Lordre: Cold

Showing posts with label Cold_War. Show all posts

Why refuse nuclear energy in a climate emergency?

Despite a recent U-turn, Germany's Green Party long opposed nuclear energy, holding this view even though nuclear power plants do not contribute to climate change. In the UK, the Scottish National Party (SNP) continues to reject nuclear energy.

There is a climate emergency, we are told. That means that we must radically change course immediately, or it will be too late.

Competing with other nations is hard to balance with saving the climate

The creation of an absolutely eco-friendly future, living fully in adherence to the philosophy of the environmentalists, is not something we actually have time for if we are in an emergency due to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming specifically. The idea of a grand new war of waste and economic competition by Western regimes and their ideological structures, against Russia and China, is not compatible with addressing a climate emergency.

In 2018, the United Nations was saying we have only until 2030 to avert an actual climate disaster (an event that will put serious strain on our countries, such as unprecedented refugees and threatening food shortages). The idea that the West can focus on eliminating energy dependence on Russia and economic reliance on China (that means accommodating an explosion of dirty industry and energy to accomplish such goals and waging conflicts throughout the world), and at the same time avert a climate disaster, is folly. Food shortages alone will be completely unmanageable, when added to the potential loss of a third of the world's wheat supply due to conflict in Ukraine.

If the West is going green, it is not going to defeat Russia or China in time to make the switch. At this point, hegemony really is incompatible with survival. Once a climate disaster really starts to have serious consequences, it is clear where all the world's refugees will be heading (the European Union and the United States). It would be game over for the Western side in this "Cold War" at that moment, as the West will be swamped by these refugees and unable to even feed them, perhaps being forced to beg for food aid from those we labelled as enemies.

Is it a lie?

Many reading the above would probably like to interject by saying that the barrage of contradicting statements (there is this climate emergency, yet we must wage this war of waste, and yet also we can scrap nuclear power stations even though they are not adding to that emergency and in fact mitigate it), means a major lie is being told somewhere. Many conspiracy theorists will probably reject the idea that there is a climate emergency at all, because of so many contradictions.

The consensus of the world's governments and the international panels of experts compels us to accept the reality of a climate emergency, whereas only a few would have us adopt declarations that conflict with this reality. Clearly, political partisans are interfering with a united response to the emergency, dependent as they are on having something to debate about.

The position of the German Greens up until their U-turn was absurd. They agreed with the idea of a climate emergency, yet they wanted to sabotage the response to it by trying to hobble our efforts to stop it, by condemning nuclear energy. They likely agree that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is a dirty and polluting process, yet they want to buy the resulting American LNG so that they can avoid gas supplies from Russia. So, what looks like a commitment to save the Earth quickly crumbles in the halls of power, replaced with familiar and ugly realpolitik.

Is the SNP's continued rejection of nuclear energy in the UK more acceptable than some, because the SNP desires independence for Scotland and Scotland likely has enough energy sources to support its small population without any nuclear plants? Yes, but someone who is truly concerned about a global warming emergency, believing we only have eight years left to solve it, would likely still want to generate nuclear energy and sell it to their neighbours, to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

"Democracy" is meant to refer to a political system that derives legitimacy from the people, but the word usually gets used when talking of foreign conflicts. Those who talk of it will say the Western countries have a unique ethnicity, which makes them better than others.

Despite Ukraine's government banning all opposition, we are being told that Ukraine is a bastion in the fight for "democracy". As usual, Western countries teaming up to fight someone is usually the main reason to talk of "democracy", even if this is not applicable to the situation all. Someone looking for images of "democracy" won't find it hard to stumble upon scenes of explosions and dead bodies.

In the end, those who meet adoring crowds or talk of any need to serve the people are more likely to be labelled as dictators than democrats. The anonymous members of the American military and intelligence junta are presented as the men of democracy, regardless of whether they are elected or have anything to do with any democratic process at all.

Zones of freedom

The word "freedom" was used in artful equivocation by politicians such as George W. Bush during his invasion of Iraq in 2003. The conquered "zone of freedom" in fact meant an area free to be plundered and preyed on by American corporations, in keeping with the vaunted "free market" so loved by Americans. To the average listener, though, it may have suggested that the country would be freed from torture and oppression, when in fact the United States brought both to the Iraqi people. The term "zone of freedom" was also used for NATO expansion, which precipitated the current conflict in Ukraine.

The "democratic peace" theory died in Iraq in 2003, too, although its well-wishers continued to refuse to write its obituary and are now busy with Ukraine. When democracies were the ones attacking the others, and they were doing so for the very reason of their arrogant belief in their political system, it was clear that associating the democratic system with the establishment of peace was a mistake.

Democracy as a call to violence

"Democracy" is invoked almost always for the express purpose of rallying people to war, not peace. It is used to conjure up images of soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy, which, however heroic, is no image of peace. Those who plead for bringing what they call "democracy" to other lands are the most depraved warmongers of our time, even if they can successfully point to the atrocities of others.

The next time you hear a speech about "democracy", try to locate anything in the speech that offers any substantive commentary on the merits of a system of government by the people. Try to listen out for praise of the people and their wisdom, since they are meant to be the masters in the democratic system. You can almost certainly guarantee that such content will be absent, yet the word "democracy" shall keep appearing, because "democracy" is here being used only in the manner of a stupid idol with no useful properties. It is a mere word, brought forth to persuade and bring comfort to people who like to hear it.

Our countries in the West use "democracy" as false rhetoric. In practice, our governments subvert truly democratic causes and demands in favour of monopolistic power and deception. The "democratic peace" we seek is consequently false, and will never be realised. The West attacks the regimes it dislikes. Its so-called theory confuses a cloud of locusts with a rainbow of peace.

The recent mistaken launch of a missile from India into Pakistan could have had disastrous consequences, and so could a misunderstanding over Ukraine.

