It’s inexcusable that these direct peace negotiations are not already underway. The recent escalation of this war makes peace talks more necessary, not less.
U.S. State Department Spokesperson Ned Price. (State Department, Freddie Everett)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
Listen to a reading of this article.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow was open to talks with the U.S. or with Turkey on ending the war in Ukraine, claiming that U.S. officials are lying when they say Russia has been refusing peace talks.
Reuters reports:
“Lavrov said officials, including White House national security spokesman John Kirby, had said the United States was open to talks but that Russia had refused.”
“This is a lie,” Lavrov said. “We have not received any serious offers to make contact.”
Lavrov’s claim was given more weight when U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price dismissed the offer for peace talks shortly after it was extended, citing Russia’s recent missile strikes on Kyiv.
“We see this as posturing,” Price said at a Tuesday press briefing.
“We do not see this as a constructive, legitimate offer to engage in the dialogue and diplomacy that is absolutely necessary to see an end to this brutal war of aggression against the people and the state, the Government of Ukraine.”
Lavrov Says Russia Open to Talks With the West, US Dismisses His Comments
Putin may discuss talks with the West in a meeting with Erdogan this week
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Russia #Lavrov #Ukraine #diplomacy #G20 https://t.co/bRbdPj7muH pic.twitter.com/PESo4C2ioN— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) October 11, 2022
This is inexcusable. At a time when our world is at its most perilous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis according to many experts as well as the president of the United States, the U.S. government has no business making the decision not to sit down with Russian officials and work toward de-escalation and peace.
They have no business making that call on behalf of every terrestrial organism on this planet whose life is being risked in these games of nuclear brinkmanship. The fact that this war has escalated with missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital makes peace talks more necessary, not less.
This rejection is made all the more outrageous by new information from The Washington Post that the U.S. government does not believe Ukraine can win this war and refuses to encourage it to negotiate with Moscow.
“Privately, U.S. officials say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, but they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table,” WaPo reports. “They say they do not know what the end of the war looks like, or how it might end or when, insisting that is up to Kyiv.”
These two points taken together lend even more credibility an argument I’ve been making from the very beginning of this war: that the U.S. does not want peace in Ukraine, but rather seeks to create a costly military quagmire for Moscow just as U.S. officials have confessed to trying to do in Afghanistan and in Syria.
Which would explain why U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the U.S. goal in Ukraine is actually to “weaken” Russia, and also why the empire appears to have actively torpedoed a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia in the early days of the conflict.
This proxy war has no exit strategy. And that is entirely by design.
Many have been calling for the U.S. to abandon its policy of actively sustaining this war while avoiding peace talks.
“President Biden’s language, we’re about at the top of the language scale, if you will,” former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen told ABC’s This Week on Sunday regarding the president’s recent remark that this conflict could lead to “Armageddon.”
“I think we need to back off that a little bit and do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing,” Mullen said, adding, “As is typical in any war, it has got to end and usually there are negotiations associated with that. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.”
“One thing the United States can do is… drop the position, the official position, that the war must go on to weaken Russia severely, meaning no negotiations,” Noam Chomsky argued in a recent appearance on Democracy Now.
“Would that open the way to negotiations, diplomacy? Can’t be sure. There’s only one way to find out. That’s to try. If you don’t try, of course it won’t happen.”
“It is time for the United States to supplement its military support for Ukraine with a diplomatic track to manage this crisis before it spirals out of control,” said the Quincy Institute’s George Beebe following the Monday missile strikes on Kyiv, calling it “a major escalation in the war” that was bound to “bring the world closer to a direct military collision between Russia and the United States.”
“The Americans have to come to an agreement with the Russians. And then the war will be over,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said at an event on Tuesday, adding that “anyone who thinks that this war will be concluded through Russian-Ukrainian negotiations is not living in this world.”
