Voice of Russia
January 17, 2014
US puppet Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia to appease NATO
John Robles
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Mikhail Saakashvili
Photo: EPA
20-20 hindsight is something we all may have in retrospect but something that at times may be more difficult to attain when there are concerted efforts at obfuscation and twisting the truth. This was the case with the invasion by Georgia of the restive enclave of South Ossetia, an area populated almost entirely by ethnic Russians who held Russian citizenship. We now know, thanks to the untiring efforts of individuals such as eminent NATO expert Rick Rozoff, the entire invasion was a move to evict Russian peacekeepers and settle a “territorial dispute” so that Georgia could join NATO. Sadly for tie-eating Georgian leader Mihail Saakashvili, Russia defended its citizens and things did not work out as his US instructors had promised. In a long 2013 end of the year summary with the Voice of Russia, long time NATO expert and anti-NATO activist Rick Rozoff details those facts and sheds light on where the alliance is headed in the coming year and onward.
This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Rick Rozoff, the owner and manager of the Stop NATO website and international mailing list. This is part 4 of an interview in progress. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com
PART 1, PART 2, PART 3
Rozoff: Were the government of Syria to have been overthrown and Russia to lose its naval docking facility at least in Tartus, and if the government of Yanukovich is to be overthrown in one manner or another either through a violent street uprising, we saw it that the West has proven to be quite adept at pulling off in countries from Yugoslavia to Ukraine nine years ago, or through a rigged or extra-constitutional election that brings about a change of regime in the country, and the Russian Black Sea fleet were to be ordered out of the Crimea which is I’m sure what the US is ordering its allies and the Ukraine to do, or to consider. Then you would have seen the eviction of Russia not only from the Mediterranean but, except for a narrow strip of Russian territory, out of the Black Sea.
And this is pretty heavy-duty geopolitics, and I think in that sense, too, the two are not unrelated.The Russian Black Sea Fleet vessels that have come to Syria recently have left their base in the Crimea, for the most part. By the way, this is a precondition for Ukraine joining NATO rather.
Robles: Evicting the Black Sea Fleet is a precondition?
Rozoff: Well not specifically, but inevitably, and I’ll need to describe how. When NATO re-asserted in 2009, if I’m correct, that Georgia and Ukraine were going to join NATO, that they have been invited to join as full members of NATO, it was with the proviso that two standard NATO conditions be met. And those two conditions are: no foreign military forces on the soil of the country that joins NATO, which is to say no non-NATO military forces on the soil. That would be the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the Crimea exactly in the case of Ukraine. It would have been at that time Russian – actually it was 2008, it was 2008 because it was several months before the five-day war that the Saakashvili regime instigated in the South Caucasus.
The second condition is no unresolved territorial disputes. I read that immediately at the NATO summit at the beginning of 2008.
Robles: No unresolved territorial disputes?
Rozoff: Such as for example Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia but, arguably, Crimea in Ukraine. You know, at the point where the West could have portrayed or can now say that a largely ethnic Russian constituency in Crimea is interfering with the Westernization or the European integration of Ukraine, then were a government like that of Yushchenko to call in Western support, including military support into the Crimea, that would not be beyond the realm of possibilities. That’s number one.
So, what we have here are two things. That I believe the war in the Caucasus in August of 2008 was the inevitable result of what NATO offered to Georgia and Ukraine earlier in the year, which was – once you get rid of foreign military forces, even peace-keepers on your territory, and once you integrate restive areas and put them under your thumb, then you can join NATO. This was all but an invitation for Mikhail Saakashvili to invade South Ossetia and following that, had he been successful, Abkhazia. And it was also an invitation for Yanukovych to clamp down on political opponents in Eastern Ukraine.
Robles: That’s the first time I’ve heard that one. Why didn’t we talk about that before? You said it was a condition for them to do that. So, basically they invaded South Ossetia and killed all the Russian citizens there to join NATO?
Rozoff: That is my firm contention to this day, that it was known, it was explicitly stated at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania in 2008 that Georgia and Ukraine were to join NATO as full members. As a matter of fact, there were special commissions set up after the war. After the war in August of 2008 the US set up formal commissions with Ukraine and Georgia and NATO set up something comparable to that, a special program for both countries for their integration.
But it is common knowledge, and it was reiterated at the Bucharest summit, that the two impediments for a nation joining NATO were unresolved territorial disputes within their national boundaries and the presence of non-NATO military forces in the country. Russia in this case was meant vis-à-vis Georgia and Ukraine. And that’s why I’m stating it.
