What Has Mueller Really Done? Think.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has a lot to show for his two-year investigation. He's indicted some 37 individuals. Of those within his reach, most charged have pleaded guilty. Others have been convicted at trial. The remainder await trial.

The local gang have mainly been indicted for lying to investigators. Manafort added witness tampering to his caseload. There have also been indictments for tax evasion and other commercial crimes that surfaced through the investigations.

Two issues are conspicuous by their absence - obstruction of justice and Russian interference with the 2016 elections. There are a number of obvious offences there but they've never resulted in charges, at least not that we know.

Why has Mueller indicted no one for either of those issues? Not even one indictment. Why?

Part of the art of criminal law is identifying what's missing. For example the Crown may develop a theory of the crime and then it's up to defence counsel to scour all the discovery evidence and look not just at what has been produced but what has not, stuff that should be evident if the Crown's theory was valid. Prosecutors do the very same thing when it comes to dismantling alibis or other exculpatory evidence. In this way each side seeks to cast doubt on the other's case and, with the Crown bearing the onus of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that's a powerful weapon.

What's missing in Mueller's case, the part that has already been aired in public? Pretty much everything dealing with obstruction or Russian interference in the 2016 election. Do you think he overlooked that, the very essence of his appointment?  The absence of that is hardly proof of its absence. That would be preposterous especially given Mueller and his team's stature. These are the 'Pros from Dover.'

Mueller spent two years doing more than sleuthing out amateurs like Papadopoulos, and middle-grade scoundrels such as Cohen, Manafort and Flynn. Most of those who pleaded guilty sang like canaries. Others, who escaped indictment, like David Pecker and Allen Weisselberg, also sang like canaries. Lesser characters who were grilled emerged saying that Team Mueller knew more about them than they did themselves.

So think. Think like a lawyer. Put this all together and what do you come up with?

Mueller was commissioned to investigate and report. He was not ordered to indict and prosecute.  When he did indict what was his purpose? That's obvious. He was doing what American prosecutors do in RICO cases. He was using the prospect of jail time, years in the Greybar Hotel, to loosen tongues. He wanted evidence going to the two foundational issues of his investigation, Russian meddling in the election and obstruction of justice.

Now, once again, think like a lawyer. Why do you think we've heard nothing about either of those matters?

There's a Reason They Called it MAD.

They were all the rage in my day. Tactical nuclear weapons, mini-nukes, or "those little bags of instant sunshine."

Somewhere around here I've got a then-"secret" field manual laying out how these weapons were to be used in the event of a massive Soviet invasion of western Europe.  All eyes were on the Fulda Gap, two corridors through which it was expected a flood of Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks would pour into the central German plain and then on to the English Channel.  The idea was that those corridors provided convenient "choke points" where massed Soviet tanks and vehicles might be eliminated with tactical nukes delivered by NATO fighters including Canada's CF-104 Starfighters.

It was a dangerous gambit. There were so many unknowns. Would it encourage the Soviets to use similar weapons to annihilate NATO bases and our forces in the field?  Might an exchange of low-yield nukes escalate into a full-blown, civilization ending exchange of ICBM volleys?  The theory, as I understood it at the time, was a hope that using nukes to block a Soviet surprise attack would buy both sides two, maybe even three days to cool down and negotiate some way out of Armageddon.

With time the luster of tactical nuclear weapons faded.  Sure there were still arsenals of B-61 gravity bombs (above) scattered about. There still are. Most of the other stuff - the atomic cannon, the nuclear depth charge, that sort of thing has gone.

That sleeping giant is stirring again and, in a world already facing a variety of potentially existential threats, it does feel like "piling on."



Russia, meanwhile, is fielding new nuclear delivery systems of its own.  Among them are a robotic nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarine that could travel very deep, very fast, over very long-ranges, navigating its way into America's coastal ports and naval bases. There's also, according to Putin, a nuclear powered, nuclear armed cruise missile. There's a new nuclear submarine-launched Russian missile and Putin has just pledged to develop a new intermediate-range nuclear missile. How does that grab ya?

Fortunately we've got a very rational, very stable genius in the White House. Thank God and the United States of America for that.

You May Not Like These Odds

The odds aren't good. Three times out of four, the result is war. Such is the nature of superpower politics. Over the centuries superpowers have come and gone. There have been 16 instances where a dominant power was muscled out by an ascending power. 12 of those ended in war. It's called the "Thucydides Trap."

Today we're on the cusp of America's uni-polar moment being ended by the ascendancy of China giving rise to a multi-polar world in which America is still prominent but not dominant.

This transition would be perilous in ordinary times only we are not in anything remotely ordinary times. On the world stage there are no end of stressors that are in play and building. The circumstances of the key players are in flux and quite uncertain. They may make a peaceful transition much less likely.

There is the economic rivalry between China and America that will reshape access to markets and already scarce resources. China is already muscling into what had been America's sphere of influence from Asia Pacific to the Middle East to Africa and even South America. Russia is likewise moving to extend its influence into former American preserves. India, well India is just getting started but it is not developing its blue water navy to suit narrow parochial aspirations.

If all this sounds a bit much remember that it wasn't much more than 300 years ago that China and India were the world's two largest economies. They don't need our help remembering what once was or imagining what may be again. China is already there. India's GDP is now almost five times greater than America's as recently as 1980.

Economic and geo-political rivalries almost inevitably manifest in military rivalries. This is also underway.  On a daily basis America's unsurpassed military demonstrates its power but it also demonstrates its weakness. The conflicts since 9/11, called by some the "long war" or "perma-war" have revealed how often all the King's Men and all the King's Horses utterly fail to deliver meaningful victories despite costs running to several trillion dollars.

America still outspends the rest of the world on its military but it gets lousy bang for its military buck. Its military adversaries, China and Russia, get a lot more mileage out of their yuan and rubles. Both Russia and China focus their spending on gaining superiority in a few critical technologies such as hyper-velocity weapons that can neutralize America's numerical superiority. They don't waste their money on trying to match, neutralize or counter every American technology in every corner of the globe. China has focused on A2/AD - anti-access/area denial - to defend their sovereignty and their immediate sphere of influence and hegemony over the Chinese mainland and Asia Pacific.

The key adversaries are also well into a renewed nuclear arms race. Russia has deployed two new submarine designs said to be world-leading technology. It has deployed two new missile systems and new warheads to go with them. The Kremlin is known to have developed a nuclear powered, nuclear armed, robotic torpedo/submarine that is said to have a range of thousands of miles and is virtually unstoppable. The United States is rearming with new submarines and a number of new nuclear warheads including some low-yield, "mini-nukes" that risk lowering the "first use" threshold. Most recently China has announced it intends to develop newer, ultra-quiet technology submarines, new missiles and, of course, new warheads.

China still trails the US in "bleeding edge" technology but defence analysts and senior American officers warn they're catching up faster than anyone had imagined.

There are other stressors some global but some which will also impact and potentially destabilize the key adversaries. Climate change, overpopulation and over-consumption of essential resources are the big three but there are others.

China and the United States face serious problems with sea level rise, droughts and floods. Both countries face threats to fresh water resources and food security. China will have to contend with rivals for access to Himalayan headwaters, India and Pakistan, which are also nuclear armed.

