Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 172

RT: Crimean Bridge damage caused by truck explosion – Russia’s Anti-Terrorism Committee

Billboard in Crimea that reads: “Crimea.. Russia. Forever.” Photo by Natylie Baldwin, Oct. 2015

RT.com, 10/8/22

The bridge was closed earlier after a fuel tank caught fire

The bridge that connects the Crimean Peninsula with mainland Russia has been damaged by a truck bombing, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said on Saturday.

Officials said that the blast, which occurred shortly after 6am local time, caused a partial collapse of the road on the vehicle section. It also triggered a blaze on a freight train on the parallel rail section, with seven fuel tanks catching fire. 

“The arch above the shipping section of the bridge has not been damaged,” the committee added.

An unverified video appears to show the moment of the blast.

https://t.me/kommersant/40806?embed=1

A video from the scene that was posted on social media appears to show the fuel tank fire and the damage to the road.

https://t.me/bbbreaking/137596?embed=1

Nikolay Lukashenko, the acting regional transport minister, told reporters that the authorities are considering launching a ferry service.

The 19-kilometer (11.8 mile) bridge, which runs across the Kerch Strait and connects Crimea with mainland Russia, consists of a railway section and a vehicle section. It became fully operational in 2020.

Anatoly Antonov: Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0 Over Ukraine?

By Anatoly Antonov, The National Interest, 9/8/22

Anatoly Antonov is the Russian ambassador to the United States.

As Henry Kissinger wrote in 2014, “The demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.”

I have commenced my work on this article for two reasons. Firstly, this October will mark sixty years since the Cuban Missile Crisis when the USSR and the United States were on the verge of a nuclear conflict. This is an occasion to look closer at the foreign policy lessons that the two great powers have learned from that dramatic time. I believe that any American will see eye-to-eye with me that we must not allow the explosive situation of the 1960s to repeat. It is important that not only Russia and the United States, but also other nuclear states, confirmed in a common statement that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

Secondly, we are witnessing a surge of concern from the international community and U.S. experts about the possibility of a nuclear conflict between Moscow and Washington. This issue has become even more acute in recent days when senior officials of the U.S. administration began sending us direct signals warning against the use of nuclear weapons in the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. Moreover, threats against us have started to be heard from the official establishment.

Princeton University has even made predictions that millions of Americans and Russians would perish in the exchange of nuclear strikes. Sometimes it feels like we are returning to the years of McCarthyism in this issue. One hardly can forget former U.S. secretary of defense James Forrestal who jumped out of the window yelling “the Russians are coming.”

The U.S. media is abounding in publications by pseudo-experts who are ignorant of history and misinterpret the current state of affairs. They erroneously compare today’s situation with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The statements by certain politicians and the media that U.S.-Russian relations are living through an unprecedented crisis may well be accepted. Let me remind you that just a couple of years ago we talked about a difficult stage in the bilateral dialogue. However, no one could have even imagined that it would come to such a perilous point. Everything created over many years of hard work, including political, economic, cultural, scientific, and educational ties, has been written off to the dustbin of history.

We see a deplorable, deserted picture in arms control. The ABM and INF treaties have sunk into oblivion. The Open Skies Treaty has virtually ceased to exist. The New START Treaty is approaching the end of its duration and, as we have repeatedly said, is not fully implemented by the American side. The NPT is experiencing serious shocks. No one can foretell what will happen next.

I have to remind readers that all of this is a result of U.S. policy. Let me elaborate on my point. Washington withdrew from the treaties in order to gain security advantages, especially in confronting Russia. It is in a constant search for opportunities to achieve global military dominance.

Over previous decades, the NATO military machine has approached Russia’s borders in several “waves”—where a powerful striking fist was raised over my Motherland. How should we have reacted? We warned our colleagues that such steps were counterproductive, increased the risk of an arms race, and we could not ignore the aggravating threats along the perimeter of the Russian boundaries, especially our western boundaries. I remember long-hour gatherings at NATO headquarters where I had to participate repeatedly in discussions on the harmfulness of global missile defense, the importance of respecting international commitments on strategic stability, and the danger of deploying shorter- and intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Russian exhortations turned out to be in vain.

The last straw that broke the camel’s back was NATO’s attempt to launch the military-technical exploitation of Ukraine and cultivate in Kiev a regime desiring to wage a bloody war against Russia.

Today our country is accused of all sins. They claim that we have unleashed an armed conflict in Europe. I have to wonder: what did the United States do to ensure the implementation of the Minsk agreements? Why did Washington keep silent for eight years and not pull Kiev up when Ukrainians and Russians were killed in Donbas?! How could it ignore the terrible tragedy in Odessa when several dozen people were burned alive?! Where were the international humanitarian institutions?! Why did the administration prioritizing human rights allow such crimes?! We have repeatedly asked American politicians these questions. Nothing but beautiful slogans were the answer. Ukraine has continued to be pitted against Russia.

Today it is obvious that the United States is directly involved in the military actions of the Kiev regime. Washington is openly building up the supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine and provides it with intelligence. They jointly plan military operations against the Russian Armed Forces. Ukrainians are being trained to use NATO military hardware in a fight.

It feels like Russia is being tested to see how long it will remain patient and refrain from responding to blatantly adversarial actions and attacks. In fact, Washington is pushing the situation towards a direct confrontation of the major nuclear powers fraught with unpredictable consequences.

U.S. officials continue to escalate the situation, intimidating the American and international public with sham Russian “nuclear threats.” Such rhetoric twists the statements of the Russian leadership.

I would like to stress that there has been no change in the conditions when our country would use nuclear weapons. In this regard, we continue to strictly adhere to the 2014 Military Doctrine and 2020 Basic Principles of State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence. Moscow has never mentioned an expansive interpretation of these documents which can be found in the public domain.

We are not threatening anyone. But we confirm that, as President Vladimir Putin said on September 21, Russia is ready to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and our people with all weapon systems we have. What is so aggressive about this statement? What is unacceptable? Would the United States not do the same if faced with an existential threat?

I would like to add that certain American politicians are under a delusion if they think that our readiness to defend our territory does not apply to Crimea or to territories that may become part of Russia on the basis of a free expression of popular will.

I would like to warn American military planners about the fallacy of their assumptions that a limited nuclear conflict is possible. They apparently hope that the United States would be able to take cover behind the ocean if such a conflict happens in Europe with British and French nuclear weapons. I would stress that this is an extremely dangerous “experiment.” It is safe to assume that any use of nuclear weapons could quickly lead to an escalation of a local or regional conflict into a global one.

I want to believe that, despite all the difficulties, we and the Americans have not yet approached a dangerous threshold of falling into the abyss of nuclear conflict. It is important to stop threatening us.

Today, it is difficult to predict how far Washington is ready to go in exacerbating relations with Russia. Will the U.S. ruling circles be able to give up their plans aimed at wearing out our country with the prospect of its dismemberment?

The recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit and the high-level week of the 77th UN General Assembly session have proved that a considerable part of the planet is not satisfied with the world order that was created after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We are witnessing the majority of the global community trying to find ways to establish an equitable system of international relations which would have neither first- nor second-tier states. We firmly support such a world order based on international law, the UN Charter, and the principle of the indivisibility of security.

