The involvement of the CIA and other state security services in the US Left is a topic that is all-too-frequently ignored. This would certainly explain why so many “left-wing” and “anarchist” groups in the US take positions that amount to anarcho-Democratic Partyism, anarcho-MSNBCism, or anarcho-State Departmentism.
By Joel van der Reijen
NGO Study Center
An interesting collection of articles and links.
This video is a response to Kevin Castley of “Liberal Hawk Memes for Moral Universality teens” and “Superpower broadcasting” video against Tulsi Gabbard. His video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uEJU… As promised, all of my sources which I sight in the video are verified in the link below, read and learn for yourself. Eisenhower’s meeting with Khrushchev https://www.history.com/this-day-in-h… American support for Turkish atrocities. https://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/turk… https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/researc… American support for operation ajax and the Shah https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqrHQ… Khomeini’s opposition to WMD, and Saddam’s use of chemical weapons during Iran Iraq war. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/… https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/16/… https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-c… https://www.cia.gov/library/readingro… https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/wo… Saudi human rights abuses and American support for them https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/09/03/s… https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/…. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/… https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl… https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle… https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archiv… https://www.politico.com/story/2015/0… https://www.tulsigabbard.org/tulsi-ga… Syrian minorities support for Bashar Assad. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/wo… https://theintercept.com/2019/10/26/s… https://www.theatlantic.com/internati… Threats of thermo-nuclear war. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buz… https://www.tulsi2020.com/issues/end-…
By Doug Enaa Greene
Left Voice
n February 19, 2019, Vermont Senator and “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders announced his plans to run for the Democratic Party nomination for President. The announcement was met with cheers from large swaths of the American left who identify with his support for expanded labor rights, Medicare for All, free college, and a litany of other progressive issues. Those appear to be very compelling reasons to back the Sanders’ campaign. However, when it comes to American imperialism and war, Sanders may offer slightly different rhetoric than other Democratic candidates or Donald Trump, but his record proves him to be no alternative at all.
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
As a practice, I despise both major parties with a passion usually reserved for religious zealotry. But I’m not ashamed, even as a lifelong leftist, to admit that I hate the Democrats most of all. In fact, it’s precisely because I’m a leftist that I hate the Democrats most of all. The only thing worse than a racist horde of war hungry zillionaires is a racist horde of war hungry zillionaires who try to pass them selves off as the high handed voice of egalitarianism. It’s like having Strom Thurmond throw on a Rasta wig and wax poetic about how he understands why the n*ggers feel cold and the slum’s got so much soul (compliments to Jello Biafra). It doesn’t exactly make me feel better that I use to be a member of that limp-wristed blackface fraternity.
But it was 2008, the scoundrels of the Bush junta were on their way out the revolving door to cushy no-show jobs in the defense industry and there was one candidate left in that party that I still believed in, and I’m not talking about Joe Lieberman’s designated black dauphin. Dennis Kucinich was the last of a dying breed. He seemed to have stepped out from a different era, like the long lost munchkin lovechild of George McGovern and Joan Baez. He didn’t just want peace, he wanted revenge against the war machine; 50% cuts in defense spending, shuttering all foreign bases, Nuremberg Tribunals for the retreating Bush junta. He didn’t have a chance in hell and I didn’t give a shit. He was on a crusade that was bigger than any election, and I was willing to swallow my vomit and leave the Green Party to join him.
I look at the ten clown car pileup that is the 2020 Democratic primaries and there is no Dennis Kucinich to be found. Just a multicultural graveyard of hyper-statist partisan corpses. For five fucking minutes we had Mike Gravel’s beautiful crusty old ass, but the glorified carnies who rig the debates quickly erased all signs of his existence until his shallow well ran dry. What we have now is a contest largely between two separate but equally deceptive cliques of creeps. The “Moderates” or, as I call them, the Obama Revivalists, and the “Revolutionaries” who are really little more than blood and butter social democrats (to quote the late Dr. Thompson, “You people voted for Humphrey… and you killed Jesus!)
