U.S. Recruits Russia As Junior Partner To Maintain Global Dominance
Thursday, 25 November 2010 09:21
Written by Rick Rozoff
This past weekend the world witnessed an event that until recently
would have seemed inconceivable: A Russian head of state attended a
summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
President Dmitry Medvedev participated in the NATO-Russia Council
meeting during the second day of the summit in Lisbon, Portugal on
November 20 with the heads of state of NATO's 28 member states.
The national leaders signed a Joint Review of 21st Century Common
Security Challenges, agreed on resuming joint - NATO and Russian -
theater missile defense cooperation and "reconfirmed a shared
determination to assist in the stabilisation of Afghanistan and the
whole region." [1]
That is, Russia's Medvedev endorsed NATO's
agenda without adding anything of substance to it and without asking
anything by way of a quid pro quo.
The joint declaration
states that "we have embarked on a new stage of cooperation towards a
true strategic partnership" and "that the security of all states in
the Euro-Atlantic community is indivisible, and that the security of
NATO and Russia is intertwined." [2] It also applauds Russia - referred
to in the third person - for "facilitating railway transit of
non-lethal ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] goods"
through its territory for the war in Afghanistan and for "resuming its
support to NATO’s operation Active Endeavour in the Mediterranean Sea."
The summit declaration referred to Operation Active Endeavor, now in
its tenth year, as an Article 5 mission; that is, as part of the first
and to date only activation of NATO's collective military assistance
provision.
On November 23 Russia signed a pact with NATO to
allow "NATO to ship armored vehicles and other equipment from the
region [the greater Afghan war theater] back to Europe using the same
route via Central Asia and Russia." [3]
The day before the
NATO-Russia Council meeting, where Russia was outnumbered 28-1, U.S.
President Obama met privately with Georgian President Mikheil
Saakashvili, Russia’s Public Enemy No. 1 as military analyst Alexander
Golts described him on the occasion.
Saakashvili, who was
educated in the U.S. on a State Department fellowship and came to power
through a U.S.-sponsored coup in 2003 which its perpetrators termed the
Rose Revolution, ordered sniper and mortar attacks on South Ossetia on
August 1, 2008, killing six people including a Russian peacekeeper. The
day after the Immediate Response 2008 NATO war games led by 1,000 U.S.
troops had ended and with American soldiers and military equipment
still in Georgia.
Six days later, as the opening ceremony of
the Olympic Games was underway in Beijing, Georgia launched an all-out
assault on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.
By the
time Russian reinforcements beat back the Georgian offensive and the
war ended five days after it had begun, 64 Russian service members had
been killed and 323 wounded. The U.S. provided military transport
planes to bring 2,000 Georgian troops back from Iraq for the fighting.
Shortly afterward the U.S. rewarded Georgia with the signing of the
United States-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership and NATO formed
the NATO-Georgia Commission, out of which an individually tailored
Annual National Program(me) was created to further Georgia's
integration into the North Atlantic Alliance.
The declaration issued by the recently concluded NATO summit in Portugal includes:
"At the 2008 Bucharest Summit we agreed that Georgia will become a
member of NATO and we reaffirm all elements of that decision, as well
as subsequent decisions. We will foster political dialogue and
practical cooperation with Georgia, including through the NATO-Georgia
Commission and the Annual National Programme. We strongly encourage and
actively support Georgia’s continued implementation of all necessary
reforms...in order to advance its Euro-Atlantic aspirations. We welcome
the recent opening of the NATO Liaison Office in Georgia which will
help in maximising our assistance and support for the country’s reform
efforts. We welcome Georgia’s important contributions to NATO
operations, in particular to ISAF. We reiterate our continued support
for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia within its
internationally recognised borders....We continue to call on Russia to
reverse its recognition of the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of
Georgia as independent states."
During the opening hours of the Georgian-Russian war of 2008 Mikheil
Saakashvili was reported to have held "several phone talks including
consultations with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer." [4]
That almost 400 Russian soldiers had been killed and wounded by
Georgian military forces trained, equipped and supported by the U.S.
and NATO before, during and since the war doesn't appear to mean much
to President Medvedev. That his 28 fellow heads of state in the
NATO-Russia Council had unanimously supported the perpetrator of the
2008 war while demanding Russia humiliate itself by rescinding its
recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia - and withdrawing its troops,
thereby leaving both states easy prey for Georgia's next assault - also
didn't take the fixed smile off Medvedev's face during his huddling
with President Obama and 27 other NATO leaders this past Saturday.
