In this series I’ve been identifying and refuting the claims made in the National Security Strategy 2022, which I refer to as the Sullivan & Biden NSS, even though it’s not known whether or not Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, took part in writing the document. He himself states that Tom Wright, Sasha Baker, and Rebecca Lissner were “instrumental in putting together” the NSS.[1]
It has been very unpleasant for me to work on this toxic thing called the NSS, but I feel it’s important to let people know about it and I don’t think US policymakers should be able to get away with saying the types of things they say in the NSS without refutation. NSS weaknesses come in different forms: illogical statements, untruthful statements, poor strategies, and the omission of good ideas. In this last essay, we’ll focus especially on the statements made about Russia.
I began my youtube channel with an essay and video about the Cultural Script. A nation that believes in a Cultural Script feels compelled to act out a certain role in a certain drama, year after year.[2] Unfortunately, the US has been engaged in adhering to this belief in a Cultural Script since Day 1 with the Native Americans. In conflict after conflict for 245 years, the USG has portrayed itself as a noble hero rescuing innocent victims from an evil, malicious persecutor, against which it must use violence and force for goodness to win. It’s a recipe for self-righteous, hateful violence.
Belief in this good vs. evil Cultural Script stunts US policy and media makers’ perception of the truth. It also limits their options and makes them behave with unnecessary hostility towards the enemy. Belief in the Script blinds them to the immorality of their own hatred and violence towards enemies. And that is what is happening now as the USG ships off weapons to Ukraine, seemingly without end. Convinced of its own nobility, or at least convinced it wants to portray itself as noble, the USG is blind—or wants to blind us—to the immorality of its hatred and its promotion of war.
Individuals with immature psychologies disposed to prejudiced thinking and black-and-white thinking are more prone to believing in this good vs. evil drama. Unfortunately, the leaders of the United States of America have these very psychologies, and the NSS is founded squarely upon a belief in this Cultural Script.
To bolster the Cultural Script, US policy and media makers dismiss, ignore, and ridicule every single one of Russia’s and Putin’s fears and grievances. They don’t allow for the possibility that Russia may genuinely be motivated by fear. Only malice is allowed to be recognized as a motivator for Russian violence, for this promotes the good vs. evil drama. At the same time, US policy and media makers cover up all hints of aggressive motives driving US, NATO, and Ukrainian government behavior.
To further support the script, lies are issued to paint Putin as evil and unwilling to negotiate. Double standards are pushed so that an action, when taken by the USG, is deemed acceptable and the US officials responsible for the action are portrayed as immune from reproach if not heroic. But when that same action is taken by Russia, even on a much smaller scale, it’s considered a flagrant, abominable violation of international law for which Putin “must” stand trial. To boost the Cultural Script still further, only shallow analysis is permitted in the media, so that the good vs. evil storyline will stand and all the holes in its logic won’t be seen.
In this and the next essay, I’ll show several examples of how the NSS is nothing but a document of psychological immaturity and impractical ideas that will only diminish US national security, democracy, and global peace and justice. For allowing prejudice to direct one’s policymaking and refusing to impartially gather information from all perspectives on all sides of conflict are psychologically immature behaviors, as explained by psychological analysts Dorothy Jongeward and Muriel James in their work, Born to Win.[3]
We’ll focus in this essay on Russia. Many of these themes we’ve discussed in earlier essays, but here I’d like to point out that these false claims are being made at the highest levels of US government.
- “Wipe Ukraine off the map.”
NSS: This top-level document created by top-level leadership—supposedly the best America has to offer in terms of intelligence and leadership—is overflowing with lies. Even in Sullivan’s speech introducing the NSS, he quotes Biden when he remarks on how the goal of Russia has been “‘to wipe Ukraine off the map.’”[4]
KYC: Sullivan & Biden are either deliberately lying, unintelligent, or helplessly caught in the trance placed upon them by prejudice, competitiveness, and compulsive black-and-white thinking. Wiping Ukraine off the map was never a goal of Russia, and making this claim is a reckless, libelous statement that only heightens ignorance, fuels unwarranted hatred and violence towards Russia, and falsely justifies weapon shipments to Ukraine.
In fact, had Sullivan & Biden been capable of reading and understanding Putin’s speeches, they would have understood that Russia and Putin were greatly distressed and enraged over the killing and torture of the people of Donetsk and Lugansk by the US-supported and US-armed government of Ukraine and their ultranationalist and neo-Nazi friends. Sullivan & Biden would have understood that Russia had been trying for eight years to resolve this violence while preserving Ukraine’s borders. They would have understood that Russia could not bear the attacks any longer, was responding to requests for help from Donetsk and Lugansk, and was entering these two self-declared nations to protect the people and end the war which had begun in 2014.