The Obama Revivalists have to be the most comically delusional conglomeration of convoluted cunts since Obama himself sold half my generation on an 8 year extension of the Bush regime with Hopelandic gobbledygook lifted straight from a Chicken Noodle Soup paperback he found at the airport. The basic pitch of these neoliberal imbeciles, who only the Clinton News Network would have the gal to call “Realists”, can be summed up by Cher’s tattooed ass on a battleship, ‘If we could just turn back time. If we could just find a way…’ They seem to all suffer under the grand-mal delusion that all of America’s woes began in February 2017, and just 8 more years of Obama (or 24 of Bush) can cure the American Empire of an authoritarian collapse that has been a longtime coming. Donald Trump is not the problem, he is the symptom. Voting for one of these mass media approved Obama Revivalists would be the equivalent of treating a brain tumor with a shotgun blow to the head.
Press TV. Listen here.
The United States has been “constantly” involved in destabilizing other countries across the world and there is “overwhelming” evidence attesting to this destructive role, says an American analyst.
Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com, made the remark in a phone interview with Press TV on Sunday while commenting on China’s denunciation of Washington’s one-sided approach to world politics and its adversarial attitude towards Beijing.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on the sidelines of a Group of 20 ministerial meeting in the city of Nagoya in southern Japan on Saturday that the US is the “world’s biggest source of instability.”
Wang detailed how Washington’s policies were making waves across the international stage, saying, “The United States is broadly engaged in unilateralism and protectionism, and is damaging multilateralism and the multilateral trading system.”
China: US ‘world’s biggest source of instability’China’s foreign minister lashes out at the US over Washington’s one-sided approach to world politics.
“There is no question that the Chinese foreign minister is correct when he says that the United States is the world’s greatest source of international instability. The evidence for that is overwhelming,” Preston told Press TV on Sunday.
“If you look at the foreign policy objectives of the United States as they have been pursued over the last 20 years or so, and even when you go back much further than that, we see that the United States has constantly created instability throughout the world by a wide range of measures. The most obvious examples would be the outright of invasion of various nations by the United States as well as these efforts towards regime change that the United States has carried out around the world or through direct military action by the United States itself or whether through the arming of insurgents and rebels in various nations,” he added.
The American analyst went on to say that, “The United States has used all of these tactics as a means of destabilizing foreign nations.”
Preston pointed to the coup in Bolivia, US-backed militants in Syria, support for the aggression of Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and increasing hostility against Iran as obvious examples of Washington’s role in plunging world countries into chaos.
“The United States has certainly created a great deal of instability in different levels, political, military and economic instability and that’s going on as well,” he noted.
Last year, US President Donald Trump began imposing tariffs and other trade barriers on China after accusing it of “unfair trade practices.” So far, the United States has imposed tariffs on about $112 billion of Chinese imports, which makes for more than two-thirds of the consumer goods it receives from China.
The punitive action has resulted in a trade war, which even domestic American politicians have come to call bleak and damaging to the countries and the global economic flow.
China wants US trade deal butChina says it wants to do trade with US, but if necessary it is
Washington has also mounted pressure on China’s Huawei — the world’s leading supplier of telecoms networking equipment and the number-two global smartphone vendor — under the pretext that its equipment could contain security loopholes that allow China to spy on global communications traffic.
It has also tried to force its allies to reject Chinese superfast 5G communication technology, especially from Huawei.
Though the company has repeatedly denied the accusation, Washington said in May that it would blacklist Huawei from the US market and from buying crucial US components.
The United States and China appear keen to de-escalate their conflict, at least temporarily, to avert a recession and boost growth in 2020.
Press TV. Listen here.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly broken his pledge to withdraw American troops from the costly wars in the Middle East, and is instead moving them to other parts of the region, says a political analyst in Virginia.
Trump is “trying to make it appear as though he’s winding down the war in Syria. One of the things that Trump ran for president for back in 2016 was he claimed that he was going to wind down America’s involvement in all of these various wars in the Middle East,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.
“[But] since then, he’s been dragging his feet to a large degree when it comes to doing some of that,” Preston told Press TV on Saturday. “For example, he’s been very slow to withdraw from Afghanistan.”
