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NATO SURROUNDS RUSSIA
By Melvin A. Goodman (former CIA analyst)
Twenty years ago, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union marked a virtual end to the long-standing military and ideological threat that Moscow represented to the United States.
Yet, instead of “anchoring” Russia to the political and economic architecture of the Western alliance system, which George F. Kennan’s “containment doctrine” endorsed, successive U.S. administrations have not only kept the Kremlin at arm’s length but have drawn the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) closer to Russia itself. This is central to the current crisis over Crimea.
U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan who is credited with devising the strategy of deterrence against the Soviet Union after World War II.
In expanding NATO, the United States has been guilty of betraying a guarantee that Secretary of State James Baker gave to Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in 1990, when the United States stated that it would not “leapfrog” over East Germany to place U.S. military forces in East Europe in the wake of the Soviet military withdrawal from Germany.
The administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush ignored that commitment when the United States sponsored the entry of eight former Warsaw Pact members as well as three former Soviet Republics into NATO. The Obama administration, meanwhile, appears ignorant of the geopolitical context of its foreign policies, which have not taken this betrayal into account in the Crimean crisis.
President Clinton seemingly had no appreciation of the great difficulty involved in Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s acceptance of the unification of Germany and German membership in NATO in view of Russian historical memories and huge World War II losses. One of the few sources of Soviet pride in foreign policy was the Soviet defeat of the German Wehrmacht, which was the key to the U.S. and British victory on the Western front. Three-fourths of the German Army fought on the Eastern front, and three-fourths of German losses took place on the Eastern front.
U.S. diplomats and academics, particularly those with expertise in European policy and the Soviet Union such as George Kennan, made a valiant effort to convince President Clinton that the expansion of NATO was bad strategic policy. Even members of the administration, including Secretary of Defense William Perry, tried to dissuade the President from his strategic blunder. In using military power against Serbia in the late 1990s, Clinton seemed to have no idea of the long historical ties between Russia and Serbia.
President Bush made further significant contributions to the alienation of the new Russian leadership by sponsoring NATO membership for former Soviet Republics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania); abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was the cornerstone of strategic deterrence; and deploying a national missile defense system in California and Alaska.
The Bush administration’s disdain for multilateral diplomacy and arms control, as well as its reliance on the use of force, particularly the unnecessary war against Iraq, angered the Russian leadership as well as many European leaders. President Bush explained that national missile defense as well as the regional missile defense in East Europe would not be aimed at Russia, but rather the “world’s least-responsible states,” which the President did not name. Of course, no one in the Kremlin believed him.
While a warning to Russia, the Bush administration was a welcome relief to the neoconservative community. The appointment of right-wing ideologues who brandished a deep animosity to the Russian state included Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, CIA Director Porter Goss as well as such Pentagon luminaries as Douglas Feith, William Luti, and Abram Shulsky.
In his memoir Duty, Gates prides himself for opposing any improved relations with Russia, since “making the Russians happy wasn’t exactly on my to-do list.” During meetings with his Russian military counterparts, Gates passed a childish and churlish note to Secretary of State Condi Rice stating “I’d forgotten how much I really don’t like these guys.” President Bush even favored the expansion of NATO into Ukraine and Georgia, and U.S. military support for Georgia played a significant role in the five-day war between Russia and Georgia in 2008.
President Obama initially received some credit for pushing the “reset” button in relations with Russia, but it was soon obvious that the button was simply symbolic and that no effort was being made to institutionalize bilateral relations. The Obama administration also ignored Secretary of State Baker’s verbal commitment against “leapfrogging” over a united Germany by basing U.S. fighter jets in Poland as well as favoring the deployment of a sophisticated regional missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic. He is using the Crimea crisis to base additional fighter jets in Poland and is considering the expansion of fighter patrols over the Baltic States.
At present, there is no U.S. ambassador in Russia, and Secretary of State John Kerry has been holding talks with his Russian counterpart without any senior Russian experts at his side. The intemperate remarks of Kerry’s assistant secretary of state for European affairs last month as the crisis in Kiev was worsening speaks to the lack of diplomatic experience at Foggy Bottom.
