Voice of Russia
August 5, 2013
NATO will make sure Russia is an enemy – Rick Rozoff
Recorded on July 31, 2013
Audio
Upcoming NATO military exercises envisage an attack on Poland and an Article 5 NATO intervention against a foreign power. To the dismay of Russia, these exercises continue the outdated Cold War thinking of the West, which refuses to let go of such stereotypes and continues to eschew peace and understanding between the nations. NATO and the West have an agenda, and that agenda is complete and total military domination of the world. Operation Steadfast Jazz 2013 underlines the real intentions of the alliance and further serves to destabilize the world in a region where countries should be working for peace. It is clear that the West is being controlled by the military-industrial complex and that peace is not something they envision. NATO, as an organization, should have been disbanded after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. But they have done quite the opposite and have continued with a global expansion that has made NATO the single-largest military power in the history of the world.
This is John Robles. I’m speaking to Mr. Rick Rozoff, the owner and manager of the Stop NATO website and international mailing list.
Robles: Rick, how are you this evening for you and morning for me. How are you doing?
Rozoff: I’m doing well, John. I hope you are also.
Robles: Thanks. Very busy lately. We have a lot of stuff going on. NATO is up and jumping almost everywhere we look, making threats to Russia, getting very active in the Baltics. What’s going on, Rick?
Rozoff: You’ve begun the discussion well, I think, that’s a string we can pull to bring in the entire fabric. What’s happening indeed, most recently a statement occurred in YLE News in Finland, a news story rather, quoting a Pentagon official, a fairly high-ranking one, one James Townsend, a civilian, he’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy. I think the fact that the Pentagon views Europe and NATO as one entity essentially is revealing, as the title suggests.
Townsend, the Pentagon official, was basically telling Russia it’s none of their business if the U.S. drags Finland into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and that if Russia is going to say something about it, the U.S. can demonstrate that it, too, has a say in the matter or words to that effect. In other words, the U.S. can back down Russia or bluff or threaten it. I mean it really was a threat, and it had a very intimidating quality to his comments.
We have talked, I believe, on your program not too long ago, John, about the fact that the military in Sweden, Sweden’s top military commander, not too long ago, a couple or three months ago, came up with an absolutely absurd but dangerous scenario stating that Sweden, hitherto of course a neutral country, might have to join NATO because if Russia attacked it, the Swedish armed forces couldn’t withstand it for five minutes. And we are seeing similar scenarios play out throughout Scandinavia and in the Baltic region.
Basically, this is a concentrated and concerted effort by the United States and its allies to build up a Nordic-Baltic military force. And you had an article yourself in just the last two or three days, the NATO so-called phantom menace in relation to military activity in Norway.
Of course, Norway has a short border with Russia. Finland has a lengthy border with Russia. And what we are seeing just in the last few days the fact that the Army Corp of Engineers issued a contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root to began the construction of a military facility in Romania, where U.S. interceptor missiles are going to be stationed. That’s right across the Black Sea from Russia. That currently, or very shortly, the U.S. is leading air exercises, including paratroop exercises, in Bulgaria.
The U.S. is increasingly expanding and consolidating its military influence in Georgia, which borders Russia; the same as Azerbaijan. But what we are seeing most of right now…another dangerous statement, one you alluded to I believe in your article, is the fact that a deputy defense minister in Russia pointed out the fact that the upcoming military exercise that will be conducted by the United States and NATO, this year’s iteration of what’s called Steadfast Jazz, Steadfast Jazz 2013, which is going to occur in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, according to the Russian deputy defense minister statement under an Article 5 scenario: Article 5 is, of course, NATO’s Washington Treaty, the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 treaty, it is that part of the NATO founding document that states that all NATO members are obligated to militarily defend another one threatened.
So as you clearly indicated in your article, there is no conceivable adversary that fits into that scenario except for Russia. There would be some potential threat to Poland and to the Baltic states, clearly even with the overly imaginative capabilities of NATO and U.S. officials to attribute military capacities to nations like Iran and North Korea, which they certainly do not have and could not develop.
In the case of the Baltic Sea and Russia’s northwest border, that would be even beyond absurd, it would be an absolutely ludicrous contention, so that clearly Russia is the portrayed aggressor in this Article 5 scenario. And that goes quite in keeping with the statement by the military chief of Sweden we just talked about, the statement by the Pentagon official about Finland joining NATO.
We have to recall that Finland maintained its neutrality during the Cold War, the half century or more of the Cold War, as did Sweden, only to have both countries right now standing on the doorstep of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, where, when they join, they become essentially military outposts for the Pentagon.
Robles: Rick, we talked about that these kind of training exercises by NATO, The Defense Ministry said .they were bewildered by these exercises, again we are talking about Steadfast Jazz 2013, that you’ve mentioned I wrote about and you’ve commented about yourself, I believe it was Anatoly Antonov, deputy defense minister of the Russian Federation.
Nobody can understand, and they are baffled by this, why do they continue demonizing Russia, when Russia has done nothing and has no intention and no geopolitical reasoning to engage in any aggression against Poland or these countries. Why do you think, if we can voice it, why are they doing this?
Rozoff: There are two points. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which again I have to give you credit, you mentioned in your article, is the largest – in terms of membership, in terms of its military capability – military alliance or bloc in history, it’s one that is growing daily through partnerships and eventually will expand yet further with full members. But it is one which came into existence in 1949 under the guise of protecting Europe from the “Soviet menace,” so that the Russian Federation being the successor state to the Soviet Union, I suppose it is incumbent on NATO to keep it around as a boogieman to justify military expansion of the United States into Eastern Europe, from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and eventually if they have their way into the Caspian Sea.
So, the facts speak for themselves. It is painfully evident to me that the U.S. is using an implied if not overtly stated Russian threat as a justification for its military expansion throughout Eastern Europe.
Robles: If there’s no enemy then why do this?
Rozoff: They will make sure that Russia is an enemy. They will do it by baiting it, by intimidating it, by encircling it militarily.
There was an article, incidentally, today, by way of parallel, in Stars and Stripes, the armed forces publication in the United States, that quite openly said, you know with a degree of candor you’ll find in a military which you won’t find in a civilian one, that the U.S. is moving sophisticated warplanes to the nations where they have never divulged they are going to be deployed before, including Singapore, Philippines and Australia, in an effort to “surround China.” Those are the exact words in the article of yesterday’s Stars and Stripes.
And they mentioned that what is going now with the Asia-Pacific pivot in surrounding China militarily is comparable to what the U.S. did during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, but I would say, and the facts incontestably back this up, that the United States has done in the post-Cold War, post-Soviet period is surrounding the Russian Federation far more than they ever succeeded in doing during the Cold War.
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