This is What a Nuclear War Does to Human Beings and Infrastructure

Please pass this along to young people and anyone you know who is ignorant of or complacent about the threat of nuclear war.

The images posted here are for non-commercial and educational purposes.

An allied correspondent stands in a sea of rubble before the shell of a building that once was a movie theatre in Hiroshima on September 8, 45.
Link here. Ruins of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945. From World Atlas. Piles of victims of the atomic blast in Hiroshima, Japan, 1945. UK Express From World Atlas A nuclear bomb victim lies in quarantine on the island of Ninoshima in Hiroshima, Japan, 9,000-meters from the epicentre on August 7, 1945, one day after the bombing by the United States. Picture: Yotsugi Kawahara. Link here.

Elon Musk Smeared As a Putin Puppet For Proposing Ukraine Peace Plan: David Sacks

Link here.

Glad to see some more influential people starting to use their platforms to say that we need a negotiated end to this war.

Gordon Hahn: The World Split Apart 2.0 – An Introduction

By Gordon Hahn, Russian & Eurasian Politics Blog, 9/21/22

Nearly a decade ago I began warning that NATO expansion and the West’s failure to understand that Russian national security interests not a Russian desire to ‘recreate the USSR’ or ‘former Russian empire’ would lead to a world split apart between the West and ‘the rest’ (Sino-Russian ‘strategic partnership and those states oriented towards it).

In September 2015, for example, I argued: “Therefore, rather than being some grand conspiracy to build a Russian empire and defeat the West in the ostensible ‘new cold war,’ Putin’s actions are actually about defending Russian positions in the region and national security at home. Any failure to realize the latter, real motivations behind Putin’s actions and instead favor a focus on the former, imagined ones is fraught with specter of more gains for the jihadists and the greater likelihood of a world needlessly split apart on this and other key issues” (https://gordonhahn.com/2015/09/29/explaining-putins-counter-jihadi-coalition-proposal-russian-interests-not-a-new-cold-war/).

In the same month I wrote: “(I)t cannot be excluded that in the back of Putin’s mind, held in reserve depending on how talks on the Levant crisis develop, talks on Ukraine could ensue around the Levant talks. In this way, the Ukraine crisis could be addressed in any grand deal. The ensuing talks could even lead to a grand deal on Ukraine. … However, just as likely an outcome as some grand deal is a more polarized East-West divide, a world split apart over the fate of Assad, the war against jihadism, and Ukraine. This has all the makings of a world war” (https://gordonhahn.com/2015/09/10/putins-arab-gambit-just-got-more-bold-the-syrialevant-jihadi-crisis/).

A year later I reiterated the point: “The calamitous Arab ‘Spring’ has justified the Russian critique of American foreign policy to such an extent that some neocons and other conservatives as well as no small number of leftists have bought into it not only in the U.S. but also in Europe and globally, most starkly in the non-West. This risks a new ‘world split apart’…. The coming of that world may well depend on the triumph in Moscow of the radical Eurasianist view; a triumph made more likely by the neocon-neolib hold on the American imagination, regardless of which ideological clan wins the upcoming exercise in the decaying American democracy” (https://gordonhahn.com/2016/10/27/the-russian-american-cultural-ideational-contention/).

In 2018 I continued, noting that “the world is increasingly split apart between the West (plus Japan) and all the rest” (https://gordonhahn.com/2018/03/12/implications-of-pew-study-on-major-threat-perceptions-around-the-globe/). In 2019 I refined the point: “Thus, for our, the American/Western, part–I can only hope that some day we will revive the political culture of tolerance, rule of law, freedom of speech, which is slowly but surely being lost in good part for the sake of our efforts at democracy-promotion and NATO expansion. A failure to do so will result in more overreactive American and Western Russia policies, increasing polarization between the West and Russia (and China), the strengthening of an anti-Western alliance led by China and Russia, an economic war in a world split apart damaging the global economy, and finally more political violence and even war between East and West” (https://gordonhahn.com/2019/01/26/the-wests-alienation-of-russia-the-next-wave/). In 2020 I noted: “It appears that excesses of traditionalism in the east and of anti-traditionalist nihilism in the West continue to split the world apart in this crisis century” (https://gordonhahn.com/2020/03/24/putins-constitutional-amendments-political-balancing-in-an-increasingly-traditionalist-russian-political-culture-divided-world-and-crisis-century/).

My worst fears now appear to be coming true, portending a global catastrophe of war, revolution, and chaos. To be sure, the war for and against NATO expansion is not the only cause of the global schism and catastrophe now before us. The Schwabist-Soros globalist and transhumanist agenda is driving economic collapse and social discontent contributing to the oncoming catastrophe, but that is another topic for another day.

NATO expansion to Ukraine continued with Ukrainian membership replaced by deep Western and NATO involvement in Ukraine’s politics and military and gradually deepening after the 2014 Maidan revolt. In effect if not juridically, Ukraine was becoming a member of the NATO alliance. In this regard, it is important to point out that the famous Article 5 of the NATO Charter is not a blanket, mandatory obligation to engage directly in military action in defense of an alliance member under attack by an alliance non-member state. It merely requires consultations and assistance, which can but does not necessarily have to be the commitment of member-states’ forces directly to the battlefield. Assistance can include the provision of weapons, training, intelligence, and other forms of indirect assistance. This was already happening in Ukraine as a result of NATO policies. Russian President Putin responded with his invasion rapidly both escalating that level of NATO military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine and accelerating the bifurcation of the world between the West and the rest. For all intents and purposes NATO and the entire West are at war with Russia and escalation to a more direct confrontation is just over the horizon. This course of events has deepened and consolidated the Sino-Russian alliance by any other name and that alliance’s efforts to rally to its side the rest of the rest. The world is becoming split apart as never before – an outcome globalization was not supposed to bring about. The ‘new cold war’ is driving towards a greater bifurcation of the world into two camps than the confrontation between communism and capitalism ever engendered.

Continuation to follow.

Dmitry Trenin: Russia and the US still have time to learn the lessons of the Cuban missile crisis and prevent a nuclear war

Fallout Shelter sign.

By Dmitry Trenin, RT, 9/26/22

This October marks the 60th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, which drew Moscow and Washington into a nuclear showdown that threatened the immediate annihilation of the world.

Luckily, the leaders of the time – Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy – had the wisdom to step back from the brink, and then engage with each other on first steps toward jointly managing adversity in the nuclear era. Given the current conflict in Ukraine, which is steadily escalating toward a direct military collision between Russia and the United States, there is a hope that the lessons of the past can also help to end the present confrontation on a peaceful note.

However, we should also be mindful of the major differences between the two crises.

On the surface the root cause of both confrontations has been acute feelings of insecurity created by the expansion of the rival power’s political influence and military presence right to the doorstep of one’s own country: Cuba then, Ukraine now.

This similarity, however, is almost as far as it goes. The salient feature of the Ukraine crisis is the vast asymmetry not only between the relevant capabilities of Russia and the United States, but even more importantly between the stakes involved. To the Kremlin, the issue is literally existential.

Essentially, it is not only the future of Ukraine, but that of Russia itself that is on the table. To the White House, the issue is definitely important, but far less critical. What is in question is clearly US global leadership (which will not collapse within the Western world, whatever happens in Ukraine), its credibility (which can be dented but hardly destroyed), and the administration’s standing with the American people (for whom Ukraine is hardly a top concern).

