Russia Strikes Back

U.S. and Georgia have made clear their long-range objective is to expand NATO’s military influence


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Russia Strikes Back
by Ardeshir Ommani
24-Aug-2008
 

After a long time being used as a leverage to extract greater concessions from Russia, finally on August 14, 2008 with great fanfare and at a much higher price, Poland conceded to letting the U.S. use part of its territory for establishing a sizeable military base in northern Poland run by American military personnel and armed with 10 U.S. global interceptor rockets. Among the most crucial factors that spurned the binding of the agreement at this moment in time were the extremely tense relations between Russia and the U.S. over the crisis in Georgia, which in turn motivated Washington to upgrade the terms of the deal with Poland. Apparently the White House was in such a hurry in the early days of the Georgian crisis to wrest the Polish accord that it was ready to pay practically any price to entice the pro-imperialist Polish ruling elite.

In addition to agreeing to pay a considerable amount of hard cash annually and equip and train the Polish armed forces, Washington made a commitment to provide Warsaw with the costly patriot missiles as well. Hopefully, no one with a rational mind will deny, except perhaps the warlords of the Pentagon, that the deal would give rise, once again, to a new round of an arms race and a renewed and long period of cold war.

For so many years, consecutive U.S. presidents, including Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and their allies in NATO have hypocritically, mainly for the sake of public relations, tried to lull the world community, including former President Vladimir Putin and current President Dimitri Medvedov, that placing some elements of a U.S. missile shield system close to Russia’s border is to intercept hypothetical missile attacks by Iran or other so-called "rogue" nations against the European continent. Events in Georgia have made clearer who the real target is.

NATO without Borders

In the last 17 years, after the collapse of the Soviet system, the U.S. and its allies in the NATO alliance have shown their intent to weaken Russia, have easy access to the former republics of the bygone Soviet Union and the region’s vast oil and gas resources. First the U.S. has proven, through its plans of placing missile shields on every border of Russia, that it will not accept a buffer (demilitarized) zone between Russia’s border and the boundary lines of the NATO countries. Two decades ago, one of the crucial conditions for the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact was that NATO would not attempt to move eastward and recruit the eastern European countries that had been part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) into NATO. Both the United States and the European Union reneged on their promises, and have persistently, through interferences in the national and regional elections of those countries, transfer of weapons and weapons systems, military trainings of their armed forces, and their military involvement in assisting the U.S. to carry out the Iraq war, have de-facto integrated the region up to the borders of Russia into the NATO alliance.

The Georgian major offensive against the people of Ossetia was planned long before the day of its execution. The active involvement of American, French, Israeli and German military instructors (advisors) in Georgia’s war preparation was admitted by President Saakashvili when lately he tried to prove that the involvement of foreign military trainers was not limited to Israeli advisors. In response to Israel’s foreign policy of military alignment with NATO, Russia’s Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn condemned Israel for its role in supplying Georgian military forces with sophisticated weapons and elite training.

Therefore, it is quite understandable why the Russian people and its leadership are concerned about the security of their country and have strongly responded to Georgia’s attack on Ossetia and the Russian Peacekeepers located there. As long as the U.S. and NATO have not given up their plans for dismembering Russia, and undermining its political system, as they did to Yugoslavia, they should not expect Russia to lay down its arms and ignore the plans of the U.S, a country located 1,000’s of miles from Eurasia.

U.S.: Partner or Adversary?

Having gone through the bitter experience of the results of the U.S. policies towards post cold- war Russia, the Kremlin knew well that the true target of those missiles would always be Russia, and perhaps China in the not-so-distant future, along with all those countries that the U.S. has threatened with sanctions and war around the world.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet system, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantlement of the Warsaw Pact, the U.S. in countless ways has supported the separatist movement in Chechnya, channeled financial and political backings to groups of oligarchs who had taken over the immense industrial, mining and financial sectors of Russia at fire-sale prices, and were also in the fraudulent business of draining Russia’s financial wealth through transferring it to U.S. and European banks and lately the U.S.-U.K. design of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceylon oil pipeline that unalterably made sure it by-passed Russia by passing through Georgia, even at a higher cost of construction and maintenance, with the intention of bringing Georgia into NATO’s fold. It is important to note that just a few years ago, the U.S. and its European allies were funding 24000 groups of domestic and foreign NGO’s whose main tasks were to undermine the authority of the Russian government and promote U.S. foreign policies. Obviously, it is not the security or welfare of these nations that the U.S. is concerned about. For the West, Ukraine is important because of its size and its strategic location at the Black Sea with its ample accessibility to the Russian mainland, and Georgia is vital, again, because of its location connecting Azerbaijan and the Caspian Basin’s oil and gas reserves to Turkey, Israel, and Europe.