While Sullivan & Biden accuse Russia of wanting to wipe Ukraine off the map, they fail to mention what Putin states in his February 21, 2022 speech:
“In March 2021, a new Military Strategy was adopted in Ukraine. This document is almost entirely dedicated to confrontation with Russia and sets the goal of involving foreign states in a conflict with our country. The strategy stipulates the organization of what can be described as a terrorist underground movement in Russia’s Crimea and in Donbas. It also sets out the contours of a potential war, which should end, according to the Kiev strategists, ‘with the assistance of the international community on favorable terms for Ukraine,’ as well as—listen carefully, please—‘with foreign military support in the geopolitical confrontation with the Russian Federation.’ In fact, this is nothing other than preparation for hostilities against our country, Russia.
“As we know, it has already been stated today that Ukraine intends to create its own nuclear weapons, and this is not just bragging. . . .
“. . . We are seeing how persistently the Kiev regime is being pumped with arms. . . . Foreign advisors supervise the activities of Ukraine’s armed forces and special services and we are well aware of this.
“Over the past few years, military contingents of NATO countries have been almost constantly present on Ukrainian territory under the pretext of exercises. The Ukrainian control system has already been integrated into NATO. . . .”[5]
How deceitfully hypocritical that Sullivan & Biden accuse Russia of seeking to wipe Ukraine off the map with its military action in 2022 when a year earlier in 2021, Ukraine, with its Western-backers and directors, were already in the planning stages of war against Russia.
- “Fight for its freedom”
NSS: “The United States will continue to support Ukraine in its fight for its freedom.”[6]
KYC: Ukrainians are not fighting for their freedom. Russia was not attacking to deprive them of freedom. Had Russia been allowed to use its military to protect the people of Donetsk and Lugansk, it’s doubtful that any violence against Ukraine would have occurred. But no, Sullivan & Biden twisted Putin’s aims and falsely declared that Russia was aggressively attacking without provocation, that Putin was seeking empire, and that the only effective response to Putin’s “aggression” would be to fight back. Yet it was precisely the fighting back that turned this into a prolonged, widened war.
It is my opinion, based on readings of Putin’s speeches and essay, based on Russian history and US jaded interpretations of it, and based on readings of the history of US foreign policy, that Ukrainian freedom was never threatened by Russia. Ukrainian freedom was already threatened by the reported puppeteering of Ukraine’s government by the West, presumably the USG, who also supported the 2014 coup and was evidently involved in hand-picking Ukraine’s leadership for the Ukrainian people.
Far from fighting for their freedom, Ukrainians are being used as cannon fodder to wear down the Russian military, which serves USG goals of world hegemony. It’s similar to the way in which National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and President Jimmy Carter armed the mujahideen in Afghanistan in order to deliberately provoke the USSR to invade six months later and give them “their own Vietnam.”[7] Afghan and Russian lives were deemed expendable for that use by US policymakers, just as Ukrainian and Russian lives are now deemed expendable.
In fact, it’s the same mentality possessed by some malicious human beings with shriveled hearts who train dogs to fight and kill one another in dog fights. Left on their own, dogs wouldn’t develop these temperaments. Dogs are friendly, sociable, and affectionate. But they’re contorted and perverted into this behavior, then set upon each other to kill and maim, and the men in the background are cackling away making money off the bloodletting. To them, the dogs are expendable.
- “An imperialist foreign policy.”
NSS: “Over the past decade, the Russian government has chosen to pursue an imperialist foreign policy with the goal of overturning key elements of the international order.”[8]
Also, in his speech introducing the NSS at Georgetown University, Sullivan refers to Russia’s military actions in Ukraine as “brutality that threatens to drag us all back into the dark days of Soviet expansionism.”[9]
KYC: The statements of the NSS and of Sullivan are entirely without substance and are, therefore, reckless and irresponsible for they promote hatred and violence towards Russia and towards Putin. I have seen no evidence that the Russian government has imperialist goals. I believe Russia’s actions in Crimea one decade ago were not based upon an imperialist desire to expand but a defensive desire to protect the Black Sea region from reported US/NATO plans to install a NATO base on the Black Sea.[10]Consistent with the good vs. evil Cultural Script, the NSS assigns malicious motives to Russia and remains silent about US/NATO plans for the Black Sea.
Russia’ military actions in Donetsk, Lugansk, and Ukraine were also not taken in the pursuit of imperialist goals of expansion. Putin and other Russian leaders had been trying for eight years to end the bloody civil war in Ukraine that had already killed 14,000 Ukrainians. Russia had supported the Minsk Agreements which preserved Ukraine’s territorial integrity and kept Donetsk and Lugansk as more autonomous regions within Ukraine. In fact, when Donetsk and Lugansk first declared their independence in 2014, Putin and the Russian government did not recognize them as independent nations because they wanted to try to preserve Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Sullivan & Biden, if Putin and the Russian government had imperialist desires, don’t you think that they would’ve recognized the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014 and not waited until February 2022?
The US propaganda machine finds its so-called “proof” of Putin’s alleged imperial ambitions by referring to his July 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” his February 2022 speeches, and his 2007 speech in Munich. At least six claims are repeatedly asserted by US policy and media makers, with Putin’s own words said to be proof of these claims.
