Report: Biden Pushed Peace Plan that Recognized Russia’s Control Over 20% of Ukraine

https://news.antiwar.com/2023/02/03/report-biden-pushed-peace-plan-that-recognized-russias-control-over-20-of-ukraine/

The White House offered the proposal within days of rolling out a military aid package for Kiev that included main battle tanks, reflecting a growing rift in the Joe Biden administration.

by Kyle Anzalone Posted on February 3, 2023

President Joe Biden dispatched his CIA Director to Kiev with a proposal to end the war in Ukraine last month, according to the Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The peace plan was offered at the same time the White House was preparing significant escalations in military support for Kiev, including announcing that it will send Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

The report cites high-level sources in Berlin who claim William Burns, the head of America’s spy agency, traveled to Kiev in mid-January to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. On January 19, the Washington Post reported that Burns recently traveled to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky. During that trip, Burns is said to have offered a deal to Zelensky wherein Ukraine would cede about 20% of its territory to Russia in exchange for Moscow ending its war in Ukraine.

NZZ’s sources claim that both Kiev and Moscow rejected the proposal. In a statement to Newsweek, the CIA denied Burns delivered the proposal. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov also dismissed the NZZ report labeling it a "canard."

According to German sources, the peace proposal reflects a growing rift within the White House on how to handle the war in Ukraine. "Security adviser Jake Sullivan and Burns [wanted] to end the war quickly so they could focus on China." The report continued, "on the other side would be Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. They did not want to let Russia get away with destroying the rules-based peace order and called for massive military support for Ukraine."

After Burns failed to sway Kiev and Moscow to agree with Washington’s plan, Blinken and Austin were able to sway the president to authorize the transfer of Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

NZZ reports the decision for the US to send main battle tanks to Ukraine caught German leader Olaf Scholz off guard. The Union in the German Bundestag issued a statement saying, “Scholz did not want to deliver until the very end because he firmly assumed that the Americans would not send battle tanks either.”

Negotiations between Kiev and Moscow have stalled for nearly a year. Last March, Turkish diplomats facilitated talks that nearly ended the war with Russian forces withdrawing from Ukrainian territory captured after the start of the invasion. However, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kiev and told Zelensky that Ukraine’s Western backers were not prepared to allow the war to end.

Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.

The Middle East Facing a Tempest

ISRAEL SHAMIR • JANUARY 31, 2023

 https://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-middle-east-facing-a-tempest/

Iran, a member of the Axis of Evil, has been attacked by the Forces of Good. Will it come to the Third World War? We shall see. But now from the beginning.

After the recent elections, Bibi Netanyahu had formed his sixth government after one-and-a-half-year break and Israelis opposing Bibi began a street revolt against the new government. They took a leaf from the Ukraine-2014 book, and created a Maidan in Tel Aviv, with up to a hundred thousand citizens gathering in neighbourhood squares every Sabbath. The would-be-revolutionaries are similar to US Democrats, while the government supporters remind us of US Republicans. To complicate the comparison further, note that Israeli Jews predominantly support US Republicans, and US Jews vote for the Dems. Yet this colour revolution on the streets and squares of Tel Aviv is a pro-American revolt (as is usual for colour revolutions). And US Dems, with their Israeli analogues are used to winning their revolutions, by whatever means necessary.

The new government has declared a plan for legal reform, directly confronting the Judicial Branch which has historically dominated the Executive Branch in Israel. Israeli judges do not like strong men, and often torpedo their measures. High Court judges are elected by other judges, and the High Court can overturn any Parliamentary or Government decision. In Israel, there is the additional ethnic tension between European (Ashkenazi) Jews and Oriental (Sephardic) Jews. All of them are against the Palestinians – with exception of the Communists. It would be a mistake to consider some of them being on the Left. There is practically no Left in Israel. This title has been seized by the gender-obsessed lesbians of Tel Aviv. As for Israeli men, they choose between Rightist or Far-Rightist.

Bibi Netanyahu is greatly disliked by many, but the majority still votes for him.

His enemies hope to use their tame judges to send Netanyahu to jail for some terrible crime, like receiving a box of cigars from a friendly Hollywood producer.

Meanwhile they have derailed Arye Der’i, the minister of Interior. They think he does not deserve to be a minister. Bibi plans to enact a law that will strip the courts of their powers to bar a minister, or even to deal with their persons. The government coalition intends to enact the law Do Not Touch Der’i. But Bibi is even more worried about himself.

