Michael Klare — War in the Arctic?

When I first met Michael Klare in the late Neolithic age (it was actually the early 1970s), he was already researching the U.S. military in a way no one else was doing. His first book on the subject, War Without End: American Planning for the Next Vietnams, had just been published. The title remains eerily apt, given Washington’s twenty-first-century “forever wars.” Almost 50 years later, he’s still ahead of the curve and his newest book on that military, All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, has only recently come out.

And he hasn’t stopped yet, as you’ll see in today’s piece on a new nuclear flashpoint for the U.S. and Russia: the melting Arctic. It’s the sort of thing that, in another world, would be headline news....

Tom Dispatch
Tomgram: Michael Klare, War in the Arctic?

See also

Stated Russian policy is that any first use of nuclear weapons against Russia will instantaneously trigger massive thermonuclear retaliation against the homeland of the aggressor state by Russia's nuclear triad–land-based missiles, bombers and submarines.

GlobalResearch.ca

Step to Nuclear Doomsday: US Puts Low-yield Nukes on Submarines to Counter Made-up Russian ‘Strategy’
Scott Ritter

Also

Andrei Martyanov comments on Scott Ritter's piece.

Reminiscence of the Future
A Slight Disagreement.
Andrei Martyanov

Maj. Tulsi Gabbard receives surprise deployment orders to Antarctica [satire] — Yossarian

Pretty funny, and very apt. Tulsi is the only foreign policy realist that is running against endless, so far at least.

Duffel Blog
Maj. Tulsi Gabbard receives surprise deployment orders to Antarctica [satire]

Yossarian

Graham E. Fuller — Turning Point in US Foreign Policy?

Former CIA "operative" Graham E. Fuller comments on Stephen Kinzer's article posted previous at MNE today. Fuller post also contains a complete copy of the Kinzer article.

Once the financial and economic elite ("the wealthy") on the both sides of the political divide conclude that present policy is costing them more than they are getting out of it, policy begins to shift. The question is whether they have deeper pockets than Sheldon Adelson and the Mercer family.

Fuller is all for it, and he is a "deep state" insider.

Graham E. Fuller
Turning Point in US Foreign Policy?

Graham E. Fuller | adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University, formerly vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, and a former senior political scientist at RAND

Is Trump Capable of Launching an All-Out Cyberwar? — Jean Perier

Backgrounder on cyberwarfare, a step up from economic warfare and internal subversion in the arsenal of hybrid warfare.

In this endeavor, the US has merged the State Department, the Pentagon, the intel services, and the private technological companies, along with allies, chiefly "five eyes" – the UK, Canada, Australia and NZ together with the US as leader.

The basic idea is to avoid kinetic warfare insofar as possible owing to the high likelihood that kinetic warfare will quickly go nuclear, bring the Great Game to a final end in nuclear winter. The added feature is that hybrid warfare is much less costly economically and also less politically volatile.

For those that have not yet noticed, WWIII is already on.

NEO
Is Trump Capable of Launching an All-Out Cyberwar?

Jean Perier

Andrei Martyanov — Douglas Macgregor Hits It Out Of The Ball Park

Douglas Macgregor is a military policy realist. He analyzes the US military and its operational strategy (in contrast with grand strategy as implementation of policy).

Reminiscence of the Future
Douglas Macgregor Hits It Out Of The Ball Park
Andrei Martyanov

Andrei Martyanov — Daniel L. Davis Hits It Out Of The Ball Park

Smackdown of US foreign and military policy and policymakers.

Reminiscence of the Future
Daniel L. Davis Hits It Out Of The Ball Park.
Andrei Martyanov

Eric Zuesse — Leaked: USA’s Feb 2018 Plan for Coup in Venezuela

What your government is up to. It is illegal under the UN Charter. Quite revealing that the US military high command would sign on to it. A foreign-mounted overthrow of a sovereign state's government without a UN Security Council resolution is a war crime. Calling it a "coup" is a misnomer. This is the overthrow of a government by a foreign state using its military to do so.