The autumn session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Warsaw, Poland
ending three days before the NATO summit began passed a resolution
referring to Abkhazia and South Ossetia as "occupied territories." Also
in advance of the summit, interim president of Moldova Mihai Ghimpu,
who came to his position on the back of the latest "color" uprising in
a former Soviet republic - the so-called Twitter Revolution of last
year - sent a telegram to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen
calling on the U.S.-dominated military alliance for assistance in
ousting 1,500 Russian peacekeepers from Transdniester (Pridnestrovie),
which refused to join an independent Moldova (and be absorbed into
Romania, now a NATO member) as the Soviet Union was dissolving in 1990.
But the legendary "reset" button has been pushed by the Obama administration and now Russia has a new "strategic partner."
Medvedev had only been president of Russia for five months when the war
with Georgia broke out and five months after it ended George W. Bush
was no longer president of the United States.
Obama and
Medvedev, it has been observed, are their respective nations' first
fully post-Cold War heads of state. Medvedev was 26 when the Soviet
Union collapsed. Obama was 30.
However, Obama's vice
president, Joseph Biden, was the first American official to visit
Georgia after the war in his then-position of chairman of the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations, pledged to work with the George W. Bush
administration to secure $1 billion in emergency aid for the
Saakashvili government, and upon returning to Washington stated:
"I left the country convinced that Russia’s invasion of Georgia may be
the one of the most significant event to occur in Europe since the end
of communism....[T]he continuing presence of Russian forces in the
country has severe implications for the broader region.”
Five
days after leaving Georgia - on August 23 - Biden was announced as
Barack Obama's running mate in the 2008 presidential election.
Three weeks after taking up his current post as vice president on
January 20, Biden spoke of plans to "press the reset button" with
Russia without in any manner adjusting his position on the South
Caucasus or any other issue: Russia had invaded Georgia. Georgia had
not attacked South Ossetia. Russian actions were characterized as a
belated confirmation of Cold War fears of Russian troops and tanks
pouring over the territory of a defenseless nation whose only crime was
to cherish freedom and democratic values...and so on.
When
Obama and Biden moved into the White House in 2009 Obama had only
served two-thirds of his first term in the U.S. Senate, where he had
been catapulted from the Illinois state legislature in 2005. Biden had
served six terms - 36 years - in the Senate and was the outgoing
chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Biden,
not Obama and the equally foreign policy-challenged Hillary Clinton at
the Department of State, is the current administration's international
relations veteran and grey eminence.
Though Obama and Clinton
have learned to parrot Biden's position on not only the South Caucasus
but on relations with Russia as a whole.
Last month Clinton
met with a delegation led by Georgian Prime Minister Nikoloz Gilauri at
the second annual United States-Georgia Charter on Strategic
Partnership meeting in Washington, D.C. and repeated the accusation
that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are "occupied territories," a charge
she made in July while meeting with fellow former short-term New Yorker
Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi.
On October 6 she stated: "We
continue to call on Russia to end its occupation of Georgian territory,
withdraw its forces and abide by its other commitments under the 2008
cease-fire agreements."
More broadly, she added:
"The
United States remains committed to Georgia's aspirations for membership
in NATO, as reflected in the Alliance's decisions in Bucharest and
Strasbourg-Kehl. We strongly support Georgia's efforts related to its
Annual National Program, which promotes defence reform and guides
cooperation with NATO. And we continue to support Georgia's efforts on
defence reform and improving defence capabilities, including NATO
interoperability and Georgia's contributions to ISAF operations in
Afghanistan."
Her comments on assisting the upgrading of
Georgia's military capability led "some observers to surmise that
Washington may consider selectively relaxing the undeclared embargo on
equipping and training Georgia for defense of the homeland. In that
case, interoperability might extend beyond counterinsurgency in
expeditionary operations, and start encompassing national defense. The
latter would not only answer to Georgia’s own requirements but also
enhance its credentials for eventual NATO membership, in line with
NATO’s core mission." [5]
The government of Abkhazia responded by challenging Clinton to label Afghanistan and Iraq "American-occupied territories."
Russian President Medvedev was silent on the subject.
