A time to celebrate … or worry? – by Branko Milanovic

Most of the world with some political influence seemed to have breathed a sigh of relief: Donald Trump had finally left the White House. Four years of chaotic policies, interspersed with racist invective, had come to an end.

United States liberals had fended off another existential challenge—this time from within their own nation. The current mood might be subdued by the ravages of the pandemic but, when this is over, would they not go back to the celebratory triumphalism of the early 1990s? There are indeed strong similarities between then and now.

Read more at: A time to celebrate … or worry? – Branko Milanovic

New Cold War ? Xi of China warns Davos forum against 'new Cold War' - by Eve Szeftel

Chinese President Xi Jinping warned global leaders at an all-virtual Davos forum Monday against starting a "new Cold War" while he championed multilateralism. Representing the only major economy to record economic growth last year, Xi presented himself as the defender of multilateralism, as he did at the same forum four years ago when Donald Trump was about to assume the United States presidency.

Without naming the US, Xi seemed to have a message for Trump's successor Joe Biden, who entered the White House just a few days ago, but who is not addressing the annual World Economic Forum (WEF).

To build small cliques or start a new Cold War, to reject, threaten or intimidate others... will only push the world into division," Xi told the world's political and economic elite as the Biden administration plans to revitalize global alliances to counter China's growing influence.

Note EU-Digest: Cold war = weapons industry profits - hopefully we in the West don't go on that dangerous route again.

Read more at: Xi warns Davos forum against 'new Cold War' - Business - The Jakarta Post

China-US relations: Can a broke America fight a cold was with China

America seems to be on the verge of declaring cold war on China, while simultaneously weakening its own ability to wage such a conflict. Across the ideological spectrum, U.S. hostility to China has surged just as financial fallout of the pandemic threatens to harm the U.S. defense budget for years to come.

The U.S. may thus be entering a period like the beginning of the original Cold War, when it decided to confront the Soviet Union on a shoestring. The U.S. ultimately won that Cold War, of course, but that analogy should be less comforting than it first seems because it reminds us that a cash-strapped approach to competition can be an extremely risky one.

Read more at:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-05/coronavirus-can-a-broke-u-s-fight-a-cold-war-with-china

Russia- US Relations: Mikhail Gorbachev: A New Nuclear Arms Race Has Begun - "or is something "rotten in Denmark" and are Trump and Putin trying to break up the EU?" - by Michael Gorbachev

Over 30 years ago, President Ronald Reagan and I signed in Washington the United States-Soviet Treaty on the elimination of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles. For the first time in history, two classes of nuclear weapons were to be eliminated and destroyed.

This was a first step. It was followed in 1991 by the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which the Soviet Union signed with President George H.W. Bush, our agreement on radical cuts in tactical nuclear arms, and the New Start Treaty, signed by the presidents of Russia and the United States in 2010.

There are still too many nuclear weapons in the world, but the American and Russian arsenals are now a fraction of what they were during the Cold War. At the Nuclear Nonproliferation Review Conference in 2015, Russia and the United States reported to the international community that 85 percent of those arsenals had been decommissioned and, for the most part, destroyed.

Today, this tremendous accomplishment, of which our two nations can be rightfully proud, is in jeopardy. President Trump announced last week the United States’ plan to withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty and his country’s intention to build up nuclear arms.

Note EU-Digest: Yes indeed Mr. Gorbachev is right when he writes in his op-ed for the NY-Times, that " he is convinced that those who hope to benefit from a global free-for-all are deeply mistaken. There will be no winner in a “war of all against all” — particularly if it ends in a nuclear war. And that is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. An unrelenting arms race, international tensions, hostility and universal mistrust will only increase the risk", 

But doesn't this statement, made by the US President, that he is planning to get out of the United States-Soviet Treaty on the elimination of intermediate-and shorter-range missiles, includes more than just what meets the naked eye? 

Couldn't it also be an indication for Europe, that the US, by giving up this treaty, which mainly concerns intermediate and shorter-range missiles, also means an immediate danger to the EU, and that it once again shows the Trump Administration's total disdain with, and disrespect for the EU?

The EU Commission, EU Parliament and EU Member States better wake up to the fact that there is something "Rotten in Denmark", when it comes to this recent announcement by Donald Trump

It  could very well be that during the two hour Helsinki meeting between Putin and Trump, earlier in the year, a scenario and strategy was also discussed to dismantle the EU. After all, there were no details given about the topics discussed, following the meeting of the two world leaders.

