There is no proof that Donald Trump is working for Vlad Putin but Obama's national security advisor, Susan Rice, writes that Putin couldn't have wished for a better stooge.

Mr. Putin’s objectives are plain: to restore Russia to global greatness at the expense of the United States and to divide Europe by weakening NATO and the European Union. In Mr. Putin’s zero-sum calculus, when the United States and Europe founder, Russia benefits. The Russian leader knows that America’s global power rests not only on our military and economic might but also on our unrivaled network of alliances from Europe to Asia. For some seven decades, our alliances have ensured that America’s strength and influence are magnified. Accordingly, Mr. Putin seeks to drive wedges between the United States and its closest partners, to strain and ultimately rupture its alliances.

If Mr. Putin were calling the shots, he would ensure that America’s reliability is doubted, its commitments broken, its values debased and its image tarnished. He would advise the new president to take a series of steps to advance those aims:

First, withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade agreement the United States negotiated to bolster its economic and strategic position in the Pacific, at the expense of China (and Russia). Then, pull out of the Paris climate agreement, becoming the only country in the world absent from this landmark accord.

Second, criticize NATO and cast doubt on America’s willingness to defend its allies on the grounds that they haven’t paid their bills (when that’s not how NATO works). Simultaneously, corrode the European Union by: lauding Brexit; sending Stephen Bannon to stoke European anti-establishment movements; and undermining Europe’s most powerful country, Germany, most recently through installing a right-wing flamethrower as ambassador.

Third, for the coup de grâce: start a trade war with our closest allies. Impose steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, Mexico and the European Union with the threat of auto tariffs to follow so that, according to reputable economists, both the United States and its allies’ economies will suffer. Justify the penalties on the preposterous grounds that allies threaten United States national security. Do so after withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, following months of stringing our European partners along with the hope that we might agree to augment aspects of the pact. Then threaten sanctions on European companies for abiding by the deal, which has worked as intended.

...Finally, for completeness, Mr. Putin might encourage the president to ensure that countries large and small revile America’s leadership, suggesting he: disparage African nations and Haiti with a vulgarity; call Latin American migrants rapists and criminals; halt most refugee admissions; ban Muslims from several countries from entering the United States; restrict legal immigration; and separate children from their parents at the border.

With the sum of these actions, President Trump has deeply angered our closest allies and offended almost every member of the international community, except Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates — and Russia. Meanwhile, Russia is ascendant in the Middle East. The European Union is reeling — with Italy, Slovenia, Austria and Hungary now led by populist nationalists who embrace Mr. Putin and wish to terminate sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. NATO’s unity is similarly strained, provoking concern about its collective will to counter any new Russian aggression.

...America stands alone, weakened and distrusted. Without United States leadership, the G-7 can accomplish little. And, when next we need our allies to rally to fight terrorists, place sanctions against North Korea, combat a pandemic or check China and Russia, will they join with us after we have so disrespected them?

That Could Touch a Nerve

There was a quiet and barely noticed event at last year's Republican convention when Donald Trump was officially chosen as the party's presidential candidate. It involved one plank of the official Republican platform that called for America to provide "lethal defensive weapons" to Ukrainian forces fighting off Russian intrusions. Of all the policies in the platform it alone was something the Trump campaign couldn't abide and so it was quietly pulled, shelved.

When it was noticed and questions raised, Team Trump responded with apparent surprise and confusion. No one seemed to know how that had happened. Then campaign chairman Paul Manafort who had been on the Russian payroll to the tune of several millions of dollars denied he had anything to do with it. Not Paul, no, never.

On Sunday’s [July, 2016]“Meet the Press,” Manafort said that the effort to keep the platform from supporting arms for Ukraine, which I first reported last month, “absolutely did not come from the Trump campaign.”

Trump, when questioned, said he heard about it but only after the fact. He didn't know who was behind the deletion of that policy.



Months later it emerged that Trump's campaign advisor on national security, J.D. Gordon, admitted that he was responsible for getting the platform policy scrapped and did so at Trump's direction. Gordon also had a number of meetings with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

Diana Denman, the GOP delegate who proposed amending the Ukraine platform to include the "lethal weapons" language, contradicted Gordon's version of events in an interview with Business Insider in January. She said Gordon and another Trump campaign representative asked the cochairmen of the subcommittee to table the amendment after she read it aloud.

"Two men sitting over to the side of the room — I had no idea who they were but later found out they were Trump representatives — jumped up and tore over to get behind the three cochairmen," she said.

Gordon then left the room to make a phone call, Denman said. Equal parts confused and angry over her proposal being scuttled, Denman said she confronted Gordon about whom he was calling.

"I'm calling New York," Gordon replied, according to Denman.

"I work for Mr. Trump, and I have to clear it," she recalled him saying, apparently in reference to the amendment.

Joining Gordon at some meetings with ambassador Kislyak, was this guy, Carter Page. Page is now said to be one of the individuals under FBI investigation.

All of which now brings us to Russia and Ukraine and NATO and, again, those pesky "lethal defensive weapons."

Yesterday the U.S. House Armed Services Committee held a briefing session with four star general Curtis Scaparotti, commander of the US European Command and Supreme Commander of NATO.

Scaparotti told the Congressmen that Russia has put NATO back on a warfighting footing. Beginning around the 17:00 mark he discusses Ukraine and, at 18:30, renews the call for the US to provide lethal defensive weapons to Ukrainian forces.

Which puts Trump's top general in Europe, the Supreme Commander of NATO, foursquare at odds with the general's own commander in chief now widely suspected of being compromised by the same Russians that so worry general Scaparotti.

Wait Just a Second

What's that? All those new NATO partners in eastern Europe don't want to defend eastern Europe?

The United States is asking Canada to join with it and the Germans and Brits to constitute a rapid reaction force along the frontier with Russia.

