NATO Double Think On War Games Reaches
Brain-dead Condition
By
Finian Cunningham
August 14, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- With four weeks to go until the start of
Russia’s Zapad (“West”) war games in
Belarus, Western media are already reporting
alarm bells that the exercise is a cover for
an invasion into NATO countries.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world,
the United States is mobilizing a giant
military force within days off the Korea
Peninsula that could very well ignite World
War III. Strangely enough, or perhaps not,
the Western media report no concern about
that much more ominous development.
The
selective hysteria and double think over
Russia-Belarusian military defense
exercises, which occur every four years,
makes a good case that those maneuvers
should be renamed 'Zapped' – such is the
brain-dead condition of NATO governments’
thinking and the Western media reporting.
Russia and
Belarus claim that the total number of
troops involved are around 13,000. The US
and other NATO members
counter-claim
that the
numbers are in the 100,000 order.
Russia’s envoy to NATO,
Aleksandr Grushko, has submitted an
inventory of military forces backing up the
Russian number, while the country’s foreign
minister Sergey Lavrov said accusations that
the war exercises are anything more sinister
than simply defensive preparations are
“nonsense”.
Those assurances haven’t stopped the Western
media from hyping up the forthcoming Zapad
drill as a foreboding event. In order to do
so, the double think has inevitably gone
into overdrive.
The New York
Times
reports:
“Russia’s military drills near NATO
border raise fears of aggression”. It
goes on to call the event “an exercise
in intimidation” carried out by
“an increasingly assertive
Russia”.
US Defense Secretary James
Mattis has called the forthcoming Russian
exercises
“destabilizing”.
So,
let’s get this straight: countless NATO
exercises and unprecedented force build-up
around Russia’s borders are not
destabilizing? Seems like Mattis is saying
that to merely have an army in one’s own
country is no longer acceptable. 'How dare
you carry out provocative defensive
measures,' seems to be his dubious logic.
What the NY Times fails to explicitly
mention is that the Zapad drills are
occurring within Russian or Belarusian
territory and that the “NATO border”
has come to exist only because of years of
provocative eastward expansion by the US
military alliance towards Russia. In
contravention of the Russia-NATO Founding
Agreement following the dissolution of the
Soviet Union and the supposed end of the
Cold War.
Elsewhere, The
Economist
reports:
“Russia’s biggest war games in Europe
since the Cold War alarms NATO”. It
adds:
“Some fear that Zapad 2017
could be a cover for skullduggery.”
Omitted in all the fear-mongering reportage
is that last year NATO actually mounted the
biggest war games since the end of the Cold
War when it conducted the Anaconda exercises
in Poland and the Baltic states. Those
drills involved over 30,000 troops and the
participation of 24 of the then 27 NATO
member states (NATO has since gained another
member with Montenegro joining this year).
A Guardian
report on
the Anaconda maneuvers at the time noted, in
a rather nonchalant tone, how it was the
first time German tanks crossed Poland since
the Nazi invasion of Russia in Operation
Barbarossa in 1941.
Also omitted in general Western media
coverage is that as the NATO alliance
membership has expanded over the years so
too have the number of its war games. Last
year, for instance, in addition to the giant
Anaconda maneuvers there were several other
exercises: Summer Shield, Iron Wolf, Saber
Strike and BALTOPS.
Other Western media reports claim that the
Russian Zapad games are a harbinger of
invasion by stealth, pointing to the case of
Georgia and the Southern Caucasus. This
comparison by the Western media is a
betrayal of what psychologists call “guilt
projection”. For it was the US-backed
Georgia which launched a war nine years ago
this month on Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The US-backed Operation Clear Field, which
the Pentagon had invested $2 billion in,
proved to be a disaster when Russian forces
quickly repelled invading Georgian military.
For
Western media and NATO figures to now claim
that Russia is readying to repeat a
“Georgia-style invasion” is beyond
double think. It is an outrageous distortion
of history.
A helpful
perspective on how zapped Western media have
become is that next week the US will conduct
huge military maneuvers on the Korean
Peninsula with its South Korean and Japanese
allies. Those exercises will
involve up
to 75,000 troops, as well as nuclear-capable
warships, aerial bombers and amphibious
forces.
Admittedly, the US war games in Korea occur
every year. Their scheduling is not unusual.
Albeit why such maneuvers have become
“acceptable” in the West has to do with
the normalizing function of the Western
media.
Nevertheless, the massive mobilization is a
continual source of threat perceived by
Communist North Korea, which views it as a
preparation for invasion. Given that the US
never signed a peace treaty with North Korea
following the Korean War (1950-53), the
fears in Pyongyang are reasonable enough.
Especially in the light of
bellicose statements made in recent days by
US President Donald Trump and his Pentagon
chief James Mattis, in which they have
threatened to destroy North Korea if the
latter should continue with missile tests.
Trump has warned North Korean leader Kim
Jong-un that his country will be met with
“fire and fury the
like of which the world has never seen
before”.
The
region, and the world for that matter, is
being placed on a hair-trigger for
catastrophic war – a war that most likely
would escalate into a nuclear conflagration
involving the deaths of millions of people.
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Yet, the US is bullishly proceeding to
conduct its war games in Korea – despite
calls by both Russia and China for
Washington to freeze the military operations
in order to give diplomacy a chance at
resolving the crisis.
Where are the urgent concerns about those US
war games in the Western media? Precisely,
there are none.
Instead, the Western media are preoccupied
with anxieties over Russian military
exercises within its own territory and that
of a neighboring ally.
The
brain-dead double think and double standards
of Western media show – more than ever –
that these news organs have nothing to do
with reporting on or analyzing objective
reality. For anyone doubting the purpose and
function of these information services, they
can be clearly seen as nothing other than
propaganda ministries. Their function is to
conceal, obfuscate, normalize the abnormal,
defend the indefensible, justify the
unjustifiable.
Perhaps the consummate absurdity betraying
their propaganda purpose is the way Western
media are totally ignoring and normalizing
the reckless war maneuvers by the US in
South Korea. That provocation could set off
World War III with nuclear weapons, yet
Western media say little to nothing about
this abominable destabilizing danger.
No.
Such 'news' media are far too busy
fantasizing over a Russian invasion of
Europe with troops that are stationed within
Russia’s own territory, while being
surrounded by NATO forces from more than 20
nations.
Zapped indeed!
Finian Cunningham has written
extensively on international affairs, with
articles published in several languages. He
is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural
Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor
for the Royal Society of Chemistry,
Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career
in newspaper journalism. He is also a
musician and songwriter. For nearly 20
years, he worked as an editor and writer in
major news media organisations, including
The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.