After the Cold War 1.0 (1949−1989) emerged many new problems in the international arena of global politics as the circumstances concerning international relations drastically have been changed. One of the many problematic issues that have been facing both the USA and Europe (in fact, NATO and the EU) after 1989 was to find a new way of their relations with[Read More…]
Western economic punishments on Russia continue to severely limit its economic prospects. But they also risk hastening the development of sanctions evasion techniques and rival economic mechanisms outside the control of Brussels and Washington. Immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S., the UK, and the EU placed major sanctions on Russia to constrict its economy and restrain[Read More…]
The Biden administration will soon release its National Security Strategy, which is being revised in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The document will no doubt trigger a renewed debate about how the United States should gear up for a new Cold War against Russia and China. But before we plunge into a global great-power competition, it’s worth recalling President Biden’s[Read More…]
Though Washington insists that it is not interested in a direct military conflict with Moscow, the latter claims that the US is, in fact, directly involved. But who is telling the truth? On September 8, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appeared in Kyiv on an unannounced visit. He carried with him pledges of yet another military and financial package[Read More…]
While Ukraine has received enormous aid from around the world since the Russian invasion began in February, open support for Russia should not be dismissed. On August 24, Ukraine’s independence day, the U.S. provided a $3 billion military aid package to the country. The additional assistance adds to more than $80 billion worth of support that Kyiv has already received between January[Read More…]
Starting on May 31, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov embarked on a tour to Gulf Cooperation Council countries, where he visited Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, among others. Lavrov’s main objective of these visits is to strengthen ties between Russia and GCC nations amid a global race for geopolitical dominance. The Middle East, especially the Gulf region, is vital[Read More…]
There is a persistent belief in both Europe and the United States that the “Western” economies are the most developed around, just as the “Western” culture and democracy, with its culture of abolition and total tolerance, is the only correct and advanced system. Russia, which is a bridge connecting Europe with Asia since Tsar Peter, has apparently chosen the European[Read More…]
A key factor that explains Vladimir Putin’s military invasion of Ukraine is traditional Russian imperialism. Throughout the world’s long and bloody history, other powerful territories (and, later, nations) expanded their lands through imperial conquest, including Rome, China, Spain, France, Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States. Russia was no exception. Beginning with the small principality of Moscow in 1300, Russia[Read More…]
Extreme religious or anti-religious engagement of the ruling political forces in modern times would have serious negative consequences for the society as whole and the state apparatus. The Russian experience shows this very clearly. The communist phase of Russia was completely anti-religion. Now Putin’s Russia is deeply associated with the Orthodox Church that suffered a lot during the communist regime. Vladimir[Read More…]
As soon as Moscow received an American response to its security demands in Ukraine, it answered indirectly by announcing greater military integration between it and three South American countries, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba. Washington’s response, on January 26, to Russia’s demands of withdrawing NATO forces from Eastern Europe and ending talks about a possible Kyiv membership in the US-led alliance,[Read More…]
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warns of imminent Russian assault on Ukraine, scrambling to get allies to rally. (File photo) A special press briefing in unseemly hurry by the US state department to warn an imminent Russian assault on Ukraine; a surprise call by state secretary Blinken to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov to be followed by an unscheduled meeting[Read More…]
Like the bilateral negotiations between the US and Russia on Monday, the meeting of the NATO-Russia Council on Wednesday also ended with no tangible result. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called it a “positive sign” that the 30 NATO countries and Russia were “sitting at the same table again for the first time in two and a half years and[Read More…]
With Russian troops massing on Ukraine’s borders, it’s not only Ukrainians who worry about what President Vladimir Putin may have in store for them. It’s Kazakhs too. For now, Kazakhs don’t have to be immediately concerned about Russian troop movements. What unsettles them is years of Russian rhetoric, spearheaded by Mr. Putin’s repeated comments, stressing the ideological rather than the[Read More…]
On Friday, Mali’s transitional government has clarified that it is engaged with Russian military trainers even as French troops are drawing down. So, it is official that Russian security personnel are deployed to Mali. Mali, a landlocked country in the Sahel region in West Africa, is the latest theatre of the great contestation involving the big powers playing out in[Read More…]
A fateful week is ending today for international security with the Russian Foreign Ministry releasing the two documents on security guarantees that Moscow had proposed to Washington as the basis for discussions to ease the tensions over NATO’s eastward expansion and to cease the alliance’s deployments close to Russia’s borders, including in Ukraine. Out of the two documents, one is a[Read More…]
Russia President Vladimir Putin has lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago as the demise of what he called “historical Russia” and said the economic crisis that followed was so bad he was forced to moonlight as a taxi driver. A Reuters report from Moscow said: Putin’s comments, released by state TV on Sunday, are likely to[Read More…]