The announcement by the Trump Administration to get out of the United States-Soviet Treaty on the elimination of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles, could therefore, possibly, also be seen as the implementation of a strategy discussed at the Helsinki meeting between the Russian and US leaders. 

Bottom-line - the EU better adhere to the saying:  "Forewarned is fore armed" , and not fall asleep on this issue. 

.  Read more: Opinion | Mikhail Gorbachev: A New Nuclear Arms Race Has Begun - The New York Times

Peace and War: Whatever happened to peace? Arms, oil and war by proxy- by Jonas Ecke

The end of the Cold War was one of the few historical moments in which people around the world looked forward to a future that promised to be more just and peaceful for everyone. The Berlin Wall was finally torn down, following years of tireless civil society activism in one of the world’s few peaceful revolutions. Liberal democratic systems seemed to be spreading everywhere, compelling Francis Fukuyama to craft the (nowadays often-scorned) argument that “The End of History” – and consequently the cessation of constant conflict – had finally arrived with the falling of the Iron Curtain.

The promising world 'peace dividend', a term initially coined by US president George H.W. Bush and UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, was on everyone’s lips. Hope was in the air. The Soviet Union and United States vowed to work together to further cut down on a nuclear arsenal that could have blown up the world many times over. And they also seemed to be hard at work getting rid of another major – and often underestimated – impediment to peace: proxy wars, the type of war waged in the developing world for most of the Cold War, from Latin America to Central Asia to the Horn of Africa. 

These were wars in which the Soviet Union and US did not directly fight, but paid and favored local fighters, often through highly classified operations and byzantine financial networks that have inspired generations of spy novelists. Before the Cold War, colonial regimes paid local proxies to advance their agendas and “divide and conquer”.

As the Cold War finally came to a close, it was hoped and anticipated that weapon donations would be replaced by UN Peacekeepers and a new generation of NGO activists. Indeed, the new crop of peacemakers seemed to be more liberated. Free from the stifling imperatives of geopolitics, they could implement deals that had previously died prematurely at the conference tables of diplomats, anxious over the advances of an enemy superpower. The tit-for-tat strategies that would reap destruction seemed to be a thing of yesteryear.  

The “War to End all Wars” is a coinage that stems from the First World War. In the global public imagination: the Cold War would be the real “War to End all Wars.” Following its conclusion, an era of enduring peace was within immediate reach. Or so it seemed.

Fast forward 28 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and few such promised realities seem to have materialized. On the contrary, we have entered a new era of proxy wars.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria,Yemen, Somalia etc.

To bring these complex wars to a halt, we have to be very precise about what keeps them going. Saudi Arabia and Iran, probably the two main players in proxy wars in a destabilizaion of the Middle Eastern region that is steadily increasing, fund proxy forces to bolster their versions of Islam—Sunni and Shiite Islam, respectively. It is safe to assume that from the perspective of Riyadh and Teheran, furthering sectarian interests, inextricably intertwined with access to resources and geopolitical influence, are of more importance than peace in the region.

But it is not only sectarian strife—often highlighted in the western media—but also global unregulated capitalism that pours kerosene on a Middle East that is already in flames. 

Western weapon companies see the newly emerging proxy wars as momentous opportunities for increased revenues. During a 2015 conference of Lockheed Martin in Palm Beach Florida, its executive vice president Bruce Tanner predicted “indirect benefits” from the war in Syria. Similarly, as the Intercept reports, Raytheon chief executive Tom Kennedy spoke of “a significant uptick” for “defense solutions across the board in multiple countries in the Middle East.” Referring to Saudi Arabia, Kennedy elaborates, “It’s all the turmoil they have going on, whether the turmoil is occurring in Yemen, whether it’s with the Houthis, whether it’s occurring in Syria or Iraq, with ISIS.” And sure enough, stocks for arms have soared in recent years.

But it is not only weapons but also oil which disincentivizes policy makers from de-escalating proxy wars. As Christopher Davidson, who the Economist called “one of the most knowledgeable academics” writing about the Middle East, shows in his 688-page long tome “Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East,” how many covert operations in the Middle East were historically supported to advance the explicit geopolitical or economic interests of the funders. 

