How ‘Obscure’ Bureaucrats Cause Wars
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Exclusive: Official Washington's anti-Russian group think is now so dominant that no one with career aspirations dares challenge it, a victory for obscure” government bureaucrats, like Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland as Jonathan Marshall explains.
By Jonathan Marshall
History isn't just made by impersonal forces and great men or great women. Sometimes relatively obscure men and women acting in key bureaucratic posts make a real difference.
Thus, the international crisis in Syria traces back in part to the decision of President Barack Obama's first ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, to reject peaceful rapprochement with the Damascus regime in favor of radically redesign[ing] his mission to promote anti-government protests that triggered the civil war in 2011.
In much the same way, Obama's Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland did her best to foment the Feb. 22, 2014 putsch against the democratically elected Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych, while convincing the ever-gullible U.S. mainstream media that the coup wasn't really a coup but a victory for ‘democracy, as journalist Robert Parry wrote last July.
Nuland, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and wife of neoconservative luminary Robert Kagan, helped achieve in Ukraine the kind of regime change that her husband had long promoted in the Middle East through the Project for a New American Century.
Nuland now has a new counterpart in the Department of Defense who bears close watching for signs of whether the Obama administration will keep escalating military confrontation with Russia over Eastern Europe, or look for opportunities to find common ground and ease tensions.
On Dec. 14, Dr. Michael Carpenter started work at the Pentagon as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, with added responsibilities for the Western Balkans and Conventional Arms Control. He replaced Evelyn Farkas, who stepped down in October.
Farkas was a firebrand who accused Russia of shredding international law and conventions that have held firm for decades. In a call to arms straight out of the early Cold War, she wrote recently, Russia's challenge is so fundamental to the international system, to democracy and free market capitalism that we cannot allow the Kremlin's policy to succeed in Syria or elsewhere.
In a remarkable display of "projection” ascribing to others one's own motives and actions she declared that Russia has invaded neighboring countries, occupied their territory, and funded NGOs and political parties not only in its periphery but also in NATO countries. Its goal, she asserted, was nothing less than breaking NATO, the European Union and transatlantic unity.
Farkas declared that the United States must continue its military buildup to deter Russia; provide lethal assistance to countries on Russia's periphery, including Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova; and step up economic sanctions to pressure Russia . . . so that U.S. national security interests and objectives prevail.
With people like that helping to shape official policy over the past three years, it's no wonder U.S.-Russia relations have hit such a low point. Might her replacement, Michael Carpenter, take a less confrontational approach?
Carpenter moved to the Pentagon from the office of Vice President Joe Biden, where he was special adviser for Europe and Eurasia. Previously he ran the Russia desk at the National Security Council and spent several years in the Foreign Service.
Carpenter has kept a low public profile, with few publications or speeches to his name. One of his few quasi-public appearances was this April at a symposium on Baltic Defense & Security After Ukraine: New Challenges, New Threats,†sponsored by The Jamestown Foundation.
His prepared remarks were off the record, but they were greeted warmly you've hit it right on the head by discussant Kurt Volker, former NATO ambassador under President George W. Bush and foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain. McCain has demanded that the United States arm Ukraine to fight Russia and he helped inflame the Ukraine crisis by meeting with the anti-Semitic leader of the country's right-wing nationalist party for photo-ops in 2013.
During a short Q&A session at the symposium, captured on video, Carpenter declared that Russia has completely shredded the NATO-Russian Founding Act, a choice of words strikingly reminiscent of Farkas's denunciation of Russia for shredding international law. He accused Russia of pursuing a neo-imperial revanchist policy in Eastern Europe, inflammatory words that Sen. McCain lifted for an op-ed column in theWashington Post a couple of months later. Carpenter also indicated that he would personally favor permanent NATO bases in the Baltic states if such an escalation would not fragment the alliance.
The fact that Carpenter chose to make one of his few appearances at the The Jamestown Foundation is itself highly telling. According to IPS Right Web, which tracks conservative think tanks, the foundation's president, Glen Howard, is the former executive director of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, a largely neoconservative-led campaign aimed at undermining Russia by bolstering U.S. support for militant nationalist and Islamist movements in the North Caucasus.†Howard has also been a consultant to the Pentagon and to “major oil companies operating in Central Asia and the Middle East.
The foundation was formed in 1984 by a leading Cold Warrior close to the Reagan administration,†with the blessing of CIA Director William Casey, to provide extra funding for Soviet bloc defectors to supplement meager stipends offered by the CIA. Its board members today include former CIA Director Michael Hayden, and previous board members included Dick Cheney and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, a prominent neoconservative activist.
All this matters hugely for several reasons. Increased confrontation with Russia, particularly along its highly sensitive Western border, will continue to poison relationships with Moscow that are crucial for achieving U.S. interests ranging from Afghanistan to Iran to Syria. Ratcheting up a new Cold War will divert tens or hundreds of billions of dollars into military spending at the expense of domestic priorities.
