Written by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Dear
Readers: The conflict that Washington has initiated between the West
and Russia/China is reckless and irresponsible. Nuclear war could be the
outcome. Indeed, Washington has been preparing for nuclear war since
the George W. Bush regime.
Washington has revised US war doctrine in order to initiate conflict with a first strike nuclear attack.
Washington
has discarded the ABM treaty in order to build and deploy
anti-ballistic missiles that are intended to prevent a retaliatory
strike against the US. Washington is engaged in a buildup of military
forces on Russia’s borders, and Washington is demonizing Russia’s
government with false charges.
As
the Bush/Obama regimes dismantled the safeguards put in place in order
to minimize the risk of nuclear war, no protests came from the American
public or the media. Washington’s European vassal states have also been
silent.
Washington’s drive for hegemony has brought nuclear insanity to the world.
Moscow
and Beijing understand that they are Washington’s targets. As
Larchmonter explains, Russia and China are conjoining their economic and
military capabilities in order to protect against Washington’s attack.
(Read what Larchmonter reports. Open the URL in my column below and run
your cursor over the bottom of the page and click “page fit.” Choose 50%
and readable text will fill your screen.)
Washington’s
demonization of Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad were preludes to
military attacks on Iraq, Libya, and Syria. In view of these precedents,
it is reasonable to regard Washington’s demonization of Vladimir Putin
as a prelude to military action.
Russia
is not Iraq, Libya, or Syria. Russian war doctrine states that Russia
can use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear or conventional attack
on Russia. For the world to sit silent while Washington’s arrogance
provokes armageddon telegraphs total political failure. Where are the
voices in behalf of humanity?
The outlook for the New Year
Washington has shaped 2015 to be a year of conflict. The conflict could be intense.
Washington
is the cause of the conflict, which has been brewing for some time.
Russia was too weak to do anything about it when the Clinton regime
pushed NATO to Russia’s borders and illegally attacked Yugoslavia,
breaking the country into small easily controlled pieces. Russia was
also too weak to do anything about it when the George W. Bush regime
withdrew from the ABM treaty and undertook to locate anti-ballistic
missile bases on Russia’s borders. Washington lied to Moscow that the
purpose of the ABM bases is to protect Europe from non-existent Iranian
nuclear ICBMs. However, Moscow understood that the purpose of the ABM
bases is to degrade Russia’s nuclear deterrent, thereby enhancing
Washington’s ability to coerce Russia into agreements that compromise
Russian sovereignty.
By
summer 2008 Russian power had returned. On Washington’s orders, the US
and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian army attacked the breakaway
republic of South Ossetia during the early hours of August 8, killing
Russian peacekeepers and civilian population. Units of the Russian
military instantly responded and within a few hours the American trained
and equipped Georgian army was routed and defeated. Georgia was in
Russia’s hands again, where the province had resided during the 19th and
20th centuries.
Putin
should have hung Mikheil Saakashvili, the American puppet installed as
president of Georgia by the Washington-instigated “Rose Revolution”, and
reincorporated Georgia into the Russian Federation. Instead, in a
strategic error, Russia withdrew its forces, leaving Washington’s puppet
regime in place to cause future trouble for Russia. Washington is
pushing hard to incorporate Georgia into NATO, thus adding more US
military bases on Russia’s border. However, at the time, Moscow thought
Europe to be more independent of Washington than it is and relied on
good relations with Europe to keep American bases out of Georgia.
Today
the Russian government no longer has any illusion that Europe is
capable of an independent foreign policy. Russian President Vladimir
Putin has stated publicly that Russia has learned that diplomacy with
Europe is pointless, because European politicians represent Washington’s
interest, not Europe’s. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently
acknowledged that Europe’s Captive Nation status has made it clear to
Russia that Russian goodwill gestures are unable to produce diplomatic
results.
With
Moscow’s delusion shattered that diplomacy with the West can produce
peaceful solutions, reality has set in, reinforced by the demonization
of Vladimir Putin by Washington and its vassal states. Hillary Clinton
called Putin the new Hitler. While Washington incorporates former
constituent parts of the Russian and Soviet empires into its own empire
and bombs seven countries, Washington claims that Putin is militarily
aggressive and intends to reconstitute the Soviet empire. Washington
arms the neo-nazi regime Obama established in Ukraine, while erroneously
claiming that Putin has invaded and annexed Ukrainian provinces. All of
these blatant lies are echoed repeatedly by the Western presstitutes.
Not even Hitler had such a compliant media as Washington has.
Every
diplomatic effort by Russia has been blocked by Washington and has come
to naught. So now Russia has been forced by reality to update its
military doctrine. The new doctrine approved on December 26 states that
the US and NATO comprise a major military threat to the existence of
Russia as a sovereign independent country.
The
Russian document cites Washington’s war doctrine of pre-emptive nuclear
attack, deployment of anti-ballistic missiles, buildup of NATO forces,
and intent to deploy weapons in space as clear indications that
Washington is preparing to attack Russia.
Washington
is also conducting economic and political warfare against Russia,
attempting to destabilize the economy with economic sanctions and
attacks on the ruble. The Russian document acknowledges that Russia
faces Western threats of regime change achieved through “actions aimed
at violent change of the Russian constitutional order, destabilization
of the political and social environment, and disorganization of the
functioning of governmental bodies, crucial civilian and military
facilities and informational infrastructure of Russia.” Foreign financed
NGOs and foreign owned Russian media are tools in Washington’s hands
for destabilizing Russia.
