RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18510/putin-victory-parade

Rather than signaling the end of hostilities, Putin may announce a widening of the perimeters of a war he no longer controls.

The invasion [of Ukraine] has led to an unexpected strengthening of creaking political and military bonds among Western powers and whetted their appetite for regime change in Moscow, something that many, perhaps even most, would have shied away from before Putin began raining his missiles on Kiev.

US President Joe Biden has publicly called for ending Putin’s domination of Russia. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says the Western aim is to so weaken Russia that it is never again able to invade another country. French Minister of Finance and Economy Bruno Le Maire says the aim of the war is to “destroy the Russian economy.” Other senior Western officials speak of bringing Putin and his close associates to justice on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The British government has already asked a commission to start working on that scheme.

Like Hussein and Milosevic, Putin dreams of surrounding Russia with countries with regimes that resemble his, ignoring the fact that reality was developing in the opposite direction with Russia or Iraq or Serbia, ending up resembling the geopolitico-cultural sphere in which fate or events of history has located them. Putin invaded to prevent Ukraine from becoming European, not knowing that Russia itself will eventually have to bury its Slavophile illusions and adopt the “Westernization” strategy supported by such unlikely partners in a dream as Peter the Great, Herzen, Turgenev and Belinsky.

What do you do when you have called a victory parade but have no victory to parade?

This is the question that Russian President Vladimir Putin faces as his faction factory prepares to churn out a gigantic street show in Moscow with Tsarist eagles with varvels bearing Volodya’s coat of arms.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/05/the-thinking-of-a-postmodern-warlord/

In 2008 Vladimir Putin provoked a war with Georgia by giving its president, Mikhail Sakashvili, the poisoned choice either of losing two “breakaway” regions of his country to pro-Russian separatists and Russian “peacekeepers” illegally present there or of risking an attempt to recover them by military action. Sakashvili chose the second course—which was also a Russian trap—and was defeated. Russian troops advanced to within twenty-five kilometres of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, where they halted and have remained.

At that time I was the executive editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague which broadcast to twenty-two countries in twenty-eight languages. Our Georgian service was an especially influential one with first-class journalists in Prague and Tbilisi. I took the crisis as a chance to visit the Tbilisi bureau, and after a few days of meeting local politicians, diplomats, economists and journalists, I set down my thoughts in a commentary for RFE/RL’s English language service.

My first thoughts, slightly abridged here, were that the Russo-Georgian war was a very postmodern experience.

***

Tbilisi, August 2008. Seated in an open-air restaurant overlooking the Mtkvari River, enjoying a light lunch of mountain trout and Georgian salad, one finds it hard to believe that Russian tanks are only about twenty-five kilometres away—indeed that they may be even closer by the time the Turkish coffee arrives.

Tbilisi has few signs of being a capital city at war. National flags hang from many buildings. Newspapers have emphatic anti-Russian headlines such as “Peacekeepers Go Home”. Some pavement satirist has sprayed the features of Vladimir Putin on the pathways so that pedestrians tread on his face.

But there are no bomb shelters; no one looks up anxiously at the sky when a plane is heard; and refugees head into the capital from South Ossetia for help rather than away from it in panic.

This postmodern invasion looks very different to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia forty years ago. In 1968, Soviet tanks reached the centre of Prague. Today, Russian tanks seem to be going back and forth around major Georgian towns, but they will not head straight for Tbilisi without an additional (and highly improbable) Georgian provocation. In 1968, Czech leaders of the Prague Spring were rounded up and deported, reappearing years later as gardeners and furnace-men. Today, Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, addresses large anti-Russian allies in the capital and hosts visits from Western leaders. In 1968, the Soviet invasion was a “multinational” one drawn from the entire USSR and Eastern Europe; today, most members of the CIS have either criticised the Russian invasion or remained silent.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18507/iran-threats-jews

These US rewards to Iran for terrorism, destabilizing the region, treating its own people with brutality and cheating on 2015 nuclear deal would significantly increase Iran’s revenues; these, in turn, will doubtless be funneled into the pockets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Quds Force and their militia and terror groups including Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah for still more expansionism and terror.

Additionally, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi openly called for the destruction of Israel as he addressed anti-Israeli rallies: “This great movement that we are witnessing today in the form of protests is a symbol of the solidarity of the Muslim people that will lead to the destruction of the Zionist regime.”

