces invested with key military and political posts by the Ukrainian state, and the power these open fascists have enjoyed since Washington installed a Western-aligned regime through a coup in 2014.

In fact, Zelensky’s top financial backer, the Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, has been a key benefactor of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and other extremists militias.
Backed By Zelensky’s Top Financier, Neo-Nazi Militants Unleash A Wave Of Intimidation

Incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, the Azov Battalion is considered the most ideologically zealous and militarily motivated unit fighting pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region.

With Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel insignia on the uniforms of its fighters, who have been photographed with Nazi SS symbols on their helmets, Azov “is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology…[and] is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing US-based white supremacy organizations,” according to an FBI indictment of several US white nationalists that traveled to Kiev to train with Azov.

Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian energy baron of Jewish heritage, has been a top funder of Azov since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions, and has deployed them as a personal thug squad to protect his financial interests.

In 2019, Kolomoisky emerged as the top backer of Zelensky’s presidential bid. Though Zelensky made anti-corruption the signature issue of his campaign, the Pandora Papers exposed him and members of his inner circle stashing large payments from Kolomoisky in a shadowy web of offshore accounts.

When Zelensky took office in May 2019, the Azov Battalion maintained de facto control of the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol and its surrounding villages. As Open Democracy noted, “Azov has certainly established political control of the streets in Mariupol. To maintain this control, they have to react violently, even if not officially, to any public event which diverges sufficiently from their political agenda.”

Attacks by Azov in Mariupol have included assaults on “feminists and liberals” marching on International Women’s Day among other incidents.

In March 2019, members of the Azov Battalion’s National Corps attacked the home of Viktor Medvedchuk, the leading opposition figure in Ukraine, accusing him of treason for his friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.

Zelensky’s administration escalated the attack on Medvedchuk, shuttering several media outlets he controlled in February 2021 with the open approval of the US State Department, and jailing the opposition leader for treason three months later. Zelensky justified his actions on the grounds that he needed to “fight against the danger of Russian aggression in the information arena.”

Next, in August 2020, Azov’s National Corps opened fire on a bus containing members of Medvedchuk’s party, Patriots for Life, wounding several with rubber-coated steel bullets.
Zelensky Failed To Rein In Neo-Nazis, Wound Up Collaborating With Them

Following his failed attempt to demobilize neo-Nazi militants in the town of Zolote in October 2019, Zelensky called the fighters to the table, telling reporters “I met with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and everyone else.”

A few seats away from the Jewish president was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.

During the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” that ousted Ukraine’s elected president in 2014, C14 activists took over Kiev’s city hall and plastered its walls with neo-Nazi insignia before taking shelter in the Canadian embassy.

As the former youth wing of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, C14 appears to draw its name from the infamous 14 words of US neo-Nazi leader David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

By offering to carry out acts of spectacular violence on behalf of anyone willing to pay, the hooligans have fostered a cozy relationship with various governing bodies and powerful elites across Ukraine.

A March 2018 report by Reuters stated that “C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a ‘municipal guard’ to patrol the streets,” effectively giving them the sanction of the state to carry out pogroms.

As The Grayzone reported, C14 led raid to “purge” Romani from Kiev’s railway station in collaboration with the Kiev police.

Not only was this activity sanctioned by the Kiev city government, the US government itself saw little problem with it, hosting Bondar at an official US government institution in Kiev where he bragged about the pogroms. C14 continued to receive state funding throughout 2018 for “national-patriotic education.”

Karas has claimed that the Ukrainian Security Serves would “pass on” information regarding pro-separatist rallies “not only [to] us, but also Azov, the Right Sector and so on.”

“In general, deputies of all factions, the National Guard, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs work for us. You can joke like that,” Karas said.

Throughout 2019, Zelensky and his administration deepened their ties with ultra-nationalist elements across Ukraine.
After Prime Minister Attends Neo-Nazi Concert, Zelensky Honors Right Sector Leader

Just days after Zelensky’s meeting with Karas and other neo-Nazi leaders in November 2019, Oleksiy Honcharuk – then the Prime Minister and deputy head of Zelensky’s presidential office – appeared on stage at a neo-Nazi concert organized by C14 figure and accused murderer Andriy Medvedko.

Zelensky’s Minister for Veterans Affairs not only attended the concert, which featured several antisemitic metal bands, she promoted the concert on Facebook.

Also in 2019, Zelensky defended Ukrainian footballer Roman Zolzulya against Spanish fans taunting him as a “Nazi.” Zolzulya had posed beside photos of the World War II-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and openly supported the Azov Battalion. Zelensky responded to the controversy by proclaiming that all of Ukraine backed Zolzulya, describing him as “not only a cool football player but a true patriot.”

In November 2021, one of Ukraine’s most prominent ultra-nationalist militiamen, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Bandera who led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.

A month later, as war with Russia drew closer, Zelensky awarded Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the “Hero of Ukraine” commendation. Known as “Da Vinci,” Kosyubaylo keeps a pet wolf in his frontline base, and likes to joke to visiting reporters that his fighters “feed it the bones of Russian-speaking children.”
Ukrainian State-Backed Neo-Nazi Leader Flaunts Influence On The Eve Of War With Russia

On February 5, 2022, only days before full-scale war with Russia erupted, Yevhen Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 delivered a stem-winding public address in Kiev intended to highlight the influence his organization and others like it enjoyed over Ukrainian politics.

“LGBT and foreign embassies say ‘there were not many Nazis at Maidan, maybe about 10 percent of real ideological ones,’” Karas remarked. “If not for those eight percent [of neo-Nazis] the effectiveness [of the Maidan coup] would have dropped by 90 percent.”

The 2014 Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” would have been a “gay parade” if not for the instrumental role of neo-Nazis, he proclaimed.