The longer the fighting goes on in Ukraine, the more likely it is that an incident will cause a direct exchange of fire between Russia and NATO. Ukraine and NATO's triumphalism, with additional calls mounting in the West for some sort of regime change in Moscow itself, is the reason there can be no reconciliation at the moment and the main reason people are dying.

NATO should offer something to de-escalate

NATO's perception that only the Ukrainians are in trouble, and that it can just support them as a kind of proxy, is false. NATO is too close to wage a proxy war there, and faces too much risk to itself. The longer this goes on, the more likely it is that NATO will be dragged in against its own judgment.

The demands of the Russians have not changed (they just want neutral territories on their borders, not NATO-aligned countries bristling with nuclear missiles), so the choice to use force is no more than the extension of their attempts to come to an understanding with what they see as a deaf and inflexible partner. If diplomacy begins to yield results that are more promising for Russia's security than Ukraine's ongoing loss of military capability and territory, the Russians are likely to eagerly suspend combat operations. This puts the burden squarely on the side of NATO to avoid escalation and just make enough concessions that would allow the conflict to freeze along a new contact line, but they seem to be incapable of this, blinded by a belief that Russia can be thoroughly defeated in Ukraine.

Rather than de-escalation, we see increasing calls for NATO involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. With a drone wandering over the border into the NATO zone from Ukraine, and the possibility of projectiles eventually landing inside NATO territory, like the mistaken launch from India into Pakistan, there is a serious risk of escalation.

An escalation would be more inconvenient to NATO than Russia, which is why their top leadership has been quite sure of the need to stay out. Politicians without any responsibility for the NATO response are making unwise and bullish suggestions about some moral duty to attack Russian troops, likely just to improve their standing with belligerent and jingoistic voters. Anyone whose words carry weight, and could actually result in NATO aircraft taking off to attack Russia, is quiet.

The war should be frozen

NATO enjoys significantly more security than Russia, with substantial buffer states in Eastern Europe that can, I am sorry to say, be sacrificed to protect the core NATO countries like France and Germany without turning the conflict nuclear. Russia, by comparison, has its back to the wall. If events reach a point at which nuclear weapons are exploding in Ukraine, this will present an existential threat to Russia that can only be matched by it launching nuclear strikes as far as Germany to push the threat away. The use of any NATO weaponry to target Russian territory will prompt Russian attacks on the US homeland and cause global nuclear war.

Despite attempts to portray Russia as the side that has engaged in reckless expansion, Russia's back is to the wall. NATO was safe throughout the entire Cold War, when the Russians were in the middle of Germany, and that was considered to be a nicely balanced situation. It seems that now, we are so expectant of total domination and so convinced of the idea that we "won" the Cold War, that we can't allow the Russians any kind of buffer and we have to have NATO troops parading in Moscow.

Unlike between India and Pakistan, there are real heated statements and even deranged and murderous calls appearing right now in relation to the standoff between NATO and Russia. A misread missile launch at this time could lead to nuclear bombardment, recreating the grotesque atomic horror of Hiroshima on a vastly larger scale.

The two sides should pursue every effort to freeze the conflict immediately, no matter how dissatisfying this may be to them, and go no further.

Far from deterring an attempt by China to achieve reunification with Taiwan by force, might sending weapons to Taiwan actually encourage a military scenario?

Preparing for a military conflict in Taiwan, like in Ukraine, may only make one inevitable. The arming of a hostile power on the doorstep of one's "enemy" can only be perceived by them as creating a springboard for damaging them via some form of provocation and border conflict.

While war is not preferable, having an enemy constantly knocking on your door and making menacing sounds about its military power at your doorstep requires countermeasures. Taiwan's development of missiles that can hit mainland China ought to be of particular concern to Beijing's military experts.

From Ukraine to Taiwan

If Taiwan is at the command of Washington, as Beijing no doubt suspects, then the US could encourage the outbreak of a local conflict at any time of its choosing in order to damage China. As we saw with Ukraine, it seemed that everything was done to provoke the Russians into what the US hopes to be a costly occupation and a strategic defeat for them.

Ever-increasing stockpiles of Western weapons, bellicose rhetoric and eventually a threat to build a nuclear weapon were undertaken by Ukraine's government prior to Russia's attack, almost as if they wanted to do whatever it took to convince Russia that an attack was the right move. Clearly, China also has red lines with Taiwan. If Taiwan announced that it would build nuclear weapons to "deter" China, for example, this could prompt China to take military action urgently in Taiwan.

Western talking heads and politicians will have us believe that arming Ukraine gave the Russians pause and made them think twice about what they were already planning to do. There is no recognition of the fact that an opposing alliance pouring its weapons onto one's doorstep might actually provoke the military action one hoped to deter.

Put yourself in their shoes

If you ask someone here in the UK, there may be an almost a complete inability to see this situation as the equivalent of Russia arming an independent Texas against the US or China arming an independent Scotland against England. Many minds won't be able to process that comparison, because of a failure to even momentarily identify with the "enemy". The badness of the enemy is taken to be an uncontested fact that even the "enemy" population must surely see.

I see an inability to comprehend the idea that the other side might think similarly to us, almost like a failure of the theory of mind (the ability that arises in infants to understand the motives of others, by realising that they also have mental states too). Without a theory of mind, you will be unable to tell if someone else will resist being stabbed with sharp sticks, like you would, because you are no longer able to imagine being in their position. You might imagine another person as some unpredictable monster and attribute everything to this, rather than trying to understand that they are an agent like you.

Of course Britain would take military action against another country that tried to threaten us by arming an enemy on our doorstep. Even if many soldiers died, the patriots would insist on sending more, and heap praise on the fallen. No foreign weapon supply would deter us in that situation, and in fact it would just outrage us and encourage us even more. Unfortunately, we are now unable to imagine that other countries might think similarly, even when any glimpse at the facts will show that they do.

