My dear Fellow Travelers, Brothers and Sisters,

The below following essay is a pretty accurate description of the means and results from US purposefully ‘helping’ Russia to become more ‘democratic’ and Capitalist - i.e. how we used money and economics, not guns, to kick Russia from her knees fully into the mud of history, face first. The reactions over there, once the Russian people fully wake to the fact that Yeltsin has been a very effective ‘agent of influence’ for US intelligence objectives, are going to be interesting to observe during the next year or two.

But also watch to the East. From living there ten years and maybe understanding a bit of its history, I feel a stage has been prepared for US action out there. More important, perhaps, I have been reading negative, demonizing type, media propaganda against CHINA throughout the US media for some years now. Of note, we have just made a new deal with our long term prostitute state, the Philippines - a rough cowboy of an Eastern analogue for the UK - to reopen new versions of old military bases there, formerly called Subic Bay and Clark field...., the biggest armaments platforms and Rest & Recuperation facilities outside the continental USA. And we just pushed Japan into modifying the Mutual Defense Treaty so that they can leave Japanese territorial waters to support us in any East Asian military action in which we become involved.

One may, perhaps, think about WHY America should be planning to find such support necessary??

The answer is CHINA. A China that has been growing commercially too competitive, too fast, for our liking; and economically and militarily too strong to be easily pushed around. To sum, China is moving towards what Russia once was, and what Japan and Germany tried to attain to : a country independent of economic persuasion by America. A country, thereby, not sufficiently servile enough towards the only Superpower. Therefore, China must soon be impressed with the futility of going its own way, by being taken down a few pegs. This is because the USA - as it is doing in continuing ‘NATO’ aggressions against the Balkans and ‘UN’ aggressions in the Middle East (most recently against Yugoslavia and Iraq) wants NO challenges to being the sole Superpower deciding the slicing up of the resource and market apple pies throughout the ENTIRE WORLD. Political scientists call this Economic Hegemony. In old days Brooklyn, specially on the beach at Coney Island (when one could safely swim there), the bully accomplished this same type of persuasion by lifting weights and strutting around until everyone got the power message.

In later times, I think it was a White House court jester, some wise fool lifting brain muscles, who advanced the same principle into a higher realm, from Ego muscle flexing into $$$ muscle flexing, by concluding "Economic hegemony makes democracy go around".

The Dow Jones is over 11,000, is a vast bubble even bigger than was Japan’s own real estate and stock bubble economy which blew up in 1989. Ours, too, IS GOING TO CRASH - within the next 6-12 months - AND the only way for the corrupt elite in Washington to stop the poor to middle classes from rioting in the streets of America will be to a stage another "DEVIL" of a foreigner to distract them from their problems. A DEVIL who is, as so many times in the past, threatening their "NATIONAL SECURITY". A national Security determined by the true rulers of the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave" : Wall Street.

Even Mayor Giuliani realizes this scenario is coming home to roost, so has proposed building NYC a $22 million bunker fighting complex, a "Command Center" he has euphemistically called it. When asked why NYC needs such a Washington, DC type of executive branch Command Center, separate from that already run by the NYC Police Department, he replied "...for natural disasters."

I wonder : when the crash comes and the marginalized hundreds of thousands climb over his SWAT and Task Force defenders to finally take his bunker, will he and his mistress have the courage to commit suicide?

Meanwhile, the City police and the national Military budgets (not counting the extra $20 billion for Yugo) have been increased, once again. Following that of our national Prison system, prison construction now budgeted more than that of our educational systems - - and one larger than ALL of East and West European countries combined.

Armed to the teeth, we are, protected from all our enemies, domestic and international; from every feasible threat, including our own citizens. If plagued with doubts that I exaggerate, don’t believe me but go and take a look at the White House and New York City Hall, from whence Clinton and Giuliani are run by Corporate America. Both these mansions are blocked off from all vehicle and pedestrian access for hundreds of meters all around. A cynic recently said that Mayor Giuliani either wants his bunker project approved or he will install missiles on City Hall roof just like they have in the great white big house on Pennsylvania Avenue he hopes and prays to someday occupy and command the world from. You see, running New York City as efficiently as Mussolini once ran Italy is too small a job for Rudy. He wants to run the world.

