Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 8

FAIR: Media Largely Ignored Gaza Famine When There Was Time to Avert Mass Starvation

By Julie Hollar, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), 7/29/25

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Even as media report more regularly on starvation in Gaza, coverage still tends to obscure responsibility—as with this CNN headline (7/26/25) blaming the baby’s death on the “starvation crisis” rather than on the US-backed Israeli government.

The headlines are increasingly dire.

“Child Dies of Malnutrition as Starvation in Gaza Grows” (CNN, 7/21/25)“More Than 100 Aid Groups Warn of Starvation in Gaza as Israeli Strikes Kill 29, Officials Say” (AP, 7/23/25)“No Formula, No Food: Mothers and Babies Starve Together in Gaza” (NBC, 7/25/25)“Five-Month-Old Baby Dies in Mother’s Arms in Gaza, a New Victim of Escalating Starvation Crisis” (CNN, 7/26/25)“Gaza’s Children Are Looking Through Trash to Avoid Starving” (New York, 7/28/25)

This media coverage is urgent and necessary—and criminally late.

Devastatingly late to care

An informative Wall Street Journal chart (7/27/25) shows the complete cutoff of food into Gaza at the beginning of 2025—a genocidal policy decision by Israel that was not accompanied by increased coverage in US media of famine in the Strip.

Since the October 7 attacks, Israel has severely restricted humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, using starvation of civilians as a tool of war, a war crime for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant have been charged by the International Criminal Court. Gallant proclaimed a “complete siege” of Gaza on October 9, 2023: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”

Aid groups warned of famine conditions in parts of Gaza as early as December 2023. By April 2024, USAID administrator Samantha Power (CNN, 4/11/24) found it “likely that parts of Gaza, and particularly northern Gaza, are already experiencing famine.”

A modest increase in food aid was allowed into the Strip during a ceasefire in early 2025. But on March 2, 2025, Netanyahu announced a complete blockade on the occupied territory. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declared that there was “no reason for a gram of food or aid to enter Gaza.”

After more than two months of a total blockade, Israel on May 19 began allowing in a trickle of aid through US/Israeli “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) centers (FAIR.org, 6/6/25)—while targeting with snipers those who came for it—but it is not anywhere near enough, and the population in Gaza is now on the brink of mass death, experts warn. According to UNICEF (7/27/25):

The entire population of over 2 million people in Gaza is severely food insecure. One out of every three people has not eaten for days, and 80% of all reported deaths by starvation are children.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 147 Gazans have died from malnutrition since the start of Israel’s post–October 7 assault. Most have been in the past few weeks.

Mainstream politicians are finally starting to speak out—even Donald Trump has acknowledged “real starvation” in Gaza—but as critical observers have pointed out, it is devastatingly late to begin to profess concern. Jack Mirkinson’s Discourse Blog (7/28/25) quoted Refugees International president Jeremy Konyndyk:

I fear that starvation in Gaza has now passed the tipping point and we are going to see mass-scale starvation mortality…. Once a famine gathers momentum, the effort required to contain it increases exponentially. It would now take an overwhelmingly large aid operation to reverse the coming wave of mortality, and it would take months.

And there are long-term, permanent health consequences to famine, even when lives are saved (NPR, 7/29/25). Mirkinson lambasted leaders like Cory Booker and Hillary Clinton for failing to speak up before now: “It is too late for them to wash the blood from their hands.”

Barely newsworthy

Major US media, likewise, bear a share of responsibility for the hunger-related deaths in Gaza. The conditions of famine have been out in the open for well over a year, and yet it was considered barely newsworthy in US news media.

A MediaCloud search of online US news reports mentioning “Gaza” and either “famine” or “starvation” shows that since Netanyahu’s March 2 announcement of a total blockade—which could only mean rapidly increasing famine conditions—there was a brief blip of media attention, and then even less news coverage than usual for the rest of March and April. Media attention rose modestly in May, at a time when the world body that classifies famines announced in May that one in five people in Gaza were “likely to face starvation between May 11 and September 30″—in other words, that flooding Gaza with aid was of the highest urgency.

But as aid continued to be held up, and Gazans were shot by Israeli snipers when attempting to retrieve the little offered them, that coverage eventually dwindled, until the current spike that began on July 21.

FAIR (e.g., 3/22/24, 4/25/25, 5/16/25, 5/16/25) has repeatedly criticized US media for  coverage that largely absolves Israel of responsibility for its policy of forced starvation—what Human Rights Watch (5/15/25) called “a tool of extermination”—implemented with the backing of the US government.

The current headlines reveal that the coverage still largely diverts attention from Israeli (let alone US) responsibility, but it’s a positive development that major US news media are beginning to devote serious coverage to the issue. Imagine how different this all could have looked had they given it the attention it has warranted, and the accountability it has demanded, when alarms were first raised.

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Putin’s Conditions for Peace Deal: Ukraine Gives Up Donbas, No NATO, and No Western Troops

YouTube link here.

By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, 8/22/25

Reuters reported on Thursday that Russia’s demands for a peace deal in Ukraine include Ukrainian forces withdrawing from the Donbas, a guarantee that Ukraine won’t join NATO, and for Ukraine to keep Western troops out of the country.

Russian sources told Reuters that Putin had compromised on his initial conditions, which included the Ukrainian withdrawal from the territory in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Under the current offer, Russia is willing to freeze the lines there and also return small amounts of territory it controls in Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly rejected the idea of ceding the territory Ukrainian forces still control in the Donbas, and European leaders appear to be backing his position.

When it comes to NATO, the Reuters report said that Moscow is seeking a legally binding pledge from the alliance that it wouldn’t move further eastwards. A guarantee that Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO was one of Russia’s main demands to avoid the invasion, but the Biden administration refused to engage on the issue.

While the Trump administration has ruled out the idea of Ukraine joining NATO as part of a potential peace deal, the alliance’s leadership is still insisting on its “open door” policy. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said this week that Ukraine is on an “irreversible path” to NATO membership.

Russia’s other condition is related to the security guarantees for Ukraine that are being discussed by the US and its European allies, who are insisting on some sort of arrangement where European troops are deployed to Ukraine and backed by US air power. But Russia has made clear repeatedly that the idea is completely unacceptable, and the insistence on it could tank the peace process.

Sources speaking to Reuters floated the idea of some kind of three way deal between the US, Russia, and Ukraine on security guarantees or revisiting an idea from short-lived peace talks in 2022 that would have involved the five permanent members of the UN Security Council providing the guarantees, which was also brought up by Russian Foreign Minsiter Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday.

While Russia continues to engage in negotiations, it has also made clear that it’s willing to continue the war if its conditions aren’t met. “There are two choices: war or peace, and if there is no peace, then there is more war,” one of the sources told Reuters.

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

***

Hopes Fade on ‘Breakthrough’ in Ukraine Talks, Russia Keeps Gaining Land

Russia Matters, 8/22/25

Despite the past week’s initial hopes that Donald Trump’s subsequent meetings with Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders would advance talks on the Ukraine conflict toward a breakthrough, the negotiations on the subject remained riddled with contradictions and stalled outcomes as of Aug. 22. For instance, Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff claimed Putin was amenable to “Article 5-like” guarantees for Kyiv, yet Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov insisted Moscow must hold veto power over any guarantees, suggesting that the P5 should provide them. Lavrov also discouraged Trump’s public hopes for quickly organizing a Zelenskyy-Putin summit, making clear Russia would presently agree to negotiate only at levels lower than heads of states. Meanwhile, European leaders flatly rejected giving Russia the veto on security guarantees, while Zelenskyy also ruled out China as a postwar security guarantor. It remains unclear whether and how these differences1 can be reconciled.

In the period of July 22–Aug. 19, Russian forces gained 237 square miles of Ukrainian territory, which marks a 2% decrease from the 241 square miles these forces gained in the period of July 15–Aug. 12, 2025, according to the latest issue of RM’s The Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. Comparing shorter periods, such as the past week to the preceding week, shows that in the period of Aug. 12–19, 2025, Russia gained 25 square miles of Ukrainian territory (roughly one Manhattan island), which marks a 67% decrease from the 76 square miles Russian forces gained in the period of Aug. 5–12, 2025. One of the reasons Russia has been able to make gains every week2 is that it has more personnel than Ukraine to employ in combat. “Today, Russia recruits about 1,000 soldiers a day,” which is “about twice as high as Ukraine’s” recruitment, according to The New York Times.*

A map that Trump showed to Zelenskyy during their Aug. 18 meeting indicates that Russian forces control 99% of the Luhansk region and 76% of the Donetsk region, which together constitute Donbass. U.S. intelligence estimates on whether and when Russia could take the rest of Donbass vary. “One assessment posits that Putin could seize all of Donetsk by October. Another predicts a far harder and inconclusive slog,“ according to Axios.