The 1962 Cuban missile crisis broke out in the atmosphere of a pervasive fear of World War III, which rose to its highest pitch during the 13 days in October. The 2022 Ukraine crisis is unfolding virtually in the absence of such fear. Russia’s actions over the past seven months have been taken in the West more as evidence of its weakness and indecision than its strength.

Moreover, the war in Ukraine is seen as an historic opportunity to defeat Russia, weakening it to a point when it can no longer pose a threat even to its smallest neighbors. A temptation emerges to finally solve the ‘Russian Question’, permanently neutering the country by seizing its nuclear arsenal, and possibly breaking it into many pieces that would likely bicker and war among themselves. Among other things, this would rob China of a major ally and resource base, and create favorable conditions for Washington to prevail in its conflict with Beijing, thus sealing its global dominance for many more decades.

The Western public is being prepared for the eventuality of nuclear weapons being used in the Ukraine crisis. Russian warnings to NATO countries, with reference to Moscow’s nuclear status, to stay away from direct involvement in the war, which are meant as deterrence rather than an intention to widen the conflict, are dismissed as blackmail. Indeed, a number of Western experts actually expect Russia to use its tactical nukes if its forces face a rout in Ukraine.

Rather than seeing this as a catastrophe to be absolutely averted, they seem to view this as an opportunity to hit Russia very hard, make it an international outlaw, and press the Kremlin to surrender unconditionally. At a practical level, the US nuclear posture and its modernization programs focus on lowering the atomic threshold and deploying small-yield weapons for use on the battlefield.

This does not suggest that the administration of US President Joe Biden wants a nuclear war with Russia. The problem is that its highly pro-active policy on Ukraine is based on a flawed premise that Russia can indeed accept being ‘strategically defeated’ and, should nuclear weapons be used, their use would be limited to Ukraine or, at worst, to Europe. Americans have a long tradition of ascribing their own strategic logic to their Russian opponents, but this can be fatally misleading. Ukraine, parts of Russia and Europe being hit by nuclear strikes – while the US emerges from the conflict unscathed – might be considered a tolerable outcome in Washington, but hardly in Moscow.

So many of Russia’s so-called red lines being breached without consequence from the start of the Ukraine war have created an impression that Moscow is bluffing, so that when President Vladimir Putin recently issued another warning to Washington, saying that “it is not a bluff,” some people concluded that it was precisely that. Yet, as recent experience demonstrates, Putin’s words deserve to be taken more seriously. In a 2018 interview he said, “Why do we need a world in which there is no Russia?”

The problem is that Moscow’s strategic defeat, which the US is aiming for in Ukraine, would probably ultimately result in “a world without Russia.” This probably suggests that if – God forbid! – the Kremlin will face what the Russian military doctrine calls “a threat to the existence of the Russian Federation,” its nuclear weapons will not point to some location on the European continent, but more likely across the Atlantic.

This is a chilling thought, but it may be salutary. Any use of nuclear weapons must be prevented, not just the use of strategic ones. It is cruel but true that peace between adversaries is based not on solemn pledges and pious wishes, but, in the final count, on mutual fear. We came to call this deterrence and “mutually assured destruction.” That fear should not paralyze our will, but it should ensure that neither side loses its senses. On the contrary, the erosion of deterrence and its dismissal as bluff would leave us sleepwalking into big trouble.

Unfortunately, this is precisely where we are heading now. It is telling that the constant shelling, over many weeks, of Europe’s largest nuclear power station is tolerated by Western – including, incredibly, European – public opinion, because it is Ukrainian forces seeking to dislodge the Russians who have occupied the station.

If there are lessons to be learned from the Cuban missile crisis, these are basically two. One is that testing nuclear deterrence is fraught with fatal consequences for all of humanity. The second is that the resolution of a crisis between major nuclear powers can only be based on understanding, and not either side’s victory.

There is still time and room for that, even if the former is running out and the latter is getting narrower. Right now, it is still too early even to discuss a potential settlement in Ukraine, but those Russians and Americans who like me spent the last three decades in a failed effort to help create a partnership between their two countries need to come together now to think about how to avert a fatal clash. In 1962, after all, it was informal human contact that saved the world.

Mattias Desmet: The Psychology of Totalitarianism

The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet

This clearly has implications beyond Covid. – Natylie

By Mattias Desmet, Brownstone Institute, 8/30/22

At the end of February 2020, the global village began to shake on its foundations. The world was presented with a foreboding crisis, the consequences of which were incalculable. In a matter of weeks, everyone was gripped by the story of a virus—a story that was undoubtedly based on facts. But on which ones? 

We caught a first glimpse of “the facts” via footage from China. A virus forced the Chinese government to take the most draconian measures. Entire cities were quarantined, new hospitals were built hastily, and individuals in white suits disinfected public spaces. Here and there, rumors emerged that the totalitarian Chinese government was overreacting and that the new virus was no worse than the flu. Opposite opinions were also floating around: that it must be much worse than it looked, because otherwise no government would take such radical measures. At that point, everything still felt far removed from our shores and we assumed that the story did not allow us to gauge the full extent of the facts.

Until the moment that the virus arrived in Europe. We then began recording infections and deaths for ourselves. We saw images of overcrowded emergency rooms in Italy, convoys of army vehicles transporting corpses, morgues full of coffins. The renowned scientists at Imperial College confidently predicted that without the most drastic measures, the virus would claim tens of millions of lives. In Bergamo, sirens blared day and night, silencing any voice in a public space that dared to doubt the emerging narrative. From then on, story and facts seemed to merge and uncertainty gave way to certainty.

The unimaginable became reality: we witnessed the abrupt pivot of nearly every country on earth to follow China’s example and place huge populations of people under de facto house arrest, a situation for which the term “lockdown” was coined. An eerie silence descended—ominous and liberating at the same time. The sky without airplanes, traffic arteries without vehicles; dust settling on the standstill of billions of people’s individual pursuits and desires. In India, the air became so pure that, for the first time in thirty years, in some places the Himalayas became once more visible against the horizon.

It didn’t stop there. We also saw a remarkable transfer of power. Expert virologists were called upon as Orwell’s pigs—the smartest animals on the farm—to replace the unreliable politicians. They would run the animal farm with accurate (“scientific”) information. But these experts soon turned out to have quite a few common, human flaws. In their statistics and graphs they made mistakes that even “ordinary” people would not easily make. It went so far that, at one point, they counted all deaths as corona deaths, including people who had died of, say, heart attacks. 

Nor did they live up to their promises. These experts pledged that the Gates to Freedom would re-open after two doses of the vaccine, but then they contrived the need for a third.  Like Orwell’s pigs, they changed the rules overnight. First, the animals had to comply with the measures because the number of sick people could not exceed the capacity of the health care system (flatten the curve). But one day, everyone woke up to discover writing on the walls stating that the measures were being extended because the virus had to be eradicated (crush the curve). Eventually, the rules changed so often that only the pigs seemed to know them. And even the pigs weren’t so sure.  

