Putin Speaks the Truth about
NATO’s War Provocations
by Jeffrey Steinberg
Oct. 26—Russian President Vladimir Putin used the occasion of the annual Valdai Club dialogue in Sochi, Russia, Oct. 24 to deliver a sweeping assessment of the present danger of global war, and the efforts that Russia is taking to avert that outcome. Coverage of Putin’s speech in the Western media was either slanderous mis-characterization (“Putin is blackmailing the West”), or simply non-existent.
The essence of the Russian President’s message was that the Western powers, particularly the United States, are tearing apart the world order, and attempting to impose a take-it-or-leave-it unilateral system, that violates all of the core principles of the post-World War II order that was established to avoid thermonuclear holocaust. Putin pointed to Washington’s 2002 cancellation of the ABM Treaty, and the building of a unilateral global missile defense system, along with the development of new, precision, high-intensity conventional weapons that have put the world on the brink of pre-emptive thermonuclear war.
He detailed the West’s promotion of Islamist terrorism, dating back to the Afghanistan War of the 1980s, warning that the use of al-Qaeda and the Taliban against the former Soviet Union is now backfiring in the face of the U.S. and its allies, a process which began with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. The West, he warned, is promoting radical jihadists and the revival of neo-Nazi movements (viz., Ukraine), which will turn on their sponsors at some point soon.
He identified the new form of color revolution regime-change that has torn apart the core principle of national sovereignty, citing the case of Syria as the most clear, ongoing example.
Putin also juxtaposed the emergence of new cooperative arrangements among leading Eurasian nations, through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS, and the Eurasian Economic Union. Nations are looking to develop bilateral and multilateral trade agreements outside the control of the dollar. This is in part in response to the out-of-control use of punitive sanctions against any nation that dares to challenge the new unipolar system.
The Battle for Kobani
Putin’s warnings came at a moment when events on the ground in the Middle East were dramatizing his case. The conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Libya all moved in a direction where larger regional conflicts could erupt at any moment. Turkey remained at odds with its NATO partners, in blocking Kurdish fighters from crossing the border into northern Syria, where the town of Kobani remains under siege by the Islamic State (IS). Intense negotiations between Washington and Ankara were reported to have reached an agreement by which several hundred Iraqi Kurdish fighters were to be allowed to cross Turkish territory to reach Kobani; however, Turkey stalled on allowing the fighters to cross into Syria.
IS is now preparing to send heavy reinforcements into the Kobani battle, while also launching new military operations in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Turkey’s refusal to allow U.S. fighter planes to use the Incerlik Air Base, just 100 miles from Kobani, has greatly hampered the air campaign against IS in Iraq and Syria, because U.S. planes are flying long distances from bases, and an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
According to news accounts in the past 24 hours, one of the Islamic State’s top commanders, Omar Al-Shishani (Omar the Chechen), is being sent to take over the Kobani offensive. He has vowed to bring the Islamic State’s war back to the Caucasus to bring down the Putin government.
Bearing out Putin’s warnings, the Obama State and Treasury departments are using heavy-handed pressure to force two key Asian allies—Australia and South Korea—to back out of plans to become founding signers on the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a Chinese initiative to invest in New Silk Road infrastructure through new long-term credit. In the case of Australia, Secretary of State John Kerry personally arm-twisted Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot into cancelling plans to sign an MoU in Beijing on Oct. 24. Twenty-one countries have signed the agreement, including China, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines. In the case of South Korea, sources in Seoul indicated that Washington offered a bunch of carrots to the Park Geun-hye government, to keep it from signing, including an agreement to postpone the transfer of command of the joint U.S.-South Korean force on the peninsula to South Korea’s armed forces.
The effort to sabotage the start-up of the AIIB comes at the same time that the U.S. military is increasing coastal surveillance of China’s major submarine facilities, and deepening military ties to Japan. The underlying premise of Washington’s AirSea Battle doctrine is that the U.S. would launch preemptive attacks on strategic facilities that are part of Beijing’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities. Like the color revolution and global missile defense deployments aimed against Russia, the AirSea Battle plans greatly increase the chances of a thermonuclear showdown.
When combined with the out-of-control Ebola epidemic and the crisis in the trans-Atlantic financial system, the war danger from the policies of the Obama Administration poses an existential threat to the survival of mankind. Lyndon LaRouche has made clear that, while there are readily available solutions to each of these three existential threats, no solution is possible so long as British stooge Barack Obama remains in the Presidency.