Interview: U.S. Attempting To Pull Former Soviet Allies Into NATO
Voice of Russia
July 22, 2012
US attempting to pull former Soviet allies in NATO – interview
John Robles
Audio: Download
In the second part of an interview with the Voice of Russia, NATO expert Rick Rozoff outlines U.S. plans to bring former Soviet Republics and allies into the alliance’s sphere of influence and away from Russia, isolating Russia and China, and eventually surrounding them with NATO member countries. Mr. Rozoff also speaks of U.S. plans to stay in Afghanistan
This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Mr. Rick Rozoff – the manager of the Stop NATO website and mailing list, and a contributing writer to http://www.globalresearch.ca
An article appeared in one of the major newspapers – I’ve heard it referred to as the major newspaper – in Slovenia a couple of weeks ago that stated that the largest and worst mistake made by the government of Slovenia was joining NATO That what that has entailed is, far from defending the territory of NATO’s member states, that it is simply waging wars worldwide. That was followed very shortly thereafter, a couple of days ago, by the head of the Orthodox Church in Montenegro, the Metropolitan, who made a similar statement. He said the NATO should break up, that it is guilty of waging aggression upon people throughout the world.
So, I think what you are starting to see even in Southeast Europe and perhaps other nations that have been dragooned into NATO without first thoroughly explaining to the population what NATO membership entails. And what it entails in the case of countries like Slovenia and Montenegro is sending their sons and daughters off to some endless and useless war like that in Afghanistan. And what is happening in Pakistan is not dissimilar to that. It is a case where if a government, if a regime, accommodates NATO demands, they are violating the trust and undermining the wellbeing of their own nation and their own people, and this is in fact what is going on in Pakistan.
We heard a statement by Hillary Clinton before that supply route was opened.
Yes, I haven’t read the complete text by Hillary Clinton but I’ll bet anything the substance of it was that she regrets the unfortunate incident, or words to that effect, that occurred in Salala where 24 Pakistani military personnel were killed last November. But certainly something short of acknowledging that the U.S. had committed a crime. We have to recall that wasn’t too long of Hillary Clinton made a tour to Central Asia where she went to, I believe, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. And shortly thereafter, as your listeners know, Uzbekistan suspended its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Armenia.
So, it appears that the State Department has succeeded once again in pulling a country out of an organization of which Russia is a member and through which, that organization, the country, Uzbekistan, was allied with Russia, to separate it from Russia – and China – and to pull it into the US orbit. After Clinton left Paris on July 6 we know she went to Afghanistan where she proclaimed Afghanistan a major non-NATO ally of the United States, meaning they get preferential arrangements with weapons and so forth. But identifying Afghanistan then as a strategic American military ally indefinitely. So, that hardly suggests the U.S. intends to leave the area.
But I think even more significant than that was after having left Afghanistan and gone for a one-day conference on Afghanistan to Japan, that she then went to Mongolia, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. And if your listeners are as old as me, or older, they recall that all four of those countries were political allies of the Soviet Union during the Cold War period, Mongolia going back since almost to the formation of the Soviet Union, but in the case of Vietnam – unified Vietnam – and Laos from 1975, and Cambodia after the overthrow of the pro-Chinese Khmer Rouge in 1979.
So, if we need any further evidence that the U.S., far from having ended the Cold War, it is simply consummating its victory of 20-some years ago by moving into territory that is geographically close, in many cases, as in Laos and Vietnam, bordering China, and in the case of Mongolia bordering both Russia and China. And recruiting not only political and economic, but ultimately military, allies throughout the world, but more particularly now in Eurasia and in the backyard of Russia and China. Central Asia fits into that pattern. If the five former Soviet Central Asian republics are increasingly integrated into the U.S. sphere of influence, then this essentially isolates Russia and China in Eurasia.
Hillary Clinton said that the US had never planned to leave Afghanistan.
You know, the U.S.’s cards are truly not on the table when it comes to Afghanistan. I heard the same statement and it is remarkable because a few years ago, perhaps when she first became Secretary of State, about that time, she made what on the surface was one of the more candid statements I’ve heard by any U.S. official about the genesis of the crisis in Afghanistan. Acknowledging in so many words that it was the U.S. support for the so-called Mujahidin forces in, operating out of northwest Pakistan, from the late 70ss through to 1992, that was really the basis for all the disorganization and the conflict that has occurred in Afghanistan since then. She made that statement maybe three or four years ago.
But, she then mouthed the conventional American wisdom on the subject, saying our mistake – I’m paraphrasing her – our mistake was then to have pulled out and left the country to internecine fighting between the U.S.’s former Mujahidin allies, and in fact that occurred as we know after 1992 when they were rocketing parts of the capital of Kabul in rivalry amongst each other. And subsequent to that by four years the Taliban marches in and takes control of the country. So, what Clinton’s most recent statement at the donor’s conference, or the Conference on Afghanistan in Japan, seems to be simply a reiteration of that – we won’t make the same mistake. If we overthrow a government in Afghanistan and allow our clients to take over we will this time stay there and support them, is how I read that.
Moving on to Syria. A Syrian general, Major General Adnan Salo, he was the former Head of the Chemical Weapons Unit of the Syrian Army, he’s made public statements calling for NATO intervention, although he says limited military intervention is needed. He said that they need two air strikes on the presidential palace to get rid of Assad. Do you think this is going to happen?
I sincerely hope it doesn’t. And I similarly hope that this is simply bravado. But it could be, too, a trial balloon to see what the world’s reaction is to inflammatory statements of this sort. The idea that you bomb the presidential palace in the name of protecting civilians or humanitarian concerns and so forth shows you just how far down the road to barbarism the world has evolved over the past twenty years. It won’t be the first time that’s happened of course; efforts to bomb the presidential palace in Yugoslavia in 1999. And apparently anything is fair game at this point.
