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Hermit
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Of Trolls, Trollops and Theatre in Russia
« on: 2009-07-17 01:49:47 » |
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Icy Smiles for Obama in Moscow
[ Hermit : Eric Margolis writes yet another analytic gem, correctly skewering the opinions of the "odious Rush Limbaugh" types, so dreadfully frequently cunt'pasted here by our troll Salamatis/Joe Dees (No dear Blunderov, it isn't a typo, it merely looks like one :-P). ]
Source: LewRockwell.com
Authors: Eric Margolis
Dated: 2009-07-16
President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow last week raised some very important questions about US-Russian relations and national security.
Given the media’s constant threat-mongering, it’s easy to forget that America’s most important national security concern is not Iran, Iraq, al-Qaida, Taliban, Afghanistan, or North Korea, whose unloved "Dear Leader" appears terminally ill.
It is Russia, which has over 2,000 nuclear warheads on some 800 delivery vehicles pointed at the United States. [ Hermit : What Eric omits here is that the Russian federation is probably fortunate to still have nuclear defences against the perfidy of the west and particularly the USA, and that the last 30 years have undoubtedly driven home the lesson that at least when it comes to the US, there is no such thing as excessive paranoia. Not just because of American untrustworthiness, but even more so, because a lethal combination of stupidity and bravado makes the US prone not to even recognise when they are standing in to danger even when whoring in Moscow to buy transit rights for the American optional wars of choice du jour. ]
Russia holds a nuclear gun to America’s head, as America does to Russia. The two great powers cannot and must not risk crises when nuclear annihilation is only a button-push away.
Clearly, Washington’s first priority is maintaining correct, civilized relations with Moscow. That means avoiding confrontation, and treating Russia with a large amount of respect even if we do not like its increasingly autocratic government and gruesome human rights record in Chechnya. [ Hermit : I don't like Russia's ethnic cleansing in Chechnya anymore than I like our ethnic cleansing in Iraq, but I don't think this has significantly affected American policy since the Cheney-Bush administration disposed of every last scruple left in "the great experiment's" ethical scales which are now apparently being used as a sort of ad hoc blindfold. ]
The Bush administration put the US and Russia on a collision course by expanding American strategic influence into the Baltic, East Europe, Georgia and Ukraine. This violated a reported secret agreement between former party chairman Mikhail Gorbachev and the first President George Bush which stipulated that in exchange for Moscow allowing its former satellites to go free, western power would not be extended up to Russia’s borders.
Bush’s plans for an antimissile system in the Czech Republic and Poland (only 190 km from Russia’s border) to supposedly shoot down Iranian nuclear-armed missiles that don’t exist was an act of monumental stupidity and pointless belligerence. Moscow was predictably enraged.
Last year, the Bush administration encouraged Georgia’s not so bright leader to invade the pro-Russian breakaway region of South Ossetia, sparking a short, nasty Russo-Georgian conflict that brought Washington and Moscow into dangerous confrontation. US warships moved into the Black Sea and US military aircraft began ferrying supplies to Georgia.
Imagine America’s reaction if Russia began rearming Cuba and sending warships to cruise off Miami. [ Hermit : What might be a little amusing in a very dangerous situation would be that very few Americans would recognise their own hypocrisy in their reaction. After all, the USA still talks about "the Cuban Crises" as if it was caused by Moscow, when American truculence to Cuba and placement of multiple batteries of nuclear tipped Jupiter MRBMs in Northern Turkey, aimed at and positioned less than 1'000 miles from Moscow was what triggered it. Russian children also learn that the US predictably broke their agreement to withdraw their missiles from Turkey "immediately" the Russian missiles, which could only ever have reached part of Florida, were removed from Cuba. ]
President Barack Obama says he went to Moscow last week to push what he called the "restart" button on battered US-Russian relations. [ Hermit : The fact that Froggy Bottom got it wrong and produced a switch marked "Overload" says a great deal that is not very good about US comprehension of Russia. ] A good decision, and badly needed. The two great powers need just the kind of mutually respectful relations that Obama has been advocating.
