Russia sent a rather unpleasant present to President Obama on the occasion of his 48th birthday. Last Tuesday, two Russian attack submarines were sighted off America’s East Coast, apparently the first such sighting for 15 years. This is the latest in a series of provocations that Russia has launched at the U.S. since America’s current president took office.

Back in March, Russia announced that it was considering basing its long-range nuclear-capable bombers on an island off the Venezuelan coast. At the end of July, less than two weeks preceding the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Georgia, Russia publicized its signing of a deal to explore for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Then, barely four days prior to that anniversary, as Russia ramped up its presence on Georgia’s borders, two Russian subs were sighted off America’s coast.

Russia is sending a powerful signal to its old Cold War enemy.

The New York Times reported that last Tuesday Russian President Dmitry Medvedev “called Mr. Obama to wish him a happy birthday and the White House said the president used the opportunity to urge Russia to work through diplomatic channels to resolve rising tensions with Georgia.” But, the Times lamely observed, “it was not clear whether the subject of the submarines came up” (August 4). You bet your boots it would have come up! If it didn’t, then this presidency is a lot more naive than even present indications suggest.

How could the president have avoided speaking to Mr. Medvedev on the issue? After all, it has reportedly “raised concerns inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about a more assertive stance by the Russian military,” with a Pentagon official stating that, regardless of the reason for the subs’ location, “We’re concerned just because they are there” (ibid.).

And so they ought to be!

Over the entire course of the Cold War, Herbert W. Armstrong declared, time and time again, that Russia would not attack America. He was able to confidently prophesy this as he knew that the Creator had prophesied all major world events since the creation of man and that no prophecy exists indicating that such an attack would take place. Herbert Armstrong’s entire ministry was devoted to warning the Anglo-Saxon nations that they would lose their power through their constant rebellion against the One who had gifted to them the choicest blessings on Earth. He warned of the invasion of their nations by a far different power, a power that lay to the northeast of the Anglo-Saxon nations! Russia’s current provocations of the still-fledgling Obama administration are actually accelerating the rise of another imperialist European power.

What Russia is now doing by thumbing its nose at the Obama administration is further demonstrating to America’s enemies that this administration has no will to meet a perceived threat with any robust counterthreat. This is a recipe for disaster.

Each poke in the ribs that America receives from Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela or any other pipsqueak nation, without a robust response in kind, is showing America’s enemies just how weak is the political will of this once vaunted superpower. We are talking high-stakes international power-broking here during a time when the world is morphing toward a state increasingly foreign to generations of Anglo-Saxon dominance. The real power behind the Russian throne, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has demonstrable skills in hard-nosed foreign policy that leave Washington’s amateurs for dead.

Make no mistake, the Russian leadership is well aware of the power of symbolism. The signing of the Russian/Cuban oil deal, the sending of attack submarines to patrol the U.S. coastline, the docking at a Cuban port by one of those subs—not to mention the prospect of nuclear attack planes being based in Venezuela—all these moves are calculated to not only test the mettle of America’s now barely six-month-old liberal administration, but to prove what Russia perceives are its most fundamental weaknesses.

To cap it all, Russia has been rattling its saber again at Georgia’s borders surrounding the August 8 anniversary of its invasion of that country last year.

Thus, feeling the heat with Russia staring down its neck, the Georgians have pleaded for help. From the U.S.? No! From the only power that they can see has a true vested interest in keeping Georgia’s borders open—the European Union!

Now, there’s a sign of the times! And it’s one Washington should well take note of. But it won’t. The reason? “As for the United States, the war demonstrated for many that Georgia is not a top priority for Washington” (Radio Free Europe, August 5).

Nature abhors a vacuum, it is said. So it is that, observing U.S. disinterest in European affairs and demonstrable unwillingness to face down Russia, the EU is stepping up to the plate.

For some time the EU and Russia have been involved in a great game of border chess as they feel each other out on where the mutual border delineating the limits to their respective hegemonic moves will be drawn. What complicates this equation is energy politics.