Karas went on to opine that the West armed Ukrainian ultra-nationalists because “we have fun killing.” He also fantasized about the balkanization of Russia, declaring that it should be broken up into “five different” countries.
“If We Get Killed…We Died Fighting A Holy War”

When Russian forces entered Ukraine this February 24, encircling the Ukrainian military in the east and driving towards Kiev, President Zelensky announced a national mobilization that included the release of criminals from prison, among them accused murderers wanted in Russia. He also blessed the distribution of arms to average citizens, and their training by battle-hardened paramilitaries like the Azov Battalion.

With fighting underway, Azov’s National Corps gathered hundreds of ordinary civilians, including grandmothers and children, to train in public squares and warehouses from Kharviv to Kiev to Lviv.

On February 27, the official Twitter account of the National Guard of Ukraine posted video of “Azov Fighters” greasing their bullets with pig fat to humiliate Russian Muslim fighters from Chechnya.

A day later, the Azov Battalion’s National Corps announced that the Azov Battalion’s Kharkiv Regional Police would begin using the city’s Regional State Administration building as a defense headquarters. Footage posted to Telegram the following day shows the Azov-occupied building being hit by a Russian airstrike.

Besides authorizing the release of hardcore criminals to join the battle against Russia, Zelensky has ordered all males of fighting age to remain in the country. Azov militants have proceeded to enforce the policy by brutalizing civilians attempting to flee from the fighting around Mariupol.

According to one Greek resident in Mariupol recently interviewed by a Greek news station, “When you try to leave you run the risk of running into a patrol of the Ukrainian fascists, the Azov Battalion,” he said, adding “they would kill me and are responsible for everything.”

Footage posted online appears to show uniformed members of a fascist Ukrainian militia in Mariupol violently pulling fleeing residents out of their vehicles at gunpoint.

Other video filmed at checkpoints around Mariupol showed Azov fighters shooting and killing civilians attempting to flee.

On March 1, Zelensky replaced the regional administrator of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbass region.

Meanwhile, as a massive convoy of Russian armored vehicles bore down on Kiev, Yehven Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 posted a video on YouTube from inside a vehicle presumably transporting fighters.

“If we get killed, it’s fucking great because it means we died fighting a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we survive, it’s going to be even fucking better! That’s why I don’t see a downside to this, only upside!”

On The Predictable Demise Of RT America

 

By Sam Husseini.

March 5, 2022

 

https://popularresistance.org/on-the-predictable-demise-of-rt-america-a-chance-for-grassroots-global-media/

 

 

A Chance For Grassroots Global Media?

The closure of RT America follows effective censorship of the channel. The ultimate decision to close was made following a cut off of service by DirecTV and Roku. Big Tech firms were also increasingly targeting RT. Reuters reported: “Tech companies in recent days have moved to restrict Russian state-controlled media including RT and Sputnik in response to requests from governments and calls to prevent the spread of Russia propaganda.”

Many will try to argue that the developments in the U.S. are completely different from the European Commission recently banned RT and Sputnik.

But it more clearly highlights the congruence of government and major corporate agendas. And indeed, as with Big Tech censorship generally, sometimes the collusion is outright, see my interview last year with Nadine Strossen, former head of the ACLU. Contrary to the common mantra that Big Tech platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter get to decide what content they want, Strossen argues “Private sector actors are directly bound by constitutional norms, including the First Amendment” if they are being coerced by or colluding with the government.

And direct censorship has been done by the U.S. government. For example, in 2020, the Trump administration seized the internet domain for the American Herald Tribune, claiming it was controlled by Iran. The following year, the Biden administration seized the domains for Press TV and over 30 others on similar grounds. The mechanism for this was sanctions that were placed on Iran — thus, sweeping sanctions can be used effectively as an instrument against the First Amendment.

Such compulsions go back. In 2008, a New York man who was trying to make Al-Manar, a TV station backed by Hezbollah in Lebanon, available to people in the U.S. was sentenced to at least five years in prison. There were at best minimal efforts to oppose this on First Amendment grounds.

But RT America was different from many of these in that RT America reached a lot of people. I remember chatting with an elderly man several years ago in rural Maryland who I happened to strike up a conversation with in a store. After our talk turned to politics, he excitedly told me about this great outlet he was watching for news — RT.

In all honesty, I was surprised at first when I saw RT’s substantial operations in DC. The U.S. government had shut down Press TV’s offices in DC. But there RT’s offices were — rows and rows of producers and other workers.

I began to suspect that RT and RT America were allowed to blossom in part because a pretext could always be found to pull the plug on them.

I worked for a time in 2007 with The Real News, then based in Toronto, which aimed to be a genuinely independent media outlet. The Real News had relatively modest funding but a lot of promise.

I thought The Real News at that point was a terribly important project — what could challenge the power of the U.S. establishment more than an independent, vibrant 24/7 media outlet?

But part of a strategy of preventing the emergence of a global independent media outlet might have included allowing the emergence of national outlets which tapped into dissent and discontent in the U.S., but which could easily have the rug pulled out from under them at any time chosen by the U.S. establishment. So, did RT end up effectively syphoning off the viewers that could have helped build up The Real News?

In January of 2021, in explaining the lack of a vibrant independent media outlet in the U.S., I wrote: “The possibility of something emerging was ironically hindered by other nationalist outlets. After Al Jazeera dudded out, instead of people in the U.S. and elsewhere trying to build something, people turned to RT etc with obvious problems, I *suspect that RT was allowed to become entrenched by the U.S. establishment for exactly this reason — its rise and funding helped preclude people from building a grassroots network and RT could obviously be dismissed when the establishment chose to do so.”

