In December, 2002, President George W. Bush proclaimed that the US would unilaterally pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that had curtailed the development of nuclear missiles and anti-missile systems to defeat them.

The arrogant, dim-witted Bush believed that US space technology was advancing so rapidly that it would neutralize Russia’s force of ICBM missiles.  Bush was just a puppet.  The real power behind him was Vice President Dick Cheney, the leading neocon who sneered at Russia, dismissed it as a mere ‘gas-station,’ and was determined to see the US achieve global dominance. 

In Cheney’s view, the ABM Treaty was holding the US back from this goal.  Bankrupt Moscow would never be able to stand up to the mighty USA.  Moscow warned that reneging on the ABM Treaty would re-ignite a ruinous arms race.  A then little known politician, Vladimir Putin, vowed that Russia would never bend its knee to the US nuclear colossus.

This week, President Putin stunned the world by revealing a new arsenal of nuclear-armed weapons that have stolen a march on Washington and left the warlike President Donald Trump looking foolish.

Russia’s new arms include the RS-28 heavy ICBM, called ‘Satan 2’ by NATO.  This big brute of a liquid fueled missile can carry up to ten nuclear warheads over 10,000 km (6,000 miles).  What makes it very different from other ICBM’s is its ability (Russia claims) to carry nuclear-armed hypersonic vehicles through low earth orbit that can attack North America from multiple directions unseen by the radars of anti-missile systems.

President Putin also revealed a new nuclear-armed cruise missile propelled by a miniature nuclear engine that can stay aloft for very long periods and fly over Latin America and the South Pole to attack North America from the south.  The US has been trying to develop such a nuclear engine since the late 1950’s, but with no success.  During the corrupt Yeltsin era, the Kremlin accepted huge amounts of cash bribes to sell a miniaturized reactor to the Americans designed to power ocean surveillance satellites.

This miniature reactor will also power Russia’s new unmanned submarine which can carry a very large nuclear explosive – even up to 25 megatons – to the North American coasts or US aircraft carrier groups.

Putin also unveiled a new hypersonic glider deployed from space (the US and China have been working on one, so far unsuccessfully), and an aircraft launched Mach-10 missile called ‘Kinzhal’ after the deadly dagger carried by Caucasian mountaineers.  And, on top of this, a combat laser system that is being deployed.  The US has been working on one since the Vietnam War.

All this is a bombshell.  Maybe Putin was boasting and exaggerating, but he usually tells the truth, unlike our politicians, and rarely embellishes.   As he said in his speech, ‘nobody wanted to listen to us,’ referring to Moscow’s failed attempted to restore a strategic arms agreement, cut nuclear forces and lower tensions with the West. ‘Now,’ said Putin, ‘you listen.’

But will Washington listen? Trump has just announced a huge modernization of America’s nuclear forces and a big increase in the military budget from $634 billion to $716 billion, with an additional $69 billion to fund ‘foreign wars.’   The real US military budget is close to $1 trillion (that’s 1,000 billion), not including the US intelligence budget which is larger that Russia’s entire annual defense budget, a meager $42.3 billion.

Washington’s war party has convinced itself that Russia can be intimidated and once again spent into the ground.  But Vladimir Putin is too smart and deft to allow this to happen.  He has neatly trumped Trump’s arms buildup and shown up Trump’s empty bullying.  So, for that mater, has North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

One hopes Washington’s deep government that has been promoting a run-up to war with Russia in the Mideast, Ukraine, Baltic and Black Sea will be sufficiently sobered by Putin’s show this week.  They should be.  The multiple warheads on one new RS-28 missile could destroy Texas or France.  Russia’s new missiles and space gliders can outflank America’s anti-missile radars in Alaska and Romania, rendering them as useless as France’s Maginot Line.  

War must never, ever be allowed to occur with Russia and China and the United States.  Will we risk the life of the planet over a stupid quarrel over some one-tractor town in Ukraine or a Syrian village no one has ever heard of?  Yes, if the neocons have their way.

ericmargolis.com

A gathering of rich oil Arabs pledged $30 billion this week at a meeting in Kuwait to start rebuilding war-shattered Iraq. Sounds nice but these kinds of conclaves are notorious for offering big but delivering little.

The event was billed as helping Iraq repair war damage caused by ISIS.  In fact, most of the damage from that short-lived conflict was caused by US bombing and a few Russian air strikes. ISIS, as this column has long been crying in the wilderness, was largely a paper tiger confected by the US, Britain and France to justify their military re-entry into Syria. 

Iraq’s government says it needs at least $88 billion to rebuild war damage.  What the US-imposed client regime in Baghdad won’t or can’t say is that the damage to Iraq is far greater than $88 billion and was largely inflicted by US air power in 1990-1991 and 2003.

Iraq was ravaged, as I saw myself while covering the wars. This small nation of 23-25 million souls, a third of whom were in permanent revolt against the Baghdad government, was pounded into rubble by US air power and cruise missiles.  First in 1990-1991, then in 2003, everything of value was blown to bits:  hospitals, schools, food factories, chemical plants making insecticide, bridges, and communications.  In short, all the attributes of a modern state.

