On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 10:31:32 PM UTC-8, slider wrote:
> The Russia-Ukraine crisis continues unabated as the United States ignores
> all of Russian President Vladmir Putin's security demands and spreads a
> frenzy of fear by claiming that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent..
>
> In a new exclusive interview for Truthout on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine
> crisis, world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky outlines the
> deadly dangers of U.S. intransigence over Ukrainian membership in the
> North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) even when key Western allies
> have already vetoed earlier U.S. efforts in that direction. He also seeks
> to shed some light on the reasons why Republicans today seem to be divided
> on Russia.
>
> https://menafn.com/1103644305/Noam-Chomsky-US-Approach-to-Ukraine-and-Russia-HasLeft-the-Domain-of-Rational-Discourse&source=30
>
> Chomsky — whose intellectual contributions have been compared to those of
> Galileo, Newton and Descartes — has had tremendous influence on a variety
> of areas of scholarly and scientific inquiry, including linguistics, logic
> and mathematics, computer science, psychology, media studies, philosophy,
> politics and international affairs. He is the author of some 150 books and
> recipient of scores of highly prestigious awards including the Sydney
> Peace Prize and the Kyoto Prize (Japan's equivalent of the Nobel Prize),
> as well as dozens of honorary doctorate degrees from the world's most
> renowned universities. Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently Laureate Professor at
> the University of Arizona.
>
> The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
>
> C.J. Polychroniou : Tensions continue to escalate between Russia and
> Ukraine, and there is little room for optimism since the U.S. offer for
> de-escalation fails to meet any of Russia's security demands. As such,
> wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the Russia-Ukraine border crisis
> stems in reality from the U.S.'s intransigent position over Ukrainian
> membership in NATO? In the same context, is it hard to imagine what might
> have been Washington's response to the hypothetical event that Mexico
> wanted to join a Moscow-driven military alliance?
>
> Noam Chomsky : We hardly need to linger on the latter question. No country
> would dare to make such a move in what former President Franklin Delano
> Roosevelt's Secretary of War Henry Stimson called“Our little region over
> here,” when he was condemning all spheres of influence (except for our own
> — which in reality, is hardly limited to the Western hemisphere).
> Secretary of State Antony Blinken is no less adamant today in condemning
> Russia's claim to a“sphere of influence,” a concept we firmly reject (with
> the same reservation).
>
> There was of course one famous case when a country in our little region
> came close to a military alliance with Russia, the 1962 missile crisis.
> The circumstances, however, were quite unlike Ukraine. President John F.
> Kennedy was escalating his terrorist war against Cuba to a threat of
> invasion; Ukraine, in sharp contrast, faces threats as a result of its
> potentially joining a hostile military alliance. Soviet leader Nikita
> Khrushchev's reckless decision to provide Cuba with missiles was also an
> effort to slightly rectify the enormous U.S. preponderance of military
> force after JFK had responded to Khrushchev's offer of mutual reduction of
> offensive weapons with the largest military buildup in peacetime history,
> though the U.S. was already far ahead. We know what that led to.
>
> The tensions over Ukraine are extremely severe, with Russia's
> concentration of military forces at Ukraine's borders. The Russian
> position has been quite explicit for some time. It was stated clearly by
> Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at his press conference at the United
> Nations:“The main issue is our clear position on the inadmissibility of
> further expansion of NATO to the East and the deployment of strike weapons
> that could threaten the territory of the Russian Federation.” Much the
> same was reiterated shortly after by Putin, as he had often said before.
>
> Historian Richard Sakwa … observed that“NATO's existence became justified
> by the need to manage threats provoked by its enlargement” — a plausible
> judgment.
>
> There is a simple way to deal with deployment of weapons: Don't deploy
> them. There is no justification for doing so. The U.S. may claim that they
> are defensive, but Russia surely doesn't see it that way, and with reason..
>
> The question of further expansion is more complex. The issue goes back
> over 30 years, to when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was
> collapsing. There were extensive negotiations among Russia, the U.S. and
> Germany. (The core issue was German unification.) Two visions were
> presented. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a Eurasian security
> system from Lisbon to Vladivostok with no military blocs. The U.S.
> rejected it: NATO stays, Russia's Warsaw Pact disappears.
>
> For obvious reasons, German reunification within a hostile military
> alliance is no small matter for Russia. Nevertheless, Gorbachev agreed to
> it, with a quid pro quo: No expansion to the East. President George H.W.
> Bush and Secretary of State James Baker agreed. In their words to
> Gorbachev:“Not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries
> as well, it is important to have guarantees that if the United States
> keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of
> NATO's present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”
>
> “East” meant East Germany. No one had a thought about anything beyond, at
> least in public. That's agreed on all sides. German leaders were even more
> explicit about it. They were overjoyed just to have Russian agreement to
> unification, and the last thing they wanted was new problems.