Russia has more than doubled the number of missiles and drones it has fired monthly into Ukraine since January, according to the Wall Street Journal. Most recently, the night of Aug. 20 to 21 saw Russia launch the third largest strike of the war, launching 574 drones and 40 missiles against 11 locations in Ukraine, according to ISW. The number of Russian long-distance strikes can be expected to increase further, and it is likely that more of them will reach targets in Ukraine as Russian drone and missile production increases (in fact, Russia may soon fire 2,000 drones a day), further attriting Ukraine’s already strained air defenses.3

India is under increasing pressure from the Trump administration over its continued purchases of Russian oil, with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro expecting punitive tariffs of 50% on imports from the South Asian nation to kick in next week. But is such pressure justified or are the Indian leaders right to complain about “double standards in Washington, which continues to buy Russian uranium hexafluoride, and in the EU, which remains a key buyer of Russian liquefied natural gas,” as the Wall Street Journal reported? Here are three facts which may help you decide if Indian leaders have a point: First, the U.S. continues to import enriched uranium from Russia. In fact, in 2024, the U.S. imported $624 million worth of Russian HEU, according to Comtrade’s international trade data. Second, the U.S. imported $1.3 billion of fertilizers from Russia, according to the New York Times. Third, Russia was the second largest source of gas imported by the European Union in 2024, with Russian supplies to the EU increasing by 18% that year. The EU also purchased $8.5 billion worth of LNG from Russia that year, according to CREA and The Economic Times.

***

US Approves European-Funded Long-Range Cruise Missile Deal for Ukraine

By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, 8/25/25

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that the US has approved a deal that will arm Ukraine with thousands of Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) air-launched missiles, which have a significantly further range than other missiles that the US has sent into the proxy war.

Two US officials told the Journal that the ERAMs can hit targets up to 280 miles away, nearly 100 miles further than the range of the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), munitions the US began providing Ukraine in 2023.

The deal will provide Ukraine with 3,350 ERAMs as part of an $850 million weapons package that will mostly be funded by European countries. This year, NATO began a new scheme to provide Ukraine with more US weapons in deals funded by other NATO allies, known as the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative.

The ERAMs are expected to arrive in Ukraine within six weeks, and the US officials said that the Ukrainian military will need Pentagon approval to use them.

The Journal report said that the Trump administration had been quietly blocking ATACMS strikes on Russian territory, which the Biden administration first greenlit toward the end of 2024. At the time, the US-backed ATACMS strikes marked a significant escalation of the proxy war, and Moscow responded by altering its nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.

The Journal report said that the Trump administration hasn’t allowed any Ukrainian ATACMS strikes on Russian territory since late spring, but the ERAMs deal signals that the US may be prepared to support missile attacks inside Russia once again. The news comes as there has been little progress toward a peace deal following the summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Gilbert Doctorow: Europe capitulates: treacherous leadership kneels before Trump and willingly destroys the prosperity of its citizenry

CCI posted this article in its entirety with the permission of the author.

By Gilbert Doctorow, Center for Citizen Initiatives, 8/7/25

Today’s European media carry the story of the agreement on tariffs that Ursula von der Leyen reached with Donald Trump at their Scotland meeting. In France, we hear that not only Marine Le Pen, on the Right, but Emmanuel Macron’s Centrist prime minister Francois Bayrou denounced the agreement, suggesting that France will oppose ratification. German chancellor Friedrich Merz called it ‘a black day for Europe’ but hinted that he will reluctantly back the agreement as the best that could be achieved under the circumstances.

Today’s leading French-language daily in Belgium Le Soir carried a front page editorial on the subject. It stated openly that this trade deal will greatly damage national economies across Europe which are already experiencing stagnation for more than two years. They predict that large flows of investment will now be directed by European manufacturers to the United States, meaning that jobs will be created there while they are lost here. They place the blame for the unequal relations with the USA which made it possible for Trump to win the tariff war on Europe’s excessive dependence on exports to maintain growth instead of promoting domestic demand. However, the editors willfully ignore the reality that the Chinese economy is also export driven and is doing very nicely, with more than 5% annual GDP growth.

The editorial board makes no mention of the way the trade deal ensures that European goods will be uncompetitive on world markets for years to come by obliging the EU to purchase still greater quantities of American gas and oil. If the deindustrialization of the German economy can be attributed to any single factor today it is precisely the switch from cheap Russian pipeline gas for very expensive LNG gas from the United States, Qatar and other global suppliers.

The Soir editorial notes that part of the logic in agreeing to Trump’s trade terms was to keep the American president engaged with them. Engaged over what? The editorial gives a slight hint at what I see also in other European media: that the engagement is over continued military and financial support to Ukraine in its war with Russia. There, indeed, is the key to understanding how and why European economic sovereignty is being sacrificed with only a few tears shed.

Note the disappearance from European media of their recent gloating over an imagined U.S. brain drain to these shores as American professors seek to immigrate to Europe in protest over Trump’s threats to university independence.

We cannot be certain that von der Leyen will triumph over all the objectors to what she has agreed with Trump. However, the objectors may be bought off by some small corrections to her deal at the margins. France, for example, may get a better tariff on its champagne and Bordeaux wines.

In an essay on these pages a few days ago, I referred to my recommendation to Europe’s leaders 10 years ago when they were first seriously discussing creating a European army: “what Europe needs is not a new army but a new foreign policy.” The same kind of recommendation is in order today: “what Europe needs is not stimulus to domestic consumption to bring back growth but a new foreign policy.”

The new foreign policy must be based first on a glance at the map, at who is Europe’s big neighbor to the East.

Russia happens to be a nuclear super power that is fast becoming a conventional weapons super power while also becoming a major global economic force. Russia in the last year roared past Germany to become Europe’s largest economy and the fourth largest economy in the world. Common sense and a Realist approach to the conduct of international affairs dictate that some accommodation has to be sought with that neighbor rather than the ongoing policy of building barbed wire and 4 meter high concrete barriers against the neighbor with whom you do not deign to talk and allocating hundreds of billions of euros to expanding European production of tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles, drones and air defense units.

I have been rereading my notes on a very interesting conference in Varna, Bulgaria that I attended ten years ago. The sponsor was the Bulgarian office of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the think tank of the SPD, the Social Democrats of Germany. The keynote address was delivered by a certain Hannes Swoboda, an Austrian Member of the European Parliament who had for 3 years been chaired the bloc of Socialists and Democrats, the second largest group of deputies in the Parliament. Swoboda was no apologist for Putin, but he told us all that Europe had to rethink how it deals with Russia. The values based approach to international dealings is fine within the European Union, he said. Each Member State can and should intervene in the internal affairs of other Member States when they violate shared values. But de facto, Europe practiced Realpolitik in its dealings with many countries around the world, for example the Gulf States. Why, he asked, cannot the same common sense approach be applied to its relations with Russia instead of the hectoring, the attempts to punish and isolate Russia for not living up to Europe’s values?

Why indeed?

The fact of the matter today is that Mr Trump’s USA is showing in every way that it is no friend of Europe, that it sees Europe as a geopolitical and economic competitor and will do anything to trip up European ambitions in both sectors.

Today’s European presidents and prime ministers who do not respond to this threat from the USA and do not respond to the opportunity for advantageous trading relations with Russia to obtain, as in the past, critical raw materials at prices that are affordable, such ‘leaders’ are enemies of their own peoples and should be voted out of office or impeached at the earliest opportunity.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Brian McDonald: Putin’s no ideologue: His creed is Russia First

By Brian McDonald, Substack, 8/21/25

By the time Michael McFaul gets round to flogging his latest volume (Autocrats vs. Democrats), the title alone has already done the heavy lifting for him. It’s the sort of binary that reads well on a publisher’s spring list, even if it crumbles like a cheap biscuit once it meets reality. And his insistence that Vladimir Putin is some kind of messianic ideologue is a fine example of this; neat for a blurb, but hopeless for a diagnosis.

It also confirms the notion that he’s become a Walmart Anne Applebaum. A cheap tribute act to a veteran master of calculated myopia on Moscow and beyond.

If Putin has a guiding star, it isn’t some grand creed stretching from the Neva to the Urals. Rather it’s much simpler, and tougher to blunt: let’s call it Russia first. The rest (Orthodoxy, talk of “values,” the occasional flirt with tradition) is merely paint on the bonnet. Underneath, the engine is all about survival and jockeying for advantage. Of course, there’s an ideological patina; the essays about the ‘Russian world,’ and the talk of civilisational clashes with the West. But these serve more as instruments than ends, leading a vocabulary of legitimacy rather than a vision to die for.

He picked it up in the wreckage of the Soviet Union, as he watched a superpower bleed out with shelves bare, figures fiddled and whole ministries running on lies. And then the humiliation of its grandees or their families heading west with their bags packed. The truth was hammered home: any faith that leaves your own pensioners hungry while you keep Cuba on the drip is a form of suicide.

And he saw the other imperial capital crack too, with misguided adventures in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan leaving Washington’s sermons of democracy turned to rubble. Of course, hubris can rot a state faster than any tank battalion.

When Joe Biden decided to hold his grand “Summit for Democracy” in 2021 and pointedly left out allies like Hungary, Putin will have seen it for what it was: an attempt to sort the world into neat ideological blocs, as if Orban in Budapest and Merkel in Berlin were playing the same sport. The Soviet Union long tried that sort of categorisation; and it didn’t end well.

Some Western pundits like to believe that Putin’s sudden turn after 2011, with a choke on the media after Dmitry Medvedev’s relatively freewheeling interlude and the lurch into family-values sermonising, was the blossoming of some long-hidden conviction. In truth, it looked more like a counter-insurgency kit cobbled together on the run, and meant to be a hard break with Vladislav Surkov’s theatre-state. Bolotnaya Square had filled with the largest crowds Moscow had seen since the nineties, and the Kremlin didn’t read them as citizens finding their voice but as Washington dusting off its colour-revolution manual. Hillary Clinton was at State, Obama in the White House, and on the stage were Alexey Navalny, once a nationalist outflanking Putin from the right, and Garry Kasparov, both lifting their lines from the Merkel-Obama hymn book. Even the pampered darlings of state TV, Ksenia Sobchak and Vladimir Pozner among them, drifted into the square for a cameo, as if to remind the Kremlin how thin the loyalty could be once the crowd began to roar.