During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union played a key role in convincing President John F. Kennedy that, if the United States gave Moscow some diplomatic room, the Kremlin would find a way to withdraw its missiles and bombers from Cuba – and thus avoid a military confrontation.
In the Crimean crisis, President Obama seems to be unnecessarily accommodating the right-wing criticism of his administration from politicians and pundits instead of finding a diplomatic solution to the current imbroglio. If the United States offered guarantees against the further expansion of NATO and invited Russia to take part in a multilateral economic aid program for beleaguered Ukraine, then it is possible that President Vladimir Putin would find a way to lower the Russian military presence in the Crimea.
In the meantime, the U.S. reliance on modest military steps, travel bans and economic sanctions will not bring any favorable change to the situation on the ground in Crimea. These steps will only worsen the crisis in the Ukraine and ensure that the United States and Russia cannot discuss important geopolitical matters on arms control and disarmament, nonproliferation and counter-terrorism, which finds them essentially in agreement.
Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and an adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He was a CIA analyst from 1966 to 1990, and a professor of international security at the National War College from 1986 to 2004. His most recent books include National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism and The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA
By Melvin A. Goodman (former CIA analyst)
Twenty years ago, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union marked a virtual end to the long-standing military and ideological threat that Moscow represented to the United States.
Yet, instead of “anchoring” Russia to the political and economic architecture of the Western alliance system, which George F. Kennan’s “containment doctrine” endorsed, successive U.S. administrations have not only kept the Kremlin at arm’s length but have drawn the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) closer to Russia itself. This is central to the current crisis over Crimea.
U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan who is credited with devising the strategy of deterrence against the Soviet Union after World War II.
In expanding NATO, the United States has been guilty of betraying a guarantee that Secretary of State James Baker gave to Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in 1990, when the United States stated that it would not “leapfrog” over East Germany to place U.S. military forces in East Europe in the wake of the Soviet military withdrawal from Germany.
The administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush ignored that commitment when the United States sponsored the entry of eight former Warsaw Pact members as well as three former Soviet Republics into NATO. The Obama administration, meanwhile, appears ignorant of the geopolitical context of its foreign policies, which have not taken this betrayal into account in the Crimean crisis.
President Clinton seemingly had no appreciation of the great difficulty involved in Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s acceptance of the unification of Germany and German membership in NATO in view of Russian historical memories and huge World War II losses. One of the few sources of Soviet pride in foreign policy was the Soviet defeat of the German Wehrmacht, which was the key to the U.S. and British victory on the Western front. Three-fourths of the German Army fought on the Eastern front, and three-fourths of German losses took place on the Eastern front.
U.S. diplomats and academics, particularly those with expertise in European policy and the Soviet Union such as George Kennan, made a valiant effort to convince President Clinton that the expansion of NATO was bad strategic policy. Even members of the administration, including Secretary of Defense William Perry, tried to dissuade the President from his strategic blunder. In using military power against Serbia in the late 1990s, Clinton seemed to have no idea of the long historical ties between Russia and Serbia.
President Bush made further significant contributions to the alienation of the new Russian leadership by sponsoring NATO membership for former Soviet Republics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania); abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was the cornerstone of strategic deterrence; and deploying a national missile defense system in California and Alaska.
The Bush administration’s disdain for multilateral diplomacy and arms control, as well as its reliance on the use of force, particularly the unnecessary war against Iraq, angered the Russian leadership as well as many European leaders. President Bush explained that national missile defense as well as the regional missile defense in East Europe would not be aimed at Russia, but rather the “world’s least-responsible states,” which the President did not name. Of course, no one in the Kremlin believed him.
While a warning to Russia, the Bush administration was a welcome relief to the neoconservative community. The appointment of right-wing ideologues who brandished a deep animosity to the Russian state included Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, CIA Director Porter Goss as well as such Pentagon luminaries as Douglas Feith, William Luti, and Abram Shulsky.
In his memoir Duty, Gates prides himself for opposing any improved relations with Russia, since “making the Russians happy wasn’t exactly on my to-do list.” During meetings with his Russian military counterparts, Gates passed a childish and churlish note to Secretary of State Condi Rice stating “I’d forgotten how much I really don’t like these guys.” President Bush even favored the expansion of NATO into Ukraine and Georgia, and U.S. military support for Georgia played a significant role in the five-day war between Russia and Georgia in 2008.
