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Cornering Russia - Risking World War III
Authored by Alastair Crooke, originally posted at ConsortiumNews.com,
Official Washington is awash with tough talk about Russia and the need to punish President Putin for his role in Ukraine and Syria. But this bravado ignores Russia’s genuine national interests, its “red lines,” and the risk that “tough-guy-ism” can lead to nuclear war, as Alastair Crooke explains.
We all know the narrative in which we (the West) are seized. It is the narrative of the Cold War: America versus the “Evil Empire.” And, as Professor Ira Chernus has written, since we are “human” and somehow they (the USSR or, now, ISIS) plainly are not, we must be their polar opposite in every way.
“If they are absolute evil, we must be the absolute opposite. It’s the old apocalyptic tale: God’s people versus Satan’s. It ensures that we never have to admit to any meaningful connection with the enemy.” It is the basis to America’s and Europe’s claim to exceptionalism and leadership.
And “buried in the assumption that the enemy is not in any sense human like us, is [an] absolution for whatever hand we may have had in sparking or contributing to evil’s rise and spread. How could we have fertilized the soil of absolute evil or bear any responsibility for its successes? It’s a basic postulate of wars against evil: God’s people must be innocent,” (and that the evil cannot be mediated, for how can one mediate with evil).
Westerners may generally think ourselves to be rationalist and (mostly) secular, but Christian modes of conceptualizing the world still permeate contemporary foreign policy.
It is this Cold War narrative of the Reagan era, with its correlates that America simply stared down the Soviet Empire through military and – as importantly – financial “pressures,” whilst making no concessions to the enemy.
What is sometimes forgotten, is how the Bush neo-cons gave their “spin” to this narrative for the Middle East by casting Arab national secularists and Ba’athists as the offspring of “Satan”: David Wurmser was advocating in 1996, “expediting the chaotic collapse” of secular-Arab nationalism in general, and Baathism in particular. He concurred with King Hussein of Jordan that “the phenomenon of Baathism” was, from the very beginning, “an agent of foreign, namely Soviet policy.”
Moreover, apart from being agents of socialism, these states opposed Israel, too. So, on the principle that if these were the enemy, then my enemy’s enemy (the kings, Emirs and monarchs of the Middle East) became the Bush neo-cons friends. And they remain such today – however much their interests now diverge from those of the U.S.
The problem, as Professor Steve Cohen, the foremost Russia scholar in the U.S., laments, is that it is this narrative which has precluded America from ever concluding any real ability to find a mutually acceptable modus vivendi with Russia – which it sorely needs, if it is ever seriously to tackle the phenomenon of Wahhabist jihadism (or resolve the Syrian conflict).
What is more, the “Cold War narrative” simply does not reflect history, but rather the narrative effaces history: It looses for us the ability to really understand the demonized “calous tyrant” – be it (Russian) President Vladimir Putin or (Ba’athist) President Bashar al-Assad – because we simply ignore the actual history of how that state came to be what it is, and, our part in it becoming what it is.
Indeed the state, or its leaders, often are not what we think they are – at all. Cohen explains: “The chance for a durable Washington-Moscow strategic partnership was lost in the 1990 after the Soviet Union ended. Actually it began to be lost earlier, because it was [President Ronald] Reagan and [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev who gave us the opportunity for a strategic partnership between 1985-89.
“And it certainly ended under the Clinton Administration, and it didn’t end in Moscow. It ended in Washington — it was squandered and lost in Washington. And it was lost so badly that today, and for at least the last several years (and I would argue since the Georgian war in 2008), we have literally been in a new Cold War with Russia.
“Many people in politics and in the media don’t want to call it this, because if they admit, ‘Yes, we are in a Cold War,’ they would have to explain what they were doing during the past 20 years. So they instead say, ‘No, it is not a Cold War.’
“Here is my next point. This new Cold War has all of the potential to be even more dangerous than the preceding 40-year Cold War, for several reasons. First of all, think about it. The epicentre of the earlier Cold War was in Berlin, not close to Russia. There was a vast buffer zone between Russia and the West in Eastern Europe.
“Today, the epicentre is in Ukraine, literally on Russia’s borders. It was the Ukrainian conflict that set this off, and politically Ukraine remains a ticking time bomb. Today’s confrontation is not only on Russia’s borders, but it’s in the heart of Russian-Ukrainian ‘Slavic civilization.’ This is a civil war as profound in some ways as was America’s Civil War.”
Cohen continued: “My next point: and still worse – You will remember that after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Washington and Moscow developed certain rules-of-mutual conduct. They saw how dangerously close they had come to a nuclear war, so they adopted “No-Nos,’ whether they were encoded in treaties or in unofficial understandings. Each side knew where the other’s red line was. Both sides tripped over them on occasion but immediately pulled back because there was a mutual understanding that there were red lines.
