“Containment” has long been a cornerstone of U.S. policy in dealing with countries that are seen as threats to U.S. interests, but today some countries are applying the same principle to the United States, observes Graham E. Fuller.
By Graham E. Fuller
Over the years “containment” has been a key U.S. political instrument by which it has sought to isolate, starve out, or excommunicate from the “international community” regimes unwilling to accept the U.S.-dominated world order.
A Cold War-era political cartoon depicting U.S. containment strategies.
Yet the great irony today is that this very U.S. policy of containment seems now to characterize the way many major powers in the world have come to think about dealing with the United States. These countries don’t actually use the word “containment,” but the intent is still the same; they perceive the need to “contain” or constrain Washington, thereby limiting the damage that the U.S. can inflict upon their national interests without engaging in outright confrontation with the U.S.
Containment has been a reasonably sensible way of dealing with hostile states that cannot be readily defeated militarily except at potentially huge military cost to the U.S. itself—especially if it risks nuclear war. Both the Soviet Union and China for many decades were “contained” due to their perceived radical ideologies and hostility to the U.S.-dominated world order.
These two states also supported many radical leftist revolutionary movements around the world that ideologically opposed the U.S. (Often these movements had good reason to be hostile and revolutionary, frequently due to terrible domestic conditions in their own countries—and under regimes often supported by Washington. Cuba, Chile, and Nicaragua come to mind, although the U.S. eventually made efforts to overthrow them after their revolutions.)
In more recent decades the U.S. applied containment policies to Saddam’s Iraq and to Iran. Containment of North Korea has been a long-standing policy, arguably wiser than most other options. Indeed, might not continued containment of Saddam in Iraq have been the wiser policy compared to the Pandora’s Box unleashed by the U.S. invasion and occupation of that country and its still unfolding wide regional fallout?
But containment also raises some searching questions. One is that once on the U.S. “containment list” it is often hard for a state to ever get off it, short of being targeted by U.S.-sponsored “regime change.” One becomes a “rogue regime.” And the biggest problem with being “contained” is that in some ways it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy of enduring hostility.
Since the end of the Cold War the world has come to look rather different. Among states that have attained reasonably comfortable living standards there is less appetite for confrontation or war. As a result the self-assumed US “burden of global leadership” in war and peace on the international scene is seen as a less desirable commodity than before.
Hence fewer nations and peoples are willing to risk the potential war that US “leadership” might today bring about—in Korea, in Europe vis-a-vis NATO’s confrontations along the Russian borders, in patrolling the straits of Taiwan, or war in Venezuela, or “maintaining the free flow of oil” in the Persian Gulf (when such free flow has almost never been challenged.)
Increasing numbers of international polls over the years suggest that the populations of many countries in the world have now come to view the U.S. itself as one of the biggest threats to global peace. The U.S.—almost continually at war somewhere since the fall of the USSR—increasingly gravitates towards military approaches to handling global crises. Even before Trump’s presidency U.S. diplomacy has grown ever weaker in the face of rising U.S. regional military commands that dwarf the authority and skills of our ambassadors abroad. The commander of US AFRICOM, for example, presides over a massive military budget and effectively represents the dominant voice of U.S. policy in Africa. These institutionalized military resources dwarf the financial and political power of any single U.S. ambassador in any African country. No wonder such maldistribution of U.S. power abroad leads to an enhanced consideration of military solutions over political or diplomatic ones.
In today’s rapidly shifting world scene the US is arguably more upset than any other major country by the nature and speed of strategic global shifts in power. Blame games are rife in Washington. The U.S. had grown used to being in the driver’s seat of the world order that it engineered since the end of World War II. It seems almost inconceivable to most Americans—and to some foreigners who grew up in that same environment—to imagine a world in which the U.S. is no longer the architect or the supreme arbiter of that global order.