Some people began to nurture suspicions. How is it possible that these experts make mistakes that even laymen wouldn’t make? Aren’t they scientists, the kind of people who took us to the moon and gave us the internet? They can’t be that stupid, can they? What is their endgame? Their recommendations take us further down the road in the same direction: with each new step, we lose more of our freedoms, until we reach a final destination where human beings are reduced to QR codes in a large technocratic medical experiment.

That’s how most people eventually became certain. Very certain. But of diametrically opposed viewpoints. Some people became certain that we were dealing with a killer virus, that would kill millions. Others became certain that it was nothing more than the seasonal flu. Still others became certain that the virus did not even exist and that we were dealing with a worldwide conspiracy. And there were also a few who continued to tolerate uncertainty and kept asking themselves: how can we adequately understand what is going on?

In the beginning of the coronavirus crisis I found myself making a choice—I would speak out. Before the crisis, I frequently lectured at University and I presented on academic conferences worldwide. When the crisis started, I intuitively decided that I would speak out in public space, this time not addressing the academic world, but society in general. I would speak out and try to bring to peoples’ attention that there was something dangerous out there, not “the virus” itself so much as the fear and technocratic–totalitarian social dynamics it was stirring up.

I was in a good position to warn for the psychological risks of the corona narrative. I could draw on my knowledge of individual psychological processes (I am a lecturing professor at Ghent University, Belgium); my PhD on the dramatically poor quality of academic research which taught me that we can never take “science” for granted; my master degree in statistics which allowed me to see through statistical deception and illusions; my knowledge of mass psychology; my philosophical explorations of the limits and destructive psychological effects of the mechanist-rationalist view on man and the world; and last but not least, my investigations into the effects of speech on the human being and the quintessential importance of “Truth Speech” in particular.

In the first week of the crisis, March 2020, I published an opinion paper titled “The Fear of the Virus Is More Dangerous Than the Virus Itself.” I had analyzed the statistics and mathematical models on which the coronavirus narrative was based and immediately saw that they all dramatically overrated the dangerousness of the virus. A few months later, by the end of May 2020, this impression had been confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt. There were no countries, including those that didn’t go into lockdown, in which the virus claimed the enormous number of casualties the models predicted it would. Sweden was perhaps the best example. According to the models, at least 60,000 people would die if the country didn’t go into lockdown. It didn’t, and only 6,000 people died.

As much as I (and others) tried to bring this to the attention of society, it didn’t have much effect. People continued to go along with the narrative. That was the moment when I decided to focus on something else, namely on the psychological processes that were at work in society and that could explain how people can become so radically blind and continued to buy into a narrative so utterly absurd. It took me a few months to realize that what was going on in society was a worldwide process of mass formation.

In the summer of 2020, I wrote an opinion paper about this phenomenon which soon became well known in Holland and Belgium. About one year later (summer 2021) Reiner Fuellmich invited me onto Corona Ausschuss, a weekly live-stream discussion between lawyers and both experts and witnesses about the coronavirus crisis, to explain about mass formation. From there, my theory spread to the rest of Europe and the United States, where it was picked up by such people as Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Peter McCullough, Michael Yeadon, Eric Clapton, and Robert Kennedy.

After Robert Malone talked about mass formation on the Joe Rogan Experience, the term became a buzz word and for a few days was the most searched for term on Twitter. Since then, my theory has met with enthusiasm but also with harsh criticism.

What is mass formation actually? It’s a specific kind of group formation that makes people radically blind to everything that goes against what the group believes in. In this way, they take the most absurd beliefs for granted. To give one example, during the Iran revolution in 1979, a mass formation emerged and people started to believe that the portrait of their leader—Ayatollah Khomeini—was visible on the surface of the moon. Each time there was a full moon in the sky, people in the street would point at it, showing each other where exactly Khomeini’s face could be seen.

A second characteristic of an individual in the grip of mass formation is that they become willing to radically sacrifice individual interest for the sake of the collective. The communist leaders who were sentenced to death by Stalin—usually innocent of the charges against them—accepted their sentences, sometimes with statements such as, “If that is what I can do for the Communist Party, I will do it with pleasure.”

Thirdly, individuals in mass formation become radically intolerant for dissonant voices. In the ultimate stage of the mass formation, they will typically commit atrocities toward those who do not go along with the masses. And even more characteristic: they will do so as if it is their ethical duty. To refer to the revolution in Iran again: I’ve spoken with an Iranian woman who had seen with her own eyes how a mother reported her son to the state and hung the noose with her own hands around his neck when he was on the scaffold. And after he was killed, she claimed to be a heroine for doing what she did.

Those are the effects of mass formation. Such processes can emerge in different ways. It can emerge spontaneously (as happened in Nazi Germany), or it can be intentionally provoked through indoctrination and propaganda (as happened in the Soviet Union). But if it is not constantly supported by indoctrination and propaganda disseminated through mass media, it will usually be short-lived and will not develop into a full-fledged totalitarian state. Whether it initially emerged spontaneously or was provoked intentionally from the beginning, no mass formation, however, can continue to exist for any length of time unless it is constantly fed by indoctrination and propaganda disseminated through mass media. If this happens, mass formation becomes the basis of an entirely new kind of state that emerged for the first time in the beginning of the twentieth century: the totalitarian state. This kind of state has an extremely destructive impact on the population because it doesn’t only control public and political space—as classical dictatorships do—but also private space. It can do the latter because it has a huge secret police at its disposal: this part of the population that is in the grip of the mass formation and that fanatically believes in the narratives distributed by the elite through mass media. In this way, totalitarianism is always based on “a diabolic pact between the masses and the elite” (see Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism).

I second an intuition articulated by Hannah Arendt in 1951: a new totalitarianism is emerging in our society. Not a communist or fascist totalitarianism but a technocratic totalitarianism. A kind of totalitarianism that is not led by “a gang leader” such as Stalin or Hitler but by dull bureaucrats and technocrats. As always, a certain part of the population will resist and won’t fall prey to the mass formation. If this part of the population makes the right choices, it will ultimately be victorious. If it makes the wrong choices, it will perish. To see what the right choices are, we have to start from a profound and accurate analysis of the nature of the phenomenon of mass formation. If we do so, we will clearly see what the right choices are, both at strategic and at the ethical levels. That’s what my book The Psychology of Totalitarianism presents: a historical–psychological analysis of the rise of the masses throughout the last few hundreds of years as it led to the emergence of totalitarianism.

The coronavirus crisis did not come out of the blue. It fits into a series of increasingly desperate and self-destructive societal responses to objects of fear: terrorists, global warming, coronavirus. Whenever a new object of fear arises in society, there is only one response: increased control. Meanwhile, human beings can only tolerate a certain amount of control. Coercive control leads to fear and fear leads to more coercive control. In this way, society falls victim to a vicious cycle that leads inevitably to totalitarianism (i.e., extreme government control) and ends in the radical destruction of both the psychological and physical integrity of human beings.

We have to consider the current fear and psychological discomfort to be a problem in itself, a problem that cannot be reduced to a virus or any other “object of threat.” Our fear originates on a completely different level—that of the failure of the Grand Narrative of our society. This is the narrative of mechanistic science, in which man is reduced to a biological organism. A narrative that ignores the psychological, spiritual, and ethical dimensions of human beings and thereby has a devastating effect at the level of human relationships. Something in this narrative causes man to become isolated from his fellow man, and from nature. Something in it causes man to stop resonating with the world around him. Something in it turns human beings into atomized subjects. It is precisely this atomized subject that, according to Hannah Arendt, is the elementary building block of the totalitarian state.