In fact, the Commonwealth of Independent States-mandated peace-keeping forces – peace-keeping forces mandated by the CIS (of which Georgia was a member at that time, before the war, let’s recall) – and that they were mandated to be in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. To NATO, it represented an impediment to the full incorporation of Georgia as a full NATO member. Mr. Saakashvili understood that and he acted accordingly. That’s my conviction.
But this applies equally, I would argue,or almost equally to Ukraine because the presence of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine would be the biggest impediment, absolutely an impediment. It would be a sine qua non of NATO membership to evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet from the Crimea. Mr. Yushchenko understood that perfectly in 2008 too.
But now that with the Eastern Partnership, because this is what the association agreement with the European Union meant, it is being done under the auspices of a program created also in 2008 – exactly the same year, we’re talking about the Bucharest summit - on the initiative of Poland and Sweden to invite all of the non-Russian, all the former Soviet republics in Europe and the Caucasus, except for Russia (meaning Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) into the Eastern Partnership to integrate them into the European Union. Which would mean what? That would mean the effective death of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
How else can that be interpreted? If you’re telling every single non-Central Asian [former] Soviet republic except Russia that they could be incorporated into the European Union, which is basically co-terminus with NATO. That’s something like 21 out of 28 members of the European Union are members of NATO and the others are partners.
Robles: I don’t think that would ever happen, because all the people have to do is sit down and look at the numbers, like they did in Ukraine and we talked about this before. $100billion in income over 7 years if we join the Customs Union and $1billion in income over 7 years if we join the EU. Plus they would have to divert all their spending on social programs and everything else into upgrading their military, and becoming NATO compatible.
I don’t think that would ever happen. But, again, NATO was formed and founded to fight the Soviet Union and destroy the Soviet Union, OK or defend against the Soviet Union, however you want to put it. And it seems to me they have just continued along that same road despite the fact that the Soviet Union no longer exists. Would you agree with that?
Rozoff: On the second score I agree. On the first score I think we have to be careful. By the way, a mistake earlier , it is 27 members I believe of the European Union, of which 21 are members in NATO, but the other six are all NATO partners in the Partnership for Peace program [or soon will be in regard to Cyprus] . So, it’s almost sleight of hand – NATO is EU, EU is NATO, or rather the EU is NATO minus the US and Canada.
Robles: I think people in Serbia know that. I think now people in Ukraine are beginning to realize that. I think people in Poland know that. I think most Russians are now waking up and realizing that but… Go ahead Rick.
Rozoff: However, as we talked about, if at the Bucharest summit of NATO in 2008 it was told to the US puppet regime in Kiev – and that’s all the Yushchenko government was – you know, he was being led by the nose by his wife Kathy from Chicago. And if anyone doesn’t believe that, I suggest they look into the matter a little more closely. But that all the government of Yushchenko or the one that would replace Yanukovych now if some kind of a revived Orange Revolution were to occur would have to do is to provoke some political crisis in the Crimea.
We know, for example, there have been demonstrations by Crimeans, local residents, against the US-NATO military exercises, the Sea Breeze exercises that we talked about a few minutes ago. All they would have to do is have a some kind of provocation staged; the US uses that as an excuse to protect Ukraine against Russian proxy subversion or something of this sort, and then you have a real crisis on your hands. So, let’s not dismiss that possibility.
On the first part of the question you asked me – is NATO an outdated organization? That’s one argument by opponents of NATO that I don’t fully share. What it tends to suggest is that NATO was a perfectly legitimate organization at its inception and throughout the Cold War, but now we don’t need it. That is not at all what NATO has been transformed into in the post-Cold War period.
The US and its major allies in NATO – and this is not strictly a US thing – we have to understand that two of the world’s largest arms exporters right now are Germany, which I believe is number three (NATO has worked very well for German death merchants), another major international arms exporter is Sweden. Sweden, which has joined the international NATO Response Force, has taken good care of its politicians and certainly of its merchants of death as a result of affiliation with NATO. So, this is not simply a matter of an outdated organization to continue on its own momentum with no purpose.
The cliché that’s been used for the last 15 years as “in search of a mission” or “redefining itself” or something of this sort – no, the US instead has seen that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc as a whole – you know, the Comecon economic union and the Warsaw Pact military alliance – as one official stated several years ago that basically the US moved the Berlin Wall to the Russian border.
