Sowing Seeds of War

March 24, 2021 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

Sowing Seeds of War

Paul Craig Roberts

China Is Losing Patience with Washington. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” China tells Washington, and China is getting angry.

Beijing warns US and its UK, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand puppets to give up pretending they constitute “world opinion.”  https://www.rt.com/news/519004-china-five-eyes-west-xinjiang/ 

This rebuke to the “Five Eyes” follows a strong dressing down delivered by Yang Jiechi, a ruling member of the Chinese government to the Biden regime at the Alaska talks.  Yang Jiechi told the US delegation that “the United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength.”  In other words, who do you think you are?  Where did you get the idea that your self-serving position constitutes international public opinion and that you can lean on us to comply with your position?

In their most recent public statements President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have stopped pleading with the West to be nice.  Putin acknowledged that Washington only wants a hegemonic relationship with Russia, a relationship inconsistent with Russian sovereignty, and Lavrov said that the EU’s hostility to Russia could result in Russia breaking off relations with Europe.  

Washington is probably too arrogant to hear what it is being told.  This is why I am concerned that Washington’s hegemonic aspiration can result in a devastating war.  It is easy to rouse Americans, especially patriotic Trump supporters, against Russia and China.  The American Establishment did not allow Trump to improve relations with Russia, but it did permit him to worsen relations with China.  But what sense does it make for Trump supporters, defined by the Biden regime as “Trump insurrectionists,” “enemies of democracy,” and “America’s greatest threat,” to support the Biden’s regime’s propaganda against Russia and China?  

Washington and its presstitutes sound like a broken record with their complaints about human rights violations in China and Russia’s alleged poisoning of Navalny, Washington’s man with whom to replace Putin. Washington’s hypocrisy does not impress China and Russia.  Washington’s puppet states go along with it, but most of the world regards the US as the human rights abuser with its 20 years of destrution of Muslim countries and its evil, inhuman, and illegal treatment of Julian Assange.  Whatever human rights violations China and Russia might have committed, they pale in comparison with Washington’s enormous crimes against humanity, crimes that include protection of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.

The long years of Washington’s hypocrisy has, I fear, destroyed world respect for Washington’s veracity and integrity.  I am afraid that China and Russia have concluded that it is impossible to come to terms with a government whose words are limited to propaganda. The resulting Russian and Chinese lack of trust in Washington, together with Washington’s quest for hegemony, makes the danger of war high.

There doesn’t seem anything to do about this risk from within the US.  Judging from the content of most articles on Johnson’s List, a daily collection of articles about Russia, Russian studies in the US are no longer serious and consist largely of accusatory propaganda that presents Russia as Washington wants Russia presented.  

Americans do not understand the risks that Washington is taking with China and Russia, because the media do not explain the facts and the risks to them. Stephen Cohen, recently deceased, was perhaps America’s last academic Russian expert.  He and I shared the concern that Washington’s intent to damage Russia was sowing the seeds of war. For our efforts, we were labeled “Russian dupes.”  For intelligent commentary on Russia, a person turns to The Saker and Andrei Martyanov, not to university departments of Russian studies. Unfortunately for understanding, all who put truth in the way of Washington’s propaganda are dismissed as “pro-Kremlin.”

Silencing the voices of sanity is how wars come about.