On February 1 Russia announced that Moscow is “closely cooperating” with Islamabad in the fight against terrorism and that “Great contribution is being made by all the countries bordering Afghanistan, and Russia is a reliable partner of those countries in every effort to ensure the security of the borders.” But although Russia acknowledges Pakistan’s vital role in the region, most western governments and media outlets claim that much of the shambles in war-torn Afghanistan is the fault of Pakistan. Not only that, but the UK’s Economist claimed in January that “Pakistan’s army is to blame for the poverty of the country’s 208m citizens — it has fostered the paranoia and extremism that hold the country back.”

This is the army which, along with para-military forces, has had 7,057 soldiers killed in operations against paranoid extremists from January 2002 to January 27, 2019. Since the US invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent expansion of Islamic terrorist groups, Pakistan has suffered 468 suicide bombing attacks, in which 7,230 citizens were killed. Before the US offensive in 2001 there was one such attack, in 1995 by a crazy Egyptian who drove a bomb-laden lorry into the Egyptian Embassy’s gates. Last year 369 Pakistani civilians died in terrorist attacks and 165 soldiers were killed in fighting against terrorists, killing 157 of them.

The Pakistan army has mounted countless operations against terrorists, and has been able to restore peace. As the BBC reported, “For over a decade the inaccessible and mountainous tribal area of North Waziristan [on the Afghan border] was home to a swirling array of violent jihadists. The Pakistan and Afghan Taliban movements, al-Qaeda and less well-known militant outfits such as the Haqqani Network used the area to hold hostages, train militants, store weapons and deploy suicide bombers to attack targets in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Today the militants have gone. Virtually the whole of North Waziristan is in Pakistani army hands.” At the cost of hundreds of dead and wounded Pakistan army soldiers.

This is the army that The Economist alleges “promotes a doctrine of persecution and paranoia”. The journal states, without any evidence, that “it helped cast out the previous prime minister, Nawaz Sharif” but doesn’t mention that Sharif was totally corrupt. It is not surprising that Sharif resigned in 2017 after the Supreme Court disqualified him from office following revelations of his family’s corruption. As reported by Al Jazeera, “In 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists leaked 11.5 million documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, dubbed the Panama Papers. Several documents included in the leak showed three of Sharif’s children — Hussain, Hasan and Maryam — owned at least three off-shore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands. The documents showed that these companies had engaged in deals worth $25m. Crucially, one of the documents also revealed that the companies had been involved in a $13.2m mortgage involving the London properties as collateral, the first time the Sharif family’s ownership of the apartments was proven on paper.”

The whole thing stank, and it was eventually made public that Nawaz Sharif was corrupt to the eyeballs — as everyone in Pakistan had known for decades.

The Pakistan Army cannot not be held to blame for that, any more than it can be for the majestic corruption of former President Asif Zardari (Mr Ten Percent), the husband of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. In 1998 the Pulitzer Prize winner John Burns wrote in an eight page exposé in the New York Times that “In 1995, a leading French military contractor, Dassault Aviation, agreed to pay Mr. Zardari and a Pakistani partner $200 million for a $4 billion jet fighter deal that fell apart only when Ms. Bhutto’s Government was dismissed. In another deal, a leading Swiss company hired to curb customs fraud in Pakistan paid millions of dollars between 1994 and 1996 to offshore companies controlled by Mr. Zardari and Ms. Bhutto’s widowed mother, Nusrat.”

The Bhutto government was also corrupt to the earlobes. As Burns recounted, “In the largest single payment investigators have discovered, a gold bullion dealer in the Middle East was shown to have deposited at least $10 million into an account controlled by Mr. Zardari after the Bhutto Government gave him a monopoly on gold imports that sustained Pakistan’s jewellery industry. The money was deposited into a Citibank account in the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, one of several Citibank accounts for companies owned by Mr. Zardari. Together, the documents provided an extraordinarily detailed look at high-level corruption in Pakistan, a nation so poor that perhaps 70 percent of its 130 million people are illiterate, and millions have no proper shelter, no schools, no hospitals, not even safe drinking water. During Ms. Bhutto’s five years in power, the economy became so enfeebled that she spent much of her time negotiating new foreign loans to stave off default on $62 billion in public debt.”

So it might be asked of The Economist exactly what the Pakistan army had to do with impoverishment of citizens during the regimes of Benazir Bhutto, then her husband, the crooked Asif Zardari, then the almost equally corrupt Nawaz Sharif. The country has had civilian government since 2008, and might reasonably be expected to have improved its economic situation, but in some weird way, according to The Economist, the fact that it has failed to do so must be the fault of the army, which has been trying to protect the country against the massive terrorist effort to destroy democracy and establish Islamic rule.

The Economist states that the army “at last” moved against the terrorists in 2014 “following an appalling school massacre.” As described above, it did indeed mount a massive operation in Waziristan in 2014, but to assert that this was belated action is totally misleading. The Economist ignores the fact that in May 2009, for example, “Pakistan’s army declared a ‘full-scale’ offensive against Taliban insurgents holed up in the Swat valley… The fighting was concentrated in the main town, Mingora, where the bulk of an estimated 4,000 Taliban fighters across Swat are heavily dug in. Artillery and helicopter gunships battered militant-held buildings, while the Taliban planted mines across the city in expectation of a major ground offensive.” In this army operation 228 officers and men were killed and 757 wounded. Fazlullah, the leader of the insurgent group known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) escaped to Afghanistan, where he was killed by a US drone strike in 2018.

It is all very well for clever commentators who have never experienced a military operation or heard a shot fired in anger to declare that Pakistan’s armed forces “commandeer resources” as if this is a crime. They have no idea of the enormous cost of logistics in anti-terrorist operations in “the inaccessible and mountainous tribal area of North Waziristan.” They have no idea of the human and financial implications of casualty evacuation in such awful terrain, or of the enormous cost of establishing forward bases and transporting ammunition and rations over hundreds of miles of rugged tracks. Yet they say they believe that “the army’s pre-eminence is precisely what lies at the heart of Pakistan’s troubles.”

