By Jon Kelly
Vancouver, BC –Video of retired Canadian diplomat James Bissett’s appearance at the University of Ottawa revealed concerns that imperialist unilateralism through pre-emptive military strikes conducted by NATO on behalf of U.S. interests is fundamental to foreign and defense policy in an era where no visible peace movement stands in protest. The former ambassador to Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria offered personal first-hand testimony of history leading to the Euromaidan protests at an event titled “United Ukraine? The Euromaidan revolution and the Donbas rebellion in domestic and international perspectives” held with support of the university’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
In a taped lecture from early December James Bissett cited the 1992 “Defense Planning Guidance, FY 1994-1999” (aka the “Wolfowitz Doctrine”) as critical in understanding European history since the fall of the Berlin Wall. That document was first authored by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz and convicted perjurer Scooter Libby then later revised under reported close supervision by convicted war criminal/reported Satanist U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell.
The retired diplomat emphasized roles played by the breach of NATO’s treaty in Bosnia, U.S. arming of KLA terrorists, historic peacekeeping attempts of Russian President Vladimir Putin and NATO’s new mission as defined by President Bill Clinton, comprised of pre-emptive military strikes and interventions on a march of destruction leading to the front door of nuclear-armed Russia. Such exclusive critical commentary emerges in a time when Western anti-Putin propaganda continues in a seemingly unending crescendo of lies targeting a country whose Emergencies Ministry is responsible for sending a reported nearly 11,000 tons of relief aid to Donetsk and Lugansk since August 11th of this year.
The following is a transcript of former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria James Bissett’s speech to “United Ukraine? The Euromaidan revolution and the Donbas rebellion in domestic and international perspectives” held at the University of Ottawa December 4, 2014. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
“Thank you very much. I’m really delighted and pleased to be here today.
“I find the situation in Ukraine to be terribly tragic. You can see from the title of my speech today (or my talk) that I hold the U.S.-led NATO powers primarily responsible for what’s happening there. As the lady from Somalia said earlier there’s a pattern here. You’ve seen it not only in Ukraine but you’ve seen it in regime change often by force, if not by force by bribing and providing NGOs with money and so on to support the U.S. cause. Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan; whose been doing all of the interventions, whose been doing all the bombing?
“It hasn’t been Putin. It hasn’t been Russia. They’re held responsible for that, as was Gaddafi, as was Milosevic, as was a list of “bad guys.” When the U.S. calls you a “bad guy” then you’re a bad guy and out comes the propaganda. The tragedy of Ukraine is that it’s being destroyed. It’s not only Eastern Ukraine that probably will never be able to recover economically. It’s Ukraine itself. The big deal that the European Union offered Ukraine a year ago or so to become an associate member of the European Union, what did it mean?
“It didn’t mean one Euro dollar. It meant some sort of association and friendship. When it was countered by Putin with a $15B deal it’s little wonder that the Ukrainian president bought into that rather than the false promise by the EU.
“I’m finding it really sad and dreadful that Ukrainians were killed in this. It’s a totally unnecessary war. It’s on the hundredth anniversary of the First World War. You would think that we’d learned something from what happened in the first part of the twentieth century: two cataclysmic world wars, millions of people killed. Now we’re not even into fourteen years of the twenty-first century and we’re doing the same thing. It’s really a condemnation of our political leaders.
“What’s happening in Ukraine is what’s happened elsewhere right since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Americans, who had a wonderful opportunity of instituting a Pax Americana, where the United States with its life of liberty and pursuit of happiness could finally maybe prevail and they screwed it up. They didn’t do that.
“They didn’t offer Russia (that collapsed) and the other members of the Soviet Union one iota of help. After the Second World War we had the Marshall Plan that brought the Germans back into economic survival, the Japanese were forgiven. And what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed? Nothing. Not an ounce of aid was offered. And in fact what happened was a resurgence of American military power because when the Soviet Union collapsed people began to wonder “Why do we have NATO,” this powerful military machine in the middle of Europe?
“Expensive and totally unnecessary. Who was the enemy? They had to find an enemy.
“George Kennan, who was perhaps the most famous U.S. ambassador in Moscow for years and who was responsible for the containment policy that kept the Communists back, said in 1980, in the middle of the Cold War and I can quote it almost from memory, he wrote that should the Soviet Union drown beneath the waters of the ocean tomorrow, the United States would have to reconstitute it within three or four days, or the whole economy of the United States would collapse.
[Quote: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”]
“He kept writing until his death that the expansion of NATO eastward was a mistake; any attempt to keep Russia down was a foolish move. That’s of course what happened because when the Soviet Union collapsed NATO had to find a reason for existence and they found it with the breakup of Yugoslavia. I happened to be there. I saw, I witnessed this first-hand.
