Russia Increases Its Defense, While U.S. Backs Down From Provoking WW III

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at Strategic Culture

Ever since Joe Biden became America’s President in January, America’s hostile and threatening actions and rhetoric against (as Biden refers to him) the ‘killer’ Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President, have made clear to Putin that the U.S. Government’s determination to impose regime-change upon Russia will continue undiminished. This hostility from Biden has dashed Putin’s hope that the string of sanctions which the U.S. Government has constantly been adding to ever since President Obama started the anti-Russian sanctions in 2012, would end, or at least not continue to be added to, under Biden.

Perhaps the clincher, in Putin’s mind, was Biden’s appointment, on January 16th (four days prior to becoming President), of Victoria Nuland to the #2 spot in the U.S. State Department, where, during Obama’s Presidency, as a third-ranked official there who reported directly to Obama (instead of to her nominal boss the Secretary of State), she had planned, and organized the bloody coup that installed a rabidly anti-Russian Government in Ukraine on Russia’s border. This coup in Ukraine is as if during the Cold War the Soviet Union were to have perpetrated a bloody coup installing an anti-U.S. government in Mexico or in Canada (something that the U.S. Government would never have tolerated for even a moment — consider the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as an example), and Putin now is making clear that he will not tolerate any further increases in America’s anti-Russian threats and aggressions. (In fact, Nuland also was one of the chief planners of America’s aggressions against Syria, which has long been an ally of Russia. The plans against both Ukraine and Syria were first being firmed-up under her during 2011. Obama intended even when he entered office in 2009, to replace Syria’s Government, but the decision to replace Ukraine’s Government didn’t come right away. On 12 April 2010 Yanukovych met the U.S. President at the White House, to which Obama had invited him, but Yanukovych refused Obama’s suggestions that Ukraine join America’s alliance against Ukraine’s next-door neighbor Russia. On 2 July 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Yanukovych held a joint press conference in Kiev, where she said that she had discussed with Yanukovych joint military exercises with U.S. forces against his neighbor, Russia. Yanukovych declined the demands, and Nuland already by no later than 23 June 2011 was planning for the coup. This regime is out to conquer Russia, any way it can.)

What is most remarkable about the U.S.-and-allied press coverage of the February 2014 coup in Ukraine is that it is always being misrepresented in the U.S.-and-allied countries as a ‘democratic revolution’, and nobody in the U.S.-and-allied countries (other than a few journalists in small non-mainstream media, such as I) has publicly called attention to the fact that is was a coup, which fact was clearly on display in the phone-conversation between Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine that was first posted to the internet on 4 February 2014, three weeks before the coup that placed “Yats” Yatsenyuk into power there: Nuland, who was a third level down in the State Department’s bureaucracy, was, in that conversation, actually instructing the U.S. Ambassador whom to get appointed to run the new Government after the coup would be over: “Yats.” She made that choice. Nobody in Ukraine did. Nor did the U.S. Secretary of State — her nominal boss. John Kerry, who was the U.S. Secretary of State, wasn’t the person who made that incredibly important decision, and the CIA also wasn’t the agency which did — Nuland, herself, made the decision, in this case; and the U.S. Ambassador there was, clearly, accepting her authority, to be speaking on behalf of the President of the United States: Barack Obama. That coup was clearly planned by the White House. And it was run through the State Department, not through the CIA (which had been the U.S. regime’s traditional method for coups). The CIA was just paying the bribes and hiring the goons, not doing the planning, for this operation. (Furthermore, the conversation, at its very end, dotted the “i”s on her authority and indicated that V.P. Biden was aware that she possessed direct authority from Obama to make these decisions. Biden’s claims during the 2020 Presidential contest, saying that Obama had given Biden the authority to run the Ukrainian operation, were lies. He was a mere functionary, and, even at that, functioned only after the coup was already over. At 4:05- in the video, Nuland said, “… when I wrote the note, [Jake] Sullivan’s [note has] come back to me VFR [meaning in response to her formal request to make these decisions without needing higher-level authorization] saying ‘you need [[V.P.]] Biden[’s approval] and I said [to Sullivan that Biden would give her that formal authorization] probably tomorrow for an ‘atta boy’ [meaning that Biden’s okay was only a formality] and to get the dets [details] to stick; so, Biden’s willing.” The Ambassador response to this was “Okay, great; thanks,” meaning that he had no question, and this exchange ended their conversation. For more details decoding that conversation, see here and here.)