Tell that to the people of Swat and North Waziristan who suffered from the atrocities of the Taliban who have now been ejected — by the army — from the regions where, for example,

“decapitated bodies were found on the roadside, hung from electric poles and trees.” Now, as the BBC notes, “The army is building infrastructure to tempt people to return. As well as new roads, there are brand new schools with facilities that rival anything on offer elsewhere in Pakistan.” That might seem to most people, if not The Economist, a reasonable use of “resources”.

In preparing for even greater instability in Afghanistan and its likely spill-over to Pakistan, the army will require more resources, and it is likely these will be forthcoming, as will cooperation by at least some other nations, notably Russia whose special envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov, said in Islamabad on January 29 that Moscow “greatly appreciated Pakistan’s role as a facilitator in the Afghan peace process.” Nobody knows how that process will pan out, but it is certain there will continue to be regional instability, and that in Pakistan it will be essential that the army continues in its role as protector of democracy.

Quite so. And so say all of us. Let’s hear it for a fearless journal that tells it like it is.

Until it doesn’t.

In the issue dated December 15, 2018 there is a strange anomaly in its description of life in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a shattered African state which the magazine’s writer(s) criticise objectively and with originality. And it’s the originality tangent that is intriguing.

The hard copy which I received in France has a half-page leader about Congo, headlined “The Kremlin-style charade in Kinshasa — Can anyone stop Joseph Kabila from doing a Putin?” which was an arresting summons that indicated objective cover concerning what one might expect to be a series of parallels and comparisons involving the leaders of Congo and Russia. On reading it, however, I wondered if perhaps the writer(s) had trended to originality that transcended objectivity, so went to the website where the headline was slightly different, employing the tried and faithful “-ology” tack-on and omitting Kabila’s name. It read “Kremlinology in Kinshasa: Can anyone stop Congo’s president from doing a Putin?”

This was becoming even more fascinating, but on reading the objective commentary on Congo’s hideous circumstances it was difficult to see how the eye-catching headline “Kremlin-style charade” was justified in relation to the text. The description of Mr Kabila was condemnatory in the extreme, and the observation that “his regime is filthier than the untreated water that most Congolese drink”, while distinctive and admirably original, could not by even the most objective commentator be applied to “doing a Putin”.

What, then, justified the comparison? The headline to the editorial on another Economist web page was “A farce in Congo: Pulling a Putin”, which wasn’t much help, and the text appeared to be identical, with the Putin-Kremlin-charade stuff being confined to a few words about presidential selection. The Economist postulates that Mr Kabila picked a successor “in the hope that he will be like Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Putin’s sidekick who kept Russia’s throne warm for a few years until the big man was constitutionally allowed to come back.” A headline and 32 words of an Editorial total of 620 were used to focus readers’ attention on Russia. It was an attempted excoriation exercise that was quite skilful, because it is a principle of psychological operations to refrain from outright insult while encouraging audiences to associate dubious behaviour with the intended target and go on from there.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions concerning other nations’ affairs, and if it seems to The Economist that there has been questionable activity in Moscow concerning governance of the Russian Federation, then it is quite entitled to make such a point, however inconsequential it might be — but even The Economist couldn’t claim that there was anything unconstitutional or illegal in President Putin’s election process. The BBC described what happened succinctly, in that “first elected president in 2000, Mr Putin renewed his four-year term in 2004 before stepping aside in 2008 to serve as prime minister under his protégé, Dmitry Medvedev, because by law he could serve only two consecutive terms.”

The Economist considers this to be reprehensible, but to publish a major editorial piece with a headline implying that the electoral system of the Democratic Republic of the Congo can be equated with that of the Russian Federation is preposterous. (It was reported on December 20 that the Congo elections scheduled for the 23rd had been postponed until the end of the month because “a fire destroyed 80% of the voting machines in the capital, Kinshasa.” Just as happens all the time in St Petersburg and Novosibirsk.)

Then it seemed that The Economist might not be so anti-Russia focused as appears in the editorial referred to above. If one reads the Middle East and Africa edition of this objective advocate of political freedom it is fascinating to see that the headline about the Congo’s election reads “A puppet is set to replace the president : Joseph Kabila will still pull the strings after stepping down.”

There isn’t a hint of “Kremlin-style charades” or “Pulling a Putin” and nowhere in this edition is there mention of Moscow, Prime Minister Medvedev, Russia, Kremlinology or even the word “corruption.” Interestingly, the word “regime” is also omitted, although it appears three times in the “Doing a Putin” version.

The Economist’s Middle East and Africa editorial about Congo is over twice as long as the Putin/Kremlin rendering, and at that length it might be imagined there would be a greater scope to elaborate on comparisons between Russia’s electoral system and that of Congo. But the author(s) refrained from taking the opportunity, and confined observations to such exposition as “The election has been a long time coming. The constitution required Mr Kabila to step down in 2016. He tried to change it, failed, and stuck around for two more years anyway.” Neat, meaty, to the point, but strangely devoid of Kremlinology comparison.

Why did The Economist publish a totally different version of the Congo editorial in its European and Middle East/Africa editions? The major differences between them is that in the former there was a headline sliming President Putin and a snide comment in the body of the piece about Russia’s presidential election system, while in the latter there was nary a whiff of Kremlinology. Is it imaginable that The Economist wants to send different messages about the same subject to different parts of the world? Why tell Europe and America about a “Kremlin-style charade” and “Pulling a Putin” and abstain from such influential impact on readers who inhabit the region from the Mediterranean to the Cape?

But perhaps that begs the question about why the objective and original Economist indulged in Moscow-slanging in the first place.

It’s not as farcical as the approach of “There’s a Bear in the Woods” in the “Daily 202” of the Washington Post, which is obsessed with Russia, and it’s unlikely that the Economist will go anywhere near such gutters — but all the same, it would be decidedly more principled to refrain from spreading false impressions by using suggestive headlines, and just be a tad more objective about the Russian Federation.

