Washington's Plan to Break Up Russia
By Mike Whitney
“The Western goal
is to weaken, divide and ultimately
destroy our nation. They are openly
stating that, since they managed to
break up the Soviet Union in 1991, now
it’s time to split Russia into many
separate regions that will be at each
other’s throats.” Russian President
Vladimir Putin
“Cheney
‘wanted to see the dismantlement not
only of the Soviet Union and the Russian
empire but of Russia itself, so it could
never again be a threat to the rest of
the world.’...The West must complete
the project that began in 1991 ….
Until Moscow’s empire is toppled,
though, the region—and the world—will
not be safe…”
(“Decolonize Russia”, The Atlantic)
October 31, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- "UNZ"
- Washington’s animus
towards Russia has a long history dating
back to 1918 when Woodrow Wilson deployed
over 7,000 troops to Siberia as part of an
Allied effort to roll back the gains of the
Bolshevik Revolution. The activities of the
American Expeditionary Force, which remained
in the country for 18 months, have long
vanished from history books in the US, but
Russians still point to the incident as yet
another example of America’s relentless
intervention in the affairs of its
neighbors. The fact is, Washington elites
have always meddled in Russia’s business
despite Moscow’s strong objections. In
fact, a great number western elites not only
think that Russia should be split-up into
smaller geographical units, but that the
Russian people should welcome such an
outcome. Western leaders in the
Anglosphere are so consumed by hubris and
their own blinkered sense of entitlement,
they honestly believe that ordinary Russians
would like to see their country splintered
into bite-sized statelets that remain open
to the voracious exploitation of the western
oil giants, mining corporations and, of
course, the Pentagon. Here’s how
Washington’s geopolitical mastermind
Zbigniew Brzezinski summed it up an article
in Foreign Affairs:
“Given (Russia’s)
size and diversity, a decentralized
political system and free-market
economics would be most likely to
unleash the creative potential of the
Russian people and Russia’s vast natural
resources. A loosely confederated
Russia — composed of a European Russia,
a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern
Republic — would also find it easier
to cultivate closer economic relations
with its neighbors. Each of the
confederated entitles would be able to
tap its local creative potential,
stifled for centuries by Moscow’s heavy
bureaucratic hand. In turn, a
decentralized Russia would be less
susceptible to imperial mobilization.”
(Zbigniew Brzezinski,
“A Geostrategy for Eurasia”, Foreign
Affairs, 1997)
The “loosely
confederated Russia”, that Brzezinski
imagines, would be a toothless, dependent
nation that could not defend its own borders
or sovereignty. It would not be able to
prevent more powerful countries from
invading, occupying and establishing
military bases on its soil. Nor would it be
able to unify its disparate people beneath a
single banner or pursue a positive “unified”
vision for the future of the country. A
confederal Russia –fragmented into a myriad
of smaller parts– would allow the US to
maintain its dominant role in the region
without threat of challenge or interference.
And that appears to be Brzezinski’s real
goal as he pointed out in this passage in
his magnum opus The Grand Chessboard. Here’s
what he said:
“For America,
the chief geopolitical prize is
Eurasia…and America’s global primacy is
directly dependent on how long and how
effectively its preponderance on the
Eurasian continent is sustained.” (“THE
GRAND CHESSBOARD – American Primacy And
It’s Geostrategic Imperatives”,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, page 30, Basic
Books, 1997)
Brzezinski sums up US
imperial ambitions succinctly. Washington
plans to establish its primacy in the
world’s most prosperous and populous region,
Eurasia. And–in order to do so– Russia must
be decimated and partitioned, its leaders
must be toppled and replaced, and its vast
resources must be transferred to the iron
grip of global transnationals who will use
them to perpetuate the flow of wealth from
east to west. In other words, Moscow must
accept its humble role in the new order as
America’s de-facto Gas and Mining Company.