Moscow has butted the grand old transatlantic alliance in the chest on Monday with the foreign ministry announcing that it will suspend the NATO military liaison mission with effect from November 1 and recall the accreditation of its staff in response to the NATO decision to withdraw the accreditation of eight Russian diplomats. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov curtly added, “if NATO has[Read More…]
On no subject is the bipartisan consensus more unshakable than on the Russian threat. In his latest book, The Stupidity of War: American Foreign Policy and the Case for Complacency, American political scientist John Mueller demonstrates that since the end of World War II, American policymakers have developed a kind of addiction to threat inflation by “routinely elevating the problematic to[Read More…]
Russia and Europe share strong historical and cultural ties from time immemorial. But these ties did not translate into amicable trade relations between the two. The Russian Federation and the European Union both came into existence in the early 1990’s. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russia we all know today came into being. During the[Read More…]
But the bottom line is that the German-French initiative has caused a divide within the EU, with East European and Baltic countries that are closer geographically to Russia being wary of any loosening of the EU’s approach to Moscow. Equally, the German-French initiative will alarm Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova in Russia’s ‘near abroad’. *** A thoughtful, far-sighted proposal by German[Read More…]
The strange policy, pursued by the present occupant of the White House during the past few weeks is fairly surprising. Moreover, Joe Biden’s actions vis-à-vis Russia are downright contradictory, to say the least. Or maybe his strange initiatives are sending some ulterior message to the team around him and those who supported last fall’s very dirty elections? On the morning[Read More…]
The future isn’t what it used to be. As a teenager in the 1970s, I watched a lot of TV science fiction shows, notably Space: 1999 and UFO, that imagined a near future of major moon bases and alien attacks on Earth. Movies of that era like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey envisioned colossal spaceships and space stations featuring international crews on mind-blowing missions[Read More…]
It is almost certain that Vladimir Putin will continue to be in office as elections in Russia are about to be held. Things have changed for Russia after the collapse of the USSR. Still, there are a lot of things which seems to be the same as they were. An article by Anders Åslund (Anders, A (2001). Russia. Foreign Policy,[Read More…]
From the number of deceased Russian dissidents, complicity in their demise seems plausible. From evidence, thought, and logic, complicity seems unlikely: (1) Only circumstantial links to Putin’s office have been established in the cases. (2) Because political opposition is weak, and no obvious threat to the ruling United Russia Party, what would the government gain in assassination of opposition figures? (3) Because Putin’s approval rating[Read More…]
This is the first part (of 5 ) of a paragraph by paragraph commentary on a recent article posing as journalism in the March 6, 2017 issue of The New Yorker. I hope to demonstrate that this article is basically a totally mendacious concoction of cold war US propaganda constructed out of unsubstantiated opinions expressed by US government officials and[Read More…]
Zerohedge’s “Tyler Durden” headlined on February 21st, “Bannon Breaks With Pence, Delivers Warning To Europe” and noted that before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis reassured European leaders this past weekend that the U.S. is as anti-Russian now as it was under Barack Obama, U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, had[Read More…]
Eisenhower’s warning In his famous farwell address, US President Dwight Eisenhower eloquently described the terrible effects of an overgrown military-industrial complex. Here are his words: “We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions…. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence, economic,[Read More…]
There is a great deal of continuity in Russian history from the reign of Peter the Great until the present. There was clear discontinuity during the Bolshevik Revolution and the brief period when V. I. Lenin was in power, but then the USSR reverted to some very traditional practices in domestic and especially foreign affairs. Just as Tsars Peter the[Read More…]
The Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was shot in the back and killed Monday (12/19) by a sacked police officer who shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo” and “Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire. The ambassador was giving a speech at an Ankara art gallery. Reuters news agency reported: “A video showed the attacker shouting: “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria!”[Read More…]
The film The Battle of Russia, produced in 1943 by the US War Department (which was renamed the Defense Department in 1949), illustrates a respectful and favorable US elite view of Russian history, the Soviet/Russian people, and Stalin for defeating Hitler in World War II and proving that the German reich (empire) was not invincible. The film was originally intended[Read More…]
On December 7th, was posed the biggest test so far of the mettle of America’s President-Elect, Donald Trump. He had said several times during his campaign, that if elected as President, he would seek a new, less-hostile, relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Now the moment has come when he must either make his first move forward with that historic commitment,[Read More…]
On October 9, I was in the Nevada desert with Catholic Workers from around the world for an action of prayer and nonviolent resistance at what is now called the Nevada National Security Site, the test site where between 1951 and 1992, nine hundred and twenty-eight documented atmospheric and underground nuclear tests occurred. Since the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and[Read More…]
In the midst of rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia, a small delegation of peace activists travels to Moscow and St. Petersburg to learn from Russian people about their perspective on war and international relations. The hardships suffered by ordinary Russians as a result of U.S.-imposed economic sanctions, and the failure of U.S. media to report on this,[Read More…]
