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What If They Started a War and No One Showed Up?
What If They Started a War and No One Showed Up?
The humiliation of United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Warsaw last week was a good thing. The ancient Greeks, exercising their demonstrated ability to synthesize defining characteristics, had a word for it: hubris. Hubris is when one develops an extreme and unreasonable feeling of confidence in a certain course of action that inevitably leads to one’s downfall when that conceit proves to be based on false principles.
Pompeo was in Warsaw for a “summit” arranged by the US State Department in partnership with the Polish government to discuss with representatives of sixty nations what to do about the fractious situation in the Middle East. In advance, he promised that the meeting would “deliver really good outcomes.” The gathering was initially conceived as a “war against Iran” precursor, intended to pull together a coalition against the Persians, but when it became clear that many of the potential participants would balk at such a designation, it assumed a broader agenda concerning “Peace and Security in the Middle East.”
Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria were not, not surprisingly, invited as some of them were the expected targets of whatever remedial action the conference might recommend. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu was, of course, present, tweeting in advance of the gathering that it would be all about “war against Iran.” He also characteristically delivered a warning that Iran was planning a “second holocaust” for his country.
Many countries, including regional power Turkey, and global powers Russia and China refused to participate at all. The European Union, the French and the Germans all sent career diplomats to the meeting rather than their Foreign Ministers while Britain’s Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt only agreed to attend at the last minute after he was granted his wish to head a discussion session on Yemen.
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India Bombs Pakistan, Targeting Terrorist Camps In Cross-Border Air Raids; Pakistan Vows Retaliation
India Bombs Pakistan, Targeting Terrorist Camps In Cross-Border Air Raids; Pakistan Vows Retaliation
With most of the world distracted by President Trump’s second summit meeting with Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, tensions between two nuclear-armed powers flared roughly 2,000 miles West in the contested border region of Kashmir.
In retaliation for one of the deadliest terror attacks in the history of the long-running Kashmiri insurgency – earlier this month, a Muslim ‘mujahidin’ drove a car loaded with explosives into a bus packed with Indian paramilitary soldiers, killing more than 40 – Indian fighter jets carried out a tactical strike on what the Indian government described as a training camp for the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), killing more than 300 militants and infuriating the government in Islamabad, which condemned the attack and insinuated that it could launch a counter-strike of its own, with Prime Minister Imran Khan warning the nation of 200 million and its armed forces to “remain prepared for all eventualities.”
Unsurprisingly, the two countries offered contrasting descriptions of the attack. Here’s more from Al Jazeera:
Indian fighter jets on Tuesday crossed into Pakistani territory, conducting what the foreign ministry in New Delhi termed a “non-military pre-emptive action” against armed group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), dramatically escalating tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours weeks after a suicide attack in the disputed Kashmir region.
Pakistan reported the Indian airspace incursion, with military spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor saying its air force jets were scrambling to respond, forcing the Indian aircraft to “release [their] payload in haste while escaping”.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, however, asserted that the jets had hit their target, and that “a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis who were being trained for fidayeen action were eliminated”.
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“For Now, We’re Not Threatening Anyone”: Russian TV Lists Nuclear Targets In The US
“For Now, We’re Not Threatening Anyone”: Russian TV Lists Nuclear Targets In The US
With US-Russia relations deteriorating rapidly in the aftermath of the collapse of the INF nuclear arms treaty, which prompted Russia’s Vladimir Putin to slam the US for “demolishing” global security, Russian state television listed U.S. military facilities that Moscow would target in the event of a nuclear strike, in a report which Reuters said “was unusual even by its own bellicose standards” and said that a hypersonic missile Russia is developing would be able to hit them in less than five minutes. The targets included the Pentagon, Forth Ritchie and the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland. A hypersonic missile Russia is developing would be able to hit them in less than five minutes, it said.
The report was broadcast on Sunday evening, days after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was militarily ready for a “Cuban Missile”-style crisis if the United States wanted one.
In the Sunday evening broadcast, Dmitry Kiselyov, presenter of Russia’s main weekly TV news show ‘Vesti Nedeli’, showed a map of the United States and identified several targets he said Moscow would want to hit in the event of a nuclear war. The targets, which Kiselyov described as U.S. presidential or military command centers, also included Fort Ritchie, a military training center in Maryland closed in 1998, McClellan, a U.S. Air Force base in California closed in 2001, and Jim Creek, a naval communications base in Washington state.
