Former director of the CIA’s Russia desk and current director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute George Beebe gives a masterclass in responsible statecraft - and why the West must negotiate with Russia to end the war.

Looking at what has happened in Gaza over the past year and how – with many noble exceptions – most of the priests, nuns, bishops and rabbis have kept their congregations passive and on the sidelines.  As Paolo Freire said:

“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

The political and military leader of Hamas is dead.  Some cheer. Some weep.  History will judge the living and the dead.  I wish Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar had appeared before an international tribunal of judges for their role in October 7th, rather than being murdered by the Israelis.  All who committed crimes in the past year should face justice.

What is at stake is epochal in its scale and implications for future generations. In the midst of a genocide, on the edge of wars that could wreck the global economy, we are also experiencing an increasingly ruthless war being waged to eliminate or silence dissent.  All of this means we have to build a better media environment that will challenge the dominant narrative; we have to find the courage within ourselves to oppose the terrible trajectory the Western elites have committed us to.  

Something absolutely stupefying is happening in Germany: its iconic auto company, VW, the darling of every Chancellor from Adolf Hitler to Olaf Scholz, appears to be in a death spiral.  At the end of this story I’ll draw a link to the salutary lesson countries like Australia and New Zealand need to draw from the German experience if we are to survive and thrive in the coming world.

History didn’t start on October 7th. True that. To get a deeper sense of why the shocking destruction in Gaza is happening we have to revive the forgotten war that the US waged against North Korea in the 1950s.  In many ways, it was the template for all that followed.

Ordinary New Zealanders and Australians have little idea about the momentous changes coming our way. For a couple of centuries we have been outposts of a Western empire that is losing its dominance of the region. Instead of having open national discussions about how our countries should respond to the rise of China, India and Indonesia – just part of the coming Asian Century – our leaders are shuttering our minds and framing public discourse in ways that hinder rather than help.  Our media and many leading members of the commentariat are keeping our collective minds in thrall to a US-Western world view.  If we wish to survive and thrive in this region – and in the emerging multipolar world – we may need to free ourselves from this form of mental slavery.

Iran may be about to launch a proper missile strike on Israel for the first time ever - in retaliation for the attack on Tehran last month which killed Ismail Haniyeh. Israeli intelligence says an attack is likely to come within days.

The Jerusalem Post on 11 August quoted Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of the Iranian Parliament's National Security Commission, as saying, "Iran's aerial operations against Israel could last three to four days.”

In an astonishing “Fuck you” to the survivors of the 1945 US nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, several Western countries including the US, Australia, Canada, France, Italy and the UK have just dropped a bombshell: announcing their ambassadors are shunning this week’s commemorations in solidarity with Israel.

Last week the mayor of Nagasaki, Shiro Suzuki, rescinded Israel’s invitation to the annual peace ceremony. It was a gentle but pointed diplomatic message: Lest we forget what it was - and still is - all about.

The headline above is outrageous and incendiary – it is also unquestionably true. We have a duty to bear witness to what the Palestinians must endure.

The great Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote powerfully a couple of days ago about the rape culture that is part of the Israeli war machine. Riots occurred at the Sde Teiman Israeli detention centre this week in support of soldiers arrested by the Israeli military police in connection with rape, torture and murder.

“A fairer multipolar world order is being born”. Eight words that sum up what is being created at pace and yet is being largely ignored by the Western media. “Tectonic shifts” indeed are happening as the countries that represent the bulk of Eurasia’s landmass, economy, population and military might come together in an alliance that not only is linking the vast region that stretches from Europe to the Sea of Japan, but will transform global power dynamics for the coming century and push the demi-gods of the Western World out of the driver’s seat and back into the ranks of humanity.

Very few people have tuned into the fact that what is happening isn't “NATO” moving into the Asia Pacific region – it’s actually far bigger than that. The US is creating a super-bloc, a super-alliance of client states that includes both the EU and NATO, the AP4 (its key Asia Pacific partners Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan) and other partners like the Philippines (now the Marcos dynasty is back at the helm).

Geopolitical tensions are again rising to boiling point; the nuclear treaties have been abandoned, nuclear weapons are again in high production, and all the lessons learnt, the visceral fears felt in decades past have been lost. The US will start stationing long-range missiles in Germany from 2026, a massive escalation that Russia has promised to respond to. What’s next?

Once upon a time the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken booked a nice hotel room with a Queen bed and invited Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to share it with him. They went there to launch a diplomatic initiative to try to end the war in Ukraine and to put to bed, so to speak, the idea of violent confrontation between the two superpowers.

It may be time to think the unthinkable: all the signs are pointing to the West preparing to launch a proper war in Europe. Once started it could bring, for the first time in living memory, millions of Western civilians into uniform and see the cities of the West attacked. Preposterous? Jumping the Shark? Listen to what the leaders in the West are saying. The time to stop the madness is now, not once the elites drive us into the abyss and civilians are stripped of all rights to oppose.

The most powerful weapon in the US arsenal is not F-16 jets, Himar missiles, or any of the other conventional war toys. Real US power resides in the US dollar. By increasingly weaponizing the dollar and access to the dollar-denominated global trading system, America has taken to the greenback with a blowtorch that will trigger a reckoning for the ages.

Daniel Everett Hale killed lots of innocent people. He went to jail, not for killing people – he was paid to do that by the US government – but for revealing the truth behind it. Recently released, he has an astonishing story to tell - and what we need to understand about why shooting the messenger is a key strategy for anti-democratic forces.

The Armavir Incident - the destruction on 23 May of a key part of Russia’s nuclear defence - means the Doomsday clock is ticking closer to midnight. Our media is keeping us in a deep, deep sleep. We need facts, analysis and an insistence on dialogue and diplomacy before it is too late.

Have we now come to an epoch-making tipping point? The recent actions by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court could shatter the Shield of Impunity - the idea that international institutions are there as tools for the West to attack their enemies and can never be used against the US and its allies.