Since the Biden administration assumed office, it has pursued the maximum appeasement policy with the ruling mullahs of Iran.

Instead of standing with its staunch allies in the Middle East, the Biden administration appears determined to stand with the Iranian regime. The ruling mullahs nonetheless appear intent on taking over their oil-rich neighbors, and eliminating Israel and the United States — all as America seems to imagine, falsely, that it can bribe its way into being spared.

When it to comes to the Iranian regime, all the Biden administration seems to care about is appeasing the ruling mullahs, reaching a weak nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, and enhancing the global legitimacy of a country that the US itself called “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18506/russia-china-nuclear-escalation

Russia has a nuclear doctrine known as “escalate to deescalate” or, more accurately, “escalate to win,” which contemplates threatening or using nuclear weapons early in a conventional conflict.

It cannot be a good sign that Russia, China, and North Korea at the same time are threatening to launch the world’s most destructive weaponry.

Because the Western democracies have largely stood down and are clearly not fighting in Ukraine, Beijing and Pyongyang want similar successes.

“Like Vladimir Putin, the Communist Party of China has lost its fear of American power… China’s nuclear threats expose… perceived American weakness, expose the risk of the lack of a U.S. regional nuclear deterrent, and expose the inadequacy of U.S. leadership.” — Richard Fisher of the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center, to the author, March 2022.

Whatever the reason for the threats, Putin and Xi have told everyone what they intend to do. Unfortunately, Western leaders are determined not to believe them.

In response to Russian threats, President Joe Biden on February 28 said the American people should not worry about nuclear war. On the contrary, there is every reason to worry.

In line with Western thinking, presidents and prime ministers have almost always ignored nuclear threats, hoping not to dignify them. Unfortunately, this posture has only emboldened the threat-makers to make more threats. The later the international community confronts belligerent Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans, the more dangerous the confrontations will be.

The world, therefore, looks like it is fast approaching the worst moment in history.

On May 1, on Russian TV, the media executive often called “Putin’s mouthpiece” urged the Russian president to launch a Poseidon underwater drone with a “warhead of up to 100 megatons.” The detonation, said Dmitry Kiselyov, would create a 1,640-foot tidal wave that would “plunge Britain to the depths of the ocean.” The wave would reach halfway up England’s tallest peak, Scafell Pike.

“This tidal wave is also a carrier of extremely high doses of radiation,” Kiselyov pointed out. “Surging over Britain, it will turn whatever is left of them into radioactive desert, unusable for anything. How do you like this prospect?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18467/turkey-nato-putin-ally

Western leaders shrugged it off when, in 2016, Erdoğan said in plain language that Turkey did not need to join the European Union “at all costs” and could instead become part of a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations.

Erdoğan’s popularity, since he came to power in 2002, has worked as a self-poisoning instrument in the Turkish society, increasingly fuelling anti-Western sentiment, particularly anti-Americanism.

The… poll also indicated that 48% of the Turkish public think that the U.S. and NATO are responsible for the situation in Ukraine. Turks also think that Russia is their country’s third most important partner.

Nearly six out of 10 Turks (58.3%), according to the GMFUS poll, see the U.S. as the country’s biggest threat, while 31% said Russia and 29% said Israel. The percentage of Turks who say the U.S. should help solve global problems stands at just 6%.

While sending smiley messages of reconciliation to the West and the West’s partners in the Middle East, including Israel, Erdoğan keeps fuelling anti-Western sentiments in Turkey.

When they are not reading pro-Erdoğan newspapers, Turks are watching pro-Erdoğan television channels featuring commentators who blame the war on Washington and NATO’s eastward expansion.

Turkey… dismissed the idea of send its S-400 missiles to Ukraine to help Kyiv resist Russian troops.

“”The Russians are buying houses and other properties in Turkey, taking advantage of the law that allows foreigners to become Turkish citizens if they invest at least $250,000. Many Russians are able to circumvent Western sanctions by transferring their money from Russian to Turkish banks and converting their rubles to Turkish liras or other currencies. All NATO member countries, with the exception of Turkey, have imposed strict sanctions on Russia…” — Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2022.

“Turkey’s central bank took in about $3 billion in just two days in mid-March… That money was likely largely composed of deposits from Russians.” — Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2022

This is how NATO ally Turkey is “fighting” the Western battle against Russian aggression. In return, the Biden administration seems to be rewarding Erdoğan.

The Biden administration, evidently, at the behest of Turkey, has tried to kill the EastMed gas pipeline project, which could supply gas from Cyprus and Israel, via Greece, to Europe.

Worse, the US State Department, in a March 17 letter to Congress, said that a potential sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey would be “in line with U.S. national security interests” and would also “serve NATO’s long-term unity.”

Greece, which recently has experienced countless illegal Turkish overflights, not to mention the last few years, must be thrilled.

Turkey needs to start acting like an ally; not a deceitful, pro-Putin ally.

Turkey’s “balancing act” during the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the result of the country’s Islamist leader’s two-decade long indoctrination of a generation of Turks to make them “pious.” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan may or may not have raised pious generations, as he declared was his political mission, but he has definitely raised an anti-Western generation. That anti-Western sentiment once again makes Turkey the odd-man-out in NATO.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18493/european-union-border-protection

This accusation is at the heart of the conflict in the European Union: should EU member states keep their borders open at all times? And is it Frontex’s job to ensure that the borders of EU member states remain always open?

Whenever the European Union talks about “fundamental rights”, it is the right of migrants to move freely that is being discussed. Never the rights of the host populations. In this context, a “pushback” is perceived as a capital crime.

Frontex alone illustrates the European Union dilemma: to welcome refugees and turn back illegal migrants looking for economic opportunity, or to welcome all migrants for fear of turning back genuine refugees ?

In his resignation letter, Leggeri wrote, “It seems that the mandate of Frontex on which I was elected and renewed in June 2019 has silently but effectively been modified.” It was a way of saying that the mission of Frontex is no longer the protection of borders but only the protection of the right of migrants to settle wherever they want.

With the departure of Leggeri, Frontex officially becomes a tourism agency for migrants, not an agency to protect Europe’s borders.

The pro-migrants lobby inside the European Union has won: Fabrice Leggeri, director-general of Frontex, the European agency tasked with guarding the EU’s borders, was forced to send a letter of resignation on April 28, 2022. His resignation was accepted by the board.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18477/putin-gas-blackmail

Now, following Russia’s dramatic decision this week to cut gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, the West and its allies must give serious consideration to upgrading the level of military support they provide to Ukraine.

The real reason, though, [that Russia cut gas supplies] is that Russia is trying to blackmail Poland and Bulgaria, which have become high profile supporters of the Ukrainian war effort, to end their support for Kyiv.

“Russia is also proving that energy resources are a weapon. That is why the EU needs to be united and impose an embargo on energy resources, depriving the Russians of their energy weapons.” — Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, The Guardian, April 26, 2022.

It is also an excellent time for the European Union finally to green-light the EastMed gas pipeline, in the works for years, but also scuppered by the Biden administration in capitulation to Turkey. The EastMed, however, remains an ideal solution to diversify the supply of gas to Europe and only awaits the European Union’s approval.

The best way for the West to respond, therefore, is not to concede to the Russian demands to scale down its support for Kyiv.

It is to do the opposite, and provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs not just to defend itself against Russian aggression, but to go on the offensive and win the war. Putin is desperate and needs to understand that if he goes for the nuclear option, Russia will cease to exist.

With the conflict now entering its third month, and Mr Putin showing no inclination to stop his barbaric assault on the people of Ukraine, it is clear this policy of appeasement has failed.

Consequently, the West should now concentrate its efforts on providing Ukraine’s forces with the military equipment they require not only to defend their country from Russian aggression, but to defeat the Russians and liberate their country from Mr Putin’s tyranny.

As a top priority, the Biden administration must therefore reverse its decision to block the transfer of 70 MiG fighters to Ukraine. Supplying Ukraine with extra warplanes, together with tanks and other military hardware, is essential if Kyiv is to have any chance of inflicting a serious defeat against Russia.

Such a change in policy is certainly in the West’s long-term interests. If the Ukrainian forces can achieve victory over their Russian invaders, it will act as a strong deterrent to Mr Putin not to launch any more unprovoked attacks on European soil, as well as to other potential aggressors waiting in the wings.

The best way for the West to respond to Russia’s blatant attempt to blackmail Europe into dropping its support for Ukraine is to provide the Ukrainian forces with the military hardware they need to win the war.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/they-call-them-koran-riots-bruce-bawer/

It began on Easter weekend. In response to a rally in Örebro, Sweden, by Stram Kurs, a Danish party that opposes Islamic immigration and whose members threatened to burn copies of the Koran, mass violence broke out in Stockholm and several other Swedish cities, with scores of Muslims – mostly young men, both also women and children – throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at cops and setting cars, buses, dumpsters, and buildings on fire. Injuries resulting from these disturbances – widely dubbed the “Koran riots” – were in the mid two figures, with police officers the hardest hit. Further Stram Kurs events had been planned, but the party’s appropriately named leader, Rasmus Paludan, paladin of Denmark’s anti-Islamization movement, canceled them on the grounds that Swedish police had shown themselves to be “completely incapable of protecting themselves and me.” By the end of the month Swedish police had forbidden any further public gatherings by Stram Kurs.

Of course, the tumult didn’t spring from out of nowhere. Among young Muslims in Sweden, car-burning is old hat. But the scale of these events was new – and, to Swedes who still have their heads in the sand about this issue, alarming. Still, for many observers in Scandinavia, the real affront wasn’t the physical brutality but the very notion of harming a Koran. Hanan Abdelrahman, a college teacher in Norway, wrote a teary op-ed on the topic in which she asserted that Paludan and his ilk made her “feel a bit scared and unsafe.” She asked: “How many camels is one really supposed to swallow? To what degree and for how long should a group of people have to tolerate feeling unsafe and unwanted?” Yes, the danger to human safety that weekend wasn’t the savagery that sent people to the hospital – it was a peaceful rally. Abdelrahman charged that if Paludan and his friends had been “braver” and “smarter,” they’d have invited somebody like her to engage in a discussion of their differing views. A pretty weird proposal, given that if she’d actually read her beloved Koran, Abdelrahman would know that it tells her not to consort with infidels but to kill them – especially if they seek to talk her out of her beliefs.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18480/what-to-do-about-china

Since about 2018, Chinese officials have been talking about the moon and Mars as sovereign Chinese territory, part of the People’s Republic of China. This means that China considers those heavenly bodies to be like the South China Sea. This also means that China will exclude other nations from going to the moon and Mars if they have the capability to do so. We do not have to speculate about that: Chinese officials say this is what they are going to do.

[W]hen Biden says, “Oh, the Chinese just want to compete with us,” he is wrong. They do not want to “compete” within the international system. They do not even want to change that system… They want to overthrow it altogether, period.

Is Xi Jinping really that bold… to start another war? … First, China considers the United States to be its enemy. Second the United States is no longer deterring China. China feels it has a big green light to do whatever it wants.

We Americans don’t pay attention to propaganda… After all, these are just words. At this particular time, these words… [suggest] to me that China is laying the justification for a strike on the United States. We keep ignoring what Beijing is saying. We kept ignoring what Osama bin Laden was saying.

We have to remember that the Chinese regime, unlike the Japanese, always warn its adversaries about what it is going to do

The second reason war is coming is that America’s deterrence of China is breaking down.

Di’s message was that with cash, China can do anything it wants, and that all Americans would take cash. He mentioned two words in this regard: Hunter Biden.

In February, [Biden] had a two‑hour phone call with Xi Jinping. By Biden’s own admission, he didn’t raise the issue of the origins of COVID‑19 even once. If you are Xi Jinping, after you put down the receiver, your first thought is, “I just got away with killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.”

We have news that China is building something like 345 missile silos in three locations: in Gansu, Xinjiang, and in Inner Mongolia. These silos are clearly built to accommodate the DF‑41. The DF‑41 has a range of about 9,300 miles, which means that it can reach any part of the United States. The DF‑41 carries 10 warheads. This means that China could, in about two years…, have a bigger arsenal than ours. …we have to assume the worst because Chinese leaders and Chinese generals, on occasion, unprovoked, have made threats to nuke American cities.

In July, 2021 China tested a hypersonic glide warhead, which circled the world. This signals China intends to violate the Outer Space Treaty, to which China is a party.

As of today, more than eight million people have died outside China. What happened? No one imposed costs on China.

For at least a half‑decade, maybe a little bit longer, Chinese military researchers have been openly writing about a new type of biological warfare….They talk about a new type of biological warfare of “specific ethnic genetic attacks.” In other words, pathogens that will leave the Chinese immune but sicken and kill everybody else, which means that the next disease from China can be a civilization killer.

