Eric Zuesse -- What Is NATO — Really?

By Eric Zuesse

Global Research, July 11, 2016

Strategic Culture Foundation 7 July 2016

Region: Europe, Russia and FSU

Theme: Culture, Society & History, US NATO War Agenda

When NATO was founded, that was done in the broader context of the US Marshall Plan, and the entire US operation to unify the developed Atlantic countries of North America and Europe, for a coming Cold War allegedly against communism, but actually against Russia – the core country not only in the USSR but also in Eastern Europe (the areas that Stalin’s forces had captured from Hitler’s forces).

NATO was founded with the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington DC on 4 April 1949, and its famous core is:

Article 5: The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

ERIC ZUESSE -- The Movement Toward Nuclear War (I)

ERIC ZUESSE | 15.06.2016 | WORLD

The Movement Toward Nuclear War (I)

Antagonizing Western Publics Against Russia

During a recent interview that former Soviet – then subsequently Russian – President Mikhail Gorbachev gave in Moscow at his namesake Foundation (to be published in Rupert Murdoch’s London Times), Gorbachev publicly approved of Crimea’s return to Russia. He said there, «I’m always with the free will of the people and most in Crimea wanted to be reunited with Russia». This statement, when it was published in the Times on 22 May 2016 (and then the next day posted to the Gorbachev Foundation site copying the Times’s version), was surrounded in the so-called ‘interview’ by propaganda from Murdoch’s ‘interviewer’ the ‘journalist’ Mark Franchetti, arguing there against Gorbachev’s statement concerning this important matter. Franchetti’s article (his ‘interview’ of Gorbachev) allowed very little of direct quotations from Gorbachev; so, it didn’t enable the presumed interview-subject to provide any evidence in support of the interviewee’s viewpoint – evidence such as, for example, even the Western-sponsored polls of Crimeans, which always have shown overwhelming support for Crimea’s transfer back to Russia. (Not even the mere fact that Crimea had been part of Russia until the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred it to Ukraine, in 1954, was mentioned in the Murdoch propagandist’s article, though this fact too is a crucial one in the entire matter.)

Nonetheless, this mere statement by Gorbachev was enough to cause Gorbachev to become banned in Ukraine – that is, in the new, rabidly anti-Russian, fascist and pro-fascist, regime in Ukraine, that had been installed there in February 2014 by US President Barack Obama’s agents under the cover of public anti-corruption demonstrations.

Just four days after the Times’s ‘interview’, on May 26^th, Ukrayinska Pravda («Ukrainian Truth») then bannered, «Gorbachev denied entry to Ukraine for 5 years», and reported that, «Security banned the ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev from Ukraine for a period of 5 years. This was reported to ‘Ukrayinska Pravda’ by a source in the SBU [Security Bureau of Ukraine], who wished to remain anonymous». This article mentioned that Anton Gerashchenko in Ukraine’s parliament had in 2014 originally called for Gorbachev to be banned. And now it was finally being done.

This Pravda article didn’t mention that Gerashchenko was a close advisor to Arsen Avakov, who was head of the SBU in the new American-installed regime in Ukraine, and that Gerashchenko had, himself, in October 2015, been supporting ISIS to defeat Assad in Syria so as to weaken Russia. In other words, Obama could hardly have installed a more rabidly anti-Russian regime in Ukraine than he did. Merely the fact that ISIS were seeking to oust an ally of Russia was enough for the US-installed new Ukrainian regime (the one that ended democracy in Ukraine) to support ISIS.

And, so, Gorbachev, who had ended the Cold War against America, was now being rewarded with contempt not only from the Russian public (as Franchetti in his article noticed and accurately reported there) for his naiveté in having accepted as being honest America’s repeated assurances (lies) that NATO would not move «one inch to the east», but with his outright banishment from the newest member of the US empire, Ukraine. And, of course, when Gorbachev was allowed in the Western press to get a word in edgewise to argue for the Russian position, his statements were now being surrounded and drowned out there by the comments from an ‘interviewer’ (if that propagandist can even honestly be called such). So, Gorbachev is now, in effect, dumped upon, even within the American empire (no longer just by the Russian people), though nobody can deny that he is an honorable and profoundly decent human being, who did the best he was capable of, for his people, and for the world-at-large.

