Tomorrow morning at 6:00, Peggy and I will drive to Vatican Square with some new Roman friends to attend the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV. The ceremony will begin at 10:00. That means we’ll be there four hours ahead of time. The attempt to secure good seats promises a long morning.
As you may recall, what Carl Jung called “synchronicity” has brought us to Rome at this precise time. Our ostensible purpose for being here was simply to spend three weeks with our son, daughter-in-law, and three small granddaughters (ages 5, 3, and 1). We wanted to spend as much time as possible getting to know the girls, whose parents’ foreign employment patterns would otherwise make that far more complicated.
However, my real synchronic purpose for being here, I’m convinced, is to reconnect me with my deep Catholic roots for purposes of final evaluation before transition into Life’s next dimension.
With that process in mind and at the age of 84, I feel overwhelmed by Rome’s beauty – its tree-lined streets, omnipresent sidewalk cafes, its lavish fountains, statuary, Renaissance paintings and churches, its operas and ballets. Today all that seems even more wonderful than it did more than half a century ago when I spent five years here (1967-’72) getting my doctoral degree in moral theology.
Those were magic years for me, when after spending my teenage and early adult years in a seminary hothouse, I finally began waking up to the real world. It all shook me to the core.
And here I’m not just thinking of personal growth experiences, but of the dawning of political awareness about the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Liberation, and of Liberation Theology which I’ve come to understand as “critical faith theory.” (By that last phrase I mean understanding the way Christianity has been used by western colonial powers to enslave, brainwash, and justify repeated exterminations of Muslims, “witches,” Native Americans, kidnapped Africans, and colonized people across the planet.)
Along those lines, being here in Rome during the ongoing holocaust in Gaza makes me think of Pope Pius XII’s virtual silence on the Jewish Holocaust in the 1930s and ‘40s. It has me wondering if Leo XIV will follow in his shameful footsteps.
I mean, the new pope will have a golden opportunity to confront his fellow American Catholics undeniably responsible for the ongoing slaughter in Palestine. I’m referring to J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and possibly Joe Biden. It’s as if during the Holocaust, Pius XII had the chance to publicly confront Hitler or Goering.
Will Leo use this golden opportunity to call them (and the absent Mr. Trump) to task the way the courageous Episcopal bishop Mariann Edgar Budde did when presented with a similar opportunity in the early days of the Trump administration? Recall that as the episcopal leader of 40,000 congregants in the D.C. area, Bishop Budde had Trump and Vance squirming in their seats as she pled for mercy on behalf of the immigrants, refugees, Palestinians, and others whom those key members of her audience show every evidence of despising.
Will the papal leader of 1.2 billion Catholics show similar courage tomorrow? Or will he take refuge in “safe” generalities, “diplomatic” bromides, and empty platitudes about “peace,” justice, and mercy?
My guess is that it will be the latter. But we’ll see.
Key predecessors of Leo XIV: Leo XIII, Francis, & John Paul II
Last evening, I was present just outside St. Peter’s Square for the first blessing of Pope Leo XIV, the former Augustinian Cardinal, Robert Prevost. Providentially, my wife Peggy and I just happen to be in Rome visiting my eldest son’s family now located here.
Around 7:00 Peggy had phoned me with news of seeing white smoke from the Vatican chimney. That traditional signal indicated the successful completion of Papal Conclave deliberations. Earlier in the day, the two of us had been together in St. Peter’s Square when black smoke revealed an inconclusive result of that morning’s process.
So, I raced off walking as fast as I could toward the Via Conciliazione, the long wide avenue extending from the papal basilica. My five years living and studying in Rome (1967-1972) told me that a huge overflow crowd would gather there spilling over from St. Peter’s Square and awaiting the introduction of the new pope.
Forty minutes later, I arrived just in time to hear and (barely) see him.
I could hardly believe my ears.
Imagine: a second consecutive American pope! And this one from the United States as successor to the first American pope, Argentina’s Pope Francis! Not only that, but the new man also turns out to be a fellow Chicagoan. Like me as well, he entered the seminary as a 14-year-old intent already at that tender age on becoming a priest. I felt I knew him. (I also found myself wondering, could he also be a Cub fan? Probably not though. Prevost is a South-Sider which probably aligns him with the White Sox.)
