Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
During the 20th century Cold War with the Soviet Union, there were US Soviet experts who were concerned that the Cold War was partly contrived and, therefore, needlessly dangerous. Stephen Cohn at Princeton University, for example, believed that exaggerating the threat was as dangerous as underestimating it. On the other hand, Richard Pipes at Harvard believed that the CIA dangerously underestimated Soviet military power and failed to grasp Soviet strategic intentions.
In 1976 President Gerald Ford and CIA Director George H.W. Bush commissioned an outside panel of experts to evaluate the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimates. This group was known as Team B. Under Pipes’ leadership Team B created the perception that the US faced a dangerous “window of vulnerability.”
In conventional wisdom, in order to close this window of vulnerability President Reagan began an American arms buildup. On this point conventional wisdom is wrong. The Reagan military buildup was as much hype as reality. Its purpose was to bring the Soviets to the negotiating table and end the Cold War in order to remove the threat of nuclear war.
Reagan’s supply-side policy had fixed the problem of worsening trade-offs between employment and inflation, thus making an arms buildup possible. In contrast, Reagan regarded the Soviet economy as broken and unfixable. He reasoned that a new arms race was more than the Soviets could afford, and that the threat of one would bring the Soviets to the table to negotiate the end of the Cold War.
The Soviet Union collapsed when hardline communists, convinced that Gorbachev was endangering the Soviet Union by giving up too much too quickly before American intentions were known, placed President Gorbachev under house arrest. The Yeltsin years (1991-1999) brought the dismemberment of the Soviet Empire and was a decade of Russian subservience to the United States.
Putin came to power as the American neoconservatives were girding up to establish US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. As General Wesley Clark told us, seven countries were to be overthrown in 5 years. The American preoccupation with the Middle East permitted Putin to throw off American overlordship and reestablish Russian sovereignty. Once Washington realized this, the American establishment turned on Putin with a vengence.
Stephen Cohen, Jack Matlock (Reagan’s ambassador to the Soviet Union), myself and a few others warned that Washington’s refusal to accept Russian independence would reignite the Cold War, thus erasing the accomplishment of ending it and resurrecting the specter of nuclear war. But Washington didn’t listen. Instead, Cohen and I were put on a list of “Russian agents/dupes,” and the process of trying to destabalize Putin began. In other words, once an American colony always an American colony, and Putin became the most demonized person on earth.
Today (March 17) we had the extraordinary spectacle of President Biden saying on ABC News that President Putin is a killer, and “he will pay a price.” This is a new low point in diplomacy. It does not serve American interests or peace.
Yesterday a CIA-Homeland Security report was declassified. The “report” is blatant propaganda. It alleges that Russia interfered in the 2020 election with the purposes of “denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.” “Russiagate” is still with us despite the failure of the three-year Mueller investigation to find a scrap of evidence.
We desperately need a new Team B like the one the CIA commissioned in 1976 to check on itself. But in those days discussion and debate was possible. Today they are not. We live in a world in which only propaganda is permitted. There is an agenda. The agenda is regime change in Russia. No facts are relevant. There will be no Team B to evaluate whether the Putin threat is exaggerated.
The anti-Russian craze that has been orchestrated in the US and throughout the Western world leaves the US in an extremely dangerous situation. Americans and Europeans perceive reality only through the light of American propaganda. American diplomacy, military policy, news reporting, and public undersranding are the fantasy creations of propaganda.
The Kremlin has shown amazing forbearance of Washington’s inanities and insults. It was the Democrat Hillary Clinton who called President Putin the “new Hitler,” and now Democrat Biden calls Putin “a killer.” American presidents and presidential candidates did not speak of Soviet leaders in these terms. They would have been regarded by the American population as far too deranged to have access to the nuclear button.
Sooner or later the Kremlin will understand that it is pointless to respond to demonization with denials. Yes, the Russians are correct. The accusations are groundless, and no facts or evidence is ever provided in support of the accusations. Sooner or later the Kremlin will realize that the purpose of demonizing a country is to prepare one’s people and allies for war against it.
Washington pays no attention to Maria Zakharova and Dmitry Peskov’s objections to unsubstaniated accusations.
When “sooner or later” is, I do not know, but the Russians haven’t reached that point. The Kremlin reads the latest allegations as an excuse for more sanctions against Russian companies and individuals. This reading is mistaken. Washington’s purpose is to demonize Russia and its leadership in order to set Russia up for regime change and, failing that, for military attack.
In the United States Russian Studies has degenerated into propaganda. Recently, two members of the Atlantic Council think tank, Emma Ashford and Matthew Burrows, suggested that American foreign policy could benefit from a less hostile approach to Russia. Instantly, 22 members of the think tank denounced the article by Ashford and Burrows.
