Six on History: Ukraine (not found on MSNBC)
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1) US military aid to Ukraine guarantees more suffering and death, by Stephen Kinzer, Boston Globe
"Ukraine has suffered two terrible afflictions in recent weeks. First came the horrific Russian invasion, which has set off bloody conflict and outraged much of the world. Second is the American decision to send that suffering country massive amounts of advanced weaponry, which guarantees more suffering and death.
Never has the United States rushed so quickly to provide so much high-tech armament to a distant country already enveloped in war. Rather than sending diplomats in an urgent effort to reach an armistice and stop the bloodshed, the United States is fueling an already raging conflagration.
This week President Biden announced that he would send Ukraine a staggering $800 million worth of “our most cutting-edge systems.” His largesse includes 800 Stinger missiles, which are hand-held projectiles that can bring down a military jet or a civilian airliner, and 9,000 “anti-armor” systems, which can blow up tanks or trucks. They will not only be used to kill Russians, but also provoke Russia to respond by killing more Ukrainians. Given the number of mercenaries that both sides are recruiting from around the world, some of these weapons will almost certainly leak onto the global black market. Look for them to turn up in the arsenals of terrorists around the world.
Nearly everyone in Washington has succumbed to our new national hysteria. One exception is Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who warned that escalating this war “does not help Ukraine, does not help the people of the United States, and does not make the world any safer.” An even more trenchant dissent came from the other end of the political spectrum. “What is the one thing that brings Republicans and Democrats together?” Senator Rand Paul asked. “War! They love it. The more the better.”
It’s bad enough that the United States and NATO have joined Putin in a mad escalation, recklessly fueling war and making no serious effort to reach peace. Even worse is that the peace formula is clear for all to see. It’s mind-numbingly simple: a non-aligned Ukraine without foreign troops or weapons. Call it the Henry Kissinger Plan, since 10 years ago he wrote that “if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.” By today’s standards, that makes Kissinger a “Kremlin stooge” who is “parroting Putin’s talking points.”
Our escalation in Ukraine will fuel counter-escalation. That intensifies a confrontation between two nuclear-armed powers. Every Russian weapon sent to Ukraine means horror. So does every American weapon. Our testosterone-fueled war fever invites disaster for Ukraine, Russia, Europe, and the world. A peaceful solution is within easy reach. We should grab it."
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
The war in Yemen, now in its eighth year, has been every bit as brutal. The war in Syria has been far deadlier, and both regime forces and Islamist militants have employed chemical weapons. Yet in those and other conflicts, we were not shown such raw and immediate images of the dead, among them the now-iconic New York Times close-up of a mother and two young children killed by Russian mortar fire in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin.
It’s not that journalists didn’t see and document such atrocities in other wars. Photos of children starving in Yemen, or the image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc running naked down a road in Vietnam after being burned with napalm have shocked the conscience. But news organizations traditionally have been squeamish about publishing images of people who had been killed in conflict, with an especially strong taboo about showing victims’ faces.
As an editor, I helped police those boundaries. Our goal was to inform readers while preserving the dignity of the dead and their families. We aimed to avoid turning our customers’ stomachs to no productive end.
That was before social media, however. In 1994, when the bloodiest genocide since World War II took place in Rwanda, there was no way for observers to capture incidents of mass slaughter with the cameras on their phones and then instantly disseminate the images worldwide. The husband and father of those victims in Irpin first learned of the death of his family from pictures he saw on Twitter. In that moment, “I lost everyone and lost the meaning of life,” he told The Post.
Mainstream news organizations could reasonably ask themselves whose sensibilities they imagine they’re protecting, given the ubiquity of social media. They could also point to other contexts in which showing images of people as they died and after their deaths were universally considered to be in the public interest — the nine-minute cellphone video of Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck, for example.
Still, I have to wonder whether something more than technology is involved in the way this war, as opposed to other wars, is being presented. The unmistakable subtext of the coverage is: These are people just like us, and we could be at risk like them.
The vast majority of the victims in Ukraine are European, White and Christian. Quite a few speak at least a little English. With their puffer coats and their rolling suitcases, they look familiar as they climb onto the trains that speed them into exile. Their children play with Muppets dolls and Legos.
Whether intentionally or subconsciously, news organizations make this war more vivid and more tragic by focusing so tightly on victims and refugees. We get to see them as individuals, not as an undifferentiated mass. Viewers and readers are invited, if not forced, to imagine ourselves in similar circumstances. It is no wonder that so many members of Congress, reflecting the views of their constituents, are pressing the Biden administration to intervene more robustly, despite the obvious risks of entering an armed conflict with Russia.
