Washington is driving the world to the final war
World hegemony is not a right America has earned
Paul Craig Roberts
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
AND FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE UNITED STATES TREASURY
When the Soviet Union collapsed, it cleared the way for the rise of the neoconservatives and their ideology of U.S. world hegemony. The neoconservatives concluded that the Soviet collapse brought the end of history, by which they meant that history had chosen "American democratic capitalism," which is neither democratic nor capitalist, as history’s final statement. History’s choice gives the government of the "exceptional, indispensable" American people the right to world hegemony. The problem for the neoconservatives is that not all of the world agrees with "history’s choice." Independent states, such as Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Iran, China, and Russia did not see themselves as provinces in Washington’s empire. Neither do India, Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
The neoconservatives made a concerted and successful
effort to take control of U.S. foreign policy
and military doctrine. With the Clinton regime’s
attack on Serbia, Washington began eliminating governments
that are obstacles to its hegemony.
The U.S. government has overthrown the Iraqi
and Libyan governments with military force, instigated
a military attack by outside Islamist forces
on the Syrian government, demonized Iran as a
precursor to military attack, captured the former
Russian province of Georgia in a U.S.-financed
"color revolution," overthrown the elected Honduran
government, unleashed orchestrated protests
against the government of Venezuela, threatened
Bolivia and Ecuador, routinely attacks with drones
and missiles populations in Pakistan and Yemen,
and has been at war against the Taliban in Afghanistan
for 13 years.
Iran, Russia, and China are being surrounded with
U.S. military bases, and now the neoconservatives in
Washington have captured Ukraine with a Washington-
sponsored coup against a democratically elected
government. Washington claims that the Ukraine
government was corrupt. Corrupt like who —
Washington and the EU?
WASHINGTON CONFRONTS RUSSIA WITH A
STRATEGIC THREAT
Washington’s coup in Ukraine brought not only a
threat to the Russian population in Ukraine but also
a direct strategic threat to Russia itself. The Russian
government got in the way of Washington’s march
to hegemony by, together with the UK parliament,
blocking Obama’s military invasion of Syria and by
producing a diplomatic solution to Iranian enrichment
of uranium for nuclear energy. Washington
was much annoyed as Washington had invested
much time and money in setting up Syria and Iran
for military attack.
Washington concluded that Russia needed to be
confronted with, or distracted by, problems that
would leave the Russian government less confident
or able to counter Washington’s aggression elsewhere.
Ukraine presented the perfect opportunity for
Washington to advance its hegemonic agenda. In
a speech at the National Press Club last December,
Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland boasted
that Washington had invested $5 billion in nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine. Allegedly, the purpose
of NGOs is to "teach democracy."
However, Ukraine already had a democracy. In
reality the NGO organizations are U.S. fifth columns
that can be used to organize protests and to provide
support for Washington’s candidates for the Ukraine
government.
Western pressure was applied to the democratically
elected government of President Victor Yanukovich
to join the EU. The Ukrainian government
considered the proposal and decided rationally that
the Ukraine economy was integrated with the Russian
economy and that the trade, subsidy, and loan
advantages of its association with Russia were worth
more than EU membership, which would likely bring
an IMF adjustment program that would result in the
looting of the Ukraine economy. When Ukraine declined
EU membership, Washington set in motion its
NGO fifth columns. Protests began in Kiev demanding
that the elected government change its mind and
join the EU.
The protests were nonviolent until well-organized
ultra-nationalist organizations, such as the Right
Sector introduced violence and took over the protests,
changing the demands from joining the EU to
overthrowing the democratic government. President
Yanukovich had reached an agreement with EU representatives
to implement constitutional changes
that could result in Ukraine being voted into the EU,
but this agreement fell by the wayside with the rise of
the Right Sector’s takeover of the protests.
It is unclear whether Washington worked with the
Right Sector or overlooked it. The ultra nationalists
and Washington’s stooges are at odds. It is unclear
how the differences will be resolved.
Washington did overlook important facts about
modern day Ukraine. For about 200 years Ukraine
was part of the Russian empire and the Soviet
Union. The Russian Black Sea naval base is located
in Crimea. Crimea, a Russian province for most of
the period since the time of Catherine the Great,
was added to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine in 1954
by Khrushchev at a time when Russia and Ukraine
were parts of the same country. The Crimean population
is mainly Russian. Other parts of present day
southern and eastern Ukraine are Russian territories
included in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine by Lenin.