US & allies "should be finding ways to open up communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to end the fighting." @RStatecraft seems the only place it's now uncontroversial to make this basic commonsense point.https://t.co/QrGNoIx5Qg
— Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) October 3, 2022
It’s absolutely insane that the world’s two nuclear superpowers are accelerating toward direct military confrontation and they aren’t even talking to each other, and it’s even crazier that anyone who says they should be gets called a Kremlin agent and a Chamberlain-like appeaser. Responsible Statecraft’s Harry Kazianis discusses this freakish dynamic in a recent article titled “Talking is not appeasement — it’s avoiding a nuclear armageddon“:
“I have fought more than thirty combat simulations in wargames under my own direction for a private defense contract over the last several months, looking at various aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war, and one thing is clear: the chances of a nuclear war increase significantly every day that passes.
In every scenario I tested, the Biden Administration slowly gives Ukraine ever more advanced weapons like ATACMS, F-16s, and other platforms that Russia has consistently warned pose a direct military threat. While each scenario has postulated a different point at which Moscow decides to use a tactical nuclear weapon in order to counter conventional platforms it can’t easily defeat, the chances that Russia uses nukes grow as new and more powerful military capabilities are introduced into the battlefield by the West.
In fact, in 28 of the thirty scenarios I have run since the war began, some sort of nuclear exchange occurs.
The good news is there is a way out of this crisis — however imperfect it may be. In the two scenarios where nuclear war was averted, direct negotiations led to a ceasefire.”
I reiterate: it is absolutely pants-on-head gibbering insanity that these direct negotiations are not already presently underway.
Let us petition any and all higher powers we have faith in that this changes very soon. Let us also petition the leaders of our individual nations around the world to exert whatever kind of pressure they can muster upon Washington for these talks to commence.
This brinkmanship threatens us all, and the managers of the U.S. empire have no business playing these games with our lives.
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This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.
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Hi Caitlin. I suspect that covert contact already occurs. It requires rational heads, outside the US-controlled regime in Kiev, to take the initiative. Even in Germany in the 1940s people were in contact with the Allies. Intermediaries were commonly employed. That will be the case now. The obstacle is the official Kiev policy, dictated by the USA/UK. Replacing Zelensky seems to me essential. Germans attempted to remove Hitler for the same reasons. Peace was impossible while he remained as Fuhrer. Peace would be impossible now for the same reasons.
More BS from JB, POTUS in the MSM talking to reporters about how the Saudis have left the US down seeing as how they are “one of the US best allies in the region “.
When pressed he declared “Well we not be able to sell them weapons any longer . . .”
I’m sick of this double gobbdetygook BS.
Look the last arms sales the US made to the Saudis, were very recent and very significant. Attached to those contracts were maintenance agreements. Very pricey maintenance agreements.
Hey Joe, cancel the damned maintenance agreements, and then order the Israelis to stop working with Saudis.
If you think JB will do that you’re daft. The Israelis will be allowed to do WTHE they wish and and JB ain’t gonna make a peep.
My big worry about this last election is that the neocons would be given free rein by Biden and his chicken hawk dimo side kicks. Guess the current situation is about all that could have been expected.
This country has significant problems when it has the like of the Orange Mussolini and the neocons calling the shots. Everyone should have see it coming.
I’ve been saying this for years now, “These people present a clear and significant national security threat and dangerous to themselves and others. From all outward appearances, at best they are delusional and ultimately schizophrenic.
Thanks CN
Comedian Jeff Dunham has a puppet or two for his acts. Anyone ever notice how much his puppet, Walter resembles POTUS 46, JB?
I wonder if JB resembles the tortured look on Walters face so much because his handlers have their hands up his butt!
IMO, if Russia has the military means, the Russians can continue the demilitarizing and denazifying until the Ukraine is a “rump” state, a small agrarian oasis with no armed forces of any kind, land locked and growing organic food for the world.
Poland, Rumania, Hungary, whichever country is interested, can take on the remaining nazi infested area of land and incorporate that land into their countries.
The Russian speaking areas to the south and east can return to the Russian Federation.
Done.
These people all need to see the movie, “The Day After” again, if they haven’t already.
