‘When Russia finishes this current military campaign, I believe the Ukrainian Army will be physically destroyed. Tragically, this means that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are going to lose their lives. This is going to be a slaughter, a massacre, but they opted for this, so they pay the price.’
He also warned that there will likely be a ‘dedicated Strategic Air Campaign’ to destroy Ukraine so much that ‘there will be no viable functioning nation.’ Ritter explained that this will force the final collapse of the Zelensky regime and allow a new government to come to power and accept surrender.
https://indepthnews.net/index.php/opinion/5887-us-intelligence-officer-warns-of-a-slaughter-a-massacre
Ritter kreeg grote bekendheid voorafgaand aan de illegale aanval op Irak, onder aanvoering van de VS, omdat hij als voormalige wapeninspecteur erop wees dat het regime van Saddam Hoessein geen massavernietingswapens bezat. Op 22 februari 2012, negen jaar nadat de illegale en desastreuze agressieoorlog tegen Irak was begonnen berichtte de Amerikaanse journalist Matt Bai in The New York Times dat ‘Ritter was in fact vindicated (gelijk had gekregen. svh) about Iraq's lack of Weapons of Mass Desruction and that the aftermath of the war could be calamitous.’ Bai beschreef Ritter als de ‘most determined dissenter and the one with the most on-the-ground intelligence.’ Ook nu weer blijkt dat hij mede dankzij zijn bronnen binnen de Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten veel beter geïnformeerd is dan de overgrote meerderheid van de ‘corporate press,’ die klakkeloos de propaganda weergeven van de macht. In een radioprogramma onder de kop ‘BRINGING LIGHT AND LIFTING THE FOG OF U.S. PROPAGANDA WITH SCOTT RITTER,’ uitgezonden door een onafhankelijke lokale zender in Austin, de hoofdstad van Texas, werd hij als volgt ingeleid:
1. In addition to current nuclear war threat and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 Ritter shares the 1983 Able Archer NATO nuclear threat that followed Autumn Forge military exercises and how President Reagan addressed it with the INF Treaty of the late 1980s and the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty that followed which protected Europe.
2. Under Putin the living standards demonstrably improved for the majority Russian population, while previous to Putin the CIA and NATO worked to import Wahabbist Islamic fundamentalism into Chechnya with the design to create a new Afghanistan-like impact that would tear Russia apart as we sought to have other nationalities break away from Russia as well as part of a strategy to dismember Russia. In 1996 we stole an election to have our guy Boris Yeltsin elected.
3. Who was provoking who? NATO multiple 2021 military exercises on Russia’s border preceding the Russian invasion and with NATO knowledge, Ukraine’s bad faith in using the 2015 Minsk agreement to buy time to build up their forces — oftewel ‘Diplomacy in NATO terms’
4. And in 2015 US built permanent training facility in Ukraine following coup to train Ukraine forces to fight in the Donbass
5. Nuclear doctrine of Russia and Russia clear warnings of a redline and their good faith effort to pursue diplomatic path that the US rejected.
6. NATO enhanced Opportunity to Promote Inter-operability making Ukraine’s non membership in NATO a myth as they trained Ukraine military to NATO standards.
7. Focus on ratio of Ukrainian vs Russian military deaths rather than loss of occupied land. Preserving the ability to fight more important than territorial gains.
https://koop.org/2022/10/bringing-light-and-lifting-the-fog-of-us-propaganda-with-scott-ritter/
Duidelijk is dat de polderpers in haar ‘berichtgeving’ over de Oekraïne zich niets aantrekt van de hierboven beschreven feiten. Op 15 november 2022 nodigde de Amerikaanse ‘nonprofit media organization The Real News Network’ Ritter uit om het publiek te informeren over de werkelijkheid van de NAVO’s ‘proxy war.’ Ook nu waarschuwde hij het publiek ‘DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE. UKRAINE CAN’T WIN THIS WAR.’
Reports of Ukrainian triumph and imminent Russian defeat have flooded the West since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February. Yet how much merit is there to this narrative? Former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector William Scott Ritter Jr. speaks with Dimitri Lascaris in a special interview for The Real News. Despite taking some ground in September’s counteroffensive, the Ukrainian military has taken heavy losses and is totally dependent on external support. Moreover, Ritter argues that Ukraine’s objectives in this war are unachievable, whereas Russia’s can be met through a negotiated settlement. While the war rages on and attempts to sanction Russia continue to backfire, more damage is being done to the people of Europe and Ukraine than to Russia. Ultimately, what must come out of this conflict is an admission from Europe that NATO is an anachronism and a new security paradigm is needed to promote international peace and cooperation. This interview was recorded Nov. 4, 2022.