Today, we could do with a John Kerry to ask the same question about the war in Afghanistan.

On August 5 it was reported that “a suicide bomber has killed three Czech NATO soldiers in an attack in eastern Afghanistan. The victims were targeted while on a routine foot patrol alongside Afghan forces, NATO officials said in a statement. A US soldier and two Afghan soldiers were wounded in the attack in Charikar, the capital of Parwan province.”

Just what is being achieved by Czech soldiers on fighting patrols 5,000 kilometres from home is not explained by any of the authorities responsible for their deployment — and thus for placing them in jeopardy of their lives — but the usual nauseating platitudes were promptly mouthed by some of them.

The Czech prime minister, Andrej Babis, declared that the dead soldiers were “heroes who fought against terrorism so far from home.” Well, he should know about operating far from home. Forbes lists him as being worth four billion dollars and owning “a Michelin-starred restaurant, La Paloma, in the French Riviera” which is no doubt some consolation to the relatives and friends of the men who were killed. Babis, of course, sent his “deepest condolences to their families,” as did the ever-ready General John Nicholson, the sixteenth commander in Washington’s seventeen years of war, who, never at a loss for futile banality, babbled that “Their sacrifice will endure in both our hearts and history and further strengthen our resolve.” What utter garbage.

The “sacrifice” of these Czech soldiers won’t be felt by any hearts other than those of their grieving families, and it is insulting to claim that it will. And their deaths won’t get even the tiniest footnote in history. As to “strengthening our resolve” — resolve to do what? — to carry on mouthing phoney inanities about the utter chaos in Afghanistan?

This tawdry exhibition of fake emotion sticks in the gullet — but it’s not as sickening as the observation in The Economist that the war’s “current cost — roughly $45 billion and around a dozen lives a year — is modest enough to invite little interest from Congress or the media. That suggests Mr Trump’s strategy is sustainable.”

The talented intellectuals of The Economist think that the deaths of a dozen American soldiers every year in the unwinnable Afghan War indicate that the policies of Trump and the Pentagon can be maintained indefinitely. What’s a dozen lives, after all?

Well, listen to me, you clever little intellectuals and you swaggering military strategists, because I’m going to tell you a few home truths.

The soldiers who have died — and those who are going to die —have relatives who love them. They have parents, brothers, sisters, wives, partners, children, all of whom suffer when the lives of their nearest and dearest are sacrificed by a bunch of no-hopers as part of a “modest” cost in a supposedly “sustainable strategy” in a country that is ungovernable.

The Costs of War Project at Brown University estimates that more than 100,000 people have died in the war in Afghanistan. They weren’t all soldiers, of course, because in conflicts like this, the civilian population always suffers from action by both militants and the armed forces involved. In July, the UN reported that 1,692 Afghan civilians were killed, and 3,430 injured in the first six months of 2018, which is the record for that period in the seventeen years of this catastrophe.

But let’s get back to the soldiers who are dying.

On August 9 it was finally acknowledged by the Kabul government that over twenty Afghan soldiers had been killed in an insurgent attack on August 3 in Uruzgan province. There were no US-NATO troops involved, so there has been little reporting of the disaster by the western media, and no mention of it whatever by NATO headquarters, but it is the most serious setback suffered by the Afghan Army for several months.

Consider what happens to the dependant families of dead Afghan soldiers: the widows are entitled to pensions, of course — but Afghanistan is the third most corrupt country in the world. Do you imagine for a moment that these anguished women receive a fraction of the tiny amount to which they are entitled? Of course they don’t. Usually, they don’t get a bean, because the money is stolen by crooked and heartless government officials. What have you to say to that, General Nicholson? Does it strengthen your resolve to do anything?

As reported by the Japan Times, “Help for Afghan Heroes, an Afghan non-profit organization supporting 5,000 families of wounded or dead security forces, said corruption is a key reason many women do not receive assistance.” Nasreen Sharar, special projects officer for the group, said that “they are asked to pay a bribe to get the application processed and they often don’t have the money.”

Of course they don’t have the money. They are just tiny inconsequential and stricken blobs in a “sustainable strategy” that costs $45 billion and “around a dozen lives a year.”

Hashratullah Ahmadzai, spokesman for Kabul’s Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled, told Arab News “We are in a state of war. The number of women who become widows is increasing. Those who fight on the government side and those on the side of the Taliban and the militants have wives and mothers too. People on both sides suffer and women on all sides are affected more than anyone in this war.”

But what about the Czech army soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan? The western media carried the 130 word Reuter's report about their deaths, and then forgot all about them, which makes a sick joke of Nicholson’s pompous pronouncement that “Their sacrifice will endure in both our hearts and history.”

They were Staff Sergeant Martin Marcin, 36, and Corporals Kamil Benes, 28, and Patrik Stepanek, 25, about whose deaths the Czech Defence Minister Lubomir Metnar declared that “We have witnessed a tragedy that can hardly be prevented when you serve in the army.” I would really like to be able to put that grubby politician on a patrol in Afghanistan, along with the intellectuals of The Economist and all the other smart-assed commentators to whom soldiers’ lives and grieving widows mean nothing.

Not that the Czech government told us much about the widows or other relatives of the soldiers Mr Metnar sent to die in Afghanistan. All that was reported by Czech Radio was “One leaves behind a widow and a three-month-old baby.”

At least, she’ll probably be paid her pension, unlike so many widows of Afghan Army soldiers who also died for… What?

In all the years of useless conflict in Afghanistan the western media has never listed the names of Afghan Army soldiers killed in action, because these soldiers don’t matter in the greater scheme of things — the “sustainable strategy” — in which they are but inconsequential pawns, as are all the civilians who are killed by bombing, whether on the ground by the Taliban, or from the sky by Afghan-US-NATO airstrikes.