Given the secretive nature of U.S. government institutions, it’s virtually impossible to show that that’s what happened, but regardless, clearly the U.S. establishment is now gunning for RT.To be clear, beyond the obvious limitations, I have thought that RT, perhaps because of its governmental backing, was at times quite limited in its critique of U.S. government policy, see my piece “Stated Goals vs Actual Goals: ‘CrossTalk’ Lives Up to Its Name” from 2015. I end that piece: “We have these media outlets of various nationalities — RT for Russia, France 24 for France, CNN for the U.S. establishment, Fox for the U.S. establishment rightwing, MSNBC for U.S. establishment corporate liberals, Al-Jazeerafor Qatar, Al-Arabia for Saudi Arabia, CCTV for China, etc.

“They all foster shallowness and ultimately prize hacks over real journalists.”

“We desperately need a global, real network dedicated to real facts and meaningful dialogue between various viewpoints.”

So, ironically, there may be a silver lining: The demise of RT America might in fact be an opportunity to build the global media structures we so desperately need.

Such an attempt, if it were even mildly successful, will likely face brutal attack.

In 2010, following pressure from then Sen. Joe Lieberman, VISA, Mastercard and Amazon pulled the plug on WikiLeaks, which had become a major sensation based on the “Collateral Murder” video.

When “Collateral Murder” came out, one could see the promise of WikiLeaks, getting direct support from millions around the world and developing a new type of journalism that could powerfully hold governments and corporations to account. But of course, WikiLeaks has been savagely attacked, such that most of their resources had to be directed at defending their founder. Still, the assaults on WikiLeaks have come at a cost for the U.S. government, exposing their tortured onslaughts on the group.

Given the seemingly ever more demented state of affairs, the lack of focus on the facts that people need to know, the manipulation of information by Big Tech, the lack of meaningful dialogue or debate on large media outlets and so many other obstacles, the need for an independent, global media outlet is more urgent than ever.

 

 

Is This Russian Propaganda?

Caitlin Johnstone.

March 5, 2022




https://popularresistance.org/is-this-russian-propaganda-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/






We’re risking a very fast, very radioactive World War 3 to defend the “democracy” of a nation whose government bans opposition parties, imprisons political opponents, shuts down opposition media, and takes all its orders from Washington due to a US-backed coup in 2014.

“Defending Ukrainian democracy” makes as much sense as “Defending Mongolian seaports”.

The powers responsible for destroying Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen are the same powers we’re trusting to carefully navigate extremely delicate nuclear brinkmanship escalations without ending the world.

“Relax, nobody’s gonna start a nuclear war” is a belief that is premised upon the assumption that the empire which laid waste those nations, while destroying our environment and making everyone crazy and miserable, is competent enough to walk that precarious and unpredictable tightrope.

I keep getting comments like “You’re saying we just can’t strike Russia AT ALL, just because they have nukes??”

Yes. Fucking duh. What are you an idiot? What the fuck is wrong with people? Did everyone forget what nuclear weapons are? Did schools stop teaching this or something?

You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand. And right now with Ukraine the entire western political/media class is pouring a tremendous amount of energy into keeping people from understanding the problem.

If they were telling us the truth about Russia they wouldn’t be censoring Russian media.

Kinda odd how defending freedom and democracy requires such copious amounts of censorship.

Don’t worry, I’m sure all those socialist and antiwar Americans that were platformed by RT America can just get jobs criticizing the murderousness and corruption of their government in the free press of the western mainstream media.

I wonder if we should be concerned that the entire western world is propagandizing and censoring like it’s on war footing?

Socialists and anti-imperialists should never accept platforms on Russian media to get heard. They should wait until a respectable western mainstream outlet agrees to platform them, and keep waiting, and waiting, and just keep on waiting until we all die in a nuclear holocaust.

People tend to overestimate the power of the US war machine and underestimate the power of the US propaganda machine.

Remember when US officials kept saying “We’re not trying to start a war, we’re trying to prevent one” while refusing to make reasonable low-cost concessions that would have prevented a war, then, when war started, launched operations which serve the long-term goals of US hegemony?

Russia gets control of Kyiv with this war, while the US gets international consensus for unprecedented economic warfare and support for NATO, plus giving Moscow another Afghanistan. NATO powers could have prevented this war but chose to egg it on instead. Looks like a classic sacrifice a pawn to get the queen move.

Choose one:

A) It’s a coincidence that we were bombarded by hysterical anti-Russia narratives for five years before this started.

B) Bogus Russia scandals were cooked up by US intelligence to start manufacturing consent for a confrontation with Russia to preserve US unipolar hegemony.

It would bring a lot of clarity for a lot of people if we replaced the term “no-fly zone” with “Directly Attack the Russian Military Zone”.

“Whataboutism” is a common misspelling of “Damning evidence that western powers are lying about their motives and values.”

Yes, Smart Internet Person, I love Vladimir Putin. Can’t possibly be that I’m criticizing the known wrongdoings of the mightiest power structure in the world, it’s that I fell in love with some random government official on the other side of the planet and want to suck his cock.

It’s not like the US or its allies have ever done anything wrong, so they couldn’t possibly have done anything to give rise to our current situation, therefore it must be that I’m just kookoo for Putin Puffs. We’re very good thinkers, you and I. Let’s go watch cartoons.

Of course I am aware that Vladimir Putin is no girl scout. That’s why I’ve been warning for years that the west’s refusal to pursue detente could lead us to nuclear war. There’d be nothing to worry about if the guy was a cuddly wuddly snugglepoo.

Having a shit fit about someone criticizing the most powerful empire of all time for actions which led to a fucking war is a great way to let everyone know you have an infantile worldview and a piss weak argument. If you say you hate this war but get upset when people talk about the known ways the US-centralized empire helped cause it, then your interest is not in peace, nor in freedom, nor in truth, but in loyalty to that empire.