When the Soviet Union dissolved and Russia allowed
Ukraine to become independent, these Russian territories
remained part of Ukraine. Consequently,
Ukraine is an untenable combination of Russian
people and Russophobic Ukrainians in the western
part of present day Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government confronted the orchestrated
protests with unarmed police and followed
up this mistake with another — the police were disbanded.
Lacking protection, Yanukovich and his party
fled or went into hiding. A Washington stooge, Yatseniuk,
was appointed, not elected, prime minister.
Yatseniuk is the person selected by Assistant Secretary
of State Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador
in Ukraine in their telephone conversation in which
Activists of the Right
Sector movement
introduced violence into
the initially peaceful
protests in support of
EU membership for
Ukraine.
REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko
For about 200 years Ukraine was part of the
Russian empire and the Soviet Union.
The Russian Black Sea naval base is located in Crimea
they choose the members of the stooge government.
Transcripts and recordings of the leaked conversation
are abundant. See, for example, here: http://www.
bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 and here:
http://rt.com/news/nuland-phone-chat-ukraine-927/
Washington’s stooge government, once installed,
either lacked all judgment or went straight to work
setting up confrontations with the Russian provinces
in Ukraine. The stooge government passed a law
outlawing the official use of the Russian language.
Proposals were introduced to arrest residents who
retained dual Russian/Ukrainian citizenship. Many
Russophobic statements were issued. For example,
former prime minister Tymoshenko, released by
the coup from prison where she was serving time
for corruption, declared in an intercepted telephone
conversation that "it’s about time we grab our guns
and go kill those damn Russians together with their
leader." http://rt.com/news/tymoshenko-callsdestroy-
russia-917/
The Right Sector destroyed Soviet war memorials
dedicated to the memory of the Russian troops who
liberated Ukraine from Hitler’s armies. Videos are
available online of Right Sector thugs attacking Russians
on the streets in cities in eastern Ukraine.
The violent words and deeds issuing from the
Washington-installed government alarmed the Russian
speaking populations in Crimea and southern
and eastern Ukraine. The elected government in
Crimea voted to separate from Ukraine, and the
Crimean population in a high vote turnout of 84%
voted 97% to rejoin Russia. Washington misrepresented
this democratic act of self-determination as
a "Russian invasion and annexation." Washington’s
blatant lie was trumpeted by the Western presstitute
media worldwide.
A SERIOUS MISCALCULATION BY WASHINGTON
On March 10 the U.S. Department of State issued
a document listing President Putin’s "10 False Claims
about Ukraine." In fact the document was Washington’s
"10 lies about Russian aggression against
Ukraine." The latest lies from the Obama regime,
repeated endlessly by the presstitute media, are that
Russian troops and tanks are massing on the Ukraine
border. This lie has been disputed by NBC News.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/
tour-ukraine-russia-border-finds-no-signs-militarybuildup-
n67336
Russia is being warned not to invade Ukraine.
Washington’s puppet states in Eastern Europe are
calling for US aircraft and NATO troops to protect
them from a nonexistent threat of a Russian invasion
of Eastern Europe. Washington is pressuring
its NATO puppets to spend more on armaments
and to speed up forward deployments of troops to
Russia’s borders. NATO announced that it has suspended
civilian and military cooperation with Russia.
http://rt.com/news/nato-military-cooperationrussia-
641/ NATO member foreign ministers are
meeting in Brussels to work out details of a planned
military escalation in Eastern Europe. http://news.
antiwar.com/2014/03/31/nato-fms-to-meet-planbuild-
up-in-eastern-europe/print/ Washington
is conducting numerous war games on Russia’s
borders and is establishing NATO relationships
with Moldova, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. http://
news.antiwar.com/2014/04/01/nato-plans-militarybuildup-
in-caucasus/ The unelected stooge government
in Ukraine has agreed to participating in
military exercises with NATO. http://news.antiwar.
com/2014/04/01/ukraine-to-host-nato-war-gamesprompting-
russian-warning/
No one in Washington or Europe has the wits to
consider how all this bellicosity and saber-rattling
looks to Putin and the Russian government. The
lies are so thick that Putin and the Russian government
have lost all belief in the integrity or word of
Washington and the EU. Washington overthrows
an elected government in Ukraine and declares an
unelected government imposed by Washington to
be "legal and legitimate," but self-determination
by Crimeans is "illegal and legitimate" and requires
sanctions against Russia. The very governments
who organized a coup against the elected Ukrainian
government now call on Russia "to take immediate
steps to return to compliance with international
law." What this means is that Russia should ignore
Crimean self-determination and hand Crimea to
Washington’s stooge government in Kiev so Washington
can evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base,
thereby blocking Russian access to the Mediterranean
Sea. Without access to the Mediterranean, Russia
cannot defend its naval facility in Tartus, Syria,
the only naval base in the Mediterranean Sea not
under the control of the U.S. or U.S. puppets.