The BBC reports that “Since President Trump announced his Afghanistan strategy . . . the number of bombs dropped by the US Air Force has surged dramatically. New rules of engagement have made it easier for US forces to carry out strikes against the Taliban” and this surge in aerial blitzing has certainly had an effect.

In the first six months of 2018 the UN documented “353 civilian casualties (149 deaths and 204 injured) from aerial attacks, a 52 per cent increase from the same period in 2017. The mission attributed 52 per cent of all civilian casualties from aerial attacks to the Afghan Air Force, 45 per cent to international military forces, and the remaining three per cent to unidentified Pro-Government Forces.”

While Afghan and foreign air forces blitz the country, and the Taliban and other militants wreak havoc with their constant attacks, all that happens politically is that corruption thrives and the murderously criminal vice-president, Abdurrashid Dostum, returns from self-imposed exile to create further chaos. The place is ungovernable, and the foreigners should get out, now.

As John Kerry said, almost fifty years ago: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Last week’s Economist Magazine won the day with the best-ever headline about the Trump-Kim Jong-un summit: `Kim Jong Won!’ 

That said it all. Just out of hospital, I was in no shape to compete with the great Economist or its very witty headline writers. But after watching a week of post Singapore summit between Great White Father Trump and delinquent Kim Jong-un I must totally agree with the Economist.

What was billed as a second-coming extravaganza between the two leaders – who have been trading insults of ‘little rocket man’ and ‘dotard’ (someone who is senile) turned out to be a very expensive photo op for both publicity seekers that made much noise but produced very little – at least so far.  It seemed as if two schoolyard bullies had been forced by the principal to shake hands.

Beyond gestures, North Korea’s leader certainly came out ahead.  His objective – and those of his family predecessors for the past 60 years – was to normalize relations with the US, start trade, and end US efforts to overthrow the Marxist government in Pyongyang.  

Trump’s objectives, at least initially, were to crush North Korea and the threats it could pose to the United States and its regional allies Japan and South Korea. Trump sought to set up Kim as a bogeyman, and himself as America’s savior.  Trump knew perfectly well that he could not destroy all of North Korea’s deeply buried nuclear-armed missiles, and, in spite of his huffing and puffing, had no stomach for an invasion of North Korea that could cost the US an estimated 250,000 casualties.

So Trump’s solution was more show-biz. A much ballyhooed flight to Singapore, backslapping a delighted Kim, and a love-fest between the two chunky leaders was sold to Americans as the dawn of peace.  America’s media was quick to retail the story and burnish Trump’s credentials among the seriously credulous.  No more hiding under your school desks or in dank basements.  As Trump grandly proclaimed, Americans no longer have to fear North Korea and can sleep peacefully at night!

Why?  Korea still has all of its medium and long-ranged missiles and an estimated 40 or more nuclear warheads. The North is developing submarines that can launch nuclear-armed missiles from underwater off America’s coasts. For Kim, these weapons are purely defensive, designed to prevent a US attack on his nation. But he is now a full-fledged member of the nuclear club.

Equally important, North Korea still has an estimated 14,000 170mm guns and hundreds of 300mm long-ranged rocket launchers emplaced in caves just north of the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas. They threaten almost all of South Korea’s capital Seoul north of the Han River and some US military bases and key airfields, notably Osan.

This is a very real threat – one that is largely immune to attack from the air. I have seen these emplacements from the northern edge of the DMZ. Kim’s big guns hold Seoul’s millions of inhabitants hostage.

There is no mention of this artillery threat in the final communiqué issued by Trump and Kim in Singapore.  But it was agreed to temporarily stop the highly provocative US/South Korean war games simulating an invasion of the North, a key demand by Kim. This column has been calling for their end for a decade.  North Korea will seemingly halt its missile tests.

This is not the ‘denuclearization’ of North Korea that has been bandied about.  There may be a few gestures of disarmament but Kim must know that his nukes are his means of survival.  In case Kim didn’t remember the dire fate of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, Trump’s new national security advisor John Bolton, a fanatic’s fanatic, cheerfully recalled the doom of Libya’s murdered Col. Khadaffi.

The Singapore summit was also a huge humiliation for America’s allies Japan and South Korea.  In Asia, preserving ‘face’ is essential. 

Trump completely ignored America’s two old allies after his meeting with Kim – who routinely blasts Japan and South Korea as ‘America’s stooges.’ Instead, Trump sent his beginner Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to explain what happened in Singapore, inflicting a deep loss of face on Tokyo and Seoul. This was a terrible insult and could spark decisions by at least Japan to proceed ahead with its covert nuclear program. Japan can deploy nuclear weapons in 3-6 months; South Korea is not far behind.

The United States and North Korea are now on a more civilized level of behavior. But nothing basic has been resolved. Maybe Trump has some more concessions up his sleeve, like cutting the number of US troops in the South. But Korea is now on the back burner as Trump wages trade wars around the globe.

ericmargolis.com

It should come as no surprise that American news networks rely on British correspondents stationed in northern Syria and Beirut as their primary sources. MI-6 has historically relied on non-official cover (NOC) agents masquerading primarily as journalists, but also humanitarian aid workers, Church of England clerics, international bankers, and hotel managers, to carry out propaganda tasks. These NOCs are situated in positions where they can promulgate British government disinformation to unsuspecting actual journalists and diplomats.

For decades, a little-known section of the British Foreign Office – the Information Research Department (IRD) – carried out propaganda campaigns using the international media as its platform on behalf of MI-6. Years before Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir became targets for Western destabilization and “regime change.” IRD and its associates at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and in the newsrooms and editorial offices of Fleet Street broadsheets, tabloids, wire services, and magazines, particularly “The Daily Telegraph,” “The Times,” “Financial Times,” Reuters, “The Guardian,” and “The Economist,” ran media smear campaigns against a number of leaders considered to be leftists, communists, or FTs (fellow travelers).

