War or Peace

For reasons of Hillary’s past record of ill-considered adventurism abroad and for reasons of the mad advisers from the Neocon camp whom she has in her inner circle today, it could be a fatal mistake to vote Hillary Clinton on November 8th

“As regards Russia, Hillary has been pouring oil on the flames of potential conflict for years now.  She has publicly likened Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, an insult that no one dared to apply to Russian (Soviet) leaders during the 50 years of the Cold War.  That coming from our nation’s senior diplomat virtually closes the door on diplomacy and reason, leaving us with brute force to settle our differences.”

In this press conference from June 2016, Putin explains in detail why Russia sees NATO’s behavior as threatening, and why Russia will be forced to react unless NATO changes course.  Strongly recommended!

Indeed, why are we tone deaf when our very survival is at risk?

2.  Why is it that the American political Establishment, of which Hillary Clinton is the standard bearer in this presidential election, does not take the Russians seriously?

Back in the 1960s and 70s, when the bard Tom Lehrer was touring college campuses with his irreverent song devoted to the nuclear Armageddon “We’ll all go together when we go,”  Americans feared and even respected the USSR for what its military arsenal signified.

Our sense that we had “won” the Cold War when the USSR collapsed in 1992 was followed by our witnessing the economic collapse of Russia as it struggled to make a transition from directed to a market economy in the 1990s. Meanwhile, Russia’s national wealth was siphoned off by newly emerged “oligarchs.” The vast majority of the population was pauperized in that period, as we plainly understood when our religious communities sent assistance packages to the Russian people.

And Russia’s political infrastructure fell apart, replaced by regional satrapies and would- be successor states from among minority nationalities. The net result is that the United States Establishment’s respect for Russia degraded into an open mockery. The fact that Russia was led in the 1990s by a confirmed alcoholic with multiple health problems that took him away from his desk for weeks at a time, only contributed to the sense that Russia had become the “Sick Man of Europe” both literally and figuratively.

This image of Russia has persisted in the thinking of our Establishment, when it is not jostled by images of a tin-pot dictator named Vladimir Putin who holds onto power by making frightening poses against foreign powers, in particular, against the United States. For our establishment, Russia remains, as Barack Obama said a couple of years ago, “just a regional power,” “ a bully” in its neighborhood who has to be put in his place, and also a country that produces nothing that anyone wants, to which no one willingly emigrates (all patently false statements). In sharing all of these views, Hillary is no different from the rest of our political Establishment.

It is Donald Trump and his questioning the wisdom of poking the Russian bear in the eye who is the odd man out. What makes Hillary different from her Establishment peers is the opportunity she has had in the Obama administration to act on her beliefs with all the powers of Secretary of State.

We should have given our view of Russian capabilities a serious rethink following their military action in Crimea in March 2014, when they engineered a bloodless takeover of the peninsula notwithstanding the local presence of nearly the same number of Ukrainian armed forces (20,000) as their own. Another jolt back to present reality could have emerged from Russian military action in Syria as from October 2015, which they used as a proving ground for their most up-to-date military gear and troops.

However, the U.S. response, with Hillary as a cheerleader, has been to double down, ignore the potential risks of conflict, and continue to drive the Russians to the wall, so as to “negotiate from a position of strength” if indeed we have any intention of negotiating with the Russians at all.

3.  Why do I say that Hillary Clinton is the War Party candidate?

The record of  Hillary Clinton on foreign policy issues has been very well documented in a recent article that appeared in Consortium News, entitled, The Fear Of Hillary’s Foreign Policy, and was republished in Russia Insider. The author, James Carden, is a former State Department employee with concentration in Russia who left the service in the George Bush Jr. years to become a journalist and now is a regular contributor to The Nation.

I will not repeat blow for blow Carden’s chronology of Hillary’s terrible foreign policy baggage, going back to the decisions taken in Bill’s second term that brought us more US military interventions abroad than any other similar period in the country’s history while also setting up the dangerous confrontation with Russia, the New Cold War, that dominates headlines today. As James Carden shows, the baggage carries through to Hillary’s consistent behavior as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, where she was always among the most hawkish, pro-military action voices, working hard to overcome the passive resistance of Obama to anything resembling policy decisions.

Here I will focus on one non-Russian issue, for the sake of simplification and clarification:  Libya.  No, not the Libya of the Benghazi catastrophe and the killing of our US consul. That has been discussed endlessly in our media, but misses the point entirely regarding Hillary’s culpability and why she will be a disastrous president.

The Libyan intervention to remove Colonel Gaddafi had the full support of Hillary within the Administration. She was a cheerleader in this exercise of American global (mis)management and regime change leading to chaos.  It was fully in line with her basic instincts, call it all-American hubris or arrogance.  And the most revealing proof of her unfitness to be Commander in Chief is the now widely publicized video sequence of Hillary, face distorted in glee, celebrating (!) the savage murder of Gaddafi following his being sodomized and grievously wounded:  “we came, we saw, he died.”

It is not for nothing that the Neocon vultures that took control of US foreign and military policy under Bush-Cheney are now avid supporters of Hillary’s candidacy.

As regards Russia, Hillary has been pouring oil on the flames of potential conflict for years now.  She has publicly likened Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, an insult that no one dared to apply to Russian (Soviet) leaders during the 50 years of the Cold War.  That coming from our nation’s senior diplomat virtually closes the door on diplomacy and reason, leaving us with brute force to settle our differences. She has called repeatedly for providing lethal weapons to Ukraine, which, if implemented would put us on a direct collision course with Russia.  She has called for establishing a no-flight zone in Syria well after the Russians introduced their air force assets, including a highly advanced air defense system covering all of the Syrian air space/ The result of implementing her recommendations in Syria would be direct armed conflict with the Russian forces in the region if we attempted to enforce an interdiction. And de jure, we  would be in the wrong, because Russian presence has the express support of the Syrian government, whereas ours does not.

Hillary’s public statements on Russia are highly irresponsible and make sense only if we were prepared to launch a war on that country here and now.  I doubt that is the case.  Meanwhile, the asymmetrical structures of political decision making in the USA and Russia, whereby the Russian President can act with a full authority far more quickly than his American counterpart, render this kind of US bluffing and posturing extremely dangerous. Russia is not Iraq. Russia is not Libya. The Russian leadership is tough, experienced and…brave.

For reasons of Hillary’s past record of ill-considered adventurism abroad and for reasons of the mad advisers from the Neocon camp whom she has in her inner circle today, it could be a fatal mistake to vote Hillary Clinton on November 8th.

About Trump’s past record in power, there is not much to say.  About his present promises on foreign policy, one may have doubts.  However, the bad blood between him and the Neocons ensures us that a Trump presidency would finally put them out on the curb, where they belong. And if we step back from our present policies on Russia, Moscow will surely reciprocate and seek accommodation. After all, even as late as 2008 Vladimir Putin harbored hopes of his country joining NATO.

Reprinted from Russia Insider.

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