{"id":75708,"date":"2016-06-27T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=75708"},"modified":"2016-06-27T10:39:45","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T09:39:45","slug":"america-trashes-nato-founding-act-rushes-weapons-to-russias-borders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/06\/america-trashes-nato-founding-act-rushes-weapons-to-russias-borders\/","title":{"rendered":"America Trashes NATO Founding Act; Rushes Weapons to Russia\u2019s Borders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"logo<\/a><\/p>\n

20 Jun 2016 – <\/em>The NATO Founding Act was agreed to between the U.S. and Russia in 1997 in order to provide to Russia\u2019s leader Boris Yeltsin some modicum of assurance that America wouldn\u2019t invade his country. When his predecessor Mikhail Gorbachev had ended the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1991, the representatives of U.S. President GHW Bush told him that NATO wouldn\u2019t move \u201cone inch to the east\u201d (toward Russia), but as soon as Gorbachev committed himself to end the Cold War and to be now the leader only of Russia (no longer of any Soviet Union), Bush told his agents, regarding what they had all promised to Gorbachev (Bush\u2019s promise which had been conveyed through them),\u00a0\u201cTo hell with that! We prevailed, they didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0In other words: Bush\u2019s prior instructions to them were merely his lies to Gorbachev, his lies to say that the U.S. wouldn\u2019t try to conquer Russia (move its forces eastward to Russia\u2019s borders); but, now, since Gorbachev was committed and had already agreed that East Germany was to be reunited with and an extension of West Germany (and the process for doing that had begun), Bush pulled that rug of lies out from under the end of the Cold War \u2014 it didn\u2019t really<\/em> end (though Gorbachev had been deceived to think it had) \u2014 and then began the long process after that time, to surround Russia by NATO troops and missiles and then (as Obama with even greater intensity has been aiming to do) ultimately to swallow it up, like it\u00a0swallowed Ukraine in February 2014<\/a>, right on Russia\u2019s doorstep.<\/p>\n

Yeltsin was mortified that Bush\u2019s successor Bill Clinton was in the process of trashing that promise which Bush\u2019s agents had given to Gorbachev, and that Clinton was allowing into NATO the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (three countries that formally joined NATO two years later, in 1999); so, this NATO Founding Act was the only \u2018assurance\u2019 Russia had, to indicate that the U.S. government wasn\u2019t going to place the Russian government into an intolerable position of nuclear war: Russia\u2019s being surrounded by NATO nuclear missiles on and near Russia\u2019s borders. What the\u00a0NATO Founding Act<\/a>\u00a0said was that, for the \u201cforeseeable\u201d future, NATO would engage in no \u201cadditional permanent stationing of substantial ground combat forces,\u201d a very vague commitment, which didn\u2019t even specify where the commitment would apply \u2014 how near to Russia\u2019s borders, etc. \u2014 but it\u2019s all that the West would sign to under Bill Clinton, except for another vague commitment: \u201cto strengthen stability by further developing measures to prevent\u00a0any potentially threatening build-up of conventional forces in\u00a0agreed regions of Europe, to include Central and Eastern\u00a0Europe.\u201d In any event, it\u2019s all dead now: the U.S. and its NATO partners have boldly violated even those vague terms. America has virtually torn up the document.<\/p>\n

On 13 June 2016, the U.S. threw into history\u2019s trash bin the NATO Founding Act, and did it unilaterally, leaving Russia totally out in the cold. NATO quietly announced that it would command a large force on Russia\u2019s periphery and that \u201cNATO will command the units both in peacetime and moment of crisis\u201d<\/a>. Though no one was using the Founding Act\u2019s language, this clearly will be \u201cadditional permanent stationing of substantial ground combat forces.\u201d It also ends all the nice language in the NATO Founding Act \u00a0\u2014 e.g.: \u201cNATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries.\u00a0They share the goal of overcoming the vestiges of earlier\u00a0confrontation and competition and of strengthening mutual trust\u00a0and cooperation.\u201d All gone.<\/p>\n

On 25 February 2016, the U.S. General Philip Breedlove, who was the Supreme Commander of NATO and the one person who possessed the power to order a NATO invasion of Russia,\u00a0had told the U.S. Congress, that:<\/a>\u00a0\u201cRussia has chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat to the United States and to\u00a0our European allies and partners.\u201d It wasn\u2019t quite a declaration of war against Russia (only the U.S. President could do that), but close.<\/p>\n

