The Prophecy is much more than seeing into the future. For the Prophecy sees without the element of time. For the Prophecy sees what is, what was, and what always shall be. 11:11 LLC
Hamas condemns Israeli strikes as it seeks to restore ties with Syria Hamas condemned the missile strikes on Damascus International Airport on Friday night which were reportedly carried out by Israel. A Palestinian Hamas supporter attends a protest to support Al-Aqsa mosque, in the northern Gaza Strip April 22, 2022. (photo credit: REUTERS/MOHAMMED SALEM) Hamas said on Saturday that its stands with Syria in the face of the “recurring Israeli aggression on Syrian soil.” Hamas condemned the missile strikes on Damascus International Airport on Friday night, which were reportedly carried out by Israel. Five Syrian soldiers were killed in the strikes, Syria’s official news agency Sana reported. “The strikes against Syria are an extension of the Israeli aggression on the entire region,” said Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem. The latest Hamas denunciation of the alleged Israeli strikes on Syria is seen as part of the Islamist movement’s efforts to restore its ties with the Syrian regime. Hamas, Syria’s Assad’s shaky ties Relations between Hamas, an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime deteriorated shortly after the beginning of the civil war in Syria. Hamas leaders, some of whom were based in Syria, refused to side with the Assad regime against the opposition groups, most of which were affiliated with Islamist organizations. In 2012, the Hamas offices in Syria were closed and the leaders of the group moved to Qatar. Last Thursday, Hamas issued a statement in which it voiced support for Syria in the face of attempts to “divide and fragment it and keep it away from its effective historical role, especially regarding the Palestinian cause.” The statement, seen by some Palestinian political analysts as an apology to the Assad regime, said that “Syria has embraced our Palestinian people and its resistance factions for decades, which requires standing with it in light of the brutal aggression to which it is being subjected.” The statement expressed Hamas’s “appreciation to the leadership and people of the Syrian Arab Republic for standing with the Palestinian people and their just cause.” Hamas looks forward to Syria “regaining its role and position in the Arab and Islamic nations and supports all sincere efforts for the stability, safety, prosperity, and progress of Syria,” the statement added. “We affirm our firm position on the unity of Syria’s land and people. We also affirm our firm strategy and keenness to develop and strengthen our relations with all those who support our cause and our resistance.” “We affirm our firm position on the unity of Syria’s land and people. We also affirm our firm strategy and keenness to develop and strengthen our relations with all those who support our cause and our resistance.” Hamas statementnone Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya was quoted as saying that his group’s leaders have agreed to search for ways to restore their relations with Syria. He did not provide further details, but said that he supports the move. Palestinian sources revealed that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group had acted as a mediator between Hamas and Syria. On Saturday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah praised Hamas for its decision to restore its relations with Syria. Full normalization between Hamas and Syria? The Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Akhbar newspaper revealed on Saturday that Hamas and Syrian officials held a series of meetings recently to pave the way for “full normalization” between the two sides. Palestinian political analyst Naji Sharab described the Hamas statement that expressed support for Syria as a “clear and frank apology” to the Assad regime. “The statement represents a clear retreat by Hamas from its previous position and even from the general stance of the Muslim Brotherhood organization,” Sharab told the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds. Noting that Iran and Hezbollah had played a role in bringing about the reconciliation between the Palestinian Islamist group and Syria, Sharab pointed out the Hamas position was consistent with the recent rapprochement between Turkey and the Assad regime. A Palestinian Authority official claimed that the Hamas decision to restore its ties with the Assad regime was taken under pressure from Iran. “The Iranians threatened to halt funding to Hamas,” the official said. “Apparently, not all the Hamas leaders are happy about normalizing their group’s relations with Syria. The decision will cause a rift within Hamas.” Several Palestinians, meanwhile, criticized Hamas for renewing its ties with the Assad regime which, they said, is responsible for the killing of thousands of Palestinians. “Instead of issuing a lengthy statement in solidarity with the Assad regime, the Hamas leadership should have been preoccupied with the important situation in the West Bank,” political analyst Yasser Za’atreh commented on Twitter. “Bashar [Assad] has destroyed Syria, and complimenting him is a sin. [Hamas] ignored the feelings of the majority of the Palestinians.” Hamas accused of ‘political prostitution’ A Palestinian columnist condemned the Hamas move as “political prostitution” and said that the group has decided to align itself with the “murderous regime of Bashar Assad.” Palestinian commentator Ibrahim Hamami described the Hamas decision as “disastrous and tragic.” The London-based Action Group For Palestinians Of Syria, a human rights watchdog that monitors the situation of Palestinian refugees in war-torn Syria, pointed out that 4,121 Palestinians have been killed there since the beginning of the civil war in 2011. The group revealed that more than 1,800 Palestinians remain in Syrian prisons, including 110 women. Another 636 Palestinians have died from torture in Syrian prisons, according to the group. The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, which represents several Sunni religious figures, also criticized Hamas for restoring its relations with the Syrian regime “at the expense of the oppressed and persecuted people of Syria.” The group said that the move will not achieve anything of importance to the Palestinian issue and the Palestinian people.