Oh, and did I mention that the United States has a lunatic in the White House? That can't help.

At this point, let's turn to Foreign Policy's Graham Allison who offers five lessons the leaders of these key adversaries need to keep foremost in their minds.

Lesson 1: War between nuclear superpowers is MADness. 

The United States and the Soviet Union built nuclear arsenals so substantial that neither could be sure of disarming the other in a first strike. Nuclear strategists described this condition as “mutual assured destruction,” or MAD. Technology, in effect, made the United States and Soviet Union conjoined twins — neither able to kill the other. 

Today, China has developed its own robust nuclear arsenal. From confrontations in the South and East China Sea, to the gathering storm over the Korean Peninsula, leaders must recognize that war would be suicidal. 

Lesson 2: Leaders must be prepared to risk a war they cannot win. 

Although neither nation can win a nuclear war, both, paradoxically, must demonstrate a willingness to risk losing one to compete. 

Consider each clause of this nuclear paradox. On the one hand, if war occurs, both nations lose and millions die — an option no rational leader could choose. But, on the other hand, if a nation is unwilling to risk war, its opponent can win any objective by forcing the more responsible power to yield. To preserve vital interests, therefore, leaders must be willing to select paths that risk destruction. Washington must think the unthinkable to credibly deter potential adversaries such as China.


Lesson 3: Define the new “precarious rules of the status quo.” 

The Cold War rivals wove an intricate web of mutual constraints around their competition that President John F. Kennedy called “precarious rules of the status quo.” These included arms-control treaties and precise rules of the road for air and sea. Such tacit guidelines for the United States and China today might involve limits on cyberattacks or surveillance operations. 

By reaching agreements on contentious issues, the United States and China can create space to cooperate on challenges — such as global terrorism and climate change — in which the national interests the two powers share are much greater than those that divide them. Overall, leaders should understand that survival depends on caution, communication, constraints, compromise, and cooperation.

Lesson 4: Domestic performance is decisive. 

What nations do inside their borders matters at least as much as what they do abroad. Had the Soviet economy overtaken that of the United States by the 1980s, as some economists predicted, Moscow could have consolidated a position of hegemony. Instead, free markets and free societies won out. The vital question for the U.S.-China rivalry today is whether Xi’s Leninist-Mandarin authoritarian government and economy proves superior to American capitalism and democracy. 

Maintaining China’s extraordinary economic growth, which provides legitimacy for sweeping party rule, is a high-wire act that will only get harder. Meanwhile, in the United States, sluggish growth is the new normal. And American democracy is exhibiting worrisome symptoms: declining civic engagement, institutionalized corruption, and widespread lack of trust in politics. Leaders in both nations would do well to prioritize their domestic challenges. 

Lesson 5: Hope is not a strategy. 

Over a four-year period from George Kennan’s famous “Long Telegram,” which identified the Soviet threat, to Paul Nitze’s NSC-68, which provided the road map for countering this threat, U.S. officials developed a winning Cold War strategy: contain Soviet expansion, deter the Soviets from acting against vital American interests, and undermine both the idea and the practice of communism. In contrast, 

America’s China policy today consists of grand, politically appealing aspirations that serious strategists know are unachievable. In attempting to maintain the post-World War II Pax Americana during a fundamental shift in the economic balance of power toward China, the United States’ real strategy, truth be told, is hope. 

In today’s Washington, strategic thinking is often marginalized. Even Barack Obama, one of America’s smartest presidents, told the New Yorker that, given the pace of change today, “I don’t really even need George Kennan.” Coherent strategy does not guarantee success, but its absence is a reliable route to failure.

Thucydides’s Trap teaches us that on the historical record, war is more likely than not. From Trump’s campaign claims that China is “ripping us off” to recent announcements about his “great chemistry” with Xi, he has accelerated the harrowing roller coaster of U.S.-China relations. 

If the president and his national security team hope to avoid catastrophic war with China while protecting and advancing American national interests, they must closely study the lessons of the Cold War.

All good advice, especially the last part, except that Trump doesn't care to study anything - the man doesn't read - and he's surrounded himself with dangerous ideologues, people like Pompeo and Bolton, real freaks who think Dr. Strangelove was a documentary, in fact their favourite.

Well, With the Week He's Had Who Wouldn't Want to Let Off a Little Steam?

The United States has launched missile strikes against government targets in Syria. This time Britain and France tossed in a few missiles of their own, brothers in arms sort of thing, I suppose.

Trump announced the strikes in an address to the nation Friday evening. “The purpose of our action tonight is to establish a strong deterrent,” he said, against the production and use of chemical weapons, describing the issue as vital to national security. Trump added that the United States is prepared “to sustain this response” until its aims are met.

Trump asked both Russia and Iran, backers of Assad, “what kind of nation wants to be associated” with mass murder and suggested that someday the United States might be able to “get along” with both if they change their policies.

Details of the attack are still sketchy at best. There's no word on any action by the Russians either. They had threatened to use their S-400 systems to shoot down incoming American missiles. Russia had also warned it would retaliate against US installations should its bases in Syria be targeted.

Trump's remarks indicate that the US and perhaps the French and British are preparing for a sustained air and missile campaign.

I've Got an Idea to Rescue Justin From His Slump

Unfair or not, Justin Trudeau has taken a hit in the public's mind over his pretty clumsy trip to India. With JT et famille sporting an elaborate wardrobe of Bollywood's best fashions, the Indian press took the piss out of him pretty relentlessly. The local scribblers piled on.

Now Trudeau's approval numbers have dropped to within spitting distance of Tory leader, Andrew Scheer's. That's Andrew "Chuckles" Scheer people, a guy with all the charisma of a recycled catheter.

Maybe JT should consider upping his game. He could start by reversing himself and honouring a major campaign promise - electoral reform. I would like it even better if he went for electoral reform and pipelines but that's probably too much to ask. 

Trudeau promised that 2015 would be our last first-past-the-post election. In short order he reneged on that committment but his "can't" sounded more like "won't."  His claim that it wouldn't work here, even though it works elsewhere, was utterly unconvincing. We would even accept the preferential ballot option if he insisted. Just do it.

Or maybe Justin can change course. Maybe he should transform himself from just another free trade mule into a Renaissance Man befitting of his legendary father. (full disclosure. what follows is taken from an email I wrote to a fellow blogger this morning)

I have long argued that Canada needs some serious redecorating. Ever since George H.W. Bush started this “coalition of the willing” business, America has treated certain allies, Canada included, as its de facto Foreign Legion.  Desert Storm was, arguably, a good cause – driving Iraq out of Kuwait. Kosovo – meh. Afghanistan, well we all lost our minds at the 9/11 attacks streamed live into our livingrooms. We even bent the rules around Article 5 in that, 1) – the US never attacked by Afghanistan, and 2) – at the time the US invoked Article 5 it was not truly “under attack.” Picky, picky.

Where we lost the plot was when Bush/Cheney decided America should turn to invading Iraq rather than finishing what it had begun in Afghanistan. We knew from Hans Blix and his team of UN inspectors that Saddam wasn’t hiding a mountain of WMDs. It was pretty obvious that Washington thought it could roll in and basically grab the oil for US energy giants. Why was the only Iraqi ministry US forces secured the oil ministry?

