In the second part of an interview with the Voice of Russia, NATO expert Rick Rozoff outlines the U.S. plans to bring former Soviet Republics and allies into the alliance’s sphere of influence and away from Russia, isolating Russia and China, and eventually surrounding them with NATO member countries. Mr. This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Mr. Rick Rozoff – the manager of the Stop NATO website and mailing list, and a contributing writer to www.globalresearch.ca
An article appeared in one of the major newspapers. I’ve heard it referred to as the major newspaper in Slovenia, a couple of weeks ago that stated that the largest and worst mistake made by the Government of Slovenia was joining NATO, that what that has entailed is far from defending the territory of NATO’s member states, that it is simply waging wars worldwide. That was followed very shortly thereafter, a couple of days ago, by the Head of the Orthodox Church in Montenegro, the Metropolitan, who made a similar statement. He said the NATO should breakup, that it is guilty of waging aggression upon people throughout the world.
So, I think what you are starting to see even in south-east Europe and perhaps other nations that have been dragooned into NATO without first thoroughly explaining to the population what NATO membership entails. And what it entails in the case of countries like Slovenia and Montenegro is sending their sons and daughters off to some endless and useless war like that in Afghanistan. And what is happening in Pakistan is not too similar to that, it is a case where if a government, if a regime, accommodates NATO demands, they are violating the trust and undermining the wellbeing of their own nation and their own people, and this is in fact what is going on in Pakistan.
We heard a statement by Hilary Clinton before that supply route was opened.
Yes, I haven’t read the complete text by Hilary Clinton but I’d bet anything the substance of it was that she regrets the unfortunate incident or words to that effect that occurred in Salalah where 24 Pakistani military personal were killed last November. But certainly something short of acknowledging that the US had committed a crime. We have to recall that wasn’t too long of Hillary Clinton made a tour to Central Asia where she went to, I believe, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. And shortly thereafter as your listeners know, Uzbekistan suspended its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization with Kirgizstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Armenia.
So, it appears that the State Department has succeeded once again in pulling a country out of an organization of which Russia is a member and through which Uzbekistan was allied with Russia, to separate it from Russia and China and to pull it into the US orbit. After Clinton left Paris on July 6 we know she went to Afghanistan where she proclaimed Afghanistan a major non-NATO ally of the US meaning they get preferential arrangements with weapons and so forth. But identifying Afghanistan as a strategic American military ally indefinitely. So, that hardly suggests the US intends to leave the area.
But I think even more significant than that was after having left Afghanistan and gone for a one day conference on Afghanistan to Japan, is that she then went to Mongolia, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. And if your listeners are as old as me, or older, they recall that all four of those countries were political allies of the Soviet Union during the Cold War period, Mongolia since almost the formation of the Soviet Union, but in the case of the unified Vietnam and Laos from 1975, and Cambodia after the overthrow of the pro-Chinese Khmer Rouge in 1979.
So, if we need any further evidence of the US far from having ended the Cold War, it is simply consummating its victory of 20 some years ago by moving on the territory that is geographically close, and in many cases, as in Laos and Vietnam, bordering China, and in the case of Mongolia bordering both Russia and China. And recruiting not only political and economic, but ultimately military allies throughout the world, but more particularly now in Eurasia and in the backyard of Russia and China both, Central Asia fits into that pattern. If the five former Soviet Central Asian republics are increasingly integrated into the US sphere of influence, then this essentially isolates Russia and China in Eurasia.
Hilary Clinton said that the US had never planned to leave Afghanistan.
You know, the US’s cards are truly not on the table when it comes to Afghanistan. I heard the same statement and it is remarkable because a few years ago, perhaps when she first became the Secretary of State, about that time, she made what on the surface was one of the more candid statements I’ve heard by any US military official about the genesis of the crisis in Afghanistan. Acknowledging in so many words that it was the US support for the so called Mujahidin forces in, operating out of northwest Pakistan, from the late 70’es through to 1992, that was really the basis for all the disorganization and the conflict that has occurred in Afghanistan since then, she made that statement maybe three or four years ago.
But she then mouthed the conventional American wisdom on the subject saying – our mistake – I’m paraphrasing her – was then to have pulled out and left the country to internal fighting between the US’s former Mujahidin allies, and in fact that occurred as we know after 1992 when they were rocketing parts of the capital of Kabul in rivalry amongst each other. And subsequent to that by four years the Taliban marches in and takes control of the country. So, what Clinton’s most recent statement at the donor’s conference, or the Conference on Afghanistan in Japan, seems to be simply a reiteration of that – we won’t make the same mistake. If we overthrow the Government in Afghanistan and allow our clients to takeover, we will this time stay there and support them, is how I read that.
Moving on to Syria. A Syrian general, Major General Adnan Salo, he was the former Head of the Chemical Weapons Unit of the Syrian Army, he’s made public statements calling for NATO intervention, although he says limited military intervention is needed. He said that they need two airstrikes on the presidential palace to get rid of Assad. Do you think this is going to happen?
I sincerely hope it doesn’t. And I similarly hope that this is simply bravado. But it could be too a trial balloon to see what the world’s reaction is to inflammatory statements of this sort. The idea that you bomb the presidential palace in the name of protecting civilians or humanitarian concerns and so forth shows you just how far down the road to barbarism the world has evolved over the past twenty years. It won’t be the first time that’s happened of course, efforts to bomb the presidential palace in Yugoslavia in 1999. And apparently anything is a fair game at this point.