Learn more and think harder about the role NATO powers have played in starting this war.

Learn more and think harder about what sanctions are and what they do to people.

Learn more and think harder about what nuclear war is and what might cause it.

Whenever I talk about the frightening escalation in censorship and propaganda we’re seeing in the west I get people telling me that Russia is censoring and propagandizing even worse. Like “We’re a bit better than Russia!” is a sane response to this assault on truth and freedom.

If you feel the need to restrict and manipulate people’s speech, even if what they’re saying is true, then your actions aren’t based on truth. They’re based on something else, like geostrategic conquest.

Everything the empire says it opposes Russia for is a lie. Everything the empire criticizes Russia for are things the empire itself does. Everything we’re told is on the line in this showdown — freedom, democracy, truth, justice — are things the empire has been actively stomping out.

Calling Russia’s Attack ‘Unprovoked’ Lets US Off The Hook

By Bryce Greene, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. March 5, 2022



https://popularresistance.org/calling-russias-attack-unprovoked-lets-us-off-the-hook/



Many governments and media figures are rightly condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine as an act of aggression and a violation of international law. But in his first speech about the invasion, on February 24, US President Joe Biden also called the invasion “unprovoked.”

It’s a word that has been echoed repeatedly across the media ecosystem. “Putin’s forces entered Ukraine’s second-largest city on the fourth day of the unprovoked invasion,” Axios (2/27/22) reported; “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its second week Friday,” said CNBC (3/4/22). Vox (3/1/22) wrote of “Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked and unnecessary war with the second-largest country in Europe.”

The “unprovoked” descriptor obscures a long history of provocative behavior from the United States in regards to Ukraine. This history is important to understanding how we got here, and what degree of responsibility the US bears for the current attack on Ukraine.
Ignoring Expert Advice

The story starts at the end of the Cold War, when the US was the only global hegemon. As part of the deal that finalized the reunification of Germany, the US promised Russia that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” Despite this, it wasn’t long before talk of expansion began to circulate among policy makers.

In 1997, dozens of foreign policy veterans (including former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and former CIA Director Stansfield Turner) sent a joint letter to then-President Bill Clinton calling “the current US-led effort to expand NATO…a policy error of historic proportions.” They predicted:


In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West [and] bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (5/2/98) in 1998 asked famed diplomat George Kennan—architect of the US Cold War strategy of containment—about NATO expansion. Kennan’s response:


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.

Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are—but this is just wrong.

Despite these warnings, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were added to NATO in 1999, with Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia following in 2004.

US planners were warned again in 2008 by US Ambassador to Moscow William Burns (now director of the CIA under Joe Biden). WikiLeaks leaked a cable from Burns titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines” that included another prophetic warning worth quoting in full (emphasis added):


Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.

Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face**.**
A De Facto NATO Ally

But the US has pushed Russia to make such a decision. Though European countries are divided about whether or not Ukraine should join, many in the NATO camp have been adamant about maintaining the alliance’s “open door policy.” Even as US planners were warning of a Russian invasion, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated NATO’s 2008 plans to integrate Ukraine into the alliance (New York Times, 12/16/21). The Biden administration has taken a more roundabout approach, supporting in the abstract “Kyiv’s right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances.” But the implication is obvious.

Even without officially being in NATO, Ukraine has become a de facto NATO ally—and Russia has paid close attention to these developments. In a December 2021 speech to his top military officials, Putin expressed his concerns:


Over the past few years, military contingents of NATO countries have been almost constantly present on Ukrainian territory under the pretext of exercises. The Ukrainian troop control system has already been integrated into NATO. This means that NATO headquarters can issue direct commands to the Ukrainian armed forces, even to their separate units and squads….

Kiev has long proclaimed a strategic course on joining NATO. Indeed, each country is entitled to pick its own security system and enter into military alliances. There would be no problem with that, if it were not for one “but.” International documents expressly stipulate the principle of equal and indivisible security, which includes obligations not to strengthen one’s own security at the expense of the security of other states….

In other words, the choice of pathways towards ensuring security should not pose a threat to other states, whereas Ukraine joining NATO is a direct threat to Russia’s security.

In an explainer piece, the New York Times (2/24/22) centered NATO expansion as a root cause of the war. Unfortunately, the Times omitted the critical context of NATO’s pledge not to expand, and the subsequent abandonment of that promise. This is an important context to understand the Russian view of US policies, especially so given the ample warnings from US diplomats and foreign policy experts.
The Maidan Coup Of 2014

A major turning point in the US/Ukraine/Russia relationship was the 2014 violent and unconstitutional ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, elected in 2010 in a vote heavily split between eastern and western Ukraine. His ouster came after months of protests led in part by far-right extremists (FAIR.org, 3/7/14). Weeks before his ouster, an unknown party leaked a phone call between US officials discussing who should and shouldn’t be part of the new government, and finding ways to “seal the deal.” After the ouster, a politician the officials designated as “the guy” even became prime minister.

The US involvement was part of a campaign aimed at exploiting the divisions in Ukrainian society to push the country into the US sphere of influence, pulling it out of the Russian sphere (FAIR.org, 1/28/22). In the aftermath of the overthrow, Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, in part to secure a major naval base from the new Ukrainian government.

The New York Times (2/24/22) and Washington Post (2/28/22) both omitted the role the US played in these events. In US media, this critical moment in history is completely cleansed of US influence, erasing a critical step on the road to the current war.
Keeping Civil War Alive

In another response to the overthrow, an uprising in Ukraine’s Donbas region grew into a rebel movement that declared independence from Ukraine and announced the formation of their own republics. The resulting civil war claimed thousands of lives, but was largely paused in 2015 with a ceasefire agreement known as the Minsk II accords.

