conflict
America Is Really Bad At Foreign Interventions. Why Does Biden Think Ukraine Will Be Any Different?
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
One of the very first operations undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after its founding in 1947 was to create an army to fight the Soviets in Ukraine. Dubbed Operation Nightingale, the CIA aimed to reconstitute Nazi death squads in Ukraine that the Germans called Nachtigall.
The newly created U.S. intelligence community figured we’d partnered with communists to destroy fascism. Now, post war, we could team with the fascists to destroy communism.
Unsurprisingly, Nightingale was a spectacular failure. The Kremlin’s spies discovered every aspect of the plan well before it was initiated.
In its early years, the CIA lurched from one fiasco to another. On Sept. 20, 1949, CIA analysts declared the Soviet Union would not produce a nuclear weapon for at least another four years. Three days later, Truman had to tell the country that Russia had the bomb.
Sadly, things are hardly better today.
In 2021, U.S. intelligence agencies looked into their crystal ball and told senior congressional leaders that Afghanistan’s national security forces could keep the Taliban at bay for a year or perhaps longer. The Taliban took Kabul in a matter of hours.
“Clearly we didn’t get things right” on that intelligence, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby dryly remarked later.
The next year, U.S. intelligence took the opposite tack on Ukraine, predicting the capital, Kiev, might fall within days of Russia’s 2022 invasion. Two years in, Kiev is still in the Ukraine column.
Bonehead analysts even offered to evacuate Volodymyr Zelensky — evidently having learned nothing from the disastrous U.S. evacuation of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
What did they get right? Avril Haynes, the Director of National Intelligence, applauded her agency for correctly predicting that Russia planned to invade Ukraine. “We assess President Putin is prepared for prolonged conflict,” she testified in May 2022. You don’t say? The 100,000 troops Putin amassed on Ukraine’s border were likely a helpful clue.
Many in our intelligence community scoffed at Putin’s criticism of America’s heavy hand in Ukraine. Those who dared point out that the CIA had injected former Nazis into Ukraine after World War II were labeled stooges of Russian disinformation. They’d prefer we not recall the U.S.’s more provocative recent history in Ukraine, much of it based on bad American intelligence.
During Ukraine’s Maidan demonstrations in 2013, U.S. officials, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, saw an opportunity to fulfill the predictions of President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who postulated that “without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
By pulling Ukraine closer to Europe, NATO and the U.S., they reasoned we could de-claw the Russian bear. Thus, the U.S. supported ousting the democratically-elected Ukraine president, Viktor Yanukovych. Victoria Nuland, Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, boasted that the United States had “invested” $5 billion to build Ukraine’s credentials to join the European Union.
She passed out actual cookies during the coup. Nuland was later caught on tape plotting who would be Ukraine’s post-coup president and getting Joe Biden to give an “attaboy” that would “F**k the EU” for not being aggressive enough with Moscow.
On cue, Biden endorsed Ukraine’s uprising: “Nothing would have greater impact for securing our interests.” Yanukovych was ousted and in the months that followed, Nuland pushed the U.S. to arm Ukraine and carefully crafted the media message, “I would like to urge you to use the word ‘defensive system’ to describe what we would be delivering against Putin’s offensive systems.”
If Nuland’s regime-change playbook sounds familiar, stop a moment and ponder that her resume also includes serving as Vice President Dick Cheney’s principal deputy national security advisor. Her husband, Robert Kagan, was among the chief proponents of America’s swell idea to bring democracy and stability to Iraq by toppling Saddam Hussein.
Other U.S. players meddled in Ukraine as well. On April 12th, 2014, CIA Director John Brennan secretly visited Ukraine, kicking off a new covert war with Russia. In a recent report by The New York Times, turns out the CIA has operated a dozen secret bases in Ukraine since his visit. Little wonder Brennan feared a Trump victory.
Trump’s surprising win in 2016 undermined all this maneuvering. “I really hope that you and President Putin can get together and solve your problem,” Trump told Zelenskyy. “That would be a tremendous achievement.” Trump lowered the temperature, but pausing weapons delivery to Ukraine became the root cause of his first impeachment.
Within six weeks of taking office, the Biden administration cranked up aid to Ukraine, delivering $125 million in March 2021. As of two weeks ago, that figure now tops $185 billion.
