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Will Washington Risk World War III to Block an Emerging EU-Russia Superstate?
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By Mike Whitney
Global Research, March 24, 2017
Counter Punch 23 March 2017
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Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/will-washington-risk-world-war-iii-to-block-an-emerging-eu-russia-superstate/5581516
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“Russia is an inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and
European civilization. Our citizens think of themselves as
Europeans…That’s why Russia proposes moving towards the creation of a
common economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a
community referred to by Russian experts as ‘the Union of Europe’ which
will strengthen Russia’s potential in its economic pivot toward the ‘new
Asia.’” — Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Russia and the changing world”, February 2012
The relentless demonization of Vladimir Putin is just one part of
Washington’s multi-pronged strategy to roll-back Russian power in
Central Asia and extinguish Putin’s dream of a “Greater Europe”. Along
with the attempt to smear the Russian president as a “KGB thug” and
“dictator”, the media has also alleged that Moscow intervened in the US
presidential elections and that Russia is a serial aggressor that poses a
growing threat to European and US national security. The media
onslaught, which has greatly intensified since the election of Donald Trump
in November 2016, has been accompanied by harsh economic sanctions,
asymmetrical attacks on Russia’s markets and currency, the arming and
training of Russian adversaries in Ukraine and Syria, the calculated
suppression of oil prices, and a heavy-handed effort to sabotage
Russia’s business relations in Europe. In short, Washington is doing
everything in its power to prevent Russia and Europe from merging
into the world’s biggest free trade zone that will be the center of
global growth and prosperity for the next century.
This is why the US State Department joined with the CIA to topple the
elected government of Ukraine in 2014. Washington hoped that by
annexing a vital land-bridge between the EU and Asia, US power-brokers
could control critical pipeline corridors that are drawing the two
continents closer together into an alliance that will exclude the United
States. The prospect of Russia meeting more of the EU’s growing energy
needs, while China’s high-speed railway system delivers more low-cost
manufactured goods, suggests that the world’s center of economic gravity
is shifting fast increasing the probability that the US will
continue on its path of irreversible decline. And when the US dollar
is inevitably jettisoned as the primary means of exchange between trade
partners in the emerging Asia-EU free trade zone, then the recycling of
wealth into US debt will drop off precipitously sending US markets
plunging while the economy slips into a deep slump. Preventing Putin
from “creating a harmonious community of economies from Lisbon to
Vladivostok” is no minor hurtle for the United States. It’s a matter of
life and death.
Remember the Wolfowitz Doctrine:
“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a
new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or
elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by
the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new
regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any
hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under
consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”
Washington’s relations with Russia will always be fractious
because Russia poses a perennial threat to US ambitions to rule the
world. Geography is fate, and Russia’s geography contains massive oil
and gas reserves that Europe needs to heat its homes and fuel its
businesses. The symbiotic relationship between supplier and
end-user will eventually lead to the lifting of trade barriers, the
lowering of tariffs, and the smooth melding together of national
economies into a region-wide common market. This may be Washington’s
biggest nightmare, but it’s also Putin’s top strategic priority. Here’s
what he said:
“We must consider more extensive cooperation in the
energy sphere, up to and including the formation of a common European
energy complex. The Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea and
the South Stream pipeline under the Black Sea are important steps in
that direction. These projects have the support of many governments and
involve major European energy companies. Once the pipelines start
operating at full capacity, Europe will have a reliable and flexible
gas-supply system that does not depend on the political whims of any
nation. This will strengthen the continent’s energy security not only in
form but in substance. This is particularly relevant in the light of
the decision of some European states to reduce or renounce nuclear
energy.”
If Europe wants a reliable partner that can meet its energy needs,
then Russia fits the bill. Unfortunately, the US has repeatedly tried
to sabotage both pipelines in order to undermine EU-Russia relations.
Washington would prefer that Europe either dramatically curtail its use
of natural gas or find other more expensive alternatives that don’t
involve Russia. In other words, Europe’s material needs are
being sacrificed for Washington’s geopolitical objectives, the primary
goal of which is to prevent the forming of Greater Europe.
Washington’s war against Russia is becoming increasingly
militarized. Recently the Pentagon deployed more combat troops to Syria
and Kuwait suggesting that US warplanners intend to shift from the
current strategy of arming jihadist militias (to topple the government
of Syrian President Bashar al Assad), to a more direct
use of martial force to seize-and-hold territory in East Syria. There
are signs of an uptick in the violence in Ukraine too, as President
Trump appears only-too-eager to use a more iron-fisted approach in
settling regional disputes than his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Also, NATO has deployed troops and weaponry to Russia’s
western flank while the US has spread its military bases across Central
Asia. NATO has continued to push eastward ever since the Berlin Wall
fell in November 1989. The steady buildup of hostile armies on Russia’s
western perimeter has been a source of growing concern in Moscow and
for good reason. Russians know their history.
At the same time the US is building a ground-based missile defense
system in Romania (Star Wars) that integrates the US nuclear arsenal at a
site that is just 900 miles from Moscow. The US missile system which
was “certified for operation” in May 2016, cancels-out Russia’s nuclear
deterrents and destroys the strategic balance of power in Europe.
