Former Soviet States: Battleground For Global Domination
"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to general global power."
"We continue to recognize that collectively the conventional forces of the states formerly comprising the Soviet Union retain the most military potential in all of Eurasia; and we do not dismiss the risks to stability in Europe from a nationalist backlash in Russia or efforts to reincorporate into Russia the newly independent republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and possibly others....We must, however, be mindful that democratic change in Russia is not irreversible, and that despite its current travails, Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States."
In its original and revised versions the 46-page Defense Planning Guidance document laid the foundation for what would informally become known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine and later the Bush Doctrine, indistinguishable in any essential manner from the Blair, alternately known as Clinton, Doctrine enunciated in 1999: That the U.S. (with its NATO allies) reserves the unquestioned right to employ military force anywhere in the world at any time for whichever purpose it sees fit and to effect "regime change" overthrows of any governments viewed as being insufficiently subservient to Washington and its regional and global designs.
Five years later former Carter administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who launched the Afghan Mujahideen support project in 1978 and worked with Khalilzad at Colombia when the latter was Assistant Professor of Political Science at the university's School of International and Public Affairs from 1979 to 1989 and Brzezinski headed the Institute on Communist Affairs, wrote an article called "A Geostrategy for Eurasia."
It was in essence a precis of his book of the same year, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives, and was published in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.
The framework for the piece is contained in this paragraph:
"America's status as the world's premier power is unlikely to be contested by any single challenger for more than a generation. No state is likely to match the United States in the four key dimensions of power - military, economic, technological, and cultural - that confer global political clout. Short of American abdication, the only real alternative to American leadership is international anarchy. President Clinton is correct when he says America has become the world's 'indispensable nation.'"
Brzezinski identified the subjugation of Eurasia as Washington's chief global geopolitical objective, with the former Soviet Union as the center of that policy and NATO as the main mechanism to accomplish the strategy.
"Europe is America's essential geopolitical bridgehead in Eurasia. America's stake in democratic Europe is enormous. Unlike America's links with Japan, NATO entrenches American political influence and military power on the Eurasian mainland. With the allied European nations still highly dependent on U.S. protection, any expansion of Europe's political scope is automatically an expansion of U.S. influence. Conversely, the United States' ability to project influence and power in Eurasia relies on close transatlantic ties.
"A wider Europe and an enlarged NATO will serve the short-term and longer-term interests of U.S. policy. A larger Europe will expand the range of American influence without simultaneously creating a Europe so politically integrated that it could challenge the United States on matters of geopolitical importance, particularly in the Middle East...."
The double emigre - first from Poland, then from Canada - advocated a diminished role for nation states, including the U.S., and Washington's collaboration in building a stronger Europe in furtherance of general Western domination of Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa and the world as a whole.
"In practical terms, all this will eventually require America's accommodation to a shared leadership in NATO, greater acceptance of France's concerns over a European role in Africa and the Middle East, and continued support for the European Union's eastward expansion even as the EU becomes politically and economically more assertive....A new Europe is still taking shape, and if that Europe is to remain part of the 'Euro-Atlantic' space, the expansion of NATO is essential."
While giving lip service to the role of the European Union, he left no doubt as to which organization - the world's only military bloc - is to lead the charge in the conquest of the former Soviet Union as well as the world's "periphery." It is NATO.
Already stating in 1997, two years before his native Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary would become full members of the Alliance, that "Ukraine, provided it has made significant domestic reforms and has become identified as a Central European country, should also be ready for initial negotiations with the EU and NATO," he added:
"Failure to widen NATO, now that the commitment has been made, would shatter the concept of an expanding Europe and demoralize the Central Europeans. Worse, it could reignite dormant Russian political aspirations in Central Europe. Moreover, it is far from evident that the Russian political elite shares the European desire for a strong American political and military presence in Europe....If a choice must be made between a larger Europe-Atlantic system and a better relationship with Russia, the former must rank higher."
That a former U.S. foreign policy official and citizen of the country would so blithely determine years before the event which nations would join the European Union went without comment on both sides of the Atlantic. That the nominal geographic location of a nation - placing Ukraine in Central Europe - would be assigned by an American was similarly assumed to be Washington's prerogative evidently.
