Bring Back The Cold War
Paul Craig Roberts
Pundits have declared a “New Cold War.” If only! The Cold War was a time when leaders focused on reducing tensions between nuclear powers. What we have today is much more dangerous: Washington’s reckless and irresponsible aggression toward the other major nuclear powers, Russia and China.
During my lifetime American presidents worked to defuse tensions with Russia. President John F. Kennedy worked with Khrushchev to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Richard Nixon negotiated SALT I and the anti-ballistic missile treaty, and Nixon opened to Communist China. President Carter negotiated SALT II. Reagan worked with Soviet leader Gorbachev and ended the Cold War. The Berlin Wall came down. Gorbachev was promised that in exchange for the Soviet Union’s agreement to the reunification of Germany, NATO would not move one inch to the East.
Peace was at hand. And then the neoconservatives, rehabilitated by the Israeli influence in the American press, went to work to destroy the peace that Reagan and Gorbachev had achieved. It was a short-lasting peace. Peace is costly to the profits of the military/security complex. Washington’s gigantic military and security interests are far more powerful than the peace lobby.
Since the advent of the criminal Clinton regime, every American president has worked overtime to raise tensions with Russia and China.
China is confronted with the crazed and criminal Obama regime’s declaration of the “pivot to Asia” and the prospect of the US Navy controlling the sea lanes that provision China.
Russia is even more dangerously threatened with US nuclear missile bases on her border and with US and NATO military bases stretching from the Baltics to the Black Sea.
Russia is also threatened with endless provocations and with demonization that is clearly intended to prepare Western peoples for war against “the Russian threat.” Extreme and hostile words stream from the mouth of the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who has called the president of Russia “the new Hitler” and threatened Russia with military force. Insouciant Americans are capable of electing this warmonger who would bring Armageddon upon the earth.
Yesterday, Israel’s voice in the US, the New York Times, added to Hillary’s demonization of the most responsible leader in the world with this editorial: “Vladimir Putin’s Outlaw State.” This irresponsible and propagandistic editorial, no doubt written by the neoconservatives, blames all the troubles in Ukraine and Syria on Putin. The NYT presstitutes know that they have no case, so they drag in the US-orchestrated false report on MH-17 recently released by Washington’s Netherlands vassal.
This report is so absurd as to cast doubt on whether intelligence exists anywhere in the Western world. Russia and the now independent Russian provinces that have separated from Ukraine have no interest whatsoever in shooting down a Malaysian airliner. But despite this fact, Russia, according to the orchesrated report, sent a surface-to-air missile, useful only at high altitude, an altitude far higher than the Ukrainian planes fly that are attacking Russians in the separated republics, to the “rebels” so that the “rebels” could shoot down a Malaysian airliner. Then the missile system was sent back to Russia.
How insouciant does a person have to be to believe this propaganda from the New York Times?
Does the New York Times write this nonsense because it is bankrupt and lives on CIA subsidies?
It is obvious that the Malaysian airliner was destroyed for the purpose of blaming Russia so that Washington could force Europe to cooperate in applying illegal sanctions on Russia in an attempt to destabilize Russia, a country that placed itself in the way of Washington’s determination to destabilize Syria and Iran.
In a recent speech, the mindless cipher, who in his role as US Secretary of Defense serves as a front man for the armaments industry, declared the one trillion dollars (1,000 billion dollars or 1,000,000 million dollars, that is, one million dollars one million times) that Washington is going to spend of Americans’ money for nuclear force renewal is so we can “get up in the morning to go to school, to go to work, to live our lives, to dream our dreams and to give our children a better future.”
But Russia’s response to this buildup in Washington’s strategic nuclear weapons is, according to Defense Secretary Aston B. Carter, “saber rattling” that “raises serious qustions about Russia’s leaders commitment to strategic stability.”
Do you get the picture? Or are you an insouciant American? Washington’s buildup is only so that we can get up in the morning and go to school and work, but Russia’s buildup in response to Washington’s buildup upsets “strategic stability.”
What the Pentagon chief means is that Russia is supposed to sit there and let Washigton gain the upper hand so Washington can maintain “strategic stability” by dictating to Russia. By not letting Washington prevail, Russia is upsetting “strategic stability.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been broken and tamed by the neoconservatives, recently displayed the same point of view with his “ultimatum” to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In effect, Kerry told Lavrov that Russia must stop helping Syria resist the jihadist forces and allow the US-supported ISIS to regain the initiative and reduce Syria to the chaos in which Washington left Libya and Iraq. Otherwise, Kerry said that the agreement to cooperate is off.
