US making bogus claims about threat Russia, China pose: Pundit

Press TV has conducted interviewed Vladimir Golstein, a professor at Brown University from Rhode Island, to get his take on US accusations against Russia and China that both powers are disrupting international order.

Following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Ashton Carter has called China’s measures in the South China Sea destabilizing actions. But, when we go further back in history, we will see it was Washington’s insidious militarization of the Pacific region which prompted Beijing to actually devise counter measures. Again, we see the same trend when it comes to Eastern Europe and Russia. Why is the US trying to portray a distorted picture of the situation?

Golstein: You are absolutely right. The pattern is obvious; somehow creates a bogus threat, somehow provoke and push both Russia or China and then when Russia finally decided to act somehow, because there was constant meddling in the area where Russia has its additional interest, be it in 1999 in Serbia, be it in Georgia, now in Ukraine.

So, once Russia responded that was a great moment for the US: Russia is declared as a threat. Something similar happens, of course, for China. Now, the US has an opportunity to start building up its military. So, my feeling is they were waiting for this moment, they were provoking Russia for pretty long time.

In all fairness, Russia was not aggressive at all and is by no means a threat. It is not a threat to Baltic Republics. It is not a threat to Poland. It is not interested. It is not old Soviet Union with its communist doctrine, with its traditional policies and strength.

Russia is basically trying to, sort of, deal with its own problems. The only thing they do need is probably some kind of access to the sea and to their fleet, and that explains their action in Crimea. People can argue about it, but to conclude from there that Russia is a threat and use it as a pretext to build up military, it is hardly believable.

I suspect that a lot of serious US partners in NATO, like France or Germany, do not really buy, but it does not really matter. What is clear to me is that there are new weapons already in US. They are prepared. So, they want to invest more money, and this money is needed, so enemy is needed. And other thing why all this is going on is to detract attention of American public from certain kind of difficulties in economics.

We just recently read a report about the fact that white Americans the mortality is increased by 20 percent. White middle class Americans are dying, and dying not just simply in the age of between 50 and 60, by committing suicide, by losing faith in what they are doing.

So to distract it is very nice to have an enemy. It is very nice, maybe, to restart some manufacturing connected with militarization. So, I understand perfectly well where Ashton Carter is going with this.

Press TV: When the United States talks about defending its friends and allies, what kind of a response is it actually referring to to counter Russia and China?

Golstein: It is clear that the United States is not going to be involved in terms of infantry, in terms of the soldiers. So, their traditional military doctrine is the dominance over the seas, over the air.

So, to build more gadget, and keep it in mind that Ashton Carter is a very serious nuclear scientist, he knows machinery and technology, which is available - so, they want to increase it, and they want to say that we can have some kind of new super modern either sort of military shield, nuclear things and what is interesting he delivered his speech at Reagan Library in California, and Reagan was the one who also came up with these ideas of some kind of a shield inspired by Star Wars and that was a hope at Reagan’s time to build up, I guess, industry and to revive economy.

And it is hardly coincidence that now we have another film in Hollywood on Star Wars coming up. So, obviously there is some kind of a correspondence between a propaganda coming from Hollywood, and reality of economics and military that we need to build more the type of response you want to do. 

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