By GILBERTO LOPES*
NATO expansion policy has significant bipartisan support in the United States.
A matter of life and death
“For the United States and its allies, the goal is to contain Russia. For our country, it is a question of life and death, of our future as a nation,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin in a speech to his citizens on February 24, as Russian troops began to cross the Ukrainian border. “It is not just a question of a real threat to our interests, but to the very existence of our State and our sovereignty. Russia cannot feel safe, develop or exist, facing the permanent threat from the territory of what is now Ukraine. This is the red line we have spoken about on numerous occasions – they have crossed it,” he highlighted.
Vladimir Putin was referring to the threat posed to his country by the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the east, by the permanent approximation of its military infrastructure to Russian borders. “Over the last 30 years we have patiently tried to reach an agreement with the main NATO countries on the principles of a mutual and indivisible security in Europe. In response, we are invariably faced with cynical tricks, lies, pressure or blackmail attempts,” he said.
Putin lamented that old agreements and treaties had fallen out of force, that the winners of the Cold War were trying to design a new world in their own way. He cited NATO's bloody military operation in the former Yugoslavia; invasions and attacks on Iraq, Libya or Syria. “Last December, we made another attempt to reach an agreement with the United States and its allies on European security and the non-expansion of NATO. Our efforts were in vain. Any attempt to establish new military installations on the territory of Ukraine is unacceptable to us!” he reiterated.
A very serious strategist
In any case, the problem for Vladimir Putin is not NATO per se. “It serves only as an instrument of US foreign policy,” he said. The problem “is that in territories adjacent to Russia that – I have to say – have historically been our territory, a hostile 'anti-Russian' environment is being fostered. Totally controlled from the outside, they do everything to attract NATO armed forces and obtain state-of-the-art weapons”.
Despite this, the most diverse voices evaluated – almost all critically – his decision to try to solve the problem through military means, such as Chinese President Xi Jinping and the former Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs and former Minister of Defense during the government by President Lula, Celso Amorim. The Russian military operation violates international norms, just as Washington and its Western allies have violated them on several occasions. The best way to resolve the crisis is peacefully, in accordance with the United Nations Charter, Jinping said.
In an article published in March 2014, after the annexation of the Crimean peninsula, Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State between 1973 and 1977, described Putin as “a very serious strategist, according to the parameters of Russian history”. “But understanding US values and psychology is not their strong point,” he added, noting also that understanding Russian history and psychology was also “not a strong point for American lawmakers.”
Western-backed protests in Ukraine for years led to President Viktor Yanukovych's ousting from power in February 2014. For Russia, it was a coup d'état. Ukraine was turning to the right, but also to the West. Kissinger had warned: “For Ukraine to survive and prosper, it must not be an allied outpost of either side against the other; should function as a bridge between them”.
But this didn't happen
"The West must understand that for Russia, Ukraine will never simply be a foreign country." “Ukraine was part of Russia for centuries,” Kissinger recalled. “Even such famous dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia.” “Treating Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would ruin for decades any possibility of bringing Russia and the West, meaning Russia and Europe, into an international system of cooperation.”
A sensible US policy towards Ukraine, Kissinger added, “would seek a form of cooperation between the two internal parts of the country. We must seek reconciliation and not domination by one faction.” He also suggested some way out of the situation in Crimea that, within the framework of existing international legislation, would take into account the political reality of the region. “The Black Sea Fleet, which is how Russia projects its power in the Mediterranean, has its strategic and historic base of operations in Sevastopol, Crimea.” Kissinger suggested for Ukraine a position similar to the one that Finland has assumed until today: an unrestricted defense of its independence; cooperation with the West in the most diverse fields and political spaces; and a careful stance to avoid any institutional hostility towards Russia.
As we know, this was not the path chosen by the West. None of this was achieved in the six years that followed Viktor Yanukovych's downfall. Without some solution based on these proposals or similar ones, the tendency towards confrontation will accelerate. The time to find out will come soon, warned the former US Secretary of State. He was not far from reality.
an unstoppable expansion
In such a vast subject, the multiplicity of articles and points of view can become a labyrinth difficult to get out of. That's why I'll try to follow some points of view that seem to help me find it.