“TODAY THERE ARE NO RED LINES. One of the things that Putin and his predecessor President Medvedev keep saying to Washington is: You are crossing our Red Lines! And Washington said, and continues to say, ‘You don’t have any red lines. We have red lines and we can have all the bases we want around your borders, but you can’t have bases in Canada or Mexico. Your red lines don’t exist.’ This clearly illustrates that today there are no mutual rules of conduct.
“Another important point: Today there is absolutely no organized anti-Cold War or Pro-Detente political force or movement in the United States at all –– not in our political parties, not in the White House, not in the State Department, not in the mainstream media, not in the universities or the think tanks. … None of this exists today. …
“My next point is a question: Who is responsible for this new Cold War? I don’t ask this question because I want to point a finger at anyone. The position of the current American political media establishment is that this new Cold War is all Putin’s fault – all of it, everything. We in America didn’t do anything wrong. At every stage, we were virtuous and wise and Putin was aggressive and a bad man. And therefore, what’s to rethink? Putin has to do all of the rethinking, not us.”
These two narratives, the Cold War narrative, and the neocons’ subsequent “spin” on it: i.e. Bill Kristol’s formulation (in 2002) that precisely because of its Cold War “victory,” America could, and must, become the “benevolent global hegemon,” guaranteeing and sustaining the new American-authored global order – an “omelette that cannot be made without breaking eggs” – converge and conflate in Syria, in the persons of President Assad and President Putin.
President Obama is no neocon, but he is constrained by the global hegemon legacy, which he must either sustain, or be labeled as the arch facilitator of America’s decline. And the President is also surrounded by R2P (“responsibility-to-protect”) proselytizers, such as Samantha Power, who seem to have convinced the President that “the tyrant” Assad’s ouster would puncture and collapse the Wahhabist jihadist balloon, allowing “moderate” jihadists such as Ahrar al-Sham to finish off the deflated fragments of the punctured ISIS balloon.
In practice, President Assad’s imposed ouster precisely will empower ISIS, rather than implode it, and the consequences will ripple across the Middle East – and beyond. President Obama privately may understand the nature and dangers of the Wahhabist cultural revolution, but seems to adhere to the conviction that everything will change if only President Assad steps down. The Gulf States said the same about Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq. He has gone (for now), but what changed? ISIS got stronger.
Of course if we think of ISIS as evil, for evil’s sake, bent on mindless, whimsical slaughter, “what a foolish task it obviously [would be] to think about the enemy’s actual motives. After all, to do so would be to treat them as humans, with human purposes arising out of history. It would smack of sympathy for the devil. Of course,” Professor Chernus continues, “this means that, whatever we might think of their actions, we generally ignore a wealth of evidence that the Islamic State’s fighters couldn’t be more human or have more comprehensible motivations.”
Indeed, ISIS and the other Caliphate forces have very clear human motivations and clearly articulated political objectives, and none of these is in any way consistent with the type of Syrian State that America says it wants for Syria. This precisely reflects the danger of becoming hostage to a certain narrative, rather than being willing to examine the prevailing conceptual framework more critically.
America lies far away from Syria and the Middle East, and as Professor Stephen Cohen notes, “unfortunately, today’s reports seem to indicate that the White House and State Department are thinking primarily how to counter Russia’s actions in Syria. They are worried, it was reported, that Russia is diminishing America’s leadership in the world.”
It is a meme of perpetual national insecurity, of perpetual fears about America’s standing and of challenges to its standing, Professor Chernus suggests.
But Europe is not “far away”; it lies on Syria’s doorstep. It is also neighbor to Russia. And in this connection, it is worth pondering Professor Cohen’s last point: Washington’s disinclination to permit Russia any enhancement to its standing in Europe, or in the non-West, through its initiative strategically to defeat Wahhabist jihadism in Syria, is not only to play with fire in the Middle East. It is playing with a fire of even greater danger: to do both at the same time seems extraordinarily reckless.
Cohen again: “The false idea [has taken root] that the nuclear threat ended with the Soviet Union: In fact, the threat became more diverse and difficult. This is something the political elite forgot. It was another disservice of the Clinton Administration (and to a certain extent the first President Bush in his re-election campaign) saying that the nuclear dangers of the preceding Cold War era no longer existed after 1991. The reality is that the threat grew, whether by inattention or accident, and is now more dangerous than ever.”
