If there is one thing clear about the U.S. national-security establishment’s pro-empire, interventionist foreign policy, it is that Americans are expected to maintain a deeply seated, permanent hatred of Russia. Woe to any public official who violates that sacred foreign-policy principle.
Imagine if some prominent member of Congress suddenly called for the lifting of all U.S. economic sanctions, tariffs, and trade restrictions against Russia. Even worse, imagine if he or she actually called for establishing normal, peaceful, and friendly relations with Russia.
No one can reasonably deny that U.S. officials, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, the U.S. mainstream press, and U.S. interventionists would go ballistic. They would brand that member of Congress as an appeaser, a coward, a Russia-lover, a Putin apologist, and even a traitor. If that member of Congress stuck by his guns and continued making the case for befriending Russia, they would do everything within their power to destroy him or her.
After all, that’s precisely what they did to President Kennedy when he declared an end to America’s mindset of permanent hatred for Russia and declared that the United States would henceforth have normalized and friendly relations with Russia. They went after him with a vengeance. After all, Kennedy was threatening not only the ever-increasing power and largess of the military-industrial complex, he was threatening the justification for the very existence of a national-security state form of governmental structure.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at this flier and this newspaper advertisement in the Dallas Morning News that were being distributed and displayed in Dallas on the day that Kennedy was assassinated. They perfectly reflect the deep anti-Kennedy hatred that essentially matched the depth of the anti-Russia hatred. It was that deep anti-Russia, anti-Kennedy hatred that led Kennedy’s enemies within the national-security establishment to bring an end to what they were convinced was the gravest threat to national-security in our nation’s history — that is, a president whose policies were inexorably leading to a total communist takeover of America. See FFF’s book JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board.
It’s worth pointing out that upon reading that newspaper advertisement, Kennedy warned his wife Jackie that they were “headed into nut country.” It would have been more accurate if Kennedy had pointed out that America’s conversion to a national-security state had turned the whole nation into nut country.
Hating Russia has been the U.S. foreign policy motif since the end of World War II. That’s what the Cold War was all about. That’s what the anti-communist crusade was all about. That’s what the Korean War and Vietnam War were all about. That’s why the U.S. government was converted from a limited-government republic to a national-security state after World War II — to protect us from the Russkies and the Reds, who, we were told, were coming to get us.
What else could have justified the ever-increasing power and largess of the national-security establishment — ie, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. Oh sure, countries like China, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Iran, and others have been used to incite fear and anxiety within the American people, but, for some reason, they have never been able to generate as much fear and anxiety as the Russian Reds.
Thus, imagine the panic that set into the national-security establishment when the Cold War unexpectedly ended. Suddenly, the anti-Russia fear, anxiety, and hatred dissipated among a large number of Americans. (Many right-wingers were convinced for years that ending the Cold War was actually a ruse on the part of the Russians to take over America.)
But the U.S. national-security establishment was not ready to let go of its anti-Russia cash cow. To be sure, U.S. interventionism in the Middle East brought us the “war on terrorism” (or the “war on Islam” or the “war on evil”), but U.S. officials always knew that that war could fizzle out. This was especially true if the U.S. was, at some point in the future, thrown out of Afghanistan and Iraq. If that happened, America’s killing machine would no longer be able to kill large numbers of people that would generate the anger and rage that would lead to the perpetual threat of terrorist retaliation.
That’s what NATO gradual expansion to the east was always all about. It was an “insurance policy.” If the “war on terrorism” began to fizzle, there was always the ability to provoke Russia into invading Ukraine by threatening to absorb Ukraine into NATO, which would enable the U.S. to install its missiles, troops, bases, tanks, and other armaments on the Ukraine-Russia border.
Thus, we’ve now come full circle. Russia is now, once again, the premier enemy, opponent, rival, adversary, and competitor of the U.S. military-intelligence empire. The deep anti-Russia hostility has, once again, been inculcated in the minds of the American people. Meanwhile, they’re stoking up hostility with the Chinese Reds and the North Korean Reds. The Cuban Reds are still there. The old Cold War racket is back, along with ever-increasing power and taxpayer largess flooding into the coffers of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. And woe to any public official who publicly calls for an end to this evil and destructive racket.
Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.
