[R-G] Making Money on a New Cold War

[Anthony Fenton]

Making Money on a New Cold War
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/082308a.html
By Morgan Strong
August 23, 2008

The Russia-Georgia clash has generated heated anti-Moscow rhetoric  
from John McCain and U.S. neoconservatives about a new Cold War, a  
prospect that most people might see in a negative light but which many  
military contractors surely view as a financial plus.

One unstated reality about revived tensions between Washington and  
Moscow is that it will mean a bonanza in military spending – billions  
of additional dollars for anti-missile weapons systems, larger armies,  
construction of new bases in Eastern Europe, etc.

Indeed, the spending on Cold War II could dwarf what military  
contractors are now making on the “war on terror” – and the prospect  
of spending on both conflicts simultaneously should make arms industry  
executives drool.

Others who stand to profit grandly from a new East-West showdown  
include tough-talking politicians and their friends in Washington  
think tanks – like Heritage, AEI and CSIS – that have long fattened up  
on contributions from the defense industry and related corporations.

There would be losers, too, like taxpayers who would see more of their  
dollars go to “national security” and less to domestic needs, from  
repairs to the crumbling infrastructure to the costs of health care,  
education, the environment and Social Security.

But, in many ways, the exploitation of Cold War fears – to divert  
money away from domestic needs to the coffers of what Dwight  
Eisenhower dubbed “the military-industrial complex” – is nothing new.

Arguably, the original Cold War ended under Eisenhower’s former Vice  
President, Richard Nixon, who as President returned from Moscow in  
1972 carrying a strategic agreement that he had reached with what was  
already a rapidly decaying Soviet Union.

“In Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which  
began in 1945,” Nixon said. “With this step, we have enhanced the  
security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear,  
by reducing the causes of fear, our two peoples, and for all the  
peoples of the world.”

Nixon unveiled a new era of realpolitik cooperation between Washington  
and Moscow that he called “détente.”

However, while reducing fears and lowering tensions might be good news  
for many people, it wasn’t welcomed by the corporations that profited  
from the fears and the tensions, nor by the intellectual hired guns  
who had built lucrative careers in politics, media and academia by  
exaggerating those fears and exacerbating those tensions.

Sabotaging Détente

So, Nixon’s era of “détente” was short-lived. After his ouster over  
the Watergate scandal in 1974, a new batch of Cold Warriors – some  
operating from conviction and others from expediency – returned to the  
old patterns of hyping threats and stoking paranoia.

In 1975, with President Gerald Ford confronting an internal Republican  
challenge from Ronald Reagan on the Right, many key figures associated  
with “détente” were purged, while hard-liners were given key jobs.

The so-called Halloween Massacre saw Henry Kissinger, the chief  
architect of détente, stripped of his post as national security  
adviser to be replaced by Gen. Brent Scowcroft; James Schlesinger was  
out as Defense Secretary while Donald Rumsfeld was in; CIA Director  
William Colby lost his job to George H.W. Bush; and Dick Cheney was  
promoted to Ford’s White House chief of staff.

Soon, alarming rumors began spreading around Washington about a new  
Soviet secret weapon, a nuclear-armed submarine that was undetectable  
to American technology. These Soviet subs could be lurking off the  
Atlantic and Pacific coasts ready to launch a nuclear attack without  
warning, a frightened public was told.

So, as Ford struggled in Republican primaries against Reagan, the word  
“détente” was banished from the administration’s lexicon. Then, to  
appease the Right further, CIA Director Bush let a right-wing panel of  
outsiders critique the work of CIA analysts who had been detecting a  
declining Soviet threat.

The outsiders, known as “Team B” and including a young neocon named  
Paul Wolfowitz, tore into the CIA professionals and insisted that the  
Soviet Union was rapidly outstripping the United States as a strategic  
power. “Team B” concluded that the Soviets were building a new  
generation of terrifying weapons, including those undetectable subs.

Years later, after the Soviet Union collapsed, it would become clear  
that “Team B” had been living in a fantasy world. Not only did the  
Soviets lack the new weapons systems, but they were falling rapidly  
behind the United States in technology and thus the development of  
sophisticated weapons.