As Europe becomes accomplice in raising the various pressures on Russia in Syria – economically through sanctions and other financial measures, in Ukraine and Crimea, and in beckoning Montenegro, Georgia and the Baltic towards NATO – we should perhaps contemplate the paradox that Russia’s determination to try to avoid war is leading to war.
Russia’s call to co-operate with Western states against the scourge of ISIS; its low-key and carefully crafted responses to such provocations as the ambush of its SU-24 bomber in Syria; and President Putin’s calm rhetoric, are all being used by Washington and London to paint Russia as a “paper tiger,” whom no one needs fear.
In short, Russia is being offered only the binary choice: to acquiesce to the “benevolent” hegemon, or to prepare for war.
* * *
Alastair Crooke (born 1950) is a British diplomat. Previously he was a ranking figure in British intelligence (MI6).
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And Gazprom at $3.65 per ADR share. A company with the largest NG and oil reserves in the world. Larger than XOM, larger than PTR. Should be a ten-bagger if Chalky White gets out of office replaced by Trump who will cut a deal with Putin (one hopes) rather than start WWIII at the bidding of reptiles. I am loaded up around $7.50 and half-waiting for Chalky to zero out the shares in the name of patriotism.
World war is only days away...
https://www.rt.com/news/325929-islamic-coalition-terrorism-saudi/
Can someone please wire Vlad some Western Union funds? He's been waiting down there since this morning and hasn't had a thing to eat.
Zero Hedge has been faithfully warning us since its inception that World War III is only days/weeks/hours away, so I'm unconcerned.
Now, if I wake up one morning and there's no ZH article on the computer talking about Kingdom Come being just around the corner, that's when I'm going to start worrying!
simpleton hasbara
Shouldnt you be over at huffington post?
Do they compensate you by character, line or level of stupidity?
Crimea river.
If Hillary gets in a fight with her lover, Huma Abedin, as president she could start setting off nukes.
No, she'll start up with Russia because she thinks her dick is bigger than Putin's.
I hear she has an 8 inch clitoris.
She has a 1.8M cock...she calls it Bill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li58voy6xXM
The United States of America is finished on the World stage and cannot recoup past glory days because the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Central Intelligence Agency, overextended their overarching so-called 'authority' too far in this World to be tolerated. In brief, America is not in a new 'cold war' with the Russian Federation, or China, because America has actually overextended itself past that sort of rhetoric, and not a single soul in this world believes the rhetoric anymore. America will not 'be great again', or prosperous, due to the fact that America is a deadbeat nation, and cannot pay its bills to creditor nations, and is inherently dishonest. Moreover, when the economy implodes again the simpletons in the American Gubbermint, and Wall Street Corporatists, will scream for World War Three because they have no alternative system to the corrupt aggression wars that America has been involved in since the Second World War. Unfortunately, this time the USA will get nuked by the Russian Federation, and China.
This outcome is a logical conclusion to the excesses of American Hegemony, and the economic largesse displayed up to, and including, the Greater Depression. We have all just evidenced 8 years of money printing that in no way filtered down to the people that pay the taxes to keep the lights on in Gubbermint buildings.
The end is nigh.
I truly believe that future generations will live in a peaceful world after the US fights a world war as a local. A taste of Carnage famine misery and all of that included. Only drawback is that call of duty videogame And murican sniper movie will not be that popular tho.
This world is based on aggression, weaponry, and militerism. Peace does not factor in after nuclear war, and nuclear winter. Starvation factors in, but peace does not unless you live in a spot of the world that will survive nuclear winter. In brief, optimism of a peaceful existence past World War Three is a little strange from my perspective of the physics of nuclear winter. It is human nature to be optimistic, and biologically adaptive, but if you think nuclear winter through to a logical conclusion it ain't exactly optimistic if you know what I mean.
Sorry. But am optimistic. Large portions of land of one of the beligerents (Russia) are not know to mankind. Am optimistic that they will take care of business. They are simple but rough people. They are peaceful and patient until attacked. Im positive that a superior peace caring mankind will follow these lunatic ameribritzionists.
You do not understand the dynamics of nuclear winter. Few, if any, will survive anywhere on the earth. Besides nuclear winter, you will have 440+ nukear power stations that will go unattended from the devastation and spew huge amounts of radioactivity into the air polluting the entire globe. Few will survive that in the long-term (though there might remain a few two-headed kids).
Mister Crooke has heard the bell ring somewhere but doesn't seem to be able to find the clapper because in fact Russia and China have only one choice and that's to prepare for war which is exactly what they are doing. Why? The Wolfowitz Doctrine - U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop, A One-Superpower World http://work.colum.edu/~amiller/wolfowitz1992.htm
Washington Intends Russia’s Demise — Paul Craig Roberts http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/05/02/washington-intends-russias-de...
