Michael Lind — America vs. Russia and China: Welcome to Cold War II

The Second Cold War is a rematch among the same teams that opposed each other for most of the First Cold War. On the one side are the United States and its East Asian and European allies, including new NATO allies in central and eastern Europe and the Baltic. On the other side are Russia and China and their allies and clients.

In Cold War II, as in Cold War I, the rivals have organized competing military alliances.…

My first argument, then, is that the underlying cause of Cold War II is the American bid for global hegemony that followed Cold War I and Chinese and Russian resistance to it. 

My second argument is that, if American victory is defined as achieving American global hegemony in the face of their resistance, particularly the resistance of China, the United States is going to be defeated in Cold War II.…

Before failure forces it to do so, the United States should abandon the doomed bid for global hegemony that followed Cold War I and has provoked Cold War II....

Longish but important.

The National Interest
America vs. Russia and China: Welcome to Cold War II

Michael Lind

Sputnik International — UN Secretary General: Cold War Resumed

Making it official.

"The Cold War is back - with a vengeance but with a difference," [UN Secretary-General Antonio] Guterres said, noting that the safeguards which managed the risk of escalation during the first Cold War "no longer seem to be present."...

Sputnik International
UN Secretary General: Cold War Resumed

Who Will Stop the US-Russia Arms Race? Aaron Maté interviews Stephen F. Cohen

Look, it's bogus. It's fiction. It's B.S. It's disinformation. It's American propaganda. The reality is this: Russia has been protesting about the, once we left, Washington left the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, Russia has been protesting what we've been building. We told Russia, why are you worried? It has nothing to do with Russia. This is all about Iran and, quote, rogue states, unidentified....

This was about Russia. The Russians knew it. You and I knew it. Everybody knew it...

Then Professor Cohen gives the game away.

STEPHEN COHEN: Do you know what is an indestructible weapon system?

AARON MATE: No I don't.

STEPHEN COHEN: One funded in all 50 states. All right. That's what this missile defense has been. They farmed out manufacturing of it everywhere from Paducah Kentucky to Israel. Everybody gets a piece of the action. Therefore you get no protest in Congress because it's constituency politics. And that's true of a lot of the weapons systems we make. They're indestructible when all 50 states get a piece of the action, and that's what you have with this missile defense stuff....

It gets worse.

AARON MATE: Now, recently there were some Democratic senators to call for a new round of strategic arms talks with Russia. But I want to read to you a quote from the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, where he is greeting the news of Mike Pompeo now being the secretary of state. And instead of pointing to Pompeo's open disdain for the Iran nuclear deal and his hawkishness on things including Russia, this is what Chuck Schumer said. He said: The instability of this administration and just about every area weakens America. If he's confirmed we hope that Mr. Pompeo will turn up we'll turn over a new leaf and will start toughening up our policies towards Russia and Putin, unquote.

So Professor Cohen, as we wrap, that is the top priority from the leader of the opposition party Chuck Schumer, for the new nominee to be secretary of state to be tougher towards Russia.
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, but it's not just Schumer. And Schumer is not to make this distinction as statesmen. He is a kind of local politician risen way above his pay grade when it comes to foreign affairs. It was outrageous what he said. But a lot of the Democratic leaders are saying this sort of thing....

Video and transcript.

TRNN
Who Will Stop the US-Russia Arms Race?

Aaron Maté interviews Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, History, and Politics at New York University and Princeton University

See also

Why do the Western regimes now feel Russia is a greater threat then in the past? Do they believe Russia is more vulnerable to Western threats or attacks? Why do the Western military leaders seek to undermine Russia’s defenses? Do the US economic elites believe it is possible to provoke an economic crisis and the demise of President Putin’s government? What is the strategic goal of Western policymakers? Why has the UK regime taken the lead in the anti-Russian crusade via the fake toxin accusations at this time?

This paper is directed at providing key elements to address these questions....

The Unz Review
Why the UK, the EU and the US Gang-Up on Russia

James Petras | Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

See also

Not only Russia.