These leaders included Indonesia’s President Sukarno, North Korean leader (and grandfather of Pyongyang’s present leader) Kim Il-Sung, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Cyprus’s Archbishop Makarios, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Chile’s Salvador Allende, British Guiana’s Cheddi Jagan, Grenada’s Maurice Bishop, Jamaica’s Michael Manley, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Guinea’s Sekou Toure, Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara, Australia’s Gough Whitlam, New Zealand’s David Lange, Cambodia’s Norodom Sihanouk, Malta’s Dom Mintoff, Vanuatu’s Father Walter Lini, and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah.

After the Cold War, this same propaganda operation took aim at Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Somalia’s Mohamad Farrah Aidid, and Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today, it is Assad’s, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s, and Catalonian independence leader Carles Puigdemont’s turn to be in the Anglo-American state propaganda gunsights. Even Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, long a darling of the Western media and such propaganda moguls as George Soros, is now being targeted for Western visa bans and sanctions over the situation with Muslim Rohingya insurgents in Rakhine State.

Through IRD-MI-6-Central Intelligence Agency joint propaganda operations, many British journalists received payments, knowingly or unknowingly, from the CIA via a front in London called Forum World Features (FWF), owned by John Hay Whitney, publisher of the “New York Herald Tribune” and a former US ambassador to London. It is not a stretch to believe that similar and even more formal relationships exist today between US and British intelligence and so-called British “journalists” reporting from such war zones as Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, and the Gaza Strip, as well as from much-ballyhooed nerve agent attack locations as Salisbury, England.

No sooner had recent news reports started to emerge from Douma about a Syrian chlorine gas and sarin agent attack that killed between 40 to 70 civilians, British reporters in the Middle East and London began echoing verbatim statements from the Syrian “White Helmets” and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In actuality, the White Helmets – claimed by Western media to be civilian defense first-responders but are Islamist activists connected to jihadist radical groups funded by Saudi Arabia – are believed to have staged the chemical attack in Douma by entering the municipality’s hospital and dowsing patients with buckets of water, video cameras at the ready. The White Helmets distributed their videos to the global news media, with the BBC and Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News providing a British imprimatur to the propaganda campaign asserting that Assad carried out another “barrel bomb” chemical attack against “his own people.” And, as always, the MI-6 financed Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad news front claimed to be operated by a Syrian expatriate and British national named Rami Abdel Rahman from his clothing shop in Coventry, England, began providing second-sourcing for the White Helmet’s chemical attack claims.

With President Trump bringing more and more neo-conservatives, discredited from their massive anti-Iraq propaganda operations during the Bush-Cheney era, into his own administration, the world is witnessing the prolongation of the “Trump Doctrine.”

The Trump Doctrine can best be explained as follows: A nation will be subject to a US military attack depending on whether Trump is facing a severe political or sex scandal at home.

Such was the case in April 2017, when Trump ordered a cruise missile attack on the joint Syrian-Russian airbase at Shayrat, Syria. Trump was still reeling from the resignation of his National Security Adviser, Lt. General Michael Flynn, in February over the mixing of his private consulting business with his official White House duties. Trump needed a diversion and the false accusation that Assad used sarin gas on the village of Khan Sheikoun on April 4, 2017, provided the necessary pabulum for the war-hungry media.

The most recent cruise missile attack was to divert the public’s attention away from Trump’s personal attorney being raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a sex scandal involving Trump and a porn actress, and a “tell-all” book by Trump’s fired FBI director, James Comey.

Although these two scandals provided opportunities for the neo-cons to test Trump with false flag operations in Syria, they were not the first time such actions had been carried out. In 2013, the Syrian government was blamed for a similar chemical attack on civilians in Ghouta. That year, Syrian rebels, supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, admitted to the Associated Press reporter on the ground in Syria that they had been given banned chemical weapons by Saudi Arabia, but that the weapons canisters exploded after improper handling by the rebels. Immediately, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian rebel organizations operating out of Turkey claimed that Assad had used chemical-laden barrel bombs on “his own people.” However, Turkish, American, and Lebanese sources confirmed that it was the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) that had badly bungled a false flag sarin nerve agent attack on Ghouta.

Few Western media outlets were concerned about a March 19, 2013, sarin nerve agent by the Bashair al-Nasr Brigade rebel group linked to the US- and British-backed Free Syrian Army. The rebels used a "Bashair-3” unguided projectile, containing the deadly sarin agent, on civilians in Khan al-Assal, outside Aleppo. At least 27 civilians were killed, and scores of others injured in the attack. The Syrian Kurds also reported the use of chemical weapons on them during the same time frame by Syrian rebel groups backed by the United States, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. The usual propaganda operations – Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Doctors Without Borders, the BBC, CNN, and Sky News – were all silent about these attacks.

In 2013, April 2017, and April 2018, the Western media echo chamber blared out all the same talking points: “Assad killing his own people,” “Syrian weapons of mass destruction,” and the “mass murder of women and children.” Western news networks featured videos of dead women and children, while paid propagandists, known as “contributors” to corporate news networks – all having links to the military-intelligence complex – demanded action be taken against Assad.

Trump, now being advised by the notorious neocon war hawk John Bolton, the new National Security Adviser, began referring to Assad as an “animal” and a “monster.” Bolton, along with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Irving Lewis “Scooter” Libby, helped craft similar language against Saddam Hussein prior to the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was not coincidental that Trump – at the urging of Bolton and other neocons – gave a full pardon to Libby on the very same day he ordered the cruise missile attack on Damascus and other targets in Syria. Libby was convicted in 2005 of perjury and illegally disclosing national security information.

The world is being asked to take, at face value, the word of patented liars like Trump, Bolton, and other neocons who are now busy joining the Trump administration at breakneck speed. The corporate media unabashedly acts as though it never lied about the reasons given by the United States and Britain for going to war in Iraq and Libya. Why should anyone believe them now?

A recent editorial in the Economist magazine simultaneously reveals both the intellectual shallowness of the new Cold War and its source of inspiration. It does so by tying together three points that have become staples of the current mind-set about Russia.

