No serious comments were made by the major US media on August 25 when the Russian Parliament asked the Russian President to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. As for the Russian Parliament's address to the Parliaments of UN countries and to international parliamentary organizations, in which Russia's position concerning the Caucasus was detailed — it was ignored by the global media completely.
The informational blockade imposed on Russia by the global media and international Euro-Atlantic organizations to prevent Moscow from advancing its view on the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia shows that the entire legal infrastructure underlying the international relations is defunct and has been replaced by corrupt lobbying and global collusion. It is informative to compare today's silence on the developments taking place in the Caucasus with the loud anti-Russian campaign launched immediately after the hostage-taking drama in Beslan in 2004. The Russophobic address to Presidents and Governments of the EU and NATO countries signed by 115 Euro-Atlantists, quite a few of whom are also involved in the current anti-Russian blockade, was an exemplary informational offensive. In 2004, all of the major US and European media reiterated calls for isolating Russia non-stop for several days. While Russia was making efforts to rescue children from terrorists, Euro-Atlantists attempted to charge it with disproportionate use of force and to organize an intervention for the sake of the internationalization of the conflict.
One should understand the pathological psychology of the current Euro-Atlantic elite. Its genesis relates it directly to the propaganda machine of Hitler's Third Reich (this theme deserves a separate discussion). Interestingly, the notorious statement made by Goebbels that ‘repeating a grand lie sufficiently often causes people to believe it’ was actually a reference to Churchill. Goebbels also wrote: “The British are notorious for lack of conscience in politics and are masters of hiding their crimes behind the facade of decency - this is the way they have acted for centuries, and this has become part of their nature to such an extent that they are no longer aware of the trait. They act with such moral expression and absolute seriousness that they even convince themselves of being an example of political innocence. They never recognize their hypocrisy; never would any British man wink at another and say “We both understand what we actually mean”. They do not only pretend to be so pure – they believe in it themselves. This is both ridiculous and perilous.” Those who know the history of the British political thought as well as its sponsors and recruits, the ideologists of the Third Reich who brought its ideas to the US strategic thinking and found a place for themselves in the EU and NATO structures, admit that there is no “grand lie” in these words of the Nazi criminal.
Espousing Western (mainly Anglo-Saxon) values and seeking to touch the conscience of partners turned opponents who actually do not believe in the applicability of moral criteria to the relations with “inferior civilizations”, Russia is bound to lose the information war. Russia should go a different way, and V. Putin's speech in Munich was the first step in the right direction.
Western opponents-partners still have not realized the seriousness of Russia's turn towards realpolitik and initially rely on their old scheme with a yet greater deal of aggressiveness. The game is indeed perilous. NATO continues to demonstratively build-up its presence in the Black Sea. Reportedly, its warships carry Tomahawk cruise missiles which can be equipped with nuclear warheads. From the outset, the “humanitarian mission” carried out with the help of warships in the proximity of Russia was an obvious provocation, and Western Russophobes were issuing statements which further complicated the situation. As a comment on the arrival of the first humanitarian shipments in Tbilisi, David Phillips of the Atlantic Council of the United States said in an interview to Le Mond that regardless of what Mr. Gates could have said the humanitarian deliveries from the US were only the first phase of the deployment of US forces in Georgia, since helicopters for distributing the humanitarian aid and land-to-air missiles for protecting them would be needed subsequently. The current US Administration appears to follow the recommendations of the Atlantic Council, though it makes no sense to expect that the US policy towards Russia is going to change under a new US President. Such a change would contradict the interests of the supra-national sponsors of the Atlantic Council, the US and NATO hawks, oil tycoons, and global financial organizations.
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Back in 1918, British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour said: “The only thing which interests me in the Caucasus is the railway line which delivers oil from Baku to Batumi. The natives can cut each other to pieces for all I care." Not much has changes since World War I when the Georgian seaport was briefly under the British control. Now that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceychan pipeline bypassing Russia has been constructed, the Anglo-Saxons and the Israelis, who made the greatest investments in the transit route and also in the militarization of the Georgian gangs charged with securing it, are preoccupied with the same problem – the export of resources to the West. As for the rest, the natives can cut each other to pieces.
It is a mystical coincidence that the same Harrimans, Rockefellers, and Rothschilds who craved for Russia's riches since the Crimean War or profited from the lend-lease and the ties with the Soviet bureaucracy are now investing in the efforts to muscle Russia away from the Black Sea, the access to which has been paid for by the lives of generations of Russians.