This shift thus generates serious anxieties in Washington over its (relatively) declining power. These anxieties lead to a constant need to publicly reinforce at home and abroad the belief that U.S. power has indeed not slipped at all. The U.S. increasingly invokes the argument that military action is required somewhere, if for nothing else than “to maintain U.S. credibility.”
In short, if you don’t act, however unwise such action might be, you might be broadcasting weakness and no longer representing a credible “commitment.” Hence we move into the seventeenth year of war in Afghanistan. This is all part of the great danger in the dangerous dance of rising and declining powers. The psychology intrinsic to both rising and declining power can be dangerous. As a result the U.S. is treated by outsiders with caution, even as perhaps a snake capable of striking out unexpectedly.
The upshot is widespread global nervousness about U.S. intentions and actions—even before Trump—and their risky or unwanted consequences. And that is why much of the world now thinks in terms of damage limitation when it anticipates more aggressive U.S. policies.
If we were then to settle on any one single description of the psychology that characterizes Chinese and Russian strategy these days it is indeed “containment” of the U.S. The EU too, for example, increasingly believes it needs to take its relations with Russia into its own hands, rather than potentially be led into a military confrontation with Russia via dubious NATO exercises on Moscow’s borders.
Supporting U.S. “credibility” is not high on the European foreign policy wish list (except understandably for those few small neighbors sadly doomed to eternal life next to the Russian Bear.) South Korean leadership too finds playing the U.S. card sometimes diplomatically useful, but posing a huge danger if Washington is actually willing to unleash war—in which Seoul has everything to lose. Indeed, the one state in the world that tends to completely support US military action almost anywhere in the world these days is Israel.
Finally, the concept of “containment” raises a deeper point about the psychology of international relations. How wise is it to maintain lists of enemy states and leaders who require containment? Few other states do so, partially because declaring another state to be an enemy has obvious negative consequences that easily lead to self-fulfilling prophecy. This phenomenon is fundamental to the very psychology of human relationships. If we signal to someone that we consider them a threat or an enemy, the chances are very good that the other party will reciprocate and that mutual relations will predictably deteriorate. That is why shrewd “good neighbor policies” represent more than just naive feel-goodism. Yet the U.S. still spends a great deal of time drawing up and announcing lists of who is an enemy, or a rival, and who must be punished or contained.
For better or for worse, the international order of the late 20th century is gone. In a period of major strategic change the United States seems determined to cling to the status quo that so long favored it. Yet it might be wise for Washington to stop yearning for it—and for all the trouble that now offers. Perhaps rather than the endless search for enemies (”dragons to slay abroad”) that is the daily stuff of most Washington strategists and think tanks, a determination to adjust to and find common cause with new world powers would yield somewhat more desirable results all around.
Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official, author of numerous books on the Muslim World; his latest book is “Breaking Faith: A novel of espionage and an American’s crisis of conscience in Pakistan.” (Amazon, Kindle) This article originally appeared at his blog, grahamefuller.com. Reprinted with permission.
nothing of substance has been given in this article.
Why are you including this article from a CIA Shill and Guland supporter who advocated for a terrorist, Guland, to be allowed in this country. Psuedo-alternative news is Consortium news!
A lot of their articles are just that. I just vet though them. There are better information platforms out there, yes.
Good journalism does not present only one view.
What MSM platforms do you prefer to good journalism?
If you cared for alternative news, you would not assume that one variant view must be that of the editors.
“Guland” is Fethullah Gulen, “psuedo” is pseudo.
A leopard can’t change its spots, a snake remains a snake and a scorpion stays a scorpion.
“The U.S.—almost continually at war somewhere since the fall of the USSR…”
Come now! Let’s not sell Uncle Sam short. “America Has Been At War 93% of the Time – 222 Out of 239 Years – Since 1776”.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41086.htm
Wow. I knew we were a Nation of war..but most I have never even heard of. Thanks for the information.
