NATO scuttles US plan to encircle Russia
By F William Engdahl
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ministers in Brussels have decided to
ignore the wishes of the United States and delay the admission of Georgia and
the Ukraine, in effect indefinitely, in what the George W Bush administration
is sheepishly trying to claim is a positive "compromise".
The decision, follows the alarm which peaked among European Union member states
last August over the prospect of having to go to war with Russia over an
erratic leader in the Caucasus who had provoked Moscow into a reaction.
The Germans have a far too deep and painful collective memory of the last war
with Russia to be willing to treat the prospect as lightly as US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice or Washington
has. The decision deepens growing fault lines across the Atlantic, and next
year will be clearly more turbulent even than 2008 in terms of global
geopolitics.
The Brussels decision is even more remarkable if taken as indication of
Washington's diminishing power over European NATO members. The NATO Foreign
Ministers meeting on December 3 issued what to the naive observer might appear
a masterpiece of diplomacy.
They unanimously agreed to sidestep the usual Membership Action Plan vote for
Georgia and Ukraine, the first concrete step towards full membership of NATO.
Instead, NATO will expand the activities of two existing bodies - the
NATO-Georgia Commission and the NATO-Ukraine Commission - basically to oversee
the same reforms as would have been contained in the action plan. NATO
ministers also agreed in their communique to renew ties with Russia "in a
conditional and graduated manner".
Translated into real political language, Washington has undergone a stunning
setback in its agenda of encircling Russia with NATO. Despite the fact that
president-elect Obama retained Bush Administration Defense Secretary Robert
Gates, and named a person to be Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who has
strongly supported bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, key European NATO
members, led by Germany and France, blocked what must be a unanimous membership
decision.
The real reasons
The real reason for the refusal is the growing realization within European
officialdom that it was Georgia's unpredictable President Mikhail Saakashvili,
not Moscow, who first sent Georgian troops into the breakaway province of South
Ossetia, after getting a go-ahead from Washington.
On November 28, during Georgian official Parliamentary Commission testimony on
the background to the August events, Saakashvili made the surprising
announcement that he had indeed initiated the war.
According to Saakashvili, the attack on the South Ossetian capital, which
involved night shelling of residential areas with multiple rocket launcher
systems, was aimed at protecting Georgian citizens. He said it was a response
to Russia's "intervention" in the region.
"We did start military action to take control of Tskhinvali and other unruly
areas. But we took this difficult decision to fend off our territory from
intervention and save the people who were dying. It was inevitable,"
Saakashvili said.
The Georgian president claims Russia moved tanks into South Ossetian territory
before Georgia launched its attack. He said: "The issue is not about why
Georgia started military action - we admit we started it. The issue is about
whether there was another chance when our citizens were being killed? We tried
to prevent the intervention and fought on our own territory."
Saakashvili's surprising admission came only hours after the testimony of
Georgia's former ambassador to Moscow, Erosi Kitsmarishvili, who had testified
for three hours before he was shouted down by pro-Saakashvili members of
parliament.
A former confidant of Saakashvili, Kitsmarishvili said Georgian officials told
him in April that they planned to start a war in Abkhazia, one of two breakaway
regions at issue in the war, and had received a green light from the United
States government to do so. He said the Georgian government later decided to
start the war in South Ossetia, the other region, and continue into Abkhazia.
He refused to name the officials who told him about planned actions in
Abkhazia, as identifying them would endanger their lives. The official US line
has been that they had "warned" Saakashvili against taking action in the two
enclaves, where Russian peacekeepers were stationed.
Kitsmarishvili's testimony in front of the parliamentary commission was shown
live on Georgian television. The chairman of the commission, Paata Davitaia,
said he would initiate a criminal case against Kitsmarishvili for "professional
negligence". Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria, who was called on short
notice to comment on Kitsmarishvili's testimony, called the allegations an
"irresponsible and shameless fabrication", adding they were "either the result
of a lack of information or the personal resentment of a man who has lost his
job and wants to get involved in politics". Kitsmarishvili was fired in
September by the president.
Kitsmarishvili walked out amid the furor last week. "They don't want to listen
to the truth," he told reporters. Two days later, Saakashvili proved
Kitsmarishvili right.
Full spectrum dominance
As I detail at some length in my book, due out in January 2009, Full Spectrum
Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, the strategy
of bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO is part of a far larger and more
dangerous strategic long-term plan of Washington to ultimately encircle,
confront and dismember Russia as a functioning state. Russia, even more than
China, is the most formidable obstacle to a Washington-centered sole
superpower, Pax Americana.