“Remember, I was an old Cold War warrior. I was proud of NATO. Canada’s foreign minister Louis St. Laurent played a major role in the formation of NATO. When the Europeans were deciding to have a defense pact, he persuaded the Europeans to invite the United States and Canada in the form of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This is critically important because Article 1 of the NATO treaty said (and again I can quote it) that NATO will never use or threaten to use force in the resolution of international disputes and will always act in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
[Article 1: “The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”]
“It became, in effect, the kind of military arm of the United Nations. That was an obstacle for American aggrandizement. They didn’t like Article 1. Article 1 prevented them from doing what they always wanted to do, having NATO at the forefront of many of their foreign policy objectives so it didn’t look as though America was doing these things. It looked like NATO was doing them.
“They broke Article 1 of the treaty starting in Bosnia where they had the bombing. They decided in Bosnia that they would support the Muslim cause there rather than the Serbian cause. I was there at the time there was a referendum in Bosnia headed by the Muslim leader [Alija Izetbegović, president of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1990-96)] who had joined up with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s, who was a fundamental Islamist (and he made no bones about it; he’d written a book about it: his “Mein Kampf”). [Possible reference to “Notes from Prison, 1983-1988”]
“He had a referendum. The referendum failed because the Serbian population, the Christian population didn’t vote for it at the time. He then signed an agreement with the Serb leader or the Croatian’s leader in Lisbon in the spring of 1992 that if Bosnia did separate there’d be three autonomous regions. That was signed in Lisbon.
[Source: “The Carrington–Cutileiro peace plan, named for its authors Lord Carrington and Portuguese ambassador José Cutileiro, resulted from the EC Peace Conference held in February 1992 in an attempt to prevent Bosnia-Herzegovina sliding into war. It proposed ethnic power-sharing on all administrative levels and the devolution of central government to local ethnic communities. However, all Bosnia-Herzegovina’s districts would be classified as Muslim, Serb or Croat under the plan, even where no ethnic majority was evident.]
“When he came back to Sarajevo after signing that my neighbor, who lived across the street from me, the U.S. ambassador decided that that was not what the Americans wanted, flew to Sarajevo and said to Izetbegović, “Why did you sign this stupid agreement? Why don’t you simply declare unilateral independence?” And Izetbegović said “If we do, we’ll have a civil war. There’s no way that Christian Serbs are going to live under Muslim rule. Warren Zimmermann, my neighbor, the ambassador said “Declare unilateral independence. We will support you, militarily if necessary.”
“What happened? A civil war; 200,000 people killed. Quite unnecessary but it was done. They later intervened in Kosovo. They decided that because the Europeans, France and Germany were beginning to think of maybe getting out of NATO and forming their own defensive organization the Americans decided we must move eastward. A good chunk of land was Kosovo, where there was trouble in Kosovo between the Albanian minority and the Serbian security forces. I notice one of the points upon this little document that I would challenge, “NATO’s Kosovo Operation: A Valid Excuse” and it says “In Kosovo there was an actual humanitarian crisis.”
“In fact there was no humanitarian crisis. The Americans armed and equipped the Kosovo Liberation Army, sent them back into Kosovo to assassinate Serbian mayors, shoot Serbian policemen, knowing that the Serbs would retaliate (which they did). There was fighting in Kosovo but there was no mass ethnic cleansing. All that took place after the NATO bombing of Kosovo. The U.N. has proven that. [Source: “KLA is still present in the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base list of terrorist groups, and is listed as an inactive terrorist organisation by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.”]
“Kosovo was important because that’s when the Americans broke the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Article 1. The Americans decided that they would bomb Serbia, a country that had no weapons of mass destruction, was not a threat to anyone except trying to put down an armed rebellion in their own country. And they bombed Serbia for 78 days and 78 nights. They did it in a violation of international law, a violation of Article 1 of the NATO treaty, of the Helsinki Accord and of the United Nations Charter.
“Who warned them not to do this? Putin. Putin warned them not to do this. And when later on, they persuaded the Albanians, after the Serbs had left Albania (ethnically cleansed I might add) they then asked for the Albanians to declare what? Unilateral independence. There was no referendum. They just said “Declare independence. We, the Americans, the United States and our allies and NATO will recognize your independence,“ which they did. Who warned them not to do that? Putin.
“Putin said, “You’re breaking international law. You’re opening a Pandora’s Box here so that any little country or region of a country can declare unilateral independence and you shouldn’t do it. And if you do do it, I’ve got a couple of places where I might want to do it.” He named Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria. That was done in March 1999 during the bombing of Kosovo. All of this I’m leading up to how it relates to Ukraine.
“On NATO’s 50th birthday party held in Washington, Bill Clinton was the guy (and his gang. I met some of them: Madeleine Albright, [United States Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke (2009-10)]. These were not in my opinion good people.)
“On the 50th anniversary of NATO’s birthday party they not only were bombing Serbia. By the way, they dropped cluster bombs on the marketplace in Niš on a Saturday afternoon where little old ladies were out buying their carrots. They couldn’t hit any of the military targets so they did a tremendous bombing campaign that went on for that length of time. People forget that but I don’t forget it because I was around then.