And we discuss reasons for our paranoia, our school murders, and the schizophrenia of materialism which has developed into fever pitches throughout our Arcadian paradise? We ask why our children understand so little, are so ignorant of, all the geography, history and cultural values of the "other" 5.6 billions of peoples east of New York, south of San Diego and west of LA.

richard manning

By John Feffer

(Ed. Note: As NATO marks its 50^th anniversary in Washington this week, it finds itself immersed in a war in the Balkans, raining bombs on the Yugoslav federation in the name of humanitarianism. In 1949 the U.S. established NATO as a military alliance to defend the West against the perceived threat of Soviet expansionism. When the Soviet Union imploded, the U.S. and other countries of the Atlantic alliance sought to bring Russia into a strategic partnership. Today, NATO’s new militarism and its expansionism have undermined that partnership. The following analysis is excerpted from a new FPIF essay by John Feffer on U.S. policy in the former Soviet Union.)

If the U.S. government had wanted to destroy Russia from the inside out, it couldn’t have devised a more effective policy than the so-called "strategic partnership." From aggressive foreign policy to misguided economic advice to undemocratic influence-peddling, the U.S. has ushered in a cold peace on the heels of the cold war. Containment remains the centerpiece of U.S. policy toward Russia. But it is a "soft" containment. It is Containment Lite.

On the foreign policy front, for instance, Containment Lite has consisted of a three-tiered effort to isolate Russia: from its neighbors, from Europe, and from the international community more generally. The Clinton administration’s policy of "geopolitical pluralism," designed to strengthen key neighbors such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan, has driven wedges into the loose confederation of post-Soviet states. By pushing ahead recklessly with expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the U.S. government is deepening the divide that separates Russia from Europe, effectively building a new Iron Curtain down the middle of Eurasia. Instead of consulting with Russia over key foreign policy issues such as the Iraq bombings and allied policy toward former Yugoslavia, Washington has attempted to steer Moscow into a diplomatic backwater where it can exert little global influence.

Part of this three-tiered foreign policy of "soft" containment has been to eliminate Russia’s last claim to superpower status—its nuclear arsenal—without providing sufficient funds for mothballing the weapons and without pursuing commensurate reductions in U.S. stockpiles. By pursuing a missile defense system, the U.S. has put several arms control treaties in jeopardy; by opposing key sales of Russian military technology, the U.S. has applied a double standard on proliferation. Announcing the largest increase in the military budget since the end of the cold war, the Clinton administration began 1999 with a clear signal that Russia’s decline would have little effect on the Pentagon’s appetite.

While Russia’s geopolitical fortunes have been grim, its economic position is even grimmer. In 1992, when implementing the first market reforms, Boris Yeltsin predicted that good times were just around the corner. This corner has retreated further and further into the distance (particularly after the crisis of August 1998 when the ruble went into free fall and Moscow defaulted on its treasury debt). Today, Russia’s Gross Domestic Product is half what it was ten years ago. The government is suffocating under $150 billion of foreign debt. Barter has re-emerged as a dominant mode of economic transaction. Workers are paid in kind when they are paid at all. Poverty is rampant. Life expectancy is dipping, the population is declining, and Russia is flirting with Third World status.

Economic reform in Russia has not only been unsuccessful, it has been profoundly undemocratic. By collaborating almost exclusively with Boris Yeltsin and his hand-picked "reformers"—and circumventing Russia’s popularly elected legislature, the Duma—the Clinton administration placed expediency over accountability, transparency, and the checks and balances of a truly democratic system. The international community poured billions of dollars into Russia, money that didn’t trickle down but rather was diverted into the pockets of a select few. The result was a crony capitalism far more pronounced than anything on show in Asia: all the corruption with none of the growth.

With its cold war containment policy, the United States relied on aggressive rhetoric and military might to confront a powerful Soviet Union. By contrast, today’s Containment Lite takes advantage of Russia’s economic and military weakness, and at first glance has relied more on carrots than sticks. In reality, however, the U.S. has wielded these carrots much like cudgels. The aid and investments, expert advice and high-profile workshops are designed to reduce the military and diplomatic reach of this erstwhile superpower and to remake the Russian economy in the neoliberal image regardless of social costs. Prodded by these carrots, Russia is moving along a path that has led to economic chaos and escalating resentment.