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s judiciary will resume its activities on Wednesday after powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr called on his supporters to withdraw from outside its headquarters, the state news agency INA reported.
The Supreme Judicial Council earlier on Tuesday suspended its work after Sadr supporters camped out near its headquarters to demand that it dissolve parliament, escalating one of the worst political crises since the US-led invasion in 2003.
“In light of the withdrawal of the demonstrators and the lifting of the siege on the headquarters of the Supreme Judicial Council and the Federal Supreme Court, it was decided to resume work normally in all courts as of tomorrow morning,” the council said.
The populist leader Sadr has helped inflame tensions in Iraq in recent weeks by commanding thousands of followers to storm and occupy parliament, preventing the formation of a government nearly 10 months after elections.
However, he called on his supporters on Tuesday to withdraw from the vicinity of the judiciary authority and to keep only the protest tents and banners outside the building.
In a statement, he also urged the protesters to continue their sit-in outside the parliament.
The judiciary condemned the gathering of protesters outside its headquarters as “unconstitutional behavior,” adding that protesters had sent threats by phone.
Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, who cut short a trip to Egypt to deal with the crisis, urged all sides to calm down and renewed calls for a national dialogue.
In a statement, Kadhimi said disrupting the judiciary “exposes the country to serious risks.”
Sadr was the biggest winner of the 2021 election but was unable to form a government with Kurdish and Sunni Muslim Arab parties, excluding his Iran-backed Shiite rivals.
The young cleric, who has unmatched influence in Iraq, can quickly mobilize hundreds of thousands of followers to stage demonstrations and paralyze the country’s byzantine politics.
Sadr has called for early elections and unspecified changes to the constitution after withdrawing his lawmakers from parliament in June.
“The people are demanding the parliament to be dissolved and the immediate formation of an interim government,” said a protester draped in an Iraqi flag.
“Help us. Stand with us. Don’t be afraid of anyone,” said another demonstrator.
He survived upheaval in the 19 years since his Mehdi Army militia took on the Americans with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in the streets and alleys of Baghdad and southern cities.
His followers also fought the Iraqi army, Daesh militants and rival Shiite militias.
Most of Iraq’s Shiite political establishment remains suspicious or even hostile to Sadr. Still, his political organization, the Sadrist movement, has come to dominate the apparatus of the Iraqi state since the 2018 election, taking senior jobs within the interior, defense and communications ministries.
Francois MurphySeptember 16, 202210:27 AM MDTLast Updated a day ago
VIENNA, Sept 16 (Reuters) – China clashed with the countries in the so-called AUKUS alliance at the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Friday over their plan to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, capping a week in which Beijing has repeatedly railed against the project.
Under the alliance between Washington, London and Canberra announced last year Australia plans to acquire at least eight nuclear submarines that International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi has said will be fuelled by “very highly enriched uranium”, suggesting it could be weapons-grade or close to it.
