The
English language Russian news agency, Sputnik, reports that former US Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger is advising US president-elect Donald Trump how to “bring
the United States and Russia closer together to offset China’s military
buildup.”
If we
take this report at face value, it tells us that Kissinger, an old cold
warrior, is working to use Trump’s commitment to better relations with Russia
in order to separate Russia from its strategic alliance with China.
China’s military buildup is a response to
US provocations against China and US claims to the South China Sea as an area
of US national interests. China does not intend to attack the US and certainly
not Russia.
Kissinger, who was my colleague at the
Center for Strategic and International studies for a dozen years, is aware of
the pro-American elites inside Russia, and he is at work creating for them a
“China threat” that they can use in their effort to lead Russia into the arms
of the West. If this effort is successful, Russia’s sovereignty will be eroded
exactly as has the sovereignty of every other country allied with the US.
At President Putin’s last press conference, journalist Marat Sagadatov
asked if Russia wasn’t already subject to forms of foreign semi-domination:
“Our economy, industry, ministries and agencies often follow
the rules laid down by international organizations and are managed
by consulting companies. Even our defense enterprises have foreign
consulting firms auditing them.” The journalist asked, “if it is not the time
to do some import substitution in this area too?”
Every
Russian needs to understand that being part of the West means living by
Washington’s rules. The only country in the Western Alliance that has an
independent foreign and economic policy is the US.
All of
us need to understand that although Trump has been elected president, the
neoconservatives remain dominant in US foreign policy, and their commitment to
the hegemony of the US as the uni-power remains as strong as ever. The
neoconservative ideology has been institutionalized in parts of the CIA, State
Department and Pentagon. The neoconservatives retain their influence in media,
think tanks, university faculties, foundations, and in the Council on Foreign
Relations.
We also need to understand that Trump
revels in the role of tough guy and will say things that can be misinterpreted
as my friend, Finian Cunningham, whose columns I read,
usually with appreciation, might have done.
I do not know that Trump will prevail over
the vast neoconservative conspiracy. However, it seems clear enough that he is
serious about reducing the tensions with Russia that have been building since
President Clinton violated the George H. W. Bush administration’s promise that
NATO would not expand one inch to the East. Unless Trump were serious, there is
no reason for him to announce Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as his choice for
Secretary of State. In 2013 Mr. Tillerson was awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship.
As Professor Michel Chossudovsky has
pointed out, a global corporation such as Exxon has interests different from
those of the US military/security complex. The military/security complex needs
a powerful threat, such as the former “Soviet threat” which has been
transformed into the “Russian threat,” in order to justify its hold on an
annual budget of approximately one trillion dollars. In contrast, Exxon wants
to be part of the Russian energy business. Therefore, as Secretary of State,
Tillerson is motivated to achieve good relations between the US and Russia,
whereas for the military/security complex good relations undermine the
orchestrated fear on which the military/security budget rests.
Clearly, the military/security complex and
the neoconservatives see Trump and Tillerson as threats, which is why the
neoconservatives and the armaments tycoons so strongly opposed Trump and why
CIA Director John Brennan made wild and unsupported accusations of Russian
interference in the US presidential election.
The lines are drawn. The next test will be
whether Trump can obtain Senate confirmation of his choice of Tillerson as
Secretary of State.
The myth is widespread that President
Reagan won the cold war by breaking the Soviet Union financially with an arms
race. As one who was involved in Reagan’s effort to end the cold war, I find
myself yet again correcting the record.
Reagan never spoke of winning the cold war.
He spoke of ending it. Other officials in his government have said the same
thing, and Pat Buchanan can verify it.
Reagan wanted to end the Cold War, not win
it. He spoke of those “godawful” nuclear weapons. He thought the Soviet economy
was in too much difficulty to compete in an arms race. He thought that if he
could first cure the stagflation that afflicted the US economy, he could force
the Soviets to the negotiating table by going through the motion of launching
an arms race. “Star wars” was mainly hype. (Whether or nor the Soviets believed
the arms race threat, the American leftwing clearly did and has never got over
it.)
Reagan had no intention of dominating the
Soviet Union or collapsing it. Unlike Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, he
was not controlled by neoconservatives. Reagan fired and prosecuted the
neoconservatives in his administration when they operated behind his back and
broke the law.
The Soviet Union did not collapse because
of Reagan’s determination to end the Cold War. The Soviet collapse was the work
of hardline communists, who believed that Gorbachev was loosening the Communist
Party’s hold so quickly that Gorbachev was a threat to the existence of the Soviet
Union and placed him under house arrest. It was the hardline communist coup
against Gorbachev that led to the rise of Yeltsin. No one expected the collapse
of the Soviet Union.
The US
military/security complex did not want Reagan to end the Cold War, as the Cold
War was the foundation of profit and power for the complex. The CIA told Reagan
that if he renewed the arms race, the Soviets would win because the Soviets
controlled investment and could allocate a larger share of the economy to the
military than Reagan could.
Reagan
did not believe the CIA’s claim that the Soviet Union could prevail in an arms
race. He formed a secret committee and gave the committee the power to
investigate the CIA’s claim that the US would lose an arms race with the Soviet
Union. The committee concluded that the CIA was protecting its prerogatives. I
know this because I was a member of the committee.
American capitalism and the social safety net would
function much better without the drain on the budget of the military/security
complex. It is correct to say that the military/security complex wants a major
threat, not an actual arms race. Stateless Muslim terrorists are not a
sufficient threat to such a massive US military, and the trouble with an actual
arms race, as opposed to a threat, is that the US armaments corporations would
have to produce weapons that work instead of cost overruns that boost profits.
The latest US missile ship has twice broken
down and had to be towed into port. The F-35 has cost endless money, has a variety of
problems and is already outclassed. The Russian missiles are hypersonic. The
Russian tanks are superior. The explosive power of the Russian Satan II ICBM is
terrifying. The morale of the Russian forces is high. They have not been
exhausted from 15 years of fighting without much success pointless wars against
women and children.
Washington, given the corrupt nature of the
US military/security complex, can arms race all it wants without being a danger
to Russia or China, much less to the strategic alliance between the two powers.
The neoconservatives are discredited, but
they are still a powerful influence on US foreign policy. Until Trump relegates
them to the ideological backwaters, Russia and China had best hold on to their
strategic alliance. Anyone attempting to break this alliance is a threat to
both Russia and China, and to America and to life on earth.
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the
US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been
reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition
of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored
with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the
protection of law, has been released by Random House. Visit his website.