The Clinton administration is acutely aware of the dangers of a Russian implosion. Yet the administration has crafted policies that are inexorably leading to the realization of its own worst fears.

Security Issues

At one time, Russia was the preoccupation of U.S. foreign policy analysts and intelligence agencies. Beginning in the 1950s, the Soviet Union underwrote anti-colonial disputes throughout the Third World and provided significant aid to countries ranging from Cuba and Angola to Syria and India. Today, Russia’s importance has dwindled considerably. It no longer plays a role in the developing world. It has scant influence in Eastern Europe. Closer to home it has retained certain ambitions—to maintain the integrity of its own territory (as in Chechnya) and to maintain influence in its "near abroad" (such as Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova). But its ambitions outstrip its capacity, as the losses in Chechnya and peacekeeping failures in the "near abroad" suggest.

The truth is, the Russian military is in dire condition—the size of its armed forces cut by a quarter in 1998, its weapons systems in deteriorating condition, and few funds available for new acquisitions (by 2005, according to current trends, only 5-7 percent of Russian military will be new). The U.S. State Department acknowledges that the Russian army’s combat readiness is in "rapid decay." The morale of the army is even lower now than at the time of the Chechen campaign. As for Russia’s ability (or desire) to project force beyond its borders, little Estonia recently declared that its neighbor was no longer a military threat. Even its nuclear arsenal, the one card that keeps Russia in the game, is deteriorating rapidly. Russia is contained, quite literally, by its own weakness.

The U.S., particularly through the vehicle of NATO expansion, is taking advantage of this weakness. NATO was designed to deter Soviet expansion into Europe. The Soviet Union is no more, and Russia desperately wants to join Europe, not invade it. Yet, without an enemy in sight, NATO is marching right up to Russia’s door. In April 1999, Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary became the first new members since Spain in 1982. Twenty-five countries now belong to the Partnership for Peace (PFP) program, a halfway house for NATO candidates where they can get help in modernizing their militaries. Virtually every country in the former Soviet bloc supports NATO expansion, partly because of NATO’s own aggressive public relations campaign and partly as a first step toward benefiting from European economic integration. The Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a far more inclusive institution committed to conflict prevention and the protection of human rights, has been sidelined, largely through U.S. maneuvers to restrict its scope and funding.

Throughout the ups and downs of U.S.-Russian relations in the 1990s, Russia has considered NATO expansion a deliberate provocation, particularly when expansion has potentially included Ukraine and the Baltic states. The U.S. has responded to Russia’s concerns with two initiatives. First, it extended membership to Russia in the PFP program. Then, promising a "special relationship," NATO concluded an accord with Moscow in May 1997 that established various mechanisms of consultation. The accord doesn’t give either party the right to veto the actions of the other. But through the Permanent Joint Council (PJC), the two sides at least meet regularly.

The PJC has been largely window dressing. The Russians haven’t taken it particularly seriously. And the U.S. has not used the mechanism to involve Russia in key foreign policy discussions. Russia has a long list of grievances on this score, for the U.S. did not consult it on air strikes against Libya (1993), Serbs in Bosnia (1994), Iraq (1995, 1996, 1998), and suspected terrorist facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan (1998).

When NATO bombed Yugoslavia in March 1999, the conflict between the United States and Russia approached dangerous proportions. Angry that U.S. and West European negotiators abandoned efforts to reach a diplomatic solution, Russia recalled its ambassador to NATO and tried unsuccessfully to rally the UN Security Council against the military action. Anti-American protests flared in Russia, and the Russian government reportedly began to consider re-deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Consultation is not Russia’s only concern. The expansion of NATO and the Partnership for Peace means a remilitarization along its borders. The new NATO members will be substantially modernizing their militaries. PFP members, which include strife-torn Georgia and Moldova, have access to free U.S. "hand-me-downs" that substantially increase the threat of conflict in the region. From Russia’s perspective, NATO is not just expanding territorially but conceptually as well. Secretary of State Albright has called for NATO to "move beyond a narrow definition of mutual defense" and take action without Security Council mandate. She intends to enlarge NATO’s sphere of potential action to include the Middle East and central Africa. By encroaching even more on UN territory, NATO in its new role would enable the U.S. to act without concern for Russia’s veto in the Security Council.