He thinks the judges will remove him from office and send him to jail. To defend himself he has decided to stir up the Iranians. Bibi has long record of poking Iran. Years ago he presented a drawing of an Iranian nuclear bomb – to the amusement of the world. After that, he fought against the nuclear deal between the US and Iran. Over the years, he has tried to convince each US President to bomb Iran – after his own generals refused to undertake the enterprise. Now he sends some drones over to bomb an Isfahan installation, hoping it will incite an Iranian response and unite people of Israel behind him.

The Iranians have not responded, yet. As long as Israel does not officially admit the act of war, one can expect any Iranian response to be similarly deniable, as it has been all the previous times. To be sure they knew that Israel destroyed Iranian trucks along the Syrian border, yet Iran refused to be drawn in. Israeli aggression is sanctioned by the US, and the US is still too strong to be effectively retaliated against by Iran – or even by Russia, a country with feeling of friendship to Iran. The US spends more money on defence than all the rest of mankind, and it still packs a punch. To add insult to injury, the bottomless military budget does not hurt the pocketbooks of American citizens; they just add it to their debt.

Recently a Jewish gentleman-of-the-press, Mr Bret Stephens, unfavourably compared Mr Netanyahu to Mr Zelensky, in an article called A Tale of Two Jewish Leaders, in NY Times. Unfortunately, his case fails when it is confronted with reality. Mr Zelensky pulled the Ukraine into war with Russia. He caused more than half of its population to leave the country. He is leading the Ukraine into economic collapse and military defeat.

On the other hand, Bibi Netanyahu has been cautious and prudent with his country. One obvious difference is that Zelensky has deliberately dragged the Ukraine into unconditional war against Russia, while Netanyahu has repeatedly scored political points against Iran without committing to his people to total war. Now, inspired by Bret Stephens and other media figures, Bibi has been driven to openly attacking Iran.

Neocons may love Israel, but they dream of the Jewish state fighting on the front lines of the American Empire. Netanyahu’s current problem is that he wants to keep his friendship with Russia, and the Neocons will not allow him that. Indeed, today the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the new Israeli government said he intends to visit Kiev immediately. Israel has been a consistent supporter of Ukrainian ambitions. The previous government led by Mr Bennett and Mr Lapid sent 500 war advisers to help the Ukrainian army, and it was openly hostile to Putin.

Russia has condemned in the strongest terms the US/Israeli attack on Iran. Russia considers the US to be the primary instigator of the two. This is by no means certain – Bibi has had a long time feud with Iran. Still, the prudent Mr Netanyahu has avoided open warfare. Yet now it seems he would go to war so that American Neocons might approve of him.

Meanwhile the Palestinian front is warming up. It is not obvious whether the Third Intifada (uprising) has begun, but it is certainly not far away. For a long time, the Palestinians have been left alone but not at peace. They are murdered by the defence forces at an average of one or two per day, each day. And then there was the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp with its ten victims. The Palestinians responded with three attacks in Jerusalem; ten Israelis were killed. Although the attack in Jenin passed without any comments, the counter-attack in Jerusalem awoke President Biden to condemnation. He said, “This was an attack against the civilized world.” The initial Israeli attack was not even mentioned. Israeli atrocities do not bother the civilised world.

In a relatively new development, one of the counter-attacks in Jerusalem was ascribed to “a terrorist, 13”. Yes, a thirteen-year-old boy was called “a terrorist”, and was killed on the spot. But seven children of his age were killed last month, and 34 last year.

The raid on Jenin was probably a stunt by the new government. The Palestinians did not join in the demonstrations against Netanyahu. They reasonably thought that these political struggles are an internal Jewish affair. But the extreme Nationalists in the government, Mr Smotrich and Mr Ben-Gvir, have wanted for a long time to implement a Final Solution for the Palestinian Problem; whether to kill them or to transfer them abroad. This is probably the reason behind the recent rise of anti-Palestinian violence, and the current wave of victims can be laid at their doorstep.

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich fit right into the Ukrainian adventure. They are typical Banderites. They are chickenhawks who might join the Azov regiment any time. They are doing their best to destroy the myth that “Jews can’t be Nazis”. They certainly talk the talk, and the rhetoric is becoming ever more extreme. Yet the difference between them and ordinary Israelis is minor. These two want to ruin villages and starve people, but many other members of Knesset will agree to it. The adversaries of Netanyahu care about preserving the High Court with its privileges, and what happens to the Palestinians makes no difference to them.

