{"id":196836,"date":"2019-10-25T07:25:46","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T07:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=196836"},"modified":"2019-10-28T07:55:44","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T07:55:44","slug":"better-relations-between-the-us-and-russia-are-not-in-the-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=196836","title":{"rendered":"Better Relations Between the US and Russia Are Not In the Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Paul Craig Roberts \u2013 paulcraigroberts.org Oct 23, 2019<\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">By now Russians must wonder if the better relations they desire with the US are ever to be.\u00a0 US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat from Hawaii is the latest peacemaker to be declared \u201ca Russian asset\u201d by Hillary, the DNC, and the presstitutes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The way the Democrats, the presstitutes, and their Puppet Master\u2014the military\/security complex\u2014have it rigged, unless you want to bomb Russia into the stone age, you are a Russian asset.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">How, then, can any American leader advocate bringing the dangerous tensions with Russia to an end?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Look what happened to Trump when he declared his intention of \u201cnormalizing relations with Russia.\u201d\u00a0 There is nothing more desperate that needs doing, but it cannot happen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Two immovable mountains stand in the way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">One is the military\/security complex\u2019s need for an enemy in order to justify the military\/security complex\u2019s $1,000 billion dollar annual budget and the power that comes with it. Fifty-eight years ago in his last address to the American people, President Dwight Eisenhower warned that \u201cwe must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.\u00a0 We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Ike\u2019s warning went unheeded, and today, more than a half century later, the military\/security complex rules America.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The other immovable mountain is the US world hegemonic ideology of the \u00a0neoconservatives who have controlled US foreign policy since the Clinton regime.\u00a0 The neoconservatives declare the US to be the \u201cindispensible, exceptional\u201d country with the right to impose its will and agendas on the rest of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The collapse of the Soviet Union removed all constraints on Washington\u2019s unilateralism.\u00a0 There was no longer another global power to get in Washington\u2019s way.\u00a0 To keep it this way, neoconservative Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz set out the Wolfowitz Doctrine.\u00a0 The doctrine states that it is the \u201cfirst objective\u201d of US foreign and military policy to prevent the rise of Russia or any country capable of serving as a check on US unilateral action.\u00a0 Caught offguard by Vladimir Putin, who restored Russian sovereignty from Russia\u2019s status as an American vassal under Yeltsin, the neoconservatives and their Western media whores have launched massive propaganda attacks on Russia in order to demonize, isolate, marginalize, and perhaps overthrow with American-financed NGOs, as happened to Ukraine in the\u00a0 Maidan Revolution and as the US is currently attempting in Hong Kong against China.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The hegemonic ideology of the neoconservatives and the military\/security complex\u2019s need for an enemy preclude any normalization of relations with Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">As I and Stephen Cohn have emphasized, the current tensions between the two nuclear superpowers are far more dangerous than during the Cold War.\u00a0 During the Cold War every American president worked with his Soviet counterpart to reduce tensions.\u00a0 John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev defused the Cuban missile crisis and removed the US missiles from Turkey.\u00a0 JFK\u2019s reward was to be assassinated by the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff who concluded that JFK was soft on communism and a threat to the national security of the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">President Richard Nixon opened to China and negotiated the SALT I Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Leonid Brezhnev. Nixon\u2019s reward was to be politically assassinated with the Watergate orchestration and forced to resign.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">President Carter and Brezhnev signed the SALT II Treaty, and Carter was rewarded by the military\/security complex throwing its money behind anti-communist Reagan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">President Reagan outmaneuvered the military\/security complex,\u00a0 and he and Gorbachev ended the Cold War.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The George H.W. Bush administration gave assurances to Gorbachev that if the Soviet Union permitted the reunification of Germany, the US would neither incorporate the former Warsaw Pact into NATO nor move NATO one inch to the East.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The Clinton regime reneged on the word of the US Government and moved NATO to Russia\u2019s borders.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Subsequent US regimes\u2014George W. Bush, Obama, Trump\u2014have pulled out of the remaining treaties and agreements and, thereby, elevated the tensions between the nuclear superpowers to the pre-Kennedy era.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The danger of this development is not appreciated.\u00a0 Nuclear warning systems of incoming ICBMs are notorious for false warnings.\u00a0 During the Cold War both sides received false alarms of incoming attacks, but neither the Amerians nor the Soviets ever pushed the button in response to the warnings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Why?\u00a0 The reason is that both sides understood that they were working to reduce tensions and to build trust.\u00a0 Both sides understood that in this atmosphere the alarms had to be false.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Today the situation is very different.\u00a0 Russia and its leadership have been demonized and excoriated by Western politicians and media.\u00a0 Americans and their vassals in Europe have been taught to hate and fear Russians.\u00a0 The Russian government has experienced false accusations never before experienced in diplomatic affairs.\u00a0 Neither side can possibly trust the other.\u00a0 Add to this the fact that response times are now in the minutes, and you should be able to comprehend that the world can be blown up due to nothing more than a false alarm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">For the ideological neoconservatives and the greed-ridden corrupt American military\/security complex to put life on Earth under this kind of risk indicates that neither neoconservatives nor armaments industries are capable of subordining their self-interests to life itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Normally, the restrained, non-confrontational responses of Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to American insults and provocative actions would be admirable.\u00a0 But with the US playing the role of the bully, passive Russian responses to bullying encourage more bullying.\u00a0 As kids of my generation learned, when confronted with a bully you immediately stand up to him.\u00a0 Otherwise, he sees you as lacking self-respect and resolve and ups the bullying. The only way to avoid the fight is to stand up to him immediately.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The Russian government\u2019s failure to stand up to Washington\u2019s bullying guarantees more bullying.\u00a0 Sooner or later the bullying will cross a line, and Russia will have to fight.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">A less passive Russian government could do a lot for peace<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.paulcraigroberts.org\/2019\/10\/23\/better-relations-between-the-us-and-russia-are-not-in-the-cards\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two immovable mountains stand in the way of Trump&#8217;s stated desire to improve relations with Russia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196836"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196839,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196836\/revisions\/196839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}