In the UK we had ‘Threads’, those who watched it back in the early 80s like myself have never forgotten it.
U.S. Citizens Must Speak UP to their own U.S. Senators and Representatives. It is the silence of the masses that that is the key poison pill.
Dear Michael, sadly (IMHO) the concept of “representative democracy” has died. These people don’t represent the folk who vote for them. As the comedian George Carlin said – “there’s a big club, and you ain’t in it …” Here in Australia a million people marched loudly, visibly and in repeatedly against our illegal attack on Iraq. The PM at the time, John Howard, referred to us as “the mob”. We were not people he represented. The “government for all Australians” he referred to did not exist. At present both major parties here represent the Kiev regime and the USA war against Russia in the Ukraine, which I oppose. I am searching for alternatives to our NON-representative democracy.
The sole purpose of NATO is to contain Russia by using European countries as human shields. Keeping bases and troop deployment. The old maxim that NATO was created to keep the U.S. in, Russia out and Germany down. NATO is and always has been a provocation of Russia cleverly renamed as defense. Several of Russia’s bordering countries have an ax to grind with Russia from past domination. The West should not get dragged into those conflicts, especially in Ukraine. Why are we obligated to defend the Baltics on Russia’s borders? That is exactly the type of alliance web that ignited WWI. Zelensky doesn’t care if he sparks a nuclear war. He openly invites it. He will fight the Russians to the last American, or European. What happened to Ukraine’s victory march through the Donbas? The armchair Generals were all assuring us that Russia was on the run with great swaths of reclaimed Ukraine land. Ukraine military dead and wounded are never mentioned. The Pentagon can read the logistics. Adm. Mullen seems to be the only sane U.S. leader and in direct conflict with Lloyd Austin and the Biden Regime. Ukraine is being bled dry. As is Russia. Ukraine and Russian lives matter. All wars end in a settlement. It is childish to refuse talks. In the deadliest game.
The Biden people really lack decencies. Biden is the biggest bully around, he insults and humiliates people and MSM let’s him get away with it. He is always ready to threaten consequences like sanctions to friends and foes alike, he even shot the NATO ally Germany in the back, intentionally doing all he can to industrialize Germany and with that the foundation of the EU. MSM does not even mention it, they weaponized energy, not Putin, not a word about it. Not a word about making enemies and isolating the USA, there will be no NATO member on the continent supporting a war against Russia. They are really criminal and sure made a big mess, to put it mildly.
correction, deindustrialize Germany.
Caitlin, I love your work, but expecting any amount of petitioning or talking common sense to change the direction of US policy at this time is pointless. This government did everything in its power to provoke this conflict, one which I doubt seriously that Russia wanted at all. And it is not something that just sprung up with Biden and his death cult minions; this is a long-term project of the US, finally coming to fruition. It was spurred to culmination by the emergence of the China/Russia/Eurasia reality coming into focus.
There are many elements to it, many different profit centers which sometimes jostle each other, vie for dominance, and occasionally work at cross purposes. Energy dominance is one way to look at it, but the US always attempts to use energy as a weapon – leverage. It does not have to be owned or controlled; application of military or financial force is used to determine who will have access to energy, or not. Look what the US has done to Europe with this totally unnecessary, avoidable conflict. As the Saudis now attempt to punish the rest of us for their previous failed machinations*, the US “brings the pain” to Europeans as a threat should they attempt to leave our loving fold.
* Readers should remember that just before the pandemic took off the Saudis and Russia were feuding over oil markets and the Saudis once again flooded the market with excess oil to try to cripple the Russians, just as they had done in 2015 in an attempt to cripple the US shale gas industry. No-one really anticipated the pandemic or knew just how badly it would affect the global economy; the Saudis’ oil glut collapsed the global price of oil, and they got caught with their pants – er, robes – down. Now they attempt (unfortunately successfully) to manipulate the global oil price in the other direction, in an attempt to replace their self-inflicted losses.