On the arms control front, meanwhile, the Clinton administration is doing little to balance NATO expansion with a commitment to mutual disarmament. Russian ratification of the START II treaty, for instance, was one of the many victims of U.S. strikes on Iraq in December 1998. The U.S. government didn’t notify Russia or the UN Security Council before launching the attacks. In retaliation, the Russian Duma suspended debate mere hours away from ratifying the treaty. Arms control aside, Russia’s nuclear force is declining daily. It is estimated that the Russian arsenal will fall below 1,000 warheads simply as systems are retired. Without START II, which puts a cap of 3,000-3,500 warheads on each side, the U.S. could remain at 6,000 warheads. With the treaty, the U.S. will destroy warheads and Russia will destroy missiles, an asymmetry that puts Russia at a strategic disadvantage. While START II is in this sense a double bind for Russia, many Russian politicians still hope to ratify the treaty in order to salvage good relations with the United States, keep the aid flowing, and prepare for more significant disarmament initiatives such as START III.

Another challenge to current and future reductions in strategic arms is the Clinton administration’s desire to modify—or perhaps even scuttle—the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in order to pave the way for a new national missile defense system. Many Russian experts have declared the ABM treaty linked to START II—if the first dies, so will the second. The Clinton administration favors "modification" while opponents such as powerful Republican Senator Jesse Helms have called for scrapping the treaty. The Pentagon reportedly offered Moscow a disturbing quid pro quo on the ABM issue: if Russia looks the other way while the U.S. develops a missile defense system, Washington will allow Russia to deploy new strategic missiles with three warheads. Although at peace with one another, the two countries are paradoxically moving away from arms control and towards arms augmentation.

Meanwhile, the lion’s share of U.S. aid to Russia is directed toward the containment and dismantling of its weapons, much of it through the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program. In his 1999 State of the Union address, Clinton called for a 70 percent increase in funds to help Russia dismantle nuclear warheads and better control fissionable material. The U.S. government is understandably concerned about the potential for Russia’s nuclear weapons to circulate on the world’s black market. Disarmament communities in both countries are justifiably delighted to witness the destruction and not mere limitation of nuclear weapons. The opportunity for disarmament is breathtaking. But the funds provided by the Clinton administration are not sufficient even to pay for the implementation of START II, much less the full range of arms control measures that the U.S. and Russia are or should be considering. Which means that a cash-strapped Russia must pay for its own humbling and the disarmament process is regrettably slowed .

NATO remains a key sticking point in U.S.-Russian relations at the moment. Particularly destabilizing from Moscow’s viewpoint is NATO’s interest in preparing the Baltic states for admission as well as efforts to absorb Ukraine into the alliance. Russia has drawn its version of a line in the sand—a "red line"—which it warns NATO not to cross or risk "destruction of the existing world order." Given Russia’s consistent opposition as well as the sheer number of actual and potential crises on Russia’s border, the U.S. must consider whether admission to NATO will make the petitioning states more or less secure. Meanwhile, the U.S. must make a commitment to the Permanent Joint Council and actively engage Russia on the broadest range of security issues, including arms limitations. NATO, for all its efforts to redefine its mission, has not spent much time on arms control (indeed, the 1999 Washington Summit will focus on the Defense Capabilities Initiative, a modernization initiative). For conventional arms control to proceed, NATO must concentrate more on the contraction of its forces than the expansion of its influence.

To address Russian concerns about the asymmetry of nuclear arms control, the Clinton administration should consider the proposal of Jonathan Dean, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, to add a protocol to the current START II treaty that would limit total deployed warheads to 1,000 and then proceed with the START III negotiations (concerning data exchange, warhead dismantling, tactical warheads and sea-launched cruise missiles). This disarmament process will cost money, of course, but every dollar spent neutralizing nuclear weapons on both sides is money well spent.

(John Feffer is the author of Shock Waves: Eastern Europe After the Revolutions (South End, 1992), Beyond Détente: Soviet Foreign Policy and U.S. Options (Hill and Wang, 1990), and several In Focus briefs (on NATO, U.S.-Russian Relations, Eastern European economic reform, and the situation in former Yugoslavia). He is also co-editor of Europe’s New Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 1996).)