More seriously, I wondered what could the cardinal electors have been thinking in selecting someone like Prevost – a dual citizen of the U.S. and Peru? And what could Prevost himself be signaling in choosing Leo XIV as his papal name? I also wondered what Leo’s election might portend for the Catholic Church and the world.
Along those lines, let me share some initial impressions.
The Significance of Prevost’s Election
Regardless of the Cardinal electors’ intentions, I find it noteworthy that the last two papal elections have shifted church focus from Europe to the Americas. They have directed attention away from the colonizers to the colonized, from the oppressed to the oppressors.
Could the cardinals’ appointment of Prevost be making a forceful statement about such dynamic?
I mean Francis was a product of United States’ oppression. Argentina’s U.S.-supported “dirty war,” led to the deaths and forced disappearances of more than 30,000 Argentinians. Whether by specific intention or by direction of the Holy Spirit, Francis’ election called attention to such tyranny over the Global South by an imperialistic United States.
Yes, Argentina’s Guerra Sucia (1974-’83) was the bloody expression of what Noam Chomsky and others identify as a more general U.S. war against the Catholic Church in Latin America. The conflict was sparked by implementation there of Catholic Church teachings on social justice and by the emergence of liberation theology, which Washington long considered and treated as a threat to national security.
With that in mind, the college of cardinals might be suggesting that new pope’s trajectory embodies the response Catholics should take to the United States’ cruel history of violence in what it has long considered its “backyard.”
Think about it: Prevost so identified with the oppressed that he became a citizen of Peru, the home of the great liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez. Could Leo’s election be another affirmation of liberation theology and of “Americans” need to identify with the Global South? Whether intended or not, the attentive can make such connection.
Prevost & Social Justice
In any case, Prevost’s clear identification with the oppressed was further underlined by his papal name, Leo XIV.
The name suggests the new pope’s intention to continue his 19th century namesake’s landmark contribution to “the best kept secret of the Catholic Church,” viz., its social justice teachings which are rarely mentioned from North American pulpits.
Nevertheless, the Church’s constantly reiterated teachings on economic and political justice highlight themes of:
Along these lines, in 1891, Leo XIII wrote perhaps the most important papal encyclical of all time. (Papal encyclicals are pastoral letters written by popes for the whole Roman Catholic Church on matters of doctrine, morals, or discipline.) I’m referring to Rerum Novarum on “The Condition of the Working Class.” While affirming the right to private property, Rerum Novarum even more centrally asserted the dignity of labor, and the right of workers to form labor unions. For its time, it was revolutionary.
The encyclical was so important that three popes have specifically repeated and updated its radical teachings.
In 1931 Pius XI did so in Quadragesimo Anno published in the middle of the Great Depression. Quadragesimo Anno began with the words, “Forty years have passed since Leo XIII’s peerless Encyclical, On the Condition of Workers, first saw the light, and the whole Catholic world, filled with grateful recollection, is undertaking to commemorate it with befitting solemnity.
Forty years later in 1971, Paul VI commemorated Rerum Novarum again with his own Octogesima Adveniens. It identified action in the political arena as an essential element of Christian faith. Paul VI’s document begins with the words, “The eightieth anniversary of the publication of the encyclical Rerum Novarum, the message of which continues to inspire action for social justice, prompts us to take up again and to extend the teaching of our predecessors, in response to the new needs of a changing world.”
A final specific reiteration of Rerum Novarum was promulgated by Pope John Paul II in his Centesimus Annus published in 1991. Its first words are “The Centenary of the promulgation of the Encyclical which begins with the words “Rerum novarum“,1 by my predecessor of venerable memory Pope Leo XIII, is an occasion of great importance for the present history of the Church and for my own Pontificate.”
Meanwhile, in 1965, the Second Vatican Council published what many consider its fundamental document, Gaudium et Spes, “The Church in the Modern World.” In what remains the official teaching of the Catholic Church, the Council document (like Rerum Novarum) declared the Church to be an agent of social transformation. It called on Catholics to constantly read “the signs of the times,” to denounce social injustices and contribute to identification of appropriate remedies. The church is humanist, the Council said, in that humanity itself is central to its philosophical and theological thinking. Moreover, human beings are not primarily individuals, but essentially members of communities.
In other words, Leo XIII remains an unforgettable giant in the history of the Catholic Church. Despite its not being acknowledged from U.S. pulpits, his teaching about social justice constitutes a central element of Roman Catholic official doctrine. Robert Provost’s assumption of his name represents yet another reiteration of Rerum Novarum’s centrality.
