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    A Sacred Oath review: Mark Esper on Trump, missiles for Mexico and more

    A Sacred Oath review: Mark Esper on Trump, missiles for Mexico and more The ex-defense secretary’s memoir is scary and sobering – but don’t expect Republican leaders or voters to heed his warningMark Esper was Donald Trump’s second defense secretary. Like James Mattis, his predecessor, he fell from Trump’s grace. Six days after the 2020 election, the 45th president fired him, via Twitter. Unlike Mattis, Esper now delivers a damning tell-all.This Will Not Pass review: Trump-Biden blockbuster is dire reading for DemocratsRead moreA Sacred Oath pulls no punches. It depicts Trump as unfit for office and a threat to democracy, a prisoner of wrath, impulse and appetite.Over 752 pages, Esper’s Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times are surgically precise in their score-settling. This is not just another book to be tossed on the pyre of Trump-alumni revenge porn. It is scary and sobering.Esper is a West Point graduate and Gulf war veteran. No one confuses him with Omarosa Manigault Newman, Cliff Simms or Chris Christie. Esper ignores Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway and barely mentions Melania Trump. He is complimentary toward Jared Kushner.In general, Esper disliked what he saw. Trump’s fidelity to process was close to nonexistent, his strategy “narrow and incomplete”, his “manner” coarse and divisive. The ends Trump “often sought rarely survived the ways and means he typically pursued to accomplish them”.The book captures Trump’s rage when advised that Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, lacked command authority over the active-duty and national guard troops Trump wanted to deploy against protesters in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.“‘You are losers!’ the president unloaded. ‘You are all fucking losers!’”In addition to Esper, Milley and William Barr, the attorney general, Trump also targeted Mike Pence.Esper writes: “He repeated the foul insults again, this time directing his venom at the vice-president as well, who sat quietly, stone-faced, in the chair at the far end of the semi-circle closest to the Rose Garden.“I never saw him yell at the vice-president before, so this really caught my attention.”Esper explains why he didn’t resign: “I didn’t think it was the right thing to do for our country.”His wife, Leah, framed it this way: “As your wife, please quit. As an American citizen, please stay.”The government attempted to censor A Sacred Oath, as it did The Room Where It Happened, a memoir by John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser. Fortunately, the powers that be buckled after Esper filed suit in federal court. Here and there, words are blacked out. The core of the story remains.At one point, Trump proposed launching “missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs”. The then-president said: “No one would know it was us.” He would simply deny responsibility. Esper looked at Trump. He was not joking.According to reports, the censors found this inflammatory. They did not, however, deny its veracity. Confronted with the story, Trump issued a “no comment”. Donald Trump Jr asked if his father’s scheme was “a bad thing”. Hunter Biden isn’t the only troublesome first son.Trump’s reliance on underlings who put their boss ahead of country distressed Esper too. Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller, Robert O’Brien and Ric Grenell all receive attention. Little is good.Esper found their bellicosity grating. After a meeting with Trump’s national security council, Esper commented to Milley about its lack of military experience and eagerness for war with Iran.“We couldn’t help but note … the irony that only two persons in the room that had ever gone to war were the ones least willing to risk doing so now.”Esper offers a full-throated defense of Trump’s decision to kill Qassem Suleimani. The Iranian general had American blood on his hands and was planning an attack on US diplomats and military personnel.Esper also writes about the state of the union.“I was worried for our democracy,” he says. “I had seen many red flags, many warnings, and many inconsistencies. But now we seemed on the verge of crossing a dark red line.”In the summer of 2020, the unrest that followed the murder of Floyd transported Trump to a Stygian realm. In the run-up to the election, Esper feared Trump would seek to use the military to stay in office.Esper met Milley and Gen Daniel Hokanson, the general in charge of the national guard, in an attempt to avert that outcome.“The essence of democracy was free and fair elections, followed by the peaceful transition of power,” Esper writes.Ultimately, Trump did not rely on the military to negate election results – a path advocated by Mike Flynn, his first national security adviser. Instead, the drama played out slowly. By early January 2021, Milley was telling aides the US was facing a “Reichstag moment” as Trump preached “the gospel of the führer”.On 6 January, Trump and his minions unleashed the insurrection.“It was the worst attack on the Capitol since the war of 1812,” Esper writes. “And maybe the worst assault on our democracy since the civil war.”The Presidency of Donald Trump review: the first draft of historyRead moreYet Trump and Trumpism remain firmly in the ascendant. In Ohio, in a crucial Senate primary, Trump’s endorsement of JD Vance proved decisive. In Pennsylvania, his support for Mehmet Oz may prove vital too.Down in Georgia, Herschel Walker, Trump’s choice, is on a glide path to nomination. Walker’s run-ins with domestic violence and death threats pose no problem for the faithful. Even Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has bought in.Days ago, Esper told the New York Times Trump was “an unprincipled person who, given his self-interest, should not be in the position of public service”.Most Republicans remain unmoved. Esper is only an author. Trump spearheads a movement.
