Churchill’s famous dictum about the Soviet Union, that it was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” is arguably just as applicable to Srebrenica. July 11 this year will be the twenty-fifth anniversary of that landmark event of the Yugoslav wars which the late Prof. Edward Hermann, speaking somewhat less poetically than Churchill, had called “the greatest triumph of propaganda at the close of the twentieth century.”
China underscored this week that it is willing to engage in negotiations with the U.S. to reduce nuclear arsenals and to underpin strategic stability. However, the offer comes with the caveat that Washington must first reduce its arsenal to the level of China’s before Beijing will engage in such talks.
In case you’ve been living in a cave the last few weeks, here’s latest news scoop riling the United States: Russia has been paying the Afghan Taliban bounties for American scalps.
Relations between the United States and Russia have already been badly wounded during recent years, largely as a result of baseless allegations such as Moscow interfering in American elections, colluding with President Donald Trump, or regarding other international developments, from the downing of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, to purported war crimes in Syria, to the alleged poisoning of British double-agent Sergei Skripal in England.
On June 15th, Breaking Defense headlined “Japan Halts $2.1B Aegis Ashore Work; New Black Eye For Struggling Program” and reported that Japan’s defense minister, Taro Kono, announced: “Due to considerations of cost and timing, we have stopped the process of introducing the Aegis Ashore system.” This is the Lockheed Martin anti-ballistic-missile system that the U.S. is installing at many places surrounding Russia in order to be able to eliminate or at least greatly reduce Russia’s ability to strike back effectively against the U.S.
A puerile propaganda stunt pulled by U.S. negotiators in Vienna this week ahead of talks with Russian counterparts was both at insult to China and a reprehensible distraction from credible bilateral business with Moscow on the vital issue of strategic security.
Ahead of talks with Russian delegates, the Americans took a stealthy photo of the venue contriving to show Chinese flags sitting atop vacant tables.
As of this month, the United States is deploying three of its aircraft carriers simultaneously to patrol the Pacific in what is designed to be a clear threat to China. Each carrier strike group comprises destroyers, aircraft and submarines. The U.S. has 11 aircraft carriers in total.
Just when you thought the leaders of NATO could not push the limits of insanity any further, something like NATO 2030 is announced.
After helping blow up the Middle East and North Africa, dividing the Balkans into zones of war and tension, turning Ukraine upside down using armadas of neo Nazis, and encircling Russia with a ballistic missile shield, the leaders of this Cold War relic have decided that the best way to deal with instability of the world is… more NATO.
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
– Max Planck
President Trump made a sensible move by proposing re-inclusion of Russia in the G-7 association of nations that, as the BBC observes “is an organisation made up of the world’s seven largest so-called advanced economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