According to Davidson, the emergence of the US as a major oil producer has motivated US policy makers (Trump included) to let Saudi forces engage in exhausting proxy wars throughout the region so that a weakened Saudi Arabia is forced to sell its state assets.

Whatever the precise motivations, aside from the publicly touted humanitarian rationales, oil and weapons play a role in the decisions made by states, even when lives are at stake.

But whatever the argument, the evidence in support of proxy wars as an effective means in the interest of peace is scarce. At least this is the case if one follows the analysis coming from the proverbial mouth of the horse, the CIA. The spy agency has funded proxy fighters for most of its history. 

Reportedly president Obama, at least an initial skeptic in the use of proxies, was interested in finding out if funding insurgents generally accomplish the stated strategic goals and commissioned an internal study.

The report concluded that conflicts were not decided in the interest of the US following the funding of proxy actors, unless, according to the report, US personnel were on the ground along with the proxies. The notable exception—according to the study—was the support for the Mujahidin against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. However, although the Mujahidin did ultimately chase the illegally invading Soviet forces out of the country, Afghanistan did not regain stability. One thing to come out of this instability was the merging of the Mujahidin into Al Qaida: the very same enemy the US fights in the current global 'War on Terror'. 

This is not just one war, but multiple new proxy wars that cause immense suffering and which have, according to the Global Terrorism Index, contributed to an almost nine-fold increase in deaths caused by terrorism between 2000 and 2016. If we consider the entire historical context, the Afghanistan example serves, at best, as a very cautionary tale. 

Tthe Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), demonstrates that 2014 saw an increase in the number of active conflicts and also the casualties from battle. Forty armed conflicts were active in 2014, whereas in 2013 34 conflicts were designated active. The increase in conflicts since 1999 stood at 18 percent. Whatever gains were brought about by the 'peace dividend', they have been reversed, with people all over the world paying the greatest price.

President Donald Trump, by contrast, initially critical of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy, has stepped up military activities since he took office. For example, drone strikes, an important component in the theater of war in Yemen, have gone up by 432 percent and his $ 110 billion weapons sale to Saudi Arabia also won't help in getting hostilities slowed down.

A new type of vigorous and principled peace movement must be formed in this time of crisis. Peace movements in rich countries should join Middle Eastern peace movements that rally for more democratic and less sectarian governance. Social movements can become stronger by integrating divergent points of view, histories and ideologies, which inform interpretations of complex conflicts. It necessarily has to look at the various internal roots of conflict, and also at how foreign governments, from Moscow and Washington to Riyadh and Teheran, fuel conflicts.

Supporting and holding political platforms accountable will be key to demilitarizing political ideologies and stopping the world in its “ruinous race” to global war, to use the words of Gorbachev. More often than not, a call to arm a party to a conflict prolongs said conflict. 

The public’s immediate question with regards to conflicts probably shouldn’t be “Whom should we support militarily?” Instead, we should more seriously consider questions such as “Who keeps a conflict going?” and “How can we de-escalate it?”

Somehow we the people—who, against all odds, want to raise our children in a more peaceful world—have to let our politicians know that arms should be removed from most regions of conflict.

Far from being out of touch with reality, the global peace movement—though worryingly weakened—in fact holds the most realistic solutions to conflict. Given the data, it is clear that negotiation with the actors in a conflict is the best route to peace. De-escalation is the only framework in tune with the realities of the contemporary world as well as the lessons of recent history. 

We the people have to compel and force if necessary regional and global political forces to work towards de-escalating conflicts. Challenging the financial conglomerates that bring weapons into the hand of proxies may be one of the most effective ways to do so.

Please get out of your comfort zone and act- the future of your children and grand-children are at stake. 

EU-Digest

Middle East: Russia ups the pressure in search for US respect - by Steve Rosenberg

They used to say that all roads lead to Rome.

But, today, it seems that all roads lead to Russia. Or to its president: Vladimir Putin.

Moscow is a key participant in the Syrian war and in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Russian hackers have been accused of breaking into US servers; the Russian state has been accused of trying to influence the outcome of the US presidential election and of attempting to divide and weaken the European Union.

And yet when Vladimir Putin came to power 16 years ago, he appeared ready for a close friendship with the West. The US President Bill Clinton described him as "smart" and a man with "enormous potential".