    A Sacred Oath is published in the US by William Morrow
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    Trump sought strike on top Iran military figure for political reasons – Esper book

    Trump sought strike on top Iran military figure for political reasons – Esper bookRobert O’Brien told top general shortly before 2020 election that Trump wanted to kill unnamed official, according to Esper memoir Shortly before the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, “stunned” the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff by saying the president wanted to kill a senior Iranian military officer operating outside the Islamic Republic.“This was a really bad idea with very big consequences,” Mark Esper, Trump’s second and last secretary of defense, writes in his new memoir, adding that Gen Mark Milley suspected O’Brien saw the strike purely in terms of Trump’s political interests.I warned national guard of possible coup, Trump defense secretary saysRead moreA Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Throughout the memoir, Esper presents himself as one of a group of aides who resisted bad or illegal ideas proposed by Trump or subordinates – such as the proposed strike on the Iranian officer.Among other such ideas that were discussed, Esper says, were sending “missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs”; sending 250,000 troops to the southern border; and dipping the decapitated head of a terrorist leader in pig’s blood as a warning to other Islamist militants.Trump made belligerence towards Tehran an important part of his administration and platform for re-election, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and regularly warning in bombastic terms of the cost of conflict with the US.He also ordered a drone strike on a top Iranian general blamed for attacks on US targets. In January 2020, Qassem Suleimani, the head of the elite Quds force, was killed in Baghdad.At a meeting in July 2020, Esper writes, O’Brien pushed for military action against Iran over its uranium enrichment – work that accelerated after Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal.Esper’s book is subject to occasional redactions. In this case, it says “O’Brien was pushing for” one blacked out word “and military action”. Esper says the vice-president, Mike Pence, “subtly lean[ed] in behind” O’Brien, who said: “The president has an appetite to do something.”Esper writes that Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, “jumped in to contradict this statement” and the moment passed.However, a month or so later, on 20 August, Esper says Milley told him O’Brien had called the evening before, to say “the president wanted to strike a senior military officer who was operating outside of Iran”.Esper writes: “Milley and I were aware of this person and the trouble he had been stirring in the region for some time. But why now? What was new? Was there an imminent threat? What about gathering the national security team to discuss this?“Milley said he was ‘stunned’ by the call, and he sensed that ‘O’Brien put the president up to this,’ trying to create news that would help Trump’s re-election.”Milley, Esper writes, told O’Brien he would discuss the request with Esper and others.“I couldn’t believe it,” Esper writes. “I had seen this movie before, where White House aides meet with the president, stir him up, and then serve up one of their ‘great ideas’. But this was a really bad idea with very big consequences. How come folks in the White House didn’t see this?”Fears that Trump might provoke war with Iran persisted throughout his presidency, stoked by reports of machinations among hawks on his staff. Such fears intensified as the 2020 election approached and Trump trailed Joe Biden in the polls.Esper book details Trump rage at Pence and proposal to hit Mexico with missilesRead moreIn September 2020, Trump tweeted: ““Any attack by Iran, in any form, against the United States will be met with an attack on Iran that will be 1,000 times greater in magnitude!”In the case of O’Brien’s suggested strike on the Iranian officer, Esper writes that he told Milley he would do nothing without a written order from Trump.“There was no way I was going to unilaterally take such an action,” he writes, “particularly one fraught with a range of legal, diplomatic, political and military implications, not to mention that it could plunge us into war with Iran.”He also says the O’Brien call to Milley in late August was “the last time something involving Iran seriously came up before the election”.TopicsBooksIranMiddle East and north AfricaDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS national securitynewsReuse this content More

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    I warned national guard of possible coup, Trump defense secretary says

    I warned national guard of possible coup, Trump defense secretary saysMark Esper writes in new memoir of how worried he was that Trump would try to use US military to hold on to power A week before election day 2020, the US secretary of defense was so worried that Donald Trump would seek to involve the military in the election in an attempt to hold on to power, he told the general commanding the US national guard to notify him of any communication from anyone at all at the White House.Trump called top aides including Pence ‘losers’ as 2020 protests raged, book saysRead more“Without being too explicit,” Mark Esper writes in a new memoir, “my message was clear: the US military was not going to get involved in the election, no matter who directed it. I would intercede.”Such an intercession, Esper writes, would involve trying to persuade Trump not to use the military to hold on to power, then if necessary Esper would resign, appeal to Republicans in Congress and hold a press conference to appeal to the American people directly.Esper thought Trump might order actions such as seizing ballot boxes in key states. Ultimately, Trump did not attempt to use the military to influence the election, which he lost to Joe Biden. He did seek to overturn the result by other means.Esper was fired by Trump