This response is far outside the boundaries of the 20th century Cold War. It precludes any rational or intelligent approach to American foreign policy. Sooner or later the Kremlin will comprehend that it is confronted by a gangster outfit of the criminally insane. Then what happens?
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There will never be a nuclear war.
What makes you so confident?
The man on the moon said so?
A buddy of mine is a flat-earther. For some reason he doesn’t believe nuclear weapons exist. I’m not sure what nuclear weapons have to do with flat earth / globe earth. I would ask him, but then he’ll text me six two-hour long YouTube videos every day for a week. For some reason, everyone in those videos wears bowling shirts. They all look like they’re in Sha Na Na.
HSF,
Nuclear war was perpetrated in the US on NYC one sunny morning -Sept 11th. 2-3 NUKES laid waste to the 103 story Twin Towers.
I doubt they’ll be the last.
You, sir, are one massively fucken retarded monkey.
(My apologies to the retarded and to monkeys everywhere.)
Then, explain the concrete and earth that was turned to glass at the bottom of the towers. The heat which lasted for months. The “dustification” of 10 story very thick steel beams. I saw the beam turn to dust as it was falling.
The cars that burned and rusted but paper inside them didn’t burn.
The workers who died and continue to die of cancers associated with nuclear type events.
Stucky, seek answers to questions before the ad hominem attacks asshat.
If you don’t think DARPA has come up with such weapons like suitcase nukes then, who is the “retarded fucken monkey”?
I don’t have to explain anything. YOU made a rather ridicules assertion. You backed it up, so far, with nothing.
1. Where was the telltale mushroom cloud?? Or, does physics no longer matter?
2. Are we to believe that nukes are so tiny and so containable as to destroy ONLY a couple of buildings?
3. Where is all the radiation TODAY. Radiation doesn’t just disappear after a nuke detonation. It has a rather long half-life.
4. Heat that melts “concrete and earth” simultaneously turns steel into dust??? Are you daft, man???
EMP grid down and/or the Internez down is Moar likely. The outcome would be every bit as catastrophic.
Russia, Russia, Russia. A country with twice the area of the US and half the population is going to invade other countries … for what? More land? The biggest problem the neocons / neolibs have in demonizing Russia is the sheer ridiculousness of the proposition. Of course, that won’t stop them from doubling and quadrupling down.
Iska, you ignorant son of a caterpillar … Russia, aka Magog, is gonna invade Israel … any fucking day now ……. IT’S IN THE BIBLE!!!!!!!
email me at [email protected] for further elucidations.
Sorry. I guess I haven’t been listening to enough John Hagee lately.
The chances of a nuclear war never actually went away. They diminished some after the USSR fell. But they
have been steadily increasing since then as more countries joined the ‘club’…especially the NORK’s. Add in
the Iranians seeking the capability….which they WILL achieve eventually plus the chances of a terrorist group
getting their hands on a rogue warhead and detonating it in some major city and the future odds of such a
war become scarily real. We are a clever species. NOT an intelligent one. If we were intelligent we would have
NEVER BUILT THOSE WEAPONS. But we did…by the thousands. And eventually they WILL GET USED. That is
simply humanity….we can’t help ourselves.
I ask all of my fellow TBP’ers to pass this on. Thanks to the feckless morons who helped put Biden in the White House, we are all in mortal danger. Hardscrabble says there will never be a nuclear war? Sorry, pal. I would advise you to read up on both Russian and Chinese military doctrine. Both of these countries see nuclear weapons as a kind of super-sized artillery and have every intention of using them should the military situation demand it.
The Sino-American meeting in Alaska and the vulgar, idiotic name-calling by Biden, with his blustering threats to Putin, constitute a turning point. For the first time both Russia and China have told us to go piss up a rope. Their patience is at an end and they are telling us in no uncertain terms. The Chinese threw our bullshit about “human rights” back in our faces. Putin mercilessly mocked the mush-brained occupant of the White House. The so-called “Biden Administration” is a sinister clown car packed with third raters, bottom dealers, Obama retreads, and political freaks. This collection of turds is quite capable of stumbling into a war with Iran, Russia or China, and we will get our butts kicked good and hard. Look at the Secretary of Defense and the Woke generals. Peewee Herman provokes more fear in the Chinese. yes, Biden’s election was a catastrophe but you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Just wait. We have entered a vicious and unstoppable cycle that is going to lead to total disaster. The financial tsunami is building, our military is a rotten, hollow shadow of itself, our political system is in free fall, a geeky doofus named Fauci is telling people who they can eat a hamburger with, and the Negroes have run wild. Ordinary working white folk won’t be far behind. Hold on tight.
Lots of I believe, accurate observations.
To add, the country is virtue signaling its weaknesses in what our military perceives as a threat, our stand against discriminating against the senile and our own obsession with hating each other due to race, sexual preference etc.
