Can the World Avert a New Cold War?

The West is charging off into a new Cold War with Russia under banners of hypocrisy, from charges of “expansionism” to complaints about disrespect for individual rights. This lack of balance could have grave consequences for the world, says former British intelligence officer Annie Machon.

By Annie Machon

Last weekend, I was invited onto RT to do an interview about the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, particularly focusing on the speech delivered by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, during his visit to Berlin.

I would like to expand on some of the topics I mentioned, how to encapsulate an alternative geopolitical perspective different from the Western orthodoxy in under four minutes? A task even Monty Python would find challenging!

Russian President Vladimir Putin during a state visit to Austria on June 24, 2014. (Official Russian government photo)

Russian President Vladimir Putin during a state visit to Austria on June 24, 2014. (Official Russian government photo)

The first issue was Gorbachev’s recent comments about the dangers of a new Cold War arising around the crisis in Ukraine. Though there are a variety of geopolitical factors involved in these new East-West tensions, the front line of this new Cold War remains the Internet, which emerged in the 1990s after the original Cold War ended — as an outlet for political diversity circumventing the traditional gatekeepers for information.

In the 1990s, the United States had a golden opportunity, in fact a perfect storm of opportunities to assert its global hegemony. It was the last superpower left standing in a newly unipolar world, history had supposedly ended and capitalism had triumphed. The Soviet Union had disintegrated and the newly shorn Russia was tottering, its vast national wealth being assiduously asset-stripped by the globalized neocon élite and its economic “shock therapy.”

Simultaneously, the new World Wide Web was exponentially growing and the key pioneers were predominantly American companies. After a panicked phase of playing catch-up to the Internet’s exhilarating burst of democratization, Western spy agencies saw the potential for total mastery of the Internet, creating a surveillance panopticon, a single location from which a watchman can observe all inmates of an institution without them knowing they are being watched. In this case, the institution was the entire planet and the inmates were the world’s people. It was an opportunity that the KGB or the Stasi could only have fantasized about. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we are now beginning to get glimpses of the full horror of the surveillance under which we all now live.

Building on the old Echelon model, which was so nearly overthrown in Europe back in July 2001, the National Security Agency suborned, bought and prostituted other intelligence agencies across Europe to do its bidding. Germany, at the nexus of east and west Europe, remains a front line in this battle, with the BND possibly working unconstitutionally to do the NSA’s bidding, even apparently to the detriment of its own national interest. Some politicians and many hacktivists are fighting back.

Reneging on a Deal

But it is the geographical boundaries that have shifted most significantly since the fall of the Wall. Here I need to credit Ray McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and now a peace activist, for all the useful information he provided during his various talks and interviews across Europe a couple of months ago.

McGovern, a fluent Russian speaker, worked as a Soviet expert for much of his career in the CIA. As such he was privy to the behind-the-scenes negotiating that occurred after the fall of the Wall when the United States pushed for German reunification but was worried about the 260,000 Soviet troops stationed in the former East Germany. So, a deal was cut with Gorbachev, stating that NATO would not move “one inch” further than Germany after reunification. The Soviets accepted this arrangement and withdrew their troops.

Well, we all know what has happened since. Though its principal raison d’etre to counter the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, NATO expanded east at an amazing rate, now encompassing a further 12 eastern European countries including the Baltic States and Poland, which the U.S. has used as a base for an increasing number of “defensive” missile systems. In 2008, NATO also issued a declaration that Georgia and Ukraine would be welcome to join, taking the front line up to the borders of Russia. Coincidentally, both these countries in recent years have been portrayed as the victims of “Russian expansionism.”

In 2008, Georgia invaded the disputed ethnic Russian region of South Ossetia. Russia moved to protect the people and gave the Georgian military a bloody nose. Anyone remember that? At the time it was portrayed across the Western media as Russian aggression, but the facts have emerged since to disprove this version of events.

