The US Air Force just landed in Poland, very quietly, accounting for a missile defense roll-out with little announcement in the local press. Military staff failed to arrive on schedule to boost the local economy. Reportedly, only ten Air Force officials landed. “Yeah, but they came with 10 F-16s fighter planes,” said one Polish-American security official.

Of course, the US Airforce isn’t storming Poland while their citizens continue to be denied Visas to the Land of Opportunity. The Poles, after all, are NATO allies serving in the War on Terror through a decade of two wars.

Besides the 10 F-16s and some 250 support staff expected in the town of Łask, the towns of Krzesiny and Powidz have also signed up to support the Yanks, welcoming a boost to the local economy. What are Poles expecting in addition to the F-16 fighter-planes and happy-go-lucky Americans? The Lockheed C-130 Hercules cargo plane to be stationed East – close to Russia.

After all, it is Russia that vocally disagreed with the need for a missile defense shield in NATO Poland. And despite Polish petitions to install missile defense, and despite US promises to add the valuable deterrent, the US has sided with Russia, drawing stinging criticism from Polish President Komorowski in August of 2012.

But the US is not concerned with drawing flattery from its NATO allies; its concern, as always, is preparing against the worst case scenario – here in Poland, even in 2012 - a Russian invasion.

In 2011, Russia staged aggressive wargames in neighboring Lithuania in tandum with strong rebukes to the Polish minority. It called for the abolishment of the Polish language teaching in the country. The wargames simulated an invasion. The Polish minority in Lithuania has pressed its cause. It is important to remember that for Russia, Eastern Europe is just another satellite state at least as much as Georgia (which it recently invaded in 2008) or Afghanistan (1979-1988). Boasting a population of some 40 million, Poland, separated from Russia by Ukraine and Belarus, might believe that it’s not counted as an extension of the Soviet states – especially as it is a loyal and productive NATO member. Perhaps Poles forget they share a border with Russia, playing host to the naval port of Kalingrad.

Since August of 2012, Visa-free travel between Russia’s Kalingrad Oblast and it’s EU neighbors has been offered. Polish residents on the Baltic Seaboard as far as Gdask may take advantage of the liberties; and Russians may travel a few kilometers into Poland.

Maybe that’s why the Americans reneged the missile defense shield – too close to Russia to secure.

Whatever the case, as this picture suggests, the Airforce sure is here now. Pay close attention, the plane marked ‘Polish Air Force’ is the Hercules C-130 cargo plane predicted to land by the Polish Press in July. The Hercules, a descendant of the famous C-54 which in 1949 broke the Soviet blockade of Berlin, serves as a gruesome reminder of the backbreaking potential of a rugged cargo-plane in Eastern Europe. In addition to paratroopers, the turboprop military transport can fulfill wildfire fighting duties as well as reconnaissance. It’s ideal for insulting the enemy; and serves as a sobering reminder that the US can invade Russia with far greater finesse than Russia may ever invade Europe.

The US Congress last week passed legislation against Russians suspected in the torture of Andrei Magnitsky. Russia promised offense, taking issue with American legislators who keep prisoners locked away in GITMO Cuba as subjects of terror. In the time being, a botched arms deal to the tune of some 4 billion with normally compliant Syria preceded the ousting of General Nikolai Makarov for corruption charges, dumping valuable military assets without recouping their value. Which, all in all, signals that Russian officials are dealing with having to tighten their belts and conserve cash. After all, that is what the Magnitsky legislation calls for: asset redistribution.

In the last couple of weeks, we have seen botched Russian arms deals in Syria, corruption rattling top Russian brass, American legislators declaring war on suspicious Russians, and the Air Force showing off its plan of attack – a CARGO plane. Then Thanksgiving and the day after that when the Polish Press announced that the Congress building nearly averted a 4 ton TNT attack; that LGBTA websites across the land have been hacked and that Gays and Lesbians should change their passwords; and that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk proposes to arrange a State Tribunal for the twin brother of fallen President Lech Kaczyński for suspicions of corruption. Mr. Kaczyński served as his brother’s Prime Minister and is still a leading candidate against Tusk power in Poland. This is despite an ostentatious grieving period that has seen the former Prime Minister concoct conspiracy after conspiracy to atone for the death of his brother and some 90 serving senior cabinet ministers in a Tupolev 154 in Smolensk, Russia, on April 10 of 2010.