At the level of the population, the mechanist ideology created the conditions that make people vulnerable for mass formation. It disconnected people from their natural and social environment, created experiences of radical absence of meaning and purpose in life, and it led to extremely high levels of so-called “free-floating” anxiety, frustration, and aggression, meaning anxiety, frustration, and aggression that is not connected with a mental representation; anxiety, frustration, and aggression in which people don’t know what they feel anxious, frustrated, and aggressive about. It is in this state that people become vulnerable to mass formation.

The mechanist ideology also had a specific effect at the level of the “elite”—it changed their psychological characteristics. Before the Enlightenment, society was led by noblemen and clergy (the “ancien régime”). This elite imposed its will on the masses in an overt way through its authority. This authority was granted by the religious Grand Narratives that held a firm grip on people’s minds. As the religious narratives lost their grip and modern democratic ideology emerged, this changed. The leaders now had to be elected by the masses. And in order to be elected by the masses, they had to find out what the masses wanted and more or less give it to them. Hence, the leaders actually became followers.

This problem was met in a rather predictable but pernicious way. If the masses cannot be commanded, they have to be manipulated. That’s where modern indoctrination and propaganda was born, as it is described in the works of people such as Lippman, Trotter, and Bernays. We will go through the work of the founding fathers of propaganda in order to fully grasp the societal function and impact of propaganda on society. Indoctrination and propaganda are usually associated with totalitarian states such as the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or the People’s Republic of China. But it is easy to show that from the beginning of the twentieth century, indoctrination and propaganda were also constantly used in virtually every “democratic” state worldwide. Besides these two, we will describe other techniques of mass-manipulation, such as brainwashing and psychological warfare.

In modern times, the explosive proliferation of mass surveillance technology led to new and previously unimaginable means for the manipulation of the masses. And emerging technological advances promise a completely new set of manipulation techniques, where the mind is materially manipulated through technological devices inserted in the human body and brain. At least that’s the plan. It’s not clear yet to what extent the mind will cooperate.

Totalitarianism is not a historical coincidence. It is the logical consequence of mechanistic thinking and the delusional belief in the omnipotence of human rationality. As such, totalitarianism is a defining feature of the Enlightenment tradition. Several authors have postulated this, but it hasn’t yet been subjected to a psychological analysis. I decided to try to fill this gap, which is why I wrote The Psychology of Totalitarianism. It analyzes the psychology of totalitarianism and situates it within the broader context of the social phenomena of which it forms a part. 

It is not my aim with the book to focus on that which is usually associated with totalitarianism—concentration camps, indoctrination, propaganda—but rather the broader cultural–historical processes from which totalitarianism emerges. This approach allows us to focus on what matters most: the conditions that surround us in our daily lives, from which totalitarianism takes root, grows, and thrives.

Ultimately, my book explores the possibilities of finding a way out of the current cultural impasse in which we appear to be stuck. The escalating social crises of the early twenty-first century are the manifestation of an underlying psychological and ideological upheaval—a shift of the tectonic plates on which a worldview rests. We are experiencing the moment in which an old ideology rears up in power, one last time, before collapsing. Each attempt to remediate the current social problems, whatever they may be, on the basis of the old ideology will only make things worse. One cannot solve a problem using the same mindset that created it. The solution to our fear and uncertainty does not lie in the increase of (technological) control. The real task facing us as individuals and as a society is to envision a new view of humankind and the world, to find a new foundation for our identity, to formulate new principles for living together with others, and to reclaim a timely human capacity—Truth Speech.

Reprinted from the author’s Substack

Mattias Desmet is a professor of psychology at Ghent University and author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism. He articulated the theory of mass formation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Review of Benjamin Abelow’s “How the West Brought War to Ukraine”

I first came across Benjamin Abelow’s analysis of the Ukraine war as a lengthy article published on Medium in May.  I found the depth and thoroughness of his article impressive and complimented him on it.  When he told me that he’d expanded it into a short book, I was intrigued and offered to review it.  I was not disappointed.

Abelow’s overall argument as expressed in the overview of the book is that in the world in which we live, countries that are able, will use the means they have available to defend what they perceive to be their national security interests, including force.  This includes deterring or repelling hostile countries from encroaching on their border and near abroad.  The prime defender of this concept for itself is the U.S. as reflected in the Monroe Doctrine and its defense during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The Monroe Doctrine, as stated by U.S. officials in recent years, is still considered to be in full force.  But U.S. officials refuse to recognize that other countries with the means will react similarly.

In the introduction, Abelow lays out the narrative of the war in the U.S.-led west, how that narrative is distorted and why that is so consequential. He argues that there have been many double standards and provocations by the U.S./NATO (the west) and that this has been omitted or obscured by the mainstream media and politicians, which leads average news consumers in the west to a misunderstanding of how the conflict started and evolved.  More importantly, this makes it difficult, if not impossible, to end the conflict.

In the following chapters, Abelow describes many of the provocations that led up to February 24th, including those that I’ve enumerated elsewhere, like the provision of offensive weapons to Ukraine, various military exercises that Ukraine and NATO participated in near Russia’s borders, and the installation of missile sites in Romania and Poland with nuclear offensive capability.  However, there are a couple of actions listed by Abelow that even many people who have followed events closely may have missed.  An example is two important agreements signed by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Defense Department with their counterparts in Ukraine in the summer/autumn of 2021:

[I]n August of 2021, the U.S. Secretary of Defense and the Ukrainian Minister of Defense signed the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Defense Framework.  This framework translates the NATO pronouncement [in Brussels in June of 2021 that reiterated Ukraine would join NATO] into a bilateral (U.S.-Ukraine) policy decision to change the military facts on the ground starting immediately, regardless whether Ukraine is a NATO member or not. And nine weeks after that signing, the U.S. Secretary of State and the Ukrainian foreign minister signed a similar document, the U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership.  This document, like the one signed by the Defense Department, referenced NATO’s declarations of 2008 and 2021, and it operationalized those statements bilaterally, starting immediately, regardless what happened with NATO (p.22).

The author also points out how the justification for U.S. involvement in the conflict since 2/24/22 has shifted from helping Ukraine defend itself (“a limited humanitarian effort’) to weakening Russia (p. 3).  There is a contradiction between a “limited humanitarian effort” which implies a goal of limiting death and destruction and weakening Russia which requires prolonging the war.  My thought as I read this is that if one is familiar with the Wolfowitz Doctrine, promulgated by Neoconservative Republicans and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard strategy which was influential among Democrats, this shouldn’t be surprising as both state a goal of preventing Russia (or any other country in Eurasia) from even aspiring to potentially be a competitor to U.S. unipolar power.

Abelow asks the important question of whether U.S. politicians have thought through their strategy of weakening Russia – if indeed it were successful – to its logical conclusions?  One threat from this strategy is the potential use of nuclear weapons if the Russian state were existentially threatened as perceived by its leadership.  Another is the likelihood of regime change – clearly desired in Washington – resulting in a pliable pro-western leader.  The chances of the latter are practically nil.  The U.S .political class doesn’t seem to accept that Yeltsin and the 1990’s was an historical anomaly unlikely to ever occur again.  It reflects the extent of magical thinking in Washington along with the sense of being in a time warp, assuming that circumstances are the same as they were in the 90’s.  I have read and heard enough of what many U.S. advisors on Russia and national security issues think and many seem to be mentally stuck in the immediate aftermath of the demise of the Soviet Union.