Washington’s
reckless aggressive policy against Russia has resurrected the nuclear
arms race. Russia is developing two new ICBM systems and in 2016 will
deploy a weapons system designed to negate the US anti-ballistic missile
system. In short, the evil warmongers that rule in Washington have set
the world on the path to nuclear armageddon.
The
Russian and Chinese governments both understand that their existence is
threatened by Washington’s hegemonic ambitions. Larchmonter reports
that in order to defeat Washington’s plans to marginalize both
countries, the Russian and Chinese governments have decided to unify
their economies into one and to conjoin their military commands.
Henceforth, Russia and China move together on the economic and military fronts.
The
unity of the Bear and the Dragon reduces the crazed neoconservatives’
dream of “an American century” to dangerous nonsense. As Larchmonter
puts it, “The US and NATO would need Michael the Archangel to defeat
China-Russia, and from all signs Michael the Archangel is aligned with
the Bear and its Orthodox culture. There is no weapon, no strategy, no
tactic conceivable in the near future to damage either of these rising
economies now that they are ‘base pairs.’”
Larchmonter
sees hope in the new geopolitics created by the conjoining of Russia
and China. I don’t dispute this, but if the arrogant neoconservatives
realize that their hegemonic policy has created a foe over which
Washington cannot prevail, they will push for a pre-emptive nuclear
strike before the Russian-Chinese unified command is fully operational.
To forestall a sneak attack, Russia and China should operate on full
nuclear alert.
The
US economy–indeed the entire Western orientated economy from Japan to
Europe–is a house of cards. Since the economic downturn began seven
years ago, the entirety of Western economic policy has been diverted to
the support of a few over-sized banks, sovereign debt, and the US
dollar. Consequently, the economies themselves and the ability of
populations to cope have deteriorated.
The
financial markets are based on manipulation, not on fundamentals. The
manipulation is untenable. With debt exploding, negative real interest
rates make no sense. With real consumer incomes, real consumer credit,
and real retail sales stagnant or falling, the stock market is a bubble.
With Russia, China, and other countries moving away from the use of the
dollar to settle international accounts, with Russia developing an
alternative to the SWIFT financial network, the BRICS developing
alternatives to the IMF and World Bank, and with other parts of the
world developing their own credit card and Internet systems, the US
dollar, along with the Japanese and European currencies that are being
printed in order to support the dollar’s exchange value, could
experience a dramatic drop in exchange value, which would make the
import-dependent Western world dysfunctional.
In
my opinion, it took the Russians and Chinese too long to comprehend the
evil that has control in Washington. Therefore, both countries risk
nuclear attack prior to the full operational capability of their
conjoined defense. As the Western economy is a house of cards, Russia
and China could collapse the Western economy before the neoconservatives
can drive the world to war. As Washington’s aggression against both
countries is crystal clear, Russia and China have every right to the
following defensive measures.
As
the US and EU are conducting economic warfare against Russia, Russia
could claim that by wrecking the Russian economy the West has deprived
Russia of the ability to repay loans to the European banks. If this does
not bring down the thinly capitalized EU banks, Russia can announce
that as NATO countries are now officially recognized by Russian war
doctrine as an enemy of the Russian state, Russia can no longer support
NATO’s aggression against Russia by selling natural gas to NATO members.
If the shutdown of much of European industry, rapidly rising rates of
unemployment, and bank failures do not result in the dissolution of NATO
and thus the end of the threat, the Chinese can act.
The
Chinese hold a very large amount of dollar-denominated financial
assets. Just as the Federal Reserve’s agents, the bullion banks, dump
massive shorts onto the bullion futures markets during periods of little
activity in order to drive down the bullion price, China can dump the
equivalent in US Treasuries of years of Quantitative Easing in a few
minutes. If the Federal Reserve quickly creates dollars with which to
purchase the enormous quantity of Treasuries so that the financial house
of cards does not implode, the Chinese can then dump the dollars that
they are paid for the bonds in the currency market. Whereas the Federal
Reserve can print dollars with which to purchase the Treasuries, the Fed
cannot print foreign currencies with which to buy the dollars.
The dollar would collapse, and with it the power of the Hegemon. The war would be over without a shot or missile fired.
In
my view, Russia and China owe it to the world to prevent the nuclear
war intended by the neoconservatives simply by replying in kind to
Washington’s economic warfare. Russia and China hold all the cards. Not
Washington.
Russia
and China should give no warning. They should just act. Indeed, instead
of step by step, Russia and China could simultaneously use the
counter-measures. With four US banks holding derivatives totaling many
times world GDP, the financial explosion would be the equivalent to a
nuclear one. The US and Europe would be finished, and the world would be
saved.
Larchmonter
possibly is correct. 2015 could be a very good year, but pre-emptive
economic moves by Moscow and Beijing could be required. Putin’s current
plan seems to be to turn away from the West, ignore the provocations,
and mesh Russia’s strategic and economic interests with those of Asia.
This is a humane and reasonable course of action, but it leaves the West
untroubled and undistracted by its economic vulnerabilities. An
untroubled West remains a grave danger not only to Russia and China but
also to Americans and the entire world.
Dr.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic
Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was
columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators
Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns
have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The
Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West
and How America Was Lost. The article was originally published on his
website: paulcraigroberts.org.
HRJ/HRJ
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