Global Research

The top Anglo-American elite appears very, very worried that the Neocons (Bush/Clinton) will fail again in stopping, or even slowing down, Russia. They are more and more weary of the impotent Rambo war-cries of the left and right Neocons who are hysterically perched around Hillary Clinton. The Anglo-American elite is trying to find a way out and, oblivious of showing their desperation, is trying to resurrect their loyal lackey Henry Kissinger. Instead of the ineffective threats of the Clintonites  (see Ashton Carter, John Allen, Leon Panetta, Michael Morell, etc. ), this elites try to go back to the soft spider poison strategy used by Kissinger in the 70s. Kissinger, in their eyes, has achieved three great successes with his “friendly” detente method:

1) weakening and undermining, progressively but surely, Russia,

2) splitting Russia and China

3) neutralizing the influence of Russia in the Middle East

The Neocons’ ferocious and deranged aggressive policy managed to nullify all three Kissingerian geostrategic achievements. In a sense, it has been a fortune for humanity, a proof of the diplomatic ability of Vladimir Putin and a clear indication of the rapacious stupidity of the Clinton/Bush establishment. For a profit, they did sell to Russia the rope to be used to hang them.   But now the Anglo-American elite realizes that the group, the mafia, the establishment  to whom they gave the car keys, have created a situation of existential danger for their domination. The real economy of the US has been thoroughly weakened by the escalating financial looting, to the point that also their war-waging ability has been jeopardized. And the Elite realizes that Russia and its allies are not going to surrender to the ferocious but hysterical and ineffective assault conceived by the moronic Neocon war criminals. This time will not be a fake coward war like the one against Iraq, or Libya. This time will be a real, nuclear, war. And the Anglo-American elite is ready to start any war against an enemy unable to defend itself, while they are scared to death of a real war in which they could LOOSE.

They realize also that, despite the military adventures and the present expenses allocated for the military, the US is being progressively isolated. They realize that, despite the investments in goebbelsian propaganda, NATO is not the magic bullet they dreamed of. While the real economy of the host country is being bled, The NATO structure is not able any more to fulfill its mission. Its mission being: “Keep the Russian out, the Americans in, and the Europeans down”.

The recent developments in Turkey has shown, for the first time,  that a NATO/US sponsored coup d’état did NOT succeed.  Now, Turkey is entering  a new political trajectory and a new geostrategic realm. Though it’s difficult to foresee with perfect accuracy what is going to happen, it is clear that a process of progressive disintegration of the anglaomerican control and domination apparatus has started. It could progress very fast and very dramatically. The possibility of Turkey leaving NATO, de jure or simply de facto, is being contemplated by many of the most competent observers. An informal military relation with Russia, China (and Iran!) is already a fact. The notorious US  network of influence nominally run by Fetullah Gulen is being dismantled not only in Turkey, but in Azerbaijan  and, it is expected to be weakened and neutralized in all the Turkic areas, i.e. the Southern Flank of the ex Soviet Union. These areas were supposed to be the bastion of the “West” against Russia. They are rapidly becoming the opposite.

The Turkish lesson is being studied very carefully by a large number of countries. Starting with the Bulgaria leadership who cowardly preferred an economic suicide when was told by Hillary Clinton’s darling, Victoria Nuland to cancel the gigantic Southern Stream pipeline from Russia.  The Turkish lesson is being studied all over the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa, and of course, Continental Europe. The British Brexit decision, though clearly dictated by clever, realpolitik considerations of surviving “to fight another day,” is part of these lessons learned and probably, was an incentive to the Turkish military and elite to make the Gulen coup fail.

And so the decrepit Kissinger is again presented on the public scene by the elite who hope he can do the “detente” trick again. We seriously doubt that Russia will fall for that for even a second. Despite the many “friends” of Russia who are vociferously telling Putin: Look, look how good is Kissinger. He represents the good faction in the West. Sign a deal with him and everything will be good and fine. Most likely Russia will treat the “messenger boy” with extreme formal respect, will even  go to the motion of discussing and negotiating in some form. BUT it will never let its strategy be conditioned by the promise and the good word of the Detente man. There will not be another Gorbachev, there will not a be an Yeltsin. Quite the contrary. Maybe there will not even be a Medvedev in the future of Russia.

Last February 4, Kissinger was in Moscow giving a speech at the Gorchakov Fund explaining why he represented  the alternative to a confrontation and presenting his plan to go back to the good old days  i.e. when Russia was… royally undermined. See the complete speech to believe (see transcript of speech below).

<http://gorchakovfund.ru/en/news/18352/ >

On Aug 19, The Doctor comes back with the same music in an interview  to Jacob Heilbrunn for the National Interest magazine. It is very telling of the  uneasy situation the Masters of Kissinger are at this point. <http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-interview-henry-kissinger-13615 >

On one side, the old factotum of Wall Street has to say words that, he believes, will be well received in Moscow (criticism of the  anti Russia attitude of the Neocons), on the other he cannot by explain frankly that his Detente strategy in the 1970s, and his “nice words” in 2016 have the same purpose: Smash Russia!  He is asked: “détente played a critical role in bringing down the Soviet Union, didn’t it?” Kissinger’s answer: “That is my view. We viewed détente as a strategy for conducting the conflict with the Soviet Union.”

