We are missing some kind of a blueprint for systemic analysis of Ukrainian coup, so I'll try to take the
trouble to put some skeleton of such a blueprint:
1. Oligarchs of Ukraine politically much stronger than people (middle class and below),
as it is easily seen by looking at the hard brainwashing propaganda Ukrainian media. That is, when
we say "the people of Odessa or Kiev rebelled against someone there," one should always take into
account who helped to incite those people, arm and financed them
2. The West (EU and USA) is much stronger than Ukrainian oligarchs, it is their "roof", if
you use criminal jargon, and actually dictating their actions. Thus actions of oligarchs also
cannot be considered to be independent, and they themselves are not an independent political players.
That means, that when we say "oligarch Kolomoisky has taken such and such political step" we must
understand that he did not by himself, but was advised by curators from abroad.
3. Kiev junta represents the interests of the winning oligarchic cartel and , respectively,
is not independent in its actions.
4. EU is vassal of the United States, the vassal with a limited sovereignty, but not the slave.
Therefore, U.S. national interests, at least in the strategically important questions will always
dominate over the interests of the EU itself (exactly as Nuland's formula prescribes - f*ck the
EU). That is, when we say that Angela Merkel something there said, we must understand that Uncle
Sam also took part in it.
5. The links of all "internal" financing of any Ukrainian political processes will always
go West (right in the U.S. or in Europe and then in the US). The fact that someone may designate
any citizen "nezalezhnoy" is being decided there and then order on appointment down in the media.
The judicial functions of the West plus its extensive punitive apparatus does not leave local single
gram of independence. Armed gang, staged a massacre in the city centre, in the Western command to
be designated as the most dangerous terrorists and criminals, and revolutionary peaceful protesters,
democratically resolve lost the last remnants of legitimacy, bloody and criminal regime. Accordingly,
the revolutionaries laid diverse and very fat "cookies" until the military assistance "to the defenders
of Ukrainian democracy", and totalitarian regime put sanctions, arrest of accounts (robbery), generous
financing traitors and deserters, international prison and courts (remembering Milosevic), and sometimes
just a bunch of sadists with bayonets (remembering Gaddafi).
20141005 : Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Drones (HBO) ( This hardly can be called humor. Those killing probably will not make the USA new friends, no matter how much NED and USAID would spend for the promotion of democracy in those countries... )
Sanction will remain in place for long, long time. They were just an opening savo of the USA new cold war -- cold war with
Russia.
You can have different opinions about Russian nationalism and the idea to defend Russian speaking
population outside Russian Federation but one this is clear: attempt to decimate Russia economically
is a dangerous gamble. and taking into account the it was the USA who organized and implemented (with
European partners) coup d'état in Ukraine the USA might face Russian resolve to fight. EU will be first
collateral victim. May be this is a real plan.
But the blowback can be economic and political alliance
to Russia and China, the alliance the possibility of which the cheerleaders of sanctions should take
into the account. If China gets Russian military technology the USA security is in real danger.
No question about it. Also balancing on the edge of real war is a dangerous exercise in any case even
without this blowback. Crippling economic sanction are equivalent to the declation of War -- remember
Japan reaction on crippling economic sanctions. May be the idea is to provoke Russia and bog them
in a local war in Ukraine like the USA managed to do with Afghanistan in the past, but in a nuclear
age this look like another sociopathic action.
Just think about simple possibility: Would confiscation
of all the USA assets in Russia be beneficial to the current jingoistic US elite ? As Bismarck noted
in a different epoch: "Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal
… A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all … I cannot tell you when that explosion
will occur, but I can tell you where … Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off.
"
We are making mayhem in Russia, and reality is almost the opposite of what is being described
in the press
I cannot be the only one to note the remarkable sequence of events in the Obama White House last
week. It tells us all we need to know-for now, anyway-about what Washington is up to as it puts
Russia in an illegal police chokehold. This will end neither soon nor well.
On Wednesday the president announced his out-of-nowhere move to lift sanctions against Cuba and
reestablish diplomatic ties. I cannot be the only one to do this, either: I wept. Half a century
of suffering pointlessly inflicted on a humane and very brave people will now come to an end.
On Thursday Obama
signed HR 5859, the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, into law. One is always suspicious of bills
with Boy Scouty names like this, and one is always justified: Obama just gave himself permission
to inflict pointless suffering on the humane and very brave Russian people more or less arbitrarily
and indefinitely. And in all our names, the Pentagon will now arm Ukraine with lethal weapons. Funny,
the $350 million committed as an opener just about matches what Truman gave the Greek monarchists
in 1947, so commencing the Cold War.
Let us end the Cold War 90 miles off our coast and far too late. Let us prosecute it full bore
against Russia and along its borders, far too irrationally and nostalgically. I find one key to
Washington's reasoning, if this is the word, on Russia in this contradiction, because it is apparent,
not real.
"It is clear that decades of U.S. isolation of Cuba have failed to accomplish our enduring objective
of promoting the emergence of a democratic, prosperous and stable Cuba," Obama said Wednesday. "We
cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. It does not serve America's interests,
or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse."
With this statement a president who has consistently betrayed principle and common decency in
deploying American power abroad went some way to redeeming himself in my household. Egypt, Syria,
endless indulgence of Israel, the fight with China over the Pacific sphere of influence, those aggressively
corporate trade deals Washington wants to impose across both oceans-and now the opening to Cuba:
This guy has the lumpiest foreign policy record of any president I can recall, but he bested 10
predecessors when he reached his hand across the water to Havana.
So went our 44th president's 24 hours in the sun.
The Ukraine bill, a straight-ahead cave to unreconstructed cold warriors on Capitol Hill, ranks
among Obama's most craven and cowardly foreign policy decisions. Sanctions are pointless on Wednesday,
but let us provide for more of them on Thursday because the Russophobes, blunt instruments all,
require them.
The Russian press wants to think Obama signed the Ukraine bill reluctantly. I want to think the
Cuba move was an expression of who the man buried in America's version of the deep state truly is.
Maybe we are both right. But the Russian press and I have to get off the question of obscured intent.
In the end this is a distraction.
Obama's State Department and Treasury are not stocked with end-of-history neoliberals by coincidence
or some kind of carryover from the Bush II years. They are staffed as they are because Obama subscribes
as avidly as any of them to the neoliberal agenda.
Obama last week on normalizing with Cuba and "our enduring objective": "The Cuban regime still
represses its people. This chips away at this hermetically sealed society, and I believe offers
the best prospect, then, of leading to greater freedom, greater self-determination on the part of
the Cuban people."
Obama last week on more sanctions against Russia: "As I have said many times, our goal is to
promote a diplomatic solution that provides a lasting resolution to the conflict and helps to promote
growth and stability in Ukraine and regionally, including in Russia."
I celebrate the Cuba opening: Triumphantly right for the wrong reason. I join a swelling number
of Europeans in condemning Obama's new provision for extending sanctions against Russia: It is abjectly
wrong for the same wrong reason. Tactics are all that is at issue. Strategy remains constant.
There is no reason whatever to expect the Cuban leadership to change in consequence of normalization.
I stand with Sen. Marco Rubio and the rest of the Castrophobes on this point.
I depart on a dime from conservatives beyond this. In the Cuban case, the Russian case and all
others, the ambition to inspire "regime change"-the single most self-deluding of all our euphemisms,
in my view-is an intrusion without justification.
Fidel Castro must have taken up "Take Me as I Am or Let Me Go" as soon as the great Ray Price
wrote it in 1967. Castro stayed the course and built one of the world's most socially just societies-this
by the U.N.'s reckoning, not merely mine. One hopes Raúl and his successors keep singing, for Rubio
and the conservatives are right on this point, too: In a half-century war of attrition with inappropriate
American objectives, Cuba has just won. We are all better off.
And so we will be if the same outcome emerges in Washington's confrontation with Russia. Conveniently,
the Cuban opening gives us just the lens through which to view the Russian question as a very destructive
year draws to a close. No, Russian society is not remotely comparable to Cuba's. This is for Russians
to think about, as I have argued previously, and changes nothing for the rest of us.
Read the transcript of Vladimir Putin's press conference last week, an annual affair with none
of the phony staging and screened questions American leaders require. It is
here. "We are protecting
our independence, our sovereignty and our right to exist," the Russian leader said among much
else. Think about this. It is not the remark of a man who plans to go anywhere soon.
Think about it again while looking back on the year now ending. Then ask: How did it come to
this? Why would a Russian leader be moved to say this?
The American press did all it could to caricature Putin's exchange with journalists. My favorite
among the strivers was BusinessWeek, for which … magazine, I suppose we have to call it, Putin's
press conference was "surreal," "extremely long and very weird."
Read the piece here. The juvenile vocabulary is for a purpose. Surreal, weird press conferences
do not have to be considered, to say nothing of understood. The above questions do not have to be
asked. Asking them would be a very bad thing. So would understanding.
It is a long way down the hill from last December, when the Independence Square protests in Kiev
were gaining momentum. Washington was meddling, as was soon exposed, but Putin continued simply
to watch as his ally in the presidential palace, Viktor Yanukovych, got deeper and deeper into trouble.
Then the crypto-Nazis and devotees of violence turned popular, vital, justified demonstrations
into an unjustified coup. That changed everything, of course, and the rest is our very recent history.
Americans do not like history because it is too revealing of events as they are, and it is hence
left out of American coverage of Ukraine from the moment I describe onward until now. But it is
there, as paying-attention people know.
As it happens, a growing number of Europeans now count among what Germans call Putin Versteher,
"Putin understanders." A Financial Times columnist explains the phenomenon
here, though
about as well as BusinessWeek explained Putin's presser last week. Gerhard Schröder, the Social
Democratic chancellor from 1998 to 2005, is a noted understander. So are a lot of left parliamentarians,
a lot of German business executives, and a lot of Europeans other than Germans. Very mixed bag.
The simplest way to explain the understanders' view is to say these are people with a grasp of
history-recent history, Cold War history, and, the best of them, history going back to the West's
response to the 1917 revolution. When Putin asserts that Russia's sovereignty and "right to exist"
are at stake, they are capable of acknowledging what he means.
A grasp of history and, in the case of the business people, a queasy-making grasp of just how
destructive sanctions-as they are, never mind new ones-are already beginning to prove outside of
Russia as well as in it. Europe today has little of the stamina it had in 2008 to withstand financial
and economic contagion. And here comes the contagion, like a westward wind off the Russian steppes.
Currency markets in Russia's neighbors are already in chaos. Every day you read-not in the American
press, of course-of devaluations against the euro, new foreign exchange controls, forex markets
closing altogether. Here is a telling detail: Last week the Swiss cut interest rates to less than
zero-you pay to deposit funds-so as to head off a rush of weak-currency holders into the franc.
Mayhem in the making, and eerily like the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, as mentioned in
this space a couple of weeks back.
Among European leaders, something like a revolt against the American sanctions regime appears
to be coalescing. At gatherings in Brussels last week, Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister,
French President François Hollande and the Danish foreign minister, Martin Lidegaard, all said in
different ways, "Enough with the sanctions already." Renzi said it best: "Absolutely no to more
sanctions."
In view of the damage already being wrought, and with more on the way in the year to come, there
is a "why" question attaching to the Ukraine crisis and the West's American-led policy toward Russia.
What is all this for, exactly? Answer this and we will answer a lot for ourselves.
My answer begins here. It is time we Americans understand exactly what is meant when our leaders
use the word "freedom." It is supposed to designate one of those values none of us would think of
assailing. Let us assail it.
Freedom for most English-speakers may bear its obvious meaning, but in truth it bears many. Freedom
to do what? The limits of which are what? Whose freedom?
Amartya Sen, the Harvard Nobelist in economics, wrote a great book some years ago called "Development
as Freedom." For him, freedom means a society wherein one is safe from poverty, where education,
health care, sewage and what we call "public goods" are available, where there is authentic opportunity
to realize oneself and where one can work with the expectation of earning a decent living. Absent
these, there is - one of Sen's great coinages-"unfreedom."
Freedom in the American dialect, at least as almost all our leaders use the term, means something
rather different. This is freedom for private enterprise and it is more or less full stop there.
My coinage would be this: In the official American meaning, we mean neoliberal freedom, which is
to say, freedom for corporations. Look out the window if you are at all confused or doubtful.
As a useful aside, we ought to think about this when we hear American leaders talk about repression
and the absence of freedom in Cuba. Who is repressed and unfree-teenagers of African descent, as
in America, or spooks, adventurers, saboteurs and Batista nostalgists, as America has urged these
on for 50 years? Which sort of repression is justified and which to be condemned?
It is the banner of neoliberal freedom Vicky Nuland, Vice President Biden, CIA Director John
Brennan and all others bear when they travel to Ukraine. Arsenyi Yatsenyuk, the prime minister
in Kiev, bears it. That is why he is popular in Washington. So does Petro Poroshenko, the candy-bar
billionaire turned president. Ditto his popularity on these shores.
N. B.:None of these people has anything to say about democracy or the attributes
of Sen's notion of freedom, do they? They speak incessantly of "reforms." Reform is part of
the neoliberal lexicon, another code word, like freedom. We will see this banner unfurl in the course
of the year to come.
As a curtain-raiser, consider Yatsenyuk's recent presentation in parliament, as outlined and
analyzed here. Were I an ordinary
Ukrainian, I would find the robotic inhumanity of Yatsenyuk's list if reforms absolutely frightening.
No wonder so many seek refuge in Russia.
As noted in earlier columns, I have been engaged in a lively exchange lately on the topics of
Ukraine and Russia with good sources in the global energy and commodities markets. In specific answer
to the why question, I can do no better than reproduce part of a long note that arrived a couple
of days ago from Europe. The South Stream this source mentions is the gas pipeline Russia just canceled
in response to deteriorating relations with Europe:
…. Also, what is at stake is the W. European gas market. In the daily froth of the
media, Asia is seen as the big prize of America's natural gas producers…. But in the industry,
fewer and fewer people are seeing it that way. The terminal market for America's shale gas will
not be Asia, but Europe…. And to grab that market, the South Stream has to be stopped, and a
big wedge driven between Russia and W. Europe…. That is where the strategy in support of the
regime which has grabbed power in Kleptokrainia fits in….
More and more evidently, it is to American energy interests that we have to look to find the
specifics of the why question. If the object is to disrupt ties between Russia and its westward
neighbors-a forlorn project, in my view-it explains why Washington pops up with more sanctions or
the threat of them, as with Obama's new bill, so often when there seems to be a break in the clouds.
I have found this weird over the months but do not any longer.
To me the question of Russia and the West comes down to one thing: It is bound to become messier
in the year to come because a mess, in effect, appears to be exactly what Washington wants. One
of two relationships will suffer a critical breach: Europe's with Russia or Washington's with Europe.
I dearly hope it is the latter and think there is a good chance it will be.
Footnote: I will file one more column before year's end. Good enough to send readers
the sincerest season's greetings I can think of now. To all of you, have a terrorist-free holiday!
May we all continue to breathe into the new year.
Patrick Smith is the author of "Time No Longer:
Americans After the American Century."He was the International Herald Tribune's bureau
chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote "Letter from
Tokyo" for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently
to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications. Follow him
on Twitter, @thefloutist.
Jeffery Sacks asks: "Why had the US, which had behaved with such wisdom and foresight in Poland,
acted with such cruel neglect in the case of Russia?" Poland is a satellite state, a vassal. Simple
-- Russia is a barrier on the way to the world dominance on which the US elite is hell bent.
Many of today's global problems are hangovers from bad, ungenerous decisions at the end of previous
conflicts, writes Jeffrey Sachs.
This has been a year of great geopolitical anniversaries. We are at the 100th anniversary of
the start of World War One, an event that more than any other shaped world history during the past
century. We are at the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the opening chapter of the
demise of the Soviet empire and the end of the Cold War. Yet we know that painfully we observe something
far more than a mere remembrance.
As William Faulkner remarked, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." WW1 and the fall
of the Wall continue to shape our most urgent realities today. The wars in Syria and Iraq are the
legacy of the closure of WW1, and dramatic events in Ukraine are unfolding in the long shadow of
1989.
1914 and 1989 are "hinge moments", decisive points of history on which subsequent events turn.
How nations both great and small behave at such hinge moments determine the future course of war
and peace.
I participated directly and personally in the events of 1989, and saw this lesson in play - positively
in the case of Poland and negatively in the case of Russia. And I can tell you that as I carried
out my own tasks as an economic adviser during 1989-92, I kept a constant and always worried gaze
on 1914. I carry that same sense of worry today.
In 1919, at the end of WW1, the great British economist John Maynard Keynes taught us invaluable
and lasting lessons about such hinge moments, how decisions of victors impact the economies of the
vanquished, and how missteps by the powerful can set the course of future wars.
With uncanny insight, prescience, and literary flair, Keynes's 1919 The Economic Consequences
of the Peace predicted that the cynicism and shortsightedness at the core of the Versailles Treaty,
especially the imposition of punitive war reparations on Germany, and the lack of solutions to the
roiling financial crises of the debtor countries, would condemn the European economies to continuing
crisis, and would in fact invite the rise of another vengeful tyrant in the coming generation.
Keynes's cri de coeur is one of those remarkable outpourings of genius that speaks across generations.
That book and its lessons proved to be a formative guide for me in my own career as policy adviser
and analyst.
As a newly minted economist some 30 years ago, I suddenly found myself charged with helping a
small and largely forgotten country, Bolivia, to find a way out of its own unmitigated economic
disaster. Keynes's writings helped me to understand that Bolivia's financial crisis should be viewed
in social and political terms, and that Bolivia's creditor, the US, had a shared responsibility
of resolving Bolivia's financial anguish.
My experience in Bolivia in 1985-86 soon brought me to Poland in the spring of 1989, at a dual
invitation of Poland's final communist government and the Solidarity trade union movement that strongly
opposed it. Poland, like Bolivia, was financially bankrupt. And Europe in 1989, like Europe in 1919,
was at a great hinge-moment of history.
Mikhail Gorbachev was in power in the Soviet Union, and was prepared to see Europe reunited in peace
and democracy. This great man desired similarly to move his own country to a new democratic order.
Poland was the first country in the region to move towards democracy in that momentous year. I quickly
became the main outside economic adviser to the new Polish government. Once again, drawing from
Keynes, I championed the kind of international assistance that I felt to be vital for Poland to
make a peaceful and successful transition to post-communist democratic rule.
Solidarity
Specifically, I appealed to the White House, 10 Downing Street, the Elysee and the German Chancellery,
for enlightened aid to Poland as a key step in building a new united and democratic Europe.
These were heady days for me as an economic adviser. My wish, it seemed on some days, was the
White House's command. One morning, in September 1989, I appealed to the US Government for $1bn
for Poland's currency stabilisation. By evening, the White House confirmed the money. No kidding,
an eight-hour turnaround time from request to result. Convincing the White House to support a sharp
cancellation of Poland's debts took a bit longer, with high-level negotiations stretching out for
about a year, but those too proved to be successful.
The rest, as they say, is history. Poland undertook very strong reform measures, based in part
on recommendations that I had helped to design. The US and Europe supported those measures with
timely and generous aid. Poland's economy began to restructure and grow, and 15 years later it became
a full-fledged member of the European Union.
Mikhail Gorbachev with John Major at the G7 Mikhail Gorbachev
I wish that I could stop my reminiscing here, with this happy story. But alas, the story of the
end of the Cold War is not only one of Western successes, as in Poland, but also one of great Western
failure vis-a-vis Russia. While American and European generosity and the long view prevailed in
Poland, American and European actions vis-a-vis post-Soviet Russia looks were much more like the
horrendous blunders of Versailles. And we are paying the consequences to this day.
In 1990 and 1991, Gorbachev's government, seeing the emerging positive results in Poland, asked
me to help advise it on economic reforms. Russia at the time was facing the same kind of financial
calamity that had engulfed Bolivia in the mid-1980s and Poland by 1989.
In the spring of 1991, I worked with colleagues at Harvard and MIT to assist Gorbachev to obtain
financial support from the West as part of his efforts at political reform and economic overhaul.
Yet our efforts fell flat - indeed they failed entirely.
Gorbachev left the G7 summit that summer of 1991 and returned to Moscow empty-handed. When he
returned to Moscow with no results, a conspiracy attempted to oust him in the notorious August Putsch,
from which he never recovered politically. With Boris Yeltsin ascendant, and the dissolution of
the Soviet Union now on the table, Yeltsin's economic team again asked me for assistance, both in
the technical challenges of stabilisation, and in the quest to obtain vital financial assistance
from the US and Europe.
Tanks in front of the Kremlin, 1991 Moscow 1991: The attempted "August putsch" against Gorbachev
I predicted to President Yeltsin and his team that help would soon be on the way. After all,
emergency help for Poland was arranged in hours or weeks. Surely the same would happen for the newly
independent and democratic Russia. Yet I watched in puzzlement and growing horror that the needed
aid was not on the way.
Where Poland had been granted debt relief, Russia instead faced harsh demands by the US and Europe
to keep paying its debts in full. Where Poland had been granted rapid and generous financial aid,
Russia received study groups from the IMF but no money. I begged and beseeched the US to do more.
I pleaded the lessons of Poland, but all to no avail. The US government would not budge.
In the end, Russia's malignant financial crisis overwhelmed the efforts at reform and normality.
The reform government of Yegor Gaidar fell from grace and from power. I resigned after two hard
years of trying to help, and of accomplishing very little indeed. A few years later, Vladimir Putin
replaced Yeltsin at the helm.
Throughout this debacle, the US pundits blamed the reformers rather than the cruel neglect by
the US and Europe. Victors write the history, as they say, and the US felt very much the victor
of the Cold War. The US would therefore remain blameless in any accounts of Russia's mishaps after
1991, and that remains true today.
It took me 20 years to gain a proper understanding of what had happened after 1991. Why had
the US, which had behaved with such wisdom and foresight in Poland, acted with such cruel neglect
in the case of Russia? Step by step, and memoir by memoir, the true story came to light. The
West had helped Poland financially and diplomatically because Poland would become the Eastern ramparts
of an expanding Nato. Poland was the West, and was therefore worthy of help. Russia, by contrast,
was viewed by US leaders roughly the same way that Lloyd George and Clemenceau had viewed Germany
at Versailles - as a defeated enemy worthy to be crushed, not helped.
A recent book by a former Nato commander, General Wesley Clark, recounts a 1991 conversation
he had with Paul Wolfowitz, who was then the Pentagon's policy director. Wolfowitz told Clark that
the US had learned that it could now act with impunity in the Middle East, and ostensibly in other
regions as well, without any threat of Russian interference.
In short, the US would behave like a victor and a bully, claiming the fruits of Cold War victory
through wars of choice if necessary. The US would be on top, and Russia would be unable to stop
it.
In a recent speech in Moscow, Putin has described US behaviour in almost the same terms as Wolfowitz.
"The Cold War ended," said Putin, "but it did not end with the signing of a peace treaty with clear
and transparent agreements on respecting existing rules or creating new rules and standards. This
created the impression that the so-called 'victors' in the Cold War had decided to pressure events
and reshape the world to suit their own needs and interests."
Russian soldiers unload trainload of their modified T-72 tanks after their arrival in Gvardeyskoe
railway station near the Crimean capital Simferopol, on March 31, 2014. Russian tanks arrive in
the Crimean capital, March 2014
By making these observations I do not mean to exonerate Putin of responsibility for Russia's recent
illegal, cynical, and dangerous acts of violence in Ukraine. But I do mean to help explain them.
The shadow of 1989 looms large. And Nato's continued desire, expressed again just recently, to add
Ukraine to its membership, thereby putting Nato right up on the Russian border, must be regarded
as profoundly unwise and provocative.
1914, 1989, 2014. We live in history. In Ukraine, we face a Russia embittered over the spread
of Nato and by US bullying since 1991. In the Middle East, we face the ruins of the Ottoman Empire,
destroyed by WW1, and replaced by the cynicism of European colonial rule and US imperial pretentions.
We face, most importantly, choices for our time. Will we use power cynically and to dominate,
believing that territory, Nato's long reach, oil reserves, and other booty are the rewards of power?
Or will we exercise power responsibly, knowing that generosity and beneficence builds trust, prosperity,
and the groundwork for peace? In each generation, the choice must be made anew.
u can listen to The Shadow of the Cold War on BBC Radio 4's Four Thought on
17 November at 20:45 GMT, or
via the iPlayer.
Dave1506
17th December 2014 - 19:00
Well Ukraine started out well armed and supported financially by its neighbour, now its in debt
to its eyeballs just in the hope the USA will start a war with Russia. Poroshenko is a placeman
and should realise it, orders from Washington, IMF & the EU come at a high price and his people
are feeling the pain. Germany was self reliant pre ww1 so not the same.
doctorcontext
17th December 2014 - 18:54
I'm not sure we should take Mr Sach's that seriously...the economic orthodoxy he promotes has been
hugely destructive to local communities all around the world.
The sort of complexity he describes is designed to establish himself as an expert...Henry Kissinger,
anyone?
I recommend Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, as a humanistic counter-argument.
The western economies grow by stealing!
cathatricacid
17th December 2014 - 18:22
580.Janusz
1 Hour ago
Mr Sach helped us so much, that ordinary Pole works for 200-250 GBP/per month (e.g. for Philips)
with no benefits of all. Only way to have a better life is to emigree.
Your comments seem valid, but many Polish, I understand, returning home from the UK, no advantage
in it. Perhaps we are "in the same boat"?
kneesupBillyD
17th December 2014 - 18:15
The West has declared war on Russia. It is waging it by their actions in the Ukraine, trade sanctions
and their middle eastern allies pumping oil at an uneconomic rate. The west used similar tactics
against Saddam which forced him to invade Kuwait. Putin has nuclear weapons and were I in his position
I would be thinking of using them. Always consider the consequences.
margaret howard
17th December 2014 - 17:56
583 presario
"not been in any destructive physical war as had been the case with Germany and Japan"
No, but our past empire ambitions are responsible for many of the ills in today's world
As Sachs writes:
"In the Middle East, we face the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, destroyed by WW1, replaced by the
cynicism of European colonial rule and US imperial pretentions"
Janusz
17th December 2014 - 17:48
Mounting up number of homeless people and other searching trashes for living. This is also legacy
of successful work for Poland of Mr Sachs and his Polish collaborators.
Janusz
17th December 2014 - 17:36
Surely Mr Sachs achieved very big success: buyout of national most important assets for 5 up to
10% of its real value to the internationals. (Big bribes in shadow).
By now we have control of over less than 20 % of the country economy. Polish businesses are rare
and persecuted by Polish state.
Jonny
17th December 2014 - 17:20
The world is constantly in turmoil.
There have been marvellous innovations & life has improved in material terms however moral &
intellectual advancement has not kept pace.
As long as the exploding global population see the avaricious & material Western lifestyle as
a goal & groups seek to dominate others the future will be uncertain & tumultuous.
quietoaktree
17th December 2014 - 17:12
Putin has enough evidence to condemn the USA, UK and NATO. The EU has joined the UK in the Crufts
´poodle´ beauty contest.
" Wolfowitz told Clark that the US had learned that it could now act with impunity in the Middle
East, and ostensibly in other regions as well, without any threat of Russian interference"
--famous last words --that put us ALL in danger.
quietoaktree
17th December 2014 - 16:52
An excellent thoughtful article.
Putin´s speech to the German Bundestag 2001.
´The President (Putin) delivered the first several paragraphs in Russian, and spoke in German
for the rest.
.The Bigger Picture
17th December 2014 - 16:49
The UK was leading the global arms race in 1913 by a long mile (fact). The UK & France carved the
middle-east up after the war without any consideration of the Arabs (fact). The UK & France imposed
a crippling treaty on Germany in 1919 which led to the rise of Nazism (fact). The UK & France are
more responsible for the mess the world is in today than anyone. Blaming the US is just the easy
option.
571.All for All
17th December 2014 - 16:37
GreenGodess @554
"a thriving
democracy"
Has Putin 'had enough time'? In the words of Jeffery Sachs, the re-birth of Russia was attended
by "cruel neglect". Perhaps short of the aggression to be endlessly argued over from 1917, but hardly
an ideal nursery for education towards agreed real democracy. Equal partnership democracy feared?
Some might allow STILL some deficiency of example in the West?
Tiny Toy
17th December 2014 - 16:36
@560.Markcd
"The rise of Islamic Fundamentalists threatens the west"
--
It threatens the West's oil interests. We should grow up and wean ourselves off oil. We can get
all our energy needs from nuclear and renewables. If we do, we don't need to interfere with the
Middle East and Russia is irrelevant. The thing preventing us is not a religion or a nation. We
need to get with the program.
Tony of Newcastle upon Tyne
17th December 2014 - 16:34
An excellent analysis. How did the USA react when Russia sought military and economic partnership
with Cuba? Why was it thought sensible to doe exactly that on Russia's border, incidentally putting
its access to its Black Sea fleet and naval base at risk by making its access pass through a NATO
country?
As often happens with empires, Americans now live in occupied country and can't particulapate in
selection of leaders. They will ofttered USSR-style "choice" of two subservient to financial oligarchy
stooges and that it.
The Left Must Derail Hillary Clinton in the Primaries
By John R MacArthur
Dec 12 2014
<http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/12/left-must-derail-hillary-clinton-primaries/>
As a presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in 2016 appears ever more likely,
it's a good moment to ask what alternative exists to lying down and letting such a campaign drown
the body politic.
Time is short. The queen of cynics, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, already has pronounced
her gorgon's judgment on the inevitability of Hillary versus Jeb. "The looming prospect of
another Clinton – Bush race makes us feel fatigued," yawns the perpetually bored Dowd, who, on the
contrary, relishes a future of easy columns mocking America's two leading political dynasties.
What about the rest of us? Is it inevitable that we swallow the nomination of the neo-liberal
Clinton, whose support of Bush's Iraq madness (not to mention Obama's Afghan and Libyan stupidity)
and her husband's recklessly pro-"free trade," pro-banker, pro-deregulation politics ought to send
reasonable liberals fleeing? Is it predestined that principled conservatives accept the anointment
of the thoroughly fraudulent Jeb, whose support of his brother's interventionist folly, along with
his own outrageous meddling as governor of Florida to "rescue" brain-dead Terri Schiavo, should
give pause to even the greediest oil baron seeking patronage from a Republican administration?
Like Adolph Reed Jr., I'm tempted to opt out of it all on the theory that we conserve energy
by reducing "the frenzied self-delusion that rivets attention to the quadrennial, biennial, and
now seemingly permanent horse races." To echo Maureen Dowd, it is, indeed, fatiguing to urge on
reluctant horses such as Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) when the only
office they seem to seek these days is vice president or committee chairman.
Nevertheless, a straightforward, nationwide electoral strategy is required if the left wants
to reverse the rightward trend of both parties over the past three decades. The tea party has had
much success moving the Republican Party to the right through primary challenges that should be
the envy of frustrated Democrats, even though liberals of the Nation magazine – Rachel Maddow persuasion
appear blind to the lessons of tea party tactics. One wouldn't want to weaken Democratic incumbents
with insurgencies lest "we" lose "our" Senate majority.
Yet political logic cries out for just such a strategy. Ask a mainstream "progressive" to list
the most calamitous events in recent times. At or near the top would be the Supreme Court's decision
in the Citizens United case, which opened wide the floodgates to plutocratic and corporate influence
in election campaigns - in effect, an overthrow of the democratic ideal of one man/woman, one vote.
Citizens United was stage-managed by Chief Justice John Roberts, who leapfrogged to the top of
the court without pausing to serve as an associate justice. Well, to a large extent you can blame
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) for Roberts's ascension. As ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary
Committee in 2005, Leahy broke with fellow liberals to support Roberts' nomination, calling him
a "man of integrity." We might wonder at Leahy's definition of integrity, but worse was his declaration
that "I take [Roberts] at his word that he does not have an ideological agenda."
We'll be paying for Roberts' "integrity" - and Leahy's foolishness - for a long time. True, the
Republican majority on the committee, including the chairman at the time, Arlen Specter, voted unanimously
for Roberts' confirmation. But a determined, unified front led by Leahy could have blocked Roberts
from becoming chief justice. Five years later, in the wake of Citizens United, Specter, by now a
Democrat, denounced the decision, saying it "affects the legitimacy of elections everywhere," and
suggested that Congress consider a constitutional amendment to override the Supreme Court ruling.
Had Leahy put up a fight in 2005, the moderate Specter might well have thought better of his vote
for Roberts.
"Stupid, ill-informed people nowadays like to compare Mr Putin with Hitler. I warn them and you
that, if we succeed in overthrowing Mr Putin by unleashing hyper-inflation in Russia, we may find out
what a Russian Hitler is really like. And that a war in Europe is anything but fun."
This is a time of year for memories, and the ones that keep bothering me are from my childhood,
which seemed at the time to be wholly happy and untroubled.
Yet all the adults in my life still dwelt in the shadow of recent war. This was not the glamorous,
exciting side of war, but the miserable, fearful and hungry aspect.
My mother, even in middle-class suburban prosperity, couldn't throw away an eggshell without
running her finger round it to get out the last of the white. No butcher dared twice to try to cheat
her on the weights.
Haunted all her life by rationing, she would habitually break a chocolate bar into its smallest
pieces. She had also been bombed from the air in Liverpool, and had developed a fatalism to cope
with the nightly danger of being blown to pieces, shocking to me then and since.
I am now beset by these ingrained memories of shortage and danger because I seem surrounded by
people who think that war might be fun. This seems to happen when wartime generations are pushed
aside by their children, who need to learn the truth all over again.
It seemed fairly clear to me from her experiences that war had in fact been a miserable affair
of fear, hunger, threadbare darned clothes, broken windows and insolent officials. And that was
a victory, more or less, though my father (who fought in it) was never sure of that.
Now I seem surrounded by people who actively want a war with Russia, a war we all might lose.
They seem to believe that we are living in a real life Lord Of The Rings, in which Moscow is Mordor
and Vladimir Putin is Sauron. Some humorous artists in Moscow, who have noticed this, have actually
tried to set up a giant Eye of Sauron on a Moscow tower.
We think we are the heroes, setting out with brave hearts to confront the Dark Lord, and free
the saintly Ukrainians from his wicked grasp.
This is all the most utter garbage. Since 1989, Moscow, the supposed aggressor, has – without
fighting or losing a war – peacefully ceded control over roughly 180 million people, and roughly
700,000 square miles of valuable territory.
The EU (and its military wing, Nato) have in the same period gained control over more than 120
million of those people, and almost 400,000 of those square miles.
Until a year ago, Ukraine remained non-aligned between the two great European powers. But the
EU wanted its land, its 48 million people (such a reservoir of cheap labour!) its Black Sea coast,
its coal and its wheat.
So first, it spent £300 million (some of it yours) on anti-Russian 'civil society' groups in
Ukraine.
Then EU and Nato politicians broke all the rules of diplomacy and descended on Kiev to take sides
with demonstrators who demanded that Ukraine align itself with the EU.
Imagine how you'd feel if Russian politicians had appeared in Edinburgh in September urging the
Scots to vote for independence, or if Russian money had been used to fund pro-independence organisations.
Then a violent crowd (20 police officers died at its hands, according to the UN) drove the elected
president from office, in violation of the Ukrainian constitution.
During all this process, Ukraine remained what it had been from the start – horrendously corrupt
and dominated by shady oligarchs, pretty much like Russia.
If you didn't want to take sides in this mess, I wouldn't at all blame you. But most people seem
to be doing so.
There seems to be a genuine appetite for confrontation in Washington, Brussels, London… and Saudi
Arabia.
There is a complacent joy abroad about the collapse of the rouble, brought about by the mysterious
fall in the world's oil price.
It's odd to gloat about this strange development, which is also destroying jobs and business
in this country. Why are the Gulf oil states not acting – as they easily could and normally would
– to prop up the price of the product that makes them rich?
I do not know, but there's no doubt that Mr Putin's Russia has been a major obstacle to the Gulf
states' desire to destroy the Assad government in Syria, and that the USA and Britain have (for
reasons I long to know) taken the Gulf's side in this.
But do we have any idea what we are doing? Ordinary Russians are pretty stoical and have endured
horrors unimaginable to most of us, including a currency collapse in 1998 that ruined millions.
But until this week they had some hope.
If anyone really is trying to punish the Russian people for being patriotic, by debauching the
rouble, I cannot imagine anything more irresponsible. It was the destruction of the German mark
in 1922, and the wipeout of the middle class that resulted, which led directly to Hitler.
Stupid, ill-informed people nowadays like to compare Mr Putin with Hitler. I warn them and you
that, if we succeed in overthrowing Mr Putin by unleashing hyper-inflation in Russia, we may find
out what a Russian Hitler is really like. And that a war in Europe is anything but fun.
So, as it's almost Christmas, let us sing with some attention that bleakest and yet loveliest
of carols, It Came Upon The Midnight Clear, stressing the lines that run 'Man at war with man hears
not the love song which they bring. Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing'.
Or gloat at your peril over the scenes of panic in Moscow.
Great photo of Lipless Dave the Madman. I agree with a Hitchens for what might be the first
time ever, especially the part where we have to learn all over again every few generations how
destructive war really is, because there's always a beep-beep-boop generation of video-gamers
coming up behind who think it must be like Call Of Duty.
What "latest incursion into Ukraine"??? They're not even bothering to pretend any more that
any incursion is actually going on – they just cite it as a reason for upping the ante. Why
can't they just say, our peckers are hard and we like our chances, so we're taking on Russia?
Why the stupid fabricated justifications? Is that for the rubes who can't reason?
I don't think it matters anymore – for the record, SWIFT is not supposed to be a partisan
organization at the beck and behest of Lipless Dave and Obama – because Russia is already committed
to develop its own system and remove itself from SWIFT. Hopefully Russia can win the BRICS to
its own financial hub and they will likewise drop SWIFT, because as I mentioned before, SWIFT
allows the American security services to monitor all of its transactions, supposedly to prevent
money-laundering. Russia must also decouple itself from western banking systems to the extent
it is possible. China will be an invaluable ally there.
SWIFT, for its part, announced previously that it had no intention of shutting Russia out,
and so far it is mostly the UK which is yapping that it be done. But if omnipotent Barry simply
waves his regal hand, it will be done. I hope all countries will take in the lesson that
it is just that simple – that in any circles dominated by the west, the only voice that matters
is that of the United States, and if it wants you shut out, you will be, because the only western
interests that matter are American interests. Just remember it could be you who falls afoul
of those interests next.
robert, December 21, 2014 at 8:20 am
Today's Observer hopes that the fall in oil price will lead to to a coup against Putin and
suggests, guess what, that Khordorkovsky could be an interim leader after the Evil One falls.
It's America's death squad junta fantasy from its previous activity in Latin America. Khodorkovsky
is a fine gusano.
Lumpy Gravy, December 21, 2014 at 1:01 pm
> Khodorkovsky is a fine gusano.
What's a gusano? Surely, you meant guano?!
kirill, December 21, 2014 at 1:11 pm
It means maggot in Spanish. I think the term was popular in Cuba.
Jen, December 21, 2014 at 1:13 pm
"Gusano" in Spanish is a worm or a maggot. In Cuban slang the word also means a sell-out
or traitor.
yalensis, December 21, 2014 at 4:43 pm
After Cuban revolution, Castro labelled as "gusanos" the Cuban emigres who flocked to the
United States.
marknesop , December 21, 2014 at 12:18 pm
Of course "there is talk" of splits in the Kremlin elite, because Shaun Walker is talking
about it. This is a common trick among journalists when they want to imply there is an emerging
movement but they can't cite any sources at all. Therefore it becomes "there is talk".
Khodorkovsky would be a dream president for Washington and London because he would do anything
for personal wealth, and feels no affinity whatsoever for his countrymen. All that matters to
him is business and making money, and busting Russia up into little statelets which could be
set to warring with one another on various lines would not bother him at all, so long as he
and his claque profited thereby. And the funny thing is that, as usual, he would be set up by
the western press as a man to be admired for that, perhaps a "tycoon" like Poroshenko – stealing
money hand over fist is not frowned upon by western capitalists at all. Being unaligned with
themselves or actually opposed to their accumulation of wealth is the real sin. Thus simpletons
around the world parrot that Putin has stolen uncounted billions and has built a network of
palaces across Russia for himself, while if Khodorkovsky managed to gain control of Russia and
made himself unbelievably wealthy while butchering the country to America's liking, he would
be revered by western journalists for his "hardheaded business sense" and his "pragmatism".
It would be implied that he had turned around Russia's staggering economy, just the ticket,
succeeded where Putin failed, and he would be loved in the west as Yeltsin was loved.
As I mentioned before, I will be delighted if the west ties its ribbon to Khodorkovsky's
sleeve and makes him its champion, because Russians would never in any circumstances accept
him as leader; the country would self-destruct first. That would suit Washington, too – if it
could not have Russia to exploit it would be satisfied if it were simply removed. But that would
not be painless; oh, no.
kirill, December 21, 2014 at 9:35 am
What is amazing to me is that the Eurotard bureaucrats and leaders actually believe that
Russia is desperate to sell gas to the EU. Recall that Russia sells only about $55 billion dollars
worth of gas to the EU (138 bcm * $400/tcm = $55 billion, it is actually less since the price
is lower). The nominal value of Russia's GDP is about $2.1 trillion.
If Russia stops shipping via Ukraine, assuming 2/3 of its exports are piped through it, then
it loses about $37 billion. But the EU is truly and utterly f*cked. It's not like Gazprom will
disappear if it stops selling the amount piped through Ukraine. And the tax revenue from this
fraction of gas is not the full $37 billion. So Russia's economy will only feel a bump. But
many eastern European states that are part of the EU will be a major energy shortage situation
which will have a huge impact on their economies. They cannot just run along to a different
shop and replace the needed gas. They will be experiencing years of supply shortfalls.
So Russia is giving the EU freaking charity and those f*cking hater ingrates pour shit all
over it.
"So Russia is giving the EU freaking charity and those f*cking hater ingrates pour shit all
over it."
It's because they've never apologized, see.
Unlike the Germans, who have paid
$89 billion in compensation for Nazi crimes since 1952.
I mean, how much have those Tatar-Mongol-Finno-Ugric subhamans paid for their crimes, huh?
They occupied Eastern Europe and half of Germany for 50 years just because they were invaded
from the West and threatened with extermination.
How petty can you get?
We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and nobody
else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least. What the nations
can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their
children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death
interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no
interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging
an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.
We shall never be tough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We, Germans,
who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume
a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry
about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult
time with them. When somebody comes up to me and says: 'I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with
women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,' then I have to say: 'You are the
murderer of your own blood, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die,
and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood….' Our concern, our duty, is
our people and our blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S.S. to adopt
this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians….
The Germans apologized for screwing up their extermination campaign in the east. You will note
that they never paid any compensation to Russian victims of their genocide.
Warren, December 21, 2014 at 1:35 pm
I've lost track of # of West presstitutes who've written hopefully & delusionally this week
of an oligarch's coup in #Russia. Speaks volumes - Mark Sleboda (@MarkSleboda1) December 21,
2014
kirill, December 21, 2014 at 6:19 pm
It's also ludicrous because the USA was one of Hitler's biggest backers before WWII and for
a large part of it. They only got serious when it looked like Soviet forces would roll all the
way to the English Channel. George W. Bush's grandfather was a bankster for the Nazis and not
just before the war. We see the current support of the west for western Ukrainian Nazis (Banderites).
It is the same thing. The only thing that matters are the west's interests and these do not
include any human rights and democracy.
Like in case of Iraq war the economic war with Russia is based of manufactured evidence and reflects
the same ruthless desire of the US elite for the world dominations and security of hydrocarbon supplies.
Putin might not be too accommodative for neoliberals in Washington, but at least he is predictable.
At the same time Western elite, at first of all the US elite once again demonstrates some kind of sociopathic
behaviour -- the desire to dominate at all costs. West is a 1000 pound guerilla that is perfectly capable
to crash relatively small Russian economy. and probably even remove Putin form power. Then what?
If I remember correctly Jana attacked the USA in Perl Harbor when it decided that economic sanctions
are strangulating. Or what if sanctions lead the civil war in the nuclear armed state, following Ukrainian
scenario, when fifth column will try to get to power via a coup? Or what if radical nationalists
will come to power if Putin are forced out, with the increased change of "accidental" nuclear accident
and "nuclear winter" aftermath? Stronger alliance of weaken Russia with China which moves
China into completely different category military wise ? What is the end game after destabilizing Russia.
The US neocons and neolibs (who are often the same people) want another drunkard Yeltsin at the
helm and camarilla of western neoliberals "guiding" him. That's a pipe dream. With the level of animosity
and the fact that many Russian consider the USA to be a fascist (Guantanamo,
Abu Ghraib torture and
prisoner abuse ) ) or at least a national security state (Snowden revelations) chances of positive
for the West change of Russian regime are pretty slim even with billions of dollars of bribes and support
of fifth column. The USA lost moral standing for the successful regime change into satellite neoliberal
mold and brute force might or might not work in the way originators wish. Also technology of color revolutions
is now is much better known then in 1991 or, even, then in 2012. Actually Russian fifth column itself
was completely decimated by Ukrainian events, event of the USA making.
As for the west's sanctions, they were introduced with one explicit
aim – to force Putin to change tack in
Ukraine. At least, that was
the stated aim. But since the measures show no sign of having any effect on his thinking, and yet
the west is considering even more sanctions, there is obviously another goal – to punish Putin for
his actions, regardless of whether he changes his mind. Sadly, it is not Putin who feels this punishment.
It is the Russian people.
... ... ...
Perhaps it is time to recognise that George W Bush's disastrous
foreign policy legacy encompasses far more than just Iraq, torture and the fanning of terrorism.
Bush also understood nothing about Russia – right from the moment that he looked into Putin's eyes
and told us how he "got a sense of his soul" – and now we are living with the consequences.
It was the Bush administration that created the sense of insecurity that has caused Russia to
react, and overreact, to every perceived threat – including, most recently, the perception that
Ukraine was being forcibly dragged out of Russia's orbit and into the west's. Bush unilaterally
abandoned
the anti-ballistic missile treaty , seen by Russia
as the cornerstone of strategic balance; he began building a missile shield on Russia's doorstep;
he expanded Nato to Russia's frontiers, blithely granting the east Europeans "security" while causing
Russia to feel threatened.
Laurence Johnson -> HansB09, 19 Dec 2014 08:30
Former US diplomats have repeatedly stated that Washington controls Germany and that has
always been the case since WW2.
If Washington controls Germany, and Germany controls the EU, then its clear where all this
is going and is going to cause some very red faces if the UK leaves the EU.
Will D 18 Dec 2014 18:57
Such hypocrisy by the West. And also nasty and vindictive. Compared to the aggressive
global bullying performed by the USA and its tame allies, Russia is positively saintly.
Russia doesn't go around starting wars or bombing innocent 'collateral damage' women and children,
or apply economic embargoes and sanctions on countries it doesn't like. It doesn't use its economic
might to force unfair trade deals on other countries.
The USA and NATO have been squeezing Russia ever since the fall of the Soviet Union,
trying hard to weaken it and corner it. Apart from the freezing northern ports, Russia
has only one other exit point, the Crimea and Black Sea, which the West has tried on various
occasions in the past to close off.
The credibility of the USA has declined massively in the last few years, and few people or
countries really trust it anymore, but are locked into an uneasy alliance which would be difficult
to break. Many don't want to keep supporting the USA's global imperialist aggression.
Angus is right, the solution is to bring Russia in from the cold and to stop the hostile
expansionism by the West. It needs one of the USA's major allies, preferably Britain, to
take a brave stand and change its USA-lapdog tune over Russia, and force the USA to back down.
The rest of Europe would probably support Britain since the sanctions are causing them some
pain.
Rozina 18 Dec 2014 17:09
Dear Angus,
I am no fan of the former US President George W Bush or his administration but to blame Cheney
and Co for expanding NATO and creating "insecurity" for Russia is A PLAIN LIE. The process to
expand NATO began earlier during Bill Clinton's time as US President:
Hungary, Poland and
the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999.
Even if GWB had allowed the ABM treaty to lapse, the Obama government could have revived
it. But the Democrats are as much under the control of US neoliberal robber barons as the
Republicans are.
This and other idiocies about appeasing Putin and his government, as if they (and not the current
US government and the corporations that hold its politicians in their pockets) are the spoilt
global bullies, that you assert demonstrate that your articles are not to be trusted.
Russia did, the Soviet Union didn't. It isolated itself and fell of its own weight and its
own Vietnam in Afghanistan. Why was it the West's fault that the USSR had top invade Hungary
in 1968 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 or couldn't even supply their people with toilet paper?
Cris Lesniak -> Ibn al Zaqqaaq 18 Dec 2014 10:09
I agree that Russia seems to be moving closer to the Erdogan regime. However, there are some
conflicting FP goals, particularly in relation to Syria.
This is a classic example of bullshit 'analysis' practiced by Lucas, Fridman et al, but perfected
by Goble: a/ regale the audience with a Russia-is-an-imperialist-predator meme early, preferably
in the title; b/ illustrate this eternal truth with a reference to an obscure Russian source,
intimating darkly that regardless of this person's obscurity, s/he "is echoing the official
Kremlin narrative"; and c/ smudge it all over: Moscow will either invade Kazakhstan soon, or
"Kazakhstan is already lost as part of the Russian world". Hopefully, a few freidmans later
one of the predictions will come true or, much more likely, both will be forgotten.
""Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids."
It's n ot in any way unusual to find imperial neocon cockroaches lurking together on the
US political table. "Spheres of influence are not like some honorary degree you get from Harvard
University and can keep forever."
Last week I flew into Moscow, arriving at 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 8. It gets dark in Moscow around
that time, and the sun doesn't rise until about 10 a.m. at this time of the year - the so-called
Black Days versus White Nights. For anyone used to life closer to the equator, this is unsettling.
It is the first sign that you are not only in a foreign country, which I am used to, but also in
a foreign environment. Yet as we drove toward downtown Moscow, well over an hour away, the traffic,
the road work, were all commonplace. Moscow has three airports, and we flew into the farthest one
from downtown, Domodedovo - the primary international airport. There is endless renovation going
on in Moscow, and while it holds up traffic, it indicates that prosperity continues, at least in
the capital.
Our host met us and we quickly went to work getting a sense of each other and talking about the
events of the day. He had spent a great deal of time in the United States and was far more familiar
with the nuances of American life than I was with Russian. In that he was the perfect host, translating
his country to me, always with the spin of a Russian patriot, which he surely was. We talked as
we drove into Moscow, managing to dive deep into the subject.
From him, and from conversations with Russian experts on most of the regions of the world - students
at the Institute of International Relations - and with a handful of what I took to be ordinary citizens
(not employed by government agencies engaged in managing Russia's foreign and economic affairs),
I gained a sense of Russia's concerns. The concerns are what you might expect. The emphasis and
order of those concerns were not.
Russians' Economic Expectations
I thought the economic problems of Russia would be foremost on people's minds. The plunge of
the ruble, the decline in oil prices, a general slowdown in the economy and the effect of Western
sanctions all appear in the West to be hammering
the Russian economy. Yet this was not the conversation I was having. The decline in the ruble
has affected foreign travel plans, but the public has only recently begun feeling the real impact
of these factors, particularly through inflation.
But there was another reason given for the relative calm over the financial situation, and it
came not only from government officials but also from private individuals and should be considered
very seriously. The Russians pointed out that economic shambles was the norm for Russia, and prosperity
the exception. There is always the expectation that prosperity will end and the normal constrictions
of Russian poverty return.
The Russians suffered terribly
during the 1990s under
Boris Yeltsin but also under previous governments stretching back to the czars. In spite of
this, several pointed out, they had won the wars they needed to win and had managed to live lives
worth living. The golden age of the previous 10 years was coming to an end. That was to be expected,
and it would be endured. The government officials meant this as a warning, and I do not think it
was a bluff. The pivot of the conversation was about sanctions, and the intent was to show that
they would not cause Russia to change
its policy toward Ukraine.
Russians' strength is that they can endure things that would break other nations. It was also
pointed out that they tend to support the government regardless of competence when Russia feels
threatened. Therefore, the Russians argued, no one should expect that sanctions, no matter how harsh,
would cause Moscow to capitulate. Instead the Russians would respond with their own sanctions, which
were not specified but which I assume would mean seizing the assets of Western companies in Russia
and curtailing agricultural imports from Europe. There was no talk of
cutting off natural gas supplies to Europe.
If this is so, then the Americans and Europeans are deluding themselves on the effects of sanctions.
In general, I personally
have
little confidence in the use of sanctions. That being said, the Russians gave me another prism
to look through. Sanctions reflect European and American thresholds of pain. They are designed to
cause pain that the West could not withstand. Applied to others, the effects may vary.
My sense is that the Russians were serious. It would explain why the increased sanctions, plus
oil price drops, economic downturns and the rest simply have not caused the erosion of confidence
that would be expected. Reliable polling numbers show that President Vladimir Putin is still enormously
popular. Whether he remains popular as the decline sets in, and whether the elite being hurt financially
are equally sanguine, is another matter. But for me the most important lesson I might have learned
in Russia - "might" being the operative term - is that Russians don't respond to economic pressure
as Westerners do, and that the idea made famous in a presidential campaign slogan, "It's the economy,
stupid," may not apply
the same way in Russia.
The Ukrainian Issue
There was much more toughness on Ukraine. There is acceptance that events in Ukraine were a reversal
for Russia and resentment that the Obama administration mounted what Russians regard as a propaganda
campaign to try to make it appear that Russia was the aggressor. Two points were regularly made.
The first was that Crimea was historically part of Russia and that it was already dominated by the
Russian military under treaty. There was no invasion but merely the assertion of reality. Second,
there was heated insistence that eastern Ukraine is populated by Russians and that as in other countries,
those Russians must be given a high degree of autonomy. One scholar pointed to the Canadian model
and Quebec to show that the West normally has no problem with regional autonomy for ethnically different
regions but is shocked that the Russians might want to practice a form of regionalism commonplace
in the West.
The case of
Kosovo is extremely important to the Russians both because they feel that their wishes were
disregarded there and because it set a precedent. Years after the fall of the Serbian government
that had threatened the Albanians in Kosovo, the West granted Kosovo independence. The Russians
argued that the borders were redrawn although no danger to Kosovo existed. Russia didn't want it
to happen, but the West did it because it could. In the Russian view, having redrawn the map of
Serbia, the West has no right to object to redrawing the map of Ukraine.
I try not to be drawn into matters of right and wrong, not because I don't believe there is a
difference but because history is rarely decided by moral principles. I have understood the Russians'
view of
Ukraine as a necessary strategic buffer and the idea that without it they would face a significant
threat, if not now, then someday. They point to Napoleon and Hitler as examples of enemies defeated
by depth.
I tried to provide a strategic American perspective. The United States has spent the past century
pursuing a single objective: avoiding the rise of any single hegemon that might be able to exploit
Western European technology and capital and Russian resources and manpower. The United States intervened
in World War I in 1917 to block German hegemony, and again in World War II. In the Cold War the
goal was to prevent Russian hegemony. U.S. strategic policy has been consistent for a century.
The United States has been conditioned to be cautious of any rising hegemon. In this case the
fear of a resurgent Russia is a recollection of the Cold War, but not an unreasonable one. As some
pointed out to me, economic weakness has rarely meant military weakness or political disunity. I
agreed with them on this and pointed out that this is precisely why the United States has a legitimate
fear of Russia in Ukraine. If Russia manages to reassert its power in Ukraine, then what will come
next? Russia has military and political power that could begin to impinge on Europe. Therefore,
it is not irrational for the United States, and at least some European countries, to want to assert
their power in Ukraine.
When I laid out this argument to a very senior official from the Russian Foreign Ministry, he
basically said he had no idea what I was trying to say. While I think he fully understood the geopolitical
imperatives guiding Russia in Ukraine, to him the century long imperatives guiding the United States
are far too vast to apply to the Ukrainian issue. It is not a question of him only seeing his side
of the issue. Rather, it is that for Russia, Ukraine is an immediate issue, and the picture I draw
of American strategy is so abstract that it doesn't seem to connect with the immediate reality.
There is an automatic American response to what it sees as Russian assertiveness; however, the Russians
feel they have been far from offensive and have been on the defense. For the official, American
fears of Russian hegemony were simply too far-fetched to contemplate.
In other gatherings, with the senior staff of the Institute of International Relations, I tried
a different tack, trying to explain that the Russians had embarrassed U.S. President Barack Obama
in Syria. Obama had not wanted to attack when poison gas was used in Syria because it was
militarily difficult and
because if he toppled Syrian President Bashar al Assad, it would leave Sunni jihadists in charge
of the country. The United States and Russia had identical interests, I asserted, and the Russian
attempt to embarrass the president by making it appear that Putin had forced him to back down triggered
the U.S. response in Ukraine. Frankly, I thought my geopolitical explanation was a lot more coherent
than this argument, but I tried it out. The discussion was over lunch, but my time was spent explaining
and arguing, not eating. I found that I could hold my own geopolitically but that they had mastered
the intricacies of the Obama administration in ways I never will.
The Future for Russia and the West
The more important question was what will come next. The obvious question is whether the Ukrainian
crisis will spread to the Baltics, Moldova or the Caucasus. I raised this with the Foreign Ministry
official. He was emphatic, making the point several times that this crisis would not spread. I took
that to mean that there would be no Russian riots in the Baltics, no unrest in Moldova and no military
action in the Caucasus. I think he was sincere. The Russians are stretched as it is. They must deal
with Ukraine, and they must cope with the existing sanctions, however much they can endure economic
problems. The West has the resources to deal with multiple crises. Russia needs to contain this
crisis in Ukraine.
The Russians will settle for a degree of autonomy for Russians within parts of eastern Ukraine.
How much autonomy, I do not know. They need a significant gesture to protect their interests and
to affirm their significance. Their point that regional autonomy exists in many countries is persuasive.
But history is about power, and the West is using its power to press Russia hard. But obviously,
nothing is more dangerous than wounding a bear. Killing him is better, but killing Russia has not
proved easy.
I came away with two senses. One was that Putin was more secure than I thought. In the scheme
of things, that does not mean much. Presidents come and go. But it is a reminder that things that
would bring down a Western leader may leave a Russian leader untouched. Second, the Russians do
not plan a campaign of aggression. Here I am more troubled - not because they want to invade anyone,
but because nations frequently are not aware of what is about to happen, and they might react in
ways that will surprise them. That is the most dangerous thing about the situation. It is not what
is intended, which seems genuinely benign. What is dangerous is the action that is unanticipated,
both by others and by Russia.
At the same time, my general analysis remains intact. Whatever Russia might do elsewhere, Ukraine
is of fundamental strategic importance to Russia. Even if the east received a degree of autonomy,
Russia would remain deeply concerned about the relationship of the rest of Ukraine to the West.
As difficult as this is for Westerners to fathom, Russian history is a tale of buffers. Buffer states
save Russia from Western invaders. Russia wants an arrangement that leaves Ukraine at least neutral.
For the United States, any rising power in Eurasia triggers an automatic response born of a century
of history. As difficult as it is for Russians to understand, nearly half a century of a Cold War
left the United States hypersensitive to the possible re-emergence of Russia. The United States
spent the past century blocking the unification of Europe under a single, hostile power. What Russia
intends and what America fears are very different things.
The United States and Europe have trouble understanding Russia's fears. Russia has trouble understanding
particularly American fears. The fears of both are real and legitimate. This is not a matter of
misunderstanding between countries but of incompatible imperatives. All of the good will in the
world - and there is precious little of that - cannot solve the problem of two major countries that
are compelled to protect their interests and in doing so must make the other feel threatened. I
learned much in my visit. I did not learn how to solve this problem, save that at the very least
each must understand the fears of the other, even if they can't calm them.
I think that to Putin might have an unrealistic goal to be a prospering neoliberal state and simultaneously
be independent from the USA. The USA will never allow that. It's iether, or.
ANTON VERNITSKY, CHANNEL ONE RUSSIA: Mr President, are the current economic developments
the price we have to pay for Crimea? Maybe the time has come to acknowledge it?
VLADIMIR PUTIN:
No. This is not the price we have to pay for Crimea… This is actually the price we have
to pay for our natural aspiration to preserve ourselves as a nation, as a civilisation, as a
state. And here is why.
As I've already mentioned when answering a question from your NTV colleague, and as I've
said during my Address to the Federal Assembly, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup
of the Soviet Union, Russia opened itself to our partners. What did we see? A direct and fully-fledges
support of terrorism in North Caucasus. They directly supported terrorism, you understand? Is
that what partners usually do? I won't go into details on that, but this is an established fact.
And everyone knows it.
On any issue, no matter what we do, we always run into challenges, objections and opposition.
Let me remind you about the preparations for the 2014 Olympics, our inspiration and enthusiasm
to organise a festive event not only for Russian sports fans, but for sports fans all over the
world. However, and this is an evident truth, unprecedented and clearly orchestrated attempts
were made to discredit our efforts to organise and host the Olympics. This is an undeniable
fact! Who needs to do so and for what reason? And so on and so forth.
You know, at the Valdai [International Discussion] Club I gave an example of our most recognisable
symbol. It is a bear protecting his taiga. You see, if we continue the analogy, sometimes I
think that maybe it would be best if our bear just sat still. Maybe he should stop chasing pigs
and boars around the taiga but start picking berries and eating honey. Maybe then he will be
left alone. But no, he won't be! Because someone will always try to chain him up. As soon as
he's chained they will tear out his teeth and claws. In this analogy, I am referring to the
power of nuclear deterrence. As soon as – God forbid – it happens and they no longer need the
bear, the taiga will be taken over.
We have heard it even from high-level officials that it is unfair that the whole of Siberia
with its immense resources belongs to Russia in its entirety. Why exactly is it unfair? So it
is fair to snatch Texas from Mexico but it is unfair that we are working on our own land – no,
we have to share.
And then, when all the teeth and claws are torn out, the bear will be of no use at all. Perhaps
they'll stuff it and that's all.
So, it is not about Crimea but about us protecting our independence, our sovereignty and
our right to exist. That is what we should all realise.
If we believe that one of the current problems – including in the economy as a result of
the sanctions – is crucial… And it is so because out of all the problems the sanctions take
up about 25 to 30 percent. But we must decide whether we want to keep going and fight, change
our economy – for the better, by the way, because we can use the current situation to our own
advantage – and be more independent, go through all this or we want our skin to hang on the
wall. This is the choice we need to make and it has nothing to do with Crimea at all.
GRIGORY DUBOVITSKY, RIA NOVOSTI: Mr President, I'd like to go back to the situation on
the currency market, which changes from one day to another and is a great concern for millions of
Russians. Many experts, including you, Mr President, have said the current situation could be blamed
also on currency profiteers. Concrete companies and individuals have been named. Can you give us
those names? Are they Russians or foreigners? And why can't they be stopped? Are they too strong?
Or are we too weak?
I have a second question on the same subject, if I may. Do the Central Bank and the Government
plan to peg or devalue the ruble?
VLADIMIR PUTIN:
This is what our Ukrainian partners did, quite unsuccessfully. Are you asking if we plan
to force our companies, our main exporters, who receive revenues in foreign currency, to sell
it? They would just buy it back the next day, as it happened in Kiev and as it happens in other
countries.
The next step in this case should be to set a limit on the purchase of foreign currency on
the domestic market. We won't go this far, and so the Central Bank and the Government are not
planning, quite correctly as far as I see it, to limit our exporters in this field.
This doesn't mean, though, that the Government should not act through its representatives
on company boards. After all, these are our largest energy companies. They are partly state-owned,
which means that we can influence their policies, but without issuing any directives or restrictions.
This we won't do.
As for the so-called profiteers, it is not a crime to play on the currency market. These
market players can be foreigners or various funds, which are present on the Russian market and
have been operating quite actively there. Or they can be Russian companies. Overall, as I said
at the beginning of this meeting, this is an accepted practice in a market economy. Profiteers
always appear when there is a chance to make some money.
They don't show up to steal or to cheat but to make some money in the market by creating
favorable conditions, by pushing, for example, as was done in the beginning of this process,
like, in this particular case, the Central Bank of Russia was pushed to enter the market
and start selling gold and foreign currency reserves in the hope of intervening and supporting
the national currency.
But the Central Bank stopped, and it was the right thing to do. Perhaps it would have been
better if it had been done earlier and in a tougher way. Then perhaps it wouldn't have been
necessary to increase the rate to 17 percent. But that is a different matter. A matter of taste,
so to speak. Although it is still rather significant. It is true. So, I told you who they are.
You know, two days ago I had a friendly telephone conversation with some of them and I asked,
"So why are you holding back?" By the way, I didn't make them do anything. "Our loan payments
are due soon," was the reply. Then I say, "I see. OK, if you scrape the bottom of the barrel,
can you enter the market?" He took a minute and replied: "Well, I guess we have three billion
dollars." They have three billion in reserves. See what I mean? It is not 30 kopeks. And this
is just one company.
So if each company has three billion, in total it is not 30 but 300 billion. Still, we can't
force them. Even top management of the companies with state participation must anticipate what
will happen and ensure the stability of their companies. To this end, the Government must work
very closely with them and ensure, along with the Central Bank, foreign currency and ruble liquidity
whenever it is necessary.
"...so many still maintain that America is the greatest nation in the world.
They swear that America represents all that is good; freedom, democracy, merit based capitalism
and the rights of the individual. That is true America does represent such things. However,
it is fraudulent to consider our current nation America. America was a concept
that promoted all that is good. And so it would seem that the nation in which they find themselves
cannot be America. Their nation today represents the will of the political class at all costs,
period. Their sole motivation is themselves. Very different from America. And
so perhaps a renaming on the nation is required, at least until or if the people
decide to take it back and reintroduce the world to the concept that is America for as discussed
below you cannot destroy a concept and so there is hope to bring her back. But until then
we need a name for this geographic region and its new societal system... It seems"Neoconica"
is most fitting."
Yikes! An embarrassingly bad post by the usually on top of it Tim Duy. Guess Russia is not
exactly his area of expertise.
For starters, Putin is president, not premier. That would be the hapless loser, Medvedev.
Second, Russia is currently running a trade surplus and has $370 billion in foreign reserves,
even if about 100 of that is tied up. They can afford to go down quite aways for some time before
they will be needing any IMF lifelines. Yes, they are under pressure, but this post is a joke.
pgl -> anne...
OK - permit me to stick to Americans. We had to endure watching the form Vice President on
Meet the Press tell us we did not torture people. So Dick Cheney is a serial liar. I as a New
Yorker have had to endure our former mayor (RUDY) spew racist garbage making it more difficult
for our current mayor to do his job. And of course that governor across the Hudson is seriously
overweight crook. Has that for fair and balanced?
JohnH -> Barkley Rosser...
Yes, Tim needed to weigh more carefully the effects of the other shoe dropping--European
banks, who hold much of the Russian debt. Has the Fed done stress tests on European bank
recently?
And how are holders of derivatives going to fare?
John Cummings :
lol to the "contagion" stuff. This oil stuff was levering up in 2004. Once again, follow
the shadow banking system for who and how is getting financing. The obsession with central banks
needs to end.
bakho :
Tanking the Russian economy would be bad for many other economies in the world.
The Media has been sold the Neocon version of Ukraine. The reporting has been just as
one sided as the run up to the Iraq war.
The losers are Ukrainians who want to live in peace but are being bombed by their own government.
They are caught in a war between the Russian Mafia and Greedy Neocon raiders. There is only
a losing outcome. Crimea was lucky to escape the conflict.
JF :
Can someone tell why low, govt policy rates have any meaning for investors in risky venturing
(no matter how many instruments they wrap around their positions)? The rates charged in such
situations should always be above these policy rates by definition so what difference does it
make if the FRB has a negative policy rate or where it is now? And how would the raising of
policy rates now affect these (unless some derived relationships calculate anew and somehow
shift risks away from the banks because the policy rate is increased - and how complex is that
and unreal)? What am I not understanding (keep any responses kind please)?
Is Mr. Duy intimating that the financial sector entered into risky venturing scenarios
and did not ask for fees and payments to cover their risk? I can see why that would cause
regulators to question the sanity of the financial community and seek better macro-prudential
rules and exact penalties if these things implode.
Is his post intended to say that there is great worldwide systemic risk that may begin to
unfold again, risk at the level of 2007-08? Or that US money-centered banks are at significant
risk?
anne :
At this point, an IMF program would be on the horizon....
[ China, India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa have already formed an international fund
that can function when necessary as the International Monetary Fund functions. As for the dictatorial
austerity conditions that could be anticipated from the IMF with regard to Russia, we can be
sure Russia will never accede to any punishing IMF dictate. ]
Here Krugman writes as a closet neoconservative. And writes about economy he absolutely does not
understand. BTW weak ruble kills EU and first of all German exports to Russia far more efficiently then
any sanctions...
The Ruble and the Textbooks: OK, this is a bit funny: This morning
Tim
Duy addresses the woes of the ruble, which is in
free fall despite a big rate hike, and declares that it "appears really quite textbook".
Meanwhile
Matthew Yglesias says that what Russia is doing is "the textbook approach to handling a
currency crisis", and speculates about why it isn't working.
I'm with Duy here; not sure if it's actually in any textbook, but as I
explained
yesterday, for aficionados of emerging-market currency crises this is all quite familiar.
... When you have big balance-sheet problems involving foreign-currency debt, an interest-rate
hike that tries to discourage capital flight damages the economy, and hence those same balance
sheets, from another direction, and it's common, even standard, for the effort to fail. Most
notably, tight-money policies were really really unsuccessful during the Asian financial crisis
of 1997-8, on which you can read my take
here. ...
So Russia isn't that unusual a story, except for the nukes.
Greg:
One thing I'm curious about is whether we're about to see several large hedge funds fail,
like LTCM did back in 1998, due to making highly leveraged bets on the ruble. If so, there might
be a domino effect where a few hedge funds that made these bets take out others that did not,
just like the situation back in 1998.
Thoughts on that?
Peter K. -> Greg...
That's what I was thinking. How good is Dodd-Frank? And just thing the Republicans and Citibank
want more deregulations.
Last time around Geithner and the NY Fed got all of the heads of LTCM's creditors in a room
and sorted it out. They'd probably do that again.
And last time Bear Stearns and Lehman didn't want to pony up, but they're no longer around.
GeorgeK -> Greg...
Maybe this explains why Chase wanted all their swaps to be on the taxpayers tab?
According to the textbook I learned from in the 60s, the falling exchange rate would greatly
boost employment in Russia as Russia stopped importing goods that were soaring in price and
began producing them locally.
But in free lunch economics, labor is ignored or considered a liability and black hole that
suck money out of the economy never to return.
Thanks for the link. It is a pity it is pdf. I tried posting the first para in here for a
summary but got all confused by pdf.
A thing not taken notice of in such currency crises is the parallel market. Poor old Russians
will be up the back streets at the moment exchanging any forex they have at a higher rate than
the official rate then running down to the shops to buy goods which were priced at the official
rate if imported. It will cost the same to them in dollars but higher in rubles. By changing
on the official market they might get a fridge but by changing on the unofficial market they
might get a fridge and a toaster with the same amount of forex. So on it goes and it is difficult
to stop. It is all based on expectations of further collapse of the currency.
I remember in a third world country where the currency collapsed and the bank rate was nowhere
like the street rate that an old lady dutifully went into the bank to change her forex to local.
The clerk in the bank said to her, excuse me madam, do you not know anyone that can exchange
that for you on the street. The bank clerk, yep, you read it correctly.
Russia is not there yet and hopefully will never get to that stage. But I would think that
the Russian Mafia are already looking at arbitrage opportunities. Now if you work in the central
bank and know how to do this you can make an absolute fortune.
pgl -> am...
Back to the 1900's when Yeltsin's cronies made a fortune ripping off the rest of the nation?
This would be the end of Putin!
am -> am...
Delete sentence, it will cost ..
Idea is official rate $1 = 80 roubles; unofficial rate $1=100 roubles; fridge in shop equals
8000 roubles; toaster in shop equals 2000 roubles. Exchange your $100 forex money in the bank
you can only buy a fridge but exchange it in the street then you get a fridge and a toaster.
Then you start selling fridges and toasters.
Owen Paine -> am...
U assume open exchange or at least massive immediate black marketeering
Emergency measures often work initially
Trade controls
Say import warrants
Can quickly force the pace of import substitution
The errors arise when improved means are not subsequently implemented
Russia could implement a price containing ring around import inputs into the domestic production
system
Thru a mark up cap and trde system
Objective
Socially capture the dynamic rents produced by the sudden revolution in relative prices
pgl -> Darryl FKA Ron...
Vaguely. I was wondering just yesterday why Matt Young had not learned the troll trick of
coming up with a whole new name. Or maybe Matt is really Patrick R. Sullivan resurfaced.
John Cummings:
Russia has a pretty strong surplus so they can remain solvent longer than you can I bet.
pgl -> John Cummings...
Read Krugman's writing on this. It sort of explains why this view is way off.
Owen Paine -> pgl...
Just what horror results from default
Sovereigns are always solvent in a credit based system
Run away inflation is only symptomatic of a horror
The horror is political incapacity
That incapacity can be as simple as a failed taxing system
Or laissez faire international transactions
Or a certain après moi elite pillaging
Or or
The pluralistic society the open society
Is perhaps incapable of survival
Perhaps we can learn much from castro's cuba
And its remarkable self sustaining capacities
pgl -> Owen Paine ...
"Just what horror results from default".
Seriously? Like the Greece economy is booming?
Matt Young:
Russia can always borrow in its own currency, right?
kthomas -> Matt Young...
Was that more of that ole Matty sarcasm? Im not as convinced as others you are stupid, but
that statement (which you disguised as a question) is easily described as such. This is no time
for jokes, Mr Young.
pgl -> kthomas...
Actually I think he is serious. Which is to say - clueless as ever.
pgl -> kthomas...
On thing Matt's disguised question (as you put it) fails to distinguish between is:
(a) a government issuing its debt to local citizens aka its taxpayers (pay me now or pay
me later as in Barro Ricardian equivalence); versus
(b) a nation borrowing from the rest of the world.
This issue is (b) but the disguised question asserts the issue is (a).
Like I said - clueless as ever.
xxx
When looking at capital flows out of Russia, we are talking about money invested in killing
jobs in Russia or extracting resources exported to create jobs outside of Russia instead of
Russia. If the "capital" investment in Russia were in real capital assets, like factories manufacturing
for Russia, the exchange rate changes would be opening up the export market to some degree and
reducing competition from imports.
But the "investment" capital fleeing is simply ownership of shares and the flight does
not result in any change in real assets or local employment, but simply repricing derivatives
of extraction privileges, returns on real capital, or importer rents.
The real problem is Russia's government has been selling off Russia land bit by bit to the
West and using the cash to pay Russians to not produce much of anythings so the cash can pay
for imports and put local workers out of work and dependent on government payouts. But by free
lunch economics, people not working but living off selling off assets is the ideal economy because
labor costs should be zero in the ideal economy.
likbez:
I think one victim are EU exports to Russia and first of all German exports. I think major
German companies will suffer substantial losses. Auf Wiedersehen Russian market.
Another victim are countries that benefitted from Russian tourism such as Egypt and Turkey.
The USA food imports to Russia are already under Russian sanctions so there is no major change
here, but GM and Ford dealerships in Russia are now toasts.
So it looks like this drop will have huge repercussions for EU and will be painful even for
relatively isolated from Russian market USA.
I wonder who of TBTF are major players in this currency game. May be Vampire Squid ?
I also wonder what is current Big Mac index for Russia.
Thomas Edsall has as interesting
piece this morning discussing the changing plight of working class whites in the United States
and their increasing estrangement from the Democratic Party. He gets much of the story right. Certainly
they can no longer be assured of a comfortable middle class existence. And, if they do manage to
get middle class jobs, they certainly cannot guarantee that their children will be as lucky.
... ... ...
Anyhow, Edsall is right that the white working class, like the working class in general, has
been poorly served by the Democrats in recent decades. It is not difficult to think of policies
that would change this story. The question is whether the Democrats will buck their wealthy donors
to pursue them.
Last Mover, December 10, 2014
Can Democrats Do More Damage than Free Markets Did?
To ask what any political party in America can do for anyone anymore begs the question with
an assumed response from the usual sock puppets - that government can do anything at all beyond
the usual warmongering.
As posed by Edsall the presumption is a zero sum game between Democrats and Republicans between
political gains and losses that translate into economic gains and losses.
To ask the question in regard to the white working class just fuels more the obvious,
that both parties are literally owned outright by the ultra rich who run the country from top
to bottom.
Of course DB is correct to contrast the economics that drive the plight of single mothers
and the white middle class and debunk irrelevant cultural myths trotted out by both parties
as the cause. But no one important or in the white working class is listening.
American media and politics have reduced economics to a faux zero sum game where each side
(for those who do vote) actually believes it wins when the other side loses, even though both
sides continue to lose big time - other than the very few who end up as ultra rich.
If Edsall really wants to be effective he should ask how the white working class came to
accept from both sides, the propaganda specifically designed to replace economics with irrelevant
cultural issues.
As JFK might have said: Ask not what "free markets" can do for you. Ask what they did to
you.
Larry Signor, December 10, 2014 9:05
Edsall Is Part of the Problem
Posing the problems of America as racial, cultural and moral is just pure idiocy. The Problem
in America is economic inequality. The blame game follows from this tremendous economic inequality.
We tore Thomas Piketty apart trying to discover where he was wrong. He wasn't wrong.
skeptonomist, December 10, 2014 9:21
A glaring omission from both Edsall's and Baker's pieces is taxes. When inequality was decreasing
in the early-middle 20th century, tax rates were highly progressive. Obviously this did not
impede economic growth. Democrats have usually collaborated or even taken the lead in the restructuring
of taxes since 1964.
There is no evidence that inequality can be reduced without appropriate taxation. As the
share of growth that goes to working people has been shrinking, they have been encouraged (by
Republicans) to blame each other. This economic matter could be a winning political issue, but
not only Democratic politicians but many "liberal" economists still subscribe to the obviously
false assumption that high tax rates reduce incentive.
While kicking out US financial institutions out of Russia would be painful, for Europe severing
economic ties with Russia would be suicidal -- this is a loss of one of the largest market they used
to have access too. But if Russian "import replacement" policy which is now in full swing succeed
even modestly they have no chances to return to Russian market as export shares for food and some machinery
would be redistributed in favor of LA, Egypt, Turkey and other third world countries. Even US
electronic companies such s IBM and Apple now run into serious difficulties in Russian market and seeded
part of their market share to Chinese companies. US Energy companies can be kicked out of Russian
market too, at least squeezed. So while Biden pumps his cheeks real business is already suffering.
But in way the West can force Russians to forget about its role in EuroMaidan. This is another Serbia
bombings in negative effects on Russian public opinion (after Serbian bombings Russian polls from 80+%
positive view on US and its allies switched to 90+% negative).
On the left, Egon Bahr, who worked with ex-chancellor Willy Brandt in the 1970s on Moscow-friendly
Ostpolitik, became the latest SPD grandee to propose an accommodation with Moscow. He suggested
that while the Crimea annexation should not be recognised, it could be "respected".
He and other Russia-friendly politicians are concerned about a hardening in Ms Merkel's rhetoric,
not least a speech she gave in Sydney shortly after her marathon meeting with Mr Putin, when she
accused Russia of "flouting international law" and "violating" Ukraine's territorial integrity.
Business is also starting to complain about the impact of sanctions and the broader damage done
to trade by the crisis. While the BDI and other umbrella organisations are sticking to the pledge
they made to Ms Merkel in the spring to support sanctions, companies doing business with Russia
are signalling their unease.
Russian economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev on Wednesday spoke in the industrial centre of Stuttgart,
southwest Germany, at the invitation of local businesses and called for an end to sanctions. "It
is time to end with the escalation of mistakes – sanctions and counter-sanctions," he said.
Mr Ulyukayev also backed proposals for talks between the EU and Russia over a free-trade zone
"from Lisbon to Vladivostok". The idea is a clear echo of Ms Merkel's proposed trade talks.
However, such proposals have been aired many times in discussions between Moscow and western
European states without leading to any concrete measures.
naoyb
I don't see how Putin can abandon Eastern Russian speakers. Let Poroshenko & Yats bomb and
kill those they call "terrorists"?
Within hours of signing the EU brokered accord that called for a "Unity" government, Yats
& cos did just the reverse - impeaching the democratically elected President Yanukovych, invalidating
a law establishing Russian as an official language, forming a "unity government" that excluded
those Easterners, sending troops, jets, helicopters to bomb those "terrorists".
Yale prof. David Bromwich, writing in London Review of Books, calls assistant secretary Victoria
Nuland that was pushing for Yats to get to the top:
" a neocon who made a highly successful transition in 2009 from Dick Cheney's staff to
Hillary Clinton's. Nuland is married to the co-founder of the Project for the New American
Century, Robert Kagan, one of the leading promoters of the Iraq war".
Bromwich faults Obama for "his obliviousness to the Cheney weeds in his policy garden ….
The vice president in 2001 was given a free hand to sow the departments and agencies of government
with first and second echelon workers who were fanatically loyal to him".
genauer
@ all, Tasdk
I cited enough of Huntingon to inform people, that this this ethnic Ukrainian/Russian conflict
simmered already from pre-Independence times, in a "cleft country" voting repeated 50 +x % for
one side and again for the other. People interested In more detail will read Huntington and
likely more sources.
The little IRI Survey paid by McCain, you cited, has very limited credibility, because IRI
is a VERY interested party.
The IRI survey in May 2013 is pretty irrelevant, because that was long before the Maidan
events
You should also take look at pages 14 (strong preference of economic union with Russia)
and 15 (68% warm feelings for Russia), page 13 strong opposition to Maidan actions (occupation
of buildings, demonstrations without permission)
"To eastern Ukrainians, this wasn't extending an olive branch or promoting Ukrainian unity:
it was a message – "my way or the highway." Crimea chose the highway."
„both Yatsenyuk and Turchynov are only interim leaders and were acting
against the majority of the Ukrainian parliament, which had voted to repeal
the law in the first place"
When you do such things in a "cleft country", then it has consequences, and one of those
was the overwhelming Crimean vote for independence, and given the real murderous
threat by Yatsenyuk and Turchynov, to join Russia to which they have warm feeling and preference
of custom union was the overwhelming result.
Finally, how did the other fault line conflict, Yugoslavia, break up, …. "in mutual agreement"
?
tasdk
@genauer
Referring to a brief excerpt from a secondary source when primary sources provide a much
more detailed picture looks like an attempt to obfuscate. As the opinion poll I referred to
below shows, 82 per cent of Crimeans speak Russian and 59 per cent are ethnically Russian (because
of Russian colonisation, especially during the Soviet era), but only 40 per cent view themselves
as Russian (as opposed to Crimean, Tatar or Ukrainian). The issue is more complex than your
comment suggests.
On your second point, the Soviet-era Crimean Supreme Council did declare independence (conditional
on a referendum), but under the principles of the Helsinki process, unilateral declarations
of independence are not generally recognised. Do you disagree with these principles?
Mutually agreed separation, as in the case of the peaceful break-ups of the USSR or Czechoslovakia,
is completely different from unilateral declarations of independence. Moreover, as the poll
I referred to below shows, prior to the Russian invasion and occupation, the majority of Crimeans
expressed a preference for autonomy within Ukraine.
exCaptain
If unilateral declarations of independence are not recognized under the Helsinki agreements,
then why did the U.S., Britain, France,Germany etc all accept Kosvo's UDI? Once a precedent
is set, others will tend to follow.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
In reality, everyone who was in Kosovo at the time knew that this was a short-term US policy
goal, which all the Europeans had to adhere to although they realized it spelled trouble down
the road. That's the fate of client states, or satellites as they were called during the Cold
War.
exCaptain
I'm wondering about Mrs Merkel's remark that Putin was "flouting international law" through
the annexation of Crimea.
How so?
Germany recognized Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence in 2008 despite Serbia's
objections and despite previous UNSC resolutions that described the province as a part of Serbia.
Then in 2010 the Intenational Court in The Hague ruled that secession was not illegal under
international law. While the Crimean referendum this year was clearly not in keeping with democratic
standards, it was light years ahead of Kosovo's case -- where there had been NO referendum at
all in 2008 (the decision was made by the government).
In reality, in both cases the vast majority of the population favored secession And union
with their mother nations (in Kosovo this has not yet been achieved due to international pressure,
but it's only a matter of time).
So again: just how did Putin flout international law?
tasdk
@exCaptain
An opinion poll in 2013 found that two thirds of the population of Crimea preferred to remain
part of Ukraine, against one quarter that expressed a desire to become part of Russia. We shall
never know what the result of a fair referendum in a Crimea not occupied by Russian forces would
have been.
As for international law, there is no law against unilateral secession per se. However, there
has been an understanding in Europe since the 1970s that borders will be respected and not altered
by force. Yugoslavia was an exception, but the border changes were a result of a civil war,
and not an attack by an outside power. I disagree with recognition of the independence of Kosovo,
but in the context of the Yugoslav wars, it is quite different from Ukraine.
The USSR was not dissolved by a civil war, but rather by mutual consent, with all the successor
states agreeing to respect the agreed borders. There was not a civil war in the USSR, nor in
Ukraine. The violence in Ukraine is a result of an attack by a foreign power (Russia). This
is a completely different situation to Kosovo.
genauer
@tasdk @exCaptain I am sure you have a reference for us for your alleged "
opinion poll in 2013 found that two thirds of the population of Crimea preferred to remain part
of Ukraine,"
The relevant result is on page 17, with shows 67 per cent reporting a preference for Crimea
remaining part of Ukraine, against 23 per cent in favour of a transfer of the peninsula from
Ukraine to Russia. Note as well that the statistical margin of error is not more than 2.8 per
cent.
The occupation of the Crimean peninsula by Russian forces was apparently very 'persuasive'
in changing the minds of Crimeans. Occupation by Nazi and Soviet forces in the mid-20th century
was often very 'persuasive' too.
Additional details on page 39 show that 59 per cent reported their ethnicity as Russian,
and 82 per cent reported that they usually speak Russian at home. The fact that most Crimeans
speak Russian does not imply that, prior to the Russian invasion, they wanted Crimea to be annexed
by Russia. Based on their self-reported views in 2013, most of them did not. However, given
the choice between Russian annexation and a Russian-backed insurgency, as we see in eastern
Ukraine, most would probably have preferred the annexation.
genauer
@tasdk @genauer well, that survey by the McCain headed , US Aid financed ,
was conducted in May 2013, after Yanukovich got democratically elected to office, and 24%
instead of 11% before Yanukovich election, thought the country was heading into the "right direction"
(page 5)
Yanukovich even gave people some hope that their financial situation would improve (page
7)
Things and moods apparently changed after his violent, unconstitutional overthrow
The IRI is accused of training some of the leaders of the 2004 Haitian coup d'état,
The IRI has been accused of supporting the 2009 Honduran coup d'état.
consider this foreign funding interference in internal affairs
tasdk
@genauer
The typical response of a Putin apologist. When faced with unpleasant reality, you divert
attention, speculate and invoke conspiracy theories. Gallup is a well respected polling agency,
and the results of its opinion poll show that prior to the Russian invasion and occupation,
the vast majority of Crimeans did not want Russia to annex the peninsula.
There is a military saying that armies have to fight the wars they can rather than the ones they
wish to fight. It is a maxim that western leaders should consider in their confrontation with Russia.
Roughing up Vladimir Putin at the recent G20 summit in Brisbane may have given them a warm moral
glow but did little to advance peace in Ukraine. Gesture politics does not substitute for a coherent
strategy needed to address the most alarming threat to European security since the end of the Soviet
Union.
Western leaders have been right to sanction Russia for unilaterally redrawing
international borders. Russia's
annexation of Crimea and intervention
in eastern Ukraine have recreated anarchy in Europe. Such aggression could not pass unanswered.
But although sanctions were a necessary punishment they have proved an ineffective deterrent.
They have not changed Russian behaviour. Indeed, they may have only worsened it. Their impact has
been to boost the regime's popularity and strengthen the Kremlin's hardliners, who relish isolation.
What next? Realism suggests it is time for the west and Ukraine to try to cut a deal with Russia.
The imposition of sanctions – and the threat of more – has provided necessary leverage. For the
sake of Ukraine's stability, the west should use that leverage to achieve the diplomatic solution
it can rather than the one it may ideally wish for.
The main priority for the west has to be to help a prosperous and secure Ukraine emerge from
the turmoil. That is a gargantuan challenge. But it will never succeed with a hostile Russia on
its borders (and within its borders) determined to emasculate Ukraine as a political and economic
entity.
One response would be to force Russia to withdraw. But short of starting World War III, that
is not going to happen. The west is not prepared to deploy troops to defend Ukraine, nor – for the
moment – is it even willing to supply heavy weapons to Kiev.
Worse, the west is failing to provide the financial support needed to prevent the Ukrainian
economy disappearing into a black hole. The economy is forecast to contract by more than 7 per cent
this year and the threat of default looms.
The Minsk Protocol, the ceasefire agreement signed by Russia and Ukraine in September under the
auspices of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, provides the basis for a comprehensive
political deal.
the west is failing to provide the financial
support needed to prevent the Ukrainian economy disappearing into a black hole
On the economy, Kiev should ensure that trade deals with the EU do not entangle its ties with
Russia. Before the conflict, Russia accounted for one quarter of Ukraine's exports. Russia too has
a big stake in Ukraine's economic revival: its banks and exporters are staring at massive losses
in one of its most important markets.
The west should also respond to Mr Putin's desire to discuss Europe's security architecture.
He should be reminded that Nato's collective self-defence means what it says, especially in the
Baltics. But the west should also accept that Nato will not expand into Ukraine. It would be unwise
for the security alliance to push for the inclusion of a country that is so divided.
Of course, there is no guarantee that Mr Putin would agree – and deliver on – any such deal.
His goal may be de facto partition of Ukraine. Moscow has ripped up the Budapest Memorandum it signed
in 1994 guaranteeing Ukraine's independence and so far failed to uphold the Minsk Protocol.
But as George F. Kennan wrote in his famous "X" article in Foreign Affairs in 1947 on how to
contain Soviet expansionism, the west's "demands on Russian policy should be put forward in such
a manner as to leave the way open for a compliance not too detrimental to Russian prestige." Given
that Russia's president insists no Russian forces are present in eastern Ukraine it should be easy
enough to magic them away.
If Moscow were to reject a deal, then it would be time to re-read and implement the rest of Kennan's
prescriptions. Then we will be back to the world of counter-force and containment.
Sir, I agree with much of what Sir Tony Brenton (Letters,
November 25) and John Thornhill (Comment,
November 24) say about policy towards Ukraine. What the unfortunate Ukrainians now need is a
political solution that guarantees their security and prosperity. That will be brought no nearer
by simply lambasting Vladimir Putin, as western leaders recently did in Brisbane.
First things first, however. President Putin is responsible for the current mess. He did
not have to annex Crimea or destabilise eastern Ukraine. If the Russian speakers there had legitimate
grievances, there were other ways of dealing with them. He has frightened all Russia's neighbours.
That was unacceptable behaviour, which we could not just ignore. The measures we have taken
were sensible, if insufficiently dramatic for some. Sanctions were inevitable. I am less convinced
than Sir Tony that they never work.
The west's most egregious mistake was to dangle Nato membership before Ukraine. Gideon Rachman
is right ("China,
Russia and the Sinatra doctrine", November 25):in an ideal world countries should be able
to choose their alliances. Russia's neighbours have every reason to want to join Nato. Nato
is now, belatedly but entirely rightly, strengthening its military arrangements in Poland and
the Baltic states. If the Russians don't like that, they have only themselves to blame. But
a serious military alliance must have both the means and the will to defend its members. Nato
seems not to have considered how in practice it would defend Ukraine against a resurgent Russia.
The calculation was perhaps that the Russians were terminally weak, and that detaching Ukraine
from Russia's "sphere of influence" would finally put the nail in the Russian imperial coffin.
We all forgot that – at least before Mr Putin began to change their minds for them – a majority
of Ukrainians were against joining.
For Nato to give Ukraine a guarantee that it could not implement would be a betrayal, one
of a long line of betrayals of weaker countries by stronger ones that neither began nor ended
with the meaningless guarantee that the French and the British gave to Poland in 1939. For the
moment there is little sign that the west will rouse itself to do even that. So what is left?
Mr Putin will not surrender unconditionally, though his domestic position may weaken as Russians
exchange nationalist euphoria for worries over the economy. So that, as Sir Tony and Mr Thornhill
say, leaves diplomacy – a negotiated settlement, which gets the best deal for the Ukrainians
while enabling the Russians to climb down without undue loss of face. That will be a protracted
and tedious business. But those who argue instead for maximalist outcomes are doing the Ukrainians
no favours.
Sir, It was good to see John Thornhill join those of us who have been arguing for months
that we need to settle with Russia over Ukraine ("It is time for the west and Ukraine to offer
Putin a deal", November 24). As anyone who knows Russia could have predicted, sanctions, however
justified by the lawlessness of Russia's actions, have made things worse not better. We have
deployed them eight times against Russia since 1945, always ineffectively. Even the Russian
opposition dismisses them, and Mikhail Gorbachev (no fan of Vladimir Putin) is now talking of
a "new cold war". They are like a failed drone strike, talked up by its authors as having done
lots of collateral damage (to the Russian economy), but which has visibly missed its main target
(to change Russian policy).
Mr Thornhill rightly cites three of the four components of a deal. Yes, the Russians need
assurances that Ukraine won't join Nato, and of continued commercial access. And they need to
be unambiguously reminded that the security guarantee for existing Nato members is cast iron.
But the key point in the current crisis is a substantial autonomy offer for the Donbass which
would enable President Putin to claim success and pull out. Without that the war will go on,
and, as Mr Thornhill acknowledges, the Russians are more determined to win than we are.
As I hear the vibes in Whitehall and Washington, the key obstacle to this sensible way
out is the prime ministerial and presidential view that "we can't let Putin win". It is of course
good to hold one's head high, but only until it bangs into reality. We are passively watching
Xi Jing Ping squeeze the air out of the Hong Kong demonstrators, and are dickering with the
Iranians about how many thousand centrifuges they can keep (having started from a demand for
total shutdown), because in both cases we recognise the alternative as worse. Exactly the same
is true of Ukraine, especially for the Ukrainians themselves.
Tony Brenton
Cambridge, UK
UK ambassador to Russia, 2004-08; Board member, Russo-British Chamber of Commerce
It's interesting to note that some Russian reader read and comment such an obscure publication as
American Interest and such an obscure author as Lilia Shevtsova. Although one paragraph in the article
related to the danger of "regime change" in Russia makes sense (see below).
Essentially, the West faces a dilemma. On the one hand, retaining the sanctions regime may
exacerbate Russia's economic crisis, provoking turmoil and unearthing the forces that would make
the current regime look angelic by comparison. And we also cannot rule out the possibility
that the regime, feeling cornered, would retaliate. The Kremlin, meanwhile, has charged that the
Western sanctions are in truth an effort aimed at bringing regime change to Moscow.
True, in the end, sanctions could undermine the Russian political regime, but the very idea that
they could cause regime change in Moscow greatly alarms Western leaders. Indeed, their fear
of destabilizing Russia and setting in motion an unpredictable chain of events is a major factor
that has induced them to proceed with every caution...
... ... ...
Most devastating for the liberal democracies is the fact that the Russian system is trying to
survive by rendering their principles and norms fake. The Russian system can't produce an idea or
ideology as did the Soviet Union; instead it makes competing ideas and ideologies irrelevant.
CCCP
Waw. Actually your ideals is beyond hypocrisy. You and your hypocrisy are ruining
concepts such as democracy and human values.
Since the fall of the Berlin wall, the United States are constantly at war. In any country,
where they built democracy came the devastation. That's all the analysis. Well, draw your own
conclusions.
Василий Батарейкин
US tried to build democracy in Iraq, in Afganistan, in Libia, all these countries are ruined
now, and IGIS is becoming stronger!
now they want to build democracy in Ukraine, the country is also about to be ruined soon!
Maybe US should try to build democracy in the really fundamentalistic country - Saudi Arabia?
Oh I completely forgot that King of S.ArAbia is a big friend of Bush family, and Obama bows
to him also. By the way, Ossama Bin Ladan was from Saudi Arabia as well...
Kirill Senchugov
It is not hypocrisy. This is schizophrenia. Americans completely lost they mind.
You are looking at the world with curved glasses, where top is bottom and bottom is the top.
And the most devastating of all your delusions, is that you think that all of your actions the
right thing and you are "protecting freedom". Guess what? You are wrong. You are the world dictator,
international bully, and if someone trying to say no to you (even if "no" means the attempt
to protect they interests or life of their people), you are calling this people "not democratic"
and doing everything to destroy them. With sanctions or bombs if they small enough, and cant
protect themself. You are disgusting.
Being a neocon propagandists pays really well: "A recent mandatory income declaration of her
husband to the Polish government shows that her income has skyrocketed from $20,000 in 2011 to more
than $800,000 in 2013."
Neoconservative newspaper columnist Anne Applebaum is angry and upset. In the days when print
was king, she could dash off her pro-war opinions and never have to worry about the common people
taking apart her arguments. In those days only a very few would be dedicated enough to write a letter
to the editor, and only a tiny fraction would be printed. All of them would be subject to approval
by the newspaper editor, of course.
Thus, when she
writes of "The Myth of Russia Humiliation," her readers take her to task. When she
writes, in "War in Europe is not a hysterical idea," that Ukrainians and Europeans should "drop
everything, mobilize, prepare for total war [with Russia] while still possible," readers overwhelmingly
push back against her war propaganda. They write things like:
Anne,
You and you family should go back to Poland where you belong.
Go fight the good fight and stop egging on America into a disastrous war for which it has no
business.
and
Anne, I am sorry but you are dillusional, nuclear strikes?! Genocide, i do not think anyone
in their sane mind would even think of it.. For now the only cleansing has been conducted by
the Ukrainians.. 860 thousand fled to Russia that telsl you something.. Stop writing bad analysis
and aggrevating the problem
and
The only raving lunatic is Anne Applebaum.
A preemptive nuclear strike against Warsaw for Russia to flex it's muscles? Please. The only
way this scenario would be remotely possible is if we directly intervened, which is the course
of action that the sociopath Anne Applebaum wants us to pursue in the first place.
As Counterpunch's Mike Whitney has recently
written, the Western
mainstream media's constant demonization of Russia and Vladimir Putin has fallen flat among readers,
who increasingly challenge the editorial lines of these media outlets.
This greatly grieves Applebaum,
whose latest column demands that negative comments be more heavily edited on the Internet.
Writes Anne:
Once upon a time, it seemed as if the Internet would be a place of civilized and open debate;
now, unedited forums often deteriorate to insult exchanges.
Applebaum is particularly concerned that negative comments about her work are leading others to
develop a negative opinion of her frequent calls for war with Russia:
Multiple experiments have shown that perceptions of an article, its writer or its subject can
be profoundly shaped by anonymous online commentary, especially if it is harsh.
She is worried that negative comments under her pro-war articles may give the impression that her
views are "controversial":
Online commentary subtly shapes what voters think and feel, even if it just raises the level
of irritation, or gives readers the impression that certain views are 'controversial...'
To Applebaum, there is nothing controversial about calling for a nuclear war with Russia. Readers
dare not think otherwise!
Her solution to the "problem" is to silence negative views, which
she claims are all made by heavily-paid and well-organized Russian trolls.
Anne Applebaum urges speech restrictions by demanding that any commenter use his or her real
name. "Too many people now abuse the privilege" of anonymity, she writes. "Sooner or later, we may
also be forced to end Internet anonymity or to at least ensure that every online persona is linked
back to a real person."
Interestingly, Applebaum demands transparency for everyone else while rejecting it for herself.
A recent mandatory income declaration of her husband to the Polish government shows that her
income has skyrocketed from $20,000 in 2011 to more than $800,000 in 2013. No explanation was
given for this massive influx of cash, though several ventures in which she has a part
are tied to CIA and National Endowment for Democracy-affiliated organizations. Could Applebaum
be one of those well-paid propagandists about whom she complains so violently?
By the way, ever the apparatchik, Anne Applebaum blocks anyone from following her on Twitter
who is critical of her work.
Not that Hagel had distinguished himself as a sterling leader of the Pentagon – nor has all hope
disappeared that a sensible resolution of the impasse with Iran might be achieved before the next
"deadline" in June – but Obama still does not appear to have escaped the spell of the neocons who
continue to dominate American geopolitical thought despite the bloody disasters that they helped
cause in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Six years into his presidency, Obama still doesn't seem to understand that just because some
people have impressive credentials doesn't mean they know what they're doing. Indeed, in a profoundly
corrupted system – like the one that now controls Official Washington – rewards are handed out to
people who serve the corrupt interests or at least don't get in the way.
In a time of corruption, the countervailing forces of wisdom and courage will never be found
among the credentialed, but rather among the outcasts of the establishment, those who were forced
to the margins because they objected to the venality, because they stood up against misguided "group
think."
But Obama has been unwilling – or possibly unable – to come to grips with this reality. Despite
his personal intelligence and rhetorical skills, Obama never has been willing to challenge people
cloaked in credentials – those who went to the best schools, worked at big-name firms, won prestigious
awards or held fellowships at famous think tanks.
The tragedy of Obama is that I'm told that he understands the stupidity of the modern U.S. establishment
and does sometimes consult with "realists" who offer practical advice for how he can resolve some
of the most nettlesome problems facing the United States around the world. But he does so virtually
in secret, with what politicians like to call "deniability."
Obama operates one foreign policy above the table – pounding his fist along with the neocons
against Syria, Iran and Russia – and another foreign policy below the table, dealing with adversaries
in ways necessary to confront global challenges, such as collaborating with Iran to counter the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and with Russia to address challenges with Iran, Syria, Libya and
elsewhere.
No one will fight for eastern Ukraine except the Ukrainians and presumably the Russians. Ukraine
needs to find a way to live with Russia in peace. NATO should reassure the Russians and caution
the Ukrainians by announcing it will not expand to Ukraine, or for that matter, to Georgia. The
E.U. should engage Putin in how to settle the crisis, doubling down on the cease-fire the Russian
leader helped broker, not escalating the conflict. The hawks should stand down.
The human costs are already mounting. It is utterly irresponsible to destroy a country in the
name of supporting it, as is happening in Ukraine. Samantha Power has it wrong: Americans aren't
tired of humanitarian intervention; they are tired of its consequences. It is time for taking a
sober look at the misconceptions that got us here.
Europe, he declared, has lost its way, its energies sapped by economic crisis and a remote, technocratic
bureaucracy. It is increasingly a bystander in a world that has become "less and less Eurocentric,"
and that frequently looks at the Continent "with aloofness, mistrust and even, at times, suspicion."
Gently delivered, it was nevertheless a failing grade.
"In many quarters we encounter a general impression of weariness and aging, of a Europe which
is now a 'grandmother,' no longer fertile and vibrant," the pope, an Argentine, told the Parliament,
where speeches usually trade in platitudes or mind-numbing technicalities.
... ... ...
John Thavis, an American
writer on the Catholic Church and the author of "The
Vatican Diaries," said
Pope Francis had a very different take on Europe than his two immediate predecessors, a Pole
and then a German, for whom "Europe was the center of the universe."
By contrast, Francis gave
little direct encouragement to calls for "more Europe," and instead echoed some of the complaints
from surging populist politicians who view the European Union as a meddlesome force that inhibits
rather than promotes ambition and economic growth.
"In
recent years, as the European Union has expanded, there has been growing mistrust on the part of
citizens toward institutions considered to be aloof, engaged in laying down rules perceived as insensitive
to individual peoples, if not downright harmful," Francis said, dressed in white clerical robes
as he addressed the packed hall.
Public discontent with the
European Union's bureaucracy, widely seen as wasteful, elitist and self-serving, helped propel France's
far-right National Front party and several other once-fringe nationalist groups to strong gains
in May elections for the
European Parliament. In France, the National Front came ahead of all other parties.
... ... ...
The pope won particularly loud applause on Tuesday with remarks that seemed to challenge a largely
German-scripted policy rooted in austerity as the cure to Europe's economic ills.
"The time has come to promote policies which create employment," he said, "but above all, there
is a need to restore dignity to labor by ensuring proper working conditions."
In a second speech Tuesday to the Council of Europe, another Strasbourg assembly with a palatial
building but little resonance among ordinary people, Francis said, "It is my profound hope that
the foundations will be laid for a new social and economic cooperation."
He noted that the Catholic Church had played an important role over centuries in providing charity
for Europe's poor but added: "How many of them there are in our streets! They ask not only for the
food they need for survival, which is the most elementary of rights, but also for a renewed appreciation
of the value of their own life, which poverty obscures, and a rediscovery of the dignity conferred
by work."
It also needs to be kept in mind that apart from the pursuit of truth, each individual becomes
the criterion for measuring himself and his own actions. The way is thus opened to a subjectivistic
assertion of rights, so that the concept of human rights, which has an intrinsically universal import,
is replaced by an individualistic conception of rights. This leads to an effective lack of concern
for others and favours that globalization of indifference born of selfishness, the result
of a conception of man incapable of embracing the truth and living an authentic social dimension.
This kind of individualism leads to human impoverishment and cultural aridity, since it effectively
cuts off the nourishing roots on which the tree grows. Indifferent individualism leads to the
cult of opulence reflected in the throwaway culture all around us. We have a surfeit of unnecessary
things, but we no longer have the capacity to build authentic human relationships marked by truth
and mutual respect. And so today we are presented with the image of a Europe which is hurt, not
only by its many past ordeals, but also by present-day crises which it no longer seems capable of
facing with its former vitality and energy; a Europe which is a bit tired and pessimistic, which
feels besieged by events and winds of change coming from other continents.
... ... ...
Similarly, the contemporary world offers a number of other challenges requiring careful study
and a common commitment, beginning with the welcoming of migrants, who immediately require the essentials
of subsistence, but more importantly a recognition of their dignity as persons. Then too, there
is the grave problem of labour, chiefly because of the high rate of young adults unemployed
in many countries – a veritable mortgage on the future – but also for the issue of the dignity of
work.
It is my profound hope that the foundations will be laid for a new social and economic cooperation,
free of ideological pressures, capable of confronting a globalized world while at the same time
encouraging that sense of solidarity and mutual charity which has been a distinctive feature of
Europe, thanks to the generous efforts of hundreds of men and women – some of whom the Catholic
Church considers saints – who over the centuries have worked to develop the continent, both by entrepreneurial
activity and by works of education, welfare, and human promotion. These works, above all, represent
an important point of reference for the many poor people living in Europe. How many of them
there are in our streets! They ask not only for the food they need for survival, which is the most
elementary of rights, but also for a renewed appreciation of the value of their own life, which
poverty obscures, and a rediscovery of the dignity conferred by work.
Yves here. As much as I consider myself to be reasonably jaded, I was nevertheless gobsmacked
to read Andrew Bacevich's list of "Washington assumptions" that underlie US policy-making in the
Middle East. They aren't just detached from reality, they are so wildly at odds with reality as
to look deranged. I'd really like to believe that Bacevich is simply describing the all-too-common
syndrome of coming to believe your own PR. But as he tells it, these "Washington assumptions" aren't
simply the undergirding talking points for key domestic and foreign constituencies; they really
are policy drivers.
... ... ...
when David Ignatius, a well-informed and normally sober columnist for the Washington Post,
reflects on what the United States must do to get Iraq War 3.0 right, he offers this "mental
checklist":
* The presence of U.S. forces in the Islamic world contributes to regional stability and enhances
American influence.
* The Persian Gulf constitutes a vital U.S. national security interest.
* Egypt and Saudi Arabia are valued and valuable American allies.
* The interests of the United States and Israel align.
* Terrorism poses an existential threat that the United States must defeat.
... ... ...
semiconscious, November 24, 2014
'They aren't just detached from reality, they are so wildly at odds with reality as to look
deranged…'
therein lies the problem: they don't just 'look' deranged. they are deranged. they are ill.
& we are all left helplessly witnessing the ever-more-tragic, ever-more-destructive results
of their madness…
my greatest fear: that, as they slowly but surely become aware of the just how insane they've
become, & how warped & deluded is their vision, they, in their anger & despair, will become
capable of doing literally anything you might imagine…
our 'leaders', having dragged us all inside with them, have become lost in a funhouse of
their own design…
damian, November 24, 2014
Being – "deranged" – may merely be context of the logic: see – Responsibility to Protect
Ambassador Power rose to prominence in government circles as part of her campaign to promote
a doctrine known as the Responsibility to Protect. This doctrine, advanced by the United Nations,
is predicated on the proposition that sovereignty is a privilege, not a right, and that if any
regime in any nation violates the prevailing precepts of acceptable governance, then the international
community is morally obligated to "revoke" that nation's sovereignty and assume command and
control of the offending country.
The three pillars of the United Nations-backed Responsibility to Protect are:
A state has a responsibility to protect its population from mass atrocities.
The international community has a responsibility to assist the state if it is unable
to protect its population on its own.
If the state fails to protect its citizens from mass atrocities and peaceful measures
have failed, the international community has the responsibility to intervene through coercive
measures such as economic sanctions.
Should all others measures fail, then military intervention is required. Command and control
of that force should be centered in the UN, according to Power and her colleagues.
all the subjective interpretations of "atrocities" and bad country management and how you
undermine that countries management – covertly – is served up by those like Obama and Powers
– as the Kindergarten (Carol Quigley's word) – who carry out their orders for those who make
the decisions for endless war?
David Lentini. November 24, 2014 at 6:17 am
As usual, Bacevitch makes important points.
But here, I think these "assumptions" are, at least at the highest levels, more "justifications"
than real deomonstrations of thinking. And I disagree somewhat with Bacevitch's point about
fracking and US oil and gas production.
First, the fracking. I think the better evidence-much of it developed here-is that our fracking
effort will, like all binges, soon end with a huge hangover. I figure that the smart money understands
that our fracking policies are for short-term political jockeying (mostly against Russia) that
also is hugely profitable for our own oligarchs. But this will only work for a few years, after
which we'll be back to the Middle East and Russia. The game is whether that will be a better
deal for us our oligarchs.
So, the Middle East may wane in importance, but will eventuall return.
As for the other arguments, I think these all can be better viewed as talking points by the
élites in favor of justifying the actions they want to take for motives that we really don't
get to see.
Thinking about Israel and our Arab Allies, I would argue that many in the establishment want
a "Greater Israel" that dominates the region for both religious and political and economic ends.
Stragely enough, the goal seems to be also tying Israel to the Saudis and other Gulf states
with the idea of turning the ME into a relable petroleum production center dominated by the
US. And we have to consider the stability of the Gulf stattes from the perspecitive of Wall
Street and the recycling of petordollars. These odd bedfellows would be united by their need
to keep the lid on the local Arab populations who are increasingly threatening to their governments.
Seen from that perspective, the placement of US troops is used to keep the hand of hte US
in the game, and to provide overwhemling violence when needed. That violence may be needed for
genuine threats, or threats that are largely synthesized to stir the pot and create opportunities
for exploitation. They are also needed to help guarantee the "Greater Israel" strategy. Of course.
all of this breeds terrorism, but that's viewed as a beneficial side effect useful to justify
our troop deployments and domestic control.
So, while it's very true that each of the points Bacevitch makes (excepting possibly the
fracking argument) are true, I think we need to get behind the smoke screen to the real strategy.
How could anyone think that these deeper goals and plans could possbily work? In short, the
people running these games are not as crazy and stupid as the seem from Bacevitch's article-they're
worse!
The value of M's insight -- of, that is, otherwise intelligent people purporting to believe in
things that don't exist -- can be applied well beyond American assumptions about Iraq. A similar
inclination to fantasize permeates, and thereby warps, U.S. policies throughout much of the Greater
Middle East. Consider the following claims, each of which in Washington circles has attained quasi-canonical
status.
For decades now, the first four of these assertions have formed the foundation of U.S. policy
in the Middle East. The events of 9/11 added the fifth, without in any way prompting a reconsideration
of the first four. On each of these matters, no senior U.S. official (or anyone aspiring to a position
of influence) will dare say otherwise, at least not on the record.
Yet subjected to even casual scrutiny, none of the five will stand up. To take them at face value
is the equivalent of believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy -- or that John Boehner and Mitch
McConnell really, really hope that the Obama administration and the upcoming Republican-controlled
Congress can find grounds to cooperate.
Let's examine all five, one at a time.
The Presence of U.S. Forces: Ever
since the U.S. intervention in Lebanon that culminated in the Beirut bombing of October 1983,
introducing American troops into predominantly Muslim countries has seldom contributed to stability.
On more than a few occasions, doing so has produced just the opposite effect.
Iraq and Afghanistan provide mournful examples. The
new book "Why We Lost" by retired Lieutenant General Daniel Bolger finally makes it permissible
in official circles to declare those wars the failures that they have been. Even granting, for the
sake of argument, that U.S. nation-building efforts were as pure and honorable as successive presidents
portrayed them, the results have been more corrosive than constructive. The IS militants plaguing
Iraq find their counterpart in the
soaring production of opium that plagues Afghanistan. This qualifies as stability?
And these are hardly the only examples. Stationing U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia after Operation
Desert Storm was supposed to have a reassuring effect. Instead, it produced the debacle of the devastating
Khobar Towers bombing.
Sending G.I.'s into Somalia back in 1992 was supposed to demonstrate American humanitarian concern
for poor, starving Muslims. Instead, it culminated in the embarrassing Mogadishu firefight, which
gained the sobriquet Black Hawk Down, and doomed that mission.
Even so, the pretense that positioning American soldiers in some Middle East hotspot will bring
calm to troubled waters survives. It's far more accurate to say that doing so provides our adversaries
with what soldiers call a target-rich environment -- with Americans as the targets.
The Importance of the Persian Gulf:
Although U.S. interests in the Gulf may once have qualified as vital, the changing global energy
picture has rendered that view obsolete. What's probably bad news for the environment is good news
in terms of creating strategic options for the United States. New technologies have once again made
the United States the world's largest producer of
oil. The U.S. is also the world's largest producer of
natural gas. It turns out that the lunatics chanting "drill, baby, drill" were right after all.
Or perhaps it's "frack, baby, frack." Regardless, the assumed energy dependence and "vital
interests" that inspired Jimmy Carter to declare back in 1980 that the Gulf is worth fighting
for no longer pertain.
Access to Gulf oil remains critically important to some countries, but surely not to the
United States. When it comes to propping up the wasteful and profligate American way of life,
Texas and
North Dakota outrank Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in terms of importance. Rather than worrying about
Iraqi oil production, Washington would be better served ensuring the safety and well-being of Canada,
with its bountiful supplies of shale oil. And if militarists ever find the itch to increase U.S.
oil reserves becoming irresistible, they would be better advised to invade Venezuela than to pick
a fight with Iran.
Does the Persian Gulf require policing from the outside? Maybe. But if so, let's volunteer China
for the job. It will keep them out of mischief.
Arab Allies: It's time to reclassify the U.S. relationship
with both Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Categorizing these two important Arab states as "allies" is surely
misleading. Neither one shares the values to which Washington professes to attach such great
importance.
For decades, Saudi Arabia, Planet Earth's closest equivalent to an absolute monarchy,
has promoted anti-Western radical jihadism -- and not without effect. The relevant numbers here
are two that most New Yorkers will remember:
15
out of 19. If a conspiracy consisting almost entirely of Russians had succeeded in killing several
thousand Americans, would U.S. authorities give the Kremlin a pass? Would U.S.-Russian relations
remain unaffected? The questions answer themselves.
Meanwhile, after a brief dalliance with democracy, Egypt has once again become what it was before:
a corrupt, oppressive military dictatorship unworthy of the
billions of dollars of military assistance that Washington
provides from one
year to the next.
Israel: The United States and Israel share more than a
few interests in common. A commitment to a "two-state solution" to the Palestinian problem does
not number among them. On that issue, Washington's and Tel Aviv's purposes diverge widely. In all
likelihood, they are
irreconcilable.
For the government of Israel, viewing security concerns as paramount, an acceptable Palestinian
state will be the equivalent of an Arab Bantustan, basically defenseless, enjoying limited sovereignty,
and possessing limited minimum economical potential. Continuing Israeli encroachments on the occupied
territories, undertaken in the teeth of
American objections, make this self-evident.
It is, of course, entirely the prerogative -- and indeed the obligation -- of the Israeli
government to advance the well being of its citizens. U.S. officials have a similar obligation:
they are called upon to act on behalf of Americans. And that means refusing to serve as Israel's
enablers when that country takes actions that are contrary to U.S. interests.
The "peace process" is a fiction. Why should the United States persist in pretending otherwise?
It's demeaning.
Terrorism: Like crime and communicable diseases, terrorism
will always be with us. In the face of an outbreak of it, prompt, effective action to reduce the
danger permits normal life to continue. Wisdom lies in striking a balance between the actually existing
threat and exertions undertaken to deal with that threat. Grown-ups understand this. They don't
expect a crime rate of zero in American cities. They don't expect all people to enjoy perfect health
all of the time. The standard they seek is "tolerable."
That terrorism threatens Americans is no doubt the case, especially when they venture into the
Greater Middle East. But aspirations to eliminate terrorism belong in the same category as campaigns
to end illiteracy or homelessness: it's okay to aim high, but don't be surprised when the results
achieved fall short.
Eliminating terrorism is a chimera. It's not going to happen. U.S. civilian and military leaders
should summon the honesty to acknowledge this.
My friend M has put his finger on a problem that is much larger than he grasps. Here's hoping
that when he gets his degree he lands an academic job. It's certain he'll never find employment
in our nation's capital. As a soldier-turned-scholar, M inhabits what one of George W. Bush's closest
associates (believed to be
Karl Rove) once
derisively referred to as the "reality-based
community." People in Washington don't have time for reality. They're lost in a world of their
own.
Even as many forms of power have grown more democratized and diffuse, other forms of power have
grown more concentrated. A very small number of states control and consume a disproportionate
share of the world's resources, and a very small number of individuals control most of the world's
wealth. (According to a 2014 Oxfam
report, the 85 richest individuals on Earth are worth more than the globe's 3.5 billion poorest
people).
Indeed, from a species-survival perspective, the world has grown vastly more dangerous over the
last century. Individual humans live longer than ever before, but a small number of states now possess
the unprecedented ability to destroy large chunks of the human race and possibly the Earth itself
-- all in a matter of days or even hours. What's more, though the near-term threat of interstate
nuclear conflict has greatly diminished since the end of the Cold War, nuclear material and know-how
are now both less controlled and less controllable.
Amid all these changes, our world has also grown far more uncertain. We possess more information
than ever before and vastly greater processing power, but the
accelerating pace of global change has far exceeded our collective ability to understand it,
much less manage it. This makes it increasingly difficult to make predictions or calculate risks.
As I've
written previously:
We literally have no points of comparison for understanding the scale and scope of the risks
faced by humanity today. Compared to the long, slow sweep of human history, the events of the
last century have taken place in the blink of an eye. This should ... give us pause when we're
tempted to conclude that today's trends are likely to continue. Rising life expectancy? That's
great, but if climate change has consequences as nasty as some predict, a century of rising
life expectancy could turn out to be a mere blip on the charts. A steep decline in interstate
conflicts? Fantastic, but less than 70 years of human history isn't much to go on....
That's why one can't dismiss the risk of catastrophic events [such as disastrous climate
change or nuclear conflict] as "high consequence, low probability." How do we compute the probability
of catastrophic events of a type that has never happened? Does 70 years without nuclear annihilation
tell us that there's a low probability of nuclear catastrophe -- or just tell us that we haven't
had a nuclear catastrophe yet?...
Lack of catastrophic change might signify a system in stable equilibrium, but sometimes --
as with earthquakes -- pressure may be building up over time, undetected....
Most analysts assumed the Soviet Union was stable -- until it collapsed. Analysts predicted
that Egypt's Hosni Mubarak would retain his firm grip on power -- until he was ousted. How much
of what we currently file under "Stable" should be recategorized under "Hasn't Collapsed Yet"?
This, then, is the character of world messiness in this first quarter of the 21st century. So
on to the next question: Where, in all this messiness, does the United States find itself?
II. The United States in the Mess: Goodbye, Lake Wobegon?
For Americans, the good news is that the United States remains an extraordinarily powerful nation.
The United States has "the most powerful military in history," Obama declared in a recent
speech. Measured by sheer destructive capacity, he is surely right. The United States spends
more on its military than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan,
and India combined.
The U.S. military can get to more places, faster, with more lethal and effective weapons, than any
military on Earth.
The United States also manages to gobble up a
disproportionate share of the world's wealth and resources. By the year 2000,
wrote Betsy Taylor and Dave Tilford, the United States, with "less than 5 percent of the world's
population,"
was using "one-third of the world's paper, a quarter of the world's oil, 23 percent of the coal,
27 percent of the aluminum, and 19 percent of the copper." In 2010, Americans possessed
39 percent of the planet's wealth.
The bad news for Americans? U.S. power and global influence have been declining. In part, this
is because various once-weak states have been growing stronger, and in part, it's because no state
can be as autonomous today as it might have been in the past. The United States' geographical position
long helped protect it from external interference, while its strong military and economy enabled
it to dominate or control numerous less powerful states. But globalization has reduced every
state's autonomy, creating collective challenges -- from climate change to the regulation of capital
-- that no state can fully address on its own.
U.S. power and global influence have also declined in absolute terms, as America's own political
and economic health has been called into question. The United States
now has greater income inequality than almost every other state in the developed world -- and
most states in the developing world. American life expectancy ranks well below that of other industrialized
democracies, and the same is true for infant mortality and elementary school enrollment. Meanwhile,
the United States has the world's highest per capita
incarceration rate, and on international
health and quality-of-life metrics, the United States has been losing ground for several decades.
This domestic decline jeopardizes the country's continued ability to innovate and prosper; it also
makes American values and the American political and economic systems less appealing to others.
Worse, the political system that Americans rely on for reform and repair seems itself to be broken;
the federal government shutdown in 2013 offered the world a striking illustration of U.S. political
dysfunction. Add to this the divisive national security policies of George W. Bush's administration
-- many of which were
continued or
expanded
by the Obama administration -- and it's no surprise that the United States has recently become
less
admired and
less emulated around the globe, reducing American "soft power."
No matter how you slice it, it comes to the same thing: Compared with 30 years ago, the United
States today has a greatly reduced ability to control its own destiny or the destiny of other states.
The United States still has unprecedented power to destroy (Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden both
discovered this, to their detriment). But the country's capacity for destruction is not equaled
by its capacity to shape the behavior of other states or their populations, and the United States
has less and less ability to insulate itself from the world's woes.
Unfortunately, American political leaders share a bipartisan inclination to deny these realities.
Mostly, they succumb to the
Lake
Wobegon effect: "Declinism" and "declinist" have entered the American political vocabulary,
but only as purely pejorative terms.
This is both stupid and dangerous. How can we adapt our global strategy to compensate for the
ways in which U.S. power has been declining if we refuse to admit that decline?
Continued U.S. decline is certainly not inevitable, and
some argue that the United States is in fact poised for an economic and political resurgence.
There is no way to know for sure -- but it's worth recalling that, historically, every significant
empire has eventually declined. Are we prepared to bet that the United States will prove an exception?
There is also no way to know for sure what form continued or eventual U.S. decline will take.
We don't know whether it will be fast or slow; we don't know whether the American Empire is in for
a hard landing or a soft one. Will the United States crash, like the former Soviet Union? Or will
a slow decline in power leave the country an intact and influential nation, like the United Kingdom?
Will America's future be more like Canada's present, or more like Brazil's?
III. Behind the Veil of Ignorance: Uncertainty as Lodestone
We don't know what America's future will look like, and we can make fewer and fewer geopolitical
predictions with confidence. The world has changed too much and too fast for us to accurately assess
the probabilities of many types of future events. Perhaps this is why it's so tempting for Americans
to stay in Lake Wobegon, with eyes closed and fingers crossed. Uncertainty is frightening.
But paradoxically, this very uncertainty should be a lodestone, pointing realists and idealists
alike toward a sensible, forward-looking global strategy. In fact, radical uncertainty can be a
powerful tool for strategic planning.
That may seem oxymoronic, but consider one of the 20th century's most influential thought experiments:
In his 1971 book,
A Theory of Justice, philosopher
John Rawls famously sought to use a
hypothetical situation involving extreme uncertainty to derive optimal principles of justice.
Imagine, said Rawls, rational, free, and equal humans seeking to devise a set of principles to
undergird the structure of human society. Imagine further that they must reason from behind what
Rawls dubbed a "veil
of ignorance," which hides from them their own future status or attributes. Behind the veil
of ignorance, wrote Rawls, people still possess general knowledge of economics, science, and so
forth, and they can draw on this knowledge to assist them in designing a future society. Their ignorance
is
limited to their own future role in the society they are designing: "no one knows his place
in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution
of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like."
If we were collectively designing social structures and rules, but could not know our own individual
future positions in that social structure, what structures and rules would we come up with? Applying
a version of decision theory,
Rawls concluded that in the face of such radical uncertainty, rational, free, and equal beings behind
the veil of ignorance would be drawn toward a "maximin"
(or "minimax") rule of decision,
in which they would seek to minimize their losses in a worst-case scenario. Since those behind the
veil of ignorance don't know whether they'll be among the haves or among the have-nots in the society
they are designing, they should seek to build a society in which they each will be least
badly off -- even the luck of the draw leads them to start with the fewest advantages.
Rawls posited that such a rule of decision should lead those behind the veil of ignorance to
support two core principles: the first relating to liberty ("each person [should] have an equal
right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others"), and the
second relating to social and economic goods. (Social goods should be distributed equally, unless
an unequal distribution would serve the common good
and be "to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged," while "offices and positions [should
remain] open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.")
This is in some ways intuitive: On a national level, it is the reason Americans across the political
spectrum continue to express substantial
support for the maintenance of unemployment benefits, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,
and so on. Any one of us might someday face a job loss or illness; nearly all of us will eventually
face old age. We know we might someday need those benefits ourselves. In the face of uncertainty
about the future, we all recognize the value of insurance, savings, and at least some minimal social
safety net.
In the international arena, the same is true.
This has obvious implications for global strategy. Empires, like individuals, can sink into poverty,
illness, or simple old age -- and in an era of uncertainty, empires, like individuals, would do
well to hedge against the possibility of future misfortune.
Indeed, two decades after the publication of
A Theory of Justice, Rawls sought to apply a form of this thought experiment to derive
the core principles that he believed would characterize a just global order. His arguments are complex,
and I can't do justice to them here -- but fortunately, unlike Rawls, I am not interested in coming
up with abstract principles of global justice. My less lofty agenda is limited to arguing that a
crude version of Rawls's thought experiment can help us delineate the contours of a sensible U.S.
global strategy -- a "maximin" strategy that is well-suited to protecting the interests of the United
States and its people, both in today's messy world and in a wide range of future messes.
Here's my thought experiment.
Imagine a crude version of Rawls's veil of ignorance, with only the United States behind it.
This veil of ignorance doesn't require us to disavow what we know of history (America's or the world's),
nor does it require us to disavow what we know of recent trends, present global realities, U.S.
values, or our current conception of the good. It only hides our future from us: Behind this veil
of ignorance, we don't know whether energy, food, water, and other vital resources will be scarcer
or more plentiful in the decades to come; we don't know whether global power will be more or less
centralized; we don't know whether new technologies and new forms of social organization will make
existing technologies and institutions obsolete.
Most of all, we don't know whether, in the decades to come, the United States will be rich or
poor, weak or strong, respected or hated. For that matter, we don't know whether the United States
-- or even the form of political organization we call the nation-state -- will exist at all a century
or two from now. In the face of such radical uncertainty, what kind of grand strategy should a rational
United States adopt?
Of course, this shouldn't really be called a "thought experiment" at all: The United States
already operates behind a veil of ignorance, if we could only bring ourselves to admit it.
We know the past; we have a reasonable understanding of recent trends; we know that the world is
messy and dangerous; we know that the potential for rapid and potentially catastrophic change is
real; and we know that our ability to predict future changes and quantify various risks is profoundly
limited.
This knowledge is profoundly unsettling. Thus, we try our best to know and not know, at the same
time: We speak glibly of complexity, accelerating change, danger, and uncertainty, but then fall
back into the comfortable assumption that continued U.S. global dominance is a given and that catastrophic
change is unlikely to occur. As long as we remain willfully ignorant of the veil of ignorance that
hangs over us, we can avoid asking hard questions and making harder choices.
But this is shortsighted and dangerous. Empires that refuse to accept reality tend to rapidly
decline. A clear-eyed acceptance of uncertainty and risk is the surest route to a more secure future.
Instead of blinding us or paralyzing us, the uncertainty of our future should motivate us to engage
in more responsible strategic planning.
If the United States can manage to be as rational as Rawls's hypothetical decision-makers, it
should adopt a similar maximin rule of decision: It should prefer international rules and institutions
that will maximize America's odds of thriving, even in a worst-case future scenario. In fact, we
should wish for international rules and institutions that will be kindest to the individuals living
in what is now the United States and their descendants, even if the United States should someday
cease to exist entirely.
Could happen, folks.
Look around you. Do you see the Roman Empire, or the Aztec Empire, or the Ottoman Empire?
Look around you. Do you see the Roman Empire, or the Aztec Empire, or the Ottoman Empire?
IV. From Messiness to Strategy: A Preliminary Sketch
This has urgent implications for U.S. strategic planning. Precisely because U.S. global power
may very well continue to decline, the United States should use the very considerable military,
political, cultural, and economic power it still has to foster the international order most
likely to benefit the country if it someday loses that power.
The ultimate objective of U.S. grand strategy should be the creation of an equitable and peaceful
international order with an effective system of global governance -- one that is built upon respect
for human dignity, human rights, and the rule of law, with robust mechanisms for resolving thorny
collective problems.
We should seek this not because it's the "morally right" thing for the United States to
do, but because a maximum decision rule should lead us to conclude that this will offer the United
States and its population the best chance of continuing to thrive, even in the event of a radical
future decline in U.S. wealth and power.
But, one might argue, the United States already tries to promote such a global order --
right?
Sure it does -- but only inconsistently, and generally as something of an afterthought. We pour
money into our military and intelligence communities, but starve our diplomats and development agencies.
We fixate on the threat du jour, often exaggerating it and allowing it to distort our foreign policy
in self-destructive ways (cf. Iraq War), while viewing matters such as United Nations reform
or reform of global economic institutions or environmental protection rules as tedious and of low
priority. If we take seriously the many potential dangers lurking in the unknowable future, however,
fostering a stronger, fairer, and more effective system of international governance would become
a matter of urgent national self-interest and our highest strategic priority -- something that should
be reflected both in our policies and in our budgetary decisions.
An effective global governance system would need to be built upon the recognition that states
remain the primary mode of political and social organization in the international sphere, but also
upon the recognition that new forms of social organization continue to evolve and may ultimately
displace at least some states. An effective and dynamic international system will need to develop
innovative ways to bring such new actors and organizations within the ambit of international law
and institutions, both as responsible creators of law and institutions and as responsible subjects.
Equitable sharing of wealth and resources:
A truly farsighted U.S. global strategy -- one that takes uncertainty seriously -- would also
seek to foster more equitable sharing of global wealth through more generous provision of financial
support to international institutions by wealthy states (and -- why not? -- by other wealthy actors,
from individuals to corporations), a greater willingness to eliminate the debt of poorer states,
more foreign aid designed to help the world's neediest people, and the elimination of protectionist
policies such as U.S. agricultural subsidies, among other things.
Similarly, the United States should champion genuinely equitable and responsible access to "the
global commons" -- the Earth's natural resources, the sea, the air, and even space -- with access
to resources depending less on raw power or accidents of history than on principles of equity and
need. (This, too, will require strong transnational institutions capable of resolving disputes relating
to resource access in a transparent, predictable, and fair manner.)
Play by the same rules we want others to respect:
From behind the veil of ignorance, a foreign-policy version of Kant's
categorical imperative
makes a good deal of sense: With the United States as the globe's sole remaining superpower, its
actions can still powerfully shore up, erode, or establish precedents, and we should therefore act
with great care, working hard to avoid hypocrisy.
When it comes to global norms, it's difficult to credibly condemn Russian military intervention
in Ukraine, for instance, while simultaneously defending the 2003 invasion of Iraq. More generally,
it's difficult to foster a global order in which states use force only in a lawful, transparent,
and accountable manner when we continue to engage in
targeted killings of terrorists inside other sovereign states, without even acknowledging our
role in their deaths.
When we believe that the rules of the international order are wrong or outmoded -- as they often
and inevitably are -- we should work collaboratively with other states to develop a thoughtful and
fair process through which to develop new rules.
Importantly, while this implies that the United States should generally eschew unilateralism
except in the direst of emergencies, it does not require national self-abnegation. On the contrary,
there is still ample room for a benign form of American exceptionalism. Decline or no decline, the
United States still has outsized power and influence and should not hesitate to use both -- carefully
and responsibly -- to advance these strategic ends.
Nation-building at home to preserve power and influence abroad:
Our ability to continue to innovate depends on our domestic vitality -- and credible U.S. influence
depends significantly on the degree to which others around the world perceive the United States
as internally strong, equitable, and just. Addressing the glaring economic inequities that have
reduced social mobility and left millions of Americans one lost job or illness away from poverty
should be seen as vital to achieving U.S. foreign-policy objectives -- along with fixing our broken
education and health-care systems and rebuilding our tattered infrastructure.
We also need to focus on reforming our own political culture and political processes, which currently
lend themselves to partisan paralysis or bipartisan panic, with little in between. But neither paralysis
nor panic will serve us well in the face of current and emerging threats. The world's messiness
will require us to be creative, patient, and resilient in the face of rapidly changing challenges
and threats we won't always be able to deter.
Universal engagement:
A renewed focus on what Obama has described as "nation-building
at home" should be coupled with a proactive policy of international engagement. This, in turn,
not only requires us to collaboratively promote the creation of strong and just international institutions
-- it also requires us to deepen and broaden our citizens' interactions with those who live beyond
our borders.
We can do this in part through providing generous and thoughtful development and humanitarian
assistance and in part through an enhanced emphasis on cultural, economic, scientific, and educational
collaborations and exchanges, particularly in areas of the globe where the U.S. government currently
has the least influence.
In the long term, developing more people-to-people ties around the globe will be as important
to our security as maintaining an effective military. Investing in such ties helps the United States
foster international goodwill and develop the strong networks of friends and information sources
that will stand us in good stead when harder times come -- as they most likely will.
The U.S. government should also do more to leverage the incredible diversity of the American
public. Consider the impressive and varied linguistic and cultural expertise that resides within
our population, as well as the robust links of family and friendship that bind so many recent U.S.
immigrants to citizens of other states. This has enormous potential to transform American culture,
making it more cosmopolitan. It also has enormous potential value from the perspective of building
relationships and increasing U.S. situational awareness.
Selective (and rare) intervention:
In a world of finite resources, there will always be trade-offs -- and if we refuse to consider
those trade-offs thoughtfully, we risk
strategic insolvency. We should focus our foreign-policy resources on building the long-term
global architecture that is likely to best protect U.S. interests in an uncertain future, one in
which we may be far less rich and powerful. But if we increase the energy we put into building an
equitable and peaceful international order with fair and effective global governance structures,
where should we reduce our efforts?
Here, I'm generally in sympathy with Michael Mazarr,
Barry Posen, FP columnist
Steve Walt, and other thoughtful
advocates of
selective engagement,
offshore balancing,
restraint, and
discriminate power. The United States should not be the world's cop of first resort.
As Obama has rightly pointed out, the United States can't solve every problem -- as noted, we have
less and less ability to influence others and control outcomes, and direct U.S. action can cause
backlash. We should step in directly as problem-solvers only after careful thought.
As a general rule, we should intervene militarily to clean up short-term global messes only when
doing so is essential to protecting our core interests. When our core interests are
not at stake, we should intervene only when we can afford to do so without damage to our
important longer-term priorities.
This will require U.S. political leaders to be far more disciplined about avoiding threat inflation
and ignoring short-term political pressures, both domestic and international. (With clearly articulated
criteria for intervention and strong, consistent political leadership, this should not be impossible.
The public appetite for military intervention is heavily influenced by the messages sent by political
elites.) We should also be more disciplined about recognizing the gulf between what we'd like to
do and what we actually have the ability to do. We may well have "the most powerful military in
history," but our strategic nuclear arsenal won't reverse climate change or end the Ebola epidemic,
and U.S. drone strikes can't prop up the imploding Iraqi government, end the Syrian civil war, or
prevent violent extremist organizations from metastasizing.
When it comes to our current perception of situations where we think the United States needs
to "do something," we should be asking tougher questions. Take, for example, the threat posed by
the self-styled Islamic State, particularly in Syria. The Islamic State is brutal, and the beheadings
of American journalists and other noncombatants evoke justifiable horror. But is the Islamic State
truly a threat to core U.S. interests, or is our perception of crisis driven by a visceral response
to the brutality of their methods?
