Former Reagan Officials Denounce US-NATO War Plans

From former advisor Suzanne Massie, former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts, former budget director David Stockman and former White House Communications Director Patrick Buchanan.

When former Reagan officials oppose U.S. and NATO preparations for war with Russia and even the most (nominally) progressive members of the House and Senate don’t, it’s a telling indication of how politics have developed in the US in the post-Cold War era.

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Panic over ‘war with Russia’ strong in US, Biden cannot stop it, Reagan’s advisor says
Suzanne Massie noted that she did not believe that peace was impossible with Russians

The panic over the allegedly possible “war with Russia” in the US is now particularly strong because US President Joe Biden is not capable of stopping it. That said, it’s only a small group of people escalating this panic while the general public has no desire for a conflict, according to ex-advisor to US President Ronald Reagan Suzanne Massie.

“I think, war is always possible and even worse now than any time in the past because of the weapons. Weapons are worse,” she told a TASS correspondent in response to a question on the matter. “There is no desire among the American public to have any war with [Russia]. It is a small group of people, among them now something is very scary. The panic is now more powerful than it has been in twenty years,” she added.

Reagan’s former advisor thinks that President Biden “has nothing to say.” “Our president, unfortunately, as you know, has everything happening behind him. And that’s why the panic is so strong. There is no one to say ‘no.’ Of course, [another president would] not let it go so long,” she added.

According to her, a small group of people “in certain positions” in the US indeed wants a military conflict in order to make money. “I certainly do not believe that peace is impossible with Russians. Because we need you. We need you more than we know. And I am going to write about this,” she emphasized.

Reagan’s former advisor is confident that Russia is absolutely unique and it shouldn’t try to be “Western,” although such attempts have been made. “Why are you unique? Because of your history, because of your people, because of your size, because of your geography. You are the only bridge now, it is more important than ever, you are the only bridge that we have between Asia and Europe. And this is really important because Asia is getting to be more and more in the news and everything else and is going to be a really big problem,” she concluded.

About Suzanne Massie

Massie was born in 1931 in New York. She is famous for her writing, including the bestselling Land of the Firebird. In the 1980s, she served as an informal advisor to US President Ronald Reagan on the Soviet Union.

In May 2021, Massie expressed a desire to obtain Russian citizenship, should Russian President Vladimir Putin find it possible to grant it to her. She reiterated that she dedicated many years to bringing the people of Russia and the US closer. On December 30, 2021, Putin signed a corresponding decree. On January 24, 2022, she was granted a Russian passport.

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Paul Craig Roberts
The Insanity of the West Accelerates

The New York Times reports that Biden is going to forestall Russian aggression against Ukraine by deploying between 1,000 and 5,000 US troops on Russia’s border and is prepared to increase the number of troops tenfold to 10,000 to 50,000 soldiers. A Russian army would eat this small number for a snack in 5 minutes. Clearly the purpose of the deployment is not military. The purpose is to heighten the “Russian threat” in the minds of the people in advance of a false flag event that will be blamed on the Kremlin.

If Biden wants to deter Russia all he needs to do is to give Russia the security guarantee she says she needs. Why does Biden want Russia to be insecure?

The cause of the problem is obvious. In 2014 the US in an attempt to deprive Russia of her Black Sea naval base overthrew a Russian-friendly and democratically elected Ukrainian government and installed a neo-Nazi regime that began war against the Russian inhabitants of the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine, formerly parts of Russia that had been transferred during the Soviet era into the the Soviet Union’s Ukrainian province.

To stabilize the situation, Russia hammered out the Minsk Agreement but neither Ukraine nor the Western signatories kept the agreement.

Russia does not want the broke and troublesome Ukraine. Russia just wants Ukraine not to become a place for US missile bases.

It is a simple demand easy to accept in the interest of peace.

But peace is unprofitable and is the last thing the US military/security complex wants. Therefore Washington is responding to the Russian/US/NATO security talks by deploying troops on Russia’s borders. The stupid British are stirring the pot of “Russian aggression” by withdrawing the embassy staff from Kiev.
We have been hearing from US/NATO about the “growing Russian threat” for a long time. What happens to credibility that is already damaged if there is no Russian invasion? It seems that Washington and its NATO puppets are so far out on the limb that they simply must provoke a Russian invasion.

The Russians are waiting in vain for Washington’s written response to their proposal for mutual security. Washington has answered with more accusations, more provocations.

Is the Kremlin having difficulty understanding: (1) that Trump was removed from office because he said he wanted to normalize relations with Russia, (2) that Russia is the necessary enemy for the power and profit of the US military/security complex, and (3) Russia is regarded as the obstacle to US hegemony? How can it be that in the face of all evidence to the contrary the Kremlin has the delusion that Washington is interested in Russians feeling secure.

While the Kremlin wastes time, weapons pour into Ukraine and the Western media prepare their people for “Russian aggression.” Russian protests of intentions attributed to her are pointless. The Western media knows the required narrative and is not interested in any facts.

The question really is whether Russia can accept that she has an enemy.

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David Stockman
The Specter of World War III – Handiwork of Washington’s Busy-Bodies and Hegemonists

Brief excerpt. With maps and graphs at link above.

The truth is, owing to the endless “breaking news” syndrome, the Ukraine matter is a national security molehill that’s been transformed into a mountain. The culprit was Washington’s phalanx of think-tanks, NGOs, the military-industrial-congressional complex, and, most especially, the neocon lumpen-intelligentsia that has insinuated itself into every nook and cranny of the national security apparatus from the Congressional committees of jurisdiction to the permanent bureaucracy at Foggy Bottom, Langley Virginia and countless nodes of hegemonic power in between.

In the first place, why in the world would any thinking person assume that Russia is a military threat to the US and/or the whole of NATO when it’s an absolute economic midget comparatively speaking?

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Patrick Buchanan
Where Does NATO Enlargement End?

Excerpt:

Do we believe Putin will indefinitely accept the encirclement and containment of his country by nations united in an alliance created to keep Russia surrounded?

Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan disagreed often but did agree on this: U.S.-NATO war guarantees stopped at the Elbe. Beyond the river in Germany, we battled the USSR with weapons of diplomacy, politics and economics, not weapons of war.

How would we have reacted if, after losing the Cold War, we were treated to Russian warships on Lake Ontario and Moscow giving Canada war guarantees?

Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of Stop NATO. This originally appeared at Anti-Bellum.