But compliments have given way to confrontation, with a list of differences as long as the Russian winter: Syria, Ukraine, Nato enlargement, missile defence. Western governments are disillusioned with an increasingly authoritarian Kremlin leader. And he no longer trusts them.

"There's a real feeling now that America is out to prove it is the only superpower," believes veteran broadcaster Vladimir Pozner. "That if Russia does not fall into step the way the US wants it to it's going to have to pay a very high price for that.

"The continued expansion of Nato is seen by the Russian leadership, perhaps incorrectly, is seen as being a real threat. You're pushing us, so we're pushing you right back. And we will do whatever we can to make it as unpleasant for you as you've made it for us.

"There is a danger of real confrontation, perhaps leading to some kind of military engagement and war."

This week the popular Russian tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets suggested that the Syrian conflict could spark a "direct military confrontation between Russia and America" - on a par with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. It warned of a Third World War.

"We had bad relations during the Cold War," says Andrey Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, "but during the Cold War the relationship was more or less stable, because we knew what to expect from each other, we knew the rules of the game.

"Today we don't have anything like that. So relations aren't stable. This is what makes this relationship dangerous, arguably more dangerous than in the Cold War."

Russian political commentatorLeonid Radzikhovsky, however, is confident that Russia will not go to war with the US.

"Putin is a megalomaniac, he is convinced he is 10 times better than any western leader. But he's not the kind of person to open a window on the 18th floor, declare 'I can fly' and jump out. He has no plan to drop a hydrogen bomb on Washington. Narcissism is one thing; suicidal tendencies are another. He is not suicidal."

Read more: Russia ups the pressure in search for US respect - BBC N

Eastern Europe and irresponsible journalism: In Europe and Russia, There’s Talk of War - by Jill Dougherty

Atomic War: often result of irresponsible Politicians and Journalists

"Recently, I grabbed a taxi in Moscow. When the driver asked me where I was from, I told him the United States. “I went there once,” he said, “to Chicago. I really liked it.”

“But tell me something,” he added. “When are we going to war?”

The question, put so starkly, so honestly, shocked me. “Well, I hope never,” I replied. “No one wants war.”

At the office, I ask a Russian employee about the mood in his working class Moscow neighborhood. The old people are buying salt, matches and gretchka [buckwheat], he tells me—the time-worn refuge for Russians stocking up on essentials in case of war.

In the past two months, I’ve traveled to the Baltic region, to Georgia, and to Russia. Talk of war is everywhere.

In Estonia, at the Lennart Meri security conference, we take a bus two and a half hours to the east of Tallinn, to Narva, a city on the border with Russia, for a discussion: “What is Narva Afraid of?” a variant on the geo-political debate: “Is Narva Next?”

In an interview widely quoted in the Russian media, a foreign affairs expert and a member of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Foreign Policy and Defense Council, Sergei Karaganov, told the German magazine Der Spiegel that Western propaganda against Russia “is reminiscent of the period preceding a new war.”

“The help offered by NATO is not symbolic help for the Baltic states,” he said. “It is a provocation. If NATO initiates an encroachment--against a nuclear power like ourselves--it will be punished.”

President Vladimir Putin himself plays both sides against the middle, warning the West that Russia will have to “strengthen the potential of its strategic nuclear forces” in order to counter the United States’ missile shield, while at the same time insisting it’s the West, not Russia, that’s destroying the balance that kept the world from nuclear conflict during the Cold War.

During the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June, he tells the heads of international news agencies that the U.S. is lying when it claims its missile defense system will not threaten Russia:

As I browse in a Moscow gift shop, a t-shirt catches my eye: a buff-looking Vladimir Putin dressed in a black turtleneck and tight black pants, with the words “SAVE THE WORLD” in white letters across his image.

How? There’s no answer on this t-shirt and, in the real world, no magic prescription.
But all the talk of war isn’t as crazy as it seems, several Russians tell me. “They may not love us,” they say, “but they fear us.”

Note EU-Digest: This quoted article by Jill Dougherty is a perfect example of pro-NATO propaganda, support of the weapons industry and irresponsible journalism. It is packed with scary comments, refueling cold war fears and whipping up peoples emotions. 