There can be no cooperation between the US and Russia over Syria, because the two government’s goals are entirely different. Russia wants to defeat ISIS, and the US wants to use ISIS to overthrow Assad. This should be clear to the Russians. Yet they still enter into “agreements” that Washington has no intention of keeping. Washington breaks the agreements and blames Russia, thus creating more opportunities to paint Russia as untrustworthy. Without Russia’s cooperation in setting themselves up for blame, Russia’s portrait would not be so black.
On September 28, 2016, the New York Times gave us a good example of how Washington’s propaganda system works.
The headline set the stage: “Russia’s Brutal Bombing of Aleppo May Be Calculated, and It May Be Working.” According to the NYT report, Russia was not bombing ISIS. Russia was “destroying hospitals and schools, choking off basic supplies, and killing aid workers and hundereds of civilians.”
The NYT asks: “What could possibly motivate such brutality?”
The NYT answers: Russia is “massacring Aleppo’s civilians as part of a calculated strategy . . . designed to pressure [moderates] to ally themselves with extremists,” thereby discrediting the forces that Washington has sent to overthrow Syria and to reduce the country to chaos.
When America’s Newspaper of Record is nothing but a propaganda ministry, what is America?
Pundits keep explaining that Washington’s 15 year old wars in the Middle East are about controlling the routing of energy pipelines. Little doubt this is a factor as it brings on board powerful American energy and financial interests. But this is not the motive for the wars. Washington, or the neoconservatives who control the US government, intend to destabilize the Russian Federation, the former Soviet Central Asian countries, and China’s Muslim province by adding Syria and then Iran to the chaos that Washington has created in Iraq and Libya. If Washington succeeds in destroying Syria as it succeeded in destroying Libya and Iraq, Iran becomes the last buffer for Russia. If Washington then knocks off Iran, Russia is set up for destabilization by jihadists operating in Muslim regions of the Russian Federation.
This is clear as day. Putin understands this. But Russia, which existed under Washington’s domination during the Yeltsin years, has been left threatened by Washington’s Fifth Columns in Russia. There are a large number of foreign-financed NGOs in Russia that Putin finally realized were Washington’s agents. These Washington operatives have been made to register as foreign-financed, but they are still functioning.
Russia is also betrayed by a section of its elite who are allied economically, politically, and emotionally with Washington. I have termed these Russians “America Worshipers.” Their over-riding cause is to have Russia integrated with the West, which means to be a vassal of Washington.
Washington’s money even seems to have found its way into Russian “think tanks” and academic institutions. According to this report (https://sputniknews.com/world/20160929/1045838744/russia-united-states-asia-pacific-region.html), two think tanks, one Russian one American, possibly funded by Washington’s money, have concluded that “US,Russia ‘Have far more common interests than differences’ in Asia-Pacific.”
This “academic report” is a direct assault on the Russian/Chinese alliance. It makes one wonder whether the report was funded by the CIA. The Russian media fall for the “common interest” propaganda, because they desire to be included in the West. Like Russian academics, the Russian media know English, not Chinese. Russia’s history since Peter the Great is with the West. So that is where they want to be. However, these America Worshipping Russians cannot understand that to be part of the West means being Washington’s vassal, or if they do understand the price, they are content with a vassal’s status like Germany, Great Britain, France, and the rest of the European puppet states.
To be a vassal is not an unusual choice in history. For example, many peoples chose to be Rome’s vassals, so those elements in Russia who desire to be Washington’s vassal have precedents for their decision.
To reduce Russia’s status to Washington’s vassal, we have Russian-US coperation between the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations and the US-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. These two co-conspirators against Russian sovereignty are working to destroy Russia’s strategic alliance with China and to create a US-Russian Pacific Alliance in its place. One of the benefits, the joint report declares, is “maintaining freedom of navigation and maritime security.”
“Freedom of navigation” is Washington’s term for controlling the sea lanes that supply China. So now we have a Russian institute supporting Washington’s plans to cut off resource flow into China. This idiocy on the part of the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations is unlikely to reassure China about its alliance with Russia. If the alliance is broken, Washington can more easily deal with the two constraints on its unilateralism.