Finally, do we in fact have the ability to significantly degrade or destroy the Islamic
State inside Syria, without excessive cost to our other priorities? Will standoff strikes against
the Islamic State or other terrorist groups lead to enduring gains in U.S. security -- or will they
just temporarily disperse the group or, worse, raise its profile and aid its recruitment efforts?
Even if strikes against the Islamic State will permanently destroy it, how much money will such
strikes cost us -- and what will we have to do without if we spend that much energy and money countering
the Islamic State?
Similar questions could be asked about U.S. counterterrorism policy more generally. Unless transnational
terrorist organizations manage to obtain weapons of mass destruction (something we should continue
to work aggressively to prevent), they are unlikely to ever pose an existential threat to the United
States or most other states. Despite this, a disproportionate share of U.S. military, intelligence,
and foreign-policy resources currently go into counterterrorism efforts -- even though little evidence
shows that our highly militarized approach to counterterrorism is working. Transnational terrorist
organizations are unlikely to respond to traditional forms of military deterrence, and their decentralized
and self-replicating nature makes them difficult to destroy. A decade into the war on terror, is
it time to conclude that unilateral, secretive, and unaccountable U.S. approaches to counterterrorism
(indefinite detentions, targeted killings, etc.) are only making things worse: alienating allies,
fueling terrorist recruitment, and undermining the very international norms and institutions we
should be trying to strengthen.
V. Adversity and the Art of the Possible
A strategy premised on uncertainty doesn't lend itself to jingoistic chest thumping, and some
might argue that regardless of whether the approach I have offered is intellectually sound, it is
unlikely to be embraced by voters. The conventional wisdom is that voters have no tolerance for
complexity or uncertainty -- they like things black and white, and preferably with a sugary coating.
Pundits are already doing their best to read recent polls and the midterm election results in
the most simplistic terms: Americans consider Obama too cautious and want decisive action (more
bombs)! No, they consider him too interventionist and want isolationism (fewer bombs)! And so on.
I think the conventional wisdom is wrong. Far from refusing to accept ambiguity, ordinary Americans
seem a good deal more willing than politicians from either party to acknowledge many of our world's
complex realities, such as the recent
decline of U.S. global power and
influence. When read with care, the more detailed and thoughtful polls, such as those by the
Pew Research Center, suggest that Americans are keenly aware of just how complex and uncertain our
world has become and understand full well that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to the world's
problems. They aren't looking for simplistic slogans and promises of easy answers, but they don't
want paralysis or arbitrary action either. Instead, they want their leaders to articulate and consistently
follow coherent, sensible principles for deciding when we should act and when we should refrain
from acting, when we should lead and when we should step back.
If we can extract one precious jewel from the ugliness and venom of the midterm election results,
it should be this: Americans are sick of being patronized.
Otto von
Bismarck called politics "the art of the possible, the attainable -- the art of the next best,"
and Americans are fully capable of grasping this. A global strategy premised on taking uncertainty
seriously will never satisfy those who like simple slogans. But in this messy world, it's probably
the best we can hope for.
Note: The veil of ignorance shrouds us all, and any serious effort to develop a U.S. global
strategy needs to be advanced with humility and be subject to constant re-evaluation. This is a
preliminary sketch, and it's already much too long for any self-respecting column. Much remains
to be filled in and teased out. Please send comments and suggestions to me here: [email protected].
Brave Ventures
Great article.
You wrote:
"The ultimate objective of U.S. grand strategy should be the creation of an equitable
and peaceful international order with an effective system of global governance -- one that
is built upon respect for human dignity, human rights, and the rule of law, with robust
mechanisms for resolving thorny collective problems."
I believe there is already an international institution that holds these values close
to heart: the United Nations. For a very long time, the US has used the UN as a political
tool. If the US began to invest in the UN as a viable international political body, instead
of constantly superseding and ignoring it, then the 'ultimate objective' that was outlined very
eloquently in this piece above would become strikingly easy.
What if UNESCO could create cultural heritage zones across entire cities? What if the UN's
food and refugee programs were well-funded enough to do their jobs correctly? What if the UN
had a body of political advisers that could help countries to become more in line with the rule
of law - regardless of governing structure?
After all, whether another country is democratic enough never really mattered to a lot of
our world's leaders. What's more important is to have benevolent, enlightened leaders. If we
make this our aim and work through existing international order, the legitimacy of US action
would lend a stabilising moral strength to the world balance.
US foreign policy is a mess, and I think that is a statement that most people from many different
political viewpoints seem to agree on, they will obviously not agree on what the correct solution
is.
This author at the end mentions that she does not like simple slogans, but I am going to
give one here, US foreign policy is simply driven by the fact that it wants to rule world -
its really just that. There are many Americans that want this, but they mask it with sophistries
or more respectable sounding words like "providing global security" or "defending freedom" or
"helping our allies". Until the blunt truth of American foreign policy simply been driven by
world rule is tackled (should and can America rule the world ?), you are going to keep getting
into one mess after another.
Hard not to agree. But creating a strong equitable and peaceful international order (read:
imposing our often value system on others when we hypocritically don't often follow it) seems
much less doable than the Fortress America or North America that many realists might argue for.
The focus on ourselves, economic strength at home and not pissing off other peoples is surely
a way to help strengthen security no matter what happens down the road (even with nukes and
climate change). It has worked for China. Imagine what withdrawing support for Israel, for example,
would do for future national security in the US. What if the US stopped bombing Islamic countries?
What if our main focus was Mexico and the border and getting that right instead of trying
with the EU to Westernize Ukraine, which led to the current mess.
The big question is whether to make America more secure or try to make the world more secure,
when the latter often makes it more insecure. The Decline question is a big distraction in my
opinion. Great piece.
Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is reported by a spokesman to have had the following
exchange with Russia's President Vladimir Putin during the Brisbane G-20 summit: "Well, I guess
I'll shake your hand, but I only have one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine."
Putin is said to have replied, "Impossible. Since we are not there."
A graceless bit of diplomatic crudity from a truly graceless man, Stephen Harper, someone Canadians
know has a history of underhanded practices at home, from introducing ugly personal-attack campaign
advertising, using secretive and bullying tactics in parliament, failing to deal with corrupt practices
by subordinates especially an American-style election scandal of robo-calls which sent some voters
to the wrong polls, to having appointed several unbelievably incompetent and corrupt ministers.
He is known for a ferocious temper in private, a very controlling man who grants his political associates
absolutely no freedom of expression, and is reported by insiders as having on at least one occasion
thrown a chair in a meeting.
... ... ...
Harper is the single most obsessed leader in Canada's history with pleasing, almost fawning
over, the United States. Had the history of Canada, which included a great deal of disagreement
and contention with the United States over its many imperialistic behaviors, included many leaders
of Harper's character, there quite likely would not be a county called Canada today.
So here are the demonstrated qualities of the man performing as Canada's diplomatic ass at the
G-20 in Brisbane. He demonstrates a genuinely anal-retentive temperament, is intolerant of differences
of opinion, and embraces a willful blindness to the world's greatest threat to peace, the United
States in its self-appointed role as imperial arbiter among nations.
... ... ...
Putin's moves in Ukraine seem to me appropriate for dealing with a deliberately-induced crisis
in an important neighboring country, and one with a long history of connections and associations.
He has not invaded Ukraine, something which he could easily do were he so inclined. I suspect he
has supplied weapons to East Ukraine, but that is something the United States does all the time,
including supplying weapons to some of the most brutal groups and governments on earth, as it is
right now doing in Syria, with secret night cargo flights out of Turkey to terrorist cutthroats.
Just ask yourself what America would do about a comparable situation in Mexico: patience simply
would not exist, and Mexico City would be quickly overrun by tanks.
The people of East Ukraine, Russian in background and sympathies, deserve protection as much
as they deserve the huge amounts of emergency supplies Russia has supplied in a conflict owing its
origin entirely to the covert acts of America. Had the coup-established government of Ukraine originally
offered protection of Eastern interests, including language rights they openly tried suppressing,
the story might have been different, but they did precisely the opposite, passing unfair laws, making
threat after threat, and attacking their own citizens. Who wouldn't rebel in that environment,
including any of the states of the United States? How easily people forget past rebellions in the
United States, the greatest of which was the Civil War, still the bloodiest war Americans ever experienced.
It is quite clear that the United States is responsible for destabilizing Ukraine. Its
funds have been invested into many unsavory projects, perhaps most disturbing is its paying support
to a collection of neo-Nazi groups ranging from extremist parties to violent militia forces, some
of the very groups who have committed atrocities such as murdering many hundreds of civilians and
some of whom actually march under swastika-like flags. It does seem more than a bit strange that
men like Harper, Abbott, and Cameron implicitly support that kind of filthy work while charging
Putin with dark acts, dark acts which are stated ambiguously and certainly never proved.
It is also clear that the United States has pressured all authorities involved to delay and
obscure the investigation into the destruction of Flight MH17, and the only explanation for
that can be America's preventing, for as long as possible while the new coup-created government
of Ukraine consolidates its position, the highly embarrassing finding that Ukraine in fact shot
it down. The United States has said over and over it has evidence about the crash, yet it has never
produced a scrap of it. Just as it never produced evidence for so many past claims from what actually
happened on 9/11 to the assassination of a President.
The great irony of the G-20 summit in Brisbane is that its only substantial agreement concerned
doing everything possible to promote growth in a world whose economy is dangerously stagnating,
yet it wasted time and energy on America's fantasy stories about Russia and Ukraine, insulted Russia's
President, and threatened in some cases further growth-suppressing sanctions.
Nothing could be more contradictory and unproductive or, frankly, just plain stupid.
Analysts were right to say that the Republican takeover of Congress bodes well for the war machine:
already we see the levers of power slowly shifting in reverse, eager to get back to salad days
of post-9/11 wartime spending.
But waiting in the wings, Hillary Clinton just may prove to
be what the defense establishment has been waiting for, and more. Superior to all in money, name
recognition, and influence, she is poised to compete aggressively for the Democratic nomination
for president. She might just win the Oval Office. And by most measures she would be the most formidable
hawk this country has seen in a generation.
"It is clear that she is behind the use of force in anything that has gone on in this cabinet.
She is a Democratic hawk and that is her track record. That's the flag she's planted," said
Gordon Adams, a national security budget expert who was an associate director in President Bill
Clinton's Office of Management and Budget.
Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who has spent her post-service days
protesting the war policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, is more blunt. "Interventionism is a business
and it has a constituency and she is tapping into it," she tells TAC. "She is for the military
industrial complex, and she is for the neoconservatives."
Hillary, Inc.
The former secretary of state, senator, and first lady appeared to fire the first salvo (at least
in her national security arsenal) in her next presidential bid last summer, when she gave an
interview to Jeffrey Goldberg mostly on the launch of her new autobiography, Hard Choices.
In the much-ballyhooed Atlantic piece, Clinton defends Israel from charges of disproportionate
attacks in Gaza, takes a hard line on Iran in the nuclear talks, and suggests President Obama could
have avoided the rise of ISIS by listening to her proposals for arming the anti-Assad rebels in
Syria last year.
... ... ...
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance reporter and TAC contributing
editor. Follow her on Twitter.
Nikola, November 20, 2014 at 6:22 am
Thank you American Conservative for mentioning the Clinton bombing of Serbia in the 1990s.
So many Serbs feel that Americans genuinely hate Serbia but most Americans have really no idea
what the Clintons did to us in the 90s. It's hard for our people here to understand that here
but I do my best to explain that 99% of Americans are unaware that their government ordered
the bombing of Christian Serbia's hospitals and schools on false pretence to secure Albanian
heroin routes in Kosovo.
Serbia was always an American ally. In WWII, Serbs saved 500 U.S. airmen who were shot down
by the Nazis in German occupied Serbia. Kept them hidden for 6 months. I suggest readers
look up the "Forgotten 500″.
philadelphialawyer, November 20, 2014
"Clinton understands that the only avenue of safety for a Democrat in the arena of national
security is to throw money at the Pentagon," said Adams, and 'this is consistent with her worldview
on national security. She sees military force as an essential tool and if you take that
view, why wouldn't you want to increase the military's budget?'"
Sadly, I think this is true. Bill Clinton, I think, appeased the military and protected himself
from the charges of "softness" that have been leveled at national Democrats since the Vietnam
era, by wasting money on the DoD and by using the military just enough to keep the hounds at
bay. But Hillary is now a true believer. She is not all for war and money for the Pentagon
because it is politic (although she does think it is politic as well), but because that is what
she now thinks is good policy.
I find it a disgrace that the Democratic party will likely nominate her. I will not vote for
her in the primary or in the general election.
When Bernie Sanders gets to griping about the Democratic Party, which happens frequently,
he asks, "What does it stand for?"
The independent senator argues that, after years of sellouts and compromises on issues ranging
from trade policy to banking regulation, and especially after letting campaign donors and consultants
define its messaging, the party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman has become an ill-defined
and distant political machine that most Americans do not relate to or get excited about.
His point has always been well-taken, but it was confirmed on November 4. How else can we explain
voters who chose Mitch McConnell senators and Elizabeth Warren policies?
That's what happened in Arkansas, where 65 percent of voters expressed their concern about income
inequality and poverty by approving a substantial minimum-wage increase on the same day they gave
Senator Mark Pryor just 39 percent of the vote. Pryor was one of many Democrats who ran away from
President Obama in 2014, and part of how Pryor distanced himself was by announcing his opposition
to increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Republican Tom Cotton, who also opposes
the federal increase, slyly endorsed the state ballot initiative and swept to victory in a race
where what could have been sharp distinctions between the contenders were neutralized by the Democrat.
This poor woman does not understand that Repugs and Demoshit are actually a single party, the party
of international capital, which have nothing to do with the interest of US people...
In domestic politics, it's the one issue where Republicans and Democrats are passionately united,
she said. This is going to be used in the next presidential election, when the two parties will
try to show who hates Russia more.
According to data compiled by Goldman Sachs, most American workers earn below $20 per hour. Goldman
Sachs economists David Mericle and Chris Mischaikow crunched Labor Department data that is used
to generate the monthly jobs report that the market closely watches, in particular from the survey
of employers.
The chart, shown above, shows that 19% of workers make less than $12.50 per hour, 32% of workers
make between $12.50 and $20 per hour, 30% make between $20 and $30 an hour, 14% make between $30
and $45 per hour, and 5% make over $45 an hour.
The economists also found that, while wage growth has been soft, the fastest growth in income
has come to the lowest-paid workers.
And they found that the biggest driver to income growth has been rising employment, with help
from rising wages and more hours worked.
By organizing in Iraq and Syria the first war leading to a decline in oil prices, the Obama administration's
intention was probably to cripple its adversaries' economies: Russia, Iran and Venezuela. But this
policy can have severe unintended consequences in other areas: acceleration of China's development,
threats to the dollar's value and a challenge to the economic model predicated on an illusory shale
oil bonanza. For William Engdhal, this last manipulation is perhaps the straw that will break the
camel's back.
I find that both bombings are different parts of the same Obama-initiated business-operation, in
which the American aristocracy, Saudi aristocracy, and Qatari aristocracy, work together, to grab
dominance over supplying energy to the world's biggest energy-market, Europe, away from Russia, which
currently is by far Europe's largest energy-supplier.
Why is the American Government, which aims to oust Syria's leader Bashar al-Assad, bombing his
main enemy, ISIS?
I find that both bombings are different parts of the same Obama-initiated business-operation,
in which the American aristocracy, Saudi aristocracy, and Qatari aristocracy, work together,
to grab dominance over supplying energy to the world's biggest energy-market, Europe, away from
Russia, which currently is by far Europe's largest energy-supplier.
Obama has initiated, and is leading, this international aristocratic team, consisting of the
U.S. aristocracy and Sunni Moslem aristocracies -- the Saudi and the Qatari royal families -- to
choke off Russia's economic lifeblood from those European energy sales, and to transfer lots of
this business, via new oil and gas pipeline contracts and new international trade-deals, over to
the royal families of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Those royals, in turn, are assisting Obama in the
overthrow of the key Russia-allied leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, who has performed an indispensable
role in blocking any such massive expansion of Saudi and Qatari energy-traffic into Europe, and
who has thus been a vital protector of Russia's dominance in the European energy-market.
America's aristocracy would be benefited in many ways from this changeover to Europe's increasing
dependence upon those Sunni Moslem nations, which have long been allied with U.S. oil companies,
and away from the Shiite Moslem nation of Iran, and from its key backer, Russia.
The most important way that America's aristocrats would benefit would be the continuance, for
the indefinite future, of the U.S. dollar's role as the international reserve currency, in which
energy and energy-futures are traded. The Sunni nations are committed to continued dominance of
the dollar, and Wall Street depends on that continuance. It's also one of the reasons the U.S. Treasury's
sales of U.S. Federal debt around the world have been as successful as they are. This also provides
essential support to the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Furthermore, Obama's effort to force the European Union to weaken their anti-global-warming standards
so as to allow European imports of oil from the exceptionally carbon-gas-generating Athabasca Canada
tar sands -- which are approximately 40% owned by America's Koch brothers, the rest owned by other
U.S. and allied oil companies -- would likewise reduce Europe's current dependency upon Russian
energy sources, at the same time as it would directly benefit U.S. energy-producers.
Obama has been working hard for those oil companies to become enabled to sell such oil into
Europe.
And, finally, the extension of U.S. fracking technology into Ukraine, and perhaps ultimately
even into some EU nations, where it has been strongly resisted, might likewise reduce the enormous
flow of European cash into Russian Government coffers to pay for Russian gas (which doesn't even
require fracking).
In other words, the wars in both Syria and Ukraine are being fought basically in order to grab
the European energy market, away from Russia, somewhat in the same way (though far more violently)
as Iran's share of that market was previously grabbed away by means of the U.S.-led sanctions against
that country. The current bombing campaigns in both Syria and Ukraine are directed specifically
against Iran's chief ally, Russia.
mike
What a fantastic article. The part I don't get is the following. Surely Iran and Russia and
Syria could actively destabilize the Qatari aristocracy and their religious allies and likewise
the Saudi aristocracy. These people number a few thousand and the discontent among the Nationals
would be easily activated if a serious effort was made.
Arindam
The Mexican drug cartels have a saying - plomo y plobo - 'silver or lead': either accept
our bribes or accept our bullets.
The Saudis, Qataris, etc... run their countries on a similar basis. The nationals are either
bought off (through easy, well-paid public sector jobs, housing allowances, free water and electricity,
etc..) - or imprisoned (as happened to one poet who dared to declare: 'We are all Tunisia in
the face of the repressive élite'). Thus, launching a revolution in these places is not as easy
as it might seem at first glance - since the discontented have usually been corrupted or incarcerated
already.
Furthermore, much of the workforce of the Gulf countries is comprised of expatriates who
are neither involved nor interested in internal politics and are happy to support the status
quo so long as it enables them to keep working and earning. Thus, they can be counted on to
keep things going, even when there are major public protests - as for example, took place in
Bahrain in the early months of the Arab Spring.
Diogenes
Money seems to destroy humanity by having the appearance of representing productivity, but
actually represents scams and corruption. It's a good representation of a variation of Gresham's
rule - when scams and corruption are competing against honesty and hard work, scams and corruption
will win.
This article is an excellent presentation of one way of viewing what is happening in the
world. It's an important contribution to the effort to understand the world. As with any article
or opinion, all or part of it may or may not be accurate.
International events are caused by the theory of swarming - with large groups supporting
one effort or another - where their motives and objectives lag behind what actually is possible
or what actually exists.
One obstacle to world stability is a continuing sense that the US has a higher quality
of life than other countries, which is increasingly untrue. Europeans are learning that
the US govt. and their own governments are pawns of transnational investors. The source of evil
in the world is not a country or an ethnic group, but those who are cursed with greed, a need
to dominate others, and a reckless disregard for the future of humanity.
Petrodollar Panic? China Signs Currency Swap Deal With Qatar Canada 11/10/2014
The march of global de-dollarization continues. In the last few days, China has signed direct
currency agreements with Canada becoming North America's first offshore RMB hub, which CBC reports
analysts suggest could double maybe even triple the level of Canadian trade between Canada and
China, impacting the need for Dollars.
Beyond these simple professions of envy or admiration, the conservative actually copies and
learns from the revolution he opposes. "To destroy that enemy," Burke wrote of the Jacobins,
"by some means or other, the force opposed to it should be made to bear some analogy and resemblance
to the force and spirit which that system exerts."
This is one of the most interesting and
least understood aspects of conservative ideology. While conservatives are hostile to the goals
of the left, particularly the empowerment of society's lower castes and classes, they often
are the left's best students.
Sometimes, their studies are self-conscious and strategic, as they look to the left for ways
to bend new vernaculars, or new media, to their suddenly delegitimated aims. Fearful that the
philosophes had taken control of popular opinion in France, reactionary theologians in the middle
of the eighteenth century looked to the example of their enemies. They stopped writing abstruse
disquisitions for each other and began to produce Catholic agitprop, which would be distributed
through the very networks that brought enlightenment to the French people. They spent vast sums
funding essay contests, like those in which Rousseau made his name, to reward writers who wrote
accessible and popular defenses of religion.
…
Even without directly engaging the progressive argument, conservatives may absorb, by some
elusive osmosis, the deeper categories and idioms of the left, even when those idioms run directly
counter to their official stance. After years of opposing the women's movement, for example,
Phyllis Schlafly seemed genuinely incapable of conjuring the prefeminist view of women as deferential
wives and mothers. Instead, she celebrated the activist "power of the positive woman."…When
she spoke out against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), she didn't claim that it introduced
a radical new language of rights. Her argument was the opposite. The ERA, she told the Washington
Star, "is a takeaway of women's rights." It will "take away the right of the wife in an
ongoing marriage, the wife in the home." Schlafly was obviously using the language of rights
in a way that was opposed to the aims of the feminist movement; she was using rights talk to
put women back into the home, to keep them as wives and mothers. But that is the point: conservatism
adapts and adopts, often unconsciously, the language of democratic reform to the cause of hierarchy.
HUDSON: Every economy needs oil to some extent. China has to use oil for many things that
gas simply won't work for. Every country's GDP goes up in keeping with its energy consumption...
... ... ...
...Right now the only country that's not part of this is Iran. To Russia, this has tipped
America's hand. It showed that what U.S. Cold Warriors really want is to break up Russia and China,
and to interrupt their financial and banking services to disorient their economies. So Russia,
China and Iran – and presumably other Asian countries – are now moving to establish their own currency
clearing systems. To be independent of the SWIFT system and the U.S. dollar, Russia and China are
denominating their trade and investments in rubles and yuan instead of the dollar. So what you've
seen in the last few days in Beijing is a rejection of the dollar standard, and a rejection of American
foreign policy behind it.
... ... ...
As for the sanctions isolating Russia economically, this is just what it needs to protect
its industrial revival and economic independence. In conjunction with China, it's integrating
the Russian economy with that of China, Kazakhstan and Iran. Russia is now going to be building
at least two atomic reactors in Iran. The center of global investment is shifting to Asia, leaving
the United States out as well as Europe.
So you can expect at the G20 Brisbane meetings next week to increase pressure from Europe to
break away from the U.S. sanctions.
All the United States has diplomatically at the present time is military pressure, while Russia
and China have economic growth – markets and investment opportunities opening up. Despite the fact
that there was an agreement on high-technology trade between the United States and China, the U.S.
is basically being left out. This seems to be why Mr. Obama was looking so out of sorts at the meetings.
He knows that the strategy that he was given by his neocons is backfiring.
... ... ...
Banger, November 14, 2014 at 12:26 pm
The issue is not the U.S. vs. China and Russia. China and Russia are centrally governed nation-states
with, at least for China, imperial ambitions – but these ambitions are of limited Empire
not like the American dreams of Empire which is to control the entire globe not just politically
but culturally.
That ambition though is largely fantasy at least in political terms. The U.S. is not any
longer what I would call a nation state with particular "interests." Israel, for example, is
more supported in the U.S. than, say, Ohio or some segment of the U.S.
The USG sees its constituency as an international elite – whether British, Polish
or Saudi–the people, as a population are, increasingly an afterthought. Washington is an international
capital (as is NYC) that focuses on the multi-national corporation.
Russia and China, while not immune to such pressures, does recognize the importance of the
population or power-factions that are native to it.
By forcing Russia, Iran and other states to the periphery they are moving them into a
Chinese orbit. Now, how China chooses to react is something should make an interesting discussion.
James Levy, November 14, 2014 at 1:04 pm
I've argued to my students that the reason America is so dangerous is that Americans
are the most ideological people on Earth without any understanding that they are ideological.
Most Americans (certainly the foreign policy decision-makers) see doing anything dissimilar
to the way "we" want it done as perverse (France), stupid (Venezuela), or malign (Iran).
The old Burkean notion that nations are what they are because of their history and traditions
is unthinkable in Washington or on Wall Street.
America is the model and its up to every other country to conform – or else. Between
Wilson and Truman a carapace formed over US thinking about itself and the world that has become
impenetrable. It will only be burst when America is too broke or ecologically devastated
to continue trying to re-form the world in its image. That's why I fear that a whole cadre
of nuts would rather the world go down in flames than that the "last, best hope of humanity"
not get to "tutor" the nations into doing thing
Banger, November 14, 2014 at 5:42 pm
Technically you are right–the USA is the last great remnant of the great ideologies of
the 20th century and the ideology of American Exceptionalism is related to fascism and communism
in the sense it is deeply nationalistic and also global - America wants everyone to become American.
But I think this is largely over.
Leaders today only half-believe in these notions and the body politic is increasingly cynical
and too self-centered to care much about "destiny" and the grand sweep of history that people
like Henry Luce or Walter Lippmann articulated back in the day both on the left and the right.
Government is increasingly staffed by self-serving careerists and yuppies who long ago sold
their souls. The ideologues are now mainly are inarticulate and no more than the equivalent
of soccer hooligans.
Michael, November 14, 2014 at 6:59 pm
Neo-cons…. I assume that is who you meant.
Not much more too add. The people with real power do not show their faces. They write memos
and let buffoons try to articulate them to the public. The public will buy into the ideology
because they've spent their lives learning facts with out learning the importance of those facts.
Also most people are too busy trying to survive to learn enough to understand the games
that the elites are playing. Hell, even the elites don't understand the system they have
built. All energy is basically used to maintain the system which will eventually collapse in
on itself…
I just hope I am self sufficient at this point….give me 5 more years and I should be set…homesteading
is in my future.
madisolation, November 15, 2014 at 8:30 am
I just read Pepe Escobar's
take on
the APEC summit. There's a lot to absorb, but here is an excerpt:
Washington/Wall Street elites – talk about Cold War hubris – always took for granted that
Beijing and Moscow would be totally apart. Now puzzlement prevails. Note how the Obama administration's
"pivoting to Asia" has been completely erased from the narrative – after Beijing identified
it for what it is: a warlike provocation. The new meme is "rebalance".
German businesses, for their part, are absolutely going bonkers with Xi's New Silk Roads
uniting Beijing to Berlin – crucially via Moscow. German politicians sooner rather than later
will have to get the message.
flora, November 15, 2014 at 11:03 am
This sentence:
"Washington/Wall Street elites… always took for granted that …"
Perfect description of the neo-con and neo-liberal ideological bubbles. Elite thinking
is so captured by their ideologies that they can't clearly see facts on the ground, can't effectively
respond to the facts, and can't accept their realpolitik failures as the consequence of their
ideological capture.
The 'shrewd yankee' has been replaced by the 'true believer'.
Interesting that Al From and the New Democrats have been described as idealists. No doubt
they are.
Steven, November 15, 2014 at 11:29 am
Dr. Hudson has long had the right take on all this. But he doesn't seem to be able to take
the last step in simplifying his analyses and prescriptions. Elites in the West and in particular
the United States have no clue about the real sources of wealth and power in the modern world.
Those elites, having long ago converted their wealth (the natural resources, skilled labor and,
above all, the inanimate energy required to power the machinery and computers that do much of
the world's real work) into money, now 'keep score' only by how much more money they can add
to their bank accounts.
For those elites – and especially for the financiers and bankers to whom they have entrusted
the wealth extracted from the labor of preceding generations and the spoils of pillaged continents
– money is all there is. This is the core of 'American exceptionalism'. Anyone who
doubts the omnipotence of money doubts the divine order of things. Educating, feeding and
caring for the West's "labouring cattle" has long been viewed not as 'investment', a source
of wealth, but an impediment on the more rapid accumulation of money. The only thing 50% of
'the people' are good for, in the words of Jay Gould, is slaughtering the other 50%.
The bottom line here is that real wealth and prosperity for the population at large represents
a mortal threat for people whose power and social status is dependent only on money. A really
wealthy population doesn't need money. For the monetarily affluent, the only possible use for
advances in science and technology is the destruction of those who refuse to worship the golden
calf. For the last century Western nations have removed the threat of general prosperity to
their ruling classes through wars with each other and beyond their nations' borders.
Devastated by global war, much of the world managed to free itself from this self-destructive
propensity by exporting the responsibility to defend their money-based ruling classes and the
sanctity of money as embodied in the world's US dollar-based reserve currency to the United
States. Thus we have arrived at the current division of labor in the world economy with
the once 'developing nations' exporting the things people really need to live and the US and
other Western nations exporting debt and death. This is the real mission of the military-industrial
complex – absorbing advances in science and technology in ever more deadly weapons systems and
ever mounting national debt. It can only end badly.
Events since 2008 have proved the world doesn't need the West's money. If the West's
central banks can create tens of trillions of dollars, euros, yen, etc out of thin air to prevent
the insolvency of its ruling elites, it can create the money it needs to pay for the real wealth
required for a sustainable future.
Have you noticed how the English-language media describes the rebels in Donbass? Most of the
time it deems them "pro-Russian rebels" which is a little bit like describing the Patriot faction
of the American Revolution the "pro-French rebels". Surely the rebels see Russia in a positive
light, but surely that is tangential to what really makes them tick. However, a designation of this
sort must at least be commended in the sense that it is an admission on the part of the English-language
press of how little it is certain of. Most of the time all it knows is that the rebs like Russia,
and does not to try to guess at the rest.
It is at other times that the media has feigned knowledge where they could have done real damage.
In a minority of cases, reports and commentary have designated the rebels the "ethnic Russian rebels".
This seems convenient, and doubtless gives the outsiders a sense of clarity and certainty, but
that is precisely what is so dangerous about this extraordinarily misleading characterization.
Once the anti-government faction is deemed to be made up of "ethnic Russian rebels" the story
becomes a familiar one. The rebels are Russians and they are fighting because they are Russians.
It is an inter-ethnic conflict between Russians and Ukrainians. Only, it is not.
Regardless of how great or important one thinks the differences between Ukrainians and Russians
are, the fact is that in the limited geographic space of south-eastern Ukraine, and particularly
in Donbass, this distinction is neither great nor significant to the people who live there. Ukrainians
and Russians in south-eastern Ukraine are part of the same ethnic coalition, and have been amalgamating
into one body ever since these lands were first opened to colonization from historic Ukraine and
Russia proper. The British-Ukrainian historian Taras Kuzio put it this way[1]:
"Identities in eastern-southern Ukraine are a mixture of local, east Slavic and Soviet. While
recognising that they are different to Russians living across the former Soviet internal administrative,
now Ukrainian-Russian, interstate border they do not differentiate between Russians and Ukrainians
within eastern-southern Ukraine. They are all, after all, Russian-speakers in a region where
all national cultures had largely been eradicated in urban centres and where few people are
religious. Linguistic, religious or cultural markers of separate identity between Ukrainians
or Russians in eastern-southern Ukraine do not therefore really exist."
The peculiarity of identity in south-eastern Ukraine actually goes further than that. The identity
of many people in the region appears fluid and ambiguous. When asked whether they are Russian or
Ukrainian they are not necessarily in a position to give a simple answer, and may resent being pressed
to do so. Numerous people regard themselves at least somewhat Ukrainian and at least somewhat Russian
at the same time.
Indeed, the last Soviet population census found Ukraine to be inhabited by 37.5 million Ukrainians
and 11.3 million Russians, but the first and only population census carried out in independent Ukraine
found 37.5 million Ukrainians and 8.3 million Russians instead. The reason the number of census
Ukrainians could stay constant while the number of census Russians fell by 25% is clear. Upwards
of 2 million people had transferred their census nationality from Russian to Ukrainian.
It should be understood that there is no sharp Russian-Ukrainian ethnic dichotomy across large
swathes of Ukraine, and furthermore it is precisely in the Donbass region that has risen up in rebellion
to the government in Kyiv that this dichotomy is the weakest. Instead of a sharp delineation between
the two ethnic communities there is an amalgamated Russian-Ukrainian community and a great deal
of fluidity and ambiguity between the two nationalities. Numerous people are comfortable identifying
as both Ukrainian and Russian at the same time, and furthermore do not believe there is, or should
be, any great difference between the two. The fight then is clearly not between Russian and Ukrainian.
The war is not about who the rebels in the south-east are, but what they believe in.
The rebels and their most ardent supporters no longer believe in Ukrainian nation-building. They
do not conceive of the Ukraine as the proper political unit for them. This is apparent from their
rejection of Ukrainian national symbols and ambition to build up local people's republics. Many
may have considerable, or even mainly, Ukrainian ethnic ancestry, but do not consider themselves
part of the Ukrainian political nation. Some are happy to concede that they are Ukrainian, but do
not want Ukrainians as a separate political nation from other East Slavs.
Just as numerous citizens of Ukraine between 1989 and 2001 transferred their census nationality
from Russian to Ukrainian, so numerous Ukrainians (particularly Russians-Ukrainians) can transfer
their allegiance away from Ukrainian nation-building and decide that their proper political community
is not the Republic of Ukraine, but the People's Republic of Donetsk/Lugansk or the Confederation
of Novorossia.
The Donbass rebellion is not a war of the kind we have seen in the Balkans with its sharp ethno-national
divisions. It is more like the American Revolution, or the American Civil War. It is a rebellion
of people who no longer subscribe to the Ukrainian national project, but who are not necessarily
ethnically distinct from those who continue to do so. It is neither a rebellion of Russian-speaking
Ukrainians nor of ethnic Russians. It is a rebellion of those Ukrainian citizens who want to remove
themselves from the project of Ukrainian nation-building.
[1] Taras Kuzio, Ukraine: State and Nation Building (London: Routledge, 1998), 73-74.
[2] Oxana Shevel, "Nationality in Ukraine: Some Rules of Engagement," East European Politics
and Societies 16, no. 2 (2002): 387-417. citing Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 219.
Why did politicians, pundits, journalists, generals – the whole bloody system – feel it necessary
to constantly remind us all that we enjoyed freed om and democracy and should be ever on our
guard lest it be taken from us?
I soon began to realize that this adoption of the moral high ground by our mentors was all
part of a programme of indoctrination directed not only at us in order to engender our political
stultification but also to suggest that there were others much less fortunate than we that yearned
for such freedoms and democracy that we were assured we enjoyed – you know the thing: "Be thankful
for what you have. Now get back to work!"
This was the time when a British prime minister once admonished the mob by announcing to
them: "You've never had it so good".
And these moralistic declarations of the existence of a superior world where goodness reigns
supreme, where the shining city on the hill is situated, where happy citizens bask in the rays
of enlightened government and enjoy the freedoms of choice as regards the ways they may pursue
their routes towards individual happiness are also beamed constantly at those that live on the
dark side.
The other day I became acquainted with a 30-something Russian professional, married, no children,
well travelled, bourgeois…
We got talking about our travels and experiences. As usual, she was astounded at the length
of time that I had lived here and – this is the one that always gets them! – that not only is
my wife Russian, but she also lives here, in Mordor with our three children, who are also Russian
all born in Moscow and who don't particularly wish to live in the UK, though they have all visited
that place..
And then she learnt that I had never visited the USA. "Why not? I find that amazing", she
said in genuine astonishment.
"Why should I have been there?" I replied.
"But it is so easy for you to go there if you want to,and everyone wants to go to the USA
and live there", she stated.
"No they don't" I answered. "And I never have wanted to do so. Why do you think everyone
wants to go and live there?"
"Because America is the number one country. It's the best. It's the best of everything!"
... ... ...
kirill, November 13, 2014 at 8:44 pm
Sounds like a Maidan style idiot. I have zero patience for such people. The USA has a lot
of pluses, but the infantile need to puff it up into some sort of Heaven on Earth is just too
much. As for where people would want to live. I think most Europeans who have a certain expectation
from their societies and government would want to live in Canada.
Unfortunately Canada has been Americanizing politically for 20 years. The Harper regime is
a historic low point for the country.
Britain's war-time leader urged the US to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union to
win the Cold War
He urged Senator Styles Bridges to persuade President Harry Truman to launch a nuclear attack
He believed a pre-emptive strike on Stalin's Russia might be the only way to stop Communism
conquering the West
The memo claims Churchill 'stated that the only salvation for the civilisation of the world would
be if the President of the United States would declare Russia to be imperilling world peace and
attack Russia'.
The note continues: 'He pointed out that if an atomic bomb could be dropped on the Kremlin, wiping
it out, it would be a very easy problem to handle the balance of Russia, which would be without
direction.
'Churchill further stated that if this was not done, Russia will attack the United States in
the next two or three years when she gets the atomic bomb and civilisation will be wiped out or
set back many years.'
The memo is published for the first time in a book called When Lions Roar: The Churchills And
The Kennedys, by award-winning investigative journalist Thomas Maier. It is due to be published
in Britain next month. John F. Kennedy regarded Churchill as his hero and made him an honorary American
citizen in 1963 – the first person to be given such an accolade.
The two families shared friends, such as Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who married
Jacqueline Kennedy after her husband's assassination.
Maier said: 'Churchill had been a great historian of warfare. He saw the last great cavalry charge
during the First World War and championed the development of tanks.
'I think he saw a nuclear strike as just another progression of conventional warfare, until he
realised there was a lot more devastation with nuclear weapons.'
Maier said Churchill was more 'bellicose' when out of office. After he returned to power in 1951,
a nuclear attack against the USSR was never mentioned again.
Did the election last week really mean that much? I took to my Twitter account on Tuesday to
point out that the change in control of the Senate from Democrat to Republican actually means very
little, despite efforts by politicians and the mainstream media to convince us otherwise. Yes, power
shifted, I wrote. But the philosophy on Capitol Hill changed very little. The warfare/welfare state
is still alive and well in Washington.
Some were critical of my comment that, "Republican control of the Senate equals expanded neo-con
wars in Syria and Iraq. Boots on the ground are coming!"
But unfortunately my fears were confirmed even sooner than I thought. Shortly after the vote,
President Obama announced that he would double the number of US troops on the ground in Iraq and
request another $5.6 billion to fight his war in the Middle East.
The President also said on Wednesday that he would seek a new authorization for the use of force
in Iraq and Syria. He said that a new authorization was needed to reflect, "not just our strategy
over the next two or three months, but our strategy going forward."
That sounds like boots on the ground in an endless war.
Senate Democrats had been competing with Republicans over who would push a more aggressive foreign
policy. This may explain their miserable showing on Tuesday: it is likely the honest, antiwar progressives
just stayed home on election night. But with the Republican victory bringing to leadership the most
hawkish of the neoconservatives like John McCain, the only fight over the President's request to
re-invade Iraq will be Republican demands that he send in even more soldiers and weapons!
Likewise, the incoming Republicans in the Senate have expressed a foolhardy desire to continue
resurrecting the Cold War. They demand that Russia be further sanctioned even as the original reason
for the sanctions – claims that Russia was behind the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17
– has been shown to be false. They want to send weapons to the US-backed government in Ukraine even
through it will result in more civilians killed in east Ukraine. Their dangerous Russia policy may
even turn the new Cold War into a hot war, which would be catastrophic.
On the domestic front, I do not hold out much hope that the next Congress will give more than
lip service to reducing spending. What is more likely is Republicans will support dramatic increases
in welfare spending as long warfare spending is increased by an equivalent, or greater, amount.
That is what is called "compromise" in Washington.
One positive development from Tuesday is the slightly improved chance for a roll-call vote on
"Audit the Fed." Most of the Senators who are likely to assume leadership roles next year are co-sponsors
of the bill. However, special interests that benefit from Fed secrecy are very influential in both
parties, so it will be up to the people to continue to pressure Congress for a Senate vote.
Elsewhere, there may also be some rollbacks and reforms of some of the worst parts of ObamaCare,
but a full repeal of the bill is unlikely. This is not just because there are still not the votes
to override an inevitable veto. The insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies that benefit from ObamaCare
are equally influential in both parties and have very deep pockets.
I ended my comments on election night by pointing out that while it may have been an important
election, it was not most important ever. Ideas are what really count. And that is where we are
winning!
The Democrats failed to make the most of a great moment in history because there was no Democrat
brave enough, independent enough, to energize their party around the mandate for reform given to
them overwhelmingly by the people in 2008.
Remember when everyone thought that the Republican party was dead, completely and utterly repudiated
in 2008? And how they have risen from the dead!
Obama was a pawn of the moneyed interests before he even took office. He didn't sell out; he
was a well engineered product with a well targeted brand, selected and groomed for it.
Less a politician than a thoroughly modern manager, Obama's primary objectives are to please
his shareholders, whomever those may be. And they were certainly not the people who voted for
him. He is not any kind of progressive or reformer once one scratches the surface.
That became clear in his first 100 days with his appointments. And in his defense, the Democrats
on the whole have been throwing their constituents under the bus for the sake of Wall Street money
since 1992. So Obama was not so much a betrayer as a fake, a member of the Wall Street wing
of the Democratic party. He is always fumbling, and making excuses, but at the end of the day, he
did as he was told.
The Democratic leadership has tried to bridge a gap between representing the people and fattening
their wallets, and have ended up pleasing few. They won't become the party of the moneyed interests
because they cannot sell out more deeply than their counterparts. And as for their traditional constituency
in the working class, the only rejoinder is, 'the other guys are worse.' And the other guys say
the same thing to their base about them. And no one is getting served, except the one percent.
I think that the 'other guys' are going to be worse, and people are just
going to have to see how bad things can get, again, before they can get any better.
From an FDR 1936 campaign speech in Madison Square Garden:
For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has
rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace-business and financial monopoly, speculation,
reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their
own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government
by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate
as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me-and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness
and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration
that in it these forces met their master.
There's a deep problem here. While movement conservatives have always chafed at the assumption
that George W. Bush embodied their ideology, he most certainly did: as TheEconomist's
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge noted in The Right Nation, Bush was the first Republican
president who had come of age with the conservative movement-Nixon, Reagan, and the elder Bush were
products of an earlier environment. Conservatism was an open-ended question in their time, but for
the second Bush it was one that had been answered all his life by self-identified conservative institutions:
think tanks, magazines, books, and blocs of politicians. Whatever Bush's personal and opportunistic
deviations, his administration's defining policies-tax cuts, wars, and expansion of executive
power in the name of national security-hewed to the movement's playbook. Movement conservatism's
organs of opinion and policy were happy with Bush overall and eager to
silence his critics
But with Bush's downfall came a need to redefine the Republican Party's ideology and brand. After
the country as a whole repudiated Bush by turning to Democrats in 2006 and 2008, the GOP also repudiated
him by turning in 2010 to the Tea Party and a new brand of liberty-minded Republicans exemplified
by Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Justin Amash. These "liberty movement" Republicans were few in number
but represented a qualitative change in tone and policy emphasis for the GOP, particularly on national
security and foreign policy. One could easily imagine Republicans of this sort as the wave of the
future, if the GOP were to have any future at all: these were the kind of Republicans who might
represent a viable conservatism in an increasingly diverse country where marijuana is legal and
same-sex marriage commands majority support. Their anti-authoritarianism and commitment to cultural
federalism suggested a way forward for the party. Win or lose in years to come, they were certainly
not the same Bush brand that voters had rejected in 2006, 2008, and indeed 2010.
Yet now Bush is ancient history, and the un-Bush of 2008, Barack Obama, has begun to exhibit
distinctly shrublike characteristics-as
Bruce Bartlett has shown, Obama is something between a moderate Republican of the old Rockefeller
variety and a direct continuation of George W. Bush. The powerful but ill-defined anti-Bush
"brand" that shaped both parties between 2006 and 2012 has given way to a Democratic Party that
now defends the Bush-like policies it once defined itself against and a Republican Party that in
opposing Obama does so for reasons unrelated to his resemblance to his predecessor. Republicans
today can once again employ their familiar decades-old ideological armament against a militarily
inept, big-spending, socially liberal Democrat. These weapons have done the trick for decades-until
the Bush disaster deprived them of their effectiveness-so who needs new ideas?
The party does have new faces. Joni Ernst is 44, Cory Gardner is 40, Tom Cotton is 37, and many
of the GOP's other new officeholders are also in their 30s and 40s. They are old enough to have
been ideologically shaped by movement conservatism as it existed in the '80s and '90s-when neoconservatism
and the religious right were ascendant-but not young enough to have had Bush's debacles as a formative
childhood experience. They are the Alex P. Keaton generation.
Can these fortyish idols of a party philosophically defined by Fox News-whose median viewer
age is 68-win over millennial voters and the electorate of the future? They will if there's
no one organized enough to compete against them. The well-oiled machinery of movement conservatism
remains fully in the hands of people who think the only trouble with George W. Bush was that he
did not go far enough. Heritage and AEI have lately tried to present softer images on a number of
domestic issues-prison reform, policies to help the working class-but they are as single-mindedly
hawkish as ever when it comes to foreign policy and just as dedicated as the Bush administration
to expanding executive power. Young Republicans like Tom Cotton represent the worst aspects of the
movement's ideology, and none of the new faces appears to represent the best.
On these great issues of war and peace, legislative government or executive prerogative, Republican
realists and libertarians have a much weaker infrastructure to begin with, and for most libertarian
institutions and their benefactors gutting regulation remains a higher priority than stopping any
war. Democrats, meanwhile, are once more terrified of seeming too dovish, as Obama's botched policies-interventionist
but reluctantly so-teach his party anew that McGovernite and Carter-esque weakness is fatal. (This
is true: peace in strength is what America's voters want.) So it's back to the Democrats' answer
to Bush: Clinton, and the female of the species may soon prove deadlier than the male.
Still, the public does have some say in all this, and it has shown to have no appetite for the
decades-long wars that Tom Cotton's Republican Party appears to portend. The market for realism
and non-authoritian politics remains. But can anyone organize the institutions and policy-making
cadres to serve this demand? If not, there is little chance of a lone politician or small group
of liberty-movement Republicans redirecting their party, much less their country, away from futile
wars and executive consolidation: we will be back to the Bush and Clinton era, with Rand Paul as
lonely a dissenter as ever his father was.
At least, that is, until the Cottons and Clintons lose another, bigger war and plunge the country
into something even worse than the Great Recession. Then we'll get change without the hope.
As a father, I want to raise responsible adults, which is why my wife and I will not
be heading to the polls this election. Previously, I would have seen this stance as many people
do: as an irresponsible act.
Both Democrats and Republicans support militarism, taxation, spying on us, inflation,
redistribution of wealth, Keynesian economics and corporatism once they get in office.
My children need not to identify with this group of sociopaths, so to vote would be
a bad example for them.
Simply put, The lesser of two evils is still evil.
When a militarily powerful country tries to govern the affairs of millions of people on the
other side of the planet, we shouldn't be surprised that chaos results …
That's of the grab from
my latest piece in Inside Story, commenting on the utter incoherence of US (and therefore
Australian) policy in the Middle East. An extended version:
How could it be otherwise? A rich and militarily powerful country has taken it upon itself to
govern the affairs of millions of people on the other side of the planet, of whom it knows nothing.
Its emissaries routinely elevate particular individuals, ethnic groups, religious sects and
political parties as favourites, then just as quickly dump them in favour of new friends. Its
tools vary randomly from overwhelming force to plaintive exhortation, with no clear or consistent
rationale.
The key observation is that, with the exception of slavish obedience to the whims of the Netanyahu
government, the US has switched sides on almost every conflict in the Middle East in the space of
a couple of years.
My policy recommendation to the US is
an announcement that, from now on, the people of the Middle East would be left to sort out their
problems for themselves. In particular, it would be useful to state that the United States has
no strategic concern with Middle Eastern oil, and that energy policy is a matter for individual
countries to determine according to their own priorities.
Inside Story doesn't appear to take comments so read there (lots of other interesting stuff)
and comment here.
Brett Bellmore 10.07.14 at 10:27 am
" In particular, it would be useful to state that the United States has no strategic
concern with Middle Eastern oil,"
I'm unclear why it is useful to state falsehoods.
For better or worse, (And I'm convinced it is for the worse.) the civilized world is dependent
on Middle Eastern oil. It would be much better if we weren't, for a long list of reasons. But
we are. Take it abruptly away, and there'd be a world-wide depression, until we managed
to find a substitute. And THAT is most certainly a strategic concern of the United States.
Now, I think we'd be much better off directing our efforts to achieving energy independence,
and making Middle Eastern oil a convenience for plastics manufacture, rather than an essential
source of energy. But until we can do that, the area is of strategic importance to the whole
civilized world.
Of which it is not a part, regrettably, which is why we have to be concerned about it.
Peter T 10.07.14 at 11:17 am
Actually, the post both overstates and understates the muddle that is US policy. It does
not so much switch sides as either try to push forward with bit players (Chalabi, FSA), or play
all sides at once (the CIA has been encouraging Baluchi insurgents in south-east Iran while
State has been trying to find a way out of the sanctions mess, and Defence muttering to Iran
about being helpful in Afghanistan).
And then when things don't go the way the US wants, the response has as often been dictated
by spite as by interest. It's an old story – see Cuba, or Vietnam and Cambodia, or China.
The last rational, coherent US foreign policy actor seems to have died around 1948.
jake the antisoshul soshulist 10.07.14 at 2:11 pm
The post does overstate everything except the incoherence of US foreign policy.
Some of the incoherence is due to political realities in the US. These include: overwhelming
support for whatever Israel's current policy is, reflexive Republican/conservative opposition
to whatever policy a Democratic president promotes, the reactive (rather than proactive) policy
of the Obama administration. (not that I oppose that philosophically)
The US needs to be independent of fossil fuels as a energy source. Normally, I would say
we need to become independent of Middle Eastern oil first, but I don't know that we have enough
time to accomplish that before solving fossil fuels.
I am not sure better or worse are proper terms, but the Middle East will have to sort it
out for themselves or we will continue to see the current chaos for any foreseeable future.
Of course, sorting it out will likely be a long and bloody process (see the religious wars in
Europe). But, I am convinced that it would likely be even longer and bloodier if the West continues
to meddle.
MPAVictoria 10.07.14 at 2:49 pm
We have been bombing the Middle East off and on for almost 25 years and what has it gotten
us? Nothing but hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, trillions of dollars wasted and chaos
across the region.
Do we really have any idea what those trillions of dollars could have accomplished if they
had been used to build up rather than tear down? High speed internet, quality infrastructure,
access to health care and education for people across the region. Perhaps we could have bribed
the Israelis and the Palestinians to make peace with that much money!
Instead we have the same people calling for bombs yesterday, bombs today and bombs tomorrow.
It is absolutely bat shit insane. Yet here we are again. Why are our leaders so willing to make
the same mistakes over and over and over again?
/This is all just so depressing.
ajay 10.07.14 at 2:57 pm
I don't know to what extent the US in particular needs Mid-East oil. Perhaps JQ does?
But without these apparently self-defeating military programmes, perhaps the US really wouldn't
need any oil but its own?
This is a cue for 15 people to say at once "oil is fungible. Even if the US does not burn
any oil that actually comes from the Middle East, an interruption to ME oil supply would drive
the world oil price up and cause harm to the US economy, and indeed to most other countries'
economies".
The US imports about 733 million barrels of crude oil a year from the Gulf region, out of
3.6 billion barrels total imports, which, added to 2.7 billion in domestic production, gives
6.3 billion barrels total consumption. The Gulf, then, supplies roughly 11% of total US oil
needs. (The US Department of Energy has an Energy Information Administration which has a very
helpful website.)
The US military uses a hell of a lot of oil – it's the single largest consumer of oil in
the US (as you might expect given that it is essentially a huge organisation for moving stuff
and people around). It uses 4.6 billion gallons of fuels and oils per year – about 83 million
barrels. That's still far less than the US imports from the Gulf, though.
Guano 10.07.14 at 3:35 pm
It's not really true that the USA has switched sides in the Middle East. Despite the
fact that the Gulf States and Turkey have brought into being a terrorist group that controls
significant territory in Iraq and Syria, the US is still treating these states with kid gloves.
And even though there is significant overlap of interests with Syria and Iraq, relations
with these states are still icy. A couple of weeks ago at the UN, the UK prime minister said
that Iran is a part if the problem in the Middle East: that's a daft thing to say about a country
whose help you want to deal with a common threat. (Iran may be part of the problem, but every
other state in the region is part of the problem.) The incoherence is not that the USA has changed
sides but that it apparently allows Turkey and the Gulf States to set conditions for fighting
the monster that they have created, so the USA is committed to creating from scratch a moderate
opposition force in Syria.
Tony Blair pops up every so often to say that The West has to be engaged in the Middle East.
What he fails to mention is that The West is engaged deeply in the Middle East but in an unhelpful
way: it is tied up with certain states and thus is involved in their conflicts and squabbles.
If it is going to engage in a helpful way it needs to disengage a bit first.
However it is probably 40 years too late for that. As some of us said back then, the response
to the 1973 oil embargo should have been to seriously explore alternative energy sources and
find ways of reducing oil use. That was a road not taken.
Plume 10.07.14 at 5:00 pm
Brett,
Please define "civilized." Do you mean, for instance, the reign of terror unleashed on the
world by Western powers with their colonial expansion, slavery, forced conversions to Christianity?
Do you mean the tens of millions slaughtered in WWI, and the even greater numbers in WWII? Do
you mean the wars upon wars after WWII, initiated primarily by the United States which led to,
for example, 2-4 million slaughtered in Korea and 3 million slaughtered in Vietnam? Or a million
slaughtered, with 4 million exiled in Iraq?
Nor has the US really changed sides in Iraq. Two years ago it was supporting the Iraqi
government, today it's supporting the Iraqi government. The prime minister has changed,
that's all
I dips me lid.
ajay 10.07.14 at 5:23 pm
Their society may or may not prioritize economic growth (and other western things:
democracy, human rights, open society, etc.) as high as westerners do
The other western things, maybe not. (Though, even if "democracy and human rights" aren't
buzzwords in the ME to the same extent, I bet "justice and good government" are.) But economic
growth, as represented in particular by general prosperity and opportunities for employment:
yes, they do, as Ronan said. Food costs were a key issue in Tunisia, in Egypt, and in Syria,
and that is an economic issue, but it's one that is common to anyone in any sort of society.
US policy was most certainly not to keep Egypt or Jordan weak for example.
True. Look at the Egyptian army. Count the tanks. Now look at where they're from.
Brett Bellmore 10.07.14 at 5:32 pm
"Do you mean, for instance, the reign of terror unleashed on the world by Western powers
with their colonial expansion, slavery, forced conversions to Christianity?"
"Still" largely uncivilized, as in present tense. I'm not talking about centuries past.
Or maybe your definition of civilization includes executing people for converting to a different
religion, prosecuting rape victims for being raped, just generally treating women as chattel,
destroying historical monuments, and so forth.
The Middle East is, to this day, still an uncivilized part of the planet. That's their fundamental
problem. Oil wealth just lets them spread it.
ajay 10.07.14 at 5:33 pm
35: huh. I missed the Peace Brigades. Interesting.
But I still think that you are over-reaching by talking about the US "changing sides" in
Iraq. Maliki's successor is the deputy head of Maliki's party, for heaven's sake.
There is a war going on in Iraq, and Maliki and al-Abadi are on the same side as each other.
It's fairly important to understand this.
roger gathman 10.07.14 at 6:26 pm
Actually, it is not just Israel that acts as a driver of US policy – although in actuality
I think this is a two way driver, and that Israel does a lot of things that the US government
wants them to do while pretending to condemn them or hold them at a distance – but Saudi Arabia.
Why should the US, which is buddies with all the authoritarian Gulf states and calmly watched
as the Saudis invaded bahrain and suppressed a democratic revolt, care about Assad? I mean,
we have no real reason to overthrow Assad. It will actually make US policy much more difficult
if Syria fragments. But the Saudis fear Iran, and thus want to damage their ally. That's it.
Similarly, when Pakistan illegally steals the technology and designs to build nuclear weapons,
and are financed in this endeavor by the Saudis, we do… nothing. When Iran openly pursues nuclear
power and, we presume, a nuclear weapon, we go apeshit.
If the US had taken a far sterner stance towards Saudi Arabia and had established a relationship
with Iran in 1989, like Israel, at that time, was advocating, we would surely not have had 9/11,
and there would surely be no ISIS.
I would define the US problem in the Middle East differently. Our patchwork of short term
policy decisions reflect an unthought out long term framework that has long been broken. It
isn't just the Israel connection that is responsible for this. Rather, it is literally the politics
of the oil companies which has brought us to this point.
TM 10.07.14 at 7:08 pm
It strikes me that Afghanistan wasn't even mentioned yet. Do people even remember how
hard the USA has worked for decades to utterly destroy a secular government and replace it with
Islamic extremists and terrorists?
The joke is that the US hasn't even changed sides – the (Sunni) Islamists have, and it took
9/11 for that to dawn on Americans. The US response has been confusion ever since.
P O'Neill 10.07.14 at 7:28 pm
It's not easy to map the evolution of US policy towards Saudi Arabia into a specific foreign
policy stance. Was it better policy in the 1950s when the Arab American Oil Company (HQ in Delaware)
was literally bankrolling the Saudi government or the 1980s when Aramco (HQ: Dhahran) was ultimately
footing the bills for Afghanistan and Saddam (back when he was the good Baathist dictator)?
More US control in the 1950s. Much worse outcomes in the 1980s.
J Thomas 10.07.14 at 7:41 pm
#45 Roger Gathman
I would define the US problem in the Middle East differently. Our patchwork of short term
policy decisions reflect an unthought out long term framework that has long been broken. It
isn't just the Israel connection that is responsible for this. Rather, it is literally the politics
of the oil companies which has brought us to this point.
That's a good point. In a few highly publicized incidents over the years it looked like
the Zionist lobby trumped the oil lobby, but it might be different for more routine matters.
And what drives oil company interests? Perhaps a middle east that has many repeated scares to
temporarily drive oil prices up, but few real catastrophes that drive down supply in the long
run….
Plume 10.07.14 at 7:56 pm
Brett,
On any sane scale if that is determined by conservative Americans. Yes. Very true. It's what
you guys are fighting for in Colorado right now. You know? The right to ram "American exceptionalism"
down the throats of students who would rather learn the truth instead.
stevenjohnson 10.07.14 at 8:03 pm
The only non-racist definition of civilization is "living in cities." And the only non-racist
definition of barbarian is "nomadic." Civilized is not a synonym for "nice, like me.) Nor is
barbarous a synonym for "cruel, unlike me."
Living in the suburbs is an in-between state, trying to have the creature comforts of civilized
life without actually committing to civilization. (Think about it, this explains a lot about
US politics.) Living in off-shore bank accounts (so to speak,) given electronic funds transfer,
is also close to barbarism.
Plume 10.07.14 at 8:11 pm
"whoever is not Greek is a barbarian." That's where it came from.
I think Brett and most American conservatives use it in similar fashion, but they extend
it to mean American, European (Western), and allow for some leeway with regard to certain other
nations. Perhaps, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia. Some parts of Latin America,
too. Not Cuba, of course, or Venezuela.
Oh, and not San Francisco. DC and Massachusetts are borderline.
J Thomas 10.07.14 at 9:28 pm
I think another issue needs to be emphasised, is that there is not an iota of evidence that
a 'hands off' policy would alter the flow of oil. Every group in the Middle East wants to export
oil at a market price – even Isis are producing oil for sale.
While I think you're mostly
right, still consider how it worked during the Iran/Iraq war.
The USA provided lots of support for Iraq, and it's possible that Iraq invaded Iran in the
first place at US request. We were happy for them to continue fighting indefinitely with no
winner. Kissinger famously quipped "Too bad they can't both lose". But they both lost a lot
of money and had to pump lots of oil to pay for it. Both cheated extensively on their OPEC oil
quotas. For some unknown reason the price of oil was low then, so they had to pump lots and
lots of oil to get the money they needed for the war.
Then the USA announced there was a threat that Iran would attack international oil shipping.
Their goal would be to damage the Iraqi war effort by interfering with their exports. (Iraq
and Iran had been attacking each other's oil shipping for some time, with minor results.) The
US Navy moved in aggressively, and Iran attacked oil shipping more while the US Navy was trying
to stop them than they ever had before.
A US cruiser shot down an Iranian passenger liner that they thought might have been a threat,
and an Iraqi warplane attacked the USS Stark. We forgave the Iraqis, though.
So while everybody in the middle east who has oil has an incentive to sell it, it's also
true that various people in the middle east who have oil also have enemies, and their enemies
may consider it more important to stop them from selling it than to keep the world economy on
an even keel.
However, it's far easier for the US military to bomb people than to keep people from bombing
oil facilities.
Guano 10.07.14 at 9:43 pm
Antoine #43 How serious is your list of causes?
If the list is serious, could you explain point
1? What outcome would you have expected from an intervention in Syria in 2013 and why?
Omega Centauri 10.07.14 at 9:46 pm
Chaos is also the enemy of oil exports. So if we let them battle it out, even if either side
would happily pump oil, it could be that a lot of export capacity would be destroyed anyway.
War/instability doesn't usually resolve as a zero-sum game, usually there is a net loss. Also
we have seen that the US isn't strictly concerned with the level of oil exports, we happily
embargo or bomb (in the case of IS controlled oil facilities) those exporters whom we consider
to be the current bad guys. Clearly the global price of oil has been higher partly because we've
embargoed Iranian oil.
There is also the fact, that humanitarian concerns aside, instability
is bad for the rest of the world. Large refugee flows are tough on those nations who agree to
take them in. That includes Europe, and even to a small extent the US.
So we try to muddle from crisis to crisis, but seem to be about as effective as a bull in
a China shop.
John Quiggin 10.08.14 at 1:33 am
Ronan: For quite a number of years, the US recognised the Khmer Rouge government in exile
as the legitimate government of Cambodia (eg supported seating them at the UN), in preference
to the Vietnam-backed government that was actually in power, having driven the KR out. I'm a
little surprised you don't remember this: it was a big deal at the time.
On the broader point, there are all sorts of ways to stop a war: a peace agreement, a truce
(now 50+ years old in Korea), or just holding lines without any formal agreement.
Bruce Wilder 10.08.14 at 6:19 am
Yes it is, but politicians who are tempted to do that will have to pay a price for it.
The will to be stupid is strong among US (and Australian) voters.
I do not think it is all down to the poor taste of the common man in America. The poor
taste of the common man in America is a commodity carefully cultivated by PR professionals,
and that cultivation is not effectively opposed.
Guano 10.08.14 at 2:15 pm
The Pottery Barn Rule ("If you break it you own it") was a warning by Colin Powell to
the neo-cons about Iraq: it was an argument for not invading because the occupier has the
duties to a country that it invades and occupies. It wasn't advice about what to do after the
USA had invaded. It didn't advocate the position that "we own someone else's society or state
because we invaded it and destroyed their government".
Allied to the Pottery Barn Rule is something that should have been learnt from the invasion
of Iraq (or even from the Vietnam War): regime change is very risky. Overthrowing a regime
is easy, building a new regime (and its institutions and popular trust in those institutions)
is very, very difficult.
If country A invades country B it has a duty to rebuild the institutions of Country B, but
that is likely to be unsuccessful. So the rule should be, avoid regime change.
CK MacLeod 10.08.14 at 5:04 pm
The key false or at best badly and misleadingly overstated assumption underlying the linked
article as well as the main argument highlighted in the OP is that US policy has ever or could
ever have been to "govern the affairs of millions of people on the other side of the planet."
At no time, even during the height of the "nation-building" phase of the occupation of Iraq,
has the US sought to "govern the affairs" of the people of the Middle East. Governing the affairs
of the people of the Middle East would require an investment of blood and treasure that the
US has never contemplated. It's not precisely an absurd concept, but it does not resemble the
American neo-imperial concept as actually implemented.
The US has predictably – or consistently – acted when Americans have perceived their
core interests endangered by events in the region. These interests mainly concern preservation
of the international political-economic order against significant disruptions, especially by
major war. Otherwise, Americans have mainly sought, like everyone else, to influence events
that occur below that threshold in one way or another, with mixed results, since we have many
competitors.
Contrary to the professor's claims, which mainly focus on the US failing to achieve goals
of relatively little actual interest to the US, the strategy has been overall quite successful
for around 70 years, and the "trillions of dollars" may be deemed, as in fact they have been
deemed by the American body politic, a worthwhile investment (for an economy with a ca. $17
trillion annual GDP). The strategy seems less successful than it has been because its fundamental
tenets are simply presumed, and most of the public discussion instead revolves around aspirational
matters – Arab-Israeli peace, liberalization in law, politics, and society, and so on.
In that last connection, there is of course nothing wrong with concern for the welfare of
the people of the Middle East, but there is violent disagreement, not least among the Middle
Easterners themselves, about the shape and content of progress or potential progress. At
present, the US seems quite under the spell of a soft imperialism of low expectations.
Americans do not expect things to go well for the people of the region anytime soon, regardless
of what America attempts, nor do they see much profit to the US in escalated involvement, but
American core interests are still affected or potentially imperiled by events there. So, America
will continue to be involved, despite generally being disposed to limit and if possible to decrease
its involvement, amidst uncertainty as to the region's and the world's willingness to cooperate.
roger gathman 10.08.14 at 8:01 pm
CK Macleod, I think this is, if not wrong, a misstatement of the case: "The US has predictably
– or consistently – acted when Americans have perceived their core interests endangered by events
in the region."
I don't believe " Americans" are the people who develop their idea of their interests in
the region. When the Bush people referred to the rush to the occupation in advertising terms,
I think they were more on the right track.
The D.C. establishment for reasons that have to do with economics, ancient behaviors
that haven't been revisited, etc., makes up its mind – like a corporation deciding on a product
– and then sells it to the American people. The sales pitch, the sale, and the remorse
are pretty easy to pick out from the polling data over time. What happens very very rarely is
that Americans think of their core interest and act on it. Did Americans, for instance, think
it would be a neat idea to get high placed Saudis out of the U.S, in the immediate aftermath
of 9/11? No. In fact, I think that was the last thing they were thinking should be done.
In foreign affairs, even more than in economic policy, the US is hardly a democracy in the
sense that ideas begin at the grassroots and flow upward. The attitude among foreign policy
elites, from what I've read, certainly reflects this. Those elites think that the American vulgaris
needs to be led to do what the foreign policy elite thinks is best.
This pattern is known to the elites themselves, which is why they do many things to distance
the disillusionment. Occasionally, a loud minority can ball up things – for instance, the minority
that demonstrated against the war in Vietnam. One of those distancing tricks is to make foreign
policy undiscussable – if you weren't for the invasion of Iraq, you must be an ardent supporter
of Saddam Hussein, and if you aren't for bombing ISIS, you must be eager to chop off heads.
Eventually, long after the discussion that should have happened, public opinion will break through
the taboos and refuse the terms. I am rather surprised that the anti-war side – which was a
decisive factor in Obama winning over Clinton in the primaries – has suddenly shut up about,
well, everything, including Obama casually using Bushite logic to declare war when he wants
to and where.
Our present pseudo-war, based as it is on such contradictory premises as that we are going
to exterminate ISIS and help overthrow Assad, calls out for discussion, but I see very little
of that in D.C., where the discussion is confined to McCain-heavy or McCain-lite positions.
Certainly way more
dangerous and incredibly aggressive.
"Next year, at the ministerial meeting, we will take decisions regarding the so-called
spearhead but, even before it is established, NATO has a strong army after all," he [the
new NATO chief] told the local state broadcaster TVP Info. "We can deploy it wherever we
want to."
Castro's scathing assessment of Stoltenberg's comments is the latest in a string of critiques
by the former Cuban leader. He has also recently weighed in on the evolution of man, the
latest discoveries about black holes by University of North Carolina professor Laura Mersini-Houghton[,]
and the work of British scientist Stephen Hawking.
...
QS 10.09.14 at 2:28 am
The simplest explanation is also the historical (colonial) one. Our foreign policy is "incoherent"
precisely because we don't want any side to win. We enforce divisions, propping up failing actors,
to ensure and perpetuate internal schism and violence. The region is then populated by a handful
of minor powers rather than any single major one, one which could challenge US hegemony.
Omega Centauri 10.09.14 at 2:42 am
QS except I don't believe thats the actual goal. Who was it who said (loosely) "Never
attribute to malevolence that which can be explained by incompetence".
QS 10.09.14 at 7:36 am
I'm not arguing that the US acts as a perfect puppet master, it cannot perfectly predict
nor control events. But to say that our incoherent foreign policy stems from stupidity is missing
the point that incoherence may very well be the policy goal.
Guano 10.09.14 at 9:34 am
#122 areanimator "It seems to me a comforting fantasy, attempting to deny the fact that
a singular nation-state, even a supposed superpower like the US, really has no power over geopolitical
events by itself."
In part the USA invaded Iraq in order to try to demonstrate that the US did have power
over geopolitical events by itself. Bush and those around him wanted to put the USA at the centre
of the Middle East and show that it could control events. That was the background to PNAC and
the neo-conservative world-view.
The results of the invasion of Iraq demonstrate that even a super-power did not have this
power (and Vietnam should have made that clear 40 years previously). Unfortunately this
is rarely acknowledged. Perhaps we are doomed to see the USA vainly trying to
shake off the Vietnam Syndrome and Iraq Syndrome over and over again, and failing to admit
that regime change is difficult and dangerous, and is beyond the capacity of even a super=power.
John Quiggin 10.09.14 at 11:05 am
A more plausible version of the deliberate incoherence story is as follows. As argued in
the OP, the US has no genuine friends in the region. So, any nation or sect that gains ascendancy
is bound to be seen as a dangerous enemy, and the obvious policy solution is to ally with the
enemy's enemy.
This isn't incoherence as grand strategy. Rather the point is that a determination to
control events, without any feasible objective for how to control them produces a toxic version
of 'balance of power' politics
Guano 10.09.14 at 12:21 pm
#124 John Quiggin "As argued in the OP, the US has no genuine friends in the region."
Yes, but this is not recognised even when our "friends" have helped to create a threat such
as ISIS. Thus the incoherence is not that the USA is now allied with countries that were its
enemies; the incoherence is that the USA continues to consider as allies countries such
as Turkey whose objectives are different from those of the USA and which is still trying to
manipulate the USA to overthrow Assad.
The most dangerous countries in the region can be our "friends" because it can be difficult
to admit that they have different objectives and are up to tricks behind our backs.
J Thomas 10.09.14 at 12:31 pm
#124
As argued in the OP, the US has no genuine friends in the region. So, any nation or
sect that gains ascendancy is bound to be seen as a dangerous enemy, and the obvious policy
solution is to ally with the enemy's enemy.
That does make sense.
Here is an alternative - The USA is genuinely friendly to Israel. But Israel has no friends
in the region, genuine or false. They have invaded every close neighbor - Lebanon, Syria, Jordan,
Egypt. They have made minor attacks (nuclear power plants, airports, etc) on some of their neighbors-once-removed
- Libya, Sudan, Iraq (but not the other two, Saudi arabia and Turkey). They are openly discussing
an attack on a tertiary neighbor, Iran.
To the extent that the USA wants to benefit Israel, our intention in any intervention among
arabs would be that both sides should lose. And this is pretty much compatible with the results
we've achieved.
So that's three hypotheses.
1. Incompetence.
2. Keep everybody weak but our friends and we don't have any friends.
3. Keep everybody weak except our friend Israel.
Somebody once said "Never attribute to malice anything that can be explained by incompetence".
But isn't it better to keep your options open? When you're planning, run it both ways and see
whether either way leads to trouble…. I think maybe the idea is designed to protect malicious
people. But maybe instead the people who advocate it are incompetent rather than malicious.
And anyway it doesn't have to be one or the other.
Long-neck Vase 10.09.14 at 1:33 pm
Who was it who said (loosely) "Never attribute to malevolence that which can be explained
by incompetence".
Just can't get into this one personally. The Cheney gang was supremely competent
(the agenda of PNAC was mentioned upthread). Their goals were evil and in my opinion counterproductive
for the long-term survival of the United States, and Murphy's Law worked its will as it does,
but the neoconservatives had and have those goals and they executed them with great competence.
Not least of which was hiding what they were doing for six years and then destroying most of
the evidence on their way out the door.
But hey, Clinton staffers vandalized W keys on computers and Occupy Wall Street didn't order
enough portapotties, so it is all evensies.
areanimator 10.09.14 at 4:12 pm
I would like to ask the commenters in 124, 125 and 126 what exactly is meant by the expression
"genuine friend" of a country. What kind of relationship do two countries need to be in so as
to be considered "genuine friends"? On the face of it, it seems that a "genuine friend" (if
it's at all similar to the way one might use this expression to describe relationships between
two individual persons) would never act against their friend's best interests and support them
"come hell or high water", which is an impossible standard in international relationships.
Countries form alliances of convenience, various institutions and entities within different
countries collaborate on issues in ways that can act against stated policy, and in the end,
the government of every country acts (or at least makes an effort to appear to act) in its own
best interest (however construed).
What possible "friends" can a nation have besides itself? And why do we need to have "friends"
in order to form a coherent foreign policy?
Guano @125:
"the incoherence is that the USA continues to consider as allies countries such as Turkey
whose objectives are different from those of the USA"
I don't really see the incoherence. As a nation independent from the USA, Turkey should have,
and will always have, foreign policy objectives that will differ from those of the USA.
Much like you go to war with the army you have, you wage said war along with whatever allies
you can muster, judging that the differences in objectives is small enough compared to whatever
primary goal the war is meant to achieve. See also: Soviet-US relations during WWII. Again,
isn't this just a self-evident fact of international relations that's taken into account when
making foreign policy?
Guano 10.09.14 at 5:27 pm
#132 areanimator
"Much like you go to war with the army you have, you wage said war along with whatever
allies you can muster, judging that the differences in objectives is small enough compared to
whatever primary goal the war is meant to achieve ……. Isn't this just a self-evident fact
of international relations that's taken into account when making foreign policy?"
It should be a self-evident fact that every country has its own interests and no two countries
have exactly overlapping interests.
However the rhetoric of international relations tends to divide nations into friend and
foe. It appears to be difficult to have graduated relations; relations seem to have to be either
all or nothing, and it is difficult to admit that circumstances have changed and that a "friend"
is abusing the relationship.
Plume 10.09.14 at 11:13 pm
The shifting alliances and complexities of factional oppositions in the Middle East just
guarantee we're going to screw up. There is no way we can't, if we engage. One of the biggest,
of course, was toppling Hussein, which sent most of this mess into motion and made Iran much,
much stronger. The Iran/Iraq situation, however, was obvious enough to recognize before hand
and avoid. And we didn't. Even the first time around. But especially invasion number two.
The odd thing, though, was that we had been clearly opposed to the state of Iran from 1979
on, but opposed to Hussein rather abruptly only when he decided to invade Kuwait in 1990. Prior
to that, he was BFF with Reagan, Bush Sr., Rumsfeld, etc. etc. Suddenly, with a push from the
wicked witch in London, Bush Senior decides to shift the balance in the region slightly in Iran's
favor by crushing Hussein, and then Dubya finishes the job. It never seems to end.
John Quiggin 10.10.14 at 1:03 am
LFC @156 I wrote that the US is debating how much support to give to Assad. THis was a straightforward
statement of fact. The NY Times (which is the journal of record for this kind of thing) presented
a debate on precisely this question
JQ writes: "I wrote that the US is debating how much support to give to Assad. THis was a straightforward
statement of fact."
Somewhere in the Pentagon and/or CIA someone is working on all sorts of
possibilities not being actively considered or debated, but the statement "the US is debating
how much support to give to Assad" is ill-founded and misleading. It is sloppy writing at best,
and the further assertion that this misstatement is or was "a straightforward statement of fact"
compounds the error.
The Obama Administration denies that there is any debate at all on that question. I do no
believe there is a single significant American official or politician who is advocating support
for Assad. There is some debate over whether to escalate from political opposition to a regime
change policy, with a third group – a by now somewhat familiar left-liberal and right libertarian
alliance – urging non-involvement. The last group has been somewhat quieter since the public
beheadings, the Obama policy statements, and opinion polls showing significant support for doing
something against IS. To the extent there is any significant debate regarding support for Assad,
it remains a debate among defense intellectuals – such as those participating in that linked
discussion from the NYT op-ed pages – and it is not a debate over how much support to give to
Assad, but about whether to give any support to Assad or, more accurately, whether to align
with and coordinate with Assad openly. Terrorism expert Max Abrahms has been arguing for that
position for some time now, while attracting little observable support.
There are also numerous hawks who argue that the chemical weapons deal amounted effectively
to legitimizing Assad, and I think there's some truth in that argument, but there's no prospect
of repeating that deal, so it is not being actively debated in or outside of government prospectively.
That debate would be more accurately termed "whether we have, intentionally or not, supported
Assad," akin to the "does attacking IS help Assad?" question.
john c. halasz 10.10.14 at 3:31 am
CK MacLeod @150:
Maybe it's because of your pro-Israel stance or your aggressive Americanism,
but I think you've got this badly wrong. Loathsome as the Assad regime might be, (though no
more than lot of others in the region, including "allies", and it doesn't pay to personalize
the matter), it does represent the interests of a significant portion of the Syrian population,
(not just Alawites, but Christians and secular Sunnis, etc.) in a country with a highly fissiparous
social structure,- (remember the Lebanese civil war lasted 15 years),- against both fundamentalist
fanatics and the prospect of complete disintegration. (And the precursor to the uprising was
a severe drought which the regime either couldn't or wouldn't deal with).
If our elites, our "fearless leaders", weren't so heedless and profligate, then the obvious
course would have been to try and contain the Syrian civil war, and constrain various regional
actors from interfering in and fomenting it, resulting in a general and artificial Shja/Sunni
regional conflict. And, as it is, dealing the weakened Assad regime in, to effect a regional
settlement still remains the best course, given the dire alternatives. That's better than a
lot of gratuitous, self-righteous moralizing to cover a multitude of sins.
Despite differing initial premises, I tend to side with conservative realists like Col. Bacevich:
you can have a republic or you can have an empire, but you can't have both. Which side are you
on?
John Quiggin 10.10.14 at 7:55 am
If anyone still cares, there are three positions being debated in the US (I'm not counting my
own suggestion of pulling out)
(a) Fight IS in Iraq, but do nothing in Syria so as to avoid
helping Assad
(b) Fight IS in Syria as well as Iraq, helping Assad, but invoking a doctrine of double effect,
and refraining from overt alliance
(c) Explicitly helping Assad
The Administration rapidly shifted from (a) to (b), and may yet be forced to (c)
dax 10.10.14 at 11:15 am
"The most pernicious argument is the "we broke it so we're morally obliged to fix it" line trotted
out even by many people who say they opposed the original invasion of Iraq. Firstly it perpetuates
the paternalistic ideology that the Arab world is culturally inferior to America and requires
endless guidance via rewards and punishment. Secondly it is on a par with allowing a doctor
who's practically killed a patient through incompetent surgery to open them up again, because
they mean well and maybe they can do better this time."
The argument is hardly pernicious.
Every time America screws up, it washes its hands and walks away. Teflon America! And then it
screws up somewhere else. You've elevated this deliberate obtuseness to a moral level. Unbelievable.
America (along with the UK and problably Australia) owes trillions to Iraq. If it doesn't
want to pay it to Iraq, fine then it should pays the money to the UN. But the idea that America
is just going to walk away and pretend you can invade and destory a foreign country and not
suffer consequences – that it was just Bush and Cheney's fault and not the fault of America
in general, which after all re-elected the pair after the fact – well that's indigestible. Really,
just indigestible.
john c. halasz 10.10.14 at 6:38 pm
CK MacLeod @164:
Well, it's difficult amidst all the abstracted curlicues to pin down the
exact points of inference and implication; that's beyond my hermeneutic skills. So I have to
rely on a sense of the general tenor. But you do seem, at least, to be endlessly rationalizing
U.S. imperial overreach, as if it were some sort of grand strategy upholding universal "liberal
democracy", where I tend to see incoherence, disintegration and devolution, on the part of grossly
incompetent, irresponsible and ignorant ruling elites. (And the rise of "mass societies" in
the 19th century is, at the very least, an incomplete description; the emergence of industrial
capitalism was a main driver. So "making the world safe for MNCs" might be a better description
of the "universal" interest that is being pursued).
As to the general issue here of the Assad regime, the U.S. doesn't have to support, nor supply
it, just acknowledge it. The Russians and the Iranians can provide the support and supplies.
(Oops! Those are other pieces of the puzzle our fearless leaders have massively screwed up on.)
The real trick, almost impossible to achieve, is to wean the Sunni areas off of supporting Daesh
or other Islamic extremists, while leaving them sufficiently armed so that they can feel capable
of securing themselves, but not so much that they can go on the offensive. Syria and Iraq likely
will never again be unified states. At most peace could be re-instituted on the basis of loose
confederations.
But the position of Erdogan puzzles me. Previously, he had pursued conciliatory policies
toward Syria and Iran, for the sake of security and economic benefits. When and why did he become
a Sunni warrior?
J Thomas 10.11.14 at 9:19 am
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the US has a conscious policy of knocking down any powerful
government or non-state actor (except Israel) in the region.
I am not suggesting that
either. I don't say this is a conscious policy on the part of the USA or the US government.
(What would it even mean for the US government to be conscious?)
I don't say this is a conscious policy on the part of the US House of Representatives. (What
would it even mean for the US House to be conscious?)
I don't say this is a conscious policy on the parts of Reagan, Bush senior, Clinton, Bush
junior, and Obama. (What would it even mean for Bush junior to have a conscious policy?)
I say only that for whatever reason, this is what happens.
Peter T 10.12.14 at 11:31 pm
LFC
The Romans (Mithridates, Boudicca) and IIRC, the British after a similar couple of nasty
experiences, worked out that unleashing a horde of grifters on the locals invites blowback detrimental
to one's wider imperial interests.
And that, therefore, the grifters often need to be forcefully restrained. The US seems to
have difficulty with the concept.
Genocide, Latin American popular estrangement from the US, drugs, migration, gangs –
all in part consequences of uncritical foreign policy establishment support for US grifters
in Central America. And ditto, often, in the Middle East. It's precisely the f-p establishment's
criteria of "success" that is in question.
LFC 10.13.14 at 3:54 am
Peter T @208:
I want to make clear that I think the US role in Latin America over the decades has been in
many respects quite reprehensible. I agree that the criteria of "success" under particular admins
are what's in question, and often I would have disagreed w those criteria. I was simply questioning
your initial framing in terms of incompetence, since some of those reprehensible outcomes might
have been intended. But it's debatable.
At any rate, w/r/t Guatemala, I've read C. Robin's
review of G. Grandin's The Last Colonial Massacre (reprinted in The Reactionary Mind),
which opens by recalling Reagan's 1982 mtg w Rios Montt and goes on to remind that the Guatemalan
military had killed some 200,000 people by the time the civil war came to an end in the mid-'90s.
So I was not defending US policy, during the Cold War esp., in Latin America. Just wanted to
be clear on that.
LFC 10.13.14 at 4:22 am
p.s. Aspects of the history are fairly well known, at least in some circles (Chile '73, School
of the Americas, Nicaragua, etc.). No need to rehearse in detail.
With respect to recent policy
in Syria and Iraq, the orig. topic of the thread, I don't see quite the level of incoherence
in US policy that some here do, though some things cd have been handled considerably better,
no doubt.
There was no sizable constituency in the country for a highly active intervention vs Assad,
even though he was/is slaughtering his own pop. and dropping barrel bombs on villages. The humanitarian-intervention
impulse in US policy has been selective and prob. inconsistent (inconsistency does not always
and necessarily equal incoherence), and the Obama admin, as Andrew F's comment above suggests,
took a dispassionate, even cold (if you like) weighing-of-costs-and-benefits approach.
Sometimes that may be the least bad thing to do. The advent of ISIS has changed the weighing.
One can argue about whether the judgments on this score are correct, but they appear to me (as
of this writing) to be at least somewhat defensible. (That's a tentative view on my part, and
I may change my mind.)
J Thomas 10.13.14 at 7:45 am
Analysis of the various moves made under Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama in Iraq and surrounds too
often leaves out the failure to engage with reality….
Sometimes it may involve a rational
attempt to deal with US irrational beliefs.
I think the Bush administration had the idea that we won the war so we could do anything
we wanted. So for example they set out to create an Iraqi government that did not include
any Ba'aths and did not include any religious people, and they wanted that government to have
an army run by Americans that Iraqis would fight and die for. When asked when we intended
to leave Iraq, Bush said that the US military was still in Germany after more than 50 years
but we weren't exactly occupying Germany.
... The fact that these "war parties" have been emboldened by their recent election victory will
present a serious challenge to President Poroshenko, who will have to forge a coalition with them.
The "chocolate king," as Poroshenko is often known, is in a tough spot, caught between his
domestic hawks and pressure from the European Union (especially Germany) and Russia to maintain
the ceasefire and find a diplomatic solution to the Donbas conflict. He is in an unenviable position.
In addition, Ukraine is bankrupt and its economy is in total disarray. The newly-elected
parliament will soon discover that being pro-Western, nationalist, and anti-Russian is simply not
the answer for Ukraine's mammoth economic problems.
Democratic Party, the other wing of Great Party of Oligarchy, has the role of spoiler in the "US
one party system" There is nothing Democratic left in Democratic Party. it's all fake and rotten
to the core. "If there wasn't already such a placebo party, big money would probably invent it." Quote:
"Don't blame the voters. If you're looking for someone to blame, how about asking the Democrats -- who
appear to know why the GOP sucks -- to either lead or get the hell out of the way. They are occupying
the opposition spot, but they are unwilling to take the natural positions that their criticism of the
Republicans would imply they should take. In fact, the National Democratic Party appears to do AS LITTLE
AS POSSIBLE to oppose the Republican agenda, while still keeping enough faithful voters around to prevent
some other party from taking its place. If there wasn't already such a placebo party, big money would
probably invent it."
Is there a difference between the Republicans and Democrats? Yes.
Is it enough to generate
excitement and make the public feel like they are truly charting this nation's course with their
votes. Not a chance in hell.
Don't blame the voters. If you're looking for someone to blame, how about asking the Democrats
-- who appear to know why the GOP sucks -- to either lead or get the hell out of the way.
They are occupying the opposition spot, but they are unwilling to take the natural positions
that their criticism of the Republicans would imply they should take.
In fact, the National Democratic Party appears to do AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE to oppose
the Republican agenda, while still keeping enough faithful voters around to prevent some other
party from taking its place.
If there wasn't already such a placebo party, big money would probably invent it.
We live in the media market of Sacramento, CA, and the only TV advertising is for the Congressional
district some 50-60 miles north of us, which the Democrat won by a narrow margin two years ago,
defeating the sitting republican congressman. The TV ads are endless, and the money being spent
on behalf of the Republican former congressman in the effort to retake the seat seems monumental.
There are at least 6 or more other congressional districts covered by the Sacramento TV stations,
but not a single ad concerning any of them. Crazy, and gross, and a mindless distortion
of democracy. But there you are; that is modern USA
I hope all those middle class people who are holding those signs have brought plenty of lube
..Because once Congress goes RED be ready for a serious reaming of the Middle Class once again
by the GOP ... There not quite done yet siphoning of the what wealth remains in the American
Middle Class .. They got real close during the Wall Street Meltdown but did not quiet get it
all .. America is poised to make.... yes the same mistake again and again and again .. Why one
may ask ?? Because we are NUMBER ONE and NUMBER TWO .. dont forget lots of Lube ......The GOP
will love it it's petroleum product after all ...
Either way, they argue, the White House loses. "He'll become the president of no,"
another GOP congressman confidently told the Guardian, revelling in the prospect of reversing
the insult that dogged House Republicans when they were the ones blocking Democratic legislative
efforts.
These clowns are still out of touch with reality...they keep saying no to everything
and believe they're paying no price for it...but somehow if the Democrats say no, that it harms
them.
I think you'll find that whenever the Democrats resist Republican pressure like the threats
to shut government down, their popularity soars....its not about WHO says the 'NO'...it's about
who says 'NO' to WHAT. They don't get it....
Republicans confident of midterm success ..........
If I was an American citizen (and I'm extremely grateful that I am not) I would not
insult/humiliate myself by participating in the Corporate corrupt bought and paid for, White
House, politician's Corporate general elections.
It makes no difference who the Corporate America is on the Election list:
Corporate politics has taken over in Corporate America. Voting is but just a mythical
action. Just a load of (taken for a ride) old bollocks.
Because the Republicans just like the Tories in British politics are always in control and
New Labour demonstrated this fact in 1997 when they embraced Tory Thatcher's financial philosophy
for thirteen years.
A One Party State !! That loves to arm and finance dictators across the world and
still clocking up coup d' etat's.
Will a republican takeover of the senate make a difference? You bet it will! Suddenly, the president
(and I use the term loosely) will become the "president of no." Republicans will set a governing
agenda, the country will be better off and in 2016, Romney might be our new president.
1. The "mainstream" media may be ignoring the election because they tend not to report anything
that might make Republicans look good.
2. Republicans should not be sure of anything for they are skilled at gaining defeat from what
looks to be a sure victory.
3. Local ads against Republicans have used quotes (if you can read the very small print) from
as long ago as 15 years and imply they were said yesterday. Some bounce back on that.
4. Interesting that most election story references to "big" money always mention the Koch brothers,
but not the likes of George Soros, et al. Locally, the Democrats raised and outspent to Republicans
by as much as 12/1.
5. There ought to be a total spending limit for a political campaign and all campaigns should
be limited to 60-90 days prior to an election.
6. Too bad we don't have the leadership to create a viable Centrist Party. We need options.
Chomsky said it best when he described Obama as a moderate Republican.
The whole scene in America is dragged so far to the right that it doesn't really matter which
you vote for. You either have extremist republicans who proudly hate poor people, women,
non-white people and people who think guns aren't the answer to everything, or you have the
more moderate Republicans who are comparable to British Tories.
And you (quite rightly) thought things were bad here!!
Interesting that Chomsky 1) made his riches being a capitalist while condemning capitalism and
2) never chose to live in a society that more closely practiced what he preached compared to
where he did choose to live.
2) why should he leave the country? Do you have to leave the country
when you don't like the government? If you don't (which you don't) then you're a hypocrite and
if you do then you're an idiot, the choice is yours. And there is no libertarian socialist society
that he could move to anyway! Where do you suggest?
PATROKLUS00
The American electorate will deserve exactly what they will get, just as the morons in Kansas
who swallowed the right-wing nonsense about trickle-down economics, slashing taxes and cutting
budgets have seen their state plummet in credit ratings, burn through a billion dollars into
massive debt, and debilitate their educational system at all levels.
Yet, the races are still close in that benighted state since its dyed-red voters will vote
for the vacuous, destructive and exploitative ideology of the right in spite of all contrary
evidence. The broader American electorate is of the same cloth and will reap the same "benefits"
as the antediluvian Kansans.
The only way all too many American voters can learn is by experience, since they are incapable
of thinking about anything with any reasonable level of knowledge and reason. So I am all for
the GOTP taking control, now and in 2016. It will, in all likelihood, benefit me, but not the
nation. I am just too weary of trying to get the first world's most politically ignorant, indolent,
incompetent and inciteable voters to act in their own interest or that of their nation. Let
them reap the whirlwind of their stupidity.
Herman Munster -> PATROKLUS00
Ah, and the democrat states like California, New York and Illinois are just rolling in excess
money because they're fiscally responsible. And their education systems are churning out Rhodes
Scholars, every child is above average, there's no poverty or racial disparity, majority democrat
states are just going great guns.
BaronVonAmericano -> PATROKLUS00
I get your frustration. But I think a big component of the problem is that there is no
genuine opposition party. Democrats could contrast themselves with the GOP in ways that
would a) get their base excited; b) get independent votes (based on issue polling) and c) be
good for the nation. But to do so would conflict with donors.
So it would appear that Democrats -- the only other viable option than the awful Republicans
-- would rather sell out their base, sell out the nation, and lose seats in power in order to
please their donors.
That probably explains why so many people don't want to vote.
Of cause politics is the art of possible and he is the only more or less representative of "conservative
realism" among republican candidates. In this sense he is definitely much more preferable then Senator
John McCain, Michele Bachman, the "Great Mormon", etc. Still he somewhat broke expectations compromising
with Washington establishment on way too many things. That that probably the only way you can play this
game. Still, even acounting for dominance of neocons in Republican Party, it looks like he is a weaker
political thinker then his father. There are compromises and compromises...
...Not since the days of Senator Robert
A. Taft – another somewhat aloof, irascible, and highly intelligent GOP presidential wannabe
– has the Eastern Republican establishment faced such an articulate and calculating challenger.
And what annoys – and, now, frightens – GOP mandarins the most is Sen. Paul's
challenge
to their failed foreign policy, which has given us so many years of bloodshed and misery, along
with a
multi-trillion bill we cannot possibly pay.
He started out taking some easy shots, reminding Francis
Fukuyama that "history has not ended" – no kidding – and doing a little bit of pandering, albeit
not to the people in the room. Russia, he averred, "slides backward vainly hoping to resurrect the
Soviet Union" – a view
not shared
by many writers for The National Interest, who have mostly
resisted Washington's fashionable
Russophobia. But this was just part of his Obama's-foreign-policy-is-going-to-pot riff: also included
was a vague warning about "the remarkable rise" of China's "one-party state capitalism," and, in
the Middle East, the "rise of radical jihadist movements" who "represent the antithesis of liberal
democracy."
Seeking to explain these unsettling phenomena, the Senator attributes them ("in part") to Washington's
failure to precisely define our national security interest in a new era:
"Our allies and our enemies are unsure where America stands. Until we develop the ability to
distinguish, as George Kennan put it, between vital interests and more peripheral interests, we
will continue to drift from crisis to crisis."
Although I'm not sure how China's rise can be at all attributed to anything having to do with
Washington, Sen. Paul's point is clear enough – especially as our current regime stumbles into
Iraq War III, with no clear strategy or, for that matter, a believable rationale.
Paul's peroration should dispel for all time the canard, spread by both John McCain and the
tiny sectarian
wing of the libertarian movement, that the Senator is compromising his anti-interventionist
principles in the vain hope of getting a date with Jennifer Rubin. After the above-mentioned preliminaries,
he strikes a theme continually repeated throughout:
"Americans want strength and leadership but that doesn't mean they see war as the only solution.
Reagan had it right when he spoke to potential adversaries: 'Our reluctance for conflict should
not be misjudged as a failure of will.'"
Citing "the tragedies of Iraq and Libya" – and let us stop here, for a moment, and acknowledge
the wondrousness of a candidate considered the Republican frontrunner describing George W. Bush's
war as a tragedy – Paul lets the War Party have it:
"America shouldn't fight wars where the best outcome is stalemate. America shouldn't fight wars
when there is no plan for victory. America shouldn't fight wars that aren't authorized by the American
people, by Congress."
Shouldn't – don't – think about it real hard: this is the woof and warp of the "conservative
realism" the Senator espouses. But realism isn't pacifism: indeed, it's quite the opposite, as Sen.
Paul makes clear:
"America should and will fight wars when the consequences….intended and unintended….are worth
the sacrifice. The war on terror is not over, and America cannot disengage from the world."
Even as he acknowledges the limits of the anti-interventionist impulse in an age of terrorism,
you'll note how the Senator also acknowledges what his warlike colleagues in Washington rarely admit:
that even justified wars – i.e. defensive wars – are fraught with unpleasant possibilities. And
while retaining – and emphasizing – his default opposition to overseas adventurism, he's intellectually
honest enough to admit that while "blowback" accounts for some degree of anti-Americanism in the
Middle East, it surely isn't the whole story.
Despite the threat inflation indulged in by the usual neocon suspects, there is indeed an enduring
threat from an international jihadist movement that aims its main blow at the "far
enemy," i.e. the continental United States. Sen. Paul points to a RAND corporation study claiming
"a 58 percent increase over the last three years in jihadist terror groups."
Here's where Paul's vision starts to cloud over: proliferation of jihadist groups could be a
sign either of weakness or of increasing strength, depending on whether it's due to ideological
splits or geographic extension. Falling back on the standard evocation of Ronald Reagan, Paul cites
the Great Helmsman as saying 'we will act" if we have to "preserve our national security."
Simultaneously citing Reagan and an undefined concept of "national security" is the foreign policy
equivalent of ordering combination plate #1 Chinese takeout: faced with the problem of deciphering
the unknown, it's always safe to go with what you think you know.
The problem is that what Sen. Paul and his advisors think they know about the "why do they
hate us?" question isn't exactly clear. "Will they hate us if we are less present?" asks Paul,
whose speechwriters have developed the slightly dotty tic of having the Senator appear to be talking
to himself. "Perhaps," answers Paul's invisible doppelganger, "but hatred for those outside the
circle of 'accepted' Islam, exists above and beyond our history of intervention overseas."
This is downright confusing. The phrase "outside the circle of 'accepted Islam'" clearly refers
to the internal conflicts of "radical Islam," so-called: the sectarian civil war between Sunnis
and Shia. Yet this has nothing to do with the question of our continuing presence in the region
except insofar as that presence
intensifies the internecine battle (as, perhaps, it's intended to).
Things get even more confusing when, in his very next breath, Senator Paul's nod to the essentialists
– who argue Islam is inherently hostile to American interests – is rudely contradicted:
"The world does not have an Islam problem. The world has a dignity problem, with millions of
men and women across the Middle East being treated as chattel by their own governments. Many of
these same governments have been chronic recipients of our aid."
So which is it – do we have an Islam problem or don't we? Some confusion is inevitable when speeches
are assembled by committees, rather than written by individuals, but in this case the Senator is
in danger of exacerbating his growing
reputation – perhaps unfairly acquired – as a champion flip-flopper. Nuance is fine, but it
doesn't win hearts and minds – or elections.
However, there is one aspect of Paul's "dignity problem" thesis that, as far as I know, has been
totally overlooked and yet
seems clear as day.
Mocked by both
neocons and our
babbling
sectarians for supposedly trying to appease the GOP's Israel Firsters, Sen. Paul himself may
or may not have been aware of just how much his description of the Middle East's "dignity problem"
conjures the
Israeli occupation of Palestine – but whoever wrote those words surely did. Yes, Egypt, Turkey,
Saudi Arabia, and other Arab kleptocracies have been recipients of US aid – but so has Israel, which
does indeed treat its Palestinian subjects
like chattel. The
lack of specificity as to which countries are suffering from a dignity problem lends itself to my
preferred interpretation – and I'm just waiting for Jenn Rubin to pick up on this, if she hasn't
already.
In spite of my impatience with nuance, I have to respect the Senator's thoughtfulness when it
comes to filling the Washington policy void when it comes to the Middle East. And it's clear that
in trying to strike a balance between necessary belligerence and an instinctive aversion to intervention,
President Paul would lean toward the latter. This was underscored by his reference to Malala Yousafzai,
the young girl who stood up to both the Taliban and an American President ordering drone strikes
on her country: for every terrorist killed by the Western alliance,
she told Obama, "500 and 5,000 rise against it and more terrorism occurs."
"The truth is," says Paul, "you can't solve a dignity problem with military force." Citing Secretary
Robert Gates's
warning that our foreign policy is becoming "over-militarized," the Senator got in a shot at
John McCain
and others eager to arm the "good' Syrian Islamist rebels: "Yes," Paul snarked, "we need a hammer
ready, but not every civil war is a nail." This is presumably true when it comes to Ukraine as well.
While I doubt quoting Otto von Bismarck to libertarians skeptical of Sen. Paul's bonafides is
going to win them over, it's hard to contradict Paul's view that "policy is the art of the possible."
And what's possible, Paul avers, is "common sense conservative realism" which is, it turns out,
a cancellation of the neoconservative project as enunciated by George W. Bush in his 2005 inaugural
speech. With the neoconservative ascendancy in the GOP at its height, President Bush II ranted
on about igniting "a fire
in the mind" across the Middle East and indeed the whole world.
The conservative realism of President Paul, far from igniting any fires, would seek instead to
tamp them down: "We can't retreat from the world, but we can't remake it in our own image either."
Yes, Paul says, the war in Afghanistan was justified because the effort to deny Al Qaeda safe
haven and bring Osama bin Laden to justice directly served American interests. He endorses the overthrow
of the Taliban, but then proceeds to denounce the nation-building project undertaken by the Bush
administration and continued by the Obamaites. Yet these two aspects of American policy are inseparable:
once we decided to widen our war aims beyond narrowly targeting bin Laden & Co. Afghanistan was
inevitably turned into a nation-building construction site.
In any case, in expressing his frustration with this outcome, Sen. Paul gives vent to some of
his strongest dissent from the bipartisan interventionist consensus:
"After the killing of Bin Laden and the toppling of the Taliban, it is hard to understand our
exact objective. Stalemate and perpetual policing seem to be our mission now in Afghanistan, Iraq,
and Syria. A precondition to the use of force must be a clear end goal. We can't have perpetual
war."
We can't have perpetual war: there, in a phrase, is "conservative realism" – and the basis
for a successful appeal to Americans on both sides of the political spectrum to rein in the American
empire.
Unfortunately, the Senator doesn't leave it at that. Instead, he paves the way for perpetual
war in Iraq by endorsing the first step down that road:
"I support a strategy of air strikes against ISIS. Our airpower must be used to rebalance the
tactical situation in favor of the Kurds and Iraqis and to defend Americans and our assets in the
region. Just as we should have defended our consulate in Benghazi, so too we must defend our consulate
in Erbil and our embassy in Baghdad."
To begin with, why is the United States the only power with "assets" in the region capable of
launching air strikes against ISIS? Those elaborate weapons systems we sell
the Saudis,
the Jordanians, and the
Gulf states surely ought to serve some purpose other than enriching our military-industrial-congressional
complex. I can't imagine why Sen. Paul is pretending he's never asked this very same question himself.
Aside from the folly of encouraging
the Kurds
– and not revealing the exact nature of our other "assets" in the region – the absurdity of Paul's
argument culminates in the "we must defend our consulate/embassy" defense. This surely sets a new
standard for US military intervention: is the Senator saying we should have bombed Tehran in response
to the 1980 takeover of our embassy? Can he really be saying that anywhere we have a consulate we
must commit ourselves to the military defense of the host nation? If so, that's an awfully unrealistic
position for an alleged "realist" to take.
Paul does a very good job of enunciating the core principles of a viable conservative realism:
his big problem, however, is translating abstract ideas into credible and consistent policy options.
And although this speech was supposed to be the Final Word on the question that's been preoccupying
the pundits and worrying the War Party – what would President Paul do in the Middle East, and what
wouldn't he do? – I rather doubt this is the last we'll be hearing of it.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here.
But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely
consist of me thinking out loud.
...Instead of supporting democracy and sovereign states, Mr. Putin said during a three-hour
appearance at the conference, the United States supports "dubious" groups ranging from "open neo-fascists
to Islamic radicals."
"Why do they support such people," he asked the annual gathering known as the Valdai Club, which
met this year in the southern resort town of Sochi. "They do this because they decide to use them
as instruments along the way in achieving their goals, but then burn their fingers and recoil."
The goal of the United States, he said, was to try to create a unipolar world in which American
interests went unchallenged.
... ... ...
"We are at a dangerous point where on both sides, unilateral grievances have thoroughly spilled
over into very, very emotional policies toward each other," said Cliff Kupchan, the chairman of
the Eurasia Group, a Washington-based risk analysis organization, who was at the meeting.
"I think it is on a new level of acrimony," Mr. Kupchan said of Mr. Putin's speech. "I think
this is a genuine message that 'Enough is enough, and I don't like being grouped with
Ebola and I don't like these sanctions
However, when one British newspaper reporter asked him specifically about the repeated reports
of Russian army troops operating in east Ukraine, Putin chose to ignore the question completely.
Our friend Shaun, after a pleasant conversation with Ukrainians "who refused to give his name",
informs us now on unnamed journalists who ask tough questions to Putin. So probably this is about The
Guardian journalist
Seumas Milne.
He actually asked to Putin two questions, after which Putin asked him to clarify his second question.
In this sense, it turns out that Putin really avoid answering the first question. But, in the previous
question, the Russian troops were not mentioned at all. However, it is better to read it yourself...
Puutin said that over the past two decades, the US had behaved as if it were someone "nouveau
riche who had suddenly received a lot of wealth – in this case, global leadership". Instead
of using its powers wisely, said Putin, the US had created a unilateral and unfair system.
The Russian president's sentiments were nothing new, but appeared to be a more concise and concentrated
version of his grievances at a time when relations between Russia and the west are more strained
than at any period since the cold war.
In a terse opening statement before taking questions for nearly three hours, Putin said: "The
exceptionalism of the United States, the way they implement their leadership, is it really a benefit?
And their worldwide intervention brings peace and stability, progress and peak of democracy?
Maybe we should relax and enjoy this splendour? No!"
In regards to Islamic terrorism I agree. How many potential terrorists has the USA created by
starting a war which has killed over half a million people?! How can they fight a 'war on terror'
by bringing terror to millions of innocent people? It's all so illogical and tragic and there
seems to be no end to this killing.
It seems obvious that America isn't killing so many civilians
in the middle east for the good of the middle east civilians. They have been planning this
for years. This video is a much watch! It has a former four star general and supreme commander
of NATO explaining America planned to invade 7 countries. Why this video isn't more widely seen
is a travesty.
George Soros wants war with Russia and he wants the EU to help pay for it by way of inflation
via the printing press i.e. further destroying the middle classes.
Are you ready to confront Russia in the name of Soros' billions?
The man has already invested quite a bit in shady NGOs like Open Society and the man was
knee-deep in the theft and plundering of Russia during the 1990s by way of Renaissance Capital
and other financial outfits.
How soon before Soros teams up with Khodorkovsky and his "Open Russia" NGO? Khodorkovsky
wants to get back what he rightfully stole so that he can placate former business partners like
Dick Cheney.
Nobody wants war with Russia and to suggest that Khodorkovsky is driven by a desire to
placate Cheney seems ludicrous.
The point I was illustrating is that Soros wants the EU to become more confrontational with
Russia, at the expense of its own security and economic well-being, the latter of which would
actually help his own financial interests.
The second point is that Khodorkovsky and Cheney were business partners in the past and that
much of the opposition to Putin by men such as Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky, Kasparov, and Zakayev
is closely linked not only to financial players like Soros but to the neo-conservatives as well;
whose media figures have been the most hawkish re: Russia and not just since Ukraine blew up
(again).
Yucos was comprehensively stolen from him under the direction of perhaps Russia's second
most influential man - Sechen. This was at a time when Putin wanted to prevent Khordorkovsky
moving into politics and Igor Sechen had an eye on the potential spoils of Yucos. Khordorkovsky
has expressed a desire to see Russia become a successful democracy.
That's why I said that "Khodorkovsky wants back what he stole in the first place".
The idea that he wants Russia to be a successful democracy is laughable, especially in light
of his treatment of employees during his heyday, in particular when he had police beat striking
workers.
All these figures: American neo-conservatives, western finance, and Russian 'opposition'
are bound in their desire to re-open Russia like the Yeltsin days so that it be plundered once
again, for varying reasons ranging from personal power to the extension of American hegemonic
ambitions.
You missed this nugget that explains his world view
The world works like this: the more loyalty you have to the single centre of power in
the world, the more legitimate your govt is
. To be fair has has a point. Syrian government not legitimate but Bahrain and Saudi governments
are...can anyone explain the difference to me? (other than the syrian regime is more secular
and protective towards minorities than the other two)
What would Ukraine be like today without US-EU support for the violent revolution/coup in February
in Kiev?
- There would be by now a normal presidential election with a new government (Ukraine for
all its faults had a democracy and Yanukovitch and before him pro-Western Yushenko were elected)
- There would be no war in the Russian-speaking east and south
- Crimea would be safely in Ukraine
- Gas imports and trade with Russia would go on as before accounting for 30% of Ukraine's trade
Instead, Ukraine has a "revolutionary" government with all kinds of street radicals and pro-Western
oligarchs running around saying some of the more stupid things in recent memory (US is going
to give Marshall Plan, EU is going to open its borders to Ukrainian migrants, Russia has used
nuclear missiles in Ukraine, etc...
The economy is dropping almost 10% a year with the worst still coming. There are 3,000 dead
and the blood-thirsty rhetoric is still escalating.
Yes, this is a result of US meddling and support for the Maidan street protests. This is
a result of 5 billion dollars spent by US on "NGO's" in Kiev. This is a result of Nuland's cookies.
Seems to me that it is self-evident that US has supported Ukraine's revolution. It is also
self-evident that it has been a failure and Ukraine will suffer for a very long time. But since
Putin said it, I am sure many will scream and shout and demonize instead of rational thinking.
Quite a spectacle we see among Western intellectuals.... Were you always like this? Or is it
something about Russia that drives you incoherent with rage?
The Ukrainians would also have 15 billion extra. It is not as if the deal with Russia would
have left some of the idiots in Ukraine without any further scope for leverage between the EU
and Russia.
I'm not sure if the EU will open up it's doors or conjure up some scheme that
makes it more possible for a higher number of Ukrainians to at least be able to work in Poland,
the supposedly "prosperous" Baltic states or Hungary.
EU is not exactly suffering from labor shortages today. So more Ukrainian workers, in Poland
or anywhere, would just lead to even worse labor market for everybody. Actually, Russia is suffering
from labor shortage, there are 3 million Ukrainians working there already.
In any negotiation one loses power and leverage by emotionally preferring one side. Ukraine
has lost any leverage over EU by so visibly "loving EU", or US (who get anything they want anyway),
or Russia by showing undisguised hatred - when Ukrainian leaders make Russo-phobic speeches
(Yatsenyuk) and then remain as Ukrainian leaders, well that reflects on all Ukrainians.
So today, Ukraine has no room to negotiate anything. They are left with pleading for
mercy and charity. That has never led to anything good.
The attempted takeover of eastern Ukraine has been way more violent and damaging than any
of the protests in Kiev and I don't see how you can contest that.
Ukraine is a corrupt
state but to imagine that this corruption would have gone away naturally following another election
is naive. Generally I ignore posts that mention Nuland, Nazis and $5 billion but I feel compelled
to disagree with you.
Months ago, many were comparing Putin's moves in Ukraine to a chess game being played masterfully.
Now, many of the same voices are saying that Russia had no influence in Ukraine and that any
problems there are the fault of the US.
The chess game analogy might be quite apt - Putin appears to see conflict as adversarial
rather than a drive to find equilibrium and compromise. The drive to capture Crimea might have
also been made in order to divert attention away from problems in Russia itself and I'm worried
that he might become ever more paranoid as Russia's economy slips and that speeches such as
this one might become a little more common.
Putin makes a general observation that is well grounded. Over the past two decades, yes. In
his ex Soviet backyard. Yet if one thinks back further the US has often acted thus - through
her proxy allies such as Turkey, Israel; through a host of coup-empowered autocrats the likes
of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Chile's Pinochet and through support for failed insurrection in
Cuba, Nicaragua and indeed, after a long period of misrule, in Iran.
Why do we so easily overlook
Turkey's incursion into Cyprus and her continued support for militarized ethnic enclaves ..but
pillory Russia for her support for similar dissident pro-Russian populations in Ukraine?
Particularly when in Russia's case, there are sound strategic reasons for her apprehension about
the way a potentially hostile linked-with-Nato military alliance has openly seized opportunity
to place forces ever-closer to her heartland.
I still believe Russia should have invaded Ukraine after Yanukovich who was elected by the
popular vote was ousted by a western backed coup. Perhaps this was what the Nato planned so
Russia would be sucked into a war, but it did not work. their plans all have been dumped into
the bin.
also, on the point of Putin ignoring one British paper's question; the British media
has been lying for a year on the Ukraine issue. It has been publishing bias news and has been
a dark page in journalism.
Anyone familiar with the context and history of NATO expansion, and the facts surrounding the
US-sponsored coup in Ukraine, knows full well that the Russians have shown tremendous restraint.
It has been the US who has been aggressive (along with their pathetic allies, like my country)
in Ukraine, as they have been on the global stage for more than half a century.
The Guardian's
dismissal of the facts, and their downplaying of US government behaviour is nothing new.
Putin once again delivered an outstanding speech. He speaks the truth, in a straightforward
manner, there is no malice nor hate. Just a fair understanding of the present situation and
a clear view on Russia's future aspirations. Putin loves his country and his people rewards
him a hundredfold.
There is a lot of food for thoughts in his speech.
We have entered a period of differing interpretations and deliberate silences in
world politics. International law has been forced to retreat over and over by the onslaught
of legal nihilism. Objectivity and justice have been sacrificed on the altar of political
expediency. Arbitrary interpretations and biased assessments have replaced legal norms.
At the same time, total control of the global mass media has made it possible when desired
to portray white as black and black as white.
Caught some of it. Brilliant stuff from a highly intelligent and decent man.
It is incredible
though some of the dumb questions these morons in the US and UK press ask. Not all of them but
many..it defies logic. One overemotional American woman asked a stupid series of questions of
pointless rhetoric that leave no scope for decent answers. The Financial Times man even worse
( a misleading question with the answer obvious) with imbecilic rudeness and fake posturing
over the "accuracy" of one his reporters latest propaganda pieces .Completely out of place to
mention in a meeting like this with a head of state.
I also would have liked some question from any nationality on why the US,Russia and Ukraine
are all involved in obfuscation of the MH17 crash. One would assume that all 3 parties know
exactly what happened from where and when and it would have been good for the President to be
cornered on this,even though a direct answer would have been unlikely to have been given...everything
else though was answered as usual with a great degree of detail that shames the empty headed,
15 minutes at best, nonsense from the likes of Obama and Cameron.
Putin stands head and shoulders above the various western leaders, from the Pillsbury Doughboy
Cameron to the "constitutional scholar" Obama.
Only the blind and the stupid don't understand that the US staged a neo-Nazi coup in
Ukraine. The neo-Nazis then went on a campaign of slaughtering civilians, even burning
them alive. The people in the eastern Ukraine said no to this psychopathy, and they in essence
have won. The Kiev government trembles because it knows now that neither Nato nor the USA would
come to their aid should Russia really attack them.
And a not so subtle threat underlies Putin's speech, because he basically has said Russia
has had enough with US criminality. I think this foreshadows the eventually break from
the petro-dollar by the BRICs, protected by Russia nuclear arms.
The federal reserve has to print out money by the untold billions in order to keep the US
economy from another crash. Behind the facade of the increases in stock prices hides a cowering
economy ready to crash at any unexpected event.
It's beyond tragi-comic belief the amount of psychophantic scaremongering, lies, half-truths
and propaganda America, Britain and others use to demonise Russia.
Luckily, there seems to be a huge disconnect between what is told/reported by governments
and official (corporate) media and what many, many people actually believe.
The Russian president "has won because we were not ready to die for Ukraine, while apparently
he was," Ambassador Gerard Araud said yesterday at a Bloomberg Government breakfast in Washington.
Donetsk is 300 miles from Volgograd (Stalingrad) where 1 million (1 million?) German soldiers
died in the legendary battle. Nearly 2 million Russian died too.
And these stupid bureaucrats are surprised that the Russians are willing to fight for... their
land?
This level of incompetence is hard to bear. Moronic, completely and utterly moronic.
Was once told that the purpose of education was to equip one with a 100% efficient bullshit
detector. There are a lot of sad, trusting folk on the site tonight; one would think uncle Jo,
Adolph and their like had never trod the earth. How can anyone take seriously a man who parades
half naked in front of his people looking like some extra from a homoerotic sword and saddles
bash? I 'll take Putin seriously when he stops banging up journos and the singers of mildly
ironic songs. Until then he's damaged goods.
This is the opening paragraph of the National Liberation Movement of Russia's manifesto which
is for the removal of unfriendly domination by the US of its economic, governmental and constitutional
arrangements. For the complete manifesto go to:
www.geopolitica.ru
The National Liberation Movement in Russia has only one goal that unites everyone regardless
of their political views: the restoration of the sovereignty of the country and liberation from
its occupiers. The inhabitants of Russia must break free from their chains of slavery and become
free citizens in a free (non-occupied) country.
To achieve these goals, the government should become ours, i.e. we must completely change
the nature of the state, including through amending the Constitution. Society is a broader concept,
and in fact, it should feel necessary to partake in this goal because the national liberation
struggle is a struggle of the society for the restoration of sovereign control over Russia,
including control over state institutions. Today, the state in Russia, as in any colony, works
for the occupier under the rules established by it, placing it under the rulers' direct control.
This provision is captured in the existing Constitution. Every day the main task of those millions
of officials who go to work is to improve living standards and the solve the problems of the
American and European peoples. That is their main function today. At the level of daily activity,
it is hard to recognize this without desire and sufficient time for the conceptualisation of
our historical facts and the current state of affairs in the country as a whole.
Since WWII, America has had plenty of wars, Committed plenty of war crimes, destabilized
plenty of countries all over the world, not all for good, but for self-interest. Yet If Putin
says this, it is labelled as propaganda, But it is true. America causes trouble everywhere it
goes, if they don't get their way, the so called "west" defends any old stupidity they come
out with. Creating chaos then try to manage it, but time and time again, it is botched up. Always
defended by "compliant allies" who follows America with their follies all over the world. America
has an army that don't win wars, it has too much money that is back by, god only knows, it's
governance is irrational and dysfunctional, a country who votes in the dumbest individuals into
positions of power and then try to dictate. I have said this plenty of time on these pages,
Why do we follow them!......If the answer is WWII, the USSR won the European theatre practically
by themselves.
"When the British reporter asked about Russian troops operating
in the Ukraine, Putin did reply according to the English translation to which I was listening.
he even admitted that Russian troops were used to prevent Ukranian troops from leaving there
base.
Maybe Shaun Walker should have gone to Sochi, or perhaps have watched RT.
As to describe Putin as railing against the U.S.A I wonder if Shaun actually knows the definition
of railing ?
This whole piece is just another stick to beat the bear with.
I am not fan of Putin but then I am no fan of Obama, but can Shaun really tell us where Putin
Lied about the historical past and what the recent history has been about the Ukraine?
I think Shaun should read "A Peoples Tragedy" by Orlando Fuges
As Sergei Lavrov said to the US "we are sorry our country is so close to your bases". Lavrov's
recent UN speech is a masterclass in diplomatic rhetoric. He is a million miles ahead of any
US spokesperson - they are all incapable of any sort of sensible dialogue. Is anyone now listening
to the constant Russophobia from the MSM.? Look what is actually happening on the ground, not
what the press is reporting. It is clear that Russia has been a model of self restraint in the
face of many provocations. The West has only succeeded in driving Russia closer to China.
And Putin is right . Putin's Russia does not send drones to kill on other continents . Putin's
Russian did not cause chaos in Libya , Iraq and Afghanistan . Putin's Russia did not spend billions
of dollars creating fundamentalist Islamic movements on the Pakistani / Afghan border in the
1980's . Putin's Russia did not invite and fund Arab Jihadists to wage war as proxies of Russia
as did the USA , a price we all suffering now . Russia does not supply arms to Israel to bomb
Palestinians . Russia does not give Israel its ' veto ' on the UN Security Council to give it
immunity from International law . Russia does not station its military bases throughout the
world . As for US activities in toppling Governments , destabilizing countries and covert operations
in Southern and Central America I'd still be typing this post tomorrow without even then revealing
the tip of the iceberg !!
The USA , lovely people unfortunately living in a global Rogue State .
Uncle Scam is in deep doggie-do now. Russia and China aren't just some little third-world countries
that Washington can wipe its ass on then throw away. Oh no... Uncle Scam is after big game now!
These two animals can defend themselves. And this time, they're on the same team.
The rest of the transcript will no doubt appear over the next several hours. I suppose it's
better than waiting until the whole thing is translated before posting anything.
Putin said nothing in this speech that wasn't patently obvious. There is really nothing that
could reasonably be denied because most statements were pure statement of facts. He just said
all this very bluntly. He started his speech by saying that he was going to speak him mind,
otherwise he sees no reason to speak at all.
I am old enough to remember as in early 1990s the American press cried every day all the
time "We won! We won! We are the sole remaining superpower!" I thought: Aren't we supposed to
be all friends now? As it became clear very soon, no, we weren't. We were expected to be servants
to "indispensable" American people destined to rule the Universe. I can't speak for the rest
of the Universe, but that role somehow doesn't appeal to me.
The exceptionalism of the United States, the way they implement their leadership, is
it really a benefit? And their worldwide intervention brings peace and stability, progress
and peak of democracy? Maybe we should relax and enjoy this splendour? No!"
This is a mistranslation. Puting didn't say anything about splendor. He did say "relax
and enjoy" but he was referring to the saying" What should you do when you are being raped?
Relax and try to enjoy". A somewhat different meaning, isn't it?
"There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that
the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical
approach to the past."
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Are they incapable, or merely unwilling? That is the credibility trap, the inability
to address the key problems because the ruling elite must risk or even undermine their own undeserved
power to do so.
I think this interview below highlights the false dichotomy between communism and free market
capitalism that was created in the 1980's largely by Thatcher's and Reagan's handlers. The dichotomy
was more properly between communist government and democracy, of the primacy of the individual over
the primacy of the organization and the state as embodied in fascism and the real world implementations
of communism in Russia and China.
But we never think of it that way any more, if at all. It is one of the greatest public relation
coups in history. One form of organizational oppression by the Russian nomenklatura was
replaced by the oppression by the oligarchs and their Corporations, in the name of freedom.
Free market capitalism, under the banner of the efficient markets hypothesis, has taken the place
of democratic ideals as the primary good as embodied in the original framing of the Declaration
of Independence and the US Constitution.
It is no accident that the individual and their concerns have become subordinated to the corporate
welfare and the profits of the upper one percent. We even see this in religion with the
'gospel of prosperity.' In their delusion they make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,
so that after they may be received into their everlasting habitations.
The market as the highest good has stood on the shoulders of the 'greed is good' philosophy promulgated
by the pied pipers of the me generation, and has turned the Western democracies on their
heads, as a series of political leaders have capitulated to this false idol of money as the measure
of all things, and all virtue.
Policy is now crafted to maximize profits as an end to itself without regard to the overall impact
on freedom and the public good. It measures 'costs' in the most narrow and biased of terms, and
allocated wealth based on the subversion of good sense to false economy theories.
Greed is a portion of the will to power. And that madness serves none but itself.
This is a brief excerpt. You may read the entire interview
here.
Henry Giroux on the Rise of Neoliberalism
19 October 2014
By Michael Nevradakis, Truthout
"...We're talking about an ideology marked by the selling off of public goods to private
interests; the attack on social provisions; the rise of the corporate state organized around
privatization, free trade, and deregulation; the celebration of self interests over social needs;
the celebration of profit-making as the essence of democracy coupled with the utterly reductionist
notion that consumption is the only applicable form of citizenship.
But even more than that, it upholds the notion that the market serves as a model for structuring
all social relations: not just the economy, but the governing of all of social life...
That's a key issue. I mean, this is a particular political and economic and social project
that not only consolidates class power in the hands of the one percent, but operates off the
assumption that economics can divorce itself from social costs, that it doesn't have to deal
with matters of ethical and social responsibility, that these things get in the way.
And I think the consequences of these policies across the globe have caused massive suffering,
misery, and the spread of a massive inequalities in wealth, power, and income. Moreover, increasingly,
we are witnessing a number of people who are committing suicide because they have lost their
pensions, jobs and dignity.
We see the attack on the welfare state; we see the privatization of public services,
the dismantling of the connection between private issues and public problems, the selling off
of state functions, deregulations, an unchecked emphasis on self-interest, the refusal to tax
the rich, and really the redistribution of wealth from the middle and working classes to the
ruling class, the elite class, what the Occupy movement called the one percent. It really has
created a very bleak emotional and economic landscape for the 99 percent of the population throughout
the world."
"This is a particular political and economic and social project that not only consolidates
class power in the hands of the one percent, but operates off the assumption that economics
can divorce itself from social costs, that it doesn't have to deal with matters of ethical and
social responsibility."
I think that as a mode of governance, it is really quite dreadful because it tends to produce
identities, subjects and ways of life driven by a kind of "survival of the fittest" ethic,
grounded in the notion of the free, possessive individual and committed to the right of individual
and ruling groups to accrue wealth removed from matters of ethics and social cost.
That's a key issue. I mean, this is a particular political and economic and social project
that not only consolidates class power in the hands of the one percent, but operates off the
assumption that economics can divorce itself from social costs, that it doesn't have to deal
with matters of ethical and social responsibility, that these things get in the way. And I think
the consequences of these policies across the globe have causedmassive suffering, misery, and
the spread of a massive inequalities in wealth, power, and income. Moreover, increasingly, we
are witnessing a number of people who are committing suicide because they have lost their pensions,
jobs and dignity. We see the attack on the welfare state; we see the privatization of public
services, the dismantling of the connection between private issues and public problems, the
selling off of state functions, deregulations, an unchecked emphasis on self-interest, the refusal
to tax the rich, and really the redistribution of wealth from the middle and working classes
to the ruling class, the elite class, what the Occupy movement called the one percent. It really
has created a very bleak emotional and economic landscape for the 99 percent of the population
throughout the world.
And having mentioned this impact on the social state and the 99%, would you go as
far as to say that these ideologies have been the direct cause of the economic crisis the world
is presently experiencing?
Oh, absolutely. I think when you look at the crisis in 2007, what are you looking at? You're
looking at the merging of unchecked financial power and a pathological notion of greed that
implemented banking policies and deregulated the financial world and allowed the financial elite,
the one percent, to pursue a series of policies, particularly the selling of junk bonds and
the illegality of what we call subprime mortgages to people who couldn't pay for them. This
created a bubble and it exploded. This is directly related to the assumption that the market
should drive all aspects of political, economic, and social life and that the ruling elite can
exercise their ruthless power and financial tools in ways that defy accountability. And what
we saw is that it failed, and it not only failed, but it caused an enormous amount of cruelty
and hardship across the world. More importantly, it emerged from the crisis not only entirely
unapologetic about what it did, but reinvented itself, particularly in the United States under
the Rubin boys along with Larry Summers and others, by attempting to prevent any policies from
being implemented that would have overturned this massively failed policy of deregulation.
It gets worse. In the aftermath of this sordid crisis produced by the banks and financial
elite, we have also learned that the feudal politics of the rich was legitimated by the false
notion that they were too big to fail, an irrational conceit that gave way to the notion
that they were too big to jail, which is a more realistic measure of the criminogenic/zombie
culture that nourishes casino capitalism.
If President Vladimir Putin is Russia, as a senior Kremlin official
said this week, then this country is angry, humiliated and suffering from an almost paranoid
fixation on the U.S. as the root of all the world's troubles.
In a
closing speech and question-and-answer session today at Russia's annual state-sponsored Valdai
conference,
Putin said he was going to be frank -- he was more than that. He dived into a long list of slights
and wounds inflicted by the U.S. on Russia and the world since the end of the Cold War, and gave
every sign of digging in for a long period of confrontation.
The U.S., according to Putin, is a global Big Brother that blackmails and bullies its allies
while producing instability and misery around the world. Because the U.S. realizes it no longer
has the ability to succeed as the lone hegemon in an age of rising powers, it is trying to recoup
that status by re-creating the Cold War and producing a new enemy against which to rally countries,
he said.
According to Putin's tour of contemporary world history, aggressive U.S. interventionism is responsible
not just for the destabilization of Iraq (which it was) and Libya, but also for Syria (where the
U.S. didn't intervene against President Bashar al-Assad) and the creation of al-Qaeda, the Taliban
and Islamic State. And that's before you get to the Maidan protests and "state coup" this year in
Ukraine.
As for the economic sanctions the European Union has imposed over Russia's annexation of Crimea
and destabilization of Ukraine, that again was all because of pressure from the U.S., he said --
not any action Russia might have taken.
There is plenty of truth salted through Putin's complaints, enough to make him -- as one fawning
Russian state TV anchor put it in what passed for a question -- "the face of resistance" for many
around the world.
What is worrying is that the post 1990s narrative Putin laid out -- in which the U.S. has ignored,
humiliated, encircled and isolated Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union -- is one most
Russians whole-heartedly believe. They, too, can't imagine that ordinary unarmed citizens -- whether
in Kiev, the Arab Spring countries or elsewhere -- might act of their own volition, rather than
as pawns in a U.S. game.
"What's in his mind is what Russia is thinking. It's like you're mad at someone and just let
it out," said Toby Gati, a former U.S. diplomat in the audience. Gati had told Putin she didn't
recognize the U.S. he described, drawing a rare conciliatory comment that he wasn't seeking confrontation.
The wellspring of popular support Putin enjoys for any potential escalation, as unwise as that
would be for Russia's long-term prosperity, allowed him to be defiant on sanctions and fatalistic
on continued bloodshed in Ukraine.
Sure, Putin called for a new rule-based world order and insisted that his country had no ambitions
to re-create the old empire. And no doubt he was talking, on state TV, in part to the home audience.
Yet the broad thrust of his remarks was defiant, arguing that if the U.S. gets to throw its weight
around and break rules, why shouldn't Russia? "What's allowed for Jupiter isn't for the bull," Putin
said. "Well, the bull may not be able to, but the bear isn't going to ask anyone's permission."
There's plenty of blame to go around for allowing the situation to get this bad, but for anyone
who wants to see the Ukraine crisis solved, sanctions lifted and a repaired relationship between
Russia and the U.S. and EU, this was a dark and depressing performance that came close to a threat.
I can't believe I'm saying this...but Putin is right. You want to talk about a system that
should cease to exist, it's this one.
And before you point to the Constitution and say "not gonna happen," there are plans out
there that would render it a moot point, like states pledging to award electors to whoever wins
the popular vote nationwide. And they'd easily pass constitutional muster.
jaysonrex1
Actually, Putin is right. After all these years, it is high the time a constitutional amendment
changes this system for the straight voting method used in the entire world by democracies and
even by dictatorships.
And while we are at it, maybe it is also high the time U.S. abandons the imperial system
(it inherited from Britain - a country that already abandoned it many years ago) and finally
adopts the metric system thus joining the civilized world - so to say.
And while we are at it, U.S. should get rid of the Senate. It serves no useful purpose apart
from representing a unacceptable drain of public funds.
And while we are at it, .....
mvymvy
A constitutional amendment could be stopped by states with as little as 3% of the U.S. population.
Instead, by state laws, without changing anything in the Constitution, The National Popular
Vote bill would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes, and thus the presidency,
to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by replacing state
winner-take-all laws for awarding electoral votes.
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No
more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps of pre-determined outcomes. There would
no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important
than those of the voters in 80% of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after
the conventions.
The bill would take effect when enacted by states with a majority of Electoral College votes-that
is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538). The candidate receiving the most popular votes
from all 50 states (and DC) would get all the 270+ electoral votes of the enacting states.
The presidential election system, using the 48 state winner-take-all method or district winner
method of awarding electoral votes, that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored
by the Founders. It is the product of decades of change precipitated by the emergence of political
parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed,
in the Constitution.
The bill has passed 33 state legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, red,
blue, and purple states with 250 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions
with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
NationalPopularVote
Follow National Popular Vote on Facebook via NationalPopularVoteInc
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Friday of endangering the international
order by trying to "remake the whole world" for its own, exclusive interests, and he predicted that
Ukraine would not be the last conflict to embroil the major powers.
Putin charged that the United States has escalated world conflicts by "unilateral diktat" and
by imposing sanctions that he said were aimed at pushing Russia toward "economic weakness," while
he denied that Russia aspires to rebuild an empire or reclaim its Cold War-era stature as a superpower.
"We did not start this," Putin said of the worsening world climate. "These policies started
a few years ago; it hasn't just started today because of sanctions."
The Russian president's comments, among the most incendiary he has ever directed against the
United States, were made during a speech before the Valdai Club, an annual gathering of international
analysts and scholars held this year in the southern Russian city of Sochi, where Russia staged
the Winter Olympic Games earlier this year.
Since then, Russia's annexation of Crimea and involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine
have driven relations between Moscow and Washington to their lowest point since the end of the Cold
War.
Putin said the United States had adopted a Cold War victor's mindset that was clouding its
view of the world, leading to "serious delusions" about what changes are needed in the international
system.
"It never ceases to amaze me how our partners have been guilty of making the same mistakes
time and again," Putin said. He said past U.S. support for Islamist extremists had helped to
create the current crises in Iraq and Syria, and he charged that U.S. backing for revolutions
in former Soviet states now contending with chaos - such as Ukraine - were tantamount to "letting
the genie out of the bottle."
magnifco1000
Trust me, if Putin weren't there, Russia would splinter into a dozen nations with half of
them "Islamic States." They'd make ISIL look tame by comparison. Our interests are currently
served with Russia under central control and with leadership that hate the Islamists as much
as we do.
magnifco1000
The US approach to Russia is totally idiotic and unproductive. I'm a businessman and know
Russia. These "Russian scholars" from Ivy League schools know nothing. Left over neocons
from the Cold War just make things worse.
Russia should be engaged and worked with. We missed a golden opportunity when the Cold
War ended. We don't have to feel afraid of Russia. It just has a conscript army and can
barely hold it's territory together.
What's the sense of kicking them when they are down.
Giantsmax
from my own objective point of view, it is hard to argue with Putin, I think what he says
bears a lot of truth.
Archy Bunka
It is hard to argue with Putin, because if you are a Russian citizen he will lock you up.
Giantsmax
But since I am an American citizen that is a moot point.
Beau7890
Of course the U.S. is trying to remake the whole world for its own interests. It's been doing
this since the early 20th century. So has Russia. So has every other country that tries to lead
the world-it's always for their own interests.
Wow... Putin practically accused the United States in international terrorism. Never mentioned the
term neoliberalism. Does this suggest that Putin feels that neoliberalism is dead and no longer dangerous?
What if he is wrong ? What if this stance is premature? Even in zombie state neoliberalism is a very
dangerous and resourceful opponent.
... ... ...
Today's discussion took place under the theme: New Rules or a Game without Rules. I think
that this formula accurately describes the historic turning point we have reached today and the
choice we all face. There is nothing new of course in the idea that the world is changing very fast.
I know this is something you have spoken about at the discussions today. It is certainly hard not
to notice the dramatic transformations in global politics and the economy, public life, and in industry,
information and social technologies.
Let me ask you right now to forgive me if I end up repeating what some of the discussion's participants
have already said. It's practically impossible to avoid. You have already held detailed discussions,
but I will set out my point of view. It will coincide with other participants' views on some points
and differ on others.
As we analyse today's situation, let us not forget history's lessons. First of all, changes in
the world order – and what we are seeing today are events on this scale – have usually been accompanied
by if not global war and conflict, then by chains of intensive local-level conflicts. Second, global
politics is above all about economic leadership, issues of war and peace, and the humanitarian dimension,
including human rights.
The world is full of contradictions today. We need to be frank in asking each other if we have
a reliable safety net in place. Sadly, there is no guarantee and no certainty that the current system
of global and regional security is able to protect us from upheavals. This system has become seriously
weakened, fragmented and deformed. The international and regional political, economic, and cultural
cooperation organisations are also going through difficult times.
Yes, many of the mechanisms we have for ensuring the world order were created quite a long time
ago now, including and above all in the period immediately following World War II. Let me stress
that the solidity of the system created back then rested not only on the balance of power and the
rights of the victor countries, but on the fact that this system's 'founding fathers' had respect
for each other, did not try to put the squeeze on others, but attempted to reach agreements.
The main thing is that this system needs to develop, and despite its various shortcomings, needs
to at least be capable of keeping the world's current problems within certain limits and regulating
the intensity of the natural competition between countries.
It is my conviction that we could not take this mechanism of checks and balances that we built
over the last decades, sometimes with such effort and difficulty, and simply tear it apart without
building anything in its place. Otherwise we would be left with no instruments other than brute
force.
What we needed to do was to carry out a rational reconstruction and adapt it the new realities
in the system of international relations.
But the United States, having declared itself the winner of the Cold War, saw no need for this.
Instead of establishing a new balance of power, essential for maintaining order and stability, they
took steps that threw the system into sharp and deep imbalance.
The Cold War ended, but it did not end with the signing of a peace treaty with clear and transparent
agreements on respecting existing rules or creating new rules and standards. This created the
impression that the so-called 'victors' in the Cold War had decided to pressure events and reshape
the world to suit their own needs and interests. If the existing system of international relations,
international law and the checks and balances in place got in the way of these aims, this system
was declared worthless, outdated and in need of immediate demolition.
Pardon the analogy, but this is the way nouveaux riches behave when they suddenly end up with
a great fortune, in this case, in the shape of world leadership and domination. Instead of managing
their wealth wisely, for their own benefit too of course, I think they have committed many follies.
