Outlook
for the New Year — Paul Craig Roberts
The Outlook for the New Year
Dear Readers: The
conflict that Washington has initiated between the West and Russia/China is
reckless and irresponsible. Nuclear war could be the outcome. Indeed,
Washington has been preparing for nuclear war since the George W. Bush regime.
Washington has revised US war doctrine in order to initiate conflict with a first strike nuclear attack.
Washington has discarded the ABM treaty in order to build and deploy anti-ballistic missiles that are intended to prevent a retaliatory strike against the US. Washington is engaged in a buildup of military forces on Russia’s borders, and Washington is demonizing Russia’s government with false charges.
As the Bush/Obama regimes dismantled the safeguards put in place in order to minimize the risk of nuclear war, no protests came from the American public or the media. Washington’s European vassal states have also been silent.
Washington’s drive for hegemony has brought nuclear insanity to the world.
Moscow and Beijing understand that they are Washington’s targets. As Larchmonter explains, Russia and China are conjoining their economic and military capabilities in order to protect against Washington’s attack. Read what Larchmonter reports. Open the URL in my column below and run your cursor over the bottom of the page and click “page fit.” Choose 50% and readable text will fill your screen.
Washington’s demonization of Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad were preludes to military attacks on Iraq, Libya, and Syria. In view of these precedents, it is reasonable to regard Washington’s demonization of Vladimir Putin as a prelude to military action.
Russia is not Iraq, Libya, or Syria. Russian war doctrine states that Russia can use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear or conventional attack on Russia. For the world to sit silent while Washington’s arrogance provokes Armageddon telegraphs total political failure. Where are the voices in behalf of humanity?
The Outlook for the New
Year
By Paul Craig Roberts
Washington has shaped 2015 to be a year of
conflict. The conflict could be intense.
Washington is the cause of the conflict, which
has been brewing for some time. Russia was too weak to do anything about it
when the Clinton regime pushed NATO to Russia’s borders and illegally attacked
Yugoslavia, breaking the country into small easily controlled pieces. Russia
was also too weak to do anything about it when the George W. Bush regime
withdrew from the ABM treaty and undertook to locate anti-ballistic missile
bases on Russia’s borders. Washington lied to Moscow that the purpose of the
ABM bases is to protect Europe from non-existent Iranian nuclear ICBMs.
However, Moscow understood that the purpose of the ABM bases is to degrade
Russia’s nuclear deterrent, thereby enhancing Washington’s ability to coerce
Russia into agreements that compromise Russian sovereignty.
By summer 2008 Russian power had returned. On
Washington’s orders, the US and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian army
attacked the breakaway republic of South Ossetia during the early hours of
August 8, killing Russian peacekeepers and civilian population. Units of the
Russian military instantly responded and within a few hours the American
trained and equipped Georgian army was routed and defeated. Georgia was in
Russia’s hands again, where the province had resided during the 19th and 20th
centuries.
Putin should have hung Mikheil Saakashvili, the
American puppet installed as president of Georgia by the Washington-instigated
“Rose Revolution”, and reincorporated Georgia into the Russian Federation.
Instead,
in a strategic error, Russia withdrew its forces, leaving Washington’s puppet
regime in place to cause future trouble for Russia. Washington is pushing hard
to incorporate Georgia into NATO, thus adding more US military bases on
Russia’s border. However, at the time, Moscow thought Europe to be more
independent of Washington than it is and relied on good relations with Europe
to keep American bases out of Georgia.
Today the Russian government no longer has any
illusion that Europe is capable of an independent foreign policy. Russian
President Vladimir Putin has stated publicly that Russia has learned that
diplomacy with Europe is pointless, because European politicians represent
Washington’s interest, not Europe’s. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently
acknowledged that Europe’s Captive Nation status has made it clear to Russia
that Russian goodwill gestures are unable to produce diplomatic results.
With Moscow’s delusion shattered that diplomacy
with the West can produce peaceful solutions, reality has set in, reinforced by
the demonization of Vladimir Putin by Washington and its vassal states. Hillary
Clinton called Putin the new Hitler. While Washington incorporates former
constituent parts of the Russian and Soviet empires into its own empire and
bombs seven countries, Washington claims that Putin is militarily aggressive
and intends to reconstitute the Soviet empire. Washington arms the neo-nazi
regime Obama established in Ukraine, while erroneously claiming that Putin has
invaded and annexed Ukrainian provinces. All of these blatant lies are echoed
repeatedly by the Western presstitutes. Not even Hitler had such a compliant
media as Washington has.
Every diplomatic effort by Russia has been
blocked by Washington and has come to naught. So now Russia has been forced by
reality to update its military doctrine. The new doctrine approved on December
26 states that the US and NATO comprise a major military threat to the
existence of Russia as a sovereign independent country.
The Russian document cites Washington’s war
doctrine of pre-emptive nuclear attack, deployment of anti-ballistic missiles,
buildup of NATO forces, and intent to deploy weapons in space as clear
indications that Washington is preparing to attack Russia.
Washington is also conducting economic and
political warfare against Russia, attempting to destabilize the economy with
economic sanctions and attacks on the ruble. The Russian document acknowledges
that Russia faces Western threats of regime change achieved through “actions
aimed at violent change of the Russian constitutional order, destabilization of
the political and social environment, and disorganization of the functioning of
governmental bodies, crucial civilian and military facilities and informational
infrastructure of Russia.” Foreign financed NGOs and foreign owned Russian
media are tools in Washington’s hands for destabilizing Russia.