US Army chief of staff, General Mark Milley, said Sunday that American troop levels in Syria are expected to stabilize at around 600 and the presence of US military forces in the Arab country is for American national interests.
The US Army general also claimed that it was important for US troops to remain in Syria so long as the Daesh (ISIS) terrorist group has a presence there.
PressTV-Top US general says 600 troops to remain in SyriaA top US army general says American troop levels in Syria are expected to stabilize at around 600.
Although Trump recently ordered the withdrawal of a small number of US troops from northern Syria, he is still planning to keep a military presence in that same region to “secure” the oil fields in the border area.
Getting American troops out of costly wars in the Middle East has long been a promise of Trump, but his latest decisions in Syria and other countries in the region may not be achieving much of that promise.
And a large number of US forces that are being withdrawn from Syria are not to be sent back to the United States, but the plan has been to move them to neighboring Iraq and keep them in the region.
Experts say American military presence in the Middle East is not really decreasing and argue that there are many chances for the US to get entangled in further conflict in the region.
Trump has also repeatedly advocated for bringing US troops back from Afghanistan. American forces have remained bogged down in Afghanistan since 2001 through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now, Trump.
PressTV. Listen here.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly broken his pledge to withdraw American troops from the costly wars in the Middle East, and is instead moving them to other parts of the region, says a political analyst in Virginia.
Trump is “trying to make it appear as though he’s winding down the war in Syria. One of the things that Trump ran for president for back in 2016 was he claimed that he was going to wind down America’s involvement in all of these various wars in the Middle East,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.
“[But] since then, he’s been dragging his feet to a large degree when it comes to doing some of that,” Preston told Press TV on Saturday. “For example, he’s been very slow to withdraw from Afghanistan.”
US Army chief of staff, General Mark Milley, said Sunday that American troop levels in Syria are expected to stabilize at around 600 and the presence of US military forces in the Arab country is for American national interests.
The US Army general also claimed that it was important for US troops to remain in Syria so long as the Daesh (ISIS) terrorist group has a presence there.
PressTV-Top US general says 600 troops to remain in SyriaA top US army general says American troop levels in Syria are expected to stabilize at around 600.
Although Trump recently ordered the withdrawal of a small number of US troops from northern Syria, he is still planning to keep a military presence in that same region to “secure” the oil fields in the border area.
Getting American troops out of costly wars in the Middle East has long been a promise of Trump, but his latest decisions in Syria and other countries in the region may not be achieving much of that promise.
And a large number of US forces that are being withdrawn from Syria are not to be sent back to the United States, but the plan has been to move them to neighboring Iraq and keep them in the region.
Experts say American military presence in the Middle East is not really decreasing and argue that there are many chances for the US to get entangled in further conflict in the region.
Trump has also repeatedly advocated for bringing US troops back from Afghanistan. American forces have remained bogged down in Afghanistan since 2001 through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now, Trump.
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
It’s all over the news. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. But I’m a muckraker and telling you what you know is the first half of my job. Baghdadi is dead! The terrifying Cobra Commander of Uncle Sam’s latest jihad Frankenstein, the Ayatollah of the fearsome Islamic State, the world’s deadliest Salafi super-villain, is dead. Dead as a door nail, as our ever-tactful commander in chief put it. Apparently he died like Rerun in the opening of What’s Happening, running and stumbling down a lantern lit tunnel, flailing his arms all about as he sobbed hysterically, only stopping to blow him and his children to smithereens with a suicide vest once his lungs were empty and his britches were full. This is the official story at least and the mainstream media seems more than happy to put down their impeachment pitchforks just long enough to parrot its Hollywood details with the unblinking innocence of a child. Brave, dick-swinging, red meat eating American heroes, flying fearlessly into the heart of darkness on their Apache choppers to wright all the wrongs and settle the score. This time there’s even dog so extrajudicial slaughter can be fun for the whole family. But as the days go by, this fable grows more and more suspect to all but the most diluted daydream believers.