Just hours after the latest close military encounter between the US and China, when the US navy sailed a destroyer to within 12 nautical miles of the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea as a "freedom of navigation" operation - a move that China condemned as a "severe provocation" just as the two countries launched an all-out trade war - the Chinese military launched its spring combat readiness drills with an air force exercise in the West Pacific and a joint combat patrol mission in the South China Sea.

The air force drills include H-6K bombers and Su-30 and Su-35 fighters, according to the PLA , and have a simple, if clear, purpose: "Air Force exercises are rehearsals for future wars and are the most direct preparation for war," the Chinese Air Force said on its Weibo account on Sunday, according to Reuters.

"The more exercises China practices far from its shores the better it will be positioned as an important force for managing and controlling crises, containing war and winning battles", it added....

Zero Hedge
China Launches Massive Military Drills "In Preparation For War"

Tyler Durden

Ekaterina Bilanova — US 'Deep State' Hopes to Bankrupt Russia Through New Arms Race – Analyst

The US elite believes that this worked for Reagan. There is, of course, the side-benefit of feeding the military-industrial-govermental complex that is foundational for the US politico-economic system.

I would add that Russia is not the principal target. The chief competitor of the US is China, and the US cannot achieve its goal of permanent global hegemony without regime change in China and partition of the country into pieces that cannot challenge the US economically. This is only possible by first effecting regime change and partitioning of Russia.

Sputnik International — Opinion
US 'Deep State' Hopes to Bankrupt Russia Through New Arms Race – Analyst

Ekaterina Bilanova

See also

Regime Change Propaganda on Syria Now In Overdrive

also

TASS
West seeks regime change plan in Syria instead of Geneva process, says Lavrov

also

Fort Russ
Putin announces Russia as world leader in Defense technologies
Izvestia | Translated by Inessa Sinchougova

Lyle J. Goldstein — Status-6: What Russia Is Saying About Its 100-Megaton Nuclear Torpedo

The new Russian underwater doomsday weapon Status-6 is a fitting symbol of the New Cold War and its senselessness.

The National Interest
Status-6: What Russia Is Saying About Its 100-Megaton Nuclear Torpedo

Lyle J. Goldstein | Professor of Strategy in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI.

Stephen F. Cohen — If America ‘Won the Cold War,’ Why Is There Now a ‘Second Cold War with Russia’?

The ongoing role of false narratives and historical fallacies.

The Nation

If America ‘Won the Cold War,’ Why Is There Now a ‘Second Cold War with Russia’?
Stephen F. Cohen | Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, History, and Politics at New York University and Princeton University

See also

Agenda and hidden agenda.

I have remarked on more than one occasion that Western perceptions of the Russian ‘threat’ have historically owed little to the real scale (or even existence) of that threat. Instead they have tended to be products of internal political debates within the West, with depictions of Russia as good or evil serving as tools to advance certain political agendas. Leo Strauss argued that underneath the surface meaning of any work of philosophy there is also a hidden meaning, discernible only by a select few. One could say much the same about analyses of Russia: there’s the surface story – Russian aggression, Russian disinformation, Russian collusion, and so on – but there’s also something going on under the surface which constitutes the true purpose of the analysis in question….

This, btw, is how the Russian government publicly portrays it — a domestic struggle within US politics.

Irrussianality
Russia as enemyPaul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

See also

The Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra (lead image, left) resigned his post this week after admitting he had publicly and repeatedly lied that he had met with President Vladimir Putin when he had not done so.

The Dutch press, which initiated the investigation exposing the lie, reports that in his resignation speech to the Dutch parliament Zijlstra confessed “the biggest mistake of my political life… The Netherlands deserves a minister who is above any doubt.”

In Canada, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland – appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in January 2017 — has been lying about meeting President Putin when she did not.

No Canadian newspaper has investigated Freeland’s lying, and she has expanded the lie to meetings with other Russian officials, which also did not happen. The Toronto Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen and the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) have also failed to report Zijlstra’s resignation for his Putin lie; their editors blocked the Reuters and Bloomberg wire reports, which have been running on Canadian newsroom screens, from appearing in print.

Is pretty boy Justin Trudeau a snake in the grass, or just naive (dumb)? This is not the half of it with Chrystia Freeland.

