Potentially the single biggest threat to our well-being is the threat of war with nuclear-armed Russia, a threat that Barack Obama airily dismissed in a presidential debate with Mitt Romney four years ago, when the challenger named Russia as a foreign policy threat:
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered a halt to an agreement with the United States on plutonium disposal, citing Washington’s “unfriendly actions”
The deal, signed in 2000, was meant to allow both nuclear powers to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium from their defense programs, a move seen as a key step in the disarmament process.
The two countries recommitted to the deal in 2010.
Humiliating as the wreckage of an Obama prioritized nuclear disarmament deal must be to Obama and Hillary, it is the least of our worries. Consider this from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (via Sputnik News):
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford warned Congress that the implementation of a No Fly Zone, a centerpiece of Hillary’s foreign policy strategy, would result in World War III.
During testimony before the Senate Committee on Armed Services last week General Joseph Dunford rang the alarm over a policy shift that is gaining more traction within the halls of Washington following the collapse of the ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia in Syria saying that it could result in a major international war which he was not prepared to advocate on behalf of.
Odd, isn’t it, that the media have not publicized the nation’s top military leader warning that Hillary’s policy would lead to war with Russia?
If Syria seems remote, how about the Baltic States? Kris Osborne writes at Scout, a military site:
The current NATO force structure in Eastern Europe would be unable to withstand a Russian invasion into neighboring Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, a new think tank study has concluded.
After conducting an exhaustive series of wargames wherein “red” (Russian) and “blue” (NATO) forces engaged in a wide range of war scenarios over the Baltic states, a Rand Corporation study called “Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO’s Eastern Flank” determined that a successful NATO defense of the region would require a much larger air-ground force than what is currently deployed.
In particular, the study calls for a NATO strategy similar to the Cold War era’s “AirLand Battle” doctrine from the 1980s. During this time, the U.S. Army stationed at least several hundred thousand troops in Europe as a strategy to deter a potential Russian invasion. Officials with U.S. Army Europe tell Scout Warrior that there are currenty 30,000 U.S. Army soldiers in Europe.
The Rand study maintains that, without a deterrent the size of at least seven brigades, fires and air support protecting Eastern Europe, that Russia cold overrun the Baltic states as quickly as in 60 hours.
A group of ex-U.S. intelligence officials is warning President Obama to defuse growing tensions with Russia over Syria by reining in the demonization of President Putin and asserting White House civilian control over the Pentagon.
ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: PREVENTING STILL WORSE IN SYRIA
We write to alert you, as we did President George W. Bush, six weeks before the attack on Iraq, that the consequences of limiting your circle of advisers to a small, relatively inexperienced coterie with a dubious record for wisdom can prove disastrous.* Our concern this time regards Syria.
We are hoping that your President’s Daily Brief tomorrow will give appropriate attention to Saturday’s warning by Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova: “If the US launches a direct aggression against Damascus and the Syrian Army, it would cause a terrible, tectonic shift not only in the country, but in the entire region.”
Speaking on Russian TV, she warned of those whose “logic is ‘why do we need diplomacy’ … when there is power … and methods of resolving a problem by power. We already know this logic; there is nothing new about it. It usually ends with one thing – full-scale war.”
We are also hoping that this is not the first you have heard of this – no doubt officially approved – statement. If on Sundays you rely on the “mainstream” press, you may well have missed it. In the Washington Post, an abridged report of Zakharova’s remarks (nothing about “full-scale war”) was buried in the last paragraph of an 11-paragraph article titled “Hospital in Aleppo is hit again by bombs.” Sunday’s New York Times totally ignored the Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s statements.
In our view, it would be a huge mistake to allow your national security advisers to follow the example of the Post and Times in minimizing the importance of Zakharova’s remarks.
Events over the past several weeks have led Russian officials to distrust Secretary of State John Kerry. Indeed, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who parses his words carefully, has publicly expressed that distrust. Some Russian officials suspect that Kerry has been playing a double game; others believe that, however much he may strive for progress through diplomacy, he cannot deliver on his commitments because the Pentagon undercuts him every time. We believe that this lack of trust is a challenge that must be overcome and that, at this point, only you can accomplish this.
It should not be attributed to paranoia on the Russians’ part that they suspect the Sept. 17 U.S. and Australian air attacks on Syrian army troops that killed 62 and wounded 100 was no “mistake,” but rather a deliberate attempt to scuttle the partial cease-fire Kerry and Lavrov had agreed on – with your approval and that of President Putin – that took effect just five days earlier.
In public remarks bordering on the insubordinate, senior Pentagon officials showed unusually open skepticism regarding key aspects of the Kerry-Lavrov deal. We can assume that what Lavrov has told his boss in private is close to his uncharacteristically blunt words on Russian NTV on Sept. 26:
“My good friend John Kerry … is under fierce criticism from the US military machine. Despite the fact that, as always, [they] made assurances that the US Commander in Chief, President Barack Obama, supported him in his contacts with Russia (he confirmed that during his meeting with President Vladimir Putin), apparently the military does not really listen to the Commander in Chief.”