The senile schoolyard bully Biden crossed the line. The NS 2 sabotage and destruction was a declaration of war against the NATO allies.
What is left of NATO is A FARCE, the European people oppose NATO.
The Arabs, China, India, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, and the African and Asian, and Latin American nations all are with Russia. In the UN they have to twist arms to get votes. The USA is virtually standing alone with the UK and maybe Canada and Australia against the world. Like Hitler, they are isolated in their Underground Bunker.
The parties to the war will not escape from the inevitable conclusion – nuclear annihilation – if they do not realize that power is an illusion (the reason for war). It cannot deliver permanent victory or protect against ultimate defeat. A free ebook: The Pattern Of History and Fate of Humanity
The facts:
The USA initiated this proxy conflict, the USA supplied the means for the conflict to escalate, the USA has explicitly involved itself in operations and sabotage to worsen this conflict, the USA has stymied every attempt to halt this conflict !
If the USA was an individual they would be confined to a mental institution for mentally deficient psychotics.
Does the West truly believe that the USA is the defender of democracy and freedom ?
Of course, the MIC has a major influence because without the MIC the USA and its crazies are nothing.
The conceit and arrogance of the USA cannot be overstated. They seem to believe, despite all evidence in living memory, that they can win a war. They have NOT done so since WW2, which they pretend to have won while it was the USSR which did all the main fighting, and dying, and having their whole country destroyed, well before the USA even condescended to enter and take over the plans for the future. The USA has NEVER had really to defend its own land at all. All the “‘defense spending” is for aggression against others it designates as “enemies”. What has Russia done to deserve this irrational hatred???
What Russia has done is to sit on a vast territory full of resources the U.S. needs to continue the expansion of its empire.
IF peace would happen…cash registers at the military/industrial complex would stop ringing. We couldn’t let that happen, could we? The US needs to experience a war on its own territory to see and feel what war is all about.
“J’ai combattu plus de trente simulations de combat dans des jeux de guerre sous ma propre direction pour un contrat de défense privée au cours des derniers mois, en examinant divers aspects de la guerre russo-ukrainienne, et une chose est claire : les chances d’une guerre nucléaire augmentent. sensiblement chaque jour qui passe. ”
Oui,par la seule nation qui l’a utilisé sur des civils sans défense : vous !!!
Vous n’avez pas les moyens de penser russe, votre esprit est profondément empoisonné par des concepts occidentaux dépassés. La Russie n’a pas besoin de nucléaire, Poseidon, et autre sarmat feront très bien le travail mais ps sur l’Ukraine, sur vous !!! les USA doivent être punis pour les millions de morts qu’ils on fait, uniquement pour le profit!
Cette stratégie de la corde raide nous menace tous, et les dirigeants de l’empire américain n’ont pas à jouer à ces jeux avec nos vies. “, mais les USA, cancer du monde, jouent avec la vie de tout le monde depuis longtemps et les américains, le peuple, a laissé faire, je parle ici d’un pays qui a continuellement agressé les autres pays, pas de quelques années, mais de l histoire de ce pays qui a été plus de 200 ans en guerre alors qu’il n’a même pas trois siècles d’existence, et qui , n’est pas une civilisation mais une barbarie !
Someone might mention to vassal Macron who said Putin should return to the negotiating table that Putin is willing but he has no interlocutor. Something has to break sometime. It is intuitively obvious to the most casual of observers that the US/UK/EU cabal are the ones keeping this war going. Especially after the US + whomever, probably Poland whom I suspect wants to be the gas hub for Europe in lieu of the Germans blew up NS. When will their populaces rise up against their overlords? What’s funny is that I suspect that the real losers are the EU/UK/US. Austin said the US wanted to weaken Russia. It looks to me like the EU/UK/US are the ones being weakened as they are running out of weapons and money to send to the black hole aka the Ukraine. Artillery shells are cheap. You’ll know the Russians are getting serious when they take out the Ukraine’s train system (which runs on electricity). NATO will have a harder time getting their fancy weapons into the Ukraine without the trains…..