Two years later came the Kiev Maidan, which followed the Orange Revolution in 2004, and the Rose in Georgia a year earlier. Each one, at least in Moscow’s telling, was carried on the shoulders of Western-funded NGOs and political fixers flown in from abroad and it hardly escaped the Kremlin’s notice that the US media quickly tried to label Bolotnaya the ‘Snow revolution.” For a government paranoid about systemic security, after the turmoil of the 20th century, the signal was blunt enough: liberalism wasn’t just another faction inside the house; it had turned into a breach in the wall. The conservative turn allowed Putin to brand these forces as alien to Russia, even treacherous… people willing to sell the country to the West for a place at someone else’s table.

All the talk of birth rates and “non-traditional propaganda” were just fronts, handy covers for something plainer: bolting the ideological doors before another colour revolution tried to walk through them.

If Putin were the stiff ideologue those playing to the gallery keep sketching, the guest list would be much tidier than the far from smooth reality. What you see is a patchwork quilt pulled from every conceivable ragged corner. You’ve got Belarus the hard dictatorship stitched beside Kyrgyzstan, which is half a democracy and half a shambles. On the friends side of the ledger can be found North Korea and China propped up on one flank, with Israel and Brazil grinning from the other. One week the Kremlin is bowing to Gulf monarchs, the next it’s raising toasts with Latin leftists. And India is nearer now than it’s ever been, regardless of the fact it’s the world’s largest democracy. No gospel binds that mess together and it looks more like the hand of a 19th-century statesman marooned in a nuclear age, playing the cards as they tumble, and not caring a damn if they match.

This is why the “Cold War” frame continues to mislead. Moscow isn’t selling its dogma like the Comintern once did and it doesn’t need converts. All the Kremlin really wants is space to breathe at home and partners it can count on abroad. Some will say this pragmatism is a liturgy in its own right, and you could call it the playbook of survival. Maybe they’re right, but it’s a far cry from the holy mission McFaul tries to hang on Putin.

Of course, you can throw sanctions at Moscow and lock it out of SWIFT, and cut it off from capital markets, but there’s no Warsaw Pact to dismantle and no utopian Soviet dream to unpick.

The trouble with McFaul’s reading, and with much of the Western mind in policy circles, is the hunger to hammer Russia into a single mould. First comes the Cold War script: Moscow cast again as the ideological foe and its principles written off as incompatible with ours. Then, after 1991, it switches to the transition-state tale: Russia as a misfiring liberal project that can be nudged back onto the “right” path. Now, in McFaul’s telling, it’s back to the first version, only painted with 21st-century anxieties about “illiberal nationalism.”

McFaul’s Autocrats vs. Democrats might sell because it flatters liberals’ need for a morality tale. But morality tales are for children and think-tank panels. Putin doesn’t view his mission as being about converting you, nor is he concerned with saving your soul. Instead, he believes he’s here to make sure Russia survives, and even thrives, on terms you may not like. That’s his ideology.

BERTRAND Critiques Hudson Institute Report: China after Communism, preparing for a post-CCP China

By Arnaud Bertrand in Switzerland, Intellinews, July 29, 2025

It may be one of the most insane reports ever produced by a US think-tank, and that’s saying something.

The Hudson Institute has just published a 128-page plan entitled “China after Communism: Preparing for a Post-CCP China“, edited by Miles Yu (director of the Institute’s China Centre), which provides detailed operational plans to bring about the collapse of the Chinese regime through systematic information operations, financial warfare and covert influence campaigns, followed by detailed protocols for post-collapse management by the United States, including military occupation, territorial reorganisation, and the installation of a political and cultural system subservient to the United States.

I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry about it.

Cry at the arrogance and casualness with which they write about overthrowing the government of the world’s largest economy, the main economic lifeline for most of the planet and a quarter of the human race.

Laugh at this cartoonish wickedness of believing that a declining empire, which can’t even maintain its own infrastructure and has lost every major conflict it has provoked in the last two decades, could orchestrate and manage the controlled collapse of a country of China’s importance.

Regardless, the report is fascinating to read because it reveals so much about the sick soul of the American empire and some of the main reasons for its decline – a comical detachment from reality, an inability to learn from past failures, a zero-sum worldview, a denial of sovereignty in others, and, more than anything else, the fact that this report screams despair.

There is a common pattern well-known to political sociologists: when groups face existential threats to their status and identity, they often exhibit compensatory extremism – becoming caricatured versions of themselves to defend themselves against irrelevance. This was, for example, the case of the Southern Confederacy before the Civil War, which responded to growing abolitionist pressure by becoming more fanatically committed to slavery and “the honour of the South” than it had ever been before.

This Hudson Institute report reads a little like this: Witnessing the end of American primacy, some members of the imperial establishment are transforming themselves into a grotesque caricature of themselves, taking every toxic aspect of American foreign policy and amplifying it to absurd extremes, becoming more imperially ambitious and delusional than ever before, planning interventions of unprecedented scale and audacity, as if doubling down on their worst impulses might somehow restore their waning dominance.

As such, this report should not be read as a true policy blueprint – its analysis of China is so detached from reality as to be completely worthless. Rather, it should be read as an anthropological specimen, a fascinating window into the fever dreams and neuroses of a dying empire, where compensatory extremism strips away all pretence and reveals what US hegemony has always been – just as the Confederacy’s fanatical focus on slavery exposed the moral rot that had always defined that system.

So let’s examine this artifact piece by piece and see what it reveals about the dying empire that produced it.

Below is a summary of the main points in the rest of the article:

Core criticisms

Misreading Chinese History and National Identity
The report assumes Chinese citizens want US-led “liberation” from the Communist Party, ignoring:China’s “century of humiliation” under Western colonial powers.The Communist Party’s legitimacy stemming from restoring sovereignty, not just economic growth.

“The idea that the Chinese people are secretly dying to see the Communist Party collapse… is beyond absurd: it represents the exact opposite of everything around which the Chinese national psyche is organised.”

Advocacy of hyper-colonialism
The report proposes measures worse than 19th-century colonialism:Support for secessionist regions to fragment China.Nuremberg-style tribunals and rewriting of Chinese history.Military occupation with “20 US Special Operations Forces” in every major city.US restructuring of China’s financial system and constitution.

“In short, the report proposes colonialism on steroids.”

Instrumentalising Ethnic Tensions
The document suggests using separatist movements purely for American gain:Xinjiang independence is encouraged, but Tibetan independence discouraged – because of Indian sensitivities.

“These are mere tools to be exploited for American geopolitical interests.”

A Vision of ‘Controlled Fragmentation’
The plan is to:Break China into manageable units.Keep it economically useful but politically weak.

“They want to create an ‘ideal point’ of permanent subordination for China.”

Hubris of “managing civilisation”

The report outlines a technocratic blueprint for rebuilding Chinese society:A 151-201 person convention to write a new constitution for 1.4bn people.Governance suggestions treated as if China were a business merger.

“This is hubris of the highest order… as if one of the youngest nations on the planet can somehow teach governance to a 5,000-year-old civilisation.”

The author points to the failures of US nation-building in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya as evidence of the folly.

Projection and delusion

The report accuses China of coercion, corruption, and economic fragility – yet the US exhibits many of these traits more acutely:Declining global trust in US leadership.A weakened domestic economy and crumbling infrastructure.Low public trust: “literally single digit”.

“The somewhat rogue world state they describe as China is just themselves, to a much greater extent than China.”

China, by contrast:Has 95.5% central government approval (Harvard study, 2016).Grew 5.4% in Q1 2025, while the US shrank by -0.5%.

Final judgment

The author sees the report as:

A reflection of imperial nostalgia and delusion.Evidence that American strategists cannot accept decline.A naked expression of imperial ambition without pretence.

“They may have accidentally produced the most honest document ever written about the American empire.”

Arnaud Bertrand is an entrepreneur and China analyst. Can be found on X @RnaudBertrand. Bertrand founded HouseTrip, a leading European vacation rental marketplace, and is the founder and CEO of Me & Qi, one of the premier English-language platforms for Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is also a graduate and honorary professor of Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland.

Kit Klarenberg: US backed ethnic cleansing of Serbs, top diplomat secretly told Croat leader

By Kit Klarenberg, The Grayzone, 8/4/25

August 4 marks the 30th anniversary of Operation Storm. Little known outside the former Yugoslavia, the military campaign unleashed a genocidal cataclysm that violently expelled Croatia’s entire Serb population. Dubbed “the most efficient ethnic cleansing we’ve seen in the Balkans” by Swedish politician Carl Bildt, Croat forces rampaged UN-protected areas of the self-declared Serb Republic of Krajina, looting, burning, raping and murdering their way across the province. Up to 350,000 locals fled, many on foot, never to return. Meanwhile, thousands were summarily executed.

As these hideous scenes unfolded, UN peacekeepers charged with protecting Krajina watched without intervening. Meanwhile, US officials strenuously denied the horrifying massacres and mass displacement amounted to ethnic cleansing, let alone war crimes. NATO member state governments were far more interested in the “sophistication” of Zagreb’s military tactics. One British colonel heading a UN observer mission in the area gushed, “whoever wrote that plan of attack could have gone to any NATO staff college in North America or Western Europe and scored an A-plus.”