One of them is that of James Kurth, professor emeritus of Political Science at the Swarthmore College, a small but prestigious institution in Pennsylvania, in a long article[I] about the inevitable clash between NATO's eastward expansion policy and Russia's sphere of influence. The key idea suggested by Kurth seems to me to be this: “in the minds of US foreign policy leaders, NATO expansion is not really about expanding a military alliance, but something more. Its real aim has been to consolidate Europe as a coherent and integral part of the American vision, its version of a global order”.
Europe is seen as a kind of fortress in the architecture of the great North American project of globalization. An idea of globalization based on the expansion of the free market, open borders, liberal democracy, the rule of law, understood as liberal norms. A project that, however, is far from becoming “global”, in Kurth's opinion. “Vast areas of the world are less integrated into the global economy and world order than they were 50 years ago”; countries like China and Russia have rejected this idea of American globalization.
Kurth suggests that NATO's expansion project to countries in Central Europe (formerly the Soviet Union's area of influence) and Eastern Europe (some of which were part of the Soviet Union itself) seeks to balance the weight of Western European countries in the Union European. Those in Central and Eastern Europe are more comfortable with the US view of the world, which is not always the case in France and even Germany. For the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, NATO's objective remained what it was for Western Europe in the postwar period: to keep the Russians away, the Americans close, and the Germans in check (keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down).
NATO expansion can consolidate US leadership in Europe and turn it into an expression of US globalization. Indeed, NATO would be the only US-led organization with legitimacy among major European countries. Such an expansion would inevitably lead to a clash with the Russian sphere of influence. Kurth recalls how, in June 2001, President George W. Bush proposed – in an important speech in Warsaw – that Europe's new democracies, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, should be admitted to NATO. It was thus clear that a new line, drawn by the expansion of NATO, was established to separate Europe from Russia. Russia, by contrast, has insisted that it is part of Europe; it was even willing to join NATO, something Washington has always rejected.
What is certain is that the project has developed without ceasing since the end of the Cold War. NATO's first eastward expansion came in 1999, with the integration of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Already at the time, Moscow warned that such expansion threatened its vital interests. The movement continued. In 2004, there was a mega incorporation of seven countries: the three Baltics – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, former members of the Soviet Union – Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria. Croatia and Albania joined in 2009, Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020.
Look at the map of Europe. If we exclude the small border zone with Norway in the far north, the Russian border is drawn with a list of five countries: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine. Finland, aligned with the West, has maintained a policy of prudent relations with Russia, although membership of NATO now appears to be considered. Estonia and Latvia, countries with a very active extreme right, are part of the most aggressive anti-Russian policies in Europe. Ukraine and Belarus have been the target of “color revolutions” promoted by the West in various parts of the world (including Africa and Latin America), successful in Ukraine but successfully faced by Moscow and its ally in Belarus. Similar movements were also promoted in the Russian “underbelly”, in Georgia and Azerbaijan, which Moscow also successfully faced.
US support for the Baltic states' membership of NATO is seen as an unprecedented move in US foreign policy. From the perspective of the “realistic” and “conservative” aspects of US foreign policy, the United States has no strategic or economic interests in the Baltic states, making support for its membership in NATO “reckless and irresponsible”. For representatives of so-called “idealist” currents, whether liberal or neoconservative, the Baltic states embody fundamental values that must be defended; they are the West's outpost in the East.
Kurth reminds us that NATO's expansion policy has significant bipartisan support in the United States, which has been a consistent policy of the last five administrations: Clinton, W. Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden. “When Obama began a large-scale support program for anti-Russian groups in Ukraine in 2013, the Russians began to mount an effective response,” he noted. First came the annexation of Crimea. More recently, the recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics. And then the invasion of Ukraine.
