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      How the US ban on Russian oil risks splitting the west’s response

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      How the US ban on Russian oil risks splitting the west’s responseAnalysis: The lights will not be going out in America but the same cannot be said for the EU, given its energy dependence on Moscow

      Ukraine-Russia war – latest updates
      Joe Biden’s decision to ban imports of Russian oil increases the economic pressure on Vladimir Putin – but it is not without risk.On the face of it, the announcement from the White House looks like a bit of a free hit, given the fact that Russia accounts for just 7% of the oil imported by the world’s biggest economy. Three-fifths of Russia’s oil exports go to the EU, only 8% to the US.Even so, Biden is taking a gamble for three important reasons. The first is that a toughening up of sanctions has given another upward twist to oil prices. American motorists were already paying higher pump prices, even before the latest surge in the cost of Brent crude above $130 a barrel and, as the US president admitted, they will soon be paying even more.Oil prices are up by 70% since the start of the year and there is no sign of them coming down anytime soon. The Oslo-based consultancy Rystad Energy has predicted a complete ban on Russian oil and gas could send crude prices to $200 a barrel. The previous milestone was the $147-a-barrel peak reached in 2008.The second risk is that Biden’s action fractures the western coalition against Putin, which in the first two weeks of the conflict has been solid. While support from the UK (phased in by the end of the year) means the US is not going it alone with its ban, other European countries clearly have misgivings. That is hardly surprising, because the EU gets 40% of its gas and just over a quarter of its oil from Russia.European oil receipts boosting Putin’s war chest by $285m a day, study findsRead moreSo when Biden said the west remained united in its determination to keep the pressure on Russia, that is not strictly true. The EU, as the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, made clear 24 hours before the US ban was announced, is worried about its energy security and has decided not to follow suit, for now at least. There is no risk of the lights going out in the US; the same could not be said of every country in Europe.This dependency on Russian energy creates a third risk, namely that Putin gets in his retaliation first by cutting off supplies. The EU has announced steps to reduce its dependency on Russian oil and gas, and the crisis could well have the effect of speeding up the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, but in the short term the loss of such a big chunk of its energy supply would result in weaker growth and higher inflation.While high energy prices eventually prove self-correcting because they tend to lead to recessions, the damage they can cause is considerable. UK living standards are on course for their biggest one-year fall since modern records began in the mid-1950s, with the war in Ukraine putting at risk the post-pandemic recovery. All of which makes it important that sanctions work quickly. The longer the economic war, the higher the cost.TopicsOilGasCommoditiesUS politicsEuropean UnionEuropeRussiaanalysisReuse this content More

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      Is Ukraine Likely to Join the EU Any Time Soon? 

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      Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, speaking of Kyiv’s ties with the EU, said that “they are one of us, they belong to us and we want them in.” These public remarks sparked a major debate on Ukraine’s accession prospects and represents a discursive shift in the European Union’s stance regarding potential membership. A change in discourse will not automatically lead to Ukraine’s dreams of accession being immediately fulfilled, but it strengthens the legitimacy of its bid, which is increasingly perceived as a valid policy option.

      Is Europe’s Newfound Unity a Liberal Illusion?

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      After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed his country’s application for candidate status, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling “for the EU institutions to work towards granting EU candidate status to Ukraine.” In this vein, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola confirmed that “we recognize Ukraine’s European perspective.” In addition, a group of eight member states expressed support for EU institutions to “conduct steps to immediately grant Ukraine a EU candidate country status and open the process of negotiations” as they “strongly believe that Ukraine deserves receiving an immediate EU accession perspective.”

      No Direct Path

      Ukraine’s path toward the EU was never a straight line leading up to this point. While former President Leonid Kuchma formulated Ukraine’s wish to join the EU throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the bloc was initially reserved with regard to these aspirations. A Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between the EU and Ukraine entered into force in March 1998, but a lack of implementation as well as the upsurge of autocratic tendencies in Ukrainian domestic politics led former European Commission President Romano Prodi to formulate the “sharing everything with the Union but institutions” paradigm. 

      In 2002, Prodi declared that we “cannot simply ignore what is happening beyond our borders. Neither can we solve problems with our new neighbours simply by letting them join the Union.” He was referring to endemic corruption, severe impediments to the rule of law or lack of freedom and independence of the media that continue to plague the country. Freedom House still labels Ukraine as only “partly free.”

      Despite this, EU-Ukraine cooperation intensified throughout the years with the adoption of an EU-Ukraine Action Plan and Kyiv joining the Eastern Partnership within the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) framework. While the ENP establishes a “special relationship with 16 of its closest neighbours who are currently not considered potential candidates for joining the EU,” Ukraine maintained its rhetoric of a pro-EU membership course. 

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      The aftermath of the Euromaidan protests, the inauguration of a new Ukrainian government and the signing of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement in June 2014 were accompanied by contradictory statements on the question of Ukrainian membership aspirations on the part of the EU. Stefan Fule, the EU commissioner for enlargement and European neighborhood policy, argued in favor of Ukraine’s admission in the long term. 

      Additionally, from 2014 onward, the European Parliament repeatedly stated in its resolutions that UKraine has “a European perspective” and that “pursuant to Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine — like any other European state — have a European perspective and may apply to become members of the Union provided that they adhere to the principles of democracy, respect fundamental freedoms and human and minority rights and ensure the rule of law.”

      In contrast, then German Chancellor Angela Merkel emphasized in 2015 that the Eastern Partnership shall not be understood as an “instrument for EU-accession” and that “Ukraine must first meet all the envisaged conditions.” Even more explicitly, former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker maintained that “Ukraine will definitely not be able to become a member of the EU in the next 20 to 25 years, and not of NATO either.”

