Instruction: Write an article about: NATO failed in Ukraine against Russia. Now it’s targeting China. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: China, Geopolitical Economy Hour, Michael Hudson, NATO, Pepe Escobar, Radhika Desai, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson are joined by geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar to discuss how NATO has shifted from its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to targeting China in the Pacific.

Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson are joined by geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar to discuss how NATO has shifted from its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to targeting China in the Pacific.
You can find more episodes of Geopolitical Economy Hour here.

RADHIKA DESAI: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the [14th] Geopolitical Economy Hour, the fortnightly show on the political and geopolitical economy of our times. I’m Radhika Desai.
MICHAEL HUDSON: And I’m Michael Hudson.
RADHIKA DESAI: And today we propose to discuss NATO in the aftermath of its recently concluded Vilnius Summit, exploring a variety of questions about how its assault on Russia is faring and the prospects of extending its sphere of operations to what NATO leaders like to call the Indo-Pacific.
RADHIKA DESAI: And in order to do this, on today’s show, we are joined by none other than Pepe Escobar. Many of you will, of course, know who he is.
He’s a Brazilian journalist, geopolitical analyst and author. Pepe, welcome to our show.
PEPE ESCOBAR: It’s a huge honor and pleasure to be with you guys and with this fantastic audience, of course. And let’s rock.
RADHIKA DESAI: All right. Let’s let’s rock. So basically, NATO is a huge topic and it’s surrounded by a considerable amount of smoke and a vast number of mirrors.
So we have to try to understand we have to sort of push through all of this to try to understand what it is. It calls itself a defensive alliance, defensive.
The fact of the matter is it was created as part of the Cold War, which the U.S. launched more or less single handedly before the Second World War was even over. It launched it against its own Second World War ally.
And again, the United States did this, you know, launched the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of this launching of the Cold War. So there is no way in which this war is defensive.
And what’s more, it’s also was an offense against communism, of course, but it has also been an offense against the third world.
Essentially, NATO was also set up as a bit of a rival to the United Nations, which the U.S. liked less and less as it began to include more and more countries from the third world.
Alliance? What sort of an alliance is it in which one about one member seeks to essentially damage and harm other members? That’s what the United States is doing, for instance, to Germany today. That’s what it did to the United Kingdom all those decades ago at the end of the Second World War.
Much is also made of NATO’s unity. In reality, the effort, the mountains of effort required to paper over the cracks that are widening in NATO are, in fact, no longer even enough. And the cracks are showing through.
The North Atlantic? What do you mean North Atlantic? NATO has long abandoned its alleged sphere of operation and it has penetrated more and more outside that sphere, not only within Europe, but is today, of course, as I’ve already said, preparing to penetrate the Indo-Pacific.
One could lengthen this list of the lies that surround NATO. But why don’t we just launch into our conversation? We’ve decided to structure it around a series of questions. So let me just start us off by posing the first one.
The first question we have is simply, where did the Vilnius Summit leave NATO? What are the principal features within the alliance that it exposed?
Maybe we can start with you, Pepe, since you are our guest.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Oh my God, can I throw a bomb? OK, guys, look, I have had this pleasure of following virtually every NATO summit for the past 15 years or so.
So the evolution or the involution of NATO as a global Robocop has been distinct year after year. In fact, I started calling NATO global Robocop as early as 2010, 2011, 2012, because that was already obvious.
And then when we got under a fog of war, Rasmussen as NATO General Secretary, usually they get a deranged Scandinavian as NATO General Secretary. Now the deranged Scandinavian is, of course, that piece of Norwegian wood, Jens Stoltenberg.
So it’s very, very hot.
I remember when I was in Sweden years ago and I was on a geopolitical roundtable in a university in southern Sweden, when I started talking about Rasmussen, my Swedish audience erupted in anger because they knew, they were postgrad students, they knew very well who Rasmussen was and they said, look, he’s destroying the reputation of Scandinavia as rational actors.
And they knew it very well. Stoltenberg is not as rabid as Rasmussen, but he is sold basically by the people who control NATO, as you know, better, much better than I do, straight from Washington. And obviously those guys at NATO headquarters in Belgium are just following orders coming from Washington.
Stoltenberg is sold as a sort of a relatively polite face of NATO, but the message is the same. And after the start of the special military operations, got even worse.
So anything that comes from the mouth of Stoltenberg, we know that it’s coming from the mouth of the rabid, Straussian neocon psychos in D.C. And they have their Scandinavian guy, you know, just voicing them.
The problem is he’s taken seriously all across Europe. I mean, seriously, Ursula von der Leyen now is the butt of jokes from Spain to Greece and everywhere in between. But Stoltenberg is actually taken seriously. And that’s what makes them even more dangerous.
If you talk to an average citizen, let’s say here in France or in Italy or in Greece or in Germany, they take NATO’s pronouncement seriously. And the NATO 24-7 spin on the war against Russia, which basically says, no, we are not involved. We are not at war with Russia. We are not part of the war.
And then he announces the umpteenth package coming either from the West, from the EU or NATO countries as well against Russia. So the problem is, most people, because of the mainstream media barrage all across Europe, they don’t get into the specifics.
So they really don’t know that NATO is up to their necks and beyond in a war against Russia.
The way Vilnius was covered by European mainstream media was that, no, once again, we are all united, the 27 of us against Russian aggression, the usual.
But no specifics and much, much worse, only very, very sparse mentions of NATO extending the Robocop mandate to the Indo-Pacific and to the South China Sea.
So in fact, what we’re seeing for the past year and a half, let’s put it this way, is that the North Atlantic Organization now has taken over the Indo-Pacific and the South China Sea. So they actually moved to Asia.
So it’s not North Atlantic Organization. It’s Northern Hemisphere, Including the Far East Organization.
But this is not explained, obviously, by, for instance, The Economist, The Financial Times, major newspapers in Italy, Le Monde here in France, etc. So obviously, the average European citizen is absolutely clueless about that.
And the fact that the war, which is being lost dramatically in Ukraine, the narrative has been changing by the Americans, not yet by NATO. But on terms of NATO policy, there is a 4,400 page not-so-secret document at the end of the World News Summit, which categorizes their next steps in Russia, but also their next steps in the Indo-Pacific. And that’s the most worrying part of them all.
And once again, I would say 99% of EU citizens are completely oblivious to all of that.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I think the purpose of NATO from the beginning has always been to promote a unipolar U.S.-centered order. And it began with Europe, because NATO, in effect, has taken over European foreign policy, and even domestic policy. It’s written into the EU constitution.
And certainly, you’ve seen the effect of the war in Ukraine is to make Western Europe a U.S. satellite. It’s cut off the trade with Russian gas and oil and fertilizer and other raw materials, making Europe dependent on U.S. suppliers at much, much higher prices.
So the effect of NATO so far has been to sort of break away Europe from what seemed to be an increasingly close relationship of mutual economic gain between Germany and other European countries, trading and investing with Russia for low-cost raw materials, and with China for low-cost manufacturers.
Well, the U.S. plan in just forcing a military solution in Ukraine has been to break away Russia’s ability to support China, to support Syria, to support Iran and other countries. The whole idea of NATO was to carve away any group that would seek to be independent of the U.S. world order.
And of course, the ultimate aim, as President Biden has said again and again, is China is the number one enemy.
Well, you can’t go against China right now, because it already has so much support from Russia and other countries. So NATO thought, well, how do we isolate China? We first of all have to break away its potential ally in Russia.
And if we have a war in Ukraine, the neocons actually believe that the Russian people would rise up against President Putin and have a regime change, and the regime change would bring another Boris Yeltsin-type Western-oriented character.
Well, the reality has been just the opposite. Hardly surprising, when a country is under attack, like Russian speakers are under attack in eastern Ukraine, well, the tendency of any population is to rally behind the leader.
And that’s why Putin’s approval rating has gone up to 80 percent, much higher than any American or European leader.
So what’s happened is that instead of NATO breaking up China, Russia, and other countries seeking to pursue their own policy, it’s driving them all together out of simply the need to protect their own economies from the U.S. sanctions and from the U.S. plan to break them up.
And when the United States comes right out and says China is our enemy, Russia’s our enemy, and all their allies are enemy, hardly by surprise, the enemies get together.
So the result is that NATO really, instead of isolating the members of the BRICS and the global majority of Eurasia with the global south, they’ve driven them all together.
I don’t think there’s any truth at all in the rumor that the heads of NATO are really working for China’s foreign policy department. I don’t think they’re really in the pay of China’s government to make sure that Western Europe is driving all the other countries together under Chinese and Russian domination.
And I don’t think they’re really working for the Russian State Department, either. But if you think of them as working for Russia and China, you realize suddenly you can explain all of the consequences of what the NATO policy is bringing about.
It’s driving the rest of the world together and being an integrating force for the rest of the world by making an iron curtain, isolating the United States, England, and Western Europe away from the rest of the world, leaving the west of the world, the BRICS and the global majority to make their own new world order.
RADHIKA DESAI: I mean, I think all of these are really interesting points. I mean, if I were to put, just summarize in one word what, where, you know, where Vilnius leaves NATO, I would say that word would be failure.
Because even though NATO has a lot of things going for it, including, you know, governments in places, important capitals like Berlin that are willing to do everything that NATO wants, in fact, NATO is failing to achieve its objectives.
And the key way in which it is failing is, of course, that all the help that has gone to the Ukrainian membership, they have essentially not been, they’re essentially going to fail in the battlefield.