We have entered a period of differing interpretations and deliberate silences in world politics.
International law has been forced to retreat over and over by the onslaught of legal nihilism. Objectivity
and justice have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Arbitrary interpretations
and biased assessments have replaced legal norms. At the same time, total control of the global
mass media has made it possible when desired to portray white as black and black as white.
In a situation where you had domination by one country and its allies, or its satellites rather,
the search for global solutions often turned into an attempt to impose their own universal recipes.
This group's ambitions grew so big that they started presenting the policies they put together in
their corridors of power as the view of the entire international community. But this is not the
case.
The very notion of 'national sovereignty' became a relative value for most countries. In essence,
what was being proposed was the formula: the greater the loyalty towards the world's sole power
centre, the greater this or that ruling regime's legitimacy.
We will have a free discussion afterwards and I will be happy to answer your questions and would
also like to use my right to ask you questions. Let someone try to disprove the arguments that I
just set out during the upcoming discussion.
The measures taken against those who refuse to submit are well-known and have been tried and
tested many times. They include use of force, economic and propaganda pressure, meddling in domestic
affairs, and appeals to a kind of 'supra-legal' legitimacy when they need to justify illegal intervention
in this or that conflict or toppling inconvenient regimes. Of late, we have increasing evidence
too that outright blackmail has been used with regard to a number of leaders. It is not for nothing
that 'big brother' is spending billions of dollars on keeping the whole world, including its own
closest allies, under surveillance.
Let's ask ourselves, how comfortable are we with this, how safe are we, how happy living in this
world, and how fair and rational has it become? Maybe, we have no real reasons to worry, argue and
ask awkward questions? Maybe the United States' exceptional position and the way they are carrying
out their leadership really is a blessing for us all, and their meddling in events all around the
world is bringing peace, prosperity, progress, growth and democracy, and we should maybe just relax
and enjoy it all?
Let me say that this is not the case, absolutely not the case.
A unilateral diktat and imposing one's own models produces the opposite result. Instead of settling
conflicts it leads to their escalation, instead of sovereign and stable states we see the growing
spread of chaos, and instead of democracy there is support for a very dubious public ranging from
open neo-fascists to Islamic radicals.
Why do they support such people? They do this because they decide to use them as instruments
along the way in achieving their goals but then burn their fingers and recoil. I never cease to
be amazed by the way that our partners just keep stepping on the same rake, as we say here in Russia,
that is to say, make the same mistake over and over.
They once sponsored Islamic extremist movements to fight the Soviet Union. Those groups got their
battle experience in Afghanistan and later gave birth to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The West if not
supported, at least closed its eyes, and, I would say, gave information, political and financial
support to international terrorists' invasion of Russia (we have not forgotten this) and the Central
Asian region's countries. Only after horrific terrorist attacks were committed on US soil itself
did the United States wake up to the common threat of terrorism. Let me remind you that we were
the first country to support the American people back then, the first to react as friends and partners
to the terrible tragedy of September 11.
During my conversations with American and European leaders, I always spoke of the need to fight
terrorism together, as a challenge on a global scale. We cannot resign ourselves to and accept this
threat, cannot cut it into separate pieces using double standards. Our partners expressed agreement,
but a little time passed and we ended up back where we started. First there was the military operation
in Iraq, then in Libya, which got pushed to the brink of falling apart. Why was Libya pushed into
this situation? Today it is a country in danger of breaking apart and has become a training ground
for terrorists.
Only the current Egyptian leadership's determination and wisdom saved this key Arab country from
chaos and having extremists run rampant. In Syria, as in the past, the United States and its allies
started directly financing and arming rebels and allowing them to fill their ranks with mercenaries
from various countries. Let me ask where do these rebels get their money, arms and military specialists?
Where does all this come from? How did the notorious ISIL manage to become such a powerful group,
essentially a real armed force?
As for financing sources, today, the money is coming not just from drugs, production of which
has increased not just by a few percentage points but many-fold, since the international coalition
forces have been present in Afghanistan. You are aware of this. The terrorists are getting money
from selling oil too. Oil is produced in territory controlled by the terrorists, who sell it at
dumping prices, produce it and transport it. But someone buys this oil, resells it, and makes a
profit from it, not thinking about the fact that they are thus financing terrorists who could come
sooner or later to their own soil and sow destruction in their own countries.
Where do they get new recruits? In Iraq, after Saddam Hussein was toppled, the state's institutions,
including the army, were left in ruins. We said back then, be very, very careful. You are driving
people out into the street, and what will they do there? Don't forget (rightfully or not) that they
were in the leadership of a large regional power, and what are you now turning them into?
What was the result? Tens of thousands of soldiers, officers and former Baath Party activists
were turned out into the streets and today have joined the rebels' ranks. Perhaps this is what explains
why the Islamic State group has turned out so effective? In military terms, it is acting very
effectively and has some very professional people. Russia warned repeatedly about the dangers
of unilateral military actions, intervening in sovereign states' affairs, and flirting with extremists
and radicals. We insisted on having the groups fighting the central Syrian government, above all
the Islamic State, included on the lists of terrorist organisations. But did we see any results?
We appealed in vain.
We sometimes get the impression that our colleagues and friends are constantly fighting the consequences
of their own policies, throw all their effort into addressing the risks they themselves have created,
and pay an ever-greater price.
Colleagues, this period of unipolar domination has convincingly demonstrated that having only
one power centre does not make global processes more manageable. On the contrary, this kind of unstable
construction has shown its inability to fight the real threats such as regional conflicts, terrorism,
drug trafficking, religious fanaticism, chauvinism and neo-Nazism. At the same time, it has opened
the road wide for inflated national pride, manipulating public opinion and letting the strong bully
and suppress the weak.
Essentially, the unipolar world is simply a means of justifying dictatorship over people and
countries. The unipolar world turned out too uncomfortable, heavy and unmanageable a burden even
for the self-proclaimed leader. Comments along this line were made here just before and I fully
agree with this. This is why we see attempts at this new historic stage to recreate a semblance
of a quasi-bipolar world as a convenient model for perpetuating American leadership. It does not
matter who takes the place of the centre of evil in American propaganda, the USSR's old place as
the main adversary. It could be Iran, as a country seeking to acquire nuclear technology, China,
as the world's biggest economy, or Russia, as a nuclear superpower.
Today, we are seeing new efforts to fragment the world, draw new dividing lines, put together
coalitions not built for something but directed against someone, anyone, create the image of an
enemy as was the case during the Cold War years, and obtain the right to this leadership, or diktat
if you wish. The situation was presented this way during the Cold War. We all understand this and
know this. The United States always told its allies: "We have a common enemy, a terrible foe, the
centre of evil, and we are defending you, our allies, from this foe, and so we have the right to
order you around, force you to sacrifice your political and economic interests and pay your share
of the costs for this collective defence, but we will be the ones in charge of it all of course."
In short, we see today attempts in a new and changing world to reproduce the familiar models of
global management, and all this so as to guarantee their [the US'] exceptional position and reap
political and economic dividends.
But these attempts are increasingly divorced from reality and are in contradiction with the world's
diversity. Steps of this kind inevitably create confrontation and countermeasures and have the opposite
effect to the hoped-for goals. We see what happens when politics rashly starts meddling in the economy
and the logic of rational decisions gives way to the logic of confrontation that only hurt one's
own economic positions and interests, including national business interests.
Joint economic projects and mutual investment objectively bring countries closer together and
help to smooth out current problems in relations between states. But today, the global business
community faces unprecedented pressure from Western governments. What business, economic expediency
and pragmatism can we speak of when we hear slogans such as "the homeland is in danger", "the free
world is under threat", and "democracy is in jeopardy"? And so everyone needs to mobilise. That
is what a real mobilisation policy looks like.
Sanctions are already undermining the foundations of world trade, the WTO rules and the principle
of inviolability of private property. They are dealing a blow to liberal model of globalisation
based on markets, freedom and competition, which, let me note, is a model that has primarily benefited
precisely the Western countries. And now they risk losing trust as the leaders of globalisation.
We have to ask ourselves, why was this necessary? After all, the United States' prosperity rests
in large part on the trust of investors and foreign holders of dollars and US securities. This trust
is clearly being undermined and signs of disappointment in the fruits of globalisation are visible
now in many countries.
The well-known Cyprus precedent and the politically motivated sanctions have only strengthened
the trend towards seeking to bolster economic and financial sovereignty and countries' or their
regional groups' desire to find ways of protecting themselves from the risks of outside pressure.
We already see that more and more countries are looking for ways to become less dependent on the
dollar and are setting up alternative financial and payments systems and reserve currencies. I think
that our American friends are quite simply cutting the branch they are sitting on. You cannot mix
politics and the economy, but this is what is happening now. I have always thought and still think
today that politically motivated sanctions were a mistake that will harm everyone, but I am sure
that we will come back to this subject later.
We know how these decisions were taken and who was applying the pressure. But let me stress that
Russia is not going to get all worked up, get offended or come begging at anyone's door. Russia
is a self-sufficient country. We will work within the foreign economic environment that has taken
shape, develop domestic production and technology and act more decisively to carry out transformation.
Pressure from outside, as has been the case on past occasions, will only consolidate our society,
keep us alert and make us concentrate on our main development goals.
Of course the sanctions are a hindrance. They are trying to hurt us through these sanctions,
block our development and push us into political, economic and cultural isolation, force us into
backwardness in other words. But let me say yet again that the world is a very different place today.
We have no intention of shutting ourselves off from anyone and choosing some kind of closed development
road, trying to live in autarky. We are always open to dialogue, including on normalising our economic
and political relations. We are counting here on the pragmatic approach and position of business
communities in the leading countries.
Some are saying today that Russia is supposedly turning its back on Europe - such words were
probably spoken already here too during the discussions - and is looking for new business partners,
above all in Asia. Let me say that this is absolutely not the case. Our active policy in the Asian-Pacific
region began not just yesterday and not in response to sanctions, but is a policy that we have been
following for a good many years now. Like many other countries, including Western countries, we
saw that Asia is playing an ever greater role in the world, in the economy and in politics, and
there is simply no way we can afford to overlook these developments.
Let me say again that everyone is doing this, and we will do so to, all the more so as a large
part of our country is geographically in Asia. Why should we not make use of our competitive advantages
in this area? It would be extremely shortsighted not to do so.
Developing economic ties with these countries and carrying out joint integration projects also
creates big incentives for our domestic development. Today's demographic, economic and cultural
trends all suggest that dependence on a sole superpower will objectively decrease. This is something
that European and American experts have been talking and writing about too.
Perhaps developments in global politics will mirror the developments we are seeing in the global
economy, namely, intensive competition for specific niches and frequent change of leaders in specific
areas. This is entirely possible.
There is no doubt that humanitarian factors such as education, science, healthcare and culture
are playing a greater role in global competition. This also has a big impact on international relations,
including because this 'soft power' resource will depend to a great extent on real achievements
in developing human capital rather than on sophisticated propaganda tricks.
At the same time, the formation of a so-called polycentric world (I would also like to draw attention
to this, colleagues) in and of itself does not improve stability; in fact, it is more likely to
be the opposite. The goal of reaching global equilibrium is turning into a fairly difficult puzzle,
an equation with many unknowns.
So, what is in store for us if we choose not to live by the rules – even if they may be strict
and inconvenient – but rather live without any rules at all? And that scenario is entirely possible;
we cannot rule it out, given the tensions in the global situation. Many predictions can already
be made, taking into account current trends, and unfortunately, they are not optimistic. If we do
not create a clear system of mutual commitments and agreements, if we do not build the mechanisms
for managing and resolving crisis situations, the symptoms of global anarchy will inevitably grow.
Today, we already see a sharp increase in the likelihood of a whole set of violent conflicts
with either direct or indirect participation by the world's major powers. And the risk factors include
not justtraditional multinational conflicts, but also the internal instability in separate
states, especially when we talk about nations located at the intersections of major states' geopolitical
interests, or on the border of cultural, historical, and economic civilizational continents.
Ukraine, which I'm sure was discussed at length and which we will discuss some more, is one of
the example of such sorts of conflicts that affect international power balance, and I think it will
certainly not be the last. From here emanates the next real threat of destroying the current system
of arms control agreements. And this dangerous process was launched by the United States of America
when it unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, and then set about
and continues today to actively pursue the creation of its global missile defence system.
Colleagues, friends,
I want to point out that we did not start this. Once again, we are sliding into the times when,
instead of the balance of interests and mutual guarantees, it is fear and the balance of mutual
destruction that prevent nations from engaging in direct conflict. In absence of legal and political
instruments, arms are once again becoming the focal point of the global agenda; they are used wherever
and however, without any UN Security Council sanctions. And if the Security Council refuses to produce
such decisions, then it is immediately declared to be an outdated and ineffective instrument.
Many states do not see any other ways of ensuring their sovereignty but to obtain their own bombs.
This is extremely dangerous. We insist on continuing talks; we are not only in favour of talks,
but insist on continuing talks to reduce nuclear arsenals. The less nuclear weapons we have in the
world, the better. And we are ready for the most serious, concrete discussions on nuclear disarmament
– but only serious discussions without any double standards.
With sanctions beginning to bite, Russia is starting to play a new economic game. To alleviate
the pain of Western restrictions on its financial and energy sectors, Russia is turning for help
to non-Western partners. Last week alone, Russia and China signed over 40 agreements that provide
Russian firms with lines of credit worth billions of dollars and establish strategic partnerships
in the energy sector.
The United States, in turn, is looking to step up its own game. Policymakers are considering
giving global companies a choice: stop providing long-term financing and energy assistance to major
Russian companies or be kicked out of the U.S. financial system. Such measures resemble the sanctions
the United States placed on Iran a couple of years ago. But Iran was a different problem. And treating
Russia the same way would be a mistake.
Sanctions can be an effective tool for forcing engagement and negotiation. But the pace and implementation
must be tailored to the target. In the case of Iran, the United States was able to tighten the screws
by pressuring foreign firms to stop dealing with the country. That move created some angry blowback,
but it generally worked. And partially as a result, Tehran is at the negotiating table. When it
comes to Russia, though, the political pushback that would come from blacklisting dealings with
the strategic Russian energy and banking sectors would be much more severe because Russia is a more
important market. Further, more companies would likely be willing to forego access to U.S. markets
in order to continue working with the Russians. And that would undermine the sanctions' effectiveness.
More generally, policymakers in the United States should be wary of continually relying on sanctions
that penalize foreign firms by preventing their access to U.S. markets. Ultimately, such a strategy
could backfire. At some point, foreign companies may decide that doing business in U.S. markets
-- and being subject to U.S. sanctions policies -- is simply not worth it. That would hurt
the U.S. economy and diminish the United States' ability to use economic levers to advance its foreign
policy.
Kiev doesn't bother to enforce the Geneva conventions. The army behaves in the Donbass as occupiers.
They consider the local population as a hostile ethnic group like in any civil war.
A casing carrying cluster munitions that landed in a shed. Press officers for the Ukrainian military
denied that their troops had used cluster weapons in the conflict. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The
New York Times
DONETSK, Ukraine - The Ukrainian Army appears to have fired cluster munitions on several occasions
into the heart of Donetsk, unleashing a weapon banned in much of the world into a rebel-held city
with a peacetime population of more than one million, according to physical evidence and interviews
with witnesses and victims.
Sites where rockets fell in the city on Oct. 2 and Oct. 5 showed clear signs that cluster munitions
had been fired from the direction of army-held territory, where misfired artillery rockets still
containing cluster bomblets were found by villagers in farm fields.
The two attacks wounded at least six people and killed a Swiss employee of the International
Red Cross based in Donetsk.
If confirmed, the use of cluster bombs by the pro-Western government could complicate efforts
to reunite the country, as residents of the east have grown increasingly bitter over the Ukrainian
Army's tactics to oust pro-Russian rebels
... ... ...
On the morning of Oct. 5, Boris V. Melikhov, 37, was chopping wood outside his house in the Gladkovka
neighborhood of Donetsk when he heard the loud clap of an explosion from the street.
His first sensation was "a strong push in the back," and he sprawled onto the grass. More explosions
followed, showering Mr. Melikhov with dust and dirt. Unable to stand, he crawled toward a spigot
in the garden, bleeding profusely and desperate for water.
"I felt the blood running down my back, down my leg," he recalled in an interview last week from
his bed in a hospital, where his uncle took him after the attack. Doctors there found several identical
metal fragments in his leg, chest, shoulder and hand.
Hundreds of such fragments, each about the size of a thumbtack, were sprayed out by at least
11 cluster bomblets that exploded on Mr. Melikhov's street that morning. The 9N210 bomblets are
carried in surface-to-surface Uragan (Hurricane) rockets that are fired from the backs of trucks
and have a range of roughly 22 miles.
Part of one of the rockets smashed into a street a few blocks away, and the impact crater indicated
it had come from the southwest.
The same morning, sunflower farmers near Novomikhailovka, a small village about 20 miles southwest
of Mr. Melikhov's house, saw rockets sailing almost directly overhead toward Donetsk. Local people
said in interviews that the army had been launching Uragan rockets from there for more than a week.
"Trust me, when it is day after day after day, you get to know your Grad launches from your Uragan
launches," said one farmer, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution for discussing Ukrainian
military positions.
... ... ...
Uragan rockets can carry 30 of the submunitions, which look like metal cans with fins. Those
bomblets in turn hold small pieces of chopped steel rod. The rocket releases the bomblets over a
wide area, and the bomblets either explode on impact, flinging out lethal steel fragments, or land
unexploded and effectively become land mines. Children often mistake them for toys.
At the Red Cross headquarters in Donetsk, Human Rights Watch researchers accompanied by a Times
reporter documented 19 distinct impacts of cluster submunitions from the Oct. 2 attack. Judging
by impact craters from rockets fired in the same salvo, the researchers said, the strike came from
the southwest.
A witness to the Oct. 2 launch in Novomikhailovka told the reporter about the malfunctioning
rockets in the fields. Other witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch on the evening of Oct.
2 confirmed that rockets had been fired from just south of the village toward Donetsk.
An advocacy group called the Cluster Munitions Coalition has been pressing Ukraine to join the
international convention banning the stockpiling or use of the weapons. (Russia and the United States
have not joined it, either.) The group's director, Sarah Blakemore, wrote to the Ukrainian Foreign
Ministry in July after images were published appearing to show the use of cluster munitions against
rebel positions in the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.
She said in a telephone interview that she had received no reply. "When I say they neither confirmed
or denied, I mean they really just did not do anything," Ms. Blakemore said.
... ... ...
In Donetsk, doctors in a city hospital and morgue said they had found cluster-munitions fragments
in several patients, including Mr. Melikhov, whose spine was nicked by one on Oct. 5. He was lucky
not to have been paralyzed, but the injury made it very painful to sit, stand or lie flat, he said.
"I see it as the senseless destruction of the southeast," he said of the attack. "There's something
wrong in their head."
Left-biased, but still very interesting assessment of the situation. Especially in the first part
(the first 14 questions) Quote: "All attempts by Russia to develop a hypothetical line of response based
on similar strategies (i.e. mobilizing a social response based on discontent) have no future, because
Russia does not represent an alternative social model, not even in the realm of Illusion of Hope. "
Un amable lector de este blog ha realizado un resumen en inglés de nuestro artículo Las catedrales
del kremlin y el capitalismo multipolar; es un resumen diferente al que nosotros hubiéramos hecho,
pero de interés sin duda alguna. Ha sido publicado como apoyo a una pregunta en un coloquio con
el economista ruso Mikhail Khazin organizado por The vineyard of the saker. Publicaremos aquí la
respuesta.
Question: Does Russia represent an alternative to the current western economic/social model?
Or is this view an illusion based only on the conflict between some traditional vs. post-modern
values? / Arturo
For context to the question I will provide a translation / paraphrase / summary of some key points
in the following article Las catedrales del kremlin y el capitalismo multipolar
The article contains and numbers many more points (36 in total) but I have translated/summarized
only the first 14 (the rest is provided is a very raw translation --NNB)
Moscow cannot defeat the American plans – i.e. the Anglo Zionist world elite – without
contradicting the class interests of its own elites (Russian oligarchs): This is impossible
because the system of sanctions and the blocking of access to their accounts and assets in the
West generates such contradictions in the Russian power elites that, in practice, it prevents
them from reacting adequately; it puts them on their knees before the American plans.
Russia *could* resist those plans, since it possesses the strength, sense of identity,
historical memory and material resources to do so. But in order to do so, its ruling elites
would have to take measures that would affect their own class status within both the Russian
system and the international system. And we can see that these are measures they are not
willing to take. On the other hand, the Anglo Zionists suffer no such internal contradiction.
Quite the opposite, in fact: Their own interest as the supporting base of the globalist
hyperclass necessarily forces them to maintain the challenge to the end.
By the term Anglo Zionists, in this analysis, we mean the dominant power group whose territorial
and military base resides in the United States, and whose center originates in the historical
and social links of the Anglo-American oligarchies, branching off to other historical central
metropolis in Europe or other power centers in different parts of the world.
The concept is made up of two elements that must be explained: the first, the "anglo" reference,
has to do with the North American British connection [...] the second, the "zionist" reference,
has to do with the interconnection among the economic and financial power groups that maintain
various kinds of links with Israel. It is not so much a reference to ethnic origin, but rather
to orientations as groups or lobbies of political and economic interests. A good part of this
Zionist component consists of people who are neither Israelis nor Jews, but who feel identified
with the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, Britain and other countries. Thus the term "zionist"
referees here to an ideology, not to an ethnic origin.
The Anglo elites on both sides of the Atlantic have evolved from being national elites
to being the executive base of a world Hyperclass made up of individuals capable of exerting
a determining influence in the most powerful nation, the United States.
The result of the Anglo Zionist line of attack is that the contradiction and internal struggle
is now occurring in Moscow between those who have already chosen to sell out and those who have
not yet found the time to realize that a multipolar global capitalism is not viable.
In this context, recovering Crimea was a mirage, an illusion.
If we compare the implications of the Maidan coup in Kiev with the liberation of Crimea,
we see that the strategic defeat implicit in losing Ukraine as an ally is of such magnitude
that everything else pales by co s (all of them) in Kiev was so gigantic that its implications
are frightening. It was either a failure or something even worse. In any case, the Crimea affair
was merely a small episode in a confrontation that Russia is losing.
Russia arrived very late at modern capitalism, and that is why its current elite will
be unable to occupy a space among the globalist elite without paying the necessary toll, which
is none other than renouncing its territorial power base – its country and its access to
and control of its energy resources and raw materials.
Stubbornly maintaining the dispute in trying to obtain a multi-polar capitalism, leads necessarily
to a intra-capitalist confrontation, as it did in 1914-1918. And because of the nature of the
current actors, nuclear powers … it brings the conflict to 2.0 war versions (color revolutions)
All attempts by Russia to develop a hypothetical line of response based on similar strategies
(i.e. mobilizing a social response based on discontent) have no future, because Russia does
not represent an alternative social model, not even in the realm of Illusion of Hope. It
can only elicit some empathy from those who reject the American domination, but here the class
contradictions come into play again, because it is not enough to oppose Washington merely on
political-military grounds, since the key to global power resides in the financial and military
structures that enable global control and plunder: World Trade Organization, IMF, Free Trade
agreements, World Bank, NATO… these are entities in relation to which Russia only shows
its displeasure at not being invited to the table as an equal, not accepting that because it
arrived late at modern capitalism, it must play a secondary role. On the other hand, Russia
is ignoring the deep contempt, bordering on racism, that things Slavic generate among Anglo
Zionist elites.
In order to be able to fight the 2.0 versions of war that are engineered today, an alternative
social model is needed. Alternative not only in regard to the postmodern vs. traditional
sets of values, but fundamentally in regard to the social model that stems from the modes of
production. In the postmodern vs. traditional conflict, Russia tends to align with the most
reactionary values. And in regard to the social struggle, they don't want to enter that fray
because they renounced it long ago. They renounced the entire Soviet Union, which they destroyed
from within.
The contradictions and the dialectical nature of reality have their own logic, however.
Thus, a coup in Kiev and the widespread appearance of Nazi symbols in the streets of Ukraine
was all that it took to induce a spontaneous reaction in the Slavic world. The popular resistance
in the Donbass took strong root thanks to the historic memory of the people's of the old USSR
and its war against fascism.
If Russia were to abandon Novorossia to the oligarchs and their mafias, the world's "left"
– or whatever remains of it - would come to scorn post-Soviet Russia even more than it already
does. In the months following the brave action in Crimea and the heroic resistance in the Donbass,
many people around the world looked to Moscow in search of some sign that it would support the
anti-fascist and anti-oligarchic resistance, even if only as an act of self-defense by Moscow
against the globalist challenge. If it finally abandons Novorossia, the price in terms of loss
of moral prestige will be absolute.
A support of the left has not been sought, but that is a collateral consequence of the character
of class struggle open that has been given in the Donbas, where Russia has been forced to provide
some assistance that would prevent the genocide at the hands of the fascist Ukrainian.
Cuando say left, we refer logically to the one who has expressed their support to the struggle
of people in the Donbas, as it is very difficult to consider the "left" to those who have preferred
to remain silent or to have directly been complicit in the assault, and the coup in Kiev.
The degradation of the left as politically active social force is very intense, their structures
are embroiled in the collapse, or in the confusion, when not literally corrupt. Then related
to both socialist parties since 1914 and the communists, at least from the time of fracture
of 1956. The social changes experienced in Europe with the systems of welfare state, based on
the elevation of the standard of living of the working population and the obtaining of social
peace by sharing the power with the trade unions are at the base of the post-industrial society
and the resulting profound changes of values.
The suicide of the USSR in 1989-93 marked a brutal global change , in which the balance which
was preserved during the cold war was broken. That led to the capitalist elite in the west,
which we are calling the Anglo-Zionists, to the suspension of the social pact (forced abandonment
of New Deal), that gave rise to the welfare state and the emergence stark reality of a global
power of capitalists without systemic opposition . Today the whole neoliberal globalization
system of capitalism is in danger by the depletion of the natural resources. And to sustain
this mode of production, they need to speed up territorial domination in the form of control
and access to resources of other countries. Now there no space in the global system for spaces,
which are managed autonomously even to a certain level.
The system of global domination, capitalism, ruling elites with a territorial basis in the
area of Anglo-American, global parasitic Hyperclass and depletion of resources, as well as cannibalization
of the other nations, in the midst of troika of crisis of climate change, peak of the energy
and raw materials shortages. those three factors that challenge the current globalization framework
... And the crisis of Novorossia, been demonstrated both impotence and the lack of real political
autonomy of Russian elite with the respect to the dominant power in neoliberal worlds order..
The new citizen movements in the western world are not so much resistance movements as samples
of the discontent of the middle classes in precarious position of marginalization and/or social
trance. This protest led to a "Maidans" which are not permanent and does not question the basis
of the system. The participants seems to believe that it is possible to restore the old good
world of the welfare state.
The western movements are brainwashed by messages emanating from the headquarters of Democratic
party of North America, the propaganda anarcho-capitalist and the various networks of ideological
interference, are managing to break the bonds of historical memory that unite the struggles
of the past with the present, de-ideologize the struggles and conflicts and to deny the tension
left and right, isolating the militants -- or simple citizens who feel identified with the values
of the left - of the masses who are suffering in the first place casualisation. At the heart
of this new "left" are leaders that are co-opted voices, pseudo-intellectuals who destroy the
words and empty of content of key concepts in a way that the alienation of the masses demonstrate
at the language itself, thus preventing putting a real name to social process and things, and
to identify the social phenomena.
Viva to Russia, which the only country which eve in a weak form decided to fight neoliberal
world order and position itself as an anti-imperialist force... It is interesting to observe
the current great moral confusion in political landscape of the societies in decay. Confusion
which have been stimulated by Moscow actions. As the result some the far-right groups that are
simultaneously anti-US that anti-Russian now support Moscow. Also some part of Russia far-right
political groups got the sympathy and support of factions of the anti EU far right forces in
France, the Nazis of the MSR in Spain, and from small groups of euro-asianists. This line of
political affiliation will allow them to simply join the Russia failure [to find alternative
to monopolar neoliberal capitalism] and might well discredit then more profoundly in the future.
The euro-asianists forces technically speaking are reactionary forces, neoliberal forces
which is comparable to the worst of the worst in the western world. Moreover, they do not have
any way to solve the main contradictions that arise in the current neoliberal model in the terms
of class and dominance of Anglo Zionist global elite.
Euro-Asianism is just a suitable ideology for the construction of Russian national idea
for those who seeks to achieve lease to life for Russia sovereignty on the world stage. It is
the actual proof that Russia has come too late to globalised capitalism and fascism...
Huttington and his war of civilizations cynically exploit this confrontation on Anglo Zionist
elite and newcomers, redefining it along the idea of the clash of civilizations which avoid
using the notion of class and thus is ideologically false. Alexander Duguin who promote similar
ideas quite seriously just shows the degree of degeneration of the Russian intelligentsia, which
oscillates between serving as comprador class to the global Anglo Zionist elite and the repetition
(as a farce, and with 75 years of delay ) of fascist reactionary revolutions in Western Europe,
which were phenomenon of the interwar period (rexistas in Belgium, Croix de feu in France, CruzFlechados
in Hungary, Requetés and Falangistas in Spain).
The globalist elite offered a solution formulated in class terms, as it could not be another
way: in the best cases, they proposes the co-optation to a handful of members of the Russian
elite as deserving members of the new global Hyperclass, but this path is opened only the very
very rich, and the pre-condition is the delivery of the country to plunder, where the global
elite certainly would have need of some compradors which will be more or less adequately compensated
depending on their achievements and sacrifices in the name of global neoliberal domination.
The part of the power elite of Russia, which managed to expel the western compradors of
the Yeltsin era, and rein in the oligarchs then, had tried with some success to regain control
of the territory of the country. The illusion of the members of this part of the power elite
-- basically the security services, both civil and military, and various synergies of those
with the military-industrial lobby -- is that it would be enough to neutralize the Russian fifth
column of the Anglo Zionists to take back control of their territorial base of power. this idea
is going to be shredded into pieces when it enter into contradiction with the reality of the
class struggle and interests of the elite at the global level. Russia is, for its size, influence,
and resources, so huge that a line of action based on the defense of its sovereignty strategic
enters in collision with the global power of neoliberalism. And that why it attracts disproportional
reaction of the Anglo Zionists
Supporters of Anglo Zionists that are ready to consent to a German-Russian alliance or Russia-EU
alliance that give the viability of a idea of mutually beneficial co-development of both Russia
and Europe are forgetting that such an action would require European sovereignty. Which is was
non-existent iether on the level of the EU, or on the level of member states. The penetration
of the Atlantism in Europe is already systemic. In the old European states there are still ancient
national traditions, which were based on the basis of cultural, industrial, economic, and political
identity. And they still run strong. But in the current situation for such states there no space
for the sovereignty as the dominant power bloc in the national elite as well as in EU elite
are Atlantists. Where this situation takes the Russian elite and the Russian state without confrontation?
A confrontation that they, on the other hand are not willing and are not able to pursue.
The multi-polar capitalist world had its lifespan which come to an end (exploded) in 1914.
In 2014, the globalization of the elites and the capital is of such magnitude that no serious
resistance is possible on the basis of some capitalist model. In those conditions the idea of
Russian elite ability to enforce change to multipolar version of the currently monopolar neoliberal
world is doomed to be a failure.
Zbigniew Brezinsky has raised things crudely and openly, unlike the ("fake") supporters
of perestroika, and their current heirs in Russia. Brezinsky know how to think in terms of the
class contradiction and knows perfectly well that the Russian oligarchy has directed its
monetary flows abroad, moved families abroad, and moved their investments abroad. That
means that Anglo Zionistscan disrupt any claim of sovereignty over the territory and
resources by simply pressing the local neoliberal elite, giving them to choose between their
interests as a class and their illusionary desire for sovereignty. Because in a globalized world,
with its brutal fight for the natural resources there is no possibility of maintaining both,
except what can be achieved in terms of direct anti-imperialist struggle. There is no space
for the national bourgeoisies in the XXI century. You can only have sovereignty if it is posed
in terms of a rupture with the actually existing neoliberal order of global capitalism, which,
in its core is Anglo Zionistsglobalization. This break does not have to be forced,
but in terms of scientific analysis of the social processes is a logical consequence of following
this path one way or the other. To claim sovereignty over their own resources and territory
inevitably leads to confrontation, and logical needs a break up and confront the Anglo Zionist
empire. If you really want to achieve the goal. And that fact imposes the logic of the relationships
and balance of power in the world today.
The claims of the BRIC countries -- to the extent that you do not question them -- is that
they have an alternative model to the dominant neoliberal capitalism model (Ango Zionist globalization
with the center in the USA) are doomed to be a failure. The efforts of the BRIC countries can
generate a lot of noise and discomfort for the West, but they can not break the global neoliberal
system. Those countries are rightfully fearful of their budget balances -- which are very fragile.
It can be even said that they are on their way to implosion sooner or later, due to the unbalanced
structure of their internal classes, including first of all their own elite.
The claim that it is possible to achieve the multipolar capitalist world (which Russia defends)
and which led to current Ukrainian crisis without confrontation is false. As soon as Russia
wanted to return to the global chessboard. as an independent player, they instantly saw opponents
attacking weak elements of their defense at the borders. Ukraine has been a defeat for Russia
and the Crimea is not a adequate compensation for loss of Ukraine. Now Novorossia is being sacrificed
precisely because the class contradictions that have emerged in Moscow and lack of desire of
Russian elite to go the bitter end.
The situation in the Donbas / Novorossia clearly shows the resignation of Moscow to the
victory, and their desire to avoid the clash with neoliberal world order. The fact is that Royal
Dutch Shell has already begun the fracking in the Donbas, the coup regime in Kiev are already
internationally accepted without reservations, the truce imposed in Novorossia has brought to
its knees the armed resistance to junta. All this leads way to deliver Novorossia to the hands
of mafias sponsored by the local oligarchs with friends in Kiev and Moscow.
Statement that the destiny of Russia was played in the Donbas is something more than a phrase,
It is a claim based on a reality, as the defeat of Novorossia would be the proof that Moscow
had not the will to struggle. The betrayal of the fighters and the hopes of Novorossia is the
acceptance of the defeat and might lead in the future to the victory to the Moscow Maidan, the
same alliance of compradors and nationalists using which as storm troopers the globalist elite
achieved their goal in Ukraine. If Novorossia is defeated, they can expect being able to push
a puppet into the Kremlin the same way. And not without reason. This summer, the heroic struggle
of the militia of the Donbas was the key element that forced the changes of the script designed
for Kiev as well as diminished chances of successful application of the same methods in Moscow.
The Minsk Agreements and the truce imposed by them are putting Novorossia on its knees, allowing
for its destruction, but this time at the hands of their allies. Sad spectacle for the Russian
security services, which were effective enough to organize the Donbas resistance, but now are
useless and powerless before the neofascist Kiev junta.
The struggle of the Donbas does not correspond to the strategic interests of the Russian
elite. They have been forced to intervene to prevent the horror of the mass murder of the population
of the Donbas at the hands of the extreme right. But the dream of a Donbas free of oligarchs
and with a sovereign state, committed to social justice for workers on this Slavic land are
completely incompatible with the post-soviet status quo. Only to the extent that there is a
significant faction of Russian elite aware of the contradictions of the global neoliberal game
and who put their sense of patriotism first can lead them to face the challenge that they face.
Only in this case there would be any possibility of resistance; I would say patriotic resistance,
because we already know no one at the top is able to think in terms of class.
While very unlikely - there can be a move from February to October in Novorossia. You would
say impossible. But he insurrection of the Donbas in March, logically was "February". In order
to achieve victory, to take full control over the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk needs creation
of the Revolutionary Military Council and suspension of the upcoming elections. which looking
to be a smokescreen for capitulation to junta. They need to declare that they are ready to resist
to the end. This output would be desperate move, without a doubt, and would represent the equivalent
of a new "October". The event which of it occurs would force Moscow to show their cards to their
own population. And perhaps it can help to generate a pulse necessary for the organization of
the fight with Anglo Zionists empire between the towers of the Kremlin. That would move the
fight toward more patriotic and popular goals, But this presuppose a lot of assumptions and
first of all that such a "Kremlin tower", which is capable of emitted such a pulse, exists.
Only in this case we can talk about achieving a real sovereignty. As Vasily Záitsev in Stalingrad
suggested: "Maybe we're doomed, but for the moment we are still the masters and lords of our
land." In Novorossia there are plenty of fighters who would agree with Záitsev, but they certainly
lack political direction and, now the lack the support of Kremlin.
The Russian objective is achieving a multipolar capitalism with a Russia united under a
nationalist ideology based on the manipulation of patriotic sentiment, Orthodoxy and various
Slavic myths. This objective is being challenged by the reality of the conflict, which should
be defined in terms of geopolitical goals. The reality is that the Russian elite would be
allowed to control their population as they wish, provided they renounce its sovereignty over
territory and resources, renounce their physical power base, i.e. homeland. This is the
nature of the challenge. Putin is mistaken if he thinks that the Grand Patriarch has the answer
in their holy books. There is not enough incense in the Kremlin cathedrals to mask that reality."
Compare argumentation with Sociología crítica To be a neoliberal
society and be free from US dominance is not very realistic until oil became at least twice more expensive
and neoliberal model of globalization start collapsing. While critique of the US policy is up to the
point, what is the alternative to the current situation? Russia is weaker then the USA neoliberal state
and so far it does not look like it decided to abandon neoliberalism. And if not, then what is the point
of confrontation ? Clearly the USA has geopolitical ambitions in Eastern Europe. And they want to exploit
their status as the pre-eminent neo-liberal state, like Moscow was for socialist camp, so to speak to
squeeze Russia, as a dissident state, which deviates from neoliberal agenda. Ukraine just fall victim
of this squeezing. Collateral damage so to speak. And the key problem with Ukraine neither the USA nor
EU want to compensate the damage their actions inflicted, to offer Marshall plan to Kiev.
...There is growing evidence of the contradiction between the need for collective, cooperative
efforts to provide adequate responses to challenges common to all, and the aspirations of a number
of countries for domination and the revival of archaic bloc thinking based on military drill discipline
and the erroneous logic of "friend or foe."
The US-led Western alliance that portrays itself as a champion of democracy, rule of law and
human rights within individual countries，acts from a completely opposite position in the international
arena, rejecting the democratic principle of the sovereign equality of states enshrined in the UN
Charter and tires to decide for everyone what is good or bad.
Washington has openly declared its right to the unilateral use of force anywhere to uphold its
own interests. Military interference has become common, even despite the dismal outcome of the use
of power that the US has carried out in recent years.
The sustainability of the international system has been severely shaken by NATO bombardment of
Yugoslavia, intervention in Iraq, the attack against Libya and the failure of the operation in Afghanistan.
Thanks only to intensive diplomatic efforts, an aggression against Syria was averted in 2013.
There is the involuntary impression that the goal of various "colour revolutions" and other
goals to change unsuitable regimes is to provoke chaos and instability.
Today, Ukraine has fallen victim to such an arrogant policy. The situation there has revealed
the remaining deep-rooted systemic flaws of the existing architecture in the Euro-Atlantic area.
The West has embarked upon a course towards "the vertical structuring of humanity" tailored
to its own hardly inoffensive standards. After they declared victory in the Cold War and the "end
of history," the US and the EU opted for expanding the geopolitical area under their control without
taking into account the balance of legitimate interests of all the people of Europe. Our Western
partners did not heed our numerous alerts on the unacceptability of the violation of the principles
of the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act, and time and again avoided serious cooperative work
to establish a common space of equal and indivisible security and cooperation from the Atlantic
to the Pacific. The Russian proposal to draft a European security treaty was rejected. We were told
directly that only the members of the North Atlantic Alliance could have the legally binding guarantees
of security, and NATO expansion to the East continued in spite of the promises to the contrary given
previously. NATO's change toward hostile rhetoric and to the drawdown of its cooperation with Russia
even to the detriment of the West's own interests, and the additional build-up of the military
infrastructure at Russian borders made the inability of the alliance to change its genetic code
embedded during the Cold War era obvious.
The US and the EU supported the coup in Ukraine and reverted to outright justification of any
act by the self-proclaimed Kiev authorities that used suppression by force on the part of the Ukrainian
people that had rejected the attempts to impose an anti-constitutional way of life to the entire
country and wanted to defend its rights to a native language, culture and history. It was precisely
the aggressive assault on these rights that compelled the population of Crimea to take destiny into
its own hands and make a choice in favor of self-determination. This was an absolutely free choice
no matter what has been invented by those who were, in the first place, responsible for the internal
conflict in Ukraine.
The attempts to distort the truth and to hide the facts behind blanket accusations have been
undertaken at all stages of the Ukrainian crisis. Nothing has been done to track down and prosecute
those responsible for February's bloody events at Maidan and the massive loss of human life in Odessa,
Mariupol and other regions in Ukraine. The scale of appalling humanitarian disaster provoked
by the acts of the Ukrainian army in southeastern Ukraine has been deliberately underscored. Recently,
new horrible facts have been brought to light as mass graves were discovered in the outskirts of
Donetsk. Despite UNSC Resolution 2166 a thorough and independent investigation of the circumstances
into the loss of the Malaysian airliner over the territory of Ukraine has been protracted. The culprits
of all these crimes must be identified and brought to justice. Otherwise it is unrealistic to expect
a national reconciliation in Ukraine.
... ... ...
Let me recall the not too distant past. As a condition for establishing diplomatic relations
with the Soviet Union in 1933 the U.S. government demanded of Moscow the guarantees of non-interference
in the domestic affairs of the US and obligations not to take any actions with a view to changing
political or social order in America. At that time Washington feared a revolutionary virus and the
above guarantees were put on record and were based on reciprocity. Perhaps, it makes sense to
return to this item and reproduce that demand of the US government on a universal scale. Shouldn't
the General Assembly adopt a declaration on the unacceptability of interference into the domestic
affairs of sovereign states and non-recognition of a coup as a method for changing power? The time
has come to exclude from international interaction the attempts of illegitimate pressure of some
states on others. The meaningless and counterproductive nature of unilateral sanctions is obvious
if we review the US blockade of Cuba.
The policy of ultimatums and philosophy of supremacy and domination do not meet the requirements
of the 21st century and run counter to the objective process of development for a polycentric
and democratic world order.
Russia is promoting a positive and unifying agenda. We always were and will be open to discussion
of the most complex issues no matter how unsolvable they would seem in the beginning. We will be
prepared to search for compromises and the balancing of interests and go as far as to exchange concessions
provided only that the discussion is respectful and equal.
... ... ...
New dividing lines in Europe should not be allowed, even more so given that under globalization
these lines can turn into a watershed between the West and the rest of the world. It should be stated
honestly that no one has a monopoly on truth and that no one can tailor global and regional processes
to one's own needs. There is no alternative today to the development of consensus regarding the
rules of sustainable global governance under new historical circumstances - with full respect for
cultural and civilizational diversity in the world and the multiplicity of the models of development.
It will be a difficult and perhaps tiresome task to achieve such a consensus on every issue. Nevertheless
the recognition of the fact that democracy in every state is the "worst form of government, except
for all the others" also took time to break through, until Winston Churchill passed his verdict.
The time has come to realize the inevitability of this axiom including in international affairs
where today there is a huge deficit of democracy. Of course someone will have to break up centuries-old
stereotypes and abandon the claims to eternal uniqueness. But there is no other way. Consolidated
efforts can only be built on the principles of mutual respect and by taking into account the interests
of each other as is the case, for example, under the framework of BRICS and the SCO, the G20 and
the UN Security Council.
The theory of the advantages of cooperative action has been supported by practice: this includes
progress in the settlement of the situation around the Iranian nuclear program and the successful
conclusion of the chemical demilitarization of Syria. Also, regarding the issue of chemical weapons,
we would like to obtain authentic information on the condition of the chemical arsenals in Libya.
We understand that our NATO colleagues, after bombing this country in violation of a UNSC Resolution,
would not like to "stir up"" the mayhem they created. However, the problem of uncontrolled Libyan
chemical arsenals is too serious to turn a blind eye to. The UN Secretary General has an obligation
to show his responsibility on this issue as well.
What is important today is to see the global priorities and avoid making them hostages to a unilateral
agenda. There is an urgent need to refrain from double standards in the approaches to conflict settlement.
Everybody largely agrees that it is a key issue to resolutely counter the terrorists who are attempting
to control increasingly larger territories in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and the Sahara-Sahel area.
If this is the case then this task should not be sacrificed to ideological schemes or a desire to
retaliate. Terrorists, no matter what their slogans, should remain outside the law.
Moreover, it goes without saying that the fight against terrorism should be based solidly on
international law. The unanimous adoption of a number of UNSC Resolutions including those on the
issue of foreign terrorist operatives became an important stage in this fight. And conversely, the
attempts to act against the Charter of our Organization do not contribute to the success of cooperative
efforts. The struggle against terrorists in Syria should be structured in cooperation with the Syrian
government, which has clearly stated its willingness to join it. Damascus has already proven its
ability to work with the international community by delivering on its obligations under the programme
to dispose of its chemical weapons.
Stephen Walt
sees the U.S. repeating past mistakes in its war on ISIS. The first mistake he identifies is
the tendency to exaggerate foreign threats:
Why is threat inflation a problem? When we exaggerate dangers in order to sell a military
[action], we are more likely to do the wrong thing instead of taking the time to figure out
if a) action is really necessary and b) what the best course of action might be.
It's fair to say that U.S. officials wouldn't have to exaggerate foreign threats so often if
military action were clearly necessary. The U.S. is an extraordinarily secure country, so it requires
an extraordinary amount of dishonesty and exaggeration to convince Americans that launching attacks
overseas is necessary for our security.
Government officials have to overstate threats from overseas in order to justify military action
that they all know isn't strictly necessary, and so they also overstate how many interests the U.S.
has in the world and exaggerate how important those interests are. All of a sudden, the U.S. is
defending supposedly "vital" interests in places that have no importance for American security whatever.
The assumptions behind preventive war also give each administration greater leeway. These allow
presidents to dismiss the lack of evidence of a direct threat right now because of a belief that
a threat might materialize later on. The slightest possibility that there could be a threat at some
point in the future is treated as if there definitely is one, and so the U.S. starts bombing another
country. It doesn't matter that the U.S. isn't actually threatened by the government or whichever
group is being targeted. All that matters is that the U.S. has responded to the overblown threat
with "action." Bombing the supposed future threat becomes self-justifying, and self-defense is expanded
to mean whatever the government wants it to mean.
Egypt Steve says:
October 17, 2014 at 8:15 am
Lincoln understood this:
"Let me first state what I understand to be your position. It is, that if it shall become
necessary, to repel invasion, the President may, without violation of the Constitution, cross
the line and invade the territory of another country; and that whether such necessity exists
in any given case, the President is to be the sole judge…But Allow the President to invade a
neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow
him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and allow
him to make war at pleasure…. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to
invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say
to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent;
I see it, if you don't.'"
bacon, October 17, 2014 at 1:24 pm
Starting at least as far back as Viet Nam, we have found deadly enemies behind many trees
and have gone after most of them with similar results. We kill a lot of them, they kill
some of us, and money that ought to be spent at home on infrastructure, education, health care,
and job creation goes down the rat hole.
The public eventually gets tired enough of the war du jour to scare the politicians, they
figure out some way to disengage, very few if any of the predicted catastrophic consequences
of such a result come to pass, and shortly afterward we start the process again.
Each iteration leaves us, in addition to the unmet needs mentioned above, with a new
crop of permanently damaged men and women at home, new enemies abroad, and further diminished
global prestige. What a mess.
Its passage was all but guaranteed after the government made a dramatic U-turn last week.
Initially the government had claimed that it would not support the proposal from United Russia
deputy Vladimir Ponevezhsky as it "violated international law." However, at the start of this month
Vedomosti, the Russian business daily newspaper, reported Putin's press secretary Natalya Timakova
as saying that:
[Prime Minister] Dmitry Medvedev, supported this initiative from the beginning and knew about
its introduction.
The bill is already provoking controversy within the country, particularly among those concerned
by the flagging economy and
plummeting ruble. The Moscow Times
quotes Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev as saying that "there is no better way
to create capital outflow than passing or even discussing such legislation."
Though it has passed its first reading this is by no means the final step. The Rotenberg bill
will have to be submitted to the Duma for a further two readings before it is passed to President
Vladimir Putin to sign it into law.
The fact that Medvedev supports strongly suggests that this too shall pass.
The Russian Parliament on Wednesday took the first major step to authorize the Kremlin to seize
foreign assets and use them to compensate individuals and businesses being hurt by Western sanctions
over the Ukraine crisis.
... ... ...
The legislation must be approved two more times by the lower chamber of Parliament, or Duma,
and the Russian senate, then signed by the president to become law. The initial passage could well
be saber-rattling but is still an alarming sign that Russia will not take the sanctions lightly.
Even early discussions of the rule in Parliament precipitated a stock sell-off late last month,
given the stakes for international corporations.
In the past, the Russian government has made no bones about taking apart private assets, dismantling
the once-largest domestic oil company, Yukos, and jailing its former owner, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky,
for a decade. Last month, a court ordered another Russian billionaire, Vladimir P. Yevtushenkov,
placed under house arrest.
American companies with large investments in Russia have been apprehensive about possible
retribution or losing business to Asian competitors, Alexis Rodzianko, the director of the
American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, said in an interview.
Russia, he said, now has a "hierarchy of procurement" putting Asian businesses first.
The only seeming swipe has been at the American corporate icon McDonald's. Russian authorities
closed several of its restaurants in Moscow in August, citing health concerns. But the timing
prompted worries that it was payback for the sanctions.
So far, those actions appear largely symbolic, with most McDonald's restaurants remaining open.
Still, the symbolism was ominous. The opening of the first McDonald's restaurant in 1990 on Pushkin
Square marked the dawning of a new era of post-Soviet business opportunities for Western corporations.
Others followed. Ford operates an assembly plant for Focus compact cars outside St. Petersburg.
A Russian forge stamps nearly half the titanium pieces as measured by weight used in the airframe
of the new
Boeing 787 Dreamliner airliner. Alcoa operates an aluminum smelter.
PepsiCo first came to the former Soviet Union after offering a taste sample to the general secretary
at the time, Nikita S. Khrushchev, in 1959. The company has invested heavily in Russia during the
oil boom and now owns one of the country's largest dairies.
Even without such rules, multinational companies are facing headwinds, as the country's economy
flirts with recession. Ford has said weakening Russian demand for cars, amid all the uncertainty
here, is hurting its global earnings.
Yet other multinationals have inadvertently benefited from Russia's attempts to punish Western
business. The ban on European dairy imports, for example, became an unexpected boon for Pepsi's
local milk and yogurt business.
The legislation, though, is amplifying corporate concerns. Russia's minister of economy, Aleksei
Ulyukayev, said just last week that "there is no better way to create capital outflow than passing
or even discussing such legislation."
Still, the law passed with 233 votes in favor and 202 against. It would allow Russian citizens
to who suffer from an "unlawful court act" of a foreign government to appeal for compensation in
Russia, ultimately by seizing foreign assets here, even those covered by immunity such as diplomatic
real estate.
The Western sanctions were intended to dissuade Mr. Putin from invading Ukraine. The United States
Treasury Department has called some of the targets the "inner circle" of Mr. Putin, or longtime
acquaintances who would presumably have his ear.
But the sanctions appear to have had an unintended consequence...
Based on Patrushev statements (and the fact of interview itself) Russia will not surrender their
positions under the weight of sanctions. So the Second Cold War can be viewed as officially started.
I think the key calculations of neocons is that Russia is too weak to confront the USA in Ukraine, and
will be forced to accept the USA actions under threat of damage to its economy, especially in financial
area. And that sanctions will not only effectively decimate the Russian economy and greatly damage the
EU economy with minimum damage to the USA. We will see if this calculation is really true, as Russian
try to play sanctions as the opportunity of structural changes and kicking out "hostile" multinationals
from the Russia market. I do not envy now representatives of Coca Cola, or GM in Russia. But what if
Russia attacks the dollar hegemony directly, in the style à la guerre comme, à la guerre. In any case
neocons like Nuland managed to make Russian public more hostile to the USA then before. Probably even
more hostile then during bombing of Serbia.
Both Ukrainian and Syrian crisis has become quite an expected result of systemic activity of
the U.S government and its closest allies, said the FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev. He noted that
due to their efforts in Ukraine had grown a whole generation, poisoned by the hatred of Russia and
the mythology of "European values" ( I think here he exaggerated -- this is natural logic of development
of most xUSSR states, probably only amplified by the USA, -- look at Baltic states, Azerbaijan and
Georgia)
"The Ukrainian crisis has become quite an expected result of systemic activity of the
U.S. and its closest allies. The last quarter of a century, this activity was aimed at
a complete separation of the Ukraine and other former Soviet republics from Russia, total reformatting
of the post-Soviet space in the American interests. They created the conditions and the pretexts
for color revolutions that were supported by generous USA government organizations funding,"
said the Director of the FSB.
Patrushev said that the assistant Secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Victoria
Nuland has said repeatedly that Washington between 1991 and 2013 has spent five billion dollars
to "support the aspirations of the Ukrainian people to a stronger, democratic government". "According
to the only open sources, such as documents of the U.S. Congress, the total public funding of various
American programs for Ukraine for the period from 2001 to 2012 amounted to not less than 2.4 billion
US dollars. ...
"As a result of this activity in Ukraine was bred a whole generation, completely poisoned
by the hatred of Russia and the mythology of "European values". They are not yet aware that
these values, even in the positive sense of the term, actually are not intended for Ukrainians.
No one is going to try to rise standard of living in Ukraine or to arrange employment of young
people in Europe. Currently Europe itself with great difficulty coping with the serious challenges
and threats in those two area" said Patrushev.
"I think that the "sobering" Ukrainians will be cruel and painful. We can hope only that
this sobering will happen relatively quickly, due to several objective reasons. I want to mention
just one factor, which is of fundamental importance. Regardless of future developments, the
significance of Russia to Ukraine and vise versa in the future will be restored. Ukraine simply
will not be able to successfully develop itself without Russia, whether you like it or not,"
he told "Rossiskaya Gaseta" daily.
"The coup in Kiev, organized with explicit support from the United States, was conducted
using the classical scheme, piloted in Latin America, Africa and the middle East. But never
before such a scheme affected Russian interests so deeply. The analysis shows that, provoking
Russia to reciprocate, the Americans are pursuing the same goals as in the 80-ies of the twentieth
century in relation to the USSR. As then, they try to determine the "vulnerabilities" of our
country. At the same time, by the way, they solve the problem of neutralization of the European
economic competitors, which according to Washington, have grown dangerously close to Moscow",
- said the head of the FSB.
"Even in periods of relative warming in relations between Russia (USSR) and the United
States American partners always remained true to such hostile views. Therefore, regardless
of the nuances in the behavior of the Americans and their allies, the Russian leadership now
has a permanent task: to take necessary measures that guarantee the territorial integrity and
sovereignty of the Motherland, protection and grows its wealth, and that distribution channels
for this wealth work in the interests of the multinational people of the Russian Federation",
- concluded Patrushev.
It has nothing to do with Putin's power; It just self-preservation instinct in view of unrealistic
and damaging Drang nach Osten by Germany
and Obama administration. Neocons run the show in State Department. Libya-style
instability in Ukraine will cost the USA a lot of money. Of course Russia losses will be much greater
(and already are, while the USA invested paltry $100 million dollars in Ukraine or so), but here there
is no free lunch for anybody at this table. Everybody will pay dearly for Nuland's adventurism in February
2014, when instead of
European
sponsored agreement to end the crisis
she unleashed a coup d'état
which brought to power far right coalition. And without Marshall plan Ukraine will simply sank, taking
some Austrian and German banks with it.
...Obama has been congratulating himself on leading a
"unified
response" by the West that, he claims, has isolated Putin. In reality, a big chunk of the NATO
alliance has quietly begun to lean toward Moscow. These governments do so in part for economic reasons:
Dependent on Russia for energy as well as export markets, they fear the consequences of escalating
sanctions.
But some also seem to be hedging their security and ideological bets. They figure it's not worth
testing whether Putin's
reported threat to invade former Soviet-bloc countries was really in jest - or whether a NATO
led by Obama would really come to their defense. Why else preemptively announce,
as did the Czech prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka, that his country did not want the troops NATO
dispatched to Poland and the Baltic States as a deterrent to Russia?
Sobotka was trumped by Slovakia's Roberto Fico, a former Communist, who followed up his rejection
of NATO troops by dismissing Obama's appeal for increased defense spending and calling sanctions
against Russia "suicidal"
and "nonsensical." Fico's pandering, in turn, looked weak compared with the
speech delivered in late July by Hungary's Viktor Orban, who described Russia as an exemplar
of how "we have to abandon liberal methods and principles of organizing a society . . . because
liberal values [in the United States] today incorporate corruption, sex and violence."
If this is a "unified response," it looks orchestrated more by Putin than by Obama. "Some Central
European politicians are angling either to remain below the radar screen - don't speak up and make
your nation the target of Putin's ire - or to ingratiate themselves with Putin and therefore fare
better than other allies when the waters get even choppier,"
Damon Wilson, the executive
vice president of the Atlantic Council, told me. "The issue for many politicians will be how to
survive when the Russians are back, nastier than ever . . . and the Americans are remote, available
only for genuine 911 calls."
Remarkably, the wobbling in Eastern Europe comes only a decade after NATO's big 2004 expansion
and a dozen years after Poland and the Czech Republic gratefully and enthusiastically backed
the U.S. invasion of Iraq. What happened?
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Sunday told CNN host Candy Crowley that it was easy to criticize President
Barack Obama's fight against ISIS in Iraq, but he reminded her that it was President George Bush's
"disastrous blunder" that allowed the extremists group to get a foothold in the first place.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Sunday told CNN host Candy Crowley that it was easy to criticize
President Barack Obama's fight against ISIS in Iraq, but he reminded her that it was President George
Bush's "disastrous blunder" that allowed the extremists group to get a foothold in the first place.
In a interview on CNN's State of the Union, Sanders agreed that ISIS had to be defeated,
but he said that "the people of America are getting sick and tired of the world and region -- Saudi
Arabia and the other countries -- saying,
'Hey, we don't have to do anything about it. The American taxpayer, the American soldiers
will do all the work for us.'"
"Saudi Arabia is the fourth largest defense spender in the world," he pointed out. "They
have an army which is probably seven times larger than ISIS, they have a major air force. Their
country is run by a royal family worth hundreds of billions of dollars."
Sanders said that if the battle was perceived as the United States vs. ISIS then
"we're going to lose that war."
"This is a war for the soul of Islam, and the Muslim nations must be deeply involved," he
insisted. "And to the degree the developed countries are involved, it should be the U.K.,
France, Germany, other countries as well."
Crowley wondered if the Vermont senator agreed with the president's handling of the conflict
so far: "Is that too far for you or just about right?"
"It is very easy to criticize the president," Sanders replied.
"But this is an enormously complicated issue. We are here today because of the disastrous
blunder of the Bush-Cheney era, which got us into this war in Iraq in the first place, which
then developed the can of worms that we're trying to deal with right now."
"We have been at war for 12 years, we have spent trillions of dollars," he added.
"We have 500,000 men and women who have come home with PTSD and [traumatic brain injuries].
What I do not want, and what I fear very much is the United States getting sucked into a
quagmire, and being involved in perpetual warfare year after year after year.
You'd never know it from watching television, but there are many thousands of people in the
United States who take peace, justice, environmental protection, and government of the people
so seriously that they don't censor themselves whenever the president is a Democrat.
While many others are still debating whether it would be appropriate to criticize or protest
President Obama after a mere three and a half years of disaster, the people I have in mind
have been openly and honestly resisting the latest Wall Street war monger since before he was
elected.
Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank have collected 56 essays from prior to, from early on
in, and from quite recently during the Obama presidency. The collection, just published as Hopeless:
Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, has a consistent approach to its topic. The authors,
including Kevin Alexander Gray, Jeremy Scahill, Chris Floyd, Sibel Edmonds, Franklin Spinney,
Kathy Kelly, Marjorie Cohn, Chase Madar, Michael Hudson, Medea Benjamin, Charles Davis, Ray
McGovern, Dave Lindorff, Bill Quigley, Tariq Ali, Andy Worthington, Linn Washington, Jr., and
many more, don't agree on everything.
A few try to urge serious progressive plans on Obama that they would never have proposed
that Bush champion, not even rhetorically, not even for laughs. The book is not organized by
topic; it's a random, if chronological, ride through a catalog of catastrophes.
But it's united by the theme of horrendously bad government in the age of Obama. It ignores
the mythology and treats Obama based on his actual performance.
Reducing the charges against Obama developed in detail in this book to a Declaration of Independence-like
list of grievances might look something like this:
Obama has taken massive funding from Wall Street, appointed Wall Streeters to top positions,
and followed their lead, to the benefit of banksters and the detriment of the rest of us.
Obama, despite promises the contrary, has put lobbyists in positions of power in his administration.
Senator Obama's corporatist vote for the Class Action Fairness Act was in line with the
rest of his performance as senator and later president.
Obama has taken massive funding from war profiteers and worked in their interest, empowering
a collection of war hawks from the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton eras, and including no
opponent of militarism in any high office.
Obama abandoned the people of Gaza to their fate beneath Israeli bombs.
Obama bailed out AIG, but not you or me.
Obama delayed de-escalation in Iraq and tried every way he could to avoid complete withdrawal.
Obama has expanded secrecy, sought retribution against whistleblowers, expanded warrentless
spying, protected confessed torturers, revived military commissions, and expanded the military.
Obama has made anti-environmentalist corporate tools the heads of the Departments of
the Interior and Agriculture.
Obama's administration facilitated and accepted a military coup in Honduras.
Obama has continued and expanded upon aggressively inhumane immigration policies.
Obama championed corporate health coverage over Medicare for All.
Obama tripled the size of the war on Afghanistan.
Obama has championed nuclear power.
Obama has backed murderers in Colombia and put U.S. troops into that country in the
interests of big oil.
Obama has dramatically escalated drone killings, developing a new type of war.
Obama has continued pointless killing in Afghanistan on the basis of false pretenses.
Obama has appointed a deeply flawed candidate to the Supreme Court.
Obama has expanded the weaponization and the use of nuclear power in space.
Obama facilitated the kind of drilling that created the BP oil gusher in the Gulf of
Mexico, and then sought to cover up the extent of the damage.
Obama has kept tax breaks for billionaires in place, persuading his followers to continue
calling them "the Bush Tax Cuts."
Obama has claimed the power to torture and to "rendition" prisoners and kidnap victims
to other countries that torture.
Obama has promoted corporate culture and CEO heroes, while failing to promote nonprofit
groups -- a fantasy that contributing author Ralph Nader proposes for Obama while never
having proposed it for Bush.
Obama has pushed deregulation as a solution to the problems caused by deregulation.
Obama has served Israel at the expense of human rights, peace, and democracy.
Obama has gone around Congress and courts to approve of Monsanto's GMOs.
Obama has tortured Bradley Manning.
Obama has pushed U.S. weapons sales on foreign nations.
Obama has punished Iranians with sanctions while threatening war.
Obama has expanded nuclear weapons spending.
Obama has worked largely against the interests of organized labor.
Obama has sabotaged efforts to protect the earth's climate.
Obama has thrown Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block.
Obama has extended the worst parts of the PATRIOT Act, plus secret parts we haven't
seen yet but which are somehow nonetheless "law."
Obama has militarized police forces, expanded wiretaps, prosecuted Muslims for speech,
raided activists' homes, preemptively detained journalists, and supported the prison industrial
complex and the widespread use of solitary confinement.
Obama has launched a fraudulent war on Libya as a "humanitarian" effort, while aiding
human rights abuses in Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere.
Obama has abandoned his effort to close Guantanamo, which was only ever -- in reality
-- an effort to move one of the United States' lawless concentration camps to Illinois from
Cuba.
Obama chose to pursue an insufficient economic stimulus bill, not to mention increasing
economically damaging military spending each year thus far.
Obama has continued the "war on drugs."
And Obama has shut down activism in this country by appearing to be what he is not and
by virtue of the malady that causes millions of people to believe that self-governance consists
of cheering for one team in a sporting competition.
St. Clair and Frank describe Obama as "so innately conflict-averse that even when pummeled
with racist slurs he wouldn't punch back." But Obama does not appear to try to minimize conflict
across the board. He avoids conflict with those on the right -- and often there is little
basis for, or value in, supposing that his mental state is one of surrender as opposed to agreement.
There are two things that Obama is able to count on.
First, no matter how seriously he attacks the interests of ordinary people, major
liberal groups will support him.
Second, no matter how much he supports the agenda of the right, major rightwing groups
will attack him while demanding more.
These two states of affairs feed each other. Attacks on Obama from the right are absolutely
essential to generating his liberal support.
Obama is the Not-Romney candidate. And that liberal support helps produce attacks from the
right.
It's hard not to feel a sense of deepening dread about what this country's doing in the world,
and the inevitable blowback.
I did not feel this way a year ago. Then it seemed that U.S. imperialism was in retreat. Not
that the leopard can change its spots; the system is, after all, what it is.
(All U.S. schoolchildren should be taught, as part of their basic civics education, by conscientious
elementary, middle school and high school teachers, that they live in animperialistcountry. The term itself ought to be popularized. This is
what politicians like Obama actually refer to, elliptically, when they call the U.S. "exceptional."
Most of the world's 196 nations are, after all, not imperialist countries.
Most aren't oligarchies controlled by a top 1%, who control 42% of the nation's wealth,
investing much of it in cheap foreign labor while the domestic standard of living declines.
Most do not have incarceration and criminal supervision rates of 1 in 32 citizens.
Most do not have police forces equipped with heavy military equipment sometimes savagely
used against their citizens. Most nations don't channel citizens' tax dollars to state "security"
forces that systematically collect their people's and others' electronic and telephone communications.
Most don't spend billions of dollars in order to overthrow other countries' governments.
Most don't maintain 860 military bases outside their borders; most don't every few years
attack other countries in declared or undeclared wars. Most don't back the Israelis in everything
they do, and nobody else blocks every UN vote that evenly mildly criticizes Israel. And
so on.)
Still-mindful of the horrible general situation-a year ago I was feeling guardedly optimistic
that U.S. imperialism was entering a less toxic stage. Obama's horrifying plan to assault Syria
had been stymied, by popular opposition, Congressional unease, and Vladimir Putin's timely chess
move (arranging for Damascus to give up its chemical weapons arsenal). Obama was suddenly speaking
with Iran's new president Hassan Rouhani, and talks on Iran's civilian nuclear program had begun.
Obama was ignoring Binyamin Netanyahu's familiar, barked demands for the U.S. to bomb Iran.
2014 has been much gloomier. We have for one thing been forcibly reminded that there has been
no real change in foreign policy between the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.
The grotesque figure of Victoria Nuland, a Dick Cheney aide who stayed on to assist Hillary
Clinton, heads the East Europe desk. She is one of those neocons (married to another distinguished,
academic neocon) who strongly supported the Iraq War based on what she knew was a campaign of lies
and has never felt any pangs of guilt about it. Her political ideology requires contempt for truth
and morality. It's all about manipulating public opinion to achieve the objectives of the tiny circle
she loves and represents. The fact that she was retained in the State Department into the Obama
administration speaks volumes about the president's own outlook on the world.
Obama postures as a centrist. In practice this means he places himself midway between the
neoconservatives serving the interests of the 1% and the "liberal interventionists" serving the
1% in their efforts to impose what Paul Wolfowitz terms "full-spectrum dominance" in the world.
He is the textbook example of how all in his position must (and naturally do) kiss the ass of the
ruling class. This is his job. His (increasingly weak) historical distinction is to be the first
African-American to do so. (Not that anyone paying attention needed persuasion that being a person
of color doesn't make you good, or progressive, or even a harbinger of "change." It might just make
you useful, like Colin Powell was for Cheney and his neocon bunch. Or Condoleezza Rice was to the
U.S. power structure throughout George W. Bush's criminal, racist war on Iraq.)
Nuland made it her mission to topple the elected government of Ukraine, promoting the concept
that the Ukrainian people (who are in fact sharply divided) possess "European aspirations" (code
word for a supposed longing for entry into the European Union-under a painful IMF-imposed austerity
program-and for admission into the anti-Russian NATO military alliance which will oblige them to
cough up 2% of their GNP in military expenditures).
On February 22 Nuland got her way, after what she has herself boasted was a five billion dollar
U.S. investment in supporting (or generating and encouraging) those "European aspirations." On that
day neo-fascist sniper fire and building seizures-a violent, lightning putsch-toppled the
elected Ukrainian president, brought Nuland's hand-picked candidate to power as unelected prime
minister, brought neo-fascists into a European government for the first time since 1945, and caused
the ethic Russian population in the east to rise up in (what ought to be) understandable rebellion.
Realizing the U.S. objective was to first draw Ukraine into the EU, then to incorporate it into
NATO, then to expel the Russian Black Sea Fleet from the Crimean Peninsula, Moscow (I will not say
Putin, because virtually any Russian leader watching the alarming power-play would have
acted similarly) promptly and bloodlessly reasserted its historical ownership of the peninsula,
to the very apparent relief of its inhabitants. But the U.S. corporate media-with stunning uniformity,
omitting if not forbidding any reference to NATO expansion as a cause for U.S. meddling in Ukraine,
or Svoboda Party and Right Sector actions in the Maidan triggering a bloody coup, or legitimate
grievances and valid agency of the "Russian secessionists"in the east-constructed an imaginary narrative
that most people in this country have swallowed.
Just like they once swallowed the mythology about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
and al-Qaeda ties. (And let us note again that the systematic dissemination of lies through the
Pentagon, State Department and White House showing utmost contempt for the people of this country-designed
to convince them that they were facing imminent Iraqi attack-has, while well documented, never been
punished! The scum responsible live comfortably as TV commentators, university academics,
and think-tank "fellows.")
Most people in this country, to the extent that they watch or read the mainstream news, believe
that the Ukrainian people rose in a peaceful mass movement, ousted a corrupt leader, and established
a popular government that just wants to escape Russia's oppressive control and join democratic,
prosperous Europe. They believe that evil power-hungry Putin, nostalgic for the past, wants to re-create
the USSR or maybe Tsarist Russia. This is sheer nonsense, but the success of the State Department-corporate
press partnership in foisting this perception on the people is amazing. It shows that, even
though the masses have largely come to understand that they were lied to, big-time, in the build
up to the Iraq War-not just by politicians but a corporate media that was entirely obedient
taking its talking-point cues from the regime-they are still willing dupes. Lambs led to the slaughter.
(I find this depressing. But what can you do, but continue to rage against the lies of the corporate
media, and try to expose them to any who will hear?)
... ... ...
In a nutshell: the United States-having caused a Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq by destroying
the secular Baathist regime and its institutions in 2003; having produced the conditions that allowed
al-Qaeda (in the form of al-Zarqawi's initial group that has morphed into ISIL) to root itself in
Iraq, then Syria; having backed (as its best bet) the government headed by al-Maliki that gradually
alienated the Sunnis of Iraq; and having, through its savagery, racism, disrespect, ignorance, arrogance,
and incompetence, made itself entirely unwelcome among the peoples of the region-cannot accomplish
anything good in the Middle East.
Citizens and residents in this declining imperialist country-those paying attention, not just
innocently imbibing the Big Lies imagining we live in a free country with a free press-should feel
dread about what's to come. Having announced that the U.S. will "degrade and destroy ISIL" (without
any clue about how to actually do that, having ruled out coordination with Syria and Iran,
and having earned the hatred of the Iraqi Shiite militias) the U.S. seems doomed to either putting
its own boots on the ground, enraging everyone in the region, or relying on proxies whom the Iraqi
Shiites will reject.
In the weeks after 9/11, witnessing the coordinated campaign of the media oligarchy (Time-Warner,
Viacom, Disney, GE, News Corp., CBS) that controls what most of us see and read, I felt truly frightened.
Not about nukes over New York City (although I did have some vivid dreams about such stuff). But
about the onset of fascism in this country. The constant syrupy patriotic music playing on the heart-strings
on cable TV, the omnipresence of the U.S. flag, the sudden ambiance of those insane terror-warning
colored level warnings deliberately promoting the sort of paranoia prescribed by Nazi specialists
on mass mind-control. The emergence of new fascist-sounding institutions and bizarre popularization
of unfamiliar terms (like "Homeland"), the stupidity of George W. Bush's pronouncements ("axis of
evil" etc.), Dick Cheney's calm prediction of a "War on Terror" to last forever. The warnings
to TV commentators that they could be fired for challenging the government line-and the actual
firings. The Patriot Act and Congress's bovine, universal endorsement of it, passed into law unread.
The clear indications that "my" government was manipulating powerful emotions of fear and hatred,
and inventing, Nazi-like, pretexts for ongoing war. Yes. I felt frightened by the manifest, staggering
power of the beast. And that was before Bush and his team began their sadistic destruction
of Iraq and that enterprise was still in its planning stage.
My anxiety level has risen and fallen in the years since, and was, as I said, lowered by some
events last fall. But it's back up there now as I switch between cable channels noting the total
merger of state power and the corporate media and total absence of moral clarity.
The egregious misrepresentation of events in Ukraine. The total lack of context of events in
Iraq and Syria, and the gracious reception (as astute commentators) of those most responsible for
the Iraq War based on lies. These are sickening things.
Those not feeling dread should feel it. My gut feeling is, if George W. Bush and his dad
opened the gates of hell, Obama has blown the gates off entirely. By attacking the Islamic State-solely
in alliance with the Muslim states whose governments are most regarded as U.S. lackeys-Obama has
merely enhanced the crazies' legitimacy. Isn't that obvious?
To save Baghdad from ISIL conquest-a feat that would outweigh the "fall" of Saigon in 1975 as
a geopolitical humiliation for the U.S.-Obama is trying to cobble together a collection of Turks,
Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs all of whom have complex contradictions with one another and
with the U.S. He claims to have assembled a "coalition" of over 60 nations (mostly western) in the
heroic anti-ISIL cause.
The majority in all categories (those providing air support and military equipment; those providing
"humanitarian assistance"; and those providing other, basically political legitimacy and support)
are NATO countries. 15 of the 21 in the first category are NATO members, plus Australia, while 6
are members of the Arab League. Aside from Iraq (whose fractious elite opposes any foreign troops
on the ground) and Lebanon (in which Hizbollah is a leading political-military force and which is
only "participating" by receiving arms to defend itself from ISIL) all these Arab countries are
repressive monarchies that promote Sunni Islam and have very bad relations with the Shiites of Iraq
and Iran.
The ISIL thugs can argue-not so inaccurately-that the force the U.S. has organized against them
is a force of Christian Crusaders and their corrupt not-really-Muslim allies (including the hated
NATO member Turkey), in a war to thwart the progress of the Caliphate versus the Alawite heretics
in Syria and the Shiite idolaters of Iraq and Iran. And they can also note that by excluding Syria's
Assad and the Iranian regime-who have actually fought ISIL on the battlefield, winning some victories--the
stupid infidels are miscalculating again, big time.
The "coalition" is not going to defeat ISIS any more than the earlier (now dissipated) "coalitions"
defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Sunni "insurgents" in Iraq. Its intervention is going
to exacerbate the misery of Syria, Iraq and the whole region and maybe trigger a real world war.
I have a modest proposal, to those dreading the likely results of more war against the generated
by recent U.S. imperialist wars-the crucifiers of children, beheaders of Shiites, destroyers of
priceless monuments. To those dreading the prospect that the failure of air strikes will inevitably
entail the dispatch of U.S. and allied ground troops in what former CIA chief Leon Panetta recently
predicted would be another Thirty Years War.
How about an anti-imperialist revolution in this country instead?
Seriously. How about, by toppling those responsible for the total destabilization of the
Middle East, we send a message to the peoples of the region that we don't want to dominate you anymore
(not that the ordinary person here ever did)?
How about--after the necessary revolution here-we say to those confronting the religious
crazies, craving secularism and democracy:
You have our political and moral support, and we now can (now having toppled the 1% who have
insanely determined U.S. policy forever), finally talk about aiding you (as internationalist
brothers and sisters-not the corporate scum, war profiteers, uniformed torturers, trigger-happy
bombers, Israel lackeys, and deceitful warmongering liars whom have earned your rightful hatred
in the past) to make your own revolutions.
Just a dream, maybe. But how else to end the dread?
Americans certainly have not been immune to the secession impulse, of course, including a great
civil war costing millions of lives. While that war presumably settled the matter, even today a
recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 23.9 percent of Americans would like to see their state pull
away from the union, up from 18 percent in 2008. In the previous year under George W. Bush,
32 percent of liberals thought breaking away would be a good idea, compared to 17 percent of conservatives.
Today under Barack Obama, 30 percent of Republicans and even 20 percent of Democrats would have
their state secede.
Former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul
even claimed a recent "growth of support for secession" inspired by Scotland and demonstrated
by the one million Californians who supported dividing the state into six entities, saying this
"should cheer all supporters of freedom." He was congratulated for raising the issue by Daniel
McCarthy of The American Conservative, but McCarthy responded that
secession is not a principle of liberty. Not only does secession often trade one master for
another-as Scotland would do under the European Union and NATO-but there is no guarantee the new
state would foster internal liberty. McCarthy argues persuasively that for Scotland and America,
secession and union are questions of security and power, which undergird prosperity, self-government,
and individual freedom. For much of the rest of the world, poisoned by ethnic and sectarian
hatreds, secession means nationalism and civil strife. In both cases, breaking up existing states
to create new ones is a revolutionary and dangerous act, one more apt to imperil liberty than
advance it.
Indeed, Paul's own original article on the matter viewed secession sentiments mostly as pressure
on a national government to limit its power over local units as opposed to being valuable in itself.
He specifically urged "devolution of power to smaller levels of government," which can be a
very different thing from secession. While secession is problematical as McCarthy argues, devolution
of power within a national government is essential to liberty.
While unsuccessful as secession, Scotland's threat forced even unionist party Prime Minister
David Cameron to promise greater local autonomy not only for it but for Wales, Northern Ireland,
and even England itself, although federalism will be challenging for Britain since England holds
85 percent of the population. While England basically invented local government with the parish
(and transferred this ideal to America while it was being suffocated at home), it has long marginalized
local government and restricted its powers. Margaret Thatcher, for all of her love of freedom, overrode
local governments with abandon. Scotland's message just might awaken England to its historical ties
to local and regional government. Some useful ideas could be found by dusting off its 1957-1960
report of the Royal Commission on Local Government.
Centralization's historic claim to greatness was ending Europe's wars, especially those of religion
through the 17th-century Treaty of Westphalia. Despite the claim by an overwhelming number of historians
and commentators ever since, ending the 30 Years War did not end wars on the continent, much less
elsewhere. A long series of dynastic wars followed, including the worldwide War of Spanish Succession,
which Americans call the French and Indian War. More important, the 30 Years War was not a religious
but a dynastic struggle. Catholic France actually fought on the supposed Protestant side. Major
dynastic wars continued right up to World War I.
Westphalia actually created a number of powers sufficiently strong to challenge each other
in alliances to decide which would rule, leading to the instability of the period. The world
is more peaceful today because only one power emerged from World War II and the Cold War. While
the U.S. has engaged more than was prudent, as McCarthy emphasizes, "a world consisting of more
states more evenly matched, would almost certainly not be more peaceful." Those who understand the
fragility of freedom "should appreciate that all states are aggressive and seek to expand, if they
can-the more of them, the more they fight, until big ones crush the smaller." -[ This is essentially
neocon agnument, see Kagan)
American hegemony properly controlled thus assists world peace, and secession could threaten
international and domestic liberty. Still, secession in its tamed form of federalism and decentralization
presents the secret to domestic liberty, especially in larger states. The ability to devolve power
to the lowest levels possible-first to the individual, then to the family, to free associations
and businesses, to the community, to local and regional government, and only to the national state
when no other institution can perform the function-allows freedom to adjust to community differences
and make individuals more satisfied with their national state.
Where secession sentiments are high, it is a strong indicator that too much power is centralized.
It is a lesson for Britain but, alas, increasingly one for the United States as well as a glance
at recent federal court decisions immediately confirms.
Ron Paul delivered a barn burner of a keynote speech at this year's LPAC conference. It was an
hour long tour-de-force on fiat currency, attacks on civil liberties, the Federal Reserve, war --
and most importantly how all of these fit together and deprive us of our life, liberty, and happiness.
Dr. Paul decried the one-party state we live in, particularly when it comes to war.
Speaking about the recent Congressional passage of a continuing resolution to keep the government
funded at current levels, he said that while the resolution keeps spending at the same level,
war spending is exempt and will rise.
He mocked those Members on both sides who voted for the resolution:
We gotta to keep the war going! And we gotta rubber stamp what Obama wants! Oh no, we don't
like Obama. Yes but we love his wars! Except for one thing: he's not bombing enough people!
"Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions
do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased
security will be seized upon those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official
censorship and concealment.
That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of
my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my
words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes
or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know."
"There are men, now in power in this country, who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope
with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression as
long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit."
John Lindsay
This link below is a
fairly long and very interesting discussion of the recent crisis in the Ukraine, and what some of
the bigger picture implications and reasons for it may be.
However, I am starting this video towards the end, so that you can hear one key point that Professor
Stephen Cohen of Princeton makes that is in my opinion essential.
He states that there is no longer a place in the popular mainstream media for debate over
the different positions and opinions on key policy questions outside of a narrow range of acceptable
views as decided by a few major media outlets. If there is a dissenting view that is distasteful
to the powerful interests that influence the government, they will not allow it to be heard or discussed
rationally, except perhaps in a few scholarly journals out of the reach of most.
And in this I think he is absolutely correct. And it is not just about issues such as a new Cold
War, but on a broad range of social and financial topics as well. Journalism as I once knew it no
longer exists except in select locations on the Internet.
Staged discussions between paid 'strategists' from the two major political parties with commentary
from a few corporate media representatives is not journalism, and does not provide the platform
for the serious discussion of issues that affect all of us.
The seeds for the decline of American mainstream media were sown by the overturn in 1987
of the Fairness Doctrine which required broadcasters to air both side of controversial subjects,
and not just the officially sanctioned sides of a carefully selected and phrased question or topic.
And the Communications Act of 1934 was further gutted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which
permitted corporate conglomerates to acquire and establish powerful monopolies across the press,
radio, and television.
I am finding too many cases where topics are being effectively censored by implicit agreement
of the corporate media to either not cover a story, or to permit only certain aspects and views
of an issue to be heard.
I am no big fan of the governments of either Russia or China. It is the oligarchs who like
the way these statist governments operate, but only when they are making deals with them and getting
their way. It was Bill Gates who came back from a tour of China in 2005 and
praised this new kind of capitalism.
I have been to both Russia and China, and I prefer neither of those brands of oligarchy and monopoly
in alliance with the State. And so I am concerned about the modern attraction by the powerful in
the West to emulate them, to manage the news, to establish monopolies, and to hide behind secrecy
as they engage in undemocratic backroom deals with powerful interests as a standard matter of doing
the business of the nation.
This de facto censoring of the news in the West is not a healthy situation. And so we
must get information about important topics where we can. The coverage of too many news topics,
from Snowden to the financial crisis to the Ukraine, have been disgracefully one sided and carry
the stink of propaganda wrapped in a press under the thumb of a few moneyed interests.
You may wish to listen to the entire interview which I found to be most interesting. Please click
on the link below to start the interview at the point of discussing censorship.
Quote: "Let's talk about what sanctions mean first of all. It's an institutionalization of the new
Cold War. Once the sanctions were enacted, it means formally, institutionally, in legislation, in presidential
degrees from the American side - we're now in a Cold War. Remember something else. It is very easy to
announce sanctions, very easy. Politically, it's popular: people say, "Oh, good, we now have punished
Russia" - whether we have or not is another question. It is very hard to end sanctions. "
The West and Russia cant seem to get over their differences, with the tensions between the Washington
and Kremlin changing the stakes for the whole world. How far would this confrontation go? Is there
another Cold War coming? And finally, will the world once again know the horror of a Nuclear War
looming over the humanity?
We ask these questions to a prominent American scholar on Russian studies, Professor at New York
University and Princeton University. Stephen Cohen is on Sophie&Co today.
The West and Russia can't seem to get over their differences, with the tensions between the
Washington and Kremlin changing the stakes for the whole world. How far would this confrontation
go? Is there another Cold War coming? And finally, will the world once again know the horror of
a Nuclear War looming over the humanity?
We ask these questions to a prominent American scholar on Russian studies, Professor at New
York University and Princeton University. Stephen Cohen is on Sophie&Co today.
Sophie Shevardnadze: Stephen, it's really great to have you back and to
have you on our show once again. Now, you've called the current U.S.-Russia crisis "the most dangerous
confrontation in many decades" - are we close to a war?
Stephen Cohen:Let me tell you what I think happened. We are in a new Cold War.
In America, the policy-makers say it's not a Cold War, because they don't want to take a responsibility
for it, because their policies, and not just recently, since the 99s, have led to Cold War. It began
before, I think, the Ukrainian crisis, but what happened in Ukraine, is that about a year ago, in
November 2013, there was a political dispute in Kiev, about whether Yanukovych will sign the agreement
with the EU. That political dispute, after the coup in February became a Ukrainian Civil War, generally
speaking between Kiev and the South-East of Ukraine. The Civil War then became what we call a "proxy
war", with the U.S. and NATO supporting Kiev and Moscow supporting the eastern Ukrainian rebels.
The danger is, and I think it continues even now, though some people think the ceasefire has averted
the danger, but the ceasefire is not solid, we don't know if it's going to be here tomorrow or next
week...the danger is that the proxy war would lead by accident or intention to the intervention
of Russian military forces in the East and NATO forces in the West, and that would be the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
SS: That's what I was going to ask you - is there really a realistic scenario
in your head where U.S. and Russia could actually enter into direct military confrontation?
SC: Yes. I just explained it to you. If the war, the Civil war in Ukraine begins
again, the military aspect of it, if the ceasefire fails, if, let's say, Kiev attacks the Donbas
again...if Russia feels the need to help the Donbas militarily - it is being discussed in NATO,
the possibility of NATO forces entering Western Ukraine. Now, what would that mean? You would have
the America-led NATO forces in Western Ukraine, whether on the ground or in the air, it doesn't
matter, Russian forces in the air or on the ground - and that would be a modern version of the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Now, I notice you're smiling, like I've said something fantastic, but we have to
think the unthinkable, because who knew 2 years ago we were going to be in a completely….
SS: Well the unthinkable is nuclear weapons being involved - do you think
that's a possibility as well?
SC: Well, let's look at what's happened. Russia has the doctrine; they've had
it since the 99s, because Russian conventional forces are weaker than American-NATO conventional
forces. Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons if Western conventional forces threaten
the Russian state and Russia. Meanwhile, as was announced in the New York Times on the front-page,
maybe 2 weeks ago, I forgot, that President Obama is about to sign a budgetary decree of what he
calls a "major modernization" of our nuclear arsenal at the cost of $1 trln over 30 years. One trillion
dollars is only the cost today, it doesn't include overrun inflation, and it's a fortune. Meanwhile,
your government has been, quote, "modernizing its nuclear weapons" - but let's talk as adults, what
does the word "modernization" means? It means buildup, so both sides are now building up their nuclear
weapons, we're in a new Cold War, we're beginning a new nuclear arms race, and the danger is now
immense - does that mean there's going to be war? No. The problem is to avert war you need leadership,
political leadership, and the question of who's leading correctly and who's not is a political discussion,
but the danger is there, absolutely 100%.
SS: There is another huge problem: between the two are the sanctions, the
imposed sanctions. Now, Moscow insists that it did not help to push for a ceasefire over the situation
in Ukraine in Minsk to actually stop the sanctions, but it helped it, because restoring peace in
Ukraine is much more important for Russia. Then you have the West that's always tying sanctions
to the agreement made in Minsk over Ukraine.
SC: Let's talk about what sanctions mean first of all. It's an institutionalization
of the new Cold War. Once the sanctions were enacted, it means formally, institutionally, in legislation,
in presidential degrees from the American side - we're now in a Cold War. Remember something else.
It is very easy to announce sanctions, very easy. Politically, it's popular: people say, "Oh, good,
we now have punished Russia" - whether we have or not is another question. It is very hard to end
sanctions. Remember, Jackson-Vanik, was enacted in 1970s to force Jewish immigration, permit Jewish
immigration from the Soviet Union. They only removed Jackson-Vanik a few years ago, long after the
time when more Jews were coming from Israel back to Russia than wanted to leave Russia to go to
Israel. Politically, and particular with the presidential campaign coming in America, which candidate
is going to say 2 years from now: "Things are good with us and Russia, I propose removing the sanctions"?
Not one. They'll think it's dangerous…
SS: Now, the Foreign Affairs committee in the U.S. is actually thinking
of turning this who sanction-thing into part of law - that would obviously limit very much the American
administration's capacity of cooperating with Russia…
SC: That's right. This law, by, what I call, the "war-party" in the Senate -
it's not the whole Senate, it's the "war-party", Republican and Democratic - have been drafting
a very harsh, Cold War law to punish Russia in many ways, and, moreover, make it possible to send
American weapons to countries that are not members of NATO, but were former parts of the Soviet
Union. They got a long list, not only Ukraine - this is a reckless, dangerous law, it's not clear
if it will pass - some Senators are against it - but, in this political atmosphere, it might pass.
Now, of course Obama could veto it - we don't know…
SS: Do you think he will be doing this? Because, like you've said, it would
take forever to actually undo that afterwards?
SC: That's correct. Will Obama veto it? We don't know if it will get to Obama,
it's got to go out of committee , then it's got to go to the full Senate, then it's got to get a
majority, and then it's got to go to Obama, I don't know. We're not sure what Obama does from day-to-day,
I mean, if he changes his mind... Now, if the Ukrainian Civil War begins again, if Kiev and the
South-East begin fighting and shooting and shelling and what else, now, then I think Obama would
sign it. But if the ceasefire and negotiations are unfolding - I don't think Obama would actually
sign this. But the strange thing is, it needs to be explained, but I'm not sure I can completely,
is why were new sanctions brought against Russia just as Putin and Poroshenko agree on a ceasefire
and negotiations?
SS: And why the sanctions are tied into the agreement made in Minsk? Because
the agreement is about the ceasefire, not about sanctions…
SC: That's right. They agreed in Minsk, Poroshenko and Putin, and the others,
the Ukrainians, and the EU, that there would be a ceasefire and negotiations both about trade, but
also about the new Ukraine, if there's going to be one. And suddenly, these sanctions were imposed.
I think - I can't prove it – that this was a compromise between Chancellor Merkel and Germany, who
has a softer approach towards Russia, wants to end this and get back to business as usual - and
the war parties in NATO and Washington; and there was a compromise agreement, where the sanctions
were something that Merkel agreed to in return for something she got.
SS: I'm sure you've heard about American vice-president speech at Harvard
University, where he revealed that American leadership actually had to embarrass the EU into imposing
sanctions on Russia over Ukraine. To me, it seemed like it came as surprise for the EU - do you
think EU is really willing to hurt itself because America wants it to?
SC: I don't think, Sophie, that we can talk on these terms of singular entities.
There are factions, there are groups. Roughly speaking, it's not entirely precise, there's a "war-party"
in Washington, there's a "war-party" in NATO, in the EU, there's a "war-party" in Kiev, because
Poroshenko is under attack in Kiev, because of the ceasefire, and - please, forgive me - there's
a "war-party" in Moscow that feels that Putin should not have agreed to the ceasefire, that the
rebels should have gone on and taken Mariupol, maybe Odessa and that he gave up too much in agreeing
to end the fighting and so forth . So, you've got forces in Washington, Kiev, Europe and Moscow
who want more war. Now, Merkel leads, in my analysis, the party that doesn't want more war, it wants
this war ended, wants to get rid of it, wants to have some negotiations, and wants to EU end the
sanctions or at least resume normal trade.
SS: Business as usual, yeah.
SC: Well, because… look, what is sanctions? We think we're punishing Russia
- and we are, it's going to hurt Russia, there's no question; but look what's happening in Europe
- European economy is down, Italian and French farmers are furious at their governments and the
EU, because the Russian market is closed to them, there's too much whatever they produce - cheese,
grapes, oranges, bananas - I don't know - but 40% of those goes to Russia and suddenly there's no
Russian market. That means they have to cut their prices in Europe, there's too much supply, too
low demand, they can't meet their costs, these people going to go out of business. Sanctions cut
both ways.
SS: You've also said that the whole Ukrainian thing has split Europe into
two.
SC: Three.
SS: Or three - so how are working out a single policy to actually patch
things up?
SC: They aren't! You hear different voices...look, Merkel went, about a month
ago or so, I forget, in August, I think to Kiev, and after talking to Poroshenko stands before the
press and says "the war must end, there's no military solution, and there must be ceasefire negotiations."
Poroshenko says: "I agree." Then Poroshenko comes to Washington couple of weeks ago, addresses Congress,
and says "We must fight, give us weapons, we're fighting for democracy, we must defeat Russia".
He's speaking out of both sides of his mouth because there's conflict in the West, and he's trying
to play the middle game.
SS: But here's another thing. The most recent UN report on situation in
Eastern Ukraine actually confirms that Kiev has violated ceasefire agreement, but this is obviously
being ignored by the West and Kiev's government keeps on receiving aids and blessings…
SC: What we do know is this: there's been fighting for the Donetsk airport that
never stopped, and suddenly it appears that Kiev shelled Donetsk and it did that on the day that
school began, they shelled some schools. It's horrible...think of what's happened; let's open our
minds to the tragedy. In November 2013 the EU told Yanukovich, then the President of Ukraine: "sign
an agreement with us or go to Russia", and Putin said "why do they have to choose, let's have a
three-way agreement of trade and financial aid to Kiev" - you remember that, it was very clear.
Lavrov, Russian foreign office and everybody… and Europe said "No" and Washington said "No, we can't
do that". Now, what's happened: near a year later, they ask Putin "please come to Minsk and discuss
with Poroshenko Russia, Ukraine and Europe, the three-way deal." Four thousand people have died,
one million people have been turned into refugees, the Donbas has been destroyed for the agreement
that could have happened without one shot fired in November one year ago. Who's responsible for
that? Historians will look back and ask, "Who is responsible for the deaths of those people, that
destruction, those refugees, when the outcome was available in November 2013, with a little diplomacy."
That is a collapse of diplomacy. Why did the West exclude Russia from the negotiations in November,
that's the question. Do you know the reason why? What would think?
SS: What would you tell me?
SC: I think it was about NATO expansion, that trade agreement.
SS: Obviously, that's another huge topic, because many believe that NATO
expansion is the main stumbling point between Russia and the West. Also, NATO strategy to actually
move Ukraine out of Russia's orbit - it is a huge problem, for Russia. Should Russia consider NATO's
actions in Europe as a threat?
SC: If I found out where you live and I came to your house, and I've sat out
in front of your house with a lot of weapons, and I've said to you: "Sophie, I'm not here to harm
you, this is good for you, this is security" – you'd be frightened and buy a few guns to protect
yourself, obviously. Look, when NATO expansion began in 1990s, the late George F. Kennan, who was
considered the wisest man in America about American-Russian relations, said "This is a terrible,
reckless, stupid decision" and it will lead to a new Cold War. Twenty years later, George - I call
him George, because we both were in Princeton together, we saw each other regularly - was correct,
and he was not alone. I've said it, Jack Matlock who was Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet Union
and Gorbachev… A lot of people warned that the expansion of NATO eastward was going to lead to a
very bad situation.
SS: But was the expansion a deliberate idea, maybe, a deliberate act, with
an eventual stand-off with Russia in mind?
SC: How can you expand a military alliance without a deliberate decision? It
wasn't as if nobody was paying attention, and NATO was on wheels and just kind of drifted…Major
decision was taken under Clinton to do it, and it was a catastrophically unwise decision, and not
only because it led to conflict with Russia, but what it said to all these new countries in NATO
that were part of the Soviet Block is that you don't have to have normal diplomatic relations with
Russia, that the Baltics don't have to negotiate with Russia about the rights of Russian-speaking
people there. You don't have to negotiate.. Georgia, who thought it was going to get into NATO one
time - you don't have to negotiate, you can punch Russia in the nose and hide behind NATO. How much
diplomacy is going on? Very little. That was one of the bad things about NATO expansion, it was
the end of diplomacy between Eastern Europe and Russia. The expansion of NATO was done for one main
purpose - to increase security in Europe. It did just the opposite.
SS: And NATO's chief keeps on saying - the new chief - that there's no contradiction
between increased NATO presence in Eastern Europe and constructive relations with Russia…
SC: That's an ideology, that's not a reality. I mean, it's foolish, everybody
else knows it isn't true. Russia is preparing for war, as NATO moves closer to Russia. And, by the
way, remember something very important, which is often forgotten: missile defense. Russia's tried
to compromise on where this missile defense would be located. Russia has proposed it to be joined,
Russian-American. What did the U.S. do? They gave the missile defense project to NATO, so missile
defense is now part of the NATO expansion. It's not just NATO bases coming towards Russia, it's
the missile defense. Now, U.S. says the missile defense is not directed at Russia, but American
scientists have said, in its fourth stage it will be able to strike down Russian missiles as the
rise towards their ultimate trajectory. Now, that means that Russia will not have the deterrent
and the nuclear peace that had been kept for 45 years, on this crazy theory - but it has worked
until now - that we won't attack you because we know if we attack you, you will attack us and vice
versa - missile defense could end that.
SS: Also, just recently, the U.S. has shipped tanks, soldiers, armored vehicles
to the Baltic states - I mean, it's the first time since the end of the Cold War, that U.S. has
shipped armed vehicles into Europe. What threat is that aimed at?
SC: Look, this is driven by the Ukrainian crisis. There's a theory in the West
of what the meaning of Ukrainian crisis is - that the Ukrainian crisis was started by Putin - that
isn't true, but that's believed, that's the ideology - and the Ukrainian crisis is only the beginning,
that Russia, the Kremlin, Putin, Russian imperialism is going to move on to the Baltics, to Poland.
It's all ridiculous, there's no evidence for it. But, there's been a group in NATO that for at least
15 years - you remember, there was an agreement between NATO and Moscow, that even if NATO would
expand, there would be no NATO permanent military bases in these countries that came in closer to
Russia - but there's been a group in NATO for years who wanted to do that, they've seized the Ukrainian
crisis at the NATO Wales summit, month ago, to create this so-called rapid deployment force of 4,000
men. What good are 4 thousand man against the Russian army? Zero, but there's a reason: there going
to go bases, communication centers, barracks, air strips in Poland, in three Baltic countries, maybe
in Romania - Romania hasn't quite agreed - and that would be not only NATO expansion politically,
which is what it was previously, and now it's an actual military expansion. In addition, there is
a plan, as you know, to build land-based missile defense installations in Poland and in those countries,
so you're right, for the first time there's a military expansion of NATO, not just political, towards
Russia - but it's not too late to stop it. It's not too late, if leadership does what leadership
is supposed to do, if statesmen and women do what they are supposed to do - we can end this Ukrainian
crisis and stop this military expansion of NATO, it's not too late, but it's five minutes to midnight.
SS: How hard is it for you to get your point across the American public
when it comes to mainstream media, because, you know, you're always welcome here, at RT, but do
you get a platform where you can talk and do you think you're getting your point across?
SC: Let me say a word about RT. Some people say if you go on RT it's unpatriotic
- it's complete nonsense. It's just that they don't want to have a debate. In the U.S., I'm not
alone, there's a very famous American professor John Mearsheimer in Chicago, who has published a
big article in the most important American journal of the elite, "Foreign Affairs" with the title
of which is something like "America caused the Ukrainian crisis" - it was a sensation. I've been
arguing that for several months, I was very happy that professor Mearsheimer joined this debate.
Jack Matlock, you remember who he is?
SS: Yeah, I've actually interviewed him recently.
SC: You know what Jack thinks. He agrees this was reckless, this was bad Western
policy. Here's the problem - the three major opinion-shaping newspapers in the U.S., Washington
Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal do not actually…
SS: The New York times actually called you "dissenting villain" because
of your views on Russia.
SC: When I was a kid, there was a saying "sticks and bones will break my bones,
but names will never hurt me" - but names do hurt you, because they stigmatize you, they make people
not invite you on mainstream television. The problem is that the Washington elite depends primarily
on mainstream television and on the three newspapers: The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall
Street Journal. Our point of view never, since last February, when the crisis began, has appeared
on their opinion pages, never. We've been excluded. Jack Matlock hasn't been there, professor Mearsheimer
hasn't been there, my articles have been rejected. I've never seen this before in America, this
is something very strange to me, because newspapers used to like controversy, but on this issue,
they seem to have convinced themselves there's only one point of view.
SS: Alright, you've got about 90 seconds. Tell me, how does the situation
affect the policy-making, decision-making, in the White House. Do you feel there's lack of expertise
on Russia?
SC: Yes. We don't even know who advises Obama. In the past, we always knew to
whom the President listens, even if those people were not in the government. But we know, for example,
that probably among the wisest men about Russia today in the U.S. is Henry Kissinger. He's 92 years
old - Obama hasn't talked to him.
SS: He has also actually said that demonizing Putin is not a policy.
SC: "It's an alibi for not having a policy." I think it's worse; it's an alibi
for having a bad policy. I'll tell you what we do: I'm old, I've been through this before, I went
through this in 70s… those of us who think as I do, we keep speaking out when we can, we're organizing,
we try to talk to Senators and Congress people who are willing to listen to us. The problem is,
most of them are Democrats and they don't want to come out against Obama, because there are Congressional
elections coming in November. They don't want to do anything to be critical of Obama publicly, because
the Democrats are having a hard time holding the Senate and the House. This is not about Russia,
this is about our social welfare programs, our Supreme Court, about helping poor people, about social
justice in America - it's a very important issue, I don't fault them. But, what I say to them: "Ok,
after the elections I expect to see you on TV saying this Ukrainian crisis is a disaster and we
are also guilty, not just Russia". We'll see if they say anything. What else can you do?
SS: Thank you very much, Stephen Cohen, very famous American scholar on
Russian studies, thanks a lot for this interview.
Gary Seven
"We've been excluded. Jack Matlock hasn't been there, professor Mearsheimer hasn't been
there, my articles have been rejected. I've never seen this before in America, this is something
very strange to me, because newspapers used to like controversy, but on this issue, they
seem to have convinced themselves there's only one point of view."
"We don't even know who advises Obama. In the past, we always knew to whom the President
listens, even if those people were not in the government."
This is important b/c to me at least, it signals a new level gained in elitist message
management. Before, you could have a "debate" within predetermined parameters of debate.
Some of it actually made sense, but this new phase is now the full censorship mode in effect.
No debate of any type. I've seen it in many journals. Look how horribly you are treated by
discussing any topic that suggests a conspiracy that is not sanctioned by the MSM or paints
the establishment in a derogatory manner not acceptable by the elites.
MH17 is a in-your-face conspiracy that begs a real investigation yet, it is not to be discussed
in the West outside of the usual Rebel bashing sort. It's all connected and we ignore it at
our peril.
Maxim Wexler
"The expansion of NATO was done for one main purpose - to increase security in Europe." Security
is secondary; the main purpose is to spread Chicken McNuggets east and take Russian resources
west.
Quote: "In modern history, no U.S. administration has proved more inept at dealing with Russia."
Despite typical for US MSMs large amount of neocon, Fox news inspired and absurd comments there are
several commentators for this the Atlantic article well worth reading (see below)
....The U.S. did not have to travel down this road, but it did, and there appears to be no way
to turn back-or no way leaders in the West or Russia are prepared to take. The newly precarious
state of affairs derives, in great measure, from a failure on the part of Western, and mostly American,
leaders to understand Russia, which they should have tried to do, given its strategic importance,
nuclear arsenal, continental dimensions, natural resources, and potential as a troublemaker-or dealmaker-in
many troubled parts of the world. It also stems from America's refusal to recognize Russia's concern
about the eventual expansion of NATO, a military bloc inherently inimical to it, into more terrain
along its western border-terrain that is closer to Moscow than the Baltics. How would the United
States react to a Russian incursion in the Western hemisphere? This is no hypothetical question.
In 1962, President Kennedy took the world to the brink of atomic war to force the Soviet Union to
withdraw its nuclear missiles from Cuba.
A deal ended that confrontation, and one is needed now. But to strike one, Western leaders would
have to reassess their view of, and policies toward, Russia. Russia, for reasons of history, culture,
size, and geography, is what it is: not Western, not Eastern, but sui generis, its own world. Predicating
policy on the hopes of a peaceful uprising and the triumph of democracy here-or, conversely, on
predictions of the country's collapse, with a new, West-friendly government emerging from the rubble-is
futile. In the same vein, announcements of economic sanctions designed to make Russia "pay" for
annexing Crimea or stirring up trouble in eastern Ukraine ring hollow to Russian ears.
And with good reason....
... In any case, Russia has set about decoupling from the West, concluding a major hydrocarbons
deal with China, helping Iran weather the effects of Western sanctions, planning its own alternative
to the interbank messaging service SWIFT, and establishing financial institutions to counter the
World Bank and the IMF. It could at any moment derail the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan;
the route home for American troops and materiel leads across Russia. Moscow cannot be bullied
into changing course.
While Putin is undeniably popular in Russia now, I am not arguing that Russian democracy has
survived. It has not. But Putin's icy demeanor, agate-blue eyes, and judo-trained physique all befit
the current mood in Russia: seething anger over everything lost with the fall of the Soviet Union-superpower
status, national pride, a generous social-welfare state, a low crime rate, and more. Democracy,
barely tried in the 1990s, did not confer those things on Russia. Putin-plus high oil prices-did.
Or such is the popular perception.
Whether or not Westerners agree with how Putin rose to power or rules today, they need to recognize
that in the interests of peace and stability, Russia's interests have to count and be accommodated
in some way. Russia must have a place at the table. The West did not exclude it (entirely) during
the Cold War years. It cannot afford to do so now.
Nikita Glushkov -> Riley 1066
"He is this and that by definition" is, by definition, an example of crude partisan hackery.
If you want to be taken seriously, at least attempt to back up your arguments with evidence.
Questionable privatisation, corruption and cronyism is what happens when a given group of elites
captures the apparatus of the state - these phenomena are found in every modern society and
their presence is merely a matter of degree, and do not provide evidence of dictatorship, merely
that people with power use it to enrich themselves and their friends. "Steals other peoples
money regularly" - Which people and and on what occasions ? Evidence ?
By the way, in case you are trying, as your brethren often do, to canonize Khodorkovsky as a
glorious freedom fighter, its worth reminding you that his wealth was ill-gotten during the
Yeltsin years. Putins popularity is not a mystery - During his tenure, living standards for
the majority of the population, especially the dozens of millions of people who live outside
the big cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg have improved vastly, especially when compared with
the 90s. People buy cars and consumer goods, take foreign vacations, etc. etc. etc. Putin's
electorate is not located in the capital - thus the 60% with which he won the election is not
unpredictable - those precentages represent the percentage of the population who have been the
biggest beneficiaries of the Putin years.
If we conclude, as is obvious, that corruption and nepotism is a feature of all governments
and the elites who man them, It becomes clear that is not corruption or nepotism that Washington
and its lackeys are concerned about, but rather the unwillingness of Moscow to dance to Washington's
tune.
Bulos Qoqish -> Nikita Glushkov
He's not a "dictator" in the strict sense of the word. But he IS a classic, far-Right, nationalist,
jingoist, manipulative, corrupt demagogue, who cynically abuses mob hysteria (particularly on
topics like "NATO encirclement", "support for our Russian-speaking brothers and sisters being
'oppressed' in places like Ukraine and the Baltic States", "re-building our military so we're
feared by every other country", "Russia is favored by God, so says the Patriarch of Moscow"
and most of all, homophobia) to advance his personal political popularity.
In other words, he's reading right from the U.S. Republican playbook, going at least as far
back as Ronnie Rayguns. He's certainly learned from the best... hasn't he? All you right-wing
Republicans and Tea Partiers should be proud. Congratulations, Dr. Frankenstein, the experiment
was a success!
Bulos Qoqish -> Riley 1066
So there is absolutely NO justification -- of any type, under any circumstances, whatsoever
-- for Russian "anger" with the West in general, or the United States in particular... do I
have that right?
What typical, self-righteous, U.S. neo-con nonsense posturing.
IAF101 -> Riley 1066
Who are YOU to decide what is "legitimate" ? Who gave you that authority ??
What makes Obama "legitimate" ? What makes George W Bush "legitimate" ?? What makes Regan
"legitimate" ??
Putin has higher approval ratings in Russia than Obama ever had in America today. What does
that tell you ?
You or your country are not the sole arbiter of what's "legitimate", "just", "right" or wrong.
First, hand over George W Bush to the ICC for War crimes trials for illegally invading Iraq,
Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo, rendition flights, waterboarding etc - THEN come and question Putin's
legitimacy or Russia's "aggression".
Bulos Qoqish -> Riley 1066
Whatever you think of Putin personally (and as I have stated elsewhere, I think he's
a cynical demagogue), his election as President of Russia (not to mention the election to the
Duma), was far, FAR more "free and fair" than ANY national level American election, what with
its gerrymandering, 2-party oligopoly, minority voter suppression, absurd over-representation
of thinly-populated, rural, white, conservative jurisdictions (Montana gets the same number
of Senators as California), antiquated "Electoral College" system, and, last but certainly not
least, its grotesquely-inflated amounts of money spent by rich people and corporations to buy
elections.
Don't like hearing that, my American friends? Don't like hearing the (true) statement that
an average Russian, has far more say over his or her government, via elections, than does the
average American?
Then SHUT THE F UP, go fix your system, clean it up, and THEN come back to me with your self-righteous
accusations of "rigged Russian elections". Until you do that, don't you DARE lecture me (or
any foreigner), about "democracy". You wouldn't know it, if it bit you on the leg.
Bulos Qoqish -> Riley 1066
How about "you're bluffing with a hand of deuces, pardner".
What's the matter?
I guess you're more comfortable debating people who don't know very much about how your country
really works (as opposed to the propaganda version of it, that the U.S. nationalist Right, wants
everyone else to believe in)? Are you maybe unprepared for a POV that doesn't come from, say,
FOX (sic.) "News"?
Don't get me wrong. I have no special hate for the United States. There are many sensible,
peaceful, reasonable Americans, some of whom are my friends. The American political system (while
antiquated and grossly unrepresentative of the wishes of 90% of its voters), isn't hugely worse
than equally-bad systems in some other so-called "Western Democracies". It's just that you then
get up on this high horse and start calling yourself "exceptional".
It's drivel, and outside your country, we know it is. Before you take it upon yourself to
try to fix Ukraine's (and Russia's... or Syria's... or Iraq's... or... "anyone's") problems,
how about you fix up your own, and THEN come back and tell us how "perfect" and "exceptional"
you are.
Bulos Qoqish -> Riley 1066
Ah, I see, I SEE -- everybody who disagrees with your U.S.-triumphalist, Russophobic POV
is an "idiot"... do I have that right?
I guess the world must be just FILLED with "idiots", with all the "smart" people (like you)
exclusively populating "God's 'exceptional' country"... right? (Funny, you know... from the
way it looks out here, it seems much more like the other way around. Maybe that has to do with
repeated street-level tests where the Average American voter can't place either Iraq, Ukraine,
or -- for that matter -- even India, on a globe or map.)
Now as to your comments about the political situation in the United States and your supposed
(I think, feigned... but as I don't know you personally, I'll have to give you the benefit of
the doubt) abhorrence of the crew of right-wing lunatics (e.g. the Koch Brothers, FOX "News"
and the whole lot of 'em) to whom I referred in an earlier posting.
Bulos Qoqish -> Riley 1066
To which "totalitarian friends" of mine do you refer, sir? If you had read any of my postings
(I guess you're not much up on "reading", are you?), you'd have seen that I have roundly condemned
Putin and his clique.
YOUR problem, sir, is that I condemn ALL totalitarians and authoritarians -- including the
cruel, jingoistic, cynical, 2-party elite plutocracy and oligopoly that runs the United States.
You're fine with people yelling at America's "devil figure of the week" (happened to be Putin
a few weeks ago, this week it's ISIS, a few months ago it was Iran's leadership, next month
it'll be someone different... names and faces change, but the song remains the same, because
fundamentally it's an exercise in propaganda and media manipulation), but you get mad when I
point the finger back at your own country.
Remember what they say about people who live in glass houses?
Bulos Qoqish -> Riley 1066
Are you hard of hearing? How many times do I have to (re)explain that I despise Vladimir
Putin and his clique of crony-capitalist stooges?
The real reason you keep repeating nonsense like "you defend Putin" is that your simplistic,
"four legs good, two legs bad", pro-American, anti-Russian propaganda narrative can't account
for someone like me, who likes NEITHER Putin NOR his U.S. elite antagonists.
Well... too bad, squire. The world is a complex place and "the enemy of my enemy ISN'T (always)
my friend". That's the truth, whatever you may be hearing back in "God's 'exceptional' country."
Srikanth -> Riley 1066
The western governments are just a power hungry, blood leeching community; first of all they
should stop interfering in to issues of other countries -- in the name of humanitarian aid they
should stop invading other countries...Western media - a propaganda machine, should stop spreading
false news, they just brainwash ppl with false news. USA is the biggest dictator in the world,
they try to dictate foreign policies of other nations, sanctions are their primary weapon, they
are just bad !
I hope the power centre will move to Russia and Asia, so that there will be a power balance
in this world....
Brendon Jaramillo -> Srikanth
cultural misunderstanding. we live on one planet. and win win situations do exist. if only
russians werent so paranoid and understood economics.
Bulos Qoqish -> Srikanth •
I agree with your depiction of the Western governments (and their motivations); but it's
naive of you to think that Russia -- particularly under Putin or another leader cut from the
same cloth -- would likely be any better. Historical precedent suggests otherwise.
The world doesn't NEED a "policeman". The world needs to enforce international law and stop
larger powers from bullying smaller ones... whether that's the U.S. bullying (for example) Venezuela,
or Russia bullying Ukraine.
Bulos Qoqish -> IAF101
"America seems to believe they can do anything without consequences."
Of course they do. They're "exceptional", you see.
Being "exceptional" means that America gets to do things (like, "kidnap helpless victims
off the streets of foreign lands and spirit them away for torture and years of arbitrary confinement,
in a world-wide Gulag of political prisons", "launch bombing raids against countries with which
one is not at war", "invade and occupy other nations", "threaten first use of nuclear weapons
against non-nuclear opponents", "ignore treaty obligations", "ignore U.N. resolutions", "apply
its own domestic laws, extra-territorially, in other countries around the world", "exempt its
soldiers and mercenaries from local laws, even when they rape and murder citizens of other countries",
"violently intervene in the internal affairs of other nations", etc., etc. etc.) that -- if
undertaken by ANY OTHER NATION -- would immediately have screams of outrage emanating from the
Washington, D.C. plutocratic elite, along with demands for "America's young 'heroes' in the
Armed Forces to 'teach this lawless enemy a thing or two' about the norms of international conduct"
(the cruise missiles would be flying within the hour).
That this nonsense propaganda -- which IS the unquestioned state dogma of official Washington
and the U.S. military-industrial plutocracy (including so-called "liberals" like Obama) -- is
simply Soviet-style agitprop, is so painfully obvious as not to merit further elaboration. Any
American politician who dares to suggest that the United States isn't, in fact, "God's 'exceptional'
nation, mandated by the Lord Himself to divinely 'lead' the rest of the world to Truth, Justice
and the American Way", will be immediately ruled out of contention (by the pundits of the elite
media) for national public office -- particularly the Presidency. There is a level of monolithic
elite agreement on this subject that rivals, for example, Soviet-era doctrine on "democratic
centralism". The only real difference is what's on the flags, and the language that the propaganda
is spoken in.
What worries ME, frankly, is that having become used to playing the "exceptional" card almost
exclusively against weaker nations (or failed states) such as Iraq, Yemen and Serbia, the U.S.
elite -- facing steady economic decline at home and needing something else to distract American
workers from their falling standard of living -- will at some point think that they can get
away with it, against a country that can and will call the U.S. elite's bluff. It might come
in a confrontation with Russia over Eastern Ukraine, or possibly with China over the South China
Sea. Maybe it will come somewhere that we can't yet imagine.
But when that day comes -- as surely it will, given the mindless, jingoistic belligerence,
siege mentality, opportunism and cynicism of the U.S. military-industrial-plutocratic elite
(and particularly, its Republican / Tea Party lunatic right wing fringe... these are guys who
make Vladimir Putin look like Mother Theresa) -- I am really, really afraid of what might happen
next.
After all... an "exceptional" nation, never backs down, after it has started a confrontation...
does it?
Start digging your shelter.
David Giles -> MatterOverMind
Actually, you are completely wrong. The USA started the fire. First by starting a war against
Gadaffi and overthrowing a long standing Russian ally. Then by training and arming Muslim Extremists
in Jordan to launch an insurrection in Syria, then by using chemical weapons in Syria in an
attempt to discredit Assad and justify direct American intervention. Remember Oclown's red line.
Despite the massive howls of the American public against action in Syria, Oclown was going to
bomb Syrian military forces anyways. That is until Russia moved their Black Sea Fleet out of
Sevastopol Crimea into the Mediterranean in front of Syria and told the US that attacking Syria
would mean war and quote from Putin and Medvedev "once wars start their is no telling where
they can lead, nuclear war is possible".
Oclown backed down from attacking Syria. But in response to Russia's defense of Syria the
USA CIA and State Department gave $5 billion dollars to criminal gangs in Ukraine to stage an
uprising against the legitimately elected government of Ukraine. They then sent in their special
forces snipers that they have used in several civil disturbances to cause them to get violent,
Libya and Syria being two examples. The goal in toppling the Ukrainian government is multifaceted;
the biggest prize being depriving Russia of the use of the navy base in Crimea. We know how
that turned out NOT!
Other goals include capturing the newly discovered vast natural gas fields in Western Ukraine
and developing those fields to supply Western Europe's energy needs. Doing this deprives Russia
of much needed funds through the sale of their natural gas to Europe. Further, 90% of Russia's
natural gas sales to Europe go through pipelines in Ukraine. Physically controlling these pipelines
puts the West in a much stronger position to negotiate prices for Russian gas as the Western
Ukrainian fields are brought on line. Or so they think.
The likely scenario is Russia is going to get really pissed and cut off the flow of gas right
in the middle of winter. America will try and take up the slack by shipping liquified natural
gas in tanker ships. Expect severe disruption of this attempt both in US and European ports.
In the meantime, Al-Maliki in Iraq was aligning with Iran and consequently Russia and refused
to sign the status of forces agreement with Oclown. Because of ongoing failures in Syria, Oclown
turned his ISIS creation loose on Iraq to disrupt and over turn the Al-Maliki government. It
didn't matter to Oclown and the leaders in Washington that countless thousands have been brutally
murdered by their ISIS puppet. Now using the pretext of combating their own creation they are
again calling for bombing Syria and arming "moderate" rebels. However, the truth on the ground
speaks volumes. ISIS is driving US military vehicles and using US made weapons. As soon as Congress
passed the aid bill, just days ago, ISIS made huge advances in Syria. This is no coincidence
as the US military and Intelligence Agencies had the weapons on site and ready for transfer
before the bill was signed. That is why it only took days from signing the bill to ISIS gaining
control of more cities in Syria.
What you really need to understand is what this is all about. BANKING and control of the
worlds monetary system.
Every country the US invades or topples doesn't support the IMF and World Bank but are debt
slaves to those institutions after invasion is complete. And many including Syria, Iraq, and
Libya planned on a new gold standard that would undermine the US dollar's control of global
oil markets.
Even in this article (a well written one), it mentions Russia's creation of alternatives
to the IMF and World Bank. This is the real reason the West is trying to go to war with Russia.
Putin has often openly spoke of combating a global evil, one out to control all nations and
install a world government, an evil who's most public face is the IMF and World Bank. Putin
is a religious man as is most of Russia today. It would not surprise me if they see Satan behind
the West Globalist institutions, certainly Iran doesn't hesitate to say that is the case.
And while you may think that taking down these regimes is good and the US has peoples best
interests at heart...and that we are the good guys. Look at the results of ALL of the Arab Spring.
Look at our ally Saudi Arabia driving tanks into Bahrain to put down that countries democratic
uprising. That western media neglected invasion of a sovereign nation by a totalitarian state
to put down people demanding freedom and democracy, an invasion called for and supported by
Washington because the people of Bahrain would tell the USA to get the F out of their nation
and take their navy base with them if they ever had a voice.
Your simplistic view of the events transpiring in the world indicates you need to lay of
the US MSM koolaid.
provocateur -> David Giles
Funny, most nations don't have a problem with the world bank..only backwards, intolerant,
self important countries like Russia do. Whats that? They don't like dancing to the American's
tune? Well build a better country and then you can call the shots. Until then, post rambling,
incoherent nonsense (like your post) or kindly shut up. People realize how terrible this planet
would be with Russia in charge.
Nikita Glushkov -> provocateur
Your comment provides an interesting insight into the American imperial psychosis - "Well
build a better country and then you CAN CALL THE SHOTS." You literally are functionally incapable
of concieving that other great powers are not motivated by a desire "to call the shots" everywhere
in the world. You forget that Putin does not go on television talking about "Indispendible Russia
Leadership, only about local Russian national interests. You forget that only in Washington
do the power elites peddle self-serving propaganda about "American global leadership." It would
be great if Washington stopped forcing itself down everyone's throats and focused it's interests
on it's own immediate borders, but they aren't going to do that, are they ? They would rather
send Mrs. Nuland of the State Department to stage right-wing coups in Kiev. We don't want to
be in charge of the world, we want Washington to stop cocking it up in our local sphere of influence.
Funny, plenty of nations and international organization, especially those that represent
developing economies, have problems with the World Bank, primarily because of it's promotion
of the Washington concensus and conditional predatory lending that eviscerates pensions, social
spending and domestic production and investment and perpetuates a vicious cycle of dependency
whereby the developing world is forced to provide raw materials to the Western nations, who
then create added value which the producers never see. It's really very simple.
provocateur -> Nikita Glushkov
Yeah yeah. Russia just wants everyone to get along in their multi-polar pinko paradise. The
World Bank, and global economy in general is primarily an American institution as it is based
on rampant capitalist ideals. You are clearly (and maybe rightfully so) frustrated at what you
see as American hegemony in the financial arena. That's what happens when the state of California
makes more money than 80% of the countries on Earth. As I said before, when poor, bullied Russia
gets that kind of power, I wonder if you will still be whining?
Nikita Glushkov -> provocateur
What on earth are you blathering on about ? Did you bother reading my comment above at all
? We couldn't care less who "gets along" in a "pinko paradise" - we have always operated on
the assumption that individual states engage in policy actions motivated by their proprietary
interests and this ensures a durable, if imperfect balance of stability in the world system.
Like I said, WE, unlike your people in Washington, don't presume that for some reason, we are
fit to tell other states how to conduct their affairs near their borders. We couldn't care less
which countries the World Bank is currently beggaring, as long as Washington keeps it various
institutional attack dogs away from our doorstep. Why is that concept so hard for you to grasp
? The State of California makes more money than 80% of individual sovereign states ? - care
to provide evidence for that fantastical claim ? Russia would have been "bullied" in this case
if we allowed Obama to get away with Ukraine in one piece - as it is, our goal, guaranteed non-expansion
of NATO, has been achieved at relatively little cost and the immediate threats to our national
security have been brought under control. We don't have designs for global domination. because
we operate under the assumption, unlike Washington, that it's an impossible goal. So, no, we
won't acquire "that kind of power" (whatever that means) because acquiring "that kind of power"
was never on the agenda to begin with - leave us alone in our backyard, and we won't bother
you in yours. How difficult is that to wrap your head around ?
provocateur -> Nikita Glushkov
Just blindly assuming that I'm American because I dont agree with your tin foil hat theories.
Im from England. Typical Russian flattering himself about how NATO wants to encircle your country.
Only a Russian could not see the irony of a massive bloated nation crushing its neighbor and
then making claims about how you are being "bullied." Also, LOL @ "world domination." Your paranoia
is truly incredible.
Maybe the countries next to you are ASKING to join NATO because Russia is a deceitful menace
to them? Isn't that more probable than whatever Nazi Alien Anti-capitalist rant you are spouting?
Your writing doesn't do much to dismiss the widely held image of Russians as cabbage eating,
drunken liars.
DrOph -> David Giles
I see where your heart is, which is nice. But your intel is all mixed up. The fact that this
exchange has garnered so much attention (regardless of the poor perspectives they both offer)
is a testament to the prevailing ignorance which reigns supreme in the world. Thank god nobody
cares about comments. Read the article. This is a very well articulated and reasoned piece.
Heed this warning, and check this hideous rashness
Bulos Qoqish -> David Giles
What I'd like to know is, "if a group of far-Left revolutionaries (including a large number
of Trotskyists who were publicly pledging to 'cleanse Mexico of its filthy Jewish capitalist
scum'), who were dissatisfied with the outcome of a recent election in Mexico and with the pro-American
policies of the resulting Mexican government, started staging a series of violent street demonstrations
in Zocalo Plaza -- thereby resulting (eventually) in the violent overthrow of the elected Mexican
government, and its replacement by a far-Left successor regime far more friendly to Russia or
Cuba... what would be the reaction of the United States?"
Because substitute "Mexico" for "Ukraine" and "United States" for "Russia", and there you
have an EXACTLY parallel situation.
Yet America whines and shrieks about Russia's behavior. I would suggest that you Americans
check the history books regarding your own track record, in Latin America, before you entertain
us with your stupid posturing about "the awful Russians".
Nikita Glushkov -> SgtKonus
I'd wager it's because there cannot exist separate standards for the foreign policies of
various great powers - unless said separate standards can be enforced. In a world of realist
power politics, it is nonsensical and disingenuous for one power to attack another for not being
moral, friendly, or nice, when the prevailing state of the world is one where being moral, friendly
or nice will compromise your security and survival. Feel me ?
hailexiao -> Bulos Qoqish
If we instigated and supporteds separatist/US annexationist movements in Baja California
and Coahuila, we would be in the wrong, just as Russia is in the wrong right now. Just because
we won't do any better doesn't mean Russia or anyone who acts similarly isn't also wrong. Glass
houses need to be broken by thrown rocks anywhere they exist without exception.
Bulos Qoqish -> hailexiao
Suppose "we" (by "we" I assume you mean "the United States"... remember, I'm not an American)
did that (note that you are, here, disingenuously implying that ALL the separatist movements
in Crimea and Ukraine were purely and simply created by the Russians, out of whole cloth, and
that they have absolutely no popular support in places like Crimea or Donetsk... an assertion
that is obviously false).
It would still not make America's likely reaction any different. So the entire point is irrelevant.
The point IS, of course, that, in true, hypocritical "U.S. exceptionalist" style, all of
the Russia-baiters on these forums are frothing at the mouth to denounce Russia for doing things
that their own country also does (actually, does much worse), on a routine basis.
Whether or not this kind of nonsense propaganda is appealing to Americans, I can personally
attest that it has ZERO credibility or traction, outside of "God's 'exceptional' country".
Nobody out here particularly likes Putin or his cynical tactics in Ukraine. But the United
States comes into this dispute as a hopelessly tainted, discredited interlocutor. America's
past track record of gross violations of international law and cavalier disregard for the rights
of less powerful nations, disqualifies it from being a positive force not only in this dispute...
but in ALL disputes.
Jack P -> David Giles
Cogent post. Thought I'd mention it because I've been through the ringers dealing with the
drivel on the Russia-Ukraine situation, and commiserate. Apparently anarchists, communists,
progressives, some libertarians like Ron Paul, socialists, syndicalists, and others are Putin
trolls or Kremlin shills because they contradict the State Department party line. Better yet,
Larry King,, Amy Martin on Breaking the Set, and economist Max Keiser are Putin trolls because
they're on Russia Today. The brainwashed boneheadedness of many of these commentators is rather
pathetic.
Hristo -> mtbr1975
First off. As everybody knows it started with a coup against the legit Ukrainian government.
This coup was initiated and backed by US mainly and EU following the "bigger brother", cause
this is what they best do. They are followers. Secondly the russian "invasion" actually never
happened. It wasn't confirmed by any of the official observers. Ukrainian government came up
with it cause they were ashamed of loosing to significantly smaller army. So they needed an
explanation. And knowingly that the west is going to hope in the wagon for political reasons
they invented the "russian invasion".
Hristo -> xi557xi
"an agent of irrational Russian behavior"
Wow finally you called somebody to come and help you with the writhing. Unfortunately for
you it sounds, how to put it mildly - stupid. Send this person back home. You were doing better
without him. Now some answers:
1. Russia proposed cheap gas and 15 billion USD loan to Ukraine. EU proposed-wait for it-nothing.
Yanukovych of course the pragmatic he is new that it will take years for the Ukrainian economy
to be able to integrate with EU. So he chose the logical one. That is the truth. Everything
else is just your wet dreams.
2. It is good that you have evolved as a result of our discussion and now you acknowledge that
there wasn't a Russian invasion. If there is (and this is a big if) any " Russian military officers,
vehicles, weapons, equipment, and training involved" it is only fair since there are American
such in Ukraine. Somebody's got to level the play field, eh
3. I don't know but I would guess that you do. Since the Dutch in their report didn't come with
an answer either, one may suggest that you probably was the one shooting the plane, cause this
is the only way to now with any certainty.
Jack P -> Kevin
"Supported various genocides such as Syria." That's a real howler. The anti-Syria jihadists
- the origin of IS - was supported by US/NATO via Turkey and the CIA. Yeah, I'm sure that conflict
had nothing to do with Georgia's independent policies that irked the kremlin" is a classic straw
man argument. It doesn't refute that Georgia and Saakashvili, with arm stockpiles provided by
the US, perpetrated the murderous assault on South Ossetia. Chechnya is Russian Federation land.
And yes, there is evidence that Russia has shown itself to be "caring humanitarians." Witness
the three aid convoys bringing food, water and other supplies to Eastern Ukraine. What exactly
has Kiev brought to that region?
Bulos Qoqish -> MatterOverMind
"Appeasement". The standard, nonsense "nuclear weapon" used by the U.S. neo-con Far Right
to shut off debate and stop any intelligent, reasoned, fact-based discussion of any topic that
the Right doesn't want to examine.
How typically... "American".
Nikita Glushkov -> MatterOverMind
Yes, my man, a fine question. Let's examine the history, shall we ? At the end of the 80s,
Gorbachev, bless his heart, decided to pretend that realist great power politics ceased to exist
and decided to unilaterally surrended Soviet interests on out Eastern border. In return, his
naive expectation was in the absence of a "threat", Washington and it's West European lackeys
would do the same. in fact, Baker, then Bush Srs. Secretarty of State, told Gorbachev clearly
that if he were to allow the reunification of Germany, NATO would not be advanced, and I quote
here, "not even an inch to the East." We know very well with hingsight that those promises were
shat upon - instead, we got a Clinton-manufactured war to dismantle Serbia and make Kosovo essentially
a huge offshore US military base, we got pretty obvious NATO expansion, we got Bush-era attempts
to place so-called ABM installations on our borders (Oh, don't pay any mind to the fact that
there are outside your door, they are actually aimed at the Iranians. What, the Iranians have
no long range missiles ? Oh well.) So don't give me Putin restablishing the Soviet empire shtick,
it's just juvenile. Thoughout this crisis, we have made clear that we will be perfectly satisfied
with a non-aligned, neutral Ukraine along the Finland model - because that is the only sitation
that allows for the preservation of our security interests. Putin, unlike your people,
boca_grande
Russia, has always wanted to be part of Europe. St. Petersburg was a testament to that wish,
a capital built in Europe and meant to impress Europe's then heads of state. (Royal Europe)
but Russia was barely European mostly Asian. And it's early history was not civilized as was
Europe. Millions of uneducated surfs wedded to the land, no hope of emancipation. After this
emancipation in the revolution came an expanded more enlightened population, but also a feeling
of national inferiority lingered. Everything had to be Russian and big, not the best, but the
biggest. The communist system failed and this empathized their degree of sophistication in governing,
manufacturing and arts. Yes, Americans managed to insult the Russians, but I think they would
have never really integrated with the west, as this Raw Russian history would prevail and they
would have turned away from the civilized west. They see the west as decadent, and reject principles
we impose on them like the extreme degree's of free speech etc.
Putin is trying to build a Russia with more discipline and control then the west.
Something like the US was in the 50's. It will be time that tells just what will come of it.
Putin shows his citizens how he can thumb his nose at the EU and US and get away with it. And
China is going right along with him. They are forming a new hemisphere more energetic and exciting,
the west just isn't offering. The tables are turning way from he west and they know it. American
leaders realize the same but don't know what to do. Cut debt??? I think the only thing the world
knows universally, is American leadership has faltered and the world is in a mess or influx.
David Giles -> boca_grande
The Civilized West you mention created ISIS and is currently arming them despite that organizations
brutal, murderous, genocidal behavior. They are doing this to take down nations that don't adhere
to their banking systems. The great civilized west killing for money again. Russia has no desire
to align with the godless, homo loving, baby killing west.
American leadership has not faltered, it has failed. It has failed to live up to its oath of
office for over 100 years now, all selling out to the One World Government movement and betraying
the American public and nation.
End the Federal Reserve, end fiat currency, end the license to steal and kill.
Jack P -> SgtKonus
Only partially true. The US/NATO was arming and training Al Nusra in Turkey to go into Syria.
The CIA was also involved. Of interest is that well-known picture of McCain meeting with several
of the "legitimate" opposition in Syria. Who's t he guy sitting across from McCain, front left
(those who want to can easily find the pic). He ends up being the head of ISIS.
Jack P -> SgtKonus
Link to a treatment of McCain purportedly meeting the "legitimate Syrian opposition." The
author of the commentary contacted the McCain camp wondering if he was meeting a later ISIS
head. At first they said it wasn't the same person, to which the author asked for the name.
They didn't provide it. So either it is a cover-up, or McCain and his camp didn't vet who he
was meeting. In the case of the latter, it puts to shame the point that arms were being shipped
to non-radical elements in Turkey and Syria.
Wow, you really are deluded. Well try then Saudi Arabia. How many be headings and stoning
s have they performed this year? And this differs from ISIS how? And they are whose allies?
This thing about Iraq's weapons is hog wash and just a phony alibi.
SWalkerTTU -> Laura •
Maybe we should consider the policy of the Roman Empire, which Tacitus (I think?) sarcastically
described as "They make a desert and call it peace."
Laura -> SWalkerTTU
What peace is, is a complex thing. If everyone is dead, that's pretty peaceful. If one side
is cowed into silence, that's peaceful.
Jack P -> vkg123
Not deep in the woods at all. Given that there are Chechen separatist terrorists in the area
who are going under the radar after Russia gaining control of the territory. Some of the volunteers
who went to East Ukraine were formerly fighting the terrorists - or separatists however you
want to look at it - in previous Chechen battle. Many of them went elsewhere, to places like
Turkey and eventually where they gained US/NATO largesse.
In fact Right Sector thug Yarosh, currently in high position in the Kiev government, praised
Right Sector Alexander Muzichko for his role in fighting against Russia in Chechnya. Muzichko
is known for torture and murder of prisoners. That's the side that transmuted into the Syrian
"opposition" and eventually the current ISIS.
Michael Tomasky
worries
about a lack of national unity in support of foreign wars:
All the above amounts to a proper and essentially democratic skepticism. But that skepticism
travels with a less healthy companion, a kind of civic cynicism that pervades almost all public
questions these days. I have trouble conjuring up, for example, any event that could make us
anything like the unified country we were during World War II.
There are at least two main reasons why modern U.S. wars so rarely produce that sort of unity.
The first is that the U.S. mostly doesn't fight necessary wars in self-defense, but chooses to join
or start wars that have at most a tangential connection to our security. Some are entirely unrelated
to American security, and some may even do real harm to that security. No matter how defensible
a military action may be, there is never going to be the same degree of support for a war of choice
as there is for a war fought in self-defense, and many of our wars of choice haven't been very defensible.
The other reason is that the enemies that the U.S. has fought over the last thirty years
have not required anything close to the sort of total mobilization that the country went through
in WWI and WWII. In almost all respects, that is an undeniably good thing: it means that the
threats we face today are much smaller and more manageable than the ones our ancestors faced, and
it means that most of our society can continue to function more or less as it normally does. Besides,
it makes no sense to demand widely shared sacrifices to combat third-rate dictatorships and low-level
insurgencies, and it is impossible to expect unity in support of war efforts that are neither necessary
nor wise. It is also very difficult to maintain broad support for a war that doesn't seem to have
any clear purpose or discernible conclusion. No sane nation would remain unified in support of pointless
wars that last a decade or more, and no one should want them to. One other reason why this degree
of unity is unlikely nowadays is that Americans have generally become less accustomed to deferring
to political leaders and more inclined to assume that we are being taken for a ride and misled into
unnecessary dangers. All things considered, I'm not sure that this is such a bad change, since our
leaders often do abuse the public's trust and don't deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt
on such important matters.