The first, is that post-Communist Russia is even worse than the USSR. While the Soviet Union promoted Communism, that was at least a political ideal. Modern Russia, by contrast, only projects cynicism (the more correct term here would be “nihilism”). It does so in order to make its own cynical leadership look better by comparison. Portraying Western leaders as self-serving and cynical is very important to Vladimir Putin because, despite every polls showing that he is overwhelmingly popular, the Economist is quite certain that Russians would otherwise look to the West for political guidance and inspiration.

This strikes me as rather disturbing news, since it leads to uncomfortable questions about why the U.S. Congress is so eager to play along with Putin’s strategy.

But, be that as it may, Putin failed to anticipate the devastating U.S. response—"the policy of no positive agenda." By refusing to negotiate anything, Western leaders cannot be blackmailed into conceding anything to Russia. Thus, the editorial approvingly concludes, "After two and a half decades of inflated hopes and expectations for peaceful coexistence, America is back to its old cold-war policy of containment and deterrence."

If this sounds eerily familiar, it should. It is the playbook that Ronald Reagan used during his first two years in office, and then decisively rejected.

Several senior members of Reagan’s initial foreign policy team, like Caspar Weinberger (later Secretary of Defense), William Casey (head of the CIA), Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (U.S. Ambassador to the UN), and Richard Pipes (the NSC staffer in charge of Soviet policy), all felt that one should never negotiate with the Soviets.

Their confrontational approach culminated in June 1982, with the CIA sabotage of the computer control systems the Soviet Union had purchased to automate the operation of a new trans-Siberian gas pipeline. “The result,” New York Times columnist William Safire later wrote giddily, “was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space.”

According to Rutgers historian David Foglesong, author of The American Mission and the 'Evil Empire', Reagan's persistent vacillation in standing up to Soviets “contributed to Casey's contempt for the president as indecisive, passive, and mindless.” It was Casey who urged the Saudis to increase their oil production in order to reduce Soviet hard cash revenues. When Gorbachev complained about it in 1986, Reagan said he honestly knew nothing about it.

By 1983, however, Ronald Reagan was already beginning to transition from “Cold Warrior” to “Peace Monger”—eager to conclude the first nuclear arms reduction agreements in U.S. history (START instead of SALT), optimistic about creating a shield that would make nuclear weapons obsolete, and especially anxious to convince the Soviets that he did not want war.

After the release of a group of Pentecostals who had been residing in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for five years, in July 1983, Reagan wrote to General Secretary Yuri Andropov asking for "a more active level of exchange." His outreach lead to conflicts with his staff. On April 6, 1983, after the National Security Council staff argued that “no approach should be made to the Soviets,” Reagan overruled them. Later that day he wrote in his diary, "Some of the N.S.C. staff are too hard line."

In July 1982 the hawkish Al Haig was replaced by George Shultz as Secretary of State, and Richard Pipes returned to Harvard. By early 1983, the new head of NSC was Jack F. Matlock, a former Russian language teacher at Dartmouth with extensive diplomatic experience in the Soviet Union. Matlock’s very first memo to the president set a new tone: “The United States cannot, from the outside, bring down the Soviet regime,” he wrote, “and that direct attempts to do so would only strengthen it.”

One month later, in May 1983, U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Arthur A. Hartman, said in a speech at Harvard that “an approach to the Soviet Union that emphasizes trade and other contacts… offers better prospects for a more peaceful world than trying to seal the Soviets off from all dealings with us.”

In January 1984 Reagan formally abandoned his view of the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire. In a televised address to the nation on Soviet-American relations, he stressed the “common interests” of the two superpowers, and said that nuclear war was the paramount security threat for both the United States and the Soviet Union.

Walking down Red Square just four years later, a journalist asked Reagan whether he still considered the Soviet Union an Evil Empire. “No,” he replied, “That was another time, another era."

What most people still do not realize, however, is the degree to which Reagan’s personal transformation was inspired by his exposure to Russian culture. His guide here was the popular historian Suzanne Massie, who introduced the president to the deep religiosity of the Russian people.

Reagan read Massie’s book, Land of the Firebird, on the eve of his first meeting with Gorbachev in November 1985, and came away from that meeting convinced that Gorbachev was a closet Christian. He began to think of the Russians (not the leaders, but the people) as religious and sentimental, a lot like Americans.

Given that quite a few of Reagan’s ex-advisors, including David M. Stockman, Patrick J. Buchanan, Jack F. Matlock and Paul Craig Roberts, strongly oppose the current Russophobic consensus, one has to wonder how much of today’s animosity is fed by crude views, like those of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that Russians are “typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor.” This view could easily be dispelled by a broader exposure to Russian history and culture.

Sadly, it is hard to even imagine someone like a Robert “Bud” McFarlane today inviting Suzanne Massie to the White House to present a point of view so drastically different from his own. Or, a scholar/diplomat like Jack F. Matlock, envisioning the possibility of not just resetting, but of actually rethinking containment. Sometimes, I wonder if luminaries like the late Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, or George F. Kennan himself, for that matter, could get a fair hearing in today’s Washington.

We were incredibly lucky to have had such people in Washington at a critical juncture in Russian-American relations. But without a profound reassessment of Russia, along the lines that Ronald Reagan had, it is doubtful we will be so lucky again.

nationalinterest.org

The recent theme — and not only in the Economist, but in almost all western journals and other media outlets — is that the dreaded Kremlin, that bastion of sabre-rattling bears, is intending to invade countries along its borders. And as I spent the last week among Scandinavians, first with individual friends, then at a large social gathering in Denmark, this allegation, belief, yea, conviction, attracted more of my attention than usual.

The general feeling among the people with whom I mixed, all of whom I have known for many decades, was indeed one of distrust and even fear of Russia. There were some differing and more objective opinions, but overall the tenor was suspicion that Russia is up to no good. We parted friends, as always, but I was disturbed by some of the expressions of dislike for Russia that were evident. My observation that the US-NATO military alliance had expanded exponentially following the end of the Cold War cut no ice (if one may use that metaphor in these circumstances) and was deemed irrelevant to the current situation.