Washington’s reckless aggressive policy against
Russia has resurrected the nuclear arms race. Russia is developing two new ICBM
systems and in 2016 will deploy a weapons system designed to negate the US
anti-ballistic missile system. In short, the evil warmongers that rule in
Washington have set the world on the path to nuclear Armageddon.
The Russian and Chinese
governments both understand that their existence is threatened by Washington’s
hegemonic ambitions. Larchmonter reports that in order to defeat Washington’s
plans to marginalize both countries, the Russian and Chinese governments have
decided to unify their economies into one and to conjoin their military
commands. Henceforth, Russia and China move together on the economic and
military fronts. http://www.mediafire.
Russia_Double_Helix.docx
Russia_Double_Helix.docx
The unity of the Bear and the Dragon reduces the
crazed neoconservatives’ dream of “an American century” to dangerous nonsense.
As Larchmonter puts it, “The US and NATO would need Michael the Archangel to
defeat China-Russia, and from all signs Michael the Archangel is aligned with
the Bear and its Orthodox culture. There is no weapon, no strategy, no tactic
conceivable in the near future to damage either of these rising economies now
that they are ‘base pairs.’”
Larchmonter sees hope in the new geopolitics
created by the conjoining of Russia and China. I don’t dispute this, but if the
arrogant neoconservatives realize that their hegemonic policy has created a foe
over which Washington cannot prevail, they will push for a pre-emptive nuclear
strike before the Russian-Chinese unified command is fully operational. To
forestall a sneak attack, Russia and China should operate on full nuclear
alert.
The US economy–indeed the entire Western
orientated economy from Japan to Europe–is a house of cards. Since the economic
downturn began seven years ago, the entirety of Western economic policy has
been diverted to the support of a few over-sized banks, sovereign debt, and the
US dollar. Consequently, the economies themselves and the ability of
populations to cope have deteriorated.
The financial markets are based on manipulation,
not on fundamentals. The manipulation is untenable. With debt exploding, negative
real interest rates make no sense. With real consumer incomes, real consumer
credit, and real retail sales stagnant or falling, the stock market is a
bubble. With Russia, China, and other countries moving away from the use of the
dollar to settle international accounts, with Russia developing an alternative
to the SWIFT financial network, the BRICS developing alternatives to the IMF
and World Bank, and with other parts of the world developing their own credit
card and Internet systems, the US dollar, along with the Japanese and European
currencies that are being printed in order to support the dollar’s exchange
value, could experience a dramatic drop in exchange value, which would make the
import-dependent Western world dysfunctional.
In my opinion, it took the Russians and Chinese
too long to comprehend the evil that has control in Washington. Therefore, both
countries risk nuclear attack prior to the full operational capability of their
conjoined defense. As the Western economy is a house of cards, Russia and China
could collapse the Western economy before the neoconservatives can drive the
world to war. As Washington’s aggression against both countries is crystal
clear, Russia and China have every right to the following defensive measures.
As the US and EU are conducting economic warfare
against Russia, Russia could claim that by wrecking the Russian economy the
West has deprived Russia of the ability to repay loans to the European banks.
If this does not bring down the thinly capitalized EU banks, Russia can
announce that as NATO countries are now officially recognized by Russian war
doctrine as an enemy of the Russian state, Russia can no longer support NATO’s
aggression against Russia by selling natural gas to NATO members. If the
shutdown of much of European industry, rapidly rising rates of unemployment,
and bank failures do not result in the dissolution of NATO and thus the end of
the threat, the Chinese can act.
The Chinese hold a very large amount of
dollar-denominated financial assets. Just as the Federal Reserve’s agents, the
bullion banks, dump massive shorts onto the bullion futures markets during
periods of little activity in order to drive down the bullion price, China can
dump the equivalent in US Treasuries of years of Quantitative Easing in a few
minutes. If the Federal Reserve quickly creates dollars with which to purchase
the enormous quantity of Treasuries so that the financial house of cards does
not implode, the Chinese can then dump the dollars that they are paid for the
bonds in the currency market. Whereas the Federal Reserve can print dollars
with which to purchase the Treasuries, the Fed cannot print foreign currencies
with which to buy the dollars.
The dollar would collapse, and with it the power
of the Hegemon. The war would be over without a shot or missile fired.
In my view, Russia and China owe it to the world
to prevent the nuclear war intended by the neoconservatives simply by replying
in kind to Washington’s economic warfare. Russia and China hold all the cards.
Not Washington.
Russia and China should give no warning. They
should just act. Indeed, instead of step by step, Russia and China could
simultaneously use the counter-measures. With four US banks holding derivatives
totaling many times world GDP, the financial explosion would be the equivalent
to a nuclear one. The US and Europe would be finished, and the world would be
saved.
Larchmonter possibly is correct. 2015 could be a
very good year, but pre-emptive economic moves by Moscow and Beijing could be
required. Putin’s current plan seems to be to turn away from the West, ignore
the provocations, and mesh Russia’s strategic and economic interests with those
of Asia. This is a humane and reasonable course of action, but it leaves the
West untroubled and undistracted by its economic vulnerabilities. An untroubled
West remains a grave danger not only to Russia and China but also to Americans
and the entire world.
Dr. Paul Craig
Roberts was Assistant Secretary
of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street
Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and
Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet
columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books areThe Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic
Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.
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