Brian Berletic:  More on the US National Security Strategy paper…

Brian Berletic:  More on the US National Security Strategy paper…

Here are Sputnik’s questions and my complete answers regarding the recently released US National Security Strategy document below – I will also be doing an article/video this coming week…

Question 1: In the recently published National Security Strategy of the US, NATO’s expansion is criticized, and Russia is no longer presented as a threat, but as a country with which strategic stability is important for stability in Europe.

What prompted the US to make such changes in the Strategy? Why now?

Answer: Upon reading the entire National Security Strategy, it is clear there is no fundamental change. The very first sentence of the introduction is a declaration of continued pursuit of global primacy. The paper lays out plans of continued war and preparations for war against all of America’s “adversaries” both directly and through “burden sharing,” by proxy.

While it briefly mentions “preventing the reality of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance,” the same paper also boasts of the vast sums of NATO spending that the US coerced European member states into committing to.

Regarding the paper’s characterization of Russia, it should be pointed out that the US desperately seeks to freeze the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, not end it. As suggested in the paper and explicitly stated by US Secretary of War Pete Hegesth in February of this year, Europe will assume more costs and risks in forcing a freeze while the US focuses on containing China.

In other words, this is merely a narrative to implement “burden sharing” and “strategic sequencing,” focusing on China’s containment now and circling back around to containing Russia later.

Question 2) The Ukraine settlement is mentioned as the US’s core interest. The document says that the peace process is crucial for reestablishing strategic stability with Russia. How could it influence the ongoing peace talks?

Answer: The US began this proxy war by overthrowing the Ukrainian government in 2014, leading efforts to train and reorganize Ukraine’s armed forces from 2014 to 2022, while the CIA assumed control over Ukraine’s intelligence services. The US began arming Ukraine with lethal aid (under the previous Trump administration), and now admittedly directs Ukraine’s armed forces from a military base in Wiesbaden, Germany, including overseeing attacks on targets deep within Russian territory itself – all while posing as an impartial mediator in a war the US itself started and is driving.

This is wholly a US proxy war on Russia; the US, and the US alone, can bring to an end. It simply doesn’t want to. What it wants instead is a “Minsk 3.0” freeze, to rebuild both Ukraine and Europe’s military capacity, all by offering Russia the same empty promises of peace, stability, and even economic cooperation that have been repeatedly betrayed since the end of the Cold War. An added bonus would be driving a wedge between Russia and China during this temporary freezing of the conflict to weaken China, so that when the US turns its attention back to Russia, China will no longer be able to offer significant support.

Question 3) The Strategy criticizes NATO expansion, which Russia had been calling a critical issue and a key reason for the Ukraine conflict. What are the realistic chances of the alliance’s expansion being limited in the future, now that the issue has been acknowledged by the US?

Answer: Even though the US ambiguously acknowledged NATO’s expansion in the paper, it also bragged about the vast sums of money the US has coerced European member states into spending on NATO – spending specifically vis-à-vis Russia – as NATO and its various member states face no actual national security threats requiring such vast sums of expenditures.

In other words, the US is telling Russia what it wants to hear in the hopes of appealing to both Russia’s and the rest of the world’s desperate desire for peace and stability and luring Russia into a ceasefire the US even says it will use in the paper to advance its primary foreign policy objective, “to ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come,” or simply, “primacy.”

Question 4) What signal does this move send to warmongers in the US and especially in Europe?

Answer: Considering the paper begins with US President Donald Trump boasting about vastly expanding US military spending (up to $1 trillion), the unprovoked, unjustified war of aggression the US launched on Iran under the current Trump administration, and the growing threat of military aggression against Venezuela, it would seem the paper itself was authored by warmongers.

The paper outlines an unprecedented military build-up and containment strategy targeting China, which is at the top of the list of US-European warmongers. The outlined strategy is simply trying to put the proxy war with Russia on hold, considering how poorly it is going for the US and its proxies at the moment, until a time later when the US once again has the advantage, just as it did with its proxy war in Syria, which it finally, successfully won late last year.

Unfortunately, wishful thinking will only play into Washington’s hands, hands that – without exception – are bloodied by decades of military aggression, aggression that sees no signs of slowing any time in the foreseeable future.