Let's see, under Bush/Cheney NATO marched ever eastward, right up to Russia's doorstep, to welcome those eastern European nations under NATO's umbrella. And they were all too eager to join. Only they're not as eager to carry their weight as NATO partners, even in their own backyard.

“European allies have reasons why they can’t come forward. They’re thinly stretched, at home, in Africa, in Afghanistan. They just don’t have the money,” said a senior NATO diplomat involved in the discussions.

The reluctance of some European governments to help the military build-up, the biggest since the end of the Cold War, reflects internal doubts over whether the alliance should be more focused on combatting militant groups and uncontrolled flows of migrants, mainly from the Middle East and North Africa.

“There are divisions within NATO,” said Sophia Besch, a European defence expert at the London-based Centre for European Reform think tank. “Some allies feel the focus should be on the south.”

Unity is crucial for NATO as Moscow and Washington accuse one another of intimidation close to the NATO-Russia border. NATO and Russia feel threatened by each other’s large military drills and are at odds over the crisis in Ukraine.

Any sense in the United States that Europe is unwilling to pay for its own defence could be damaging. U.S. President Barack Obama has suggested European powers were “free riders” during the 2011 Libya air campaign, and U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused them of not paying their fair share.

As for NATO's eastern deadbeats, they're banking on the perception that we'll carry the burden for them rather than appearing weak to Vlad Putin. If they want to be our protectorates rather than our partners, shouldn't we be treating them that way?

It's Hard to Believe We Were That Stupid

Just as Europe undermined the EU so too did we undermine, potentially fatally, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  Both organizations foolishly indulged in a promiscuous bout of expansion that has left them unwieldy, incoherent and perhaps even dangerous.

This is EU Europe:

This is NATO:

Both began and operated quite well with a small, well integrated membership, capable of reliably cooperating to achieve clearly understood objectives.  And then they both got just a little whorish in the bacchanal that marked the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Oh my, look, there's one missing - the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

How they got left out I'll never know.  I guess Bush and Cheney forgot about them in their race to march NATO to Russia's doorstep.

When it comes to NATO it might be a good idea to cull the membership herd, especially if we see the E.U. beginning to come part at the seams.  There are a lot of scary people and movements waiting in the wings to exploit that chaos and we might not find their table manners exactly pleasing.

Don't forget that Article 5 business, the "mutual aid" clause that says an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all.  There's no Article 5(b) that covers the situation where one NATO member attacks another.  Worse yet, there are some NATO aspirants that might like nothing better than to provoke a regional adversary (can you say Russia?) and then drag in the NATO muscle. Think Georgia. Think Ukraine.

NATO was built to face threats from without, namely the Soviet bloc.  It cobbled together nations of the Western European tradition on an implied assumption of shared values and principles. What a happy bunch of chaps - well, except for those uppity French.  DeGaulle, you know.

NATO picked up some dodgy characters in its rampage of expansion to the East. Take Hungary, which joined in 1999.  Sixty years earlier it joined another alliance, the Axis powers.  And today you wouldn't consider Hungary a particularly enthusiastic adherent to democracy.  Sort of like the little kid who's standing still in the corner of the pool.  You just know he's peeing.

It's like having more kids than you can possibly feed. When you get the urge to add a few more, don't.  And try to get the kids you do have educated and out the door as soon as you can.

Quick, put a call through to Grand Fenwick. I need to speak to the Duke.          

Austerity's Silver Lining - Arms Race Update

A couple of headlines this morning got me thinking that the West's embrace of austerity might not be all bad.  Of course it's probably just wishful thinking.

The first article concerns a refreshingly nuanced and balanced lecture delivered by former US ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock.

In a lecture at King's College London, Jack Matlock said that the crisis in Ukraine is increasingly comparable to what he saw during his time as ambassador during the turbulent end of the Cold War. "We see increasingly implicit military confrontations and I'm beginning to wonder, could this result in something which is almost the functional equivalent of the Cold War," he said.

According to Matlock, an explanation for the crisis in Ukraine and worsening relationship between Russia and the West does not simply lie with the actions of Russian President, Vladimir Putin.

"Is it just a matter of Russia violating international norms and law, is there more to this story? There is no question that Russia has violated international law, that the way they conducted the referendum of the Crimea and then annexed it, was a violation of a number of agreements.

"However, all of us should recognise that as brutal and aggressive as Russian policy is, ultimately it is prompted by…feeling…that US and West in general…are trying to encircle and strangle them," he said.

Following a decision made at the recent G7 summit to continue imposing sanctions on Russia, and the steadily increasing popularity within Russia of its President, Matlock argues that the West needs to reconsider its own policies to "bring the results that we want."

The second headline concerns the newly minted NATO sec-gen Jens Stoltenberg claiming that the alliance will not get dragged into an arms race with Moscow.  I suspect Stoltenberg's comforting assurance is really code for the obvious.  With most of the peoples of the Western nations already under the heel of brutal austerity policies, their governing classes are keenly aware of what might befall them should they try to pump up their defence spending to 3 or 4% GDP to play the arms race game with Vlad Putin.  After all, you can't have defence and the ultra low, corporate tax cuts demanded by your corporate masters.

A silver lining?  Maybe, maybe not.  Well, we're plenty ready to sacrifice the environment and our grandkids future to the whims of corporatism.  Surely defence spending is a paltry bauble in the greater scheme of commercial morality.

Let's Ditch the Cowboy Act

Modern, high-tech warfare is putting many nations in an increasingly offensive military posture. The controversial F-35 is a perfect example. Despite what we're told, the F-35 is not a fighter jet. It's a light attack bomber, an inherently offensive, first-strike weapon.  One American general, by way of defending the F-35, called it his "kick in the front door" weapon.

You're probably familiar with Pearl Harbor.  Did you know the Japanese prepared for that attack by staging a full dress rehearsal with real aircraft launching torpedoes at targets simulating the American Pacific fleet at anchor? It's how they tested and perfected the ability to use torpedoes in the shallow anchorage at Pearl Harbor.