On 23 November 2020, CBS headlined “Biden to appoint Jake Sullivan as national security adviser” and also reported that Antony Blinken would be the Secretary of State. Sullivan and Blinken were friends of Nuland, and all of them had long records as neoconservatives; but nonetheless the subsequent appointment of Nuland to be #2 at State was a shocker because Nuland was a neocon even amongst neocons. In fact, she had been Dick Cheney’s national security advisor when George W. Bush was President. She has been a constant, probably planning all of the 21st Century U.S. invasions and coups. No one is more bloodthirsty than she. But Biden calls Putin a “killer.”

America’s meta-strategy, at least since 2006, has been to ‘win’ WW III against Russia, whereas Russia has always remained with what had been the meta-strategy on both sides, of having nuclear weapons only in order to be able to deliver an annihilating retaliatory response if the opposite side blitz-attacks it with nuclear weapons. That previous (in the United States, but still current in Russia) meta-strategy is called “Mutually Assured Destruction,” or “M.A.D.” for short.

As I had headlined and documented on 3 May 2017, “America’s Top Scientists Confirm: U.S. Goal Now Is to Conquer Russia”. That article quoted America’s top experts on nuclear war as saying that America’s “boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three … creates exactly what one would expect to see if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.” This would nearly be sufficient superiority of U.S. forces to fulfill the plan which had been first described publicly in America’s two most prestigious international relations journals, as being a suitable replacement for “M.A.D.”: “Nuclear Primacy”. That’s the goal for America to blitz-nuclear attack Russia so quickly that Russia won’t have enough time to launch a retaliatory response. America’s Establishment wants it to happen. (They are even buying luxurious deep-underground nuclear-bomb-proof shelters so that they will be among the few survivors from it.)

Putin is now taking the situation to be so dangerous for Russia so that he has publicly established “red lines” in U.S. policies, which, if crossed by the United States or its allies, might be responded to by Russia’s being the first to strike — the start of WW III — even though that would destroy the entire world, including Russia itself.

Though he takes a great risk with these “red lines,” he seems to believe that by establishing them, there is less of a risk to Russians than if he continues to pretend that M.A.D. remains as being American policy. He is, in effect, forcing Joe Biden to choose now, between Nuclear Primacy versus M.A.D. Putin is now publicly warning the U.S. Government and America’s allies what could possibly be responded to by Russia’s blitz-attacking them. That’s what this new Russian policy is all about: pre-announced red lines.

The biggest hot spot, where a world-destroying nuclear war is the likeliest to be sparked, is in Ukraine, after Barack Obama’s February 2014 coup in Ukraine (on Russia’s border) which coup illegally and violently overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected President and replaced him by a racist-fascist (or nazi) anti-Russian regime that promptly began an ethnic cleansing operation in its far south and far east in order to eliminate voters who had (in the far east, the Donbass region) voted 90%+ for him, and (in the far south, including Crimea) voted 75%+ for him. (Only by eliminating those people could the Obama-imposed regime remain in power after an election.) Obama had started planning this operation in 2011, and by the time of June 2013 a part of this plan was for America to replace Russia’s largest naval base, which was (and remains) in Crimea, by establishing yet another U.S. naval base there. (Putin — with the strong backing of the Crimean people — blocked that part of Obama’s plan.)

On April 15th, the U.S. regime’s Associated Press (AP) propaganda agency headlined a thousand-word “EXPLAINER: What’s behind the conflict in eastern Ukraine?” and devoted one section of it to “WHAT ARE THE ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT?” and another section to “WHAT’S THE U.S. ROLE?”, but nowhere in it was anything that has just been documented here, via the links, to be true — none of that was — even so much as just mentioned, in that entire ‘news’ article.