      Drawing Closer

      Juncker’s position and the EU’s more cautious reactions regarding Ukraine’s membership aspirations mark a considerable contrast to the current discourse within the bloc. But while von der Leyen’s address to the European Parliament is a positive step forward, it does not mean that the discursive shift on the subject will necessarily lead to Ukraine’s accession. Instead, such rhetoric contributes to rendering this policy option more appropriate and legitimate. 

      In order to open this “policy space,” as Lene Hansen, professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen, put it in 2006, Ukraine’s drawing closer to the bloc must be presented as a course of action that conforms with the EU’s identity.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Following this line of thought, in her speech, von der Leyen highlighted Ukraine’s European character. Not only did she declare that the outbreak of war in Ukraine means that “War has returned to Europe” (even though war has been ongoing in Eastern Ukraine since 2014), she also refers to Kyiv as a “European capital” and argues that “the European Union and Ukraine are already closer than ever before.” Von der Leyen also emphasized that “Nobody in this hemicycle can doubt that a people that stands up so bravely for our European values belongs in our European family.”

      References to values do not only function as a means to construct a sense of community with Ukraine. They also establish a clear line of difference to Russia. In this respect, von der Leyen cites a Ukrainian newspaper stating that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marks “a clash of two worlds, two polar sets of values.” Von der Leyen builds on this quote and argues that “this is a clash between the rule of law and the rule of the gun; between democracies and autocracies; between a rules-based order and a world of naked aggression.” 

      She draws a clear line not only between the EU itself but also other actors who share these values and Russia on the diametrically opposed side. That Ukraine continues to struggle with corruption, restricted political rights and civil liberties as well as a weak rule of law does not fit into this discourse and so is no longer relevant.

      Von der Leyen holds that “If Putin was seeking to divide the European Union, to weaken NATO, and to break the international community, he has achieved exactly the opposite. We are more united than ever.” Indeed, this perfectly reflects what Australian political scientist David Campbell pointed out already in the beginning of the 1990s, namely that foreign policy discourses lend themselves particularly well to the establishment of an understanding of the inside as opposed to the (threatening) outside — that is, to construct identity through difference. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      In that sense, the EU does not only have to “stand up against this cruel aggression” due to the values that it shares with Ukraine and deems attacked by the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but also because “The destiny of Ukraine is at stake, but our own fate also lies in the balance,” as von der Leyen states. Thus, the EU’s own security and freedom are closely linked to the situation in Ukraine.

      Diplomatic Tightrope

      While von der Leyen’s address to the European Parliament perfectly supports the discursive shift that is currently taking place within the EU regarding closer cooperation with Ukraine, she emphasizes that “There is still a long path ahead.” It remains unlikely that the EU will admit Ukraine via an accelerated procedure in the midst of an ongoing war; this would override the Copenhagen Criteria that determine whether a state is eligible to accede to the EU.

      Nevertheless, the current discourse lays the foundation for consolidating and popularizing the demand for Ukraine’s accession. Hence, it is now up to the EU to find ways to reconcile this discourse with Russian concerns and to de-escalate the ongoing conflict. 

      According to Hiski Haukkala, a professor of International Relations at the University of Tampere, from 2014 onward, the EU has tried to perform a balancing act between showing solidarity with Ukraine and condemning Russia’s attempts to deter Kyiv from following a pro-European path while simultaneously trying to allay Moscow’s unease regarding these developments.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Similar to Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO, Haukkala foresaw in 2015 “that both EU-Russia relations and the wider European security order will be in for a wider and longer disruption than has currently been witnessed” due to this increasing collision. This is exactly the situation we find ourselves in at the moment.

      How can the EU preserve its credibility after stating that Ukraine “belongs to the European family” and that its “own fate also lies in the balance” without adding fuel to the fire of Russia’s security concerns? What the EU needs now is a clear strategy regarding a sustainable postwar European security order that must be, whether we like it or not, coordinated with Moscow. This does not mean that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is justified by supposed Russian security concerns. 

      Nevertheless, this war must end immediately in order to avert an immense humanitarian crisis and to prevent the war from spilling to neighboring countries. Considering that Georgia and Moldova are reported to be waiting to hand in their EU membership application any minute now, the union needs a more robust, diplomatically sensitive strategy toward the eastern countries with which it maintains association agreements. The EU urgently needs to provide answers to the question of how it could strive for further eastern enlargement without it being met with Russian aggression. 

      When asked about the earliest possible date for Ukrainian accession, von der Leyen replied that “This is hard to say. … Reforms have to be done, processes have to be set up.” This indicates that a clear approach toward Europe’s eastern neighborhood and to Russia in particular is still wanting.

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      In her speech, Ursula von der Leyen adopted the phrase “Slava Ukraini” — “Glory to Ukraine” — used by President Zelenskyy during his address to the European Parliament. The phrase is a greeting that became closely connected to the Euromaidan protests in contemporary Ukrainian public consciousness. It conveys the vision of an independent and free Ukraine seeking cooperation with the EU. 

      While the European Union’s discourse demonstrates that this vision already resonates more strongly than ever before, it seems unlikely that Ukraine will be able to join the EU anytime soon. The European Council has to unanimously approve a country’s application, which will remain unrealistic as long as the core problem of overcoming the dividing line between the West and the EU on the one hand and Russia on the other remains unresolved.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Is Europe’s Newfound Unity a Liberal Illusion?

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      This is Fair Observer’s new feature offering a review of the way language is used, sometimes for devious purposes, in the news. Click here to read the previous edition.