Events in Ukraine are intense and the outcome is unclear. Just about every moral judgment seems to have already been issued. Minds are made up. Virtually all sanctions are being applied to Russia.

The US was trying to pivot to what it sees as the China threat, not Russia. The sanctions applied to Russia are therefore unscheduled, reactive, and possibly disruptive to America's own global strategy.

US thrown off balance by Russian surprises

Because of the degree of coordination between Russia and China, Moscow's decision to act bullishly against NATO-groomed Ukraine may be a calculated move to somehow benefit Beijing and help overturn Washington's domination. The Western leaders react predictably, and all their attention is going to be on Russia for some time.

Events are unfolding similarly to the start of the original Cold War (which was "hot" when it began), but in Ukraine rather than the Korean Peninsula. We are in a period of acute hostility and denunciation that nobody can escape. Crackdowns on allegedly pro-Russian "treason", which encompasses mere remarks and media appearances, may resemble the talk of the 1950s. The dismantlement of global security and arms control treaties guarantees a horrifying nuclear war scare. Both sides will feel as if we confront a faceless, dark, silent enemy whose views and motives we are prohibited from seeing. All news will be the most vulgar propaganda, with barely a shred of truth.

None of the horror will last, however. A kinder politics is always inevitably around the corner, be it ten years away or twenty years away, when thinking people grow tired of the established warmongers and their canards.

Western sanctions on Russia could take a long time to really make people reconsider any foreign policy choices, if they have any effect at all and are not just political gestures to placate our own populations in the West. Difficulty getting something like microchips and the latest mobile phones could, at a guess, take multiple years to actually alarm society in Russia, and they may simply be able to get decent alternative products from China.

Future reset to occur on basis of respect with Russia

The disputes surrounding Ukraine, which at the time of writing were being addressed in a violent and chaotic manner that is difficult to track, could be resolved long before sanctions could hope to damage Russia, and be steadily lifted by dovish future administrations in Western governments. At that point, a certain respect for Russia's security would have developed, rather than merely casting everything the Russians do as villainy.

A final point to consider is that full sanctions on Russia mean the West no longer has any tools in its sanctions box for influencing Russia. If all these sanctions are aimed at Russian policy in Ukraine, more sanctions can't be allocated to deal with other Russian actions, for example, if the Russians choose to be more violent in their intervention in Syria. The West could end up in a position where it has more grievances against Russia than sanctions it can use to retaliate for them, having exhausted them all on Ukraine.

In such a position, Western leaders may be forced to offer sanctions relief in exchange for Russian help on entirely new crises, or the West will appear to be out of options. In seeing as much, Moscow now has every reason to carry on annoying Washington and doing everything to make it uncomfortable around the world, until Washington offers sanctions relief in exchange for Moscow ceasing its own actions.

Russia has defied Europe on a scale never before seen since the days of Josef Stalin. We are, without question, now moving into a new Cold War. How does Russia justify what the EU has described as "barbaric"?

Russia's national security leadership may have valid reasons to stage a premeditated intervention in Ukraine, but the action is legally dubious, if this means anything anymore. Russian leaders likely foresaw an increasingly heavily-equipped Ukrainian irregular faction such as the neofascist Azov Battalion (Western journalists reject their reported existence as disinformation despite it being a fact), and feared that they may infiltrate Russian territory in future years with their increasing stockpile of NATO-supplied weaponry. Russia chose to nip this threat in the bud with a huge military operation and fully secure its Western frontier against NATO, whose leaders were already labelling Russia as their adversary to be confronted, years before the Russian intervention.

Inaction or vacillation on Russia's part could have been disastrous. NATO weapons were being sent to Ukraine's anti-Russian regime in increasing quantities, curtailing the potential success of Russian military action. With groups like Azov not necessarily following government orders, and accumulating sophisticated equipment and training, it would have been plausible for such people to launch opportunistic terrorist attacks in Russia. We could have seen an unconventional military campaign coordinated secretly by NATO on Russian territory using these irregulars (in concert with foreign-organised protests against the Russian government), to bypass a nuclear standoff while destroying Russia. It is fortunate for Russia that the conflict is taking place inside Ukraine, instead, and that this army of irregulars is being killed off prematurely inside Ukraine.

Ending Nazism again

It is a shame that a lot of anti-Nazis in the West did not notice the return of literal, gun-toting Nazism to Ukraine, with its thousands of armed stormtroopers, and have failed to appreciate Russia destroying Nazism for the second time. Instead, we see convoluted and cerebral claims that Russia is instead somehow analogous to Nazi Germany itself, based on the mere fact that Russia has soldiers and is sending them into combat against those people.

The Ukrainian government is not neo-Nazi, but it wilfully presides over territory filled with them and their weapons, and that makes Ukraine Russia's business.

To Russians: I assure you that some of us in Britain have not been brainwashed by false captions and lies from our government, but we instead still believe in the alliance of 1941-45. We appreciate Russia saving Europe from this Nazi scourge for the second time, and hope for their crushing and prompt defeat.

Russia's lesser evil

The haste with which everything happened, event after event, suggests that Russia had all of it planned or at least was creating contingencies with great enthusiasm (the law of the instrument), and that the recognition of the republics (DPR and LPR) as states is itself just part of a military strategy. The side that has been caught unprepared is Ukraine, which evidently just expected the eight-year war in Donbass to continue its slow creep even despite Western warnings that Russia would attack.

