Waking up the bear
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Until the NATO attacks on Serbia, Russia was a nation severely divided over politics. There were no "common enemies" among the disparate factions of Communists, fascists, nationalists and democrats. The once-fearful Russian bear was asleep. Bill Clinton fixed that.
Today, there is virtual unanimity among Russians that the United States and its NATO allies represent an aggressive, imperialist threat.
As a result, Russians are demonstrating in the streets, volunteering for military service on behalf of Belgrade and mobilizing their military in a way not witnessed since the height of the Cold War.
Is all this, as Clinton explains, just an unfortunate side-effect of the Balkans action? Or does it potentially represent the unmistakable stage-setting for World War III?
According to Turkish intelligence sources, Russia is sending another nine-vessel naval battle group to the Mediterranean. Moscow is beginning to draft young men into military service with a preliminary target of 169,000 recruits.
Such ominous developments are receiving scant notice by the White House and Defense Department, which are focused on day-to-day escalations of their offensive actions against the Serbs. The western media pretend Russia's grumblings are meaningless. They are scarcely mentioned in the daily news coverage of the establishment press. It's as if the Russian army is perceived to be some kind of irrelevant "paper tiger." It is not.
The Russian army, while certainly demoralized before the U.S. Balkans war, now has a popular cause. Even in its fallen state, Moscow boasts military forces at least triple the size of Washington's. The new recruits will make it four times larger than the U.S. military.
It's worth pointing out that Russia's nuclear arsenal is still potent enough to destroy the United States -- to reduce it to cinders -- several times over. And the U.S. would have no defense against such an attack -- none, zip, zero, zilch. Our only counter-measure would be to destroy Russia, which, unlike the U.S. still maintains the vestiges of a civil defense apparatus. They've been preparing. We haven't.
Furthermore, Russia has no military distractions other than the current events in the Balkans. While the U.S. is heavily committed to defending its allies in South Korea from an always threatening Pyongyang and conducting nearly daily bombing runs in Iraq. The U.S. military would have a very difficult time, analysts say, fighting on two fronts. Fighting on three would be a mission-impossible scenario.
Then, of course, there's always the wild card of China. With a strategic alliance forged between Beijing and Moscow, imagine the crisis the U.S. would face if the Chinese decided the time was right to pursue its territorial claims to Taiwan or the Spratly Islands or some other Asian outpost. The U.S. has been forced to move its last aircraft carrier battle group from Asia to the Persian Gulf. Washington is betting that China and North Korea are going to remain on their best behavior for the foreseeable future. Do you like those odds?
Back in Russia, meanwhile, our old friend Boris Yeltsin, already weakened by health problems, is perceived by many in Moscow as a wimp who is refusing to stand up to the West. He's on shaky grounds politically, facing impeachment and growing opposition from hard-line Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov.
On virtually a daily basis, the most bellicose, warlike and threatening statements are being issued from Moscow and Beijing. The leaders of Russia and China are angry about the NATO attack on Serbia. They feel betrayed by the assurances of this "defensive" alliance that it would never use its military might in an offensive way -- that it would never try to impose its will on neighbors.
Of course, no matter how you slice it, that's just what NATO has done in the Balkans. You can rationalize it all you want. You can pretend this action is humanitarian in nature and only designed to protect civilians from harm. The fact is that more civilians have been killed since this war began than in the weeks and months prior. It looks like imperialism. It smells like imperialism. It sounds like imperialism. It feels like imperialism.
Not only has the NATO mission failed miserably in its primary stated objective of humanitarian relief, it has moved the entire world precipitously closer to Armageddon. Is it all a big blunder? Or is there globalist calculation behind this apparent madness?
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