“For decades there have been warnings about the provocation that the expansion of NATO represents for Moscow”, had also said the professor of History and Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ronald Suny, in an article published last March. "Biden's CIA Director William J. Burns has been warning of the ripple effect of NATO expansion into Russia since 1995." "When President Bill Clinton's administration took steps to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in NATO, Burns wrote that the decision was "premature at best and unnecessarily provocative at worst." Suny reminds us that, “in June 1997, 50 leading US foreign policy experts signed an open letter to Clinton in which they said: “We believe that the current US-led effort to expand NATO… is a political mistake. of historic proportions” that “will disturb European stability”.
The head of the European Union's foreign policy, the Catalan socialist Josep Borrell, has some reason when he said he was "ready to admit that they had made a series of mistakes and missed the opportunity to bring Russia closer to the West". However, his statement did not lead to any known action to remedy the error. On the contrary, he contributed to Ukraine's arms policy and the escalation of the conflict.
Turning on the high light
“The Cold War is over. The result surpassed any expectations of the victors: Germany was reunified, and is now fully incorporated into NATO; the Warsaw Pact was abolished; Soviet troops withdrew from Hungary and Czechoslovakia and will soon leave Poland, countries joining the European Community and knocking on NATO's door. The Soviet Union has collapsed and the economic and political fate of what until recently was a looming superpower is increasingly in the hands of the West,” said former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski (1977-81), then advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tanks headquartered in Washington.
His article was published in the magazine Foreign Affairs in the fall of 1992. Brzezinski noted the triumph of the West in the Cold War and asked himself: What is the next step? What kind of peace? What should be the West's strategic objective vis-à-vis its former Cold War rival?
Brzezinski takes a long-term historical view. He compares the disintegration of the USSR (which lasted only 70 years) to the disintegration of the great Russian Empire, which lasted more than three centuries. Brzezinski's observation excludes a key aspect of the Cold War – the confrontation between capitalism and socialism – so that we have a long-term view of Russia's historic role on the European and world stage. I consider this a useful proposition for understanding the current conflict and Washington's rejection of any Russian membership of NATO or European structures, including its economic integration into Europe, which is difficult to avoid due to Europe's energy dependence on the supply of Russian gas.
The legacy of the Cold War posed two challenges: ensuring that the disintegration of the Soviet Union meant a peaceful and lasting end to the Russian Empire; while the collapse of communism represented the end of the utopian phase of modern political history. Brzezinski already understood the difficulties of incorporating Russia into the Western context. He suggested facilitating Russia's socioeconomic recovery with the same "magnanimity" with which the United States promoted Germany's postwar recovery.
This has been tried. Perhaps few texts illustrate it better than Jorge Volpi's long novel “Times of Sceniza”. The voracity (and failure) of this transition – which Volpi relates – is part of the world that Brzezinski was looking at in 1992. For him, it was about offering Russia an alternative to its status longtime imperial. Transformed into a “partner of the West”, it could take its place “in the concert of the main democratic nations of the world”. Naturally, under the leadership of Washington.
Russia should not realize that a new cordon sanitaire separated it from the West, but this should be done while promoting the reconstruction of the nations of the former Soviet empire. Brzezinski considered it essential that Ukraine stabilize itself as an independent and secure state. This should be a critical component of the West's strategy, not only economically but also politically.
In practice, the offer turned out to be very malicious. If Germany and Japan were able to accept their role in the world led by Washington, Russia was never comfortable in that role. It seems to me that none of Brzezinski's dreams came true in the end.
Russians out, Americans in, Germans down
The relay in NATO's eastward race was taken over by countries of the former Soviet Union – such as the Baltics – and countries that were part of the Warsaw Pact, the military alliance with which the USSR sought to confront NATO. Of the latter, the most active is Poland. “A secure Poland and Europe need the United States more, both militarily and economically; I will talk about this with the president of the United States”, said president Andrzej Duda last March, on the eve of a visit by his North American counterpart to the country.