The West made the situation very bad for Ukraine. They seemed to be idiotic in their handling of intelligence by telegraphing their own actions in the press (timelines of equipping Ukraine, types and quantities of missiles, and the fact they were espying the Russian military build-up) to Russia, meanwhile failing to convince Ukraine of the imminent attack it foresaw. These idiots telegraphed how they expected Russia to attack, likely allowing it to adjust its attack plan. Many disbelieved the West, myself included, seeing all kinds of holes in what they were saying, because of their thorough record of lying while quoting intelligence officers, such as in the 2003 Iraq War. It is likely that the only beneficiary of the hysterical coverage was, in the end, the Russian military.

The main moral difference between Russia's intervention and the US and NATO interventions in various countries is that this conflict zone was close to Russia, and many of those suffering in the crisis area were Russian civilians, whether holding Russian citizenship or not. If the US or UK were in a similar position to Russia's position with Donbass, military intervention against the neighbouring country would be treated as righteous. The normal anti-war criticisms, decrying the government for bombing distant countries to capture oil and failing to bring stability, would be muted because the target country is not distant and the goal is clearly not oil. In addition, Ukraine was already highly unstable due to the US action supporting a violent takeover in 2014.

Arming freedom fighters in Ukraine

NATO's policy toward the crisis in Ukraine is erratic and reactive, and Russia has taken the initiative. The most popular view among Western leaders now seems to be to equip the Ukrainians with weapons, similarly to the effort to arm militants in Syria against Bashar al-Assad, which was essentially a failure and is probably less viable in Ukraine. Comparisons are made to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which the US reacted to by arming militants with Stinger missiles over a long period of time. It is doubtful that this comparison holds. The Russian military is not the Soviet military, being now highly specialised in countering insurgents in Syria. Russia likely has no fear of NATO-equipped militants, because it is already facing them in Syria and expects to face them in any case, whether in the Caucasus or elsewhere. From Russia's point of view, defeating such militants is to be pursued eagerly rather than avoiding them.

What is happening in Ukraine is a conventional war that will likely succeed in subjugating the country, if Russia wants to do that. If NATO wanted to preserve a place for Western influence in Ukraine, it would need to send tanks across the border into the western regions of the country immediately, to provide safe haven for those afraid of pro-Russian reprisals in the aftermath of this conflict. However, most likely, they will instead cling to neoconservative fantasies about aiding freedom fighters and repeating the 1980s struggle in Europe.

In a European country, a forced and inapplicable strategy of armed civilian resistance will only claim civilian lives and alienate people. Ukraine is not tribal. Treating it like Afghanistan will only amount to terrorism, prolonging suffering and death among those who want a decent life, ultimately turning the peaceful population against those staging attacks, in revulsion. Afghans are used to war and hardship, but the more important observation is that they have no choice. Even if we literally transferred all the Taliban to Ukraine, they would flee into the EU rather than wage a brutal insurgency. People's predicament in Afghanistan is due to geographic and cultural isolation, and this doesn't apply in Ukraine. Ukrainians won't resist like the Afghans, even under an occupation. Europeans will welcome refugees with open arms, and they won't volunteer to go back and shoot up their own villages or stage car bombings outside schools.

I believe that if the Afghan resistance model failed in Syria, it has no hope of success in Ukraine. However, if it does succeed, that insurgency will spread all over Europe, with car bombs and assassinations becoming a normal form of politics in European capitals, just as the Afghan wars resulted in such regional instability and terror.

The sum of NATO's arrogance and incompetence

What we have is the combined problem of a West that is too arrogant to follow international law consistently, and now this same West is weak and facing defeat in all its foreign policy gambits. To actually be the guarantor of international peace and security, a country has to both follow its own rules and display some success. The US has failed on both counts, spreading misery and violating international law for decades (my own main reason for distrust of the United States foreign policy), and now becoming craven and trying to use third countries to fight dubious battles, now goading pro-Western Ukrainians to get themselves killed.

Comprised mainly of two parts, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska, Bosnia is an irregularity on the map of Europe.

The beautiful Balkan region has long been unstable, with Sarajevo being the flashpoint where the First World War began with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and with attempts to create multi-ethnic states consistently ending in failure there. With the massacres of the Bosnian Genocide, it is a land filled with grudges.

A history of disintegration

The "clash of civilisations" theory of Samuel P. Huntington would hold that the former Yugoslavia is always potentially conflict-ridden because it has seen the competing presence of Catholic, Islamic and Greek Orthodox civilisation. The theory may be too simplistic, but the region is indeed a hotspot of historical grievances.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire failed, Yugoslavia failed, and what exists there now has no particular guarantee against failing again. As geopolitical tensions rise, especially between NATO and Russia in Europe, lines are being drawn again in Bosnia.

Battle lines drawn

Republika Srpska is turning away from the central government in Bosnia and is seeking an imminent breakup. It is being equipped with weaponry from Russia and China, in anticipation of the breakdown of the international liberal order that is now openly challenged. Meanwhile, the Western-allied component that rules from Sarajevo seeks NATO membership. If conflicts heat up around the world once again, there may be no avoiding a war of further disintegration in Bosnia.

The position of the central government in Sarajevo is, of course, fundamentally hypocritical. Their country unilaterally seceded from Yugoslavia, and yet now they declare that there may be no secession from their authority by Serbs. There is no moral justification for supporting Bosnian separatism and rejecting Serb separatism.

In the event of a renewed conflict, there is no denying the inferior strategic position of the Serbs. They are cut off from their natural allies, the Russians, just as they were in the First World War, and enveloped by the NATO powers. However, the Serbs have been swallowed by many empires before, and have proven to be a bellyache to them. They were no gift to the Ottomans, to the Austrians or to the Nazis, and Western-allied Europe would be foolish to volunteer to go through the same symptoms.

Rather than defeat anything during the so-called war on terror, the United States instead caused a proliferation of threats. Despite having lost, it decided to restart Cold War tension in Europe and Asia.