Here are headlines from April 17th regarding Ukraine:

“Ukraine’s military chief urges authorities to refrain from creating armed formations”: This reports an announcement by Ukraine’s Government telling its independently organized volunteer nazi battalions: please do not invade Donbass unless and until authorized to do so. Those battalions had previously been given to understand that they would soon be authorized to invade. The Ukrainian General is here telling those battalions (such as the nazi Azov Battalion, which has been championed by the U.S.-and-allied governments) that premature actions on their part might be exploited by Russia for its purposes (for Russian propaganda). This plea to those far-right mercenaries can only be very disappointing to them. Both of Ukraine’s two nazi Parties, Svoboda (originally the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine), and Right Sector (meaning “Right Wing” in the extreme senses), are on the front lines there, and have publicly threatened to overthrow Ukraine’s current President if he fails to invade Donbas soon. Those mercenaries could quickly turn against him.

“Russia Shuts Ukraine’s Military Access To [the Sea of Azov]”: Beginning “next week,” and continuing at least until October, Russia will prevent any military vessels of or allied with the United States from passing through the Kerch Strait, which transits from the Black Sea, into the Sea of Azov, which latter is Ukraine’s sole coastal waters. (That U.S.-written headline erroneously said “Russia Shuts Ukraine’s Military Access To Black Sea,” because confusing the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov is common. However, that news-report provided an excellent map which shows what the article was actually reporting: Russia will close off U.S-and-allied warship-access to Ukraine’s coast.) The implication of this news-report is that until (at least) October, Ukraine must avoid invading Donbas, or else do it without being able to be militarily resupplied by the U.S. and its allies.

“FAA issues warning for flights in Russia-Ukraine border airspace”: This is a warning to airlines to avoid that area because of the possibility of war breaking out imminently there (warning them to avoid events like the 17 July 2014 MH17 incident).

In other words: Putin is finally putting his foot down. He won’t tolerate any more of what Obama and Trump were dishing out.

On April 15th a headline was “U.S. drops plans to send destroyers into the Black Sea due to concerns over Russia”. This is one of several strong signs that Biden understands that crossing one of Putin’s red lines would be extremely dangerous.

The stooge-President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, appears to be trapped between what he has promised to do — which is for Ukraine to retake both Donbas and Crimea (the same thing that his predecessor Petro Poroshenko had promised)  — and what will be within his power to do. Even the U.S. empire, which had placed him (and Poroshenko — and Poroshenko’s predecessor “Yats” Yatsenyuk) into nominal control over that country, won’t actually risk WW III in order to keep him in power there. At the present point in time, the best that Zelensky can reasonably hope for is to survive beyond his clearly doomed Presidency. He is learning that being a stooge is not a comfortable position to occupy.

On April 20th, the U.S. Democratic Party news-summary site “Political Wire” headlined “Leaked Ukraine Memo Shows Scope of Russia Aggression” and reported that “‘Russia has been holding last-minute military exercises near commercial shipping lanes in the Black Sea that threaten to strangle Ukraine’s economy,’ according to an internal document from Ukraine’s ministry of defense reviewed by Axios” (another Democratic Party ‘news’ site). In an America whose population is torn between the suckers of Democratic Party billionaires versus the suckers of Republican Party billionaires, each Party’s ‘news’ sites reaches virtually only that Party’s voters; and, so, the most popular of the many reader-comments there is blindly pro-Biden (like pro-Trumpers are about Trump), from “S1AMER”: “The economic base of Russia is shaky at best, and nearly all Russians can see that and personally feel it. So Putin no doubt thinks he can get restive Russians to rally around him if he invents a war (‘Ukraine invaded us!’) or just elevates the profile of a common enemy (‘US and NATO are picking on us!’). (And, of course, all this mightily distracts the Russian populace from the imminent death of Putin’s most effective opponent [here presumably Navalny].) Disaster appears likely to be lurking around the corner. We should be very glad we have our current president on the job, and that NATO and the USA and other decent countries just might do all (or at least most) of the right things going forward.”

—————

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.