GOP war drummers demanding action against Russia

Republicans should demand better from their lawmakers in DC, lest they risk fighting again for someone else’s war.

JANUARY 4, 2022

Written by
Doug Bandow

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/01/04/gop-war-drummers-demanding-action-against-russia/

The drums of war are sounding in Washington, D.C., and Republicans are among the most enthusiastic backers of military action. Some enthusiastically, almost gleefully, suggest risking nuclear war.

This is no longer the party of Ronald Reagan, who sought to prevent conflict and especially nuclear conflict. Nor of earlier Republicans. During his vice-presidential run in 1976, Kansas Sen. Robert Dole denounced “Democrat wars of the 20th century.” Democratic presidents took America into World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. In retrospect, only the Second World War looks necessary, and even then the Democratic administration’s pre-war conduct, whatever its justification, was deceitful and reckless.

Today the most dangerous spot on earth might be Ukraine. Despite Washington’s foolhardy arrogance that led successive administrations to lie and expand NATO to Russia’s borders, dismember Serbia, stage multiple “color revolutions,” and promise alliance membership to Ukraine and Georgia, GOP legislators are pressing for direct confrontation with Russia. Most want to send arms. For instance, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and 14 colleagues wrote a letter pressing President Joe Biden to provide intelligence and weapons to Ukraine.

Some advocate sending troops. In a separate letter with Rep. Mike Rodgers (R-Al.), Turner also advocated that the administration “deploy a U.S. military presence in the Black Sea to deter a Russian invasion.” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) would go much further, proposing “military action” which, he explained, “could mean that we standoff with our ships in the Black Sea, and we rain destruction on Russian military capability.” That’s not all: “It could mean that we participate, and I would not rule that out, I would not rule out American troops on the ground. We don’t rule out first use nuclear action.”

Wicker put out a statement asserting: “President Biden should make clear that there is no scenario under which Ukraine will be overrun by Russia, period. Putin is already courting a bloodbath should he attack Ukrainian troops. President Biden should up the ante by warning him that an invasion would saddle him with an intolerably high Russian casualty count. This means leaving all options on the table and granting no concessions.”

Perhaps Wicker assumes that Putin will retreat before such threats. However, Ukraine matters far more to Russia, and the latter enjoys local military superiority. The “bloodbath” that Wicker would enthusiastically impose on Moscow would also consume American and Ukrainian lives.

Equally irrational was Sen. Lindsey Graham’s endorsement of nuclear war against North Korea back in 2017. Long the loyal sidekick to war-happy John McCain, Graham gravitated toward Donald Trump, to whom the senator offered ostentatious subservience. That appears to include advocating nuclear war. In speaking about South Korea Graham explained: “If there’s going to be a war to stop [Kim Jong-un], it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here.” Graham added: “And that may be provocative, but not really. When you’re president of the United States, where does your allegiance lie? To the people of the United States.”

Graham’s war would result in hundreds of thousands, or more likely, millions of deaths. And many of them would be Americans. The Republic of Korea hosts a large US population, including service personnel, military dependents, students, and businessmen, and women. In war, American forces would surge in to fight North Korean ground forces. US citizens would die in droves. And the toll among South and North Koreans would be much greater. When the Clinton administration was contemplating military action against the North some analysts predicted a million deaths from a full-scale war.

That was in the “old days,” when the main threat was the numerous though decrepit North Korean conventional forces. Seoul’s proximity to the border left it vulnerable to missile and artillery attacks even if Pyongyang’s tanks could not break through. Last year, reported the Rand Corporation: “North Korea maintains nearly 6,000 artillery systems within range of major South Korean population centers, which it could use to kill many thousands in just an hour, even without resorting to chemical or nuclear weapons.”

However, with enough nuclear materials to produce scores of nuclear weapons, the North also could lay waste to American possessions of Guam and Commonwealth of Mariana Islands, and Japan, including Okinawa, home to a Marine Expeditionary Force tagged for action in Korea. The casualty toll would further escalate if the North’s existing missiles could reach American territory beyond. Observing Harry Kazianis of the Center for the National Interest, war game results indicated that “There was no question millions of people would die—it was just a question of how many.”

The GOP’s 2016 presidential candidate class was filled with reckless statesmen-wannabes. Almost all advocated imposing a “no-fly” zone in Syria: Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and of course Graham.

Any serious “no-fly” zone would have to apply to Russia, an issue which most of the candidates avoided. But not Christie. When asked by host Wolf Blitzer if he was “prepared to shoot down that Russian plane and risk war with Russia,” Christie responded: “Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it. A no-fly zone means a no-fly zone, Wolf. That’s what it means.”

Then the governor, who apparently believed being tough in politics meant causing a traffic jam to inconvenience the residents of his political enemies, put on a full faux tough guy performance: “I would make very clear … I would talk to Vladimir Putin a lot. But I’d say to him, ‘Listen, Mr. President, there’s a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you.’ And yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if, in fact, they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now.”

