Israel Dismisses US Call to Investigate Mass Grave Discovered at Gaza Hospital

Nearly 400 bodies were found at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis

by Dave DeCamp April 28, 2024

https://news.antiwar.com/2024/04/28/israel-dismisses-us-call-to-investigate-mass-grave-discovered-at-gaza-hospital/

Israel has rejected a US call for an investigation into a mass grave that was discovered at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

US officials have said they want Israel to investigate the situation itself and has not backed international calls for an independent investigation. When asked by POLITICO if Israel would conduct an investigation, Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani said, “Investigate what?”

Shoshani said the military had already cleared itself of any wrongdoing. “We gave answers. We don’t bury people in mass graves. Not something we do,” he said.

Israel’s story is that a mass grave was already there when its troops showed up and that its forces dug up the bodies to look for Israeli hostages, then returned them to the ground. But Gaza’s Civil Defense agency said only about 100 people were buried at the hospital before the Israeli raid, and a total of 392 bodies have been discovered.

Gaza’s Civil Defense said some children were found in the mass grave, some bodies had their hands in restraints, and there were signs of torture.

“There are indications of carrying out field executions against some of the victims, while the bodies of other victims carried signs of torture and others were buried alive,” said Abu Sulaiman, the head of Gaza’s Civil Defense.

The UN has backed the Palestinian call for an independent investigation into the mass grave. “Given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. “Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law. And the intentional killing of civilians, detainees, and others who are hors de combat is a war crime.”

Fearful Netanyahu scrambles to prevent ICC arrest warrant: Report

An Israeli analyst said that the US is engaged in Israel’s efforts to block the ICC from issuing a warrant against the premier

News Desk

APR 28, 2024

https://thecradle.co/articles/fearful-netanyahu-scrambles-to-prevent-icc-arrest-warrant-report

The US is involved in a diplomatic effort to prevent the International Criminal Court (ICC) from issuing an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Hebrew media reports. 

Haaretz analyst Amos Harel said on 28 April that Washington is “already” engaged in efforts to block the ICC warrant against Netanyahu. 

The prime minister is reportedly in a state of extreme anxiety over the matter. 

Israeli journalist Ben Caspit wrote that Netanyahu is “under unusual stress” over the possibility of an arrest warrant being issued against him by the UN tribunal at the Hague, adding that he is leading a “nonstop push over the telephone” to prevent it. 

Both Washington and Tel Aviv are not among the 124 states that signed the ICC Rome Statute of 1998, which established genocide as one of four major international crimes, along with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes of aggression. 

Hebrew newspaper Maariv newspaper also reported that Netanyahu is fearful of the prospect of an ICC warrant against him. 

Sources close to the matter told the newspaper that Netanyahu has made an extensive number of phone calls to international leaders and officials, particularly US President Joe Biden, in an attempt to prevent the issuance of an arrest warrant against him and that the Israeli prime minister is indirectly trying to pressure Biden to act against the ICC. 

“Netanyahu realizes that the international arrest warrant could make him subject to prosecution and detainment, so he attempts to thwart its issuance daily,” the sources said. 

The sources also did not rule out the possibility that the recent shift in the Israeli position regarding a prisoner exchange and ceasefire deal, which now appears to be in favor of an agreement, is part of efforts to avoid the ICC warrant.

The ICC could also issue warrants to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, according to the report. 

“We will never stop defending ourselves. Whereas decisions of the court in the Hague will not affect Israel’s actions, they would be a dangerous precedent threatening the soldiers and officials of any democracy fighting criminal terrorism and aggression,” Netanyahu said on 26 April. 

Earlier this month, it was reported that arrest warrants could be issued against top Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, prompting an emergency meeting at the prime minister's office on 16 April. 

Israel has been accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). 

An interim ruling at the start of the year determined that Israel was plausibly guilty of the crime of genocide and ordered it to stop genocidal acts during its war on Gaza and take measures to guarantee the efficient provision of humanitarian aid to the strip. 

‘It felt like pulling my heart out of the earth:’ testimonies from the mass grave at Nasser Hospital

As Civil Defense teams continue to unearth hundreds of bodies from the mass graves discovered at Nasser Hospital, Palestinians are flocking to the medical complex in search of their missing loved ones.

BY TAREQ S. HAJJAJ  APRIL 25, 2024

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/i-felt-like-pulling-my-heart-out-of-the-earth-testimonies-from-the-mass-grave-at-nasser-hospital/

Bulldozers dig with their steel tongues between layers of sand and earth. Rescue teams dig into the ground on the other side of the large yard with simple shovels. Others dig with their hands in search of their families. The place is crowded. 

The Nasser Medical Complex has become a sprawling mass grave, where the Israeli army buried evidence of a hideous massacre. 

At least 13,000 people have been missing in the Gaza Strip since the war began in October, and people are arriving looking for missing loved ones. Even if they are found dead, it will at least put an end to their story. 

Among the dismembered bodies, scattered limbs, and decapitated heads are a large number of people searching for family or just there to observe. Some cannot bear it and stand far away, unable to fathom the carnage. 

The mass grave at Nasser Hospital is one of dozens left by the Israeli army throughout Gaza. Civil Defense officials believe that many more are yet to be found.

Ayman, 51, his wife Jamila, 44, and their son Abdul Karim, 22, insisted on going to Nasser Medical Complex after the Civil Defense announced that over two hundred bodies had been recovered in one day. The family was there to look for Abdul Karim’s younger brother, who had been missing in Khan Younis for over two months.

