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Manufacturing War With Russia

Chris Hedges

 Mannufacturing War With Russia
 / Truthdig

Despite the Robert Mueller report's conclusion that Donald Trump and his
campaign did not collude with Russia during the 2016 presidential race, the
new Cold War with Moscow shows little sign of abating. It is used to justify
the expansion of NATO to Russia's borders, a move that has made billions in
profits for U.S. arms manufacturers. It is used to demonize domestic critics
and alternative media outlets as agents of a foreign power. It is used to
paper over the Democratic Party's betrayal of the working class and the
party's subservience to corporate power. It is used to discredit détente
between the world's two largest nuclear powers. It is used to justify both
the curtailment of civil liberties in the United States and U.S.
interventions overseas—including in countries such as Syria and Venezuela.
This new Cold War predates the Trump presidential campaign. It was
manufactured over a decade ago by a war industry and intelligence community
that understood that, by fueling a conflict with Russia, they could
consolidate their power and increase their profits. (Seventy percent of
intelligence is carried out by private corporations such as Booz Allen
Hamilton, which has been called the world's most profitable spy operation.)

"This began long before Trump and 'Russiagate,' " Stephen F. Cohen said when
I interviewed him for my television show, "On Contact." Cohen is professor
emeritus of politics at Princeton University, where he was the director of
the Russian studies program, and professor emeritus of Russian studies and
history at New York University. "You have to ask yourself, why is it that
Washington had no problem doing productive diplomacy with Soviet communist
leaders. Remember Richard Nixon and  Leonid Brezhnev? It was a love fest.
They went hunting together [in the Soviet Union]. Yet along comes a
post-Soviet leader, Vladimir Putin, who is not only not a communist but a
professed anti-communist. Washington has been hating on him ever since 2003,
2004. It requires some explanation. Why do we like communist leaders in
Russia better than we like Russia's anti-communist leader? It's a riddle."

"If you're trying to explain how the Washington establishment has dealt with
Putin in a hateful and demonizing way, you have to go back to the 1990s
before Putin," said Cohen, whose new book is "War With Russia? From Putin &
Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate." The first post-Soviet leader is Boris
Yeltsin. Clinton is president. And they have this fake, pseudo-partnership
and friendship, whereas essentially the Clinton administration took
advantage of the fact that Russia was in collapse. It almost lost its
sovereignty. I lived there in the '90s. Middle-class people lost their
professions. Elderly people lost their pensions. I think it's correct to say
that industrial production fell more in the Russian 1990s than it did during
our own Great Depression. It was the worst economic and social depression
ever in peacetime. It was a catastrophe for Russia."

In September 1993 Russians took to the streets to protest the collapse of
the economy—the gross domestic product had fallen by 50% and the country was
convulsed by hyperinflation—along with the rampant corruption that saw state
enterprises sold for paltry fees to Russian oligarchs and foreign
corporations in exchange for lavish kickbacks and bribes; food and fuel
shortages; the nonpayment of wages and pensions; the lack of basic services,
including medical services; falling life expectancy; the explosion of
violent crime; and Yeltsin's increasing authoritarianism and his unpopular
war with Chechnya.

In October 1993 Yeltsin, after dissolving the parliament, ordered army tanks
to shell the Russian parliament building, which was being occupied by
democratic protesters. The assault left 2,000 dead. Yet during his
presidency Yeltsin was effusively praised and supported by Washington. This
included U.S. support for a $10.2 billion International Monetary Fund loan
to Russia during his 1996 re-election campaign. The loan enabled the Yeltsin
government to pay huge sums in back wages and pensions to millions of
Russians, with checks often arriving on the eve of the election. Also, an
estimated $1.5 billion from the loan was used to directly fund the Yeltsin
presidential campaign. But by the time Yeltsin was forced out of office in
December 1999 his approval rating had sunk to 2%. Washington, losing
Yeltsin, went in search of another malleable Russian leader and, at first,
thought it had found one in Putin.