Mercifully the exchange ended there. Christie did not enlighten the audience as to what he would do if Putin responded by downing a couple American planes or destroying a training camp for US-backed insurgents, followed by issuing a nuclear alert. Russia could not allow itself to be bullied: it had more at stake in Syria and appeasing Washington would risk even more imperious American demands.

The Bush administration considered war with Russia over Georgia. Reported Politico’s Ben Smith: “With desperate Georgians begging for American help in closing down the key route through which Russian soldiers were pouring into the country, Bush’s national security aides outlined possible responses, including ‘the bombardment and sealing of the Roki Tunnel’ and other ‘surgical strikes,’ according to a new history of the conflict and independent interviews with former senior officials.”

Moscow certainly would have responded, creating an extraordinarily dangerous situation. Yet, reported Andrew Cockburn: Saakashvili’s “confidence may have been buoyed by back-channel assurances from minions of Vice-President Richard Cheney that the U.S. would, in the end, come to his aid. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley feared that Cheney might indeed persuade Bush to intervene.” Today, some officials involved in the debate continue to wonder if they should have pushed for “harder options,” meaning war.

Obviously, not all Republican politicians plot new wars. Rep. Ron and Sen. Rand Paul famously opposed the Washington War Party. Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Peter Meijer have been skeptics of America’s endless wars. Rep. Nancy Mace is a new face who has supported repealing the Iraq AUMF. And both Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump used the military only sparingly, avoiding new open-ended conflicts.

Yet even the latter offered no principled opposition to the war. Warned Bonnie Kristian: “if another GOP president pushed for war in the wake of our hypothetical terrorist attack, most of the right would be raring to go.”

Republican Party officials appear almost mindlessly hawkish, even when clearly not in America’s interest. Incredibly, some officials are willing to risk nuclear war over peripheral stakes. Republican voters no longer can afford to leave foreign policy to the Washington elite, even their own. They risk finding themselves fighting and dying, again, in someone else’s war.

Republicans’ Revealing Arguments Against the Islamophobia Envoy

The antisemitism envoy is exactly what congressional Republicans fear the Islamophobia envoy could become: a threat to free speech.

Peter Beinart

December 29, 2021

https://jewishcurrents.org/republicans-revealing-arguments-against-the-islamophobia-envoy

EARLIER THIS MONTH, the House of Representatives considered a bill to create a State Department envoy to monitor Islamophobia overseas, a position modeled on the one that already exists to monitor global antisemitism. Every single House Republican voted no. In explaining why the State Department does not need an envoy to combat Islamophobia, however, they repeatedly employed anti-Muslim stereotypes that demonstrate just how prevalent Islamophobia remains in Washington. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene warned that the legislation might shield Muslims who rape non-Muslim women. Rep. Ken Buck claimed the bill might render it Islamophobic to accuse Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, of marrying her brother. Rep. Scott Perry labeled America’s largest Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American–Islamic Relations, a terrorist organization, and warned that the legislation might entitle it to federal funds.

These accusations shared a common mantra: that because Omar’s legislation doesn’t define Islamophobia, it could be interpreted in ways that violate constitutional rights. “Without clear definitions,” warned Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, “even First Amendment-protected speech could qualify for an investigation.” Rep. Michael McCaul claimed that the bill’s discussion of Islamophobia “is so vague and subjective that it could be used against legitimate speech.” Rep. Perry declared that “the goal is to silence dissent.”

It is true that the legislation—which appears unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate—doesn’t define Islamophobia. What it does instead lists the behaviors that the envoy would monitor: ‘‘acts of physical violence against, or harassment of, Muslim people, and acts of violence against, or vandalism of, Muslim community institutions, including schools, mosques, and cemeteries” as well as “instances of propaganda in government and nongovernment media that attempt to justify or promote racial hatred or incite acts of violence against Muslim people.” The litany is similar to the one outlined in the 2004 law that created the antisemitism envoy position. That law doesn’t define the bigotry it seeks to combat either, which has never seemed to bother Republicans in Congress. Yet many conservative legislators took pains to distinguish the Islamophobia job, which they oppose, from the antisemitism job, which they support.

The irony is that in warning that an overly broad definition of anti-Muslim bigotry might infringe on individual freedom, congressional Republicans inadvertently highlighted the ways in which an overly broad definition of antisemitism already does. While the law creating the antisemitism envoy didn’t offer a definition of Jew-hatred, its silence on that point has allowed establishment Jewish groups to successfully agitate for an extremely expansive one. And that definition has made the antisemitism envoy exactly what congressional Republicans fear the Islamophobia envoy could become: a threat to free speech.

