by Rodrigue Tremblay
The Code for Global Ethics, March 4, 2014
March 7, 2014
“Every state is condemned to follow a policy dictated by its geography.” — Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
[NATO’s goal is] “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” — Lord Ismay, first NATO Secretary-General
“Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.” — James Madison (1751-1836), fourth American President
The hazards associated with American foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 should appear obvious to all, because it is precisely this policy that has caused the crisis in Ukraine with all its negative consequences for the coming months and years.
President Barack Obama was candid in admitting it on Monday March 3, 2014, when he said that “we are indicating to the Russians [that] if in fact they continue on the current trajectory they’re on, then we are examining a whole series of steps — economic, diplomatic— that will isolate Russia.”
Well, it is precisely this desire to expand NATO and to isolate Russia by incorporating all the countries bordering Russia into NATO, i.e. a strategy of geopolitical and military encirclement of Russia, which has provoked that country when it felt threatened in its national security.
This is easy to understand.
For example, what would the United States do if a hypothetical Russian Empire were to incorporate Mexico or Canada into a military alliance? To ask the question is to answer it. Why is it so difficult to understand that the best way to start a war is to threaten a country’s vital interests?
The truth is that NATO should have been disbanded after the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, and especially after the Warsaw Pact was itself dismantled. Europe should have then moved to build an expanded Europe of nations, large, democratic and peaceful, within a framework of economic and political cooperation and peace. But no! The United States wanted to take advantage of the situation and demanded that everything fell into the military-financial U.S. empire.
That is the source of many problems.
In my book “The New American Empire”, originally published in 2003, just before the onset of the Iraq war, I pointed out the dangers of the American global imperial ambition and explained the reasons. The Middle East was the first to suffer under this global policy of interventionism. And now, Europe as a whole, most unfortunately, may have to pay the price for this unbridled American hubris, under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, although that policy goes back to George H. Bush and Bill Clinton.
This is why I believe President Obama and his neocon advisers do not think beyond their nose, as was the case for the not-too-bright George W. Bush, when they adopted such a global imperialist ideology.
In 2008, it just happened that I published an article which has been translated into several languages, and in which I advanced the idea that Europe had a vital interest in disbanding that relic of another age that is NATO. Indeed, we must blame European leaders not to have understood that the fundamental interest of Europe was not to blend into the American Empire but rather to build an independent and united Europe. Because that reality has not been well understood, Europe is now running the risk of falling prey to a new Cold War with divisive and ruinous conflicts, while the United States will try to pull their chestnuts out of the fire, with the U.K as its convenient ally from within.
It may be not too late for European leaders to rectify the situation. This would, however, require wisdom and the courage to tell the American neocons who have designed American foreign policy for a quarter of a century that they are not masters of the world and that the European Union has no intention to pursue an aggressive policy of military encirclement Russia. That’s it.
And rather, on the contrary, Russia should be invited to join an expanded Europe of nations, large, democratic and peaceful within a framework of economic cooperation and peace.
What would be required of them, however, is a minimum of vision, of insight and a spirit of independence, which currently seems to be lacking badly in many current European governments.
Carelessness and the current European abdication in letting Washington decide European foreign policy may serve the interests of the American empire, but this could lead Europe to disaster.
N.B.: Now things are getting muddier. Details of a leaked phone call between EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign affairs minister Urmas Paet suggest that the US-backed opposition was responsible for hiring snipers who gunned down protesters in Kiev and not the deposed government of Viktor Yanukovich, as the media widely claimed.
Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is an economist and author, whose last two books are:
The Code for Global Ethics, Prometheus Books, 2010; and
The New American Empire, Infinity Publishing, 2003.
