Russia and China - Potential Objectives of US Nuclear Attacks: Interview by Michel Chossudovsky
According to a survey of the organization Gallup, conducted at the beginning of 2012, 32% of Americans consider the Islamic Republic of Iran the worst enemy of the United States. Fortunately, the respondents did not ask why they were so annoyed by Iran, located on the other side of the world, otherwise most of them would be in a puddle, as this "notorious" Iran could hardly be found on the world map. However, they think that Iran is the enemy. This is not surprising, since brainwashing has become an integral part of the socio-cultural mainstream of Western civilization. "People hawala", - would say in Russia; "Iran is the enemy," every third American said. It is noteworthy that a year before Iran considered the enemy state "only" 25% of Americans. In any case, while the US population obediently changes its opinion, adjusting to the sentiments of the top, the leadership of the United States repeats for days on end the need to "stop Iran" and actively supports the terrorists operating in the territory of Iran's "younger brother" Syria. State terrorism - this is what Washington’s actions are called - is not liked to discuss in the West, and rare people who dare to do it are rotten. One of them is a well-known Canadian expert, professor of economics at the University of Ottawa, head of the Globalization Research Center Michel Chossudovsky. He, in particular, has a statement that the main threat to world security is not (then still alive) Osama bin Laden, but US President Barack Obama. Western media branded Chossudovsky crazy, paranoid, criticized for anti-Americanism, anti-globalization sentiment. The expert shared his views with a REGNUM correspondent.REGNUM: Mr. Chossudovsky, in your many writings you have repeatedly written about the US military doctrine, the intention of Washington to achieve its own ambitions with the help of large-scale military expansion. It seems that what is happening today in Syria, the increase in tension around Iran fully justifies your previous predictions. What is your forecast for the near future, in particular, on the Syrian issue?
We are at a very dangerous crossroads, events can develop in different directions. Now the Western military alliance is considering various options for the invasion of Syria. The main focus is on supporting local rebels, terrorists, the so-called "Free Army of Syria", the spread of hostilities throughout the country, the creation of a no-fly zone. In terms of the latter, it can be said that when the Iraq campaign began in 2003, such a zone was created. This greatly undermined the ability of Saddam Hussein, soon followed by his defeat. Another parallel - the creation of such a zone led to the overthrow of power in Libya. Along with all this, the United States and its allies with might and main are increasing their military presence in the region: it is reliably known that Syria has a large number of special forces from France, Turkey, Qatar, who are currently in the phase of active military training, and also control the actions of the rebels .
REGNUM: Do you think that all of this indicates a quick intervention in Syria?
At this stage, it seems to me, there will be no major military operations. States are more inclined to non-traditional methods of warfare, which ultimately are aimed at destroying the country from the inside. Today, the attacks are committed in Damascus, Aleppo and other smaller cities. The geography of terrorist attacks will expand until the state is finally destroyed: This process undermines the economy, suppresses the work of state and institutional institutions, destroys the links between various socio-ethnic groups in Syria, and the main goal is to overthrow the Syrian government and, probably, "clearing" the ways for the formation of a puppet regime acting in the interests of the West. In addition, it is obvious that the actions of the Western military alliance are aimed at weakening ties between Syria and Iran.
REGNUM: Iran is another link in the chain of goals of military aggression of the West?
In many ways, the war in Iran has already begun. Washington creates and cultivates its terrorist groups inside Iran, such as the Mojahedin-e Hulk (Organization of the Mojaheds of the Iranian People), introduces and initiates the introduction of various economic sanctions, acts with aggressive anti-Iranian rhetoric - all this indicates that the West has It has long been working on the internal decomposition of Iran, undermining Iran’s ties with the outside world, and so on. It should be understood that during the past 70-80 years, the United States and its allies, including Israel, have developed a plan to invade Iran, they have never abandoned thoughts of military aggression against Tehran. It should be noted that although the military campaign against Iran has been prepared for a long time, in the near future this will not happen. Israel itself will never, under any circumstances, decide on such an adventure, since the Armed Forces of Israel are closely integrated with the military structures of NATO member countries, especially the United States. Obviously, not Israel is the main driving force. Without a green light from Washington, he will never decide to take any action, and there will be no green light at least until the presidential election in the United States.