The US decided to offload much of the Afghan mission to free up troops for Iraq and wanted a Foreign Legion. Rick “Big Cod” Hillier talked Paul Martin into taking the combat gig in Kandahar with a laughably token force of just 2,000 personnel, no more than half combat ready, to a province whose area and population mandated a combat force of between 20 to 30,000.  Martin didn’t know any better. Hillier probably did know, definitely should have known , but obviously didn’t tell his prime minister. It’s right there in the US Army/Marine Corps field manual, FM-3/24.

We lost our war in Afghanistan, the first military defeat in Canadian history. We lost badly. War is a state of armed conflict used to achieve a political outcome. That sought outcome was defined by Stephen Harper. We were there to stay. We would never cut and run. We would stay until the Taliban had been vanquished, effectively eradicated. We would make Afghanistan safe for democracy and a restoration of human rights (as they had once enjoyed under the country’s last king). We did none of those things. The Talibs are resurgent. The government is a hopelessly corrupt amalgamation of warlords from five main ethnic groups. Little boys’ bums are all the rage again and the struggle for women’s rights languishes. Meanwhile we definitely chose to cut and run.

Then along came Libya, a not so tidy war that Obama basically offloaded on Europe. Harper staged a victory fly past over Parliament Hill for that one even as Libya itself descended into an intractable, second phase civil war, this one substituting Islamist radicals for Gadhafi.

Syria? ISIS has been driven out, more or less, for now. It has been reduced from a rebellion to an insurgency to what is today essentially a terrorist movement. That’s the thing with these guys. They can morph from one state to another, often rather effortlessly, and that enables them to be flexible, mobile. They’ll be back, probably in another guise.

I have gone on at some length on these events because the world has become no safer for all of our post 9/11 misadventures. If anything we’ve demonstrated, repeatedly, that all the King’s Horses and all the King’s Men are no longer a sure path to a meaningful, lasting victory. We have all the watches but the bad guys have all the time.

We are returning to a more challenging era, one akin to the last Cold War, another win that we utterly failed to consolidate as we allowed triumphalism to get the better of us. That Doomsday Clock is now closer to midnight than it has been since the Cuban missile crisis. Around the world but particularly in Europe, Eurasia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the greater Asia Pacific region all the way to Australia, Russia and China, everyone is madly rearming.

America is being overtaken, economically, by China which is fast making inroads into the Middle East, Africa and even South America (whatever happened to the Monroe Doctrine anyway?). We have seen a number of these major power transitions over the centuries. At various times in the modern period the dominant spot belonged alternately to the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, the Brits and now the Americans. Before that came the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, etc.

Here’s the thing. History tells us that these transitions tend to be difficult. Two-thirds of them result in war. Is war in the offing between the U.S. and China? From what I’ve read over the past ten years, China’s military leadership is quietly bellicose.  At some level they want to exact revenge for China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of us white folks – Opium Wars, etc.?  That thought came to mind when I found an essay in the Proceedings of the US Naval Institute wherin an acting service officer complained bitterly that China was overtaking the United States “without a fight” as though that was unthinkable.

It would be tempting to dismiss that view as the work of a hothead only his sentiments go deeper in that, all the way back to the Project for a New American Century, the neo-cons (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz, Libby et al)  developed an “over my dead body” policy prescription that was subsequently embodied in the Bush Doctrine. That doctrine provided that America reserved the right to institute pre-emptive war against any nation or group of nations that challenged America’s economic and military domination.  Seriously, look it up.

The backbone of American airpower today and into the future are its stealth warplanes, the F-22 and F-35. Those are not dual purpose aircraft. They’re not defence oriented. There are simply too few F-22s to handle the job and the F-35 has a series of deficiencies that make it marginal in the air defence role. They are primarily offensive weapons designed to “take the fight to the enemy” and not just any garden variety enemy either.  They are purpose built to operate in heavily defended, hostile airspace.  One American general called the F-35 his “kick in the front door” weapon. Do you remember that the Japanese ran a dress rehearsal of their Pearl Harbour attack to test their shallow-draught Long Lance torpedoes in an appropriate anchorage? The USAF staged a similar “proof of concept” exercise called Operation Chimichanga that simulated a stealth first strike attack on China. Do you the Chinese maybe didn’t hear about that?

Whether it’s North Korea or the South China Sea or maybe just two countries getting into each other’s faces, this is not a very placid time. For Canada, however, it may be a time to begin loosening the ties that bind us to American foreign and military policy, perhaps by aligning Canadian  policy more directly with our western European allies. It doesn’t mean we won’t pick up the phone when Washington calls but maybe just not on the first or even the twenty-first ring.

If you follow this global rearmament business as I do you’re drawn to the conclusion that the world has absolutely no shortage of state of the art weaponry. State of the art everything. Hell even the city state of Singapore has six modern and very capable submarines.

How about we zig where everyone else chooses to zag by decoupling ourselves from Washington and restoring our credibility as an honest broker nation? Communications between rival nations (at all levels) are apt to become more strained in this overheated and armed-to-the-teeth milieu that has become our new reality. The need for a trustworthy intermediary may be greater now than ever before in Canadian history. It's a job suitable for the nation that gave the world the concept of peacekeeping, an initiative that earned Mike Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize.

A Blast From the Past. Remember the "Peace Dividend"?

The world but especially the Western alliance breathed a huge sigh of relief at the collapse of the former Soviet Union in late 1991. Over the following years, nation after nation dialed back their military preparedness, declaring what was then called a peace dividend. Defence budgets fell from about 4% of GDP to around 1.5%, in some cases (Canada) even less. The future would be one of fewer guns and ever more butter. The nuclear Sword of Damocles had been sheathed.

Yet, instead of being appropriately grateful for our blessing, we did little to build a lasting peace. What we did was to siphon up the former Warsaw Pact states into our alliance, NATO, and then march our armies literally up to Russia's doorstep. Yeah, that Russia, the nation and people who still had vivid memories of the last time armies from Western Europe massed their tanks along the borders of the Rodina.

Triumphalism was the order of the day, especially in Washington. We, i.e. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, had crushed the Soviet menace until it collapsed under its own weight. Instead of being grateful for having averted a war we celebrated having won a war.

This is a too common failing of the United States. They're pretty good at winning battles, campaigns, but they've been utterly inept at the next step, the important phase, winning the peace. Once the smoke clears and the barrels cool, they go all ADHD.

There's a price to be paid for this neglect. Ours has been a resumption of that Cold War we talked ourselves into believing had been won. Now the emphasis is on every one reinflating their military budgets, again practicing Armageddon-grade warfare, and feverishly re-arming.

For America, this has taken the form of an additional $300-billion of military funding. That's just to top it off. We're told that money will go to refurbish an American military worn out by its endless wars in the Middle East/South Asia. That doesn't sound especially alarming but maybe that money is earmarked for something less benign.

An op-ed in Aviation Week by US defence analyst Robert Stallard contends that $300-billion is going elsewhere - into preparations for waging war with China and/or Russia. Stallard suggests the big winners will be space warfare (the ability to defend your own space assets while obliterating your adversary's), cyber-warfare (you'll just have to wait to see what the three players have in mind), and black projects, stuff that won't even be showcased to Congress. Some of these programmes such as hyper-velocity and directed-energy (set phasers to "obliterate") are already under development and have been considered in a few published articles of unknown reliability.

