[Unlocked] US admits to pushing Ukraine into a fight it can't win

A US "windfall" in Ukraine comes at an unfathomable cost.

AARON MATÉ

28 JUL 2023

https://mate.substack.com/p/unlocked-us-admits-to-pushing-ukraine

Nearly one month into Russia’s invasion, the New York Times quietly abandoned any pretense that the US aim was to defend Ukraine and bring the war to a quick end. The White House, the Times reported, “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire without inciting a broader conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary or cutting off potential paths to de-escalation.”

Eighteen months later, the desired quagmire has been achieved. This is due not only to a massive influx of NATO weaponry, but a Western blockade of every tangible path to de-escalation, most notably the April 2022 Ukraine-Russia peace deal that Boris Johnson nixed.

With a Russian quagmire the overriding goal, the US and its partners have adopted an attendant disregard for the tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives sacrificed for the task.

In the war’s early stages, only the most outwardly enthusiastic proxy warriors, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, could candidly admit that US support ensured that Ukraine would “fight to the last person.” With Ukraine now struggling to mount a widely hyped counteroffensive, the prevailing indifference to its human toll is more widely acknowledged.

As the Wall Street Journal newly reports:

“When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. They haven’t.”

It is unclear how Western officials could have “hoped” that Ukrainian “resourcefulness” would make up for the training and weapons that they did not provide. A war zone, after all, is not an episode of MacGyver or the A-Team, and Ukraine’s adversary happens to be one of the world’s most powerful militaries. The operative Western definition of “Ukrainian courage”, however, is not hard to discern: a willingness to use Ukrainian soldiers as cannon fodder.

“Senior U.S. officials,” the New York Times reports, have “privately expressed frustration that some Ukrainian commanders... fearing increased casualties among their ranks” have recently “reverted to old habits — decades of Soviet-style training in artillery barrages — rather than sticking with the Western tactics and pressing harder to breach the Russian defenses.”

The Times did not ask these same US officials whether it is appropriate to express “frustration” at the decision of another military – the one we claim to support – to avoid “increased casualties” among its ranks. But Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, asked an equally salient question of his US counterparts: “Why don’t they come and do it themselves?”

Frustrated US officials are well aware of Ukraine’s toll. According to the New York Times, Western states now estimate that Ukraine lost about 20 percent of its weaponry in the first weeks of its counteroffensive, a “startling rate of losses... as Ukrainian soldiers struggle against Russia’s formidable defenses.” Oddly, the Times omits any mention of losses in Ukrainian lives – a tacit admission, perhaps, that the human casualties are even more startling.

As is also increasingly admitted, all of this was foreseen. “U.S. Defense Department analysts knew early this year that Ukraine’s front-line troops would struggle against Russian air attacks,” the Wall Street Journal notes. Or as the Washington Post puts it: “Privately, U.S. military officials concede that their expectation from early this year, described in leaked intelligence documents, that Ukraine is likely to make only modest gains in its counteroffensive has not changed, despite public pronouncements seeking to downplay fallout from the disclosure.”

In other words, US “public pronouncements” have entailed lying to the public to “downplay fallout” of fueling a knowingly catastrophic and futile war. The participants in this deception include Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who declared in March that the Ukrainian military had “a very good chance for success,” despite privately being told the opposite.

One reason for Ukraine’s current woes, as President Biden recently admitted to CNN, is that “the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition,” and “we're low on it” as well. Another major factor, a classified Pentagon assessment noted in February, was Ukraine’s “inability to prevent Russian air superiority.” Or as a senior European official now warns, “everyone worries that the Ukrainians will run out of ammunition and air defenses.”

“America would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but they [Ukrainians] don’t have air superiority,” John Nagl, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and professor at the U.S. Army War College, observes. “It’s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.”

According to the Pentagon, NATO’s latest influx of heavy weaponry will not change the tide. Speaking at a Washington security conference this month, John Kirchhofer, chief of staff at the US Defense Intelligence Agency, claimed that the Ukraine war is at a “stalemate” and that “none of these” newly provided weapons – including Storm Shadow missiles and cluster bombs -- “are the holy grail that Ukraine is looking for.”

Accordingly, the Wall Street Journal notes, the unlikelihood of “any large-scale breakthrough by the Ukrainians... raises the unsettling prospect for Washington and its allies of a longer war—one that would require a huge new infusion of sophisticated armaments and more training to give Kyiv a chance at victory.”

For Washington, perhaps that prospect is not unsettling. According to veteran Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, the Ukraine war has already yielded a “triumphal summer” for the NATO alliance.

“The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked,” Ignatius writes. “NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values.”

Accordingly, “for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians).”

Indeed, it is quite easy to reap a “windfall” from 18 months of war when the US is not itself fighting it. It has instead sacrificed future generations of an entire nation, whose worth is so devalued that their unfolding catastrophe is openly reduced to an afterthought.

Neutral status for Ukraine ‘fundamental’ to Russia – Putin

Moscow can’t accept having a hostile military bloc in the former Soviet republic, the Russian president said

28 Jul, 2023

https://www.rt.com/russia/580488-putin-ukraine-african-leaders/

The prospect of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO is an existential threat to Russian national security and will not be tolerated, Russian President Vladimir Putin told representatives of several African countries on Friday.