on 9 November 2020, six days after the election.He details the extraordinary steps he felt compelled to take before that in a new book, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Esper devotes considerable space to his work with Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, to stymie Trump’s attempts to use the military for political purposes, either in military strikes against Iran or in Syria – or even Mexico – or at home, by invoking the Insurrection Act against protesters for racial justice.Trump’s request that such protesters be shot in the legs, and Esper’s account of his resistance to it, has been reported elsewhere. The protests died down but Esper says the two most senior Pentagon figures remained concerned Trump could seek to use the military domestically, to tilt power his way.Esper describes a meeting at the Pentagon with Milley and the national guard chief, Gen Daniel Hokanson, on 30 October, “the last Friday before the election”.The “ostensible purpose of the meeting”, Esper says, given it was visible to anyone who could see his calendar, was an update on national guard military police units placed on alert to placate Trump during the protests for racial justice.But with regard to the election, Esper says, “this was a serious moment”.He says he told Gen Hokanson: “If at any point in the coming days – before, during or after the election – you get a call from anyone at the White House, take it, acknowledge the message, and call me immediately. The same rule applies if you hear of any TAGS [national guard state adjutant generals] or governors getting a similar call.”Esper says he also asked Hokanson “to figure out a discreet way to get this last part out, which he said he would”.Esper writes that as the only civilian between the president and the military, he was concerned the White House might “try to circumvent me to do something inappropriate” and “wanted to be ready for anything”.“The whole point of my game plan – the reason that I had taken so much crap over the last several months – was to be in this position, at this moment, to act. The essence of democracy was free and fair elections, followed by the peaceful transition of power.”Milley, he writes, told him he and the other joint chiefs would “resign if pressed to break their oath” and involve the military in the election. Esper says he did not want to allow the generals “to be put in such a compromising position, especially if a presidential order was legal but grossly wrong or inappropriate.“… If such an order came from the White House, my immediate recourse would be to demand a meeting with the president. I would want to hear and understand the directive straight from him, to offer alternative solutions if such were possible, and to voice my opposition face-to-face if he was unyielding. If I was unsuccessful I would be forced to resign on the spot in protest. But that wouldn’t be the end of the line for me.”Esper writes that he would have called senior Republicans on Capitol Hill to ask them to intercede with Trump, then staged a press conference “where I informed the country about all that had transpired and continued to unfold.Trump the hero for anti-abortion movement after bending supreme court his wayRead more“I would present my best case and make an appeal to the American people, their elected leaders in Congress, and the institutions of government to intervene. The point would be to buy time and put pressure on the president to stand down.”As Esper writes, election day, 3 November, “came and went without any incident involving the armed forces. Thank God.” He says he was relieved that though the contest was not called until the following weekend, Biden’s lead was clear.Esper also says he “never imagined” what came next: Trump’s attempt to overturn the election through lies about electoral fraud and coordination with Republicans in Congress and other rightwing groups and advisers, culminating on 6 January 2021 in the storming of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.The attack on the Capitol has been linked to seven deaths and has led to more than 800 charges. But it failed to stop certification of Biden’s win. Having been fired after the election, Esper watched the attack on TV.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpUS militaryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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    Biden’s record defense budget draws progressive ire over spending priorities

    Biden’s record defense budget draws progressive ire over spending prioritiesPresident’s $813bn proposal is a 4% increase for the Pentagon which already spends more than the next 11 countries combined When Joe Biden released his annual budget proposal last week, one number in particular jumped out to progressives: $813bn. That is how much Biden is calling to spend on national defense in the US in the coming fiscal year. If approved, that number would represent the largest defense budget that America has ever seen.US presidents’ budget proposals are generally considered to be reflections of their policy priorities rather than realistic estimates of final spending allocations. If Biden’s call for a 4% increase in defense spending was meant to signal his policy priorities, progressives wasted no time in telling the president that his priorities are backwards.The US should cut the Pentagon budget to fund social | Emma Claire FoleyRead moreProgressive lawmakers have fiercely criticized the proposed defense budget, arguing that the US already spends far too much on its military and needs to invest more in domestic programs. But the war in Ukraine has complicated progressives’ arguments and given Republicans an opening to demand even more money for the military.Just hours after the White House announced its budget proposal on Monday, leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus released a statement attacking Biden’s plan to increase defense spending and opening up a familiar split in the party.“It is simply unacceptable that after the conclusion of our longest war and during a period of Democratic control of both chambers of Congress, the president is proposing record high military spending,” said the CPC chair, Pramila Jayapal, and former chairs Mark Pocan and Barbara Lee.“Appropriators and advocates are constantly called to answer for how we will afford spending on lowering costs and expanding access to healthcare, housing, childcare services, on fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, and on combating climate change – but such concerns evaporate when it comes to the Pentagon’s endlessly growing, unaudited budget.”We do not need to raise the defense budget by another $31 billion. It’s time to make investments into our communities — not into a defense budget that is already larger than the next 11 countries combined. pic.twitter.com/2nUpMpNt6E— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) March 28, 2022
