As Russia’s special operations continue in Ukraine so does the West’s propaganda war against it. The propaganda is particularly effective but also particularly predictable in terms of who will be drawn in by it and become hysterical because of it.

This includes right-wing extremists from across the Western world but also the many US-sponsored “pro-democracy” movements elsewhere. This includes within the Southeast Asian Kingdom of Thailand.

Reuters in an article titled, “Thai democracy activists sign up to fight ‘tyranny’ in Ukraine,” would claim:

Far-off Thailand might not seem an obvious place for recruits to Ukraine’s efforts to raise an international volunteer force to defend against Russia’s invasion.

But for former Thai Air Force conscript turned political activist Chanaphong “Ball” Phongpai, the cause is a natural fit for members of the pro-democracy movement that emerged in 2020 to protest a military-backed government in the Southeast Asian country.

Reuters would also claim that these Thai “activists” saw Russia as a “superpower and a tyrant,” lifting phrases verbatim from the halls of Western power and from across Western media headlines.

After years of covering up the violent nature of US-sponsored anti-government protest in Thailand, Reuters obliquely admitted in its more recent article that indeed the protests were violent, noting how those interested in fighting in Ukraine claimed they needed to “switch from holding bottle bombs to holding guns.”

The article concluded by quoting one of the so-called activists, claiming:

“We fight for democracy here. They fight for their democracy there,” he said. “We are like friends. Its the same feeling, the same ideology.”

It is without doubt that Thais seeking to fight in Ukraine share a similar ideology with Ukraine’s current regime and those fighting to sustain it. But while Reuters and the Thai “activists” it interviewed attempted to insist that ideology shared is “democracy,” in reality the true common denominator is subordination to US interests, extensive US backing, and belligerent intolerance to alternative views as well as a deep disdain for the primacy of national sovereignty.

Nazis Lead the Fight Thai Volunteers are Joining – So Says the Western Media

Far from “Russian propaganda,” evidence that Ukraine’s current political order is propped up by actual Nazis including those playing a central role in Ukraine’s current security apparatus has been provided by the Western media itself, every single year since the US-backed coup overthrew Ukraine’s last legitimate elected government in 2014.

Scores of articles from each year have covered Nazi military formations folded into Ukraine’s official armed forces.

In 2014, for example, The Guardian in its article, “Azov fighters are Ukraine’s greatest weapon and may be its greatest threat,” would focus on members of the so-called “Azov Battalion,” noting that while they denied they were Nazis, they openly praised Adolf Hitler and used Nazis symbols for their flags and on their uniforms. The article noted the key role Azov played in the ongoing armed conflict already raging at that point in eastern Ukraine.

By 2015 the Western media admitted that Azov Battalion was rolled into Ukraine’s armed forces as part of the National Guard. Reuters in an article that year titled, “Ultra-nationalist Ukrainian battalion gears up for more fighting,” would note:

The 1,000 strong ultra-nationalist militia has a reputation as a fierce pro-government fighting force in the almost year-old conflict with the Russia-backed rebels in east Ukraine, and is disdainful of peace efforts.

But the radical views of the commanders of a group affiliated to Ukraine’s national guard which works alongside the army, and the use of symbols echoing Nazi emblems have caused alarm in the West and Russia, and could return to haunt Kiev’s pro-Western leadership when fighting eventually ends.

Reuters would also point out in its article that Azov had evolved into an organization including infantry, artillery, and even tank forces.

In addition to admissions across the West’s corporate media, are also articles from outlets like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) funded by the US government. A 2016 RFE/RL article titled, “Right-Wing Azov Battalion Enters Ukraine’s Political Arena,” would note that in addition to Azov’s inclusion in Ukraine’s armed forces, the armed organization sought to work its way deeper into the government itself.

The US government-funded outlet would also admit that, “human rights organizations have accused the Azov Battalion of torture,” highlighting the obvious outcome of arming actual Nazis and giving them an increasing amount of power both on the battlefield and off it.

By 2017 the threat Azov Battalion posed to both Ukrainians and Ukraine’s neighbors had raised serious concerns – concerns that many in the halls of Western political power attempted to dismiss as “Russian propaganda.” However, even Western media outlets would contradict this claim. An article that year by The Hill titled, “The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda,” would note:

There are indeed neo-Nazi formations in Ukraine. This has been overwhelmingly confirmed by nearly every major Western outlet. The fact that analysts are able to dismiss it as propaganda disseminated by Moscow is profoundly disturbing. It is especially disturbing given the current surge of neo-Nazis and white supremacists across the globe.

The most infamous neo-Nazi group in Ukraine is the 3,000-strong Azov Battalion, founded in 2014. Prior to creating Azov, its commander, Andriy Biletsky, headed the neo-Nazi group Patriot of Ukraine, members of which went on to form the core of Azov. Biletsky had stated that the mission of Ukraine is to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival … against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

The idea that Thai volunteers are attempting to travel to Ukraine and fight alongside actual Nazis against “tyranny” takes on a particularly contradictory tone in light of such observations made even across the a Western media landscaped mostly committed to covering up the true nature of Ukraine’s post-2014 regime and its increasingly toxic security apparatus.

By 2018 even US government-funded RFE/RL would note the danger Ukrainian military formations like Azov posed to nations beyond Ukraine’s borders. An article that year titled, “Azov, Ukraine’s Most Prominent Ultranationalist Group, Sets Its Sights On US, Europe,” pointed out the concerted effort made by Azov to build ties with ultra-right extremists from across the Western world.

In 2019, Israeli publication Haaretz attempted to draw attention to the growing danger in its article, “Inside the Extremist Group That Dreams of Ruling Ukraine.” The article would elaborate further, claiming:

The Azov movement insists it is not neo-Nazi, yet its members have been captured giving Hitler salutes and being virulently anti-Semitic.

The threat of Nazism in Ukraine’s security forces and as well as within Ukraine’s political structures was pointed out even by the inveterate Russophobic US government-funded think tank, The Atlantic Council.

In a 2020 article titled, “The Azov Regiment has not depoliticized,” the Atlantic Council would admit that even the US government was debating whether or not to designate Azov as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” and that Ukrainian Nazis still played a central role in Azov’s political and military activities.

Also in 2020 Western media outlets like Buzzfeed in articles like, “This Neo-Nazi Group Is Organizing On Facebook Despite A Year-Old Ban,” would point out how Azov was by then designated by the US State Department as a “nationalist hate group” and that despite a supposed ban of the organization across US-based social media, US corporations like Facebook continued making exceptions for and profits from Azov’s online activities.

TIME Magazine in an eight minute long video report titled, “Inside a White Supremacist Militia in Ukraine,” would showcase Azov Battalion’s nationwide political and military activities including running camps for children indoctrinating them into white supremacist ideology, providing them with military training, and preparing them to be inducted into military formations like Azov in the near future.

By 2022 US-based media outlet NPR in an article titled, “A closer look at the volunteers who are signing up to fight the Russians,” would admit that members of Azov were the ones receiving foreign volunteers precisely like the Thais mentioned by Reuters seeking to fight “tyranny” in Ukraine.

The NPR article would admit in regards to Azov that:

That regiment has a reputation for having the fiercest fighters in Ukraine. The paramilitary is credited with recapturing the southern port city of Mariupol from Russian separatists in 2014. And despite their neo-Nazi affiliations, they were folded into Ukraine’s National Guard. Groups like this are what Putin uses when he tries to paint Ukraine as rife with Nazis. It’s part of his justification for invading.

And according to the Western media itself, these claims by “Putin” are far from “attempts” to “paint Ukraine as rife with Nazis.” Ukraine is actually rife with Nazis – so much so that those who believe they will be joining the fight against tyranny will instead be received by the worst forms of tyranny – actual Nazis of formations like Azov Battalion – an organization now many thousands strong, consisting of infantry, artillery, tank, and other forces with detachments located in every major Ukrainian city – in other words – an organization of Nazis Ukraine is utterly rife with.

It is abundantly clear that these Thais now volunteering to fight alongside Nazis in Ukraine had nothing to do with democracy back home. The organizations behind the protests they had been a part of were not a product of Thai democratic aspirations, but of US government funding and interference within Thailand’s internal political affairs. Duped once at home, and now by Western media reports depicting Ukraine as a “victim” of Russian “aggression,” they are being thrown into harm’s way once again for a cause even more hopeless and delusional than the one they failed fighting for at home.