By their actions in South Ossetia, the U.S. and Georgia have made clear that their long-range objective is to expand NATO’s military influence and turn the buffer zone into a hostile camp against both Russia and Iran. Without a slightest doubt, the U.S. and E.U.’s plan to redraw the boundary lines of NATO and take it to the doorstep of Russia, are meeting fierce resistance.

It was in reference to the hostile U.S. behavior that after the American-Polish conclusion of the missile contract, Dimitri Rogozin, Russia’s NATO envoy pointedly said "The fact that this was signed in a period of very difficult crisis in relations between Russia and the United States over the situation in Georgia shows that, of course, the missile defense system will be deployed not against Iran but against the strategic potential of Russia."

The contemporary history, particularly the events in the last two decades, shows that Russia has been abused by the U.S. and Western powers in general. It has been only since the year 2000 that Russia, under the leadership of former President Putin, has been able to reassert control of its destiny, improve its socio-economic conditions and devise its independent foreign policies. From that year on, the governments of the developed capitalist countries along with an army of corporate media began characterizing the Russian leadership as "autocratic" and "a violator of human rights", and finally, of being a supporter of ‘rogue states’ in the Third World countries, such as Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Zimbabwe and especially the national liberation movement of Palestine, led by Hamas. At the behest of the U.S. administration, the U.S. corporate media began to liken Putin to the Tsar and painted the Kremlin as the new headquarters of the old KGB. Yet all of this has not been able to stymie the vibrant Russian economy that attracts the attention and capital investment of countless industrial enterprises and Western mutual funds.

Split in Nato

During the 26-nation NATO summit in April 2008 in Bucharest, a split between the governments of the European Union (EU) and their American friend emerged. In that meeting the U.S. pressed the Europeans to admit Georgia and Ukraine as full members of the alliance. But the members of the military pact decided to table the issue for the time being and thereby avoid provoking Russia, whose president, Vladimir Putin, was in attendance.

By advocating Georgia’s membership into NATO, while no doubt cognizant of the Georgian plan of attack on South Ossetia (whose population is partly Russian) four months later, Washington intended to make it difficult for Moscow to hinder the Georgian invasion and assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of Ossetia. In the Bucharest summit the European leaders were rather mindful of doing all sorts of business with Russia and enjoying the supply of much more reliable sources of energy, including oil and gas, than being dragged into an endless war of the U.S. empire. Obviously Europe does not wish to approve membership of those countries into NATO when their intent of joining the alliance is to drag Europe or the US. into wars with Russia. Washington, still trapped in the grips of retardation and indolence, knows only one way and that is falling back on the neo-conservative ideological rhetoric and the "bad days" of the cold war. The U.S. is unhappy about the situation where the European Union acts independently and Washington makes very effort to pressure the "old Europe" to be militarily more assertive, by showing greater military participation in the war in Afghanistan and being less pro-dialogue and more hawkish towards Iran and China. The U.S. was not pleased that the European Union, represented by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, took the first initiative in drafting a 4-point cease-fire agreement without consultation with the head of the empire in Washington, and presenting it to the Russian President Dimitri Medvedov for negotiation, out of which came a 6-point negotiated settlement that forgot to mention the principle of Georgian sovereignty.

The divide in NATO with regards to a cease-fire and the status of the Russian troops in northern Georgia became more transparent when the draft presented to an emergency UN Security Council meeting on August 19, 2008, differed from the original 6-point document which was agreed upon in the talks between Russian President Dimitri Medvedev and France’s President, Nicolas Sarkozy a few days earlier. The new proposal did not make provision for the "additional security measures" stated in the original document, said Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s UN Ambassador.