I typically don’t believe anything a spymaster/spook has to say as they are well trained liars. Maybe Mr is sincere in what he’s saying about reining US Empire’s relentless obsession on global domination. I certainly concur, except with my view of completely putting the environment at the forefront of any consideration what-so-ever. However stopping foreign aggression is certainly a step in the right direction. I’ll refrain from commenting on the spookiness of Mr Fuller’s past doings.
Reading some of the comments, I hope they do not dissuade Mr. Fuller from continuing to submit articles. nor Consortium printing them.
He needs to put a little more meat on the bone to compete with most of the other writers showcased here. Just as I thought his piece was going to really take off, it ended.
” Even before Trump’s presidency U.S. diplomacy has grown ever weaker in the face of rising U.S. regional military commands that dwarf the authority and skills of our ambassadors abroad.”
That was most apparent under Bush in Afghanistan when on policy matters the voice was the military commander, seldom the ambassador. Since, it has grown worse, certainly the appointment of Generals in Trump’s Cabinet demonstrates that, recalling the lament about Viet Nam that we would have won if we just left to the Generals.
If there is one single thing that made Putin the target it is his challenge, that the world doesn’t belong to us and mutual respect is essential.
Still, it is surprising how cowed the world is when it come to America. When you think of the outrageous use of sanctions at the drop of the hat, and the injury that does not only to the party targeted but any party with relations with the target, why is there not more outrage and movement to fight back.
Again, the devil Putin comes to mind. He has stood up and he needs to be punished.
“Still, it is surprising how cowed the world is when it come to America”.
I think you’ll find that this is for a very simple reason. It’s rather like the way huge corporations come to dominate their markets and become semi-monopolies. Any time a promising new firm starts up, the incumbent leader just buys it.
Similarly, many nations and their citizens have profound doubts about the USA. But the leaders of those nations are quite a different matter. Let’s just say that they have their own financial concerns, and no less than anyone they wish to provide for their retirement.
I can’t remember any time when “American diplomacy” extended any further than threats and bribery.
After reading Mr. Fuller’s assessment, it is very hard not to concur with his observations; There are innumerable examples that one could cite to support his chief thesis so I will refer to only one. Several years ago, president Obama declared Venezuela as a national threat to the security of US. A third world country mired in deep political, social, and economical problems. One would have to have some mental retardation to agree with Obama’s decre. Only a population either ignorant or gullible could be duped this ease.
I concur. And we are as a ‘Nation’ as your suppose. A nation of useful idiots and mindless zombies.
there’s no doubt at all that the US of A is a basket case – a criminal one
I read an article about how China has grasped the future of transportation and will soon be the dominant producer of batteries for electric cars. Meanwhile we seem to be spectators in Elon Musk’s gamble to build the biggest battery factory in the World.
Not fans but spectators looking at a playing field and not truly understanding what it is like to be in the game. In fact we are not in the game. Scott Pruitt and all the appointees of the current administration seem more devoted to trotting out the Beverly Hillbilly’s of “Clean Coal Miner Town” while the petrodollars smile down from their soon to end Ivory towers.
We are currently heading headlong into technological obscurity as the current administration panders to the rich without any coherent vision of how we will continue our economic success.
Our politicians are well paid by the rich to prop up their dying business models and prop up their bloated stock prices with pure BS about how clean coal will power our future and how we all need to be super concerned about the jobs of coal miners.
It is laughable that we are concerned about coal mines and the jobs they create while the government and industry are sidetracked by a nostalgic of “America” filled with smokestacks and hard working blue collar coal miners. Such appeals to a shrinking job market may appeal to voters but it does absolutely nothing to secure a competitive advantage.
The new economy depends on highly educated people who can design our future and lead our economy. There are lots of them for sure and I have no doubt that future Elon Musk’s will spring up and like the Wright Brothers invent new technologies we are still at a distinct disadvantage.
We are at a disadvantage because our government is controlled by the wealth of the past. A wealth built on oil, coal, gas and lots of geopolitics which, while they have spent our wealth on military programs and wars, is doing nothing to prepare us for the coming age.