BakuToday: For 70-80 years of which you speak, it was possible to find a lot of reasons for the invasion. Why has this not happened yet?
Iran is a country with significant military capabilities, and for this very reason this state has so far managed to avoid direct military aggression. The next round of growth of tension around Iran began in the year 2004. I would say that already in 2005, the Western allies developed a detailed plan for invading Iran, but then they gave preference to unconventional methods of warfare, which are used today: support for terrorist groups in Iran, hidden operations, intelligence activities inside the country, targeted economy loosening , heated internecine opposition and so on.
REGNUM: What is the danger of a possible invasion of the Western allies in Iran, how likely is it in the foreseeable future?
Undoubtedly, intervention in Iran will mark the beginning of a major regional war. I have been studying this issue for many years and I can say with confidence that a direct blow to Iran will entail an escalation of conflicts throughout the region, ranging from the western Mediterranean to the Afghan-Chinese border. Iran borders with Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, is an ally of Syria, supports the Palestinians, Hamas. Thus, a possible war will affect all countries in the region, including Israel. Iran made it very clear that in case of aggression retribution is inevitable. Tehran is capable of delivering a rocket attack on Israel, on the US military bases in the Middle East, including military facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf. We must not forget that Iran has a sufficiently mobile Armed Forces, which are able to reorganize in a day. This is exactly the scenario that the United States and its allies would like to avoid. Given these circumstances, I believe that the adopted course on the use of various non-traditional methods of warfare against Iran will continue. These include, in addition to the above, the introduction of mercenaries, the sending of spies, as well as cyber attacks, which can block the ability of the Iranian authorities to control the situation at critical moments. All this will be done. In the end, today the West is not going to apply the technologies chosen during the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the Pentagon, preference is given to already existing mechanisms, which are slowly destabilizing Iran and undermining its sovereignty from within. As long as the infrastructure, the main communication nodes of Iran are in working condition, a direct blow or invasion will not be considered.
REGNUM: What role in the development of the Iranian scenario do you assign to Russia and China?
Russia and China are allies of Iran, but the question arises: where is the limit of these allied relations? Will they respond with intervention to intervention in Iran? In any case, the scenarios of world war games were written not only against Iran and Syria, they also feature North Korea, Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing should understand that they themselves are on the list of potential targets for US and NATO aggression. This is written in black and white in US military documents that I have been studying for the past 10 years. China and Russia are also potential targets for preventive nuclear strikes. Today, this iceberg is exposed more and more. We see the militarization near the Russian border in Eastern Europe; no one has yet refused the European missile defense project.
At the same time, in the South China Sea, we face another zone of militarization, stretching right from the Korean Peninsula to the South China Sea. The US Navy forces stationed there will eventually “guard” the borders of China. China is surrounded: the US military bases in Afghanistan are being propped up on the south side; in the western part of China, the US is supporting local groups, putting together a separatist movement in Tibet, for example, feeding the Islamists in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. These underground operations are carried out over the years. Both China and Russia are in danger, and the military in both countries are fully aware of this. The mobilization of military resources against China originates in the 1999 year, and in the case of Russia this is a long process, rooted in the very beginning of the Cold War. Moscow and Beijing are well aware that the attack on Iran, in fact, is an attempt to establish Western hegemony in Central Asia and the attack on themselves. If they respond to force with force, please, we are in World War III. But, as I have already noted, regardless of the reaction of these two countries, the attack on Iran (which, by the way, may be presented to the public as a one-time operation, although it has been prepared for several decades), its nuclear facilities will lead to a large-scale war that will cover whole region.