Yet, as described in detail in several of my earlier essays on Countercurrents and on my youtube channel, including Parts 4K, 4L, and 4S, not one of these claims is supported by Putin’s essay or his speeches. Putin’s actual words—reasonable, principled, and humane words—have been shamefully twisted and dishonestly contorted by US policy and media makers seeking to portray him as malicious and imperial. Here are the six claims allegedly based on his words and my refutations based on his words:
- He does not recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty. (In fact, he does recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty.)
- He considers Ukrainians not to be a separate people but the same as Russians. (In fact, he considers them to be separate.)
- He thinks Ukraine and Belorussia should be a part of Russia. (In fact, he does not think this. When he spoke of these three nations, he was referring to the past when he was discussing their history. These three nations evolved from the same branch: the Eastern Slavs.)
- He seeks to resurrect the Russian Empire. (In fact, he does not seek this.)
- He thinks that Ukraine has little to no legitimate claim to independent statehood. (In fact, he does think Ukraine has a legitimate claim to independent statehood. He was referring matter-of-factly to the historical fact that prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had only a brief period of independent statehood, which is true. He was not implying that this weakened Ukraine’s right to statehood today.)
- He considers Ukraine and Russia to be one nation, artificially divided. (In fact, he does not think this. He considers the sundering of Ukrainian-Russian relations and the creation in Ukraine of hate-Russia feelings to be artificial and unnatural because of their hundreds of years of history, cooperation, and cultural, genetic, and linguistic bonds. He is not describing the political division into two separate nations as artificial.)
In fact, of this artificial severing of emotional, social, and cultural ties, Putin has written in his July 2021 essay:
“Again, for many people in Ukraine, the anti-Russia project is simply unacceptable. And there are millions of such people. But they are not allowed to raise their heads. They have had their legal opportunity to defend their point of view in fact taken away from them. They are intimidated, driven underground. Not only are they persecuted for their convictions, for the spoken word, for the open expression of their position, but they are also killed. Murderers, as a rule, go unpunished.
“Today, the “right” patriot of Ukraine is only the one who hates Russia.”[11]
If you read Putin’s passionate and principled words for yourself, you will see that US policy and media makers, including the writers and supporters of the NSS, are either deliberate liars, or they are blinded to such a degree by their prejudice that their ability to accurately ingest information is crippled, or they have abysmal levels of reading comprehension skills.
Such stunted mentalities are unacceptable in US leadership. The statements made about Putin with regard to his alleged imperial ambitions as based upon these speeches and essay are absolutely libelous and reckless. Those manufacturing and spreading these lies should be prosecuted and held accountable to law, for they are recklessly spreading the flames of hatred and war.
Sullivan & Biden, if Putin really did have imperialist aims, then why the need to lie about his speeches and essay? Was the case against him so weak that lies were needed as “proof” of his alleged imperial ambitions?
Calling Putin imperialist is an act of projection on the part of the USG which has 800 military bases worldwide. It’s not likely that any of these USG bases in these host nations has the support of those nations’ populations. If you’d like to see written material that clearly displays imperial ambitions and desires for world hegemony, read “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” written in 2000 by the neoconservative Project for the New American Century. There you’ll see gleeful American attitudes towards world domination never found or even implied in the words of Putin.
With regard to “overturning the international order,” we’ll discuss this in the next essay. But take note that it was Putin who condemned the USG’s “disdain for the basic principles of international law” in his 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference.[12] Instead of being respected for standing up for international law, he was condemned.
- “Bring it under Russian control.”
NSS: “This culminated in a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in an attempt to topple its government and bring it under Russian control.”[13]
KYC: Putin and the Russian government took military action in Donetsk and Lugansk to try to protect them from the attacks by Ukraine’s government and their ultranationalist and neo-Nazi colleagues. The purpose was not to bring Ukraine’s government under Russian control. In fact, Russia initially limited its military action because the military operation had a limited goal. Yet Russia’s limited actions brought upon it the ridicule of the US propaganda machine.
The Infographics Show on youtube, for example, in a blatantly propagandistic video of April 8, 2022, managed to both condemn Russia’s invasion and simultaneously mock Russia for not being competent enough to fight a real war. Infographics referred to the Persian Gulf War—considered slaughter by the Third World—and the high ratio of US troops to enemy forces as the admirable benchmark ratio that Russia should have used. It also mocked Russia for not using its air force. Infographics was incapable of grasping that Russia was not trying to engage in a full-scale war: it was only trying to protect Donetsk and Lugansk. Infographics was incapable of grasping that perhaps Russia didn’t want to use its air force because of the limited goals of its military action and because the air force is infamous for inflicting extremely high levels of civilian casualties.[14]
It was the violent reaction of the US- and NATO-armed Zelensky government in Kiev, including attacking the bridge to Crimea with an exploding truck,[15] that compelled Russia to step up the severity of its attacks. Protecting Donetsk and Lugansk now required attacking Ukraine. Moreover, Russia itself had come under attack.
