{"id":349862,"date":"2018-02-26T04:56:18","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T03:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=349862"},"modified":"2018-02-26T04:56:18","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T03:56:18","slug":"britain-officially-prepares-now-war-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/britain-officially-prepares-now-war-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain Officially Prepares Now for War Against Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

On Wednesday, February 21st, the UK\u2019s Minister of Defence, Conservative Gavin Williamson, announced that the United Kingdom is changing its fundamental defence strategy from one that\u2019s targeted against non-state terrorists (Al Qaeda, etc.), to one that\u2019s targeted instead against three countries: Russia, China, and North Korea. He acknowledged that a massive increase in military spending will be needed for this, and that \u201csavings\u201d will have to be found in other areas of Government-spending, such as the health services, and in military spending against terrorism.<\/span><\/p>\n

The headline in the London Times<\/i> on February 22nd was \u201cRussia \u2018is a bigger threat to our security than terrorists\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/a>. Their Defence Editor, Deborah Haynes. reported:<\/span><\/p>\n

The threat to Britain from states such as Russia and North Korea is greater than that posed by terrorism, the defence secretary said yesterday, marking a significant shift in security policy.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Gavin Williamson suggested to MPs that more money and a change in the structure of the armed forces would be needed as part of a defence review to meet the challenge of a state-on-state conflict, something that Britain has not had to consider for a generation. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It is a departure from the national security strategy published in 2015, which listed international terrorism first, and chimes with a decision by the United States last month to declare \u201cstrategic competition\u201d from countries such as China and Russia as its top focus instead of counterterrorism. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

He described the Kremlin\u2019s \u201cincreased assertiveness\u201d, such as a ten-fold increase in submarine activity in the North Atlantic, a growing Russian presence in the Mediterranean region and their involvement in the war in Syria. \u201cBut then you are seeing new nations that are starting to play a greater role in the world, such as China. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Asked whether Mr Williamson accepted that this would have a knock-on effect for how Britain\u2019s military was structured and its readiness for war, \u201cYes it does,\u201d Mr Williamson replied.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Just as happened when UK\u2019s Prime Minister Tony Blair made his country the U.S. President George W. Bush\u2019s lap-dog in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, UK\u2019s Prime Minister Theresa May makes her country U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s lap-dog now in the invasions to come, of North Korea, Russia, and China.<\/span><\/p>\n

The press in the U.S. and its allied countries (such as UK) might have a difficult time persuading their populations that expanding military expenditures in order to conquer Russia, China, North Korea, and \u2014 as U.S. President Trump wants also to include \u2014 Iran (but he\u2019ll probably use America\u2019s ally Israel for that part of the operation), could be difficult, because, for example, on the same day, February 22nd, Gallup reported<\/span><\/a> that by a margin of 59% to 37%, Americans disapprove of Trump on the issue of \u201cRelations with Russia,\u201d and back on 23 March 2017, Public Integrity headlined “The public favors cutting defense spending, not adding billions more, new survey finds”<\/span><\/a> and reported:<\/span><\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s proposed budget for 2018 isn\u2019t following public sentiment, a new survey finds.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The survey, by the University of Maryland\u2019s Program for Public Consultation (PPC), found that while Trump has proposed a $54 billion boost to federal spending for the military, a majority of Americans prefer a cut of $41 billion. While Trump has proposed a $2.8 billion increase for homeland security, a majority of Americans favor a $2 billion cut. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s proposals were at odds with the preferences of both Republicans and Democrats. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

A majority of GOP respondents said they wished to keep the so-called \u201cbase\u201d or main defense budget at the current level, although they favored cutting $5 billion in spending from a budget for \u201coverseas contingency operations,\u201d specifically in Afghanistan and Iraq. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Those results, in turn, were strikingly similar to the conclusions of a 2012 survey by the Center for Public Integrity, PPC, and the Stimson Center, a nonprofit policy study group in Washington, D.C. When respondents were asked in that survey what they would do with Obama\u2019s base defense budget, the majority favored cutting it by at least $65 billion, from $562 billion down to $497 billion. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The situation is likely to be even more difficult in UK, where according to Gallup\u2019s polling in 2017, as reported in their \u201cRating World Leaders: 2018\u201d<\/span><\/a>, residents in UK who were asked \u201cDo you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the leadership of the United States?\u201d answered 63% \u201cDisapprove,\u201d and 33% \u201cApprove,\u201d and the net<\/i> approval (-30%) had declined 26% from the prior President Obama\u2019s rating (-4%), in 2016. <\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently, in order for the leaders to do this, there will need to be a total divorce from even the claim of being \u2018democracies\u2019, because, on such a momentous decision as to whether or not there should be a Third World War (and if so, whether Iran should be a target in it), going against the overwhelming public opinion wouldn\u2019t be possible except in what is effectively a dictatorship (such as the U.S. has been scientifically proven to be<\/span><\/a>). So: actually achieving this will be a stretch, but at least in the United States \u2014 a proven dictatorship \u2014 it\u2019s possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whereas the press, both in the U.S. and UK, willingly pumped the lies of the Government, that according to the IAEA Saddam Hussein was only six months away from having nuclear weapons<\/span><\/a>, they might not do it this time against actual nuclearly armed nations, because there probably aren\u2019t yet, and won\u2019t soon be, enough billionaires\u2019 bunkers deep underground \u2014 such as here<\/span><\/a>, and here<\/span><\/a>, and here<\/span><\/a>, and here<\/span><\/a>, and here<\/span><\/a>, and here<\/span><\/a>, and here<\/span><\/a>, and here<\/span><\/a>, and here<\/span><\/a>, and here<\/span><\/a>, and here<\/span><\/a> \u2014 to protect them from even the nuclear blasts, much less anything at all to protect anyone at all from the resulting nuclear winter and global famine. So, perhaps, greed will finally meet its limit: sheer self<\/i>-preservation. It\u2019s one thing when a foreign country, such as Iraq \u2014 or Libya, or Syria, or Yemen \u2014 is destroyed, but quite another matter when the world itself will be. The degree of insanity that the military-industrial complex is now assuming to exist amongst the general public, might simply not be there, at all. Finally, Western governments\u2019 weapons-manufacturing firms might need to face the steep declines in their stock-values that all of them so richly deserve, and that\u2019s been held off already for decades too long \u2014 since at least 1991, when the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance all ended, and all that\u2019s left available as bogeymen who must be killed in order to \u2018save the world\u2019, is: Russia, China, North Korea \u2014 and maybe (if the Sauds and Israel are to have their way), Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not yet clear just when \u2014 if ever \u2014 the \u2018democratic\u2019 countries in The West (the U.S. and its allies, the billionaires there) will reach the limit of their imperial greed. But if the world is their limit, then there is no limit at all, because the world itself will end, before this limit is reached. And, now, it\u2019s not only Donald Trump who is leading the way there, but Theresa May has joined his luxurious march, toward global oblivion.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org On Wednesday, February 21st, the UK\u2019s Minister of Defence, Conservative Gavin Williamson, announced that the United Kingdom is changing its fundamental defence strategy from one that\u2019s targeted against non-state terrorists (Al Qaeda, etc.), to one that\u2019s targeted instead against three countries: Russia, China, and North Korea. He acknowledged that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":162645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,519],"tags":[30,93,535,524,55,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-349862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-newswire","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-global-news","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-uk-news","14":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349862","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=349862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}