Similarly, this year we have seen a violent coup overthrow democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine when he was inclined to stay within the Russian sphere of influence rather than ally the country more closely to the European Union under the asset-stripping austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund.

Victoria Nuland, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State responsible for Europe, explained in one speech late last year that the United States had spent $5 billion in support of Ukraine’s “European aspirations” and then before the Feb. 22 coup she was overheard in a phone conversation with the U.S. ambassador in Kiev picking who should serve in the new government, saying “Fuck the EU” and declaring that Arseniy Yatsenyuk “Yats is the guy” should take over. After the coup, Yatsenyuk emerged as the new prime minister and then pushed through the IMF plan.

And yet still Russia is blamed for aggression. I am not an apologist for Russia, but the facts speak for themselves even if they are not widely reported in the Western mainstream media.

Why the Meddling?

But why on earth would the U.S. be meddling in Ukraine? Would an expansion of NATO be sufficient excuse in America’s self-interested eyes? Probably not.

Which leads me on to a very interesting article by Eric Zuesse. The argument of his well-researched report is that it all comes down to energy supplies once again. When does it not?

The United States has some unsavory allies in the Middle East, including theocratic dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Their vast energy reserves are not only essential to the United States, but also the trading of these reserves in the petrodollar monopoly is vital to propping up the fragile U.S. economy.

Russia, at the moment, is the primary energy supplier to the EU, the world’s largest market. Iran, which has strengthened its ties to Russia, wanted to build a pipeline via Syria with President Bashar al-Assad’s approval, to exploit this vast market. However, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States apparently have other plans involving a pipeline from Qatar via Syria to Europe.

Hence the urgent need to overthrow Assad and put a Sunni puppet government in place, more susceptible to those pulling the strings. Qatar’s preferred candidate of choice would be more moderate, such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, would have no compunction about installing a hardline fundamentalist régime in place, up to and including ISIS or al-Qaeda’s affiliate, the Nusra Front. Thus the murder, mayhem and human suffering erupting across the region now.

Though the mainstream media presents the Syrian civil war to the U.S. and EU people as a noble struggle of “moderates” to oust evil dictator Assad, it is really an appalling real-life example of the horrors inherent in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s psy­cho­pathic “grand chess­board.”

King Dollar

It is a widely accepted understanding today, over a decade after the “war on terror” began, that all the wars in the Middle East were launched to protect America’s oil and energy interests. Less well known is the country’s desperate scramble to protect the petro-dollar monopoly, the denomination of oil sales in U.S. dollars. If that ends if some alternative currency or basket of currencies supplants the U.S. dollar the dollar will no longer remain the world’s reserve currency and the United States will be financially screwed.

If you look at all the recent wars, invasions and “humanitarian interventions” that have resulted in collapsed countries and anarchy across whole regions, it is clear that beyond oil and gas the key issue is money.

Pre-2003 Iraq tried to trade what oil it could in euros not dollars and Saddam Hussein was deposed and killed; Libya was welcomed briefly back into the international fold, but once Colonel Muammar Gaddafi began to talk about establishing an African gold dinar currency, backed by Libya’s oil wealth to challenge the petro-dollar, he too was toppled and killed; Assad wanted to facilitate energy pipelines to Europe for Russia and Iran, and he was attacked; even Iran tried to trade its energy reserves in euros, and lo and behold it was almost bombed in 2008; and finally Russia itself trades some of its energy in rubles and faces NATO expansion onto its borders, economic sanctions and the prospects of a new Cold War.

As people say, always follow the money.

So, in my view, this is the current geopolitical situation: Russia is now strong enough — with its domination of Europe’s energy supply, its backing by some Middle Eastern countries that want to break away from the U.S. sphere of influence, and its trade deals and establishment of an independent global investment development bank with other BRICS countries — that it can challenge the U.S. hegemony.

However, threaten the petro-dollar monopoly and thereby the financial solvency of the United States of America and you are suddenly Public Enemy No 1.