 There is no way to verify the document appended as genuine since it is labeled "Top Secret" however. But if true, this qualifies the US as a rogue state, and it appears reminiscent of Hitler's takeover of adjacent countries in the lead-up to WWII. This is one thing that the establishment of the UN was aimed at preventing. Serious stuff. "It can happen again," and it is happening. (See last link in this series.)

Congress should be on this immediately or the entire US government can be viewed as involved based on silence being consent.

I really don't think that the US politician get this. But the military high command certainly should. Following illegal orders is no excuse. This was decided international law at Nuremberg.

Off-Guardian
Leaked: USA’s Feb 2018 Plan for Coup in Venezuela
Eric Zuesse

Bullshit law.

Sputnik International
Pompeo Claims Any US Action in Venezuela, Including Military, to Be 'Lawful'
See also

It's certain that Trump and Putin had some words about this at their recent telephonic meeting.

RT
US attempt to topple Venezuelan govt by force would lead to grave consequences – Lavrov

Sputnik International

Lavrov Warns Attempts to Overthrow Venezuelan Gov't to Cause 'Catastrophe'

US' Real Actions Contradict Verbal Crusade Over Venezuela 'Humanitarian Crisis'

Rachel Maddow doesn’t think John Bolton is being hawkish enough.
John. Fucking. Bolton.

At the time, I thought MSNBC's hiring of Rachel was a great idea. Now I view it as an unmitigated disaster. The Democratic Establishment is digging a hole for themselves that will be impossible to haul themselves out of. That is a good thing. Time for the whole lot of them to do. They are all losers — born to lose.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
On Venezuela, Tucker Airs Anti-Trump Ideas While Maddow Wants John Bolton To Be More Hawkish
Caitlin Johnstone

Fort Russ
MAJOR: Inside How The Coup Was Foiled – Venezuela’s Army Chief Padrino TRICKED Trump & Abrams
Vladimir Dobrynin

In the aftermath of the failed coup which FRN has covered in depth, the White House is in clear disarray. U.S President Donald Trump has openly contradicted the statements of his senior officials on Russian “involvement” in Venezuela after a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin held on May 3.

Clown government.

Fort Russ
VENEZUELA REVERSAL: Trump Says Russia not Interfering – ditches Pompeo-Bolton line on Venezuela after Putin talks

Paul Antonopoulos

MISSING: Guaido now in hiding ADMITS COUP A FAILURE, blames military’s loyalty to Maduro

Joaquin Flores

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Venezuela: Establishment Talking Points Translation Key
Caitlin Johnstone

Yes, it can happen again. Fascism is alive and well, even in quarters that may seem unbelievable based on history.

Sputnik International
'Yes, We're Racists': Rabbis Recorded Endorsing Hitler, Urging to Enslave Arabs

Pepe Escobar — Pentagon Obsession: China, China, China

Another backgrounder, but more about the US and Russia than China.

Strategic Culture Foundation
Pentagon Obsession: China, China, China

Pepe Escobar

Col. Patrick Lang — Trump and the Spookery

Col. Lang backs the intel chiefs rather than the neocons handling Trump.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Trump and the Spookery
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.)

At the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lang was the Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Middle East, South Asia and counter-terrorism, and later, the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. At the DIA, he was a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. He participated in the drafting of National Intelligence Estimates. From 1992 to 1994, all the U.S. military attachés worldwide reported to him. During that period, he also briefed President George H. W. Bush at the White House, as he had during Operation Desert Storm.

He was also the head of intelligence analysis for the Middle East for seven or eight years at that institution. He was the head of all the Middle East and South Asia analysis in DIA for counter-terrorism for seven years. For his service in the DIA, Lang received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive. — Wikipedia

See also

Sputnik International
Intelligence Community 'Wrong' About Iran, 'Should Go Back to School' - Trump

SouthFront — US-Style “Troops Withdrawal”: Pentagon Plans To Keep Special Forces In Syria

The first cracks appear.

SouthFront
US-Style “Troops Withdrawal”: Pentagon Plans To Keep Special Forces In Syria

Craig Murray — Continued American Occupation of the Middle East Does Not Suppress Terrorism, It Causes It

Even the neo-con warmongers’ house journal The Guardian, furious at Trump’s attempts to pull US troops out of Syria, in producing a map to illustrate its point, could only produce one single, uncertain, very short pen stroke to describe the minute strip of territory it claims ISIS still control on the Iraqi border.

Of course, the Guardian produces the argument that continued US military presence is necessary to ensure that ISIS does not spring back to life in Syria. The fallacy of that argument can be easily demonstrated. In Afghanistan, the USA has managed to drag out the long process of humiliating defeat in war even further than it did in Vietnam. It is plain as a pikestaff that the presence of US occupation troops is itself the best recruiting sergeant for resistance. In Sikunder Burnes I trace how the battle lines of tribal alliances there today are precisely the same ones the British faced in 1841. We just attach labels like Taliban to hide the fact that invaders face national resistance.

The secret to ending the strength of ISIS in Syria is not the continued presence of American troops. It is for America’s ever closer allies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf to cut off the major artery of money and arms, which we should never forget in origin and for a long time had a strong US component. The US/Saudi/Israeli alliance against Iran is the most important geo-political factor in the region today. It is high time this alliance stopped both funding ISIS and pretending to fight it; schizophrenia is not a foreign policy stance.... 

The chaos of this incoherent and counterproductive strategy is, peculiarly enough, what the neocons actually want. Perpetual war and destabilisation in the Middle East is their goal. One of the findings I had not expected to discover in writing Sikunder Burnes was that the British had been deliberately exploiting and exacerbating the Shia/Sunni divide as early as 1836 to the Imperial purpose. Today, by keeping Arab populations poor and politically divided, the neo-cons believe that they enhance the security of Israel, and they certainly do facilitate the access of western companies to the oil and gas of the region, as we see in destabilised Iraq and Libya.… 

I have written before that Trump may be a rotten President for Americans, but at least he has not initiated a major war; and I am quite sure Hillary would have done by now. For a non-American, the choice between Hillary and Trump ended up in balancing on one side of the scale the evil of millions more killed and maimed in the Middle East and the launching of a full on, unreserved new Cold War, against on the other side of the scale poorer Americans having very bad healthcare and social provision and America adopting racist immigration policies. I do hope that the neo-con barrage today arguing for more American troops in the Middle East, will help people remember just how very unattractive also is the Hillary side of the equation....

Craig Murray Blog
Continued American Occupation of the Middle East Does Not Suppress Terrorism, It Causes It
Craig Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee

TTG — James Jeffrey wants no-fly-zone over Syria… all of Syria

This is flat nuts… Marx Brothers in Duck Soup nuts.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
James Jeffrey wants no-fly-zone over Syria… all of Syria

TTG

Andrei Martyanov — Cutting Empire To Size, Or Yet Another "National Security" Crisis

What passes for US military strategy.

Reminiscence of the Future
Cutting Empire To Size, Or Yet Another "National Security" CrisisAndrei Martyanov

Andrei Martyanov cites this. It's a must read. Gripping account.

We Are The Mighty
That time a Marine general led a fictional Iran against the US military – and won

Blake Stilwell

See also

This year, the US has started to stress its intention of withdrawing from the 1987 INF Treaty not just because of Russia’s alleged non-compliance with it, but also because Asia has such delivery systems, particularly China. Donald Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, outlined Washington’s position during a recent visit to Moscow. The same message has previously been conveyed by the US president himself.…

Having announced the country’s unilateral withdrawal from the INF Treaty, Donald Trump’s administration is planning to enmesh both Europe and Asia in the new intermediate-range and shorter-range nuclear missiles that Washington decided to create a long time ago. Many countries around the world understand this perfectly. By deciding to terminate the INF Treaty, which previous US administrations have referred to as “a cornerstone of global stability”, America has clearly set itself two main objectives.

First, to significantly increase the level of America’s nuclear missile capabilities in global terms by creating a completely new strategic nuclear triad and modernising the country’s tactical nuclear weapons, the use of which in the first nuclear strike is indicated in a number of provisions amended by Donald Trump in the country’s nuclear strategy.

