Westerners bellow to denounce the "military annexation" of the Crimea by Russia. According to them, Moscow, returning to the "Brezhnev doctrine" threatens the sovereignty of all States which were members not only of the former Soviet Union, but also of the Warsaw Pact, and is about to invade as it did in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Is this true ? Obviously, the same Westerners are not convinced of the imminent danger. Though they equate the "annexation" of the Crimea by Vladimir Putin to that of the Sudetenland by Adolf Hitler, they do not think that we are heading towards a Third World War.
At most, they have enacted theoretical sanctions against some Russian leaders - including Crimean leaders - blocking their accounts in case they should wish to open such in Western banks, or prohibiting them from traveling there, in case they yearned to travel there. True, the Pentagon has sent 22 fighter jets to Poland and the Baltic States, but it does not intend to do more than this posturing for the moment.
What exactly is happening?
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 and the Malta summit that followed on December 2 and 3, the United States has steadily gained ground, and in violation of their promises, have absorbed all Eastern European states - except Russia - into NATO. The process began a few days later, on Christmas 1989, with the overthrow of Ceausescu in Romania and his replacement by another communist dignitary suddenly converted to liberalism : Ion Iliescu. For the first time, the CIA organized a coup in broad daylight, while staging it as a "revolution" thanks to a new television channel, CNN International. This was the beginning of a long series.
Twenty other targets would follow, often by equally fraudulent means: Albania, East Germany, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria , Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, FYROM, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Ukraine.
No document was signed at the summit in Malta, but President Bush Sr. , advised by Condoleezza Rice, took the oral commitment that no member of the Warsaw Pact would be accepted into NATO. In reality, East Germany was de facto accepted, by its simple accession to West Germany. And the door being open, now 12 former USSR and Warsaw Pact member states acceded and others have been waiting to join the Alliance. However, "all good things come to an end."
The power of NATO and its civil side, the European Union, is faltering.
While the Alliance has never been so numerous , its armies are ineffective. It excels in small theaters of operation, such as Afghanistan, but can not go to war against China, or against Russia, without the certainty of losing as we have seen in Syria this summer.
Ultimately, Westerners are amazed at Russian speed and efficiency. During the Olympic Games in Sochi, Putin stoically uttered no comment on Maidan events. But he reacted when his hands were free. Everyone could see him playing cards he had prepared during his long silence. Within hours, the pro- Russian forces neutralized the pro-Kiev Crimea forces while a revolution was organized in Semferopol to bring to power a pro-Russian team.
The new government called for a referendum on self-determination which saw a huge pro-Russian wave, Tatar population included. Then the official Russian forces captured the soldiers still loyal to Kiev with their equipment.
All this without firing a shot, with the exception of a pro-NATO Ukrainian sniper who was arrested in Semferopol after killing a person from each side.
Twenty years ago, the same Crimeans would certainly have voted against Russia. But today, freedom is better provided by Moscow than by Kiev, where a third of the government has gone back to the Nazis and the other two thirds to the representatives of the oligarchs.
In addition, their bankrupt economy was immediately underwritten by the Bank of Russia, while, despite the IMF and loans from the U.S. and EU, Kiev is sentenced to a long period of poverty. It was not necessary to speak Russian to make that choice and, despite Western propaganda, Muslim Tatars did so as well as Russian speakers.
This is also the choice of 88 % of Ukrainian troops stationed in the Crimea, who rallied with Moscow with the intention of bringing their families and getting their Russian citizenship. It is also the choice of 82% of Ukrainian sailors who were at sea, too happy to be Russians, they rallied to Moscow with their ships without being forced in any way.
Freedom and prosperity that were selling in the West for almost 70 years, have changed sides.
This is not to say that Russia is perfect, but to note that for Crimeans and in reality for most Europeans, it is more attractive than the Western camp.
That is why the independence of the Crimea and its accession to the Russian Federation marked the return of the pendulum. For the first time, an ex-Soviet people freely decided to recognize the authority of Moscow. What Westerners fear is that this event is comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall in effect, but in the other direction.
Why would we not see among the member states of NATO -like Greece - or simply in the European Union – like Cyprus – some that would follow the same path? The Western camp would then disagregate and sink into a very deep recession - like Yeltsin’s Russia -.
In addition, the question of the survival of the United States would inevitably arise. The dissolution of the USSR should have caused that of its enemy and nonetheless partner, however, these two superpowers existing only to face one another. But it did not happen.
Washington, being deprived of its competitor, launched into world conquest, globalized the economy and installed a new order. It took two years and one month for the Soviet Union to dissolve after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Will we soon see the dissolution of the United States and the European Union into several entities, as theorized by Igor Panarin of the Diplomatic Academy in Moscow? The collapse would be even faster as Washington reduced its subsidies to its allies and its Brussels Structural Funds.
Nobody should fear the attractiveness of Russia, because it is an imperial power but not imperialist. If Moscow tends to snub small countries it protects, it does not intend to extend its hegemony by force. Its military strategy is the "denial of access" to its territory. Its armies are the first in the world in terms of anti-aircraft and anti-ship defense. They can destroy fleets of bombers and aircraft carriers. But they are not equipped to set out to conquer the world, or deployed in quantities of external bases.
It is particularly strange to hear Westerners denounce membership of Crimea to Russia as contrary to international law and the Constitution of Ukraine.
Is it not they who dismembered the USSR and the Warsaw Pact?
Is it not they who broke the constitutional order in Kiev?
German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, deplores alleged Russian will to "cut Europe in two." But Russia got rid of the Soviet bureaucratic dictatorship and does not intend to restore the Iron Curtain.
It is the United States who wants to cut Europe in two to avoid hemoraging to the east. The new bureaucratic dictatorship is not in Moscow but in Brussels, it is called the European Union.
Henceforth, Washington is trying to bind its allies to its camp. It extends its missile cover to Poland, Romania and Azerbaijan. It is no longer a mystery that its "shield" was never intended to counter Iranian missiles, but is designed to attack Russia.
It also tries to push its European allies to take economic sanctions that would cripple the continent and would push capital to flee... to the United States.
The magnitude of these adjustments is such that the Pentagon is examining the possibility of interrupting its "pivot to the Far East", that is to say, the movement of its troops from Europe and the Middle East to position them for a war against China. Anyway, any change in its long-term strategy will disrupt its armies even in the short and medium term.
Moscow did not ask for as much, and voluptuously observes the reactions of populations of eastern Ukraine and, why not, Transnistria.
Thierry Meyssan (Voltaire Network - Al-Watan 'Syria') - Translation Roger Lagassé
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