David Phillips, the author of the recent recommendations concerning the return of Abkhazia under the control of the “influential families”, is also an adviser with the Harriman Institute. Judging by a number of US studies, it was the Harriman family who had played a special role in introducing the Bush family to the powerful clique which casts the global politics using schemes not much different from the old Drang nach Osten strategy.
Now it is not exactly the right time for jokes, but the recommendations for reintegrating Abkhazia into Georgia made by David Phillips and his advice to offer Moscow stimuli make one recall an old funny story. A guy is late for a funeral. He walks in when the funeral service has already started, quickly approaches the coffin, puts something under the dead man's head, and then steps back clearly relieved. “What did you put in the coffin?”, asks one of the people attending the funeral. He replies: “A candy bar. I was late and did not make it to buy flowers, so I stopped by a convenience store and got it instead”. The lengthy report Restoring Georgia’s Sovereignty in Abkhazia (July, 2008) is somewhat like the story. After the atrocities committed by the Georgian army in South Ossetia, the possibility of the integration of the two breakaways with Georgia is buried with the victims of the genocide, and the incentives for Abkhazia and Russia suggested by Phillips are an idea as cynical and untimely as buying candy bars for the thousands of the innocently killed.
The gradualist whip-and-carrot strategy in dealing with Russia in the Caucasus has not been dropped. The fact that the report by David Phillips saw the light of day on the eve of the devastation of Tskhinvali by the Georgian forces is just another indication that bombarding South Ossetia has been a test move, the purpose being to find out how far Russia is ready to go to defend its interests. To an extent, the answer is known. Facing Tbilisi's preparations for an attack on Abkhazia, the Kremlin made the decision on August 24 to increase the numbers of Russian troops near on the border between Georgia and the de facto Republic. The reinforcements total 9,000 soldiers and 350 armored vehicles.
“We have to deny Russian strategic objectives“, C. Rice has recently said a number of times, though the provocative tone befits a downright Russophobe rather than a high-ranking diplomat. As for the position on the issue espoused by the audacious Russophobe experts, who are mostly recruited among the ethnic minorities of the former USSR, it is well-known. For example Vladimir Socor, a recipient of grants from the German Marshall Fund, advises the US, EU, and NATO leaders to switch the frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space to an active phase. “Azerbaijan and Georgia in tandem provide a unique transit corridor for Caspian energy to Europe, as well as an irreplaceable access corridor for AMERICAN-LED and NATO forces to bases and operation theaters in Central Asia and Greater Middle East. Ukraine is in many ways an extension of those corridors. Moldova forms a 450-kilometer long sector of NATO‘s new border, soon to be the EU’s border as well. Those interests require consolidated, reform-capable states that are safe from Russian or proxy military pressures, free to pursue a Western orientation, secure in their function as energy transit routes, and able at any time to join US-led coalitions or NATO operations including those of which Moscow may disapprove”.
The report by David Phillips reads: “The United States and key European allies should strongly urge Russia to reverse its decision establishing legal ties to Abkhazia and South Ossetia and to withdraw its paratroopers. Western allies should also publicly affirm that recognition, de-facto annexation of Abkhazia, or acts of war constitute a line that Russia must not cross”. Furthermore:
“If Russia continues to undermine Georgia’s sovereignty”, the EU, the USA, and NATO “ must also make it clear that the international community is prepared to act in concert so that Russia pays a steep price. Following are possible measures:
Western countries will condition their participation in the 2014 Sochi Olympics and call on the International Olympics Committee to review Russia’s compliance with host country standards of conduct;
The EU will impose sanctions on Russian firms illegally investing in Abkhazia. It could also suspend the visa facilitation regime for Russians, as well as talks on the PCA (Partnership and Cooperation Agreement);
NATO will affirm its commitment to a MAP for Georgia. NATO will also extend its Combat Air Patrol to Georgia and extend NATO exercises in Georgia. The United States will strengthen its bilateral security cooperation with Georgia;
The GoG (government of Georgia) will annul the Russian-led peacekeeping operation (PKO); if Russia then refuses to withdraw, its troops will remain not a peacekeeping force but an occupation army.”
Russia's response was presented in the August 26, 2008 Statement made by President D. Medvedev: “Considering the freely expressed will of the Ossetian and Abkhaz peoples and being guided by the provisions of the UN Charter, the 1970 Declaration on the Principles of International Law Governing Friendly Relations Between States, the CSCE Helsinki Final Act of 1975 and other fundamental international instruments, I signed Decrees on the recognition by the Russian Federation of South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's independence. Russia calls on other states to follow its example. This is not an easy choice to make, but it represents the only possibility to save human lives.”








