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https://theduran.com/the-internal-struggle-within-the-deep-state

The Internal Struggle Within the Deep State Over Whether to Escalate to Nuclear War

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

The military analysts in The West who were predicting that Ukrainian troops armed by NATO weapons and satellite intelligence will defeat Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine are now known to have been just as wrong as their earlier equivalents were in the wars in Vietnam and in Afghanistan and are now pretending that they know why they failed and will do better the next time so that our taxpayers will not be wasting tens of trillions of dollars more in the future as we’ve been doing till now. Or, as “Simplicius The Thinker” (whose predictions in this war have been right all along, such as his closing on 10 June 2023 with “this conflict is becoming the graveyard to NATO wunderwaffen”) closed one of his recent articles, “You can sense the desperation in the West as the realities begin to dawn on their leading thinkers. Years of building showroom ‘good-weather’ armies meant to impress buyers at MIC-enabled arms expos have left Western military doctrines woefully out of date concerning how real wars are fought.” But just look at the extraordinary profits that The West’s privatized armaments-producers have been producing for their investors, and you will know whom the people are who have been winning from all of this consistent U.S.-and-allied military failure for decades. (By contrast, Russia never privatized their armaments-producers; and, so, the armaments-producers there serve the Government, instead of the Government serving the armaments-producers — i.e., their big stockholders — as in The West.)

Right now, the very highest levels of the Deep State — the U.S.-UK empire and its dependent colonies’ collaborating aristocracies — are struggling within and against each other over what to do now that their decades-long plans and expectations of ultimately expanding to absorb into their empire every country and so to win for their billionaires collective rule over the entire planet, are collapsing into abject failure in the battlefields of Ukraine, in America’s war there to defeat Russia. 

One public sign of this behind-the-scenes struggle over how crucial their retaining control over Ukraine (the Russia-bordering nation whose border is the closest to The Kremlin) is, was reported in my article on 7 March 2024 (“Biden Now Seeks WW3 Against Russia, Says High U.S. Defense Expert”), about an important member of the U.S. aristocracy or Deep State, Stephen Bryen, who has suddenly broken away from his lifelong commitment to its obligatory ideology that is popularly called “neoconservatism” but that was actually instead created in 1877 by the British aristocrat Cecil Rhodes who wrote down in the first draft of his will the plan for his “secret society” that would lead England to re-acquire the U.S. but this time America’s secretly becoming a colony and this time being the only one that will be co-equal with England, in order to re-invigorate England’s empire with sufficient additional power and resources to ultimately absorb into itself, and become the government for, the entire world — a global U.S./UK dictatorship over all other nations. That is what “neoconservatism” actually refers to — that goal, of a U.S./UK empire being formed (which ultimately did happen on 25 July 1945 — using as its excuse ‘the war against communism’), and then its acquiring ultimately control over the entire world (which they have ever since been aiming for — even after Russia’s communism ended). That March 7th article opened:

The U.S. plan is that since any Ukrainian pilots who could fly America’s F-16s are dead by now, Biden and Stoltenberg have authorized NATO pilots to be flying the U.S. F-16s that will be sent to Ukraine, and that those pilots will attack Russia and bomb Russia so as to create such an outburst of opposition to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin there as to overthrow him, and the CIA right now is in Ukraine on its border with Russia training Ukrainians what to do in order to assist NATO in this U.S.-headed regime-change operation for The West (i.e., for the U.S. Government) to take over control of Russia and therefore win America’s war against Russia and (as it’s thought) cause Biden to be re-elected.

This information and viewpoint comes from Stephen Bryen, who in the 1980s under President Reagan, founded and headed the Defense Technology Security Administration within the U.S. Defense Department, and he has extensive experience at top levels in academia, government, industry, and national-security think tanks, including as the President of the aerospace-defense firm Finmeccanica North America (now Leonardo) (which the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, rates as the world’s 9th-largest seller of armaments), and he was a Deputy Under Secretary of Defense throughout Reagan's two terms. He also has been a senior staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Consequently, he either is a part of America’s Deep State, and/or he has extensive and mutually supportive personal contacts with people who are. And he can therefore be reasonably considered to be far more knowledgable about the U.S. Government’s military plans than ordinary commentators and journalists are, who speculate upon such plans.