>
> There is extensive scholarship on the matter — Mary Sarotte, Joshua
> Shifrinson, and others, debating exactly who said what, what they meant,
> what's its status, and so on. It is interesting and illuminating work, but
> what it comes down to, when the dust settles, is what I quoted from the
> declassified record.
>
> President H.W. Bush pretty much lived up to these commitments. So did
> President Bill Clinton at first, until 1999, the 50th anniversary of NATO;
> with an eye on the Polish vote in the upcoming election, some have
> speculated. He admitted Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO.
> President George W. Bush — the lovable goofy grandpa who was celebrated in
> the press on the 20th anniversary of his invasion of Afghanistan — let
> down all the bars. He brought in the Baltic states and others. In 2008, he
> invited Ukraine to join NATO, poking the bear in the eye. Ukraine is
> Russia's geostrategic heartland, apart from intimate historic relations
> and a large Russia-oriented population. Germany and France vetoed Bush's
> reckless invitation, but it's still on the table. No Russian leader would
> accept that, surely not Gorbachev, as he made clear.
>
> As in the case of deployment of offensive weapons on the Russian border,
> there is a straightforward answer. Ukraine can have the same status as
> Austria and two Nordic countries throughout the whole Cold War: neutral,
> but tightly linked to the West and quite secure, part of the European
> Union to the extent they chose to be.
>
> The U.S. adamantly rejects this outcome, loftily proclaiming its
> passionate dedication to the sovereignty of nations, which cannot be
> infringed: Ukraine's right to join NATO must be honored. This principled
> stand may be lauded in the U.S., but it surely is eliciting loud guffaws
> in much of the world, including the Kremlin. The world is hardly unaware
> of our inspiring dedication to sovereignty, notably in the three cases
> that particularly enraged Russia: Iraq, Libya and Kosovo-Serbia.
>
> Iraq need not be discussed: U.S. aggression enraged almost everyone. The
> NATO assaults on Libya and Serbia, both a slap in Russia's face during its
> sharp decline in the '90s, is clothed in righteous humanitarian terms in
> U.S. propaganda. It all quickly dissolves under scrutiny, as amply
> documented elsewhere. And the richer record of U.S. reverence for the
> sovereignty of nations needs no review.
>
> It is sometimes claimed that NATO membership increases security for Poland
> and others. A much stronger case can be made that NATO membership
> threatens their security by heightening tensions. Historian Richard Sakwa,
> a specialist on East Europe, observed that“NATO's existence became
> justified by the need to manage threats provoked by its enlargement” — a
> plausible judgment.
>
> The U.S. is vigorously fanning the flames while Ukraine is asking it to
> tone down the rhetoric.
>
> There is much more to say about Ukraine and how to deal with the very
> dangerous and mounting crisis there, but perhaps this is enough to suggest
> that there is no need to inflame the situation and to move on to what
> might well turn out to be a catastrophic war.
>
> There is, in fact, a surreal quality to the U.S. rejection of
> Austrian-style neutrality for Ukraine. U.S. policy makers know perfectly
> well that admission of Ukraine to NATO is not an option for the
> foreseeable future. We can, of course, put aside the ridiculous posturing
> about the sanctity of sovereignty. So, for the sake of a principle in
> which they do not believe for a moment, and in pursuit of an objective
> that they know is out of reach, the U.S. is risking what may turn into a
> shocking catastrophe. On the surface, it seems incomprehensible, but there
> are plausible imperial calculations.
>
> We might ask why Putin has taken such a belligerent stance on the ground.
> There is a cottage industry seeking to solve this mystery: Is he a madman?
> Is he planning to force Europe to become a Russian satellite? What is he
> up to?
>
> One way to find out is to listen to what he says: For years, Putin has
> tried to induce the U.S. to pay some attention to the requests that he and
> Foreign Minister Lavrov repeated, in vain. One possibility is that the
> show of force is a way to achieve this objective. That has been suggested
> by well-informed analysts. If so, it seems to have succeeded, at least in
> a limited way.
>
> Germany and France have already vetoed earlier U.S. efforts to offer
> membership to Ukraine. So why is the U.S. so keen on NATO expansion
> eastward to the point of treating a Russian invasion of Ukraine as
> imminent, even when Ukrainian leaders themselves don't seem to think so?
> And since when did Ukraine come to represent a beacon of democracy?
>
> It is indeed curious to watch what is unfolding. The U.S. is vigorously
> fanning the flames while Ukraine is asking it to tone down the rhetoric.
> While there is much turmoil about why the demon Putin is acting as he is,
> U.S. motives are rarely subject to scrutiny. The reason is familiar: By
> definition, U.S. motives are noble, even if its efforts to implement them
> are perhaps misguided.
>
> Nevertheless, the question might merit some thought, at least by“the wild
> men in the wings,” to borrow former National Security Advisor McGeorge
> Bundy's phrase, referring to those incorrigible figures who dare to
> subject Washington to the standards applied elsewhere.
>
> A possible answer is suggested by a famous slogan about the purpose of
> NATO: to keep Russia out, to keep Germany down and to keep the U.S. in.