I would like to call it Cold War II but it doesn't seem to be a noticeable departure from the thinking of Cold War I. It may be merely a continuation of our incredibly dangerous past following a quarter-century of relative dormancy. One thing is certain. Whatever it is, "it's on."

Shame on us for having so negligently bequeathed this future to our kids and grandkids. This did not have to be.

The Evisceration of a Thug.

Few have done it so well as Roger Cohen's op-ed dissection of Donald Trump in Der Spiegel.

Many of us tend to take Trump's insults to decency as they come, one at a time, but Cohen stitches them all together to paint a picture that's much darker and dangerous than we may perceive. It's a good read.

Meanwhile Foreign Policy's Max Boot writes that, while America may survive Trump, it will never again be the same.

One critical area in which Trump has already inflicted irreparable harm is the State Department where, by some reports, upwards of 60% of America's professional diplomats have already left, taking with them the department's "institutional memory." These are the people who make the place work. They know their counterparts in foreign capitals, who to call and how to reach them. They know what to do when things go wrong, how to fix what's broken, what worked and didn't work in the past, how things get done. Anyone who has ever worked in the management side of a large organization knows the type, the indispensable few.


Scores of senior diplomats, including 60 percent of career ambassadors, have left the department since the beginning of the year, when President Donald Trump took office, according to the letter. There are 74 top posts at State that remain vacant with no announced nominee.

“Were the U.S. military to face such a decapitation of its leadership ranks, I would expect a public outcry,” [Barbara Stephenson, president of the American Foreign Service Association] wrote.

It’s not just top leadership that is fleeing. New recruitment is falling dramatically as well, shrinking the pool for future talent. The number of applicants registering to take the Foreign Service Officer Test this year will be fewer than half the 17,000 who registered just two years ago, she wrote.

What they're seeing on the diplomatic front, as in other areas Trump is abandoning, is the Russians and the Chinese quick to exploit the vacuum.

When you lose that institutional memory it can take years, decades to rebuild and, by then, you may find yourself in a world radically changed. Trump has no grasp of how he's undermining America, now and for future administrations. 

Where There's Smoke... There's Wilbur

It's like dragging up a bucket of seawater and looking at all the tiny little critters swimming around inside. You're only getting the smallest of looks, a bare peep, into what's in the sea. A microcosm if you will.

The bucket of seawater in this case is being called the Paradise Papers, a massive media investigation into just two "offshore service providers and 19 tax haven's company registries." There are a bunch of critters, some of them tax cheats, who are being identified including Justin Trudeau's confidante and chief fundraiser, Stephen Bronfman.  Lorne has the rundown on Bronfman, here.

There's another, perhaps more interesting name, being splashed onto the pages of The Guardian, Wilbur Ross, Trump's commerce secretary, and it touches on the secretary's active business dealings with Vlad Putin's son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov, the husband of Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova.

Leaked documents and public filings show Ross holds a stake in a shipping company, Navigator, through a chain of offshore investments. Navigator operates a lucrative partnership with Sibur, a Russian gas company part-owned by Kirill Shamalov.

...

Analysts said the arrangement was troubling. Daniel Fried, an assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs under George W Bush, said Ross’s connection to “cronies of Putin” threatened to undermine US sanctions.

“I don’t understand why anybody would decide to maintain this kind of relationship going into a senior government position,” he said. “What is he thinking?”

...

The disclosures come as inquiries intensify into Russian interference with the 2016 US election. Congress and Robert Mueller, the special counsel, are investigating possible collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Moscow. Ross has dismissed claims of collusion as “rumour and innuendo”.

The involvement of Ross and Shamalov in the shipping venture dates back to 2011. That year, Ross’s investment firm, WL Ross, began buying into Navigator with an investment that gave him two seats on the company’s board. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Shamalov began investing in Sibur, which was formerly state owned.

By January 2012, having built up his holding in the Russian company, Shamalov, then 29, was made its deputy chairman. That summer, WL Ross took control of Navigator by buying a further $110m stake from the collapsed Lehman Brothers bank.

Shamalov is the son of Nikolai Shamalov, one of Putin’s oldest friends from St Petersburg, where Putin worked in the mayor’s office. He married Katerina in a secret ceremony in February 2013.

Later that year, two ships from Ross’s company began transporting liquefied gas out of Russia for Putin’s son-in-law’s firm under a decade-long contract initially worth $226m.

Of greater interest is Wilbur's relationship to the Kremlin through his ownership interest in the major Cypriot bank, the Bank of Cyprus, where he served as vice-chairman. Cyprus is considered the first stop in the laundering of dirty money from Russia. It's alleged Paul Manafort laundered tens of millions of dollars in rubles through Cyprus before transiting through Deutsche Bank en route to a new life as real estate and other investments in the US.

Back in March, The Guardian took a look at Wilbur's dealings with Moscow while at the Bank of Cyprus. 

In 2015, while [Ross] served as vice-chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, the bank’s Russia-based businesses were sold to a Russian banker and consultant, Artem Avetisyan, who had ties to both the Russian president and Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. At the time, Sberbank was under US and EU sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Avetisyan had earlier been selected by Putin to head a new business branch of the Russian president’s strategic initiative agency, which was tasked with improving business and government ties.

Avetisyan’s business partner, Oleg Gref, is the son of Herman Gref, Sberbank’s chief executive officer, and their consultancy has served as a “partner” to Sberbank, according to their website. Ross had described the Russian businesses – including 120 bank branches in Russia – as being worth “hundreds of millions of euros” in 2014 but they were sold with other assets to Avetisyan for €7m (£6m).

Ross has not been accused of wrongdoing and there is no indication the Russian deal violated US or EU sanctions. Ross resigned from the Bank of Cyprus board after he was confirmed as commerce secretary last month.

...

In 2014, the Bank of Cyprus was still considered to be in a precarious state following a dramatic €10bn rescue of Cyprus’s banking sector by the ECB and the IMF. Under the terms of the deal, many of the bank’s wealthy Russian deposit holders lost their cash and became shareholders in the bank.

Ross, who had made billions of dollars years earlier by betting on bankrupt steel mills, was known for taking risky bets. But his decision to inject €400m into the bank with other investors encompassed a different kind of risk. It put him at the centre of the biggest financial institution in a country that was widely considered to be a tax haven for Russian oligarchs, even as the US and EU were imposing sanctions on Russia. In 2014, the year he made his investment, the US State Department considered Cyprus an area of “primary concern” for money laundering (pdf), according to its official assessment.

Meanwhile, the Paradise Papers scandal seems to have Ross working overtime to distance himself from the Russians and not very convincingly.

Rockas, Ross’s press secretary, tried to distance Ross from the Sibur deal with a series of statements that were contradicted by other sources. He said the Navigator-Sibur deal was signed in February 2012, before Ross joined the Navigator board. But Sibur’s annual report for that year said the deal was signed in March.

Rockas said Ross did not join Navigator’s board until 31 March 2012. But a press release filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission on 2 March that year said Ross was by then already on the board. In ethics forms filed this year, Ross estimated that his start date had been January 2012.

