BRIAN BERLETIC—The US through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has created large numbers of media platforms, political organizations, and education programs meant to convince the Philippine people that serving US foreign policy objectives is in their own best interests. The ultimate irony is that these US efforts have convinced Filipinos that fighting China is necessary to protect their sovereignty, when in fact US influence over Philippine foreign policy already constitutes the usurpation of Philippine sovereignty.
CRIMINAL FOREIGN POLICY
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ERIC ZUESSE—The main modern iteration of this U.S. regime obsession to get a nuclear missile posted so near to The Kremlin so that the blitz-attack would happen too fast to be responded to, is the case of Ukraine, which is only 317 miles or five minutes of flying-time away from The Kremlin. What Cuba was to the United States in 1962, Ukraine came to be to Russia after Obama’s coup there grabbed it in February 2014. But whereas Cuba is 1,131 miles away from DC, Ukraine is only 317 miles away from Moscow; so, in this iteration of the geography-based strategy, Russia’s argument against Ukraine is even stronger than America’s argument against Cuba was in 1962. Russia has been altogether too trusting of the U.S. Government. But, by now, any further continuation of that trust in this Government, is extremely unlikely — not only in Russia, but everywhere.
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ALEKS—I think first there were considerations to intervene directly in Western Ukraine through Poland. Not to fight the Russians, but to secure territory. And I also think that President Putin made it crystal clear in one of his early speeches during the war that such actions would trigger lightning responses. Most likely he was talking about a hypersonic rain over Poland. These intentions died down afterwards. Nevertheless, it seems that Poland is still eager to seize some parts of Ukraine that Poland considers former Polish territories. This, of course, is an interesting fact.
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SPENGLER—Fertility doesn’t explain everything; both Russia and Ukraine had very low fertility when the 2015 Gallup Survey was taken, but relatively high willingness to fight.
The Ukraine war engages a few hundred thousand combat troops on the same land where millions fought during World War II. When the Soviets recaptured Kharkov in 1943, they threw 1.2 million men at the city and lost 200,000 of them. Russia has perhaps a hundredth of that number around the city today.
For all the demands on America’s NATO allies to bulk up their armies, the opposite is happening. Japan and Germany, the American allies with economies big enough to make a difference in defense spending, are quietly abandoning their commitments to higher defense outlays.
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PEPE ESCOBAR—Michael Hudson once again has reminded everyone with a brain that the running NATO warmongering show has nothing to do with peaceful internationalism. It’s rather about “a unipolar U.S. military alliance leading toward military aggression and economic sanctions to isolate Russia and China. Or more to the point, to isolate European and other allies from its former trade and investment with Russia and China, making those allies more dependent on the United States.”