Furthermore to hear a former MI6 man not mentioning the real objective in Syria namely the pipelines is curious to say at least. And The Wolfowitz Doctrine is not with Europe, as suggested, but also directed against Europe.
Very cool, Youri Carma. I'm going to read your posts from now on cuz I like the way you think.
Oh Danny boy, the pipelines, the pipelines are calling. From glen to glen, and here's a down arrow....
Indeed. There is rarely just one simple motive involved around any issue. In this case, there are the pipelines and the Wolfowitz Policy. The sanctions against Russia were also engineered to weaken the EU, keep them subjugated to the US and prevent a strengthening EU-Russian relationship. And then there is the New Silk Road. America can not afford to allow a Eurasian economic union to happen. America is also in a fight to maintain the power of the petrodollar upon which Americans rely to maintain their extravagant standard of living - Russian and China are a mortal threat to the current global monetary system. Americans often brag about how their standard of living is envied throughout the world and because it is so high, it must be the superior American economic system that is the base cause for that. If only others would adopt the American way, we would all prosper. That is a myth and a lie as the world is discovering recently. America is rich because the petrodollar has forced the world to support America's standard of living - that will soon come to an end.
Nothing is simple.
I hope the Russian wife likes the new watch I bought her for Festivus because that one was not cheap. Fuck sakes that watch was expensive. I figured she needed something that I could not commandeer. I do not have a watch like that and a woman's watch is a woman's watch. I aced myself out on purpose. Russian women like style and I know that I nailed it. She deserves it for putting up with me and never asking for anything special. It is as much quality jewelry as it is a precise timepiece. It is very cool. There is no reason for war.
I know that she will be pissed off at me at first because she did not want anything. However, she earned it and I worked my ass off for it.
Yes, you wouldn't want to do a traditional Festivus with the Airing of the Grievances with a Russian wife.
In a traditional Festivus you would have put the watch in a bag and nailed it up to the wall. When she asks you about it, you would then reply: "That's not for you to know."
I do love traditions. Even the ones that happen for the very first time.
Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.
Obviously, a saying that Obama isn't aware of.
One of the problems with the Neo Con plan for conquest is that they disregard the people at home instead of enlisting them. Even in rapacious regimes, the people were always promised some kind of reward for supporting the ruling elite. Jobs, access to resources, founding companies, trade routes, and so forth.
So far, the Neo Cons have not only managed to piss off everyone else in the world, but also to shit a huge turd on the heads of the American People. They thumb their nose at the proles and dare them to stop the Neo Con agenda. You can't throw out people who were never elected.
Either the Neo Cons are stupid enough to think they can win a world war with the weak half of their United States supporting them, or they are setting the country up for a great fall on purpose. They know that true Americans have no love in their hearts for a philosophy of conquest which is absolutely antithetical to the American Spirit. Those deluded fools, the "progressives" that live in the coastal cities, are weak sycophants and do nothing for the Neo Cons except to create a human shield between themselves and the Americans who want them removed.
As long as the perception that a large number of people support the Neo Cons and their government persists, those who despise what has happened to their country will feel powerless to act. This is the secret to the power of a hated regime. Nobody can act until legitimacy is lost; there is a question of moral authority. And by then, it is almost always too late.
Education and communication are the tools for reclaiming stolen moral authority.
When all of creation is destroyed, then the necons can claim victory for their master.
Can some explain how Putin is so wrong and Obama so right? What countries has Russia invaded? Other than Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria, the US hasn't invaded any foreign countries over the past 10 or 20 years, right?
Shouldn't the US and Russia really be friends? Didn't Russia help the American Colonists in their Revolutionary War for independence from England? And wasn't Russia an ally with the US in World Wars 1 and 2?
The British and Americans needed Russians to kill Germans on the Eastern Front.
USSR gave 80% of all military losses in World War 2, and ~90% of nazi army was occupied with trying to hold off the soviet armies.
Its not only casualty numbers, however. You have to look at the german side and their attitude towards the combatants to understand who beat them. germans threw EVERYTHING they had in eastern front until 1944, and yet got hammered to oblivion day by day. eastern front was basically seen as a graveyard - you got sent there, you die. a german pilot explains: "you would shoot down one of them (soviet aircraft) somewhere, and the next day there would be 10 of them in the same place".... solely the battle of kursk, the biggest tank battle ever to take place in the history of the world, should tell you where ww2 was truly fought.
circa 1944, western front assignment was seen by germans as a 'holiday assignment'. privileged people, relatives of nazi party were sent there. while the peons were being slaughtered in eastern front.