The deal, agreed to by Ukraine, Russia and other European countries, was designed to grant some form of autonomy to the breakaway regions in exchange for reintegrating them into the Ukrainian state. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian government refused to implement the autonomy provision of the accords. Anatol Lieven, a researcher with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in The Nation (11/15/21):****


The main reason for this refusal, apart from a general commitment to retain centralized power in Kiev, has been the belief that permanent autonomy for the Donbas would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and the European Union, as the region could use its constitutional position within Ukraine to block membership.

Ukraine opted instead to prolong the Donbas conflict, and there was never significant pressure from the West to alter course. Though there were brief reports of the accords’ revival as recently as late January, Ukrainian security chief Oleksiy Danilov warned the West not to pressure Ukraine to implement the peace deal. “The fulfillment of the Minsk agreement means the country’s destruction,” he said (AP, 1/31/22). Danilov claimed that even when the agreement was signed eight years ago, “it was already clear for all rational people that it’s impossible to implement.”

Lieven notes that the depth of Russian commitment has yet to be fully tested, but Putin has supported the Minsk accords, refraining from officially recognizing the Donbas republics until last week.

The New York Times (2/8/22) explainer on the Minsk accords blamed their failure on a disagreement between Ukraine and Russia over their implementation. This is inadequate to explain the failure of the agreements, however, given that Russia cannot affect Ukrainian parliamentary procedure. The Times quietly acknowledged that the law meant to define special status in the Donbas had been “shelved” by the Ukranians, indicating that the country had stopped trying to solve the issue in favor of a stalemate.

There was no mention of the comments from a top Ukrainian official openly denouncing the peace accords. Nor was it acknowledged that the US could have used its influence to push Ukraine to solve the issue, but refrained from doing so.
Ukrainian Missile Crisis

One under-discussed aspect of this crisis is the role of US missiles stationed in NATO countries. Many media outlets have claimed that Putin is Hitler-like (Washington Post, 2/24/22; Boston Globe, 2/24/22), hellbent on reconquering old Soviet states to “recreat[e] the Russian empire with himself as the Tsar,” as Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbot told Politico (2/25/22).

Pundits try to psychoanalyze Putin, asking “What is motivating him?” and answering by citing his televised speech on February 21 that recounted the history of Ukraine’s relationship with Russia.

This speech has been widely characterized as a call to reestablish the Soviet empire and a challenge to Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign nation. Corporate media ignore other public statements Putin has made in recent months. For example, at an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry Board, Putin elaborated on what he considered to be the main military threat from US/NATO expansion to Ukraine:


It is extremely alarming that elements of the US global defense system are being deployed near Russia. The Mk 41 launchers, which are located in Romania and are to be deployed in Poland, are adapted for launching the Tomahawk strike missiles. If this infrastructure continues to move forward, and if US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems. This is a huge challenge for us, for our security.

The United States does not possess hypersonic weapons yet, but we know when they will have it…. They will supply hypersonic weapons to Ukraine and then use them as cover…to arm extremists from a neighbouring state and incite them against certain regions of the Russian Federation, such as Crimea, when they think circumstances are favorable.

Do they really think we do not see these threats? Or do they think that we will just stand idly watching threats to Russia emerge? This is the problem: We simply have no room to retreat.

Having these missiles so close to Russia—weapons that Russia (and China) see as part of a plan to give the United States the capacity to launch a nuclear first-strike without retaliation—seriously challenges the cold war deterrent of Mutually Assured Destruction, and more closely resembles a gun pointed at the Russian head for the remainder of the nuclear age. Would this be acceptable to any country?

Media refuse to present this crucial question to their audiences, instead couching Putin’s motives in purely aggressive terms.
Refusal To De-Escalate

By December 2021, US intelligence agencies were sounding the alarm that Russia was amassing troops at the Ukrainian border and planning to attack. Yet Putin was very clear about a path to deescalation: He called on the West to halt NATO expansion, negotiate Ukrainian neutrality in the East/West rivalry, remove US nuclear weapons from non proliferating countries, and remove missiles, troops and bases near Russia. These are demands the US would surely have made were it in Russia’s position.

Unfortunately, the US refused to negotiate on Russia’s core concerns. The US offered some serious steps towards a larger arms control arrangement (Antiwar.com, 2/2/22)—something the Russians acknowledged and appreciated—but ignored issues of NATO’s military activity in Ukraine, and the deployment of nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe (Antiwar.com, 2/17/22).

On NATO expansion, the State Department continued to insist that they would not compromise NATO’s open door policy—in other words, it asserted the right to expand NATO and to ignore Russia’s red line.

While the US has signaled that it would approve of an informal agreement to keep Ukraine from joining the alliance for a period of time, this clearly was not going to be enough for Russia, which still remembers the last broken agreement.

Instead of addressing Russian concerns about Ukraine’s NATO relationship, the US instead chose to pour hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, exacerbating Putin’s expressed concerns. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t help matters by suggesting that Ukraine might begin a nuclear weapons program at the height of the tensions.

After Putin announced his recognition of the breakaway republics, Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled talks with Putin, and began the process of implementing sanctions on Russia—all before Russian soldiers had set foot into Ukraine.

Had the US been genuinely interested in avoiding war, it would have taken every opportunity to de-escalate the situation. Instead, it did the opposite nearly every step of the way.

