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Top 7 ways
America Has Alienated Vladimir Putin
By Robert Bridge
September
02, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "RT
"
-
Western
media and thinktankdom have gone wildly off the
rails regarding the Russian leader, blaming
anything and everything on Vladimir Putin. The
public has largely bought the raw propaganda
wholesale and this is a tragedy for US-Russian
relations.
A cursory
glance at Putin’s track record should convince
even the most jaded Russian observer that he has
done everything possible to build solid
relations with the United States. Yet not only
has the Obama administration refused to meet
Putin halfway, it characterizes the Russian
leader as the global arch villain bar none.
So here’s
a refresher course for anybody who’s ever
dragged Putin’s name through the mud, serving up
piping hot propa-garbage while helping to
exasperate tensions between Russia and the US.
As
Vladimir Nabokov once proclaimed before
considering an entirely different subject,
“Look at this tangle of thorns”.
7. Putin
provides ‘extraordinary assistance’ to ‘War on
Terror’
It is
no secret that following the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001 against the US, Putin was the
first global leader to telephone US President
George W. Bush. And he didn't call collect.
Moreover, the Russian leader offered more than
just words of condolence. He pushed through a
raft of legislation to assist the US in the
fight against terrorism.
In his
2011 book, “Vladimir Putin and Russian
Statecraft,” Allen C. Lynch documented
Putin’s contributions to America’s endless ‘War
on Terror’.
“In a bold decision… Putin made
Russia the most important U.S. ally in the war
against the Taliban,”
Lynch wrote. “Among
other things, he accelerated deliveries of
weapons to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan
so that when the Alliance marched into Kabul it
did so with Russian, not American, weapons and
vehicles. He encouraged the governments of
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to allow American
military bases on their territory.”
And
here is my personal favorite: “He opened
Russian airspace for American overflights to
bases in Central Asia so that the US could
conduct search and rescue operations for U.S.
airmen (Please imagine the howl of pain
that would echo across Washington if any US
president allowed Russian military overflights
across US territory into South America!).
Despite
Putin’s extreme generosity bestowed upon the US
military and intelligence apparatus, Washington
proved Graham Greene’s adage “there is no
such thing as gratitude in politics” by
ratcheting up pressure against Russia for no
good reason whatsoever.
According to Stephen Cohen, the US repaid
Putin for his “extraordinary assistance”
by “further expanding NATO to Russia’s
borders and by unilaterally withdrawing from the
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which Moscow
regarded as the linchpin of its nuclear
security.”
With
friends like this who needs enemies?
6. Putin gives
Washington a chance to pass on war (for a
change)
After
spending prodigious amounts of money, material
and manpower fighting fundamentalists in the
desert, some might be tempted to think the US
would relish any opportunity to avoid another
military misadventure. If you believed that, you
haven’t been paying attention to what’s been
occurring in the Middle East since 2002 with the
US invasion of Afghanistan.
Future
historians (that is, assuming there is a future
where historians may ponder the past) may one
day mark August 29, 2013 as the day when the
American Empire first started showing signs of
wear and tear. That was when UK Prime Minister
David Cameron failed to secure approval in the
House of Commons to join yet another US-led
serial killing, this time in Syria, after
President Bashar Assad purportedly
crossed Obama’s whimsical “red line”
and used chemical weapons against the Syrian
opposition (an assertion that was never proven).
This
placed the Obama administration in a bind,
eventually leading to a ‘slip of the tongue’ by
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who remarked
that Syria could avoid an American blitzkrieg if
it agreed to surrender its chemical weapons
“within one week”. Infuriatingly for the US
neocons, Putin successfully convinced
Damascus to remove its chemical weapons with all
due haste.
Predictably, however, US media and thinktankdom
portrayed Putin’s eleventh-hour diplomacy, which
delayed the obliteration of yet another Middle
East state, as some sort of geopolitical ploy.
"It absolutely is a diplomatic
win by Putin right now,"
Fiona Hill, director of the Center on the United
States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, told
CNN.
I was
almost expecting Fiona to employ some sort of
judo analogy next. Oh wait, she did.
"If we think about this as judo,
which is of course Mr. Putin's favorite sport,
this is just one set of moves,"
she said. "And right
now, he's managed to get Obama off the mat, at
least, and get the terms set down that play to
his advantage."
Think
about that. If that was the best press Putin
could get when he helped America to avoid yet
another military smash-up, chances are
negligible that he would ever get positive
reviews under normal circumstances. And therein,
dear reader, lies the rub: America has come to
the psychotic point in its foreign policy when
avoiding military conflict is actually viewed as
a setback.