Most important, the action-reaction cycle between NATO and Russia in Eastern Europe is dramatically increasing chances for an unwanted, unneeded and disastrous war involving the world's great nuclear powers. Ian Kearns, director of the European Leadership Network, noted in a recent commentary for the Arms Control Association:
Despite protestations by both sides that the exercises are aimed at no particular adversary, it is clear that each side is exercising with the most likely war plans of the other in mind. The Russian military is preparing for a confrontation with NATO, and NATO is preparing for a confrontation with Russia. This does not mean either side has the political intent to start a war, but it does mean that both believe a war is no longer unthinkable.
Too few appear to recognize that the current cocktail of incidents, mistrust, changed military posture, and nuclear signaling is creating the conditions in which a single event or combination of events could result in a NATO-Russian war, even if neither side intends it.
In such a way, the actions of relatively minor figures in history if their provocations are not reined in can lead the world to cataclysm.
Jonathan Marshall is an independent researcher living in San Anselmo, California. Some of his previous articles for Consortiumnews were Risky Blowback from Russian Sanctions Neocons Want Regime Change in Iran Saudi Cash Wins France's Favor The Saudis' Hurt Feelings Saudi Arabia's Nuclear Bluster The US Hand in the Syrian Mess Hidden Origins of Syria's Civil War.
Cold war, cold snub: Sergei Lavrov’s
passing hand leaves Victoria Nuland’s
mouth gaping, signaling ‘dire distress’
and much more
By John Helmer, Dances With Bears, Jan 24, 2016
Moscow – Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held a meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, last Wednesday, January 20, with US Secretary of State, John Kerry. The meeting-room and press opportunity were set up by State Department officials. One of the Kerry delegation was Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian affairs. She is one of several Washington officials directing the war against Russia on the Ukraine front. In her arsenal, Nuland’s mouth has been used to attack European governments reluctant to join her war, as her “Fuck the EU”remark to US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, revealed at the start of 2014, before President Victor Yanukovich was ousted in Kiev.
The sequence of stills showing Lavrov greeting the US delegation for the press, ahead of the Zurich talks, has been extracted from a videotape recorded by a Russian press camera crew. Lavrov’s hand shakes every US official introduced by Kerry (1), except for Nuland. Her hand was extended (2), then slipped, or slapped past, as Lavrov turned to his left to greet each of the junior US officials lining the wall. As he did so, Lavrov presented Nuland with his right shoulder. Nuland’s mouth fell open (3); the microphones recorded that nothing came out.
On January 15, five days earlier, Nuland had met Kremlin advisor, Vyacheslav Surkov. According to the US Government organ, Radio Free Europe, and the Russian state news service, the meeting took place at a Russian state residence at Pionersky, near Kaliningrad city, behind closed doors. Tass reported their talks lasted for more than four hours. No photographs have been released.
The State Department announced later in the day: “The talks were constructive and designed to support the ongoing work of the Normandy countries and the Trilateral Contact Group.” Surkov told the Russian media: “We had rather substantial, constructive and helpful discussions. It was, so to speak, brainstorming on ways to find compromises in the implementation of the Minsk agreements.”
Surkov’s meeting was endorsed by Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov on January 19. Hetold Tass that Surkov had reported on Nuland to President Vladimir Putin. Peskov alsoclaimed: “Regarding these talks, in this case we are talking about dialogue at the expert level between Moscow and Washington. As you know, the United States is not party to the Normandy process, at the same time, of course everyone is interested in the United States having the opportunity to receive first hand information, [despite] not being a member of the Normandy process.”
One day later, at the Zurich meeting, note the Russian flag behind Kerry (4). Minutes before the meeting commenced, the State Department organizer recorded this response to a Russian cameraman’s warning that the Russian standard was flying on its flag-pole upside down. This has been an important signal since the time of sailing ships. According to the US Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Sect 176 (a), the display of the flag upside down is a “signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.”
These images have been interpreted in the international media as indicators of Russian, also American animus towards each other, as the war to topple the Russian government enters its third year. This interpretation is mistaken. The images are signals intelligence (sigint), but they aren’t encrypted or coded. Nuland’s moves revealed her belief that she can conduct warfare without risk to herself. Her gape registered shock that she is a target.
Lavrov’s moves weren’t a display of personal pique. They communicated the conclusion of the General Staff, the intelligence services, and the Foreign Ministry that there is no point in talking to US officials like Nuland. That is because there has been nothing they have said, or signed their names to over the past two years, which can be believed. If Nuland conducts this war, Lavrov was signalling, the outcome will be decided by arms, at the front.
This was not the Nuland signal Surkov and Peskov have sent.
NOTE: an alert reader who has studied the Zurich meeting record points out that for less than a second, between 0.19 and 0.20 of the running tape, Lavrov’s hand and Nuland’s appear to touch. Comparing Lavrov’s grip and hand-shake with every other American in the room, the Nuland move is more a slip or a slide; it’s not the shake Nuland’s hand was extended for and anticipating. Watch again.
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