Speaking at the NATO summit in Brussels on March 24, Duda said that given Russia's aggression against Ukraine, greater NATO engagement in the region was needed, both in terms of troop deployments and infrastructure. NATO has already deployed medium-range missiles in Poland and Romania. The Polish border has also been used to supply arms to Ukraine.
On March 26 in Warsaw, Joe Biden spelled out his objective, stating that “Putin cannot remain in power”. An unusual revelation of goals, which forced clarification from the White House that Biden was not proposing regime change in Russia. On April 4, Germany and France announced the expulsion of 40 and 30 Russian diplomats from their countries. On March 29, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland joined Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, who had also expelled Russian diplomats. “There are international customs that are insignificant and go nowhere. Like, for example, the expulsion of diplomats,” said Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council and former President of the country Dmitry Medvedev. The response will be symmetrical and destructive of bilateral relations, he warned.
It all adds up to economic sanctions designed to cripple the Russian economy and try to sever its ties with the Western world. But the third goal of the Cold War period – “german down” – is no longer placed at the current time. He suffered a different fate. “Germany takes a turn in its national security strategy,” was the headline by Elena Sevillano, Berlin correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El País, on February 27. In a speech to the Bundestag (the federal parliament), which Sevillano described as "historic", German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced an extraordinary allocation of 100 billion euros to rearm the German army, and an increase in annual defense spending of more than 2 % of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Germany also decided to abandon its policy of not sending weapons to conflict zones, to send 500 anti-tank missiles and XNUMX Stinger surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine. Days later, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party announced the development of a new security strategy that will involve various government departments. The justification is Germany's "special responsibility", due to its role in the last world war, to "support those whose lives, freedoms and rights are threatened".
Baerbock justified Germany's rearming and taking a more active role in the Atlantic Alliance, saying the war shows "once again that security depends on NATO's ability to form alliances". Strengthening the eastern flank and “military exercises adapted to the new realities” will be key at this stage, as “the entire eastern area of the Alliance is subject to a new threat,” she said. "In the face of Russia's radical break with our peace order, we must put our guiding principles into practice," he added, in the face of a Europe that seems unaware of its own history and the risks of taking the Berlin principles everywhere, a source of two terrible wars in Europe.
The truth is "german down” is no longer a goal of this Europe. A loss of perspective that cost dearly in the past. In this context, attention is drawn to the (at least public) silence of two particularly important figures in recent German politics, whose relations with Russia could perhaps help find a solution to the conflict: former Chancellor Angela Merkel, a Democrat -Conservative Christian, as well as former Chancellor Gerard Schroeder, a Social Democrat.
But German rearmament is not the only risk facing Europe. Aligned with Washington, committed to winning the war against Russia in Ukraine, far from recognizing the mistakes Borrell referred to, Europe – like everyone else in the world – runs the risk of a third world war. As Joe Biden said in a speech in Philadelphia and in a tweet last March: if Russia and NATO were to come into direct confrontation, make no mistake: it would mean World War III!
China and the Charter of the United Nations
Away from the conflict scene, China maintains a position that is not strident, but very active, in a context that is not at the heart of the conflict. Knowing Russian troop movements in Ukraine, he advocated respecting and safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, including Ukraine, and sincere observance of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. She also considered that “Russia's legitimate security requirements had to be taken seriously and adequately addressed”, referring to NATO's five consecutive rounds of eastward expansion.
For critics such as Hofstra University of New York law professor Julian Ku, the Chinese position in this case contradicts its definition of principles. Countries in Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia, which sympathized with China's commitment to the United Nations Charter, may feel misled by the abandonment of that principle, Ku said. China's position on the conflict in Ukraine was explained in detail (and with subtlety) by the Chinese ambassador to Washington, Qin Gang, in a March 20 interview with journalist Fu Xiaotian in a talk show traditional of phoenix tv. He also did so in an article – “Where we stand in Ukraine” – published by Washington Post five days before.