Whatever will happen next?

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Kent, U.S.A – Escape from Oblivion: A Moscow Correspondent’s Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Donald S. Connery, has just been published as an Amazon e-book in time to mark the 50th anniversary of the October 16-28, 1962 nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. The book is unique among the many works on the singular event in human history that almost ended human history.

As one of the most-traveled of the early Cold War reporters, and now the last still-working American journalist based in Moscow during the crisis, Mr. Connery has produced an extraordinary, highly personal eyewitness account of the frightening thirteen days that brought the world to the brink of a thermonuclear war. He sets the near-death moment of civilization against the background of the superpower conflict—and Russia’s internal difficulties—that he reported from Asia, Europe and Africa in the 1950s and ’60s.

He reveals that the citizens of the Soviet police state, who were kept in ignorance about the near collision between the U.S. and the USSR, remained calm while many Americans were in panic. He tells how Russians, “Americans in disguise” as seen during his far-reaching trips in 1961-1962, believed that they were drawing closer to the U.S. even as the Soviet government under Premier Nikita Khrushchev defied President John F. Kennedy by secretly shipping nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of troops to Cuba.

For the first time in any book about the superpower confrontation, the author offers a detailed look at the preceding but long-forgotten U.S.-USSR cultural honeymoon in the autumn of 1962. Such visiting luminaries as Igor Stravinsky, George Balanchine and Robert Frost were acclaimed by adoring Russian fans in Moscow and Leningrad.

Younger readers unfamiliar with the communist way of life in the Soviet Union half a century ago may be moved by the author’s account of the struggles and yearnings of ordinary Russians—”the enemy” in the eyes of many Americans at the time—long before the Soviet state collapsed in 1991. His many interviews reveal the bitter humor people used as a weapon against the rulers who denied them access to the world outside.

A recent visitor to today’s Russia during the Putin era, Mr. Connery shatters the myths about who started the Cuban missile crisis and who was the victor after both Khrushchev and Kennedy rejected the advice of the hard-liners that might have led to World War III.

Donald S. Connery, the author of six books, is a World War II veteran and Harvard graduate who was a United Press reporter at the United Nations when the Cold War broke into the open in 1946. In the following decades he roamed the world for Time and Life magazines during the heyday of their global influence. As described in Escape From Oblivion, his 6,000-mile Trans-Siberian Railway journey from the Far East to Moscow in 1961, a postwar first by an American correspondent, led to a world scoop for his magazines.

His NBC radio and television reports from Moscow during the missile crisis brought news of the gathering storm into millions of American homes. As an independent journalist since 1960s, Mr. Connery has been a pioneer in investigating “wrong man” cases and exposing the magnitude of major-crime wrongful convictions—tens of thousands each year—in America’s “broken” criminal justice system.

The $2.99 e-book is available at Amazon.

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In the last months, the diplomatic relation between Russian and the United States has become tense and unstable, mainly because Russia and China vetoed the U.N. intervention on Syria. This really angered the United States, but Vladimir Putin’s recent election to the Russian presidency has not helped to solve the problem and calm things down.

Russia is the U.S.’ 20th largest trading partner in goods. The goods trade between the two countries is reported as $42.9 billion USD in total. U.S. exports to Russia were $8.3 billion dollars. U.S. goods imports from Russia totaled $34.6 billion last year. Compared to China, Russia is a small economic partner to the United States, but a very important one in other areas.

In the 19th century, Russia sold Alaska to the United States. Russia also supported the U.S. during the civil war. In fact, the 19th  century was a golden period for U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations. But the  20th century told us a completely different story. It witnessed the worst  case scenario in the diplomatic relations between the two countries: the Cold War, which was a mainly political conflict between the Soviet Union, a union of countries in which Russia was the biggest, and the United States. Even though the Cold War was going on, the U.S. and Soviet astronauts went to space together in the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission.

The Soviet Union didn’t last forever, ending in 1991. After this, relations between the two countries got better, but, like with every country, there are a lot of aspects in which both governments do not agree. This is completely normal considering both countries come from two totally different backgrounds.