To date no party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) other than the five countries the treaty recognises as weapons states – the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France – has nuclear submarines. The vessels can stay underwater for longer than conventional ones and are harder to detect.
Australia says it will be unable and unwilling to use the fuel in its submarines to make nuclear weapons since the vessels will have “welded power units” containing nuclear material that would need chemical processing for use in an atom bomb, and Australia does not have or want facilities that can do that.
The AUKUS countries and the IAEA say the NPT allows so-called marine nuclear propulsion provided necessary arrangements are made with the IAEA.
China disagrees in this case because nuclear material will be transferred to Australia rather than being produced by it. It argues that the IAEA is overstepping its mandate and wants an unspecified “inter-governmental” process to examine the issue at the IAEA instead of leaving it to the agency.
Nuclear submarines are a particular challenge because when they are at sea their fuel is beyond the reach of the agency’s inspectors who are supposed to keep track of all nuclear material. IAEA chief Grossi has said he is satisfied with the AUKUS countries’ transparency so far.
This week’s clash has done little to change the way the IAEA approaches the submarine plan, which is still being developed. But it shows China continues to campaign vocally against it, even at the risk of harming its relations with the IAEA.
“It is deeply concerning to hear China calling into question the legitimacy and integrity of the IAEA,” an AUKUS statementto the Board of Governors said on Friday. “The AUKUS partners have full confidence in the ability of the IAEA Director General and Secretariat to carry out the Agency’s mission and mandate.”
General Anthony Cotton, Air Force Global Strike Command commander, speaks during the Striker Stripe event May 9, 2022, at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. Cotton emphasized the importance of familiarizing Airmen with today’s complex strategic environment. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Chase Sullivan)
Russia and China’s nuclear capabilities require continual assessment due to the threats these powers pose to the United States and its allies, the nominee to head U.S. Strategic Command told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Testifying Thursday, Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton said the assessment needs to cover how “the two might work together” and “how they might not work together” in a crisis. He pointed to Russia’s warnings that it could use limited nuclear weapons to take over Ukraine and China’s breathtaking advances in building its nuclear triad in fewer than four years. Cotton said this is the first time, since the dawn of the nuclear age in 1945, that the United States had to weigh the threats coming from more than one power with strategic weapons.
That assessment will play a crucial role in understanding “what needs to be done” in force shaping and future security and nuclear strategy and the role the command plays in carrying them out, he added.
“I absolutely believe that our nuclear deterrent” helped deter Russia from using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Cotton, who heads the Air Force’s Global Strike Command, said he supports accelerating the development of nuclear weapons systems, platforms, command and control, and infrastructure modernization when possible.
“We have to roll up our sleeves” to meet the challenges of modernization in facing two near-peer competitors, he added.
To do this, “we’re going to need stable, predictable funding” from Congress and the administration. In turn, the same stability and predictability needs to come from the Pentagon in defining requirements for nuclear programs across the board.
While Cotton on several occasions voiced his support for modernizing all three legs of the triad in both oral and written testimony, the only direct question about the Navy’s ballistic missile submarine program concerned extending the service life of some Ohio-classclass boomers.
Cotton said that he needed to understand “what aging we really see” in extending some of the Ohio boats’ service lives to 42 years instead of the originally planned 30. Will the extension “get the result we want” or build new is the question that has to be answered, he said.
He also voiced his support for the continued development of the long-range stand-off cruise missile for the Air Force’s bomber fleet to keep that leg of the triad viable. His support also kept the door open for a nuclear long-range sea-launched cruise missile, an effort the Biden administration canceled earlier this year. Long-range in these cases means missiles capable of covering distances over 1,500 miles.
“I have seen that capability gap as well,” referring to the long-range strike program in general, Cotton said.
Now that electro-magnetic and spectrum warfare falls under STRATCOM, Cotton said, “it’s going to be a front-burner issue.” He added that over the years the program in the Pentagon has atrophied. Cotton said he intends to have the command “not pace our adversaries, but lead our adversaries” in this domain.