In its explainer piece, the Washington Post (2/28/22) downplayed the significance of the US’s rejection of Russia’s core concerns, writing: “Russia has said that it wants guarantees Ukraine will be barred from joining NATO—a non-starter for the Western alliance, which maintains an open-door policy.” NATO’s open door policy is simply accepted as an immutable policy that Putin just needs to deal with. This very assumption, so key to the Ukraine crisis, goes unchallenged in the US media ecosystem.
‘The Strategic Case For Risking War’

It’s impossible to say for sure why the Biden administration took an approach that increased the likelihood of war, but one Wall Street Journal piece from last month may offer some insight.

The Journal (12/22/21) published an op-ed from John Deni, a researcher at the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by the US and allied governments that serves as NATO’s de facto brain trust. The piece was provocatively headlined “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine.” Deni’s argument was that the West should refuse to negotiate with Russia, because either potential outcome would be beneficial to US interests.

If Putin backed down without a deal, it would be a major embarrassment. He would lose face and stature, domestically and on the world stage.

But Putin going to war would also be good for the US, the Journal op-ed argued. Firstly, it would give NATO more legitimacy by “forg[ing] an even stronger anti-Russian consensus across Europe.” Secondly, a major attack would trigger “another round of more debilitating economic sanctions,” weakening the Russian economy and its ability to compete with the US for global influence. Thirdly, an invasion is “likely to spawn a guerrilla war” that would “sap the strength and morale of Russia’s military while undercutting Mr. Putin’s domestic popularity and reducing Russia’s soft power globally.”

In short, we have part of the NATO brain trust advocating risking Ukrainian civilians as pawns in the US’s quest to strengthen its position around the world.
‘Something Even Worse Than War’

A New York Times op-ed (2/3/22) by Ivan Krastev of Vienna’s Institute of Human Sciences likewise suggested that a Russian invasion of Ukraine wouldn’t be the worst outcome:


A Russian incursion into Ukraine could, in a perverse way, save the current European order. NATO would have no choice but to respond assertively, bringing in stiff sanctions and acting in decisive unity. By hardening the conflict, Mr. Putin could cohere his opponents.

The op-ed was headlined “Europe Thinks Putin Is Planning Something Even Worse Than War”—that something being “a new European security architecture that recognizes Russia’s sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space.”

It is impossible to know for sure whether the Biden administration shared this sense that there would be an upside to a Russian invasion, but the incentives are clear, and much of what these op-eds predicted is coming to pass.

None of this is to say that Putin’s invasion is justified—FAIR resolutely condemns the invasion as illegal and ruinous—but calling it “unprovoked” distracts attention from the US’s own contribution to this disastrous outcome. The US ignored warnings from both Russian and US officials that a major conflagration could erupt if the US continued its path, and it shouldn’t be surprising that one eventually did.

Now, as the world once again inches toward the brink of nuclear omnicide, it is more important than ever for Western audiences to understand and challenge their own government’s role in dragging us all to this point.

Ukraine No-Fly Zone ‘Could Lead To End Of Human Civilization’

By Yves Engler. March 5, 2022



https://popularresistance.org/ukraine-no-fly-zone-could-lead-to-end-of-human-civilization/


Canadians calling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine have lost the plot.

Unless their real aim is nuclear war.

Recently, former Conservative cabinet minister Chris Alexander, New Brunswick education minister Dominic Cardy and former Chief of the Defense Staff Rick Hillier have raised the idea of creating a “no-fly zone” (NFZ) over Ukraine. “We’re calling on all governments of the world to support creating a no fly zone over Ukraine”, declared Michael Shwec, president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, at a rally in Montréal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US Congressman Adam Kinzinger have also called for NATO to adopt a NFZ.

A NFZ over Ukraine means war with Russia. It would force the US or NATO to shoot down Russian planes.

A war between Russia and NATO would be horrendous. Both the US and Russia have thousands of nuclear weapons. Highlighting the dangers, Paul Street wrote on Counterpunch that “any elected official calling for a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine should be forced to rescind that call or resign for advocating a policy that could lead to the end of human civilization.”

Fortunately, Canada’s defense minister Anita Anand and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki have rejected the idea of an NFZ. “It would essentially mean the US military would be shooting down planes, Russian planes,” said Psaki. “That is definitely escalatory, that would potentially put us in a place where we are in a military conflict with Russia. That is not something the president wants to do.”

Even when the target is not a nuclear power, Canadian-backed NFZs have created death, destruction and escalation.

After killing thousands of Iraqis in 1991 the US, UK, France and Canada imposed a NFZ over Northern and Southern Iraq. Over the next 12 years US and British warplanes regularly bombed Iraqi military and civilian installations to enforce the NFZs.

On different occasions Canada sent naval vessels and air-to-air refueling aircraft to assist US airstrikes. Canadian air crew on exchange with their US counterparts also helped patrol the NFZs.

After a September 1996 US strike to further destroy Iraq’s “air-defense network” Prime Minister Jean Chretien said the action was “necessary to avert a larger human tragedy in northern Iraq.” Five years later Chretien responded to another bombing by stating, “if the Iraqis are breaking the agreement or what is the zone of no-flying, and they don’t respect that, the Americans and the British have the duty to make sure it is respected.”

12-years after enforcing the NFZs the US/UK launched a full-scale invasion of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands were killed.

In March 2011 Washington, Paris and some other NATO countries convinced the United Nations Security Council to endorse a plan to implement a NFZ over Libya (China, Germany, Russia, Brazil and Turkey abstained on the vote).Begun under the pretext of saving civilians from Muammar Gaddafi’s terror, the real aim was regime change. The UN “no-fly zone” immediately became a license to bomb Libyan tanks, government installations and other targets in coordination with rebel attacks. With a Canadian general leading the mission, NATO also bombed Gaddafi’s compound and the houses of people close to him. The military alliance defined “effective protection” of civilians as per the UN resolution, noted Professor of North African and Middle Eastern history Hugh Roberts, as “requiring the elimination of the threat, which was Gaddafi himself for as long as he was in power (subsequently revised to ‘for as long as he is in Libya’ before finally becoming ‘for as long as he is alive’).” Thousands, probably tens of thousands, died directly or indirectly from that conflict. Libya has yet to recover and the conflict spilled south into the Sahel region of Africa.