Civilians killed and displaced by the 2003 invasion of Iraq suffered no less grievously.[as of 3/20/22, about 200x more in Iraq!] But the fact is that we rarely get intimately acquainted with the victims (who, in that case, were neither European nor White nor Christian) when U.S. forces are the ones firing the cruise missiles and lobbing the artillery shells.
I don’t believe these are willfully biased decisions being made by editors. And I have nothing but awed respect for the reporters covering the Ukraine war, including Brent Renaud, the American journalist and filmmaker killed on Sunday at a checkpoint outside Kyiv.
“This was not his first war. This was not his first highly complex situation. He was not a cowboy,” said Ann Marie Lipinski, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where Renaud spent the 2018-2019 academic year as a Nieman fellow. “He was such an unusual man, with a very deep sensitivity, a shyness that made people at ease. There was a profound humanity about him. It was okay to love your subject.”
Wounded in that same incident was Juan Arredondo, Renaud’s collaborator and Nieman classmate, who has undergone surgery at a hospital in Ukraine.
The Ukraine crisis is not something we want to see, and the events again show that countries should not come to the point of meeting on the battlefield. Conflict and confrontation are not in anyone's interest, and peace and security are what the international community should treasure the most, Xi said.
After Biden said the US does not seek a new Cold War, changes in China's system, a stronger alliance against China, supporting "Taiwan secessionism" or conflict with China, Xi said he takes the remarks very seriously.
On China-US relations, Xi said the direct cause for the current situation in the China-US relationship is that some people on the US side have not followed through on the important common understanding reached by the two presidents and have not acted on Biden's positive statements. The US has misperceived and miscalculated China's strategic intention.
The meeting lasted nearly two hours, and both Xi and Biden agreed that it was constructive, and urged working groups on both sides to take concrete actions to bring bilateral relations back to the right track and make respective efforts in solving the Ukraine crisis.
President Xi has focused on the big picture - instead of merely talking about the Ukraine crisis. He stressed China's overall views on security and diplomacy and reiterated our principles, Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
President Xi's remarks on the Ukraine crisis have comprehensively declared China's stance and by standing at a higher level, he encouraged peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, and talks between the US, NATO and Russia, Lü said, noting that some US senior officials' aggressive pressuring toward China had never affected China's own pace.
"I think the Friday talk is not only meaningful for the China-US relations, but also for the global geopolitical situation. The Chinese leader's remarks showed countries closely following the US in inciting a crisis what a responsible major power should do in facing with problems," said Lü.
President Xi also made remarks on the Taiwan question. Lü said that these are signals to the US - if it keeps playing with fire on the Taiwan question and violates China's core interests, there will be no friendly or positive interactions between China and the US.
The Ukraine crisis is already a headache for the US and it will not like more confrontations with China. The US and its politicians should abandon the fantasy that they could solve all problems by imposing sanctions or coercion as it is impossible to solve global problems, including political crises or economic issues without China and Russia, Lü said.
Just hours before the meeting, China, in a rare move, sent tough signals, stating it will never accept US threats and coercion over the Ukraine issue and vowing to make a strong response if the US takes measures harming China's legitimate interests.
In an exclusive interview with the Global Times, an anonymous Chinese official said China accepted the US' proposal for the phone call between the heads of the two countries on China-US relations and the Ukraine situation out of considerations of bilateral relations, promoting peace talks and urging the US to take right stance.
China will never accept US threats and coercion, and if the US takes measures that harm China's legitimate interests and the interests of Chinese enterprises and individuals, China will not sit idly by and will make a strong response, the official stressed, noting the US should not have any illusions or miscalculations about this.
China's strong signals were sent as the Biden administration has intensified its disinformation campaign over China's "military support" to Russia and attempted to threaten China with "dire consequences."
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken gives a press briefing at the end of a NATO Foreign Ministers' meeting at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, 24 March 2021.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that Biden will make clear during Friday's call that China will "bear responsibility for any actions it takes to support Russia's aggression, and we will not hesitate to impose costs," he told a media briefing.
Chinese analysts said China's clear statement on its stand is very necessary and timely, when the US seeks to manipulate Friday's talk to coerce China to change its diplomatic position, provoke China-Russia relations and smear China's image, which is sinister and vicious.
China is sending a stern warning to the Biden administration not to harbor any illusions of changing China in Friday night's talk, and is urging Biden to calm down on the practical issues of the two countries, analysts said.