As I said, I am by no means an apologist for Russia. I tell it like I see it. To Western sensibilities, Russia has some serious domestic issues to address: human rights abuses during the brutal Chechen war; its suspected involvement in the death by polonium-210 poisoning of KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006; its overly punitive drug laws; and human rights abuses against dissidents, the LGBT community and journ­al­ists. Yet the West has merely mouthed platitudinous objections to all these issues and clearly does not have clean hands on similar troubling issues of its own.

So why now is Russia being internationally excoriated and penalized for its reaction to what was clearly an unconstitutional coup in Ukraine followed by a punitive campaign of repression by the new Kiev regime against ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s south and east? Over the last few years, Russia has looked statesmanlike compared to the U.S. and its vassal states: it was not involved with the Libya fiasco; it has given safe haven to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden; and it halted the rush to yet another disastrous western war in Syria.

Nor, to my West European sensibilities, are America and its acolytes pristine either, with their mass surveillance, presidentially approved kill lists, illegal wars, kidnapping, torture and drone bombings. Not to mention the U.S. domestic addiction to gun ownership, vast prison populations, draconian drug sentences and the death penalty, but that’s another story.

Yet the U.S. media-enabled propaganda machines justify all of the above and demonize Russia for reacting to geopolitical provocations on its own border thus creating yet another fresh bogeyman to justify yet more “defense” spending.

A Patient Bear

The Russian bear is being baited, increasingly surrounded by yapping curs. I thought this sport had been made illegal hundreds of years ago, at least in Europe, but obviously not in the dirty realm of international politics. It is a marvel that the bear has not lashed out more in the face of such provocation.

There was a chance for peace when the Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago. If the United States had upheld its side of the gentlemen’s agreement about not expanding NATO, if the neocon “shock therapy” predators had not pounced on a weakened post-Soviet Russia, and if closer integration could have been achieved with Europe, the future could have been rosy.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Gorbachev, we are indeed facing a new Cold War, and this time it is clearly of America’s making. But Europe will bear the brunt, through trade sanctions, energy shortages and even, potentially, war. It is time we Europeans broke away from our American vassalage and looked to our own future.

Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer in the UK’s MI5 Security Service (the U.S. counterpart is the FBI). She is also a British member of Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.

8 comments for “Can the World Avert a New Cold War?

  1. November 17, 2014 at 18:57

    I would trust a Russian politician or media release from Russian Media long before I would ever trust an american or the mainstream media in the USA. The new americans are total idiots who are on the level of a inferior 5th grade student in Europe in just about everything except religious idiocy and hypocrisy. Americans have become the laughing stock of the world, and I no longer travel or even admit to ever having been one of you. I think that the whole world should be boycotting you and Israel for your hypocrisy and stupidity.

    Just this old Chief’s 2 cents

  2. Gerd Balzer
    November 15, 2014 at 15:11

    The titel of this article may be somewhat incorrect.Here in Europe i.e. Germany,we have to ask us if we can or even want to avert a HOT war.

    • Serg Derbst
      November 22, 2014 at 16:22

      Gerd, I wouldn’t go that far – yet. Besides, should a hot war between Russia and NATO ensue, I’m pretty sure the backlash in Germany would be tremendous. And let’s not forget the amount of Russian speakers on the Bundeswehr (I believe to have read something about the two digits in percentages). A lot of people would switch sides easily and promptly.

      No, I think the main question we Germans have to ask ourselves is for how long we still want to be occupied by the US/UK? I like both people, American and British, but politically, why should we still have to allow their military and agencies to have rights that go above our own constitution? Why should we remain in NATO, let alone EU? After all, and except maybe for France and Italy, we’re one of the few major industrial nations in the “West” that still have a major manufacturing economy (even though that is now in jeopardy thanks to Merkel’s constant kowtow to Washington). Why not negotiate peace treaties with Russia and France, join with the French and Italians and move towards the BRICS, where there is a future beyond corrupt financial bubbles and moronic wars? I believe these are the questions we need to ask and the political decisions we’ll have to make – and to pressure our leaders to do so. The alternative will be a grim future, war or not.