The EU must speak out that it does not want another cold or God forbid a hot war war with Russia, and that it does not support NATO troop movements on Russia's borders, regardless of what the  US or the usually "short sighted" Eastern European EU members are saying.The NATO, being perfectly honest, is also an organization,  whose time has come and gone, and for the past 20 years certainly has not achieved any positive track record    

Read more:  In  Europe and Russia, There’s Talk of War

Cold war: Russian PM Medvedev says new cold war is on

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said strains between Russia and the West have pushed the world "into a new cold war".

"On an almost daily basis, we are being described the worst threat - be it to Nato as a whole, or to Europe, America or other countries," Mr Medvedev said.

He cited Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg's speeches and films depicting Russia starting a nuclear war.
"Sometimes I wonder if this is 2016 or 1962," Mr Medvedev said.

The Cold War was a period of ideological confrontation between the former Soviet Union and Western countries. It began after World War Two and ended with the collapse of the Soviet-led communist camp in the 1989.

The 45 years of tension were marked by espionage and proxy wars involving client states - all undertaken with the knowledge or fear of the nuclear catastrophe that actual war would bring.
The Nato alliance was established in 1949 to protect Western countries.

Read more: Russian PM Medvedev says new cold war is on - BBC News

Russia says will retaliate if U.S. weapons stationed on its borders - by Gabriela Baczynska and Wiktor Szary

A plan by Washington to station tanks and heavy weapons in NATO states on Russia's border would be the most aggressive U.S. act since the Cold War, and Moscow would retaliate by beefing up its own forces, a Russian defense official said on Monday.

The United States is offering to store military equipment on allies' territory in eastern Europe, a proposal aimed at reassuring governments worried that after the conflict in Ukraine, they could be the Kremlin's next target.

Poland and the Baltic states, where officials say privately they have been frustrated the NATO alliance has not taken more decisive steps to deter Russia, welcomed the decision by Washington to take the lead.

But others in the region were more cautious, fearing their countries could be caught in the middle of a new arms race between Russia and the United States.

"If heavy U.S. military equipment, including tanks, artillery batteries and other equipment really does turn up in countries in eastern Europe and the Baltics, that will be the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO since the Cold War," Russian defense ministry official General Yuri Yakubov said.

"Russia will have no option but to build up its forces and resources on the Western strategic front," Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

He said the Russian response was likely to include speeding up the deployment of Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania, and beefing up Russian forces in ex-Soviet Belarus.

Read more: Russia says will retaliate if U.S. weapons stationed on its borders - Yahoo News

Iran: How a Nuclear Deal Could Bring Democracy to Iran - by Peter Beinart

Last week, Akbar Ganji wrote one of the most important essays published since the signing of the framework nuclear deal with Iran earlier this month. It’s partly important because of who Ganji is. Imprisoned in 2001 for accusing Iranian officials of orchestrating the murder of government critics, he penned a manifesto from jail calling for Iran to replace theocracy with democracy. After being released and leaving Iran, he launched a hunger strike on behalf of Iranian political prisoners in 2009. He’s been called Iran’s “preeminent political dissident.”

But it’s also important because of what Ganji says. In the essay, he calls the framework deal “a great victory for Iran and Iranians, if we look at it from a democracy angle.” Why? Because “when a nation such as Iran is threatened by the US and Israel for over two decades, and suffers from the most crippling economic sanctions in history, democracy becomes an impossible dream for its people, who live instead in terror and fear of war.”

 If the United States and its allies “are truly interested in the development of democracy in Iran,” he continues, “they should set aside military threats and economic sanctions. Peace and economic well-being is directly linked with democracy.”

In those sentences, Ganji challenges one of the most damaging myths in modern American foreign policy: that via war and cold war, America promotes freedom.

As with so much else involving today’s GOP, that myth is connected to the myth of Ronald Reagan. As hawks tell it, Reagan entered the White House in 1981, built up the American military, sent arms to anti-communist rebels, refused to negotiate arms-control deals, called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” and, presto, the Berlin Wall fell. It was America’s escalation of the Cold War that liberated Eastern Europe.

The lesson isn’t that American leaders should never criticize dictatorships. They should. But they should also remember that imposing sanctions and threatening war rarely strengthen human rights. It’s usually the reverse. First, threats of war make it easier for dictators to discredit their opponents. In Ganji’s words, “The Islamic Republic’s dictatorship used the threat of military action [from Israel and the United States] to increase its repression of the Iranian people, accusing the opposition of treason and being turncoats.” Second, sanctions tend to impoverish the very middle class best able to create and sustain democratic change.