The current administration’s vision is akin to a fictional administration which fights the railroads and the telegraph and touts the brave Americans who still ride horses and rely on the Pony Express.
They claim the “good horse riders of America” are the key to a sound economy. while the eschew technology and smirk at the locomotive and other means of transportation like the automobile.
They do this because they are paid by the owners of the telegraph and the Pony Express to support their business model.
We call these folks “Special Interests” and they are the largest corporations in America like Exxon. They run Washington politics and have an economic interest to prolong their dying business models. They have the bucks and hold our government hostage. For now at least.
Nowhere to be seen is a coherent vision of the future.
The stock market grows and grows as the rich hold ever more control over our government installing politicians at every level of government to actually block technology.
Do we really think we live on another planet? Do we really expect that other nations like China will not capitalize on all of the technology and seek to dominate the future. I can tell you the answer is they will use every advantage to outmaneuver us and leave us in the dust.
Trump can dream all he wants to about the wondrous nature and the sheer beauty of clean coal and all of the beautiful coal miners who represent America in his politicized acts to pander to who voted for him. It will not be much comfort as other nations leapfrog us and become the next superpowers.
If we want to remain relevant and competitive we would be wise to embrace the vision of Elon Musk and look to new technology and leaders who share his vision.
If Trump really wants to make America great again he could start by abandoning his refusal to believe in science and technology, stop appointing anti progressive nitwits and paid corporate shills to agency posts, stop the nomination of Judges who have no legal experience but very much have an undying loyalty to the party of the rich etc.
No good can come from all of this governmental neanderthalism.
Other nations are not waiting for us to take the lead but are already taking the lead for the future.
My final take is that the current government is deeply troubling in that it is owned and controlled by special interest who have managed to exert undue influence on our leadership and has hand picked lackies who will do their bidding.
Democracy and our nation cannot function with a bunch of CEOs who rail against every pressure for them to change their business models and pay politicians to preserve those business models.
Something wicked this way comes unless we again have the vision which won the space race and landed men on the Moon.
Right now we are in a precarious position brought on by visionless politicians who only grovel at the feet of CEOs
If we think these geniuses are going to win the day, one only need look at all of the failed businesses of the past to see they have no crystal ball which will secure their future.
National prosperity needs a government which is at the forefront not protecting the rear guard.
Excellent analogy.
Yes, the coherent vision, although well represented here, is nowhere to be seen on US mass media controlled by money power. The US has squandered its great opportunity for a benevolent American Century since WWII, which could easily have raised half the world from poverty and set a shining example for the future, and made the US the most secure of nations. Instead the US has killed millions of innocents, sold its institutions to the zionist/MIC/WallSt plutocracy, ruined its security, and discredited itself for all time.
Those with great vision will be seldom heard in the US until the poor rise to overthrow the dictatorship of the rich. That will likely be long after the US has declined in isolation and embargo, after humiliating military defeats and economic bubbles. The US has caused its own ruin by seeking to tyrannize a global family fast growing to far greater strength than its own. All tyrants at last fall, as conciliators build for the future.
When I entered the software engineering field in the 1970s, US software development along with its developers and engineers were the growing crown jewel of the US economy.
In 2014, when I finally retired from corporate development, the US was beginning to enter third place in the hierarchy of top engineering nations.
As the US technical sector is run by people very similar to the bureaucrats in Washington, in which each caters to his or her own agendas over anything realistic in terms of a future for well designed technologies that are actually useful to society, this sector of the US economy will continue to sink lower into irrelevance…
Yes, within our unregulated market economy, where money controls mass media and elections, the bullyboys of industry and politics rise to power by lack of ethics, representing a private agenda rather than the group. This weakens the US even more than it does companies, because the vision required is far broader, requiring a sympathetic rather than purely selfish perspective. Those of humanitarian vision are discarded in contempt by the bullyboys early in the rise to power.