The New Pope’s Promise
So, what does all of this portend for Leo XIV’s reign?
It suggests:
A continuation not only of the tradition of Leo XIII, but of Prevost’s immediate predecessor and patron, Pope Francis.
Yet another encyclical in the spirit of Rerum Novarum
This time incorporating the environmental themes of Francis’ Laudato Si’ (2015) which remains perhaps the most important document of the 21st century on climate change.
Leo XIV as an outspoken voice concerning the climatic and imperial causes of Global South immigration to Europe and North America.
Denunciations of U.S. forever wars as responses to global crises.
In other words, amid of one of our planet’s darkest hours, the election of Leo XIV could signal a highly significant turning point towards the light.
Today is Good Friday. This morning’s New York Times (NYT) correctly identified the day as “part of the holiest week in the Christian calendar.”
It also recalled President Trump’s campaign promise to “bring back Christianity.” According to him and his first lady that means following “the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity.” The pair wants this to be “one of the great Easters ever.”
The article went on to recall how Mr. Trump’s aspirations were following and expanding the lead of George W. Bush who established the first White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives in the early 2000s.
Mr. Trump’s “personal pastor,” Paula White-Cain who heads the Office affirms its ability “to weigh in on any issue it deems appropriate.” Chief among them, she said, were the desire to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” including deviation from the position that there are two sexes, male and female. Such concerns have afforded the Faith Office “unprecedented access” for faith leaders to “officials in intelligence, domestic policy and national security.”
Accordingly, Mr. Trump has often met with pastors from states like Colorado and Pennsylvania. On returning home, those reverends have shared photos taken with the president sometimes with heads bowed in prayer, imposing hands of blessing on the president’s head, or with Mr. Trump joining them in singing hymns.
All of this led the NYT article and accompanying video to identify the White House as “one of the safest places in the world to be a Christian.” In fact, one of the Christian pastors interviewed for the piece said that “he doesn’t see any rails on the limits of the faith office.”
Good Friday Perspective
As a Jesus scholar and theologian, I found all this quite ironic, false, and heretical. In my view it is reminiscent of Germany of the 1930s, when Christian pastors and Catholic bishops routinely endorsed the leader of the Third Reich, who also affirmed allegiance to the Jesus reflected in Mr. and Ms. Trump’s profession of faith.
The reality was, however, that Hitler’s Germany and the policies supported by Trump’s MAGA crowd reveal an actual hatred for Jesus mourned and celebrated this Good Friday. After all he was the son of an impoverished unwed teenage mother who was houseless at birth. He was an immigrant in Egypt. He was an unemployed construction worker. He was a harsh critic of the Jewish political and religious establishment, of the Roman Empire, and of the rich in general. He said that the future belonged to the poor, the non-violent, and those persecuted for justice sake. He ended his life as a victim of imperial torture and capital punishment.
Conclusion
So, if there are no rails, no limits, on Mr. Trump’s faith office how about lowering them for pastors like Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde? (Remember how she infuriated Donald Trump and JD Vance at Trump’s inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington. She did so merely by pleading with Mr. Trump to “have mercy” on LGBTQ people and immigrants targeted by his policies.)
If there are no rails, how about lowering them for rabbis, ministers, priests, and faithful demanding that Mr. Trump stop the Hitlerian genocide he’s committing in Zionist Israel?
If there are no rails, how about implementing policies that recognize and honor Jesus in the children of poor unwed teenage mothers, in the houseless, in immigrants, in the working class, in opponents of the rich and powerful, in those protesting the hypocrisy of Jewish Zionists, in U.S.-supported torture facilities, and on death row.
Only changes like those can convince followers of the historical Jesus that the White House is “one of the safest places in the world to be a Christian.” Only changes like those can make this “one of the great Easters ever.”
I never thought I would find myself writing these words. But I think the world is far better off with Trump as our president than with Genocide Joe Biden.
There I said it. I do so under the threat of great personal detriment. I mean, I can hardly voice such opinion in polite progressive company. I can’t even say so in my own family.
So, at the risk of complete isolation, let me try to explain myself.
