Tag: European Council on Foreign Relations

Europe Hatches Plans for Ukraine Peacekeepers Without U.S.

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Europe Hatches Plans for Ukraine Peacekeepers Without U.S.

Western allies are trying to hash out a bold European idea: sending 10,000 to 30,000 troops to Ukraine to help enforce any eventual peace deal with Russia.

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As things stand, the chance of this force ever heading to Ukraine is a long shot, says Bence Németh, a defense expert at King’s College London. European leaders say they will only send troops if there is a lasting peace in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has so far ruled out signing a peace deal that includes Western forces in Ukraine. 

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The Postwar Vision That Sees Gaza Sliced Into Concentration Camps

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Postwar Vision That Sees Gaza Sliced Into Security Zones

A plan that is gaining currency in the government and military envisions creating geographical “islands” or “bubbles” where Palestinians who are unconnected to Hamas can live in temporary shelter while the Israeli military mops up remaining insurgents. 

Other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party are backing another, security-focused plan that seeks to slice up Gaza with two corridors running across its width and a fortified perimeter that would allow Israel’s military to mount raids when it deems them necessary. 

The ideas come from informal groups of retired army and intelligence officers, think tanks, academics and politicians, as well as internal discussions inside the military. While Israel’s political leadership has said almost nothing about how the Gaza Strip will look and be governed after the heaviest fighting ends, these groups have been working on detailed plans that offer a glimpse of how Israel is thinking about what it calls the Day After. 

The plans—whether or not they get adopted in full—reveal hard realities about the aftermath that rarely get voiced. Among them, that Palestinian civilians could be confined indefinitely to smaller areas of the Gaza Strip while fighting continues outside, and that Israel’s army could be forced to remain deeply involved in the enclave for years until Hamas is marginalized.

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According to people familiar with the effort, it aims to work with local Palestinians who are unaffiliated with Hamas to set up isolated zones in northern Gaza. Palestinians in areas where Israel believes Hamas no longer holds sway would distribute aid and take on civic duties. Eventually, a coalition of U.S. and Arab states would manage the process, these people said. 

Ziv, who oversaw Israel’s exit from Gaza in 2005, proposes that Palestinians who are ready to denounce Hamas could register to live in fenced-off geographic islands located next to their neighborhoods and guarded by the Israeli military. This would entitle them to reconstruction of their homes. 

The process would be gradual, and in the longer term, Ziv envisages bringing the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority back to Gaza as a political solution, with the whole process taking roughly five years as the military fights Hamas insurgents. Under his plan, Hamas could be part of Gaza’s administration, if it frees all the hostages held there and disarms, becoming purely a political movement.

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Northern Gaza, under the plan, would remain without reconstruction, and Palestinians there wouldn’t be allowed back to their homes until Hamas’s miles-long tunnel network was destroyed. Like the bubbles plan, it promotes the notion of de-escalation zones where aid can be delivered by the Israeli military or by international forces, but stops short of articulating an idea for governance. 

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Another plan published by the Washington-based Wilson Center* also advocates a coalition-style approach to the conflict but refrains from calling for Israel to consider the adoption of a Palestinian state. It says the U.S. should establish an international police force to manage security in Gaza and over time hand the job to a yet-to-be-defined Palestinian administration. 

Robert Silverman**, a former U.S. diplomat in Iraq who is a co-author, said his team discussed the plan with Israeli officials for months, even changing parts of the proposal to make it more agreeable to Israel’s war objectives and political dynamics, but it stalled with the prime minister’s office.

“He believes we finish the war first and then plan the postwar,” Silverman said of Netanyahu. “All the people who have done this before say that’s a huge mistake.”

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Another document, drafted by Israeli academics, that has made its way to the prime minister’s desk draws on historical precedents in rebuilding the war zones in Germany and Japan after World War II, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. It considers how to tackle Hamas’s Islamist doctrine by learning from the defeat of ideologies such as Nazism and that of Islamic State. 

Related:

Strategic Hamlet Program

The Strategic Hamlet Program (SHP; Vietnamese: Ấp Chiến lược) was a plan by the government of South Vietnam in conjunction with the US government and ARPA during the Vietnam War to combat the communist insurgency by pacifying the countryside and reducing the influence of the communists among the rural population through the creation of concentration camps.

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The Strategic Hamlet Program was unsuccessful, failing to stop the insurgency or gain support for the government from rural Vietnamese, it alienated many and helped contribute to the growth in influence of the Viet Cong. After President Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown in a coup in November 1963, the program was cancelled. Peasants moved back into their old homes or sought refuge from the war in the cities. The failure of the Strategic Hamlet and other counterinsurgency and pacification programs were causes that led the United States to decide to intervene in South Vietnam with air strikes and ground troops.