The pure selfishness of the bullyboy personality is also a limiting factor. They do not care whether their group succeeds as long as they succeed; do not care for citizens, employees, or even their own family, let alone the future. They truly believe in selfishness, ignorance, hypocrisy, and malice, and religiously protect the myth that money=power=virtue to sustain their self-respect and attack their moral superiors.
But in their families, businesses, and nation, the bullyboys make serious mistakes that gradually weaken them. Their partners are betrayed as circumstances permit, their policies are short-sighted and alienate other groups or nations, even their family at last sees them as purely selfish. So their companies are led astray and taxed or asset-stripped for their advantage, and their nation is isolated as diseased, for in fact unregulated market economies are a national disease that leads to all others.
Very well said, I think your assessments are pretty much spot on. I would like to know the secrets of our State and the Pentagon.
Everything they have made public; all their technologies, advancements, researches, discoveries; everything. I believe we already have
zero point torsion field energies, but, as you stated, the old money hierarchy will not give up their positions of prestige on power. As
stated by both Rothschild and Rockefeller. 178 kakistocracies signed the UN Agenda Agreements of world wide genocide, so I don’t
see any ‘Nation’ bringing forth any type of technology that will free people from their regimes of domination. Unless, the Agendas are
met, and under five hundred million that are left are absolute higher functioning autistic slaves that the House of Lords envision. I have
become a pessimist after learning what I have learned. I don’t think enough people will awaken in time. Including those serving in the
or for the global kakistocracy that is the UN. Excellent read, by the way, was your comments and assessments.
Zombie Nation. That is what we are. We are faced with so much manipulation of information and deliberate attempts to hide what is really going on that I agree we are all just wandering zombies not able to perform any useful function but mere slaves to the virus that reanimates our corpses. That virus is the media. More accurately the virus is the media in lock step with the government and their masters the intelligence agencies and the big corporations. They have concocted a deadly brew of misinformation, disinformation, distraction, obfuscation and concealment with each tactic crafted to forge a completely fake narrative that supports the aims and goals of the deep state. Chief among those goals are to establish a permanent reason for the huge military defense budget of the United States. It is double the other largest national budget (China) and ten times what Russia spends. It is larger than the next seven larger nations defense budgets combined. Such a system that routinely adds tens of billions of dollars to the defense budget without question each year has clearly got a lot at stake and much to gain if it can invent new threats and convince us all that the Russians are a grave threat to our democratic process. Yet the real grave threat is the domination of the defense contractors over our political process.
Other major controllers of government are healthcare, insurance and pharmaceutical companies. They have some competition coming up through the ranks for special treatment by our press and our politicians. Internet companies also have a lot to gain and the recent actions by the FCC to end net neutrality and eliminate barriers on media ownership which has not been overturned by the Congress signals the arrival of a new power structure which will further our nations plunge into zombies serving the profit motives of the tech sector. There will be even more propaganda on the internet and even more discouraging there will be a gradual elimination the websites that are out there like this one who question the current paradigm. Ending Net Neutrality means that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will have no obligation to allow equal access to the internet from the ISPs servers. They can now pick and choose who they let onto the information superhighway and who they decline to allow access. The selection process will all be based upon the perceived economic benefit that the ISPs have as their business models and the chief targets of censoring will be those websites that either threaten to hurt their cash flow based on their messaging or those that threaten the deep state power structure that has enabled their rise and their control over the public space. Such things would be any website that calls out the fallacy of the group think.
So brace yourself for the coming onslaught of advertisements by pharmaceutical companies selling cures for mouth related speaking disorders which are contracted by visiting the wrong website. There’s a cure for that.
Well I always think that at some point things like US sanctions will no longer bite. At some point the US will lose reserve currency status, the US Petrodollar will no longer be dominant, and the US dollar will not reign supreme. When the US is no longer the dominant economy on the planet then will the victims of US sanctions take retribution on the US. Myself, I see the US moreover somewhat isolated from the rest of the world such as votes about Israel in the UN. Or the fact that the US is among 3 nations out of what a 196 countries that has not adopted the metric system. Increasingly, I see US actions as isolating itself from the rest of the world. Also, I am one who sees the US as the greatest threat to peace on this planet (even Martin Luther King knew this many years ago). I would also point out that I believe the US has been at war 93% of its’ history so not everything started with the Cold War.
