EEAS: Foreign Affairs Council (Defence): Press briefing Josep Borrell | Nov. 15, 2022 |

You know that these lines of approach to Russia have been discussed in order to make an approach that everybody could share. We are in the middle of the war, it is very difficult to say how our future relations will be - who knows when and how. For the time being, we have to deal with Russia considered as an aggressor to Ukraine. Member States agreed - there are always some differences, some verbs, some words; but I think there is a strong unity around these lines that can be summarised in six points. 

• NATO Declares Russia Nr. 1 Adversary, Starts Troops Buildup | May 2, 2014 |

First point, we have to isolate Russia internationally. This is also a geopolitical battle. I used the term "battle of narratives" three years ago at the beginning of my mandate. I think I invented the term "battle of narratives". And this battle of narratives is really raging today. We have to isolate Russia internationally. What does it mean? It means imposing and implementing restrictive measures against Russia and preventing their circumvention. We do that in order to impede Russia to wage the war. And these measures are efficient, they work.  

Second, we have to look at how to ensure accountability by holding Russia, the perpetrators and the accomplices, responsible for the violation of human rights and international law. Accountability. The second word is accountability.  

The third [point] is to support our neighbours, including the neighbours that are part of our Enlargement policy in the [Western] Balkans. To help them to address the global consequences of the war, including what we have done with Ukraine with the Solidarity Lanes because Russia is weaponising food and energy. In the war against Ukraine, they are weaponising food and energy, affecting the global food insecurity. And yesterday, at the G20 [Summit], I think it was President Xi [Jinping] from China, that together with President [of the United States, Joe] Biden - both of them - stressed that food and energy should not be used as a weapon, and this is what Russia is doing. So, we have to support the neighbours. 

The fourth [point] is to work closely with NATO and partners worldwide to defend the international rule-based order, and to reject the notion of spheres of influence that was used in the past century. But in the twenty-first century, no one has to be part of a sphere of influence. The European security order has to reject this idea of areas of influence.  

Then, the fifth [point] would be that we have to enhance our resilience: to build our energy security, to protect our critical infrastructures, to defend [ourselves] against information manipulation. And it is much more urgent to increase our security and defence, as we did in this graph.  

And the last one is to support civil society, everywhere: to support human rights defenders, to support independent media inside and outside Russia. And also, to address the increasing threats to security and public order in the European Union, because Putin believes that some events in the international arena could be useful for him. He was thinking of good results on the American elections. He was thinking of the new attitude of some governments in Europe. He was thinking of the effect on the high prices of electricity, and he is still thinking that, during winter, the European societies will be weakened by these problems. And we have to increase our resilience to defend the defenders of human rights - in the case of Iran also - and doing that every day. And these are our lines to take, which are quite evident. It is quite common sense. I do not think that anyone can disagree with that. 

Strained Europe-US relationship: it's Europe's fault again | by Jerome a Paris on Dec 15th, 2006 |

Or so say Washington cognoscenti Ivo Daalder (senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a former Clinton administration NSC member) and James Goldgeier (fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations) in the Financial Times and

U.S. and Europe Must Learn About Alliances | Brookings Institute |

A comment ...

No mention, of course, that the only place where one decides that "action is needed" is Washington: if Europeans disagree, it's because they are not behaving like proper allies, i.e. vassals.

Choose a different piece by Daalder and you could find yourself saying the exact opposite - this is the guy who was Dean's top foreign policy guy in 2003-2004, in spite of threats from the centrist Dem establishment that if he joined up with him he'd have no chance of getting a job in any Dem admin since he'd have shown himself to be irresponsible and radical.

If you read his writings his concern on Afghanistan is that it is necessary to limit the damage that Bush can do there in  his last two years in office - getting the Europeans to take charge is a way to do that. He is also concerned in the longer run with how to repair the damage done generally to the US by the Bush administration. That means reforging the Atlantic alliance in a way that will on the one hand enhance US power, on the other constrain it by limiting its capability for unilateral action.

