WHO WANTS A (COLD?) WAR WITH RUSSIA?

Investigative reporter Robert Parry has written a series of articles noting the relentless “Group-Think” (here and here) among Washington policy elites toward a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine.  Among other things, the conventional wisdom erases completely the events following the (first) Cold War which laid the groundwork for the present crisis.

 

In 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev called on European leaders to ‘learn how to make peace together’ with a cooperative approach to European security that would lay the foundations of a ‘common European home.’  It was not just rhetoric.  Gorbachev unilaterally withdrew Soviet troops from East Germany and Eastern Europe, allowing the former Warsaw Pact to dissolve. Perhaps he naively expected NATO, founded in 1949 ostensibly to deter Soviet aggression, to reciprocally disband (the Warsaw Pact was created later, in 1954, as a response to German rearmament). He was very much mistaken.  Instead, NATO began a relentless expansion eastward, to the borders of a much reduced Russia, violating the explicit understanding that had been put in place to allow peaceful German reunification; NATO would later intervene unilaterally to dismember Yugoslavia and later the rump Serbian Republic; then it participated in the US the wars against Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan and the bombing of Libya – all without prior UN sanction and in violation of international law.

 

Jack Matlock, US ambassador to Russia under Presidents Reagan and George HW Bush from 1987–91,

was present at some of the most pivotal discussions between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev during the Cold War’s denouement, the taproot of the current crisis is NATO expansion. Beginning with NATO’s Madrid Summit (1994) at which NATO announced it would begin the process of bringing in new member states, through NATO’s Bucharest Summit (2008), at which the alliance declared that “Georgia and Ukraine shall become members of NATO,” the United States has reneged on the promise President George H.W. Bush made to Gorbachev at the Malta Summit (1989) not to expand NATO eastward.  Bush’s promise not to expand the alliance eastward in exchange for the peaceful and orderly withdrawal of Soviet occupying troops in Eastern Europe was, according to Matlock, repeated by nearly all of the alliance members at the time. According to the ambassador, what today’s Western leaders seem not to understand is that a Europe that is “whole and free” will not and cannot exist unless “Russia is part of the system.” And yet, the United States has pursued policies toward Russia over the past two decades that can only be seen as exclusionary.  More

 

NATO expansion did not happen in a vacuum, but was promoted by very powerful interests, especially ones connected to the US armaments industry.

 

Meet The People Who Pushed Towards A New Cold War

Following the end of the Cold War, defense cuts had presented bottom-line problems for American businesses that relied exclusively on Pentagon contracts…  [Lockheed CEO Norm Augustine, a former undersecretary of the Army] was already thinking of future export markets for his company’s goods. In his capacity as the chairman of a Pentagon advisory council on arms-export policy, he was able to secure yet more subsidy guarantees for weapons sales to former Warsaw Pact countries. But in order to buy the types of expensive weapons that would stabilize the industry’s books, those countries had to enter into an alliance with the U.S… Enter the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO...  Its founder and chairman, Bruce Jackson, was so principled in his desire to see freedom in Central and Eastern Europe that he didn’t even take a salary. He didn’t have to. Jackson was a vice president at Lockheed Martin… Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were all in NATO come 1999. The Baltic States would soon follow. By 2003, those initial inductees had arranged deals to buy just short of $5 billion in fighter jets from Lockheed… As for freedom-purveyor Bruce Jackson, he began running a new outfit in 2002. It was called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.  More

 

Economic interests are still important drivers of US policy toward Ukraine and Russia. On the same day last January when a reported 50,000 “pro-Western” Ukrainians descended upon Kiev’s Independence Square to protest against the government of President Viktor Yanukovych the Financial Times reported a major deal for U.S. agribusiness titan Cargill.

 

Corporate Interests Behind Ukraine Putsch

Mr. Yuetter [Vice President for Corporate Affairs at Cargill] serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council… it’s a veritable who’s who of Big Ag. Among the luminaries working tirelessly and no doubt selflessly for a better, freer Ukraine are:  Melissa Agustin, Director, International Government Affairs & Trade for Monsanto; Brigitte Dias Ferreira, Counsel, International Affairs for John Deere; Steven Nadherny, Director, Institutional Relations for agriculture equipment-maker CNH Industrial; Jeff Rowe, Regional Director for DuPont Pioneer; John F. Steele, Director, International Affairs for Eli Lilly & Company…  Nuland also told the group that the United States had invested more than $5 billion in support of Ukraine’s “European aspirations,” meaning pulling Ukraine away from Russia. She made her remarks on a dais featuring a backdrop emblazoned with a Chevron logo. Also, her colleague and phone call buddy U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt helped Chevron cook up their 50-year shale gas deal.  More

 

Not surprisingly, the near unanimous outcry among our Washington elites for a more belligerent policy toward Russia is having an effect on US public opinion.

 

Americans Increasingly See Russia as Threat, Top U.S. Enemy

Russia now edges out North Korea as the country Americans consider the United States' greatest enemy. Two years ago, only 2% of Americans named Russia, but that increased to 9% in 2014 as tensions between Russia and the U.S. increased, and now sits at 18%.... Americans have also become significantly more likely to view Russia's military power as a critical threat to the U.S. -- 49% now hold this view, compared with 32% a year ago.   More

 

WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE? (cont’d)

 

Anne Applebaum is among the prominent opinion-leaders pressing for more confrontation with Russia. She has made a career in rehashing and reviving the Cold War, also writing a regular column for the increasingly Neo-Con Washington Post and contributing to the otherwise Liberal New York Review of Books.  Last week Applebaum wrote that “It will take much more than weapons to save Ukraine—and keep Russia at bay” and suggested we should “build a Berlin Wall around Donetsk in the form of a demilitarized zone and treat the rest of Ukraine like West Germany.”  Last summer she suggested people should drop everything and prepare “for total war.”

 

Readers might be interested to know that Applebaum (now a Polish citizen) is married to former Polish Foreign Minister and Minister of Defense Radosław Sikorski, who was once chief foreign correspondent for the rightwing US National Review and a fellow of the rightwing American Enterprise Institute (as was Applebaum); Sikorsky was closely aligned with the Maidan protests.

 

Nicholas Burns is closer to home. His regular Boston Globe column this week argued that  “The United States is locked into another generational struggle with Russia for power in Europe.”  Burns suggested that “Obama should also up the ante by delivering powerful defensive weapons to the embattled Ukrainian government. That will drive up the costs to Putin, who respects power above all else.”

 

The Globe identifies Burns is a “professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.” His faculty profile notes that the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations has some interesting outside connections. Burns is Director of the Aspen Strategy Group, whose members include a who’s who of neocons and liberal interventionists; he is a “Senior Counselor” at the Cohen Group (whose founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer William S. Cohen, Secretary of Defense (1997-2001),  providing  “global business consulting services and advice on tactical and strategic opportunities in virtually every market” and has a strong strategic partnership with DLA Piper, an international law firm which offers “client-driven legal services to leading local, international and multinational companies operating in Ukraine. We are well-positioned to guide clients through this risky yet highly prospective market;” and Burns  serves on the Board of Directors of Entegris, Inc., a diversified transnational corporation with substantial assets in military-related industries.