As to the ultimate purpose of the U.S. training Georgia's armed forces
for deployment to Afghanistan, in September Saakashvili told cadets at
a military base in Georgia that "someone may say: 'we have so many
problems, our territories are occupied and there is no time now for
going somewhere else to fight.' But because of these very same problems
that we have, we need huge combat experience...and that [Afghan
mission] is a unique combat and war school." [6]
As noted
earlier, Obama set aside time on the first day of last week's NATO
summit in Portugal to meet privately with his fellow Columbia
University alumnus Saakashvili.
Between Clinton's meeting with
Georgia's prime minister and Obama's with its president, State
Department spokesman Philip Crowley sided with military ally Japan on
what Washington also considers to be "occupied territory," Russia's
Kuril Islands. On November 2 he affirmed "We do back Japan regarding
the Northern Territories," the Japanese term for the islands.
Russia's Medvedev has made an odd choice of partners. Washington has
consistently supported Japan, with which it is bound by the 1960 Treaty
of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan,
and Georgia, which it is committed to under the terms of the 2009
United States-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership, against Russia
in regards to territorial disputes and openly accuses Russia of
occupying territory belonging to two of its major military allies.
There is no reciprocity in Russian-American relations.
Even in the transition from the former Bush administration's
interceptor missile plans for Eastern Europe, the new Phased Adaptive
Approach of current administration - described by Obama himself in
September of 2009 as providing "stronger, smarter and swifter defenses
of American forces and America's allies" than his predecessor's would
have - will, as formalized by last week's NATO summit declaration, be
far broader than 10 ground-based midcourse missiles in Poland.
That NATO chief Rasmussen has repeatedly advocated - and since the
Lisbon summit has secured - a U.S.-controlled interceptor missile
system over all of Europe as the continent is allegedly threatened
because "30 countries have or are aspiring to get missile technology"
without ever listing which nations he's speaking of or being pressed to
do so by the news media is reprehensible. Four days before the summit
began he told journalists in Brussels: "There is no reason to name
specific countries, because there are already a lot of them." That the
Russian government allows such statements to go unchallenged is
criminal.
This May the Pentagon moved the first interceptor
missiles into Europe by installing a Patriot Advanced Capability-3
battery in Poland as close to Russia's border - 35 miles - as possible.
[7]
The day before the NATO summit in Lisbon, Polish Defense
Minister Bogdan Klich revealed that the U.S. will start rotating F-16
Fighting Falcon jet fighters and Hercules military transport planes to
Poland in 2013. The U.S. provided Poland with 48 F-16s between 2006 and
2008, the first deployment of the planes to a former member of the
Warsaw Pact and the largest arms purchase in Poland's history.
(Russia's Black Sea neighbors Romania and Bulgaria were next in line to
purchase F-16 warplanes until the current financial crisis hit Europe.)
On November 16 the U.S. delivered the third of five C-130 Hercules
military transport aircraft to Poland. "The C-130 aircraft are Poland's
biggest transport planes. Polish crews used the planes to fly to Spain,
Georgia, Iraq and Afghanistan." [8]
U.S. F-15C Eagle aerial
combat fighters are operating out of the Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania
until the end of the year for the now six-year-old NATO Baltic Air
Policing mission, and earlier this month they participated in a Baltic
Region Training Event with NATO Airborne Warning and Control System
(AWACS) aircraft at the Siauliai Air Base.
Fellow Baltic state
Estonia recently opened the newly expanded and modernized Amari Air
Base for use by NATO and U.S. warplanes. [9]
The U.S. has
gained access to and has been employing eight military bases, including
three air bases, in Bulgaria and Romania over the past five years.
This February Romania and Bulgaria were prevailed upon by the U.S. to
provide missile shield installations for the Pentagon's - and now
NATO's - interceptor missile system, in the case of Romania a
land-based adaptation of the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) as the 1936
Montreux Convention prohibits the transit of non-Black Sea nations'
warships over 45,000 tons through the Bosporus Straits and the
Dardanelles into the sea and as such effectively excludes U.S. Aegis
class destroyers and cruisers equipped with SM-3s. There are no
comparable restrictions in the Baltic Sea region where the Pentagon is
also going to station land-based SM-3s in Poland.