      We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

      March 7: Unity

      Like many voices in the West, The Economist appears delighted by one of the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The title of a current article contains the self-congratulatory message: “Russian aggression is prompting rare unity and severe reprisals.” The New York Times made the same point with its own more melodramatic rhetoric. “In a few frantic days,” a trio of Times reporters wrote, “the West threw out the standard playbook that it had used for decades and instead marshaled a stunning show of unity against Russia’s brutal aggression in the heart of Europe.” 

      Unity is stunning, and The Economist’s “severe reprisals” are the icing on the cake that demonstrate the West’s vaunted ability, according to The Times, to respond “on a global scale and with dizzying speed.” So why is beleaguered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy now complaining about not getting the support he expected?

      Emmanuel Macron’s Chance to Appear Transformative

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      The suffering of the Ukrainian people and their president’s complaints apparently haven’t dampened the West’s penchant for self-congratulation. Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, writing for The Washington Post, goes further in summing up US optimism: “It’s too early to think in these terms, but a NATO that perhaps also has Sweden and Finland as members should be ready to invite both Ukraine and Russia to join.” 

      It’s the dream of every politician inside the Beltway and nearly everyone in Arlington and Langley: the evocation of a new Europe enthusiastically and harmoniously united under the US military leadership. Bildt nevertheless concludes on a note of appropriate humility and even a dose of realism: “But before we get there, much will happen, little of which we can foresee today.”

      Harvard University also noticed the phenomenon, which it describes as “a much-needed wake-up call for Europe.” In the interest of offering some much-needed perspective, Harvard mobilized two serious thinkers for a panel discussion. The noted theorist and professor of international affairs, Stephen Walt, argued that “the war in Ukraine has in some respects dispelled a whole series of liberal illusions that misled many people during the post-Cold War period.”

      This remark is particularly apt at a time when the entire US establishment, led by a Democratic administration that has been obsessed by the Russian threat since losing the 2016 election to Donald Trump, is currently using the power of the media to recreate a dangerously bellicose Cold War atmosphere.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Walt’s analysis dares to call into question the major assumptions inculcated by US media in its presentation of the stakes of the current crisis. He unveils some of the “liberal illusions” that other less charitable analysts might more appropriately call a case of systemic, voluntary blindness. Among the illusions he cites “the idea that a major war could never happen again in Europe, and that the spread of economic interdependence and the expansion of NATO would mean that ‘eventually all of Europe would be a vast zone of peace.’”

      These were essentially acts of faith shared by every administration and promoted by the massive security state and military-industrial for the last 30 years. They stemmed from the neoliberal conviction that a stable American economy required a system based on subsidizing an industrial core focused on military technology that was also indirectly coupled with the consumer market. The military side, through the global presence of US armed forces, guaranteed unencumbered access to the resources required to produce the technology. The military also served as the initial outlet for the technology’s use.

      This rational system supposedly respectful of free markets that was launched in the aftermath of World War II rapidly turned into a “liberal” version of a new version of state socialism with global reach. It imperceptibly acquired the attributes needed to build a modern hypertechnologized hegemon. 

      Alas, its very scope and several of the mistakes it produced along the way made the formerly invisible model of state socialism visible to critics. It became increasingly clear that the institutions of a democratic nation had become dominated by a financial and political elite. They even had a name, “the 1%.” They banded together to fuel, manage and monitor the system they had put in place. Politics was redesigned to meet their needs rather than those of the people.

      Liberal Orthodoxy at the Service of State Socialism

      The world has seen three contrasting models of state socialism in the past century, as well as a fourth and highly aggressive one — fascism. That one was thankfully eliminated at the end of the Second World War, discredited for providing a model that was too in your face. Fascism’s focus on military technology and the media’s role in disseminating nationalistic propaganda nevertheless provided models that influenced the other versions of state socialism. The three other more solidly built models are those of the Soviet Union, the US and China.

      The Soviet model ultimately failed because it was frozen into an ideology crafted in the 19th century that took no account of an evolving world. The American model gradually took form, initially as a reaction to the particularly aggressive version of laissez-faire capitalism that emerged in the late 19th century. Its taming began in the 20th century with the anti-trust movement. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Eschewing any form of collectivist ideology, the US model subtly and nearly invisibly imposed its collectivist nature through its understanding of the power of media and the birth of the “science” of public relations, pioneered in the early decades of the 20thcentury by Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays. These consultants worked in the darker shadows of the corridors of political and economic power. Unlike Marx and Lenin, they were cleverly prevented by their handlers from being seen on center stage as they honed the powerful ideology that undergirded the new American version of state socialism. They and their ideology remained too invisible to criticize.

      The new ideology nevertheless didn’t go unnoticed. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky engaged a valiant effort to articulate criticism of it in their book “Manufacturing Consent.” And they did so with great precision. But their thesis focusing on the oppressive power of the media at the service of a corporate and governmental oligarchy became known only to a marginal segment of the population. 

      The new ideology nevertheless didn’t go unnoticed. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky engaged a valiant effort to articulate criticism of it in their book “Manufacturing Consent.” And they did so with great precision. But their thesis focusing on the oppressive power of the media at the service of a corporate and governmental oligarchy became known only to a marginal segment of the population. The media it criticized predictably ignored it, ensuring the invisibility of the true structure of a system of state socialism. 

      In traditional centralized power systems — and this is true in many nations even today — the lack of cultural influence of their media forces them to resort to direct censorship. In an evolved system in which the media has attained a superficial image of autonomy, government censorship serves no purpose because it can count on the media to self-censor. Indeed, any attempt to censor calls attention to what the government prefers people simply to ignore.

      China has turned out to be a special case. With the Communist Party running the government, it is archetypically a socialist state. But it has learned some of the lessons provided by the US example, including the admiration of personal wealth stemming from the traditional Chinese celebration of prosperity.