President Obama initially received some credit for pushing the “reset” button in relations with Russia, but it was soon obvious that the button was simply symbolic and that no effort was being made to institutionalize bilateral relations. The Obama administration also ignored Secretary of State Baker’s verbal commitment against “leapfrogging” over a united Germany by basing U.S. fighter jets in Poland as well as favoring the deployment of a sophisticated regional missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic. He is using the Crimea crisis to base additional fighter jets in Poland and is considering the expansion of fighter patrols over the Baltic States.
At present, there is no U.S. ambassador in Russia, and Secretary of State John Kerry has been holding talks with his Russian counterpart without any senior Russian experts at his side. The intemperate remarks of Kerry’s assistant secretary of state for European affairs last month as the crisis in Kiev was worsening speaks to the lack of diplomatic experience at Foggy Bottom.
During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union played a key role in convincing President John F. Kennedy that, if the United States gave Moscow some diplomatic room, the Kremlin would find a way to withdraw its missiles and bombers from Cuba – and thus avoid a military confrontation.
In the Crimean crisis, President Obama seems to be unnecessarily accommodating the right-wing criticism of his administration from politicians and pundits instead of finding a diplomatic solution to the current imbroglio. If the United States offered guarantees against the further expansion of NATO and invited Russia to take part in a multilateral economic aid program for beleaguered Ukraine, then it is possible that President Vladimir Putin would find a way to lower the Russian military presence in the Crimea.
In the meantime, the U.S. reliance on modest military steps, travel bans and economic sanctions will not bring any favorable change to the situation on the ground in Crimea. These steps will only worsen the crisis in the Ukraine and ensure that the United States and Russia cannot discuss important geopolitical matters on arms control and disarmament, nonproliferation and counter-terrorism, which finds them essentially in agreement.
Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and an adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He was a CIA analyst from 1966 to 1990, and a professor of international security at the National War College from 1986 to 2004. His most recent books include National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism and The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA
Courtesy of the Venus Project
The next piece below "NATO SURROUNDS RUSSIA" written by former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman offers a perspective not seen in the corporate US media.
However I like to add something I feel is necessary to fundamentally understand the big picture. One thing I see with most narratives trying to explain geopolitics, is the missing link that connects the root cause of all these actions. The mistake as far as I have discovered, is to focus on the actions of "countries" like the US, Israel or Britain while in my view the controllers are above the nation-state level and act as a virus that has infected the power structures of "democracies" and other forms of government around the globe. In the US the virus' agent is called AIPAC.
Just like a virus that invades cells in a body demanding them to change their behavior to satisfy its cravings and stop doing their normal functions, the "virus" takes over countries by using debt as its weapon and it is in the currency where the venom flows. Money is the "blood" of the economy. Without it society chokes and dies. The "virus" is the financial Cabal that inserted itself into the main flow of energy of the economy (money) by using a fraudulent monetary system called Fractional Reserve Banking that allows them to create the money supply out of thin air and then charge interest. They've been doing this for over 300 years but they still have no control over a few countries like Syria, Iran and Russia, hence the Ukraine crisis.
It's the same as having a healthy dog being infected with rabies that transforms him into an unpredictable, violent animal, not in control of his own acts. This is what I see when supposedly intelligent people like Merkel, Cameron, Hollande, Obama, Kerry etc. make public statements that are so incoherent and stupid on the face of the facts, that one comes to the conclusion they are infected with something foreign to their brains that affects their mental state.
The referendum of Kosovo against the will of the central government of Serbia is but one example of the contradictions these many world "leaders" display with thorough shamelessness. While Kosovo was presented by these same automatons as a triumph of "democracy", the same vote in Crimea, is accused of being the opposite, "illegal" and an "attempt against the integrity of Ukraine".
The existence of this Cabal that pulls the strings from the shadows is financial at its base, using the blood of the economy (money) as its main source of strength by controlling it, while the same action weakens the "infected" world economic body, making its victim less likely to be able to break free.
