President-elect Donald Trump may want to make a deal with Russia, award-winning journalist John Pilger told RT, adding that the “US intelligence and national security monolith is pointed towards war.”

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“It seems that he [Donald Trump] wants to make a deal with Russia, it makes sense from everyone’s point of view,” Pilger told RT’s Rory Suchet during a lengthy interview. “There is a great pressure on him not to do it”.

The US president now has “enormous military power,” noted Pilger. Trump is currently under pressure from fellow Republicans calling for tougher sanctions against Russia and those standing for softening rhetoric towards Moscow.

“The US’ biggest business is war. Lockheed Martin and all other major armament companies have a great halt on the US administration, on the US Congress. The so-called intelligence community and national security monolith is pointed towards war.”

The ultimate ambition of ‘Washington Hawks’ is regime change in Russia – “to dismember the Russian Federation,” according to the veteran journalist. He reminded about interventions US conducted since the end of the WWII against numerous nations.

“If Trump is going to drawback from that, that’s very good news. The US usually only attack defenseless countries. They rarely attack countries that can stand up for themselves.”

That’s why “this reckless provocation” on the western borders with Russia and in the Asia Pacific against China is “slightly unusual,” as it’s taking things up to “another level of risks and provocation,” he added.

Pilger was referring to the NATO deployment in Eastern Europe. Earlier in January, some 2,800 pieces of military hardware and 4,000 troops arrived at the German port of Bremerhaven to be transferred to various NATO bases.

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“NATO is a war-making machine, it’s an American operation. Why is it doing this? I think there is a real strategic extremism in the US.” And the “prize in this operation” is Russia, he concluded, adding that such a prize was almost won in the times of Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999), the first Russian president to serve after the fall of the Soviet Union.

“And what really has been upsetting in the US is that Russia is again independent, and that’s intolerable.”

Pilger called outgoing US leader Barack Obama “one of the most violent presidents.”

“He initiated a worldwide terrorist campaign with hellfire [air-to-surface] missiles being fired by drones at so-called terrorists certainly at weddings and funerals,” Pilger said, referring to numerous incidents when US missiles targeted civilians during their campaign in the Middle East.

The European Parliament “came up with good liberal initiatives” long ago, but now it has merely become an “echo chamber of the US,” according to Pilger.

“Much of Europe has … become a place of financial extremism, central banks that trash small members like Greece,” he added.