    Bernie Sanders, who chairs the Senate budget committee, echoed the CPC’s concerns, saying on Monday, “At a time when we are already spending more on the military than the next 11 countries combined, no we do not need a massive increase in the defense budget.”So far, the White House has stood by its request, insisting the increased funding will allow the US to better defend its international interests and assist Ukraine’s battle against Russia’s military assault.“As I have said many times, we need resources matched to strategy, strategy matched to policy and policy matched to the will of the American people,” the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said. “This budget gives us the resources we need to deliver on that promise.”And even as progressives urge Biden to curb funding for the military, the president is simultaneously facing criticism from the right for not proposing an even higher defense spending hike in response to the war in Ukraine.“The world is a dangerous place and growing more dangerous by the day,” the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Monday. “Amid all this, the White House has proposed no meaningful increase in resources for protecting innocent Americans, promoting our interests, supporting our partners, assisting Ukraine, or replenishing our stockpiles.”Progressives have pushed for years to lower US defense spending, but the devastation in Ukraine has added a new challenge to their efforts. Polling indicates that a majority of Americans believe Biden has not been tough enough in his response to Russia’s aggression, which has added fuel to Republicans’ demands for more military funding.But progressives are not abandoning their campaign, instead arguing that the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrates how US military dollars would be better spent elsewhere.“I think it’s a political challenge, but it’s not an actual budgetary challenge. This increase in money is not about Ukraine. This is about spending more on the US military-industrial complex,” said Robert Weissman, president of the progressive group Public Citizen. “The United States already spends more than 10 times what Russia does on its military. And that expenditure, obviously, didn’t deter Russia from invading Ukraine.”Even as Republicans point to the war in Ukraine to advocate for more defense spending, it is worth remembering that most of Biden’s budget proposal was crafted before the Russian invasion.Dr Travis Sharp, budget studies director at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the requested funding increase is more a reflection of how record-high US inflation has affected government agencies’ finances rather than the impact of the crisis in Ukraine.“Providing a higher level of defense spending does help to correct for some of the decreasing buying power as a result of inflation,” Sharp said. “If you didn’t provide a higher level of defense spending, then you would be trying to support the same-sized military with less money, so that would force you to make some hard trade-offs.”However, progressives reject inflation-based arguments for increasing the Pentagon’s budget, saying the Pentagon has consistently failed to account for how it spends its funds and should not be trusted with even more money.“An agency that can’t pass an audit needs to do a little bit more homework before we can be honest about what the impacts of inflation are,” said Stephen Miles, president of the progressive group Win Without War. He added, “Republicans don’t seem particularly concerned about the impacts of inflation on any other part of the budget, besides the military.”As the number of US coronavirus deaths nears 1 million and the world faces the grim realities of climate change, it was “unconscionable” to demand more funding for the military, Miles said.“The threats we face in the 21st century are primarily not going to be solved by spending more money at the Pentagon,” he told the Guardian.For Sharp, the Pentagon’s significant budget is a reflection of America’s military commitments around the world and its strategy to maintain strong alliances with key foreign partners. He suggested that, in order for progressives to be successful in their push to lower defense spending, they need to make a pitch for a new kind of American foreign policy.“If you really want to reduce the size of US defense spending, then you need to go after the strategy,” Sharp said. “If you pare back the strategy, reduce the operational tempo, then the dollars will decline proportionately.”TopicsUS militaryBiden administrationUS politicsDemocratsanalysisReuse this content More

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    The US government is deploying robot dogs to the Mexican border. Seriously? | Moustafa Bayoumi

