ANTIWAR

THOMAS FAZI—[Quoting Jeffrey Sachs]—”[Saying that Russia’s invasions of Ukraine was unprovoked is] very dangerous because it’s wrong. It gets the whole story completely wrong, and it misunderstands the trap that we set for ourselves as the United states to push Ukraine deeper and deeper and deeper into this hopeless mess that they’re in right now.

Basically, it started very simply, which is that the United States government — let’s not call it the US people, they had nothing to do with this — but the US government said: “We’re going to put Ukraine on our side and we’re going to go right up to that 2,100 kilometre border with Russian. We’re going to put our troops and NATO and maybe missiles, whatever we want, because we are the sole superpower of the world and we do what we want”.

And it goes back, actually a long way. It goes back 170 years. The Brits had this idea, first surround Russia in the Black Sea region, and Russia’s not a great power anymore. And that was Lord Palmerston’s idea in the Crimean War, 1853 to 1856. And the Brits taught us what we know about empire, and they basically taught us the idea…”

ERIC ZUESSE—The “Supplemental” this year (Ukraine+Gaza+Taiwan) totals to $95.3B, which causes the original $886B ‘Defense’ (or Aggression) budget for this fiscal year to be: $886B+752.5B+95.3B=$1,733,800 billion, or $1.734T. However, even that is incomplete, because the entire U.S. intelligence community, CIA, DIA, and the many others, is classified, its budgets are secret, hidden from the public, and, of course, these are also important parts of the U.S. military; so, perhaps annual U.S. military spending is now around $2T. On 12 March 2024, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence headlined “DNI RELEASES FY 2025 BUDGET REQUEST FIGURE FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM” and publicly revealed (in accord with a 2007 law) “the aggregate amount of $73.4 billion in requested appropriations for the Fiscal Year 2025 National Intelligence Program (NIP),” and on 20 April 2024 I shall request from the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community the IC’s latest Audit Report in order to determine how complete that $73.4B figure is. I start with the assumption that it is the bare minimum of what the complete number is, and that what the maximum might be, and what the reality is, have remained top secret in this dictatorship.

P. GREANVILLE—This project, which as an added benefit creates jobs in the US, something badly needed at this point, costs a pittance compared to the obscene sums (such as the US$ 95 billion recently approved by our non-representative political class) to be squandered on repulsively criminal regimes in Ukraine and Israel, not to mention to pick an idiotic and equally criminal fight with China. Criminal because a war with China will be mind-boggingly destructive to everyone on this planet, including Americans, who—assuming they survive— will see their already tenuous standard of living plummet dramatically as a result of a conflict “of choice” started by the US establishment. 

EDITOR—Missiles and rockets have been around for a long time, as part of artillery and—as in the case of ICBMs—as the ultimate strategic weapons. But now they are being used in more flexible ways, as the Ukraine War battlefields and the recent Iranian barrage on Israel have shown. It’s now a fact that tactical missiles have made much of the billion-dollar US and NATO blue water navies obsolete. The humble but brave Houthis have demonstrated that, for example. Think of what the Russians or Chinese could do. And drones, missiles and other forms of relatively inexpensive weapons have also significantly damaged the formidable Russian navy in the Black Sea. The world is changing,

SCOTT RITTER—The US had deployed at least one, and possibly two, THAAD missile batteries to Israel at the time of the Iranian missile attack. In addition to assisting the THAAD missiles in shooting down incoming threats, the AN/TPY-2 radar data was integrated with Israeli radar data and other technical intelligence collected by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization’s (BMDO) network of early warning satellites deployed for the sole purpose of monitoring and reporting Iranian ballistic missile launches. This integrated early warning/surveillance/tracking system was tied into a multi-layered missile defense architecture which included the US THAAD and Israeli Arrow 2, Arrow 3, advanced Patriot, and David’s Sling anti-ballistic missile interceptor systems.