The EU needs Russia’s oil and gas. Russia needs the EU’s market for the sale of its energy resources. Two countries stand at the east-west European energy crossroads: Ukraine and Georgia. Unlike Serbia, where the U.S. was used as an unwitting pawn to deliver Kosovo into the willing arms of the Albanians (with the cunning connivance of Germany), negotiations as to the settlement of the EU/Russian border will be ultimately settled between Moscow and Brussels/Berlin. The U.S. won’t be party to this arrangement.

Already the EU has brokered a deal with Ukraine to guarantee energy supply during the coming winter. What remains is to settle the Georgian dispute in a manner acceptable to the EU and Russia, without America. No doubt Georgia will be the sacrificial calf in the ultimate trade-off between these two imperialist powers.

“Russia says EU monitors have helped stabilize the situation in Georgia since last year’s war, but has rejected any similar role for the U.S. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the peace plan brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy ‘continues to be a most serious stabilizing factor.’ He accused Georgia of trying to ‘drag the Americans into Georgia’ and put them up against the Russian military’” (bbc News, August 5).

Speaking in a Russian television interview last Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rounded on U.S. Vice President Joe Biden for his unbelievable diplomatic gaffe by which he recently described Russia as “a weakened nation” due to the global economic crisis. “Mr. Biden also voiced support for Georgia on a recent visit to Tbilisi, but he resisted Georgian pressure to send U.S. monitors to the region. … The EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia (eumm) is the only organization now monitoring the boundary line” (ibid.).

However you view it, Russia has America’s number.

But so has the EU.

The rising imperial European power has had the measure of America, believe it or not, for over 60 years. Rome and Berlin/Brussels have carefully played the big fish in a manner such as to answer almost its every whim. That may sound unbelievable, but it is true.

Since naive America handed over the denazification of Germany to Germany, its major enemy in two world wars, Germany has quietly gone about its imperialist agenda, to America’s great expense—monetarily, militarily and morally.

Meanwhile, the grand sophistry of the election campaign, the great wave of messianic worship of the nation’s new leader, is beginning to ring very hollow in America. Not one major policy initiative of America’s current administration is working. Prime Minister Putin is reputed to have observed that the new American administration is lightweight, and his overt anti-American foreign-policy initiatives just go to show the impunity with which this “weakened nation” regards its former Cold War foe.

All this is serving as grist for the mill of the rising European superpower. Russia may well be doing the taunting, but it will be the Eurobeast that initiates the nuclear whirlwind that will first hit the Middle East and spread like wildfire to engulf the increasingly spineless, morally and politically corrupt Anglo-Saxon nations.

Sound extremist? Not if you have followed the progressive fulfillment of inerrant Bible prophecies through major world events over the past two decades and more. If you feel challenged by that statement, then read the special edition of the Trumpet magazine, titled “He Was Right.” It’s a real eye-opener.

Watch Russia. Watch, in particular, for a treaty to be concluded between Russia and a rising, German-led European superpower destined to steamroll into global leadership in the near future.

We have warned of this event for 20 years, as did Herbert Armstrong for nigh on 60 years before that. There exists far more documented proof of this reality today than Herbert Armstrong ever perceived in his day.

You know, Almighty God made it so simple for the progenitors of the Anglo-Saxons, the ancient Israelites. He covenanted with them that if they would just obey His law, He would fight their battles for them. But no, the people of Israel just could not bring themselves to fulfill God’s royal law of love toward God and fellow man. So they chose to fight their own battles, to this very day.

The consequence of this will be, millennia after our forebears rejected their Maker, that this current Anglo-Saxon generation will finally reap the whirlwind.

Watch the Key of Davidtv program and monitor our Trumpet website to keep abreast of these developments. You will find that the real difference between the news reported via the mass media compared to that analyzed on the Key of Davidtv program and in the Trumpet magazine is that we tell you why current events are happening and we fit them into an unfolding scale of events prophesied millennia ago.

Based on inerrant, provable biblical prophecy, we tell you where these world events are heading. We show you the great universal future that these current world events are leading toward. And that’s the greatest news any human being could ever hope for!