Widely overlooked documents reviewed by The Grayzone help explain why Croatian forces were graded so highly: Operation Storm was for all intents and purposes a NATO attack, carried out by soldiers armed and trained by the US and directly coordinated with other Western powers. Despite publicly endorsing a negotiated peace, Washington privately encouraged Zagreb to employ maximum belligerence, even as their ultranationalist Croat proxies plotted to strike with such ferocity that the country’s entire Serb population would “to all practical purposes disappear.”

In the midst of talks on a political settlement in Geneva, high-ranking Croat officials privately discussed methods to justify their coming blitzkrieg, including false flag attacks. Assured of their Western patrons’ continued backing amid the bloodshed, Croat leaders boasted that they merely needed to inform their NATO backers in advance of their plans. Once the dust settled and Croatia’s Serb population was entirely cleansed, Croat officials met in secret with US officials to celebrate their “triumph.”

Richard Holbrooke, a veteran US diplomat then serving as Assistant Secretary of State in the Bill Clinton administration, told the president of Croatia that while the US “said publicly… that we were concerned” about the situation, “privately, you knew what we wanted.” As one of Holbrooke’s aides wrote in a note the diplomat later reproduced, Croatian forces had been “hired” as Washington’s “junkyard dogs” to destroy Yugoslavia.

After expelling the newly-independent country’s Serb population, the newly-formed Croat regime could be counted on to exert US dominance not only over the Balkans, but Europe more widely. The ethnic tensions fomented by NATO in the region still simmer, and have been exploited to justify perpetual occupation.

The former Yugoslavia remains horribly scarred by Operation Storm. From NATO’s perspective, however, the military campaign provided a blueprint for subsequent proxy conflicts and military strikes. Washington has recreated the strategy of weaponizing extremist foreign fighters as shock troops in an array of theaters, from Syria to Ukraine.

Western-backed fascists seek ethnically pure Croatia

Throughout the 1980s, Western powers – in particular Britain, Germany, and the US – covertly sponsored the growth of nationalism in Yugoslavia, hoping to encourage the multiethnic federation’s breakup. Their chosen proxy in Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, was a fanatical ethnonationalist, outspoken Holocaust denier, Catholic fundamentalist, and alumni of secessionist extremist groups. These factions embarked on a terrorist rampage throughout the early 1970’s, hijacking and blowing up airliners, attacking Yugoslav diplomatic sites abroad, and in 1971 assassinating Vladimir Rolovic, Belgrade’s ambassador to Sweden.

Following an upsurge of Croatian separatist violence in Yugoslavia, Tudjman was jailed in March 1972 along with his close confederate Stepjan Mesic due to their ultranationalist views. When Zagreb held its first multi-party elections since World War II 18 years later, the pair’s Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) won a plurality of votes, and a majority of parliamentary seats. In the process, Tudjman became President, and Mesic Prime Minister. As Croatian nationalism soared, Serbs were purged en masse from state agencies.

On the campaign trail, Tudjman eagerly venerated the “Independent State of Croatia,” a Nazi-created puppet entity savagely run by local collaborators from April 1941 to May 1945, describing the fascistic construct as “an expression of the historical aspirations of the Croatian people.” Elsewhere, he openly remarked, “thank God, my wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew.”

These utterances reflected a monstrous strategy Tudjman laid out in February 1990 at a public meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, for when HDZ took power:

“[Our] basic goal… is to separate Croatia from Yugoslavia,” Tudjman explained. “If we come to power, then in the first 48 hours, while there is still euphoria, it is indispensable that we settle scores with all those who are against Croatia.”

“Lists of such persons have already been drawn up,” he continued. “Serbs in Croatia should be declared citizens of Croatia and called Orthodox Croats. The name ‘Orthodox Serb’ will be banned. The Serbian Orthodox Church will be abolished… it will be declared Croatian for those who do not move to Serbia.”

Many of Tudjman’s adherents adulated the Ustase, hardcore fascists who ruled the “Independent State of Croatia” during World War II. Their crimes ranged from executing women and the elderly by the hundred through methods including beheading, drowning. Meanwhile, the Ustase managed a network of death camps across Axis-occupied Yugoslavia, with dedicated units for children. Their ruthless barbarity towards Jews, Roma, and Serbs repulsed even their Nazi patrons. Hundreds of thousands were murdered by the Ustase, whose officer corps included the brother and father of Tudjman’s Defense Minister, Gojko Šušak.

These horrific events remained visceral for residents of the historic Serbian territory of Krajina, which was administratively assigned to the Yugoslav socialist republic of Croatia following World War II. HDZ received funding from Ustase exiles in Western countries, and immediately upon taking office renamed Zagreb’s iconic Square of the Victims of Fascism as Croatian Nobles Square, while Croat paramilitary units proudly touted Ustase chants and symbols. As the Tudjman-led government openly fanned the flames of ethnic hatred, Serbs in the fledgling country began preparing for civil war.

After interethnic fighting broke out in Croatia in March 1991, Yugoslav People’s Army units were deployed to guard Krajina, where residents declared the establishment of an autonomous Serb Republic until an international peacekeeping deal could be brokered. Yugoslavia’s then-President Borislav Jovic testified before his death the objective was “to protect the Serb territories, until a political solution [could be] found.”

Croats covertly scheme to make Serbs ‘disappear’

In August 1995, that “political solution” appeared on the brink of fruition. A dedicated UN Contact Group was conducting peace negotiations in Geneva between Krajina authorities and Zagreb. A proposal intended to bring the Croatian conflict to an end, known as Zagreb 4 or Z-4, was drafted by the EU, Russia, and the US. Washington’s ambassador to Zagreb, Peter Galbraith, played a key role in negotiating terms with Krajina-Serb leaders.

Accepted on August 3rd 1995, Z-4 envisioned Serb-majority areas in Croatia remaining part of the country, albeit with a degree of autonomy. That same day, Galbraith confirmed on local TV that “reintegration of the Serb-held areas in Croatia” had been agreed upon. Meanwhile, US mediators in Geneva declared that due to major Serb concessions, there was “no reason for Croatia to go to war.” At long last, the stage was finally set for a negotiated peace.

Upbeat Krajina-Serb officials announced they’d received assurances from Washington that it would intervene to prevent Croatian military action against Krajina if they complied with Z-4’s terms. Yet, before the day was over, Croatian officials rejected Z-4, walking out of negotiations. Operation Storm began the next morning.

Now, documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal that Tudjman never had any intention of securing peace at the conference.

Instead, the files shows that Croatia’s participation in Geneva was a ruse intended to create the illusion Zagreb was seeking a diplomatic settlement, while it secretly crafted plans for “completely [vanquishing] the enemy.” The scheme was revealed in the minutes from a July 31, 1995 meeting between Tudjman and his top military brass at the presidential palace on the Brionian Islands. During the conversation, Tudjman informed those assembled: “We have to inflict such blows that the Serbs will to all practical purposes disappear.”

“I am going to Geneva to hide this and not to talk… I want to hide what we are preparing for the day after. And we can rebut any argument in the world about how we didn’t want to talk.”

Such statements, which constitute clear and unambiguous evidence of genocidal intent, were not limited to the President. The inevitability of ethnic cleansing was admitted by Ante Gotovina, a senior general who returned to Yugoslavia to lead operation Storm after he fleeing in the early 1970s. a decisive and sustained attack on Krajina would mean that afterwards, “there won’t be so many civilians, just those who have to stay, who have no possibility of leaving,” said Gotovina. The former French foreign legion commander, who was once employed as security for France’s far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen and worked as a strikebreaker cracking down on CGT union workers, would later be acquitted for his leading role in Operation Storm by a Western-dominated international tribunal.

For those Serbs who were now trapped in a hostile ethnic enclave, Tudjman suggested a mass propaganda campaign targeting them with leaflets declaring “the victory of the Croatian Army supported by the international community,” and calling on Serbs not to flee – in an apparent attempt to lend an inclusive veneer to their proposal to forcibly displace the civilian population. “This means giving them a way out, while pretending [emphasis added] to guarantee civil rights… Use radio and television, but leaflets as well.”

The generals discussed other propaganda efforts to justify the impending attack, including false flags. Given that “every military operation must have its political justification,” Tudjman said the Serbs “should provide us with a pretext and provoke us” before the strike began. One official proposed, “we accuse them of having launched a sabotage attack against us… that’s why we were forced to intervene.” Another general suggested carrying out “an explosion as if they had struck with their airforce.”

Bill Clinton provided ‘all clearance’ for mass murder

In late 1990, Yugoslav intelligence secretly filmed Croatia’s Defense Minister Martin Spegelj covertly plotting to purge the republic’s Serb population. In one tape, he told a fellow official that anyone opposed to Zagreb’s independence should be murdered “on the spot, in the street, in the compound, in barracks, anywhere” via “[a] pistol…into the stomach.” He forecast “a civil war in which there is no mercy towards anyone, women or children,” and Serb “family homes” were dealt with using “quite simply grenades.”

Spegelj went on to openly advocate “slaughter” to “resolve” the issue of Knin, Krajina’s capital, making the city “disappear.” He boasted, “we have international recognition for that.” The US had already “offered us all possible assistance,” including “thousands of combat vehicles” and “complete arming” of 100,000 Croat soldiers “free of charge.” The desired end result? “Serbs in Croatia will never be there again.” Spegelj concluded, “we are going to create a state at all costs, if necessary, at the cost of shedding blood.”