Rockas said: “No funds managed by WL Ross & Co ever owned a majority of Navigator shares.” But a press release issued by the company in August 2012 was titled “WL Ross Agrees To Acquire Majority Stake In Navigator”.

Navigator vessels also carried out extensive business with the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, records show, at a time when Venezuela’s government was cracking down on opposition. Trump imposed sanctions on PDVSA in August.

Rockas said Ross “has been generally supportive of the administration’s sanctions of Russian and Venezuelan entities.” He said Ross had never met Shamalov, Timchenko or Mikhelson.

It raises the question of why so many Trump administration principals have such close financial ties to Russian companies, Russian oligarchs, even Putin himself. Both Paul Manafort and Wilbur Ross were operating in Cyprus during the same period, Cyprus the first link in the money laundering trail leading out of Russia. Ross who was the vice-chairman of the Bank of Cyprus resigning only once he was confirmed to his appointment as Trump's commerce secretary.

What I want to know now is what does Robert Mueller know.

And the Hits Just Keep on Coming - Papadopoulis Rolls Over

It's raining Trump conspirators. Just after word got out that Paul Manafort (plus one) has been indicted for tax evasion and money laundering, it's being reported that another Trump aide, George Papadopoulos, has pleaded guilty to lying to Mueller's investigators.  Papadopoulos was a senior foreign policy adviser to Trump during the campaign. It's a safe bet George has decided to play "Let's Make a Deal."

This could be juicy, the break that goes beyond tawdry money laundering.

Paul Manafort is reported to have turned himself in to the FBI. I wonder who'll be posting his bail.

UPDATE

The New Republic seems to agree that the Papadopoulos  plea is possibly a much bigger deal than the indictment of Paul Manafort (plus one) for money laundering and tax evasion.


The Papadopoulos plea is even more important than the Manafort indictment on a number of counts. First, because it is a plea, it suggests that Papadopoulos has flipped and is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The Manafort indictment, by contrast, suggests that Manafort is not yet cooperating, since one major reason for bringing an indictment could be to put pressure on Manafort.

Second, the Papadopoulos plea directly links a Trump campaign official with attempts to make a deal with the Russian government. Papadopoulos had emailed a high-ranking campaign official with a subject heading “New message from Russia.” In it, he proposed to make an “off the record” trip to Russia to meet with Russian foreign ministry officials “in the interest of Mr. Trump and the campaign.”

...

In sum, a member of Trump’s campaign has pled guilty and provided evidence that the campaign did collude or attempt to collude with Russia. That cuts to the heart of the Mueller investigation—and it means that the president should be in very deep trouble.

While the spotlight will remain on Paul Manafort, his indictment does not directly affect Trump - unless and until Manafort decides to cut his losses and roll over on the Mango Mussolini.  Papadopoulos, that's a different matter altogether.

Even most journalists have little grasp of how an investigation of this order works. Those who have been through this before can read a lot into developments, especially the announcement of Papadopoulos' guilty plea atop the Manafort (plus one) charges.  From The Atlantic. 

The Papadopoulos revelations came as a complete surprise and undermined conservative talking points.

“Not only does this suggest that Mueller is taking into account the optics and the politics of the moment, but that he’s actually trying to take advantage of them to maximize the clout of the investigation and to control the narrative,” Vladeck said.

Other filings released Monday revealed Papadopoulos was actively cooperating with Mueller’s investigation as part of his plea deal. “One assumes that the plea deal was in exchange for something” on Papadopoulos’s part, Vladeck said. “And the ‘something’ is clearly not related to the Manafort indictment. So the real question is, what exactly did Papadopoulos give up?”

Papadopoulos’s plea agreement was initially sealed. According to a motion filed in July, were its particulars publicly known at the time, they would have hampered his ability to work on behalf of investigators as a “proactive cooperator.” According to Barrett, that phrase could refer to Papadopoulos “having law enforcement-monitored meetings,” including wearing a wire or arranging “calls or emails with other subjects of the investigation who are unaware that he is cooperating with the government.”

If the Papadopoulos plea was indeed a surprise, it will have Team Trump scrambling especially given that it seems the Trump adviser had been working for Team Mueller for nearly four months. He might have been wired in meetings or telephone calls with top Trump officials. Loose lips sink ships and people who have reason to fear that worry.

Trump, Russia and Cambridge Analytica (Maybe the Crew From Victoria Too?)

The plot thickens. The world was awakened to how votes could be hacked, voters brainwashed, by sophisticated software, social networks, and targeted messaging in the upset "leave" vote for Brexit. Fingered in that was a small company from Victoria, B.C., Aggregate IQ, and a shadowy young man from Western Canada, Chris Wylie.

Aggregate IQ and Wylie are believed to have links to American rightwing billionaire, Robert Mercer, his cohort, Steve Bannon, and his Aggregate IQ clone, Cambridge Analytica.

AggregateIQ holds the key to unravelling another complicated network of influence that Mercer has created. A source emailed me to say he had found that AggregateIQ’s address and telephone number corresponded to a company listed on Cambridge Analytica’s website as its overseas office: “SCL Canada”. A day later, that online reference vanished.

There had to be a connection between the two companies. Between the various Leave campaigns. Between the referendum and Mercer. It was too big a coincidence. But everyone – AggregateIQ, Cambridge Analytica, Leave.EU, Vote Leave – denied it. AggregateIQ had just been a short-term “contractor” to Cambridge Analytica. There was nothing to disprove this. We published the known facts. On 29 March, article 50 was triggered.

Then I meet Paul, the first of two sources formerly employed by Cambridge Analytica. He is in his late 20s and bears mental scars from his time there. “It’s almost like post-traumatic shock. It was so… messed up. It happened so fast. I just woke up one morning and found we’d turned into the Republican fascist party. I still can’t get my head around it.”

He laughed when I told him the frustrating mystery that was AggregateIQ. “Find Chris Wylie,” he said.

Who is Chris Wylie?

“He’s the one who brought data and micro-targeting [individualised political messages] to Cambridge Analytica. And he’s from west Canada. It’s only because of him that AggregateIQ exist. They’re his friends. He’s the one who brought them in.”

There wasn’t just a relationship between Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ, Paul told me. They were intimately entwined, key nodes in Robert Mercer’s distributed empire. “The Canadians were our back office. They built our software for us. They held our database. If AggregateIQ is involved then Cambridge Analytica is involved. And if Cambridge Analytica is involved, then Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon are involved."

Now Cambridge Analytica has shown up on the radar of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. They want to know if Cambridge Analytica colluded with Russian interests to hack the election and catapult Donald Trump into the White House.  Go figure.

The company is in the process of turning over documents to HPSCI, according to a source familiar with the committee’s work. Another source close to the investigation said that the probe’s focus on Cambridge Analytica is “fruitful.”

Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, had holdings in Cambridge Analytica worth between $1 million and $5 million as recently as April of this year, Bloomberg reported. Bannon, now back as the chairman of the pro-Trump media outlet Breitbart, hasn’t been publicly mentioned as a potential witness for or target of Russia investigators. He previously sat on the board of Cambridge Analytica.

