TEHRAN – A geopolitical analyst says that NATO has no answer for Russia’s hypersonic missiles which can nullify NATO air capability.

“The problem is that NATO has no answer for Russia’s now deployed hypersonic missiles which, for all intents and purposes, nullifies NATO air capability in not only Eastern Europe but also in the whole of the Mediterranean,” Tom Luongo tells the Tehran Times.

Noting that “in the near term, they (Europeans) wanted Nordstream 2 completed and some guarantees from Putin that gas would also still flow through Ukraine,” Luongo argues that hawks within NATO and U.S. neoconservatives try to destabilize Russia’s neighbors.

“The hawks within NATO and U.S. neoconservatives, like Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and personally in charge of U.S. policy in Eastern Europe still believe they can destabilize Russia’s neighbors like Belarus, Armenia and Georgia to keep Russia distracted and get Putin to back down in the Middle East (West Asia).”

Following is the text of the interview:

Q: How do you see U.S.-Russia ties under the Biden presidency?

A: I wouldn’t have expected much change from Biden to Trump since I saw much of Trump’s policies towards Russia driven by policy inertia coming from within the U.S. diplomatic and military bureaucracy.  Until there is a generational shift in personnel in those institutions, we shouldn’t expect much in terms of a shift in policy.  The Biden Administration is an extension of the Obama administration and it was under Obama that U.S.-Russian relations began to sour badly after Putin stopped the EU/NATO takeover of Ukraine.

That said, it’s clear that the recent summit between Putin and Biden changed the nature of the relationship because there is no solution to Ukraine that doesn’t involve a kinetic war NATO can’t win and Europe doesn’t want to spill out into a wider conflict.  

So, now it looks to me that Europe wants better relations with Russia and Biden was there to negotiate a face-saving exit from Ukraine while pivoting its resources to focus more attention on China.  U.S.-Russian relations won’t become anything close to good, but they won’t get any worse from here.

Q: Russia says it chases the British destroyer out of Crimea waters with warning shots. What are the implications of this development?

A: There are a lot of implications from this incident.  The first is that it is clear there are forces within both the U.S. and British military-foreign policy establishment who are upset with any kind of rapprochement between Europe and Russia.  For that matter, there are a lot of EU members who are not happy about this either.   

So, on the one hand, NATO’s bluff was called over to start a hot war in Ukraine and on the other Biden is forming the so-called Bucharest 9 to act as the tip of the European spear to keep pressure on Russia from taking complete control over the Black Sea.  Old habits die hard and the oligarchs. I like to call The Davos Crowd still want to maintain pressure on Russia without actually getting into a shooting war.  But Putin is fully aware of this and, if his recent statements are any indication, he is, at best, amused by these impotent shows of force from fading powers like the UK.

Moreover, the UK is being hung out as the inconsolable child while Europe begins distancing themselves from such behavior to improve their image on the world stage.  The biggest implication here is that the U.S. under Biden and the EU are united in making the British look like the aggressors.

Q: Do you think the EU can approach Russia under U.S. pressure?

A: They already are.  In my mind, it was Davos and the EU who put the call into Biden to sue for a tenuous peace with Russia.  Biden called for the summit.  It was strong influence by Davos that stage-managed the U.S. election to overthrow Trump and install Biden.  So, watch what happens between Russia and the EU from that perspective and you can clearly see Biden doing whatever it is that Europe wants. 

And in the near term, they wanted Nordstream 2 completed and some guarantees from Putin that gas would also still flow through Ukraine.  The hawks within NATO and U.S. neoconservatives, like Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and personally in charge of U.S. policy in Eastern Europe still believe they can destabilize Russia’s neighbors like Belarus, Armenia and Georgia to keep Russia distracted and get Putin to back down in the Middle East (West Asia), but so far they have failed at every turn, other than getting Nikol Pashinyan miraculously re-elected in Armenia. 

That situation will not, however, last long either.  

Q: How does Russia see NATO and its presence near itself? What are the main benefits of NATO for its members and the rest of the world?

A: NATO is Russia’s biggest threat.  NATO has made this abundantly clear.  Whether they do this simply to secure their annual budget or because of some deep-seated animus towards Russia is open to debate.  I think it’s a toxic combination of both, to be honest.  
The problem is that NATO has no answer for Russia’s now deployed hypersonic missiles which, for all intents and purposes, nullifies NATO air capability in not only Eastern Europe but also in the whole of the Mediterranean. Now that Russia has deployed Kinzhal-capable SU-31k’s to Syria.

The main function of NATO at this point is to be the military arm of the European Union and the transnational globalists (The Davos Crowd) that control it.  Under Biden, there is no real foreign policy difference between them.  What Davos wants from Biden Davos gets.  And what they want is cheap energy for Europe from wherever they can get it and to make energy expensive for everyone else.  This is in a vain attempt to now make Europe competitive on the world stage, which currently, it is not.  

Nominally, they do this in the name of Climate Change but really it is all about economic and political control by superseding national governments.  

Q: Do you think Russia has been successful to form a coalition against the U.S.? For instance, with China and Iran.

A: In a word, yes.  Putin has been very successful in securing Russia’s future domestically while also blowing open the foreign policy lies of both Europe and the U.S.  It has been the policy goal of the U.S. going back to the Nixon administration (if not earlier) to destroy Russian independence and bring its vast natural resource wealth under the control of Western financial entities.  

Putin has very successfully and skillfully managed to thwart nearly every attack on Russia and place it in the position it is in now.  Today Russia is the primary diplomatic power in the Middle East (West Asia).  It controls the marginal barrel of oil production, in essence dictating terms to OPEC+ while also stitching together central Asia with oil and gas pipelines and power generation stations, nuclear or otherwise, to change the complexion of the entire Asian continent for the next century.  

In doing so he has finally broken the West’s obsession with the philosophy of 19th-century British thinker Halford Mackinder who believed that the Heartland – central Asia – was the key to controlling the world economy.  If the British could not control it then no one could.  
Mackinder’s ideas became the Brzezinski Doctrine of the 1970s and ’80s and the Wolfowitz Doctrine of the turn of the century.  It’s this thinking that put the British in Afghanistan in the 19th century and the U.S. there in the 21st. 

The key to this was keeping Russia weak, divided and constantly warring against itself and its neighbors.  Putin has systematically secured Russia’s borders, rebuilt its military and diplomatic presence and balanced the country’s books to the point where it is nearly immune to the ebbs and flows of global capital created by Western central banks. 

Its partnerships with Iran and China are designed, in my opinion, to have a rising tide lift all boats while at the same time keeping both Europe and the U.S., despite their hostility from imploding completely in case anyone else, possibly China, gets any ideas about replacing the U.S.-European conglomeration with their own.

That’s also why I think Putin took the meeting with Biden, to begin the process of de-escalating dangerous situations which could easily lead to a global conflict that kills tens of millions.  

Let’s hope that everyone involved in the folly that was the buildup to war in Ukraine now properly understands this point.