Once at the gates to the compound, Jamila could not bear the sight and smell of death, so she stayed outside with her son Abdul Karim, while Ayman went in to inspect the bodies.

“I could not bear to take a single step in there,” Jamila tells Mondoweiss at the door to the complex. “It is a scene that a person cannot bear: a great massacre, a large basin of blood, a pit of bodies buried, cut up.”

The Civil Defense teams at Nasser Hospital say that the mass graves they uncovered here contain more than 400 martyrs. The bodies had been buried with bulldozers, which dismembered some of them. Body parts were mixed together with garbage.

Ayman searches among the scattered pieces of human bodies for his son. Some of the decomposing bodies are already skeletons, so he looks for identifying signs like the clothes his son wore the last time he went out.

“He was wearing the blue wool sweater. I bought it for him. I know everything he wears and can identify him by his clothes,” Ayman says, describing his son as he searches among the bodies pulled out of the sand. “I could recognize him even if he were a skeleton.”

Over the past several days, new families have arrived as people continue flocking to the complex. Every day, Civil Defense teams announce the discovery of dozens of new bodies buried inside and around the complex. Some of the people who arrive come and go multiple times, like Ayman and his family, without learning the fate of their missing child. Others are able to identify their loved ones and take them to their final resting place. 

Alaa al-Arabashli, 43, identified his 19-year-old son Moaz’s body at Nasser Hospital. Despite the pain he endured in collecting his son’s body, picking him up from the dirt, and burying him with his own hands, it was an end to the fate of his missing son.

He says that he found his son after the rescue teams were able to recover more than 40 bodies from the gravesite. Civil Defense teams allowed people to check them, and there was nothing that distinguished the bodies except for the clothing. That was enough for him to identify his son.

Some families are summoned to bury their children after relatives recognize them, and they come carrying flowers to transport their bodies to other graves. The bodies are lined up among the people in the hopes that whoever comes will recognize some of them. After they are identified, they are placed in a new plastic bag, covered with a white shroud, and buried again.

Signs of execution of detainees

The Civil Defense teams at the gravesite insist that the Israeli army committed a massacre inside the hospital, which it wanted to hide by digging this mass grave.

Colonel Yamen Abu Suleiman, the Director of Civil Defense in Khan Younis, has been working at the scene over the past four days. He says that he and his colleagues have recovered over 300 bodies so far, confirming that a large number of them showed signs of torture and executions. 

Abu Suleiman told Mondoweiss that Israeli forces deliberately carried out indiscriminate killings at Nasser Hospital and tried to hide them in mass graves after collecting them in bags placed on top of each other. Many of the bodies were cut up in pieces, some even torn in half, showing signs of tank treads and bulldozer tracks. 

“There was no morality in dealing with the martyrs and the dead,” Abu Suleiman said.

He also confirms that he recovered bodies with their hands tied with plastic tape, which the Israeli soldiers used to bind their prisoners. Abu Suleiman says they also found martyrs with their eyes and mouths blindfolded.

He points out that the collection of body parts has not yet been completed and that the Ministry of Health will hold a conference in the coming days to reveal further details.

He also asserts that there are dozens of mass graves all over Gaza. “We are still counting and discovering graves in various places based on the presence of bodies in those areas, which leads us to begin searching and excavating in the vicinity until we find mass graves and extract the bodies from them in the dozens,” he tells Mondoweiss.

“So far, four mass graves have been discovered in Nasser Hospital alone,” he continues. “The number of martyrs indicates a massacre, and we found the martyrs with signs of torture, their stomachs and chests opened, and their heads smashed.” 

The mass graves at the Nasser complex were not the first to be found in Gaza. A few weeks ago, mass graves just like these were discovered in the al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City. Indeed, the number of bodies discovered there exceeds the number that has so far been reported in Khan Younis. To this day, bodies are still being discovered from the Israeli army’s massacre in al-Shifa, which took place during a two-week siege of the hospital. Before that, mass graves were discovered in the Turkish hospital in Jabalia, in northern Gaza.

And now, the Israeli army has withdrawn following the conclusion of its assault on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, leaving behind a similar story. 

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that it has so far documented a combined total of 140 unmarked graves and mass graves across the Gaza Strip, containing the bodies of thousands of victims since October 7. These graves include documented cases of people who were executed by the occupation before being buried.

“The Civil Defence teams’ discovery of hundreds of bodies from mass graves in the ‘Al-Shifa’ Medical Complex and the ‘Nasser’ Hospital represents a dark chapter in the history of Israeli military violations,” the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said. 

The human rights monitor also expressed that the mass graves at al-Shifa and Nasser revealed several bodies with hands bound behind their backs, raising suspicions that the army carried out extrajudicial executions of people it had arrested and detained. 

Moreover, the organization asserted that the exhumation process revealed “the presence of urinary catheters or splints that were still attached to some patients’ bodies,” indicating that there were executions of the sick and the injured at the hospital.

Alaa Al-Arabashli, the father who found his son Moaz, said that he could never have imagined that he would be looking for his son in a ditch full of human body parts. Still, he was able to find him and be at peace, knowing that his son was a martyr. 

“I collected my son with my own two hands, and I took him to his final resting place,” he told Mondoweiss. “It felt like pulling my heart out of the earth.”

“But I consider myself lucky,” he added. “I found my son. There are thousands of people who don’t know where their loved ones are.”

Tareq S. Hajjaj
Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Mondoweiss Gaza Correspondent and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. Follow him on Twitter at @Tareqshajjaj.