No doubt the Europeans did not want to jump into the fray initiated by the U.S. and its puppet regime of Saakashvili. The U.S. expects to act not through the means of diplomacy and peace-keeping plans, but by roaring missiles and jet fighters, if not yet by mushroom clouds. "If Europeans are not willing to engage through NATO," writes John R. Bolton, infamous former U.S. representative to the United Nations, "that tells us everything we need to know about the true state of health of what is, after all, supposedly a ‘North Atlantic’ alliance."

Hired Guns

The United States, like all self-appointed empires in history, habitually tends to over-reach its actual or even potential capabilities, and consequently finds itself in need of other nation’s resources and manpower to fight its continual wars of conquest. In return, these imperialist powers dole out blood money and promises of protection, which usually does not materialize.

Georgia under the autocratic and corrupt rule of Mikheil Saakashvili, is a case in point. In December 2003, the CIA joined with endless networks of semi-private foundations and the so-called NGO’s financed also by the American billionaire George Soros, carried out a mob coup and pushed out the Georgian President Edward Shevardnadze, installed the Western-exported government of Saakashvili and named the "regime change" the "Rose Revolution." Soon the rulers in Tbilisi, drunk with their newly found power and wealth readily gave into the demand of President George W. Bush and rushed thousands of Georgian troops, their third largest military force after the U.S. and Britain, to Iraq to join the occupation armies in their business of slaughter, torture and rape of the people and nation of Iraq.

It is astonishing to know that the territory of Georgia covers less than 27,000 square miles, which is less than one-half of the area of New York State. Furthermore, Georgia’s population does not exceed 4.4 million, which is about one-fourth of the New York State’s population. The question must be posed that why such a tiny state should deploy its youth to fight Iraqis who have done no harm to the Georgian people, thousands of miles away? The only answer could be that President Saakashvili was paying back Washington for his seat of the presidency and also in exchange for the windfall wealth and the military hardware and training that his armed forces received from the American and Israeli troops based in Tbilisi. So much for the sovereignty and independence of Georgia that George Bush is so fond of reminding the international community.

Obstacles to Russia’s WTO Accession

Russia, the only major economy outside the World Trade Organization (WTO), has been seeking membership in the organization since 1993, i.e., 15 years ago. The structural form of the organization is such that sixty-two countries belong to what is called the Working Party on Russia’s WTO accession. Each of the 62 has the right to sign individual, bilateral agreements with Russia before granting their approval for providing membership. Once all of them have done so, the 149 countries that belong to the WTO can collectively decide whether to accept a new member into its ranks. By June 2008, Moscow had concluded bilateral talks with over 60 states, but still needed to complete discussions with two WTO members: Georgia and Ukraine.

On June 14, 2006, Yury Isakov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s special G8 representative, said, "We are on the eve of entering that entity (the WTO). And if my memory and information is correct, the only country with uncompleted process of bilateral negotiations is the United States."

On the other hand Georgia with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $20.5 billion purchasing power parity in June 2008, two months prior to the recent Tbilisi-Ossetia crisis, was threatening to block Russia, with $2.088 trillion GDP, i.e., 101 times greater than Georgia’s from entering the WTO, unless Moscow halts support for its breakaway regions of Abkhazia and Ossetia. As it could be easily discerned the background of the Georgian military attack on August 7, 2008, against the population of the province of Ossetia and consequently the Russian military intervention for stopping the aggression and further bloodshed was deeply rooted in the U.S.-EU’s ambitions of expanding the 26-nation NATO far into the front yard of Russia, the U.S. plan of planting dozens of missiles at the doorstep of Moscow and the U.S.-Georgian authoritarian rules of blocking Russia from access to the World Trade Organization.

As recently as June 13, 2008, U.S. Commerce Secretary, Carlos Gutierrez, said that Russian membership in the World Trade Organization is "not near." He added that "We’ve worked with Russia in terms of the WTO accession and they still have a way to go…They still have some work to do before they get to it."

Despite all the posturing and finger pointing by President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the U.S. has little leverage over Russia, except for the purpose of backing Senator John McCain and influencing the U.S. presidential election, what else could the U.S. or NATO do to reverse the Russian resistance that has exposed the weakness of U.S. imperialism, its European allies, and the NATO Alliance?


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Dear Ardeshir, I do not

by Fatollah (not verified) on

Dear Ardeshir, I do not trust Russia nor China when it comes to Iran and Iranian interests. Iran is still a weak nation in both military and economic sense! But, surely America under the leadership of G.W.B has proven to be a true threat to the world peace, more then any other states in recent years.