Russian TV listed the potential US targets of the planned hypersonic Zircon missile, which Dmitri Kiselev described as “invincible”. They include the Pentagon, Camp David and Fort Ritchie.
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India-Pakistan War: Pakistan Army Prepares For Conflict, Tells Hospitals To Be Ready
India-Pakistan War: Pakistan Army Prepares For Conflict, Tells Hospitals To Be Ready
The Pakistan military is preparing to defend against future attacks by India, and would respond with “full force,” the army’s spokesman announced Friday, amid worries of retaliation from India after the Pulwama terror incident, reported Reuters.
“We have no intention to initiate war, but we will respond with full force to full spectrum threat, that would surprise you,” Major General Asif Ghafoor said.
“Don’t mess with Pakistan.”
“We do not wish to go to war. If it is imposed on us, we have the right to respond,” Major General Ghafoor told journalists during a news conference in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, one week after a Pakistani-based terror organization claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack that killed 40 Indian policemen in the Kashmir region.
The Times of India has obtained new government documents, one by the Pakistani military and another from local authorities in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), which suggests the Pakistani military is preparing for an upcoming conflict on the Line of Control (LOC), a military control line between the Indian and Pakistani controlled parts of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistan Army based in Headquarters Quetta Logistics Area in Quetta Cantonment sent a letter to Jilani Hospital on February 20 to prepare for medical support in the event of war.
“In case of emergency war on the eastern front, Quetta logistics area is expected to receive injured soldiers from civil and military hospitals of Sindh and Punjab. After initial medical treatment, these soldiers are planned to be shifted from military and civil public sector to the civil hospital in Balochistan till the period of availability of beds in CMHs (civil-military hospitals),” the letter to Jilani hospital’s Abdul Malik by one Asia Naz, force commander, HQLA, said.
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Can Venezuela and its neighbours survive the coming war?
Can Venezuela and its neighbours survive the coming war?
Today, Venezuela is divided between two legitimacies – that of Constitutional President Nicolas Maduro and that of the President of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó.
Guaido nominated himself as interim President, allegedly by virtue of articles 223 and 233 of the Constitution. We only need to read these articles to see that they in no way apply to his case, and that he can not claim from them any legitimacy for the post he seeks to usurp. Despite that, he has been accredited by the United States, the Lima Group and part of the European Union.
Some of Nicolas Maduro’s supporters claim that Washington is reproducing the overthrow of a leftist government, just as it did against Salvadore Allende in 1973, during the mandate of President Richard Nixon.
Others, reacting to the revelations of Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen about the career path of Juan Guaidó [1], believe on the contrary that this is a colour revolution similar to those we saw under the presidency of George W. Bush.
Facing an aggression by an enemy who is far stronger than oneself, it is crucial to identify its objectives and understand its methods. Only those who are capable of anticipating the attacks they are about to suffer will have any chance of surviving.
Three dominant hypotheses
It is perfectly logical for Latin-Americans to compare what they are presently experiencing to what they have already known, like the Chilean coup d’etat of 1973. But it would be risky for Washington to reproduce the same scenario 46 years later – it would be an error, because today, everyone is familiar with the details of this deception.
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Will the Trade War Lead to Real War with China?
Will the Trade War Lead to Real War with China?
Five hundred years ago, Hernán Cortés began the European annihilation of the Mayan, Aztec, and other indigenous civilizations in the Western Hemisphere. Six months later, in August 1519, Magellan [Fernão de Magalhães] launched his circumnavigation of the globe. For five centuries thereafter, a series of Western powers — Portugal, Spain, Holland, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and, finally, the United States — overturned preexisting regional orders as they imposed their own on the world. That era has now come to an end.
In the final phases of the age of Western dominance, we Americans made and enforced the rules. We were empowered to do so in two phases. First, around 1880, the United States became the world’s largest economy. Then, in 1945, having liberated Western Europe from Germany and overthrown Japanese hegemony in East Asia, Americans achieved primacy in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Almost immediately, the Soviet Union and its then-apparently-faithful Asian companion, Communist China, challenged our new sphere of influence. In response, we placed our defeated enemies (Germany, Italy, Japan), our wartime allies, and most countries previously occupied by our enemies under American protection. With our help, these countries — which we called “allies” — soon returned to wealth and power but remained our protectorates. Now other countries, like China and India, are rising to challenge our global supremacy.
