All NATO leaders will meet together at a crucial July 8th-9thSummit meeting in Warsaw, to agree regarding what to do to Russia, about which U.S. General Philip Breedlove, then the Supreme Commander of NATO, said earlier this year “Russia has chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat to the United States and to our European allies and partners.” The main purpose of this meeting will be to achieve unity on the Russian problem. It will be difficult to do. The 28 member nations are not, and have not been, unified on the matter. The U.S. is seeking a more aggressive stand.
Did you know that in 2004, the U.S. itself had already crossed the nuclear red line against Russia, by nuclear missiles right on Russia’s border, even worse than, in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet dictatorship had threatened to cross America’s nuclear red line, by the Soviets’ plan at that time to place nuclear missiles there 90 miles from the U.S. border? And did you know that, finally, in 2016, Russia is being surrounded so hostilely by the U.S., that their President Vladimir Putin is now issuing vague threats that Russia will strike before the U.S.? (The second side to launch its missiles will likely receive the lesser amount of damage in the resulting nuclear exchange — who strikes first will largely determine the ‘winner’ of any WW III.)
Instead of the U.S. government’s and press’s “Duck and cover!” and build-your-bombshelters campaigns in 1962, the people who are terrified this time around are actually the Russians; but, would you know about this widespread fear in Russia, from the ‘reporting’ in the U.S. ’news’ media? It’s not being reported. And it won’t be the topic at NATO, because NATO is the alliance against Russia, not against America.
The international aristocracy, which own more than half of the world’s wealth, own especially the newsmedia, and so the facts that they’re the most inclined to hide from their public (besides how untrustworthy they are), are the facts that are the most important to hide by the international corporations (including corporations such as Lockheed Martin), which also are owned by them, and which advertise the most in the newsmedia. Thus, foreign affairs is the topic that receives the most-distorted, the most propagandistic, ‘news’ coverage of all, in fake ‘democracies’ such as today’s U.S.
America’s hyper-aggressive foreign policy is not actually designed to protect the American public (such as the ‘Defense’ Department and its millions of military contractors say), but to further enrich America’s billionaires, by conquering the world’s most-resource-rich nation, Russia(starting by ousting foreign leaders who are friendly toward Russia, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddaffi, Viktor Yanukovych, and Bashar al-Assad), as a consequence of which ‘domino-war’ against Russia, the only international poll that was ever done on the question of “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?” produced the remarkable and little-publicized finding, that overwhelmingly the nation which is considered worldwide to be the most dangerous of all, is the United States.
This was an open-ended question, and the 67,806 global respondents who answered it, named many different countries as being the “greatest threat,” but the clear #1 there was the U.S., named by 24%; #2 was Pakistan, named by 8%; #3 was China, named by 6% — and the nation that U.S. President Barack Obama identifies as being the world’s most dangerous country, Russia, was #12 on that list, with only 2% of global respondents naming it. Is this because the foreign press are underplaying how aggressive Russia is? Or is it instead because the U.S. press are overplaying how peaceful the U.S. is, and arealso overplaying how aggressive Russia is?
Back in early 1990, when the last President of the Soviet Union and the first President of the post-Soviet independent nation of Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev, was negotiating, with the representatives of U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush, the terms for the USSR and its military alliance of the Warsaw Pact to come to an end (the supposed end of the Cold War, which ended only on Russia’s side, but actually continued on and has now become a hot war against Russia on the U.S. side), Gorbachev was assured that NATO would not move “one inch to the east”, and so Gorbachev thought that the U.S. was satisfied that communism and the Warsaw Pact would be terminating, and that the U.S. would therefore henceforth cease its “Cold War” against the now-rump, remaining, post-Soviet nation, Russia, and there would really be peace between the two countries, at last. That’s why Gorbachev agreed to do it — to end the Cold War. But as soon as he committed himself, Bush told his people not to follow through on the promise that they all had just made on Bush’s behalf. Bringing his agents together privately at Camp David on 24-25 February 1990, Bush told his people, “To hell with that! We prevailed, they didn’t.” They followed through on that instruction from him, even though it made liars of them all.
And, Bush’s successor Bill Clinton followed through likewise on that double-cross of Gorbachev, by ending Clinton’s own Presidency with admitting Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, into NATO, in 1999 (at around the same time as he was ending FDR’s AFDC protections of poor children, and FDR’s Glass-Steagall protections of the public taxpayers so they wouldn’t be charged to reimburse Wall Street gambling-losses in the event of an economic crash (such as did occur in 2008) — Clinton became the anti-FDR ‘Democratic’ President). But that NATO act of Clinton didn’t cross Russia’s nuclear red line, it only caused then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s military to draft a policy saying that if the Baltic republics — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, right on Russia’s border and under ten minutes missile-striking time away from Moscow — were ever to become admitted into NATO, Russia should launch its missiles (not wait for the U.S. to do so first, from so nearby, which would eliminate Russia’s missiles faster than Russia’s missiles could even be launched at all).
