"The Russian people should definitely brace themselves for a further buildup of NATO and so-called peace-loving Japanese military threats on their borders," John Bosnitch, a Belgrade-based Canadian political consultant and journalist told Sputnik.
Commenting on Donald Trump's 2019 budget, which envisages an increase in military spending, the specialist stressed that the current US-led war preparations resembles nothing less than "the immense US/NATO politico-economic initiative called 'Star Wars' in the 1980s that required parallel defensive expenditures by the Soviet Union."
The US' 2019 budget requests more than $6.3 billion for the Pentagon's European Deterrence Initiative (EDI) "to better counter Russian coercion and deter Russian aggression in the region."
"Washington's deep state is hoping to repeat the bankrupting of the Soviet Union by today bankrupting Russia through forced defense spending," Bosnitch underscored. "The Pentagon is merely a paid worker in this aggressive policy… it actually is not initiated by the Pentagon but by the ultra-rich oligarchs who dominate America through their monopoly of banks and production resources."
However, the journalist believes that "a continuous international media focus on NATO's saber-rattling at Russia's borders can undermine the Western militarists' push for armed conflict."
Why US War Planners are Boosting Military Aid to Kiev
Referring to the US budget's proposal to allocate "$250 million to help Ukraine protect its territorial sovereignty," the Canadian political consultant pointed out that "this publicly announced US military spending of a quarter of a billion dollars to support the illegal coup regime in Kiev is only the tip of the iceberg."
"US intelligence services and other arms of the US Empire have admitted spending billions to stage the coup against the elected government of Ukraine," Bosnitch said. "That they are now moving into openly financing lethal arms for Kiev means US deep-state planners realize that their effort to destroy Russia via fake 'color revolutions' has finally failed. That is a good thing."
Still, the journalist warned against possible aberrations, stressing that one "should not confuse the actions of the US military-industrial complex with the Trump administration which came to power trying to campaign against the long US history of 'wealth through aggressive war'."
Although Donald Trump assumed the presidency, he de facto remains "a captive prisoner of the US military-industrial oligarchs, locked up like a canary in a golden cage called the 'White House'," Bosnitch noted.
According to the specialist, "the banksters and oligarchs who make their money through outrageously overpriced arms sales have not accepted that their warmonger candidate Hillary Clinton was defeated."
"They continue to try to use their wholly owned lying mainstream media to undermine President Trump and turn the American people against their own elected leader," he pointed out.
New Wars in Europe, Asia Pacific are Probable
Bosnitch believes that "there can be no doubt that the focus on weapons spending is directly aimed at preparing for new wars in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region."
"I was working as a frontline war reporter here in Belgrade in 1999 when Washington's deep state led NATO into a wholly fabricated war of aggression against the former Yugoslavia," the journalist recalled. "Few believed that it would really happen, but the fact is that once US taxpayers' money has been spent on weapons, those weapons need to be used in order for the megalo-oligarchs of America to keep on making more and bigger profits."
According to Bosnitch, "the fundamental problem with the US war-economy syndrome is that prosperity in America continues to depend on waging aggressive wars, regardless of the fact that Donald Trump pledged to focus on repairing America itself."
US war planners and their wealthy backers gain far more profit from "destroying other countries, occupying them, and plundering them," than from improving the daily lives of the American people, he underscored.
The Danger of Nuclear War Elevated to a New Level of Likelihood
However, the US military buildup cannot last forever without prompting blowback: "The out-of-control US military-industrial deep state has created new enemies all around the planet and it is inevitable that they will team up to resist invasion and bombing in the future," the political consultant noted.
Washington's National Security Strategy and the new nuclear doctrine specifically outline Russia and China as America's number one "rivals," which potentially could trigger the two to form a full-fledged military alliance in the future.
Citing the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, Bosnitch noted that although the US has never rejected the first use of nuclear weapons, "what is new in today's situation is that they now threaten to use nuclear weapons against 'cyber threats in the form of computer hacking,' which elevates the danger of nuclear war to a new and never-before imagined level of likelihood."
"This latest US threat definitely increases the pressure on Russia to be able to offer a credible nuclear-response that would make a US first-strike unthinkable in terms of having any possibility of being able to wipe Russia out in a blitzkrieg-style surprise attack," the political consultant warned.
"In other words, there is a growing chance that multiple countries, not only China and Russia, might respond together in mutual defense against an unprovoked US attack on another victim country like Yugoslavia, Syria or Libya," Bosnitch highlighted.
Why Any Conflict Between Superpowers Will Translate Into a Multi-Front War
The journalist continued that while making "long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia" the "principal priority" for the US Department of Defense (DOD), US war planners should take into account that "it is unlikely now that a major war between superpowers could be anything other than a multi-front war."
He remarked that currently Russia and China are "peacefully challenging US domination via BRICS, the cooperation forum that offers new politico-economic options to independence-minded states."
Drawing parallels with the Second World War, the journalist recalled that Adolf Hitler "suffered the consequences of engaging in two-front war." While the US is capable of waging two separate military campaigns, it could do it only for a limited period of time, he emphasized.
However, "the vast majority of Americans are certainly not ready to die for the aim of further enriching the multi-billionaire owners of their country's aggressive war machine, so freedom of speech and the media will need to be crushed, step by step, inside the US in order to move forward to war," the Canadian political consultant concluded.
The views and opinions expressed by John Bosnitch, Ekaterina Blinova are those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
