Mainstream US politicians trapped in Cold War mentality: Scholar

The mainstream US politicians who cast Russian President Vladimir Putin as a villain are trapped in the Cold War mentality, an American scholar and political analyst says.

In an interview with Press TV on Tuesday, Dennis Etler, professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in California, said both President Barack Obama and Republican White House contender Jeb Bush are lying about the Russian leader.

Professor Etler made the remarks when asked to comment on a statement by Bush, who in a burst of anti-Russian rhetoric on Sunday, tried to stigmatize GOP frontrunner Donald Trump as soft on Putin.

“Putin is organized to challenge the United States across the world now. He views his success by pushing us back. We’re losing influence around the world and Putin is gaining influence,” Bush said.

“He’s not an ally. He’s a dictator. He’s a bully,” declared the former Florida governor, adding that the Russian president admires strength and the United States should demonstrate strength to counter him in the global arena.

Professor Etler said, “US political narratives are purely partisan and have no basis in reality. According to Obama, Russia is totally isolated and all their efforts will come to naught, while according to Jeb Bush, Putin is on a roll and Russia's influence is superseding that of the US. You can't have it both ways.”

US wants to extend global hegemony

“What's really going on is that the US under both parties continues to try, by all means possible, to maintain and extend its global hegemony, while those countries that have their independence and autonomy are trying to retain it in the face of US expansionism,” Etler said.

“The US is not content to dominate the world it wants to control it and stop any other country or group of countries from challenging its power either regionally or globally. In order to do this the US sets traps around the world and goads nations to fall into them,” he added.

“To maintain its own security and defenses Russia had no alternative but to intervene in neighboring Ukraine and China likewise needs to assert itself in the South China Sea in response to the US' provocative ‘Asian Pivot,’” the analyst pointed out.

“In both instances the US can then attempt to portray itself as the guardian of ‘peace and freedom’ and enlist its allies in isolating and destabilizing those countries it deems to be a threat to its continued hegemony,” he noted.

“When this strategy fails as has occurred in Syria where Russian intervention in support of the legitimate government has caught the US off guard, domestic political discord results,” he stated.

“Thus Obama tries to maintain his administration's credibility by gloating about how isolated Russia is due to the sanctions that the US has forced upon it, even though Russia has found support from those nations that feel threatened by US ambitions, in particular China,” he observed.

“Jeb Bush and others in the opposition will however try to portray the resistance to US power projection as aggressive rather than defensive in nature and cast the international situation as one in which US power is being challenged and diminished. Both sides are being demagogic in their portrayal of the situation to suit their opposing partisan needs,” the academic continued.

Both Obama and Bush lying about Putin

Professor Etler said, “Both Obama and Bush are united however in typecasting Putin as a heavy, a thug and a dictator who can't be trusted and must be throttled. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Putin in standing up to protect Russia's national interests and security has garnered the overwhelming support of the Russian people and the freedom and justice loving people of the world.”

“But it is impossible to say or acknowledge that in the heavily censored, propagandistic US media. When an outsider like Donald Trump or Ron Paul suggests that Putin is a strong, intelligent and powerful leader they are immediately castigated and ridiculed as naive or marginalized as political mavericks,” he stated.

“But more and more people in the US are beginning to see through the miasma of US foreign policy and see it for what it is, the attempt by the US to impose its will on any country that opposes it,” the commentator noted.  

US would benefit from world at peace

Professor Etler said “the war and the destruction that it entails are not in the interests of the US as a nation or a people. It only benefits the power elites in both parties that rule on behalf of the military profiteers and money-lenders.”

“The US and its people would truly benefit from a world at peace, in which all nations are treated equally, based on the UN Charter which was originally founded to promote peace, stability and global development, not instability, war and the destruction that results in failed states and the spread of terrorism,” he said.

“Obama and Bush are hence flip sides of the same coin. Their narratives are interchangeable, depending on which party holds power. Anyone, even a buffoon like Donald Trump, who sees the truth behind the false bravado of an Obama or the equally false alarmism of a Bush is immediately attacked and ostracized as a political outsider beyond the pale of acceptable political discourse,” the scholar concluded. 

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk