TGIF: The Russians Are Coming? The Russians Are Coming?

Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

―H. L. Mencken, In Defense of Women

It is in Mencken's spirit that I would size up this announcement from the U.S. Justice Department, titled "Justice Department Disrupts Covert Russian Government-Sponsored Foreign Malign Influence Operation Targeting Audiences in the United States and Elsewhere":

The Justice Department today announced the ongoing seizure of 32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as “Doppelganger,” in violation of U.S. money laundering and criminal trademark laws. As alleged in an unsealed affidavit, ... Russian companies..., operating under the direction and control of the Russian Presidential Administration, ... used these domains, among others, to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections, including the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election.

The release quoted FBI Director Christopher Wray: “Companies operating at the direction of the Russian government created websites to trick Americans into unwittingly consuming Russian propaganda. By seizing these websites, the FBI is making clear to the world what they are, Russian attempts to interfere in our elections and influence our society."

So once again a foreign power—usually Russia—is allegedly trying to manipulate the American people with disinformation as a presidential election is coming on. How dare the Russians do this? Political manipulation is allowed only to certain anointed Americans. It's a position of privilege. So the government will protect us from "consuming" Russian propaganda without knowing it. We're too stupid to check claims out for ourselves when they sound fishy—even when they come from so-called legitimate" sources. (Point of information: are Russians incapable of saying anything accurate worth hearing? Just asking.)

Before we get all primed for nuclear war, let's take a deep breath. Maybe it would help to picture a scene that may or may not have occurred in the Kremlin.

Picture President Vladimir Putin (not a guy I'd ever hang with) summoning a top aide to his office. "Sergei, I have a great idea," he might say this trusted aid. "Here's $10 million. I want you to launder it, then have some American-looking company pass the money to big-time American internet influencers. But make sure the money goes to people who are already saying what we want them to say. No sense wasting it on people who don't like us. Pay these friendly guys to post propaganda favorable videos."

Putin might have gone on: "What we want to do is capitalize—pardon expression, comrade—on the American sport of arguing about politics and culture. Muhahahahahaha! Yes, I know, America is severely divided over more issues than I can name. But it's not divided nearly enough for our purposes! We can do better, da? This will help us in many ways, primarily by disillusioning Americans about Ukraine. That would be good, nyet?"

After hearing Putin, Sergei might have laughed under his breath and agreed to oversee the project. Why might he have laughed? Because he might have been thinking, "Do we need to pay even a ruble on polarizing America? What a waste of money! America is doing just fine polarizing itself. They don't need our help. And $10 million? Is he kidding? That's a drop in the bucket compared to what Americans spend bitterly promoting their views on public issues. Is this the Putin who's cracked up to be so foxy? Sheesh! Maybe I should be president."

According to the government's indictment:

Many of the videos published by U.S. Company-I contain commentary on events and issues in the United States, such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related to domestic and foreign policy While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia's interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine. [Emphasis added.]

Immigration, inflation, and other topics related to domestic and foreign policy? Are we to believe that Russian officials think they need to amplify divisions in America? How much more amplified can they get? And what about the Justice Department's acknowledgment that "the views expressed in the videos are not uniform"? What are we being asked to get upset about?

J. D. Tuccille writing at Reason points out:

Translated Russian documents [provided by the Justice Department] outlining a "guerilla media campaign in the United States" caution their intended audience that "in the United States there are no pro-Russian and/or pro-Putin mainstream politicians or sufficiently large numbers of influencers and voters. There is no point of justifying Russia and no one to justify it to." [Emphasis added—SR] The campaign was meant to exploit "the high level of polarization of American society" by paying commentators to say things they were already saying.

It's not clear they got a lot of mileage from that program.

That's an understatement, I'd say. But Putin's objective (if he was behind this) might simply have been to upset American officials and the public. Here's a suggestion: let's not get upset. Read the rest of Tuccille's article for more particulars about the effectiveness of meddling and about the U.S. government's own sorry decades-long record of manipulating other countries' political systems. Then remember the advice about stones and glass houses.

"So, take reports of Russian interference in American elections with a grain of salt," Tuccille advises, "knowing that Putin is paying Americans to say what they already believe, and the U.S. does the same in other countries. Importantly, none of that interference prevents you from making your own decisions."

I have plenty of criticism of democracy, as readers know, but I wonder: is America so fragile? Or is this one of Mencken's hobgoblins? If so, who benefits?

TGIF: NATO and Collective Insecurity

Collective security, the official goal of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, seems plausible on its face. A group of nations ostensibly concerned about a common threat agree to defend one another in the event of an attack. "All for one and one for all," as the Three Musketeers said.

But like many things, the principle, even if sincerely invoked, is more problematic than the first glance indicates. This is particularly true with governments, and in no area more so than foreign policy and armed forces. Schoolyard analogies involving bullies do not hold.

NATO was established soon after World War II ostensibly to keep the Soviet Union from overrunning Western Europe. The Red Army was present in Eastern and Central Europe, including eastern Germany, having driven back the Wehrmacht in the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany. It is by no means clear that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin aspired to have his armed forces conquer Western Europe, and his doctrine of "socialism in one country," which suggests a conservative foreign policy, hardly supports a militarily aggressive posture toward the West. For one thing, the Soviet Union was exhausted from the savage war -- it lost well over 20 million military personnel and civilians -- and was hardly in a position to begin a new one against the Americans.

While many American politicians, fearing a return of the prewar public sentiment against foreign intervention, spoke of a Soviet threat, not all agreed. The influential Republican senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, whom I will discuss below, questioned the consensus and thus the official premise of the Cold War.

On April 4, 1949, 12 countries -- the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland -- signed the treaty that created NATO. (The Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union's counter-alliance with the Eastern European countries it occupied, would not be founded for another six years.) Since 1998, 18 more countries have joined NATO, for a total of 30, including former Warsaw Pact members and the former Soviet Baltic republics that border Russia -- with the predicted disastrous consequences. (Austria is not a member, having agreed to neutrality in 1955, in return for the Soviet withdrawal. West Germany became a member in 1955, and then a reunified Germany became a member in 1990 as the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact were being dismantled.)

The heart of the treaty, the "all for one and one for all" provision, is Article 5:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.  [Emphasis added.]

Note the italic phrase: in the event of an attack on a member, each other member will assist by taking "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force." Strangely, this clearly provided wiggle room is never mentioned in the news commentaries about NATO and the Russia-Ukraine war. Why would that be? The reason for the hedge was that, in light of the constitutional delegation of the war power exclusively to Congress, the Senate would have had a problem ratifying a treaty that obligated the country to go to war automatically. (Ironically, President Truman went to war in Korea, which was not a NATO member, without a declaration of war. He called it a "police action.")

The Senate ratified the NATO treaty 82-13 on July 21, 1949. Among those who voted nay was Sen. Taft. Who was he and what were the grounds for his vote?

Taft was the elder son of the late President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft. Sen. Taft had earlier voted to approve U.S. entry into the United Nations but doubted it would be effective, among other reasons, because, of the veto power held by the five permanent members of the Security Council: the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and China.

Because of the influence and respect he had earned, Taft became known as Mr. Republican and was the Senate majority leader at the beginning of the Eisenhower administration, from January 3 to July 31, 1953, when he died. He had tried for the Republican presidential nomination three times, in 1940, 1948, and 1952, but failed because the Republican establishment had committed itself to bipartisan multilateral internationalism. As a principled noninterventionist, Taft had no chance.

Earlier, Taft had spoken against U.S. entry into World War II, having witnessed firsthand the unprecedented horrendous destruction and tyrannical aftermath of the first world war, propelled by U.S. intervention under President Wilson. Like other antiwar Republicans, Taft ended his opposition to entry into World War II after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. (He objected to President Roosevelt's shameful internment of Japanese-Americans beginning in 1942, which the Supreme Court later endorsed.)

Taft's opponents smeared him as an isolationist, an unfair charge. His default position was against U.S. foreign military intervention because he feared it would lead to war, a loss of American liberty and economic stability, constitutionally compromising alliances, and foreign resentment of America. On the other hand he supported an internationally administered rule of law, complete with a court and enforcement mechanism, to protect smaller, weaker nations from domination. That regime, however, would have had no power to meddle in the internal affairs of nations. Taft did favor giving Western Europe assurances regarding a Soviet military threat. (More below.) Taft also voted for, after initially opposing, both Truman's postwar military aid to Turkey and Greece and the Marshall Plan for Western Europe.)

He also opposed the U.S. government's encouragement of American investment in other countries because he foresaw that it would lead to imperialism, again, creating resentment against America. Taft thought the United States should set an example by protecting its own freedom, not by imposing values on others. Taft, who disliked the label conservative, which he associated with the plutocracy, was not a consistent libertarian, but it's clear that individual liberty and the imperative to limit centralized bureaucratic power topped his political values. For that reason he inspired several future libertarian stalwarts, including Murray Rothbard, Ralph Raico, and Leonard Liggio, to join Youth for Taft when the senator ran, unsuccessfully, against Dwight Eisenhower for the 1952 Republican nomination.

On April 12, 1949, Truman in a speech to the Senate urged ratification of the North Atlantic treaty, expressing the official line: "The security and welfare of each member of the community depend upon the security and welfare of all."

In opposing NATO, Taft gave a speech to the Senate on July 26, 1949. In it he criticized the alliance system for, among other things, subordinating U.S. foreign policy to the policies of the other member nations, which might unjustifiably provoke an attack. Note its current relevance:

[T]he Atlantic Pact goes much further. It obligates us to go to war if at any time during the next 20 years anyone makes an armed attack on any of the 12 nations. Under the Monroe Doctrine we could change our policy at any time. We could judge whether perhaps one of the countries had given cause for the attack. Only Congress could declare a war in pursuance of the doctrine. Under the new pact the President can take us into war without Congress. But, above all the treaty is a part of a much larger program by which we arm all these nations against Russia…. A joint military program has already been made…. It thus becomes an offensive and defensive military alliance against Russia. I believe our foreign policy should be aimed primarily at security and peace, and I believe such an alliance is more likely to produce war than peace. A third world war would be the greatest tragedy the world has ever suffered. Even if we won the war, we this time would probably suffer tremendous destruction, our economic system would be crippled, and we would lose our liberties and free system just as the Second World War destroyed the free systems of Europe. It might easily destroy civilization on this earth…[Emphasis added.]

Taft continued (again note the relevance):

If we undertake to arm all the nations around Russia from Norway on the north to Turkey on the south, and Russia sees itself ringed about gradually by so-called defensive arms from Norway and. Denmark to Turkey and Greece, it may form a different opinion. It may decide that the arming of western Europe, regardless of its present purpose, looks to an attack upon Russia....

How would we feel if Russia undertook to arm a country on our border; Mexico, for instance?

He also said America could not afford the foreign policy of which NATO is a part.:"we can’t let them [the Russian and Chinese communists ] scare us into bankruptcy and the surrender of all liberty, or let them determine our foreign policies.... If the President is unwilling to recommend more taxes for fear of creating a depression, then we must have reached the limit of our taxpaying ability and we ought not to start a new and unnecessary building project...."

And more: NATO "is a step backward -- a military alliance of the old type where we have to come to each others’ assistance no matter who is to blame, and with ourselves the judges of the law."

From his prominent position, Taft made sure the public would hear a debate about postwar foreign policy. The bipartisan establishment surely would have preferred he had not done so.

As he prepared to run for the 1952 Republican presidential nomination, he published his book A Foreign Policy for Americans, in which he called for American "moral leadership" rather than imperial domination:

I do not think this moral leadership justifies engaging in any preventive war, or going to the defense of one country against another, or getting ourselves in a vulnerable fiscal and economic position at home which may invite war. I do not believe any policy which has behind it the threat of military force is justified as part of the basic foreign policy except to defend the liberty of our own people.

For some time now, American foreign policy has been sadly contrary to Taft's advice. The price measured in lives and treasure, for Americans and non-Americans, is beyond measure. Taft would be horrified but not surprised by what NATO has wrought and by what is happening today.

Further reading:

"The Republican Road Not Taken: The Foreign-Policy Vision of Robert A. Taft" by Michael T. Hayes, Independent Review, Spring 2004

"New Deal Nemesis: The 'Old Right' Jeffersonians by Sheldon Richman, Independent Review, Fall 1996

TGIF: Shades of Gray in the Russia-Ukraine War

If you're looking for morality tales -- clashes between the clearly good and the clearly bad -- I suggest you look elsewhere than the geopolitical theater. There we find only conflicts between shades of darker gray.

This seems to have been the case throughout history. Empires and would-be empires vied with rival empires and would-be empires for territory, resources, taxpayers, and soldiers. No surprise: governments will be governments, and that's not good. This is not to say the shades of gray did not differ at all, perhaps even significantly on occasion, but the objective was always, first and foremost, booty and control of people. The interests of commoners were rarely if ever the cause.

We see this in Russia's war on Ukraine. Let's be clear: Vladimir Putin and his Russian government freely chose to send military forces across the border into Ukraine. Their military personnel complied. They ultimately are responsible for their choices and therefore the death, injury, and mayhem that is taking place. (I make an exception for proven false-flag operations on the Ukrainian side, should any come to light.)

Now that the issue of primary culpability is out of the way, we can go on to talk about contributory culpability. I hope I've left little room for anyone to argue assigning contributory culpability to others is intended to let the Russian government personnel off the hook.

What sort of culpability do I have in mind? It's on the order of setting a trap and loading it with bait in order to lure a target. Russia had to choose to step into it, but those who set the trap did not have to do what they did. Hence, they contributed to a terrible situation.

Many experts analysts have long pointed out that the U.S. government at least since the late 1990s has knowingly been provoking Russia by expanding NATO up to the country's western border, incorporating most of the allies and some of the republics of the late Soviet Union. For years the U.S. government and other NATO officials have talked publicly about inviting the former republics Ukraine and Georgia to join. Everyone knew that Ukraine was an especially sensitive matter because it had long been a buffer between Russia and states to the west, Poland in particular. The Soviet Union had been invaded three times in the 20th century, twice by Germany and once by Poland, both NATO members since the demise of the USSR.

The warnings against NATO's march eastward were too many to count and came from people as diverse as Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky, Soviet-rollback guru Paul Nitze and Soviet-containment architect George Kennan. The current director of the CIA, William J. Burns, warned in 2008, when he was George W. Bush's ambassador to Russia, that no Russian leader -- conservative or liberal -- would ever stand for the admission of Ukraine and George into NATO. Burns's leaked memo was written shortly after publicly NATO declared that it welcomed applications for membership from those states.

That was 14 years ago and six years before the U.S. State Department helped foment a Nazi-backed coup that drove a Russia-friendly but democratically elected president from power -- even though he had been making concessions to the opposition in the streets, including a call for early elections. What motivated the U.S. government was that president's intention to reject an exclusive economic and political relationship with the European Union in order to accept a loan with liberal terms from Russia.

Aside from the overt NATO talk, there's the matter of the U.S. government's putting missile launchers in Poland and Romania. As outfitted, they are for defensive anti-missile missiles, but that could be changed. Moreover, defensive missiles obviously can be useful in an offensive campaign. Remember that Donald Trump, the reputed Russian agent, had earlier denounced the Reagan-era treaty that banned intermediate-range nuclear weapons from Europe and elsewhere. No one could have been surprised when all this was worrisome to the Russians. (Recall what happened in 1962 when the Soviet Union tried to put missiles in Cuba. John F. Kennedy imposed a naval blockade on the island and was ready to launch a nuclear war if the missiles were not removed.)

Since the Russian invasion, Joe Biden and his foreign policy people have denounced Russia sanctimoniously for its violations of international law and brutality, including the inexcusable deaths of noncombatants. It is not inappropriate to ask when an American president has ever respected international law when it was inconvenient for U.S. objectives. In the 21st century alone, American presidents have launched illegal aggressive wars in the Middle East and other places to effect regime change and other geopolitical objectives even partially on behalf of other states, such as Israel. In the process Americans have killed untold noncombatants. They have tortured prisoners. They have wreaked sickening destruction, creating hordes of refugees -- and so on. Yet day after day, lying American officials -- but I repeat myself -- admonish Putin for his bad behavior. There's nothing like setting a good example.

The Ukrainian leaders must also share in the blame. Those leaders who have been West-leaning have not been shy about aspiring to join NATO, knowing full well how the Russians would interpret those words. Since the 2014 coup -- in response to which Russia annexed a long-standing security area, the Crimea with its Russian naval base, to keep it out of NATO hands -- Ukrainian presidents could have made overtures to Russia, assuring that they would not seek NATO membership and offering to make Ukraine neutral in the manner of Austria since 1955. They did not do that, even though the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian and actor, was elected on a peace-with-Russia platform.

Superfically, Zelensky is an appealing figure. He's young and charismatic, and he wears t-shirts. His country has been invaded, which of course puts him in a sympathetic light when he appears on television. But is that the whole story of the man? It also seems that despite the terms of the Minsk agreements, he has been unwilling to talk to leaders in the heavily Russian-ethnic Donbas region, in the far east of Ukraine, about home-rule. Two provinces there, Luhansk and Donetsk, have since declared their independence, which Russia has recognized. The Ukrainian military has been shelling the area since the 2014 coup, and Donbas forces have fought back. The casualties on both sides have been high.

Moreover, as Jacques Baud, an intelligence expert who has worked for NATO, the UN, and Swiss strategic intelligence  writes:

On [March 24, 2021], Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree for the recapture of the Crimea, and began to deploy his forces to the south of the country. At the same time, several NATO exercises were conducted between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, accompanied by a significant increase in reconnaissance flights along the Russian border. Russia then conducted several exercises to test the operational readiness of its troops and to show that it was following the evolution of the situation. [Aaron Mate's video interview with Baud is here.]

Baud also writes, "In violation of the Minsk Agreements, the Ukraine was conducting air operations in Donbass using drones, including at least one strike against a fuel depot in Donetsk in October 2021. The American press noted this, but not the Europeans; and no one condemned these violations."

It begins to look as though Zelensky has cavalierly used the Ukrainian people for his own ends: instead of seeking peace, he sought or was willing to risk war with Russia, assuming the U.S. government and other NATO states would back him up with perhaps more than arms shipments. He still demands a NATO no-fly zone, which would all but assure a new world war and perhaps an all-out nuclear war. So he also shares in the responsibility.

As usual, there's blame aplenty to go around.

TGIF: Joe Biden, What the Hell?

What's going on with Joe Biden? Is he oblivious to the fact that Russia has about as many strategic nuclear weapons as the United States has? Is he taking advice from the neocons, who apparently believe that we should not fear a nuclear holocaust because that's exactly what Vladimir Putin wants us to do? (I presume Putin also wants us to believe that the earth is round. Should we give that up too?)

How else to explain Biden's astounding statements in recent days, particularly while meeting with NATO representatives in Brussels and with U.S. troops in Poland? That's right: 9,000 U.S. troops are now in southeast Poland, not far from the Ukrainian border. Poland of course is a member of NATO, which means that if Poland clashes with Russia, the U.S. government has treaty obligations to its ally. To be clear, here's Article 5, which embodies the principle that NATO describes as being "at the very heart" of the treaty":

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. [Emphasis added to indicate ambiguity in the provision that isn't often acknowledged.]

Are Biden's off-the-cuff-and-wall remarks signs of dementia? Or are they just the Bidenesque "Kinsley gaffes" we've become accustomed to? (A Kinsley gaffe occurs when someone important speaks his mind when he or his handlers know he shouldn't.)

By now, Biden's irresponsibly provocative remarks have made the rounds. He has said that Russia's use of chemical weapons in Ukraine would bring a NATO response, but left the nature of the response vague. His administration seems to be shying away from explicitly declaring "red lines."

And yet, when ABC News asked Biden, "If chemical weapons were used in Ukraine could that trigger a military response from NATO?" Biden responded, "It would trigger a response in kind. Whether or not -- you're asking whether NATO would cross -- we'd make that decision at the time." (Emphasis added.)

Say what? Response in kind? Does that mean he might order a chemical-weapons counterattack?

As others have pointed out, even a de facto red line is an invitation for a false-flag attack in which a Ukrainian group, hoping to bring NATO into the fight, would use chemical weapons while making the perpetrator appear to be Russian. This sort of thing seems likely to have happened in Syria.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky is still lobbying for even more NATO intervention (in addition to arms and sanctions) in the form of a no-fly zone, which is now called "close the sky." The shameless public appeal includes this video, with the lyric "If you don't close the sky/I will die." The lyricist neglected to point out that if the sky is closed and the U.S. Air Force shoots down a Russian jet, we all could die in a nuclear exchange.

Biden still says no to closing the sky, but if he started saying the opposite, who'd be surprised?

As everyone knows, while abroad Biden also seemed to call for regime change in Russia with this ad-lib: "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power." History teaches that implied policies such as that do not facilitate ceasefires and peace. The Gaffer-in-Chief and his people tried to walk it back, but the attempts were lame. "I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel," he said while insisting he wasn't walking back his statement, "and I make no apologies for it." (American presidents are always morally outraged whenever countries they don't like do what the U.S. government regularly does.)

A White House official dutifully insisted that what his boss meant "was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin's power in Russia, or regime change." If you buy that, they have a bridge you might be interested in.

Biden also appeared to tell U.S. troops stationed near the Ukrainian border in Poland that they would soon be in the war zone and that in fact some have already been on the other side of the border: "You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see — you’re gonna see women, young people standing in the middle — in front of a damned tank just saying, ‘I’m not leaving, I’m holding my ground.'”

In clarification mode, Biden explained that the words when you're there referred to the training of Ukrainian forces in Poland. Oh really? They're going to see women and young people blocking Russian tanks in Poland? What's he trying to tell us now?

The Deputy Assistant White House Gaffe-Follow-Upper quickly clarified, "The president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position.”

Yeah, yeah. So that means the guy's head is full of cotton.

Finally, Biden amazingly said two important things about the sanctions he's imposed on the Russians: first, that he never said the sanctions would force the Russian government to alter its Ukraine policy because he knew they wouldn't have that effect, and second, that sanctions will create food shortages (and so higher prices) for Americans and by implication, other non-Russians the world over.

As to the first, that was an outright lie or a case of senility. A long list of administration officials did indeed say the sanctions would work. As to the second, how can Biden -- father of noted entrepreneur Hunter Biden -- justify making innocent people go hungry?

Given the two things Biden has admitted, what is the point of the sanctions? Does it make him feel better?

Joe Biden, what the hell?

Biden Puts His Foot in It Again

People like Joe Biden never learn from history and never think long-term. It's the double whammy. By declaring that Vladimir Putin must not remain in power, Biden has incentivized Putin to stand firm lest he end up like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi -- that is, dead. The lesson goes back at least to World War II, when the Allies demanded the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan. Historians and commentators have criticized that policy for perhaps prolonging the war by discouraging internal attempts to overthrow the government.

Disparity

 From Mondoweiss:

The Rotten Case for Sanctions

Now's a good time to read (or reread) Gary Chartier's 2019 article "The Case for Sanctions Fails at Every Turn."

Only People Threatened by Russia May Bear Arms

Pundits and politicians who routinely deny that Americans have the natural right to keep and bear arms nevertheless are thrilled by the scenes of Ukrainian civilians bearing arms in order to resist the Russian invaders.

I guess only people threatened by Russians have the right to keep and bear arms.

But don't those same pundits and politicians tell us that we Americans are threatened by Russia?  Ergo...

TGIF: Russia in Ukraine: Cui Bono?

I don't know if the U.S. foreign-policy elite wanted Russia to invade Ukraine -- an argument could be made for the affirmative -- but I'd hate to think it did. Yet given its long record of global mischief (a polite word for its machinations), we certainly cannot rule out the point a priori.

Perhaps the best evidence in favor of the proposition is that President Biden refused to take the few simple steps that might have averted the whole thing. (The attempt would have cost nothing.) But if an invasion might have been averted and was unwanted, why was so much weaponry and other military aid poured into Ukraine in apparent anticipation of a splendid little war?

I acknowledge that none of this constitutes a smoking gun (pun intended), but the question is worth asking. One might say it was a "just in case" move, but the risks were high because, first, U.S. support might have encouraged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to do something foolish, and second, the arms flow itself might have provoked a Russian response, particularly since the Ukrainian National Guard has the pro-Nazi Azov Battalion incorporated into it.

That said, I am far more confident that, from Biden on down -- if I'm not giving him too much credit -- the foreign-policy makers foresaw benefits in the reprehensible Russian invasion.

Benefits? Cui bono? To whom? Well, certainly not the Ukrainians who are dying, hurting, and fleeing their homes in terror. Nor do the beneficiaries include the rest of the world's regular people, including Americans, who now must wonder if the end of the world is at hand, or if not that, then how they'll cope with the inevitable economic hardship that war and sanctions impose: rising prices, food shortages, and so on.

But make no mistake: there are beneficiaries, as there are in all wars. ("There's not much I can tell you about this war. It's like all wars, I guess. The undertakers are winning.") The American foreign-policy elite itself is a beneficiary because the heightened tensions and potential for conflict offer enormous political opportunities for bigger budgets, grander missions, and the prestige that comes from playing Winston Churchill.

Then there are the sheer economic benefits -- the profits, compliments of the taxpayers -- to the military-industrial complex, which has profited handsomely from NATO expansion since 1998 and from the increased military budgets in NATO countries. Crystal City, Va., will not be on hard times, no matter how the rest of us fare. (Remember when Salesman-in-Chief Donald Trump used to chide the NATO countries for spending too little on their militaries? Get it now? Did you really think he had the American taxpayers in mind?)

And let's face it, NATO needed a shot in the arm. The Soviet Union was long gone, and international terrorism has just not lived up to its ominous billing. It hasn't had the staying power to justify the sinecures that the obsolete alliance had provided over the years. Now things have changed -- in Finland and Sweden, historically neutral countries, "public support for joining NATO has surged to record levels," Yasmeen Serhan writes in The Atlantic.

Nor should we underrate the satisfaction that the elite expects to get from the likely prolonged Russian quagmire. As Scott Horton writes,

Weapons to Ukraine had all been supposedly “calibrated” they said, “not to provoke Mr. Putin,” officials told the New York Times. Maybe arming an insurgency truly is Plan B after an invasion they truly meant to deter and these Democrats are just very poor at "calibration." But they sure seem to be thinking ahead to how an invasion could hurt Russia, with the poor Ukrainians serving as merely an instrument against them.

"The level of military support would make our efforts in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union [in the 1980s] look puny by comparison," said former Hillary Clinton adviser retired Adm. James Stavridis. I sense some anticipatory glee.

The failed presidential candidate herself -- the one who did as much as anyone to ratchet up tensions with Russia during and after her witless campaign -- herself weighed in during a Feb. 28 MSNBC interview. She was asked what she thought about Americans going to fight as private individuals (as they did during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s), and also whether other countries, including NATO members, ought to send troops to fight the Russians. Clinton responded:

It may well be that some people will go into Ukraine to help fight the Russians.

I don't think it`s a good idea for that to be a government-sponsored effort. And I think people who go should be made aware that they are going on their own.

It is heartbreaking to see Ukraine standing alone against Russia, although they`re doing so far an amazing job in rallying their citizens. I don`t think you will find any country right now that will do that.

And then she added:

But, remember, the Russians invaded Afghanistan back in 1980. And although no country went in, they certainly had a lot of countries supplying arms and advice and even some advisers to those who were recruited to fight Russia. It didn`t end well for the Russians. There were other unintended consequences, as we know. But the fact is that a very motivated and then funded and armed insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan.

Did you catch the carefully buried reference to 9/11 and all the death and destruction that ensued in the "war on terror" and that still plagues the Middle East? It's in these words: "There were other unintended consequences" -- as though what followed was an insignificant detail of the valiant effort to aid the mujahideen -- al Qaeda was there -- against the Russians beginning in 1979.

Scott Horton, the author of Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, commented:

People really should watch the entire clip to see the way Clinton smirks at the cute little irony of al Qaeda’s attacks against America and the entire 20-year terror war: What are two million dead humans, 10 trillion dollars wasted, the 21st century and new millennium started off soaking in blood just a decade after the peaceful victory for the West after the fall of the USSR? Just a few little-old “unintended consequences,” not even worth mentioning.

Anyone who can talk the way Clinton does is a seriously flawed human being. And she's not the first. Recall that President Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, bragged, no doubt with exaggeration, that he personally lured Russia into Afghanistan so Russia would have its own "Vietnam." Now here's Hillary Clinton essentially saying that, with Western help, Ukraine just might be Russia's 21st-century Afghanistan. Oh, joy!

We shouldn't be surprised by her cynical neglect of the suffering Afghans and Ukrainians. Remember, she was co-president in the 1990s when she and her husband, Bill Clinton the triangulator, helped to pave the way for every virtually manmade disaster of the 21st century.

American Infallibility

Beneath the widespread stubborn American refusal to understand the Russian government's motives for its condemnable invasion of Ukraine is the equally widespread stubborn refusal to learn from the U.S. government's wrong moves with respect to Russia over the last 30 years. But even deeper is the widespread stubborn refusal to even entertain the possibility that the U.S. government might have made any wrong moves at all.

TGIF: When History Begins - Russia, Ukraine & the US

Contrary to what hypocritical U.S. rulers and their loyal mass media suggest, two propositions can both be -- and indeed are -- true:

1. that Russia has grossly, brutally, and criminally mishandled the situation it has faced with respect to Ukraine, and
2. that the U.S. government since the late 1990s has been entirely responsible for imposing that situation on Russia.

If you want the fine details, you can do no better than to watch my Libertarian Institute colleague Scott Horton's excellent cataloging of the irresponsible misdeeds of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joseph Biden in this recent lecture. If, after absorbing this shocking record of indisputable facts, you are seething at what the U.S. government has done to squander a historic chance for good relations with Russia, you will be fully justified -- and then some. (See also this 2015 lecture by John Mearsheimer, the respected "realist" foreign policy analyst at the University of Chicago.)

To appreciate what bipartisan U.S. foreign policy has wrought, think about 1989 when the undreamt-of virtually bloodless dismantling of the Soviet empire began. At that point humanity was on the verge of a new chapter in which the world's largest nuclear superpowers would no longer confront each other, holding everyone hostage. Think about that, and then learn how the U.S. government blew it deliberately, despite all the warnings that the consequences would be dire. (Over-optimism about what might have been is always a danger. In 1990, when President George H. W. Bush ordered Iraq's Saddam Hussein to remove his army from Kuwait, Bush declared a "New World Order," admonishing, "What we say goes." The Russians no doubt noticed.)

How so? By kicking the Russian people in the teeth repeatedly in all kinds of ways when they were reeling from seven decades of communism. If the U.S. government's intent had been to destroy the chance for this historic turn, it couldn't have done a better job.

Americans have a funny way of thinking that history began the day of the latest crisis. The politicians and media feed this bad habit. So if Russia invades Ukraine, the only explanation is that he's power-mad, if not just plain mad. The idea that the U.S. might have set the stage isn't allowed to be entertained. With social-media magnates sucking up to the power elite, this is serious stuff.

Do Americans want to know why Russia went to war? They might not like to hear that "their" government must shoulder a good deal of blame, but it's undeniable that since World War II the power that occupies Middle North America has had its heavy hand in virtually every part of the world. The rules of international law that all nations are supposed to observe simply don't apply to the United States. Just look at the invasions and regime changes that have gone on since 2001, not to mention back to the early 1950s. That's what it means to be the exceptional nation. The rules apply to everyone except America's rulers. (See Robert Wright's "In Defense of Whataboutism.")

This history forms the larger context in which the unconscionable Russian war on Ukraine -- with all the terror it's inflicting on innocents -- is taking place. It is unseemly for an American president to piously admonish the Russian government about its breaches of national sovereignty in light of the shameful U.S. record.

Since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, U.S. presidents have taken a series of actions that seemed designed to make the Russians distrust the West in the new era. This is not hindsight. As noted, many respected establishment foreign-policy figures warned against such measures.

The measures included the bombing of Russia's ally Serbia in the late 1990s; the repeated expansion of NATO, the postwar alliance founded to counter the Soviet Union, to include former Soviet allies and republics; the public talk of including the former Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia in the Western alliance; the trashing of long-standing anti-nuclear-weapons treaties with Russia; the placing of defensive missile launchers (which could be converted to offensive launchers) in Poland and Romania: the attempts to sabotage the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline deal; instigating the 2014 regime change in Ukraine (following earlier regime-changes operations in Ukraine and Georgia); the arming of Ukraine since 2017; the conducting of NATO war exercises, with U.S. personnel, near the Russian border; the years-long evidence-free effort to persuade Americans that Russia manipulated the 2016 presidential election to elect Donald Trump; and much, much, much more. Trump -- recall his goading of NATO members into spending more on their militaries -- was among the offenders: his anti-Russia moves, including NATO expansion like all of his 21st-century predecessors, would fill a list as long as Wilt Chamberlain's arm. If he was a Russian puppet, as the Democrats, intelligence apparatus, and mainstream media want us to believe, then the Russians have a great deal to learn about puppeteering.

Take one of the biggest spurs to war: the eastward expansion of NATO, which the U.S. government and Western Europe promised would not happen after Germany was reunited while the Soviet Union was heading toward termination. It happened anyway, but not because Russia had behaved badly toward the West. It hadn't. In fact, after 9/11 Russian ruler Vladimir Putin was the first to call Bush II to offer his support. Later Putin even suggested that Russia be invited to join NATO, something President George H. W. Bush had once mentioned. One wonders why NATO was even necessary with the Soviet Union gone, but if Russia could join -- really, what was the point?

The expansion of NATO by 1,200 miles toward Russia demonstrates how myopic American rulers can be. American critics repeatedly pointed out that no president would not have tolerated Russia's inviting Mexico and Canada into its now-defunct Warsaw Pact. Yet NATO now includes the Baltic states -- those former Soviet republics on the Russian border, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia --and Eastern European states that were once in the Warsaw Pact.

Indeed, we already know how the U.S. government reacts when its security concerns are flouted. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy was ready to launch a nuclear war against the Soviet Union when it placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. For days the world sat on the edge of its seat wondering if the end was near. (I remember it!) Finally, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev withdrew the missiles, but only when Kennedy secretly agreed to remove American nuclear-tipped missiles from Turkey.

Later American presidents forgot about that crisis. Clinton added Warsaw Pact states late in his second term. Then it was Bush II's turn. At its April 2008 Bucharest summit, NATO declared that it "welcomes Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO." This was a fateful move. As noted, pillars of the foreign policy establishment from George Kennan to Paul Nitze to Robert McNamara had already forcefully spoken out against the first rounds of NATO expansion, which included the Baltic states. No less a figure than Willian Burns, Bush II's ambassador to Russia and now Biden's CIA chief, said in 2008,

Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.

Putin responded to the summit declaration, saying he deemed it a "direct threat" to Russia. A few months later, the emboldened president of Georgia, on Russia's southern border, attacked EU-authorized Russian peacekeepers in the Republic of South Ossetia, which had earlier broken away from Georgia. Russia responded by invading and occupying Georgia. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili thought -- no doubt lead on by the U.S. government -- that the West would back him up, but it did not. Washington, London, Paris, and the rest of NATO were not willing to go to risk a nuclear war with Russia over South Ossetia. (Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky seems to be imitating Shaakashvili.)