Western support for the horrors planned and perpetrated during Operation Storm was also writ large during the meeting on July 31, 1995. There, Tudjman told his generals, “we have a friend, Germany, which consistently supports us.” The Croats just had to “inform them ahead of time” of their objectives. “In NATO as well there is also understanding of our views,” he explained, adding, “we enjoy the sympathy of the US.” In 2006, German outlet Der Spiegel confirmed that the massacres bore Washington’s fingerprints, citing Croatian military sources who claimed they’d enjoyed “direct though secret support from both the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency in planning and carrying out the ‘Storm’ offensive.”

“In preparing for the offensive, Croatian soldiers were trained at Fort Irwin in California and the Pentagon aided in planning the operation,” the outlet reported. US support went far beyond what it publicly acknowledged, which was that Croatian forces merely underwent training exercises carried out by US private military contractor MPRI, Spiegel revealed. “Immediately prior to the offensive, then-Deputy CIA Director George Tenet met with Gotovina and Tudjman’s son – then in charge of Croatian intelligence – for last minute consultations. During the operation, US aircraft destroyed Serbian communication and anti-aircraft centers and the Pentagon passed on information gathered by satellite to [Croatian forces].”

At an August 7 1995 cabinet meeting, Tudjman bragged of how Washington “must have been pleased” with how Croatia’s military executed Operation Storm. His premier, Ivo Sanader, then discussed coordinating the effort with US officials, who “worked in the name of” Vice President Al Gore. He assured those gathered that “all clearance… was approved straight” by US President Bill Clinton, and that Croatia could therefore “expect continuous support” from Washington as the massacres unfolded.

US diplomat cheers a genocidal ‘triumph’

On August 18, a high-level summit with senior US diplomat Richard Holbrooke was convened in Zagreb’s Presidential palace. A fixture of the intervention-obsessed Beltway foreign policy establishment, Holbrooke had his eyes on plum appointments under Bill Clinton and beyond – perhaps under a future Hillary Clinton administration. The successful dismantling of Yugoslavia would provide fuel for his ambitions.

In a transcript reviewed by The Grayzone, Holbrooke fawningly described Tudjman as the “father of modern Croatia” and its “liberator” and “creator.” Noting with approval that the strongman had “regained 98 percent of your territory” – without mentioning that it had been purged of Serbs – the American diplomat described himself as “a friend” of the newly-independent state, whose violent conduct he framed as legitimate.

“You had justification for your military action in Eastern Slavonia,” Holbrooke informed Tudjman, “and I defended it, always, in Washington.” When some in the US suggested reining in Zagreb, Holbrooke argued Croats should “continue” anyway, he declared.

Regarding Operation Storm, Holbrooke admitted, “we said publicly, as you know, that we were concerned, but privately, you knew what we wanted.” He dubbed the horrifying blitzkrieg a “triumph” from “a political and military point of view,” which left refugees as “the only problem” from Zagreb’s perspective. Effectively stage-managing the Croatian president, Holbrooke advised Tudjman to “give a speech stating that the war has finished and that [Serbs] should return.” While forecasting “the majority would not return,” Holbrooke apparently felt it important to at least leave the offer open publicly.

Croatian authorities dealt with this “problem” by passing discriminatory laws making it virtually impossible for displaced Serbs to return, while seizing their property. Despite possessing overwhelming evidence of grave war crimes, the NATO-funded International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia did not indict anyone responsible for Operation Storm until 2008. Many culpable officials, including Tudjman, died in the intervening time. Three surviving military commanders were eventually prosecuted in 2011. One was acquitted and two convicted, although this was overturned on appeal in 2012.

That ruling reached several other extraordinary conclusions. While accepting “discriminatory and restrictive measures” were employed by Zagreb to prevent displaced Serbs from returning, this did not mean their departure was forced. Although civilians had been murdered in large numbers, including the elderly and infirm who couldn’t flee, Operation Storm somehow didn’t deliberately target non-combatants. And despite the explicitly stated desire of Spegelj and Tudjman to make Serbs “disappear,” neither government nor military officials were found to have specifically intended to expel Croatia’s entire Serb minority.

The anniversary of Operation Storm is now celebrated as ‘Victory Day’ in Croatia. The attack’s success is venerated in Western military circles today, and the effort may have influenced similar operations in other theaters of proxy conflict. In September 2022, the Kyiv Post cheered Ukraine’s unexpectedly successful counteroffensive in Kharkov as “Operation Storm 2.0,” suggesting it was a harbinger of Russia’s impending “capitulation.”

Almost three years later, Kiev’s forces are collapsing throughout the Donbass. Unlike in Croatia, the latest crop of ultranationalist US proxies appear unlikely to prevail.

Commentary & Analysis on Reports from Trump-Putin Meeting and Trump-Zelensky-European Leaders Meeting

​Trump’s security guarantees: key to a Ukraine settlement?

By Stephen Bryen, Asia Times, 8/18/25

Are we in for something like a repeat of Woodrow Wilson’s failure to achieve Senate backing for the Treaty of Versailles?

US President Donald Trump has offered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky security guarantees that Trump describes as “like Article V” of the NATO Treaty. Zelensky has apparently signed onto the Trump offer and potentially has agreed that some “territorial swaps” will be needed to make a deal with Russia.

Trump has reported to his European interlocutors who came to the White House to back up Zelensky. He told them more or less the same thing, according to reports, and told German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who pushed for an immediate ceasefire, that a ceasefire ahead of a deal was off the table.

We don’t know what security guarantees mean or how they would be implemented. The Russians will be asking a lot of questions about the idea, if they have not already done so. Trump said he would be calling Russian President Vladimir Putin as soon as today, [August] 18, 2025, where it is already after midnight as this is written.

Here are the likely questions about security guarantees.

(1) Will the US send troops to Ukraine (as the European so-called “coalition of the willing” wants to do) or will the assurances to Kyiv be political in nature?

(2) Will the US set up any kind of infrastructure in Ukraine as part of the assurances to Ukraine?

(3) While Trump has ruled out any NATO membership for Ukraine, will the Europeans, or some of then, be part of the Trump guarantee?

(4) Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which is the effective collective security provision of the Treaty, requires consensus of all NATO members. Is Trump thinking of a quasi-NATO-like arrangement that also will require consensus for activation? One should note that not all European countries plan to support any troop presence in Ukraine even for security assurances. Specifically, Germany, Italy and Poland have said “no” to proposals from the UK and France.

(5) NATO is a treaty organization that was formally approved by its members, meaning the Treaty was signed and ratified by each country’s legislative authority. If Trump’s security guarantees are not under a treaty format, the deal might not be supported by a future President. If Trump wants to sign a treaty with Ukraine, he will need to convince Congress it is in the US national interest. This may not be as easy as it would seem because many will start to question exactly what would oblige the US to take military action if there is a violation of the final deal on Ukraine. It is obvious these are tricky waters, and the Trump administration will have to skip a lot of rope to sell the idea of an actual guarantee that involves the US military in a war with Russia, which is, as I am sure some have noticed, a nuclear-armed power.

In the United States a treaty, for ratification, needs a two thirds vote in the US Senate. There may well be enough isolationists in Congress to block ratification, if Trump goes for a treaty. Down the road, one is reminded of Woodrow Wilson’s failure to achieve Senate backing for the Treaty of Versailles.

There are more recent examples of treaties that ran into trouble. These include the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Convention on Elimination of All Forces of Discrimination Against Women and the Law of the Sea Convention.

(6) The Russians have demanded a smaller Ukrainian military and a neutral Ukraine. Will this demand be honored in any way?

(7) We don’t yet have any idea on the territories Ukraine will yield, or the actual borders (since the Russians do not control all of Donbas). This will be a tough negotiation, and Putin will be under heavy pressure from his army, which, for the most part, is gaining ground in Donbas and elsewhere.

Trump faces an uphill battle selling US guarantees for Ukraine, notwithstanding whether they require US boots on the ground and if others will join the US, such as the UK and France. In one sense, with a smaller group, the Russians will regard the future risk as greater than the NATO risk because the UK and French are aggressively promoting their participation in armed conflict against Russia. A so-called coalition of some-willing looks like a non-starter for Russia.

All of this means that what looks like a success at the White House may devolve into another casualty of the Ukraine war. The offer of guarantees may fail under scrutiny, either by Russia or by the US Congress.

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Doubts Grow on Ukraine Security Package as Russia Demands a Role (Excerpt)

By Natalia Drozdiak, Bloomberg, 8/21/25

Efforts to establish security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a US-led push to end Russia’s war are running into difficulties almost immediately.

US, Ukrainian and European officials have started hashing out proposals for a post-war plan to protect Ukraine, after White House officials said Russian President Vladimir Putin was open to “Article 5-style” security guarantees for Kyiv, a reference to NATO’s collective defense commitment.

The Kremlin hasn’t confirmed publicly that Putin made such a commitment at his summit with US President Donald Trump in Alaska last week. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that Russia should have a say in security arrangements for Ukraine, which could also involve China. Hours later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy ruled out Beijing as a potential guarantor of peace.

Lavrov reiterated the demand on Thursday, saying Moscow had supported a Ukrainian proposal at negotiations in Istanbul shortly after the 2022 invasion began that would have involved the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the US, Russia, China, the UK and France, in security guarantees.

Russia supports guarantees based “on the principle of collective security, on the principles of indivisible security,” Lavrov said. “Anything else, anything unilateral is, of course, an absolutely hopeless undertaking.”