Another key Cambridge Analytica investor is Robert Mercer, the reclusive hedge fund billionaire who also generously backed Trump’s presidential campaign. Mercer and his daughter Rebekah introduced several top officials to Trump’s campaign, including Kellyanne Conway and Bannon. The Mercers also are partial owners of Breitbart—among their many, many investment in far-right media outlets, think tanks, and political campaigns.

A recent Vanity Fair piece highlighted speculation among Washington Democrats that the Trump campaign’s data operation could point to collusion between Trump and Russia.

Cambridge purports to go beyond the typical voter targeting—relying on online clues like Facebook Likes to give a hint at a user’s political leanings and construct a picture of a voter’s mental state. The “psychographic” picture Cambridge ostensibly provides to a campaign is the ability to tailor a specific message based on personality type – angry, fearful, optimistic and so forth – rather than simply aiming ads at voters from likely convivial candidates.

Russian propaganda on Facebook and other social-media platforms passed itself off as authentic American voices; targeting refugees, posing as an American Muslim groupand backing an Atlanta-based duo supporting Black Lives Matter. Depending on which cohort was being targeted, the efforts encouraged pro-Trump voters to intensify political participation, black voters to abandon Hillary Clinton for Trump, and Muslim voters to consider Clinton an Islamophobe.

The Kremlin-orchestrated propaganda efforts on Facebook have evinced a level of sophistication surprising for a foreign entity, prompting speculation that Russians may have received some kind of targeting help. Such targeting reached voters in states where Clinton enjoyed a traditional advantage but went for Trump, including Michigan and Wisconsin, CNN reported.

In May, the Guardian’s Sunday Observer reported that Cambridge Analytica and its UK affiliate SCL––which owns 10 percent of Cambridge Analytica to Mercer’s 90 percent––have worked in Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Iran and Moldova.

“Multiple Cambridge Analytica sources have revealed other links to Russia, including trips to the country, meetings with executives from Russian state-owned companies, and references by SCL employees to working for Russian entities,” the Observer reported.

Meanwhile, where in hell is Chris Wylie?

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.

Justin's Folly - Selling Death Wagons to a Despotic Regime Going Broke

You remember the Saudi death wagon controversy when the Trudeau regime gave the go ahead to the sale of 15-billion dollars worth of armoured fighting vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

Well, what if those death wagons fall into the hands of the very people we've been over there fighting, radical Sunni Islamists? Justie would have a little egg on his face then, wouldn't he?

For two years now reports have been coming out about the Saudi's fiscal woes. Some say the monarchy is teetering on the edge of bankrutpcy, a function of profligate spending and low, low, low world oil prices. It's the old story - too much going out, not enough coming in. Even the IMF has predicted that the Saudi regime could be bankrupt within five years.

The Saudi royal family, the House of Saud, for whom the country is named, have managed to hold onto power thanks to what had been mountains of cash. Academics suggest that a fiscal crisis could mean the end of the monarchy and trigger anarchy and violence possibly exacerbated by Russia and Iran.


The consolidation of the Shia Belt and the destabilization of Saudi Arabia will have one of two outcomes for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In the first, it will be inevitably destroyed by the Syrian army, who will be bolstered by an increase in Russian and Iranian forces in the theater. With U.S. and Western attention being drawn towards a destabilized Saudi Arabia, the Russian Federation as well as Iran will be able to increase military operations within Syria, increasing the likelihood that Assad will remain in power and both ISIS and the Free Syrian Army will be crushed.

The second scenario would be the rise of radical Salafism in a destabilized Saudi Arabia. With Wahhabism being one of the most popular forms of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia, it would seem only logical as this would be the immediate threat in the Kingdom. ISIS would undoubtedly take advantage of the destabilization of Saudi Arabia in the same manner as in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. As radical Salafism is the widely practiced form of Sunni Islam in both al-Qaeda and ISIS, it would only be a matter of time before the two powers took a more active role in the country.

Iraq and Syria have taught us what it means when al-Qaeda and ISIS take a "more active role" in a country. We can imagine what form that might take in a country where they're basically the home team.

So Much for Democracy

We now know that Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by well more than 2.5-million ballots. Perhaps as many ballots again were not counted due to Republican efforts to disqualify eligible voters. - Strike One.

We now know that investigations by the Central Intelligence Agency determined that Russia meddled in the election by leaking Democratic emails to Assange's WikiLeaks that then spread the damaging material into the election campaigns. - Strike Two.

Then there was the FBI director's curious announcement, less than two weeks before voting day, of yet another criminal investigation into Clinton's emails. Just a few days before the vote the director, Comey, cleared Mrs. Clinton only the damage was done. - Strike Three.

Now it's suggested that the FBI knew about Russia's skulduggery, knew that the Russians also had Republican emails that they were withholding, but said nothing. Outgoing senate minority leader Harry Reid argues that Comey was every bit as bent as J. Edgar Hoover. - Strike Four???

Meanwhile Trump hasn't even waited for his inauguration to tell the Gullibillies who were stupid enough to vote for him that all those election promises that got them so hot and bothered - well that was just malarkey to suck them in. That swamp? It stays, in fact it's going to be worse than ever. "Lock her up" Hillary? Hey, he was only screwin' with ya. - Strike Five.

Then there's the unhinged, unwashed horde who did support Trump while deep in an alternate reality.


Over the course of the campaign we found there was a cult like aspect to Trump's support, where any idea he put forth a substantial share of his supporters would go along with. We see that trend continuing post election. 60% of Trump voters think that Hillary Clinton received millions of illegal votes to only 18% who disagree with that concept and 22% who aren't sure either way.

A couple other findings related to the vote in this year's election:

-40% of Trump voters insist that he won the national popular vote to only 49% who grant that Clinton won it and 11% who aren't sure.

-Only 53% of Trump voters think that California's votes should be allowed to count in the national popular vote. 29% don't think they should be allowed to count, and another 18% are unsure.

There's been a lot of attention to the way fake news has spread and been believed especially by Trump supporters and that's borne out in our polling:

-73% of Trump voters think that George Soros is paying protesters against Trump to only 6% who think that's not true, and 21% who aren't sure one way or the other. (I personally had to explain to my Grandmother that this wasn't true a few weeks ag0 after someone sent her an e-mail about it.)

-14% of Trump supporters [and Trump's pick for national security advisor] think Hillary Clinton is connected to a child sex ring run out of a Washington DC pizzeria. Another 32% aren't sure one way or another, much as the North Carolinian who went to Washington to check it out last weekend said was the case for him. Only 54% of Trump voters expressly say they don't think #Pizzagate is real.

There's also been a lot of discussion recently about how we might be in a post-fact world and we see some evidence of that coming through in our polling:

-67% of Trump voters say that unemployment increased during the Obama administration, to only 20% who say it decreased.

-Only 41% of Trump voters say that the stock market went up during the Obama administration. 39% say it went down, and another 19% say they're not sure.

The research plainly shows that a good many Trump supporters were mentally fogged in. They are Gullibillies in the most pejorative sense of the term. Utterly misled, incapable of properly exercising their democratic franchise. - Strike Six.

This, then, is beyond argument the least legitimate government in American history and in the postwar western world. The whole thing is a sham built on layer upon layer of deceit and contrivance by Trump, his backers, a foreign power, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Russia and the GOP Have the Same Goal for America - Chaos - Or How We Know Who'll Win the American Election - Trump, No. Clinton, No. Putin, Of Course.