Sanctions, Michael, as you mentioned, have already failed to bring Russia down. Now there’s going to be failure in the battlefield.
And if there is failure in the battlefield, then I think that the divisions within NATO, which are already quite apparent, I mean, the fact of the matter is that the various Eastern European countries wanted to give Ukraine membership or at least some sort of map to membership.
And this was not permitted by Germany for its own reasons, but also by the United States. And President Biden cannot afford to be seen as essentially, you know, increasing the U.S.’s or NATO’s involvement in this war in any way.
So the fact of the matter is that in this it has not succeeded either.
Moreover, the military aid, you know, just think about this, the size of the actual military industrial complex possessed by the NATO countries collectively is enormous.
But the fact of the matter is that still they have been unwilling to a considerable extent, but also unable to supply Ukraine with the quantity and quality of the arms that it needs so that it cannot succeed, could not succeed. And so the so-called counteroffensive is failing.
And that’s the background against which the Vilnius Summit took place. With that background, even though it added Finland and hopes to add Sweden, having overcome President Erdogan’s limitations by offering him vast quantities of money, et cetera.
The fact of the matter is that this alliance, the cracks within it are already showing.
And I also feel that success against Russia is very critical to extending the alliance and its sphere of operations to China, because the fact of the matter is that if they can’t succeed against Russia, there’s definitely, they’re not going to succeed against China.
And what’s more, there was already dissension over Russia. The fact of the matter is that the various NATO members are so deeply involved economically with China that they are not going to, they’re going to be even greater dissensions with essentially targeting China, even though all Washington’s puppets in various European capitals are huffing and puffing to try to achieve this by talking about de-risking and what have you.
People like Ursula von der Leyen are in the forefront of this effort, but I don’t think they’re going to succeed for reasons, I think, Michael, that you also mentioned.
The cost that these countries are going to have to pay for these wars costs not just militarily, but also economically. The consequences of the economic disruptions that it’s going to bring is going to create dissension within these people, is going to create popular discontent. It’s going to destabilize governments.
And what’s more, it’s also going to create dissensions within the elites, because many of them have reasons to continue doing business not only with Russia, but also with China, in particular with China.
So in that sense, I would say that the Vilnius Summit has simply shown the dysfunction of NATO to an even greater extent.
Maybe we can go on to the next question, which is how is the proxy war on Ukraine faring? What does it mean for Biden and his larger strategy of uniting so-called democracies against the so-called autocracies and targeting China?
I’ve kind of already segued into that topic.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Well, I’ve been writing about this stuff for a year and a half, so I hate to repeat myself. But OK, let’s go straight to the point.
NATO’s humiliation, full humiliation, is just around the corner. And compared to it, Afghanistan does not even qualify as a mini Disneyland. Just wait. Because in terms of the counteroffensive, it’s already dead. It lasted three weeks and it’s already dead. And there won’t be a counteroffensive 2.0.
First of all, they have no personnel, qualified personnel. Second, they have no weapons. Third, they are being demilitarized on a daily basis, non-stop.
Because if you follow any good writing in English, of course, if you don’t follow the ones writing Russian or Chinese, it’s understandable in the West.
But if you follow the very good ones writing in English, starting with Andrei Martianov. Andrei Martianov is very funny because technically he’s an Azerbaijani. He was born in Baku, but in the old Soviet Union. But Andrei lives in Western USA.
He writes in English. His blog is excellent. His podcasts are also excellent. And I would say, without a shadow of a doubt, in English, he’s the number one military analyst of what’s really going on in the war.
And we have excellent American analysts like Colonel Douglas McGregor, Scott Ritter, etc. They all, in military terms, they all say the same thing. This thing is dead. This thing is practically over. The thing is how long […] NATO can get away with selling a fiction to a global audience.
People in Germany, France, and Italy, the top three economies here in Europe, are already asking questions. I mean, industrialists, academics, they are not, of course, stigmatized in mainstream media, underground channels, parallel discussions, roundtables of very well-informed people, including intelligence people, French, Italians, etc.
They say, look, there’s got. We need to find a way out of this, but it’s impossible because everything is controlled in Washington by those Straussian neocon psychos.
Even them, not them, even the so-called Biden administration, which the way I’ve been writing for years, it doesn’t exist. What exists is the Biden combo.
Biden is, as we all know, he cannot find his way to the next room. Everybody knows that. So the decisions are taken by the combo.
And among the combo, the visible faces, which makes them even more toxic, are the toxic trio. Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland. But the guys who actually make these decisions, they are in the back. They never show up. So that makes it even more dangerous.
We have an idea of who they are, but they never show up. They don’t need to. The messengers spread the message. And they are trying to change the narrative badly because they know that there’s going to be a massive humiliation just around the corner.
The elections are getting closer and closer. You cannot go to the American public next year and present a NATO humiliation, which is obvious for 88% of the world, as a victory and try to get away with it. It’s absolutely impossible.
People who bother to look at what’s really happening on the ground in the battlefield in Ukraine can see for themselves. So now they’re trying to change the narrative.
And the best example these past few weeks, in fact, these past few days, was Edward Luttwak, which you all know as, let’s say, number one or number two Pentagon advisor for the past 50 years or so.
He gave an interview that is absolutely incandescent, where he’s basically changing the subject to war on China.
So this was, I would say, the official entry of the real war is against China, not in Ukraine, into mainstream media. It’s on YouTube. Everybody can watch it. Soon, if people start watching, soon we’ll have millions of views.
And Edward, as you know, is a very, very clever operator. Even when he doesn’t say it, he’s spelling the whole game, in fact.
Look, William Burns called Naryshkin. William Burns, head of CIA, Naryshkin, head of Russian foreign intelligence. This is true. Burns did call Naryshkin. They have a very important phone conversation, but not exactly what Edward is spinning.
Basically, Naryshkin was trying to explain to Burns, look, if you, CIA, start mounting operations inside the Russian Federation, there are going to be repercussions for you guys. So, you know, go slow.
Edward’s, basically, Edward’s spin was, no, Burns told Naryshkin that Putin and Biden should close a deal.
Putin is not going to close a deal with the Biden administration. Forget it. The Biden administration knows exactly what Russia wants, which is exactly what Russia wanted in December 2021. Indivisibility of security. You guys know this very, very well. In our audience, I’m sure it’s familiar with that.
Those letters that were sent to the Pentagon and the White House and got a non-answer. Also sent to NATO. It’s all about indivisibility of security for Europe and for the post-Soviet space. And at the time, the Americans ignored it.
So now they want to go back to the table and discuss with the Russians. The Russians know very well when they receive a yes, no, or a no, yes, which was the case. So there’s nothing to discuss.
And the Russian foreign ministry, the minister of defense, in putting himself over and over again has said, look, our set of conditions to end the war are there. The Americans know it very well.
We can finish the whole thing with a phone call. They don’t make the phone call that really matters. It’s not Bernstein or Rischke. It’s the White House to Putin. This one is not going to happen anytime soon. But he’s still trying to find a way out.
So if you think that this came straight out of a Kafka novel, yes, it did. And it keeps going.
RADHIKA DESAI: How and when do you think the war might end?
PEPE ESCOBAR: There are two short answers, Radhika. One, with the phone call, the war stops tomorrow. And they all go to a negotiating table somewhere in Finland, in Kazakhstan, in Geneva.
And obviously there will be no agreement because the Americans will refuse to accept indivisibility of security. Everybody knows that. So there is no peaceful solution to this war.
The only solution for this war is a complete humiliation of either side. As we look at the battlefield, we see that the humiliation of NATO is just around the corner, literally.
And it doesn’t matter if you send F-16s in six months or in one year. It doesn’t matter if you have more Storm Shadows from Britain. It doesn’t matter if you send 1,000 Leopards from Germany. It doesn’t matter.
And it’s very, very funny because even Putin himself is saying, look, whatever they send here, it will be incinerated. And he says that casually now. Before that, the Russian Minister of Defense was even trying to be relatively diplomatic.
And now the Russians are even laughing about it because they are annihilating so-called top-of-the-line Western weapons with old Soviet weapons, modified Soviet weapons as well. So is this going on for another three months? It’s very possible.
And there is going to be some sort of Russian, let’s say, crypto-offensive trying to take the whole of the east of Dnieper. They can take over everything.
Another possibility, in the next few months or until early next year, go all the way to Odessa, which is something that every military analyst in Russia was saying since February last year. We have to go all the way to Odessa now, soon, immediately.
So maybe this is going to happen. But the Russian Minister of Defense has different scenarios for what happens after what happened in Bakhmut, which was this World War I thing, absolutely devastating, lasting six or seven months.
But it was a rehearsal to what the Russians might do when they really decide to get into war. So what Putin said a few months ago still applies. We haven’t even started yet. And they haven’t.
Because their best weapons are still in the rear guard. Their top battalions are not part of the fighting yet. They are using their hypersonic missiles sparingly when they have a very specific target like that bunker near Lviv in western Ukraine that they destroyed a few months ago with one Kinzhal penetrating underground.
And then nobody talked about it. The Pentagon didn’t talk about it. The Russian Minister of Defense didn’t talk about it because this was too sensitive. A lot of NATO people were killed in that Kinzhal strike.
So the Russians are fighting with one hand behind their backs. No question. And with velvet gloves. But now, after all these attacks inside the Russian Federation including the second attack against the Kerch Bridge and attacks against civilians in Russia, they are starting to lose their patience.
They have the possibility to increase lethality to any degree you can imagine. They don’t want it for the moment. They always leave a window open in case the Americans decide to start talking.