In the document that ushered in Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union, “it is written in black and white that Ukraine is a neutral state,” Putin reminded the visiting African leaders, during the public part of their meeting in St. Petersburg. The president was referring to the 1990 declaration proclaiming Soviet Ukraine a sovereign state that would strive to become “a permanently neutral country.”  

“This is of fundamental importance. Why the West began to drag Ukraine into NATO is not very clear to us. But this created, in our opinion, a fundamental threat to our security,” Putin added.

Putin and several members of the African Union peace mission met to discuss the Ukraine conflict, after the two-day Russia-Africa summit attended by representatives of 49 states from the continent. 

While Russia has always said it is ready to negotiate an end to hostilities, Kiev has passed a law prohibiting talks with Moscow and reneged on the agreement negotiated in March 2022 in Istanbul, Putin stated. 

According to Putin, during last year’s meeting in Türkiye, the Ukrainian delegation initially agreed to sign a neutrality pact that would also cap Ukraine’s heavy weapons and hardware. However, the preliminary deal was “thrown out” shortly afterward, the Russian leader said earlier this year.

Ukrainian officials walked away from negotiations after accusing the Russian military of atrocities in Bucha and other areas around the country’s capital. Moscow denied that its troops were killing civilians.

Kiev later argued that meaningful negotiations cannot commence until Moscow surrenders Crimea and four other territories that voted to leave Ukraine and become parts of Russia. Moscow repeatedly stressed that it was impossible. 

Speaking on Friday, the Russian president repeated his long-standing position that the current crisis was caused by the 2014 “anti-constitutional, armed, bloody coup” in Kiev, carried out with “active support” of the US and other Western governments.

Following the coup, Crimea organized a referendum to join Russia. Kiev sent the military and nationalist militias to crush dissent in Odessa and Kharkov regions, but ran into resistance in Donetsk and Lugansk, which would declare independence later that year. The 2015 Minsk Agreements envisioned a process by which the two regions could return to Ukraine with guarantees of autonomy, but Kiev never implemented it. 

Former German leader Angela Merkel claimed last December that the Minsk process was only a play for time by the West to arm Ukraine for a war against Russia. Former president of France, Francois Hollande, seconded Merkel’s interpretation.

As part of the African Peace Initiative, leaders of seven countries from the continent visited Ukraine and Russia in mid-June. Though Moscow expressed interest in exploring the African proposal further, Kiev has insisted that only its “peace formula” – a ten-point plan amounting to Russia’s unconditional surrender – would be acceptable to Ukraine.

The Russia-Global South Connection: Africa as Strategic Partner

PEPE ESCOBAR • JULY 26, 2023

 https://www.unz.com/pescobar/the-russia-global-south-connection-africa-as-strategic-partner/

The second Russia-Africa summit, this week in St. Petersburg, should be seen as a milestone in terms of Global South integration and the concerted drive by the Global Majority towards a more equal and fair multipolar order.

The summit welcomes no less than 49 African delegations. President Putin previously announced that a comprehensive declaration and a Russia-Africa Partnership Forum Action Plan all the way to 2026 will be adopted.

Madaraka Nyerere, the son of Tanzania’s legendary anti-colonial activist and first President, Julius Nyerere, set the context, telling RT that the only “realistic” way for Africa to develop is to unite and stop being an agent for foreign exploitative powers.

And the path towards cooperation goes through BRICS – starting with the crucial upcoming summit in South Africa, and the incorporation of more African nations into BRICS+.

Nyerere’s father was a very important force behind the Organization of African Unity, which later became the African Union.

South Africa’s Julius Malema succinctly expanded the geoeconomic concept of a united Africa: “They [neocolonial powers] thrive on the division of the African continent. Can you imagine the minerals of the DRC combined with the minerals of South Africa, and with a new currency based on the minerals? What can we do to the dollar? If we become a United States of Africa, with our minerals alone, we can defeat the dollar.”

No humanitarian nature, no deal

The Russian-African Conference of the Valdai Club functioned like a sort of final expert watch synchronization in the run-up to St. Petersburg. The first session was particularly relevant.

That came after the publication of a comprehensive analysis by President Putin of Russia-Africa relations, with a special emphasis on the recently collapsed grain deal involving the UN, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine.

Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Russian Federation Council, has stressed how “Ukraine, Washington and NATO were interested in the grain corridor for sabotage”.

In his Op-Ed, Putin explained how, “for almost a year, a total of 32.8 million tons of cargo were exported from Ukraine under the ‘deal’, of which more than 70%

went to high-and above-middle-income countries, including the European Union, while countries such as Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia, as well as Yemen and Afghanistan accounted for less than 3% of the total volume – less than one million tons.”

So that was one of the key reasons for Russia to leave the grain deal. Moscow published a list of requirements which would need to be fulfilled for Russia to reinstate it.