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      Because many Westerners have traditionally labeled Chinese culture “inscrutable,” American establishment strategists, attracted by the dynamics of the Chinese economy but repelled by its political culture, appear to be floundering about in their quest to categorize the evil they desperately want to see as the essence of a perceived powerful rival. It was easy for Americans to dismiss the Soviet Union as a relic of a 19th-century worldview. In contrast, China’s state socialism is oriented toward the future, notably with its emphasis on technology and proactive concern with infrastructure. 

      Moreover, in too many ways, China’s state socialism resembles the US version, which means criticizing China might invite self-criticism. Worse, instead of placing all its faith in the ruling class as the US does with its trickle-down economics, China factors into many of its policies the needs of the entire population. That, as Edward Bernays might remark, gives it a certain PR advantage.  

      At the Harvard event, the Atlantic Council’s Benjamin Haddad represented a point of view more consistent with the optics of the US security state. But, in contrast with The Post’s editorialist, he noted that “something much deeper is happening in Europe that will have really long-term consequences.” He has dared to express the heterodox view that, instead of perceiving an increased need for NATO, Europe may now be calling into question its traditional acceptance of US leadership.

      As such debates continue in the US, the Ukrainian people and President Zelenskyy appear to be losing patience with NATO and the US, who have expressed their undying love for the country while refusing to save it from a situation they created. They may be well placed to appreciate Stephen Walt’s observation that “powerful countries often do pretty horrible things when they feel, rightly or wrongly, that their security is being endangered.” The US and NATO are more worried about their own security than Ukraine’s. On that, they are in total agreement with Vladimir Putin.

      Why Monitoring Language Is Important

      Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

      In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

      Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

      Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Blinken vows to escalate sanctions on Russia but warns war could last ‘some time’

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      Blinken vows to escalate sanctions on Russia but warns war could last ‘some time’Speaking from Moldova, US secretary of state warns Russia holds military advantage that western allies are finding hard to counter

      US in ‘active discussion’ with allies to ban Russian oil imports
      US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a pledge on Sunday to increase pressure on Russia through sanctions and provide more aid to Ukraine, but warned that Russia held a military advantage that western allies are finding hard to counter and the war was set to last “some time”.“Vladimir Putin has, unfortunately, the capacity with the sheer manpower he has in Ukraine and overmatch he has, the ability to keep grinding things down against incredibly resilient and courageous Ukrainians. I think we have to be prepared for this to last for some time,” Blinken told CNN.America’s top diplomat was speaking from Chisinau in Moldova, which sits between Romania, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) military alliance, and the south-western border of Ukraine on the Black Sea, not far from the Ukrainian city of Odesa which is threatened by advancing Russian forces.Blinken has spent the weekend visiting Nato member nations in eastern Europe that have taken in refugees from Ukraine. He said of the destruction being perpetrated under the direction of Russian president Vladimir Putin in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol that: “Just winning a battle is not winning a war, and just taking a city does not mean taking the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people. On the contrary, he is destined to lose.”“The Ukrainian people will not allow themselves to be subjugated to Vladimir Putin or to Russia’s rule – but it could take some time, and meanwhile the suffering is real and it’s terrible,” he told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning TV show.Blinken said he’d met with refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, currently estimated at a stunning 1.5 million.“We’re doing everything we can to bring this to an end as quickly as we can but this may still go on for a while,” he added.Pressed on US sanctions on Russia, Blinken defended Washington’s comparative lag in application compared to European Union allies and its failure to cut off Russian imports of oil by the US.“We’re adding to sanctions virtually every day,” Blinken said. He said he had spoken to US president Joe Biden on Saturday and members of the cabinet on the issue of oil.“We are now talking to our European partners and allies to look in a co-ordinated way at the prospect of banning Russian oil while making sure there is an appropriate supply of oil on world markets.”Blinken also reacted to the issue of providing increased military aid to Ukraine, including sending US fighter jets to Poland so that that country can send supplies of used Migs and Sukhoi military planes to Ukraine, where the military is familiar with those Russian-style jets rather than western-made fighters.“We are working with Poland to see if we can backfill anything they provide to Ukraine. We very much support them, providing planes that the Ukrainians can fly. But we also want to see if we can be helpful in making sure that whatever they provide to the Ukrainians, something goes to them to make up for any gap in security for Poland.”But Blinken, on NBC, insisted that while the US would continue to add to Ukraine with “security assistance” – totaling more than $1bn over the past year – the US would not enforce a Ukrainian no fly zone or put the US in “direct conflict” with Russia.“For everything we’re doing for Ukraine, the president also has a responsibility to not get us into a direct conflict, a direct war, with Russia, a nuclear power, and risk a war that expands beyond Ukraine to Europe. We’re trying to end this war in Ukraine, not start a larger one,” he said.The White House issued a report of Joe Biden’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday evening, saying his administration is “surging security, humanitarian, and economic assistance to Ukraine and is working closely with Congress to secure additional funding”.Lawmakers in a video call with Zelenskiy on Saturday morning said they were eager to approve an additional $10bn in spending to aid Ukraine.Leaders are also accusing Vladimir Putin of suspected war crimes based on Russia’s blatant killing of Ukrainian civilians as part of its action, destroying residential areas far from likely military targets and also directly firing on civilians trying to evacuate.“We have some very credible reports of attacks on civilians, which is what is considered a war crime.” Blinken said.Republican senator Marco Rubio, vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said he thought the Russian people would ultimately remove Putin from power over his action in Ukraine.“Hopefully to stand trial for war crimes, for what he has done,” Rubio said. He described Putin as “a monster” on ABC.European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday morning on the same CNN show that an investigation is needed into whether Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine.“I think there needs to be a strong and clear investigation on this question,” she said.US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield told ABC’s This Week: “Any attack on civilians is a war crime.”Meanwhile, Ukraine is not willing to compromise on its territorial integrity in talks with Russia but is open to discussing “non- Nato models” for its future security, in a wider forum, one of its negotiators told Fox News.Ukraine has pursued membership of Nato, cited by Putin as evidence of what he portrays as Nato aggression toward Russia.Nato members “are not ready to even discuss having us in Nato, not for the next period of five or 10 years,” negotiator David Arakhamia said in remarks published on the Fox News website late on Saturday.“We are ready to discuss some non-Nato models. For example, there could be direct guarantees by different countries like the US, China, UK, maybe Germany and France. We are open to discussing such things in a broader circle.”And on Sunday afternoon, retired army general David Petraeus, former head of US central command during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he did not accept military assumptions that Kyiv will inevitably fall to Russia.Russian forces have a 40-mile-long convoy of military vehicles stalled on the approach to the Ukrainian capital and Petraeus said it appeared “they cannot keep their columns fueled” and praised Ukrainian resilience so far.“They’ve taken down road signs or pointed “Welcome to Hell” and stuff like that,” Petraeus told CNN.“This is going to be a very long fight in Kyiv. The locals there have been stockpiling food, there is going to be an enormously fierce resistance. I don’t accept assumptions that it will fall,” he said.Petraeus also noted Kyiv’s extensive surface area as a major obstacle for the Russian military, pointing out that the capital is spread across around 320 sq miles, larger than New York City and a little over half the size of London’s sprawl.TopicsBiden administrationAntony BlinkenUS politicsUkraineRussiaVladimir PutinEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      US in ‘very active discussion’ with allies to ban import of Russian oil

