[Peace-discuss] Nato's action plan in Ukraine is right out of Dr Strangelove - John Pilger

[David Johnson]

Nato's action plan in Ukraine is right out of Dr Strangelove 

 <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/johnpilger> John Pilger 

>From China to Ukraine, the US is pursuing its longstanding ambition to
dominate the Eurasian landmass 

 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/17/nato-ukraine-dr-strang
elove-china-us#img-1> 

 
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/17/nato-ukraine-dr-strang
elove-china-us#img-1> Description: Men wearing military fatigues in the
eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk

'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 

Thursday 17 April 2014 11.41 EDT Last modified on Saturday 4 October 2014
10.40 EDT 

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<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/17/nato-ukraine-dr-strang
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I watched
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove_or:_How_I_Learned_to_Stop_Worr
ying_and_Love_the_Bomb> Dr Strangelove 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."

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
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays> Edward Bernays, the inventor
of public relations, described modern propaganda.

In 1964, the year  <http://www.theguardian.com/film/dr-strangelove> Dr
Strangelove 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.

Description: Strategic nuclear missiles Cold War National Museum of the US
Air ForceStrategic nuclear missiles from the cold war. Photograph: Alamy 

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has ringed Russia with
military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/nato> Nato enlargement project. Reneging
on a US promise to the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-did-the
-west-break-its-promise-to-moscow-a-663315.html> Nato would not expand "one
inch to the east", 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.

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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  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army>
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (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.

Since
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/02/not-too-late-for-ukrai
ne-nato-should-back-off> Washington's putsch in Kiev - 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 -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_M._Breedlove> General Philip Breedlove,
no less - claimed more than two weeks ago to
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/23/russian-troops-may-invade-ukra
ine-white-house> have pictures showing 40,000 Russian troops "massing" on
the border with Ukraine. So did
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-schwarz/colin-powell-wmd-iraq-war_b_
2624620.html> Colin Powell claim to have pictures proving there were weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq. 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.

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.

A Nato membership action plan - straight from the war room of Dr Strangelove
- is General Breedlove's gift to the new dictatorship in Ukraine. "
<http://www.eur.army.mil/RapidTrident/> Rapid Trident" will put US troops on
Ukraine's Russian border and "
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/01/nato-ministers-meet-over-ukrai
ne> Sea Breeze" 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.

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And there is China. On 23 April,
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/16/us-usa-asia-obama-idUSBREA3F1C620
140416> Obama will begin a tour of Asia 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.

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 "
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/16/us-usa-asia-obama-idUSBREA3F1C620
140416> pivot" is designed to undermine China's influence in its region. It
is as if a world war has begun by other means.

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
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/us-military> US military can provide".

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
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/china> China to Europe: a "manifest
destiny" made right by might.

. This article was amended on 22 April 2014 to clarify a reference to a US
promise that  <http://www.theguardian.com/world/nato> Nato would not expand
to the east.

 

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