Moscow and Washington signed another nuclear arms reduction treaty making modest cuts in their nuclear arsenals over ten years to 1,500–1,675 warheads each – still enough to destroy civilization three times over. Interestingly, the US’s large reserve of nuclear warheads were not included. [ Hermit : The US claims that disassembled weapons are "components," does not discuss ready pits, and rejects "doveryai, no proveryai" for themselves while insisting on it for others. Perhaps this has something to do with history reflecting that the USA is a world class cheat. ]
The "reduction" was a major disappointment. Neither side needs more than a few hundred nuclear warheads. In fact, the "antiwar" Obama should have begun seriously negotiating scrapping all nuclear weapons rather than modest reductions. Every American president since Dwight Eisenhower called for global nuclear disarmament, mostly recently Barack Obama – but to no avail. Resistance from America’s national security complex, and the difficulty of convincing other nations to disarm thwarted their idealistic plans.
The US and Russia are also violating the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which called on all nuclear powers to totally eliminate their nuclear weapons.
Obama came away from Moscow with the Kremlin’s curious agreement to allow the US to fly soldiers and supplies across Russian territory to Afghanistan. Either Moscow got some serious secret payoffs from Washington, or the Kremlin is happy to see the US sink ever deeper into the Afghan morass. [ Hermit : Russia must have received some very significant concessions, particularly in the light of the US' involvement in overthrowing governments and buying elections to guarantee the future of Nabucco. ]
President Obama was politely received in Moscow by a smiling President Dimitri Medvedev and a mostly scowling Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Their "good cop/bad cop" routine left everyone wondering who was really the boss.
Obama’s golden oratory did not move Russia’s leaders or people. Both remained deeply skeptical of Washington’s professions of friendship and concerned by America’s growing influence around Russia’s borders. [ Hermit : The fact that many Americans, apparently including many in the State Department, simply don't appear to realize or care that most Russians understand that America deliberately caused the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent economic collapse, effectively winning the Cold War through subterfuge and economic warfare, and will remember this every time they have to deal with the USA, does not speak well for the future of relationship building. Especially given that they know that the current economic collapse is caused by the fact that "Washington has no more troops and now has to borrow 50 cents from China for every dollar it spends." The reality that many if not most Americans, left and right have yet to grasp. ]
A just-issued World Public Opinion survey finds that opinion of President Obama is generally positive on a personal level and has boosted America’s battered image.
But 66–68% of British, French, Poles, Ukrainians, Iraqis and Egyptians surveyed believed the US was abusing its great power. In Russia, the result was 75%. In two key US allies, an alarming 86% in Turkey, and 90% in Pakistan. These last two figures are very ominous. They show intense public opposition to the pro-US policies of these nations, a recipe for violence or even revolution.
Russia and the Muslim world are waiting to see President Obama turn his professions of change, friendship, and improved relations into actions. Unfortunately, they often seem to be seeing the opposite.
The US is pressing ahead with the Polish/Czech missile project, still says it wants to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, and is expanding American strategic power into former Soviet Central Asian Republics. In short, surrounding Russia on the strategic chessboard. This strategy has played right into the hands of anti-western Russian hardliners and nationalists.
Is Washington really ready to risk a possible nuclear war with Moscow over Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia or Luhansk, Ukraine – places very few Americans could find on a map if their lives depended on it. Building antimissile sites on Moscow’s doorstep is a reckless and pointless provocation. You don’t kick a man in the shins who is holding a gun to your head. [ Hermit : And given Moscow's deep ties with Iran, attacking the reactors which Russia is building there - or allowing Israel to do it for them, would be like trying to kick their balls rather than their shins. And naturally failing to achieve the critical objective of an informal orchidectomy by missing the target - with a doubtless irate response to follow. ]
Russians, peoples of the Muslim world, and some Americans are wondering if they are seeing Bushism without Bush? [ Hermit : I would say that the more perceptive, Americans and Europeans included, have long stopped wondering about it and have already been persuaded by the evidence. The only significant differences between O-bomber and Bush is that O-Bomber is not illiterate, intelligence- and speech-impaired. As far as policy is concerned, O-Bomber seems more extreme but better at the hypocrisy needed to disguise it. ]
Half a century ago, President Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans about the growing power of the military-industrial complex. Is the updated version – the financial-military-industrial complex – making US foreign policy no matter who is in the White House? [ Hermit : I think Eric misses the mark here. He does not include either Israel's lobby, nor the hardly unrelated media's significant role in the dumbing down and taking-over of America. ]
Hopefully not. But, aside from the thinning of US forces in Iraq, there has been remarkably little change of direction in US foreign policy since Obama took office.
To many of Moscow’s "siloviki" – the hard men of the security complex – it’s Washington’s old "imperialist ruling circles" still hard at work. Back at the Pentagon, there is palpable relief that the "reds" are again running things again in Moscow. The devils you know…
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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