This money is used then to purchase and corrupt key players in world leadership, while the consequences of the use of Fractional Reserve Banking churns out the debt that is used as a weapon against all countries to force them to hand over the product of their hard working people in the form of interest and taxes. In this manner so-called "elected" leaders like Barack Obama, Merkel, Cameron etc. become mere servants for the Cabal who squeeze the citizens they represent for the benefit of their real bosses, by taking away services and imposing taxes to pay a higher tribute.
The current global debt crisis is FAKE, it's artificial, it really doesn't exist because it is the product of governments borrowing money from banks at interest that they could have created themselves Interest-FREE. The banks create money out of nothing by punching numbers in a computer and governments could have done the same, just as Lincoln did with the GREENBACKS and be left with no debt. The current debts strangling the world economy are bogus, it's a mind game.
The Cabal is not only financial because they have been busy using this fake money to purchase real assets all over the globe, like water rights, land, industry, but especially owning the Military Industrial Complex which propels them to keep creating conflicts around the world to maintain a sense of fear in the people while profits from arms sales keep increasing. The corporate media is also an important component used by the Cabal to brainwash the unsuspecting masses with the false narrative. As an example is the concept of "too big to fail".
THE ESSENCE OF FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING 2 minutes.
My point is that all of these clever and true accounts by analysts and whisteblowers as in the piece below, will not thoroughly resolve the riddle unless we understand who is at the top of the pyramid pulling the strings. Even if we got rid of all corrupt politicians in the US and elsewhere, the monetary system as set up today will ensure it corrupts any new leaders by placing them in a straightjacket of debt owed to the same Cabal.
The armies of the most powerful countries like the US are at the service of the Cabal, of the Virus, and not at the service and defense of the people that pay for them through their taxes. So blaming the US and Britain, or NATO is not targeting the true culprits controlling them.
The advantage of focusing on the real source of the evil power, is that then we can be truly effective in attacking it and breaking free from it. To do that we need monetary reform. We need to bypass the FED and the ECB by stopping the use of the US dollar and the Euro which are the venom killing the Real Economies of the world, and are the means by which the theft is taking place, by draining the working people of the wealth they're creating with the sweat of their work..
Another advantage of attacking the top is that it is much easier to get rid of 737 monsters than defeating the US military.
However I like to add something I feel is necessary to fundamentally understand the big picture. One thing I see with most narratives trying to explain geopolitics, is the missing link that connects the root cause of all these actions. The mistake as far as I have discovered, is to focus on the actions of "countries" like the US, Israel or Britain while in my view the controllers are above the nation-state level and act as a virus that has infected the power structures of "democracies" and other forms of government around the globe. In the US the virus' agent is called AIPAC.
Just like a virus that invades cells in a body demanding them to change their behavior to satisfy its cravings and stop doing their normal functions, the "virus" takes over countries by using debt as its weapon and it is in the currency where the venom flows. Money is the "blood" of the economy. Without it society chokes and dies. The "virus" is the financial Cabal that inserted itself into the main flow of energy of the economy (money) by using a fraudulent monetary system called Fractional Reserve Banking that allows them to create the money supply out of thin air and then charge interest. They've been doing this for over 300 years but they still have no control over a few countries like Syria, Iran and Russia, hence the Ukraine crisis.
It's the same as having a healthy dog being infected with rabies that transforms him into an unpredictable, violent animal, not in control of his own acts. This is what I see when supposedly intelligent people like Merkel, Cameron, Hollande, Obama, Kerry etc. make public statements that are so incoherent and stupid on the face of the facts, that one comes to the conclusion they are infected with something foreign to their brains that affects their mental state.
The referendum of Kosovo against the will of the central government of Serbia is but one example of the contradictions these many world "leaders" display with thorough shamelessness. While Kosovo was presented by these same automatons as a triumph of "democracy", the same vote in Crimea, is accused of being the opposite, "illegal" and an "attempt against the integrity of Ukraine".
The existence of this Cabal that pulls the strings from the shadows is financial at its base, using the blood of the economy (money) as its main source of strength by controlling it, while the same action weakens the "infected" world economic body, making its victim less likely to be able to break free.
