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Russian TV Says U.S. Breaks Peace Treaty

Eric Zuesse


Headlining “‘More US troops at our borders’ – Russian Defense Ministry”, Russian Television (whose U.S. broadcasts the U.S. Government is considering to ban) reported, on Friday, October 13th, that “On Thursday, the U.S. announced the presence of a second [U.S.] regiment in the already very tense Baltic region, and Poland, and that’s a move which Moscow claims violates that fundamental peace treaty signed between Russia and NATO.”
This report was referring to the NATO Founding Act, which had been signed in 1997 after Russian President Boris Yeltsin learned that the verbal promise which the agents of America’s President George H.W. Bush had made to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would not move “one inch to the east”, was soon going to be broken, and that Hungary, Czech Republic, and Poland would be the first former Warsaw Pact nations to be added to NATO. Yeltsin was furious to learn of this, and so there were negotiations; and, this time around, Russia got the West’s signatures upon what was to be the contractual relationship between the by-now clearly expanding NATO, and the post-communist and now lone nation of Russia. The NATO Founding Act promised that:

NATO reiterates that in the current and foreseeable security environment, the Alliance will carry out its collective defence and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces. Accordingly, it will have to rely on adequate infrastructure commensurate with the above tasks. In this context, reinforcement may take place, when necessary, in the event of defence against a threat of aggression and missions in support of peace consistent with the United Nations Charter and the OSCE governing principles, as well as for exercises consistent with the adapted CFE Treaty, the provisions of the Vienna Document 1994 and mutually agreed transparency measures. Russia will exercise similar restraint in its conventional force deployments in Europe.

The key phrase there is “permanent stationing,” and, as is common in treaties, it isn’t defined. Russia had wanted it to be defined, but the U.S. refused.
Back on 4 September 2014, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was asked at a press conference, “How would you respond to US President Barack Obama’s statement that the Russia-NATO Founding Act may be amended?” And Lavrov said:

“This document was elaborated by all countries that are members of the Russia-NATO Council, and can only be amended collectively. Unilaterally, it is possible only to withdraw from the act, but this would apply only to the country that makes this decision. Declaring that ‘I, a single country, have decided to amend a collective document signed by 28 nations’ is not entirely appropriate, either legally or politically.”

On 9 March 2017, Deutsche Welle bannered “Hopeful for more troops, US scouts basing options in Germany” and reported that, “Eastern European countries, including Poland, have pushed for permanent troops in their territory, but Western allies, including Germany, have resisted, citing the 1997 NATO Founding Act, an agreement with Russia that they argue limits permanent deployments in former Warsaw Pact nations.”
So: the U.S. is doing it regardless of what the leadership of Germany or any other NATO-member-nation want. The U.S. had been behind the East European regimes that want to go to war against Russia, and it’s providing them the men and materiel in order to lead them in that invasion. Russia is in no position to be able to respond in-kind against the United States, because not only does Russia no longer control the nations that are on and near its own borders, but it doesn’t have, and never did have, control over any of the nations that are on or near America’s borders, except for tiny Cuba, back when both Cuba and the U.S.S.R. were communist. The current U.S.-NATO buildup along and near Russia’s borders would be more similar to a Russian buildup along America’s borders with Canada and Mexico, which Russia wouldn’t be able to do, even if Russia’s Government wanted to.
The American news-site Newsweek (formerly a major glossy magazine but now only online) headlined on October 12th, “U.S. Military Sends Troops to Russian Border, Officials Say They Want ‘Peace, Not War’ With Russia”, and noted that though Russia said the NATO Founding Act prohibited this deployment, “Since Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula amid political unrest in neighboring Ukraine in 2014, however, NATO has significantly expanded its military presence near Russia, especially among the three Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — and Poland. These four nations were designated by the U.S. last year to host NATO battle groups, but the multinational coalition has expanded its forces beyond these countries, drawing further Russian fury.” In other words: the U.S. designated these countries, on and near the Russian border, to precipitate the final war, which the U.S. intends to finish. And the U.S. then approved even more countries, for the task.
Back on 13 June 2015, the New York Times had headlined “U.S. Is Poised to Put Heavy Weaponry in Eastern Europe” and reported:

In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries, American and allied officials say.
The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine have caused alarm and prompted new military planning in NATO capitals.

What had actually happened is that starting by no later than 2011, the Obama Administration was planning a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Ukrainian President who had been elected in 2010, and the resulting coup — which was carried out in 2014 by Ukraine’s two racist-fascist or ideologically nazi political Parties, the Right Sector, and the Svoboda Party (the latter of which Party was renamed from its original “Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine” name, at the demand of the CIA) — was very violent and bloody, and terrified the residents in the Ukrainian regions that had voted over 75% for the elected President (whom Ukraine’s nazis had just overthrown), especially Crimea and Donbass, so these supporters of the elected President (these people being Russian-speakers) clamored for Russian protection, and Russia provided it. (Here is what Russia was protecting them against in Crimea; and, here is what Russia was protecting them against in Donbass.)
By no later than two days after the coup was over, the top officials of the EU knew that it had been a coup and was not a ‘democratic revolution’ such as was being publicly reported. They kept silent about it, and the regimes in the former Warsaw Pact nations have prevented their publics from knowing that Ukraine had suffered a nazi-executed and U.S.-financed coup; and, so, the people in those Eastern European countries think that the imperialistic nation is Russia (like the former Soviet regime was), and not the U.S. (which in recent decades was taken over by fascists, America’s oligarchs).
And, so, since the U.S. Government is gearing up for war with Russia, Russia is preparing to defend itself — against the U.S., and against at least the nations that are bordering or close to Russia (maybe including Ukraine itself), which are providing the military bases and allowing the missiles and other weapons to be installed there (in the participating countries) for the invasion. If and when the invasion happens, it will be completed within less than an hour, the idea being to destroy Russia’s retaliatory weapons by a blitz-attack before they can be fired and before their warheads can reach their destinations, for which reasons Lockheed Martin’s ABM (or BMD) system (called “Aegis Ashore”) is being deployed around Russia’s borders: to nullify all retaliatory capability (as if that were even possible to do).
Anyway, regardless of whether Russia violated the NATO Founding Act by its having accepted the 90%+ plebiscite results in Crimea on 16 March 2014 favoring to become again a part of Russia (as they had been until the Soviet dictator transferred them to Ukraine in 1954), there can be no question that, under U.S. President Obama, and now continuing under U.S. President Trump, the NATO Founding Act has itself been nullified, and there is no longer exists what had been the only peace treaty that the U.S. ever signed with Russia. We’re now in not the Cold War, which was accepted on both sides as being a balance of terror in order to maintain the peace (Mutually Assured Destruction or “MAD”); we’re in the situation where the U.S. Government believes instead in “Nuclear Primacy”, or America conquering Russia. If that weren’t the case, then America wouldn’t have been doing what it has been doing since 2011.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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Frank
Frank
Oct 18, 2017 11:00 AM

The United States cannot fight a conventional land war, least of all against powers such as Russia and China. This much has been amply demonstrated in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. It’s presence in Eastern Europe together with its proxy forces – approx 50,000 – is largely symbolic, a political exercise rather than a military one. Compare this with Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in WW2. Operation Barbarossa. Between 22nd June and 4th July 1941, the German’s massive invasion force consisted of 138 divisions, approximately 3,359 000 men, 4,445 fully tracked AFVs of all types, and 3,914 aircraft of all types. We all know what happened.
Putin has gone on record as saying that in any future war the hostilities will not be fought on Russian soil. And In any nuclear exchange all the major centres of the enemy powers will be targeted. So is the US prepared to sacrifice Los Angeles, New York or Washington for Vilnius, Riga of Warsaw? As for ABM systems, these are untested and easily countered by adding to Russia’s latest ICBMs – RS-28s as well as counter-measures to defeat ABMs.
According to the National Interest ”
‘’Defending the United States against a major Russian or Chinese ballistic missile attack is currently not feasible. A reliable and affordable defence that could protect America against a Russian ICBM and SLBM force that could launch some 1,500 ballistic missile warheads simply does not exist. While the Chinese force is much smaller, numbering several dozen ICBMs, it probably includes countermeasures that would seriously complicate disruption by missile defines systems …
For the foreseeable future, offence wins the offence-defence relationship. Offensive ballistic missile technology is far more mature than that of missile defence, and cost considerations favour the offence. Adding fourteen more GMD interceptors by 2017 will require the Pentagon to spend about $1 billion. The Russians and Chinese can each add fourteen more warheads to their strategic offensive forces at considerably less cost. One reason that the Russians are building a replacement for their heavy SS-18 ICBM is to have a missile that can carry ten-fifteen warheads as a means of overwhelming a future American missile defence.
It is important to remember that the other side may not sit passively as the U.S. military develops missile defences. Other nuclear powers may choose to build up their strategic offensive forces in response, increasing the number of nuclear weapons targeted at the United States (China comes to mind). Indeed, it was concern that the ABM systems of the 1960s would spark an uncontrollable strategic offensive arms race that led to negotiation of the 1972 ABM Treaty.
None of this is to say that a future technological breakthrough might not produce a change in the offense-defence equation. Some new technology could be developed that would make defence against ballistic missiles far more lethal, cost-effective and attractive, tilting the equation to favour defence instead of offense. But that breakthrough does not appear to be on the horizon, at least not for the next fifteen-twenty years. And a key lesson of the past thirty-two years is that technology in the missile defence area often does not deliver on its potential—at least not as rapidly, or as inexpensively, as originally thought.”
The National Interest. March 2015 – Steven Pifer
The only situation which might trigger some sort of conflict between US proxy NATO forces and the Russian Federation is the arming and admission of Ukraine into NATO. This I think would be a provocation too far for Putin and Russia. The example of the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia should have given the west an unmistakable warning of what would happen in such a blatant provocation. We shall wait and we shall see.

BigB
BigB
Oct 17, 2017 11:37 PM

The recent buildup in Poland is merely the start: Congress has recently signed off a $4.6bn “European Detterence Initiative” in the FY2018 NDAA. McCain, acting as a factotum for Soros and the rest of the Gods of Money – has basically ordered more of everything – to be stationed in Europe. Over and above this is a further $65m to develop an intermediate range ground launched cruise missile (range – less than 500km) – also to be stationed in Europe. The intention is clear: to get Russia to “violate” or withdraw from the NATO Founders Pact – so the buildup can continue unabated.
In a parallel but integrated development (as featured on the UK Column yesterday and today): is the acceleration of Permanent Structural Cooperation (PESCO) on defence – to be launched in December this year. What this involves is defence sector cooperation and integration – and a “military Schengen” across Europe – not excluding the UK. To be followed by European Economic and Monetary Union. Basically, this involves us tearing up Magna Carta, sh1tting on our constitution, handing our sovereignty, armed forces, nuclear weapons, economic and foreign policy – to an unelected faceless bunch of Brussels bureaucrats in service of the ECB. Brexit: what’s that? It’s being turned by Treason May into a “More Europe” totalitarian coup.
None of this can take place without an enemy: real or imagined. An amalgamated EU military, with it’s own federal treasury and budget … a $4.6bn troop and war materiel buildup … Cold War? With what TPTB seem to have planned – that period in history may well soon be viewed nostalgically as a favourite Summer Holiday???

Big B
Big B
Oct 18, 2017 11:20 AM
Reply to  BigB

Erratum: PESCO = Permanent Structured Cooperation.
I might have slipped into colloquial language: but the threat is real. Invoking Aricle 42(6) and 46(10) – ‘Cooperation’ is a major step toward full EU military integration: “It will set a new centre of gravity on defence within the existing EU framework and become a cornerstone of a more resilient civil/military security architecture for Europe as a whole.” The UK is sleepwalking into an (almost) total loss of sovereignty (that 17m of us voted to take back – so democratic sovereignty and the ‘sacrosanct’ right to self-determination will be sacrificed too?) May and her cabinet are committing treason on behalf of the UK Deep State. Corbyn et al are complicit in their silence. The presstitute media-commentariat? Don’t expect too much from them. If you don’t want to be a vassal of a federated EU superstate (built on ‘defence’ {read offence}) – pass it on.
http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/protocols-annexed-to-the-treaties/673-protocol-on-permanent-structured-cooperation-established-by-article-42-of-the-treaty-on-european.html
https://ec.europa.eu/epsc/publications/strategic-notes/defence-europe_en

Big B
Big B
Oct 23, 2017 2:37 PM
Reply to  Big B

Here are two of the most recent documents published on PESCO, after last weeks EU summit. Notice how one contains ‘EU28’ in the title: and May declared that we will be “taking our seat at the table” for another 18 months. The intention is clear, to me at least. The Brexit negotiations are a smoke and mirrors hoax: the real deal is further EU integration – starting with PESCO.
https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/34257/eu-28-leaders-look-launch-permanent-structured-cooperation-defence-end-2017_en
https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage_en/34226/Permanent%20Structured%20Cooperation%20(PESCO)%20-%20Factsheet

bevin
bevin
Oct 17, 2017 9:15 PM

The saddest thing is that those promoting war-in the US and Israel- are those most likely to survive it.
Playing chicken in eastern Europe is dangerous to the Russians but it is much more dangerous to the Poles, Balts, Galicians, Austrians Germans and all the rest whose governments blithely invite the bases, troops and facilities which are immediately chalked up as targets by Russia’s highly competent rocket forces.
It is the same game as in Korea where the Americans huff and puff about a war which (like the last one) would be barely noticed in the USA but which would lead to the deaths of millions and the rendering uninhabitable of vast tracts of land in Korea.
It is all part of the price western Europeans have to pay for not having the guts to tell the Americans to go home, and take their fascist puppets with them., back to the emigre ethnic machines in Chicago, Toronto and Mew York from which they came.

Afriend
Afriend
Oct 18, 2017 12:17 AM
Reply to  bevin

FAO Bevin, you are apparently unbanned now at the Craig Murray Blog.

Reg Varney
Reg Varney
Oct 17, 2017 8:39 PM

It never fails me as to why the rest of the world doesn’t see America for what it is, the biggest threat to mankind, how many countries have they invaded since the WW2 60? since it’s inception 339 years ago they have been at war for 223 years with someone, not a bad record, I doubt any country could come anywhere near it. warmongering bastards.

jag37777
jag37777
Oct 18, 2017 8:58 AM
Reply to  Reg Varney

Perfidious Albion gives them a run for their money. Same people really. Same capitalism.

Runner77
Runner77
Oct 17, 2017 7:52 PM

And only slightly off-topic, I see that the infamous Shaun Walker has been publishing more of his fantasies in the Grauniad. Headlined “Russian troll factory paid US activists to help fund protests during election”, Walker’s article is an imaginative tale of “Russian imposters” infesting Western blogs and comment pages. Is there anyone who still believes this nonsense, I wonder??

summitflyer
summitflyer
Oct 17, 2017 7:20 PM

As always ,more American belligerence and lies . Any grown ups left over there ?