Second, to install its new ground-based intermediate-range and shorter-range mobile nuclear missiles in Japan and South Korea, which have been covered well in advance by America’s anti-missile shield.

Fort Russ
America’s Withdrawal From The INF Treaty: Clear Reasons And Ulterior Motives
Vladimir Kozin | Chief Adviser and the Head of the Group of Advisers to the Director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Presidential Administration. Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Professor of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences

See also

China must submit to US hegemony — or else.

The Chinese leadership knows that US politics is volatile and the present administration won't be power forever. China can afford to play a waiting game in which the odds are in its favor.

Zero Hedge
Pence: "All-Out Cold War" Coming If China Doesn't Change Course; "We Won't Back Down"

Tyler Durden

Also

Even Macron refuses to submit France to the US.

RT
Being America’s ally does not mean becoming a vassal state — Macron

See also

Asia Times
Decoding the hypersonic Putin on a day of remembrance

Pepe Escobar

Doug Bandow — Why America Shouldn't Threaten Preemptive War

Continually pushing for dominance in the backyards of the world's nuclear powers is madness.

Not if one thinks that they can win a nuclear war, which the neocons apparently do. Then, it's perfectly "rational."

The National Interest
Why America Shouldn't Threaten Preemptive War

Doug Bandow | senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan

See also

World Beyond War
Alice Slater: Time Out for Nukes!

Also

In These Times
How Pro-War Democrats Use Russiagate To Bloat the Military—And Why That’s Dangerous

Sarah Lazare, web editor at In These Times

Pepe Escobar — What sanctions on Russia and China really mean

The Pentagon may not be advocating total war against both Russia and China – as it has been interpreted in some quarters

Look at the behavior and its motives rather than the speech and spin.

Global hegemony is a zero-sum game for the US. The stakes could not be higher. Obviously, the US has not built the military it has to defend the homeland or even its allies.

The US would prefer to prevail through hybrid means rather than kinetically, but if not ....

Even an amateur in international relations, geopolitics, or geostrategy, as well as history, could figure this out easily. But the US has already declared it as policy in the Wolfowitz and Bush doctrines. and recently named Russia and China as the chief adversaries. 

Equally obviously, when backed to a corner, great powers respond.

This is a trajectory toward WWIII.

Asia Times
What sanctions on Russia and China really mean

Pepe Escobar

Eururasian Times — US, UK Geared-Up For “Clear Sky 2018 Military Exercise” in Ukraine

Clear Sky 2018 is a “multinational military exercise focusing on promoting peace and security,” the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine said on Facebook. It will involve approximately 950 personnel from nine countries, including Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Ukraine will be represented by five tactical aviation units with about 350 military personnel.

Gotta keep fueling the arms race to hit GDP goals.

Eururasian Times
US, UK Geared-Up For “Clear Sky 2018 Military Exercise” in Ukraine

See also

The US Navy's Pacific Fleet has drawn up a classified proposal to carry out a global show of force as a warning to China and to demonstrate the US is prepared to deter and counter their military actions, according to several US defense officials.The draft proposal from the Navy is recommending the US Pacific Fleet conduct a series of operations during a single week in November.

The goal is to carry out a highly focused and concentrated set of exercises involving US warships, combat aircraft and troops to demonstrate that the US can counter potential adversaries quickly on several fronts.

They don't realize yet that carriers are now sitting ducks. The Navy's Worst Fear: What Happens if an Aircraft Carrier Was Sunk?

Technology doesn't stand still. Aircraft carriers are the new battleships — obsolete other than against small countries that don't have advanced technological capabilities. Russia and China do, and to some degree, so does Iran.

Paper tigers?

Anyway, what happened to "America First"? Trump has caved, just like they all do eventually.

CNN Politics
US Navy proposing major show of force to warn China
Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent

Moon of Alabama — India's U-Turn Destroys Trump's Anti-Chinese 'Quad' Strategy

India give the finger to the US. Moon of Alabama provides the back story. As usual follow the money. Indian politics is notoriously corrupt. Prime Minister Modi get caught out and had to shift gears.

The other back story is that DJT is now onboard with the US military and deep state's global strategy for world domination by submitting Russia and China to US dominance. 