Among them: a real, practical end to sanctions on Russian grain and fertilizers shipped to world markets; no more obstacles for banks and financial institutions; no more restrictions on charter of ships and insurance – that means clean logistics for all food supplies; restoration of the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline.

And a particularly crucial item: the restoration of “the original humanitarian nature of the grain deal.”

There’s no way the collective West subjected to the Straussian neocon psychos who control US foreign policy will fulfill all or even some of these conditions.

So Russia, by itself, will offer grain and fertilizers free of charge for the poorest nations and contracts for grain supply at normal commercial terms for the others. Supply is guaranteed: Moscow had the biggest grain harvest ever during this season.

This is all about solidarity. At the Valdai session, a key discussion was around the importance of solidarity in the struggle against neo-colonialism and for global equality and justice.

Oleg Ozerov, Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry, and Head of the Secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, stressed how European “former” partners persist on the one-way track of shifting blame to Russia as Africa is “acquiring agency” and “denying neo-colonialism.”

Ozerov mentioned how “France-Afrique is collapsing – and Russia is not behind it. Russia is ensuring that Africa acts as one of the powers of the multipolar world”, as “a member of the G20 and present in the UN Security Council.” Moreover, Moscow is interested to expand Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) free trade deals towards Africa.

Welcome to Global South “multi-vector” cooperation

This all spells out a common theme in the Russia-Africa summit: “multi-vector cooperation”. The South African perspective, especially in the light of the raging controversy over Putin’s non-physical presence in the BRICS summit, is that “Africans are not taking sides. They want peace.”

What matters is what Africa brings to BRICS: “Markets, and a young, educated population.”

On the Russian bridge to Africa, what is needed, for instance, is “railways along coastlines”: connectivity, which can be developed with Russian assistance, much as China has been investing widely across Africa under BRI projects. Russia, after all, “trained many professionals across Africa.”

There’s a wide consensus, to be reflected in the summit, that Africa is becoming an economic growth pole in the Global South – and African experts know it. State institutions are becoming more stable. The abysmal crisis in Russia-Western relations ended up boosting interest in Africa. No wonder that’s now a national priority for Russia.

So what can Russia offer? Essentially an investment portfolio, and crucially the idea of sovereignty – without requesting anything in return.

Mali is a fascinating case. It goes back to investments by the USSR training the workforce; at least 10,000 Malians, who were offered first-class education, including 80% of their professors.

That intersects with the terrorism threat of the Salafi-jihadi variety, “encouraged” by the usual suspects even before 9/11. Mali holds at least 350,000 refugees, all of them unemployed. France’s “initiatives” have been deemed “totally inefficient”.

Mali needs “broader measures” – including the launch of a new trading system. Russia after all taught how to set up infrastructure to create new jobs; time to fully profit from the knowledge of those trained in the USSR. Moreover, in 2023 over 100 students from Mali are coming to Russia on state-sponsored scholarships.

As Russia makes inroads in French-speaking Africa, former “partners”, predictably, demonize Mali’s cooperation with Russia. With no avail. Mali has just dropped French as its official language (that has been the case since 1960).

Under the new constitution, passed overwhelmingly with 96.9% in a June 15 referendum, French will be only a working language, while 13 national languages will also receive official language status.

Essentially, this is about sovereignty. Coupled with the fact that the West, as recognized from Mali to Ethiopia – the only African nation never colonized by Europeans – is losing moral authority across Africa at astonishing speed.

Multitudes in Africa now understand that Russia actively encourages freedom from neocolonialism. When it comes to geopolitical capital, Moscow now seems to enjoy all it takes to build a fruitful, Global Majority-centered strategic partnership.

Israeli protests cast light on laws discriminating against Palestinians

Israel has passed many laws that codify bias against Palestinians but did not meet the same uproar as the judicial overhaul bill.

By Dalia Hatuqa

Published On 27 Jul 202327 Jul 2023

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/27/israeli-protests-cast-light-on-laws-discriminating-against-palestinians

The passing of a bill this week by the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, restricting the Supreme Court’s powers has garnered domestic opposition and even international calls for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government to reconsider.

The push for the bill, months in the making, has brought out thousands of Israelis to the streets, with the country’s opposition rallying around a call to “protect democracy”, and maintaining that the present government and its control of the Knesset mark a departure from the norms of Israeli parliamentary democracy.

Palestinians, watching on, may have a different opinion. Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories rarely, if ever, receives censure in the Knesset. Instead, many bills are passed – relatively unnoticed – that continue to subjugate and discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel, as well as those living in occupied East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Sari Bashi, programme director at Human Rights Watch, said Israeli law codifies racial discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and facilitates institutional privilege of Israeli Jews over Palestinians.

“I respect the pro-democracy protestors engaging in mass demonstrations against the further erosion of judicial independence in Israel, and many are also protesting Israeli occupation and apartheid. But let’s please be clear about the Israeli ‘democracy’ they are trying to protect,” she tweeted.

