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This is Glenn Greenwald talking to Tucker Carlson on 21st March.
"From the very beginning, it's been clear that the United States wants this war to continue and wants it to go on for as long as possible because they have no interest in protecting Ukraine. They instead want to sacrifice Ukraine, have Ukraine destroyed in order to advance what they think is the United States' political interest, geopolitical interest of weakening Russia."
"The lie just got revealed. If you listen to what John Kirby said, they asked him are the Ukrainians willing to have a ceasefire and he said not only won't they, we won't allow it either. Essentially admitting finally what's long been obvious that the country funding the war, providing the arms for the war, which is the United States determines if and when the war ends, and we obviously don't want that war to end."
Here are Admiral Kirby's words.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN: "So if they call for a ceasefire, you believe Ukraine should and will reject that?"
JOHN KIRBY: "Yes, we do. And we would reject it as well. We think that that's an unacceptable outcome right now. Obviously, we want the fighting to stop. We want the war to be over. And as I said, it could end today if Mr. Putin would do the right thing. But to call for a ceasefire right now basically ratifies what they've been able to grab inside Ukraine and gives them time and space to prepare for future operations. And that's just not going to be acceptable."
Obviously, the chances of Ukraine pushing Russia back to the de facto borders of February 2022 are very slim.
Obviously Ukraine benefits more from peace than land, especially land occupied by ethnic Russians.
Obviously there is no chance of Ukraine recapturing the Crimea unless Nato troops go in, which would mean a third world war.
Yet Biden or the people around him want the war to go on for a long time.
Why does a ceasefire help Russia more than Ukraine? It makes no sense but the neo-con Robert Kaplan, husband of Victoria Nuland, said the same thing. Kirby says that Russia and China chafe at American leadership of the world. Yes.
It is prettty obvious the Americans are not spending tens of billions of US$ in Ukraine just to help the Ukrainians be free. Clearly it is a geopolitical play at containing Russia and its nuclear capabilities, to avoid a Russian resurgence in Europe. The resurgence happened as soon as Putin determined his army is strong enough. That is the problem with dictators. If Ukraine was taken by the Russians, it was Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Baltic countries next (NATO or not). So, thank God for the US geopolitical interest (which served UK very well in the WW2 if I remember correctly). I heard no complains about the US geopolitical interest from the UK politicians in the WW2. Using strategic nuclear weapons is not an option for Putin or US, so in the end he might end up using tactical nuclear if he gets desperate in Ukraine, but even so, they do not win a war there, but he will then face a military force who will hold nothing back (nor will the Europeans helping them and preventing further Russian advances). So you post dear Paul tells us what? That the US is an evil force? It was not the US who started the war.
ReplyDeleteNeville Chamberlain told Joseph Kennedy the US Ambassador that America caused the war. I don't know of that is true but Roosevelt provoked the Japanese to attack. I think the idea that Putin intends to attack Romania or Poland is simply silly, but thank you for teading what I wrote.and commenting. I wonder why the same.people who were in favour of the lockdown and the European Union are opposed to efforts to broker peace in Ukraine. I can't see what the links are between the 3 issues.
DeleteMy view is that had Nato been wound up years ago this war would not be happening.
DeleteThe United States officially entered WW II thirteen months after Neville Chamberlain's death. If Chamberlain was referring to the Pacific war, then he was clairvoyant. If he was referring to the war in Europe, then I don't see how the US comes in for blame.
DeleteCan you cite the particular comment (and interview) paraphrased? I followed several of Kirby’s interviews and Greenwald has taught me to verify the sources. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteNo and it worries me.
DeleteI imagined Greenwald was kosher but really I know very little about him.
DeleteHere is what Glenn Greenwald is referring to, I think. https://youtu.be/-aZYWor0_DM
DeleteSo Greenwald slightly paraphrased what Kirby said but got it right and makes an extremely important point.
DeleteNo he said they would reject an offer at that point, he did not say America would for forbid Ukraine to do so. Twisting meaning to serve your point is not paraphrasing
DeleteCOLLINS: "So if they call for a ceasefire, you believe Ukraine should and will reject that?"
DeleteKIRBY: "Yes, we do. And we would reject it as well."
Does Glenn Greenwald twist his meaning? He was speaking live not reading from a text. I leave readers to decide.
The USA does not have the power to forbid Ukraine negotiating but retired Admiral Kirby said 'we would reject' the idea of a ceasefire now, rather than repeating the line that it is for the Ukraine to decide. He wants peace if Russia surrenders all the Ukrainian territory she is occupying - otherwise war must go on.
