Does the Washington Establishment Seek War with Russia? By ERIC ZUESSE

Which Is scary to Washington’s Establishment: a U.S. President who wants to reach new agreements with Russia, or a U.S. President who wants to replace all of Russia’s allies?

 | 31.03.2017 | OPINION

What we’ve been having recently is solely Presidents who want to replace all of Russia’s allies — and they’ve been succeeding at that:

We replaced Saddam Hussein.

We replaced Muammar Gaddafi.

We replaced Viktor Yanukovych.

We’re still trying to replace Bashar al-Assad, and also Iran’s leadership.

There’s question as to whether U.S. President Donald Trump will continue that string, and many in the press consider him to be too favorable toward Russia.

The newsmedia pick up from the Democrats and the other neoconservatives, and therefore Trump is being pressed hard on his being ‘Putin’s stooge’ or even ‘Putin’s Manchurian candidate,’ though the presumption in those statements is that Russia is doomed to be America’s enemy unless America outright conquers it — and this is a war-mongering and arrogant presumption for the U.S. government to be making about Russia, and it’s also very far from being a realistic assumption about Russia. Will Russia tolerate having all of its allies overthrown by the U.S.? How many more U.S. nuclear missiles will Russia accept being placed near and on its borders in formerly allied countries that now are in NATO — the anti-Russia military club?

Trump made clear during his campaign, that he wants to be allied with Putin’s consistent war against “radical Islamic terrorism” — no one can challenge that Putin has always, and consistently, been uncompromisingly determined to oppose that — never to arm nor train jihadists like the U.S. and its Saudi ‘ally’ the Saud family, do (in order to overthrow Russia’s allies).

So: which of the two is scary — the Hillary Clinton and John McCain crowd, the neocons, who want to crush Russia; or, the few people in Washington who (at least until Trump became elected) were that crowd’s enemies?

As soon as Trump became elected, his fear of being dubbed ‘Putin’s stooge’ or ‘Putin’s Manchurian candidate’ caused him to appoint a national-security team who were hell-bent on replacing Russia’s remaining allies, Iran and Syria. But even this hasn’t been enough to satisfy the neocons who run both Parties, and the newsmedia. Trump has been trying to accommodate the people who are doing all they can to bring him down, but it doesn’t seem to be appeasing them. The Washington Establishment has terrified him away from his campaign promise of creating an alliance with Russia to cooperate together in wiping out jihadism — and jihadism is something that didn’t even exist in modern times until the U.S. and its Saud allies introduced it into Afghanistan in 1979 to overthrow the secular, Soviet-allied leader of that country, Nur Muhammed Taraki. This joint effort with the Sauds created jihadism in the modern age. Zbigniew Brzezinski said of his and the CIA’s and the Sauds’ achievement, in a 1998 interview, “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?” It became the model for what they’re now doing to Syria. 

Trump had said that his top national-security priority would be against jihadism, not against Russia and its allies. But so far, his foreign policy in this regard seems more like what had been widely anticipated in the event of a Hillary Clinton win. (Even Trump’s focus against “radical Islamic terrorism” is directed almost exclusively against seven mainly Shiite nations that America’s Saudi allies — who are fundamentalist Sunnis and hate Shia muslims — despise. And two of those Shiite-run nations, Iran and Syria, are backed by Russia; so, Trump might just be continuing his predecessor’s pro-Saud policy there.) Yet nonetheless, the neoconservatives press on with investigations of whether Trump is a secret Russian agent.

What does the Washington Establishment really want? What is their real demand? Putin’s head on a stake? Or do they really want Trump’s head on a stake, for some entirely different reason? The motivations that they are stating for wanting to replace Trump by his Vice President, Mike Pence — a rabid neoconservative — don’t make sense, and the ‘evidence’ they’re basing this campaign on, is, as of yet, after months of trying, still more smears than authentic evidence. Clearly, there are ulterior motives behind it. And they seem to be winning — whatever their real motivations are.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/03/31/does-washington-establishment-seek-war-with-russia.html
I sincerely hope Eric Zuesse is mistaken! (Blogger)