You can see and hear Dr. Bryen answering questions about this matter, in a 37-minute-long 7 March 2024 video interview of him (including its full transcript) titled “Ukraine: Has the US Lost Yet Another Proxy War? with Stephen Bryen”. I summarized it in the opening paragraph here. (If you want to see also an article from him, you might be interested in Bryen’s February 24th “Fire Jens Stoltenberg Now Before It Is Too Late!” in which he pointed out that on February 20th, Stoltenberg “announced he is giving Ukraine ‘permission’ to use its soon to be delivered F-16s to launch attacks inside Russia.”)

And it’s not only F-16s that will be flying in Ukraine soon; the stealth F-35s already are flying there, also with American pilots. This war is already sliding into WW3. On 3 March 2024, Boyko Nikolov at BulgarianMilitary dot com headlined “F-35s scan Ukraine to locate Russian air defense, Singapore says”, and reported that:

Singapore’s Minister of Defense, Ng Eng Hen, has announced that American F-35s have been actively engaged in missions related to Ukraine. The objective of these missions is to pinpoint the exact locations of Russian anti-aircraft missile systems. “In recent activities, the United States has mobilized its F-35s to identify the deployment of Russian anti-aircraft missile systems within Ukraine. The gathered intelligence is subsequently disseminated to NATO countries,” shared the chief of Singapore’s military. 

The revelation was made by Ng Eng Hen during a session of the Parliamentary Committee on Public Procurement. It’s worth reminding you that Singapore recently decided to bolster its defense capabilities by procuring eight additional F-35A stealth fighters from Lockheed Martin, as reported by BulgarianMilitary.com. …

Contrary to suppositions made by certain media outlets, which suggest this is the first confirmation of F-35s being used in support of Ukraine, let’s set the record straight. A similar instance was reported last April by BulgarianMilitary.com, it was based on the admission of an American pilot. He confirmed the F-35 he piloted was used to determine the location of a Russian S-300 system stationed near the Belarus-Ukraine border.

Singapore Ministry of Defense website

Not only does Ng Eng Heng’s commentary validate the USAF’s use of the F-35s in their surveillance efforts in Ukraine, but also the Singapore Military Department’s online source offers an in-depth look at this aircraft. They describe this plane in vibrant detail as a “radio-electronic vacuum cleaner,” essentially an advanced tool proficient at gathering a wealth of information. 

Dubbed radio-electronic “vacuum cleaners” by the military department, the F-35s are equipped with top-of-the-line gear to aid in the collection of diverse intelligence data. This includes the APG-81 AFAR radar, the AN/ASQ-239 electronic warfare system, and the electro-optical EOTS system. 

To put it simply, the F-35 is an additional component that has been added to the intricate network of platforms and sensors currently being used by Western nations, with the USA as the leader, to provide Ukraine with crucial intelligence, according to the publication. ...

On 20 January 2023, Drago Bosnic at InfoBRICS headlined “WikiLeaks cables reveal NATO intended to cross all Russian red lines”, and presented the first-ever comprehensive research through WikiLeaks regarding this topic (NATO’s bold intention to ignore Russia’s most basic national-defense requirements). He reported:

For nearly a year, the massive Western propaganda machine has been manipulating its audience into believing the "Russia's unprovoked aggression in Ukraine" narrative. The "reporting" can be crudely boiled down to the following: "On February 24, bloodthirsty Kremlin dictator Putin got up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to attack the nascent beacon of freedom and democracy in Kiev." This is mandatory in virtually all Western mainstream media and any attempt to even think of questioning it results in immediate "cancellation". Propagandists posing as "pundits" flooded political talk shows with the task of presenting decades of unrelenting NATO expansion as irrelevant to Russia's reaction.

