Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity

There was a drastic refocus by US President Barack Obama away from being anti-jihadist and toward being anti-Russian, after his first Presidential term ended and as soon as his second Presidential term began; but the signs that Obama presented during his re-election campaign in 2012 were in exactly the opposite direction – that he was going to reduce, not increase, American armaments against Russia.

A major reason why the American people re-elected US President Barack Obama, instead of elected a new President Mitt Romney, was Romney’s having said of Russia, on 26 March 2012,

Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe. They – they fight every cause for the world’s worst actors. … Russia is the – the geopolitical foe.

Not just “a” geopolitical foe, but “the” geopolitical foe.” (Wow! In a world with growing jihadist movements, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS?)

Obama responded to that at the re-election campaign’s end, by springing this upon Romney during a debate, on 22 October 2012:

Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that Al Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaida; you said Russia. In the 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.

Obama’s campaign had very successfully presented himself as having killed Osama bin Laden and many other Al Qaeda leaders; and, though no polling has been done on whether the American public considered jihadists (fundamentalist-extremist Islamists who seek a global “Caliphate”) to be “our number one geopolitical foe,” or Russia to be that instead, the poor polling that has been done relating to that matter, suggests the majority of Americans would have selected “jihadists,” not “Russia,” as being “our number one geopolitical foe”; and, in the final analysis, the 2012 Presidential contest exit polls did show Obama (who was publicly less hostile toward Russia than Romney and the Republicans were) with a 42% to 36% advantage over Romney on the national-security question: “Who Do You Trust To Handle International Crisis?” The exit polls showed Obama winning the total vote by around 50% to 48%; so, “International Crisis” went for Obama, and against Romney, considerably more than did the overall exit-polled Presidential vote, and this at least suggests that Obama not Romney gained from this public disagreement over “our number one geopolitical foe.”

Regarding the incident on 26 March 2012, when Obama spoke with Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev at the South Korean “Nuclear Security Summit”, Politifact reported:

In March 2012, at a summit in South Korea, Obama was caught in a “hot mic” incident. Without realizing he could be overheard, Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more ability to negotiate with the Russians about missile defense after the November election.

“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him [the incoming President Putin] to give me space,”Obama was heard telling Medvedev, apparently referring to incoming Russian president Vladi­mir Putin.

“Yeah, I understand,”Medvedev replied.

Obama interjected, saying, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”

So: Obama was telling Putin there, through Medvedev, that his next Administration would soften its stand on America’s installing in eastern Europe, near and even on Russia’s borders, missiles that are designed to disable Russia’s ability to retaliate against a US nuclear first-strike – the US ABM or anti-ballistic-missile system.

Obama wasn’t lying only to America’s voters; he was shown there privately lying to Putin, by indicating to Medvedev that instead of becoming more aggressive (by his planned ABMs) against Russia in a second term, he’d become less aggressive (by negotiating with Putin about the matter – as you can see there, the nub of it was George Herbert Walker Bush’s lie to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990).

The missile system to disable Russia’s retaliatory force is extremely aggressive (the termination of the nuclear balance – called “Mutually Assured Destruction,” or MAD – replacing that by nuclear weapons as instruments of conquest), and Putin had been constantly making clear that he wouldn’t accept it without hiking Russia’s armaments so as to counter it, if Obama goes forward with it.

Obama’s double-lie there – both to Americans in public, and to Putin in private – was as vicious as can possibly be imagined, because it could produce a nuclear war, which is something that neither the American people want, nor the Russian people want, nor Vladimir Putin wants, even if Barack Obama might (and he’s certainly playing a bold game of poker over it, which is the most vicious part of this entire affair).

But actually, Obama’s lie was even worse than this, because, from the very moment when he entered the White House in 2009, he already was hoping to invade Syria so as to eliminate Russia’s ally there, Bashar al-Assad. And, furthermore, Obama at the very start of his second term began preparations to overthrow another key Russian ally, the democratically elected President of Russia’s next-door neighbor Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. The coup in Ukraine started being implemented on 1 March 2013, which was well before the excuse for it (Yanukovych’s 20 November 2013 turn-down of Ukrainian membership in the EU) had even occurred; so, the lie that Obama’s anti-Russian sanctions are because Russia accepted Crimea’s return to Russia, after Obama actually stole Ukraine from its former Russian alliance, after Yanukovych rejected the EU’s offer to sell, to Ukraine, EU membership for a cost of $160 billion to be borne solely by Ukrainians, after Obama had set all of that up almost immediately after his second term began, is actually a string of lies by Obama about what he was doing and about what Putin was doing, and about what it all meant – and means.

And then, when Obama did spring his coup, in February 2014, which was an extremely violent coup, it was very reasonably seen to be a dangerous threat to the regions of Ukraine (Crimea and Donbass) that had voted over 75% for the man whom Obama had just overthrown, and they seceded in Crimea and in Donbass, because not only of the very real threat (and the Obama-regime’s ethnic-cleansing campaign against Donbass), but because they saw no legitimacy in their being ruled by their enemies, who are fake proponents of ‘democracy’, but actually aspiring global dictators.

Does there exist any lying by Donald Trump which trumps that? I have never been a Republican, but I certainly won’t vote for Hillary Clinton, who, in all details, has been similar to Obama on each of these matters, only even more reckless about her aggression than Obama has been – she was the Administration’s “super-hawk”.

On 9 January 2012, the geostrategist F. William Engdahl presented relevant immediate background for Obama’s lie asserting his alleged disagreement with Romney about Russia, when Engdahl headlined “Why Washington Wants ‘Finito’ with Putin”, and he opened (and he was one of the first Westerners to have read correctly the tea leaves on this):

“Washington clearly wants ‘finito’ with Russia’s Putin as in basta! or as they said in Egypt last spring, Kefaya – enough! Hillary Clinton and friends have apparently decided Russia’s prospective next president, Vladimir Putin, is a major obstacle to their plans. Few however understand why.

Russia today, in tandem with China and to a significant degree Iran, form the spine, however shaky, of the only effective global axis of resistance to a world dominated by one sole superpower [to clarify: dominated by US-based international corporations].

On December 8 several days after election results for Russia’s parliamentary elections were announced, showing a sharp drop in popularity for Prime Minister Putin’s United Russia party, Putin accused the United States and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fueling the Russian opposition protesters and their election protests. Putin stated, “The (US) Secretary of State was quick to evaluate the elections, saying that they are unfair and unjust even before she received materials from the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the OSCE international election monitors-w.e.) observers.”

Obama’s hostility against Russia, and his reasons for it, were known to his targets, but in America’s ‘democracy’, were not only kept secret from the electorate, but Obama blatantly lied to them about the matter, and he won re-election on the basis of lies such as this – lies such as his calling Romney on ugly designs that Obama too (though secretly) held.

It’s not enough for America’s voracious aristocracy to control their own country; they’re determined to control all others, regardless of how much bloodshed and misery (all otherwise entirely unnecessary, including in Libya – which, likewise, under Gaddafi, had been friendly toward Russia) they’re creating in the process. And that’s what the most vicious lying is really all about: to hide their psychopathic intent, and their fundamental ugliness, as they go about their dirty-work.

rinf.com