After several years of overseeing an antisemitism envoy without a formal definition of antisemitism, the State Department announced in 2011 that it had adopted one. That definition was rooted in what the Soviet dissident turned Israeli politician Natan Sharansky called the “3D Test.” In a 2004 essay, Sharansky had proposed three criteria that, he claimed, could be used to detect the presence of antisemitism in statements critical of Israel: “demonization” (wildly exaggerated criticism), “delegitimization” (challenging Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state), and “double standards” (criticizing only Israel for actions also committed by other countries). Following Sharansky’s lead, the State Department definition included “applying double standards [to Israel] by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” and “denying Israel the right to exist” among its examples of Jew-hatred. This language has serious implications for pro-Palestinian free speech. The first example could be used to declare a Palestinian activist antisemitic for boycotting Israel but not other countries. The second could be used to declare that activist antisemitic for supporting equality under the law in Israel-Palestine rather than a state that favors Jews over Palestinians.

After 2016, when European governments adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s definition of antisemitism, the State Department began using it as well. That definition, too, lists applying “double standards” to Israel and “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” as examples of bigotry against Jews. Donald Trump’s appointee to the envoy position, Elan Carr, and his boss, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, broadened the definition of antisemitism still further by alleging that it was antisemitic to boycott Israel, boycott Israeli settlements in the West Bank, separately label products from Israeli settlements, or even publicize which foreign companies operate in those settlements.

As an envoy, Carr energetically deployed this sweeping conception of antisemitism. Last year, when the United Nations Human Rights Office published a list of global companies that work in West Bank settlements—which the UN considers illegal under international law—Carr called it an “appalling example of [anti-Israel] bias.” At Pompeo’s direction, Carr also launched an investigation into organizations that “support” the BDS movement. According to Politico, Carr’s office considered labeling Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam antisemitic during this process, despite the fact that none of them has taken a position on BDS. The logic, apparently, was that their reports on Israeli human rights abuses fuel the boycott movement. According to The Times of Israel, opposition from career State Department officials delayed the initiative until Carr left his post.

Carr claimed that his efforts did not threaten free speech. “Condemnation,” he insisted, “does not mean censorship.” But that’s not always true. In 2019, for instance, Carr repeatedly praised the German parliament for passing a resolution labeling BDS antisemitic and declaring that its supporters should not receive state funds. That resolution, according to an open letter signed by more than 1,500 artists, writers, and academics, “has created a repressive climate in which cultural workers are routinely asked to formally renounce BDS, as a prerequisite for working in Germany.”

Carr’s efforts also contributed to a repressive climate for Palestinian rights supporters in the US. In the past, the antisemitism envoy has focused their efforts overseas. But Carr championed his broad definition of antisemitism domestically as well. He called Jewish Voice for Peace, an American Jewish group that supports BDS, “an organization that traffics in antisemitism” and celebrated a 2019 executive order in which Trump instructed the federal government to employ the IHRA definition when investigating antisemitism allegations at American universities. As in Germany, this push to use the IHRA definition and equate BDS with antisemitism has threatened free speech. In Texas, which has adopted the IHRA definition, a Palestinian American speech pathologist was told in 2018 that according to state law she could not work in the Austin school district unless she pledged not to boycott Israel. A lawyer who would not sign the anti-boycott pledge was prevented from working as a public defender in Arizona. A newspaper in Arkansas was required to oppose boycotts in order to receive advertising from a state university.

There’s no evidence that any of this bothers the congressional Republicans who claim an Islamophobia envoy would menace free expression. In fact, Rep. Reschenthaler, who last week warned that the creation of an Islamophobia monitor could lead to the “investigation” of protected speech, has co-sponsored legislation that would require the Department of Education to use the IHRA definition when it investigates allegations of campus antisemitism. Rep. McCaul, who claimed the Islamophobia envoy bill “could be used against legitimate speech,” and Rep. Perry, who predicted it would “silence dissent,” both support a bill to ensure that states can pass laws denying contracts to BDS supporters—laws that judges in Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas have declared unconstitutional.

Imagine if the circumstances were reversed: if American politicians argued against an antisemitism envoy by publicly fretting that the position would limit their ability to accuse Jews of secretly controlling America’s banks, yet cheered on an Islamophobia envoy who promoted laws prohibiting Americans who boycott Saudi Arabia from working in America’s public schools. It’s hard for most American Jews to envision such a reality. But it is the equivalent of the world in which American Muslims currently live.

Año horrible para los migrantes

Jorge Durand

https://www.jornada.com.mx/2022/01/02/opinion/013a1pol

Hace un año, el 3 de enero de 2021, hice un balance de 2020 y decía, en el artículo titulado Los pendientes de AMLO: El tema migratorio ha sido la peor crisis sorteada en los dos años de gobierno; puso en vilo al país, tuvo que dar marcha atrás en su política aperturista y ceder a las presiones y chantajes de Trump. Sin embargo, no se le dio la debida importancia al tema y al problema.

Terminó 2021 y seguimos en las mismas. Ha sido un año terrible en cuanto al manejo de los flujos migratorios; se dio marcha atrás y se volvió a aceptar la presión de Estados Unidos para reabrir el programa Quédate en México (MPP en inglés); no se le da la debida atención al tema migratorio, sólo se reacciona en momentos de crisis. Tampoco hay cambios en el organigrama y los encargados de definir y aplicar la política migratoria continúan siendo los mismos.

