US pursuing Hitler’s Drang nach Osten policy in Eastern Europe: Pundit

The US military expansion in Eastern Europe is Adolf Hitler's Drang nach Osten, or thrust toward the East, in a different guise, an American writer and political analyst says.

Daniel Patrick Welch made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Saturday while commenting on a report which says United States Army Europe (USAREUR) plans to move units into Hungary on Monday as it expands its presence in Eastern Europe beyond the Baltic States and Poland.

USAREUR, which is an Army Service Component Command of the US Army, has a near-constant presence in the Baltic States and Poland and has participated in periodic exercises in Bulgaria and Romania to the south.

“This move into Hungary – moving troops -- is just one more chapter in the absolutely relentless onslaught in the eastward expansion of NATO,” Welch said.

“Since 1990 and well before that as part of the breakup of the Soviet Union, it’s a threat to Russia directly, and it’s an obvious threat, it’s meant to be a threat, it’s Hitler's Drang nach Osten in another guise, and the US keeps pushing and pushing,” he added.

“The head of NATO actually said last year something about Russia creeping closer to their doorstep, which is laughable if it wasn’t so paranoid and dangerous.

“But the US is using Russia’s defensive actions in Syria and Ukraine, pushing back against the US-led coup in both places, to justify this as a defensive tactic when in fact it’s part of a long-running strategy, an attempt to encircle both Russia and China, and really to keep every potential rival down unless it does what the US empire and its vassal states wanted them to do.

“This is what to do, they move to your borders, if you won’t submit to the will of the diktats of Capital, they’ll invade, kill you and destroy your infrastructure and occupy your country.

“They’ve proven it over and over again, the latest example being Libya – I mean Syria. Libya just slipped because Obama and Clinton destroyed an entire country without even batting an eye.

“And the Russians see it as what it is, fortunately, and they are reacting appropriately.  They are saying that this is existential threat to our own sovereignty, and we have to act.  So they are doing this in concert with the Chinese, and increasingly with the other leaders and peoples and nations of the Global South.

“It’s not ganging up which is a kind of paranoid view, and the exceptionalist blindness that the Americans and America policy makers espouse. It’s solidarity for survival, and increasingly this will be how it plays out. The bear and the dragon have fully woken up, and they’ve realized that their only way to survive is to push back.

“And it is a shock to the American policy making system, because the bully hasn’t been kicked before -- no one has dared to stand up.

“And my prediction is that this is the beginning of the end for the US Empire. This increasing concert between the other two major powers and then their allies throughout the Global South is a major, major shift in balance of geopolitical power.

“The only remaining question is how and what chaos and destruction the US Empire will cause on its way down, because dying empires can be a very dangerous thing. So we have to wait and see, but they are not fooling anyone, anymore. The mask is off, and the pushback has begun.”

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