My belief is also that the US has the potential to be a great nation if only it would use its’ technology for the betterment of mankind rather than trying to dominate the planet to enrich itself.
Joe L, I agree. When the sanctioned nations become a market all of their own, and while this block of sanctioned nations forms a new union, the U.S. will be left a lone, and without a reserve currency to it’s once unrivaled status….then we are done. Joe
Joe Tedesky… Well I don’t know if the US will be done, I certainly don’t want to see a complete collapse of the US, but I do want to see a nation that joins the rest of the world and stops sewing chaos around the world. I mean right now, China is already the world’s top economy by Purchasing Power Parity and I believe, somewhere in the 2020’s, China will be the top economy by nominal GDP. I also know that I believe that it is 2018 that China is opening a massive oil refinery in Saudi Arabia, China being its’ largest customer, and Beijing announced the PetroYuan. Times they are a changin’.
I believe it is part of the plan. The US is still an Imperial colony of the peerage. A peerage that has been infiltrated and co-opted by Khazars. Many NATO/EURO States are ramping up their military units(France, Poland becoming the Eastern Command, Germany) that is so they have a more proportional percentage of forces compared to the US, say completely switched. Plus, you can’t have a global digital block chain currency with a paper global currency(the dollar) and that needs to be taken down. China will prevent WW3 and thus become the leader in economic and labor policy adopted by the world. Policies so fantastic, people leap to their deaths instead of living an abhorrent live of complete servitude. The New Silk Road, Internet of Everything, total global surveillance, etc. The need to have a dominant global country and military will soon no longer be needed, the UN will become the Global Purveyors of Peace. It already has begun, Agenda 21/30/50, the IMF producing SSA cards…See Diversified Metal Products vs IRS. That is why I use the word kakistocracy to describe any/all States or centralized power. Peace, and a good day to you Joe L.
I’m all for what you said Joe L. Joe
Perhaps rather than the endless search for enemies (”dragons to slay abroad”) that is the daily stuff of most Washington strategists and think tanks, a determination to adjust to and find common cause with new world powers would yield somewhat more desirable results all around.
Sadly this requires that there be sane voices in power in Washington. There are none that identify themselves This is because such voices are systematically eliminated as soon as they express views that deviate from the Imperial line as efficiently as similar dissenters were in communist Albania. Who can forget the endless cringeworthy standing ovations that the lunatic Netanyahu receives whenever this leader of a small nation speaks to the joint houses in Washington. Woe betide being seen as anything less than ecstatically enthralled. Enver Hoxha and Stalin would have been in total admiration.
US imperium is declining, that’s it, the sooner it can respect a multipolar world and other nations, the better for all inhabitants of Planet Earth. US bureaucrats live in delusion.
Except that just like a dying start turns into an all consuming black hole , the crazed Exceptionalist Empire may well kill us all.
Gary,…Your link is a lot more interesting than the Fuller article. I would recommend that everyone watch the “Glaudio” videos. I haven’t finished watching, but Sebel Edmonds has some very revealing information. it’s the first indication I’ve had as to where Gulen fits into the matrix of intrigue.
BobH – I quite agree Bob and believe that Ms. Edmonds information is really key here in understanding who this author “is.” Also, her observations on the evolution of Operation Gladio into Gladio-B as she calls it, is also critical in examining more recent false flag terrorism by Western powers.
A very well documented study on the “Gladio” operations can be found in the 2015 publication of British journalist Richard Cottrell’s, “Gladio”…
Thanks for the link Gary…I keep going back to it.
Thank you also, Steve…I’ll look into it.
“The U.S.—almost continually at war somewhere since the fall of the USSR—increasingly gravitates towards military approaches to handling global crises.” ALMOST!?!?!? if its almost then please point to the day, the single day in the past 73 years when the US did not kill anyone anywhere in the world.