Putin’s July 2021 essay makes clear that Russia’s goal has never been to bring Ukraine under Russian control. In fact, USG accusations against Russia may be another act of projection in which they accuse Putin of goals that they themselves have already been achieving. Don’t forget: Hunter Biden sat on the board of Ukraine’s largest private natural gas corporation, Burisma Holdings.[16] Why? What on Earth was he doing there? What was he trying to accomplish?
As Putin expresses in his February 21, 2022 speech, and as earlier discussed in my essays Parts 4F and 4I, Russia is highly concerned that Ukraine is not free to make its own decisions but instead has come under the control, manipulations, and avaricious, pillaging abuses of Western governments. One example of this is reported USG assistance to ultranationalist groups who manipulated peaceful protests in 2014 in order to get US-preferred, pro-NATO leaders into power over Ukraine. Putin explains:
“Radical nationalists took advantage of the justified public discontent and saddled the Maidan protest, escalating it to a coup d’état in 2014. They also had direct assistance from foreign states. According to reports, the US Embassy provided $1 million a day to support the so-called protest camp on Independence Square in Kiev. In addition, large amounts were impudently transferred directly to the opposition leaders’ bank accounts, tens of millions of dollars. But the people who actually suffered, the families of those who died in the clashes provoked in the streets and squares of Kiev and other cities, how much did they get in the end? Better not ask.”
According to Putin’s words, it is the West that has taken control over Ukraine at the expense of Ukrainian sovereignty, particularly after the 2014 coup:
“It all came down to a Ukrainian economy in tatters and an outright pillage of the country’s citizens, while Ukraine itself was placed under external control, directed not only from the Western capitals, but also on the ground, as the saying goes, through an entire network of foreign advisors, NGOs and other institutions present in Ukraine. They have a direct bearing on all the key appointments and dismissals and on all branches of power at all levels, from the central government to municipalities, as well as on state-owned companies and corporations. . . .
“Are the Ukrainian people aware that this is how their country is managed? Do they realize that their country has turned not even into a political or economic protectorate but has been reduced to a colony with a puppet regime? The state was privatized. As a result, the government. . . consistently pushed Ukraine towards losing its sovereignty.
“. . . There are more and more acts enabling the Ukrainian military and law enforcement agencies to suppress freedom of speech and dissent, and persecute the opposition. . . .”[17]
US policy and media makers seem uneager to investigate these points that Putin makes.
Sullivan & Biden, members of the US Congress, in exactly what ways does the USG or its allies have political or civic control over Ukraine, have financial investments or developments in Ukraine, or have military plans to use Ukraine as a springboard to attack Russia?
- “Unprovoked war”
NSS: “Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war on its neighbor Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe and impacted stability everywhere, and its reckless nuclear threats endanger the global non-proliferation regime.”[18]
KYC: The “unprovoked war” phrase has become nauseating to me, because US policy and media makers parrot it mindlessly without examining it. Yet it is Sullivan & Biden’s own comments that are reckless: claiming that Russia’s action was unprovoked only increases the false justification for war against Russia. The comment about “shattered peace” reveals Biden’s ignorance or deceptiveness about the bloody eight-year civil war in Ukraine prior to Russia’s military action. His comment also ignores Putin’s repeated statement that it was the West, not Russia, that initiated this war in 2014 with its coup and resulting civil war.
Sullivan & Biden’s comment about Russia’s “reckless nuclear threats” is extremely reckless in that Russia, to my awareness, did not issue any nuclear threats. How can the USG consider itself not reckless when it recklessly uses our taxpayer money to manufacture 4,000 hazardous-waste-producing nuclear warheads that could go off by accident and that should never even be used?
Sullivan & Biden’s talk about Russia’s “endangering” the “non-proliferation regime” is entirely hypocritical given that it is the USG that has violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPP) of 1968 not only with its three decades of nukes in South Korea aimed at North Korea,[19] but its dispatching of nukes—with no concern for the people’s will—to five nations of Europe! The USG states such deployment is not a violation of the NPP because the USG is still in control of the nukes in Europe. With that absurd logic, the USG could sprinkle nukes around the world and still not be accused of proliferation, as long as the USG mans the nukes. It is the USG, moreover, as well as the UK, who have used radioactive depleted uranium in their wars. The UK has also shipped depleted uranium to be used in the current conflict in Ukraine.
- “This attack did not come out of the blue.”
NSS: “This attack did not come out of the blue; it was preceded by Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, its military intervention in Syria, its longstanding efforts to destabilize its neighbors using intelligence and cyber capabilities. . . .”[20]
KYC: It is utterly amazing that Sullivan & Biden are still unable to grasp or admit that Russia’s military actions in Donetsk and Lugansk and subsequently in Ukraine in 2022 were provoked by the US-supported undemocratic coup of 2014 which placed in power a pro-NATO leader.
