“What would a war between Russia and the USA look like?” This must be the question which I am most frequently asked. This is also the question to which I hear the most outlandish and ill-informed responses to. I have addressed this question in the past and those interested in this topic can consult the following articles: Remembering the important lessons of the Cold War Making sense of Obama’s billion dollar hammer Why the US-Russian nuclear balance is as solid as ever Short reminder about US and Russian nuclear weapons Thinking the unthinkable
The Russia-U.S. Conventional Military Balance It would be pointless for me to repeat it all here, so I will try to approach the issue from a somewhat different angle, but I would strongly recommend that those interested take the time to read this articles which, while mostly written in 2014 and 2015, are still basically valid, especially in the methodology used to tackle this issue. All I propose to do today is to debunk a few popular clichés about modern warfare in general. My hope is that by debunking them I will provide you with some tools to cut through the nonsense which the corporate media loves to present to us as “analysis”.
Category: Head Stories
China, as current chair of the G-20 group of nations, called on France to organize a very special conference in Paris. The fact such a conference would even take place in an OECD country is a sign of how weakened the hegemony of the US-dominated Dollar System has become. On March 31 in Paris a special meeting, named “Nanjing II,” was held. People’s Bank of China Governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, was there and made a major presentation on, among other points, broader use of the IMF special basket of five major world currencies, the Special Drawing Rights or SDR’s. The invited were a very select few. The list included German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde discussed the world’s financial architecture together with China. Apparently and significantly, there was no senior US official present.
A World Crisis Looms The American aggression against China continued Tuesday May 10th with the invasion of Chinese waters just off the Spratly Islands by an American destroyer as China’s limited stock of patience continues to run out. By sending their ships into Chinese territorial waters on the bizarre claim that they are exercising “their right of innocent passage” and that, the “United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows,” they are in fact claiming the right to go anywhere they want, anytime they want. They might as well claim the right to once again send gunboats up the Yangtze River bristling with guns and marines, for their passage through Chinese waters was not only illegal, because without permission; it was also certainly not “innocent” since the passage was meant to be a display of power and control, which is prohibited by the Law of the Sea Convention.
The deployment this week of a US missile system in Eastern Europe is another step towards all-out global war. Despite Western propaganda demonizing Russia, the truth is that it is Russian military might that is actually holding the line to prevent such a cataclysm. The United States and its NATO allies are already at war with Russia. This is not hyperbole. It is fact. The US and its allies are amassing weapons and troops on Russia’s borders, and engaging in simulated attacks from various directions. Orwellian language of “war games” in Western media serves to diminish the disturbing fact that NATO forces are preparing offensive strikes on Russia.
Dilma Rousseff Calls for Mobilizations to Overturn Coup Ousted Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Thursday called on Brazilians to defend their country’s democracy and mobilize against the coup that saw her suspended from office. “I call for the people to remain mobilized, together, in peace … It is a fight we are going to win, it depends on all of us, let’s show the world the millions of people who defend democracy in our country,” said Rousseff in her first comments from the presidential palace since the country’s Senate voted to proceed with impeachment proceedings. Rousseff, who as a young activist was arrested and tortured for her efforts to organize against the military dictatorship that previously ruled Brazil, said she “never thought I would have to fight against another coup in our country.”
In 2002, Brazil’s left-of-center Workers Party (PT) ascended to the presidency when Lula da Silva won in a landslide over the candidate of the center-right party PSDB (throughout 2002, “markets” were indignant at the mere prospect of PT’s victory). The PT remained in power when Lula, in 2006, was re-elected in another landslide against a different PSDB candidate. PT’s enemies thought they had their chance to get rid of PT in 2010, when Lula was barred by term limits from running again, but their hopes were crushed when Lula’s handpicked successor, the previously unknown Dilma Rousseff, won by 12 points over the same PSDB candidate who lost to Lula in 2002.
We are all living in Hybrid War time. From R2P (“responsibility to protect”) to color revolutions, from currency attacks to stock market manipulations. From judicial-financial-political-media enabled “soft” coups – as in Brazil – to support for “moderate” jihadis, multiple stages of Hybrid War now cross-pollinate and generate a vortex of new mutant viruses. Hybrid War, a Beltway concept, has even been turned upside down by the conceptualizers. NATO, affecting puzzlement at the very existence of the concept, interprets the Russian “invasion” of Ukraine as Hybrid War. That serves prime Hybrid War purveyors such as the RAND corporation to take it further, peddling war game scenarios of Russia being able to invade and conquer the Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — in less than 60 hours.
The great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in two previous articles in the London Review of Books («Whose Sarin?» and «The Red Line and the Rat Line») has reported that the Obama Administration falsely blamed the government of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for the sarin gas attack that Obama was trying to use as an excuse to invade Syria; and Hersh pointed to a report from British intelligence saying that the sarin that was used didn’t come from Assad’s stockpiles. Hersh also said that a secret agreement in 2012 was reached between the Obama Administration and the leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to set up a sarin gas attack and blame it on Assad so that the US could invade and overthrow Assad.
Can the World Wake Up? … That Russia and China permit Washington to operate in their media, in their universities, in their financial systems, and in “do-good” NGOs that infiltrate every aspect of their societies demonstrates that both governments have no interest in their survival as independent states. They are too scared of being called “authoritarian” by the Western presstitute media to protect their own independence. My prediction is that Russia and China will soon be confronted with an unwelcome decision: accept American hegemony or go to war.
Washington and its Vassals are demonizing China for Keeping a Check on Foreign NGOs On April 28, the New York Times was blasting “Clampdown in China Restricts 7,000 Foreign Organizations”. A perfect reason for demonizing China for infringing on the liberties of foreign NGOs – NGO’s that try to help and do good in China. The ‘doing good’ is a concerted effort by foreign agents, including international and national organizations and NGOs that receive foreign training and funding to influence public opinion and eventually to cause civil unrest. Imagine, foreign agents teaching and influencing students at Chinese universities with western interests of, for example, privatizing China’s public and social services; or directly interfering in sovereign state affairs, by for instance attempting to rig the Shanghai stock exchange.