You are right though - Kirby did not say the USA would not allow a ceasefire exactly, simply that the Americans reject the idea. But the point is that the USA is opposed to a ceasefire - which we all know - and has her own interests in this war discrete from Ukraine's - which we also knew unless we we asleep.
DeleteNaturally the US has tremendous leverage over Ukraine's decisions; that is an obvious and open secret (and always has been). But I find it a bit farfetched to characterize the US position as being able to force the Ukrainians to keep fighting if Zelensky thought a ceasefire were more desirable. How do you achieve that? Shoot them in the back like Prigozhin?
DeleteNobody thinks the Americans are holding Ukraine prisoner but they should be using their good offices to help bring about a ceasefire. The despicable Kirby is anxious to prevent one.
DeleteThey probably tell the Ukrainians they can drive out the Russians bag and baggage, which seems highly unlikely indeed, even if we do not talk of the Crimea.
DeleteHow the US and NATO reuse the 1990s Yugoslavia wars playbook in Ukraine
ReplyDeleteOperation Allied Force (NATO’s official name for the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia) is proof that NATO’s claim of being a “defensive alliance” is a lie. So is the notion that changing borders by force is something that is simply not done in the “rules-based world order,” what with the US-led bloc occupying Serbia’s province of Kosovo and endorsing its “independence” in 2008. The West was so law-abiding, it tried to justify the unjustifiable by inventing the doctrine of “responsibility to protect” and setting up an “independent” commission to declare the war “illegal but legitimate.”
The narrative about Ukraine as an innocent victim of aggression and a plucky underdog defending Western values, in need of money, weapons and volunteers – that’s exactly how the Western press painted Croatia and the Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s. Being an actor, Vladimir Zelensky is just better at reciting the same lines as Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic.
Zelensky’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba is also working off a script lifted from his Bosnian counterpart Haris Silajdzic. He too was a globe-trotting media fixture, demanding everything from food to weapons and accusing the “aggressor” of war crimes, rapes and genocide. To give Kiev some credit, it at least sacked the official who made fake claims of mass rape; Silajdzic never disavowed his accusations. In every other respect, Ukraine has far exceeded Bosnia in terms of projecting a sense of entitlement.
The current US and EU sanctions against Russia also had a precedent in the 1990s UN sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro, down to the ban on international sporting competitions.
The UN also placed an arms embargo on all Yugoslav republics. The US skirted it during the early 1990s, to send weapons to Muslims and Croats. At the Dayton, Ohio peace talks in late 1995, US envoy Richard Holbrooke sought to sweeten the deal for the reluctant Izetbegovic by offering to “train and equip” the Muslim military after the armistice. The current push to create a Western-armed force in Ukraine is basically the same, only on steroids.
In fact, Jens Stoltenberg’s January 2023 argument that “weapons are the way to peace” is but an echo of Holbrooke’s “bombs for peace” from September 1995, during a NATO aerial bombardment campaign that Time magazine described as “bringing the Serbs to heel.”
Named ‘Deliberate Force’, that NATO operation dovetailed with Croatia’s Operation ‘Storm,’ an assault on Krajina, in August 1995. Serbs living in the historic borderlands of present-day Croatia had set up their own republic in 1992, which Zagreb denounced as “aggression” from Serbia itself – much like how Kiev, in 2014, reacted to the independence claims by the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk by denouncing it as Russian "aggression". The US had armed, trained and advised the Croatian military for the 1995 attack, and Holbrooke even revealed that Washington had told Zagreb what to hit and when – in a preview of the US and NATO providing intelligence to Kiev.
ReplyDeleteOperation 'Storm' ended with a forced "reintegration" of Krajina into Croatia, having left thousands of people dead and over 200,000 driven from their homes. In recent years, officials in Ukraine – from presidential adviser and top prosecutor Yury Lutsenko to PM Vladimir Groisman – have publicly argued for a “Croatian solution” to the Donbass “problem.”
The West has insisted on enforcing the 1991 borders of Croatia, Bosnia, and Ukraine, even though they were drawn by Communist governments that the very same West worked for decades to overthrow. Lest you believe that indicates a principled position, the US and its allies declared an exception for the borders of Serbia when they carved away Kosovo in 1999. The whole point of the “rules-based order” is that they are the ones making the rules.
The obvious problem here is that Russia today is not 1990s Serbia.
How the US and NATO reuse the 1990s Yugoslavia wars playbook in Ukraine
If certain strategies and tactics seem familiar, that’s because they are over 20 years old
Mar 29, 2023
By Nebojsa Malic
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/authors/nebojsa-malic/