Completely misled by the intention of neo-Conservatives. From 2002 forward, US foreign policy was a complete disaster, using NATO forces as a proxy in Afghanistan as Bush & Co. took up the neocon plan to invade Iraq. Protector of human rights? What a farce and deep shame for Americans.

Ivo Daalder was the architect from 2007 to isolate Russia and make it a pariah state. HRC with her dumb "reset" in meeting with Lavrov continued on a path of regime change in the Middle East. Eventually shit hits the fan as "New Europe" got the US administrations ear to settle centuries old grievances.

The UK and US intend to rewrite European history in the aftermath of WWII to defeat the former Soviet empire at any and all cost. Churchill's revenge on president Roosevelt.

Kerry Preaching Policy Contra Russia @Atlantic Council | @BooMan on Apr 30, 2014 |

Kerry should experience a warm bath here as I have referred to the right-wing Atlantic Council and its harsh statements of containment for Putin's Russia in a New Cold War. The US wants to reduce its military presence in Europe and has set policy for NATO members to increase investments in its military: Navy, Air Force and Army. The Ukraine is an ideal nation to illustrate the "Imperial Danger" of the Russian Bear. A dangerous path to create division between new and old Europe, when did we take this path before? Rumsfeld in the lead-up to the Iraq War ...

Confrontational: Carter & Mujahideen; Obama & Neo-nazis | @BooMan on May 9, 2014 |

Inspired by the new fp story by BooMan - A Heat-Fever Bacchanalian Feast of Stupid. Searching archive @BT for earliest usage of the term Benghazi, was found in 2005 under WH rule by GW Bush ... no surprise really. Neo-cons still dictate US foreign policy inside and outside of the White House in Washington DC. What else I found:  

• Libya is Not Our Problem  by BooMan on March 13, 2011 |
• No-fly zone over Libya Approved!  by Oui on March 17, 2011 |
• NY Times: Ms Clinton and Arab League Help Shift U.S. Policy on Libya

Libyan War diaries @EuroTrib

When the Libyans stormed and destroyed the American Embassy in Benghazi, on June 5, 1967, they didn't do it because they hated freedom. They did because the Arab-Israeli War had begun, and they had been convinced by propaganda broadcasts that the United States was bombing Cairo.

The famous Afghan mujahideen didn't fight the Soviets for freedom alone:

Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser

Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998 


Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs "From the Shadows", that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahideen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

History Commons -- 1973-1979: US Starts to Provide Support to Islamists Opposing the Soviets in Afghanistan [cached page]

Excellent read ...

Transitioning from military interventions to long-term counter-terrorism policy
The case of Libya (2011-2016)

NATO Is Ready for Russia In Baltic States, Not In Syria | Feb 10, 2016 |

NATO and it's subordinate states were upping the stakes on the Ukraine, provoking the Russian Bear and investing in a multi-year PR campaign of lies and ugly propaganda. The European states in NATO talked the talk but were not eager to invest the 2% of GDP in new weapons stamped "Made In USA". After pulling troops out of Europe to cut costs of the military, the institutions of war mongering and agggression NATO, Atlantic Council "think-tank" and the White House are about to return with military might on the East Front.

Europe has been split in two, roughly across the partition of New and Old Europe. The Syrian refugee crisis added fuel to the fire started by the ill-conceived Neocon doctrine of regime change in Assad's Syria.

Putin's Russia took a very long time to decide there was no partner in Geneva for peace talks.

The tide turned for the Sunni foreigner division armed and funded by Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah soldiers joined by Iranian advisers has stopped the advance of Al Qaeda linked groups led by Jabhat al-Nusra and Jaish al-Islam. Western nations including the US sat back, satisfied the proxy groups fighting the Syrian Army was a battle of Muslims killing one another.

The advance of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria caused a major headache in Washington and much later in Great Britain and Paris, France after the troubling terror strikes on Charlie Hebdo in January and the multi=proned theater attack on Friday November 13th last year.

Europe already received large numbers of nigrants avross it's open borders in Italy and Greece, slowly  destroying that little fabric of solidarity betweeb mations based on its founding principles of human rights. Building fences, aborting direct transportation across borders and even changing constitutions to get rid of any human attitude towards these migrants fleeing onslaught in their home countries.