Munich gathering descends into Russia-bashing nonsense & warmongering
Finian Cunningham
RT.com
20 Feb, 2018
For an event designed to address real global security issues, the Munich Security Conference has shown itself to be a useless talking shop. But it does add more propaganda fodder for Russia-bashing.
How ironic. A forum proclaiming to uphold global security is acting like a bullhorn for war.
The release on Friday of the US Department of Justice’s indictment of 13 Russian citizens for alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election went on to dominate the conference being held in Munich over the weekend.
Rather than being a peripheral matter owing to its dubious claims, the Washington hobby horse of “Russian meddling” was given free rein in Munich. Instead of parsing the latest Russophobia with intelligent skepticism, the conference added fuel to the bonfire of warmongering.
The annual gathering in the Bavarian capital is supposed to be an occasion when international political, military and intelligence leaders gather to discuss pressing security issues. The pro-NATO bias of the 54th Munich Security Conference (MSC) – never too disguised at best of times – was this year openly brandished.
A flurry of speakers eagerly took the latest US indictments at face value and cited them as “evidence” of Russian subversion and cyber warfare against Western democracies.
We should expect no less invective impugning Russia from the likes of NATO civilian chief Jens Stoltenberg, or Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko, as well as US National Security Advisor General HR McMaster. But even German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel in his address to the conference accused Russia (and China) of trying to “undermine” unity within the European Union.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov weathered the anti-Russia barrage by pointing out that the latest US indictments alleging Kremlin interference in American politics are yet more evidence-free assertions, which amount to nothing but “blather.”
Sure enough, the 37-page charge sheet issued by the DOJ probe headed up by special counsel Robert Mueller is scant in incriminating details, heavy on innuendo, as usual, and certainly bereft of any credible link to Kremlin involvement in meddling with the US presidential election.
For this superficial and tenuous case to be held up by American politicians as “an act of war” by Russia on the United States is ludicrous. Insanity has indeed taken hold of mainstream American discourse.
One would think that maybe the Munich conference would be able to address global security issues objectively and professionally. No. It afforded its proceedings at the weekend to amplify the Russophobia raging in the US media over the spurious ‘Russiagate’ affair. At a time, too, when many alternative rational observers in the US and Europe are able to perceive that the Russiagate narrative is collapsing from lack of evidence.
Arguably, over its 54 years of convening in Munich, the only time that the MSC became enlivened with a dose of geopolitical reality was when Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a blistering landmark speech back in 2007. Putin did not hold back any rhetorical punches then, propounding a withering criticism of Washington and its NATO allies for shattering international law and security through illegal military interventions around the world.
In the 11 years since Putin’s seminal address, the international disorder has vindicated the Russian leader’s prognosis. It has become even more frayed from US and NATO’s unbridled use of military force, overtly and covertly, to pursue regime change and other criminal intrigues.
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