Russia Was Hell-Bent on Keeping Ukraine Out of NATO

 

Agreement on Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation and Member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, December 17, 2021:

The Russian Federation and the member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), hereinafter referred to as the Parties, reaffirming their aspiration to improve relations and deepen mutual understanding, acknowledging that an effective response to contemporary challenges and threats to security in our interdependent world requires joint efforts of all the Parties, determined to prevent dangerous military activity and therefore reduce the possibility of incidents between their armed forces, noting that the security interests of each Party require better multilateral cooperation, more political and military stability, predictability, and transparency, reaffirming their commitment to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, the 1997 Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between the Russian Federation and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the 1994 Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security, the 1999 Charter for European Security, and the Rome Declaration "Russia-NATO Relations: a New Quality" signed by the Heads of State and Government of the Russian Federation and NATO member States in 2002, have agreed as follows:

Article 1

The Parties shall guide in their relations by the principles of cooperation, equal and indivisible security. They shall not strengthen their security individually, within international organizations, military alliances or coalitions at the expense of the security of other Parties.

The Parties shall settle all international disputes in their mutual relations by peaceful means and refrain from the use or threat of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

The Parties shall not create conditions or situations that pose or could be perceived as a threat to the national security of other Parties.

The Parties shall exercise restraint in military planning and conducting exercises to reduce risks of eventual dangerous situations in accordance with their obligations under international law, including those set out in intergovernmental agreements on the prevention of incidents at sea outside territorial waters and in the airspace above, as well as in intergovernmental agreements on the prevention of dangerous military activities.

Article 2

In order to address issues and settle problems, the Parties shall use the mechanisms of urgent bilateral or multilateral consultations, including the NATO-Russia Council.

The Parties shall regularly and voluntarily exchange assessments of contemporary threats and security challenges, inform each other about military exercises and maneuvers, and main provisions of their military doctrines. All existing mechanisms and tools for confidence-building measures shall be used in order to ensure transparency and predictability of military activities.

Telephone hotlines shall be established to maintain emergency contacts between the Parties.

Article 3

The Parties reaffirm that they do not consider each other as adversaries.

The Parties shall maintain dialogue and interaction on improving mechanisms to prevent incidents on and over the high seas (primarily in the Baltics and the Black Sea region).

Article 4

The Russian Federation and all the Parties that were member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as of 27 May 1997, respectively, shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other States in Europe in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997. With the consent of all the Parties such deployments can take place in exceptional cases to eliminate a threat to security of one or more Parties.

Article 5

The Parties shall not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles in areas allowing them to reach the territory of the other Parties.

Article 6

All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States.

Article 7

The Parties that are member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization shall not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine as well as other States in the Eastern Europe, in the South Caucasus and in Central Asia.

In order to exclude incidents the Russian Federation and the Parties that are member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization shall not conduct military exercises or other military activities above the brigade level in a zone of agreed width and configuration on each side of the border line of the Russian Federation and the states in a military alliance with it, as well as Parties that are member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Article 8

This Agreement shall not affect and shall not be interpreted as affecting the primary responsibility of the Security Council of the United Nations for maintaining international peace and security, nor the rights and obligations
of the Parties under the Charter of the United Nations.


Article 9

This Agreement shall enter into force from the date of deposit of the instruments of ratification, expressing consent to be bound by it, with the Depositary by more than a half of the signatory States. With respect to a State that deposited its instrument of ratification at a later date, this Agreement shall enter into force from the date of its deposit.

Each Party to this Agreement may withdraw from it by giving appropriate notice to the Depositary. This Agreement shall terminate for such Party [30] days after receipt of such notice by the Depositary.

This Agreement has been drawn up in Russian, English and French, all texts being equally authentic, and shall be deposited in the archive of the Depositary, which is the Government of ...


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"But who will now be able to get the votes necessary to become House speaker?"- Heather Cox Richardson

 

Eight extremist members of the Republican congressional conference demonstrated that they could stop their party, and the government, from functioning. Indeed, that’s about all those members have ever managed to do. Political scientist Lindsey Cormack noted on social media that Representatives Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) have managed only to name a single facility each; Representatives Ken Buck (R-CO), Tim Burchett (R-TN), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Matt Rosendale (R-MT) have each sponsored no successful bills; and Bob Good (R-VA) has sent one thing to the president, who vetoed it. 

