The Conspiracy Against Russia
Do We Really Want To Pick a Fight With Moscow?
by
Eric Margolis
Recently
by Eric Margolis: Training
the Big Guns on China
America’s most
vital national security concern is to maintain calm, productive
relations with Russia.
The reason
is obvious: Russia and the United States have thousands of nuclear
warheads targeted on each other. Many are ready to launch in minutes.
Compared to this threat, all of America’s other security issues
are minor.
Avoiding confrontations
with a major nuclear power is obvious. Yet the United States and
Russia are ignoring such common sense in their increasingly heated
war of words over Syria’s civil war.
The US and
its allies have been actively trying to overthrow the Assad regime
in Syria for over a year. They have been pouring arms, money, communications
gear and fighters into Syria to take advantage of a popular Sunni
uprising against the Alawite-dominated regime.
Washington’s
intervention in Syria is driven by its obsession to undermine Iran
by bringing down its most important Arab ally. Israel, which exerts
enormous political pressure over US Mideast policy in an election
year, sees destabilizing Syria as a triple win: a blow to its arch
enemy Iran; a blow to Syria’s efforts to regain its strategic Golan
Heights that Israel captured in 1967, then annexed; and wrecking
the key backer of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinians.
Last week,
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose presidential ambitions
are increasingly evident, accused Russia of selling MI-24 helicopter
gunships to Syria. Russia angrily denied the charge and asserted
that US anti-riot gear was being used against demonstrators across
the Mideast.
Washington
scourged Syria for attacking civilian targets. Talk about the pot
calling the kettle black. The same week, the US-installed president
of Afghanistan pleaded with Washington to stop its air strikes that
are killing many civilians. Pakistan’s feeble government begged
Washington to halt its drone attacks.
The angry Russians
could have added that the US has been buying rocket-armed Russian-made
MI-17 combat helicopters from them for use by Afghan government
forces, and using helicopter and AC-130 gunships in Afghanistan.
Or citing US sales of advanced Apache attack helicopters to Israel
that were used to attack civilian targets in Gaza.
Syria has long
been a close ally of Moscow. US attempts to overthrow the Assad
regime were sure to infuriate and alarm Moscow, which sees US plots
everywhere to undermine Russia. The Kremlin must find a way to answer
the US challenge or lose face.
Meanwhile,
another US-Russia fracas is brewing up in the Caucasus. Relations
between the two great powers are still raw due to the 2008 mini-war
between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia. Washington helped
overthrow the former Georgian government of Eduard Shevardnadze
in the so-called “Rose Revolution,” replacing him with
close US ally, Mikhail Shakashvilli.
The new Georgian
leader quickly turned his small Caucasian nation into a base for
US and Israel intelligence and military operations. In 2008, Shakashvilli
foolishly picked a fight with Russia. US warships were moved into
the Black Sea, setting of a war scare in the region before tempers
cooled.
Now, the US
is back playing the Great Game in the Caucasus while the Georgia
feud still simmers. This time it’s in oil-rich Azerbaijan, which
has become a key American and Israeli ally. The Baku regime just
bought $1.6 billion worth of Israeli arms.
Azerbaijan
and Armenia, a close Russian ally, have been warring for a decade
over disputed Nagorno-Karabakh. This obscure conflict is heating
up again as Russia and the US back opposite sides.
CIA has been
busy for some time trying to stir up Azeri separatists in northern
Iran. The US and Israel might use Azerbaijan as a base to attack
Iran.
As
if Russo-American relations were not bad enough, US Republicans
demand President Barack Obama “get tough” with Moscow.
Threats fly back and forth over the planned US missile defense shield
in Eastern Europe that enrages the Kremlin.
Provoking or
antagonizing Russia over areas that are of no vital US strategic
interest is dangerous and childish. Moscow
and Washington
should be seeking peaceful resolutions in Syria and the Caucasus,
not playing silly Cold War games.
Hopefully,
Presidents Obama and Vladimir Putin will sit down and talk some
grown-up sense when they meet at a summit this week in Mexico.
June
15, 2012
Eric
Margolis [send
him mail] is the author of War
at the Top of the World and the new book, American
Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the
West and the Muslim World. See his
website.
Copyright
© 2012 Eric Margolis