Another problematic aspect of the narrative on this conflict is that Putin is an irrational imperialist.  This assertion omits any historical context and conveniently renders the U.S./NATO as innocent and obviating any need to look at their actions for any cause-and-effect relationship. This makes diplomacy and negotiation the equivalent of appeasement.

Abelow outlines how this distorted narrative underpins a dangerous and irresponsible set of policy decisions and reactions to the events of February 24th, arguing that it is necessary to understand Putin and the Russian government’s decisions and what led to them, though understanding does not necessarily equate to agreement.

If you’re looking for a concise little book to point people to who might be open to a more balanced view of this war, Abelow’s book – with arguments soundly made in 62 pages – is it.

William Arkin: Biden Thinks Non-Nuclear Threats Will Stop Putin. His Military Doesn’t

Fallout shelter sign

By William Arkin, Newsweek, 9/30/22

Assuming that Arkin’s sources reflect any kind of accurate picture of what’s being contemplated in Washington and by the US military (Scott Ritter has criticized Arkin’s sources in the past), this sounds unhinged – especially given the fact that Ukraine is thousands of miles away from the US and has zero value to the US in terms of our national security interests. Bolding for emphasis below is mine – Natylie

The United States would “respond forcefully” to any Russian nuclear strike, President Biden said—but there’s a divide between his administration and some of his military advisers over the role of American nuclear weapons and the most effective way to deter Vladimir Putin, knowledgeable sources tell Newsweek.

“It’s the closest we’ve been to the use of nuclear weapons in over 50 years,” says one civilian working at the Omaha, Nebraska-based Strategic Command. “But I’m not so sure that we are communicating the right thing to deter Putin.”

The nuclear planner and two other senior officers who spoke to Newsweek say that President Biden favors non-nuclear options over nuclear ones, should Russia cross the nuclear threshold. The officials don’t disagree with that view, and none of them advocate any use of nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike. But to deter Putin from using nuclear weapons in the first place, the officers say, the United States needs to talk the nuclear talk—and not be held back by the fear of having to walk the walk.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” says a senior intelligence officer. “Threatening to respond forcefully and creating catastrophic consequences for Russia [without] suggesting nuclear war: Is that strong enough to deter Putin? And is it really clear? I’m not so sure.”

Because Biden and his top national security advisers can’t conceive of pressing the nuclear button short of a full-scale attack on the United States, the White House is focusing too much—in its planning and its messaging—on what it considers to be “usable” capabilities, the military officers say. The non-nuclear options include military and non-military measures, including the total economic isolation of Russia.

“We have to ponder whether other [non-nuclear] threats are powerful enough to deter Putin,” says a former bomber pilot who is now a Washington-based Pentagon officer.

The officials and the STRATCOM civilian, all with experience in nuclear planning, were granted anonymity to speak about highly sensitive matters.

‘Not a bluff’

Vladimir Putin said last week that Russia would use nuclear weapons over the Ukraine conflict if the country was directly attacked, ominously adding that “this is not a bluff.”

“In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us,” he said in a special address aired on television to announce the country’s first military mobilization since World War II.

Other Russian officials followed Putin in amplifying his nuclear threat, stressing that Moscow’s official nuclear deterrence strategy, first unveiled in June 2020, before the invasion of Ukraine, stated clearly when the nuclear threshold might be crossed. This includes the first use of nuclear weapons in response to non-nuclear attacks that threaten the “existence of the state.”

Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and the second most powerful man in Russia (Putin is the chair), said last Thursday that the county would defend itself, including with “strategic nuclear weapons,” suggesting a strike outside Ukraine and even on the United States.

“The IC doesn’t expect a nuclear strike in Ukraine itself,” the Pentagon officer tells Newsweek, referring to the intelligence community. “This is not about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon to turn the tide of the war. It is a signal, first to the United States and secondarily to NATO not to continue the war into Russia, nor to threaten Putin directly.”

On Sunday, President Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan appeared on all three major networks to emphasize the seriousness of the moment and publicly respond to Russia’s nuclear threat. Washington has “communicated directly, privately, to the Russians at very high levels that there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia if they use nuclear weapons in Ukraine,” he said on ABC News.

“If Russia crosses this line…the United States will respond decisively,” Sullivan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The Biden administration, he said, has “spelled out in greater detail exactly what that would mean” in its communications with the Kremlin.

Details about what “decisively” means have not been publicly revealed. The military sources tell Newsweek that there are subtle moves being made with regard to nuclear threats, including moving submarines and aircraft and drilling B-52 bombers. But they stress that non-nuclear military options—the use of conventional weapons and special operations, as well as cyber and space attack—are front and center, to include a decapitation strike to kill Putin in the heart of the Kremlin.

Asked to comment on whether Biden thinks a non-nuclear threat is a sufficient deterrent to Putin, and whether there is consensus on this issue between his administration and the military, the White House declined to respond specifically. Instead, a spokesperson pointed Newsweek to “Jake Sullivan’s comments on the Sunday shows this week on our messaging to Russia over nuclear weapons.”

Complicated calculation

Since the Ukraine war began in February, the number-one priority of U.S. intelligence has been to closely monitor Russian preparations for any use of nuclear weapons. At the highest level, the national security team has been contemplating what it would do if Putin escalated.

“We’ve been tabletopping different scenarios for months now,” says the Strategic Command planner. The various Russian scenarios range from a nuclear attack in Western Europe to the Russians detonating a high-altitude nuclear blast to create an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that could lead to the complete collapse of the electric grid.

The latter scenario particularly concerns nuclear planners, the STRATCOM planner says, because such an attack, while crossing the nuclear threshold, would not be a physical attack on land and thus might not be equated with a traditional nuclear attack. That would complicate the calculation of whether or not the U.S. response should automatically be nuclear.

“Not all nuclear wars would be … catastrophic; some, perhaps involving electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks using only a few high-altitude detonations or demonstration strikes of various kinds, could result in few casualties,” James Scouras has written. (Scouras is a senior scholar at the government-funded Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the former chief scientist in the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Advanced Systems and Concepts Office.) He says that not enough work has been done on EMP to understand the effects of such a strike or the role EMP might play in deterrence strategy.

This scenario—an enemy crossing the nuclear threshold does not unleash full scale nuclear war—has preoccupied nuclear decision-makers in the past few years. Not only is there the EMP option, available to both parties, but also smaller and smaller nuclear weapons, such as the new American low-yield Trident warhead on ballistic missile submarines, which many strategists think can be used in a limited response without provoking all-out nuclear war.

Because nuclear weapons have served as the singular element of deterrence throughout atomic history, the inclusion of non-nuclear options now worries senior officers who have to contend with a far more complex picture.

“Every operational plan in the DoD [Department of Defense], and every other capability we have, rests on the assumption that strategic deterrence, and in particular nuclear deterrence, will hold,” commander of U.S. Strategic Command Adm. Charles “Chas” Richard said in March at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2022 conference. That suggests that Richard, the man responsible for building the plans to deter nuclear use, worries not only that the Cold War model of nuclear deterrence might no longer hold, but that it is no longer clear what would happen if enemy nuclear weapons were actually used.

