Dispatches from
STEPHEN LENDMAN
US ground, air and naval forces operating near Russia’s borders are willful provocations risking direct confrontation. Imagine if Russia or China operated the same way – in America’s gulf, off its east or west coasts, on its Canadian or Mexican borders, or aerial patrols provocatively close to its airspace, perhaps at times penetrating it.
USS Destroyer Donald Cook Incident
(Apr. 9, 2003) — USS Donald Cook (DDG 75), was the first surface vessel to fire Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM’s) in support of [the ludicrously branded] Operation Iraqi Freedom. Beautiful ships, evil imperial purposes. It figures. Now it’s being used to provoke the Russkies.
WW III might follow. Yet America practically claims a divine right to operate provocatively anywhere worldwide, blaming other nations for actions bordering on lawlessness, and too often crossing the line. US warships routinely deploy close to Russian waters, including for provocative military exercises.
Maneuvers performed near America’s warship complied “with all the necessary safety rules” – posing no threat to the vessel.
The guided missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG 75) in the Atlantic Ocean. (2005).
The Pentagon lied, claiming it was a “simulated attack,” even though Russian aircraft approached “wings clean,” without armaments, indicating no aggressive intent. John Kerry called the incident “reckless” and “provocative,” irresponsibly claiming “rules of engagement” could have authorized Russian aircraft to be shot down, adding “the United States is not going to be intimidated on the high seas.”
What’s going on? Moscow-based foreign correspondent John Helmer called the incident “long anticipated.” The Donald Cook conducted provocative naval exercises with Polish vessels about 70km offshore Kaliningrad and Russia’s military complex based there. Two previous days of Russian sorties monitoring the Donald Cook were ignored. So why were two nonthreatening ones called a simulated attack?
The two Su-24s were armed with “electronic countermeasures, pods designed for jamming hostile gunnery and missile targeting systems,” Helmer explained. “(C)ommanders and their signals staff on board the Donald Cook” knew they weren’t threatened. They were being watched and warned.
Russian aircraft were deployed as a self-defense measure – to monitor close up what the Donald Cook and other US warships are up to, along with vessels from other countries like Poland.
STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." ( http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
EXHIBIT
The incident as reported on US media. (CBS This Morning).
“Nothing provocative about what we are doing.”—Pentagon mouthpiece
Comment by Patrice Greanville
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his CBS report (see below) is not one of the worst we have seen; in fact it packs more useful information than most, but it does leave a lot to be desired since it succeeds in conveying a manipulated version of the reality behind this event. As is customary for US journalists reporting in “us vs. them” mode, there is no historical context whatsoever for this report, as the context would quickly indict American actions and motives.
Thus, for starters, it ignores the longstanding American policy of encircling the Soviet Union and now Russia with hundreds of forward military bases and aggressive military alliances in all continents. Second, it makes no mention of the fact that the US, its puppet NATO, its coterie of russophobic Eastern European allies, assorted flunky states, and its official instrument, the US Navy, are conducting essentially provocations and joint military maneuvers in Russia’s own neighborhood, at her doorstep, an act that manages to be at once sanctimonious, insulting and arrogant, as if the Russians were doing the same in the Gulf of Mexico or a few miles off New York City or Washington, DC. (The incident took place very near Kaliningrad, Russia’s strategic enclave in the Baltic, surrounded by Washington’s friends in the region). We could go on, but you get the point. This kind of “news editing” is what causes the US public to remain utterly ignorant and confused about US actions abroad, not to mention their baleful implications. So, as usual, the real question with this report is: who’s provoking whom? CBS gives the wrong answer.
—Comment by P. Greanville
Russia defends warplanes flying “dangerously close” to U.S. ship
DAVE LINDORFF’S TAKE
Brinksmanship, but by Whom? Russia…or the US?
Hysterical Cold-War Style US Reporting as 2 Unarmed Russian Jets Buzz US Destroyer Sailing Near Russian Port
This political poster has it right.