> Russia is out, far out. Germany is down. What remains is the question
> whether the U.S. will be in Europe — more accurately, should be in charge.
> Not all have quietly accepted this principle of world affairs, among them:
> Charles de Gaulle, who advanced his concept of Europe from the Atlantic to
> the Ural's; former German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik; and French
> President Emmanuel Macron, with his current diplomatic initiatives that
> are causing much displeasure in Washington.
>
> If the Ukraine crisis is resolved peacefully, it will be a European
> affair, breaking from the post-World War II“Atlanticist” conception that
> places the U.S. firmly in the driver's seat. It might even be a precedent
> for further moves toward European independence, maybe even moving toward
> Gorbachev's vision. With China's Belt-and-Road initiative encroaching from
> the East, much larger issues of global order arise.
>
> As virtually always in the past when it comes to foreign affairs, we see a
> bipartisan frenzy over Ukraine. However, while Republicans in Congress are
> urging President Joe Biden to adopt a more aggressive stance toward
> Russia, the proto-fascist base is questioning the party line. Why, and
> what does the split among Republicans over Ukraine tell us about what is
> happening to the Republicans?
>
> One cannot easily speak of today's Republican Party as if it were a
> genuine political party participating in a functioning democracy. More apt
> is the description of the organization as“a radical insurgency —
> ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, and dismissive of
> the legitimacy of its political opposition.” This characterization by
> political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein of the American
> Enterprise is from a decade ago, pre-Donald Trump. By now it's far out of
> date. In the acronym“GOP,” what remains is“O.”
>
> I don't know whether the popular base that Trump has whipped up into a
> worshipful cult is questioning the aggressive stance of Republican
> leaders, or if they even care. Evidence is skimpy. Leading right-wing
> figures closely associated with the GOP are moving well to the right of
> European opinion, and of the stance of those who hope to retain some
> semblance of democracy in the U.S. They are going even beyond Trump in
> their enthusiastic support for Hungarian President Viktor
> Orban's“illiberal democracy,” extolling it for saving Western
> civilization, no less.
>
> This effusive welcome for Orban's dismantling of democracy might bring to
> mind the praise for Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini for
> having“saved European civilization [so that] the merit that Fascism has
> thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history”; the thoughts of
> the revered founder of the neoliberal movement that has reigned for the
> past 40 years, Ludwig von Mises, in his 1927 classic Liberalism.
>
> Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson has been the most outspoken of the
> enthusiasts. Many Republican senators either go along with him or claim
> ignorance of what Orban is doing, a remarkable confession of illiteracy at
> the peak of global power. The highly regarded senior Sen. Charles Grassley
> reports that he knows about Hungary only from Carlson's TV expositions,
> and approves. Such performances tell us a good deal about the radical
> insurgency. On Ukraine, breaking with the GOP leadership, Carlson asks why
> we should take any position on a quarrel between“foreign countries that
> don't care anything about the United States.”
>
> Whatever one's views on international affairs, it's clear that we've left
> the domain of rational discourse far behind, and are moving into territory
> with an unattractive history, to put it mildly.
>
> (C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author,
> and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and
> research centers in Europe and the United States)
>
> ### - smile, can always rely on good old chomsky to provide an 'objective'
> view of us silly humans scrabbling in the dirt, pretending to be
> intellectuals but never quite making it due to a whole in-built set of
> stinky prior agendas that poisons everything...
>
> iow: the human race is full of shit! so much so that we're actually
> unlikely to survive our own stupid machinations!
>
> greed, dishonesty & fear still ruling the species at every turn and
> intersection, and screw the traffic lights!
>
> we're clearly unable to get-out of our OWN way???
>
> it's a crisis now alright, today, in ukraine... one that's gonna KEEP
> occurring and REPEATING + getting worse each time, if not in europe then
> elsewhere, on & on until the human race either radically changes it ways
> and grows the fuck up (and learns to live together) or destroys itself in
> some crazy outpouring of self-hatred & loathing...
>
> imho & observation though we're prolly just too greedy & DUMB to survive?
>
> the winning/losing game is just all too important to us!?
>
> unfortunately it's moronic haha! the equivalent of being addicted to
> buying scratch-cards or playing the lotto: ya KNOW ya can't ever win it
> for real but still do it anyway LOL !
>
> when it comes to the 'current' ukraine crisis though: we 'should' stop now
> and start talking, come to some NEW arrangement... and THIS time WITHOUT
> the forked-tongue and then maybe we'll get somewhere! coz just can't see
> russia taking ALL these direct threats to their security lying down??
>
> not a chance, they're a nuclear super-power in their own right ffs,
> there's gonna be trouble otherwise!
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVzM6cS1iME
>
> (was lucky enough to actually be sitting in this audience at earls court
> for this heh, was an incredible concert)
it's where's my shit and buy my shit culture.
i want what i want and i want it now fucker.
i don't care if kids in china are starving. where's my wheaties damnit? lol