Here are just some of the laws Israel has passed in recent years that experts have said codify discrimination against Palestinians and restrict their rights but that have not met the same public uproar:

Expansion of the Admissions Committees Law

On Tuesday, the Knesset expanded a 2010 law that allows communities to screen and reject applicants deemed “unsuitable to the[ir] social and cultural makeup”. This, observers have said, essentially maked it easier for towns to prevent Palestinian citizens of Israel from moving to Jewish-majority towns. Many of these towns were built on or near Palestinian towns and villages that were depopulated before or during the 1948 Nakba, after their inhabitants were expelled or fled.

“The passage of the ‘Admissions Committees’ law in the Knesset yesterday, which effectively authorises segregation in Israeli towns, is but the latest reminder that principles of democracy and equality have been absent in Israel long before this most recent judicial overhaul,” said Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C.

“From NGO laws targeting human rights organisations, laws around Palestinian family unification, laws around the right to boycott and laws around the right to commemorate Palestinian history, the assault on liberal principles in Israel has been a very long road, which was paved by some of the same political figures screaming about democracy today,” Munayyer told Al Jazeera.

Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People

In July 2018, the Knesset voted to pass a law that defines Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people”, with Hebrew as its official language and Jerusalem – including the illegally occupied eastern side – as its capital.

The bill denies Palestinians any national rights and further entrenched racial discrimination against them by declaring that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”.

According to the Haifa-based Adalah legal rights centre, the law “transforms discrimination into a constitutional, systematic and institutional principle, and into a basic element of the foundations of Israeli law”.

The law states that Jewish settlement is “a national value” and that the state will “encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation” – essentially giving it carte blanche to settle more land in the occupied territories – the Golan Heights included, or in Israel proper.

 

Upholding the 2008 Citizenship Law

In July 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the state can revoke citizenship over offences constituting a “breach of loyalty”, providing the government with legal mechanisms to strip Palestinians of their citizenship and fundamental rights and deport them, after rendering them stateless.

In August 2017, the Haifa District Court revoked the citizenship of Alaa Zayoud, a Palestinian citizen of Israel serving time in prison after being convicted of attempted murder. This was the first time an Israeli court has ruled that an individual’s citizenship be revoked, according to Adalah.

“There has never been a request to revoke the citizenship of a Jewish citizen, even when Jewish citizens were involved in serious and grave crimes,” Adalah noted, highlighting the case of Yigal Amir, the assassin of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a request to revoke his citizenship in 1996, but upheld the ruling against Zayoud.

Law banning BDS supporters from entering Israel

In March 2017, parliament voted to ban any Palestinians or foreign nationals if they, or the organisations they belong to, publicly endorse the boycott of Israel or its illegal settlements.

The law, with its vague wording, also has implications for Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem whose partners live with them on Israeli military-issued permits or a temporary residence status.

If those spouses are vocal about supporting BDS – the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement – they could be vulnerable to having their status or permits revoked based on their political opinions.

BDS is a campaign to push Israel into withdrawing from all occupied Palestinian and Arab territory, and to give its Palestinian citizens the same rights as its Jewish ones.

Mexican armed forces facilitated Ayotzinapa disappearances: Panel

An independent investigatory panel says security forces obstructed their efforts to investigate the human rights scandal.

25 Jul 2023

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/25/mexican-armed-forces-facilitated-ayotzinapa-disappearances-panel

An independent panel investigating the 2014 disappearance of 43 Mexican college students has issued a final report, implicating the country’s security forces but offering few definitive answers about the students’ fate.

In a presentation on Tuesday, the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) said authorities from the country’s army, navy, intelligence services and police agencies knew the location of the abducted students, refuting their previous denials.

“They all collaborated to make them [the students] disappear,” GIEI panel member Carlos Beristain told a press conference before the presentation of the group’s sixth and final fact-finding report.

The kidnapping case — known as the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa 43 — has become the largest human rights scandal in modern Mexican history. But nearly a decade on, accountability and a clear understanding of what happened remain elusive.

The panel — appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights — said it faced consistent opposition and deception from Mexico’s security agencies, which have long faced scrutiny over alleged rights abuses and collaboration with criminal groups.

“They’ve lied to us, they’ve responded with falsehoods. We have no more information,” said Beristain. “We can’t investigate like this.”

The panel was critical of the government’s initial account of the event, which alleged that local police had acted in collaboration with local drug groups to kill the students, all of whom hailed from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College.

GIEI instead accused security forces of withholding key information, obstructing investigative efforts and using torture to extract false testimonies.

The students had been travelling on buses through the city of Iguala, en route to Mexico City for an annual protest, when they disappeared. They are all presumed dead.

The GIEI said it will depart the country next week, ending hopes that the administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would bring closure to the families of the victims.

“I’m devastated,” Cristina Bautista, the mother of one of the students, told the Washington Post. “How are we supposed to get to the truth if the experts leave?”

Of the 43 who were disappeared, the remains of only three have been recovered and formally identified.

Upon taking office in 2018, Lopez Obrador — who had been critical of the previous administration’s handling of the affair — created a “truth commission” and renewed the mandate of GIEI.

But critics say security forces have continued to act with impunity under Lopez Obrador, whose six-year term ends in September 2024.