Probably things won’t change in the Middle East until the US debt is called, and the US dollar ceases to act as an international mean of payment. Here’s hoping that it will come soon. Just recently, Mohammed Al-Jadaan told Bloomberg TV in Davos that “There are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it is in the US dollar, whether it is the euro, whether it is the Saudi riyal.” The end of Israeli Apartheid and US global domination may be closer than you think!

With help of Paul Bennett

Trials and Tribulations of the Collective West

February 01, 2023 

https://thesaker.is/trials-and-tribulations-of-the-collective-west/

by Pepe Escobar, widely distributed on the Internet and posted with the author’s permission

Sit back, relax, and enjoy a race to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The only question is who will get there first: the EU, NATO, or both. 

One may be excused to imagine all sorts of amusement games unrolling at the HQ of the Russian General Staff as The Empire and NATO go literally bonkers. What crazy stunt will they come up with next – short of WWIII?

Here is a delightful putdown of NATO’s dementia praecox. Everything so far has failed, from “crippling sanctions” to all sorts of wunderwaffen, while the whole Global South marvels at the exploits of Wagner PMC – now configured as the planet’s top urban fighting machine.

CIA mouthpiece Washington Post duly released how Washington, once again, had the Liver Sausage Chancellor Scholz for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The idea was floated by Secretary of State Tony Blinken: let’s announce we will deliver M1 Abrams to Ukraine in a hazy, unspecified future, thus providing cover for Scholz to release the Leopards now.

Don’t you just love German sovereignty in action?

Every military analyst with an IQ over room temperature knows all those Leopards will be duly incinerated – or better yet, captured, and dissected by Russian military specialists.

So what happens next is yet another vector of the – very successful so far – U.S.-unleashed German de-industrialization racket: the Americans will invade the German industrial military complex with their “much improved” Abrams – which may perhaps arrive in 2024, when only a rump Ukraine may still exist, or never arrive at all. So no need for the Abrams to prove themselves in actual combat – as in being captured and/or incinerated.

Rumors in Washington advance that the U.S. “strategy” in Ukraine – extensively detailed by endless think tank reports – had to be adapted. It’s not about “defeating Russia” anymore but providing Kiev with the means to “scare” Russia. The Russian General Staff must be trembling in their boots.

Meanwhile, in real life, nearly every possible scenario gamed in Washington and Brussels finishes with NATO like a giant, armored version of Wile E. Coyote plunging to the depths of the Grand Canyon. And that happens even if the much-ballyhooed “Big Arrow” Russian offensive starts in a few days or weeks, or never starts at all.

Arguably the Russian General Staff has concluded a long time ago there’s no point in reducing Ukraine to rubble in a matter of hours – something they could easily accomplish. Thus the fabled mincing machine approach – offering no excuses for NATO to “escalate” (which they continue to do anyway, as Jens “War is Peace” Stoltenberg is so fond of parroting).

The trick is that NATO’s escalation overdrive, as it happens, is somewhat controlled by the Russian General Staff, which is always calculating which optimal maneuvers will consume NATO’s military hardware faster. Call it a Russian version of the popular axiom “frog in a boiling pot doesn’t realize it’s being cooked until it croaks.”

Attacking Russia-China-Iran

Absolute desperation is now graphically extrapolating into attacks on Iran. Both Russia and China have Iran as their key ally in West Asia for the whole, complex process of Eurasia integration; strategic partnerships interlink the trio.

So attacking the Ministry of Defense in Isfahan with drones – total fail – and bombing an IRGC convoy of humanitarian aid crossing from Iraq to Syria is a serious U.S.-Israel-coordinated provocation.

Essentially these are also attacks against Russia and China. Israel cannot lift its hand or foot without U.S. permission. Iranian intel may be able to establish how the Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con cabal in charge of U.S. foreign policy authorized if not ordered these attacks, which of course are directly connected to NATO’s desperation in Ukraine.

When in doubt, just come back to Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski: “Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps, Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by contemporary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc.”

And mirroring Ukraine/Russia there’s of course Taiwan/China.

As Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar has extensively explained, if Taiwan manufactures chips for U.S. missiles Washington then sends them to Taiwan for its “self-defense”, but Taiwan needs to wait because the missiles are needed for Ukraine instead, or chips can’t be shipped to the U.S. owing to a possible sea and air blockade imposed by China, the Americans will be operationally ill-equipped to support their two-front war against peer competitors Russia and China.

