presstv.ir <http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/11/09/436919/Russia-US-military-Pentagon-NATO-Jan-Oberg>
PressTV-‘US needs to project Russia as big threat’ The US military's scaremongering tactics project Russia as a threat in the attempt to fund army projects and promote Washington's agenda, says a political analyst. “Those who run the world’s armaments and the wars, they seem to be in constant need of constructing enemies to get budgets and the way you do that is that you use propaganda and you would also use, what we would call in political psychology fearology,” Jan Oberg told Press TV on Monday. “Fearology means you instill fears in ordinary citizens, that is taxpayers, so they are ready to pay for these outrageous fighter aircraft, military exercises, nuclear weapons, etc,” he added. If the US was to introduce Russia as a “nice guy” who does not pose threats to Washington anymore, then it would face problems in funding its projects, he added. The comments come as General Philip Breedlove, the supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), warned over the weekend that cooperating with Russia on Syria means the West has accepted Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russia forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region. US military officials describe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military support for the Syrian government as a distraction designed to take away attention from the conflict in Ukraine. Ties between Moscow and Washington hit a new low after US-backed forces ousted Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. Oberg said the NATO chief is forgetting that the annexation of Crimea “was a response to what the West did with regime change.” “So it is very funny when General Breedlove says that Russia is now operating in Syria in order to cover up for Russia’s activities in Crimea, where in reality, that is what we call projection psychologically, he is talking about arming and rotating troops and getting more troops and more weapons,” Oberg added. The analyst said by making such statements, Breedlove and NATO are seeking to cover up their own “mistake” in Ukraine. Oberg added that Russia’s military expenditure is only a fraction of that of NATO and that “you have to see Putin as either suicidal or a madman psychologically, to see him start a war against a power and alliance” which is twelve times bigger than its own military. Speaking about the US military’s increasing exercises in Europe, Oberg warned that these drills “could lead to something bad.” “You just need a stray missile somewhere and you have a huge crisis,” he warned.