And Sullivan & Biden are still unable to grasp or admit that Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was preceded not only by the US-supported coup of 2014 but by fears that US and NATO were reportedly planning to create a military base on the Black Sea.
Our national leadership is incapable of understanding or determined to deceitfully conceal the obvious truth that a decade of USG efforts to push Ukraine to sever its ties in all ways with Russia, to hate Russia, to arm itself against Russia, and to use its people as pawns to attack Russia, will, in fact, be alarming and provoking to Russia.
With regard to Georgia, one of Russia’s neighbors who is likely being referred to in the NSS quote above, Russia was not seeking to destabilize Georgia in the conflict of 2008. This conflict is described in more detail in my earlier essays Parts 4N and 4O. In fact, Russia Today, fed up with immature US media psychologies, itself points out that the US media omits the complexities of the conflict and instead paints the story of Georgia in 2008 with the usual evil Russia vs. freedom-loving victims violin refrain, a refrain that deletes so much of the truth that it can only be characterized as false.
The US media even portrayed Georgia as peaceful prior to the Russian military action, when, in fact, Russia was responding to violence in Georgia that had been transpiring for quite some time. This portrayal of an innocent, peaceful nation attacked by Russia is parallel to how the USG and media makers describe Russia’s military actions of 2022 as breaking the “peace” of Ukraine. Did they forget about the 14,000 killed over the past eight years in Ukraine’s Civil War? In both cases, Russia was responding to situations of violence, violence that the USG may have played a role in cooking up.
With regard to Syria, that conflict, too, has another side to the story, the Russian perspective, which is ignored by US policy and media makers. Why is it, Sullivan & Biden, that the USG is so intent upon condemning a Syrian dictator who’s despised by Islamists and who’s allied with Russia, but meanwhile it sends billions in weapons to an Egyptian dictator who’s also despised by Islamists but who’s allied with the USG? Is it because a dictator who’s violating human rights doesn’t actually concern the USG? Is it really a network of bribable national leaders subservient to its goals that the USG craves?
And why doesn’t the USG like to discuss the fact that it was reportedly working with Al-Nusrah for regime change in Syria? Why isn’t this reported violation of international law and of the UN Charter being investigated? Putin also notes that the Western-supported combat operations seeking to topple Bashar al-Asad in Syria were performed without the approval of the UN Security Council. In addition, he remarks on yet another element of the Syrian conflict not mentioned in the US media: “In 2015, we used our Armed Forces to create a reliable shield that prevents terrorists from Syria from penetrating Russia. This was a matter of defending ourselves. We had no other choice.”[21]
Jan Oberg of the Transnational Foundation is passionately committed to investigating and publicizing the truth, and he discusses what’s known in the West as the “fall of Aleppo” but what’s known within the Syrian city as its liberation from Western-backed rebel forces. Oberg writes: “Syria 2016 represented the biggest media fraud I had experienced up till then, while those of Yugoslavia and Iraq were not exactly small.”
Oberg concludes that Western journalistic coverage of Syria included none of the “classic journalistic principles” including “checking more sources than one, independent of each other” and “independent investigative digging or seeking possible, latent truths underneath official manifest narratives.”[22] In other words, journalists nowadays are merely supposed to take notes on what their teacher tells them, turn it in as their assignment, call it truth, and pick up a paycheck.
When you research the Syrian conflict on Russia Today, a media source that I find to have a much more balanced tone than the immature good vs. evil themes that pervade US mainstream media coverage of foreign policy, you find that the USG, though it classified al-Nusrah as a terrorist organization in 2012, is accused by Russia of orchestrating, with the use of US security services, some of al-Nusrah’s offensive attacks.[23]
Al-Nusrah is affiliated with al-Qaeda, and ISIS played a significant role in its founding. Al-Nusrah announced in 2012 that its goal was to topple the administration of Bashir al-Asad. Biden himself has said that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have funded Al-Nusrah and their allies with hundreds of millions of dollars,[24] and history has shown that Saudi Arabia has a history of funding groups that dominant US policymakers want to fund without letting Congress and the American public know about it, such as UNITA in Angola.[25]
The pages of Russia Today demonstrate Russia’s frustration a decade ago with the constant shipment of Western weapons to the rebel groups in Syria. In Aleppo, al-Nusrah was the most powerful group attacking the city. “The Al-Nusrah Front in Aleppo keeps receiving tanks and heavy weapons shipped by their Western backers as the US turns a blind eye, Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, told the Security Council.”
Russia Today also reveals Russia’s frustration with the US storyline that paints Russia and Damascus as responsible for attacks upon civilians but fails to mention the inhumane behaviors of the rebel groups.[26] Russia Today reported:
“According to Churkin, Al-Nusrah uses the civilian population of Aleppo as human shields while indiscriminately attacking residential areas in the city controlled by the Syrian government.
