Introduction
The principle Nazi ideological prop
that secured massive financial and political support from Germany’s leading
industrialists was the Communist and Soviet threat. The main Nazi military drive, absorbing
two-thirds of its best troops, was directed eastward at conquering and
destroying Russia. The ‘Russian Threat’ justified Nazi Germany’s conquest and
occupation of the Ukraine, the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Baltic states,
with the aid of a substantial proportion of local Nazi collaborators.
After Germany’s defeat, division and disarmament,
and with the extension of Soviet power, the US reinstated the Nazi industrial
and banking giants, officials and intelligence operatives. At first they were
engaged in rebuilding their domestic economy and consolidating political power,
in collaboration with the US military occupation forces.
By the late 1960’s Germany regained
economic primacy in Europe and was at the forefront of European ‘integration’,
in association with France and England. It soon came to dominate the principle
decision–making institutions of the European Union (EU). The EU served as
Germany’s instrument for conquest by stealth. Year by year, through ‘aid’ and
low interest loans, the EU facilitated German capitalist’s market penetration
and financial expansion, through out south and central Europe. Germany set the
agenda for Western Europe, gaining economic dominance while benefiting from US
subversion and encirclement of Eastern Europe, Russia and the Baltic and Balkan
states.
Germany’s Great Leap Forward: The
Annexation of East Germany and the Demise of the USSR
Germany’s projection of power on a
world scale would never have occurred if it had not annexed East Germany. Despite
the West German claims of beneficence and ‘aid’ to the East, the Bonn regime
secured several million skilled engineers, workers and technicians, the
takeover of factories, productive farms and, most important, the Eastern
European and Russian markets for industrial goods, worth billions of dollars. Germany
was transformed from an emerging influential EU partner, into the most dynamic
expansionist power in Europe, especially in the former Warsaw Pact economies.
The annexation of East Germany and the
overthrow of the Communist governments in the East allowed German capitalists
to dominate markets in the former Eastern bloc. As the major trading partner, it
seized control of major industrial enterprises via corrupt privatizations
decreed by the newly installed
pro-capitalist client regimes. As the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia,
Hungary, Bulgarian, the Baltic States “privatized” and “de-nationalized”
strategic economic, trade, media and social service sectors, ‘unified’ Germany
was able to resume a privileged place. As Russia fell into the hands of
gangsters, emerging oligarchs and political proxies of western capitalists, its
entire industrial infrastructure was decimated and Russia was converted into a
giant raw-material export region.
Germany converted its trade relations
with Russia from one between equals into a ‘colonial’ pattern: Germany exported
high value industrial products and imported gas, oil and raw materials from
Russia.
German power expanded exponentially,
with the annexation of the “other Germany”, the restoration of capitalism in
Eastern Europe and the ascendancy of client regimes eager and willing to submit
to a German dominated European Union and a US directed NATO military command.
German political-economic expansion via
‘popular uprisings', controlled by local political clients, was soon
accompanied by a US led military offensive – sparked by separatist movements. Germany
intervened in Yugoslavia, aiding and abetting separatists in Slovenia and
Croatia. It backed the US-NATO bombing of Serbia and supported the far-right,
self-styled Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), engaged in a terrorist war in Kosovo.
Belgrade was defeated and regime change led to a neo-liberal client state. The
US built the largest military base in Europe in Kosovo. Montenegro and
Macedonia became EU satellites.
While NATO expanded and enhanced the US
military presence up to Russia’s borders, Germany became the continent’s
pre-eminent economic power.
Germany and the New World Order
While President Bush and Clinton were
heralding a “new world order”, based on unipolar military supremacy, Germany
advanced its new imperial order by exercising its political and economic levers.
Each of the two power centers, Germany and the US, shared the common quest of
rapidly incorporating the new capitalist regimes into their regional
organizations -- the European Union (EU) and NATO -- and extending their reach
globally. Given the reactionary origins and trajectory into vassalage of the
Eastern, Baltic and Balkan regimes, and given their political fears of a
popular reaction to the loss of employment, welfare and independence resulting
from their implementation of savage neoliberal “shock policies”, the client
rulers immediately “applied” for membership as subordinate members of the EU
and NATO, trading sovereignty, markets and national ownership of the means of
production for economic handouts and the ‘free’ movement of labor, an escape valve
for the millions of newly unemployed workers. German and English capital got
millions of skilled immigrant workers at below labor market wages, and
unimpeded access to markets and resources. The US secured NATO military bases,
and recruited military forces for its Middle East and South Asian imperial
wars.
US-German military and economic
dominance in Europe was premised on retaining Russia as a weak quasi vassal
state, and on the continued economic growth of their economies beyond the initial
pillage of the ex-communist economies.
For the US, uncontested military
supremacy throughout Europe was the springboard for near-time imperial
expansion in the Middle East, South Asia, Africa and Latin America. NATO was
‘internationalized’ into an offensive global military alliance: first in
Somalia, Afghanistan then Iraq, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine.