 

EL PODER DEL SIONISMO SE HACE PRESENTE EN LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS

Desde el fin de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, pero especialmente, después de la Guerra de los 6 días en 1967, cuando Israel derrotó a Egipto, en Estados Unidos y Europa Occidental se estableció una subordinación completa de las élites políticas, económicas y militares de Occidente con respecto a Israel.

Ha sido un apoyo total a los gobiernos israelíes, sin importar si son de derecha o izquierda, para alcanzar los siguientes objetivos:

-     Ocupar y desposeer de sus territorios en la Franja de Gaza, este de Jerusalén y Cisjordania a los palestinos.

-     En la medida de lo posible, expulsar de esos territorios y de los de Israel a la población palestina (disfrazada limpieza étnica).

-    Afirmar la hegemonía militar, tanto en armas convencionales como nucleares (ser la única potencia que las posee en Medio Oriente) sobre sus vecinos árabes, turcos y persas.

-     Asegurar para Israel el aprovechamiento de los principales recursos naturales como agua, petróleo y gas, en los territorios conquistados y ocupados.

-   Lograr que Occidente y en general la comunidad internacional abandonen la causa palestina y se afirme en el mundo la islamofobia, al presentar a los países árabes e Irán, como “terroristas”.

-    Afirmar en la narrativa y en el imaginario de las poblaciones de Occidente y del Sur Global que Israel y los judíos siempre son las víctimas y siempre son los agredidos.

Todos estos objetivos los han conseguido las élites sionistas de Israel en mayor o menor medida, gracias a que los lobbies pro-Israel de las principales potencias de Occidente (especialmente los de Estados Unidos), han logrado dominar a los establecimientos político, económico-financiero, de medios de comunicación y a los aparatos de seguridad e inteligencia de las potencias occidentales.

Por supuesto, cualquier académico, intelectual, periodista, político o ciudadano común que se atreviera o que se atreva a decir públicamente esto, era y es inmediatamente descalificado por gobiernos, partidos políticos, empresas y medios de comunicación como “antisemita”; además de que es separado de su trabajo, estigmatizado de por vida, apartado de la sociedad y en muchas ocasiones (en distintos países que tienen legislaciones al respecto), hasta enviado a la cárcel.

Tal nivel de intimidación para las personas que se atreven a decir lo obvio, más la constante propaganda en medios de comunicación y a través de los sistemas escolares de los países vasallos de Israel, supuestamente habrían logrado, para esta época, el que la gran mayoría de la población mundial se creyera las versiones de Israel, de Estados Unidos y en general de Occidente, de que Israel y los judíos son víctimas del odio de árabes, de los iraníes, turcos y los que se acumulen, sólo porque sí, sólo porque son “antisemitas” y sólo porque odian a los judíos y a Occidente, porque les tienen envidia.

Sin duda, este discurso permanente, que sobre todo los poderosos medios de comunicación occidentales (encabezados por Hollywood), han difundido por al menos 60 años, ha permeado en gran parte de la población mundial y ello ha dado la confianza a las élites pro-sionistas de Occidente para descararse abiertamente en favor de Israel; sobre todo a partir de los ataques de “falsa bandera” del 11 de septiembre de 2001.

Por ello, después de que Hamas, en un último intento por evitar que los países árabes abandonaran por completo la causa palestina, llevaron a cabo un ataque contra Israel el 7 de octubre, todo Occidente y muchos países vasallos de América Latina y Asia fueron a postrarse ante el Primer Ministro israelí, Benjamín Netanyahu, para brindarle su apoyo económico, político y militar.

Ante esto, Netanyahu y su gobierno etno-nacionalista, xenófobo y ultraderechista aprovechó la oportunidad no sólo de destruir a Hamas, sino de acelerar la limpieza étnica de Gaza, Cisjordania y el este de Jerusalén, para lo cual inició otra Nakba (catástrofe) como la de 1948, para devastar Gaza, llevar a cabo un genocidio y así obligar a la población palestina a buscar refugio en Egipto; mientras en Cisjordania se llevaba a cabo una represión brutal y un aumento exponencial de los asentamientos de colonos sionistas, también para lograr la limpieza étnica en esa zona; al tiempo que se realizaban constantes provocaciones (bombardeos y asesinatos) contra la organización Hezbollah en el sur de Líbano y contra Siria y los grupos pro iraníes en Siria e Irak; hasta llegar al bombardeo del consulado iraní en Damasco, Siria; todo ello con el fin de provocar una guerra regional, mediante la cual Israel obligara a Occidente a participar en su favor para destruir a Hezbollah, Líbano, Siria, Irán y de paso a los houtíes en Yemen que han apoyado a la causa palestina con el hostigamiento a la navegación comercial que se dirige por el paso de Bab el Mandeb hacia Israel.

Pero resultó que toda la propaganda que durante 60 años se ha difundido en el mundo; todo el dominio sobre medios de comunicación, gobiernos, sistemas escolares, legislación, etc. para convencer de que Israel es la víctima, no acabó por permear a toda la población del mundo; vamos, ni siquiera a la de Occidente.

Las escenas de horror de la matanza indiscriminada de mujeres, niños, ancianos; de civiles desarmados en Gaza. El corte del agua, los alimentos y el combustible de manera deliberada; la destrucción de casas, edificios, escuelas, hospitales, iglesias, mezquitas e infraestructura civil de los palestinos, a la vista de todos; y peor aún, las declaraciones de odio, de burla, de arrogancia, así como videos infames de soldados israelíes robándose propiedad de los habitantes de Gaza, insultándolos, degradándolos y presumiéndolo en redes sociales, acabó por escandalizar y llevar al repudio de estas acciones a millones de personas en el mundo.