Washington has never
really veered from its aim of obliterating
the Russian state, in fact, the recently
released National Security Strategy (NSS)
along with a congressional report titled
“Renewed Great Power Competition:
Implications for Defense—Issues for
Congress”, confirm much of what we have said
here, that the US plans to crush any
emerging opposition to its expansion into
Central Asia in order to become the dominant
player in that region. Here’s an excerpt
from the congressional report:
The U.S. goal
of preventing the emergence of regional
hegemons in Eurasia, though
long-standing, is not written in
stone—it is a policy choice
reflecting two judgments: (1) that
given the amount of people, resources,
and economic activity in Eurasia, a
regional hegemon in Eurasia would
represent a concentration of power large
enough to be able to threaten vital U.S.
interests; and (2) that Eurasia is
not dependably self-regulating in terms
of preventing the emergence of regional
hegemons, meaning that the countries
of Eurasia cannot be counted on to be
able to prevent, though their own
actions, the emergence of regional
hegemons, and may need assistance
from one or more countries outside
Eurasia to be able to do this
dependably.” (“Renewed
Great Power Competition: Implications
for Defense—Issues for Congress”, US
Congress)
How different is this
new iteration of official US foreign policy
than the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine that
was delivered prior to the War in Iraq. Here
it is:
“Our first
objective is to prevent the re-emergence
of a new rival, either on the territory
of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere,
that poses a threat on the order of that
posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This
is a dominant consideration underlying
the new regional defense strategy and
requires that we endeavor to prevent
any hostile power from dominating a
region whose resources would, under
consolidated control, be sufficient to
generate global power.”
As you can see, there
has been no meaningful change in the policy
since Wolfowitz articulated his doctrine
nearly 2 decades ago. The US foreign
policy establishment still resolutely
asserts Washington’s right to dominate
Central Asia and to regard any competitor in
the region as national security threat.
This is further underscored by the fact that
both Russia and China have been identified
in the latest National Security Strategy as
“strategic competitors” which is a
deep-state euphemism for mortal enemies.
Check out this excerpt from an article
titled “Partitioning Russia After World War
III?”:
The end goal of
the US and NATO is to divide and pacify
the world’s biggest country, the Russian
Federation, and to even establish a
blanket of perpetual disorder
(somalization) over its vast territory
or, at a minimum, over a portion of
Russia and the post-Soviet space…
The ultimate
goal of the US is to prevent any
alternatives from emerging in Europe and
Eurasia to Euro-Atlantic integration.
This is why the destruction of Russia is
one of its strategic objectives….
Redrawing
Eurasia: Washington’s Maps of a Divided
Russia
With the division
of the Russian Federation, (the) article
claims that any bipolar rivalry between
Moscow and Washington would end after
World War III. In a stark contradiction,
it claims that only when Russia is
destroyed will there be a genuine
multipolar world, but also implies that
the US will be the most dominant global
power even though Washington and the
European Union will be weakened from the
anticipated major war with the Russians.”
(“Partitioning
Russia after World War 3”, Global
Research)
Washington’s
relations with Russia have always been
contentious but that has more to do with
Washington’s geostrategic ambitions than any
disruptive behavior on Moscow’s part.
Russia’s only crime is that happens to
occupy real estate in a part of the world
the US wants to control by any means
necessary. When Hillary Clinton first
announced US plans to “pivot to Asia” most
people thought it sounded like a reasonable
scheme for shifting resources from the
Middle East to Asia in order to increase US
participation in the world’s fastest growing
market. They didn’t realize at the time,
that policymakers intended to goad Russia
into a bloody ground-war in Ukraine to
“weaken” Russia so that Washington could
spread its military bases across the
Eurasian landmass unopposed. Nor did
anyone foresee the lengths to which
Washington would go to provoke, isolate and
demonize Russia for the express purpose of
removing its political leaders and splitting
the country into multiple statlets.