See the following exchange:

Heilbrunn: I’d forgotten that he’d managed that feat. In the end, though, détente played a critical role in bringing down the Soviet Union, didn’t it?

Kissinger: That is my view. We viewed détente as a strategy for conducting the conflict with the Soviet Union.

Heilbrunn: I’m amazed that this doesn’t get more attention—in Europe, this is the common view, that détente was essential toward softening up Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and getting over the memory of World War II, whereas in the United States we have a triumphalist view.

Kissinger: Well, you have the view that Reagan started the process with his Evil Empire speech, which, in my opinion, occurred at the point when the Soviet Union was already well on the way to defeat. We were engaged in a long-term struggle, generating many competing analyses. I was on the hard-line side of the analysis. But I stressed also the diplomatic and psychological dimensions. We needed to wage the Cold War from a posture in which we would not be isolated, and in which we would have the best possible basis for conducting unavoidable conflicts. Finally, we had a special obligation to find a way to avoid nuclear conflict, since that risked civilization. We sought a position to be ready to use force when necessary but always in the context of making it clearly demonstrable as a last resort. The neoconservatives took a more absolutist view. Reagan used the span of time that was available to him with considerable tactical skill, although I’m not sure that all of it was preconceived. But its effect was extremely impressive. I think the détente period was an indispensable prelude.

Heilbrunn: The other monumental accomplishment was obviously the opening to China. Do you feel today that—

Kissinger: —Reducing the Soviet role in the Middle East. That was not minor.

Heilbrunn: That’s correct, and saving Israel in the ’73 war with the arms supply.

Kissinger: The two were related.

Heilbrunn: Is China the new Wilhelmine Germany today? Richard Nixon, shortly before he died, told William Safire that it was necessary to create the opening to China, but we may have created a Frankenstein.

Kissinger: A country that has had three thousand years of dominating its region can be said to have an inherent reality. The alternative would have been to keep China permanently subdued in collusion with the Soviet Union, and therefore making the Soviet Union—already an advanced nuclear country—the dominant country of Eurasia with American connivance. But China inherently presents a fundamental challenge to American strategy.

See:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-interview-henry-kissinger-13615
The Interview: Henry Kissinger

See:
http://www.fort-russ.com/2015/08/kissinger-goal-of-us-is-break-up-of.html
Kissinger: The goal of the US is a break up of Russia

See:
http://gorchakovfund.ru/en/news/18352/
Primakov Lecture by Henry A. Kissinger at the Gorchakov Fund in Moscow

ANNEX

Primakov Lecture by Henry A. Kissinger at the Gorchakov Fund in Moscow

February 4, 2016

From 2007 into 2009, Evgeny Primakov and I chaired a group composed of retired senior ministers, high officials, and military leaders from Russia and the United States, including some of you present here today. Its purpose was to ease the adversarial aspects of the U.S.-Russian relationship and to consider opportunities for cooperative approaches. In America, it was described as a Track II group, which meant it was bipartisan and encouraged by the White House to explore but not negotiate on its behalf. We alternated meetings in each other’s country. President Putin received the group in Moscow in 2007, and President Medvedev in 2009. In 2008, President George W. Bush assembled most of his National Security team in the Cabinet Room for a dialogue with our guests.

All the participants had held responsible positions during the Cold War. During periods of tension, they had asserted the national interest of their country as they understood it. But they had also learned through experience the perils of a technology threatening civilized life and evolving in a direction which, in crisis, might disrupt any organized human activity. Upheavals were looming around the globe, magnified in part by different cultural identities and clashing ideologies. The goal of the Track II effort was to overcome crises and explore common principles of world order.

Evgeny Primakov was an indispensable partner in this effort. His sharp analytical mind combined with a wide grasp of global trends acquired in years close to and ultimately at the center of power, and his great devotion to his country refined our thinking and helped in the quest for a common vision. We did not always agree, but we always respected each other. He is missed by all of us and by me personally as a colleague and a friend.

I do not need to tell you that our relations today are much worse than they were a decade ago. Indeed, they are probably the worst they have been since before the end of the Cold War. Mutual trust has been dissipated on both sides. Confrontation has replaced cooperation. I know that in his last months, Evgeny Primakov looked for ways to overcome this disturbing state of affairs. We would honor his memory by making that effort our own.

At the end of the Cold War, both Russians and Americans had a vision of strategic partnership shaped by their recent experiences. Americans were expecting that a period of reduced tensions would lead to productive cooperation on global issues. Russian pride in their role in modernizing their society was tempered by discomfort at the transformation of their borders and recognition of the monumental tasks ahead in reconstruction and redefinition. Many on both sides understood that the fates of Russia and the U.S. remained tightly intertwined. Maintaining strategic stability and preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction became a growing necessity, as did the building of a security system for Eurasia, especially along Russia’s long periphery. New vistas opened up in trade and investment; cooperation in the field of energy topped the list.