However, WikiLeaks, an organization the United States has been trying to shut down for well over a decade, including through the horrendous treatment of its founder Julian Assange, published secret cables showing this narrative couldn't possibly be further from reality. Data indicates that American officials weren't only aware of the frustration NATO expansion caused in Moscow, but were even directly told it would result in Russia's response. And while the US often insists that the current crisis is a result of Vladimir Putin's alleged desire to "rebuild the Russian Empire", WikiLeaks reveals that even his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, infamous for his suicidal subservience to Washington DC, warned against NATO expansion.

For approximately three decades, consecutive US administrations were explicitly warned that Ukraine's NATO membership would be the last straw for Moscow. Numerous Russian officials kept cautioning this would destabilize the deeply divided post-Soviet country. These warnings were made both in public and private, and were reiterated by other NATO members, geopolitical experts, Russian opposition leaders and even some American diplomats, including a US ambassador in Moscow. Yeltsin once told former president Bill Clinton that NATO expansion was "nothing but humiliation for Russia if you proceed". Clinton, infamous for his aggression on Yugoslavia, ignored the warning and by 1999, less than a decade after the "not an inch to the east" promise was made, most of Eastern Europe was in NATO.

Despite this encroachment, Vladimir Putin still tried to establish closer ties with the political West, ratified START II and even offered to join NATO. America responded with unilateral withdrawal from key arms control treaties and color revolutions in Moscow's geopolitical backyard. By the mid-2000s, Russia was flanked by two hostile US-backed regimes on its southern and western borders (Georgia and Ukraine). Major NATO members, such as Germany and France, warned this would lead to an inevitable response from Moscow. A WikiLeaks cable dated September 2005 reads:

"[French presidential advisor Maurice] Gourdault-Montagne warned that the question of Ukrainian accession to NATO remained extremely sensitive for Moscow, and concluded that if there remained one potential cause for war in Europe, it was Ukraine. Some in the Russian administration felt we were doing too much in their core zone of interest, and one could wonder whether the Russians might launch a move similar to Prague in 1968, to see what the West would do."

WikiLeaks further reveals that German officials reiterated similar concerns about Russia's reaction to NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine, particularly the latter, with diplomat Rolf Nikel stating: "While Georgia was ‘just a bug on the skin of the bear,’ Ukraine was inseparably identified with Russia, going back to Vladimir of Kiev in 988." Another cable dated January 2008 says that "Italy is a strong advocate" for NATO enlargement, "but is concerned about provoking Russia through hurried Georgian integration." Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere made similar remarks, an April 2008 cable indicates. Despite believing Russia shouldn't have a saying in NATO, he said that "he understands Russia’s objections to NATO enlargement and that the alliance needs to work to normalize the relationship with Russia."

In the US, even some high-level government officials made nearly identical assessments. WikiLeaks reveals that these warnings were presented to Washington DC by none other than William Burns himself, former US Ambassador to Russia and the current CIA chief. According to a cable dated March 2007, Burns said: "NATO enlargement and US missile defense deployments in Europe play to the classic Russian fear of encirclement." Months later, he stated: "Ukraine's and Georgia's entry represents an 'unthinkable' predicament for Russia and Moscow would cause enough trouble in Georgia and continued political disarray in Ukraine to halt it." Interestingly, Burns also assessed that closer ties between Russia and China were largely the "by-product of ‘bad’ US policies" and were unsustainable "unless continued NATO enlargement pushed Russia and China even closer together."

In February 2008, Burns wrote: "Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. Russia would then have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face."