Republican Congressional leaders have been pretty outspoken about one thing - if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, they plan on making the gridlock that beset the Obama administration even worse, much worse. They will plunge the government and, to some extent the country itself, into chaos.

Perhaps not coincidentally that's an agenda shared with Russian strongman, Vlad Putin. From Foreign Policy:

The desired result in this election has not necessarily been the presidency of Donald Trump. In fact, he seems to them to be rather disposable. The mission is sowing disruption, chaos. And in doing that, Putin will have accomplished something for himself, regardless of who wins next week: a deeply fractured American system, once held up as a shining alternative to Moscow’s style of power, now tarnished beyond recognition.

Even more importantly, Putin will have shown himself to be able to project power far beyond where anyone would have suspected. It’s no longer just in his backyard, like in Georgia and Ukraine — not even in the Middle East. Putin is now able to bring his tactics of asymmetric warfare deep into the belly of his greatest foe, the world’s last superpower. “Putin wants to show himself as a player who can’t be forced to do what America wants and that he can do what he needs, whether the others like it or not,” says independent political analyst Masha Lipman. “Today, everyone understands that you might not like Russia, you might hate it, you might be scared of it, you might want to punish it, but you can’t do anything about it. It can do what it wants."

“If Trump wins, of course they’ll drink champagne in the Kremlin, but not for long,” says former Putin advisor and political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky. “Then they’ll realize that nothing is resolved and that the election of Trump will lead to more chaos. But that’s what we’re selling — chaos.”

If Clinton wins, Putin won’t mind that he’ll be dealing with a president who had to climb over a mountain of Kremlin propaganda and interference to get to the White House. Bitter? Fine. But at least you’ll know that we’re stronger than you thought. “How can it be a regional power if it was the central topic of the third debate?” Markov asks.

“It doesn’t matter who’s president,” Lipman says. “Any kind of turmoil or internal split that’s hard to overcome, that is good for Russia. If your powerful opponent is disabled from within, it works to your advantage.” It also greatly undermines a central tenet of U.S. foreign policy, one that has driven Putin to distraction: democracy promotion and the idea that striving toward American values is a force for positive change in the world. “‘They said our elections are no good, but look at their elections, look at this much-touted democracy,’” Lipman says of the Russian view. “That is much more important than a single person.

Could Syria Become the 21st Century Sarajevo?

There were plenty of proxy wars during the Cold War only back then the principals had enough sense to avoid direct clashes. That was then, this is Syria where today we find the rival superpowers circling each other inside the same phone booth.

You could search the world over and never find one place where so many players are gathered as Syria.

First up is the Alawite government of Bashar Assad.

Then there's the original rebels, Syrian Sunnis.

Then we have the Sunni Islamists - the 'moderate' al Nusra, an affiliate of al Qaeda, and the far nastier Islamic State, ISIS.

The United States and its minions have been waging a bombing campaign against ISIS, first in Iraq and later also in Syria. It's been the standard, ineffective "whack a mole" stuff.

Turkey finally got off the fence and began its own air campaign only they're less concerned about ISIS than they are at bombing Syrian Kurds.

The United States was supporting the Syrian rebels with equipment and training until it discovered the rebels were surrendering all that gear to al Nusra and al Qaeda. Can't be having that. So the United States is now supporting Syria's Kurds which is really pissing off Turkey's Erdogan.

Recently three more places have been set at the table of mass mayhem. Here sit Russia, Hezbollah and now Iranian forces all supporting Bashar Assad.  Latest word has it that Iran has not only sent in units of the Revolutionary Guard but also a contingent of warplanes. They seem to be focused mainly on the moderate Syrian rebels but they also take on the Sunni Islamists every now and then.

It's hard to keep track of how many nations are waging air wars in Syria.  There's the Syrian air force, naturally, its strength replenished by replacement aircraft from Russia. There's the US Air Force and the League of Vassals, America's aerial Foreign Legion that, naturally, includes a Canadian contingent plus strike fighters from France, Britain, Australia and other European states plus Jordan and a half-hearted effort from a few Gulf States.

We want to battle ISIS. The other side seems intent mainly on attacking Syrian opposition rebels. The Turks prefer to bomb Syrian Kurds, the very group the US is still supporting. Nobody is bombing Assad, the guy who sparked the original fighting, and, with the Russians riding shotgun, it's hard to imagine the Western coalition going after him any time soon.

Syria, which is almost the same size as the state of Washington (just over twice the size of New Brunswick), suddenly has an awful lot of warplanes buzzing overhead at cross purposes.  The Russians have also introduced their highly lethal  S-300 surface to air missile batteries. Turkey, meanwhile, is clamoring for the US and Germany to reactivate their Patriot missile batteries in support of their NATO partner. Eventually someone may fire one of those things.

The Americans have been snookered by Putin and this is bound to have geopolitical ramifications throughout the Middle East. Will the Saudis and the Egyptians tolerate Shiite Iran's military presence in Syria? Will they pile on?

Could Syria become the Sarajevo of the 21st century, the place where a proxy war becomes a shooting war between the West and Russia? Those expert in these matters warn these eyeball to eyeball confrontations are the sort of situations in which rival powers can back into direct conflicts neither one of them truly wants to initiate.

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.          

A Seismic Jolt That Most Won't Even Notice

Just consider it the 21st century version of the "Great Game,"  the superpower struggle to wrest control of South Asia.  While it used to be a contest between Russia and Britain, today the players are Washington and Beijing.  The latest round goes to China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which seems to be evolving into something akin to our side's NATO.

India and Pakistan have began accession to a regional security group led by China and Russia after two days of summits which Russian President Vladimir Putin held up as evidence Moscow is not isolated in the world.

The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, meeting in the Russian city of Ufa on Friday, a day after the BRICS emerging economies held a summit there, said the invitation to the two Asian nations showed a "multipolar" world was now emerging.

Those words will have pleased Mr Putin, who says the United States has an outdated vision of a "uni-polar" world dominated by Washington and wants to show Russia has not been weakened by Western sanctions over its role in the Ukraine crisis.

The potential ramifications of this are as fascinating as they are worrying.  China is acquiring a land bridge that connects it via Pakistan to Iran and, from Iran, to Iraq.  Iran, at the moment, could really use a powerful benefactor.  Two would be even better.  Look at the map above.  Go from Iran to Pakistan, India and China, then on to Russia and south to the Caspian and the "Stans."  Now do you see what they're locking up?

Then look at the neighbouring waters.  China is already muscling into control of the South China Sea. With India and Pakistan aboard, that could spread to the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and, if Iran runs for cover, the Persian Gulf.

Next up, take a look at what this new geopolitical reality would mean to Southeast Asia - Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Burma, Bangladesh and Nepal. They're sort of sewn up.  

Then consider what this means in the context of the American position in the arc extending from Japan to Saudi Arabia, an area the US has been struggling to dominate.  This is not good news for Washington although it's not much of a surprise either.  This deal has been in the works for a couple of years.

One other thing.  If I were the Saudis or Israel, I'd be shitting bricks at the prospect of Iran backed by the muscle of Moscow and Beijing and, worse still, the "other side" being able to manipulate oil markets through control of the reserves of Iraq, Iran and the Caspian Basin.