Regrettably, the momentum of global upheaval has outstripped the capacities of statesmanship. Evgeny Primakov’s decision as Prime Minister, on a flight over the Atlantic to Washington, to order his plane to turn around and return to Moscow to protest the start of NATO military operations in Yugoslavia was symbolic. The initial hopes that the close cooperation in the early phases of the campaign against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan might lead to partnership on a broader range of issues weakened in the vortex of disputes over Middle East policy, and then collapsed with the Russian military moves in the Caucasus in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. The more recent efforts to find common ground in the Syria conflict and to defuse the tension over Ukraine have done little to change the mounting sense of estrangement.

The prevailing narrative in each country places full blame on the other side, and in each country there is a tendency to demonize, if not the other country, then its leaders. As national security issues dominate the dialogue, some of the mistrust and suspicions from the bitter Cold-War struggle have reemerged. These feelings have been exacerbated in Russia by the memory of the first post-Soviet decade when Russia suffered a staggering socio-economic and political crisis, while the United States enjoyed its longest period of uninterrupted economic expansion. All this caused policy differences over the Balkans, the former Soviet territory, the Middle East, NATO expansion, missile defense, and arms sales to overwhelm prospects for cooperation.

Perhaps most important has been a fundamental gap in historical conception. For the United States, the end of the Cold War seemed like a vindication of its traditional faith in inevitable democratic revolution. It visualized the expansion of an international system governed by essentially legal rules. But Russia’s historical experience is more complicated. To a country across which foreign armies have marched for centuries from both East and West, security will always need to have a geopolitical, as well as a legal, foundation. When its security border moves from the Elbe 1,000 miles east towards Moscow, Russia’s perception of world order will contain an inevitable strategic component. The challenge of our period is to merge the two perspectives—the legal and the geopolitical—in a coherent concept.

In this way, paradoxically, we find ourselves confronting anew an essentially philosophical problem. How does the United States work together with Russia, a country which does not share all its values but is an indispensable component of the international order? How does Russia exercise its security interests without raising alarms around its periphery and accumulating adversaries? Can Russia gain a respected place in global affairs with which the United States is comfortable? Can the United States pursue its values without being perceived as threatening to impose them? I will not attempt to propose answers to all these questions. My purpose is to encourage an effort to explore them.

Many commentators, both Russian and American, have rejected the possibility of the U.S. and Russia working cooperatively on a new international order. In their view, the United States and Russia have entered a new Cold War.

The danger today is less a return to military confrontation than the consolidation of a self-fulfilling prophecy in both countries. The long-term interests of both countries call for a world that transforms the contemporary turbulence and flux into a new equilibrium which is increasingly multipolar and globalized.

The nature of the turmoil is in itself unprecedented. Until quite recently, global international threats were identified with the accumulation of power by a dominating state. Today threats more frequently arise from the disintegration of state power and the growing number of ungoverned territories. This spreading power vacuum cannot be dealt with by any state, no matter how powerful on an exclusively national basis. It requires sustained cooperation between the United States and Russia, and other major powers. Therefore the elements of competition, in dealing with the traditional conflicts in the interstate system, must be constrained so that the competition remains within bounds and creates conditions which prevent a recurrence.

There are, as we know, a number of divisive issues before us, Ukraine or Syria as the most immediate. For the past few years, our countries have engaged in episodic discussions of such matters without much notable progress. This is not surprising, because the discussions have taken place outside an agreed strategic framework. Each of the specific issues is an expression of a larger strategic one. Ukraine needs to be embedded in the structure of European and international security architecture in such a way that it serves as a bridge between Russia and the West, rather than as an outpost of either side. Regarding Syria, it is clear that the local and regional factions cannot find a solution on their own. Compatible U.S.-Russian efforts coordinated with other major powers could create a pattern for peaceful solutions in the Middle East and perhaps elsewhere.

Any effort to improve relations must include a dialogue about the emerging world order. What are the trends that are eroding the old order and shaping the new one? What challenges do the changes pose to both Russian and American national interests? What role does each country want to play in shaping that order, and what position can it reasonably and ultimately hope to occupy in that new order? How do we reconcile the very different concepts of world order that have evolved in Russia and the United States—and in other major powers—on the basis of historical experience? The goal should be to develop a strategic concept for U.S.-Russian relations within which the points of contention may be managed.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, I perceived international relations as an essentially adversarial relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the evolution of technology, a conception of strategic stability developed that the two countries could implement, even as their rivalry continued in other areas. The world has changed dramatically since then. In particular, in the emerging multipolar order, Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States.

I have spent the greater part of the past seventy years engaged in one way or another in U.S.-Russian relations. I have been at decision centers when alert levels have been raised, and at joint celebrations of diplomatic achievement. Our countries and the peoples of the world need a more durable prospect.

I am here to argue for the possibility of a dialogue that seeks to merge our futures rather than elaborate our conflicts. This requires respect by both sides of the vital values and interest of the other. These goals cannot be completed in what remains of the current administration. But neither should their pursuits be postponed for American domestic politics. It will only come with a willingness in both Washington and Moscow, in the White House and the Kremlin, to move beyond the grievances and sense of victimization to confront the larger challenges that face both of our countries in the years ahead.