Did you know the Americans have done pretty much the same thing as their Japanese counterparts 75-years earlier?  It was called Operation Chimichanga and it was a full dress rehearsal of a surprise, first-strike attack by American warplanes on China.  In a real, sneak attack, the F-35 is intended to play a prominent role in taking out critical Chinese air defence assets.

One online course I'm doing at the moment explores what is loosely called "remote controlled warfare."  It's all about high-tech weaponry and push button warfare with really truncated lines of command.  Critics warn this affords less time for reflection and leads to a shift toward offensive decision making on short notice.  It also degrades meaningful oversight.

What is usually overlooked is that, to the person staring at the business end of the barrel, this bellicose policy encourages an equally bellicose response (see NATO v. Russia).  What makes it doubly dangerous is that it begins, quite seductively, with conventional weapons that, like the camel's nose under the tent, can make nuclear escalation a quite conceivable outcome.

We wind up, like whiskey-soaked cowboys at a saloon poker table, holding our cards in one hand while, under the table, everyone has a drawn six shooter in the other.

I'm sure you're familiar with the adage that, to a man who has only a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  It could be argued that, to a nation that has a preponderance of offensive weaponry, everything looks like a target.  And that's not a good thing, not good at all.

After WWII our appetite for offensive warfare was slaked, for a while.  What had been the Ministry of War or the War Department became the Ministry of Defence or the Defense Department.  It was all so demure.  In Canada we call it the Department of National Defence even though we devote little in the actual defence of the nation and far more in whacking some curious looking fellow whose religion we don't like at various hotspots on the other side of the world. This, they tell us, is the defence of the homeland.  Really?

NATO itself was born and lived its entire useful life as a defensive alliance. Then, its work done, it died.  Unfortunately there was no end of Dr. Frankensteins in various national capitals, but especially in Washington, who thought to resurrect it and managed to transform its DNA into an offensive alliance for political and military expansionism.  Today, we're "the horde."  I guess it's our turn.

It would be one thing if our military adventures were rational and, even better yet, if they were successful - if they brought meaningful and lasting change and stability to those lands that we so freely endow with our aerial, precision-guided generosity.  But they don't and that's not going to change.  We just go in to fuck'em up for a while and then we leave, mission accomplished.  We did that in our air war over Kosovo.  The Americans and Brits did that in Iraq.  We all did the same thing in Afghanistan.  And who can forget our triumphant bombing campaign in Libya?  Now we've become so immersed in all things Middle Eastern that we're alternately allied with and attacking both sides in the Islamic civil wars.

Look, let's ditch the cowboy act.  All we're managing to do is set up the world for a far greater conflagration.  If we don't stop this soon, we could become the victims of our own policies.

Whacking Iran - Maybe Sooner Than You Think - The Warmonger Digest, vol. 2

It's reported that the Saudis have given Israel a green light to overfly Saudi Arabia should Netanyahu decide to launch an attack on Iran.

Jerusalem and Riyadh do not have diplomatic ties, but unconfirmed reports have swirled for years of coordination between them against the common enemy of Iran, a partnership that may ramp up should the world powers reach a reportedly emerging deal that would allow Tehran to continue enriching some uranium.

There's some suggestion that NATO tacitly approves of an Israeli air war on Iran.

Saudi Arabia and Israel may be given the green light to attack Iran on behalf of NATO powers if NATO feels it could not sell a direct war in Iran to their populations back home. Regime change in Syria is a prerequisite before an overt attack on Iran can take place however, as Damascus is an important Iranian ally in the Middle East. If a military assault on Iran occurs it would be difficult for the arena of conflict to be contained to the Middle East, as it has the potential to rapidly escalate into a wider conflict involving Russia and China.

Western nations have been engaged in attempting to covertly overthrow the present Iranian regime for decades, a country that has been placed under sanctions by an assortment of nations for years. Regime change in Iran has been a dream of Western foreign policy strategists for decades, with Iran pinpointed in a strategic paper written in 2000 by the neoconservative thinktank, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), alongside countries such as Iraq, Libya and Syria. Retired US four star general and former NATO commander, Wesley Clark, also revealed a plan circulating around the Pentagon in 2001 to attack 7 countries in 5 years, with Iran named as one of the seven.

I wonder if Israel will be able to wait until it gets those F-35s.

Germany Alarmed at NATO's (and America's) Ginned Up Claims on Ukraine

A Warmonger and a Fearmonger

Angela Merkel thinks that Germany (and the rest of the West) is being conned by NATO and the U.S. inflating the Russian threat to the Ukraine.

General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington. Putin, the 59-year-old said, had once again "upped the ante" in eastern Ukraine -- with "well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery" having been sent to the Donbass. "What is clear," Breedlove said, "is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day."

German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn't understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn't the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

The pattern has become a familiar one. For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. 

Over and over again, Breedlove's numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America's NATO allies in Europe. As such, he is playing directly into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.

...But Breedlove hasn't been the only source of friction. Europeans have also begun to see others as hindrances in their search for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. First and foremost among them is Victoria Nuland, head of European affairs at the US State Department. She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats.

...To be sure, neither Berlin's Russia experts nor BND intelligence analysts doubt that Moscow is supporting the pro-Russian separatists. The BND even has proof of such support.

But it is the tone of Breedlove's announcements that makes Berlin uneasy. False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO -- and by extension, the entire West -- in danger of losing its credibility.

At the beginning of the crisis, General Breedlove announced that the Russians had assembled 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and warned that an invasion could take place at any moment. The situation, he said, was "incredibly concerning." But intelligence officials from NATO member states had already excluded the possibility of a Russian invasion. They believed that neither the composition nor the equipment of the troops was consistent with an imminent invasion.