“Volunteers” fighting in Ukraine have already been given a stark wake-up call – their training facility in western Ukraine targeted by a missile strike wiping out most of them, and sending those few who survived fleeing back home, before ever stepping foot on the battlefield.

Buzzfeed in their article, ““I Thought I Was Going To Die”: US And UK Fighters In Ukraine Described The “Chaos” Of A Russian Missile Attack,” make it abundantly clear Russia’s statements regarding the operation was not propaganda, but the actual fate foreign fighters face.

Nations who do little to prevent their citizens from being tricked into traveling to Ukraine to face what is almost certain death provide an example of how Western foreign policy objectives have compromised the self-interests of nations worldwide.

Thais victimized by Western narratives illustrate once again the absolute danger a population can be placed in when a nation like Thailand categorically fails to secure its information space, allowing foreign interests like the US to dominate that information space and prey upon Thai citizens to the point of recruiting them into an armed conflict thousands of miles away.

US control over global media and also social media has only tightened since Russia’s special operations began in Ukraine, and the danger this control the US possess over information space worldwide has only grown. Now more than ever nations around the world need to secure their information space as a matter of national security – and not in some abstract way – but to literally protect their citizens from toxic disinformation so pervasive and compelling, that it has Thais and many others from around the globe  literally signing up to join Nazis in combat.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The Center for Arab Unity Studies (CAUS) has held recently a very interesting and useful webinar on the US-led NATO-Russia confrontation in Ukraine and related international developments. Many Arab scholars, diplomats and analysts have attempted to analyze the current state of affairs in Europe and, where possible, provide some political predictions. Among the issues addressed first and foremost was how to articulate the current developments that have led to the military hysteria hyped up by the West in Ukraine against fraternal Russia, Kiev’s thorough preparations for aggression against Donetsk and Luhansk, and the attack on Crimea. Was this a scheme devised by the West to damage Russia by dragging it into a protracted conflict with Ukraine, as happened with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan? Or was the special operation a well-considered preemptive Russian strike to stop NATO’s expansion into Ukraine – a direct threat to Russian national security?

Many believe that the Afghanistan analogy was part of Western propaganda aimed at making Moscow look like a “reactive player,” a characterization reinforced by the Western media’s emphasis on the slowness of the Russian military offensive. Proponents of this view argue that the comparison between Ukraine and Afghanistan has no place either in terms of scale or, more importantly, in terms of results. They predict that where Russia has failed in Afghanistan, it will succeed in Ukraine. It will be some time before Russia’s specialized counter-guerrilla forces prepare the ground for the Russian army to enter Kiev to make two basic demands: the disarmament of Ukraine and the overthrow of extreme right-wing political elites. Any delay in achieving these objectives would be primarily the product of Russian calculations, which are focused on targeting the enemy’s military capabilities rather than destroying Ukrainian infrastructure. In the meantime, special attention is paid to President Putin’s speech, in which he said quite clearly that the special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine is a surgical intervention, in which a malignant tumor has to be removed without damaging vital organs.

The opposing view, which supports a Western conspiracy theory to lure Russia into a Ukrainian trap, believes that the West’s aim is to strengthen and expand NATO’s reach by bringing its provocative activities sharply closer to Russia’s borders. And in doing so, try to throw such an international leash on Russia that its leaders are forced to go to war for geostrategic purposes, regardless of the enormous economic costs. This postulate sparks a debate about the extent to which Russia has coped with economic sanctions since 2014. But there is a lack of data here, as no studies have been conducted in the West and they can only guess how Russian economy “feels” now.

The webinar also looked at the impact of the Ukrainian special operation on the world order. Much will depend on the outcome of hostilities, but that is not the only factor. Even assuming that Russia fails to achieve its political and military goals in Ukraine and NATO strengthens as a result, Washington’s continued leadership of NATO is not a foregone conclusion, especially in light of its allies’ experience with this notorious leadership in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is no coincidence that Germany has embarked on an ambitious program to restructure its army and radically modernize its defense strategy, or that some European powers that have remained neutral are now reconsidering their position. In the East, a Chinese giant appears with a well-equipped, highly disciplined army. If the special operation in Ukraine, as the Western media claims, has momentarily distracted Washington from its aggressive policies, then ultimately the US – originally an imperialist project, defended and promoted through a series of wars – will not tolerate the rivalry at the international helm that China is now trying to challenge it. One speaker put it this way: if the United States does not remain at the top of the world order, it will not remain united and a civil war will break out on its soil. The question arises: how will NATO feel in this new environment, and how should the countries of the Arab world respond to all this?

This raises questions about the relationship between history and change. There is a perception that Western leaders who have made major changes to the world order have not read history well. Another view expressed doubts about the extent to which history can be used as a tool for change in any particular direction and how it applies to current failed US policies. The global geopolitical realities have been extremely complex, which the West has so far failed to cope with. At the level of Eurasian-Atlantic interactions alone was their trajectory and impact on the future world order too multifaceted an issue to make any truthful and reliable predictions. And, incidentally, as was said at the webinar, this interaction will be reconsidered in the near future in favor of increasing the influence of Eurasian states on world politics.

The third question, discussed quite extensively during the webinar, was of a moral nature: how can one express sympathy for Russia’s legitimate need to defend its national security while opposing the use of force to enforce its demands? Many participants noted that a significant part of Arab public opinion was inclined to support Russia’s resentment of NATO’s crude and permanent expansion into countries that were once part of the Eastern Bloc. More importantly, some have asked how support for Russian actions in Ukraine can be reconciled with opposition to US behavior in Iraq and Afghanistan and, more importantly, to Israeli behavior in Palestine under the rubric of supposedly protecting national security. According to one view, if Russia were to limit its operation to Donbass in order to dislodge Ukrainian forces in order to allow the Donetsk and Luhansk republics to acquire the right to legitimate self-determination, the Russian position would have more legitimacy, as the two republics have a predominantly ethnic Russian population. Others argue that this view does not address the issue of legitimacy because it encourages separatist movements which, if not stopped, will lead to the proliferation of small states. After all, there is no country without minorities. The United Kingdom, which consists of a number of patchwork parts – Scotland, Wales, England and the invaded Northern Ireland – can be cited in this regard. With current trends, these parts of the common state could rightfully demand secession from the common country and the status of an independent state. Incidentally, it is in Scotland and Northern Ireland where these tendencies towards independence are strongest.

Turning to the Arab position on the Ukraine issue, it was noted that Syria was the only Arab country whose support for Russia went beyond the diplomatic level, expressed in its vote against the recent UN Security Council resolution on Ukraine, to the logistical level. The facilities Russia has in Syrian ports epitomize how intertwined Russian and Syrian interests are. Just as Moscow saved that country from falling into the hands of terrorists actively supported and armed by the West and the Gulf monarchies. At the same time, Syria is one of the regions that will suffer the most from the protraction of the special operation in Ukraine.

At the webinar, many analysts who are more courageous in their judgement than their diplomatic colleagues came to a clear conclusion: any state, including Russia, has a perfectly legitimate right to defend its national interests, and even more so the Russian special operation in Ukraine. In the current circumstances in which the West, especially the US, is abandoning its allies to their fate, the countries of the Arab world should rely only on their own strength and pursue policies only in the interests of their state and their nation, unlike in the past.

Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The war in Ukraine has, as expected, brought yet another flow of migrants. This latest wave is being greeted with either flag-waving enthusiasm or weary resignation, but few are noticing that it adds a new dimension to the existing refugee and geopolitical situation.

Most refugees come from Third World countries and live in other Third World countries. Despite Europe constantly complaining about being under siege from waves of migration, Europe only houses a tiny fraction of the world’s refugee populations, 85% of whom are in developing countries and 27% of whom live in the least developed countries on earth – hardly in the process of escaping to a better life.

But this wave is of Europeans, fleeing to other European countries. They may be Eastern European, therefore considered automatically poor, criminal and of dubious politics, but they are from a European country.

They are in the same position as dispossessed persons from Allied countries, such as Russia, were during and after World War Two, who likewise feel they should be welcomed as friends by those who maintain their dispossession is an assault of Europe and its values.

That is not happening. Some are going as far, tongue in cheek, as to claim that these refugees are Putin’s secret weapon – and how he is [somehow] acting in cahoots with “deep agents” in Ukraine in a scheme to depopulate the country of its women, making them into poor and needy migrants in nearby countries, mostly under the guise of refugee status.

