US provocation of Russia could trigger world war: Analyst

The most recent incident involving a US spy plane flying near the Russian border over the Baltic Sea is yet another “provocation” from Washington, which could lead to a “global catastrophe,” says an American geopolitical analyst.

Russia said on Saturday that it had sent a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter plane to intercept a US aircraft approaching its border the day before, because the American jet had turned off its transponder signal.

The Pentagon, however, claimed the surveillance plane was flying in international airspace when the Russian jet approached in an “unsafe and unprofessional” manner and had “the potential to cause serious harm and injury to all aircrews involved.”

It was “another provocation from NATO, from the United States, right up against Russia’s border,” Eric Draitser, founder of stopimperialism.org, said in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.

“It is of course completely ignoring the elephant in the room that the United States is engaging in what amount to spying missions and deliberate provocations right up against Russian airspace, and that Russia is responding militarily in the way that I think any military power would when its territory is either encroached upon or is being deliberately provoked,” he said.

Draitser believes that through intercepting the US jet, Moscow sent a clear message to Washington that “the United States cannot treat Russia in the way that it treats other countries.”

“When we hear that this US jet had turned off its transponder, in other words refusing to identify itself electronically, and it’s flying essentially right up against Russian airspace, I think that the obvious response from Russia is exactly what they did; namely to intercept the aircraft to send a message to Washington that you cannot engage in princely this sort of provocation,” he added.

Draitser said such provocation could have broader implications. “We have a global situation now in Syria, in Ukraine, in many other places in the South China Sea and elsewhere where seemingly one false move, one blunder of significant proportions, could lead the world into a global catastrophe.”

He stressed that an armed confrontation “between the super powers of the United States and the nuclear power of Russia, the growing financial and of course military power of China; this could lead to world war.”

Relations between the United States and Russia are at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War, largely due to the crisis in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s air campaign in Syria.

Draitser concluded that Washington keeps on with its “military provocation tactic” which is “an absolutely dangerous and insane path,” because “this is how the US sees it will expand and maintain its hegemony.”

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