"Putin went to Texas," Cohen said. "He had a barbecue with Bush, second
Bush. Bush said he 'looked into his eyes and saw a good soul.' There was
this honeymoon. Why did they turn against Putin? He turned out not to be
Yeltsin. We have a very interesting comment about this from Nicholas
Kristof, the New York Times columnist, who wrote, I think in 2003, that his
own disillusion with Putin was that he had turned out not to be 'a sober
Yeltsin.' What Washington was hoping for was a submissive, supplicant,
post-Soviet Russian leader, but one who was younger, healthier and not a
drinker. They thought they had that in Putin. Yeltsin had put Putin in
power, or at least the people around Yeltsin did."

"When Putin began talking about Russia's sovereignty, Russia's independent
course in world affairs, they're aghast," Cohen said of the Washington
elites. "This is not what they expected. Since then, my own thinking is we
were pretty lucky after the 1990s to get Putin because there were worst
contenders in the wings. I knew some of them. I don't want to name names.
But some of these guys were really harsh people. Putin was kind of the right
person for the right time, both for Russia and for Russian world affairs."

"We have had three years of this," Cohen said of Russiagate. "We lost sight
of the essence of what this allegation is. The people who created Russiagate
are literally saying, and have been for almost three years, that the
president of the United States is a Russian agent, or he has been
compromised by the Kremlin. We grin because it's so fantastic. But the
Washington establishment, mainly the Democrats but not only, have taken this
seriously."

"I don't know if there has ever been anything like this in American
history," Cohen said. "That accusation does such damage to our own
institutions, to the presidency, to our electoral system, to Congress, to
the American mainstream media, not to mention the damage it's done to
American-Russian relations, the damage it has done to the way Russians, both
elite Russians and young Russians, look at America today. This whole
Russiagate has not only been fraudulent, it's been a catastrophe."

"There were three major episodes of détente in the 20th century," Cohen
said. "The first was after Stalin died, when the Cold War was very
dangerous. That was carried out by Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican
president. The second was by Richard Nixon, advised by Henry Kissinger—it
was called 'the Nixon détente with Brezhnev.' The third, and we thought most
successful, was Ronald Reagan with Mikhail Gorbachev. It was such a
successful détente Reagan and Gorbachev, and Reagan's successor, the first
Bush, said the Cold War was over forever."

"The wall had come down," Cohen said of the 1989 collapse of East Germany
and the fall of the Berlin Wall. "Germany was reunifying. The question
became 'where would a united Germany be?' The West wanted Germany in NATO.
For Gorbachev, this was an impossible sell. Twenty-seven point five million
Soviet citizens had died in the war against Germany in the Second World War
on the eastern front. Contrary to the bunk we're told, the United States
didn't land on Normandy and defeat Nazi Germany. The defeat of Nazi Germany
was done primarily by the Soviet army. How could Gorbachev go home and say,
'Germany is reunited. Great. And it's going to be in NATO.' It was
impossible. They told Gorbachev, 'We promise if you agree to a reunited
Germany in NATO, NATO will not move—this was Secretary of State James
Baker—one inch to the east. In other words, NATO would not move from Germany
toward Russia. And it did."

"As we speak today, NATO is on Russia's borders," Cohen said. "From the
Baltics to Ukraine to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. So, what
happened? Later, they said Gorbachev lied or he misunderstood. [That] the
promise was never made. But the National Security Archive in Washington has
produced all the documents of the discussion in 1990. It was not only
[President George H.W.] Bush, it was the French leader François Mitterrand,
it was Margaret Thatcher of England. Every Western leader promised Gorbachev
NATO would not move eastward."

"What do you end up with today?" he asked. "Betrayal. Any kind of discussion
about Russian-American relations today, an informed Russian is going to say,
'We worry you will betray us again.'… Putin said he had illusions about the
West when he came to power."