Despite vapid maunderings about desiring to free post-Soviet Russia from its "imperial past" and "integrating [it] into a cooperative transcontinental system," Brzezinski presented a blueprint for surrounding the nation with a NATO cordon sanitaire, in truth a wall of military fortifications.
"Russia is more likely to make a break with its imperial past if the newly independent post-Soviet states are vital and stable. Their vitality will temper any residual Russian imperial temptations. Political and economic support for the new states must be an integral part of a broader strategy....Ukraine is a critically important component of such a policy, as is support for such strategically pivotal states as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan."
Adding Georgia and Moldova, the three states he singles out became the nucleus of the GUUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Moldova) bloc originally created in the same year as Brzezinski's article and book appeared. (Uzbekistan joined in 1999 and left in 2005.)
GUAM was promoted by the Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright administration as a vehicle for planned Trans-Eurasian energy projects and to tear apart the Commonwealth of Independent States by luring members apart from Russia toward the European Union, the so-called soft power preliminary stage, and NATO, the hard power culmination of the process.
In the above-quoted article Brzezinski also wrote, in addressing Turkey, that "Regular consultations with Ankara regarding the future of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia would foster Turkey's sense of strategic partnership with the United States. America should also support Turkish aspirations to have a pipeline from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Ceyhan on its own Mediterranean coast serve as a major outlet for the Caspian sea basin energy reserves."
Eight years later, in 2005, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline transporting Caspian Sea oil to Europe came online, followed by the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum natural gas pipeline and the Kars-Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Baku railway, with the Nabucco natural gas pipeline next to be activated. The last-named is already slated to include, in addition to Caspian supplies, gas from Iraq and North Africa.
The book whose foreword Brzezinski's "A Geostrategy for Eurasia" in a way was, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives, laid out in greater detail plans that have been expanded upon in the interim.
The volume's preface states, "It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book....Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran....Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of US geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.”
In pursuance of "America's role as the first, only, and last truly global superpower," Brzezinski noted that "the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia. For half a millennium, world affairs were dominated by Eurasian powers and peoples who fought with one another for regional domination and reached out for global power. Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained."
The military fist inside the diplomatic glove is and will remain NATO.
"The emergence of a truly united Europe - especially if that should occur with constructive American support - will require significant changes in the structure and processes of the NATO alliance, the principal link between America and Europe. NATO provides not only the main mechanism for the exercise of US influence regarding European matters but the basis for the politically critical American military presence in Western Europe....Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played."
In a section with the heading "The NATO Imperative," the author reiterated earlier policy demands: "It follows that a wider Europe and an enlarged NATO will serve well both the short-term and the longer-term goals of US policy. A larger Europe will expand the range of American influence — and, through the admission of new Central European members, also increase in the European councils the number of states with a pro-American proclivity — without simultaneously creating a Europe politically so integrated that it could soon challenge the United States on geopolitical matters of high importance to America elsewhere, particularly in the Middle East."
A Europe united under the EU and especially NATO is to be strong enough to contain, isolate and increasingly confront Russia as the central component of U.S. plans for control of Eurasia and the world, but cannot be allowed to conduct an independent foreign policy, particularly in regard to Russia and the Middle East. European NATO allies are to assist Washington in preventing the emergence of "the most dangerous scenario...a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran" such as has been adumbrated since in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Four years after the publication of The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski's recommended chess move was made: The U.S. and NATO invaded Afghanistan and expanded into Central Asia where Russian, Chinese and Iranian interests converge and where the basis for their regional cooperation existed, and Western military bases were established in the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, where they remain for the indefinite future.
Western-controlled pipelines traverse the South Caucasus - Azerbaijan and Georgia - to drive Russia and Iran out of the European and ultimately world energy markets, with a concomitant U.S. and NATO takeover of the armed forces of both nations. The two countries have also been tapped for increased troop deployments and transport routes for the war in South Asia.
The West is completing the process described by Brzezinski in his 1997 book in which he stated "In effect, by the mid-1990s a bloc, quietly led by Ukraine and comprising Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and sometimes also Kazakhstan, Georgia and Moldova, had informally emerged to obstruct Russian efforts to use the CIS as the tool for political integration."
