Over the years, a favorite propaganda trope of U.S. media "pundits," imperialist foreign policy apparatchiks and "experts," and politicians scoring points against other politicians and presidents of the rival political party, has been that "Russia is playing chess" and the U.S. is playing checkers. Then imperialist yakkers trying to stand out in the babbling "foreign policy" mob hyped it up to "The Russians are playing three-dimensional chess," outclassing the asleep at the switch U.S. (This as the U.S. dominates the world, as it has done continuously since 1945.)
Well, if we're talking political strategy, Russian
ruler Vladimir Putin is no chess Grandmaster. Incredibly, he has invaded
Ukraine- for real this time. Western propagandists and politicians
refer to this actual invasion as "another" invasion, pretending Russia
"invaded" the secessionist regions of Ukraine when in actuality they
sent in small forces and aid to help defend the regions from attack by
the Kyiv regime, which targeted apartment complexes and other civilian
targets. Two new states were declared in 2014, which Russia only now
recognized, putting U.S. president Joseph Biden into a state of high
dudgeon.
Unmentioned was the fact that for years, Russia has tried to bring about an accommodation between the Kyiv regime and the newly-declared Republics, whereby those Republics would be part of Ukraine but with some autonomy to protect their language and culture. The Kyiv regimr signed the Minsk Accords, which called for ceasefire, yet the Kyiv regime has never stopped its military attack on the breakaway regions, killing over 10,000 people, committing many war crimes- targeting apartment buildings for shelling and bombing. (The twisted Western media refers to this as "Russian invasion" and a war forced on Kyiv!)
Another tortured use of the word "invasion"
is now even occasionally being applied to Russia and Crimea. Apparently
calling it an "occupation" or "annexation" is too feeble a denunciation.
Crimea is the site of a vital Russian naval base, which after the
breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia leased from Ukraine. After the U.S.
coup of February 2014 and the installation of a regime which immediately
targeted Russian-speaking Ukrainians for repression, local Crimea
parliament and then the citizens both voted to reunite with Russia. (The
people voted 97% in favor, with the Tatar inhabitants, 15% of the
populace there, boycotting the referendum.) AFTER that, the Russian Duma
voted to reunite with Crimea. (Crimea had been part of Russia until
1954, when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to the
Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the U.S.S.R.)
Russia is landlocked for virtually its entire southern border. Crimea is on the Black Sea, through which ships can navigate to the Mediterranean Ocean and hence to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Geostrategically, Russia had NO CHOICE but to make sure Crimea stayed in friendly hands. [To understand this, see my article with maps: FOOTNOTE 1 BELOW.]
Why
was it so dumb for Putin to invade Ukraine? I mean really invade.
Because even if the Russian army successfully occupies it, it will have
to stay there in force to prop up whatever government Russia installs.
And it will be subjected to endless guerrilla warfare funded and armed
by the U.S. and its Eurolackeys. It will be a bleeding wound, just as
Afghanistan was for the Soviet Union. (Does Putin's pining for the
defunct SU extend to its debacles?) And the "sanctions"- economic
warfare- being waged by the U.S. and its lackeys will significantly
damage the Russian economy and hurt its people. In fact, bringing misery
to people is the main point of U.S. sanctions. The goal is to create
discontent with the government and undermine it, hopefully to overthrow
it, as the U.S. is trying to do to Venezuela and Iran, North Korea, Cuba
for 60 plus years, and whoever else gets in its way or displeases it.
Ukraine
as another Afghanistan brings to mind another interesting parallel. It
has emerged that the U.S. WANTED the Soviets in Afghanistan to bleed
their army and weaken the Soviet regime. Likewise, the invasion of
Ukraine can only be destructive for Russia. The U.S. and its lackeys are
doing much to wreck the Russian economy right now. And billions of
people are being subjected to saturation, non-stop anti-Russian
propaganda which is putting a saintly glow of plucky martyrdom around
Ukraine, hiding the key role played by actual neo-Nazis in the regime
and its wars.
The truth is, the U.S. practically forced Russia to invade Ukraine. For weeks leading up to the invasion, the Russians reiterated the same demands they've been making since 1999, when the U.S. double-crossed them and expanded NATO into more nations, violating a deal made with Mikhail Gobachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, in 1989. The U.S. publicly, adamantly refused to budge; Biden himself rejected the Soviet demand to keep Ukraine out of NATO. The U.S. had NATO announce in 2008 that Ukraine (and Georgia) would be welcomed into NATO. Infuriatingly, U.S. propagandists ignore what Putin actually "wants" and invent imaginary goals for him.
The second
outrageous provocation was the U.S.-neo-nazi coup in 2014 that overthrew
the elected president and replaced the government with one so hostile
to everything Russian that it passed laws aimed at oppressing
Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
Here's the echo of Afghanistan:
The Soviet Union was lured into invading Afghanistan by a dastardly plot
of the Carter regime, masterminded by Carter's "National Security"
Advisor, the Russia-despising Pole, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski
actually went to Afghanistan to put his fiendish plot in motion, and
shortly thereafter the Soviets fell for it. Years later, Brzezinski
slipped up and blurted out a boast about what he had done to a French
publication, Le Nouvel Observateur [Paris], January 15-21, 1998, p. 76.:
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. Is this period, you were the national securty advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history,
CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the
Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise:
Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first
directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in
Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I
explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a
Soviet military intervention [emphasis added throughout].
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it?
B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q : When
the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they
intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan , nobody
believed them . However, there was an element of truth in this. You
don’t regret any of this today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime , a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B
: What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse
of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central
Europe and the end of the cold war?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So
these supremely cynical U.S. imperialist brought the world
Islamofascism. And people tolerate their continuance in power, their
continued rule over us all.
And next time you hear propagandists
and politicians describing Putin as diabolically cunning, remember they
are building up a bogeyman to distract the people in the countries they
rule and to rally support for their own imperialist aggressions.
Brzezinski interview translated from the French by William Blum and David N. Gibbs. This translation was published in Gibbs, "Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect," International Politics 37, no. 2, 2000, pp. 241-242.
Original
French version appeared in "Les Révélations d'un Ancien Conseilleur de
Carter: ‘Oui, la CIA est Entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes...’" Le
Nouvel Observateur [Paris], January 15-21, 1998, p. 76. Click here for original French text.
1]
I published a series of articles on the Ukraine situation in 2014 which
are still apropos today.. To see why the U.S. grabbing Ukraine is a
dagger aiimed at Russia's vital strategic interests, read "Obama Dictates Terms to Russia To Keep Its Naval Base in Crimea." When you go there, you can click on "2022" on the side of the page to see my latest essays.
You
can search on that page the word "Ukraine" in the search box to pull up
all the essays, or use this URL which is the search result: https://jasonzenith.blogspot.com/search?q=UKRAINE
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