adminStephen Lendman
Putin had the courage to say what needs to be heard publicly. Containing Russia is longstanding US policy.
It’s longstanding US policy. In his March 18 address on Crimea, Putin was right saying:“(W)e have every reason to assume that the infamous policy of containment, led in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, continues today.”
Western nations are “constantly trying to sweep us into a corner because we have an independent position, because we maintain it, and because we call things like they are and do not engage in hypocrisy.”
“Everything has its limits,” he added. “(I)n Ukraine, our Western partners crossed the red line.” They “act(ed) irresponsibly and unprofessionally.”
Putin had the courage to say what needs to be heard publicly. Containing Russia is longstanding US policy. It reflects US hegemonic ambitions. It risks a potential belligerent East/West confrontation.
As early as 1917, Washington and Britain wanted the new Soviet state destroyed. Three months before WW I ended, Britain led a multi-nation force.
At the time, Lloyd George was Prime Minister. Churchill was UK Minister of War and Air. Woodrow Wilson was US president. Thousands of US marines were involved. They invaded Russia. They intervened against Bolshevik forces. They remained until April 1920.
So-called “preventive war” failed. At the same time, “Red Scare” propaganda was intense.
Political scientist Murray Levin called it “a nation-wide anti-radical hysteria provoked by a mounting fear and anxiety that a Bolshevik revolution in America was imminent – a revolution that would change church, home, marriage, civility, and the American way of Life.”
Newspapers hyped fear. Xenophobia raged. Industrial Workers of the World (IWW Wobblies) were demonised. Latter-day media scoundrels called them “radical threats to American society” inspired by “left-wing, foreign agent provocateurs.”
Labour strikes they led were called “crimes against society,” conspiracies against the government,” and “plots to establish communism.”
Dozens of Wobbly members were arrested. They were convicted. They got long prison terms. The IWW was never the same again.
The infamous 1917 Espionage Act and 1918 anti-anarchist Sedition Act were enacted. Law Professor David Cole said Wilson “targeted alien radicals.”
“(He) deported them for their speech or associations. (He) ma(de) little effort to distinguish true threats from ideological dissidents.”
In 1918, the abusive Palmer raids followed. They continued into 1921. Wilson’s Attorney General Mitchell Palmer ordered them. He targeted Wobbly members and other left-wing groups.
He launched J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI career. It began in the Department of Justice Bureau of Investigation’s newly created General Intelligence Division. In 1935, it became the FBI.
A year earlier, the Special Committee on Un-American Activities was established. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) succeeded it.
From the mid-1950s through the early 1970s, Hoover’s infamous COINTELPRO (counterintelligence) program targeted political dissidents, alleged communists, anti-war, human and civil rights activists, American Indian Movement members, and Black Panther Party ones, among others.
In their book, “Agents of Repression,” Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall said:
“(T)he term came to signify the whole context of clandestine (usually illegal) political repression activities . . .”
They included “a massive surveillance (program via) wire-taps, surreptitious entries and burglaries, electronic devices, live ‘tails’ and bogus mail.”
It was done to induce paranoia and “foster ‘splits’ within or between organizations.”
Other tactics included:
“black propaganda” through leaflets or other publications; it was “designed to discredit organisations and foster internal tensions;”
“disinformation or ‘gray propaganda’ “ for the same purpose;
“bad-jacketing” to “creat(e) suspicion — through the spread of rumours, manufacture of evidence, etc.” to turn some members against others violently;
“harassment arrests (on bogus) charges;” and
“assassinations (of) selected political leaders.”
This writer vividly remembers December 4, 1969.
Chicago police murdered Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark while they slept. They did so in cold blood.
In November 1968, J. Edgar Hoover ordered FBI agents “to exploit all avenues of creating . . . dissension within the ranks of the BPP (using) imaginative hard-hitting counterintelligence measures aimed at crippling” the organisation. He targeted independent voices challenging America’s imperial agenda. Soviet Russia supporters were prime targets.
Post-WWII, containing Russia became official US policy. US diplomat/ambassador to Soviet Russia/presidential advisor George Kennan (1904 – 2005) was “the father of containment.”
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. – http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/
He was a core member of so-called foreign policy “Wise Men.” His advice inspired the Truman Doctrine.
His 1946 “Long Telegram” from Moscow and 1947 “Sources of Soviet Conduct” claimed its government was inherently expansionist.
Containing Russia remains official US policy. It’s back to the future. The Cold War never ended. It morphed into new form.
Putin is public enemy number one. He’s vilified more intensively than Soviet era leaders. In 2007, during his first term as president, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed containing Russia, saying:
“The very (notion) appeals to instincts of the past. It not so much attests to the lack of imagination, but rather that for some individuals almost nothing has changed since the end of the Cold War.”
“These people propose imposing the structure of international relations which took shape long ago in the Western alliance, to the present moment.”
“The motives that dictated this policy of containment are making themselves felt at this new historical stage, as well.”
“What kind of Russia should be contained,” he asked? “What can be the goal of ‘containing Russia’ today?”
“A Russia that has renounced an ideology of imperial and other ‘great plans’ in favor of pragmatism and common sense.”
“How can a nation, which has placed emphasis on its domestic development and is now progressing remarkably well, be contained?”
“Russia’s consolidation through creative work has naturally been translated into the strengthening of its international positions. Russia’s foreign policy is nothing more than the continuation of its domestic policy.”
“We have realistic and understandable aspirations, namely: the maintenance of international stability as a major condition for our further development together with the natural evolution of international relations with the goal of achieving freedom and democracy.”
Washington and Moscow are geopolitical opposites, he added. Therein lies what’s at issue. Russia’s peace and respect for national sovereignty priorities are at odds with America’s imperial agenda.
Heightened tensions risk an East/West confrontation. Irresponsible US policy risks possible global war. If initiated there’s no turning back. Humanity’s fate hangs in the balance.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. – http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/
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