"America First" as taken on new meaning. The president has apparently decided now that Iraq was not the strategic blunder had had believed.

The game on the grand chessboard is about to get a lot more "interesting" in the many faceted reality show. More popcorn please.

Moon of Alabama
India's U-Turn Destroys Trump's Anti-Chinese 'Quad' Strategy

b

Also

Fort Russ Press
Why is India NOT Afraid of U.S Sanctions

Paul Antonopoulos

See also

Fear of defeat drives military men to folly. Early in 1968, General William Westmoreland, America’s commanding general in Vietnam, feared that communist forces might overrun U.S. military positions at Khe Sanh. His response, according to recently declassified cables as reported in the New York Times today, was to seek authorization to move nuclear weapons into Vietnam. He planned to use tactical nuclear weapons against concentrations of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops. President Lyndon Johnson cancelled Westmoreland’s plans and ordered that discussions about using nuclear weapons be kept secret (i.e. hidden from the American people), which for the last fifty years they have been.

Westmoreland and the U.S. military/government had already been lying to the American people about progress in the war. Khe Sanh as well as the Tet Offensive of 1968 were illustrations that there was no light in sight at the end of the tunnel — no victory loomed by force of arms. Thus the call for nuclear weapons to be deployed to Vietnam, a call that President Johnson wisely refused to countenance....

Recall that five-star Gen. Douglas MacArthur, winner of the war in Pacfic and one of the most popular people in the US at the time wanted to use nuclear weapons against China after they entered the Korean War. Truman fired him. MacArthur returned to a ticker tape in Manhattan and became chairman of the board of Remington Rand and later of the Sperry Rand.

Bracing Views
Fear of Defeat and the Vietnam War

William J. Astore | retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) who taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School and now teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology

F. William Engdahl — Behind the Anglo American War on Russia

Perhaps they had a chance back during the Obama days when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed her amusing “Reset” in USA-Russia relations to the new Medvedew Presidency following Putin’s rotation to the seat of Prime Minister in March 2009. Had Washington been a bit more perceptive and offered serious alternatives, it is conceivable that Washington would today have a geopolitical isolation of their second major problem on the Eurasian Continent, namely, the Peoples’ Republic of China. Recently the US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, Wess Mitchell, testified to the Senate where he candidly revealed the true reasons for current Washington and London campaigns and sanctions against Russia. It has nothing to do with faked allegations of US election interference; it has nothing to do with poorly-staged false flag poisoning of the Russian Skripals. It’s far more fundamental and takes us back to the era before the First World War more than a century ago.

NEO
Behind the Anglo American War on Russia

F. William Engdahl

Martin Armstrong — Why Did the USA Invade Iraq?

Short backgrounder on the recent film, "Shock and Awe."

How the neocons hijacked US policy with lies.

Armstrong Economics
Why Did the USA Invade Iraq?
Martin Armstrong

Henry Kissinger and Donald Trump

Fort Russ

TRUMPS SECRET PLAN? Turn Russia into ‘battering ram’ against China
Paul Antonopoulos

See also

Counterpunch
Trump, Putin & Helsinki: Henry Kissinger Still Calls the Shots
Rajai R. Masri is a former lecturer of Finance at McGill University and Boston University.

Related

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Let Mikey do it? Maybe not.
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.)

At the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lang was the Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Middle East, South Asia and counter-terrorism, and later, the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. At the DIA, he was a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. He participated in the drafting of National Intelligence Estimates. From 1992 to 1994, all the U.S. military attachés worldwide reported to him. During that period, he also briefed President George H. W. Bush at the White House, as he had during Operation Desert Storm.

He was also the head of intelligence analysis for the Middle East for seven or eight years at that institution. He was the head of all the Middle East and South Asia analysis in DIA for counter-terrorism for seven years. For his service in the DIA, Lang received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive. — Wikipedia

See also

Jacksonian populism. Should read.

Truthdig
American History for Truthdiggers: Andrew Jackson’s White-Male World and the Start of Modern Politics

Danny Sjursen | Major, U.S. Army, formerly assistant professor of history at West Point