SIGNALLING
SIGNALS
How can the shooting
down of a US spy drone over the Black Sea be interpreted and what are the immediate
political consequences?
By Sidney Hey
I don't remember who it was who said that human beings are the only animals that trip over the same stone twice, but it is a truism. I think I would rephrase that saying with one of my own that says "the only human beings who do the same stupid things twice are the Anglo-Saxons" in the light of recent events in both Ukraine and the USA.
While I was resting
peacefully in Horbat, one of my contacts who is up to date on what is happening
in Ukraine sent me the news of the terrorist attack on the Crimean beaches
committed by the Ukrainians of Zelensky, in which two children were killed.
What's new about that, you tell me? What was revealing, though not so
revealing, was that a US-made ATACMS missile caused this and Washington is
playing the sore-eyed.
It is true that the US
and its Atlanticist partners have been intervening in Ukraine since the
beginning of the war and that their weapons have killed many Russian civilians
including those in the Donbas. Even the CIA trying to create internal commotion
and discredit against Putin has committed terrorist attacks in Moscow itself
and they have refined this tactic by employing their Islamist assets as we saw
in Crocus Hall and most recently in Dagestan.
I am sure that the
Russian public already knows all this. There are also signs that Putin has said
enough is enough, beyond the return bombing of critical Ukrainian
infrastructure, and has begun to implement more effective measures to prevent
these terrorist actions from being carried out with impunity.
The first loud and
clear signal was the shooting down more than eight days ago of a US Navy
"MQ9-Reaper" drone operating over the Black Sea. While Washington has
denied this episode -a blow to Yankee pride- the fact is that the
flights of these aircraft were unexpectedly suspended until further notice. No
one in Washington or Langley has said a word.
Those familiar with the
subject know that such aircraft are used by the Americans (and NATO) as one of
their ISR assets for reconnaissance, surveillance and marking of targets to be
attacked by their patrons. In short, they are part of the electronic
intelligence assets that the Americans collect and then provide to Ukrainian
far-right battalions to carry out their terrorist attacks. There is no doubt
that the ATACMS missiles that fell and caused the massacre on the Crimean beach
were guided by information provided by this intelligence source.
But beyond the
countermeasures that Russia seems to be successfully implementing to end this
strategic cooperation on terror, there is a very complex scenario at the moment
in both the US and the EU that does not favour plans to continue the war.
In the case of the US,
we saw this with the hilarious show staged to promote the presidential
candidacies between Donald Trump and incumbent Joe Biden and candidate of the
war party. After such a demonstration of absence and lack of intellectual
coordination by the current president, Americans who maintained some degree of
credibility in his administration began to question whether it wasn't really
true about his inability to govern, including his decisions to continue solving
other people's wars.
There is no doubt that
Donald Trump lent a hand to this reflex. In addition to exposing the senile
condition of his adversary, he put on the table his view of what he would do if
he gets to the White House, and that would be to end the war.
As far as the EU is
concerned, the tectonic (not to say cataclysmic) changes in the domestic
politics of its main members are already causing panic among Washington's
subjects such as Ursula Von Der Leyen, the brand new NATO Secretary Mark Rutte
and the entire staff of subordinates that make up the Union. In particular the
situation in France, with the landslide victory of Marine Le Pen's right wing,
which will undoubtedly bring about serious changes for French institutions and
citizens that could mean, in addition to a redirection of foreign policy,
reforms in the country's status as a member of the EU or, if that were more
convenient for France, simply its exit from the bloc.
This in turn would be
compounded by the change that is already underway in Britain with Labour's
return to power, which seems to have been listening to the cries of ordinary
Britons and their needs, issues so neglected by Rishi Sunak and the
Conservative camp as a whole.
Beyond these
extraordinary circumstances, Vladimir Putin has already begun to structure a
new multipolar security system that does not necessarily resemble NATO but aims
to be more effective and efficient in building a security framework against the
malicious interference of the collective West, extending to all states that
agree with the principles of the BRICS+ to guarantee autonomous development,
free from subtle interference and detached from Washington's extortionist
hegemonism.