The time has come!
Let’s begin with the reality of the decline of the West morally, geo-politically, and spiritually. We have no moral or position of good from which to negotiate. We must negotiate by giving concessions. I would argue that we should declare Conditional surrender by the West. The conditions being: 1) We de-militarize the world, pay retributions, re-distribute the oligarch’s wealth; 2) Russia put climate change, the environment aa a central value, pluralism of culture, values, and identities as central values, and the de-financialization of economies as a central value, and having the well-being and continuity of indigenous peoples and their lives and values and employed and unemployed, landed and landless working class well-being as a central value. I think the Russians would take this, seeing as they are not far off on elements of this, and that the U.S. IS STILL the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, if in no other way than in the preparation for war. We would still have what is good in the U.S. and we would rid the world of the globalist, imperial scourge culminating 500 years of the West’s colonial atrocities.
Seize the time!
Julian Assange explained that “the goal is endless war, not successful war”.
These regime change wars are money laundering operations to transfer massive amounts of money from the people to the cabal of war profiteers.
Who own our corporate press and corporate politicians.
Emerging evidence shows that World War One and World War Two were engineered, enabled by the cowardly slavishness of the political “leaders” and the supine press. So World War Three is a very real possibility. Certain people are acting like they want it.
It is clear that after the Minsk I, Minsk II, and the Turkey talks: it is the USA that has refused to engage in any serious peace talks. Two is needed to tango and Russia along cannot do it.
You are, of course, correct but look at how the US has behaved in all the negotiations in recent years. They expected their interlocutor to essentially accept the US’s terms. That ain’t happenin’ this time.
There can be peace when Russia gives back the Crimea and all the rest of the territory it took by force killing women and children. The sooner they withdraw, the sooner there can be peace. I don’t see why there would be any other way.
You have either never been to Ukraine or have been subjected to pervasive propaganda by the MSM. I have been to and have talked to people there and I know where the war came from and it was definitively not from Russia. Look at your own back yard.
“This brinkmanship threatens us all, and the managers of the U.S. empire have no business playing these games with our lives.”
But “playing games” has been the major strength in all US strategies and has been for decades. It has resulted in a total disregard for public opinion, as seen everywhere in the US, its citizens either disinterested in what is happening in the rest of the world based solely on the fact that geographically, they are not under any danger from anyone in their domain, or, alternatively, fearful of being added to the CIA lists of questionable loyal citizens and subject to laws designed to counter any fragment of independent thinking or opinion.
Hard to beat those conditions for exerting total control over 330 million people with the mainstream media of course, assisting in every way they can with tailored scripts by Biden and his Israeli-controlled Neocons.
The fact that Biden and his cronies want to continue this Ukrainian fracas for as long as they can is certainly being reflected in the profits by Biden’s sponsors in the war industries, the BlackRocks and Vanguards, that proxy war that has now taken over as the big money spinner for his asset-controlling. friends in place of the forced reduction of the massive Covid profits generated by the same shareholders.
Doesn’t make sense? Check the shareholdings.
Clients of asset managers BlackRock and Vanguard are holding substantial shares of Sovcomflot, Russia’s largest shipping company, responsible for moving millions of tonnes of fossil fuels that fund the war on Ukraine. That’s just one small example.
Get your CIA operatives to check that one out, Joe Biden, on your next meeting.
I had some comments yesterday and this early AM here at CN about LNG, the US sending it to Germany and others. What the US offered hardly fills the void created by shutting down the two pipelines. To that point the US cannot , alone, provide the number of ships needed to meet the magic number. This history goes back to at least 2014.
Then the election of 2016 and Trump wins. In the ensuing chaos I’m not sure anyone had a real handle on events, save the State Department and the Intelligence community who made their plans for Ukraine clear in 2014.
First the republicans must be held responsible for locking arms and becoming the very real “party of No”. At this point I’m no even sure if Trump won the election legitimately, but assume that to Intelligence community it made little difference. We all, by now, should know of Joe Biden’s interest in everything Ukraine, especially oil and natural gas, especially liquefied natural gas.