(except understandably for those few small neighbors sadly doomed to eternal life next to the Russian Bear.) This is a joke right? He can’t be serious – being next to evil Russia dooms a country to just what exactly?
Yes the world order is changing and it looks like to me that Fuller has not noticed very well. His fear of the “Russian Bear” his “almost” on continuous slaughter and his entire argument misunderstands what changes are taking place and the new approaches to it.
It is common knowledge that US foreign policy at its root is “Global full spectrum domination.” Each and every action the US takes is to further the effort toward that goal. All this enemies list and theater is just that.
Commentators talk and talk and never give voice to the fundamental policy behind all this. So the real problem is never or rarely discussed.
The World is being guided, right now, via new Silk Road, and here in America by LaRouche’s four laws, towards becoming a Class I global civilization (according to galactic definitions) of peaceful coexistence within itself and with its sister civilizations on the other worlds of the Galaxy. This help is coming from those whom your fellow Babylonians, also ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Sumerians, etc….would immediately recognize, but we moderns are completely blind to. There. Never again say that what is REALLY going on hasn’t been told on this site again.
Babyl-on –
Yes, I completely agree with the your comments. However, considering the background and career of Graham Fuller, he has made some valid criticisms of U.S. foreign policy in his own language. More than a decade ago, Graham Fuller’s articles used to appear on Op-ed pages of Los Angeles Times. Those were the days when Alexander Cockburn used to be contributor to L.A. Times. These days, I don’t think this article by Graham Fuller will make it to the Los Angeles Times Op-Ed pages. Los Angeles Times is a NeoCon rag now, with Max Boot and the likes as its main contributors.
So, it is good to take this article by Graham Fuller for some what it is – some valid criticisms of U.S. foreign policy.
“The EU too, for example, increasingly believes it needs to take its relations with Russia into its own hands, rather than potentially be led into a military confrontation with Russia via dubious NATO exercises on Moscow’s borders.”
I’d be interested in seeing some specific examples of this alleged phenomenon. It seems to me the U.S./NATO/EU monolith remains disturbingly solid, especially vis-à-vis Russia.
This Graham Fuller piece in general suffers from an excess of windy generalities relative to actual facts and analysis.
I concur. As soon as you see some EU political figure starts talking that way on MSM, further checking usually reveals that it’s either some retired politician that already has no real weight, or some backstage left wingers, who noone listens to.
Now european PEOPLE are indeed mostly believe that. For past 7 years of working and travelling different states, I concluded that there are actually only 3 european countries that indeed HATE Russia and russians on every level – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Ukraine I am not talking about, it’s a different can of worms, quite a complicated one (and hardly a Europe anyway). Poland is often claimed to be that, but in my experience, that’s a load of wishful propaganda. Polish people are generally quite arrogant, but when it comes to Russia-hating, I’ve been repeatedly surprised how NOT into that they are.
But so far as I can see, EU countries are tend to ignore people’s opinion on this matter, and EU people prefer not to stir the boat too much, despite the losses they have from anti-Russian policies in different spheres. Can’t blame them for that, really.
In my experience, the vast majority of Europeans think the Palestinians are very badly treated and should be given more support and equal status in the Middle East. Unlike European politicians, who bow down to Israel on every occasion.
The author’s description of Washington’s habit of targeting countries for “containment” seemed like a good pretext for a lengthier discussion, but then the article just ran out of gas.
Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept is like a teaspoon of fine wine in a barrel of sewage , the end result being a barrel of sewage.
More important to recognize is that a teaspoon of sewage in a barrel of fine wine will cause the same end result , a barrel of sewage.
I don’t know what made me think of this , but anyway…….
That is called greshams law I think…the bad drives out the good. The Sentinal has died. Infiltration begins. I’m outta here.