Additionally, the joint report says that Moscow could cooperate with Washington in confidence-building measures to resolve territorial disputes in the Asia-Pacific region. What this means is that Russia should help Washington pressure China to give up its territorial claims.
One cannot but wonder if the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations is a CIA front. If it is not, the CIA is getting a free ride.
The foreign policy of the United States rests entirely on propagandistic lies. The presstitute media, a Ministry of Propaganda, establishes an orchestrated reality by treating lies as fact. News organizations around the world, accustomed as they are to following Washington’s lead, echo the lies as if they are facts.
Thus Washington’s lies–such as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasions–become the reality.
Russia’s very capable spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, understands that Washington uses the Western media to control explanations by shaping public opinion. She terms it a “reality show.” However, Zakharova thinks the problem is that Washington misuses “international relations and international platforms for addressing internal issues.”http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45564.htm
By this she means that Obama’s foreign policy failures have made him hysterical and impudent as he strives to leave a legacy, and that American/Russian relations are poisoned by the US presidential campaign that is painting Trump as a “Putin stooge” for not seeing the point of conflict with Russia.
The US presstitutes are disreputable. This morning NPR presented us with a report on Chinese censorship of the media as if this was something that never happens in the US. Yet NPR not only censors the news, but uses disinformation as a weapon in behalf of Washington and Israel’s agendas. Anyone who depends on NPR is presented a very controlled picture of the world. And do not forget German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte, who admits he planted stories for the CIA in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitnung and says that there is no significant European journalist who doesn’t do the same thing.
The situation is far more serious than Zakharova realizes. Russians seem unable to get their minds around the fact that the neoconservatives are serious about imposing Washington’s hegemony on the rest of the world. The neoconservative doctrine declares that it is the principal goal of US foreign policy to prevent the rise of any country that would have sufficient power to serve as a check on American unilateralism. This neoonservative doctrine puts Russia and China in Washington’s crosshairs. If the Russian and Chinese governments do not yet understand this, they are not long for this world.
The neoconservative doctrine fits perfectly with the material interests of the US military/security complex. The US armaments and spy industries have had 70 years to entrench themselves with a huge claim on the US budget. This politically powerful interest group has no intention of letting go of its hold on US resources.
As long ago as 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his last public address to the American people warned that the Cold War confronted Americans with a new internal danger as large as the external Soviet threat:
“Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
President Eisenhower’s warning that our liberties were equally at stake from the military/security complex as from the Soviet Threat did not last 24 hours. The military/security complex buried Eisenhower’s warning with extraordinary hype of the Soviet Threat.
In truth, there was no Soviet threat. Stalin had buffered Russia from the West with his control of Eastern Europe, just as Washington controlled Western Europe. Stalin had eliminated Trotsky and his supporters who stood for world revolution. Stalin declared “socialism in one country.”
Stalin terminated international communism. But the American military/security complex had much money to gain from the American taxpayers in order to “protect America from International Communism.” So the fact that there was no effort on the part of the Soviet Union to subvert the world was ignored. Instead, every national liberation movement was declared by the US military/industrial complex to be a “falling domino” of the Communist takeover of the world.
Ho Chi Minh begged Washington for help against the French colonialists in Vietnam. Washington told him to go to hell. It was Washington that sent Ho Cho Minh to seek communist support.
The long Vietnam war went on for years. It enriched the military/security complex and officers’ pensions. But it was otherwise entirely pointless. There were no dominoes to fall. Vietnam won the war but is open to American influence and commerce.
Because of the military/secutity complex more than 50,000 Americans died in the war and many thousands more suffered physical and psychological wounds. Millions of Vietnamese suffered death, maiming, birth defects and illnesses associated with Washington’s use of Agent Orange.
The entire war was totally pointless. It achieved nothing but destruction of innocents.
This is Washington’s preferred way. The corrupt capitalism that rules in America has no interest in life, only in profit. Profit is all that counts. If entire countries are destroyed and left in ruins, all the better for American armaments industries.
Yes, please, a new Cold War. We need one desperately, a conflict responsibly managed in place of the reckless, insane drive for world hegemony emanating from the crazed, evil criminals in Washington who are driving the world to Armageddon.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.
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