February 2023

The Illegality of NATO: Violation of the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Principles In recent years, participation in NATO has made European countries accomplices in US efforts to achieve global hegemony by means of military force, in violation of international law, and especially in violation of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles. Former UN Assistant Secretary-General Hans Christof von Sponeck – also a TFF Associate – used the following words to express his opinion that NATO now violates the UN Charter and international law: “In the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, the Charter of the United Nations was declared to be NATO’s legally binding framework.” However, the United Nations’ monopoly of the use of force, especially as specified in Article 51 of the Charter, was no longer accepted according to the 1999 NATO doctrine. NATO’s territorial scope, until then limited to the Euro-Atlantic region, was expanded by its members to include...

February 26, 2023 Veteran U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh claims that the U.S. was behind the Nord Stream pipeline explosions last year. What’s the connection between that incident and the war, one year on? CGTN’s Liu Xin had an exclusive interview with Prof. Jeffrey Sachs from Columbia University. He is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University; also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Sam Kolitch February 14, 2022 Ambassador Chas Freeman is a retired career diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993-1994, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989-1992 during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1986-1989 during the Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola and the US mediation of Namibian independence from South Africa, Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires in the American embassies at Bangkok from 1984-1986 and Beijing from 1981-1984, and Director for Chinese Affairs at the US Department of State from 1979-1981. In 1972, he was the primary American interpreter for President Nixon’s trailblazing visit to China. Ambassador Freeman is the author of America’s Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East, Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige, America’s Misadventures in the Middle East, The Diplomat’s Dictionary, Arts of Power: Statecraft...

Photo by Master Sgt. Sean M. Worrell, U.S. Air Force via ABACAPRESS.COM Branko Marcetic February 22, 2023 The Biden team has quietly blown past red lines of involvement. The question now, is how far is it willing to go. When the United States involves itself militarily in a conflict, it often finds it hard to get itself out, let alone avoid deep entanglements that blow well past lines it had drawn at the start of the intervention.  It happened in Vietnam, when U.S. military advisers helping the South Vietnamese fight Viet Cong eventually became U.S. soldiers fighting an American war. It happened in Afghanistan, when an initial invasion to capture al-Qaida and overthrow the Taliban morphed into a nearly two-decade-long nation-building project. And it could be happening right now in Ukraine.  Originally published at Responsible Statecraft Little by little, NATO and the United States are creeping closer to the catastrophic scenario President...

USA versus China trade war concept. Statue of Liberty and Chinese Dragon prepared for battle. National symbols show international relations. Vector illustration in comic style.  John Menadue February 22, 2023 Originally posted on John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal “Pearls and Irritations” on February 11th, 2023. h As China grows and prospers many in the US want us to believe that China will follow the same path that the US itself pursued- global military aggression, the overthrow of numerous governments around the world and persecution of minorities at home. But the record so far suggests that China is different. As former US senior diplomat Chas Freeman in Brown Political Review of 14 March 2022 put it, China does not have a Monroe Doctrine like the US and does not think and behave like the US. There’s not much evidence of China wanting to replace us. They are displacing us in some spheres because they’re big and growing and...

Beyond Russia, NATO/EU policies will prove morally wrong, unrealistic, dangerous and self-destructive. Introduction: 1 year of violence on top of 30 years of conflict: Too much wrong thinking The world’s focus is on the war. On February 24, it is one year since Russia launched its so-called special military operation. Much more important is to focus on the underlying conflicts – because there exists no war or other violence without root causes. The focus on war, by definition, won’t lead to a solution or wider, sustainable peace – like feeling the pain in a patient without diagnosing where it comes from can never lead to healing. Unless you ask: What is the problem, the conflict, that stands between the conflicting parties – NATO and Russia – it will end with escalation until one of the sides feel that the nuclear button is the only way out. International politics is still...