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      US in ‘very active discussion’ with allies to ban import of Russian oilSecretary of state says Biden has convened a meeting of his National Security Council on the subject

      Blinken vows to escalate sanctions on Russia
      US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the US and its allies are engaged in a “very active discussion” about banning the import of Russian oil and natural gas in a new escalation of sanctions in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine.Blinken vows to escalate sanctions on Russia but warns war could last ‘some time’Read moreThe US and western allies have until now held off on current energy supplies from Russia, in order to avoid blowback on their own economies, where inflation is already making prices of gasoline and other goods a problem.Earlier this week, the White House publicly rebuffed suggestions from lawmakers that the US ban Russian oil, which made up 3% of all the crude shipments that arrived in the US last year, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration.But Europe is far more dependent, with an estimated 30% of oil and 39% of gas supplies coming from Russia.Blinken told CNN on Sunday morning that Joe Biden convened a meeting of his National Security Council on the subject the day before.“We are now talking to our European partners and allies to look in a coordinated way at the prospect of banning the import of Russian oil while making sure that there is still an appropriate supply of oil on world market,” said Blinken. “That’s a very active discussion as we speak.”Republicans and a growing number of Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, back the idea of a Russian oil import ban, arguing that Russia’s lucrative exports fund Putin’s war effort.“I’m all for that… ban the oil coming from Russia,” Pelosi said at her weekly press briefing on Capitol Hill on Thursday. But the White House has maintained that it doesn’t want to cause domestic fuel prices to rise.“We don’t have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki has said.Energy analysts have warned that there are limited options for maintaining oil supplies without Russian imports. OPEC Plus member countries, which include Russia, last week rejected increasing production , and global inventories of oil are low.Oil rose to $117 a barrel last week, the highest price since 2008. One option to maintain price stability, analysts have said, is to reduce demand – a process known to traders as “demand destruction.”On Sunday’s US TV talk shows, Florida senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, said he supported Biden’s resistance to issuing a Russian oil import ban so far. But he said the US could “phase that in pretty rapidly” using “reserves for the purposes of buffering that”.“We have more than enough ability in this country to produce enough oil to make up for the percentage that we buy from Russia,” Rubio said, adding that: “This notion that somehow banning Russian oil would raise prices on American consumers is an admission that this guy, that this killer, that this butcher, Vladimir Putin, has leverage over us.”“I think we have enough that we should produce more American oil and buy less Russian oil or none – actually, none at all,” Rubio added.But the issue of producing more oil in the US is a controversial one, with partisan battles over the role of government in using laws to curb greenhouse gas emissions and wean Americans off fossil fuels in the face of the climate crisis.TopicsBiden administrationOilAntony BlinkenUS politicsRussiaEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      The week where decades happened: how the west finally woke up to Putin

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      The week where decades happened: how the west finally woke up to Putin From Germany’s shock military spending rise to sanctions unity, leaders have come together over the war in Ukraine