Bye, bye Pax Americana. It’s the fear, actually, paranoia, of a destroyed Taiwan – and the destruction in every scenario would be provoked by the Americans themselves – that has led the Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con cabal to demand their chips be Made in the USA.

On the energy front, since U.S. energy costs are low, Washington gambled that much of the deindustrialization of Germany would revert to American benefit. Yet since Iranian, Russian, and Venezuelan oil prices are lower than the U.S., not much production may be shifting to the Hegemon: it will go to China.

To the bottom of the Grand Canyon!

The January 10 joint declaration between EU-NATO graphically shows how the EU is no more than the P.R. arm of NATO.

This NATO-EU joint mission consists in using all economic, political, and military means to make sure the “jungle” always behaves according to the “rules-based international order” and accepts to be plundered ad infinitum by the “blooming garden”.

So in the end what’s left of “Europe”, when it’s NATO – actually Washington – that really rules?

“Europe”, according to relentless propaganda, means defending “our values” – as in peace, democracy, and prosperity. The trick is that unelected elites forced the implicit identification of this imagined, practically sacred “Europe” with the European Union. And that’s how the EU has acquired a mythical identity.

Of course, in real life the EU – as in the real, politically organized “Europe” – has performed as a toxic instrument of division among European peoples.

Instead of peace, it has invested in an all-out rabid war against Russia. The EU is arguably the most democratically irresponsible institution on the planet: spend a day in Brussels and you understand everything. And instead of prosperity, the EU has institutionalized austerity.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy a race to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The only question is who will get there first: the EU, NATO, or both.

NATO’s 'war against Russia' inches 'closer to direct conflict'

"We are fighting a war against Russia," the German Foreign Minister says, as the US and Germany authorize tank shipments, and new dangers, in the Ukraine proxy war.

https://mate.substack.com/p/natos-war-against-russia-inches-closer

Aaron Maté

Jan 26

Since the first week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron has repeated a mantra on behalf of his NATO partners: “We are not at war with Russia.”

Nearly one year in, that notion has officially been dispelled.  

“We are fighting a war against Russia,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said this week.

Baerbock was trying to assuage NATO allies’ frustration over German reluctance to send Leopard 2 tanks into Ukraine. She can now claim vindication. In a reversal of its initial position, the German government has announced it that will deliver Leopard 2 tanks to the Ukrainian army.

To overcome German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s jitters, the White House engaged in an about-face of its own, approving the shipment of 31 US-made M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Scholz had insisted on conditioning any German tanks to a similar US commitment. Up until this week, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin was “dead set against providing” the M1s, and declared there to be “no linkage between providing M1s and providing Leopards.” Austin had argued that the M1s are too cumbersome for Ukraine, requiring costly jet fuel, heavy maintenance, and lengthy training.

Just last month, a senior US defense official declared that “even one M1 was out of the question,” according to the Washington Post. When used by US troops in Iraq, the M1s were “hard for us to sustain and maintain,” the official noted. For Ukraine, “it would be impossible.” Even last week, senior Pentagon official Colin Kahl dismissed the prospect of sending the “very complicated” M1, because “we should not be providing the Ukrainians systems they can’t repair, they can’t sustain, and that they, over the long term, can’t afford.”

As Gen. Mark Milley learned when he came out in favor of diplomacy with Russia to end the fighting, the Pentagon’s outlook is no match for Washington’s proxy war fever. The White House reversed course, Politico notes, after “a parade of Democrats and Republicans” in Congress “pressured the Biden administration to grant Berlin’s request to send U.S. tanks first.” What the Pentagon “was not taking into enough account,” the New York Times reports, citing a US official, “was the intense fear among European governments of doing anything to provoke Russia without having the cover of the United States doing the same thing first.” When it comes to provoking Russia, the US is undoubtedly first.

When President Biden overruled the Pentagon and unveiled the M1 approval, Austin stood by his side. “These tanks are further evidence of our enduring, unflagging commitment to Ukraine and our confidence in the skill of Ukrainian forces,” Biden declared.

Yet the publicly trumpeted US tank shipment comes with a quietly disclosed delay.

The M1s are “probably not for the near fight,” and in fact “are not likely to arrive for many months, if not years,” a US official told the Washington Post. The M1 tanks’ slow journey, the Post explains, results from plans to have them “ordered from manufacturers, rather than transferred from existing U.S. stocks.” The administration’s bespoke tank orders are undoubtedly a new boon for the already booming US weapons industry, to the detriment of a Ukrainian military that would prefer an expedited delivery.

At this stage, NATO has pledged at least 105 tanks for Ukraine, well short of the 300 tanks that the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, has said are “urgent needs” to turn the tide. Germany aims to have the tanks deployed in Ukraine by the end of March, around the time of an expected Russian spring offensive. But whether the tanks “will arrive in Ukraine for the next phase of the war is uncertain,” the Wall Street Journal notes.

If the tanks’ likely impact on the battlefield is unclear, they do guarantee another ascent up the proxy war’s ever-growing escalation ladder. As Branko Marcetic observes, “the United States and its NATO allies have serially blown past their own self-imposed lines over arms transfers,” which “have now escalated well beyond what governments had worried just months ago could draw the alliance into direct war with Russia.” In an October 2022 interview, Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, predicted:

“When I was in D.C. in November [2021], before the invasion, and asked for Stingers, they told me it was impossible. Now it’s possible. When I asked for 155-millimeter guns, the answer was no. HIMARS, no. HARM, no. Now all of that is a yes. Therefore, I’m certain that tomorrow there will be tanks and ATACMS and F-16s.”

Reznikov’s prescience on the tanks could well continue. Just hours after the US and Germany committed tanks, the Ukrainian government began calling for F-16 fighter jets.

The F-16’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, is happy to oblige. Lockheed will be “ramping production on F-16s... to get to the place where we will be able to backfill pretty capably any countries that choose to do third party transfers to help with the current conflict,” Frank St. John, the military giant’s chief contracting officer, told the Financial Times. According to European officials, talks on such transfers are at an “early stage.”

Just as the prospect of diplomacy with Moscow is off-limits to Western policymakers, so is serious consideration of Russia’s response. The more advanced NATO weaponry pours in, the more that Russia will play its part in “permanent escalation”, as Russia’s Berlin embassy described the new tank deliveries. “While it is unclear whether” the German tanks “will make a decisive difference in the spring offensive” planned by Ukraine, the New York Times notes, “it is the latest in a series of gradual escalations that has inched the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia.”

Whatever the impact of the German tank shipments on the battlefield, their utility is not strictly military. By convincing Germany to send tanks for battle with Russian forces, the White House is advancing a goal that long predates the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine: undermine ties between Germany, Western Europe’s biggest power, and neighboring Russia, the United States’ biggest adversary.

“Germany built its postwar economy on cheap Russian energy,” the New York Times notes. The US-forced cancellation and then US-welcomed (if not planned) bombing of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline took care of Germany’s cheap energy supply from Russia. The new German tank shipment further buries the chance of any possible reconciliation.

“Russia does not threaten America’s global position, but the mere possibility that it might collaborate with Europe and particularly Germany opens up the most significant threat in the decade, a long-term threat that needs to be nipped in the bud,” George Friedman, founder of the private US intelligence firm Stratfor, explained in a 2010 book. Therefore, he concluded, “maintaining a powerful wedge between Germany and Russia is of overwhelming interest to the United States.”

For the US, Friedman added in 2015, “the primordial fear” is “German technology and German capital” combining with “Russian natural resources and Russian manpower” to form “the only combination that has for centuries scared the hell out of the United States.” In this showdown, the US aims to control “the line from the Baltics to the Black Sea.” Russia, by contrast, “must have at least a neutral Ukraine, not a pro-western Ukraine.” Because a neutral Ukraine would impede the primordial US goal of a Russia-German fissure, the US has opted for a proxy war instead.

Before Scholz caved to their pressure campaign, US officials noted that the German Chancellor “does not believe the world is ready to see German tanks near the borders of Russia, a reminder of the Nazi invasion in World War II,” according to the New York Times. Although the Times no longer allows itself to acknowledge it, there is another fraught historical irony: Germany is now sending tanks to a Ukrainian military that has formally incorporated what the Paper of Record once described as the "openly neo-Nazi" Azov Battalion.

One inconvenience acknowledged by the Times is opinion polling showing that “half of Germans do not want to send tanks,” with their country “profoundly divided about being a military leader and risking a direct confrontation with Russia.” According to German officials, Scholz was also “concerned about ending up with a fleet of almost exclusively German-made tanks being used to fight the Russians in Ukraine, a scenario that could single his country out as a party to the conflict,” the Wall Street Journal adds.