The experts contradicted Breedlove's view in almost every respect. There weren't 40,000 soldiers on the border, they believed, rather there were much less than 30,000 and perhaps even fewer than 20,000. Furthermore, most of the military equipment had not been brought to the border for a possible invasion, but had already been there prior to the beginning of the conflict. Furthermore, there was no evidence of logistical preparation for an invasion, such as a field headquarters.

...there are many at NATO headquarters in Brussels who are likewise concerned about Breedlove's statements. On Tuesday of last week, Breedlove's public appearances were an official item on the agenda of the North Atlantic Council's weekly lunch meeting. Several ambassadors present criticized Breedlove and expressed their incredulity at some of the commander's statements.

...Although President Obama has decided for the time being to give European diplomacy a chance, hawks like Breedlove or Victoria Nuland are doing what they can to pave the way for weapons deliveries. "We can fight against the Europeans, fight against them rhetorically," Nuland said during a private meeting of American officials on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of February.

...Nuland has also been open -- at least internally -- about her contempt for European weakness and is famous for having said "Fuck the EU" during the initial days of the Ukraine crisis in February of 2014. Her husband, the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, is, after all, the originator of the idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans, unwilling as they are to realize that true security depends on military power, are from Venus.

When it comes to the goal of delivering weapons to Ukraine, Nuland and Breedlove work hand-in-hand. On the first day of the Munich Security Conference, the two gathered the US delegation behind closed doors to discuss their strategy for breaking Europe's resistance to arming Ukraine.

What a tag team, "Made in America" fear mongers and war mongers.  It's dismaying to realize that our own government, and a good number of our opposition, are right in there with them.  NATO is pretty obviously bent.  Instead of a military, mutual-defence alliance it has been allowed to become a very dangerous instrument of geo-politics.  Enough.

Bangin' that Old War Drum, Again.

Maybe it's because they're still smarting from getting their asses handed to them in Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe not.  Either way it's getting a bit embarrassing listening to Western military leaders banging the war drums over Russia.

NATO, especially, is sounding the alarm of an all-out shooting war with the Kremlin.  The Russians fly their bombers were we don't want to see them, that's a provocation, a threat, even if they're well inside international airspace.  The Russians send their subs into our territorial waters.  We can't find them anyway.

Now Britain's top general in NATO, Adrian Bradshaw, is warning that Russia poses an "existential threat to our whole being."

Gen Sir Adrian Bradshaw, deputy commander of Nato forces in Europe, said there was a danger Vladimir Putin could try to use his armies to invade and seize Nato territory, after calculating the alliance would be too afraid of escalating violence to respond.

His comments follow a clash between London and Moscow after the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, said there wasa "real and present danger" Mr Putin could try to destabilise the Baltic states with a campaign of subversion and irregular warfare.

The Kremlin called those comments “absolutely unacceptable".

Sir Adrian, one of the most senior generals in the British Army and a former director of special forces, went further and said there was also danger that Russia could use conventional forces and Soviet-era brinkmanship to seize Nato territory.

He said Russia had shown last year it could generate large conventional forces at short notice for snap exercises along its borders. There was a danger these could be used “not only for intimidation and coercion but potentially to seize Nato territory, after which the threat of escalation might be used to prevent re-establishment of territorial integrity. This use of so called escalation dominance was of course a classic Soviet technique.”

Curious, ain't it?  We drive NATO's military presence right up to Russia's borders and then get offended when Russia shows that it can "generate large conventional forces at short notice for snap exercises along its borders."  What would any country want to do if a powerful adversary showed up on its borders?

This may sound like so much hot air but the path of Cold War is heavily influenced by the parties' confidence.  If one side is relatively confident it's safe from hostilities from the other side, tensions abate.  That confidence is pretty fragile and can be readily, perhaps even irrevocably, undermined by provocative actions and pronouncements from the adversary, statements just like Sir Adrian's.

It's not that Vlad Putin isn't a dangerous thug.  He's all that and more.  It's just that a shooting war with Russia, of the very sort these NATO leaders are so quick to envision, could well be the end of everything and everyone, possibly even yourself.

Update - gasp.  Is general Adrian making the rounds of some German online dating site?

Are We Really Willing to Go To War over Ukraine?

Would you be okay if it was your kids in uniform going off to a shooting war with the Russians over Ukraine?

The whole idea seems fantastic, ridiculous.  We tend to dismiss it as unimaginable but giving it short shrift can be lethal.

Earlier this week three words caught my attention - "une guerre totale."  That was the prospect French president Francois Hollande foresaw if there was no quick resolution to the conflict between the warring sides in the Ukraine and between Moscow and Kiev.

Total war.  That's something we've not done for quite a while.  Even at the top ranks of our militaries there's no one around who has any experience of it.  Our military and political leadership resemble more, say, 1914 than in 1918 or 19459 (and, trust me, that's not a good thing).

Modern Total War (MTW).  If you want an idea of what that means, go back to the extensive research on nuclear weapons escalation and use that as your "start" point.  We already had the ability, several times over, to obliterate life on this planet when this business began.  Sure, we've cut the inventories overall but so what?  There's still far more than would ever be needed to turn Earth into Mars, all in under 15-minutes. When was the last time 15-minutes had that relevance in your life?

One of the reasons  WWI went so horribly wrong was that almost no one had the foggiest idea of how it might play out.  Neither side went into that war expecting to be dragged down into years of murderous trench warfare.  Both sides went into the war with large contingents of cavalry - guys on horses with swords and lances.  They didn't have mass deployment of machine guns on their minds, that's for sure.  They didn't foresee aerial warfare, chemical weapons, the introduction of tanks to the battlefield - and so much more.

Add to our naivete, a thick layer of hubris.  We think we can deploy a rapid response force of 5,000 soldiers that can quickly accordion into 30,000 to nip any Putin adventurism in the bud.  NATO has "an erection lasting more than four hours" for that one.  At the top levels of the Alliance the bellicosity is searing. Maybe they're reminiscing of NATO's studly days staring down the Soviets back in the 60s.  Are we so blinded with our sense of superiority that we imagine a shooting war with ten or twenty thousand troops wouldn't escalate to something far exceeding our contemplation?