Another cable dated March 2008 stated that "opposing NATO’s enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia, was one of the few security areas where there is almost complete consensus among Russian policymakers, experts and the informed population." One defense expert stated that "Ukraine was the line of last resort that would complete Russia’s encirclement" and that "its entry into NATO was universally viewed by the Russian political elite as an unfriendly act." Dozens of other cables make nearly identical assessments of radical changes in Russia's foreign policy if NATO encroachment were to continue.

However, the vast majority of US officials, regardless of the administration, simply dismissed all warnings, repeatedly describing them as "oft-heard, old, nothing new, largely predictable, familiar litany and rehashing that provided little new substance." Astonishingly, even the aforementioned Norway’s understanding of Moscow's objections was labeled as "parroting Russia's line". While many German officials warned that the east-west split within Ukraine made the idea of NATO membership "risky" and that it could "break up the country", US officials insisted this was only temporary and that it would change over time.

And indeed, the political West invested hundreds of billions of dollars in turning Ukraine into a fervently Russophobic country, effectively becoming a giant military springboard aimed against Moscow. NATO regularly conducted exercises, maintained an extensive presence, and even planned to make it permanent with at least several land and naval bases under construction in the country at the time when Russia launched its counteroffensive. In 2019, RAND Corporation, a well-known think tank funded by the Pentagon, published a report which focused on devising strategies for overextending Russia. Part of it reads:

"The Kremlin’s anxieties over a direct military attack on Russia were very real and could drive its leaders to make rash, self-defeating decisions... ...Providing more US military equipment and advice to Ukraine could lead Moscow to respond by mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory."

It's quite hard to dismiss Moscow's claims that the Ukrainian crisis is a segment of the comprehensive aggression against Russia when the very institutions funded by the political West itself openly admit that the current events were planned years or even decades ago. And even if the impossible happened and the Eurasian giant decided to surrender and succumb to Western pressure, where does the US-led aggression against the world stop? Or worse yet, how long before a disaster of cataclysmic proportions puts an end to it?

That’s the entirety of Bosnic’s sellar report, which is included here because it masterfully documents that The West’s accusations that the war in Ukraine was started by Russia instead of by The West is the most vicious lie ever since the end of WW2. Every honest news-medium in The West will republish that masterful report; and, so, it is included here in full, so as to display beyond any question how evil The West — the U.S./UK empire — is. Next up here is a report that presents this reality from the standpoint of the U.S./UK stooges who are being required to participate in this international-gangland operation. (One can only wonder what the threats are against them if they will say no to Uncle Sam’s demands.)

On Wednesday 6 March 2024, Oriental Review headlined an editorial “German Military Officials On The Wire” (meaning like a tightrope-walker) and reported:

On Friday, a leaked conversation among German officers regarding the use of Taurus missiles on Ukrainian territory gained public attention. This incident not only stirred the media but also prompted reactions from the highest leadership of the Bundeswehr, the German government, and other Western countries. Like any situation involving the discovery of information that was not meant to be revealed, this conversation had a powerful and diverse impact. Most experts discuss how it could have happened, but in our view, the most crucial question is not how, but why it could have happened. Let’s delve into it.

The first question that arises with such leaks is about authenticity. Modern technologies allow not only the manipulation of voices but also images, so suspicions of falsification are expected. Nevertheless, the German side hastened to assure everyone that the intercepted conversation is genuine.

The second question, naturally following a positive answer to the first, concerns how it could have happened. Strict directives to investigate the circumstances of the leak from the leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany at the highest level did not take long to follow.

The third question, finally, pertains to the significance of the content of this ill-fated conversation. German military officials discussed actions that, in the past, would have been considered an act of war. They were talking about the Bundeswehr using long-range guided missiles against the civilian infrastructure of Russia.

Only an inexperienced observer might seriously believe that Western countries are simply passing weapons to Ukrainians, who then independently use them as they see fit, as if they were spears or bows with arrows. These are highly sophisticated systems that require not only careful reading of the user manual but also compatibility with the carrier aircraft. The use of missiles like the German Taurus implies direct dependence on the availability of certain fighter jets and, therefore, pilots capable of operating them.