And that brings us to an extremely complex matter which unfortunately we don’t have time at least today to talk about it, which is divisions at the top in Russia.
There are oligarchs who are pro-ending the war. There are oligarchs who want to extend the war indefinitely because they are making a lot of money out of it. There are pro-EU people very, very close to the Kremlin. And there are the Silovikis and the ultra-nationalists who say no, we should cut off the head of the snake tomorrow in 20 minutes, which they can if they want to.
So there are divisions inside Russia and at the highest levels. There is no division in terms of accomplishing the goals as fuzzy as they are of the special military operation.
Demilitarization of Ukraine is on the way. They did it at least 50% if not more. Demilitarization of NATO is also working because they did it.
Germany, they don’t have shells for one week if they decide to go into a war. Their Leopards are gone, not to mention the other ones.
Which leads us to the most dangerous element in all that, which brings us back to our NATO discussion: the Poles, the rabbit hyenas of Europe. The Poles and the Baltics are cultivated by the Americans as their new strike force considering that the Ukrainian strike force is practically gone
And that would assure the war entering another even more complicated stage and with no end in sight. The possibilities of this thing getting worse of course are endless but this one I would say is the number one.
Subcontracting the next offensive to the Poles with help from other NATO mercenaries. Forget about Ukraine, now it’s going to be Poland independently, not part of NATO because they’re doing this on their own, NATO is not involved.
And then we have a different actor on the Ukrainian battlefield because the Poles, their agenda as all of us know, is to annex Western Ukraine and they think they have a golden opportunity that they never had before in the past few decades to do it.
So I’m sorry if I’m being so nihilistic but –
MICHAEL HUDSON: – Well you may sound nihilistic but I think what you said Pepe is exactly what was being discussed at Vilnius and NATO. I think all the NATO people are in agreement with you.
What we’re saying is no longer on the outside as a minority view. What you said is the majority view of NATO.
They got together, they realized it, and it’s as if at the Vilnius meeting they said, okay we’re going to bury Ukraine, this is a funeral for Ukraine, we know that we can’t win, the only thing we want to do is.
If there are any tanks and weapons left, let’s use them all up so that Europe will buy a huge bonanza for the American military industrial complex, Raytheon is very happy.
But I think the message at Vilnius the associated meetings at the EU was, we’re finished with Ukraine, we’ve done everything that we set out to do, we’ve bled Russia, great success as you pointed out elsewhere our real enemy now is China.
Now our center is really in the Pacific. Our center is in the China Sea. Specifically, let’s make Taiwan the new Ukraine. Let’s be willing to die for the last Taiwanese. Let’s do to China what we’ve just so wonderfully done to NATO.
We’ve expended everything there, but while we’ve used our tanks and ammunition and armaments in the West now let’s use up our navy, there’s a huge market in building all the ships that a war with a provocation with China will do.
Let’s send some of our ships that China will say well that’s our own territory we’re one country, let’s shift to a naval war in the Pacific now, and that seems to be what they all decided on.
They don’t want to talk about Ukraine anymore, it makes them unhappy. I mean for us it’s saying, ha ha we told you all about it all along.
For them they say, well we did what we could.
And I think you’re right about Poland. In Poland they’re obsessed with the 15th century and the 16th century. When Poland had Lithuania, had many of the Baltic States, had Prussia. All of that. Had part of Ukraine.
They want to recover their lost glory and the leaders of Poland are exactly as you said, and I think NATO isn’t really going to be a part of it, if Poland tries to attack Belarus or even isolate Königsberg.
Somehow NATO’s not going to get involved if Russia retaliates with a slam. You can just remember what happened in World War II to remember that.
I think what you’ve outlined, I think it’s what NATO agrees with
RADHIKA DESAI: Well I mean let me complicate that a little bit, because the thing is that if there were to be any kind of Polish military action of the sort that you’re discussing, it’s going to actually divide NATO quite radically.
There’ll be some powers who’ll be saying, we have to back Poland. This is a fight. And all the rhetoric about freedom and democracy and so on will come out.
But the fact of the matter is beginning with the Germans and a whole lot of others, they’re not going to support, as Michael you were just saying, they’re not going to go along with that. So I think it’s more complicated.
I think also that in terms of extending this to China I really think that military failure of the sort that we all agree the West is facing that NATO is facing is going to give people pause, first of all.
That is to say, can the United States really do, can it really hold up the military end, so to speak? And it can’t. It spends more money on its military than the next however many states combined but still cannot produce weapons of the quantity and quality that even Ukraine needs, let alone the West as a whole will need if it goes to war with China.
So in a sense it’s got an overpaid, pampered military industrial complex that cannot actually produce the weapons, so in that sense.
And earlier I said Biden didn’t want to include Ukraine in NATO or not even give it a road map for electoral reasons, but I think there’s also another reason.
They do not want a failed state in their ranks, because that’s what Ukraine will become soon. So in that sense I would say that the possibility of extending the war to China is much less secure I think.
Also because, even the countries around China who the United States has been trying to divide from China for a long time, they continue to deepen their economic connections, trade relations, investment relations, etc with China.They’re not going to go to war with China in any easy way.
They’re going to be deeply divided just as the European leadership is divided.
In fact all of this kind of nicely segues into our next question, which is how much longer do you think Europe and other US allies sustain the appearance of unity?
Because we know that Europe is paying a big economic cost. The unity that is much doubted has also been a very selective sort of, convenient sort of, unity where every country has sent whatever is convenient for it rather than what is needed in Ukraine.
So how long do you think that even Europe can stay united, with the British pulling in one direction, the eastern states in another direction, Germany and France and Italy in yet another direction? How long can this unity be sustained?
MICHAEL HUDSON: I don’t think it’s a question of countries fighting each other. It’s a question of the business interests fighting the political interests who basically are employees of the United States.
The question is, are international relations going to be determined by economic factors and mutual gains as we all believe with the materialist approach to history, or is it going to be completely non-economic factors, or, as Janet Yellen and her European counterpart said, all trade is risk.
Any trade with China or Russia or the Near East runs a risk of losing national security. Because if you trade with a country, you’re dependent on them, and therefore you should break off the trade with China. You should break off the trade.
Well obviously, breaking off the trade with China and Russia has already led to the collapse of the German steel industry and the industries that use steel and the fertilizer industry and the glass making industry that uses gas.
So the real question is, are European politics going to be based on economic long-term self-interest as we all assumed was the guiding shape of geopolitical arrangements, or is it going to be rejecting your self-interest in terms of national security, meaning, trade with the United States establishes absolute dependence on the United States.
When Janet Yellen the US Secretary of the Treasury and [Von Leyen] you have to base all your trade on national security, that means all trade must be locking in your dependence on US exporters, US oil and gas exporters, now that we are your only suppliers of gas and oil. US farm exports. US computer information technology exports. US communications technology. Rejecting Huawei.
How is it that the European politics is not dominated by the business interests, but by American fantasy that even American interests are not based on the benefits of American computer chip exporters.
You’ve just had President Biden say we’re going to have to give 30 billion dollars to support US chip modernization, but the chip companies are going to have to lose one third of their total market which is China.
And the chip companies have said, wait a minute you’re saying that we’re going to lose our markets and you’re going to try to make us grow again but without a market for our goods because our market is China.
Even the United States is turning away from its economic self-interest to this obsession with we must dominate other countries. This obsession of the neocon to control other countries.
I don’t think something like this has really come across before and those of us who believe in the economic determination of history can’t believe it’s going to go on very long but here we are.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Just complementing what Michael said, it has to do with the astounding mediocrity of the current political elites in Europe.
This is something that, of course, we have these conversations here in Europe, but of course, totally off the record. And you never see a debate like that on the opinion pages of Le Monde or in any nightly newscast.
But German businesses, they are absolutely furious. And they said, look, there are already some sort of revolt that we need to get rid of this government as soon as possible. French interests, more or less the same thing.
When Macron went to visit China recently, the businessman with Macron said, we don’t care what you discuss in terms of politics. We are here to do business with the Chinese, whatever you say.
And in fact, they clinched a lot of very juicy contracts while they were in Beijing.
The Italians, the same thing. The Italians are saying, are you nuts? You want to cut off the Italian partnership in the Belt and Road Initiative in Brie, which is a decision that they’ll have to take until the end of the year, beginning of next year. This is absurd. They’re going to invest in our ports. They’re creating jobs here.
So, you know, there is a revolt in business circles. These are the three economists that really matter in Europe, Germany, France. Everybody else is an extra, you know.
So we can see maybe, I would say, medium to long term, a change in the horizon. Short term, I would say it’s an absolute massive tactical victory by the Americans to cut off the EU, especially Germany, from Russia.
The problem is the people who actually know how business is done, businessmen and industrialists, now they’re starting to get the full picture, not only for the next winter, but for the years ahead.
So the best we should all expect is a change in governments in these three countries that really matter.
In France, it’s not going to happen because, as we know, Macron was recently reelected, even though his popularity is probably less than zero at the moment. There’s no chance there’s going to be a coup d’etat to get rid of le petit roi, the little king.
But French businessmen, they are as furious as their German counterparts. They say, so what do we got left? Are we going to transfer to the US? No. Are we going to transfer to Asia? Maybe.