Note, not to obstruct a new "imperial" Russia from exploiting the Commonwealth of Independent States to dominate much less absorb former parts not only of the Soviet Union but of historical Russia, but to integrate - or rather maintain the integration of - nations which were within one state until eighteen years ago. At that time, 1991, the Soviet Union precipitately disintegrated into fifteen new nations and four independent "frozen conflict" zones - Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transdniester - and Russia made a 180 degree turn in its political structure and orientation, both domestically and in its foreign policy.
The response to those developments by the U.S. and its NATO cohorts was to scent blood and move in for the kill.
Starting in 1994 NATO recruited all fifteen former Soviet republics into its Partnership for Peace program, which has subsequently prepared ten nations - all in Eastern Europe, three of them former Soviet republics - for full membership.
As noted above, in 1997 the West absorbed four and for a period five former Soviet states - Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Uzbekistan - into the GUAM, now Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, format, which has recently been expanded to include Armenia and Belarus with the European Union's Eastern Partnership initiative. The latter includes half (six of twelve) of the CIS and former CIS nations, all except for Russia and the five Central Asian countries. [1]
Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian and Ukrainian troops have been enlisted by the U.S. and NATO for the war in Afghanistan, with Moldova to be the next supplier of soldiers. All five nations also provided forces for the war and occupation in Iraq.
The five Central Asian former Soviet republics - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - have provided the Pentagon and NATO with bases and transit rights for the war in South Asia and as such are being daily dragged deeper into the Western military nexus. Kazakhstan, for example, sent troops to Iraq and may soon deploy them to Afghanistan.
In recent days the West has stepped up its offensive in several former Soviet states.
GUAM held a meeting of its Parliamentary Assembly in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on November 9 and the leader of the host nation's parliamentary majority, David Darchiashvili, said "GUAM has significant potential, as its member states have common interests while the CIS is a union of conflicting interests" and "It is important for GUAM members to have a specific attitude to the EU. GUAM has a potential to develop a common direction with the EU under the policy of the Eastern Partnership." [2]
Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze said at the event that "Our relations are extending, new partners appear. The US, the Czech Republic, Japan and the Baltic states will become GUAM partners soon. They will participate in economic projects with us." [3]
The Secretary General of the Council of Europe Torbjorn Jagland met with GUAM member states' permanent representatives to the Council of Europe and during the meeting "the Azerbaijani side emphasized the need to intensify the Council of Europe's efforts in the settlement of 'frozen conflicts' in the GUAM area." [4] The allusion is again to Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transdniester where several thousand lives were lost in fighting after the breakup of the Soviet Union and, in the case of South Ossetia, where a Georgian invasion of last year triggered a five-day war with Russia.
Later at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland from November 13-17, Azerbaijani member of parliament Zahid Oruj said that "the territories of both Georgia and Azerbaijan were occupied and the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s policy in the region proved that" and he "characterized these steps as an action against NATO." [5] The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is a post-Soviet security bloc consisting of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Belarus (initially) and Uzbekistan both boycotted the creation of the new CSTO rapid reaction force last month and the Eastern Partnership is designed in part to pull Armenia and Belarus out of the organization. Comparable initiatives are underway in regards to the four Central Asian members states, with the Afghan war the chief mechanism for reorienting them toward NATO.
During the NATO Parliamentary Assembly session, for example, a Turkish parliamentarian said "Armenia’s releasing the occupied Azerbaijani territories [Nagorno Karabakh] will create a security zone in the South Caucasus and pave the way for NATO’s cooperation with this region."
An Azerbaijani counterpart was even more blunt in stating "NATO should defend Azerbaijan” and stressing "that otherwise, security will not be firm in the region, stability can be violated anytime [and a] new military conflict will be inevitable." [6]
The day after the NATO session ended the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, revealed the context for NATO "defending Azerbaijan" when he announced that "There is strong support for building the national army. Our army grows stronger. We are holding negotiations but we should be ready to liberate our territories any time from the invaders by military means." [7]
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Former Soviet States: Battleground For Global Domination