In seeking to force Germany to send its tanks into battle with Russia, the US wants Germany “to draw Russia’s counterfire,” German parliamentarian Sevim Dağdelen writes. “One cannot escape the impression that it is hoped a possible counterstrike would hit Berlin first and foremost. The United States would thus have achieved one of its long-term strategic objectives, namely to prevent cooperation between Germany and Russia forever.” US officials, Dağdelen warns, are “forcing their ally, like a vassal, to sacrifice itself.”

Dağdelen’s characterization of the US use of Germany applies to Ukraine as well. According to Der Spiegel, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is “alarmed by the high losses of the Ukrainian army in the battle for the strategically important city of Bakhmut,” where a “three-digit number” of Ukrainian soldiers are losing their lives daily. Russia’s capture of Bakhmut, the BND warns, “would have significant consequences, as it would allow Russia to make further forays into the interior of the country.” Russian advances on Bakhmut follow a 300,000-plus troop mobilization that has “appeared to tilt the calculus of attrition in Moscow’s favor,” the Wall Street Journal notes.

Perhaps the coming influx of NATO tanks will reverse that trend. If not, the proxy war’s NATO architects can point to other victories: Russian forces depleted, Berlin-Moscow ties severed, and US dominance of NATO strengthened. After all, it is mainly Ukrainians paying the price of the “war against Russia” fueled from afar.

The West Is Incentivizing Russia To Hit Back

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-west-is-incentivizing-russia

Caitlin Johnstone

Jan 26

Well, the omnicidal war sluts won the debate over sending tanks to Ukraine, so now it's time to start arguing for sending F-16s.

In an article titled "Ukraine sets sights on fighter jets after securing tank supplies," Reuters reports the following:

"Ukraine will now push for Western fourth generation fighter jets such as the U.S. F-16 after securing supplies of main battle tanks, an adviser to Ukraine's defense minister said on Wednesday.

Ukraine won a huge boost for its troops as Germany announced plans to provide heavy tanks for Kyiv on Wednesday, ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock on the issue. The United States is poised to make a similar announcement.

Just in time for the good news, Lockheed Martin has announced that the arms manufacturing giant happens to be all set to ramp up production of F-16s should they be needed for shipment to Ukraine.

"Lockheed Martin has said that it’s ready to meet demands for F-16 fighter jets if the US and its allies choose to ship them to Ukraine," Antiwar's Dave DeCamp reports. "So far, the US and its allies have been hesitant to send fighter jets to Ukraine due to concerns that they could be used to target Russian territory. But the Western powers seem less and less concerned about escalation as the US and Germany have now pledged to send their main battle tanks."

The New York Times has a new article out titled "How Biden Reluctantly Agreed to Send Tanks to Ukraine," subtitled "The decision unlocked a flow of heavy arms from Europe and inched the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia." Its authors David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper write:

President Biden’s announcement Wednesday that he would send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine came after weeks of tense back-channel negotiations with the chancellor of Germany and other European leaders, who insisted that the only way to unlock a flow of heavy European arms was for the United States to send tanks of its own.

His decision, however reluctant, now paves the way for German-made Leopard 2 tanks to be delivered to Ukraine in two or three months, provided by several European nations. While it is unclear whether it will make a decisive difference in the spring offensive that President Volodymyr Zelensky is now planning to take back territory seized by Russia, it is the latest in a series of gradual escalations that have inched the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia.

When even the myopic empire simps at The New York Times acknowledging that western powers are escalating aggressions in a very dangerous direction, you should probably sit up and pay attention. 

In a recent article for Responsible Statecraft titled "Mission Creep? How the US role in Ukraine has slowly escalated," Branko Marcetic outlines the ways the US empire has "serially blown past their own self-imposed lines over arms transfers," over and over again relenting to war hawks and requests from Ukrainian officials to supply weapons which it had previously refrained from supplying for fear that they would be too escalatory and lead to hot warfare between nuclear superpowers. Marcetic notes the way previously unthinkable aggressions like NATO spy agencies conducting sabotage operations on Russian infrastructure are now accepted, with more escalations being called for as soon as the previous one was made.

Toward the end of his article, Marcetic drives home a very important point that needs more attention: the western alliance has established a policy of continually escalating every time Russia doesn't react forcefully to a previous western escalation, which necessarily means Russia is being actively incentivized to react forcefully to those escalations.