REGNUM: Today, it is widely believed that the West will not get involved in a new military adventure until it shifts the burden of at least some of the old ones.
Today we already have several theaters of military operations with the participation of the United States and NATO: Afghanistan, Iraq - the war continues there; Pakistan - an undeclared war is under way; Syria is a hidden war against the government, in which, and this is documented, the special forces of the Western allies participate, as well as the terrorists who enjoy their support; Palestine is a territory that is not regarded as a war zone, but where there is conflict in the open phase; Libya is a country that is still the target of US aggression, and although many say that the fighting has ended there, recent events indicate that there is a resistance movement inside Libya that actively opposes a foreign invasion.
REGNUM: One-time wars all over the world are costly. Why should Washington initiate a similar campaign?
In the late nineties, a special doctrine was developed for the well-known New American Century project (Statement of Principles of the New American Century Project presented in 1997 year - ed.). This is an extremely important document, which is, in essence, a road map of wars around the world. This document is very clear that the US goal is simultaneous wars in different parts of the world. Open hostilities involving the US Armed Forces are now taking place in turns, but the doctrine I have indicated involves the simultaneous involvement of the United States in several wars throughout the world. This is exactly what we see today, just open warfare prefer hidden methods of warfare. There are a dozen countries where Americans do it. There is no doubt that Russia, China, and North Korea are included in the US military agenda, since in the current geopolitical situation these countries play the role of a serious obstacle for the global, mainly Western-style capitalist economy.
I must clarify that both Russia and China are capitalist countries. If before, in the era of the Cold War, there was fierce competition among economic systems, today we are dealing with a clash of competing superpowers with similar economic models. Take, for example, China: it is economically strong, has powerful enough Armed forces, developed infrastructure and government institutions, rich history, culture, but in many ways it acts as an economic, industrial colony of the West. This country produces much of what is consumed in the West. This is a large plant for the production of consumer goods for the West, as well as a territory intended for the relocation of Western industrial structures. It aims to multiply the labels "Made in China", to provide the world with cheap labor and at the same time be part of this global economic system. The question is to what extent China is a colony of the West.
REGNUM: I think that the Chinese leadership would hardly agree with this wording.
This is not about political leadership. Both in Russia and in China the political elite is strongly divided. Some of them support the idea of allied relations with the West, the rest insist on the need to act as independent superpowers on the world stage. But in terms of economic differences almost none. In the same Russia there is a whole layer of representatives of the business elite, aimed at cooperation with Western companies. These people look at the question exclusively from a business point of view, apart from geopolitical peripetia. In addition, Russia cooperates with Western countries in the oil and gas industry. The same is in China, whose industrial sector I have studied for many years. Business people, entrepreneurs, businessmen - they are all loyal to the United States. Why? Because they sell to Americans, sell and sell, and in their own country they actively lobby Washington’s interests.
REGNUM: And Beijing is slowly but surely bending under the interests of Washington ...
Exactly. Back in 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), an ambiguous agreement was reached between Beijing and Washington, which went far beyond the framework of cooperation within the WTO. According to this document, China pledged to open access to its financial sector to American commercial banks. Moreover, American banks were able to contact directly with individuals, not limited to the provision of corporate services to various organizations, firms and institutions. Today, they manage everything in China just as they are - JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and others. In China, the situation is very controversial: on the one hand, this is a Western colony, strongly integrated into Western financial structures, on the other - a country with its own development dynamics. The Chinese leadership is polarized in the sense that even if the top elite within the Communist Party is fairly homogeneous, the economic grandees, which in one way or another are related to the authorities, tend to cooperate with the West.
REGNUM: The scenario of pushing the interests of the West through economic levers has been known for a long time. But about the Third World there, like, we are not talking?