5. Putin offers
cooperation on US missile defense system in
Eastern Europe
In May,
the US put the finishing touches on its Aegis
Ashore Missile Defense System in
Romania, the culmination of a decades-worth
of disingenuous
negotiations with Moscow.
Washington’s determination to build this system,
which Moscow naturally views as a major security
threat smoking on its doorstep, has completely
upset the strategic balance in the region.
Russia is now forced to respond to this system
with more powerful and elusive ballistic
missiles. In other words, our tiny, fragile
planet, thanks to the surrogate mother of global
upheaval and chaos, Lady Liberty, is
experiencing the birth pains of another arms
race between the world’s two nuclear
superpowers. This did not have to be.
Early
in his presidency, Obama announced
he would “scrap” the Bush
administration's defense system, slated for
Poland and the Czech Republic, after it was
determined that Iran was not the existential
threat to Eastern Europe that his predecessor
had touted it as.
This
seemed to indicate an open window of opportunity
for Russia-US cooperation (in fact, the fate of
the New START nuclear disarmament treaty, signed
into force between Dmitry Medvedev and Barack
Obama on April 8, 2010, hinged on bilateral
cooperation). Russia even proposed the two
countries share the Qabala Radar in Azerbaijan,
which Russia leased at the time, but the US
rejected the proposal even though it made more
tactical sense.
Eventually,
it became maddeningly apparent that the US was
bluffing, dangling the carrot of mutual cooperation
with Russia at the same time a new missile defense
system was moving forward.
In
November, Putin rightly accused
the US of attempting to “neutralize Russia’s
nuclear potential” by camouflaging their real
designs behind Iran and North Korea.
“The US is attempting to achieve strategic military
superiority, with all the consequences that
entails,” he said.
Obama’s
failure to cooperate with Putin on this
game-changing system has been the real source of bad
blood between the two nuclear superpowers.
4. Putin delivers
setback to Islamic State in Syria
In
September 2015, following an official request by the
Syrian government, Russia launched
a formidable aerial attack on Islamic State
positions in Syria. Russia went on to provide ample
video evidence of its success against ISIS, not only
hitting its command and control centers, but
destroying its makeshift oil exporting business.
Oddly, Moscow’s request for assistance in providing
logistics on terrorist positions was rebuked by
Western governments. In fact, the only thing Putin
got from the United States for his labors in Syria
was a lamentable lecture
by US Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter: “This
will have consequences for Russia itself, which is
rightly fearful of attacks,” Carter said before
uttering a regrettable prediction.
“In coming days, the Russians will
begin to suffer from casualties.”
Coincidentally, throughout the course of Russia’s
military offensive in Syria, it has only lost a
single fighter jet and a number of servicemen. But
not to Islamic State or some other nefarious group.
The jet was shot down by Turkey, the first time a
NATO member engaged a Russian aircraft in over 50
years.
3. Putin bans
genetically engineered food
Despite
whatever Monsanto lobbyists may tell our
representatives in Congress, Americans are
overwhelmingly opposed - on moral, ethical and
health grounds - to genetically modified foods.
In a survey
of US residents representative of the population on
gender, age, and income, 64 percent opposed GMO, and
71 percent of GMO opponents said they were
“absolutely” opposed—that is, they agreed that
GM should be prohibited no matter the risks and
benefits. Yet this clear demonstration of public
opinion has not translated into any sort of
democratic ability to pull GMO ‘Frankenstein foods’
from the shelves.
What
is all the more incredible about America’s
willingness to begrudgingly accept genetically
modified foods is that the FDA (Food and Drug
Administration) performs no tests on such products.
As Jason Dietz, a policy analyst at FDA, explained:
“It’s the manufacturer’s
responsibility to insure that the product is safe.”
However,
companies like Monsanto are under no obligation to
test their products for safety considerations; the
process is completely voluntary.
“Well, the companies are supposed to do a voluntary
consultation,” Michael
Hansen, a critic of GM foods at the Consumers
Union, told
Grist. “[B]ut it’s
voluntary. Look at what the FDA says when they
approve a food: ‘It is our understanding that
Monsanto has concluded this is safe.’ They just
rubber-stamp it.”
While
Americans are being essentially used as laboratory
test bunnies, paying good money to consume products
that may or may not kill them, Putin refuses to play
Russian roulette with his peoples’ health.
In June,
Putin approved
a bill that bans all genetically engineered foods
from entering Russia. The legislation includes stiff
fines for producing GMO products in Russia or
importing them from abroad, with the exception of
genetically altered organisms and materials used for
expertise and research.
Meanwhile,
Americans will be happy to know that Russia is
offering a healthy alternative to what the global
food corporations are delivering.
In
his state of the nation speech on December 3 in the
Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin said,
“We can not only feed ourselves,
Russia can become an important global supplier of
healthy, organic and high-quality food, especially
since the global demand for such products is showing
a steady growth.”