Under such circumstances, the possibilities available to undefeated terrorist groups are almost infinite. While it is a good thing that local forces may now be entrusted to defend their own interests against terrorists without Western intervention, international terrorist groups may quickly gain the ability to inflict disaster on the new Cold War belligerents while their backs are turned.

End of Days

We have no idea how groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda view the developing Cold War between People's Republic of China and Russian Federation on one side, and the United States and European Union on the other. However, most likely, they view it as a chance for respite and an opportunity to plan new attacks.

By far the worst possibility is an apocalyptic one. Terrorist interlopers could infiltrate the battlegrounds of this new Cold War and stage operations aiming to draw the superpowers into destroying one another in a nuclear escalation, threatening everyone on the planet in the process. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda are considered to be irrational actors in international relations, so they may believe this is a doable and beneficial operation for them. Even if they understand the consequences, ISIS or al-Qaeda leaders could decide they will bring about the end of days.

The Russian front

One policy that could present an opportunity for ISIS is the expansion of NATO across Eastern Europe, potentially up to the Russian border. This presents a region where militant anti-Russian sentiment in countries such as Ukraine results in a willingness to accept help from anyone, including potential international terrorists, in an effort to confront what they see as the Russian threat. They want to join NATO, but an anti-Russian ISIS or al-Qaeda fighter or a neo-Nazi is just as much of an attractive ally for them and they are delighted with them all.

Imagine a day of tension along a huge, thousand-mile frontier between NATO and the Moscow-led CSTO alliance. That is what the frontier would be like, if Ukraine joined NATO. Somewhere - anywhere - along that broad front, is an ISIS cell in possession of a small armed drone they put together in cooperation with anti-Russian fighters in Ukraine. Their intention, against the wishes of the Ukrainian government and NATO, is to attack the Russians with it, and provoke an incident. The Western side is too naïve to have imagined the scenario, and the Russians are too focused on the massive NATO threat to see the subsequent explosion as anything other than the opening of a NATO attack on the local Russian nuclear forces based in the area. Without any delay, the Russians launch tactical nuclear weapons at assigned targets inside NATO Ukraine, the Baltics and Poland, fearful that any delay may give the West a chance to neutralise these weapons. Every subsequent escalation would then be a loss to the West and East, and yet a victory for ISIS who secretly started it.

Avoiding the premature end of the world

The solution to the above scenario would be for NATO to step back from the Russian frontier, agreeing to a demilitarised zone (DMZ) of buffer states or regions between the two sides, since this would avert a situation of continuous tension and distrust along a thousand-mile frontline. To agree to such a DMZ, NATO would have to realise that a tense frontier simply takes power away from political leaders, decreases security for all, and possibly empowers third parties and low-ranking officers with the ability to start a war neither side wants. As well as giving ISIS or al-Qaeda the ability to start World War Three, a NATO-Russia frontline could even give solitary lunatics this ability if they shoot over the border between the two sides.

The delusion that one can simply abdicate from an existing war without winning it, and declare a different war, is extremely perilous. On the one hand, it suggests that Western politicians exaggerated the terrorist threat over a period of twenty years. Perhaps they don't really take it as seriously as they said they did, seeing it just fine to forget about it without even having accomplished anything nearly like a victory, but rather a defeat in Afghanistan. On the other hand, it may signal a false belief that a mortal enemy was defeated when it wasn't. A US decision to take the fight to Russia and China, when ISIS is still out there looking for opportunities to destroy both sides, may well be as idiotic as the West hypothetically deciding to focus all their resources against the Soviets before the Nazis had been defeated.

No cooperation on terror threats

Finally, even discounting the above scenarios as unrealistic, which they might be, the new Cold War potentially eliminates all possibilities of cooperation against international terrorism. The Russians and Chinese, and possibly the Turks (because the West is so much against them too) refusing to cooperate on terrorism could be fatal to the West. It could result in Europe being abruptly flooded with tens of thousands of armed militants keen to take the battle into Westerners' living rooms, high on victory in Afghanistan.

On 4 February 2022, China and Russia declared what they are all about. Multipolarity, multilateralism, and order are what they hope to offer other countries.

Defying the Western "rules-based order", the Russian and Chinese declaration expresses a commitment to the "international law-based world order". It calls for multilateralism over unilateralism, and the defence of the internal affairs of states against outside interference. In short, for them, the law takes precedence over moral proclamations in international relations.

Defenders of sovereignty

The Russian-Chinese declaration is a statement of opposition to Western meddling in other countries. The US's blatant attempts at regime-change when governments are not complying with Western liberal norms, as occurred in Syria, Venezuela and countless other countries, are recognised in the statement as something Russia and China are going to try to prevent.

It has to be pointed out that incitement of conflict and regime-change, like the West carried out in Ukraine in 2014, is the severest and most blatant kind of violation of national sovereignty. It is the precise kind of meddling that the very concept of sovereignty ever meant to abolish, violating the self-determination of peoples and forcing them to adhere to another country's model and ideology under its direct supervision even from thousands of miles away.

With their declaration, the Russians and Chinese express their willingness to thwart US-allied attempts at regime-change in other countries. It is an assurance to all the member states of the United Nations wishing to preserve their internal order against interference and ensure that they continue to develop naturally rather than being plunged into chaos by outsiders. This is a vision with cross-civilisational support all across the world, being appealing to a set of states so diverse it includes Serbia, Turkey, Ethiopia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Peru and even Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Unlike the Western unipolar disorder, currently bogged down in conflicts in Ukraine and completely defeated in Afghanistan, the multipolar order China and Russia suggest is an uncontroversial configuration that could actually be viable across the entire world.

A helping hand to all countries

It should not be underestimated how appealing the Russian-Chinese declaration will be to other nations. While everything the United States proclaims to member states of the United Nations is a vague threat or a demand for compliance with the US's will, the Russians and Chinese are pledging to mitigate this destructive behaviour by being supportive of countries under US pressure.