And obviously, if that happens, the social situation inside France, which is already mega explosive, then it’s going to be total combustion.
And in Germany, the deindustrialization of Germany now is a fact, and the numbers are absolutely horrifying. They basically deindustrialized this year over 30% compared to last year. This is beyond enormous and unimaginable until a few months ago, right?
And obviously, Eastern Europe doesn’t count. In Eastern Europe, they have other ideas. Apart from the Poles, the Romanians soon are going to start saying, ah, we want to recover our lands that now are part of Ukraine.
And the Hungarians are going to say exactly the same thing.
So basically, there will be a giant partition of Western Ukraine with everybody jumping in. So the ramifications of all that are, in terms of political economy and in geopolitical terms, are absolutely horrifying.
And from the point of view of the average EU citizen, which is already being buried by taxes, the average French or Italian taxpayer basically pays 50% of what they earn in taxes. It’s completely absurd.
They don’t get much in return because the social security system in both countries and the other ones is also collapsing. So ends barely meet for most people.
They are starting to make the direct connection of throwing zillions of euros into Ukraine while the social situation inside the EU, as much as inside the US, as you know very well, is deteriorating very fast.
RADHIKA DESAI: And this is so true. And just to go back to something that Michael was saying, you know, Michael, you were talking about how those of us who think that economic interests should determine political and geopolitical actions and so on, that we are somehow being pushed to reassess the basis of the way we think.
But there’s a way of thinking about it. If you think about this in terms of the longer history of imperialism, and I’ve always said that it’s important to recognize that imperialism has been in decline since about 1914.
It’s been a long one. It’s been a slow one. Some of us can’t wait for it to accelerate, but it has been in decline.
And it’s come to the point where the very actions that are necessary to preserve the imperial system are in fact harming the very system on which it is based.
So when you have that sort of, the snake eating its own tail situation, that’s when you begin to see that the contradictions of the system are mounting. And that’s the position, that’s the situation where we are at.
That what the United States needs to do in order to preserve and extend the imperial system and therefore the capitalist system itself is proving harmful to capitalism.
Now, what that means for the future is anybody’s guess. Supposing, you know, we got the kind of government that, the regime change.
So if you got the kind of regime change that Pepe was mentioning and important European capitals, they will then have to go back to something like the approach that they were taking when Merkel made Germany dependent on Russia for its, you know, energy needs and so on and so forth.
You could have something like that.
But then what that has to do is we will see that the capitalist world is going to have to make terms with a world that is, you know, on the one hand socialist in the sense that China is socialist and other socialist powers.
And on the other hand, if not socialist, like Russia, at least not willing to be subordinated to capitalism and therefore to be, to follow neoliberal principles, because neoliberal principles are nothing but subordination to capitalism.
So in that sense, I think that we are looking at part of the reason why this situation looks as complex as it does is because of this very complicated situation of capitalism and imperialism today.
So maybe we have time to at least go into one further question. And that is really, again, this is about the very economic question.
But why do you think the Grain Deal broke down? What is the significance of the breakdown of the Grain Deal?
Because remember, of course, remembering that originally the Grain Deal, you know, the West made a lot of noise about how Ukraine feeds the world and blah blah and so on.
But in reality, the Grain Deal was arrived at in order that the big agribusinesses that are located in Ukraine will be able to export their grain and make a profit. That was the real reason for the Grain Deal.
Now, of course, President Putin has given his own reasons and he’s actually given two sets of reasons. One is, you know, he’s pointed out that the West did not keep its side of the deal.
But he also pointed out that the grain that was coming out of Ukraine was, in fact, not reaching the third world anyway.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Three percent of the grain was reaching poor countries in Africa. You know what? They were discussing this this morning at a Valdai Club session this morning, previous to the Russia-Africa Summit that starts on Thursday.
They were discussing that and they got into detail and they said the Russians were the only ones who actually exposed to the rest of the world a fiction.
Over 40 percent was going to rich EU nations, not the poor EU nations. That’s number one.
Number two, they were using the fact that Odessa port was the center to stockpile weapons in Odessa. Why the Russians are bombing Odessa since the beginning of this week? Because they are bombing exactly this as a stockpiling of weapons.
And number three, they were organizing ways of using the corridors of the Grain Deal to attack the Black Sea fleet and especially Crimea. There you go. Michael, it’s all yours.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Now that you said the whole point, what you said is exactly right.
The grain that Russia had said, we’re producing the grain. We want to use this grain to give to the African countries to consolidate our linkage between Russia, China and the BRICS and the global south, specifically of Africa.
Obviously for them, just as when they built the Aswan Dam in Egypt, for them trade and support was a means of creating national alliances and Europe prevented that.
And as you pointed out, the big agricultural agribusiness companies wanted to make money for the same reason that Willie Sutton said, why do you rob banks? Because that’s where the money is.
So of course they wanted to get paid by Europe instead of giving their product away for free. There’s no percentage of zero that you can really get out of this.
And as you pointed out, Ukraine was trying to use this ostensibly humanitarian grain trade to stockpile weapons and use that sea transport as a means of, how do you attack Crimea? By the sea. That’s how they used a sea torpedo to blow up the bridge to Crimea.
So you’re having exactly this. Russia has decided to demilitarize the Black Sea. Putin has said that if there’s any foreign ship that is not with Russian permission in the Black Sea, that would be treated as an enemy because who else would possibly go to the Black Sea?
There are not going to be insurance companies that are going to guarantee the safety of shipping in a military war zone. So without getting insurance for your sea transport, how are you going to transport grain? That in itself has stopped it.
And Putin had just listed a whole series of criteria that would be necessary for the grain deal to resume.
And that included stopping the EU sanctions against the Russian banks that have to finance the grain deal, stopping all sorts of attacks on Russia, sort of using the grain transport path as a means of actually putting a warship in there to attack Russia.
Essentially, Russia said, you’ll have to demilitarize the Black Sea if you want peaceful grain commerce across the Black Sea.
The US is completely unwilling to do that. Congress will never go along with that. So essentially, the United States has blocked the grain deal.
And it’s using its propaganda in Africa to say, oh, look, Russia is blocking it. That’s why you’re not being fed with the grain.
Who are you going to believe, the Russian reality or the American cover story? That’s what’s being fought out in Africa right now.
And Africa is becoming actually one of the great battlefields in this split between the unipolar US order and the emerging global majority order. And grain is the basis of this.
The foundation of American trade policy since 1945 has been to prevent other countries from growing their own food.
All of the World Bank loans to third world countries in the 50s, 60s and 70s have been for exporting plantation crops and for the US State Department opposing family-based farming to promote plantation crops, especially on lands owned by American exporting interests.
The issue is the whole structure of African and Southern Hemisphere land tenure and whether they’re going to aim at feeding themselves just as the Europeans have fed themselves.
And the issue that you didn’t mention with the grain deal was Ukraine says, all right, let’s try to export our grain by rail to Europe.
Well, the center of European foreign policy, the most important economic aim of creating the common market in the first place was the common agricultural policy to protect French and German and other agriculture.
And the last thing they want is for their farmers to be undersold with cheap Ukrainian grain that will hurt their economic interests. And so they’re European farmers and they have the agricultural policy that is blocking the shipment of Ukrainian grain through Europe.
But apart from the fact that all of the storage facilities, the silos for grain are already being used for European farm grain, there’s nowhere to put that Ukrainian grain. The problem is insolvable from that point of view.
RADHIKA DESAI: Yeah, that’s so true and important, Michael, that you sort of have broadened the picture to put the issue of the grain deal in the larger picture of imperialism and the way it has always operated.
Because all the first world countries, the imperialist countries themselves actually pursue a very strict food security policy.
Meanwhile, they tell third world countries, oh, you shouldn’t worry about food security. You should, as Michael rightly points out, produce the export crops. What are export crops? They are crops that the first world wants.
Why should third world countries produce export crops? Because they exist as far as the third world, as far as first world countries are concerned, to supply cheap things that the West, which is largely non-tropical, cannot produce.
So the third world is supposed to supply us with all those tropical fruits, vegetables, tobacco, cocoa, coffee, tea, whatever it is.
And what’s really also interesting is, you know, people always think of the third world as being unable to feed itself. In reality, there are actually relatively few third world countries that have fallen for the definitely the very real inducements of the United States to not worry about food security.
And besides, they are not rich enough to import a lot of food. So the extent of food dependence of first world countries is actually much greater.
We import a lot more of our food than the average third world country and certainly big third world countries.
And what that food export also does is it keeps inflation low. We are able to, in first world countries, buy things for next to nothing. And this is a big factor in keeping inflation low.
So, yeah, I think this is very important to put the grain deal in the larger picture of imperialism.
Now, I should say we are near to an hour in this show and we still have several questions to discuss. So what I propose is that next week we will come back and discuss the same issue and complete the number of various questions that we were discussing.
So until next week, then we will have when we’ll have the second part of this program on NATO. Thanks, everyone, for watching. Thanks to Pepe for being our guest.
He will be back next week. And, of course, thanks also to Paul Graham, who’s a videographer and all the others who support our show. Thank you very much. And till next time.
MICHAEL HUDSON: If there is a next week.