Dances with Bears
What Is the Difference Between the Lies the Dutch Foreign Minister and the Canadian Foreign Minister Have Been Telling About President Vladimir Putin? There’s No Difference.
John Helmer

Also

It would be wishful thinking to believe actions could ‘change China’s DNA’

Asia Times
‘Dangerous to advocate confrontation’: China’s US envoy

Sputnik International — US New NPR: Foreign Threats Justify Arms Spending Hike - Russian Ambassador

The new arms race heats up.

The Trump Administration's newly-released Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) lays out plans to modernize the US nuclear triad by integrating nuclear capability on the F-35 fighter jet, deploying low-yield warheads at sea, and developing new silo-based strategic weapons, among other initiatives.…

Nutty logic.

The review claims a stronger US nuclear deterrent is needed to discourage Russia, China, Iran and North Korea from either developing new weapons or expanding existing arsenals.

This will provoke further steps to maintain parity rather than discourage declared adversaries.

The US policy is military dominance. This policy guarantees an arms race.

Sputnik International
US New NPR: Foreign Threats Justify Arms Spending Hike - Russian Ambassador

Stephen F. Cohen — The American Bipartisan Policy Establishment Declares Its ‘Second Cold War’ vs. Russia After Years of Denying It

The most influential US foreign-policy membership society has issued a report affirming the new Cold War and its eagerness to fight it.

Here we go again. Cold War = arms race.

The US military has been advancing on Russia and China for years and Russia and China have responded to the perceived threat predictably by arming up. Now the US is claiming that Russia and China are threatening US interests and the US needs to commit more resources in order to stay on top.

It's a self-augmenting cycle and that the rate it is going it won't end until WWIII.

American Committee for East-West Accord
The American Bipartisan Policy Establishment Declares Its ‘Second Cold War’ vs. Russia After Years of Denying It

Stephen F. Cohen | Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, History, and Politics at New York University and Princeton University

See also. I rate it a must-read.

If we are to understand the policy options being considered by Russian elites, including by the occupant of the Kremlin, we must understand in depth the contempt and derision with which they speak of the U.S. today in media directed at the home audience.

Amidst all the hullaballoo in U.S. media over alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections and ongoing threats to American democracy, the broad public may be forgiven for not noticing that the U.S.A. is day by day massively interfering in the Russian presidential campaign with a view to turning elites and the electorate against the front-runner, Vladimir Putin, and at the same time at discrediting the entire process. These are not allegations: they are verifiable facts that can be spotted in the daily news, but they go unobserved because they appear separately, each with its own separate plausible explanation, and the media never connect the dots. I have in mind such details as...

It is sheer madness for Americans to ignore these realities, as is today the case. So long as the conduct of U.S. policy towards Russia remains in the hands of those who guided it under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, people who believe that Russia can be broken by “non-kinetic” means, we are on a trajectory to precisely kinetic solutions, meaning armed conflict, in which who strikes first may also strike last. And for precisely the same reasons of unwillingness to penetrate the Russian psyche, and see what makes them tick, it is more likely that the Russians will strike first when we cross their final red line....

Une parole franche
‘Total War’ Led by the U.S. and Russia’s Predicament over How to RespondGilbert Doctorow | European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd.

TF Metals Report — The New Cold War in 2018 -- A Discussion With Professor Stephen F. Cohen

Partial transcript and link to podcast.

A few days ago, we had the opportunity to visit with Professor Stephen F. Cohen. As regular readers know, we've been featuring his weekly podcasts with John Batchelor for the past four years so it was a real honor to speak with him directly regarding The New Cold War.

As mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, we are all indebted to John and Steve for their regular, weekly discussions. Their podcasts offer the only fair and balanced coverage of The New Cold War that you will find anywhere in the western media. Rather than a simple regurgitation of the War Party line, John and Steve consider the conflict from the historical perspective of each side. Thus, in listening to them over the past four years, I almost feel as if I have participated in a graduate-level Russian Studies class.

To be certain that this discussion is as widely-heard as possible, I've taken the additional step of transcribing portions of the audio. We begin with Professor Cohen providing some historical background regarding Ukraine, Russia and the run-up of this New Cold War.

