After Soviet Union ended, US elites believed Russia was “ours to lose.” Warmonger George Bush #1 broke US agreement ending the Cold War: “To hell with that!,” had nothing but scorn for Russia: “didn’t want peace with Russia; he wanted to conquer it; he wanted to rub Russians’ noses in their inferiority to Americans.” In 1990s US elites completely plundered Russia. In 1996 US proudly decided Russia’s next president, ran Yeltsin’s re-election campaign: “Yanks to the Rescue,” 7/15/1996 Time cover
7/26/18, “‘Vladimir the Terrible’: US Deep State desperately needs a Russian villain to cover its tracks,” Strategic Culture, Robert Bridge
“Conventional wisdom would have us believe that Russia became America’s sworn enemy in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. As is often the case, however, conventional wisdom can be illusory.
In the momentous 2016 showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, a faraway dark kingdom known as Russia, the fantastic fable goes, hijacked that part of the American brain responsible for critical thinking and lever pulling with a few thousand dollars’ worth of Facebook and Twitter adverts, bots and whatnot. The result of that gross intrusion into the squeaky clean machinery of the God-blessed US election system is now more or less well-documented history brought to you by the US mainstream media: Donald Trump, with some assistance from the Russians that has never been adequately explained, pulled the presidential contest out from under the wobbly feet of Hillary Clinton.
For those who unwittingly bought that work of fiction, I can only offer my sincere condolences. In fact, Russiagate is just the latest installment of an anti-Russia story that has been ongoing since the presidency of George W. Bush.
Act 1: Smokescreen
Rewind to September 24th, 2001. Having gone on record as the first global leader to telephone George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Putin showed his support went beyond mere words. He announced a five-point plan to support America in the ‘war against terror’ that included the sharing of intelligence, as well as the opening of Russian airspace for US humanitarian flights to Central Asia.
In the words of perennial Kremlin critic, Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, Putin’s “acquiescence to NATO troops in Central Asia signaled a reversal of two hundred years of Russian foreign policy. Under Yeltsin, the communists, and the tsars, Russia had always considered Central Asia as its ‘sphere of influence.’ Putin broke with that tradition.”
In other words, the new Russian leader was demonstrating his desire for Russia to have, as Henry Kissinger explained it some seven years later, “a reliable strategic partner, with America being the preferred choice.”
This leads us to the question for the ages: If it was obvious that Russia was now fully prepared to enter into a serious partnership with the United States in the ‘war on terror,’ then how do we explain George W. Bush announcing the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty just three months later?
There are some things we may take away from that move, which Putin tersely and rightly described as a “mistake.”
First, Washington must not have considered a security partnership with Moscow very important, since they certainly understood that Russia would respond negatively to the decision to scrap the 30-year-old ABM Treaty. Second, the US must not considered the ‘war on terror’ very serious either; otherwise it would not have risked losing Russian assistance in hunting down the baddies in Central Asia and the Middle East, geographical areas where Russia has gained valuable experience over the years. This was a remarkably odd choice considering that the US military apparatus had failed spectacularly to defend the nation against a terrorist attack, coordinated by 19 amateurs, armed with box cutters, no less. Third, as was the case with the decision to invade Iraq, a country with nodiscernible connection to the events of 9/11, as well as the imposition of the pre-drafted Patriot Act on a shell-shocked nation, the decision to break with Russia seems to have been a premeditated move on the global chessboard. Although it would be hard to prove such a claim, we can take some guidance from Rahm Emanuel, former Obama Chief of Staff, who notoriously advised, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
So why did Bush abrogate the ABM Treaty with Russia? The argument was that some “rogue state,” rumored to be Iran, might be tempted to launch a missile attack against “US interests abroad.” Yet there was absolutely no logic to the claim since Tehran was inextricably bound by the same principle of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) as were any other states that tempted fate with a surprise attack on US-Israeli interests. Further, it made no sense to focus attention on Shia-dominant Iran when the majority of the terrorists, allegedly acolytes of Osama bin Laden, reportedly hailed from Sunni-dominant Saudi Arabia. In other words, the Bush administration happily sacrificed an invincible relationship with Russia in the war on terror in order to guard against some external threat that only nominally existed, with a missile defense system that was largely unproven in the field. Again, zero logic.
