US dragging Europe into 'dangerous project'

Analysts warn of 'new Iron Curtain', citing West's proxy war against Russia

Two former CIA analysts have said some major geopolitical events are now unfolding with huge consequences for the future of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, especially the Nord Stream pipeline explosions.

"I think Europeans have now begun to see that by joining through NATO, joining the United States in this proxy war against Russia, they have really been brought into a very dangerous and long-term project with huge long-term implications, not what they had bargained for," said Graham Fuller, former top analyst of the CIA, at a webinar titled Investigate Nord Stream Revelations: Stop Nuclear World War III last month organized by the Schiller Institute.

On Sept 26, 2022, seven months after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict, two Russian pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, under the Baltic Sea, connecting with Germany and carrying natural gas to Europe, exploded. Both Denmark and Sweden, the nearest coastal states, confirmed the explosion as an act of sabotage.

Last month, Seymour Hersh, a veteran US journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, pinned the blame on the US and Norway in a detailed self-published report on the US portal Substack. The US government termed it "a false story".

Led by the US, NATO countries are indirectly involved in the conflict through sanctions against Russia, and military assistance to Ukraine.

Fuller said the Nord Stream explosions and sanctions on Russia were causing the beginning of the deindustrialization of Germany due to a lack of fuel and huge price rises.

"These are profound consequences, and we see the domestic growth rate of almost all European countries now dropping down to below 1 percent. So, the consequences are very serious," said Fuller.

"I think European populations will perhaps demonstrate their dissatisfaction through the ballot box, demonstrations, writings, or whatever else there, demonstrate their dissatisfaction with joining the United States and what seems increasingly a highly dangerous and unwise venture."

Fuller said the US and other NATO countries, through huge sanctions which "ironically" have not had a great effect on Russia, built "a massive new wall" between Europe and Russia.

'Cultural assault'

"This is not simply a question of economic sanctions against Russia, but it's also been an extraordinary cultural assault against the very idea of Russian civilization," he said.

Fuller, who described himself as a "Cold War warrior" back in those days, worried that now the US and its NATO partners' action was a "full-scale onslaught" on Russian culture without considering Russia's security concerns.

"Much of the foundations of the war was really Russia's search for a new Europe, wide Pan-European security arrangement which would include not only all the vital security interests of NATO and EU states and all Eastern Europe and the Balkans and all of that but also the legitimate long-term security concerns of Russia itself."

He asked, "How can you have a general peace security arrangement for Europe that excludes one of the most important countries of all and that feels itself under the gun, literally and otherwise, for wanting to become part of a European broad security arrangement?"

Another former CIA analyst, Raymond McGovern, also said at the same webinar that "a new Iron Curtain" has come up. The new Iron Curtain, he said, is between the collective West and the East "with its great plans for economic development" and "the vast majority of the population in the world".

McGovern said that he is optimistic that after a decade or two, Europeans will come to their senses and realize that US politicians have misled them. "Russia is not really just a gas station posing as a country. Russia is a country without whom the rest of Europe is impoverished."

He also said that the isolation of Russia led by the US is, in fact, the "lily-white West" against the rest of the world, the vast majority of whom are people of color, and it will not succeed.

"How can you say that the US has isolated Russia if 1.4 billion Chinese and 1.4 billion Indians and Indonesians, Brazilians, South Africans and Iranians are all lined up against what's happening in the lily-white West?" McGovern asked.

Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, recently said at a news conference that China is considering supplying weapons to Russia, which will lead to "consequences". Beijing strongly denied this allegation.

China is not taking part in the Russia-Ukraine conflict in any military way, Fuller said.

"Clearly, China has an understanding with Russia that it understands Russia's security needs," he said, "I would add that both of these countries share a view that they no longer accept a world in which the United States or even NATO or even the West is able to dictate what the security arrangements of the world should be."

"I would argue for the foreseeable, I would argue at least for decades, that this will go on because they share this common geopolitical goal of facing Western intervention around the world," Fuller said.

yifanxu@chinadailyusa.com