I think the world’s better off with Trump because a head of state should at least be sui compos mentis. Clearly, Joe Biden was not. By most accounts, Jake Sullivan has been running the country for the last four years. Secondly, Trump is better because he’s backing us off from nuclear war with the Russians. Joe wouldn’t even talk with them. Thirdly, whatever we might think of his words about real estate in Gaza, the Donald has introduced a cease fire there. It seems to be holding. Fourthly, President Trump shows promise of dismantling the CIA and FBI. That has no downside as far as I can see. And finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, he’s unifying the country around the issue of truth-telling. I mean it. Let me explain.
Trump’s Not Senile
I can hardly believe the Democrats knew Joe Biden was mentally over the hill from the first day of his administration. And yet after four years, they were willing to run him out there for a second term, when everybody knew he could scarcely tell up from down.
How cynical is that? How disrespectful to voters! How anti-democratic!
Thank God for the first presidential debate that showed the old man mired in an advanced condition of senility.
As such, his defining issues became:
Billions and billions and billions for Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. (Trump stopped that right quick.)
His inability to do anything about a ceasefire in Gaza. (Trump turned that around even before he was sworn in.)
Unstinting cooperation in the genocide of Palestinians. (We have yet to see Trump’s final policy here, though his words and supply of 2000 pound bombs are not promising.)
Maintaining U.S. hegemony at all costs.
Those are the issues that obsessed and defined Genocide Joe – Ukraine, Gaza, genocide itself, and refusal to recognize that we live in a multipolar world. Little else he did really counts.
Trump Talks Russian
In sharp contrast to Biden’s foolishness, Donald Trump has agreed to peace talks with our proxy adversary in Ukraine. That war could have been entirely avoided had Biden even acknowledged reading and had he responded to Mr. Putin’s peace proposal in December of 2021. However, preferring war to diplomacy, he chose not to.
Shortly afterwards, the war could have been stopped in its tracks had Biden not (through Boris Johnson’s nefarious graces) effectively voided the peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine initialed by both belligerents in March of 2022. Instead, the old man again chose war that so far has exacted more than a million casualties.
In other words, Biden’s version of diplomacy was refusal to even talk with Putin.
Donald Trump has reversed all of that. Simple man that he is, Trump evidently realizes what all of us teach our children – make up with those you’ve been fighting with. Talk with your “enemies.” Try to see things from their point of view. No good parent would instruct them otherwise.
Diplomacy is as simple as that. Its exercise under Donald Trump has made the world a safer place.
Ceasefire in Gaza
So far, Trump’s policy in Gaza has made Palestinians safer as well.
The whole sequence of events since Trump’s diplomatic intervention illustrates the point. Since then, the whole world has witnessed:
Thousands upon thousands of Palestinians returning “home.”
The Zionist-caused rubble of their homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, mosques, and churches.
The uncovering of untold numbers of friends, relatives, doctors, nurses, and teachers buried and uncounted under the rubble raising the number of Palestinians indiscriminately killed to well over 100.000 – more than half women, children, and the elderly.
The survival of Hamas fighters still proud, well-armed, and undefeated by Israel’s genocidal attacks.
The testimony of Hamas prisoners about humane treatment on the part of their captors.
The contrasting emaciated and evidently tortured bodies of Zionist prisoners released by the Zionists.
None of this has been good for Israel’s image in the world. Instead, it’s made the world aware of the justice of the Palestinian cause.
To repeat, all of that makes Palestinians safer. It has also shown President Trump’s policy in Israel to be better than Mr. Biden’s, at least so far.
Today, Palestinians are better off under Trump.
Dismantling the CIA
And then there’s Mr. Trump’s appointment of Tulsi Gabbard to oversee the country’s 18 spy organizations. Those agencies spy on us! They engage in regime change operations. According to ex-CIA director, Mike Pompeo, they lie, they cheat, they steal all the time. They take entire courses on how to do so. Pompeo was proud of that. He thought it was a big joke.
Tulsi Gabbard realizes all of that. In Senate testimony, she refused to identify Snowden as a traitor.
Clearly, she has the “intelligence” establishment quaking in their boots.
That makes all of us better off.
ConclusionBringing Us All Together
Recently, I saw a YouTube discussion between leftist comedian Jimmy Dore and progressive journalist Matt Taibbi. Dore raised a question about climate change. He confessed that in view of all the lies that have infected the scientific community (and American public life in general) he was for the first time having doubts about climate change. Was its threat being overblown?