While they may sound benign, NFZs have generally elicited violence. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a terrible violation of international law that is likely to have deleterious consequences for years to come. But, escalating the conflict through a no-fly zone will only make it worse. It could lead to a cataclysmic nuclear war.

The Focus On Russia Distracts From What The US Government Is Doing

By Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. March 5, 2022
| Newsletter

https://popularresistance.org/the-focus-on-russia-distracts-from-what-the-us-government-is-doing-in-ukraine/






The current escalation of the conflict between the United States and Russia, two nations with the most nuclear weapons, places the world in great danger of a major war. It is the people of Ukraine who are bearing the brunt of this violence, which the United States government claims is “unprovoked,” but comes after more than eight years of direct intervention in the country, including a coup in 2014 led by the US. It is the people of the world who will need to rise up together to demand an end to this and all wars.

Ukraine is being targeted by the United States as part of a plan to surround Russia militarily through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Russia has the largest land mass of any country, including the longest border with the Arctic Ocean. The US is in competition with Russia over control of the Arctic Ocean, sales of oil and gas to the European Union and maintaining its status as a global hegemon.

Once again, the people of the United States are being lied into a war, in part over fossil fuels. This is particularly dangerous given the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that warns we are not only running out of time to mitigate the climate crisis but we are also behind schedule on efforts to adapt to it. We face multiple existential crises – the pandemic, climate crisis and risk of nuclear war – that require massive international cooperation, not division.

As people living in the United States, we have a responsibility to focus on the US government’s responsibility for the crisis in Ukraine and to demand immediate action to de-escalate the conflict. It is the US government that is giving political cover for Ukraine to violate the Minsk Accords, supplying hundreds of millions of dollars in ‘lethal aid’ to Ukraine and issuing economic coercive measures, also called sanctions, on Russia. These actions have fanned the flames of war.

Instead of focusing on the role of the US government, political leaders and the corporate media are pointing the finger at Russia to distract the public. There has been a strategic campaign to demonize Russia and stoke hatred for President Vladimir Putin, as if one person is a whole country, to build public support for aggression. The context within which the current crisis is occurring has been omitted from the national dialogue. This effort has largely been successful in confusing people and causing division within the antiwar movement.

Despite this challenge, much of the antiwar movement in the US is uniting against war with Russia in Ukraine. On February 5, a dozen national and international antiwar organizations held a National Day of Action against War with Russia that was endorsed by over 200 local groups. Actions were held in more than 70 cities from Washington, DC to Honolulu, Hawai’i.

On February 22, just two days before the Russian military intervention, over 900 people gathered online to call for an international week of action from March 1 to 7. Most of the actions are being planned for Sunday, March 6. This is an important day to demonstrate widespread opposition to war.

While much of the focus of this day of action is the conflict in Ukraine, the call to action is broader than that. The demands include saying no to all wars, opposing the expansion of NATO and economic sanctions, and obeying international law.

We must keep in mind that Ukrainians are not the only ones suffering from a war being waged or supported by the United States. Military violence, regime change campaigns and economic wars are being waged throughout the world that bring death and devastation every day.

The same day that Russia began its attack on Ukraine, the United States was dropping bombs on Somalia. A few days before that, the US-backed Saudi attack on Yemen escalated in what the United Nations calls “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” Millions of Yemenis face a loss of international aid that will cause mass starvation. In Afghanistan, more than half of the population is experiencing severe food insecurity due to the United States’ refusal to release $7 billion dollars from the Federal Reserve that belong to the Central Bank of Afghanistan. In Palestine, violence against and displacement of Palestinians by Israeli occupiers are rising. These acts of aggression are nearly invisible in the corporate media. We must ask ourselves why the lives of black and brown people in these countries do not seem to matter.

US-imposed economic coercive measures impact one-third of the global population. These illegal sanctions are just as deadly as military attacks, but they are less visible. Sanctions lead to inflation and the inability to import basic necessities such as food, medicines and medical supplies. They harm those who are the most vulnerable, children and people who are ill.

This week, the Biden administration announced immediate sanctions on Russia, including freezing the assets of its central bank, much like what was done to Afghanistan. Economist Jack Rasmus outlines the ways sanctions will not only harm Russian people but will also reverberate to impact the economies of the European Union and the United States. The global economy is deeply integrated such that sanctions on Russia will cause inflation and slow economic recovery for the EU and the US too.

Sanctions are a tool designed to destabilize countries and bring them under US control, but even institutions within the United States recognize that they are ineffective. The hardship brought to people in sanctioned countries often unifies them in opposition to the United States and leads their governments to develop mechanisms to do trade with other major powers that bypass the US dollar.

Similar to the use of sanctions in violation of international law, the United States also uses NATO as a way to advance its foreign policy outside of international legal structures such as the United Nations. There is a growing international movement to end NATO as its initial mandate ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Currently, NATO is not only expanding to confront Russia with weapons directly on its border but is also entering Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. The expansion of NATO to Ukraine in violation of promises made by the United States not to expand eastward after German reunification and the announcement of Ukrainian President Zelensky of his desire to acquire nuclear weapons are citied as major reasons for Russia’s military intervention.

The final demand, the adherence to international law, is critical. The United Nations Charter was established as a mechanism to prevent wars and protect the sovereignty of all nations. The UN Charter prohibits a country from intervening in the politics of another country, issuing unilateral sanctions and engaging in military aggression without approval by the Security Council. However, the United States has demonstrated a total disregard for the Charter.