Already the impact of the influx of new migrants is being felt in places like Georgia, which is seeing a spike in rental prices. It is not only Ukrainians, but well off Russians, including many from Belarus, who are coming to set up shop and to establish and reestablish businesses in sanction free zones.

Iranians and others step aside, as a new migrant flow is coming to Europe; people often well-funded, who see the war as a chance not to fight over residency permits but to be fast tracked as refugees, with benefits and immediate status. Or at least that is how it is seen, in the traditional manner of those who would rather continue funding the wars which cause these migrant flows than help their victims – and by governments who believe this will suit their domestic electoral advantage, without taking into account the difference in character between these refugees and others.

Facts get in the way

Most fleeing the current conflict are indeed legitimate refugees. The UN believes that the total number of refugees may top as many as seven million—and that as many as 18 million Ukrainians will be affected by the war.

The majority of these refugees have fled to neighbouring Poland, despite its reputation as increasingly nationalistic and anti-immigrant, and then to Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and other European Union countries, as well as to Moldova and to Russia itself. The number of Ukrainians fleeing to neighbouring countries has recently reached 1.5 million in 10 days, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

According to UN data, more than half of those fleeing Ukraine went to Poland and more than 116,000 to Hungary to the south. Moldova has taken in more than 79,000 and 71,200 have gone to Slovakia. These numbers are increasing each and every day, hour-by-hour, and they should only be viewed as a distribution of where the refugees are initially ending up.

It is worth nothing that these flows are being increased as a result of the EU agreeing to give immediate protection to Ukrainians escaping the war, including instant rights to live and work within the bloc, and also offering them access to social service benefits like housing and medical care. However it can also be noted then when such rights and benefits have been removed in previous years for other refugees; this has not led to the hoped-for long term reduction in numbers, but rather the opposite.

Moldova has by far the largest concentration of new refugees per capita, with almost 4,000 per 100,000 residents. Its president has appealed for international help in dealing with the numbers arriving.

Get to know the hero!

There have been some isolated cases of Ukrainian men dressing up as women in order to make it across the Ukrainian border, as recently reported in the Turkish media. A short commentary on this, “An interesting refugee caught at the border. “Get to know the hero.” was shared on social media and attracted many likes.

This was actually the fault of Ukraine, not Europe’s attitude. Women and their children are allowed to seek refugee status after leaving Ukraine; men between the ages of ages of 18-60 are prohibited from leaving the country under martial law because they are expected to fight.

However this in itself can be regarded as “grounds for oppression”, and is seen as such in some cases, such as those of former child soldiers in Liberia. It may be Ukraine’s law, but Europe can ignore it, rather than leave people at the mercy of the enemy – unless the idea is to force Ukrainians to stay to gain propaganda points, or avoid sending their own soldiers.

Open arms depends on origins!

But we only need to remember previous surges of refugees to see that not all refugees are treating with the same open arms. Race, culture and politics underpin how — or if — refugees are welcomed in Europe.

According to NPR, “the open-arm welcome for those fleeing Ukraine stands in sharp contrast to the treatment of previous waves of refugees from places like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Just two months earlier, Orbán said Hungary was keeping its restrictive immigration policies: “[W]e aren’t going to let anyone in.”

It is hard to ascertain how many of these are true refugees, fleeing from war, or people seeing the conflict in Ukraine as a golden opportunity to establish themselves in other countries. In many cases, it will be a bit of both.

But that should have no part in the calculation of whether they were driven from their homes, or can now return to them. Whether motivations are suspect is a political decision, not based on empirical evidence, and as such should not be taken into account when assessing the circumstances people came from, the only evidence permissible when determining refugee status.

“En route between the Ukrainian city of Lviv and Poland, security guards dragged “all the Black guys from the train,” said Clement Akenboro, an economics student from Nigeria.”

Refugee flows make better breaking news headlines than do the domestic economic and political conditions, lack of opportunities and endemic corruption which stifles growth and prosperity. However this does not mean that everyone fleeing a situation not on the front page of the newspapers or diplomatic dispatches doesn’t have equally genuine reasons for fleeing persecution.

Our friends in the news

This being West versus Russia, the same games are being played with people’s lives for the sake of political gain. For instance, a Tbilisi City Assembly co-ordination group has been established to support Ukraine, and act as mechanism for collecting humanitarian aid for Ukrainians. But this even includes providing support to citizens of Ukraine who are visitors to Tbilisi, and not officially designated as refugees.

This group describes how it has taken on a significant mission. “We must do the most possible [in order to] stand by Ukrainian tourists, who, because of the hostilities in their homeland, are stuck in Georgia. Also, it is vitally important to collect and sort out humanitarian goods for Ukraine. A lot of structures are well-organised in addressing the needs of Ukrainians. We want to use our resources effectively and the group will work to address the needs of Ukrainians,” said Giorgi Tkemaladze, a spokesperson for the Tbilisi City government.

However these tourists are the ones coming with money, not only their bags and the clothes on their backs, those who saw the war coming and are ready to reestablish themselves in a safe haven. This impacts the real estate market, and makes finding affordable housing difficult for locals.

In some countries, property was purchased with the anticipation that the day would come where it would be necessary to relocate. In Georgia, many real estate transitions in recent years have been with people with the same passports, who came with guarantees, who are now being deemed legit refugees.

But if you question the official policy in this case, even though the official policy in most other refugee waves is the exact reverse, your comments are perceived to be on the level of another Rivers of Blood speech, the one which saw Enoch Powell, until then widely considered the most qualified person to be the next PM of the UK, marginalised and labelled a rabid racist.

It also means you are designated a supporter of Putin – which means being blacklisted, not only in the sphere of journalism but many professions, including politics.

Wait and See!

The problem of Ukrainian and “nearby refugees” is only now opening up a discussion of the geopolitical consequences, as since the fall of Communism it has been treated as a theoretical model, despite the intra-European immigration which has continued unabated. Furthermore, no mention is yet being made of IDPs, internally displaced persons within their own countries.

Massive relocations of people can change the demographic makeup of regions and impact language policies. Relatively small numbers being presented as massive inflows can hinder efforts to create Nation States which are more often than not artificial constructs.

Most refugees end up gaining some sort of status, or just stay in the countries they find themselves in, incorporated into the society, with their children raised in a new culture and assimilated. For example, even if Palestine would be able to gain statehood and recognition on the world stage, and the Arab-Israeli conflict was brought to an end, it is doubtful if many diaspora Palestinians would want to pull up stakes and make it back to their rightful homeland and participate in state building.

This is not in itself a bad thing for anyone. Considering the birth dearth in Europe, the aging population, and the need for workers and consumers, especially those with skills, many European countries will experience a windfall with a flow of migrants, regardless of how they obtain their status.

The problem is not just the number of Europeans dropping below the replacement rate but the average age of the population, based on the shape of the age pyramid. The continent-wide fertility-rate is now 1.5 children per mother, far below the “replacement rate” of 2.3, generally said to be the birth rate needed to keep a stable population. It should come as no surprise that Germany, which once had one of the lowest birthrates in the world, now has the most liberal refugee policies, and not just in terms of numbers but in encouraging workers who are willing to take the less glorious jobs, involving manual labour and lower wages.

However all of this is being packaged in the usual political way, practical facts notwithstanding. The refugee flows to Russia from Ukraine are not being addressed in the international media, because Russia has to be the villain they are fleeing from, not the devastation caused by the war itself. Consequently these people will receive no international support, like the widows of the large numbers of British soldiers withdrawn from the Western Front to try and keep the Tsar in power, until he lost.

If a bomb hits you, it doesn’t matter where the bomb came from. Consistent refusal to help most refugees, then branding people who are not refugees at all as a better class of refugee when it suits you, does nothing to help refugees, nothing to resolve conflicts, and everything to disconnect the public from the authorities by creating an alternative reality only politicians can inhabit.

Henry Kamens, columnist, expert on Central Asia and Caucasus, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The elimination of Russian media across the West and to a greater extent from across US-based social media platforms used worldwide, is a stark demonstration of the power the West still wields within global information space.

It is a wake-up call for nations around the globe regarding the threat of leaving a nation’s information space not only completely undefended, but entirely dominated by foreign interests.

Southeast Asia, for example, counts Russia as a close ally and an important counterweight to maintain a balance in global relations and even as a means of protection against Western influence and even interference.

Yet because Southeast Asian countries are overly dependent on US-based social media giants like Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Google (including YouTube), and Twitter, their respective information spaces have been flooded with anti-Russian sentiment and even outright hostility. Moreover, voices within each respective Southeast Asian country critical of Western claims and sympathetic toward Russia are being suppressed if not outright censored and permanently silenced.

