Analysis

Browder’s critics argue that he didn’t merely profit from Russian oligarchy as it transformed into Putinism; he may even have helped usher that system into existence by pioneering and refining the structures that continue to enable it.

William Browder claims to be fighting for justice. One of the reasons he’s so successful may be because he’s adept at aligning his story with the devastating image that Russia has been projecting for years. And many media outlets believe him.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg likely surprised both factions in the ongoing debate about NATO expansion and its role in triggering the Russia-Ukraine War. He also undermined (perhaps fatally) the official cover story about the reasons for the Ukraine war. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Western officials and their allies in the corporate media have insisted vehemently that the alliance’s addition of Eastern European nations after the Cold War and giving a pledge to Ukraine that it would become a member someday had nothing to do with Vladimir Putin’s decision to attack his neighbor. Indeed, anyone who argued otherwise risked being accused of echoing Russian propaganda and being “Putin’s puppet.”

The ethical calculations are less clear than you might think.

And now the local sitcom star is a global celebrity: the Lion of Kiev, a reincarnation of Winston Churchill.

Like Churchill, Zelensky deserves a place in history for his actions during a perilous moment. The Ukrainian leader showed great physical courage by staying in Kyiv when it appeared that the Russian Army would seize the capital. But physical courage is not the only thing Zelensky will need to steer his country out of its current conflict. And like Churchill, Zelensky’s track record before and since his finest hour is checkered at best.

Zelensky warned in the Economist: “There is no way of predicting how the millions of Ukrainian refugees in European countries would react to their country being abandoned.” Zelensky said the Ukrainian refugees have “behaved well . . . and are grateful” to those who have sheltered them, but it would not be a “good story” for Europe if a Ukrainian defeat “were to drive the people into a corner.” It was nothing less than a threat of internal insurrection.

For the New York Times news department, cluster munitions fall into two categories—clearly wrong or complexly controversial— depending on who uses them.

A POLITICO review of congressional earmarks and political contributions found that in addition to the money for homelessness and drug treatment, Schiff also steered millions to for-profit companies and raised tens of thousands for his House reelection campaigns from corporate executives and people connected to them. The review was mostly limited to publicly available data from the brief three-year window when corporate earmarks were disclosed.

Schiff said he doesn’t have a complete accounting of his earmarks.

The Canadian Parliament gave a standing ovation on Friday to a 98-year-old immigrant from Ukraine who fought in a Third Reich military formation accused of war crimes.

During the Nuremberg Trials, the International Military Tribunal declared the Waffen-SS to be a criminal organization responsible for mass atrocities including the “persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labor program, and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners.”

After the war, thousands of SS Galichina veterans were allowed to resettle in the West, around 2,000 of them in Canada. By then, the unit was universally known as the First Ukrainian Division.

All parties have an interest in a lasting peace and in security guarantees.

Further escalation and prolongation of the conflict may threaten to escalate into a war with more parties involved or into a nuclear war, and obviously prolongates the suffering and losses of so many lives on both sides.

Attempts to portray the Ukrainian recapture of the village of Robotyne as a great victory are unhappily reminiscent of British and French offensives on the Western Front during the First World War, when the seizure after months of fighting and at dreadful cost of miserable hamlets like Passchendaele were also celebrated as great victories, for want of anything else to celebrate.

In a speech titled, “The Power and Purpose of American Diplomacy in a New Era,” Blinken set forth a vision of U.S. foreign policy that is both exhaustingly familiar and deeply concerning because it indicates, at the very least, that our chief diplomat has very little understanding of what traditional diplomacy actually means. The sense one takes away from the speech is that Blinken believes it to be analogous to edict, fiat, and ukase.

Washington has a history of adopting confrontational foreign policy stances toward individual leaders (admittedly often less-than-savory characters), rather than toward strategic objectives that support or defend US national interests.

On Sunday Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Jonathan Karl of ABC’s This Week that he remained “very confident in Ukraine’s ultimate success” in the ongoing war with Russia. He depicted Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to escalate its attacks inside Russia as “their decision, not ours.”

Blinken’s wrong-headed confidence and his acceptance of a significant escalation in the Ukraine war defies belief, given the reality on the ground today in the war. But it also could be based on insanely optimistic assessments supplied by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA’s assessments, as I have reported, are now the intelligence of choice inside the White House.

If there was no Russia, you would have to invent it, even just for the US to try to destroy it. There is something deeply rooted in neocons that makes them crave for a good enemy, preferably someone to demonise as a primordial evil that fits into their Manichean world view. Anatol Lieven, Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a member of the Board of ACURA, speaks with the podcast Neutrality Studies.

Originally posted at https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/p/a-message-for-lt-colonel-retired

I have had several people flag a recent article in 1945 by Daniel Davis. I do not know the man but one friend, who fought alongside Davis, credits him as a brave man under fire. So this is not an attack on his character. But as I said to my knowledgeable friend, “Bravery under combat does not mean one is qualified to do analysis.”

[Read more…] about Larry C. Johnson: On Ukraine War Analysis that Misses the Mark

Glenn Diesen talks with Col. Macgregor about the corruption, death and destruction in Ukraine.

Today, September 18th marks the third anniversary of Stephen F. Cohen’s passing. To mark it, we are running the following essay from 2006 in which Cohen presciently and accurately described the state of relations between the US and Russia as a New Cold War. Needless to say, subsequent events have proven him correct.

–James W. Carden for The Board.  [Read more…] about Flashback: Stephen F. Cohen: The New American Cold War (June 2007)