Instruction: Write an article about: China condemns ‘racist’ Western hypocrisy over Ukraine: You ignore victims in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, racism, Russia, Syria, Ukraine

Output:
China’s Foreign Ministry said the “US, NATO and some western media are very hypocritical” over Ukraine, that their “reports smack of racism” and are not “equally concerned about the civilian casualties in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine.”

The Chinese government blasted Western hypocrisy over the war in Ukraine, asking why there was not similar outrage over the civilian casualties caused by the US and NATO wars on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and former Yugoslavia.
“The US, NATO and some western media are very hypocritical, especially as some reports smack of racism,” said a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry.
“I wonder if you were equally concerned about the civilian casualties in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine. Do these civilians mean nothing to you?” he asked.
Beijing argued that it has been consistent in opposing wars and calling for peace everywhere, unlike the Western bloc.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian made these scathing comments in a press conference on March 17.
A reporter from Western news agency AFP asked why China has not condemned Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
In an extremely biased loaded question, the AFP reporter said, “My question is given that China has not explicitly opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, should we assume that China therefore has no problem with this kind of indiscriminate killing of civilians?”
The reporter went on: “President Biden has called President Putin a ‘war criminal’. Does China agree that Russia may have committed war crimes in Ukraine?”
The deeply one-sided comments clearly angered Zhao Lijian, who condemned the “hypocrisy” and “racism” of the Western media.
“On the Ukraine issue, China has made its view known that the international community should focus on two things, namely, peace talks and avoidance of a large-scale humanitarian crisis,” he said.
“We have also made huge efforts in this regard. China has proposed a six-point initiative on easing the humanitarian situation in Ukraine and has taken real actions. We will continue to provide new humanitarian assistance as needed,” Zhao added.
“I want to stress that China’s position on peace talks is consistent. You may refer to China’s statements on hotspot issues including Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine and Israel,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman continued.
“When it comes to civilian casualties and humanitarian situation, I wonder if you were equally concerned about the civilian casualties in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine. Do these civilians mean nothing to you?” Zhao asked.
“Do not forget Serbia in 1999, or the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Did you show any care about civilian casualties there? If not, then you are in no position to make accusations against China,” he said.
“China’s position is aboveboard, objective and just. But the US, NATO and some western media are very hypocritical, especially as some reports smack of racism,” Zhao continued.
“We suggest some media focus more efforts on things that are conducive to promoting peace,” the Foreign Minister spokesman concluded. “They may advise the US and NATO countries not to supply ammunition or add fuel to the flame, but to sit down and build peace by talking with Europe, Russia and Ukraine.”


Instruction: Write an article about: Pentagon says China and Russia are top US national security ‘threats,’ not terrorism. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: China, Cold War Two, Donald Trump, James Mattis, new cold war, Pentagon, Russia, war on terror

Output:
The US government is moving away from “war on terror” rhetoric as Defense Secretary Mattis says “great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of US national security.”

(This report was first published at The Real News.)

BENJAMIN NORTON: Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has justified numerous wars and interventions throughout the world under the pretext of a so-called “war on terror.”
That appears to be is changing. In December, President Donald Trump released a new national security strategy, which reveals that the top priority for U.S. national security is not countering terrorism, but rather countering the influence of competing foreign states, namely China and Russia.
Defense Secretary James Mattis made this incredibly significant announcement in a speech at John Hopkins University on January 19.
JAMES MATTIS: The world, to quote George Shultz, is awash in change, defined by increasing global volatility and uncertainty with great power competition between nations becoming a reality once again. Though we will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists that we are engaged in today, but great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.
BENJAMIN NORTON: This marks a huge shift in U.S. government rhetoric on national security, which for nearly two decades has largely been synonymous with counterterrorism.
The United States has used terrorism and the threat of extremist groups like al-Qaeda as an excuse to military intervene throughout the Middle East and North Africa, from Iraq to Libya, to Syria, to Yemen.
Trump’s new national security strategy, however, singles out China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran as the primary targets of U.S. foreign policy.
JAMES MATTIS: We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia are from each other… Rogue regimes like North Korea and Iran persist in taking outlaw actions that threaten regional and even global stability.
BENJAMIN NORTON: Defense Secretary Mattis said this is the first U.S. national defense strategy in 10 years.
A key part of the Trump administration’s rhetoric in the document is the myth that the U.S. military is somehow underfunded.
JAMES MATTIS: The negative impact on military readiness is resulting from the longest continuous stretch of combat in our nation’s history and defense spending caps, because we have been operating also for nine of the last 10 years under continuing resolutions that have created an overstretched and under-resourced military.
BENJAMIN NORTON: In reality, with a $611 billion budget in 2016, the United States already spent more on its military than the next eight largest countries combined — and six of those eight are U.S. allies.
And in 2017, Congress voted to increase the already enormous U.S. military budget to a staggering $700 billion per year.
Trump’s national security strategy also states that sustaining U.S. nuclear weapons and modernizing U.S. nuclear infrastructure is a key priority.
These announcements from the Trump administration are yet another sign that the post-Cold War, U.S.-led hegemonic order is breaking down, and we are seeing the rise of a new multipolar world. Military rhetoric is changing from a war on terror to a more traditional, World War I-style great power rivalry.
However, there has long been skepticism of the notion that the “war on terror” was ever even about stopping terror in the first place. The George W. Bush administration, which launched the endless war, falsely tried to link Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda to justify an invasion that the United Nations said was illegal.
Moreover, while the United States has waged a drone war in Yemen since 2001, ostensibly to beat back al-Qaeda extremists, in recent years, there has simultaneously been a well-documented alliance between al-Qaeda and U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have fought side-by-side against Yemen’s Houthi movement, Ansarallah.
A similar alliance with al-Qaeda-linked Islamist extremists could be seen in the U.S.-backed opposition in Syria.
The United States is not necessarily abandoning the war on terror, but the Trump administration’s new national security strategy stands out as one of the most frank admissions yet that U.S. foreign policy is principally about undermining foreign states that challenge U.S. economic and political interests, not about stopping extremist groups that threaten civilians.
This announcement did not come out of nowhere. The shift began under former president Barack Obama, whose administration declared a “pivot to Asia” as a key part of its foreign policy.
But this declaration is another indication of the Trump administration’s embrace of a more conventional, hawkish, bipartisan foreign policy. And it’s a sign of President Trump’s abandonment of any pretense of non-interventionism.


Instruction: Write an article about: Pakistan’s Western-backed coup regime hits PM Imran Khan with ‘terrorism’ charges to silence dissent. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Imran Khan, Pakistan, podcast

Output:
After Pakistan’s elected Prime Minister Imran Khan was overthrown in a US-backed coup, the regime has charged him with “terrorism.” Scholar Junaid S. Ahmad discusses the desperate attempt to crush his mass movement.

Pakistan’s elected Prime Minister Imran Khan was overthrown in a US-backed regime-change operation due to his independent foreign policy. Now the coup regime has charged him with “terrorism.” Pakistani scholar Junaid S. Ahmad discusses the desperate attempt to crush the mass movement and protests that Khan has led.

Multipolarista’s previous interview with Junaid:
US-backed coup in Pakistan overthrows PM Imran Khan over his independent foreign policy

Read Junaid’s article warning about the coup:
Pakistan warns of foreign-backed regime-change attempt, to disrupt China/Russia alliance


Instruction: Write an article about: Sandinista Nicaragua allies with China, Russia, Iran against US imperialism. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: China, Covid-19, Daniel Ortega, Denis Moncada, Iran, Laureano Ortega, Nicaragua, Russia, vaccines

Output:
Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government is forming a closer alliance with China, Russia, and Iran in a common struggle against US imperialism, jointly resisting Washington’s illegal sanctions, meddling, and coup attempts.

Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government has formed a political and economic alliance with China, Russia, and Iran, as a counterbalance against constant US meddling in the Central American nation.
All four countries are targeted by illegal Western sanctions and coup attempts. So they have grown closer together in a common struggle against Washington’s aggression.
In December 2021, Nicaragua re-established relations with the People’s Republic of China, and on December 31, 2021, Beijing re-opened its embassy in Managua.
The People's Republic of China just reopened its embassy today in Nicaragua, a few weeks after the Sandinista government re-established relations.
Nicaragua's right-wing US-backed Chamorro oligarch government had broken ties with China back in 1990.pic.twitter.com/OZiSO8o9v7
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 31, 2021

Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said Nicaragua and China are “two peoples who have fought for their national liberation with perseverance,” seeking the “eradication of poverty.”
The Nicaraguan foreign minister said they seek to build a new world “that is multipolar.”
Nicaraguan presidential advisor Laureano Ortega praised China for eliminating extreme poverty and showing how “to advance toward the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist model.”
He also thanked Beijing for giving 2 billion Covid-19 vaccines to some 120 countries, including more than 1 million to Nicaragua.
Right-wing US government-funded media outlets have expressed extreme distress over this growing alliance.
Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega announced at his inauguration on January 10 that the country had signed a series of economic agreements with China.
The most important of these officially incorporates the Central American nation into Beijing’s global Belt and Road Initiative.
President Daniel Ortega said “the United States does not accept that the end of its hegemony is a fact.”
Breaking: At his inauguration tonight, President Daniel Ortega announced that Nicaragua and China just signed a series of strategic agreements, including officially incorporating Nicaragua into Beijing's global Belt and Road Initiative, as well as programs on housing and trade. pic.twitter.com/n9URPvkkO1
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 11, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: US-Saudi war on Yemen has killed 377,000 people – UN estimate. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Joe Biden, Saudi Arabia, UN, UNDP, United Nations, Yemen

Output:
An estimated 377,000 Yemenis have died in the US-Saudi war on their country, and roughly 70% of deaths were children under age 5, according to a comprehensive United Nations report.