Most shocking to me, was the destruction of Iraq’s water and sewage treatment plants by US air strikes.

Their destruction resulted in epidemics of cholera and other water-born diseases. Children were the primary victims.  The UN asserted that over 550,000 Iraqi children died as a result of contaminated water. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright later notoriously asserted that these deaths were ‘a price worth paying.’  I call them a war crime.

In 2003, 900,000 US-directed troops massed in Kuwait, invaded Iraq to finish off, it was claimed, the ‘work that the first president Bush failed to achieve,’ the overthrow and lynching of Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein.  If Saddam had any nuclear or broad-area biological weapons, the invader’s buildup in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would have been a dream target.

But Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons, contrary to US and British claims.  I discovered in Baghdad a group of British scientific technicians who had been sent by the UK Ministry of Defense to build outlawed biological weapons at Salman Pak.  These included deadly anthrax and Q-fever – but only for use against Iran if a second Iraq-Iran War erupted.

It is now widely accepted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction pointed at the West, as George Bush and Tony Blair incessantly claimed.  But this was the excuse for going to war against Iraq and destroying it.  When no such weapons were found, the story from Washington and London was changed to ‘oops, it was an intelligence failure.  Sorry about that.’

Journalists like myself who asserted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction were fired or marginalized.  I was blacklisted at CNN after the White House told the network to fire me at once.  All the ‘presstitutes’, who acted as government boosters for the war, were promoted and lauded.  Welcome to the new Soviet media.

Since Iraq, one if the Arab world’s most developed countries, was laid waste by US bombing, and since the war was deemed a big mistake, who is responsible for trying to repair Iraq to its pre-war condition?  The money offered last week in Baghdad by the Gulf Arabs was a drop in the bucket and designed to bring Iraq into the forming anti-Iran alliance.

If this war crime was being properly litigated, Washington would likely end up being assessed something like $100 billion in damages just to replace physical infrastructure destroyed in the two wars, never mind the deaths of so many Iraqi civilians.  Iran would also have a claim against Iraq’s western and Arab backers for Baghdad’s 1980-1988 war of aggression against Iran that caused an estimated one million Iranian casualties.

‘Oops, I’m sorry we destroyed your country and children’ is not a sufficient mea culpa. The western leaders who engineered this criminal war against Iraq deserve to be brought to book. So far, they have gotten off scot free. In fact, the same terrible fate has since befallen Syria, Yemen and parts of Somalia.  Were these disasters also mistakes due to faulty intelligence?

ericmargolis.com

Considering that a nuclear conflict over North Korea appeared imminent in recent weeks, the winter Olympics at Pyeongchang, South Korea, is a most welcome distraction – and might even deter a major war on the peninsula.

The highlight of the games was the arrival of Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong-un. This was the first time a member of North Korea’s ruling Kim dynasty had come to South Korea. Her handshake with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in was a historic and welcome moment.

So too the planned joint marches by North and South Korean athletes under a new reunification flag.  For all Koreans, this was a deeply emotional and inspiring ceremony.

But not for US Vice President Mike Pence, who was sent by Trump to give the Olympics the evil eye.  He even refused to stand for the joint marchers in a surly act that spoke volumes about his role.  Whether he meets President Moon or Kim Yo-jong remains to be seen. Even a cup of tea between Pence and Kim could end all the crazy talk about nuclear war. Does anyone in Washington know that North Korea lies between China and Russia?

All this drama is happening as the Trump White House is advocating giving North Korea a `bloody nose.’  Meaning a massive bombing campaign that could very likely include nuclear weapons.  Trump, who received a reported five exemptions from military service because of a little boner spur in his foot, revels in military affairs and thinks a ‘bloody nose’ will warn Kim Jong-un to be good. Trump is planning a big military parade at which he will take the salute.

This writer went through US Army basic and advanced infantry training with a broken bone in my foot, and has no sympathy with the president’s militaristic pretensions.

South Korea’s able president Moon is moving heaven and earth to prevent a war in which his nation would be the main victim.  Some 2-3 million Korean civilians died in the 1950-53 Korean War.  All North Korea and much of South Korea were bombed flat by US air power.  Now, as tensions surge, US heavy bombers and nuclear weapons ring North Korea, ready to flatten the north and make the rubble bounce.

North Korea’s thousands of heavy guns dug into mountains just north of the DMZ (I’ve seen them) could flatten all of South Korea’s capitol, Seoul, north of the Han River, killing millions, not counting nukes and poison gas.  South Korea, the world’s eleventh industrial power, would again pay the terrible price for a new war on the peninsula.

One of VP Pence’s main missions is to whip up support among rightwing South Koreans who bitterly oppose any peace deal between the two Koreas and support attacking the north.  Many on South Korea’s hard right are evangelical Christians.  It’s no coincidence that Mike Pence, an ardent fundamentalist protestant, was sent to show the flag and rally opposition to any détente with North Korea.  Whatever happened to ‘turn the other cheek?’