Seguimos acostumbrados a considerar la migración del siglo XXI como si fuera igual a la del XX. Los patrones migratorios han cambiado. Ya no se puede aplicar la tradicional política de la no política, de no hacer nada.

Inauguramos el siglo con los migrantes de La Bestia, encaramados en su techo y no se prestó atención a la incursión del crimen organizado en el tráfico y la trata de personas. Incluso los migrantes más vulnerables fueron presa fácil de funcionarios, policías, pandillas, violadores y extorsionadores. Todo ese drama cotidiano se hizo evidente en octubre de 2010 con la masacre de los 72 migrantes de San Fernando. La relación de las policías con el narcotráfico se hizo pública y notoria.

Otro cambio radical del patrón migratorio fue la migración familiar y de jóvenes y niños no acompañados. Un cambio gradual de estrategia migrante al encontrar resquicios legales para solicitar refugio, si ingresaban con mujeres y niños. Una medida desesperada ante la dilación permanente de los legisladores para permitir la reunificación familiar. Esta modalidad hizo crisis en 2014, durante el gobierno de Obama.

Luego vendrían la amenazas y el endurecimiento de las políticas migratorias con Donald Trump en 2016. Y ante la cerrazón, los migrantes respondieron de manera organizada y espontánea con las caravanas de 2018, 2019 y 2021. La migración clandestina y subrepticia, dejó paso a un nuevo patrón migratorio, la masa organizada, proactiva, demandante y disruptiva. Las reglas del juego turbio de la migración clandestina, quedaron arrasadas por caravanas que marchan a pecho descubierto, protegidas por la fuerza de una masa compacta, como diría Elías Canetti, de gran repercusión mediática y respaldada por una amplia solidaridad.

Transcurre el año pasado con la llegada de un pueblo errante, nómada e itinerante, los haitianos, que después de años de residencia en Brasil y Chile, siguen dándole la vuelta al continente en busca de la tierra prometida, que para ellos, les queda completamente claro, es Estados Unidos. Una porción de este pueblo, disperso en el Caribe, Sudamérica y Norteamérica llegó a México en 2016, en un primer intento de cruzar a Estados Unidos, fueron cerca de 20 mil y unos 4 mil se quedaron en nuestro país. Cinco años después vuelven a intentarlo, pasan varias fronteras sin dificultad hasta que llegan a México, donde los confinan en Tapachula. Pero cerca de 15 mil, de manera estratégica y organizada llegan a Ciudad Acuña y dan un portazo en el lugar menos esperado, donde se podía cruzar el río Bravo con facilidad y dónde no había muro.

El año horrible rompió varios récords de cifras en México y Estados Unidos. Más de un millón y medio de migrantes fueron atrapados por la Patrulla Fronteriza y México presentó ante la autoridad migratoria a 252 mil y devolvió a 101 mil entre enero y noviembre.

La crisis de 2019 y el chantaje de Trump tuvo como argumento a 130 mil migrantes detenidos por la Patrulla Fronteriza; pero esa cifra fue ampliamente rebasada en 2021 y se llegó de 210 mil en julio. En diciembre de 2020, en los últimos días de la administración de Trump los migrantes detenidos no sobrepasaban los 30 mil mensuales y en tres meses, para marzo de 2021, llegaron a 170 mil y la curva no bajó hasta noviembre. ¿Qué sucedió?

En primer lugar el efecto de contención por parte del Covid-19, por motivos sanitarios se cerraron las fronteras en prácticamente todo el continente, durante 2020 y los controles sólo disminuyeron al comenzar 2021. La migración dejó de ser una salida posible a pesar de la terrible crisis económica que se vivía.

En segundo término, esta fecha coincide con el cambio de la administración en Estados Unidos, con la llegada de Joe Biden y una nueva política migratoria, que prometía ser diferente. Y la respuesta por parte del colectivo migrante fue inmediata y se desbordaron los flujos desde distintos rincones de América, un ejemplo claro del efecto llamada.

Un tercer factor tiene que ver con un cambio en la política de contención por parte de México, las cifras de detenidos llegaron a 45 mil en septiembre, pero para esas fechas ya había transitado más de un millón de migrantes. Luego vendrían los programas de contención en Tapachula, ante las presiones de EU.

El año pasado comenzó y terminó con ataúdes y crespones negros. El 21 de enero se descubren los cuerpos de 16 migrantes masacrados en Camargo por un grupo de elite de la policía de Tamaulipas. El 9 de diciembre, un tráiler hacinado y cargado de migrantes se estrelló en Chiapas y murieron 56 personas.

 Four Western provocations that led to the U.S.-Russia crisis today

The one-sided indictments of Moscow’s behavior invariably ignore numerous missteps that took place, beginning with President Clinton.