This is all too similar to what's going on today, but with something more. After talking about bringing Ukraine into NATO, the U.S. and EU in February 2014 instigated a coup in Kyiv, in which opponents of the government, including neo-Nazis, drove a democratically elected and Russia-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, from office. A leaked recording of a phone call between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (now a Biden official) and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt revealed that the coup and the new leadership of the country were orchestrated by the U.S. State Department. This followed billions of dollars in U.S. aid to "pro-democracy," that is, anti-Yanukovych, organizations.

Yanukovych had been willing to deal with the European Union, but when he balked at the terms of the proposed loan, Russia offered Ukraine $15 billion under more favorable terms. This the EU and U.S. government could not tolerate. Yanukovych had to go.

Keep in mind that eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which is filled with Russian-speaking people, had voted heavily for Yanukovych, with the western part going for his opponent. So driving out the elected president was a direct slap at the ethnic Russians. When the new government came to power, it downgraded Russians from official-language status and tried to cut back on the autonomy of the far-eastern provinces, the Donbas region, which borders Russia. Violence erupted and has continued. Meanwhile, Russia annexed Crimea, which has been a Russian security concern and the home of its only year-round warm-water naval base since the 18th century. Russia could not take the risk that Crimea would become a base for NATO forces. The predominantly ethnic Russians in Crimea approved of the annexation. But one thing Russia refused to do was to accept an annexation invitation from the people in the Donbas.

As a result, the U.S. government sent large amounts of aid to Ukraine, but Obama refused to send weapons because he did not want to escalate the conflict or risk direct war with Russia. He noted, properly, that Ukraine was a core security interest of Russia but not of the United States and that in a conflict over nearby Ukraine, Russia would have a large advantage over the United States, despite America's much larger military. Trump, however, reversed Obama's policy and sent massive arms shipments to Ukraine, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.

As Russia increased pressure on Ukraine over the last year, with a buildup of troops near the border, it made clear its demands: no NATO membership for Ukraine and no missile launchers in Eastern Europe. Since taking office, Biden has talked tough, proclaiming that the United States would support Ukrainian sovereignty, while also saying, first, that U.S. troops would not be committed, second, that Ukraine would not be joining NATO anytime soon, and third, that offensive nuclear missiles would not be placed in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, he scoffed at Russia's demands, insisting that no one but NATO would decide who became a member. This sounded like schoolyard pettiness, with Biden refusing to formalize for Russia his disavowal of things that Biden had already said he would not do.

Would Russia have shelved plans for the invasion had Biden not been so wrongheaded? Who can say? But what was there to lose?

So here we are. The situation is dangerous in a global sense because, in the fog of war, shit happens. (Sorry.) It doesn't help that some prominent Americans, still in the minority, want the U.S. government to do more than impose sanctions, send even more troops to neighboring NATO countries, and further arm Ukraine, all of which Biden is doing -- some, like President Zelensky, are calling for a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would bring America into direct military conflict with Russia. Some are even calling for regime change in Russia. Need we be reminded that, like the U.S. government, Russia has thousands of hydrogen bombs ready to launch. Are these people nuts?

No, history did not begin on February 24, 2022, or even March 18, 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.

What now? It's ridiculous to think that Russia -- given its $1.5 trillion GDP (smaller than Italy's and Texas's) and $60 billion military budget (6 percent of the total U.S. military budget) -- is out to re-establish the Russian empire of old or the Soviet Union. To put things in perspective, the U.S. government has had recent annual increases in military spending that exceeded Russia's entire military budget.

The goal must be a ceasefire. Biden can facilitate that by doing what he should have done long ago: put in writing that Ukraine and Georgia will not join NATO, that the missile launchers will be removed from Eastern Europe, and that the war exercises on Russia's border will end. Ukraine could help by accepting the status of neutrality with Finland-like assurances that it will not let its territory be used offensively against Russia. Biden should also propose that the arms-control treaties trashed by Bush II and Trump will be reinstated in talks with Russia.

Russia, of course, should pledge to leave Ukraine and offer compensation, while the heavily ethnic Russian areas in the east are given the freedom to join Russia.

We need not be at war -- even if it's a new cold war -- with Russia.

Don't Let the US Foreign Policy Elite Off the Hook

It would be unwise in the extreme to let our horror at Putin's invasion of Ukraine to permit us to forget the many ways in which the U.S. foreign policy establishment for over 20 years set the stage for what's happing now.

Change of Pace

It's certainly a change to have a major country other than the United States committing an invasion.

Damn!

Vladimir Putin's invasion and bombing of Ukraine deserve the condemnation of all decent people. Regardless of what has been going on over there, Putin did not have to do it. He had a moral obligation to deal with the issues properly. His actions cannot be excused.

Why Provoke Putin?

No one I know who criticizes America's post-Cold War policy toward Russia -- including the U.S. position on Ukraine -- thinks Vladimir Putin is a good guy. Indeed, the case against U.S. bellicosity toward Russia in no way depends on a favorable view of the Russian ruler. On the contrary, it is because Putin is who he is (an aggrieved nationalist) and because of Russia's place in history that the U.S. policy of ignoring, when not belittling, Russia's security concerns is so dangerous. Russia's history -- including multiple invasions from the west -- is what it is, and that huge nuclear power isn't going anywhere, no matter what America's warmongers would like. Neither are its neighbors going to relocate anytime soon. So a regional modus vivendi is imperative. If the U.S. government continues to stand in the way -- remember the U.S.-backed coup against the elected Ukrainian government in 2014 and the repeated eastward expansion of NATO since the Cold War -- it is an agent of war, not peace.

See Peter Hitchens's take.

TGIF: Joe Biden, Let's Not Go to War with Russia

Here's a good idea: let's not go to war against Russia. Let's not even rattle a saber at Russia (or China, for that matter) because even wars that no one really wants can be blundered into. Many losers would be left in the aftermath, even if nuclear weapons were kept out of sight, but no one would win. So as that smart Defense Department computer says in the 1983 movie WarGames, "The only winning move is not to play."