The U.S. and
its NATO allies in Europe have yet to ratify the 1999 Adapted
Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty - insisting, without legal
foundation, on linkage with the demand for the withdrawal of Russian
peacekeeping contingents in Transdniester, Abkhazia and South Ossetia -
and the U.S. and NATO are in direct violation of it through
establishing a permanent (in all but name) military presence in several
Eastern European countries. [11]
The Pentagon and NATO resumed
annual Sea Breeze exercises in Ukraine this July, presided over by
commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe and Africa Admiral Mark
Fitzgerald, after last year's exercise was cancelled because of
domestic opposition, particularly in the Crimea where the exercises are
held near the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.
In former
Soviet Central Asia, the U.S. State Department signed a military
transit agreement with Kazakhstan and the Defense Department a
cooperation agreement with Uzbekistan in the past two weeks. The U.S.
and NATO conduct ongoing operations out of bases in Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and, though not publicly acknowledged,
Turkmenistan. Earlier this year reports surfaced of plans for the
Pentagon to construct new multi-million-dollar training bases in
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The U.S. and NATO are also
expanding military exercises, deployments and facilities in the Arctic
Ocean in concert against their only rival in the region, Russia. [12]
In return for the steadily advancing deployment of U.S. military
personnel and infrastructure to Russia's borders, the Medvedev
administration is expanding its accommodation of Pentagon and NATO
operations in Central and South Asia by providing ever-broader transit
and overflight rights for U.S. and NATO troops and equipment headed to
Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Last week the U.S. secured a port in Lithuania as the latest transit
hub for NATO's Northern Distribution Network to bring supplies and
equipment by rail across Russia for the war in Afghanistan. Estonia and
Latvia already supply docking facilities for goods coming to the Baltic
Sea.
Two years ago Russia granted Germany permission to
transit military equipment bound for the German military base in
Termez, Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan. Several years before
Russian passengers were forced off a train to provide seats for German
troops. German troops in Russia.
After assigning its first
troops to NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan
recently, on November 12 Kazakhstan signed an agreement with the U.S.
that allows American military aircraft to fly across the North Pole and
over Kazakhstan to supply U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Kazakhstan is a
member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization and
along with Russia and China a member of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization. It also shares borders with China and Russia. [13]
Last August U.S. and British troops led a NATO military exercise, Steppe Eagle 2010, in the country.
The new agreement permits the U.S. to send weapons over Kazakh airspace for the first time.
Between the Arctic Ocean and Kazakhstan lies Russia, which had to - and
did - agree to the Pentagon flying military aircraft over its territory.
"The new arrangement will also substitute for a previous one under
which U.S. military cargo planes flew combat troops and materiel to the
Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where they refueled, and from there to
air bases in Kuwait and other destinations in the Persian Gulf,
circumventing Iran which forbids American military overflights, and
then either directly into the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or to
Pakistan." [14] Or from Germany over Eastern Europe and the South
Caucasus to the Caspian Sea and western Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan, where
cargo was transshipped across Tajikistan to Afghanistan. The Northern
Distribution Network also includes sea-land-sea shipments through the
South Caucasus: Georgia and Azerbaijan on the Black Sea and Caspian
Sea, respectively. Decidedly circuitous - and expensive - routes.
Flying over Russia and Kazakhstan allows U.S. military transport planes
to go directly from Alaska to Afghanistan without refueling.
"The new route over the North Pole to Bagram Air Base, the military’s
main air hub in Afghanistan, will allow troops to fly direct from the
United States in a little more than 12 hours.” [15]
Last April
Michael McFaul, Special Assistant to the President for National
Security Affairs and senior director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs at
the United States National Security Council, said the agreement would
also "allow troops to fly directly from the United States over the
North Pole to the region” in addition to supplies and equipment. "This
will save money; it will save time in terms of moving our troops and
supplies needed into the theater." [16]
Additionally, "Chartered passenger jets could leave from Chicago and fly over the North Pole to deliver troops.” [17]
Presidents Obama and Medvedev prepared the way for the recent agreement
in a verbal commitment on polar overflights in the summer of 2009. "The
White House said at the time that the accord would set the stage for
4,500 polar-route flights a year over Russia and Kazakhstan, saving the
U.S. government $133 million annually in fuel, maintenance and other
transportation costs." [18]
The Obama administration has
approved a $708 billion defense budget for next year - the largest in
constant dollars since 1946 and over $2,300 for every man, woman and
child in the United States - and Russia is kind enough to save it $133
million on the war in Afghanistan. The Medvedev government is even more
obliging considering that two of three armed groups the U.S. and NATO
are laying waste to Afghanistan in the name of fighting are those of
Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who Washington - and its
then-CIA deputy director, now defense secretary Robert Gates - funded
and armed to kill young Russian and other Soviet conscripts in the
1980s.