    The US government is deploying robot dogs to the Mexico border. Seriously?Moustafa BayoumiAs if the border isn’t surveilled and militarized enough, the Department of Homeland Security wants to go full Black Mirror Are we all doomed to live in Charlie Brooker’s techno-dystopia? In Metalhead, an episode from season four of his famed Netflix show Black Mirror, a woman navigates an austere post-apocalyptic landscape while running for her life from a murderous robot dog. What makes the mechanized beast in the show particularly frightening is the lethal combination of the single-mindedness of a computer program with the extreme ferocity of an angry, feral dog.But it’s just TV, right? Not exactly. The military, technological, security and political classes in this country appear united in their desire to make robot dogs part of our future, and we should all be worried.The latest example came on 1 February, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release titled “Robot Dogs Take Another Step Towards Deployment at the Border”. DHS dressed up their statement with the kind of adorable language made to warm the hearts of dog lovers everywhere. “The Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is offering US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) a helping hand (or ‘paw’),” read the release. Isn’t that cute? A picture of the “four-legged ground drone” accompanied the release, and the “Automated Ground Surveillance Vehicle”, as it’s called, looked remarkably (and scarily) similar to the monstrous quadrupeds seen in the Black Mirror episode. But let’s not judge based on appearance. The real issue is that we keep rushing to militarized and technological solutions to what ultimately are human and political questions, creating more problems along the way.These particular robot dogs are made by Ghost Robotics, which claims that its 100lb machine was “bred” to scale “all types of natural terrain including sand, rocks and hills, as well as human-built environments, like stairs”. Each robot dog is outfitted with a bevy of sensors and able to transmit real-time video and information feeds. The devices are not yet in operation on the US-Mexico border, but a testing and evaluation program is under way in El Paso, Texas.To listen to DHS, it all sounds so utterly charming and so very next-gen – until you realize that what we’re talking about is the further encroachment of government surveillance on our daily lives. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, “people who live along the border are some of the most heavily surveilled people in the United States. A massive amalgamation of federal, state and local law enforcement and national security agencies are flying drones, putting up cameras and just generally attempting to negate civil liberties – capturing the general goings-on of people who live and work in proximity to the border.”Then there’s the question of lethal force. These specific ground drones may not be armed, but Ghost Robotics is already infamous for the combination of robot dog and robot rifle. In 2021, small arms manufacturer Sword International (must these companies choose such dystopian names?) outfitted a robot dog from Ghost Robotics with a custom-made weapon, called a “special purpose unmanned rifle” or Spur. This darling invention was unveiled at the annual conference of the Association of the United States Army.Incidentally, US policy not only does not “prohibit the development or employment” of killer robots (officially known as “lethal autonomous weapon systems,” or Laws) but also opposes any international preemptive ban. Meanwhile, as the Congressional Research Service notes, Israel has already exported what many consider a lethal autonomous weapon system to Chile, China, India, South Korea and Turkey. We’re fast running out of time for robust international dialogue on this issue.Domestically, the short history of the use of the robot dogs in our cities is also troubling. The Honolulu police department used about $150,000 of pandemic funding to buy their robot dog, which they then used to scan the eyes and take the temperatures of unhoused people to check for symptoms of Covid. The practice raised the alarms of advocates who said the practice was fundamentally dehumanizing. Needless to say, no housed person was treated that way.And after public outcry in 2021, the New York police department returned its $94,200 robot dog, Digidog. That robot was deployed to a home invasion in the Bronx and to a tense situation in a public housing building in Manhattan, attracting the angry notice of New Yorkers. Once again, many Black and brown New Yorkers felt over-policed, over-surveilled and under-resourced.“You can’t give me a living wage, you can’t raise a minimum wage, you can’t give me affordable housing; I’m working hard and I can’t get paid leave, I can’t get affordable childcare,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman in a video he posted to Twitter. “Instead we got money, taxpayer money, going to robot dogs?”Bowman is hardly alone. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized both the NYPD’s robot dog in 2021 and the recent news of robot dogs at the border. “It’s shameful how both parties fight tooth + nail to defend their ability to pump endless public money into militarization,” she recently tweeted. “From tanks in police depts to corrupt military contracts, funding this violence is bipartisan + non-controversial, yet healthcare + housing isn’t. It’s BS.”She’s right, of course, as is Bowman. Where exactly are our priorities?The Biden administration has a chance to stop this program in its tracks before the border becomes even more of a militarized, technological dystopia. We’re so easily mesmerized by the massive capabilities of technology, but the fact is that techno-military solutions to human problems too often create more problems than they solve. Just ask the unhoused populations in Honolulu, the urban poor in New York, and – if the program’s not cancelled – asylum seekers on the border. These are the people whose daily realities are increasingly being militarized by this technology. And because they are vulnerable and without political clout, they’re the ones closest to living in a Black Mirror episode. Meanwhile, the rest of us are sold a hi-tech bill of goods that unites everything that Americans love – technology, dogs and guns – and told to believe it’s all for the best.Look, I love my tech and all it can do as much as the next person, but when our embrace of technology reduces rather than enhances our dignity, then we have a problem. Humans deserve better. And frankly, so do dogs – even robot ones.
    Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is a professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York
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    US Senate panel close to approving ‘mother of all sanctions’ against Russia

    US Senate panel close to approving ‘mother of all sanctions’ against RussiaNegotiations for package of sanctions against Putin ‘on the one-yard line’, says Bob Menendez of foreign relations committee

    Opinion: Russia’s phony war is playing out as surreal theatre
    The leaders of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Sunday they were on the verge of approving “the mother of all sanctions” against Vladimir Putin, warning there would be no appeasement as the Russian president contemplates an invasion of Ukraine.UK to bring in measures to allow for tougher sanctions on Russia, says TrussRead more“We cannot have a Munich moment again,” the panel’s Democratic chair, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, told CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the 1938 agreement by which allies ceded parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, believing it would stave off war.“Putin will not stop if he believes the west will not respond,” Menendez said. “We saw what he did in 2008 in Georgia, we saw what he did in 2014 in pursuit of Crimea. He will not stop.”Menendez said he believed bipartisan negotiations for severe sanctions were “on the one-yard line”, despite disagreements with Republicans over whether measures should be imposed before or after any Russian invasion. The UK government promised to ramp up sanctions against Putin and his associates.Tensions on the Ukraine border continued to escalate with Reuters reporting the Russian military build-up included supplies of blood in anticipation of casualties. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told Fox News Sunday: “Putin has a lot of options available to him if he wants to further invade Ukraine, and he can execute some of those options imminently. It could happen really, honestly, at any time.”Seeking to show bipartisan resolve, Menendez gave CNN a joint interview with his committee’s ranking Republican, James Risch of Wisconsin.Menendez said: “There is an incredible bipartisan resolve for support of Ukraine, and an incredibly strong bipartisan resolve to have severe consequences for Russia if it invades, and in some cases for what it has already done.“We are building on the legislation that both Senator Risch wrote independently, and I wrote, which I called the mother of all sanctions. It’s to include a variety of elements, massive sanctions against the most significant Russian banks, crippling to their economy, Russia sovereign debt. These are sanctions beyond any that we have ever levied before.”Risch said talks had been a “24 hour-a-day effort for the last several days” in an attempt to reach agreement over sanctions timing and content, and that he was optimistic.“That’s a work in progress,” Risch said, when pressed over discussions about pre-emptive sanctions or measures to be taken in the event of an invasion. “[But] I’m more than cautiously optimistic that when we get back to DC tomorrow that we’re going to be moving forward.”Menendez said he believed western allies did not have to wait to start penalising Putin.“There are some sanctions that could take place up front because of what Russia has already done, cyber attacks on Ukraine, false flag operations, the efforts to undermine the Ukrainian government internally,” he said.“But then the devastating sanctions that ultimately would crush Russia’s economy, and the continuing lethal aid that we are going to send, means Putin has to decide how many body bags of Russian sons are going to return to Russia.“The sanctions we’re talking about would come later on if he invades, some sanctions would come up front for what has been done already, but the lethal aid will travel no matter what.”Risch criticized the stance of several far-right figures, including the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie, who have questioned why the US is backing Ukraine and opposing Russia. Carlson said “it makes sense” that Putin “just wants to keep his western border secure” by opposing moves by Ukraine to join Nato.“We side always with countries that are democracies, and certainly there isn’t going to be a truce committed in that regard,” Risch said.“But the people who were saying that we shouldn’t be engaged in this at all are going to be singing a very different tune when they go to fill up their car with gas, if indeed there is an invasion. There are going to be sanctions that are going to be crippling to Russia, it is going to cripple their oil production. And as we all know, Russia is simply a gas station that is thinly disguised masquerading as a country. It is going to have a devastating effect on the economy around the world.”UK ready to commit extra forces to Nato allies as Russia tension mountsRead moreOn NBC’s Meet the Press, Dick Durbin, co-chair of the Senate Ukraine caucus, addressed concerns aired by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday that growing rhetoric over the crisis was causing panic and destabilising his country’s economy.His comments followed a call with Joe Biden that Ukraine officials said “did not go well”.