The truth commission has also struggled to deliver results. In an interview last year with the New York Times, Alejandro Encinas — the head of the commission — admitted that “a very important percentage” of the evidence it collected had been “invalidated” due to flaws in its investigation.

The case has become emblematic of the opaque circumstances that often accompany disappearances in Mexico, where state forces sometimes collaborate with networks of illicit activities.

Last month, the former head of Mexico’s federal anti-kidnapping unit was arrested in connection with the Ayotzinapa case after being accused of torture and forced disappearances. Nevertheless, the government has yet to achieve a single conviction in the Ayotzinapa case.

Human rights advocates calling for justice in the Ayotzinapa case have also had their phones targeted by Pegasus spyware, a type of surveillance software which is supposed to be only available to government forces.

Uber Russia-hawk Victoria Nuland rises to acting deputy secretary of state

She’s done as much as anyone to sour US-Russia ties; now, she is one of Washington’s top diplomats.

JULY 25, 2023

Written by
Connor Echols

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/07/25/uber-russia-hawk-victoria-nuland-rises-to-acting-deputy-secretary-of-state/

In a little-remarked move, the Biden administration announced Monday that Victoria Nuland will take over as the acting second-in-command at the State Department. She replaces Wendy Sherman, who plans to retire at the end of this week.

Nuland’s appointment will be a boon for Russia hawks who want to turn up the heat on the Kremlin. But, for those who favor a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine, a promotion for the notoriously “undiplomatic diplomat” will be a bitter pill.

A few quick reminders are in order. When Nuland was serving in the Obama administration, she had a now-infamous leaked call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. As the Maidan Uprising roiled the country, the pair of American diplomats discussed conversations with opposition leaders, and Nuland expressed support for putting Arseniy Yatseniuk into power. (Yatseniuk would become prime minister later that month, after Russia-friendly former President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country.) At one memorable point in the call, Nuland said “Fu–k the EU” in response to Europe’s softer stance on the protests.

The controversy surrounding the call — and larger implications of U.S. involvement in the ouster of Yanukovych — kicked up tensions with Russia and contributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to seize Crimea and support an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Her handing out  food to demonstrators on the ground in Kyiv probably didn’t help either. Nuland, along with State Department sanctions czar Daniel Fried, then led the effort to punish Putin through sanctions. Another official at State reportedly asked Fried if “the Russians realize that the two hardest-line people in the entire U.S. government are now in a position to go after them?”

Nuland’s hawkish inclinations continued after she left the Obama administration. Back in 2020, she penned a Foreign Affairs essay entitled “Pinning Down Putin” in which she called for a permanent expansion of NATO bases in the alliance’s eastern flank, a move that would be sure to ratchet up tensions between the United States and Russia. As I’ve previously noted, Nuland also opposed the idea of a “free rollover of New START” — the only remaining agreement that limits Washington and Moscow’s nuclear weapons stockpiles — when it was set to expire in 2021.

Since returning to the State Department under President Joe Biden, she has showed little interest in a dovish turn. In an interview earlier this year, Nuland called Putin a “19th century autocrat” and justified Ukrainian attacks in Crimea, which Russia has called a red line. “If we don’t [defeat Putin], every other autocrat on this planet is going to go looking to bite off pieces of countries and destabilize the order that has largely kept us safe and prosperous for decades and decades,” she argued.

To recap, Nuland 1) was allegedly involved in a conspiracy to overthrow Ukraine’s president, 2) was definitely behind a strict sanctions regime on Russian officials, and 3) has never softened her uber-hawkish stances since. With U.S.-Russia tensions at their highest point in decades, there should be little doubt as to how her appointment would be received in Moscow.

There is, of course, some reason for hope. In the statement announcing Sherman’s retirement, the Biden administration did not give a clear indication of whether Nuland would be nominated to formally take over as deputy secretary of state. “Biden has asked Victoria Nuland to serve as Acting Deputy Secretary until our next Deputy Secretary is confirmed,” the statement said. This leaves some reason to believe that there is internal opposition to her nomination, or that the administration has someone else in mind.

For now, we can only wait and see as Kyiv struggles to retake territory through its grinding counteroffensive in the east. “In one month, we have only advanced one kilometer and a half,” a Ukrainian medic told Kyiv Post. “We move forward by inches, but I don’t think it’s worth all the human resources and materiel that we have spent.”

 EL GOBIERNO DE LÓPEZ OBRADOR REAFIRMA SU CONDICIÓN DE VASALLO ANTE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS

México siempre ha sido considerado por los gobiernos de Estados Unidos como un Estado subordinado, vasallo, como un protectorado. Incluso dentro del juego burocrático del gobierno estadounidense los “asuntos mexicanos” se tratan como cuestiones “domésticas” y raramente como cuestiones de política exterior.

Los gobiernos del periodo neoliberal en nuestro país (1982-2018) reafirmaron este tipo de relación, especialmente en dos ámbitos, el económico y el de seguridad.

En el primero, México firmó el Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (TLCAN) que dio inicio el primer día de 1994, mediante el cual las estructuras y procesos económicos se embonaron con las necesidades productivas, de consumo y logísticas de Estados Unidos.