Pero los sionistas de Israel y de Estados Unidos y Europa pensaron que su dominio sobre el mundo es tal, que podían burlarse de sus víctimas palestinas y presumir su poderío sin que nadie en el mundo se atreviera a criticarlos, cuestionarlos o repudiarlos.

Se equivocaron, en casi todo el mundo, incluso en Occidente, las protestas, las marchas multitudinarias, las condenas en redes sociales contra el genocidio y la limpieza étnicas de Israel contra los palestinos, se ha hecho presente desde octubre del año pasado hasta la fecha; y ello ha obligado, a regañadientes, a los vasallos gobiernos occidentales a tomar algunas tibias medidas para llamar la atención de sus amos sionistas de Israel, para que no exageren tanto las barbaridades que están cometiendo; aunque con muy pocos resultados, puesto que los sionistas de Israel se consideran los dueños del mundo, y por lo tanto no aceptan “recomendaciones” y mucho menos “sanciones” (por tibias que sean), de sus subordinados occidentales.

Ahora incluso estudiantes no judíos (y algunos judíos) de las principales universidades de Estados Unidos (la mayoría de ellas dependientes de las “donaciones” de multimillonarios sionistas), han establecido campamentos en sus campus universitarios y marchas de protesta contra su gobierno y contra Israel, por el genocidio que realizan contra los palestinos en Gaza.

Esto sí enloqueció a las élites sionistas de Estados Unidos e Israel, que no pueden permitir que universidades de “prestigio” que ellos llevan controlando desde hace décadas, se conviertan en plataformas de condena de los abusos israelíes en Gaza y en el mundo.

Por ello, tanto el vasallo gobierno sionista de Biden (él mismo se ha autodenominado como un convencido sionista), como los medios de comunicación, políticos y grandes empresas se han manifestado en contra de los estudiantes, señalándolos como “antisemitas”, y han lanzado a las policías y hasta a la Guardia Nacional a reprimirlos, arrestarlos y dispersarlos.

Esta es una de las mayores muestras del poder del sionismo en Estados Unidos, cuando a los hijos de las élites privilegiadas de ese país, que se atreven a protestar contra el genocidio israelí en Gaza, se les trata peor que a trabajadores tercermundistas; se hace evidente así que los anglos no son en Estados Unidos más que unos lacayos de los sionistas (ni qué decir de hispanos, negros o asiáticos); y esto ha demostrado el poder que tienen la élites sionistas, aún contra estudiantes y profesores de las universidades más caras y conocidas del país.

El mensaje es claro, los sionistas dominan Estados Unidos; dominan Europa y por lo tanto el mundo (aunque Rusia, China, Irán y Corea del Norte tienen otra opinión); y quien quiera retar de cualquier manera ese poder recibirá su castigo, así sean jóvenes de universidades privilegiadas del país más poderoso del mundo.

Veremos hasta dónde son capaces de llegar estos psicópatas, que han llevado al mundo al abismo de guerras, genocidios, destrucción del medio ambiente, odio permanente entre los pueblos, discriminación, desigualdad y destrucción de valores morales en el mundo.

 

Fight against UK arms sales to Israel persists

A case to halt UK arms sales was dismissed in February but has since been granted a judicial review

News Desk

APR 23, 2024

https://thecradle.co/articles/fight-against-uk-arms-sales-to-israel-persists

A legal obstacle to British weapons exports was reignited at the UK High Court on 23 April. 

The case, brought by Palestinian rights group Al-Haq and the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), was dismissed in February. 

On Tuesday, 23 April, the case was granted an expedited judicial review of the UK government’s export license process, scheduled for the coming October. 

According to Al-Haq, there is a serious risk that weapons exported by the UK to Israel will be used in violation of international law, making their continued export illegal. 

In the court filings for Tuesday’s preliminary hearing on the matter, Al-Haq’s lawyers said the government processes for evaluating violations are “robust and detailed.” 

A lawyer for the Department for Business and Trade, James Eadie, said the processes have been “honed and refined” following cases previously brought by the Campaign Against Arms Trade over arms exports to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. 

“The world has watched as 34,000 people have been killed, and more are being killed every day. Over the weekend, a single strike in Rafah killed 17 children. The case for urgency has never been clearer,” said GLAN’s lawyer Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe. 

The UN has repeatedly warned in recent months that states exporting arms or military goods to Israel are at high risk of complicity in war crimes. Last month, Canada announced its intention to impose a ban on arms sales to Israel. Several countries, including Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, and Belgium, have taken similar steps.

At the start of March, over 200 MPs from 12 states signed a letter urging their governments to impose a ban on weapons sales to Israel. In the letter, organized by Progressive International and signed on 1 March, the MPs said they refused to be complicit in “Israel’s grave violation of international law” in Gaza.

 

What Can We Learn from Our Forever War in Ukraine?

by Chas W. Freeman, Jr. 

Posted on April 23, 2024

https://original.antiwar.com/Chas_Freeman/2024/04/22/what-can-we-learn-from-our-forever-war-in-ukraine/

It has been a while since the United States won a war.  It looks as though we are about to lose yet another one – the war in Ukraine.  This is a proxy war justified as an effort to “weaken and isolate” Russia.  Our strategic defeat in this effort now leaves us with three unpalatable alternatives.  We can continue to support Ukraine as Russia grinds it to bits and reduces it further in size and population.  We can escalate the war, as French President Emmanuel Macron has advocated, despite the Russian threat to answer us with counter-escalation, possibly to the nuclear level.  Or we can face up to failure and save what we can of Ukraine by negotiating with Russia.  I know which of these choices I would prefer, and I suspect you do too.  And, however this unwise and unnecessary war ends, we need to ensure that there are no more like it in future.