Scott Ritter: Well, let’s just start with basic strategic objectives. Let’s look at the Russian strategic objectives first. First and foremost, Russia is seeking to get Europe and the United States to buy into the notion of a negotiated new European security framework. It’s something that Russia put on the table prior to invading Ukraine. If people remember back to Dec. 17, I believe, of last year, Russia submitted two draft treaties, one to NATO, one to the United States, which articulated Russia’s stance on what its vision of a new European security framework could look like. They invited the West to read it and have a serious discussion about it, and they were ignored.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and Russia has two objectives. One is the demilitarization of Ukraine, the other is the denazification of Ukraine. Demilitarization means the elimination of all NATO influence on the Ukrainian military, and deNazification means just that, getting rid of everything that Russia considers to be related to the ultra nationalistic ideology of Stepan Bandera and the white supremacist manifestations of that.
Scott Ritter: Well, let’s just start with basic strategic objectives. Let’s look at the Russian strategic objectives first. First and foremost, Russia is seeking to get Europe and the United States to buy into the notion of a negotiated new European security framework. It’s something that Russia put on the table prior to invading Ukraine. If people remember back to Dec. 17, I believe, of last year, Russia submitted two draft treaties, one to NATO, one to the United States, which articulated Russia’s stance on what its vision of a new European security framework could look like. They invited the West to read it and have a serious discussion about it, and they were ignored.
I would say that Russia’s closer to achieving its objectives than Ukraine is to achieving its objectives, which tells me Russia has the momentum, Russia has the initiative, and Russia has realistic objectives that can be attained. Ukraine doesn’t. I mean, there’s just literally no one on this planet besides maybe… I don’t even think the Ukrainians believe it, that they’re going to recapture the Donbas, that they’re going to recapture Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, that they’re going to recapture Crimea. This is fantasy. So you have one side that their objectives are fantasy based, you have another side whose objectives are, while difficult to achieve, are very realistic. So I’ll go with the realistic side over the fantasy side as to who I think is going to prevail.
Then we take a look at capabilities. For certain, Ukraine had a good September. There’s no one that’s going to debate that issue whatsoever. But at what cost? And what I mean by that is in order to achieve this good September, Ukraine had to absorb billions, tens of billions of dollars worth of NATO equipment. It took months to do this. It took months to get people trained on this, to bring the equipment in, to match the equipment with the people, organize it, and bring it to the battlefield. And then in one month, Ukraine pretty much burned through everything. The casualties they’ve suffered have been horrific. They’ve lost the equipment, they’ve lost most of the manpower, and they’re down to a position now where they’re begging the West to help them reconstitute this capability.
Russia started September with pretty much the same force structure that it brought in when it invaded in February, and what had happened is Russia pretty much had insufficient resources to the task they had set forth for themself. They had many parts of the defensive line that were stretched thin, and the Ukrainians were able to exploit this. And the Russians wisely, I believe, traded territory for lives. Now the Russians aren’t in the business of just throwing away Russian lives, and so they weren’t going to hold on to a strong point and defend it to the last man. They were more than happy to withdraw, trade territory, save lives, consolidate their defensive positions, all the while inflicting what should have been prohibitive casualties on the Ukrainians, tens of thousands of losses.
Meanwhile, while Russia is consolidating their lines, they are reinforcing. Vladimir Putin ordered the partial mobilization, 300,000 reservists have been called up, 87,000 of them are currently deployed into the special military operations zone, the rest are finalizing their organization into fresh combat units, which will give the Russians tremendous flexibility and operational capacity. So as Ukraine is shrinking its combat capability, Russia is increasing its combat capability.
And then we take a look at the strategic aspects of this conflict. I think the West made a mistake in misinterpreting Russia’s soft approach to the special military operation, going in with fewer numbers than many people thought was necessary, and going in softer, not doctrinally, not using overwhelming firepower, not rolling through, in effect, trying to reduce civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure. While the reduction of civilian casualties continues to be an objective of Russia, the day and age of saying, we don’t want to harm civilian infrastructure, is over. Russia has taken the gloves off and has shown that it can close down Ukraine as a modern nation state anytime it wants to.
It’s degraded their electrical grid, their power grid. Ukraine has rolling blackouts, and the Russians are taking it easy. Russia could easily shut everything down, but they’re not, they’re making a point right now that they can do this damage. Meanwhile, Russia is disfunctioning as it is, and then we take it out a step further because it’s not just Ukraine that’s suffering.