DECEMBER 28, 2021

Written by
Ted Galen Carpenter

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/12/28/four-western-provocations-that-led-to-u-s-russia-crisis-today/

At the end of 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved — a surprisingly peaceful end to a brutal empire. Russia, as the principal successor state, sought to join the democratic West, and the United States and its European allies officially welcomed that aspiration. Three decades later, however, the West and Russia are locked in an increasingly acrimonious cold war struggle. It is a tragic development and one that could escalate into a catastrophic armed conflict. Neither side is blameless for the onset of a new cold war, but there is a substantial difference in the degree of culpability. Provocations by the United States and NATO were more numerous, more egregious, and began earlier.  

U.S. and NATO officials, as well as most of the Western news media, contend that Russia is to blame for the current ugly confrontation. They highlight four Kremlin actions that severely spiked East-West tensions. The first episode, according to that version of history, occurred in 2008 when Russian forces invaded Georgia and advanced to the outskirts of the capital, Tbilisi.  A second, even more, serious offense, took place in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine and annexed that strategic peninsula after holding a bogus referendum. The third incident followed just months later when Russia orchestrated a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and then sent in troops to assist the rebellion. During the years that followed, Vladimir Putin’s government exacerbated the emerging cold war by interfering in the internal political affairs of numerous Western countries, especially the United States.

Those allegations contain some truth, but all of them conveniently omit crucial context. For example, the 2008 invasion of Georgia occurred only after the Georgian military fired on Russian peacekeeping troops that had been in the secessionist region of South Ossetia since the early 1990s. Even a European Union investigation concluded that Georgian forces had initiated the fighting. The conflict also occurred in large part because President George W. Bush encouraged Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, to believe that the United States and NATO would support his country if it became embroiled in a conflict with Russia.

Putin’s seizure of Crimea was indeed a blatant violation of international law, but it occurred only after the United States and key EU allies had shamelessly assisted demonstrators to overthrow Ukraine’s elected pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych. That thinly disguised coup triggered Russian fears that Ukraine was about to become a forward staging area for NATO military power. Among other worries, the Kremlin suspected that it would lose access to its crucial naval base at Sevastopol on the Crimea peninsula and watch that facility become a hostile NATO base. 

The one-sided, self-serving indictments of Russia’s behavior invariably ignore the numerous Western provocations that took place long before Moscow engaged in disruptive measures.  Indeed, the deterioration of the West’s relations with post-communist Russia began during Bill Clinton’s administration.

Western provocation number 1: NATO’s first eastward expansion. 

In her memoir “Madame Secretary,” former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of state Madeleine Albright concedes that Clinton administration officials decided already in 1993 to endorse the wishes of Central and East European countries to join NATO. The Alliance proceeded to add Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in 1998. Albright admitted that Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his associates were extremely unhappy with that development. The Russian reaction was understandable since the expansion violated informal promises that President George H. W. Bush’s administration had given Moscow when Mikhail Gorbachev had agreed not only to accept a unified Germany but a united Germany in NATO.  The implicit quid pro quo was that NATO would not move beyond the eastern border of a united Germany.  

Western provocation number 2: NATO’s military intervention in the Balkans. 

NATO’s 1995 air war against Bosnian Serbs seeking to secede from the newly minted country of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the imposition of the Dayton Peace Accords greatly annoyed Yeltsin’s government and the Russian people. The Balkans had been a region of considerable religious and strategic interest to Moscow for generations, and it was humiliating for Russians to watch impotently as a U.S.-led alliance dictated outcomes there. The Western powers conducted an even greater provocation four years later when they intervened on behalf of a secessionist insurgency in Serbia’s restless Kosovo province. Detaching that province from Serbia and placing it under U.N. control not only set an unhealthy international precedent, but the move also displayed utter contempt for Russia’s interests and preferences in the Balkans.  

The Clinton administration’s decisions to expand NATO and meddle in Bosnia and Kosovo were crucial steps toward creating a new cold war with Russia. Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack F. Matlock Jr. cites the negative impact that NATO expansion and the U.S.-led military interventions in the Balkans had on Russian attitudes toward the United States and the West: “The effect on Russians’ trust in the United States was devastating. In 1991, polls indicated that about 80 percent of Russian citizens had a favorable view of the United States; in 1999, nearly the same percentage had an unfavorable view.” 

Western provocation number 3: NATO’s subsequent waves of expansion.  

Not content with how the Clinton administration antagonized Moscow by moving NATO into Central Europe, George W. Bush’s administration pushed the allies to give membership to the rest of the defunct Warsaw Pact and to the three Baltic republics. Admitting the latter in 2004 dramatically escalated the West’s military encroachment. Those three small countries had not only been part of the Soviet Union, they also had spent most of their recent history as part of Czarist Russia’s empire. Russia was still too weak to do more than present feeble diplomatic protests, but the level of anger at the West’s arrogant disregard of Russia’s security interests rose.