In response, Taibbi admitted that the exposure of so many lies conveyed by politicians, clergymen, journalists, and university researchers had him wondering too. “I’m ashamed to say so,” he said in effect, “but all of that has me wondering about beliefs I’ve taken for granted over the last 30 years of my life.”
The exchange between Dore and Taibbi made me realize that even the falsehoods conveyed by the Liar in Chief currently manning the White House has important benefits.
On all segments of the political spectrum, it has us wondering about truth. We no longer trust those claiming to be truth tellers. We no longer trust the “fact checkers.” They’ve all been shown to be liars.
Regardless of where we stand on politics or climate change, that’s a hugely important point for Americans to realize and agree to. Thank you for bringing us together, Mr. Trump.
I’m always disappointed with Democracy Now’s (DN) coverage of Syria. Its reporting on the fall of the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad was no exception. It described Assad’s deposition as primarily a triumph of freedom and the will of a brutally repressed people.
Absent from DN’s narrative was the straightforward truth that the fall of Assad was the fruit of another regime change operation. It was part of the U.S. plan announced in 2001 to depose seven governments in five years, viz., Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Iran.
Though the American timetable was overly optimistic, with the change of regime in Syria, the U.S. has succeeded in hitting six of its seven targets. Only Iran’s government remains in place.
Let me show you what I mean by summarizing DN’s account, contrasting it with its counter narrative, and sketching the way U.S. regime change operations work.
The Official Syrian Story
For years DN’s usually critical founder, Amy Goodman, has for some reason sided with the United States and Israel by uncritically repeating their official story about the Zionists’ neighbor to the north. It tells us that:
Bashar al Assad is a brutal dictator who succeeded his dictator father to rule Syria with an iron fist for the last half century and more.
He has not only claimed absolute power in Syria,
But has run an extensive secret prison system there (a “human slaughterhouse”) where captives are systematically mistreated, tortured, and held without charge.
His use of chemical weapons against those objecting to his rule is well documented by independent witnesses such as the Syrian Civil Defense Organization, the “White Helmets.”
For all these reasons, the U.S. and Israel have long held that “Assad must go.”
“Moderate rebels” have recently transformed that imperative into facts on the ground. Thankfully, they have successfully overthrown the hated dictator.
Since his removal from office, his brutality and consequent unpopularity have received ample testimony and denunciation by ordinary Syrians who are universally celebrating his fall from power.
Thus the U.S. and Israel (as champions of democracy, just war, and humane incarceration, and as opponents of torture and the killing of innocent civilians) have triumphed once again in yet another mid-east country.
The triumph mirrors what they have accomplished so idealistically and benevolently in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia and other countries benefitting from their wars fought for democracy and peace.
That’s the official line DN’s Amy Goodman consistently presents and/or implies.
A More Complete Picture
However, what Goodman’s account fails to explore are its following contradictions that would have us forget that:
The foreign powers advocating and celebrating the end of Assad’s cruelty (i.e., Israel and the U.S.) are the current perpetrators of genocide in Palestine. Arguably, that deprives them of ability to convincingly champion human rights in any forum. It demonstrates that they have no concern about civilian deaths, secret prisons, unjust torture, democracy, freedom, or peace.
In fact (according to George Galloway) during its war on terror, the U.S. used Syrian prisons as black sites to which they rendered “terrorists” for torturous interrogation.
Moreover, the “moderate” agents fulfilling the U.S. and Israel’s imperative to remove Asad from power are successors to the very “terrorists” responsible for al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks 23 years ago).
That is, while designating Syria as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” the U.S. has once again allied itself with al-Qaeda as it had in Afghanistan during Russia’s war there (1979-1989).
Additionally, the U.S. has crippled the Syrian economy by illegally occupying its eastern oil fields since 2014 effectively stealing its oil revenue since then.
While Israel has similarly occupied its neighbor’s Golan Heights.
Syria’s economy and population have suffered severe hardships under a U.S. sanctions regime that started in 2011 and whose effects worsened following a massive earthquake in February of 2023. For years they’ve had to function on the provision of a single hour of electricity each day.
Civil Discontent in Syria
As for the testimony of Syrians applauding and celebrating the fall of Asad . . .. It too demonstrates the effectiveness of standard American policy against designated enemies whose political “regimes” the U.S. wishes to change. That policy never deviates from the following procedure:
Vilify the regime leader as the latest incarnation of Hitler.