"By escalating their support for Ukraine’s military, the U.S. and NATO have created an incentive structure for Moscow to take a drastic, aggressive step to show the seriousness of its own red lines," Marcetic writes. "This would be dangerous at the best of times, but particularly so when Russian officials are making clear they increasingly view the war as one against NATO as a whole, not merely Ukraine while threatening nuclear response to the alliance’s escalation in weapons deliveries."

"Moscow keeps saying escalatory arms transfers are unacceptable and could mean wider war; US officials say since Moscow hasn't acted on those threats, they can freely escalate. Russia is effectively told it has to escalate to show it's serious about lines," Marcetic added on Twitter.

A good recent example of this dynamic is the recent New York Times report that the Biden administration is considering backing a Ukrainian offensive on Crimea, which many experts agree is one of the most likely ways this conflict could lead to nuclear warfare. The article reports that the Biden administration has assessed that Russia is unlikely to reciprocate an escalatory aggression, but the basis for that assessment apparently comes from nothing other than the fact that Russia hasn't done so yet.

“Crimea has already been hit many times without a massive escalation from the Kremlin," the Times quotes a RAND Corporation think tanker as saying in explanation for the Biden administration's belief that it can get away with backing a Crimea offensive. But as Dave DeCamp explained at the time, that's not even true; Russia did significantly escalate its aggressions in response to strikes on Crimea, beginning to target critical Ukrainian infrastructure in ways it previously had not.

So Russia has in fact been escalating its aggressions in response to attacks on Crimea; it just hasn't been escalating them against NATO powers. As long as Russia is only escalating in ways that hurt Ukrainians, the US-centralized power structure does not regard them as real escalations. The take-home message to Moscow is that they're going to get squeezed harder and harder until they attack NATO itself.

And of course, that won't de-escalate things either; it will be seized on and spun as evidence that Putin is a reckless madman who is attacking the free world completely unprovoked and must be stopped at all cost, even if it means risking nuclear armageddon. Russia would of course be aware of this obvious reality, so the only way it takes the bait is if the pain of not reacting gets to a point where it is perceived as outweighing the pain of reacting. But judging by its actions the empire seems determined to push them to that point.

It really is spooky how much de-escalation and detente have disappeared from public discourse about Russia. People genuinely don't seem to know it's an option. They really do think the only option is continually escalating nuclear brinkmanship, and that anything else is obsequious appeasement. They think that because that's the message they are being fed by the imperial propaganda machine, and they're being fed that message because that is the empire's actual position.

I've been warning about the increasing risk of nuclear armageddon for as long as I've been publicly engaged in political commentary, and people have been calling me a hysterical idiot and a Putin puppet the entire time even as we've moved closer and closer to the exact point I've been screaming about at the top of my lungs all these years. Now there's not a whole lot closer it can get without being directly upon us. I deeply, deeply hope we turn this thing around before it's too late.

Russia Warns of ‘Full-Blown Conflict in Europe’

by Will Porter | Jan 27, 2023

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/russia-warns-of-full-blown-conflict-in-europe/

The decision by the United States and several allies to supply Ukraine with main battle tanks is paving a “direct path” to a full-scale war in Europe, Russia’s deputy envoy to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) warned.

In a statement issued on Thursday concerning the “dangerous policy of the Western Alliance countries to escalate tensions” in Ukraine, deputy OSCE representative Maxim Buyakevich said foreign arms deliveries to Kiev would only prolong the current conflict, or kick off a larger regional war.

“The leaders of the US and their NATO client states have come close to a red line. Their deliberate actions to escalate the military confrontation in Ukraine – provoking the regime into military action against the Russian population using Western heavy weapons and NATO intelligence – is a direct path to a full-blown military conflict in Europe,” he said, arguing that all people on the continent “definitely stand to lose” from such a war.

The Anglo-Saxon puppeteers of this escalation will not sit on the sidelines this time.

The statement followed an agreement between Washington, Berlin and other European partners to send heavy armor to Ukrainian forces earlier this week, with the US preparing to ship more than 30 M1 Abrams tanks in addition to about a dozen Leopard 2s from Germany and Challenger tanks from the UK.  

While it will take some time before the tanks reach the battlefield, the decision marked a sharp reversal for the US, which had repeatedly declined to send the M1 Abrams in the past. The White House made a similar about-face on the Patriot missile defense battery, one of which was authorized for Kiev last year despite previous refusals.  

