April 20, 2015
On Saturday, April 18th, the Commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, Ben
Hodges, told Britain’s Telegraph that “There is a Russian threat,” and
that “The best insurance we have against a showdown is that NATO stands
together.”
Ever since the Soviet Union’s military alliance, the Warsaw Pact,
dissolved in 1991, NATO has expanded eastward to Russia’s borders, and
now it is preparing to admit yet another nation on Russia’s border:
Ukraine. This eastward expansion broke (and breaks, since it’s
continuing) a verbal agreement which had produced the termination of the
Warsaw Pact (the Soviet Union’s equivalent of America’s NATO alliance).
In February 1990, U.S. President George H.W. Bush sent his Secretary of
State, James Baker, to Moscow to negotiate with Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev an end to the Cold War. According to Jack Matlock, the U.S.
Ambassador to the Soviet Union then, Baker offered Gorbachev the
following deal:
“Assuming there is no expansion of NATO jurisdiction to the East,
not one inch, what would you prefer, a Germany embedded in NATO, or one
that can go independently in any direction it chooses.”
Baker knew that Russia, after Hitler’s invasion of Russia in June 1941
(“Operation Barbarossa”), feared, more than anything, the possibility
that an independent Germany would build a nuclear-weapons force and use
it against Russia. According to Ray McGovern’s account of the meeting,
Gorbachev “wasted little time agreeing to the deal.”
McGovern, a retired high official of the CIA, blames U.S. President
Bill Clinton for breaking that verbal agreement. Gorbachev had gotten
nothing in writing from Baker on it, but acted on Baker’s verbal
promise. No one has explained why, but the presumption has always been
that Baker made clear to Gorbachev that congressional Republicans would
have blocked approval of any deal to limit future NATO expansion. Hardly
anyone, at that time, would have expected a Democratic Party initiative
to expand NATO after its supposed reason-for-existence had ended; but,
this is what happened, when the conservative, pro-Wall-Street, Democrat,
Bill Clinton, won the White House. (Bill Clinton ended Democratic
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall Act regulation of
Wall Street, and then, aided by Wall Street, became enormously wealthy
himself with his Foundation. He used liberal rhetoric to hide his
conservative objectives, so as to be able to win votes in the Democratic
Party.)
McGovern writes,
“Clinton bragged about proposing NATO enlargement at his first NATO
summit in 1994, saying it ‘should enlarge steadily, deliberately,
openly.’ He never explained why.”
This move on Clinton’s part assured Clinton, in retirement, the support
of his Foundation not only by Wall Street but also now by the ‘defense’
industry, for which NATO serves as the international marketing arm.
Expanding NATO means expanding the sales of U.S.-made tanks, bombers,
etc.
So: this is the reason why the U.S. lied to Gorbachev, and why U.S.
President Barack Obama in February 2014, continued further along
Clinton’s path, by overthrowing the neutralist Ukrainian government and
replacing it with a racist-fascist, or ideologically nazi, rabidly
anti-Russian government, bent on Russia’s destruction, which has
subsequently been bombing the region of Ukraine, Donbass, that had voted
90% for the man whom Obama overthrew, and that would, if the residents
there survive within Ukraine, strongly oppose the construction of
nuclear-weapons sites aimed against next-door Russia.
McGovern says:
“Clinton’s tough-guy-ism toward Russia was, in part, a response to
even more aggressive NATO plans from Clinton’s Republican opponent Bob
Dole, who had been calling for incorporating Poland, the Czech Republic
and Hungary as full members of NATO and had accused Clinton of “dragging
his feet” on this. Clinton was not about to be out-toughed. Those three
countries joined NATO in 1999, starting a trend. By April 2009, nine
more countries became members, bringing the post-Cold War additions to
12 – equal to the number of the original 12 NATO states.” Ukraine would
make that 13.
Here is the percentage-breakdown of the nations that are selling the most weapons:
Screen Shot 2015-04-03 at 3.11.05 PM
The S&P Aerospace and Defense Index stood at 2,451.18 on 20 January
2009 when Obama was inaugurated, and is at 8,692.26 as of 17 April
2015. That’s 3.55 times what it was at the start. The S&P 500 Index
on 20 January 2009 was at 805.22, and on 17 April 2015 was 2,081.18;
that’s 2.58 times what it was at the start. So: during Obama’s
Presidency thus far, ‘defense’ stocks have gained 38% more than the
total market has.
So, now we understand what Ben Hodges is selling when he sells the
‘Russian threat.’ The competition to be hired by ‘defense’ firms is
intense, and he does what he must to win in his chosen field.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of
They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records,
1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created
Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/nato-increasingly-surrounds-the-russian-threat-war-is-good-for-business/5443951
Monday, April 20, 2015
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