      Russia-Ukraine war: live news
      Lenin, a Russian leader as obsessed with history as Vladimir Putin, famously said: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” This has been the latter. The little more than a week since Russian troops invaded Ukraine has indeed shaken the world. Change has been telescoped, national taboos broken, moribund institutions given purpose and the spectre of a nuclear war in Europe has been raised for the first time since the 1980s. Germany has called it Zeitenwende, the turning point. It will not just be Ukraine that is changed for ever by this war.But there is something specific about how war accelerates change. In The Deluge, his classic work on how society is changed by war, the British historian Arthur Marwick wrote: “War acts as a supreme challenge to, and test of, a country’s social and political institutions. War results not only in the destruction of inefficient institutions (such as the Tsarist regime in Russia), but also in the transformation of less efficient mechanisms into more efficient ones”.The west has surprised itself with its ability to respond to the misery inflicted on the people of Ukraine. All kinds of unimaginable images emerge. The German Bundestag cheered an extra €100bn (£82.4bn) on defence spending, followed by 100,000 people on the streets in protest at Putin. Matteo Salvini, the great Italian defender of Putin, bringing white tulips to the Ukrainian embassy. Liz Truss, the UK foreign secretary, attending a meeting of the EU foreign affairs ministers meeting. The Hungarian leader, Viktor Orbán, sharply criticised by human-rights groups and others over the years for his hardline border policies, sitting on a school bench opening his arms to refugees.It was just a fortnight ago that the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, had appeared at the Munich security conference to caution the crisis was not the moment to try to execute an 180-degree turn on the decades-old German policy banning the sale of arms into conflict zones. Josep Borrell, the EU external affairs chief, batted away calls for Ukraine to join the EU, saying they already had an exceptional trade deal. He spoke about the “power of the EU’s language”, distancing himself from his own one-time claim that the EU must learn “the language of power”.The next day – Sunday – all the talk was of Emmanuel Macron’s diplomatic initiative, and the concessions the French president had extracted from Vladimir Putin. Even on Wednesday, on the eve of the invasion, Baerbock gave an interview saying it was impossible for Germany to impose the strongest sanctions because of “the massive collateral damage” to Germany’s own economy. Putin could end up laughing at us, she warned.Yet by the following weekend, two days after the invasion began on Thursday, Germany’s coalition government had started that 180-degree course correction. Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his cabinet agreed to send Ukraine 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, lifting restrictions on German weapons being sent to conflict zones by third parties in the process. The next day, Scholz told the Bundestag in his trademark matter-of-fact manner that he was injecting €100bn into German defence, but protecting other budgets, and defence spending would rise above 2% of German GDP. The MPs from government and the CDU gasped and cheered in equal measure. David McAllister, a leading figure in the German CDU and chair of the European parliament’s foreign affairs select committee, admits he nearly fell off his chair when he heard the plans.Russian forces attacked multiple targets in southern UkraineThe promised growth catapults Germany into becoming the third largest spender on defence globally, behind only the US and China. GlobalData forecasts an annual German defence budget of $83.5bn in 2024, equating to a 45% increase on 2021’s budget of $57.5bn. That is bigger than France and the UK. Overnight Germany became not just an economic but also a geopolitical powerhouse. Polls said 78% of Germans backed the decision.Matthias Matthijs, Europe senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations, said: “It is quite astonishing how fast this government broke pretty well every taboo in postwar German foreign policy.”He attributes the scale of the change to a visit to Berlin on Sunday by the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki. “I came to Berlin to shake the conscience of Germany,” Morawiecki said.Sophia Besch, from the Centre for European Reform, points out Scholz himself insisted he had not acted due to pressure from allies, but due to Germany changing its view of the threat posed by Putin. “The truth is the world did not change last Thursday,” she said. “Berlin for years has ignored the warnings that came from many of our allies and from Putin. We need to learn the lessons of how this could have happened and how we could have been so blind. We are leaving behind some of our old beliefs – that economic interdependence prevents conflict, but I am not sure we know yet with what we are replacing this belief.”Sergey Lagodinsky, a German Green MEP, argued Germany needs not only to spend more money, but to shift its mindset without becoming militaristic or interventionist. It needs to discuss how to adopt escalation, including military escalation, as leverage as part of its foreign policy toolbox. Foreign policy is not just a peace policy, Friedenspolitik in German, but also the ability to deal, manage and face conflict.But the new German coalition, faced by the need to extricate itself from Russian energy, may have to challenge other orthodoxies. The Green economics minister, Robert Habeck, does not rule out extending the use of coal-fired power plants. “This blind, naive, one-sided relationship of dependency on Russia for energy for decades is one of the biggest strategic mistakes of the past 20 years,” Lagodinsky said. “Now we are stuck. It represents a medium- and long-term problem”.But Putin’s recklessness is not just causing a revolution in Germany, but across Europe.Sweden abandoned its policy of not sending weapons to conflict zones, agreeing to send Bofors AT-4, a single-use anti-tank launcher, to Ukraine, plus medical supplies. In Finland, a bombshell poll showed 53% want Finland to join Nato. “This poll flipped everything on its head,” said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Moreover the poll showed that if voters were told that politicians said they backed the plan the support went up to two-thirds. “You could sense the president, Sauli Niinisto, realised the whole defence dynamic was changed.” Niinisto, seen as one of the best readers of what Putin is thinking is now rushing to hold urgent talks with Joe Biden in the White House.Ukraine war prompts European reappraisal of its energy supplies Read moreEven in Switzerland, leaders had to catch up with the public mood in the space of a weekend, and by the Monday an emergency cabinet promised to implement the entire EU sanctions package. The decision does not formally end a policy of neutrality that has survived two world wars, but there is now pressure to track down the many oligarchs that live in the country. There are also calls for an increase in the defence budgetThere has been a mini-revolution in Italy, too, where the prime minister, Mario Draghi, accused last week of seeking sanctions carve-outs to protect Italy’s dependence on Russian gas, has also found some mettle. He told parliament on Tuesday: “Yes, we want peace, but it is obvious that whoever amassed more than 60km of tanks near Kyiv does not want peace. We cannot turn our backs on Ukraine. Italy does not intend to look away.” He proposed an international public register of those with assets of more than €10m. In France, Macron looks likely to be re-elected comfortably next month as the rightwing candidates find themselves compromised by links to Putin they cannot deny.Eastern European countries, sometimes hostile to refugees, have instead had the most open arms. Poland has taken an unprecedented 600,000 people. Orbán the Hungarian leader photographed smiling at child refugees, vows “No one will be left uncared for.”The UK too has been experiencing unusually heavy traffic on the Road to Damascus. The Conservative government promises there will be no hiding place for oligarchs, publishing the delayed economic crime bill and seemingly unnerving Roman Abramovich into selling his stake in Chelsea football club. The endless denigration of Brussels has stopped. “The quality and intensity of the contacts between the EU and UK has been different to anything since before Brexit,” one EU official said. “We have restored a level of trust”.But it has been at the level of the European Union that the action has been quickest and most surprising, revealing Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU Commission and former German defence minister, as a powerful advocate for action. For the EU to release €500m from the European Peace Facility to provide equipment and supplies to the Ukrainian armed forces, including – for the first time – lethal equipment, was a first. EU military staff based in Poland are now coordinating military supplies into Ukraine. The EU as a military player is no longer just the stuff of seminars.Equally, the Commission in discussing its EU sanctions package acted with an unparalleled speed, and by consensus among the member states. Some EU sanctions packages take months to be agreed as one country or other exploiting the requirement for unanimity uses their veto power to pursue a national interest.That the UK, US and EU were able to coordinate an attack on the Russian central bank, freezing out some Russian banks from the global Swift bank payment system and implementing measures to prevent Russian banks and firms raising capital, showed a wholly unexpected level of resolve. This was a financial declaration of war – an attempt to turn Russia into a pariah economy – something never tried before, using methods never deployed before. It involved, for instance, some G20 central banks freezing the Russian central bank reserves held in their own jurisdiction, so depleting the war chest of reserves that Putin had accumulated to defend his economy if it came under western attack.All this is remarkable, indeed epoch-making, but not a cause for celebration. The institutions of liberal democracy may have belatedly shown resolve and unity, but in the here and now they are still losing. Keir Giles, from the Chatham House thinktank, is blunt: “Russia will want to present Zelenskiy with an appalling choice – whether to fight on at immense human cost and to the destruction of his country, infrastructure and economy or to submit to his terms in order that life can go on.“The decision to abandon Ukraine to that fate was made by the west when it gave the green light to Putin by reassuring him that no one would intervene. Nato does not have a strategy to win the war in Ukraine because Nato does not want to be in the war in Ukraine.”European politicians will also be worrying as the price of bread and energy soars in the months ahead whether voters are willing to make the sacrifice.the Lithuanian foreign minister told the UK foreign affairs select committee that half-measures would not do. “Putin has no boundaries to what instruments he is going to use and unleash against the Ukrainians”, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said, adding the west “had to go all-in”.He wants humanitarian corridors supported by no-fly zones. But the UK and the US have firmly rejected this since it would pit Nato pilots against Russian pilots. A Polish plan, backed by Borrell for Nato to provide Ukraine with Nato jets, training and bombs, got shot down in less than a day.The other remaining option is to end the final carve-outs in the sanctions regime. “The push is now for carpet sanctions to match the carpet bombing,” said Orysia Lutsevych from the Ukraine Forum, adding the UK, EU and the US are still buying more than €700m of oil, gas and other commodities that is the equivalent of 150 tanks a day that Russia can finance.That could be stopped either through an energy trade embargo, or by reversing the EU decision to let Gazprombank and Sberbank, the vehicles through which Europe pays for Russian oil and gas, stay in the Swift payment system. UK officials briefed on Wednesday they want to abolish the carve out given by the EU. If these two banks are thrown out of Swift that might immobilise Russian oil and gas exports, or lead to unspecified retaliation by Putin.The breadth and range of economic and financial measures taken against Moscow, not to mention growing sporting and cultural isolation, has been a humiliation for Putin, but it is also a risk for the west if the Russian leader sees no answer but total victory. “He is in a corner, but unfortunately with nuclear weapons, says Giles.The west has been transformed in a week, but the question this weekend is if it would be willing, forced by the chaos of events, to go even further. The charge facing the west after a week of war is the one made by George Orwell of Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Like almost everyone at the time, he “neither wanted to pay the price of peace nor that of war”.TopicsUkraineEuropeRussiaGermanyMilitaryArms tradeSwedenfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      Emmanuel Macron’s Chance to Appear Transformative