But the “Team B” report served its purpose. Its dramatic findings  
shaped an alarmist CIA intelligence estimate that CIA Director Bush  
left behind to limit the arms-control initiatives of Jimmy Carter’s  
incoming administration. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy &  
Privilege.]

During the late 1970s, the hysteria on the Right about mythical Soviet  
weapons continued to grow, pushed along by an arch-conservative group  
called the Committee on the Present Danger, which warned of a “window  
of vulnerability.”

The fear about secret Soviet capabilities seeped into mainstream news  
coverage critical of Carter’s proposed arms deals with Moscow.

‘Winning’ the Cold War

By 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan, the old Cold Warriors and  
their younger neoconservative allies had gained the upper hand.  
Assuming power under Reagan, they immediately sought to bury any  
remnants of the Nixon-Kissinger détente.

At the CIA, hard-line Director William Casey and his deputy, Robert  
Gates, purged CIA analysts who still insisted on seeing a Soviet  
decline. The only acceptable analysis was to agree that the Soviets  
were on the march and set on world domination.

In reaction to this perceived Soviet threat, there was a massive  
expansion in U.S. military spending, combined with aggressive covert  
operations in dirty wars from Central America to Afghanistan. There,  
the Reagan administration sent sophisticated weapons to rebel forces  
that included Islamic fundamentalists, such as Osama bin Laden.

Ironically, when the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991, the CIA  
analytical division was mocked for having “missed” this momentous  
event. Meanwhile, the U.S. news media credited Reagan’s vast military  
spending, especially his “Star Wars” missile defense program and the  
Afghan war, with “winning” the Cold War.

The counter-analysis – that the Soviet Union was in a death spiral by  
the early 1970s and that Reagan’s aggressive strategies may have, if  
anything, prolonged the Cold War by strengthening the hands of  
Moscow’s hardliners – was ignored or dismissed.

Reagan’s legacy had another consequence. The triumphant neocons  
insisted on dispatching to Moscow free-market “shock therapists” who  
aided and abetted a new class of rapacious “robber barons” as they  
stripped the country of its assets and stuck the nation’s capital in  
offshore accounts.

U.S. policy also supported the dismemberment of the old Soviet empire  
and humiliated Moscow by expanding NATO deep into its traditional  
sphere of influence. In 1999, Russia faced a new disgrace when the  
Clinton administration spearheaded a NATO war against Moscow’s  
longtime allies in Serbia, over the breakaway province of Kosovo.

When George W. Bush became President in 2001, his administration  
welcomed back many of the key neocons and hardliners who had served in  
previous Republican administrations. Cheney was Vice President;  
Rumsfeld was Defense Secretary; Wolfowitz was Rumsfeld’s deputy.

On the other hand, Bush claimed to have forged a bond of personal  
trust with Vladimir Putin by looking into the Russian president’s eyes.

“I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his  
country and the best interests of his country,” Bush said on June 16,  
2001.

Neocon Strategy

Though many U.S. observers mocked Bush’s comment and cited Putin’s  
history as a KGB agent, the underlying reality was that Bush never  
treated Putin as a trustworthy partner. The kind words represented a  
façade for a continued U.S. campaign to box in and undermine Russia.

In June 2002, for instance, Bush withdrew the United States from  
Nixon’s 1972 Ballistic Missile Treaty to clear the way for deployment  
of a missile defense system that Moscow saw as a strategic threat  
given its deteriorating nuclear-missile arsenal.

As Russia’s leaders fumed about the abrogated ABM Treaty, Bush spoke  
cavalierly. “The treaty is now behind us,” he said, while reaffirming  
his commitment to deploy a missile defense system “as soon as possible.”

The Bush administration and its oil-industry allies also supported the  
construction of the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which was designed to  
deliver Caspian oil to the West and to Israel while avoiding Russian  
territory. The pipeline’s primary contractor was Bechtel, a company  
with long-standing ties to powerful Republicans.

The pipeline also enhanced the need to make sure that the former  
Soviet republic of Georgia was under the control of a reliably pro- 
Western leader.