  3. November 15, 2014 at 12:36

    Cold war inevitable.
    Summary of global crimes by fbi/cia under New World Order standards as documented by Geral W. Sosbee.

    Evidence of a new, secret, illegal, quasi CJS forged by fbi

    https://www.academia.edu/9220060/Evidence_of_a_new_secret_illegal_CJS_forged_by_fbi

    Report of performances

    fbi:

    http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/fbimisconduct.html

    http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/part4-worldinabo.html

    Geral:

    http://austin.indymedia.org/article/2013/09/14/summary-fbi-crimes-against-me

    http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/reportperform.html

    We all must join in to stop the assassins of fbi/cia for the eternal benefit of mankind.

    http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/11/382350.shtml?discuss

  4. Abe
    November 15, 2014 at 00:46

    The Kremlin has conclusively established that Washington/Wall Street elites have absolutely no intention of allowing a minimum of multipolarity in international relations. What’s left is chaos.

    There’s no question that Moscow pivoting away from the West and towards East Asia is a process directly influenced by President Barack Obama’s self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” foreign policy doctrine, a formula he came up with aboard Air Force One when coming back last April from a trip to – where else – Asia.

    But the Russia-China symbiosis/strategic partnership is developing in multiple levels.

    On energy, Russia is turning east because that’s where top demand is. On finance, Moscow ended the pegging of the rouble to the US dollar and euro; not surprisingly the US dollar instantly – if only briefly – dropped against the rouble. Russian bank VTB announced it may leave the London Stock Exchange for Shanghai’s – which is about to become directly linked to Hong Kong. And Hong Kong, for its part, is already attracting Russian energy giants.

    Now mix all these key developments with the massive yuan-rouble energy double deal, and the picture is clear; Russia is actively protecting itself from speculative/politically motivated Western attacks against its currency.

    The Russia-China symbiosis/strategic partnership visibly expands on energy, finance and, also inevitably, on the military technology front. That includes, crucially, Moscow selling Beijing the S-400 air defense system and, in the future, the S-500 – against which the Americans are sitting ducks; and this while Beijing develops surface-to-ship missiles that can take out everything the US Navy can muster.

    Anyway, at APEC, Xi and Obama at least agreed to establish a mutual reporting mechanism on major military operations. That might – and the operative word is “might” – prevent an East Asia replica of relentless NATO-style whining of the “Russia has invaded Ukraine!” kind.

    China’s silky road to glory
    By Pepe Escobar
    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-141114.html

  5. Zachary Smith
    November 14, 2014 at 22:55

    Which leads me on to a very interesting article by Eric Zuesse.

    It was indeed interesting. And all the more so because it tied together a couple puzzling news stories I’ve seen recently.

    Today the neocon WP had this headline: “U.S. weighs expanded CIA training, arming of Syrian allies struggling against Assad”. They’re still planning on throwing away money trying to take over Syria despite nearly zero chance of getting anything for the investment.

    xxxx://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-weighs-expanded-cia-training-arming-of-syrian-allies-struggling-against-assad/2014/11/14/227abfe4-6c17-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html

    Then there has been the sudden demonizing of Hungary.

    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/11/06/hungary_is_helping_putin_keep_his_chokehold_on_europes_energy_south_stream_orban

    Now there have been some ugly things going on in Hungary, but none of them bothered anybody until that nation decided to allow the South Stream pipeline to proceed through its territory. All of a sudden there are no kind words from the West for Hungary.