- Kurush
you are absoultely right when it comes to hypocrisy of both past and current European politicians! And I see no difference between Stalin and Churchill when it comes to sacrificing others as long as their interests are servered!


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Nostalgic for the past

by MRX1 (not verified) on

Soviet Union may be gone, but the commi's and leftists specially the ones from Iran are yearning for the gone by era. They suffer from a mental disorder: they love to liveIn capitalist countries, but they love to promote communism at any cost!

Like their islamo fascist counter parts, their only guiding light is haltered. In this case hatred of U.S
At any cost. Be a mass murderer and maniac and as long as you hate U.S they are with you!

I have asked this question before though and never got any answers. The writer of this piece claims that he has been fighting imperialism for 25 years. I have yet to know how he has been doing this? And what kind of work this person does that gives him so much time to fight imperialism? Finaly if the shah was so bad, even though large part of white revolution had socialist angle to it than capitalism, now that he is gone and their beloved regime is supposedly anti U.S, why don’t these people go back to Iran? mental disorder perhaps?


Farhad Kashani

Velayat, absolutely right.

by Farhad Kashani on

Velayat, absolutely right. The author of this article is famous on this site for his outrageous and clear IRI supporting and extreme leftist positions and comments.

 

Let me also add to the list of the things that these Islamists and leftists are silent about:

 

-         They are silent about the brutal Russian destruction of Chechnya, a Muslim province.

-         They are silent about the Chinese savagery in Tibet and Oyghor (another Muslim province).

-         They are silent about China’s horrible human rights records.

-         They are silent about the N Koreans mass murder and starvation of its people.

-         They are silent about Sudan’s genocide against the Southerners and in Darfur.

-         They are silent about Islamists’ mass murder of people in Iraq (both shite and Sunni.)

-         They are silent about Taliban’s relentless killings in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

-         They are silent about Belarus’ horrific human rights record.

-         They are silent about Zimbabwe’s murder of its citizens and dictatorial tendencies of Mugabe.

-         They are silent about Chavez attempt to become king for life, closure of opposition media, and barring candidates from running.

-         Last but not least, and most importantly, they are silent about the horrendous oppression of Iranian people by the hands of the fascist regime in Iran.

  

And the reason they’re silent is very clear, because the dictator heads of state of those countries bash the U.S. For them, you could be on a mission to destroy civilization as w know it for all they care, but as long as you bash the U.S, you’re their friend.

   


samsam1111

Russia,s legacy to the world

by samsam1111 on

world class hookers!


Farhad Kashani

Fred, great points. Yes,

by Farhad Kashani on

Fred, great points. Yes, brutal and tyrannical Russia, who has attacked and in many cases directly occupied most, if not all of its neighbors throught history, the most recent Georgia, did strike back., but it strike back invading another country, killing innocent people and punishing a country for not becoming a Russian puppet.

Nothing wrong with expansion of NATO towards the East. All nations have all kinds of treaties all over the world to strengthen their security. Russia itself is part of Shanghai treaty, and many others. These Islamist Leftist are upset because through Georgia joining NATO, which after the lastest developments prooved its necessity even more than before to shield itself from the barabric Russian policies, Russian influenece would decrease. Thats not only good for Georgian people, but good for Iranian people, U.S and the world.