The torrent of disinformation flowing out of US-based social media networks – targeting anyone across the global public dependent on these networks for a lack of local alternatives – is shaping opinions and helping generate support for Western foreign policy objectives even within nations directly threatened by the West and its foreign policy.

Thailand, for example, enjoys a longstanding and positive relationship with Russia. But because the nation has categorically failed to secure its information space, allowing it to be utterly dominated by US-based social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, the Thai public is subjected to a daily barrage of anti-Russian propaganda forced onto users through features like Twitter’s “Twitter Moments” and its “Ukraine: latest news” section.

The feature consists of a stream of content from 55 “members” drawn from US and European government-funded media platforms including (at the time of writing) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office-funded Eurasianet, the EU-funded “EUvsDisinfo” project, and “First Draft” funded by European governments and American corporate-funded foundations like Open Society, the Ford Foundation, and Google.

The Twitter stream also features content from government-funded think tanks like the British government-funded Chatham House, the Center for European Policy Analysis (funded by armed deals, the US NED, and US military), the US government-funded Center of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) as well as other obviously bias media sources including the Kyiv Independent based out of Kiev, Ukraine itself.

What Twitter pushes into the face of its users worldwide as supposed “experts and on-the-ground sources”  couldn’t be more overtly one-sided and politically-motivated – or in other words, such blatant propaganda.

That Western audiences would be subjected to such propaganda is a given – but the failure to secure the information space of nations around the globe far beyond the West and whose interests do not necessarily benefit from Western foreign policy objectives have now put their populations in danger and opened an otherwise easily avoidable vector of influence on each nation’s respective foreign policy decision making processes.

For Thailand, the population is under threat of being grossly manipulated in favor of adopting Western perspectives and demanding action from the Thai government to support Western foreign policy objectives regarding Russia’s ongoing special operations in Ukraine at the cost of Thailand’s long standing relationship with Russia and even at the cost of Thailand’s own long-term security and best interests.

On the other hand, China has fully secured its information space – leaving China not only in complete control of what comes in and leaves Chinese information space, but what takes place across it. China has developed a diverse ecosystem of platforms ranging from internet search engines, to social media networks, to e-commerce services and online news portals – all working in relative harmony with China’s interests and the interest of China’s allies.

Despite what seems to be the late hour of the West’s growing conflict with both Russia and China, it may not be too late for nations – including in Southeast Asia – to import Russian and Chinese platforms and tools for protecting Southeast Asia’s information space in the same way Southeast Asian nations import weapons from Russia and China to secure their physical domains.

Whether or not it is too late to make a difference regarding ongoing conflicts – such a move made either individually by nations or as a bloc such as through ASEAN – efforts can be made today to prevent the widespread sweeping propaganda campaigns of tomorrow we see today related to Russia and Ukraine.

It is the 21st century. Information space today is as important to protect as a nation’s land borders, shores, and air space. Any nation that is not protecting its information space is a nation that is not protecting itself at all.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

After publishing the materials about the traces of shamanism in Yoon Suk-yeol’s case, the author received many comments asking him to clarify this case in more detail. Therefore, it was decided to offer some more insights on such issues as shamanism and politics in South Korea.

Despite traditional role and popularity in the society, the social status of a shaman in South Korea has been always low. Two more important aspects complicate this situation:

Firstly, Koreans, similarly to Japanese, confess a certain type of syncretism, which means that you can visit a shaman, go to a Protestant church, and to a Buddhist temple. However, shamanism does not have a status of a religion, and most shamans describe themselves as Buddhists, especially as in some temples, near the Buddha statues there are also statues of mountain spirits.

Secondly, in religious issues Koreans behave like consumers or pagans, which can be expressed along the lines of “I’ll light a candle in your name, and you give me a salary raise and help my son enter the university.” If the problem looks important enough, it is allowed to light and candle in a church and bring a gift – a pork head – to a shaman.

In addition, for most shamans such things as contacting the spirits of their ancestors or exorcising the spirits of illness are not their core competence, as they are mostly engaged in fortunetelling and predictions about the future, and are in effect akin to personal growth coaches, by simply issuing “differently encoded” recommendations. This is the reason why visiting shamans, on the one hand, is considered a sign of being a superstitious and dark person. On the other hand, many people visit shamans. And as a result, it works out to be like with bribery cases, when a person is brought to trial not so much for stealing, but for getting caught or attracting attention under the existing political conditions.

Some experts and researchers of Korean political culture emphasize that along with authoritarianism, hierarchy, clientelism, etc., another important element of this culture is a kind of fatalism which means that people prefer to rely on good luck, or the intervention of external forces instead of putting in hard work. It is commonly believed that people may plan certain events, but it is up to Heaven’s will to let those plans become real, and the outcome of an event is not a result of cause-effect relationship, but the result of good or bad luck or destiny.

This leads to an increased role of superstitions and increased trust in shamans and other occultists, whose competence is not about planning events, but to predict the reaction to them. The hope for a magical solution to the problem is based on faith in fate and the help of some external forces, including representatives of the authorities. So when you address your request to an official, it is almost the same as addressing supernatural forces in the person of a shaman: both of them are expected to ensure good outcome. It is not surprising that university graduates visit shamans with a list of their potential employers to help them choose which job to apply for, businessmen often ask supernatural forces which investments to make, and young people see this as a way to gain confidence and psychological comfort.

The data about the number of practicing shamans in Korea varies. According to the Korean Statistical Office in 2019, there are 10,745 prophets and shamans in the country. It is believed that there are much more of them than the official statistics shows, because many shamans work without any licenses: only ‘supernatural power’ is needed and some training with those who already know the craft. This is why “during the economic recession more and more people choose to become shamans or fortunetellers,” and, according to The Economist and Korea Economic Daily reports in 2018, the market of mystical services at the time reached USD 3.7 billion.

According to Baek Yoon Sang, the head of the Korean Association of Fortune Tellers, there are more than 300,000 fortune tellers and 150,000 shamans in the country. For comparison, the headcount of the Korea’s Armed Forces is 610,000 persons.

Not only ordinary citizens, but also some decision-makers are among the clients of shamans. In the shamanist community, it is said that it was shamanism which played a role in Park Geun-hye’s political games. It is worth noting that during the military regime shamans were out of favor.

Some say that shamanism in Korea’s political life dates back to the country’s first president – Syngman Rhee (1952-1960), who was believed to have changed his name following the advice of some shaman, as he wanted to “become president at the advanced age” and he really became president at 73. Also, shamans had allegedly predicted the death of President Park Chung-hee 20 years before he was killed by one of his closest aides in 1979. And the President Chun Doo-hwan’s mother had three of her front teeth pulled out after a monk had told her they would hinder her son’s future career.

Of course, people tend to expect shamans to bring luck and ignore real life circumstances. For example, the history says that President Kim Dae-jung, who lost the presidential elections three times, was elected in his fourth attempt in 1998, after he had moved his father’s grave to a place which was better from the geomancy point of view. The financial recession and the split in the ruling party side remained out of focus, as did the fact that his contemporary and well-known conservative leader Lee Hoi-chang lost the presidential election race even after he moved the graves of his ancestors several times. The shaman Shim Jin Song became famous when he predicted the death of North Korean President Kim Il Sung in 1994 and the election of President Kim Dae-jung. However, after some bad forecasts his popularity drastically dropped. Other famous Korean fortunetellers could not guess that Kim Young-sam, Kim Dae-jung, Lee Myung-bak and Roh Moo-hyun would be elected.

However, during the military regime, shamans were given the cold shoulder, and many politicians began to visit shamans and fortunetellers only after democratization and liberalization. According to the former Environment Minister Yun Ye Jung, Korean politicians and businessmen consulted with shamans “almost without exception.”

The political commentator Park Sang-byung said that shamanism has naturally penetrated the Korean institutional culture, and “… visiting a shaman cannot be prevented because it is the freedom of the individual. … However, this is problematic and causes public distrust.”

The most interesting thing is that Choi Soon-sil, Park Geun-hye’s friend, who is usually introduced as a shaman herself, was in fact only the daughter of a shaman. However, the propaganda of the Democrats presented her as the second Rasputin, and they played on the people’s annoyance described above, despite the fact that at the time when Choi “had especially strong influence on her friend, the president,” she was living in Germany.