EVEN after the normandy landings, germans STILL allocated weight of their fighting force to east. getting overrun by soviets were psychologicallyunacceptable for nazi party. After it became evident that germany was beaten, this time they kept assigning bulk of their forces to eastern front, and had their divisions in the west start surrendering (after hitler was more or less out of the picture of course) in order to prevent soviets from overrunning entire germany - they preferred to evade soviet occupation.
the fate of world war 2 probably really changed when stalin properly believed the report famous german spy in tokyo delivered, telling that the japanese were not intending an attack on ussr anytime soon. this allowed zukov's armies to be directed to german front, and changed the tide there decisively. previously that famous spy also reported the 1941 attack germans made against ussr - but stalin dismissed and ridiculed him. he didnt do that mistake a 2nd time.
in truth, japan was not a foe that could upset the balance of ww2. even when they were attacking ussr at the early stages of war, they were mainly infantry, lacking armor and proper air support. not to mention that japanese staff correctly calculated that the resources and equipment (including aircraft carriers) they had would not be able to maintain a proper war with usa, hence the decision to raid pearl harbor and try to destroy us navy in one stroke with the hopes of forcing a peace treaty. their aircraft carriers were mostly conversions of old ships, and their production capability was nowhere near usa. Even by the time of pearl harbor after japanese destroyed or crippled bulk of us navy and left only 1 aircraft carwith the initiatives u.s. took for production would make usa end up outnumbering japanese aircraft carriers 1 to 10 in 2 years' time. And it ended up happening as such. and not only in numbers but also tonnage. not counting smaller aircraft carriers or 'escort carriers' a lot of which were equal to some front line japanese aircraft carriers themselves.
combine this with the fact that especially churchill (hence the brits) hoped that germany would destroy soviet union - being the privileged elitist aristocrat psychopath churchill was (he thought the 'opulent' (rich) should govern the 'masses' - the people), he did everything in his power to delay any meaningful front in the west - hence the shitty, pointless italy landings, and the totally absurd and unnecessary bloodshed that happened in italy.
only after it was evident that soviets were overrunning germans and would end up taking over europe that the lunatics hastily started preparing for an invasion.
even at the end of ww2, churchill was urging an immediate attack on ussr, relentlessly - only to shut the hell up after learning that even at the end of the war at that point, soviets outnumbered ALL the allies combined 1 to 3.
but thankfully for churchill, the military-industry complex had had successfully taken over usa by staging a political coup against FDR's candidate, Wallace, and planted their puppet, truman. Who were to proceed with pushing churchill's agenda in the coming decade.
Well, you see, there are about 40 or more in the last 60 years.
But it has been conveniently forgotten here.
Communism, very brutal at times
"Thirty Million People Killed by U.S. Since the End of World War II"
Do you think anybody wants to be friends with the US? That would be like befriending Stalin or Mao. Pro-US news pieces appear only in the US and the five eyes. The UN routinely votes 195-2 against the US (and Israel.)
America is on its own. Even Europe can't afford to get too friendly and will drop them at a moment's notice. There is no future in NATO, especially once the SHTF.
An article in the Washington Post just now ( Liz Sly) . The MOST fact twisted, and mainstream anti Russian propaganda one yet. Russia bombing Aid stations, cutting of supplies to a million Syrians, and only targeting anti Assad forces. Embarrassing writing.
"They show that Qatar has bought Russian-made bombs in Ukraine so as to accuse Russia"
This is possibly one of the scenarios set up by deals like that below.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article189607.html
Excellent article! Thank you for making it availabe.
Russia has a history of 1,000 years of wars with Turkey.
I would hope that Russia has in mind protecting its Christian past against Islamic agression
But I wonder if a deal is being made behind the tables with Obama the Gog man
I see now that Turkey and its previous empire fit a Magog like scenario indicating a large final war in the ME
This set up would allow the invasion of Israel which many here would think is good but it is not.
Obama has let it be known to his Muslim buddies that he would take out Israel 5 months after he was elected
This current situation will fascilitate that.
Syria and the Golan Heights will be the staging ground
So, before Obama looks like he will be out of office, this is all going to come down.
This current political climate then is all entertainment
for you prophecy buffs, this vid by Avi Lipkin and Gary Stearman is a gem in making sense of this difficult and complicated situation.
https://youtu.be/tSjriSKMLSg
thats from religious point
The paradigm has changed, folks. This is about a NatGas pipeline going from Qatar to Europe, with Qatar, Saudi and Turkey on one side and Syria, Iran and Russia on the other. The Sunni/Shia thing is also part of this. Syria is ground zero; at the moment, it looks like Russia, Syria, Iran is winning... but this one might well go on for another 3-4 years. The Yemeni crisis is also part of this same mess. The collapse in oil prices is, ironically, fuel onto this fire..both sides increasingly need the more revenues. This has absolutely nothing to do with the US or Israel. Yet.