As Tomasky will remember, there was a remarkable degree of unity in the weeks and months
following 9/11 and during the earliest phase of the war in Afghanistan. That attitude prevailed
as long as the main U.S. military effort overseas was directly related to responding to the attacks
on the U.S. There was overwhelming support for that effort, and it is likely that this would
have continued without much change for at least a few years. Once the debate over invading Iraq
began, that unity started to fracture for obvious reasons. The Iraq war was completely unrelated
to the attacks, and it represented a huge diversion of attention and resources into a new and unnecessary
conflict. The public rallied behind the administration in 2002-03, but found that it had been
sold a bill of goods and belatedly discovered that the short, cheap, and easy war that they had
been promised had turned into an open-ended, expensive, and bloody conflict. The last time that
the public offered broad, largely uncritical support to U.S. foreign wars, their trust was betrayed
and the country was much worse off because of it. We shouldn't be worried about a lack of unity
in support of our foreign wars. We should be more concerned with avoiding the unnecessary ones,
of which the current war is just the latest.
Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, ISIS, Hong Kong - why is the US at war with much of the rest of the world?
Why does the government lie to trick so many Americans into backing their impoverishing and dangerous
plans? Who is behind this warmongering and why?
RPI Director Daniel McAdams is on the Robert Wenzel Show at the
Economic Policy Journal today to survey the expanse of the US empire. Listen to the Robert Wenzel
show here:
After 13 years of war in Afghanistan – the longest in US history – the US government has achieved
no victory. Afghanistan is in chaos and would collapse completely without regular infusions of US
money. The war has been a failure, but Washington will not admit it.
More than 2,000 US fighters
have been killed in the 13 year Afghan war. More than 20,000 Afghan civilians were also killed.
According to a study last year by a Harvard University researcher, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
will cost in total between four and six trillion dollars. There is no way of looking at the US invasion
of Afghanistan and seeing a success.
So in light of this failure, what does the Obama Administration do? Do they admit the mistake?
Do they pull the remaining US troops out of Afghanistan and try to avoid making matters even worse?
No! As with all US government programs, if the desired result is not achieved they just pump in
more resources and continue with the same policies. The past 13 years have been an utter failure,
so this past week the US government signed on for ten more years of war!
US troops were legally required to be out of Afghanistan by the end of this year, according to
a status of forces agreement between the US and Afghanistan. The US was unsuccessful in negotiating
a new status of forces agreement with outgoing president Hamid Karzai. The Afghan leader had grown
critical of the US military presence – which has actually increased under President Obama. So, the
US needed a new puppet in government.
As international correspondent Eric Margolis pointed out recently, the elections in Afghanistan
earlier this year were a farce. The candidates were hand-picked by the US government. Furthermore,
wrote Margolis, "[t]he largest, most popular party in Afghanistan, Taliban…[has] been excluded as
'terrorists' from the current and past elections."
But they got their new status of forces agreement. US troops will remain through 2024.
The United States' war on Iraq has also been a failure. The neocons want to blame the current
disintegration of Iraq on President Obama for pulling US troops out. This is historical revisionism
at its worst. The real blame goes to those who put the troops in in the first place.
In fact, President Obama didn't even want to pull US troops out of Iraq. He had tried to re-negotiate
a new status of forces agreement with the Maliki government in Iraq, but Maliki hesitated to extend
immunity from prosecution to the remaining US troops. The US responded by turning on Maliki, eventually
demanding that he step down even though he had been elected.
Maintaining US troops in Iraq would not have prevented the current unrest there for the simple
reason that it was the presence of US troops in the first place that caused the unrest. It was the
US invasion that led to the emergence of al-Qaeda in Iraq and other extremist Islamist groups. This
should not have been a surprise to war planners: Saddam Hussein had been using brutal means to keep
these groups at bay for decades. The same is true with Afghanistan.
The Taliban government of 2001 in Afghanistan did not attack the United States. Al-Qaeda did.
But the 2003 US attack on Iraq under false pretenses removed a leader who had fought ruthlessly
against al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist fighters. The result was that the al-Qaeda we were supposed
to be fighting in Afghanistan flourished in post-invasion Iraq, along with other even more brutal
groups. Will our government ever learn that invasion and occupation are not the solution, but rather
the problem? No new status of forces agreement can change that basic fact.
Unfortunately permanent war for permanent peace is now a reality... ""to see the world
looks more and more like George Orwell's vision in 1984 where war is a constant thing...
it's just a little bit depressing."
"It's tiring," explains author Stephen King in this succinct interview, "to see the
world looks more and more like George Orwell's vision in 1984 where war is a constant thing...
it's just a little bit depressing."
J S Bach
Yeah... had King had the vision 40 years ago, his "Carrie" might have instead been "Barry".
Or, how about "Children Of The Porn"?
Zhuge Liang
Barry isn't playing the Randall Flagg character... not by a long shot. that guy is still
in the shadows. Barry simply isn't qualified, but rather is relegated to role of useful idiot
sock puppet... and too narcissistic to get it.
vie
On behalf of everyone here, while it's still legal, I'd just like to exercise my freedom
of speech to say, fuck the UK and fuck the US, fuck fascist statist assholes everywhere. What
good is it if you don't use it right? That is all.
The9thDoctor
King isn't surprised. He wrote The Running Man in 1982 which predicted a global economic
collapse and the United States turns into a totalitarian state with bread and circus TV shows
of contestants being hunted to death.
Stephen King is a great writer, I've read quite a few, but some of them get so...dark. lol.
If Stephen King says things are depressing then by GOD it must be depressing!
Things that go bump
He imagined the government in a pretty unflattering light in The Stand, Firestarter and The
Dead Zone, at least. Is he surprised to find how closely life is imitating his dark art or that
his worst imaginings are closer to nonfiction than flights of fancy?
Fucktard Bloomberg interviewer should have asked, if in his millionaire opinion, the
CIA's "destablizing of Libya" at Obama's order bothered him as much as Iraq.
I just like to see a bogus blowhards jaw drop from the unexpected every once in a while ;-)
'Fucktard Bloomberg interviewer should have asked...'. I missed your 'sarc' tag.
That guy works for BLOOMBERG. Um, MICHEAL BLOOMBERG. The surveillance-city no-Cokes MAYOR,
MICHEAL BLOOMBERG.
I have several of Mr. King's novels ('The Stand' being the best one in my opinion), but the
guy personally is an ass when it comes to politics. HIS president 'Cannigula' is carrying on
the surveillance-state mantra set in place by USAPATRIOT and the NSA, and he's all blubbering
and whining and puling about how scared HE is that it looks like '1984'.
The BLOOMBOIG employee isn't about to start ANY line of questioning that brings Dear Leader
Adolf Obola, the Mullato Kenyan Golfer-In-Chief, into question, though, regarding this growth
of the 'Survelliance State' (OR the CIA OR Israeli State
Intelligence Services OR the FED OR 'Nanothermite', god forbid).
Mr. King used the correctly-scripted 'ISIL', in his commentary (find the region 'Levant'
on a map, and that little 'state' in the middle of it all).
NOW, on to the REAL question: Is Steven King FOR or AGAINST 'gay marriage'?
I am a Man I am...
What are you talking about? Shawshank Redemption is a great fucking movie, don't ever dis
Mr. King again. I'm not sure how Cujo and Christine is considered selling out, the guy's a writer
in the entertainment business, gimme a break.
saints51
Enjoy the matrix buddy. I won't give any of them a break because I know exactly what agenda
hollywood pushes.
fonzannoon
I am surprised he went with 1984. This looks more and more like The Long Walk
Spungo
But better. 1984 made no mention of Lexington Steel.
Charles Nelson ...
Interesting take on history!?!
I would say the birth of the petrodollar and our having military bases in just about every
country on the planet has a bit more to do with destabilization. Obama is like every other
bankster puppet president.
This hardly can be called humor. Those killing probably will not make the USA new friends, no matter
how much NED and USAID would spend for the promotion of democracy in those countries...
Pabluzcu
This clip is perfect to have a good debate about a serious issue, but we have to suffer the
fucking trolls ruining the conversation. When is Google going to acknowledge that they have
ruined the youtube comments? ...
Federico Pistono
"Right now we have the executive branch making a claim that it has the right to kill
anyone, anywhere on Earth, at any time, for secret reasons based on secret evidence, in
a secret process undertaken by unidentified officials.
That frightens me."
This is how Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown professor and former Pentagon official under President
Obama, explained the US policy on drone strikes during a congressional hearing last year.
With Ukraine the USA got dragon teeth planted all over Europe again. Now Russia just do not trust
iether EU or the USA and will seek new alliances. It will also speed up rearmament of its army; that
potentially means that Russians might be able to prepare a couple of nasty surprises to the USA. The
US elite might regret their role in Ukrainian crisis in less then a decade.
Considering the huge lift that the White House gave last week to the visit by the Ukrainian President
Petro Poroshenko - 'rare honor' of addressing a joint session of the US Congress, et al -
one would have thought the Barack Obama administration was getting into a heightened mood of belligerence
vis-a-vis Russia. But a close reading of President
Obama's remarks after the bilateral meeting with Poroshenko last Thursday in Washington creates
doubts in the mind.
Obama is a smart politician who can make a retreat appear a victory. He's done it in Afghanistan.
Is he doing it in Ukraine? Consider the following. Obama who poured scorn at the Minsk dialogue
has now become its votary.
He is also advocating that Ukraine should have "good relations with all of its neighbors,
both east and west," and he recommends that Ukraine should continue its strong economic links
and people-to-people relations with Russia. This is vintage Obama.
Are we seeing the signs of Obama all but counseling Poroshenko to sort out issues directly with
Moscow? It seems so. On returning to Kiev, Poroshenko
disclosed today that US will only supply "non-lethal" military items to Ukraine, which of course
falls far short of his wish list.
And, as for economic assistance, White House agreed to give the princely amount of $50 million
to help Poroshenko see through the year 2015. It's rather tragi-comic, coming at a time when according
to the IMF, Ukraine needs around $19 billion next year, if the civil war continues, by way of financial
assistance to survive through next year, on top of the global bailout program for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the IMF has revised its own estimate six months earlier and now says a staggering bailout
of $55 billion is needed as external financing for Ukraine.
Experts forecast that this figure could eventually turn out to be somewhere closer to $100 billion
than $55 billion. .
It's a macabre joke - handing out a measly amount of $50 million after egging
on Ukraine to go to war with Russia. Where is the remaining $18450 million to come from to see Ukraine
through next year?
Well, from Europe, where else? And who will pay from Europe? Not Poland, not Lithuania, not Estonia.
It has to come from 'Old Europe'. In essence, Germany has to loosen the purse strings. Chancellor
Angela Merkel must be hopping mad.
Contrary to earlier estimates, Ukraine's economy's contraction this year could turn out to be
in double digits. All this may go a long way to explain certain intriguing developments relating
to Ukraine in the recent weeks: a) European Union's
summary decision to consign its hurriedly-signed Association Agreement with Ukraine in the freezer
at least until end-2015; b) the robust EU backing for the
Minsk accord between
Kiev and the separatists in southeastern Ukraine; c) the top secret meeting between the foreign
ministers of France, Germany and Russia on the sidelines of the recent international conference
in Paris regarding the Islamic State; d) NATO's
belated acknowledgment
that Russia has pulled troops back from Ukraine border; and, e)
meeting between the foreign ministers of Russia and US in New York later today.
Suffice to say, Russia's President Vladimir Putin may be pulling off a major diplomatic victory
in getting the West to recognize that Moscow has legitimate interests in Ukraine. The West
has no option but to accept that Ukraine's economy is connected to Moscow with an umbilical cord
and without whole-heatred Russian cooperation, it cannot be salvaged.
In retrospect, Moscow did well to ignore the EU's latest round of sanctions announced three weeks
ago. The signs are already there that Poroshenko is eyeing Putin as, perhaps, his most consequential
interlocutor.
Concurrently, Washington too should begin to realize that engaging Moscow is becoming a necessity
for effectively mobilizing an international campaign against the Islamic State. It could be a sign
of the way the wind is turning direction that the former British defence secretary and Conservative
MP, Liam Fox today explicitly cautioned Europe and the US against making threats against Russia
over Ukraine.
Fox said, "I think it's very important not to pretend that you [West] can or will do things
that you clearly won't. Making false threats, I think, is a big problem. We have to look at different
ways of dealing with the Ukrainian situation."Bravo !
Don't be surprised, therefore, if one of these days Putin comes to the aid of Obama once again in
Syria. Russia can help Obama legitimize the international campaign against the islamic State by
getting a UN Security Council mandate for it; Russia can be helpful in the US' dealing (or the lack
of it) with Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad. Make mo mistake, Russia's stance (here,
here and
here) on the Islamic State threat is unequivocal and broadly supportive of the US-led international
campaign.
Russia's only caveat is that the US operations in Syria should have the concurrence of the Syrian
government and/or should have a UN mandate, but then, what stops Obama from seeking a UN mandate
is also the apprehension that Moscow may not cooperate.
Quite possibly, the ice will be broken regarding Syria today at the meeting between Sergey Lavrov
and John Kerry in New York. The New Cold war, which started with a bang, might be ending with a
whimper.
Railways Chief Yakunin Sees U.S. Seeking to Subvert Russia; No Impact on Ukraine Policy
MOSCOW-Vladimir Yakunin, a longtime friend of President Vladimir Putin, is still indignant that
he was slapped with U.S. sanctions in March. But asked whether they have changed the minds of Kremlin
insiders like himself regarding Russian policy in Ukraine, his answer is a resounding no.
"That's wishful thinking," he scoffed in a recent interview.
Considering the huge lift that the White House gave
last week to the visit by the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko - 'rare honor' of addressing
a joint session of the US Congress, et al - one would have thought the Barack Obama administration
was getting into a heightened mood of belligerence vis-a-vis Russia. But a close reading of
President Obama's remarks after the bilateral meeting with Poroshenko last Thursday in Washington
creates doubts in the mind.
Obama is a smart politician who can make a retreat appear a victory. He's done it in Afghanistan.
Is he doing it in Ukraine? Consider the following. Obama who poured scorn at the Minsk dialogue
has now become its votary.
He is also advocating that Ukraine should have "good relations with all of its neighbors,
both east and west," and he recommends that Ukraine should continue its strong economic links
and people-to-people relations with Russia. This is vintage Obama.
Are we seeing the signs of Obama all but counseling Poroshenko to sort out issues directly
with Moscow? It seems so. On returning to Kiev, Poroshenko disclosed today that US will only
supply "non-lethal" military items to Ukraine, which of course falls far short of his wish list.
And, as for economic assistance, White House agreed to give the princely amount of $50 million
to help Poroshenko see through the year 2015. It's rather tragi-comic, coming at a time when
according to the IMF, UKraine needs around $19 billion next year, if the civil war continues,
by way of financial assistance to survive through next year, on top of the global bailout program
for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the IMF has revised its own estimate six months earlier and now says a staggering
bailout of $55 billion is needed as external financing for Ukraine. Experts forecast that this
figure could eventually turn out to be somewhere closer to $100 billion than $55 billion.
It's a macabre joke - handing out a measly amount of $50 million after egging on Ukraine
to go to war with Russia. Where is the remaining $18450 million to come from to see Ukraine
through next year?
Well, from Europe, where else? And who will pay from Europe? Not Poland, not Lithuania, not
Estonia. It has to come from 'Old Europe'. In essence, Germany has to loosen the purse strings.
Chancellor Angela Merkel must be hopping mad.
Contrary to earlier estimates, Ukraine's economy's contraction this year could turn out to
be in double digits. All this may go a long way to explain certain intriguing developments relating
to Ukraine in the recent weeks: a) European Union's summary decision to consign its hurriedly-signed
Association Agreement with Ukraine in the freezer at least until end-2015; b) the robust EU
backing for the Minsk accord between Kiev and the separatists in southeastern Ukraine; c) the
top secret meeting between the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Russia on the sidelines
of the recent international conference in Paris regarding the Islamic State; d) NATO's belated
acknowledgment that Russia has pulled troops back from Ukraine border; and, e) meeting between
the foreign ministers of Russia and US in New York later today.
Suffice to say, Russia's President Vladimir Putin may be pulling off a major diplomatic victory
in getting the West to recognize that Moscow has legitimate interests in Ukraine. The West has
no option but to accept that Ukraine's economy is connected to Moscow with an umbilical cord
and without whole-heatred Russian cooperation, it cannot be salvaged.
In retrospect, Moscow did well to ignore the EU's latest round of sanctions announced three
weeks ago. The signs are already there that Poroshenko is eyeing Putin as, perhaps, his most
consequential interlocutor.
Concurrently, Washington too should begin to realize that engaging Moscow is becoming a necessity
for effectively mobilizing an international campaign against the Islamic State. It could be
a sign of the way the wind is turning direction that the former British defence secretary and
Conservative MP, Liam Fox today explicitly cautioned Europe and the US against making threats
against Russia over Ukraine.
Fox said, "I think it's very important not to pretend that you [West] can or will do things
that you clearly won't. Making false threats, I think, is a big problem. We have to look at
different ways of dealing with the Ukrainian situation." Bravo !
Don't be surprised, therefore, if one of these days Putin comes to the aid of Obama once
again in Syria. Russia can help Obama legitimize the international campaign against the islamic
State by getting a UN Security Council mandate for it; Russia can be helpful in the US' dealing
(or the lack of it) with Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad. Make mo mistake, Russia's stance
(here, here and here) on the Islamic State threat is unequivocal and broadly supportive of the
US-led international campaign.
Russia's only caveat is that the US operations in Syria should have the concurrence of the
Syrian government and/or should have a UN mandate, but then, what stops Obama from seeking a
UN mandate is also the apprehension that Moscow may not cooperate.
Quite possibly, the ice will be broken regarding Syria today at the meeting between Sergey
Lavrov and John Kerry in New York. The New Cold war, which started with a bang, might be ending
with a whimper.
Quote: "This is a shocking misrepresentation of the "facts," but one that is believable to most
Americans because it is the tale we have been repeatedly fed by the corporate media". Imagine Washington's
response if Russia were to politically intervene in Canada in order to install an anti-US government.
This week US President Barack Obama addressed the UN General Assembly and the unintended irony
in his speech would be humorous if it were not so cruel-and dangerous. Obama touched on a variety
of global issues from the Ebola epidemic to the Ukraine to the Islamic State (formerly known as
ISIS). So what was this unintended irony so prevalent in Obama's speech?
Well, here are a few choice nuggets for you to consider:
"We see the future not as something out of our control, but as something we can shape for
the better through concerted and collective effort."
Obama neglected to note that the reason that the future may seem out of control is directly
related to US interventionist actions in faraway regions such as Iraq and the Ukraine. The
illegal and unilateral action-rather than a legal collective effort through the United Nations-to
conquer and occupy Iraq lies at the root of the new US intervention in that country and in Syria.
"Russia's actions in Ukraine challenge this post-war order. Here are the facts. After the
people of Ukraine mobilized popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt President fled.
Against the will of the government in Kiev, Crimea was annexed."
This is a shocking misrepresentation of the "facts," but one that is believable to most Americans
because it is the tale we have been repeatedly fed by the corporate media. After being told
by our political leaders and the corporate media at the time that the protests by the Euromaidan
movement in Ukraine constituted a popular uprising, the events that followed laid bare that lie.
The Euromaidan movement represented a section of the Ukrainian population that was allied with
US and EU interests. Furthermore, it was being supported by Washington long before the protests
began in order to destabilize the country and overthrow the democratically-elected president because
he was more closely-aligned with Russia than Western Europe. While Russia is undoubtedly meddling
in the Ukraine, at least it is a neighbour with intimate and even ethnic ties to manyUkranians. Imagine Washington's response if Russia were to politically intervene in Canada
in order to install an anti-US government.
Quote: "...a hostile policy aimed at containing Russia, eliminating any kind of influence it has
within its own borders, and surrounding it with hostile states. And if you know anything of Russian
history of the first half of the 20th century, you can understand how sensitive Russia would be. ...
I think if the West were not supporting to the hilt the Ukrainian -- the nationalist faction of the
Ukrainian elite, we wouldn't have seen the Civil War. So the West bears a lot of responsibility."
David Mandel teaches political science at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal. He specializes
in countries of former Soviet Union, especially labour. For many year has been involved in labour
education in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, where he visiting this summer. David is the author of
many articles and books, among which is Labour after Communism (Black Rose Press, Montreal,
2005).
JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in
Baltimore. And welcome to part two of our count conversation with our guest David Mandel to discuss
the crisis in Ukraine. David is a professor of political science at the University of Quebec in
Montreal, and he specializes in the countries of the former Soviet Union, specifically looking at
labor. Thank you so much for joining us,
David.DAVID MANDEL, PROF. POLI. SCI., UNIVERSITÉ
DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL: I'm glad to be here.
DESVARIEUX: So, David, I want us to kind of understand the historical context of this recent
civil war. What has been the economic and political relationship with Russia? What has Ukraine's
relationship been like since their independence in 1991?
MANDEL: Well, so the eastern part of the Ukraine, which is the more industrialized part--I
mean, the Soviet Union was a highly integrated economy. Since independence, there was some move
to try to detach Ukraine to some degree, but still the Donbas, the Eastern Ukraine, and the Northeast
and South are still highly integrated, especially the machine-building sectors, with Russia. The
West is more agrarian. It's mostly smaller towns. And so they don't have that same economic interest
or tie.
DESVARIEUX: Wait. So the West is more--. Okay.
MANDEL: The West is -- I mean, there's three reasons. I mean, I think [incompr.] provinces are
regions there are, but there's quite a few. But there's three that are really the--what shall I
say? -- the cradle of Ukranian nationalism, which is a very anti-Russian nationalism. And
this was part of Ukraine that was separate from the rest of the country for hundreds of years and
only rejoined the rest of Ukraine in 1939 under Stalin, actually. It was part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
treaty, and at the end of the war it was occupied, and at the end of the war occupied by the Soviet
Union. So this part is actually--it's more to the west. It's extremely anti-Russian, hostile to
Russia.
And also there's not much economically or in terms of family ties, certainly no linguistic--not
really much linguistically, ethnically. It had--it's a different religion. It's [incompr.] church
[incompr.] in the East, it's the Russia Orthodox. So it doesn't have the same ties. And as I said,
its nationalism has--a major part of its nationalism is hatred of Russia, and to some degree
of Russians.
DESVARIEUX: Was there ever talk of partitioning sections of Ukraine? I mean, was there ever
that conversation that they should divide the country at all?
MANDEL: Well, not really. But the eastern parts of Ukraine were -- at the turn of the 20th century,
it started being built up as industrial parts -- coal mining, metallurgy, some machine building.
And it was basically--I wouldn't say unpopulated, but they were nomadic peoples. There were Cossacks
there, who--it's not clear if they're Russian or Ukrainian.
Anyway, people--cities started to be built and people came from all over. But they were Russians.
These towns were Russian-speaking. Generally, in Ukraine the cities are Russian-speaking. So that--and
it wasn't really considered part of Ukraine at the time. It was called small Russia, Malorossiya.
Then, after the Civil War, though, in 1920, the Communist government decided to make this part part
of Ukraine. So even this part became part of Ukraine only since 1920, really. And local communist
elements actually opposed that to some degree, but they were overruled. And then they have the western
regions, the three western regions, which were joined to the Ukraine only in--basically in 1940,
1939 and in the 1940s.
And the state, as--Ukraine as a state never really existed before. I mean, there was maybe a
few months during the Civil War in Russia. So it first came into existence in 1991. And so it's
extremely fragile. And you'd think this kind of state, the political elites would be very concerned
about keeping it together and creating a national identity or making everyone feel at home.
But what there's been since 1991 is a kind of tug-of-war, the western province wanted to impose
their [incompr.] and their orientation, anti-Russian orientation, on the rest. And, of course, this
is anathema to the east. And then the East, this last government that was overthrown, was more identified
with the East, and it was overthrown in what people [incompr.] see as a kind of Western-sponsored
coup d'etat, and they see it as illegitimate. So is what's been going on. And I'd say--and so the
political elites, which have been basically at the surface of the so-called oligarchs, which is
the new capitalist class--it's a small class, but extremely rich, was basically pillaging the country
for the last two-plus decades. They've been making--instead of trying to calm down these nationalist
passions and these different linguistic and ethnic differences, have been actually exacerbating
them to get [incompr.] in their inter-elite struggles and to gain elections, etc. That's it.
Yeah.
DESVARIEUX: So, David, you've been involved in labor you education in Ukraine for many years.
So for you, what are the issues faced by the Ukrainian working class? You mentioned that, that elite
that has kind of risen to power, these oligarchs. Can you speak to that a little bit? And what are
the concerns of the working people?
MANDEL: Well, that's just it. This kind of--it's kind of a postmodern identity struggle, although
there are economic interests somewhere involved. But basically it keeps the working people [incompr.]
mass of the population are very poor in Ukraine. Most are really known as the working class in terms
of [incompr.] There's almost no social safety net in Ukraine. It's much worse. I mean, you get sick
and Ukraine, you pay for everything. You pay for the sheets. You pay for the food. You pay for the
soap that cleans the floor. And you get nothing. You pay for the doctor, you pay for the medicine,
you pay for the bed dressers. So there's really no social safety net. And this is the mass of the
population that, instead of--. And then there's a ruling group, a small ruling group of oligarchs.
They're called oligarchs. This is big capital who basically just pillage the country and grasp for
pennies, grab the factories and all the wealth that was inherited from the Soviet Union, and created
very little. You have this group that keeps the population divided along these ethnic and linguistic
lines so they can't get together to fight the corruption. The corruption is just horrible in Ukraine.
And so that's the real--and for me the real issue is to overcome this communitarian strife, so that
you can get [incompr.] social and economic issues and fight corruption and get control over the
economy so that it can start developing. I mean, Ukraine is--I think it's one of two or maybe the
only one of the former Soviet republics that hasn't yet reached the level of GDP per capita that
it was in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell apart.
DESVARIEUX: So for you, then, does it mean that being in this, like, sphere of influence,
I guess, to kind of borrow the language of geopolitics, of either Russia or Europe, would either
one really benefit the conditions of workers? Do you have a stance on that?
MANDEL: Sure. I mean, just from a purely rational point of view, the most advantageous position
for Ukraine is to be neutral and to be between the east, Russia, and European Union, to, as much
as possible, play one against the other. And I think that's something that Russia would definitely
accept. I mean, it's probably not proved its first choice. But the West is insisting that Ukraine
become part of, be drawn into the Western camp in a kind of [incompr.] really hostile move. I mean,
there was a declaration in 2008 that the intention of NATO is to bring, eventually, Ukraine in.
I mean, how real that it is is another question.
And then this government, the prime minister, the government announced that it's going to apply
for NATO membership. I don't think it'll get in, but that's beside the point. I mean, they have
to -- from Russia's point of view, what's been happening since the Soviet Union fell apart is that
NATO has been advancing, incorporating the country -- advancing toward the east, incorporating countries
that are getting closer and closer to Russia's border.
And Russia views this as basically--I mean, it doesn't--it's a hostile policy aimed at containing
Russia, eliminating any kind of influence it has within its own borders, and surrounding it with
hostile states. And if you know anything of Russian history of the first half of the 20th century,
you can understand how sensitive Russia would be.
And Ukraine is the big prize, as its 2,500 kilometers of common border with Russia--I mean, this
is--and this is--it's bordering on the part of Russia where all the population and the great part
of the industry is. Ukraine has deep, deep historical, ethnic, family, linguistic, and other ties.
And the West has just been totally indifferent to that, you know, insensitive to that. And that's
the basic source of the problem. [incompr.] I think if the West were not supporting to the hilt
the Ukrainian -- the nationalist faction of the Ukrainian elite, we wouldn't have seen the Civil
War. So the West bears a lot of responsibility.
DESVARIEUX: Alright. David Mandel, thank you for joining us.MANDEL: Okay. Thank you.DESVARIEUX:
And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
End
DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording
of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Quote: "So the future of the presentation of Russia as a hodgepodge of unflattering stereotypes
seems bright. The naive liberal notion that the world has a teleological disposition toward a progressive
end-if only holdouts like Russia would get with the program-is deeply entrenched. Headlines datelined
in Russia-on corrupt oligarchs, or on control-freak KGB-generation political operators-will continue
to nourish sweeping criticism of Russians, from their leaders on down, as primitive and psychologically
ill. Probably no other nation is so easy (or so safe) to caricature."
RUSSIA, IT IS often said, is a country that is barely able to stumble out of bed and put on matching
socks in the morning. In the lead-up to the Winter Olympics in Sochi and continuing during the Games,
the U.S. media declared open season on the nation. Americans were told that Russia is a country
just about bereft of functioning elevators or toilets. Or even a national food, "except perhaps
bad sushi." Its people "hardly know who they are anymore" and its essence is defined by copyright
infringement and "all-encompassing corruption." All in all, Russia is "a country that's falling
apart," as a New Republic cover story in February put it.
It's a hardy theme. It's also
a completely bogus one. But that hasn't stopped the media from reviving it again and again.
Thirteen years ago, for example, the Atlantic published a cover story, "Russia Is Finished,"
on "the unstoppable descent of a once great power into social catastrophe" and ultimately "obscurity."
That was a particularly bad year to predict Russia's demise, as an economic revival was starting
to take hold. And these days, Russia is proving itself to be anything but "finished" as a geopolitical
actor, with its aggressive seizure of Crimea and its arming of pro-Russia separatists in eastern
Ukraine-who appear to be responsible for the July shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines passenger
jet as it flew over rebel-held territory. Nor is Russia's determined and so far successful backing
of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and its nascent alliance with China based on a historic energy pact,
suggestive of a nation that is no longer a consequential player on the world stage. Russia remains
a risk-taking nation-and as questionable, even reckless, as its gambles may be, as in its support
for the rebels in eastern Ukraine, this is not the behavior of a country destined for insignificance.
And while there is a great deal that is second-rate about Russia, from its sagging transportation
infrastructure to its shoddy health-care system, such blemishes, common to many nations, including
the United States, are hardly evidence of a fatal malaise.
The interesting question, then, is what lies behind this unbalanced mind-set-what might be called
the "Russia Is Doomed" syndrome. What is the source of such stubbornly exaggerated thinking-and
why is Russia chronically misdiagnosed in this fashion?
IT FEELS right, as a first line of exploration, to call in Dr. Freud. Maybe the strange idea
that "the drama is coming to a close," as the Atlantic piece prematurely declared of Russian
history, is actually a wish of the collective Western subconscious-the silent urge of the id. The
Freudian recesses can subtly affect our political desires, after all, and our twenty-first-century
nervousness about Russia can be traced to long-standing European anxieties about despotic Russia
as a kind of repository of the primitive in the human condition-dangerously and infuriatingly resistant
to higher and hard-won European values. In his popular and bigoted early nineteenth-century travelogue,
the French aristocrat Marquis de Custine said that in Russia "the veneer of European civilization
was too thin to be credible." His dyspeptic view of Russia has lived on ever since.
Russia was indeed less developed than Europe-according to standards of modernity such as science,
technology and industry-but there was a self-serving element of power politics as well as cultural
hauteur behind such disparagements. It is no surprise that the notion of Russia and Russians as
representing an Other-as in, apart from "us Westerners"-was strikingly prevalent in nineteenth-century
Victorian England. That was the time of the Great Game-the competition between Britain and Russia
for influence and spoils in a swath of Asia stretching from the Indian subcontinent to the Black
Sea.
The Crimean War of the 1850s, pitting both the French and the British against the Russians, sparked
an especially intense British animus against a marauding Russian bear, pitted against the regal
British lion, as the political cartoonists of the day had it. (Or a meek lion, as some illustrators
sketched the scene. In one such cartoon, a massive bear, a Russian soldier's cap on its head, sits
atop a prostrate Persian cat, a lion looking on helplessly in the background.) Negative images of
Russia seeped into British literature. George Stoker wrote an anti-Russian travelogue, With
the Unspeakables, drawn from the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–1878. That book, in turn, may have
supplied an impetus for his older brother, Bram, who later wrote of a pair of fantastical novels,
Dracula and The Lady of the Shroud, that can be read as conjuring an "Eastern"
or Slavic threat to England. In the end, of course, Count Dracula has his throat slashed and is
stabbed dead in the heart.
Granted, the British Empire was a promiscuous slanderer of its motley rivals-consider the aspersions
regularly cast toward the French. Still, British feelings toward Russia were notably raw. The historian
J. H. Gleason, in his 1950 book The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain, characterized
the nineteenth-century English public's "antipathy toward Russia" as the "most pronounced and enduring
element in the national outlook on the world abroad." The sentiment, Gleason concluded, was concocted
by a manipulative, imperial-minded elite-and was off base, anyway, since Britain's foreign policy
was actually "more provocative than Russia's" in this period. Others concur. "The world champion
imperialists of modern history, the British, were in a permanent state of hysteria about the chimera
of Russia advancing over the Himalayas to India," Martin Malia observed in his 1999 book Russia
under Western Eyes.
What about Russia's grim demographic profile? The analyst Nicholas Eberstadt at the American
Enterprise Institute labeled Russia "The Dying Bear" in a 2011 essay in Foreign Affairs. "The country's
population has been shrinking, its mortality levels are nothing short of catastrophic, and its human
resources appear to be dangerously eroding," he wrote. Critics of that piece pointed out that Russia
in 2010 actually had a lower mortality rate than in 2000. And this progress has continued. In a
Wall Street Journal piece earlier this year, Eberstadt conceded:
Russia's post-Soviet population decline has halted. Thanks to immigration chiefly from the
"near abroad" of former Soviet states, a rebound in births from their 1999 nadir and a drift
downward of the death rate, Russia's total population today is officially estimated to be nearly
a million higher than five years ago. For the first time in the post-Soviet era, Russia saw
more births than deaths last year.
It seems the ursine creature is not, after all, dying.
In any case, our taste for a country-favorable or unfavorable-shouldn't dictate our foreign policy,
which is properly shaped by a cool calculation of our national interest. On these terms, America
is right to resist Russia if Putin seems truly bent on bullying his way to a redrawn map of Europe,
but also right to try to keep working with Russia on matters of mutual concern such as Islamic militancy.
And that same calculation will hold when Putin, as must happen eventually, exits the Kremlin, willingly
or unwillingly, whether replaced by a new autocrat or a more democratic figure. Today's heightened
tension between the United States and Russia, conceivably the first chapter of a new cold war, with
Europe as ambivalent as ever about its role, underscores that Russia is likely to remain one of
America's most vexing and formidable diplomatic challenges for a long time to come.
So the future of the presentation of Russia as a hodgepodge of unflattering stereotypes seems
bright. The naive liberal notion that the world has a teleological disposition toward a progressive
end-if only holdouts like Russia would get with the program-is deeply entrenched. Headlines datelined
in Russia-on corrupt oligarchs, or on control-freak KGB-generation political operators-will
continue to nourish sweeping criticism of Russians, from their leaders on down, as primitive and
psychologically ill. Probably no other nation is so easy (or so safe) to caricature.
And the "Russia Is Doomed" syndrome is bound to survive because Russia, alas, still matters.
The object of such concentrated anxiety over the centuries, far from heading down a path to obscurity,
remains a global force and impossible to ignore. So the worries will live on, too, as will the sublimated
wish to efface Russia. But perhaps the good news for the critics is precisely that Russia is not
about to go away. They will have plenty of grist for their mill for decades to come.
Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief of Business Week and the author of After America:
Narratives for the Next Global Age (Viking, 2009).
Peacen1k
The author Paul Starobin lists and presents examples of Western propaganda, misconceptions,
and disinformation as the causes for misrepresenting and misunderstanding Russia, but in the
process adds a bunch of his own into the mix (the source for which is the same as for the ones
he lists).
Was that intended as some kind of half-assed disclaimer and a placating bone thrown at an
average Western reader? Was the author afraid that this reader would simply stop reading if
some of the more recent propaganda wasn't used to calm the Westerner's nerves?
Very sad that this just keeps happening with no end in sight...
smoothieX12 - -> Peacen1k
Very sad that this just keeps happening with no end in sight...
All "sources" of Western media in Russia are limited to Urban ultra-liberal "intelligentsia"
(which is insult to this title) and those who by definition hate Russian guts. At least author
had guts to point out the religious affiliation of some of those "sources". "Russian narrative"
in US historically was set up by Russian Jews and other minorities and dissidents. Thus the
caricature and failure to even react properly to a real information and facts, such as this
crisis in Ukraine. No surprise here, when US Networks, from CNN to NBC, use Pavel Falgenhauer
(MSU graduate with degree in biology) as "Russian military expert" (the guy is moron, basically)
what else should one expect?
ProV - -> smoothieX12
Too many soothsayers, and not enough critics. Stephen Cohen is blacklisted now for ever daring
to criticize people like Strobe Talbott.
The Guardian started its campaign against disagreeable commentators by labeling them all
FSB trolls. Now you cannot read anything BTL because there are literally hundreds of accusations
like this in every single article. Interestingly, GCHQ has for a number of years employed an
astroturfing campaign to influence blog posts and online comment boards.
AlexZhukov -> WBC
In spite of the abundance of ways available for American people to obtain all kinds of
information on all subjects, US still remains a formidable bastion of bigotry and ignorance
in the world, so it is no wonder that you get to read these wacky bloopers here.
This is what happens when your average Joe The Clown suddenly swings his "attention" from
porn to politics.
Hegelguy
It is the same with India: according to the Anglo-American press, India can NEVER do
right unless it unconditionally capitulates to every idea hatched in Washington. The West
is a great hater: any sizable country that poses the smallest possible challenge to total US
domination is treated with relentless hostility.
The Russians are just waking up to this truth well known to Lenin.
Jon Lester -> Hegelguy • 14 days ago
I didn't learn of the disastrous anti-Bolshevik "Polar Bear" and Siberian expeditions until
adulthood, and it wasn't because I missed any history classes at school. Not unlike how US actions
in the Philippines in the 1890's and early 1900's tend to get passed over in most textbooks,
too.
evangelical -> Jon Lester • 14 days ago
Oh you mean they conveniently forgot to teach that the US killed 250,000 Filipinos after
they "liberated" the islands from spain?
Guest -> Hegelguy • 14 days ago
"It is the same with India: according to the Anglo-American press, India can NEVER do
right unless it unconditionally capitulates to every idea hatched in Washington."
Not fair at all. It's not that the stories about India in the American press are bad, so
much as they're non-existant. India gets about as much airtime in the American press as Canada.
The reception towards Modi has been generally positive despite the U.S. government's past issues
with him. In fact, I can't think of a major story portraying India badly in the U.S. except
for the ones about religious riots years ago. The closest thing to negative press are stories
about jobs going offshore--but those aren't India-specific.
You risk falling into the same spot as Russia--where a country we do a lot of business with,
have no beef with, have helped out signicantly in the past (Google "Rockefeller Foundation,"
"famine," "1970"), and should by all rights be close allies with insists on becoming an enemy
because of the gigantic nationalistic chip on their shoulder.
Mike -> Hegelguy • 14 days ago
Hegelguy, Anglo-American press? It's 2014, America is anything but Anglo these days. In fact,
the largest ancestry group in the US is German followed by African! English is fifth on the
list for ancestry. All of that being said. India occupies about 0.1% of American news. India
isn't even on the radar. No one here cares what India does or doesn't do.
ning05 • 17 days ago
It was Hitler's Nazi Germany that invaded and laid waste Soviet Russia through the corridor
of Central and Eastern Europe, and it was the Red Army, not the armies of the
Western allies, which at horrendous cost broke the spinal cord of the Wehrmacht.
A nation that willingly sacrificed 14% of its entire population or more than 30% of its entire
male population in the Great Patriotic War rather than surrender will never collapse. China
realized that truth about Russia long time ago and pragmatically settled the border disputes
and gave up the claims on a million square kilometers territory (formerly of Manchuria, not
really Chinese to begin with) seized by Russian Czar more than a century ago. It is lucky for
China in this century to have Russia as its ally or at least tacitly supporting and providing
a strategic hinderland for China.
Oh yeah? when did you last time read the historical books?
In 1919-1920 the Polish ruling circles declared out to restore the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
in the borders of 1772 and the conquest of the corridor to the Black Sea (Poland from sea to
sea).
Poland seized Vilnius and Lithuania in the field in direct violation of the treaty between
Lithuania and Poland in 1920 . March 17, 1938 Poland declared ultimatum to Lithuania to cancel
the article of the constitution, declaring Vilnius the capital of Lithuania, and guarantee the
rights of the Polish minority in Lithuania. In case of disagreement on the requirements within
24 hours Poland threatened to occupy Lithuania, which then was done so.
Poland was the first State to conclude a nonaggression pact with Hitler's Germany. January 26,
1934 was signed the Polish-German non-aggression pact for 10 years. The Polish ambassador in
Berlin, Jozef Lipski said on this occasion the French reporter, that "now Poland does not need
in France anymore". "We are delighted with our first agreements with Hitler" - said the head
of the Polish state Pilsudski to the French Foreign Minister Louis Bart in spring 1934. From
1934 to 1939, a strategic partnership with the Nazis was the core of the Polish foreign policy.
In 1938 Poland, together with Hitler'r Germany attacked Czechoslovakia and shared it.
Churchill called Poland a vulture of Europe.
But then in Poland did not manage to communicate well with Hitler, because the Poles wanted
too much, and Hitler decided to do without them what he did.
Russia wanted to prevent the start of war by any price, only France and England wanted to
push Germany closer to Russia's birder by making the Minich Treaty, which was actually a betrayal
of both POland and Russsia. Actually in 1939 there was total chaos in Poland, so USSR had to
proceed to POland to save its population from Bandera nationalists and create a buffer in otderno
separate Germany from direct contact with Russia's border.
There was chaos and mess in Poland in September 1939, a process of disorganization of the
entire Polish state machine. on the first day of the war the Polish president 72-year-old Ignatius
Mościcki left the capital . On September 4, the evacuation from Warsaw to Lutsk was started
for facilities, gold reserves, the diplomatic corps and for the government there was nothing
to control. And a senseless from political point of view two-week trip to safe places of officials
and government was made thereby paralyzing the work of the entire administrative system and
demoralizing the population.
Supreme Commander also decided to retreat to 180 kilometers from capital. As noted by the
Polish author, Rydz Smigly felt kind of leader of the nation rather than a military leader directly
responsible for the defense of the country. Unfortunately, he was not Pilsudski and not equal
to him in any moral authority or political talent. Smigly was a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy.He
selectes as his Headquarters Brest and moved there. After him, it is not clear from what reasons,
apart from the government and ambassadors, followed Minister of Foreign Affairs with the most
important departments. And to cover the new precious command post the air cover Fighter Aviation
Brigade has been removed from capital to Brest.
As suddenly was revealed the Brest fortress was completely not adapted for the work as military
headqurters for Polish strategists, secondly, in Brest there was no connection to army. Had
brought the station which could not be used as codes were forgotten in Warsaw. Twelve hours
later they managed to establish telephone communication with the army in Lublin and Narew. Finally,
the railway brought codes, but by this time the radio was already was not working.
After that USSR has made an official notificattion that due to the fact that Poland does
not control its territories , a bufer zone between GErmany and USSR must be created. It saved
thousands of pooles from ukraininan nazis.
Василий Батарейкин -> harryposter • 14 days ago
lier! lier! March 17, 1938 Poland declared ultimatum to Lithuania to cancel the article of
the constitution, declaring Vilnius the capital of Lithuania, and guarantee the rights of the
Polish minority in Lithuania. In case of disagreement on the requirements within 24 hours Poland
threatened to occupy Lithuania, which then was done so.
Poland was the first State to conclude a nonaggression pact with Hitler's Germany. January
26, 1934 was signed the Polish-German non-aggression pact for 10 years. The Polish ambassador
in Berlin, Jozef Lipski said on this occasion the French reporter, that "now Poland does not
need in France anymore". "We are delighted with our first agreements with Hitler" - said the
head of the Polish state Pilsudski to the French Foreign Minister Louis Bart in spring 1934.
From 1934 to 1939, a strategic partnership with the Nazis was the core of the Polish foreign
policy.
In 1938 Poland, together with Hitler'r Germany attacked Czechoslovakia and shared it.
Churchill called Poland a vulture of Europe.
But then in Poland did not manage to communicate well with Hitler, because the Poles wanted
too much, and Hitler decided to do without them what he did.
Василий Батарейкин -> Mriordon
Darn, you lost 14% of your population in world war 2, was that before or after you
switched sides? Stalin murdered at least another 14% and 10% drank themselves to death-
hard to imagine you have enough people left to make the vodka.
Stalin has killed 700 000 of former revolitionaries and trozkists, not more, all the rest
is your propaganha.
the population was only growing all the time. there was only a decline in population between
1941-1945 (8,4 mln dead soldiers and 14 mln dead civilians):
January 1897 (Russian Empire): 125,640,000
1911 (Russian Empire): 167,003,000
January 1920 (Russian SFSR): 137,727,000*
January 1926 : 148,656,000[2]
January 1937: 162,500,000[2]
January 1939: 168,524,000[2]
June 1941: 196,716,000[2]
January 1946: 170,548,000[2]
January 1951: 182,321,000[2]
January 1959: 209,035,000[2]
January 1970: 241,720,000[3]
July1977: 257,700,000
July1982: 270,000,000
July 1985: 277,700,000
1990: 290,938,469
July 1991: 293,047,571
You just justify yourself, saying "we are bad but you are worse", but you just lie.
Alexey Strelkov
A more or less reasonable Western article about Russia. A rare breed and, I am afraid, a
dying one. However, I have to note several inconsistencies:
"his efforts to dodge any responsibility for the downing of the Malaysia Airlines plane"
- it wasn't Russia who signed the NDA regarding the investigation of the crash. Evenmore
- Russian envoy to the UN Security Council has asked his Ukrainian colleague 4 (four) times
whether they have provided the investigation with recordings of Dniepropetrovsk traffic
control and MH17 (they were the last one who were in contact with the plane). No conclusive
answer was provided.
"Politkovskaya was certainly not wrong to discern a thuggish element in Putin's Russia-she
herself was murdered in Moscow in 2006, on the day, suspiciously, of Putin's birthday."
- according to BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/russi... that data may be a little outdated
now) 47 journalists died un Russia since 1992, and 14 of them died during Putin's reign.
So it looks like Putin has actually improved the situation.
"okroshka, typically made of sour cream, vinegar, potatoes, cucumbers, eggs and dill"
- its main ingredient is kvas (Slavic fizzy drink made of bread and yeast, it's a bit of
an acquired taste but I still urge you to try it. Just remember that real kvas has a very
short shelf life, so the best place to try it is where it is made - Eastern Europe) or sometimes
kefir (fermented milk drink very popular in Russia. Imagine thin sour drinking yoghurt)
The problem with Ioffe and Gessen is not their ancestry (at least, for normal people
and not neo-Nazis), but their sweeping statements on amateur culturology and history. There
is also some problem with English language itself - in English "Russian" means both ethnic
Russian (russkiy) AND citizen of Russia (rossiyanin - note that these are two DIFFERENT
words), so Russians (and here I mean both rossiyane and russkie) get very confused when,
for example, Masha Gessen says "we, Russians, are lazy/stupid/aggressive/etc" - she is neither
ethnic Russian nor she lives in Russia, so we don't know whether she is being slightly racist
or making a very broad statement about different peoples of a very diverse country.
P.S. While I do not usually agree with what Ioffe writes about politics (her political writing
usually lacks any primary data and sources), I have to note that I find her non-political writing
to be often interesting and insightful. In that sense she is the opposite of Mark Adomanis whose
analysis of statistics is very convincing.
Shane
Fascinating.
I've noticed that commentators in many countries despair of their own societies and seem
to see preferable societies abroad, that's not restricted to Russian elites.
Left-leaning commentators in Britain or Ireland might identify Scandinavian countries as
examples, and denounce the perceived failings of their own state.
smoothieX12 .
The truth is, Russia often has been maddening to a certain strata of educated Russians (and
by Russians I mean not just ethnic Russians, strictly speaking, but all peoples native to or
attaching themselves to Russia)
I think that author of this piece should open Isaiah Berlin's masterpiece "Russian Thinkers"
and may be not try so hard.
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Lavrov said the crisis in Ukraine
was the result of a coup d'etat in that country backed by the US and the European Union for the
purpose of pulling Kiev out of its "organic role as a binding link between" east and west, denying
it the opportunity for "neutral and non-bloc status".
Lavrov also said the Russian annexation of Crimea earlier this year was the choice of the largely
Russian-speaking population there.
Immediately before Lavrov spoke, the German foreign minister had said Russia's actions to retake
Crimea were a crime.
"Russia has, with its annexation of Crimea, unilaterally changed existing borders in Europe and
thus broke international law," Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in his address to the world body. He
spent considerable time speaking about what the west sees as Russian meddling in Ukraine.
the increasingly anti-western stance of Russia's president, Vladimir Putin
Or how about 'the increasingly defensive Russia' that has been targeted by US provocations in
Ukraine, a constant programme of media destabilisation using CIA "pet" oligarchs and a network
of Ngo front organisations.
The US plan with the Ukraine operation was to split EU-Russian trade and political relations.
No doubt 10 years of NSA surveillance of all EU leaders and top civil servants helped generate
some "leverage" to persuade Europe to go along with this self-harming plan.
All this anti-Russia or anti-Putin media crusade is aimed at destabilising Russia politically.
Then Iran will be a sitting duck for the US-Wahabi terror sponsors to destroy it with jihadi
proxies like they're doing to Syria.
Oh, and the "pet" oligarchs can then return Russia to the broken kleptocracy that Bush1 oversaw
there.
Russia was progressing with European relations. This "increasingly anti-western stance" is
code for "having taken measures to prevent US subversion" and for having rebuffed attempts to
pin the MH17 attack on them or the rebels. So it's more a question of "America's increasingly
desperate measures in attacking Russian stability".
The US has to destroy this emergent Russian stability (it's just 14 years since the end of
the Yeltsin chaos) that represents an obstacle to the US-Saudi-Israeli Eurasian ambitions. They
want the Qatar-Turkey pipeline - Russian backed Assad said no. Russian backs Iran, long a target
for Saudi hatred (and Israeli), and surviving even after years of strangulation sanctions. They
have huge oil & gas reserves. Russia stands in the way of the Brzezinski-Wolfowitz plans for
domination so they must be attacked.
The US has lusted to colonize Russia and exploit its natural resources as far back as
the US invasion of Russia in 1918. It is a forgotten military disaster for the US but not
forgotten by Russia.
goatrider, 27 September 2014 9:07pm
Lavrov said the crisis in Ukraine was the result of a coup d'etat in that country backed by
the US and the European Union for the purpose of pulling Kiev out of its "organic role as a
binding link between" east and west, denying it the opportunity for "neutral and non-bloc status".
Well said
davidpear - -> goatrider, 27 September 2014 9:48pm
Well said
It was the EU that offered an unacceptable miserly trade deal to Ukraine and then said that
they had to choose between the EU or Russia but could not take both trade deals. It intentionally
drove a wedge between already existing divisions within Ukraine.
Bosula, 27 September 2014 9:09pm
Crimea has had three referendums since 1991 and they have all supported independence from Ukraine.
Two of these referendums were organised by Kiev and they refused to recognise the results.
Crimea has consistently not seen itself as part of Ukraine.
sodtheproles - -> Bosula, 27 September 2014 9:25pm
What has democracy got to do with it? That's our prerogative, to impose on or deny to others
as we see fit, and in this instance, the Crimeans plainly aren't suited to democracy, since
the results of their ballots fail to pass the basic democratic test of coherence with Western
policy on Ukraine.
davidpear - -> sodtheproles, 27 September 2014 9:51pm
What has democracy got to do with it? Nothing. US foreign policy has nothing to do with democracy,
freedom, human rights and even life itself. It is all about what is best for US and multinational
corporations.
RedPeony, 27 September 2014 9:29pm
Lavrov is right. USA acts like they are above everybody else. The sooner we learn that their
way is the only way the better. It's frustrating. I don't know what's worse: when they openly
bully you or when they pretend to be your friends (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erYpXzE9Pxs).
Papistpal - -> RedPeony, 27 September 2014 10:15pm
RedPony,
No hard feelings. We want to be your friend. Please provide your address and we will send
our special "Friendship Drone" with special gifts and prizes for you and all your friends.
HansVonDerHeyde - -> RedPeony, 28 September 2014 2:26am
U.S "Democracy" and "Freedom" coming to a country near you.
To us old folks to hear a German foreign minister preaching about invasion of other countries
sounds like bitter irony.
Just fill in the blanks in the sentence " The Reich has, with its annexation of ****, unilaterally
changed existing borders in Europe and thus broke international law" Uh huh, nihil sub sole
novum
1. Russia's long term end goal is to survive and prosper through the collapse of the AngloZionist
Empire.
2. Russia's mid term goal is to create the conditions for regime change in
Kiev, because Russia will never be safe with a neo-Nazi russophobic regime in power in Kiev.
3. Russia's short term goal is to prevent the Kiev junta from over-running Novorussia.
4. Russia's preferred method to achieve these goals is negotiation with all parties involved.
5. A prerequisite to achieve these goals by negotiations is to prevent the Empire from succeeding
in creating an acute continental crisis (conversely, the imperial "deep state" fully understands
all this, hence the double declaration of war last week by Obama and Poroshenko).
the German foreign minister had said Russia's actions to retake Crimea were a crime.
You need some neck, the size of a lamp post, to make such statement.
Your country Monsieur started 2 world wars, killing 27 million Russians during the second.
Your country dished out cruelty only matched by the Americans, and their Supermaxes.
I happen to be British, but If I was Russian, and I mean Sergei Lavrov, I would be permanently
having your country in my nukes eye sights.
I'm British too. You really need to examine what you were taught about the wars:
Nazism is
usually depicted as the outcome of political blunders and unique economic factors: we are told
that it could not be prevented, and that it will never be repeated.
In this explosive book, Guido Giacomo Preparata shows that the truth is very different: using
meticulous economic analysis, he demonstrates that Hitler's extraordinary rise to power was
in fact facilitated -- and eventually financed -- by the British and American political classes
during the decade following World War I.
Through a close analysis of events in the Third Reich, Preparata unveils a startling
history of Anglo-American geopolitical interests in the early twentieth century. He explains
that Britain, still clinging to its empire, was terrified of an alliance forming between Germany
and Russia. He shows how the UK, through the Bank of England, came to exercise control over
Weimar Germany and how Anglo-American financial support for Hitler enabled the Nazis to seize
power.
This controversial study shows that Nazism was not regarded as an aberration: for the British
and American establishment of the time, it was regarded as a convenient way of destabilising
Europe and driving Germany into conflict with Stalinist Russia, thus preventing the formation
of any rival continental power block.
Guido Giacomo Preparata lays bare the economic forces at play in the Third Reich, and identifies
the key players in the British and American establishment who aided Hitler's meteoric rise.
Referencing German FM Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the author said that
He spent considerable time speaking about what the west sees as Russian meddling in Ukraine.
The author grossly misstates the facts.
Mr. Steinmeier's prepared speech contained 27 paragraphs. 6 referred to the UN in general.
5 referred to Ukraine. 4 referred to the ME crisis. 2 referred to Ebola.
In reading the 5 paragraphs involving Ukraine, only 1 can be categorized as substantive criticism
of "what the west sees as Russian meddling..." Indeed, 2 were 1 sentence paragraphs.
See for yourself:
That's why I must mention the conflict in Ukraine here. Some people in this chamber may
regard this as nothing more than a regional conflict in eastern Europe. But I am convinced
that this view is incorrect; this conflict affects each and every one of us. Not just any
state, but a permanent member of the Security Council, Russia has, with its annexation of
Crimea, unilaterally changed existing borders in Europe and thus broken international law.
We had to counter this dangerous signal, because we must not allow the power of international
law to be eroded from insidel We must not allow the old division between East and West to
re-emerge in the United Nations.
Because so much is at stake in this conflict, not only for the people in Ukraine but
also for the future of international law, Germany and its partners have taken on responsibility
and committed themselves vigorously to defusing the conflict.
I am under no illusion. A political solution is still a long way off. That said, however,
just a few weeks ago we were on the brink of direct military confrontation between Russian
and Ukrainian armed forces. Diplomacy prevented the worst. Now the priority must be to bring
about a lasting ceasefire and to arrive at a political solution, a solution based on the
principles of the United Nations and preserving the unity of Ukraine.
But I am not only talking about Ukraine! As long as this conflict is simmering, as long
as Russia and the West are in dispute over Ukraine, this threatens to paralyse the United
Nations. But we need a UN Security Council at is able and willing to act in order to tackle
the new and, in the long term, far more important tasks we are facing. For the world of
2014 is plagued not only by the old ghost of division, but also by new demons.
I might note that the "political solution" and "diplomacy (that) prevented the worst" did
not originate in the efforts of Herr Steinmeier, nor of Sec.St. Kerry, nor FM Hammond, nor Mr.
von Rumpuy. The political solution was brought about by the diplomacy of Russia, which sought
diplomatic resolution to the conflict since the US and EU helped regime change the Yanukovych
government in February and then saw CIA Director Brennan secretly travel to Kyiv just days before
the post-coup, unelected government unleashed the dogs of war on the eastern Ukrainians who
rose in opposition to the coup that reversed their two victories in the democratic elections
of 2010 (presidency) and 2012 (parliament).
As this short but sweet article demonstrates, the western "free press" continues to serve
as nothing but the mouthpiece for the US & NATO globalist elites to distort the facts and reality.
The reason they do that is to condition the western audience for the oncoming global conflict
being brought upon the world courtesy of the US Neocon warhawk's implementation of its declared
national security strategy, called the "Wolfowitz Doctrine," to prevent Russia or any other
country, or group of countries, from challenging our unilateral dominance of the world. And
those Neocons are clearly willing to go to war to maintain that hegemonistic position.
Can anybody, reasonably. disagree with this analysis?
American "leadership" is not a constant
in an uncertain world, it is a myth only Americans ever believed. American foreign policy is
to protect American political, economic and corporate interests - that is all. They push selfish
aims behind a mask of "democracy" and have done nothing but sewn chaos around the world.
American "leadership" is a meaningless lie that fewer and fewer people can even speak with
a straight face. Its economy is propped up with imaginary money and crushing debt and in its
panic to secure its place at the head of the table it is pushing insane policies against China,
Russia and various countries in the middle east.
America is not a good guy, and only Americans ever thought it was.
American foreign policy is to protect American political, economic and corporate interests
- that is all.
Sometimes I think it is less than that.. Who benefited from the mess in Iraq, Libya, Syria?
American people or economy certainly did not. Very few people did, and I think it is all about
them.
The German FM knows the truth of it, as we all do, and the recent debacle in Ukraine proves
there's a limit to how far Europe is prepared to go in order to sustain the US's insane aims
for global dominance.
"And Crimea was not "annexed," the Crimean people voted to secede in a referendum. The fact
that the new illegal and unelected government in the Ukraine argued that the secession of Crimea
violated the Ukrainian Constitution was truly ironic given that same government came to power
through the unconstitutional overthrow of the country's democratically-elected president. And
given the number of people in Crimea who voted to secede and the vast numbers of people in Eastern
Ukraine who are fighting for secession rather than live under the new US and EU backed government,
it is clear that the Euromaidan movement did not speak for all Ukrainians."
Nazi Germany was a criminal State but Hitler did the world a favour by provoking a global war,
the consequence of which was the end of European colonialism. Hitler even did the Jews a favour:
the Jews finally received a homeland. Without the WW2, decolonialization by Britain, France,
Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal would never have happened. History is complicated. Russia will
be doing humanity a favour if Putin triggers a full sanctions conflict with the West, and that
sanctions conflict leads to the end of US-EU hegemony, the collapse of the US Dollar, and the
end of the Washington Consensus, IMF; World Bank, UN, mass consumerism, denial of climate warming,
and more.
Trudi Goater, 27 September 2014 8:21pm
Actually I'd say he's right it is about time America stopped telling everyone how unique
it is! it's unique in it's ability to chaos chaos and mess the wold up and that's it as far
as I can see!
MikeBB2 - -> Trudi Goater, 27 September 2014 8:27pm
Indeed - all that "uniqueness' is as mythical as the supposed benefits brought to the world
by the British Empire!
Barbacana - -> MikeBB2, 27 September 2014 10:02pm
as mythical as the supposed benefits brought to the world by the British Empire!
Well at least the Brits built railways in some of their colonies. The US on the other hand
blows them up. So I think you're being too kind to the US.
Saint_mean - -> Barbacana, 27 September 2014 10:47pm
The railways that were conceived and built for the primary purpose of accomplishing the primary
goal of empire building - that is, total appropriation and exploitation of the riches of the
colonized countries for the main benefit of Britain? Now, many years after, any suggestion that
this is a credit to Britain, or that the dispossessed should be thankful for this is not only
a crude attempt at revisionism, it is also tantamount to asking the victim of a violent robbery
to recognize some 'benign' act of the robber to the victim while he was being violently robbed.
GoodmansParadox - -> ElectroMagneticPulse, 27 September 2014 11:42pm
It never ceases to amaze me how the practice of repeating a lie can be interpreted as becoming
proof.
We know that the "little green men" in Crimea weren't Russian troops, although Russian troops
ensured there would be no conflict between the Crimeans who shrugged off Kiev's authority, and
the poor Kievan forces confined to bases. As Lavrov said As Putin said.
A peaceful counter-revolution happened in Crimea, and the Crimean people gained their self-determination.
Let's applaud this, hey?
The same happened in Donetsk and Luhansk, but because Russian forces weren't there to keep
the peace, Kiev sent in the tanks, slaughtering the civilian population and causing mass displacement.
Yet some people still support the murderers from Kiev.
Why is that?
LeDingue - -> GoodmansParadox, 27 September 2014 11:56pm
It never ceases to amaze me how the practice of repeating a lie can be interpreted as becoming
proof.
Well said.
Some people just never tire of repeating it!
Otuocha11 - -> ElectroMagneticPulse, 28 September 2014 2:27am
"Lavrov's reputation was trashed yonks ago, he is just a Putin yes-man. He just stirs
and lies, as it suits him."
If Lavrov's reputation is questionable what would you say about Kerry, Blair, Clapper, and
those three-tongued Americans who keeps on deceiving the public? Are there no 'yes' men in the
US? The first yes-man is you, period.
littlebigcoala - -> ElectroMagneticPulse, 28 September 2014 2:31am
ElectroMagneticPulse said: "is it normal in Ukraine, and perhaps Russia too, for local
militias to be equipped with vast amounts of modern weaponry, enough in fact, to overrun
the territory of another country?
They were decked in the full kit, from boots to helmets, with flak-jackets, camouflage,
equipment, and assault rifles (current models, in use with the Russian army). There were
no rag-tag soldiers, with Wellington boots and pitchforks.
==============
1. remember Chechnya? - where did chechens got their weapons and equipment that helped them
actually to win in first chechen war against Russian federal forces?
2. Local regional police in Crimea actually sided with militia from the very begining - maybe
it was another source of weapons
3. your photo may depict local militia as well as Russians troops - but whae (what date)
it was made? - you can aquite (buy) uniform in Russia and they had support from business I am
sure - so it is not a proof - there were some well equiped, others badly equipped - we saw both
4. Crimean Riot Police regiment "Berkut" accused in Kiev in supporting Yanukovych on Maidan
was on the side of separatists of Crimea from the first day of separatist protest - they (Crimean
riot police regiment were under investigation by Kiev and immidiatelly openned their storage/uniform/arms
and even vehicled for separatists...
etc.etc...
are you honest enough to agree that you was wrong with your "arguments"?
Indianrook - -> ElectroMagneticPulse, 28 September 2014 2:58am
The uniqueness of the veracity is that it can be said by anyone.
It is also not correct that only idiots believe the lies. In history there were incidents
like the (in) famous WMD search that was supposedly existed in the middle east and almost all
in the west had believed that story. Unfortunately there still exist many who believe in the
similar type of stories land certainly they are not idiots.
davidpear, 27 September 2014 8:51pm
Vladimir Putin, who is riding a wave of popularity at home
Russians are united because the rightfully feel under attack. It is the US lead NATO that
is militarily encircling Russia. Not the other way around. The US and the EU are turning logic
on its head by blaming Russia for the destabilization of Ukraine.
ElectroMagneticPulse - -> davidpear, 27 September 2014 9:10pm
The good thing about Russia losing the Cold War, and its status as a superpower, is it can
no longer project its military strength. It is limited to playing in its own backyard, and harassing
places like Chechnya and Ukraine - albeit with fearsome casualties.
Since Putin invaded Crimea, NATO has been resurrected. It is reforming, deploying troops
eastwards, and Russia's worried neighbours are ardently flocking to NATO and pledging their
allegiance.
After the Cold War, NATO was virtually defunct, and for the last 25 years has been scrabbling
around for a reason to exist - but Putin has gifted it new purpose. This could end with NATO
bases and troops strung along Russia's borders from the Black Sea to the Baltic.
Might be that Putin has committed a massive strategic blunder.
davidpear - -> ElectroMagneticPulse, 27 September 2014 9:28pm
playing in its own backyard
If the US would stick to "playing in its own backyard" the world would be a more peaceful
place.
foolisholdman - -> ElectroMagneticPulse, 27 September 2014 10:33pm
After the Cold War, NATO was virtually defunct, and for the last 25 years has been
scrabbling around for a reason to exist - but Putin has gifted it new purpose. This could
end with NATO bases and troops strung along Russia's borders from the Black Sea to the Baltic.
Might be that Putin has committed a massive strategic blunder.
For something that was "virtually defunct" it certainly cost!
If it has been defunct all this last 25 years what is it going to cost now that it has come
back to life?
Where did all the money that was spent on this moribund, shadowy organisation, go? Any ideas?
Since the West is allegedly "virtually bankrupt" can it afford a newly revitalized NATO?
secondiceberg - -> ElectroMagneticPulse, 27 September 2014 11:00pm
Intolerably turbulent and bloody is exactly what the world is now. The U.S. and some of its
allies have broken more international laws than any other country.
Really? Ukraine's decision to move towards adopting EU models of governance and economics,
and leave Russia's behind is the West's fault? If you hadn't noticed, almost every former Warsaw
Pact and USSR member has run away from Russia by choice.
Shame on you for buying Lavrov's rationalization for Putin's Folly.
So Maidan Protesters beating kids who wore St.George Ribbons or Russian Flags never happened?
Protesters throwing molotov at the police , taking and burning government buildings never happened
right? Protesters parading police officers with the word "slave" written on their head never
happened? Protesters shooting at the police , patrolling Kiev streets with guns and bats also
never happened ?
U.S sending Senators, Diplomats, Secretary of State, CIA Director to Maidan also never happened.
Shame on you for missing a lot of chapters on Ukraine Crisis and not thinking enough.....
In view of events in Ukraine Russia treatment of foreign MSM is very lax and is bordeline to betryal
of national interests. Also they are trying to re-invent the bicycle. They should borrow the USA practice
without any major modifications instead.
Parliament passes law barring foreign investors from holding more than a 20% stake in Russian
media outlets
The legislation, which was passed by the state Duma without debate on Friday with a vote of 430-2,
forbids international organisations and foreign citizens, companies and governments from founding
or holding more than a 20% stake in Russian media businesses. Although it will come into force at
the start of 2016, media owners will have until 1 February 2017 to bring their holdings into compliance.
Foreign ownership of radio and television outlets, as well as print publications with a circulation
of more than one million, was previously limited to 50%. The law will affect a wide variety of publications,
including the country's leading business daily, Vedomosti, the Russian versions of glossy magazines
such as Esquire, GQ and Cosmopolitan, and television channels such as Disney and Eurosport.
Listening to Poroshenko a few days ago and then to Obama at the UNGA can leave no doubt whatsoever
about the fact that the AngloZionist Empire is at war with Russia. Yet many believe that
the Russian response to this reality is inadequate. Likewise, there is a steady stream of accusations
made against Putin about Russia's policy towards the crisis in the Ukraine. What I propose to do
here is to offer a few basic reminders about Putin, his obligations and his options.
First and foremost, Putin was never elected to be the world's policeman or savior, he was only
elected to be president of Russia. Seems obvious, but yet many seem to assume that somehow Putin
is morally obliged to do something to protect Syria, Novorussia or any other part of our harassed
world. This is not so. Yes, Russia is the de facto leader of the BRICS and SCO countries,
and Russia accepts that fact, but Putin has the moral and legal obligation to care for his own people
first.
Second, Russia is now officially in the crosshairs of the AngloZionist Empire which includes
not only 3 nuclear countries (US, UK, FR) but also the most powerful military force (US+NATO) and
the world's biggest economies (US+EU). I think that we can all agree that the threat posed
by such an Empire is not trivial and that Russia is right in dealing with it very carefully.
Sniping at Putin and missing the point
Now, amazingly, many of those who accuse Putin of being a wimp, a sellout or a naive Pollyanna
also claim that the West is preparing nuclear war on Russia. If that is really the case, this begs
the question: if that is really the case, if there is a real risk of war, nuclear or not, is Putin
not doing the right thing by not acting tough or threatening? Some would say that the West
is bent on a war no matter what Putin does. Okay, fair enough, but in that case is his buying as
much time as possible before the inevitable not the right thing to do?!
Third, on the issue of the USA vs ISIL, several comment here accused Putin of back-stabbing Assad
because Russia supported the US Resolution at the UNSC.
And what was Putin supposed to do?! Fly the Russian Air Force to Syria to protect the Syrian
border? What about Assad? Did he scramble his own air force to try to stop the US or has he quietly
made a deal: bomb "them" not us, and I shall protest and do nothing about it? Most obviously
the latter.
In fact, Putin and Assad have exactly the same position: protest the unilateral nature of the
strikes, demand a UN Resolution while quietly watching how Uncle Sam turned on his own progeny and
now tries to destroy them.
I would add that Lavrov quite logically stated that there are no "good terrorists". He knows
that ISIL is nothing but a continuation of the US-created Syrian insurgency, itself a continuation
of the US-created al-Qaeda. From a Russian point of view, the choice is simple: what is better,
for the US to use its forces and men to kill crazed Wahabis or have Assad do it? And if ISIL is
successful in Iraq, how long before they come back to Chechnia? Or Crimea? Or Tatarstan? Why should
any Russian or Syria soldier risk death when the USAF is willing to do that for them?
While there is a sweet irony in the fact that the US now has to bomb it's own creation, let them
do that. Even Assad was clearly forewarned and he obviously is quite happy about that.
Finally, UN or no UN, the US had already taken the decision to bomb ISIL. So what is the point
of blocking a perfectly good UN Resolution? That would be self-defeating. In fact, this Resolution
can even be used by Russia to prevent the US and UK from serving as a rear base for Wahabi extremists
(this resolution bans that, and we are talking about a mandatory, Chapter VII, UNSC Resolution).
And yet, some still say that Putin threw Assad under the bus. How crazy and stupid can one get
to have that kind of notion about warfare or politics? And if Putin wanted to toss Assad under the
bus, why did he not do that last year?
Sincere frustration or intellectual dishonesty?
But that kind of nonsense about the Syria is absolutely dwarfed by the kind of truly crazy stuff
some people post about Novorussia. Here are my favorite ones. The author begins by quoting me:
"This war has never been about Novorussia or about the Ukraine."
and then continues:
That statement is too vacuous and convenient as a copout. Do you really mean to say that
the thousands of people murdered by shelling, the thousands of young Ukrainian conscripts put
through the meat grinder, the thousands of homes destroyed, the more than 1 million people who
have turned into refugees... NONE of that has anything to do with Novorussia and Ukraine? That
this is only about Russia? Really, one would wish you'd refrain from making silly statements
like that.
The only problem being, of course, that I never made it in the first place :-)
Of course, it is
rather obvious that I meant that FOR THE ANGLOZIONIST EMPIRE the goal has never been the Ukraine
or Novorussia, but a war on Russia. All Russia did was to recognize this reality. Again, the words
"do you really mean to say that" clearly show that the author is going to twist what I said,
make yet another strawman, and then indignantly denounce me for being a monster who does not care
about the Ukraine or Novorussia (the rest of the comment was in the same vein: indignant denunciations
of statements I never made and conclusions I never reached).
I have already grown used to the truly remarkable level of dishonesty of the Putin-bashing crowd
and by now I consider it par for the course. But I wanted to illustrate that one more time just
to show that at least in certain cases an honest discussion is not the purpose at all. But I don't
want to bring it all down to just a few dishonest and vociferous individuals. There are also many
who are sincerely baffled, frustrated and even disappointed with Russia's apparent passivity. Here
is an excerpt of an email I got this morning:
I guess I was really hoping that perhaps Russia, China The BRICS would be a counter force.
What I fail to understand is why after all the demonisation by the U.S and Europe doesn't Russia
retaliate. The sanctions imposed by the West is hurting Russia and yet they still trade oil
in euros/dollars and are bending over backwards to accommodate Europe. I do not understand why
they do not say lift all sanctions or no gas. China also says very little against the U.S ,
even though they fully understand that if Russian is weakened they are next on the list. As
for all the talk of lifting the sanctions on Iran that is farcical as we all know Israel will
never allow them to be lifted. So why do China and Russia go along with the whole charade. Sometimes
I wonder if we are all being played, and this is all one big game , which no chance of anything
changing.
In this case the author correctly sees that Russia and China follow a very similar policy which
sure looks like an attempt to appease the US. In contrast to the previous comment, here the author
is both sincere and truly distressed.
In fact, I believe that what I am observing are three very different phenomena all manifesting
themselves at the same time:
An organized Putin-bashing campaign initiated by US/UK government branches tasked with manipulating
the social media.
A spontaneous Putin-bashing campaign lead by certain Russian National-Bolshevik circles
(Limonov, Dugin & Co.).
The expression of a sincere bafflement, distress and frustration by honest and well-intentioned
people to whom the current Russian stance really makes no sense at all.
The rest of this post will be entirely dedicated to try to explain the Russian stance to those
in this third group (any dialog with the 2 first ones just makes no sense).
Trying to make sense of an apparently illogical policy
In my introduction above I stated that what is taking place is a war on Russia, not hot war (yet?)
and not quite an old-style Cold War. In essence, what the AngloZionists are doing is pretty clear
and a lot of Russian commentators have already reached that conclusion: the US are engaged into
a war against Russia for which the US will fight to the last Ukrainian. Thus, for the Empire,
"success" can never be defined as an outcome in the Ukraine because, as I said previously,
this war is not about the Ukraine. For the Empire "success" is a specific outcome in Russia:
regime change. Let's us look at how the Empire plans to achieve this result.
The original plan was simplistic in a typically US Neocon way: overthrow Yanukovich, get the
Ukraine into the EU and NATO, politically move NATO to the Russian border and militarily move it
into Crimea. That plan failed. Russia accepted Crimea and the Ukraine collapsed into a vicious civil
war combined with a terminal economic crisis. Then the US Neocons fell-back to plan B.
Plan B was also simple: get Russia to intervene militarily in the Donbass and use that as a pretext
for a full-scale Cold War v2 which would create 1950's style tensions between East and West, justify
fear-induced policies in the West, and completely sever the growing economic ties between Russia
and the EU. Except that plan also failed -- Russia did not take the bait and instead of intervening
directly in the Donbass, she began a massive covert operation to support the anti-Nazi forces in
Novorussia. The Russian plan worked, and the Junta Repression Forces (JRF) were soundly defeated
by the Novorussian Armed Forces (NAF) even though the latter was suffering a huge deficit in firepower,
armor, specialists and men (gradually, Russian covert aid turned all these around).
At this point in time the AngloZionist plutocracy truly freaked out under the combined realization
that their plan was falling apart and that there was nothing they could really do to rescue it (a
military option was totally impossible as I explained it
in the past).
They did try economic sanctions, but that only helped Putin to engage in long overdue reforms. But
the worst part of it all was that each time the West expected Putin to do something, he did the
exact opposite:
Nobody expected that Putin would use military force in Crimea in a lightening-fast take-over
operation which will go down in history as at least as amazing as
Storm-333.
Everybody (including myself) expected Putin to send forces into Novorussia. He did not.
Nobody expected Russian counter-sanctions to hit the EU agricultural sector.
Everybody expected that Putin would retaliate after the latest round of sanctions. He did
not.
There is a pattern here and it is one basic to all martial arts: first, never signal your
intentions, second use feints and third, hit when and where your opponent doesn't expect it.
Conversely, there are two things which are deeply ingrained in the western political mindset which
Putin never does: he never threatens and he never postures. For example, while the US is basically
at war with Russia, Russia will gladly support a US resolution on ISIL if it is to Russia's advantage.
And Russian diplomats will speak of "our American partners" or "our American friends" while, at
the same time, doing more than the rest of the planet combined to bring down the AngloZionist
Empire.
A quick look at Putin's record
As I have written in the past, unlike some other bloggers and commentators, I am neither a psychic
not a prophet and I cannot tell you what Putin thinks or what he will do tomorrow. But what I can
tell you is that which Putin has already done in the past: (in no particular order)
broken the back of the AngloZionist-baked oligarchy in Russia.
achieved a truly miraculous success in Chechnia (one which nobody, prophets included, had
foreseen).
literally resurrected the Russian economy.
rebuilt the Russian military, security and intelligences forces.
severely disrupted the ability of foreign NGOs to subvert Russia.
done more for the de-dollarization of the planet than anybody before.
made Russia the clear leader of both BRICS and SCO.
openly challenged the informational monopoly of the western propaganda machine (with projects
like RussiaToday).
stopped an imminent US/NATO strike on Syria by sending in a Russian Navy Expeditionary Force
(which gave Syria a full radar coverage of the entire region).
made it possible for Assad to prevail in the Syrian civil war.
openly rejected the Western "universal civilizational model" and declared his support for
another, a religion and tradition based one.
openly rejected a unipolar "New World Order" lead by the AngloZionists and declared his
support for a multi-polar world order.
supported Assange (through RussiaToday) and protected Snowden
created and promoted a new alliance model between Christianity and Islam thus undermining
the "clash of civilization" paradigm.
booted the AngloZionists out of key locations in the Caucasus (Chechnia, Ossetia).
booted the AngloZionists out of key locations in Central Asia (Manas base in Kyrgyzstan)
gave Russia the means to defend her interest in the Arctic region, including military means.
established a full-spectrum strategic alliance with China which is at the core of both SCO
and BRICS.
is currently passing laws barring foreign interests from controlling the Russian media.
gave Iran the means to develop a much needed civilian nuclear program.
is working with China to create a financial system fully separated form the current AngloZionist
controlled one (including trade in Rubles or Renminbi).
re-establised Russian political and economic support for Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador,
Brazil, Nicaragua and Argentina.
very effectively deflated the pro-US color-coded revolution in Russia.
organized the "Voentorg" which armed the NAF.
gave refuge to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
sent in vitally needed humanitarian aid to Novorussia.
provided direct Russian fire support and possibly even air cover to NAF in key locations
(the "southern cauldron" for example).
last but not least, he openly spoke of the need for Russia to "sovereignize" herself and
to prevail over the pro-US 5th column.
and that list goes on and on. All I am trying to illustrate is that there is a very good reason
for the AngloZionist's hatred for Putin: his long record of very effectively fighting them. So unless
we assume that Putin had a sudden change of heart or that he simply ran out of energy or courage,
I submit that the notion that he suddenly made a 180 makes no sense. His current policies, however,
do make sense, as I will try to explain now.
If you are a "Putin betrayed Novorussia" person,
please set that hypothesis aside for a moment, just for argument's sake and assume that Putin is
both principled and logical. What could he be doing in the Ukraine? Can we make sense of what we
observe?
Imperatives Russia cannot ignore
First, I consider the following sequence indisputable:
First, Russia must prevail over the current AngloZionist war against her. What the Empire
wants in Russia is regime change followed by complete absorption into the Western sphere of influence
including a likely break-up of Russia. What is threatened is the very existence of the Russian civilization.
Second, Russia will never be safe with a neo-Nazi russophobic regime in power in Kiev.
The Ukie nationalist freaks have proven that it is impossible to negotiate with them (they have
broken literally every single agreement signed so far), their hatred for Russia is total (as shown
with their constant references to the use of - hypothetical - nuclear weapons against Russia). Therefore,
Third, regime change in Kiev followed by a full de-Nazification is the only possible way for
Russia to achieve her vital objectives.
Again, and at the risk of having my words twisted and misrepresented, I have to repeat here that
Novorussia is not what is at stake here. It's not even the future of the Ukraine. What is
at stake here is a planetary confrontation (this is the one thesis of Dugin which I fully
agree with). The future of the planet depends on the capability of the BRICS/SCO countries to replace
the AngloZionist Empire with a very different, multi-polar, international order. Russia is crucial
and indispensable in this effort (any such effort without Russia is doomed to fail), and the future
of Russia is now decided by what Russia will do in the Ukraine. As for the future of the Ukraine,
it largely depends on what will happen to Novorussia, but not exclusively. In a paradoxical way,
Novorussia is more important to Russia than to the Ukraine. Here is why:
For the rest of the Ukraine, Novorussia is lost.
Forever. Not even a joint Putin-Obama effort could prevent that. In fact, the Ukies know
that and this is why they make no effort to win the hearts and minds of the local population. If
fact, I am convinced that the so-called "random" or "wanton" destruction of the Novorussian industrial,
economic, scientific and cultural infrastructure has been intentional act of hateful vengeance similar
to the way the AngloZionists always turn to killing civilians when they fail to overcome military
forces (the examples of Yugoslavia and Lebanon come to mind). Of course, Moscow can probably force
the local Novorussian political leaders to sign some kind of document accepting Kiev's sovereignty,
but that will be a fiction, it is way too late for that. If not de jure, then de facto,
Novorussia is never going to accept Kiev's rule again and everybody knows that, in Kiev, in Novorussia
and in Russia.
What could a de facto but not de jure independence look like?
No Ukrainian military, national guard, oligarch battalion or SBU, full economic, cultural, religious,
linguistic and educational independence, locally elected officials and local media, but all that
with Ukie flags, no official independence status, no Novorussian Armed Forces (they will be called
something like "regional security force" or even "police force") and no Novorussian currency (though
the Ruble - along with the Dollar and Euro - will be used on a daily basis). The top officials will
have to be officially approved by Kiev (which Kiev will, of course, lest its impotence becomes visible).
This will be a temporary, transitional and unstable arrangement, but it will
be good enough to provide a face-saving way out to Kiev.
This said, I would argue that both Kiev and Moscow have an interest in maintaining the
fiction of a unitary Ukraine. For Kiev this is a way to not appear completely defeated by
the accursed Moskals. But what about Russia?
What if you were in Putin's place?
Ask yourself the following question: if you were Putin and your goal was regime change
in Kiev, would you prefer Novorussia to be part of the Ukraine or not? I would submit that having
Novorussia inside is much better for the following reasons:
it makes it part, even on a macro-level, of the Ukrainian processes, like national elections
or national media.
it begs the comparison with the conditions in the rest of the Ukraine.
it makes it far easier to influence commerce, business, transportation, etc.
it creates an alternative (Nazi-free) political center to Kiev.
it makes it easier for Russian interests (of all kind) to penetrate into the Ukraine.
it removes the possibility to put up a Cold War like "wall" or barrier on some geographical
marker.
it removes the accusation that Russian wants to partition the Ukraine.
In other words, to keep Novorussia de jure, nominally, part of the Ukraine is the best way
to appear to be complying with AngloZionist demands while subverting the Nazi junta in power.
In
a recent article I outlined what Russia could do without incurring any major consequences:
Politically oppose the regime everywhere: UN, media, public opinion, etc.
Express political support for Novorussia and any Ukrainian oppositionContinue the informational
war (Russian media does a great job)
Prevent Novorussia from falling (covert military aid)
Mercilessly keep up the economic pressure on the Ukraine
Disrupt as much as possible the US-EU "axis of kindness"
Help Crimea and Novorussia prosper economically and financially
In other words - give the appearance of staying out while very much staying in.
What
is the alternative anyway?
I already hear the chorus of indignant "hurray-patriots" (that is what these folks are called
in Russia) accusing me of only seeing Novorussia as a tool for Russian political goals and of ignoring
the death and suffering endured by the people of Novorussia. To this I will simply reply the following:
Does anybody seriously believe that an independent Novorussia can live in even minimal peace
and security without a regime change in Kiev? If Russia cannot afford a Nazi junta in power
in Kiev, can Novorussia?!
In general, the hurray-patriots are long on what should be done now and very short any kind of
mid or long term vision. Just like those who believe that Syria can be saved by sending in the Russian
Air Force, the hurray-patriots believe that the crisis in the Ukraine can be solved by sending in
tanks. They are a perfect example of the mindset H. L. Mencken was referring to when he wrote "For
every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong".
The sad reality is that the mindset behind such "simple" solutions is always the same one: never
negotiate, never compromise, never look long term but only to the immediate future and use force
in all cases.
But the facts are here: the US/NATO block is powerful, militarily, economically and politically
and it can hurt Russia, especially over time. Furthermore, while Russia can easily defeat the Ukrainian
military, this hardly would be a very meaningful "victory". Externally it would trigger a massive
deterioration of the international political climate, while internally the Russians would have to
suppress the Ukrainian nationalists (not all of them Nazi) by force. Could Russia do that? Again,
the answer is that yes - but at what cost?
I good friend of mine was a Colonel in the KGB Special Forces unit called "Kaskad" (which later
was renamed "Vympel"). One day he told me how his father, himself a special operator for the GRU,
fought against Ukrainian insurgents from the end of WWII in 1945 up to 1958: that is thirteen years!
It took Stalin and Krushchev 13 years to finally crush the Ukrainian nationalist insurgents. Does
anybody in his/her right mind sincerely
By the way, if the Ukrainian nationalists could fight the Soviet rule under Stalin and Krushchev
for a full 13 years after the end of the war - how is it that there is no visible anti-Nazi
resistance in Zaporozhie, Dnepropetrivsk or Kharkov? Yes, Luganks and Donetsk did rise up and
take arms, very successfully - but the rest of the Ukraine? If you were Putin, would you be confident
that Russian forces liberating these cities would receive the same welcome that they did in Crimea?
And yet, the hurray-patriots keep pushing for more Russian intervention and further Novorussian
military operations against Ukie forces. Is it not about time we begin asking who would benefit
from such policies?
It has been an old trick of the US CIA to use the social media and the blogosphere to push
for nationalist extremism in Russia. A well know and respected Russian patriot and journalist
- Maksim Shevchenko - had a group of people organized to track down the IP numbers of some of the
most influential radical nationalist organizations, website, blogs and individual posters on the
Russian Internet. Turns out that most were based in the USA, Canada and Israel. Surprise, surprise.
Or, maybe, no surprise at all?
For the AngloZionists, supporting extremists and rabid nationalists in Russia makes perfectly
good sense. Either they get to influence the public opinion or they at the very least can be used
to bash the regime in power. I personally see no difference between an Udaltsov or a Navalnii on
one hand and a Limonov or a Dugin on the other. Their sole effect is to get people mad at the Kremlin.
What the pretext for the anger is does not matter - for Navalnyi its "stolen elections" for Dugin
it's "back-stabbed Novorussia". And it does not matter which of them are actually paid agents or
just "useful idiots" - God be their judge - but what does matter is that the solutions they advocate
are no solutions at all, just pious pretexts to bash the regime in power.
In the meantime, not only had Putin not sold-out, back-stabbed, traded away or otherwise abandoned
Novorussia, it's Poroshenko who is barely holding on to power and Banderastan which is going down
the tubes. There are also plenty of people who see through this doom and gloom nonsense, both in
Russia (Yuri Baranchik) and abroad (M.
K. Bhadrakumar).
But what about the oligarchs?
I already addressed this issue
in a recent post, but I think that it is important to return to this topic here and the first
thing which is crucial to understand in the Russian or Ukrainian context is that oligarchs are a
fact of life. This is not to say that their presence is a good thing, only that Putin and Poroshenko
and, for that matter, anybody trying to get anything done over there needs to take them into account.
The big difference is that while in Kiev a regime controlled by the oligarchs has been replaced
by a regime of oligarchs, in Russia the oligarchy can only influence, but not control, the Kremlin.
The examples, of Khodorkovsky or Evtushenkov show that the Kremlin still can, and does, smack down
an oligarch when needed.
Still, it is one thing to pick on one or two oligarchs and quite another to remove them from
the Ukrainian equation: the latter is just not going to happen. So for Putin any Ukrainian strategy
has to take into account the presence and, frankly, power of the Ukrainian oligarchs and their Russian
counterparts.
Putin knows that oligarchs have their true loyalty only to themselves and that their only "country"
is wherever their assets happen to be. As a former KGB foreign intelligence officer for Putin this
is an obvious plus, because that mindset potentially allows him to manipulate them. Any intelligence
officer knows that people can be manipulated by a finite list of approaches: ideology, ego, resentment,
sex, a skeleton in the closet and, of course, money. From Putin's point of view,
Rinat Akhmetov, for example, is a guy
who used to employ something like 200'000 people in the Donbass, who clearly can get things done,
and whose official loyalty Kiev and the Ukraine is just a camouflage for his real loyalty: his money.
Now, Putin does not have to like or respect Akhmetov, most intelligence officers will quietly despise
that kind of person, but that also means that for Putin Akhmetov is an absolutely crucial person
to talk to, explore options with and, possibly, use to achieve a Russian national strategic objective
in the Donbass.
I have already written this many times here: Russians do talk to their enemies. With a friendly
smile. This is even more true for a former intelligence officer who is trained to always communicate,
smile, appear to be engaging and understanding. For Putin Akhmetov is not a friend or an ally, but
he is a powerful figure which can be manipulated in Russia's advantage. What I am trying to explain
here is the following:
There are numerous rumors of secret negotiations between Rinat Akhmetov and various Russian officials.
Some say that Khodakovski is involved. Others mention Surkov. There is no doubt in my mind that
such secret negotiations are taking place. In fact, I am sure that all the parties involved talk
to all other other parties involved. Even with a disgusting, evil and vile creature like Kolomoiski.
In fact, the sure signal that somebody has finally decided to take him out would be that nobody
would be speaking with him any more. That will probably happen, with time, but most definitely not
until his power base is sufficiently eroded.
One Russian blogger believes that Akhmetov
has already been "persuaded" (read: bought off) by Putin and that he is willing to play by the new
rules which now say "Putin is boss". Maybe. Maybe not yet, but soon. Maybe never. All I am suggesting
is that negotiations between the Kremlin and local Ukie oligarchs are as logical and inevitable
as the US contacts with the Italian Mafia before the US armed forces entered Italy.
But is there a 5th column in Russia?
Yes, absolutely. First and foremost, it is found inside the Medvedev government itself and even
inside the Presidential administration. Always remember that Putin was put into power by two competing
forces: the secret services and big money. And yes, while it is true that Putin has tremendously
weakened the "big money" component (what I call the "Atlantic Integrationists") they are still very
much there, though they are more subdued, more careful and less arrogant than during the time when
Medvedev was formally in charge. The big change in the recent years is that the struggle between
patriots (the "Eurasian Sovereignists") and the 5th column now is in the open, but it if far from
over. And we should never underestimate these people: they have a lot of power, a lot of money and
a fantastic capability to corrupt, threaten, discredit, sabotage, cover-up, smear, etc. They are
also very smart, they can hire the best professionals in the field, and they are very, very
good at ugly political campaigns. For example, the 5th columnists try hard to give a voice to the
National-Bolshevik opposition (both Limonov and Dugin regularly get airtime on Russian TV) and rumor
has it that they finance a lot of the National-Bolshevik media (just like the Koch brothers paid
for the Tea Party in the USA).
Another problem is that while these guys are objectively doing the US CIA's bidding, there is
no proof of it. As I was told many times by a wise friend: most conspiracies are really collusions
and the latter are very hard to prove. But the community of interests between the US CIA and the
Russian and Ukrainian oligarchy is so obvious as to be undeniable.
The real danger for Russia
So now we have the full picture. Again, Putin has to simultaneously contend with
a strategic psyop campaign run by the US/UK & Co. which combines the corporate media's demonization
of Putin and a campaign in the social media to discredit him for his passivity and lack
of appropriate response to the West.
a small but very vociferous group of (mostly) National-Bolsheviks (Limonov, Dugin & Co.)
who have found in the Novorussian cause a perfect opportunity to bash Putin for not sharing
their ideology and their "clear, simple, and wrong" "solutions".
a network of powerful oligarchs who want to use the opportunity presented by the actions
of first two groups to promote their own interests.
a 5th column for whom all of the above is a fantastic opportunity to weaken the Eurasian
Sovereignists
a sense of disappointment by many sincere people who feel that Russia is acting like a passive
punching-ball.
an overwhelming majority of people in Novorussia who want complete (de factoandde jure) independence from Kiev and who are sincerely convinced that any negotiations
with Kiev are a prelude to a betrayal by Russia of Novorussian interest.
the objective reality that Russian and Novorussian interests are not the same.
the objective reality that the AngloZionist Empire is still very powerful and even potentially
dangerous.
It is very, very, hard for Putin to try to balance these forces in such a way that the resulting
vector is one which is in the strategic interest of Russia. I would argue that there is simply no
other solution to this conundrum other than to completely separate Russia's official (declaratory)
police and Russia's real actions. The covert help to Novorussia - the Voentorg - is an example
of that, but only a limited one because what Russia must do now goes beyond covert actions: Russia
must appear to be doing one thing while doing exactly the opposite. It is in Russia's strategic
interest at this point in time to appear to:
1) Support a negotiated solution along the lines of: a unitary non-aligned Ukraine, with large
regional right for all regions while, at the same time, politically opposing the regime everywhere:
UN, media, public opinion, etc. and supporting both Novorussia and any Ukrainian opposition.
2) Give Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs a reason to if not support, then at least not oppose such
a solution (for ex: by not nationalizing Akhmetov's assets in the Donbass), while at the same time
making sure that there is literally enough "firepower" to keep the oligarch under control.
3) Negotiate with the EU on the actual implementation of Ukraine's Agreement with the EU while at
the same time helping the Ukraine commit economic suicide by making sure that there is just the
right amount of economic strangulation applied to prevent the regime from bouncing back.
4) Negotiate with the EU and the Junta in Kiev over the delivery of gas while at the same time making
sure that the regime pays enough for it to be broke.
5) Appear generally non-confrontational towards the USA while at the same time trying as hard as
possible to create tensions between the US and the EU.
6) Appear to be generally available and willing to do business with the AngoZionist Empire while
at the same time building an alternative international systems not centered on the USA or the Dollar.
As you see, this goes far beyond a regular covert action program. What we are dealing with is
a very complex, multi-layered, program to achieve the Russian most important goal in the Ukraine
(regime change and de-Nazification) while inhibiting as much as possible the AngloZionists attempts
to re-created a severe and long lasting East-West crisis in which the EU would basically fuse with
the USA.
Conclusion: a key to Russian policies?
Most of us are used to think in terms of super-power categories. After all, US President from
Reagan on to Obama have all served us a diet of grand statements, almost constant military operations
followed by Pentagon briefings, threats, sanctions, boycotts, etc. I would argue that this has always
been the hallmark of western "diplomacy" from the Crusades to the latest bombing campaign against
ISIL. Russia and China have a diametrically opposed tradition. For example, in terms of methodology
Lavrov always repeats the same principle: "we want to turn our enemies into neutrals, we want
to turn neutrals into partner and we want to turn partners into friends". The role of Russian
diplomats is not to prepare for war, but to avoid it. Yes, Russia will fight, but only when diplomacy
has failed. If for the US diplomacy is solely a means to deliver threats, for Russia it is a the
primary tool to defuse them. It is therefore no wonder at all the the US diplomacy is primitive
to the point of bordering on the comical. After all, how much sophistication is needed to say "comply
or else". Any petty street thug know how to do that. Russian diplomats are much more akin to explosives
disposal specialist or a mine clearance officer: they have to be extremely patient, very careful
and fully focused. But most importantly, they cannot allow anybody to rush them lest the entire
thing blows up.
Russia is fully aware that the AngloZionist Empire is at war with her and that surrender is simply
not an option any more (assuming it ever was). Russia also understands that she is not a real super-power
or, even less so, an empire. Russia is only a very powerful country which is trying to de-fang the
Empire without triggering a frontal confrontation with it. In the Ukraine, Russia sees no other
solution than regime change in Kiev. To achieve this goal Russia will always prefer a negotiated
solution to one obtained by force, even though if not other choice is left to her, she will use
force. In other words:
Russia's long term end goal is to bring down the AngloZionis Empire. Russia's mid term goal
is to create the conditions for regime change in Kiev.
Russia's short term goal is to prevent the junta from over-running Novorussia. Russia's preferred
method to achieve these goals is negotiation with all parties involved.
A prerequisite to achieve these goals by negotiations is to prevent the Empire from succeeding
in creating an acute continental crisis (conversely, the imperial "deep state" fully understands
all this, hence the double declaration of war by Obama and Poroshenko.)
As long as you keep these basic principles in mind, the apparent zig-zags, contradictions and
passivity of Russian policies will begin to make sense.
It is an open question whether Russia will succeed in her goals. In theory, a successful Junta
attack on Novorussia could force Russia to intervene. Likewise, there is always the possibility
of yet another "false flag", possibly a nuclear one. I think that the Russian policy is sound
and the best realistically achievable under the current set of circumstances, but only time will
tell.
I am sorry that it took me over 6400 words to explain all that, but in a society were most "thoughts"
are expressed as "tweets" and analyses as Facebook posts, it was a daunting task to try to shed
some light to what is turning to be a deluge of misunderstandings and misconceptions, all made worse
by the manipulation of the social media. I feel that 60'000 words would be more adequate to this
task as it is far easier to just throw out a short and simple slogan than to refute its assumptions
and implications.
My hope that at least those of you who sincerely were confused by Russia's apparently illogical
stance can now connect the dots and make better sense of it all.
My essay claims that the security provided by the British Empire and later U.S. hegemony-or American
Empire, if we want to be indelicate-has promoted liberal practice, and liberal practice, messy and
imperfect though it might be, has promoted liberal theory. The claim here is not deterministic at
the individual level: it's plainly not the case no one can come up with liberal ideas amid an illiberal
environment. Rather, a liberal environment is more conducive than an illiberal one to the extension
and refinement of liberal thought among a populace.
... ... ...
This is why the largest concentration of classical liberals in 19th-century politics and the
greatest volume of classical-liberal literature were to be found in Britain, and it's why libertarianism
today finds the most followers and is most strongly institutionalized-in think tanks, magazines,
and a nascent political movement-in the United States. Liberalism is a luxury security affords,
and hegemons have the security in the greatest abundance.
Security by itself is not enough, of course: a state that enjoyed tremendous international security,
as Japan did for centuries, might or might not spontaneously develop broadly liberal ideas. Given
the presence of liberal seeds, however, security seems to encourage their growth-this was true even
in the Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc during the Cold War and in the USSR itself.
The extended Soviet Empire was distinctly illiberal in ideology but enjoyed supreme security:
there was never much prospect that NATO would simply invade Eastern Europe. (Just as NATO deterred
the Soviets themselves from doing any invading of the West.) What liberal ideas survived Soviet
repression or otherwise made their way through black-market channels into Soviet-controlled domains
often met with a welcoming audience, and over decades, under conditions of peace, those liberal
ideas grew stronger while the totalitarian ideology of the USSR grew weaker, including in Russia
itself. Ironically, the Soviet Union's greatest success-its conquest of Eastern Europe and guarantee
of Russia's security-contributed to its undoing. It created conditions in which liberalism could
grow.
... ... ...
What's more, radical liberals may call for complete nonintervention, but most self-identified
liberals, including a contingent of libertarians, favor humanitarian warfare and aggressive efforts
to "liberalize" countries that are insufficiently liberal and democratic. This is another irony
of liberalism: it was fostered by non-ideological empires-Britain obtained hers in a fit of absence
of mind; America acquired hers with tremendous reluctance and a troubled conscience. But once non-ideological
empire has promoted the growth of liberal ideology, that ideology takes on a more radical, demanding
character: a liberal minority adopt the anarcho-pacifist position, calling for dismantling the empire
today; while a larger number of liberals call for using the empire to promote liberal ideological
ends. Reining in empire thus requires reining in the demands of liberalism-realism as an antidote
to ideology.
Murphy and Richman both point to the ways in which war and empire have made the United States
less liberal in practice. War's illiberal effects are indeed a major part of my argument:
war is the opposite of security, and conditions of war-i.e., the absence of security-are dreadful
for liberty. The question is what minimizes conditions of war and maximizes conditions of security.
That's not a question that can be answered in the abstract; it's one that must be answered in
the context of particular times. In the case of 19th-century Europe, a balance of power safeguarded
by the British Empire as an "offshore balancer" seems to have done the trick. In the case of 20th-century
Europe, a 45-year balance between the United States and a contained USSR kept the peace from the
fall of Nazi Germany until the collapse of the Soviet Union. One thing I hope my essay will
do is prompt libertarians to think more seriously about historical security conditions and what
viable "libertarian" options there may have been in the foreign-policy crises of the past. If there
were no viable libertarian options, that's a problem for libertarianism.
It's a practical problem being confronted by Rand Paul right now. What liberal or libertarian
thinkers can he draw upon for practical foreign-policy advice? There are a few, but most radical
libertarians are simply not interested in real-world foreign-policy choices. And once libertarians
do engage with reality, they start to seem a lot less libertarian.
The US elite (and that first and foremost means means financial oligarchy) is on war path and Obama
voiced the strategy of weakening and dismantling Russia as a new cold war with very similar demonization
of the enemy. One quote: "Here we must give credit where its due, even if it's through gritted teeth:
US imperialism has a genius for reinventing itself."
Colonel Kilgore, in Coppola's "Apocalypse Now," said he loved the smell of napalm in the morning.
By way of contrast, US President Barack Obama, prefers the smell of coffee.
But in many ways,
the image of the president with the coffee cup is perfect for what US imperialism needs at present.
It's fully in line with the non-macho, or even wimpish image of Obama, the reluctant warrior, the
man who would prefer to spend his time trying to hit birdies on the golf course, or listening to
Marvin Gaye on his iPod, rather than getting involved in yet another Middle East conflict.This image
counts for quite a lot in selling US foreign policy and getting support for it in Western Europe.
Here we must give credit where its due, even if it's through gritted teeth: US imperialism
has a genius for reinventing itself. After the Bush years, the Empire desperately needed a
new kind of front man. The trouble with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and co was that they were too obvious,
too easy to protest against, too similar to Colonel Kilgore in their obvious love of war and conquest.
The hardcore fanatical neo-cons cheered them on, but the more intelligent imperialists realized
that they had done great damage to the cause of Pax Americana, and that a new kind of president
was needed to extend US global hegemony and take things on to the next stage. One who would
talk the language of dialogue and negotiation and stress the
need for the US to act multilaterally, someone who would talk of a "new beginning between
the United States and Muslims around the world," but who would still, like Bush, carry on with
the Permanent War agenda.
I remember the first time I saw Barack Obama on American TV in 2006. It was hard not be impressed.
He spoke of his opposition to the Iraq war, maintaining that it was the "wrong war." He
came over as personable, articulate and sophisticated. He was a throwback to the sort of Democrats
we had in the 1960s and '70s. A stark contrast to that clapped-out catastrophe George W. Bush.
Hillary 'The Hawk' Clinton was the favorite to beat Obama in the race for the Democratic nomination,
but the smart money was on the more "doveish" senator from Illinois.
The great thing about Obama from the viewpoint of the more intelligent US imperialists was that
he could regain liberal-left support for Pax Americana, and help reduce the widespread anti-Americanism
in the west which had grown in the Bush years to record levels. He would be able to rebuild bridges
with Europe.
... ... ...
Neocons may call him a 'wimp', but The President Who Would Rather Play Golf is exactly what the
Empire has needed over the past few years. It has needed a front man who doesn't appear to like
war, but who nevertheless keeps on coming back for more. He's someone who talks the language of
peace and conflict resolution, and not interfering in other nations' affairs, but who still works,
like presidents before him, to enforce "regime change" on governments that the US elite wants toppled.
Those who believed
Obama would be radically different to Bush showed a breathtaking naivety regarding the power
of the US military-industrial complex and the huge influence that the pro-Israel lobby, Saudi Arabia,
and the Arab oil states have on US foreign policy.
Even if he had really wanted to "stop the war," Obama would have been unable to do so as he's
no more than the pilot of an imperial juggernaut whose controls have already been set, and which
purposely has no reverse gear.
As bad as he's been from an anti-war viewpoint, the really depressing thing is that there were,
and are, no better alternatives – as the system simply won't allow it.
If you're anti-war, would you really have preferred Mitt Romney to Obama in 2012? Criticism of
Obama has been muted because of the sheer awfulness of the alternatives to him. If we didn't get
President Obama in 2008, we'd have had President McCain.And who would also want to line up with
those reactionaries who attack Obama on racial grounds, or who peddle the "Barack Osama – he's a
secret Muslim" line?
There's also the fact that the man, in spite of his foreign policy, still remains hard to dislike
on a personal basis. That too helps the Empire, and it wouldn't have applied had the obnoxious McCain
or smarmy Romney got elected.
Those who think things will improve from an anti-war viewpoint post-Obama are likely to be cruelly
disappointed. The face and even the gender of the president may change, but the policies will stay
more or less the same.
Already the uber-hawks are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of President Hillary
Clinton, who they're sure will be more outwardly aggressive in foreign policy, and who will push
the cause of Israel in the Middle East even more forcefully than Obama. She'll probably face a pro-war
Republican candidate in an election in which the military-industrial complex and big business simply
can't lose because both candidates will do what is required of them if they win. Anyone who might
pose a challenge to the system, from either the genuine left, or the antiwar libertarian right,
won't get the required funding from Wall Street, and in any case will be portrayed as a "dangerous
extremist" or "fanatic" by establishment gatekeepers.
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. His award winning blog can be found at
www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. Follow him on
Twitter
Selected Skeptical Comments
Enrique Ferro's insight:
If you watch closely, and take into account the number of wars they get into and the bulk
of constitutional order they violate, the American Presidents, at least since Reagan, go from
bad to worse. The trend is unstoppable. Just imagine next a Hillary Clinton... Their militarism
and scorn for the laws, both international and domestic, take us nearer and nearer from a 21st
Century version of Apocalypse Now.
pj
No more no less.
Bush, because he is on the "rightwing" side of the Left-Right Control System has to have
a "macho" persona. Obama, because he is on the "leftwing" side has to have a "wimp/hippie/whatever"
persona.
However the Obama persona is more dangerous to the World because this allows the "Wizard
of Oz" to be more agressive and warmongering and get away with it more easy.
Perfectly stated! PJ. Bush is, as has been said: "The OBVIOUS EVIL". Obama is the MORE
EFFECTIVE EVIL.
And thus, much, much more dangerous. of course pre-election - Obama was already displaying
his cretinous nature...in his polished con-game way: speaking to different, even opposing factions
according to what THEY hungered for: democrats and "left-wingers" "wanting" "social justice,
etc."...Conservatives wanting "confirmation that he understands"....Wall street -- above all,
as well as the pentagon -- KNOWING that he , ultimately serves THEM and American Empire...with
words of the same nature: "I Believe in American Exceptionalism, I believe in Capitalism, I
believe that we must continue to LEAD".. everything ELSE was just fluff to "appeal" to every
stripe (ESPECIALLY to NEUTER the radical black votes that represented the hopes for TRUE justice
and thus, render "black america" completely without potency--from which segment REALLY came
the true calls for justice -- and THAT had to be effectively neutered once and for all by a
"black president") -- in service of American EMPIRE all the same. as far as I am concerned --
this man is WORSE than Nixon, Johnson, Bush Jr, put together.
For how better could we terrorized the Middle-East into trading their oil for our war
materials then by an unending war with a perpetual enemy who is funded by our friends, and who
must needs our enmity and combat to survive. Pure theatrics if you ask me.
Damn right -- The US and friends (Saudi Arabia, Israel, and most of the Sheikhdoms of the
Persian Gulf) engendered the Isis and now their genie has left the bottle and they don't know
what to do with it. thank you.
With the fall of the Kremlin, the neocons decided that what Charles Krauthammer dubbed the "unipolar
moment" was at hand. This was our big chance, now that the Soviets were out of the way, to establish
a "world order" with Washington – of course! – as its center, but also incorporating Western Europe
and Japan into one vast superstate. This was all part of the flurry of discussion that followed
the publication of Francis Fukuyama's "End of History"
essay, in which he related that the Soviets' demise and his reading of Hegel had revealed to him
an astonishing fact: history had come to an end. Liberal democracy had triumphed over all other
competitors and was fated to be "the final form of human government." A World State was not only
in the making, it was the inevitable outcome of the Spirit of History!
The old 19th
century post-millennial pietism burns brightest in the hearts of our neocons. The urge to conquer,
to remake, and purify the world of sin, to impose some kind of authoritarian "world order" out of
what is a natural, beneficial, and self-regulating spontaneous order – this is the essence of the
interventionist credo.
The neocons were lost for a while after the communist collapse: no one was listening to them
anymore. The Kosovo war was a bust as far as Republicans were concerned: indeed, when a Republican
House of Representatives voted down Clinton's Kosovo war budget, Bill Kristol threatened to leave
the GOP. If only he had followed through on his threat the Republican party might have been spared
much – but, alas, it was not to be.
September 11, 2001 was the Neoconservative Moment, and in the months and years to come their
star would rise until they had effectively seized control of the government. As Bob Woodward said
in his book,
Plan of Attack:
"[Colin] Powell felt Cheney and his allies – his chief aide, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby,
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas
J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's 'Gestapo' office – had established what amounted
to a separate government."
There's no real need to go into this in much detail, since the story of their deception is well-known.
They manipulated the "intelligence" and after lying us into war they presided over the worst military
disaster in American history, with the blowback still coming at us right up to the present day.
At the end of the cold war, as the neocons were flailing about looking to gain some traction,
Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan co-wrote an essay on a new foreign policy agenda for America in the
post cold war world in which they stated that the goal of American policymakers ought to be the
creation of a "benevolent
global hegemony." This is the world state envisioned by Fukuyama: a global government with a
world central bank backed up by a multinational military force and a system of universal surveillance
– with nowhere to hide from the all-seeing eye of the Empire.
That is their goal – and they have come much closer to achieving it in the past few years. Already
they have overrun much of the Middle East, and now they have their sights fixed on the lands of
the former Soviet Union. In partnership with the EU, they are moving in on Russia. And while China
may seem too vast a country to absorb, Western penetration of that formerly isolated and hostile
land has been impressive.
The frontiers of the empire are moving outward so fast that one can hardly keep up with their
progress. Could this turn out to be the fatal weakness that brings the whole thing tumbling down?
All empires fall. But each case is different. No one knows when the cracks will begin to appear
in the façade, or how long the will take to fatally weaken and split the foundations once thought
to be invulnerable. My best guess, however, is that whenever it starts, it will take quite a while
to bring the whole thing down. The Soviet empire disintegrated in a little over a year – the Mayans,
almost overnight. In the case of the American empire, the foundations are a lot stronger to begin
with: I think we are going to go the Roman way, with ups and downs, long declines followed by brief
revivals.
And finally, I want to say that I've gotten more optimistic as I've gotten older, and that the
pessimism of my youthful vision of a rotten system collapsing under its own weight no longer seems
either desirable or imminent. What I do see as a very real possibility is a political movement in
this country that will restore our old republic, dismantle the empire, and return the Constitution
to its rightful place at the very center of the American system. I see that a man with the last
name of Paul is now the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination and suddenly I am
a teenage libertarian all over again. You know, we had a slogan back then, in the 60s, when the
libertarian movement first began to organize itself. It was: "Freedom in our time." Back then, it
seemed like a distant promise. Today, it seems like a real possibility. And that is, in itself,
a great victory.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here.
But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely
consist of me thinking out loud.
By driving a wedge between President Obama and President Putin over Ukraine, America's
neocons and the mainstream media can hope for more "shock and awe" in the Mideast, but the U.S.
taxpayers are footing the bill, including $1 trillion more on nuclear weapons, writes Robert Parry.
The costs of the mainstream U.S. media's wildly anti-Moscow bias in the Ukraine crisis are adding
up, as the Obama administration has decided to react to alleged "Russian aggression" by investing
as much as $1 trillion in modernizing the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.
On Monday, a typically slanted New York Times
article justified these modernization plans by describing "Russia on the warpath" and adding:
"Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington's escalating
confrontation with Moscow."
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup
and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
But the Ukraine crisis has been a textbook case of the U.S. mainstream media misreporting
the facts of a foreign confrontation and then misinterpreting the meaning of the events, a classic
case of "garbage in, garbage out." The core of the false mainstream narrative is that Russian
President Vladimir Putin instigated the crisis as an excuse to reclaim territory for the Russian
Empire.
While that interpretation of events has been the cornerstone of Official Washington's "group
think," the reality always was that Putin favored maintaining the status quo in Ukraine. He had
no plans to "invade" Ukraine and was satisfied with the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych.
Indeed, when the crisis heated up last February, Putin was distracted by the Sochi Winter Olympics.
Rather than Putin's "warmongering" – as the Times said in the lead-in to another Monday
article – the evidence is clear that it was the United States and the European Union that initiated
this confrontation in a bid to pull Ukraine out of Russia's sphere of influence and into the West's
orbit.
This was a scheme long in the making, but the immediate framework for the crisis took shape
a year ago when influential U.S. neocons set their sights on Ukraine and Putin after Putin helped
defuse a crisis in Syria by persuading President Barack Obama to set aside plans to bomb Syrian
government targets over
a disputed Sarin gas attack and instead accept Syria's willingness to surrender its entire chemical
weapons arsenal.
But the neocons and their "liberal interventionist" allies had their hearts set on another "shock
and awe" campaign with the goal of precipitating another "regime change" against a Middle East government
disfavored by Israel. Putin also worked with Obama to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear program,
averting another neocon dream to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."
The Despised Putin
So, Putin suddenly rose to the top of the neocons' "enemies list" and some prominent neocons
quickly detected his vulnerability in Ukraine, a historical route for western invasions of Russia
and the scene of extraordinarily bloody fighting during World War II.
National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, one of the top neocon paymasters spreading
around $100 million a year in U.S. taxpayers' money,
declared in late September 2013 that Ukraine represented "the biggest prize" but beyond that
was an opportunity to put Putin "on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia
itself."
The context for Gershman's excitement was a European Union offer of an association agreement
to Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych, but it came with some nasty strings attached,
an austerity plan demanded by the International Monetary Fund that would have made the hard lives
of the average Ukrainian even harder.
That prompted Yanukovych to seek a better deal from Putin who offered $15 billion in aid without
the IMF's harsh terms. Yet, once Yanukovych rebuffed the EU plan, his government was targeted by
a destabilization campaign that involved scores of political and media projects funded by Gershman's
NED and other U.S. agencies.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, a neocon holdover who had
been an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney,
reminded a group of Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion
in their "European aspirations." Nuland, wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, also showed up at
the Maidan square in Kiev passing out cookies to protesters.
The Maidan protests, reflecting western Ukraine's desire for closer ties to Europe, also were
cheered on by neocon Sen. John McCain, who appeared on a podium with leaders of the far-right Svoboda
party under a banner honoring Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. A year earlier, the European Parliament
had
identified Svoboda as professing "racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views [that] go against
the EU's fundamental values and principles."
Yet, militants from Svoboda and the even more extreme Right Sektor were emerging as the muscle
of the Maidan protests, seizing government buildings and hurling firebombs at police. A well-known
Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader, Andriy Parubiy, became the commandant of the Maidan's "self-defense"
forces.
Behind the scenes, Assistant Secretary Nuland was deciding who would take over the Ukrainian
government once Yanukovych was ousted. In
an intercepted phone
call with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland crossed off some potential leaders and announced
that "Yats" – or Arseniy Yatsenyuk – was her guy.
The Coup
On Feb. 20, as the neo-Nazi militias stepped up their attacks on police, a mysterious sniper
opened fire on both protesters and police killing scores and bringing the political crisis to a
boil. The U.S. news media blamed Yanukovych for the killings though he denied giving such an order
and some evidence pointed toward a provocation from the far-right extremists.
As Estonia's Foreign Minister Urmas Paet
said in another intercepted phone call with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Asthon, "there
is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody
from the new coalition."
But the sniper shootings led Yanukovych to agree on Feb. 21 to a deal guaranteed by three European
countries – France, Germany and Poland – that he would surrender much of his power and move up elections
so he could be voted out of office. He also assented to U.S. demands that he pull back his police.
That last move, however, prompted the neo-Nazi militias to overrun the presidential buildings
on Feb. 22 and force Yanukovych's officials to flee for their lives. Then, rather than seeking to
enforce the Feb. 21 agreement, the U.S. State Department promptly declared the coup regime "legitimate"
and blamed everything on Yanukovych and Putin.
Nuland's choice, Yatsenyuk, was made prime minister and the neo-Nazis were rewarded for their
crucial role by receiving several ministries, including national security headed by Parubiy. The
parliament also voted to ban Russian as an official language (though that was later rescinded),
and the IMF austerity demands were pushed through by Yatsenyuk. Not surprisingly, ethnic Russians
in the south and east, the base of Yanukovych's support, began resisting what they regarded as the
illegitimate coup regime.
To blame this crisis on Putin simply ignores the facts and defies logic. To presume that Putin
instigated the ouster of Yanukovych in some convoluted scheme to seize territory requires you to
believe that Putin got the EU to make its reckless association offer, organized the mass protests
at the Maidan, convinced neo-Nazis from western Ukraine to throw firebombs at police, and manipulated
Gershman, Nuland and McCain to coordinate with the coup-makers – all while appearing to support
Yanukovych's idea for new elections within Ukraine's constitutional structure.
Though such a crazy conspiracy theory would make people in tinfoil hats blush, this certainty
is at the heart of what every "smart" person in Official Washington believes. If you dared to suggest
that Putin was actually distracted by the Sochi Olympics last February, was caught off guard by
the events in Ukraine, and reacted to a Western-inspired crisis on his border (including his acceptance
of Crimea's request to be readmitted to Russia), you would be immediately dismissed as "a stooge
of Moscow."
Such is how mindless "group think" works in Washington. All the people who matter jump on the
bandwagon and smirk at anyone who questions how wise it is to be rolling downhill in some disastrous
direction.
But the pols and pundits who appear on U.S. television spouting the conventional wisdom are always
the winners in this scenario. They get to look tough, standing up to villains like Yanukovych and
Putin and siding with the saintly Maidan protesters. The neo-Nazi brown shirts are whited out of
the picture and any Ukrainian who objected to the U.S.-backed coup regime finds a black hat firmly
glued on his or her head.
For the neocons, there are both financial and ideological benefits. By shattering the fragile
alliance that had evolved between Putin and Obama over Syria and Iran, the neocons seized greater
control over U.S. policies in the Middle East and revived the prospects for violent "regime change."
On a more mundane level – by stirring up a new Cold War – the neocons generate more U.S. government
money for military contractors who bestow a portion on Washington think tanks that provide cushy
jobs for neocons when they are out of government.
The Losers
The worst losers are the people of Ukraine, most tragically the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine,
thousands of whom have died from a combination of heavy artillery fire by the Ukrainian army on
residential areas followed by street fighting led by brutal neo-Nazi militias who were incorporated
into Kiev's battle plans. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Ukraine's
'Romantic' Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers."]
The devastation of eastern Ukraine, which has driven an estimated one million Ukrainians out
of their homes, has left parts of this industrial region in ruins. Of course, in the U.S. media
version, it's all Putin's fault for deceiving these ethnic Russians with "propaganda" about neo-Nazis
and then inducing these deluded individuals to resist the "legitimate" authorities in Kiev.
Notably, America's righteous "responsibility to protect" crowd, which demanded that Obama begin
airstrikes in Syria a year ago, swallowed its moral whistles when it came to the U.S.-backed Kiev
regime butchering ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine (or for that matter, when Israeli forces slaughtered
Palestinians in Gaza).
However, beyond the death and destruction in eastern Ukraine, the meddling by Nuland, Gershman
and others has pushed all of Ukraine toward financial catastrophe. As "The Business Insider" reported
on Sept. 21, "Ukraine
Is on the Brink of Total Economic Collapse."
Author Walter Kurtz wrote:
"Those who have spent any time in Ukraine during the winter know how harsh the weather can
get. And at these [current] valuations, hryvnia [Ukraine's currency] isn't going to buy much
heating fuel from abroad. …
"Inflation rate is running above 14% and will spike sharply from here in the next few months
if the currency weakness persists. Real wages are collapsing. … Finally, Ukraine's fiscal situation
is unraveling."
In other words, the already suffering Ukrainians from the west, east and center of the country
can expect to suffer a great deal more. They have been made expendable pawns in a geopolitical
chess game played by neocon masters and serving interests far from Lviv, Donetsk and Kiev.
But other victims from these latest machinations by the U.S. political/media elite will include
the American taxpayers who will be expected to foot the bill for the new Cold War launched in reaction
to Putin's imaginary scheme to instigate the Ukraine crisis so he could reclaim territory of the
Russian Empire.
As nutty as that conspiracy theory is, it is now one of the key reasons why the American people
have to spend $1 trillion to modernize the nation's nuclear arsenal, rather than scaling back the
thousands of U.S. atomic weapons to around 900, as had been planned.
Or as one supposed expert, Gary Samore at Harvard, explained to the New York Times: "The most
fundamental game changer is Putin's invasion of Ukraine. That has made any measure to reduce the
stockpile unilaterally politically impossible."
Thus, you can see how hyperbolic journalism and self-interested punditry can end up costing the
American taxpayers vast sums of money and contributing to a more dangerous world.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated
Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in
print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush
Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's
Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer,
click here.
Ron Paul Blasts Congress 'More War' Vote, "They Come Over Here, Because We Are Over There"
If we want to stop radical terrorists from operating in Syria and Iraq, how about telling our
ally Saudi Arabia to stop funding and training them? For that matter, how about the US government
stops arming and training the various rebel groups in Syria and finally ends its 24 year US war
on Iraq. Remember, they come over here because we are over there. So let's not be over there any
longer.
Since the cataclysmic events that took place on the morning of September 11th 2001,
an extended series of consequences have unfolded with an alarming rapidity. Between vast escalations
of military activity abroad, the passing of draconian laws, like the
Patriot Act and the
NDAA,
the instituting of the
Department of Homeland Security, and the ramping up of
domestic spy programs
through the NSA, 9/11 has served as a catalyst for a radical change in how America conducts
itself both at home and around the world. In the weeks and months following the incident, the American
people were bombarded with a veritable hurricane of bald-faced lies and assertions based on dubious
"intelligence". Before they could begin to wrap their heads around the significance of the events
taking place around them, their government had already set plans into motion to wage a decades-long
military conflict in the Middle East, a conflict which rages at full force to this day. In fact,
recent developments in Iraq regarding the Islamic State militant group, or ISIS, elevate the
issue of the 2003 Iraq War to the highest importance.
Among the general populace, a widely-accepted narrative has developed which attempts to make
sense of all that has happened since September 11th. Very broadly, the narrative contends
that Islamic extremists have declared war on the United States, and this alone serves to explain
and justify the long string of wars that have been waged in the name of the global "War on Terrorism"
ever since. What's most surprising about the public narrative is that it offers almost no explanation
at all of how or why Iraq was, directly or indirectly, implicated in the 2001 terror attacks
on New York and DC. At best, the public storyline suggests only a vague connection between Saddam
Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Any substantial explanation of this tie, however,
has seemingly fallen away into the ethereal memory hole of American historical conscience.
Of the many oft-repeated talking points which comprise the terror war narrative, the question
of the highest importance almost always goes unasked: why exactly did the United States wage
war against Iraq in the first place? It is extremely peculiar that the largest-scale, most significant
conflict to date in the war on terrorism has no widely-understood explanation. Those who have paid
the highest price to initiate this war, the American people, seem to be the least informed on the
matter. It is because of this lack of understanding regarding Iraq in particular that the terror
war was ever able to get underway, and, indeed, build up a seemingly unstoppable momentum.
On this 13th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, which initiated
the drive for war, it is vital to return to these basic questions. How did this happen? Who was
involved? What justifications were given to go into Iraq in the first place? After more than a decade,
the American people still cannot provide firm answers to such questions. To understand the broader
war on terror, and how it came to dominate American foreign policy, it is necessary to fill in the
blanks of the official narrative, as well as overturn some of the prevailing falsehoods about Iraq,
WMDs, and its connection to al-Qaeda.
In basic terms, the official US government justification for the Iraq War goes something like
this: Saddam Hussein was a material supporter of terrorist groups like
al-Qaeda
– particularly the Islamic militant
Abu Musab Zarqawi
– offering safe harbor and/or training facilities for them in Iraq. On top of this is the related
claim that Hussein was actively pursuing "weapons
of mass destruction," using "mobile
bio-weapons labs," as well as "aluminum
tubes" for centrifuges in a reconstituted
nuclear weapons program. In his alleged link to militant Islam – and his ties to Palestine in the
case of Zarqawi, a Jordan-born Palestinian – Saddam was said to have planned to provide Iraq's weapons
to terrorists, who would act as his proxies. For these reasons, Iraq was said to be a threat to
its neighbors, and a threat to the United States. These claims are officially stated in a 2002
National Intelligence Estimate
(NIE), but also informally circulated in TV and print news media in the run up to the war.
While the Bush Administration explicitly
refrained from directly accusing
Saddam of complicity in the 9/11 attacks, they were certainly happy to let the American people believe
there was a direct connection between the two. After all, many thought, why would the US ever wage
a war against Iraq, seemingly as a result of 9/11, if Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11? Due to the
disjointed and incoherent Administration narrative, and the mainstream media's
willingness to
freely
speculate on all matters pertaining to 9/11, Iraq, and terror, the American people were left
to rationalize and put two-and-two together on their own,
often concluding
that Saddam and September 11th were related.
The only explicit attempt to tie 9/11 to Iraq was in the claim that lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohammad
Atta, made contact with Iraqi intelligence at a
meeting in Prague.
Later, additional allegations derived from "Israeli security sources" assert that an Iraqi agent
furnished Atta with an "anthrax flask"
at the same meeting. Some suggested also
that Iraq was involved in the 2001
anthrax-letter attacks
that took place shortly after 9/11, targeting media outlets as well as Senators Patrick Leahy and
Thomas Daschle (who
both,
coincidentally, happened to oppose
the invasion of Iraq). All the talk of anthrax, no matter how baseless, ultimately helped to terrorize
the American people and warm them up to the idea of war with Iraq. Finally, but no less important,
we have the documents, curiously supplied by an Italian intelligence agency (SISMI), which were
claimed to prove Saddam's attempt to procure 500 tons of
yellowcake uranium from Niger.
Sprinkle in a little Wilsonian talk of "spreading
democracy," and
you've got yourself a war.
As we shall see, absolutely none of the casus belli presented to the American people had
any resemblance to reality. Through a complex network of government officials – primarily connected
to the Pentagon and the office of the Vice President – media pundits and journalists – such as
Judith Miller,
others at the
New York Times,
and the
PNAC crowd at the
Weekly Standard – as well as foreign sources –
Iraqi ex-pats as well as Italian
and Israeli intelligence – the Iraq War was set off without a hitch; built upon, in the
words of
Colin Powell, a "web
of lies."
An essential link in the chain was the Pentagon-created
Office of Special Plans
(OSP). Established in 2002, this agency lies at the very heart of the War Party push to invade Iraq.
Through this Office, headed by Abram Shulsky
under the authority of Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, "intelligence" was funneled into
important or influential places, such as the office of Vice President Cheney via his Chief of Staff,
Louis "Scooter" Libby. In one case, information
was even directly leaked by Douglas Feith
to Bill Kristol's neocon rag,
the Weekly Standard, demonstrating, in part, the state-media complicity in misleading the
American people. Additional players linked to the OSP, to name only a few, include
NESA bureau head William Luti, Defense
Policy Board members
Richard Perle and former Republican Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich, as well as neocon Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, whose prior
informal intelligence activity
with Feith was officially codified in the creation of the OSP. Its primary task was to dig through
raw intelligence agency information, unaccompanied by the judgment of a professional analyst, in
order to ham-fistedly piece together official justifications for war.
According to retired U.S. Air Force
Lieutenant Colonel and former Pentagon desk officer Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked closely with senior
Pentagon staff such as William Luti, higher-up officials in the OSP were "willing to exclude or
marginalize intelligence products that did not fit the agenda." To that end, information disseminated
from this office was carefully cherry-picked and highly exaggerated, with much of it gleaned from
the Iraqi expat group the Iraqi National
Congress (INC). Presiding over the INC was Ahmed Chalabi, essentially a
double agent for the Ayatollah, who temporarily served a vital purpose for his neo-conservative
dupes.
Chalabi dazzled neocons with talk of a future "Hashemite Kingdom" in Iraq (referring to
Jordan; diplomatically and economically
friendly with Israel). He was selected by administration war hawks
as early as the Gulf War
to lead the Iraqi political march to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Exiled from Iraq, and a
convicted bank fraudster,
Chalabi weaseled his way into
high
position in the post-Saddam Iraqi state after helping the Bush Administration successfully bamboozle
their way in. Later on, to the horror of his former US colleagues, his
trueloyalties
were discovered, revealing an epic
betrayal of the War Party in favor of his long-held Iranian connections. As an influential figure
among pro-war ideologues, Chalabi was able to carefully sway events to Iran's benefit in ways which
his neocon handlers were oblivious of. Despite this double-cross, it was Chalabi and his INC
"heroes in error" who provided many of the intelligence sources that were vital in the push
for invasion. For example, in a
New York Times piece by Judith Miller, she cites a meeting, arranged by the INC, with
an "Iraqi defector," claiming there to be "renovations at sites for chemical and nuclear arms" in
Saddam's Iraq. With the popular news media parroting the government's claims, it helped to quickly
move along the pro-war policy.
In the end, nothing regarding the claims of "aluminum
tubes," initially insisted on by the CIA's
WINPACcenter,
was true. The same goes for the "arms sites" and "mobile
weapons labs," both of which were
sourced from Iraqi defectors.
All of these talking points were, as well, used in Colin Powell's
speech to
the United Nations in February of 2003, a speech which was crucial in the green-lighting of the
American-led coalition
to invade Iraq. The lies in that speech, as well as the ones told in the 2002 NIE cited above, are
officially debunked by a
2004 Senate Report (download PDF in link) which cites intelligence community conclusions on
the various fraudulent claims. None of the information used to bolster the WMD story held any weight,
and a large portion of the US intelligence community had said so all along. This was not just a
big mistake, it was intelligence
deliberately concocted, or
presented wildly out of context, in order to send the nation (back) to war, to finish the job started
in the 1991 Iraq conflict.
Official skepticism toward Bush Administration claims of Saddam's weapons, as well as his ties
to terror is illustrated the leaked
UK intelligence documents, known as the "Downing Street
Memos". These memos depict high-ranking UK officials expressing concern over whether the Administration
was "fixing" intelligence around a pro-war policy, rather than a policy around intelligence. Before,
during, and after the war, there were a
multitude of
intelligence sources, as well as a fairly large body of
journalism, which conveyed deep
skepticism
toward the dubious pro-war talking points. There certainly were dissenting voices in the lead up
to the war; these voices simply went unheeded and unheard, at least until after the invasion.
The mainstream media chose, instead, to create an echo chamber for the flurry of false claims emanating
from the Bush Administration and the
tightly-knit group
of neo-conservatives in high office
or positions of public influence.
Also proven false
in the 2004 Senate Report are the allegations of Saddam attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium
from the Nigerian government in 1999-2000. The documents
passed along from Italian intelligence, in fact, turned out to be the crudest of
forgeries!
From October of 2002 to March of 2003, the CIA, as well as the
IAEA, expressed
doubts about the
information contained in the documents, yet this didn't stop President Bush from invoking it in
his State
of the Union address of January 2003. Indeed, the CIA's skepticism was either
discounted or completely circumnavigated in order to push this particular piece of intelligence.
Of much interest here is the 2005 La Republica exposé
(translation)
which explores the antics of one Rocco Martino, an Italian peddler of information who worked with
Italian, and at times French, intelligence. Martino and a number of associates, looking for a quick
way to make money, were able to use various intelligence assets to attain access to outdated Nigerian
documents. Using official stamps and letterhead stolen from the Nigerian Embassy in Rome, this group
of rapacious rogues crudely pieced together the stale documents to create the forgery, which they
hoped to sell. They were initially handed off to SISMI and to the French, who quickly saw them for
what they were. But much changed after 9/11 and the Bush Administration's mad scramble for Saddam-WMD
intelligence. At this point, SISMI finds new willingness to share the documents with the CIA station
in Rome, while Martino gives them over to British MI6. The information makes its way to the Bush
Administration, where it is eventually used in the 2003 SOTU address in the form of sixteen ambiguous
words. Following the rest of this story,
with its possible ties to a police sting, Iran, Israel, and Michael Ledeen, will lead us down
quite a deep
rabbit-hole, which due to space limitations simply cannot be elaborated on here.
Finally it should also be briefly noted that the more recent
scandal involving the
outing
of undercover agent Valerie Plame is heavily
related to her husband's
investigation of the forged
Niger documents. The Wilson-Plame Niger investigation clearly probed too close to the truth, leading
to an attempted career assassination at the
behest of powerful
people.
Another key example of botched intelligence is the claim of the meeting in Prague between Mohammad
Atta and Iraqi intelligence, as well as the later attempt to link this meeting with anthrax. The
Prague meeting was initially
reported
by Czech officials, although there were various
conflicting accounts, where different Czech officials deny the meeting ever happened. An interesting
parenthetical note, when Dick Cheney cited these reports in a TV
interview
to confirm the 9/11-Iraq tie, he refers to "Czechoslovakia,"
a country which had not existed since Czech-Slovak split in 1993. This certainly could have been
a simple slip of the tongue, but it seems that, assuming Cheney himself had seen the Czech report,
it'd be fresh enough in his mind to at least get the country's name right!
Mark Rossini, a former FBI counter-terrorism agent given the task of analyzing the Czech report
on the Prague meeting,
recalls his
reaction to the Cheney interview: "I remember looking at the TV screen and saying, 'What did I just
hear?' And I–first time in my life, I actually threw something at the television because I couldn't
believe what I just heard." A 2006
Select Committee on Intelligence report repeats this conclusion, held among US intelligence
circles, that the Prague meeting was dubious at best, definitely not solid enough base a military
invasion on. Since this meeting likely
never
occurred, there is no need to provide further evidence to disprove the claim, sourced from "Israeli
security," that a flask full of anthrax was given to Atta during the meeting.
Aside from the Prague-anthrax connection, further attempts were made to link the anthrax-letter
attacks to both the 9/11 hijackers and, again, to Iraq. The
letters themselves contained messages that
were so deliberately suggestive of hijacker involvement that it strikes one as suspicious, proclaiming
"09-11-01, this is next," and "Death to America, death to Israel."
Bryan Ross at ABC repeatedly said, with
increasing degrees of certainty, that it was very likely from Saddam Hussein's anthrax program.
He sourced three or four unnamed "well placed people," which if true might suggest that Ross was
purposely mislead by government agents who wished to anonymously disseminate false information.
Despite the massive
FBI probe into the case, no definitive answers were ever provided as to who was responsible.
The total incompetency of the FBI, however, didn't stop
independent journalists from delving into the case themselves. From these investigations came
a series of very strange discoveries, not the least of which was the likelihood that the specific
anthrax strains used in the letter-attacks originated in
US Army labs!
Although two different
people were selected as "fall-men,"
the baseless accusations against neither of them stuck. The second of the two, one Dr. Ayaad Assaad,
an Egyptian-American scientist, worked at the Fort Detrick facility from which samples of anthrax,
among other dangerous biological compounds, went missing years before the letter-attacks. In later,
seemingly unrelated, events at Fort Detrick, Dr. Assaad's colleagues, primarily a group led by a
man named Phillip Zack,
engaged in bizarre and juvenile harassments against him. This same Phillip Zack was a
suspect in a 1992 internal
Army inquiry, thought to be making unauthorized access, by cover of night, to a biological compounds
lab, where pathogens like anthrax, Ebola, and the Hanta virus had gone missing.
Moreover, in late September 2001, an
anonymous letter sent to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia alleging that Dr. Assaad was behind a
terrorist plot to use biological agents in the United States. This accusatory letter was sent
after the anthrax-letters were mailed, but before they were discovered to contain anthrax.
This suggests that some third-party, somebody other than Dr. Assaad, had foreknowledge of the attacks.
Tying things together, in the missive accusing Assaad it is also stated that the author had formerly
worked with him, demonstrating fairly extensive knowledge of Assaad's career at USAMRIID.