En él tema de seguridad, primero él gobierno de Vicente Fox se allanó a las prioridades establecidas por Washington en el periodo de la post-Guerra Fría, mediante la conformación de una supuesta Alianza para la Prosperidad y la Seguridad de América del Norte (2005); y posteriormente el gobierno de Felipe Calderón estableció un acuerdo en materia de seguridad conocido como la Iniciativa Mérida en 2008, con lo que México quedó definitivamente integrado a las estructuras y mecanismos de seguridad y defensa de la superpotencia, aunque explícitamente ello no se señalara en el acuerdo; lo que además se expresó en la integración de las Fuerzas Armadas mexicanas dentro del ámbito de responsabilidad del Comando Norte del Departamento de Defensa de los Estados Unidos[1].

Así, los 3200 kilómetros de frontera entre ambos países forman parte de la primerísima línea de defensa y seguridad de la superpotencia, por lo que es claro que todo aspecto relativo a la seguridad mexicana le parezca o no al gobierno en turno en nuestro país, es considerado una prioridad en Washington y por lo mismo, se consideran con la obligación de intervenir de una u otra forma para eliminar o al menos minimizar los riesgos que se originan desde nuestro territorio. 

Es lo que se conoce desde el punto de vista estratégico como el "Imperativo categórico"; esto es, aquellas amenazas que pongan en peligro la existencia misma de la nación. 

Ya el gobierno de Trump dobló con una facilidad inusitada a López Obrador para imponerle sus prioridades[2]; especialmente detener el flujo de indocumentados hacia Estados Unidos, y al menos intentó que el gobierno de López Obrador disminuyera significativamente el contrabando de fentanilo que llega a Estados Unidos por la frontera mexicana, sin lograr grandes avances.

Biden ha intensificado la presión sobre el gobierno mexicano para que detenga el flujo de fentanilo a los Estados Unidos[3], y para ello ha designado a la asesora de Seguridad Nacional, Elizabeth Sherwood Randall para encabezar un grupo de trabajo con el gobierno mexicano que monitoreé el progreso de las autoridades mexicanas en detener el contrabando de fentanilo. Sherwood Randall es la Homeland Security Advisor, lo que reafirma el hecho de que México es visto y tratado como un asunto "nacional" dentro de la burocracia estadounidense.

Ayer la asesora del presidente Biden se reunió por segunda vez en menos de medio año con el gabinete de seguridad del gobierno mexicano, presidido por el propio presidente López Obrador.

La señora Sherwood venía acompañada de subsecretarios y vicefiscales estadounidenses[4], mientras el gobierno mexicano estaba representado por el Jefe de Estado y sus principales secretarios en el gabinete de Seguridad Nacional.

Está muy claro lo que eso quiere decir, el gobierno mexicano es visto y tratado como un país bananero, que no requiere ni siquiera que la delegación visitante de Washington venga presidida por un secretario del gabinete.

La asesora Sherwood es una, digámoslo con todas sus letras, segundona de la oficina del consejero de seguridad nacional Jake Sullivan, y el débil gobierno mexicano la recibe como mandataria, en Palacio Nacional, con el gabinete de seguridad y con el mismo Jefe de Estado en una reunión de más de dos horas.

En todo caso López Obrador la hubiera podido recibir 15 minutos y dejarla que tratara los temas de la agenda con los miembros de su gabinete; pero como él presidente no confía en nadie más que en él mismo y además en las tardes (como se ha dado a conocer en los Guacamaya Leaks)[5], prácticamente ya no hace nada después de su conferencia “mañanera”, pues entonces tiene todo el tiempo del mundo para atender a una funcionaria de cuarta del gobierno de Biden, que viene a checar y pedir cuentas de lo que está haciendo el gobierno mexicano para detener los cargamentos de fentanilo que matan a miles de viciosos en los Estados Unidos cada año.

Sólo para “taparle el ojo al macho” el gobierno mexicano destacó en la información sobre la reunión que divulgó a los medios, que la señora Sherwood estuvo de acuerdo en que había que detener el flujo de armas de Estados Unidos a México, pero sin comprometerse a nada más y mucho menos a aceptar que México pida cuentas a Estados Unidos sobre ese tema, tal como Washington lo hace al subordinado y vasallo gobierno mexicano en el caso del fentanilo.

López Obrador se la pasa diciendo que este gobierno “no es igual” a los neoliberales. No, no es igual, es peor, en este tema como en muchos otros, pues siquiera los anteriores no rebajaban al Jefe de Estado mexicano a ser un pobre funcionario de segunda que tiene que reunirse con una funcionaria menor, para recibir instrucciones y demandas de la abusiva y prepotente superpotencia.

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[1] Protege los “intereses nacionales” de Estados Unidos en el territorio continental del país, Puerto Rico, Canadá, México y Las Bahamas.

[2] Así como un nuevo tratado comercial, el USMCA; negociado y firmado por Peña Nieto, pero avalado por López Obrador.

[3] En 2021 se firmó un nuevo acuerdo de seguridad, el Entendimiento Bicentenario.