N.B. : To read Dr. Tremblay’s blog, please visit:
http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.htm
The author can be reach at:
rodrigue.tremblay1@gmail.com.
see
Look in the Mirror, US, EU–Don’t Blame President Putin by Felicity Arbuthnot
Washington’s Hysteria Towards Russia Hides US Regime Change by Finian Cunningham
US Provokes Russia, Acts Surprised to Get a Nasty Reaction by William Boardman
Boxing In The Bear by Bruce Gagnon
from the archives:
Dandelion Salad 
Real, extremely publicized investigations into Urmas Paet’s earthquake phone allegation, and where the Ukraine’s 12-70 $billions missing ended up, would go a long way toward beginning the end of violent coups and tax havens.
That would be a giant step Jerry, and we should call for it.
My only caveat is that there is this perpetual cloud of of manufactured confusion and misdirection that surrounds and camouflages every official action.
The tactic is to quickly move on and draw the public’s attention to some other issue elsewhere; or even better, to keep multiple anxieties on the boil, so that the threat of possible chaos and constant distraction reigns supreme. Then the rulers can step in with spectacular salvationist “solutions.”
The only difference is, right now, I suspect that the forked tongue of “authority” is so greedily self-obsessed, it is has begun to talk and swallow and even choke on its own tail all at once…nothing lasts forever ~ except eternity that is!
I’d just love to see the real grass-roots USA-ers reclaim their own dignified governance, and ditch these neo-con clowns with their fake economics.
Not a peep about investigations into possible violent coup or tax havens being where the billions are. One can only guess that coups are tax havens are both sacred. Especially tax havens, where the uber-wealthy from every region stash it. If Yanukovych’s stash is broadcasted everywhere as in a tax haven, then the rest of the tax evaders get bad, bad publicity – everywhere. We can’t have that David.
Blatant criminality is the law, when gangsters “rule.”
This may be of interest to you http://treasureislands.org/the-finance-curse-my-new-book/
Pepe Escobar was talking about the Crimea with Ryan Dawson recently, and alluded to the amoral cynicism of the City of London, that is awash with Russian “profits.” So these people play any political game so long as it produces heaps of digital zeros.
In fact that is quite an accurate analogy I think, because this is precisely what accrues, more and more of less and less ~ imaginary empty bubbles. Its almost as though every time we breathe, something is robbing us of the oxygen of existence!
Thanks, David.
Here’s the interview with Pepe Escobar (last video on the post; scroll down): https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/western-media-is-a-propaganda-arm-of-the-state-by-finian-cunningham/
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It is precisely the purpose of the US to create a new Cold War. This is necessary to keep the Russians out, the US in, and Germany down. The threat is that Germany will ally with Russia, leading EU to exclude America from Europe, creating DeGaulle’s ‘one Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals.’ This would in effect create a Eurasian bloc, since China is on the other end of it.
The US is sponsoring Japan’s remilitarization against China at the other end of Eurasia, recreating the world war 2 ideology of Japan. The use of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine tends to legitimate the world war 2 ideology of the Germans, drawing Germany to the right. The US is trying for Cold War at both ends of Eurasia, creating the chaos needed to impose Freedom&Democracy in Ukraine. (Svoboda means ‘Freedom” in English.) This is an extremely dangerous policy in the nuclear age.
As for the EU and the euro, the US was against them from the word go. Afraid of competition? As for Russia…Obama is no match for Putin. An old culture/country used to being attacked and experienced at defending itself. Being a ‘super power’ doesn’t mean a thing when the country lacks integrity and always preaching from the pulpit of hypocrisy. You set an example by moral and ethical conduct, not by how many drones can kill women and children and leaving countries in rubble.
Well said…
I’m incredulous at the stupidity!
The very idea of “isolating” Russia reveals the reductionist intellectual bankruptcy of this US “policy.” These fatuous conceits are but the noxious excreta of cultural ignorami.
Mind you as Dr Tremblay makes clear, “Europe” has fallen far short of its prospective capabilities, for why? because the main ambition of the neo-conned US has been to subjugate the EU by demolishing the viability of the Eurozone.
Life (for some) is long, but memory is short ~ and severely short-changed.