Although the true culprits of the 2001 anthrax-letter attacks remain a mystery, this highly peculiar
series of events seems to suggest there is much more to the story than simply another act of terrorism
perpetrated by the same group responsible for the 9/11 attacks (or Iraq, as Bryan Ross asserted).
One might speculate that this Phillip Zack, or somebody closely related, had a hand in the anthrax-letters,
based on his suspected past unauthorized access to pathogens labs, his proven hatred for Dr. Assaad,
and the strange letter sent by an alleged former colleague of Assaad's, ascribing the guilt to him.
There
is more to be
said
about this long
story, however what matters here is
not the identity of the culprit, but the fact that despite almost zero solid evidence pointing to
Iraq, nor to the 9/11 hijackers,
influential people in the government
and media were more than willing to accept such an event as a pretext for war; behind closed doors
with the former, out in the open with the latter.
In the end, most of the high-ranking US officials involved in kicking off the Iraq invasion have
subsequently come
out to admit there were no
WMDs, and no ties between Hussein and
al-Qaeda. While they admit they made mistakes, most of them, unbelievably,
deny they ever made claims about
nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. They also
deny ever asserting there were ties between
Saddam and al-Qaeda. Needless to say, there are mountains of direct evidence proving without a shadow
of a doubt that these people are complete liars, guilty of the highest crimes against humanity imaginable.
The Iraq War has often been
blamed on faulty intelligence
alone, and for some of the people involved this may well be true. However, what's clear is that
within the intelligence community itself, there was all along a basic consensus of the doubts regarding
Bush Administration claims. The intelligence is not to be blamed, but those who wielded it in dishonest
and outright corrupt ways.
What's more are the absolutely damning ties between the neocon cabal largely responsible for
the war, and the Israeli foreign policy apparatus. There is a long and
extensive history of neo-conservative groups' – especially the
Project for
a New American Century (PNAC) –
involvement in the crafting of both Israeli and
Americanpolicy,
as well as garnering immense tax-dollar
support for the Israeli state. Perhaps this is best illustrated in a 1996
Israeli policy paper entitled "A Clean Break: A New
Strategy for Securing the Realm," authored by neocon figurehead David Wurmser, with signers-on
Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, among others.
Here they outline a plan regarding how Israel should deal with its neighboring Arab states. Working
with allies Jordan and Turkey, they hope to "contain, destabilize, and roll-back some of [Israel's]
most dangerous threats." This includes countries like Syria, Lebanon, and Iran – most of whom the
US has taken an increasingly aggressive posture toward. Iraq also is said to a valuable prize, with
the removal of Saddam Hussein from power a priority. Indeed, for many years,
long before 9/11, this very
same group of hardline Israel-firsters sought to influence American policy toward war with
Iraq as well, in large part to serve Israeli interests, alongside
military-industrial
ones. The 9/11 attacks were obviously used as justification to execute this plan, to get a regime
change in Iraq. To these neocons, American and Israeli state-security interests are one in the same,
certainly regarding Iraq, as well as the aggressive Zionism (illustrated in the "Yinon
Plan") which characterizes Israeli policy, both domestic and foreign.
This incestuous neocon-Israeli involvement in the crafting of state-policy should, of course,
come as no surprise. This is a
well-known phenomenon, not any sort of speculative conspiracy fringe. Israel not only has long-standing
ties with influential conservative movers-and-shakers in the foreign policy field, but also a history
of deceptive and outright murderous behavior all around. From the decades of
military
occupation of the Palestinian people, the
Israeli spying on
American institutions, the
multiple cases
of Israeli (or Israel-related, through AIPAC) theft of sensitive US
intelligence-related secrets, the theft of
uranium in the 1950s to build nuclear bombs with, to their deliberate attempt to sink the
USS Liberty in June of 1967, Israel has quite
a deranged history indeed.
As with most matters of policy, the Iraq War was certainly not pushed by only one single set
of interests. Things aren't so simple. The Israel-first neocon crowd had a very important role to
play, but in the end this was a confluence of many inter-locking interest groups. Political campaigning,
military-industrial interests, oil, and, especially in the case of Bush Jr., personal ambition;
these also were part of the incentive-structure for a pro-war policy. All of the people responsible
for this war did not necessarily have to be unified in a grand conspiracy in order to push for the
same policy-objective. Indeed, it just goes to show the way in which disparate and varying interest
groups can come together in agreement where their individual motivations and values meet. It is
sometimes easy to ascribe a collective agency to government actors, but these are still human
beings we're speaking of here. Each individual, in reality, acts according to the values placed
on his own given ends in the situation he finds himself in.
I have hardly even begun to broach the voluminous content of the Iraq War chronicles, but this
short review should alone serve to prove the case. The United States government, or rather a
militant
clique within its most powerful and influential agencies, sent this nation to war, based on fraudulent
pretexts, with a largely disarmed and impoverished adversary. Between the 1990s sanctions, which
lead to the deaths of 500,000 children,
the
one million people killed in the war of 2003, and many more millions displaced – their homes
in ruin and their lives destroyed – the toll taken on the Iraqi people has been devastating. From
1990-2012, it is estimated
2-3 million Iraqis were killed or died, due to the economic sanctions, the two wars waged by
the US government, and the Civil War which broke out during the second occupation.
Let us never forget how easily this happened, as we are faced with yet anotherattempt
to send troops to Iraq. For almost a half-century now, the United States has
constantly intervened in Iraq, and to what avail? Of all the
trillions of dollars,
the millions of lives, the rivers of blood poured into the country, it has only given rise to the
most brutal, out of control problem to date: the Islamic State. ISIS is currently rampaging across
Iraq and Syria, taking entire swaths of territory and proclaiming the establishment of a long-sought
Islamic Caliphate.
As the United States, with its Mid-East allies the
Turks
and
Saudis, continues to funnel material support to the "moderate"
anti-Assad rebels in Syria, they fund and back precisely the same people they claim to oppose in
Iraq. The anti-Assad rebels and the pro-caliphate jihadists are, in many cases, the very same militant
groups. Considering these issues, it is long, long, overdue that the American people and, less likely,
the politicians who make US policy, reexamine the issue of the Middle East, and the
long-standing practice of US foreign
intervention in general. If 50 years of failed policy, the colossal waste of money and resources,
as well as the resulting
blowback can't
teach us this lesson, I do not know what ever would.
At least encouraging was the strong
majority stance of the American
people to absolutely reject the notion of US military involvement in Syria around September of last
year. But for any hope to avoid future bloodshed and destruction, it is vital that we internalize
the lessons of the past. We must abandon the idea that history began last week, and always return
to the past in order to inform our knowledge of the present and the future. For that reason, after
the anniversary of the most horrific example of blowback this country has ever seen, let us never
forget Iraq.
A special thank you is reserved for independent researcher, author, and filmmaker
RyanDawson.
Both his film "War by Deception" and his personal correspondence
were invaluable. Another big thanks to radio show host Scott Horton,
who took the time to go over this essay and offer many needed resources and corrections.
As the new war on ISIS widens, and the media war drums pick up the tempo, some nice breaks in
the rhythm have been the few peeps made about the role of the U.S. and its allies (especially Saudi
Arabia) in feeding the beast, by arming and training ISIS's fellow travelers and prospective members
in Syria.
Yet, this is no new phenomenon. Less-than-pious rulers (especially American presidents and decadent
Saudi royals) have cynically harnessed radical Islam to fuel their worldly wars of conquest and
dominance for centuries. And they have done so with the indispensable help of radical Islamic scholars,
clerics, and preachers who formulate and communicate the doctrines that underpin that fanaticism.
... ... ...
The two men discovered a particularly volatile blend of the defining chemical formula for state
power: dogma-propagating violence mixed with violence-sanctifying dogma. The sword and the scepter
had once again joined forces, and Araby would soon quake.
Recently in The Huffington Post, British diplomat and former intelligence officer Alastaire
Crooke
told the story of this dynamic duo's fanaticism-fueled march through the Middle East.
Ibn Saud's clan, seizing on Abd al-Wahhab's doctrine, now could do what they always did,
which was raiding neighboring villages and robbing them of their possessions. Only now they
were doing it not within the ambit of Arab tradition, but rather under the banner of jihad.
Ibn Saud and Abd al-Wahhab also reintroduced the idea of martyrdom in the name of jihad, as
it granted those martyred immediate entry into paradise.
In the beginning, they conquered a few local communities and imposed their rule over them.
(The conquered inhabitants were given a limited choice: conversion to Wahhabism or death.) By
1790, the Alliance controlled most of the Arabian Peninsula and repeatedly raided Medina, Syria
and Iraq.
Their strategy-like that of ISIS today-was to bring the peoples whom they conquered into
submission. They aimed to instill fear. In 1801, the Allies attacked the Holy City of Karbala
in Iraq. They massacred thousands of Shiites, including women and children. Many Shiite shrines
were destroyed, including the shrine of Imam Hussein, the murdered grandson of Prophet Muhammad.
A British official, Lieutenant Francis Warden, observing the situation at the time, wrote:
"They pillaged the whole of it [Karbala], and plundered the Tomb of Hussein… slaying in the
course of the day, with circumstances of peculiar cruelty, above five thousand of the inhabitants
…"
Osman Ibn Bishr Najdi, the historian of the first Saudi state, wrote that Ibn Saud committed
a massacre in Karbala in 1801. He proudly documented that massacre saying, "we took Karbala
and slaughtered and took its people (as slaves), then praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds,
and we do not apologize for that and say: 'And to the unbelievers: the same treatment.'"
... ... ...
And the U.S. has been playing with that same fire all along. It allied with the Saudis in their
Afghan proxy war against the Soviets, funding, supplying, and CIA-training a Mujahadeen movement
that included Al Qaeda founder bin Laden and ISIS godfather Zarqawi. This led to that country, which
had been secularizing, falling into the hands of the puritanical Taliban.
And, after the Bush administration's 2007 Middle East pivot away from the Shias and toward the
Sunnis that Seymour Hersh termed "the Redirection," the U.S. joined the Saudis in its proxy wars
on Hezbollah and Assad, funding, supplying, and CIA-training Sunni Islamist fighters in Lebanon
and Syria.
Under Obama, Washington also aided Islamist rebels in Libya, helping them overthrow that country's
secular ruler Moammar Gaddafi, which turned that country too into a chaotic "jihadist wonderland,"
to use Rand Paul's term. (Also, in 2011, Reuters reported that, "U.S. officials also have said that
Saudi Arabia and Qatar, whose leaders despise Gaddafi, have indicated a willingness to supply Libyan
rebels with weapons.")
And Obama recently announced that part of his grand strategy in the new war on ISIS is to double-down
on U.S. support for the Syrian "rebels," the very policy that helped lead to ISIS's rise in the
first place.
And these are only incidents in which the U.S. partnered with the Saudis. For a more complete
rundown of the U.S. government's history of playing with fanatic fire, bookmark to read later Robert
Barsocchini's recent post on Washington's Blog, "How and Why the USA Has Sponsored Terrorism in
the Mid East Since at Least 1948."
The U.S. also sponsors Islamic fanaticism simply by virtue of its propping up, through military
and financial aid, the Saudi monarchy, whose very existence hinges on fostering fanaticism, due
to its centuries-old dependence on the Wahhabi clerics for public legitimacy. While the U.S. government
is indignantly launching a war over ISIS's beheading of two journalists, it simultaneously continues
to prop up a theocracy that beheads scores of people every year for such crimes as "apostasy" and
"sorcery." And while the U.S. assassinated one of its own citizens for preaching jihad, it continued
to sponsor a state whose founding and very existence are predicated on preaching, sponsoring, and
manning world jihad. If the baleful regime in Washington cared more about world peace and domestic
security than it did about enriching its cronies and trying to more fully conquer the world, it
would cease support for this other baleful regime entirely and immediately.
This is not to say that the U.S. should take on an adversarial stance toward Saudi Arabia. Doing
so to Iran has only tightened that besieged theocracy's grip on power, and it would likely do the
same for this theocracy as well. It is highly doubtful that such an oppressive and contentious regime
as the Saudi/Wahhabi machine would persist with neither a foreign bogeyman to rally the people against,
nor a foreign hegemon militarily securing the state and its grip on the country's oil wealth. Just
take out the props and watch the thing fall, to the great benefit of the Arabian people.
And oil is no excuse not to. U.S. support for Saudi Arabia may be necessary to preserve the exclusive
concessions to favored American oil companies. But it is not necessary to preserve Americans' access
to oil. Worrywarts raise the 1970s oil crisis, but as Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren argued, the
impact of the 1973 Saudi oil embargo has been completely overblown. The crisis, as they say, was
chiefly due to U.S. price controls.
Did the subsequent embargo stoke the crisis further? No-it was an economically meaningless
gesture. That's because the embargo had no effect on imports. Once oil is in a tanker, neither
Petroleum Exporting Countries nor OPEC nor Knick-Knack-Paddywack can control where it goes.
Oil that was exported to Europe during the embargo was simply resold to the United States or
ended up displacing non-OPEC oil that was diverted to the U.S. market. Supply routes were shuffled
but import volumes remained steady.
Guest
"neither a foreign bogeyman to rally the people against, nor a foreign hegemon militarily
securing the state"
Great article. But is the general public capable of understanding the ugly political irony
of the USA's dual role in Saudi Arabia?
Sam Lowry
"U.S. support for Saudi Arabia may be necessary to preserve the exclusive concessions
to favored American oil companies. But it is not necessary to preserve Americans' access to
oil."
Unfortunately, U.S. support for Saudi Arabia is about far more than exclusive concessions
to favored American oil companies. It's about making sure the oil is sold exclusively for dollars.
A tiny group of political and financial elite have asserted for themselves the exclusive
privilege of creating money out of nothing. But this scam only works as long as others are using
your money as money. So a whole lot of foreign and military policy is really about forcing
the rest of the world to use dollars as money. The other role of the court intellectual is to
obfuscate the true nature and global scope of this massive act of theft.
Given that all the leading candidates for Global Hegemon are hastening down paths of self-destruction,
perhaps there will be no global hegemon dominating the 21st century.
Given that all the leading candidates for Global Hegemon are hastening down paths of self-destruction,
perhaps there will be no global hegemon dominating the 21st century.
Which nation with aspirations of global dominance (i.e. hegemony) has these attributes?
The nation's recent prosperity is based on a vast expansion of credit.
The nation has 100+ million obese/diabetic citizens.
The citizens have little say over central government policies that favor cronies.
The nation faces demographic headwinds as the number of people in the workforce declines
and the number of retirees balloons.
Large regions of the nation suffer from chronic water shortages.
Hmm, sounds like the U.S. is a match so far.... Let's add a few more attributes:
The nation's credit expansion has relied on a largely unregulated shadow banking system.
The nation is in the midst of an unprecedented housing bubble.
This could still be the U.S., but America's unprecedented housing bubble popped in 2006--the
current bubble is a mere echo bubble. Let's add a few more attributes:
The nation is beset with unprecedented "external" environmental costs as a result of rapid
and largely unregulated industrialization.
The nation suffers from large-scale desertification.
Over half the nation's monied Elites have either left the nation or plan to leave and transfer
their financial wealth overseas.
The only nation with aspirations of global hegemony that fits all these attributes is China.
The conventional China Story holds that the 21st century will be China's century, much
like the 20th century was America's. But this story overlooks the vast demographic, health,
environmental and financial problems built into China's land, people, and Central-Planning systems
of finance and governance.
Consider two charts drawn from John Hampson's recent overview of
Problems in China:
China's shadow banking system, which provided the majority of the credit that fueled the current
expansion, is imploding...
... ... ...
The China Story based on demographics, health, environmental damage and financial Central Planning
is a quite different one from the China will be the global hegemon in the 21st century story. Given
that all the leading candidates for Global Hegemon are hastening down paths of self-destruction,
perhaps there will be no global hegemon dominating the 21st century.
When I tuned in to US president Barack Obama's televised speech on his plans for war against
the so-called "Islamic State," I expected exactly what we got - a bland sundae of pseudo-patriotic
drivel topped off with some whipped cream of big bucks for the military-industrial complex and the
cherry of regime change in Syria. What I didn't expect was a bon mot homage to a previous
era:
A curious inversion: LBJ's remark came near the end of the "advisor" era in Vietnam and prior
to the massive, direct US military intervention there. Obama's reprise comes after nearly a quarter
century of massive, direct US military interventions in Iraq and proposes to make history run backward
into an "advisor" scenario. Curious, but clearly not accidental.
We all remember how Vietnam ended. After two lost ground wars in Asia in the last 12 years, after
recourse to the history book accounts of the post-WWII era, you might expect Obama to have learned
a lesson by now. And you'd be right.
Unfortunately the lesson he's learned isn't the obvious one (mind your own business, America!).
Rather it's that modern American wars aren't meant to be "won." The measure of success since 1945
is not military victory over a defined enemy, but dollars fed into the maw of "defense" contractors
– the more and the longer the better.
Obama's perverse hat tip to LBJ might have been better framed as an invocation of Harry Hopkins,
US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest political confidant. Hopkins summed up the past
history and future goals of all states in 1938 thusly: "[S]pend and spend and spend, and tax and
tax and tax, and elect and elect and elect." World War II put the military-industrial complex at
the center of the "spend, tax" web. It has remained there ever since and has every intention of
remaining there until the end of time.
Nearly 65 years after the first shots of the Korean war, the US still maintains a force of nearly
30,000 troops along the 38th Parallel. Nearly 75 years after VE and VJ Days, the US still maintains
huge garrisons and naval presences in Europe (nearly 70,000 troops) and the Pacific (80,000).
The purpose of these gigantic perpetual deployments? To justify expenditures of hundreds of billions
of dollars per year on weapons, gear, ships, planes, barracks and so forth, all provided by our
politicians' friends in the "defense" industry. The killing isn't the point, except to the extent
that the weapons wear out, the ammunition gets consumed, etctuff can be bought.
Vietnam was a long and lucrative war but pretty much a one-off affair. When it was over it was
over.
The aim of successive US administrations in the Middle East seems to be a return to the Vietnam
model, with some helpful modifications. The mythology of ISIS as a substantial (even, in the overheated
words of certain Capitol Hill crazies, "existential") threat to the US, combined with its actual
status as an amorphous, ill-defined bogeyman that can never really be "defeated," lends itself well
to the further extension of 24 years of war.
And the aim of the current administration in Ukraine? To extend NATO's 70-year career, on its
own model and on that of Korea, instead of letting a long since militarily pointless "alliance"
shuffle off to the retirement home.
The usual leading and fixed question set on matters of war is: "Can the state afford to have
this war?" Quickly countered with "can the state afford to NOT have this war?"
The real question we should be asking ourselves is "can we afford the state and its perpetual
wars?"
The recent NATO meeting in Wales was supposed to be about how to wind down NATO's 12-year military
adventure in Afghanistan-without admitting the monumental failure of leaving behind a fractured,
impoverished nation that can't even figure out who won the last election. Afghanistan, however,
was barely mentioned. Nor was the disastrous NATO intervention in Libya that has
resulted in a failed state rife with violence.
And while there was some handwringing about how to deal with ISIS, it was clear most NATO countries
did not want to join Obama in a new military quagmire. The meeting's main focus was the conflict
in Ukraine, a conflict that NATO played a key role in creating.
It's not that the United States conjured its Russian adversary back into existence out of some
misguided nostalgia. Rather, the inevitable consequence of our refusal to restrain our global
ambitions necessarily created a counterforce. In the end, it's boils down to physics: for every
action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
So, let's stop talking about the Cold War's revival as if Vladimir Putin is the one who raised
the dead. We are the vampire hunters who failed to drive a stake through its heart. So we shouldn't
be surprised, when we go out for a stroll one day to survey our domain, to hear the click of sharp
teeth poised to tear into its latest victim.
A big part of the US government's trickery, Kucinich notes at the beginning of the interview,
is that US "ally" Qatar is funding ISIS while the US government is bombing ISIS. Asked by Colmes
what Kucinich, a two-time presidential candidate, would do regarding ISIS if Kucinich were "in power,"
Kucinich responds:
Well, I'd start with having Qatar stop funding them. I mean, to me it's not even credible that
Qatar could be providing money to ISIS and the US spending $80 billion a year on so-called intelligence
doesn't know that.
Originally published at
Washingtonsblog by Kevin Ryan on 5/22/14
When former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
was asked about World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7), he
claimed that he had never heard
of it. This was despite the unprecedented destruction of that 47-story building and its relationship
to the events of 9/11 that shaped Rumsfeld's career. Although not hit by a plane, WTC 7 experienced
free fall into its own footprint on the afternoon of 9/11-through the path of what should have been
the most resistance. The government agency charged with investigating the building's destruction
ultimately admitted that it
had been in free fall during a portion of its descent. That fact makes explosive demolition
the only logical explanation. Considering how WTC 7 might have been demolished leads to some interesting
facts about Rumsfeld and his associates.
The one major tenant of WTC 7 was Salomon Smith Barney (SSB), the company that occupied
37 of the 47 floors in WTC 7. A little discussed fact is that Rumsfeld was the chairman of the
SSB advisory board and Dick Cheney was a board member as well. Rumsfeld had served as chairman of
the SSB advisory board since its inception in 1999. According to the financial disclosures he made
in his nomination process, during the same period Rumsfeld had also been a paid consultant to the
Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet. Rumsfeld and Cheney had to resign from their CIA
and SSB positions in 2001 when they were confirmed as members of George W. Bush's cabinet.
Several
of Rumsfeld and Cheney's colleagues had access to, or personal knowledge of, WTC 7. Secret Service
agent Carl Truscott, who was in charge of the Presidential Protection Division on 9/11, knew the
building well because he had worked at the Secret Service's New York field office located there.
Furthermore, Tenet's CIA secretly operated a "false
front of another federal organization" from within WTC 7. That false front might have
been related to the Secret Service, the Internal Revenue Service, Rumsfeld's Department of Defense,
or the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), all of which were listed as tenants of WTC 7. The
SEC lost many important documents when the building was destroyed, including much of what was needed
to effectively prosecute Enron and WorldCom.
In any event, it is clear that covert operatives had access to WTC 7. Through the Secret Service,
the DOD, and a secret office of the CIA, the building provided access to many such people. Additionally,
electronic security for the WTC complex was contracted out to Stratesec, a security company operated
by military arms logistician and
Iran-Contra
suspect, Barry McDaniel. Wirt Walker, the son of a CIA employee who was flagged by the SEC
for suspected 9/11 insider trading, was McDaniel's boss at Stratesec.
Amazingly, explosives and terrorism were planned topics of discussion at WTC 7 on the day of
the attacks. There was a meeting scheduled at WTC 7 for the morning of 9/11 that included explosive
disposal units from the U.S. military. The Demolition Ordnance Disposal Team from the Army's Fort
Monmouth just happened to be invited there that morning to meet with the building's owner, Larry
Silverstein. They were "reportedly planning to hold a
meeting at 7 World Trade Center to discuss terrorism prevention efforts." The meeting was set
for eight o'clock in the morning on 9/11 but was canceled with the excuse that one of Silverstein's
executives could not make it.
Richard Spanard, an Army captain and commander of Fort Monmouth's explosive disposal unit, was
at WTC 7 to attend the meeting. He was "enjoying breakfast at a deli 50 feet from the World Trade
Center twin towers when the first plane hit. General hysteria inundated the deli. Spanard decided
that he and the three soldiers with him should move to number
7 World Trade Center,
where they had a scheduled meeting." Building 7 was "full of people in the midst of evacuating.
A second explosion was heard, and people began mobbing the three escalators in a state of panic.
Spanard and the now five soldiers with him began yelling for everyone to remain calm."
In yet another "eerie
quirk of fate," Fort Monmouth personnel were preparing for an exercise called Timely Alert II
on the day of 9/11. This was a disaster drill focused on response to a terrorist attack and included
law enforcement agencies and emergency personnel. The drill simply changed to an actual response
as the attacks began.
Fort Monmouth, located in New Jersey just 49 miles away from the WTC complex, was home to several
units of the Army Materiel Command (AMC). Coincidentally, Stratesec's Barry McDaniel had led AMC
a decade earlier. McDaniel had an interesting past and, after 9/11, became business partners with
one of Dick Cheney's closest
colleagues.
The Fort Monmouth response on 9/11 included the explosives unit and the Army's Communications-Electronics
Command (CECOM). As the drill was converted to an actual response, teams of CECOM experts were deployed
to locate cell phone transmissions in the pile at Ground Zero. The remainder of the base's explosive
ordnance company was there by the afternoon of 9/11 and stayed for three days in order to, among
other things, help "authorities" look for any
possible explosives
in the debris.
The explosive disposal/terrorism meeting was not just a request of Larry Silverstein, however,
but was actually organized by the Secret Service field office. The U.S. Navy's explosive ordnance
disposal Mobile Unit 6 had also been invited to WTC 7 that morning, again
at the request of
the Secret Service. As they arrived, the planes began to strike the towers.
Considering all of this, Rumsfeld's claim that he had never heard of WTC 7 is not believable.
It does not reconcile with the facts about the positions he held and those of his colleagues and
subordinates. It certainly doesn't reconcile with the fact that Rudy
Giuliani gave Rumsfeld
a personal tour of Ground Zero just two months after the attacks. Surely Rumsfeld noticed the
huge pile of still-smoking rubble that was once the building where Giuliani's 23rd-floor emergency
bunker was housed. They were photographed standing right across the street from it.
Rumsfeld was the chairman of the advisory board for a company that occupied nearly the entirety
of WTC 7. On 9/11 he led the DOD-another tenant of the building. Explosive disposal units from both
the Army and the Navy (DOD entities) were scheduled to meet in WTC 7 on the morning of 9/11, ostensibly
to discuss terrorism. A DOD-sponsored terrorism exercise was scheduled for that morning in the same
area. Moreover, Rumsfeld's long-time business associate Peter Janson ran AMEC Construction, a company
hired to clean-up the debris at the WTC complex (after having renovated the exact area where Flight
77 was said to have hit the Pentagon).
And as stated above, Rumsfeld had been a paid consultant to CIA director George Tenet in the
three years prior to 9/11. Immediately after WTC 7 was destroyed, the
CIA ordered the immediate area
around the building to be surrounded by FBI agents. According to the New York Times, the
CIA then "dispatched
a special team to scour the rubble." Reportedly this was to retrieve secret documents. But was
the CIA, in conjunction with (or posing as) the Secret Service, also coordinating the military's
ordnance disposal units in their search for explosives in the debris?
Rumsfeld's comments should be considered in light of the fact that he was among the leaders of
a concerted plan to lie about Iraq's WMDs. Similarly, there has been a pattern of lying about WTC
7 by government officials. The official report on the destruction of the building is
patently
and provably false and followed a long string of false explanations. When government scientists
finally admitted that WTC 7 was in free-fall, indicating that they had previously lied about that
fact, even their body language
revealed the deception.
When we remember 9/11, we should remember that those crimes initiated and continue to drive the
devastating "War on Terror." We should also remember that war is based on deception and the official
account of 9/11 is a prime example. We see the lies about 9/11 everyday as they are still being
told, like the one readily seen in the form of a 47-story building experiencing free fall and nearly
every statement made about it by government officials since that time.
"I say to the people of Estonia and the people of the Baltics, today we are bound by our treaty
alliance. … Article 5 is crystal clear: An attack on one is an attack on all. So if … you ever ask
again, 'who'll come to help,' you'll know the answer – the NATO alliance, including the armed forces
of the United States of America."
That was Barack Obama in Tallinn, Estonia, last week, reissuing a U.S. war guarantee to the tiniest
of the Baltic republics – which his Cold War predecessors would have regarded as certifiable madness.
From 1945 to 1989, no president would have dreamed of issuing a blank check for war in Eastern
Europe. Our red line was in the heart of Germany. It said to Moscow: Cross the Elbe, and we
fight.
That red line was made credible by hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops permanently stationed
in West Germany.
Yet Truman did not use force to break the Berlin Blockade. Ike did not use force to save the
Hungarian rebels. JFK fulminated, and observed, when the Wall went up. When Leonid Brezhnev sent
Warsaw Pact armies into Czechoslovakia, LBJ did nothing.
Why did these presidents not act? None believed there was any vital U.S. interest in Eastern
Europe worth a war with Russia.
And, truth be told, there was no vital interest there then, and there is no vital interest there
now. If we would not risk war with a nuclear-armed Russia over Hungary or Czechoslovakia half a
century ago, why would we risk it now over Estonia?
Cold War presidents routinely issued captive nations resolutions, declaring our belief in the
right of the peoples behind the Iron Curtain to be free. But no president regarded their liberation
worthy of war.
What has changed?
When did the independence of the Baltic republics, miraculous and welcome as it is, become so
critical to us that if Russia intrudes into Estonia, we will treat it as an attack on our homeland?
In 1994, George Kennan called the expansion of NATO into the old Soviet bloc "a strategic
blunder of potentially epic proportions."
Yet we not only brought into NATO all the Warsaw Pact nations, George W. Bush brought in
the Baltic republics.
To see the folly of what we have done, consider Ukraine, which has been involved in a military
and political collision with Russia ever since we colluded in the overthrow of its pro-Russian regime.
As neocons cheered the ouster of the corrupt and incompetent, but democratically elected, Viktor
Yanukovych, Vladimir Putin moved to secure and annex Crimea, and pro-Russian separatists sought
to break away from Kiev and achieve independence or reunification with Russia.
A question arises: Why do not the pro-Russian separatists of Donetsk and Luhansk have the
same right to secede from Ukraine, as Ukraine had to secede from the Soviet Union?
And why is this quarrel any of America's business? Was it the business of Czar Alexander II when
the 11 Southern states seceded from the Union and, then, West Virginia seceded from Virginia?
Under the new government of Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine sent its forces to the southeast to crush
the separatists. They failed. Rising casualties and a separatist drive on the city of Mariupol have
apparently persuaded Kiev to seek a ceasefire and peace.
Needless to say, those who celebrated the overthrow of the pro-Russian regime in Kiev are now
apoplectic at Kiev's apparent defeat.
Yet, on Sept. 5, the New York Times wrote, "The Americans have no illusion that Ukraine could
ever prevail in a war with Russia."
That is realism. But if Ukraine's cause is militarily hopeless, what would be Estonia's chances
in a clash with Moscow? Estonia has three percent of Ukraine's population and is less than one-tenth
its size. If Moscow decided to take Estonia, it could do so in 48 hours.
Forty years ago many Americans celebrated the demise of the imperial presidency with the resignation
of Richard Nixon. Today it is clear they celebrated too soon. Nixon's view of presidential powers,
summed up in his infamous statement that, "when the president does it that means it is not illegal,"
is embraced by the majority of the political class. In fact, the last two presidents have abused
their power in ways that would have made Nixon blush.
... ... ...
Many today act as apologists for the imperial presidency. One reason for this is that many politicians
place partisan concerns above loyalty to the Constitution. Thus, they openly defend, and even celebrate,
executive branch power grabs when made by a president of their own party.
Another reason is the bipartisan consensus in support of the warfare state. Many politicians
and intellectuals in both parties support an imperial presidency because they recognize that the
Founders' vision of a limited executive branch is incompatible with an aggressive foreign policy.
When Republicans are in power "neoconservatives" take the lead, while when Democrats are in power
"humanitarian interventionists" take the lead. Regardless of party or ideological label, they share
the same goal – to protect the executive branch from being constrained by the constitutional requirement
that the president seek congressional approval before waging war.
The strength of the bipartisan consensus that the president should have limitless discretion
in committing troops to war is illustrated by the failure of an attempt to add an article dealing
with Nixon's "secret bombing" of Cambodia to the articles of impeachment. Even at the low point
of support for the imperial presidency, Congress still refused to rein in the president's war-making
powers.
The failure to include the Cambodia invasion in the articles of impeachment may well be the main
reason Watergate had little to do with reining in the imperial presidency. Because the imperial
presidency is rooted in the war power, attempts to rein in the imperial presidency that do not work
to restore Congress' constitutional authority to declare war are doomed to fail.
Given the very high stakes of a nuclear confrontation with Russia, some analysts wonder what's
the real motive for taking this extraordinary risk over Ukraine. Is it about natural gas, protection
of the U.S. dollar's dominance, or an outgrowth of neocon extremism, asks Robert Parry.
A senior U.S. diplomat told me recently that if Russia were to occupy all of Ukraine and
even neighboring Belarus that there would be zero impact on U.S. national interests. The diplomat
wasn't advocating that, of course, but was noting the curious reality that Official Washington's
current war hysteria over Ukraine doesn't connect to genuine security concerns.
So why has so much of the Washington Establishment – from prominent government officials to all
the major media pundits – devoted so much time this past year to pounding their chests over the
need to confront Russia regarding Ukraine? Who is benefiting from this eminently avoidable – yet
extremely dangerous – crisis? What's driving the madness?
Of course, Washington's conventional wisdom is that America only wants "democracy" for the people
of Ukraine and that Russian President Vladimir Putin provoked this confrontation as part of an imperialist
design to reclaim Russian territory lost during the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. But that
"group think" doesn't withstand examination. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Who's
Telling the Big Lie on Ukraine?"]
The Ukraine crisis was provoked not by Putin but by a combination of the European Union's
reckless move to expand its influence eastward and the machinations of U.S. neoconservatives who
were angered by Putin's collaboration with President Barack Obama to tamp down confrontations in
Syria and Iran, two neocon targets for "regime change."
Plus, if "democracy promotion" were the real motive, there were obviously better ways to achieve
it. Democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych pledged on Feb. 21 – in an agreement guaranteed
by three European nations – to surrender much of his power and hold early elections so he could
be voted out of office if the people wanted.
However, on Feb. 22, the agreement was brushed aside as neo-Nazi militias stormed presidential
buildings and forced Yanukovych and other officials to flee for their lives. Rather than stand
behind the Feb. 21 arrangement, the U.S. State Department quickly endorsed the coup regime that
emerged as "legitimate" and the mainstream U.S. press dutifully demonized Yanukovych by noting,
for instance, that a house being built for him had a pricy sauna.
The key role of the neo-Nazis, who were given several ministries in recognition of their importance
to the putsch, was studiously ignored or immediately forgotten by all the big U.S. news outlets.
[See Consortiumnews.com's "Ukraine's
'Dr. Strangelove' Reality."]
So, it's hard for any rational person to swallow the official line that the U.S. interest in
the spiraling catastrophe of Ukraine, now including thousands of ethnic Russians killed by the coup
regime's brutal "anti-terrorist operation," was either to stop Putin's imperial designs or to bring
"democracy" to the Ukrainians.
... ... ...
The Neocons' 'Samson Option'
So, while it's reasonable to see multiple motives behind the brinksmanship with Russia over Ukraine,
the sheer recklessness of the confrontation has, to me, the feel of an ideology or an "ism," where
people are ready to risk it all for some larger vision that is central to their being.
That is why I have long considered the Ukraine crisis to be an outgrowth of the neoconservative
obsession with Israel's interests in the Middle East.
Not only did key neocons – the likes of Assistant Secretary Nuland and Sen. John McCain – put
themselves at the center of the coup plotting last winter but the neocons had an overriding motive:
they wanted to destroy the behind-the-scenes collaboration between President Obama and President
Putin who had worked together to avert a U.S. bombing campaign against the Syrian government a year
ago and then advanced negotiations with Iran over limiting but not eliminating its nuclear program.
Those Obama-Putin diplomatic initiatives frustrated the desires of Israeli officials and the
neocons to engineer "regime change" in those two countries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
even believed that bombing Iran's nuclear plants was an "existential" necessity.
Further, there was the possibility that an expansion of the Obama-Putin cooperation could have
supplanted Israel's powerful position as a key arbiter of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
Thus, the Obama-Putin relationship had to be blown up – and the Ukraine crisis was the perfect explosive
for the destruction. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Why
Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia."]
Though I'm told that Obama now understands how the neocons and other hardliners outmaneuvered
him over Ukraine, he has felt compelled to join in Official Washington's endless Putin-bashing,
causing a furious Putin to make clear that he cannot be counted on to assist Obama on tricky foreign
policy predicaments like Syria and Iran.
As I
wrote last April, "There is a 'little-old-lady-who-swallowed-the-fly' quality to neocon thinking.
When one of their schemes goes bad, they simply move to a bigger, more dangerous scheme. If the
Palestinians and Lebanon's Hezbollah persist in annoying you and troubling Israel, you target their
sponsors with 'regime change' – in Iraq, Syria and Iran. If your 'regime change' in Iraq goes badly,
you escalate the subversion of Syria and the bankrupting of Iran.
"Just when you think you've cornered President Barack Obama into a massive bombing campaign against
Syria – with a possible follow-on war against Iran – Putin steps in to give Obama a peaceful path
out, getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and Iran to agree to constraints on its nuclear
program. So, this Obama-Putin collaboration has become your new threat. That means you take aim
at Ukraine, knowing its sensitivity to Russia.
"You support an uprising against elected President Viktor Yanukovych, even though neo-Nazi militias
are needed to accomplish the actual coup. You get the U.S. State Department to immediately recognize
the coup regime although it disenfranchises many people of eastern and southern Ukraine, where Yanukovych
had his political base.
"When Putin steps in to protect the interests of those ethnic Russian populations and supports
the secession of Crimea (endorsed by 96 percent of voters in a hastily called referendum), your
target shifts again. Though you've succeeded in your plan to drive a wedge between Obama and Putin,
Putin's resistance to your Ukraine plans makes him the next focus of 'regime change.'
"Your many friends in the mainstream U.S. news media begin to relentlessly demonize Putin with
a propaganda barrage that would do a totalitarian state proud. The anti-Putin 'group think' is near
total and any accusation – regardless of the absence of facts – is fine."
Yet, by risking a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia - the equivalent of the old lady
swallowing a horse – the neocons have moved beyond what can be described in a children's ditty.
It has become more like a global version of Israel's "Samson Option," the readiness to use nuclear
weapons in a self-destructive commitment to eliminate your enemies whatever the cost to yourself.
But what is particularly shocking in this case is how virtually everyone in U.S. officialdom
– and across the mainstream media spectrum – has bought into this madness.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated
Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in
print here
or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush
Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's
Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer,
click here.
Ukraine was
a typical neoliberal color revolution.
With standard set of players known from Iraq and Libya. And standard methods. But this time the goal was actually not Ukraine but Russia.
And this crisis has shown pretty well that the EU is not an independent player. It is a vassal of Washington.
Notable quotes:
"... by a combination of the European Union's reckless move to expand its influence eastward and the machinations of U.S. neoconservatives who were angered by Putin's collaboration with President Barack Obama to tamp down confrontations in Syria and Iran, two neocon targets for "regime change." ..."
"... Feb. 22, the agreement was brushed aside as neo-Nazi militias stormed presidential buildings and forced Yanukovych and other officials to flee for their lives. ..."
"... There's also the issue of Russia's interest in exploring with China and other emerging economies the possibility of escaping the financial hegemony of the U.S. dollar, a move that could seriously threaten American economic dominance. ..."
"... Those Obama-Putin diplomatic initiatives frustrated the desires of Israeli officials and the neocons to engineer "regime change" in those two countries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even believed that bombing Iran's nuclear plants was an "existential" necessity. ..."
"... "You support an uprising against elected President Viktor Yanukovych, even though neo-Nazi militias are needed to accomplish the actual coup. You get the U.S. State Department to immediately recognize the coup regime although it disenfranchises many people of eastern and southern Ukraine, where Yanukovych had his political base. ..."
"... "When Putin steps in to protect the interests of those ethnic Russian populations and supports the secession of Crimea (endorsed by 96 percent of voters in a hastily called referendum), your target shifts again. Though you've succeeded in your plan to drive a wedge between Obama and Putin, Putin's resistance to your Ukraine plans makes him the next focus of 'regime change.' ..."
Given the very high stakes of a nuclear confrontation with Russia, some analysts wonder what's the real motive for taking this
extraordinary risk over Ukraine. Is it about natural gas, protection of the U.S. dollar's dominance, or an outgrowth of neocon extremism,
asks Robert Parry.
A senior U.S. diplomat told me recently that if Russia were to occupy all of Ukraine and even neighboring Belarus that there would
be zero impact on U.S. national interests. The diplomat wasn't advocating that, of course, but was noting the curious reality that
Official Washington's current war hysteria over Ukraine doesn't connect to genuine security concerns.
So why has so much of the Washington Establishment – from prominent government officials to all the major media pundits – devoted
so much time this past year to pounding their chests over the need to confront Russia regarding Ukraine? Who is benefiting from this
eminently avoidable – yet extremely dangerous – crisis? What's driving the madness?
Of course, Washington's conventional wisdom is that America only wants "democracy" for the people of Ukraine and that Russian
President Vladimir Putin provoked this confrontation as part of an imperialist design to reclaim Russian territory lost during the
breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. But that "group think" doesn't withstand examination. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Who's
Telling the Big Lie on Ukraine?"]
The Ukraine crisis was provoked not by Putin but by a combination of the European Union's reckless move to expand its influence
eastward and the machinations of U.S. neoconservatives who were angered by Putin's collaboration with President Barack Obama to tamp
down confrontations in Syria and Iran, two neocon targets for "regime change."
Plus, if "democracy promotion" were the real motive, there were obviously better ways to achieve it. Democratically elected President
Viktor Yanukovych pledged on Feb. 21 – in an agreement guaranteed by three European nations – to surrender much of his power and
hold early elections so he could be voted out of office if the people wanted.
However, on Feb. 22, the agreement was brushed aside as neo-Nazi militias stormed presidential buildings and forced Yanukovych
and other officials to flee for their lives. Rather than stand behind the Feb. 21 arrangement, the U.S. State Department quickly
endorsed the coup regime that emerged as "legitimate" and the mainstream U.S. press dutifully demonized Yanukovych by noting, for
instance, that a house being built for him had a pricy sauna.
The key role of the neo-Nazis, who were given several ministries in recognition of their importance to the putsch, was studiously
ignored or immediately forgotten by all the big U.S. news outlets. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Ukraine's
'Dr. Strangelove' Reality."]
So, it's hard for any rational person to swallow the official line that the U.S. interest in the spiraling catastrophe of Ukraine,
now including thousands of ethnic Russians killed by the coup regime's brutal "anti-terrorist operation," was either to stop Putin's
imperial designs or to bring "democracy" to the Ukrainians.
That skepticism – combined with the extraordinary danger of stoking a hot war on the border of nuclear-armed Russia – has caused
many observers to search for more strategic explanations behind the crisis, such as the West's desires to "frack" eastern Ukraine
for shale gas or the American determination to protect the dollar as the world's currency.
Thermo-Nuclear War Anyone?
The thinking is that when the potential cost of such an adventure, i.e. thermo-nuclear warfare that could end all life on the
planet, is so high, the motivation must be commensurate. And there is logic behind that thinking although it's hard to conceive what
financial payoff is big enough to risk wiping out all humanity including the people on Wall Street.
But sometimes gambles are made with the assumption that lots of money can be pocketed before cooler heads intervene to prevent
total devastation - or even the more immediate risk that the Ukraine crisis will pitch Europe into a triple-dip recession that could
destabilize the fragile U.S. economy, too.
In the Ukraine case, the temptation has been to think that Moscow – hit with escalating economic sanctions – will back down even
as the EU and U.S. energy interests seize control of eastern Ukraine's energy reserves. The fracking could mean both a financial
bonanza to investors and an end to Russia's dominance of the natural gas supplies feeding central and eastern Europe. So the economic
and geopolitical payoff could be substantial.
According
to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Ukraine has Europe's third-largest shale gas reserves at 42 trillion cubic feet, an
inviting target especially since other European nations, such as Britain, Poland, France and Bulgaria, have resisted fracking technology
because of environmental concerns. An economically supine Ukraine would presumably be less able to say no. [See Consortiumnews.com's
"Beneath the Ukraine
Crisis: Shale Gas."]
Further supporting the "natural gas motive" is the fact that it was Vice President Joe Biden who demanded that President Yanukovych
pull back his police on Feb. 21, a move that opened the way for the neo-Nazi militias and the U.S.-backed coup. Then, just three
months later, Ukraine's largest private gas firm, Burisma Holdings,
appointed Biden's son, Hunter
Biden, to its board of directors.
While that might strike some of you as a serious conflict of interest, even vocal advocates for ethics in government lost their
voices amid Washington's near-universal applause for the ouster of Yanukovych and warm affection for the coup regime in Kiev.
For instance, Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington,
dismissed
the idea that Hunter Biden's new job should raise eyebrows, telling Reuters: "It can't be that because your dad is the vice president,
you can't do anything,"
Who Is Behind Burisma?
Soon, Burisma – a shadowy Cyprus-based company – was lining up well-connected lobbyists, some with ties to Secretary of State
John Kerry, including Kerry's former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.
As Time magazine reported,
"Leiter's involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new
board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter
Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry's son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity
company."
According to investigative journalism
in Ukraine, the ownership of Burisma has been traced to Privat Bank, which is controlled by the thuggish billionaire oligarch Ihor
Kolomoysky, who was appointed by the coup regime to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central province of Ukraine. Kolomoysky
also has been associated with the financing of brutal paramilitary forces killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
Also, regarding this energy motive, it shouldn't be forgotten that on Dec. 13, 2013, when neocon Assistant Secretary of State
for European Affairs Victoria Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their
"European aspirations," she was at a conference sponsored by Chevron. She even stood next to the company's logo.
So, clearly energy resources and the billions of dollars that go with them should be factored in when trying to solve the mystery
of why Official Washington has gone so berserk about a confrontation with Russia that boils down to whether ethnic Russians in eastern
Ukraine should be allowed some measure of autonomy or be put firmly under the thumb of U.S.-friendly authorities in Kiev.
There's also the issue of Russia's interest in exploring with China and other emerging economies the possibility of escaping
the financial hegemony of the U.S. dollar, a move that could seriously threaten American economic dominance. According to this
line of thinking, the U.S. and its close allies need to bring Moscow to its geopolitical knees – where it was under the late Boris
Yeltsin – to stop any experimentation with other currencies for global trade.
Again, the advocates for this theory have a point. Protecting the Mighty Dollar is of utmost importance to Wall Street. The financial
cataclysm of a potential ouster of the U.S. dollar as the world's benchmark currency might understandably prompt some powerful people
to play a dangerous game of chicken with nuclear-armed Russia.
Of course, there's also the budgetary interest of NATO and the U.S. "military-industrial complex" (which helps fund many of Washington's
"think tanks") to hype every propaganda opportunity to scare the American people about the "Russian threat."
And, it's a truism that every major international confrontation has multiple drivers. Think back on the motives behind the U.S.
invasion of Iraq in 2003. Among a variety of factors were Vice President Dick Cheney's lust for oil, President George W. Bush's psychological
rivalry with his father, and the neocons' interest in orchestrating "regime change" in countries considered hostile to Israel. [See
Consortiumnews.com's "The
Mysterious Why of the Iraq War."]
There are also other reasons to disdain Putin, from his bare-chested horseback riding to his retrograde policies on gay rights.
But he is no Stalin and surely no Hitler.
The Neocons' 'Samson Option'
So, while it's reasonable to see multiple motives behind the brinksmanship with Russia over Ukraine, the sheer recklessness of
the confrontation has, to me, the feel of an ideology or an "ism," where people are ready to risk it all for some larger vision that
is central to their being.
That is why I have long considered the Ukraine crisis to be an outgrowth of the neoconservative obsession with Israel's interests
in the Middle East.
Not only did key neocons – the likes of Assistant Secretary Nuland and Sen. John McCain – put themselves at the center of the
coup plotting last winter but the neocons had an overriding motive: they wanted to destroy the behind-the-scenes collaboration between
President Obama and President Putin who had worked together to avert a U.S. bombing campaign against the Syrian government a year
ago and then advanced negotiations with Iran over limiting but not eliminating its nuclear program.
Those Obama-Putin diplomatic initiatives frustrated the desires of Israeli officials and the neocons to engineer "regime change"
in those two countries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even believed that bombing Iran's nuclear plants was an "existential"
necessity.
Further, there was the possibility that an expansion of the Obama-Putin cooperation could have supplanted Israel's powerful position
as a key arbiter of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Thus, the Obama-Putin relationship had to be blown up – and the Ukraine
crisis was the perfect explosive for the destruction. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Why
Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia."]
Though I'm told that Obama now understands how the neocons and other hardliners outmaneuvered him over Ukraine, he has felt compelled
to join in Official Washington's endless Putin-bashing, causing a furious Putin to make clear that he cannot be counted on to assist
Obama on tricky foreign policy predicaments like Syria and Iran.
As I wrote last
April, "There is a 'little-old-lady-who-swallowed-the-fly' quality to neocon thinking. When one of their schemes goes bad, they simply
move to a bigger, more dangerous scheme. If the Palestinians and Lebanon's Hezbollah persist in annoying you and troubling Israel,
you target their sponsors with 'regime change' – in Iraq, Syria and Iran. If your 'regime change' in Iraq goes badly, you escalate
the subversion of Syria and the bankrupting of Iran.
"Just when you think you've cornered President Barack Obama into a massive bombing campaign against Syria – with a possible follow-on
war against Iran – Putin steps in to give Obama a peaceful path out, getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and Iran to
agree to constraints on its nuclear program. So, this Obama-Putin collaboration has become your new threat. That means you take aim
at Ukraine, knowing its sensitivity to Russia.
"You support an uprising against elected President Viktor Yanukovych, even though neo-Nazi militias are needed to accomplish the
actual coup. You get the U.S. State Department to immediately recognize the coup regime although it disenfranchises many people of
eastern and southern Ukraine, where Yanukovych had his political base.
"When Putin steps in to protect the interests of those ethnic Russian populations and supports the secession of Crimea (endorsed
by 96 percent of voters in a hastily called referendum), your target shifts again. Though you've succeeded in your plan to drive
a wedge between Obama and Putin, Putin's resistance to your Ukraine plans makes him the next focus of 'regime change.'
"Your many friends in the mainstream U.S. news media begin to relentlessly demonize Putin with a propaganda barrage that would
do a totalitarian state proud. The anti-Putin 'group think' is near total and any accusation – regardless of the absence of facts
– is fine."
Yet, by risking a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia - the equivalent of the old lady swallowing a horse – the neocons
have moved beyond what can be described in a children's ditty. It has become more like a global version of Israel's "Samson Option,"
the readiness to use nuclear weapons in a self-destructive commitment to eliminate your enemies whatever the cost to yourself.
But what is particularly shocking in this case is how virtually everyone in U.S. officialdom – and across the mainstream media
spectrum – has bought into this madness.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.
You can buy his new book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in
print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to
various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer,
click here.
Ukraine was
a typical neoliberal color revolution.
With standard set of players known from Iraq and Libya. And standard methods. But this time the goal was actually not Ukraine but Russia.
And this crisis has shown pretty well that the EU is not an independent player. It is a vassal of Washington.
Notable quotes:
"... by a combination of the European Union's reckless move to expand its influence eastward and the machinations of U.S. neoconservatives who were angered by Putin's collaboration with President Barack Obama to tamp down confrontations in Syria and Iran, two neocon targets for "regime change." ..."
"... Feb. 22, the agreement was brushed aside as neo-Nazi militias stormed presidential buildings and forced Yanukovych and other officials to flee for their lives. ..."
"... There's also the issue of Russia's interest in exploring with China and other emerging economies the possibility of escaping the financial hegemony of the U.S. dollar, a move that could seriously threaten American economic dominance. ..."
"... Those Obama-Putin diplomatic initiatives frustrated the desires of Israeli officials and the neocons to engineer "regime change" in those two countries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even believed that bombing Iran's nuclear plants was an "existential" necessity. ..."
"... "You support an uprising against elected President Viktor Yanukovych, even though neo-Nazi militias are needed to accomplish the actual coup. You get the U.S. State Department to immediately recognize the coup regime although it disenfranchises many people of eastern and southern Ukraine, where Yanukovych had his political base. ..."
"... "When Putin steps in to protect the interests of those ethnic Russian populations and supports the secession of Crimea (endorsed by 96 percent of voters in a hastily called referendum), your target shifts again. Though you've succeeded in your plan to drive a wedge between Obama and Putin, Putin's resistance to your Ukraine plans makes him the next focus of 'regime change.' ..."
Given the very high stakes of a nuclear confrontation with Russia, some analysts wonder what's the real motive for taking this
extraordinary risk over Ukraine. Is it about natural gas, protection of the U.S. dollar's dominance, or an outgrowth of neocon extremism,
asks Robert Parry.
A senior U.S. diplomat told me recently that if Russia were to occupy all of Ukraine and even neighboring Belarus that there would
be zero impact on U.S. national interests. The diplomat wasn't advocating that, of course, but was noting the curious reality that
Official Washington's current war hysteria over Ukraine doesn't connect to genuine security concerns.
So why has so much of the Washington Establishment – from prominent government officials to all the major media pundits – devoted
so much time this past year to pounding their chests over the need to confront Russia regarding Ukraine? Who is benefiting from this
eminently avoidable – yet extremely dangerous – crisis? What's driving the madness?
Of course, Washington's conventional wisdom is that America only wants "democracy" for the people of Ukraine and that Russian
President Vladimir Putin provoked this confrontation as part of an imperialist design to reclaim Russian territory lost during the
breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. But that "group think" doesn't withstand examination. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Who's
Telling the Big Lie on Ukraine?"]
The Ukraine crisis was provoked not by Putin but by a combination of the European Union's reckless move to expand its influence
eastward and the machinations of U.S. neoconservatives who were angered by Putin's collaboration with President Barack Obama to tamp
down confrontations in Syria and Iran, two neocon targets for "regime change."
Plus, if "democracy promotion" were the real motive, there were obviously better ways to achieve it. Democratically elected President
Viktor Yanukovych pledged on Feb. 21 – in an agreement guaranteed by three European nations – to surrender much of his power and
hold early elections so he could be voted out of office if the people wanted.
However, on Feb. 22, the agreement was brushed aside as neo-Nazi militias stormed presidential buildings and forced Yanukovych
and other officials to flee for their lives. Rather than stand behind the Feb. 21 arrangement, the U.S. State Department quickly
endorsed the coup regime that emerged as "legitimate" and the mainstream U.S. press dutifully demonized Yanukovych by noting, for
instance, that a house being built for him had a pricy sauna.
The key role of the neo-Nazis, who were given several ministries in recognition of their importance to the putsch, was studiously
ignored or immediately forgotten by all the big U.S. news outlets. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Ukraine's
'Dr. Strangelove' Reality."]
So, it's hard for any rational person to swallow the official line that the U.S. interest in the spiraling catastrophe of Ukraine,
now including thousands of ethnic Russians killed by the coup regime's brutal "anti-terrorist operation," was either to stop Putin's
imperial designs or to bring "democracy" to the Ukrainians.
That skepticism – combined with the extraordinary danger of stoking a hot war on the border of nuclear-armed Russia – has caused
many observers to search for more strategic explanations behind the crisis, such as the West's desires to "frack" eastern Ukraine
for shale gas or the American determination to protect the dollar as the world's currency.
Thermo-Nuclear War Anyone?
The thinking is that when the potential cost of such an adventure, i.e. thermo-nuclear warfare that could end all life on the
planet, is so high, the motivation must be commensurate. And there is logic behind that thinking although it's hard to conceive what
financial payoff is big enough to risk wiping out all humanity including the people on Wall Street.
But sometimes gambles are made with the assumption that lots of money can be pocketed before cooler heads intervene to prevent
total devastation - or even the more immediate risk that the Ukraine crisis will pitch Europe into a triple-dip recession that could
destabilize the fragile U.S. economy, too.
In the Ukraine case, the temptation has been to think that Moscow – hit with escalating economic sanctions – will back down even
as the EU and U.S. energy interests seize control of eastern Ukraine's energy reserves. The fracking could mean both a financial
bonanza to investors and an end to Russia's dominance of the natural gas supplies feeding central and eastern Europe. So the economic
and geopolitical payoff could be substantial.
According
to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Ukraine has Europe's third-largest shale gas reserves at 42 trillion cubic feet, an
inviting target especially since other European nations, such as Britain, Poland, France and Bulgaria, have resisted fracking technology
because of environmental concerns. An economically supine Ukraine would presumably be less able to say no. [See Consortiumnews.com's
"Beneath the Ukraine
Crisis: Shale Gas."]
Further supporting the "natural gas motive" is the fact that it was Vice President Joe Biden who demanded that President Yanukovych
pull back his police on Feb. 21, a move that opened the way for the neo-Nazi militias and the U.S.-backed coup. Then, just three
months later, Ukraine's largest private gas firm, Burisma Holdings,
appointed Biden's son, Hunter
Biden, to its board of directors.
While that might strike some of you as a serious conflict of interest, even vocal advocates for ethics in government lost their
voices amid Washington's near-universal applause for the ouster of Yanukovych and warm affection for the coup regime in Kiev.
For instance, Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington,
dismissed
the idea that Hunter Biden's new job should raise eyebrows, telling Reuters: "It can't be that because your dad is the vice president,
you can't do anything,"
Who Is Behind Burisma?
Soon, Burisma – a shadowy Cyprus-based company – was lining up well-connected lobbyists, some with ties to Secretary of State
John Kerry, including Kerry's former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.
As Time magazine reported,
"Leiter's involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new
board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter
Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry's son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity
company."
According to investigative journalism
in Ukraine, the ownership of Burisma has been traced to Privat Bank, which is controlled by the thuggish billionaire oligarch Ihor
Kolomoysky, who was appointed by the coup regime to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central province of Ukraine. Kolomoysky
also has been associated with the financing of brutal paramilitary forces killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
Also, regarding this energy motive, it shouldn't be forgotten that on Dec. 13, 2013, when neocon Assistant Secretary of State
for European Affairs Victoria Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their
"European aspirations," she was at a conference sponsored by Chevron. She even stood next to the company's logo.
So, clearly energy resources and the billions of dollars that go with them should be factored in when trying to solve the mystery
of why Official Washington has gone so berserk about a confrontation with Russia that boils down to whether ethnic Russians in eastern
Ukraine should be allowed some measure of autonomy or be put firmly under the thumb of U.S.-friendly authorities in Kiev.
There's also the issue of Russia's interest in exploring with China and other emerging economies the possibility of escaping
the financial hegemony of the U.S. dollar, a move that could seriously threaten American economic dominance. According to this
line of thinking, the U.S. and its close allies need to bring Moscow to its geopolitical knees – where it was under the late Boris
Yeltsin – to stop any experimentation with other currencies for global trade.
Again, the advocates for this theory have a point. Protecting the Mighty Dollar is of utmost importance to Wall Street. The financial
cataclysm of a potential ouster of the U.S. dollar as the world's benchmark currency might understandably prompt some powerful people
to play a dangerous game of chicken with nuclear-armed Russia.
Of course, there's also the budgetary interest of NATO and the U.S. "military-industrial complex" (which helps fund many of Washington's
"think tanks") to hype every propaganda opportunity to scare the American people about the "Russian threat."
And, it's a truism that every major international confrontation has multiple drivers. Think back on the motives behind the U.S.
invasion of Iraq in 2003. Among a variety of factors were Vice President Dick Cheney's lust for oil, President George W. Bush's psychological
rivalry with his father, and the neocons' interest in orchestrating "regime change" in countries considered hostile to Israel. [See
Consortiumnews.com's "The
Mysterious Why of the Iraq War."]
There are also other reasons to disdain Putin, from his bare-chested horseback riding to his retrograde policies on gay rights.
But he is no Stalin and surely no Hitler.
The Neocons' 'Samson Option'
So, while it's reasonable to see multiple motives behind the brinksmanship with Russia over Ukraine, the sheer recklessness of
the confrontation has, to me, the feel of an ideology or an "ism," where people are ready to risk it all for some larger vision that
is central to their being.
That is why I have long considered the Ukraine crisis to be an outgrowth of the neoconservative obsession with Israel's interests
in the Middle East.
Not only did key neocons – the likes of Assistant Secretary Nuland and Sen. John McCain – put themselves at the center of the
coup plotting last winter but the neocons had an overriding motive: they wanted to destroy the behind-the-scenes collaboration between
President Obama and President Putin who had worked together to avert a U.S. bombing campaign against the Syrian government a year
ago and then advanced negotiations with Iran over limiting but not eliminating its nuclear program.
Those Obama-Putin diplomatic initiatives frustrated the desires of Israeli officials and the neocons to engineer "regime change"
in those two countries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even believed that bombing Iran's nuclear plants was an "existential"
necessity.
Further, there was the possibility that an expansion of the Obama-Putin cooperation could have supplanted Israel's powerful position
as a key arbiter of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Thus, the Obama-Putin relationship had to be blown up – and the Ukraine
crisis was the perfect explosive for the destruction. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Why
Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia."]
Though I'm told that Obama now understands how the neocons and other hardliners outmaneuvered him over Ukraine, he has felt compelled
to join in Official Washington's endless Putin-bashing, causing a furious Putin to make clear that he cannot be counted on to assist
Obama on tricky foreign policy predicaments like Syria and Iran.
As I wrote last
April, "There is a 'little-old-lady-who-swallowed-the-fly' quality to neocon thinking. When one of their schemes goes bad, they simply
move to a bigger, more dangerous scheme. If the Palestinians and Lebanon's Hezbollah persist in annoying you and troubling Israel,
you target their sponsors with 'regime change' – in Iraq, Syria and Iran. If your 'regime change' in Iraq goes badly, you escalate
the subversion of Syria and the bankrupting of Iran.
"Just when you think you've cornered President Barack Obama into a massive bombing campaign against Syria – with a possible follow-on
war against Iran – Putin steps in to give Obama a peaceful path out, getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and Iran to
agree to constraints on its nuclear program. So, this Obama-Putin collaboration has become your new threat. That means you take aim
at Ukraine, knowing its sensitivity to Russia.
"You support an uprising against elected President Viktor Yanukovych, even though neo-Nazi militias are needed to accomplish the
actual coup. You get the U.S. State Department to immediately recognize the coup regime although it disenfranchises many people of
eastern and southern Ukraine, where Yanukovych had his political base.
"When Putin steps in to protect the interests of those ethnic Russian populations and supports the secession of Crimea (endorsed
by 96 percent of voters in a hastily called referendum), your target shifts again. Though you've succeeded in your plan to drive
a wedge between Obama and Putin, Putin's resistance to your Ukraine plans makes him the next focus of 'regime change.'
"Your many friends in the mainstream U.S. news media begin to relentlessly demonize Putin with a propaganda barrage that would
do a totalitarian state proud. The anti-Putin 'group think' is near total and any accusation – regardless of the absence of facts
– is fine."
Yet, by risking a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia - the equivalent of the old lady swallowing a horse – the neocons
have moved beyond what can be described in a children's ditty. It has become more like a global version of Israel's "Samson Option,"
the readiness to use nuclear weapons in a self-destructive commitment to eliminate your enemies whatever the cost to yourself.
But what is particularly shocking in this case is how virtually everyone in U.S. officialdom – and across the mainstream media
spectrum – has bought into this madness.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.
You can buy his new book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in
print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to
various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer,
click here.
There are so many rumors and opinions about the latest ceasefire for Novorussia agreed between
the Novorussian leaders and the Junta reps that I have decided to make a small survey of the issues
in the format of a Q&A/FAQ. I will write up a real analysis next week. I also will use this opportunity
to explain a few thing about what my own personal position is. So here goes:
Q: Do you support or oppose the latest peaceplan?
A: Neither. First, I still have not seen the 14 points actually agreed upon and, most importantly,
I don't believe that this plan will hold.
Q: Why not?
A: Because it is opposed by all the following groups: the USA, NATO, the Ukie Nazis, most of
the Novorussian field commanders and a large segment of the Russian nationalist ideologues in Russia.
Furthermore, Poroshenko is so weak that he probably cannot impose his will on others. Finally,
the Ukies and their western supporters have so reneged on every agreement they signed/
Q: So you think that this agreement is irrelevant?
A: No, not at all. For one thing, it's perfect timing took a lot of wind out of the sails of
the anti-Russian crowd at the NATO summit which, after all, did not result in anything more than
hot air and empty threats.
Q: Are you saying that this is a victory for Russia?
A: Hardly, but it has been an effective way to temporarily defuse a potentially dangerous situation.
Also, the very fact that neither the EU or NATO or the US were even present in Minsk is a very powerful
symbol of the fact that the "indispensable nation" and it instruments of colonial domination are
not indispensable after all.
Q: But will this ceasefire not allow the Junta Repression Force (JRF) to regroup?
A: Yes, but that is not that relevant because of the size of its strategic depth the Junta can
to reorganize and regroup anyway. Most the JRF units close to the front are so beat up that "regrouping"
will not help very much. At best ("best" for the JRF of course), this ceasefire will turn a hasty
retreat into a more or less organized withdrawal followed by a much needed break...
Q: What about Mariupol?
A: What about it? The city is still surrounded and the Novorussian Armed Forces (NAF) will not
retreat. All this ceasefire does is "freeze" the situation around this city. If anything, the Ukies
will use it to cut and run.
Q: Will the NAF benefit ceasefire?
A: Yes. There are several "cauldrons" in the NAF rear which are a pain, well, in the rear, which
will hopefully be flushed out by a mutual agreement to have the JRF units to move out and leave
their weapons behind. If not, then please remember that the NAF control all of the Novorussian/Russian
border and that the "voentorg" (cover delivery of weapons and specialists) will continue unabated.
Q: Are you saying that all is good and we should rejoice?
A: Not at all. First, there are clear signs of infighting in Novorussia. Not only was
Strelkov apparently blackmailed out of control, but there have been rumors of an attempted coup
by Antiufeev yesterday. The Novorussians denied this info, others say that the coup failed, but
there is no doubt that there are real tensions inside Novorussia now and that while some support
the current strategy of negotiations (we can refer to them as the "Zakharchenko clan") others clearly
oppose it (we can refer to them as the "Mozgovoi clan").
Likewise, in Russia there are those who favor this strategy (most of the "near-Kremlin" circles
"околокремлевские круги" - I explain this term
here)
and those who oppose it (Dugin, Colonel Cassad, el-Miurid, and many other generally para-Marxist
bloggers and activists).
Q: So you agree that this is bad for Novorussia?
A: No, I did not say that either. I think that this is probably an inevitable and possibly indispensable
temporary phase in this conflict with is neither a triumph nor a disaster, but something which is
a natural consequence of the situation on the ground.
Q: What do you mean?
A: Contrary to most commentators here, I do not believe that the NAF have been "treacherously
stopped in what could have been their triumphant march on Kiev". The amazing successes in the
south have totally obscured in the minds of many the undeniable fact that the JRF forces north of
Luganks are still big, powerful and holding their ground, that the Ukies even managed a (small and
useless) counter-offensive in the region of Dukuchaevsk and that, contrary to initial reports, the
Donetsk airport is still not under full NAF control. Those who had imagined that the
NAF would soon move on and take Odessa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk or even Kiev just don't understand
the military situation. Right now, the NAF can't even take back Slaviansk, nevermind reconquer all
of Novorussia.
Q: What about the notion that Russian and Ukie oligarchs are the real force behind this deal?
A: What oligarchs? Akhmetov has not only lost Donetsk forever, even the material infrastructure
of this assets is now in ruins. Kolomoiski has had this assets in Crimea nationalized and he is
now locked in a struggle with both Akhmetov and Poroshenko. As for the Russian oligarchs - they
have exactly zero needs for anything in the Donbass and they are way too smart to invest
anything in such a dangerous, unstable and ruined region. At least in the short term, only the Russian
state will provide help for political reasons, but the Russian oligarchs have much safer and lucrative
options than the ruined Donbass.
Q: Okay, then what about the accusation that rather then allowing the creation of a viable
and independent Novorussia, Putin has created yet another Transnistria?
A: What is this thesis based on? On a 14 point plan which nobody has seen and which will be soon
broken anyway?
Q: No, on the fact that instead of fighting Poroshenko and the Nazis, the Novorussians have
been forced to negotiate with them.
A: Oh come on! How many times will I have to explain that, unlike westerners, Russians have
no problems at all talking to their enemies? Study the history of the Tatar-Mongol invasions
of Russia when the Russian Princes were always talking "negotiating" with the Khans of the Golden
Horde, and yet that never prevented them from rising up and fighting them regularly. Russians are
much more Asians than Europeans and in Asia talking to your enemy is normal, it is an integral
part of warfare. If in the West talking or negotiating with your enemy is a sign of weakness,
in Asia it is not talking or negotiating with your enemy which is a sign of weakness.
Q: So what do you think Putin want in this war?
A: What he always said he wanted: a united, independent, neutral, prosperous and friendly Ukraine,
in other words - "regime change" in Kiev.
Q: So will he "sell out" Novorussia to achieve this goal?
A: I don't know. Unlike so many armchair generals who apparently also moonlight as telepaths
and prophets, I cannot read Putin's mind or predict the future. What I can say is that
so far I see no signs of Putin betraying or "selling out" anybody. In fact, it takes an amazing
degree of blindness or intellectual dishonesty not to notice that the first and immediate consequence
of what many assume was a Kremlin-ordered change in the Novorussian leadership has been a huge and
successful offensive which crushed the JRF. If Putin wanted to "sell out" Novorussia to the Nazis,
he could have easily done so just before that counter-offensive was launched.
Q: So you really love and trust Putin, don't you?
A: No, but I will admit that what I have seen this man do for Russia and the world fills me with
sincere admiration, often bordering an awe, and that I see absolutely no signs of him changing course.
What I see is a leader whose methods and strategies are simply too subtle and complex for most "armchair
heads of states" to understand. The very same Putin-bashing crowd which now is hysterically yelling
about betrayal was saying exactly the same things about Syria when Putin single handedly stopped
the US attack on it. And when the Russians told the Syrian to get rid of their (dangerous and useless)
chemical weapons the same Putin-bashers were yelling from the top of their lungs that this was the
ultimate proof of Russian back-stabbing. Now Assad has, if not won the civil war, but conducted
a successful reelection and the West is now eating humble-pie and pondering how to best get Assad's
help in Iraq. So while I don't "love" Putin, I sure despise the Putin-bashers not only for their
short-sightedness and lack of expertise, but for their mind-blowing intellectual dishonesty. They
are like a broken record constantly repeating "Putin betrayed, Putin betrayed, Putin betrayed".
In Russia this kind of rabid nationalists are called "горе патриоты" or "sorrow-patriots". They
are the kind that never actually do anything useful, but are the most vociferous about what
should be done. I want to make it clear that I am not referring to Strelkov, Mozgovoi or any other
real patriot who happens to disagree with Putin. I am referring to those for whom Putin-bashing
is an end in itself and who basically don't give a damn as long as they get to bash the man.
Q: Still, Novorussia wants independence while Putin wants a united Ukraine. Don't you see
the contradiction here?
A: Of course I do. So? That does not mean that one side is "bad" and the other one "good", it
just shows the truth of the US saying that "where I sit is where I stand". The real question is
how this contradiction will be resolved. So far I don't know and I reserve judgment precisely because,
unlike the "professional and full-time Putin bashers" I like to base my opinions on fact, not telepathy
or prophetic visions.
Q: You constantly speak of "Putin bashers" - that is offensive to many!
A: Guess what? I am not a nice guy. I am an direct guy who calls it as he sees it and if that
offends anybody, they are welcome to hug a teddy-bear and go sob on their bed. My message to them
is - grow-up and remember that I owe you nothing. This is my blog and I write it for adults who
value truthfulness and honesty over sugar-coated affirmations.
Q: What about Poroshenko - has he not won a huge break if not victory?
A: Yesterday I was watching the latest edition of the priceless
Ukie propaganda show "Shuster Live" and it felt like I was watching a funeral. The host and
all the guest were in a somber, sorrowful and quasi-depressed mode. Though they did not want to
admit the magnitude of the beating which their "invincible Ukrainian army" just had taken, it was
pretty darn clear that flag-waving was no more the order of the day. One Ukie official even said
"when we are talking about 30 to 40 thousand armed men then we *have to* talk to these "terrorists""
- it was hilarious, really. So no. Poroshenko, far from having "won" anything, is in real deep
trouble. For starters, his own Prime Minister - Iatseniuk - is absolutely outraged about the
deal and makes no bones about it. Ditto for Timoshenko. I won't even go into the Nazi freaks.
The fact is that the protecting Poroshenko will now become a major headache for the local CIA
station in Kiev: the guy is in HUGE trouble and his only hope is that during the next
elections he will look less bad and less crazy then the rest of them. That is assuming these elections
are held and that Iarosh or Tiagnibok do not simply seize power and execute Poroshenko for "high
crimes, treason or being an FSB agent" (he is not, but how cares?!). The regime is so much on the
defense that even though everybody knows that this plan is really Putin's plan, the Junta is engaged
in a massive PR effort to convince the public that this is really Poroshenko's plan. The Russians,
typically, just smile and are happy to give him the credit (remember, this is Asia - different rules
apply).
Q: So what will happen next?
A: As I said, I am not a prophet. But what I know is this: Putin clearly has full control of
Russia and Novorussia - what he says happens, he can deliver. Poroshenko has no control over anything,
not even "his" own" ruling coalition. There is no real power in Banderastan right not, not even
the local CIA station. For this simple reason I do not see how the ceasefire could hold. Then I
don't see much change in the military balance either. The NAF is far more capable than the JRF whose
only advantage lies in the huge strategic depth of this territory. The JRF used to (past
tense!) have a huge advantage in hardware and manpower, but even this is changing now. In terms
of hardware, most of the best hardware they had is now either lost or in NAF hands. Yes, they still
have huge reserves, but of old and terribly maintained equipment. As for manpower, the Junta clearly
has more and more difficulties finding enough men to compensate for its huge losses. Just ask yourself
a basic question: if you were Ukie, even a nationalist, would you want to join to JRF and go fight
the NAF? Exactly. Yes, NATO has promised 15 million dollars. That would buy the Ukies, what,
maybe 10 old and used T-72 or 3 T-80? This is a joke, really. But even if the US provides 150
millions in covert aid - this will not affect the balance, nevermind tipping it. As for the NAF,
it is doing well and will probably get even more men and modern gear through the "voentorg", but
it cannot push too far. As one NAF commander said, "so far we have been liberators, but we don't
want to become occupiers". The rule of thumb is simple: the further west the NAF goes, the
less support it will get and the more it will expose itself to guerrilla warfare lead by a local
insurgency.A far smarter strategy is to sit tight and watch the Ukies go after each other.
Q: Why do you think that will happen?
A: Because no matter what all this still holds true: the Ukraine was always an artificial country,
Banderastan is even worse. There is no real power in control, even the Junta is "kinda"
in power only. The country is economically dead dead dead. The economic crisis is only at it's very
early stages, and from now on it's only going to get worse. Socially, the people are increasingly
mad, disillusioned and feel lied to and, at the same time, less and less afraid to speak up. The
Nazis are by far the most united and best armed group in the country, except for a theoretical "Ukrainian
military" which, at least so far, has no leader and is therefore is not united (might this change
in the future? Maybe). Basically, any person who took Social Sciences 101 in college will tell
you that the Ukies will now turn on each other, God willing just with words and ideas, but
violence is most likely. For the NAF it is far better to wait until Zaporozhie, Dnepropetrovsk,
Kharkov or even Odessa turn into lawless cities which nobody really controls then to try to take
them by force now. There is even a real possibility that the NAF might be seen as a liberator in
these cities if chaos there reaches a "Mad Max" level.
Q: What if NATO sends in forces to prop-up the Junta?
A: LOL! First, I would strongly advise our AngloZionist "partners" (as they say in Russia) to
first consult with their German, French and Polish colleagues to see if the latter have pleasant
memories of being in charge of the Ukraine. Second, I would remind our AngloZionist partners
that their move into Iraq and Afghanistan was supposed to be a love fest which would pay for itself.
Third, I would also suggest to them that if they did not like Maliki, they might not like Iarosh
either. Of course, sending a symbolic force to some maneuvers with whatever is left of the Ukie
military is a good idea - it's called "showing the flag" - but to try to do something meaningful
by trying to use NATO military forces inside the Ukraine would be very, very, dangerous even
if Russia does nothing at all to make things worse.
Q: What about the EU?
A: I think that it lost it's willpower (not that it ever had much!). That ridiculous performance
by Hollande has already come crushing down: turns out that his loud statement was an
"individual opinion" with no legal meaning. Now, of course, the EU Kindergartgen (Poland, Lithuania,
etc.) will keep on being what it is, a Kindergarten, but the adults (Germany, France, etc.) are
showing signs of getting fed up. I don't expect them to make a 180 overnight, no, but I just expect
them to stop pro-actively making things worse. One of the possible signs of that might be a decrease
in the role of the EU and an increase in the role of the OSCE.
Q: And what about Uncle Sam?
A: He is totally stuck in his only mode: demands, threats, condemnation, demands, threats,
condemnation, etc. etc. etc. Normally "aggression" is part of that mantra, except that neither
the US nor NATO have what it takes to militarily attack Russia. As for the AngloZionist 'deep state'
it will continue to try subvert and economically cripple Russia, but as long as Putin is on the
Kremlin I don't see that strategy succeeding either.
Q: Sounds like you are optimistic.
A: If so, then only very very cautiously so. I don't see a big drama, much less so a disaster,
in what just happened, I think that Russia holds all the good cards in this game, and I see no danger
for the people of Novorussia. To those who wanted to ride on a tank straight to the Maidan I
can only say that even though I very much share their hopes and dreams, politics is the art of the
possible and that smart politics are often slow and time-consuming politics. Maximalism is
good for teenagers, not heads of state whose decision affect the lives of millions of people. Thus
my temporary and provisional conclusion is this: so far, so good, things are better than they seemed
to be only 2 months ago and I see no reason to expect a major reversal in the foreseeable future.
Q: What do you consider the biggest danger for Novorussia right now?
A: Political infighting. I don't know if this is possible right now, but I would like to see
the emergence of an undisputed Novorussian leader who would have the official and full support of
Strelkov, Zakharchenko, Borodai, Mozgovoi, Kononov, Khodakovski, Tsarev, Bolotov, Gubarev and all
the other political and military leaders. This has to be a truly Novorussian leader, not just a
"Putin proconsul", a person capable of negotiating with Putin for the interests of the people of
Novorussia. I don't mean to suggest that these negotiations cannot be friendly, if only because
there can be no Novorussia against Russia, but this leader needs to represent the interests of the
Novorussian people, and not the Russian people whose interests are (very well) represented
by Putin himself. Right now, the main reason why Putin has so much power in Novorussia is primarily
because there is still no real Novorussian political leadership. There is a Novorussian military
leadership, and even they probably have to more or less do what the Russian military tells them
to do. Far from being weakened by the emergence of such a truly independent and truly Novorussian
leader, I think that the Russian-Novorussian alliance would be greatly strengthened by it. Novorussia
should not, and cannot, be micro-managed from the Kremlin. In other words, what I hope is for a
"Novorussian Nasrallah" who would be a loyal and faithful but sovereign and independent ally of
Putin (like Nasrallah is for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), but not a poodle like Blair or Hollande. Novorussia
needs a spokesman and negotiator who could really have a mandate to speak for the people of Novorussia.
Until that happens, I will always be worried for the future of the people of Novorussia.
*******
That's it for now. I hope that with this self-made Q&A/FAQ I have replied to many, if not most,
of the questions, comments and emails I simply had no time to respond to in the past. I also hope
to have set the record straight about my own views which have been constantly and systematically
mis-represented by either dishonest or plain stupid individuals. If I am succeeded in terminally
offending and discouraging the Putin-haters - good. I am tired of dealing with their illiterate
rants. Ditto for Saker-haters (- : told you: I am not a nice guy :-), to whom I will add this personal
message: stop telling me what I am supposed to do, say, think or write. This blog is like an AA
meeting: "take what you like and leave the rest". But don't expect me to change and don't
expect me to change my views unless you can show me by facts and logic that I am wrong
(in which case I will gratefully welcome the opportunity correct my mistake). Rants just annoy me,
especially racist ones, but they won't make me turn into a clone of you.
Sorry if I forgot many good questions or points and please feel free to post more comments or questions,
and I will try to answer those which a) do not misrepresent my views (no more strawman) or b) which
I have not already answered ad nauseam elsewhere. To those of you who have - correctly -
detected my irritation and/or frustration with certain comments I will simply say "guilty as charged"
(- : told you: I am definitely not a nice guy :-). I won't even bother justifying myself, either
you can or you cannot imagine how frustrating it is for me to deal with, shall we say, some "personality
types". But either way there is nothing I could add to affect that. To the many kind, supportive,
respectful, generous, educated, wise, interesting, funny, sophisticated, compassionate, intelligent,
principled, honest, honorable and otherwise wonderful members of our community I want to express
my most heartfelt and sincere gratitude: I simple don't know how I could have made it through these
terrible and tragic months without your help, support and kindness.
RFC: Now let's get a good brainstorming session going about any and all the topics above.
All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true within itself – that in the big lie
there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more
easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and
thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the
small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort
to large-scale falsehoods.
~ Adolf Hitler
... Colin Powell's own staff warned him that his claims would not be deemed plausible.
And yet, they got away with it to such an extent that most well-intentioned people in the United
States to this day maintain that nobody can possibly be sure that Bush, Cheney, et alia, knew their
statements were false when they made them.
All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true within itself – that in the big
lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are
always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously
or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims
to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters
but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
~ Adolf Hitler
The U.S. media has repeatedly been claiming that Russia has invaded Ukraine. They claim it
for a while, and there's obviously been no invasion, so they pause. Then they claim it again. Or
they claim that a convoy of aid trucks constitutes an invasion. But the aid trucks look like
aid trucks in all the photographs, and yet nobody has taken similar photographs of any invasion.
When Ukrainian tanks rolled into eastern Ukraine and were surrounded by civilians, we saw photographs
and videos. Now there's just a Colin-Powellesque satellite photo from NATO supposedly showing Russian
artillery in Ukraine.
The major Russian invasion that apparently comes complete with some sort of muggle-and-photographer-repellant
charm is said to consist of 1,000 troops – or roughly as many troops as the US has now sent back
into Iraq in no sort of invasion to worry about whatsoever.
But where are the 1,000 Russian troops invading Ukraine? Ukraine claims to have captured 10 of
them, but the captured troops don't seem to have agreed to the story. And what happened to the other
990? How did someone get close enough to capture 10 but not photograph the other 990?
... ... ...
How do they imagine they'll get away with it? Well, let's see. Not a single individual responsible
for the lies that launched the destruction of Iraq and the death of some million people and the
predictable and predicted chaos now tormenting Iraq's whole region has been held accountable in
any way.
The lie that Gadaffi was about to slaughter innocents, the lie that facilitated the attack
on Libya and the hell that has now been established there – No one has been held accountable
for that lie in any way whatsoever.
The lie that the White House had proof that Assad had used chemical weapons – No one has
been held accountable. No one has even had to recant as they switch targets and propose bombing
Assad's enemies.
The lie that drone strikes don't kill innocents and don't kill those who could easily have
been arrested instead – No one has been held accountable.
The lie that the United States had proof Russia had shot down an airplane over Ukraine –
No one has been held accountable, and the United States is opposing an independent investigation.
The lie that torture makes us safe, a lie that led to the United States torturing some folks
– No one at the level of air-conditioned office work has been held responsible at all.
Why do they think they can get away with it? Because you let them. Because you don't want to
believe they commit such atrocities. Because you don't want to believe they tell big lies.
You know, some people feel like idiots for having believed the Iraq lies. Imagine how they're
going to feel when they find out they believed a nation had been invaded when it hadn't.
Events of the past two weeks have demonstrated once again that the Atlantic Empire regards humanity
as nothing more than pieces on the game board. Wars in the Ukraine, Iraq and Syria, the ongoing
meltdown of "liberated" Libya, the barbarous actions of ISIS – all consequences of imperial meddling,
to greater or lesser extent – have all been invoked as excuses for more Empire: the "perpetual
war for perpetual peace", as Charles A Beard put it.
That, at least, was the message of the speech by the Emperor Himself, given in Talinn, Estonia
on the eve of the NATO summit in Wales. It is an instructive case study in the
insidious power of propaganda.
C-SPAN has the video,
while the White House has
provided the transcript; you can compare the actual remarks, in context, with what the mainstream
media have chosen to feature.
Dreams of Freedom
Emperor Obama began by praising the Estonians' "dream of freedom," which "endured through centuries
of occupation and oppression" and was fought for by poets, protesters and "Forest Brothers" – a
phrase that means nothing to most Americans, but in Estonia denotes the WW2 guerrillas who fought
against the Soviets.
Some might object that praising the Baltic "freedom fighting" in WW2 is awkward because it involved
the SS – except those SS are okay, because the Empire said so:
The Baltic Waffen SS Units (Baltic Legions) are to be considered as separate and distinct
in purpose, ideology, activities, and qualifications for membership from the German SS, and therefore
the Commission holds them not to be a movement hostile to the Government of the United States. (U.S.
Displaced Persons Commission, 1950, cited here.)
Considering this isn't the first time the Emperor
re-imagined history,
such disregard of inconvenient facts in favor of the preferred fantasy narrative ought not to come
as a surprise. But the talk of "freedom" and "independence" in a country that has neither – Estonia
is part of NATO and the EU, and thus effectively run from Washington and Brussels – represents rank
hypocrisy.
In fact, the entire speech is one big exercise in pointing out motes in the eyes of others, while
ignoring a beam in the Emperor's own.
Duh-mock-risy
If repression of language and culture is so deplorable – as Emperor Obama implies by praising
the Estonian resistance thereto – then why does Washington back the regime in Kiev doing just
that to the Russian-speaking population of the Ukraine? And how was it proper for the Baltic
States to separate from Russia (and later from the USSR), but not for Crimea to separate from Kiev?
To hear the Emperor say it, it's because some people are "democratic" (i.e. backed by the Empire)
and thus get a free pass to do no wrong, while others are not, and can therefore do no right. Estonia,
averred Emperor Obama, is an inspiration to "people working to build their own democracies – from
Kyiv to Tunis." But whatever you do, don't actually look into how "democracy" is
working out in North Africa! Everything is fine in "liberated Libya", nothing to see here, move
along, what difference does it make?
And "Kyiv"… well, more on that in a moment.
"Facts" of Aggression
The reason Barack Obama picked Estonia for this speech was not the
Laulupidu song-and-dance festival
he name-checked in the opening remarks, but the country's position as NATO's forward outpost on
Russia's border. There Mr. Obama delivered a resounding condemnation of aggression:
It is a brazen assault on the territorial integrity of [Serbia] – a sovereign and independent
European nation. It challenges that most basic of principles of our international system – that
borders cannot be redrawn at the barrel of a gun; that nations have the right to determine their
own future. It undermines an international order where the rights of peoples and nations are upheld
and can't simply be taken away by brute force.
Except he didn't say "Serbia", but "Ukraine" – yet everything described here is what the United
States and NATO have
actually done – to Serbia (or rather, Yugoslavia), Iraq, Libya, and even Ukraine itself,
where the supposedly sacrosanct right of Ukrainians to make their own choices was usurped by the
February coup and the Maidan revolution "midwifed"
by Washington.
No problem – according to Mr. Obama, none of this happened. The Maidan protests were "not led
by neo-Nazis or fascists" – Lyashko,
Kolomoisky, the Right Sector thugs such as
Sashko Bily were but "ordinary Ukrainians."
The
February 22 coup was not an "armed seizure of power," he avers, but the result of an "agreement…
for constitutional reform" (!), after which President Yanukovich "abandoned his office." (!!) He
then goes on to blame the crisis on "pro-Russian separatists who are encouraged by Russia, financed
by Russia, trained by Russia, supplied by Russia and armed by Russia," and shockingly concludes:
Now, these are the facts. They are provable. They're not subject to dispute.
No. They are not facts. They are not proven. And they are not merely "subject to dispute", they
have been conclusively disputed. Notice he said "provable" not "proven" – because he knows
all too well both his State Department and its subservient media have "zero
proof" for their claims.
Fortress Europe
This was followed by more lies: that NATO was a purely defensive alliance of democracies that
never meant anyone any harm – ask the Serbs, Libyans or Afghans how true that is – and that the
West is not hostile towards Russia. "Over the past two decades, the United States has gone to great
lengths to welcome Russia into the community of nations and to encourage its economic success,"
Mr. Obama claimed.
This is
simply
not true. Not to mention that the "encouragement of economic success" was rightly
described as "the Rape of Russia", which only ended after Mr. Putin came to power. This is not
the first time the Emperor has
lied about Russia, and probably won't be the last.
But the lie of "Russian aggression" and NATO's innocence is necessary to maintain the US control
of Europe. On the eve of a major NATO meeting in Wales, Emperor Obama announced plans to "further
increase America's military presence in Europe," including "American boots on the ground", but also
"intelligence and surveillance and reconnaissance and missile defense."
Better yet, it's the Europeans who are expected to pay the cost of their own occupation – their
"full share," in Mr. Obama's words – even though the US-imposed trade war with Russia is destroying
their economy, already mired in welfare-statism and austerity.
Zero Self-Awareness
It is simply amazing to observe the utter lack of self-awareness in a man who says that "lies
and misinformation are no match for the truth" after just having lied; who rejects a world "where
the big are allowed to bully the small" though his own country is the biggest bully on the planet;
and who can say with a straight face that "might does not make right" after just boasting about
"the strongest military alliance the world has ever known."
If he rejects "any talk of spheres of influence today", it's because the Imperial government
believes the
entire planet to be theirs.
By the time one reaches the claim that the "currents of history" that "flow towards freedom,"
one simply must shake one's head in bewilderment, and wonder whether the Emperor's speechwriter
is channeling the Simpsons' Citizen Kang.
"…A good place [for NATO] to start would
be to level with their clients in Kiev: tell them NATO membership is not in the offing and politely
refer them to the terms of the Austrian State Treaty."
The Austrian State Treaty is, indeed, a good place to start in working to resolve the Ukraine
crisis!
Before the signing of the Austrian State Treaty in 1955 Austria agreed that after the last
of the Allied (U.S., British, French, and Soviet) occupation troops left the country it would
pass a formal Declaration of Neutrality, declaring itself permanently neutral (which it did
on Oct. 26, 1955). By this Declaration of Neutrality Austria guaranteed that it would never
join military alliances or any other organizations that might compromise its neutrality.
The importance of the Austrian model for the Ukraine crisis is well-presented by Franz-Stefan
Gady in his excellent "Austrian Neutrality: A Model for Ukraine" in "The National Interest"
March 6, 2014:
I do love it when other people aside from myself argue the realist point of view in the argument.
I cannot understand why we must "stand up" to Russia. It gains us nothing and loses us a potential
partner in other areas; such as actions against terrorist organizations, or diplomacy with Iran
over their nuclear program, or any other myriad of things Russia is involved with. Russia is
not a second class power in terms of the world, it may not be the equal of the United States
but it is a very different Russia than the one that emerged in the 90′s and it behooves us to
realize this and act with this in mind.
Russia is a partner to be courted not a client to be bullied.
"Ukraine needs anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, drones, spare parts and fuel, among other
things, and these are readily available in NATO members' arsenals"
And the trained personnel to operate these systems? No? That worked so well for MH17.
It really is startling how major media and political figures in this country seem entirely
unfamiliar with the well-worn truism that Russians are sensitive to and paranoid about threats
on their borders. Taking any kind of course in college on anything that has anything to do with
Russia amply exposes you to this fact about them. Why we think that we can do anything we want
without regard to that fact, and why we're surprised when our expectations are dashed, are genuine
mysteries of elite-group bubblethink.
Better Western weapons won't win the war. But they may provide enough deterrent to Russian
planners and confidence boosting to Ukrainians to make the armistice bearable.
You're not assuming, I hope, that Moscow will just leave Kiev alone after whatever semi-resolution
is found to the current war. It's not what Putin does.
Barack Obama,
"NATO must make concrete commitments to help Ukraine modernize and strengthen its security forces.
We must do more to help other NATO partners, including Georgia and Moldova, strengthen their
defenses as well."
Apparently Obama himself is willing to help Ukraine to drag this fighting out, while laying
more sanctions on Putin.
I am more than a little tired of the constant repetition that "Russia invaded" Ukraine. The
basis for any assertion of a Russian invasion must be proven with actual physical or technical
intelligence data to confirm that assertion. Simply repeating the statements of the Kyiv government
that forcibly seized power in an unconstitutional manner in February and then commenced this
war of oppression on its own citizens in eastern Ukraine would be irresponsible and simply naive.
Ten foot soldiers who didn't fire a shot when captured does not an invasion make. Sketchy
non-military sourced "imagery", in this day and age when our satellites are ominipresent and
have had capabilities since at least 1984 to read a license plate (NYTimes article Oct 7, 1984)
being offered as "evidence" by NATO is patently absurd. Our defense department released imagery
intelligence of Nicaragua in the Contra War, and when we invaded Granada. Tons of intel was
fed to the pliant media during our Iraq invasion (which, need I remind you, was launched under
completely false and fabricated pretenses with nary a skeptical inquiry by our "free press").
Where is our imagery today? Have our technological capabilities declined since so much that
we can't clearly prove with high quality satellite imagery that an invasion occurred?
Clearly not if we can listen to Chancellor Merkel's phone calls. Maybe the reason we haven't
released it is that it doesn't exist.
Any "military expert" will know that if Russia were to invade, and pay the price in sanctions
and threats coming from the west by doing so, it would have sent more than 1,000 men in antiquated
armor (a few T-72BM) that has made such little progress in the past week; it would have launch
a combined arms assault with masses of advanced armor, artillery and air forces to destroy Ukrainian
artillery that continues to bomb eastern cities and seize whatever targets it desired, including
Kyiv.
The evidence I see in paying attention to this crisis in Ukraine is that an extremist nationalist
government controlled by western Ukrainians took power after removing the elected government
in a coup d'etat, fully backed financially, politically and logistically by the US and EU, all
because the elected President, and Rada (that was controlled by the Party of Regions and its
allies, all whom had their electoral support principally in eastern Ukraine), decided to to
not accept EU terms to the Association Treaty. In response, we helped the parties who drew most
of their electoral support from western Ukraine, including extremist parties like Svoboda and
the Right Sector alliance, conduct mass protests that led to a forcible, unconstitutional seizure
of not only the presidency but control of the parliament and cabinet of ministeres. With the
window dressing of Poroshenko's election, all Ukraine did was remove one oligarch and replace
him with another; the first oligarch stole from his people, the second has sent the army to
kill his people.
I have also seen repeated accusations, entirely unproven by technical intelligence, of Russian
forces in Ukraine for months now. How many times must we see and hear Mr. Poroshenko's government
cry wolf (or in this case 'bear"), before his credibility is irrevocably destroyed. I personally
think it is past that point.
Now that the rebels have absorbed the blows from Kyiv, an ineptly managed blow at that, and
has counterattacked with great spead and effect, the Ukraine government blames Russia's army
of invading and calls for NATO's help; the typical bully that can't defeat the little guy then
calls in his friends to fight his battles for him.
As to western credibility, need I remind you that the chief NATO advocate for increasing
military efforts in eastern Europe is the inveterate liar Anders Fogh Rasmussen. You may recall
what he said as P.M. of Denmark when he fully supported our illegal and immoral war of aggression
against Iraq in 2003: "Iraq has WMDs. It is not something we think, it is something we know……
there is no doubt in my mind." How did that venture turn out; hundreds of thousand of dead and
Iraq still in bloody turmoil as I type. In Syria in 2013, he said "I can tell you that personally
I am convinced, not only that a chemical attack has taken place …, but I am also convinced that
the Syrian regime is responsible." (Reuters Sept. 2, 2013) The problem is that the facts were
contrary to his statements; the gas in Ghouta was were more likely used by the rebels we surreptitiously
supported and armed then, you know, the rebels who cut the hearts out of their defeated enemy
and ate it. (See Seymour Hersh "The Red Line and the Rat Line"; Carla del Ponte of the UN).
Rasmussen is nothing but the leading continental propagandist in chief for our neocon warhawks
and repeating our mininformation campaigns (i.e. spreading lies, fabrication and faleshoods)
in support of our pro-war neocons who are, after all, just conforming to our Wolfowitz Doctrine
to harm Russia. Trust him if you dare, but history proves that a dangerous proposition.
Until today's maybe breakthrough, the only peace plan that Poroshenko has offered is that
the rebels surrender their arms before negotiations commence. Given the events from Odessa to
today, with the Ukraine military dropping illegal phosphorous gas bombs on its cities, cluster
bombs dropped on its cities, and even SS-21 Scarab ballistic missiles fired on its cities, not
to mention the arming quasi-private oligarch funded militia's manned by Svoboda and Right Sector
extremists, that is clearly not a reasonable suggestion calculated to lead to a diplomatic solution.
(By the way, am I the only person who finds the structure of Ukraine's war effort today eerily
similar to Germany circa 1938-1945; a true army like the wehrmacht and a privately run independent
armed force manned by political zealots like the Waffen SS?)
Finally, after more than 6 weeks, I still await to see tangible evidence of responsibility
for the MH-17 shootdown. No satellite images from Washington; no release of black box data from
London; no air traffic control tapes from Kyiv ATC that was seized by the Ukraine military;
the Ukraine army refusing a cease-fire to allow the investigators to thoroughly inspect the
wreckage. The only nation that even discusses MH-17 to this date is, of all nations, Russia.
The only "evidence" we offer is declaratory statements and social media. Maybe Robert Parry's
report in July was accurate after all (search Robert Parry MH-17).
It's telling that no one in favor of arming Ukraine believes that it would do anything
more than drag out the conflict.
Disagree. This will shorten the conflict dramatically because it will allow Russia to get
rid off plausible deniability as MO and will open the channels for real serious supplies for
rebels. As I stated ad nauseam–the situation on the ground speaks (in fact–it screams) volumes
about the state of Ukrainian so called Army.
No amount of weaponry or advisers (which are already there) will help. There is a whole technical
and operational issue behind all that–but this is not the issue which people who advocate arming
of junta understand. The whole thing will continue to come in full circles (time and again,
and again) to the same issue–how about they learn about real war and history. I don't hold my
breath, though.
Jim, a military aspect of the Ukrainian crisis is almost completely missing from US mainstream
media. There is a reason for that, even when some generals have about 30 seconds to "comment"
on that. But the military aspect is what really matters. Punditry as well as largely
neocon war-mongers they simply have no clue about war. They never studied it, never served,
don't have serious military degrees. They are in a state of the deer frozen in the headlights
of the incoming truck. That is why they also do not understand the gravity of the situation.
Why don't we want to prolong the conflict? Why don't we want to provoke Russia into further
military engagement? If we want to weaken Russia as a geostrategic force, a nice irritating
proxy war is a tried and true method. And I expect the Ukrainians would be much less likely
to rebound on us than the Afghans were.
I seriously doubt that we would be capable of helping Ukraine enough to actually win them
the war, but we can certainly make things harder and more costly for Russia. Could someone explain
exactly why that's not a valid geostrategic objective?
As much as I agree with you about supplying weapons is wrong, I believe it will happen evidently.
At this point, most Eastern European nations are alarmed by the Putin's actions and rightfully
scared of long term Russian desires. Unfortunately sending weapons to the Ukrainian government
as the longer the war last the more Russia is going to suffer for their actions.
In the long run, I still think this is to be the Russian Iraq War much like 1980 Afghanistan
was the Soviet Vietnam.
The longer a war goes on in Ukraine, the more instability and upheaval there will be on the
borders of NATO. That makes it more likely that one or more members of NATO will be drawn into
the conflict to their detriment. Waging a proxy war against another major power on its doorstep
is not only a waste of resources and an exercise in pointless hostility, but it would help cause
needless destruction on the country that Washington supposedly wants to "help" and burdens all
of Ukraine's neighbors with the costs that will come from a longer war.
"Why don't we want to provoke Russia into further military engagement?"
The answer should be obvious. Ukraine can't win. Further escalation on Russia's part may
be costly for Russia but it will be disastrous for Ukraine. Assuming that the U.S. and its allies
aren't going to come to Ukraine's defense directly, this sets Ukraine up to be trounced. The
U.S. would gain nothing from this except the shame of having encouraged Ukraine to persist in
a fight that it was sure to lose.
"The U.S. and its NATO allies should make clear to Ukraine at the upcoming alliance summit
that military aid won't be forthcoming and that NATO membership for the country is out of the
question."
Everything I read leads me to believe that the opposite of the above will happen.
Putin interfered with the nice little war planned against Syria and offered refuge to the
NSA's whistleblower, both of which are unforgivable affronts to hegemonic world order.
thorny issues but I 'd add do not sanction Russia either – sanctions are a virtual waging
of war on a nation – economic but still war. And they do not work – as has been demonstrated
going back to 1938 and the Japanese. They will however solidify support for Putin and his policies.
So why do it? For the same reason we will send arms – cause we have to look like we are doing
something and the alternative is to engage in actual statecraft and work out a genuine relationship
with Russia respecting her concerns. We don't have a clue as to how to do that so off we go.
Again.
Why don't we want to prolong the conflict? Why don't we want to provoke Russia into further
military engagement? If we want to weaken Russia as a geostrategic force, a nice irritating
proxy war is a tried and true method. And I expect the Ukrainians would be much less likely
to rebound on us than the Afghans were.
Yeah, sure, that'd be a good play in Risk.
Ukrainians, even those far from Donetsk, are already suffering from this war, and there are
few happy prospects on the horizon. The Gryvnia's been about 8 to the dollar for years; nowadays
it's running 12-13. In a poor country, the government proposes to spend 3 billion on arms. Unemployment
seems to be rising steeply, and heating fuel will soon be much more expensive - right in time
for winter. Perhaps worst of all, acquaintanceships and loyalties that haven't been questioned
for a lifetime are getting stressed and shredded.
So let's make Ukraine a full-fledged battlefield, because we might get to stick it to some
people whom - this month - we don't like.
You would use Ukrainians as bit players in some childish power game. And for what?!?!
The Russophobia on display since the Sochi Olympics has been one of the weirdest fads that's
ever swept America.
What on earth is a NATO partner? Sure we can help strengthen Georgia's defenses. Cut them
a military aid check valid only with Russian arms dealers. There, that should make everyone
happy. I'm half serious.
My point is, the situation with NATO is currently unstable. It either needs to freeze accessions
or shift to a program of fairly robust exchange with Russia. Otherwise we are backing ourselves
into the most predictable corner in the world. Either Russia or the U.S. is going to go too
far, and start a real crisis. If this takes place within spitting distance of Russia's borders,
things will get hairy. Best case scenario, this causes the grown ups to wake up and very carefully
defuse the situation and institute long term structural stability. Worse case scenario, the
maximalists and armchair warriors on both sides go for glory. In the aftermath, several nuclear
arms deals could be shattered, more Eastern European territory could be eaten at great cost
to its residents, a ruinous sanctions regime could really tank Russia's economy, and the ensuing
economic reprisals could take Europe's economy down with it. Calls for military build up will
be shrill and you really don't want to see that bill, or think through the possible consequences
of a new Great Depression in the region.
And to what end? We can see the cliff, any good reason to merrily continue towards it? We've
come uncomfortably close to extending ourselves too far economically and militarily in the past
ten years. Let's not let the neocons seal that deal.
Civil war unleashed in Ukraine for geopolitical reasons and West desire for expansion is a terrible
tragedy. More then 2000 dead and 20000 wounded, Around one million of refugees. This is another terrible
consequence of neoliberal ideology domination with its use of color revolutions to destabilize weaker
countries, as well as desire to get new markets on the part of Germany and EU as a whole and squeeze
Russia out of the area. And this tragedy started with February coup. Quote: "Although the full extent
of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington backed the coup."
Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington
backed the coup. Nuland and Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations,
and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after Yanukovych's toppling that
it was "a day for the history books." As a leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated
regime change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in
the new government, which he did. No wonder Russians of all persuasions think the West played a
role in Yanukovych's ouster.
... ... ...
Putin's actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France,
imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer
state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance
that was Moscow's mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader
stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate
Ukraine into the West.
... ... ...
To understand why the West, especially the United States, failed to understand that its Ukraine
policy was laying the groundwork for a major clash with Russia, one must go back to the mid-1990s,
when the Clinton administration began advocating NATO expansion. Pundits advanced a variety of arguments
for and against enlargement, but there was no consensus on what to do. Most eastern European émigrés
in the United States and their relatives, for example, strongly supported expansion, because they
wanted NATO to protect such countries as Hungary and Poland. A few realists also favored the policy
because they thought Russia still needed to be contained.
... ... ...
In that same 1998 interview, Kennan predicted that NATO expansion would provoke a crisis, after
which the proponents of expansion would "say that we always told you that is how the Russians are."
As if on cue, most Western officials have portrayed Putin as the real culprit in the Ukraine predicament.
In March, according to The New York Times, German Chancellor Angela Merkel implied that
Putin was irrational, telling Obama that he was "in another world." Although Putin no doubt has
autocratic tendencies, no evidence supports the charge that he is mentally unbalanced. On the contrary:
he is a first-class strategist who should be feared and respected by anyone challenging him on foreign
policy.
... ... ...
To achieve this end, the United States and its allies should publicly rule out NATO's expansion
into both Georgia and Ukraine. The West should also help fashion an economic rescue plan for Ukraine
funded jointly by the EU, the International Monetary Fund, Russia, and the United States -- a proposal
that Moscow should welcome, given its interest in having a prosperous and stable Ukraine on its
western flank. And the West should considerably limit its social-engineering efforts inside Ukraine.
It is time to put an end to Western support for another Orange Revolution. Nevertheless, U.S. and
European leaders should encourage Ukraine to respect minority rights, especially the language rights
of its Russian speakers.
We the undersigned are longtime veterans of U.S. intelligence. We take the unusual step of writing
this open letter to you to ensure that you have an opportunity to be briefed on our views prior
to the NATO summit on September 4-5.
You need to know, for example, that accusations of a major
Russian "invasion" of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence. Rather, the "intelligence"
seems to be of the same dubious, politically "fixed" kind used 12 years ago to "justify" the U.S.-led
attack on Iraq. We saw no credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq then; we see
no credible evidence of a Russian invasion now. Twelve years ago, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder,
mindful of the flimsiness of the evidence on Iraqi WMD, refused to join in the attack on Iraq. In
our view, you should be appropriately suspicions of charges made by the US State Department and
NATO officials alleging a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
President Barack Obama tried yesterday to cool the rhetoric of his own senior diplomats and the
corporate media, when he publicly described recent activity in the Ukraine, as "a continuation of
what's been taking place for months now … it's not really a shift."
Obama, however, has only tenuous control over the policymakers in his administration – who, sadly,
lack much sense of history, know little of war, and substitute anti-Russian invective for a policy.
One year ago, hawkish State Department officials and their friends in the media very nearly got
Mr. Obama to launch a major attack on Syria based, once again, on "intelligence" that was dubious,
at best.
Largely because of the growing prominence of, and apparent reliance on, intelligence we believe
to be spurious, we think the possibility of hostilities escalating beyond the borders of Ukraine
has increased significantly over the past several days. More important, we believe that this likelihood
can be avoided, depending on the degree of judicious skepticism you and other European leaders bring
to the NATO summit next week.
Experience With Untruth
Hopefully, your advisers have reminded you of NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen's
checkered record for credibility. It appears to us that Rasmussen's speeches continue to be
drafted by Washington. This was abundantly clear on the day before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq
when, as Danish Prime Minister, he told his Parliament: "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This
is not something we just believe. We know."
Photos can be worth a thousand words; they can also deceive. We have considerable experience
collecting, analyzing, and reporting on all kinds of satellite and other imagery, as well as other
kinds of intelligence. Suffice it to say that the images released by NATO on August 28 provide a
very flimsy basis on which to charge Russia with invading Ukraine. Sadly, they bear a strong resemblance
to the images shown by Colin Powell at the UN on February 5, 2003 that, likewise, proved nothing.
That same day, we warned President Bush that our former colleague analysts were "increasingly
distressed at the politicization of intelligence" and told him flatly, "Powell's presentation does
not come close" to justifying war. We urged Mr. Bush to "widen the discussion … beyond the circle
of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we
believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."
Consider Iraq today. Worse than catastrophic. Although President Vladimir Putin has until now
showed considerable reserve on the conflict in the Ukraine, it behooves us to remember that Russia,
too, can "shock and awe." In our view, if there is the slightest chance of that kind of thing eventually
happening to Europe because of Ukraine, sober-minded leaders need to think this through very carefully.
If the photos that NATO and the US have released represent the best available "proof" of an invasion
from Russia, our suspicions increase that a major effort is under way to fortify arguments for the
NATO summit to approve actions that Russia is sure to regard as provocative. Caveat emptor
is an expression with which you are no doubt familiar. Suffice it to add that one should be very
cautious regarding what Mr. Rasmussen, or even Secretary of State John Kerry, are peddling.
We trust that your advisers have kept you informed regarding the crisis in Ukraine from the beginning
of 2014, and how the possibility that Ukraine would become a member of NATO is anathema to the Kremlin.
According to a February 1, 2008 cable (published by WikiLeaks) from the US embassy in Moscow to
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, US Ambassador William Burns was called in by Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov, who explained Russia's strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine.
Lavrov warned pointedly of "fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two,
leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to
intervene." Burns gave his cable the unusual title, "NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA'S NATO ENLARGEMENT
REDLINES," and sent it off to Washington with IMMEDIATE precedence. Two months later, at their summit
in Bucharest NATO leaders issued a formal declaration that "Georgia and Ukraine will be in NATO."
Just yesterday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk used his Facebook page to claim that,
with the approval of Parliament that he has requested, the path to NATO membership is open. Yatsenyuk,
of course, was Washington's favorite pick to become prime minister after the February 22 coup d'etat
in Kiev. "Yats is the guy," said Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland a few weeks before
the coup, in an intercepted telephone conversation with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt.
You may recall that this is the same conversation in which Nuland said, "Fuck the EU."
Timing of the Russian "Invasion"
The conventional wisdom promoted by Kiev just a few weeks ago was that Ukrainian forces had the
upper hand in fighting the anti-coup federalists in southeastern Ukraine, in what was largely portrayed
as a mop-up operation. But that picture of the offensive originated almost solely from official
government sources in Kiev. There were very few reports coming from the ground in southeastern Ukraine.
There was one, however, quoting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, that raised doubt about the
reliability of the government's portrayal.
According to the "press service of the President of Ukraine" on August 18, Poroshenko called
for a "regrouping of Ukrainian military units involved in the operation of power in the East of
the country. … Today we need to do the rearrangement of forces that will defend our territory and
continued army offensives," said Poroshenko, adding, "we need to consider a new military operation
in the new circumstances."
If the "new circumstances" meant successful advances by Ukrainian government forces, why would
it be necessary to "regroup," to "rearrange" the forces? At about this time, sources on the ground
began to report a string of successful attacks by the anti-coup federalists against government forces.
According to these sources, it was the government army that was starting to take heavy casualties
and lose ground, largely because of ineptitude and poor leadership.
Ten days later, as they became encircled and/or retreated, a ready-made excuse for this was to
be found in the "Russian invasion." That is precisely when the fuzzy photos were released by NATO
and reporters like the New York Times' Michael Gordon were set loose to spread the word that "the
Russians are coming." (Michael Gordon was one of the most egregious propagandists promoting the
war on Iraq.)
No Invasion – But Plenty Other Russian Support
The anti-coup federalists in southeastern Ukraine enjoy considerable local support, partly as
a result of government artillery strikes on major population centers. And we believe that Russian
support probably has been pouring across the border and includes, significantly, excellent battlefield
intelligence. But it is far from clear that this support includes tanks and artillery at this point
– mostly because the federalists have been better led and surprisingly successful in pinning down
government forces.
At the same time, we have little doubt that, if and when the federalists need them, the Russian
tanks will come.
This is precisely why the situation demands a concerted effort for a ceasefire, which you know
Kiev has so far been delaying. What is to be done at this point? In our view, Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk
need to be told flat-out that membership in NATO is not in the cards – and that NATO has no intention
of waging a proxy war with Russia – and especially not in support of the ragtag army of Ukraine.
Other members of NATO need to be told the same thing.
For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA;
co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East (ret.)
Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (Ret.)
Coleen Rowley, Division Counsel & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)
Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned)
Angela Merkel and her Christian democrats party is part of the economic problem in Europe,
she is partner with those far right EU politicians, bankers, German industries, energy and NATO
whom are looking forward to destabilize more of Eastern Europe where they get their hands into
more of people's natural resources where ever it might be.
Angela Markell love to see the day when EU is no longer buys Russian gas, especially now
that Saudis/UAE are on the side of Europe foreign policies in Middle East and supporting Israel
apartheid regime to steal more of Palestinians land, Angela Markell loves to expend Europe to
where and when Hitler ruled.
Trusting this women is like trusting Hillary Clinton being the most honest and correct
on her political adventurous doing everything for the American working man and women while living
the oil company to work for their billion of billions of dollars profit and USG subsidies.
Retired · 8 hours ago
Continued - Russia are no angels in Ukraine, they never have been angels anywhere. Neither
have the US been angels anytime or British either in terms of activities peripheral to direct
military action, add anyone else to this group as well.
We all know the rules and the 'game'. It's time for sobriety and professionalism, something
the Germans are purportedly endowed with!
Let's hope Merkel shows not only common sense but a little of some German qualities as well,
qualities other German leaders have shown before her.
Iki · 5 hours ago
Gentlemen, I am a guy from the other side (east Europe), I had never been involved in any
agency activities like you had been. Although as a student I was a communist, during the cold
war I stepped out from the Party and gave up my membership and I want to express my appreciation
of your work in dismantling communism. Good job.
But now I share your serious concern about what is going in Ukraine. Since I speak Russian
I have a direct access to information on what´s happening there and I work as an analyst on
Russia. The Ukrainian story is one of the most ugliest stories we have had in recent years.
Is there anything I can do for you to help to change the situation?
I am analyst only for internet independent radio station, because the situation with the
mainstream media is that there is no space for information like the message above. Anyway I
believe that your message to Mrs. Merkel is a very important step aimed to open eyes of those
at power in EU as well as i US.
Please continue and do as much as possible of this kind of steps. Any sincere effort to help
change the situation towards better world is precious. Thank you. My compliments.
More than one million people have been displaced by the conflict in Ukraine, including 814,000
Ukrainians now in Russia with various forms of status, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.
Numbers displaced inside Ukraine by the fighting have nearly doubled in the past there weeks
to at least 260,000 and more are fleeing, it earlier told a Geneva news briefing.
"It's safe to say you have over a million people now displaced as a result of the conflict, internally
and externally together," Vincent Cochetel, director of the UNHCR's bureau for Europe, later told
reporters. "I mean 260,000 in Ukraine, it's a low estimate, 814,000 in Russia, then you add the
rest ... Belarus, Moldova, European Union."
UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres warned of dire consequences if the spiralling crisis in eastern
Ukraine, which has killed more than 2,600 people since mid-April, is allowed to continue.
"If this crisis is not quickly stopped, it will have not only devastating humanitarian consequences,
but it also has the potential to destabilize the whole region," Guterres said in a statement.
TonyT12
Interesting that our media are so full of endless stories that Putin is an evil tyrant and
that Russia is the home of all that is terrible in the world. Yet where do so many of those
whose lives are wrecked by the Ukraine civil war choose to go as refugees? - Russia - because
it is safer than anywhere on offer from the Kiev regime so favored by Washington, London and
the EU.
Our politicians simply have no regard for civilians' lives any more. They are dispensable
pawns on their chessboard. Politics must come first, second and third. It does not matter if
it is Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, Syria or anywhere else. The West decides to intervene and lives
are wrecked wholesale.
jezzam
What is Putin up to? It's difficult to see any outcome of his policies in Ukraine which will
not be disastrous for Russia in the long term. He's provoking an arms race with the West that
he cannot possible win, given the huge disparity in GDP between the West and Russia. He has
almost totally isolated Russia in the world. His only significant ally now is China (or semi-ally,
since China has been careful not to express support for Putin's policy in Ukraine.
This "alliance" is of course very much in China's interest - they get cheap oil and gas,
since Russia will not be able to sell to EU countries soon. At some future date China will be
able to do in Outer Manchuria what Russia are now doing in Ukraine. A very similar situation
- historically it belongs to China - a large ethnic Chines population who would almost certainly
prefer to be part of China rather than Russia - Russia will have no allies if this happens after
what they have done in Ukraine.
The only reasonably rational explanation I can think of is that this is all intended to strenthen
Putin's grip on power. Create a Russia beseiged by enemies - this allows him to introduce further
repressive measures to control the Russian population - Goering explicitly stated that this
was Hitler's strategy one he gained power - poor Russians. Or perhaps he's just lost his marbles.
ashleigh2
For several months now we have read the almost daily claims of the heroic Ukraine army of
mercenaries battling against 'Russian' soldiers and armoured columns of Russian tanks which
had been 'destroyed' by the same Ukraine Nazi volunteer mercenaries, but not one single photograph
or picture was available to support the claims.
Now the US/UK/EU financed killers are being driven back all of a sudden there are plenty
of news photographs available that show exactly what has been happening on the ground. The UK
government, the BBC, The Daily Telegraph and all the other UK based news agencies who printed
all the lies and propaganda spouted by Porkshenko, whilst the same time supressing any photographic
evidence that existed and was detrimental to the Nazis Junta, ought to hang their collective
heads in shame.
Their level of misinformation is on the scale of Goebbels...
StJohnofAustria -> Joker
I hope the Russian people appreciate how lucky they've been for Putin to be around at the
right time
The war mongering maniacs in the West were planning to asset strip, and plunder Russia, claiming
its natural resources while funding serial inter-ethnic tribal wars (Chechens , ISIS and Talibans)
just like in Congo, Angola....
In the 1990s, Russian people were driven into starvation and collective suicide under pro
American Yeltsin (whom sold the industry to oligarchs), but Putin kicked the CIA EU Mossad lunatics
out and has been re-building a Russia into a world power ever since.
The West is now asset stripping Ukraine , enslaving it into IMF debt , and its people will be
driven to mass poverty and extreme hardship.
Let's hope Putin saves Western White European Christian civilization and the children of
England and the West from abuse caused by state sponsored neo Marxist multiculturalism and Islamic
third world immigration .
My thoughts and prayers go to the families of the 1800 English children sacrificed by the
labour pro sharia council ...and many tens of thousands more across England .
Vladimir Slaviansky
The Telegraph: "If this crisis is not quickly stopped, it will have not only devastating
humanitarian consequences, but it also has the potential to destabilise the whole region."
Russians and Ukrainians have common roots, common religion and related languages, that is
why there was no animosity between the two nations, neither in the Russian Empire, nor in the
Soviet Union. Serious manifestations of Ukrainian nationalism took place during the Civil War
and the Patriotic War - due to a sharp change in living conditions. The current crisis is also
due to the problems in the Ukrainian economy and because of the need to make an unnatural choice
between Russia and Europe.
In my opinion, the only way out of the crisis, is to create equal win-win relations for all
countries in the region. The current position of the EU and NATO do not allow this, so the conflict
will continue in one form or another. It is possible that tomorrow the Ukrainians will direct
their hatred against members of NATO.
BMWA1 -> Pavel Chichikov
Do not feel sorry Mr. Chichkov, on 8th May this year, 20 unarmed civilians were murdered
in Mariupol by the same 'Azov Battalion' (private army formed by Pariuby), altough as such,
they do have to watch their backs as well as their fronts.
This is the Azov battalion that employs the Wolfangel rune as its emblem, also used by the
2nd Waffen SS Panzer Division for example, its proprietor, btw, helped to form the original
'Social Nationalist' Party of Ukraine', prior to its 2004 rebrand as Svoboda.
The clash between the international economy and the political institutions that ostensibly govern
it also weakens the sense of common purpose necessary for world order. The economic system has become
global, while the political structure of the world remains based on the nation-state. Economic globalization,
in its essence, ignores national frontiers. Foreign policy affirms them, even as it seeks to reconcile
conflicting national aims or ideals of world order.
This dynamic has produced decades of sustained economic growth punctuated by periodic financial
crises of seemingly escalating intensity: in Latin America in the 1980s; in Asia in 1997; in Russia
in 1998; in the U.S. in 2001 and again starting in 2007; in Europe after 2010. The winners have
few reservations about the system. But the losers-such as those stuck in structural misdesigns,
as has been the case with the European Union's southern tier-seek their remedies by solutions that
negate, or at least obstruct, the functioning of the global economic system.
The international order thus faces a paradox: Its prosperity is dependent on the success of globalization,
but the process produces a political reaction that often works counter to its aspirations.
A third failing of the current world order, such as it exists, is the absence of an effective
mechanism for the great powers to consult and possibly cooperate on the most consequential issues.
Quote: "Although they rarely mention it in the history books, it is ironic that around this
time the moneyed interests and neo-cons of Roosevelt's day were
fomenting a domestic revolution, and investing
heavily in European fascists whom they hoped would be obedient gangsters for crony capitalism."
"A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him."
Adam Smith
"The issue isn't just jobs. Even slaves had jobs. The issue is wages."
Jim Hightower
Some analysts are confusing higher wages with monetary stimulus. Nothing could be further from
the truth, at least in the real world of today.
Monetary stimulus is what the Federal Reserve does, that is, increasing the money supply by expanding
the monetary base. It is a non-organic growth of money.
I think it is a well-noted and oft-remarked upon feature that the monetary stimulus that the
Fed is providing is being given directly and almost exclusive to the Banks, in order to shore up
their damaged balance sheets and provide them an artificial stream of profits.
And of that stimulus, the bulk of it seems to be finding its way into financial speculation and
a new bubble in paper assets, and the acquisition of more companies to build even greater monopolies.
Wage increases, that are not merely a secondary effect of a general monetary inflation, are indeed
not useful, except that the workers at least keep pace with the rate of price inflation. But I don't
think that this is what anyone is recommending who talks about higher wages. The Fed is not an actor
on that stage.
The currently imbalanced and distorted financial system is taking the lion's share of all new
growth, and continues to do so as it has been doing for the past twenty years. This cannot last.
When consumers purchase things, they must either use cash or credit. And to obtain the cash they
can work more hours, or have more family members working. To obtain more credit, they can mortgage
their house, and increase their debts.
We have seen the explosion of a consumer credit bubble in housing debt, facilitated and engineered
by historic levels of financial fraud by the very Banks who are now taking their subsidies of monetary
stimulus from the Fed. It happened almost six years ago, but the economy remains in 'the new noe-feudal
normal.'
At some point the long abused consumer says 'enough' and cuts back their purchasing to the barest
of essentials. And the economy grows stagnant at home, which gives the moneyed interests a strong
incentive to seek captive markets overseas. And so a new round of neo-colonialism is born. Which
in turn creates its own sets of problems, lies, and economic distortions.
The data indicates that we are now, at long last, finally at that point.
And the one percent has never been richer, or had more influence with the political class.
How much is enough for them? When will they be content? With them it is with wealth as it is
with power.
'Wir haben keine Hemmungen, und einen großen Magen.'
I think that the solution is rather obvious. We have been here before.
"After many requests on my part the Congress passed a Fair Labor Standards Act, what we call
the Wages and Hours Bill. That Act --applying to products in interstate
commerce -- ends child labor, sets a floor below wages, and a ceiling over hours of labor.
Except perhaps for the Social Security Act, it is the most far-reaching, the most far-sighted
program for the benefit of workers ever adopted here or in any other country. Without question
it starts us toward a better standard of living and increases purchasing power to buy the products
of farm and factory.
Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000.00 a day, who has been
turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company's
undistributed reserves, tell you -- using his stockholders' money to pay the postage for his
personal opinions -- tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect
on all American industry.
Fortunately for business as a whole, and therefore for the Nation, that type of executive
is a rarity with whom most business executives most heartily disagree...
Some of my opponents and some of my associates have considered that I have a mistakenly sentimental
judgment as to the tenacity of purpose and the general level of intelligence of the American
people.
I am still convinced that the American people, since 1932, continue to insist on two requisites
of private enterprise, and the relationship of Government to it. The first is a complete honesty,
a complete honesty at the top in looking after the use of other people's money, and in apportioning
and paying individual and corporate taxes (according to) in accordance with ability to pay.
And the second is sincere respect for the need of all people who are at the bottom, all people
at the bottom who need to get work -- and through work to get a (really) fair share of the good
things of life, and a chance to save and a chance to rise.
After the election of 1936 I was told, and the Congress was told, by an increasing number
of politically -- and worldly-- wise people that I should coast along, enjoy an easy Presidency
for four years, and not take the Democratic platform too seriously. They told me that people
were getting weary of reform through political effort and would no longer oppose that small
minority which, in spite of its own disastrous leadership in 1929, is always eager to resume
its control over the Government of the United States.
Never in our lifetime has such a concerted campaign of defeatism been thrown at the heads
of the President and the Senators and Congressmen as in the case of this Seventy-Fifth Congress.
Never before have we had so many Copperheads among us -- and you will remember that it was the
Copperheads who, in the days of the Civil War, the War between the States, tried their best
to make President Lincoln and his Congress give up the fight in the middle of the fight, to
let the Nation remain split in two and return to peace -- yes, peace at any price.
This Congress has ended on the side of the people. My faith in the American people -- and
their faith in themselves -- have been justified. I congratulate the Congress and the leadership
thereof and I congratulate the American people on their own staying power...
You will remember that from March 4, 1933 down to date, not a single week has passed without
a cry from the opposition, a small opposition, a cry 'to do something, to say something, to
restore confidence.' There is a very articulate group of people in this country, with plenty
of ability to procure publicity for their views, who have consistently refused to cooperate
with the mass of the people, whether things were going well or going badly, on the ground that
they required more concessions to their point of view before they would admit having what they
called "confidence."
These people demanded 'restoration of confidence' when the banks were closed -- and demanded
it again when the banks were reopened.
They demanded 'restoration of confidence' when hungry people were thronging (the) our streets
-- and demanded it again now when the hungry people were fed and put to work.
They demanded 'restoration of confidence' when droughts hit the country -- and demanded it
again now when our fields are laden with bounteous yields and excessive crops.
They demanded 'restoration of confidence' last year when the automobile industry was running
three shifts day and night, turning out more cars than the country could buy -- and they are
demanding it again this year when the industry is trying to get rid of an automobile surplus
and has shut down its factories as a result.
But, my friends, it is my belief that many of these people who have been crying aloud for
'confidence' are beginning today to realize that that hand has been overplayed..."
Although they rarely mention it in the history books, it is ironic that around this time the
moneyed interests and neo-cons of Roosevelt's day were
fomenting a domestic revolution, and investing
heavily in European fascists whom they hoped would be obedient gangsters for crony capitalism.
Images from Libya today speak more clearly about the folly of US interventionism, US "regime change"
operations, US-led bombing campaigns to "promote democracy" than anything else.
Arguing passionately
in favor of a US attack on Libya, over the objections of then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, then-US
Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice
said:
I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of
dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.
Well she was partly right. Thanks to her successful demands for a US attack, it was Libya that
went down in flames.
In October, 2011, the Washington Post, always friendly to the US regime, wrote this about the
Libya attack:
[T]he coalition air campaign has emerged as a foreign policy success for the Obama administration
and its most famous Cabinet member, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Here is Hillary's great success, here are Rice's flames: weeks after the US embassy was forced to
abandon Tripoli in shame as Libya plunged into murderous chaos and gang warfare, radical Islamists
are enjoying the US embassy pool, weight room, and other luxurious facilities on the embassy compound.
Here is Hillary Clinton, here is Susan Rice, here is interventionism...
Former Congressman and 2012 Presidential Candidate Ron Paul believes you deserve to know what's
in the 28 pages of the 9/11 report that have been classified since the report was issued in 2002.
Though criticism has come to those who are certain that we do not know the full story of what happened
that fateful day, it is important for us to set aside the conjecture and come together on the principle
that we must always seek the truth.
Members of Congress are pushing to bring the truth to light,
and they need your support. Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC) and Congressman Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.)
introduced legislation at the end of 2013-H.
Res. 428-to get the administration to reveal the redacted information from the 9/11 report.
Here's what the individuals who have seen the classified pages of the report said about their
experience reading the information therein and the importance of making it public:
Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC) in an interview with Ron Paul recorded on August 14, 2014 - "You
have to go down into a room that is guarded by uniformed officers, and then also you have an FBI
person to sit there in the room. you can't make any notes. The Bush people do not want it released.
It's not a national security issue. But it would be embarrassing to the previous administration
if this information is opened for the public. . . . There will be no hope for America's future if
the American people don't know the truth about a tragedy such as 9/11."
Congressman Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) in a December 2, 2013 press conference with Congressman Jones
- "Twelve years after the horrific September 11 attacks, unanswered questions still remain. These
pages contain information that is vital to a full understanding of the events and circumstances
surrounding this tragedy. The families of the victims and the American people deserve better; they
deserve answers, they deserve a full accounting, and that has not happened yet."
Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) in a March 12, 2014 press conference with Congressman Jones
and Congressman Lynch - "This is something the families deserve to know, this information. It's
been a decade-over a decade, 13 years-since this event happened. And we've had a narrative in the
media and in the press and in the collective American conscience of what happened that day. But
I don't think it's fully informed and it won't be fully informed until everybody gets to see these
28 pages. . . . I had to stop every couple pages and just sort of absorb and try to rearrange my
understanding of history for the past 13 years and the years leading up to that. It challenges you
to rethink everything."
Former Senator and Chairman of the Senate intelligence Committee Bob Graham (D-Fl.) in an interview
with HuffPost Live in December 2013 - "This is not just a matter of something that happened a dozen
years ago. This has real consequences today. It has real consequences in terms of justice. There
are thousands of Americans who are victims of 9/11 who have been trying to secure justice through
our federal court system and who have been largely blocked by our federal government through denying
them access to information that would be necessary to successfully pursue their litigation and raising
sovereign immunity on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
Former Congressman and Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) in an interview
with independent journalist Luke Rudowski in 2001 - "We do not claim in this report to have written
the final truth."
And former Congressman Hamilton on C-SPAN coverage of the 9/11 Commission Report 10th Anniversary
on July 22, 2014 - "I am embarrassed that they are not declassified. We emphasized throughout transparency.
And I assumed incorrectly that our records would be public-all of them, everything. And then when
I learned that a number of the documents were classified and even redacted, I was surprised and
disappointed. I want those documents declassified. I am embarrassed to be associated with a work
product that is secret."
Germany, to a large extent, was behind coup in Kiev. Was one of the forces, for
sure -- it is a fact. Names of Timoshenko and Klitchko speak volumes;
Germany IS NOT an international player. For all my love for German culture
and admiration for German national genius--Germany is not a global player. She is incapable
of having own position in foreign affairs unless it is toeing the US line.
Merkel is below average, run of the mill, European bureaucrat -- not a states(wo)man.
She is NO Helmut Schmidt or Willie Brandt, she is not even Schroeder.
Realistically, Germany is still occupied country. What is fascinating, however,
in Mr. Trenin's piece is the fact, that this former Colonel political officer (or whatever he
was), still doesn't get the fundamental truism of diplomacy: no matter how mass-media spread
propaganda (and it is a weapon, indeed), the final configuration is always settled on the ground.
Diplomats are merely an extension, however important, of the armies and navies, whose movements
create a reality. Once one begins to look at the reality of the events on the ground in Ukraine,
all questions about the role of Germany, US, Interplanetary Ecumenical Council or whatever become
irrelevant. There is ONLY one reality--operational one.
This reality tells us (as it told to any competent observer for months) that Ukrainian so
called army is being simply obliterated as we speak and that excludes ANY serious role of Germany
or whoever in the final settlement in Ukraine. So, Mr. Trenin better shake himself out of his
little Carnegie fantasy world and recall some basic courses in Military History--I am sure they
taught those in his Alma Mater.
folktruther
The greatest supporter of the war, Washington, wasn't at the conference. It is pursuing
its usual Divide and Ruin strategy that has devastated Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and
so many other states. But western Europe may not go along.
And Ukraine under the US-engineered Nazi-Oligarch regime is increasingly a basket case. As
the Ukrainian people increasingly understand how they are been driven into the ground, the pressure
for the end to the war will increase.
It amounts to saying "The US have created mayhem through dirty
tricks, now it is up to Mrs Merkel and the Europeans to sort out the mess"
The moral of the Ukraine story is, the US should get out of Europe diplomatically and militarily
(along with their CIA/NSA/DIA/mercenary gangsters), since the US creates for more for us that
it solves (to be polite)
And the US should publicly apologize for creating this totally avoidable disaster...
PS and start by telling Strobe Talbot, that Clinton hasbeen, to stop his Russophic ranting
and lies (to think that he could be Secretary of State with this Cold warmongering is unbelievable)
- what a disgrace, like Hillary Clinton and her "Hitler" remark...these Democratic loonies are
as dangerous for world peace and a decent world order as the neocons...
I don't think Germany can or even want to save Ukraine. It was Germany who brought chaos
to Ukraine after all, by supporting Maidan coupists along with the USA, sponsoring a coup against
a democratically elected government.
Just to remember, Eastern Ukraine and Crimea were formerly Russian, then Ukranian, and it
seems the inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea want to get Independence from Eastern Ukraine
(or even join back Russia), after their failed association to Western Ukraine when they got
Independence from Russia about 20 years back.
EU and USA does not want to recognize the will of Eastern Ukrainian inhabitants to be independent
of Western Ukraine. They are helping to subdue the political oppositors to Kiev coupist regime,
no matter how many civilians are killed by coupist regime.
coinspace -> Pawel66
Considering that Holland, US/UK, and Kiev have all clamped down on the evidence for the shootdown
of MH17, then the reason for the sanctions disappears.
What if it was indeed Kiev that shot down the plane? Then you support them no matter what
because Russia?
Everyone knows the German economy carries the weight of the EU. When they go down, the eurozone
and all of their neighboring countries will go down. Why is everyone in a rush to kill the golden
goose?
Shaul_R -> coinspace
Yes, indeed. The MH17 investigation seems to be going the way of the investigations of the
Odessa burning in May and the Majdan shooting in February. Which is, nowhere. Not too surprising,
since criminals don't usually investigate themselves
Add to that the 'suiciding' of Valentina Semenyuk earlier this week. She was the former head
of the State Property Fund, who blew the whistle on the corrupt machinations around the privatization
of state properties by some of the same oligarchs who are now in power in Ukraine.
What, the western mass media has not reported it? Shocking, simply shocking...
Buzzy123 -> Oldertimer
Not a good analogy at all. Russia CANT use their atomic bombs not unless they were suicidal.
The US would wipe them out in a counter strike--and without using nuclear weapons the military
might of the US would stop Russian armed forces well short of Germany.
Then in the long run the combined $40T economies of the USA/EU/Canada and Australia would
grind the $2T natural resource dependent Russian economy into dust, probably within a year or
two.
coinspace -> Buzzy123
Your presumptions are all insane, if not scary because I know this is how most people in
the Washington bubble think. Russia's military doctrine includes tactical nuclear strikes against
superior forces - no ifs, ands, or buts.
It should be unthinkable and undesirable for ANY European to want conventional war on the
continent. Nuclear war is the inevitable consequence of one, so any competent leadership should
be genuinely trying to deescalate the situation. Instead, the Neocons are running ramshod over
them to keep hitting the escalate button.
BTW, consider this. The Saudis (a necessary component to keep the petrodollar afloat) have
witnessed the fact that Obama would rather dick around with Russia than confront Iran as its
regional rival. Iran is the clear winner in this (as is China), so of course they will consider
knocking out the giant's feet.
In his
interview with Thomas Friedman published on August 8, President Obama gave a convincing explanation
of why the United States could not create an effective government in Iraq: "We cannot do for them
what they are unwilling to do for themselves," he pointed out, and also explained, "Societies don't
work if political factions take maximalist positions. And the more diverse the country is, the less
it can afford to take maximalist positions."
The president has identified the central issue, not
only in Iraq but also in many of the world's hotspots. In particular, his perception should be applied
to guide our policy toward Ukraine and its conflict with Russia. American policymakers also need
to pay closer attention to regional power realities and perceived interests than they apparently
have in the recent past.
...we should not ignore the fact that their government is unrepresentative of the country
as a whole, and that, so long as extensive fighting continues in the eastern provinces, valid representation
of Ukrainian citizens there will be virtually impossible.
Kiev's Western friends cannot provide political representation from Ukraine's eastern provinces
and Kiev is unlikely to enlist it while fighting goes on in Donetsk and Luhansk. Those who feel
that the Kiev government can unify the country by means of a military victory over the separatists
are surely wrong. Even in the unlikely event that Russia would permit a complete military victory,
the government in Kiev would face the challenge of dealing with festering cancers rather than healthy,
functional organs in Ukraine's body politic.
...realistic diplomacy is going to steer the warring parties in Ukraine away from the disastrous
course they have chosen. The Ukrainians must understand that they cannot achieve the unity any successful
nation-state requires by imposing the will of one part of the country on the rest. The Russians
must be convinced that ending support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is in their interest
and is not a precursor to a NATO-dominated Ukraine. The EU needs to understand that, no matter how
well intended its arrangements with the government in Kiev may be, success is impossible unless
Ukraine can create a genuine degree of national unity.