Notwithstanding the assurances by the George H.W Bush administration to the Mikhail Gorbachev government that NATO would not move one inch eastward, we can see what is in fact…
Robles: Well, they made that promise they just refused to put it on paper.
Rozoff: I don’t want to belabor this point. And whatever it was, it is no longer such after 1991, and actually earlier than that.
In 1991 the Warsaw Pact, which had already been moribund for years, formally dissolved itself and then, in the same year, in 1991 the Soviet Union fragmented into 15 republics or nations.
So, that the whatever alleged justification that NATO might ever have had, it disappeared, it dissolved immediately. And at that point, if NATO was a defensive organization (I don’t believe it was, but for those who claim it was at any point in its history), then it of necessity had to dissolve itself too at that point. Yes or no?
Robles: What is NATO then? I mean, it wasn’t a defensive organization to begin with, what exactly was it then?
Rozoff: At the moment Berlin fell in 1945 the war waged by the US, France and Britain and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany became a conflict between the US, Britain and France against the Soviet Union. Everybody knows that.
One war had not ended before the next one – the Cold War – began. And NATO was necessary to sustain permanent US military presence in Europe, consolidate friendly (one might argue compliant) governments in the major European countries, that would be beholden to the US military and would in fact be integrated politically and militarily with the United States.
However, at that time at least the name of the organization made some sense and had some legitimacy when we speak about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Of the original 12 members I believe all but Italy were on or near the Atlantic Ocean. We are now looking at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization that from 1999 to 2009, that is in one decade, expanded from 16 countries to 28. That is a 40% increase.
Robles: Now North Atlantic is into eastern Africa, I believe.
Rozoff: It is all over the world. And the 12 new members are all in Eastern and Central Europe, from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea to the Adriatic Sea. And none of them are anywhere near the Atlantic Ocean.
So, if it was a defensive organization to defend democracies and the Euro-Atlantic region, then why is it up to 28 members, the majority of whom now are not on the Atlantic Ocean.
That’s, I think, a simple refutation of that claim. I mean, the fact that three former Soviet republics – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – were brought in as full NATO members in 2004 and in the NATO summit in Turkey seven new nations were brought in at one time – that is unprecedented, right? – except for the original inception.
Robles: I’d like to say one thing. Russia, does that pose a threat to the West. I’m sorry, people. Russia is not threatening America. Russia is not and has never threatened Europe. Russia is not threatening Scandinavia…
Rozoff: No, it is a bogeyman. I mean, you’ve talked about before phantom enemies. You know, they concoct a man of straw, an imaginary threat and then they… as it was evidenced perhaps in the last year, maybe a little longer than that, a major military official, I believe a Defense Ministry official in Sweden had said: “If Russia invades Sweden, without NATO support we’d be overrun in days.” Now, come on!
Robles: Yes, we wouldn’t last eight hours I think he said.
Rozoff: Okay, that is even worse. In what geopolitical and what psychological universe does one reside to be able to frame scenarios like that? But it is clear that this is evoking images, the absolute, the most horrifying images of the Cold War. You know, Russians are coming. And if: “we – Sweden – do not join NATO immediately, by the time you get home from work there are going to be Russian troops in Stockholm.”
I mean, this is the kind of lunacy that goes on. But because the media, as well as the political establishment in Western countries are so subservient, first of all, to the US and, second of all, to the Western elites as a whole… somebody like that should have been drummed out of his position immediately after making a statement like that. That is alarmism, that is fear-mongering.
Robles: Who is this serving? It is serving the military industrial complex, isn’t it?
Rozoff: Including that in Sweden, including Sweden’s ability to sell arms around the world, based on its affiliation with NATO, because of the interoperability of weaponry.
There is something else that is significant and only a handful of people in Sweden, evidently, fully I think taken cognizance of this. About two or three years ago the Swedish Army revamped itself. It had been a territorial defense army, a citizen army, and it was meant for one purpose only – in the very, very unlikely, if not impossible, case of foreign military forces assaulting Sweden, the Swedish armed forces were to defend Sweden, period.
That was the end of part 4 of an interview with Rick Rozoff – the owner and manager of the stop NATO website and international mailing list. You can find the remaining parts of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com
PART 1, PART 2, PART 3
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_01_17/US-puppet-Sakashvili-invaded-South-Ossetia-to-appease-NATO-4441/