The *Wilson Center plan isn’t much better. 👇🏻

Related:

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China’s Game in Gaza: How Beijing Is Exploiting Israel’s War to Win Over the Global South

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Foreign Affairs so, yes, it has a bias. Author Mark Leonard

Still there are some points of interest. One obvious point made is the lamentable state of US diplomacy. Perhaps better acknowledged as non existent.

China’s Game in Gaza: How Beijing Is Exploiting Israel’s War to Win Over the Global South

The USG is doing a good enough job of ruining its reputation, on the international stage, but let’s blame China! 🤦🏼‍♀️

U.S. and NATO scramble to arm Ukraine and refill their own arsenals

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Either this narrative about weapon stockpiles, being depleted, is part of the information war or Russia is demilitarizing NATO!?!

U.S. and NATO scramble to arm Ukraine and refill their own arsenals

In Ukraine, the kind of European war thought inconceivable is chewing up the modest stockpiles of artillery, ammunition and air defenses of what some in NATO call Europe’s “bonsai armies,” after the tiny Japanese trees. Even the mighty United States has only limited stocks of the weapons the Ukrainians want and need, and Washington is unwilling to divert key weapons from delicate regions like Taiwan and Korea, where China and North Korea are constantly testing the limits.

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So the West is scrambling to find increasingly scarce Soviet-era equipment and ammunition that Ukraine can use now, including S-300 air defense missiles, T-72 tanks and especially Soviet-caliber artillery shells

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There are even discussions about NATO investing in old factories in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria to restart the manufacturing of Soviet-caliber 152-mm and 122-mm shells for Ukraine’s still largely Soviet-era artillery armory.

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The European Union has approved €3.1 billion ($3.2 billion) to repay member states for what they provide to Ukraine, but that fund, the [ironically-named] European Peace Facility, is nearly 90 percent depleted.

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Smaller countries have exhausted their potential, another NATO official said, with 20 of its 30 members “pretty tapped out.” But the remaining 10 can still provide more, he suggested, especially larger allies. That would include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has advised the alliance — including, pointedly, Germany — that NATO guidelines requiring members to keep stockpiles should not be a pretext to limit arms exports to Ukraine. But it is also true that Germany and France, like the United States, want to calibrate the weapons Ukraine gets, to prevent escalation and direct attacks on Russia.

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Washington is also looking at older, cheaper alternatives like giving Ukraine anti-tank TOW missiles, which are in plentiful supply, instead of Javelins, and Hawk surface-to-air missiles instead of newer versions. But officials are increasingly pushing Ukraine to be more efficient and not, for example, fire a missile that costs $150,000 at a drone that costs $20,000.

EU foreign ministers pledge to train 15,000 Ukrainian troops for war with Russia

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Yesterday, European Union (EU) foreign ministers met at a summit in Luxembourg and pledged a massive escalation of their participation in the NATO war on Russia in Ukraine. This decision confirms that EU countries are at war with Russia and, by the admission of top EU officials, raises the danger of direct military conflict between EU states and Russia.

EU foreign ministers pledge to train 15,000 Ukrainian troops for war with Russia

‘Western’ Conflict Reporting Has Come Down To “Officials On Our Side Said …”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

Larry Johnson is rightfully appalled by a New York Times piece that quotes a lot from ‘officials’ but fails to check any of their obviously false claims:

“I never cease to be amazed by the utter failure of journalists to assemble facts. I think it boils down to laziness. Why should you do any independent research or thinking that requires you to go to the front lines when you can gobble up and regurgitate pre-packaged talking points? You get paid the same and hell, you might even get a Pulitzer if you are the most enthusiastic purveyor of regime bullshit.”

‘Western’ Conflict Reporting Has Come Down To “Officials On Our Side Said …”

Timeline: Euromaidan, the original “Ukraine Crisis”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Genuine grassroots revolution or NATO backed coup? Here are the facts to help you decide.

Timeline: Euromaidan, the original “Ukraine Crisis”

Related:

George Soros admits to funding the Ukraine crisis [2014]

Canada’s fury at Russia’s recognition of the DPR & LPR shows its continuing subservience to US Empire (Documents Canada’s role in the Euromaidan and the Orange Revolution)

NATO’s relationship with Ukraine, actually started in 1991 when they signed joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. George Soros invested in the 2004 Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan. Not to mention, Pierre Omidyar co-funded Ukraine revolution groups with US government.