My, my, my.  It's hard to say how much of this is America's own doing from marching NATO to Russia's doorstep to trying to contain China, primarily from contesting Chinese domination of the South China Sea, trying to recruit India to leave China's sea lane access to the Middle East vulnerable in the Indian Ocean and aligning the nations of the Asia Pacific toward Washington and away from Beijing.  None of those gambits seems particularly bright right now.

Meanwhile, In Our Vast, Undefended North...

The latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine is devoted to espionage, spying, and the magazine reports that today's Ground Zero of spying is the Arctic.

For the countries that border the Arctic Ocean—
Russia, the United States, Canada, Norway, and Denmark (through its territory of Greenland)—an accessible ocean means new opportunities. And for the states that have their sights set on the Lomonosov Ridge—possibly all five Arctic Ocean neighbors but the United States—an open ocean means access to much of the North Pole’s largesse. First, though, they must prove to the United Nations that the access is rightfully theirs. Because that process could take years, if not decades, these countries could clash in the meantime, especially as they quietly send in soldiers, spies, and scientists to collect information on one of the planet’s most hostile pieces of real estate.

While the world’s attention today is focused largely on the Middle East and other obvious trouble spots, few people seem to be monitoring what’s happening in the Arctic. Over the past few years, in fact, the Arctic Ocean countries have been busy building up their espionage armories with imaging satellites, reconnaissance drones, eavesdropping bases, spy planes, and stealthy subs. Denmark and Canada have described a clear uptick in Arctic spies operating on their territories, with Canada reporting levels comparable to those at the height of the Cold War. As of October, NATO had recorded a threefold jump in 2014 over the previous year in the number of Russian spy aircraft it had intercepted in the region. Meanwhile, the United States is sending satellites over the icy region about every 30 minutes, averaging more than 17,000 passes every year, and is developing a new generation of unmanned intelligence sensors to monitor everything above, on, and below the ice and water.

If Vienna was the crossroads of human espionage during the Cold War, a hub of safe houses where spies for the East and the West debriefed agents and eyed each other in cafes, it’s fair to say that the Arctic has become the crossroads of technical espionage today. According to an old Inuit proverb, “Only when the ice breaks will you truly know who is your friend and who is your enemy.”

...Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared that Santa Claus is a Canadian citizen and announced plans to claim ownership of the North Pole. “Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic,” Harper had said in a 2007 speech at a naval base outside Victoria, British Columbia. “We either use it or lose it. And make no mistake, this government intends to use it.” The idea, according to Harper’s “Northern Strategy,” is to assert Canadian presence in the Arctic by “putting more boots on the Arctic tundra, more ships in the icy water and a better eye-in-the-sky.”

...Over the past few decades, [Arctic countries] have happily assumed something akin to Arctic squatters’ rights, taking special liberties to explore the ocean’s bounty while simultaneously expanding control, both mechanical and human, as the ice continues to shrink. With or without a U.N. decision, the Arctic countries likely aren’t budging anytime soon.


...Russian President Vladimir Putin views the far north in a vehemently nationalist light. “The Arctic is, unconditionally, an integral part of the Russian Federation that has been under our sovereignty for several centuries,” he said in 2013. To put muscle behind this statement, in March 2015 the Russian military launched a massive five-day show of force in the Arctic involving 38,000 servicemen and special forces troops, more than 50 surface ships and submarines, and 110 aircraft. Two months earlier, the first of about 7,000 Russian troops began arriving at a recently reopened military air base at Alakurtti, north of the Arctic Circle; 3,000 of them will be assigned to an enormous signals intelligence listening post designed to eavesdrop on the West across the frozen ice cap.

Greetings, Comrade!

More than a dozen additional bases are slated for construction. In October 2014, Lt. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the National Defense Management Center, told the Russian Defense Ministry’s public council that Moscow plans to build 13 airfields, an air-to-ground firing range, and 10 radar posts. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed the council, “In 2015 we will be almost fully prepared to meet unwelcome guests from east and north.”

...Norway is also becoming nervous about Russia. In March 2015, around the same time that Moscow showed off its 38,000 troops, Norway acted similarly, dragging out 5,000 soldiers and 400 vehicles for its own Arctic military exercise. But rather than spying on Russia with satellites, Norway is putting its spies to sea. In December 2014, Prime Minister Erna Solberg christened the $250 million Marjata. Built for the Norwegian Intelligence Service and expected to become operational in 2016, the vessel will be among the world’s most advanced surveillance ships, according to information released by the Norwegian military.

With 72 subs, the United States has an advantage in numbers over Russia, which has about 60. But Russia is debuting a new generation of vessels that are far quieter and much more difficult for U.S. defense systems to detect. According to an article in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine, the “alarmingly sophisticated” Russian fleet “will likely dramatically alter the world’s future geopolitical landscape.” The author, veteran submariner Lt. Cmdr. Tom Spahn, said the armament on the Yasen, Russia’s new fast-
attack submarine, includes supercavitating torpedoes that can speed through the water in excess of 200 knots, about the equivalent of 230 miles per hour. This “makes her truly terrifying,” Spahn wrote. The new Russian subs, that is, will be stealthier and far deadlier than any ever known.

One evening in November 2014, U.S. radar operators spotted six Russian aircraft—two Tu-95 “Bear” long-range bombers, two Il-78 refueling tankers, and two MiG-31 fighters—heading toward the Alaskan coast. They had entered a U.S. air defense identification zone, airspace approaching the American border where aircraft must identify themselves, and they were getting closer when two U.S. F-22 fighter jets were dispatched to intercept them. About six hours later, Canada detected two more Russian Bear bombers approaching its Arctic airspace. Like the United States, Canada scrambled two CF-18 fighter jets to divert the bombers within about 40 nautical miles off the Canadian coast.

Although the Bears are designed to drop bombs, they are also used to collect intelligence and eavesdrop on military communications. This was most likely their purpose in flying close to the U.S. and Canadian Arctic coasts. To be clear, Moscow wasn’t doing anything Washington doesn’t do itself: The United States regularly flies its RC-135 aircraft—a variant of a Boeing 707 that sucks signals, from radar beeps to military conversations to civilian email, from the air like a vacuum cleaner—near Russia’s northern territory.

If Harper is planning to blunt Putin's sharp elbows he's going about it in a curious way - defunding the armed forces, degrading the readiness of the navy, air force and army alike.  Canada's military budget has plummeted to just 0.89% of GDP and our 'missions' to the Baltics and the ISIS air war eat up a good chuck of that.

Who?  Harper?  Nyet!

In other words it's Vlad Putin's military muscle versus Harper's hot air. Harper was on the money when he said that we have to exercise our sovereignty in the north or risk losing it.  That, however, was 2007, before the Great Recession. Harper was presiding over a government he inherited from the Libs with a balanced budget and money in the bank.  That was before he began defunding the government and degrading the readiness of all of our military forces - army, navy and air force.  Today his focus is on pipelines and jury-rigging government revenues and expenses to create the illusion of a balanced budget before Canadians choose their next government.

When NATO stages Arctic air exercises and Canada is a "no show", we're running on fumes which is music to the ears of a guy like Putin.