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The US’ will to control every independent country in the world has provoked a direct confrontation with Russia that might end up in a use of atomic weapons, Lew Rockwell, chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, told RT.

RT: So what do you make of President Obama's wording about brokering a transition of power in Ukraine, do you agree with Sergey Lavrov's comment that it's direct involvement?

Lew Rockwell: Of course, there was. And maybe he is doing this by mistake or maybe he is on purpose telling the truth. But anybody who listened to that horrible phone call from Victoria Nuland, the Under- Secretary of State, with the US ambassador to Ukraine about exactly who they were going to put in power, how they were going to overthrow the elected government, and how they were going to stage the coup.

So it’s been clear I would say to anybody who’s got a brain, who’s observing this, that this was a US staged coup also with people in the EU, to move the boundaries of NATO right up to the boundary of Russia. I mean, that’s the point about encircling Russia. It’s because Russia is one of the only two large countries in the world that are independent of the US. Russia and China. So who are the two countries the US is targeting now and hates the guts of? Russia and China. And of course we are all supposed to hate their guts too just because they would like to be independent… Obama said people have a right to be free, that’s right including the people of East Ukraine, they have a right to be free. People of Crimea have the right to make a decision. Do they want to secede, do they want to be independent, do they want to be a part of Russia? That’s their business. That’s a basic classical liberal principal. And the US of course has engineered many secessions. We can think of the break-up of Serbia, the break-up of Yugoslavia, the break-up of Czechoslovakia. I’m not opposed to any of all these things. I think I agree with von Mises that any people have the right not be held in a political association that it doesn’t want. So this is just a basic principle of freedom. But the US has got dirty hands when it pretends all this is in favor of this, because of course it’s not. The US is usually anti-independence, anti-self-determination; at least it’s something the CIA is bringing about.

RT: NATO is now considering supplying Ukraine with lethal aid - on top of billions of dollars in funding and non-lethal equipment. What are their goals there?

LR: First of all, we have to remember all the sanctions that have been put on are an act of war under international law... Although remember that NATO countries are actually unhappy bearing the economic burden of this just like the Russians, much less so the US. The US is forcing them into it. So what do they want to do? They want to bring down Putin. Look at what neocons, people like Victoria Nuland and her husband and other people. What they want is they want to break up the Russian Federation. They want to break it up and to disarm it, and so that [Russia] becomes another province or colony of the US just like the countries in Western Europe. That is what they actually would like. Can they get away with that? I hope not. But I think there is no question that is the ultimate goal. Very scary.

RT: How do you see things are going to move in the next couple of months or so?

LR: It’s actually terrifying because the more the US has got.. and I think there are already US mercenaries in Ukraine.. the more that there are so-called trainers and other kinds of US troops there, the more that the weapons are supplied. You know there is a chance of a very serious military confrontation with Russia. Could it end in a use of atomic weapons? It could. So this is the kind of confrontation that was initiated during the first Cold War started by the US by the way. The atomic powers are careful not to confront each other like this. So now we see that there is a direct confrontation, very scary for the whole world. And I hope Obama comes to his senses, but I’m not holding my breath.

RT: Can this brinkmanship force people into peace talks?

LR: We just think of the history of sanctions. It really strengthens the regime that’s being attacked. Because the people… Just like what happens with the Russian people, even the Russian people who are not pro-Putin, don’t like what the US is doing to them. That was the same thing that happened in Iraq and in other countries, where sanctions had been put on. It doesn’t make people want to overthrow their own government. It makes them hate the guts of the people putting the sanctions on. So I don’t think sanctions work in that sense. Although they do punish the people who can make a lot of money out of sanctions. So that’s you know that’s a part of it. But it’s really about the empire. It’s about expanding the US empire. It sees itself as a global empire. In fact it sees itself, you know, controlling the solar system. So yeah they want to control everything and how far will they go I don’t know. But again I think it’s quite scary. It is brinkmanship just back to the days of John Foster Dulles and the Eisenhower administration. It’s actually a terrifying prospect.