So, U.S.-financed political organizations, such as the National  
Endowment for Democracy, poured in money to help an anti-Russian  
political movement called the Rose Revolution, as well as to groom pro- 
Washington politicians like Mikheil Saakashvili.

In 2003, the bloodless Rose Revolution brought Saakashvili to power  
and, in his gratitude, the new president named a major boulevard in  
the capital of Tiblisi after George W. Bush. Saakashvili also  
committed Georgian soldiers to Bush’s “coalition of the willing” in  
Iraq, and brought in U.S. and Israeli military trainers to advise the  
Georgian army.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration kept up the pressure on Moscow by  
adding more of the former Warsaw Pact nations to NATO, pushing the  
Western military alliance right up to Russia’s borders.

In 2007, Bush announced plans to deploy interceptor missiles to Poland  
with supporting radar tracking stations in the Czech Republic. Though  
Bush insisted the missile defense was intended to counter potential  
threats from rogue states, like Iran, the Russians saw the move as  
threatening to them.

Arms Export magazine editor Mikhail Barabanov, writing in the Moscow  
newspaper Kommersant, said the real U.S. motivation for placing  
interceptor missiles in Poland was to expand U.S. military and  
strategic capacities and constrict those of other nuclear states, such  
as Russia and China.

Russia Strikes Back

In effect, Russian leaders became convinced that Bush’s words about  
partnership were just sweet talk disguising the neocon agenda, as  
described by the Project for the New American Century, of crippling  
potential challengers to American global dominance.

Yet, under Putin’s firm grip, Russian authorities were steadily  
regaining control of the nation’s political destiny. “Robber barons”  
were exiled or jailed, their media outlets throttled, their businesses  
brought under the Kremlin’s thumb.

The rise in commodities prices for Russian oil, natural gas and metals  
also put money into the national treasury and helped Putin rebuild his  
military might.

That was the backdrop to the crisis in Georgia. President Saakashvili,  
trusting in the support of his neocon American allies, decided the  
time was ripe to crush pro-Russian separatists in South Ossetia, an  
attack he launched on Aug. 7, the eve of the Olympics.

If Saakashvili thought his offensive would go answered – that the  
Russians again would retreat rather than risk offending the West – he  
thought wrong. The Russians counterattacked, expelled Georgia forces  
from both South Ossetia and another breakaway province Abkhazia, and  
took up strategic positions inside Georgia.

The American political elite, led by Sen. McCain and President Bush,  
and neocon editorialists, including at the Washington Post, raged  
against the Russian military thrust, but the Russians were not  
deterred. They agreed to a ceasefire largely on their terms and left  
Saakashvili to fume about his betrayal by Western powers.

Bush, however, did back up his angry words with some action.

On Aug. 15, the United States and Poland finalized an agreement to  
deploy American missile defenses onto Polish territory. Patriot anti- 
missile missiles, now in Germany, were to be moved to Poland along  
with support crews.

The next day, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ratcheted up the  
tensions by defining the American move as a provocative threat to  
Russian security and warning of possible military action against Poland.

“The Russian side in such a situation will take adequate measures to  
compensate for potential threats to its national security,” the  
Ministry said, referring not to diplomatic but to “military- 
technological methods.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev added, “Placing elements of a global  
anti-missile system by the U.S. in Eastern Europe only deepens the  
situation, and we will be forced to react to this adequately.”

Some observers suggested that the Russians were now facing a situation  
similar to what President John Kennedy confronted in 1962 when the  
Soviets installed missiles in Cuba, a crisis that pushed the world to  
the brink of a nuclear confrontation before Moscow relented and  
removed the missiles.

Still, despite the risks to humanity, the rewards of a revived Cold  
War – with fatter defense budgets and greater demand for anti-Russian  
propaganda – will benefit military contractors, neocon theorists and  
politicians who again can exploit the fears of the American people.

Morgan Strong is a former professor of Middle Eastern and Russian  
History, and was an advisor to CBS News’ “60 Minutes” on the Middle  
East.