In this context Yoon Suk-yeol is being made look like a puppet of shamans, taking into consideration the well-known telephone conversations – when his wife Kim Keon-hee said that she would move to the Blue House if she became the president’s wife, because the shamans advised her to do so. She also met her husband, who is 12 years older than her, following the advice of a Buddhist monk.

This is the basis to accuse Yoon and his wife of their close relations with religious figures who allegedly gave them advice on the verge of interfering in politics.

In January 2022, the Segye Ilbo newspaper “reported on the suspicions” about an incident in February 2020, when Yoon (at that time the Prosecutor General) refused to execute the order of the Minister of Justice on the repressions against the Shincheonji religious sect in connection with the fact that its members spread the coronavirus (there was a clear instruction to dig the dirt about the sect and show them as guilty in the disease spread), and he refused to do that because the shaman Chong Gong Jin allegedly told him: “Don’t get your hands dirty with blood.”

The same person allegedly took part in the work of Yoon’s election center – the so-called network headquarters, which was disestablished after the above news.

Then the representative of the Democratic Party, Kim Yoo-geum, said that back in 2018 (when Yoon was the prosecutor General), Yoon Suk-yeol and his wife were involved in a dubious religious ritual conducted by a shaman who informally participated in Yoon’s election campaign as a consultant.

Kim showed photos of the ritual held in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province, where tags with the names of Yoon and his wife and some Conservative Party members can be seen. Participation in the ritual is very expensive, and the ritual includes skinning a cow and hanging it on the altar wall next to a pile of 10 slaughtered pigs.

In response, the opposition party stated that in the same videos and photos from this ceremony, there are tags with the names of some prominent figures of the ruling party, including President Moon Jae-in and Lee Si-jong, governor of North Chungcheong Province.  After that this conviction was not mentioned anywhere in the news.

Thus, this seems to be an attempt to reproach Yoon Suk-yeol for doing things everyone else was somehow engaged in, playing on those fears that were artificially created during the candle revolution. However, most voters are dissatisfied with the close relationship that some politicians maintain with shamans. According to the two-day survey by the Southern Post when 1,002 persons were interviewed at the CBS’s request in January 2022, 60.7% of respondents said that relationship with shamans would have a negative impact on their attitude to Yoon Suk-yeol.

It is up to you to decide what effect this had on the outcome of the elections.

Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of the Far East at the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Fleeing from wars, armed conflicts and various militant activities, migrants from Africa and Asia continue to make risky attempts to enter the EU by various means, often using risky and perilous routes. However, streams of refugees in Europe have increased in recent days amid the events in Ukraine.

So, after the outright genocide of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine by Kiev’s neo-Nazi authorities, especially in Donbass, where, according to incomplete figures, more than 13,000 citizens of that country have died in the last eight years, almost 200,000 refugees have already taken refuge in Russia in recent days.

The EU media also have their own figures on refugees from Ukraine to Europe. The number of refugees who have arrived in Poland since the start of the military operation is reported to have exceeded 922,000. More than 200,000 Ukrainians have arrived in tiny Moldova with a population of 2.6 million. European diplomacy chief Josep Borrell, who has always stirred up Russophobic hysteria, said at a press conference on March 7 following an informal EU Council meeting in Montpellier that “some 5 million refugees from Ukraine will enter the EU member states.”

However, the EU leadership, which avoids publicizing truthful information about what is happening in Ukraine, deliberately glosses over the fact that thousands of refugees from Ukraine and non-Ukrainians are being returned to their countries of origin by the European authorities. For example, tengrinews.kz has repeatedly reported on the removal of hundreds of allegedly “Ukrainian” refugees from Central Asia from Europe to the capital of Kazakhstan.

The number of similar “refugee” Uzbek nationals has exceeded 2,500. More than 1,400 people are still waiting for their turn in Poland, Podrobno.uz reported on March 4, quoting the Polish Foreign Ministry. The first plane with Uzbek nationals evacuated from Ukraine to Poland left the city of Katowice on February 28, Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Yusup Kabulzhanov wrote in his Telegram channel.

Tajikistan’s ambassador to Ukraine, Davlat Nazrizoda, told Asia-Plus about Tajik nationals fleeing Ukraine for Europe, who number about 4,000 not counting former citizens of the republic who accepted Ukrainian citizenship. Their evacuation to Central Asia after arrival in the EU is also on schedule.

However, even to the uninitiated observer a strong difference in the composition of the “Ukrainian refugees” to Russia and Europe is striking. For example, while the border with the Russian Federation is crossed by women, children and elderly people fleeing extermination by Ukrainian militants, the picture on the border with European states is quite different. They are, as the social media in Moldova in particular point out, mostly sturdy Ukrainian guys of conscription age, clearly not poor and with short Nazi haircuts. This inadvertently suggests that in this case we are dealing with fleeing fighters of numerous nationalist battalions, who openly fear retribution for their crimes as a result of Moscow’s westward push for a special operation to demilitarize and denazify the Ukrainian military. There is a very strong reaction to the use of any language other than Ukrainian when communicating with them and a desire to engage in conflict and violent confrontation with those around them.

There is already a lot of information about their behavior on social media in European countries, which does not describe these Ukrainian “refugees” in a positive light. For example, an Israeli citizen was reportedly killed in late February, according to 9tv.co.il and the international branch of the Jewish volunteer organization ZAKA.  “A 37-year-old Jewish-Israeli man was shot dead while trying to leave Ukraine in the direction of the state border to join a guarded bus convoy and leave Ukraine,” ZAKA said in a statement.

In the Italian city of Bologna, two truckers from Belarus were killed by similar “refugees” near their cars in a car park on March 1. A witness, a CIS truck driver, said the crime was committed by eleven Ukrainians. “A boy was stabbed to death, he was 26 years old. Why? Because he just had Belarusian number plates,” said the driver, who recorded the incident on his phone camera and uploaded it to his Telegram channel named Mash.

On March 4, Italian media reported another incident in a supermarket in Brescia, Italy, where Moldovan nationals were hurt by a radical Ukrainian who started an argument about a military conflict with Russia and, as “an argument for his version of the conflict”, stabbed one of his opponents in the cheek and flank and another in the neck and then fled. It is also reported that Ukrainian refugees in Moldova are behaving brazenly and aggressively, with increasing instances of insults and fights with the staff of institutions. Ukrainian refugees arriving in Moldova complain that swimming pools do not operate in some hotels, they present passports of Ukrainian citizens in restaurants and demand free service. This was reported by a Moldovan volunteer who witnessed the defiant behavior of the so-called “Ukrainian refugees”. Chisinau municipal authorities have even asked the police to beef up security at Ukrainian refugee sites, and local volunteers have requested for the border to be closed.

Angelina Peregenska, a resident of Hungarian Transcarpathia, expressed outrage that refugees from Kiev complain about their reception conditions, “sit in bars and drink vodka”, insult locals and disrespect Hungarian, while already wanting to rule everything.

Tadeusz Rydzyk, a well-known priest of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland and head of the religious and political radio station Radio Maria, has warned his parishioners that yesterday’s illegal migrants from the Middle East and Africa, who unsuccessfully tried to enter the country through Belarus last year, are coming to Poland disguised as Ukrainian refugees.

However, today many media are already talking about Nazi-racial discrimination in Ukraine against foreign nationals who happen to be in the country. For example, dark-skinned Ukrainians fleeing the country in the wake of recent events have faced prejudice because of their skin color, ABC News confirms. As the channel’s correspondent found out, Africans were not allowed on trains leaving for the west, and one group was even almost forced to take part in the defense of Ukraine. Many refugees of foreign origin face racism in Ukraine, ABC News reported in another of its correspondences. In particular, there have been recorded cases of Ukrainian border guards and police giving priority to white citizens and not allowing people of Indian or African descent to pass. Moreover, foreigners are at times insulted and even attacked. However, there has been no active reaction from the “democratic West” on this issue with regard to the Kiev authorities, which amounts in effect to encouragement of Kiev’s Nazi-racial policies.

Most Ukrainian refugees go primarily to Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. They have also started arriving in the Balkans, Radoš Đurović, director of the Serbian Refugee Protection Center, told the Tanjug news agency.