Washington does not want a lessening of tensions between the two Koreas.  And much less, talk of potential reunification.  If the two Koreas came to peace, what justification would the US have for keeping powerful air, land and naval forces in strategic South Korea, often called ‘America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier.’  Japan is no more favorable to a united Korea.

South Korean President Moon has been calling for a new, positive era in north-south relations. He has been adamant in opposing any chance of war on the peninsula.  But Washington has simply ignored Moon or brushed aside his objections to threats of war against North Korea.  The North Koreans routinely accused the south of being ‘American puppets.’  Pyongyang is the only ‘legitimate, truly independent Korean government,’ charges the north.

Interestingly, in the event of war, South Korea’s 655,000-man active armed forces and 4 million-man reserves come under the command of a four-star US general.  US nuclear weapons can be moved through South Korean bases.  The so-called joint US-South Korea joint command is mere window dressing.

It’s hard to say how close the US was to attacking North Korea.  Trump certainly backed himself into a corner by all his foolish threats to unleash ‘fire and fury’ on North Korea.  The Olympics delayed the rush to war against North Korea. But once they are over, the war drums will resume beating. President Trump is probably thinking about a dandy parade after a short, devastating attack on North Korea – provided, of course, that the troublesome northerners don’t manage to retaliate by landing a few nuclear warheads on Japan and Washington.

ericmargolis.com

While we agonize over such life and death questions as clumsy men groping women and the crucial need for gender and racial ‘inclusion,’ let me spare a few seconds thought to something really important and scary:  Russia’s doomsday nuclear torpedo.

Code-named by NATO ‘Kanyon,’  it’s reportedly something new and terrifying, a ‘third strike’ weapon designed to obliterate the US east and west coasts in a nuclear war.   US intelligence seems to think this doomsday weapon is very real indeed.

I just re-watched for the umpteenth time the wonderful, 1964 Kubrick film, ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and marveled anew at how prescient this razor-sharp satire was.  In the film, the Soviets admit they ran out of money to keep up the nuclear arms race with the United States.  Their answer was to create a secret, automated doomsday nuclear device that would destroy the entire planet in the event of a major war.

Now, the Russians appear to have responded to a new, trillion dollar US program to develop and deploy an anti-missile system that would negate their ballistic missile system:  the ‘Kanyon.’  Fact imitates fiction.

This revelation comes just after the Trump administration has also embarked on new programs to deploy an entire new generation of lower yield nuclear weapons that can be used for tactical war-fighting purposes.  North Korea and Iran are the evident targets, as well as Afghanistan.  But there is now talk aplenty in Pentagon circles about waging a limited tactical nuclear war against Russia.  New US bomber and drone programs are being speeded up.  War talk is in the air.  Military stocks are booming.

‘Kanyon,’ according to the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a cheerleader for military spending, is a mammoth 100-megaton nuclear device carried by an unmanned submarine.  This monster weapon is designed to detonate on the US west coast, destroying the ports of San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.  The device is reportedly covered with cobalt, for maximum radioactive effect.

A similar device launched from the Atlantic Ocean would devastate the US East coast, leaving it under a lethal shroud of radiation for generations. 

If these reports are true, any hopes that some US generals have of fighting and winning a ‘limited’ nuclear exchange with Russia or China (never mind India) are absurd.   But in fact any serious nuclear exchange between the great powers would be a death sentence for the entire planet, wrapping us in a lethal shroud of nuclear winter. 

One US intelligence study done of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan estimated two million immediate dead and 100 million deaths within weeks.  That was from a rather limited nuclear war using first generation weapons.  Today’s weapons have ten times the explosive power.

Russia has a large and effective nuclear arsenal.  The sharp decline of Russia’s once-mighty conventional military forces after 1991 drove Moscow to place ever greater reliance on nuclear weapons to defend its interests.   Russia has also begun introducing modernized nuclear weapons in strategic and tactical versions.  China is also slowly developing its nuclear forces to be able to fight a thermonuclear war against the United States and India at the same time.

President Trump, who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War on spurious medical grounds, appears infatuated by military affairs and the panoply of weapons that he commands.  In an act of historic irresponsibility, he has brought the US to the edge of nuclear war against North Korea heedless of the dire consequences of even a ‘small’ nuclear war in Asia. 

Anyone who thinks a nuclear war can be waged without permanently polluting our planet should be put under psychiatric care.  As crazy as this notion sounds, there are some senior US generals who share this view and, most likely, President Trump, the man with the big red button.  Russia’s marshals are more cautious.  They still see the scars of World War II, in which some 27 million Soviet civilians died, and know what war means.  

Perhaps leaks about this Russian monster weapon are clever disinformation spread by Moscow to give the Americans a big scare.  Let’s hope so because, if real, they should scare the pants off all of us.

ericmargolis.com

Henry Kissinger rightly noted that it’s often more dangerous being an ally of the United States than its enemy.  The latest victim of this sad truism is Pakistan, a loyal ally of the US since the dawn of our era.

President Donald Trump’s visceral hatred of Muslims (never mind what kind, or why, or where) erupted this week as he ordered some $900 million in US aid to Pakistan to be abruptly cut off.  Trump accused Pakistan of lying and deceiving the US and providing a safe haven to Afghan resistance forces of Taliban (`terrorists’ in US speak) battling American occupation forces.