Trump’s full-breasted boasts about watching the whole raid in real time on the ground like an executive episode of Cops have turned out to be pure weapons-grade bullshit. The only show the Donald was munching popcorn to that night was hazy overhead surveillance footage without a lick of audio. No matter. Trump’s a liar, even his supporters know that. This raid is still a momentous act of uncut American heroism. Real Rambo shit. But what do we really know about this raid? Every scrap of information we’ve managed to get our hands on comes straight from the State Department. You know, those fine upstanding bureaucrats who are still mining the deserts of Babylon for Saddam’s secret plutonium stash. Baghdadi’s been declared dead a dozen times before and if the motherfucker blew himself to bits, what makes us so damn sure that we even got the right guy? The Kurds are claiming they retrieved Baghdadi’s DNA from a pair of pilfered underwear. So skid marks from a panty raid hold this thing together, and the dogs of war felt confident enough with this evidence to blow up the block and chuck the corpse chunks in the fucking ocean? Am I really the only one who feels like they’re being sold a bill of goods here? Am I the only one with deja vu?
The United States wants to eliminate any country, or any government in the Middle East region, “that does not do Washington’s bidding,” says an American political analyst in Virginia.
A Saudi-led group based in Riyadh has imposed illegal sanctions on Islamic Revolution Guard Corps and Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah. The so-called Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, which is only two years old, imposed the sanctions on Wednesday. The group also includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Read more:
US, Arab allies impose illegal sanctions on IRGC
US pursuing regime-change policy in Iran
“All of this is part of an ongoing policy the United States has been carrying out which is ultimately aimed towards regime change,” Keith Preston told Press TV in an interview on Wednesday.
Preston believes the move against Iran is not particularly new and it a continuation of the failed maximum pressure policy against the Iranian nation.
“This is nothing that is particularly new. As we know the United States has certainly been escalating the sanctions that are imposed on Iran for some time now under the Donald Trump administration,” he said.
Preston noted that the six Persian Gulf Arab countries, namely, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, who are participating in the sanctions, were aligned with the US.
He believes the US always uses military and economic pressure, as well as covert operations, to pursue a regime-change policy in any country opposing it.
“The United States wants to simply eliminate any country, or any government in the region, that does not do Washington’s bidding,” Preston noted.
“And, of course, Saudi Arabia and [Persian] Gulf nations are central part of that because they are so closely in alliance with the United States. It’s simply symbiotic relationship,” he added. “And, of course, they see Iran as the primary barrier to the Saudi expansionist efforts in the region.”
In the meantime, Washington’s Arab ally, the Al Saud regime itself, may be in the final stages of its life.
The secretary general of Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah said last month that the Saudi regime was on its last legs.
PressTV-Saudi regime in final stages of its life: Nasrallah
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the Saudi rulers were expediting the regime’s demise through their cruel policies.
“Cruel measures over the past 100 years, and the systematic corruption in the regime, suppression of people, and totalitarianism of its rules” are expediting the Wahabi Takfir regime’s soon to come demise, according to Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Wahhabism is the official religion of in Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism, according to Wikipedia, has been accused of being a source of global terrorism, inspiring the ideology of Daesh and for causing disunity in Muslim communities by labeling Muslims who disagreed with the Wahhabi definition of monotheism as apostates (Takfir) and justifying their killing.
Press TV. Listen here.
he US administration in Washington is to blame for the proliferation of Daesh and other terrorist groups in the Middle East and killing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi doesn’t change this fact, say an American analyst.
Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com, said the US has been trying to “weaponize” such Takfiri outfits against countries opposing the US establishment in the region, says an American political analyst in Virginia.
HE made the remark in a phone interview with Press TV on Sunday while commenting on a special operations raid carried out by the US military in the Syrian province of Idlib, which killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — the leader of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.
The Joint Special Operations Command carried out the top-secret operation after receiving actionable intelligence, according to US military sources, and two Baghdadi’s wives were also killed in the raid.
PressTV-Daesh chief targeted, US claimsThe United States military has conducted a special operations raid against Daesh Takfiri leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Newsweek reports.