Russia's understandable refusal to abandon its nuclear strike force in the face
of US violations of agreements made in 1989 between the Soviet Union's Mikhail
Gorbachev and then US secretary of state James Baker III, namely that NATO
would not expand east to the former states of the Warsaw Pact or USSR, presents
a dilemma for any plans for sole US superpower domination.
The Bush presidency was a raw attempt to remedy this by brute military force.
The militarization of Iraq and the Middle East oil fields was but one step. The
creation of a US 'missile shield' in Poland and the Czech Republic, was
another, major step.
The misnamed "missile defense shield" would in reality be an offensive
capability that when installed by perhaps 2012, will put the world, especially
Western Europe on a hair-trigger to nuclear war. When combined with the entry
of Russian border states Georgia and Ukraine to NATO this would simply present
Moscow with de facto defeat. This is not about Russia returning to old
Soviet-style rule under Putin or Medvedev. It's about the ultimate survival of
Russia as a nation, as Moscow rightly sees it, not about the finer points of
democracy.
No one in either Berlin, Paris, London nor Brussels, and certainly not in
Washington, is ignorant of that reality. European NATO members are increasingly
nervous about the prospect of a military confrontation with Russia. Last
August's swift Russian response to act in aid of South Ossetians against the
Georgian invasion sent a reality shock through Europe. Neither Germany nor
France wish to admit unstable states like Georgia or Ukraine only to be forced
to act militarily in their defense in event of a repeat of the madness of last
August.
That, simply stated, is the real, unspoken reason that Washington on December 3
in Brussels was forced to accept a face-saving compromise. The NATO membership
of Georgia and Ukraine to all intent and purposes is dead. As one NATO military
official stated, "NATO has lost the glue that once held it together." The
statement of Rice following the NATO meeting was telling. She was forced to
tell press, "... there is a long road ahead for both Georgia and Ukraine to
reach those standards. The United States stands resolutely for those standards,
meaning that there should be no shortcuts to membership of NATO." Rice added.
Polish motorcade shoot was 'Georgia stunt'
Further adding to the atmosphere of almost Laurel and Hardy comic farce
surrounding Georgia's erratic president - who was filmed shortly after the
Russian invasion in August by BBC actually swallowing and chewing on his tie -
it has now emerged that an alleged shooting incident a week before the Brussels
NATO meeting, which involved the motorcade of the Georgian and Polish
presidents, was a staged "stunt".
Special services in Warsaw say the alleged attack near the South Ossetian
border was a provocation staged by the Georgians. A report by Poland's Internal
Security Agency - the Agencja Bezpieczenstwa Wewnetrznego (ABW), published by
the Dziennik newspaper, claims Georgia staged the incident for propaganda
purposes.
The incident took place on Sunday evening when Saakashvili was showing his
Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski the area near the border with South Ossetia.
After the convoy stopped at a checkpoint, there was gunfire, which the
Georgians claimed was an "attack by Russian troops".
Lech Kaczynski's personal security chief, Colonel Krzysztof Olszowiec, was
accused of failing to ensure proper security for the president during his trip
to Georgia and dismissed despite objections from Kaczynski, according to the
Polish media.
The trip to the border area with Russian-backed South Ossetia was the result of
a last-minute invitation from Saakashvili, according to Polish Foreign Ministry
spokesman Piotr Paskowski.
Initially, Warsaw blamed Russia for the incident. But now Polish security
forces say it was staged by Tbilisi. Russia had strongly denied the
allegations, saying Tbilisi was behind it. President Kaczynski confirmed that
shooting had taken place but stopped short of blaming anyone. Russia's position
has now been supported by Poland's ABW, who said "the shots fired near the cars
of Georgian and Polish president were a Georgian provocation". The Polish
document points out that Saakashvili kept on smiling after the first shots and
his bodyguards didn't react.
The report also highlights another suspicious fact, namely, that the bus
carrying journalists was instructed to travel in front of the motorcade, while
the car with Kaczynski's own bodyguards was pushed back by Georgian soldiers.
The result was that they were not in a position to witness the alleged
shooting.
All-in-all, it might be Saakashvili's tenure as president that faces major
internal challeges over his bent for undertaking such reckless stunts.
F William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American
Oil Politics (Pluto Press), and the book, Seeds of Destruction: The
Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (www.globalresearch.ca). His new book,
Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Third
Millennium Press) is due out late January 2009. He may be reached through his
website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