Trump receives Chinese Vice Premier Liu He in Oval Office, January 2019 (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour via Flickr )
President Donald Trump has raised the very pertinent question: Should states with the formidable capabilities longstanding American “allies” now have still be partial wards of the U.S. taxpayer? In terms of our own security, are they assets or liabilities? Another way of putting this is to ask: Do our Cold War allies and their neighbors now face credible threats that they cannot handle by themselves?
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Unhinged Mike Pence Warns of ‘New Holocaust’ as Team Trump Tries to Rally EU Leaders for War With Iran
Unhinged Mike Pence Warns of ‘New Holocaust’ as Team Trump Tries to Rally EU Leaders for War With Iran
“Can someone remind me how things turned out the last time the U.S. pushed flimsy evidence of a nuclear weapons program in the Middle East and tried to bully its allies into supporting its policy?”
Vice President Mike Pence spoke at a U.S.-led summit about the Middle East in Warsaw, Poland on Thursday. (Photo: VP/Twitter)
Speaking at a U.S.-led conference about the Middle East in Warsaw, Poland on Thursday, Vice President piled on the potent anti-Iran sentiment surrounding the conference by demanding that European Union (EU) allies withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, which President Donald Trump ditched last year, and accused Iran of plotting a “new Holocaust.”
“Instead of recognizing the U.S.’ failed Iran policy, Pence is doubling down in his search for an excuse to go to war.”
—NIAC
Pence accused Iran of being “the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world” and “the greatest threat to peace and security in the Middle East” while attempting to shame European leaders over their recent “effort to create mechanisms to break up our sanctions…against Iran’s murderous revolutionary regime.”
His speech was met with a mix of frustration and alarm:
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How Many Minutes to Midnight?
How Many Minutes to Midnight?
Consider it a marriage made in hell. Start with the groom, Donald Trump, the man who once wondered why in the world we make nuclear weapons if we can’t use them; who wouldn’t rule out using nukes, even in Europe; who insisted that a president should be “unpredictable” on the subject; who suggested that it might not be “a bad thing for us” if Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea all became nuclear powers; who threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” before he became a chummy correspondent with its dictator; and who called for a nearly 10-fold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal (among many other, often contradictory, comments he’s made on nuclear matters).
Now, think about the bride, National Security Advisor John Bolton, a “statesman” who never saw a nuclear agreement he didn’t want to nuke. Those included President Richard Nixon’s Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, President Bill Clinton’s Agreed Framework with North Korea, President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal (all of which he helped to deep-six), and most recently President Ronald Reagan’s Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, Treaty (a pact that had actually resulted in thousands of ready-to-use nuclear weapons being scrapped). With the help of his neocon bro, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Bolton recently succeeded in sticking a knife directly in the back of that treaty. He’s undoubtedly now eying the New START treaty, which put limits on long-range nukes and is up for renewal in 2021. (The president has already called it “one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration.”)
As TomDispatch regular and former Boston Globe columnist James Carroll points out today, the first new member of Trump’s and Bolton’s nuclear family, a “low-yield” nuke, was only recently born and given the less-than-apocalyptic name, W76-2.
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US accuses China of preparing for WWIII: What you’re not being told
US accuses China of preparing for WWIII: What you’re not being told
The military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, Beijing, China, September 3, 2015 © Reuters / Damir Sagolj
A Republican senator has accused China of preparing for World War III. Like most of Washington’s statements concerning China, the lawmaker has completely ignored the US’ role in creating such a scenario in the first place.
Just last week, Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma made the allegation that China’s military was preparing for World War III.
“It’s like you’re preparing for World War III,” he said during a Senate hearing focused on the so-called challenges presented by Russia and China. “You’re talking to our allies over there and you wonder whose side they’re going to be on.”
According to Inhofe, the US has sat back and watched as China has built its military presence in the South China Sea, turning artificial islands into potential launch pads for its military.
The idea that the US has sat back and watched anything, ever, in the history of the world, is somewhat laughable. Even under the Obama administration, the president had an explicit containment strategy which was supposed to enclose and encircle China from all angles. The so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) was also designed for this purpose (yet for some reason Donald Trump, who is overtly anti-Chinese, thought the agreement was a bad idea).