You see, the West thought they were going to A, deter Russian aggression and B, compel Russia to stop its aggression by imposing massive economic sanctions, I think that’s the word that was used, unprecedented economic sanctions. I mean, we were told there were masterful economists, experts in energy security that had solved the issue of how to shut down this gas station disguised as a nation. All we have to do is cut off their gas, their energy, and they’re going to shrivel up and go away.
Russia proves that the gas station actually knows more about global energy security than the West does. They flipped the script. Russia’s not the nation suffering, Europe is suffering, the entire continent is suffering. America’s suffering. What people are talking about, we have a couple weeks left of diesel fuel. I don’t think people comprehend what that means, when we run out of diesel fuel or we get such a shortage that the prices go through the roof. Because diesel powers the trucks that make the supply line work, that bring food to our stores at a reasonable price. And you start jacking up the price of the cost of transportation, it will be transferred to the consumer. And if you eliminate diesel potential to where transportation is frozen, nothing makes it to market.
Russia doesn’t have this problem. So they’ve won that battle, too. So across the board, from the big picture strategic aspect of the West supporting Ukraine to Ukraine’s ability to sustain the conflict, but what’s happening on the battlefield, it’s advantage Russia, advantage Russia, advantage Russia, advantage Russia. Russia’s winning this war. Call it controversial, but that’s my take.
https://therealnews.com/scott-ritter-dont-believe-the-hype-ukraine-cant-win-this-war
Op 10 februari 2007 hield Vladimir Poetin een historische toespraak tijdens de ‘Munich Conference on Security Policy.’ De Russische president herinnerde de aanwezige staatslieden erop dat:
It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders, and we continue to strictly fulfill the treaty obligations and do not react to these actions at all.
The stones and concrete blocks of the Berlin Wall have long been distributed as souvenirs. But we should not forget that the fall of the Berlin Wall was possible thanks to a historic choice — one that was also made by our people, the people of Russia — a choice in favor of democracy, freedom, openness and a sincere partnership with all the members of the big European family.
And now they are trying to impose new dividing lines and walls on us — these walls may be virtual but they are nevertheless dividing, ones that cut through our continent. And is it possible that we will once again require many years and decades, as well as several generations of politicians, to dissemble and dismantle these new walls?
Dear ladies and gentlemen!
We are unequivocally in favor of strengthening the regime of non-proliferation. The present international legal principles allow us to develop technologies to manufacture nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes. And many countries with all good reasons want to create their own nuclear energy as a basis for their energy independence. But we also understand that these technologies can be quickly transformed into nuclear weapons.
This creates serious international tensions. The situation surrounding the Iranian nuclear program acts as a clear example. And if the international community does not find a reasonable solution for resolving this conflict of interests, the world will continue to suffer similar, destabilizing crises because there are more threshold countries than simply Iran. We both know this. We are going to constantly fight against the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Last year Russia put forward the initiative to establish international centers for the enrichment of uranium. We are open to the possibility that such centers not only be created in Russia, but also in other countries where there is a legitimate basis for using civil nuclear energy. Countries that want to develop their nuclear energy could guarantee that they will receive fuel through direct participation in these centers. And the centers would, of course, operate under strict IAEA supervision…
Regarding our perception of NATO’s eastern expansion, I already mentioned the guarantees that were made and that are not being observed today. Do you happen to think that this is normal practice in international affairs? But all right, forget it. Forget these guarantees. With respect to democracy and NATO expansion. NATO is not a universal organization, as opposed to the UN. It is first and foremost a military and political alliance, military and political! Well, ensuring one’s own security is the right of any sovereign state. We are not arguing against this. Of course we are not objecting to this. But why is it necessary to put military infrastructure on our borders during this expansion? Can someone answer this question?
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/copy/24034
De Britse hoogleraar Russische en Europese Politiek aan de Universiteit van Kent, Richard Satwa, tevens als deskundige verbonden aan de bekende denktank Chatham House, schreef in zijn opzienbarende boek Frontline Ukraine. Crisis in the Borderlands (2015) met betrekking tot 'The New Suicide of Europe':
On hearing of the outbreak of World War I, Pope Benedict XV declared that it represented ‘the suicide of Europe.’ One hundred years later we can talk of a ‘new suicide,’ as the idealism associated with a whole era of European integration has been revealed as nugatory and an illusion. At the heart of the EU is a peace project, and it delivered on this promise in Western Europe before 1989. However, when faced with a no less demanding challenge in the post-Communist era — to heal the Cold War divisions and to build the foundations for a united continent — the EU has spectacularly failed. Instead of a vision embracing the whole continent, it has become little more than the civilian wing of the Atlantic security alliance. Even its increasingly limited commitment to social and cross-national solidarity is jeopardised by the putative Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Atlanticism is becoming increasingly ramified, while Russia is increasingly left out in the cold.
