I can recommend his sort of autobiographical books, Secrets and The Doomsday Machine. The former covers his time driving around in Vietnam with John Paul Vahn and his leaking of the Pentagon Papers, the latter covering nuclear planning and command and control. He had a number of top secret nuclear documents that he was planning on leaking that he buried in a landfill but were lost during a storm.
> At the same time, Horton believes that Ellsberg, like other whistleblowers, occasionally sees conspiracy and government perfidy when the evidence is scant. During the course of our hour- and-20-minute interview, Ellsberg contended America still runs a “covert empire” around the world, embodied in the U.S. domination of NATO. He believes Washington deliberately provoked Vladimir Putin into invading Ukraine by pushing its seat of power eastward toward Russia’s borders;
Ellsberg probably sees a lot of parallels between Ukraine and Vietnam: Domino theory that if the invasion isn’t stopped now, more countries will be invaded in the future and escalation starting with non-lethal aid, then lethal aid, then more advisors and trainers, and in Vietnam, actual American combatants.
At the time of Vietnam there was some sort of competition of different systems, now it‘s just plain old far right tyranny vs. the democratic world.
The Domino theory was more about the alternative perhaps proving itself viable so it was to be stopped in time. But Russia is not about to prove anything, instead Putin has stated over and over again that they want to bring the former Soviet countries under their rule.
One thing I've noticed is that people who are very anti-america often end up being very pro other anti-america people. Choamsky comes to mind. America bad, therefore Russia good.
I'm not a fan of the CIA, to put it mildly, but the idea that the US "provoked" Russia into invading Ukraine is obvious Russian propaganda. Here's a heuristic for knowing if something is Russian propaganda: is it a story where Russia has no agency? Then it's Russian propaganda. You'll notice the amount of stories floating around where Russia is portrayed as "we had no choice, there was nothing else we could do". Notice that American propaganda is very different. The US illegally invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, but it never defended its position as "Isis is there, we have no choice but to invade", or "Sadam has WMD, we have no choice but to invade". No, the way that America writes its propaganda is very different. It says "we do have a choice, and we choose X because of freedom/national security interest/whatever". It's very telling that Russia is always "we had no choice". It's self-victimization propaganda, coming from a weak country.
While I think your first sentence is true, I think this is a consequence of being human - i.e. it's hard to be an objective observer.
Remember, all these countries were Warsaw Pact countries. And from my limited knowledge of the situation I recall that Russia's attempt to join NATO was basically responded with, "You have to wait your turn" as if they were just another country, not the country that the alliance was formed because of to begin with.
It's kind of like the story of the prodigal son, only instead of a joyous welcome the father tells him to "wait his turn".
It's also occurred to me that things like not allowing Russian athletes to fly their flag at the Olympics must be profoundly humiliating.
I remember happening to see a speech a neo-con made where they called the idea of thinking of countries in terms of international citizens (and therefore the U.S. should behave like a good citizen) "crazy", but the question is, "how else should we act?" It's kind of like thinking of various universities in terms of their sports rivalries, instead of institutions of higher learning working for a common cause.
In conclusion, the observation that critics think in terms of moral polarities applies equally to the criticized, and should be cold comfort.
> Ellsberg probably sees a lot of parallels between Ukraine and Vietnam:
There are a lot of parallels.
But the closest parallel to the US role in Vietnam in the 1950s-1970s is to the Russian role in Ukraine in the 2010s-2020s.
Russia is the one citing Domino Theory to justify first backing local proxies and no conducting massivr direct combat operations against a regime they claim is not the ultimate enemy, but just a pawn in a superpower scheme that must be stopped.
I can recommend his sort of autobiographical books, Secrets and The Doomsday Machine. The former covers his time driving around in Vietnam with John Paul Vahn and his leaking of the Pentagon Papers, the latter covering nuclear planning and command and control. He had a number of top secret nuclear documents that he was planning on leaking that he buried in a landfill but were lost during a storm.
> At the same time, Horton believes that Ellsberg, like other whistleblowers, occasionally sees conspiracy and government perfidy when the evidence is scant. During the course of our hour- and-20-minute interview, Ellsberg contended America still runs a “covert empire” around the world, embodied in the U.S. domination of NATO. He believes Washington deliberately provoked Vladimir Putin into invading Ukraine by pushing its seat of power eastward toward Russia’s borders;
Ellsberg probably sees a lot of parallels between Ukraine and Vietnam: Domino theory that if the invasion isn’t stopped now, more countries will be invaded in the future and escalation starting with non-lethal aid, then lethal aid, then more advisors and trainers, and in Vietnam, actual American combatants.
At the time of Vietnam there was some sort of competition of different systems, now it‘s just plain old far right tyranny vs. the democratic world.
The Domino theory was more about the alternative perhaps proving itself viable so it was to be stopped in time. But Russia is not about to prove anything, instead Putin has stated over and over again that they want to bring the former Soviet countries under their rule.
One thing I've noticed is that people who are very anti-america often end up being very pro other anti-america people. Choamsky comes to mind. America bad, therefore Russia good.
I'm not a fan of the CIA, to put it mildly, but the idea that the US "provoked" Russia into invading Ukraine is obvious Russian propaganda. Here's a heuristic for knowing if something is Russian propaganda: is it a story where Russia has no agency? Then it's Russian propaganda. You'll notice the amount of stories floating around where Russia is portrayed as "we had no choice, there was nothing else we could do". Notice that American propaganda is very different. The US illegally invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, but it never defended its position as "Isis is there, we have no choice but to invade", or "Sadam has WMD, we have no choice but to invade". No, the way that America writes its propaganda is very different. It says "we do have a choice, and we choose X because of freedom/national security interest/whatever". It's very telling that Russia is always "we had no choice". It's self-victimization propaganda, coming from a weak country.
While I think your first sentence is true, I think this is a consequence of being human - i.e. it's hard to be an objective observer.
Remember, all these countries were Warsaw Pact countries. And from my limited knowledge of the situation I recall that Russia's attempt to join NATO was basically responded with, "You have to wait your turn" as if they were just another country, not the country that the alliance was formed because of to begin with.
It's kind of like the story of the prodigal son, only instead of a joyous welcome the father tells him to "wait his turn".
It's also occurred to me that things like not allowing Russian athletes to fly their flag at the Olympics must be profoundly humiliating.
I remember happening to see a speech a neo-con made where they called the idea of thinking of countries in terms of international citizens (and therefore the U.S. should behave like a good citizen) "crazy", but the question is, "how else should we act?" It's kind of like thinking of various universities in terms of their sports rivalries, instead of institutions of higher learning working for a common cause.
In conclusion, the observation that critics think in terms of moral polarities applies equally to the criticized, and should be cold comfort.
> Ellsberg probably sees a lot of parallels between Ukraine and Vietnam:
There are a lot of parallels.
But the closest parallel to the US role in Vietnam in the 1950s-1970s is to the Russian role in Ukraine in the 2010s-2020s.
Russia is the one citing Domino Theory to justify first backing local proxies and no conducting massivr direct combat operations against a regime they claim is not the ultimate enemy, but just a pawn in a superpower scheme that must be stopped.