[4] https://heraldodemexico.com.mx/nacional/2023/7/24/elizabeth-sherwood-randall-encabeza-delegacion-de-eu-que-visita-amlo-una-reunion-muy-productiva-524726.html

 

[5] Hackeo de información a la Secretaría de la Defensa Naciona.

Leading liberal Zionist voices call for ending U.S. aid to Israel

A New York Times Op-Ed featuring liberal Zionist leaders calls to end military aid to Israel as the country passes a law gutting its judiciary. This is the moment people working to end U.S. aid to Israel has been waiting for.

BY MITCHELL PLITNICK  JULY 24, 2023

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/07/leading-liberal-zionist-voices-call-for-ending-u-s-aid-to-israel/

The damage Israel is causing to its support base in the United States is becoming more apparent. A very bright warning flare went up this weekend, appearing once again in the New York Times. This time, it was columnist Nicholas Kristof who took a much bolder and far less speculative step than his colleague, Tom Friedman did last week by suggesting that the very heart of AIPAC’s mission—annual military aid to Israel—should be phased out.

Friedman, you might recall, floated the idea that a “reassessment” of the United States’ relationship with Israel might be on the horizon, if not already starting. As I noted, that was meant as a warning to Israel, not a reflection of any actual steps by Joe Biden’s White House to launch a policy process of reassessment. Indeed, as subsequent events confirmed, and as was indicated by the fact that Friedman cited no sources, even anonymous ones, this was the columnist trying to use his column to get Israel to back off because political winds are shifting. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not heed the warning, instead moving forward uncompromisingly on his domestic agenda and misleading the media about his conversation with Biden. Needless to say, that didn’t sit well in Washington. 

A liberal Zionist argument for ending military aid to Israel

Kristof launched his next volley on Saturday, the Sabbath. That was likely not a coincidence, as it meant that many religious Jews in the U.S. would not see it for a while and Israel would be slower to respond than usual, much like when the U.S. government releases controversial statements late on Friday afternoon. 

Kristof’s column strikes at the very heart of the lobbying might of pro-Israel forces, and uses noted liberal Zionists to do it. Former Ambassadors to Israel Dan Kurtzer and Martin Indyk, former diplomat Aaron David Miller, and J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami all chime in on why they think it would be a good idea to stop sending billions of dollars in military aid to Israel every year. 

These voices, all appearing in the New York Times under the byline of one of the United States’ most prominent columnists calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel is no small thing, although it’s tempered a bit. Kristof is quick to note, “…the reason to have this conversation is that American aid to another rich country squanders scarce resources and creates an unhealthy relationship damaging to both sides.” In other words, it’s not that we don’t still love you, Israel, it’s just that we think you’ve grown up and don’t need the money anymore. 

But that is absurd on its face. There’s nothing about this moment that is any different for Israel economically than it’s been for at least the past thirty years. Israel’s economy has been capable of paying for its own military for a very long time. 

Kristof also claims that the money sent to Israel each year could instead be used to aid countries in much more dire need. That’s true, but doing so would hardly necessitate cutting aid to Israel. The annual $3.8 billion that Israel gets is a drop in the ocean of annual U.S. spending, which totaled $6 trillion in 2022, and that was a significant downgrade from the $7.25 trillion spent in 2021. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. ranked 22^nd out of 24 developed countries in the amount of aid it gives as a percentage of GDP. So we can, and should, be giving more without cutting anything. 

Digging deeper into Kristof’s piece, we see the real reasons behind his thinking. Dan Kurtzer, ambassador to Israel during George W. Bush’s first term, told Kristof, “Aid provides the U.S. with no leverage or influence over Israeli decisions to use force; because we sit by quietly while Israel pursues policies we oppose, we are seen as ‘enablers’ of Israel’s occupation.”

How seriously we oppose those policies is a matter of debate, but Kurtzer is not alone in his concern over how aid to Israel makes the U.S. look to people around the world. Although by now, it is a mundane point, and taken as normal, American officials have voiced such concerns in the past. Still, the relationship has endured for all these decades, and even now, when Israel’s public image in the United States is at a historic low, criticism directed at it is perilous, as Pramila Jayapal saw just last week.

Yet the voices of people like Kurtzer and Martin Indyk, ambassador to Israel under Bill Clinton, might have been mildly critical of Israel in the past, but they had always stopped well short of calling for even slowing U.S. military aid. Obviously, the current far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to irritate Israel’s more liberal supporters in Washington in a way Israel has never done before. 

Netanyahu escalates the insults

The proposed judicial reform is the key reason, of course. Netanyahu’s attempt to render Israel’s judicial system unable to do anything but obey the Knesset’s every word threatens all the propaganda about “democracy” and “shared values” that are the only way Democrats have to justify their lockstep support of Israel regardless of its many crimes. But it is more than that.

Netanyahu has made a mockery of the United States as its patron. While the Biden administration has fallen over itself to keep the cash flowing to Israel; to shield Israel at the United Nations and other international fora; and to promote the truly evil myths that anti-Zionism and BDS are nothing more than forms of antisemitism, Israel has responded by making commitments to Washington it never intended to keep, often abrogating them as soon as the meetings where they were made were over. Netanyahu also misled the media about the phone call the two had last week. That didn’t sit well with Biden at all.