They say that a mistake is only a mistake if you don’t learn from it.  Our country has recently made a lot of mistakes in its foreign policies.  Sadly, we don’t seem to be learning much of anything from this experience.  We have instead invented something uniquely American called a “forever war.”  Such wars routinely fail.  Still, we keep launching them.

I want to speak to you this evening about why we do this, why we shouldn’t, and how we can stop doing it.  My focus will be the forever war with Russia in Ukraine.

Forever wars can take many forms.  They can be economic or technological, like the one the Trump administration kicked off against China and that the Biden administration has enthusiastically doubled down on.  They can be military, like our twenty-three year “global war on terrorism.”  That has taken us into combat in over eighty countries, killed over 900,000 people, and cost us an estimated $8 trillion.  Forever wars need not be direct, as our proxy war in Ukraine illustrates.  They can even be covert, as our multiple barely concealed interventions in Syria demonstrate.

What America’s forever wars have in common is that they involve:

• muddled, open-ended objectives,
• movable goal posts,
• an intensely propagandized narrative to mobilize support for them,
• no quarter for those who challenge that narrative,
• no benchmarks for judging success or failure,
• no limits on the level of resources we must feed into them,
• no defined end state that would justify ending them,
• no strategy for their termination, and
• no vision of a feasible order if and when they end.

Sunzi argued that wars should implement strategies that achieve specific national objectives with the least destruction.  Carl von Clausewitz described war as the expedient continuation of politics by other means.  William Tecumseh Sherman said that the purpose of war was to produce a better peace.  Fred Iklé said every war must end.

But what if domestic political dysfunction prevents the definition of specific national objectives?  What if a country’s political culture dictates that the only effective way to impose its druthers on other countries is coercively, through warfare – economic or military?   What if such a country measures the success of punitive measures not by the extent to which they achieve desirable changes in foreign behavior but by the pain they inflict on foreigners?  What if such a country believes it can resort to the use of force with impunity whenever it judges that  less violent methods of bending foreigners to its will are less likely to do so?  What if that country’s wars routinely lead not to peace but to turmoil or anarchy?

Our “forever wars” are the product of applying hubris to two related national ambitions vis-à-vis the world beyond our borders: (1) the consolidation of a global American sphere of influence and (2) the foreign regime changes needed to realize this.  The Ukraine war exemplifies both elements of this hegemonic behavior.  It has been accompanied by wall-to-wall propaganda that confuses self-righteousness with truth, demonizes our adversary, and replaces analysis with wishful thinking and denial, leaving nothing certain and everything plausible.  As always, the most destructive lies are those we tell ourselves.

The Ukraine war is not – as is claimed – about democracy vs. authoritarianism.  It is about delineating the post-Cold War U.S. sphere of influence in Europe.

Our country invented the modern sphere of influence.  In the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary to it, we asserted a right to limit the freedom of maneuver of the countries of the Western Hemisphere and to demand their deference to our political and economic interests.  After World War II, Americans expanded our sphere of influence to include Western Europe and Northeast Asia.  In the post-Cold War period, Washington adapted the hegemonic principles of the Monroe Doctrine to the unipolar moment and extended our sphere of influence to the entire world beyond the borders of Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea.  In the end, the only countries bordering Russia other than those of Central Asia not in our sphere of influence were Georgia and Ukraine.  American neoconservatives saw these neighbors of Russia as vacuums to be filled by U.S. military power.

During the Cold War, NATO was a purely defensive alliance that effectively protected Western Europe from a predatory Soviet Union and its restive satellites.  But twenty-five years ago, at the end of the 20^th century, after the USSR had disappeared, NATO began to launch offensive operations – first against Serbia, then in Afghanistan, later in Libya.  And as NATO expanded toward Russia’s borders, American troops and weapons aimed at Russia routinely established a presence on the territory of its new members.

At the 2007 Munich security conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin bluntly warned the United States and its European allies that his country would feel obliged to act if NATO – the instrument by which the U.S. has long exercised dominant politico-military influence in Europe – were further expanded.  His warning echoed that of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin as early as 1994.

In 2008 as in 1994, Washington ignored these warnings and persuaded NATO to offer membership to Georgia and Ukraine, both of which border the Russian Federation.  As the Russians habitually say, it was no accident that shortly thereafter, war broke out between Georgia and Russia.  This was in part due to Georgia’s exuberant reaction to apparent open-ended American support for its nationalist ambitions.  More to the point, it was a calculated Russian signal of resolve to resist encirclement by the United States and NATO.  We dismissed the signal and portrayed Moscow’s defeat of Georgian adventurism as wanton Russian aggression that vindicated our determination to bring Russia’s neighbors into NATO.  Someone summed this up by declaring that the reason NATO still exists is to handle the problems that NATO’s continuing existence creates.

Coincident with the war in Georgia, the United States and NATO escalated the effort to re-equip, restructure, and retrain the Ukrainian armed forces to be ready for combat with Russia.  In 2014, Washington helped engineer a coup in Kyiv that overthrew the elected government and installed handpicked pro-American, anti-Russian successors in its place.  The new ultranationalist Ukrainian government then banned the use of Russian and other minority languages in education or for official business.  But almost thirty percent of Ukrainians are native speakers of Russian.  Russian-speaking secessionists in the Donbas region resisted forced assimilation and began a civil war with Ukrainian ultranationalists.  This soon became a proxy war between Russia and the West.