In addition, a massive wave of refugees from Ukraine is gradually sweeping Germany as well, with Berlin becoming the first federal land of Germany to declare it, Süddeutsche Zeitung says. However, most refugees arriving in Berlin by train continue on their way and other federal lands confirm this fact. Germany’s “appeal” to Ukrainian refugees is due to a number of reasons. First and foremost, the desire to get even closer to the historical roots of Nazism. Moreover, Ukrainians are not required to register in Germany. They are entitled to stay for 90 days without a visa and only after that, i.e. if they plan to stay for a longer period, special EU rules start to apply. According to these rules, refugees from Ukraine can stay in Germany for one year without going through the asylum procedure. This period may be extended to three years. They also hope to take advantage of the law on Residence, Economic Activity and Integration of Foreigners in Germany, according to which military refugees are entitled to social benefits and access to the labor market. All costs in this case are borne by the federal lands.

In addition to the current German authorities’ blatant support for the Nazi regime in Kiev, they have made a number of additional “favors” available to such Ukrainian “refugees” with characteristic UPA hairstyles. “We want to apply for the first time the legal framework created after the Balkan wars. This means that refugees from Ukraine will not have to go through the asylum procedure. They will receive temporary protection in the EU for up to three years,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said. In other words, today it is possible for such “UPA boys” to go to the EU quite legally simply on the basis of having Ukrainian citizenship. And stay there for the next three years on welfare.

Therefore, in addition to pumping neo-Nazi-minded Ukrainians into EU territory, this category of “refugees” expects to use the conflict currently taking place to migrate legally to the EU and “join official Europeans.”

And the fact that this wave will thereby cause a rise in crime in Europe and neo-Nazism, which only Russia has so far decided to fight in its special operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukrainian society, will become fully clear to Europeans in the very next few days.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 changed our world permanently. Although those who staged those events have not yet been identified, Washington unequivocally declared a “war on terror”, directed at the overthrow of Al Qaeda (a terrorist organization banned in Russia) and the Taliban regime (banned in Russia), supported by American satellites. But it is also common knowledge that al-Qaeda was created by the CIA with the money from the monarchical regimes of the Persian Gulf to actively oppose the Soviet forces, who were the actual fighters against terrorism.

As time passed, the United States no longer needed the boogeyman who had done the dirty work for Washington, hence the decision was made to “destroy” al-Qaeda by “pinning” the tragic events of 9/11 on it. However, this war was only proclaimed on paper, and it was never won, as the US still needed a tool to continuously threaten states in the Middle East region. At the same time, Washington, while carrying out its aggressive plans, occupied Afghanistan for 20 years in a mean and cynical manner, in violation of all international norms, and took no real action there, except for increasing poppy crops and then helping the Taliban to transport drugs from that Asian country.

Misery and hunger became commonplace for Afghans during this period. Many left their country in search of security or better opportunities, whether as a result of the US invasion, during the brazen arbitrariness of the US and its satellites for 20 years, or after the return of the Taliban and their seizure of power. The wounds of that day for the Afghan people remain open till this very moment, and one wonders who will answer for all this and make up for the huge losses suffered by the Afghans. As you can see, the US and its allies are in no hurry to do so and, moreover, are trying to pay with Afghan money for the victims of the sad events of 9/11, which the Afghan people had nothing to do with.

Twenty years later, the American style of “nation building” clearly failed in Afghanistan. And such a deafening collapse was documented when the West rushed to pack up and hastily evacuate Afghanistan last August, leaving the country facing its worst humanitarian crisis. As international organisations struggled to find the necessary funds to feed the starving Afghans, President Joe Biden found no other solution than to seize assets belonging to the previous Afghan government. The US Democrat has solemnly signed an executive order dividing the Afghan funds between the victims of the September 11 attacks and much needed help for Afghanistan in rebuilding the country.

When the Afghan government collapsed last August, and the Taliban took control of the country, the US quickly froze the assets of Afghanistan’s Central Bank. The idea was to prevent any use of resources by the Taliban government. Very few Afghans knew much about such assets and their value until they were frozen. It was later revealed that the frozen amount was about $9 billion, of which $7 billion were deposited in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the rest was in European banks. The reason why the former Afghan government chose the US Federal Bank was the institution’s high credibility and prestige around the world. The recent decision by the US government to allocate half of those $7 billion it had frozen to compensate the families of 9/11 victims and use the rest for humanitarian aid in Afghanistan came as a big shock to Afghans around the world.

Ever since the US government froze these assets, the Taliban have been constantly calling for their release. Few people in Afghanistan know the actual purpose of the precious currency reserves held outside the country. Many believe that these assets serve as reserve funds to help the Afghan government in times of extreme need or emergency when alternative means of financing become unavailable. While governments have the right to use such funds in extreme situations and financial emergencies, this should only be done as a last resort. The actual purpose of these hard-earned foreign exchange reserves is to ensure the stability of Afghanistan’s central bank and the monetary discipline of the value of afghani, the national currency.

The US government’s decision to divide the assets has caused a sense of grief and despair among Afghans all over the world. They are surprised that the de facto rulers of Afghanistan are legally linked to the people of the country, who are the real owners of these assets. The vast majority of Afghans believe that these funds belong to them and the whole country. The Taliban have called this move, ordered by “great democrat” Joe Biden on Afghanistan, “theft”, which reflects the lowest level of “moral decay”. Many Afghans also criticised the US action, saying it was “unfair and vile”. Even former Afghan President Hamid Karzai reminded Washington that Afghans were also victims of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s past and called on the American president to reverse his unjust edict. But he did not question who was likely to compensate the Afghans for their colossal losses as a result of the illegal occupation by the US and NATO and the arbitrariness that the occupiers had perpetrated on Afghan soil.

The Taliban, who fought insurgent warfare against the US-led forces for 20 years and now control the entire country, have not been recognised by the US or any other country, mainly because of their human rights abuses. However, with abject poverty gripping the country, not only is Washington not helping the Afghans, it is looking for different ways to further rob them. It plans to put $3.5 billion in frozen funds into a special fund to support people affected by 9/11, at least for now, as the cost of supporting the claimants is estimated at $10 billion over the next 10 years alone. Compensation, reparation and ensuring that victims and their families are well taken care of is a legitimate right in international relations. President Biden’s decision to release frozen Afghan assets will naturally be welcomed in a midterm election year in America, but it is very difficult to understand why the assets of poor and destitute Afghans are being used to supplement the US compensation scheme. It also begs the question: what have the Afghans got to do with it, if, as the US media itself reported, the Saudis were the terrorists. Let them pay compensation to the victims of Saudi terrorists. This is the law, and everyone must obey it, including the US leadership.

The irony is that 20 years after 9/11, the bleeding wounds remain open both for the American victims, as a result of Washington’s mindlessly aggressive policies, and for the Afghan people, who have suffered for some 20 years under the oppression of occupation by the US and NATO forces. The US federal government seems to have failed to find a suitable funding mechanism for victims to extend this compensation scheme to those who deserve it, so it uses Afghan funds instead. Similarly, the Taliban last year rushed to seize control of Afghanistan by quietly and simply expelling foreign forces, primarily Americans. But they did not take into account how to finance their rise to power or their responsibility to provide basic necessities to all Afghans, where to find money to rebuild the country, after the plundering of its national wealth by the US.

In this difficult environment, the new Afghan government, trying to find a way out of the economic crisis, decided to step up efforts to rebuild relations with the rich Gulf States. In this context, a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) delegation met for the first time in Qatar with Afghan representatives. Representatives of individual GCC member states had previously met with the Taliban in various capacities, mainly to discuss the delivery of humanitarian aid, security and logistics. While the very fact that a meeting like the one in Doha was a remarkable event in itself, participants were able to exchange valuable information and deliver important messages.

Ironically, since the end of the war in Afghanistan, the country has been plunged into a humanitarian crisis by the US and NATO due to economic isolation, depleted financial resources and an inability to provide basic social services. At a meeting in Doha, GCC officials stressed the importance of addressing the urgent humanitarian needs of the Afghan people as international reports reflected the grim reality. According to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), Afghanistan is facing the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, with needs exceeding those of Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Tens of millions of lives are at stake. The WFP has found that 22.8 million people are at acute risk, while 8.7 million face extreme levels of hunger, indicating a serious risk of widespread hunger. The UN estimates that 97% of Afghans could fall into poverty before the end of 2022.

Afghanistan is now trying every way possible to establish a peaceful life and provide basic livelihoods for the Afghan people. And a number of countries have come to the aid of this Asian country, with the exception of the United States, which is still trying to rob poverty-stricken Afghans, using their frozen money for its own selfish interests.

Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The South Korean presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol recently stated that he thought a preemptive strike against the DPRK would be justified, since, if the latter were to launch a rocket armed with a nuclear warhead against Seoul, it would be almost impossible to intercept itю The only option would be to forestall the attack.

This statement triggered a great deal of heated discussion, and the left-leaning daily Hankyoreh published an article in response, quoting Otto von Bismark’s famous dictum that “Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.”

Nevertheless both the US and Israel have at various times launched attacks that they described as preemptive strikes. Given the situation on the Korean peninsula there appears to be a real risk that an attack on the DPRK’s missile launchers could trigger a full-scale war – but in other parts of the world the principle that “attack is the best form of defense” seems more justified, at least in relation to the bases of terrorist groups.

But the concept of a preemptive strike raises a number of problems, some of which relate to ethical issues, as will be discussed below.

In principle, a preemptive strike can be a viable strategy: “Strike first and do not let your adversary strike you back.  In a fight between a weaker and a stronger party, where a first blow by your enemy or an extended struggle would manifest your defeat, the best way to turn the situation to your advantage is to strike first.” In the US and many other countries, this principle is applied by law enforcement officers, who frequently shoot first when faced with suspicious activity.  In a country where citizens have the right to bear arms, if a suspect puts their hand in their pocket during an arrest, then the police officer is likely to assume they are reaching for a gun. The officer will naturally shoot first, before it is too late.

Although in theory a preemptive strike is a first blow, in practice it is a last resort, adopted only when a fight seems inevitable. But if the fight is NOT inevitable then the preemptive strike closes off all other options for resolving the conflict, leaving force as the only option.

That leads us to the first problem: the need to have a proper justification for such a strike. Whether it is a conflict between individuals or between states, it is essential to have cast iron proof that the party against which the strike is directed was staging an attack.  Otherwise the result will be the same as so often happens on American streets when the police get involved. The “suspicious” activity turns out to have been misinterpreted, but it is too late – the shots have already been fired.

To make things more difficult, the decision to strike preemptively is often made in a split second and in response to incomplete information, and, at least in a political context, what Dick Cheney referred to as the “one per cent doctrine” also comes into play. As Mr. Cheney put it: “if there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It’s not about our analysis… It’s about our response.”

In terms of what could be called the “bodyguard’s reflex” (a quality common to security professionals all over the world – it’s in the nature of their job) that approach is justifiable – a one percent risk may represent a significant threat if we are talking about what Cheney refers to as low-probability, high-impact events.

For example if there is a 1% risk of a car accident due to technical failure it is essential to check all parts of the vehicle and ensure that everything is working properly. A 1% risk of an epidemic would justify strict quarantine measures against a person who may be infectious – even if it turns out to be a false alarm.

The US Patriot Act allows official to block potential terrorists’ bank accounts and their telephones without need for any proof, in order, on the off chance that he really is a terrorist, to prevent him from carrying out an attack. And if it turns out that he is not a terrorist and protests about these measures, no harm is done – in relation to such a serious threat, it is better to be safe than sorry.

That is why, for example when the US started looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it paid no heed to the potential consequences for that country: “We need to be absolutely certain that you do not and cannot obtain such weapons, and any suspicious or dual use technology will be taken as proof of our suspicions, and any reluctance to cooperate (or failure to comply in full with all our instructions) will be treated as indirect evidence and an indication that you have got something to hide.”

This bears some explanation. Certain media outlets have promoted the theory that the US knew right from the beginning that Iraq did not have any WMDs, and that it fabricated the data it needed in order to launch the invasion. But in fact it is now clear that the reality was rather different, and perhaps even worse. In view of Saddam Hussein’s reputation, the US was convinced (or better, convinced itself) that it was impossible that such a tyrant did not have a WMD program, and the lack of evidence simply meant that the program was well hidden – it was just a question of carrying on the search. And there was no need to check that the information was true as a pro-democracy defector could not possibly be lying!

The bodyguard’s reflex is based on the idea that it is better to arrest 10 potential terrorists, even if they then turn out to be innocent, rather than miss one real terrorist whose actions would cause far more harm than the unpleasantness suffered by the ten mistakenly arrested individuals. Which is better, to be cautious but earn a reputation for infringing civil liberties, or to fail to take action and thus allow a catastrophic attack to occur?

But there is another, much darker, side to the coin. Any fast-track procedures such as those provided by the Patriot Act or other special regulations can streamline processes and minimize bureaucracy, but they can also make it easier for the authorities to abuse their powers, as the normal checks and balances have been weakened. It is not surprising that government critics and conspiracy theorists see such measures as primarily aimed at making such abuse easier.

That approach also erodes the distinction between likely and unlikely scenarios, which can result in self-fulfilling prophecies. This response, however, is clearly insufficient. This combination – demonizing the enemy and applying the 1% doctrine – is doubly dangerous: firstly because we assess the likelihood of a scenario (often using such phrases as “it is impossible to exclude the risk of X”) based on our a priori assumption that the enemy regime is evil, and secondly because the 1% doctrine allows us to treat a small likelihood in the same way as a certainty.

Moreover, the public reaction to a preemptive strike will inevitably be mixed: generally people approve of government actions when they are a response to another party’s conduct. Following a terrorist attack, the government strikes back and those responsible are punished. But when measures are taken, not in response to events that have occurred, but to prevent something that thus never happens, then many people question whether the measures were morally justified. Was the preemptive strike really proportionate to the danger? Or was it just a provocation?  What if the claims that the attack was a preemptive strike are just an attempt to justify the decision to strike first?

The present author could cite a number of unpleasant situations in which people are forced to choose between two versions of the truth, their choice being determined in each case by religious considerations or their political views.

Once such dilemma has become quite common thanks to the #MeToo movement. A woman accuses a man of raping her many years ago, and apart from her own claim there is no evidence of the alleged crime. As a result, we have two conflicting presumptions: the presumption of an accused person’s innocence, which is a foundation of the criminal justice system, and the widespread presumption that a person accused of rape is guilty.  If the accused defends himself he is often seen as slandering his accuser, but in reality it is often the case that the only evidence for a rape is the woman’s accusation. There is no satisfactory solution to this dilemma.

Here’s another example. States are often accused of torturing political dissidents, and then using the confessions extracted under torture against them. In many cases the torture is impossible to prove, due to the lack of any physical evidence – we just have to take the victim’s word for it. Thus we again have two presumptions: the presumption of innocence, and the presumption that the regime is guilty – as there are many types of torture which leave no physical mark on the victim.

But public opinion will always favor simple solutions. People want a universal rule like “if the state is accused of using violence, it means it used violence,” or “if he was tortured, it means he is innocent.” In the absence of such simple solutions, people resort to the logic of “us and them” – they are terrorists, and we are freedom fighters. Or – he is a rapist, and we are victims.

The problem is the same with preemptive strikes: it is often hard for society to accept that the events that we have averted would have been worse than what has actually happened. After all, what has happened is a certainty, while what might happen could be just a 1% chance, or it could be more. No one would fall for the argument that “this cute puppy would have grown up into a killer dog, so we shot him to stop this happening.” We need other arguments.

Especially if people generally believe that “the authorities are hiding the truth,” or if distrust of the government takes some other form, in which case the regime is inevitably assumed to be guilty: “Of course they attacked innocent civilians and then accused them of being terrorists for some political reason or other self-serving motive.” And, naturally, dead militants, or persons accused of being militants, cannot say anything – they were killed by a preemptive strike before they could launch an attack.

This article will necessarily lack a clear conclusion – as normally dilemmas of the types discussed above have specific features that allow us to make a balanced rational assessment in each case, without having to resorting to a crude rule of thumb. The present author simply wishes to draw attention to these kinds of conflicting presumptions, and point out the importance of carefully assessing the circumstances and causes in each individual case.

 Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of the Far East at the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The dismissive attitude of the US political and military establishment towards its foreign “helpers” is well known.

This attitude became even more apparent after Joe Biden’s recent appearance before the House of Representatives and Senate with his annual State of the Union Address, in which he described the people of Ukraine as Iranians. One could hardly attribute this remark to Biden’s mental ageing. It is yet another indication of the indifference of the White House as to whom to shell: Iranians, Ukrainians, Iraqis, Afghans, Vietnamese, who are all seen there as second class people.

As recently as last August, US combat veteran Sgt Larry Suer was convinced that the story of how the Americans abandoned the Vietnamese in Saigon in 1975 would be repeated in Kabul, which, by the way, happened!