“‘Over 200,000 residents of Aleppo are hostage of the Al-Nusrah Front and groups allied with it,’ Churkin said.
“The terrorists are the main reason why attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to Aleppo have failed, contradicting accusations by the US, which blames Russia and Damascus, he said.”[27]
Russia Today also reveals Russian frustrations with the Western narrative that Russia and Damascus are obstacles to peace even though it is rebel units that have continued “to disrupt the fragile US-Russian brokered ceasefire.”[28] Russia Today reports on the unwillingness or inability of the USG to control the rebel groups with which it sides:
“Moscow’s experience of giving concessions to the Syrian rebels following requests from the US, in the hope of it culminating in a ceasefire has not worked, Churkin told the Security Council. . . .
“Churkin also turned down statements made by his US counterpart Samantha Power, who said Russia had to prove that it genuinely has intentions of bringing peace to Syria, saying the other participants also have to prove they are willing to take steps towards achieving a ceasefire.”[29]
The highly admired Churkin died unexpectedly in New York City in 2017.
Such one-sided US media coverage supports the fictional Cultural Script of good vs. evil, but such fiction doesn’t help the citizens of Syria, the Syrian leadership, or the rebel groups, because it doesn’t provide the comprehensive truth required for cooperative negotiation and the fulfillment of legitimate needs on all sides!
Jan Oberg travelled to Aleppo, Syria in 2016 where he found there were fewer than ten Western media persons. He writes:
“On December 12, Eastern Aleppo was finally liberated from 4.5 years of occupation by terrorist organizations such as Al-Nusrah. For the first time, the citizens could walk the streets, drink a coffee and hear no immediate shooting. Children who had not been able to play in the yards and street could now do so. . . .
“You must understand that the liberation of Eastern Aleppo marked the end of the Western attempt at regime change that had started 5 years before. It was after this event that Syria largely disappeared from the media. The West had lost, and, some would say, the Syrian government, assisted by Russia and Iran, had won.
“To see the destruction along the road from Damascus up to Aleppo and the utter destruction of Eastern Aleppo was the most shocking I’ve experienced. But the lack of media interest was as shocking to me, although in a different manner.”
Oberg explains: “Most of what you heard about Syria was a well-financed, meticulously constructed narrative based on a series of fake assumptions, frameworks and selected (hi)stories. . . .”[30]
In other words, Sullivan & Biden’s brief mention of Syria in their list of accusations against Russia is yet one more accusation that falls flat upon investigation.
Again, we have to ask, if Putin is so bad, if the Russian government is so bad, why the need to make up lies about them? If the case against them were bad, no lies would be needed. And why the desperate attempt to keep out the “Russian narrative,” the Russian side of the story? Why the obsessive need to label all of Putin’s explanations and words as lies?
Why the obsession with believing in a Cultural Script? Why no impartial scientific and humanitarian curiosity about the causes of conflict? Why no impartial interest in opening up to all perspectives that just might help resolve conflict?
This fanatical degree of silencing Russia’s point of view is reminiscent of centuries ago when the Church was adamant and even violent about silencing the voices of scientists whose views seemed to threaten Christianity, or at least the positions and status of religious officials. The desperate dogma of illogic is indicative of the falseness of the USG’s own claims.
- “Made considerable efforts. . . to reach out”
NSS: “The United States, under successive administrations, made considerable efforts at multiple points to reach out to Russia to limit our rivalry and identify pragmatic areas of cooperation. . . . President Putin spurned these efforts and it is now clear he will not change.”[31]
KYC: How interesting. In his February 21, 2022 speech, Putin remarked:
“Back in 2008, Russia put forth an initiative to conclude a European Security Treaty under which not a single Euro-Atlantic state or international organization could strengthen their security at the expense of the security of others. However, our proposal was rejected right off the bat on the pretext that Russia should not be allowed to put limits on NATO activities.
“Furthermore, it was made explicitly clear to us that only NATO members can have legally binding security guarantees.”
Sullivan & Biden, why did the Obama administration have no interest in Russia’s proposed European Security Treaty? Wouldn’t limitations on NATO activities be an essential element of a security treaty with Russia?
Putin continued:
“Last December, we handed over to our Western partners a draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on security guarantees, as well as a draft agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and NATO member states.
“The United States and NATO responded with general statements. There were kernels of rationality in them as well, but they concerned matters of secondary importance and it all looked like an attempt to drag the issue out and to lead the discussion astray.
“We responded to this accordingly and pointed out that we were ready to follow the path of negotiations, provided, however, that all issues are considered as a package that includes Russia’s core proposals which contain three points. First, to prevent further NATO expansion. Second, to have the Alliance refrain from deploying assault weapon systems on Russian borders. And finally, rolling back the bloc’s military capability and infrastructure in Europe as to where they were in 1997, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed.
“These principle proposals of our have been ignored. To reiterate, our Western partners have once again vocalized the all-too-familiar formulas that each state is entitled to freely choose ways to ensure its security or to join any military union or alliance. . . .
