Do Russiagate Promoters Prefer Impeaching Trump to Avoiding War
With Russia?
The new Cold War is not a mere replica of its 40-year
predecessor, which the world survived. In vital ways, it is more dangerous,
more fraught with actual war, as illustrated by events in 2018, among them:
Stephen
Cohen and I are branded “Russian dupes” and “Putin agents,” because we object
to the highly orchestrated and false portrayal of Russia as a threat to the
West, a portrayal that is leading to war. The purpose of this orchestration is
to prevent President Trump or any future president from reducing the dangerous
tensions between nuclear powers that have accumulated since the Clinton regime.
The military/security complex has resurrected its Cold War enemy so necessary
for its outsized budget and power and intends to keep Russia as The Enemy. The
Democrats have an interest in the villification of Russia as “Russiagate”
explains Hillary’s loss of the 2016 Presidential election and gives Democrats
hope of removing President Trump from office. The media lacks independence,
knowledge, and integrity and is the tool used by the military/security complex
to control explanations, a prostitution of the media that has made the term
“presstitutes” an accurate description. As strategic and Russian studies are
largely funded by the military/security complex, the universities are also
complicit in the march toward nuclear war. Republicans are as dependent as
Democrats on funding from the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby.
All of this
self-serving is driving America and its vassals to war with Russia, which might
also mean with China. The war would be nuclear and be the end of the West, an
act of self-genocide. The US national security establishment is so crazed that
Trump’s efforts to get off the war track and onto a peace track are
characterized as treason and a threat to US national security. See for example:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/opinion/trump-mattis-syria-afghanistan.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion
The
Russians are aware that the accusations and demonization that they experience
are fabrications. They no longer see the problem as one of misunderstandings
that diplomacy can overcome. What they see now is the West preparing its
populations for war. It is this perception for which the West is solely
responsible that makes the situation today far more dangerous than it ever was
during the long Cold War.
In his
just published book, War With Russia? (reviewed here:https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/12/22/if-truth-cannot-prevail-over-material-agendas-we-are-doomed/ ),
Stephen Cohen documents the creation of the “Russian threat” that serves a few
material interests at the expense of life on earth.
In the
article below, Cohen asks if it is more important to impeach Trump than to
avoid nuclear war.
Do
Russiagate Promoters Prefer Impeaching Trump to Avoiding War With Russia?
The new
Cold War is not a mere replica of its 40-year predecessor, which the world
survived. In vital ways, it is more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, as
illustrated by events in 2018, among them:
The
militarization of the new Cold War intensified, with direct or proxy US-Russian
military confrontations in the Baltic region, Ukraine, and Syria; the onset of
another nuclear arms race with both sides in quest of more “usable” weapons;
mounting, but entirely unsubstantiated, claims by influential Cold War lobbies,
such as the Atlantic Council, that Moscow is contemplating an invasion of
Europe; and the growing influence of Moscow’s own “hawks.” The previous Cold
War was also highly militarized, but never directly on Russia’s own borders, as
is this one, from the small nations of Eastern Europe to Ukraine, a process
that continued to unfold in 2018.
Russiagate—allegations
that President Trump is strongly influenced by or even under the sway of the
Kremlin, for which there remains no actual evidence—continued to escalate as a
dangerous and unprecedented factor in the new Cold War. What began as
suggestions that the Kremlin had “meddled” in the 2016 US presidential election
grew into mainstream insinuations, even assertions, that the Kremlin put Trump
in the White House. The result has been to all but shackle Trump as a
crisis-negotiator with Russian President Putin. Thus, for attending a July
summit meeting with Putin in Helsinki—during which Trump defended the
legitimacy of his own presidency—he was widely denounced by mainstream US media
and politicians as having committed “treason.” And twice subsequently Trump was
compelled to cancel scheduled meetings with Putin. Americans may reasonably ask
whether the politicians, journalists, and organizations that assail Trump for
the same kind of summit diplomacy practiced by every president since Eisenhower
actually prefer trying to impeach Trump to avoiding war with Russia.
The same
question can be asked of major mainstream media outlets that have virtually
abandoned the reasonably balanced and fact-based reporting and commentary they
practiced during the latter stages of the preceding Cold War. In 2018, for
example, their nonfactual, surreal allegation that “Putin’s Russia attacked
American democracy” in 2016 became an orthodox dogma and the pivot of their
Russiagate and new Cold War narrative. Also unlike during the preceding Cold
War, they continued to exclude dissenting, alternative reporting, perspectives,
and opinions. Still more, these media outlets persist in relying heavily on
former intelligence chiefs as sources and commentators, even though the role of
these intel officials in the origins of the Russiagate narrative now seems
clear. A striking example of media malpractice was coverage of the maritime
conflict between Ukrainian and Russian gunboats on November 25, in the Kerch
straits between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. All empirical evidence
available, as well as Ukrainian President Poroshenko’s desperate need to
bolster his chances for reelection in March 2019, strongly indicated that this
was a deliberate provocation by Kiev. But the US mainstream media portrayed it
instead as yet another instance of “Putin’s aggression.” Thus was a dangerous
US-Russian proxy war fundamentally misrepresented to the American public.
In large
part due to such media malpractice, and despite the escalating dangers in
US-Russian relations, in 2018 there continued to be no significant anti–Cold
War opposition anywhere in mainstream American political life—not in Congress,
the major political parties, think tanks, or on college campuses, only a very
few individual dissenters. Accordingly, the policy of détente with Russia, or
what Trump has repeatedly called “cooperation with Russia,” still found no
significant supporters in mainstream politics, even though it was the policy of
other Republican presidents, notably Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan. Trump has
tried, but he has been thwarted, repeatedly again in 2018.
Meanwhile,
the charge that Russia “attacked American democracy” and continues to do so
might best be applied to Russiagate promoters themselves. Their allegations
have undermined the America presidency as an institution and cast doubt on US
elections. By criminalizing both “contacts with Russia” and proposals for
“better relations,” and by threatening to weed out a capacious and nebulous
body of “disinformation” in US media, they have considerably diminished the
vaunted American marketplace of free speech and ideas. Also under growing
assault are traditional concepts of US political justice, which, at least based
on what is known in regard to Russia, have been abused in the cases of Gen.
Michael Flynn and, in Soviet-like fashion, of Maria Butina. At worst, this
young Russian woman seems to have been an undeclared (but candidly open)
advocate of “better relations” and an ardent proponent of her own country. For
this, something long pursued by young Americans in Russia as well, she was held
for months in solitary confinement until she confessed—that is, entered a plea.
And this in a nation that has long officially “promoted” democracy abroad.
Finally, while US political and media
elites remained obsessed with the fictions of Russiagate—which increasingly
appears to be Russiagate without Russia and instead mostly tax-fraud-gate and
sex-gate—post–Soviet Russia continued its remarkable rise as a diplomatic great
power, primarily, though not only, in the East, as documented
recently in three highly
informed publications far from and scarcely noted by the US political-media establishment. Meanwhile, Washington’s primary base of allies in world affairs, the European Union, continued its slide into self-inflicted, ever-deepening crisis.
informed publications far from and scarcely noted by the US political-media establishment. Meanwhile, Washington’s primary base of allies in world affairs, the European Union, continued its slide into self-inflicted, ever-deepening crisis.