Italy Building Anti-EU Axis

by Soeren Kern • January 14, 2019 at 5:00 am

"Today begins a journey that will continue in the coming months for a different Europe, for a change of the European Commission, of European policies, which puts at the center the right to life, work, health, safety, all that the European elites, financed by [billionaire Hungarian philanthropist George] Soros and represented by Macron, deny...." — Matteo Salvini, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior.
"Both President Macron and Mrs. Merkel have expressed frustration at the rise of populism and nationalism, and at Europe's dithering in the face of problems such as climate change and mass migration...." — The Times.
"The only certainty I have of the European elections is that the socialists and the communists will always be less in Brussels -- they have already done enough damage...." — Matteo Salvini.

During a January 9 visit to Poland, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said that populists from Italy and Poland should spark a "European spring" and forge a "new equilibrium" to replace the influence of Germany and France in the European Parliament. Pictured: Salvini meets with Poland's Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński in Warsaw on January 9. (Image source: Matteo Salvini Facebook page)

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is leading an effort to create a pan-European populist alliance to challenge the pro-European establishment over the future of the European Union. The aim is to reclaim sovereignty from unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and transfer key EU powers back to national capitals.

Germany and France, the self-appointed guardians of European integration, are responding to the challenge with an ambitious counterplan to make the European Union a "more decisive power on the world stage."

The showdown, which threatens to split the European Union down the middle between Eurosceptic nationalists and Europhile globalists, will heat up in coming weeks and months, ahead of elections for the European Parliament in late May 2019.

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"Peace Through Paper"
The Ruinous Position of the U.S. Disarmament Community

by Peter Huessy • January 14, 2019 at 4:00 am

The notion of a unilateral U.S. cut completely disregards Moscow's large-scale nuclear modernization that has been going on since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the effort in April 2000.
During his state-of-the-nation address on March 1, Putin boasted of technological breakthroughs in Russia's nuclear-weapons capabilities, which have rendered NATO's U.S.-led missile defense "useless." In 2014, Putin announced that Russia's nuclear capabilities would be 100% modernized by 2021. Meanwhile, America's nuclear upgrades -- including a new bomber, submarine and land-based missile -- will not go into the field until 2027 at the earliest, and will not be completed before 2042.
Reagan's successful policies involved not the elimination of all nuclear weapons, but the simultaneous modernization of all legs of America's nuclear Triad in a manner that enhanced national security and strategic stability.

The notion of a unilateral U.S. cut completely disregards Moscow's large-scale nuclear modernization that has been going on since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the effort in April 2000. Pictured: A Russian ballistic missile on parade in Moscow in 2017. (Image source: kremlin.ru)

The disarmament community in the United States -- made up of organizations such as Global Zero and the Ploughshares Fund -- believes that America's nuclear modernization program is "stoking a new arms race."

Downplaying threats from North Korea, Iran, China and Russia, pro-disarmament groups want the U.S. unilaterally to eliminate more than 90% of its strategic nuclear delivery vehicles and drastically reduce strategic nuclear bombers, submarines and silo-based missiles.

The notion of a unilateral U.S. cut completely disregards Moscow's large-scale nuclear modernization that has been going on since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the effort in April 2000. It is a build-up that includes thousands of additional theater nuclear systems, as well as deployments that directly violate the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) between the U.S. and Russia.

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