Just days after the Rome meeting between senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, the US reached out to China again for a higher-level meeting, which in some Chinese analysts' view reflected the US' growing anxiety over the uncontrollable consequences of the worsening Ukraine crisis, especially after its attempt to change China's position failed in Rome and the US is in dire need of China's help to deal with the chaos it created but failed to handle.
Friday's meeting is being made as the US is caught in double plight: worrying about possible nuclear conflict with Russia with its extreme pressure against it and the risk of a rapid escalation of conflicts with China over the Taiwan question, Chinese analysts said, noting the Taiwan question and the Ukraine issue will be high on the agenda of the exchange.
Behind the Biden administration's designed pressuring on China was its deep anxiety and pressing need for help from China on the Ukraine crisis, Li Haidong, a professor from the Institute of International Relations of China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.
"Friday's meeting for the US is far more urgent than other issues Biden has dealt with since he took office. The exchange was held as the US, under extreme urgent circumstances, requested to have exchanges with China on Ukraine," Li said.
Some American media are also aware of the US' dilemma. In covering Friday's exchange, Bloomberg News said in its headline that, "Biden looks to China for help with Putin." An opinion piece for Bloomberg said the worse Russia does, "the greater the risks America and its European allies may face."
The Ukraine issue is the consequence of accumulated problems between the US and Russia or the US-led NATO's continuous pressuring and challenging of Russia's security, thus the US, deep inside, does not expect China to solve it, but it still wants to draw China into its mess or ask China to help it out since the current situation is beyond its expectations and it will become harder for the US to avoid being directly involved in it, Lü said.
Lü pointed out that Biden has been naïve for thinking that Russia will not fight back when faced with the US' provocations, and now he is using fuel to put out the fire in Ukraine while being afraid the fire will reach NATO.
However, the US on one hand is seeking China's help with the worsening Ukraine crisis that it created but failed to handle; on the other hand, it is pressuring and threatening China, which is typical American practice, Li said, noting that it is unwise and counterproductive.
"If the US harbors an illusion that China will yield to its pressure on the Ukraine crisis and China-Russia relations, it only reflects that the US has a too superficial understanding of current complex international situations and the right and wrong of facts," Li said.
Many of the US and West's sanctions against Russia were done purely via long-arm jurisdiction without permission from the UN. And such a practice of framing relations with other countries based on its domestic law and forcing third countries to accept it is undoubtedly contrary to the spirit of international law and the principles of the UN Charter, Chinese analysts said.
While trying to drag China into the mess the US created, Washington is also smearing China-Russia relations with rumors and disinformation to sow discord between the two.
After Sullivan warned China that it would "absolutely face consequences" if it helped Moscow evade sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova denounced Sullivan's remarks on Thursday, saying it is another manifestation of Washington's imperialist and hegemonic ambitions. China-Russia relations have strong internal momentum, which are not affected by international changes, she said.
China and Russia have reiterated there is no military cooperation, and the high-level strategic partnership between the two countries has never targeted any third party, nor will it be affected by any third party. This is a key point that the US and the West never understand, analysts said.
China has developed bilateral relations with Russia and the US respectively and it does not use bilateral relations to target Russia or the US. Currently, the conflicts between the US and Russia and between China and the US all have roots in the US, and the US is trying to sow discord between Russia and China, Lü said, noting that this is why China has reiterated that the US' actions should fit its remarks.
Photo taken on July 21, 2019 from Xiangshan Mountain shows the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taipei, southeast China's Taiwan. Photo:Xinhua
Explosive issue on China-US relations
Mishandling of the Taiwan question will have a disruptive impact on the bilateral ties, and China hopes that the US will give due attention to this issue, Xi said in the video talk.
While driving Russia into a corner on the Ukraine issue, the US has also tried to drive China into a corner with the most "explosive issue" for bilateral ties - the Taiwan question, Yang Xiyu, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times.
The US has been quickly advancing its Indo-Pacific strategy using Taiwan as its pawn, and kept sending wrong signals to Taiwan secessionists by sending former American diplomats to visit the island, which shows its conflict with China over Taiwan question is rapidly escalating, Yang said.
Some US officials also hyped the relevance of the Ukraine issue with the Taiwan question, but the two are fundamentally different.
Top US Air Force General Kenneth Wilsbach connected the situation in Ukraine with the question of Taiwan, claiming that one of the "key lessons" the Chinese are taking from the Ukraine situation is the "solidarity of the global community," and that if China behaves in a similar way against the island or another neighbor, "something more robust will happen."