Inhofe also said he was “concerned” that “our message” was “not getting across.”
China getting the “message” loud and clear
I don’t mean to be base, but perhaps the problem in the China-US relationship is that the message is getting across – loud and clear. The US has pushed the expansion of NATO up to and around Russia’s borders. It has invaded and bombed Iraq, Syria (miraculously occupying one-third of Syrian territory, including its most oil-rich region), Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and even the Philippines.
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The Mother of All Bombs: U.S. Foreign Policy
The Mother of All Bombs: U.S. Foreign Policy
Following the horrific destruction left in the wake of World War II, the United Nations in its seminal and founding document, the Charter of the United Nations, set out to prevent future wars among member nations. The Charter’s admonition against war was also voiced in the lessons learned from the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals in its condemnation of war: “starting or waging a war against a territorial integrity, political independence or sovereignty of a state, or violation of international treaties or agreements.” are crimes against peace and “makes all war crimes possible.”
The few and the wealthy of many nations are no longer constrained by rules that categorize civilized and enlightened behavior toward other nations such as Venezuela and Iran. They’ve had many nations in their crosshairs and have met with much “success.” Their attacks against Venezuela’s sovereignty are the final nail in the coffin of the endless wars, and the preparation for war, that are now all the rage among the sycophants of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Venezuela is absolutely no threat to the U.S., and therefore, the U.N. Charter prohibits the kinds of dangerous and lethal idiocy that the Trump administration is now orchestrating against Venezuela. Readers need to consider that presidents are viewed in a positive light when they are seen as acting in a presidential manner, i.e., threaten or incite war against other nations. Recall the popularity of the newly elected Trump when he ordered the use of the mother of all bombs against Afghanistan. The bipartisan talking heads in the U.S. loved that theatre (“Trump Drops The Mother Of All Bombs On Afghanistan,” New Yorker, April 14, 2017).
Even billionaire Michael Bloomberg got in on the act of Venezuela bashing in his attacks against mild reformers of the political system like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren:
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Goodbye to the Dollar
Goodbye to the Dollar
The inept and corrupt presidency of Donald Trump has unwittingly triggered the fatal blow to the American empire—the abandonment of the dollar as the world’s principal reserve currency. Nations around the globe, especially in Europe, have lost confidence in the United States to act rationally, much less lead, in issues of international finance, trade, diplomacy and war. These nations are quietly dismantling the seven-decade-old alliance with the United States and building alternative systems of bilateral trade. This reconfiguring of the world’s financial system will be fatal to the American empire, as the historian Alfred McCoy and the economist Michael Hudsonhave long pointed out. It will trigger an economic death spiral, including high inflation, which will necessitate a massive military contraction overseas and plunge the United States into a prolonged depression. Trump, rather than make America great again, has turned out, unwittingly, to be the empire’s most aggressive gravedigger.
The Trump administration has capriciously sabotaged the global institutions, including NATO, the European Union, the United Nations, the World Bank and the IMF, which provide cover and lend legitimacy to American imperialism and global economic hegemony. The American empire, as McCoy points out, was always a hybrid of past empires. It developed, he writes, “a distinctive form of global governance that incorporated aspects of antecedent empires, ancient and modern. This unique U.S. imperium was Athenian in its ability to forge coalitions among allies; Roman in its reliance on legions that occupied military bases across most of the known world; and British in its aspiration to merge culture, commerce, and alliances into a comprehensive system that covered the globe.”
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The Coming US-China Proxy War In Venezuela
The Coming US-China Proxy War In Venezuela
China won’t give up on embattled Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro anytime soon even as the US-led international noose of “delegitimizing” hangs around the socialist strongman, according to government statements released on Friday. Beijing reaffirmed it maintains “normal state-to-state relations” and cooperation between the two sides “shouldn’t be undermined no matter how the situation evolves,” according to press briefing by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Or rather, we could more simply translate: with billions of dollars in credit on the line, “non-interference” is simply not an option for China.
“China has maintained close communication with all parties through different ways,” a ministry spokesperson said in response to question about whether China has had contact with National Assembly leader Juan Guaido. “We are ready to work with all parties to promote peace talks, and create favorable conditions for the proper settlement of the Venezuelan issue,” the ministry added.