All of this has led these key figures in the liberal Zionist, Washington community to beat the drums on the most sacred of cows on Capitol Hill — U.S. aid to Israel. Yet even there, the calls are tempered with a sense that they don’t believe it to be possible. 

Aaron David Miller, who coined the phrase “Israel’s lawyer” in reference to former U.S. “Peace envoy” Dennis Ross, told Kristof, “Under the right conditions and in a galaxy far, far away, with U.S.-Israeli relations on even if not better keel, there would be advantages to both to see military aid phased out over time.” Clearly, he does not believe it to be possible, even if cutting off the aid to Israel might be desirable. 

Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street offered a similar sentiment. “There’s a serious conversation that should be had ahead of this next memorandum of understanding about how best to use $40 billion in U.S. tax dollars. Yet instead of a serious national security discussion, you’re likely to get a toxic mix of partisan brawling and political pandering.”

Ben-Ami is certainly correct when it comes to Congress. The shameful display of Israeli President Isaac Herzog addressing a joint session of Congress right after the debacle of Democrats joining Republicans to browbeat Rep. Pramila Jayapal for daring to point out that Israel, which deprives millions of Palestinians of freedom, rights, property, and often their very lives for no reason other than their ethnicity, is a racist state, shows that Congress, with a few notable exceptions, remains unwilling to challenge Israel and its American supporters.

Given the tidal shift the current Israeli government is causing, that can change, but it would require two things. One is time, as that sort of entrenched support doesn’t turn around overnight. The second is leadership, and that must come from the White House. Joe Biden is both personally and politically disinclined to provide that leadership. He’d much rather grit his teeth and bear the humiliations, as he has in the past. But Netanyahu is pushing it so hard he may not leave Biden much choice. 

Even as Republicans absurdly blast Biden as “antisemitic” for trying to convince Israel to stop record-setting settlement expansion and expanding its brutal authoritarianism from Palestinians to its own Jewish citizens, they will have a much stronger case in describing him as weak if he continues to allow Netanyahu to spit in his face with only a metaphorical “thank you, sir, may I have another?” in response. They won’t say it directly as that might imply that they think Biden should not do as Netanyahu says. But they will capitalize on Biden’s kowtowing to Netanyahu’s extremism in roundabout ways. 

In any case, Biden is not there yet. In a recent speech to the Atlantic Council, his Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the audience that “I think we’ve seen Israeli democracy in all of its vibrancy. It’s telling a remarkable story right now. That’s playing out, and I’m confident the system will be able to deal effectively with it.” As I asked last week, how the mere existence of protests, which are seen frequently in authoritarian states, demonstrates the existence of a “vibrant democracy” is, at best, unclear.

But Blinken is setting up the narrative the Biden administration wants to use if Netanyahu’s judicial reform fails. They will double down on Israel’s democracy, shout to the heavens about the shared values that were demonstrated, and how the bond between us is more “unbreakable” than ever. 

Opening the door to ending military aid to Israel

That might be starting even now. Just hours after I wrote these words on Monday, the Knesset voted on the first major bill in the overhaul process. It passed, and now the Israeli judiciary’s power to check any excesses of the government has been erased. In an effort to stop this, President Herzog tried to broker a compromise with the considerable added leverage of the threat of some 10,000 military reservists refusing duty—an unprecedented threat in Israeli history—along with a planned strike called by a forum of some 150 Israeli businesses. These factors were also bolstered by another public statement from Biden calling for Netanyahu to stop the bill from moving forward. 

But still, the bill passed. Now, it must be used by advocates for Palestine in Washington to press forward with calls for the end of aid to Israel.

The current Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which laid down the terms for ten years of aid to Israel, runs through September 2028. The negotiations for the next one will likely start to gather steam in late 2025. Netanyahu has given advocates in the U.S. an opening to build political momentum against a new MOU, and that could have the effect of either diminishing it, placing conditions on it, or even stopping it altogether. The time to start building that momentum is now, taking advantage of the opening this moment provides.

Even if future parts of the judicial reform doesn’t pass, the topic has been broached, and that opening must be exploited. For decades, AIPAC has succeeded in its founding goal, its prime directive: to sustain and maximize aid to Israel. It built an impenetrable wall around that aid. 

That wall has finally begun to crack. This is the moment people who want to see that aid stopped has been waiting for. Now is the time to go after U.S. aid to Israel, but not for the reasons Kristof proposes. That aid should stop for one reason above all others: because it is used to fund the oppression of the Palestinians, whether one wants to term that occupation or apartheid. It’s the argument that can’t be countered, and its time has finally come to Washington. 

Mitchell Plitnick

Mitchell Plitnick is the president of ReThinking Foreign Policy. He is the co-author, with Marc Lamont Hill, of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. Mitchell's previous positions include vice president at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Director of the US Office of B'Tselem, and Co-Director of Jewish Voice for Peace.