The New Cold War, episode MDXIII: The Financial Times on the 'expulsion of 8 Russians for spying'. (Revised)
Almost Marx scoffs!
Headline: Nato expels 8 Russians for spying
Sub-headline: Maximum size of Moscow delegation to Brussels headquarters halved as east-west relations deteriorate
https://www.ft.com/content/a3c24aea-8db8-44ad-bbc4-6acbb77a93da
The New Cold War reaches one of its many denouements! NATO had once outlived its usefulness with the fall of the Soviet Union. And the American Project of administering the ‘shock therapy’ of the Free Market, upon the misbegotten citizens of the once Enemy. Administered, after the election of Clinton, by Strobe Talbott, Jeffrey Sachs (now in a state of pathetic, comic denial) and one of his minions Zanny Minton Beddoes, now editor-in-chief of The Economist.
But the propaganda arm of NATO ,The Atlantic Council, has become a stepping stone for young aspirants, to enter the Foreign Policy Technocracy. No critics of that powerful coterie, will ever come from inside this hive of political conformists.
One very pressing question might be, how many operatives of the American National Security are employed by NATO. Or is that simply a naïve query , that fails to recognize NATO as just one more arm of American Imperialism. Born of the first Cold War, as an instrument to blunt/confront Soviet revanchism?
Although FDR and Churchill’s bargain with Stalin, is a fact, that can never be faced by respectable bourgeois commentators: posing as experts/technocrats in possession of a ‘knowledge’ not available to the ordinary reader?
Almost Marx
******************************************
Added October 7, 2021
This Financial Times essay by Tony Barber from April 29 2009 is revelatory of NATO’s expulsions of Russians as a regular occurrence?
Headline: Nato expels Russian envoys
Nato ordered the expulsion of two Russian diplomats on Wednesday in retaliation for a spy scandal in which a senior Estonian official was jailed for passing on top-level secrets about the western alliance to Moscow.
One of the expelled Russians was the son of Vladimir Chizhov, Moscow’s ambassador to the European Union. Both he and the other diplomat were attached to Russia’s mission to Nato and are believed to have worked undercover as intelligence agents, alliance sources said on Wednesday night.
Russia did not immediately react to Nato’s move. But the expulsions come at a sensitive time as the US and its allies try to rebuild relations with Moscow following last summer’s war between Russia and Georgia.
The move came as Nato on Wednesday held its first formal talks with Russia since the war.
Ambassadors of the 28 Nato member states met Russia’s envoy to the defence alliance in Brussels, resuming contacts that were frozen over Russia’s five-day war with Georgia last August.
James Appathurai, Nato spokesman, said disagreement continued over Georgia and on Nato’s plans to hold military exercises there next month. But he also said there appeared to be a “positive spirit of compromise” in discussions over the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.
The treaty limits the number of tanks and other military equipment stored between the Atlantic and Russia’s Ural mountains but Russia suspended its participation in 2007, saying Nato countries were flouting it.
Dmitry Rogozin, Russian envoy, declined to comment on the content of the talks on the treaty but said Nato was behaving like a “blind rhinoceros” as it refused to scrap the planned military exercises next month despite Russian protests.
The two expelled Russian diplomats were not directly involved in the Estonian spy affair. But Nato sources said the scandal had caused such damage to the alliance’s security that it had to deliver a hard response.
Herman Simm, the Estonian official, was convicted of treason in February and jailed for 12 years by an Estonian court for passing Nato and other defence and diplomatic secrets to Russia.
…
https://www.ft.com/content/39446224-3500-11de-940a-00144feabdc0#comments-anchor
These ‘expulsions’ are a matter politics, about the rise and fall of the tensions between Russia and America. But it’s like Old Cold War theatrics, made for the black & white 21 inch screens of 50’s, that look shopworn on presentation!
Almost Marx