Sometimes, as in apartheid South Africa, dissidents endorse sanctions anyway. But even in South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress only endorsed sanctions aimed at improving human rights. Most of the sanctions imposed on Iran make no pretense of that; they’re simply designed to keep Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. Third, and most obviously, America’s wars themselves often threaten human rights.

In the midst of genocide, “humanitarian war,” coupled with diplomacy and long-term peacekeeping, can sometimes bring peace, as it did in Bosnia and Kosovo. But more often, bombing an oppressed people simply makes their plight worse. 

Read more: How a Nuclear Deal Could Bring Democracy to Iran - The Atlantic

Panama: Obama meets Raul Castro in highest-level U.S.-Cuba talks in decades

History in the making: Raoul Castro and Barack Obama

U.S. President Barack Obama met Cuban President Raul Castro on Saturday in the highest-level talks between the two countries in nearly 60 years, and the two men agreed to push ahead on improving relations after decades of hostility.

Describing their private meeting as "historic," Obama said the two countries can now end the antagonism of the Cold War era, although he said he would continue to pressure the communist-led country on democracy and human rights.

"Obviously there are still going to be deep and significant differences between our two governments," Obama told Castro as they met in Panama, where they both attended a summit of leaders from across the Americas.

The U.S. president said he believed both sides could raise their concerns about the other's policies yet still work together to boost commercial, travel and diplomatic ties.

"The Cold War is over ... Cuba is not a threat to the United States," Obama later told reporters, pointing out that at 53, he wasn't even born when Castro and his brother Fidel seized power in the 1959 Cuban revolution.

The meeting followed a landmark agreement in December, when Obama and Castro announced they would move to normalize relations, including seeking to restore diplomatic ties that were broken off by Washington in 1961.

Obama said he decided to overturn longstanding U.S. policy on Cuba because the old approach of open hostility and economic sanctions had failed to force through major changes on the Caribbean island and it was time to try something new.

Read more: Obama meets Raul Castro in highest-level U.S.-Cuba talks in decades - SWI swissinfo.ch

The Wall: 25 Years After Berlin, Do We Still Need Walls? - by Peter Schurman

The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago this week. People on both sides filled the streets in celebration, cheered on by virtually everyone around the world. For all of us who were alive then, it remains one of the most hopeful historical moments we've ever experienced.

Now that 25 years have passed, it's an appropriate time to take stock. Have we seized our historic opportunity to create, at last, a more peaceful world?

Sadly, we have not:

• By Wikipedia's count, the US has engaged in 10 wars since then, and we now live in a surveillance state the East German secret police would have envied.

• Russia has reasserted regional military dominance, annexing Crimea, threatening other parts of Ukraine, and re-conquering Chechnya.

• The Middle East is a boiling cauldron of warfare, much of it touched off by the American invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003.

• China is building a potentially formidable Navy and picking fights with its neighbors.

Although we seldom consider it, one key factor that ties all these failures together is our fragmented system of nation-states, separated by militarized borders.

Note EU-Digest: After the wall went down in Berlin many new walls went up. There is now a wall built by Israel which will eventually stretch for 750 km's between Palestine and Israel. 

There is also a new wall between the US and Mexico and China has built an electronic wall around China to curb what the Chinese citizens can see on the Internet .   

Read more: 25 Years After Berlin, Do We Still Need Walls? | Peter Schurman

Russia Has Become Dangerous Again - by David Frum

Vladimir Putin

It was not even a month ago that Vladimir Putin stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the elected leaders of the Western world to commemorate the D-Day invasion.

I hope whoever issued that invitation has the decency to feel some embarrassment today. Through the past eight months of escalating Russian violence against Ukraine, too many European governments have treated the Ukraine issue as remote and marginal: regrettable, yes, but not a threat to the peace of the continent. It was more important, they felt, to sustain a normal relationship with Russia. That illusion died yesterday along with the murdered passengers of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Russia is funding, arming, and urging forward a violent insurgency against an elected European government. In Crimea, Russia sent troops across an internationally recognized border, seized territory, and intimidated and abused the conquered population. This is not a bilateral Ukraine-Russia conflict, in the way that, for example, the conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008 could be dismissed as a bilateral conflict. It’s a challenge to the stability of the whole continent.