A lot of military analysts talk about how the first seconds of a war with China are going to be fought in outer space. They are going to blind our satellites, take them down, do all sorts of stuff. Those statements are wrong. The first day of war against the United States occurs about six months earlier, when they release pathogens in the United States. Then we are going to have that day in space. The war starts here, with a pathogen ‑‑ a virus, a microbe, a bug of some kind. That is where it begins.

The One‑China policy is something many people misunderstand. Probably because Beijing uses propaganda to try to fuzzy up the issue…. China has a One‑China principle: that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China, full stop. We have a One‑China policy…, that the status of Taiwan is unresolved…. that the resolution of the status of Taiwan must be with the consent of people on both sides of the Strait.

We need a policy of “strategic clarity,” where we tell China that we will defend Taiwan. We also say we will extend a mutual defense treaty to Taiwan if it wants it, and we will put American troops on the island as a tripwire.

We are Americans. We naturally assume that there are solutions, and good solutions, to every problem. After three decades of truly misguided China policy, there are no … solutions that are “undangerous.” …The current trend of policy is unsustainable. There will be no American republic if we continue to do what we are currently doing and if we continue to allow China to do what it does. I do not think that enforcing a trade deal will start World War III.

China has not met its obligations. As of a few months ago, China had met about 62% of its commitments….. We should be increasing the tariffs that President Trump imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Remember, those tariffs are meant to be a remedy for the theft of US intellectual property. China has continued to steal US IP. As matter of fact, it has gotten worse…

I do not think that we should be trying to foster integration of Wall Street into China’s markets…. Do not take it from me, just look at their failure to comply with very simple, easy‑to‑comply-with requirements. It was a mistake.

The best response would be if we hit them with everything at once because China right now is weak. If we were going to pick the number one thing to do, I would think trade.

China now has a debt crisis, so they are not going to invest their way out of this crisis, which means the only way they can save their economy is net exports. We should stop buying their stuff.

China has bought the political establishment in the Solomon Islands, except for one brave man named David Suidani. Recently, somebody got the bright idea of publishing all of the specific payments that Beijing has made to Solomon Islands politicians…. We should be doing this with payments to American politicians, we should be doing this across the board.

What bothers me is that, although their assumptions about China have demonstrably been proven wrong, American policymakers still continue with the same policies. There is, in some people’s mind, an unbreakable view that we have to cooperate with China…. This is what people learn in international relations school when they go to Georgetown, and they become totally stupid.

Clearly, Nike and Apple and other companies are now, at this very moment, trying to prevent Congress from enacting toughened rules on the importation of forced‑labor products into our country.

Moreover, the Chinese regime is even more casualty‑averse than we are. Even if Beijing thinks it can take Taiwan by force, it is probably not going to invade because it knows an invasion would be unpopular with most people in China. It is not going to risk hundreds of thousands of casualties that would result from an invasion.

Unfortunately…, we taught the Chinese that they can without cost engage in these dangerous maneuvers of intercepting our planes and our ships. That is the problem: because as we have taught the Chinese to be more aggressive, they have been.

[W]e should have made it clear to the Chinese leadership that they cannot kill Americans without cost. Hundreds of thousands Americans have been killed by a disease that China deliberately spread. From October 2020 to October 2021, more than 105,000 Americans died from fentanyl — which China has purposefully, as a matter of state and Communist Party policy — sold to Americans… we have to change course.

I would close China’s four remaining consulates. I would also strip the Chinese embassy down to the ambassador and his personal staff. The thousands who are in Washington, DC, they would be out.

I would also raise tariffs to 3,600%, or whatever. This is a good time to do it. We have supply chain disruptions. We are not getting products from China anyway. We can actually start to do this sort of stuff.

I would… just hammer those guys all the time verbally. People may think, “Those are just words.” For communists, words are really important, because they are an insecure regime where propaganda is absolutely critical.

I would be going after the Communists on human rights, I would be going after them on occupying the South China Sea, on Taiwan, unrelentingly — because I would want to show the world that the United States is no longer afraid of China…. State Department people, they are frightened. We need to say to the Chinese regime, like Dulles, “I’m not afraid of you. I’m going after you, and I’m going to win.”

All the conditions for history’s next great war are in place. Jim Holmes, the Wiley Professor at the Naval War College, actually talks about this period as being 1937.