The pipeline is only part of the game. It is about who is going to control Eurasia, its people, markets and resources as part of the wider space that extends from the UK all the way to Vladivostok. The one who controls Eurasia controls that wider space.
America's strength lies in the fact that geographically nobody can really touch it. But for America to get into power and remain there it needs to engage (and subjugate) the rest of the world. Hence the hundreds of bases the US has around the world.
I live in the west and quite frankly don't believe a dam thing the leaders of the USA tell us.
You just have to look around and and determine how many countries the USA has decimated and in the process have murdered millions of innocent people. OBAMA has to be listed as the worst muderer from the USA and they call him their own. He told you all to believe and you all got sucked in. All this is being accomplished by the apparent approval of the public. Look at all the countries the USA has entered and decimated. Everyone of those countries have turned into a shit pit and are ruined economically. Look at the Ukraine that they so conveniently created a coup in and now the economy has crumbled practically into bankruptcy. There are countless countries around the world that they have placed their own people in as head of government. South America has been systematically taken over by the USA's desireable people. The USA has an organization that was called School of the America's (SOA). It changed names but it's still in existence. This so called school is on an army base in the United States. It trains people how to be good dictators and mostly in South America. The people that are taught at this school became some of the most cutthroat dictators South America has ever seen. Thousands upon thousands of people have been mudered by these trained people of the CIA. This is not a secret and has been reported on in the past.
Unless the people of the world get organized you will all suffer from these Piraya's of the world.
The citizens of the USA should get some balls and solve this problem from within. May I suggest you keep all your weapons of choice because you may need them one day. Until you solve this problem please stay home and organize your thoughts in a nice way and impeach or arrest that President of yours.
The right people the US installed in Latin America were all right wing. The purpose was to make US corporations immune to government interference. Any left wing government had to be undermined as quickly as possible.
Roger Ramjet and his Eagles fighting for the freedom..........
indeed it did
Another of America's problems to be laid at the feet of Kristol, Wolfowitz, and Kagan.
They had it all figured out in the 90's. Withdraw from the ABM Treaty and then install hundreds of anti-ballistic missiles in the recently emancipated Soviet satellites.
After as many missiles were installed to eliminate the Russian response following the American nuclear first strike, Russia would finally be defeated.
The neocons will have brought victory to the 'last best hope' after its nuclear first strike.
Alas, it was not to be. When Bush withdrew the US from the ABM treaty, he also put an end to MAD. The neocons and their friends in high office would finally be rid of that terrible ball and chain of mutuality.
As soon as enough missiles were set up in eastern Europe and enough long range bombers were built and enough submarines were plying beneath the waters around Russia, the button would be pushed, the first strike would hit and then all the newly installed anti-ballistic missiles would pick off the Russian ABMs that managed to fire up into the launch phase. If a handful of them made it across the Atlantic or over the Pole, they would be taken care of by our Homeland missile defenses.
But the Smelly Finger of Fate intervened.
For one reason or another, while the West was scheming their schemes, the Russians doubled down on improving all of the weaponry from tanks to rockets and who knows what else?
I don't have to enumerate the names of them: S-300, S-400 (S-500 is in the oven), Iskander, Yakhont, Khibiny, etc etc. Weapons that might degrade the US's first strike and mean that some Russian nukes might accidentally fall on Trinity Church or Lincoln Center, which would annoy the 1% no end.
There was also the matter of that pesky triple dip recovery, which meant that our new found allies in eastern Europe couldn't pay for their anti-ballistic as fast Wolfie wanted them to, even with the generous terms we offered them.
So after living without MAD for most of the first decade of the new century, by 2012 or so they really wanted it back real bad. And they wanted a commitment from Moscow that if a conventional war was joined, that it would not turn nuclear. The US, with their unbelievable military, wanted to fight conventionally. That's what they were set up to do.
Nuclear wars weren't their cup of tea at all. They had so much more to lose even if they won.
Vladimir Putin knew, now that the US knew that there was a huge price to pay for a nuclear first strike, that there was no downside to mentioning word nuclear as often as possible.
It was fingernails on a chalk board to Washington.
Ocean Multipurpose System: Status 6 - Ocean going nuclear drones parked off the coast from New Jersey / Delaware. As I understand them, they're just bombs but they could just as easily fire nuclear tipped cruise missiles just 100km.
I prefer the exploding container ship in Long Beach and New Orleans
Trinity Church?