For a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Europeans hoped that Russia would and could evolve into a country at peace with itself and its neighbors, as Germany has so notably done since 1945. Russia was invited to join the Group of Seven industrialized nations (G7).

NATO redefined its mission, reorienting itself as a global peacekeeping organization rather than a Western alliance designed to contain Russia. NATO extended a kind of associate status to Russia, and Russia was assured that no U.S. troops would be stationed in former Warsaw Pact territories.

Vladimir Putin’s ascent to power crushed those hopes.


Read more: Russia Has Become Dangerous Again - David Frum - The Atlantic

Europe, Russia Ensnared in 'Energy Cold War,' Experts Say - by Alan Neuhauser and Paul D. Shinkman

Europe and Russia have become locked in an “energy cold war,” experts say, walking a razor’s edge between mutual economic dependence and “mutually assured economic destruction.”

“If someone makes a wrong move on this economy or energy war game, everyone can lose,” says Paul Sullivan, a professor of economics at National Defense University and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

“Europe depends on the Russians. The Russians depend on Europe. The question is who’s going to blink?”

The situation grew ever more precarious Thursday when Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to completely shut down the country’s gas pipelines to Ukraine — and, by extension, parts of Western Europe — if Ukraine didn’t pay off the $2.2 billion it owes the Russian-owned gas giant Gazprom.

Yet as much as a gas freeze would cripple the Ukrainian economy and hurt Western Europe, it would also affect Russia — and the consequences for both sides, if allowed to fester, could ultimately prove disastrous.

Read more: Europe, Russia Ensnared in 'Energy Cold War,' Experts Say - US News

Ukraine: Putin and Obama: Playing Chess With New Cold War At Stake - by RM

High stakes chess game

It's amazing to hear US Senator McCaine calling for force to solve the Ukraine crises while President Obama and President Putin are playing a complicated game of chess in trying  to solve the problem without militarily involvement.

How can President Obama and his European allies counter Putin's opening gambit of this chess game? And how can the United States and the EU roll back what Putin has pulled off so far?

The US Obama Administration and the EU can-not and must-not confront Russia militarily -- it would be suicide in today's nuclear age.

At this point it looks like actions from the West against Russia, over the long term, will come in a form where it will hurt Russia and President Putin's popularity at home the most - economics.

But not everyone agrees that this scenario is the best course of action - certainly not the Republicans in the US, or for that matter, the conservative right-wingers in Britain.

US Republican Sen. John McCain - presently one of the the least popular senators in the US of those surveyed by the Public Policy Polling, with low marks from members of his own party, independents and Democrats, is among the Republican's loudest critics of the Obama Administration foreign policy.

He directly blamed President Obama's "incompetent" foreign policy for inviting the crisis in Ukraine and  recently told a pro-Israel group that the president has repeatedly failed to demonstrate American strength in the face of adversaries.

McCain was not the only Republican to criticize the Administration's handling of the crisis.Many other GOP critics just about tripped over each others feet to attack Obama.

On Sunday March 2, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., even went as far as to tell CNN in an interview, "we have a weak and indecisive president whom invites aggression.".

As an independent congressman remarked afterwards, "this kind of rhetoric by the Republicans can basically be qualified as that of five year old's playing with marbles and one suddenly throwing a tantrum."

To put some perspective as to the causes of what is happening in Ukraine, and why Obama and Putin are now having to negotiate and play a game of chess,  requires us to turn back the clock to when the Soviet Union (USSR) formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991. 

From that date onward,  the United States has relentlessly pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran.

At the same time, the US also increased its military capability in Europe after it brought an additional 12 countries from central Europe, all of them formerly allied with Moscow, into the already existing NATO alliance. This in fact has now brought US military power and might directly on Russia’s borders.

Apart from facing the issue of encirclement President Putin probably also had a few other sleepless nights after he compared US military spending, which is 40% of the worlds total military spending,  to that of his own country, which is only 5.5% of the total global military spending.

Let's face it and be realistic, Russia is now basically between "a rock and a hard place" and  that is not a good place for them or anyone else to be in.

Obviously there are no angels on either side -  but for this issue is to be resolved everyone has to take a step back, look at the bigger picture, calm down and reach a negotiated diplomatic solution.

EU-Digest