The United States reaffirmed its intention to bring Ukraine into NATO and stepped up our aid to the Ukrainian armed forces.  But if Ukraine entered NATO while Crimea was still part of it, the 250-year-old Russian naval base at Sevastopol would fall under the control of the U.S. and NATO.  In large measure to preempt this, Russia annexed Crimea.  It was able to do so without violence because Crimeans had made it clear on several previous occasions that they did not want to be part of Ukraine.  In 2014, a Russian-organized referendum revealed that the views of most Crimeans had not changed.  If they could not be independent, they preferred to be part of Russia.  It is utterly unrealistic to expect them ever to agree to place themselves again under Ukrainian sovereignty.

By 2021, with our help, Ukraine had acquired a NATO-trained and equipped army larger than the armed forces of Britain, France, and Germany combined.  Not surprisingly, Moscow viewed this huge hostile force on its western borders as a serious national security threat.  Recent attacks deep into Russia by Ukrainian forces have inadvertently validated Russia’s concerns about the consequences of Ukraine joining an alliance hostile to it.  Just as Soviet forces stationed in Cuba in 1962 menaced Washington, U.S. forces stationed in Ukraine could reduce the warning time of a strike on Moscow to about five minutes.

So, in December 2021, Moscow massed troops on the Russian border with Ukraine and demanded negotiations to resolve its security concerns.  It insisted on Ukrainian neutrality, respect for the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine, and a discussion of a new European security architecture that would threaten neither Russia nor the members of NATO.  The U.S. and NATO responded by rejecting negotiations while warning – in an instance of self-fulfilling paranoia – that Russia planned to invade Ukraine.

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, put it this way: “President Putin … sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement.  That … was a pre-condition for [Russia] not invad[ing] Ukraine.  Of course we didn’t sign that.”  In fact, the U.S. and NATO refused to discuss it at all, leaving Russia with the choice of either accepting NATO membership for Ukraine and the eventual deployment of U.S. forces there or using force to prevent this.  This unwelcome choice was the proximate cause of Moscow’s fateful decision to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022.  The Russian invasion of Ukraine was clearly illegal under international law, but to say that it was “unprovoked” defies credibility.

Could a negotiation with Russia have prevented war?  We have at least two solid pieces of evidence to suggest that it might have.  Despite Moscow’s sympathy and support for the Russian-speaking secessionists in the Donbas, it agreed in the Minsk accords of 2014 and ’15 that their region should remain part of Ukraine, provided their linguistic autonomy was guaranteed. (The Minsk accords were subsequently repudiated, not by Russia but by Ukraine, France, and Germany.)

Then, too, six weeks after it invaded Ukraine, Moscow agreed to a draft treaty with Kyiv by which it would withdraw from Ukraine in return for Ukraine renouncing NATO membership and proclaiming neutrality.  This treaty was to have been signed on April 15, 2022, but the U.S., U.K, and NATO objected to it.  In early April Ukraine repudiated its earlier agreement to the terms of the treaty.

As the war has ground on, Russia has repeatedly reiterated its willingness to talk, and the U.S., NATO, and Ukraine have consistently rejected doing so.  The refusal to discuss a formula for peaceful coexistence between Ukraine and Russia, between NATO and Russia, and between Ukrainian and Russian-speaking Ukrainians has had grave consequences, most of all for Ukraine.

The war has not only imposed huge costs on Ukraine but also greatly weakened its bargaining power in any future negotiation with Russia.  If there is an agreed end to this war, it will be on largely Russian terms and vastly less favorable to Ukraine than the peace the U.S. and NATO persuaded Kyiv to reject in April 2022.  Ukraine, the U.S., and NATO are now in the final stages of a humiliating strategic defeat.

In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the population of Ukraine was about 32 million.  Since then, it has fallen to about 20 million.

One-third of Ukraine’s people have been dislocated.  Over 2 million have fled to Russia and 6 to 8 million to the West and elsewhere.  The number of Ukrainian casualties is a closely guarded secret, but indications are that it may be around half a million.  Ukraine’s industrial base and infrastructure have been devastated.  As the war began, Ukraine was the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe.  Now it is even poorer and more corrupt.

The Biden administration has regularly described the proxy war with Russia as designed to “isolate and weaken Russia” and pledged to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”  Prominent American politicians have extolled the benefits of having Ukrainians rather than Americans fight Russians.  Ukrainians have done so with remarkable bravery.  But so many have died that Ukraine can no longer mount an adequate defense, let alone go on the offensive.

The war has devastated Ukraine without either isolating or weakening Russia.  It has cut Europe off from Russian energy supplies and reoriented Russia toward China, India, Iran, the West Asian Arab countries, and Africa.  Russia’s economy has grown, not contracted.  Moscow’s defense budget has doubled, and its armaments production is now three times that of the US and NATO combined.  Like Ukrainian casualties, those of Russia are hard to estimate.  But with a population four to five times larger than Ukraine’s, Russia can sustain many more casualties than Ukraine can.

The U.S. and NATO expected an easy victory over Russia.  But both now face a humiliating military defeat.  The war has greatly weakened Ukraine’s bargaining position in any future negotiation with Russia.  Germany now feels sufficiently threatened for it have begun a debate on whether to acquire nuclear weapons.

As a result of U.S. sanctions and the sabotage of Russia’s undersea gas pipeline to Germany, Europe has lost its access to cheap Russian energy supplies.  These have been replaced by imports from the United States that are as much as four times as expensive.  European energy-intensive industries are no longer internationally competitive.  Germany, Europe’s core economy, is being deindustrialized.  Current trends are raising disturbing questions about the future of the EU.

