By Stephen Lendman
The US has much to gain from Navalny’s illness.
Most obvious is its aim to block Nord Stream 2’s completion.
If Russia’s gas pipeline to Germany becomes operational next year, it will double what Gazprom can supply Germany and other Western countries.
If the project is suspended or halted altogether, it will advantage US LNG producers — despite the much higher cost of this energy supply.
Republicans and Dems have greater aims.
They want Russia harmed economically, geopolitically and strategically.
They want the country marginalized, weakened, and isolated.
The above objectives have been US policy throughout the Cold
War and after its aftermath to the present day — no matter which right wing of its one-party state runs things.
Post-WW II, containing Russia became official US policy.
US diplomat/envoy to Soviet Russia/presidential advisor George Kennan (1904 – 2005) was “the father of containment.”
He was a core member of so-called foreign policy “wise men” in Washington.
His 1946 “Long Telegram” from Moscow and 1947 “Sources of Soviet Conduct” claimed its government was inherently expansionist.
In February 1948, his “Memo PPS23” said the following:
“(W)e have 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. (It makes us) the object of envy and resentment.
“Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships (to let us) maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national society.”
“We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction…”
“We should dispense with the aspiration to ‘be liked’ or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism.”
“We should (stop talking about) unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization.”
“The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.”
“The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans (ideas and practices), the better.”
In July 1947, his so-called “X” article on the “Sources of Soviet Conduct urged countering it “effectively.”
The US “can never be on Moscow’s side,” he stressed.
In March 1948, NSC 7 detailed “The Position of the United States with Respect to Soviet-Directed World Communism,” saying:
“(A) defensive policy cannot be considered an effective means of checking the momentum of Soviet expansion.”
“Defeat(ing)” communism was considered “vital to the security of the United States.”
NSC 68 (April 1950 — issued weeks before Harry Truman’s preemptive war on nonbelligerent North Korea) officially inaugurated anti-Soviet Russia containment.
It called the country an enemy “unlike previous aspirants to hegemony…animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own (wishing to) impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.”
Ignored was the scourge of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan — or that WW II devastated Soviet Russia, requiring years of rebuilding.
Its government posed no threat to the US — not then, notably not now.
After Soviet Russia’s dissolution in December 1991, capitalism replaced its communist system.
It remains Russian Federation policy today.
Because Moscow is independent of US control, made-in-the-USA adversarial relations continue.
No Russian threat to US/Western interests exists so it was invented, notably since Vladimir Putin became president.
Bipartisan hostility toward Russia in Washington is all about wanting the country transformed into a US vassal state.
It’s about gaining control over its vast resources and population, along with eliminating a strategic rival — whose overtures for normalized relations are consistently spurned.
The Trump regime is using the Navalny incident to further its strategic interests.
It’s pressuring Germany and the EU to punish Russia for an incident no evidence suggests it had anything to do with.
Last week, German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass said that if the chemical watchdog OPCW — an imperial lapdog serving Western interests — says Navalny was poisoned by novichok exposure, “I am convinced that (EU) sanctions will be unavoidable” on Russia, adding:
“(S)uch a grave violation of the International Chemical Weapons Convention cannot go unanswered.”
Earlier, a German military lab and facilities in France and Sweden claimed that the deadly nerve agent caused his illness.
Unmentioned by these countries was that exposure to novichok — the deadliest known toxin — causes death in minutes.
Navalny is very much alive over a month after falling ill.
Discharged from hospitalization in Berlin, German doctors expect him to recovery fully or near-fully.
If poisoned by novichok, he’d have died before boarding a flight from Tomsk, Russia to Moscow.
What’s obvious is suppressed in the West by hostile-to-Moscow political officials and media.
Heroic efforts by Russian doctors in Omsk that saved Navalny’s life was erased from the EU’s historical record.
So was their biological analysis — finding no toxins in his blood, urine, liver, or elsewhere in his system.
According to former German diplomat Frank Elbe, Europe is “making a giant step backwards – back to the Cold War” by allying with US hostility toward Russia instead of normalizing relations, adding:
US policymakers are furious about an alliance by Germany and other EU countries with Russia to construct Nord Stream 2, “pursu(ing) their own independent policy.”
Elbe urged Europe to break from the US when their interests diverge — to uphold their sovereign independence.
Most often, European countries bend to Washington’s will — even when harming their interests.
So far, opposing the Trump regime’s pressure to abandon the landmark JCPOA nuclear deal is an exception to the rule — if it sticks.
Will Nord Stream 2 be another?
Will Germany support its completion or shoot itself in the foot by allying with US interests against its own?
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