On 29 March 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush crossed the Russian military’s nuclear red line, by admitting into NATO: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Bush the son was at that time crossing Russia’s red line — and then some.
Here is an account (translated from the Russian) that a highly respected Russian journalist, Aleksandr Lyasko, provided, regarding what Russian President Yeltsin’s military, in the Fall of 1995 (after Clinton started the process of admitting his three nations into NATO), had advised Yeltsin to be established as Russia’s nuclear red line that must not be crossed by NATO (the U.S.):
The military department’s next sensational idea involves dramatic action in connection with NATO’s expansion. As regards Poland and the other countries of Eastern Europe, Russia is currently unable to stop this process by force. However, the plan [“I learned from reliable sources that some time ago the General Staff completed its formulation of a version of Russia’s new defense doctrine”] presupposes that if NATO agrees to admit the Baltic Republics [right on Russia’s border: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania], Russian Federation armed forces will immediately be moved into Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Any attempt by NATO to stop this will be viewed by Russia as the prelude to a nuclear world catastrophe. …
According to the high-ranking General Staff officer, the preliminary outlines of the defense doctrine formulated by General Grachev’s department have been cautiously approved by the minister himself and his first deputy and constitute the military’s response to the lack of any consistent policy by the Foreign Ministry and presidential structures on questions of military security. According to some of Grachev’s statements following his talks with Yeltsin in Sochi, the army is ready to begin erecting a nuclear shield over the besieged fortress, which is how it sees Russia. … The authors of the draft by no means lack allies in the Duma and within the Kremlin Walls.
That report had the additional imprimatur of its having been cited as an authority on Russian policy, by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a key (and passionately anti-Russian) foreign-policy advisor to U.S. Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama. (Brzezinski’s family, when he was a boy, were Polish nobility who became dispossessed by the Russians, and he hated Russians ever after.)
However, Vladimir Putin was now the Russian President who needed to make the final decision as to whether to launch World War III. He decided not to. That’s why we’re all here today, even reading this. But NATO says that Russia is the problem.
U.S. President Barack Obama came into office in 2009 with no clear indication that he was intending to intensify Russia’s isolation, by removing from office even more of the few remaining Russia-friendly leaders of nations. Just like Clinton had waited till his second term before making clear his actual conservatism, Obama had gone so far as to mock his 2012 re-election opponent Mitt Romney for having said, during the 2012 campaign, about “Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe. They – they fight every cause for the world’s worst actors. … Russia is the – the geopolitical foe.”
Romney said this after having heard from Wolf Blitzer on CNN, that Obama had just then privately told Putin’s agent Dmitry Medvedev, “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” Obama told Putin (via Medvedev) this in the context of Putin’s objections against the continued expansions of NATO, and against the threat, by several recent U.S. Presidents, to position in those NATO nations a U.S. missile system that would be able to neutralize or eliminate Russia’s ability to strike back against a blitz nuclear attack from the U.S.: it’s called the anti ballistic missile or ballistic missile defense (ABM or BMD) system. Obama was privately telling Putin: Don’t worry, we’re not trying to conquer Russia.
Obama fooled everyone (not only his voters). Actually, at that very moment, Obama was already well into his plan to remove from power the Russia-allied leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and was very soon to organize, starting by no later than 1 March 2013 in the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, the overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych — whose country has the longest border with Russia of any European country (and which country has been called by Brzezinski the most important steppingstone to defeating Russia).
And then, when Obama carried out his Ukrainian coup in February 2014 (almost a year after his starting to organize the coup in the U.S. Embassy there), Putin responded to that by allowing the people of Crimea — who had voted nearly 80% for the man Obama had just overthrown — to re-enter as being part of Russia, of which Crimea had been a part until the Soviet dictator in 1954 transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine.
For Putin’s doing this, Obama slapped economic sanctions against Russia, and then sicced the NATO dogs against Russia, by quadrupling U.S. weapons and soldiers on Russia’s borders, in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania, and by starting the installation of the “Aegis Ashore” ABM/BMD system, which Putin had warned Obama not to install.
Now, after the coup in Ukraine, the approval-rating of the post-coup President is even lower than the approval-rating of the pre-coup one was (and even lower than that if the separatist regions, Crimea and Donbass — both of which had voted heavily for the President whom Obama overthrew — had been included in the polling: those regions would have given Obama’s Ukrainian government a near-0% approval-rating).
The global poll that had asked people “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?” and that found 24% of people worldwide were saying the U.S. was, had been taken only months before the coup in Ukraine; and, in Ukraine, 33% said “U.S.” and only 5% said “Russia.” The massive bloodshed there after Obama’s coupcan only be confirming Ukrainians’ opinion. But America’s ‘news’ media blame it on Russia.
And that’s the Russian problem, which NATO will be meeting to resolve.
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.
