Sunday, March 12, 2023

Debunking Pro War Claims

One of the biggest pipes in the War Wurlitzer of western media is the well known Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and their publication Foreign Affairs.  (I was once invited to join the CFR, but only as some kind of  associate member and not one of the big dogs, so it would primarily be a high priced magazine subscription, though I might get invited to a lecture or two, and there might be the potential of upgrading my membership except that there was never any hope of that, since I have no relevant qualifications, and have no plan to get any.  I was tempted anyway.)  Pretty much every member of Congress becomes a member of CFR, etc.

Another is the more consumer oriented magazine The Atlantic.  As you might guess from the name, it invariably sides with US/NATO.

In the past couple months, both have published seemingly out-of-place articles critical of the US role in Ukraine.  (Which to me is further evidence of what I speculated a couple months ago, the US/NATO is now looking for a face saving out.)

There was much in both of these articles that I strongly agreed with, along with a few points that I wouldn't agree with.  

The importance of these articles to me is that they put a much more authoritative imprimateur on points I've been making before with support mainly from sources you might not trust as much as I do (MoA, ConsortiumNews, Aaron Mate, Caitlyn Johnstone, John Mearsheimer, and dozens more like them). 

I've tried to make at least one point the newest The Atlantic article makes many times, but a friend tends to quote a few words from a speech Putin made in the 1990's (rather than anything from the past decade)  to discredit my point.  The article in The Atlantic addresses this very issue.

QUOTE

Why did Russia invade Ukraine?

Perhaps because they view NATO as a benign—even benevolent—force in the world, many Western commentators argue that Russia was primarily motivated to conquer Ukraine for offensive purposes as part of its “colonial venture” to reconstitute the Soviet Union. The controversial international-relations luminary John Mearsheimer overstates the case that there is “no evidence” of Russian imperial ambitions to gobble up Ukraine. But his work on “offensive realism” suggests that NATO enlargement eastward since the Iron Curtain fell has indeed been viewed by Russian leaders as inherently threatening, and played a significant role in the invasion.

END QUOTE 

This section continues, and is followed by another section debunking the analogy with Munich, but you can read the original for all that.

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