Settlement on any terms while fighting continues seems most unlikely, so efforts to stop the
fighting and meet the humanitarian needs of the people trapped in combat zones must take priority.
Nevertheless, active negotiations to reach an overall settlement must proceed in order to improve
the prospects for a cease-fire and the durability of one, if reached. The principles on which the
civil war in Ukraine could be brought to an end and a government established that can provide effective
rule for the entire country (minus, at least temporarily, Crimea) are well known to those familiar
with the area and not blinded by partisan passions. They are, speaking broadly: (1) a commitment,
embedded in the constitution, by Ukrainian political leaders to power-sharing that prevents the
domination of one section of the country by the other; (2) a federal structure in function if not
necessarily in name; (3) acceptance of Russian as an official language along with Ukrainian in regions
with a significant number of Russian speakers-ideally in the entire country; and (4) a credible
assurance that Ukraine will not become a member of a military alliance hostile to Russia, perhaps
by requiring the vote of a supermajority as a prerequisite to joining any military alliance.
Jack Matlock, Jr. is a former professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton
and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union.
This article is part of Carnegie Corporation of New York's Carnegie Forum: Rebuilding
U.S.-Russia Relations. Read more perspectives
here.
I have a profound respect for Esteemed Ambassador Jack Matlock--he put a bar on the diplomatic
art so high, that very few of current American foreign policy officers dealing with Russia will
ever reach. Having said all that, I have to disagree on this:
Coverage of events in Ukraine by prominent American and Western European
media, while more accurate and balanced than that in the Russian
government-controlled media, has nevertheless devoted little attention
to the militant right-wing elements in Ukraine's Maidan movement, or to
Kiev's use of unofficial armed militias with ties to countries in the
West
From the get go Western media have become the bullhorn of Kiev propaganda (granted Russia
has her own propaganda machine). It manifested itself most dramatically after the tragedy of
Malaysian Flight Mh-17. Moreover, already for four + months the so called mainstream media in
the West spread disinformation (which is not surprising when one relies on the Kiev "sources")
about the real state of the affairs on the ground in Donbass and Luhansk. I don't remember,
I simply can not find, ANY competent military (operational and strategic) analysis of the events
on the ground in English. None, zilch, nada. Could it be that media are so incompetent that
they cannot even find a proper professionals? Highly likely, in fact, it is a fact, but not
only that. What this crisis in Ukraine has shown is that from the get go all those so called
"Russia experts" and "Moscow sources" got it all wrong all along. Virtually, no real expertise
on Russia's foreign policy, military or economy (forget about culture) remains today inside
the "political elites" in the US, just same old nauseating "Russian narrative". It is especially
striking against the background of people of such scale as Ambassador Matlock, but then again,
it was a different time and Jack Matlock served the US which was a very different country then.
P.S. Would Ambassador Matlock, who knows full Evgenii Onegin in Russian, the feat very few
Russians can accomplish, stand for such people as Jenn Psaki being the face of US Foreign Service?
Voltaire -> smoothieX12
Good morning Smoothie
Re our Jen Psaki, I love this stand up humour...she should be a groupie for some punk rocker...that
is about her level....or running the State Department nursery...
She is apparently so stupid that she does not realize that most of the time she is giving
us our daily vaudeville ...and she even blushes like a high school girl when she lies (which
is most of the time especially on Ukraine and the Middle East)
Voltaire
Ambassador Jack, welcome,
As we would expect from you, a sane and knowledgeable voice in a sea of shameful US/UK Russophobic
hysteria
You recommend (in general) what Henry Kissinger, Zbig (before his ancestral anti-Russian
feelings overtook him) and most serious Europeans, like myself, who know the situation and background,
have been saying since the Putsch on February 21
Keep up your good work, and I hope that Mrs Merkel and the Europeans can sort this before
it becomes a real Cold War with devastating results.
But I am afraid deep and lasting damage has been done to relations with Russia through all
this infantile, shameful and counter-productive Russophobic propaganda from US/UK media...which
can only be the result of the US administration's deliberate and orchestrated policy to smear
and blacken the latest "bogeyman"...the opposite of the way a great power should behave...
I, for one, cannot think of such a disgraceful campaign since the media blitz surrounding
the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and I will never trust a US administration again...
tdilla -> Voltaire
In this spirit of balance, it is imprudent to lambast "Russophobic propaganda" without giving
due service to Russia's own propaganda. The US government is quite good at giving the well-timed
press release that news outlets gleefully re-hash with little critical thought given; however,
Russia's own news networks are a constant parade of "news" attacking not only the policies of
Western nations, but the very fabric of their societies.
Mr. Matlock's suggestions are poignant and practical, but they are impossible to implement
so long as there is an absence of clarity regarding what is happening in every involved capital.
ApqIA
This view of the broader realities is essential.
The US and Russia urgently need to cooperate on matters ranging from destroying ISIS to settling
the Iranian nuclear energy controversy.
Ukraine is a sideshow, an irrelevance.
Time to back off, cut the explosive rhetoric, tell the NATO pot-bangers to focus on ISIS and
restore some semblance of order to US-Russian relations.
Russia will no more back away from Ukraine than the US would back away from trouble being stirred
up in Mexico.
smoothieX12 . -> ApqIA
The US and Russia urgently need to cooperate on matters ranging from destroying ISIS
Why? How can one cooperate with the enabler of ISIS?
Russia does her part by providing Su-25s and, now, Mi-28s and 35s to Baghdad. Probably, some
military advisers on the ground.
tdilla -> smoothieX12
If you're really determined to assign blame for the genesis of ISIS, you would be wise to
look at the root of the issue for the past 1,500 years: religion.
Washington's desire to see Assad fall (and subsequent enabling) is a byproduct of a fantasy
world where American policy makers believe removing a tyrant will allow democracy to flourish.
The reality, as has been constantly reiterated for centuries now, is that for as long as the
majority of your population believes in a religion that advocates the execution of blasphemers
and non-believers, the only way to maintain some semblance of order is to have a very strong
centralized government keeping the lid on things.
RMThoughts
Ukraine's troubles began when the US State Department toppled the elected president in
February and replaced him with a compliant stooge who agreed to follow Washington's directives.
The new "junta" government quickly launched a full-blown war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians
in the east which split the civilian population and drove the country to ruin. The plan
"pacify" the East was concocted in Washington, not Kiev and certainly not Moscow.
Moscow has repeatedly called for an end to the violence and a resumption of negotiations,
but each request has been rebuffed by Obama's puppet in Kiev leading to another round of hostilities.
Washington doesn't want peace. Washington wants the same solution it imposed on Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya and Syria, that is, a chaotic failed state where ethnic and sectarian animosities are
kept at a boiling point so forward-operating bases can be established without resistance,
so resources can be extracted at will, and so a formally-independent nation can be reduced to
a "permanent state of colonial dependency." (Chomsky) That's the basic gameplan wherever Washington
goes. The same rule applies
Barack Obama has pushed Ukraine to the brink of political, economic and social collapse.
Now he wants to blame Russia for the damage he's done. It's absurd. Moscow is in no way responsible
for Ukraine's descent into anarchy. That's all Washington's doing, just as Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya, and now Syria were Washington's doing. If you want to blame someone, blame Obama.
Knowing that, we can see the real culprits in the formation of ISIS are the Gulf States and
Turkey. That's the short-term answer. The long term answer is the remove Islam, and all religious
zealots, entirely through science and education.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says Ukrainian operations in the east are reminiscent
of the Nazi siege of Leningrad during the World War II. (Reuters)
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday hailed pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine as
"insurgents" battling an army that he likened to Nazi invaders during World War II, and
the Ukrainian government raised the prospect of joining NATO as it seeks help to repel what it calls
an outright Russian military invasion.
In a statement published on the Kremlin's Web site ear nks and heavy artillery had begun rolling
into the region to help the separatists reverse recent Ukrainian military gains.
.... ... ...
...he praised the separatists, calling them "insurgents" who had undermined "Kiev's military
operation, which threatened lives of the residents of Donbas and has already led to a colossal death
toll among civilians" - a reference to the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donets Basin, or
Donbas, whose unofficial capital is rebel-held Donetsk.
... ... ...
In the same appearance, Putin said the recent Ukrainian offensive against pro-Russian rebels
reminded him of "the events of the Second World War, when the Nazi occupiers, the troops, surrounded
our cities - for example, Leningrad - and point-blank shot at these settlements and their inhabitants."
He added: "It's awful. It's a disaster."
Although skirting the issue of Russian military involvement in Ukraine, Putin's remarks directly
addressing the separatists and his disparaging comments about Ukrainian forces served to escalate
the rhetoric surrounding the crisis at a time when Moscow and Kiev are supposed to be talking about
prisoner swaps, humanitarian convoys and other matters.
...Russia's Foreign Ministry again accused the United States of hypocrisy - this time for what
it called U.S. disregard for civilians in eastern Ukraine.
"In any other conflict, whether in the Middle East, Africa or anywhere else, the West has
consistently opposed actions causing harm to civilians," the ministry said on its Web site.
"It is only in relation to southeastern Ukraine that it holds a diametrically opposite line,
in gross violation of international humanitarian law."
A total of 2,593 people, including civilians, have been killed in the fighting in eastern Ukraine
since mid-April, a senior U.N. human rights official said Friday.
"The trend is clear and alarming," Ivan Simonovic, U.N. assistant secretary general for human
rights, told journalists in Kiev. "There is a significant increase in the death toll in the east."
Simonovic said the number would be close to 3,000 if the 298 victims of downed Malaysia Airlines
Flight 17 were counted. Civilian casualties would continue to rise "as each side increases its strength,
through mobilization, better organization, or the deployment of new fighters and more sophisticated
weapons and support from outside," he said.
Simonovic had sharp words for both sides.
"Armed groups continue to commit abductions, physical and psychological torture," he said of
the separatists, whose tactics he said were aimed at terrorizing the population under their control.
But he added that the United Nations has also heard "disturbing reports of violations committed
by battalions under government control."
... ... ...
Branigin reported from Washington. Annie Gowen in Kiev, Anne Gearan and Karen DeYoung in Washington
and Daniela Deane in Rome contributed to this report.
This will never happen. Look at what GW Bush said about Putin.
"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and
we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul."
- GW Bush 2001
Bush was right about so many other things after all.
change_happens60, 6:12 PM EDT
And Obama/Hillary have been right on nothing.
They both bragged about killing Qaddafi. Now Libya is AQ.
They both bragged about ending the Iraq war as their biggest foreign policy accomplishment.
They both bragged about resetting the evil Bush policy to Russia.
In each of these cases the USA is in worse situation than under Bush. Obama's clueless Inspector
Clouseau routine has over 2 years to run.
The US will be lucky to escape without a major war affecting US soil while that mad man is
in power, along with the insane and stupid progressives that are his lap dogs.
Ridgebac, 5:50 PM EDT
Applebaum is a hysterical woman who makes Mr Putin into a cartoon figure. He is
not interested in war but peaceful relations and trade. The west and US want to turn Ukraine
into another NATO bastion to station nuclear weapons on its soil and destabilize Russia. it
wont happen soon despite all the propaganda and lies cranked out endlessly..
The Russian threat is fake as is the endless garbage of the well managed news that repeats
lies over and over ala Joseph Goebels Hitler's propagandist.
Ukraine has been a part of Russia for centuries and most eastern Ukrainians are of Russian
heritage and speak Russia at home. This is no tiny minority to be erased the west and the rightwing
fascists in Kiev. Ms Applebaum failed to note anything about the Nazis and their flags in Kiev
or that Israel has figure it out and refuses to get entangled and support Poroshenko and his
Nazi pals.
Awaken Ms Applebaum and get more of the truth like Edward Snowden a great American Hero who
noted the malevolence of the NSA as it trod upon our liberties and violated the law routinely
without being punished. The truth is that we (the US and EU) started Ukraine's genocide and
with the EU are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians and four times that number
wounded. Civilians being shelled by artillery and rockets and missiles constitute a war crime
and crimes against humanity. It is this Mr Putin will put an end to but eh US and EU governments
will escape their just punishment life being hanged in a public square by the victims families
or more likely a life sentence in jail without parole.
Alex1818, 5:41 PM EDT
When Admiral Perry steamed into Tokyo Harbor in 1852, he had no idea he was starting Japan
and the US down a path that led to Pearl Harbor and war in Asia and the Pacific on a horrific
scale. But it was foreign trade, which Japan ha previously rejected in its entirety, that ultimately
bankrolled Japanese aggression in China, Manchuria, Korea, Southeast Asia and throughout the
Pacific all the way to Hawaii. In other words, our own dollars paid for the Japanese Army and
Navy.
That's what Europe is doing right now with oil and gas from Russia. Their Euros are paying
for the Russian military's revival and mobilization. I think that irony is lost on Europe's
leaders. At best they are like addicts who cannot wean themselves off of what is killing them.
And when it comes to foreign energy, the US is no different in terms of the Middle East and
climate change.
Alex1818, 5:23 PM EDT
The concept of Europe is interesting. Prior to World War II, countries and regions like Poland,
Ukraine, Hungary, Slovenia, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, and arguably Estonia and Latvia were
considered Central Europe. Once the Iron Curtain went up, Central Europe moved west and included
Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Where is Central Europe today?
Culturally, when people used to talk about Europeans, they didn't mean Slavic peoples. Ukraine
has its own nationality and culture that is in many ways "European" (whatever that means), but
the Eastern part of the country is culturally and linguistically Russian. I'd argue that Russians
are not Europeans; they are too culturally and geographically distinct, and Eastern Europeans
are not easily classified as either culturally Russian or European.
Ukraine, unfortunately for the people who live there, are stuck in the middle, with multiple
identities, and this invasion should be seen as just the latest in a centuries long tug of war
over Ukraine.
ggsalt1, 4:14 PM EDT
It's nice to hear from the wife of Poland's Minister of Foreign Affairs.
I'm sure all of this makes sense from a Polish perspective. I'm not so sure it makes sense
from an American perspective.
As the reigning superpower, America must be vigilant of foreign machinations to influence
American policy for their own benefit.
BDQ71, 4:36 PM EDT
Why didn't this newspaper more fully identify the background of the author so its readers
might appreciate the possibility of her bias?
tidelandermdva, 4:54 PM EDT
Because she is one of their favored Neo Cons -- the same reason it does not identify the
biases of all its other editorial writer and columnists, starting with Fred Hiatt.
egdusa, 4:05 PM EDT
Russian support for the Serbs helped plunge the world into WWI.
Their non-aggression pacts with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan allowed those countries to
attack in Poland and in the Far East thus starting WWII.
Do not let this almost Third World country do it to the world again.
Alex1818, 5:54 PM EDT
Britain and France were depending on Russian strength to put a quick end to WWI. In fact,
their overestimation of the rapidity with which Russia could mobilize and get troops westward
is why Britain and France were so confident in going to war in the first place.
As for WWII, that non-aggression pact delayed full blown war by another six months and gave
Russia time to prepare, after which it drew 2 out of 3 German soldiers to its front and away
from the west. Russia lost 28,000,000 dead in WWII, 1 out of every 7 Soviet citizens alive in
1939. Russia won the war on the ground.
In the Pacific, the US didn't want Russia involved. Firstly, the western powers wanted Russia
focused on Germany. Second, the US didn't want to Russia ending up in possession of any Asian
territory.
What Russia is doing is morally and politically reprehensible, and there is much in their
history that is worthy of heavy condemnation, but your interpretation of the start of the World
Wars is wrong.
UrbanProgressive, 4:53 PM EDT
The Bush administration destabilized the Mideast. As for China asserting itself, it is inevitable
considering China's increasing economic and strategic power. The presents of the U.S. is a countervailing
force, but they will ultimately have to be accommodated as a new geo-political order comes into
existence. How that unfolds, whether peacefully or through armed conflict, remains to be played
out over the coming decades. If we and the other nation's involved play it wrong, through misunderstanding
and miscalculation, it could be disastrous for everyone.
egdusa, 4:05 PM EDT
Russian support for the Serbs helped plunge the world into WWI.
Their non-aggression pacts with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan allowed those countries to
attack in Poland and in the Far East thus starting WWII.
Do not let this almost Third World country do it to the world again.
Alex1818, 5:54 PM EDT
Britain and France were depending on Russian strength to put a quick end to WWI. In fact,
their overestimation of the rapidity with which Russia could mobilize and get troops westward
is why Britain and France were so confident in going to war in the first place.
As for WWII, that non-aggression pact delayed full blown war by another six months and gave
Russia time to prepare, after which it drew 2 out of 3 German soldiers to its front and away
from the west. Russia lost 28,000,000 dead in WWII, 1 out of every 7 Soviet citizens alive in
1939. Russia won the war on the ground.
In the Pacific, the US didn't want Russia involved. Firstly, the western powers wanted Russia
focused on Germany. Second, the US didn't want to Russia ending up in possession of any Asian
territory.
What Russia is doing is morally and politically reprehensible, and there is much in their
history that is worthy of heavy condemnation, but your interpretation of the start of the World
Wars is wrong.
egdusa, 4:03 PM EDT
The US should immediately offer Poland assistance in creating an independent nuclear deterrent.
If the US doesn't do so, the Poles should start a crash program of their own.
Two can play by Russia's intimidation game.
problematic, 4:12 PM EDT
This isn't necessary.
What can easily be done is for NATO members to respond to a member request from Poland for
launchers and missile defense equipment. These need not be a nuclear deterrent, but, Poland
could say of Putin what Netanyahu once famously said of Hussein, 'it might not be a bad thing
if he assumed they were'.
The implied threat can be simple. NATO has no need to arm its members that border Russia,
but so long as Russia threatens its neighbors, the alliance will provide these countries with
the means to deliver a 'proportional' response.
If NATO doesn't do this for Poland? Then they should withdraw from the alliance and get cracking
on a bomb or bio weapon. Israel might help them with some of the bomb.
Jacek01, 4:38 PM EDT
What Poland can learn from Israel are concerted systematic and intensive efforts in its building
own security.
tidelandermdva, 4:57 PM EDT
Poland is under the NATO nuclear umbrella and does not need its own, nor would I trust them
with it.
Good point about building its own security. We spend over 4% of our rich and huge GNP on
weapons. .Poland does not even meet the NATO 2% criteria of its poor and puny GNP.
malusk03, 3:57 PM EDT
There's the old Foreign Office legend of the intelligence analyst, retiring shortly after
World War II, reminiscing that "In each of my fifty years of service, the worriers and fretters
came to me with dire predictions of war and disaster. Each year I reassured them that the situation
was not as serious as they imagined, and that there would be no general war in Europe this year.
I was wrong only twice."
TRUTHsquad, 1:18 PM EDT
This article is Just more example of what non-sense Republicans & Obama Democrat War-Mongers
and Wall Street Media are capable of producing. Based on your Historical reasoning, aka non-sense,
there is GREATER Chance of Civil War in USA than War in European Union.
So this XYZ fear-mongering BS is more proof that there is NO Limit to lies and lies that
Republicans & Obama Democrat War-Mongers and Wall Street Media are capable of producing.
On Friday, I wrote
a piece reevaluating the Russian position on the crisis in Syria, asking whether, in hindsight,
Moscow's early attempts to preserve the regime of Bashar al-Assad ought to have been taken more
seriously by the West. You can read the post
here.
The reaction to the story, which was picked up by Drudge, was considerable. I had not intended
the piece to be an overt critique of the White House's Syria policy - indeed, President Obama's
caution on intervening in Syria echoes a realism perhaps shared in this instance by Russian President
Vladimir Putin. Some of Obama's Republican critics were far more adamant about the need for robust
U.S. military involvement in the Syrian conflict.
But, parsing the comments beneath the post (and trying to ignore a lot of the nastiness and ad
hominem attacks), a clear theme emerges: the respect, if not total adoration, on the part of many
American conservatives for Putin. Over the past year, we've seen a consistent trend in both
the United States and
Europe of conservative admiration for Putin, a strongman praised for his decisive leadership,
Christian values and old-school nationalism.
These sentiments were widely on display among the 900+ comments appended to my piece, which I
had the pleasure of sifting through. Below are excerpts that serve as a guide to American conservative
support for Putin.
Many want a leader in Putin's iron-cast mold, free of the fluff and frills of American politicking:
Thomas Fournier
8/24/2014 12:08 PM EDT
Putin right? Why is anyone on earth surprised? President Putin is highly intelligent and
by far the best leader in the world. The best leader I have seen in my life time. A man's man
who makes his own decisions and loves his country and its citizens.
Steve Stahler
8/23/2014 10:44 AM EDT
OF COURSE HE WAS [RIGHT]!!!!!!! He is a world leader. He sees the world, not the next party,
photo op, selfie.... Putin=Leader Obama=Loser in every category for a leader as well as human
being.
David Goldman
8/22/2014 5:55 PM EDT
Putin is a former KGB colonel. 0bama is a former community organizer. Of course Putin is
going to have a far better grasp of international affairs. That is obvious to anyone outside
of the liberal echo chamber.
andycutler
8/22/2014 10:28 PM EDT
We would be wise to listen to Mr. Putin (and be aware that once we do he will try to manipulate
us). He's a real professional, and a very talented one Mr. Obama is a not very talented amateur.
Mr. Putin's job is to advance Russian interests, not ours. However American interests are not
always diammetrically opposed to those of Russia. We both have a lot in common in our desire
to maintain some semblance of international law and world order.
Some commenters just really, really like Putin:
t-bone51
8/22/2014 6:17 PM EDT
I intend to name my first born son, Vladimir. How does "Vladimir Erickson" sound?
JohnLeeHooker1
8/23/2014 1:52 PM EDT
arguably, Putin would be a better Commander in Chief than our dear leader
notenotions
8/23/2014 8:52 AM EDT
Too bad Putin wasn't born in the USA...
Others floated cultural arguments, including a hefty dose of prejudice and Islamophobia, explaining
why Putin's brand of politics was preferable to the version they believe is espoused by the White
House:
mcstamper
8/23/2014 12:45 PM EDT
Putin loves his country. That's difficult for many Americans to understand because we have been
educated to hate our own country. Russia wants secure national borders. We (or at least the
MSM and the liberal ruling elite) think that open borders and unrestricted illegal immigration
are "so progressive". Putin is a grown man who understands the nature of power (and how, when,
and where to use it). Obama and friends are children by comparison. Russia pays its debts and
understand that national wealth comes from production and trade. America thinks that "wealth"
comes from borrowing and printing money. Russia will survive the 21st century. We are headed
into bankruptcy and dissolution.
neelynzus
8/23/2014 12:14 PM EDT
Putin was right. Right or wrong, he is a leader. Obama is a transformer. He has transformed
us into a permanent welfare state with a back breaking national debt, a declining healthcare
system, a hoard of invaders - probably including terrorists - from the south, deteriorating
race relations, a corrupt DOJ and IRS, and no credibility on the world stage.
MissOgyny
8/23/2014 12:52 AM EDT
Of course Vlad The Redeemer was right! He IS the West's (and the World's) last great hope...and
the Muslimes' [sic] most formidable Super Foe. Tactical brilliance and courage under duress
are the least of Vladamir Putin's plethora of extremely laudable attributes...Thank the Lord
that Putin has publicly avowed his unswerving dedication to protecting Christianity and Christians
(as well as the rest of the Occidental world) from the Maniacal Muslime [sic] Menace.
garys_opinion
8/23/2014 2:06 PM EDT
Of course Putin was right. Russia has a lot more experience with Muslim terrorists than Obama
does.
We have to get away from this regime change theories that don't work. Every time we've tried
it in the Mid East it's failed. There are many factions there that want to kill each other,
and we can't/shouldn't be trying to sort them out.
freods
8/24/2014 7:26 PM EDT
Another thing Putin is right about is that tribalism trumps multicultural globalism everytime.
As Western elites try to cobble together a one world multicultural utopia, Putin stokes up Russian
nationalism and enjoys an 80+% approval rating in his country
Doe John100
8/24/2014 12:21 PM EDT
Damn right Putin was right we should have stayed out of Assad's Syrian issues as well as
left Mubaric [sic] in Egypt and Gaddafi in Libya alone. Now look at what we have to deal with
a bunch of radical suicide bombing idiots that are hell bent on wiping out the non Islamic world.
They where not perfect but they where a lot better than what took there place. All in the name
of Democracy we now have a religious world war. There will never be a true democracy under Islam.
Islam is a cancer that need's to be cured and wiped out.
Karen Brodsky
8/23/2014 5:17 PM EDT
Putin is smarter than the Obama admin??/ about Syria? about muslims??? is anybody really
surprised??
Putin gets the real world, not the one big happy family world Obama & the west want...people
might like Putin but if Russians were being decapitated the retaliation would be swift and not
at all nice...the world takes Putin seriously.
And some seemed a bit confused about where the Soviet legacy was more apparent:
RichTheEngineer
8/22/2014 5:07 PM EDT
Putin at least isn't a blind Marxism/Leninism fool, unlike Obama and his fellow New Bolshevik
Criminals. Their pathetic attempts to focus solely on domestic control, while ignoring rest
of world will end up destroying this country.
CaptPhil
8/22/2014 7:02 PM EDT
It is too bad that we don't have someone within the Administration with the insight, intelligence
and guts that Putin continues to demonstrate. Obama looks like a trained monkey compared to
Putins polished and clever moves on the International chessboard. Someone rightly observed that
Putin plays chess while Obama plays checkers! It is not all Obama's fault, however... he has
surrounded himself with very bright but inexperienced academicians who share his zealotry for
marxist and left wing political ideology. This will be this country's downfall!
Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior
editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.
Compare this with ferocious anti-Russian campaign that is waged by neoliberal presstitutes from
Guardian... Good point about Psaki becoming new Baghdad Bob... It is clear that Poroshenko wants to
internationalize the situation and turn it into a conflict between Ukraine and Russia or, better, between
the USA and Russia.
The U.S. needs Russia. This may sound peculiar coming from a person who spent 25 years at the NSA,
almost half of those fighting communism. But our approach to Russia since the end of the Cold War
has been unimaginative and aggressive. Politicians in Washington put on their Cold-War glasses any
time Russia makes noise. It's time to archive those in the Smithsonian.
Many notable academics
agree that our policies toward Russia are flawed, but my conclusion - that we need Russia - is derived
from the kind of work we mastered at NSA: carefully listening to and analyzing communications, in
this case what Russians have said openly on social networks and in private conversations with me
during a recent trip to Russia.
Unfortunately, for Americans schooled in "exceptionalism," what they say is hard to accept.Many don't like us. They despise our government, our swagger and how we have bullied our way
across the globe since the end of the Cold War. Russians were humiliated then; it's no wonder
that I saw a Russian youth with his fist held high under a gargantuan Soviet-era monument: the Worker
and Collective Farm Girl. Russians opine about the respect, power and authority they once enjoyed.
Russians resent how NATO has brought Poland, the Baltics and other Eastern European countries under
its wing. Rightly or wrongly, they continue to believe that at the end of the Cold War, then-Secretary
of State James Baker promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the U.S. would not expand NATO
"one inch to the east." To put this in more comprehensible terms, recall that less than 20
years ago this country was outraged by the prospect of China potentially operating the Panama Canal.
Imagine China having a military toe-hold in Mexico.
So, it's no surprise that roughly a quarter century after the end of the Cold War, Russians
began to feel boxed in. Our on-again, off-again policy of deploying anti-ballistic missile
defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic only heightened tensions. With NATO's expansion, the U.S.
lost an opportunity to grow closer to Russia. The sad part about our feckless policy is that the
chances of the American public supporting a war with Russia over Romania, Poland or the Baltics
are slim to none.
Ordinary Russians worry about Vladimir Putin, but will stand up for him when he is constantly
labeled a "KGB thug." They detest State Department spokesperson Jennifer Psaki, but since she has
become a favorite topic of humor, they were relieved when she returned from a recent week-long absence.
What Russians seek from the U.S. is respect and problem-solving on a peer-to-peer level.
The situation in Ukraine is a brutal regional conflict, which Russians and Ukrainians must work
out for themselves. Eventually they will tire of civil war, given their deep cultural ties. Antagonizing
Russia by trying to peel off Ukraine for the West is foolish given the larger strategic problems
confronting the U.S. We need to reverse NATO expansion and put a new governing framework in
place. We need Russia's expertise and influence in the Middle East. Mr. Putin helped us avoid
a military commitment in Syria. And, have we forgotten that his government tried to warn us about
the Boston bombers, the Tsarnaev brothers?
Short of a policy change, Russia will continue to thwart us, undermine our currency and heighten
tensions, creating a new Cold War that neither can afford. Oddly, the Russian people adore
our music, movies, and even our fast food restaurants, and a large number speak English to varying
degrees. One Russian friend cynically commented that all large empires need enemies. But is this
the kind of enemy we want - especially now?
Jerome Israel is a former senior executive at NSA and the FBI. His email is [email protected].
To respond to this commentary, send an email to [email protected]. Please include your name
and contact information.
The interesting part about history is that it has provided past insights how nations become empires
and then how those empires disintegrate. No empire has ever learnt from the mistakes of past empires
and should they've done so, they would've become a truly global empire as the US aspires today.
Many books and many volumes have been written about the greatest empire which US has been mimicking
for the past century - the Roman Empire. It's history has been analysed by Edward Gibbons in the
six volumes of "The Fall of the Roman Empire" (1776 - 1789) and by Cullin Murphy in his book "Are
we Rome? The Decline of an Empire (meaning Rome) and the Fate of America". Gibbons attributed the
fall of the Roman Empire to barbarian invasions (such as that of Attila) as well as due to the loss
of civic virtues (habits of personal living) among it's citizens. Roman administration had become
weak outsourcing their duties to defend their Empire. Christianity, too, was a contributor to the
fall according to Gibbons. Rome had become an oligarchy - the oligarchs enjoying lives of pomp and
waste while the subjects descended into poverty. It was no different than what the US is today.
Someone had recently sent me the attached cartoon which I contemplated in depth in light of the
American-Israeli situation in Gaza, civic virtues in the US and in the Muslim world notably the
situations in Syria and Iraq due to ISIS (Islamic States of Iraq and Syria) barbarians as well as
the involvement of the others depicted in the cartoon. The US is cognizant of it's mistakes and
continues to write it's own history of "The Fall of the American Empire" for future generations.
Like the Romans, the US is also an oligarchy.
... ... ...
Both Israel and the US have also tried in vain for the past 3 years to bring down the regime
of Al-Assad with the objective of cutting off Iran from Syria through the Iraqi-Syrian conduit and
installing a puppet government favorable to the west. Now the only alternative is to start a Shia-Sunni
war by bringing Iran into the vortex. One of the most logical presentation involving ISIS and the
Shia-Sunni conflict has been provided by David Icke who has produced a short 19 minutes video titled
"ISIS - The Start of WWIII?"
http://www.siasat.pk/forum/showthread.php?266299-ISIS-The-Start-of-World-War-III.
Icke states that world wars change worlds and if one has a agenda the idea of WW3 is to establish
a global state with a world government and a world army.
Some time back I'd published an article "One World if you Will" in which David Rockefeller had
written in his memoirs "The Proud Internationalists" that 'he has been charged with others around
the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you
will. If that's the charge, he stands not only guilty but proud of it.' The article was published
on the website Countercurrents on 23 August 2008. For the interested reader the weblink is
http://www.countercurrents.org/mitha230808.htm.
The article provides an insight into how the neo-Conservatives have already built a network of an
integrated political and economic structure over the past 100 years.
... ... ...
As I've written in the opening paragraph: no empire has ever learnt from the mistakes of past
empires and should they've done so, they would've become a truly global empire as the US aspires
today. They've all failed in the past so what are the chances that Israel and it's allies will form
a global empire? Really none...
G. Asgar Mitha recently retired from working with a large oil company in
Canada as a Technical Safety Engineer.
Now the Obama administration and American political class is celebrating the one-year anniversary
of the failed "Bomb Assad!" campaign by starting a new campaign to bomb those fighting against Assad
-- the very same side the U.S. has been arming over the last two years.
In a Ron Paul Channel
commentary on Wednesday, Ron Paul took issue with aspects of the August 7 New York Times article
"Has the 'Libertarian Moment' Finally Arrived?" In particular, Paul argues that the article
describes the growing influence of libertarianism wrongly when it pigeonholes libertarianism within
the Republican Party. Instead, Paul explains, the crucial issue is Americans' expanding understanding
of libertarian ideas.
Paul explains that a shift toward libertarian ideas becoming dominant in America is arising from
a change in the views of Americans and "has nothing to do really with the Republican Party." The
important battle, Paul explains, is between liberty and interventionism, not between Republicans
and Democrats.
Right at the start, Paul corrects the article's suggestion that libertarian ideas are confined
within the Republican Party. Paul explains:
The big question [New York Times article author Robert Draper] was trying to answer is "Is libertarianism
becoming significant in changing the way Washington is working?" and he dwells on whether or
not and how much libertarian influence there is in the Republican Party. And he leaves it there.
But, I think that's missing a major point. Libertarianism isn't a political party. It's an idea.
It's ideological.
As Paul has said on other occasions, he
welcomes people seeking to advance freedom in association with various political parties or
no political party. Paul himself has run for president as both a Republican in 2008 and 2012 and
as a Libertarian in 1988. The ideas Paul championed did not change with the party associated with
his name on a ballot.
Paul proceeds in his commentary to look back in American history to the promulgation of the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution where Paul identifies an earlier "libertarian moment" with
libertarian ideology "in many ways" for over 100 years basically "the thrust of our society" and
not "limited to one party."
Paul then jumps forward in American history to around 1914 when interventionism, both domestic
and abroad, started to take hold as the dominant American ideology.
Paul also describes the current state of interventionism's dominance:
Most people think - especially in Washington and news media-that it's always a contest between
Republicans and Democrats. They never stop to think, you know, interventionism is what controls
Republicans and Democrats and most of the independents, and that's what we have lived with.
The "libertarian moment" occurring now, Paul explains, is not a sudden shift from out of nowhere.
It is a transition that has been developing from educational efforts dating back to the 1950s.
Paul also suggests that "the obvious failure of what has been going on these last 100 years"
is a reason the message of individual liberty is "being very well received" now.
Paul, the chairman and founder of RPI, points out that what we are seeing with a "libertarian
moment" is potentially much more significant than the tunnel-visioned and inaccurate version the
New York Times article depicts. Paul explains:
I see us entering an age which is very exciting, very important, has the libertarian message.
But the effect on the Republican Party - that is so minor compared to what I'm thinking about.
Because, if libertarianism has its "moment," believe me it's not going to be a faction in the
Republican Party that finally wins control over the party and changes the world. It's going
to be like Keynesianism; Keynesianism is endorsed by just about all the politicians in Washington,
although there's variety.
Merkel's vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, has meanwhile told a German newspaper that a federal
Ukraine would be the only way to put an end to the conflict.
In an interview to appear on Sunday in the weekly Welt am Sonntag, Gabriel said federalism was
"the only viable path."
"The territorial interity of Ukraine cannot be preserved unless a proposition is made to the
majority Russian-speaking regions," he said.
Sanctions is a sharp weapon and Western leaders calculation that Russia is too weak to withstand
them for a considerable amount of time, especially in the area of high technology. But Russia can inflict
damage by raising energy prices. This is a very dangerous game.
The Financial Times commented on August 10 that in reaction to the chaos in Ukraine, "Western
policy has become a mere knee-jerk escalation of sanctions", and for once the FT has got it right
about foreign affairs. The US and its disciples in Europe and Australia have imposed sanctions on
Russia for its alleged interference in Ukraine, which has got nothing whatever to do with the US
or anyone else. And Russia, understandably, is answering back.
In spite of there being no proof whatever produced by the West's intercept spooks and other sleuths
there is no doubt that Russia has been involved in Ukraine, finding out about and even trying to
influence its policies - just as the US is spying on and trying to influence domestic policies in
almost every country on this blighted globe and has recently given Ukraine its special attention.
The difference between the activities of the US and Russia is that Ukraine is right next door
to Russia, and many of its eastern-located citizens are of Russian origin and speak Russian and
think Russian and feel that their cultural roots are Russian and want to belong to Russia, just
as their entire country did until 23 years ago.
On the other hand, Washington considers it has the God-given right to listen to everyone's private
deliberations and tell every nation in the world how to run its affairs and if necessary to enforce
this by military intervention. The fact that such military fiddling proved utterly catastrophic
in Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Libya is neither here nor there. The next frontier
is Ukraine.
And poor decrepit leaderless old Britain, socially confused and morally collapsing, tries to
combat what it sees as world chaos by following the example of its erratic mentor in applying sanctions
on Russia, a country whose amity it would be well-advised to seek.
There is no border between the US or the UK and Ukraine. There is no military treaty binding
them together. Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It doesn't belong
to the European Union. It has no cultural connection with that Union, and its trade with the entire
EU is tiny. It is, however, dependent on Russia for a great deal. And so is the EU, which has no
intention whatever of letting Ukraine join it.
Russo-Ukrainian relations are a bilateral matter between Russia and Ukraine. But ever eager to
indulge in provocative nose-poking, the US and Britain headed the Charge of the Spite Brigade and
decided that an attractive means of trying to foul up the lives of large numbers of perfectly innocent
people was imposition of sanctions, proven in history to be totally ineffective in making governments
bow to the commands of the sanctioneers.
The West's malevolent sanctions on Russia were not imposed because Russia had in any way affected
the well-being, economic circumstances, territorial integrity or social structure of the United
States or of any nation that jumped on the US sanctions' bandwagon. There was no question of enforcing
sanctions because Russia's actions anywhere in the world had impacted adversely on one single citizen
of any Western nation. But they were imposed, anyway, just to try to make things difficult for Moscow
and to try to ratchet up tension between Russia and the West.
The sanctions have been an irritant to Moscow, but sanctions are usually more than that, and
in the past have proved useless in persuading governments to act contrary to what they perceive
as national interests - but they've been effective in destroying the lives of ordinary people who
have done no harm to anyone.
... ... ...
But there's one enormous problem for the countries of the European Union in joining the US in
imposing sanctions on Russia: rebounding retaliation by Moscow.
This is already affecting European economies, and especially the incomes of small producers of
foodstuffs, the ordinary folk who always suffer in one way or another from the effects of lordly
sanctions, none of which will inconvenience for one instant the high mucky-mucks of the US and other
countries who decided to go down the sanctions route. They'll be perfectly comfortable, and not
one of them will suffer in the slightest from Russia's riposte. But for their citizens it will be
quite another matter, because many of them they will experience grave financial loss and considerable
distress.
Russia decided to hit back against US and EU sanctions by barring some US and EU imports. And
why shouldn't it, after such gross provocation? But there's a definite downside for innocent people.
For example, Russia is the biggest market for French apples and pears, of which 1.5 million tonnes
were expected to be exported this year. Now, thanks to Russia's reply to the US/UK-sponsored embargo
there are hundreds of small farmers in France who are going to have a miserable Christmas. The Scottish
and Norwegian fishing industries are suffering appallingly because their exports to Russia were
enormous. Now - nothing.
And there is now a curious lack of reporting about all this in the Western media. It's a major
story, but after the first couple of days of media interest in it suddenly became back page stuff
in the print media, and blank-out on radio and television.
They're not interested in Polish, Spanish, Dutch and Greek fruit-growers going bankrupt. Poland,
for example, exports over a billion dollars-worth of food to Russia every year, and is suffering
accordingly, and a Greek spokesman said that "Russia absorbed more than 60% of our peach exports
and almost 90% of our strawberries," as over 3,500 tonnes of peaches lay rotting in stores and trucks.
Ten per cent of the EU's annual agricultural exports went to Russia. Now - thanks to Moscow's riposte
to US-led imposition of sanctions, there won't be any.
You might say that this is Russia's fault. But why should Russia sit meekly and take punishment
by the US and the EU that has been imposed by reason of spite?
The European agriculture commissioner, Romanian Dacian Ciolos - yearly salary 250,000 euros (US$333,000),
untaxed and not including expenses - declared that Europe's farmers will "re-orient rapidly toward
new markets and opportunities". But just how this miracle is going to take place is not explained.
Mr Ciolos, like President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron and all the other
rich, scheming fatheads who began and are prolonging this vicious economic war, will not himself
be affected in the tiniest way by any of their nonsense. It's only the little people who suffer.
One particularly out-of-touch British politician, the Secretary of State for the Environment,
said that Russia's action "is totally unjustified and I share the concerns of Scotland's fishing
industry about the possible impact on their business". She declared, presumably seriously, that
the UK would "call on the European Commission to consider the merits of any potential World Trade
Organization case to ensure the rules of international trade are upheld", which ignores the fact
that it was the European Commission that followed Washington in ensuring that the principles of
international trade were shattered by their sanctions on Russia.
The US/EU sanctions of the new Cold War have dropped from pages and screens. But this doesn't
mean that the problem has gone away. Russia's position is that "We have repeatedly said that Russia
is not an advocate of the sanctions rhetoric and did not initiate it. But in the event that our
partners [sic] continue their unconstructive and even destructive practices, additional measures
are being worked out" in order to make it clear that imposition of sanctions on Russia by the West
will continue to be entirely counter-productive.
No doubt the complacent position of Washington, London and Brussels will be that "We think the
price is worth it."
Brian Cloughley is a former soldier who writes on military and political affairs, mainly concerning
the sub-continent. His book A History of the Pakistan Army is now in its fourth edition.
This event can serve as a litmus test of attitude toward federalization of Ukraine. Judging from
the fact of publication of this material which is very unpleasant for new Ukrainian authorities looks
like NYT has less supportive position about Ukrainian far right about Ukraine as unitary state (and
the position of Ukraine war party in general) then Washington Post or State Department (VOA
did publish this information but WashPost did not). BTW Guardian mentioned this event only in passing
in the last paragraph of the article
Ukraine
marks Independence Day with parade. The tragedy of Poroshenko is that forces that brought him to
power exclude possibility of any negotiated settlement with confederates.
DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) - Pro-Russian separatists marched dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of
war through the eastern rebel stronghold of Donetsk on Sunday in a parade meant to counter Independence
Day celebrations in Kiev.
Some bandaged, some limping, the men were marched up one of Donetsk's main streets and past the
remains of Ukrainian armoured personnel carriers destroyed in battle and put on display in the city's
main Lenin Square.
Hundreds of people lined the street to see the largely dishevelled and unshaven soldiers who
walked with their heads bowed and their hands behind them, led by an armed woman in camouflage and
flanked by men carrying Kalashnikovs.
"We are now able to watch passing people who were sent to kill us," a voice said over the loudspeaker,
mocking the soldiers as "victorious Ukrainians".
"We are Russians," the voice boomed to applause.
For days, separatists have prepared for the march, timed to coincide with Independence Day celebrations
and a military parade in Kiev where Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for solidarity against
the rebels.
Kiev blames Russia for fanning the conflict by sending fighters and weapons to eastern Ukraine
through rebel-held border regions. Russia denies it is involved in the conflict.
Steeped in historical significance, the event was meant to recreate the forced march of nearly
60,000 German Nazi soldiers through the streets of Moscow in 1944 towards the end of World War Two.
Some on Sunday threw bottles from the crowd of men and women waving the Russian flag and the
red, black and blue standard of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. Others shouted "fascists"
and "murderers".
In a theatrical gesture intended to show the captives were sullied, street cleaning vehicles
moved behind them spraying water where they had walked, similar to what happened in Moscow in 1944.
Separatist rhetoric and Russian state-owned media coverage of events in eastern Ukrainian have
evoked memories of World War Two, revered in Russia as the Great Patriotic War.
Ten armoured personnel carriers and military vehicles, some of them still littered with bullets,
were displayed on Lenin Square. One had a sneaker and a dirtied yellow cap inside.
"Today the Ukrainians have their Independence Day. But today we have our day of independence
from them. They are attacking today, we are defending ourselves," said a rebel.
(Writing by Thomas Grove and Richard Balmforth; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Calling Hillary Clinton "a war hawk," Senator Rand Paul says that if the former secretary of state
seeks the presidency, some voters will worry that she will get the US involved in another Middle
East war.
Paul is a leading anti-interventionist in the GOP and is considering running for
president. Last year he opposed President Obama's call for military action in Syria.
In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, Paul predicted a "transformational
election" if the Democrats nominate "a war hawk like Hillary Clinton."
"I think that's what scares the Democrats the most, is that in a general election, were I to
run, there's gonna be a lot of independents and even some Democrats who say, 'You know what? We
are tired of war,'" Paul said. "We're worried that Hillary Clinton will get us involved in another
Middle Eastern war, because she's so gung-ho."
As a senator in 2002, Clinton voted in favor of giving President George W Bush the broad authority
to invade Iraq. She has said over the years that she regrets that vote, and in her new book Hard
Choices wrote that "I wasn't alone in getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong. Plain and simple."
snix, 24 August 2014 2:45pm
Clinton is the feminine face of fascism always pushing intervention and war .Psychopathic
tendencies delivered with faux tenderness.
MerkinOnParis, 24 August 2014 2:48pm
Whoever runs we will get the same Foreign Policy.
A policy written in the middle east.
JinTexas MerkinOnParis, 24 August 2014 2:52pm
You mean written in Langley, Virginia?
No matter who gets in the white house the CIA and pentagon run foreign policy and the
insurance, pharmaceutical, banking lobbies run domestic policy. That's why they'll never
let a guy like Rand Paul in, they're still scared to death from when his dad ran at the idea
there could actually be a meaningful change.
samlebon23 MerkinOnParis, 24 August 2014 3:08pm
Same shit, different outfit.
samlebon23 JinTexas, 24 August 2014 3:11pm
That's why they'll never let a guy like Rand Paul in
He did the first step, he traveled to Jerusalem and kissed the western wall. He's working
on getting the blessing of AIPAC.
Haigin88, 24 August 2014 2:56pm
This'll be where the action is if/when Clinton runs. The lockstep Democrats/liberal apologists/MSNBC
water carriers will be able to bleat all they want to but Rand Paul - completely wrong on maybe
two thirds of the issues while completely correct on the other third - will be able to hammer
Clinton over and over and over again on her neo-con-artistry and demented interventionist Hawkishness
and he'll be correct in what he says over and over and over again. Remember this when you hear
someone pout and peddle the 'Well, I'm way more liberal than Hillary but progressives need to
get behind someone who can win.'. Paul could do Hillary (the supposed 'safe choice') an awful
lot of damage.
retarius, 24 August 2014 2:57pm
Well sadly he's right. And sadly I sent money to Hillary's campaign for New York senator
back in maybe 2002 or 2004....I didn;t know that she would turn into such a monster. How embarrassing
was she as secretary for state? Anyone who manages to make John Kerry seem statesmanlike has
to be truly awful, and she was awful and more.
And don't think I like the GOP...I wouldn't vote for the GOP if they were the last party
on Capitol Hill...a bunch of bigoted, racist, hypocritical, white men...but it is said that
even Hilter had his good points (apparently he was fond of dogs), so maybe Rand Paul is correct
this once.
If Hillary is the Dem nominee in 2016, I won't vote.
diddoit, 24 August 2014 3:10pm
Like what Rand Paul has to say. But you'd imagine powerful forces are amassing to stop him
getting anywhere near the Presidency, as they did to thwart his father.
He's right though, that military interventionism and political meddling have been a complete
disaster for America. Every problem 'solved' has led to two new ones springing up.
Victor Chan, 24 August 2014 3:14pm
Her war mongering tone (calling Putin a Hitler and condoning and blindly supporting Israelis
military operation in Gaza and her book being banned in China) outweights her "feminism." :)
She will become the Margaret Thatcher of America....
Think about it...by the time Obama is done with his presidency, the would would be in at
the brink of a new cold war with Russia. America's relation with China would still be rocky.
The middle east crisis, with the Israeli and Gaza conflict, and the IS, would have escalated.
How would she handle these global conflicts and to make the world a safer, a peaceful place?
While Russia is now as President Obama noted " a regional power" the key problem is the neoliberalism
as an ideology is in trouble after 2008 and no longer as attractive to other countries as it was in
1991. Most developing countries now have strong allergy to "classic neoliberalism" (aka Washington consensus").
Far right forces which EU &USA brought into power are not exactly friends of neoliberalism and that
creates problems for Yats and his company of compradors. So Ukraine can be as much trouble for the neoliberal
West as it is for neoliberal Russia.
Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault. The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin
According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely
on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of
a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest
of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian
President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin's decision to order
Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine.
But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility
for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger
strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia's orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time,
the EU's expansion eastward and the West's backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine -- beginning
with the Orange Revolution in 2004 -- were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian
leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that
they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion.
For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected and pro-Russian president --
which he rightly labeled a "coup" -- was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula
he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its
efforts to join the West.
... ... ...
The West's triple package of policies -- NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and democracy promotion
-- added fuel to a fire waiting to ignite. The spark came in November 2013, when Yanukovych rejected
a major economic deal he had been negotiating with the EU and decided to accept a $15 billion Russian
counteroffer instead. That decision gave rise to antigovernment demonstrations that escalated over
the following three months and that by mid-February had led to the deaths of some one hundred protesters.
Western emissaries hurriedly flew to Kiev to resolve the crisis. On February 21, the government
and the opposition struck a deal that allowed Yanukovych to stay in power until new elections were
held. But it immediately fell apart, and Yanukovych fled to Russia the next day. The new government
in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the core, and it contained four high-ranking members
who could legitimately be labeled neofascists.
Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington
backed the coup. Nuland and Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations,
and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after Yanukovych's toppling that
it was "a day for the history books." As a leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated
regime change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in
the new government, which he did. No wonder Russians of all persuasions think the West played a
role in Yanukovych's ouster.
... ... ....
To understand why the West, especially the United States, failed to understand that its Ukraine
policy was laying the groundwork for a major clash with Russia, one must go back to the mid-1990s,
when the Clinton administration began advocating NATO expansion. Pundits advanced a variety of arguments
for and against enlargement, but there was no consensus on what to do. Most eastern European émigrés
in the United States and their relatives, for example, strongly supported expansion, because they
wanted NATO to protect such countries as Hungary and Poland. A few realists also favored the policy
because they thought Russia still needed to be contained.
But most realists opposed expansion, in the belief that a declining great power with an aging
population and a one-dimensional economy did not in fact need to be contained. And they feared that
enlargement would only give Moscow an incentive to cause trouble in eastern Europe. The U.S. diplomat
George Kennan articulated this perspective in a 1998 interview, shortly after the U.S. Senate approved
the first round of NATO expansion. "I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely
and it will affect their policies," he said. "I think it is a tragic mistake. There was
no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anyone else."
... ... ...
The United States and its European allies now face a choice on Ukraine. They can continue their
current policy, which will exacerbate hostilities with Russia and devastate Ukraine in the process
-- a scenario in which everyone would come out a loser. Or they can switch gears and work to create
a prosperous but neutral Ukraine, one that does not threaten Russia and allows the West to repair
its relations with Moscow. With that approach, all sides would win.
"In March, according to The New York Times, German Chancellor Angela Merkel implied that
Putin was irrational, telling Obama that he was "in another world."
Question: Who the hell would leak just 3 words from a conversation between Obama and Merkel
to the NYT?
Anyway, the Office of the Federal Chancellor told a German newspaper: Merkel did not say
that Putin was irrational, what she said was Putin has a different perception, a different viewpoint
concerning the situation in Crimea.
Somebody in Washington sabotaged Merkel's attempt to diplomatically defuse the situation
and used her for some nice Propaganda. If I were her I would be furious.
This isn't the case, Merkel is fully devoted to implementing Washington's war agenda against
Russia. Germany is the real US trojan horse in Europe, not little and irrelevant Britain, and
the country through which the Transatlantic policies are filtered and imposed on Europe. It
helps a lot that Germany detached itself in the past from the military adventures of the US,
unlike France and Britain, and always kept a a low profile when it came to war rhetoric to cover
for its role as the main enabler and facilitator of the US agenda in Europe. BTW this isn't
what Merkel said about Putin, only another example of the NYT being the official outlet of Washington's
war agenda, assigned with the responsibility to twist facts and fabricate evidence to sell wars
and regime change.
I am fairly certain that German's stance is mostly influenced by the derivatives schemes
Deutsche Bank is wrapped up in. These are liabilities many times the size of Germany's economy,
and the Fed has threatened to pull the plug on it.
"This tactical action is coupled with a strategic operation, that of a drive to dismantle
the EU to the advantage of an economic union spanning the two continents. The project
to create a grand transatlantic market [5] is the most visible manifestation of this thrust.
It is in light of the second objective that one is able to understand the attitude of Germany
which, just as readily with the struggle against tax evasion as with the attack on the euro,
has provided support for the American offensive.This two-fold approach is consistent with
the commitment of this European state to the establishment of a transatlantic economic union."
The State Dept. official Victoria ("F*ck EU") Nuland personally directed the Kiev coup; she
handpicked the government and the president of the new American colony on the Dnieper River.
Her husband, Robert Kagan, is a founder of FPI, the successor of infamous PNAC, the extremist
Zionist think tank which promoted wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and pushed for a war with Iran.
Now they attack Russia.
"We have invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine to promote Ukraine to the future
it deserves." she boasted to a group of oligarchs in Washington before the coup.
Now we see what our tax dollars bought... Mass murder.
"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" most certainly knows who Nuland and Kagan are
and must also know the degree of Russiaphobe Neocon involvement in this coup. For whatever reason,
he never mentioned it. My take when reading the article was he was playing diplomat and proposing
an easy way for the criminals responsible for what has now turned into widespread mass murder
against the people of Donbass.
Professor Mearsheimer also failed to mention the mass murder AND Kiev's downing of MH17.
Remember that? The lapdog media and their masters would prefer that you don't because after
failing to pin their false flag on Russia and the resistance, it's as though it never happened
and the story has completely evaporated. Kiev confiscated the air traffic control data. The
UK has the black boxes. The US has (real) satellite and radar data. NONE of it has been released.
It's all being covered up because KIEV DID IT. The only ones who released real data, satellite
and radar, were the Russians and all evidence points straight at Kiev. Kiev MUST pay for this
terrible crime along with the war crimes in Donbass. Be vocal about MH17 and demand the data.
We cannot let this outrageous crime be swept under the rug.
Having read over the comments below now, I'm amazed at how little comprehension the posters
have of the situation and how much hysterical anti-Russian phobia there is.
I suppose I should not be surprised...This is Foreign Affairs, after all, where reality is
usually missing and American "Exceptionalism" is always on full display.
Personally I think Putin should declare a no-fly zone over the Eastern militia positions,
wipe the Ukrainian Air Force from the skies, bomb the crap out of the Ukrainian military positions
in the East, then inform the neo-Nazi junta that Kiev will be the next target if they don't
back off their war crimes in the East.
After all, if that process is good enough for Obama in Libya (and what a "success" that was,
eh?), it's good enough for Putin.
I think Mearsheimer is wrong when he thinks Russia's military cannot handle the Ukraine.
Russia doesn't have to occupy it - just destroy the Ukraine military and then leave, subsequently
demanding new elections that encompass both West and East.
Simultaneously Putin should inform the US and NATO that any attempt to put any significant
amount of foreign military forces into Ukraine will result in the immediate invasion of Ukraine.
Putin doesn't have to annex Ukraine or stay in Ukraine - just make it crystal clear that the
Ukraine is NOT going to be in NATO - ever. There's no way NATO can move faster than Russia in
Ukraine, so NATO had better just back off.
Putin has been strenuously avoiding these moves for months now, contrary to the hysterics
in the comments below, due to the negative geopolitical consequences. But I suspect his patience
is wearing thin. I've seen interviews with some of his advisers which make it clear they understand
that this is a deliberate attack by the US and NATO - mostly the US - on Russia with the ultimate
goal of regime change in Russia. And this is undoubtedly what they are telling Putin - correctly,
in my opinion.
The US and NATO will not stop this idiocy until Putin forces them to.
So I wouldn't count on Putin having such forbearance in the future. At this point, he
appears to be waiting for winter, at which point the neo-Nazi junta in Kiev will implode when
the people realize there is no gas to be had. The numerous demonstrations against the war
by the parents of the Ukraine conscripts being forced to the front under threat of 15 years
in prison will also have an effect once the current offensive on Donetsk and Luhansk fail -
as they are likely to.
Literally thousands of Ukraine troops have died trying to defeat the militia, requiring Ukraine
to decree THREE mobilizations, the last one being everyone from 19 to 55. Contrary to the MSM,
the war is NOT going well. And if Russia is pushed any more, it will go disastrously badly for
the Ukraine junta, NATO and Obama.
Agree. I think Mearsheimer is talking about Russia's occupation of portion of eastern Ukraine.
If I were Putin, I would simply arm the separatists to ensure a civil war to last in Ukraine
for many years to come. It will impose tremendous cost for EU and NATO for fighting such a civil
war.
Once a long civil war in Ukraine starts, we have to enlist Russia's help to end it.
Ukraine will never be able to sustain a long civil war without massive outside support,
the country is nearly bankrupt as it is. In fact, even without any insurgency in the East
a mere economic blockade by Russia would finish off the Ukrainian economy in a very short order.
Putin is just waiting for (and a bit hastening) that inevitable collapse, so that Ukrainian
population be more accepting of Russian intervention and geopolitical reorientation of their
country.
One mistake in the article: Mearsheimer writes: "One Russian newspaper reported that Putin,
while speaking with Bush, 'very transparently hinted that if Ukraine was accepted into NATO,
it would cease to exist'." In fact, Kommersant was quoting an unidentified source, "a member
of a delegation from a NATO country," who was in attendance. This is also the same unidentified
source who reported that Putin said to Bush that 'Ukraine is not even a state.'
A dubious source, especially if it came from the Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, or Estonian
delegation.
As usual in some US elite circles, the prevailing attitude of this article is "let's
divide the world and decide what is good for whom". It totally ignores the fact that there
are millions of people out there who want to decide for themselves what they want. It is precisely
the same attitude that gave the whole Eastern Europe to Stalin after the end of WWII.
Ukrainians have the right to decide what kind of country they want to live in, their choice
is the western model...
Ukraine is too weak to stand on her own. It must lean on either EU or Russia. With NATO and
Russia suspicious of each other's intention, Ukraine's choice either way must have some adverse
implications. If Ukraine chose Russia, the US and EU will continue fanning up discontent among
western Ukrainian population. Russia would do the same to Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
The whole situation also tells us much about the quality of Ukrainian politicians. They don't
think like statesmen. They are more of provincial chiefs quarreling over petty affairs and shouting
grand slogans without knowing how to design a plan to achieve their vision.
Poroshenko wants a clear-cut victory over the rebels. A victory over rebels does not
mean stability over the region. The more complete Poroshenko's victory is, the more likely
separatism will regenerate. Without coming to an agreement to Russia, Moscow will continue to
contribute the instability in eastern Ukraine. Poroshenko thinks like he is making chocolate
for Ukrainians only.
Actually you assume allot, especially a sound knowledge of History. Crimea, Donetsk most
of the East was ALL PART OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. The people the East are the ones who have always
lived there, they speak Russian for a reason.
Let me break down very simply so a kindergartener would understand the separatism issue (ALSO
they asked for federalization so stop inventing concepts). 60% of the whole of Ukraine is a
member of the Russian Orthodox Church meaning that is where there Pope lives. The majority of
Ukrainians are Slavic just like Russians. You are and have been supporting a smaller minority
in the West who are closer genetically to French and Nords and are Catholics, they also no matter
how much you want to deny it (dare me to reference the hundreds of articles) have many citizens
involved with hard right organisations including Svoda the group that teamed up with Hitler
to exterminate Ukrainians Jews.
Know let me really articulate this for you. You may not care but Hitler's armies killed 8-10
MILLION Eastern Ukrainians in the most brutal ways, Hitler was helped by SVODA. So think for
a second your elected Government is thrown out overnight because of Protests in one city in
one square and suddenly members of far right groups are being parachuted into Government positions.
They then as a first act try to pass a law banning the Russian language which is spoken as first
language by 60% of the Country. It was not an anti-Putin bill it was a genocidal bill. All business
and way of life is in Russian.
Know geez you think that may cause you to consider your future. Do you even know how low
the attendance was for Poroshenko across Ukraine. Guess what America is in North America and
will change multiple Governments Putin and Russia will always be there. Your myth of it becoming
unified is know a joke because the Junta and it's supporters will rue the day they seized power
because Russia will never let it go when more important things come up America will. The retribution
will be powerful.
Russia will not go anywhere near western Ukraine. Kiev understands that Moscow wants to dismember
Ukraine. Kiev is doing all it can to annihilate separatists in order to forestall Moscow's plan.
Ukraine is economically too weak to win in the shot run. It should compromise to secure internal
stability in order to develop economically. If Kiev's economy improves, it has a much better
than to unite the country.
With a war, Kiev is unlikely to bring peace to Ukraine. Without peace, the economy is
going to falter. Then Moscow can incite more unrest.
"Ukrainians" comprise what, 56 or so million people? "Ukrainians" didn't choose the "western
model" (whatever that is). The United States and EU hijacked protests against corruption (widespread
in the US and EU, as well, btw) and rule by an oligarch mafia, and overthrew an elected government,
using violent neo Nazi thugs. The CIA terminology is "subversive incitement" followed by a "counter-revolutionary
coup", both of which the US, UK and their intelligence agencies have a long history of doing.
A few thousand demonstrators in Kiev do not represent Ukraine. The people of Crimea said a resounding
"hell no", as did the people of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. They did not go west to murder
their fellow citizens. Kiev sent it's minions east to murder people who made THEIR choice.
Ukraine is a failed state and the interference of the US and EU drove the final nails in
that coffin. Thousands of innocents have now been butchered, maimed, and terrorized by the puppet
government. Thousands of homes, businesses, schools, hospitals and major infrastructure have
been deliberately targeted and destroyed in this ethnic cleansing frenzy by the freaks in Kiev.
This is all ONGOING as I write. These are people who merely voted for federalization and autonomy.
Do you think they want to remain part of the failed state of Ukraine, now? WOULD YOU? Everybody
in this bloody regime, their minions and their western puppet masters should be hanged for war
crimes and Ukraine should get the Yugoslavia treatment and be broken up, forever. Let the Ukrainian
Nazis have their pure Ukrainian paradise in the west but as sure as Crimea is Russia and will
remain that way, Novorussiya has been born and will NEVER subjugate itself to the fascist mobster
US proxies in Kiev.
President Putin has shown remarkable restraint. He should have ordered Russian troops to
invade Ukraine weeks ago, and arrested the poodle Poroshenko, driven out Western spies & agitators,
then cleaned house in Kiev.
Nice sentiments, Unfortunately, it is exactly what the Miltary / Industrial / Congressional
Mafia wants. The Mafia **wants**, hopes and desires that Russia crosses the border in force.
It would be good for the war economy, good for NATO, good for tightening our grip on Europe,
good for blaming all the ills of the Ukrainian economy on Russia. Good for making Russia into
a Super Boogeyman again. Good for McCarthyism. Good for the Security State...
The one place where this article goes wrong is Mearsheimer's assumption that the US actions
are the result of Obama and his advisers not understanding realist foreign policy, and that
therefore this is all some big mistake.
Bullcrap. Obama and his masters in the military-industrial complex know exactly what they
are doing and what would happen. They can read articles like this and many others written before
the events that predicted exactly this situation. This is a deliberate policy by the US military-industrial
complex to restart the Cold War for PROFIT. Afghanistan is winding down and they want to continue
that $100 billion a year windfall that Iraq and Afghanistan have provided for the last ten years.
Which is also why they wanted a war with Iran, starting with Syria.
Obama is also a "stunning narcissist", as Normal Finkelstein has described him, and he was
incensed when his plans to attack Syria were derailed by Putin's diplomacy with Syria over removing
Syrian chemical weapons, Obama's BS excuse for starting another war in the Middle East for the
benefit of his "Israel First" masters in Chicago. So the Ukraine crisis is basically Obama enjoying
a "temper tantrum" in retaliation courtesy of those same Masters in the military-industrial
complex.
Although the saying goes, "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence",
the reverse is also true much more frequently than is generally acknowledged by Very Serious
People.
Obama should be grateful that Putin got him off a hook to fight in Syria. The mess of Syria
civil war is spilling into Iraq. Obama has not fight out what to do with Libya where a civil
war is developing fast.
Eisenhower warned us about the hijacking of US policy by military-industrial complex. Do you
know anyone who has written about it and provide concrete evidences? I have heard it so many
times but where is proof?
Nonsense. Putin is entirely to blame for his own actions. It is a fallacy to suggest that
he acts out of fear of NATO. What could he fear? It is clear that they would never take overt
military action against Russia and they are not an economic bloc that could threaten his economy.
Indeed, until he annexed Crimea it was an organization in search of a purpose, withering on
the vine and under threat of being abandoned by it's members. His own actions have re-invigorated
it.
Regardless, it is not NATO that (western) ukrainians are clamouring to join but the EU as
a means to escape from the endemic state sponsored corruption and oligarchy.
What he fears is loss of influence and increased democratization on his borders. His own
powerbase is not a wide one and is maintained through cronyism, repression and propaganda. Should
another russian speaking nation pass the democratic bug on to the Russian people he and his
cabal could face a widespread and serious challenge to their power (and existence). This must
be headed off at all costs, even at the risk of military confrontation with the west.
Fascinating and very telling how you can see all of Putin's negative qualities. quite clearly
but you are blind all those apply to USA and EU as well.
The way you describe Putin fits 100% USA also. USA also spreads propaganda and uses repression
and military aggression. You are going to tell me media in which only 6 companies control ALL
media is free? USA also controls through cronism. There are many eee poking facts supporting
this. USA has been ar war in Iraq since the 1990s.
it's NOT Russia but USA who attacked Iraq in 1990.
It's NOT Russia but USA who bombed Iraq during the 1990s.
Its' NOT Russia but USA who lied Iraq had imaginary "weapons of mass distraction" during 2001-2003.
It's NOT Russia but USA who attacked and occupied Iraq in 20013.
It's NOT Russia but USA who attacked and occupied Afghanistan in 2001
It's NOT Russia but USA who has attacked and bombed Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Lybia, Sudan, etc,
etc,
insolent lies USA has used in the last decade to start up wars:
1990 babies taken out of incubators and left to die on cold hospital floor
1990-1999 Saddam working on nuclear weapons
2001 Osama engineered and did 9-11
2001-2003 Saddam has ties with Ali Queda
2001-2003 Saddam has weapons of mass distraction (Colin Powell, Bush jr, Cheney, Condy Rice,
etc)
2002-2203 Saddam working on weapons of mass distraction
2002-2003 Saddam working on acquiring nuclear weapons
2001 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2001 Iran has ties with Al Queda
2002 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2003 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2004 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2005 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2006 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2007 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2008 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2009 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2010 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2011 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2012 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2013 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2013 Assad gassed his own people (part 1)
2013 Assad gassed his own people (part 2)
2014 Iran will have nuclear bomb
2014 Assad gassed his own people (part 3)
For you to even claim Russia wants a war when the very opposite is clearly true shows what
you are either a shill or a fool.
We Germans and our Russian allies and some Ukrainian friends are very angry about the fact
that many media especially from Northern America always speak about an "annexion" of Crimea.
In fact, crimea always has been Russian (and a little bit Ukrainian) and the referendum ended
with 97%. Without the Soviet communists it had not belonged to the Ukraine. All Ukrainians can
visit it, settle and work there, but it's Russian and the German populations knows these basic
facts, also that Russia was founded in Kiev. Brussels and Washington are most irresponsible
and cannot be trusted. Putin wanted to join NATO long enough but he was not let in thanks to
US geo-strategic interests which in this form are not compatible with Germany's or those of
France and Italy.
Czarist conquest added Ukraine to Russia. Ukrainians have NEVER considered themselves Russian.
They have their own language.
Several purges of Tartars and other native Ukrainian minorities forced them vacate their
homes, businesses and farms. They were forced to go to Siberia packed in cattle cars. Many died
along the way. That was an act of genocide!
Then Russian overloads illegally moved to Crimea and took over what was left.
Don't like the west's influence and Ukraine's move to join them? To bad!
Tell me again, What does Russia have to offer beside centuries of conquest, murder and genocide?
...Not a damn thing except, Ops. I forgot! Russian natural gas and extortion.
Putin's Russia today is a state sponsor of terrorism.
Ukraine joined Russia (from Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) voluntarily (by a nearly unanimous
vote of the General Council of Pereyaslav) in 1654. Having shared common origin with Russians
since early middle ages, Ukrainians always considered and self-identified themselves as Russians
- the very concept of "Ukrainianness" did not exist until 19th century. Ukrainian nazis cannot
deny that common history and blood ties.
Mearsheimer is getting almost as much flack on this from the sycophants of the Empire than
his famous exposé on Israel got from The Lobby... Or do I repeat myself?
Good job John!
Mearsheimer's focus is properly on Washington, though I don't think he provided an adequate
account of the dynamics in play.
For one thing, the reckless and aggressive policy in Ukraine and with Russia in general is
hardly a liberal franchise. Yes, Clinton (the President) and Clinton (the Secretary of State)
were driving figures to the dangerous conundrum being played out. But Hillary recruited the
neo-Con faction in the person of Victoria Nuland, famously married into the Kagan clan. The
neo-Cons are even more aggressive than the liberal "democracy" forces in confronting the Russians.
In any case, Obama-Clinton forged a new Washington Consensus regarding Russia and East Europe.
But let's add context. At the moment Ukraine is only one of at least three powder kegs set
to ignite WW III, the others being, first, the Middle East, now little more than a pile of rubble
presided over by Gulf States financed Islamist war lords. The second, of course, is the infamous
Asian Pivot.
It seems that the new Washington Consensus amounts to doubling down on full spectrum dominance
and eradication of all potential rival blocs that might challenge American hegemony, the George
W. Bush National Security Strategy referred to as "The Big Enchilada". Amid crumbling economic
and financial prospects the Consensus is willing to risk nuclear confrontation with Russia to
remain the sole SuperPower, right to the bitter end.
The great danger is the brinksmanship this entails introduces accidental or miscalculated
events that escalate to thermonuclear war.
I believe the most poignant mis-statement about this article is "Abstract rights such as
self-determination are largely meaningless when powerful states get into brawls with weaker
states. " The context for this was that Ukraine should not make the mistake of thinking it can
determine it's alliances, it should take its guidance from Russia. Sir, you are mistaken and
that is the gist of the entire crisis. Russia does not have, should not have and is bound and
determined to prove it will never have - the right to determine Ukraine's preference for alliances.
Russia has illegally, unethically and immorally forced itself upon another sovereign state.
In the long run Russia will lose this battle of force.
Russia had its opportunity to create a profitable alliance with Ukraine in the 23 years since
the end of the Soviet Union. Russia's use of force is the antithesis of what it should have
done and will cause Russia to lose face with the rest of the world and will likely result in
Putin's downfall.
This article is great...your comments to it highly ridiculous. This isn't "Ukraine" making
it's own choices this is the US/EU forcing a stooge government onto the people of Ukraine...aided
by the local rabid thugs
It is clear the the US neocons (which actually dominate State Department) want to use both
MH17 tragedy and
Ukrainian crisis as a
whole to bully Russia. This article is no exception. Jeffrey Stacey expresses his primitive liner neocons
views in other his articles too -- see
whiteoliphaunt.com/duckofminerva
. John Herbst was United
States Ambassador to Ukraine from September 2003 to May 2006, period which includes Color revolution
which preceded EuroMaidan -- Orange revolution.
So he can be called the Godfather of Orange Revolution. Comments to article are really interesting,
which can't be said about the article itself. It is standard neocon view on Russia.
The international community is at long last beginning to take a strong stand against Moscow's
aggression in eastern Ukraine. There is solid evidence indicating not only that Malaysia Airlines
Flight 17 was shot down by Russian-aided rebels in eastern Ukraine, but that the Kremlin has bolstered
the rebels with heavy artillery despite toughened Western sanctions. Moreover, Russia has massed
over 45,000 soldiers near the eastern Ukrainian border, who are poised to undertake a "humanitarian
operation." The large convoy of trucks Russia is sending to aid rebel-held Lugansk could prove to
be a thinly disguised Trojan horse, setting off a major showdown once it arrives at the border.
President Vladimir Putin's double game has only ramped up since the downing of MH17, in response
to the recent gains Ukraine's military forces have been making against the rebels. After a turning-point
victory in liberating the strategic town of Slavyansk last month, the Ukrainian military has gone
on to retake three-fourths of its lost territory and is now pounding the last two major rebel strongholds,
Donetsk and Lugansk. Many of these rebels are not just pro-Russian sympathizers, they are full-fledged
Russian citizens -- including some notorious bad apples like Igor Strelkov and Vladimir Antyufeyev,
whom Russia previously used in not-so-subtle attempts to destabilize former members of the Warsaw
Pact. Now Moscow is also aiding them by firing artillery across the border at Ukrainian forces attempting
a final rout of the rebels.
The time has come for the West to make a decisive move to counter Putin's irregular war against
Ukraine. The Russian president has introduced a perilous new norm into the international system,
namely that it is legitimate to violate the borders of other countries in order to "protect" not
just ethnic Russians, but "Russian speakers" -- with military means if necessary. Putin has notoriously
threatened to annex Transnistria, the Russian-speaking territory of Moldova, inter alia. The Putin
Doctrine represents a serious transgression of the status quo that has guaranteed the continent's
security since the end of World War II; moreover, it violates the most essential tenet of the post-1945
international order.
The aim of Western actions must involve compelling Russia to end all support for the rebels in
eastern Ukraine and ensure complete respect for Ukraine's territorial integrity. In order to bring
about this result -- and ensure Moscow does not continue its dangerous double game -- a comprehensive
approach is needed. It should consist of three elements: even tougher economic sanctions; military
armaments to Ukraine; and an updated NATO strategy. The combined effect of this approach is to persuade
the Kremlin that the cost of its Ukraine adventure and aggressive pursuit of the Putin Doctrine
is too high.
The West has imposed economic sanctions on Russia for the past several months, but the results
thus far have been feeble. The problem is partly that the sanctions started small and were only
slowly ratcheted up. Moreover, European sanctions have been noticeably weaker than U.S. measures,
feeding Putin's calculation that he can continue to act as he chooses, while a reluctant Europe
hesitates to impose sufficiently punishing measures.
The sanctions that the United States and the European Union put in place on July 29, however,
are strong enough to get Moscow's attention. Indeed, despite Russia's counter-sanctions on European
and American food products, Putin is witnessing the failure of his efforts to split Europe from
the United States -- not to mention the larger failure of preventing Kiev's new government from
tilting to the West. But these measures have not been enough to actually deter Russia from continuing
to intervene in eastern Ukraine. The West needs to make clear that the latest sanctions will not
be the last if Moscow's aggression is not rapidly terminated.
The second part of a comprehensive strategy is to make it easier for Ukraine to re-establish
control in its restive east. Since his late-May election, President Petro Poroshenko has conducted
a successful counteroffensive against the rebels in eastern Ukraine. His forces have resealed a
significant part of its eastern border and taken back much of the territory seized by the rebel
forces. But as Poroshenko's troops have advanced, Moscow has increased the amount and sophistication
of military supplies to Ukraine, including the SA-11 surface-to-air missile system that shot down
MH17 and the SA-13 system. Thus far, his multiple requests for direct lethal aid have only met with
reluctance in Brussels and Washington.
The West has dithered under the assumption that providing lethal aid to Ukraine would escalate
the conflict. But a sanctions-dominant approach clearly has not prevented escalation. Indeed, with
France's determination to sell the Mistral ships to Russia, the West is in the peculiar position
of arming the aggressor and forbidding arms to the victim. If Russia does not cease firing missiles
at Ukrainian forces and supplying the rebels with arms and equipment, and does not pull troops back
from the border within two weeks, the West should begin supplying Ukraine proper with anti-tank
missiles, anti-aircraft missile batteries, and a variety of additional infantry weaponry. And it
should immediately threaten to do even more if Russia invades eastern Ukraine -- including inviting
Kiev to join NATO.
The third element of a comprehensive strategy against Moscow requires a clear-eyed understanding
of the Putin Doctrine. His stated right to "protect" Russian speakers is an invitation to intervene
along Russia's border in all directions, including in the territory of America's NATO allies in
the Baltics and elsewhere. For this reason, Washington's response must involve a new approach at
NATO for managing the Russian relationship. The NATO-Russia Joint Doctrine that concluded in the
late 1990s, which saw Russia as a partner, and which spoke of not building military infrastructure
in the new NATO members or permanently deploying major military equipment and forces, needs to be
reviewed. Publicly.
The small steps taken earlier this year to reassure NATO's eastern members -- Baltic air policing,
NATO maritime movements, several small-scale NATO exercises, placement of U.S. and Western European
aircraft around the Baltics and in Poland, and the deployment of a company of U.S. paratroopers
to Poland -- need substantial reinforcing. If Russia fails to respond to tougher sanctions, pointed
diplomacy, and lethal aid supplied to the Ukraine military, the allies must take further measures
at September's NATO summit in Wales.
It would be prudent to follow up NATO's suspension of cooperation with Russia with an official
review, with one of the options being maintaining the suspension and another being to end it and
all other forms of cooperation. Because Washington still needs Moscow's help with a handful of key
things (missile defense, Iran negotiations, Syria peace talks, and agreeing to rules governing cyberwarfare),
the aim would be to list ending the NATO-Russia Council as an option -- but with the unstated intention
of not actually following through. As NATO's Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow has been
arguing, Russia has begun treating the United States and the alliance as an adversary. This is why
we need to go beyond suspension and dangle complete cessation, even if for the time being we don't
plan to make good on this threat.
Regarding NATO's troop placement, however, the United States needs to use this as the major means
of reassuring our allies. It would be a good idea to bring the level of U.S. troops in Eastern Europe
up to 1,000 from the temporary placement of 600 paratroopers (this could include 100 to 150 "soft
forces," such as trainers). Washington also needs to do its best to get the Western Europeans to
add to this total. To entice the Europeans to match the U.S. commitment, Washington should propose
not permanent placement but a perpetual rotational arrangement. This way, the reddish line of permanent
placement would not be crossed, but NATO would nonetheless achieve upgraded deterrence capability,
while mollifying Poland and the Baltics.
Eastern European nations such as Poland are likely to welcome and add to increased capabilities
commitments; Western Europeans nations, however, are far more hesitant. Direct lethal aid and a
regularized rotational U.S.-Europe troop placement will go most of the way toward re-establishing
conventional deterrence against Moscow. But to go all the way, Western allies also need to conduct
a yearly exercise in Poland (and make announcements that in future years this new major exercise
will be taking place in the Baltic states). This should be a major ground-air exercise of the NATO
Response Force (NRF), with a military plan for defending an invasion from the east.
Regarding military capabilities, the United States should endorse both the German proposal to
organize clusters of allies that would increase their military capabilities and Britain's proposal
that would align Western allies to spearhead NATO military operations beyond what the current NRF
plans call for. It is worth remembering that crude measures like the level of overall defense spending
are far less important than the current state of military capabilities, which lately have been enhanced
even by Western allies that have reduced their defense spending (e.g. France, Britain, and Germany).
Furthermore, the alliance ought to augment its operational air force capabilities to be able to
conduct 30-day air operations like the one carried out in Libya in 2011 (with the necessary fighter
aircraft, flight crews, refueling aircraft, drones, and satellite surveillance). NATO needs to be
thinking of capabilities in the full spectrum of land, naval, air, and cyber-power, and air capability
is the biggest gap.
Indeed, the time has come for the West to take an even stronger stand against Russian aggression
and force Putin to back down and end this crisis. The West should proceed with a fuller slate of
toughened sanctions, targeting all major sectors of the Russian economy -- virtually all of their
products and services -- and a full-fledged embargo against transferring any arms or defense technology
to Russia. Tightening the economic screws is still a major element of a successful strategy to get
Russia to cease and desist. But this is not enough.
The Russian president needs to be deterred from annexing other contested territories, like Transnistria,
and reinforcing his ugly new international relations norm by deeply interfering in the internal
affairs of other national states, such as the Baltics. This will require a series of additional
and stronger military moves on the European chessboard. Let Crimea be the apogee of revanchist Russian
aggrandizement. It is time for global security and international law to push back strongly against
bellicose Russian dictates.
Selected Comments
poncejorge
Dear authors,
After reading the first paragraph of your paper one can realize the astounding lack of academic
analysis behind it. Without going into deep analysis it can be easily pointed out that what
you call as "international community" is mostly EU and affiliates - Norway as an example, the
US, Australia and someway somehow Japan. The rest of the world is not on board. By your surprise
the "rest" of the world comprises China (1.3 billion people), India (1.2 billion), LATAM (600
+ million), and so on. As you can see, what you call as the international community does not
even account for 1 billion people. Instead of instigating and advocating for war you should
realize that Eurocentric (and US centric views) (see Edward Said) are rapidly fading into the
past and like most US policies of the past century they may create a blowback effect (see Charles
Johnson). Secondly, if you want to accuse someone of doing something first of all you have to
present proofs of it. That is a basic principle that can be easily traced back to Roman times
(2,000 years ago). What you call as "strong evidences" (shooting down of the Malaysian plane)
are nothing else than bluff without proofs. "I believe" does not count as proof, nobody cares
about what you believe, we care about what evidence you have. Furthermore, if you have the audacity
to trash a country as big and powerful as Russia - and its leadership- (6th world biggest economy,
and...full of atomic bombs!) without solid proofs you should realize that instead of creating
an atmosphere for dialog you are fomenting bickering and misunderstanding to say the least.
My advice is to stop acting as if you have any moral ground (Vietnam, Irak, Afghanista, invasion
of Mexico, and so on proofs that you are not better than anyone, just like the rest, and accepting
that will maybe make you come to terms with yourself and clear up your analysis) and understand
that the world does not work under presumptions, nor is black or white. Stop advocating for
war and start understanding that each country acts on its on interest, and that the US or the
EU do not have the right to impose its mores on everyone else (no one has the right, nor china,
russia, brazil etc, but unfortunately the EU - Spain, France, Uk mostly, and the US has a long
history of meddling in everyone affairs, first under open colonial format (Spain, France, UK)
and later under disguised moralistic pretenses (US).
Best regards,
A Citizen of the world who is tired of watching fellow humans died without a reason and watching
how the media sells itself to that purpose.
Klopezdron
Jeffrey,
Russians/Putin are responsible for downing of the Malaysian airplane? Come again please.
Why don't you charge Putin with Kennedy assassination and the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa
while you're at it.
Oligan
You've chosen wrong Bully, dear authors.
I'm Russian married to a French, I live in France and don't watch russian TV. I never supported
Putin and in February was really glad for Ukranians. Since then me (as well as many of those
who can read in Russian and talk to people from the region) have changed my opinion dramatically
- the deeds of so called Ukranian army on the east are terrible!!!
They bomb civilians all the time, they use nazys, they punish those civilians who have
relatives in protestants army, and on top those bastards in Kiev lie all the time - it is obvious
for any person who has a brain, you don't have to listen to Putin's propaganda to see it.
Ukranian revolution has turned from the step to western civilization into the most barbarian
war since 1941, and it is not only Putin who is in charge of it.
But you are so stubborn, it is amazing. You believe any bullshit that proves your fears
(somebody said something on facebook - wow!), and ignore facts that does not fit the concept.
Frankly speaking, when I read articles like this I see no difference between Putin's propaganda
and yours. And I see no difference between Putin's support of separatists and yours support
of Ukranian army. If you think that people in Donets and Lugansk will happily live with Kiev
after what they've done to them - well, it says a lot about your competence as an experts.
So - go both to hell with your military calls.
Sergey Aleksandrychev
@Oligan, you see no difference between Putin's "propaganda" and Ukrainian/American lies?
The best propaganda is telling truth, that's why Putin's propaganda is gaining the upper
hand.
I have not seen in the Western media or at Psaki's meetins any evidence of Putin's military
support to the rebels. They are not separatists. They have always lived on this land, and they
defend it against the gang of murderers who came to power in Kiev and consider the people of
Eastern Ukrain "subhumans".
rosavo
I doubt western leaders schooled at the tradition of pol cor guilt will do help eastern allies
against Russian revisionism, it's up to us in the east to do this.
as about Transnistria things are more complex since Stalin after the war took big parts from
Romania, Poland and Russia and included them into Ukraine. to compensate Moldova for losing
southern regions and Bukovina to Ukraine it added Transnistria to Moldova, integrating a huge
Russian-speaking population of non-Russians (that nevertheless identify themselves with Russian
identity and culture) into Moldova. I honestly prefer Transnistria to be integrated in Russia,
otherwise they will act in Moldova as a fifth column, as we see now the pro-Russians doing in
eastern Ukraine.
oguv
When you say bully, do you mean the Russians or US/EU/Nato?
natrium
The reference to "solid evidence" means a shortage of proof. By the way, the US
introduced a perilous new norm into the international system - to make regimes inside the borders
of other countries crashed. The ukrainian civil war is the reaction to such US invading.
Ildus
Overly simplistic analysis.
musicmaster
Ukraine is refusing to release the conversation of the plane with the control tower and
the radar images of the control tower and the US is refusing to release its satellite and radar
images. Kiev clearly has something to hide and that makes them the primary suspect.
Yet the article starts with the claim that the rebels did it. This lie made me skip the rest
of the article.
Shingo
This article is another very thinly disguised piece of neocon propaganda. There
are so many assumptions and claims made in this article that have never been proven, but form
the basis for the piece.
There is solid evidence indicating not only that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down
by Russian-aided rebels in eastern Ukraine
Actually there isn't. The only thing that has been presented is a prima facie case, but the
US government, who was surely monitoring the area closely at the time the plane was attacked,
have refused to produce one iota of evidence. When challenged to produce evidence, the State
Department has pointed to social media, insisting that their evidence is too sensitive to share
with the public.
Robert Parry has reported that his sources at the CIA and NSA refute the claim that the rebels
were responsible.
Moreover, Russia has massed over 45,000 soldiersnear the eastern Ukrainian border, who are
poised to undertake a "humanitarian operation."
And what is the basis of this claim other than pure speculation? What is the evidence that
the aid intended for the rebel-held areas is a Trojan horse?
in response to the recent gains Ukraine's military forces have been making against the rebels.
The alleged gains made by the Ukraine's military forces have proven to be entirely fictional.
In fact, from all the reports I have seen, it is Kiev which at tremendous costs has achieved
exactly nothing. They suffered enormous losses in the Southern Cauldron. The re-taking of Saur
Mogila has been marketed as a turning point victory, along with all the other so called turning
point victories that amounted to nothing. Add to this the very persistent rumors and hints by
various commanders on the ground that a big counter-offensive is in the works and the Ukies
might well have reached a breaking point.
Putin has notoriously threatened to annex Transnistria, the Russian-speaking territory of
Moldova, inter alia.
This is a lie. Putin has not threatened anything of the kind. And how is it that the authors
insist this should be NATO's problem when the Ukraine is not part of NATO? This whole crisis
is the consequence of the US violating the promise not to extend NATO further eastward beyond
Germany. The US would not accept a foreign military power installing bases along it's borders
and nor should Russia.
Stacey and Herbst also trivially dismiss the EU's own concerns and argue the EU should put
it's own interests aside for the sake of giving Putting a bloody nose. But the fact is that
sanctions have backfired. The EU is now returning to recession while he Russian economy continues
to grow.
Putin's efforts to split Europe from the United States have not been a failure, they are
only 2 weeks old, so Stacey and Herbst's argument that his efforts have failed are premature.
The new economic agreements between Russia and the BRICS countries has exposed the limits of
Western power to isolate Russia without shooting itself in the foot.
As for the Poroshenko's forces, they are at breaking point and time is running out for them.
The longer this conflict continues, the less likely their chance of success.
If Russia does not cease firing missiles at Ukrainian forces
What evidence is there that Russia has fired missiles at Ukrainian forces? What's more, it's
odd that Stacey and Herbst suggest the West should begin supplying Ukraine proper with anti-tank
missiles, anti-aircraft missile batteries when they already have them. They have close to a
dozen SA-11 surface-to-air missile systems that allegedly shot down MH17. Indeed, the Ukrainian
military moved one launcher into the area the day before MH17 was shot down.
It's also grossly hypocritical that Stacey and Herbst object to Russia's stated right to
"protect" Russian speakers when the US has done the same in Iraq.
In the end, Stacey and Herbst are complaining about the lack of action taken by the West
against Putin while admitting that the West don't have many options short of going to war.
mkham11
KIEV: The one thing Ukraine needs that could quickly end this torture is HARM missiles. The
dozens of Russian Buks, Stelas, now Tunguska missile trucks in the Donbas that are crippling
Ukr air power could be destroyed in short order by the radar-targeting air to ground missiles.
Able to run full air ops again, Ukraine could stamp out these cockroaches and take back the
East in 2-3 weeks, IF they would close the border. There is still a significant threat from
all the shoulder mounted infrared AA missiles, but the long range ones are more significant.
There's some evidence that Russia has even shipped the S-300 AA rockets, which can reach planes
200km away!
@mkham11 The one thing Ukraine needs that could quickly end this torture is HARM missiles
Do you seriously the Russians don't have something to deal with radar-targeting air to ground
missiles? The Russians have managed to paralyze Western military radar systems effortlessly.
Able to run full air ops again, Ukraine could stamp out these cockroaches and take back
the East in 2-3 weeks, IF they would close the border.
If who would close the border? You have no idea what you are talking about. For decades,
ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine travelled to Russia to work. Those borders are purely artificial.
Boomerang83
I have never read such garbage. US/EU/NATO are the bullies constantly demonizing Russia through
a web of lies and deceit. Every recent event since the violent and brutal overthrow of the democratically
elected government in Kiev (by a group of far right neo nazi thugs funded by US) has been orchestrated
and choreographed to make Putin look like the aggressor. Western media outlets slavishly follow
a prepared narrative, irrespective of the truth, to further some political agenda....the expansion
of NATO in Europe.
The hypocrisy of the US is nauseating...sticking their nose in where they are not wanted,
masquerading as the world's guardian of morals while they turn to poison everything they touch..Iraq,
Libya, Egypt, US badly needs a war because they are bankrupt to the tune of trillions of dollars;
Putin meanwhile is looking eastwards with the BRICS initiative which will eventually bypass
the dollar as the world reserve currency....and Obama sees the writing on the wall!
Every ploy is being used to goad Russia into a military conflict...all the bare faced lies
emanating from Ukraine from the Malaysian air disaster (interesting how everybody in the West
has gone all quiet on this one...even though they were accusing Russia within hours of the event.
Moscow produced satellite images clearly showing presence of Ukrainian fighter jets close to
aircraft at time of 'accident'.
US with all their satellite technology weren't prepared to reveal what they saw....we all
know why! And latest attempt is the 'Russian invasion' of Ukraine. remind me again, how many
tanks where there! Please don't insult people's intelligence.
Even the dogs in the street know what Ukraine and their puppet masters in US/EU are up to!.
Meanwhile the Russian speaking thousands of people of eastern Ukraine are being obliterated
in a ferocious onslaught from it's own government...and the West remains silent. Enough said!
Shingo
@ellsid @Boomerang83
If anything the U.S. EU and NATO response to Russia's INVASION of a sovereign country
have been pathetically weak.
There was no invasion. Name the date the invasion took place.
The U.S. you love to hate gives more aid to the world than any other country
Most of which is military aid, which amounts to a boondoggle for US arms manufacturers. And
no, the US did not bail out Russia.
Yes, the same criminal who stole billions from Ukraine's coffers, whose 'family' and
friends ran one of the most corrupt regimes (next to Putin's) in Europe.
All that happened is that the control of the UKraine has passed from one group of oligarchs
who stole billions from Ukraine's coffers to another group who stole billions from Ukraine's
coffers. The Ukraine is as corrupt now as it was then.
Your really have no clear understanding of what Maidan was about. It had everything to
do with the citizens of Ukraine wanting to be rid of their corrupt thieving government.
If that were true, the demonstrations would have ended when Yanukovych was ousted, but they
continued. The only thing that changed is that the US media stopped reporting these demonstrations
and the neo Nazis who sabotaged the demonstrations and took power then outlawed subsequent demonstrations.
The demonstrators in Maidan were being paid $50 a day from Nuland's $5 billion dollar fund
to overthrow the Ukrainian government.
I guess that kind of backfired for when Putin next sets his sites on reconquering the
Baltic countries or Poland.
How can it have backfired when Putin has not tried to reconquering the Baltic countries or
Poland. The fact is that neo cone lovers and Russophobes like you have been predicting that
Russia was about to invade for months now, and you've been wrong.
That's why Poroshenko and the Kiev junta keep coming up with BS stories about cross borders
skirmishes, because he is desperately trying to convince the world that the Russians are about
to invade.
Those were indigenous revolts against tyrant leaders, which hopefully may one day
come to Russian soil
Indigenous revolts that were not only undemocratic, but illegal. What's more, they were sabotaged
by extremists with the original demonstrators being sidelined. Egypt has become a dictatorship
with even the supporters of the Morsi overthrow afraid of being imprisoned for criticizing the
junta. Libya had has been destroyed and taken over by Jihadists.
.the Kremlin has dropped this line when it was pointed out to them these were GROUND
ATTACK aircraft that could not fly at this attitude and could not carry air to air missiles.
False. Those aircraft could indeed fly at 30,000 feet and are designed to carry missiles.
They tend to operate at lower altitudes when bombing ground targets, but that doesn't mean they
are not capable of cruising at higher altitudes.
You're the moron for trying to argue from the position of such ignorance.
"Strelkov"/ Girkin, Borodai, and all the Russian citizens sent in to lead the insurgency
all lamented the lack of support the Russia sponsored mercenaries received from the local
population.
Rubbish, You have it completely backwards. It is the local population that is behind the
insurgency. In fact, they have lamented the lack of support from Russia, not the other way around.
Putin has no desire to recreate "Novorossiya", otherwise Moscow would never had given recognition
to the new regime in Kiev. Putin knows that the Ukraine is an economic basket case and whoever
wins it loses because it's a poisoned chalice.
Shingo
@ellsid @Boomerang83
Anyone who thinks Maidan ended crony capitalism and the reign of the oligarchs are delusional.
And just to prove that you haven't done any research but are simply parroting talking points
you read on some right wing web site, here is evidence the top cruising altitude of a Su-25
is 10km, the same as a passenger plane.
If anyone has been hibernating under a slimy rock it's you. You should also get over your
crush' on Neuland and the necons because they have a track record of lying, being wrong about
everything and creating chaos and destruction.
marty martel
Previous US ambassador Anne Patterson to Pakistan wrote in a secret review in 2009 that 'Pakistan's
Army and ISI are covertly SPONSORING four militant groups - Haqqani's HQN, Mullah Omar's QST
(Quetta Shura Taliban), Al Qaeda and LeT - and will not abandon them for any amount of US money',
diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show. Amb. Patterson had NO reason to mislead her own
State Department or US government.
Admiral Mike Mullen told the US Senate Armed Services Committee on 22-Sept-2011 that: 'The
fact remains that the Quetta Shura and the Haqqani Network operate from Pakistan with impunity.
(These) Extremist organizations serving as PROXIES of the government of Pakistan are attacking
Afghan troops and civilians as well as U.S. soldiers.' Adm. Mullen had NO reason to mislead
US Senate.
In 'Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War' published in January, 2014, former defense secretary
Gates writes: "Although I would defend them (Pakistanis) in front of Congress and to the press
to keep the relationship from getting worse – and endangering our supply line from Karachi –
I knew they were really no ally at all." So Gates in effect, kept lying to US Congress and press
and thereby to the whole World that Pakistan was an ally when it was anything but.
However not just administration but most of the American foreign policy wonks and news media
have been deafeningly silent about Pakistani State waging Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan
that has been killing thousands of innocent Afghans since 2001.
marty martel
It has been interesting that while raising such a public hue and cry over Russia's support
of Ukrainian insurgents, US government, foreign policy wonks and news media have sought to varnish,
suppress and even reward similar behavior of Pakistani State that has been playing duplicitous
game of 'running with the Haqqani/Mullah Omar's Taliban insurgents while hunting with the American
hounds'.
There has been NO doubt in US establishment about from where the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan
is being waged that has been killing not just thousands of innocent Afghan civilians but US/NATO/Afghan
troops as well since 2001.
"For twenty years Pakistan's army - the real power broker in the country - has backed the
Afghan Taliban. It helped create the Taliban's Islamic Emirate in the 1990s and build the al-Qaeda
state within a state. The army has provided safe haven, arms, expertise and other help to Taliban.
It briefly pretended to abandon Taliban to avoid American anger in 2001 misleading George W
Bush", so said an ex-CIA official Bruce Riedel at an US Islamic World Forum organized in Qatar
on June 9-11, 2013.
You might be misogynist if you especially fear Hillary over all the other mainstream a##hole
imperialist potential USA next presidents. I like in a sense that she's clumsy and people hate
her, and so she will have much more difficulty b.s.ing people than Obama does.
I have to admit that when it comes to Hillary, I'm a misogynist. ;-) Her lust for power is distinctly
feminine, like that of Lady Macbeth; I suppose that such a sentiment on my part can be considered
misogynistic.
Your argument that it might be good for Hillary to become the next president because "she's clumsy
and people hate her" is one I haven't heard before. Obama appointing Hillary SecState was the first
clear sign after the election (there were already signs before) that his presidency was going to
be a disaster. I don't want to see or hear anything from Hillary ever again. It is hard to think
of a politician who is more annoying. There are plenty of women who become successful politicians
in Europe, and none of them suffers from the Lady Macbeth syndrome, so far as I know.
Finally, as an American, to me there is the simple matter of national dignity. Are we really
going to have wives succeed their husbands as president now? Up until now, this has only happened
in Third World countries.
Richard Gage talked about his group, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which claimed that
the World Trade Center was brought down by explosive demolition on September 11, 2001. The group
was founded in 2006 and said its mission was to
"expose the official lies and cover-up surrounding the events of September 11, 2001 in
a way that inspires the people to overcome denial and understand the truth."
Mr. Gage spoke via video link from San Francisco, California.
American bluff and bombast toward Moscow has stoked Russian nationalism, convinced Putin
we're weak, and fostered a dangerous realignment.
Meanwhile, focused on domestic politics and entranced by post–Cold War triumphalism, America's
political elites worked assertively to short-circuit debate and to marginalize anyone who questioned
their international assumptions. The end result was a foreign policy in which, as George F.
Kennan described it, "a given statement or action will be rated as a triumph in Washington if
it is applauded at home in those particular domestic circles at which it is aimed, even if it is
quite ineffective or even self-defeating in its external effects." Publics in America-and Europe-were
also proud of their international successes and were thus prepared to accept their governments'
activism so long as it worked and so long as continued prosperity made it cheap. Now, however, they
are much less willing to support interventionist policies, meaning that out-of-touch elites will
likely lack the political support to finish what they might succeed in starting.
WHAT THE triumphalists failed, and continue to fail, to recognize is how little is truly new
in world politics. This is not the first time that a dominant alliance has claimed exceptional virtue
and exceptional prerogatives. Quite the contrary. During the early nineteenth century, for example,
the Holy Alliance made some of the same arguments in outlining its obligations to protect the kings
and princes of Europe. Claiming divine virtue and superior political systems, its proponents acted
with no less moral conviction or entitlement than today's Western democracy promoters.
Of course, the combination of human nature and democratic politics virtually assures that while
promoting universal values, powerful nations and alliances also take care of their interests-and
see their opponents' interests and perspectives as inherently inferior. In fact, in proclaiming
a unipolar world and making himself a global democracy enforcer, former president George W. Bush
briefly went even further than Russia's Czar Nicholas I, who won fame as the "gendarme of Europe"
for making the Continent safe for autocracy.
Statesmen like Otto von Bismarck and Benjamin Disraeli ruthlessly advanced what they saw as their
nations' true interests while coldly appraising their rivals' aims and views. As the German author
Emil Ludwig wrote, what most repelled the Iron Chancellor in dealing with Russia was "that country's
bold claim to equality of right-a claim he has never been able to endure, whether in politics, family
life, or ministerial councils." Despite this, Bismarck understood that Russia was a major factor
in European politics and one that Prussia's kings had to live with-and could even find useful to
advance their core interests, including in unifying Germany. Today's Western leaders, however, are
more preoccupied with short-term political fortunes than strategic national interests.
Nowhere is this clearer than in America's relations with Russia. The swing from euphoria over
the fall of the Berlin Wall to noisy calls for a new cold war provides a sobering reminder of the
superficiality of American analysis of Russia's motives and goals. Instead of responding emotionally
to Russian actions, the United States should adopt a more calculating approach toward Moscow. One
fundamental mistake that those thirsting for a cold war are making is to assume that Putin has a
grand master plan for re-creating the Soviet empire. Putin's long-term desire to enhance Russia's
power and influence is clear-and he has not hesitated to act on it in the current crisis over Ukraine.
Yet, he has also sought partnership with the West at times and clearly hopes-correctly or incorrectly-
that Russia's annexation of Crimea does not foreclose future engagement.
Indeed, looked at from a historical perspective, Moscow's conduct does not suggest a crusade
to rebuild the Soviet Union. Yes, Putin has said that he considers the collapse of the USSR to be
a terrible tragedy, and he clearly seeks a greater political, security and economic role for his
country in the post-Soviet region. But consider this: until the crisis in Ukraine, Moscow used force
against a neighboring state only one time, in 2008, after Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili
first ordered attacks on Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. Before that, Abkhazia and South
Ossetia had been largely under de facto Russian control for years. Despite the fact that both are
contiguous to Russia's territory and reliant on Russian subsidies to survive economically, the Kremlin
did not choose to integrate them into Russia.
Then there is Ukraine. Russia's annexation of Crimea was not predetermined and resulted from
a complex and multidimensional process. There is no evidence that Putin would have tried to take
over Crimea without the combination of humiliating defeat and political opportunity that Obama and
his EU associates presented to him after their Ukrainian political protégés drove former president
Viktor Yanukovych from office without quite following the parliamentary procedures required to impeach
him under the country's constitution. The result was regime change, which is not a rules-based policy,
especially when it assertively extends the West's-let's be honest about it-sphere of influence to
the single most strategically, economically, historically and emotionally significant area on Russia's
borders. After contributing to the Crimean fiasco, it is little wonder the president sounds so defensive.
I sometimes get very interesting emails in my inbox and this happened today when I found the
email below sent to me by "M". Having read it I immediately contacted "M" to ask for his permission
to post it here. I felt that this would be especially important since I posted the "Appeal"
of Egor Prosvirnin which some of you interpreted as anti-German and then accused me of also harboring
anti-German feelings. As
I explained
it later, my intention had been to make people aware that there is a growing anger against Germany
in Russia and that even though I personally did not feel that anger, I considered that anger legitimate,
if not necessarily deserved (I soon realized that the most vociferous and nasty protests against
this post did not come from Germans or even Germanophiles, but from the same old crowd of neo-Nazis
who strongly feel that defending anything German is part of their ethos). Still, I have to admit
that I felt bad about the whole thing (because, believe it or not, I am not only not anti-German,
I don't even believe in collective, nevermind inherited, guilt). For one thing, as an anti-Soviet
Russian myself, I know the very difficult situation of a person who opposes the regime in power
in his country, but still feels that his own people are also victims. There are quite a few countries
and nationalities who still are resentful and angry with Russians, especially for things which the
Soviet forces did during WWII, and I consider that this resentment and anger is legitimate even
if sometimes historically one-sided. It is always tough to be at the receiving end of somebody's
anger - whether fully deserved or not - and so when I saw "M" email I decided to share it with you
and I am grateful to "M" for giving me his permission.
The Saker
-------
Seeing the hatred and outright ill will some have towards Germans really brought me down.
It makes me wonder how we are ever going to manage to have some kind of stability in Europe
and the world...
Here are some of the dynamics in Germany, as I see them. Most likely
many will disagree and want to debate them, I don't claim they are how it is, just how I see
it. I don't claim to know and understand it all. But it's something I would like people to think
about, before they write off the German people as a whole.
Where do I start? Something that should be obvious is that Germany is not a free and sovereign
country. From the start, when the Federal Republic was conceived, the Allies had a great influence
on shaping the new Germany. Especially the Americans. It is somewhat subtle if you are used
to how things are, but once you start observing it becomes clear that the American political
circles have great influence on ours. Anyone interested can take a look at how many of our Politicians
in the various established parties are members in transatlantic clubs. So guess where their
allegiance lies? They are not even ashamed of it, it's normal to them. For decades we've
had what you can call US whores. Not long ago I complained about that on a page of young
transatlanticists and was quickly accused of being anti-American, they weren't interested in
any of my arguments. Being anti-American is hardly possible since I am an American citizen.
There is a divide between the common people, many of whom don't have anything against Americans
but are not too keen on having them involved in German affairs, and many of our leaders who
try to make us all believe that we need the United States as partner, come what may. One fact
that should make anyone pause is that there are currently still around 40.000 US troops on German
soil and various US bases. It may not sound like much, but in principle should any be here at
all? We have US nuclear warheads here, the maintenance of which is also paid for by German tax
payers money. If you asked the average German what he thought about that, you can be sure that
they would be against that. "Ami go home" is a more and more open sentiment here. "American
go home". But will the Americans go? I doubt it. It seems they do not have the slightest interest
in granting Germany full sovereignty and of letting go. So the question begs: how free are German
politicians to do what they want? And then, how "natural" is the influence Germany has on the
shaping of European affairs?
I can fully understand that many in Europe resent Germany, due to the dominating of EU
policies and the problems they cause. What many don't know though is that the current administration
and the previous ones have been equally harsh on Germans. German politicians don't just sell
Europeans out, but their own people. The climate here has changed drastically in past years.
People are having increasingly hard times to make a living and are in fear, fear of loosing
their jobs, fear of making ends meet, fear of loosing what they have. Fear is the perfect mechanism
of keeping people in check. The contempt and the lack of any shame on the part of our government
has never been this drastic before. Careful observers have seen it for years. Why people keep
voting for the same parties is beyond me. There are some who say voter fraud could be at play.
It would not surprise me. At the very least the media have been extremely pro Merkel for years,
even campaigning for her and her party, when they should have been neutral. Every once and a
while that has been criticized but nothing changes and many don't even notice. Merkel's
policies are always aimed at business elites, not the common people. I remember how years
ago she spoke of "market conformed democracy". There was no outcry, no outrage. No one seemed
to care. As in most places, the elites own the media as well. So honest and critical reporting
has become a thing of the past, unless one watches carefully and knows where to look. The average
person doesn't. So if people are angry with Germans, I wish they would know that Germans are
angry with our leaders as well and have been screwed over as well. Why Germans put up with that?
Good question. This is a subject of its own. My impression is that Germans have always been
people that are good at following and bowing to higher ups. They are terribly long suffering,
in a bad way. After the Second World War Germans have been pacified as a people, in my opinion.
Imagine having the mindset of being aware of things you dislike and that anger you, but thinking
that somehow it'll be alright, that life must go on. You go through the motions. And then add
a state of paralysis and helplessness. Perhaps that is what is going on with Germans. Of course
those that have the upper hand and benefit from the current status have a vested interest in
keeping things the way they are. It is unrealistic to expect Germans to magically snap out of
it and overthrow the status quo. And though it is not obvious we do have a police apparatus
in place that can quickly stomp out any uprising.
I will not deny that Germans can be arrogant in their views. But there is a constant stream
of medial manipulation feeding them that perspective. I know that deep down Germans want peace
and have no interest in dominating other Nations and people. Many are actually appalled and
shocked because our leaders are calling for more involvement in conflicts and taking on more
"responsibility". People see that as dangerous and hypocritical. The problem is that the (you
can only call it) "political cast" is so far gone and so far out of touch with the common people.
There is a complete disconnect. I see it on Facebook postings of Steinmeier, Gabriel and many
others. They live in their own world, facts and reality do not exist for them. And their personal
integrity and values are non existent. Calling them pathetic would still be a compliment. It
is not any different with our media. Regularly you get to see statistics that suggest people
to be skeptic of Putin and Russia. Every time many speak out and question these. Sometimes there
are polls in which readers can take part and they say the opposite, that people see through
the lies and are not in favor of sanctions and do not want a conflict with Russia, that they
do not want anything to do with the crimes committed in the Ukraine. There's a saying "don't
trust any statistic that you haven't forged yourself." There have been statistics for years,
that suggest Merkel having very high support among people.. To me it's a mystery how she has
been in power for so long. I guess there still are many idiots who believe in her, but there
are also very many who would like to see the worst happen to her.
Many people see that when the wall came down and the two Germanies were reunited, the
Soviets/Russians were fair. Just think about how much time has passed, when have the United
States and the British made an attempt at the same fairness? I'm afraid the US would rather
see Germany in ruins yet again, rather than leaving and giving the Germans freedom. I understand
the resentment that many have for Germans, but am also shocked by how much hatred there is.
Is it not the same principle in most places, that Governments do not act in accord with and
represent the will of the people? And to what degree can we count on the will of the people
when they are not given accurate information and facts, but are fed half truths at best and
outright manipulation most of the time? Ironically I see a lot of Americans accusing us of cowardice
for not taking a more aggressive stance against Russia. The same with the Polish. Merkel's behavior
in this crisis makes no sense to me at all. At times she is bullying Russia, like the perfect
US poodle, but then there are reports of her reaching out to Putin. Either she is completely
soul less without a personal sense of direction, or she is more devious than she appears. No
idea what her true aims are. They certainly don't seem to be what they should be. Part of her
vow when sworn into office is to avert harm from the German people. She is steadily doing the
opposite. She and her cronies along with her.
It seems that we are prisoners of a political apparatus gone insane, both on a German
level and a EU level. Then there's NATO on top of that. And lets be realistic, the cards are
stacked in favor of the higher ups. That is no excuse for giving up, which I am not suggesting,
but haters need to take a close look at reality. Finding solutions is not that easy, is it?
So, this is part of what I observe, I bet I forgot a lot. My health is not too well and my strength
limited.
...Or, if only we had come down harder on Putin he wouldn't be mucking around in eastern Ukraine
today. Yet another repeated feature is an equation of leadership with forceful action, especially
military action-as illustrated by Corker's charge that President Obama is "uncomfortable being commander
in chief".
Also recurrent is the invoking of very hedgehog-like calls for a single "coherent strategy" or
"organizing principle" or some such thing, with those making the calls secure in the knowledge that
rhetorically such formulations always have an advantage over anything that can be belittled as ad
hoc or reactive. The oversimplification involved is grossest when applied to U.S. policy toward
the entire world, but there is still oversimplification when such a call is applied even to a single
country. We hear, for example, that problems of U.S. policy toward Iraq are a simple matter of deciding
whether the United State has a mission of stabilizing Iraq. Actually, it's not really anywhere near
that simple. Instability in Iraq has many different facets, some of which should concern the United
States and some of which should not, and some of which are amenable to U.S. influence and some of
which are not.
Hillary Clinton, whose recent pronouncements must be dismaying to progressive realists fearing
they will not have any acceptable choice at the top of the ballot in November 2016, has been talking
in the same mode. She tells us that not doing stupid stuff is not an "organizing principle,"
and a great nation like the United States needs an organizing principle for its foreign policy.
Two things about that comment make it, well, not quite smart. One is that the world is a very disorganized
place, and any single organizing principle is too simple to be effective in dealing with all, or
even most, of the problems the world throws at us.
The other thing wrong with that comment is that not doing stupid stuff is so important that it
deserves to be at the top of any president's checklist, just as Hippocrates taught that "first
do no harm" should be at the top of any physician's checklist. Think about the Middle East,
and ask what development, whether involving an action or inaction by the United States, has had
the biggest effects, for good or for ill, on U.S. interests in recent years. The answer has to be-firmly
implanted on the "for ill" side of the ledger-the Iraq War. The most important thing any U.S.
president should do is not to do stupid stuff like that, or to get into a position with a serious
risk of sliding into something like that.
... ... ...
Selected Comments
Mike Bittinger
We haven't seen ANYTHING YET! On the odd chance Obama doesn't get us all killed... Wait till
Hillary gets elected! O.O
David -> Mike Bittinger
I think that Obama is keeping us out of war. I also think he is doing it mainly because we
can't afford it with the economy the way it is and the increase in US multinationals that are
moving their base of operation to countries with practically no cooperate taxes. The US economy
just can't afford to pay for another war. The next President can fight it out with Russia. As
for China, I think that all the bashing they got from their neighbors made them see the light.
We will see if they learned their lesson or not in the next year or so. Their alignment with
Russian will not be militarily but will be only to secure sources of energy and markets for
their products. China is too dependent on the US to cause any serious trouble, and the Chinese
know understand this point perfectly.
Timur
Title should say: "US narcissist foreign policies drove others away."
roadwish
UNDERSTANDING THE Ukrainian crisis requires to watch this :
and not to whitewash Americans foreighn policy ( supporting jihadist and alqaeda in Syria
and neo nazis in Ukraine ) , just look at the map and NATO bases that are getting closer and
closer to China and Russia . Neo - cons gambled BIG trying to take Crimea for themselves and
nearly started ww3 .
denniscerasoli
Excellent article and it should be read by everyone not just the Administration.There is
no question that Putin will not be bullied and the crisis in Ukraine could have and should have
been avoided and w should have never backed the coup.I have posted many times that Putin didn't
have his eye on Crimea and was surprised by the coup.And I never thought that Putin was trying
to restore the Soviet Union as he himself called Stalin a tyrant but he did want to restore
Russia to a measure of significance in the eyes of the world, no surprise.The big danger right
now for America is that there are many even some friends who would like the dollar to be devalued
because America has arrogantly used the dollar as a tool for blackmail, lets face it what is,is.If
this were to happen it would change our lives dramatically and not for the good and there are
already plans in place among the Russians, Chinese,Iran just to mention a few and it may very
well succeed.
Alex
It is simply disgusting and almost unbelievable that some one can called U.S peaceful and
almost Victim of the PUTIN...Jesus CHRIST..Like that Serbia 1999, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003,
Libya Attempt in Syria, and before that , All around South American installing of worst Dictators
on the planets, Vietnam etccc...from this Column some ALIEN can conclude how America is one
peaceful country which never ever will be capable to be involved in any kind of war. POOR peaceful
Americans...
scott
Let's face it. The Zionist NWO thugs; Israel, United States, Great Britain are pushing the
envelope. They want war. They will forge ahead hell or high water to accomplish their satanic
dream.
Tomtom
A long, meandering, circular, and ultimately self-contradicting essay that goes a long way
to go nowhere at all. The EU, NATO,US (CIA et al) by way of fomenting the soft overthrow of
a corrupt Russian puppet government have achieved their objective in this "conflict". The EU
has a new 3rd world labor pool in western Ukraine. Russia continues its decline and as it does
its aging nukes continue to be the most pressing worry.
...Sanctions have so far done nothing but consolidate domestic support for him and his Ukraine
policy. Truly damaging economic restrictions would foment more anti-Western (and, specifically,
anti-American) hostility and strengthen Russians' conviction-generated by the virulent propaganda
streaming forth endlessly over Kremlin-controlled airwaves-that the West is ganging up on Russia
and bent on destroying it. Indeed, this perception is already widespread, and has taken root among
many Russians who were previously indifferent to politics or hostile to Putin, whose popularity
now stands at 87 percent.
The military measures the act proposes are positively dangerous. Providing Western arms, intelligence,
and military advisors to Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova-all of which are clashing or have clashed
with Russia-would make possible scenarios hitherto unimaginable. If American-made bombs or bullets
supplied to Ukraine, for example, end up killing Russian troops, or if American intelligence helps
Ukraine score significant victories against Russian-backed separatists, Putin would have to respond
or risk appearing weak. Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine have never formed part of a Western political,
military, or economic alliance, though they have participated in NATO's symbolic Partnership for
Peace program. With the exception of Georgia, they do, however, belong to the Russia-dominated Commonwealth
of Independent States. Just what these countries would bring to the United States and NATO besides
trouble is hard to see.
Beyond the Russian Aggression Prevention Act, the Obama administration has shown little aptitude
for dealing with the crisis in Ukraine, imposing sanctions that have not prompted Putin to quit
Crimea or stop supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine, and spouting rhetoric that has only hardened
Putin's determination to not back down.
The way out of this standoff lies in dialogue-realpolitik-based dialogue, the kind in which the
United States engaged in the 1970s to initiate its groundbreaking détente policy with Leonid Brezhnev's
far stronger, more troublesome, and more threatening Soviet Union. Talking to Russia would be in
keeping with how American presidents-from Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush-handled
relations with their counterparts in the Kremlin even after major acts of Soviet aggression, from
the repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 to the stationing of missiles in Cuba in 1962 to
the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in
1983. (During the Missile Crisis, John F. Kennedy imposed a U.S. Navy-enforced "quarantine" on Cuba
to prevent Soviet ships from delivering more weapons to the island, but kept talking to the Kremlin
throughout the incident.) Previous administrations understood that they had to recognize and even
accommodate, however grudgingly, Soviet interests. With the threat of nuclear war looming, they
had no choice. That threat has not by any means disappeared.
The fact remains that Russia for centuries was a major power (and may become one again). Its
"national ego" befits a country with a thousand-year past-a nation that played the dominant role
in defeating the Nazis and underwent, in the space of a few decades, a transformation from a backward
agricultural land to a nuclear superpower that launched the first satellite, dog, man, and woman
into space.
Obama's lengthy and ineffectual phone conversations with Putin (a feature of the standoff's first
months) should also be scrapped in favor of behind-the-scenes diplomacy. The staffs of the White
House and State Department need to talk quietly to their Russian counterparts about concrete, realistic
objectives that culminate in a deal with Russia that benefits all parties involved, including Ukraine.
A U.S.-Russia summit should be the goal, and presented as such to the Kremlin. I am not the first
to issue a call for an Obama-Putin summit: the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a
group established to contest the intelligence used by the Bush administration to justify its invasion
of Iraq, did
so in May.
... The United States should take Putin
at his
word that the possibility of NATO membership for Ukraine prompted him to annex Crimea in March,
and surely motivates him to support separatists in eastern Ukraine now.
Russia's concerns about NATO expansion are legitimate. The alliance, after all, was created with
one purpose: countering Soviet military might. In 2008, NATO member countries
jointly declared that
they welcomed "Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO," adding
that "these countries will become members of NATO." The prospect, however distant, of NATO troops,
tanks, missiles, and intelligence-gathering operations eventually being stationed a few hundred
miles south of Moscow, and of Russia losing access to its sole warm-water port in the Crimean city
of Sevastopol, can only alarm the Kremlin.
physicsnut -> mtbr1975
and who created this mess ? Stephen Cohen said that his contacts in the administration see
incompetence and ignorance.
Corker, McCain and Graham add to the mess.
Europe letting itself become dependent on Russian Gas and Oil put them in a bind.
Albright, Condoleeza and Bob Gates were on c-span pushing a tough stance - as if they think
it might go swimmingly, despite new currency agreements w china, being able to cut off gas,
etc
stilicho -> willallen2
At this point things will only get worse. There will be a long running insurgency in eastern
Ukraine even if the Kiev regime manages to establish a certain amount of authority.
Washington can't afford to look weak vis a vis Russia and Russia/Putin can't afford to look
weak vis a vis the U.S. Will Russia move in its humanitarian relief column, after amassing those
few hundred trucks on the Ukraine border...I think yes. Will there be friction with the Ukraine
military...yes. Will Russia then escalate with cyber attacks on Kiev, maybe sabotage operations
in /around Kiev...probably. Will the U.S. respond with condemnatory rhetoric...of course. Will
Putin, fighting for his credibility in Russia and having to protect his right flank from a possible
rightist coup, escalate by raising the stakes in another theatre, maybe dropping out of the
Iran nuclear talks, maybe signing a mutual defense treaty with Iran so as to destroy years-long
American stumbling forward to contain Iran's nuclear program...maybe. The Russians must play
the cards they have to punish America for what they see as American meddling in Ukraine.
Neither side has the political capital to be able to visibly give in to the other. If this
spirals out of control into some kind of accidental war with Russia I hope all the self righteous
hawks enjoy sitting in the nuclear rubble that can result, and remember, always, that risking
catastrophe was worth it, it was imperative that we challenge Russia on the Ukraine, it's a
matter of values.
willallen2 -> stilicho
President Obama hopefully grasps that his party is likely going to get its ass handed to
it in November, no matter what he does, and he ain't running again. Bob Corker has about as
much influence on policy towards Russia as I do, but I'm not sure Putin is outward-looking enough
to grasp this.
GusFarmer -> willallen2
I suspect Putin is far more aware of the details of US policy-making than we are of Russian
policy-making. He probably knows Corker's a fool.
But if Congress passes Corker's bill, that puts OUR policy into a major corner and severely
limits our flexibility to de-escalate this mess and demands unreasonable things from Russia.
(For example, nobody sane would pull their forces back from their own border with a civil war
raging on the other side if there's a chance it'll spill over. If Mexico exploded, I'm sure
we'd post troops to the border to contain it, just as Moscow has. Even if there were no war,
Russia has every right to station its troops anywhere within its country it wishes.)
When it comes to foreign policy, in fact, the key divide is no longer between Democrats and
Republicans. It's between the elites of both parties and their rank and file. When asked about
arming Syria's rebels, an Iran deal that allows some uranium enrichment, and whether America should
do more or less in the world, both Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly take the more dovish
view. On each question, the partisan divide is five percentage points or less.
The real gap emerges when you compare ordinary Americans to elites. According to Pew, for instance,
rank-and-file Republicans are 34 percentage points more likely to want America to do less overseas.
Rank-and-file Democrats are 31 points more likely to want America to do less. Members of the prestigious,
bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations, by contrast, are 20 points more likely to say America should
do more.
... ... ...
It's worth analyzing the current moment in historical perspective. For a century, Americans have
responded to disillusioning wars by demanding a less interventionist foreign policy. It happened
after World War 1, after Korea, after Vietnam, and it's happening again in the wake of Afghanistan
and Iraq. The difference between this moment and past ones is the role of money in politics. As
on so many issues, politicians' need to raise vast sums from the super-rich makes them ultra-responsive
to one, distinct sliver of the population and less responsive to everyone else. The way campaign
finance warps the political debate over financial regulation is well known. What we're witnessing
this year is a case study in the way it warps the foreign-policy debate as well.
... ... ...
...the elite consensus is stronger than ever, and in the run-up to 2016, that consensus-more
than public opinion-is driving the presidential debate. No wonder Americans are cynical.
Does anyone here seem notice how wrong a hawkish policy has been?
- Wrong about invading 2003 Iraq War. The Iraqis did not greet the US with flowers. More
like insurgents and IEDs. ISIS taking over may very well be an unexpected Blowback of sorts.
- Wrong about realistic prospects in Afghanistan. The outcome of invading Afghanistan has
more in common with the Soviet invasion of that same nation.
There's a ton of other examples.
Yet the elite consensus is stronger than ever, and in the run-up to
2016, that consensus-more than public opinion-is driving the
presidential debate. No wonder Americans are cynical.
If you think about it, for most of history, the political divide was always between the rich
and poor. I don't think the US ever had a "true" democracy in a sense where public opinion
versus elite opinion shaped foreign policy.
It's just that now the divide has gotten bigger and bigger before so it's more and more noticeable.
Perhaps its because the gap between the top 0.1% and the rest of us has gotten bigger and bigger
than in the previous few decades.
It may very well be that as the rich-poor gap grows, the gap between the very rich and reality
also grows. That has serious implications in the long run.
James_Blair -> NoldorElf
Look at it from their perspective. To them, Americans are nothing special and are in fact entitled
to no special consideration. In fact, there is a point of view that Americans are greedy, lazy
and enjoy an undeserved standard of living. Jimmy Carter's famous 1979 malaise speech was an
open articulation of a long held beliefs among the elite.
To the elite, the question isn't the wealth gap between billionaires and the middle class in
the US, the question is the wealth gap between the American middle class and Mexicans or Chinese
or Vietnamese or take your pick of most countries.
From that point of view, the problem is not a wealth gap with the rich, but rather a wealth
gap with the rest of the world that must be addressed. Wages and living standards need to be
equalized downward.
The thinking goes that yes, a Warren Buffet is wealthy. But he is just one man using a small
amount of global resources. he uses his wealth productively for the whole world. On the other
hand, an American manufacturing worker is squandering massive amounts of the world's total resources
living an unearned and undeserved lifestyle.
stefanstackhouse -> James_Blair
Close. It is more accurate to say that in removing global trade barriers, labor markets
will inevitably and inexorably converge toward a global mean. That's good news for Mexicans
and Chinese and Vietnamese, bad news for Americans. The global elites, however, looking only
at their own interests, fail to see any real problem with this. They benefit fabulously from
the opening up of global markets.
This isn't a conspiracy, and the decline in the fortunes of non-elite Americans wasn't particularly
an end goal; we're just incidental collateral damage.
James_Blair -> stefanstackhouse
its not good news for anyone. You look at the factories in China where people are used like
machines and where death has become so preferable to life that buildings have to be surrounded
with suicide nets.
You go down to the industrial regions in Mexico along the US border and its just unbelievable
how bad things are. One American I knew who occasionally went to a factory producing wiring
harnesses down there described how it was necessary to stay away from the windows in the factory
due to snipers.
Then there is Vietnam where most of the country has been sold as slave labor to shoe companies
and other western interests.
In all these places, the common theme is that the few are doing better while many are not
doing better at all. I worry very much about the situation in China. At a certain level, the
Chinese elite don't consider the situation stable and all plan to get it when things finally
blow. You have people working in jobs where there is literally no future and where death is
becoming preferable to life. That's classically how revolutions happen.
And just to be clear, I'm not talking about conspiracies. And people have plenty of financial
motives for trade policy. But the views I articulated about rich & poor and how some rich people
view the real gap as being between undeserving americans and the rest of the world is quite
real. But its more about how they justify themselves and their position in society and the consequences
of their actions.
The war in Ukraine became predictable when the great Muslim Brotherhood Project in Syria failed
during the summer of 2012. It became unavoidable in December 2012, when the European Union and Russia
failed to agree on the EU's 3rd Energy Package. The geopolitical dynamics which are driving the
war in Ukraine were known in the early 1980s.
Hundred years after the shots in Sarajevo ignited WW I, Europe is again being driven towards
disaster. Hundred years ago the presence of true statesmen could have prevented the war. Today many
of the selected front figures of western democracies dress up in pilot uniforms while they hardly
have the qualifications needed for a job as flight attendant.
The handling of the tragedy surrounding the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 prompted Malaysian
PM Najib Razak to leash out at those behind the geopolitical chess game that led to the death of
the 298 on board the Boeing 777-200. Showing true statesmanship, PM
Najib Razak said:
"As a leader, there has never been an occasion as heart-breaking as what I went through
yesterday. Wives losing their husbands, fathers losing their children. Imagine their feelings
from such a great loss. … This is what happens when there is a conflict, whatever conflict that
cannot be resolved through negotiations, with peace. In the end, who becomes the victim"?
The War in Ukraine Began in Libya and Syria.
In 2007 the discovery of the world's largest known reserves of natural gas, shared by Qatar and
Iran, led to the Great Muslim Brotherhood Project that was sold under the trade mark "The Arab Spring".
A joint Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian pipeline project was supposed to transport Iranian gas from the
PARS gas fields in the Persian Gulf to Syria's eastern Mediterranean coast and further on to continental
Europe. It was this development that played midwife to the birth of the Great Muslim Brotherhood
Project.
The completion of the Iran – Iraq – Syria pipeline would have caused a cohort of developments
which were unacceptable to the US, UK, Israel and Qatar. Several continental European countries,
including Germany, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic saw much more favorably at it. Together with the
Russian gas which the EU received via Ukraine and the North Stream pipeline, the EU would have been
able to cover some 50 percent of its requirements for natural gas via Iranian and Russian sources.
It would be naive to assume that Israel was not gravely concerned about the prospect of Iran
becoming one of the European Union's primary sources of natural gas. Energy security concerns influence
foreign relations and foreign policy. EU – Israeli relations and the influence Tehran would have
attained with regard to the EU's position on Palestine and the Middle East are no exception to that
rule.
The US and UK were not interested in competition to the Nabucco project. Qatar, the main center
of gravity with regard to the international Muslim Brotherhood, eyed its chance to become a regional
power to be recogned with and sent a 10 billion US dollar check to Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmed
Davotoglu. The money was reportedly earmarked, to be spent on preparing the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
for the Great Project.
An additional dimension that was overlooked by many, if not most analysts, was that the US/UK
never would allow Russian – continental European relations to be dominated by an interdependence
that had some 50 percent of continental Europe's energy security at its heart. To explain that point,
allow me to refer to a conversation the author has had with a top-NATO admiral from a northern European
country during a day of sailing on a sailing yacht in the early 1980s. Discussing European security
issues, out of the reach of curious ears and microphones he said that (paraphrased):
"American colleagues at the Pentagon told me, unequivocally, that the US and UK never would allow
European – Soviet relations to develop to such a degree that they would challenge the US/UK's political,
economic or military primacy and hegemony on the European continent. Such a development will be
prevented by all necessary means, if necessary by provoking a war in central Europe".
It is safe to assume that the discontinuation of the USSR with help of the US and UK has not
significantly changed the principle premises of this doctrine and that it is still valid today.
By 2009 the implementation of the Great Muslim Brotherhood Project was already in high gear.
The former French Foreign Minister
Roland Dumas recalled during an appearance on the French TV Channel LPC in July 2013. (audio
recording).
"I'm going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on
other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something
in Syria. … This was in Britain, not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into
Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer Minister of Foreign Affairs, if I would like
to participate. Naturally, I refused, I said I am French, that does not interest me. …
" This does not make sense. … There are some sides who have the desire to destroy Arab States,
like what happened in Libya before, particularly given Syria's special relations with Russia., …(emphasis
added)…That if an agreement is not reached, then Israel will attack and destroy the governments
that stand against Israel".
Note Dumas' reference to Libya. Note that the statement came after NATO abused UN Security Council
Resolution 1973 (2011) on Libya to implement the Great Muslim Brotherhood Project in that country.
The then U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO Ivo H. Daalder and then NATO Supreme Allied Commander
Europe and Commander of the U.S. European Command James G. Stavridis published an article in the
March/April 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs, calling NATO's "intervention" in Libya "A teachable moment
and model for future interventions".
The statement was repeated at NATO's 25th Summit in Chicago that year. As
Ivo H. Daalder also explained in a Forestal
Lecure that year, there was a need for a new warfare, special warfare. Traditional conventional
war had become impossible. Moreover,
Libya was necessary as a hub for the shipment of arms and the recruiting and training of mercenaries
for Syria, Mali, and beyond.
Defeat in Syria Made the Ukraine War Unavoidable.
In June and July 2012 some 20,000 NATO mercenaries who had been recruited and trained in Libya
and then staged in the Jordanian border town Al-Mafraq, launched two massive campaigns aimed at
seizing the Syrian city of Aleppo. Both campaigns failed and the "Libyan Brigade" was literally
wiped out by the Syrian Arab Army.
It was after this decisive defeat that Saudi Arabia began a massive campaign for the recruitment
of jihadi fighters via the network of the Muslim Brotherhoods evil twin sister Al-Qaeda.
The International Crisis Group responded by publishing its report
"Tentative Jihad". Washington had to make an attempt to distance itself "politically" from the
"extremists". Plan B, the chemical weapons plan was hedged but it became obvious that the war on
Syria was not winnable anymore. This, and nothing else was why the British parliament turned down
the bombing of Syria in August 2013.
The
war on Ukraine had become predictable from that point onwards and the timing of the developments
in Ukraine during 2012 and 2013 strongly suggest that plans to overthrow the Yanukovich government
and to aim at a long-term destabilization of Ukraine were launched after July 2012.
There was one last opportunity to turn the tide with regards to Ukraine in late 2012, during
negotiations about the European Union's 3rd Energy Package. Relations between Russia and the EU
were stressed by a primarily British-sponsored initiative within the EU that was targeting Russia.
The "EU" or UK/US should not accept that a major energy provider like Russia or Gazprom had the
majority ownership over both the gas and the transportation System.
On 21 December 2012 the leaders of the 27 EU member states and Russia held a summit in Brussels
but failed to resolve the issue. It was from this point onward that the war in Ukraine had become
unavoidable, which means that it was from here on, that powerful lobbies in the US and UK became
hellbent on starting a 4th generation war in Ukraine. On
December 22, 2012, nsnbc published the article "Russia – E.U. Meeting in Brussels: Risk of Middle
East and European War Increased". The December 2012 article stated
"The sudden pullout of the Ukraine on Tuesday is by energy insiders with whom the author
consulted perceived as yet another Ukrainian, US and UK backed attempt to force the expansion
of NATO and to drive a wedge between an increased integration of the Russian and E.U. Economies.
As it will become obvious below, it is related to an aggressive attempt to save the value of
the petro dollar".
By February 9, 2013, relations between Russia and core NATO members had deteriorated so much
over Syria and the lack of convergence in energy issues, that Russia's Ambassador to NATO, Alexander
Grutchko said:
"Someone here in Brussels made a most profound point by saying that if you are holding a hammer,
you should not think that every emerging problem is a nail. We think the world has ample opportunity
to engage in energy cooperation and to ensure energy security without making use of military-political
organizations as an instrument".
There were not many who at that time understood the bearing of the Russian NATO Ambassador's
words.
On February 21 the Ukrainian parliament was seized by masked gunmen. The president was removed
from office in a vote held in the presence of gunmen. One of the first official statements of the
new powers at be was that the Russian language would no longer be accepted as the second official
language in the predominantly Russian speaking eastern regions of Ukraine.
The statement was bound to and didn't fail to elicit a response that would tear Ukraine apart.
On February 22, 2013, some 3,500 governors from southern and eastern Ukrainian regions convened
in Kharkov and rejected the legality of the putchist parliament and any of the laws it adopted.
Was the tragedy surrounding MAS Flight MH17 another Sarajevo moment and will it be used to throw
an additional spanner into attempt to peacefully integrate the Russian and European economies?
Michael Emmerson, associate senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies
suggests "After MH17, the EU must act against Putin and stop importing Russian gas".
Dr. Christof Lehmann an independent political consultant on conflict and conflict
resolution and the founder and editor in chief of nsnbc, exclusively
for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook".
I find it very disquieting that so few among the West European and American commentators on the
Ukraine crisis, private or public, seem concerned that the United States has started this affair,
and that it is not inconceivable that it may end in a war.
Worse yet, Washington's demonization of Vladimir Putin has been so successful in the American
press and public, and its secrecy about the American role in Kiev, has left the public in the United
States and in NATO Europe convinced that this has all been the result of a Russian strategy of aggressive
expansion into Ukraine, and not a bungled and essentially American attempt to annex Ukraine to NATO
and the European Union, and to undermine the domestic political position of President Putin - which
all has gone badly and dangerously wrong.
The Ukrainian coup d'état in February was prepared by Washington. Why else were the State Department
official in charge of Europe and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, together with officials of the
European Union and a number of intelligence people present, in company with the "moderate" Ukrainians
programmed to take over the government after the planned overthrow of the corrupt (but elected)
President Viktor Yanukovych? Even President Obama, in Mexico for a "summit", was waiting to supply
a video feed speeding the overthrown Mr. Yanukovych on his way, and congratulating the "democratic"
victors.
But then, as the night wore on, things got out of hand. The riot police and the opposition forces
went out of control. In a video made at the time, the American candidate for prime minister, Arseniy
Yatsenyuk, said desperately, "Ukraine is in a big mess."
Even though the immediate mess was eventually sorted out, and Mr. Yatsenyuk ("Yats" to Secretary
Nuland) was soon (briefly) the prime minister -- and immediately was welcomed to Washington to dine
at the White House with the American president -- one must ask what was accomplished by all this
that did not discredit the United States and the EU, and draw towards Ukraine and the American troops
today deployed in Poland and the Baltics, and towards NATO itself, the storm-clouds of a useless
war?
It is the latest (and probably last) step in a foolish American and European betrayal of the
promise given to Mikhail Gorbachev by President George H.W. Bush, at the time of the unification
of Germany, that if the Soviet Union agreed to a newly united Germany's assuming the Federal
Republic's existing place as a member of NATO, no NATO troops would be stationed in what formerly
had been the Communist German Democratic Republic.
The deal was done, and at the time was a cause for congratulations on all sides, since it removed
the principal obstacle to Germany reunion, considered desirable (and inevitable) by the western
countries, and as inevitable, given Germany's history, by Moscow as well.
This agreement was undermined during the Clinton presidency by measures that first gave the former
Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe what might be described as cadet NATO membership (the "Partnership
for Peace").
Agreement to actual NATO admission came as part of the European Union Maastricht treaty in 1991,
and in 1999 Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia (soon to become two states) became NATO members,
and in 2004 the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria.
Washington and the EU then turned their attention to the Caucasus and Ukraine. As early as 1987,
the EU's "Europe 2000" plan for expansion named Ukraine, Moldavia, and Belarus as eventual candidates
for EU membership.