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      This is Fair Observer’s new feature offering a review of the way language is used, sometimes for devious purposes, in the news. Click here to read the previous edition.

      We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

      March 4: Tragic

      Even though he hesitated until the last minute to make it official on Thursday, everyone in France knew that their president, Emmanuel Macron, would be up for reelection in a contest whose first round will take place on April 10, followed by the second-round runoff on April 24.

      The strategic delay in his decision-making has been officially explained by the combination of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the much more recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, a dossier for which Macron has been very active in recent months. The race is very difficult to call given the range of opponents, but Macron is favored to win the first round. Though it’s anyone’s guess how the second round may play out or even who the opposing candidate is likely to be.

      How Coherent Is NATO Today and in the Future?

      READ MORE

      With the Ukraine crisis dominating the headlines, Macron stepped up this week, almost at the same time as US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, to give a rousing speech with a similar theme, insisting on solidarity with the Ukrainians and the defense of democracy. But unlike his American counterpart, whose speech read like a celebration of his administration’s and his nation’s moral commitment to the Ukrainian cause, Macron went a bit further, invoking the “tragic” dimension of the current situation with these words: “To this brutal return of tragedy in history, we owe it to ourselves to respond with historic decisions.” He added the idea that “Europe has entered a new era” and hinted that it would be an era defined in terms of “energy independence” and “European defense.”  