“. . . when our proposals for an equal dialogue on fundamental issues have actually remained unanswered by the United States and NATO, when the level of threats to our country has increased significantly, Russia has every right to respond in order to ensure its security.”[32]
So, Sullivan & Biden, what do you have to say about Russia’s proposed draft treaty of December 2021? Was the treaty so bad that you really preferred war? Or does war help you achieve your ulterior goals?
In his 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, Putin stated:
“In Russia’s opinion, the militarisation of outer space could have unpredictable consequences for the international community and provoke nothing less than the beginning of a nuclear era. And we have come forward more than once with initiatives designed to prevent the use of weapons in outer space.
“Today I would like to tell you that we have prepared a project for an agreement on the prevention of deploying weapons in outer space. And in the near future it will be sent to our partners as an official proposal. Let’s work on this together.”
With regard to nuclear weapons, Putin stated:
“We are unequivocally in favour of strengthening the regime of non-proliferation. The present international legal principles allow us to develop technologies to manufacture nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes. . . . But we also understand that these technologies can be quickly transformed into nuclear weapons. . . .
“Last year Russia put forward the initiative to establish international centres for the enrichment of uranium. . . . Countries that want to develop their nuclear energy could guarantee that they will receive fuel through direct participation in these centres.”[33]
So Sullivan & Biden, if Putin supposedly is so spurning of your offers, why didn’t you take him up on his proposal to forbid weapons in space? And, while I’m not an advocate of nuclear energy, on what basis can you claim that Putin is a threat to the non-proliferation regime and you are not?
With regard to European security, Putin remarked:
“The Adapted Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was signed in 1999. It took into account a new geopolitical reality, namely the elimination of the Warsaw bloc. Seven years have passed and only four states have ratified this document, including the Russian Federation.
“NATO countries openly declared that they will not ratify this treaty. . . until Russia removed its military bases from Georgia and Moldova. Our army is leaving Georgia, even according to an accelerated schedule. There are still 1,500 servicemen in Moldova that are carrying out peacekeeping operations. . . .
“But what is happening at the same time? Simultaneously the so-called flexible frontline American bases with up to five thousand men each. It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders. . . .”[34]
Sullivan & Biden, why did you spurn Russia’s Adapted Treaty? And why do you ask Russia to remove itself from Georgia when you’re positioning yourself on Russia’s borders?
It’s odd that according to Sullivan & Biden, Putin spurned several USG negotiation efforts, yet according to Putin, it was Sullivan & Biden and earlier presidential administrations that spurned several Russian negotiation efforts. So what’s the truth?
Sullivan and Biden, what exactly were the “considerable efforts” and when were the “multiple points” that you and others reached out to Russia? And what were your proposed offers? Can we have a public or congressional review of all proposals from both sides?
Note that the USG does have a history of concealing from Americans the negotiation offers of its so-called enemies, including those of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.[35] Hiding the offers makes it easier to portray the enemy as evil, as the Cultural Script dictates, and thus falsely justify war against that enemy.
Putin also describes how Russia’s ideas in general were dismissed ever since the 1991 dissolution of the USSR. He writes in his February 24, 2022 speech:
“It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.
“. . . What is the explanation for this contemptuous and disdainful attitude to our interests and absolutely legitimate demands?
“The answer is simple. . . . In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union grew weaker and subsequently broke apart. . . . it has shown us that the paralysis of power and will is the first step towards complete degradation and oblivion.
“As a result, the old treaties and agreements are no longer effective. Entreaties and requests do not help. Anything that does not suit the dominant state, the powers that be, is denounced as archaic, obsolete and useless. At the same time, everything it regards as useful is presented as the ultimate truth and forced on others regardless of the cost, abusively and by any means available. Those who refuse to comply are subjected to strong-arm tactics.”[36]
Sullivan & Biden, is this true? Does the USG no longer give Russia the time of day to consider its treaty proposals and other cooperative ideas? Why is this? Do you think you’re representing the American population when you spurn Russia’s negotiation offers?
Conclusion. The USG’s Cultural Script is a fictional drama that pretends that a noble USG and NATO are rescuing innocent Ukrainian victims by supplying them with weapons to fight against a malicious, evil Putin and Russia. Yet, despite its being fiction, this Cultural Script is fully played out on the pages of the NSS 2022, a document based upon falsehood, a document that promotes the escalation of violence and the escalation of injustice and double standards. And at its toxic core, the NSS seeks to serve the odious, unconscionable goals of using Ukrainians as expendable fodder, of killing Russians, and of assassinating Putin, a leader whose principled and cooperative ideas deserve respect and appreciation, not the scorn and mockery of jeering crowds and sanctimonious hypocrites.
[1] White House, “Remarks by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on the Biden-Harris Administration’s National Security Strategy,” Oct. 12, 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov.
[2] Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward, Born to Win (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1971), 76-97.