Here’s Hillary making the case back in 2011:
“Harnessing
Asia’s growth and dynamism is central to
American economic and strategic
interests… Open markets in Asia
provide the United States with
unprecedented opportunities for
investment, trade, and access to
cutting-edge technology…..American firms
(need) to tap into the vast and growing
consumer base of Asia…
The region
already generates more than half of
global output and nearly half of global
trade…. we are looking for
opportunities to do even more business
in Asia…and our investment opportunities
in Asia’s dynamic markets.”(“America’s
Pacific Century”, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton”, Foreign Policy
Magazine, 2011)
A careful reading of
Clinton’s speech along with a review of the
Wolfowitz Doctrine will help even the most
obtuse reader to draw some obvious
conclusions about the current conflict in
Ukraine which has almost nothing to do with
so-called “Russian aggression”, but
everything to do with Washington’s plan to
project power across Asia , control
Russia’s massive oil and gas reserves,
encircle China with military bases, and
establish American domination at the
epicenter of this century’s most prosperous
market. Here’s Putin again:
“In order to
free itself from the latest web of
challenges, they need to dismantle
Russia as well as other states that
choose a sovereign path of development,
at all costs, to be able to further
plunder other nations’ wealth and use it
to patch their own holes. If this does
not happen, I cannot rule out that
they will try to trigger a collapse of
the entire system, and blame
everything on that, or, God forbid,
decide to use the old formula of
economic growth through war.”
US foreign policy
experts are shameless in their promotion of
theories that threaten to trigger a direct
military confrontation with Russia that
could result in a nuclear exchange. In a
recent “webinar for congressmen and women
hosted on June 23 under the title
“Decolonizing Russia.” The webinar, staffed
by CIA operatives and right-wing
nationalists from Ukraine and the Caucasus,
effectively argued that Russia was a
colonial empire that had to be broken up
with the support of Washington.” (WSWS) The
author explores the reasons why some experts
want to brand Russia as “imperialist”? An
article at the WSWS explains why:
...”the claim
that Russia is “imperialist” serves a
vital political function: It provides a
political cover for the imperialist
aggression against Russia and the war
aims of the imperialist powers…. It
is this strategy which the pro-NATO
pseudo-left covers up for with its
clamor about “Russian imperialism.” The
fostering of nationalist, regionalist
and ethnic tensions has been a key
component of imperialist war policy for
decades…..
Through a
combination of NATO expansion, coups on
its borders and military interventions
in countries allied with Russia and
China, the imperialist powers have
systematically and relentlessly
encircled Russia…
Indeed, if one
reviews the history of the wars waged by
US imperialism over the past thirty
years, the unfolding war for the
carve-up of Russia and China appears
like a brutal inevitability. Despite
their reintegration into the world
capitalist system, the imperialist
powers have been barred by the ruling
oligarchic regimes from directly
plundering the vast resources of these
countries. Vying for these resources
between themselves, and driven by
irresolvable domestic crises, they are
now determined to change this.
… the draft
resolution describes the basic aims of
the US war against Russia as follows:
“the removal of the present regime in
Russia, its replacement by an
American-controlled puppet, and the
breakup of Russia itself—in what is
referred to as “decolonizing
Russia”—into a dozen or more impotent
statelets whose valuable resources will
be owned and exploited by US and
European finance capital.” This
passage is central for understanding
both the unfolding conflict and the
politics of the pro-NATO pseudo-left and
their insistence that Russia is an
“imperialist country.” (“The
historical and political principles of
the socialist opposition to imperialist
war and the Putin regime“, Clara
Weiss, World Socialist Web Site)
As you can see, elite
members of the foreign policy establishment
are doggedly searching for new and more
convincing justifications for a
confrontation with Russia the ultimate
purpose of which is to fragment the country
paving the way for Washington’s strategic
rebalancing or “pivot”. 20 years ago, during
the Bush administration, politicians were
not nearly as circumspect in their views
about Russia. Former Vice President Dick
Cheney, for example, made no attempt to
conceal his utter contempt for Russia and
was surprisingly candid about the policy he
supported. Check out this excerpt from an
article by Ben Norton:
Former US Vice
President Dick Cheney, a lead
architect of the Iraq War, not only
wanted to dismantle the Soviet Union; he
also wanted to break up Russia itself,
to prevent it from rising again as a
significant political power…. Former US
Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote
that, “When the Soviet Union was
collapsing in late 1991, Dick wanted to
see the dismantlement not only of the
Soviet Union and the Russian empire but
of Russia itself, so it could never
again be a threat.”…
The fact that a
figure at the helm of the US government
not-so-secretly sought the permanent
dissolution of Russia as a country, and
straightforwardly communicated this to
colleagues like Robert Gates, partially
explains the aggressive posturing
Washington has taken toward the Russian
Federation since the overthrow of the
USSR.