Frustrated and outwitted in Afghanistan, US imperial generals, Pentagon bureaucrats and politicians have been trying to cast blame on anyone they can find, with Pakistan the primary whipping boy.  Next in line is the notorious Haqqani network which is blamed for most US military failures in Afghanistan, though its active combat role is modest.  I knew its founder, old man Haqqani.  In the 1980’s, he was the golden boy of the CIA/Pakistani-led effort to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan.

Why has Washington given billions in aid to Pakistan? In 2001, Washington decided to invade Afghanistan to uproot or destroy the Pashtun resistance movement, Taliban, which was wrongly blamed for the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.  The ethnic Pashtun warriors President Reagan had hailed as ‘Freedom Fighters’ became ‘terrorists’ once the west wanted to occupy Afghanistan.

But invading land-locked Afghanistan was an awesome undertaking.  US troops there had to be supplied through Pakistan’s principal port, Karachi, then up twisting mountain roads and across the torturous Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.  The huge amount of logistical supplies required by US troops could not be met by air supply.  It cost $400 per barrel for one gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan, and as much as $600,000 per sortie to keep a single US warplane over Afghanistan.   Without 24/7 air cover, the US occupation force would have been quickly defeated.

Invading Afghanistan without Pakistani cooperation would have been impossible.  Pakistan at first refused to let US armed forces cross its borders. But as Pakistan’s former military leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf  told me, ‘the US put a gun to my head and said let US troops enter and use Pakistan or ‘we will bomb you back to the Stone Age.’

That was the big stick. The carrot was some $33 billion in US cash to secure ‘Ground Lines of Communication’ (the Karachi-Bagram route) and ‘Air Lines of Communication.’  In fact, Pakistan briefly closed them in 2011 after US warplanes killed two dozen Pakistani Army soldiers.   Pakistan could do it again unless Washington stops treating it like an enemy state.

Trump and his men just don’t understand that Pakistan has paramount national security interests in next-door Afghanistan.  Thirty million Pakistanis are ethnic Pashtuns.  They dominate Pakistan’s armed forces.  Another 1.4 million Pashtun are refugees in northern Pakistan.  Narrow-waisted Pakistan sees Afghanistan as its strategic hinterland in a next war with old enemy India.

The US-installed regime in Kabul routinely blames Pakistan for its glaring failures.  Its powerful Communist-dominated intelligence agency routinely spreads untruths about Pakistan, claiming it supports ‘terrorism.’

In fact, the warlike Pashtun tribes along the Durand Line, the artificial border between Pakistan and Afghanistan imposed by the British colonialists, have been on the warpath since the 19th Century.  Winston Churchill even approved the use of poison gas on the ‘unruly tribesmen.’  The wonderfully named Faqir of Ipi kept threatening to ride down from the Hindu Kush Mountains and put to the sack the British garrison at Peshwar.

Today, one hears threats in Pentagon circles that the US may begin bombing ‘Taliban sanctuaries’ (actually villages where these Pashtun locals live) and then send in air mobile US troops to attack them.  This would make the longest war in US history even longer.  Washington just can’t seem to accept that its military machine was defeated in Afghanistan, well-known as the Graveyard of Empires.

It’s also clear that the US has not given up its ambition to neutralize or destroy Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.  Attacking so-called terrorist enclaves in northern Pakistan would offer a perfect cover for a major us air and ground assault on Pakistan’s nuclear complexes and dispersed storage sites.  India and Israel have long been pressing the US to attack Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure.

Any major US moves against Pakistan are very likely to push it closer to Beijing and expand Chinese influence in the region.  China is unlikely to allow old ally Pakistan to be torn apart by US power.  Unlike the US, China remembers its old friends.

ericmargolis.com

Listen to the state-‘guided’ US media this past week and you’d believe a series of spontaneous anti-government protests broke out across Iran.  The protests, according to President Donald Trump and his Israeli allies, were caused by `anger over Iran’s spending billions on wars in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon and helping the Palestinian movement Hamas.’ Trump tweeted that Iranians were finally rising up against what he called their hated, brutal regime.  

Talk about manufactured news.  Most Iranians were elated and proud of their nation’s role in thwarting US plans to occupy much of Syria and overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad.  By contrast, the other side in this long proxy war – the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Britain – was smarting with defeat and seeking ways to exact revenge on the hateful trio, Syria, Iran and Russia.

Interestingly, the so-called news of protests over Iran’s military spending did not apparently originate in Iran but rather in Washington which spread it far and wide to our state-guided media.  This was clumsy, but the US and Israel were so eager to get this piece of made-up good news out that they forget the basics of propaganda management: wait for the event before you proclaim it.

What in fact was going on in Iran where more than 21 demonstrators have died violent deaths?  As a very long-time Iran watcher allow me to explain.