Ukraine exposed the crisis in the EU’s development. As an institution, it struggled to make itself relevant in devising policies that could provide solutions to fundamental international problems. The drift towards a merger with the Atlantic security system left it bereft of autonomy and policy instruments when it really mattered — maintaining peace on the European continent. As Lukyanov (hoofdredacteur van het kwartaal-tijdschrift Russia in Global Affairs. svh) puts it, the EU was preoccupied with its own survival and:
‘internal disagreements caused by the conflict over Russia constitute no less of a risk than the losses Europe will suffer as a result of downgrading its ties with Moscow. The question of which risk is more dangerous will be answered by the EU in due course.’
It is easy to argue that the EU as an institution was marginalized as the crisis developed, and this was indeed the case, but its performance was even worse: it failed to restrain the war party in Washington or to articulate a strategy that was more nuanced and in keeping with its proclaimed normative values. The EU proved desperately inept as a conflict regulator.
More than that, its lack of strategic perspective and dismissive attitude to Russian concerns reflected the absorption of the US culture of hegemonism. As David Habakkuk (directeur van de Britse RIVERSIDE TELEVISION LIMITED, a private limited company svh), drawing on the work of Hew Strachan (Britse militair historicus. svh), notes regarding British policy on the eve of the Great War (Eerste Wereldoorlog. svh), instead of committing to a strategy of “containment” of Germany in alliance with France and Russia it may have been wise to seek some sort of compromise with Germany. Habakkuk goes on:
‘If […] one looks at recent Western policy, what is evident is a complete lack of any serious attempt to "calculate at least a step ahead." That an attempt to wrest the whole of Ukraine away from Russia, and incorporate it in “the West” would produce essentially the kind of crisis that has developed was obvious to any reasonably rational being years ago. We have here, not simply a crisis of Western foreign policy, but a crisis of our whole system of government, and faith in “democracy.”’
Critics of the failure of the EU to adopt severe sanctions more swiftly complained that this was because of the high level of dependency on Russian energy imports and the intense ties in some countries between their corporations and Russia. This is undoubtedly a factor shaping national policy making and the EU leadership as a whole, but there is also another explanation — there were still a few leaders in the EU who realized that the Ukraine crisis was not simply the outcome of Putinite Russia’s alleged malevolence, but was born out of a complex set of interactions, perceptions and fears. Critics of the rush to sanctions and other coercive measures understood that sooner or later a negotiated exit from the crisis would have to be found, and condemned the failure to seize the opportunities as they emerged, for example after Poroshenko’s election and after the MH17 tragedy.
Voor alle duidelijkheid: Poroshenko was de corrupte president van Oekraïne na het Maidan-geweld van 2014 dat met vijf miljard dollar gefinancierd werd door de Amerikaanse regering onder president Obama, en gecoordineerd werd door de Amerikaanse staatssecretaris voor Europese en Euraziatische betrekkingen van het ministerie van buitenlandse zaken, Victoria Nuland, exponent van de agressieve Joods Amerikaanse neoconservatieve pro-Israel Lobby die de grote drijfkracht vormde achter de illegale, uiterst gewelddadige, en desastreuze bezetting van Irak.
As a candidate for a second term in 2019, Poroshenko obtained 24.5% in the second round, and was defeated by Volodymyr Zelenskyy. There was no true consensus in the expert community on a singular reason for why Poroshenko lost, though various reasons cited are; a rapid decline in the overall quality of life, failure to successfully end the war, failure to stem corruption, several corruption scandals in which Poroshenko or people closely associated with him were involved (that included an investigation publicized during the election campaign, according to which Poroshenko's people created a money laundering scheme in Ukroboronprom), a conflict with Ihor Kolomoyskyi which resulted in an anti-Poroshenko campaign by 1+1 Media Group (one of the largest media conglomerates in Ukraine), an information campaign supported by Russia against him, an overall fatigue from Ukrainian political elites, a presidential campaign that was focused almost exclusively on the right-wing and nationalistic population and exploited the patriotism topic at the expense of debates about social and economic situation, and lack of understanding and communication with Ukrainian people.