“While it’s certainly true that the United States may have been responsible for the killing of the leader of the Daesh just like they were responsible for the killing of [Taliban militant group leader] Osama bin Laden some years back, we also have to consider the ways in which the United States has been responsible for the proliferation of these Takfiri terrorist organizations,” Preston said.
“The United States has claimed now for 18 years that they are waging war against these terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda, like al-Nusra Front, like the Daesh. At the same time, the United States has also tried to work both ends against the middle when it comes to these kinds of organizations. On the one hand, they are opposed to terrorist attacks by these kinds of groups against American targets in case they are American allies, but they also try to weaponize these organizations against America’s geopolitical rivals in the Middle East,” he added.
The American political commentator said Washington tries to “use the Daesh as a weapon against Syria, against Iran, against other forces that are opposed to the United States in the region as well. The United States, on the one hand, wages its own war against some of these organizations, and on the other hand, gives them a free hand when it comes to its effort to use them as a weapon against other parties in the region.”
Preston also blamed the United States for its role in providing support to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and other nations in the region that spread this Takfiri ideology that builds these terrorist groups.
“So, it’s not like the US has been the white hat in this particular conflict,” he concluded.
PressTV-Trump: Al-Baghdadi blew himself up, died ‘like a dog’President Trump says Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “died like a dog” after blowing himself and three children up inside a tunnel.
The Idlib operation was conducted only a few weeks after Trump announced that the US would be withdrawing its forces from northeastern Syria, clearing the path for an expected Turkish incursion into the region.
Turkey launched the offensive on October 9 with the aim of purging the northeastern Syrian regions near its border of US-backed Kurdish militants, whom it views as terrorists linked to local autonomy-seeking militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Trump, later however, rowed back on the withdrawal decision, announcing that a contingent of US Special Forces would remain in Syria to control its oil fields.
Press TV. Listen here.
There is growing concern that US forces that have entered Iraq after retreating from northern Syria seek to destabilize the country and foment civil unrest, says an American political analyst.
Iraq on Wednesday rejected any long-term presence of US troops in his country after their withdrawal from neighboring Syria. Baghdad said American forces crossing into Iraq could only be there in transit.
“it’s not surprising that the government of Iraq would make a decision not wanting American troops to be positioned within Iraq,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.
“We have to consider that the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and there was a very bloody war took place…so the Iraqis certainly are not anxious to have American troops return to Iraq,” Preston told Press TV on Thursday.
“Also there’s been civil unrest in Iraq in recent times; there may be concerns that the Americans may try to foment civil unrest within Iraq because of the fact that the Iraqi government has moved closer to Iran,” he added.
PressTV-US forces leaving Syria not allowed to stay in Iraq: PMIraq’s Abdul-Mahdi says American forces withdrawing from Syria don’t have permission to stay in his country and Baghdad is taking legal action to address the issue.
US forces have been deeply unpopular in much of Iraq since their 2003-2011 occupation of the country.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi said after a meeting with visiting US Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Wednesday that the American forces were not allowed to remain in Iraq and his government was taking “all international legal measures” to address the issue.
“We have (already) issued an official statement saying that, and we are taking all international legal measures. We ask the international community and the United Nations to perform their roles in this matter,” he said.
He asserted that any foreign troop presence on Iraqi soil must be authorized by the government first and should end upon Baghdad’s request.
Esper had initially told reporters that troops leaving Syria would go to western Iraq for further operations against scattered Daesh terrorists and “help defend Iraq”. But he backtracked on Tuesday, saying Washington aimed to eventually bring the troops home.
In a major U-turn in the US military policy, the White House announced on October 6 that the US would be withdrawing its forces from northeastern Syria, clearing the path for an expected Turkish incursion into the region.
Three days later, Turkey launched the offensive with the aim of purging the northern Syrian regions near its border of US-backed Kurdish militants, whom it views as terrorists linked to local autonomy-seeking militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The United States is using “the Turks as de facto mercenaries” in Syria in order to continue Washington’s destabilization effort in the war-torn country, an analyst says. Keith Preston made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Sunday when asked about US President Donald Trump who had defended his decision to pull American forces out of northern Syria.