Restive minority groups in Iran’s Kurdish, Azeri and Sunni Arab regions, most far from the big cities, have been demonstrating and protesting severe economic problems.  Iran is a big, resource-rich nation of 80 million people that should be booming.  But it has been under economic siege warfare by the US and its allies ever since a popular uprising in 1979 overthrew the US-British backed monarchy that was raping the nation and keeping it a vassal of the western powers.

Iran’s new Islamic Republic was deemed a dire threat to Western and Israeli strategic and military interests (think Saudi Arabia).  The very idea that the Islamic Republic would follow the tenets of Islam and share oil wealth with the needy was anathema to London and Washington.  Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, ran Iran’s dreaded, brutal secret police, Savak. The crooked royal family looted the nation and stored their swag in California.

The West’s first act was to induce Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to invade Iran, in Sept 1980.  The West (including the Gulf Arabs) armed, financed and supplied Iraq.  As I discovered in Baghdad, Britain and the US supplied Iraq with poison gas and germ warfare toxins. After eight years, 250,000 Iraqis were killed and nearly one million Iranians died. 

Ever since the Islamic Revolution, the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs have been trying to overthrow the Tehran government and mount a counter-revolution.   CIA and Britain’s MI6 has ample practice: in 1953, the CIA and MI6 mounted an elaborate operation to overthrow Iran’s democratically-elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh who sought to nationalize Iran’s British-owned oil company.  Mobs of specially trained anti-Mossadegh plotters poured into Tehran’s streets. Bombs went off. Army commanders were suborned, lavish bribes handed out.

The 1953 coup went perfectly. Mossadegh was ousted with backing from the Army and Savak.  Iran’s oil remained safe in western hands.  The successful Iran uprising became the template for future ‘color revolutions’ in Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Russia, Poland, and Romania.

But in 2009 a US-engineered ‘color revolution’ in Iran went badly wrong even though it used all the latest arts of social media to whip up protestors and deploy them in the streets.  Something similar happened in Iran this past weekend where mobs of 20-somethings, agitated by US and British covert social media, poured into the streets of dingy provincial towns.

As of now, this medium-sized uprising in Iran looks to be over, though it could re-ignite at any time. Young Iranians, at least 40% of the population, suffer due to 50% unemployment.   Iran’s $11 trillion economy is extremely fragile and in some cases barely functioning after decades of US-engineered economic warfare and boycotts.  High unemployment is a result of US economic warfare and bullying other nations not to do business with Iran, producing 13% overall unemployment and a 40% inflation rate. The latter and wide-scale corruption were the spark that ignited the latest riots.

In two more weeks, President Trump, who makes no secret of his hatred and contempt for Muslims, must decide whether to reaffirm the multilateral nuclear energy deal with Iran or heed Israel’s demands and refuse to certify it.  His cutoff this week of US military aid to Muslim Pakistan bodes ill for Iran.

Many Iranians observing the current US-North Korea nuclear standoff will wonder if their nation was not better off continuing its nuclear program and holding the Saudi oil fields at risk to deter a US attack.  Trump’s wild, inconsistent and often infantile responses on this issue are making matters murkier…and ever more dangerous.

ericmargolis.com

At a time when the United States is convulsed by anti-Russian hysteria and demonization of Vladimir Putin, a trove of recently declassified Cold War documents reveals the astounding extent of the lies, duplicity and double-dealing engaged in by the western powers with the collapsing Soviet Union in 1990.

I was covering Moscow in those days and met some of the key players in this sordid drama. Ever since, I’ve been writing that the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, were shamelessly lied to and deceived by the United States, Britain, and their appendage, NATO.

All the western powers promised Gorbachev and Shevardnadze that NATO would not expand eastward by ‘one inch’ if Moscow would pull the Red Army out of East Germany and allow it to peacefully reunify with West Germany.  This was a titanic concession by Gorbachev: it led to a failed coup against him in 1991 by Communist hardliners.

The documents released by George Washington University in Washington DC, which I attended for a semester, make sickening reading (see them online).  All western powers and statesmen assured the Russians that NATO would not take advantage of the Soviet retreat and that a new era of amity and cooperation would dawn in post-Cold War Europe.  US Secretary of State Jim Baker offered ‘ironclad guarantees’ there would be no NATO expansion.  Lies, all lies.

Gorbachev was a humanist, a very decent, intelligent man who believed he could end the Cold War and nuclear arms race. He ordered the Red Army back from Eastern Europe.  I was in Wunsdorf, East Germany, HQ of the Group of Soviet Forces, Germany, and at Stasi secret police HQ in East Berlin right after the pullout order was given.  The Soviets withdrew their 338,000 troops and 4,200 tanks and sent them home at lightening speed.

Western promises made to Soviet leaders by President George W. H. Bush and Jim Baker quickly proved to be empty.  They were honorable men but their successors were not.  Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush quickly began moving NATO into Eastern Europe, violating all the pledges made to Moscow.

The Poles, Hungarians and Czechs were brought into NATO, then Romania and Bulgaria, the Baltic States, Albania, and Montenegro.  Washington tried to get the former Soviet Republics of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO.  The Moscow-aligned government of Ukraine was overthrown in a US-engineered coup.  The road to Moscow was open.