Under the pretext of punishing him, use sanctions, economic blockades, bombing, propaganda, bribery, election interference, terrorism, and internal subversion whose real purpose is to make the lives of locals so miserable
That they will arise,
Overthrow the regime in question,
And celebrate the victory as the triumph of democracy.
This is the standard policy followed not only against Syria, but against official enemies such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The subversion invariably causes the threatened governments to adopt their own counter-policies that the U.S. and its allies then describe as authoritarian, oppressive, and brutal. The policies include imprisonment of compromised political opponents, jailing and mistreatment of terrorists (no harsher btw than the mistreatment of prisoners in Israel and the U.S.), and restrictions on (usually foreign allied) press along with fifth column civil and religious organizations. All these government actions provide further evidence of the illegitimacy of the regimes in question.
They also provide well-meaning news sources like Democracy Now with reasons to uncritically repeat imperialist talking points.
Conclusion
Listening to Democracy Now’s account of a people’s triumph in Syria after more than a half century of dictatorship made me think of Cuba. As a friend of the revolution there and as a frequent visitor to the island, I couldn’t help thinking how in the case of a successful uprising there (God forbid!), a similar sort of account might be concocted.
There’d be the same people dancing for joy in Havana’s streets and the same people saying on camera how relieved they are that the hated regime had been deposed. There’d also be the same ex-pat Cuban professors from prestigious U.S. universities sharing the joy and supplying historical details about the brutalities of Castro’s legacy.
Misinformed viewers would be led to conclude “Thank Goodness Cubans are finally free!”
But if the current Syrian template were followed, those viewers would never be stimulated to question the official story. They’d never be reminded of the disastrous effects of 60 years of sanctions, blockade, and acts of terrorism against the state. They’d never know about attempted assassinations of the country’s president. Neither would they think critically about the effect of anti-Cuban propaganda on their own psyches.
The point I’m trying to make here is that questions should always be raised about official stories concerning designated enemies of discredited imperialist countries like the United States and Israel.
They should be asked as well when perpetrators of genocide decry the human rights record “dictators” carefully selected from a long list of tyrants routinely supported by the complaining parties and when the black sites and “slaughterhouses” of the offending dictators have been used by their accusers themselves.
Yes, critical reporters should be able to identify such contradictions.
Simply repeating “the official story” helps no one.
Donald Trump’s landslide victory last month and his repeated promise to end war in Ukraine has Washington neocons quaking in their boots. How can they save their beloved Project Ukraine and prevent peace from breaking out on Russia’s border?
That’s the question Foreign Affairs (FA) tackled this week in an article by Elie Tenenbaum and Leo Litra. It’s entitled “Ukraine’s Security Now Depends on Europe.” The piece was marked by significant departure from the familiar “official story” on Ukraine. Yet it retained enough of that story’s elements to virtually render impossible reasoned discussion about ending the Ukrainian debacle.
The Official Story
To begin with, the FA article tells the story that aficionados of Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, and Washington Post have been programmed to accept. Taking its cue from the White House, the story holds that Putin is the aggressor in Ukraine. He cannot be trusted, lies habitually, routinely breaks promises, and remains unconstrained by international law.
Accordingly, everyone knows that his attack on Ukraine was unprovoked, and that Russia had been raining missiles on terrorized Ukrainian armed forces in the Donbas since 2014. It was Putin who backed out of the Minsk Accords as well as voiding the Istanbul peace framework in March of 2022. Putin also obstinately refuses to consider peace negotiations even though his army has suffered casualties by the hundreds of thousands – far more than his Ukrainian opponents. Moreover, Russia’s economy is crumbling while its citizens generally do not support the war effort.
That’s the Official Story. It’s the one largely repeated by Tenenbaum and Litra.
A Competing Narrative
However, the story’s elements are contradicted point by point by highly credible scholars, diplomats, ex-military and CIA officials and independent journalists. A short list of the latter includes John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Colonel Douglass MacGregor, Scott Ritter, Ray McGovern, Alexander Mercouris, Brian Berletic, and Chris Hedges.
All these maintain that a U.S.-led NATO provoked the war in Ukraine after completely ignoring Vladimir Putin’s peace proposal advanced in December of 2021. Moreover, Russia’s invasion mirrors what the United States would do – in fact what it has done – in similar circumstances. Recall the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Remember America’s many violent invocations of the Monroe Doctrine to protect its interests in its Latin American “backyard” by direct invasion, proxy wars, and bloody regime changes.
