More Unraveling

Yesterday I addressed what I termed the Great Unraveling. I took that from an article by Alastair Crooke, which concluded:

Events in Gaza and in Ukraine are unravelling long-standing political power control structures in the EU, in Europe and in the US.  This is why there is panic and double-down.

Today I want to simply point to some symptoms of this unraveling—some more speculative than others.

I’ll start with a partial transcript of a Danny Davis interview with Chas Freeman. Here is the link to the full video which is a very lively discussion:

Israel May Lose this War w/ fmr US Ambassador Chas Freeman

The theme that runs through this excerpt is one that is common to other critics of the The Israel Lobby’s almost total control over that in any way touches on Israeli interests—a very broad category of interests that includes Russia, for example. John Mearsheimer, with whom readers will be familiar, is another example of a pioneer researcher in this field. I include this exchange under the heading of unraveling because Freeman argues that the conflict of interests between The Israel Lobby and ordinary Americans has reached an acute point—The Israel Lobby is demanding that Americans be complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians or simply shut up. This astounding demand has led to unprecedented and public pushback.

DD: I don't see any evidence that the Biden administration is going to do anything except say whatever it needs to and then do whatever Israel asks [tells?] it to do.

CF: Well, if you remember there was a famous question asked by Bill Clinton after one meeting with Netanyahu: "Who's the superpower? Us or them? They do whatever the hell they want, they don't pay any attention to us, and they demand--they feel they're entitled to our support regardless.” We have it within our power to stop this. The fact that we fail to use that power makes us look weak everywhere in the world. ... Patience with this has pretty much run out overseas, and in many quarters of the United States it's running out, too. And it's having a real impact on our society. Domestically it's become one of the most polarizing subjects. We've seen university presidents toppled because they didn't toe the line. We've seen real absurd statements about "Kill all the Palestinians!" made by our politicians, basically endorsing genocide.

The Israelis have no interest in minimizing genocide. The fewer Palestinians there are serves their purposes. The fewer Palestinians there are the happier the Israelis are, the safer they feel. You cannot occupy another people and rule by terror and expect them to just lie down and take it.

In the next section Freeman moves on to argue—without using the tag The Israel Lobby—that The Israel Lobby has frog marched America out on to a limb on which the US is rapidly losing respect in the eyes of the world. The world is looking for, and finding, alternatives to the US Rules Based Order—American Imperial hegemony is unraveling. That is not the concern of The Israel Lobby, which is more focused on the short term interests of the Netanyahu government.

The longer this goes on the less clout or influence the US will have overseas. The fact that Joe Biden feels obliged to take orders from Netanyahu and can't do anything about Netanyahu basically spitting in the face of the United States on the issues in Gaza and just keeps funnelling more money and weapons to Netanyahu to go on doing what we've told him he shouldn't do--this makes us look incredibly weak.

Quite aside from that, our complicity in genocide ... spills over to issues like Ukraine--why should anyone support us on Ukraine if we have the double standards that we do. ...

... in the UN Security Council we are almost alone in trying to defend the indefensible. [The president] should live up to American values, which are not the same as Israeli values. It used to be said that we supported Israel for several reasons. One, we shared values. Well, their values are the values of the Ku Klux Klan. ... We should not support Israel on that ground. Second, we supported them because we thought they were useful to us strategically, but they are taking us down with them globally. In effect, we have made a choice. We have chosen to back Israel over the international system, the Rule of Law, the United Nations system that we created after WW2, the Rule Bound Order, if you will, not the one that's dictated by Washington but the one that reflects the common aspirations of Mankind. We have chosen Israel over that internationaal system. We're prepared to destroy the international system in order to allow Israel to continue to conduct genocide.

I think that is truly sick.

Tell us what you really think, Chas!

Of course, this conversation took place only a day after arch Neocon Victoria Nuland’s announced “retirement” from the State Department. Just a reminder. The day before that announcement I had argued, somewhat deferentially, that the trip to DC of Benny Gantz, Israeli former general and current political rival to Netanyahu, as well as current war cabinet member, could presage some change in US policy—which, alone, would constitute an unraveling of long standing control structures. Gantz was slated to meet with NSA Jake Sullivan and VP Kama Sutra, who had, on Sunday, delivered a rather impassioned call for an immediate ceasefire—something Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected out of hand. I was, perhaps uncharacteristically, deferential in my argument because I was going against the views of several commentators whom I respect, and who argued that Gantz was totally on board with Netanyahu and his policies—despite Gantz’ public statements. My position was/is not that Gantz is even remotely a peacenik, but that he may represent a faction within the fractious Israeli government that is concerned that Netanyahu and the “settler” faction is jeopardizing Israel’s relationship with the US.