This product is widely available in the US and Canada and I smell some very big rats. Maybe more correctly “Rat Fuckers”!
The US suddenly became very interested in the product in 2014 and later after Russia invaded Ulraine Biden promised to help NATO nations by supplying them in case Putin shut his industry down.
The Saudi’s have cut oil production and gas prices are rising, my question is if gas goes to 10 $$$$ US a gallon, what / who has caused this and why? The Israelis and \ the Saudis now seem to enjoy a Chummy relationship out of now where.
Who and why, I cannot say but Because regardless if this country had a decent intelligence and national security apparatus those there responsible should have acted to stave of the gigantic suffering of inflation that is ongoing.
You want to talk national security threat!
Now according to late new, 8 days ago, Israel is negotiating with Lebanon for port access there. Lebanon !
Could it be that those in Deep State / Government Systems are willing to go this far to get Putin out and ruin the Russian country? And to what end?
Maybe it’s time we all learned who will benefit the most from this shit storm!
google ; Who finances the building of merchant sea going vessals
See: hxxps://www.maritime.dot.gov/grants/title-xi/federal-ship-financing-program-title-xi The prompt says Federal Ship Financing Program (Title XI) Maritime Administration
So can this mean that the lending institutions who the US government selects will see huge profits from the “emergency” construction, ship building and port facilities for loading and off loading, projects involved with filling the US LNG shipping shortfall caused not acting sooner?
I’m not quite sure what it will take for brain dead Americans to wake up but we all are being severely abused by the super rich.
You cannot make this stuff up!
Thank CN
“the world’s two nuclear superpowers are accelerating toward direct military confrontation and they aren’t even talking to each other, and anyone who says they should be gets called a Chamberlain-like appeaser.”
The idea that anyone who’s against Washington fomenting hostilities on Russia’s Western border region is Chamberlain-like is the biggest laugher and off the charts distortion and downright lie. It’s a popular smear technique that’s being plastered all over social media by the handmaidens and paid shills of the Washington neocon/Ziocon imperialists.
Hitler invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia to rescue ethnic Germans who since 1930 had been getting slaughtered and butchered by fascists funded, armed, and supported by the biggest and bloodiest empire the globe had ever seen? Yeah right.
And those same ethnic Germans were under imminent threat of invasion by a 100,000 strong army again supported by the biggest militarist empire the world had ever seen? Give it a rest.
To conflate Putin’s liberating SMO in Ukraine — in which he was eagerly invited in by the Donbas ethnic Russians — to Hitlerian conquest and invasion is to deceive the world. Sick freaks and militarist w hores are running with this canard all over the internet and Western Russophobic mass media.
The Left are betraying their principles and the Right is getting stronger. All the anti-Russia war-mongering, neo-liberalism and wokeism has destroyed the image of the left. The Democrats went too overboard in focusing too much on race and not on class, not helping workers, betraying unions, and not focusing on eliminating poverty and homelessness. Of course, Biden and his liberal supporters will blame Putin for all of America’s ill’s and will seek nothing more than Regime change for Russia. As a result of all this, a hateful, Wahhabi-like Christian fascism is emerging on the horizon. We are entering an era of Right-wing Christian Tyranny and hyper-American nationalism. What’s ironic is that conservatives, just like the global elites they despise, are united in hating on China and wanting to destroy it. The end goal is taking out China and making it a weak and subservient country. The Rightists want to turn Russia away from China and towards the US.
Yes Rich, this “Right-wing Christian Tyranny” is rightly called religious nationalism because
there’s certainly nothing Christian about it; and during Germany’s Nazi takeover it was the
opposite to religious socialism. Both terms are religious because ultimate concerns are
in play, for the Nazis their god was the Third Reich. Paul Tillich was a leader of the latter.