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
The death toll of the US-UK-Saudi-Emirati war on Yemen is estimated to be at least 377,000 individuals, as of the end of 2021.
More than two-thirds of these Yemenis killed were likely children.
These statistics come from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which reported in November that the number of deaths by direct and indirect causes in Yemen was projected to surpass 377,000 by the end of 2021.
March 2022 will mark the seventh anniversary of this war, which has caused the largest humanitarian crisis on Earth.
Saudi Arabia initiated the war in March 2015 by launching airstrikes on its southern neighbor, with support and weapons from the United States, United Kingdom, and United Arab Emirates.
Approximately 60% (226,000) of these estimated Yemeni deaths were because of indirect causes, according to the UNDP, such as preventable diseases or a lack of access to food, water, and healthcare.
Roughly 40% (151,000) of these Yemenis suffered violent deaths, whether from US-backed Saudi airstrikes or front-line fighting.
The UNDP said 70% (264,000) of the estimated Yemeni deaths were children under age 5.

15.6 million Yemenis live in extreme poverty, and 8.6 million suffer from under-nutrition, according to the report.
The UNDP added that Yemen’s economy has suffered an estimated loss of US $126 billion in potential gross domestic product (GDP) since 2015.
“If war in Yemen continues through 2030, we estimate that 1.3 million people will die as a result,” the report added ominously.
Over 7 years of conflict caused the death of 377 thousand Yemenis, mostly children and mostly from indirect causes according to @UNDPYemenLearn more about the conflict's impact in 5th issue of our newsletter: https://t.co/ux7WIsTmbu
Read UNDP's report: https://t.co/Kk11rptMn9 pic.twitter.com/fx8yp6p1QJ
— @OSE_Yemen (@OSE_Yemen) January 6, 2022

The war on Yemen gets very little media coverage, and is rarely mentioned by political leaders in the United States.
President Joe Biden claimed during his presidential campaign that he would end the war. In February 2021, the president announced that the United States would end support for “offensive” Saudi operations in Yemen – although by their very nature, all Saudi operations in Yemen are offensive, because the wealthy monarchy initiated the war by bombing its neighbor, the poorest country in West Asia.
Yet the Biden administration has continued selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, and the war on Yemen has only escalated since the Democratic president entered office.
Violence in Yemen is at the highest levels since 2018, with a civilian killed or wounded every hour on average.
President Biden claimed he would end the war on Yemen, but US-backed Saudi bombing has escalated.
A Yemeni civilian is now killed or injured every hour on average, the highest casualty level since 2018.
This March marks the 7th anniversary of this war.https://t.co/v9ltD2095R
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) February 12, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: West sabotaged Ukraine peace deal with Russia, admit Zelensky official and Germany’s ex leader. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Boris Johnson, Davyd Arakhamia, Naftali Bennett, Russia, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky

Output:
Russia wanted to sign a peace deal with Ukraine in March 2022, but NATO countries sabotaged it, according to Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the parliamentary faction leader of Zelensky’s political party, Davyd Arakhamia.

The United States has played a key role in fueling the wars in both Israel-Palestine and Ukraine.
The US government has sought to prevent peace in Gaza, vetoing resolutions in the UN Security Council that call for a ceasefire, while sending weapons to Israel to help it bomb densely populated civilian areas, contributing to the killing of more than 15,000 Palestinians, approximately 70% of whom are women and children.
Since 2022, Washington has done exactly the same in Ukraine, torpedoing peace proposals that Russia had supported.
This has been confirmed by numerous sources, including the former leader of Germany and a top Ukrainian official, as well as Israel’s ex prime minister.

This October, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder explained in an interview how he had tried to negotiate peace between Ukraine and Russia in 2022.
Ukraine’s overtly anti-Russian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported on his bombshell remarks.
Moscow had a concrete peace plan laid out, according to Schröder. It was based on five points: “Ukraine’s rejection of NATO membership, two official languages in Ukraine, Donbas autonomy, security guarantees for Ukraine, and negotiations on the status of Crimea”, Ukrainska Pravda wrote.
But the former German leader said the United States sabotaged the peace talks.
“The only people who could resolve the war over Ukraine are the Americans”, Schröder emphasized.
“During the peace talks in March 2022 in Istanbul with [Ukraine’s Defense Minister] Rustem Umierov, Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They had to coordinate everything they talked about with the Americans first”, he recalled.
“However, nothing eventually happened. My impression is that nothing could happen because everything else was decided in Washington. It was fatal”, Schröder added.
The former German head of state likewise warned that Russia will never accept NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia.
“Regardless of who is in power, there is a belief in Russia that the West wants to expand further with NATO, namely into the post-Soviet area. Keywords: Georgia and Ukraine. No one at the head of Russia will allow this to happen. This danger analysis may be emotional, but it is real for Russia. The West must understand this and compromise accordingly; otherwise, peace will be tough to achieve”, Schröder stressed, in the comments quoted by Ukrainska Pravda.
A top Ukrainian official and Germany's former leader have admitted that Russia wanted to sign a peace deal with Ukraine in March 2022, but NATO countries sabotaged it, instead preferring war.
Link to full video below pic.twitter.com/WUVvBANiuN
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 3, 2023

The former German chancellor’s observations were further bolstered by the remarks of a top Ukrainian official.
In November, Davyd Arakhamia sat down for an interview with Ukraine’s TV channel 1+1. Arakhamia is the parliamentary faction leader of the political party of Ukraine’s Western-backed President Volydmyr Zelensky.
This interview was also reported on by Ukraine’s vehemently anti-Russian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda.
Arakhamia represented Ukraine in the peace talks with Russia in Türkiye in March 2022.
At those negotiations, Arakhamia admitted that Russia did indeed want peace, and neutrality “was the most important thing for them”.
“They [the Russians] were prepared to end the war if we agreed to – as Finland once did – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO”, the top Ukrainian official said, according to a translation by Ukrainska Pravda.
“They really hoped almost to the last moment that they would force us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality”, he added.
But Ukraine’s Western sponsors were adamantly opposed to the peace proposal.
“When we returned from Istanbul, [British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight”, Arakhamia recalled.

These important testimonies from Germany’s former leader and a top Ukrainian official both echo an admission made by Israel’s former prime minister.
Israel’s ex Prime Minister Naftali Bennett explained in a February 2023 interview how he had been a mediator between Ukraine and Russia the year before.
“Anything I did was coordinated down to the last detail with the US, Germany, and France”, Bennett said. And “there was a legitimate decision by the West to keep striking Putin”.
Referring to the NATO bloc’s response to the peace proposal, the interviewer asked, “So they blocked it?”
Bennett replied, “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they’re wrong”.


Instruction: Write an article about: Anarchist hero Murray Bookchin was a Zionist who whitewashed Israel’s colonialism and war crimes. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: anarchism, David Graeber, Debbie Bookchin, Gloria Steinem, Israel, Michael Walzer, Murray Bookchin, Rojava, SDF, Syria, Yasser Arafat, Zionism

Output:
Anarchist hero Murray Bookchin was a Zionist who whitewashed Israel and justified its colonialist policies and war crimes against Arabs, calling them “imperialists”