The Ukraine war, combined with other bellicose actions, has cost the United States and the West the moral argument internationally.  We cannot have it both ways – condemning Russia’s illegal actions in Ukraine while actively supporting Israel’s even more lawless and lethal actions in Palestine.  The West has inadvertently put its hypocrisy and double standards on dramatic display.

We are told by our leaders and their political straphangers that Ukraine and other current and potential “forever wars” are about defending democratic values.  But as we build a domestic national security state to support our wars, we are sacrificing ever more of the civil liberties and respect for due process and the rule of law that are central to constitutional democracy.  As Benjamin Franklin wisely pointed out, a nation prepared to trade its freedoms for its security puts both in jeopardy.  And, in this case, it is not even our security that is at stake but that of others.  The “domino theory” was nonsense in Southeast Asia.  It is equally fallacious in Eastern Europe.  Our wars are wars of choice, not necessity, and have little or no direct connection to Americans’ security and wellbeing.

It is said that U.S. credibility with allies and adversaries is at stake in Ukraine.  But our policies and actions there have not bolstered confidence in American steadfastness so much as shaken confidence in our judgment and cast doubt on the efficacy of our military doctrines and weaponry.  The West now suffers from “forever war” fatigue.  American and European taxpayers are becoming reluctant to keep sending money to a cause that they increasingly perceive as both futile and corrupt.  And we are being reminded that, as the 20^th century demonstrated, there can be no peace in Europe based on ostracizing Russia or any other European great power.

As the war proceeds, Russia’s bargaining position continues to strengthen.  If there is ever an end to this war, it will be on terms far less favorable to Ukraine than the peace the U.S. and NATO persuaded it to reject in April 2022.  Meanwhile, inept American diplomacy continues to push Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea together in a loose anti-American entente and to increase the danger of one or more nuclear wars.

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty stipulates that “an armed attack against one or more [NATO member states] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”  This is an unequivocal commitment to defend any and all NATO members against attack.  But the United States and other NATO members have already demonstrated that we are not in fact prepared to respond directly to an armed attack on Ukraine by Russia.  In response to just such an attack, we have resorted to evasions and a proxy war pitting Ukrainians – but not us – against the aggressor.

If Ukraine were a member of NATO, Article 5 would require the president to ask Congress to declare war on the world’s most formidable nuclear power.  Vladimir Putin has threatened to conduct such a war at the nuclear level.  He may not be the demonic figure our propaganda makes him out to be.  But bravado aside, calling his bluff is an insane risk for us to take for ourselves, our allies, and the world at large.

As in other “forever wars,” we have inhaled our own propaganda about Ukraine.  Our quixotic attempt to exploit Ukrainian nationalism to “weaken and isolate” Russia or engineer regime change in Moscow has been a catastrophe for Ukrainians and a strategic defeat for the West.  It has brought the U.S. and NATO to the point at which we must either enter the fray directly, watch Russia grind Ukraine to bits, or accept a negotiated outcome that addresses Russian interests and objectives.

Moscow has described those interests and stated those objectives clearly and consistently.  They do not include invading NATO territory.  Claiming that they do is threat mongering designed to mobilize popular support in the West for our proxy war in Ukraine, to boost U.S. and NATO defense budgets, and to fatten the profits of the military-industrial complex.  Moscow has conducted a limited war – a so-called “special military operation” – in Ukraine.  It has not marshalled the forces necessary to subdue, occupy, or annex all of Ukraine.  Russia’s battlefield performance has not demonstrated any capacity to invade the West, and Moscow has expressed no ambition to do so.

It is time to stop attributing objectives to Russia that it has not stated and does not have.  Moscow’s professed aims have been and remain: (1) to restore the neutrality of Ukraine and prevent the deployment of U.S. and other NATO forces and installations to Ukraine; (2) to restore and ensure the linguistic and other rights of Ukraine’s large Russian-speaking minority; and (3) to negotiate a new European security architecture that can alleviate the threat Russia and other European states pose to each other by crafting a durable peace between them.

In the absence of diplomacy, the use of force has once again failed.  Far from weakening Russia, the Ukraine war has strengthened it.  Far from isolating Russia, the Ukraine war has forced it into the embrace of China and Iran and boosted its ties with India, the Arab world, and Africa.  Ukraine’s economy has been eviscerated, its population reduced, its military capacity gutted, and its territory diminished.  If the war is allowed to continue, this will only wreak more havoc in Ukraine, kill more Ukrainians as well as Russians, and further shrink Ukraine’s territory, possibly leaving it landlocked.

The proponents of our militarized foreign policy asked us once again to give war a chance.  We foolishly did.  This has now left us with no alternative to trying diplomacy.  We cannot hope to regain at the negotiating table what we have lost on the battlefield, but we must now strive to compose a peace with Russia that enables Ukraine to be both a buffer and a bridge between Russia and the rest of Europe.  That – not NATO membership – is the prerequisite for the emergence of a prosperous and democratic Ukraine, untainted by corruption.  And that – not NATO membership for Ukraine – is the prerequisite for peace and stability in Europe.

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. chairs Projects International, Inc. He is a retired US defense official, diplomat, and interpreter, the recipient of numerous high honors and awards, a popular public speaker, and the author of five books. He was a former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm), acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Chargé d’affaires at both Bangkok and Beijing. He began his diplomatic career in India but specialized in Chinese affairs. (He was the principal American interpreter during President Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972.) Reprinted with permission from his blog.