All the bankrupt, confused Russians could do was denounce these eastward moves by the US and NATO.  The best response NATO and Washington could come up with was, ‘well, there was no official written promise.’  This is worthy of a street peddler selling counterfeit watches.  The leaders of the US, Britain, France, Belgium and Italy all lied.  Germany was caught between its honor and imminent reunification. So even its Chancellor Helmut Kohl had to go along with the West’s prevarications.

At the time, I wrote that the best solution would be for the demilitarization of formerly Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe.  NATO had no need or business to expand eastward.  Doing so would be a constant provocation to Russia, which regarded Eastern Europe as an essential defensive glacis against invasions from the West.

Now, with NATO forces on its western borders, Russia’s deepest fears have been realized.

Today, US military aircraft based on the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria, former Warsaw Pact members, probe Russian airspace over the Black Sea and the vital strategic port of Sevastopol.  Washington talks about arming chaotic Ukraine. US and NATO troops are in the Baltic, on Russia’s northwestern borders.  Polish right-wingers are beating the war drums against Russia.

In 1990, KGB and CIA agreed to the principal of ‘not one inch’ eastward for NATO.  Former US ambassador to Moscow, Jack Matlock, confirms the same agreement. Gorbachev, who is denounced as a foolish idealist by many Russians, trusted the Western powers. He should have had a battalion of New York City garment district shyster lawyers to document his agreements in 1990.  He thought he was dealing with honest, honorable men, like himself.

Is it any wonder after this bait and switch diplomacy that Russia has no trust in the Western powers?  Moscow watches US-run NATO oozing ever eastwards. Today, Russia’s leaders firmly believe Washington’s ultimate plan is to tear apart Russia and reduce it to an impotent, pauper nation.  Two former Western leaders, Napoleon and Hitler, had similar plans.

Instead of carrying on about Hitler’s duplicity after Munich, we should look at our own shameless behavior after 1990.

ericmargolis.com

What’s going on in Saudi Arabia?  Over 200 bigwigs detained and billions of ‘illegal profits’ of some $800 billion confiscated.

The kingdom is in an uproar.  The Saudi regime of King Salman and his ambitious 32-year old son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, claim it was all part of an ‘anti-corruption’ drive that has Washington’s full backing.

Utter nonsense.  I’ve done business in Saudi Arabia since 1976 and can attest that the entire kingdom, with its thousands of pampered princes and princesses, is one vast swamp of corruption.  In Saudi, the entire nation and its vast oil revenues are considered property of the extended Saudi royal family and its hangers-on.  A giant piggy bank.

The late Libyan leader Muammar Khadaffi told me the Saudis are ‘an incredibly rich bunch of Bedouins living behind high walls and scared to death of their poorer neighbors.’

We have just witnessed a palace coup in Riyadh caused by the violation of the traditional desert ruling system which was based on compromise and sharing the nation’s riches.

Young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s appointment as heir apparent by his ailing father, King Salman, who is reportedly suffering from cognitive issues, upset the time-proven Saudi collegial system and provoked the current crisis.  Among the people arrested so far were 11 princes and 38 senior officials and businessmen, including the nation’s best-known and richest businessman, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns important chunks of Apple, Citigroup and Twitter. He’s being detained at Riyadh’s swanky Ritz Carlton Hotel.

Also arrested was Bakr bin Laden, chairman of the largest Saudi construction firm, The Binladen Group, and former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a bitter rival to the new Crown Prince Mohammed.

Interestingly, there are no reports of senior Saudi military figures being arrested.  The Saudi military has always been kept weak and marginalized for fear it could one day stage a military coup like the one led by Colonel Khadaffi who overthrew Libya’s old British stooge ruler, King Idris.  For decades the Saudi army was denied ammunition.  Mercenary troops from Pakistan were hired to protect the Saudi royals.

The Saudis still shudder at the memory of British puppets King Feisal of Iraq and his strongman, Nuri as-Said, who were overthrown and murdered by mobs after an  Iraqi army colonel, Abd al-Karim Qasim, staged a coup in 1958.  Nuri ended up hanging from a Baghdad lamppost, leading Egypt’s fiery strongmen, Abdel Nasser, to aptly call the new Iraqi military junta, ‘the wild men of Baghdad.’

More mysteries arose this tumultuous week. One of Saudi’s most influential princes, Mansour bin Muqrin, died in a mysterious crash of his helicopter, an ‘accident’ that has the smell of sabotage. Another key prince, Miteb, was ousted.  He was commander of the famed ‘White Guard,’ the Saudi Bedouin tribal army designed to protect the monarchy and a former contender for the throne.  Meanwhile, three or four other Saudi princes were reportedly kidnapped from Europe and sent home, leading to rumors that Saudi’s new ally, Israel, was involved.

It appears that Prince Mohammed and his men have so far grabbed at least $800 billion from those arrested to refill the war-depleted Saudi coffers.  Call this a traditional Arab tribal raid – except that no women or horses were seized.

But behind all this lies the stalemated Saudi war against wretched Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest, most backwards nation.  Saudi Arabia has been heavily bombing Yemen for over a year, using US-supplied warplanes, munitions, including cluster bombs and white phosphorus, and US Air Force management.  A Saudi blockade of Yemen, aided by the US, has caused mass starvation and epidemics such as cholera.

When I first explored Yemen, in the mid 1970’s, it was just creeping out of the 12th century AD.  Today, it’s been bombed back into the 6th Century.

In spite of spending over $200 million daily (not including payoffs to `coalition’ members like Egypt) the Saudis are stuck in a stalemated conflict against Yemen’s Shia Houthi people.  The US and Britain are cheerfully selling bombs and weapons to the Saudis.  President Donald Trump has been lauding the destruction of Yemen because he mistakenly believes Iran is the mainstay of the anti-Saudi resistance.

Yemen is a horrible human rights disaster and scene of widespread war crimes.  It reminds me of the savagery inflicted on Afghanistan by the Soviets in the 1970’s.

The Saudis were fools to become involved in Yemen. Prince Mohammed was going to show the tough Yemeni tribes who was boss.   Now he knows, and it’s not the Saudis.

The Saudis appear to be planning military provocations against bad neighbour Iran. These may include attacks in Lebanon against Hezbollah – which might open the way for US attacks on Iran and its allies.  The Saudis are enraged over their defeat in Syria and want revenge.

Is this the beginning of the collapse of the House of Saud?  Or a Saudi renaissance led by Prince Mohammed as he claims?   Stay tuned.

ericmargolis.com

The so-called Islamic State organization was primarily a bogeyman encouraged by the western powers. I’ve been saying this for the last four years.

I asserted, as a former soldier and war correspondent, that IS would collapse like a wet paper bag if proper western ground forces attacked their strongholds in Syria and Iraq.  This week, the western powers and their local satraps finally took action and stormed the last IS stronghold at Raqqa.  To no surprise, IS put up almost no resistance and ran for its miserable life.

The much-dreaded IS was never more than a bunch of young hooligans and religious fanatics who were as militarily effective as the medieval Children’s Crusade.

In the west, IS was blown up by media and governments into a giant monster that was coming to cut the throats of honest folk in the suburbs.

IS did stage some very bloody and grisly attacks – that’s what put it on the map.   But none of them posed any mortal threat or really endangered our national security.   In fact, the primary target of IS attacks has been Shia Muslims in the Mideast.

Many of the IS attacks in North America and Europe were done by mentally deranged individuals or were initiated by under-cover government provocateurs, such as the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center.  IS was notorious for falsely taking credit for attacks it did not commit.

Other ‘lone wolf’ attacks were made by Mideasterners driven to revenge after watching the destruction by the US and its allies of substantial parts of their region.  Think Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan, and the murderous brutality of Egypt’s-US backed regime.

IS appears to have been shaped by western intelligence in an effort to duplicate its success with the Afghan mujahidin in the mid 1980’s that helped defeat the Soviet Union.  CIA, Pakistani and Saudi intelligence, and Britain’s MI-6 recruited some 100,000 volunteers from across the Muslim world to wage jihad in Afghanistan.  I observed this brilliant success first hand from the ranks of the mujahidin.

The western powers, led by the US, sought to emulate this success in Syria by unleashing armies of mercenaries, disaffected, unemployed youth, and religious primitives against the independent-minded regime of President Bashar Assad.  The plan nearly worked – at least until Russia, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement intervened and reversed the tide of battle.

The canard promoted in the west that IS was a dire military threat was always a big joke.  I said so on one TV program and was promptly banned from the station. I’m also the miscreant who insisted that Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction and was consequently blacklisted by a major cable TV news network.

The CIA cobbled together two small armies, one of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and the other of Iraqi mercenaries.  Both were directed, armed, equipped and financed by Washington.  Shades of the British Empire’s native troops under white officers.  The Kurds and Iraqi Arabs are now in a major confrontation over the Kirkuk oil-rich region.

Raqqa and Mosul were so close to western forces that they were merely a taxi ride away.  But it took three years and much token bombing of the desert before a decisive move was made against IS.  Once the US-led campaign against Damascus failed, the crazies of IS were no longer of any use so they were marked for death.

Like Fallujah in Iraq and Mosul, Raqqa was flattened by US air power, a stark message to those who would defy the American Raj. The ruins of Raqqa, the IS capital, were occupied by US-led forces.  This historic déjà vu recalled the dramatic defeat by British Imperial forces at Omdurman in September 1898 of Sudan’s Khalifa and his Islamic dervish army.

The remnants of IS had melted into the Euphrates Valley and the desert.  They will now return to being an irksome guerilla group with very little combat power.  Anti-western IS supporters still cluster in Europe’s urban ghettos and will cause occasional mayhem.  A few high-profile attacks on civilians may be expected to show that IS is still alive.  But none of this is likely to influence the course of events.  IS’s rival, al-Qaida, is likely to resurface and lead attacks to drive the west out of the Mideast.