Expanding NATO to Russia’s border was not the only provocation. Increasingly, the United States was engaging in “rotational” deployments of its military forces in the new alliance members. Even George Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates, expressed worries that such actions were creating dangerous tensions. Putin’s February 2007 speech to the annual Munich Security Conference made it extremely clear that the Kremlin’s patience with U.S. and NATO arrogance was coming to an end. Bush, tone-deaf as ever, even tried to secure NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine — a policy that his successors have continued to push, despite resistance from France and Germany.

Western Provocation number 4: treating Russia as an outright enemy in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Western leaders did not take Putin’s warnings seriously enough, however. Instead, the provocations on multiple fronts continued and, in some cases, even accelerated. The United States and key NATO powers bypassed the U.N. Security Council (and a certain Russian veto) in early 2008 to grant Kosovo full independence. Three years later, Barack Obama’s administration misled Russian officials about the purpose of a “humanitarian” U.N. military mission in Libya, convincing Moscow to withhold its veto. The mission promptly turned into a U.S.-led regime-change war to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Shortly thereafter, the United States worked with like-minded Middle East powers in a campaign to oust Russia’s client, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria. The egregious U.S.-EU meddling in Ukraine’s domestic politics followed.

It is unfair to judge Russia’s aggressive and destabilizing actions, including the annexation of Crimea, the ongoing military intervention in Syria, continuing support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, and attempted interference in the political affairs of other countries, without acknowledging the multitude of preceding Western abuses. The West, not Russia, is largely responsible for the onset of the new cold war.

 RETOS PARA MÉXICO

EN EL 2022

El año que iniciará el sábado próximo será crucial en muchos sentidos, para el proyecto personal del presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), que pretende pasar a la historia como el mejor primer mandatario que ha tenido nuestro país.

Primero, enfrenta una inflación desatada, la más alta en los últimos 20 años, de entre 7 y 8% anual, que por ahora no hay forma de controlarla, dado que proviene de los problemas en las cadenas internacionales de suministro, en las que nada puede influir el gobierno mexicano; y el Banco de México, con todo y su nueva gobernadora, se limitará a subir las tasas de interés, lo que sólo restringirá más el crédito a una economía que comienza a mostrar problemas en su camino a la recuperación.

Si bien el año que termina, 2021 el crecimiento económico podría llegar al 6%, con la caída de 8.5% en 2020 y de 0.1% en 2019, arroja aún un saldo negativo en el periodo gubernamental de – 2.6%.

Se especula que en el 2022 la economía pueda crecer un 3%, con lo que en los cuatro años del gobierno (2018-2022) se tendría un crecimiento acumulado de sólo 0.4%, lo que equivale a un 0.1% anual, el peor dato desde la crisis económica de los años 30 del siglo pasado.

A raíz de la pandemia y los cierres obligados de la economía, aumentó la pobreza en estos tres años en 3.7 millones de personas, y eso el gobierno de AMLO lo considera un logro, pues argumenta, contra factualmente que hubiera podido ser peor, de no ser por los programas sociales implantados por la actual administración. La misma explicación que daban los gobiernos neoliberales a los que se les criticaba el aumento de la pobreza durante sus administraciones, y de la misma forma argumentaban que “hubiera sido peor” de no haber aplicado sus programas de ajuste. Nada nuevo bajo el sol.

Si bien ha habido una histórica recuperación del salario mínimo; con el aumento de la inflación, se ha anulado dicho incremento para 2022, y en el caso de los salarios contractuales tuvieron una caída real de menos 2.14% en 2021.[1]

Gracias a las remesas, inversión extranjera directa y las exportaciones agropecuarias, la balanza de pagos del país, al menos al tercer trimestre del 2021, no resultó tan deficitaria, al llegar a -4,070 millones de dólares.

Así también, se ha visto una recuperación en el empleo, aunque para el último trimestre del año parece perder dinamismo.

De lo anterior se desprende que el gobierno de AMLO va a tener que buscar darle solidez a la recuperación económica, basada en gran medida en su sector exportador, que como se sabe está vinculado al aparato productivo de Estados Unidos.

Por ello, AMLO ha anunciado que en los próximos días, el secretario de Hacienda, Rogelio Ramirez de la O, anunciará el Plan México, que tiene como objetivo proponer al gobierno de Estados Unidos una estrategia para afianzar las cadenas de suministro entre ambos países y promover la relocalización de empresas estadounidenses desde China hacia México; todo ello con objeto de que en nuestro país se mantenga elevada la inversión extranjera directa, la creación de empleo y así se impulse la recuperación de la economía.

Sin embargo, este plan no embona con la falta de apoyo a las pequeñas y medianas empresas, que son las que crean hasta el 70% del empleo formal en el país, y que para 2022 no recibirán ni un solo peso de apoyos de parte del gobierno federal.

Si a esto se le suma el encarecimiento del crédito por el alza de las tasas de interés y la permanencia de la violencia criminal, la inseguridad, el “cobro de piso”, etc. que afectan desproporcionadamente a los pequeños empresarios, llegamos al escenario en que el Plan México se va a quedar en puros buenos deseos; sobre todo si le aunamos la desconfianza de los inversores estadounidenses en la política energética del gobierno de AMLO, que impulsa una mayor autosuficiencia en la producción de hidrocarburos y la rectoría del Estado en la generación y distribución de la electricidad.