[3] James and Jongeward, Born to Win, 10-11, 17-18, 23, 259, 297-99.
[4] White House, “Remarks by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.”
[5] Vladimir Putin, “Address to the People of Russia on the Donbas Problem and the Situation in Ukraine,” American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, Feb. 21, 2022, https://www.americanrhetoric.com.
[6] National Security Strategy 2022, Oct. 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov, 26.
[7] Bill Van Auken, “Zbigniew Brzezinski, Architect of the Catastrophe in Afghanistan, Dead at 89,” World Socialist Web Site, May 29, 2017, https://www.wsws.org.
Nick Turse, The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (New York: Verso, 2010), Chalmers Johnson. “Abolish the CIA!” 31-32.
David N. Gibbs, “The Brzezinski Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur (1998),” Translated by William Blum and David N. Gibbs, https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu.
[8] NSS 2022, 25.
[9] White House, “Remarks by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.”
[10] Vladimir Putin, “Address to the People of Russia,” Feb. 21, 2022;
Eric Zuesse, “Surprise, Surprise….The Washington Post Publishes a Commentary Full of Lies against Putin,” CovertAction Magazine, Feb. 2, 2022, https://covertactionmagazine.com.
[11] Vladimir Putin, “Article by Vladimir Putin: ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” July 12, 2021, Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, https://russiaun.ru.
[12] Vladimir Putin, 43rd Munich Conference on Security and Policy, Feb. 11, 2007, https://russialist.org.
[13] NSS 2022, 25.
[14] Infographic Show, “Russia’s Big Problem with Ukraine,” Apr. 8, 2022, https://www.youtube.com.
[15] Russia Today, “Ukraine behind terrorist attack on Crimea Bridge,” Oct. 9, 2022, https://www.rt.com.
[16] David Martosko, “Russians Cry ‘Colonialism’ and Complain of ‘America’s Dark Side’ after Joe Biden’s Son Joins the Board of Ukraine’s Largest Private Gas Company,” May 13, 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk.
[17] Vladimir Putin, “Address to the People of Russia,” Feb. 21, 2022.
[18] NSS 2022, 3.
[19] Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Another Country (New York: New Press, 2004), 53;
Jae-Bong Lee, “US Deployment of Nuclear Weapons in 1950s South Korea & North Korea’s Nuclear Development: Toward Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 7 (Feb. 17, 2009), 15, https://apjjf.org.
[20] NSS 2022, 25.
[21] Vladimir Putin, “Transcript: Vladimir Putin’s Televised Address on Ukraine,” Feb. 24, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com.
[22] Jan Oberg, Goodbye Peace. Worldmoires into a Peaceful Future, “3. Experiences with the media over almost 50 years,” https://oberg.life, 10-12.
[23] Russia Today, “US security services behind Al Nusra offensive in Syria’s Idlib—Russia MoD,” Sept. 20, 2017, https://www.rt.com.
[24] Gopal Ratnam, “Joe Biden Is the Only Honest Man in Washington,” Foreign Policy, Oct. 7, 2014, https://foreignpolicy.com;
Kim Sengupta, “Turkey and Saudi Arabia Alarm the West by Backing Islamist Extremists the Americans Had Bombed in Syria,” Independent, May 13, 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk.
[25] Congressional Hearing, “Possible Violation or Circumvention of the Clark Amendment,” 100th Congress, 1st Session, July 1, 1987, 112.
[26] Russia Today, “West still arming Al-Nusra in Syria, peace almost impossible—Russia’s UN envoy,” Sept. 25, 2016, https://www.rt.com.
Russia Today, “Al-Nusra executes militants fleeing Aleppo, killing their families,” Aug. 13, 2016, https://www.rt.com.
Russia Today, “RT EXCLUSIVE: RT crew’s footage reveals ISIS & Al-Nusrah flags planted in Aleppo’s frontline,” Oct. 10, 2016, https://www.rt.com.
[27] Russia Today, “West still arming Al-Nusra.”
[28] Russia Today, “Al-Nusra assembles 6,000-strong attack force in Aleppo—Russia MoD,” May 24, 2016, https://www.rt.com.
[29] Russia Today, “West still arming Al-Nusra.”
[30] Jan Oberg, Goodbye Peace. Worldmoires into a Peaceful Future.
[31] NSS 2022, 25.
[32] Putin, “Address to the People of Russia,” Feb. 21, 2022.
[33] Putin, Munich Conference, 2007.
[34] Putin, Munich Conference, 2007.
[35] Hamid Mowlana, George Gerbner, and Herbert Schiller, editors, Triumph of an Image: The Media’s War in the Persian Gulf – A Global Perspective (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc., 1992),
Noam Chomsky,“The Media and the War: What War?” 59-60;
Erskine Childers, “Clusters of Reality Bombed into Bold Relief” 240.
[36] Putin, “Vladimir Putin’s Televised Address,” Feb. 24, 2022.
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