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Ommani/Russia strikes back

by Kurush (not verified) on

In discussions with regards to Russia and the West several notions might be kept in mind:
First, Russia is the fulcrum of the world military balance. The Western propaganda, portraying Russia as an imperialist power, intends to hide this fundamentally crucial fact. You would like to know how this translates into our everyday life? Here is an example to sober you up with regards to this vital point: In the immediate aftermath of that false flag, ramming passenger planes into buildings a few years ago in New York, the US intended to launch nuclear attacks on several countries including Iran. So why did not the US do so? Was it that the US acted ethically or was concerned with the destruction and havoc or, for that matter, human lives? Of course not. In the neo-cons's brains one word kept repeating itself, Russia, Russia...The neo-cons feared Russia. Cheney sitting in his bunker on that fateful day decided the consequences were not worth it. For while Iran and Syria cannot retaliate meaningfully to a nuclear attack, Russia can and will. Russia was the fulcrum that forced the American extremists such as Cheney to act rationally in spite of their deep desires to use nuclear weapons., for the moment was opportune.
Second, the propaganda tool of the neo-cons centrally is the false premise that the US is the sole superpower and the inference that the US can get away with virtually anything globally. George Schultz, Reagan's secretary of state, the godfather of the neo-cons, mocked this notion on Lehrer news hour a few years ago. Being a realist, he said ‘we call ourselves the sole superpower but let us not forget that Russia can destroy us in two hours.’ He was of course referring to the MAD principle. By the way, the US propaganda system, from the media to the talking heads, none will allude to this basic fact because the Americans, and the world as well, must be fed, and accept, this false premise that the US is the irresistible force in the world. So much of the US policies and behaviour internationally is predicated on this false premise and its face value acceptance worldwide. Psychological warfare? Of course.
Third, the Holy Grail of the Western civilization is the destruction of Russia utterly. No wonder that Russia has been invaded and victimized five times by the West in the past few centuries. From the Teutonic invasion in the Middle Ages, defeated by Alexander Nevsky, to Swedish Charles XII, to France's Napoleon, to Western intervention in the Russian civil war after the October Revolution, to Nazi Germany's invasion.
All have of course ended in the defeat of the Western invaders. But the Nazi invasion is especially peculiar and noteworthy. The so-called western allies shared Hitler's visceral hatred of the Russians and communism. Churchill was very much an ally of Hitler in this regard. Churchill hated the Russians and communism deeply. The Soviets were a mortal foe of the Western Colonial system at the top of which stood Britain. Why did Hitler in the heat of the aerial warfare against Britain in 1940, all of a sudden, wheeled around and sent the Luftwaffe and the Wehermacht towards the Soviet borders? Stalin cajoled relentlessly both Churchill and Roosevelt to open a second front against Hitler and relieve the pressure on the Eastern Front. They did no such thing. For three years, three crucial epoch-making years, the Soviets fought off against the Western fascists-single-handedly. Is it not interesting that the Normandy landing finally occurred just as the Nazi war machine had been effectively decimated by the Soviets and the Soviet armies mad dash for Berlin (Western Europe?) was about to begin? In the event of the Nazi victory, the Germans intended to turn the whole Slav race into millions of slaves. along with the wholesale destruction of Moscow and Leningrad so that the glories of the Slav race be wiped out of memory. This fact has been well documented by the western historians themselves.
So what are the Western (Nato) powers up to? Need I say more. If you still have trouble consuming this narrative thus far, just think what would happen if the Russian fulcrum is removed from the equation. The West will send ultimatums to a few countries to ‘do what we tell you or else‘. The defiant ones will serve as example, they will be nuked. End of the story. Is it clear now what is at stake?


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AnonymousAnonymous

by Velayat (not verified) on

I think Fred is attacking the writer's political views. Many people on the left are happy (or are silent) with respect to Russia's show of force. They believe its a good Counter balance to "American Imperialism". Hence, you get the Islamist/Anti Semites and left allies comment. It does not matter that these Russians are not communist to these people on the Left. They are still celebrating because they like to see American weakness.

The writer of this article has very outlandish views about the state of current affairs in the IRI and its accomplishments. Just look at what he wrote when he visited the IRI in 2006 at the link below.

//www.doublestandards.org/ommani1.html

To the Editors (as per AnonymousAnonymous)
Please publish this post in its entirety, as I have refrained from using profanity. Thank you.


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Fred: the incoherence continues

by AnonymousAnonymous (not verified) on

What makes this commentary "anti-semitic"? In what sense is opposition to Georgia's campaign against South Ossetia "Islamist"? The South Ossetians are a mostly Christian people. In fact, real-life Islamists in the Caucasus (rather than those of Fred's imaginary world) oppose Russia because of solidarity with the Chechens. What does "Soviet" have to do with this? Russia's current leaders are nationalists of a right-wing bent; there is nothing "commie" about them.

Can anyone recall a single instance in which Fred made an argument by employing evidence, rather than merely cutting-and-pasting his own meaningless phrase "Islamist/Anti-Semites and their likeminded lefty allies"? If someone can find actual evidence of Fred making a reasoned argument, I would be eager to see it.

Please publish this post in its entirety, as I have refrained from using profanity. Thank you.