Here at home we've got no end of Chickenhawks busily banging the war drums lately.  Ignatieff introduced the Liberals to the notion of a "muscular foreign policy" and it seems to have stuck.  There's no overt, "you're either with us or with the terrorists" policy in Canada but the opposition parties sure act as though there was.  Every morning Mulcair steps outside to test which way the winds are blowing while Trudeau conferences his Bay Street advisers for his orders of the day.

We seem to want to militarize any real estate we can occupy within spitting distance of the Russian border.  NATO talks about establishing "forward bases" in the Baltic states, lest Moscow get designs on their sovereignty.  The very nature of forward bases is to define a front, a military front, and we're pressing it right up hard against Putin's doorstep.  What could possibly go wrong?

And, on our side, we've already broken into various camps.  There's NATO snarling angrily, straining against its chains, eager for the fray.  Then there's the US and Britain tossing about the idea of arming the Ukrainians, conveniently leaving unmentioned what probably follows such a bold move.  That puts them at odds with Hollande and Merkel who perhaps see the dangers more clearly and are on their, self-described last ditch tour to defuse the conflict before other nations get sucked into the malestrom.

It seems like we've amassed the perfect circumstances for backing ourselves into a war that we probably would regret fairly quickly.  It's as though we're caught in a process that has no "reset" button.  Hollande seems to acknowledge as much with obvious resignation.

Maybe all sides are already in this too deep to back down.

This reminds me of getting stuck taking shelter from a gale in a northern inlet on what had been a floating logging camp.  It consisted of a number of vintage wood buildings sitting atop rafts of cedar logs.  The buildings were being repurposed, renovated.  The one we were inside had the plaster and lathe removed to reveal old Vancouver newspapers stuffed inside for insulation.

We obviously had a few hours to wait so I opened a few of these old papers going back to from 1936 to around 1941.  There were daily accounts of Hitler's armies on the move through Europe and Japan's assault on China.  As I read them I wondered how we didn't foresee world war returning and dragging us all in yet again.  How could anyone read these reports, day by day, month after month and think anything else?  And yet we did for it was unimaginable to us in those years that we would inevitably get swept up into a world on fire.

Merkel's right, keep Ukraine out of NATO.  We don't need another country able to pull the Article 5 trigger.

In my view the 'grand bargain' that we need to bind the West and Russia requires a zone of buffer states between NATO and Russian positions.  It would mean Old NATO, the original members, stepping back.  Yet I think that possibility is already foreclosed.

Banging the War Drums

If you thought you had heard the last of insanely bellicose Anders Fogh "Foggy" Rasmussen when his term as NATO secretary-general lapsed, you were wrong. He's back and he's talking war again.


“This is not about Ukraine. Putin wants to restore Russia to its former position as a great power,” he told The Telegraph.

“There is a high probability that he will intervene in the Baltics to test Nato’s Article 5,” he said, referring to the solidarity clause that underpins collective security.

“Putin knows that if he crosses the red line and attacks a Nato ally, he will be defeated. Let us be quite clear about that. But he is a specialist in hybrid warfare,” he said.

The fear is that the Kremlin will generate a murky conflict in Estonia or Latvia where there are large Russian minorities, using arms-length action or “little green men” without insignia to disguise any intervention. This may tempt weaker Nato members to play down the incident, either to protect commercial ties with Russia or because of pro-Kremlin sympathies as in Hungary or Greece.

Estonia's relations with Russia worsened significantly last September when a squad of Russian security operatives allegedly crossed into Estonian territory and seized Eston Kohver, a veteran officer in the Estonian Security Service.

...Mr Rasmussen said there is no truth to Kremlin claims that the West violated pledges at the end of the Cold War that there would be no eastward expansion of the alliance into the territory of former Soviet Union. “No such pledge was ever made, and declassified documents in Washington prove this. It is pure propaganda,” he said.

No, Foggy, you lying shit, the propaganda is coming from you.  The pledge you dispute was given by George H.W. Bush to Mikhail Gorbachev to elicit Russia's agreement to the unification of Germany and the unified Germany's right to be a full NATO partner.  It has been confirmed by the third man in the room, Bush's Russia adviser, Princeton professor Stephen F. Cohen.  For daring to tell the truth of what those two men agreed to, Cohen is today being treated as Putin's stooge.

The New Frontier is the Russian Border

Think of it as the new equivalent of the East German-West German border.  It was across that border that NATO (i.e. US) and Warsaw Pact (i.e. Soviet) forces glared at each other, constantly ready to leap into what probably would have been global annihilation.

We've moved the line.  It's now the border of Russia.

NATO is set to agree on a major boost to its defences in eastern Europe including six bases and a "spearhead" force of 5000 troops in response to what it called Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg insisted that the moves likely to be approved by defence ministers meeting in Brussels were purely defensive, but the increased presence on Russia's borders is likely to rile Moscow.

With Eastern European states concerned by the worst tensions with Russia since the Cold War, the bases will be in the alliance's three Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where the alliance has had little presence until now -- plus Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.

The new NATO-Russia front line won't have an invasion-capable force deployed, at least not yet.  Just a few thousand troops for starters.  Yet it's the sort of thing that's quite susceptible to 'mission creep.'  If Putin responds in kind with a NATO-targeted force, we'll be tempted to up the ante and from there it becomes a game of escalation.  Before long you have theatre-nuclear weapons and tank armies pointing at each other across an invisible line and a lot of people holding their breath, hoping that no one does something stupid.

Vlad Putin - NATO's Indispensable Enemy

Vlad Putin has given NATO - well, nothing less than a reason to exist a little longer.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO was a headless chicken, running around aimlessly, still on its feet but just.  The North Atlantic alliance pretty much took whatever gig it could get.