Several senior European officials and diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they viewed Lavrov’s comments as an attempt to stall the process, and expressed doubt that Putin is willing to make a deal. Trump is pressing for Putin and Zelenskiy to meet for direct talks as the next stage of US efforts to reach an end to the war that’s in its fourth year.

Zelenskiy and a delegation of European leaders rushed to the White House on Monday for talks with Trump after the US president rolled out the red carpet for Putin at their summit and appeared to swing toward Russia’s positions on the war. He abandoned demands for Putin to agree to a ceasefire ahead of negotiations and said Ukraine would have to concede territories to Russia as part of a settlement.

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US will play minimum role in Ukraine’s security guarantees – Politico

By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 8/21/25

The Pentagon’s top policy official Elbridge Colby says the US will play a minimal role in any Ukraine security guarantees, Politico reported on August 21.

US President Donald Trump has shifted position in the last month, promising to contribute to the security guarantees being worked out by Ukraine’s European allies ahead of a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, but has also made it clear that the US role will be limited.

Trump has revealed few details of what the US role will be but has said Washington will not contribute troops to any peacekeeping force Europe appears to be planning. Colby comments add some clarity and underscore the fact that the lion’s share of the security arrangements will fall to Europe.

There also seems to be some dissent amongst EU leaders on what the best sort of security guarantee would be. While the UK and France are tending towards reviving the idea of sending peacekeepers, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been a lone voice arguing for a true “Nato Article 5-like” guarantee where EU members sign genuine security guarantees and commit to sending troops to Ukraine within 24 hours if Russia were to re-invade Ukraine, Bloomberg reports. The plan does not include Ukraine’s membership in Nato, but does tally with the bilateral security deals that Zelenskiy was hoping for as part of the 2022 Istanbul peace deal.

Meloni first brought up the idea of “Nato-lite” Article 5-like protections for Kyiv in March 2025, but has not been backed by other Nato members. She brought the idea up again in public comments during the White House summit on August 18.

The Article 5-like proposal is one of many options currently being weighed by European leaders ahead of a mooted meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy that also includes peacekeepers, more sanctions, increased weapons supplies, security agreements, long-term economic aid, and land swaps.

Peacekeepers

A decision to send peacekeepers to Ukraine is controversial. The Kremlin has said repeatedly that it will not accept any Nato-backed troops on Ukrainian soil.

The idea of peacekeepers was first floated by French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this year and backed by the UK, two of the leading members of the coalition of the willing. Germany, however, the third leading member of the coalition, has made it clear that it will not participate. Bloomberg previously reported that about ten European countries are willing to commit troops to Ukraine.

The Kremlin has dismissed the peacekeeping security proposals. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on August 20 that Russia should be one of the countries that provides Ukraine security guarantees.

“As for reports that the UK, France, and Germany want to develop collective security guarantees, we support making these guarantees truly reliable,” Lavrov said on August 20 and repeated earlier calls that any deal should be based on the terms agreed in Istanbul in 2022.

“Our delegation then agreed to work out security guarantees involving all permanent members of the UN Security Council — Russia, China, the US, France, and the UK,” he said. “Germany and Turkey were mentioned, as well as others that may be interested in joining this group.”

Zelenskiy has demanded that Russia provide Ukraine with “ironclad” security guarantees and Putin signalled during the Alaska summit on August 15 that he was agreeable to the idea.

EU leaders have flip flopped on the idea of peacekeepers, but it appeared the plan was abandoned in March, deemed to be unworkable thanks to Russia’s objections. Now the idea appears to have been revived in lieu of giving Ukraine true security guarantees.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on August 20 that the UK was willing to send up to 30,000 soldiers to Ukraine as part of the peacekeeper force.

Europe in the driving seat

Colby’s comments came in response to questions from European military leaders in a meeting of the Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Dan Caine on August 20. Defence chiefs from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Finland pushed the US side to disclose what it would provide in troops and air defences to help Ukraine maintain a peace deal with Russia should an agreement be reached, according to a European official cited by Politico.

“There’s the dawning reality that this will be Europe making this happen on the ground,” a Nato diplomat who was briefed on the talks told Politico. “The US is not fully committed to anything.”

Trump on Monday said he was ready to send US troops to Ukraine. But he backtracked next day, suggesting instead that he was open to providing air support for European troops there.

“I don’t know where that leaves us,” a European official told Politico. “Pretty much back to where we were in the spring with the coalition of the willing.”

Trump has tried to withdraw from supporting Ukraine since taking office. He has cancelled all monetary and military support at least twice since taking office but has been pressured into resuming some level of support by the Ukraine supporters in his entourage.

But what support remains, will be minimal. US Secretary for Defence Pete Hegseth announced in July that the Pentagon had stopped all support for Ukraine, although the White House walked the total halt back a week later. As bne IntelliNews reported, Europe has taken on almost the entire burden of supporting Ukraine since the start of the year.

EU officials are sceptical of Colby, who was the force behind Hegseth’s decision to stop supplying Ukraine, arguing that US stockpiles of weapons had fallen to only 25% of what Pentagon’s strategic planning targets demanded for the US’ own defensive needs. Coby has long lobbied for European allies to do more to defend the continent against Russia.

A poll from The Economist/YouGov found that US citizens are deeply divided on the question of US support for Ukraine. A third (32%) of Americans favour increasing military aid, and a fifth (21%) favour maintaining the current amount. Just over half (54%) of those polled said that Europe should be involved in the talks with Russia while just under half (46%) think the US should also be involved.

The poll also found that the results show that 42% would blame Putin for the failure of the talks, while only one in ten would blame Zelenskiy. An additional 11% would blame President Donald Trump, and 17% would blame all of the leaders equally.

The poll also shows strong opposition to Ukrainian territorial concessions: 68% of Americans said Russia should get “none of it,” although the same poll found that 38% of Americans believe Russia will ultimately control “some of” Ukraine’s territory and 30% of Americans believe Russia is more likely to win the conflict, while only 15% believe Ukraine is more likely to win.

Zelenskiy reports that Ukraine now produces between 40% and 50% of all the weapons it needs, but the progress has been largely in the simpler weapons raising the question: can Ukraine go it alone? For now, Kyiv remains entirely dependent on the West for the sophisticated and long-range offensive and defensive items like Patriot, HIMARS and ATACMS missile systems.

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Can Putin Legally Stop The Conflict Without First Controlling All The Disputed Territory?

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 8/19/25

The Constitutional Court would likely have to rule on this hypothetical scenario due to 2020’s constitutional amendment prohibiting the cession of Russian territory except in certain cases.

RT’s report on Steve Witkoff’s claim that Russia has made “some concessions” on territorial issues, which signal a “significant” shift towards “moderation”, prompted talk about whether Putin can legally stop the special operation without first controlling all the disputed territory that Moscow claims as its own. He himself demanded in June 2024 that the Ukrainian Armed Forces “must be withdrawn from the entire territory of these regions within their administrative borders at the time of their being part of Ukraine.”

Moreover, the agreements under which Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson joined Russia all describe their administrative boundaries as those that existed “on the day of [their] formation”, thus suggesting that the entirety of their regions are indeed legally considered by Russia to be its own. Putin also famously declared during the signing of those treaties in late September 2022 that “the people living [there] have become our citizens, forever” and that “Russia will not betray [their choice to join it]”.

Nevertheless, Putin could still hypothetically “moderate” this demand. Article 67.2.1 of the Russian Constitution, which entered into force after 2020’s constitutional referendum, stipulates that “Actions (except delimitation, demarcation, and re-demarcation of the state border of the Russian Federation with adjacent states) aimed at alienating part of the territory of the Russian Federation, as well as calls for such actions, are not permitted.” “Moderation” could thus hypothetically be an “exception”.

To be absolutely clear, no call is being made within this analysis for Russia to “cede” any territory that it considers to be its own, nor have any Russian officials lent any credence whatsoever to Witkoff’s claim. That said, if Putin concludes for whatever reason that Russia’s national interests are now best served by “moderating” its territorial claims after all that happened since September 2022’s referenda, then any proposed “re-demarcation of the state border” would likely require the Constitutional Court’s approval.

He’s a lawyer by training so it would make sense for him to proactively ask them to rule on the legality of this hypothetical solution to the Ukrainian Conflict. Even if he instead hypothetically proposes retaining his country’s territorial claims but freezing the military phase of the conflict and only advancing those claims through political means, he’d still likely seek their judgement too. They’re the final authority on constitutional issues and these scenarios require their expertise per their connection to Article 67.2.1.

If they hypothetically rule in his favor, the question would then arise about the fate of those living in the Ukrainian-controlled parts of those regions who Putin said “have become our citizens, forever.” They might rule that those who didn’t take part in the referenda, such as the residents of Zaporozhye city, aren’t Russian citizens. Those that did but then fell under Ukrainian control, such as the residents of Kherson city, might be deemed citizens who could move to Russia if Ukraine lets them as part of a deal.

To remind the reader, no Russian officials at the time of this analysis’ publication have lent any credence whatsoever to Witkoff’s claim that Russia made “some concessions” on territorial issues, so it remains solely a hypothetical scenario for now. Even so, Putin might hypothetically conclude that such “moderation” is the best way to advance Russia’s national interests in the current context (such as part of a grand compromise), in which case the Constitutional Court would likely have to rule on its legality.

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Declassified notes from Putin’s first presidential summit show parallels with Alaska meeting last week

National Security Archive, 8/21/25

Washington, D.C., August 21, 2025 – Newly declassified notes from Vladimir Putin’s first presidential summit with an American leader reveal some of the constants in the Russian leader’s approach: flattery, banter about sports, appearing to agree while saying nyet, and history lectures, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information lawsuit and published today by the National Security Archive.