America holds a long list of failed interventions based on bad intelligence: Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Panama, Haiti, Serbia, Grenada, Iran, South Vietnam, Congo, Cuba, Guatemala, Albania and the Dominican Republic, among others.
It doesn’t take an intelligence genius to predict the ultimate outcome of our latest dalliance in Ukraine.
Morgan Murphy is a former DoD press secretary, national security adviser in the U.S. Senate, a veteran of Afghanistan.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
conflict
US and UK authorize missile strikes into Russia, but are we really in danger of World War III?
From LifeSiteNews
By Frank Wright
Hopefully a world war appears unlikely, but the decision to allow Ukraine to shoot U.S. and U.K.-provided missiles into Russia once again reveals the lengths to which the ‘neocon globalists’ will go to throw a lifeline to their failing business model.
News that the lame duck President Joe Biden has authorized long-range strikes into Russia using NATO systems was announced with the alarming warning that he had “started World War III.”
The following day, U.S.-supplied and operated ATACMS missiles were fired into Russia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the authorized strikes as an “escalation” showing that the West wants war.
“The fact that ATACMS were used repeatedly in the Bryansk region overnight is, of course, a signal that they want escalation,” he said, according to Reuters.
Lavrov continued: “Without the Americans, it is impossible to use these high-tech missiles, as Putin has repeatedly said.”
Why would the U.S. president finally give the green light to use NATO systems to attack Russia? German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has refused to follow suit and supply German-made Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine – because he does not want to see Germany drawn into a direct war with Russia.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer responded by suggesting it is only a matter of time before U.K.-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles strike deep into Russian territory.
Today – Wednesday, November 20 – the Guardian reported that it has already happened.
The U.K. government has been behind a long campaign to escalate the war in Ukraine, a move seen as an attempt to secure continued U.S. commitments in Europe. The Trump camp has long signaled its desire to draw down its security provision to leave a “dormant NATO.”
In an indication of the dangers of the U.K.-backed move by Biden, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced an alarming amendment of the Russian nuclear doctrine.
The policy change, announced in September and published following Biden’s announcement, says “an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear power, will be treated as a joint assault on Russia,” according to the BBC.
Russian nuclear doctrine has long included the use of low-yield “tactical” nuclear weapons in “conventional” warfare – a significantly lower threshold than that of NATO.
While Russian officials urged Western leaders to consult the text, Foreign Minister Lavrov stressed that “we strongly are in favor of doing everything to not allow nuclear war to happen.”
As Reuters reported, this latest provocation is “unlikely to be a gamechanger.” Western media outlets have moved from a narrative of Ukrainian victory to mulling how or even if the state of Ukraine can survive its “inevitable” defeat.
Yet it is not only Ukraine which faces an uncertain future with a Russian victory. The entire globalist order faces a significant blow should the war conclude. Statements from figures such as George Soros, U.S. General Mark Milley, E.U. chief Ursula von der Leyen, and the former head of NATO stressed that their liberal-globalist regime is threatened by defeat in Ukraine.
Biden’s decision has been seen as an attempt to frustrate Donald Trump’s declared agenda – to clear out the “deep state globalists” whose “neocons seeking confrontation … such as Victoria Nuland” have led the U.S. into endless wars since that in Iraq.
An escalation to all-out war with Russia would not only be a disastrous precursor to nuclear escalation, but would also preserve the dominance of the same “neocon globalists” whose “forever wars” Trump has pledged to end.
Arch-neocon Robert Kagan said Americans who support ending wars are “intolerant.” He went on to author two articles which Hitlerized Trump and appeared to incite the assassination of a man who promised in his 2024 victory speech, “I’m not going to start wars. I’m going to stop wars.”
This follows a long series of claims in the same vein.
“I will end the war in Ukraine,” Trump declared in February 2023, saying he would also end “the chaos in the Middle East” and “stop World War III.”
This move by Biden has no military significance in improving Ukraine’s chances of victory. Russia claimed to have shot down seven of eight ATACMS fired into its Bryansk region. Yet prolonging or even escalating this war has enormous political significance.
Since the publication of the RAND Corporation’s 2019 paper “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia,” a strategy of bleeding Russia on the battlefield to collapse its government has been clear. Russia’s near-limitless mineral wealth would provide an obvious boon to a Western system self-sabotaged by sanctions and the destruction of the Nordstream gas supply.
