{"id":100327,"date":"2021-12-07T12:51:37","date_gmt":"2021-12-07T16:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=100327"},"modified":"2021-12-07T12:52:30","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T16:52:30","slug":"putin-ukraine-is-to-russia-what-cuba-was-to-america-in-the-1963-cuban-missile-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=100327","title":{"rendered":"Putin: Ukraine Is to Russia What Cuba Was to America in the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Submitted by Eric Zuesse
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In an almost universally ignored speech by Putin, on December 1st (titled \u201cCeremony for presenting foreign ambassadors\u2019 letters of credence\u201d)<\/a>, he said, merely as an aside [and I here shall add clarifications in brackets]:<\/div>\n
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By the way, the threat on our western border<\/i> [he was referring mainly to Ukraine] is really growing, and we have mentioned it many times. It is enough to see how close NATO military infrastructure has moved to Russia\u2019s borders. This is more than serious for us. <\/i>[He meant that it is an existential threat against Russia, just as the Soviet Union\u2019s placement of nuclear weapons in Cuba would have been an existential threat to America in 1963. But he always tries to be non-alarmist, because his real audience regarding such matters is the people who control U.S. foreign policies, and he doesn\u2019t want to draw the public\u2019s attention to matters of existential consequence between the superpowers.]<\/div>\n
In this situation, we are taking appropriate military-technical measures. But, I repeat, we are not threatening anyone and it is at the very least irresponsible to accuse us of this, given the real state of affairs. This would mean laying the blame at the wrong door, as the Russian saying goes.<\/i><\/div>\n
In my speech at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs I already stressed that the priority facing Russian diplomacy at this juncture is to try to ensure that Russia is granted reliable and long-term security guarantees.<\/i><\/div>\n
While engaging in dialogue with the United States and its allies, we will insist on the elaboration of concrete agreements that would rule out any further eastward expansion of NATO and the deployment of weapons systems posing a threat to us in close proximity to Russia\u2019s territory. We suggest that substantive talks on this topic should be started.<\/i><\/div>\n
I would like to note in particular that we need precisely legal, juridical guarantees, because our Western colleagues have failed to deliver on verbal commitments they made. Specifically, everyone is aware of the assurances they gave verbally that NATO would not expand to the east. But they did absolutely the opposite in reality. In effect, Russia\u2019s legitimate security concerns were ignored and they continue to be ignored in the same manner even now.<\/i><\/div>\n
We are not demanding any special terms for ourselves. We understand that any agreements must take into account the interests of both Russia and all other states in the Euro-Atlantic region. A calm and stable situation should be ensured for everyone and is needed by all without exception.<\/i><\/div>\n
That said, I would like to stress that Russia is interested precisely in constructive collaboration and in equitable international cooperation, and this remains the central tenet of Russian foreign policy. I hope that you will convey this signal to the leaders of your states.<\/i><\/div>\n
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He was referring there to the fact that the U.S. Government \u2014 which had, in 2013, been planning to replace Russia\u2019s largest naval base, which had long been on Crimea, and to transform it into yet another U.S. naval base, and which U.S. Government, since 2011, had been planning and then in February 2014 actually perpetrated a coup in Ukraine so as to have a new Ukrainian government which would join NATO and allow America to position U.S. nuclear weapons less than a ten-minute flight-time away from nuking Moscow<\/a> \u2014 that this U.S. Government had broken its repeated verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that if the Soviet Union would end its side of the Cold War, then America would do likewise, and NATO would not expand \u201cone inch to the east\u201d (toward Russia\u2019s border)<\/a>.<\/div>\n
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Putin has many times expressed his regret that the Soviet Union had agreed to quit (in 1991) the Cold War without getting ironclad commitments from the U.S. to simultaneously do the same on its side<\/i>. However, this new speech from Putin (as was so brilliantly pointed out by the great geostrategic analyst Alexander Mercouris in this recent video from him \u2014 starting at 9:55 in that video<\/a>) is entirely new from Russia: \u201cThe Russians have never actually set out their position on NATO\u2019s eastward expansion in this way. They have never previously, at any point since the end of the Cold War [on Russia\u2019s side \u2014 America never left the Cold War<\/a>], or even, by the way during the Cold War, said that they now insist that there is to be in effect an international treaty which will limit the expansion of NATO eastward and which will reduce NATO military forces in areas close to Russia\u2019s borders. The fact that Putin is talking in this way is a sign of growing Russian confidence. \u2026 (18:35) For the first time, since the end of the Cold War [on Russia\u2019s side], it is the Russians who are now making demands of The West [the U.S. regime and its satellite states<\/a> or colonies \u2014 \u2018allies\u2019]. They are saying that they now want legal guarantees that NATO\u2019s expansion eastward [i.e., closer to Russia\u2019s border] must stop. What they are saying is that