against an invasion from a now non-existent USSR who at the time could conceivably have marched into Western Europe to take it over in an attempt to forge a greater world Communist hegemony.
Now the hegemony shoe is on the other foot, with the power-mad, amoral, US-hegemony-pushing neocons determined to encircle and curtail Russian power and influence and even break up Russia itself to get control of its energy supplies.
Thank goodness the Russians at least have enough sense not to help the PNACers put their neocon-hegemony noose around Russia's own neck. Which makes them somewhat more sensible than most of the dumbed down, brainwashed-by-corporate-media-infotainment sheep in the USA, watching passively as the war criminal PNAC/neocon assholes in their government progressively tighten the noose around America's neck on their way to the creation of a full fledged police state.
The Western Encirclement of Russia
To understand Russian thinking, we need to look at two events. The first is the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. From the U.S. and European point of view, the Orange Revolution represented a triumph of democracy and Western influence. From the Russian point of view, as Moscow made clear, the Orange Revolution was a CIA-funded intrusion into the internal affairs of Ukraine, designed to draw Ukraine into NATO and add to the encirclement of Russia. U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton had promised the Russians that NATO would not expand into the former Soviet Union empire.
That promise had already been broken in 1998 by NATO’s expansion to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic — and again in the 2004 expansion, which absorbed not only the rest of the former Soviet satellites in what is now Central Europe, but also the three Baltic states, which had been components of the Soviet Union.
The Russians had tolerated all that, but the discussion of including Ukraine in NATO represented a fundamental threat to Russia’s national security. It would have rendered Russia indefensible and threatened to destabilize the Russian Federation itself. When the United States went so far as to suggest that Georgia be included as well, bringing NATO deeper into the Caucasus, the Russian conclusion — publicly stated — was that the United States in particular intended to encircle and break Russia.
The second and lesser event was the decision by Europe and the United States to back Kosovo’s separation from Serbia. The Russians were friendly with Serbia, but the deeper issue for Russia was this: The principle of Europe since World War II was that, to prevent conflict, national borders would not be changed. If that principle were violated in Kosovo, other border shifts — including demands by various regions for independence from Russia — might follow. The Russians publicly and privately asked that Kosovo not be given formal independence, but instead continue its informal autonomy, which was the same thing in practical terms. Russia’s requests were ignored.
From the Ukrainian experience, the Russians became convinced that the United States was engaged in a plan of strategic encirclement and strangulation of Russia. From the Kosovo experience, they concluded that the United States and Europe were not prepared to consider Russian wishes even in fairly minor affairs. That was the breaking point. If Russian desires could not be accommodated even in a minor matter like this, then clearly Russia and the West were in conflict. For the Russians, as we said, the question was how to respond. Having declined to respond in Kosovo, the Russians decided to respond where they had all the cards: in South Ossetia.
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/russo_georgian_war_and_balance_powerObama's top foreign policy advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wrote in his book The Grand Chessboard, that the top priority for the U.S. was seizing control of the Eurasian Balkans.
Here are some sample quotes from the Grand Chessboard:
* The Eurasian Balkans include nine countries that one way or another fit the foregoing description, with two others as potential candidates. The nine are Kazakstan ... Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia ... as well as Afghanistan. (p.124)
* "Moreover, they (the Central Asian Republics) are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold." (p.124)
* "Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power."- (p. xiii)
* "It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book.” (p. xiv)
In short, Brzezinski argues that Eurasia is the ultimate prize, and the key to controlling Eurasia is controlling the Eurasian Balkans, of which Georgia is a part.
It is clear that the US is following Brzezinski's playbook for the region.
Indeed, this is exactly what Mikhail Gorbachev was referring to when he wrote:
"By declaring the Caucasus, a region that is thousands of miles from the American continent, a sphere of its 'national interest,' the United States made a serious blunder."
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/08/us-following-brzezinskis-playbook-for.htmlCan anyone wonder as to what the US response would be if Russia declared Mexico a sphere of its national interest and started shipping arms and troops into Mexico, and giving military training to the Mexican military while the trainers look on as Mexican troops stage a cross border raid into a US border town that kills a few thousand US civilians and military personnel?
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