According to the analysts just mentioned, it is the U.S. and NATO that lie habitually and cannot be trusted. In fact, the whole Ukrainian conflict is based on a broken promise by U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker, to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. It said that NATO would not expand even “one inch” towards Russia.
Then (as admitted by German ex-prime minister Angela Merkel) NATO further tricked Russia into signing the Minsk Accords to provide time for Ukraine to build up its military for confrontation with its neighbor. According to Merkel, NATO had no intention of observing either Minsk I or Minsk II.
Additionally, in December of 2021, when Russia offered NATO those terms to prevent the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. refused to even consider the proposal. Two months later, after only one month of Russia’s “Special Military Operation,” and after Ukraine and Russia had initialed accords to ensure the former’s territorial integrity in exchange for neutrality on Ukraine’s part, NATO persuaded its protégé to fight on rather than finalize the accord.
The result of such deceptions has been complete catastrophe for Ukraine. Russia’s strategy of attrition has claimed more than 600,000 lives and seriously wounded 100,000 more. As a result, Ukraine is running out of men, its economy is in freefall, and Russian troops are moving relentlessly westward by kilometers every day. Meanwhile, Russia’s economy is flourishing despite the war generally supported by its citizens. There is no way Ukraine can bring Project Ukraine to a successful conclusion.
Cracks in the Official Story
Up until recently, NATO’s official story held unmovable sway. However, the FA article considered here exhibits important concessions to the unofficial account. For instance, Tenenbaum and Litra admit that: by all accounts Ukraine is losing the war as Russian troops rapidly move towards Kyiv. In fact, it seems nearly impossible to reverse this desperate situation since Ukraine and its allies have not only run short of weapons but also, of soldiers who are getting killed and wounded at unsustainable rates. Additionally, the Russian air force and air defense mechanisms are unmatched by Ukraine. Kremlin’s troops also far outnumber the Ukrainians while using and replacing their weapons at a scale Ukrainian allies cannot match.
In this dire situation, it is time for negotiations on terms NATO (not Russia) must dictate to possibly include: (1) vastly increased and decades-long economic and military aid to Ukraine, (2) a ceasefire that temporarily freezes current positions of both the Russian and Ukrainian front lines, (3) granting Ukraine NATO membership before hostilities cease or postponing the country’s entry into NATO for 10 to 20 years, (4) the deployment of a NATO peacekeeping force to ensure the frozen hostilities, and/or (5) more extensive intervention by multinational NATO land, sea, and air forces to act as a Security Shield or Guarantor Force against future Russian threats.
The problem is however (even for Tanenbaum and Litra) that absent a “significant military defeat or internal political change,” Moscow will never accept such terms, but is likely to insist instead on settling the war on the battlefield.
Nonetheless the authors hold that the Russian president may come to the negotiation table because: his Special Military Operation is unpopular at home. His army has suffered tremendous battlefield losses. His stockpile of Soviet Era weapons is rapidly diminishing. The Russian economy is overheating while public spending, inflation, and interest rates are exploding.
Conclusion
Do you see how the Official Story is weakening and now finds itself on the shakiest of grounds? It has finally made important concessions to its unofficial counterpart. It admits that Ukraine is losing the war, that it is getting weaker, and Russia is getting stronger.
On the other hand, FA’s insistence on the remnants of the Official Story render virtually impossible intelligent discussion of Ukraine’s future. Depending on one’s source of information – mainstream or alternative – it becomes a kind of “he said, she said” debate over details that are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Practically speaking, it matters little now who started the war, who backed out of agreements first, who’s lying, and who’s telling the truth. What matters now are facts on the ground. And all of them favor Russia.
So, given new agreement on the conflict’s inevitable direction, and given the promises of Mr. Trump, it remains unclear why Ukraine would continue sacrificing its soldiers for no good end.
After all, Ukraine lacks leverage in any negotiations that include proposals for Ukrainian inclusion in NATO. Membership now or ten years from now is a non-starter as far as the more powerful Russians are concerned. Russians are in the driver’s seat now and it must be remembered that a major purpose of their SMO was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.
Also, it is unclear why Tanenbaum and Litra think that a NATO peacekeeping force would be acceptable to Mr. Putin. Why not China and North Korea?