In other words, while the US tries to bulk up its aggressive military alliances, denigrate the rule of law everywhere, and overthrow the governments of the world, the Chinese and the Russians are driven by no objective other than preventing such capricious intimidation and violence. Instead, international law will steadily begin to gain teeth under Chinese and Russian protection, and Western attempts at regime-change will increasingly stall as the West's economic and military power gradually recedes.

Abolition of the US-led disorder

With its ideological proclamations and military alliances, the US can't avoid being bogged down in multiple conflicts with a whole host of different countries. It is driven by a craving for confetti-filled skies affirming its supreme importance, and for continuous tickertape parades of glory and victory for itself. What the US wants to accomplish, again and again, is the familiar world where its capricious authority, not the law, is paramount and countries must listen to America's every word. It wants to handwave away the sovereignty of other states and civilisations, declaring itself as the sole judge of whether a regime is legitimate, and judging them by comparison with its vain self. That is what is meant by the rules-based, or liberal international, order.

As of 2022, the US regime still views all other countries as inferior, devoid of agency, subject to US policy, or even completely under US jurisdiction. Such an attitude is in conflict with anyone who has a genuine interest in the shared wellbeing of humanity and would prefer the course of human history to take a path for the good of all rather than the glorification of a few.

In short, the hegemonic goals of the United States are fundamentally opposed to the goals of the United Nations and the authority of its Security Council. Unless the US is able to discard unilateralism, the UN could eventually reform against it and the US could eventually find itself or its NATO proxy states in opposition to UN peacekeeping forces backed by a majority of nations.

Rather than a communist bloc, it is now the multitude of diverse but law-abiding individuals and nations desiring some form of stability that are the "other side". Far from seeking a chaotic world devoid of US leadership and fraught with abuse, they recognise the liberal powers as the main sources of chaos.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has long held the internet to be CIA, and has not made a secret of this belief. He doesn't use social media, which gives some insight into his attitude towards it.

In many ways, Putin is a man of the Cold War, almost perfectly built to handle Russia's affairs in what is considered a new cold war. He thinks in terms of missile numbers, move and countermove.

And there is some truth to the internet being a weapon of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). When one looks at its origins, most of the work really was done by a US government agency. Those who work at US agencies often step between other bodies, including the CIA. That doesn't mean it couldn't backfire on the US, however, becoming yet another case of what the CIA calls blowback.

It is clear to Putin and his cohorts that a few things went wrong in the last global struggle against the United States, and they will be determined not to repeat their mistakes. During the first Cold War, the then-Soviet Union, to which the Russian Federation is the modern-day successor, had what is considered to be a stagnant society and economy.

Censorship as the loser's strategy

Censorship was arguably a factor in the failure of the Soviet system. People are driven to find the awful truth about things, or at least see the countervailing point of view. When you restrict access to alternative views, even successfully, the effort almost always backfires.

At present, the aforementioned fault seems to be more apparent in the Western countries than Russia. The least popular variety of boring establishment "journalists", are the loudest in calling for suppressing competing information and curtailing freedom of expression on the very internet the West created and which Putin loathes. An example of this is their backlash against Substack.

Western states and their most obvious and vapid shills hate current Russian media networks such as the award-winning "Putin's propaganda channel" RT and Sputnik with a passion, making exaggerated claims about their apparent influence over Western audiences. In the original Cold War, the Russians didn't even possess such media with which to tempt anybody in the West.

For many unthinking people, there is likely a guilty allure to subversive foreign media, which explains both the alleged fascination of Russians with Western entertainment during the original Cold War and the current popularity of something like RT in Western countries. Western companies and authorities labelling RT as dangerous, foreign, and state-sponsored does nothing to reduce people's fascination with it and may only increase it.

We could see an escalation of attempts to stamp out Russian-backed media, going further than simply placing labels on it and moving more and more towards prosecuting journalists and banning points of view entirely. The West can be expected to be more heavy-handed than Russia, because it is backed up by an arrogant moral certitude implicit even in all news reporting on foreign policy, whereas the Russians merely speak of their national security.

A West no longer for freedom?

The sad reality is that in this Cold War, the establishment in the West is treading a boring path of ideological orthodoxy and restriction, and the foreign adversary is not. This is not just an immaterial difference of ideals in a contest of might, either. The attitude of automatically rejecting "enemy" points of view and denying people the right to even see them is potentially a threat to democratic models, dulling the intellect and pacifying political opposition.

Examples of Western ideological inflexibility are the commitment to imposing frameworks of LGBT rights, minority rights, and the freedom to offend religious sensibilities, even when such things divide their own alliances and cause discomfort especially among culturally diverse states. The West presents such things as universal and set to be accepted everywhere, which is far from certain even in Europe.

Western leaders want Russians to be portrayed as the ones afraid of information, afraid of human expression and liberty, as in the previous Cold War. However, with Western press arbitrarily branding all kinds of media stories as attacks or disinformation that need to be suppressed for the sake of democracy (like the blocked and then unblocked New York Post story in the US 2020 election), it is clear that Western states are at least as intolerant places for online dissent as Russia. The minutiae of how information and people are disappeared in the West and Russia may be different, but that is no basis to argue that the West is morally superior or better justified to make anything disappear.

If Western politicians and journalists are right in their claims about the threat of Russian disinformation and social media accounts, it means Russia has effectively turned what Putin considers to be a CIA weapon - the internet - into a tool against the West. It means the US, particularly the CIA, is profoundly confused about its role in the world, having believed it stood for freedom and encouraged technologies to facilitate just that, only to realise this was a mistake and will threaten American statehood too.