Thus, it turns out that without the involvement of the hosts, such missiles are useless. Consequently, the Bundeswehr has effectively admitted not only to supplying significant lethal weapons to Ukraine but also to its direct participation in planning strikes on Russian territory, targeting civilian objects.

Federal Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius, center, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, right, are presented with a model of an Airbus A400M by Inspector of the German Air Force Ingo Gerhartz, during their visit to the international air force maneuver “Air Defender 2023” at Jagel Air Base in Jagel, Germany, June 20, 2023

All of this happened just a few days after the head of the German government once again officially stated that there would be no deliveries of Taurus missiles.

Judging by the tense reaction of the highest leadership of the Bundeswehr and the German government, such a turn of events was certainly not part of their plans. What were their plans? Were they shared plans?

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rushed to assure everyone that support for Ukraine would be provided as needed but without escalating the conflict between Russia and NATO. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius made significant efforts to convince everyone that the attacks against Russia discussed in the published conversation were not real but only theoretical, and, overall, it was all due to the “Russian information war.”

Now we come to the most crucial question. The interception of the scandalous conversation and the subsequent revelation of its content can only be understood when we determine who benefited the most from it in the end.

After the scandal surrounding the delivery of Taurus missiles to Ukraine, such shipments practically became impossible. Thus, those who aimed to prevent Germany from direct confrontation with Russia have succeeded.

Among Germans, there still remain sober-minded people with a sense of self-preservation. Olaf Scholz, who resisted Taurus deliveries to Ukraine until the last moment, appears to be one of them. Therefore, the scandal with the intercepted military conversation was apparently in his interest.

Furthermore, as a result of the scandal, the German military department and its leader, the top contender for the position of chancellor after or instead of Scholz, found themselves in a less favorable light. It may seem that Olaf Scholz is the one benefiting the most from the situation.

However, some commentators express the opinion that the head of the German government is in the most precarious position as a result of the scandal. They point out that, in the published recording, German military officials directly contradict Scholz by stating that the use of Taurus missiles in Ukraine would require the direct involvement of German specialists.

It turns out that the scandal has positioned Olaf Scholz as the main obstacle to Ukraine’s victory. Only he hinders the success of all Western efforts to support these courageous Ukrainians, who, according to experts, manage to deliver significant blows to the Russian military machine through fantastic operations.

But the German Chancellor has long been the target of widespread criticism from Western media for refusing to supply long-range guided missiles to Ukraine. Now, Scholz is accused of revealing “military secrets” by disclosing facts about the allies from the US, UK, and France aiding Ukrainians in targeting long-range guided missile strikes. He can hardly be considered a beneficiary in such a situation.

Germany has 231 U.S. military bases on its soil and is perhaps the U.S. regime’s most important colony; and, so, outright resistance to its imperial master would be out of the question, but on 28 September 2022 I headlined “How America Is Crushing Europe” and reported that already the U.S.-commanded EU sanctions against Russia and prohibition of Russia’s energy-supplies which were by far the cheapest in Europe, were so strangling German manufacturers that already many of them were relocating their plants to America where energy is cheap and labor and environmental regulations are also far less costly. Then, on 24 June 2023, I headlined “Now the Pay-off Comes from Blowing Up the Nord Stream Pipeline” and reported that the 20-year lock-in contract sale of U.S. compressed canned and trans-Atlantic-shipped gas to Germany, which contract had been signed in June 2022, would be costing Germans at least twice as high a price as they had been paying to Russia for its pipelined-in natural gas and oil. So: Germany is destroying its manufacturing competitiveness, and their consumers are suffering inflation, in order to serve their American masters — and THAT is why there are “German Military Officials On The Wire.” It is for their billionaire masters across the pond.

This isn’t merely the heist of the Century. It is the heist of the future. And who will publish this? These are democracies?

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.