The death of Afghan interpreter Sohail Pardis and the dramatic plight of thousands of Afghans working for the US is a vivid example of the entire highly chaotic attempt to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan, but also a testament to Washington’s disregard towards its helpers abroad. According to a report by the Association of Wartime Allies, the Afghanistan International television revealed that the United States evacuated about 3% of its Afghan allies who had applied for special immigration visas, leaving behind some 78,000 people willing to flee. According to interviews with 4,000 applicants for special immigration visas, those remaining in Afghanistan face harassment and hardship under the Taliban (organization banned in the Russian Federation). Almost 30% of these applicants said they spent some time in detention during the six months after the withdrawal of US troops, and 52% said they were interrogated, 88% of these people faced unemployement, and 94% reported economic difficulties and hunger. Meanwhile, Kim Stafiri, one of the founders of the Association of Wartime Allies, says other Western governments, unlike the US, have managed to pull their Afghan partners out of Afghanistan with fewer casualties.

Hundreds of Iraqi interpreters working for the US army have made similar claims against the US authorities, as they have been abandoned to their fate, according to Switzerland’s SRF portal. Citing the testimony of one of them, Ali, an Iraqi resident, SRF says he worked as an interpreter for the US army for nearly two years, carrying out communications between the US and Iraqi military. For the sake of their work, such Iraqi interpreters risked everything – including the safety of their families. After almost two years in the US army, he received order to leave the US military base, then he was escorted on foot to a fortified Iraqi army post, and five days later received a letter telling him that his job with the US army was over. He then learned that the US military had given the full identities of all Iraqi interpreters to the Iraqi government, which Ali said had been infiltrated by militant groups. After this, a list of several hundred interpreters’ names appeared on the Internet and members of militant groups started sending death threats to the interpreters.

According to a former interpreter who worked with the US army occupation forces, the US military was ambivalent towards Iraqis during the occupation. He divided the US military into three groups according to their attitude towards Iraqis: the first supported the occupation of Iraq and held a grudge against the local population; the second doubted the rightness of the US leadership; the third detached themselves from politics and joined the service just to be able to get a higher education.

More than once, the US has demonstrated its complete indifference to the fate of the Kurds by exploiting them for its own momentary interests during the wars in Iraq and Syria. The US has shown the Kurds its support towards the Kurdish vision of creating a separate state, supported by the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds. To this end, Washington has nurtured this dream to meet its own needs of establishing US bases in those areas of Iraq and Syria where Iran has had a lot of influence. However, the Kurdish plan, like the US support for it, has failed to come to fruition. In particular, it is well known that after the start of the Turkish military operation Peace Spring, Washington abandoned the Kurds to their fate, forcing them to fight with Ankara.

In this context and against the backdrop of a deteriorating situation in Ukraine after Russia launched a special operation to denazify and demilitarize it, many Ukrainians began to express their concerns about the possible consequences of cooperation with the US embassy. In particular, local employees of the US embassy in Kiev have sent a letter to the US Department of State asking for help, feeling, as the US media report, abandoned to their fate. In particular, on February 26, The Financial Times, quoting the text of their letter, which was made available to its editors, pointed out that the embassy staff requested help with evacuating from the war zone, obtaining US visas, as well as a stable line of communication with the Department of State amid the ongoing hostilities. However, even these requests for help were ignored by Washington, which showed its true attitude towards those “helpers”.

Under these circumstances, even the Polish Polityka points out the fear of many countries today that the US will abandon them, demonstrating its usual “defection” to them and NATO.

Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

For many decades, the states of the European Union (EU) have been considered the sphere of the US influence. American troops occupied a considerable part of them during the Second World War, and after it ended, they never left. The military presence combined with the strongest economic dependence on the United States, in which these countries found themselves after the devastating war, made American dominance in the west of Eurasia strong and unshakable for many years.

In 1949, the NATO military bloc directed against the Soviet Union was founded, which finally turned the presence of American troops into a legitimate and habitual practice for European states that did not enter the Soviet sphere of influence. And in the 1950s, the EU began to form into a supranational organization that has effectively been broadcasting Washington’s influence and spreading it to all its new members.

Now there are American military facilities in Greece and Bulgaria, Italy, Spain and Portugal, in the Baltic States, in Scandinavia, and even in the most developed countries of Europe, such as Great Britain and Germany.

Therefore, when it comes to global politics, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and their other allies, such as Australia or Canada, rarely have to be mentioned separately and usually are collectively referred to simply as the “West”.

For a long time it seemed that the West was one and undivided. However, in recent years, the presence of a new force, namely, China, has been increasingly felt in Europe.

Early in the second half of the twentieth century, China was a big country with considerable natural resources, as well as a huge and poor population, which meant lots of cheap labor. It was an ideal candidate for localization of production, and soon it turned into a real factory for the whole West. It would have seemingly been easy to foresee, but when China grew into a mighty industrial power, filled all possible markets with its products, developed the economy and turned into a powerful economic, political and even military competitor to the West, this seemed to be a surprise for the latter.

A quiet but alarming “bell” for Western unity rang in 2014-2015, when Chinese Hong Kong was engulfed by thousands of protests dubbed the “umbrella revolution” in the media. The speeches received active ideological support through the media from Washington and London, but Brussels did not show much interest in this campaign.

Soon, in 2016, China became the main trading partner of Germany, one of the key states of the European Union, and already in 2017, China became the second trading partner of the entire EU after the United States.

Finally, in 2020, China overtook the United States and became the EU’s main trading partner, with the mutual turnover standing at EUR 586 billion. And the EU’s trade turnover with the United States in 2020 showed a steep decline from EUR 616 billion to EUR 555 billion. Perhaps this is due to the fact that China began to recover faster after the coronavirus lockdown. However, this could not have happened without China’s purposeful efforts to conquer the European market either.

On December 30, 2020, the EU and China completed negotiations on the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) whose task, among other things, was to remove barriers restricting the access of European investors to the Chinese domestic market. Chinese Leader Xi Jinping and EU leaders, such as Germany’s then Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and others, participated in the discussion of the document. As a result, the CAI was signed by the European Commission, the highest executive authority of the EU. Interestingly, Washington spoke out against the agreement. There is an opinion that this is exactly why the CAI was agreed and signed at the turn of 2020/2021, while the inauguration of the new US President Joe Biden has not yet taken place. As a result, Washington and London accused the European negotiators of “violating the rules of Western solidarity.”

Soon Washington had the opportunity to “restore order” in its possessions. In March 2021, the United States imposed new sanctions against China on charges of human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This time, Washington has made sure that the EU joins the sanctions. In response, Beijing banned five MEPs from entering China. As a counter-sanctions on the counter-sanctions, in May 2021, the European Parliament decided by an overwhelming majority to “freeze” ratification of the CAI. It is difficult to say whether Chinese sanctions against MEPs were the real reason for “freezing” the agreement. The CAI opened up too many opportunities for European business. Interestingly, among other things, the European Parliament’s resolution to freeze ratification of the CAI also contains a requirement to coordinate steps with Washington regarding China. Apparently, the United States played a significant role in the deterioration of the EU-China relations.

Nevertheless, in 2021, the Sino-European trade turnover continued to grow and again exceeded the EU-US trade turnover. The China-Germany trade turnover, according to available data, also increased compared to the previous year, showing a 15% increase and reaching USD 279 billion.

Now China remains the main trading partner for both the EU as a whole and Germany in particular. Some believe that the growth of Sino-European trade will continue, and that the EU already depends to a considerable extent on Chinese supplies of certain types of goods. It should be recalled that, in addition to huge volumes of everyday goods, China exports telecommunications equipment and technologies, including those related to 5G communications. This can already be called a product of strategic importance.

Of course, the American position in the EU so far seems to be stronger than that of China. Despite the fact that the United States has ceded to China the first place in trade with the EU, the volume of European-American trade is still huge. In addition, one cannot forget that there are still dozens of thousands of American military personnel in Europe. However, it should be remembered that huge funds are required to maintain military bases abroad, and ultimately the preservation of US influence in the EU depends on whether and how the American economy is successful. It is in the economic sphere that China is rapidly catching up with the United States and is preparing to overtake it in the near future. And the economic positions that China has managed to occupy in Europe are already clearly exceeding the level desirable for Washington. No one is talking about China ousting the US from Europe yet, but it is obvious that what is commonly referred to in modern media as “soft power,” which, according to popular opinion, developed states use against less developed ones, is now being used by China in Europe at full power.

Petr Konovalov, a political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.