Germany, the UK and Poland have said their tanks will arrive in Ukraine in a matter of weeks, but the timeline for the American weapons remains hazy given a large backlog of orders for General Dynamics, which produces the Abrams. Poland currently expects to receive 250 M1A2 tanks, while Taiwan previously ordered 108 units of the same model. Deliveries aren’t expected until 2024 and 2025, however, and the single facility capable of manufacturing the Abrams can produce only 12 units per month. It is unclear, then, how long it will take before Ukraine gets the 31 tanks pledged this week. 

Russia’s OSCE rep went on to say that military aid from Western states only “deepens their involvement in an armed confrontation with Russian troops,” claiming their support is not “pro-Ukrainian,” but rather “anti-Russian.” 

“Their masks have long been thrown off. They are no longer embarrassed to say directly that this is not at all about the struggle for some kind of Ukrainian statehood, but about the promotion of the ‘rules-based world order’ being formed by the West,” Buyakevich continued, citing recent comments by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who declared that “we are fighting a war against Russia” earlier this week.

Moscow has vowed to “destroy” all NATO weaponry sent to Kiev and said it would respond to Western tank deliveries, with Russian Ambassador to Germany Sergei Nechayev saying the move “takes the conflict to a new level of confrontation.” It remains unclear how Russian forces will react to the decision, though a large round of airstrikes was reported around Ukraine on Thursday, including in its capital city.

 ¿CÓMO SALVAR LA CANDIDATURA DE SHEINBAUM?

Esa es la pregunta diaria que se hace el presidente López Obrador, ante un nuevo estancamiento en las preferencias ciudadanas por su precandidata favorita (la jefa de gobierno de la Ciudad de México), a raíz de los “incidentes atípicos” que han estado sucediendo en el Sistema de Transporte Colectivo Metro (incluido un nuevo accidente con una víctima mortal y varios heridos), que los propagandistas gubernamentales[1] quieren adjudicar a un “complot” de los conservadores y la derecha para descarrilar las aspiraciones presidenciales de la favorita de López Obrador.

Por su parte la oposición (PAN, PRI y PRD), tratan de explotar la ineficiencia del mencionado sistema de transporte y las justificaciones gubernamentales, para debilitar la precandidatura de Claudia Sheinbaum, jefa de gobierno capitalina.

En este contexto, López Obrador está impulsando una serie de reformas legislativas a las instituciones encargadas de organizar las elecciones en el país, con las que dejará literalmente ”en los huesos” a las mismas, Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE) y Tribunal Electoral (TEPJF)[2], devastando hasta el 85% de la estructura de dichos organismos, con el objetivo de que el partido político que concentra la mayoría de gubernaturas y presidencias municipales, el oficialista Morena, cuente con predominio en el terreno sobre sus competidores, puesto que ante la ausencia de autoridades electorales para planear, capacitar personal y organizar las elecciones, serán los gobiernos quienes de facto asuman dicha función, dándole así una clara ventaja al partido en el gobierno.

Para López Obrador y su coalición gobernante, no importa en lo absoluto violar la legislación aún vigente que prohíbe las precampañas presidenciales, pues saben que el que tendría que aplicar las sanciones que impongan el INE y el Tribunal Electoral, es el mismo gobierno federal, y por lo tanto eso no va a suceder.

Hay así una violación cínica y flagrante de la normatividad electoral aún vigente, con claro uso de recursos públicos para favorecer la precandidatura de la favorita presidencial, en espera de que la mayoría oficialista en el Congreso apruebe normas que “legalicen” esas violaciones a la actual legislación; y que esa misma mayoría nombre próximamente a 4 nuevos consejeros electorales que cambien la correlación de fuerzas en el Consejo General del Instituto Nacional Electoral, para desde ahí avalar el uso de recursos públicos para apoyar a la precandidata oficial y para bloquear cualquier intento de sanción contra nuevas posibles violaciones a la legislación electoral.

Con todo ello, la “democracia mexicana” se ha convertido en una farsa, pues todo el poder del Estado está siendo utilizado para que el partido en el poder logre el triunfo en las elecciones federales del 2024, tanto a la presidencia de la República como en la renovación del Congreso de la Unión, sin que la sociedad mexicana pueda detener tan grosera imposición.

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[1] https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/01/27/opinion/010a1pol

 

[2] https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/nacional/2023/01/25/plan-b-de-reforma-electoral-ine-prepara-impugnaciones/