Georgia was the first to be invited to prepare for NATO membership, and took this as a sign that
NATO and the U.S. would underwrite its military recovery of its "lost lands," and launched an attack
on South Ossetia. Russia's patience was exhausted. The Russian army promptly defeated the Georgians
and took over the Ossetian statelet, and nearby Abkhazia as well. Washington and the NATO allies
voiced loud outrage. But it was Georgia that had started this little war of national revenge.
NATO was, and remains, an alliance effectively under complete American control. Its arrival on
the frontier of the former Soviet Union was viewed by the new Russia of Vladimir Putin with disquiet.
This was not supposed to have happened.
It would take a closer knowledge than I possess of the workings of American government to explain
why it decided to take control of post-1990 Central and Eastern Europe, following Communism's collapse.
For Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states, Hungary and Romania, who suffered badly
under the Communists, NATO membership obviously offered reassurance.
But for Georgia and other states in the Caucasus, and for Ukraine, NATO membership amounted to
an annexation by NATO of nations formerly among the historical territories of Soviet or Czarist
Russia. Why should the United States and the original states of the European Union - western, Roman
Catholic or Protestant Christian, Atlantic-oriented states - decide to dismantle historical Russia
by taking over nations once part of Russia itself (and in the Ukranian case had been the instrument
of Russia's conversion to Christianity), or had been colonies, some of them Muslim, of the Czars.
That, in any case, is where we are now, and Russia's reaction is not simply that of an aggressive
and authoritarian President Putin - as the West likes to make out - but the hostility of a significant
part of the Russian population, which only now has recovered its national self-confidence and ambition.
What was the intent of all this? To create an east-west civil war in Ukraine? Why is that in
the American interest? Russia's intervention in such a futile war handed it back Crimea, but also
apparent responsibility for some fool's shooting down a passenger airliner.
Dmitri Trenin, Director of the Carnegie Center in Moscow, recently offered the following observations:
Vladimir Putin's essential requirements are:
NATO excluded from Ukraine.
No U.S. troops on Russia's borders.
Protection and preservation of the Russian cultural identity of the south and east of Ukraine.
Keeping Crimea Russian.
Putin won't yield. Any serious concession to the U.S. would cause him to fall from power, and
produce disorder in Russia.
For the future, he considers the U.S. in decline. He does not look to alliance with a rising
China but to Germany, which he sees as the coming leader of a powerful Europe.
What is Barack Obama's interest in all this? What about the Washington hawks responsible for
what is happening? Why have they done this without an explanation to the American people?
There is only one possible solution now: negotiated truce on the Ukraine frontier, followed by
Russo-American and EU agreement on the permanent existence of an independent and autonomous Ukraine.
The alternative could be major war.
Former Congressman Ron Paul said the US knows 'more than it is telling' about the Malaysian aircraft
that crashed in eastern Ukraine last month, killing 298 people on board and seriously damaging US-Russian
relations in the process.
In an effort to inject some balance of opinion, not to mention pure
sanity, into the ongoing debate over what happened to Malaysian Flight MH17, Ron Paul is convinced
the US government is withholding information on the catastrophe.
"The US government has grown strangely quiet on the accusation that it was Russia or her
allies that brought down the Malaysian airliner with a Buk anti-aircraft missile," Paul said
on his news
website on Thursday.
Paul's comments are in sharp contrast to the echo chamber of one-sided opinion inside Western
mainstream media, which has almost unanimously blamed anti-Kiev militia for bringing down the commercial
airline. Incredibly, in many cases Washington had nothing to show as evidence to incriminate Russian
rebels aside for references to social media.
"We've seen that there were heavy weapons moved from Russia to Ukraine, that they have moved
into the hands of separatist leaders,"said White
House spokesman Josh Earnest. "And according to social media reports, those weapons include
the SA-11 [Buk missile] system."
In another instance, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf
told reporters"the Russians intend to deliver heavier and more powerful rocket launchers to the separatist
forces in Ukraine, and have evidence that Russia is firing artillery from within Russia to attack
Ukrainian military positions." When veteran AP reporter Matthew Lee asked for proof, he was
to be disappointed.
"I can't get into the sources and methods behind it," Harf responded. "I can't tell
you what the information is based on." Lee said the allegations made by the State Department
on Ukraine have fallen far short of "definitive proof."
Just days after US intelligence officials
admitted
they had no conclusive evidence to prove Russia was behind the downing of the airliner, Kiev published
satellite images as 'proof' it didn't deploy anti-aircraft batteries around the MH17 crash site.
However, these images have altered time-stamps and are from the days after the MH17 tragedy, the
Russian Defense Ministry
revealed,
fully discrediting the Ukrainian claims.
In yet another yet-to-be explained event, Russian
military detected
a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jet approaching the MH17 Boeing on the day of the catastrophe. No acceptable
explanation has ever been given by Kiev as to why this fighter aircraft was so close to the doomed
passenger jet moments before it was brought down.
"[We] would like to get an explanation as to why the military jet was flying along a civil
aviation corridor at almost the same time and at the same level as a passenger plane," Russian
Lieutenant-General Andrey Kartopolov demanded days after the crash.
Paul has slammed the United States, despite its arsenal of surveillance technologies at its disposal,
for its failure to provide a single grain of evidence to solve the mystery of the Malaysian airliner.
"It's hard to believe that the US, with all of its spy satellites available for monitoring
everything in Ukraine, that precise proof of who did what and when is not available," the two-time
presidential candidate said.
"Too bad we can't count on our government to just tell us the truth and show us the evidence,"
Paul added. "I'm convinced that it knows a lot more than it's telling us."
Although no sufficient evidence has been presented to prove that the anti-Kiev militia was responsible
for the downing of the international flight, such an inconvenient oversight has not stopped the
United States and Europe from slapping economic sanctions and travel bans against Russia.
Moscow hit back, saying it would
place a ban
on agricultural imports from the United States and the European Union. Russia's tit-for-tat ban
will certainly be felt, as food and agricultural imports from the US amounted to $1.3 billion last
year, according to the US Department of Agriculture. In 2013, meanwhile, the EU's agricultural exports
to Russia totaled 11.8 billion euros ($15.8 billion).
After the crash, Ron Paul was one of a few voices calling for calm as US officials were pointing
fingers without a shred of evidence to support their claims. Paul has not been afraid to say the
painfully obvious things the US media, for any number of reasons, cannot find the courage to articulate.
"They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported
protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych," Paul
said. "Without US-sponsored 'regime change,' it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed
in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened."
Paul also found it outrageous that Western media, parroting the government line, has reported
that the Malaysian flight must have been downed by "Russian-backed separatists," because
the BUK missile that reportedly brought down the aircraft was Russian made.
"They will not report that the Ukrainian government also uses the exact same Russian-made
weapons," he emphasized.
Bookworm Doe 10.08.2014 17:43
Too bad he didn't mention the OSCE observer
Michael Bociurkiw who was on scene within hours of it being shot down, and what he saw
and photographed conclusive evidence that---the Malaysian plane had been hit by very, very strong
machine-gun fire, not by ground-based missile-fire.
Both sides of the cockpit where the pilots sat were riddled with huge bullet holes. This
is so disgusting, and to think the US has been behind Kiev's planning every step of the way
is repulsive to me as an American.
What if the Cockpit Audio Recorder was full of non-stop frightening talk? Why haven't we
heard it?
Russia and the West are at war – over fruits, veggies, pork, and bank loans. The cause is Ukraine,
a vast emptiness formerly unknown to the western world, but now deemed a vital national security
interest worthy of a risking a very scary war.
Economic embargos such as those launched by the US against Russia may seem relatively harmless.
They are not. Trade sanctions are a form of strategic warfare that is sometimes followed by bullets
and shells.
Think, for good example, of the 1940 US embargo against Japan that led Tokyo's fateful decision
to go to war rather than face slow, economic strangulation. How many Americans know that President
Roosevelt closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping to enforce demands that Tokyo get out of
Manchuria and China?
Frighteningly, today, there are senior officials in Washington and Moscow who are actually considering
a head on clash in Ukraine between Russian forces and NATO – which is an extension of US military
power.
Intensifying attacks by Ukrainian government forces (quietly armed and financed by the US) against
pro-Russian separatists and civilian targets in eastern Ukraine are increasing the danger that Moscow
may intervene militarily to protect Ukraine's ethnic Russian minority.
A full-scale military clash could begin with a Russian-declared "no-fly" zone over the eastern
Ukraine such as the US imposed over Iraq. Moscow's aim would be to stop the bombing and shelling
of Ukrainian rebel cities by Kiev's air force.
Russia's leader, President Vladimir Putin, is under growing popular pressure to stop the killing
of pro-Russian Ukrainians – who were Russian citizens until 1991.
The US just launched air strikes against northern Iraq, ostensibly to protect Yazidis, a small
religious cult based on Zoroastrianism, which many Iraqis call devil worshipers. Though these strikes
were clearly aimed at bolstering US-backed Kurds against the advancing Islamic State forces, Washington
called them a humanitarian attack to protect Iraqi Christians and Yazidis – perfectly in keeping
with the administration's claim to be waging humanitarian warfare.
NATO could quickly deploy its potent air power against Russian aircraft. US and NATO aircraft
flying from new bases in Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland could seriously challenge the Russian Air
Force over the Russia-Ukraine border region. More US warplanes would be rushed into Eastern Europe.
Russian air defenses are strong and its air bases are close to the sphere of action. Still, NATO
air power has a technological superiority over the Russian Air Force and better trained pilots.
On the ground, Russia has a slight advantage. It has 16,000-18,000 troops on the Ukraine border
made up of mechanized infantry, armor, mobile air defense and artillery. A competent but small force,
and hardly a menace to Europe, as the pro-war media howl. Compare this small number of troops to
the Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front alone in 1944, made up of six armies and thousands of tanks and heavy
guns.
Russia could fight border skirmishes but certainly not retake Ukraine with this paltry force.
Russia's once 200-division army which boasted some 50,000 tanks is today a shadow of its past: 205,000
active soldiers and 80,000 indifferent reservists spread over the world's largest nation. Russia,
as always, has excellent heavy artillery and good tanks, but nothing compared to WWII when Soviet
152mm guns and rocket batteries were lined up wheel-to-wheel for kilometers.
Any attempt by NATO to capture Crimea would likely be defeated by Soviet air, naval, and land
forces. The constricted, shallow Black Sea could prove a death trap for US warships. Sevastopol
(with Leningrad and Stalingrad) was named a Hero City of the Soviet Union for its heroic defense
in WWII
Ukraine's cobbled together army, about 64,000 men, suffers from poor training, logistical problems,
and weak leadership. During Soviet days, it numbered more than 700,000 with the cutting edge of
Russian weapons. Today, the army is stiffened by foreign mercenaries and far-rightists from Kiev.
Even so, it could not stand up to Russia's better-armed, better-equipped troops.
What about NATO? In 1970, the US Army had about 710,000 soldiers in Europe, mostly based in Germany.
Today, US has only 27,500 German-based troops left, largely non-combat support units. At best, the
US could probably assemble two weak combat brigades – about 5,500 men total – to rush to Ukraine.
The rest of US forces are based in Afghanistan, Kuwait, the Gulf, South Korea, and Japan, or at
stateside. Moving them to Europe would take about six months.
But the US still retains large airbases in Germany that could support military intervention in
Ukraine. Lately, small US and NATO contingents have been quietly inserted into East Europe and the
Baltic region – large enough to spark a war, but too small to win one.
Since the end of the Cold War, the US armed forces, NATO, and Russia's military have been sharply
reduced by budget cuts. Until the Ukraine crisis, there was almost no prospect of war in Europe.
Ardor for war among Europeans and Russians is very low.
Britain, now a toothless old lion, would support the US in Ukraine with a few men and warplanes;
so would France, Denmark, Poland, Canada, and Holland, but to a limited or even token degree. Germany
and Turkey, NATO's two heavy hitters, want to avoid any conflict with Russia and might well stand
aside. They both do very large business with Russia and are unhappy about the manufactured Ukraine
crisis.
So any military clash in Ukraine would initially be limited in scope and intensity. But a confrontation
could quickly escalate into a dangerous crisis. The Cold War taught that nuclear–armed powers must
never fight directly, only through proxies.
Nothing is worth the risk of nuclear war, even a limited one. Let the Ukrainians sort out their
differences by referendum. On the 100th anniversary of World War I, we again see our leaders playing
with matches.
Reprinted with author's permission from his
website.
The West is demonising President Putin when what set this crisis in motion were recklessly provocative
moves to absorb Ukraine into the EU
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said: 'The modern Poles look at Russia today, they look at
Vladimir Putin – and of course they want to bury themselves as deeply as possible in the comforting
bosom of a German-led Europe.'
However dangerous this crisis becomes, it is the West which has brought it about; and our hysterical
vilifying of Vladimir Putin is more reminiscent of that fateful mood in the summer of 1914 than
we should find it comfortable to contemplate.
How odd it has been to read all those accounts of Europe sleepwalking into war in the summer
of 1914, and how such madness must never happen again, against the background of the most misrepresented
major story of 2014 – the gathering crisis between Russia and the West over Ukraine, as we watch
developments in that very nasty civil war, with 20,000 Russian troops massing on the border.
For months the West has been demonising President Putin, with figures such as the Prince of Wales
and Hillary Clinton comparing him with Hitler, oblivious to the fact that what set this crisis in
motion were those recklessly provocative moves to absorb Ukraine into the EU.
There was never any way that this drive to suck the original cradle of Russian identity into
the Brussels empire was not going to provoke Moscow to react – not least due to the prospect that
its only warm-water ports, in Crimea, might soon be taken over by Nato.
And still scarcely reported here have been the billions of dollars and euros the West has
been more or less secretively pouring into Ukraine to promote the cause: not just to prop up its
bankrupt government and banking system, but to fund scores of bogus "pro-European" groups making
up what the EU calls "civil society".
When the European Commission told a journalist that, between 2004 and 2013, these groups
had only been given €31 million, my co-author Richard North was soon reporting on his EU Referendum
blog that the true figure, shown on the commission's own "Financial Transparency" website, was €496 million.
The 200 front organisations receiving this colossal sum have such names as "Center for European
Co-operation" or the "Donetsk Regional Public Organisation with Hope for the Future" (the very first
page shows how many are in eastern Ukraine or Crimea, with their largely Russian populations).
One of my readers heard from a Ukrainian woman working in Britain that her husband back home
earns €200 a month as an electrician, but is paid another €200 a month, from a German bank,
to join demonstrations such as the one last March when hundreds of thousands – many doubtless entirely
sincere – turned out in Kiev to chant "Europe, Europe" at Baroness Ashton, the EU's visiting "foreign
minister".
However dangerous this crisis becomes, it is the West which has brought it about; and our
hysterical vilifying of Russia is more reminiscent of that fateful mood in the summer of 1914 than
we should find it comfortable to contemplate.
Whos this "WE"? Seeing that this nation has no say in the matter of Eu policy .Nor will it
as it is the antithesis of any UK foreign policy of any merit .
That the Eu by its very nature is a great trouble maker and will be the cause of the loss
of any peace in Europe waking up to what it was doing in the Ukraine now is a bit too late as
too the fact that most media coverage was FOR such moves while it was deluded/deceived by Russia's
hibernation.
Its method of bribing nations to join it is its basic flaw and underlines its corrupting
influence as too its economic folly. as all the nations willing to be bought will soon find
out the true cost of joining this new immaculate conception.
c1sp -> G Blezard
"WE", unfortunately, is the USA and it's colonies -- which we, the UK, have been
reduced to. The EU is simply doing the US' bidding, because that is what it has been created
for.
knave27
A worthwhile article from the Telegraph for a change. But the problem is that Putin with
his stupid decision not to launch an invasion in the East of Ukraine to protect the population
from the genocide ordered by Barry O' Kongo and executed by the freakshow of thugs and psychopaths
that is the Kiev regime, has allowed the West to twist all facts, shoot down planes, hire snipers
to shoot at both sides and yet Putin gets all the blame.
Without decisive action to end the crisis, Putin left himself open and vulnerable to the
manipulation of the west that peaked when the Ukrainians, following orders from the White House,
shot down MH 17 and launched a propaganda campaign against him from which he won't recover.
Choosing to go soft on Ukraine and the west only made things worse for him and for Russia,
refusing to come to terms with the fact that the west will push to the end to remove him and
Russia from the picture. Had he closed the open wound that is Eastern Ukraine none of this would
have happened, and the wound will bleed him and Russia to death. So if anything, the Ukraine
crisis proved Putin's incompetence and that his appeasement policy towards the west has failed.
Richard N
How refreshing to see a one in a thousand articles in the mainstream media that is not pumping
out whatever lies and propaganda narrative is most recently issued by the US media control system.
How disgusting it is that our entire Western media - with very, very few exceptions such
as Mr. Booker's article above - is now nothing at all to do with a free press - but is just
a giant, centrally-controlled propaganda machine for the US.
Most Europeans oppose the anti-Russian sanctions and the ramping-up of the anti-Russian narrative
in the entire Western media machine, all done to try to secure the success of the American land
grab of Ukraine.
But despite this, every Western government - all US controlled puppets, of course - is gung-hu
supporting this vilification of Putin and Russia, totally ignoring the opposition to all this
warmongering amongst their own citizens.
I hope people remember the slavish obedience to the war-mongering US by all the liblabcon
puppet leaders when the next election comes.
evad666 -> Richard N
One really should not blame the US when it was the idiots in the EU Commission who triggered
this crisis. After all they need a constant stream of new entrants to the EU to prop up their
little Ponzi scheme.
I see that some people are mentioning the downing of MH17 in the comments on here. This is a
run down of all the (credible) evidence that has been presented so far as to who and what shot
down Malaysian Flight MH17
http://ian56.blogspot.com/2014...
Contrary to the Obama administration's public claims blaming eastern Ukrainian rebels and Russia
for the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, some U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded
that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces
were to blame, according to a source briefed on these findings.
This judgment – at odds with what President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have
expressed publicly – is based largely on the absence of U.S. government evidence that Russia supplied
the rebels with a Buk anti-aircraft missile system that would be needed to hit a civilian jetliner
flying at 33,000 feet, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Despite U.S. spy satellites positioned over eastern Ukraine, U.S. intelligence agencies have
released no images of a Buk system being transferred by Russians to rebel control, shipped into
Ukraine, deployed into firing position and then being taken back to Russia. Though the Obama administration
has released other images of Ukraine taken by U.S. spy satellites, the absence of any photos of
a rebel-controlled Buk missile battery has been the dog not barking in the strident case that Official
Washington has made in blaming the rebels and Russia for the July 17 shoot-down that killed 298
people.
Given the size of these missile batteries – containing four 16-foot-long missiles – the absence
of this evidence prompted caution among U.S. intelligence analysts even as senior U.S. officials
and the U.S. mainstream media rushed to judgment blaming the rebels and Russians.
In making that case, Kerry and other senior officials relied on claims made by the Ukrainian
government along with items posted on "social media." These snippets of "evidence" included ambiguous
remarks attributed to rebels who may have initially thought the shoot-down was another of their
successful attacks on lower-flying Ukrainian military aircraft but who later insisted that they
had not fired on the Malaysian plane and lacked the longer-range Buk missiles needed to reach above
30,000 feet.
If the U.S. intelligence analysts are correct – that the rebels and Russia are likely not responsible
– the chief remaining suspect would be the Ukrainian government, which does possess Buk anti-aircraft
missiles and reportedly had two fighter jets in the vicinity of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 at the
time of the shoot-down.
Some independent analyses of the initial evidence from the crash site suggest the jetliner may
have been
destroyed by an air-to-air attack, not by an anti-aircraft missile fired from the ground. Yet,
the working hypothesis of the U.S. intelligence analysts is that a Ukrainian military Buk battery
and the jetfighters may have been operating in collusion as they hunted what they thought was a
Russian airliner, possibly even the plane carrying President Vladimir Putin on a return trip from
South America, the source said.
The source added that the U.S. intelligence analysis does not implicate top Ukrainian officials,
such as President Petro Poroshenko or Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, suggesting that the attack
may have been the work of more extremist factions, possibly even one of the Ukrainian oligarchs
who have taken an aggressive approach toward prosecuting the war against the ethnic Russian rebels
in the east.
Obviously, a successful shoot-down of a Russian plane, especially one carrying Putin, could have
been a major coup for the Kiev regime, which ousted Russian ally, President Viktor Yanukovych, last
February touching off the civil war. Some prominent Ukrainian politicians, such as ex-Prime Minister
Yulia Tymoshenko, have expressed the desire to kill Putin.
"It's about time we grab our guns and kill, go kill those damn Russians together with their leader,"
Tymoshenko said in an intercepted
phone call in March, according to a leak published in the Russian press and implicitly confirmed
by Tymoshenko.
The Shoot-Down Mystery
The Malaysia Airlines plane, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was not expected to be over
the eastern part of Ukraine on the afternoon of July 17, but was rerouted to avoid bad weather.
The plane was nearing Russian airspace when it was shot down.
Some early speculation had been that the Ukrainian military might have mistaken the plane for
a Russian spy plane and attacked it in a scenario similar to the Soviet shoot-down of Korean Airlines
Flight 007 in 1983 after misidentifying it as a U.S. spy plane.
In the two-plus weeks since the Ukrainian air disaster, there have been notable gaps between
the more measured approach taken by U.S. intelligence analysts and the U.S. politicians and media
personalities who quickly rushed to the judgment blaming the rebels and Russia.
Only three days after the crash, Secretary of State Kerry did the rounds of the Sunday talk shows
making what
he deemed
an "extraordinary circumstantial" case supposedly proving that the rebels carried out the shoot-down
with missiles provided by Russia. He acknowledged that the U.S. government was "not drawing the
final conclusion here, but there is a lot that points at the need for Russia to be responsible."
By then, I was already being told that the U.S. intelligence community lacked any satellite imagery
supporting Kerry's allegations and that the only Buk missile system in that part of Ukraine appeared
to be under the control of the Ukrainian military. [See Consortiumnews.com's "What
Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine?"]
On the Tuesday after Kerry's Sunday declarations, mainstream journalists, including for the Los
Angeles Times and the Washington Post, were given a senior-level briefing about the U.S. intelligence
information that supposedly pointed the finger of blame at the rebels and Russia. But, again, much
of the "evidence" was derived from postings on "social media."
The Los Angeles Times article
on the briefing took note of the uncertainties: "U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been unable
to determine the nationalities or identities of the crew that launched the missile. U.S. officials
said it was possible the SA-11 [the Buk anti-aircraft missile] was launched by a defector from the
Ukrainian military who was trained to use similar missile systems."
That reference to a possible "defector" may have been an attempt to reconcile the U.S. government's
narrative with the still-unreleased satellite imagery of the missile battery controlled by soldiers
appearing to wear Ukrainian uniforms. But I'm now told that U.S. intelligence analysts have largely
dismissed the "defector" possibility and are concentrating on the scenario of a willful Ukrainian
shoot-down of the plane, albeit possibly not knowing its actual identity.
A Hardened Conventional Wisdom
Nevertheless, even as the mystery of who shot down Flight 17 deepened, the U.S. conventional
wisdom blaming Putin and the rebels hardened. The New York Times has reported Russia's culpability
in the airline disaster
as flat-fact.
On July 29, Obama prefaced his announcement of tougher sanctions against Russia by implicitly
blaming Putin for the tragedy, too. Reading a prepared statement, Obama
said:
"In the Netherlands, Malaysia, Australia, and countries around the world, families are still in
shock over the sudden and tragic loss of nearly 300 loved ones senselessly killed when their civilian
airliner was shot down over territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine. …
"Since the shoot-down, however, Russia and its proxies in Ukraine have failed to cooperate with
the investigation and to take the opportunity to pursue a diplomatic solution to the conflict in
Ukraine. These Russian-backed separatists have continued to interfere in the crash investigation
and to tamper with the evidence. They have continued to shoot down Ukrainian aircraftin the region.
And because of their actions, scores of Ukrainian civilians continue to die needlessly every day."
[Emphasis added.]
Though one could argue that Obama was rhetorically tip-toeing around a direct accusation that
the rebels and Russia were responsible for the Malaysia Airlines shoot-down, his intent clearly
was to leave that impression. In other words, Obama was pandering to the conventional wisdom about
Russian guilt and was misleading the American people about what the latest U.S. intelligence may
suggest.
It's also grotesquely deceptive to blame the Russians and the rebels for the indiscriminate shelling
by government forces that have claimed hundreds of lives in eastern Ukraine. The rebels have been
resisting what they regard as an illegitimate coup regime that, with the aid of neo-Nazi militias
from western Ukraine, overthrew elected President Yanukovych in February and then moved to marginalize
and suppress the ethnic Russian population in the east.
By presenting the conflict in a one-sided way, Obama not only misled Americans about the origins
of the Ukraine crisis but, in effect, gave the Kiev regime a green light to slaughter more ethnic
Russians. By pointing the finger of blame at Moscow for all the troubles of Ukraine, Obama has created
more geopolitical space for Kiev to expand its brutal onslaught that now has included reported use
of poorly targeted ballistic missiles against population centers.
Obama's covering for the Kiev regime is even more outrageous if the U.S. intelligence analysts
are right to suspect that Ukrainian forces were behind the Flight 17 shoot-down.
And as for who's been responsible for destroying evidence of the Flight 17 shoot-down, an assault
by the Ukrainian military on the area where the plane crashed not only delayed access by international
investigators but appears to have touched off a fire that consumed plane debris that could have
helped identify the reasons for the disaster.
On Saturday, the last paragraph of a New York Times story by Andrew E. Kramer reported that "the
fighting ignited a fire in a wheat field that burned over fuselage fragments, including one that
was potentially relevant to the crash investigation because it had what appeared to be shrapnel
holes." The shrapnel holes have been cited by independent analysts as possible evidence of an attack
by Ukrainian jetfighters.
Accepting Reality
Yet, given how far the U.S. political/media establishment has gone in its Flight 17 judgment
pinning the blame on the rebels and Russia even before an official investigation was started, it's
not clear how those power-brokers would respond if the emerging analysis fingering Ukrainian forces
turns out to be correct.
The embarrassment to high-level U.S. officials and prominent mainstream U.S. news outlets would
be so extreme that it is hard to believe that the reality would ever be acknowledged. Indeed, there
surely will be intense pressure on airline investigators and intelligence analysts to endorse the
Putin-is-to-blame narrative.
And, if the investigators and analysts won't go that far, they might at least avoid a direct
contradiction of the conventional wisdom by suggesting that the Flight 17 mystery remains unsolved,
something for historians to unravel.
Such has been the pattern in other cases of major mainstream mistakes. For instance, last year,
some of the same players, including Secretary Kerry and the New York Times, jumped to conclusions
blaming the Syrian government for an Aug. 21 sarin gas attack that killed hundreds of people in
a Damascus suburb.
On Aug. 30, Kerry gave a bellicose speech filled with "we knows" but providing no verifiable
evidence. A punitive U.S. bombing campaign against the Syrian government was averted at the last
minute when President Obama decided to first seek congressional approval and then accepted President
Putin's assistance in working out a deal in which the Syrian government surrendered all its chemical
weapons while still denying a role in the Aug. 21 incident.
Only later did much of Kerry's case fall apart as new evidence pointed to an alternative explanation,
that extremist Syrian rebels released the sarin as a provocation to push Obama across his "red line"
and into committing the U.S. military to the Syrian civil war on the side of the rebels. But neither
U.S. officialdom nor the mainstream U.S. press has acknowledged the dangerous "group think" that
almost got the United States into another unnecessary war in the Middle East. [See Consortiumnews.com's
"The Collapsing
Syria-Sarin Case."]
It may seem cynical to suggest that the powers-that-be in Official Washington are so caught up
in their own propaganda that they would prefer the actual killers of innocent people – whether in
Syria or Ukraine – to go unpunished, rather than to admit their own mistakes. But that is often
how the powerful react. Nothing is more important than their reputations.
To be a neoliberal state and not to be a USA vassal is a pipe dream. The system is Washington-centric
by design. Contrary to Putin's vision, a neoliberal state can't be sovereign, it can only be a vassal
of Washington. As soon as a neoliberal state shows some independence it became a "rogue state" and punishment
via financial system (and for smaller states via military actions) will follow. Dominance in finance
sphere gives the USA the ability to punish Russia to almost any extent they wish without significant
possibilities of retaliation, unless formal block of Russia and China is created. Russia can only retaliate
in selected carefully chosen "weak spots". NGOs, media, the USA food companies (Coca-cola, junk food,
chickens, etc) and consulting firms (and first of all Big Three, as most closely connected with the
USA government) are rumored to get under Russian government knife first.
Found at zerohedge, a US reaction on Russia's reaction to the sanctions:
"Assuming that they take this action, it would be blatant protectionism," Clayton
Yeutter, a U.S. Trade Representative under President Ronald Reagan, said in a phone interview.
"There is little or no legitimacy to their complaints."
Yep, how dare the Russkies retaliate, when they ought to come begging on their knees
to be allowed to do what the grand master in DC wants them to do …
Russians are using "trade as a geopolitical tool," warns a Washington think tank. Russia
engaging in trade war – How despicable!
First Russkies pretend to find antibiotics in
McDonalds "cheese" products. But everybody knows the cheese cannot possibly contain antibiotics,
because it's not even real cheese! (it's a kind of edible plastic substance…)
And next Russans claim that "Fruit shipments from the EU have recently contained Oriental
fruit moths…"
That's a lie too.
Everybody knows that if you eat your Polish quinces with a runcible spoon, then they will
not contain any measurable amounts of moth larvae.
"It's not unusual for Russia to find something wrong when they have a political reason
to do so".
No word on whether his tongue immediately turned black and started to smoke, then fell out
of his mouth. It's not unusual for the United States to apply sanctions when they have a political
reason to do so, and fuck-all else.
I was wrong about Rosoboronexport. It is EXEMPT from the list of sanctions. No doubt some
of the deals (titanium) are critical for the US's own MIC. Put Kadyrov or someone on the
board and force Congress to slit Boeing's throat.
Or hire him to the company that produces rolled titanium alloys for Boeing and Airbus. A shot
across the bow to say that Western leaders will have to be standing in front of their populations
as they crash their economies. Russia won't do it for them.
Excellent reasoning. The baying audience of FOX-friends might be stoked at the idea of economic
war with Russia, but the cold-eyed businessmen are likely to be unenthused at best. This
is a great plan for achieving leverage cheaply and easily, and the U.S. government would be
left 'splaining to Boeing that they had to lay off a couple of thousand workers because a bad
man was appointed to the board of their major supplier.
The west is locked into its lame sanctions
groove, and too proud to back down. This might be
the big shootout from which only one currency will walk away.
The speech of British Prime Minister David Cameron in the newspaper "Sunday Times" with sweeping
accusations against Russia marked a new stage of escalation of the Ukrainian crisis in order to
involve EU in the war against Russia.
Until now, American politicians and European officials have been playing significant role as
a major warmongers by having brought to the power their protégés, Ukrainian Nazis, and by encouraging
them in mass crimes against the people of Eastern Ukraine with the aim to involve Russia in war.
It is the first time, when the head of the government of the one of the leading European powers
has urged for war against Russia. Motivated by this accompaniment Ukrainian troops began the physical
destruction of Lugansk and Donetsk including all inhabitants of this cities.
Just as it was in 1938, when British Prime Minister Chamberlain exhorted European leaders to
bless the German Nazis campaign against the USSR, the present British Prime Minister expressed unequivocal
support for the Ukrainian Nazis and angrily convinced his European colleagues to " change the attitude
to the Russia fundamentally" blackmailing us by unleashing a new war. Desiring that this deja vu
were not turned into a nightmare of a new world war we have to respond to the British Prime Minister
Thus, analyzing the theses of your speech, Mr. Cameron:
1 . The statement, that belonged to you, that "more and more evidences points out at that fact
that airplane, flying flight MH17, was shot down by anti-aircraft missile from the area, which was
controlled by the rebels," is an outright lie. Vice versa every day the evidences proving facts
opposite to this suggestion are growing, confirming Russian President Vladimir Putin's statement,
having been made just after the crash of the airplane, that the airplane was shot down by Ukrainian
military. You probably know about the obvious evidence of finding Ukrainian Air Force fighter near
the downed plane, this was released to the press by Ministry of Defense of Russian Federation ,
and even earlier – this information was announced by the Spanish dispatcher in Kiev and by local
civilians. There is data that just before the crash, the air defense was rapidly strengthen and
activated just in the area of the crush , that means that this crime had advanced preparation and
was carefully planned, as well as the withdrawal of the aircraft from the specified route into the
military trap ,which had been prepared beforehand by Ukrainian army. Furthermore, the absolutely
outrageous facts about fraud and fabrications with the allegedly intercepted negotiations between
militias made in advance by the Security Service of the Ukraine, indicate that this crime have been
prepared by Ukrainian Security Services, which as you probably know, is controlled by CIA. The fraud
has been done in order to provoke European countries to involve them in war with Russia, which according
to this plan should be blamed in the destruction of the airliner. And you, Mr. Prime Minister, are
involved in it and you are a participant of this criminal provocation.
2. You insult us by using the unfair and wrongful accusation, based on falsehood, proclaiming
:"This is the result of actions of Russia ,which destabilizes sovereign state, violates its territorial
integrity, supports, trains and equips the criminal formation. And we have to respond to this iniquity
by acting ". Respected leaders of the NATO countries, the truth that this crime is exactly result
of your actions that have led to this tragedy. You and your colleagues have supported armed rebellion
and coup d'etat in Ukraine, fulfillment under Nazi slogans. You must being informed about the mass
crimes and murders of citizens of Ukraine committed by the regime of Poroshenko-Yatsenyuk-Turchynov-Avakov-Nalivaychenko.
If you do not know, look in the White Book of the crimes committed against the citizens of Ukraine
junta supported by you. Blood of the brutally burned children and women in Odessa, thousands murdered
civilians in Mariupol, Slavic, Kramatorsk, Lugansk, Donetsk and other Ukrainian cities , this blood
is on the hands of your protégés. Unless massacres committed by junta do not touch your citizens,
you do not notice them as well as the daily shelling and bombing of cities in eastern Ukraine with
the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous, intentional destruction of life support systems there.
Now, Ukrainian Nazis, supported by you, reached your citizens, tempted them into the trap, destroyed
Malaysian plane. I think it will be interesting to you to know that American and European instructors
and advisors are training and educating these Nazis, and, moreover, the CIA and possibly your security
services, are involved in the planning of punitive action against the inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine.
3. You're saying that if President Vladimir Putin have stopped supporting fighters in eastern
Ukraine and would allow Ukrainian authorities to restore order, the crisis would have ended. There
is no doubt that it would have ended with the physical destruction or expulsion of all Ukrainian
citizens who disagree with the Nazi regime
4. When you state that the rebels do not represent the people of Ukraine, you act as an advocate
of the Ukrainian Nazis, which refuse to consider everyone, who disagrees with them, as the citizens
of Ukraine. So, you support ethnic cleansing, mass executions of civilians. Thus, you determine
and push Nazi to the new crimes.
5. You really should not have to forget the lessons of the history of Europe, Mr. Cameron. Pushing
sweeping accusations and provoking a new war, you consider yourself entitled to fight and pit people
and judge the nations, to rule the world by the path of lie and violence. So did your predecessors
- Chamberlain and other European leaders, supporting and inciting Hitler against the USSR. Destroying
Iraq on false charges of the presence of weapons of mass destruction. Bombing of Belgrade. Since
you have participated in it, destroying Libya. Millions of innocent citizens paid with their lives
for all these, for all your crimes. Including the passengers of the downed aircraft, which lives
were taken for framing provocation for your protégés for new crimes against the humanity.
I agree with you only in that it is necessary to conduct a full investigation of the crash. Russia,
as you requested, provided the most detailed and comprehensive information about the incident, as
well as facilitating the collection of all the evidences and in finding the bodies... We hope that
your experts, to whom the evidences were transferred, will now be able to clarify and scrutiny the
situation objectively. . And you will study out why the Ukrainian authorities are destroying all
the data from their radars, which led this airplane. And you can take testimony from Ukrainian air
traffic controllers, which according to the SSU order are being prohibited to say anything.
The last one. You are suggesting about the need to establish long-term relations between Ukraine,
Russia and the EU, in the format depending on how Russia will react to the tragedy.
The Russian authority has reacted according to your urges, demanding immediate cessation of hostilities
and pressing for the start of negotiations.
By the way, during the anti-terrorist operations in Chechnya my country did it at the same way
.
Sorry for being harshness, as all this hurts me much.
S. Stepashin
The Prime Minister of Russian Federation in 1999
The Minister of Internal Affairs of Russia in 1998
The Minister of Justice of Russia in 1997
The director of the the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation in 1994-1995
[1] White book of infringements of human rights and the rule of law in Ukraine (April-mid June
2014). The Ministry of foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. June 2014
Facing a tough but respectful grilling on Fox Business's The Independents over his recent comments
on Ukraine and the apparent downing of a Malaysia Air plane, Ron Paul argues that the US government
wants to blame Russia for the shoot-down while providing no evidence for its conclusion. Paul points
out that the US claim that Russia was to blame for the disaster because they supply weapons to the
rebels in east Ukraine is hypocritical because the US has armed oppositionists in Syria who went
on to attack the US-backed government in Iraq.
But the best moment was when one of the hosts trotted out the old "aren't you're blaming America?"
question, which was previously used by the likes of Giuliani and the other neocons over the 9/11
attacks.
Responded Paul to the claim:
That is a misrepresentation of what I say. I don't blame America. I am America, you are America.
I don't blame you. I blame bad policy. I blame the interventionists. I blame the neoconservatives
who preach this stuff, who believe in it like a religion -- that they have to promote American
goodness even if you have to bomb and kill people.
They say 'oh Ron Paul blames America
therefore he's a bad guy and we can't listen to him.' Well I'll tell you what: the American
people are listening more carefully now than ever before. ...Non-intervention is the wave of
the future.
Pieter Broertjes called for 29-year-old to be expelled from the Netherlands in wake of plane
disaster but later apologised
Pieter Broertjes, the mayor of the city of Hilversum, used a radio interview on Wednesday morning
to call for 29-year-old Maria Putin, who is said to live in Voorschoten with her Dutch boyfriend,
to be thrown out of the country.
…Ukrainians living in Holland have also called for a peaceful protest outside Putin's daughter's
flat, according to De Telegraaf newspaper. It published a photograph of the apartment complex where
Maria is said to live alongside the article on Monday.
Now the fact the the plane was from Holland makes a lot more sense...
The mayor of the Dutch city Hilversum Pieter Broertjes in an interview to Radio 1 called "throw
away" from the country the daughter of Vladimir Putin, which, presumably, lives in the town of Voorschoten.
Just days after the tragic crash of a Malaysian Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine, Western
politicians and media joined together to gain the maximum propaganda value from the disaster. It
had to be Russia; it had to be Putin, they said. President Obama held a press conference to claim
– even before an investigation – that it was pro-Russian rebels in the region who were responsible.
His ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, did the same at the UN Security Council – just one day
after the crash!
While western media outlets rush to repeat government propaganda on the event, there are a few
things they will not report.
They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported
protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without
US-sponsored "regime change," it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest
that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened.
The media has reported that the plane must have been shot down by Russian forces or Russian-backed
separatists, because the missile that reportedly brought down the plane was Russian made. But they
will not report that the Ukrainian government also uses the exact same Russian-made weapons.
They will not report that the post-coup government in Kiev has, according to OSCE monitors,
killed 250 people in the breakaway Lugansk region since June, including 20 killed as government
forces bombed the city center the day after the plane crash! Most of these are civilians and
together they roughly equal the number killed in the plane crash. By contrast, Russia has killed
no one in Ukraine, and the separatists have struck largely military, not civilian, targets.
They will not report that the US has strongly backed the Ukrainian government in these
attacks on civilians, which a State Department spokeswoman called "measured and moderate."
They will not report that neither Russia nor the separatists in eastern Ukraine have anything
to gain but everything to lose by shooting down a passenger liner full of civilians.
They will not report that the Ukrainian government has much to gain by pinning the attack
on Russia, and that the Ukrainian prime minister has already expressed his pleasure that Russia
is being blamed for the attack.
They will not report that the missile that apparently shot down the plane was from a sophisticated
surface-to-air missile system that requires a good deal of training that the separatists do
not have.
They will not report that the separatists in eastern Ukraine have inflicted considerable
losses on the Ukrainian government in the week before the plane was downed.
They will not report how similar this is to last summer's US claim that the Assad government
in Syria had used poison gas against civilians in Ghouta. Assad was also gaining the upper hand
in his struggle with US-backed rebels and the US claimed that the attack came from Syrian government
positions. Then, US claims led us to the brink of another war in the Middle East. At the last
minute public opposition forced Obama to back down – and we have learned since then that US
claims about the gas attack were false.
Of course it is entirely possible that the Obama administration and the US media has it right
this time, and Russia or the separatists in eastern Ukraine either purposely or inadvertently shot
down this aircraft. The real point is, it's very difficult to get accurate information so everybody
engages in propaganda. At this point it would be unwise to say the Russians did it, the Ukrainian
government did it, or the rebels did it. Is it so hard to simply demand a real investigation?
Why criminals from Eurocontol (and this is definitely criminal negligence) who put this
plane on the route over fighting were not fired and put to court? Why airspace over Donetsk
region was open, while airspace over Crimea was closed? Is this about just money or intentional
provocation was planned?
What was the main benefits of this tragedy for Ukrainian government? Is this declaring
rebels a terrorist organization, getting more international help, or something else connected
with painting Russia into the corner.
Why there was a SU-25 fighter in the vicinity at the moment of the destruction of the
airliner ? Who was the pilot of this SU-25 plane any why he was not questioned about the
incident? He is an important witness of the tragedy and if he is alive he needs to be questioned.
Can it be the Su-25 intentionally shadowed Boeing airliner from below to force fire and then
escaped putting larger and less maneuverable airliner to certain death.
It is possible to mistakenly identify such huge and fling that high civil airliner with
military jet on BUK radar screen?. Because generally both height and velocity of the the
aircraft should be clearly identified on the radar screen of such system. this aircrast has
speed around 900 km/hour and altitude 10K meters so in no way it could be taken as a target.
That the target should be some other plane as was in
Black see shooing tragegy
(where Ukranians also used Buk system). In any case it is clear that even with most basic data
any target, flying from Europe at such altitude and speed toward Russian airspace, is 100% civilian
aircraft.
Course of the Boeing airliner over Ukraine has changed. Who ordered this? Was it
pilot error or command from Kiev or Dnepropetrovsk air-traffic control centers? Who ordered
the airliner to fly over the war zone? How Ukraine, who is the responsible party, explains this?
Why airliner flight plan was changed to lie directly over the fighting while usually it took
400 miles to the south from this region, where previous flies crossed this territory?
What fragmentation warhead was used?. Does it belong to BUK ground to surface missile
or to air-to -air missile?Does the wreckage of the plane. especially wings really contains
traces of elements from the air-to-air rocket as http://stbcaptain.livejournal.com/110169.htmlclaims? Or it was BUK missile as NYT claims
Wreckage Offers Clues on Why Flight 17 Went Down - NYTimes.com. It might well hit by both.
Some of the passengers bodies must also be struck by shrapnel. That is why the international
Commission must now examine the corpses on the presence in them of metal pieces!
Why most of spikes of turbine visible on one of the photos are intact which probably
should not happens if airliner was shot by rocket (such a rocket has warhead which elect
a cloud of fast moving shrapnel several hundred feet before hitting the target; which generally
should destroys most turbine spikes)
Are there any witnesses of smoke trail from BUK rocket? The anti-aircraft missile
from "Buk" leaves the distinctive thick smoky trail that can stay in the air for up to ten minutes.
An SA-11 leaves an enormous smoke trail when fired ... where are the photographs
of it? ... surely someone at the CIA has thought about that ...
However, within hours of airliner hit there were no testimony about existence of such dense
smoke trail from witnesses. Does not this fact increases chances that air-to-air missile from
Su-25 was used ? (Lenta.ru)
Was BUK system captured by rebels operational?Why there are no demands to inspect
it to determine whether a missile was fired from it or not? Which would settle the rumors.
Ukraine claimed before that Ukrainian military destroyed the functionality of all air defense
systems, which were captured by the militias during surrender of the Ukrainian military units
at the end of June 2014. If functionality was destroyed by Ukrainian military how it could
be fired? . Russia denies that it supplied BUK systems to rebels. How militants obtained and
does it has a radar it has (built-in) and rebels definitely did not have a radar on a separate
truck as Ukrainian Army)? They do not even have a special track to load misses (required).
Was it possible for a rebels to form a crew to operate "BUK" air defense system in such
short period of time? And do it without a special radar truck which can "paint" targets
for the height up to 20K meters (it looks like autonomous radar can track targets only below
6.5K meters). See They Did This In Rebel Country, Disbelief
- NYTimes.com"This is a complex system to use, in today's terms," said retired
Army Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O'Reilly, a former director of the Missile Defense Agency, who
estimated that each of the SA-11 crew members would have needed at least six months of training.
"You don't just take some folks off the street and 30 days later they're trained."
LA Times
If we assume that it was "militias" who launch the rocket, then to what group those men
belong? Is there a chance that they were militias "mole", i.e. there was a planned sabotage,
false flag operation? It is obvious that the attack is extremely disadvantageous for Russia,
militias and extremely advantageous to the United States and the puppet Ukrainian government.
Was there in fact this "Spanish air controller"? Or this is a dezo. Who is he, what
is his name? Why Spanish? In Kiev, there are not a lot of Spanish air traffic controllers so
he should be pretty easy to identify. They say there were 2 other civilian airliners close by.
If I understand the map correctly, the Paris to Taipei 17.24 (0368) flight appears to take a
sudden very sharp turn south.
If this is true, why?
If militia has operational middle range air defense system why it was never used for
defense of Donetsk from air bombardment by junta air forces before the incident?
Ukraine conducted BUK training exercises during this day. On the day of shooting
down of Malaysian liner air defense units of the Ukrainian armed forces carried out a training
exercise on improvement of removing the lock for rocket launch. The emergency situation during
those exercises could well be a cause of the tragedy with Boeing, said to RIA a source in one
of the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine. Who was the commander and why he was not interviewed
about those exercise by international commission? Why this fact like existence of SU-25 in the
vicinity of Malaysian airliner is so carefully ignored by Western MSM? Were those crews composed
of drafted soldiers or contractors? . Where all 17 Ukrainian and single militia BUK system were
located at the time of the tragedy? Are distance between Ukrainian Missile systems and militia
missile systems is measured kilometers or tens of kilometers? Why Ukrainian radar from BUK was
operational that particular day ?
Ukrainian Buk battery radar
was operational when Malaysian plane downed - Moscow - RT News
How lame was the American satellite evidence that supposedly can read even car registration
plates? Why they do not provide us with the conclusive evidence despite the fact that the
event happened at the height of 10K meters about clouds approximately at 5 PM? Where is this
video of the system that launched the rocket? Where is the pho of faces of people who served
it?
Pilots Reported Problems with GPS in Ukraine Prior to MH17 Crash. Ukraine should
provide information on whether GPS jamming devices were used in the country on the day the Malaysia
Airlines Boeing 777 crashed
Militiamen who arrived at the scene previously said that putrid smell of some of the victims
of the disaster was "stale". Was it really so or this is a result of decompression ?
If it is well known from previous similar accident that Ukrainian standard reaction is
"TSE ne mi" (it's not me) and attempts to hide the evidence, why Borispol tower records were
not secured by Dutch military attaché before SBU grabbed them and possible destroyed or altered
them? Id this just professional incompetence or something more serious?
Why did Putin called Obama? What did they say? What the phone call pre-scheduled
and on different topic ?
Why the discussion of the situation in the UN hijacked by the USA and its allies?
Why UN did not force Kiev to give all the evidence immediately, especially recordings of Kiev
air traffic control center confiscated by SBU ?. Why black boxes are analyzed in Great Britain
which is notorious for close association with the USA and can tamper the records?
Why SBU was so quick to confiscate all record from Kiev traffic control center instead
of presenting all of them intact to international bodies? Do they fear the evidence?
Perhaps most questions have simple answers. But I would like to get answers to them.
There has been a lot of good discussion here regarding the intention of the Uke government to
blame Russia for its economic ills by drawing them into overt military action.
The foregoing
may be just the tip of the iceberg. Given the pathetic economic numbers, the US needs to misdirect
attention (after drugs, Hollywood and modern art have done their part) from a collapsing standard
of living for, say, 90% of the population toward a good ol' war, preferable lukewarm. Tighten
up security in the homeland (all the apparatus is in place), (re)create the evil empire, blame
illegal aliens, ramp up defense spending, keep the two party system in place, protect the dollar
and monitor/control the social media and the US is ready tooooo ruuuuuuumble!
As mentioned many times, the US wants a manageable war with Russia but not for conquest (even
the crazies know that is not possible) but to "condition" the US population for an inevitable,
severe and sustained collapse of the standard of living.
If the foregoing is a good approximation of reality then the Russian strategy should be to
stay out of war at all cost and let its would-be enemies collapse from social unrest and social
immorality.
For me, this puts together most of the pieces of the puzzle. In short, the Uke strategy
may be an essential step in saving the US from possible social instability by adopting a war-time
security state when the economic shit hits the fan.
Fern, July 10, 2014 at 6:45 pm
Well, Dick Cheney was sounding off the other week about how he was very much afeared the
US was facing another attack like 9/11 but much worse this time and waddya know? Bang on cue,
those ISIL/ISIS/IS folk appear to have gotten themselves some sarin gas and nuclear materials.
patient observer, July 10, 2014 at 6:56 pm
The ISIL is certainly a partner-in-crime if not the son of Al Qaeda spawned by the US. They
will do the bidding of the US in Syria, Iraq and beyond. Again, the US has no bounds in the
evil that it does.
Looks like Paul Craig Roberts that neoliberalism is well, and not under the treat after events of
2008. That might not be true. I think 2008 hit neoliberalism with such a blow that it (and the by extension
the USA as the capital of neoliberal world) are still shaking and that gives some degree of freedom
to "noncompliant nations". Great recession which started in 2008 is not over. Oil prices are high and
that means that most probably without WWIII it might became permanent. Loopholes that exist as a result
on 2008 crisis (such as tremendous national debt by the USA and major European countries) is not that
big, but can probably be exploted to counter the USA hegemony, which is unnatural state of world affairs
in any case and can't last long. The key problem is that it is unclear what can replace neoliberalism
as dominant world ideology it because in late 80th, displacing Marxism.
The Cold War made a lot of money for the military/security complex for four decades dating from
Churchill's March 5, 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri declaring a Soviet "Iron Curtain" until Reagan
and Gorbachev ended the Cold War in the late 1980s. During the Cold War Americans heard endlessly
about "the Captive Nations." The Captive Nations were the Baltics and the Soviet bloc, usually summarized
as "Eastern Europe."
These nations were captive because their foreign policies were dictated by Moscow, just as these
same Captive Nations, plus the UK, Western Europe, Canada, Mexico, Columbia, Japan, Australia, New
Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Georgia, and Ukraine, have their foreign policies
dictated today by Washington. Washington intends to expand the Captive Nations to include Azerbaijan,
former constituent parts of Soviet Central Asia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia.
During the Cold War Americans thought of Western Europe and Great Britain as independent sovereign
countries. Whether they were or not, they most certainly are not today. We are now almost seven
decades after WWII, and US troops still occupy Germany. No European government dares to take
a stance different from that of the US Department of State.
...Great Britain and Germany are such complete vassals of Washington that neither country can
publicly discuss its own future.
When Baltasar Garzon, a Spanish judge with prosecuting authority, attempted to indict members
of the George W. Bush regime for violating international law by torturing detainees, he was slapped
down.
In Modern Britain, Stephane Aderca writes that the UK is so proud of being Washington's "junior
partner" that the British government agreed to a one-sided extradition treaty under which Washington
merely has to declare "reasonable suspicion" in order to obtain extradition from the UK, but the
UK must prove "probable cause." Being Washington's "junior partner," Aderca reports, is an ego-boost
for British elites, giving them a feeling of self-importance.
Under the rule of the Soviet Union, a larger entity than present day Russia, the captive nations
had poor economic performance. Under Washington's rule, these same captives have poor economic performance
due to their looting by Wall Street and the IMF.
As Giuseppe di Lampedusa said, "Things have to change in order to remain the same."
The looting of Europe by Wall Street has gone beyond Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland
and Ukraine, and is now focused on France and Great Britain. The American authorities are demanding
$10 billion from France's largest bank on a trumped-up charge of financing trade with Iran, as if
it is any business whatsoever of Washington's who French banks choose to finance. And despite Great
Britain's total subservience to Washington, Barclays bank has a civil fraud suit filed against it
by the NY State Attorney General.
The charges against Barclays PLC are likely correct. But as no US banks were charged, most
of which are similarly guilty, the US charge against Barclays means that big pension funds
and mutual funds must flee Barclays as customers, because the pension funds and mutual funds would
be subject to lawsuits for negligence if they stayed with a bank under charges.
The result, of course, of the US charges against foreign banks is that US banks like Morgan Stanley
and Citigroup are given a competitive advantage and gain market share in their own dark pools.
So, what are we witnessing? Clearly and unequivocally, we are witnessing the use of US law
to create financial hegemony for US financial institutions. The US Department of Justice (sic)
has had evidence for five years of Citigroup's participation in the fixing of the LIBOR interest
rate, but no indictment has been forthcoming.
The bought and paid for governments of Washington's European puppet states are so corrupt that
the leaders permit Washington control over their countries in order to advance American financial,
political, and economic hegemony.
Washington is organizing the world against Russia and China for Washington's benefit. On June
27 Washington's puppet states that comprise the EU issued an ultimatum to Russia.The absurdity of
this ultimatum is obvious. Militarily, Washington's EU puppets are harmless. Russia could wipe out
Europe in a few minutes. Here we have the weak issuing an ultimatum to the strong.
The EU, ordered by Washington, told Russia to suppress the opposition in southern and eastern
Ukraine to Washington's stooge government in Kiev. But, as every educated person knows, including
the White House, 10 Downing Street, Merkel, and Holland, Russia is not responsible for the separatist
unrest in eastern and southern Ukraine. These territories are former constituent parts of Russia
that were added to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet Communist Party leaders when Ukraine
and Russia were two parts of the same country.
These Russians want to return to Russia because they are threatened by the stooge government
in Kiev that Washington has installed. Washington, determined to force Putin into military action
that can be used to justify more sanctions, is intent on forcing the issue, not on resolving the
issue.
What is Putin to do? He has been given 72 hours to submit to an ultimatum from a collection of
puppet states that he can wipe out at a moment's notice or seriously inconvenience by turning off
the flow of Russian natural gas to Europe.
Historically, such a stupid challenge to power would result in consequences. But Putin is a humanist
who favors peace. He will not willingly give up his strategy of demonstrating to Europe that the
provocations are coming from Washington, not from Russia. Putin's hope, and Russia's, is that Europe
will eventually realize that Europe is being badly used by Washington.
Washington has hundreds of Washington-financed NGOs in Russia hiding behind various guises such
as "human rights," and Washington can unleash these NGOs on Putin at will, as Washington did with
the protests against Putin's election. Washington's fifth columns claimed that Putin stole the election
even though polls showed that Putin was the clear and undisputed winner.
In 1991 Russians were, for the most part, delighted to be released from communism and looked
to the West as an ally in the construction of a civil society based on good will. This was Russia's
mistake. As the Brzezinski and Wolfowitz doctrines make clear, Russia is the enemy whose rise
to influence must be prevented at all cost.
Putin's dilemma is that he is caught between his heart-felt desire to reach an accommodation
with Europe and Washington's desire to demonize and isolate Russia.
The risk for Putin is that his desire for accommodation is being exploited by Washington and
explained to the EU as Putin's weakness and lack of courage. Washington is telling its European
vassals that Putin's retreat under Europe's pressure will undermine his status in Russia, and at
the right time Washington will unleash its many hundreds of NGOs to bring Putin to ruin.
This was the Ukraine scenario. With Putin replaced with a compliant Russian, richly
rewarded by Washington, only China would remain as an obstacle to American world hegemony.
Don't worry, Israel and Russia will outlive the United States. The USSR was a country based
on a false ideology; so is the USA. Thus both were/are doomed to disintegrate.
@Ronald Thomas West #15:
What's amazing to me is, the Ukrainian naiveté.
Ukrainian culture exists only on a children's storybook level. Ukrainian nationalists are
essentially crazy Nazis, not even rational in the sense of knowing how to effectively pursue
given ends/goals. (Higher rationality involves knowing how to determine what goals should be
pursued.)
Also, there is no such thing as the Ukraine: it is a Western imperialist fabrication, adopted
by the Soviets. As an article I quoted before indicated, there are three types of "Ukrainians":
(1) the crazy racist Banderites, whose identity is based on hating Russians (10-20% of the population);
(2) Russians who have been brainwashed into thinking that they are Ukrainian (30-40%); (3) Russians
who still know that they are Russian (30-40%).
Marc
Remember this is Petro Dollar-shenko and Obamas big punishing offensive that was going to
wipe out resistance in a "few hours. The dreaded "plan B". Expect plan C to be more of the same,
but with circumstances becoming a little less favorable for Kiev every week. Winter is not far
off.
VietnamVet
To be clear, Russia does not want a civil war on its border; this is being forced on it by
outsiders; multi-national neoliberal financiers who want to loot Russia again, assorted arms
dealers and neo-conservatives who now control the West. On the other hand, Russia does not want
a Ukraine to join NATO so it has not sealed its borders. If history is a guide, a committed
insurgency with a safe haven is impossible to eradicate if technologically equivalent unless
overwhelming force, ethnic cleansing and resettlement are used. At some point Russia will be
forced to intervene if the civil war continues to escalate as it has to date.
The USA is supporting Ukrainian Nazis and refuses to reach a negotiated settlement to end
the civil war, It cannot be a coincidence that the Islamic State (IS) is up and running at the
same time that Russia is threatened by a civil war next door. Topping the US news is the Hispanic
children's migration that is overwhelming the Southern border. This all is not going to end
well.
Noirette
.. disagree in some measure.
In the sense that Putin is swept up in events not of his own making and is in prudent reactionary
mode.
He probably 'annexed' Crimea somewhat to his own surprise, it was not a pre-calculated move,
but an opportunistic, obligatory leap in the situation. He will not enter E Ukraine, this bait
he will continue to ignore. He could have done in fact without this whole mess.
Now that is a pov that sees events as shocks and reactions as pretty ad-hoc and not planned
in function of some long-term road-map with a number of systemic branches all over, like a chess
game.
Putin will indeed continue to push for pol. and diplomatic solutions, cease-fire, etc. (as
does France, Germany..) though he and the others realise this is a superficial authoritarian
move and a vain hope, as events on the ground are not commandeered by international overlords.
(e.g. Donbass.) Nobody can really control the Ukrainian nuts .. or don't wish to for now. (That
is why they keep yelling at Putin in the hope he can DO something. Amongst other reasons.)
Note though that all the guff about diplomatic solutions etc. has no content whatsoever:
there are no positions, demands, proposals, deals, schemes of governance, principles, outside
help, under discussion, it is a *void.* Incompetence or cynical posturing?
Putin is not looking to expand Russia or R. Federation territory or create a 'new nation'
holding more land. He has enough on his plate as is, and all is already extremely difficult
and compromised in various ways. Reminds me of the days when my Papa was into Kreminology…:)
Something that hasn't been mentioned here of late is the Russian intelligence advantage over
the US and the Ukies. TheRussian defense and intelligence probably have close to perfect information
about Poroschenko's prospective moves to the point they probably know when he is going to take
his next pee. The same holds for American and NATO agents operating out of Kiev. The Ukrainians
probably understand that, too, as it isn't rocket science. If we are going to speculate, and
just about everybody here does, we ought to game out Russian strategy conditional on the assumption
they know exactly what the Ukies are up to, not just in general, but in detail. Putin probably
has a lot more room to manoeuvre than many people give him credit for. He knows the Ukie order
of battle.
Barack Obama has asked Congress for $500 million to train and arm rebels of the Free Syrian Army
who seek to overthrow the government.
Before Congress takes up his proposal, both houses should demand that Obama explain exactly where
he gets the constitutional authority to plunge us into what the president himself calls "somebody
else's civil war."
Syria has not attacked us. Syria does not threaten us.
Why are we joining a jihad to overthrow the Syrian government?
President Bashar Assad is fighting against the al Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front and the even more
extreme and vicious Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
In training and arming the FSA, we are enlisting in a cause where our foremost fighting allies
are Islamists, like those who brought down the twin towers, and a Sunni terrorist army that seeks
to bring down the government we left behind in Baghdad.
What are we doing?
Assad is no angel. But before this uprising, which has taken 150,000 lives and created millions
of refugees, Congressmen and secretaries of state regularly visited him in Damascus.
"There's a different leader in Syria now," cooed Hillary in 2011, "Many of the members of Congress
of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he's a reformer."
If we bring down Assad, what assurance do we have that the Free Syrian Army will prevail against
the Islamists who have proved far more effective in the field?
Will we not be compelled to plunge into the subsequent civil war to keep ISIS and al-Qaida from
taking power?
If Assad falls there is also a high probability Syria's Christians will face beheadings and butchery
at the hands of the fanatics.
And should martyrdoms and massacres begin with the fall of Assad because of our intervention,
the blood of Christians will be on the hands of Barack Hussein Obama and the Congress of the United
States.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin says he wants no part of Obama's new wars. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine
rightly asserts that President Obama has no authority to take us into war in Syria or Iraq.
But where are the Republicans?
Absent an attack on U.S. citizens or vital interests, or an imminent threat of attack, Obama
has no authority to initiate war. The Constitution places the power to authorize wars of choice
exclusively with Congress.
James Madison and his colleagues were seeking to ensure against a rogue presidency of the kind
that Obama has lately begun to conduct.
It is astonishing that Republicans who threaten to impeach Obama for usurping authority at home
remain silent as he prepares to usurp their war powers – to march us into Syria and back into Iraq.
Last August, Americans rose as one to tell Congress to deny Obama any authority to attack Syria.
Are Republicans now prepared to sit mute as Obama takes us into two new Middle East wars, on his
own authority?
A congressional debate on war is essential not only from a legal and constitutional standpoint
but also a strategic one. For there is a question as to whether we are even on the right side in
Syria.
Assad, no matter his sins, is the defender of the Christian and Shia minorities in Syria. He
has been the most successful Arab ruler in waging war against the terrorist brigades of ISIS and
al-Qaida.
Why, then, are we training Syrians to attack his army and arming people to topple his government?
Have we not before us, in Libya, an example of what happens when we bring down an autocrat like
Gadhafi, and even worse devils are unleashed?
While Assad has battled al-Qaida and ISIS for three years, our NATO ally Turkey has looked the
other way as jihadists crossed over into Syria. Our Gulf allies have provided jihadists battling
Assad with arms and money.
Query: Why are our putative allies aiding our worst enemies?
This weekend ISIS declared a caliphate, the Islamic State, over all lands in Syria and Iraq it
now controls. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS war chief, has been declared the new caliph.
"The Caliphate Rises," wails the Wall Street Journal.
But who midwifed and breast-fed the ISIS movement that has now proclaimed the new caliphate?
Was it not our Turkish and Arab friends?
And whose army is the major obstacle to consolidation of a caliphate from Aleppo to Anbar? Is
it not the army of the autocrat Assad whom we seek to bring down? Does this make sense?
We are told that ISIS represents a security threat to the United States.
But ISIS-controlled Syria and Iraq are on the border of Turkey, whose army could make short work
of them. If the caliphate is not such a threat to the Turks as to warrant their intervention in
Syria, how can it be a greater threat to us? It cannot.
Congress should block the $500 million for Obama's wars and tell him his days as imperial president
are over.
IF THE preservation of any semblance of a U.S.-Russian partnership is a priority, especially
in order to support U.S. goals in the Middle East and East Asia, then Washington must be willing
to compromise and promote the so-called neutralization of Ukraine as well as its decentralization,
returning the country to its status as a nonaligned intermediary between Russia and the West. In
addition, any offers for closer economic integration between Ukraine and the Euro-Atlantic community
would have to be nonexclusive in nature and not threaten Russia's economic interests. The United
States and its European allies would also have to convince a recalcitrant Ukrainian government,
as well as significant segments of the population that are hoping for substantial Western assistance
to break Ukraine out of the Russian orbit once and for all, that such help would not be forthcoming
and that Ukraine would have no choice but to reach some sort of modus vivendi with Moscow. Essentially,
this approach would concede to Putin many of his preferences for how Ukrainian-Russian relations
ought to be defined, with the proviso that some degree of Western influence would be permitted.
Finland and Austria both lived under such regimes during the Cold War, as a price for retaining
their democratic forms of governance and capitalist economic systems, so there are precedents.
But Russia is not the Soviet Union. It is not clear that Washington ought to make such accommodations-necessary
as they might have been during the Cold War, when Moscow posed a global challenge to U.S. interests-to
a regional power that has significant geopolitical Achilles' heels, starting with demography. But
casual remarks about how this is the twenty-first century and how great-power machinations for spheres
of influence ought to be relegated to the past are insufficient and ill advised.
If the choice is made to confront and contain Putin's Russia-with the eventual goal of initiating
change in Russia itself-then Ukraine is on the front line of that campaign. During the Cold War,
the United States was willing to marshal huge amounts of resources, first to reconstruct Western
Europe and Japan, then to aid the development of states from Korea to Pakistan-and to extend defense
commitments to boot. If this is going to be the strategy, however, the United States would need
to use its leverage to push for a significant improvement in the standard of living of ordinary
Ukrainians and to encourage a greater responsiveness of the government to the concerns of ordinary
people. In addition, it would have to encourage a new government to preserve Ukraine as a bilingual
(Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking) state that did not restrict the ability of its citizens to espouse
a (culturally) Russophile Ukrainian identity. It would need to reduce the possible attractiveness
of Russia to key portions of Ukraine while, in the longer run, setting up Ukraine's ability to serve
as an alternate example for successful governance to the Putin model.
There would be costs for such a strategy, starting with the short-term disruptions to Western
European economies, the need to make massive new infrastructure investments to diversify from Russian
sources of energy, and the likely loss of Russian help in everything from evacuating Afghanistan
to securing a lasting diplomatic settlement with Iran over its nuclear program. Furthermore,
Washington would have to take all the steps to bail out and assist the transition in Ukraine that
it and Europe were unwilling to take ten years ago in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution, when
it was easy for lawmakers to wear orange ties but much more difficult to implement preferential
access for Ukrainian goods or make it easier for Ukrainians to visit and work in the West.
The worst choice, however, would be to make rhetorical commitments to Ukraine that the West has
no real intention of fulfilling. This would only anger both the Russians (who see it as unacceptable
interference in their affairs) and the Ukrainians (who have trusted the promises made to them by
Western politicians).
Putin takes the fate of Ukraine seriously, and has shown he will take major risks to secure the
Kremlin's position. He may be willing to reach an accommodation with the United States-but it is
not clear that the United States should or would accept it. But Putin won't meekly accept that Ukraine,
like the Warsaw Pact states before it, will drift into the Western orbit. In his view, Russia, since
the end of the Cold War, has signed off on too many compromises and found itself pushed out of Europe.
In Ukraine, in 2014, he has drawn the line and effectively said, "This far, and no further."
The decision by the United States-and its allies-to accept that line or to cross it should not be
made lightly.
Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a professor of national-security studies at the U.S. Naval War College
and a contributing editor at The National Interest.
Many Americans believe thatthe United States and China have entered a long-term strategic competition. The way we
use "competition" in many ways resembles a literary trope. At the US Naval War College, for example,
we teach several historical case studies explicitly built around this narrative:Where a "rising power" challenges the "hegemon," and its aggressive bid only increases
tensions that at some point lead to military conflict. This is the story as much with Athens and
Sparta in classical Greece as with Britain and Germany in the early 20th century.
The limitation of such historical analogies is in how, perhaps unwittingly, they create for us
expectations that only go in one direction. It might be more helpful to contrast America and China
today with a strategic competition that did not lead to war. This sort of comparison encourages
us to test our dynamics against similar forces within an historical situation that-however strategically
alarming at the time-did not end in war. Is our situation similarly stable (at a deep level), or
should we really be worried?
Happily, there is a startlingly familiar-if mostly forgotten-historical counterpoint. Here the
United States is the British Empire, and China is the United States:
In 1861. Britain and America almost went to war during the winter of 1861-1862. We call it the
Trent Affair. Why did we almost go to war?
Because the US-in the midst of civil war-was in "existential mode" and on a strategic hair-trigger.
Britain was supplying high-tech weapons to the Confederacy, and also the delivery vehicles to get
them past the Union blockade. Worse yet Britain (along with France) might recognize the Confederacy
at any moment. In the eyes of the Lincoln administration, Britain was a real strategic threat.
This is why the Britain-US analogy (as in the verse fragment above) is relevant: China is challenging
the US; the US is actively containing China across a great ocean; disputes between China and US
local allies threaten an incident, followed by crisis; both nations feel threatened by each other;
and thus, both countries increasingly see each other as strategic threats. Plus, both nations fought
each other in bloody war just a couple long generations back, in Korea, just like Britain and the
US did in 1812.
But if Victorians seem too far-fetched and fantastical to tell us anything about today, the Trent
crisis is still the best metaphor we have for thinking through our strategic naval situation with
China. The most important question it asks us is this: When USS San Jacinto stopped and boarded
a British flag vessel (Royal Mail Steamer Trent), forcibly (and illegally) removing Confederate
envoys to the United Kingdom and France, why was there no war?
Remember, a lot of people on both sides of the Atlantic wanted war. Amanda Foreman's book-A World
On Fire-describes this amazingly intense Anglo-American crisis, much worse that anything that has
happened yet between the US and China. But war did not happen.
Here are ten reasons why war between Britain and the US did not happen. In contrast, stacked
like historical cordwood, are ten darker indicators why war-despite everything we say-might just
happen between the United States and the Peoples Republic of China.
The conventional wisdom, such as it is, on the political impact of events in Iraq, Ukraine and
elsewhere seems to be that they will empower the Republican Party's hawkish establishment at the
expense of the party's libertarian/anti-interventionist wing - strengthening the hawks' critique
of the Obama White House, bringing
Bush-era voices - ->
back to the fore, and
throwing new obstacles in Rand Paul's
already-difficult path
to the nomination. And when you combine this scenario with Hillary Clinton's
none-too-subtle - ->
positioning of herself as a more interventionist figure than the current president, you
have the possibility of the return of a kind of 2004-style hawkish center in American presidential
politics, in which both Clinton and her eventual G.O.P. rival (be it a Cruz, a Rubio, a Bush, a
Christie, whomever) would compete to out-tough the other on terrorism, Syria, Iran, ISIS, Putin,
and so forth.
What's interesting about this back-to-2004 possibility, though, is how poorly it fits with the
state of public opinion at the moment. The country
has understandably soured on this president's foreign policy stewardship, but I've seen no polling
data to indicate that the post-Bush,
"let's mind our own business" trend is substantially reversing. Anecdotally at least, the return
of right-wing interventionism looks to me more like an elite phenomenon than a mass shift: The hawks
are having a renaissance on op-ed pages and in newspaper profiles, but when Dick Cheney goes on
Megyn Kelly's show
he's greeted with questions that he would simply not have encountered on Fox News a decade back,
and I'm willing to bet that more potential G.O.P. primary voters will be influenced by
Glenn Beck's mea culpa on the Iraq War than will read a single word by Robert Kagan. And then
on the Democratic side, it's hard to imagine that more than a vanishingly-small percentage of liberal
partisans now believe that Obama was wrong to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq, or would say,
if asked, that they want a more militarily-aggressive posture from his successor.
So this sets up a couple of interesting outside-the-box possibilities. In one, Hillary Clinton's
"I'm more hawkish than Obama" positioning will gradually become a problem for her in the Democratic
primary, feeding into a general progressive discontent with her candidacy and helping to inspire
the serious intra-party challenge that
some
smart people (though not me) think she'll eventually face. In another, she still cruises
to the nomination, but her hawkishness has an unexpected effect on the Republican primary:
That is, it could actually end up empowering Rand Paul.
This could happen along two vectors. First, if it's clear that the next Democratic nominee will
be a liberal interventionist (one
blessed by neoconservatives, at that!), the partisan, "whatever the Democrats are for I'm against"
impulse among G.O.P. voters won't necessarily make a maximally hawkish line seem as compelling as
it would if Obama were on the ballot a third time. (Recall that George W. Bush's "humble foreign
policy" was intended, in part, to make a contrast with the interventionism of Bill Clinton and Al
Gore.) And then second, if Hillary faces only token opposition, the public's anti-interventionist
inclinations could end up finding a different outlet - in the form of higher pro-Paul turnout in
primaries where independents and Democrats can cast a vote.
I'm just spitballing here, of course, and even with recent events I expect domestic concerns
to predominate in the next presidential cycle. But I do think the politics of foreign policy in
2016 may be more complicated, and the left-right debate more muddy, than some of the last two weeks'
commentary would suggest.
Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he
was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com.
He is the author of "Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class" (Hyperion, 2005)
and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class
and Save the American Dream" (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review.
Whenever there's a conflict anywhere in the world, a gaggle of American pundits and politicians
insists that the United States fix it. Whether it's Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham
pushing weapons shipments to Ukraine, former ambassador Robert Ford
urging Washington to arm Syrian rebels, or The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol
calling for troops to
be sent to Iraq, the assumption is always that every problem is America's problem, and that the
best way to solve America's problems is with force.
Barry Posen, a professor of political science at MIT and a foreign-policy realist, advocates
a different approach. The title of his new book,
Restraint, succinctly expresses his policy recommendation. The U.S., he argues, needs
to stop trying to do more and more. Instead, it needs to do less. Or, as he puts it, "Efforts to
defend everything leave one defending not much of anything."
Posen rests his discussion on two basic arguments. The first is that the United States is, by
any reasonable metric, an incredibly secure nation. It is geographically isolated from other great
powers-a position that makes invading or even attacking the U.S. mainland prohibitively difficult.
U.S. conventional forces are by far the most powerful in the world. Posen notes that the U.S. "accounted
for a little more than a third of all the military spending in the world during the 1990s," and
has increased the percentage to about 41 percent of all military spending in the world today. On
top of that, the U.S. has a massive nuclear deterrent. It is simply not credible to argue that Iran,
North Korea, Iraq, Pakistan, or even Russia or China have the combination of dangerous capabilities
and malign intentions to pose a serious existential threat to the United States in anything but
the most paranoid neocon fantasies.
Second,
enforcing "liberal hegemony"-a grand strategy of promoting global democracy and peace underwritten
by U.S. military power-is simply beyond America's capabilities. As the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and, earlier, Vietnam showed, the United States does not have the military resources and political
will necessary to impose friendly democratic regimes upon distant peoples. Nor, as all three of
those wars also demonstrate, does it have the ability to utterly destroy its enemies forever. Nor,
finally, can the U.S. ensure, militarily or otherwise, that no one anywhere gets nuclear weapons-after
all, if it could, presumably Pakistan and North Korea wouldn't have them.
The effort to control and police the world through force of arms makes the United States less
secure in numerous ways, Posen argues. It bleeds U.S. resources, both military and economic, while
leaving the country less prepared to face immediate threats. The belief that America will act as
the world's policeman encourages some of its allies to skimp on their own defense spending, forcing
the U.S. to undertake further costly investments it cannot afford in the long term. In its role
as Liberal Hegemon, it also encourages aggression and risky behavior in states like Israel, which
can put off peace deals and engage in provocative actions like settlement construction because of
the elaborate pledges of support it has received from America.
Rather than imposing American will by force, Posen suggests that we could more fruitfully and
practically engage the world in other ways. For instance, if the U.S. is concerned about genocide,
we could join the International Criminal Court and support the prosecution of those who commit war
crimes (including, though Posen does not say this, American officials, at whatever level, who condoned,
or condone, torture.) If we want to save people, we could honor our commitments under international
treaties and open our borders to refugees; as Posen says, we are "rich enough to receive many individuals
in such dire straits." We could also send aid to poorer countries to encourage them to receive refugees.
Posen makes a compelling argument. But he makes it almost entirely on realist grounds. He advocates
a policy of restraint because it will make the U.S. stronger and more secure, not-or at least not
primarily-because a policy of restraint is more ethical than the alternative. His humanitarian suggestions-joining
the ICC, opening borders-are addendums to, rather than the essence of, his reasoning.
But liberal hegemony, the argument Posen is rebutting, isn't just based on security interests.
It's also predicated on morality. For instance, the rationale for invading Iraq was not only that
the United States needed to crush Saddam Hussein for its own safety. It was also that Saddam was
uniquely evil and that it would be good for the people of Iraq, and for people around the world,
if he were destroyed. Similarly, the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is justified
not only on the basis of protecting America from al-Qaeda, but also on the grounds that the Taliban
are hideously oppressive, especially to women, and that it is America's responsibility to stop them
from returning to power.
Responding to the argument for liberal hegemony, then, requires consideration of the moral as
well as the practical arguments for restraint. Fortunately for Posen, the "just war" tradition of
ethics yields a very strong argument for the morality of restraint-indeed, in many ways just-war
doctrine is based on the restraint principle. As summarized
by the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
The principles of the justice of war are commonly held to be: having just cause, being a
last resort, being declared by a proper authority, possessing right intention, having a reasonable
chance of success, and the end being proportional to the means used.
The just-war doctrine is not equivalent to pacifism, which holds that there is no justification
for war at all. But it shares with pacifism, as political ethicist Jean Bethke Elshtain
has written, the belief that "violence must never be celebrated, and that violence must always
be put on trial." Though Elshtain herself supported the Iraq war, the reasoning here suggests, on
the contrary, that preventive wars aimed at warding off the eventual emergence of a threat should
be anathema. Wars are by their nature bloody, destructive, and impossible to control (as the
spiraling and ongoing violence in Iraq demonstrates all too clearly.) It is simply not tenable
to argue that starting a war will preserve peace, because war by its nature breeds chaos and more
war. That's why war must be a last resort, and why it should solely be used in self-defense; the
only time it's reasonable to think that war might reduce war is when you're already at war.
The essence of just war can be summarized generally as follows:
first, try to limit harm, and second, treat war with respect and fear. Dropping bombs on Libya or
Iran to prevent evil is illegitimate because war itself is evil-and it is an evil not easily contained.
Treating war as a convenient tool of policy, rather than as a last resort, sows more death and hardship,
not less. Similarly, building up massive stockpiles of weapons that are not immediately necessary
creates a temptation to use those weapons-the succinct moral of Johnny Cash's "Don't
Take Your Guns to Town." Outsized military expenditures can themselves be seen as a violation
of the principles that inform the just-war doctrine.
From the just-war perspective, Posen's realist arguments have an ethical force. Even from the
perspective of the World War II-era realist theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who rejected pacifism and
just war alike as overly idealistic, Posen's position has moral consequences. Niebuhr saw war as
moral when it advanced best outcomes. The case Posen outlines suggests what those best outcomes
are.
When Posen says, for example, that the U.S. cannot, in the long run, defend Taiwan, that's not
just a practical statement, but an ethical one. That's because engaging in an unwinnable conflict
over Taiwan-possibly unleashing nuclear war in a lost cause without a self-defense rationale-is,
on just-war grounds, or even on Neibuhrian grounds, morally wrong. Similarly, there is plentiful
evidence that the U.S. cannot impose its preferred form of government on the peoples of the Middle
East. Intervening in Middle Eastern civil wars when there is no realistic chance of success is an
ethical failure as well as a tactical one. It is evil to bomb people purely in the hope, against
all the evidence, that bombing will make things better.
Restraint is also preferable to liberal hegemony from the standpoint of American ideals. Proponents
of liberal hegemony often argue that the United States has an ethical duty to spread its values
across the globe. But this argument overlooks the fact that one of the most basic foundational values
of America is self-determination. The American Revolution was fought for the principle that people
have a right to make decisions about their own fate through their own institutions. When the U.S.
sets itself up as a global policeman, it is saying, on the contrary, that U.S. policymakers have
the right to decide who should rule in Iraq, or how Iran should conduct its nuclear program. Perhaps,
in certain cases, for the security of its own citizens, the U.S. may need to take steps to curtail
the actions of other states and other people. But as a wholesale philosophy, "the United States
should run the world" contradicts America's most basic value: that people have the right to rule
themselves.
Restraint, then, is not merely a practical necessity for the United States to improve its security.
It's also an ethical duty, and a specifically American ideal. Rather than fearing America's "decline"
because we're not able to undertake a land war in Ukraine or a third invasion of Iraq, we should
welcome a world in which the U.S. does not try to solve other people's problems by force. Liberal
hegemony hasn't worked, and won't work. The United States will be more secure-and more moral-if
it can give up its dreams of empire, and restrain its impulse to war.
Terri_in_LA • a day ago
"For instance, if the U.S. is concerned about genocide, we could join the International Criminal
Court and support the prosecution of those who commit war crimes (including, though Posen does
not say this, American officials, at whatever level, who condoned, or condone, torture.)"
US Foreign Policy = Follow the Money.
The US Federal Gov't is not primarily concerned about things like genocide when developing
its foreign policy. It is concerned about chaotic situations that can disrupt our economy. Concerns
for security almost always come back to economic security not physical security. That's why
we make the same mistakes over and over. We want to control things that we just don't have much
ability to control in attempts to eliminate economic risk. We live in fear that we'll lose access
to raw materials, markets, etc. It is why we go head long into the Middle East while we allow
wars to rage without intervention in parts of Africa. It's why we are freaked about the Ukraine.
We're not worried that Russia is going to wage an actual war, but that it might be in a position
to impact our economy or that of our allies. It's why we fear China, when they've shown no interest
in meddling in the affairs of countries outside its own region. China has growing economic clout
around the world
.
Until we start to discuss foreign policy in more concrete terms (What are our interests exactly?
What are we willing or unwilling to sacrifice to protect them?) rather than as if its all high
minded ideology or how these are bad guys that need to be taken out for humanitarian reasons,
we'll never stop doing things that damage our interests and are damaging to the rest of the
world.
Consequently, for example, a
recent CNN Poll
has found that Americans' fear of Russia has soared within just the past two years. Our news media
present a type of news "reporting" that places Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin, into a very bad
light,
even when it's unjustified by the facts.
The situation now is thus rather similar to that right before
World War I, when the aristocracy in America
decided that a pretext had to be created for our going to war against Germany. That War had already
started in Europe on 28 July 1914, and President Wilson wanted to keep the U.S. out of it, but we
ultimately joined it on the side of J.P. Morgan and Company. This was documented in detail in an
important 1985 book, Britain, America and the Sinews of War, 1914-1918, which was well summarized
in
Business History Review, by noting that: "J.P. Morgan & Co. served as Britain's financial and
purchasing agent, and the author makes especially good use of the Morgan Grenfell & Co. papers in
London to probe that relationship. Expanding British demand for U.S. dollars to pay for North American
imports made the politics of foreign exchange absolutely central to Anglo-American relations. How
to manage those politics became the chief preoccupation of Her Majesty's representatives in the
United States," and most especially of Britain's financial and purchasing agent in the U.S.
In 1917, after almost two years of heavy anti-German propaganda in the U.S. press that built
an overwhelming public support for our joining that war against Germany,
Congress found that, in March 1915,
"J.P. Morgan interests
had bought 25 of America's leading newspapers, and inserted their own editors, in order to control
the media" so that we'd join the war on England's side. Whereas back then, it was Germany's
leader who was being goaded into providing a pretext for us to declare war against his country,
this time it's Russia's leader (Putin) who is being demonized and goaded into providing such a pretext,
though Putin (unlike Germany's Kaiser) has thus far refrained from providing the pretext that Obama
constantly warns us that he will (a Russian invasion of Ukraine). Consequently, Obama's people are
stepping up the pressure upon Putin by bombing
the areas of neighboring Ukraine where Russian speakers live, who have family across the border
inside Russia itself. Just a few more weeks of this, and Putin's public support inside Russia could
palpably erode if Putin simply lets the slaughter proceed without his sending troops in to defend
them and to fight back against Kiev's (Washington's
- ->
surrogate's) bombing-campaign. This would provide the pretext that Obama has been warning
about.
I also have reported on
"Why Ukraine's Civil War Is of Global Historical Importance." The article argued that "This
civil war is of massive historical importance, because it re-starts the global Cold War, this time
no longer under the fig-leaf rationalization of an ideological battle between 'capitalism' versus
'communism,' but instead more raw, as a struggle between, on the one hand, the U.S. and West European
aristocracies; and, on the other hand, the newly emerging aristocracies of Russia and of China."
The conflict's origin, as recounted there, was told in its highest detail in an
article in the
scholarly journal Diplomatic History, about how U.S. President George H.W. Bush in 1990 fooled
the Soviet Union's leader Mikhail Gorbachev into Gorbachev's allowing the Cold War to be ended without
any assurance being given to the remaining rump country, his own Russia, that NATO and its missiles
and bombers won't expand right up to Russia's doorstep and surround Russia with a first-strike ability
to destroy Russia before Russia will even have a chance to get its own nuclear weapons into the
air in order to destroy the U.S. right back in retaliation.
On June 17, The American Conservative will convene leading thinkers from across the
political spectrum at George Washington University for a wide-ranging conversation about American
foreign policy after the War on Terror.
The goal of the New Internationalism conference is to address America's role in the world after
Afghanistan and Iraq, and to discuss alternative visions for protecting America's core security
and economic interests in the new global framework.
The American Conservative and our co-sponsors The American Prospect and the Institute
for Security and Conflict Studies at GW will build on the emerging consensus that favors prudence,
the rule of law, and diplomacy. We hope you can join us!
8:30am Welcome: Charles L. Glaser, George Washington University Institute for
Security and Conflict Studies and Daniel McCarthy, The American Conservative
8:45am Threats and Responses: How the U.S. can maintain stability in the long
term without war.
Daniel Drezner, Washington Post and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
William Lind, The American Conservative
Matt Duss, Center for American Progress and TheAmerican Prospect
Daniel Larison, The American Conservative
9:45am The Case for Restraint: Barry R. Posen, MIT Security Studies Program
10:45am Break
11:15am National Security State Overreach and Reform
Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic
Marcy Wheeler, Emptywheel
Adam Serwer, MSNBC.com
Samuel Goldman, The American Conservative
12:15pm Political Realities: Prospects for realism and reform in a new economic
and political environment.
John B. Judis, The New Republic
Michael Cohen, Century Foundation
Christopher Preble, Cato Institute
Robert W. Merry, The National Interest
The conversation will continue in the coming weeks thanks to our partners at
Bloggingheads.
American critics of U.S. foreign policy (as well as some
neoconservative supporters) often refer to the United States as an empire. This is not an emotional
outburst but a substantive description of the national government's role in the world. But what
exactly is an empire? This question is all the more relevant today with Iraq is being consumed by
sectarian violence and calls for renewed U.S. intervention here are increasingly louder.
In 1952 the journalist and novelist
Garet Garrett (1878–1954)
took up this question in contemplating post-World War II America. The resulting essay, "The Rise
of Empire," is included in his anthology,
The People's Pottage (PDF).
It bears close study today.
Garrett was an important figure in what has come to be known as the "Old Right," an eclectic
group of writers and politicians (mostly Republican) who emerged in the 1930s to oppose militarism
and the centralization of power under the New Deal. (For a history of the Old Right, see my "New
Deal Nemesis: The 'Old Right' Jeffersonians" [PDF].)
Garrett began with this somber message:
We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire. If you ask when, the
answer is that you cannot make a single stroke between day and night; the precise moment does
not matter. There was no painted sign to say: "You now are entering Imperium." Yet it was a
very old road and the voice of history was saying: "Whether you know it or not, the act of crossing
may be irreversible." And now, not far ahead, is a sign that reads: "No U-turns."
If you say there were no frightening omens, that is true. The political foundations did not
quake, the graves of the fathers did not fly open, the Constitution did not tear itself up.
If you say people did not will it, that also is true. But if you say therefore it has not happened,
then you have been so long bemused by words that your mind does not believe what the eye can
see, even as in the jungle the terrified primitive, on meeting the lion, importunes magic by
saying to himself, "He is not there."
(For evidence that the American empire is older than Garrett thought, see my "Empire
on Their Minds.")
The country's institutions may look the same, Garrett wrote, but a "revolution within the form"
has occurred:
There is no comfort in history for those who put their faith in forms; who think there is
safeguard in words inscribed on parchment, preserved in a glass case, reproduced in facsimile
and hauled to and fro on a Freedom Train.
Garrett next proceeded to carefully isolate the characteristics of empire. After examining Rome's
transition from republic to empire, he wondered,
If you may have Empire with or without a constitution, even within the form of a republican
constitution, and if also you may have Empire with or without an emperor, then how may the true
marks of Empire be distinguished with certainty? What are they?
Republics, he said, can make war, conquer territory, and even acquire colonies, depending on
how one defines the term, so "let us regard the things that belong only to empire, and set them
down. Then we shall see."
He came up with five traits:
(1) Rise of the executive principle of government to a position of dominant power,
(2) Accommodation of domestic policy to foreign policy,
(3) Ascendancy of the military mind,
(4) A system of satellite nations for a purpose called collective security, and,
(5) An emotional complex of vaunting and fear.
It's easy to see how closely this fits the United States today. For a long time, the executive
branch has been the dominant branch of government. For example, as Garrett noted, the war power
has moved entirely into the hands of the president, despite the Constitution's language and Congress's
half-hearted attempt to hold on to some power with the War Powers Resolution. Since the Korean War,
it's the president who decides when the country goes to war. (Even when Barack Obama tossed the
question of bombing Syria to Congress last year, he and others maintained that he had the unilateral
power to act if he wanted to.) During the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, lawyers
inside and outside the government spun broad theories of autocratic executive authority over national
security based entirely on the apparently thin Article II of the Constitution.
Garrett wrote that the "aggrandizement of the executive principle of government" occurred by
congressional delegation, reinterpretation of the language of the Constitution, innovation, the
appearance of administrative agencies, usurpation, and increasing involvement in foreign affairs.
This last is especially relevant, because the executive can always assert that foreign policy cannot
be made by 535 members of Congress.
The subordination of domestic policy to foreign policy is accomplished by claiming that without
national security, nothing else matters. So domestic concerns must take a back seat to foreign affairs.
The national-security establishment's sheer demand for goods and services - which produces the military-industrial
complex - diverts the economy from serving consumers to serving the state. As long as the president
can keep the people in fear of foreign enemies, he can justify the transfer of resources from the
private sector to the government sector. It is too easy for the executive to answer any challenge
by playing the "I know things that you don't know" card. As Garrett wrote,
It needs hardly to be argued that as we convert the nation into a garrison state to build
the most terrible war machine that has ever been imagined on earth, every domestic policy is
bound to be conditioned by our foreign policy.
One need only look around to see evidence of the "ascendancy of the military mind." Not even
a looming fiscal crisis prompts a serious reconsideration of America's far-flung military presence
or its putative "interests" everywhere. Reverence for the military intrudes on everyday life; one
cannot watch a ballgame or even a televised cooking competition without being subjected to sappy
expressions of gratitude for supposed "service to our country." Americans did not always have a
worshipful disposition toward the military.
As in Garrett's time, satellite nations are today called "allies." Americans are not only obliged
to cough up billions of dollars each year in armaments and cash to support those alliances, they
also must be prepared to go to war to defend countries throughout the world. In his recent speech
at West Point, Obama included the defense of allies in his definition of America's "core interests."
Thus the American people are on call should most of Europe up to the Russian border, Japan, South
Korea, Israel, and other nations find themselves threatened - even if their own conduct provoked
the alleged threat.
Garrett's phrase "an emotional complex of vaunting and fear" couldn't better apply to today's
America. Government officials beat their chests in describing how powerful, exceptional, and indispensable
America is for the world. No one, they say, can challenge America's dominance and leadership in
the world. Yet at the same time they advise Americans to fear Islamic terrorism, China, Russia,
Latin American drug lords, and sundry other threats. That's vaunting and fear.
Finally, Garrett made a point that is entirely relevant today: "a time comes when Empire finds
itself - a prisoner of history." A republic, Garrett wrote, can determine its own history.
"But the history of Empire is world history and belongs to many people."
We've all heard presidents say that America's responsibilities to the world have been thrust
upon it and cannot be avoided. It is not a matter of choice. That's the doctrine which Garrett had
in mind:
What is it that now obliges the American people to act upon the world?
As you ask that question the fear theme plays itself down and the one that takes its place
is magnifical. It is not only our security we are thinking of - our security in a frame of collective
security. Beyond that lies a greater thought.
It is our turn.
Our turn to do what? you may ask. Garrett nails the political establishment's reply, which is
calculated to awe Americans into blind compliance:
Our turn to assume the responsibilities or moral leadership in the world.
Our turn to maintain a balance of power against the forces of evil everywhere - in Europe
and Asia and Africa, in the Atlantic and in the Pacific, by air and by sea - evil in this case
being the Russian barbarian. [This is especially pertinent now.]
Our turn to keep the peace of the world.
Our turn to save civilization.
Our turn to serve mankind.
But this is the language of Empire.
We're told, however, that American empire is unique because it is dedicated to freedom and peace.
This claim cannot withstand scrutiny: look at the regimes American administrations have supported
and support today. But Garrett said that even if this claim were granted, the case for empire would
be self-defeating because its price is bankruptcy.
So even if "this is Imperialism of the Good Intent," he wrote, it would also have to be the "Empire
of the Bottomless Purse."
Last September, as they scrambled to decide on one final ultimatum before shutting down the federal
government, Republican House leaders came up with what seemed like an odd demand: to strip their
own staff of health care benefits.
At the time, staffers reacted to the news with a mixture of despair and disbelief. "It was like
getting sucker-punched by your boss," one aide told me. "Everyone was thinking, What's the point?
How is screwing us going to help you?"
The dubious logic behind the House Republicans' demand can be traced back to a contested provision
in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the gutting of which was the price the Republicans were demanding
for agreeing to fund the government. The provision requires employees of the U.S. Congress, including
members and their staffs, to buy insurance on the new health care exchanges, while still allowing
them to receive subsidies from their employer. Over the course of more than a year, ideologues at
several conservative think tanks, especially the Tea Party-friendly Heritage Foundation, which was
pushing for the shutdown, managed to put an imaginative spin on the provision, convincing the conservative
world that members and their staff were getting a sneaky, backroom deal, a "special exemption from
Obamacare."
In fact, had the Republicans' desired language passed, congressional personnel would have become
the only employees in America whose employer (in their case, the federal government) was explicitly
forbidden from contributing to their health care-a blow that, in all likelihood, would have caused
most of the best and brightest staffers, and perhaps some lawmakers, to simply hightail it for the
door. Some quite conservative members even said as much. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, in a
candid moment later, called the move "political theater" that would do nothing more than catalyze
a rapid "brain drain" in Congress.
While Sensenbrenner was right, one must appreciate the irony. A debilitating brain drain has
actually been under way in Congress for the past twenty-five years, and it is Sensenbrenner and
his conservative colleagues who have engineered it.
A quick refresher: In 1995, after winning a majority in the House for the first time in forty
years, one of the first things the new Republican House leadership did was gut Congress's workforce.
They cut the "professional staff" (the lawyers, economists, and investigators who work for committees
rather than individual members) by a third. They reduced the "legislative support staff" (the auditors,
analysts, and subject-matter experts at the Government Accountability Office [GAO], the Congressional
Research Service [CRS], and so on) by a third, too, and killed off the Office of Technology Assessment
(OTA) entirely. And they fundamentally dismantled the old committee structure, centralizing power
in the House speaker's office and discouraging members and their staff from performing their own
policy research. (The Republicans who took over the Senate in 1995 were less draconian, cutting
committee staff by about 16 percent and leaving the committee system largely in place.) Today, the
GAO and the CRS, which serve both House and Senate, are each operating at about 80 percent of their
1979 capacity. While Senate committee staffs have rebounded somewhat under Democratic control, every
single House standing committee had fewer staffers in 2009 than in 1994. Since 2011, with a Tea
Party-radicalized GOP back in control of the House, Congress has cut its budget by a whopping 20
percent, a far higher ratio than any other federal agency, leading, predictably, to staff layoffs,
hiring and salary freezes, and drooping morale.
Why would conservative lawmakers decimate the staff and organizational capacity of an institution
they themselves control? Part of it is political optics: What better way to show the conservative
voters back home that you're serious about shrinking government than by cutting your own staff?
But a bigger reason is strategic. The Gingrich Revolutionaries of 1995 and the Tea Partiers of 2011
share the same basic dream: to defund and dismantle the vast complex of agencies and programs that
have been created by bipartisan majorities since the New Deal. The people in Congress who knew those
agencies and programs best and were most invested in making them work-the professional staffers,
the CRS analysts, the veteran committee chairs-were not going to consent to seeing them swept away.
So they had to be swept away.
Of course, all of this slashing and cutting has done nothing to actually help shrink the federal
government. Real federal spending has increased 50 percent since 1995, in line with the growth of
the U.S. population and economy. Meanwhile, Washington has fought two major land wars, added two
large new entitlement programs (Medicare's prescription drug benefit under George W. Bush, the ACA
under Barack Obama), and created several new federal bureaucracies, ranging from the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau to the gigantic Department of Homeland Security.
At the same time, as political scientist Lee Drutman of the Sunlight Foundation has noted, both
the government and the issues it has to deal with have grown more complex. There are more contractors
to manage, more stakeholders to liaison with, more technologies to adapt to, more industry-funded
research studies to take account of. That, in turn, has made the jobs of congressional staffers,
of keeping an eye on government and sorting through the ever-growing amount of information coming
at them from lobbyists and constituents, far more difficult, even as their numbers have not remotely
kept pace with the growth of government and K Street. In 2010, the House spent $1.37 billion and
employed between 7,000 and 8,000 staffers. That same year, corporations and special interests spent
twice as much-$2.6 billion-on lobbying (which excludes billions spent on other forms of influence)
and employed 12,000 federally registered lobbyists, according to Sunlight Foundation.
Instead of helping to shrink the government, the gutting of congressional expertise and institutional
capacity-what New America Foundation scholar and former congressional staffer Lorelei Kelly refers
to as a "self-lobotomy"-has had two other effects, both of which have advanced conservative power,
if not necessarily conservative ideals.
The first effect is an outsourcing of policy development. Much of the research, number crunching,
and legislative wordsmithing that used to be done by Capitol Hill staffers working for the government
is now being done by outside experts, many of them former Hill staffers, working for lobbying firms,
think tanks, consultancies, trade associations, and PR outfits. This has strengthened the already-powerful
hand of corporate interests in shaping legislation, and given conservative groups an added measure
of influence over Congress, as the shutdown itself illustrates.
... ... ...
The second effect of the brain drain is a significant decline in Congress's institutional
ability to monitor and investigate a growing and ever-more-complex federal government. This
decline has been going on quietly, behind the scenes, for so many years that hardly anyone even
notices anymore. But like termites eating away at the joists, there's a danger of catastrophic collapse
unless regular inspections are done. While Congress continues to devote what limited investigative
resources it has into the fished-out waters of the Internal Revenue Service and Benghazi "scandals"
(thirteen Benghazi hearings in the House alone, with a new select committee launched in May), just
in the last year we've witnessed two appalling government fiascoes that better congressional oversight
might have avoided: the botched rollout of the health insurance exchanges and the uncontrolled expansion
of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. (Fun fact: while annual federal spending
on intelligence has roughly doubled since 1997, staff levels on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
have actually declined.) Debacles like these, by undermining the public's faith in government,
wind up perversely advancing the conservative antigovernment agenda-another reason why many Republicans
don't worry much about the brain drain on the Hill. But the rest of us should.
... ... ...
In addition to the outsourcing of policy development, the other big effect of the brain drain
has been the atrophying of congressional oversight. Good oversight requires teams of educated,
detail-oriented staffers who have the time to cull through documents, review thousands of line items
in a budget, read budget justifications, and then follow up with federal agencies or local programs
to determine what is really happening in government programs on the ground. Those teams have traditionally
resided in the committees, buttressed by permanent staff and long-serving members, and in the legislative
service agencies like the GAO. As we've seen, both were greatly downsized in the 1990s and remained
profoundly understaffed and under-resourced.
Of course, good oversight has always been more the exception than the rule in Congress, in part
because it has never been a particularly sexy part of a Congress member's job, and in part because
voters don't generally reward members who excel at it. Rare are the headlines congratulating Congress
for catching disasters before they happen.
Even today, valuable oversight still happens on occasion. In the run-up to the 2010 census, for
instance, the GAO identified fatal flaws in the handheld computer devices the Census Bureau was
planning to use as a cost-saving measure. Thanks to the GAO's reports, major fixes to the devices
were made, the officials originally in charge of the project canned, and a possible disaster with
the decennial census averted.
Still, there has unquestionably been a massive falloff in congressional oversight. In the decade
after the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, the number of Senate oversight hearings dropped by a
third, and House oversight hearings fell by half, according to the Brookings Institution. And even
these numbers probably understate the problem. A lot of oversight hearings today are almost strictly
for show, especially in the House. And even those that are meant to be serious suffer from the ignorance
and poor preparation of many lawmakers. "In the old days, the member used to know more than any
witness from the outside that came before the committee," Dingell said. "Today, they don't. Members
don't even understand the issues. They don't even ask questions that are relevant. Sometimes they
just want to give a political speech."
Congress's failure of oversight is perhaps least obvious but most critical on the appropriations
committees and subcommittees. These entities control the purse strings for every government
program and agency. It has traditionally been their job-and they once took it seriously- to ensure
that dollars were being spent on programs that were doing what they said they were doing. That sort
of line-item oversight takes time and a dedicated staff that is paying an inordinate amount of attention
to detail. "It was never a thrilling process," said Scott Lilly, who served as a clerk and staff
director of the House Appropriations Committee, "but it was vital."
And it has all but ceased to happen in the past decade or so, as staff numbers have dwindled
and the passing of sweeping, omnibus budgets have become the norm. Even when they do try to look,
appropriations subcommittees are snowed under by literally thousands of pages- "multiple tomes,"
as one staffer put it-of oversight reports that no one has the time to read. "Agencies just fill
up these budget justifications with all sorts of meaningless metrics, which is a convenient tool
to overwhelm a handful of staffers, who are stretched so thin they don't have the time to find out
anything that's going on," Lilly said. The result, Republican Senator Tom Coburn pointed out in
a 2012 report, is wasted money, uncontrolled government programs, and a panicky sense of "fire-alarm
oversight" in which members of Congress don't ask questions until a scandal breaks and there's a
mad scurry to assign blame.
Americans have grown understandably weary of foreign entanglements over the last 12 years of
open-ended warfare, and they are now more receptive to a noninterventionist message than they have
been in decades. According to a recent Pew survey, 52 percent of Americans now prefer that the U.S.
"mind its own business in international affairs," which represents the most support for a restrained
and modest foreign policy in the last 50 years. That presents a challenge and an opportunity for
noninterventionists to articulate a coherent and positive case for what a foreign policy of peace
and prudence would mean in practice. As useful and necessary as critiquing dangerous ideas may be,
noninterventionism will remain a marginal, dissenting position in policymaking unless its advocates
explain in detail how their alternative foreign policy would be conducted.
A noninterventionist foreign policy would first of all require a moratorium on new foreign entanglements
and commitments for the foreseeable future. A careful reevaluation of where the U.S. has vital interests
at stake would follow. There are relatively few places where the U.S. has truly vital concerns that
directly affect our security and prosperity, and the ambition and scale of our foreign policy should
reflect that. A noninterventionist U.S. would conduct itself like a normal country without pretensions
to global "leadership" or the temptation of a proselytizing mission. This is a foreign policy
more in line with what the American people will accept and less likely to provoke violent resentment
from overseas, and it is therefore more sustainable and affordable over the long term.
When a conflict or dispute erupts somewhere, unless it directly threatens the security of America
or our treaty allies, the assumption should be that it is not the business of the U.S. government
to take a leading role in resolving it. If a government requests aid in the event of a natural disaster
or humanitarian crisis (e.g., famine, disease), as Haiti did following its devastating earthquake
in 2010, the U.S. can and should lend assistance-but as a general rule the U.S. should not seek
to interfere in other nations' domestic circumstances.
... ... ...
The U.S. would also refuse to take sides in the internal quarrels of other countries. The sovereignty
of other states would be respected much more consistently than in past decades. The U.S. would refrain
from destabilizing foreign governments or aiding in their overthrow, and it would not make a habit
of siding with whichever protest movement happened to be in the streets of a foreign capital. Likewise,
it would refrain from propping up and subsidizing abusive and dictatorial regimes and would condition
U.S. aid on how a government treats its people. While there may be a need to cooperate with authoritarian
states on certain issues, governments that torture or violently suppress peaceful protests, including
the current Egyptian government, shouldn't be supported in any way by American taxpayers.
War
might be necessary at some point, but if so it would be waged only in self-defense or the defense
of a treaty ally. A noninterventionist U.S. would never wage a preventive war- which is contrary
both to international law and morality-and would generally be wary of using force even when it could
be justified. The U.S. should always avoid giving allies and clients the impression that they have
a blank check from Washington, since that will tend to make them more combative and unreasonable
in disputes with their neighbors. Allies and clients that wanted to pursue reckless and provocative
courses of action would be actively discouraged, and it would be the responsibility of the U.S.
to pull these states back from avoidable conflicts. A noninterventionist U.S. would manage relations
with other major powers by seeking to cooperate on matters of common interest and by avoiding unnecessary
disagreements on those issues where the U.S. has relatively little at stake. The U.S. and other
major powers are bound to have conflicting interests from time to time, but these unavoidable disagreements
shouldn't be compounded by picking fights over every issue where we differ. As long as the U.S.
has allies on the borders of other major powers, there will always be a certain degree of mistrust
and tension in our relations. However, the U.S. shouldn't make this worse by seeking to enlarge
our alliances or increase our influence in countries that have historically been in the orbit of
another major power. The goal here should be to keep tensions with other major powers at a tolerable
minimum and to reduce the possibility of renewed great power conflict in the new century.
As George Washington also said: "In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than
that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for
others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should
be cultivated." For that reason, a noninterventionist U.S. would be one that doesn't seek to demagogue
or exaggerate foreign threats, nor would it cultivate either hostility towards or adoration of any
other country. Above all, it won't seek to make the U.S. the champion of any other country's interests
at our expense.
Noninterventionism is a rather clunky and unappealing label for a set of very appealing ideas:
that the U.S. should mind its own business, act with restraint, respect other nations, refrain from
unnecessary violence, and pursue peace. If future administrations took just a few of these as guiding
principles for the conduct of foreign policy, America and the world would both be better off.
Senior editor Daniel Larison blogs at TheAmericanConservative.com/Larison.
"The whole of Mosul collapsed today. We've fled our homes and neighborhoods, and we're looking
for God's mercy. We are waiting to die."
– Mahmoud Al Taie, resident of Mosul, Wall Street Journal
An army of Sunni fighters affiliated to al Qaida crossed the Syrian border into Iraq on Tuesday,
scattering defensive units from the Iraqi security forces, capturing Iraq's second biggest city
of Mosul, and sending 500,000 civilians fleeing for safety. The unexpected jihadi blitz has
left President Barack Obama's Middle East policy in tatters and created a crisis of incalculable
magnitude.
The administration will now be forced to focus its attention and resources on this new flashpoint
hoping that it can prevent the makeshift militia from marching on Baghdad and toppling the regime
of Nouri al Maliki. Events on the ground are moving at breakneck speed as the extremists have expanded
their grip to Saddam's birthplace in Tikrit and north to Baiji, home to Iraq's biggest refinery.
The political thread that held Iraq together has snapped pushing Iraq closer to a full-blown civil
war.
Here's an excerpt from the New York Times:
"The militants freed thousands of prisoners and took over military bases, police stations,
banks and provincial headquarters, before raising the black flag of the jihadi group Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria over public buildings. The bodies of soldiers, police officers and civilians
lay scattered in the streets."
"Having consolidated control over Sunni-dominated Nineveh Province, armed gunmen were heading
on the main road to Baghdad, Iraqi officials said, and had already taken over parts of Salahuddin
Province."
The Iraqi security forces–whose training by the US military cost an estimated $20 billion–dropped
their weapons and fled at the first sign of trouble. Now the streets, government buildings, schools,
hospitals, airports and military installations are in the hands of the al Qaida-splinter group called
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS. The group is now in possession of helicopters and tanks
that were left behind by al Malaki's soldiers.
Tens of thousands of civilians have left the city in cars and on foot carrying whatever they
can in small trunks and plastic bags. Iraqi news stations report that the roads and checkpoints
are clogged with people fleeing for safety to Kirkuk or Baghdad. According to Bloomberg: "Dead bodies
are scattered around western Mosul due to the fighting. The city is empty and most shops are closed."
In a desperate attempt to reverse developments on the ground, "Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
took to the airwaves to urge all men to volunteer to fight, promising to provide weapons and equipment.
The Prime Minister also urged parliament to declare a state of emergency as part of an effort "to
confront this ferocious attack that harms all Iraqis."
Krauthammer is Right, for Once! The US Empire is in Decline
I was shocked to find myself in almost perfect agreement today with a recent column by the neoconservative
pundit Charles Krauthammer. Usually Krauthammer has me groaning, but yesterday
his column nailed it. He was writing about what he correctly observes as the end of "American
hegemony" in the global political sphere
... ... ...
Missing from Krauthammer's analysis, of course, is the history behind this development.
US global domination, which could be said to have begun with the collapse in the early 1990s
of the former Soviet Union, was destined to be a short-lived affair. By 1990, the Soviet Union had
been bankrupted by President Reagan's massive military spending campaign, and the USSR's political
and economic implosion did leave the US, by default, as the world's last and only "superpower,"
but left unremarked was that this country's massive military spending had also effectively hollowed
out the US economy, too. And instead of turning inward at the end of the Cold War, and investing
in a revitalization of America's crumbling physical, social and educational infrastructure, which
might have rectified things, the problem was made worse by two more decades of continuous war economy,
driven by the very neoconservative ideology that Krauthammer still espouses.
Wars were launched: first the Persian Gulf War against Iraq in 1990-1 (which continued until
the 2003 invasion of Iraq with the maintenance of "no-fly zones" over parts of Iraq), then the Bosnian
and Kosovo wars in the mid and late '90s, followed by the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003
invasion of Iraq. And when that was not enough, a fake "War on Terror" was launched to convince
the gullible American public of the need of continued massive military spending.
Instead of shrinking the bloated US military, successive presidents - George H.W. Bush, Bill
Clinton, George W. Bush and finally Barack Obama - all kept increasing military spending to
the point that this country under President Obama has been spending as much on its military as the
rest of the world combined. And to make things worse, the US has been losing its wars. that is not
the kind of thing designed to instill fear in potential adversaries.
At the same time that the US empire was bankrupting itself through extravagant military spending,
it has been relentlessly pushing its weight around everywhere in the world, subverting or trying
to subvert democratically elected governments in places like Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Haiti and
Venezuela, and even seeking to undermine governments in states like Russia, Ukraine and Iran.
Something had to give, and as Krauthammer correctly notes, something finally has given. America's
bluff is being called.
Fed up with the clumsy bullying of American foreign and economic policy, angered by the imperial
over-reach of America's National Security Agency, and emboldened by the weakness of both the American
dollar and America's bloated, bureaucratic and over-stretched military (as evidenced by its inability
to defeat minimally armed and trained patriotic forces in Afghanistan and Iraq), Russia and China,
and perhaps Iran too, are realizing that they "don't have to take it anymore."
While Krauthammer didn't mention it, even NATO, that Cold War relic that the US had been using
as a fig leaf since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 to cover its aggressive policy of encirclement
and gradual subversion of Russia, is now showing signs of collapse. The European public and their
elected officials are angry at Edward Snowden's revelations about massive NSA spying on it's purported
"allies," and the latest effort to enlist Europe in a program of economic sanctions against Russia
over its annexation of Crimea have fallen flat, with France refusing to stop selling advanced military
equipment to Russia and with Germany balking at any serious economic sanctions against one of its
largest trading partners.
Increasingly, Russia, China, Brazil and other large developing economies are separating themselves
from the dollar-based global financial system, undermining the last mainstay of US hegemony - the
dollar as the world's reserve currency.
... ... ...
History is replete with empires that crumbled under their own hubris and ambition, and the United
States is no different.
The only real disagreement I have with Krauthammer is in seeing this decline of US empire
as a tragedy. Looking at the incredible death, destruction and grotesque waste of resources
that can be directly attributed to the US and its imperialist program since the end of the Second
World War, I can only see its demise as a positive thing.
Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective,
and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).
This is huge. By indelibly linking producer and consumer - the pipeline alone is a $70 billion
infrastructure project - it deflates the post-Ukraine Western threat (mostly empty, but still very
loud) to cut European imports of Russian gas. Putin has just defiantly demonstrated that he has
other places to go.
The Russia-China deal also makes a mockery of U.S. boasts to have isolated Russia because of
Ukraine. Not even Germany wants to risk a serious rupture with Russia (hence the absence of significant
sanctions). And now Putin has just ostentatiously unveiled a signal 30-year energy partnership with
the world's second-largest economy. Some isolation.
...They see these alleged norms as forms of velvet-glove imperialism, clever extensions of a
Western hegemony meant to keep Russia in its reduced post-Soviet condition and China contained by
a dominant U.S. military.
Obama cites modern rules; Russia and China, animated by resurgent nationalism, are governed by
ancient maps. Putin refers to eastern and southern Ukraine by the old czarist term of "New Russia."
And China's foreign minister justifies vast territorial claims that violate maritime law by citing
traditional ("nine-dash") maps that grant China dominion over the East and South China seas.
Which makes this alignment of the world's two leading anti-Western powers all the more significant.
It marks a major alteration in the global balance of power.
... ... ...
Putin to Shanghai reprises Nixon to China. To be sure, it's not the surprise that Henry Kissinger
pulled off in secret. But it is the capstone of a gradual - now accelerated - Russia-China rapprochement
that essentially undoes the Kissinger-Nixon achievement.
Their 1972 strategic coup fundamentally turned the geopolitical tables on Moscow. Putin has now
turned the same tables on us.
...Indeed, at this week's Asian cooperation conference, Xi proposed a brand-new continental security
system to include Russia and Iran (lest anyone mistake its anti-imperialist essence) and exclude
America. This is an open challenge to the post-Cold War, U.S.-dominated world that Obama inherited
and then weakened beyond imagining.
If carried through, it would mark the end of a quarter-century of unipolarity. And herald a return
to a form of bipolarity - two global coalitions: one free, one not - though, with communism dead,
not as structurally rigid or ideologically dangerous as Cold War bipolarity. Not a fight to the
finish, but a struggle nonetheless - for dominion and domination.
GENEVA – Russia's leader Vladimir Putin usually wears a perfect poker face. But last week in
Shangahi, the icy-cold Russian president came awfully close to bursting into a big grin.
And why not? Putin had just stolen a march on his western rivals. The US-British attempt
to wound Russia's economy and punish Putin for disobedience had just blown up in their red faces.
After 20 years of difficult talks, Russia and China had just signed a huge deal that called for
Russia to export 38 billion cubic meters of gas worth some $400 billion to China. The agreement
begins in 2018 and will involve one of the globe's largest engineering projects that links Russia's
remote gas fields to China's pipeline system.
In addition, China will invest at least $20 billion in Russian industry and boost imports of
Russian products, notably military systems. China will become Russia's largest trade partner.
This was not the much ballyhooed "pivot to Asia" that President Barack Obama expected. It is,
however, the long-dreaded embrace between the Chinese dragon and Russian bear that has given western
strategists the willies.
One must suspect that the recent fracas in Ukraine was the last straw that pushed China to make
a strategic alignment with Russia. Until now, the two great powers had quietly cooperated, not always
without problems. Thanks to all the bluster and sabre-rattling from the US and its allies over
Eastern Europe and the South China Sea, China decided to deepen and expand its entente with Moscow.
The Republicans in the US Congress who have been beating the war drums and calling for Obama
to get tough with Russia (whatever that means) now share blame for pushing Moscow into China's arms.
All perfectly predictable and perfectly dumb. A diplomatic fiasco of the first water.
Russia has thus given its economy a big boost and made western sanctions look inconsequential.
Chinese funds will allow cash-strapped Russia to modernize its oil and gas industry. The new gas
pipelines will be a major economic boost for Russia's distressed eastern regions and Siberia.
If the gas deal works and prospers, it will serve as a template for heightened Sino-Russian cooperation
in military projects, such as fifth generation fighter aircraft, missile systems, naval forces and
advanced electronics. Until today, Russia had been reluctant to share more advanced military
systems with China because of China's copying of Russian technology, then refusing to pay adequate
royalties.
For China, the deal offers many advantages. China has been energy deficient for years. Beijing
desperately needs to find new energy sources to fuel its growing economy. Russian gas offers a clean
alternative to the filthy coal China has used for power and heat. Estimates are that a switch to
gas will reduce air pollution by at least 25% in China's northern cities, maybe much more. Having
gasped for air through numerous Beijing nights, I fully appreciate what this means.
Russia has long been reluctant to cooperate too closely with China on Far East industrial projects.
Russians have little love for China – or "Kitai" – because China evokes memories of the Mongol-Tatar
invasions that ravaged large parts of Russia for hundreds of years. Distrust and even straight out
dislike is wired into the mentality of many Russians. During the 19th century, Russia joined the
western powers and Japan in raping China.
Demography lies at the heart of Russia's fears of China. Russia's far eastern regions, with
the vital port of Vladivostok, has only 7.4 million citizens. Ten times as many Chinese lived
just across the border in the northeast region known as the "Dongbei." This highly strategic region
and Manchuria became an arena of conflict at the end of the 19th century between Russia, Japan,
and China, leading to the bloody 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War, the first big, modern war of the
20th century.
... ... ...
Today, China's growing energy imports are very vulnerable to interdiction. The US and lately
India have the capability to block inbound Chinese oil tankers and maritime cargo exports, either
of which would shut down China's major industries.
... ... ...
Most important, the Sino-Russian energy deal may further alter the world's balance of power to
the East. Russia and China working in tandem could offset the great power and wealth of the US and
its rich allies. It is a major geopolitical event.
(Reprinted from EricMargolis.com
by permission of author or representative)
(Pseudo) "Election" of Poroshenko as seen in Moscow
There seems to be a consensus in Moscow that Poroshenko is a political chameleon who can change
his opinion as fast as this animal can change his color: first he was a member of Kuchma's United
Social Democratic Party, then he helped create the Party of Regions, then he joined Yushchenko's
Our Ukraine Party. He also was a member of the Azarov government under President Yanukovich whom
he then betrayed by financing the Maidan movement and joining the Udar Party. So Poroshenko is the
ultimate political prostitute and in Moscow this is definitely a cause for optimism because a prostitute
is pragmatic and can be bought. Does that shock you? Consider the alternatives and you will rapidly
come to the same conclusion as Moscow.
The bad news is that for the time being Poroshenko is clearly on the USA's payroll and that both
his rhetoric and his declared policies are pretty much indistinguishable from the one of Iatseniuk,
Turchinov, Avakov & Co. As a result the Kremlin's reaction to Poroshenko's announcement that he
wanted to travel to Moscow to meet Putin has been to declared that at this point in time no such
visit was being considered.
Russia's policy towards the Ukraine
The approach chosen by the Kremlin to deal with the Ukrainian mess is now becoming pretty clear.
Declare that while Moscow has huge reservations about the so-called "elections" it will
be willing to negotiate and work with whoever is in power in Kiev.
Declare that secession of combat operations in the Donbass as a pre-condition for any such
negotiations.
Agree to try to find a deal on gas sales provided the Ukies pay their outstanding bill.
Basically take note but otherwise ignore any statements made by Poroshenko and judge him
by his actions and not his words.
Translated from "Diplomatese" into plain English this means putting the financial and political
squeeze on Poroshenko until he decides that his current attempts at rapidly solving the problems
of the Donbass by force will fail.
This is a tough and unpalatable policy because it implies that
Russia will stand by and watch the neo-Nazi forces killing combatants and civilians across the Donbass.
In this context it is very important to keep in mind another no less disturbing fact: the current
level of resistance in the Donbass is still far below what it could be and nowhere near the kind
of levels of resistance which took place in South Ossetia, Abkhazia or Crimea. Just take a look
at the map of the Donbass and circle the cities where combats are taking place. You will see Slaviansk,
Kramatorsk, Kransyi Liman, Antartsit and maybe one or two more. So what about all the rest?
What about Donetsk. We have all seen the combat footage coming out of Donetsk so let me ask you
- how many combatants did you see on that footage? Ten, maybe thirty soldiers? More? Fifty? One
hundred? Did you know that Donetsk has a population just under one million people and that the Donetsk
Metropolitan area has two million? Any military analyst will tell you that you can easily put 10%
of any given population under arms, and 20% with some effort. In other words, the city of Donetsk
should be able to generate anywhere between 100'000 and 200'000 men and the Donetsk Metropolitan
area anywhere between 200'000 and 400'000 men. While no reliable figures are available at this point,
I personally doubt that the entire NAF has much more than maybe 10'000 to 15'000 men in arms (maybe
"Juan" can correct me here). In other words, what is clear is that the current level of resistance
in the Donbass is at best about 10% of what it could be.
That is most emphatically not something the Kremlin can ignore.
Of course, some wannabe strategists would want Moscow do to what the USA did with Iraq and simply
*assume* that Russian forces will be greeted as liberators by a majority of the population of the
Donbass and in this case I happen to think that it might even be true, but that is not a good enough
reason to move forces in. Sadly, but what is taking place now is what I would call a massive "awareness
campaign" for the people of Novorossiia: the obscene alliance of Jewish oligarchs and Galician neo-Nazis
is showing its true face and with every shell dropped on the Donbass the prospect of a unitary Ukraine
are becoming more and more remote.
One anonymous commentator recently
posted this most insightful comment on this blog. He/she wrote: Call me cynic, but invasion
is when Russia enters in Ukraine after 3 days of shooting. Liberation is when Russia enters in Ukraine
after 3 months of bloody mess. This is absolutely true.
Painful as this may be to admit, the current problem is not that Russia is not ready to intervene
in the Donbass, but that the Donbass is not ready to make such an intervention justifiable.
Other factors which affect the Russian stance: changes in the EU
There is no doubt at all that the results of the recent European elections have been received
with elation in the Kremlin. I have carefully listened to the reaction to these election results
by many commentators in Russia and it is absolutely clear that they have a very different view of
what happened than their western counterparts. Where western analysts speaks of a triumph of xenophobic
and Right-Wing parties, Russian analysts speak of a victory for anti-EU, anti-NATO and, ultimately,
anti-US forces. Furthermore, what is labeled as "Right Wing" in the West is perceived as "conservative"
or even "traditionalist" in Russia. One commentator said that the victory of the "Conchita Wurst"
freak at the Eurovision Song Contest was the straw that broke the camel's back and that it had a
direct impact on the European rejection of a morally degenerate and politically subservient Europe.
I am not sure that the Wurst freak by itself has such a role, but the constant barrage of sicko
gender propaganda, combined with a frontal assault on European traditional values probably did.
I wish I had the time to write a detailed analysis of these elections here. I will say that I
follow French politics very closely and that I fully agree with the Russian point of view.
The National Front is not just a "right wing" movement (although in some aspects it is). It is first
and foremost an anti-system movement and party which is deeply affected by the kind of values
Alain Soral promotes: the "Left of Labor and the Right of Values". True, the top leadership of the
National Front is still stuck in old "Right of Labor" ideas, but most members are clearly "popular"
in their politics, some even very close to Socialist ideas. In fact, I would argue that the entire
Right-Left paradigm simply does not apply to Europe any more. Look at all the so-called "Left" parties
in France, Germany or the UK. They are all really nasty, hardcore, capitalist and reactionary parties.
I prefer to use pro-system and anti-system categories. By 'system' I mean the following characteristics:
promotion of supra-national entities like the EU and NATO
total political subservience to the AngloZionist empire
support for and constant use of the "Ziomedia" to achieve its goals
systematic destruction of traditional European values
support for a police state internally
support for use of military force externally
These are the policies which the establishment or "system" parties in Europe have promoted for
decades and these are the policies which have been rejected in the latest European elections. Now
look at Russia's stance on the very same issues:
Officially, Russia is a social/socialist state (Putin's words in his address to the Federal
Assembly). In reality there are still many signs of very strong capitalism in Russia, but they
are being regulated and contained. Most of the population is probably far more socialist than
the current regime, but compared to the EU/US Russia is definitely a social state.
Russia is clearly opposed to the EU and NATO.
Russia, at least under Putin, has tried really hard to free itself from the AngloZionist
Empire.
The Russian media has largely been "de-Zionistized". There are some exceptions like the
notorious Ekho Mosvky (Echo of Moscow, also called "Ekho Matsy" or "Echo of the Matzo") and
the Dozhd (Rain) TV channel, but they have very little or no traction with the general public.
Russia clearly support traditional values, especially Christian and Islamic ones.
Russia's policies on civil rights are a mixed bag. Unfortunately, the Kremlin does support
Internet censorship, so-called "anti-Piracy" laws, surveillance of Internet Service Providers,
etc. The Russian Duma has also passed some terrible laws banning the free discussion of WWII.
The good news is that these laws seem to be applied with clear lack of determination and that
they are probably more a reaction to the rise of neo-Nazis in the Ukraine than a true attempt
at internal political censorship.
Russia clearly opposes the use of force in international affairs unless the UNSC gives
it's approval, Russians are attacked or when a vital national strategic interest is threatened.
In other words, the folks in the Kremlin and the French National Front would largely agree with
each other and the fact is that historically these two forces get along very well.
Russia is clearly counting on the fact that before the end of the year it might see a much more
friendly Europe than it has so far.
Other factors which affect the Russian stance: crypto-alliance with China
Though I wish I could I cannot go into an analysis of the recent Russian-Chinese agreements (others
have done so very well - see
here, here,
here or here). I will just
say this:
While, for a number of reasons, the word "alliance" has never been used by Russia or Chinese
officials - they prefer to speak of "partnership" - the fact is that what Russia and China have
committed to is exactly that: a strategic alliance.
Two huge countries do not commit to a 30 year long full spectrum joint development program without
committing to an de-facto alliance. No country decides to commit to a 400 billion dollar deal without
committing to a de-facto alliance. This alliance will make it possible for Russia to create a single
energy distribution network, meaning that gas could be sent from any place in Russia to any client
state. As for China they have basically decided that their energy needs for the next 30 years or
more will entirely depend on Russia. So whether the word "alliance" is used or not, we are dealing
with a clear strategic and vital pact, the decision to operate in symbiosis if you want. From now
on, China will depend on Russia and Russia will depend on China. Put differently, the survival of
the other partner will become an existential priority for both countries. I call that a crypto-alliance.
Furthermore, while both sides went to extraordinary lengths to declare that this alliance or,
excuse me, "partnership" was not targeted against any third party, and most definitely not against
the USA, it of course is. Russia and China are now committed to create a dollar-free economic zone,
not only for energy but for all goods and services. And whom do you think the Russian and Chinese
military strategists see as their biggest potential enemy? Bulgaria? Nepal? Of course not, it is
pretty darn obvious that they both see the US as the number one enemy or, as the Russians used to
say, their "main adversary".
So this is a tectonic shift. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have basically committed their countries
to a strategic alliance which will define the future of our planet more than any other factor. Already
now the combined power of Russia and China far supersedes the power of the AngloZionist Empire,
thrown in the BRICS, the
SCO, the
CSTO and the
EEC and will will clearly
see the beginning of a consolidation of the Eurasian landmass against the AngloZionist Empire. Here,
again, the Russians feel that time is on their sides and that with each passing day they are becoming
stronger while the Western plutocracy is becoming weaker.
A look from above
So let us look at the big picture. If we "take-off" from Slaviansk or Donetsk and look at what
is taking place on a global, planetary, scale we shall immediately see that the Ukraine is only
the latest visible flashpoint of a much bigger struggle: the decolonization of the entire Eurasian
landmass. While the US and its EU puppets have their gaze fixed on such "developments" as the (pseudo-)
"election" of a non-entity like Poroshenko to the (largely symbolical) position of President of
(the completely broke) "Banderastan", the Chinese and the Russians are busy looking decades down
the road with the shared objective to bring down the AngloZionist Empire. In this context, the Ukraine
will not be neglected, of course, but each policy decision towards the developments there will be
carefully evaluated in the context of this global, over-reaching, strategy.
Crisis
of the Eurocrats, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: ...It's hard to imagine war in
today's Europe, which has coalesced around democratic values and even taken its first steps
toward political union. Indeed, as I write this, elections are being held all across Europe
... to select members of the European Parliament. ... But here's the thing: An alarmingly high
fraction of the vote is expected to go to right-wing extremists hostile to the very values that
made the election possible. ... The truth is that the European project - peace guaranteed by
democracy and prosperity - is in deep trouble...
Why is Europe in trouble?
The immediate problem is poor economic performance. ... The inherent problems of the euro have
been aggravated by bad policy. European leaders ... continue to insist,
in the teeth
of the evidence, that the crisis is all about fiscal irresponsibility, and have imposed
savage austerity that makes a terrible situation worse.
The good news, sort of, is that despite all these missteps the euro is still holding together,
surprising many analysts... Why this resilience? Part of the answer is that the European Central
Bank has calmed markets by promising to do "whatever
it takes" to save the euro... Beyond that, however, the European elite remains deeply committed
to the project, and, so far, no government has been willing to break ranks.
But... By closing ranks, the elite has in effect ensured that there are no moderate voices dissenting
from policy orthodoxy. And this lack of moderate dissent has empowered groups like the National
Front in France...
So far,... the elite has been able to hold things together. But we don't know how long this
can last, and there are some very scary people waiting in the wings.
If we're lucky - and if officials at the European Central Bank ... act boldly enough against
the growing threat of deflation - we may see some real economic recovery over the next few
years. This could, in turn, offer a breathing space, a chance to get the European project ...
back on track.
But economic recovery by itself won't be enough; Europe's elite needs to recall what the project
is really about. It's terrifying to see so many Europeans rejecting democratic values, but at
least part of the blame rests with officials who seem more interested in price stability and
fiscal probity than in democracy. Modern Europe is built on a noble idea, but that idea needs
more defenders.
JohnH :
But...but...but...the EU is doing so well that that want to bring the economic black hole
of Ukraine in! They claimed that they could barely afford the Greek bailout, yet they are shoveling
money at Ukraine!
This is a sure sign that the EU elites have become totally unhinged...or that they have been
totally corrupted by the dream of being junior partners in the American hegemony project.
bakho - -> JohnH...
Ukraine is a NeoCon project, a cabal of corrupt international elites, not a strictly American
venture.
The west is being run by corrupt elites who are only interested in enriching themselves.
The only check on the corruption is pitchforks.
anne - -> bakho...
The routine, casual expression of disdain for and hatred of Russia and especially President
Putin is continually shocking to me and I am quite sure has no precedent since the 1950s Cold
War-Joseph McCarthy era.
Beezer :
And meanwhile along comes professor Piketty, explaining it all quite well. The elites have
their policies and they are uniformly unpopular, both in Europe and the US. In Europe the EU
elites continue to impose the policies benefiting the very wealthy, and here in the US that
job belongs to the Republican Party.
Cheap labor (check), price stability (check), cut entitlement spending on the proles (check),
keep tax loopholes (check), scoop up cheap capital and add to fortunes (check, check), keep
economic growth slow, the slower the better (check, check). And as Piketty shows, capital and
capital's income accelerates when growth is slow.
Makes perfect sense. If people ever figure out how they've been betrayed by leadership, how
they've voted for their own plunder by the wealthy, hard to predict which of the various possible
outcomes develop. Most of which are 'scary.'
Myself, I'll just vote Democrat. Put a sign or two on the yard. Attend some fundraisers.
Hold a sign at the polls and chat up the neighbors as they go to vote.
Least I can do to keep the Barbarians outside the gate.
Dan Kervick :
I listened to a podcast of an LSE public event last week on the status of the European crisis
... or recovery, or financial crisis, or reform project or whatever they are calling it this
week. I was amazed by how morose, fatalistic, cynical and yet coldly obtuse these Eurocrats
seem.
What is bizarre is how they all seemed to have talked themselves into believing that their
problems are simply financial, and and managed to almost completely ignore the fact that their
economic growth is dead in the water and their unemployment rates are horrifying. They use stupid
euphemisms to describe everything around them and can't think straight.
Honestly, I felt like I was listening to a group of madmen who were obsessively balancing
their checkbooks over and over and over instead of going to work, eating food, washing and changing
their dirty clothes and fixing up their houses.
On the other hand, it's hard to say what they should do. It's sort of like what would happen
in the US is the central government ceased to exist, but everybody still used the dollar and
the dollar system, and the national banking system were still run by the Fed. You would have
50 state governments with no control over their own destinies, owned by banks, and crucified
to a currency that the governments don't control.
What a madhouse that continent has become. They have consigned a whole lost generation to
unemployment and nothingness, but on they go, balancing their checkbooks, convinced that someday,
only *after* they have paid all the bills, they can afford to work and build a roof over their
heads.
bakho - -> Dan Kervick...
The problems of the Malefactors of Great Wealth ARE financial. Those are the only problems
that matter. The Malefactors like cheap labor. For them, high unemployment is a feature, not
a bug.
...American preeminence is triggering a balancing coalition.
The deal allows Putin to conduct his own pivot toward Asia. It allows him to ameliorate the
economic damage caused by sanctions. ... it allows him ... Russia as an independent actor rather
than the supplicant of the West, as it was during the Yeltsin era.
If the deal is good for Russia, it may even be better for China. Beijing won't ally itself firmly
with Moscow. Instead, it will likely seek to play the role of honest broker, maneuvering between
the Moscow and Washington.
Right now, the U.S. has a lot more to offer. But playing the Russia card gives China increased
flexibility.
CBCalif
As the author begrudgingly notes,
"the deal ... signals another shift on the road to a new geopolitical constellation--one
in which the U.S. figures as the target of joint Russian and Chinese [responding to] Washington[s
ill gotten belief it] could do whatever it wanted wherever it chose. No longer. What realists
predicted would occur is indeed occurring. American preeminence is triggering a balancing
coalition."
Obama was simply wrong, when he asserted that Russia is merely a regional power and that
the U.S. is truly the [only] world power. The two are out maneuvering this country, despite
our leaders denials of that fact.
Arti Fact
It is good that this deal masquerades all other deals signed. Let you think we are
gas station, let you :) But as for the text, IMHO it states obvious things, what was the purpose
of writing it? Btw try to read newspapers and blogs and forums in China: the words used towards
Russia is "neighbour", "friend", "ally". Words used towards US are in best case: "trade partner".
Just to give some material for thinkin
IT IS PAST TIME FOR WASHINGTON to recognize a fundamental truth, which is that it cannot
mold other states in its own image and that its attempts to do so through force are actually counterproductive.
Dov S. Zakheim was the under secretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer
of the U.S. Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004. He is vice chairman of the Center for the National
Interest and serves on the Advisory Council of The National Interest.
But here from Europe, one can only wonder how you personally could have held a senior position
in the US DOD when the disastrous illegal war in Iraq was launched
Invading Iraq of the basis of cooked "intelligence" was bad enough
But to have no "nation building" policy to back up the Occupation was equally disastrous
while disbanding the Iraqi Army
And now you say, rightly, that the US should abandon nation building
Perhaps you and fellow eggheads could have thought a little before aggressing..
And perhaps a little mea culpa could go a long way
I hope you will not make the same mistake in Iran and Ukraine and Syria where your neocon
friends are up their usual tricks
This
week's 30-year $400 billion Russia-China natural gas deal has justifiably attracted considerable
attention for both its scale and its symbolism. Indeed, it is an important agreement that could
have profound consequences. Nevertheless, there may also be less to the immediate arrangement than
meets the eye.
On the surface, the agreement appears to be a major accomplishment for President Vladimir Putin
and for Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled natural-gas monopoly, even if the company made price
and other concessions to secure the agreement with China National Petroleum Corporation, China's
largest energy producer. Mr. Putin accurately described the deal as "the
biggest contract in the history of the gas sector of the former USSR" and, as this thinking
goes, artfully deflected Western efforts to isolate Russia politically or economically over the
annexation of Crimea, implied that a new Moscow-Beijing axis could produce a global political realignment,
and secured an important new role for Gazprom in Asia's vast energy markets.
Some appropriately question just how much Moscow had to give away-Russia needed this deal, and
international observers expected it, so failure could have left the Kremlin looking somewhat deflated.
The fact that the Russian president himself acknowledged that the Chinese had been "difficult,
hard negotiators" and that the final pricing appears to be below what Gazprom originally sought
adds weight to this. Others speculate whether it is really in Russia's national interest to be too
close to China or express skepticism that Moscow and Beijing can ever get along due to mutual suspicion
and competing aims. But these are long-term questions and may not be answerable until after Russia,
China, Europe, Asia, the United States and others have already experienced the consequences.