"Trump comes out of nowhere in 2016 and says, 'I think we should cooperate
with Russia,' " Cohen said. "This is a statement of détente. It's what drew
my attention to him. It's then that this talk of Trump being an agent of the
Kremlin begins. One has to wonder—I can't prove it—but you have to think
logically. Was this [allegation] begun somewhere high up in America by
people who didn't want a pro-détente president? And [they] thought that
Trump, however small it seemed at the time that he could win—they really
didn't like this talk of cooperation with Russia. It set in motion these
things we call Russiagate."

"The forefathers of détente were Republicans," Cohen said. "How the
Democrats behaved during this period of détente was mixed. There was what
used to be called the Henry Jackson wing. This was a very hard-line,
ideological wing of the Democratic Party that didn't believe in détente.
Some Democrats did. I lived many years in Moscow, both Soviet and
post-Soviet times. If you talk to Russian, Soviet policymakers, they
generally prefer Republican candidates for the presidency."

Democrats are perceived by Russian rulers as more ideological, Cohen said.

"Republicans tend to be businessmen who want to do business in Russia," he
said. "The most important pro-détente lobby group, created in the 1970s, was
called the American Committee for East-West Accord. It was created by
American CEOs who wanted to do business in Soviet Russia."

"The single most important relationship the United States has is with
Russia," Cohen went on, "not only because of the nuclear weapons. It remains
the largest territorial country in the world. It abuts every region we are
concerned about. Détente with Russia—not friendship, not partnership, not
alliance—but reducing conflict is essential. Yet something happened in
2016."

The accusations made repeatedly by James Clapper, the former director of the
National Security Agency, and John Brennan, the former director of the
Central Intelligence Agency, concerning the Kremlin's supposed control of
Trump and Russia's alleged theft of our elections are deeply disturbing,
Cohen said. Clapper and Brennan have described Trump as a Kremlin "asset."
Brennan called Trump's performance at a news conference with the Russian
president in Finland "nothing short of treasonous."

Clapper in his memoir, "Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From a Life in
Intelligence," claims Putin's interference in the 2016 presidential election
on behalf of Trump was "staggering."

"Of course, the Russian efforts affected the outcome," writes Clapper.
"Surprising even themselves, they swung the election to a Trump win. To
conclude otherwise stretches logic, common sense and credulity to the
breaking point. Less than eighty thousand votes in three key states swung
the election. I have no doubt that more votes than that were influenced by
this massive effort by the Russians."

Brennan and Clapper have on numerous occasions been caught lying to the
public. Brennan, for example, denied, falsely, that the CIA was monitoring
the computers that Senate staff members were using to prepare a report on
torture. The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne
Feinstein, took to the Senate floor to accuse Brennan and the CIA of
potentially violating the U.S. Constitution and of criminal activity in its
attempts to spy on and thwart her committee's investigations into the
agency's use of torture. She described the situation as a "defining moment"
for political oversight. Brennan also claimed there was not a "single
collateral death" in the drone assassination program, that Osama bin Laden
used his wife as a human shield before being gunned down in a U.S. raid in
Pakistan, and insisted that torture, or what is euphemistically called
"enhanced interrogation," has produced valuable intelligence. None of these
statements are true.

Clapper, who at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was the head of the
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon unit responsible for
interpreting spy-satellite photos and intelligence such as air particles and
soil samples, concocted a story about Saddam Hussein spiriting his
nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and the documents that verified his
program to Syria on the eve of the invasion. He blatantly committed perjury
before the Senate when being questioned about domestic surveillance programs
of the American public. He was asked, "Does the NSA [National Security
Agency] collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions
of Americans?" Clapper responded, "No, sir. … Not wittingly." It was, as
Clapper knew very well, a lie.

