Hard reminders: Mutual Assured Destruction means exactly that

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Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Sometimes it is possible to read or view something that completely changes the way one looks at things. I had that experience last week when I read an article at Lobelog entitled “A Plea for Common Sense on Missile Defense,” written by Joe Cirincione, a former staffer on the House Armed Services Committee who now heads the Ploughshares Fund, which is a Washington DC based global foundation that seeks to stop the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

The article debunks much of the narrative being put out by the White House and Pentagon regarding missile defense. To be sure, it is perfectly reasonable to mistrust anything that comes out of the federal government justifying war given its track record going back to the War of 1812. And the belligerent posture of the United States towards Iran and North Korea can well be condemned based on its own merits, threatening war where there are either no real interests at stake or where a diplomatic solution has for various reasons been eschewed.

But the real reason why the White House gets away with saber rattling is historical, that the continental United States has not experienced the consequences of war since Pancho Villa invaded in 1916. This is a reality that administration after administration has exploited to do what they want when dealing with foreign nations: whatever happens “over there” will stay “over there.”

Americans consequently do not know war except as something that happens elsewhere and to foreigners, requiring only that the U.S. step in on occasion and bail things out, or screw things up depending on one’s point of view. This is why hawks like John McCain, while receiving a “Liberty” award from Joe Biden, can, with a straight face, get away with denouncing those Americans who have become tired of playing at being the world’s policeman. He describes them as fearful of “the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, [abandoning] the ideals we have advanced around the globe, [refusing] the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism.”

McCain’s completely fatuous account of recent world history befits a Navy pilot who was adept at crashing his planes and almost sank his own aircraft carrier. He also made propaganda radio broadcasts for the North Vietnamese after he was captured. The McCain globalist-American Exceptionalism narrative is also, unfortunately, echoed by the media. The steady ingestion of lies and half-truths is why the public puts up with unending demands for increased defense spending, accepting that the world outside is a dangerous place that must be kept in line by force majeure. Yes, we are the good guys.

But underlying the citizenry’s willingness to accept that the military establishment should encircle the globe with foreign bases to keep the world “safe” is the assumption that the 48 States are invulnerable, isolated by broad oceans and friendly nations to the north and south. And protected from far distant threats by technology, interceptor systems developed and maintained at enormous expense to intercept and shoot down incoming ballistic missiles launched by enemies overseas.

In a recent speech, relating to the North Korean threat, President Donald Trump boasted that the United States anti-missile defenses are 97% effective, meaning that they can intercept and destroy incoming projectiles 97 times out of a 100. Trump was seeking to assure the public that whatever happens over in Korea, it cannot have an undesirable outcome over here in the continental United States nor, apparently, in Hawaii, Alaska and overseas possessions like Guam, all of which are shielded under the anti-missile defense umbrella. Trump was undoubtedly referring to, even if he was ignorant of many of the specifics, the Ground Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) installations in Alaska and Hawaii, which are part of the existing $330 billion missile defense system.

It is certainly comforting to learn that the United States cannot be physically attacked with either nuclear or conventional weapons no matter what our government does overseas, but is it true? What if the countermeasures were somewhat closer to 0% effective? Would that change the thinking about going to war in Korea? Or about confronting Russia in Eastern Europe? And for those who think that a nuclear exchange is unthinkable it would be wise to consider the recent comments by Jack Keane of the aptly named Institute for the Study of War, a leading neoconservative former general who reportedly has the ear of the White House and reflects its thinking on the matter. Keane is not hesitant to employ the military option against Pyongyang and he describes a likely trigger for a U.S. attack to take out its nuclear facilities or remove “leadership targets” as the setting up of a ballistic missile in North Korea with a nuclear warhead mounted on top “aimed at America.” Some observers believe that North Korea is close to having the ability to reduce the size of its nukes to make that possible and, if Keane is to be believed, it would be considered an “act of war” which would trigger an immediate attack by Washington. And a counter attack by Pyongyang.

The claim of 97% reliability for the U.S.’s anti-missile defenses is being challenged by Cirincione and others, who argue that the United States can only “shoot down some…missiles some of the time.” They make a number of arguments that are quite convincing, even to a layman who has no understanding of the physics involved. I will try to keep it simple.

First of all, an anti-missile interceptor must hit its target head on or nearly so and it must either actually strike the target or explode its own warhead at a close enough distance to be effective. Both objectives are difficult to achieve. An Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) travels at 5,000 meters per second. By way of comparison a bullet fired from a rifle travels at about one fifth that speed. Imagine two men with rifles standing a mile apart and firing their weapons in an attempt to have the bullets meet head on. Multiply the speed by five if one is referring to missiles, not bullets. Even using the finest radars and sensors as well as the most advanced guidance technologies, the variables involved make it much more likely that there will be a miss than a hit. Cirincione observes that “…the only way to hit a bullet is if the bullet cooperates.”

A new by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in the United States finds about 40 million...

Second, the tests carried out by the Pentagon to determine reliability are essentially fraudulent. Contrary to the Donald Trump comment, the 97% accuracy is an extrapolation based on firing four anti-missile missiles at a target to make up for the fact that in the rigged tests a single interceptor has proven to be closer to only 56% accurate, and that under ideal conditions. This statistic is based on the actual tests performed since 1999 in which interceptors were able to shoot down 10 of 18 targets. The conclusion that four would result in 97% derives from the assumption that multiple interceptors increases the accuracy but most engineers would argue that if one missile cannot hit the target for any number of technical shortcomings it is equally likely that all four will miss for the same reason.

The tests themselves are carefully scripted to guarantee success. They take place in daylight, preferably at dusk to ensure maximum visibility, under good weather conditions, and without any attempt made by the approaching missile to confuse the interceptor through the use of electronic countermeasures or through the ejection of chaff or jammers, which would certainly be deployed. The targets in tests have sometimes been heated to make them easier to find and some have had transponders attached to make them almost impossible to miss. As a result, the missile interceptor system has never been tested under realistic battlefield conditions.

Even the federal government watchdog agencies have concluded that the missile interception system seldom performs. The Government Accountability Office concluded that flaws in the technology, which it describes as “failure modes,” mean that America has an “interceptor fleet that may not work as intended, prompting one Californian congressman John Garamendi to observe that “I think the answer is absolutely clear. It will not work. Nevertheless, the momentum of the fear…of the investments…[of] the momentum of the industry, it carries forward.”

The Operational Test and Evaluation Office of the Department of Defense has also been skeptical, reporting that the GMD in Alaska and Hawaii has only “…a limited capability to defend the U.S. Homeland from small numbers of simple intermediate range or intercontinental ballistic missile threats launched from North Korea…the reliability and availability of the operational [interceptors] are low.”

The dangerous overconfidence being demonstrated by the White House over the ability to intercept a North Korean missile attack might indeed be in some part a bluff, designed to convince Pyongyang that it if initiates a shooting war it will be destroyed while the U.S. remains untouched. But somehow, with a president who doesn’t do subtle very well, I would doubt that to be the case. And the North Koreans, able to build a nuclear weapon and an ICBM, would surely understand the flaws in missile defense as well as anyone.

But the real danger is that it is the American people that is being fooled by the Administration. War is thinkable, even nuclear war, if one cannot be touched by it, a truism that has enabled the sixteen-year- long and counting “global war on terror.” If that is the message being sent by the White House, it would encourage further reckless adventurism on the part of the national security state. Far better to take the North Korean threat seriously and admit that a west coast city like Seattle could well become the target of a successful nuclear weapon attack.

That would demonstrate that war has real life consequences and the unfamiliar dose of honesty would perhaps result in a public demand to seriously negotiate with Pyongyang instead of hurling threats in speeches at the United Nations and on Capitol Hill.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip Giraldi (born c. 1946) is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a columnist and television commentator who is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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The Death and Resurrection of a Blogger

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

By Dmitry Orlov / Club Orlov

Babchenko, quite probably a crisis actor, a false flag mercenary in the CIA pay. Playing a dangerous game. Could end up like ambitious Boris Nemtsov.

• Cultural collapse has resulted from a pseudo-nationalist effort to deny Ukraine’s Russian heritage and to replace it with a cult of adulation of all things Western and a made-up national language and culture synthesized out of some village dialects and a deep-seated sense of historical grievance.

• Social collapse came from the marginalization and ostracism of a large part of the population that associated itself more closely with Russia than with nativist Ukrainian pseudo-nationalism. A lot of these people moved there after the Revolution, to exert a civilizing influence on a backward, agrarian region. Many of their descendants have now moved back to Russia.

• Political collapse started with the foreign-directed violent overthrow of the constitutional government and its replacement with some compliant stooges hand-picked by the US State Department. In its second phase, bad politics provoked a civil war that is going on to this day, and a dismembering of the country, with Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea going their separate ways. Somewhere along the way the Ukrainian parliament was restocked with oligarchs and criminals of every stripe, making the country’s politics so corrupt as to make it ungovernable even for its mighty CIA handlers.

• Commercial collapse was readily produced by severing many of the economic ties between the Ukraine and Russia. In particular, this largely destroyed the entire advanced industrial sector of the Ukrainian economy (which was once the pride of the USSR) and caused many of the technical specialists to exfiltrate to other, more productive locales—such as North Korea, which was in need of some rocket scientists and atomic weapons experts. All of the major high tech sectors—rocket engines, large ship engines, helicopter engines, etc.—have relocated to Russia. Russia remains the Ukraine’s largest trading partner, but this only shows that its attempted reorientation toward the West has been a failure. The Ukraine does still manage to export to the West such items as logs (it is clearcutting what’s left of its forests) and dirt (stripping off its topsoil using bulldozers and bucket loaders and shipping it out).

But then poor Babchenko gets shot, three times in the back, just like poor Boris Nemtsov. He was feeling ill, and so he went to the corner to buy some bread (I know, but that’s the official story) and he got shot in the back either on the way there or on the way back (versions vary) right in front of his apartment (where his wife was at home). Below is a picture of him dead. As numerous astute observers of wounded and corpses quickly pointed out, he is conscious (judging from pose and muscle tone), his respiratory and circulatory systems are in good shape (his bald pate is nice and pink) and there is far too much bleeding from the entry wounds. As a crisis actor, Babchenko is unconvincing. Never mind that, he died, either right there and then, or in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, or in the hospital (versions vary).

[dropcap]U[/dropcap]pon news of poor Babchenko’s untimely demise, the entire Russian floccinaucinihilipilificationist community flew into high dudgeon over what was clearly (no investigation or evidence needed) a political assassination ordered by the highest echelons of the criminal Russian regime, perhaps by Putin personally. Red carnations piled up in front of Babchenko’s apartment building. People in Moscow started booking flights to Kiev to attend the fallen hero’s funeral. At the UN in New York, the Russian-born Ukrainian representative Pavel (self-styled “Pavlo”) Klimkin said this:

“Arkady Babchenko, a Russian journalist and well-known opponent of the Russian regime, was killed near his apartment in [Kiev]. Before he arrived in [the] Ukraine, he was forced to leave Russia after attacks and threats against him and his family… [He] continued to fight for a democratic Russia from [the] Ukraine, so, of course, Moscow has always viewed him as an enemy… It’s too early to say who is behind it, but the analysis of similar cases gives us reasonable grounds to believe that Russia is using other types of tactics to destabilize the situation in Ukraine. In particular, there are terrorist attacks, subversive activities and political murders.”

Several other Ukrainian worthies weighed in as well. This, please note, is now standard procedure: something happens, and before an investigation even starts and any facts are ascertained a snap decision is made to Blame Russia. This has by now happened so many times as to make it routine: the shoot-down of the Malaysian Boeing over Eastern Ukraine, the killing of Boris Nemtsov, the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, etc. Some people started saying that it’s now high time to expel some more Russian diplomats and introduce some more anti-Russian sanctions.

Everything was going perfectly well. But then Babchenko turns up very much alive at a press conference. There is an audible gasp. Babchenko, flanked by Ukrainian officials, looks rather shamefaced, and so do they. It is then announced that his murder was staged, but that there really was a contract taken out on him, and that this was all done in order to apprehend the culprits, who had already paid the advance, when they pay the rest of the contract. And the culprits are, of course, Russian officials.

All the Russian floccinaucinihilipilificationists, everywhere in the world, instantaneously felt very much cheated by this spectacle of their favorite blogger rising from the dead, and were outraged. The piles of carnations cost money, as did the airline tickets from Moscow to Kiev to attend his funeral. The fact that lots of people were rolling around on the floor laughing didn’t make them feel any better. And most people were laughing, or at least smiling. You see, most people in the world are what you might call “normies”: they don’t like constructed realities, and they aren’t capable of distinguishing a skillfully arranged political hoax from just some damned lies. While everyone was laughing their heads off, the Russian floccinaucinihilipilificationist community, along with much of the Western media, was loudly condemning this breach of good manners, journalistic ethics, competent governance and whatever else they could think of condemning. It was beautiful!

An obvious question arose in numerous heads at once: who knew of the hoax, and when did they know it. The Ukrainian perma-drunk president Poroshenko definitely knew all along, and the silly dunce Klimkin obviously didn’t. But did Babchenko’s own wife know? She was present at the scene while Babchenko laid on the floor and waited for the makeup artist to arrange the pig’s blood and paint the bullet holes on his back. And then she spent a day grieving publicly and accepting condolences. By now it is very difficult to establish who knew when, although it is sometimes quite obvious who lied about it.

But what of the reason for this hoax? A certain person was immediately arrested: a middle-aged pudgy balding gentleman who is the top manager of a German-Ukrainian company that is the only private company that supplies weapons to the Ukrainian military. He was interrogated, and divulged several nonsensical details. The chief assassin was to be a certain Ukrainian warrior priest who fought “Russian separatists” in the east and hates Russia. And his contact within Russia was some individual whose existence is yet to be established. A likely story for a Kremlin assassination plot, no?

A more reasonable explanation is that this was part of an effort to get the balding middle-aged manager to give up his share of the arms company—a corporate raid, in essence. Blaming Russia is always job one, of course, but why not kill two birds with one stone? That’s how they do things in the Ukraine. The facts that the "Kremlin’s paid assassin" was to be some warrior monk of Shaolin who happens to hate Russia, and that the Russian contact doesn’t quite exist—those are just some pesky details to sweep under the rug while everyone is looking away.

A lot of Ukrainian officials are now scratching their heads; what did they do wrong? They faithfully followed the same playbook as the British did with the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter. They were "killed" using a nerve agent designed to kill thousands within seconds, but survived. Russia was accused based on no evidence, and the accusation stuck to the extent that lots of countries expelled some Russian diplomats. And now that the entire official version of the Skripal affair is starting to look like a simple politically motivated kidnapping, the media is suddenly mum about it. The Brits don’t seem particularly embarrassed by all this, and there aren’t millions of people laughing at this folly. Well, Theresa May does seem permanently embarrassed, and she is indeed an embarrassment, but the Skripal mission was something like a success. At least it didn’t rise to the level of ridicule of the Babchenko affair.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what collapse looks like up close and personal. A journalist who dies and is resurrected as a non-journalist. A country’s political establishment becomes the laughingstock of the planet. Who will believe them now? And an entire juggernaut of anti-Russian provocations based on evidence-free accusations is in danger of being derailed by the “Babchenko Effect.” Arkady, you Russian patriot, let me buy you a beer!

Although it is generally a good idea not to ascribe sinister intent to actions for which mere stupidity suffices, in this case there may be a hidden motive. The official story is that the pudgy manager and his warrior priest were targeting up to 30 individuals. Couple this with the fact that Poroshenko is doing dismally in the ratings, and is likely to do equally badly at the polls during the upcoming election. Perhaps the real targets of the Babchenko effect are other journalists working in the Ukraine. At any time now, should they displease Poroshenko, they may find themselves lying prone in a pool of blood with three bullet holes in the back, and this time it won't be just a warning and their death may turn out to be quite real. This prospect brings us face to face with the real task of surviving collapse: not dying.

Peter VE said...: Arkady Babchenko should count himself lucky that he was able to get to the press conference the next day. Most "victims" in his situation are a potential embarrassment to the perpetrators, and so end up becoming a victim after all. The perpetrators in this case are so incompetent that they didn't realize their own stupidity in bringing him out in public.
Putin doesn't need secret agents when the West puts in its stooges: they have decisively demonstrated how to ruin a country by following the siren call of Westernization.; TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 2018 AT 10:04:00 AM EDT
Veronica said...: Thanks Dmitry. There's a book called "The Battle for the Mind", about brainwashing, and one of its most memorable points was that the retention of a sense of humour is the best protection from being sucked into mental and emotional management by others. It was primarily about the experience of prisoners of war, but the principle holds true. This is a lovely piece 🙂 - I shall enjoy sharing it - thanks again!; TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 2018 AT 10:28:00 AM EDT
Slo Mo said...: While I agree that this particular stunt miserably failed, in general demonization of Russia has been successful so far. You can say an outright lie about Russia and if it portrays her as a villain nobody will question it, because the character has been established. We would have to see more evidence that the tide is changing, in my opinion.; TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 2018 AT 1:49:00 PM EDT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Russian-born D. Orlov is a well known commentator on international affairs with a focus on the global US/Russia struggle.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

Why America’s Major News-Media Must Change Their Thinking

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Contrary to the myth that the American media was once a reliable and honest source of news, the fact is that it has always been a mendacious tool in the service of the national and global plutocracies, the only difference being that in the present era it has degenerated from an erratic and mediocre performance to a totalitarian level. In all likelihood, a well informed public would have never permitted criminal meddling and adventures in Iran, Central America, Korea, Vietnam and scores of other brutally victimised countries. The inherent criminality and hypocrisy of US imperialist foreign policy would have been gradually but surely revealed. —PG

America’s ‘news’-media possess the mentality that characterizes a dictatorship, not a democracy. This will be documented in the linked-to empirical data which will be subsequently discussed. But, first, here is what will be documented by those data, and which will make sense of these data:

In a democracy, the public perceive their country to be improving, in accord with that nation’s values and priorities. Consequently, they trust their government, and especially they approve of the job-performance of their nation’s leader. In a dictatorship, they don’t. In a dictatorship, the government doesn’t really represent them, at all. It represents the rulers, typically a national oligarchy, an aristocracy of the richest 0.1% or even of only the richest 0.01%. No matter how much the government ‘represents’ the public in law (or “on paper”), it’s not representing them in reality; and, so, the public don’t trust their government, and the public’s job-rating of their national leader, the head-of-state, is poor, perhaps even more disapproval than approval. So, whereas in a democracy, the public widely approve of both the government and the head-of-state; in a dictatorship, they don’t.

In a dictatorship, the ‘news’-media hide reality from the public, in order to serve the government — not the public. But the quality of government that the regime delivers to its public cannot be hidden as the lies continually pile up, and as the promises remain unfulfilled, and as the public find that despite all of the rosy promises, things are no better than before, or are even becoming worse. Trust in such a government falls, no matter how much the government lies and its media hide the fact that it has been lying. Though a ‘democratic’ election might not retain in power the same leaders, it retains in power the same regime (be it the richest 0.1%, or the richest 0.01%, or The Party, or whatever the dictatorship happens to be). That’s because it’s a dictatorship: it represents the same elite of power-holding insiders, no matter what. It does not represent the public. That elite — whatever it is — is referred to as the “Deep State,” and the same Deep State can control more than one country, in which case there is an empire, which nominally is headed by the head-of-state of its leading country (this used to be called an “Emperor”), but which actually consists of an alliance between the aristocracies within all these countries; and, sometimes, the nominal leading country is actually being led, in its foreign policies, by wealthier aristocrats in the supposedly vassal nations. But no empire can be a democracy, because the residents in no country want to be governed by any foreign power: the public, in every land, want their nation to be free — they want democracy, no dictatorship at all, especially no dictatorship from abroad.

In order for the elite to change, a revolution is required, even if it’s only to a different elite, instead of to a democracy. So, if there is no revolution, then certainly it’s the same dictatorship as before. The elite has changed (and this happens at least as often as generations change), but the dictatorship has not. And in order to change from a dictatorship to a democracy, a revolution also is required, but it will have to be a revolution that totally removes from power the elite (and all their agents) who had been ruling. If this elite had been the nation’s billionaires and its centi-millionaires who had also been billionaire-class donors to political campaigns (such as has been proven to be the case in the United States), then those people, who until the revolution had been behind the scenes producing the bad government, need to be dispossessed of their assets, because their assets were being used as their weapons against the public, and those weapons need (if there is to be a democracy) to be transferred to the public as represented by the new and authentically democratic government. If instead the elite had been a party, then all of those individuals need to be banned from every sort of political activity in the future. But, in either case, there will need to be a new constitution, and a consequent new body of laws, because the old order (the dictatorship) no longer reigns — it’s no longer in force after a revolution. That’s what “revolution” means. It doesn’t necessarily mean “democratic,” but sometimes it does produce a democracy where there wasn’t one before. The idea that every revolution is democratic is ridiculous, though it’s often assumed in ‘news’-reports. In fact, coups (which the U.S. Government specializes in like no other) often are a revolution that replaces a democracy by a dictatorship (such as the U.S. Government did to Ukraine in 2014, for example, and most famously before that, did to Iran in 1953). (Any country that perpetrates a coup anywhere is a dictatorship over the residents there, just the same as is the case when any invasion and occupation of a country are perpetrated upon a country. The imposed stooges are stooges, just the same. No country that imposes coups and/or invasions/occupations upon any government that has not posed an existential threat against the residents of that perpetrating country, supports democracy; to the exact contrary, that country unjustifiably imposes dictatorships; it spreads its own dictatorship, which is of the imperialistic type, and any government that spreads its dictatorship is evil and needs to be replaced — revolution is certainly justified there.)

This is how to identify which countries are democracies, and which ones are not: In a democracy, the public are served by the government, and thus are experiencing improvement in their lives and consequently approve of the job-performance of their head-of-state, and they trust the government. But in a dictatorship, none of these things is true.

In 2014, a Japanese international marketing-research firm polled citizens in each of ten countries asking whether they approve or disapprove of the job-performance of their nation’s head-of-state, and Harvard then provided an English-translated version online for a few years, then eliminated that translation from its website; but, fortunately, the translation had been web-archived and so is permanent here (with no information however regarding methodology or sampling); and it shows the following percentages who approved of the job-performance of their President or other head-of-state in each of the given countries, at that time:

China (Xi) 90%

Russia (Putin) 87%

India (Modi) 86%

South Africa (Zuma) 70%

Germany (Merkel) 67%

Brazil (Roussef) 63%

U.S. (Obama) 62%

Japan (Abe) 60%

UK (Cameron) 55%

France (Hollande) 48%

In January 2018, the global PR firm Edelman came out with the latest in their annual series of scientifically polled surveys in more than two dozen countries throughout the world, tapping into, actually, some of the major criteria within each nation indicating whether or not the given nation is more toward the dictatorship model, or more toward the democracy model. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer survey showed that “Trust in Government” (scored and ranked on page 39) is 44% in Russia, and is only 33% in the United States. Trust in Government is the highest in China: 84%. The U.S. and Russia are the nuclear super-powers; and the U.S. and China are the two economic super-powers; so, these are the world’s three leading powers; and, on that single measure of whether or not a country is democratic, China is the global leader (#1 of 28), Russia is in the middle (#13 of 28), and U.S. ranks at the bottom of the three, and near the bottom of the entire lot (#21 of 28). (#28 of 28 is South Africa, which, thus — clearly in retrospect — had a failed revolution when it transitioned out of its apartheid dictatorship. That’s just a fact, which cannot reasonably be denied, given this extreme finding. Though the nation’s leader, Zuma, was, according to the 2014 Japanese study, widely approved by South Africans, his Government was overwhelmingly distrusted. This distrust indicates that the public don’t believe that the head-of-state actually represents the Government. If the head-of-state doesn’t represent the Government, the country cannot possibly be a democracy: the leader might represent the people, but the Government doesn’t.)

When the government is trusted but the head-of-state is not, or vice-versa, there cannot be a functioning democracy. In other words: if either the head-of-state, or the Government, is widely distrusted, there’s a dictatorship at that time, and the only real question regarding it, is: What type of dictatorship is this?

These figures — the numbers reported here — contradict the ordinary propaganda; and, so, Edelman’s trust-barometer on each nation’s ‘news’-media (which are scored and ranked on page 40) might also be considered, because the natural question now is whether unreliable news-media might have caused this counter-intuitive (in Western countries) rank-order. However, a major reason why this media-trust-question is actually of only dubious relevance to whether or not the given nation is a democracy, is that to assume that it is, presumes that trust in the government can be that easily manipulated — it actually can’t. Media and PR can’t do that; they can’t achieve it. Here is a widespread misconception: Trust in government results not from the media but from a government’s having fulfilled its promises, and from the public’s experiencing and seeing all around themselves that they clearly have been fulfilled; and lying ‘news’-media can’t cover-up that reality, which is constantly and directly being experienced by the public.

However, even if trust in the ‘news’-media isn’t really such a thing as might be commonly hypothesized regarding trust in the government, here are those Edelman findings regarding the media, for whatever they’re worth regarding the question of democracy-versus-dictatorship: Trust in Media is the highest, #1, in China, 71%; and is 42% in #15 U.S.; and is 35% in #20 Russia. (A July 2017 Marist poll however found that only 30% of Americans trust the media. That’s a stunning 12% lower than the Edelman survey found.) In other words: Chinese people experience that what they encounter in their news-media becomes borne-out in retrospect as having been true, but only half of that percentage of Russians experience this; and U.S. scores nearer to Russia than to China on this matter. (Interestingly, Turkey, which scores #7 on trust-in-government, scores #28 on trust-in-media. Evidently, Turks find that their government delivers well on its promises, but that their ‘news’-media often deceive them. A contrast this extreme within the Edelman findings is unique. Turkey is a special case, regarding this.)

I have elsewhere reported regarding other key findings in that 2018 Edelman study.

According to all of these empirical findings, the United States is clearly not more of a democracy than it is a dictatorship. This particular finding from these studies has already been overwhelmingly (and even more so) confirmed in the world’s only in-depth empirical scientific study of whether or not a given country is or is not a “democracy”: This study (the classic Gilens and Page study) found, incontrovertibly, that the U.S. is a dictatorship — specifically an aristocracy, otherwise commonly called an “oligarchy,” and that it’s specifically a dictatorship by the richest, against the public.

Consequently, whenever the U.S. Government argues that it intends to “spread democracy” (such as it claims in regards to Syria, and to Ukraine), it is most-flagrantly lying — and any ‘news’-medium that reports such a claim without documenting (such as by linking to this article) its clear and already-proven falsehood (which is more fully documented here than has yet been done anywhere, since the Gilens and Page study is here being further proven by these international data), is no real ‘news’-medium at all, but is, instead, a propaganda-vehicle for the U.S. Government, a propaganda-arm of a dictatorship — a nation that has been overwhelmingly proven to be a dictatorship, not a democracy.

The American public seem to know this (though the ‘news’-media routinely deny it by using phrases such as ‘America’s democracy’ in the current tense, not merely as referrng to some past time): A scientifically designed Monmouth University poll of 803 American adults found — and reported on March 19th — that 74% believed either probably or definitely that “a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy” (commonly called the “Deep State”) actually exists in America.

The question as asked was: “The term Deep State refers to the possible existence of a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy. Do you think this type of Deep State in the federal government definitely exists, probably exists, probably does not exist, or definitely does not exist?” 27% said “Definitely”; 47% said “Probably”; only 16% said “Probably not”; and only 5% said “Definitely not.”

In effect, then: 74% think America is a dictatorship; only 21% think it’s not. So: this isn’t only fact; it’s also widespread belief. How, then, can the American Government claim that when it invades a country like Iraq (2003), or like Libya (2011), or like Syria (2012-), or like Ukraine (by coup in 2014), it’s hoping to ‘bring democracy’ there? Only by lying. Even the vast majority of the American public now know this.

So: America’s major ‘news’-media will have to change their thinking, to become at least as realistic as the American public already are. The con on that, has evidently run its course. It simply discredits those ‘news’-media.

This article is a crosspost with strategic-culture.org

About the author

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. Besides TGP, his reports and historical analyses are published on many leading current events and political sites, including The Saker, Huffpost, Oped News, and others.

What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?

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Making sense of the Russian 5th generation fighters in Syria

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE SAKER

[This article was written for the Unz Review]

killing about “2000 Americans“. This was truly some crazy nonsense so I decided to find out what really happened and, so far, here is what I found out.

First, amazingly enough, the reports of the Su-57 in Syria are true. Some say 2 aircraft, some say 4 (out of a current total of 13). It doesn’t really matter, what matters is that the deployment of a few Su-57s in Syria is a fact and that this represents a dramatic departure from normal Russian (and Soviet) practice.

Introducing the Sukhoi 57 5th generation multi-role fighter

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Su-57 (aka “PAK-FA” aka “T-50”) is the first real 5th generation multi-role aircraft produced by Russia. All the other Russian multi-role and air superiority aircraft previously deployed in Syria (such as the Su-30SM and the Su-35S) are 4++ aircraft, not true 5th generation. One might be forgiven for thinking that 4++ is awfully close to 5, but it really is not. 4++ generation aircraft are really 4th generation aircraft upgraded with a number of systems and capabilities typically associated with a 5th generation, but they all lack several key components of a true 5th generation aircraft such as:

a low radar cross-section (“stealth”),
the capability to fly at supersonic speeds without using afterburners,
the ability to carry weapons inside a special weapons bay (as opposed to outside, under its wings or body)
an advanced “situational awareness” (network-centric) capability (sensor and external data fusion).

To make a long story short, the difference between 4th and 5th generation aircraft is really huge and requires not one, but several very complex “technological jumps” especially in the integrations of numerous complex systems.

The only country which currently has a deployed real 5th generation fighter is the USA with its F-22. In theory, the USA also has another 5th generation fighter, the F-35, but the latter is such a terrible design and has such immense problems that for our purposes we can pretty much dismiss it. As for now, the F-22 is the only “real deal”: thoroughly tested and fully deployed in substantial numbers. The Russian Su-57 is still years away from being able to make such a claim as it has not been thoroughly tested or deployed in substantial numbers. That is not to say that the Russians are not catching up really fast, they are, but as of right now, the Su-57 has only completed the first phase of testing. The normal Soviet/Russian procedure should have been at this time to send a few aircraft to the Russian Aerospace Forces (RAF) base in Lipetsk to familiarize the military crews with the aircraft and continue the testing while getting the feedback, not from test pilots but from actual air combat instructors. This second phase of testing could easily last 6 months or more and reveal a very large number of “minor” problems many of which could actually have very severe consequences in an actual combat deployment. In other words, the Su-57 is still very “raw” and probably needs a lot of tuning before it can be deployed in combat. How “raw”? Just one example: as of today, only one of the currently existing Su-57 flies with the new supercruise-capable engines, all the others use a 4th generation type engine. This is no big deal, but it goes to show that a lot of work still needs to be done on this aircraft before it becomes fully operational.

The notion that the Russians sent the Su-57 to Syria to somehow compete with the F-22s or otherwise participate in actual combat is ludicrous. While, on paper, the Su-57 is even more advanced and capable than the F-22, in reality, the Su-57 presents no credible threat to the US forces in Syria (if the Russians really wanted to freak out the Americans, they could have, for example, decided to keep a pair of MiG-31BMs on 24/7 combat air patrol over Syria). The Russian reports about these aircraft flattening Ghouta or killing thousands of Americans are nothing more than cheap and inflammatory propaganda from ignorant Russian nationalists who don’t seem to realize that flattening urban centers is not even the theoretical mission of the Su-57. In fact, as soon as these crazy reports surfaced, Russians analysts immediately dismissed them as nonsense.

Utter nonsense is hardly the monopoly of Russian nationalists, however. The folks at the National Interest reposted an article (initially posted on the blog The War is Boring) which basically dismissed the Su-57 as a failed and dead project and its deployment in Syria as a “farce” (I should tip my hat off to the commentators at the National Interest who immediately saw through the total ridiculous nature of this article and wondered if Lockheed had paid for it). On the other hand, in the western insanity spectrum, we have the UK’s Daily Express which wrote about Vladimir Putin sending his “fearsome new state-of-the-art Su-57” into the Syrian war zone. Just like with the Kuznetsov, the Ziomedia can’t decide if the Russian hardware is an antiquated, useless pile of scrap metal or a terrifying threat which ought to keep the entire world up at night. Maybe both at the same time? With paranoid narcissists, you can’t tell. Finally, the notion that Putin (personally?) sent these 4 aircraft to Syria to help him in his re-election campaign (peddled by the Russophobes at Ha’aret z ) is also devoid of all truth and makes me wonder if those who write that kind of crap are even aware of Putin’s popularity numbers.

So what is really going on?

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ell, frankly, that is hard to say, and Russian officials are being tight-lipped about it. Still, various well informed Russian analysts have offered some educated guesses as to what is taking place. The short version is this: the Su-57s were only sent to Syria to test their avionics in a rich combat-like electromagnetic environment. The more detailed version would be something like this:

The Su-57 features an extremely complex and fully integrated avionics suite which will include three X band active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar (one main, two side-looking), another two L band active electronically scanned array radars in the wing’s leading edge extensions, plus an integrated electro-optical system location system (working in infra-red, visible and ultra-violet frequencies). All these sensors are fused (5 radars, 2 bands, plus passive optics) and they are then combined with the data received by the Su-57’s advanced electronic warfare suite and a high-speed encrypted datalink, connecting the aircraft to other airborne, space, as well as ground-based sensors. This is not unlike what the USA is trying to achieve with the F-35, but on an even more complex level (even in theory, the F-35 is a comparatively simpler, and much less capable, aircraft). One could see how it would be interesting to test all this gear in a radiation-rich environment like the Syrian skies where the Russians have advanced systems (S-400, A-50U, etc.) and where the USA and Israel also provide a lot of very interesting signals (including US and Israeli AWACS, F-22s and F-35s, etc.). To re-create such a radiation-rich environment in Russia would be very hard and maybe even impossible. The question is whether this is worth the risk?

The risks of this deployment in Syria are very real and very serious. As far as I know, there are still no bombproof shelters built (yet) and Russia recently lost a number of aircraft (some not totally, some totally) when the “good terrorists” used mortars against the Khmeimim base. So now we have FOUR Su-57s (out of how many total, maybe 12 or 13?!), each worth 50-100 million dollars under an open sky in a war zone?! What about operational security? What about base security?

There is also a political risk. It is well known that the USA has been putting immense political pressure on India to withdraw from the joint development between Russia and India of the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) or Perspective Multi-role Fighter (PMF) program. To make things worse, India currently has too many parallel aircraft programs and there are, reportedly, disagreements between the Russians and the Indians on design features. With the apparently never-ending disaster of the F-35, the very last thing the USA needs is a successful Russian 5th generation competitor showing up anywhere on the planet (especially one which has the clear potential to far outclass both the successful F-22 and the disastrous F-35). One can easily imagine what the AngloZionist propaganda machine will do should even a minor problem happen to the Su-57 while in Syria (just read the National Interest article quoted above to see what the mindset is in the West)!

The Su-57 also has formidable competitors inside Russia: the 4++ generation aircraft mentioned above, especially the Su-35S. Here we have a similar dynamic as with the F-22: while on paper the Su-57 is clearly superior to the Su-35S, in the real world the Su-35S is a well tested and deployed system which, unlike the F-22, also happens to be much cheaper than the Su-57 (the F-22 being at least twice as expensive than the Su-57). This issue is especially relevant for the internal, Russian market. So the real question for the RAF is simple: does Russia really need the Su-57 and, if yes, in what numbers?