They are not interested in governing; they are interested in stopping the government, apparently working with right-wing agitator Steve Bannon to sink the speakership of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Indeed, the only two significant legislative achievements the Republicans have made since they took control of the House in January 2023 were raising the debt ceiling and passing a continuing resolution to fund the government for 45 days. In both of those cases, the measures passed because Democrats provided more votes for them than the Republicans did. 

The former House speaker was one of many Republicans who tried to turn this internal party debacle into the fault of the Democrats, although he apparently offered them no reason to come to his support and made it clear he would continue to boost the extremists. 

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented: “The idea that D[emocrat]s should have bailed out McCarthy is a codicil of the larger logic of DC punditry in which R[epublican] bad behavior/destruction is assumed, a baseline like weather, and D[emocrat]s managing the consequences of that behavior is a given.” Journalist James Fallows agreed that this understanding “is so deeply engrained in mainstream coverage and ‘framing’ of DC that it doesn’t need to be said out loud.” 

Aaron Fritschner, the deputy chief of staff for Representative Don Beyer (D-VA), was more specific, calling the idea the Democrats were refusing to support McCarthy out of spite “silly nonsense.” He noted that on Saturday, the House was preparing to shut down when McCarthy sprung on the Democrats a vote on the continuing resolution the Democrats had never seen. “My immediate read was he wanted and expected us to vote against [it] so we would be blamed for a shutdown,” Fritschner wrote. The Democrats instead lined up behind it. 

Then, after it passed, McCarthy said to a reporter that the Democrats were to blame for the threatened shutdown in the first place. “People want us to give the guy credit for stopping a shutdown but it is still not clear to me right now sitting here writing this that he *intended* to do that,” Fritschner wrote. 

Meanwhile, Fritschner continued, McCarthy was making it clear that he would “steer us directly back into the crazy cuts and abortion restrictions, the Freedom Caucus setting the agenda, breaking his deal with Biden, and driving us towards a shutdown in November,” refusing to make any reassurances that he would try to work with Democrats. As Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News reported: “Mccarthys allies say they will NOT negotiate with democrats. Even as some house Dems privately say they want to help the California Republican.” 

“This came down to trust, and that's the word I saw and heard from House Democrats more than any other word. We did not trust Kevin McCarthy and he gave us no reason to. He could have done so (and I suspect saved his gavel) through fairly simple actions. He chose not to do that,” Fritschner wrote. 

Adam Cancryn, Jennifer Haberkorn, Lara Seligman, and Sam Stein of Politico confirmed that both McCarthy’s allies and opponents found him untrustworthy, noting that when negotiating with President Joe Biden on “a particularly sensitive matter,” the speaker privately told allies that he found the president “sharp and substantive in their conversations” while in public he made fun of Biden’s age and mental abilities. That contradiction “left a deep impression on the White House,” the reporters said. 

But who will now be able to get the votes necessary to become House speaker? 

It seems reasonable to believe that the Democrats will continue to vote as a bloc for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), leaving the Republicans back where they were in January, when it took them 15 ballots to agree on McCarthy. Now, though, they are even angrier at each other than they were then. "Frankly, one has to wonder whether the House is governable at all," Representative Dusty Johnson (R-SD) told Andrew Solender of Axios. 

Two Republicans have thrown their hats into the ring: Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Both are significantly to the right of McCarthy, and both carry significant baggage. Jordan was involved in a major college molestation scandal and refused to answer a subpoena concerning his participation in the attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Scalise has described himself as like Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke “but without the baggage.”

Republicans from less extreme districts, including the 18 who represent districts Biden won in 2020, are not going to want to go before voters in 2024 with the kinds of voting records Jordan or Scalise would force on them. 