Soon U.S. and NATO planes, troops and equipment will
criss-cross Russia from the west, east and north. Russia has made a new
friend, has found a new "strategic partner," at the expense of its
traditional allies, its national interests and its self-respect alike.
The Russian position on regional and international developments has
changed radically since then-President Vladimir Putin addressed the
Munich Security Conference in February of 2007 and said:
"What
then is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the
end of the day it describes a scenario in which there is one centre of
authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making. It is a
world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And this is
pernicious, not only for all those within this system, but also for the
sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within. And this,
certainly, has nothing in common with democracy. Because democracy is
the power of the majority in the light of the interests and opinions of
the minority.
"Today we are witnessing an almost unrestrained
hyper-use of force - military force - in international relations, a
force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts."
Two years before, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held its
fifth annual heads of state summit in Kazakhstan at which India,
Pakistan and Iran (in addition to Mongolia) were welcomed as observer
nations. Addressing the attendees of those nations and the six members
of the SCO - Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan - the host country's President Nursultan Nazarbayev said
they represented half of humanity. [19]
After the summit
nations as diverse as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nepal
and even NATO member Turkey expressed interest in joining or
affiliating with the SCO.
In reference to the SCO and to the
RIC (Russia, China, India) and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, China, India)
formats, discussions of a new multipolar world order, of a just,
rational and peaceful world, and of a new international security
architecture were heard in Eurasia and throughout the world.
When in 2007 Putin warned against the unrestrained use of military
force in the world, his comments came three years after the U.S. and
its NATO allies had launched three wars in less than four years: In
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. His speech was condemned in the West,
after which Putin was labeled a new czar, commissar and so forth, but
was welcomed in most of the rest of the world, even being translated
and posted on the website of the Turkish armed forces.
Russia
is uniquely positioned to rally the world against the post-Cold War
unipolar dominance of what current U.S. president Obama referred to as
- without irony, though under ironic circumstances: while receiving the
Nobel Peace Prize - the world's sole military superpower. [20]
Because of Russia's size and location. Because of its vast natural
resources, including oil, natural gas and uranium; its military
technology; its possession of the only nuclear deterrent and triad of
delivery systems that matches those of the U.S. Because of its history:
Its predecessor state the Soviet Union had supported independence and
national liberation movements in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and
Latin America for 70 years.
Calls from Russia for, not a revival of a bipolar, but the creation of a multipolar world had to be taken seriously.
After the financial crisis that began on Wall Street in 2008 and soon
engulfed the world, Russia suffered several serious blows, affecting
its two main export products: Energy and arms.
The price of
oil and natural gas plummeted precipitately, which in turn led to a
decrease in foreign arms orders from oil- and gas-producing nations and
a substantial depletion of Russia's previously formidable gold and
foreign exchange reserves. NATO expansion into Eastern Europe has also
led new member states and candidates to discontinue the acquisition of
military equipment made, designed and licensed by Russia in favor of
U.S. and Western European arms, and deals struck during President
Obama's recent visit to India have advanced the displacement of Russia
as that Asian giant's main weapons provider.
Nevertheless, the
abrupt about-face in Russia's foreign policy is not solely attributable
to nor can it be excused by the above-cited developments.
In
addition to unconscionably dragging out the completion of the nuclear
power plant it has been building in Bushehr after draining Iran of
substantial sums of money, in June of this year Russia joined China in
voting for the harshest sanctions yet against Iran in the United
Nations Security Council. The measures would have stronger, no doubt,
without Russian and Chinese efforts to soften them, but both countries
had the option of voting against and if need be vetoing them.
Claiming the very sanctions it had supported as the rationale, in
September President Medvedev signed a decree which banned the delivery
of S-300 air defense missiles to Iran - a $1 billion dollar package for
which Iran had already paid $166.8 million - and other weapons
including tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, ships and missile systems.
At several decisive points in the middle of this decade key Russian
officials - including the country's foreign and defense ministers and
top military commanders - warned against military attacks against Iran.