En lo que respecta a la inseguridad, los 106 mil asesinatos en lo que va del sexenio, ya constituyen un récord; la impunidad sigue siendo del 96%, los desaparecidos suman casi 100 mil personas, y la estrategia de seguridad sigue centrada exclusivamente en la presencia de los 100 mil elementos de la Guardia Nacional, que no pueden controlar los enfrentamientos entre grupos criminales, la violencia permanente en diversos estados del país y el creciente desplazamiento de población, especialmente en el medio rural y en pequeñas poblaciones, que es expulsada por los grupos criminales.

Así, para 2022, el que se logre la modificación constitucional mediante la cual la Guardia Nacional quede definitivamente encuadrada en la Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional, no resolverá nada, en la medida en que las policías, los ministerios públicos y los juzgados sigan siendo insuficientes, mal preparados, rebasados por la cantidad de casos que deben atender y en muchísimos casos intimidados y cooptados por el crimen organizado.

En materia de migración la crisis continúa y no parece existir una estrategia para ordenar, regular y absorber una creciente migración indocumentada que busca llegar a Estados Unidos, lo que se ha visto agravado por la política de “quédate en México” y las expulsiones mediante el título 42 de la Unión Americana a nuestro país, lo que sigue generando una crisis humanitaria en la frontera entre ambos países.

La pandemia sigue, y en nuestro país ya se llega a un total de 300 mil muertos (el cuarto lugar mundial), y si bien se ha moderado el crecimiento de los contagios, aún con la nueva variante ómicron, falta del esquema completo de vacunación, casi el 40% de la población; no hay planes para vacunar a los menores de 15 años y es muy posible que se tenga que vacunar con una tercera dosis de refuerzo a los ya inoculados.

Como cada año huracanes, sequías, incendios forestales y emergencias como las explosiones por pirotecnia o por robo de combustible, seguirán golpeando al país, y por ahora sólo la Sedena con el Plan DN-III y la Semar con el Plan Marina, se encargan de la mayor parte de la responsabilidad en estos eventos catastróficos, dado que la desaparición del Fondo de Desastres Naturales (Fonden), ha relocalizado los recursos para hacer frente a estos fenómenos en varias secretarías y organismos, lo que hace más difícil la respuesta rápida que se requiere para apoyar a la población afectada.

El presidente sigue obsesionado con que la mayor parte de los recursos, atención y esfuerzo gubernamentales se centren en sus proyectos preferidos como el Tren Maya, la Refinería de Dos Boca, el Aeropuerto Felipe Angeles y el Proyecto del Istmo de Tehuantepec, así como en ampliar los programas de ayuda directa a la población más pobre del país.

Ello significa que otras prioridades como la educación, los temas de salud adicionales al Covid-19, la inseguridad, el deterioro ambiental, las violaciones a los derechos humanos, la vivienda y otras obras de infraestructura necesarias como, por ejemplo, en materia de agua y drenaje, quedarán rezagadas o sub financiadas, con lo que la atención de problemas relevantes, en distintas regiones del país, será menor a la requerida.

En lo político, el presidente y su gobierno están enfocados en que se realice la consulta para la revocación de mandato, con lo que esperan reforzar el liderazgo de AMLO para la segunda parte de su periodo gubernamental; lograr la reforma constitucional en materia de energía eléctrica, para lo que requieren el apoyo del PRI en el Congreso de la Unión y ganar la mayoría de las 6 gubernaturas que están en juego a mitad del año.

Hay muchos otros temas, pero estos parecerían de los más relevantes para la actual administración y para el país en el año que inicia este sábado.

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[1] https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/capitalhumano/Revisiones-salariales-caen-a-su-peor-nivel-del-2021-inflacion-devora-incrementos-20211210-0041.html

 

 News Bulletin! Jewish Currents

Senior Reporter Alex Kane

alex@jewishcurrents.org.

December 28th, 2021

On Sunday, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who crusaded against apartheid and helped lead South Africa into a new democratic era, died at the age of 90. Leaders around the world, from the Dalai Lama to the mayor of New York, issued tributes to Tutu after news of his death broke.

By contrast, Israeli officials and the American Jewish establishment generally stayed silent. But they weren’t so quiet over the past two decades, as Tutu’s repeated denunciations of Israel’s rule over Palestinians and his comparisons between the South African and Israeli versions of apartheid earned him the ire of Jewish leaders in both countries, as well as the United States. Tutu’s pronouncements sparked a particularly intense reaction; criticism hurts more when it comes from someone widely lionized as a moral beacon.