The notes written by Strobe Talbott show Putin in his most cooperative and pro-Western period, hoping for full integration of Russia into the European security system and even NATO. Putin emphasizes cooperation on every point, strategic and economic, even when he intends to disagree. Putin is still inexperienced, yet confident and in full command of his brief, freely moving from subject to subject and trying to impress the American president.

The declassified notes published today include extensive color commentary about Putin’s style, psychological assessments of Putin and his rhetorical flourishes, dramatic quotes from Putin about preferring force to negotiations (“giving them what they deserved”), descriptions of Russian motivations and red lines—all the product of close first-hand observation by Strobe Talbott, then deputy secretary of state and fluent in Russian, during the June 2000 summit between Putin and President Bill Clinton at the Kremlin. Talbott was the U.S. notetaker during the three “one-on-ones” (actually 3-on-3 including translators and notetakers) at the 2000 summit, as he had been for most of Clinton’s previous meetings with Yeltsin.

The publication today also includes the formal memorandum of conversation for one of the two plenary sessions during the summit, declassified by the Clinton Presidential Library as the result of a Mandatory Review request by the National Security Archive. Detailed in this memcon is an extraordinary back-and-forth between Putin and Clinton about the possibility of Russia actually joining NATO, a prospect about which Putin says, “I am pleased.”

While the parallels between last week’s Alaska summit and the Moscow summit 25 years ago are not exact, many of the same issues resonate today, although similar detailed notes are unlikely ever to appear from the meeting last week between Putin and President Trump. Putin’s aggressive approach to the Chechen war back then and his endorsement of force over negotiation no doubt rhymes with his current stance on Ukraine, since he was the invader and could stop the war tomorrow if he wanted. The other major subject of the Putin-Clinton conversations—missile defense—remains a front-burner issue today, with President Trump’s newfound interest in building a “Golden Dome” over the U.S.

Read documents here.

New Poll Finds More Americans Question Atomic Bombings of 1945

By Greg Mitchell, Antiwar.com, 7/31/25

Reprinted on Antiwar with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Between Rock and a Hard Place.

Just to start briefly: As some know, this is a subject that I have explored in hundreds of articles, and in four books, since 1984, and now in an award-winning film “The Atomic Bowl” that started streaming on PBS.org and PBS apps this week (you can easily watch it via links here), plus: a companion e-book.

Having closely followed and studied American responses to the atomic bomb attacks on Japan (even co-authored a book with Robert Jay Lifton titled “Hiroshima in America”), I have to say that polling on this subject has always been very spotty. What has emerged has generally attested to very strong support in the months and first years after, then a slow decline but still fairly strong or clear majority backing last time I checked.

This week, however, , the venerable Pew Research operation has released a new survey taken in June with what I’d call somewhat encouraging results. In a rare step, they did not just ask yes or no but broke results down by gender and age.

Still, I wish they had asked the question of support for Hiroshima bombing and Nagasaki bombing separately instead of the usual “Hiroshima and Nagasaki” together.

In any event here are a few highlights, directly from Pew:

In a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, also conducted on the phone, 56% of Americans said the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified, while 34% said it was not. Unlike in the new survey, the 2015 survey question did not include an explicit “Not sure” response option.

Of course, I would argue that if the question about the Nagasaki bombing was asked separately the results would be interesting. Perhaps more opposition but more likely much more “not sure” (given low awareness among Americans going back, well, almost 80 years). Perhaps my new PBS film will change that, a bit, and you can watch now.

A breakdown of the new poll, again directly from Pew:

»Gender

Men are more likely than women to say the bombings were justified (51% vs. 20%). Women are more likely than men to say the bombings were not justified (36% vs. 25%). Women are also about twice as likely as men to say they aren’t sure (43% vs. 22%).

»Age

Americans ages 65 and older (48%) are more likely than adults in younger age groups to say the bombings were justified. Adults under 30, meanwhile, are considerably more likely to say the bombings were not justified than to say they were justified (44% vs. 27%).

»Party and ideology

About half of Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party (51%) say the bombings were justified, but views differ considerably by ideology. Around six-in-ten conservative Republicans (61%) say the bombings were justified, while a much smaller share (14%) say they were not. Moderate and liberal Republicans, by contrast, are about equally likely to say the use of the bombs was justified as to say it was not justified (35% vs. 31%).

Democrats and Democratic leaners are more likely to say the bombings were not justified than to say they were justified (42% vs. 23%). Liberal Democrats are particularly likely to see the use of the atomic bomb as unjustified – 50% say this.

And ultimately:

Today, most Americans (69%) say the development of nuclear weapons has made the world less safe. Far fewer (10%) say this has made the world safer, according to the Center’s new survey, which was fielded prior to U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in June.

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including “Hiroshima in America,” and the recent award-winning  The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood – and America – Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb , and has directed three documentary films since 2021, including two for PBS (plus award-winning “Atomic Cover-up”). He has written widely about the atomic bomb and atomic bombings, and their aftermath, for over forty years. He writes often at Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

Paul Robinson: ‘Russian Dream’: Ideological Blueprint or Ideologues’ Pressure Tactic for a National Idea?

By Paul Robinson, Russia Post, 7/25/25

Ever since the collapse of communism, Russians have struggled to define their national identity, their country’s place in the world, and the values that should underpin their society. In the early 1990s, the idea that Russia was a European country that should rest on liberal democratic values briefly held centre stage, but this vision was soon abandoned due to disillusionment with the realities of shock therapy and Westernization.

In the mid-1990s, President Boris Yeltsin called for the definition of the ‘Russian Idea’ only to abandon the project once it became clear that nobody could agree what it was. The 1993 constitution forbade the country from having an official ideology (a rule designed to prevent a situation of ideological conformity such as existed under communism), and so efforts to define the ideological foundations of post-Soviet society came largely to a halt.

Cover of the report “A Living Idea – Russia’s Dream. The Russian’s Code in the 21st Century. The Ideological Foundation of the Russian State-Civilization”.

From Ideological Flexibility to a Vision of Russia as a Distinct Civilization

For the most part, Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, has been happy to keep things that way, preferring ideological flexibility over the constraints of a formal state doctrine. Many conservative intellectuals, however, have long been unhappy with this state of affairs, pointing out that any society, if it is to be stable, has to have a commonly agreed understanding of itself and its core values.

As political tensions with the West have grown, the Russian state has increasingly defined Russia in terms of opposition to the West, and in the last few years as an entirely distinct civilization. But that has raised the questions of what defines Russian civilization and makes it distinct, questions to which the state has no easy answers, due to its lack of clear ideological foundations. The process of defining Russian civilization has therefore acquired a new political importance.

Into this political context, there now steps a new report titled ‘A Living Idea – Russia’s Dream. The Russian’s Code in the 21st Century. The Ideological Foundation of the Russian State-Civilization.’

The report’s primary author is prominent public intellectual Sergei Karaganov, but it is not his work alone. Rather, it is the collective product of numerous individuals from the Council of Foreign and Defence Policy, the Higher School of Economics and its Institute of World Military Economics and Strategy, as well as the journal Russia in Global Affairs.

As such it is perhaps a good reflection of thinking among elements of that part of Russia’s intellectual class that devotes itself to studying foreign and defence policy. Karaganov himself is especially well-known and last year was granted the honour of moderating Putin’s speech to the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. Thus, even if this report does not reflect the views of the entire foreign and defence policy community, it certainly represents those of a well-connected segment of it, and as such is worth paying attention to.

The report’s starting point is that Russia is ‘a unique civilizational formation’ and that like any human society it needs a unifying idea. This cannot be Western liberalism, a philosophy spread ‘by liberal-globalistic elites, striving to strengthen their privileged position and to facilitate their control over the masses.’

Russia, according to the report, needs to develop an alternative, something that it has not yet done. Due to the constitutional prohibition, this cannot be a formal state ideology, but it could instead be designated as ‘Russia’s dream’ and as such play much the same role as an official ideology. This dream is necessary in order ‘to save the human in humans, to protect the Russian civilizational code, and to save the world from global thermonuclear war.

“Russia, claim the authors, is a ‘God-bearing country’ with ‘a mission before God and humanity’.”

Sergei Karaganov (center) moderates Vladimir Putin’s address at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. June 2024. Source: Kremlin.ru

The Ideological Roots of Sergey Karaganov’s Report

The report is largely a modernized version of mid-nineteenth century Slavophilism, with hints of Cosmism and Eurasianism, and occasional lines that could have been written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Ivan Ilyin, or other twentieth century conservative Russian philosophers (see my earlier article in Russia.Post here). There is very little about it that could be said to be intellectually original. One can, for instance, find much the same logic in the writings of Alexander Panarin in the 1990s, such as his book The Russian Alternative. The report is very much part of a Russian tradition.

The Slavophile elements come out strongly in the depiction of the Western world as decadent, materialistic, individualistic, and overly rationalistic, compared to which Russia is portrayed as spiritually oriented, collectivistic, and founded on faith as well as reason. Modern Western civilization, the report says, ‘while making the person’s life more comfortable, destroys many of the functions that make him a person,’ leading to ‘an ever more evident degradation of the person himself.’

Russian philosophy has long been concerned with the issue of what constitutes ‘personhood’ and what makes someone a ‘person’ (the word for which in such philosophical debates was traditionally ‘lichnost’ but in this report for some reason is ‘chelovek’).