It is to be assumed that such public pronouncements as well as back
channel communications may well have stayed the hand of the U.S.,
Israel and perhaps both.
However, with the Russian political
leadership's turn toward the U.S, and NATO, the prospects of an attack
against Iran and all the catastrophic - perhaps cataclysmic -
consequences it will unavoidably bring in its wake is heightened
dramatically. To an extent that the conflagrations in Afghanistan and
Iraq will seem mild in comparison.
In the past year and a half
the only military-security formation Russia is a member of - the
Collective Security Treaty Organization - has been weakened, perhaps
fatally, with Belarus and Uzbekistan drawing back from commitments and
joint exercises and the remaining members - Armenia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - being courted and in varying degrees won
over by the U.S. and NATO.
The Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, once a model and a source of inspiration for the world,
has degenerated into an ineffectual forum, with this year's summit in
Uzbekistan a non-event where Russia's Medvedev stated that "Countries
which have difficulties with their legal status cannot claim SCO
membership." An allusion to Iran and the sanctions Medvedev's
government had voted for two days before.
In February of this
year Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hosted Madeleine Albright
and her NATO Group of Experts at the Moscow State Institute of
International Relations as part of a tour in preparation for presenting
a report on the military bloc's new Strategic Concept.
A
leading Russian think tank, the Institute of Contemporary Development,
issued a report whose contents, divulged in early September, detailed
prospects for Russia collaborating more closely with NATO, even
discussing the nation joining the Alliance. President Medvedev is the
chairman of the institute's supervisory board.
Two days after
the NATO summit in Lisbon ended, Eduard Shevardnadze, former president
of Georgia ousted by the "Rose Revolution" and the last foreign
minister of the Soviet Union, told one of his nation's newsweeklies
that "Russia will become a NATO member soon." [21]
In an
analysis published three days before the Lisbon summit, Victor Kovalev,
a corresponding member of Russia's Military Science Academy, warned of
what confronts Russia as it intensifies its collaboration with NATO:
"The NATO summit which will convene in Lisbon on November 19-20 will
adopt the alliance's new strategic concept switching NATO from regional
defense to global-scale missions. In practice, the reform will
institutionalize the West's victory in the Cold World War III. The
already visible results of the victory include the ongoing departure
from the Yalta-Potsdam system and the downscaling of the role played by
the UN – or at least by the UN Security Council – in international
relations."
"The new world order built as we watch on the
ruins of the Yalta-Potsdam system automatically energizes a range of
negative global processes and is prone with new wars or major regional
conflicts. At the moment, the situation in the Far East already appears
similar to that in Europe on the eve of World War II." This week's
developments on the Korean peninsula bear out the contention.
"Under the circumstances, Russia's priority should be to avoid being
dragged into the epicenter of the coming collapse. Hoping to get rid of
competitors in the post-capitalist world and to enforce a 'final
solution' of the Russian problem, the West is luring Russia into this
very epicenter." [22]
The author also pointed out that by
assisting the U.S. and NATO in their plans for Eurasia and much of the
rest of the world Russia risks alienating the Muslim world.
Approximately 20 percent of Russians are Muslims or of Muslim religious
background and in 2005 Russia became a permanent observer at the
57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Russia will
also "be neutralized during the planned attack against Iran," though
still be affected by whatever broader consequences such an action would
entail.
It will expend material resources and political
capital on the flagging and failing war in Afghanistan which has
already contributed to an explosion in opium production that has led to
2.5 million heroin addicts and 30-40,000 annual overdoses in Russia
according to the nation's Federal Drug Control Service.
The
Russian analyst also stated that increased cooperation with NATO would
lead to Russia Moscow "see[ing] its promising dialog with Beijing
suspended as China would end up fully encircled" by a U.S.-created
Asian NATO.
Russia will also be expected to distance itself
from historical allies in the Arab world like Syria and Libya and to
abandon burgeoning relations with Latin American partners like
Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Nicaragua
and Venezuela have recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia, which none of Russia's partners in the Collective Security
Treaty Organization and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization have yet
to do. The U.S. and its NATO allies - President Medvedev's new friends
- are adamant in branding the two new nations Russian-occupied Georgian
territories. Moscow will be punishing its real friends and rewarding
its competitors and adversaries.