This is a very complex question, both technically and politically and to even attempt to answer it, a lot of very debatable assumptions have to be made about what kind of threats the RAF will face in the future and what kind of missions it will be given. The biggest problem for the Russians is that they already have an array of extremely successful combat aircraft, especially the Su-35S and the formidable Su-34. Should Russia deploy more of these or should she place huge resources into a new very complex and advanced aircraft? Most Russian analysts would probably agree that Russia needs to be able to deploy some minimal number of real 5th generation combat aircraft, but they would probably disagree on what exactly that minimal number ought to be. The current 4++ generation aircraft are very successful and more than a match for their western counterparts, with the possible exception of the F-22. But how likely is it that Russians and US Americans will really start a shooting war?

Furthermore, the real outcome from a theoretical Su-35S vs F-22 (which so many bloggers love to speculate about) would most likely depend much more on tactics and engagement scenarios than on the actual capabilities of these aircraft. Besides, should the Su-35s and F-22s even be used in anger against each other, a lot would also depend on what else is actually happening around them and where exactly this engagement would take place. Furthermore, to even look at this issue theoretically, we would need to compare not only the actual aircraft but also their weapons. I submit that the outcome of any Su-35S vs F-22 engagement would be impossible to predict (unless you are a flag-waving patriot, in which case you will, of course, be absolutely certain that “your” side will win). If I am correct, then this means that there is no compelling case to be made that Russia needs to deploy Su-57s in large numbers and that the Su-30SM+Su-35S air superiority combo is more than enough to deter the Americans.

[This is a recurrent problem for Russian weapons and weapon systems: being so good that there is little incentive to produce something new. The best example of that is the famous AK-47 Kalashnikov which was modernized a few times, such as the AKM-74, but which has yet to be replaced with a fundamentally new and truly different assault rifle. There are plenty of good candidates out there, but each time one has to wonder if the difference in price is worth the effort. The original Su-27 (introduced in 1985) was such an immense success that it served as a basis for a long series of immensely successful variants including the ones we now see in Syria, the Su-30SM, the Su-35S and even the amazing Su-34 (which still has no equivalent anywhere in the world). Sometimes a weapon, or weapon system, can be even “too successful” and create a problem for future modernization efforts.]

Whatever may be the case, the future of the Su-57 is far from being secured and this might also, in part, explain the decision to send a few of them to Syria: not only to test its avionics suite, but also to score a PR success by raising the visibility and, especially, the symbolical role of the aircraft. Russian officials admitted that the deployment to Syria was scheduled to coincide with the celebration of the “Defender of the Fatherland” day. This kind of move breaks with normal Soviet/Russian procedures and I have to admit that I am most uncomfortable with this development and while I would not go as far as to call it a “farce” (like the article in the National Interest did), it does look like a PR stunt to me. And I wonder: if the Russians are taking such a risk, what is it that drives such a sense of urgency? I don’t believe that anybody in Russia seriously thinks that the US will be deterred, or even be impressed by this, frankly, hasty deployment. So I suspect that this development is linked to the uncertainty of the future of the Su-57 procurement program. Hopefully, the risks will pay-off and the Su-57 will get all the avionics testing it requires and all the funding and export contracts it needs.

Addendum:

Just as I was writing these words, the Russians have announced (see here and here) that the Israeli satellite images were fakes, that the the Su-57 stayed only two days in Syria and that they have been flown back to Russia. Two days? Frankly, I don’t buy it. What this looks like to me is that what looks like a PR stunt has now backfired, including in the Russian social media, and that Russia decided to bring these aircraft back home. Now *that* sounds like a good idea to me.

—The Saker

ABOUT THE SAKER

THE SAKER is an ex-military analyst who was born in Europe to a family of Russian refugees. He now lives in Florida where he writes the Vineyard of the Saker blog and is a regular contributor to The Unz Review. Like The Greanville Post, with which it is now allied in his war against official disinformation, the Saker's site, VINEYARD OF THE SAKER, is the hub of an international network of sites devoted to fighting the "billion-dollar deception machinery" supporting the empire's wars against Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and any other independent nation opposing or standing in the way of Washington's drive for global hegemony. The Saker is published in more than half a dozen languages. A Saker is a very large falcon, native to Europe and Asia.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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More US Troops in Latin America: Signs of an Invasion Foretold?

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by Martín Pastor

The cancer of American imperialism is digging its claws again in Latin America.
CORRUPT RIGHT-WING REGIMES, LED BY BRAZIL AND COLOMBIA, HAVE REOPENED THE DOOR TO US REGIONAL PENETRATION AFTER YEARS OF RETREAT

“The upcoming military exercise is just another piece in this growing pattern of militarization and regional threat.”

The US army will increase its military presence in Latin America’s Amazonia. Under the “Amazon Log” Initiative, passed in 2017 by Michel Temer’s putschist government in Brazil, Operation “United America” will join the armies of the United States, Brazil, Peru and Colombia from November 6 to 13, 2017, in the tri-border city of Tabatinga. This exercise is a sign of a substantial increase in foreign militarization of the region.

The initiative is led by the Logistics Command of the Brazilian Army, and it is inspired in the logistic military exercise carried out by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Hungary, in 2015, which deployed around 1,700 military. In this Latin American version, the goals, according to the official page of the Brazilian army, are creating a multi-national logistic base to carry out operations of illegal migration control, humanitarian aid, peace operations, actions against drug trafficking and environmental protection. (Source , Source)

However, as Brazilian journal Gauchazh pointed out, teaching a foreign army to combat in national territory should be deemed “high treason”. But the Brazilian Ministry of Defense doesn’t share that appreciation, as it considers that this is an opportunity to unite the armies of the two countries.(Source )

The problem with this exercise is the magnitude and the openness that has been granted to the United States to enter the Latin American jungle. Because one of the risks this entails is that a “temporary” station becomes a permanent one, as happened in Hungary, after the NATO exercises. Brazilian authorities deny this possibility. (Source )

“Behind the US military action there’s always the goal of taking over resources.”

The US’ interest in the region must be measured against the history of the Northern empire. Altruism, protection of nature and combating drug trafficking used as slogans for their presence in the region echo other interventions in other parts of the world, especially the Middle East, and we know that there, their goals were far from those. Behind the US military action there’s always the goal of taking over resources to achieve their national goals.