“Any decision about the future of Ukraine will be made by Ukraine,” said Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. “It won’t be made in Moscow or in Washington, in the European Union or in Belarus. It’s their future and their fate and their decision as far as that is concerned.”The caucus co-chair, Republican Rob Portman of Ohio, who is also on the foreign relations committee, told NBC he believed Putin had underestimated the unity of Nato and others.“One thing Vladimir Putin has done successfully is he has strengthened the transatlantic alliance and countries around the world who are looking at this and saying, ‘We cannot let this stand, we cannot let this happen’,” Portman said.“For the first time in nearly 80 years we could have a major and very bloody conflict in Europe unless we stand up together and push back, and so far so good.”TopicsUkraineRussiaUS foreign policyUS national securityUS militaryBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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    Ukraine: US puts 8,500 troops on alert to deploy to bolster Nato – video

    The US military has put up to 8,500 troops on alert to be ready to deploy to Europe, potentially at very short notice, should the Nato alliance activate a rapid response force. It’s the latest sign of US resolve in the face of a Russian military buildup near Ukraine. The Pentagon spokesman John Kirby stressed that no decision had been made on whether to deploy the troops, and that any such deployment would separate from intra-European movements of US troops to Nato’s eastern flank, to reassure nervous allies. The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told US citizens in Ukraine that ‘now is the time to leave’

    US puts 8,500 troops on heightened alert amid fears over Ukraine
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    The Biden doctrine: Ukraine gaffe sums up mixed year of foreign policy

    The Biden doctrine: Ukraine gaffe sums up mixed year of foreign policy On Russia and Putin, the president said the quiet part loud. Re-engagement has been welcomed but the exit from Afghanistan was a disaster. Analysts see much to do to rebuild US credibilityJoe Biden marked his first anniversary in office with a gaffe over Ukraine that undid weeks of disciplined messaging and diplomatic preparation.Russian ships, tanks and troops on the move to Ukraine as peace talks stallRead moreThe president’s suggestion that a “minor incursion” by Russia might split Nato over how to respond sent the White House into frantic damage limitation mode.Officials insisted Biden had been referring to cyber attacks and paramilitary activities and not Russian troops crossing the border. That failed to entirely calm nerves in Kyiv and other European capitals, especially as Biden also raised eyebrows by predicting that Vladimir Putin would “move in” to Ukraine because “he has to do something” and would probably prevail.The analysis of Nato’s weaknesses and Putin’s intentions was no doubt widely shared but Biden had said the quiet part loud, contradicting what his own officials had been saying. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, had just been telling Foreign Policy that one of the great successes of the Biden administration was that “the 30 allies of Nato [were] speaking with one voice in the Russia-Ukraine crisis”.Aides who have shadowed Biden through his long career as senator and vice-president are used to his prolix ways, his tendency to draw on his deep foreign policy expense to over-explain, but the stakes are immeasurably greater as a president, trying to stare down Putin as Europe stands on the threshold of war.The stumble distracted from some of the foreign policy achievements of Biden’s first year – the mending of transatlantic ties, the bolstering of US support for the embattled government in Kyiv and the development of a consistent policy towards Moscow – which combined a openness to talks with a readiness to inflict punitive measures and a refusal to be divided from Nato allies.None of those gains were a given in US foreign policy after four years of Donald Trump, a president who frequently put domestic political and business advantage ahead of strategic national interests, particularly when it came to Russia. Mending alliances, returning to multilateralism and restoring predictability to US policy after the volatile Trump era is widely regarded as Biden’s greatest success so far in foreign policy.His claim on taking office that “America is back” was backed up by a quick deal to extend the New Start treaty in Russia and thereby salvage the only major arms control agreement to survive Trump. The US rejoined the Paris climate accord and the United Nations Human Rights Council, re-engaged with major powers in nuclear talks with Iran, and convened a virtual Summit for Democracy in December.All those steps were in line with a broad strategy which Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based Institute of International Affairs, describes as a Biden doctrine.“I think it’s a strategic reorientation towards competition/conflict with China and, the other side of that coin, strengthening relationships with partners in Europe and in Asia, both bilaterally and multilaterally,” Tocci said. “And relying less on the military instrument in order to pursue US foreign policy goals.”The Ukraine stumble was not the first time that strategy has been impaired by its execution. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was intended to be a decisive break with the past, extricating the US from its longest war so it could focus on its most important geopolitical challenge, the rapid rise of China.The departure turned to chaos when the Afghan army, which the US had spent $83m and 20 years trying to build, collapsed in a few days in the face of a Taliban offensive. The scenes of desperate Afghans trying to cling to departing US planes, some dying in the attempt, are an inescapable part of Biden’s legacy.Biden has argued he was boxed in by the Doha agreement the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in February 2020, under which the US was due to leave by May 2021. Biden was able to stretch that deadline by four months but maintained that staying any longer would have led to renewed attacks on US troops.Nathan Sales, an acting under secretary of state in the Trump administration, argued that the Doha deal was no longer binding on Biden, and he could have left a force to maintain US leverage.“When one side of an agreement breaches it serially and flagrantly like the Taliban did, I think the Biden administration would have been well within its rights to say: ‘We’re not bound by it either,’” said Sales, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.Current US officials argue that whether the US declared the Taliban had been in violation or not, there would have been renewed attacks on US troops, forcing a decision to cut and run or send large-scale reinforcements. The status quo, they say, was not sustainable.Putin, a ‘rogue male’ on the rampage, threatens to start a war no one wants | Simon Tisdall Read moreEven considering the constraints imposed by the previous administration, the withdrawal was a fiasco. US planners failed to anticipate the speed of the collapse even though a government watchdog, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, had warned in 2021 that without US contractors to service planes and helicopters, the Afghan air force would no longer be able to function, depriving troops on the ground of a key advantage.For Afghans who worked with the US and its allies, and for the country’s women and girls, the departure seemed like a betrayal, raising a serious question mark over the administration’s claims to have restored human rights to the heart of US foreign policy.Its record in that regard was already mixed.On one hand, the administration had taken a firm stand against China’s mass persecution of Muslim Uyghurs, declaring it a genocide. Furthermore, the assembly of a coalition of some 130 countries to establish a global minimum tax was, according to Matt Duss, foreign affairs adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, “a step toward addressing global economic inequality which is one of the drivers of conflict and authoritarianism”.“It’s an important first step and a courageous one,” Duss said. He also pointed to the sanctions against surveillance companies like the Israeli NSO group, whose software was used by authoritarian regimes to target dissidents.“​​That was a very consequential move, and there has been a massive pressure campaign trying to get them to roll it back, but they’ve stood firm,” he said.However, the steps taken against the Saudi monarchy for the heavy civilian toll from its air war in Yemen and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi felt well short of what human rights campaigners and progressive Democrats had hoped for. The Biden administration continued to sell Riyadh substantial quantities of advanced weaponry.“We’ve basically returned to the traditional US approach of supporting human rights in countries that don’t buy our weapons,” Duss said. “I very much hope that changes.”‘A lot of bad blood’Another way in which the manner of the US exit from Afghanistan undermined the administration’s wider objectives was by alienating European allies, who felt left out of a decision they were obliged to follow.“The pull-out really caused a lot of bad blood unnecessarily,” Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said. “You can call it the root cause of unhappiness within the alliance.”The formation in September of Aukus, a partnership with the UK and Australia to help the latter acquire nuclear-powered submarines, was another sweeping move in the pivot towards Asia.Confusion over UK claim that Putin plans coup in UkraineRead moreBut the protagonists had omitted to inform France, who discovered on the same day that their contract to sell Australia diesel submarines had been cancelled. Biden was forced to acknowledge the “clumsy” way it had been handled, and the rift clouded bilateral relations for months.Putin’s threat to Ukraine has helped rally the transatlantic alliance but as Biden revealed in his own public reflections, there are still serious divisions below the surface, limiting his room for manoeuvre.The president’s freedom of action on other global issues, like making progress in climate action or finding a nuclear compromise with Iran, will be hindered still further if Republicans gain control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections. In that case, the administration’s record until now, mixed as it is, may prove to be the high point of the Biden doctrine.TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS foreign policyUS national securityUS militaryUS politicsUkrainefeaturesReuse this content More