In the historic port city of Yalta, located on the Crimean Peninsula, we visited the site where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, in February of 1945, concluded negotiations ending World War II. These leaders and their top advisors were also present at the creation of the United Nations and other instruments of international negotiation and non-military cooperation. Tragically, the creation of[Read More…]
The NATO Founding Act was agreed to between the U.S. and Russia in 1997 in order to provide to Russia’s leader Boris Yeltsin some modicum of assurance that America wouldn’t invade his country. When his predecessor Mikhail Gorbachev had ended the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1991, the representatives of U.S. President GHW Bush told him[Read More…]
There are dangerous provocations along Russia’s western border that have received little or incredibly one-sided coverage by the U.S. media. Thus the U.S. public is not aware of the possibility of a major conflict between two nuclear-armed powers occurring due to an accident or misinterpretation. The genesis of this current situation goes back in ancient history to 1989 and[Read More…]
I wasn’t at first going to listen to Rosemary Barton’s interview (CBC) with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg considering I would probably not learn anything new. But I did and I didn’t – I did listen and I didn’t learn anything new, the interview only reinforced previously held ideas. In general that falls into two parts. First it reminded me[Read More…]
This news-report consists of a compilation of accounts that Crimeans have given to human rights groups or directly posted to the internet, regarding their experiences when the freely elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who had received 75% of the votes of Crimeans, was violently overthrown during January and February of 2014. On 20 February 2014, eight busloads of people[Read More…]
When the democratically elected President of Ukraine was violently overthrown in February 2014 and replaced by a rabidly anti-Russian regime, not only the residents in the areas of Ukraine that had voted heavily for him (Crimea having voted 75% for him, and Donbass having voted 90% for him) were terrified by what they viewed to be a bloodthirsty new regime,[Read More…]
NATO is supposed to be a defensive alliance, whose purpose is to “protect Europe from aggression”; but today it is aggressive tool of the United States. Today NATO is threatening to drive Europe into an all-destroying thermonuclear war with Russia. In recent years, participation in NATO has made European countries accomplices in US efforts to achieve global hegemony by means[Read More…]
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is sending 4,000 additional troops to Eastern Europe in the name of reassuring Poland and the Baltic states, the alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed on Monday. “We will agree to deploy by rotation four robust multi-national battalions in the Baltic states and Poland,” Stoltenberg told NATO officials. The US, Germany and Britain will[Read More…]
Since 1983, Sharon Tennison has worked to develop ordinary citizens’ capacities to avert international crises, focusing on relations between the U.S. and Russia. Now, amid a rising crisis in relations between the U.S. and Russia, she has organized a delegation which assembled in Moscow yesterday for a two week visit. I joined the group yesterday, and happened to finish reading[Read More…]
On Tuesday, June 14th, NATO announced that if a NATO member country becomes the victim of a cyber attack by persons in a non-NATO country such as Russia or China, then NATO’s Article V “collective defense” provision requires each NATO member country to join that NATO member country if it decides to strike back against the attacking country. The preliminary[Read More…]
Nord Stream sabotage was to undercut Germany, says Seymour Hersh 
It Will Be Hard And Cost A Lot Of Blood For Ukraine To Kick Out Russians, Says Top U.S. General 
Saudi – Iran rapprochement: A chance for peace 
Day 30 of the NREGA Protest: Students and Activists Detained by the Delhi Police 
An Irrational Verdict? 
Trump Rot at the EPA 
AUKUS, the Australian Labor Party, and Growing Dissent 
Palestinians Don’t Exist? 
The Long Arm of Washington Extends Into Africa’s Sahel 
Radio Fatherland!! 
Bellies of the Rich Swell Further on the Back of Hunger 
The Big Picture And The Small – Part II 
2500 people urge Chief Minister of Karnataka to protect farmers, pastoralists and Dalits from Supreme injustice 
Our Global Water Crisis 
3.5 Million March Across France Opposing Macron’s Pension Reform 
Election Commission of India must question the presence political nominees on BEL’s and ECIL’s Boards 
Ihan Omar Introduces Legislation to Combat Islamophobia 
Narendra Modi’s Cricket Coup 
The Big Picture And The Small 
Prophesies, Then and Now – My Life at World’s End 
How the Cuban Government and Its People Collaborated on the Family Code 
Stop Criminalizing Journalism and Human Rights Activism: Release Irfan Mehraj and Parvez Khurram 
Politics of Bhagat Singh’s trial 
The Tragedy of Footpaths: Impressions of a Pedestrian in Bangalore 
Altruism exists in nature, Reciprocal altruism in humans U.S. Trying To Cover Up Its Role In Nord Stream Sabotage, Says Seymour Hersh 
Open Letter To Rahul Gandhi, Indian National Congress Party 
Future Scenarios in Ukraine West Sends Depleted Uranium Weapons to Ukraine: MEP to Warmongers – “You Make Me Sick!” 
Sri Lanka’s unconvincing response to Universal Periodic Review’s forthright findings 
Kisan Mahapanchayat stages massive rally in Delhi 
The betrayers of Julian Assange 
The Truth About Our Failure to Curb Carbon Emissions 
They’re liars, Mexico’s President on U.S. 
Grameena Pedala Sangham, Telangana State conference, is an important mile-stone 
Imperial Visits: US Emissaries in the Pacific Enough is enough. Restore parliament 
Disgrace at the New York Times 
‘Israel is (Not) Back to Africa’: How African Countries are Challenging Israeli Plot on the Continent 
A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell? The Vast Power of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex 
Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
