Strategic Culture Foundation

2022-02-15 21:30:43 QUAD provides an umbrella to huddle together behind closed doors and give vent to their grouse against China in hushed tone — a safety valve for pent-up frustrations.

The scheduling of the QUAD ministerial meeting in Canberra on February 9 right in the middle of the Ukraine crisis and cascading U.S.-Russia tensions served to highlight that China remains Washington’s top foreign policy priority.

Possibly, Washington also gave a nuanced message that it has the capability to simultaneously tackle China and Russia. Washington probably hoped that such messaging would resonate in the Asia-Pacific region, which largely refuses to take sides between the U.S. and China.

Read more by Melkulangara Bhadrakumar: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/14/why-quad-is-irreplaceable/

#Quad #Australia #India #Japan #UnitedStates #China

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-02-15 21:00:38 If the west is able to discover the moral fitness to survive at this late stage of decay, it will be due to our rediscovery of this lost heritage and recognize its living expression in the Russian-Chinese alliance today.

Read more by Matthew Ehret: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/14/the-greater-eurasian-partnership-revives-americas-forgotten-hamiltonian-tradition/

#AbrahamLincoln #China #History #UnitedStates

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-02-15 20:48:53 It seems reasonable to expect we will have this crisis with us – in its various forms – for at least the next two years, Alastair Crooke writes.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/14/nord-stream-geopolitics-of-keeping-germany-down-russia-out-and-instability-ukraine/

#NordStream2 #Sanctions #EU #Ukraine

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-02-15 20:42:08 The infernal danger is that Washington and London are pushing Europe and the world towards the abyss of a nuclear with Russia.

The Anglo-Americans are running a modern-day reworking of Operation Overlord, the June 1944 military invasion plan billed to liberate Western Europe from Nazi Germany. This time around, the billed objective is to “liberate” the European Union from its “tyrannical” dependency on Russian natural gas.

In reality, the unspoken objective is to maintain U.S. tyrannical control over Europe. That control is essential for upholding American hegemony and global power. The ultimate price is economic devastation and even war for Europe which the “noble” American hegemon is all too willing for its peons to pay.

Read more by Finian Cunningham: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/12/american-overlord-demands-europe-sign-suicide-note/

#UK #Germany #EU #Diplomacy

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-02-12 12:01:25 Russia should not give such people an opportunity to insult with their provocative agenda.

Britain’s Foreign Minister Liz Truss was given a cool reception in Moscow this week. The guarded attitude is understandable for Truss has shown no respect to Russia or any attempt at genuine diplomacy. Her boorish warmongering and arrogant conduct should have been dealt with by denying her entry to Russia.

Granted, in the world of diplomacy there are supposed to be always open doors and it is recommended that uttering the word “no” is forbidden. So, one could argue that the Russian government was obliged to receive Britain’s top diplomat this week.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/11/forget-diplomacy-russia-should-shun-uk-toxic-foreign-secretary-liz-truss/

#UK #Ukraine #Russia #Diplomacy

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-02-11 21:37:37 Is the U.S. in a position to maintain the embargo upon the pretext of bringing democracy to Cuba with its record in destabilising secure states, even those upholding democracy?

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/10/cubans-will-not-forget-us-treachery/

#Cuba #FidelCastro #CIA #LatinAmerica

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-02-11 21:30:38 Not since the Vietnam War – when liberals behaved like peaceniks and not the Neocon country cousins they’ve become – has the media seriously scrutinized the US government’s arguments for military exploits abroad.

From the oilfields of Iraq, to the mountains of Afghanistan, to Trump’s classic head fake in Syria when a few missiles demolished a deserted airfield, triggering NBC host Brian Williams to get all choked up over “the beauty of our weapons,” the MSM has dutifully played water boy to Uncle Sam’s overseas misadventures. Somewhere, somehow along the way Americans inherited a Fourth Estate that actively promotes military aggression abroad.

Read more by Robert Bridge: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/09/is-american-legacy-media-weapon-of-mass-destruction/

#MassMedia #MSM #Propaganda #Ukraine

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-02-10 12:45:11 Cynthia Chung explains how the philosophy of the American establishment formed their “understanding” of nuclear strategy, which continues to influence thought today such as in the belief in the winnability of a limited nuclear war.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/08/in-search-monsters-destroy-manufacturing-of-cold-war/

#ArmsRace #ColdWar #Diplomacy #NuclearWeapons #UnitedStates

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-02-10 12:02:02 New trends that have appeared in regional security since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan are highly consequential for regional politics.

The joint statement issued on February 6 following the four-day visit by the Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to China has been an exceptional gesture by Beijing underscoring the highest importance attached to that country as a regional ally. Beijing feels the need to underscore that not only does it back the government in Islamabad to the hilt but is determined to boost the ties, especially by boosting the flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Aside its overt emphasis on the launch of the CPEC’s Phase 2, the two highlights of the joint statement are: one, the affirmation that ’stronger’ defence and security cooperation will be ‘an important factor of peace and stability in the region,’ and, two, the joint initiative to take up with the Taliban government the holding of the China-Pakistan-Afghanistan Trilateral Foreign Ministers’ Dialogue as well as the ‘extension of CPEC to Afghanistan.’

Read more by Melkulangara Bhadrakumar: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/08/pakistan-in-eye-of-storm/

#Afghanistan #Taliban #Pakistan #AntiTerrorism #China #CPEC

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-02-09 23:10:29 British duplicity doesn’t come much thicker than Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s hailing the virtues of diplomacy while piling up military tensions with Russia.

Johnson wrote an opinion piece for the Times newspaper this week in which he said he believed that “diplomacy can prevail” to prevent mounting tensions over Ukraine from escalating into a full-blown war between the US-NATO military bloc and Russia.

This was while Johnson announced that Britain was planning to deploy more Marines, fighter jets and warships to Eastern Europe. Britain has already taken the lead among European NATO members in sending weapons and special forces to Ukraine in what is claimed to be a defense against “Russian aggression”.

What Johnson is proposing this week is deploying more British forces to Poland and the Baltic states in what he calls a show of Britain’s “immovable” support for Europe. This is cynical grandstanding to burnish Britain’s image as some kind of noble power.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/09/uk-johnson-hails-diplomacy-while-stoking-russia-war/

#BorisJohnson #UK #Diplomacy #Ukraine #War

@strategic_culture Open / Comment