- Flush with cash from high energy prices, Russia continues
its long-planned return as a world power, clearly intending to challenge
the United States as the world's sole hegemon. According to Newsweek's
Owen Matthews,
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- "A large chunk of the cash has gone into rebuilding
the beleaguered Russian Army. Putin has pledged the military $189 billion
over five years, commissioning a new generation of ICBMs specifically designed
to evade a U.S. missile defense shield and ordering up six new carrier
battle groups, which... will make the Russian Navy even mightier than its
Soviet predecessor within 20 years. This week, we'll review Putin's latest
maneuvers to test Western resolve as he pulls out of the Convention Forces
in Europe Treaty.
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- Despite the grand deception faking the collapse of the
Soviet Union, Russia has continued its underground preparations for war
with the West. The development of massive underground bunkers and weapons
factories in the Ural mountains, begun after the "collapse,"
continues unabated. Strangely, the CIA and the State Department continue
to downplay and explain away these danger signs. While Russian President
Putin rarely misses an opportunity to attack the US for its intervention
and bullying worldwide, President Bush continues to assure the world about
Putin's "honesty, trust and integrity."
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- To further test how soft the US is on confronting Russia,
Putin has declared he is pulling out of the Conventional Forces of Europe
Treaty, signed in 1990. This treaty was completely favorable to the Soviets,
and yet they still violated many of its provisions. While both sides were
to downsize their respective conventional forces to relative parity, the
Russians were allowed to simply remove their massive armored weapons to
storage depots beyond the Ural mountains.
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- This year, as NATO announced that it was going to establish
military bases in former Soviet states (now part of NATO), Russia complained
that this amounted to a NATO violation of the treaty. Russia's Foreign
Minister responded that Russia would consider itself no longer limited
in its deployment of heavy weapons (tanks and artillery) to its western
border with NATO countries.
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- While this implies that Russia was formerly in compliance,
it is not true. During the 1990s, Russia had used the expansion of NATO
as an excuse to demand amendments to the treaty that ratified Russia's
huge armor deployments from the Ural depots to the South of Russia during
the Chechen war. In fact, Russia had moved those weapons out of storage
in clear violation of the treaty and then demanded the treaty be amended
to ratify the violation. Russian, never one to give an inch when it can
demand a mile, offered to withdraw troops from Georgia and Moldova in exchange
for the changes. The deal was made, but Russian troops are still in Georgia.
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- Russia's latest move is "upping the ante" in
its challenge to US plans to install a few token anti-ballistic missile
systems in Eastern Europe that directly threaten Russia's growing battery
of first-strike Topol M missiles. Russia had been testing the truth of
US claims that the ABM systems were aimed at confronting rogue missiles
from Iran, by offering basing facilities in southern Russia where they
would be more effective against Iranian missiles. For that matter, if the
US were really targeting Iranian missiles they would simply base the interceptors
in Iraq!
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- Bush's rejection of the Russian suggestion confirmed
Russia's suspicion that these ABMs are meant to target Russian offensive
missiles in their boost phase over the poles, when they are most vulnerable.
While this appears as if Bush is legitimately defending US and Western
interests, the few missiles being proposed are too few in number to stop
a Russian attack. As I said in prior briefings recently, I believe the
real reason for the ABM proposal in Poland and Czechoslovakia is to threaten
the Russians with the appearance of future encirclement to HASTEN Russia's
planned pre-emptive strike on the West--a key element in the globalist
plan to justify going to war in order to force a New World Order on reluctant
citizens, holding fast to "archaic notions" of national sovereignty.
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- Is unilateral disarmament the answer? No more than during
the cold war. But some liberal editors in the US are beginning to wax eloquent
again about the foolish "virtues" of disarmament. The editorial
board of the Boston Herald told their readers this week, after extolling
Russian sincerity in disarmament, "We are not aware of any problems
with the inspections that both sides have been conducting since they began
under the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. [Really? See below!]
The United States has declared total holdings of bombs and warheads to
be 5,866 and Russia has declared 4,162. Though these numbers represent
reductions of 75 percent or more from peak holdings of the 1970s and 1980s,
they are still far in excess of any real military usefulness, and should
be reduced by about 90 percent."
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- Let me add a little analysis to what the Herald wrote
to show you why their words are deceptive. Note that they said "the
US has declared total holdings..." That word implies no inspections--that
the Russians are just having to take our word for it. In fact, that isn't
true. We continue to allow Russian teams (housed in luxury condos at US
taxpayer expense) to inspect our nuclear inventory. Not so on the Russian's
part. The Boston Herald's use of "declared" is totally appropriate
in describing the Russian estimate because our inspectors do NOT have access
to their nuclear warhead storage facilities, including the one WE built
for them. In fact I believe the Herald purposely chose to apply the word
"declare" to both nations, to imply they are both acting on the
same basis.
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- As to their statement that "we are not aware of
any problems with the inspections" I can only say, they must not read
the papers. Even the controlled press made some mention of the egregious
Russian violations of the INF treaty. Worldnetdaily.com had Ken Timmerman
detail the violations during the Clinton administration:
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- "As President Clinton met with Russian President
Putin in Moscow to discuss nuclear arms control over the weekend, an old
story from the Cold War has resurfaced that sheds doubt on Russia's reliability
as a negotiating partner: nuclear-tipped SS-23 missiles that the Soviet
Union never declared to the United States, in direct violation of a 1987
arms-control agreement.
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- "During the Cold War, the SS-23 missiles were equipped
with a 100-kiloton nuclear warhead and were fired from wheeled launchers,
making them virtually impossible to destroy once they were deployed from
their underground storage sites. The Soviets secretly deployed the SS-23s
in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria in 1986. In the event of war
in Europe between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, they would have given the Soviets
a clear military advantage by allowing them to launch a surprise nuclear
strike at the heart of NATO forces in Germany.
-
- "Under the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF)
Agreement signed in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 8, 1987, President Reagan
and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to destroy all existing
theater nuclear missiles in Europe, including all SS-23s... While the Soviets
allowed U.S. inspectors to witness the destruction of the longer-range
SS-20 missiles [the US allowed the Russians to keep the warheads], which
constituted the bulk of their force, they secretly rushed several batteries
of the shorter-range SS-23s to East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria
just prior to signing the Treaty, and never declared them or destroyed
them."
-
- The problem of "looking the other way" while
the continuing Soviets cheat on all disarmament pacts isn't just a Clinton
thing. The Bush administration continues to fulfill its share of the two
disarmament reduction pacts signed with Russia recently even though Russia
has backed out of their commitments. The Russians announced they were not
going to destroy their remaining SS-18 Satan missiles as stipulated in
the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, but the US continued to
dismantle our 50 Peacekeeper missiles, with 10 warheads each.
-
- Last week the US announced another dismantling of 50
Minuteman III missiles, without any Russian quid pro quo. We must ask,
Why is it that the US continues to go head long down this suicidal path
to unilateral disarmament? Is Russia getting any less hostile to the US?
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Russian foreign minister, Sergei
Lagrov, have pledged to reduce the arsenals of nuclear weapons "the
lowest possible level."
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- Only one of the two is keeping the pledge, and I fear
that is NOT because the US is working in America's best interest, but to
further this globalist plot to create future conflict. It's no wonder the
American public is so willing to be led like lambs to the slaughter with
the Boston Herald declaring, "It's disconcerting to have to say this,
but the Russians have the better idea how to do it [disarmament]."
This is either incredible ignorance or outright deception.
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-
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- World Affairs Brief, July 20, 2007. Commentary and Insights
on a Troubled World.
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- Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution
permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief (<http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com>
http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com )
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