But this is only the propaganda in countries where the Soviet Union and communism had never presented really a danger of invading by traditional, non-nuclear, forces – tanks rolling across borders, etc. The Warsaw Pact countries – Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and of course the core Russia – were in constant fear that the core country, Russia, might invade (along with some of the others in their alliance) to quell popular movements to join the democratic (it was authentically so then) West. These are countries (Russia’s traditional «buffer states» against potential invasions coming from the west) where a real fear of Russian conquest is a living memory, from recent generations. In addition, there are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were conquered by the USSR in 1940. Ukraine, Georgia, and some other states within the USSR, had been conquered by Russia shortly after the Russian Revolution and so there were emigre communities abroad that were supportive of either the Nazis or else the democratic nations during World War II. All of these countries therefore have a much more fearful relationship with today’s, the post-Soviet, Russia, than do the core countries of the West (such as the UK, and the now master of them all, the US), which used to be democratic.

The issue of Crimea is part of the issue of Ukraine, only because, in 1954, the Soviet dictator Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred Crimea from Russia, of which Crimea had been a part since 1783, to Ukraine – the Crimean population had nothing to do with it: they overwhelmingly considered themselves to be Russians, and still do. Consequently, the issue that the US aristocracy and its associated aristocracies are alleging to be the basis for their economic sanctions against Russia and for their surrounding Russia with surges of weapons and soldiers against Russia, happens to be, by long standing, a part of Russia, not only by centuries-long tradition, but also by constant showings as such in all opinion polls of the Crimean public – the people themselves (the publics whom the once-democratic Western nations used to respect as being the very foundation stone for democracy – but obviously no longer do, because the Western nations are no longer authentic democracies, not even as close to that as they once were).

But the evil here, on the part of The West, goes beyond even that. The US government is now feeding the fear that the publics in all of the former Soviet and Soviet-allied subjugated states very naturally but also entirely unjustifiably feel against the successor Russian state; and this understandable residual fear, in turn, is being responded to by Russia, by means of its pouring tens of thousands of troops and associated armaments toward their borders in order to protect against a potential US invasion from US-allied soil.

This mutual buildup along Russia’s European borders can easily get out of control, and so Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has many times quietly urged Washington for there to be private communications between himself and US President Barack Obama to reach a peaceable conclusion to this escalation, but Obama repeatedly refuses.

The real function of Western propaganda in Western Europe, such as Rupert Murdoch’s recent propaganda using Mikhail Gorbachev in this way, is not so much in order to stir his countrymen’s fears of an invasion against their country by Russia, but is instead to stir sufficient support by Brits for UK to join with the US invasion of Russia that increasingly likely will be precipitated under the Article V provision of the NATO Treaty as a ‘justification’ to escalate to all-out war if and when Russia provides a ‘provocation’. That may not happen this year (and the US military sends signals that they won’t be prepared for that until 2017), but the buildup is happening right now.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/06/15/the-movement-toward-nuclear-war-i.html 

German Intelligence Service to Become Branch of U.S. CIA

German Intelligence Service to Become Branch of U.S. CIA

By Eric Zuesse

(NOTE: The following news report was offered on the morning of June 7th as an exclusive, to the following newsmedia, all of whom ignored it; and so it’s now being distributed free-of-charge to all newsmedia, but the following were the newsmedia that had already declined it as an exclusive news report: The Daily Beast, Slate, The Intercept, Huffington Post, Salon, Common Dreams, Truthout, ProPublica, Harper’s, Atlantic, Foreign Policy, National Journal, AP, Globe and Mail, National Post, Telegraph, Guardian, Financial Times, The Economist, Daily Mail, London Times, London Review of Books, New Statesman, The Spectator, Bloomberg, NYT, McClatchy, CBS, CNN, Politico, The Nation, The National Interest, The New Republic, Reason, Rolling Stone, Buzzfeed, Newsweek, Time, USN&WR, Consortium News Service.)

June 08, 2016 "Information Clearing House" -

According to a news report in the June 7th German Economic News (Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, or DWN), headlined “Merkel entmachtet BND: USA kontrollieren Spionage in Deutschland” or “Merkel Ousts BND: US to Control German Espionage,” a new law will soon be passed in the German parliament and be approved by Chancellor Angela Merkel, which will make Germany’s version of the CIA, the Bundesnachrichtendienstes (BND), nothing more than a branch of the CIA, to such an extreme degree, that even U.S. corporate espionage against German companies will become part of that ‘German’ operation. The independent capacities of the BND will become emasculated, no longer operational, under the new law. 

“In practice, this means that the US intelligence services [NSA] will be allowed to continue to listen in on every company and every individual in Germany.”

