Part II

By Shane Quinn

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Read Part I:

 

The History of US-NATO Led Wars: “Exporting Democracy” through Acts of Subversion and Infiltration

By Shane Quinn, November 28, 2023

Beginning in 1997 the US had been conducting military exercises in former Soviet republics, under the banner of NATO’s so-called Partnership for Peace Program. In 1999 Washington helped to integrate Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova into an organisation (GUUAM) that was a potential step to including those territories in NATO, and which was meant to rival the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) led by Russia.

The Western powers have since overlooked the fact that Russia has recovered significantly as a major power this century, experiencing much improved economic growth and living standards. In 2022 the percentage of the Russian population living below the poverty line was 9.8%. That same year 12.4% of Americans were living below the poverty line. The average yearly salary of a Russian citizen is substantially higher than people living in notable countries like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, China, Iran and Egypt.

America and its European allies have been guilty of underestimating Russia’s military strength and capabilities, which includes the country’s vast arsenals of nuclear and conventional weaponry. Russia had no alternative in the first place but to acquire nuclear bombs, in 1949, which came as a natural response to America’s possession of such weapons and their unnecessary use in 1945 against two Japanese cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), at a time when there was no doubt as to the outcome of the Pacific War.

Top level US military officers, General Dwight Eisenhower and Admiral William Leahy, made it clear afterward that there was no need to drop atomic bombs on Japan because, by August 1945, Tokyo was in a hopeless position and close to surrendering.

Japan counted among its adversaries not only the leading Western states but also the Soviet Union, fresh from victory over Nazi Germany. Hisatsune Sakomizu, the Chief Secretary to prime minister Kantaro Suzuki, estimated that Japan could have held out until October 1945 at the latest before surrendering.

If Washington was prepared to use nuclear bombs against a non-nuclear power that was virtually defeated, then it is likely they would have been prepared to use them against their main international rival, Russia, which prompted the Soviet government to create its own nuclear bombs in what was a necessary defensive measure in order to protect the country. From the 1950s onward Russia’s nuclear weapons have acted as a deterrent.

We can imagine how Washington would respond were a rival power encroaching on its spheres of interest in the Western hemisphere. The Americans in all probability would react with military force. Regardless of realities like these NATO continued with its provocative enlargement, in spite of repeated warnings of the consequences.

Author Moniz Bandeira wrote,

“The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov and other authorities had reiterated that Moscow would strongly oppose NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe, since it perceived it as a potential military threat. Ukraine, in particular, remained ‘an emotional and neuralgic point,’ Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed, adding that underlying strategic considerations and policies further strengthened Russia’s opposition, just as it opposed Georgia joining NATO”.

After 1991 the Soviet Union may have ceased to exist but this was not because Russia had been defeated militarily. The country retained its nuclear arsenal and military and economic potential. Russia could not be overcome by armed force and subjugated, as for example Japan was. Russia is also a resource-rich state and contains more natural gas and oil than the US and China put together.

Japan on the other hand has been lacking in natural resources. It was this weakness of the Japanese that proved a critical factor in their decision to begin hostilities against the Americans on 7 December 1941, when Tokyo launched an aerial bombardment on the large US naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.