The fight over the speakership is unlikely to be quick, and there is urgent business to be done. Congress must fund the government—the continuing resolution that made Gaetz call for McCarthy’s ouster runs out shortly before Thanksgiving. Even more immediate is funding for Ukraine to help its military defend the country against Russia’s invasion. That funding is very popular with members of both parties in both the House and Senate, but Jordan has said he is against moving forward with that funding, believing the extremists’ wish list is more pressing...

—Heather Cox Richardson

Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/04/white-house-mccarthy-downfall-00119933

https://www.axios.com/2023/10/04/house-republicans-kevin-mccarthy-removal-speaker

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/succession-wingnut-world-edition

 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/04/us/politics/bannon-republicans-gaetz-mace.html

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-fleet-retreats-ukraine-is-winning-the-battle-of-the-black-sea/

https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-colleagues-call-immediate

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/04/politics/ukraine-funding-house-speaker-race/index.html

Twitter (X):

https://x.com/Fritschner/status/1709559909488976279?s=20

DCInbox/status/1709589473573392484

1709594489868710108

joshtpm/status/1709568786389443026

JamesFallows/status/1709576559051288860

JakeSherman/status/1709180583815864595

MicaSoellnerDC/status/1709599144447279455

 

John Kelly goes on the record to confirm several disturbing stories about Trump

 

John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN.

Kelly set the record straight with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors attacking US service members and veterans, listing a number of objectionable comments Kelly witnessed Trump make firsthand.

“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”

In the statement, Kelly is confirming, on the record, a number of details in a 2020 story in The Atlantic by editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, including Trump turning to Kelly on Memorial Day 2017, as they stood among those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, and saying, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

Those details also include Trump’s inability to understand why the American public respects former prisoners of war and those shot down in combat. Then-candidate Trump of course said in front of a crowd in 2015 that former Vietnam POW Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, was “not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” But behind closed doors, sources told Goldberg, this lack of understanding went on to cause Trump to repeatedly call McCain a “loser” and to refer to former President George H. W. Bush, who was also shot down as a Navy pilot in World War II, as a “loser.”

CNN reached out to the Trump campaign Monday afternoon, telling officials there that a former administration official had confirmed, on the record, a number of details about the 2020 Atlantic story, without naming Kelly, and seeking comment. The Trump campaign responded by insulting the character and credibility of retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, who had nothing to do with this story. An updated statement from a Trump campaign spokesperson on Tuesday said, “John Kelly has totally clowned himself with these debunked stories he’s made up because he didn’t serve his president well while working as chief of staff.”

The Atlantic article also described Trump’s 2018 visit to France for the centennial anniversary of the end of World War I, where, according to several senior staff members, Trump said he did not want to visit the graves of American soldiers buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris because, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” During that same trip to France, the article reported, Trump said the 1,800 US Marines killed in the Belleau Wood were “suckers” for getting killed.

And Kelly’s statement adds context to a story in the book “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, in which Trump, after a separate trip to France in 2017, tells Kelly he wants no wounded veterans in a military parade he’s trying to have planned in his honor. Inspired by the Bastille Day parade, except for the section of the parade featuring wounded French veterans in wheelchairs, Trump tells Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade.”

“Those are the heroes,” Kelly said. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are – and they are buried over in Arlington.”

“I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.”

The story squares with another recent story from Goldberg in The Atlantic, a profile of retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, in which Trump does not react well to seeing severely wounded Army Captain Luis Avila singing “God Bless America” at a welcome event for the new chairman. “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”

Kelly’s statement also refers to a remark Trump made in response to that same article, which describes Milley, in the closing days of the Trump presidency in 2020, receiving intelligence that the Chinese military feared Trump was about to order a military strike on it. Milley, in a call authorized by Trump administration officials, reassured his Chinese counterparts that such a strike was not going to happen.

That call was first reported in 2021 in the book “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, but Trump said this past week on his social media site that the call was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”

Asked for reaction to the suggestion that he deserves execution, Milley told Norah O’Donnell of “60 Minutes” that he wouldn’t “comment directly on those, those things. But I can tell you that this military, this soldier, me, will never turn our back on that Constitution.”

Kelly’s statement to CNN comes days after former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson sat down with CNN in an interview promoting her new book, “Enough,” and warned the public that “Donald Trump is the most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history.”