It is rarely mentioned in the western media that NATO’s vast expansion took place in a time of total peace and hoped-for reconstruction throughout Europe. These were the days of economic dreams, of hope and optimism about a commercially benign Europe that would flourish through mutual cooperation and by expanding ties with nations that sought trade rather than military confrontation. Russia was weak, but obviously had economic potential. The way to prosperity was open and all the signs beckoned to expansion of trade, the furthering of cultural understanding and creation of mutual trust.

Fat chance of that happening for so long as NATO existed. And even less after NATO swelled its military presence ever closer to Russia’s borders.

When I served as a reconnaissance and survey officer in a British army nuclear missile regiment at the height of the Cold War confrontation in the 1960s, the NATO group was comparatively small, and the Belgian and Dutch armies went home for weekends. (Well, that’s what we believed.) Its magazine ‘NATO’s Fifteen (later Sixteen) Nations’ was a turgid ill-written propaganda journal of which I ploughed through two issues and which to my certain knowledge remained ever-unopened amongst the plethora of publications on the table of our Officers’ Mess ante-room, for NATO was a boring farce and none of us believed for a moment that the alliance’s defences would last longer than a few days if the hordes advanced west across the frontier, no matter the kilotonnage of our obsolescent warheads. We well knew that if we were to launch just one of our missiles we would all die a horrible death, along with most of the populations of Europe and America — and the Soviet Union — in a hideous global nuclear catastrophe.

Then came the end of Cold War confrontation, and the end of any justification for the existence of NATO. But instead of being disbanded it expanded. The successor to ‘NATO’s Fifteen/Sixteen Nations’ is a free online and much glossier magazine, produced at vast expense (NATO has plenty of money; witness its new 1.5 billion dollars headquarters palace in Brussels, mocked by President Trump in May), and it celebrates membership of 29 countries, pushing forward to Russia’s borders. The magazine is totally independent, of course, publishing such objective pieces as «NATO-Ukraine Distinctive Partnership turns twenty: lessons to take forward». The US-NATO military alliance now numbers 29 countries, of which 13 joined between March 1999 and last June, thrusting the NATO nuclear threat ever-closer to Russia’s borders.

There is little wonder that Russia was and continues to be concerned about expansion of NATO and its increasingly aggressive presence in the Baltic region. The western media complains about Russian military flights over the Baltic, but usually avoids mentioning that Russia is a Baltic country, while the United States, which flies its provocative electronic warfare aircraft on regular missions as close to Russian territory as it dares, has no territorial or any other justification for its confrontational antics. One report, though, went so far as to admit that on 21 June 2017 «a Nato military plane approached the plane of Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. A Nato fighter jet tried to approach Mr Shoigu's plane but a Russian escort plane intervened to defend it… The escort plane, a Sukhoi SU-27, demonstrated it was armed by rocking its wings, after which the Nato plane flew off… Nato insisted the crew's actions were ‘routine’ to identify the plane».

What garbage. The massive US electronic intercept apparatus knew very well that the Russian plane was in international airspace and that its main passenger was the defence minister. What message was the US-NATO military alliance trying to send, other than threat and military confrontation?

So back to Scandinavia, where the prime minister of Denmark is the only European leader with a real sense of humour (although Angela does occasionally have a laugh; I hope she wins the next election), and who at the moment is considering reintroduction of national conscription. He isn’t going to do this because he thinks it might be amusing or because he fears Russia, but because he wants to do the best for his young people, as he and his advisers and generals (and all of us) know perfectly well that a few thousand semi-trained conscripts would be but innocent cannon-fodder in wartime.

No: he knows that it would be smart to bring Denmark up to the two percent of national expenditure on defence that is so important to Trump’s moronic conception of NATO. That percentage isn’t mandatory, of course; but it would show willing to the erratic nutcase Trump who demands it, and who knows what benefits that might bring? So Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen will win on three counts, while not appearing to be a card-carrying warmonger like the NATO fanatics. He’ll take a few thousand young empty-heads off the streets and inject some discipline and further education at little expense while basking in the sunshine of being a NATO two percenter and showing the ingenuous Russia-fearers in his nation that he is standing up to the Great Bear. It’s good to have a sense of humour that results in social improvement and satisfies a bunch of people you’re laughing at.

We should remember, of course, that his defence minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen was reported as saying that «We need to make it clear in Denmark that we are all under one type of threat or another. And we need to act. We can confirm that the Russians are right now installing new missiles in Kalingrad that can reach Copenhagen». Well, a bit of national conscription of young people will make him happy and give him a lot more to do in his office and make him look busy — and perhaps his «need to act» will make the missile battery crews in Kalingrad tremble in their boots.

Denmark’s fellow NATO members Norway and Iceland (which doesn’t have an army, navy or air force or even a large police force) and non-NATO countries Sweden and Finland decided in 2015 to «step-up military cooperation in the face of increased Russian aggression, which they described as the ‘biggest challenge to European security’».

Baloney.

Russia wants trade, general economic cooperation, cultural exchanges, close association with the European Union — and peaceful development. If Moscow wanted territorial expansion it could have invaded and totally conquered Ukraine right up to its western border in 22 days, or perhaps (according to a US military college analysis which I was sent) 26 days maximum. And NATO could have done nothing. But if Russia had invaded Ukraine, as the paper points out in some detail, it would have had to cope with a massive domestic resistance movement.

What would be the point of that?

Similarly, why on earth would Russia want to invade any of the Baltic States? It could overcome the lot of them in a matter of days — but what would be the point? The result would be nothing but trouble and strife.

The Economist is concerned about Russia’s military exercise Zapad being held in its own sovereign territory and quotes General Ben Hodges, the commander of American forces in Europe as saying that «People are worried this is a Trojan horse. They [the Russians] say, ‘We’re just doing an exercise,’ and then all of a sudden they’ve moved all these people and capabilities somewhere… Look, we’ll be ready; we’ll be prepared. But we’re not going to be up on the parapets waiting for something to happen».