Global military spending soars to new record highs

Oliver Pieper

The global defense budget saw its largest yearly increase in 14 years in 2023, according to the think tank SIPRI. Russia's war in Ukraine, the China-Taiwan crisis and other global conflicts played a significant role.

https://www.dw.com/en/global-military-spending-soars-to-new-record-highs/a-68876104

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has updated its Military Expenditure Database for 2023, with top spenders such as the United States, China and Russia ratcheting up their military budgets.

Military spending is up in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Oceania and North and South America. It's the first time since 2009 that annual spending has increased in all geographical regions examined by SIPRI at once.

With a budget increase of 105%, the Democratic Republic of the Congo stood out as the country with the single largest increase in military spending in 2023 by percentage. Researchers attributed this boost to the protracted conflict between the government and non-state armed groups.

How surprising is military expenditure rise?

Xiao Liang, a researcher in SIPRI's military expenditure and arms production program, told DW that "what might be surprising is how large the increases are in the rest of the world, especially in Latin America and Africa."

Liang said the governments of Mexico and El Salvador were using the military for internal affairs such as combating organized crime and gang violence. Ecuador and Brazil are showing similarly concerning trends, he added.

"The increase itself is not too surprising, but it's the scale and scope of the increase," Liang said. "For the global trend, if the current conflicts and tensions continue, we will probably see more increase in the coming years."

Ukraine-Russia war spending imbalanced

Ukraine has remained a conflict hot spot since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in early 2022.

At 5.9% in 2023, Liang said, Russia's military spending in relation to its gross domestic product (GDP) reached its highest point since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

By comparison, Ukraine's military spending was 37% of its GDP. "So the war is burdening Ukraine much more than Russia," Liang said. The bare numbers highlight that the fight between Russia and Ukraine is imbalanced, but Western support has helped Ukraine level the playing field, preliminary SIPRI reports indicated.

"From the spending trend last year, all but three countries in NATO increased their spending," Liang said. "And also we've seen the most number of countries, in 11 out of 31 members in NATO, that met or exceeded the 2% GDP target, which is the highest since the end of the Cold War. We expect to see more countries reaching their targets in the next few years. Now also, with Finland and Sweden joining NATO, I think the spending by NATO countries as a whole will keep rising."

What's behind China's military spending increase?

The conflict between China and Taiwan also drove up military spending in 2023. China increased military expenditures by 6% from the previous year, allocating about $296 billion (€277.5 billion) to the military in 2023. That's about half of the overall military expenditure across the Asia and Oceania regions. 

Liang said China was directing most of its growing military budget toward increasing the combat readiness of its People's Liberation Army.

"We are clearly seeing that trend because, if you look at spending, it has been rising for 29 consecutive years," Liang said. "That's the longest streak recorded by a single country. It's mostly actually increasing set alongside the pace of its economic growth, regardless of fluctuations in geopolitical tensions or global crisis such as the war in Ukraine or COVID."

Liang said China's military modernization had also prompted countries such as Japan, Taiwan and India to increase their military spending. Japan and Taiwan both raised their military spending by 11%, to $50.2 billion and $16.6 billion, respectively. 

How regional conflicts are fueling military spending increases

Another noteworthy development in SIPRI's database is the increased military spending in South Sudan. Marked by internal violence and spillover effects from the civil war in neighboring Sudan, the world's youngest nation increased military spending by 78% compared with 2022.

Countries across Europe spent another year fearing security threats from Russia. Poland increased its military spending the most of all European countries, by 75% from 2022, to $31.6 billion in total.

In the Middle East, Iran recorded a military budget of $10.3 billion, making it the region's fourth-largest spender.

'Military security has became a priority again'

"We live in an age when military security has became a priority again and security is defined in a militaristic framework," said Niklas Schörnig, a political scientist at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. "In this sense, these numbers are just a reflection of that mindset."

Pointing to Ukraine and the recent exchange of blows between Iran and Israel, Schörnig also noted that defense was far most costly than an offensive. "Take the drones that Iran is delivering to Russia, for example, and that Iran recently deployed," he told DW. "Organizing that kind of defense is hugely cost-intensive."

Schörnig, the institute's senior researcher in international security, said conflicts such as the war in Ukraine were proof that the logic of disarmament has reached its limits. Instead, he said, the world has entered a new era in which armament is spiraling out of control as most arms control agreements are outdated or no longer in use.

To counter this trend, Schörnig proposed a new international goal. "States need to return to controlled armament," he said. "They need to agree not to arm themselves above a certain level. This could de-escalate things a bit. Arms controls could be an interim goal, a way to limit and stabilize armament, and avoid everyone wildly arming themselves however they like."

It's likely SIPRI's report on military expenditures in 2024 will once again find an increase in spending. In 2023, Israel's large-scale offensive in Gaza and tensions in the wider region led to the highest annual growth in military spending the Middle East had seen in 10 years.

Total military expenditure in the region grew by 9% and amounted to $200 billion. Israel's military spending alone spiked by 24% to $27.5 billion, second only to Saudi Arabia.

Schörnig said he had a pessimistic outlook. "If the general political climate doesn't change, I don't believe the current upward trend in armament will come to an end," he said. "This would only be possible if Ukraine achieved a peace agreement that didn't divide the country."

He said he also hoped the United States and China could negotiate to keep the regional conflict with Taiwan under control.

Even if they could, he said, "this current geopolitical situation is like a powder keg, and SIPRI's numbers reflect just that."