Israel, Hamas, Ukraine conflicts: Reality Insights with Ania K, Scott Ritter, Andrei Martyanov
by Through the eyes of [10-12-2023 published].
(One of the many things I like about Scott Ritter is that he is a student of history & had direct experience in military intelligence. This is a very insightful discussion by all three. It is obvious that Scott has studied the history of the Middle East & Russia. He passionately lays out the historical conflict between the Jews & Arabs and it becomes obvious that many in the West have amnesia about the historical conflict. Listen carefully to what all 3 have to say and then consider rethinking what our government & the West are saying that only flames the hatred on both sides. — RAD)
Ania K was originally from Poland, but for the last 15 years has been living in the USA, currently in Santa Barbara, California, where she loves to spend time in nature. If you don’t find her there hiking or taking long walks on the beach, you may meet her on the streets of London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam or Paris or somewhere else in the world where she’s looking for new inspiration. Her big dream is to open one of the best bookstores in the United States, where people will not only read great books or drink a great coffee but also experience workshops and seminars with the greatest teachers of our time.
Andrei Martyanov is an expert on Russian military and naval issues. He was born in Baku, USSR in 1963. He graduated from the Kirov Naval Red Banner Academy and served as an officer on the ships and staff position of Soviet Coast Guard through 1990. He took part in the events in the Caucasus which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In mid-1990s he moved to the United States where he currently works as Laboratory Director in a commercial aerospace group. He is a frequent blogger on the US Naval Institute Blog. He is author of Losing Military Supremacy, The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, and Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse.
Scott Ritter is an American author, international relations analyst, former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector. Ritter served as a military intelligence analyst during Operation Desert Storm. He then served as a member of the UNSCOM overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, from which he resigned in protest. He later became a critic of the Iraq War and United States foreign policy in the Middle East. He is a regular contributor to Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik.
Ritter worked as a weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission from 1991 to 1998, which was charged with finding and destroying all weapons of mass destruction and WMD-related manufacturing capabilities in Iraq. He was chief inspector in fourteen of the more than thirty inspection missions in which he participated.
Scott Ritter's 2022 book, "Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika" is the definitive history of the implementation of the INF Treaty signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in all its complexities, and the lengths both sides went to “trust, but verify” this successful and unique historic disarmament process. It demonstrates how two nations fundamentally at odds with one another could come together and rid the world of weapons which threatened international peace and security and, indeed, all of humanity. Those engaged were pioneers in what was to be the new frontier of superpower arms control―on-site inspection―that would define compliance verification for future treaties and agreements to come. Their work represents not just a guide to but the standard upon which all future on-site inspections will be based and judged.
Ritter traces in great detail the formation of the On-Site Inspection Agency, who was involved, and how a technologically advanced compliance verification system was installed outside the gates of one of the most sensitive military industrial facilities in the remote Soviet city of Votkinsk, nestled in the foothills of the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union. He draws upon his own personal history― occasionally hilarious, occasionally fraught with peril― as well as the recollections of the other inspectors and personnel involved, and an extensive archive of reports and memoranda relating to the work of OSIA to tell the story of how OSIA was created, and the first three years of inspection operations at the Votkinsk portal monitoring facility. The Votkinsk Portal, circa December 1988, was the wild, wild East of arms control, a place where the inspectors and inspected alike were writing the rules of the game as it played out before them.
This treaty implementation did not occur in a geopolitical vacuum. Ritter captures, on a human level, the historic changes taking place inside the Soviet Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev due to the new policies of perestroika and glasnost that gripped the Soviet Union during this time, and their real and meaningful impact on the lives of the Soviet people, and the economic functioning of the Soviet nation. Much of it was for the worse. The INF treaty was not only born of these new policies, but also helped trigger meaningful changes inside the Soviet Union due to the economic and political implications brought on by the cessation of missile production in a factory town whose lifeblood was missile production.