TF Metals Report

The New Cold War in 2018 -- A Discussion With Professor Stephen F. Cohen
Turd Ferguson

RT — US missile defense in Europe directly threatens Russia – Chinese military

US antimissile shield in Europe directly threats Russia, a senior-ranking Chinese general said at an international security in Beijing. He added that US actions across the globe disrupt the balance of regional power and provoke regional instability.

“The US did not provide legally-binding guarantees that the missile defense system they are deploying in Europe would not be aimed against Russia. But at the same time it poses a real and direct threat to the Russian security,” Maj. Gen. Cai Jun, the vice head of the Central Military Commission Joint Staff Department's warfare bureau, said in a speech at the Xiangshan Forum.

The assessment is similar to that of the Russian military, which insists that the American antimissile shield in Europe compromises Russia’s security and needs to be countered with better ballistic missiles and capabilities to destroy antimissile sites, should the need arise.

“China and Russia have similar positions about strategic antiballistic missile systems and oppose attempts by any nation or group of nations to create such systems unilaterally at the expense of strategic international security,” the general said.

China is increasingly getting involved. If the US objective was to create a Russian-Chinese military alliance, it's succeeding very well.

[Russian] Gen. Poznikhir said Russia and China are forced to respond to these threats and preserve the strategic balance of power.

RT
US missile defense in Europe directly threatens Russia – Chinese military

Also

According to the general, the US is developing a global missile shield system as a means to achieve global supremacy

TASS
Chinese general: US encourages Asia-Pacific countries to develop nuclear missile programs

According to the Russian General Staff, US missile defense systems can be used as attack weapons

Russian general: US needs missile shield for military supremacy over Russia, China

China calls for dropping outdated mindset of Cold War times

Sputnik — Nuclear Poker: Why the US Can't Trick Russia Into Changing Its Nuclear Doctrine

Interesting look at US and Russian military policy.

Accordingly, Alexandrov suggested that US lawmakers' proposal is based on the understanding that a nuclear war is unwinnable, and to try to trick Russia into abandoning its established doctrine.

"In essence, the US is repeating the technique of Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union, which unilaterally renounced the first use of nuclear weapons. This was done because at the time, the USSR had a significant superiority in conventional forces over NATO. As a result, the use of nuclear weapons was judged to be disadvantageous, since all of Western Europe could be captured without their use. In that situation, it's worth noting, NATO banked on the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which became a deterrent against possible Soviet attack."

Today, Alexandrov noted, the situation has been flipped on its head. Russia can no longer resist the combined might of NATO in a long war using only conventional weaponry. 

"Therefore, since the 1990s, our doctrine provides for the possibility of using nuclear weapons first in case of a serious threat to Russia's national security." "Thus, the Democrats' initiative is aimed at achieving strategic superiority over Russia, and possibly China," the analyst suggested. "Of course, Moscow should not give in to this kind of demagogy. Russia must continue to retain the right to use tactical nuclear weapons first," he emphasized.

Ultimately, Alexandrov noted, Russia has already taken the necessary measures to move to a new generation of nuclear weaponry, from the Iskander tactical missile complex and the Kh-101 strategic cruise missile, which has a range of 5,000 km, to new ballistic missiles capable of overcoming US missile defenses. "All of this has forced the US to maneuver in this way, and to try to outplay Russia in the nuclear field," the analyst concluded.

Sputnik International
Nuclear Poker: Why the US Can't Trick Russia Into Changing Its Nuclear Doctrine

Alistair Crooke — Washington’s Hawks Push New Cold War

Must-read. Crooke is a former British intelligence officer with long experience. He covers a lot of ground in a fairly short post given the issues, and I would say he comes closer than anyone else I have seen in summing up the geopolitical situation. America is losing its marbles. The wheels are coming off.

The US is not only a deeply divided nation, but there is a "civil war" going on among the elites. Whoever wins the election, the other side is not going away quietly. Look for a rocky four years in an internecine struggle for supremacy.  

The real danger is when a country is dangerously disunited, elites know that at least a semblance of unity can be restored by manufacturing a foreign enemy to hate, and if need be, a war. Dark clouds in the horizon.