In the case of Latin America, the environmental abundance justifies the North American presence. According to the World Bank, the region has a global role in the problem of climate change because it possesses “the largest freshwater reserves in the world”. (Source )

This is bittersweet news for Latin Americans, because several analysts, including former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, maintain that the wars of the future will be fought over water. Brazil, Colombia and Perú, the three Latin American countries involved in the “United America” Operation, are among the ten countries with the largest water reserves in the world (first, sixth and eighth, respectively).

At the US Office of Net Assessment of the Defense Department, which analyzes the future of the army and its threats, former Director Andrew Marshall commissioned in 2004 a confidential report to Peter Schwartz, CIA advisor and former Director of Planning of the Royal Dutch/Shell group, and to Doug Randall, of the Global Business Network. (Source , Source )

“The Amazonas contains 95% of the reserves of niobium, which is essential for the steel of spacecrafts and intercontinental missiles.”

In their final conclusions, the authors of the report argued that climate change and water shortage are a threat to the US’ national security and reasons for future military conflicts. Thirteen years after that report, the US is preparing to add another base on the Amazonas river.

But water is not the only reason why the world superpower is interested in the region. Telma Luzzani, Argentine journalist, explains in her book “Surveilled Territories” (“Territorios Vigilados”) that “the Amazonas contains 95% of the reserves of niobium, which is essential for the steel of spacecrafts and intercontinental missiles, and 96% of the reserves of titanium and tungsten, used in space and military aeronautics; besides being rich in petroleum, gas, uranium, gold and diamonds.”

That’s why the upcoming military exercise is just another piece in this growing pattern of militarization and regional threat. So far in 2017, two other military exercises have been carried out in the Pacific and the Caribbean: Teamwork Southcon Chile and Tradewinds outside the coasts of Venezuela with 18 countries and over 2,500 militaries. (Source , Source )

The freedom of action of this operation proves a resurgence of the US’ presence in the region, which had been reduced during the cycle of progressivist, neo-developmentalist leaders in Latin America. Although the creation of bases in Latin America and the Caribbean has gone through different stages since the post-war, their current characteristics began to emerge in the late 20th century.

In 1999, as part of the Torrijos-Carter agreement, the Howard military base in Panama, which housed the Southern Command, army branch in charge of operations for the region, was dismantled. This led the US Defense Department to reevaluate their defense strategy and foreign politics. Under the banner of the Plan Colombia, the “War on Drugs” and humanitarian operations, two models of military bases were applied in Latin America.

“The exercise takes place under the pretext of migration control, humanitarian aid, and fighting drug trafficking.”

The first one was the Main Operating Base (MOB), a military base with infrastructure and agreements approved by the governments of the target countries: Guantánamo, Cuba; Soto Cano, Honduras, and several in Puerto Rico. Although they are still active, the model was dismissed because it causes rejection among the locals and have high infrastructure and logistics costs.

That led to a second model called Forward Operating Locations (FOL), which have few permanent military personnel but are designed to escalate easily if required. The four bases that have been officially acknowledged began their activities in 1999 and they are: Aruba, Curazao, El Salvador and Manta (which didn’t renew the contract since 2009). Cooperative Security Locations (CSLs) are also small but with no permanent force or contractor personnel. (Source , Source )

As explained by Robert Kaplan, former advisor of the Pentagon from 2009 to 2011, “often the key role in managing a CSL is played by a private contractor. (…) He rents his facilities at the base from the host-country military, and then charges a fee to the U.S. Air Force pilots transiting the base. Officially he is in business for himself, which the host country likes because it can then claim it is not really working with the American military. Of course no one, including the local media, believes this. But the very fact that a relationship with the U.S. armed forces is indirect rather than direct eases tensions”. (Source )

Although there are no official numbers, we currently know of approximately 75 bases, including MOBs, FOLs, CSLs and others with names like the Regional Complex for Disaster Preparation in Peru. The countries with the largest number of bases are Panama (12), Puerto Rico (12), Colombia (9) and Peru (8). (Source )

“Argentina’s president announced he will re-enable the installation of permanent U.S. military bases in Argentina.”

Additionally, Colombia signed a cooperation agreement with NATO in 2016 to exchange information, strategies and protocols of the Colombian army with members of this organization, which includes the United States. Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, announced he will re-enable the installation of permanent military bases in Argentina: one on the Triple Frontier with Paraguay and Brazil and another one in the southernmost province, Ushuaia. In Brazil, Temer’s government has increased the military budget by 36%, months after the passing of the Constitutional Amendment 55, which froze the health and education budget for 20 years. (Source , Source , Source , Source )

These actions legitimate the presence of foreign military at the government level. Besides, this new approach in defense will strengthen the military alliances with the US, and this in turn will open the door to a new phase of indoctrination of Latin American forces, with Brazil playing a lead role. (Source )

According to Héctor Luis Saint Pierre, coordinator of International Security, Defense and Strategy of the Brazilian Association of International Relations, “in South America there’s respect for the Brazilian military school. This makes Brazil a strategic partner in the doctrinal training of militaries in the continent. If the US builds a good relation with the Brazilian army, it is easier to disseminate their message to the militaries in the region.” (Source )

This brings back the chilling memory of the School of the Americas, an institution of military and ideological training of the 70s, 80s and 90s. To go back to colonial defense models only means danger and recession for the project of regional integration and peace. (Source )

Even initiatives like Council of South American Defense—which was created by UNASUR in 2008 to implement policies of military cooperation, humanitarian actions and operations for peace industry and defense technology—will be involved in the United Americas Operation as official observer. “This legitimizes the spaces in which the Pentagon participates and dilutes South America’s own spaces,” analyzes Uruguayan journalistRaúl Zibechi. (Source , Source )

With the US undermining national sovereignties, supported by the comeback of “right-wing” leaders and the systematic delegitimization of progressivist projects in the region, the idea of a truly united Latin America, without imperialist impositions, becomes a dream again. Alarmingly, the region continues to be filled of US strategic bases, to control resources, people and military operations. If this isn’t colonialism, then what is it?

ARTIN PARTOR—These actions legitimate the presence of foreign military at the government level. Besides, this new approach in defense will strengthen the military alliances with the US, and this in turn will open the door to a new phase of indoctrination of Latin American forces, with Brazil playing a lead role.

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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