The Rise of Russia, The Islamic
Resistance and the New Cold War
During the ‘decade of infamy’
(1991-2000) extreme privatization measures by the client rulers in Russia on
behalf of EU and US investors and gangster oligarchs, added up to vast pillage
of the entire economy, public treasury and national patrimony. The image and
reality of a giant prostrate vassal state unable to pursue an independent
foreign policy, and incapable of providing the minimum semblance of a modern
functioning economy and maintaining the rule of law, became the defining view
of Russia by the EU and the USA. Post-communist Russia, a failed state by any
measure, was dubbed a “liberal democracy” by every western capitalist
politician and so it was repeated by all their mass media acolytes.
The fortuitous rise of Vladimir Putin
and the gradual replacement of some of the most egregious ‘sell-out’
neo-liberal officials, and most important, the reconstruction of the Russian
state with a proper budget and functioning national institutions, was
immediately perceived as a threat to US military supremacy and German economic
expansion Russia’s transition from Western vassalage to regaining its status as
a sovereign independent state set in motion, an aggressive counter-offensive by
the US-EU. They financed a neo-liberal-oligarchy backed political opposition in
an attempt to restore Russia to vassalage via street demonstrations and
elections. Their efforts to oust Putin and re-establish Western vassal state
failed. What worked in 1991 with Yeltsin’s power grab against Gorbachev was
ineffective against Putin. The vast majority of Russians did not want a return
to the decade of infamy.
In the beginning of the new century,
Putin and his team set new ground-rules, in which oligarchs could retain their
illicit wealth and conglomerates, providing they didn’t use their economic
levers to seize state power. Secondly, Putin revived and restored the
scientific technical, military, industrial and cultural institutions and
centralized trade and investment decisions within a wide circle of public and
private decision makers not beholden to Western policymakers. Thirdly, he began
to assess and rectify the breakdown of Russian security agencies particularly
with regard to the threats emanating from Western sponsored ‘separatist’
movements in the Caucuses, especially, in Chechnya, and the onset of US backed
‘color revolutions’ in the Ukraine and Georgia.
At first, Putin optimistically assumed
that, Russia being a capitalist state, and without any competing ideology, the
normalization and stabilization of the Russian state would be welcomed by the
US and the EU. He even envisioned that they would accept Russia as an economic,
political, and even NATO partner. Putin even made overtures to join and
co-operate with NATO and the EU. The West did not try to dissuade Putin of his
illusions. In fact they encouraged him, even as they escalated their backing
for Putin’s internal opposition and prepared a series of imperial wars and
sanctions in the Middle East, targeting traditional Russian allies in Iraq,
Syria and Libya.
As the ‘internal’ subversive strategy
failed to dislodge President Putin, and the Russian state prevailed over the
neo-vassals, the demonization of Putin became constant and shrill. The West
moved decisively to an ‘outsider strategy’, to isolate, encircle and undermine
the Russian state by undermining allies, and trading partners
US and Germany Confront Russia:
Manufacturing the “Russian Threat”
Russia was enticed to support US and
NATO wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya in exchange for the promise of deeper
integration into Western markets. The US and EU accepted Russian co-operation,
including military supply routes and bases, for their invasion and occupation
of Afghanistan. The NATO powers secured Russian support of sanctions against
Iran. They exploited Russia’s naïve support of a “no fly zone” over Libya to
launch a full-scale aerial war. The US financed so-called “color revolutions”
in Georgia and the Ukraine, a dress rehearsal for the putsch in 2014. Each
violent seizure of power allowed NATO to impose anti-Russian rulers eager and
willing to serve as vassal states to Germany and the US.
Germany spearheaded the European
imperial advance in the Balkans and Moldavia, countries with strong economic
ties to Russia. High German officials “visited” the Balkans to bolster their
ties with vassal regimes in Slovenia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia. Under
German direction, the European Union ordered the vassal Bulgarian regime of
Boyko “the booby” Borisov to block the passage of Russian owned South Stream
pipeline to Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia and beyond. The Bulgarian state lost $400
million in annual revenue... Germany and the US bankrolled pro-NATO and EU
client politicians in Moldavia – securing the election of Iurie Leanca as Prime
Minister. As a result of Leanca’s
slavish pursuit of EU vassalage, Moldavia lost $150 million in exports to
Russia. Leanca’s pro-EU policies go counter to the views of most Moldavians –
57% see Russia as the country’s most important economic partner. Nearly 40% of the Moldavian working age
population works in Russia and 25% of the Moldavians’ $8 billion GDP is
accounted for by overseas remittances.