In branding the internet as a tool of foreign subversion of their political systems, Putin's enemies in the West are making his own case for him. Impose greater control and restrictions on what information is allowed online? Exactly what he wanted from the beginning. Only allow information that fits with one's national security interests? The Kremlin will be the first to agree with that sentiment.

The internet might be broken up

If the West wants to subvert adversarial influence and narratives on the internet, it will help Balkanise the internet. If Putin's comments about the internet being CIA reflect his views, then he is looking for this anyway. As such, those who continuously serve up stories and articulate concerns about Russian influence are doing Putin's work to destroy the CIA's weapon. It could be argued, of course, that this weapon should be subverted or destroyed, but that is another conversation.

The spread of deep suspicion about all media and the motives of those who produce it, rather than the content itself, may be the real foreign trick, and a clever one. If foreign interference or sympathising with the enemy is perceived in even a minor act of dissent, or any vocal form of opposition, nobody will be willing to correct or reform anything, which will eventually have repercussions for government and economic performance.

What better way for bureaucrats to prove their strength than to poke a bear and see what happens? Surely, an angry bear with its back to the wall, cornered in its own den, is the best one to safely poke as it can do nothing?

NATO's defiance of Russian pleas to avoid further expansion are making Russia feel cornered. While this may cause some in the West to gloat over Russia because NATO is growing seemingly invincible, a Russian reaction could be serious.

Should Georgia and Ukraine join NATO?

NATO candidates Georgia and Ukraine have ongoing territorial disputes and Russian troops within their internationally recognised borders (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea), motivating their desire to get NATO membership so the alliance can kick the Russians out. If they join, Russia and NATO will be claiming the same territories as their responsibility. Adding these countries to NATO would lead to regular NATO encounters with Russian civilians and soldiers while Russia's entire armed forces watch from nearby. Russia already complained of NATO's near misses with Russian civilian aircraft and vessels. This could mean an extremely grave and perilous situation that might delegate more and more responsibility for keeping the peace to frontline soldiers and even civilians, removing it from the politicians who created the situation.

Is it good for NATO if airline pilots and merchant captains are responsible for preventing World War Three? Does this make the alliance more powerful, or a step closer to the Stone Age?

Russia is now spoken of dismissively in the press and among leaders, as some minor threat that can be eliminated by sending a few rocket artillery to Ukraine or imposing some financial penalty. Russia, meanwhile, believes the stakes are extremely high and that its national security is in jeopardy.

The encroachment of NATO close to Russia does not create any possibility of interdicting Russian missiles and making the West safe from Russia. In fact, it may crowd the Russian border with missiles threatening both sides and increase the likelihood of a Russian first strike because the stakes are higher for them now.

NATO suggestions about countering Russian nuclear weapons in Europe without nuclear weapons are perplexing. If true, this would put NATO at a significant disadvantage to Russia. The Russians express a lack of trust, meaning they think NATO is lying or is itself deceived.

An accidental nuclear war on the horizon?

If NATO is lying about whether nuclear weapons will be sent to the Russian border, we're in trouble. The Russians being unaware of the types and yields of the weapons being deployed against them could cause an accidental nuclear war, since they won't know this type of weapon is in the area. For Russia to even think NATO is lying entails the same problem.

In fact, being dishonest may be incompatible with NATO's entire mission as an openly declared alliance, making it unable to achieve deterrence. If NATO is dishonest, then the adversary cannot even perceive what it is doing, much less be deterred by it.

This was the problem with the alliances of World War One, whose secrecy made them ineffective at preventing a world war. NATO was meant to be an alternative to this, a clearly defined alliance with its own flag.

NATO troops on Russia border are paralysed by escalation risk

Russia officially reserves the right to a first strike if its statehood is threatened, which could even be short of an actual attack on its territory, if the enemy is at the gates. In a border conflict, Russia would be very resolute about removing an enemy force they say is menacing their civilians, just as the UK or America would be.

Finally, what NATO risks doing if there are tensions at the Russian border is placing soldiers who aren't even authorised to shoot in the direction of their opponent if they take fire. An attack on Russian soil is out of the question, to avoid the risk of escalation into a full nuclear war. This will paralyse NATO troops' ability to do anything, while the Russians have permission to do as they please.

So, what starts like a brilliant plan to corner the bear could instead just end up tying the hands of NATO troops so this bear can eat them.

This is a short explanation of what is happening in Ukraine, looking at the country's conflict from a neutral perspective. The war in Ukraine originated in a political crisis in 2014 and has sometimes shown signs that it will become very intense and violent.

The pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych was deposed through the Euromaidan street protests in 2014. Following this, pro-Russian elements of the population in the country's east and Crimea rebelled against the new pro-European Union administration.

Russian troops sneaked into Ukraine during the crisis in 2014, taking over Crimea and assisting armed rebellion in the east of Ukraine. Crimea was subsequently declared as part of Russia following a referendum rejected by Western countries, creating an intense standoff that lasts to this day.

False alarms

Fortunately, each time the conflict looked like it would result in a full-scale clash with Russia, the situation quickly calmed down. It happened earlier this year, already. In April, alarm was raised over a Russian build-up in preparation to invade Ukraine. The Russian troops withdrew, and it turned out to be a false alarm.

By November, we began to hear reports of Russia building up troops to invade Ukraine once again. These reports have continued as we entered December and so far there is no report of any withdrawal of troops.

What is really happening in Ukraine is that the country wishes to restore complete control over its territory. It states this as its goal, referring to the Russian-claimed Crimean Peninsula as temporarily occupied and claiming it will retake the Peninsula by force in the future, although this is just grandstanding.

Russia is against the Ukrainian government going on the offensive in the eastern zones and most likely has objectives limited to protecting that area, deriving popular support due to the high Russian-speaking population there. Russia. whether cynical or sincere about it, most likely assesses that an eventual Ukrainian offensive will cause a lot of civilian deaths. If a certain threshold is reached, it can launch its own large-scale attack on Ukrainian troops and present it as a limited response aiming to protect civilians.