The Islamic State bogeyman was very useful for the western powers.  It justified deeper military involvement in the Mideast, higher arms budgets, scared people into voting for rightwing parties, and gave police more powers.   By contrast, these faux Muslims brought misery, fear and shame on the Islamic world. We are very well rid of them. And it’s about time.

ericmargolis.com

Not since Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev banged his fists and waved his shoe at the UN in 1960 has a world leader made such a spectacle of himself as President Donald Trump did this past week at the world organization.

Trump vowed to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea, a nation of 25 million, if it dared threaten the US or its allies.   To do so, the US would have to use numerous nuclear weapons.

The president’s Genghis Khan behavior seemed to take no account that a US nuclear strike against North Korea would cause huge destruction to neighboring China, Japan and Russia – and pollute the globe.   They could hardly be expected to applaud Trump’s final solution for pesky North Korea.

As leader of the world’s greatest power, President Trump was foolish to get into a schoolyard fracas with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.  Superpowers shouldn’t engage in such childish behavior.  Trump’s claim that North Korea threatens the world is a reheated Bush-era lie used to whip up support for invading Iraq.

In a subsequent speech to African UN delegates, Trump comically referred to the nation of ‘Nambia’ instead of Namibia.  Let’s hope Trump does not mix up the Koreas.  While passing through Philadelphia last week I was reminded of its former flamboyant, tough-guy police chief Frank Rizzo.  He famously welcomed a senior Nigerian official as the leader of ‘Niggeria.’

Interestingly, both ‘axis of evil’ jeremiads originated from two different neocon speech writers, both known to this writer.

Escalating tensions, North Korea’s foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, suggested that his nation might detonate a hydrogen bomb in the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean.

Amidst all the trumped-up hysteria over North Korea, too few questions were asked about its ballistic missiles that have caused such an uproar.

First, the DPRK’s medium-range missiles, notably the 6,700km-range Hwasong and the 3,500 km-range Musudan are fueled by highly volatile liquid propellants.  Fuelling them is often done outdoors for safety reasons.  The dangerous, unstable chemical fuels have a tendency to spontaneously explode.  Early US ballistic missiles had similar problems.  Musudan, based on an elderly Soviet design, is notoriously unreliable and plagued by technical problems.

These missiles are usually kept on wheeled transporters (aka TELs) secreted in caves.  The transporters are based on Russian and Chinese designs.  An erector device then positions the missile into upright launch position.

This is the most vulnerable time for North Korea’s missiles.  The US and South Korea claim they can knock out the DPRK missiles while getting ready for launch.

South Korea has a tactical program known as ‘Kill Chain’ that would use missiles, rocket batteries and air strikes to destroy the pre-launch missiles.  But the problem remains:  during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, US warplanes and missiles totally failed to knock out Iraq’s mobile missile launchers and stop it firing ineffective Scud missiles at Israel.

For North Korea, launching a major missile barrage is no easy matter.  The North’s missile caves, fueling points, and leadership bunkers are photographed even more often than super-model Cindy Crawford.  US satellites, high-altitude recon aircraft, sensors and drones keep a 24/7 watch on North Korea’s potential launch sites.

Preparations for refueling and erecting large numbers of missiles would invite a massive nuclear strike by US air and naval forces. But given the technology unreliability of the DPRK’s missiles, it would have to fire a sizeable barrage in order to be sure of scoring a few long-range nuclear hits.

Equally important, North Korea’s ability to fire a nuclear warhead atop a ballistic missile has not yet been demonstrated. A miniaturized warhead that can withstand the g-forces of launch and re-entry, extreme heat and cold and buffeting and detonate as planned after a 6,700-km journey is a tall order. The US and USSR both keep redundant ICBM missiles because of the reliability problem.

North Korea’s submarine-launched prototype KN-08 missile could pose a far greater danger.  Though short-medium ranged, the missile if fired from submarines off the US East and West coast is greatly worrying US defense authorities. But, once again, North Korea is only in its infancy when it comes to underwater-launched strategic missiles and submarines.

Another key point. US and South Korean intelligence question how much missile propellant fuel the North has or could produce. Supplies are believed limited; raw material components are under embargo, even from ally China.  Information about DPRK fuel supplies is, as always, scanty and unreliable.  So is US and South Korean intelligence about North Korea.

Finally, if Washington believed North Korea was about to launch a massive, long-ranged missile strike against North America, it’s likely the US would detonate a nuclear device high above North Korea. The electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from such a detonation would likely fry most of North Korea’s electronic circuits, notably missile guidance systems and communications. Of course, the North Koreans could do the same to the US and allies Japan and South Korea. Pacific Russia and northern China would also be affected.

Behind all the hysteria over North Korea lies the basic question: why would rather small North Korea embark on a nuclear war with the United States? Its leadership, however zany and eccentric, is in no mood to commit suicide.  US nuclear weapons would vaporize North Korea before any of the missiles it might fire at North America could detonate.

Having nuclear-armed missiles does not necessarily make one’s nation a public menace that must be destroyed. India has them. So do Pakistan and Israel, China and Russia.  Add France and Britain.  We don’t keep threatening to invade them and overthrow their governments. That’s why they are not threatening us.

ericmargolis.com