Poroshenko is a people's deputy of the Verkhovna Rada and leader of the European Solidarity party. Outside government, Poroshenko has been a prominent Ukrainian oligarch with a lucrative career in acquiring and building assets. His most recognized brands are Roshen, a large-scale confectionery company which has earned him the nickname of ‘Chocolate King’ and his TV news channel 5 kanal, which he was forced to sell to comply with anti-oligarch legislation in November 2021. He is considered an oligarch due to the scale of his business holdings in manufacturing, agriculture and finance, his political influence from several stints in government prior to his presidency, and his ownership of an influential mass-media outlet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_Poroshenko
Nogmaals enkele fragmenten uit Frontline Ukraine. Crisis in the Borderlands (2015), waarin professor Richard Sakwa erop wijst dat:
The EU of course is not a state but an ensemble of complex institutions, processes and member states, and thus the expectation that it can act with the purpose of a state is ill-founded. Nevertheless, the Ukraine crisis posed a fundamental existential choice before the EU, the answer to which would determine its fate. On the one hand, the EU could try to refine its continental vocation and find mechanisms and means to avoid the imposition of a new Iron Curtain that would doom the continent to a renewed period of militarization and confrontation. The economic platform for renewed continentalism, whether called ‘Greater Europe’ or something else, has already been laid. The opportunities offered by interdependence could be used to shape behavior on all sides. Russia is highly sensitive to threats to its valuable economic partnerships with countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Holland, and throughout the Ukraine crisis sought to protect them. The politics of Greater European interdependence are based on diplomacy and negotiation, and seek to find ways in which contesting parties can retreat with dignity and compromise in an environment where the language of threats is constrained.
On the other hand, although elements of this approach were not entirely stilled, the predominant stance was drawn from the playlist of the hawks, the path of sanctions and confrontation. For a number of ‘new’ European states, although not all of them, the Ukraine crisis was used to vindicate their stance of irreconcilable hostility to Russia, arguing that the country was a threat to be countered rather than an opportunity to be exploited. In the Ukraine crisis it was the turn of Lithuania to be in the vanguard of anti-Russian sentiments. The ferocity of President Dalia Grybauskaitė’s onslaught on Russia was matched only by that of Georgia under Saakashvili. The Polish president, Bronisław Komorowski, even called for Russia to be deprived of its veto power in the UN Security Council:
‘We know this is not the right time to reset relations with Russia. This is not the right time to limit any commitment to Euro-Atlantic relations. No, just the reverse. This is an important moment to contain Russia from any dangerous expansion in order to pursue its neo-imperial vision.’
This is not a policy but an attitude. It is immune to rational argument or the practices of diplomacy. Based on an essentialist reading of history, it treats Russia as the eternal enemy. This is a stance that in its very essence is axiological — assuming that certain postulates (veronderstellingen. svh) are axiomatic (onbewezen. svh) and unquestionable (onbetwistbaar. svh) — and anyone who raises questions is condemned as a ‘Putin apologist,’ a ‘useful idiot,’ a ‘stooge,’ and worse. This is a dangerous fundamentalism, masquerading as the defense of the ‘European choice’ and the avoidance of ‘another Munich.’
Deze hysterie heeft tot een gevaarlijke confrontatie geleid tussen het Westen, onder aanvoering van Washington en Wall Street, en de grootmachten Rusland en China. Al in 2015 waarschuwde professor Sakwa dat:
the Ukraine crisis demonstrated that ultimately the EU was not an instrument to unite the continent and to overcome the logic of conflict in its community of nations, but another institution born in the Cold War that in the end was destined to perpetuate the Cold War in new forms. It was unable to act as an interlocutor (gesprekspartner. svh) between the contending parties or even to act as ‘honest broker’ between Washington and Moscow, and encouraged a conflict to cancerate (als kankercellen uitzaaien. svh) into war in its heartlands. Uncritical alignment with the ‘Atlantic’ community, in other words with Washington’s policies, deprived it of credibility with Moscow. Instead, the honest-broker role was taken by Germany, although even here the Atlanticists used the Ukraine crisis to attack the traditional moderation of the Social Democrats…
The new foreign minister of Angela Merkel’s restructured Christian Democrat–Social Democratic coalition government, formed in late 2013, was the veteran Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who helped broker the 21 February deal (Minsk-Akkoorden. svh). He was under no illusion about the dangers facing Europe, arguing that it was ‘the worst crisis since the end of the Cold War.’ He warned that Russia was ‘playing a dangerous game with potentially dramatic consequences,’ not least for Russia itself. When asked about the need for NATO to revisit its strategic defense planning, he insisted:
‘There is no military solution to the conflict in Ukraine. Even if it can sometimes be frustrating, I am firmly convinced that only tenacious diplomatic work can bring us any closer to a solution.’