However, when it is considered that the missile defense system was tailor-made by America specifically with Russia in mind, the whole scheme begins to make more sense, at least from a strategic perspective. Thus, the Bush administration used the attacks of 9/11 to not only dramatically curtail the civil rights of American citizens with the passage of the Patriot Act, it also took the first steps towards encircling Russia with a so-called ‘defense system’ that has the capacity to grow in effectiveness and range.
For those who thought Russia would just sit back and let itself be encircled by foreign missiles, they were in for quite a surprise. In March 2018, Putin stunned the world, and certainly Washington’s hawks, by announcing in the annual Address to the Federal Assembly the introduction of advanced weapons systems – including those with hypersonic capabilities – designed to overcome any missile defense system in the world.
These major developments by Russia, which Putin emphasized was accomplished “without the benefit” of Soviet-era expertise, has fueled the narrative that “Putin’s Russia” is an aggressive nation with “imperial ambitions,” when in reality its goal was to form a bilateral pact with the United States and other Western states almost two decades ago post 9/11.
Now, US officials can only wring their hands in angst while speaking about an “aggressive Russia.”
“Russia is the most significant threat just because they pose the only existential threat to the country right now. So we have to look at that from that perspective,” declared Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of US Strategic Command, or STRATCOM.
Putin reiterated in his Address, however, that there would have been no need for Russia to have developed such advanced weapon systems if its legitimate concerns had not been dismissed by the US.
“Nobody wanted to talk with us on the core of the problem,” he said. “Nobody listened to us. Now you listen!””
“To be continued: Part II: Reset, or ‘Overcharged’”
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Added:
After Soviet breakup in Dec. 1991, US elites thought Russia belonged to them:
“In the years following the end of the Soviet Union, the idea that Russia was “ours to lose” gained wide currency in American foreign policy circles. …The idea that Russia is an enemy culture in addition to a geopolitical adversary has since gained wide purchase among American media and political elites. As one prominent commentator put it: “Russia has been targeting the American right.”…Our [US] “culture war” approach to foreign policy has only intensified since then. The failure of this project has contributed significantly to the present animus towards Russia and continues to hinder more reasonable diplomatic relations.”
May 2018, “The Cold War Culture War,” James Carden, American Affairs Journal (“Carden served as an advisor to the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the State Department in 2011–12”)
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Added:
“In 1991 Russia was pro-American and on the road to freedom” But in 1990s US elites (Russia was “ours to lose“) plundered Russia:
May 14, 1998, “The Harvard Boys Do Russia,“ The Nation, Janine R. Wedel
“The [GAO] audit team concluded, for example, that the U.S. government exercised “favoritism” toward Harvard, but this conclusion and the supporting documentation were removed from the final report.…The very people who were supposed to be the trustees of the system not only undercut the aid program’s stated goal of building independent institutions but replicated the Soviet practice of skimming assets to benefit the nomenklatura….
After seven years of economic “reform” financed by billions of dollars in U.S. and other Western aid, subsidized loans and rescheduled debt, the majority of Russian people find themselves worse off economically. The privatization drive that was supposed to reap the fruits of the free market instead helped to create a system of tycoon capitalism run for the benefit of a corrupt political oligarchy that has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars of Western aid and plundered Russia’s wealth.
The architect of privatization was former First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, a darling of the U.S. and Western financial establishments. Chubais’s drastic and corrupt stewardship made him extremely unpopular. According to The New York Times, he “may be the most despised man in Russia.”
Essential to the implementation of Chubais’s policies was the enthusiastic support of the Clinton Administration and its key representative for economic assistance in Moscow, the Harvard Institute for International Development. Using the prestige of Harvard’s name and connections in the Administration, H.I.I.D. officials acquired virtual carte blanche over the U.S. economic aid program to Russia, with minimal oversight by the government agencies involved. With this access and their close alliance with Chubais and his circle, they allegedly profited on the side. Yet few Americans are aware of H.I.I.D.’s role in Russian privatization, and its suspected misuse of taxpayers’ funds….
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“Yanks to the Rescue,” 7/15/1996 Time cover. US proudly interfered in Russia’s 1996 presidential election to re-elect Yeltsin: “The Americans were “vital,” says Mikhail Margolev, who coordinated the Yeltsin account at Video International…. For four months, a group of American political consultants clandestinely participated in guiding Yeltsin’s campaign.”
