Antiwar.com Blog

On Saturday the Leafs are playing an outdoor game against the Washington Capitals at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. To mark the occasion the team created a jersey with the Royal Canadian Navy’s "Ready, Aye, Ready" motto on it. The website unveiling the sweaters includes a brief history of the RCN and Leafs President Brendan Shanahan said the jerseys were designed to honor"the traditions of the Royal Canadian Navy" whose sailors "stand always ready to defend Canada and proudly safeguard its interests and values whether at home or abroad."

Sounds all maple syrupy, but there are a couple of nagging questions: Whose "interests and values" are we talking about? Should we honor all their traditions?

For example, in 1917 the Royal Bank loaned $200,000 to unpopular Costa Rican dictator Federico Tinoco just as he was about to flee the country. A new government refused to repay, saying the Canadian bank knew Tinoco was likely to steal it. "In 1921," reports Royal Military College historian Sean Maloney in Canadian Gunboat Diplomacy, "Aurora, Patriot and Patrician helped the Royal Bank of Canada satisfactorily settle an outstanding claim with the government of that country."

Continue reading “Hey Maple Leafs, Be Careful What Traditions You Honor”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s State-of-the-Nation speech Thursday represents a liminal event in the East-West strategic balance – and an ominous one.

That the strategic equation is precarious today comes through clearly in Putin’s words. The U.S. and Russia have walked backwards over the threshold of sanity first crossed in the right direction by their predecessors in 1972 with the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Amid the “balance of terror” that reigned pre-1972, sensible statesmen on both sides concluded and implemented the ABM treaty which, in effect, guaranteed “mutual assured destruction” – the (altogether fitting) acronym was MAD – if either side attempted a nuclear attack on the other. MAD might not sound much better than “balance of terror,” but the ABM treaty introduced a significant degree of stability for 30 years.

Continue reading “Ray McGovern says Putin Claims Strategic Parity, Respect”

Every special interest has a pitch on how to get government benefits at the expense of everyone else. This week we get the steel industry pitch. Americans are supposedly going to “Beat China” by paying a tax to the U.S. government. With enough propaganda, Americans will go along with it. But Ron Paul will tell the truth instead.

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

John Bolton defends preventive war against North Korea, but he won’t call it by that name:

Pre-emption opponents argue that action is not justified because Pyongyang does not constitute an “imminent threat.” They are wrong. The threat is imminent, and the case against preemption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times.

The concepts of preemption and imminent threat have been so thoroughly warped by the Iraq war debate that their proper meanings have been all but lost. Preemption means striking before an impending attack occurs, but there is no such attack being prepared by North Korea. If the U.S. strikes North Korea first under these circumstances, our government would be committing an act of aggression pure and simple. There would be no preemption, because there would be no attack to preempt.

Continue reading “John Bolton Wants Preventive War Against North Korea”

Attending a high-profile security conference in the Bavarian city of Munich forced Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, and the German Defense Ministry, to take extreme measures to facilitate his arrival and departure.

Zarif was warned by the private companies that operate Munich Airport that they would refuse to refuel his official jet to make the return trip after the conference was over, citing fear the US would punish them for doing so. They suggested that he either bring a plane that could carry enough fuel for the round trip, or instead fly to Vienna, Austria and then drive the 400+ kilometers to Munich for the conference, since Vienna’s airport is run by a different company.

Option three, it turns out, was for Zarif to petition the German government about the problem, and the solution ended up being that the German Defense Ministry agreed that the German military would be in charge of refueling Zarif’s plane for the sake of departing Munich, as they apparently do not fear US reprisals.

All’s well that ends well, but this once again underscores that the US is acting in such bad faith with respect to obliged sanctions relief for Iran that airports nowhere near the US are afraid to refuel official Iranian planes who are invited for major international events.

Iran has been going through this problem virtually from the start of the P5+1 nuclear deal, with European banks fearing financing perfectly legal business deals between Iran and EU companies because they think the US will take revenge on them for doing business with the Iranians. Though publicly US officials have at times denied pressuring EU banks about this, at other times Treasury officials have bragged about how limited Iran’s access to international commerce remains, despite the supposed sanction relief. This incident just adds to Iran’s grievances about the way the deal is being handled, grievances which are largely shared by the EU parties to the deal, whose companies are losing out on lucrative business ties because of US acrimony.

Sanders, Lee and Murphy to Introduce Yemen War Powers Resolution: Live Stream at 4:30pm EST

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) will introduce Wednesday, Feb. 28 at 4:30 p.m. a bipartisan joint resolution to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis in Yemen pursuant to the War Powers Resolution. The bill will force the first-ever vote in the Senate to withdraw U.S. armed forces from an unauthorized war.

Senate Radio-TV Gallery (S-325) and live streamed here

The website for the campaign will kick off at the start of the news conference at https://stopthewar.us/