How about the Wall St Synagogue? THAT would really piss 'em off.
Thats exactly what i thought. The one war hog$ kissinger and soros attend
You must be aware that the Wall St Synagogue is just a cover for a nuclear bomb shelter for the rich principals of the large jewish firms.
Tried to find the picture for the article (with the 2 armed guys) on the main page and remembered another one:
http://rykov.ru/image/7cc27448-75c0-47e8-bb41-dceb2e22baf5.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HjsN8mCpc1A/UxY9wLW7OeI/AAAAAAAALhU/qZQeGNhz-y...
Thank you. But, it seems (IMHO), that it has no any sense.
In Russian but imho worth the pains of using computerized Internet translator (I recommend Yandex as it gives more accurate translation from Russian to English than Google):
http://news-front.info/2015/12/15/kak-russkie-i-kitajcy-pobedyat-ameriku...
clownfish for skype
Ogromnoe spasibo for the link to Yandex, brilliant translator.
You can type in a URL and it will translate the whole page while showing links and images!
USSA through its own hubris and stupidity despite a century of planetary rape and pillage is broke. The only "solution" for its oligarch psychopaths is the same as what has brought Mercans to ruin; WAR and the bigger the better. So the evil zero 1% bums from the Washing town thugocracy and the owners of Pentacon Kill Industries will get their war. However, the snaggle-toothed our troopians have got it figured and finally understand that there is really only one war that changes anything; civil war. This is indeed what is coming home to USSA, and it will be our most perfect war to date. Like our first bash only bigger, more destructive and more expensive (as if we could affford anything) and more Mercan bodies bagged locally than all our foreign bouts of slaughter put together.
So bring it on and drag the ruling scum from their ratholes and bunkers and douse them one and all like Uncle Adolf, before USSA is a burnt out pile of rubble.
For everyone's sake, IT IS TIME to start cornering the NeoCon ZIO-SCUMMM* .
We know WHAT these psycho-predator vermin are: Dispensers of Death, Destruction & Destitution in service to a Demonic Entity.
We know WHO these psycho-predator vermin are: Paul "Rat Face I" Wolfowitz, Elliot "Rat Face II" Abrams, the KKK (KAGAN Kriminal Kabal), Perle, Ledeen, Feith, Kristol, WOrmser, PNAC'ers, ZIO-Hag Nudelman... ...
(SCUMMM* - Satanic Cabal Underwriting Mass-Murder & Mayhem)
I work with Russians, and Ukranians, in Berlin. in fact they work together as well. All of them very smart, and well educated, and motivated people.
NONE of this is about ordinary people. On ANY of the sides. it is about who owns those people and benefits from their productive capacity. The "leaders".
War, is ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE, the leaders against their OWN people.
Make no mistake, Obama and the Neocons are making war against ordinary Americans.
Vlad meal poop teen
ban this type inane crap please Tyler
morning joe , Trump says Israel funding Isis
We should be so lucky as to end our collective miseries with a flash and a bang. However, I sometimes fear that our overlords are crueler than that and would rather see us subjugated, stripped of our wealth and futures, starved and vulnerable. Being the satanists that we believe them to be, this latter scenario would better fit their M.O... cruelty and enjoying seeing others suffer slow, agonizing and humiliating deaths. Just saying.
America is fully aware that the way to draw Russia into a conflict is to push forward towards Russia’s borders. In time, Russia will be forced to defend its right to exist, and when this happens, western powers will not know what hit them!
http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/22/4790
War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. 60s song? Peace brothers.
What happens when your money goes worthless and is "no good" anywhere you try to take it using violence and theft as the only means you believe you have left from others that refuse to "own it"!...
The US never had any intention of developing “a durable Washington-Moscow strategic partnership” following dissolution of the Soviet Union. Rather, the goal was to exploit this situation, increase the presence of US/NATO forces in Eastern Europe and plunder the resources of former Soviet States, including Russia, with the help of Boris Yeltsin and other sell outs. For a good historical overview see:Revolution From Above: The Demise of the Soviet System by David Kotz and Fred Weir.
As the US economic situation continues declining, US foreign policy has become increasingly reckless and dangerous. We are on the path to a direct military confrontation between the US, Russia and China. This will make WWII look like a Sunday BBQ by comparison.
I've only been to moscow once & it definitely was not in a diplomatic role but having grown up a "reagan youth" in the 80s I have to say I was struck at how NOT evil the russian people are! ruthlessly pragmatic? sure, but to me that's admirable! (btw - one of my favorite jokes I took away was comeone asking: "do you know how to say 'too bad' in russian?" me: "no..." them: "TOUGH SHITSKY!!!" we got along great from that moment on...)
