Steven Collins
September 1, 2008
In recent decades, the nation-states of the Western world have been gradually surrendering pieces of their sovereignty to globalist, supranational organizations. These supranational organizations have leaders who are not elected by the people and they are dominated by global elites who wield wealth and power. The vanquished World War II foes, Germany and Japan were successfully absorbed into the family of western nations and this trend toward supranationalism. The western elites thought that the same thing would happen with Russia and China after the “end of the Cold War.”
After the USSR fell, Russia was seen as a source of immense raw materials that western corporations could exploit and China was seen as a vast nation of coolies who could build an endless supply of cheap goods for the western corporations to sell to the world’s customers. However, Russia and China have not cooperated with the plan that the western elites had set out for them. Russia’s Putin jailed the kleptocrats in Russia who were cooperating in the West’s plunder of Russian raw materials and he has steadily made Russia a growing financial and military power financed by the very energy wealth the western corporations thought they could exploit for themselves. China is historically inscrutable, but it has steadily gained much leverage over the USA’s decisions due to China’s vast dollar reserves and China has already embarked on a military expansion much like Hitler’s Germany did in the run-up to World War II. Russia and China are acting like traditional nation states who see the West in a weakened state so they intend to exploit that weakness. That is how the game of geopolitics has always been played.
The West has created a host of internationalist entities since the end of World War II: the UN, the IMF, the BIS, NATO, the EU, the G-7 (now the G-8 with Russia in it), UNESCO, and other entities with “alphabet soup” acronyms. The western elites refer to emerging powers as “groups of nations” instead of the nation-states that they are. For example, the merging powers of Brazil, Russia, India and China are called the “BRIC” nations as if they were a supranational bloc to be moved around on a global chessboard instead of the nation-states they really are. The resurgence of nation-states acting militarily in their own national interests has seemingly shocked the western elites, whose reaction to Russia’s invasion of Georgia reminds me of the reaction of a deer “frozen in the headlights” of an oncoming car.
As recently as the July-August issue of Foreign Affairs, the flagship publication of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR–another influential internationalist entity), Russia was deeply slighted in one of that publication’s featured articles. An article by C. Fred Bergsten entitled “A Partnership of Equals,” discusses what he believed were the three “entities” in the world (notice his reluctance to use the term “nation”) which qualify as “economic superpowers.” He cites the USA, the EU and China as those three “entities.” Russia is ignored in his analysis. Mr. Bergsten’s article examines the qualifications of India, Japan and South Korea to work with Australia and New Zealand in leading a new “ASEAN” entity (an acronym for Association of Southeast Asian Nations–another internationalist entity). Germany rates a mere mention, But Mr. Bergsten does not regard Russia as being worthy of the slightest mention in his analysis of the great powers who will shape the future. This in spite of the fact that Russia is the globe’s largest nuclear power, its second-largest oil-exporting nation after Saudi Arabia and it possesses vast tracts of natural resources. Mr. Bergsten devotes most of the article to China and the USA (calling them “The Big Two”–again dissing Russia).
Mr. Bergsten’s article seems to be an effort by the western elites to urge China to “join the agenda of the western elites” instead of opposing them in a nation-state fashion. Mr. Bergsten does have quite lucid comments about China’s threat to the West. He notes that “the speed at which China has risen is difficult…to comprehend,” and added that a Chinese ambassador to the WTO (another internationalist entity) “reportedly thundered, ‘We know we have to play the game your way now, but in ten years we will set the rules’ (emphasis added).” That sounds like China is a nation-state prepared to act as a nation-state against the western elites. China’s recent Olympics in Beijing was an amazing spectacle of China’s wealth and ability to coordinate large masses of its people according to the will of the governing Communist Party. The Olympics were a peaceful event, but China sent the message that it can direct its people with the same organized precision militarily as well.
Maybe Russia read Mr. Bergsten’s article and got really angry. Maybe Russia was already preparing to seize part of Georgia and the timing was simply coincidental. Russia and China are strategic allies now, and while China fixated the world’s attention on the Olympics, Russia went to war. It went to war as a classic nation-state acting in its own interests, taking advantage of the deep economic/military weakness that now characterizes NATO/ the EU.
Russia has openly ignored the “cease-fire” negotiated by President Sarkozy of France. After damaging much of Georgia, it first recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia (Georgian provinces) as separate nations. A few days later, Russia simply announced South Ossetia would become part of Russia itself. The Russian “anschluss” with a part of Georgia has been completed much like the “anschluss” of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia was accomplished by Nazi Germany prior to World War II. Even as Europe dithered when Hitler seized part of Czechoslovakia, it now dithers when Russia seizes South Ossetia. Indeed, the EU or NATO can do nothing to stop it. The USA and NATO are grievously afflicted with “imperial overreach.” They cannot defend their own core states of Europe, much less give a military guarantee to Eastern Europe and Baltic nations that they can protect them against Russia. Trying to include the Ukraine and Georgia in NATO was “imperial overreach” on an obscene scale. Russia has now demonstrated that if it wants to do so, it can take over the entire Caucasus region at will. The impotence of NATO is palpable.
Like a shark smelling blood in the water, Russia has now announced a new set of principles in which it declared that it will “defend Russian citizens and business interests abroad,” and that it would “claim a unique sphere of influence in the world” (the first two links below discuss this new Russian edict). Since many Russians citizens live in previous Soviet states (Ukraine, the Baltic republics, the “-stan” nations of Central Asia), Russia is announcing that it will send its tanks into whatever nations it feels are “endangering Russian citizens.” The most immediate danger would seem to be faced by the Ukraine and the Baltic states. However, since Russia also announced it would defend Russian “business interests” outside Russia, this allows for Russia to openly seize the energy pipelines passing through Georgia from the Caspian Sea to Turkey if it feels it jeopardizes “Russia’s business interests” (i.e. its monopolistic control of European nations via Russian energy supplies).
