On May 22, 1949 the first US Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, who avidly promoted Russophobia and anti-Russian hysteria in American society, stepped out the window, with the last words from his mouth being: “The Russians are coming“.
Today, almost three decades since the end of the Cold War, Russophobia remains a pivotal part of US foreign policy, actively pushed forward by supporters of the so-called war party in Washington.
It seems that America is unable to come to grips with the fact that the 90’s are over. Today, Russia is no longer lying in ruins, and the US is not nearly as powerful and hegemonic as it used to be after the fall of Berlin Wall. Washington just cannot adapt to the new realities in order to adjust its relations with Russia accordingly, effectively preventing itself from finding an ally in Moscow. Now Russia demonstrates that it is once again a great power, and in military and political terms – it is again a superpower, one that will not tolerate abuses and provocations the US regularly visits upon nations across the developing world.
Under the pretext of assisting Ukraine, the United States has been actively building up its military presence in Eastern Europe, deploying large numbers of troops in states accepted into NATO after 2000. In 2015, six new advanced command and control centers were established in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Estonia. American soldiers are now standing on Russia’s borders in the territory of the Baltic states. In Ukraine, Pentagon’s instructors have been providing military training to the militants of a radical Nazi organization know as Right Sector, which played a pivotal role in fueling the Ukrainian conflict and Kiev’s growing tensions with Russia.
Similarly in Syria, conflict is driven by America’s desire to redraw the map of the Middle East, toppling unwanted governments across the region, allowing the United States to establish control of the energy flow of hydrocarbons across and beyond the region. When Russia at the request of the only legitimate and recognized government in Syria became involved in the crisis, Washington was enraged. In the end, the US eventually resorted to striking the positions of Syrian government forces on September 17 near the town of Deir ez-Zorom. The US has since demonstrated its unwillingness to fulfill its obligations to separate terrorists and the so-called moderate opposition in Syria, and despite the subsequent announcement that the White House refuses to further cooperate with Russia in a bid to put an end to the Syrian conflict, the US has attempted to place the blame on Moscow for this failure.
In a bid to undermine Russia and its positions in the world, Washington has employed a wide range of tools, including the largest propaganda campaign in modern history. The Western corporate media has been hard at work spreading Russophobia by exploiting the so-called Panama Papers, the tragic incident with Malaysian Airline flight MH-17 that was downed over Donbass, the so-called “doping scandal” during the latest Olympics and the situation in Syria to spread lies.
The straight-out Russophobian policy was further compounded by Washington’s sanctions against Russia, starting with the so-called Magnitsky Act, and then was expanded further in connection with the events in Ukraine, forcing the EU and other players to assume the same aggressive posture toward Moscow. Tthen Washington took a step too far by virtually announcing war with Russia.
Over the years, various political analysts of various caliber have tried to talk reason into Washington, urging the White House to make adjustments in its approach regarding US-Russian relations, however, those arguments have fallen on deaf ears.
Finally, against a backdrop of continuously deteriorating Russian-American relations, and as a form of response toward Washington’s aggressive actions, Moscow has recently announced that it will suspend an agreement on the disposal of excessive amounts of plutonium. The New York Times would point out:
The treaty, on the disposal of plutonium, the material used in some nuclear weapons, was concluded in 2000 as one of the framework disarmament deals of the early post-Cold War period.
It required Russia and the United States to destroy military stockpiles of plutonium, a deal that represented another encouraging step away from nuclear doomsday and an insurance policy against the materials falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue states.
The deal has no bearing on the numbers of nuclear weapons deployed by Russia or the United States. Instead, it concerns 34 tons of plutonium in storage in each country that might go into a future arsenal, none of which has yet undergone verifiable disposal.
There’s an ever increasing number of cogent analysts and politicians demanding to know why the war party in the US is so adamantly opposed to any cooperation with Russia anywhere in the world when it is otherwise in US interests to do so. The demand to stop the demonization of Russia is getting louder by the day since it’s standing in the way of genuine and productive bilateral cooperation that could allow the international community to solve the most pressing global problems. Because otherwise, fascinated with their paranoid Russophobic ideas, the most adamant supporters of this party of war may repeat the sorry fate of James Forrestal, who finished his life and career with maniacal cries: “The Russians are coming“.
Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”