“Yanks to the Rescue,” Time Magazine Boris Yeltsin cover, July 15, 1996, re-published 6/24/2001, “Rescuing Boris,” Time, Michael Kramer
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Added: “One reason why Yeltsin was the West’s darling-while Mr. Putin is the target of virulent attacks–was that his policies perfectly suited the Western agenda for Russia, a superpower-turned economic and military weakling, a subservient client state and a source of cheap energy and minerals. By contrast, Russia’s resurgence under Mr. Putin is seen as upsetting the global balance of power and threatening the U.S. unipolar model….The West outrageously ignores the opinion of the Russian people.”
3/20/2008, “Why the West loved Yeltsin and hates Putin,“ thehindu.com, Vladimir Radyuhi
“One reason why Yeltsin was the West’s darling—while Mr. Putin is the target of virulent attacks–was that his policies perfectly suited the Western agenda for Russia, a superpower-turned economic and military weakling, a subservient client state and a source of cheap energy and minerals. By contrast, Russia’s resurgence under Mr. Putin is seen as upsetting the global balance of power and threatening the U.S. unipolar model….[Link, Yeltsin Time cover, “Yanks to the Rescue,” 7/15/1996]
In Russia, Yeltsin is associated with plunging the country into chaos, reducing a majority of Russians to abject poverty and awarding the country’s oil, gas and other mineral riches to a handful of rapacious oligarchs, who plundered Russia and played Kremlin powerbrokers. The West lauded him as the “father of Russian democracy” who buried communism. Yeltsin remained “Friend Boris” to the West even after he sent tanks to blast his political opponents from Parliament in 1993. In Russia, he faced impeachment charges for this and other “crimes against the nation.”… Mr. Putin’s “controlled democracy” involves centralisation of power, government control over most electronic and some printed media, and Kremlin-supervised grooming of political parties. This policy helped to curb the chaos of the 1990s and bring about political stability that has underpinned economic growth.
At the same time, the communist-era restrictions on personal freedoms are gone. Russians can choose where to live, what books to read and how much money to earn. They are free to marry foreigners and emigrate. They love travelling abroad, fondly drive Fords, Mercedes and Toyotas, and shop for Western goods in the crowded malls lining the streets of Russian cities. The West has denied Mr. Putin’s Russia any democratic credential because it “challenges the prerogative of the dominant democratic powers, in practice the U.S., to judge what is and what is not democratic,” says Russia expert Vlad Sobell of the Daiwa Institute of Research. According to the petrified “ideological orthodoxy” of the West, “modern democracy was incubated predominantly in the Anglo-Saxon culture and, following the defeat of totalitarian empires in the 20th century, it was spread by the victorious powers throughout Western Europe and Japan,” and more recently in the former Soviet Union and also initially in Yeltsin’s Russia.
The rise of new Russia has undermined America’s self-arrogated right to decide what is good and what is evil, to award marks for good or bad behaviour, and to impose “democratic transformation” on other nations, either by war as in Iraq, or through “colour revolutions” as in Georgia and Ukraine.
If Mr. Putin’s Russia is accepted as an emerging democracy, rather than as a successor to the “evil empire,” it will be difficult to justify the new containment policy the U.S. has set in train, surrounding Russia with a ring of military bases and missile interceptors. Nor would one be able to easily dismiss Moscow’s criticism of the aggressive and arrogant U.S. behaviour across the world.
As Mr. Putin asked in his famous Munich speech, if Russia could carry out a peaceful transition from the Soviet regime to democracy, why should other countries be bombed at every opportunity for want of democracy? Hence the Herculean effort of Western opinion-makers to paint everything Mr. Putin does in evil colours.
The U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights in 2007 mounted the harshest attack yet on the state of freedom in Russia, while the U.S. Freedom House listed it as one of the several “energy-rich dictatorships.” Republican presidential candidate John McCain has accused Mr. Putin of “trying to restore the old Russian empire,” and “perpetuating himself in power” by installing his “puppet” Dmitry Medvedev in the Kremlin.
In sticking labels on Russian leaders, the West outrageously ignores the opinion of the Russian people. Russians showed what they thought of Yeltsin’s legacy when they voted out of Parliament twice in recent years the liberal parties that had supported his policies in the 1990s. They demonstrated their support for Mr. Putin’s policies when they triumphantly re-elected him for a second term in 2004 and when they overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Medvedev in March 2008.