Putin has responded by ordering appropriate countermeasures. Here are
Putin’s comments on the subject:
“It seems that NATO countries, and especially the United
States, have developed a peculiar understanding of security which is
fundamentally different from our own. The Americans are obsessed with
the idea of ‘absolute invulnerability’ for themselves… But absolute
invulnerability for one nation means absolute vulnerability for
everybody else. We cannot agree to this.”
In the last week, the Trump administration announced that it will
deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to South
Korea citing a need to respond to provocations by North Korea. In truth,
Washington is using the North as a pretext for its plan to hem in
Russia and China at “axial ends” of the Eurasian heartland as a means of
containing the vast landmass that Sir Halford Mackinder called the “pivot area… stretching from the Persian Gulf to China’s Yangtze River.”
Washington hopes that by controlling critical sea lanes, encircling
the region with military bases, and aggressively inserting itself where
necessary, it can prevent the emergence of an economic colossus
that will diminish the United States role as global superpower.
America’s future rests on its ability to derail economic integration at
the center of the world and prevail in the Great Game where others have
failed. Here’s an excerpt from an article by Alfred W. McCoy
titled The Geopolitics of American Global Decline” which helps to shed
light on the struggle that is now taking place for control over the so
called “world island”:
Following World War II the US became “the first power in
history to control the strategic axial points “at both ends of
Eurasia” … With fears of Chinese and Russian expansion serving as the
“catalyst for collaboration,” the U.S. won imperial bastions in both
Western Europe and Japan. With these axial points as anchors, Washington
then built an arc of military bases that followed Britain’s maritime
template and were visibly meant to encircle the world island….
“Having seized the axial ends of the world island from Nazi Germany
and Imperial Japan in 1945, for the next 70 years the United States
relied on ever-thickening layers of military power to contain China and
Russia inside that Eurasian heartland. Stripped of its ideological
foliage, Washington’s grand strategy of Cold War-era anticommunist
“containment” was little more than a process of imperial succession. …
By the Cold War’s end in 1990, the encirclement of communist China
and Russia required 700 overseas bases, an air force of 1,763 jet
fighters, a vast nuclear arsenal, more than 1,000 ballistic missiles,
and a navy of 600 ships, including 15 nuclear carrier battle groups —
all linked by the world’s only global system of communications
satellites….(“The Geopolitics of Global Decline”, Alfred W. McCoy)
For the last 70 years the imperial strategy has worked without a
hitch, but now Russia’s resurgence and China’s explosive growth are
threatening to break free from Washington’s stranglehold. The Asian
allies have begun to crisscross Central Asia and Europe with pipelines
and high-speed rail that will gather together
the far-flung statelets scattered across the steppe, draw them into a
Eurasian Economic Union, and link them to an expansive and thriving
superstate, the epicenter of global commerce and industry. Grand
Chessboard brain-trust Zbigniew Brzezinski summed up the importance of Central Asia in his 1997 classic stating:
“Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is
geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two
of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions.
….About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of
the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises
and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s
GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.”
(The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic
Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, p.31)
A new global empire is gradually emerging in Central Asia, and while
the transformative impact of economic integration has not yet been
realized, US efforts to block the embryonic alliance are getting weaker
and more desperate all the time. The hyperbolic propaganda about
the alleged “Russia hacking” of the presidential election is just one
example of this, while the arming of Nazi militants in Kiev is another.
The bottom line is that both Russia and China are using markets,
development and raw ingenuity to beat Washington, while Washington
relies almost exclusively on deception, covert activity and hard
power. In other words, the former communists are beating the
capitalists at their own game. Here’s more from McCoy:
“China is reaching deep within the world island in an
attempt to thoroughly reshape the geopolitical fundamentals of global
power. It is using a subtle strategy that has so far eluded Washington’s
power elites….
The initial step has involved a breathtaking project to put in place
an infrastructure for the continent’s economic integration. By laying
down an elaborate and enormously expensive network of high-speed,
high-volume railroads as well as oil and natural gas pipelines across
the vast breadth of Eurasia, China may realize Mackinder’s vision in a
new way. For the first time in history, the rapid transcontinental
movement of critical cargo — oil, minerals, and manufactured goods —
will be possible on a massive scale, thereby potentially unifying that
vast landmass into a single economic zone stretching 6,500 miles from
Shanghai to Madrid. In this way, the leadership in Beijing hopes to
shift the locus of geopolitical power away from the maritime periphery
and deep into the continent’s heartland….” (Tomgram: Alfred McCoy,
Washington’s Great Game and Why It’s Failing”, TomDispatch)
Washington is not going to let the Russo-China plan go forward
without a fight. If economic sanctions, covert activity and financial
sabotage don’t work, then US powerbrokers will implement more lethal
strategies. The recent deployment of troops to the Middle East suggests
that policymakers believe that a direct military confrontation might be
the best available option, after all, a shooting war with Russia in
Syria or Ukraine would not necessarily escalate into a full-blown
nuclear conflagration. No one wants that. But if the fighting can be
contained within Syria’s borders, then it would be a practical way to
rally the EU allies, torpedo Russia’s “economic integration” plan, and
draw Moscow into a long, resource-draining quagmire. Is that what US
war-planners have in mind?
It’s a risky plan, but one that Washington would eagerly pursue if it helped to reinforce America’s global supremacy.
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