The essence of the joint statement by Putin and Xi Jinping, Ambassador Qin told Xiaotian last February, “is that we must promote democracy in international relations, uphold the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, oppose the resurrection of Cold War mentality and confrontation in blocks”. Quoting former President Jimmy Carter, Qin recalled that during just over 240 years of independent life, the United States has not been at war for only about 20 years. Xiaotiano then questioned him: "They didn't send troops to Ukraine." Qin replied, “No. But they provided weapons. So is the United States directly involved in the Ukraine crisis, or not?”
Qin recognizes that this conflict is not good for China. "We need to focus on our economic and social development to ensure better living conditions for our people." Cooperation between China and Russia, he reiterated, has no limits, but has a baseline, which is precisely "the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, international law and the basic norms that govern international relations". The most important principle enshrined in these rules, said the ambassador, "is respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, including Ukraine."
But, he added, "there is a complex story behind the Ukrainian problem." “You have to look back 30 years. The disintegration of the Soviet Union had a major impact on the European geopolitical and security landscape. Russia feels cheated by NATO's eastward expansion. You feel threatened and cornered.” “Now everyone is involved in a serious confrontation with Russia. Only China can dialogue with Russia.”
China also rejects unilateral US sanctions against Russia and the attempt to link the situation in Taiwan with that of Ukraine. “These are totally different questions,” he says. “Taiwan's problem is China's internal problem. Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory, while the Ukraine problem is a conflict between two sovereign states.”
Despite the war, the West has not given up on confrontation with China either. Although this was the main topic of the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels on 7 April, for the first time diplomats from Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand participated in such a meeting. For US analysts, in the long run, Russia and China pose the same challenge to the current world order. It's the opinion of Heather Conley, head of the German Marshall Fund, a think tanks North American dedicated to relations with Europe. An organization that defines itself as an alliance to defend democracy against its enemies, a statement that is accompanied, on its portal, by an illustration of the flags of China, Russia and Iran.
As the conflict in Europe unfolds, Joe Biden has authorized a contract for the maintenance of Taiwan's Patriot air defense systems. A possible visit by the Speaker of the United States, Nancy Pelosi, to the island was also announced. China responded by saying it "will take decisive measures to protect its national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the United States will bear full responsibility for all consequences," according to Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Tan Kefei.
Chinese diplomacy has maintained intense activity amid tensions. “With the world focused on the war in Ukraine, China has been engaging in diplomatic activities with neighboring countries, especially in South Asia,” recalled Yun Sun, Chinese program director and co-director of the East Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington. “During the last ten days of March, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, participated in the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and organized a series of international conferences on Afghanistan”.
Yun Sun particularly stresses the importance of the Chinese foreign minister's visit to India on March 24, which included a stopover in Kabul and was followed by a visit to Kathmandu. He visits which, in his opinion, is part of a position of neutrality shared by both countries in the Ukrainian conflict. Both countries abstained from voting on a UN resolution on March 2 that demanded an immediate end to Russian military operations in Ukraine. But he suspects that China's rapprochement with India will be successful, given the tensions arising from the border clash between the two countries in 2020, a wound that has not yet healed, although the subject is on Wang Yi's agenda in New Delhi .
United States for your home, Russia for yours
We referenced questions asked by President Carter's former national security adviser Zibgniew Brzezinski after the Cold War: What's next? What kind of peace? What should be the West's strategic objective vis-à-vis its former Cold War rival?
The idea was to transform Russia into a partner of the West, which would take its place in the concert of the main democratic nations of the world. Naturally, a subordinate place to the US liberal order. Did not work. They tried to transform their economy with a vast process of privatization of state enterprises. Some have become billionaires, but neither Washington nor its European allies have opened the door for Russia to join European organizations. The objective now is what President Biden indicated: to put an end to Putin's rule.