      Embed from Getty Images

      Macron’s vision of a different future may be interpreted more as a campaign promise than a realistic forecast of how European identity will evolve in the future. But it is a theme that Macron has heavily invested in, an idea he has been promoting for a long time. Despite past failure to move the needle, he may be onto something this time concerning the future of Europe’s security policies, which are as much under attack as Kyiv itself.

      The crisis in Ukraine reveals not only the threat Russia potentially represents for some European nations, but also the risk associated with Europe’s dependence on Russia’s natural gas. Even more significantly — though discussion of this topic must wait for some sort of resolution to the Ukrainian drama — the crisis has revealed the troubling degree to which European countries have become the hostages of the monster known as NATO.

      The calling into question of NATO may sound paradoxical at the very moment when every country in the prosperous West has expressed its heartfelt solidarity with Ukraine and its bitter condemnation of Russia’s invasion. Many commentators have waxed lyrical about the “unification” of Europe in opposition to Russia and see this as a prelude to the reinforcement of NATO. That is possible, but at this early stage in the conflict, it sounds like a hasty conclusion.

      Macron is hinting at a world beyond NATO. He is certainly right to assume that he isn’t the only European leader who, without complaining too loudly, is privately assessing Washington’s responsibility in the conflict. After all, the US is the nation that, despite France and Germany’s resistance, drew the red line defending the iron-clad principle of Ukraine’s inalienable right to join NATO.  

      Macron’s position should help his chances in the coming election. He cannot be accused of electoral opportunism as he has proved himself consistent and sincere in his mission to redefine Europe’s security in European rather than North Atlantic terms. It hasn’t worked yet despite his and, to some extent, Germany’s previous efforts, but that predictable disappointment occurred before the tragedy that is now engulfing Europe. When the dust settles on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, all Europeans (and maybe even the UK’s Boris Johnson) will begin parsing the complex lessons produced by a terribly mismanaged fiasco that is still ongoing and shows some signs of possibly leading to a nuclear conflagration.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      For the moment, the Americans have presented the Russian assault as a combat between good and evil. Europe and its media have, in their very real but to some extent staged outrage, followed suit. But at some point in the near future, Europeans will sit down and attempt to assess not just the winners and losers as the US tends to do, but the volume of evil that is attributable to both sides. European cultures tend to be far less binary and Manichean than US culture, which has demonstrated in this crisis its inimitable capacity to discard the kind of nuance that can, at least on some occasions, actually prevent or at least forestall tragedy.

      The idea of tragedy, understood to be a noble art form, is taken seriously in France, a nation that produced two famous authors of tragedy, Corneille and Racine. Apart from a brief episode in the 18th century (partly due to jealousy), France has always admired Shakespeare and Schiller. The French know that authentic tragedy is never about the battle between good and evil. The literary genre that exploits that kind of binary logic is called melodrama. Tragedy always contains something corresponding to Aristotle’s intuition of its being built around the notion of a tragic flaw.

      In his analysis of Oedipus Rex, Aristotle attributed the flaw to the tragic hero, seen as admirable and good, but affected by something that undermines his good fortune. But the flaw may also exist in the system and its rules, in the government or the culture of the play, in the environment in which tragic heroes and heroines are permitted to act. As one famous tragic hero noted, there may be “something rotten in the state of Denmark,” something that to which the tragedy itself is drawing the audience’s attention.

      When he characterizes the Ukraine conflict as a tragedy, Emmanuel Macron, like other Europeans familiar with the history of the past century, is thinking not so much of the literary tradition as the devastating wars that have taken place on the continent’s soil. This is a privilege not equally available to Americans, whose only lasting memory of war on their own soil is that of a civil war that happened over 150 years ago.

      The idea of history Americans learn at school and through the media, even in the case of their own civil war, is always about a struggle between good and evil. Slavery defined the South as evil, despite the fact that Southerners were true Americans. Because all conflicts are framed as a combat between good and evil, Americans are encouraged to think of their nation as a “force for good.” America is exceptional and has been called the “indispensable nation.” Many attribute to the French leader Charles de Gaulle the reflection that “the graveyard is full of indispensable people.” History too is full of indispensable nations and even empires.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Today, everyone in Europe perceives the Ukraine situation as a worrying tragedy that is still building toward its most destructive climax. But for Macron, whose reelection is far from assured within the chaotic political environment that currently reigns in France, it may turn out to be a serendipitous tragedy. It may turn out to be the moment of enlightenment in which his dream of a Europe no longer tethered to the United States may define and implement its own security system. As he begins to hone his official reelection campaign, Macron can pursue that goal and, at the same time, hope that it will convince his electors that he’s the one who can carry it out. 

      Why Monitoring Language Is Important

      Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

      In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

      Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

      Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in UK Politics

      ‘Worst is yet to come’ as Putin vows to bomb Ukraine ‘until the end’

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      Vladimir Putin is determined to continue bombing Ukraine “until the end” despite a plea last night from Volodymyr Zelensky for face to face talks to halt the military assault.In a series of phone and video calls on Thursday, the Russian president accused Kyiv of using human shields and behaving “like Nazis”, hailed his fallen soldiers as heroes and claimed the invasion was going “according to plan”. He told members of his Kremlin security council that Russia has only bombed military facilities and his troops haven’t targeted residential areas – despite another day of carnage in which the bodies of Ukrainian civilians were recovered from destroyed homes.Putin reaffirmed his claim that the Russian military was fighting “neo-Nazis”, adding that some Ukrainians were also “fooled by nationalist propaganda”. In a call with French president Emmanuel Macron, Putin was so undaunted by international condemnation that an Elysee official bleakly concluded: “We expect that the worst is yet to come.”The official said Putin initiated the one and half hour call but insisted there would be no let-up in the invasion, blamed the West for the conflict and also “denied having bombarded Kyiv”. More