German and US empire-builders steamroll
over dissenting voices in Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia, as well as Moldova and
Bulgaria, whose economy and population suffer from the impositions of the
blockade of the Russian gas and oil pipeline. But Germany’s all out economic
warfare against Russia takes precedence over the interests of its vassal
states: it’s theirs to sacrifice for the ‘Greater Good’ of the emerging German
economic empire and the US – NATO military encirclement of Russia. The
extremely crude dictates of German imperial interests articulated through the
EU, and the willingness of Balkan and Baltic regimes to sacrifice fundamental
economic interests, are the best indicators of the emerging German empire in
Europe.
Parallel to Germany’s rabid
anti-Russian economic campaign, the US via NATO is engaged in a vast military
build-up along the length and breadth of Russia’s frontier. The US stooge, NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg,
boasts that over the current year, NATO has increased 5-fold the warplanes and
bombers patrolling Russian maritime and land frontiers, carried out military
exercises every two days and vastly increased the number of war ships in the
Baltic and Black Sea.
Conclusion
What is absolutely clear is that the US
and Germany want to return Russia to the vassalage status of the 1990s. They do
not want ‘normal relations’. From the moment Putin moved to restore the Russian
state and economy, the Western powers have engaged in a series of political and
military interventions, eliminating Russian allies, trading partners and
independent states.
The emergent of extremist, visceral
anti-Russian regimes in Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania served as the
forward shield for NATO advancement and German economic encroachment. Hitler’s
‘dream’ of realizing the conquest of the East via unilateral military conquest
has now, under Prime Minister Merkel, taken the form of conquest by stealth in
Northern and Central Europe, by economic blackmail in the Balkans, and by
violent putsches in the Ukraine and Georgia.
The German economic ruling class is
divided between the dominant pro-US sector that is willing to sacrifice
lucrative trade with Russia today in hopes of dominating and pillaging the
entire economy in a post-Putin Russia (dominated by ‘reborn Yeltsin clones’)
and a minority industrial sector, which wants to end sanctions and return to
normal economic relations with Russia.
Germany is fearful that its client
rulers in the East, especially in the Balkans are vulnerable to a popular
upheaval due to the economic sacrifices they impose on the population. Hence,
Germany is wholly in favor of the new NATO rapid deployment force, ostensibly
designed to counter a non-existent “Russian threat” but in reality to prop up
faltering vassal regimes.
The ‘Russian Threat’, the ideology
driving the US and German offensive throughout Europe and the Caucuses, is a
replay of the same doctrine which Hitler used to secure support from domestic
industrial bankers, conservatives and right wing overseas collaborators among
extremists in Ukraine, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria.
The US-EU seizure of power via vassal
political clients backed by corrupt oligarchs and Nazi street fighters in
Ukraine detonated the current crisis. Ukraine power grab posed a top security
threat to the very existence of Russia as an independent state. After the Kiev take-over, NATO moved its
stooge regime in Kiev forward to militarily eliminate the independent regions
in the Southeast and seize the Crimea thus totally eliminating Russia’s
strategic position in the Black Sea. Russia the victim of the NATO power grab
was labeled the “aggressor”. The entire officialdom and mass media echoed the
Big Lie. Two decades of US NATO military advances on Russia’s borders and
German-EU economic expansion into Russian markets were obfuscated. Ukraine is
the most important strategic military platform from which the US-NATO can
launch an attack on the Russian heartland and the single largest market for
Germany since the annexation of East Germany
The US and Germany see the Ukraine
conquest as of extreme value in itself but also as the key to launching an
all-out offensive to strangle Russia’s economy via sanctions and dumping oil
and to militarily threaten Russia. The strategic goal is to reduce the Russian
population to poverty and to re-activate the quasi-moribund opposition to overthrow
the Putin government and return Russia to permanent vassalage. The US and
German imperial elite, looking beyond Russia, believe that if they control
Russia, they can encircle, isolate and attack China from the West as well as
the East.
Wild-eyed fanatics they are not. But as
rabid proponents of a permanent war to end Russia’s presence in Europe and to
undermine China’s emergence as a world power, they are willing to go to the
brink of a nuclear war.
The ideological centerpiece of
US-German imperial expansion and conquest in Europe and the Caucuses is the
“Russian Threat”. It is the touchstone defining adversaries and allies. Countries
that do not uphold sanctions are targeted. The mass media repeat the lie. The
“Russian Threat” has become the war cry for cringing vassals – the phony
justification for imposing frightful sacrifices to serve their imperial ‘padrones’
in Berlin and Washington, fearing the rebellion of the ‘sacrificed’ population.
No doubt, under siege, Russia will be forced to make sacrifices. The oligarchs
will flee westward; the liberals will crawl under their beds. But just as the
Soviets turned the tide of war in Stalingrad, the Russian people, past the
first two years of a bootstrap operation will survive, thrive and become once
again a beacon of hope to all people looking to get from under the tyranny of
US-NATO militarism and German-EU economic dictates.
© Copyright 2014 by AxisofLogic.com
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