If the US does not take seriously China's concern but just wants to seek China's help for its own purposes, such pattern of interaction would not work out but only inject more uncertainty into China-US relations, analysts warned."
"With the aim to train reinforcement of northern Norway, Cold Response will be the largest NATO exercise inside the Arctic Circle since the 1980s. Some 35,000 soldiers from 28 nations will participate and a significant portion of the training that kicks off in March will be at sea and in the air.
Preparation for the long-time planned exercise is already well underway and is not directly linked to the current standoff between NATO and Moscow over Russia’s massive military buildup of troops at Ukraine’s border. However, a conflict in eastern Europe could spill over to the Arctic as the Kola Peninsula is home to some of Russia’s most powerful weapon systems, including hypersonic cruise missiles and the naval component of the strategic nuclear triad.
On January 11, the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy announced that its newest aircraft carrier, the “HMS Prince of Wales”, will sail to the Arctic to lead naval involvement in the large-scale Norwegian-led exercise Cold Response.
“NATO is the cornerstone of the UK defence and our commitment to the alliance is absolute and it is a privilege to be the UK Maritime Component Commander moving into our vital role this year,” said Rear Admiral Mike Utley, Commander UK Strike Force.
“The Royal Navy is global, modern, ready and well placed to support NATO in all its endeavours,” Utley said.
The brand new aircraft carrier is the second in the Queen Elizabeth-class and can operate an air wing of 24 to 36 F-35 fighter jets and 14 helicopters, including the Apache that Britain’s Armed Forces first time started to train with from Bardufoss air station in Arctic Norway in 2019.
Cold Response 2022 (CR22) kicks off in the second half of March and will continue to the beginning of April.
US carrier groupFirst intended to sail through the Suez into the Gulf, [The Mullahs will have to wait their turn!] the American carrier group “USS Harry S Truman” has due to Russia’s military threat to Ukraine been held in the Eastern Mediterranean. Norway’s frigate “Fridtjof Nansen” is part of the carrier group.
Norway’s Minister of Defense, Odd Roger Enoksen, said in an interview with newspaper VG this week that the American carrier group and the Norwegian frigate in February will sail to the North Atlantic where the plan is to take part in the NATO exercise Cold Response 2022.
During NATO’s Trident Juncture exercise in 2018, the US aircraft carrier “USS Harry S. Truman“ sailed north of the Arctic Circle in the Norwegian Sea for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The carrier stayed in the waters around Lofoten archipelago.
“USS Harry S Truman” (CVN-75) is of the Nimitz-class and can bring 90 fighter jets and helicopters. The ship is powered by two nuclear reactors.
According to the latest update from the Norwegian Armed Forces, Exercise Cold Response will consist of 14,000 soldiers on land, 13,000 at sea and 8,000 serving aircraft and headquarters at different bases.
The main action during Cold Response 2022 will be by navy and air force capacities in the Ofoten area.
The region is near to the Army’s northern brigade and training areas where U.S., British and Dutch soldiers frequently drill Arctic warfare. This week, the first British soldiers arrived at Bardufoss air station, preparing for the winter exercise.
Ofoten is also home to Evenes airport where Norway’s new fleet of P8 Poseidon maritime surveillance planes will be based together with NATO’s two northernmost Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) F-35s fighter jets on standby to meet Russian military planes flying near Norwegian air space. For NATO and the Nordic countries’ defense partnership, Ofoten is core strategic important in case of a larger global conflict involving Russia in the North-Atlantic.
The area is about 600 kilometers from the Kola Peninsula where the Northern Fleet’s nuclear submarines are based.
Russia invitedHead of the Norwegian Armed Forces, General Eirik Kristoffersen, said to the Barents Observer last year that Russia is informed about the exercise “in accordance with international standards and agreements.”
Under the Vienna Document, member states in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) invite each other to observe military exercises.
“Russia will be invited to observe Cold Response 2022,” Kristoffersen said.
Following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Oslo, like most other NATO members, cut defense ties with Russia. The Norwegians, though, maintain a hotline from the military Headquarters near Bodø to the Northern Fleet Headquarters in Severomorsk.
On Thursday, the OSCE’s Permanent Council met in Vienna aimed at defusing tensions on Russia’s border to Ukraine and other security-related matters in Europe. The meeting is the third in a row this week where the escalating military troubles are up for discussion. First, Russia and the US held bilateral talks and on Wednesday, a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council took place."