With that in mind, and to illustrate the close connection between American policy vis a vis Israel and Russia, I offer the concluding paragraphs of a fascinating essay by former Indian diplomat M. K. Bhadrakumar. MKB speculates on what might have been behind Nuland’s announced departure (she’s being replaced by someone from the WH, btw, not by anyone tagged by Tony Blinken). MKB ties it in to Russian matters, but I would argue that there may be a confluence of factors—Middle East as well as Russia (and of course Russia plays a prominent role in the Middle East, too). The title alone suggests unraveling of control structures.

Is ground beneath Biden’s Russia policy shifting?

Nuland has had a big role in the life of Ukraine and we can only guess the massive dimensions of it. Indeed, she publicly celebrated the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which broke the umbilical cord tying Germany to a geopolitical alliance with Russia.

Last month, after a sudden visit to Kiev, Nuland promised some nasty surprises waiting in store for the Kremlin in the Ukraine war. Was it the idea of combat deployment in Ukraine by NATO countries she was referring to? There are no easy answers. Well, belatedly at least, White House has intervened twice to assert that putting American troops on the ground in Ukraine is a no-go area. 

The point is, it is entirely conceivable that Nuland’s exit could be a reflection of the collapse of the whole architecture of the US’ Ukraine strategy, which she designed. 

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has emphatically stated that the development is to be attributed solely to the failure of the US’ anti-Russia policies: “They [American side] won’t tell you the reason. But it is simple: the failure of the anti-Russian policies of the Biden administration. Russophobia, which was proposed by Victoria Nuland as the main US foreign policy concept, is making the Democrats sink like a stone. Well, with them already being at the bottom, it’s not letting them go up.”              

All things considered, therefore, there could be added meaning to the intriguing remark yesterday by the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence Sergey Naryshkin promising his CIA counterpart William Burns that he will scrupulously observe their mutual agreement not to allow any leaks about their communication. “It was our mutual agreement not to allow leaks not only about the nature, about the issues that are being discussed or will be discussed in our face-to-face meetings, in telephone conversations, but also about them happening. I am standing by this agreement,” Naryshkin said. [Emphasis added.]

It could be coincidental that Naryshkin was messaging to Burns on a tumultuous day marking the news that Victoria Nuland is stepping down — and within a week of Putin’s unusual nuclear warning to the US. But it will be extraordinary for a seasoned politician and intelligence chief to speak up fortuitously.  

Now, I’m going to quote the entire, brief, Tass article that MKB links. What happened to occasion Naryshkin’s statement was that his meeting with Burns was immediately leaked to the press—despite the agreement, insisted upon by the US, that it be kept strictly secret. Naryshkin is pointedly stating, in effect: What the …?

Russian intelligence chief stands by agreement with CIA’s Burns to allow no leaks

Sergey Naryshkin also said all previous leaks were on the US side

MOSCOW, March 5. /TASS/. Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergey Naryshkin has said that he will stick to the agreement with US Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns not to allow any leaks about their communication.

"It was our mutual agreement not to allow leaks not only about the nature, about the issues that are being discussed or will be discussed in our face-to-face meetings, in telephone conversations, but also about them happening. I am standing by this agreement," Naryshkin said in a fragment of an interview for Soloviev Live television, which was shown on Rossiya-1 television and on the Smotrim platform.

The Russian official said all previous leaks were on the US side.

Naryshkin and Burns met at the headquarters of the National Intelligence Organization of Turkey in Ankara on November 14, 2022. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the US insisted on keeping the communication channel between the officials in confidence, but right upon the arrival of the US delegation in Ankara, that information was immediately leaked. Naryshkin later did not rule out the possibility of a new meeting with the CIA chief. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that such communication is "useful.".

Note that this March 5 article scrupulously mentions only the November, 2022, meeting—while hinting that there may have been later meetings. There could have been any number of reasons for a new meeting. For example, the reports of multiple deaths of CIA “advisers” in Ukraine recently. Or, the unraveling of previous US policy and an attempt to get a new policy in place, to set ground rules. Ask yourself, if you were a high level official in a NATO government—take your pick—how would reading this article make you feel? Assuming the US hadn’t briefed you on it, which I’ll bet they didn’t. What does that tell you about the state of NATO? It certainly suggests quite a bit about the constant references we’re seeing to “panic” in the West.

Finally, Danny Davis did a really good interview today with David Sacks, whose tweet A War of Lies has gone viral (we reproduced it in full just the other day). Davis and Sacks yuck it up about the transparent corruption of our MIC, which now embraces the total Deep State. But the willingness of Mike Johnson to resist the pressure he’s getting suggests that other things may be unraveling—at least a little. I start at the 38 minute mark of a 47 minute video (it’s all worthwhile). They are discussing the attempt to get $60 billion more “for Ukraine”—to try to push the Ukrainian collapse past November. At the 41 minute mark is when they start talking about the $60 billion being the “last big payday” and how the pitch of the discussion surrounding the $60 billion is approaching the level of hysteria, “because they're really nervous about this money not coming through and they really want it.” By “they” they mean MIC contractors.