[Source: “On 7 May 1999, between the time of 11:30 and 11:40, a NATO attack was carried out with two containers of cluster bombs directed at Niš Airport, located at the end of the city. The bombs missed their target and fell near the city center. The bombs were scattered from the two containers and were carried by the wind and then fell in three locations in the central part of the city: The Pathology building next to the Medical Center of Niš in the south of the city, next to the building of “Banovina” including the main market, bus station next to the Niš Fortress and “12th February” Health Centre, parking of “Niš Express” near the Nišava River. A report from Human Rights Watch stated that 15 civilians were killed, with another 28 injured.”]
“In addition to that they broke their promise that they had made to Gorbachev [President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev (1990-91)] that if the Russians allowed a united Germany into NATO that then NATO would not expand eastward. In March 1999 not only did they bomb Serbia but at that 50th birthday party Billy Clinton announced a new role for NATO. That is NATO can now operate out of territory and it can bomb militarily or intervene militarily anywhere and wherever they want to do, with or without U.N. approval.
[Quote: “We’ve also reaffirmed our determination repeatedly to intensify our actions, military and economic, until we achieve our objectives in Kosovo … We cannot expect for people to stop being drawn back to old ways of organizing themselves, even profoundly destructive ways resting on ethnic and religious divisions, unless there is a far more powerful magnate out there before them.”]
“In addition to that, in the same month they let into NATO Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, breaking the promise to Gorbachev. Since then, as you know, they’ve got Russia completely encircled by the former members of the Soviet Union, none of them friendly with Russia (with good historical reasons) and they’re putting military bases there. The great prize for the Americans of course is Ukraine and it didn’t look as though they were going to get it until the Maidan [Euromaidan protests in Kiev marked by neo-nazi violence and sniper fire leading to overthrow of the democratically government].
“There’s a question about whether they actually instigated the uprising. I don’t think they necessarily did. I think initially it was a fed-up Ukrainian people who saw no hope for their country. They were tired, they were out of work, they moan for their kids and they started protesting and probably rightly so. But at that point the Americans saw an opportunity and stepped in. Victoria Nuland, whose the head of the European division of the State Department [Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs] flew into the Maidan. Senator McCain, the warlord who’ll fight anybody, he flew in there. Even our own foreign minister was there.
“They just used the Ukraine as a pawn. I don’t think they’re going to get away with it because they gave Putin a wonderful opportunity to get the Crimea back (which he did) and Russia is not to be played with militarily; they have the nuclear bomb. I was once in India trying to persuade the Indian government not to recognize Kosovo and complaining bitterly about what happened in Yugoslavia. An Indian military man asked if he could put a question to me and I said “Yes” and he said “There’s a big difference between India and Serbia, ambassador.”
“I said, “What’s that?” He said, “India has the bomb. Serbia does not.” Russia has the bomb. There is no way that Russia can allow Ukraine to become a member of NATO any more than they would allow Georgia to become a member of NATO. This is in their national interest. Certainly the Americans knew what was going to happen when Khrushchev was going to put missiles in Cuba [Former First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis]. Of course they wouldn’t allow it and rightly so.
“The future for Ukraine is not a happy one but it’s a sad and tragic thing that they’re killing each other because they’re simply a pawn in a much bigger game. It’s not going to be [President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko] who decides to stop the fighting. It’s going to be Obama and I’m not sure Obama cares. I’m not sure he even knows where Ukraine is and that’s the problem. Republicans are more war-like than the Democrats so the situation in the future is not a very healthy or happy one.
“What’s the origin of this American passion to rule the world? It starts again in 1992. The U.S. had a defense planning document. It’s a very critical document and it explains a great deal of all the things that will happen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. [Download PDF: “Defense Planning Guidance, FY 1994-1999”]
“I’m going to read a bit of it. It was in 1992. The Defense Planning document envisaged the U.S.A. as the world’s strongman dominating every other country and locking down the Middle East oil supplies for its own use. That was one of its primary objectives. The other objective was to prevent the rise of any global power from dominating a region whose resources would generate a global power to rival the United States. The document refers to the former Soviet Union and the danger that Russia might one day again aspire to challenge U.S. hegemony in Europe and calls for a unilateral U.S. defense guarantee of Eastern Europe in cooperation with other NATO allies.
“The Planning document explains a great deal about what happened since then and they’re not stopping it. Ukraine is simply another example. I think this time they’ve run into something that they’re not going to be able to resolve very easily. But how are we going to stop it? Interestingly enough there’s no peace movement any more in the United States or in Canada or anywhere. It’s a shame. Look at the Vietnam War, the demonstrations, people out on the streets saying “Come on, stop this killing. Let’s get down to talking.” And that’s gone by the board. It’s unfortunate.”
Recommended Reading
Maidan Conspiracy Redux: British black ops in Kiev sniper attacks
Cheney’s ‘Kiss of Shame’: A satanic torture conspiracy revealed
CIA Torture: American Heroes or Sadistic Psychopaths? You Decide!
‘Planet Jonestown’ reveals drone warrior’s mind control secrets
MH370: CIA front Inmarsat’s SIGNINT Iran nuclear missile secrets revealed
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