Consortium News
Washington’s Hawks Push New Cold War
Alistair Crooke

Clinton Ehrlich — The Kremlin Really Believes That Hillary Wants to Start a War With Russia

Ominous.

Let’s not mince words: Moscow perceives the former secretary of state as an existential threat.

Foreign Policy
The Kremlin Really Believes That Hillary Wants to Start a War With Russia
Clinton Ehrlich, sole Western researcher at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Moscow State Institute of International Relations

ht Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

NEO
Clinton & Russia: Has US Media Forgotten the 1990s?
Caleb Maupin

Patrick Lawrence — The West escalates with Russia: Make no mistake, a second Cold War is now official NATO policy

One, while talk of Cold War II has been common for several years, as of last week it is official policy in Washington and at NATO headquarters in Brussels. This is a grave, reckless step. In broad outline what just occurred is not unlike what Washington did in the late 1940s to initiate Cold War I. The consequences in that case cost millions of lives, trillions of dollars and endured for 42 years. We still wear the scars.

Two, President Obama’s foreign policy legacy is now complete in outline. We now know what he will hand his successor, and it is long on mess, short on success. Once again, an outgoing president surrenders ground by leaving unexplored nearly all opportunity for authentic progress toward sound, 21st century policies abroad. Once again, a new president must begin — at least on the foreign side—further back on history’s clock than the point from which his or her predecessor set out four or eight years earlier.
The disorder and dangers just baked into our cake are awful enough to contemplate but only part of the story. There is also the question of urgency. We do not have time for this, readers. There is too much to be done to let generals and profiteers, the one often blurring into the other, indulge in another global confrontation. Too many openings are lost, and this mistake is not free of cost—as Cold War I ought to have taught us.

National decline is not inevitable, I continue to insist, but it is made of wrong turns such as this. That, indeed, is among Cold War I’s greatest lessons: In what we take to be our moment of triumph we find defeat.

The US is betting the farm on securing permanent US hegemony. It's a bet with huge stakes on the table, global dominance for the foreseeable future and trillions of dollars worth of loot. The price? World peace and distributed property.

Lawrence includes China along with Russia later in the article. Longer term, China is the greater threat to US hegemony than Russia.

Salon
The West escalates with Russia: Make no mistake, a second Cold War is now official NATO policy

Patrick Lawrence

Chuck Spinney — Why Are Defense Policy Wonks So Ineffectual?

Today, America’s foreign policy is a shambles. Its primary features are (1) a perpetual war on terror, and (2) the seemingly inevitable march into a new and unnecessary cold war against Russia and China. At the same time, President Obama is leaving his successor with a budget plan containing a front loaded and political engineered* procurement bow wave that guarantees steeply rising defense expenditures well into the next decade and possibly beyond. Such long term increases in the defense budget can only be justified by a new cold war. Yet the United States now spends far more on the military than any other country. Add in the expenditures of our allies, and the spending advantage over any conceivable combination of adversaries becomes overwhelming. Nevertheless, US citizens are more fearful than they were during the Cold War, and politicians and the yellow journalism of the mainstream media are hyping those fears to a greater extent than they did during the Cold War.
What is going on?

Goldman Sachs is not the only giant vampire squid. As always, follow the money.

Risking nuclear war, you say? Small potatoes given the enormous pile of $ on the table.

The Blaster
Why Are Defense Policy Wonks So Ineffectual?
Franklin C. "Chuck" Spinney, former Pentagon military analyst

Sputnik — NATO has begun its Anaconda-16 war game, calling for the largest assembly of foreign forces in Poland since World War II.

On Monday, NATO launched its largest war game in decades, near the Russian border, as part of what analysts call the "summer of provocation," a bid to reignite the Cold War intended to force Moscow to starve its domestic economy to ramp up its military to meet a growing external threat.

The war game, titled Anaconda-16, will take place in Poland ahead of next month’s NATO summit in Warsaw, where officials are expected to approve permanent troops to be stationed in the country and throughout eastern Europe, to combat what they consistently refer to 'Russian aggression.'