The report notes that ‘We are for Personhood (‘Chelovechnost’), true humanism, for preserving the Person in the person, the godly principle in him.’ True personhood relies on connections to God and to the rest of society – ‘a person cannot develop outside the family, society, nature, and country’. With its assaults on religion, the family, patriotism, and so on, Western civilization is thus portrayed as destroying personhood, in contrast to which, Russia, as the defender of religion, family, nation, and so on, is defending what it means to be truly human.

The report is thus in many respects profoundly conservative, although it denies this, saying that the values it promotes are not conservative values but universal human ones. Russia, by promoting these values, is thus defending humanity as a whole, giving Russia a holy global mission, albeit one that is more spiritual than political. Again, this is not exactly novel, but an updated version of the original Slavophilism.

“Russia, in the eyes of the report’s authors, is blessed by God, a fact proven by its recovery from the traumas of the 1990s, a true ‘miracle’ that has ‘only one “scientific” explanation – that God took pity on Russia and forgave her sins’.”

Russia is for Justice Rather than Freedom 

In true Slavophile fashion, the authors portray Russia as resting on different spiritual roots than the West, although they differ from the Slavophiles in viewing Russia as a largely Eastern country, thus showing the influence of later Eurasianist ideas.

‘The main external sources of our identity lie in Byzantium and the Great Mongol empire and not in the West’, claims the report. Russia, it says, has a ‘tradition of sobornost’ and obschinnost’, using a couple of rather untranslatable words to indicate a tradition of collectivism in contrast to individualism.

Russians, says the report, are also distinguished from Westerners by their concern for justice rather than freedom, for their concern for peace, and for their use of force only ‘to defeat endless aggressions’ rather than for ‘looting and enrichment.’ Russia is noted also for the importance it assigns to sovereignty and to a strong state, to the principle of statehood [‘gosudarstvennichestvo’]. And finally, Russians are distinguished by their ‘sense of unity with nature’ and their understanding of the ‘active unity of man and nature.’

As previously stated, none of these claims are in any way novel. They are the long standing core of Slavophile, Cosmist, and Eurasianist mythology. They also lack firm evidential basis – the idea that Russians are more collectivist, more at one with nature, and more concerned with justice than their Western counterparts is, for instance, hard to empirically justify.

Nevertheless, the report uses them to derive the essence of the ‘Russian dream’: service of God manifested in service of fellow humans through society, the family, and the state. This has political ramifications, above all the strengthening of the state, something that is necessary not only for Russia, but also for the world as a whole, since the collective problems of humanity, such as climate change, hunger, and poverty, can only be solved by strong states.

‘Оnly a strong state, resting on the support of a strong society’, the report says, can save humanity from the degrading influence of the negative trends of modern civilization, that deprive the person of many of the functions that make him a person. … The state is needed to counteract the previously mentioned tendencies and the efforts of contemporary globalists liberal elites to destroy the person … [and also] to counteract the efforts of liberal imperialist globalist elites to weaken it in order to seize it and impose its dominance.’

Aleksey Khomyakov, 1804-1860, philosopher and co-founder of the Slavophile movement. Source: Wiki Commons

Western liberal democracy in incompatible with this kind of strong state, claims the report. Liberal democracy can function only in conditions of relative peace and stability and is incompatible with Russia’s particular conditions and the increasingly unstable state of the world.

What is needed instead is a ‘leader democracy’ [‘liderskaia demokratiia’], a term that remains frustratingly undefined, but seems to endorse Russia’s current political system. At the same time, though, the authors stress that this ‘leader democracy’, while authoritarian in terms of central government, should allow for local democracy (an idea that again has Slavophile roots as well as appearing in the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn), and should guarantee freedom of thought since ‘intellectual, spiritual freedom is the undoubted precondition of a country’s prosperity’.

The latter idea reflects a long-standing Russian philosophical concern with ‘inner freedom’, as found in the writings of such diverse writers as Boris Chicherin, Ivan Ilyin, Nikolai Berdiaev, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and others. The report comments that ‘Combining intellectual freedom, freedom of thought, and political authoritarianism is not simple. But Russian history gives examples.’ Unfortunately, it doesn’t say what those are.

“The question that arises from all this is to what extent these views are shared by anyone outside of the report’s authors and especially by anybody in authority.”

It is difficult to say. One should not assume that just because the authors are well-connected, their opinions reflect those of the people actually running the country. Indeed, if they did, the authors wouldn’t have felt it necessary to publish a report saying all these things.

Clearly, this is an effort to convince the authorities of the need to act in the perceived absence of action. Indeed, at one point the report contains a veiled criticism of President Putin for refusing to challenge the constitutional prohibition of an official ideology and for failing to recognize the need for a national idea.

Putin has often been seen as an ideological balancer. He permits intellectual entrepreneurs such as Karaganov to generate ideas and then co-opts the ones that he finds politically suitable, while at the same time rejecting the ones that he doesn’t and refusing to be limited by the confines of a single ideological system.

This report notes that one of the reasons for the lack of a formal state ideology is the resistance of ‘technocrats’ who still ‘dominate in the leading layer of the state’, and that the Presidential Administration has no department specifically devoted to ideological issues. This raises the possibility that Putin and other high state officials may actually be one of the prime barriers against the adoption of the kind of ideological prescripts put forward in this report. When Putin eventually leaves office (as in due course he must, if only due to death), a turn back towards liberalism might be possible, but if this report is anything to go by, a turn in an even more conservative direction might be every bit as likely.

Matt Taibbi: Russiagate Releases Lifting a Veil on Surveillance State Abuses

By Matt Taibbi, Substack, 8/14/25

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s office released two damning emails yesterday [August 13th], the first being a letter from former DNI James Clapper to former FBI head James Comey, former CIA head John Brennan, and then-NSA chief Michael Rogers. Dated December 22, 2016, Clapper’s letter explains how the chiefs should approach writing a new Intelligence Community Assessment, whose conclusion — that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump — had already been reported:

Mike John Jim;

Understand your concern. It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page. and are all supportive of the report — in the highest tradition of “that’s OUR story, and we’re stickin’ to it.” This evening, CIA has provided to the NIC the complete draft generated by the ad hoc fusion cell. We will facilitate as much mutual transparency as possible as we complete the report, but, more time is not negotiable,” We may have to compromise on our “normal” modalities, since we must do this on such a compressed schedule.

This is one project that has to be a team sport.

Jim

“That’s OUR STORY and we’re stickin’ to it”

Clapper’s email was in response to a note about “concerns” from Rogers, the NSA chief who never upgraded his agency’s confidence level in the “Russia did it for Trump” conclusion from “moderate” to high. The Rogers letter makes it clear that the head of the Pentagon’s most powerful surveillance agency was being asked to sign off on a conclusion without seeing the most “sensitive” intelligence. From Rogers:

I asked my team if they’d had sufficient access to the underlying intelligence and sufficient time to review that intelligence. On both points my team raised concerns… I’m concerned that, given the expedited nature of this activity, my folks aren’t fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all of the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments… I do want to make sure that, when we are asked in the future whether we can absolutely stand behind the paper… I’m concerned we are not there yet.

This is a devastating exchange. It shows that in assembling perhaps the most high-profile group analysis since the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD program, four of America’s most powerful enforcement officials said, “To hell with evidence, let’s just put out a tale and stick with it.”

In the specific context of this scandal, it makes a joke of years of public narratives about Trump, Putin, and Russia. Along with more documents funneled from Kash Patel’s FBI to Just The News asserting that senior Justice Department officials squashed Hillary Clinton corruption investigations, and that Comey gave a middleman access to highly classified information to help plead his case to newspapers like the New York Times, the new Gabbard docs further elucidate how years of Russia mania were built on fraud.

But this cascade of revelations is bringing a more disturbing story into focus. A subtext is the unnerving casualness with which procedural rules were broken. Even before Rogers and the NSA were asked to blindly bless a domestic political probe built in part atop “evidence” from an illegal FISA warrant, the FISA court had begun investigating misuse of the surveillance program. Onetime Trump aide Carter Page is not the only American in a politically sensitive position recently monitored under this dubious legal end-around. There was FISA monitoring of campaign manager Paul Manafort, “non-compliant” use of FISA to investigate the January 6th Capitol breach, even FISA tracking of ordinary Americans overseas applying for benefits.

In the coming weeks you’ll be reading (at Racket, among other places) about wholesale abuse of other surveillance programs. It turns out an alarming number of senior Trump campaign officials from the 2024 cycle were notified about prior FBI surveillance (news about Kash Patel, Dan Scavino, and Jeff Clark receiving such notices has already broken, but more names are coming). Widespread surveillance of congressional officials in a 2017 leak probe was the underlying context of recent revelations suggesting two members, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, approved leaks of classified information.

The legacy press is ignoring the releases both because they paint Donald Trump as a victim of overreach and because the press played such a prominent role in the Russiagate corruption. They’re betraying audiences who might be concerned about the larger pattern coming into relief. That story is about intelligence agencies meddling in domestic politics at all — Trump or no Trump — through a list of forbidden practices. We’re about to find out that far more people in the political world were under routine surveillance than previously thought, including mainstream and independent reporters who communicated with political sources of all stripes.

I’m technically on vacation, but there’s more coming on this front, from players now forced to come forward. Please also tune in to America This Week tomorrow for a review of all the new materials with Walter Kirn, before he appears as a guest with Bill Maher.