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
I have long been a vocal supporter of the Kurds, even before the Syrian clusterfuck sparked the Rojava Revolution. Part of this comes from my checkered past as a lapsed Tankie-Guevarist. I grew up gorging myself on New Left folk tails of Third World rebellion. The fearsome PKK were one of a dozen or so clans of crimson bearded renegades, fighting like Castro for some post-colonial utopia. I read everything I could find about the Bolshevik adventures of groups like FARC, Hezbollah and the Naxalites. But the thing that set the Kurds apart was their fourth quarter conversion to anarchism which closely mirrored my own.
Abdullah Ocalan discovered the works of Murray Bookchin right around the time I dropped communism for panarchy and syndicalism. And when the wrest of Syria sunk into CIA sponsored Salafi hell, the Ocalan influenced Kurds of the YPG created a successful stateless society that flourished amidst the chaos. It was proof positive that anarchism could work. But it was all over the moment the YPG accepted the poison gift of American military occupation. Anarchism quite simply cannot coexist with the greatest source of imperial tyranny on the fucking planet. The only sick comfort I took in this nauseating arrangement is that I knew it wouldn’t last. That’s because, dearest motherfuckers, screwing over the Kurds is a time-honored American pastime.
The original Kurdish screwjob was the work of that whimsical Bond villain known as Henry Kissinger. During his busy time as Secretary of State and National Security Adviser under Nixon and Ford, respectively, Henry cooked up a devilish little scheme with the help of his flunkies in Israel and the Shah’s Iran. Iraq was becoming suspiciously cozy with the Soviet Union. So they flooded Iraq’s long suffering Kurdish independence movement with Soviet hardware pilfered from the killing fields of Vietnam and the Sinai Peninsula. Mustafa Barzani, the founding father of the modern Peshmerga, didn’t trust the Shah farther than he could squeeze his ham-fist up his pinched little quisling asshole, no sane Mesopotamian did, but he believed in his heart of hearts that America was that shining beacon of freedom on the hill. Mustafa was a sucker. Once Henry and Co. managed to frighten Iraq into playing ball, we quickly drummed up a deal between them and Iran that included handing over the Kurds on a spit. Not only did old Henry, that Nobel pacifist, refuse to even return Mustafa’s frantic calls for help, he cut all humanitarian aide to the region as Helter Skelter came tumbling down. The Kurds were slaughtered and Kissinger summed up America’s Kurdish policy in a nutshell when he told a disgusted congress that “One should not confuse undercover action with social work.” If only the Kurds took his advice.
Press TV. Listen here.
The military–industrial complex in the United States has vast influence over the country’s economy and government policy, says an American political analyst.
“The armaments industry is such an important part of the American economy and such a powerful force within the American political system; in many ways it is the American political system,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.
“It’s been said that the United States doesn’t just have a military–industrial complex; it is a military–industrial complex,” Preston told Press TV on Tuesday.
“And that’s extended internationally through the fact that the United States has hundreds of military bases spread out all over the world, they’ve got nuclear weapons deployed in different places,” he added.
“The armaments industry guides American policy.”
Russia says it is closely watching the United States’ work on developing new weapon systems, months after Washington abandoned an arms control treaty with Moscow.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that Russian authorities “are actually keeping a close watch on Washington’s actions with regard to the development of new weapon systems.”
Back in early August, US President Donald Trump officially withdrew his country from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which had been concluded in 1987 by then-US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
The INF had banned all land-based missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers and covered missiles carrying both nuclear and conventional warheads.
PressTV-US military steps up efforts to counter China’s rising powerThe US Defense Department has been sharply expanding its efforts to counter China’s growing military power.
Trump’s withdrawal from the INF reflect the new momentum his administration has given to the US policy of “strategic rivalry” with China and Russia, two countries seen increasingly as a threat by Washington.
Last month, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper warned European nations to tackle what he called growing security and economic threats from China and Russia, the latest sign that Washington has shifted its main focus from the US wars in the Middle East to confronting Beijing and Moscow.