The situation is much more complicated than it might seem at first glance. The scenario of the Third World War can take various forms, but it is absolutely clear that we are playing world-wide war games, where the lead role is played by the United States and its allies. The goal of these games is to impose a new order on the world, where the financial tycoons from Wall Street will rule. In other words, this procedure will serve the interests of the financial elite of the United States, the countries of the European Union, as well as the companies loyal to them. This process goes beyond the power of politicians, they really do not solve anything, absolutely nothing. They obey the rules dictated by these elite groups.
BakuToday: In general, you describe a rather gloomy scenario, and experience shows that your predictions come true. What do you think can be opposed to US imperialistic ambitions?
This question is very important. In order to change something, it is necessary, first of all, to start from the societies of Western countries, from the very bottom. Today, people living in a developed part of the world are very weakly resisting military expansion to the East. The most common position on this issue is silence, lack of opinion. Immediately before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, in Western countries, the level of social mobilization against the war was very high, but today there is not a single more or less significant movement. This is a very disturbing sign. I, by and large, do not feel particularly optimistic on this issue. Most Western organizations, civil and public structures completely ignore the concepts that once lay at their core - equality, pacifism, protection of human rights ... Thus, they give the green light to further military expansion, in particular, the war in Syria and the planned attack on Iran.
Here, the Western media play a special role, most of them hammering in people, convincing them that behind these wars there are lofty goals, singing about spreading democracy throughout the world, although in reality these are just aggressive military campaigns. At the moment when it comes to the Middle East, we must understand that the ultimate goal of these military campaigns is 60% -70% of the world’s oil and gas resources that are located in Muslim countries. This is a geographical fact - oil and gas are located in countries where Muslims live. This is why anti-Islamic propaganda against Muslims in the Western world is explained - this is the only reason that justifies Islamophobia, there are simply no others. The seizure of resources by the West in these territories with the use of military force requires demonization of the followers of this religion. If Buddhists lived in these countries, the West would demonize Buddhists, if only to fulfill the task - to gain control over more than half the world's reserves of black and blue fuel in the territory from Saudi Arabia to the Caspian: Iraq - 10%, Iran - also 10%, Kuwait and so on. The upcoming war in Iran, among other things, aims to establish the energy hegemony of the Anglo-Persian oil company, which later turned into British Petroleum. In many ways, this is a battle for oil, which will also strengthen the influence of the United States and its allies in the Middle East and Central Asia, and, of course, undermine the economic interests of Russia and China, which are strongly interested in trade and cooperation with various states in the region.
REGNUM: The Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the WikiLeaks phenomenon - do you think that these and many other events should also be viewed in the context of the US multi-layer aggressive policy?
Most of the more or less significant world events are initiated in various ways by Western governments. I spent a lot of time studying this issue and I can say that in order to achieve different goals, Western governments use different mechanisms, such as conducting underground operations, supporting non-governmental organizations in different countries, financing so-called "pro-democracy" movements ... WikiLeaks - also very, you know, an ambiguous project, which I suspect is indirectly supported by US intelligence agencies.
As for the "Arab Spring", on the example of Egypt we can say the following: from the very beginning, the goal was to transfer power in this country to the Islamists. Formally, this is a regime change, yes, but only the first recalcitrant to the second loyal. It is known for certain that the British MI-6 has supported the Muslim Brotherhood over the past fifty years or more. The April 6 Movement and other youth initiatives were supported by the US Embassy in Cairo, Kefaya Movement was supervised directly from the US Department of State. We knew that the coming to power of these groups was predetermined. Although this does not mean that the unrest in Egypt did not take root at the bottom, but these "bottoms" were manipulated from the very beginning. But this is a separate and very long conversation.
REGNUM: Offtopic question, if you will. In the West, your ideas, to put it mildly, are not popular, you are talking about things that few people want to hear. How do you live with this?
You know, I'm not part of the western mainstream. Every day I study what is happening in the world, trying to give an objective assessment of the facts. I study the US military doctrine, understand what's what, after which I call things by their names. When I see that the business is bad, I say so - “the business is bad”. If someone doesn't like it, well, this is part of my job.
REGNUM: Thank you for the interview, professor.
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