Category: Russia

The Fall of the US Empire – And then what?

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By Johan Galtung

Johan Galtung

Is the title of a book published by TRANSCEND University Press in 2009, now in second printing, and several translations including Chinese. There were two subtitles indicating answers: Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? – US Blossoming or US Fascism?

What is the situation today, five years later?

Successors? UK is militarily with USA to keep Anglo-America as a dominant world force even if a shadow of 50 years ago; France tries to keep its hold on former colonies in Africa; they use NATO-North Atlantic Treaty Organization for military and EU-European Union for political support. In empires the local elites line up to do the killing; yet the Western powers have mainly to do that themselves.

China is very active economically abroad, some of it structural violence; however, the military component has not been used aggressively.

Russia went into the “near abroad”, CIS-Commonwealth of Independent States, Ukraine; but for other reasons. The gift of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 was a mistake to be corrected as conditions changed; and Moscow, not Kiev, proposes federal solutions for “one country, two nations”. In short, no successors.Read More »

TFF PressInfo 276 – Ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine: Now withdrawal by Russia, the UN in and NATO out

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By Jan Oberg, TFF co-founder

Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden September 3, 2014 – 11:30 CET.

As announced just a few minutes ago, the Ukrainian and Russian president have agreed to what the first reports call a permanent ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine.
That’s indeed the best piece of news from that region.

It places the NATO Summit in Wales this Thursday and Friday in a new light.

The ceasefire must be solidified
However, an agreement over a phone is only a beginning; the devil is in the details. Secondly, there is no mention – yet – of the East Ukrainian fighters are on board this agreement.

Time for UN peacekeeping
Third, a credible ceasefire should be monitored by neutral observers and competent people. The only ones who can do that is the UN peace-keepers – perhaps with some staff also from Russia and Ukraine.Read More »

Make Russia a friend again

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By Jonathan Power

August 26th 2014.

In his magisterial book “Europe”, Norman Davies writes, “Europe is a relatively modern idea. It gradually replaced the earlier concept of ‘Christendom’ in a complex intellectual process lasting from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries.”

Jean Monnet, the founder of the European Union, said, “Europe has never existed. One has to genuinely create Europe”.

“For more than 500 years”, continues Davies, “the cardinal problem in defining Europe has centred on the inclusion or exclusion of Russia. Throughout modern history the Orthodox, autocratic, economically backward but expanding Russia has been a bad fit.”

Nevertheless, Empress Catherine the Great announced in 1767 in St Petersburg that “Russia is a European state”. Dostoevsky, at the poet Pushkin’s funeral, eulogised Europe. “Peoples of Europe don’t know how dear to us they are.”

Muscovy has been an integral part of Christendom since the tenth century. Moreover, one can see that since Pushkin’s time Russia has created a larger part of the Western high cultural heritage than any other single European country and far much more than America. Think of the ballet (the best in the world by far) and the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theatres- and their protégés from Nureyev to Anna Netrebko. Think of composers: Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Stravinsky and Shostakovich. Think of the novel, poetry and drama: Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekov, Turgenev, Anna Ahmatova as well as Pushkin and Dostoevsky.

Lenin identified closely with Europe. Only under Stalin did Russia move away from Europe. In more recent times both Mikhail Gorbachev and President Vladimir Putin have talked of wanting to belong to the “Common European Home”- one day members of the European Union.Read More »

Demand swells for straight answers on plane in Ukraine

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By David Krieger and others

A long list of prominent individuals has signed, a number of organizations will be promoting next week, and you can be one of the first to sign right now, a petition titled “Call For Independent Inquiry of the Airplane Crash in Ukraine and its Catastrophic Aftermath.”

The petition is directed to “All the heads of states of NATO countries, and of Russia and the Ukraine, to Ban-ki Moon and the heads of states of countries on the UN Security Council.” And it will be delivered to each of them.

The petition reads . . continue here. And please sign it!

TFF PressInfo: Support Richard Branson’s Ukraine dialogue initiative

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TFF PressInfo 273

By Jan Oberg, TFF co-founder

Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden August 22, 2014

We are drifting towards a new Cold War. The reason isn’t substance because there is no reason we should not be able to live in peace in Europe – if we want and educated ourselves in handling problems.

No, the reason is the woefully incompetent way in which politicians and media focus on violence and ignore the underlying conflict and civil means – yes yes, of course there are exceptions.

Escalation doesn’t create peace

Here is just one example – NATO S-G Anders Fogh Rasmussen and NATO’s supreme commander General Breedlove (funny name given his anything but loving views coming rather from a Strangelove …) in the Wall Street Journal.

They tell you about all the escalation they have already done Read More »

Rusland, EU og sanktionerne

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Af Jens Jørgen Nielsen

Betragtninger 7. august, 2014

Vi lever i en interessant tid. Og den er ikke kedelig. Mange faste forestillinger ændrer sig. Det slår mig, at EU politikere og ditto amerikanske ved meget lidt om både Rusland og verden. Som EU borger kan jeg med beklagelse konstatere, at EU ikke har nogen politik i forhold til Rusland. Og højstemt forargelse og at snakke amerikanerne efter munden tæller ikke som en egentlig politik.