Gang warfare is always an interesting phenomena.
Gaining turf for tribute and to deny rivals access. It really gets exciting when they have flags, big hats and very large piles of weapons to rely on.
Most of the serfs only have to concern ourselves with defending our little quarter acre patches of ground.
Don't forget to pay your quarterly and annual tribute.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/it/c/c6/Gangs_of_New_York_-_Five_...
OMFG! Yet another progressive "blame bush" piece of trash propaganda trying to save the Obirdbrain and Hitlery?
Why is that so important to ZH? Getting paid from the Clinton mafia fund thru the Bulgarian mafia connection or something?
Striking in it's absence from this progressive propaganda trash is Hillary Clinton's charge into Egypt, Ukraine, Libya and Syria. This was not neocon directed policy, this was PURE PROGRESSIVE FACE OF DEATH policy.
Progressives are the FACE OF DEATH for millions, off the top of the logarithmic scale moar than their stupid neocon lapdogs.
None of this was directed by constitutional conservatives was it? Hell no it wasn't because their would have been no intervention, no wars, no death, limited government and peace.
To have crime, you first must have progressives. Better get it straight ZH assclowns.
Grimaldus
Once you use the progressive vs conservative dicotomy terms I know your writing is junk. Boring shet.
Fucking stupid americans..
Who do you thinks have the most nukes weapons??
http://ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report
And which country is BIGGER IN LANDS SIZE?? US or Russia??
You really wants to fucking threats Russia with YOUR MUKES??
REALLY?? Aee you that fucking retards??
Fuck you. BTW... Happy Holidays :)
Full Orwell. The "evil empire" today is clearly the USSA, not Putin. Today the USSA is pure authoritarian and well along the process of dominating the world.
These are precisely the reasons the USSR was called the "evil empire" in the 1970s and 1980s.
The USSA provides ZERO reasons they should rule the earth, other than utterly empty and meaningless soundbite assertions like "the indispensable nation" or "manifest destiny" or "purveyor of democracy". In fact, the USSA is worse than the USSR, worse than the Nazis, worse than the spies in East Germany.
The neo-con-jobs fully intend to literally become dictators of the entire planet, or destroy every human on the planet in a hissy-fit if they can't. They need to go. The USSA needs to go. Humans need to wise up.
But humans are too insane and stupid, so they won't.
Humans are a failed species.
Humans are doomed.
-----
Can a few of us escape [into space] before the end? Let's hope so.
No, I think humans need to go, period. Like comedian Lenny Bruce famously remarked, "we are all the same schmuck", and I believe this to be true. Similar to the concept of the movie 'Trading Places', in an overwhelming majority of cases, if you take an otherwise honest, caring and compassionate person, put him or her in a position of power, give them everything and more, in no time at all they will end up like the pipe-layer in the (half)White House, or maybe Hitler or Pol Pot. Just look at human history down through the ages, nothing has changed and nothing will. Its all about money and power, no matter the cost. We have soiled this planet as if it were no more than a diaper, a receptacle for our shit, killed off native species too numerous to even remember, denuded entire rain forests, and for what? And now the Monkey in Charge at the White Castle is jumping up and down and flinging his feces against the wall so we all know that he just saved the world from certain climate disaster (or if you are able to parse the 'monkey speak' what he is really saying is welome to your new tax(es), suckas). As long as we live in a world where an unknown, untested, narcissistic, lying, stupid porch monkey can become the the leader of what used to be the greatest country on the planet, we are so fucked...
The old military-industrial complex knows only aggression. Flexing this muscle from a peak debt economy is different from flexing it at a time when you have a real economy unconstrained by debts. Putin calling this bluff on an empire that has no teeth at the center. He is smart (a chess player) to agitate at the fringes knowing well too that the Russian economy also cannot sustain prolonged bleeding. Money has moved to markets dominated by transnational elites who will take their bites from increase in defense budgets and political egos as well as cronies that commit national economic genocides.
Sadly, Europe will face the brunt of these games with rotating proxy states while the lootings go on. Welcome to globalization where nations do not matter and too many human digits around. The global markets today testify to no Capital, Beijing, Washington etc can enforce obeisance. Also, sadly that the cream among the 90% preys has not morphed into global citizens to lead a push back. They are still stuck with their parochial secondary priorities like race, language and religion. That's where the global elite (neutral in color predators) get it in dividing and ruling.
This is the time
countries should align themselves
those who dont have nuclear arms they should come under nuclear umbrella of Russia
considering that America & west are only pirates
America destroys its friends & poor countries
America & west have become totally evil