NATO bombed Serbia to "liberate" Kosovo.  Don't ask how well that has gone for the Kosovors.  45% unemployment, rampant crime, a hopelessly corrupt government, that sort of thing.

NATO upped its game to jump into Afghanistan.  No need to ask how well that turned out.

NATO went back to bombing in Libya. a drawn out fiasco that helped oust Qaddafi, eventually, but also gave al Qaeda a golden window of opportunity to get established in North Africa and they made the most of it.  Today Libya is reeling, on the cusp of becoming a true failed state.

Now NATO's real members are busy playing aerial "whack-a-mole" in Iraq, lobbing bombs on ISIS which, according to some observers, is something of a replay of our campaign in Libya.

If NATO is becoming a bit gun shy it's for good reason.  Fortunately it has a friend in Vlad Putin.  The Russian has allowed NATO to do what it does best - glower menacingly.  No guns, no bombs.  We're not that stupid.  It's Ukraine after all or the remaining part of it.  Who in his right mind really wants a shooting war with Russia over Ukraine?  It's right on Russia's border.  They can pour in any time.

If NATO can't actually liberate Ukraine, it can use it as a pretext for a brand new Cold War, the very thing NATO does best.  Experience shows that's a very extended-run gig.  It can last for decades, the military equivalent of Wayne Newton in Vegas.  We get to patrol with our jets.  They get to patrol with theirs. We get to mass our tanks in their vicinity and they mass their tanks along ours. Our subs go here, theirs go there.  We're all getting new missiles, subs and nuclear warheads anyway so the timing is near perfect.

Let the games resume.

Sh_t Pravda Says

Ah, Pravda, the legendary propaganda agency of the Soviet Union, is back at it, merrily thrashing about in its favourite Cold War wading pool.

Articles such as, "Russia takes complete advantage of castrated Armed Forces of the West," or, "Russia prepares nuclear surprise for NATO," or, "Modern Day America, One Step Away from the Third Reich," strike a very bellicose chord.



While some passages in the articles are laughable, the question arises whether the Russian public is being tuned up for a resumption of a full-blown Cold War.  The West is being presented as an out-of-control, potentially existential threat to Russia and her people and we seem unable to stop feeding their paranoia.  

A Word of Warning to NATO from Finland

Finland isn't impressed with NATO's anti-Moscow attitude.  President Sauli Niinisto will be taking that message to a conference in Helsinki on Thursday with David Cameron and the leaders of the Nordic and Baltic nations.

Niinisto says NATO is backing into a new Cold War with Russia.  He criticized the West for a continuing failure to "grasp the depth and seriousness of Putin's grievances with the US and the EU."

"We are in the position in the West of asking what is Putin up to.  Putin keeps saying the West and Nato are hostile. [He says] they have deceived Russia with Nato enlargement and they are undermining and humiliating Russia.

"So this is a situation that is not promising.  I have said we are almost at the gates of a new kind of cold war" that could suck in all of Europe. 

Niinisto says Finns are worried that, if their country becomes a full member of NATO, the country's 1,300 km. border with Russia would double the frontier along which Russia faces the hostile alliance.

If It's Cold War You Want, It's Cold War You'll Get

Wasn't one enough?  Really?

For almost a half century we, the West, and the Russians/Soviets poured mountains of money down the drain preparing for a war none of us would have survived had it come to that.

Underground missile batteries, fleets of nuclear missile submarines, strategic (nuclear) bombers, nuclear-capable strike fighters, mobile battlefield (tactical) nuclear missiles, massive tank armies ready to mix it up in the Fulda Gap on short notice.  An ocean of gasoline just looking for a match.

How many trillions of dollars were squandered on this global, nuclear make-work project?  What might we have accomplished with that vast fortune?

Make no mistake, that money was squandered.  Pissed away.  It didn't have to be that way.  With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, we could have taken a well-earned reward from the investment of all that money and all those lives.  We could have turned sacrifice into peace.

Lasting peace. It was ours for the taking. We could have implemented peaceful approaches to East Europe and Russia. That didn't happen. Instead we treated Russia as a vanquished foe.  As the Warsaw Pact dissolved, we eagerly snapped up its member states, brought them into the NATO fold, and marched triumphantly to Russia's very borders.

We said we were going to be peaceful, at least that's what we told Moscow.  But they've heard that from the West before and, instead, what they got was war. Napoleon, Hitler - real object lessons.

We said we wanted peace.  George H.W. Bush promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand beyond the borders of a unified Germany.  They believed it. We lied. That sort of thing left scars and primed Russia for strongman rule.

We let Russia know we wouldn't hesitate to attack.  We even positioned anti-missile batteries on their borders with the unconvincing cover story that they were to protect Europe from an Iranian attack.  And all this stealth technology? It's aimed at two countries, China and Russia. It's intended to take down their sophisticated air defence networks to pave the way for their aerial subjugation. The Americans have even done full-scale dress rehearsals that revealed our willingness to strike without notice, pre-emptively if you like.  We've shown the Russians - and the Chinese - they need their own stealth squadrons.

Today the Cold War that never really ended, not really, is returning to business as usual.  Putin has commissioned the deployment of new, long-range ballistic missiles; a new strategic bomber; new warheads and new submarines.  As Vice reports the undersea arms race is really heating up.

Last week what was believed to be a Russian sub had the Swedes chasing their tails in the Stockholm archipelago.   This week it's Latvia's turn.  They've got the wind up after spotting what appears to be a Russian sub tender in their waters.

It's a good thing we've got six CF-18 jets defending the airspace over the Baltic nations, again on Russia's doorstep, because Moscow is giving them plenty of warplanes to keep them hopping.  Let's just hope those RCAF Hornets never have to go head to head with Russia's Su-35s.