This comment was written and video created for and published by China Daily on February 20, 2023. The daily also used it for a special feature with three experts, which you may read here. It has also been published by The Citizen in India. Whatever other reasons that a war is raging in Ukraine, one major reason is that we live in times characterised by the increasingly dangerous – perhaps fatal – combination of intellectual-moral disarmament and military re-armament. Militarism is now the main factor holding the West NATO/EU world together. It’s a religion and NATO its church. In different ways, militarists argue that their side was historically innocent and are justified to do what they do now; NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg even states that NATO is not a party to the conflict. Secondly, they argue that they must win, meaning others must lose. The latter too is an intellectual fallacy...

Image from searchwizards This rather long text was written on the invitation of the distinguished “China Investment” magazine, which is sponsored by China’s National Development and Reform Commission. In spite of its name, it has consistently asked me to write on subjects that are not often connected with economics in general and investment issues in particular. I find that – much broader – approach to economics very interesting, and I am very pleased to cooperate with such broad-minded people. Here is the original version – a cover story – in both English and Chinese Introduction – The enigma of good things Like many other positive things in this world, there is little research available on what trust is and how it works. Human beings study war and other violence much more than nonviolence and peace; evil more than goodness; aggression more than forgiveness and reconciliation. It is quite strange because...

Source: www.cambodia-roads.fr Sebastian Strangio, In the Dragon’s Shadow – Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2022. Peter PeverelliTFF Associate This text is a combination of a book review and a report of a visit to Cambodia in January 2023. Both texts were published earlier in Dutch on Chinasquare. It seems justified to compare the value of the ASEAN countries to China with that of South America to the US. Turned around, one could expect that the ASEAN countries regard China as a Big Brother that you cannot ignore, even if you want to. This book confirms that expectation, but also shows that any ASEAN member can build a win-win relationship with China in its own specific way. The author, an academic who has been stationed as a journalist in various ASEAN countries for years, builds his arguments on a solid historical foundation, combined...

It’s time to distinguish between concepts of peace – the peace of life and civilisation and the peace of armament, war and other destruction, the latter being a defilement of the first. This award represents the latter, a Rest In Peace – RIP – Prize in times when war has become peace, real peace has been cancelled – and you are being fooled by the kakistocrats of rampant militarism, who – if they are allowed to continue – will destroy our society the way cancer destroys our body. It’s one of those countless absurd events within the field of security politics of our dark times: Finland and Sweden are proud to receive the Ewald von Kleist Prize at the Munich Security Conference, February 17-19, 2023. The Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, will give the keynote speech. More here. The Munich Security Conference is the main European hawk forum –...

Gordon M Hahn February 14, 2023 We are entering the most dangerous phase of the NATO-Russian Ukraine war up till now. The West is undertaking a major escalation in the war by increasing the lethality of weapons it is supplying Ukraine to include tanks and the largest tranche of military equipment supplied to Kiev so far. Meanwhile, Russia is on the verge of an offensive on the background of slow but steady gains in the east, taking Soledar, moving into Vugledar (Ugledar) and the outskirts of Bakhmut (Atemevsk), threatening Ukrainian forces with operational encirclements in several areas. Russia now has available in and around Ukraine 5-600,000 regular troops, almost none of which have been used so far, with Moscow having been relying on the DPR and LNR forces, the Wagner troops, Chechens, and massive attacks from the air by artillery, rockets, drones and such in previous phases of the war....

Dennis Argall February 13th, 2023 The US is at war, and the dollar is at risk of imminent collapse. Australia’s lobbying of the United States as a good ally should focus on these issues above all else. Originally posted on John Menadue’s journal Pearls and Irritations on January 19th, 2023 I am aware that many readers will say oh dear, you must not talk like that. But it’s sensible to discuss the distance to the ground before we jump off the cliff. And a lot has already gone over the cliff. In the narrow spectrum of security, focused on war and peace, the largest problems we cannot afford to ignore right now are as follows: War elements are increasingly out of control, In Europe and elsewhere. Clausewitz was right, war drives out policy and pursues its own ends. We are effectively in a world war, and the barrier to nuclear...