The enormous significance of the war is found in its use as an attempt to extend and consolidate the power of the same system of neocon “globalism” which Trump has vowed to end.
This context explains why the U.K. government has consistently pressed for escalation since the 2022 intervention of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson seems to have sabotaged peace in favor of an all-or-nothing gamble towards “regime change” in Russia.
Since then, the U.K. government has urged the authorization of long-range strikes into Russia, and it has supplied cruise missiles to attack Russian over-the-horizon nuclear radar warning systems, which play no role in the Ukraine war.
Reports have confirmed “terrorist operations” in Russia, including attacks on the Kerch Bridge leading to Crimea were U.K.-led. A recent expose by The Grayzone revealed that the British state appears to be training Ukrainians to fight a guerilla war, extending hostilities even beyond any ceasefire.
Ukraine’s recent and failed offensive into Russia’s Kursk region appears to have also been a British operation – to secure the kind of “morale boost” which Alastair Crooke says is the only significant war-fighting contribution of the authorization of “wonder weapons” like ATACMS.
The ATACMS authorization was heralded as a turning point in the war by Foreign Affairs. Yet the suspicion of Responsible Statecraft that it was a “sideshow that may become a tragedy” appears to have been confirmed.
The grim reality of this war is underscored by the fact that measures taken which will result in even more needless loss of human life are done so to legitimize useful propaganda headlines. This is undertaken to sell a war which has long been predicted to end as it now seems certain to do so: with a victory on Russian terms.
Though it appears unlikely that a world war will result from this latest reckless move, what has been demonstrated once more is the lengths to which the “neocon globalists” will go to throw a lifeline to their failing business model.
That lifeline is perpetual war, and when they end – so do the careers of so many whose livelihoods and reputations depend on keeping them going.
conflict
Putin Launches Mass-Production of Nuclear Shelters for his People
From Armstrong Economics
By Martin Armstrong
Russia has begun mass production of mobile nuclear bunkers. This is in response to Ukraine’s use of Western US and British missiles to attack deep inside Russia to destroy its conventional capability so NATO can launch an invasion by March/April 2025.
This has coincided with Mr Putin’s change of Russia’s doctrine to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons to include the use of conventional weapons by Ukraine. Russia’s defense ministry said Ukraine attacked an ammunition stockpile in the Bryansk region using missiles supplied by the US military’s MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS).
Russia has also ordered the production of its mobile nuclear bunkers to protect citizens. They are shelters capable of protecting people from the light radiation of a nuclear explosion and radioactive contamination of the surrounding environment. These are known as “KUB-M” and will protect 54 people for 48 hours from the air shock wave and light radiation of a nuclear explosion; penetrating radiation and radioactive contamination of the area; high-explosive and fragmentation effects of conventional weapons; falling debris from building structures; dangerous chemicals; fires. Unlike traditional, stationary bunkers, mobile bunkers are built to be easily moved from one location to another, often on vehicles or trailers. They can be equipped with advanced shielding, air filtration systems, and other necessary survival equipment to withstand the harsh conditions of a nuclear event.
The Western press keeps putting out the Neocon and NATO propaganda that Russia will never fire a nuke and Ukraine can win the war. But this is all a smoke screen for NATO will invade Russia, and they are using Ukraine as our Hesbolla, the same as Iran is using Lebanon. Zelensky claimed he invaded Russia to force Putin to peace. But they had a peace deal. Boris Johnson ran to Kiev and instructed Zelensky he was not allowed to sign a peace deal, and now far more than 1 million Ukrainians have been killed so Europe can invade Russia.
Just as Robert McNamara said about Vietnam and the Weapons of Mass Destruction that did not exist in Iraq, what if these people are wrong AGAIN? There goes Europe! Not a single European leader cares about their own people.
Either the Ukrainian people rise up and take their country back, or Putin needs to nuke Kiev to show the world he is serious. Otherwise, we are sleepwalking into World War III. Our press will NEVER write a single word for peace. It is always Putin is bluffing. What if you are wrong again?
Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Kiev was just shut down after Biden gave the go-ahead to use long-range missiles. Hm. If this was to win the war, then why flee Kiev? They know Putin will respond forcefully against Zelensky. Russians get nuclear bomb shelters, and we get Fake News – Don’t worry – he’s bluffing.
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