Nowhere in the reports in the US was it mentioned that the Cook was itself engaging in provocative behavior.
The Baltic Sea is an international waterway, bordering the countries of Denmark, Germany, Poland, Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland and Sweden and as such, if the US wants to sail a military ship there, it has every right to do so. But honest reporting on this incident should have included that the Cook wasn’t just sailing around innocently in the open waters of the Baltic. It had moved to within a 70-mile radius of the Russian port enclave of Kaliningrad — an isolated and thus sensitive part of Russian territory located on the Baltic coast that is bounded by Lithuania and Poland and thus is separated from the rest of Russia. Kaliningrad is the site of a major Russian naval base, and is also home to 500,000 Russian people.
Here’s a map of Kaliningrad showing the 70-mile radius within which the USS Cook had positioned itself at the time of the multiple flybys by two Russian Su-24s (and where it was engaging in landing and takeoff exercises with Polish military helicopters.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he US reporting on this whole incident has been hysterical.
CNN’s Pentagon reporter said the jets were “demonstrating a simulated strafing run” and implied that it was dangerous because “if it had been a real strafing run, we wouldn’t have known it until it was too late.” Of course, Russia and the US are not at war, so why would Russia have strafed a US destroyer? The reporter didn’t say. Instead, he said the ship’s commander deserved “kudos” for keeping his cool and not loosing the ships anti-aircraft defenses on the two jets.
The Russian jets, it should be noted (but wasn’t in this report until late in the piece), were not armed, with no missiles mounted on the wings. The Cook, on the other hand, is armed not only with deadly defensive anti-aircraft weapons, but also with offensive (and potentially nuclear-tipped) Tomahawk cruise missiles, making its maneuvers in and around the Russian base and Russian territory anything but innocent.
Other US news reports were similarly breathless and one-sidedly jingoistic in their reporting about the encounter.
In fact, there was nothing dangerous about the incident at all except if the US ship’s crew had been foolish enough to respond to the harassment by shooting down the planes. (in truth, nobody on the US vessel seems to have been particularly anxious about the Russian jets zipping by them.)
A fairer reporting job might have speculated as to how US forces would have responded, had a Russian cruise-missile-armed frigate or destroyer approached within 70 miles of naval bases at Newport News, Virginia, or San Diego, or perhaps the Pensacoula Naval Air Station on the coast of Florida just east of Mobile in the Gulf of Mexico. See map of the region to understand to how near the USS Cook was to Kaliningrad when it was buzzed.
Under international maritime laws, a country can claim the waters within 12 miles of its coast to be “territorial waters,” and can exclude foreign ships within that distance, but when it comes to military bases, and countries that a country views as potentially rivals, such as the US and Russia or China, ships further off from a base are liable to be surveilled and maybe even harassed if they approach. I’m guessing if a Russian warship were to get within 70 miles of a US Naval installation, it would, like the USS Cook, find itself being buzzed by US Navy attack planes, or visited by US Coast Guard vessels.
Equivalent location in the USA
And remember, while US government officials keep referring to Russian aggression (falsely claiming, for example, that the Russian Army “invades” Ukraine and especially the erstwhile Ukrainian territory of Crimea, it has actually been the US that has been taking a very aggressive stance towards Russia. This has been true ever since the US backed a coup in Ukraine, which ousted the elected pro-Russian leader of that country and installed a fascist anti-Russian government that then launched a war against the Russian minority in Eastern Ukraine. The US lately has been moving offensive weaponry into Poland, Estonia and other countries bordering Russia in what can only be seen as threatening moves, while leading an embargo against Russia –itself an act of economic warfare.
It is in light of these aggressive US moves that the USS Cook’s incursion near Kaliningrad has to be seen, and also the Russian aerial response to it.
But that kind of reporting is absolutely absent from US corporate media reports on this incident, which instead simply parrot the Pentagon and State Department line and present it all as an example of Russian “brinksmanship.”
Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).
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