Israel was one of South Africa’s closest allies during apartheid, even offering to sell the apartheid regime nuclear warheads in 1975. As early as the 1980s, the Anti-Defamation League kept a watchful eye on the US anti-apartheid movement as activists criticized Israel’s close relationship with Pretoria. In 1960, the ADL hired a private spy named Roy Bullock to collect information on Arab American activists and the broader left, which he did for the next 30 years. As Sasha Polakow-Suransky notes in his book The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa, the ADL dispatched Bullock “to attend the meetings of U.S.-based anti-apartheid groups, collect their publications, and take down the license plate numbers of leaders’ cars—including visitors such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani.”

The attacks escalated as the archbishop grew more outspoken about Israel’s military occupation after the end of apartheid in South Africa. In 2002, Tutu gave a speech to a Boston conference calling for an end to Israel’s occupation in which he said that, while “Israel has a right to secure borders,” a recent trip to Israel/Palestine reminded him “so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.” The checkpoints in the occupied West Bank humiliate Palestinians, he said, comparing them to what South Africans experienced “when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.” He also noted that some were scared to forthrightly criticize Israel because of the power of the “Jewish lobby.”

The next year, student groups at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School decided to honor Tutu. In response, American Jewish officials joined some right-wing Jewish students in criticizing the decision. Mark Weitzman, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The New York Jewish Week that Tutu shouldn’t be honored because he “blames Israel disproportionately for tensions in the Middle East.” ADL head Abe Foxman was even harsher: “He has flirted with anti-Semitism and his condemnations have been angry and nasty.”

In 2005, inspired by the global movement to isolate South Africa’s apartheid regime, Palestinian civil society groups issued a call to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. Tutu became one of the BDS movement’s most prominent endorsers. Seven years after the BDS call first emerged, the United Methodist Church debated whether to divest their funds from corporations that do business with the IDF. Tutu issued an open letter, urging the church “to disinvest from companies who benefit from the Occupation of Palestine. This is a moral position that I have no choice but to support, especially since I know of the effect that Boycotts, Disinvestment, and Sanctions had on the apartheid regime in South Africa.” As part of Tutu’s argument, he wrote that “The situation in Israel and Palestine pains me greatly since it is the place where God formed a very particular relationship with a particular group of people; Hebrews who were oppressed as slaves in another land. As time moved on, these people disobeyed God, and time and time again the prophets had to call them back to their deepest values.” In response, the ADL argued Tutu “veered into classical religion-based anti-Semitism.” (The church declined divestment that year, but the church pension board removed investments from Israeli banks that fund illegal West Bank settlements in 2016.)

Nineteen years after Tutu first raised the apartheid comparison—a parallel originally raised by Palestinian intellectuals and, in fact, by South African apartheid officials themselves—the rest of the world is beginning to catch up. In January, the leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem proclaimed that Israel had instituted an “apartheid regime.” In April, Human Rights Watch issued its own report, arguing that certain Israeli abuses targeting Palestinians made Israel guilty of “the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

The American Jewish establishment’s response to the charges of apartheid, though, hasn’t changed. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the umbrella lobby group for the Jewish establishment, denounced HRW for inflaming tensions, inciting violence, and “giving voice” to “vicious hate.” But with no end in sight to Israel’s military occupation, it’s inevitable that more liberal organizations like HRW will follow in Tutu’s footsteps, leaving the Jewish establishment with fewer and fewer allies in its defense of apartheid.

¿Y la reactivación? En 2022 desaparecerán los apoyos a las Pymes

El FMI reveló que México fue uno de los países del G20 con menores apoyos a las empresas por la pandemia, con 1.9 por ciento del PIB en 2020.

Por Felipe Gazcón diciembre 28, 2021

https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/economia/2021/12/28/pef-elimina-programas-de-apoyo-a-pymes/

El Presupuesto de Egresos de 2022 eliminó por completo los apoyos para las pequeñas y medianas empresas (Pymes), a pesar de que todavía estaban considerados en los Criterios Generales de Política Económica de abril pasado, donde se indicaba que pasarían a la Secretaria del Bienestar, afirmó Adriana García.

La coordinadora de Análisis Económico de México ¿Cómo vamos? explicó que el programa de microcréditos para el bienestar prestaba hasta 51 mil pesos, existía antes de la pandemia y en 2020 tenía un presupuesto de 2 mil 451 millones de pesos, para 2021 se aprobaron mil 500 millones y en 2022 no existirá.

El programa de apoyo financiero a microempresas familiares que prestaba 25 mil pesos, en 2020 tuvo un presupuesto de 36 mil 754 millones de pesos, en 2021 de mil 600 millones, y en 2022 desapareció, abundó.

“El año de 2022 debería de ser de reactivación económica, aunque aún estamos en pandemia, no hay apoyo para las Pymes”, enfatizó.

Clemente Ruíz Durán, profesor e investigador del Posgrado de Economía de la UNAM, expresó que debería de haber un programa de apoyos muy fuerte para las micro y pequeñas empresas, por ejemplo, las empresas gubernamentales deberían de comprarle a las micro y pequeñas empresas, para ayudarles a subsistir en estos momentos tan críticos.