The crisis du jour is Ukraine; before that, it was Georgia, both former Soviet republics. For some inexplicable reason, Russia's rulers get nervous when the U.S. foreign policy elite treats Russian historical security concerns as of no consequence. Could it have something to do with the several invasions of Russia through Eastern Europe in the past? Jeez, from the way the irrational Russians behave, you'd think their American counterparts never invoked U.S. security concerns (usually bogus) as a reason for military action. As if...

But maybe it is time for America's rulers to take Russian worries into consideration. Even for those of us who are no fans of Vladimir Putin and the government he runs, this seems like good advice – if for no other reason than narrow American self-interest. At least, that's how it looks from the view of regular Americans, who might appreciate for a change what Adam Smith described as "peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice."

Anyone who has paid attention to U.S. foreign policy since the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact alliance, 1989-91, would realize that America's bipartisan foreign-policy elite has taken precisely the wrong tack by baiting nervous Russian nationalists at every turn. Despite promises to the contrary, that elite has led the charge to add members to the NATO alliance, taking the anti-Soviet military and political organization right up to the Russian border and staging military exercises uncomfortably close. The U.S. has also sold weapons systems to NATO-member Poland, formerly a member of the Warsaw Pact.

Putin insists that NATO not expand any further, but Biden told him to shut up. The U.S. position is that NATO's inclusion of former Soviet possessions is purely an alliance affair. Meanwhile, Biden threatens more harsh economic sanctions and even more U.S. troops to Eastern Europe if Putin doesn't acquiesce by, among other things, moving his troops away from the Russia-Ukraine border

Let's also recall that in 2014 the U.S. stood behind a neo-Nazi-supported coup against an elected, Russian-friendly president in Ukraine, knowing full well how the Russians would react. Fearing U.S./NATO encroachment, Putin's government annexed Crimea with its strategic warm-water Black Sea naval base, which has been part of the Russian security system for over 200 years. Nevertheless, and most relevant to today's heightened tensions, Putin declined an opportunity to annex eastern Ukraine (the Donbass region full of ethnic Russians ) when a majority there voted for independence from Kiev.

You didn't have to know too much about European history to see how provocative the U.S.-sponsored regime change in Ukraine would be. To make matters worse, Ukraine and Georgia have become de facto NATO members, but only because the U.S. elite has not yet convinced its European counterparts to give those two former Soviet republics official membership. That, however, hasn't stopped Washington from extending a security guarantee to Ukraine that is all too much like the one that NATO members extend to one another. Biden has just reinforced that guarantee.

Which Americans are ready to die for Kiev?

For some reason it's easy for Americans, who can be as nationalistically self-centered as anyone, to assume that any ratcheting up of tensions with Russia must be the Russians' fault. The establishment media have no problem presenting this as an indisputable fact. But how do they know it's true? They never furnish evidence. Foreign-policy expert Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute has a much more evidence-bound take:

Moscow’s behavior has been more a reaction to aggressive moves that the United States and its Ukrainian client have already taken than it is evidence of offensive intent. Russian leaders have viewed the steady expansion of NATO’s membership and military presence eastward toward Russia’s border since the late 1990s suspiciously and they have considered Washington’s growing strategic love affair with Kiev as especially provocative.

Moreover, Carpenter adds,

Ukraine’s own policies have become dangerously bellicose. The government’s official security doctrine adopted earlier this year, for example, focuses on retaking Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014 following the West’s campaign that helped demonstrators overthrow Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russian president. Statements by President Volodymyr Zelensky and other leaders have been disturbingly bellicose, and Ukraine’s own military deployments have further destabilized an already fragile situation.

Carpenter points out that while the United States is far more powerful than Russia in conventional terms, "unless the United States and its allies are willing to wage an all-out war against Russia, an armed conflict confined to Ukraine (and perhaps some adjacent territories), would diminish much of that advantage. Russian forces would be operating close to home, with relatively short supply and communications lines. US forces would be operating far from home with extremely stressed lines. In other words, there is no certainty that the US would prevail in such a conflict."

Would the Biden administration then back down or go nuclear? Who is eager to find out?

Those considerations aside, the U.S. government should simply stop fanning the Russophobic flames simply because a war would be incredibly stupid.

Stephen F. Cohen: A Rare Voice of Sanity Gone

One of the saddest pieces of news is the death of Stephen F. Cohen at age 81. Cohen, who taught at Princeton and NYU, was an eminent scholar of the history and politics of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. He spent his last years warning against the years-long bipartisan effort to prosecute a new cold war against Russia, with special attention to what has unfortunately come to be known as Russiagate, the groundless allegation, debunked by only a few heroic thinkers, that Trump is an agent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who--fiction has it--is Stalin-reincarnate intent on reconstituting the Soviet Empire. (Putin has also been called, absurdly, a "new Hitler.")

Cohen's last book was War with Russia?, in which he warned that the new cold war could easily turn hot and even nuclear, thanks to Russiagate and U.S. imperial policy in Ukraine and Syria. His analysis is impeccable--not to mention frightening. “I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen said.

I won't go into detail about Cohen's final intellectual battle because the indispensable Caitlin Johnstone has done the job admirably. I'll close with her words: "In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen’s death is a blow to humanity’s desperate quest for clarity and understanding." And, I would add, peace.

It's Beginning to Make Sense

So now, if Trump says he's going to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, he'll be accused of turning tail before the Russians. I wonder if there's a connection,

Regarding the Latest in Russophobia

I might believe the latest Russia story (about bounties for American scalps in Afghanistan) when I see a headline like this:

Russian Fiscal Conservatives Blast Putin for Paying for What He's Already Getting for Free

TGIF: War Over Ukraine?

Who wants to go to war against Russia in defense of Ukraine over the Kerch Strait, which lies between the Black and Azov seas and between Russia’s Taman Peninsula and Russian-annexed Crimea? 

A show of hands, please.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

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