The command is still feeling the pandemic’s impact on defense production and delivery, he added. Even with American-made parts, he said that in some areas it is taking 90 days to deliver components versus 10 before COVID-19 reached pandemic levels.
The committee and full Senate are expected to confirm Cotton’s nomination.
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the formal appeal to the U.N.General Assembly of the then U.S.President, George W. Bush to support invasion of Iraq – which fell on September 12 – it makes sense to review its justification:Iraq is still suffering from the U.S. invasion of 2003, and American occupation till 2011. Every community is worse off than what it was before Americans entered the region. There have been no weapons of mass destruction found, no democracy established, no end to tyranny, and certainly no end to terrorist involvement in the nation.
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ON September 12, 2002, then U.S. President George W. Bush, while addressing the United Nations (‘UN’) General Assembly, said, “Twelve years ago, Iraq invaded Kuwait without provocation. And the regime’s forces were poised to continue their march to seize other countries and their resources. Had Saddam Hussein been appeased instead of stopped, he would have endangered the peace and stability of the world. Yet this aggression was stopped — by the might of coalition forces and the will of the United Nations. To suspend hostilities, to spare himself, Iraq’s dictator accepted a series of commitments. The terms were clear, to him and to all. And he agreed to prove he is complying with every one of those obligations. He has proven instead only his contempt for the United Nations, and for all his pledges. By breaking every pledge — by his deceptions, and by his cruelties — Saddam Hussein has made the case against himself.”
This was Bush’s first formal appeal to the international community to support an invasion of Iraq. It was on this day the building up to the war, which commenced on March 2003, began. As we recently crossed the 20-year mark to this address, it is an excellent time to assess the decision of the Bush administration through the prism of justice, because the current U.S. President does like to claim that Washington, D.C. stands for a rules-based order.
In what conditions is a war just? Did the Iraq invasion satisfy those conditions?
The idea that a war can ever be just is a debate that has gone on for centuries. However, there is a consensus on what makes a war just, popularly summed up with two phrases: jus ad bellum (conditions in which a State may resort to war) and jus in bello (the rules of war). These philosophies I have had provide the constraints to judge the validity and fairness of any war.
These parameters can largely be cast along three axes: were the reasons valid (cause and intention); were the aggressors willing to be accountable (authority and responsibility); were all other paths exhausted (last resort)?
1. Right cause and intention: War can in some circumstances be justified. India made a powerful case for invading the then East Pakistan in 1971, by pointing out the Pakistani military’s atrocities and the refugee crisis that India was facing as a product of it.
For the cause of war and the intention of the aggressor to be right, it needs to satisfy two conditions: is injustice being addressed and is it an act of self-defence/stopping aggression? The problems India faced from Pakistan’s acts in its eastern territory did satisfy both conditions. What the Pakistani army was doing could be called a mass atrocity, particularly operations like Searchlight, and north-eastern India, an already sensitive region, was being detrimentally affected due to the massive refugee influx.
If Iraq was authoritative, then so was, as is, China; if Hussein was a dictator, then how different were the monarchs of Saudi Arabia and the military regimes of North Africa? If this invasion was indeed a crusade for democracy, then why was Iraq specifically being targeted? And if the Bush administration was so keen on specifically ending the reign of Hussein, was it willing to stick around in occupation of Iraq for the next eight years?
Washington rested its case on two pillars, one of which addressed security concerns by claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was involved in the 9/11 attack (the 21st anniversary of which was only earlier this week), and the second being the replacement of the dictatorial rule of then President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein with democracy.
A preliminary investigation of Iraq, by the International Atomic Energy Agency after the UN Security Council Resolution 1441, declared that“There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites. There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.”
