​US demonizes Russia to assert hegemony in face of ‘credible threat’

The US sees Russia as a credible threat, therefore Washington has unleashed a demonizing PR campaign against Moscow which, however is acting in a statesman-like manner, trying to avoid escalation of tensions, former MI5 agent Annie Machon told RT.

RT:Mikhail Gorbachev says we are on the brink of a new Cold War. Where’s the frontline this time and what are the weapons of choice?

Annie Machon: I think there will be a variety of weapons and probably the most pungent will be the information technology that we have now. We are already seeing the use of the Internet to try to attack each other’s countries, each other’s infrastructures potentially. So that would be the new front line.

Geographically of course the front line has been moved greatly since the fall of the Berlin Wall back in 1989 when NATO finished at West Germany. And when the reunification happened, NATO promised and the US promised to Gorbachev that it would not move one inch further East, after the reunification of Germany. That would be it.

And yet of course since then we have seen 12 other countries join NATO. So the front line is now including the Baltic States and Poland, and there is even talks of trying to even include Ukraine and Georgia within NATO. So the front is now hedging into Russia at the moment.

RT:NATO has been crying foul in recent weeks about Russian military planes flying in international airspace. Why's the US-led alliance so worried about this?

AM: I think they are trying to ramp up any pretext to crack down on Russia’s success, actually. There seems to be a sort of an overwhelming narrative within the Western media, particularly coming out of the US and parroted across other European countries, that Russia is a big, bad enemy that they have an expansionist plan to go back to the Soviet borders. And this is where we see the lies being told of what is going on in Ukraine, being paddled immediately after thing like the crash of MH17, before any evidence has been gathered.

So I think it is very useful for the US to make a new bogeyman out of Russia and it also suits there geo strategic purposes, particularly with trade. They are trying to break the trust and the trade routes between Russia and Europe for the benefits of the US markets and its allies in the Middle East.

RT:Are we seeing a new arms race now and can any country really compete with the US in that sense?

AM: Well I think certain countries can certainly give them a bloody nose, there is no doubt about that. Russia being one of them, China being the other. And in fact the whole BRICS configuration of countries now are rising to challenge the US hegemony on many, many fronts, not just the weapons but also financially. Trying to break away from this sort of dollar monopoly and this sort of strangle hold that US financial institutions have across the rest of the world. So I think the way Russia is being demonized now particularly by the US is a way of trying to assert the US power, assert its influence and also to see off a competitor.

When Russia was broken after the fall of the Soviet empire, we did not see the vilification going on in the media. The fact that US is now doing that to such a great extent, and fabricating, and telling lies about what Russian intentions are in Ukraine, for example, shows that the US does see Russia as a credible threat these days, particularly since its allied with Brazil, and India, and Iran and China particularly.

And having said that, of course, if you look at the facts of what is going on, Russia has played a very restrained, a very statesman-like game in a number of international interventions, most notably with Syria and the issue of chemical weapons destruction. And it seems to be that Russia is statesman-like, calm and peacemaking country, ironically in the face of US warmongering.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.