Vladimir Putin returned to the Russian presidency in March, which will definitely affect the good relations that President Obama had with his precursor, Dmitri Medvedev, who was in power from 2008 to 2012. Medvedev even declared once that “these were perhaps the best three years of relations between Russia and the United States over the last decade.”

But now Putin, a former K.G.B officer, is back on the game. The man became President for the first time in 2000 and remained so until 2008 when he gave power to his chosen one, Medvedev. Yet, most analysts agree he never stopped ruling.

The first problems between the U.S. and Russia have already reappeared, and the Syria issue has been the trigger. The State Secretary Hillary Clinton accused Putin in June of shipping attack helicopters to Syria that President al-Assad could use to continue with his massacre of civilians. The Russian government responded that they only have sent weapons that can be used for self-defense.

But the problematic relations between both countries really started in February, when Russia and China vetoed the United Nations’ action on Syria. This action caused fury on the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. The U.S. ambassador Susan Rice told CNN that “those that have blocked potentially the last effort to resolve this peacefully … will have any future blood spill on their hands.”

But President Obama made an announcement in June to try to calm things down. After a meeting with President Putin, he expressed the tensions can be solved although they have disagreements. Concerning the Syria issue he declared that President Putin agreed that a political process should be created in Syria in order to avoid a civil war.

Image Courtesy of  World Economic Forum

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As of July 1, new sanctions against Iran are taking effect, effectively banning crude oil imports to the EU, which accounts for some 18% of Iranian crude oil exports. These new sanctions are coming into play as talks between the Iranian regime and the so called P5+1 nations (the U.S., U.K., China, Russia, and France plus Germany) are not making much headway.

Neither the May 23 meeting in Bagdad nor the June 23 meeting in Moscow resulted in anything substantial. Arguably, Iran is moving closer to the “point of no return” with threats being handed out on all sides and the rhetoric growing fiercer. Although a military solution seems to become more and more likely, there are compelling reasons why an air strike should be avoided at all costs.

An air strike on Iran is neither going be as easy as the Israeli strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981, nor the strike on Syria’s reactor near al-Kibar in 2007. Iran, having learned a lesson or two from history, has gone to great lengths to protect their enrichment plants – spread out all over Iran – composing at least a dozen different sites. A top US air-force planner estimates that at least 400 targets would have to be hit, and that at least 75 would require the use of penetrating munitions (such as so called “bunker buster bombs”).

Furthermore, these sites are buried deep under ground, (such as the enrichment plant at Fordow which is located under a mountain), and are protected by sophisticated Russian-made air defence systems.

The air strike would have to be massive, continuous and surgical – and the problem is, it would do nothing but postpone the Iranian nuclear venture, (with some 2-5 years according to analysts). And detriment to the whole cause, a strike would naturally add enormous incentive for Iran to actually acquire the bomb, instead of keeping to peaceful uranium enrichment.

Following an Israeli strike, the Iranians would undoubtedly counterattack. Such a strike would be delivered both by means of conventional weapons such as ballistic missiles towards Israel (Iran has got the biggest stock of ballistic missiles in the Middle East), and also by the use of proxy forces such as Hezbollah who could target Israel with rocket strikes from the neighbouring Lebanon.

Other notable proxy strikes would come from the powerful warlord Moqtada al-Sadr, commander of the Shiite Mahdi Army, who’s openly promised to strike back at U.S. coalition forces in Iraq in the case of a U.S./Israeli strike against Iran.

If such a scenario unfolds, the U.S. would undoubtedly launch its own strike against Iran. The U.S., having built up a presence of some 125,000 troops in close proximity to Iran according to recent CENTCOM figures have the ability to hit some 10,000 targets inside Iran overnight.

However, the aftermath of a potential U.S. strike could prove to be very dangerous, as it would galvanize the other pro-Iranian powerhouses China and Russia, active in the region, and, in a worst case scenario, spark a new cold war.

Furthermore, a U.S. strike would have to be continuous and conducted over a long time span, in order to quell any resumed Iranian nuclear efforts, putting further strain on an already badly overstretched U.S. army, not to mention its economy. And all the while, soaring global oil prices would put the final nail in the coffin of an already badly beaten Western economy.