If the United States had not interfered in Ukraine to provoke war with Russia, the Ukrainian people would not be suffering the death, destruction and displacement happening today. Ukraine is not the first country to be used as a pawn for the US’ global interests and it won’t be the last. That is why we in the United States must join with the rest of the global community to say no to wars everywhere and demand diplomacy and cooperation as the path forward to a livable future in these dangerous times. Join the Global Day of Action on March 6.

Sanctions kill

https://duluthreader.com/articles/2022/02/03/120487-sanctions-kill


Thursday Feb. 3rd, 2022

Phil Anderson



Currently Afghanistan is the target of economic warfare. Despite our troops coming home our government has not accepted defeat. The war on Afghanistan continues. Instead of killing people with weapons of war, we now plan to kill them with economic sanctions.

Economic sanctions may sound innocuous. The common perception is that economic sanctions are an alternative to war. But this is not the case.

Looking at the results of economic sanctions in the past it is more accurate to call them economic warfare. The term “sanctions” is merely a sanitized term similar to “collateral damage.”

They are both euphemisms for the destruction, death and injury of war.

Aid agencies and news reports say a humanitarian crisis is developing. Twenty million Afghans are on the brink of famine. The Taliban are terrible leaders with destructive policies. But our financial sanctions are resulting in great harm to the people of Afghanistan.

In 1967 Martin Luther King spoke out against the Vietnam war. He said, “...I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.”

He could not remain silent when “...our own nation [was] using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted.”

Dr. Kings words are as relevant today as they were 55 years ago. Economic warfare is one form of violence used by our government to “bring about the changes it wants.“

Today we cannot honestly raise our voices against the violence and oppression perpetrated by Russia in Ukraine, or China in Hong Kong and Xinjiang province, or the Taliban in Afghanistan when our government continues to inflict destruction, hardship and death on innocent people all over the world.

The U.S. is currently waging economic warfare on between 20 and 40 other nations. The numbers vary with the source and the type of sanctions counted. Sanctions can be trade restrictions, tariffs, or refusal to import and export from a country (an embargo). They can apply to the whole country, just certain products, specific companies, or individuals.

The severity of the impact varies. In many cases the economy of the targeted country is severely affected. Normal business activity is disrupted creating unemployment and stopping necessary imports such as food, medicine or replacement parts needed to keep businesses and public services functioning.

Economic warfare is often financial. The U.S. has a lot of power over the world’s financial system. The dollar is the primary currency for trade and the U.S. controls the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Financial sanctions imposed by the U.S. can cut off access to loans, international banking services, and freeze assets.

In short the U.S has the power, as President Nixon ordered for Chile in 1973, to “make the economy scream.”

Despite this power economic warfare seldom forces other countries to change their alleged “evil” ways.

Ending “socialism” in other countries, or forcing a “regime change” rarely happens.

This reality is widely known and acknowledged by experts from across the political spectrum. A 2020 analysis by the far-right, libertarian Cato Institute says sanctions don’t work. The analysis said, “Sanctions have massive humanitarian costs and are not only ineffective but likely counterproductive... they almost always fail to achieve their goals, particularly when the aim is regime change or significant behavioral changes.”

Economic sanctions are most frequently imposed by the U.S. Other nations and the U.N. can also impose economic sanctions. Often other countries cooperate with U.S. sanctions, either voluntarily or out of fear of potential retaliation by us. When authorized by the U.N. sanctions are considered legal under international law.

Regardless of who initiates the action, economic warfare is a blunt instrument. The people of the targeted countries can be severely impacted but the ruling elite are not hurt. The people have no power to make changes and the rulers simply ignore, or evade, the hardships created by the sanctions. This is the major reason sanctions usually fail to achieve any positive result.

After the first Gulf War in Iraq hundreds of thousands of children were killed by U.S.-imposed economic warfare (the estimates vary widely but are large). But Sadam Hussein remained in power until the country was conquered in 2003.

Cuba has been under an economic embargo for 60 years and has survived. Venezuela and North Korea have not surrendered because of sanctions.

There is no rational reason to expect economic warfare to remove the Taliban from Afghanistan, or to force the Iranians to surrender to U.S. demands.

Economic warfare, like armed warfare, represents the failure of diplomacy. Continuing failed policies while expecting a different result is, as Albert Einstein said, insanity – or at least stupidity.

So what can be done when faced with intractable problems like nuclear proliferation, belligerent dictators, human rights abuses or aggression against weak countries?

To begin with the United States needs to lead by example. We can not credibly criticize, or take action against, other nations when we remain the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” The historical record of our numerous invasions, deposing of leaders, support for military dictators, interference in elections and ignoring of international laws cannot be denied.

We need to lead with cooperation rather than confrontation. Too often our “negotiations” consist of making demands. Other nations submit or get bombed and sanctioned.

Cooperation must be an honest effort to find win-win solutions.

We need to collaborate with other nations. This must go way beyond “coalitions of the willing” or using our economic power to coerce cooperation. We need to support and respect international organizations like the U.N and the World Court. We need to promote a collective global security rather than national security. We need to promote fair trade that enhances the common good and widespread prosperity.

This must be real collaboration and not just manipulations to promote our “national interests.”

Mostly we need to change the way we think. We are part of and not the masters of the world. But we consider ourselves “exceptional.” We don’t have to abide by the rules.

Double standards and hypocrisy do not build effective, constructive relationships with other nations.

All this needs to be done before a “crisis” erupts. Real leadership is the continuous process of promoting respect, fairness, the rule of law, and support international norms that resolves conflicts peacefully.
In short, we need to practice what we preach. A good place to start is to stop killing people with economic sanctions.