Yes Rich, this “Right-wing Christian Tyranny” is rightly called religious nationalism because
there’s certainly nothing Christian about it; and during Germany’s Nazi takeover it was the
opposite to religious socialism. Both terms are religious because ultimate concerns are
in play, for the Nazis their god was the Third Reich. Paul Tillich was a leader of the latter.
“Claiming that Russia has no way of winning the war” indicates an over-indulgence of western, capitalist corporate media. In this instance, it turns out to be a quote from the Washington Post. Suitable for wrapping dead fish, although a deceased fish might object to this.
It is fascinating, because even ‘alternative’ authors and thinkers in the modern West appear to spend too much time consuming corporate media, and thus often the very foundations of their discussions are built upon the quicksand of lies from the empire of lies.
The reason why there was once a ‘counter-culture’ is that it is very difficult to oppose a culture, and that culture’s wars, from inside the culture and while still consuming all of the products of that culture.
I think the Russian constitution says they can’t give up annexed territory. So it’s not clear to me what they could negotiate.
You are so right. There are neoliberals, but no real liberals, one thing they have in common with conservatives, all are neocons who believe the world and all its resources belong to the American oligarchs.
Uncle Joe has dementia – much like Reagan so, who is really running the show?
NEOCONS, Susan, have been since the 1960’s, working on Israel’s instructions and probably on their payroll as well, swearing allegiance as they have to anyone in that big White House, Party notwithstanding.
They have entirely different objectives than the rest of the USA and absolutely different loyalties.
Aaron Good has written a remarkable book titled “American Exception: Empire and The Deep State.” The research was part and parcel undertaken as a result of his selection of the topic for his doctoral thesis. If you are a seeker of the truth, you will not be sorry for having read the brilliant work.
And what about all the other US presidents – dementia too??? The US is a war mongering nation, no matter who sits in the Out House.
Claiming that Russia has no way of winning the war outright assumes that the Ukrainian people have a limitless tolerance for pain, because Russia has the capacity to keep delivering it indefinitely. Somehow, I don’t think that is the case. No people were more diehard than the Japanese in World War II, and even they surrendered eventually.
The claim that Russia cannot win is useful to the warmongers as an excuse to justify sending more weapons and refusing to negotiate.
The reality is not something they can grasp behind their mental walls of hatred, prejudice, arrogance, paranoia and of course, stupidity. Russia is not the weakened country it was 20 years ago, far from it – and more importantly doesn’t use the same methods and tactics as western militaries. This makes it hard for them (the west) to understand what is going on on the battlefield and what Russia’s true capability really is.
I’m inclined to believe Putin when he says he hasn’t even started yet. Considering that with one hand tied behind its back, a relatively small Russian force, up until the recent mobilisation, has mostly only provided support for the Donbas militias, with little direct military engagement – and still has managed to push back on a much larger NATO equipped and trained Ukrainian army.
If Russia can do that, with so many self-imposed constraints, what can it do now that the gloves are coming off? It knows the West won’t negotiate, at least not in good faith, so it has little option but to get to a point where it can weaken Ukraine’s military ability, even with western weapons and support, to do anything of significance. Russia can then defend its new territories and then revert to a purely defensive position.
This would leave the west with a difficult choice – accept the new status quo or escalate and be seen by the whole world as the real aggressor.
I refer to the State Dept spokesperson as “Colonel Flagg”
He used to be CIA. Which leads to an old question, once asked by movies, back before the CIA got script approval, can a person truly resign from the CIA? Or if once in, are you in for life?
Did this person come over from the CIA along with Mike Pompeo? Is this like Hillary hiring Victoria Nuland from VP Cheney’s staff? Democrats making sure that Republicans don’t lose their jobs just because of democracy and the unpopularity of their policies? Or is it just that now the CIA and the State Dept are so fully merged that there is really no difference anymore?
If you are too young to get the Colonel Flagg reference, check YouTube. You might want to add “M.A.S.H.” to the search, as ‘Colonel Flagg’ was an occasional character on what was then the number one TV show in America. TV used to be funnier back before the CIA and the Pentagon got script approval.