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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='font-size:22.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Nato's action plan in Ukraine is right out of Dr Strangelove <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/johnpilger"><span style='color:blue'>John Pilger</span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>From China to Ukraine, the US is pursuing its longstanding ambition to dominate the Eurasian landmass <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/17/nato-ukraine-dr-strangelove-china-us#img-1"><span style='color:blue'><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:blue'><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/17/nato-ukraine-dr-strangelove-china-us#img-1"><span style='color:blue;text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=700 height=420 id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image001.jpg@01D06628.989D8750" alt="Description: Men wearing military fatigues in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk"></span><span style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>'What is certain is that Barack Obama’s rapacious coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.' Photograph: Anatoliy Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Thursday 17 April 2014 11.41 EDT Last modified on Saturday 4 October 2014 10.40 EDT <o:p></o:p></span></p><ul type=disc><li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><a href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgu.com%2Fp%2F3zg5p%2Fsfb&ref=responsive" target="_blank" title=Facebook><span style='color:blue'>Share on Facebook </span></a><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Nato%27s+action+plan+in+Ukraine+is+right+out+of+Dr+Strangelove+%7C+John+Pilger&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgu.com%2Fp%2F3zg5p%2Fstw" target="_blank" title=Twitter><span style='color:blue'>Share on Twitter </span></a><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><a href="mailto:?subject=Nato%27s%20action%20plan%20in%20Ukraine%20is%20right%20out%20of%20Dr%20Strangelove%20%7C%20John%20Pilger&body=http%3A%2F%2Fgu.com%2Fp%2F3zg5p%2Fsbl" target="_blank" title=Email><span style='color:blue'>Share via Email </span></a><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&title=Nato%27s+action+plan+in+Ukraine+is+right+out+of+Dr+Strangelove+%7C+John+Pilger&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgu.com%2Fp%2F3zg5p" target="_blank" title=LinkedIn><span style='color:blue'>Share on LinkedIn </span></a><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><a href="https://plus.google.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgu.com%2Fp%2F3zg5p%2Fsgp&hl=en-GB&wwc=1" target="_blank" title="Google plus"><span style='color:blue'>Share on Google+ </span></a><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Shares<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>7,592<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/17/nato-ukraine-dr-strangelove-china-us#comments"><span style='color:blue'><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><u><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:blue'><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/17/nato-ukraine-dr-strangelove-china-us#comments"><span style='color:blue'>Comments</span><span style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></u></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><u><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:blue'><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/17/nato-ukraine-dr-strangelove-china-us#comments"><span style='color:blue'>1,230 </span></a></span></u><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>I watched <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove_or:_How_I_Learned_to_Stop_Worrying_and_Love_the_Bomb" title=""><span style='color:blue'>Dr Strangelove</span></a> the other day. I have seen it perhaps a dozen times; it makes sense of senseless news. When Major TJ "King" Kong goes "toe to toe with the Rooskies" and flies his rogue B52 nuclear bomber to a target in Russia, it's left to General "Buck" Turgidson to reassure the president. Strike first, says the general, and "you got no more than 10-20 million killed, tops". President Merkin Muffley: "I will not go down in history as the greatest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler." General Turgidson: "Perhaps it might be better, Mr President, if you were more concerned with the American people than with your image in the history books."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The genius of Stanley Kubrick's film is that it accurately represents the cold war's lunacy and dangers. Most of the characters are based on real people and real maniacs. There is no equivalent to Strangelove today because popular culture is directed almost entirely at our interior lives, as if identity is the moral zeitgeist and true satire is redundant, yet the dangers are the same. The nuclear clock has remained at five minutes to midnight; the same false flags are hoisted above the same targets by the same "invisible government", as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays" title=""><span style='color:blue'>Edward Bernays</span></a>, the inventor of public relations, described modern propaganda.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In 1964, the year <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/dr-strangelove"><span style='color:blue'>Dr Strangelove</span></a> was made, "the missile gap" was the false flag. To build more and bigger nuclear weapons and pursue an undeclared policy of domination, President John F Kennedy approved the CIA's propaganda that the Soviet Union was well ahead of the US in the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles. This filled front pages as the "Russian threat". In fact, the Americans were so far ahead in production of the missiles, the Russians never approached them. The cold war was based largely on this lie.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><img border=0 width=220 height=132 id="Picture_x0020_2" src="cid:image002.jpg@01D06628.989D8750" alt="Description: Strategic nuclear missiles Cold War National Museum of the US Air Force"></span><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Strategic nuclear missiles from the cold war. Photograph: Alamy <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/nato" title=""><span style='color:blue'>Nato</span></a> enlargement project. Reneging on a US promise to the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-did-the-west-break-its-promise-to-moscow-a-663315.html" title=""><span style='color:blue'>Nato would not expand "one inch to the east"</span></a>, Nato has all but taken over eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato's military build-up is the most extensive since the second world war.