Russia and China have just written to the United States asking it to respect the United Nations Charter and the word it has given. This approach, devoid of any aggressiveness, calls into question not only the functioning of the UN, NATO and the European Union, but almost all the US advances since the dissolution of the USSR. It is obviously unacceptable to Washington. But the US hyper-power is not what it used to be. It will have to begin its withdrawal.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article215199.html

by Thierry Meyssan

The world today is ruled by the United States of America and NATO, which present themselves as the only global powers, while the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China are more powerful than them, both economically and militarily.

On December 17, 2021, Moscow released a draft bilateral treaty with Washington providing guarantees for peace [1], as well as a draft agreement to implement it [2]. These documents are not directed against the United States, they are only aimed at enforcing the UN Charter and complying with its own commitments.

On December 23, at President Putin’s annual press conference, a question from Sky News journalist Diana Magnay led to a spat. Vladimir Putin curtly replied that Russia’s remarks on US behaviour dated back to 1990 and that Washington not only ignored them, but persisted in going ahead. Now Nato weapons were about to be deployed in Ukraine, which would be an unacceptable fact for Moscow [3]. Never before has a Russian leader expressed himself in this way. It is important to understand that placing missiles four minutes’ flight from Moscow poses an extreme threat and is a cause for war.

On 30 December, a telephone conversation was held between Presidents Biden and Putin. The US side put forward proposals for resolving the Ukrainian issue, while the Russian side brought the discussion back to the US violations of the UN Charter and of its word.

The US is considering showing its good faith by not welcoming Ukraine into Nato. This is an approach that only marginally answers the question posed and is only likely to prevent war if accompanied by withdrawal measures.

It is clear that we are entering a period of extreme confrontation that will last for several years and could degenerate into a World War at any moment.

In this article, we will examine this conflict, which is largely unknown in the West.

1- The extension of Nato to the borders of Russia

During the Second World War, the United States deliberately made the maximum effort weigh on the Soviet Union. Between 22 and 27 million Soviets died (13-16% of the population) compared to 418,000 Americans (0.32% of the population). When this butchery ended, the US formed a military alliance in Western Europe, Nato, to which the USSR responded by creating the Warsaw Pact. Nato soon proved to be a federation that violated the principle of state sovereignty laid down in Article 2 of the United Nations Charter [4], which Third World countries denounced in 1955 at the Bandung Conference [5]. Ultimately, the USSR also violated the UN Charter by adopting the Brezhnev Doctrine in 1968 and imposing it on the members of the Warsaw Pact. When the USSR was dissolved and some of its former members created a new military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty, they chose to turn it into a confederation in compliance with the UN Charter.

To be clear about the meaning of federation and confederation, let us take an example: during the Civil War, the Northerners formed a federation because the decisions of their government were binding on all its member states. In contrast, the Southerners formed a confederation because each member state remained sovereign.

When the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, the Germans wanted to reunite their nation into one country. However, this meant the extension of Nato into the territory of the German Democratic Republic. At first, the Soviets were opposed to this. A reunification with the neutralisation of GDR territory was envisaged. In the end, First Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to the expansion of Nato through the reunification of the two Germanies on the condition that the Alliance did not seek to expand to the East.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, his Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and French President François Mitterrand jointly supported the Russian position: NATO had to commit itself to no further expansion to the East. US President George H. Bush Sr. and his Secretary of State, James Baker, made numerous public statements and commitments to this effect to all their interlocutors [6].

As soon as the USSR was dissolved, three neutral countries joined the European Union: Austria, Finland and Sweden. However, the EU and Nato are one and the same entity, one civilian and one military, both based in Brussels. According to the Treaty on European Union as amended by the Lisbon Treaty (Article 42, paragraph 7), it is NATO that ensures the defence of the European Union whether or not its members are also members of NATO. De facto, these countries are no longer neutral since their accession to the European Union.

In 1993, the Copenhagen European Council announced that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe could join the European Union. From then on, the process of NATO membership for the former members of the Soviet bloc went smoothly, apart from the traditional Russian remarks.

But by the 1990s, Russia was a shadow of its former self. Its wealth was plundered by 90 people, the so-called ’oligarchs’. The standard of living collapsed and the life expectancy of Russians dropped by 20 years. In this context, no one listened to what Moscow was saying.

In 1997, the Nato summit in Madrid called on the former Soviet bloc countries to join the North Atlantic Treaty. After East Germany (1990), but the next five times in violation of its word, it was the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in 1999; then in 2004 Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia; in 2009 Albania and Croatia; in 2017 Montenegro; and again in 2020 Northern Macedonia.

Ukraine and Georgia may soon join Nato, while Sweden and Finland may abandon their theoretical neutrality and openly join the Atlantic Alliance.

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