2. Putin protects
children from overt sexual messages
Since many
Westerners will never have an opportunity to visit
Russia, their perceptions of this relatively distant
country are largely shaped for them by journalists,
the majority of whom are predisposed to a form of
self-imposed censorship that is constantly
whispering in their ear that Russia must never
appear attractive to their readers, lest they want
to lose their jobs.
Thus,
whenever news travels from Russia across the ocean
to Western audiences, it is inevitably tainted by
misconceptions, misinformation and outright lies. A
classic example of this is the Western media outcry
following Putin’s so-called ‘anti-gay’ legislation,
which is in fact ‘pro-children’ legislation.
Putin
patiently explained
the legislation in an interview with World Media:
"[…] All people are
absolutely equal regardless of their religion, sex,
ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Everybody is
equal. We have recently only passed a law
prohibiting propaganda, and not of homosexuality
only, but of homosexuality and child abuse, child
sexual abuse. But this has nothing in common with
persecuting individuals for their sexual
orientation. And there is a world of difference
between these things."
Personally
- and I’ve spoken with many people on this issue who
feel the same way - this passage sounds like the
Mount Everest of common sense. Why on earth should
children be exposed to issues – whether they are of
a homosexual, heterosexual, metrosexual or
what-have-you-sexual content – at such an early age?
There is an appropriate time for such considerations
later in life and probably better after puberty.
Well, good
luck trying to convince the Western media of that.
Harvey Fierstein, just prior to the Sochi Olympics,
wrote in the New York Times that
"Putin has declared war on
homosexuals... allowing police officers to arrest
tourists and foreign nationals they suspect of being
homosexual, lesbian or “pro-gay” and detain them for
up to 14 days."
Fierstein, an actor and playwright, not a lawyer,
continued peddling
absurdities that "the
law could mean that any Olympic athlete, trainer,
reporter, family member or fan who is gay — or
suspected of being gay, or just accused of being gay
— can go to jail."
To be
honest, this ranks as some of the smelliest
anti-Russia rubbish I have ever read (If I may, I
would just like to assure readers, and especially
the homosexuals, there are no anti-gay goon squads
on patrol in Russia, so feel free to pack your
rainbow-colored T-shirt).
Instead of
quoting a Russian source (this may come as a
surprise, but Russia does have lawyers) that might
just have some insight as to what the law really
says, Fierstein quoted
the Huffington Post, who got their blotched
information from an obscure Canadian travel site. So
much for investigative journalism.
In any
case, Putin’s actions on behalf of protecting
children (not arresting homosexuals) offer a nice
counterbalance to America’s disturbing desire to
expose children to overt sexual messages at very
young ages. And not just your traditional fireside
chats with Dad about the birds and the bees. No,
that would be too damm sensible.
Today, many
American schoolchildren, before they are old enough
to lace up their shoes, are being
psychologically strip searched, with demands
being made upon them to come to terms with their
sexuality, with forays into the tall weeds of
transgender.
Personally,
I am grateful for Putin to present an alternative
method for addressing such extremely sensitive
issues to our children.
1. Putin keeps
America in the space race
Although
the US continues to enforce a sanctions regime
against Russia, which seems, incidentally, to be
damaging Western interests far more than Russia’s,
Putin continues to let America use Russian rockets
to travel to outer space, keeping the US from being
a landlocked superpower.
Needless to say, this is a rather embarrassing
situation for NASA, which must rely on the Atlas V
rocket, powered by a Russian rocket engine, to
transport its satellite technology into the cosmos.
Senator John McCain, a perennial anti-Russia
bugbear, recently stormed:
“Today, Russia holds many of our most
precious national security satellites at risk before
they ever get off the ground."
Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin put the
problem squarely on Washington’s shoulders,
complaining that
“Americans spend more annually on pizza ($27 billion
USD) than on space.”
“Due to such changes NASA’s mission today is much
weaker than several decades ago,”wrote
Nenad Drca in Modern Diplomacy.
“The United States, first to send men
to the moon in 1969, now struggles in the 21st
century to reach beyond low-earth orbit without
expensive Russian assistance. How the mighty have
fallen…”
All things
considered, the United States – and the world - has
far more to gain with better relations, not just
with Vladimir Putin, but with Russia. If you don't
believe it, put down that Western newspaper and come
see the reality for yourself.
Robert
Bridge is an American writer and journalist based in
Moscow, Russia. His articles have been featured in
many publications, including Russia in Global
Affairs, The Moscow Times, Lew Rockwell and Global
Research. Bridge is the author of the book on
corporate power, “Midnight in the American Empire”,
which was released in 2013. email:
robertvbridge@yahoo.com |
