Tensions in the Black Sea could rise dramatically if U.S. agitation doesn’t stop.
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
The neoconservatives who run U.S. foreign policy are now herding the U.S. out of the remaining arms limitations agreements. It appears that Washington intends to withdraw from the “Open Skies” agreement with Russia.
The “Open Skies” treaty allowed the U.S. and Russia to overfly each other’s territory in order that there could be mutual assurance that one country or the other wasn’t building up forces for attack. If Washington withdraws from the treaty, which seems in the cards, tensions and uncertainties between the two major nuclear powers will increase. In no way is this a good thing.
The American military-security complex wants the tensions to increase, because this makes the orchestrated “Russia threat” even larger and leads to a larger budget and more profits and power for the complex. The military-security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned us, to no effect, has been highly successful in dismantling the arms control agreements made between past U.S. and Russian leaders. This has raised the profits of the U.S. military-security complex at the expense of the security of the world.
On top of this, Washington is currently raising tensions in the Black Sea, arming Ukraine, Georgia, and Romania, countries that border the Black Sea along with Russia, Turkey, and Bulgaria. The U.S. and its NATO puppets are conducting military exercises in this internal sea that hosts Russia’s Crimean naval base. The Black Sea is Russia’s exit to the Mediterranean Sea. The neocon warmongers would love to cut off Russia’s access to the Mediterranean and, thereby, Russia’s naval base in Syria. This would make it easier for the neoconservatives to overthrow Syria for Israel.
This is irresponsible provocation on the part of Washington. A buildup of forces in such a small area carries all kinds of risks. It would be easy for a CIA black op to provoke one of the Ukrainian Nazis or one of the Georgian fools or one of the bought-and-paid-for Romanian vassals to provoke an incident.
Indeed, the purpose of the U.S. buildup of forces is to provoke incidents that can be blamed on Russia in order to create more fear and loathing in the West in order to keep feeding the military-security budget.
Russia, a country in which the military-security complex, to the extent that it exists, does not run the country, has difficulty comprehending what it is facing. Wanting no conflict, the Russian responses, as I have often emphasized, are passive and thus provoke more irresponsible moves by Washington.
As there is no doubt that the buildup of U.S. and vassal-state military forces in Russia’s neighborhood is very dangerous and gives every opportunity to the CIA to create incidents that can be used for anti-Russian propaganda. As it is very easy for such incidents to have unintended consequences and to get out of control, anything that can be done to stop the buildup of Western forces in the Black Sea and in Romania, Ukraine, and Georgia is an act of peace. Russia needs to understand that sometimes peace is protected by a more aggressive, instead of passive, response.
What might such a response be? It seems to me that if the U.S. can declare the South China Sea, thousands of miles from the U.S. coastline, to be a “U.S. national security interest,” Russia can declare the Black Sea on Russia’s own coast to be a Russian national security interest.
It would be a highly responsible decision for the Russian government to prevent the dangers that Washington is creating by taking a lesson from ancient Rome. Rome declared a much larger sea, the Mediterranean Sea, to be “mare nostrum”— our sea. The Russians could declare the Black Sea to be “our sea.”
As Russia is by far the most powerful force in the area, the U.S. is on the low end of the correlation of forces. No one could do anything about it if Russia were to declare the Black Sea “mare nostrum.”
Russia could politely inform other parties that no military vessels of any other country are permitted in the Black Sea without Russian permission. This would exclude the U.S. and its NATO, Ukrainian, Romanian, and Georgian vassals. Russia should specify an immediate date by which the foreign military vessels must leave the Black Sea or be escorted out by Russian forces, or, if resistance is met, destroyed.
This would bring to an end the Zionist/CIA attempt to create a new avenue to demonize Russia. It would protect Russia from multiple attacks all along its borders.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury under President Ronald Reagan and was associate editor and columnist at The Wall Street Journal. He has been a professor of economics in six universities and is the author of numerous books available at the American Free Press bookstore.
Peter, the US may start it as usually, but it is mine Russia who ends the wars on her terms!
Developments in the Black Sea region ominously point to conflict. The withdrawal from arms treaties will herald, not a new arms race, but a race to re-arm – like the 1930s. The pattern of history has us on course for another world war: nuclear war.