The reality is
that the US empire will simply never
allow Russia to challenge its unilateral
domination of Eurasia, despite the fact
that the government in Moscow restored
capitalism. This is why it is not
surprising that Washington has utterly
ignored Russia’s security concerns,
breaking its promise not to expand NATO
“once inch eastward” after German
reunification, surrounding Moscow with
militarized adversaries hell bent on
destabilizing it.
Russian
security services have published
evidence that the United States
supported Chechen separatists in their
wars on the central Russian government.
British academic John Laughland stressed
in a 2004 article in The Guardian,
titled “The Chechens’ American friends,”
that several Chechen secessionist
leaders were living in the West, and
were even given grant money by the US
government. Laughland noted that the
most important US-based pro-Chechen
secessionist group, the deceptively
named American Committee for Peace in
Chechnya (ACPC), listed as its members
“a rollcall of the most prominent
neoconservatives who so enthusiastically
support the ‘war on terror’”:
They include
Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon
adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra
fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US
ambassador to the UN who egged on the
invasion of Iraq by predicting it would
be “a cakewalk”; Midge Decter,
biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a
director of the rightwing Heritage
Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the
militarist Centre for Security Policy;
Bruce Jackson, former US military
intelligence officer and one-time
vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now
president of the US Committee on Nato;
Michael Ledeen of the American
Enterprise Institute, a former admirer
of Italian fascism and now a leading
proponent of regime change in Iran; and
R James Woolsey, the former CIA director
who is one of the leading cheerleaders
behind George Bush’s plans to re-model
the Muslim world along pro-US lines.
The fact that
far-right Salafi-jihadists made up a
significant percentage of the Chechen
insurgency didn’t bother these
anti-Muslim neocons – just as
Islamophobic “War on Terror” veterans
had no problem supporting extremist
head-chopping Takfiri Islamists in the
subsequent US wars on Syria and Libya….
…. Victoria
Nuland, the third-most powerful official
in the Joe Biden administration’s State
Department, served as Vice President
Cheney’s principal deputy foreign policy
adviser from 2003 to 2005. (She also
helped to sponsor the violent coup in
Ukraine in 2014 that toppled the
democratically-elected government.) Like
her mentor Cheney, Nuland is a hard-line
neoconservative. The fact that he is a
Republican and she works primarily in
Democratic administrations is
irrelevant; this hawkish foreign-policy
consensus is completely bipartisan.
Nuland (a
former member of the bipartisan board of
directors of the NED) is also married to
Robert Kagan, a patron saint of
neoconservatism, and co-founder of the
Project for the New American Century –
the cozy home of the neocons in
Washington, where he worked alongside
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz,
and other top Bush administration
officials. Kagan was a longtime
Republican, but in 2016 he joined the
Democrats and openly campaigned for
Hillary Clinton for president.” (“Ex
VP Dick Cheney confirmed US goal is to
break up Russia, not just USSR”, Ben
Norton, Multipolarista)
US foreign policy is
now exclusively in the hands of a small
group of neocon extremists who reject
diplomacy outright and who genuinely believe
that America’s strategic interests can only
be achieved through a military conflict with
Russia. That said, we can say with some
degree of certainty, that things are going
to get a lot worse before they get better.