Mr. Putin bluntly told the West that its criticism of his policies would not induce his successor to strike a softer posture in foreign policy. “I am long accustomed to the label by which it is difficult to work with a former KGB agent,” Mr. Putin said at a recent press conference. “Dmitry Medvedev will be free from having to prove his liberal views. But he is no less a Russian nationalist than me, in the good sense of the word, and I do not think our partners will find it easier to deal with him.”
For his part, Mr. Medvedev, while pledging that “freedom in all its manifestations — personal freedom, economic freedom and, finally, freedom of expression” — would be “at the core of our politics,” said democratic values would be adopted in line with Russia’s “national tradition.””
Added: George HW Bush broke US agreement with Gorbachev, “To hell with that!”: “The conditionality of the Soviet Union’s agreement to allow East Germany to be taken by West Germany and for the Cold War to end, was that NATO would not expand «one inch to the east».” Russia had even asked to join NATO. But warmonger George HW Bush “didn’t want peace with Russia; he wanted to conquer it; he wanted to rub Russians’ noses in their inferiority to Americans.”
10/9/2015, “How America Double-Crossed Russia and Shamed West,“ Strategic Culture Foundation, Eric Zuesse
“The conditionality of the Soviet Union’s agreement to allow East Germany to be taken by West Germany and for the Cold War to end, was that NATO would not expand «one inch to the east». This was the agreement that was approved by the Russian President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, a great man and a subsequent hero to democrats around the world.
He [Gorbachev] agreed then to end the Soviet Union and abandon communism and thus to end the entire Cold War; he agreed to this because he had been promised that NATO would expand not «one inch to the east,» or «one inch eastward,» depending upon how the promise was translated and understood — but it has the same meaning, no matter how it was translated. He trusted American President George Herbert Walker Bush, whose friend and Secretary of State James Baker made this promise to Gorbachev. With this promise, Gorbachev agreed to end the Soviet Union; end the communist mutual-defense pact which was their own equivalent of NATO, the Warsaw Pact; and he believed that the remaining nation that he would then be leading, which was Russia, would be accepted as a Western democracy.
He was even promised by the United States that «we were going to make them a member [of NATO], we were – observer first and then a member». In other words: the U.S. promised that NATO would not extend up to the borders of Russia and so become a mortal threat to the national security of the Russian people – now isolated and separated from its former military allies. Instead, Gorbachev was told, Russia would itself become welcomed into the Western Alliance, and ultimately become a NATO member. That was the deal, ending the 46-year Cold War.
Russia kept its part of the bargain. The United States did not; the U.S. instead lied through its teeth and so has since expanded NATO to absorb former member-nations of the Warsaw Pact into NATO as being, now, an anti-Russian military alliance — exactly what the U.S. had promised would never happen. U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush in private told West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl (who had wanted to go along with what James Baker had arranged): «To hell with that! We prevailed, they didn’t». He didn’t want peace with Russia; he wanted to conquer it; he wanted to rub Russians’ noses in their inferiority to Americans.
Russia’s continued (and continuing) desire to join NATO has simply been spurned. This is war by NATO in intent; it is the exact opposite of what the U.S. had promised to Russia, on the basis of which the Warsaw Pact ended. How can the Russian people then trust such a country as the United States? They would need to be fools to do so.
But this deceit, this double-cross, isn’t merely America’s shame; it has also become the shame by the entirety of the nations that joined in that Western promise at the time. Because all of them accepted America’s leadership in this double-crossing war against Russia, America’s war to conquer Russia. They accept this merely by remaining as members of the now-nefarious military gang, which NATO has thus become. Worse yet, some of the other member-nations of NATO at the time were (like West Germany’s Kohl, the model for his protégé Angela Merkel, who now continues the crime) themselves key participants in the making, and now breaking, of that promise to Russia.”…
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Comment: US elites are just as scornful of Americans as they are of Russians, proving in 2016 that US elections are like those in Communist countries, that no matter who wins, US taxpayers remain global slaves of the Endless Unwinnable War Industry. Countries like Syria and Libya that the US has bombed are quite justified in bombing the US in return.
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