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Moscow: Bush advocates "law of the jungle,"
Bush and Harry Truman promote U.S. "world domination"
September 27, 2002
International News Analysis Today Special Report
By Toby Westerman
Copyright 2002 International News Analysis Today
www.inatoday.com
U.S. willingness to act "all alone,"and choose "targets for preventive strikes," constitutes "the law of the jungle," according to official Russian sources.
The U.S. is seeking "world domination" through implementation of the "role of missionary in the world," a policy originating with the "containment doctrine" of President Harry Truman, according to the Voice of Russia World Service, the official broadcasting service of the Russian government.
The Voice of Russia is heard around the world, and functions to "spread Russian values, language, and political priorities," according to Russian press minister Mikail Lesin in a statement issued following budgetary appropriations for VOR earlier this year.
Bush's "doctrine of preventive strikes …implies that the United States has assumed the role of defenders of human values in the world," and is "prepared to protect them all alone," declared Moscow.
The "Truman doctrine" was the U.S. response to Soviet expansion into Eastern and Central Europe, in contravention of WWII agreements among the allied nations. Truman stated that the U.S. would act to "contain" the USSR by preventing further communist gains, especially in Europe.
Bush's just released - and controversial -- "National Security Strategy of the United States" abandons Truman's concept of containment, and replaces it with the willingness to act "pre-emptively" against states and organizations which "hate the United States and everything for which it stands."
Almost all observers link the new strategy to the events of September 11.
Moscow, however, connects Bush's readiness to initiate an assault against a perceived threat with Truman's Cold War-era foreign policy.
Bush's "security strategy is nothing else than Truman's…doctrine, which justifies U.S. claim for world domination," according to Moscow."
Moscow's fresh attack on the over fifty-year-old Truman foreign policy harkens back to the USSR's Cold War attacks on the United States.
The Soviet-era analysis of U.S. policy, past and present, comes as the Bush administration regards Russia as a "strategic ally," and many experts view Russia as a potential "stable and dependable" source of oil, as opposed to the turbulent Middle East.
Washington no longer considers Russia a military threat because of its poor economy, considerable social problems, and warm personal relations between Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Despite the Bush administration's close relations with Moscow, Washington's willingness to act alone in "choosing targets for preventive strikes" directly threatens several of Russia's closest allies, including Iraq, Iran and North Korea, identified as an "axis of evil" by the Bush administration.
Observers note that every state implicated in aiding terrorism is a friend of Russia, while Moscow also provides considerable technical and military aid to nations which are hostile to the U.S.
Russian aid to communist China is a decisive factor in Beijing's rapid modernization of its military. As a result of Russian assistance, China will soon be able to challenge U.S. forces in the Pacific region.
Soviet-era propaganda is evident in the Russian press, which is controlled by the Russian government.
In its analysis of the currently strained U.S.-German relations, Pravda online, a popular Russian news source, attributes the difficulties between the two traditional allies exclusively to an attempt by the U.S. to dominate Germany, and Germany's desire to express its independence.
The Internet version of Pravda published its comments in an article entitled, "No longer America's puppet."
The online version of Pravda claims to be independent from its parent, the newspaper Pravda, which remains closely tied to the Russian Communist Party. During the Soviet era, Pravda was the Party's official news organ.
Despite claims of independence, however, the online version still sports communist insignia - including the image of the founder of the defunct Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin -- on its masthead.
Germany "wishes to follow its own path" and not the "instructions" of "Great America," declared Pravda, implying U.S. dominance over German political affairs.
Pravda's analysis of the German-American included the characterization U.S. investors in Germany as being part of the U.S. government's plan to dominate the German nation. American investors are "probably suspicious" of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder "because of his attempts to build a truly German foreign policy," according to Pravda.
With the exception of the nation's high unemployment, and Schroeder's anemic reforms program, Pravda did not mention any negative economic development in Germany which could influence investors.
Germany became "an enemy of America" solely because Schroeder sought to establish a foreign policy independent of the United States, declared Pravda.
Pravda cited as examples of Schroeder's "truly German foreign policy" Berlin's opposition to an American attack on Iraq, and a German minister's comparison of Bush with Hitler.
While most of America's allies oppose any American unilateral attack, German-U.S. relations deteriorated after Bush was compared with Hitler, and Schroeder appeared to make use of anti-American sentiments to achieve his narrow victory.
Pravda also raised the specter of an American attack if Germany acted independently.
Recalling a discussion "two years ago" with political scientist and philosopher Anne Roerig, Pravda recounted that it asked Roerig why Germany "wasn't expanding obviously profitable political and economic relations with Russia," and why Germany was not more independent of the U.S. in its foreign policy.
Roerig responded, according to Pravda, that "…the Americans will then bomb us the same way they did Yugoslavia."
Pravda termed Roerig's statement as "a rather significant answer."
Ironically, two years ago, Germany was - and continues to be - the largest investor in Russia. In April 2002, Putin declared that German and Russian relations had "reached a new level," and that Berlin and Moscow were "strategic partners," according to the Voice of Russia.
The German business community recognizes the dangers posed by continued German-American enmity, and wants to see ties with America retained and strengthened.
President of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, Ludwig George Braun, lamented the present "unsatisfying" state of German-American relations in a recent interview given to Deutsche Welle, the official broadcasting service of the German government.
Braun expressed his hope for a speedy return to the usually cordial nature of relations between America and Germany, and warned of possible "disastrous" effects of prolonged hostilities between the two traditional allies, according to the Deutsche Welle broadcast.
The U.S. is Germany's most important trading partner, with current sales at 60 billion dollars, a figure which German business leaders still hope to increase this year, despite current political difficulties, according to Deutsche Welle.