By Liudmila Chernova<\/p>\n
The speech of the US Vice President Joe Biden can backfire on Washington, as it embarrasses the European Union members and demonstrates the US has intimidated them, Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, believes.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the possible consequences is that his speech embarrasses European governments by showing that Europe is Washington\u2019s vassal,\u201d Roberts told RIA Novosti on Friday. \u201cThe other is that by pressing Europeans to act against their own interests, Washington might have been too much of a bully and hurt its future influence in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n
US Vice President said Thursday that the United States and US President Barack Obama, in particular, had forced the European Union members to \u201ctake economic hits to impose cost\u201d on Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is true that they did not want to do that. But again, it was America\u2019s leadership and the President of the United States insisting,\u201d Biden noted, speaking at Harvard University\u2019s Kennedy School of Government.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a known fact that Western European peoples and business interests, and even the governments themselves oppose Washington\u2019s sanctions on Russia,\u201d Roberts noted, underlining that many Europeans know full well that Russia is not responsible for the trouble in Ukraine. \u201cThey know that the cause is Washington\u2019s use of the CIA and the NGOs established by the National Endowment for Democracy and other US \u201cdemocracy groups\u201d to orchestrate protests and use the protests to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWashington forced its European vassal states to impose sanctions on Russia,\u201d the former assistant Secretary of the Treasury said, adding that one of the US aims was to portray Russia, not Washington, as the government that is interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine and must be punished.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy punishing Russia, the sanctions support Washington\u2019s propaganda that it is Russia that is the aggressor,\u201d he asserted. \u201cThis image also serves to boost the budgets of Washington\u2019s military and security complex in order to defend NATO countries against the alleged \u201cRussian threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another aim of the sanctions is to break up Europe\u2019s economic and political relationships with Russia, according to Roberts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWashington is afraid that growing relationships between Europe and Russia will loosen Washington\u2019s hold on Europe. European countries do not have independent foreign policies, and Washington wants to keep it that way,\u201d Roberts stated.<\/p>\n
In addition, Roberts thinks its goal was also to answer the Republicans\u2019 claims that Obama had taken a weak position in foreign policy and toward Russia, as Biden\u2019s speech comes one month before the November general elections in the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cBiden emphasized that Obama was strong and forced Europe to take action against Europe\u2019s own interests. In other words, Obama gives orders to Europe just as Stalin gave orders to the Warsaw Pact,\u201d former assistant Secretary of the Treasury said. \u201cObama, like Stalin, is a man of steel. The speech is a domestic political message designed to neutralize Republican criticisms of the Democrats\u2019 foreign policy,\u201d Roberts explained.<\/p>\n
Over the past few months, the United States has introduced several rounds of economic sanctions against Russia, blaming Moscow for meddling in Ukraine\u2019s internal affairs \u2013 claims that Russia has repeatedly denied. The EU and US allies have followed in Washington\u2019s footsteps, drawing up their own blacklists.<\/p>\n
In August Moscow responded to western sanctions, implementing a one-year ban on certain food imports from the European Union, the United States, Australia, Canada and Norway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Liudmila Chernova The speech of the US Vice President Joe Biden can backfire on Washington, as it embarrasses the European Union members and demonstrates the US has intimidated them, Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, believes. \u201cOne of the possible consequences is that his speech embarrasses European governments by showing that … Continue reading “Biden\u2019s speech might backfire on Washington”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10,123],"tags":[593,8419,12268,727],"class_list":["post-16270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","category-world","tag-barack-obama","tag-joe-biden","tag-paul-craig-roberts","tag-washington"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16271,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16270\/revisions\/16271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}