Hvilke forestillinger har EU politikerne haft om slutspillet i Ukraine? Hvilke forestillinger har de haft om virkningerne af sanktionerne? Hvilken viden og forståelse af hvilket land Rusland er, har de samme politikere haft?

Det er som om dæmonisering af Putin har gjort det ud for en politik. Jeg opfordrer ikke her til at man skal elske Putin. Men jeg opfordrer for det første til at finde ud af, hvad man ønsker med Rusland og for den sags skyld også med Ukraine. For det andet, at man gør sig overvejelser over, hvad sanktionerne betyder på både det lange og korte sigt.

Hvad har mangelen på overvejelser over egne interesser og mangelen på analyse af sanktionernes virkning ført til? Read More »

Vesten bør reagere på Irans åbne vindue

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Af Birgitte Rahbek

Trykt i Kristeligt Dagblad 11. juli 2014

Birgitte Rahbek

Lige fra den syriske krigs begyndelse har det været et standende emne, om krigen kunne vindes – og dermed standses – ved at sende våben til oprørerne eller ved at gribe ind med flyveforbudszoner eller direkte intervention. På et meget tidligt tidspunkt gjorde NATO det klart, at en intervention ikke kunne komme på tale; det er der megen fornuft i, bortset fra at det måske havde været klogere ikke at sige det højt, for det fremmede ikke just det syriske regimes fredsvilje.

I mellemtiden har den overvejende holdning været, at Vesten hverken kan eller skal gribe ind, og at vejen til en fredelig løsning går gennem forhandlinger. FN har to gange sat erfarne diplomater til at føre forhandlingerne, men uden at de har kunnet komme igennem med en fredsplan, især fordi der blandt vestlige ledere og mellemøstlige autokrater hersker en stærk uvilje mod at forhandle fred med fjenden, som i denne forbindelse – ud over den syriske præsident og hans klan – har været Iran og Rusland. Read More »

Putins Rusland er ikke som Sovjet

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Af Jens Jørgen Nielsen

Billedet af Rusland i de vestlige medier er i dag næsten mere dystert end under den kolde krig. Mange tror, at russerne lever i fattigdom og ufrihed i evig angst for Putins rædselsregime, præget af få censurerede medier. Rusland skulle angiveligt være ved at falde sammen og borgerne længes efter de friheder, som vesten kan tilbyde.

Putin skulle angiveligt være nervøs for, at den ukrainske ’demokratiske’ revolution skulle sprede sig til Rusland. Derfor skal vi i vesten entydigt støtte Kiev regeringen og den ikke-parlamentariske opposition i Rusland. Mange vestlige politikere mener, at vi økonomisk skal isolere Rusland.

EU og USA fokuserer i disse tider på at straffe Rusland og Read More »

TFF PressInfo: Cold War warnings 1998 – 2014

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By Jan Oberg

Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden August 11, 2014

Quality research leads to better predictions

One criteria of quality research is that it predicts the future better than incompetent research.

Because TFF is independent of governments and coroporations it doesn’t have to take political considerations or exclude certain theories, concepts or values. This free research enabled it over the years to make fairly precise predictions about for instance former Yugoslavia, the Iraq war and East-West relations.

In 1998 – 16 years ago – we warned that NATO’s expansion would lead to future problems with Russia. Read it here.

NATO should never have been expanded

We backed this prediction up with 46 arguments and argued that so many other things would be wiser than containing Russia from the Baltic republics to Georgia – a strategy pursued by Bill Clinton in contravention of all promises given to the Soviet Union/Russia at the end of the Cold War about ten years earlier.

That counterproductive and insensitive expansion has now hit Ukraine. A new Cold War is gathering over Europe. It should have been predicted by advisers, intelligence agencies, big research institutes and columnists.

But it wasn’t.

At the end of the Cold War, NATO/the West got everything it could ever wish – and without war. But it wanted more: keeping Russia down, making NATO bigger and “peace-making” as well as finding new enemies to keeping its Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex (MIMAC) alive and well: Saddam, Milosevic, the Muslim world, terrorism and – now re-cycling – Russia.Read More »

TFF PressInfo: Wow, Hillary Clinton as moral philosopher

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By Jan Oberg, TFF director

Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden July 31, 2014

Responsibility for wars and killing

A number of Western/NATO politicians – Hillary Clinton foremost among them – and media people have recently introduced a new ethical principle in international affairs:

When A delivers weapons to B, A is responsible for what B does with these weapons. The former Secretary of State and perhaps future U.S. President presents this new ethical principle here on CNN.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Look at it this way:

Here is a young confused boy who has little to look forward to – and less to lose – because his country is falling apart in nasty civil war. He’s been told by some commander, or by his President, that he must hate the enemy; he gets paid for killing off as many as he can. And so he does.

He believes also in what he’s been promised: Fame as a hero upon return – that is, if he returns – and a comfortable life.

So he kills people, Read More »