“If strategic or nuclear deterrence fails … no other plan or capability in the DoD will work as designed,” Richard said.

‘Time for a blunt hammer’

“I can tell you that we don’t see any indication that we need to change our strategic deterrent posture at this point,” White House National Security Council spokesman retired Rear Admiral John Kirby said this week in response to Putin’s latest nuclear threats. In fact, at the same time the White House is conveying the message that nuclear weapons are secondary to non-nuclear options in deterring Putin, nuclear forces (and their supporting attack elements) are being readied.

“I don’t think this is insubordination on the part of the military,” the senior intelligence officer tells Newsweek. “It’s [government] schizophrenia.” The officer says that “nuclear messaging” is taking place, even if the White House thinks there are non-nuclear ways of deterring Russia.

Admiral Richard of Strategic Command said on Wednesday, the day Putin made his nuclear weapons threat, that America was “back in the business of [planning for a possible war] with a nuclear-capable peer,” referring most immediately to Russia. “This is no longer theoretical,” he said.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the Navy “surged a bunch of ships” into the European theater, said chief of naval operations Admiral Mike Gilday at the Naval War College last month. “Many of them are still there,” he said, “including … submarines that we’ve extended.” Those submarines can fire sea-launched cruise missiles deep into Russia, either by themselves or as part of a broader nuclear and conventional campaign.

Ballistic missile submarines are on alert 24/7 and ready to strike. “Yes of course the SSBNs [ballistic missile submarines with Trident II missiles] are also on station as normal and could be employed,” a retired senior naval officer told Newsweek in August. “It’s obviously the most important serial number option that can be implemented instantly,” the officer said, using the current navy lingo to refer to large platforms and capabilities, that is, things with serial numbers.

Four North Dakota-based B-52 aircraft are also deployed forward in Europe at RAF Fairford base in the United Kingdom, though they are not carrying nuclear weapons. Two bombers operated around Norway over the last few weeks approaching Russia from the north while another pair flew over central Europe crossing into Romanian airspace, approaching Russia from the south, demonstrating the ability to attack.

To convey the nuclear threat that bombers pose, last Friday Strategic Command quietly completed a ten-day exercise at Minot air force base in North Dakota. During that exercise, called Prairie Vigilance 22, the B-52 bomber wing practiced its ability to quickly load nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missiles and conduct rapid take-offs, according to the Air Force.

“Threatening severe consequences without saying that the use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable under any circumstances, drawing a red-line … it isn’t clear that that is an adequate deterrent threat for Putin’s ears,” the Strategic Command civilian says.

“A general statement of deterrence didn’t prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine not only because Putin is reckless but also because ‘no matter what’ wasn’t the threat. It was the same as Sullivan’s threat today: ‘If you do it, we’ll respond.’ That’s not deterrence.”

“I believe in deterrence,” the senior intelligence officer tells Newsweek, “I’m just not so sure that the subtlety of our message is getting through. Now might be time for a blunt hammer approach.”

Serbian Analyst: How war in Ukraine resembles past conflict in Yugoslavia

Interview by Adriel Kasonta, Asia Times, 9/24/22

Dragana Trifković is the general director of the Center for Geostrategic Studies in Belgrade, Serbia.

On September 8, a session was held in the UN Security Council on the topic of arms delivery to Ukraine by the West.

In the introductory part of the session, Trifković spoke about the weapons that were delivered to the battlefield during the war in Yugoslavia, comparing it to the current situation in Ukraine. 

In the following interview, Trifković elaborates on that point for Asia Times.

Adriel Kasonta: We’re being told by our politicians, pundits and mainstream press that pumping more weapons into Ukraine is money worth spending, as it will likely bring peace. Yet the same people don’t seem to be rushing to offer any non-military diplomatic solution to this conflict – something that could save European economies and their people and stop unnecessary bloodshed in the brotherly conflict between Ukraine and Russia. What is the reason for this warmongering masquerading as a sincere desire to secure peace?

Draganа Trifković: The arming of Ukraine by the West, more precisely by NATO, led to the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine.

For years, Russia has warned the West that it sees the expansion of NATO toward its borders as a threat to national security. Although the détente of relations after the Cold War should have led to the pacification of passions, NATO used this situation to launch an invasion in the east. In a short time, it expanded and integrated even the former republics of the Soviet Union.

Now the West is accusing Russia of aggressive behavior, but it is hard to blame the side that voluntarily retreated 2,000 kilometers to the east without firing a shot.

In my opinion, Russia has made enormous diplomatic efforts to cooperate with the West in recent decades. But it did not [see] any results because the West did not want to talk but ignored Russia and belittled the right of that country to have its own interests. That’s how we got to today’s situation.

The arming of Ukraine leads to further aggravation of relations and poses a danger of a direct conflict between NATO and Russia. The European Union is suffering huge losses due to the conflict with Russia, and the sanctions have a counter-effect. I think it will be especially pronounced during the winter.

Unfortunately, European political elites behave irresponsibly towards their own citizens, and such behavior leads to conflict between political elites and citizens whose interests they are supposed to represent. I think the reason is the lack of sovereignty of the EU and European countries.

AK: During your testimony at the United Nations Security Council session on September 8, you drew a parallel between the current conflict in Ukraine and the one that took place on the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Would you be so kind as to expand on that?

DT: At the session of the UN Security Council, I spoke about the similarities between the war in Yugoslavia and the one happening now in Ukraine. Although almost 30 years have passed since the war in Yugoslavia, similar effects of external influence can be seen in Ukraine and should not be ignored.

Even before the beginning of the conflict on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, the West began to arm Croatia and then the Bosnian Muslims. Both sides were in conflict with the Serbs, but there was also mutual conflict. So everyone fought against everyone.

The West supplied Croats and Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina with vast quantities of weapons, even during an embargo, which was a direct violation of international law. However, that was not all. Western private military companies trained the Croatian and Muslim armies but also commanded operations, for example, the operations of ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia called “Flash” and “Storm.”

Advisers from Croatia instructed Ukraine several times on how to cleanse the Russian population using the same recipe. Many volunteers from terrorist organizations in the Middle East also came to Bosnia and Herzegovina through the West.

For example, the El Mujahedin unit was formed, which fought as part of the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was made up of warriors from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Syria and others. Some of those warriors later went to Iraq and Syria to fight in the Islamic State units.

It is also worth noteing here that Yugoslavia was under severe sanctions from the West, which affected the population the most. The concluded peace agreements led to the de-escalation of the conflict, but neither side was satisfied with them. Permanent solutions have not been achieved to date.

It is also necessary to mention Kosovo and Metohija, the southern Serbian province that seceded after the bombing of Serbia in 1999. NATO launched aggression against Serbia, without the approval of the UN Security Council, under the pretext of preventing violations of the human rights of Kosovo Albanians. However, the Kosovar Albanians had autonomy guaranteed by the constitution, the right to use their language and culture, schools with the Albanian language and guaranteed participation in the republic’s authorities.

Unfortunately, a similar arrangement was taken off the table for the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine. Still, NATO did not decide to bomb Kiev because of it but instead encouraged them in the violation of all human rights and violence against their own population.