When the White House discovered in recent weeks that its unclassified computer systems had been breached, intelligence officials examined the digital evidence and focused on a prime suspect: Russia, which they believe is using its highly sophisticated cyber capabilities to test American defenses. But its tracks were well covered, and officials say they may never know for sure.

They have no doubt, however, about what happened this week on the edges of NATO territory in Europe. More than two dozen Russian aircraft, including four Tu-95 strategic bombers, flew through the Baltic and Black Seas, along the coast of Norway and all the way to Portugal, staying over international waters but prompting NATO forces to send up intercepting aircraft.

Taken together, they represent the old and the updated techniques of Cold War signal-sending. In the Soviet era, both sides probed each other’s defenses, hoping to learn something from the reaction those tests of will created. In 2014, cyber is the new weapon, one that can be used with less restraint, and because its creators believe they cannot be traced and can create a bit of havoc without prompting a response.

From Bush to Clinton to Bush and, now, Obama, we've kept the embers of Cold War burning and now, quite predictably, we're back in business.  All that danger, all that money, all those lives - and it was all for nothing.  I know, maybe we can tell ourselves all this is "noble."

Oh Hell, There Goes the NATO Neighbourhood

The allegation:  our longtime NATO partner, Turkey, has been supporting al-Qaeda in Syria.  The accuser, Francis Ricciardone, until late June the American ambassador to Turkey.

"Turkey has directly supported al-QAeda's wing in Syria, in defiance of America, the former US ambassador has disclosed.

"The Turkish authorities thought they could work with extremist Islamist groups in the Syrian civil war and at the same time push them to become more moderate, Ricciardone told journalists in a briefing.  That led them to work with Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda offshoot, as well as hardline Salafi Islamist groups such as Ahrar al-Sham.  Mr. Ricciardone said that he tried to persuade the Turks to close their borders to the groups, but to no avail.

Turkey has declined to join Obama's coalition to beat back the ISIS threat in Iraq and Syria and has prohibited US forces from launching missions against ISIS from bases inside Turkey. In another, "whose side are you on anyway?" moment, it's reported that Turkey has failed to interfere with ISIS' oil marketing by which ISIS has become one of the wealthiest terror groups ever.

In Case You Missed It, the Nuclear Option is Back

Vlad Putin is going for his nukes and we need to grasp our role in getting him there.  Russia is re-arming with a new class of nuclear submarines, a new and possibly illegal inter-continental ballistic missile and a new strategic bomber. 

Our sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine are working.  They're hammering the Russian economy which, in turn, destabilizes the state.  In case you don't get it, a destabilized nation just brimming with nuclear weapons is never a good idea.

NATO has been ratcheting up the pressure on Russia by announcing plans to establish two new bases on Russia's doorstep and the formation of an all-arms (naval, air and land) rapid reaction force specifically targeted at Russia. 

Putin doesn't much trust the West nor have we given him any reason that he should.   NATO's blunt-minded (and fortunately outgoing) Secretary-General, Andy Rasmussen, is pushing for the establishment of two military bases on Russia's borders.  It's the sort of thing that Hadrian would have done to keep the Picts at bay.  He's also spinning the idea of a rapid reaction force just in case Moscow gets frisky.  Little does Foggy Rasmussen seem to understand that his own homeland, Denmark, would probably fare poorly in a shooting war with Russia and that, maybe destabilizing Russia with provocative military installations and threats of rapid reaction forces really isn't in Europe's best interests.  Winter is coming.

But surely a cool customer like Vlad Putin wouldn't do something insane like resort to nukes, would he?  Maybe, maybe not.  The folks at ForeignPolicy.com aren't convinced.

Ever the one to administer bracing doses of Geopolitics 101 to his opponents, especially those inclined to underestimate his nerve, President Vladimir Putin, at a youth forum north of Moscow last week, reminded the world that "Russia is one of the most powerful nuclear nations. This is a reality, not just words." (Indeed it is.)

Fifteen days earlier, on Aug. 14, at a conference in Yalta, the Russian president had told the assembled factions of the State Duma that he soon planned to "surprise the West with our new developments in offensive nuclear weapons about which we do not talk yet." This came as Russian strategic nuclear bombers and fighter jets have been accused of violating the airspace of the United States and Western European countries with mounting frequency, while under the surface of the world's seas Russian and U.S. nuclear submarines have been involved in confrontations recalling the worst days of the Cold War. As NATO leaders convene for their summit in Wales, Russia just announced that its strategic nuclear forces will hold exercises of unprecedented dimensions this month. And the Kremlin, for its part, just declared that it will amend its military doctrine to reflect Russia's growing tensions with NATO. What this means exactly remains unclear, but in view of the rising tensions with the Western alliance, it cannot be good.

...But Putin would never actually use nuclear weapons, would he? The scientist and longtime Putin critic Andrei Piontkovsky, a former executive director of the Strategic Studies Center in Moscow and a political commentator for the BBC World Service, believes he might. In August, Piontkovsky published a troubling account of what he believes Putin might do to win the current standoff with the West -- and, in one blow, destroy NATO as an organization and finish off what's left of America's credibility as the world's guardian of peace.
 
In view of the Russian leader's recent remarks and provocative actions, the scenario Piontkovsky lays out becomes terrifyingly relevant. Worse, if the trigger events described come to pass, it becomes logical, maybe even inevitable.

Here's the chilling scenario the experts envision.

Not a massive launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles at the United States or Western Europe, which would bring about a suicidal atomic holocaust, but a small, tactical strike or two against a NATO member that few in the West would be willing to die to protect. Piontkovsky surmises that, in such a conflict, the nuclear-armed country with the "superior political will" to alter the geopolitical "status quo" and -- most importantly -- with the "greater indifference to values concerning human lives" would prevail. Any guesses which country that would be?