Stand up on the parapet, General, bear your bemedalled breast, and wait for nothing, for nothing is going to happen. And bear in mind that the Trojan Horse was full of Greeks, not Trojans.

The comment by the Economist that «All NATO can do is remain vigilant and hope Mr Putin sends his troops back to barracks when Zapad is over» is the only really stupid thing I’ve read in that publication in over fifty years. Where do you think the troops are going to go?

His Holiness the Pope did not of course make a public statement about the meeting, but the NATO publicity machine (a large and remarkably expensive organisation) made up for that omission by announcing that he and his distinguished visitor discussed global issues of common concern, including the conflicts in Syria and the wider Middle East, the importance of protecting civilian populations from suffering, and the importance of dialogue in international affairs to reduce tensions. The Secretary General also stressed that climate change could pose a significant security risk.

It is remarkable that His Holiness engaged in such discussions with the titular head of an enormous nuclear-armed military alliance, and it would be interesting to know what Mr Stoltenberg thinks about climate change in the context of international security.

The meeting was intriguing in other ways. It will be recollected that in February 2016 Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church met with Pope Francis in Havana and that Western media headlines included “Pope Francis Handed Putin a Diplomatic Victory” which was as absurd as it was trivial. But even The Economist headline was similarly slanted and amusingly asked “Did the Pope Just Kiss Putin’s Ring?”

This set the tone for other comment, but one thrust of its reporting was especially revealing, as it pointed out in shocked — shocked — tones that the Pope had “made clear in his interview before the meeting that on certain issues he agrees with Mr Putin and disagrees with America and its allies”. How truly dreadful that the Pope dares to be even-handed and ventures to disagree with the western world about international affairs.

The Economist further noted that “On Libya, where Western powers helped to bring down former dictator Muammar Qaddafi, the pope was explicit: ‘The West ought to be self-critical.’ And he continued that ‘In part, there has been a convergence of analysis between the Holy See and Russia’.” The Economist did not mention the unpalatable fact that the ‘western powers’ — the US-NATO military alliance — bombed and rocketed Libya to a catastrophic shambles and created a base for Islamic terrorists. Perhaps the Pope had taken note of that merciless Blitz, and of the fact that under the dictator Gaddafi the Catholic community in Libya had lived peacefully while now it is suffering gravely.

As recorded by Christian Freedom International, “The upsurge in attacks on Christians in Libya since the Obama / Clinton supported ouster of Gaddafi is of grave concern. CFI condemns these abductions, killings and attacks on Christian property in what is becoming an increasingly inhospitable region for Christians.” Perhaps Pope Francis raised this unpalatable fact with the devout Mr Stoltenberg, a graduate of Oslo Cathedral School who, it should be remembered, was prime minister of Norway when its air force “carried out about 10 percent of the NATO airstrikes in Libya since March 31 [to the end of June 2011].”

The revelation that the Pope has had the temerity and moral realism to “disagree with America and its allies” is not altogether surprising, but the report that “on certain issues he agrees with Mr Putin” must have shaken Mr Stoltenberg, whose fundamental stance is that “Russia is trying to kind of re-establish spheres of influence along its borders and for me this just underlines the importance of strong NATO, of strong partnership with other countries in Europe that are not members of NATO.”

Mr Stoltenberg believes that because Russia wants to establish — or, more accurately, maintain — spheres of influence along its borders then it must be discouraged or even stopped from doing so. This is confrontational, and it is unsurprising that His Holiness has made it clear that the Vatican is not an unconditional supporter of Washington’s Pentagon and its sub-office at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Mr Stoltenberg may not have read the address to the US Congress by His Holiness in 2015, when he said ‘We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays: to discard whatever proves troublesome. Let us remember the golden rule: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’.’ As reported, ‘The line drew instant, thunderous applause from Democrats, followed with some hesitation by Republicans, a pattern repeated throughout the address.’

In his talk to Congress Pope Francis veered from the Stoltenberg line that Russia’s desire to maintain peaceful ‘spheres of influence’ around its borders must by definition be wrong and unacceptable when he pointed out that ‘there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners.’

As President Putin observed in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera “we are not expanding anywhere; it is NATO infrastructure, including military infrastructure, that is moving towards our borders. Is this a manifestation of our aggression?” No, it is not — except in the eyes of such as Mr Stoltenberg.

Stoltenberg makes many visits round the world, including head-of-state-style attendance at the UN General Assembly in New York, where he had discussions with, among others, Ukraine’s President Poroshenko, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon; and his most recent stopover was in the United Arab Emirates on October 19. There, while committing NATO to an Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme with the UAE he “praised the UAE for its role as a valuable NATO partner in projecting international security and stability: from Kosovo, to Afghanistan to Libya.”

Perhaps Mr Stoltenberg’s meeting with the Pope affected his short-term memory. He ignores the unpalatable facts that in Kosovo, as Freedom House reports, there has been “little progress in strengthening its statehood,” while Afghanistan verges on total anarchy and, as noted above, US-NATO’s war on Libya destroyed the country. These are far from being examples of “security and stability” as Mr Stoltenberg would have us believe them to be, but self-delusion knows no borders.

When Stoltenberg was made head of NATO, President Putin considered him to be a “serious, responsible person” but warned with prescience that “we'll see how our relations develop with him in his new position.” Unfortunately that apprehension concerning future developments has been more than justified. During a trip to Washington in April, Stoltenberg told the Washington Post correspondent Karen de Young, that “NATO has to remain an expeditionary alliance, able to deploy forces outside our territory,” which is a plain unvarnished statement of expansionism. The Pope summed it up when he quoted the Bible’s advice to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you,’ but it is unlikely that Mr Stoltenberg could ever bring himself to abide by such wise advice. More confrontation lies ahead.