Our inability to oversee or control senior intelligence officials and their
agencies, which fabricate information to push through agendas embraced by
the shadow state, signals the death of democracy. Intelligence officials
seemingly empowered to lie—Brennan and Clapper have been among
them—ominously have in their hands instruments of surveillance, intimidation
and coercion that effectively silence their critics, blunt investigations
into their activities, even within the government, and make them and their
agencies unaccountable.

"We have the Steele dossier that was spookily floating around American
media," Cohen said of the report compiled by Christopher Steele.

The report was commissioned by Fusion GPS and paid for by the Hillary
Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Bob
Woodward reported that Brennan pushed to include the Steele dossier in the
intelligence community assessment of Russian election interference.

"He [Steele] got it from newspapers," Cohen said. "I don't think he had a
single source in Russia. Steele comes forward with this dossier and says,
'I've got information from high-level sources.' The Clinton campaign is
funding this operation. But Steele is very important. He's a former U.K.
intelligence officer, if he's really former, who had served in Russia and
ran Russian cases. He says he has this information in the dossier about
Trump frolicking with prostitutes. About Trump having been corrupted decades
ago. He got it from 'high-level' Kremlin sources. This is preposterous. It's
illogical."

"The theory is Putin desperately wanted to make Trump president," Cohen
said. "Yet, guys in the Kremlin, around Putin, were feeding Trump dirt to a
guy called Steele. Even though the boss wants—does it make any sense to
you?"

"Why is this important?" Cohen asked. "Right-wing American media outlets
today, in particularly Fox News, are blaming Russia for this whole
Russiagate thing. They're saying that Russia provided this false information
to Steele, who pumped it into our system, which led to Russiagate. This is
untrue."

"Who is behind all this? Including the Steele operation?" Cohen asked. "I
prefer a good question to an orthodox answer. I'm not dogmatic. I don't have
the evidence. But all the surface information suggests that this originated
with Brennan and the CIA. Long before it hit America—maybe as early as late
2015. One of the problems we have today is everybody is hitting on the FBI.
Lovers who sent emails. But the FBI is a squishy organization, nobody is
afraid of the FBI. It's not what it used to be under J. Edgar Hoover. Look
at James Comey, for God's sake. He's a patsy. Brennan and Clapper played
Comey. They dumped this stuff on him. Comey couldn't even handle Mrs.
Clinton's emails. He made a mess of everything. Who were the cunning guys?
They were Brennan and Clapper. [Brennan,] the head of the CIA. Clapper, the
head of the Office of [the Director of] National Intelligence, who is
supposed to oversee these agencies."

"Is there any reality to these Russiagate allegations against Trump and
Putin?" he asked. "Was this dreamed up by our intelligence services? Today
investigations are being promised, including by the attorney general of the
United States. They all want to investigate the FBI. But they need to
investigate what Brennan and the CIA did. This is the worst scandal in
American history. It's the worst, at least since the Civil War. We need to
know how this began. If our intelligence services are way off the
reservation, to the point that they can try to first destroy a presidential
candidate and then a president, and I don't care that it's Trump, it may be
Harry Smith next time, or a woman; if they can do this, we need to know it."

"The second Bush left the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002," Cohen
said. "It was a very important treaty. It prevented the deployment of
missile defense. If anybody got missile defense that worked, they might
think they had a first strike [option]. Russia or the United States could
strike the other without retaliation. Once Bush left the treaty, we began to
deploy missile defense around Russia. It was very dangerous."

"The Russians began a new missile program which we learned about last year,"
he said. Hypersonic missiles. Russia now has nuclear missiles that can evade
and elude any missile defense system. We are in a new and more perilous
point in a 50-year nuclear arms race. Putin says, 'We've developed these
because of what you did. We can destroy each other.' Now is the time for a
serious, new arms control agreement. What do we get? Russiagate. Russiagate
is one of the greatest threats to national security. I have five listed in
the book. Russia and China aren't on there. Russiagate is number one."

Chris Hedges

Columnist

Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a
New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree
program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers…