Mon Jul 27,
2015 1:55AM
PressTv User
Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) welcomes Iran's
President Hassan Rouhani during the 7th BRICS summit in Ufa, Russia, on July 9,
2015. (AFP photo)
A former White House official says the United States
cannot stand independent countries, such as Russia and Iran, because they are a
threat to Washington’s unilateral actions.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and associate editor of the Wall
Street Journal, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on
Sunday.
He was commenting on a statement by the head of the US
Special Operations Command, General Joseph Votel, who said on Friday that
Russia “could pose an existential threat" to the United States.
“Let me clarify what the word or the term existential
threat means,” Roberts said.
“When a general says this as a public statement, it
tells the American people that Russia is a threat to the very existence of the
United States, and it causes them to think that Russia may attack the United
States with nuclear weapons, or maybe preparing to do that.
“So it creates a fear that Washington can use [it] for
its agenda. We’re going to talk about what that agenda is. But what does it
mean to Washington to say that Russia is a threat to its existence?
“What it means to Washington is that Russia has an
independent foreign policy.
“We have reached the point in the United States that
the drive for hegemony over the world – the importance for Washington of
remaining the uni-power – that drive is now so strong that a country that has
an independent foreign policy is regarded as an enemy, or a threat.
“What they mean is that it’s a threat to Washington’s
unilateral action. They don’t mean it’s a threat to the existence of a country
in the sense that the American people understand that word.”
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Dr. Roberts said that "what we have is a
situation where countries with independent foreign policy, that’s countries
that do not always accommodate Washington; they are now regarded as enemy
countries.
"So that’s one of the meanings of these
statements, that Russia is a threat.
“The other meaning is that in the United States the
military security complex has a budget from taxpayers, from public funds – a
budget of one trillion dollars. I believe that is about two and a half times
the size of the Iranian gross domestic product… just for the military security
complex.
“So these are very large firms entirely dependent on
public appropriations, that’s where their revenues come from.”
Dr. Roberts said if you have a budget of one trillion
dollars, “you have to have a reason, especially when Americans themselves are
having hard times, that’s the people who are paying the taxes.”
He added that a lot of these have “lost houses, on the
verge of losing them. The young people have student debts they can’t pay, they
can’t get jobs. A lot of people are having trouble of paying their
medical insurance, even with some of the subsidies that ObamaCare provides.
“So they look at this trillion dollars, and say what
is this for. We need this money spent differently. So, the military security
complex is making sure that fear takes the place of this hope by Americans to
get some of that money to help them with their problems. So Russia then has
become the bogeyman.
“This is also what has been going on with Iran.
Washington has always known that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program.
They always knew that. But the trouble with Iran is that it has an independent
foreign policy.
“It, for example, supported Hezbollah. Iran did not
comply with Washington’s goals in the Middle East. And that’s the reason for
the sanctions.
“It was to try to force Iran to do what Washington
wanted. It had nothing to do with the nuclear energy program, that was the
cover.
“Washington can’t go and tell the American people,
‘Look, Iran won’t do what we want them to do so we are putting sanctions on
them, we may go into war with them, we may bomb them, because they don’t do
what we wanted them do. ”
“They can’t tell the people that. They say, ‘Oh, be
scared, the Iranians, they are going to make nuclear weapons. We have to stop
them.’ And then the people say, ‘OK, all right, we have to do something.’ That’s what they are doing with Russia.
“There are two reasons that they have shifted from the
[so-called] Islamic State, and Iran, and Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the
Taliban, all of that, they have shifted to Russia, because Russia is a much
more credible threat. It’s a huge country. A lot of Americans believe it’s
communist."
From L: Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev,
Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Russian President Vladimir Putin
and China’s President Xi Jinping wave as they pose for a family photo at the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Ufa on July 10, 2015. (AFP
photo)
“So, it’s a more believable threat. It’s hard to say
that Iran is an ‘existential threat’ to the United States. But if tell them
that it’s Russia, they say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s probably the case. It’s the
needed enemy. It justifies the massive spending programs that go into the
military security complex, and all the power associated with that," Dr.
Roberts stated.
“And also Washington is using this pressure to put
sanctions on Russia, like they did on Iran. They are pressing the Europeans
break off their economic and political relations with Russia, because of two
reasons.
“1) the Europeans are too dependent on Russian energy,
and that Washington will lose control of Europe because of its dependence on
the Russian energy.
“And the other reason that they are putting all this
pressure is Russia is able to constrain the American unilateralism.
“Russia was able to stop Obama’s planned invasion of
Syria, and it was Russia who found the diplomatic solution to Iran, that
Washington was going to use to bomb Iran.
“So what Russia has proven [is] that it can frustrate
Washington, it can step in and block the American foreign policy initiative and
force some different actions on the Americans. And Washington can’t simply
stand that.
“The whole notion is we have to cut Russia down to
size in some was so they accommodate us instead of blocking us. So that’s what
it is all about,” Dr. Roberts concluded.
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