As far as the attacks of September 11 are concerned, the 19 men who committed the act hailed from four different countries: 15 of them were citizens of Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Lebanon, and one was from Egypt. The mastermind was the terrorist Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi national who was allegedly hiding in Afghanistan at the time of the attacks. If some reports are to be believed, Iraq wasn’t even mentioned as one of the culprits for the terror act early on.
Coming to the regime that Hussein was running, the hypocrisy of Americans opposing the system is that they had, and continue to have, no problem maintaining cordial relations with similarly run countries. If Iraq was authoritative, then so was, as is, China; if Hussein was a dictator, then how different were the monarchs of Saudi Arabia and the military regimes of North Africa? If this invasion was indeed a crusade for democracy, then why was Iraq specifically being targeted? And if the Bush administration was so keen on specifically ending the reign of Hussein, was it willing to stick around in occupation of Iraq for the next eight years?
2. Taking authority and claiming responsibility: The answer to all the questions raised earlier can be found in American conduct during the occupation. After the Second World War, American troops occupied most of Western Europe and the territories of Japan. In both the regions, apart from defeating occupying forces, the Americans ensured that appropriate development worktakes place, and that the region was up and running again. When a nation takes the decision of annihilating another entity, it has to take the responsibility of ensuring the region is back on its feet.
The success of this parameter can be gauged based on whether any defined targets were achieved, and if the region ended up in the status quo?
Another supposed American goal was rooting out terrorism, but post-invasion, Iraq became the bastion of the militant Islamist group, the Islamic State.
The Bush administration had big plans when they entered Baghdad, mainly of ostensibly turning the nation into a functioning, open democracy. Instead, immediately after the U.S.’s arrival, a civil war broke out and even today the region is ranked as an authoritarian State.
Another supposed American goal was rooting out terrorism, but post-invasion, Iraq became the bastion of the militant Islamist group, the Islamic State. Twenty years later, it still hasn’t seen any stability. The new Iraqi government after Hussein’s exit immediately went after the Sunni population and almost made it State policy to persecute them. Moreover, the government wasn’t accommodative of the region’s diversity and became an equally oppressive regime, albeit it didn’t have the same grip, resulting in no actual change in terms of rights but conversely unleashing a tyrannical majority.
After the First World War, both Britain and France had failed to empathise with the losing side, thus fuelling resentment, which became a factor in causing the Second World War. America’s similar failure highlighted that it didn’t have a plan regarding what to do after overthrowing Hussein, and thus left the people in anarchy. This raises the question: if the U.S. never had a plan to fix Iraq and establish a stable order before leaving, was this avoidable? Was the war necessary?
3. Last resort: If war is avoidable it must be avoided, as agreed even by hawks like American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant Henry Kissingerhttps://andrewtheprophet.com. So were alternatives explored before the ultimate military intervention?
Before further engaging with this point, some facts about U.S. foreign policy must be acknowledged. Back in 1998, the 105th U.S. Congress adopted the Iraq Liberation Act which stated: “it should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government.” Iraq clearly had been a long-standing grievance of Washington, and the latter was looking for an excuse to install a friendly government in the former.
Given most of the reasons stated by the American administration to invade Iraq didn’t really have much merit, it is important to view the removal of Hussein as a primary objective: did even that require an invasion?
Was an invasion necessary? Would violently overthrowing Hussein’s regime solve any problem? Could a more non-confrontational way of empowering the Shia majority not have been used to instead dispose of the brutal dictatorial regime? The last-resort nature of war means there is no alternative, and the situation calls for immediate action. No American argument, either short or long-term, can possibly explain why the conflict simply had to take place.
Thus, it is clear that the invasion was unethical. But unethical things may not necessarily be unjust. The war seals itself as an act of grave injustice based on the way it was carried out, and the aftermath of American capture.
What made the Iraq war an act of injustice?
The unjust nature of the war can be understood in terms of the method adopted to win it, and the consequences of the actions taken. It’s here where U.S. intervention crosses the realm of unethical to outright illegal, and makes its case redundant to the point that their former president D.J. Trump accepted that the world was a better place with Hussein in charge of Iraq.
1. Means: The intent of the war and the justification Washington gave would have been irrelevant had the means it adopted to win the war been just and ethical. However, from the very beginning of the assault, America took an extremely disproportional approach to the war. Using heavy artillery, the American war machine unleashed 1,300 missiles on Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk. Though the U.S. army claimed that civilian casualties were very limited, a study found that the number of women and children killed in the air raids was disproportionately high, with almost 46 per cent of air strike victims being women and 39 per cent being children.
This was followed by battle after battle to capture individual cities, and a counter-terror operation in which the conduct of the American troops was outrageous. There was the infamous Mahmudiyah rape and killings, where a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl was raped and murdered, along with her family, by five American soldiers. The worst, however, were Abu Ghraib and Nisour Square.
In the case of the Nisour Square massacre, employees of Blackwater Security Consulting, a private military contractor company, shot at Iraqi civilians, killing 17 and injuring 20 while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy. In this case, again the five people who were convicted were later pardoned by President Trump.
Its conduct during the war and occupation brought forth the lack of empathy, crudeness, vile hatred and absolute incompetence on America’s end.
On top of this, throughout the occupation, the U.S. administration was extremely corrupt, with billions of dollars of American money spent on the supposed reconstruction of Iraq without any commensurate gains. It was best summed up by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that “$55 billion could have brought a great change in Iraq.” The sheer scale of corruption is hard to state. This conduct brought forth the lack of empathy, crudeness, vile hatred and absolute incompetence on America’s end.
2. Aftermath: Analysis so far makes it clear that Americans had no plan apart from throwing Hussein out. With no vision, Iraq immediately fell into chaos. America’s massive artillery strikes had sabotaged everyday life and that meant everything had to be rebuilt. But because of excessive corruption and the failure to create a working State, that rebuilding never took place, which in turn caused a refugee crisis.
The U.S. government also immediately handed over power to the Shia majority, which decided to use the limited State machinery to indiscriminately persecute Sunnis; this drove a rift in Iraqi society, becoming one of the key reasons for the coming civil war.
The biggest failure of the U.S. was to disband the massive military that Hussein had built and kill the main source of livelihood in the country, the army. This resented class, which was now facing State persecution, decided to organise itself under the banner of the Islamic State, which became a fascist force that threatened the entire region. Such was the terror of the organisation that America was forced to lead another coalition into the country, this time to defeat the Caliphate.
The sheer loss of life that took place after the fall of Hussein’s regime falls on the head of Washington’s mismanagement of the entire invasion.
Today, the invasion has become an anecdote that gets a laugh from the American audience – a gaffe that people are supposed to move on from. The reality is that the region is still suffering. Every community is worse off than what it was before Americans entered the region. There have been no weapons of mass destruction found, no democracy established, no end to tyranny, and certainly no end to terrorist involvement in the nation.
Russian Yars ballistic nuclear missiles on mobile launchers roll through Red Square during the Victory Day military parade rehearsals on May 6, 2018 in Moscow, Russia.
The US should not overreact to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a new Costs of War Project report warns.
The report underscores that the war has shown Russia’s military is much weaker than previously thought.
If the US overreacts, it could push Moscow toward “nuclear escalation,” the report states.
If the US and NATO overreact to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with drastic increases in defense spending and conventional forces in Europe, it could push Moscow toward “nuclear escalation,” a new report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project that was shared exclusively with Insider warns.
“The horrific conflict resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to develop into a volatile situation for European security with the grave possibility of a wider war,” the report says. “In turn, these escalatory pressures have led to calls for significantly enhanced United States defense spending. Yet, it is important that the US not succumb to threat inflation, or ‘speech that gives an exaggerated sense of danger,’ in regards to public and official perceptions of Russia.”
The Cost of War Project report underscores that Russia is “a weaker conventional military power than many in the US had imagined,” as evidenced by its disastrous performance in the war in Ukraine thus far.