Lavrov’s words are not mere rhetoric. He also criticized JCS Chairman Joseph Dunford for telling Congress that he opposed sharing intelligence with Russia, “after the agreements concluded on direct orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama stipulated that they would share intelligence. … It is difficult to work with such partners. …”
In the Kremlin’s view, Russia has far more skin in the game than the U.S. does. Thousands of Russian dissident terrorists have found their way to Syria, where they obtain weapons, funding, and practical experience in waging violent insurgency. There is understandable worry on Moscow’s part over the threat they will pose when they come back home. In addition, President Putin can be assumed to be under the same kind of pressure you face from the military to order it to try to clean out the mess in Syria “once and for all,” regardless how dim the prospects for a military solution are for either side in Syria.
We are aware that many in Congress and the “mainstream” media are now calling on you to up the ante and respond – overtly or covertly or both – with more violence in Syria. Shades of the “Washington Playbook,” about which you spoke derisively in interviews with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg earlier this year. We take some encouragement in your acknowledgment to Goldberg that the “playbook” can be “a trap that can lead to bad decisions” – not to mention doing “stupid stuff.”
Goldberg wrote that you felt the Pentagon had “jammed” you on the troop surge for Afghanistan seven years ago and that the same thing almost happened three years ago on Syria, before President Putin persuaded Syria to surrender its chemical weapons for destruction. It seems that the kind of approach that worked then should be tried now, as well – particularly if you are starting to feel jammed once again.
Incidentally, it would be helpful toward that end if you had one of your staffers tell the “mainstream” media to tone down it puerile, nasty – and for the most part unjustified and certainly unhelpful – personal vilification of President Putin.
Renewing direct dialogue with President Putin might well offer the best chance to ensure an end, finally, to unwanted “jamming.” We believe John Kerry is correct in emphasizing how frightfully complicated the disarray in Syria is amid the various vying interests and factions. At the same time, he has already done much of the necessary spadework and has found Lavrov for the most part, a helpful partner.
Still, in view of lingering Russian – and not only Russian – skepticism regarding the strength of your support for your secretary of state, we believe that discussions at the highest level would be the best way to prevent hotheads on either side from risking the kind of armed confrontation that nobody should want.
Therefore, we strongly recommend that you invite President Putin to meet with you in a mutually convenient place, in order to try to sort things out and prevent still worse for the people of Syria.
In the wake of the carnage of World War II, Winston Churchill made an observation that is equally applicable to our 21st Century: “To jaw, jaw, jaw, is better than to war, war, war.”
Amid simmering South China Sea tensions, two US Navy ships docked in Vietnam for the first time since the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
On Sunday, the destroyer USS John S. McCain, named for both the father and grandfather of Arizona Senator John McCain, and the submarine USS Frank Cable made a historic visit to the Vietnamese port of Cam Ranh Bay.
Both vessels left port earlier on Tuesday.
While the port call may be significant in terms of US-Vietnamese relations, it also serves a more immediate purpose in light of tensions in the neighboring South China Sea.
Cam Ranh Bay is roughly 200 miles from the Paracel and Spratly island chains, where China has constructed a series of artificial islands.
A highly disputed region through which roughly $5 trillion in international trade passes annually, most of the South China Sea is claimed by China, though are a number of competing claims by other nations, including Vietnam.
The US Naval presence in Cam Ranh Bay comes amid American efforts to convince regional allies to play a more active role in preventing China’s rising influence. Earlier this month, Japan’s recently appointed Defense Minister Tomomi Inada indicated strong support for the Pentagon’s activities.
"Japan, for its part, will increase its engagement in the South China Sea, for example, Maritime Self-Defense Force joint training cruises with the US Navy and bilateral and multilateral exercises with regional navies," she said.
Documents reportedly hacked from the Clinton Foundation servers have identified major Democratic donors and troubling ties between TARP aid given to banks and their political contributions. One folder is outright labeled “Pay to Play.”
A Hacker calling himself “Guccifer 2.0,” who claimed responsibility for previous breaches of the Democratic National Committee and the congressional Democrats, published the documents on Tuesday afternoon ahead of the vice-presidential debates.
“I hacked the Clinton Foundation server and downloaded hundreds of thousands of docs and donors’ databases,” the hacker wrote on his blog. “Clinton and her staff don’t even bother about the information security.”
The Clinton Foundation has denied the hack, with president Donna Shalala saying that “none of the files or folders shown are ours.”
Guccifer 2.0 also claimed that one of the documents shows that big banks are donating a percentage of funds received through the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program to the DNC, citing a spreadsheet that lists the TARP amounts next to the amounts donated to lawmakers like then-Representative Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts), co-author of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
“It looks like big banks and corporations agreed to donate to the Democrats a certain percentage of the allocated TARP funds,” he wrote.
Another document posted on the blog appears to be a master list of Clinton Foundation donors in the western US, tracking contributions from 2009 to 2015. Among the names are movie directors JJ Abrams and Gore Verbinski; Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff; Google CEO Eric Schmidt; Walt Disney Co. President and CEO Robert Iger; Microsoft founder Bill Gates; Microsoft VP Steve Ballmer; and major Hollywood stars like Barbra Streisand, James Brolin, and Tom Hanks.
The hacker pr
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