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Advertisement<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In February, the US mounted one of its proxy "colour" coups against the elected government of Ukraine; the shock troops were fascists. For the first time since 1945, a pro-Nazi, openly antisemitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism on the border of Russia. Some 30 million Russians died in the invasion of their country by Hitler's Nazis, who were supported by the infamous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army" title=""><span style='color:blue'>Ukrainian Insurgent Army</span></a> (the UPA) which was responsible for numerous Jewish and Polish massacres. The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, of which the UPA was the military wing, inspires today's Svoboda party.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Since <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/02/not-too-late-for-ukraine-nato-should-back-off" title=""><span style='color:blue'>Washington's putsch in Kiev</span></a> – and Moscow's inevitable response in Russian Crimea to protect its Black Sea fleet – the provocation and isolation of Russia have been inverted in the news to the "Russian threat". This is fossilised propaganda. The US air force general who runs Nato forces in Europe – <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_M._Breedlove" title=""><span style='color:blue'>General Philip Breedlove</span></a>, no less – claimed more than two weeks ago to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/23/russian-troops-may-invade-ukraine-white-house" title=""><span style='color:blue'>have pictures showing 40,000 Russian troops</span></a> "massing" on the border with Ukraine. So did <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-schwarz/colin-powell-wmd-iraq-war_b_2624620.html" title=""><span style='color:blue'>Colin Powell claim to have pictures proving there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq</span></a>. What is certain is that Barack Obama's rapacious, reckless coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Following a 13-year rampage that began in stricken Afghanistan well after Osama bin Laden had fled, then destroyed Iraq beneath a false flag, invented a "nuclear rogue" in Iran, dispatched Libya to a Hobbesian anarchy and backed jihadists in Syria, the US finally has a new cold war to supplement its worldwide campaign of murder and terror by drone.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>A Nato membership action plan – straight from the war room of Dr Strangelove – is General Breedlove's gift to the new dictatorship in Ukraine. "<a href="http://www.eur.army.mil/RapidTrident/" title=""><span style='color:blue'>Rapid Trident</span></a>" will put US troops on Ukraine's Russian border and "<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/01/nato-ministers-meet-over-ukraine" title=""><span style='color:blue'>Sea Breeze</span></a>" will put US warships within sight of Russian ports. At the same time, Nato war games in eastern Europe are designed to intimidate Russia. Imagine the response if this madness was reversed and happened on the US's borders. Cue General Turgidson.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Advertisement<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>And there is China. On 23 April, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/16/us-usa-asia-obama-idUSBREA3F1C620140416" title=""><span style='color:blue'>Obama will begin a tour of Asia</span></a> to promote his "pivot" to China. The aim is to convince his "allies" in the region, principally Japan, to rearm and prepare for the possibility of war with China. By 2020, almost two-thirds of all US naval forces in the world will be transferred to the Asia-Pacific area. This is the greatest military concentration in that vast region since the second world war.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In an arc extending from Australia to Japan, China will face US missiles and nuclear-armed bombers. A strategic naval base is being built on the Korean island of Jeju, less than 400 miles from Shanghai and the industrial heartland of the only country whose economic power is likely to surpass that of the US. Obama's "<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/16/us-usa-asia-obama-idUSBREA3F1C620140416" title=""><span style='color:blue'>pivot</span></a>" is designed to undermine China's influence in its region. It is as if a world war has begun by other means.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>This is not a Dr Strangelove fantasy. Obama's defence secretary, Charles "Chuck" Hagel, was in Beijing last week to deliver a warning that China, like Russia, could face isolation and war if it did not bow to US demands. He compared the annexation of Crimea to China's complex territorial dispute with Japan over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. "You cannot go around the world," said Hagel with a straight face, "and violate the sovereignty of nations by force, coercion or intimidation." As for America's massive movement of naval forces and nuclear weapons to Asia, that is "a sign of the humanitarian assistance the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/us-military"><span style='color:blue'>US military</span></a> can provide".<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Obama is seeking a bigger budget for nuclear weapons than the historical peak during the cold war, the era of Dr Strangelove. The US is pursuing its longstanding ambition to dominate the Eurasian landmass, stretching from <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/china"><span style='color:blue'>China</span></a> to Europe: a "manifest destiny" made right by might.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>• This article was amended on 22 April 2014 to clarify a reference to a US promise that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/nato"><span style='color:blue'>Nato</span></a> would not expand to the east.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>