In August, the Department of Defense said that the US estimates that Russia had suffered as many as 80,000 casualties in Ukraine — an astonishing number in just six months of war. Russia is also estimated to have lost thousands of armored vehicles.
Though Ukraine was widely expected to be swiftly defeated by Russia prior to the war’s onset, Ukrainian forces have held off the Russian invaders and ensured that they failed to take Kyiv in the early days of the conflict. More recently, Ukraine launched a blistering counteroffensive that has pushed Russia’s forces into retreat.
Meanwhile, the US and its Western allies have moved to isolate Russia both economically and politically. Taken together, all of these factors have placed Russian President Vladimir Putin in a precarious political position, both at home and abroad.
“If the US and NATO increase their military spending and conventional forces in Europe, the weakness of Russian conventional military forces could prompt Moscow to rely more heavily on its nuclear forces,” the report said, adding that “because the Russian military is relatively weak, an over-reaction to Russian aggression could push the Russian leadership toward nuclear escalation.”
The report states that the “greatest threat of nuclear war could lie in the West’s overreaction to Russia’s aggression.”
The report says that though it might seem contrary to conventional wisdom, the US defense budget doesn’t need to grow. “Rather, cognizant of Russia’s conventional military weakness, the US military budget can instead be trimmed,” it adds.
Though Ukraine has drastically altered assessments of the threat posed by Russia’s conventional military, Putin still has at his disposal the largest nuclear arsenal in the world — 5,977 nuclear warheads, per the Federation of American Scientists, with thousands readily available for delivery to distant targets via land-, air-, and sea-based platforms. Western officials and Russia watchers have warned that if the Russian president feels backed into a corner, it could increase the risk of him using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. The consequences of such a move could be catastrophic, with global ramifications.
Earlier this week, Retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan told Insider that as Ukraine recaptures territory he’s now “even more concerned” about nuclear-weapon use.
Lyle Goldstein, a professor of international and public affairs at Brown who authored the Costs of War Project report, emphasized that as the world approaches the 60th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis “it is imperative to mitigate Cold War-type tensions with Moscow and prioritize reducing nuclear risk.”
“Russian aggression in Ukraine requires an international response,” said Stephanie Savell, co-director of the Costs of War Project. “However, it does not justify increased US military budgets, which could ultimately escalate tensions with Russia and once again lead us down a dangerous path.”
Nope “The US military budget is poised to surge above $800 billion, in part due to the conflict in Ukraine. But higher spending isn’t the solution,” Savell added, stating that the research in the new report “lays the foundation for a more honest conversation in the US about what’s truly going to promote peace for people in the region, and for the world.”
The US Mission to the UN has reiterated that Iran must provide technically credible explanations for the presence of uranium particles detected at three undeclared locations.
“The United States expresses our sincere appreciation for the continued professional and impartial efforts of the Agency [IAEA] to implement Iran’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement,” read the US Statement as delivered by Laura S.H. Holgate, the US envoy to international organizations in Vienna on Wednesday.
“We commend the Director General for his extensive efforts to engage Iran on the need to clarify and resolve the Agency’s longstanding concerns related to the presence of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at three undeclared locations in Iran – Turquzabad, Varamin, and Marivan,” it added.
Emphasizing that “the path towards clarifying and resolving these issues is neither complicated nor never-ending,” the US mission said Iran must inform the IAEA about the current location of the detected nuclear material and/or contaminated equipment.” “The power to resolve these issues is in Iran’s hands.”
On Thursday, Rep. Claudia Tenney (D-NY) said that a resolution to demand documents from the Biden Administration related to nuclear talks with Iran failed to pass the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“This morning…Democrats blocked efforts to pass resolutions of inquiry (also known as an ROI) to require the Biden Administration to turn over documents related to the Afghanistan withdrawal as well as ongoing nuclear talks with Iran.”
“Instead, House Democrats on the Foreign Affairs Committee prevented both the Afghanistan and Iran requests from moving forward. It was a shameful abdication of their oversight responsibilities to the American people,” she added.
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