Murray Bookchin is something of a saint in the anarchist community. His ideas on social ecology and what he termed “libertarian municipalism” and “communalism” have influenced generations of self-declared leftists, and he was frequently cited as an ideological force behind the anti-globalization and Occupy Wall Street movements.
Bookchin became especially influential in Kurdish circles after Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), adopted his ideas to advance a vision of “democratic confederalism,” a vision his followers later attempted to implement in northeast Syria — with the help of the US military.
What is not often mentioned, however, is that — like many of his anarchists and “libertarian socialist” peers — Bookchin was very soft on imperialism, and in some cases downright apologetic.
Specifically, Bookchin was a Zionist who publicly whitewashed and even rationalized Israel’s crimes against humanity. He also frequently demonized independent post-colonial governments in the Global South, echoing imperialist propaganda and chauvinistic myths about countries targeted by the United States for regime change.
In 1986 Bookchin published a liberal Zionist screed that sounds like it could have been written by a neoconservative New York Times pundit today. The essay — which is reprinted in full below — uncritically rehashes Hasbara talking points, erases the history of the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians, and blames neighboring Arab states and “Arab irredentists” for the failure of peace initiatives.
Bookchin’s essay betrays a racist view of Arabs, as inherently authoritarian, blood-thirsty anti-Semitic hordes. This hero of the anti-communist left depicts independent Arab nations as the true “imperialists” in the Middle East, and likens anti-imperialist leaders in the region to US-backed right-wing military juntas in Latin America.
This jingoistic outlook on the Global South might also explain why Bookchin’s proposed solution to halting the carnage of the mass-murdering capitalist machine was to move to an almost entirely white community in Burlington, Vermont and organize some community councils with his middle-class anarchist friends — while his government bombed and tortured poor people across the planet, including many Third World communists and socialists he excoriated as “authoritarian.”
Murray Bookchin’s explicit, public support for Israeli colonialism, and his equally strident condemnations of anti-Zionist leftists, have been quietly swept under the rug by a Western “libertarian” left that is eager to portray allies of US imperialism as the truly progressive forces.
With the international proxy war on Syria that began in 2011, Bookchin’s renown reached new heights. The Kurdish-led militia the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which is linked to the PKK and whose political program is based in large part on Bookchin’s thought, has enjoyed the support of the US empire.
The YPG rebranded as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in 2015, at the direct request of the Pentagon. It subsequently allowed the construction of more than a dozen US military bases in northeastern Syria.
The SDF’s spokesperson insisted in 2017 that American troops would be remaining in the region “ for decades to come,” as Washington had a “strategic interest” in maintaining its military occupation.
A strategic interest indeed: this US-occupied area just so happens to have most of Syria’s oil reserves, and also serves as the nation’s breadbasket region.
US-backed Kurdish nationalists, proud followers of Bookchin’s anarchist ideology, have even acceded to Washington’s demands and held Syria’s own grain production hostage, refusing to sell wheat to Damascus, as a political and economic weapon.
In this roughly 30 percent of US-occupied, Syrian sovereign territory — an ethnically and religiously diverse area populated by not only Kurds but also Assyrians, Armenians, Turkmen, Arabs, and more — US-backed Kurdish nationalists created an autonomous region they referred to as Rojava.
Rojava was aggressively marketed as a utopian social experiment in egalitarianism, ironically by the very same corporate media apparatus that has spent decades publishing propaganda and justifying wars of aggression against any shred of socialism that has dared to challenge the US-led capitalist imperialist system.
Large segments of the Western left has fetishized the Kurdish groups in Syria with a kind of orientalist fixation, and mainstream journalists who are normally hopelessly antagonistic to the socialist left published report after report waxing poetic on how incredible, brave, enlightened, democratic, and feminist the YPG and its women’s wing the YPJ are — coincidentally right at the moment when these forces allied with the US and allowed American troops to occupy nearly a third of Syria’s sovereign territory. (By the way, there are women who fight in the Syrian army and allied militias, too — but they are dehumanized and disparagingly portrayed as “ Bashar al-Assad’s female fighters,” as if they were his personal property.)
Writer David Mizner noted that the US government’s propaganda arm Voice of America, a longtime vehicle for CIA lies and information warfare against the international left, “even gave Bookchin a pat on the back,” praising the Vermont anarchist for inspiring Washington’s Kurdish allies in Syria.
He's gained new prominence bc of Ocalan. Voice of America even gave Bookchin a pat on the back. https://t.co/XBG9nm8o5z
— David Mizner (@DavidMizner) August 17, 2017

The soft spot so-called “libertarian socialism” has for imperialism — and that imperialists have for “libertarian socialists” — might also explain why today’s leading anarchist giants, including Noam Chomsky and David Graeber, signed an open letter in the New York Review of Books in 2018 calling for the US empire to “continue military support for the SDF.”
Joining Chomsky and Graeber in signing the pro-military intervention letter were renowned academic Marxist intellectual David Harvey, Iraq War-supporting socdem Zionist Michael Walzer, and even liberal feminist luminary and former CIA agent Gloria Steinem — as well as Bookchin’s daughter Debbie Bookchin, who has devoted her life to Rojava.
It may come as no surprise, then, that this American “libertarian socialist” and avowed anti-communist, whose writings ideologically informed a militia that is openly allied with US imperialism, had actually supported Zionism and imperialist designs in the Middle East.
On May 4, 1986, Murray Bookchin published an article in his local newspaper, the Burlington Free Press, titled “ Attacks on Israel Ignore the Long History of Arab Conflict.”
The full text of the essay can be found at the bottom of this post, under the image.
This screed, by an ostensibly radical anarchist saint, sounds indistinguishable from the rhetoric of neoconservative pundits in the mainstream corporate media.
Bookchin portrays Israel as a beacon of democracy in a backward region, demonizing Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and beyond as all hopeless bastions of oriental despotism.
He condemns “anti-Israeli sentiment that has surfaced in the local press and the virtual equation of Zionism with anti-Arab racism,” and portrays Arabs as violent savages.
Bookchin implores readers to never “forget the Jewish men and women who were slaughtered by the stalwarts of Arab nationalism,” and blamed “Arab irredentists” for the failure of so-called peace talks (that in reality Israel and its loyal protector the US empire were never truly interested in pursuing).
He also condemns the “invasion of the country by Arab armies” without even mentioning the Nakba, Zionist militias’ murderous ethnic cleansing of the vast majority of the indigenous population of Palestine in 1947 and 1948, which created the refugee crisis that precipitated the Arab war.
In fact, this “libertarian socialist” idol goes so far as condemn Egypt, Syria, and Jordan as “imperialist,” insisting there would be an independent Palestinian state were it not for their war on Israel.
Bookchin’s essay turns reality on its head, depicting Israeli colonialists as hapless victims of “imperialist” brutality by authoritarian Arabs.
He likens Palestinian nationalist leader Yasser Arafat to the Nazi-collaborating Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and compares Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi and Syria’s Hafez al-Assad to Washington-allied right-wing dictators in Latin America.
Bookchin also regurgitates imperialist propaganda and lies, claiming Assad “slaughtered between 6,000 to 10,000 people in Kama in February 1982, for daring to challenge his leadership of the country.”
What he does not mention, of course, is that this so-called uprising in Hama (which Bookchin misspells) had nothing to do with democracy or freedom. It was led by violent sectarian Islamist extremists who were directly backed by that benevolent democracy to the north, Turkey, and also enjoyed support from American and British intelligence services — much like the so-called uprising in Syria in 2011, an imperialist déjà vu.
Not one to let simple facts get in the way of his Zionist apologism, Bookchin instead condemns what he calls “Syrian imperialism,” and speaks of avowed secularist Hafez al-Assad as a sectarian Alawite parallel to the theocratic Israeli fascist Meir Kahane
In the article, Bookchin even notes that he wanted the Israeli colonial project to be a model of his decentralized vision of society, writing, “For years I had hoped that Israel or Palestine could have evolved into a Swiss-like confederation of Jews and Arabs.”
But the anarchist idol was not able to disguise his utter contempt for Arabs. Echoing racist tropes, Bookchin laments that Arabs are using the Palestinian plight to cover up their own “cultural problems.”
Murray Bookchin’s full article follows below:

There is certainly much one can criticize about Israeli policy, particularly under the Likud government which orchestrated the invasion of Lebanon. But the torrent of anti-Israeli sentiment that has surfaced in the local press and the virtual equation of Zionism with anti-Arab racism impels me to reply with some vigor.
For years I had hoped that Israel or Palestine could have evolved into a Swiss-like confederation of Jews and Arabs, a confederation in which both peoples could live peacefully with each other and develop their cultures creatively and harmoniously.
Tragically, this was not to be. The United Nations resolution of 1947, which partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, was followed by the invasion of the country by Arab armies, notably the Egyptian, Syria, and highly trained Jordanian “Arab Legion” with direct or indirect aid from Iraq and other Arab nations.
In some cases these armies, particularly the Arab irregulars who accompanied them, took no prisoners in their assaults on Jewish communities. Generally, they tried to systematically obliterate all Jewish settlements in their paths until they were stopped by furious and costly Jewish resistance.
The invasion and the annihilatory combat it created set a terrible pattern of fear and bitterness that is not easy to erase from the minds of Israeli Jews. That a desperate lunatic element of Jewish zealots behaved in kind before it was stopped by the newly formed Israeli military forces should not allow us to forget the Jewish men and women who were slaughtered by the stalwarts of Arab nationalism even after they had raised white flags of surrender.
I have seen very little mention of this fearful pattern of “combat” which stained the Arab invasions of Palestine and so profoundly influenced Jewish confidence in the value of “truce negotiations” and the predictability of peace agreements with Arab irredentists. Indeed, the partition lines that were eventually established after the 1948 invasions were the product of bloody warfare — literally the give-and-take of battle — not the “imperialistic” or “land-grabbing Zionists,” to use the language that is so much in vogue these days.
Nor do I hear any longer of the ernest attempts by the the Haganah — the Jewish citizens’ militia of the partition era — to encourage Arabs to remain in their neighborhoods and towns, of the Israeli vehicles with loudspeakers that went through the streets of Jaffa, for example, urging Arabs not to succumb to the feelings of panic engendered by battle conditions and by extremists on both sides of the conflict.
That many Arabs remained in Israel clearly challenges the myth that Israeli Jews tried to rid the country of its Moslem inhabitants. What seems to be totally ignored is the certainty that there would have been an Arab state in Palestine side-by-side with a Jewish one if Egyptian armies to the south, Syrian in the north, and Jordanian in the east had not tried to seize both U.N.-Partitioned lands with imperialist interests of their own and, when this failed, used the Palestinian refugees as pawns in future negotiations with the Israelis and their western supporters.
There is another myth that must be removed: that the present volatile situation in the Middle East has its source in the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts; indeed, that the relationship between the Jews and Arabs was “beatific” until it was poisoned by “Zionist ambitions.” Leaving aside the simplistic image of Middle East problems that this notion fosters, the extent to which it is a sheer distortion of Jewish-Arab relations in the past verges on the unspeakable.
Are we to forget that Arab persecution of Jews, while less genocidal than European, has a centuries-long history of its own with the exception of Moslem Spain and Ottoman Turkey? That Arab pogroms against the Jews accompanies the Jewish settlement of pre-World War II Palestine, culminating in the extermination of the ages-old Jewish community of Hebron (once the seat of the Hebrew tribal confederacy) in the late 1920s? That the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1930s (the precursor of Yassar Arafat two generations ago) was an avowed admirer of Hitler and called for a “holy war” of extermination of Palestinian Jews up to and into World War II? That Jordan’s “Arab Legion” systematically leveled the old Jewish quarter of Jerusalem in 1948 and stabled horses at the Western Wall of Herod’s Temple, defiling the most sacred place of world Judaism?
Are we to forget that General Hafez Assad, the so-called “president” of Syria (elected by a “majority” of 99.97 percent of the Syrian “electorate”) slaughtered between 6,000 to 10,000 people in Kama in February 1982, for daring to challenge his leadership of the country?
One wonders why there was no storm of protest when Amnesty International in 1983 declared that “Syrian security forces have practiced systematic violations of human rights, including torture and political killings, and have been operating with impunity under the country’s emergency laws”? Why is there no concern over Syrian imperialism — notably Assad’s fantasy of absorbing Lebanon and Palestine, including Israel, if you please, into a Syrian empire — a goal every objective expert in the Middle East knows to be Assad’s Arabic version of Rabi Kahane’s insane version of a “Greater-Israel” — a notion that has been vigorously denounced by responsible Jewish and Zionist organizations in Israel and abroad.
If the “core problem” of the Middle East, to use Miriam Ward’s words in her Vermont Perspective of April 27, is the confiscation of Palestinian land by Israel, what would the whole area look like if Israel and its Jewish population magically disappeared from the scene? Would Syria be less of a police state than it is today and would its Sunni Moslem majority feel less dominated, exploited, and manipulated by General Assad, who tends to speak for the Alawite Moslem minority of the country?
Would Saudi princes cease to squander much of their country’s wealth on limosines, palaces, jewels, and real estate abroad, much less bring a modicum of freedom to their own people at home? Would Egyptian landowners, living in lavish opulence amidst incredible squalor, return a fraction of their landholdings to a starved Egyptian peasantry? Would Iraq free its Kurdish population to speak only of its most vocal and rebellious minorities, or meet their demands for genuine equal autonomy?
Would the Iraq-Iran war come to an end, a war that has already claimed a million lives in the past few years? Would Colonel Khadafy cease to be a strutting militarist who has been trying to eat away at the territories of many of his neighbors? Would Khomeni and Moslem fundamentalism, whose main thrust is against any form of modernity and western culture, give equality to women and freedom to critics of Iran’s present-day theocratic regime?
What is so disquieting about many persistent attacks of Israel is that they help to completely obfuscate what is really a “core problem” of the Palestinian people. This abandoned people is being used in the most unconscionable manner by the Arab states to conceal deep-seated economic, social, and cultural problems in their own lands and in the Middle East as a whole. That the differences between the Israelis and Palestinians have to be resoled equitably such that both people can live with a sense of security that resolves their fears of what has happened in the past and achieve a constructive harmony with each other goes without saying.
I am not sure what that solution will be. But it certainly will not be achieved by acts of PLO-related terrorism against independently minded Arab mayors who are trying to negotiate a settlement between the two peoples at one end of the spectrum or lunatics like Rabbi Kahane at the other end who are trying to expel the Palestinians from their landholdings and communities.
But crucial as such a settlement surely is, we should not bury the real “core problem” of the Middle East as embodied by its cynical politicians, landowners, oil barons, military juntas, fanatic clerics, and imperialistic predators in the welter and tragic problems that have emerged between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Given this background, it would be wise to remember that both peoples have more interests in common than they have differences. It would be a splendid example of political independence if people who raise a justifiable hue about military juntas in Latin America would remind themselves that they are confronted with an exact parallel in the Middle East — from Colonel Khadafy to General Assad?


Instruction: Write an article about: German EU official uses racist rhetoric claiming Russians don’t value life. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: EU, European Union, Germany, neoliberalism, Russia, shock therapy, Soviet Union, Ukraine, USSR, WEF, World Economic Forum

Output:
A German EU official claimed Russians don’t value human life and thus aren’t Europeans. The ex NATO researcher was echoing a centuries-old colonialist trope used to justify genocide of Indigenous peoples, US war on Vietnam, and Israeli occupation of Palestine.

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
A European Union official has used racist rhetoric to dehumanize Russians, claiming they don’t value human life, and are therefore not Europeans.
The fact that the EU official is German is also eyebrow-raising, considering the country’s fascist history and genocidal attacks on Russians.
Florence Gaub is deputy director of the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), which describes itself as “the Union’s agency dealing with the analysis of foreign, security and defence policy issues.”
Gaub has also served as a researcher at the NATO Defense College, and has taught at numerous prestigious European universities. She currently works with the World Economic Forum (WEF), a corporate-backed neoliberal lobby group.
On April 12, Gaub was invited on to Germany’s state media outlet ZDF, to discuss the Ukraine war on its top news program Heute, hosted by prominent journalist Markus Lanz.
She used this large platform to launch a racist rant essentially claiming that the Russian people are uncivilized non-Europeans who don’t care about human life.
This is the kind of racist BS they are now spreading in the EU: this #NATO advisor, @FlorenceGaub spews her version of Nazi-Germany's trope of "Untermenschen"
USA in the Vietnam War also claimed: "Asians just don't care about death, like us".Disgusting dehumanisation#NotoNATO pic.twitter.com/ZsEk051VVf
— Paul #SaveSheikhJarrah Dva ?? (@zoolooy) April 13, 2022

“We should not forget, even if Russians look European, they are not European, in a cultural sense,” Gaub declared in the German-language interview.
“They [Russians] think differently about violence or death,” the EU official continued. “They have no concept of a liberal, post-modern life, a concept of life that each individual can choose. Instead, life simply can end early with death.”
To try to justify her bigoted views, Gaub said that “Russian life expectancy is quite low, as you know. It is 70 for men.”
She failed to explain that Russians had a healthy life expectancy under socialism in the Soviet Union, but after the United States and Western Europe overthrew the USSR from 1989 to 1991, they imposed brutal capitalist “shock therapy” on Russia that caused life expectancy to fall precipitously.
A 2001 UNICEF report found that the grueling capitalist reforms forced on Russia in the 1990s caused 3.2 million excess deaths, leading life expectancy for men to drop by six years.
In this period of Western-imposed mass privatizations and free market fundamentalism, 18 million Russian children were pushed into poverty. Over one-third of the population lived in poverty, with mass unemployment. There were high levels of child malnutrition, and a steep increase in HIV and tuberculosis cases.
The Russian Federation was not able to get back to the level of life expectancy it had had under socialism in the Soviet Union in 1989 until 22 years later, in 2011.
In other words, it took Russia two decades to recover from the devastating economic attack waged on it by the Western powers.
A graph of Russian male life expectancy shows it precipitously fell after the overthrow of the Soviet Union
In her racist rant, Florence Gaub, the German European Union official, conveniently failed to mention that life expectancy is even lower today in Ukraine than it is in Russia.
Ukraine’s post-Soviet regime also suffered from the capitalist shock therapy imposed on it in the 1990s, although not quite as badly as Russia. Despite this, Russia’s life expectancy surpassed that of Ukraine in 2015.
(For context, Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the United States, despite the fact that Cuba is a relatively poor, formerly colonized country that has been under an illegal US economic blockade for more than 60 years.)

Despite these disparities, Gaub claims Russia is the country that does not value human life, not Ukraine.
Many Western government officials likewise insist that Ukraine is a model of “democracy,” despite the fact that the authoritarian regime in Kiev banned communist parties and left-wing symbols, arrested elected opposition lawmakers, and shut down critical media outlets long before Russia invaded in February 2022, and have since prohibited another dozen opposition parties.
Instead of addressing any of this historical context, the EU’s Florence Gaub chose to use racist rhetoric and claim that the political conflict in Ukraine is a product of Russian culture, that Russians simply don’t value life.
“That is why they treat death differently, people simply die,” she claimed.
The notion that a population targeted by Western imperialist powers supposedly doesn’t care about human life is a centuries-old colonial trope.
‘They don’t value life’: How the US empire dehumanizes its victims, from Indigenous genocide to Vietnam to Palestine

European settlers claimed Native Americans did not value human life to try to justify their genocidal colonization of the Americas.
The US Declaration of Independence itself echoes this racist rhetoric about “the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
To justify Washington’s decades-long war on Vietnam, which led up to to 3.8 million deaths, top US General William Westmoreland similarly claimed, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner… Life is plentiful; life is cheap in the Orient. The philosophy of the Orient expresses that life is not important.”
US general who led mass-murdering war in Vietnam (3.8M dead) claimed "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as a Westerner" pic.twitter.com/WsTaeeb7iK
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 5, 2017

Today, officials from the Israeli apartheid regime frequently dehumanize indigenous Palestinians by claiming they don’t value life.
US politicians make the same racist comments about the Chinese, to justify Washington’s new cold war on Beijing.
Now German militarists are rehashing this racist rhetoric to accelerate the new cold war on Russia.