    Syria is in the way of the neocon plans for energy. And Israel covets the soil and water of Syria. So all you hear from the shills are howls demanding Assad be overthrown. But Russia is backing Syria, so they’re an obstacle. Demonize Putin, and hurt him in every way possible, even if the EU ends up harmed even worse. After all, the Euro is a potential Dollar threat too, and if the Yurpeans are stupid enough to dig their own graves, let them have at it!

    It all kind of hangs together.

  6. maurice latoya
    November 14, 2014 at 22:24

    Great article. It seems so obvious what the west is doing but what’s scary is that so many countries are marching to US orders in very contradiction to their own interests That shows the reach of the United States around the world. It’s not a cold war but a “hot” one which started as soon as the US and its puppets impose sanctions against Russia and essentially become a declaration of war.

    Btw I noticed that Reuters, CNN do not seems to take comments anymore for each article. I am not sure but may be it’s because a lot of public comments were very critical of the agency news reporting, especially internationals affairs reporting, so they took them down.

  7. November 14, 2014 at 22:08

    Annie
    I agree with you that Russia is an important player breaking US-hegemony over the world and therefore now branded public enemy number one. Of course, it’s not about human rights and so on. To see that one has just to compare the demonization of Russia with the careful treatment of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s human rights record is in magnitudes worse than that of Russia, but Russia is blamed for that. Saudi Arabia is an ally of the US in persuing geopolitical interests, Russia an adversary, that’s why. Of course.

    I also agree with you that US-disire to keep hegemony over energy and to support of the Petrodollar plays a role in US aggressions against countries like Libya and Syria.

    However, I disagree with you that’s the main drivers of the US-led wars and coups we have seen since the fall of the Berlin wall until now. There are two US motivations that are so important for the US elites that they supercede these important motivations.

    1st) Unconditional support whatever Israel wants is a key driver of aggressive behaviour in the US. Parts of US government institutions are Israeli occupied territory. If they were not laws like those binding the US to guaratee Israels Qualitative Military Edge QME, think of the Naval Vessel Transfer Act of 2008 for example, were not to explain. Israel wanted “regime change” in Iraq and Libya and the US did it for Israel. Now Israel wants “regime change” in Syria and the US tries to do it. The Israel lobby in the US is so powerful, that it has a major say in US foreign policy, even and especially on matters of war and peace. In 2012, after China and Russia repeatedly vetoed US-backed resolution drafts for Syria in the security council, Hillary Clinton, a major advocate of Israeli interests in the US, publicly called on the whole world to punish China and Russia for their stances on Syria by whatever means possible, and she promised anyone the help of the US when doing so. Shortly after that “Island disputes” with China rose to high tension in east Asia, and hardly more than a year later, US-backed Ukraine trouble raised tensions with Russia to high levels. Also in the end of 2012, the US started to serously push trade pacts TPP, TTIP and TiSA excluding the BRICS, to isolate China and Russia economically.

    2) There is another major thing what motivates the US elites to seek wars and confrontation: the rise of China. The US elites see with absolute horror prognosis that China will overtake and outclass the US in a short time in every sense economically, and that together with it’s friends, among them the BRICS, China will overtake all the so-called Western world in a couple of years. So far the US still has more money, larger alliances and more military than China and friends. And so the US elites are using these assets, money, alliances and military, to try to come out on top of the strategic US struggle with China. Russia is an important BRICS and SCO ally of China, and so the US try to destroy Russia to hit China, as one method to try to prevent China being able to take over world leadership from the US in a couple of years. The same goes for US-led wars against, among others, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine. They were all friends of Russia and China. And the same goes for dozens of US-led color revolutions or attempts to do so. A major motivation for the US to hit all these countries was an attempt to isolate China.

    So, while Russia is targeted for challenging US-hegemony and the US does use war to prop up the US-control over world energy resources, US elite’s desire for supporting Israel and US elite’s desire to keep China “down” are even more important motivators behind the bloody aggressive US foreign policy, at least in recent years.

    Leaving these factors out results in an imcomplete picture. That’s how I see it.

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