[…] The destructive Russophobia of new Europe undermined the credibility and coherence of the EU as a whole. It had been anticipated that the new members would be ‘socialized’ in the ways of the EU, but, instead, the EU was in danger of reverse socialization — incorporating the axiological dynamics and virulent neoliberal free marketism of some new members, accompanied by their prioritization of Atlantic security over EU social solidarity.
The Ukraine crisis has created a new and irreparable dividing line across the heart of the continent. In the words of a recent study: ‘The idea of co-operation in the region is dead – at least for the foreseeable future.’ What had once been described as the ‘common neighborhood’ now became the ‘contested neighborhood.’ Almost universally the proposed remedies only deepen the tensions that provoked the crisis…
Compromise and balancing are the essence of EU politics, but the Ukraine crisis undermined its credibility as an international actor. It failed to enunciate a European perspective and instead was reduced to no more than a junior partner of the Atlantic alliance, which in turn had become little more than an extended platform for the Washington hawks. The EU’s normative agenda was inverted, and instead of bringing peoples and nations together, it acted as yet another instrument of discord. The EU is all about dialogue or else it is nothing, yet as the Ukraine crisis dragged on the EU simply imported the language of sanctions, threats and warnings, even after a ceasefire was agreed on 5 September 2014. The EU allowed the very notion of ‘dialogue’ to be discredited and, indeed, to become a dirty word. Critics of the EU who had considered it to be just another expression of Cold War politics were vindicated, while those who believed that it could pursue a transformative agenda for continental peace were left disappointed.
De EU toeliet dat het begrip 'dialoog' in diskrediet werd gebracht en zelfs een vies woord werd. Critici van de EU die het beschouwden als gewoon een andere manifestatie van Koude Oorlog-politiek, kregen gelijk, terwijl degenen die geloofden dat het een transformerende agenda voor continentale vrede kon nastreven, teleurgesteld achterbleven.
Gezien de benauwend lage kwaliteit van de huidige generatie politici in zowel de VS als Europa, is het niet onverklaarbaar dat hun hysterie de leidraad is geworden van de westerse politiek. Dit in tegenstelling tot de politieke houding tijdens mijn jeugd en volwassen leven, toen het Westen nog staatslieden kende die zelf getuige waren geweest van de omvangrijke bloedbaden en de massale terreur van de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Destijds deden politiek verantwoordelijken niet voortdurend alle moeite om enerzijds de massa te behagen en anderzijds de belangen van de elite te dienen. Zelfs de massamedia waren toen minder hoerig dan vandaag de dag. Wat we tegenwoordig zien is een virtuele reality-show via alle kanalen, waardoor volkomen identiteitsloze autoriteiten, televisie-clowns en corrupte sjacheraars alle dagen de huiskamer kunnen penetreren met doorgaans gezwets. Nogmaals Richard Sakwa:
A cold peace is an unresolved geopolitical conflict that retains the potential to become a full-scale war or to be resolved through some process of negotiation. The dynamics of the current cold peace are vividly described by John Mearsheimer, an international-relations scholar in the realist tradition. He notes that imposing sanctions and increasing support for the new Kiev government were a mistake and were ‘based on the same faulty logic that helped precipitate the crisis. Instead of resolving the dispute, it will lead to more trouble.’
Mearsheimer excoriated (hekelde. svh) Washington’s attempts to absolve itself of responsibility for provoking the crisis by placing all the blame on Putin and claiming that his motives were illegitimate: ‘This is wrong. Washington played a key role in precipitating this dangerous situation, and Mr. Putin’s behavior is motivated by the same geopolitical considerations that influence all great powers, including the United States.’ For Mearsheimer: ‘The taproot of the current crisis is NATO expansion and Washington’s commitment to move Ukraine out of Moscow’s orbit and integrate it into the West.’ The US then made the ‘fatal mistake’ of backing the protesters when Yanukovych had decided to accept the better deal on offer from Russia. Mearsheimer understood Putin’s concerns about the new government in Ukraine, which he viewed as
‘a direct threat to Russia’s core strategic interests. Who can blame him? After all, the United States, which has been unable to leave the Cold War behind, has treated Russia as a potential threat since the early 1990s and ignored its protests about NATO’s expansion and its objections to American plans to build missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.’