But then there’s the not so minor issue of China over the past decade lending over $50 billion to Caracas as part of an oil-for-loan agreements program. It underscores just how quickly what appears a new White House full court press for regime change could bring Washington again into indirect conflict with both China and Russia. And in total Venezuela owes “more than $120 billion just to China and Russia” FOX reported this week.
A new Wall Street Journal report outlines what’s at stake, and the mounting costs for Beijing:
When China hatched the first of a series of oil-for-loans agreements with Venezuela in 2007, it seemed like a perfect match. Venezuela had the world’s biggest oil reserves; China was poised to become the biggest energy consumer.
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Tolstoy on War: The Systemic Vision of a Tragedy
Tolstoy on War: The Systemic Vision of a Tragedy
Leon Tolstoy set his novel, “War and Peace” (1867) during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia of 1812. But he had not witnessed that war — rather, Tolstoy had fought in another senseless and bloody war, the Crimean War (1853-1856), an experience that deeply influenced his thought. Tolstoy had a deep vision of the tragedy that wars are and his viewpoint is similar to our modern one based on statistics, although obtained by intuition only. Above, a painting by Vasilii Nesterenko (2005) that celebrates the Russian defense of Sevastopol in 1855.
From Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” (1867)
To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England’s policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolénsk and Moscow and were killed by them.
To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its impotence—apart from the cooperation of all the other coincident causes—to occasion the event.
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Trump’s trade war isn’t about trade anymore — it’s plainly about beating China in the next great war
Trump’s trade war isn’t about trade anymore — it’s plainly about beating China in the next great war
- President Donald Trump’s trade war with China started with tariffs and talk of trade deficits but quickly moved to addressing deep US national-security concerns about Beijing spying and stealing technology.
- In 2018, the US’s trade deficit with China ballooned to $344 billion, but China is thought to cost the US as much as $600 billion a year through intellectual-property theft.
- In the next great war, the country that masters artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and the internet of things will essentially bring guided-missile destroyers to a sailboat fight.
- For this reason, most insiders and China watchers agree that Beijing’s forced technology transfer must end, and Trump is actually having some success on that front.
President Donald Trump’s Thursday chat with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He at the White House revealed something that insiders have long known: Trade figures like the deficit are red herrings, and the real fight between China and the US is over the future of tech and, by extension, who will win the next world war.
While Trump drones on about the trade deficit, his trade war with China also seeks to fundamentally restructure the relationship between the world’s two economic superpowers.
And the key here isn’t trade stats or even economics broadly, but national security.
In the next great war, the country that masters artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and the internet of things will essentially bring guided-missile destroyers to a sailboat fight.
With that in mind, here’s what the White House said Trump and Liu talked about (emphasis added):
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China, Russia Preparing For “Blackout Warfare” With “Super-EMP” Bombs
China, Russia Preparing For “Blackout Warfare” With “Super-EMP” Bombs
Russia, China and several other nations are developing powerful high-altitude nuclear bombs that can produce super-electromagnetic pulse (EMP) waves capable of knocking out critical electronic infrastructure, according to several declassified 2017 reports from the now-defunct Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack (see below).
“Foreign adversaries may aptly consider nuclear EMP attack a weapon that can gravely damage the U.S. by striking at its technological Achilles Heel, without having to confront the U.S. military,” reads the report, which notes how foreign actors could use EMP attacks virtually anywhere in the world.
“Super-EMP” weapons, as they are termed by Russia, are nuclear weapons specially designed to generate an extraordinarily powerful E1 EMP field. Super-EMP warheads are designed to produce gamma rays, which generate the E1 EMP effect, not a big explosion, and typically have very low explosive yields, only 1-10 kilotons … Even EMP hardened U.S. strategic forces and command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) systems are potentially vulnerable to such a threat. –Firstempcommission.org
Nuclear EMP attack is part of the military doctrines, plans, and exercises of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran for a revolutionary new way of warfare against military forces and civilian critical infrastructures by cyber, sabotage, and EMP,” the report continues.
“The Commission sees the high-altitude nuclear explosion-generated electromagnetic pulse as an existential threat to the survival of the United States and its allies that can be exploited by major nuclear powers and small-scale nuclear weapon powers, including North Korea and non-state actors, such as nuclear-armed terrorists.”
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