The double standards applied by the West are visible here. The parallels are that the West was a critical actor in the Yugoslav conflict and the Ukrainian conflict, where it directly participated in the battle with the help of a hybrid way of warfare.

AK: What could be the consequences of a large influx of weapons to the conflict-affected territory of Ukraine, and how this possibly affects its neighbors?

DT: The large influx of weapons into Ukraine prolongs the conflict in that country but also threatens the danger of the conflict spreading to other areas. According to the Center for Geostrategic Studies, at least 20-30% of weapons sent to Ukraine end up in third countries. There are reports that some of the weapons from Ukraine ended up in the Balkans, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Metohija. In addition, some of the weapons ended up in other EU countries, most likely in the hands of terrorists.

As I have already mentioned, a fragile peace has been established in the Balkans, and there is a constant danger of a re-escalation of unresolved conflicts. This situation puts [all of] Europe in danger, especially if we consider the growing dissatisfaction of citizens, social unrest, the large number of migrants who have come to the EU in recent years, and the unpredictable economic and energy stability.

These facts can quickly escalate the conflict in other European countries, not only in the Balkans. For now, I do not see an initiative by the European Union to move from the issue of armaments to the problem of solving the numerous causes of possible conflicts.

AK: It is a well-known fact that under humanitarian law, combatants should not direct attacks against civilians or civilian infrastructure and take all necessary steps to avoid, or at least minimize, the loss of civilian life. Yet, according to a report published by Amnesty International last month, “Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians.”

Would you agree that human rights and humanitarian law have been bastardized and weaponized by the US and its various propaganda groups portraying themselves as independent NGOs and think-tanks? What does it mean for the protection of human rights around the world?

DT: The big problem is that many NGOs do not work independently. These organizations rely on [significant] donations from the nation-states that give them orders. Plenty of precedents relating to the production of “evidence” (reports) were then used to demonize authorities unfriendly to the West.

Similarly, think-tanks also depend on taxpayers’ money. As a matter of fact, many of these are closely linked to the military-industrial complex. The latter is tasking think-tanks with the production of policy papers which are then distributed to lawmakers to orient foreign policy in favor of US intervention.

Think-tanks usually are composed of former senior security officials who practice the “revolving door.”

Notable examples include William Walker (Greater Albania lobbyist), Dick Cheney (Halliburton), Lloyd Austin (Lockheed Martin), Frank Carlucci (Carlyle group), but also former French chief of staff [Pierre] de Villiers, who immediately joined the Boston Group after resigning in July 2017.

Such was the case during the Yugoslav wars when reports against Serbia were fabricated. Let’s say a turn in the international community’s attitude regarding Kosovo and Metohija was caused by a report on the so-called massacre in the village of Račak, where the Serbian security forces fought against terrorists from the Kosovo Liberation Army.

The international forces on the ground, especially the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] mission headed by the American agent William Walker, banned investigation into the case. They ordered that killed terrorists be stripped of their uniforms and dressed in civilian clothes, and then announced that Serbian security forces had killed civilians.

Although no investigation was conducted and no evidence was established, Western media accused Serbia of killing civilians, not mentioning that they were terrorists. Human Rights Watch, the OSCE and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) confirmed such claims without any evidence, although appointed forensic experts claimed William Walker forced them to falsify reports.

AK: The Center for Geostrategic Studies, which you manage, recently sent a letter to the UN Human Rights Committee, the Council of Europe, the Red Cross and other institutions and organizations dealing with humanitarian law, where it has been highlighted that the Ukrainian army is using weapons prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. How did CGS obtain this information, and what are the weapons in question?

DT: Experts from the Center for Geostrategic Studies and I have visited war-torn areas in Ukraine several times. Our rule is not to write about military conflicts from secondary sources but to personally investigate and verify the facts on the ground. This need is also driven by the example of Yugoslavia, where all the mainstream media turned against Serbia.

The media campaign being waged against Russia today is identical to the one we went through. Many journalists who described the events of the war did not witness those events but took the information from other sources.

In Izyum, we had the opportunity to verify the use of various shells that hit civilian objects, including those with cluster munitions. The regional hospital in Izyum received wounded civilians almost every day from April to July, which was confirmed by the hospital’s chief doctor, Aleksandar Božkov. Some of the civilians have been evacuated to Russia for further treatment.

In July, several missile attacks … in the Donetsk region were carried out on the civilian population and infrastructure by the Ukrainian army in Elenovka and Aleksandrovka. The colony where prisoners of war from the Azov Battalion were housed was also attacked.

I had the opportunity to talk to some of those who survived. They confirmed that the attack was carried out at night, and 53 prisoners were killed and 75 wounded. Military experts showed us the remains of parts of the rocket.

Then, at the end of July, the Ukrainian army targeted the center of the densely populated city of Donetsk. On that occasion, the military used NATO-produced Uragan missiles equipped with cluster munitions. Each rocket contained a large quantity of banned PMF-1 Lepestok anti-personnel mines. It completely paralyzed the city and the residents’ supply of food and water for several days.

We concluded that the Ukrainian side perceives civilians, as well as prisoners of war, as legitimate targets and is acting to achieve as many victims as possible among them, which goes against all the rules of war and international humanitarian law.

AK: Was there any response to the mentioned letter?

DT: Unfortunately, we did not receive a single response to our letter, which was sent to more than 10 addresses, including the UN Human Rights Committee, the Council of Europe, and the Red Cross. It is an appeal directly related to humanitarian law, and the question arises as to why international institutions are not reacting. I must admit that this is not the first case.

We had previously addressed international institutions on other issues but were left without an answer. For example, the Center for Geostrategic Studies wrote several times to Ms Dunja Mijatović, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, asking her to investigate the violation of the religious rights of the citizens of Montenegro, as well as the continuous violence against Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija by Kosovo Albanians. Apart from the notification that the letter had arrived, there were no other reactions.

Namely, we have not been informed that the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights has undertaken anything to protect vulnerable citizens or at least draw the public’s attention to the fact that this is happening. I think that it is necessary to reform international institutions so that they can perform their function again. Many non-governmental organizations should take responsibility for initiating these reforms.

AK: Is it fair to say that European governments are violating their “Common Position” rules that ban licensing of arms exports in a situation when they violate international humanitarian law? If so, then what is the reason for this violation?

DT: I think the answer lies in a total change of paradigm as it relates to the collective West’s own observance of its vaunted rule of law. The advanced decomposition through the takeover of state bureaucracy and organs by private interests has revealed the true nature of Western states today: corporate fascist techno entities.

Thus when these entities’ citizens become mere variables within the larger purpose of maintaining their positions against an emerging Eurasian bloc, respect for the rule of law (which used to be the West’s trademark self-characterization) is discarded.

The West has simply intensified the practice of exporting state violence on behalf of corporate interests. Therefore, the rule of law and democracy exist in the West today only on paper. Due to the abuse of humanitarian law and democracy by the West, we have reached a position where trust in fundamental human values is lost along with confidence in institutions.

Adriel Kasonta is a London-based political risk consultant and lawyer. He is an expert at the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) in Moscow and former chairman of the International Affairs Committee at the oldest conservative think tank in the UK, Bow Group.