This is simply a scenario, but makes a rather convincing case why a military strike should be avoided at all costs. But amidst the threats and the gloomy outlooks, there are some positive notions.

Although the conflict has seen some escalations, such as cyber attacks on Iranian enrichment plants, as well as several mysterious and dramatic deaths of leading Iranian nuclear scientists, it has mostly been a war of words up to this point.

Historically, Israel has shown that when they are really intent on striking, such as in the cases of Iraq and Syria, it was done in the quiet, without any warning. The current amount of warnings and threats is thus a sign that Israel is content at keeping it “a war of words,” at least for now. But this rather precarious stalemate is not going to last forever.

Image Courtesy of  Mahmoud Ahmadinejar 

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Srdja Trifkovic, Foreign Affairs Editor of Chronicles and Executive Director of  The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies, in a recent article, has claimed that Western media reporting on Russia is “bias” and “stereotypical”, and has said that the “West” should put more trust in Russia.

Trifkovic said: “Most Western media professionals tend to subscribe, consciously or not, to a neo-liberal world outlook in general and to the tenets of multiculturalism in particular. The result is notable media favouritism of allegedly disadvantaged, non-Western, traditionally non-Christian societies.

“Behind the veneer of all-embracing diversity, however, we find a carefully calibrated scale of acceptance or rejection of “the Other” depending on the cultural and political preferences of the media professionals themselves. The result is moral and intellectual relativism, which enables the media elite to pick and choose, which group or nation will be approved for the status of sympathy or victimhood, and which will be denied the benefit of the doubt.

“The image of Russia in the Western media indicates that Russia has been relegated to the latter category.”It sounds paradoxical,” said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, referring to the Western attitude toward Russia, “but there was more mutual trust and respect during the Cold War.” His correct hint is that the Western opinion-makers detest post-Soviet Russia – the state that no longer is subservient, as it had been in the 1990s, but reviving its statehood and identity – more than the Cold War leaders of the West detested the USSR.

“The problem of bias, stereotypical reporting and quasi-analysis is by no means new. The collapse of Russia’s institutions and social infrastructure under Yeltsin was accompanied by Western approval of the key engineers of the disaster (Anatoly Chubais, Yegor Gaidar, Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov…). Their small political factions, lionized by the Western media, were duly supported by the quasi-NGO network funded in part by the Western taxpayers.

“Various anti-Russian stereotypes notably prevailed over common sense and journalistic integrity at the time of Mikhael Saakashvili’s attack on South Ossetia in August 2008, with the mainstream media pack attacking Russia’s “aggression” and criticizing Western “passivity.”

“While never missing an opportunity to hector Russia on democracy and criticize her human rights record, the Western media have been and still are notably silent on the discriminatory treatment of large Russian minorities in some former Soviet republics.

“In other words, the verdict depends on an actors’ status in the ideological pecking order of the media elite itself, not on his words and actions as such – in line with the Leninist dictum that the moral value of any act by anyone is determined by that act’s contribution to the march of history. V.V. Putin’s high approval rating is thus cited as further “evidence” of his manipulative populism and “proof” that democracy remains underdeveloped in Russia.

“The similarity of reactions to Russia on the right and left ends of the Western media spectrum reflects the perception that Russia belongs to a tradition that is unworthy of multiculturalist tolerance.

The problem stems not from any misunderstanding of the Russian mindset and tradition, but, on the contrary, from an accurate assessment by the media class that Russia as such is an obstacle to the realization of their political, economic, and ideological preferences in the modern world. The sin of the Russians, in the eyes of the Western media elite, is that they are still defined by their ethnic, cultural and religious identity.

“The problem exists. For it to be solved we need a paradigm shift in the West that would pave the way for a “Northern Alliance” of Russia, Western Europe and North America, as all three face similar geopolitical and demographic threats in the decades ahead. We need to rediscover and cherish the commonalities of the spiritual traditions, history and culture of the extended European family, from Anchorage via Berlin to Vladivostok.”

Srdja Trifkovic is Foreign Affairs Editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, and Executive Director of The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.flickr.com/photos/utenriksdept/

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