(That includes the Chancellor herself, whose phone-conversations were previously embarrassingly revealed to have been listened-in upon by the NSA. Now it’ll be legal.)

This could be part of the West’s buildup toward a global war. According to a report issued on June 6th in German Economic News, the German government is preparing to go to war against Russia, and has in draft-form a Bundeswehr report declaring Russia to be an enemy nation. DWN said there: “The Russian secret services have apparently thoroughly studied the paper. In advance of the paper’s publication, a harsh note of protest has been sent to Berlin: The head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian State Duma, Alexei Puschkow, has posted this Twitter message: ‘The decision of the German government declaring Russia to be an enemy shows Merkel’s subservience to the Obama administration.’”

Eric Zuesse -- Germany Preparing for War Against Russia?

Germany Preparing for War Against Russia?

By Eric Zuesse

Global Research, June 07, 2016

Region: Europe, Russia and FSU

Theme: US NATO War Agenda

According to a report issued on June 6th in German Economic News (Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, or DWN), the German government is preparing to go to war against Russia, and has in draft-form a Bundeswehr report declaring Russia to be an enemy nation. DWN says: “The Russian secret services have apparently thoroughly studied the paper. In advance of the paper’s publication, a harsh note of protest has been sent to Berlin: The head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian State Duma, Alexei Puschkow, has posted the Twitter message: ‘The decision of the German government declaring Russia to be an enemy shows Merkel’s subservience to the Obama administration.’”

Back on February 17th, DWN had reported that German Chancellor Merkel “will develop a new military doctrine” declaring, “The ‘annexation’ of Crimea by Russia is the basis for military action against Moscow.” Apparently, that prior report will soon be fulfilled.

Obama Slams Door in Putin’s Face: Says if Putin doesn’t want Russia’s retaliatory forces eliminated, he’ll need to be the one to press the nuclear button first

Obama Slams Door in Putin’s Face: Says if Putin doesn’t want Russia’s retaliatory forces eliminated, he’ll need to be the one to press the nuclear button first

13459 ViewsJune 06, 2016 71 Comments

by Eric Zuesse

Actions speak louder than mere words, and U.S. President Barack Obama has now acted, not only spoken. His action is to refuse to discuss with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s biggest worry about recent changes in America’s nuclear strategy — particularly a stunning change that is terrifying Putin.

On Sunday June 5th, Reuters headlined “Russia Says U.S. Refuses Talks on Missile Defence System”, and reported that, “The United States has refused Russian offers to discuss Washington’s missile defence programme, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov was quoted as saying on Sunday, calling the initiative ‘very dangerous’.”

Russia’s concern is that, if the “Ballistic Missile Defense” or “Anti Ballistic Missile” system, that the United States is now just starting to install on and near Russia’s borders, works, then the United States will be able to launch a surprise nuclear attack against Russia, and this system, which has been in development for decades and is technically called the “Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System”, will annihilate the missiles that Russia launches in retaliation, which will then leave the Russian population with no retaliation at all, except for the nuclear contamination of the entire northern hemisphere, and global nuclear winter, the blowback from America’s onslaught against Russia, which blowback some strategists in the West say would be manageable probems for the U.S. and might be worth the cost of eliminating Russia.

That theory, of a winnable nuclear war (which in the U.S. seems to be replacing the prior theory, called “M.A.D.” for Mutually Assured Destruction) was first prominently put forth in 2006 in the prestigious U.S. journal Foreign Affairs, headlining “The Rise of Nuclear Primacy” and which advocated for a much bolder U.S. strategic policy against Russia, based upon what it argued was America’s technological superiority against Russia’s weaponry and a possibly limited time-window in which to take advantage of it before Russia catches up and the opportunity to do so is gone.

Paul Craig Roberts was the first reporter in the West to write in a supportive way about Russia’s concerns that Barack Obama might be a follower of that theory. One of Roberts’s early articles on this was issued on 17 June 2014 and headlined “Washington Is Beating The War Drums”, where he observed that “US war doctrine has been changed. US nuclear weapons are no longer restricted to a retaliatory force, but have been elevated to the role of preemptive nuclear attack.”

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has tried many times to raise this issue with President Obama, the most recent such instance being via a public statement of his concern, made on May 27th. Apparently, the public statement by Antonov on June 5th is following up on that latest Putin effort, by Antonov’s announcement there that Obama now explicitly refuses to discuss Putin’s concerns about the matter.

The fact that these efforts on the part of the Russian government are via public media instead of via private conversations (such as had been the means used during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the shoe was on the other foot and the U.S. President was concerned about the Soviet President’s installation of nuclear missiles 90 miles from the U.S. border) suggests that Mr. Obama, unlike U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1962, refuses to communicate with Russia, now that the U.S. is potentially in the position of the aggressor.

Russia is making its preparations, just in case it will (because of the Aegis Ashore system) need to be the first to attack. However, some knowledgeable people on the subject say that Russia will never strike first. Perhaps U.S. President Obama is proceeding on the basis of a similar assumption, and this is the reason why he is refusing to discuss the matter with his Russian counterpart. However, if Mr. Obama wishes to avoid a nuclear confrontation, then refusing even to discuss the opponent’s concerns would not be the way to go about doing that. Obama is therefore sending signals to the contrary — that he is preparing a nuclear attack against Russia — simply by his refusal to discuss the matter. In this case, his action of refusal is, itself, an answer to Putin’s question, like slamming the door in Putin’s face would be. It’s a behavioral answer, instead of a merely verbal one.

The geostrategist John Helmer discussed on May 30th the question of when the “Trigger Point” will likely be for Putin to decide whether there is no reasonable alternative but to launch — and for him then to launch — World War III.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Eric Zuesse -- Media Lies and Fabrications: “Russia Bombs Syria to Force Refugees into Europe”

Media Lies and Fabrications: “Russia Bombs Syria to Force Refugees into Europe”

Statements by NPR and OSCE

By Eric Zuesse

Global Research, May 21, 2016

Region: Middle East & North Africa

Theme: 9/11 & 'War on Terrorism', Crimes against Humanity,Media Disinformation

In-depth Report: SYRIA: NATO'S NEXT WAR?

The “Morning Edition” program of the U.S. National Public Radio network — which is America’s most-trusted American source of news as measured by “the ratio of people who trust a news outlet to those who distrust it” — included on May 20th a segment,  “Russia’s Involvement In Syria Worsens Migration Crisis, Zannier Says”, in which the interviewer, Renee Montagne, opened her interview of Lamberto Zannier, the Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), by saying:

“There is actually a theory out there to do with the migration crisis in Europe, that Russia may have purposely been bombing Syria with an air campaign in order to send more Syrian migrants into Europe, to destabilize Europe. Now, I’m wondering whether you think that’s far-fetched, but, at the same time, it sort of fits the picture of a Cold War?”

Eric Zuesse -- NATO Announces War Policy Against Russia. Chilling Scenario of Encirclement

NATO Announces War Policy Against Russia. Chilling Scenario of Encirclement

By Eric Zuesse

Global Research, May 18, 2016

Region: Europe, Russia and FSU

Theme: US NATO War Agenda

On May 18th, Britain’s Guardian headlined 

“West and Russia on course for war, says ex-Nato deputy commander” and reported that the former deputy commander of NATO, the former British general Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff (who was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe from 2011-2014), expressed outrage that Britain isn’t urgently preparing for war against Russia, and also reported that “He describes Russia as now the west’s most dangerous adversary and says Putin’s course can only be stopped if the west wakes up to the real possibility of war and takes urgent action. … In a chilling scenario, he predicts that Russia, in order to escape what it believes to be encirclement by Nato, will seize territory in eastern Ukraine.” (That’s the Donbass region, where there has been a civil war.)

This encirclement by NATO is, apparently, about to be expanded: Shirreff will now be satisfied by NATO, even if not by its member the UK, of which Shirreff happens to be a citizen. New Europe bannered the same day, “NATO lays down the cards on its Russia policy”, and reported that, “In two distinct pre-ministerial press conferences on Wednesday [May 18th], the General Secretary of NATO Jens Stoltenberg and the US Ambassador to NATO, Daglas Lute, introduced the Russia agenda to be covered.

Both NATO leaders said that the Accession Protocol Montenegro is signing on Thursday is a strong affirmation of NATO’s open door policy, mentioning explicitly Georgia. ‘We will continue to defend Georgia’s right to make its own decisions,’ Stoltenberg said.” Georgia is on Russia’s southwestern flank; so, it could be yet another a nuclear-missile base right on Russia’s borders, complementing Poland and the Baltics on Russia’s northwestern flank. (The U.S. itself has around 800 military bases in foreign countries, and so even Russia’s less-populous eastern regions would be able to be obliterated virtually in an instant, if the U.S. President so decides. And President Obama is already committed to the view that Russia is by far the world’s most “aggressive” enemy, more so even than international jihadists are.)