they will not tolerate NATO expansion into places like Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and the rest, and that they insist that there must be a treaty agreed by the Western powers, that that will not happen. They also want some form of treaty which will restrict the deployment of Western military systems close to Russia\u2019s borders. The Russians have never made this sort of demand before, but they are making it now. \u2026 It speaks of a major belief in Russian self-confidence. \u2026 Putin, in that speech which he made, at the Russian Foreign Ministry \u2014 a speech which, to my mind is going to become one of the most important speeches of the Cold War era \u2014 is going to become gradually understood to mark a fundamental break in Russian foreign policy. \u2026 until the point is finally reached, when the NATO powers, the Western powers, finally accept<\/i> that the Russians have fundamental security interests in Eastern Europe, and negotiate in earnest to acknowledge those [as Khrushchev did with JFK in October 1963 regarding Cuba]. \u2026 It may take five years, it might take ten years; it might take even longer than that. But in time that negotiation \u2026 will take place, and an agreement will be reached; or, alternatively, there will be something far more dramatic.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Mercouris\u2019s statement got me to wondering why Putin would be demanding, now, after all of these decades when he wasn\u2019t<\/i>, that the lying promises that George Herbert Walker Bush\u2019s representatives had been making to Gorbachev and to his representatives, that the U.S. and its allies had no goal of conquering Russia if the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw-Pact copy of America\u2019s NATO military alliance, all would end, and that NATO would then NOT expand closer to Russia\u2019s border, turned out to have been lies (by G.H.W. Bush) that were clearly demonstrated by all subsequent U.S. Presidents<\/i> to have been<\/i> lies. WHY would Putin now want those lies to be signed by the U.S. Government and its vassal-nations, after the U.S. regime\u2019s entire record ever since the end of WW II has been one of lying? Why would he want the U.S. signature being now placed on those promises? It\u2019s a worthless signature, entirely untrustworthy, isn\u2019t it? Look at what the U.S. regime did to the START Treaty, Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, and to so many other Treaties that it had signed-onto \u2014 unilaterally trashed them, by unilaterally abandoning the Agreement on its side. What would actually be to be gained by such a trashy signature \u2014 a signature from a nation whose trustworthiness has been so conclusively disproven<\/i>?<\/div>\n
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Maybe Putin\u2019s strategy is to get it in writing (though the U.S. routinely cancels its international agreements and therefore its \u201csignature\u201d is meaningless), in order subsequently<\/i> to announce that if and when<\/i> the U.S. ever violates what it had signed (and this follow-up by Russia will then automatically make the signed Agreement effectively inviolable-noncancellable), then, at that moment<\/i>, both the full force of the Russian (and maybe also of the Chinese) nuclear forces that are targeted against the snake\u2019s head (D.C., NYC, London, Toronto, Canberra, and Israel) will be promptly unleashed. That would be an unannounced and unwarned first-strike nuclear attack against the snake\u2019s head. Then Russia (and maybe also China) will wait for any possible counter-attack (body-twitches from the snake) before unleashing a second unannounced nuclear attack, which would be against and destroying all nations that had participated in<\/i> that counterstrike against those participating U.S.-allied nations\u2019 counter<\/i>-attack.<\/div>\n
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Iff that is the reason why he is now demanding that the promise be put in writing, then I think that he was correct to assert what he said. Indeed: what OTHER geostrategy from a Russian (and perhaps also from a Chinese) leader who has been placed (by that snake) into such an existentially precarious position, would make any sense, at all?<\/div>\n
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(I say this in full recognition that any WW III would produce nuclear winter<\/a> and terminate all human life and perhaps all life on this planet; however, the U.S. regime, ever since at least 2006, has been planning to \u2018win\u2019 such a war<\/a>; and the only way that Russia and China might possibly be able to deter such insanity would be for them to pursue a very clear path forward that includes the real possibility of their initiating the nuclear stage of the conflict. The U.S. \u2014 including NATO \u2014 regime\u2019s rabidly neoconservative presumptions are that it will scare its opponents into ultimately complying with the regime\u2019s imperialistic demands. If a slave is about to be killed by its master, then its only choice \u2014 if any \u2014 is to kill its master in the process, regardless whether that will save the slave\u2019s life. If this is the only way to end imperialism, then still it must be done, and the side that issues the first-strike will be on the right side of it, and the imperialist opponent will be on the wrong side of it. The slave who kills its master is in the right, because the slave-master is always on the wrong side of the relationship. My next book, due out soon, will be about this, and will be titled America\u2019s Empire of Evil<\/i>.)<\/div>\n
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\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/div>\n
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/a>.<\/div>\n

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Submitted by Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}