“Enough,” interestingly, contains a scene in which Hutchinson and then-White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin push back against Goldberg’s 2020 story. Griffin issued a statement to The Atlantic after that story posted denying the report.

Reached for comment over the weekend, Griffin said, “Despite publicly praising the military and claiming to be the most pro-military president, there’s a demonstrable record of Trump bashing the most decorated service members in our country, from Gen. Mattis to Kelly to Milley, to criticizing the wounded or deceased like John McCain. Donald Trump will fundamentally never understand service the way those who have actually served in uniform will, and it’s one of the countless reasons he’s unfit to be commander in chief.”

No other presidential candidate in history has had so many detractors from his inner circle. His former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, told CNN in November 2022, “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”

Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, told CBS in June that “he is a consummate narcissist. And he constantly engages in reckless conduct. … He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests. Our country can’t, you know, can’t be a therapy session for you know, a troubled man like this.”

-Jake Tapper, CNN   

CNN’s Kristen Holmes contributed to this story.

Cassidy Hutchinson on Trump and the Damage Done

 

Cassidy Hutchinson may have done more to place Donald Trump in legal jeopardy than anyone other than Trump himself. By the time the twenty-something deputy to Mark Meadows (Trump’s last chief of staff) completed her first public appearance before the January 6 committee, in June last year, the US had received an up-close-and-personal view of the venom, wrath and malice of the 45th president.

 

Hutchinson “isn’t crazy”, a Trump White House veteran confided to the Guardian before that first hearing. But she is a “time bomb.”

 

When told that he would not be driven to the Capitol to join the rioters, Trump lunged for the steering wheel of his car. He said Mike Pence “deserved” to be hanged for his refusal to overturn the election.

He broke dishes and splattered condiments. Hutchinson “grabbed a towel and started wiping the ketchup off of the wall to help the valet out”. Her testimony was extraordinary. It has also withstood scrutiny.

The Capitol was defaced for the “sake of a lie.” Hutchinson declared, on camera. She placed Trump, Meadows and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, in the middle of it all.

Fifteen months later, however, Trump is both a 91-times charged criminal defendant and the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, tied with, if not ahead of, Joe Biden in the polls.

In Fulton county, Georgia, a grand jury indicted Meadows and Giuliani as well as Trump, for seeking to illegally overturn Biden’s win. As for Hutchinson, she is out with Enough, her memoir.

She shares her life story, pointing a damning finger at the powerful, the guys she once worked for and her own father. She tries to exhale but doesn’t fully succeed. She can’t.

She is likely to be a witness at Trump’s Washington trial on four election subversion charges, slated to kick off the day before Super Tuesday, the key point of the Republican primary next year.

Hutchinson expresses gratitude for life’s opportunities and disgust for what she has seen and endured. Her nameless “dad.” her mother’s first husband, was all too often a no-show in clutch moments.

She considers Paul, the man who followed, to be her “chosen father”. He was there when it counted. Meadows once asked if she had a happy childhood, she writes. She offers a detailed answer.

Hutchinson’s disdain for Trump is on record. Now, too, is her deep disillusionment with Meadows and disgust for Giuliani.

On January 6, “America’s mayor” allegedly preyed upon her. John Eastman, Trump’s legal adviser in his attempted coup, purportedly looked on and smiled.

Over time, Meadows let Hutchinson down, then abandoned her entirely. When the subpoenas began to fly, he left her to fend for herself. He never offered to help, she says, in contrast to how he treated his male deputy, Ben Williamson. To Hutchinson, Meadows extended platitudes as if she were a mass shooting victim.

“Tell her me and Debbie are thinking about her,” he told Williamson.

In her own memoir, Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s last White House press secretary, gushed at Hutchinson: “You were a constant reminder of faith. Thank you for being an inspiring leader for the entire West Wing.”

The contrast in the two women’s post-White House lives is remarkable. McEnany is ensconced at Fox News. Hutchinson gives interviews at home with the shades drawn, worried for her safety.

According to Hutchinson, Meadows ceaselessly sought to endear himself to Trump, a task impossible for anyone other than Ivanka, Trump’s oldest daughter. Early on, Meadows told Hutchinson he would take a bullet for his boss.

