Stratfor — The West Hems in Russia Little by Little
Mike Norman Economics 2015-07-01
Not the whole story according to George Friedman, head of Stratfor. According to a talk that Friedman gave which was taped and excerpts put on YouTube, what is actually happening is that the US is creating a cordon sanitaire from the Baltics to the Black Sea, which accounts for the US led coup in Ukraine and the US running Ukraine through a puppet government. (Friedman regards this as transparent.) Note this is the US acting alone in creating the cordon, not NATO, which would likely not approve the strategy since NATO policy requires unanimous consent of the member states and this is not in everyone's interest.
The US strategy is ostensibly to isolate and contain Russia. But the hidden agenda is to create a US military controlled corridor separating Europe from Russia in order to prevent the development of Russian-European cooperation and perhaps an eventual alliance based on economic and trade benefits — and especially to prevent a German-Russian alliance should Germany listen to Putin's overtures about the advantages of this.
According to Friedman, the worst nightmare of the Anglo-Americans beginning with German unification under Prussian leadership has been development of a German-Russian alliance, which would unite Germany's economic and technological expertise with Russian natural resources, giving this alliance effective control of strategist Halford Mackinder's heartland of Eurasia and as a consequence control of the world island. This is fundamental to the Brzezinski doctrine, too.
A German-Russian alliance is essentially the only really viable threat to continuing US world hegemony through military control of the sea, air and space, at least for the foreseeable future. According to Friedman, everything hangs on Germany, and Germany hasn't yet made up it mind. The US is not waiting to find out, since there is a lot of pressure by German business to dump the US in favor of a closer relationship with Russia, which would be much more in Germany's economic interest (meaning their economic interest). Friedman admits its cynical but hey, this is hard ball.
Stratfor — Geopolitical Diary The West Hems in Russia Little by Little