For Dr. Andrei Illarionov, identified by Jonathan Joseph, business correspondent for bbc news, as the former top economic adviser to Vladimir Putin, a man currently living in the United States, a diligent way to end the conflict in Ukraine would be a complete embargo on Russia's oil and gas exports. Vladimir Milov, Russia's former deputy energy minister, now a member of the opposition party led by Alexei Navalny, is also betting on the effect of economic sanctions. “I would say that a few months of deep economic difficulties, the likes of which we have not seen in the country for 30 years, would change the state of mind of society. More people will start complaining openly.” For Illarionov “sooner or later” a change of government is inevitable in Russia. In his opinion, it is absolutely impossible to see a positive future for the country under its current political regime. “There is no way for the country to reintegrate itself into international relations, into the world economy”.
Can the United States and its Western partners now achieve what they failed to achieve with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991? For 30 years, the West has been moving closer to the Russian border. In the end, Ukraine was just the final piece of a puzzle that turned out to have global dimensions. Such a realignment of forces would eventually bring Washington and Beijing face to face.
Whether or not the military response chosen by Vladimir Putin to end this game was successful, the Russian president has been fighting the threats on his doorstep. Control of the Crimean peninsula is somewhat consolidated and it could be difficult, even for an eventual government imposed by the West, to reverse the situation. Nor would it be simple to return the territory of the Donbas, with a majority Russian population, to Ukrainian control. His goal of ending the Nazis' role in governing Ukraine cannot be achieved without the support of Ukrainians, and he doesn't seem to have that support. Ukraine's accession to NATO will depend on the outcome of the war and a certain amount of foresight by western leaders to understand the tensions it will create. Naturally, this will be impossible with Putin in power in Russia.
A suicidal call to war
Convinced that “there were no alternatives” to their vision of the world or their interests, Washington made its policy of intervention in the internal affairs of other countries global. the role of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been central to this task. like the New York Times noted in 1997, the NED was created in the Reagan administration in the 1980s "to openly do what the CIA had been doing surreptitiously for years".
In Ukraine, it played a key role in promoting an anti-Russian climate. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Washington rushed to erase details of the NED's funding of Ukrainian groups, said Tim Anderson, director of the Center for Counter Hegemonic Studies, based in Sydney, Australia. Among them is the group InformNapalm, which publishes anti-Russian propaganda in 31 languages. “There are few sectors that NED has not penetrated,” says Anderson.
Almost 35 years later, other models of development and new conceptions of political order, anchored above all on China's role in the international economic, political and military scenario, undermined this unilateral view of the world. The conflict in Ukraine makes it clear that the world would be a much safer place if Russian troops returned home. But it would be even more important if US troops, spread across all continents, did the same and put an end to this policy of intervention in the internal affairs of other states such as Pakistan or Nicaragua.
The current crisis has awakened unsuspecting voices' enthusiasm for war, the dreams of authors such as Paul Manson, who aspire to embody a European left enthusiastic about rearmament, with the confrontation of blocs, with the confrontation with Russia (it is understood that also with the China), a war to which he calls the Party of European Socialists, the Greens and the left-wing European political parties, in an article published in Social Europe on April 11th. He dreams that, in five years, NATO will be able to count on new military divisions “employed from the north of Finland to the Black Sea; large reserve forces capable of being deployed to central Europe in times of crisis; overwhelming superiority in air combat; drones and anti-aircraft missiles; a navy capable of deterring Russian aggression; and space platforms, capable of surviving any destructive Russian action”. A fanciful “Star Wars” that, if unleashed, can only lead us to a final catastrophe.
No one should walk away from this debate. Latin American left-wing thinking must not go away. There must be a sensible humanity capable of tying these people's hands. Instead of a suicidal arms race with no future, instead of the lines of confrontation approaching (in the style of the old trenches in the center of Europe, in the First World War), it seems much more sensible to separate them by a huge moat, making that the American troops scattered around the world and the Russian troops fighting on their borders return home. We would all be safer.
*Gilberto Lopes is a journalist, PhD in Society and Cultural Studies from the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR). author of Political crisis of the modern world (Uruk).
Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.
Note
[I] The article, full of suggestions, can be seen using this link.