“I would do anything … to get him re-elected,” he said.

Months later, Meadows did something: he hid Trump’s Covid from Hutchinson and from the world at large. He knew Trump had fulfilled appearances and taken the debate stage against Biden after testing positive. He did not share that information. Later, when Hutchinson and Meadows were in a limo, she asked if Trump had Covid. Meadows did not answer.

“His silence answered every question I had,” Hutchinson writes now.

She did not sicken and flirt with death, as Chris Christie did after helping prep Trump for the debate. But no apology was forthcoming. All were expected to take the bullet.

Out of office, however, Meadows ratted Trump out, in his own memoir, The Chief’s Chief. Hutchinson cites his book in hers.

 

“Stop the president from leaving,” Meadows says Sean Conley, the White House physician, told him. “He just tested positive for Covid.”

“Mr President,” Meadows says he said, “I’ve got some bad news. You’ve tested positive for Covid-19.” Trump’s reply, the devout Christian writes, “rhyme[d] with ‘Oh spit, you’ve gotta be trucking lidding me”.

When Meadows’s book came out, Trump trashed it as “fake news” and derided Meadows as “fucking stupid”. Meadows concurred. These days, though, he appears to be cooperating with Jack Smith, the special counsel. The prospect of prison can bring clarity. Ask Michael Cohen.

Giuliani and Eastman deny Hutchinson’s description of how the former groped her as the latter smiled. They also threaten to sue but they have larger things to focus on, professions and freedom at risk.

If anyone’s character can be judged by the identities of their enemies, Hutchinson is well placed. Starting with Trump, she has amassed an array of appalling detractors. But she has able folks in her corner.

Liz Cheney, the January 6 vice-chair whose stand against Trump cost her so dearly, is there. Hutchinson’s roster of legal talent, meanwhile, includes Jody Hunt and Bill Jordan. A justice department veteran, Hunt was chief of staff to Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first attorney general.

When news of Enough was breaking, another former Trump legal adviser, Ty Cobb, told the Guardian: “Hutchinson was a very devoted White House employee who worked very very hard. She was proud to serve her country. So sad she had to endure this.”

-Lloyd Green, The Guardian

 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, Arlington Virginia, September 29, 2023

 

“Today is not about anyone up here on this stage…. It’s about something much larger than all of us. It’s about our democracy. It’s about our republic…. It’s about the ideas and values that make up this great experiment in liberty. Those values and ideas are contained within the Constitution of the United States of America, which is the moral North Star for all of us who have the privilege of wearing the cloth of our nation. 

“It is that document…that gives purpose to our service. It is that document that gives purpose to our lives. It is that document that all of us in uniform swear to protect and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

“That has been true across generations, and we in uniform are willing to die to pass that document off to the next generation. So it is that document that gives ultimate purpose to our death. The motto of our country is ‘E Pluribus Unum,’ from the many, come one. We are one nation under God. We are indivisible, with liberty for all. And the motto of our army, for over 200 years…has been ‘This We’ll Defend,’ and the ‘this’ refers to the Constitution….

“You see, we in uniform are unique…among the world's armies. We are unique among the world’s militaries. We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. 

“We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.…

“Those who sacrificed themselves on the altar of freedom in the last two and a half centuries of this country must not have done so in vain. The millions wounded in our nation’s wars did not sacrifice their limbs and shed their blood to see this great experiment in democracy perish from this earth. No. We the United States military will always be true to those that came before us. We will never, under any circumstances, turn our back on our duty….

“From the earliest days, before we were even a nation, our military stood…in the breach, has suffered the crucible of combat, and has stood the watch and defended liberty for all Americans. Each of us signs a blank check to this country to protect our freedom. The blood we spill pays for our freedom of speech. Our blood pays for the right to assemble, our due process, our freedom of the press, our right to vote, and all the other rights and privileges that come with being an American…. 

“We the American people, we the American military, must never turn our back on those that came before us. And we will never turn our back on the Constitution. That is our North Star, that is who we are, and that is why we fight.”

-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, Arlington, Virginia, September 29, 2023