An article in the September 1, 2008 Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that as this new edict was made, Vladimir Putin was “inspecting progress on a trans-Siberian oil pipeline to China and the Pacific Ocean, a clear warning to Europe that Russia could find alternative customers for its energy exports.” Fittingly, it added that Putin was interviewed while “hunting a Siberian tiger with a tranquilizer gun” (see third link below). Putin is now portraying Russia’s new macho image.
Russia has also dramatically increased its use of strategic bombers to “pressure” other nations in a military manner (see fourth link), and has threatened to spend almost “half its budget on a new arms race” (see fifth link below). Russia has also test-fired a cutting edge new missile (see sixth link below), and various web articles have reported that a Russian admiral has bragged the Russian fleet can sink the NATO warships in the Black Sea in a matter of “minutes” (see www.debka.com for one example). That may be braggadocio by the Russian admiral, but it indicates how deeply Russia is now “feeling its oats” in its resurgent stage.
NATO and US planners never prepared for this eventuality. They thought Russia and China would become happy little cogs in the globalist entitles that the western elites were arranging for them. Russia and China have rebelled against the diminished roles that overconfident western elites envisioned for them. Russia and China are both powerful, nationalistic nation-states whose people are rallying behind their national governments. Putin doesn’t need to rig elections in Russia. His strong leadership of a resurgent Russia makes him a very popular leader in his nation. The Communist Party’s iron hand still governs China, but its people are very proud of China’s new power, wealth and prominence. Shiite fervor manifests itself via the nation-state of Iran, which is allied to Russia and China.
Those who are Lord of the Rings fans will appreciate my next analogy. In “The Two Towers” movie, King Théoden of the “northern kingdom ” of Rohan faces an outbreak of war being declared on him by Sauroman’s army. In initial denial, Théoden states: “I will not risk open war.” Lord Aragorn, the hero, wakes him up to the obvious danger with these words: “war is upon you–whether you would risk it or not.” Someone needs to tell the flaccid nations of NATO and the western alliance something similar: “a new Cold War is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.”
In order to meet the new Cold War posed by vigorous nation-states like Russia and China, the western alliance needs vigorous nation-states of its own. But it has weakened its own western nations by subsuming them into bureaucratic globalist entities toward whom the western peoples owe scarce allegiance or loyalty. If a call goes out to Europe’s people to enlist in new armies to “defend the EU bureaucrats” against new Russian armies, will even a regiment show up? However, if globalist entities take a back seat and nation-states rally their own people to defend “motherland” and “fatherland,” millions could rally to the cause. People will sacrifice for their homeland in ways they would never consider in behalf of faceless bureaucrats in some internationalist entity. If the western elites do not want to face the grim fate Russia and China have planned for them, they need to “reverse course” and start strengthening their own nation states.
Time is running out. Ezekiel 38 reveals that an alliance of angry nation-states led by Russia and including China and Iran will attack the nation-states of the western world (called “the house of Israel” or “Israel” in Ezekiel 38-39) at the end of our age. The Bible consistently uses those terms to describe the nations of the ten tribes of Israel, it does not use those terms to describe the Jews (which are called “Judah” in biblical terminology). Genesis 48-49 offer many clues about where those ten tribes are today. Ephraim and Manasseh, the leading tribes of the house of Israel, will be “brother nations” bearing the name of Isaac (Genesis 21:12) upon them (think “Saxon,” the Romanized name of the Scythian “Sacae” from which the Saxons descended). Genesis 48:19 prophesies that Manasseh will be a single great nation while Ephraim will be a multitude (think “commonwealth”) of nations. As brother nations they will share a common language and culture and enjoy such a “special relationship” in the latter days that they are described by their common name, “Joseph,” in Genesis 49:22-26. Manasseh is the USA and the British nations are Ephraim. Many of the NATO nations are composed of their other “brother” tribes of Israel (all are identified in my books, which can be ordered on-line at the publisher’s website: www.bibleblessings.net). Hosea 1:10 prophesied that the ten tribes of Israel would be greatly increased in numbers after they went into exile. People tend to mistakenly think the ten tribes “died out” or would be forsaken of God. No way! God promised not only to make them large nations, but also in Jeremiah 51:5 (written over a century after the ten tribes went into exile), God stated clearly that he would NOT forsake the ten tribes of Israel.
God is shaping world events exactly according to his latter-day prophesies of Genesis 49, Ezekiel 38-39, etc. Today a new Cold War is befalling the western world, a development for which they are ill-prepared. Ezekiel 38 warns the modern nations of the western world that a “hot war” is eventually going to come upon them and it will be waged by Russia, China, Iran and their allies. It will come (in the words of Lord Aragorn of LOTR fame): “whether they would risk it or not.” The angry Russian bear is out of its cage. It is already gobbling up territory and threatening to seize even more. The eventual fulfillment of Ezekiel 38 is staring us in the face right now…in our time. The West better wake up soon and start preparing for the onslaught to come.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e9469744-7784-11dd-be24-0000779fd18c.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/01/europe/01russia.php
http://www.startribune.com/world/27726814.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUJ
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080901095328.t879zi97&show_article=1
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080829/116385526.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL1726908520071217?sp=true