This arrogance from Washington comes after
Russia has observed Washington’s strategic moves
against Russian national interests and sovereignty for
two decades.
Washington’s promises to Russia that NATO
would not be expanded into Eastern Europe were
broken and NATO was taken to Russia’s border.
Washington withdrew from the ABM treaty, which
prohibited escalating the arms race with anti-ballistic
missile systems designed to negate an opponent’s
strategic nuclear deterrent, thus making nuclear war
"winnable."
Washington arranged with a deranged Polish
government to deploy anti-ballistic missile bases on
Poland’s border with Russia, thus dooming Poland to
annihilation if war breaks out. In 2010 Washington
deployed Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles in
Morag, Poland, about 35 kilometers from Russian
territory. This is the first permanent deployment of
land-based interceptor missiles outside the U.S. In
2018 advanced versions of interceptor missiles are to
be positioned on Russia’s borders under Phase 3 of
the European Phased Adaptive Approach U.S.-NATO
Plan. To reassure Russia, Washington has talked
about perhaps not going forward with the additional
deployments, but certainly will use the crisis that
Washington has instigated as justification for going
forward with the additional ABM missiles on Russia’s
borders. The U.S. and NATO have guided missile
destroyers and cruisers equipped with interceptor
missiles in the Mediterranean and will complete
the surrounding of Russia with deployments to the
Black, Baltic, Barents, and Norwegian Seas.
At this point it becomes easy to indwell Putin’s
mind: "The Americans tell us the fantastic lie that
the purpose of American missile bases in Poland is
to protect Europe from non-existent Iranian ICBMs.
The Americans change their war doctrine to elevate
their nuclear weapons from a retaliatory deterrent
to a pre-emptive first strike force. The Americans
pretend that this change in their war doctrine is
directed at terrorists, but we know it is directed at
Russia. The Americans have financed ‘color revolutions’
in Georgia and Ukraine and hope to do so in
the Russian Federation itself. The Americans support
the terrorists in Chechnya. The Americans trained
and equipped the Georgian military and gave it the
green light to attack our peacekeepers in South Ossetia.
The Americans have financed the overthrow
of the elected government in Ukraine and blame me
for the anxiety this caused among Crimeans who
on their own volition fled Ukraine and returned to
Russia from whence they came. Even Gorbachev said
that Khrushchev should never have put Crimea into
Ukraine. Solzhenitsyn said that Lenin should not
have put Russian provinces into eastern and southern
Ukraine. Now I have these Russian provinces
agitating to return to Russia, and the Americans are
blaming me for the consequences of their own reckless
and irresponsible actions.
"The Americans say I want to rebuild the Soviet
Empire. Yet, the Americans witnessed me withdraw
from Georgia when I had this former Russian province
in my hands, thanks to Russia’s victory in the
short-lived war instigated by the Americans.
"There is no end to the American lies. I have done
everything possible to respond to provocations in a
low-key reasonable manner, offering to work things
out diplomatically, as has my Foreign Minister Lavrov.
But the Americans continue to provoke and to
hide their provocations behind lies. The Americans
brazenly bring to me a strategic threat in Ukraine, a
former Russian province. They intend to put Ukraine
in NATO, the purpose of which expired with the Soviet
collapse. They intend to put more missile bases
on Russia’s borders, and they intended to evict Russia
from its Black Sea naval base, our warm water port.
"Americans have no intention of working anything
out. They intend to subjugate Russia. Washington
wants Russia powerless, surrounded with ABM bases
that degrade our strategic deterrent to uselessness.
These Americans will not work with me. They will
not listen to me or to Russia’s Foreign Minister. They
only hear their own call for American hegemony over
the world. My only alternative is to prepare for war."
The government of China, having read Washington’s
war plans for war against China and being fully
aware of Washington’s "pivot to Asia," in which the
"indispensable nation" announced its "safe-guarding
of peace" by surrounding China with naval and air
bases, understands that it has the same Washington
enemy as does Russia.
Washington, overflowing with hubris and arrogance
and filled with confidence from its choice by
History as the hegemonic power, is driving the world
to the final war. TJ
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