Some may see the US as being behind the escalation in Ukraine, but this is unlikely (barring their involvement in the original events of 2014). The US is heavily focused on China. Being distracted by a major conflict in Europe would put an end to the attempted pivot to Asia. Lifting of targeted sanctions to allow US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland to visit Moscow may represent one of the attempts to somewhat mend ties as the US tries to form alliances against China.

The most likely outcome is that the US will convince Ukraine to stand down, following which the Russians will also stand down. The same happened back in April.

Russia's secret plans for Ukraine

A Russian attack could begin with vague objectives in eastern Ukraine but could secretly be entirely open-ended, allowing their military to accomplish anything it deems possible, including the total occupation of Ukraine. Although this could not be a Russian goal in 2014, it now may be one of their goals.

NATO suggestions about moving nuclear weapons into Europe, potentially to the Russian border, alarmed Moscow. They most likely demand a very heavy response from the Russian side and there is already the offer by Belarus to host Russian nukes in response. The Russian military may have demanded access to Ukrainian territory so nuclear weapons can be stationed there in response to NATO.

Although NATO nuclear deployments were denied by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, it could be too late as the perception now exists that NATO wants nukes close to Russia. NATO failed to keep its plans secret: it wants nuclear strike capability close enough to Moscow to deny Russia the chance to retaliate. If Russia is going to respond to this, Ukraine has no hope.

Ukraine should not attempt to restore its control over the eastern parts of the country or Crimea. It especially should not offer to host US missile defences or nuclear weapons. Such actions would trigger Russian intervention and Russia would be able to enact its own plans for Ukraine.

Russia may choose to enact its plans anyway, feeling compelled to respond to the NATO nuclear weapons that could otherwise be positioned at its border. The decision may have already been made to secure launch sites in Ukraine at all costs.

During the course of any Russian intervention, Russian troops could get very close to Ukraine's capital city, Kiev. They could suddenly decide to decapitate the Ukrainian government in such a conflict, even if it was not their original plan.

The reality is that Ukraine is much weaker than Russia and cannot count on NATO support. The best thing for both sides to do would be to maintain the status quo, not start any offensive, and wait to see if changes of government in Kiev and Moscow in future result in better relations.

Sometimes, revolutions and coups occur. These unconstitutional seizures of power violate the rule of law and should always be discouraged. However, when such a coup does occur, the international community eventually accepts it as a fait accompli.

In the Cold War, many such violent transfers of power occurred but typically the resulting government would be backed by the US or USSR. In some other cases, such as that of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, it was China that provided most of the legitimacy to the new regime.

However, on very rare occasions, an uprising would not be backed by any of the superpowers. Examples are the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and the rise of the original Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to power in 1996. The rise of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan back to power in 2021 is another such event, although Moscow and Beijing were not bothered by the previous pro-Western regime's fall.

Refusing to accept illegal takeovers

Sometimes, the rise to power of a faction will be met with rejection by the supreme body of authority in the world - the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council, representing the victorious countries of the Second World War, provides a kind of "might makes right" verdict on a dispute where the right cannot otherwise be established. It includes the rival Russians, Chinese and Americans and can often be split and indecisive.

Based on the strictest adherence to the rule of law, you would never recognise any unconstitutional seizure of power as valid. It is the duty of the Security Council to condemn any and all violent takeovers and attempt to reinstall the previous regime. Unfortunately, this is not always practical.

In Ukraine in 2014, crowds used violence to overpower security forces in Kiev and bring opposition politicians to power, ostracizing and kicking out the elected government. The former president fled to Russia, but rather than continue backing this president, Russia accepted the new regime's rise to power as a fait accompli. Despite the hostility between Kiev and Moscow, Moscow does not say the Ukrainian government is illegitimate. Its beef with the country is about the treatment of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, not the validity of a government that rose to power illegally.

This brings us to the topic for today.

Who rules Yemen?

In Yemen, from 2014-2015, almost the exact same thing was happening as was taking place in Ukraine. In this case, the offending group that took control was Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis. The president of the country, in this case Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, fled not to Russia but to Saudi Arabia.

Rather than accept the defeat of their disgraced former favourite as Russia did in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia instead formed a military coalition to lay siege to Yemen in an attempt to reinstall the kicked-out president. This is the reason for the ongoing conflict in Yemen.

Imagine if, rather than accept what happened in Ukraine in 2014, Russia instead assembled the alliance of post-Soviet states, the CSTO, to invade Ukraine and restore the former president Viktor Yanukovych to power in Kiev. Imagine further, that this resulted in nearly a hundred thousand deaths, total destruction of infrastructure and outbreaks of cholera, and that Russia was still attempting to reach Kiev, being continuously defeated in the process. That is what Saudi Arabia is doing in Yemen.

The UN Security Council, including Russia, despite it contradicting the way it accepted the unconstitutional seizure of power in Ukraine, still recognises the discredited former regime of Yemen as the legitimate government of the country.

Peace through accepting reality

The Houthis should not have seized power in Yemen, but they did. This reality would be accepted by pragmatists and if the Houthis continue to prevail, it will eventually be accepted. The UN has a duty in this case to stop propping up a defeated regime, and to withdraw recognition of Hadi. The Houthis, like the Taliban, are the rulers of the country they rose to power in whether you like them or not. They have been in power for multiple years despite an international coalition against them. They stood the strongest tests any regime could be subjected to, and are the right ones to hold accountable for the wellbeing of that country.

Attempting to restore an old regime, possibly at the cost of killing everyone in the country, is insanity. We recognise all kinds of governments that we don't personally support, and that is what is needed here.

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