As James Coburn once very succinctly stated in a movie back in the 1970s, “Good only gets to come out when evil takes a rest…”
” I’m outta here. ”
Send my regards to our sister civilizations throughout the galaxy. I’ll be sticking around here , in the event they’d like to stop by and say hello.
look into CE-5 protocols as devised by Dr. Greer, then you can say hi to them, as they are already here and have always been here…but you’ll find that out eventually.
There’s a great deal of sewage around these days. Even though a lot of it thinks of itself as fine wine, or brandy.
This blog would have been much more fun to debate:
“Why did Turkey Issue an Arrest Warrant Against Me?” Graham E. Fuller 7 December 2017
*laughing* I agree Deniz. That would have been fun indeed.
Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has some interesting observations about the author Graham Fuller that are worth examining.
https://www.newsbud.com/2013/04/27/bfp-breaking-news-boston-terror-cias-graham-fuller-nato-cia-operation-gladio-b-caucasus-central-asia/
Gary …see my (misplaced) remarks below
A quote from the Sibel Edmond’s article linked earlier speaks volumes.
(Here is a quote from Graham A. Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence:
“The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.”)
I’d say Mr. Fuller subscribes to the typical deep state “enemies list” and “methods” of operation.
I am glad to see Mr. Fuller oppose “the endless search for enemies … of most Washington strategists” on the zionist payroll, whose chant of “rogue regime” is always intended as “a self-fulfilling prophesy of enduring hostility” to serve themselves at the expense of the people of the United States.
Russia and China did not support “revolutionary movements around the world that ideologically opposed the U.S.” for it was only the US plutocracy that felt threatened or opposed by those inevitable anti-colonial and socialist movements, rooted in the same injustice of plutocracy against which Russia and China had revolted. The people of the US simply have not accepted that their former democracy has been lost to a dictatorship of the rich, and are not suffering enough yet, to have the courage to rebel.
The US is now, and has long been led by its dictatorship away from a sane foreign policy. It is troubling that Mr. Fuller may have been involved in the US attempt to overthrow the government of NATO ally Turkey; one wonders whether he now sees that “common cause with new world powers would yield somewhat more desirable results.” Perhaps Turkey has simply come around to the US plutocracy plan of wars for Israel using Al Qaeda rebranded.
But now I would like to hear Mr. Fuller explain how it is that his daughter married the uncle of one of the Boston Bombers. Was this not another false-flag operation to recruit Boston liberals to the cause of endless wars for Israel? Who gave a couple of amateurs two large functioning bombs? Why detonate such things among young liberals far from DC?
And why not explain, Mr. Fuller, your relationship with Fethullah Gulen, his relationship with the CIA, who funds his costly network of madrassahs across central Asia (“to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia” as Mr. Fuller put it), and who backed the coup attempt in Turkey?
And please explain the strategy of Turkey vs. the US in Syria, both backing Al Qaeda re-brands, neither very interested in committing their own troops.
And above all, please explain what you get from Israel for all this.
You mean “the Boston Bombers who weren’t”. There is a ton of evidence that neither of them had anything to do with the explosions.
From the Sibel Edmond article I linked – Here is a quote from Graham A. Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence:
“The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.”
Sibel Edmonds is awesome. I will check into this. What is that is said: Once a spook always a spook? That one NEVER actually retires. Once you in, your in for life.
I have my doubts recently about Sibel. Having seen her performance on Twitter over the last week, using really childish abuse and insinuation to attack Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett, while refusing to produce any evidence for her nasty insinuations, I have started to reconsider my former admiration.
Having said that – her scepticism of Fuller is well-deserved.
We will know her evidence once their report comes out, most likely it’s the fact that Vanessa and Eva have taken funds from Russia for their work, and have somehow been reeled into Putins propaganda net, instead of being independent journalists, which makes sense because Sibel prides herself on being 100% independent and not having any 3rd party influences on her work.
Sam, I have asked several times that you use some means to avoid confusion of our pseudonyms, as I use an initial in “Sam F”, to avoid presumption of improper intent.