Yesterday’s posting evoked a very thoughtful response from a faithful and highly valued reader of this blog. He apparently read my remarks as endorsing the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in response to attacks against that country — attacks supported and directed by the U.S.
I sincerely apologize for giving that impression.
To clarify, let me say the following:
Nuclear weapons are categorically immoral.
No human being (Not Biden, Trump, Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Rob Bauer, Vladimir Putin, or Xi Jing Ping) has the right to use (or threaten the use of) nuclear weapons that will cause the end of humanity.
This means that the reigning deterrence agreement between nuclear powers involving “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) is also unquestionably immoral.
Yet unbelievably, many academicians, politicians, moralists, and military leaders praise such deterrence (coupled with disarmament agreements and pacts limiting the number and explosive force of nuclear weapons) as the most effective way of avoiding nuclear war.
As a result (and quite irrationally), MAD represents the status quo that politicians of all the world’s nuclear powers have endorsed. It embodies the tragically accepted “rules of the game.”
Shamefully, NO ONE among world “leaders” speaks (or apparently thinks) beyond the parameters of MAD.
Nor do they evidence a willingness to engage in nuclear disarmament talks or to sign pacts limiting weapons design or deployment. (In fact, the U.S. has unilaterally withdrawn from several previously signed pacts.)
This means that provocations of one nuclear power against another are completely reckless, irresponsible, and insane, since (according to the “rules” of the MAD game) such provocations can easily lead to nuclear response.
More specifically, though the present conflict in Ukraine ostensibly involves a war between Russia and Ukraine, it is clearly a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
Yet U.S. insistence on provoking the nuclear power, Russia, with missile attacks that are impossible without direct logistical, targeting, and ordnance supplied by the United States and other NATO members exposes a level of insanity that would be unprecedented
If it weren’t for the fact that the United States is the only country in the history of the world that has ever actually used nuclear weapons (twice).
In these circumstances, it is Russia led by Vladimir Putin that has shown restraint.
And it is the Biden administration that is engaged in irresponsible escalation.
It is the world’s acceptance of its MAD “leaders” that makes it all (im)possible.
I never ever thought I’d write these words. But I find myself desperately wishing for the arrival of the Donald Trump presidency. My driving force here is my love for my children and grandchildren. For their sake, Trump’s advent can’t come soon enough. I don’t want them to die in nuclear war.
As I’ve written elsewhere, my hope is not founded in admiration for Mr. Trump. Far from it. I consider the man a moron unfit for the U.S. presidency.
But he seems to be our only hope of avoiding World War III and the end of humanity – an agenda recklessly pursued by the lame duck Biden administration so recently and so decisively rejected by the American electorate.
Have you seen what that old fool is doing? Do you realize the threat his utter stupidity poses to our children and grandchildren?
He’s trying to “Trump-proof” his insane and ill-fated Project Ukraine.
After having repeatedly rejected Russian attempts to resolve the project’s underlying issues (even before Mr. Putin’s invasion), and after more than a million casualties resulting from such obstinacy, Genocide Joe is trying to transform his failed project into World War III.
His “reasoning” seems to be that such transformation would tie Donald Trump’s hands. That is, despite his repeated promises to end the Ukraine War 24 hours after assuming office, the new old fool would find himself obliged to see it through to its suicidal end, thus dooming ourselves, our children and grandchildren.
That’s the problem. The “End” of World War III will be THE END of us all!
For Ukraine!!
It’s all so insane.
To implement the insanity, the senile old man with one foot already in the grave has:
Allowed Ukraine to invade Russia’s Kursk Region
Given Zelensky “permission” to attack targets deep within Russia.
Directly involved the U.S. and its NATO allies in targeting those attacks.
Permitted U.S. military brass to speak of the possibility of direct U.S. “preemptive” strikes against Russian targets.
Allows NATO “allies” to threaten fielding “boots on the ground” in Ukraine which remains the most corrupt government in Europe.
None of this is even remotely necessary.
Imagine U.S. reaction to similar events on our border. Imagine if Russia or China struck an alliance with Mexico or Canada, poured in arms and trained their allies specifically for conflict with the United States. Would the U.S. stand by idly?
Of course it wouldn’t. Of course it didn’t during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
This is not complicated. It’s simply crazy. It represents complete insanity on the part of “leaders” who should be put in jail for even considering such hypocrisy and mass murder. I can’t wait for January 20th.
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