He called on Obama to think more like a strategist than a lawyer, and to acknowledge Russia’s security interests by recognizing that Georgia and Ukraine would not become NATO members, and that ‘Ukraine should become neutral between East and West.’
In a later article, in Foreign Affairs, Mearsheimer developed his argument, now including America’s European allies in the circle of blame. They were ‘blindsided by events’ because ‘they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics,’ believing that the logic of realism was no longer relevant and that Europe could be ‘kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy.’ These principles have indeed gained added weight in the era of ‘globalization,’ but, as I have argued, realpolitik and geopolitics remained relevant and represents the other half of the walnut of American hegemony. With the EU’s enlargement to the contested frontier zone of Eastern Europe, it had also inadvertently become an adversarial geopolitical player, even though it lacked the language and the means to manage such a role. Mearsheimer argues that the Ukraine crisis demonstrated that realpolitik remains relevant, but also exposed the contradictions between the two aspects of Western power — liberal universalism and hegemonic geopolitical power — which are particularly acute in the case of the EU. The enlarged EU simply had no way of dealing with the aggressive geopolitical stance adopted by some of its newer members, and this then spectacularly blew back to destroy the credibility of the EU’s normative proclamations. The more the contradiction was exposed, the more aggressive it became in advocating sanctions and Russia’s punishment…
In the Cold War this had ended in a stable compromise known as ‘peaceful coexistence’, the uneasy acceptance of difference and the devising of means to manage the conflict. These were dismantled at the end of the Cold War, while the sustainability of difference was questioned. This was the impasse that gave rise to confrontation over Ukraine.
Kortom, aangezien Rusland niet een kopie van het Westen wilde worden, moest het door de westerse elite daartoe gedwongen worden, en ditmaal met grootscheeps geweld. Waarom? Omdat het Westen sinds de Renaissance de alleenheerschappij over de wereld claimt. Dit wordt dermate vanzelfsprekend geacht dat er geen enkele discussie hierover wordt gevoerd. De Russen worden als inferieure barbaren afgeschreven, die met harde hand gedresseerd moeten worden in de westerse mores die de kloof tussen rijk en arm almaar vergroten. Er is dus geen logica meer noodzakelijk. De gedemoniseerde kan vanzelfsprekend zijn onschuld nooit bewijzen, allen al de poging daartoe toont juist zijn schuld aan. Vandaar dat Adolf Hitler, die door het Duitse en Amerikaanse grootkapitaal werd gesteund, in Mein Kampf kon schrijven:
De Zweedse hoogleraar en auteur Sven Lindqvist benadrukte deze westerse houding, die onvermijdelijk tot genocide leidt, aan het eind van zijn boek Exterminate all the Brutes (2007), door te concluderen dat ‘Auschwitz de moderne industriële toepassing [was] van een uitroeiingspolitiek waarop de Europese overheersing van de wereld […] lang heeft gesteund.’ De titel van zijn boek verwijst naar de zin uit Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness (1899), ‘verdelg al het gespuis.’ Lindqvist vraagt zich af waarom de westerse kolonialist in het boek, genaamd ‘Kurtz zijn rapport over de beschavingstaak van de blanke man in Afrika met deze woorden eindigt?’ Hij schrijft dan:
Lindqvist ontdekt gaandeweg dat de ‘Europese vernietiging van de “inferieure rassen” van vier continenten de grond voorbereidde voor Hitlers vernietiging van zes miljoen joden in Europa,’ en dat ‘Het Europese expansionisme, vergezeld als het was door een schaamteloze verdediging van het uitroeien, manieren van denken en politieke precedenten [schiep] die de weg baanden voor nieuwe wandaden, die uiteindelijk culmineerden in’ niets anders dan ‘de Holocaust.’ En toen:
hetgeen was gebeurd in het hart der duisternis werd herhaald in het hart van Europa, herkende niemand het. Niemand wilde toegeven wat iedereen wist. Overal in de wereld waar kennis wordt onderdrukt, kennis die als ze bekend zou worden gemaakt ons beeld van de wereld aan gruzelementen zou slaan en ons zou dwingen om onszelf ter discussie te stellen — daar wordt overal het Hart der Duisternis opgevoerd. U weet dat al. Net als ik. Het is geen kennis die ons ontbreekt. Wat gemist wordt is de moed om te begrijpen wat we weten en daaruit conclusies te trekken.