Africa, where during the
Soviet period Russia was the continent's main political and economic
partner, will have to be acknowledged as the exclusive province of the
Pentagon's Africa Command.
The analyst also warned that
Western preconditions for integrating into NATO include the resolution
of territorial disputes and could lead to demands to cede the Kuril
Islands and even Sakhalin to Japan. That Russia would have to abandon
claims in the Arctic Ocean in favor of NATO members the U.S., Canada,
Denmark (through Greenland) and Norway, and "as a minimal concession"
would have "to renounce its claim to the Lomonosov Ridge."
Russia might also be confronted with territorial claims by Estonia,
Latvia, Finland, Georgia and Ukraine and be compelled to make
concessions in the Caspian Sea. The Kaliningrad exclave is not free
from potential claims by Poland, Lithuania and even Germany.
....
It has been a long time since words like multipolar world have been
mouthed by Russian officials. Expressions like a just, rational and
peaceful world are as rarely heard.
By aligning itself with the U.S. and NATO, Russia has nothing to gain and everything to lose.
1) North Atlantic Treaty Organization, November 20, 2010
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-4F07AFE2-C5D95F20/natolive/news_68876.htm
2) NATO-Russia Council Joint Statement
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, November 20, 2010
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/news_68871.htm
3) Xinhua News Agency, November 23, 2010
4) Russia Today, December 31, 2008
http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/35499
5) Jamestown Foundation, October 8, 2010
6) Civil Georgia, September 13, 2010
7) Poland: U.S. Moves First Missiles, Troops Near Russian Border
Stop NATO, May 29, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/poland-u-s-moves-first-missiles-troops-near-russian-border
8) Xinhua News Agency, November 17, 2010
9) Baltic States: Pentagon’s Training Grounds For Afghan and Future Wars
Stop NATO, September 30, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/baltic-states-pentagons-training-grounds-for-afghan-and-future-wars
....
Pentagon Confronts Russia In The Baltic Sea
Stop NATO, January 28, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/pentagon-confronts-russia-in-the-baltic-sea
10) U.S. And NATO Accelerate Military Build-Up In Black Sea Region
Stop NATO, May 20, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/u-s-and-nato-accelerate-military-build-up-in-black-sea-region
....
Romania: U.S. Expands Missile Shield Into Black Sea
Stop NATO, February 6, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/romania-u-s-expands-missile-shield-into-black-sea
11) Pentagon Forges NATO Proxy Armies In Eastern Europe
Stop NATO, October 30, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/pentagon-forges-nato-proxy-armies-in-eastern-europe
....
U.S. Consolidates New Military Outposts In Eastern Europe
Stop NATO, September 23, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/u-s-consolidates-new-military-outposts-in-eastern-europe
12) Canada Opens Arctic To NATO, Plans Massive Weapons Buildup
Stop NATO, August 29, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/canada-opens-arctic-to-nato-plans-massive-weapons-buildup
....
Loose Cannon And Nuclear Submarines: West Prepares For Arctic Warfare
Stop NATO, December 1, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/loose-cannon-and-nuclear-submarines-west-prepares-for-arctic-warfare
....
NATO’s, Pentagon’s New Strategic Battleground: The Arctic
Stop NATO, February 2, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/natos-pentagons-new-strategic-battleground-the-arctic
13) Kazakhstan: U.S., NATO Seek Military Outpost Between Russia And China
Stop NATO, April 14, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/kazakhstan-u-s-nato-seek-military-outpost-between-russia-and-china
14) Ibid
15) New York Times, April 12, 2010
16) Washington Post, April 12, 2010
17) Air Force Times, April 12, 2010
18) Central Asia Newswire, November 15, 2010
19) The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Prospects For A Multipolar World
Stop NATO, May 21, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/150
20) Obama Doctrine: Eternal War For Imperfect Mankind
Stop NATO, December 10, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/obama-doctrine-eternal-war-for-imperfect-mankind
21) Trend News Agency, November 22, 2010
22) Victor Kovalev, The Cost Russia Will Pay for NATO Rapprochement
Strategic Culture Foundation, November 16, 2010
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2010/11/16/the-cost-russia-will-pay-for-nato-rapprochement.html
Rick Rozoff
Rick Rozoff is a journalist and blogger and many of his articles may be found at the Stop NATO blog.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/analysis/9960--us-recruits-russia-as-junior-partner-to-maintain-global-dominance