The irony is that the West is also starving domestic economies to pressure Russia and China into escalating their production of guns over butter. Lose-lose scenario. Will Westerners be dumb enough or cowed enough to put up with it. What is quite predictable is that it will stiffen Russian spines and increase their resolve to resist. Westerners are a lot softer than Russians and less likely to put up with inconvenience, let alone lower living standards to meet manufactured threats. Will there be a boomerang effect.

And anyone wondering about whether NATO strategy involves surrounding Russia, the code name "Anaconda" dispels that.

Sputnik
NATO has begun its Anaconda-16 war game, calling for the largest assembly of foreign forces in Poland since World War II.

Sam LeGrone — Admiral Warns: Russian Subs Waging Cold War-Style ‘Battle of the Atlantic’

More evidence that Cold War 2 is engaged. China has just announced something similar for the Pacific.

In an article for the U.S. Naval Institute’s June issue of Proceedings, Vice Adm. James Foggo III outlined a new era in U.S. and Russian submarine warfare he dubs “The Fourth Battle of the Atlantic.”…

USNI (US Naval Institute) News
Admiral Warns: Russian Subs Waging Cold War-Style ‘Battle of the Atlantic’

Sam LeGrone

Chuck Spinney — New Nukes for a New Cold War

President Obama’s administration is planting the seed money for an across-the-board-modernization of nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and support systems that will cost at least a trillion dollars (more likely $2 trillion to $3 trillion, IMO) over the next 15-30 years.…

Given the highly evolved nature of the domestic politics driving defense spending (i.e., the domestic operations of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (I described this in “The Domestic Roots of Perpetual War”), history shows the golden cornucopia of this nuc “bow wave” or programs will quickly evolve into an unstoppable tsunami of front-loaded and politically engineered contracts and subcontracts that will grow over time to overwhelm and paralyze future Presidents and Congresses for the next 20-30 years.

This kind of budget time bomb has happened at least twice before in the non-nuclear part of the defense budget: The first began when the Nixon-Ford Administration planted the seeds of defense budget hysteria by starting a bow wave of new modernization programs, financed in the short term by readiness and force structure reductions in early-to-mid 1970s. These reductions led to budget pressures that exploded in the late 1970s and 1980s when President Jimmy Carter began growing the defense budget and President Ronald Reagan accelerated that growth.Get ready for huge budget deficits or cuts in domestic spending as the arms race accelerates, since the chances of raising taxes is low.

Spinney doesn’t mention it, but there is also the thinking that while the US can afford this, Russia and China, who will be forced to respond, will not. This is as much as piece of economic warfare as it is about military preparedness.

Ironic or disingenuous coming from a president that has called for nuclear disarmament.

Consortium News
New Nukes for a New Cold War

Chuck Spinney

James Carden — Does Russia Have Reason to Fear?

Oh, but never mind. Having abandoned any pretense that other great powers have definable (and eminently defensible) security interests of their own, American-led NATO is blithely plunging the Western world into fighting Cold War 2.0.

Yet, given the wide support candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have been receiving this election cycle, it is just possible that the heretofore somnolent American public may be waking up to the long post-Cold War con perpetuated by the country’s governing elites over the need for global American hegemony.

But I wouldn’t count on it.

Slouching toward (nuclear) war with Russia and China.

Consortium News
Does Russia Have Reason to Fear?

James Carden, contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American Committee for East-West Accord’s eastwestaccord.com, who previously served as an advisor on Russia to the Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State Department

John Pilger — The Start of a New World War

Propaganda about Russian and Chinese “aggression” has cloaked the reality of the U.S. and the West moving aggressively to encircle both countries, the start of a new world war, says John Pilger.

And it will likely be nuclear.

How many people are aware that a world war has begun? At present, it is a war of propaganda, of lies and distraction, but this can change instantaneously with the first mistaken order, the first missile.

In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague, in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make “the world free from nuclear weapons.” People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It was all fake. He was lying.

The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over 30 years is more than $1 trillion.

A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, “Going smaller [makes using this nuclear] weapon more thinkable.”

HRC

The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted “exceptionalism” is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.

As presidential Election Day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of her crimes and lies – just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about “hope.” And the drool goes on.…

Consortium News
The Start of a New World War
John Pilger