Met als gevolg dat de Russen nu de rol krijgen die destijds de joodse Europeanen kregen toebedeeld. Het is ook niet onverklaarbaar dat Nederland fel anti-Russisch is, immers als de Hollanders eenmaal hun houvast kwijt zijn geraakt, reageren ze even onverschillig als ten tijde van de Tweede wereldoorlog toen 75 procent van de joden in Nederland, met steun van de Nederlandse politie, de hoofdstedelijke ambtenarij en de Nederlandse Spoorwegen werd vernietigd, een percentage dat twee keer zo hoog was als dat in België en drie keer hoger dan in Frankrijk.
In zijn boek Een reis door niemandsland. Hoe de Aboriginals Australië verloren (2007) constateerde Lindqvist:
Deze context, wordt door de westerse mainstream-pers hardnekkig verzwegen, omdat het natuurlijk niet past in het propagandabeeld, waarbij wij beschaafd zijn en de rest onbeschaafd.
Als Europeaan die veel gereisd had schreef Sven Lindqvist: 'Naarmate het historisch geheugen meer wordt gedemocratiseerd en geglobaliseerd, zullen we eraan moeten wennen dat we niet langer worden gezien als louter pioniers en weldoeners, maar ook als onderdrukkers en geweldsplegers en soms zelf als veroveraars die continentale misdaden op hun geweten hebben.’ Het is een uiterst belangrijke constatering, want als gevolg van het kuddegedrag doen de ‘corporate press’ en de parlementariërs het voorkomen alsof de hele wereld tegen ‘Poetin’ is, inclusief de voormalige slachtoffers van het westers kolonialisme en neo-kolonialisme, terwijl juist het tegenovergesteld het geval is. De vernederden uit de voormalige wingewesten weten maar al te goed wie de uitbuiters en onderdrukkers zijn, en keren zich in toenemende mate tegen de willekeur van de westerse macht. Datgene wat de westerling alweer vergeten is, zoals de westerse terreur in Noord Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Irak, Libië, Syrië, Zuid- en Midden-Amerika, Kongo, en overal elders waar de westerse elitebelangen beschermd worden, is door de slachtoffers nog lang niet vergeten en vergeven. Die amnesia demonstreert het pathologische eurocentrisme, voortvloeiend uit verregaande onverschilligheid en het botte cynisme van vooral de Nederlandse regenten.
Imre Kertész, joods Hongaarse auteur die de Holocaust overleefde en in 2002 de Nobelprijs Literatuur ontving, verwoordde in 1994 het onderhuidse gevoel in Europa na de val van de Sovjet Unie aldus:
Kertész wees erop dat ‘één van de belangrijkste kenmerken van de geschiedenis van de twintigste eeuw [is] dat zij de persoon en de persoonlijkheid volkomen wegvaagt,’ om eraan toe te voegen:
Het is inmiddels duidelijk: het overleven is geen persoonlijk probleem van de overlevenden, de lange, donkere schaduw van de Holocaust ligt over de hele beschaving waarin hij is gebeurd, en die beschaving moet verder leven met het gewicht en de gevolgen van het gebeurde.’
Bovendien, zo benadrukte hij, moet ‘u van mij aannemen dat de historische misdaden van deze eeuw in niet geringe mate het gevolg zijn van extreme abstractie, van de bijna ziekelijke woede van het denken en het daarmee gepaard gaande totale gebrek aan verbeelding.’
De centrale vraag bij het voeren van oorlog blijft altijd: 'What is the endgame?’ Daarover zei Henry Kissinger in 2015 dat ‘het eindspel’ onder de regering Obama/Biden simpelweg was ‘breaking Russia,’ terwijl ‘the long-range purpose should be to integrate it.’ Als ’s werelds meest bekende geopolitieke deskundige benadrukte Kissinger dat:
If we treat Russia seriously as a great power, we need at an early stage to determine whether their concerns can be reconciled with our necessities. We should explore the possibilities of a status of nonmilitary grouping on the territory between Russia and the existing frontiers of NATO.
The West hesitates to take on the economic recovery of Greece; it’s surely not going to take on Ukraine as a unilateral project. So one should at least examine the possibility of some cooperation between the West and Russia in a militarily nonaligned Ukraine. The Ukraine crisis is turning into a tragedy because it is confusing the long-range interests of global order with the immediate need of restoring Ukrainian identity. I favor an independent Ukraine in its existing borders. I have advocated it from the start of the post-Soviet period. When you read now that Muslim units are fighting on behalf of Ukraine, then the sense of proportion has been lost.
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