This money is used then to purchase and corrupt key players in world leadership, while the consequences of the use of Fractional Reserve Banking churns out the debt that is used as a weapon against all countries to force them to hand over the product of their hard working people in the form of interest and taxes. In this manner so-called "elected" leaders like Barack Obama, Merkel, Cameron etc. become mere servants for the Cabal who squeeze the citizens they represent for the benefit of their real bosses, by taking away services and imposing taxes to pay a higher tribute.
The current global debt crisis is FAKE, it's artificial, it really doesn't exist because it is the product of governments borrowing money from banks at interest that they could have created themselves Interest-FREE. The banks create money out of nothing by punching numbers in a computer and governments could have done the same, just as Lincoln did with the GREENBACKS and be left with no debt. The current debts strangling the world economy are bogus, it's a mind game.
The Cabal is not only financial because they have been busy using this fake money to purchase real assets all over the globe, like water rights, land, industry, but especially owning the Military Industrial Complex which propels them to keep creating conflicts around the world to maintain a sense of fear in the people while profits from arms sales keep increasing. The corporate media is also an important component used by the Cabal to brainwash the unsuspecting masses with the false narrative. As an example is the concept of "too big to fail".
THE ESSENCE OF FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING 2 minutes.
My point is that all of these clever and true accounts by analysts and whisteblowers as in the piece below, will not thoroughly resolve the riddle unless we understand who is at the top of the pyramid pulling the strings. Even if we got rid of all corrupt politicians in the US and elsewhere, the monetary system as set up today will ensure it corrupts any new leaders by placing them in a straightjacket of debt owed to the same Cabal.
The armies of the most powerful countries like the US are at the service of the Cabal, of the Virus, and not at the service and defense of the people that pay for them through their taxes. So blaming the US and Britain, or NATO is not targeting the true culprits controlling them.
The advantage of focusing on the real source of the evil power, is that then we can be truly effective in attacking it and breaking free from it. To do that we need monetary reform. We need to bypass the FED and the ECB by stopping the use of the US dollar and the Euro which are the venom killing the Real Economies of the world, and are the means by which the theft is taking place, by draining the working people of the wealth they're creating with the sweat of their work..
Another advantage of attacking the top is that it is much easier to get rid of 737 monsters than defeating the US military.
CONSPIRACY FACTS, Not Theories.
Who controls the World? video
In 2012 three mathematicians from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich consistently ranked the top university in continental Europe, ETH Zurich, researching the corporate connections around the world, came up with an astounding discovery. A mere few hundred individuals control 80% of the world's output and assets.
This is the heart of the Cabal that the world's working people need to "neutralize" in order to cure the "infection" and end the virus stealing the wealth from the world's producers.
Consciousness will render the security apparatus the Cabal relies on to repress and kill the enslaved, ineffective to them and instead will turn around to protect and support the people they have pledged to serve and protect. Soldiers and policemen are part of the 99% and our job is to remind them of it.
To get out of the money vicious circle we need to create our own ways of trading outside of the FED's venom currency, the US dollar and Euro.
Read THIS BOOK to learn how and why.
Who controls the World? video
In 2012 three mathematicians from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich consistently ranked the top university in continental Europe, ETH Zurich, researching the corporate connections around the world, came up with an astounding discovery. A mere few hundred individuals control 80% of the world's output and assets.
This is the heart of the Cabal that the world's working people need to "neutralize" in order to cure the "infection" and end the virus stealing the wealth from the world's producers.
Consciousness will render the security apparatus the Cabal relies on to repress and kill the enslaved, ineffective to them and instead will turn around to protect and support the people they have pledged to serve and protect. Soldiers and policemen are part of the 99% and our job is to remind them of it.
To get out of the money vicious circle we need to create our own ways of trading outside of the FED's venom currency, the US dollar and Euro.
Read THIS BOOK to learn how and why.
THE CABAL EXERTS POWER USING DEBT.
AS SHOWN BELOW, RUSSIA HAS THE LOWEST DEBT OF ALL LARGER ECONOMIES allowing it to act more independently than countries indebted to the Cabal.
AS SHOWN BELOW, RUSSIA HAS THE LOWEST DEBT OF ALL LARGER ECONOMIES allowing it to act more independently than countries indebted to the Cabal.