But what would trigger a Russian attack? According to Piontkovsky's scenario, it could be something as simple as a plebiscite: the Estonian city of Narva, overwhelmingly ethnically Russian and adjacent to Russia, deciding to hold a referendum on joining the Motherland. To help them "freely express their will" at the polls, Russia could send in a brigade of "little green men armed to the teeth," much like it did in Crimea in March. Estonia would thereupon invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter -- "an armed attack against one or more [NATO members] … shall be considered an attack against them all" -- and demand that the alliance defend it. Speaking in the Estonian capital of Tallinn on the eve of NATO's summit in Wales, this is just what Obama promised. "The defense of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defense of Berlin and Paris and London," he said.

Suddenly, the most terrifying nightmare becomes reality: NATO faces war with Russia.
 
How would Putin then react? Piontkovsky believes that NATO would balk at attacking Moscow over a small country remote from NATO's heartland and the hearts of its citizens. Piontkovsky imagines the course of action open to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama as he contemplates unleashing a planetary holocaust over a "damned little city no one has even heard of" while the American public cries out, "We don't want to die for fucking Narva, Mr. President!" Piontkovsky also cites a German public opinion poll asking what Berlin should do if Estonia enters an armed conflict with Russia: 70 percent would want their country to remain neutral.

Piontkovsky then tries to envision the situation in which Putin would find himself if NATO intervened to drive his little green men from Narva. Would Putin commit suicide by letting his missiles fly against the United States? No. Rather, he would respond with a limited nuclear strike against a couple of European capitals -- not London or Paris, but smaller ones, presumably in Eastern European countries that have only recently joined NATO. Warsaw, against which Russia has already conducted a drill simulating a Russian nuclear attack, first comes to mind. Or, say, Vilnius, Lithuania's capital. The point is, Putin would bet on decision-makers in Washington, Berlin, London, and Paris not retaliating with nuclear weapons against Russia if it had "only" hit a city or two most Westerners have barely heard of -- and certainly do not want to die for.

...it's worth remembering that since 2000 Russian nuclear doctrine has foreseen the deployment of battlefield nuclear weapons to de-escalate a conflict with NATO, if Russian forces were about to suffer defeat in a conventional conflict -- which shows that the Kremlin has already been betting that neither Obama nor the leaders of other nuclear powers would push the button if they could avoid it.

The Kremlin is probably right.

NATO - You're Not the Master of the Universe. Now, Stand Down.

NATO's outgoing CEO, er Secretary-General, Anders 'Foggy' Rasmussen, should really send caviar and roses to Vladimir Putin.  NATO hasn't done all that well on Foggy's watch - the cock-up in Libya, the hapless adventure in Afghanistan everybody would rather forget, the absorption of new members from eastern Europe more eager to get under NATO's umbrella than to pull their own weight.

Until Putin made his move on the Crimea, NATO had the makings of an alliance without much purpose and a very spotty track record.  Desultory is a word that comes to mind.

NATO needed a real enemy, someone we could all perceive as a direct threat to us, the world. Libyans or Afghans didn't really count. Small potatoes.

Along came Vlad and the Crimea to make our dreams come true.  They're Back!!! Those awful Russians with their awful ways.  Let's mobilize.  Assemble the fleet, set sail.  Prowl the skies with those fighters.  Parade the Legion.  We've got barbarians at the gate - and just in time!

Except I don't know that the people of the "old NATO" nations are up for another nuclear superpower confrontation.   We've done that once.  It was a costly, unproductive, and sometimes worrisome pain in the ass.  One Cuban missile crisis is enough for one lifetime.  We know that there are too many people on our side, people like Foggy Rasmussen, who are just too keen to get a new cold war stoked up.

We've been pushing Russia's buttons ever since George H.W. Bush promised Gorbachev that, if only East Germany was allowed to come into NATO's fold, the alliance would never extend further eastward.  One provocation atop another - until NATO was parked on Moscow's doorstep.

Enough.  The world is going to be up to its alligators in existential threats this century.  We don't need an ersatz cold war added to it.  Let's focus on ways to try to get through this century with mankind more or less intact instead of engineering ways to see there is no next century.  Enough.

NATO Leaders Huddle and Fume While Putin Chuckles

NATO's Drang Nach Osten

There'll be an absolute glut of righteous indignation when NATO leaders convene this week in Wales to decide whatever to do with that big bad bully, the Russian Bear, Vladimir Putin.  Meanwhile, as The Guardian's Simon Jenkins writes, Putin will be kicking back in Red Square laughing his ass off.

It is currently impossible to hear a speech or open a newspaper in which defence experts do not beat their breasts, bang their drums and demand "the west stand firm... show resolve... teach Russia a lesson... show Putin who is boss."  They call for more economic sanctions - which have never seemed more counterproductive.  They demand backing for Ukraine, aid for Kiev, support for other border states, more spearhead battalions and seemingly endless rapid reaction forces.  But they all end up asserting "we cannot mean war" and "a diplomatic solution is inevitable.

All intelligence out of Moscow says the same, that this bombast merely emboldens Putin.  He can do what he wants in eastern Ukraine, because he has an army there and it enjoys widespread support among the Russian-speaking population.  There is no question Putin has infringed the integrity of Ukrainian sovereignty. But so did America in its Latin American "sphere of influence" during the cold war.  Meanwhile, Britain kowtowed to China for economic gain and Olympic glory when Beijing was treating Tibet far worse.

Foreign policy always involves double standards.  The best policy is to avoid one's own weaknesses and instead test those of one's opponents.  Peace and trade were slowly eroding the juggernaut of Russian power across eastern Europe. Now Nato's pseudo-support for Kiev has played to Putin's one strength: his support among Russian peoples along his borders.  Kiev, the EU and Nato have played a dangerous game with Russia over Ukraine for years.  Putin has laid down a marker for an armistice, talks on autonomy, one that is bound to look like a victory for him.  It is for Kiev to pick it up.  Nato can go on swilling champagne in Wales.