Leading up to that, the White House had announced<\/a> on 2 February 2016, a quadrupling of U.S. funding for its European Reassurance Initiative (ERI), which funds NATO\u2019s Operation Atlantic Resolve, which is rushing tens of thousands of troops and advanced American weaponry to and near Russia\u2019s borders. President Obama said that in order to address \u201cRussia\u2019s aggression against Ukraine almost two years ago, \u2026 today my Administration announced a four-fold increase in ERI funding for Fiscal Year 2017. An ERI funding level of $3.4 billion will enable the United States to strengthen our robust military posture in Europe and improve our ability to uphold our Article 5 commitments to NATO members.\u201d He was asserting that in order to supposedly defend Ukraine against \u201cRussia\u2019s aggression\u201d (though Ukraine isn\u2019t a NATO member and so isn\u2019t subject to the the NATO Treaty\u2019s Article V military protection clause), the United States was quadrupling its forces elsewhere<\/em> on Russia\u2019s borders, so that if Russia invaded a NATO member country on Russia\u2019s borders (which post-Soviet Russia has never done and which would be insane for Russia to do), a blitz U.S. invasion of Russia would be the response, in accord with NATO\u2019s Article V. But since Russia would never do a thing like that, what was Obama\u2019s real motive? Perhaps it was and is to invade Russia regardless<\/em>. But what could be the pretext for doing that<\/em>?<\/p>\n

On 15 June 2016, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, as if Ukraine already were<\/em> a NATO member:<\/p>\n

We stand firm in our support for Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Allies do not, and will not recognise the illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea. And we will continue to call on Russia to stop its destabilisation of Ukraine. Russia needs to stop supporting the militants, and withdraw its forces and military equipment from Ukrainian territory.<\/em><\/p>\n

He was saying that the residents of Crimea shouldn\u2019t have any say in the matter of whether Crimea should be restored to Russia (of which it had been a part until the Soviet dictator transferred it from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 \u2014 Stoltenberg was saying that that dictator\u2019s action must never be reversed<\/em>, no matter if more than 90% of Crimeans want it to be<\/em> reversed; he was saying that the current Ukrainian government owns<\/em> them, and they have no say over who rules them).<\/p>\n

Obviously, if Ukraine\u2019s application for membership in NATO turns out to be accepted, then at that time, NATO (in other words, the U.S.) will reiterate its demand for Russia to reverse its having accepted the overwhelming desire of the Crimean people to have their Russian nationality restored to them, and if Russia fails to comply with NATO\u2019s (i.e., with the American government\u2019s) demand, then there will be a nuclear war, in order to force the issue.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government, or at least its present personnel, are apparently willing to go to nuclear war in order to force the people of Crimea to be ruled by the Ukrainian coup-regime<\/a> that the U.S. had installed in Ukraine in February 2014 and which was wanting to kill them<\/a> if it could not conquer them.<\/p>\n

Of course, one cannot predict whether the people who control the U.S. government will go all the way in that matter, but right now, this is a nuclear showdown in the making, and apparently the only people who are seriously worried about it are Russians. Now, why would that be? Why would Westerners be so nonchalant about such a matter? Why would they not be furious against the governments that are reigning over them and threatening nuclear war in order to coerce Crimeans to be Ukrainians? Could it be that Westerners don\u2019t realize how dangerous this situation is? Could it be that the Western \u2018news\u2019 media haven\u2019t been reporting the situation honestly to them? Could it be that democracy is actually gone from the Western countries? Could it be<\/a>?<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 <\/em>They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/a>,<\/em> of\u00a0<\/em>Christ\u2019s Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity<\/a>, and\u00a0of<\/em>\u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 strategic-culture.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NATO Founding Act was agreed to between the U.S. and Russia in 1997 in order to provide to Russia\u2019s leader Boris Yeltsin some modicum of assurance that America wouldn\u2019t invade his country. When his predecessor Mikhail Gorbachev had ended the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1991, the representatives of U.S. President GHW Bush told him that NATO wouldn\u2019t move \u201cone inch to the east.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}