{"id":159476,"date":"2015-06-15T23:33:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T23:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=159476"},"modified":"2015-06-16T01:02:30","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T01:02:30","slug":"u-s-may-position-for-a-war-against-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/u-s-may-position-for-a-war-against-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. May Position for a War Against Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia Says It Will Respond If U.S. Does So<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

On Saturday, June 13th, The New York Times<\/i> bannered,\u00a0“U.S. Is Poised to Put Heavy Weaponry in Eastern\u00a0Europe,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and Russia\u2019s response to the announcement wasn\u2019t long in coming.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Russian equivalent of America\u2019s Wall Street Journal<\/i> and Britain\u2019s Financial Times<\/i>, which is Kommersant<\/i> (or Businessperson<\/i>), headlined on June 15th, “US may redeploy heavy weapons to the borders of the Russian Federation,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and reported that, “According to sources in the Russian Government, the implementation of this plan will force Moscow to\u00a0post on the border with the Baltic countries Russia’s own offensive military capability that can destroy US facilities in the event of a\u00a0hypothetical conflict.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The report in the Times<\/i> had noted that, “The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end of\u00a0the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military\u00a0equipment in the newer\u00a0NATO\u00a0member nations in Eastern Europe that had\u00a0once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Soviet Union (and its communism, which the U.S. always said was the basis for the Cold War) ended in 1991. That was the same year when the Warsaw Pact \u2013 Russia\u2019s equivalent of NATO \u2013 also ended. In Russia, the expectation was that that would be that \u2013 there would be no more hostility between the governments of the U.S.A. and Russia. Russian leaders had assumed this, but it turned out not to be the case. (Perhaps this<\/span><\/a> explains part of the reason why it turned out not to be so: Dick Cheney\u2019s Halliburton Corporation in the 1990s estimated that Russia has enormous oil deposits.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. has thus been expanding NATO right up to the very borders of Russia, after the Soviet Union\u2019s Warsaw Pact ended in 1991. (Russia did no such thing to the United States; Russia hasn\u2019t been trying to surround the U.S. with enemy nations.) The NATO expansion started in 1999, when U.S. President Bill Clinton brought into NATO the former Warsaw Pact member-nations of Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary. Then, this threatening (if not aggressive) U.S. move, expanded even further in 2004, when U.S. President George W. Bush brought into NATO other former Warsaw Pact members: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama brought into NATO two more former Warsaw Pact nations, Albania and Croatia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, President Obama, in a 2014 very bloody\u00a0coup d\u2019etat,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0overthrew the neutralist government of Ukraine, and replaced it with a government which is filled with politicians whose political heritage goes back to\u00a0the pro-Hitler and rabidly anti-Russian political movements in Ukraine during World War II,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and these fascist<\/span><\/a> U.S.-client politicians have many times spoken of\u00a0their aim being to join NATO and \u2013 with NATO\u2019s help \u2013 to destroy Russia.<\/span><\/a> America\u2019s threat to Russia is very real.<\/span><\/p>\n

Russian intelligence had,\u00a0even earlier than Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych\u2019s decision on 20 November 2013 to decline membership in the EU,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0gotten wind of the Obama Administration\u2019s preparations ever since the Spring of 2013, to overthrow the neutralist Yanukovych and replace him with a racist-fascist anti-Russian regime in next-door Ukraine: a bunch of nazis who are Russian-hating fascists even more than they are Jew-hating fascists<\/span><\/a>. They hate the Russian people. What nation wants a rabidly hostile regime like that on its doorstep? Consequently, within even less than a month after the American coup<\/span><\/a>, Russia prevented America\u2019s planned follow-on takeover of Russia\u2019s main naval base, which is on the then-Ukrainian island of Crimea. The Soviet dictator Nikita Khruschev had donated Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, though Crimea had always been part of Russia; and Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin provided, immediately after the coup, Russian protection to Crimeans, so that they could hold their own vote on whether to rejoin with Russia. Even the hard-like anti-Russian Forbes<\/i> magazine commentator, Kenneth Rapoza, headlined on 20 March 2015,\u00a0\u201cOne Year After Russia Annexed Crimea, Locals Prefer Moscow To Kiev,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and he reviewed several polls, some taken by U.S.-owned polling organizations, all showing almost 100% support among Crimeans for the switch back to being Russians again and no longer being subject to rule from Kiev \u2013 especially not this Russia-hating Kiev regime. Rapoza concluded simply, \u201cAt some point, the West will have to recognize Crimea\u2019s right to self rule.\u201d But U.S. President Obama, and his followers within the European Union, still refuse to do that. The people of Scotland are allowed to vote on whether to secede from the UK, but the people of Crimea (who never self-identified as Ukrainians nearly to the extent they self-identified as Russians) cannot do likewise? That\u2019s what the West\u2019s hypocritical leaders are saying \u2013 and now a World War III could result from it.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, Obama and the EU slapped economic sanctions on Russia (for what are actually the consequences of America\u2019s coup); and, when the new Ukrainian Government started a\u00a0bombing campaign<\/span><\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0eliminate<\/span><\/a>\u00a0the inhabitants in\u00a0the Donbass region of Ukraine, which had voted over 90% for Viktor Yanukovych<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(which is the only way to get Obama\u2019s regime-change in Ukraine to survive future elections \u2013 i.e., to get rid of the voters there) the West then blamed Russia for assisting the residents in the Donbass region to defend themselves against the\u00a0exterminationist invasion<\/span><\/a>\u00a0from Kiev. And President Obama still\u00a0insists that Ukraine seize back both Donbass and Crimea.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

And this brings us to today, and, perhaps, to the brink of\u00a0a U.S.-Russian war.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0of \u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia Says It Will Respond If U.S. Does So Eric Zuesse On Saturday, June 13th, The New York Times bannered,\u00a0“U.S. Is Poised to Put Heavy Weaponry in Eastern\u00a0Europe,\u201d\u00a0and Russia\u2019s response to the announcement wasn\u2019t long in coming. The Russian equivalent of America\u2019s Wall Street Journal and Britain\u2019s Financial Times, which is Kommersant (or Businessperson), headlined […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":142495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,1021,59,527,753,543,524,523,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-159476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-martial-law","15":"tag-military","16":"tag-nuclear-war","17":"tag-police-state","18":"tag-putin","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-ukraine","21":"tag-usa-news","22":"tag-warfare","23":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}