We are the turtle on our proverbial back, flailing helplessly and looking like the next meal to any of our enemies.
Fully agree. Nukes are back on the table. Ideologies like islam and communisim have zero respect for human value or life.
Muslims will put kids in car bombs because nobody suspects a car with kids to be a bomb. Do you think if they got hold of a nuke they wouldn’t use it???
The chinese have zero problem with organ harvesting from political prisoners like the Uiger, christian, falon gong practitioners etc. Do you think they’d have much problem using a nuke if they think it will decimate their enemy?? Would they use a bio warfare bomb??
Would the Russians use a nuke?? They’ve murdered plenty of people in the last century so to think they wouldn’t again… is stupid.
Some Bulgarian friends who grew up under the communist regime, before the wall came down. Once stated to me after the wall fell, the communist leaders merely took off their communist hats and put on their capitolist hats… nothing changed.
oh no… just realized ol Stucks gonna be on my case now because I didn’t go outside right away. better down vote me towards my penance
Says the guy who lives in the only country that, you know, …. actually dropped nukes on human life.
Ok, now go outside and play. Adults are talking in this room.
aaahhh wrong again… canukistan has never dropped a nuke period… Now children who just make up fanciful and emotional stories should stay silent and let the adults talk.
Came in for a screw driver…
Ah, shit. i fergot you were a Canuck.
Serious question. Did you have fun playing outside today?
Atheist Russians have shown restraint on a couple of occasions in the past when it appeared that they were likely about to be struck by an American first strike. Maybe – just guessing here – living in what they knew to be a totalitarian system oddly made them more empathetic toward people in other countries, while we in the The Greatest Country On Earth® are quicker to view others (especially atheists) as non-human and expendable. Between Russia and the US, there’s no doubt in my mind that America is far more likely to launch a first strike. Purely, “defensive”, of course. China – I don’t know. China has ambitions. Russia just wants to be left the fuck alone. Why is that so hard? It’s like (((some people))) have an undying grievance against them. AND BY SOME PEOPLE, I MEAN JEWS. Not all of them of course – just the ones who sit atop our governing structures.
All Putin and Xi have to do is sit back and wait. The assholes in DC are doing a fabulous job of destroying the country sans any outside help and putting on a great comic show to boot. When you have Biden playing stumble bum on the plane ramp and rambling incoherently on green screens you know you have Benny Hill and the Keystone Kops running the show.
Just make Russia a trading partner and open up new markets. Hasn’t everyone seen that wargames movie by now? nobody wins.
Uh, there’s a feud underlying this Great Game. Most Americans are unaware of it.
Of course they are going after Russia. They need a bad guy fir their totalitarian control of the US population and because they are bought and paid for by China they cannot go after China. So Russia it is.
Unnecessary and idiotic. The warmongers are back in full control. The once party of peace, of RFK, Gene McCarthy and George McGovern have made a Faustian bargain with the Empire’s Pentagon death star.
Or Faucian.
WWI, WWII, Korean War, Viet Nam War…hardly a party of peace. Just sayin
The threat of nuclear war is where it has always been. Out of our hands.
With Trump, the news and politicians were stoking fears about the president’s control over nukes. They compared him to Nixon. Well, who had final say? Not Nixon, but the jews Schlesinger and Kissinger.
Does anyone really think anything has changed? jews have a lot of power in Russia, most likely the only war between Russia and America will be another war to kill White men and create some military spending, through proxy wars. Maybe whatever is next on the list for Greater Israel. I don’t know. But I’m positive that the only relevance that the puppets like Biden have are making us lose face, which shouldn’t hurt any of us directly.
My take on the Russia-bad madness is that it is driven by genuine fear on the part of Israel, fear that is perhaps well-founded. Iran is the underlying factor, Iran plus the Muslim world in general, who have Russian nuclear backing to a certain extent, perhaps to a greater extent than many realize. The USA, very nearly an Israeli client state thanks to an astonishingly high degree of infiltration in gov, academia, media, etc., is–to use a word beloved of PCR–shamefully insouciant with respect to the danger presented by this. If the Israelis and their fifth columnists embedded in the institutions named above wish to play with fire by attacking Iran, the USA’s best interests would be served by standing aside if Iran retaliates. If Israel uses nukes on Iran, it is far from impossible that other nuclear powers will respond in kind against Isreal, “Samson option” or not. If the USA were then to enter the fray on the side of Israel, “Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni” and the scale of the destruction to follow would render moot any further debate with respect to a civil war among those who survive; the USA–what was left of it–would be torn apart from within.
PCR is nobody’s fool, something that cannot be said of a large percentage of the USA’s present leadership and those who support it.
“A blessing for the czar? Of course. May God bless and keep the czar… far away from us.”
– Fiddler on the Roof.
Putin would seem to be well aware that the US is now run by criminally insane Jewish gangsters.