Among other things, we do not know what other agreements-or informal understandings-Mr. Putin
may have reached in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Exchanges of military
technology or of intelligence, whether gathered through cyberspying or the old-fashioned way,
could be problematic for Washington.
So could closer coordination between Moscow and Beijing on a host of international security issues
in Asia and the Middle East. None of this would require a Russia-China alliance or any comprehensive
agreement on other mutually frustrating issues; Moscow and Beijing might not find it too difficult
to compartmentalize and subordinate their differences in competing with the United States. Skepticism
toward Russia's possibly wishful thinking should not facilitate our own.
Paul J. Saunders is executive director of The Center for the National Interest and
associate publisher of The National Interest.
He served in the State Department from 2003 to 2005. Follow him on Twitter: @1796farewell.
With the stroke of a pen, Russia significantly shifted its economic relations with its neighbors,
creating a major new export market to the east and reducing its reliance on European customers at
a time when its relations with the West are at their lowest point since the Cold War.
... ... ...
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew appealed to China in a visit last week to avoid actions that
might limit the impact of recent Western sanctions against Russia. But a U.S. official, who was
not authorized to speak by name, said the United States would distinguish between deals that have
long been in the works - such as this one - and new agreements that seek to fill space left by U.S.
and European Union sanctions.
... ... ...
Russian officials on Wednesday also hinted at a possible "prepayment" totaling $25 billion.
Mr. Putin told reporters after the signing ceremony that the price of the gas for China was based
on the market price of oil, just as it was for European countries.
"The gas price formula as in our other contracts is pegged to the market price of oil and oil
products," Itar-Tass quoted Mr. Putin as saying.
The deal is the largest ever for the Russian natural gas industry, he said.
Russia will invest $55 billion in infrastructure for transporting the gas to China, said Alexei
B. Miller, the chief executive officer of Gazprom.
AK, US
This gas deal shows that the US attempts to isolate Russia economically are destined to fail.
These attempts are getting little traction even in Europe. Nobody wants to take economic pain
to help people in the State Department advance their agenda. And countries like China and India
will absolutely refuse to treat Russia like a pariah state. These countries have their own economic
and geopolitical interests. Working with Russia helps them further their interests. The relative
economic power of these countries will continue to grow.
The US-centered world order established after the fall of the Soviet Union was never going
to last. Instead of trying to maintain it, US policymakers should think about how to act in
a multipolar world. Considering other countries' interests – now, that would be a change!
Nick Wright, Halifax, Nova Scotia 4 hours ago
The geostrategic and environmental implications of this deal are huge.
The West, in a hamfisted continuation of the Cold War, has been trying to isolate and contain
a resurgent Russia. However, it found itself strategically and tactically outplayed by Vladimir
Putin as it blundered around in his neighbourhood--Ukraine, Syria and Iran--and its Cold War
bluster and saber-rattling over military interference in sovereign nations just look hypocritical
to educated people worldwide.
On the environmental front, China looks good for succeeding in lowering its reliance on energy
from coal, while Europe--especially Germany--is building more coal-fired generating capacity,
and Canada is offending the world with its determination to develop its massive, polluting oil
sands. Western claims of superiority on the environmental front sound hollow by comparison.
Socially--from Ukraine, to Europe, to Canada, to the U.S.A.--the world is watching the rise
of aggressive, intolerant, divisive parties of the extreme right in the West, raising the legitimate
question of which of the world's regions are improving and which are in decline. Throw in Western
levels of indebtedness, and the question becomes even more pointed.
And finally, Western chauvinism is pushing Asian countries into closer economic alliances--and
who knows, perhaps eventually military ones as well. But it didn't have to turn out this way;
we can change direction before things get worse; it's just a matter of political will.
Stephen Miller, Oakland
This deal is just the tip of the iceberg. Russia has astonishingly huge reserves of gas,
and all those oil and coal burning plants are going to need to switch over in the coming years
to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Russia will become the undisputed energy superpower
and likely overtake the US eventually.
As the easy oil disappears and energy demands continue to rise globally, prices will rise
very dramatically. More gas and oil from fracking and tar sands and shale will slow the rise,
but eventually the prices will go up.
The US and Europe can whine about Russian gas all they want, but in the end, everybody pays.
Quandry, is a trusted commenter LI,NY
Although this is very important to the US's and the world's survival from an environmental
perspective, this is another faux pas upon Obama's and the EU's statecraft. The big winners
in all of this are Russia who now can thumb its nose at the US, and even more China which who
will pay less than the EU for its gas. Unfortunately, China has continued to prevail in its
economic policy over the US from Iraq to Africa, while the US has paid in lives and unrequited
financial aid. Our statecraft can use some changes and improvement.
Judyw, cumberland,
Congratulaton to our State Department who have made this deal possible. Oh yes our Congress
helped out too. By our reckless of expansion of NATO we have driven the Russian into the army
of China. I hope we are proud of ourselves for doing that.
I have never seen the US government make such a mess of Foreign Policy as this government
has made. And I don;t mean to leave out the government from Bill Clinton forward - they have
contributed to this mess with the the whole Kosovo creation.
It is important that we now recognize that we are driving countries away from the US who
are sick of our efforts of trying to "run the world", be "the indispenable power" and all that
malarky.
Our pivot to Asia seems more like it was Russia's pivot to Asia while we sat and watched.
Perhaps it would be better if we did more watching and less acting. It seems that whenever we
interfere, we create more hatred of the US and increase our separation from the world.
I hope this lesson on "the pivot to Asia" has taught us a lesson. We thought we could punish
and sanctions Russia to behave as we dictated. We just found out we can't bully Russia. In the
world today Sanctions have little meaning as they are easily broken by countries who have no
interest in "toeing the US line".
We had wanted Russia as friend, but our actions have driven into the arms of China. Congratulations
USA -- you just had another foreign policy failure.
Efren, Texas 6 hours ago
All of this is the result of not understanding that the world is headed to a multipolar world,
and that the US must learn to deal with it (see conference of Bill Clinton in Davos). Why does
US insist on destabilization of governments claiming democracy interests? Don't you remember
all dictatorial regimes supported by the US in Latin America? Now, US is so engaged in bringing
back the cold war. It's not only Russia-China being together now, most of main Latin American
countries have leftist governments. Don't be surprised if they start achieving important deals
with Russia and China.
Let's take it easy. No empire last forever. It would be better for US to respect others and
try to build a leadership based on ethical and real reasons, not on bullying everybody else
who thinks differently.
Smartlegov Oleg, Moscow 7 hours ago
This is an epic deal and just on time. Putin compromised the price, but showed how quickly
he can respond in a big wave to US/EU symbolic sanctions.
Cato, California 5 hours ago
Another positive step by Russia and China in brokering a deal that doesn't involve the West.
Please note that the almighty USD wasn't invited to this party. The deal, coupled with massive
historic accumulations of gold by both countries, spells doom for the world's reserve currency.
This will be over the next 10 years the nightmare of all nightmares for Americans when we lose
world currency status. A word to America: Hope is not a strategy.
Edwin, NY 4 hours ago
China is learning how to do its things. I'm actually glad for them and for Russia also. I'm
a citizen of the United States but I'm tired of foreign policies. Its time to realize that we
are not the only kid in the block. Let them join in and play the game of capitalism. Focus our
money and our strength our Nation in serving our people, in educating them, and helping them
become more competitive in this global marketplace instead of throwing money and effort to keep
others down while we stand at the top. Those days are over. Lets work together, accept our differences,
and be the best we can be. Invest in healthcare, social programs, education, research, technology
and we will remain at the top no matter what without the need to isolate or bomb everyone that
stands on our way
Babeouf, Ireland 7 hours ago
The US desperately needs joined up thinking in it foreign policy. The US 'Pivot to Asia'
to contain China may make sense. The US funding of the coup in Ukraine may make sense. Doing
both at the same time doesn't make sense. It is US foreign policy which has provided the incentive
for Russia and China to draw closer together. Of course for imperial powers foreign policy appears
just another part of domestic policy.
With the result that, due to political competition in the US, a rational US foreign policy
seems out of reach.
PuppetMaster11 - -> FighTheBrainwashing
Even better. NYT, yesterday, already ran with the story of the failure of the gas deal.
China and Russia Fail to Reach Agreement on Gas Plan
I'd like to see them eat their hats.
PuppetMaster11, 21 May 2014 6:14pm
The US attempt to sever the economic tie between Europe and Russia forced Russian into an
alliance with China.
Now, a lot depends on whether this rearrangement will congeal into a permanent line of confrontation,
or the new Russia-China alliance will work as a leverage to entice Europe away from the confrontational
US.
raindancer68, 21 May 2014 6:15pm
Energy makes the world go around, not money. The Russians are in a strong position, as the
western world tries to make up for the falling energy dynamic in their economies by scrabbling
around for fracked oil and gas.
The price that Russia was formerly selling gas to Ukraine at was $268.50 per thousand cubic
metres. Now, thanks to the so-called international community's destabilisation, Russia is selling
its gas to China instead, and getting a 30 per cent higher price.
So, as less Russian gas is available to Europe, the Ukrainians and people in the rest of
Europe can look forward to paying more. Well done, our leaders! But no doubt their masters in
Saudi Arabia and Qatar will be able to provide supplies, at rather higher prices.
MyDown titipap, 21 May 2014 6:32pm
Not that simple. Urengoy from which gas goes to Europe is 5 thousand kms away from Yakutiya
and 6 thousands kms away from Sakhalin from which gas will go to China.
Mr1Cynical, 21 May 2014 6:23pm
This has gone under the radar but Rouhani is also in China perhaps its to do with this ?
U.S. Issues Threats Over Pending Russia-Iran Oil Deal
FTMDaily.com – Russia and Iran are forging ahead with a controversial oil-for-goods deal that
is being criticized by Washington as a violation of Iran's interim nuclear agreement. .
Under an interim agreement reached with world powers last year, Iran is permitted to continue
exporting no more than 1 million barrels a day of oil to six countries: China, India, Japan,
South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey.
Now, Russia is offering to buy 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day, which Washington says
will violate the terms of the interim agreement.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has already begun threatening more 'sanctions.
Iran's response: The country refuses to 'wait for America's permission' to increase its oil
exports.
On the surface, Washington is pointing to Iran's "violation" of the interim agreement. But,
when you follow the money, you find something much different. Not only will a Russian-Iranian
oil deal inject a massive amount of fresh revenue into Tehran while emboldening Russia, but
the proposed oil deal will completely sidestep the U.S. dollar. rest of article
Will May 20th Go Down In History As the Day the U.S. "Petrodollar" Monopoly Was Finally Shattered?
May 21, 2014
…The struggle over Ukraine has caused Russia to completely re-evaluate the financial relationship
that it has russia-dollarwith the United States. If it starts trading a lot of oil and
natural gas for currencies other than the U.S. dollar, that will be a massive blow for the petrodollar,
and it could end up dramatically – and negatively – impacting the average American's current
standard of living. Let me explain.rest of article
…The struggle over Ukraine has caused Russia to completely re-evaluate the financial relationship
that it has russia-dollarwith the United States.
Nonsense! The West's reaction regarding Ukraine has been entirely immaterial. Putin has been
committed to the geopolitical policy of Eurasianism for a decade, as have those in positions
of power and influence around him.
Mr1Cynical ID5677229
Yes but i think you'll find Iran and Syria are a part of that plan Iran the wildcard I think
they wanted the west to lift sanctions but realize now that the G5+ 1 are demanding that Iran
gives up their ICBMS as part of the Nuclear deal it won't happen so Iran has joined the triparte
and will now ignore sanctions. Iv'e heard they now have the S300 So Israel becomes less of a
threat I think the US fck fest in the Ukraine has forced Russia China Iran to man up, and put
the crazies from the shite house back in their boxes
John Mack, 21 May 2014 6:28pm
Truly ironic. Mich of the US long term strategy has been to prevent China from becoming dependent
on Russia for energy. That was the point of the Iraqi war. The US feared a Russian-French plan
to assassinate Saddam Hussein and replace him immediately with a stable military government
that would agree to respect certain human rights an Shiite rights and Kurdish rights. That would
have made Russia in control of the largest store of energy resources. The US feared that would
mean that Russia gained a position where it vastly increase the costs of energy to China, Japan,
and India, or even starve them at least partially of their energy needs, this crippling their
economies or making them ally with Russia. So here we are, over Ukraine ...
elti97
Europe's long-term energy policy seems clear: reduce energy dependence on Russia. Fortunately
there are good alternatives: oil and gas imports from the Middle East, Africa and North America,
fracking, nuclear, renewables and increased efficiency.
With a little smart planning, in 5-10 years time, Russian threats to cut off the gas will
be a mild annoyance. More importantly, a variety of competing suppliers will give European countries
greater bargaining power.
AlexRussia elti97
If you decline dependence from Russia then you increase dependence from someone and it is not
fact that the second is good for you
elti97 AlexRussia
Wrong. If you increase the number of potential suppliers, you gain bargaining power.
For example, if Estonia has the option to buy gas from Russia, Norway or the US, it is obviously
in a better position than if it could only buy from Russia. That is exactly why a massive gas
terminal is currently in construction in Estonia.
Estonia will probably still buy some gas from Russia, but at a better price.
Robert Sandlin elti97
Dream on.Estonia is one country Russia wouldn't mind seeing fall off into the Baltic Sea.
Robert Sandlin elti97, 21 May 2014 7:41pm
On yes,who would ever doubt that gas from North Africa and the Middle East wasn't a reliable
source,cough,cough,Libya,Al Queda,cough. And were you talking about the DOA Nabucco pipeline.
But seriously, I have no doubt giving up Russian gas could be done. But the question is WHY
in the first place give up a cheap easy supply. To pay out the a$$ for uncertain other supplies
of gas.
kenlinuk, 21 May 2014 6:39pm
Russia tells the EU to go frack itself. China and Russia stand united against the
US-EU sponsored fascist coup in Ukraine! UKIP landslide is a certainty. Good times for democratic
freedom. Fuck the EU!
Kingston Elenwo kenlinuk, 21 May 2014 8:05pm
It's Frack the EU... If ur gonna say it, say it right :)
ID7776906, 21 May 2014 6:40pm
West always treated Russia like a dog anyways. They`re better off going East.
burnageblue11 ID7776906, 21 May 2014 7:09pm
I find it all very sad. I would much rather closer ties with Russia and see a declining US
influence in Europe.
What we have done, is push an economic neighbor East. We are now fully dependent on US gas
imports(with transit costs).We are now more dependent on the United States than ever.
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Huge hike in Gas bills this winter.
indietinker
21 May 2014 6:41pm
this is all in the US plan for Russia and China am afraid to say.
"Instead of containment, the US should block Russia's ambitions in Europe while encouraging
them in Asia".
Last month, The New York Times reported that in the wake of the Ukraine Crisis, U.S. President
Barack Obama had decided to abandon the reset with Russia in favor of a policy of containment
2.0. According to the report
Given Russia's intransigence, it's completely understandable that Obama would be tempted
to pursue this approach. It's also a mistake. Instead of containing Russia completely, the U.S.
should block its ambitions in Europe while encouraging it to turn eastward towards Asia.
Despite the hopes of many in the post-Cold War era, the U.S. and Russia are not going to
have compatible interests in Eastern Europe anytime soon. Russia will always see this as its
natural domain, which is a status that the U.S. is unwilling to grant Moscow, especially since
NATO's expansion over the past two decades. On the other hand, as John Allen Gay recently noted,
American and Russian interests are almost perfectly compatible throughout Asia. It is in this
region that the strategic rationale of the reset was always on the firmest ground.
The challenge is forcing Russia to turn eastward. Europe's dynamism throughout the modern
era has forced the Russian state to adopt a westward orientation. This is reflected in the country's
geography - with most of the major cities being located in western Russia - and deeply ingrained
in Moscow's strategic culture.
Over the long-term, it's nearly inevitable that the Asian Century will force Russia to reorient
itself towards the east. Indeed, as I have noted before, this is already taking place to a growing
degree. Still, the question for U.S. policymakers is what actions can be taken to accelerate
this natural progression?
The first step is blocking Russia's ability to expand westward. This doesn't mean that the
U.S. and its NATO allies have to deploy troops to Ukraine. All that is required is to introduce
greater uncertainty into Putin's calculus about Russia's ability to successfully expand westward.
Most importantly, the U.S. must disabuse Putin of the notion that Russia could easily take and
hold territory in Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
The more Putin fears that an invasion would expose the weaknesses of the Russian armed forces,
and either fail completely or turn into a prolonged debacle in the mold of Afghanistan during
the 1980s, the less likely he is to order Russian troops across the border. The good news is
that Putin appears to already have these fears, as evidenced by his restraint in an overt invasion
of eastern Ukraine.
In addition, the U.S. should continue underscoring its commitment to the security of all
NATO member states, and intentionally create ambiguity as to how it might react to Russian expansion
in non-NATO countries in Eastern Europe. This will increase Putin's apprehension about becoming
too adventurous in Europe. After all, he has already squandered Russia's influence in most of
Ukraine and can hardly endure another embarrassing international setback.
At the same time, the U.S. should encourage Russia to expand its influence in Asia, and thus
give Putin an outlet in which to act upon his grand ambitions for Russia. The most immediate
area of focus should be in Central Asia, where the U.S. is currently withdrawing from Afghanistan.
Given Russia's largely congruent interests with the U.S. in Central Asia, Moscow should be encouraged
to play a leading role in helping to fill the vacuum the U.S. withdrawal is bound to create,
as it is already starting to do with India in the region. Moscow and Delhi can help ensure a
modicum of stability in Central Asia even as they cooperate in opposing radical Islamist terrorist
groups. This would be entirely to America's benefit.
Furthermore, as Russia has been focused elsewhere in recent years, China has quickly filled
the role Moscow historically has played in Central Asia. Already, many analysts see China as
the most important external actor in Central Asia, a position that Russia has held since the
19th Century. Beijing is in the process of trying to further entrench its new position further
through organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and its new Silk Road
Economic Belt.
As Russia reengages in Central Asia, it will increasingly find itself clashing with China
for influence in the region. This would inevitably create tensions in the increasingly close
relationship between Beijing and Moscow. These tensions would force Russia to concentrate more
on the long-term threat a rising China poses to its national security. In grappling with this
challenge, Russia will naturally seek to assert itself more forcefully in Eastern Asia to hedge
against China.
Mr1Cynical - -> indietinker
To try and spin this as an American plan is wishful thinking I think you'll find the NYT
is hailing defeat as victory. The Dollar as the worlds reserve currency has been in decline
for many years this deal between Russia and China will hasten it The EU won't save the US, it
will only ever be it's prostitute with little economic clout outside of Germany.
loveminuso - -> indietinker, 21 May 2014 6:56pm
Yeah right...The only problem here is this shit might work in Africa and the ME, with one
big difference...Russia and China have Nukes with the capability of strategic delivery...
"We have powerful enemies but we don't have powerful friends, that's why we need
the support of such a giant as China," said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for
the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow.
Even the threat of use by this new alliance will set the American working class against it's
'leadership'; and the Americans know how to deal with criminals - even those in leadership positions...I
think Obama, and those NeoCons who own him have huge problems right at Home suddenly. The Revolution
is coming...
docrhw - -> Mr1Cynical, 21 May 2014 7:01pm
I agree about the reserve currency thing. One day we Americans will wake up and discover
that the dollar is now part of a basket of currencies needed to buy raw materials. It will
happen gradually, but I think is inevitable. The sad thing is that Congress, the Fed, and of
course the American public are completely oblivious to this issue. (At least the first two don't
talk about it.) When that day comes it will be mighty ugly here.
Robert Sandlin indietinker, 21 May 2014 7:17pm
So basically what your saying is that since Russia is to feel nothing for Europe. Then in
a crisis they'll have no remorse about destroying it in a nuclear holocaust. OK,maybe they'll
get the point.Now me, if I was a European leader, I'd want to have Russia as friendly and connected
to me as possible.
Because countries friendly and interconnected don't want to destroy each other. And with
thousands of nukes, and a rightful paranoia about being attacked by the west, I'd want as much
friendship as I could get with Russia.
But maybe I'm wrong, maybe the right thing is to slap Russia around like the EU is doing
now. Spit in their face and all. After all just how mad would a country once ruled by Stalin
get anyway. But then maybe dusting off the old bomb shelters might be prudent. Just encase following
the US's advise isn't the best idea. It was Britain that followed the US into Iraq right. I
forget,how did that work out anyway.
Mr1Cynical docrhw, 21 May 2014 7:20pm
A lot of American Patriots want the Dollar to collapse, to get rid of the Fed. introduce
a new Currency, kick the thieves and jackals out ,rebuild the constitution,.and start afresh,
these people who've run the US into the ground are neocon globalists inhuman completely without
reason,barking mad Narcissists For all our sakes i hope you get rid of them.
ID075732, 21 May 2014 6:45pm
So the EU$A have blundered into the Ukrainian kitchen.
Vicky Nuland's half-baked attempt with the cookies was a failed recipe. Even Chaz
has now brought his flaky biscuit to the table. The only question now remaining is who could
believe any of them could make anything?
So it's not surprising Putin's gone to the Chinese!
kenlinuk, 21 May 2014 6:46pm
US loan repayments to China are going to end up in Russia. Sweet justice!
tfernando, 21 May 2014 6:54pm
I ask all Americans to read this article without burying head in sand.
The US really shot itself on the foot. This self-inflicted wound of interfering to destabilize
other countries for its own interest, the US will only accelerate its decline that should/could
have been avoided with sensible thinking.
I live in the US and, as it is, times are far from being good compared to what it was just
ten years ago. And despite the fact there is not much indications the country's economy
is improving, the US wants to act as if no economic or financial crisis took place and wants
to live on just 'confidence'.
Well, I think it is very sandy ending for the people of this nation who, to begin with, has
a tough me making ends meet.
lesnouveauxpauvre tfernando
There still is enough people with good jobs to keep the illusion afloat. I live in San Francisco
and it's a bubble here in Silicon Valley. There are a lot of young people like myself and younger
with good jobs making really good money. They have no concern about what you are talking about;
and you could never convince them their bubble they are living in is not real.
They think this country is wonderful and so do all people here who still support Obama; including
gays who don't care Obama has a 'kill list', and can imprison any American without cause; as
long as he supports gay marriage they and a lot of people will support war crimes!?
It seems unbelievable but it is true. I have gotten into arguments with people about this;
and I am gay.
burnageblue11, 21 May 2014 6:58pm
The USA can now fill that big void that is left in the gas market. It can supply Gas at vastly
inflated prices knowing the EU,UK are now fully dependent on all they gas they can get
EU leaders want sacking for this.They are not looking after Europeans interests only those
off the corporate USA.We will pay the price.
evolution2now burnageblue11, 21 May 2014 7:07pm
Europe getting American Natural Gas is fantasy. This is a fact for at least the next 10 years.
richiep40 burnageblue11, 21 May 2014 7:25pm
Despite the US pretends to be into free trade it is a lie, even though it basically runs
WTO.
LNG exports from the US are not in a free market, they are restricted to only about 20
countries which the US classifies as FTA agreement countries. These FTA trade deals are
almost as catastrophic for the client nations as the proposed TTIP deal with the EU.
I am a member of 38 degrees, I was surveyed yesterday by them about my views on TTIP. Although
38 degrees have many priorities, my vote was to put TTIP close to the top of their priority
list ( I am only a member, nothing to do with those that run 38 degrees, so don't blame 38 degrees
for my opinions).
JVC120, 21 May 2014 7:00pm
America should reevaluate the direction of ots foreign policies. It is antagonizing a few
important countries and the remaking are sitting on the fences or are looking from the sidelines.
Can US afford the vives of militaristic arrogant and unreasonable messages it is sending to
the Asian ,African,and Latin American?
Its foreignolicy has been hijacked by the warmongers who have never seen a war from frontline
and have never wavered on supporting a war from close distance.
Blenheim, 21 May 2014 7:02pm
"Russia's new pipeline to China will increase competition for natural gas from 2018 and
will most likely increase the cost we pay for natural gas here in the European Union. It will
certainly increase the pressure on European countries to find alternative gas supplies,"
he said.
Yup, you just have to love the way the west handled the Ukraine situation. Brilliant!
Reducing China's massive dependence on coal based energy is a great win for the world. This
deal does more for the environment than any western climate regulations could possibly do.
Let's not forget India, which also relies heavily on coal. I would guess they are next to
make a deal with Russia.
Babeouf, 21 May 2014 7:05pm
Yes this is the first mega deal which breaks the ice it won't be the last though will it.
The US regime will still continue attacking both Russian and China. It will still bore the world
rigid with its ' Pivot to Asia' and its 'Isolation of Russia' . The really really funny part
is the sudden suggestion that the EU's Russia policy is actually going to raise gas prices for
European customers. Must be part of the EU's new competition strategy built on raising production
costs for the various European based industries that consume large amounts of energy. Still
you must admit that the EU's Russian policy has worked a treat for the Chinese government. So
among the nations of Europe there is at least one ' Manchurian Candidate'. The servile spirit
of Europe's political leaders is only matched by the bone headed stupidity of their imperial
US masters.
Peabody94
Nice deal, take a loss for a few years, smacks of desperation by Russia. It's nowhere near
being a deal big enough to bother European supplies, Europe takes about 170 bn cubic meters
a year, this is only for 38bn and from an undeveloped field. Desperate dealing at a low price.
So as Europe weans itself off Russian gas Gazprom takes a mighty big hit over time. That's
what happens when you have a one trick pony economy and you need western technology to extract
the minerals, one trick pony technology as well, decades behind the west.
AlexRussia Peabody94
Generally less and in Europe are important only a few countries - everything else is not
so important
Great job that EU is doing with antagonising Putin with the Ukrahinian saga. Now we have
to bail out a broke country and pay more for the gas. Great news.
vr13vr Shiku101, 21 May 2014 7:28pm
This deal will definitely make it more difficult for Ukraine to claim any discount. Ukraine
will have to eat at least this price and guess who will have to pay it? That's right, the "Western
partners," a.k.a EU.
ID5677229, 21 May 2014 7:15pm
The contract [is for Russia ]to provide 38bn cubic metres of gas each year [to China at]
.... about $350 (£207) per thousand cubic metres.
This deal has some symbolic value I suppose but otherwise it is a rather desperate and only
partially successful move on Russia's part to shore up its export market for gas.
Reacting to Russia's aggression in Ukraine, a month ago the EU announced plans to effect
a 25% cut in its gas imports from Russia by 2020. Since the EU has been importing 180bn cubic
metres of gas a year Russia's deal with China barely makes up the shortfall. In fact, from Russia's
viewpoint the situation is even worse: China will pay $30 per thousand cubic metres less than
the EU has been paying; moreover, Ukraine's imports of Russian gas are going to be greatly reduced
too.
vr13vr ID5677229
This deal is bigger than the current European deal, and it is muuuuuuch bigger than whatever
reduction EU will be able to make in the future. China got some 9% of volume discount compared
to EU prices, but that's reasonable given the volume. At the end of the day both countries will
end up with newly developed infrustructure. And both will be better diversified to deal with
"pressure" from the West. Not a bad deal at all.
mustspeak, 21 May 2014 7:17pm
@article:
"But one British energy expert warned last night that the move could drive up prices for European
gas consumers who are becoming increasingly dependent on Russia and now face a competition for
supplies"
Serves Britain and EU right, only pity and concern is that I happen to be British, so also
EU citizen. The West's gerrymandering around the world is going to spectacularly bite their
asses harder and harder as time goes by.
daylight101 mustspeak, 21 May 2014 7:22pm
It's unlikely. Russia already sells gas to Europe at premium price and setting it higher
now might be self defeating in longer terms. I am sure that Russia will attempt to undermine
the US gas proposal to EU by offering more competitive bargains.
SteveK9, 21 May 2014 7:21pm
The comment about 'finding financing' betrays the faulty economic thinking that pervades
the West right now. If Russia does not import anything to build the pipeline, then 'financing'
is irrelevant. The Russian state cannot run out of Rubles. The only question is whether this
is a worthwhile investment of workers and materials. Since this is becoming a strategic question
for Russia ... you can bet your ... they will 'find the financing'.
I don't know how much help China will be providing to this project but if there is one thing
that China seems to be very capable of these days it is large construction projects.
Just incredible: infrastructure investment from both sides will be more than $70
billion and will be the world's largest construction project, with Russia providing $55 billion
up front and China $22 billion. Fuck my boots...
All this is fallout over the Crimea because off US hegemonic foreign policy. It was a Russian
base to start with, its not like they were invading. We had to make a big song and dance over
it, because the United States really wanted it as a warm water base for the US 6th fleet in
Sevastopol.
It was never going to happen, we knew it, they knew it.
Sanctions, provocative rhetoric, more sanctions.
End result. New Cold war. Redirected gas supplies to China that Europe badly needed. The
irony is, the United States will be totally unaffected. Europe will become dependent on US gas
imports. How could European leaders allow this to happen. How could they pursue a US foreign
policy that will have a detrimental affect on Europe European industry, and consumers.
Our leaders are nothing more than traitors.
It wont be the citizens off the United States freezing this winter. They wont be paying though
the nose for gas, it will be us in the EU,UK.
Not sure how traitorous EU leaders who have screwed their own people, economies over will
survive long term. Germany will be the biggest loser. Merkel pursuing US hegemonic foreign policy
despite the fact German industry is very dependent on Russian imported supplies. German Business
leaders were totally against Merkel position to start with.
Russia has said it will turn off supplies to Ukraine on June 3rd if their debt is not paid
in full. And unless they pay in advance.
European supplies come through the Ukraine. This could get much worse.
I hope this winter is not a cold one.
mikebraksa Fednad
Europe will fall apart into three parts soon - that's all
Already has. Eastern EU states. Western EU states. And France.
Slo27, 21 May 2014 8:04pm
So, they are getting $350 from China and $380 from Europe and what will they do? Sell more
to Russia and less to Europe .... Eeeh, not exactly.
BrissieSteve Slo27, 21 May 2014 9:19pm
The gas comes from totally different gas fields thousands of km apart and with different
extraction costs. Geography wasn't one of your school subjects was it?
GAHenty, 21 May 2014 8:06pm
The significance is in the continued rise of China. Putin may believe himself clever but
in any Chinese-Russia alliance Russia will quickly become the junior member. The provider of
raw materials for the Chinese machine.
Russia and China have to guard against America's sanctions-happy foreign policy, so the more
business they can do together, it will be the more 'sanction-proof' their economies become.
We already see America gunning for China, in her attempt to delay China's ascendancy to top-dog
status.
Eaglesson, 21 May 2014 8:27pm
What the article forget to mention is both countries with this deal are bypassing the (petro)dollar,
so it will be in their domestic currencies.
Another bold move from both sides..After a similar bold move between Russians and Iranians
short time ago
Russia and China took a small step toward undercutting the domination of the U.S. dollar
as the international reserve currency on Tuesday when Russia's second biggest financial
institution, VTB, signed a deal with the Bank of China to bypass the dollar and pay each
other in domestic currencies.
Japan got the news and is running fast to get a piece of the deal, quoting that is paying
a hefty price for US LNG...why should't they? And Russians have thought about that, the plan
of a gas pipeline through North Korea are targeted for markets of South Korea and Japan.
In a period of one year neocons have done so much damage to US and Europe that it cannot be
revoked any more. The biggest loosers are EU in this deal and right away after the deal Barroso
send a pledge letter to Putin, pleading him to keep his gas running for Europe and (they were
prepared to pay the price dictated by russians for Ukraine's gas supply)
wimberlin AlexRussia
In spite of all the space that the 'Prince's' stupid comments are receiving from the Guardian
- in fact the US today is much more similar to Nazi Germany than any other country. Ask Edward
Snowden, he has all the dirty details that the US does not want you do know. He is presently
in Russia, so therefore all the anti-Russia hysteria.
Oh but not by Luke Harding - he is really good and never lies about Russia - no I certainly
do not include him!
Ciarán Here
When you compare this deal to the "DEAL" Russia had with Ukraine since 1991- Russia lost
- subsidised Ukraine to the tune of up to 300 billion it now seems that Russia has Ukraine and
EU over a barrel. Russia won't be subsidising Ukraine a saving of 300 billion over the next
30 years and a gain of over 400 billion from China . I guess Russia with not be to concerned
about others taking on the burden of Ukraine.....
daylight101 Ciarán Here
There will be some attempts to rebuild Ukraine but it will be not subsidising, I am sure.
finnja, 21 May 2014 8:42pm
Notably, also
the plans for South Stream, which does not go through Ukraine, are on track
, at least when it comes to the directly involved EU countries (like Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria)
and Russia.
The question now is: will the EU force its Southeastern member states (the ones that depend
on Russian gas) to fall on their swords in order to make a point and to prop up fracking and
TTIP?
GAHenty natalifoley, 21 May 2014 9:26pm
Oh look. Articles from a Russian news corporation. No bias there then.
windies GAHenty, 21 May 2014 9:56pm
ABC, NBC or CNN, they do objectivity, they do equal points of view, don't they!!
American news is as bias as Russian news..
What is your point.
Mark Chaloner, 21 May 2014 8:47pm
Sounds like a good deal but it won't make the Russian economy grow. Russia needed this just
to stand still. In the long term Russia can't do without the EU. Russia needs the EU as much
as the EU needs Russia.
daylight101 Mark Chaloner
My understanding is that Russia can actually substitute many of its high-tech EU imports
by chinese ones.
ploughmanlunch Mark Chaloner, 21 May 2014 9:04pm
Standing still might be more desirable than back tracking, as this still fragile Euro economy
may yet do.
It's true that the EU and Russia would mutually benefit from unimpeded trade and commerce, but
the EU, following the lead of the US appears to be willing to sacrifice it's own prosperity
at the behest of US geo-political interests.
daylight101 Mark Chaloner, 21 May 2014 9:19pm
Russians will not quit EU market, I am sure. They will keep selling gas to EU and, probably,
will even offer bargain to undermine the US gas proposal. They will compete, not leave.
bulldoggy, 21 May 2014 9:11pm
Reporter needs to get the story straight. One paragraph describes a deal, "ten years in the
making". Another paragraph quotes a Russian spokesman who attributes the deal to western hostility.
What it really looks like is Russia and China not letting a PR opportunity slip by without exploitation.
A deal ten years in the making wasn't spawned on western hostility. It was spawned by economic
reality. An eastern Siberian gas field is conveniently close to China and half a planet away
from Europe. I'd guess the low price China wrung out of Russia had a lot to do with Chinese
perception that Russia has no other buyers for this gas.
knuckles66, 21 May 2014 9:18pm
Businessweek and Bloomberg both think the deal is more fumes....that the Chinese and Russians
agreed on the volume to be shipped, but still have not agreed on the price. The Chinese will
kick in 25 billion in pre-payment to fund the cost of building the pipeline, but the final pice
will still be in negotiations.
Since the pipeline will take several years to build, they have plenty of time to fight over
the price.
windies knuckles66, 21 May 2014 9:31pm
They will make it work, the "west" pisses them off..
American financial reporting are so boned faced one-sided, objective reporting is beyond
them. Course they want it to fail.
The US/EU point of view is now redundant in their eyes.
richiep40 windies
The 'markets' and the western press have been predicting the collapse of the Chinese economy
for more than a decade. It will not happen.
MyDown, 21 May 2014 9:22pm
Almost 700 comments, yet there is none about the agreement is somehow affecting gay rights.
Strange, but it shows that Guardian readers are confused. )))
zchabj5, 21 May 2014 9:27pm
Much more important than the deal itself is the agreement to open up Russia to Chinese investment
for infrastructure.
The UK has agreed to become a clearing house for the renminbi. Osborne is not stupid, we
can see which way the wind is blowing, and it is blowing east. Israel has also made significant
moves to encourage trade with China, to mitigate the fallout of US decline.
For last 20 centuries, China has had the largest GDP for 15 to 18 of them. The two centuries
right after the industrial revolution saw European hegemony, brief lived, but the world will
return to it's Asia dominated status quo.
MyDown, 21 May 2014 9:46pm
Economical and infrastructural aspects are significant, but political one is just huge. Talking
to my Chinese friends - they are as excited on green light the deal brought as Russians are.
The whole story is kind of step up in friendly relations between Russia and China and money
is not the main issue.
followthemonkey PoiticalWatchDog, 21 May 2014 9:59pm
Saddam Hussein paid a high price but Russia and China are not defenceless like Iraq or Afghanistan.
They're completely capable of defending their countries interest.
geoprobe, 21 May 2014 9:49pm
I think we need to thank the neo-cons in the Obama administration to apply the pressure to
make this deal happen. Without them, the Russians might have held firm on their price and the
Chinese might have held out for a lower price.
Due to the Americans' imperial might it brought these players to the table. It might be a
bad move for American might, but it just might save the planet, as it will provide the Chinese
a more climate friendly fuel than their current coal.
"We have powerful enemies but we don't have powerful friends, that's why we need the support
of such a giant as China," said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for the Analysis of Strategies
and Technologies in Moscow.
Telling statement.
Robert Sandlin Wagram, 21 May 2014 10:53pm
And it works both ways.Only a fool couldn't see that if Russia was destroyed,China would
face the West alone.A strong Russia in support is China's greatest aid.So in many ways the Russo-Chinese
relationship is a marriage made in Heaven.And they can both thank the US for being the Matchmaker.The
US trying to humble Russia,and threatening China,did the trick
Our dependence on their gas is their dependence on our money. Both sides are well advised
to diversify. However, i would be careful if i had to decide for Russia: China and Russia have
animosities and while the Europeans are a bunch of hysteric merchants, the Chinese will know
how to get what they want once Russia is dependent on THEIR money.
followthemonkey - -> Bismarx, 21 May 2014 8:59pm
the Chinese will know how to get what they want
I'd rather be a Chinese than an American.
"Americans more afraid of being tortured by their government than Chinese are of theirs"
Putin said that gas price of the agreement is linked to petrol price, so it will not effect
USD.
FrankPoster - -> MyDown, 21 May 2014 7:44pm
FFS you know nothing. The price might have a formula that involved the USD somewhere, but
the transactions will be in Rubles and Yuan, thereby fully bypassing the petrodollar. There
are huge implication to the US for this, and therefore you will see them ramp up efforts in
Ukraine and elsewhere to engage Russia in a proxy war with a view to eventually destabilize
Russia in 5-10 years time to grab their oil and gas and process it in dollars to support their
massively bankrupt financial system...but this time they will fails since china will side with
the Russians and will drop their US treasury bills if necessary.
HongKongBlue
preemptive move to invade Ukraine?
Gudwin - -> HongKongBlue
Nobody gives a rat's ass about Ukraine anymore.
whyohwhy1 Gudwin
Nobody gives a rat's ass about Ukraine anymore.
At the moment Ukrainian soldiers are killing civilians in the eastern part of that country,
that is why the Western media seem to have lost all interest after 24/7 coverage for a couple
of months.
AndyOC, 21 May 2014 5:39pm
You can't blame them for forging ever closer ties, uncertain as both countries must be with
regards both recent Ukraine and industrial espionage problems.
Is it worth being worried about? Probably.
PaulThtanley AndyOC, 21 May 2014 7:49pm
No it isn't.
Russia and China don't trust each other at all, despite this grandstanding. Both countries
look to the West and define themselves relative to it. Their oligarchs send their kids to school
here and maintain holiday homes. Many retire (or flee) here. Let the Chinese bubble accumulate
more investment debt and let the Russians have a go at extracting gas that is harder to reach
than the gas they currently extract and sell it for less than they are currently selling their
gas that has existing infrastructure. Who knows? It may even work out.
griffinalabama, 21 May 2014 5:39pm
Nice to see Russia outsmarting the nefarious yanks especially after all the bullshit the
US has instigated in Ukraine. A good article in Counterpunch goes into the media coverup of
the Odessa massacre and US involvement. The truth is coming out. Link here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/08/false-flag-in-odessa/
ahbowledhim
Geo-political realignment is evident. A Sino-Russian alliance is huge and puts Washington
on the back foot.
Can Washington play off the back foot like the incomparable Viv Richards could is the question?
IgAIgEIgG ahbowledhim, 21 May 2014 5:45pm
Geo-political realignment is evident. A Sino-Russian alliance is huge and puts Washington
on the back foot.
Dude! What are the contingencies?!
Carl Jones IgAIgEIgG
Only one...world war 3. The fact is, Amerika and Britain are bankrupt. So they need some
very big wars.
iamnotwise vr13vr, 21 May 2014 7:49pm
But this will become a new Cold War only if the US decides to stir trouble.
Continue to stir trouble, I think you mean. This whole Ukrainian situation is another US
instigated clusterfuck. Once again the failing empire (with the UK clinging to it like a tumour)
tries to drag everyone else down with it.
steavey, 21 May 2014 5:42pm
Russia maybe unpopular with the west, but their assets are always popular everywhere. It's
nice to come home in winter time heated by gas central heating, and does not matter where the
gas comes from, Alex Salmond's Scotland or Putin's Russia.
OneWorldGovernment, 21 May 2014 5:50pm
Love the 15 minute context. The negotiations for this deal was a decade in the making and
the Chinese strong armed the Russians into taking a lower price. It shows how desperate the
Russians have become and their weak bargaining power.
Carl Jones
I like that US dollar sign in front of the 400 billion?lol This deal is a massive nail in
the coffin of the US dollar!!lol Funny, but true, Western sanctions are actually hastening the
end of US dollar hegemony. You should watch a Dr Paul Craig Roberts youtube vid called "Fed
launders treasury bonds in Belgium"...then you`ll know just how precarious the US economy is.lol
PaperEater Carl Jones
Lol. The level of discourse is amazing. Lol
Pazuzu Carl Jones, 21 May 2014 9:07pm
Nothing like a bunch of LOLs and references to to the Youtube School of Economics to lend
that much needed dose of credibility to an argument. Well played!
Let me put things in perspective for you, if you'll allow me to interrupt your scholarly
lulz for a moment: $400 billion is about the amount Uncle Sam uses to wipe his bum every day.
Still, I admire the resolve of the Putinbots, like obedient toy poodles still firmly clamping
their little jaws on the heels of a giant, convinced they're winning the fight.
Mr1Cynical, 21 May 2014 5:56pm
This is only a terrible deal for the US and it's prostitute EU Milov i wouldn't take to seriously,
as usual the Guardian always go for the lowest denomination when it comes to experts they mean
someone who has an axe to grind.
This comes as CNN are calling Russia a pariah nation, they really mean o shi# this is great
as the Bog roll called the petro dollar struggles along getting closer to the cliff O-Bama helping
it along the way
What next Sanctions on everybody outside of Utah, still cheer up you Barry o supporters,
you've still got your killer drones to play with
whyohwhy1
Russia didn't "fall out with the West": it was threatened with sanctions by the US and their
puppets in Europe after they supported a coup against the elected government of Ukraine.
Maybe Kerry's hot air can provide enough energy for Poland and Germany next winter.
semyorka, 21 May 2014 5:59pm
The Kovykta field is considered to supply natural gas to China and Korea. According to
these agreements signed by Rusia Petroleum with China National Petroleum Corporation and
Kogas on 2 November 2000, the annual export of gas to China and Korea will be 20 billion
cubic meters (bcm) and 10 bcm, respectively.[7] The Kovykta field will contribute also to
the gasification of Irkutsk Oblast, implemented by the OAO East Siberia Gas Company, a joint
venture of Gazprom (originally TNK-BP) and the Irkutsk Oblast Administration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kovykta_field
You tell people Putin had stomach cramps and CiF would be crawling with people announcing
this latest move had the west in knots by the master strategist.
TransAtlanticist, 21 May 2014 6:00pm
Iraq, Afghanistan .. now Russia. I will say the Chinese are remarkably good at knowing when
to capitalize on others' bad situations.
vr13vr TransAtlanticist, 21 May 2014 6:30pm
It says the US is remarkably good at creating bad situations that only hurt the US.
AlexRussia, 21 May 2014 6:01pm
Putin: gas contract with China signed today has become the largest in the history of the
USSR and Russia
Signed today contract to supply China natural gas from Russia is the biggest gas deal in
the history of the USSR and Russia , said Russian President Vladimir Putin According to him,
laying a gas pipeline " Power of Siberia " will come be the largest construction project in
the world for the next 4 years. Meanwhile, Russia will invest in the construction of the pipeline
and development Kovyktinsky and Chayandin deposits and about $ 55 billion while China is going
to to create the necessary infrastructure for at least $ 20 billion. "This is the largest contract
for Gazprom" - said SEO Gazprom Miller.
Ludwitt, 21 May 2014 6:04pm
The reporter writes
"Gazprom and CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) have signed a 30-year, $400bn (£237bn)
deal to deliver Russian gas to China"
a factual statement and adds an editorial comment
"a deal that underscores Russia's shift towards Asia amid strained relations with the west."
It's fine for the reporter and/or editor to have an opinion: it's just that the above statement
does not follow at all from the previous statement about the signing of the deal. Indeed further
down the article that this deal was 10 years in the making. Indeed it is prudent to diversify
one's portfolio for a variety of reasons and especially have China, a voracious consumer and
a key if not THE engine of global growth as one of your primary customers.
In fact the US and the West do roaring business with China itself. So why not Russia? And
why not some analysis as to whether this deal would eventually be good or bad for the Russian
economy and its growth? Or the development of the Russian Far East which has long been declared
as a National Priority within Russia's domestic policy?
In a Western government centric world, any major deals that don't have the West in the picture
are seen to be a threat, to be amplified as such by the Western corporate media.
An interesting gas story thread to chew on meanwhile is Hunter Biden - the US VP's son -
being appointed to the board of Ukraine's largest gas company.
And so it goes.
FighTheBrainwashing
To be honest, right now I can't but feel quite a bit of shadenfreude picturing the "ecstatic"
faces of the newsmakers from the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal,
etc., etc. that spent the last 24 hours leading to the announcement of this ground-breaking
deal gloating over Putin's "failure to reach a landmark agreement with China".
As they say, he laughs best who laughs last, so, suckers, deal with it! It's our turn to
laugh now!
:)
PS: And I'm absolutely positive it's only the beginning of good news for those who dare defy
the criminally hypocritical, cynical, double faced, devious, mendacous and war-mongering United
States of Lies, Propaganda and Double Standards around the world!
LE CHESNAY, France - At a rally last week near the Palace of Versailles, France's largest far
right party, the National Front, deployed all the familiar theatrics and populist themes of nationalist
movements across Europe.
A standing-room-only crowd waved the national flag, joined in a boisterous singing of the national
anthem and applauded as speakers denounced freeloading foreigners and, with particular venom, the
European Union.
But the event, part of an energetic push for votes by France's surging far right ahead of elections
this week for the European Parliament, also promoted an agenda distant from the customary concerns
of conservative voters: why Europe needs to break its "submission" to the United States and
look to Russia as a force for peace and a bulwark against moral decay.
While the European Union has joined Washington in denouncing Russia's annexation of Crimea and
the chaos stirred by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, Europe's right-wing populists have
been gripped by a contrarian fever of enthusiasm for Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin.
"Russian influence in the affairs of the far right is a phenomenon seen all over Europe," said
a study by Political Capital Institute, a Hungarian research group. It predicted that far right
parties, "spearheaded by the French National Front," could form a pro-Russian bloc in the European
Parliament or, at the very least, amplify previously marginal pro-Russian voices.
Pro-Russian sentiment remains largely confined to the fringes of European politics, though Mr.
Putin also has more mainstream admirers and allies on both the right and the left, including Silvio
Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, and Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor.
... We were promised deracination would lead inevitably to world peace. The original Cobdenite
told us
nations that trade with each other don't go to war with each other. Free trade apologists have
been repeating this utopianism ever since, facts notwithstanding. (Germany and France were major
trading partners before World War I.) No rational head of state would upset the harmonious workings
of the global economy; nationalist passions would be tempered by "market realities."
It's clear they didn't get the memo in Russia and Ukraine. They have been significant trading
partners, yet economic realities did not trump nationalism. To be sure, many of the Maidan protestors
coveted their own flag more than designer goods from the EU. It is a modern Western conceit to view
human aspirations strictly through a materialistic lens. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
decried Western society's tendency to focus on the accumulation of material goods to the exclusion
of all other human characteristics.
This stubborn insistence on seeing the world in purely economic terms blinded us to anticipating
that Vladimir Putin could do exactly what he did. Putin wasn't supposed to risk upsetting "the market"-but
he did. He was supposed to fear sanctions and economic backlash-but he didn't. The only possible
explanation is that he is disconnected from reality, as Angela Merkel reportedly said.
Blind faith in economism informs the solutions to foreign conundrums proposed by many across
the political spectrum. Economic sanctions will promote good behavior in Eastern Europe, while economic
engagement will promote human rights and religious tolerance in East Asia. In Ukraine, we can conveniently
have it both ways, sanctions and engagement: exporting loads of cheap American natural gas will
reward our friends and punish our enemies.
Just as events in Ukraine show us nationalism is not a spent force, the Malaysian Airlines mystery
shows us the limits of global technocracy.
We have come to believe that raising everyone to the Western standard of living will spread our
values. The assumption is that having the same material goods makes everyone the same-the software
goes with the hardware. President Clinton used this formulation to sell PNTR (Permanent Normal Trade
Relations) with China: democracy would flourish in China in tandem with a middle class.
...media critic and Rupert Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff is legally married to Cold Spring lawyer Alison
Anthoine, from whom
he famously separated
in 2009
to
pursue
a then-28-year-old
Vanity Fair
intern named
Victoria Floethe
(pictured
above with Wolff).
While it's not clear what happened with Wolff and Floethe -- the pair were
photographed
at a
Financial Times
party in
2012 -- the former's marriage remained intact, at least by the courts.
No more.
Tom Scocca · 10/21/13 11:47AM
New York policy expert Michael Wolff believes you can
take the subway
"
from
Red Hook to Wall Street
." (Also: the
Guardian
believes "sleaze balls" should be two words.)
Everything the Kiev junta is doing is pushing those in the East of Ukraine further and further
from its grip. The West has given the Kiev fascists carte blanche in the vain hope that they
will be able to rescue their failed adventure and despite a torrent of Western propaganda, both
in Ukraine and across the West, via every media outlet, the whole situation has slipped from
fiasco to farce to tragedy.
The same tired dedicated followers of our propaganda that haunt these comments sections will
never yield, but whatever they may say, one thing that must by now be clear to all is that the
only ones to come out of this situation with integrity are the Russians.
It certainly isn't the West.
When we next celebrate the bravery of our WWII soldiers, at the back of our minds will be
the image of our present government's support for those with the very mindset against which
they fought 75 years ago.
retsdon Cloudcuckoolives
When we next celebrate the bravery of our WWII soldiers,
What's to celebrate? What bravery? They were conscripts.
Two quotes from my late father that I remember as a child/teenager. Driving through Normandy
with the caravan behind the car, and out of nowhere, ' the last time I came down this road the
ditches were full of dead Germans, and the smell was terrible'.
And the other, (while watching the tv series World At War),
'If the people who promoted wars had to fight them..'
He was an unenthusiastic poppy wearer. But looking back, on Armistice day, he'd have a few
drinks - probably remembering the seventy percent casualties that (I subsequently discovered)
his unit suffered in the battle for Caen.
But he really never spoke about it. And why?
Because there is nothing to celebrate!
Cloudcuckoolives retsdon
I happen to agree with you. Thing is if I had written 'When you next celebrate etc..." it
would have opened up a new front (to use a rather inappropriate phrase) of contention. I didn't
want to detract from my main point.
On Armistice Day, I tend to mourn the brutality of human nature at its worst.
However in such circumstance there most definitely must have been great acts of bravery and
self sacrifice, as well, no doubt, as terrible acts of moral cowardice. I suspect, though, that
in many cases I would disagree with the fashionable view of which was which.
PuppetMaster11 Cloudcuckoolives
Neocons are expert at presenting their brilliant success disguised as a failure. I suspect
this is also a similar case.
There is a possibility that this failure is actually what they wanted.
I have to go to bed ;) but before I did, I had to read your comment and the subsequent thread.
Please understand my short reply...
I understand your theory and think there is often some truth to it, in so far as the true
intentions of these people is often hidden and chaos and division is frequently their aim.
There are in fact many different motivations amongst the different strata of the power elites.
Wall Street will be more interested in how it can profiteer and in a military-industrial economy,
at often means a preference for war, plunder and chaos. Their short term view favours short
term gains. Older, bigger money takes a more strategic point of view and it becomes more about
empire. Many neocons are literally crazies, ideologically driven, often religious fundamentalists,
racists and white supremacists, with a view of manifest destiny beckoning them. Others are strategists
in their metaphorical Nazi bunkers, planning the next step in the Great Game.
It is difficult to talk about a single motivation, but all these different emphases somehow
coalesce into a single force that no one in particular is in control of. This gives great scope
for the law of unintended consequences. Like much of human history, despite the interpretations
of conspiracy obsessives, no one is actually in control. Instead there is a dynamic reaction
upon reaction to events as they spin out of control.
If you believe in such things, and I do, the direction these forces take is if anything a
reflection of the will of the collective consciousness of the power elites as a whole...and
probably of entire nations and entire cultures. The Jungian shadow manifests through the powerful.
Anyway...just some thoughts for bedtime.
Good night Puppetmaster! Sleep well.
PuppetMaster11 Cloudcuckoolives
Hmmm. Standard answer to a conspiracy theory?
Actually I am all for unintended consequences. What would the world be like without unintended
consequences?
I also agree with you that the history is results of many conflicting intentions dotted with
unintended consequences.
What amazes me every time is how these small coteries of neocons were able to push through
their agenda in spite of everything. How powerful interests and opinions, though initially resistant,
are somehow neutralized or aligned with them. I gave up my last hope after Obama.
Sometimes, to move a boulder, You don't have to push it. You remove only few pebbles and
the boulder will move by itself. And once it begins to move, nobody can stop it. Maybe we are
at such a juncture in history.
What you call Jungian shadow or a Hegelian Zeitgeist, it seems that the neocons captured
it. Therefore they no longer even have to be in charge and even the Guardian is dancing at their
tune.
It is just an amazing scene to watch.
Still I am hoping for another chance for unintended consequences. And as far as I can see,
it hasn't happened yet.
Polana
clear to all is that the only ones to come out of this situation with integrity are
the Russians. It certainly isn't the West.
I disagree, not about the lack of integrity of 'The West' but in assigning 'integrity' to
Russia. No integrity to be found anywhere, naked self-interest only. Russia has just been better
at it. Impressive in a sense but certainly not 100% worthy of support.
Cloudcuckoolives Polana
I agree. Whilst I made a black and white statement to make a point, I do not consider the
situation black and white. It is all a question of degree. What I think is undeniable is that
the Russians have shown far more integrity. They have been able to pursue their self interest
with skill and as a consequence without unnecessary loss of life. The West on the other hand,
mired in arrogance, ignorance and self delusion, has sunk to the point where it can only pursue
its aims with the heaviest of hands. Thus it chooses fascists for its partners, subverts democracies,
nurtures violence and atrocity and lies incessantly.
Damocles59 Cloudcuckoolives
Surely You are talking about Russia? Isn't in Russia subverting democracy in Ukraine?
Cloudcuckoolives Damocles59
No. Ukraine ceased to be a democracy the day the West subverted it and installed a fascist
junta. In case you hadn't noticed, the present bunch of criminals and extremists weren't elected.
They don't even represent the bulk of the protesters who were in Maidan whose protest movement
was also subverted by violent thugs and fascists, supported by the West. So please explain to
me the idiotic notion that Ukraine is still a democracy. Is it that you place your faith in
the promise of an election? How utterly naive. Every fascist in history has promised an election
at some time or another. Even if it is held, do you have faith that it will even come close
to an international standard of democratic?
I rather suspect your statement does not so much stem from incredible naïveté, but rather
from the profoundest ignorance of the type which is found only in those who choose not to see.
Robert Miller
Why does The Guardian continue to call the dissatisfied eastern Ukrainians as pro-Russian?
Many just oppose the fascist coup government in Kiev and only want a federal system that protects
the rights of minorities across Ukraine. Some are ethnic Russians, more are Russian-speaking,
some want to be reunited with Russia, far more only want their rights guaranteed from attacks
by the Right Sektor and Svoboda and the Banderites.
A more encompassing term would be federalists. Even better, anti-fascists.
Also, were the Ukrainian soldiers attacking Mariupol the national guard units Minister Parubiy
culled from the Nazi street gangs that he had promised to send to the east? It seems that waging
a war against its own citizens with an army of 30,000 that after a month that burning down one
police station seems to be rather meager results. Perhaps one of your reporters can find out
the mood among the Ukrainian troops and why they can't control the east. My guess is, with the
exception of the fascist national guard units that the troops generally have no stomach for
killing their own fellow citizens. That's not a good sign for the fascist coup government.
Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America,
nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the
country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have
to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism
and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. - Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg trials,
April 18, 1946[70]
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he
has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. ~George Orwell
The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike
and unscrupulous of nations. ~Ambrose Bierce
Dulce bellum inexpertis (War is delightful to the inexperienced). ~Erasmus, the 16th-century
scholar
The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations
to war by their own weight. –
A. J. P. Taylor
War is the continuation of politics by other means. ~Karl Von Clausewitz
Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
~Benjamin Franklin
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable,
surely the most vicious. ~General Smedley Butler
War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which
the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. ~General Smedley Butler
Imperialism is an institution under which one nation asserts the right to seize the land
or at least to control the government or resources of another people. ~John T. Flynn
The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in
foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics... ~Simone Weil
Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies. ~W. L. George
War doesn't make boys men, it makes men dead. ~Ken Gillespie
I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying
hatreds it arouses... ~Harry Emerson Fosdick
Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence
all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly. ~Senator Robert M. La Follette
After every ''victory'' you have more enemies. ~Jeanette Winterson
I hope....that mankind will at length, as they call themselves responsible creatures, have
the reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats... ~Benjamin
Franklin
[T]he essence of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some by what it takes from others.
It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income. ~Ludwig von Mises
Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. ~Hugo
Black, Supreme Court Justice
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the
same. ~Marie Beyle
I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war...suffer the loss of the same old illusions,
and learn the same old lessons on its own. ~Phillip Caputo
Although tyranny...may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only
if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people. ~Hannah Areddt
I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and
cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die. ~Mary Roberts Rinehart
Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. ~George Washington
The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy
and open to our cultural assault. ~Major Ralph Peters, US Military
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or
any other public official... ~Theodore Roosevelt
We may extend our dominion over the whole continent...but be assured it will be at the price
of our free institutions. ~Rep. William Waters Boyce
The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all. ~Tacitus
Modern war appears as a struggle led by all the State apparatuses and their general staffs
against all men old enough to bear arms... ~Simone Weil
Military glory -- that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood - -that serpent's
eye, that charms to destroy... ~Abraham Lincoln
Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. ~Hugo
Black, Supreme Court Justice
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. ~George McGovern
Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet
and are called an emperor. ~A pirate, from St. Augustine's "City of God"
Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange
voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. ~Sir Winston Churchill
What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain
that you believe to be to your advantage. ~Marcus Tullius Cicero
We are the ones responsible to determine whether the war that our marines, soldiers and
airmen are fighting in is worth the cause... ~Scott Ritter
I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness
to submit. ~Thucydides
Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of
war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear. ~General Douglas MacArthur
...Violence as a way of gaining power...is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition,
national honor [and] national security... ~Alfred Adler
Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating
in it. ~Noam Chomsky
We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
by the military-industrial complex. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
It is far easier to make war than peace. ~Georges Clemenceau
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient
and dangerous of human illusions. ~Robert Lynd
Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all
these evils. ~Thucydides
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. ~Issac Asimov
War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction,
and irresponsible murder. ~Alexander Berkman
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. ~Groucho Marx
War remains the decisive human failure. ~John Kenneth Galbraith
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit
injustices. ~Voltaire
Think of war as a game of Russian roulette. It is a game of chance with your life as the
grand prize. ~Ramman Kenoun
To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make
a desert, they call it peace. ~Tacitus About the quote: This quote is attributed to Calgacus
in the Roman historian Tacitus' "Agricola."
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality,
its futility, its stupidity. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral
and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has
nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal
safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the
exertions of better men than himself. -Jimmy Carter (1924 - )
Force always attracts men of low morality. ~Albert Einstein
A hospital alone shows what war is. ~Erich Maria Remarque
The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign
hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall. ~Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Rules of engagement" are a set of guidelines for murder. ~Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
War is the ultimate tool of politics. ~R. Buckminster Fuller
The failure to dissect the cause of war leaves us open for the next installment. ~Chris
Hedges
Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.
~Elias Canetti
The soldier's main enemy is not the opposing soldier, but his own commander. ~Ramman Kenoun
The occupation and robbery of a nation occurs under the illusion of freeing its citizens
from brutal oppression. ~Ramman Kenoun
A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners,
and an army of thieves. ~German proverb
Our enemies...never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we. ~George W. Bush
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements.
~Senator James W. Fulbright
We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us.
~Francis John McConnell
A man who kills on his own is a murderer. A man who kills at his government's request is
a national hero. ~Ramman Kenoun
National defense is the usual pretext for the policy of fleecing the people. ~Senator John
Taylor About the quote: US Senator, lived from 1753-1824
If you want war, nurish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men
ever are subject... ~William Graham Sumner
The world should take notice when someone...with a fanatic mind and with powerful means,
receives his marching orders from Heaven. ~Rodrigue TremblayAbout the quote: From Trembaly's
"The New American Empire." Tremblay is a Professor of Economic Science at the University of
Montreal."When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will." ~Fredric Bastiat
The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The
agitation it produces must be submitted to. ~Thomas Jefferson
All wars eventually act as boomerangs and the victor suffers as much as the vanquished.
~Eleanor Roosevelt About the quote: from "My Day," February 7, 1939
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. ~Voltaire
To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war. ~Winston Churchill
The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.
~Marcus Aurelius
Emphasis on military prowess is an indication of philosophical poverty. ~Henk Middelraad
War brings out the most negative emotional human responses on both sides. ~Henk Middelraad
I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I
insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. ~James Baldwin
War is the tool of small-minded scoundrels who worship the death of others on the altar
of their greed. ~John Cory
The State acquires power... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable
of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates. ~Frank Chodorov
No great dependence is to be placed on the eagerness of young soldiers for action...fighting
is agreeable to those who are strangers to it. ~Vegetius
To the wicked, everything serves as pretext. ~Voltaire
I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of
national security. ~Jim Garrison
All it takes is a single act of aggression to permanently wound a nation's reputation. ~Ramman
Kenoun
The tyrant always talks as if he's preserving the best interests of his people when he actually
acts to undermine them. ~Ramman Kenoun
It's one thing to fight for what you believe in, another thing to fight for what others
believe in. ~James Wolcott About the quote: in his article "From Fear to Eternity" in
Vanity Fair, March 2005
The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves.
To stop being conned, stop conning yourself. ~James WolcottAbout the quote: in his article
"From Fear to Eternity," Vanity Fair, March 2005Misery, mutilation, destruction, terror, starvation
and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product. ~Lewis Mumford
About the quote: from "Technics and Civilization"
We have met the enemy and he is us. ~Walt Kelly About the quote: Cartoonist, notably
of "Pogo." lived 1913-1973.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. ~Edward Abbey
About the quote: A naturalist and author, Abbey lived from 1927-1989.
Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as
Hell. ~Edward Abbey About the quote: A naturalist and author, Abbey lived from 1927-1989.
Patriotism lies not in blind obedience to authority, but in the desire to search for the
truth. ~Ramman Kenoun
When we fill our souls up with creativity, artistry and intelligence ...we have a better
chance at avoiding the behavior that leads to destruction. ~Rick DellaRatta About the quote:
Rick DellaRatta is founder of the group Jazz for Peace.
The only antidote to the poison of war is the public's courage to disagree with their leader.
~Ramman Kenoun
What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify. ~Henry Kissinger
About the quote: from page 303 of his book, "Diplomacy"
There are many terrorist states in the world, but the United States is unusual in that it
is officially committed to international terrorism. ~Noam Chomsky About the quote: from
his book "Necessary Illusions" (p. 270)
Politics and crime are the same thing. ~Michael Corleone (from "The Godfather: Part III")
About the quote: This line is spoken by Al Pacino's character in the Francis Ford Coppola
film "The Godfather: Part III," script by Coppola and Mario Puzo.
Wars are the hobbies of half-informed children who have somehow come into possession of
the levers of power. ~Fred Reed About the quote: You can read Fred Reed's articles on
LewRockwell.com: http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed-arch.html
Since the end of the World War II, the United States has fought three "small" wars...we
lost all three of them and for the same reason -- hubris. ~Andrew Greely About the quote:
Andrew Greely is a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times. You can read his articles at http://www.suntimes.com/index/greeley.html
It looks like the civil war in Ukraine is getting much worse. Western Ukraine right now is being
urged on by its Western supporters, meaning its NATO supporters, the European Union, the United
States, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Western Ukraine has moved to take back control
of the cities in Eastern Ukraine that have been taken over by supporters of Russia.
Of course, it's said in the major media that Russia has started all of this trouble, and so all
this has to be done. The truth is, the coup of several weeks ago to overthrow the elected leader
Viktor Yanokovych was stirred up by the same group: NATO, the European Union, the US, and the IMF.
Since this whole mess was started, we've been very much involved, spending more than $5 billion
to control Ukraine. And this intervention continues. But the current fighting looks like a serious
escalation that may get out of control, even though it's in the interest on both sides, the West
as well as Russia, not to escalate. There have been a lot of threats and intimidation on sanctions
and economic penalties, which very well could get out of control.
Hat tip to Mood of Alabama. Quote: "Alastair Crooke, a former MI-6 honcho and diplomat, is just
back from Moscow and has some
interesting
thoughts on the bigger historic issues which express themselves in the current events in Ukraine."
Conflicts Forum
Following five days in Moscow, a few thoughts on Russian perspectives: Firstly, we are beyond
the Crimea. That is over. We too are beyond 'loose' federalism for Ukraine (no longer thought politically
viable). Indeed, we are most likely beyond Ukraine as a single entity. Also, we are beyond either
Kiev or Moscow having the capacity to 'control' events (in the wider sense of the word): both are
hostage to events (as well as are Europe and America), and to any provocations mounted by a multitude
of uncontrollable and violent activists.
In gist, the dynamics towards some sort of secession of East Ukraine (either in part, or in successive
increments) is thought to be the almost inevitable outcome. The question most informed commentators
in Moscow ask themselves is whether this will occur with relatively less or relatively
more violence – and whether that violence will reach such a level (massacres of ethnic Russians
or of the pro-Russian community) that President Putin will feel that he has no option but to intervene.
We are nowhere near that point at the time of writing: Kiev's 'security initiatives' have been strikingly
ineffective, and casualties surprisingly small (given the tensions). It seems that the Ukrainian
military is unwilling, or unable (or both of these), to crush a rebellion composed only of a few
hundred armed men backed by a few thousand unarmed civilians - but that of course may change at
any moment. (One explanation circulating on
Russian internet circles is that pro-Russian insurgents and the Ukrainian servicemen simply
will not shoot at each other - even when given the order to do so. Furthermore, they appear to be
in direct and regular contact with each other and there is an informal understanding that neither
side will fire at the other. Note - we have witnessed similar understandings in Afghanistan in the
1980s between the Soviet armed forces and the Mujahidin.)
And this the point, most of those with whom we spoke suspect that it is the interest of certain
components of the American foreign policy establishment (but not necessarily that of the US President)
to provoke just such a situation: a forced Russian intervention in East Ukraine (in order to protect
its nationals there from violence or disorder or both). It is also thought that Russian intervention
could be seen to hold political advantage to the beleaguered and fading acting government in Kiev.
And further, it is believed that some former Soviet Republics, now lying at the frontline of the
EU's interface with Russia, will see poking Moscow in the eye as a settling of past scores, as well
as underscoring their standing in Brussels and Washington for having brought 'democracy' to eastern
Europe.
There seems absolutely no appetite in Moscow to intervene in Ukraine (and this is common to all
shades of political opinion). Everyone understands Ukraine to be a vipers' nest, and additionally
knows it to be a vast economic 'black hole'. But … you can scarcely meet anyone in Moscow who does
not have relatives in Ukraine. This is not Libya; East Ukraine is family. Beyond
some certain point, if the dynamic for separation persists, and if the situation on the ground gets
very messy, some sort of Russian intervention may become unavoidable (just as Mrs Thatcher found
it impossible to resist pressures to intervene in support of British 'kith and kin' in the Falklands).
Moscow well understands that such a move will unleash another western outpouring of outrage.
More broadly then, we are moving too beyond the post-Cold War global dispensation, or unipolar
moment. We are not heading – at least from the Russian perspective, as far as can be judged – towards
a new Cold War, but to a period of increased Russian antagonism towards any western move that it
judges hostile to its key interests – and especially to those that are seen to threaten its security
interests. In this sense, a Cold War is not inevitable. Russia has made, for example, no antagonistic
moves in Iran, in Syria or in Afghanistan. Putin has been at some pains to underline that whereas
– from now – Russia will pursue its vital interests unhesitatingly, and in the face of any western
pressures, on other non-existential issues, it is still open to diplomatic business as usual.
That said, and to just to be clear, there is deep disillusion with European (and American)
diplomacy in Moscow. No one holds out any real prospect for diplomacy – given the recent history
of breaches of faith (broken agreements) in Ukraine. No doubt these sentiments are mirrored in western
capitals, but the atmosphere in Moscow is hardening, and hardening visibly. Even the 'pro-Atlanticist'
component in Russia senses that Europe will not prove able to de-escalate the situation. They are
both disappointed, and bitter at their political eclipse in the new mood that is contemporary Russia,
where the 'recovery of sovergnty' current prevails.
Thus, the era of Gorbachevian hope of some sort of parity of esteem (even partnership) emerging
between Russia and the western powers, in the wake of the conclusion to the Cold War, has imploded
– with finality. To understand this is to reflect on the way the Cold War was brought to and
end; and how that ending, and its aftermath, was managed. In retrospect, the post-war
era was not well handled by the US, and there existirreconcilable
narratives on the subject of the nature of the so-called 'defeat' itself, and whether it was
a defeat for Russia at all.
Be that as it may, the Russian people have been treated as if they were psychologically-seared
and defeated in the Cold War – as were the Japanese in the wake of the dropping of the nuclear bombs
by the US in 1945. Russia was granted a bare paucity of esteem in the Cold War's wake; instead Russians
experienced rather the disdain of victors for the defeated visited upon them. There was little or
any attempt at including Russia in a company of the nations of equals – as many Russians had hoped.
Few too would contest that the economic measures forced on Russia in the war's aftermath brought
anything other than misery to most Russians. However unlike 1945, most Russians never felt defeated,
and some felt then – and still feel – just betrayed. Whatever the verdict of history on
how much the Cold War truly was a defeat, the aftermath of it has given rise to a Versailles Treaty-type
of popular resentment at the consequences of the post-Cold War settlement, and at the (unwarranted)
unipolar triumphalism (from the Russian perspective).
In this sense, it is the end of an era: it marks the end of the post-Cold War settlement that
brought into being the American unipolar era. It is the rise of a Russian challenge to that unipolar
order which seems so unsettling to many living in the West. Just as Versailles was psychologically
rejected by Germans, so Russia is abdicating out of the present dispensation (at least in respect
to its key interests). The big question must be whether the wider triangulation (US-Russia-China)
that saw merit in its complementary touching at each of its three apexes is over too - a triangulation
on which the US depends heavily for its foreign policy. We have to wait on China. The answer to
this question may well hinge on how far the antagonism between Russia and the West is allowed –
or even encouraged – to escalate. Only then, might it become more apparent how many, and who, is
thinking of seceding from the global order (including from the Federal Reserve controlled financial
system).
In the interim, time and dynamics require Russia to do little in Ukraine at this point but to
watch and wait. The mood in Russia, however, is to expect provocations in Ukraine, by any one of
the assorted interested parties, with the aim of forcing a Russian intervention - and thus a politically
useful 'limited' war that will do many things: restore US 'leadership' in Europe, give NATO a new
mission and purpose, and provide the same (and greater prominence) to certain newer EU member states
(such as Poland). Russia will have concluded that the second round of economic sanctions has revealed
more about a certain lack of political (and financial) will – or perhaps vulnerability – on the
part of America'sEuropean
allies. Russia no doubt sees the US to be gripped by the
logic of escalation (as Administration talk centres on a new containment strategy, and the demonization
of Russia as a pariah state), whatever President Obama may be hinting through the columns of
David Ignatius. It is a dangerous moment, as all in Moscow acknowledge, with positions hardening
on both sides.
Russia is not frightened by sanctions (which some, with influence in Moscow, would welcome as
a chance to push-back against the US use of the global interbank payment systems for its own ends).
Nor is Russia concerned that, as occurred with the USSR, the US – in today's changed circumstances
– can contrive a drop in the price of oil in order to weaken the state. But Russia is somewhat more
vulnerable to the West's teaming up with Sunni radicals as its new geo-strategic weapon of choice.
We have therefore seen a Russian outreach both to Saudi Arabia and Egypt (President Putin recently
extolled King Abdallah's "wisdom"). There is a feeling too that US policy is not fully controlled
by the US President; and that Gulf States, smelling that US policy may be adrift, and open to manipulation
by interests within the US, will take advantage (perhaps in coordination with certain Americans
opposed to President Obama's policies) to escalate the jihadist war against President Assad and
to target Obama's Iran policy. Russia may be expected to try to circumscribe this danger to its
own Muslim population and to that of its neighbouring former Soviet Republics. But for now, Russia
will be likely to play it cool: to wait-and-see how events unfold, before recalibrating any main
components of its Middle East policy. For the longer term however, Russia's effective divorce out
of the unipolar international order will impact powerfully on the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia
(not to say Syria and Iran) have already virtually done the same.
The USA, ruled by incompetent and poorly educated politicians (rather than by professional diplomats
or real statement) probably expected Russia to roll-over and accept a Banderastan regime in power
in the Ukraine. And when Russia refused to accept that and pushed back, the AngloZionists made their
initial miscalculation even worse by dramatically increasing their rhetoric and by insisting that
black was white and white was black.
The Empire is desperate for some kind of victory in the Ukraine. If it cannot be respected any
more, it needs to be at least feared. But if Ukraine explodes and Russia gets Crimea and the East
(which appears increasingly likely) then the AngloZionist won't even be feared any more. Once that
happens, the life expectancy of the Empire will become very, very short.
The truth is the most powerful empire-buster ever invented. It brought down the USSR and it will
bring down the AngloZionists too. It is just a matter of time.
America's splendid era of overseas "boots on the ground" and "regime change" is beginning to
draw to a close. Even in the hegemonic sphere decreed by the Monroe Doctrine there is a world of
difference between yesteryear's and today's interventions. In the not so distant good old times
the U. S. horned in rather nakedly in Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1962), Dominican Republic (1965),
Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980s), Grenada (1983), Bolivia (1986), Panama (1989), and Haiti (2004),
almost invariably without enthroning and empowering more democratic and socially progressive "regimes."
Presently Washington may be said to tread with considerably greater caution as it uses a panoply
of crypto NGO-type agencies and agents in Venezuela. It does so because in every domain, except
the military, the empire is not only vastly overextended but also because over the last few years
left-leaning governments/"regimes" have emerged in five Latin American nations which most likely
will become every less economically and diplomatically dependent on and fearful of the U. S.
Though largely subliminal, the greater the sense and fear of imperial decay and decline,
the greater the national hubris and arrogance of power which cuts across party lines. To be
sure, the tone and vocabulary in which neo-conservatives and right-of-center conservatives keep
trumpeting America's self-styled historically unique exceptionalism, grandeur, and indispensability
is shriller than that of left-of-center "liberals" who, in the fray, tend to be afraid of their
own shadow. Actually, Winston Churchill's position and rhetoric is emblematic of conservatives and
their fellow travelers in the epoch of the West's imperial decline which overlapped with the rise
and fall of the Soviet Union and Communism. Churchill was a fiery anti-Soviet and anti-Communist
of the very first hour and became a discreet admirer of Mussolini and Franco before, in 1942, proclaiming
loud and clear: "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation
of the British Empire." By then Churchill had also long since become the chief crier of the ideologically
fired "appeasement" mantra which was of one piece with his landmark "Iron Curtain" speech of March
1946. Needless to say, never a word about London and Paris, in the run-up to Munich, having willfully
ignored or refused Moscow's offer to collaborate on the Czech (Sudeten) issue. Nor did Churchill
and his aficionados ever concede that the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact (Nazi-Soviet Pact) of August 1939
was sealed a year after the Munich Pact, and that both were equally infamous ideologically informed
geopolitical and military chess moves.
To be sure, Stalin was an unspeakably cruel tyrant. But it was Hitler's Nazi Germany that invaded
and laid waste Soviet Russia through the corridor of Central and Eastern Europe, and it was the
Red Army, not the armies of the Western allies, which at horrendous cost broke the spinal cord of
the Wehrmacht. If the major nations of the European Union today hesitate to impose full-press economic
sanctions on Moscow for its defiance on Crimea and Ukraine it is not only because of their likely
disproportionate boomerang effect on them. The Western Powers, in particular Germany, have a Continental
rather than Transatlantic recollection and narrative of Europe's Second Thirty Years Crisis and
War followed by the American-driven and –financed unrelenting Cold War against the "evil empire"-practically
to this day.
During the reign of Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev NATO, founded in 1949 and essentially
led and financed by the U. S., inexorably pushed right up to or against Russia's borders. This became
most barefaced following 1989 to 1991, when Gorbachev freed the "captive nations" and signed on
to the reunification of Germany. Between 1999 and 2009 all the liberated Eastern European countries-former
Warsaw Pact members-bordering on Russia as well as three former Soviet republics were integrated
into NATO, to eventually account for easily one-third of the 28 member nations of this North Atlantic
military alliance. Alone Finland opted for a disarmed neutrality within first the Soviet and then
post-Soviet Russian sphere. Almost overnight Finland was traduced not only for "appeasing" its neighboring
nuclear superpower but also for being a dangerous role model for the rest of Europe and the then
so-called Third World. Indeed, during the perpetual Cold War, in most of the "free world" the term
and concept "Finlandization" became a cuss word well-nigh on a par with Communism, all the more
so because it was embraced by those critics of the Cold War zealots who advocated a "third way"
or "non-alignment." All along, NATO, to wit Washington, intensely eyed both Georgia and Ukraine.
By March 2, 2014, the U. S. Department of State released a "statement on the situation in Ukraine
by the North Atlantic Council" in which it declared that "Ukraine is a valued partner for NATO and
a founding member of the Partnership for Peace . . . [and that] NATO Allies will continue to support
Ukrainian sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and the right of the Ukrainian people
to determine their own future, without outside interference." The State Department also stressed
that "in addition to its traditional defense of Allied nations, NATO leads the UN-mandated International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and has ongoing missions in the Balkans and the
Mediterranean; it also conducts extensive training exercises and offers security support to partners
around the globe, including the European Union in particular but also the United Nations and the
African Union."
Within a matter of days following Putin's monitory move NATO, notably President Obama, countered
in kind: a guided-missile destroyer crossed the Bosphoros into the Black Sea for naval exercises
with the Romanian and Bulgarian navies; additional F-15 fighter jets were dispatched to reinforce
NATO patrol missions being flown over the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; and a
squadron of F-16 fighter bombers and a fulsome company of "boots on the ground" was hastened to
Poland. Of course, theses deployments and reinforcements ostensibly were ordered at the urging of
these NATO allies along Russia's borders, all of whose "regimes" between the wars, and especially
during the 1930s, had not exactly been paragons of democracy and because of their Russo-cum-anti-Communist
phobia had moved closer to Nazi Germany. And once Hitler's legions crashed into Russia through the
borderlands not insignificant sectors of their political and civil societies were not exactly innocent
by-standers or collaborators in Operation Barbarossa and the Judeocide.
To be sure, Secretary of State John Kerry, the Obama administration's chief finger wagger, merely
denounced Putin's deployment in and around Ukraine-Crimea as an "act of aggression that is completely
trumped up in terms of pretext." For good measure he added, however, that "you just do not invade
another country," and he did so at a time there was nothing illegal about Putin's move. But Hillary
Clinton, Kerry's predecessor, and most likely repeat candidate for the Democratic nomination for
the Presidency, rather than outright demonize Putin as an unreconstructed KGB operative or a mini-Stalin
went straight for the kill: "Now if this sounds familiar. . . it is like Hitler did back in the
'30s." Presently, as if to defang criticism of her verbal thrust, Clinton averred that "I just want
people to have a little historic perspective," so that they should learn from the Nazis' tactics
in the run-up to World War II.
But ultimately it was Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who said out loud what was being whispered
in so many corridors of the foreign policy establishment and on so many editorial boards of the
mainline media. He advocated "creating a democratic noose around Putin's Russia." To this end Graham
called for preparing the ground to make Georgia and Moldova members of NATO. Graham also advocated
upgrading the military capability of the most "threatened" NATO members along Russia's borders,
along with an expansion of radar and missile defense systems. In short, he would "fly the NATO flag
as strongly as I could around Putin"-in keeping with NATO's policy since
1990. Assuming different roles, while Senator Graham kept up the hawkish drumbeat on the Hill and
in the media Senator McCain hastened to Kiev to affirm the "other" America's resolve, competence,
and muscle as over the fecklessness of President Obama and his foreign-policy team. He went to Ukraine's
capital a first time in December, and the second time, in mid-March 2014, as head of a bipartisan
delegation of eight like-minded Senators.
On Kiev's Maidan Square, or Independence Square, McCain not only mingled with and addressed the
crowd of ardent anti-Russian nationalists, not a few of them neo-fascists, but also consorted with
Victoria Nuland, U. S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. Too much
has been made of her revealing or unfortunate "fuck the EU" expletive in her tapped phone conversation
with the local U. S. Ambassador Geoffrey Ryatt and her distribution of sweets on Maidan Square.
What really matters is that Nuland is a consummate insider of Washington's imperial foreign policy
establishment in that she served in the Clinton and Bush administrations before coming on board
the Obama administration, having close relations with Hillary Clinton.
Besides, she is married to Robert Kagan, a wizard of geopolitics who though generally viewed
as a sworn neo-conservative is every bit as much at home as his spouse among mainline Republicans
and Democrats. He was a foreign-policy advisor to John McCain and Mitt Romney during their presidential
runs, respectively in 2008 and 2012, before President Obama let on that he embraced some of the
main arguments in The World America Made (2012), Kagan's latest book. In it he spells out ways to
preserve the empire by way of controlling with some twelve naval task forces built around unsurpassable
nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, its expanding Mare Nostrum in the South China Sea and Indian
Ocean.
As a disciple of Alfred Thayer Mahan, quite naturally Kagan earned his spurs and his entrée to
the inner circles of the makers and shakers of foreign and military policy by spending years at
the Carnegie Endowment and Brookings Institution. That was before, in 1997, he became a co-founder,
with William Kristol, of the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century, committed to
the promotion of America's "global leadership" in pursuit of its national security and interests.
A few years later, after this think tank expired, Kagan and Kristol began to play a leading role
in the Foreign Policy Initiative, its lineal ideological descendant.
But the point is not that Victoria Nuland's demarche in Maidan Square may have been unduly influenced
by her husband's writings and political engagements. Indeed, on the Ukrainian question, she is more
likely to have been attentive to Zbigniew Brzezinski, another highly visible geopolitician who,
however, has been swimming exclusively in Democratic waters ever since 1960, when he advised John
F. Kennedy during his presidential campaign and then became national security advisor to President
Jimmy Carter. Heavily fixed on Eurasia, Brzezinski is more likely to stand on Clausewitz's rather
than Mahan's shoulders. But both Kagan and Brzezinski are red-blooded imperial Americans. In 1997,
in his The Great Chessboard Brzezinski argued that "the struggle for global primacy [would] continue
to be played" on the Eurasian "chessboard," and that as a "new and important space on [this] chessboard
. . . Ukraine was a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps
to transform Russia." Indeed, "if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its [then] 52 million
people and major resources, as well as access to the Black Sea," Russia would "automatically again
regain the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia." The unwritten
script of Brzezinski, one of Obama's foreign policy advisors: intensify the West's-America's-efforts,
by means fair and foul, to detach Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence, including especially
the Black Sea Peninsula with its access to the Eastern Mediterranean via the Aegean Sea.
Presently rather than focus on the geopolitical springs and objectives of Russia's "aggression"
against Ukraine-Crimea Brzezinski turned the spotlight on the nefarious intentions and methods of
Putin's move on the Great Chessboard. To permit Putin to have his way in Ukraine-Crimea would be
"similar to the two phases of Hitler's seizure of Sudetenland after Munich in 1938 and the final
occupation of Prague and Czechoslovakia in early 1938." Incontrovertibly "much depends on how clearly
the West conveys to the dictator in the Kremlin-a partially comical imitation of Mussolini and a
more menacing reminder of Hitler-that NATO cannot be passive if war erupts in Europe." For should
Ukraine be "crushed with the West simply watching the new freedom and security of Romania, Poland,
and the three Baltic republics would also be threatened." Having resuscitated the domino theory,
Brzezinski urged the West to "promptly recognize the current government of Ukraine legitimate" and
assure it "privately . . . that the Ukrainian army can count on immediate and direct Western aid
so as to enhance its defense capabilities." At the same time "NATO forces . . . should be put on
alert [and] high readiness for some immediate airlift to Europe of U. S. airborne units would be
politically and militarily meaningful." And as an afterthought Brzezinski suggested that along with
"such efforts to avoid miscalculations that could lead to war" the West should reaffirm its "desire
for a peaceful accommodation . . . [and] reassure Russia that it is not seeking to draw Ukraine
into NATO or turn it against Russia." Indeed, mirabile dictu, Brzezinski, like Henry Kissinger,
his fellow geopolitician with a cold-war imperial mindset, adumbrated a form of Finlandization of
Ukraine-but, needless to say, not of the other eastern border states-without, however, letting on
that actually Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, had recently made some such proposal.
Of course, the likes of Kagan, Brzezinski, and Kissinger keep mum about America's inimitable
hand in the "regime change" in Kiev which resulted in a government in which the ultra-nationalists
and neo-fascists, who had been in the front lines on Maidan Square, are well represented.
Since critics of America's subversive interventions tend to be dismissed as knee-jerk left-liberals
wired to exaggerate their dark anti-democratic side it might help to listen to a voice which on
this issue can hardly be suspect. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League
and renowned inquisitor of anti-Semitism, concedes that "there is no doubt that Ukraine, like Croatia,
was one of those places where local militias played a key role in the murder of thousands of Jews
during World War II." And anti-Semitism "having by no means disappeared from Ukraine . . . in recent
months there have been a number of anti-Semitic incidents and there are at least two parties in
Ukraine, Svoboda and Right Sector, that have within them some extreme nationalists and anti-Semites."
But having said that, Foxman insists that it is "pure demagoguery and an effort to rationalize
criminal behavior on the part of Russia to invoke the anti-Semitism ogre into the struggle in Ukraine,
. . . for it is fair to say that there was more anti-Semitism manifest in the worldwide Occupy Wall
Street movement than we have seen so far in the revolution taking place in Ukraine." To be sure,
Putin "plays the anti-Semitism card" much as he plays that of Moscow rushing to "protect ethnic
Russians from alleged extremist Ukrainians." Even at that, however, "it is, of course, reprehensible
to suggest that Putin's policies in Ukraine are anything akin to Nazi policies during World War
II." But then Foxman hastens to stress that it "is not absurd to evoke Hitler's lie" about the plight
of the Sudeten Germans as comparable to "exactly" what "Putin is saying and doing in Crimea" and
therefore needs to be "condemned . . . as forcefully . . . as the world should have condemned the
German move into the Sudetenland."
Abraham Foxman's tortured stance is consonant with that of American and Israeli hardliners who
mean to contain and roll back a resurgent great-power Russia, as much in Syria and Iran as in its
"near abroad" in Europe and Asia.
As if listening to Brzezinski and McCain, Washington is building up its forces in the Baltic
states, especially Poland, with a view to give additional bite to sanctions. But this old-style
intervention will cut little ice unless fully concerted, militarily and economically, with NATO's
weighty members, which seems unlikely. Of course, America has drones and weapons of mass destruction-but
so does Russia.
In any case, for unreconstructed imperials, and for AIPAC, the crux of the matter is not Russia's
European "near abroad" but its reemergence in the Greater Middle East, presently in Syria and Iran,
and this at a time when, according to Kagan, the Persian Gulf was paling in strategic and economic
importance compared to the Asia-Pacific region where China is an awakening sleeping giant that even
now is the globe's second largest economy-over half the size of the U. S. economy-and the unreal
third largest holder of America's public debt-by far the largest foreign holder of U. S. Treasury
bonds.
In sum, the unregenerate U. S. empire means to actively contain both Russia and China in the
true-and-tried modus operandi, starting along and over Russia's European "near abroad" and the South
China Sea and Taiwan Strait connecting the South China Sea to the East China Sea.
... ... ...
Not only Washington but Moscow knows that in 1945 the ultimate reason for using the absolute
weapon was transparently geopolitical rather than purely military.
With the weight of the
unregenerate imperials in the White House, Pentagon, Congress, the "third house," and the think
tanks there is the risk that this U. S.- masterminded NATO "operation freedom in Russia's European
"near abroad" will spin out of control, also because the American Knownothings are bound to have
their Russian counterparts.
In this game of chicken on the edge of the nuclear cliff the U. S. cannot claim the moral
and legal high ground since it was President Truman and his inner circle of advisors who unleashed
the scourge of nuclear warfare, and with time there was neither an official nor a popular gesture
of atonement for this wanton and excessive military excess. And this despite FDR and Truman
Chief of Staff Admiral William Leahy confessing that "in being the first to use it, we had adopted
an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages," an observation possibly anticipated
by General Eisenhower's plaint to Secretary of War Stimson of his "grave misgivings" and belief
that "dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary and… our country should avoid shocking world
opinion…" Is there a filiation between this cri de coeur and the forewarning about the toxicity
of the "military industrial complex" in President Eisenhower's farewell address?
This is a time for a national debate and a citizen-initiated referendum on whether or not the
U. S. should adopt unilateral nuclear disarmament. It might be a salutary and exemplary exercise
in participatory democracy.
The USA became superpower after 1991. And now it wants to assert its role as European hegemon in
Ukraine. At this point there was no force that can prevent the US elite from achieving their geopolitical
goals. But in the process they undermined the US economy to the extent that now the question of how
long the USA can maintain its current privileged position in international affairs does not look too
academic...
June 1, 2003 | nationalinterest.org
As the wisest of all American philosophers, Yogi Berra, has insightfully observed, making predictions
is hard, especially about the future. And he might have added-pointing to the predictions of an
impending Euro-American rupture that have been a staple of debates about U.S.-European relations
at least since the 1956 Suez crisis-prognosticating accurately about the future of Transatlantic
relations is extra hard. Through all the ups and downs in U.S.-European relations over the years,
those many Chicken Littles who have gone out on a limb to forecast an impending drifting apart of
Europe and the United States never have had their predictions validated by events.
Until now, perhaps?
The Iraq War has produced a very different kind of rift. The damage inflicted on Washington's
ties to Europe by the Bush Administration's policy is likely to prove real, lasting and, at the
end of the day, irreparable. In other words, if the fat lady isn't singing already, she clearly
can be heard warming up her voice.
To understand why this crisis is different, we must understand its causes. The rupture between
the United States and Europe is not, as some have asserted, mainly about an alleged Transatlantic
rift in the realm of culture, values and ideology. It is not about the relative merits of unilateralism
versus multilateralism. It is not even about the issues that framed the debate about Iraq during
the run-up to war (Should the weapons inspections process have been allowed to play out? Was the
United States wrong to go to war without a second resolution from the United Nations Security Council?).
For sure, Iraq was a catalyst for Transatlantic dispute, but this crisis has been about American
power-specifically about American hegemony.
Of Balance and Hegemony
When future historians write about how American hegemony ended, they may well point to January
22, 2003 as a watershed. On that day, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Franco-German Treaty
negotiated by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer as a bulwark against American hegemony, French
President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder jointly declared that Paris and
Berlin would work together to oppose the Bush Administration's evident intent to resolve the Iraqi
question by force of arms. Later that day, in a Pentagon briefing, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld responded to the Franco-German declaration by contemptuously dismissing those partners
as representing the "Old Europe", thereby triggering a Transatlantic earthquake, the geopolitical
after-shocks of which will be felt for a long time. And well they should, for these contretemps
reflect what is already a very old issue.
The problem of hegemony has been a major issue in U.S.-European relations since the United States
emerged as a great power at the end of the 19th century. The United States fought two big wars in
Europe out of fear that if a single power (in those cases, Germany) attained hegemony in Europe,
it would be able to mobilize the continent's resources and threaten America in its own backyard,
the Western Hemisphere. The conventional wisdom holds that America's post-World War II initiatives-the
Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty-were driven by similar fears of possible Soviet hegemony
in Europe. Indeed, many American strategic thinkers define America's traditional European strategy
as a text-book example of "offshore balancing."
As an offshore balancer, the United States supposedly remains on the sidelines with respect to
European security affairs unless a single great power threatens to dominate the continent. America's
European grand strategy, therefore, is said to be counter-hegemonic: the United States intervenes
in Europe only when the continental balance of power appears unable to thwart the rise of a would-be
hegemon without U.S. assistance. The most notable proponent of this view of America's European grand
strategy toward Europe is University of Chicago political scientist John J. Mearsheimer. He argues
that the United States is not a global hegemon. Rather, because of what he describes as the "stopping
power of water", the United States is a hegemon only in its own region (the Western hemisphere),
and acts as an offshore balancer toward Europe. He predicts that the United States soon will end
its "continental commitment" because there is no European hegemon looming on the geopolitical horizon.
As an offshore balancer, Mearsheimer says, the United States will not remain in Europe merely to
play the role of regional stabilizer or pacifier.
There is just one thing wrong with this view: it does not fit the facts.
If American strategy toward Europe is indeed one of counter-hegemonic offshore balancing, it
should have been over, over there, for the United States when the Soviet Union collapsed. By a different
but not far-fetched reckoning, it should have been over in the early 1960s, when the Europeans were
capable of deterring a Soviet military advance westward without the United States. With no hegemonic
threat to contain, American military power should have been retracted from Europe after 1991, and
NATO should have contracted into non-existence rather than undergoing two rounds of expansion. Of
course, it may be that America will ultimately be ejected from the continent by the Europeans, but
there are no signs that the United States will voluntarily pack up and go home any time soon.
It is not a "time lag", or mere inertia, that has kept American military power on the European
continent more than a decade after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. There is a better explanation
for why U.S. troops are still in Europe and NATO is still in business. It is because the Soviet
Union's containment was never the driving force behind America's post-World War II commitment to
Europe. There is a well-known quip that NATO was created to "keep the Russians out, the Germans
down, and the Americans in." It would be more accurate to say that the Atlantic Alliance's primary
raison d'être, from Washington's standpoint, was to keep America in-and on top-so that Germans
could be kept down, Europe could be kept quiet militarily, and the Europeans would lack any pressing
incentive to unite politically. The attainment of America's postwar grand strategic objectives on
the continent required that the United States establish its own hegemony over Western Europe, something
it would probably have done even in the absence of the Cold War. In other words, NATO is still in
business to advance long-standing American objectives that existed independently of the Cold War
and hence survived the Soviet Union's collapse.
American Aims
We usually look to history to help us understand the present and predict the future. But the
reverse can be true, as well: sometimes recent events serve to shed light on what happened in the
past, and why it happened. Many may react skeptically to the claim that America's postwar European
grand strategy was driven at least as much-probably more-by non-Cold War factors as by the Soviet
threat. But Washington's post-Cold War behavior provides a good deal of support for this thesis.
For starters, when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union began to unravel, the first Bush
Administration did not feel in the least bit compelled to reconsider the relevance of, or need for,
either the U.S. military commitment to Europe or NATO. As Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, both
of whom served that administration as senior foreign policy officials, have observed:
"[The] administration believed strongly that, even if the immediate military threat from
the Soviet Union diminished, the United States should maintain a significant military presence
in Europe for the foreseeable future. . . . The American troop presence thus also served as
the ante to ensure a central place for the United States as a player in European politics. The
Bush administration placed a high value on retaining such influence, underscored by Bush's flat
statement that the United States was and would remain 'a European power.' . . . The Bush administration
was determined to maintain crucial features of the NATO system for European security even if
the Cold War ended."
The Clinton Administration took a similar view. As one former State Department official avers,
NATO to had be revitalized after the Cold War because American interests in Europe "transcended"
the Soviet threat. And using phraseology reminiscent of Voltaire's comment about God, then-Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright said, "Clearly if an institution such as NATO did not exist today, we
would want to create one."
The fact that American policymakers did not miss a beat when the Cold War ended with respect
to reaffirming NATO's continuing importance reveals a great deal about the real nature of the interests
that shaped America's European grand strategy after World War II, and that continue to do so today.
The truth is that, from its inception, America's postwar European grand strategy reflected a complex
set of interlocking "Open Door" interests.* These interests are at once economic, strategic and
broadly political in nature.
The first of these is that U.S. postwar officials believed that America had crucial economic
interests in Europe. Even if there was no communist threat to Western Europe, State Department Policy
Planning Staff Director George F. Kennan argued in 1947, the United States had a vital interest
in facilitating Western Europe's economic recovery: "The United States people have a very real economic
interest in Europe. This stems from Europe's role in the past as a market and as a major source
of supply for a variety of products and services." These interests required that Europe's antiquated
economic structure of small, national markets be fused into a large, integrated market that would
facilitate efficiencies and economies of scale.** As the U.S. Ambassador to France, Jefferson Caffery,
argued in 1947, economic integration would "eliminate the small watertight compartment into which
Europe's pre-war and present economy is divided." Paul Hoffman, director of the Economic Cooperation
Agency (which administered Marshall Plan aid to Europe), elaborated on the reasons why Washington
favored Western Europe's economic integration: "Europe could not be self-supporting until it had
made great progress towards unity and until there was a wide, free, competitive market to lower
costs, increase efficiency, and raise the standard of living."
To prevent far Left parties (especially the communists) from coming to power on the Continent's
western half after World War II, U.S. aims also required political and social stability there. Washington
was not really so concerned that such governments would drift into Moscow's political orbit, but
it was very concerned that they would embrace the kinds of nationalist, or autarkic, economic policies
that were anathema to America's goal of an open international economy. As Averell Harriman, the
U.S. Special Representative in Europe, put it, Washington was committed to multilateral trade and
was "opposed to restrictive policies and especially to the creation of an autarkic Europe."
Second, American strategists perceived that U.S. economic interests would be jeopardized if postwar
Europe relapsed into its bad habits of nationalism, great power rivalries and realpolitik. To ensure
stability in Europe after World War II, the United States sought to create a militarily de-nationalized
and economically integrated-but not politically unified-Europe. Washington would assume primary
responsibility for European security, thereby precluding the re-emergence of the security dilemmas
(especially that between France and Germany) that had sparked the two world wars. In turn, Western
Europe's economic integration and interdependence-under the umbrella of America's military protectorate-would
contribute to building a peaceful and stable Western Europe. In this respect, U.S. economic and
security objectives meshed nicely.
Postwar U.S. policymakers viewed Europe's traditional balance of power security architecture
as a "fire trap" and, as Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett said following World War II, Washington
wanted to make certain that this fire trap was not rebuilt. Starting with those who were "present
at the creation", successive generations of U.S. policymakers feared the continent's reversion to
its (as Americans see it) dark past-a past defined by war, militarism, nationalism and an unstable
multipolar balance of power. For American officials, Europe indeed has been a dark continent whose
wars spilled over across the Atlantic, threatened American interests and invariably drew in the
United States. Secretary Rumsfeld's disparaging remark about the "Old Europe" thus stands in a long
and consistent line of American attitudes toward the Continent and its various historical crimes
and misdemeanors.
After World War II, Rumsfeld's cabinet predecessors sought to maintain U.S. interests by breaking
the Old Europe of its bad old geopolitical habits. As Secretary of State John Foster Dulles put
it in 1953,
"Surely there is an urgent, positive duty on all of us to seek to end that danger which comes
from within. It has been the cause of two world wars and it will be disastrous if it persists."
Even during the Cold War, American policymakers acknowledged that, quite apart from the Soviet
threat, the United States needed to be present militarily in Western Europe to create a political
environment that permitted "a secure and easy relationship among our friends in Western Europe."
As Secretary of State Dean Rusk said in 1967, the U.S. military presence on the continent played
a pivotal role in assuring stability within Western Europe: "Much progress has been made. But without
the visible assurance of a sizeable American contingent, old frictions may revive, and Europe could
become unstable once more." Former Secretary of State Acheson, too, observed in the mid-1960s that,
as the vehicle for America's stabilizer role in Western Europe, "NATO is not merely a military structure
to prepare a collective defense against military aggression, but also a political organization to
preserve the peace of Europe."
The U.S. goal of embedding a militarily de-nationalized, but economically integrated Western
Europe within the structure of an American-dominated "Atlantic Community" dovetailed neatly with
another of Washington's key post-1945 grand strategic objectives: preventing the emergence of new
poles of power in the international system-in the form either of a resurgent Germany or a united
Europe-that could challenge America's geopolitical pre-eminence. Since the 1940s, Washington has
had to perform a delicate balancing act with respect to Europe. To be sure, for economic reasons,
the United States encouraged Western Europe's integration into a single common market, but the United
States sought to prevent that from leading to its political unification.
To prevent the emergence of a politically unified Western Europe, successive U.S. administrations
sought to "de-nationalize" the region by establishing a military protectorate that integrated Western
Europe's military forces under, and subordinated them to, American command. The goal was to neuter
Western Europe geopolitically and thereby circumscribe its ability to act independently of the United
States in the high political realms of foreign and security policy. Embedding West European integration
in the American-dominated Atlantic community would prevent the Europeans from veering off in the
wrong direction. "An increased measure of Continental European integration", Acheson and Lovett
told President Truman,
"can be secured only within the broader framework of the North Atlantic Community. This is
entirely consistent with our own desire to see a power arrangement on the Continent which does
not threaten us and with which we can work in close harmony."
Acheson stated American strategic concerns with crystal clarity when he spoke of the necessity
of a "well-knit large grouping of Atlantic states within which a new EUR grouping can develop, thus
ensuring unity of purpose within the entire group and precluding [the] possibility of [a] EUR Union
becoming [a] third force or opposing force."
Europe's military absorption into the Atlantic Community went hand in hand with its economic
integration. By persuading the West Europeans to "pool" their military and economic sovereignty,
Washington aimed to strip them of the capacity to take unilateral national action. As Kennan observed,
Western Europe should be unified on terms which "would automatically make it impossible or extremely
difficult for any member, not only Germany, to embark upon a path of unilateral aggression." But
it was the American diplomat Charles Bohlen who cut to the heart of the U.S. de-nationalization
strategy when he said, "Our maximum objective should be the general one of making common European
interests more important than individual national interests."
For the United States, therefore, institutions such as NATO, the aborted European Defense Community,
the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the Common Market were the instruments it employed
to contain the West Europeans.* As the State Department said, the United States hoped that "cautious
initial steps toward military, political, and economic cooperation will be followed by more radical
departures from traditional concepts of sovereignty." The American aim was to create "institutional
machinery to ensure that separate national interests are subordinated to the best interests of the
community", and achieving this subordination was deemed essential if the United States was to accomplish
its grand strategic purposes in Europe.
The Continental Response
Just as fear of a European hegemon led the United States to intervene in Europe's two great wars
of the 20th century, the West Europeans after World War II understood that America had established
its own hegemony over them. As realist international relations theory suggests, Western Europe tried
to do something about it.
To be sure, West European balancing against the United States was constrained. On the one hand,
although the West Europeans feared American power, they feared the Soviet Union even more during
the Cold War. In a more positive sense, too, following World War II, Washington was able to use
the carrot of economic assistance-notably, the Marshall Plan-to keep Western Europe aligned (albeit
very tenuously at times) with the United States. Nevertheless, throughout the post-World War II
era, West European inclinations to balance against American power were never far from the surface.
In the five years or so after the end of World War II, it was Britain that hoped to emerge as
a "Third Force" in world politics to balance both the United States and the Soviet Union. As the
British diplomat Gladwyn Jebb put it, London needed to prevent the geopolitical equilibrium from
being undermined "by a 'bi-polar' system centering around what Mr. Toynbee calls the two 'semi-barbarian
states on the cultural periphery'." The accelerating decline of Britain's relative power, of course,
put paid to London's Third Force aspirations, but continental Europe's Third Force aspirations remained.
In the late 1940s and 1950s, one of the hopes of the founding fathers of today's European Union
was that the European Coal and Steel Community, and then the Common Market, would prove to be the
embryo of a united Europe that could act as a geopolitical and economic counterweight to the United
States. Commenting on the motives driving the West Europeans to integrate, the diplomatic historian
Geir Lundestad observes:
"Although they wanted the two sides of the Atlantic to cooperate more closely, in a more general
sense it was probably also the desire of most European policymakers to strengthen Western Europe
vis-Ã -vis the United States. This could be done economically by supporting the Common Market and
politically by working more closely together on the European side."
Even Jean Monnet, author of the Schuman Plan that led to the ECSC and the "father" of European
integration, first toyed with the idea of an Anglo-French federation in the late 1940s because he
saw this as the basis of a European bloc that could stand apart from both the United States and
the Soviet Union.
The 1956 Suez crisis gave fresh impetus to the arguments that Western Europe needed to counterbalance
the United States. Britain's initial reaction to its humiliation by the Eisenhower Administration
was to consider reviving the Third Force concept: "We should pool our resources with our European
allies so that Western Europe as a whole might become a third nuclear power comparable with the
United States and the Soviet Union." Under Harold Macmillan, of course, Britain rejected becoming
part of a West European Third Force, opting instead to curry favor-and maintain influence-with Washington
through the "special relationship" ("playing Greece to America's Rome"). On the Continent, however,
Suez focused French and West German attentions on the need for a West European counterweight to
American power. As William I. Hitchcock recounts, Adenauer and French Premier Guy Mollet were meeting
in Paris on November 6, 1956, at the height of the Suez crisis (and the simultaneous turmoil in
Hungary). Shortly after Adenauer exclaimed that it was time for Europe to unite "against America",
Mollet excused himself to take a phone call from the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, who informed
Mollet that, under U.S. pressure, London had decided to call off the Anglo-French invasion of the
Suez Canal Zone. When a crestfallen Mollet returned to the meeting room and conveyed the content
of the telephone conversation to his guest, Adenauer consoled him by saying, "Now, it is time to
create Europe."
By the early 1960s, French President Charles de Gaulle believed that Western Europe had recovered
sufficiently from World War II's dislocations and was poised to re-emerge as an independent pole
of power in the international system. De Gaulle, clearly one of the 20th century's towering figures,
was well versed in the realities of international politics. Following Washington's successful facing-down
of the Soviet Union in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, he concluded then that the world had become
"unipolar"-dominated by a hegemonic America. To balance U.S. hegemony, de Gaulle pushed for France
to acquire independent nuclear capabilities, and he sought to build a West European pole of power
based on a Franco-German axis. That is what the 1963 treaty-the one Chirac and Schröder were commemorating
on January 22-was all about, a fact that Washington apprehended clearly. U.S. policymakers were
deeply concerned that Paris would lure West Germany out of the "Atlantic" (that is, U.S.) orbit,
because such a Euro-centric strategic axis, as a 1966 State Department cable explicitly said, "would
fragment Europe and divide the Atlantic world." In plainer English, the foundations of America's
European hegemony would be undermined.
Washington recognized the Gaullist challenge for what it was-a direct assault on U.S. preponderance
in Western Europe-and reacted by re-asserting its own hegemonic prerogatives on the Continent. President
Kennedy gave eloquent expression to the fear that Western Europe's emergence as an independent pole
of power in the international system would be inimical to U.S. interests, and his doing so shows
that U.S. concerns on this score were not limited to the immediate postwar period, as sketched out
above. Kennedy voiced concern that U.S. leverage over Europe might be waning because the West Europeans,
having staged a vigorous postwar recovery, were no longer dependent on the United States economically.
Noting that "the European states are less subject to our influence", Kennedy expressed the fear
that "if the French and other European powers acquire a nuclear capability they would be in a position
to be entirely independent and we might be on the outside looking in." By pushing for a Multilateral
Nuclear Force for Western Europe (in reality, one that kept Washington's finger firmly on the trigger),
the United States sought-unsuccessfully-to derail France's nuclear ambitions.
With considerably more success, however, the United States did manage to take the teeth out of
the Franco-German Treaty. In so doing, Washington played the hardest kind of hegemonic hardball.
Threatening to rescind the security guarantee that protected West Germany from the Soviets, the
U.S. government insisted that the Bundestag insert a preamble to the treaty reaffirming that Bonn's
Atlantic connection to the United States and NATO took supremacy over its ties with Paris.* This
intervention by the United States hastened Adenauer's retirement and helped ensure that he would
be succeeded by the more pliable Atlanticist, Ludwig Erhard.
What's New?
Now, forty years later, the United States and Europe are still playing the same game. America
still asserts its hegemony, and France and Germany still seek (so far without much success) to create
a European counterweight. As has been the case in the past, too, Washington is employing a number
of strategies to keep Europe apart.
First, the United States is still actively discouraging Europe from either collective, or national,
efforts to acquire the full-spectrum of advanced military capabilities. Specifically, the United
States has opposed the EU's Rapid Reaction Force (the nucleus of a future EU army), insisting that
any European efforts must not duplicate NATO capabilities and must be part of an effort to strengthen
the Alliance's "European pillar." The United States is also encouraging European NATO members to
concentrate individually on carving-out "niche" capabilities that will complement U.S. power rather
than potentially challenge it.
Second, Washington is engaged in a game of divide and rule in a bid to thwart the EU's political
unification process. The United States is pushing hard for the enlargement of the EU-and especially
the admission of Turkey -- in the expectation that a bigger EU will prove unmanageable and hence
unable to emerge as a politically unified actor in international politics. The United States
also has encouraged NATO expansion in a similar vein, in the hope that the "New Europe" (Poland,
Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania)-which, with the exception of Romania, will join the EU
in 2004-will side with Washington against France and Germany on most issues of significance. For
the United States, a Europe that speaks with many voices is optimal, which is why the United States
is trying to ensure that the EU's "state-building" process fails-thereby heading off the emergence
of a united Europe that could become an independent pole of power in the international system.
Finally, the United States has continued to remind the rest of Europe, sometimes delicately,
sometimes in a heavy-handed fashion, that they still need an American presence to "keep the Germans
down." For example, at his speech in Prague during the November 2002 NATO summit, President George
W. Bush-just before invoking the historically freighted memories of Verdun, Munich, Stalingrad and
Nuremberg-alluded in a not-so-subtle fashion to the German threat from World War II to make the
case for a U.S. role in Europe:
U-boats could not divide us. . . . The commitment of my nation to Europe is found in the carefully
tended graves of young Americans who died for this continent's freedom. That commitment is shown
by the thousands in uniforms still serving here, from the Balkans to Bavaria, still willing to make
the ultimate sacrifice for this continent's future.
Washington's aim of keeping Europe apart paid apparent dividends when, at the end of January,
the leaders of Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic
signed a letter urging Europe and the international community to unite behind Washington's Iraq
policy. This letter was notable especially because it illustrated that the United States is having
some success in using the "New Europe" to balance against the "Old" Franco-German core. Clearly,
Washington hopes that states such as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania will not only
line up behind the United States within NATO, but will also represent Atlanticist interests over
European ones within the EU itself.
In short, U.S. policy seeks to encourage an intra-European counterweight that will block French
and German aspirations to create a united Europe counterweight to American hegemony. Indeed, in
the wake of the Iraq War, Transatlantic relations are characterized by a kind of "double containment"
in Europe: the hard core of Old Europe (centered around France and Germany, and possibly supported
by Russia) seeks to brake America's aspirations for global hegemony, while the United States and
its "New European" allies in central and eastern Europe seek to contain Franco-German power on the
Continent. It is an old game, in a new form.
The Widening Atlantic
In the decade between the Soviet Union's collapse and 9/11, American hegemony (or as some U.S.
policymakers called it during the Clinton Administration, America's "hegemony problem") was the
central issue in American grand strategy debates. It still is. Although American policymakers have
developed a number of (too) clever rationales to convince themselves that the United States will
escape the fate that invariably befalls hegemons, the fallout of the Iraq crisis on the Transatlantic
relationship illustrates that concern with America's hegemonic power-and the way it is exercised-is
not confined to the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
Why do France, Germany and much of the rest of the world, including other major powers such as
Russia and China, worry about American hegemony? The simple answer is that international politics
remains fundamentally what it has always been: a competitive arena in which states struggle to survive.
States are always worried about their security. Thus when one state becomes overwhelmingly powerful-that
is, hegemonic-others fear for their safety.
Doubtless the Bush Administration's fervent hegemonists will scoff at the idea that the United
States will become the object of counter-hegemonic balancing. They clearly believe that the United
States can do as it pleases because it is so far ahead in terms of hard power that no other state
(or coalition of states) can possibly hope to balance against it. They also know, and know that
Europeans know, that the United States does not and will never literally threaten Europe with its
military power. This confidence is misplaced, however, because it overlooks the effects of what
can be called "the hegemon's temptation."
A hegemonic power like the United States today has overwhelming hard power-especially military
power-and indeed there is no state or coalition with commensurate power capable of restraining the
United States from exercising that power. For hegemons, the formula of overwhelming power and lack
of opposition creates powerful incentives to expand the scope of its geopolitical interests. But
over time, the cumulative effects of expansion for the United States-wars and subsequent occupations
in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and the War on Terrorism; possible future wars against
North Korea, Iran, Syria, or China over Taiwan-will have an enervating impact on U.S. power.
At the end of the day, hegemonic decline results from the interplay of over-extension abroad
and domestic economic weakness.* Over time, the costs of America's hegemonic vocation will interact
with its economic vulnerabilities-endless budget deficits fueled in part by burgeoning military
spending, and the persistent balance of payments deficit-to erode America's relative power advantage
over the rest of the world. As the relative power gap between the United States and potential new
great powers begins to shrink, the costs and risks of challenging the United States will decrease,
and the pay-off for doing so will increase. As the British found out toward the end of the 19th
century, a seemingly unassailable international power position can melt away with unexpected rapidity.
There are already today other potential poles of power in the international system waiting in
the wings that could quickly emerge as counterweights to the United States. And with the Iraq crisis
revealing the stark nature of American hegemony, these new power centers have increasingly greater
incentive to do so. Here, by facilitating "soft" balancing against the United States, the Iraq crisis
may have paved the way for "hard" balancing as well. Since the end of World War II, policymakers
and analysts on both sides of the Atlantic have realized that Europe is a potential pole of power
in the international system. Will France and Germany provide the motor to unite Europe in opposition
to the United States? Time, of course, will tell.
But for sure, this is not 1963. The Cold War is over, and France and Germany are freer to challenge
American hegemony. The EU is in the midst of an important constitutional convention that is laying
the foundation for a politically unified Europe. And even as the Iraq War proceeded, there were
straws in the wind pointing in the direction of hard balancing against the United States. Most notable
are indications that France, Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg may act together to create Europe's
own version of a coalition of the willing–by forming a "hard core" of enhanced defense cooperation
among themselves.
In the short term, however, Paris and Berlin–supported by Russia–have lead the way in soft balancing
to counter American hegemony. By using international organizations like the United Nations to marshal
opposition to the United States, France and Germany–and similarly inclined powers such as Russia
and China–are beginning to develop new habits of diplomatic cooperation to oppose Washington.
Similarly, it is likely that France and Germany (again, joined by Russia and China) will be more
likely to cooperate in propping up key regional powers that might be the next targets in Washington's
geopolitical gunsight. Iran is one such potential target. With Washington bidding for hegemony in
the Persian Gulf region by establishing a protectorate over postwar Iraq, France and Germany–Russia
and China, too-will have strong incentives for collaborating to ensure their own strategic and commercial
interests in the region by building up, and supporting, Iran (and perhaps Syria) as a counter-weight
to U.S. regional power. It was no coincidence, after all, that Dominique de Villepin showed up in
Tehran within days after the fall of Baghdad.
AT THE END of the day, the most telling piece of evidence that the Iraq War marks a turning point
in Transatlantic relations, and with respect to American hegemony, is this: Despite widespread predictions
that they would fold diplomatically and acquiesce in a second UN resolution authorizing the United
States and Great Britain to forcibly disarm fraq, Paris and Berlin (and Moscow) held firm. Rather
than being shocked and awed by America's power and strong-arm diplomacy, they stuck to their guns–just
as Britain and France did not do at Suez–and refused to fall into line behind Washington. What this
shows, at the very least, is that it is easier to be Number One when there is a Number Two that
threatens Numbers Three, Four, Five and so on. It also suggests that a hegemon so clearly defied
is a hegemon on a downward arc.
Many throughout the world now have the impression that the United States is acting as an aggressive
hegemon engaged in the naked aggrandizement of its own power. The notion that the United States
is a "benevolent" hegemon has been shredded. America is inviting the same fate as that which has
overtaken previous contenders for hegemony. In the sweep of history, the Bush Administration will
not be remembered for conquering Baghdad, but for a policy that galvanized both soft and hard balancing
against American hegemony. At the end of the day, what the administration trumpets as "victory"
in the Persian Gulf may prove, in reality, to have pushed NATO into terminal decline, given the
decisive boost to the political unification of Europe (at least the most important parts of it),
and marked the beginning of the end of America's era of global preponderance.
*The seminal work of the "Open Door" school, of course, is 'William Appleman Williams' The Tragedy
of American Diplomacy (New York: Delta, 1962). Williams' work has acted as a powerful stimulus that
produced a broad body of historical scholarship that both built upon, and refined, the Open Door
interpretation. When read as a whole, it encompasses economics, ideology, national interest and
security as key factors in shaping U.S. grand strategy–and underscores their interconnectedness.
** In notes prepared for Secretary of State George Marshall, Kennan argued that the Marshall
Plan was necessary for two reasons, the first of which was "so that they can buy from us." The second
reason was "so that they will have enough self-confidence to withstand outside pressures." Memorandum
Prepared by the Policy Planning Staff, July 21, 1947, FRUS 1947,III, p. 335.
* Referring to NATO and the EGSC, Secretary of State Dulles observed, "These represent important
unifying efforts, but it cannot be confidently affirmed that these organizations are clearly adequate
to ensure against a tragic repetition of the past where the Atlantic community, and particularly
Western Europe, has been torn apart by internecine struggles." He then underscored the need for
even greater unity within the Atlantic Community, not simply to meet the Soviet threat, but "forms
of unity and integration which would preserve the West from a continuance of internal struggles
which have been characteristic of its past." U.S. Delegation at North Atlantic Council Ministerial
Meeting to Dept. of State, May 5, 1956, FRUS 1955-57, IV, pp. 68-9.
* As Secretary of State Rusk said, "If Europe were ever to be organized so as to leave us outside,
from the point of view of these great issues of policy and defense, it would become most difficult
for us to sustain our present guarantee against Soviet aggression. We shall not hesitate to make
this point to the Germans if they show signs of accepting any idea of a Bonn-Paris axis." Rusk to
the Embassy in France, May 18, 1963, FRUS 1961-63, XIII, p. 704.
* The two classic elaborations are Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic
Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987).
Christopher Layne is a visiting fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He is
writing a book on America's hegemonic grand strategy for Cornell University Press.
President Carter: "The Rest of the World, Almost Unanimously, Looks At America As The No.
1 Warmonger. That We Revert To Armed Conflict Almost At The Drop Of A Hat - And Quite Often It's
Not Only Desired By The Leaders Of Our Country, But It's Also Supported By The People Of America"
In a sad commentary on America's war-like nature, President Carter
points out:
The rest of the world, almost unanimously, looks at America as the No. 1 warmonger. That
we revert to armed conflict almost at the drop of a hat - and quite often it's not only desired
by the leaders of our country, but it's also supported by the people of America.
Indeed, continuous war is a
feature – not a bug – of U.S. policy. (As a patriotic American who was born in the
U.S. and lived here my whole life, I am sad that so many Americans still fall for the myths of "American
exceptionalism" and "world's policeman".)
Other hard-hitting Carter quotes from the last year:
Jimmy Carter's new book, "A
Call to Action," is an urgent and bold addition to a library of some two dozen books he's written
in his post-presidency, as one of our finest global citizens. It's subtitled "Women, Religion, Violence
and Power," and Carter is unafraid to tackle controversial topics: sexual assault on campus and
the military; religious leaders of all faiths who use sacred texts to justify oppression; punitive
prison sentences weighted against the poor and against racial minorities; American drone wars and
endless military operations.
... ... ...
You very clearly call out the speed with which the United States jumps into military
action. You write that, "more than any nation in the world, the U.S. has been involved in armed
conflict and has used war as means of resolving disputes …"
That's correct, and I list some of the wars. I listed 10 or 15 and I could have listed about
10 or 15 more.
We also rarely acknowledge the loss and suffering that our policies have caused around
the world. You're specifically critical of our drone wars, and of the innocent people we've killed
as almost collateral damage. You've traveled to so many countries through the Carter Center: At
home, we talk of American exceptionalism, of this duty to bring our great democracy to the rest
of the world. Do we see ourselves accurately and understand our own history? And how does that square
with how the rest of the world perceives us?
(laughs) No. The rest of the world, almost unanimously, looks at America as the No. 1 warmonger.
That we revert to armed conflict almost at the drop of a hat - and quite often it's not only desired
by the leaders of our country, but it's also supported by the people of America. We've also reverted
back to a terrible degree of punishment of our people rather than the reinstitution of them back
into life. And this means that we have 7.5 times as many people now in prison as when I left the
governor's mansion.
We're the only country that has the death penalty in NATO; we're the only country in this hemisphere
that has the death penalty, and this is another blight on our country as far as unwarranted, unnecessary
and counterproductive violence are concerned.
John Kerry goes on "Meet the Press" after the Russian actions in Crimea and says, with
a straight face, that "it's the 21st century, you can't just invade another country anymore." And
I think a lot of us said, "Well, wait a second. That sounds a lot like something we did in Iraq,
you know, during the 21st century."
Right. We did. We do it all the time. That's Washington. Unfortunately. And we have for years.
When the old order begins to fall apart, many of the vociferous men of words, who prayed so
long for the day, are in a funk – Eric Hoffer, True Believer
The news of late out of eastern Ukraine is laden with irony. Those of us possessed of a realist
disposition-I use the term "disposition" advisedly, for as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr noted
in his essay "Augustine's Political Realism," definitions of realists "emphasize disposition, rather
than doctrines"-are not terribly surprised that the recently installed regime in Kiev has set in
motion a revolution it now finds itself unable to control. As history shows, that's the trouble
with revolutions: once begun, efforts to predict-much less control-their path are often fruitless.
What we are seeing taking place in the eastern provinces of Ukraine shouldn't be terribly surprising,
after all-the erroneous, yet seductive phrase "one Ukrainian people" that has been uttered over
and over again by American and European diplomats, was always a fiction. So the new regime in Kiev
finds itself in an analogous position to the one the Yanukovych government found itself in late
2013-early 2014; it faces popular dissatisfaction that expresses itself in the street (we have thankfully-thus
far anyway-been spared the term "the Ukrainian street").
There are a few differences between the oft-praised Euro-Maidan and the pro-Russian demonstrations
now taking place across the East; the first being that the latter have actually been peaceful (so
far). The nature of the regimes against which the respective protests were aimed are different as
well; one, Yanukovych's, was democratically elected in 2010, the government headed by Arseniy Yatsenyuk
(or, as he was referred to in honeyed tones by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, "Yats")
was imposed by acts of violence and coercion. Another difference can be spotted in the reactions
of the American media to the two movements. Proving the American media is nothing if not nimble,
solidarity for the aspirations of the "Ukrainian people" during the Maidan riots has now morphed-in
nary a blink of an eye-to scorn for protesters in the east who are obviously tools of the Kremlin.
And so if the protagonists of the Ukrainian revolution and their Western cheerleaders aren't
"in a funk," perhaps they ought to be, for developments are not proving very favorable at present.
In addition to the restive populations in urban centers like Donetsk and Kharkiv, Vladimir Putin
is playing a strong hand well. He recently issued a letter to 18 European leaders urging them to
provide Ukraine with financial assistance to avoid a shutdown of Russian gas supplies to Europe;
economic leverage is joined by military leverage: Russia has amassed over 40,000 troops on its western
border with Ukraine; and last but not least, Russia is busy consolidating its hold over Crimea.
Indeed, this week the Russian government announced it was exploring the possibility of investing
upwards of $1 billion toward developing the Crimean wine industry.
The Western response to all this has been to issue a handful of visa bans and to sanction a smallish
Russian private bank. Calls by some of our more martial-minded elected representatives (read: John
McCain) to arm the new Ukrainian regime have been met with little enthusiasm from the State Department.
Yet in the face of all this, neoconservative enthusiasm for ever deepening American involvement
continues unabated-the Russian government has accused the military contractor Greystone of sending
mercenaries to assist the Kiev regime, and neoconservative prodigal son David Frum bravely parachuted
into Kiev to assure the readers of The Atlantic that concerns over fascist and neo-Nazi elements
within and without the new Ukrainian government are baseless; his message: there's nothing to see
here folks.
The problems associated with promoting "democratic revolutions" go unremarked upon by the Washington
establishment. Yet even a casual student of history knows that the problem with revolutions generally
is that-like any ordinary street brawl-one never really knows for sure how things will end. A question
that we might do well to ponder in the coming days: Why is it that so many American journalists
and politicians favor provocation over prudence, and conflict over conciliation regarding the continuing
crisis in Ukraine?
Is the US or the World Coming to an End? It will be one or the other
2014 is shaping up as a year of reckoning for the United States. One of two things is likely:
Either the US dollar will be abandoned and collapse in value, thus ending Washington's superpower
status and Washington's threat to world peace, or Washington will lead its puppets into military
conflict with Russia and China. The outcome of such a war would be far more devastating than the
collapse of the US dollar.
Submitted by Paul Craig Roberts via The Institute for Political Economy,
Is the US or the World Coming to an End?
It will be one or the other
2014 is shaping up as a year of reckoning for the United States.
Two pressures are building on the US dollar.
One pressure comes from the Federal Reserve's declining ability to rig the price of gold
as Western gold supplies shrivel and market knowledge of the Fed's illegal price rigging spreads.
The evidence of massive amounts of naked shorts being dumped into the paper gold futures market
at times of day when trading is thin is unequivocal. It has become obvious that the price of
gold is being rigged in the futures market in order to protect the dollar's value from QE.
The other pressure arises from the Obama regime's foolish threats of sanctions on Russia.
Other countries are no longer willing to tolerate Washington's abuse of the world dollar standard.
Washington uses the dollar-based international payments system to inflict damage on the economies
of countries that resist Washington's political hegemony.
Russia and China have had enough. As I have reported and as Peter Koenig reports here http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38165.htm
Russia and China are disconnecting their international trade from the dollar. Henceforth, Russia
will conduct its trade, including the sale of oil and natural gas to Europe, in rubles and in the
currencies of its BRICS partners.
This means a big drop in the demand for US dollars and a corresponding drop in the dollar's exchange
value.
As John Williams (shadowstats.com) has made clear, the US economy has not recovered from
the downturn in 2008 and has weakened further. The vast majority of the US population is hard pressed
from the lack of income growth for years. As the US is now an import-dependent economy, a drop
in the dollar's value will raise US prices and push living standards lower.
All evidence points to US economic failure in 2014, and that is the conclusion of John Williams'
April 9 report.
This year could also see the breakup of NATO and even the EU. Washington's reckless coup
in Ukraine and threat of sanctions against Russia have pushed its NATO puppet states onto dangerous
ground. Washington misjudged the reaction in Ukraine to its overthrow of the elected democratic
government and imposition of a stooge government. Crimea quickly departed Ukraine and rejoined Russia.
Other former Russian territories in Ukraine might soon follow. Protesters in Lugansk, Donetsk, and
Kharkov are demanding their own referendums. Protesters have declared the Donetsk People's Republic
and Kharkov People's Republic. Washington's stooge government in Kiev has threatened to put the
protests down with violence. http://rt.com/news/eastern-ukraine-violence-threats-405/ Washington
claims that the protests are organized by Russia, but no one believes Washington, not even its Ukrainian
stooges.
Russian news reports have identified US mercenaries among the Kiev force that has been sent to
put down the separatists in eastern Ukraine. A member of the right-wing, neo-Nazi Fatherland Party
in the Kiev parliament has called for shooting the protesters dead.
Violence against the protesters is likely to bring in the Russian Army and result in the return
to Russia of its former territories in Eastern Ukraine that were attached to Ukraine by the Soviet
Communist Party.
With Washington out on a limb issuing threats hand over fist, Washington is pushing Europe into
two highly undesirable confrontations. Europeans do not want a war with Russia over Washington's
coup in Kiev, and Europeans understand that any real sanctions on Russia, if observed, would do
far more damage to Europeans. Within the EU, growing economic inequality among the countries, high
unemployment, and stringent economic austerity imposed on poorer members have produced enormous
strains. Europeans are in no mood to bear the brunt of a Washington-orchestrated conflict with Russia.
While Washington presents Europe with war and sacrifice, Russia and China offer trade and friendship.
Washington will do its best to keep European politicians bought-and-paid-for and in line with Washington's
policies, but the downside for Europe of going along with Washington is now much larger.
Across many fronts, Washington is emerging in the world's eye as duplicitous, untrustworthy,
and totally corrupt. A Securities and Exchange Commission prosecuting attorney, James Kidney used
the occasion of his retirement to reveal that higher ups had squelched his prosecutions of Goldman
Sachs and other "banks too big to fail," because his SEC bosses were not focused on justice but
"on getting high-paying jobs after their government service" by protecting the banks from prosecution
for their illegal actions. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/09/65578/
The US Agency for International Development has been caught trying to use social media to overthrow
the government of Cuba. http://rt.com/news/cuba-usaid-senate-zunzuneo-241/
This audacious recklessness comes on top of Washington's overthrow of the Ukrainian government,
the NSA spying scandal, Seymour Hersh's investigative report that the Sarin gas attack in Syria
was a false flag event arranged by NATO member Turkey in order to justify a US military attack on
Syria, Washington's forcing down Bolivian President Evo Morales' presidential plane to be searched,
Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," the misuse of the Libyan no-fly resolution for military
attack, and on and on. Essentially, Washington has so badly damaged other countries' confidence
in the judgment and integrity of the US government that the world has lost its belief in US leadership.
Washington is reduced to threats and bribes and increasingly presents as a bully.
The self-inflicted hammer blows to Washington's credibility have taken a toll. The most serious
blow of all is the dawning realization everywhere that Washington's crackpot conspiracy theory of
9/11 is false. Large numbers of independent experts as well as more than one hundred first responders
have contradicted every aspect of Washington's absurd conspiracy theory. No aware person believes
that a few Saudi Arabians, who could not fly airplanes, operating without help from any intelligence
agency, outwitted the entire National Security State, not only all 16 US intelligence agencies but
also all intelligence agencies of NATO and Israel as well.
Nothing worked on 9/11. Airport security failed four times in one hour, more failures in one
hour than have occurred during the other 116,232 hours of the 21st century combined. For the first
time in history the US Air Force could not get interceptor fighters off the ground and into the
sky. For the first time in history Air Traffic Control lost airliners for up to one hour and did
not report it. For the first time in history low temperature, short-lived, fires on a few floors
caused massive steel structures to weaken and collapse. For the first time in history 3 skyscrapers
fell at essentially free fall acceleration without the benefit of controlled demolition removing
resistance from below.
Two-thirds of Americans fell for this crackpot story. The left-wing fell for it, because they
saw the story as the oppressed striking back at America's evil empire. The right-wing fell for the
story, because they saw it as the demonized Muslims striking out at American goodness. President
George W. Bush expressed the right-wing view very well: "They hate us for our freedom and democracy."
But no one else believed it, least of all the Italians. Italians had been informed some years
previously about government false flag events when their President revealed the truth about secret
Operation Gladio. Operation Gladio was an operation run by the CIA and Italian intelligence during
the second half of the 20th century to set off bombs that would kill European women and children
in order to blame communists and, thereby, erode support for European communist parties.
Italians were among the first to make video presentations challenging Washington's crackpot story
of 9/11. The ultimate of this challenge is the 1 hour and 45 minute film, "Zero." You can watch
it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU961SGps8g&feature=youtu.be
Zero was produced as a film investigating 9/ll by the Italian company Telemaco. Many prominent
people appear in the film along with independent experts. Together, they disprove every assertion
made by the US government regarding its explanation of 9/11.
The film was shown to the European parliament.
It is impossible for anyone who watches this film to believe one word of the official explanation
of 9/11.
The conclusion is increasingly difficult to avoid that elements of the US government blew up
three New York skyscrapers in order to destroy Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iran, and
Hezbollah and to launch the US on the neoconservatives agenda of US world hegemony.
China and Russia protested but accepted Libya's destruction even though it was to their own detriment.
But Iran became a red line. Washington was blocked, so Washington decided to cause major problems
for Russia in Ukraine in order to distract Russia from Washington's agenda elsewhere.
China has been uncertain about the trade-offs between its trade surpluses with the US and Washington's
growing encirclement of China with naval and air bases. China has come to the conclusion that China
has the same enemy as Russia has–Washington.
One of two things is likely: Either the US dollar will be abandoned and collapse in value, thus
ending Washington's superpower status and Washington's threat to world peace, or Washington will
lead its puppets into military conflict with Russia and China. The outcome of such a war would be
far more devastating than the collapse of the US dollar.
Everyone looking for a proxy side to support or oppose in the Ukraine political dynamic will
be disappointed. Ukraine politics go by their own rules. Today's neoliberal ultranationalist could
be tomorrow's Kremlin ally, and visa-versa. Just look at what happened to the Orange Revolution-nothing.
To wit:
a) One Orange Revolution leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, wound up turning against her partner
Viktor Yushchenko and allying with Yanukovych to strip Yushchenko of presidential powers; later,
Tymoshenko allied with the Kremlin against Yushchenko; now she's free from jail and the presumptive
leader of the anti-Yanukovych forces.
b) The other Orange leader-the pro-EU, anti-Kremlin Viktor Yushchenko-wound up allying with
pro-Kremlin Yanukovych to jail Yulia Tymoshenko.
c) John McCain has been the big driving force for regime change against Yanukovych, but
McCain's 2008 campaign chief's lobby firm, Davis Manafort, managed Yanukovych's political
campaigns and his lobbying efforts in the US.
d) Anthony Podesta, brother of President Obama's senior advisor John Podesta, is another
Yanukovych lobbyist; John Podesta was the chief of Obama's 2008 transition team.
4. Yanukovych was not fighting neoliberalism, the World Bank, or oligarchy - nor was he merely
a tool of the Kremlin.
There's another false meme going around that because the World Bank and IMF are moving in to
"reform" Ukraine's economy - for the umpteenth time - that somehow this means that this was a fight
between pro-neoliberal and anti-neoliberal forces. It wasn't.
Yanukovych enthusiastically cooperated with the IMF and pledged to adhere to their demands.
Six months after Yanukovych was elected president, the headline read "International Monetary Fund
approves $15 billion loan to Ukraine". As the AFP reported,
"President Viktor Yanukovych had made restoring relations with the IMF a major priority
on taking office."
Later that year, the Wall Street Journal praised Yanukovych's neoliberal reforms as "truly transformational"
and gushed that Yanukovych "may soon become Europe's star economic liberalizer."
The problem was that last November, the Kremlin offered Yanukovych what he thought was a better
deal than what the EU was offering. He bet wrong.
The point is this: Ukraine is not Venezuela. This is not a profoundly political or class fight,
as it is in Venezuela. Yanukovych represents one faction of oligarchs; the opposition, unwittingly
or otherwise, ultimately fronts for other factions. Many of those oligarchs have close business
ties with Russia, but assets and bank accounts-and mansions-in Europe. Both forces are happy to
work with the neoliberal global institutions.
In Ukraine, there is no populist left politics, even though the country's deepest problem is
inequality and oligarchy. Memories of the Soviet Union play a big role in turning people off to
populist-left politics there, for understandable reasons.
But the Ukrainians do have a sense of people power that is rare in the world, and it goes back
to the first major protests in 2000, through the success of the Orange Revolution. The masses understand
their power-in-numbers to overthrow bad governments, but they haven't forged a populist politics
to change their situation and redistribute power by redistributing wealth.
So they wind up switching from one oligarchical faction to another, forming broad popular coalitions
that can be easily co-opted by the most politically organized minority factions within-neoliberals,
neofascists, or Kremlin tools. All of whom eventually produce more of the same shitty life that
leads to the next revolution.
Given everything that's going wrong with Ukraine's economy, there's very little chance that the
IMF bailout will prove large enough to allow the country to pay all of its bills. And while it's
fair to say that Ukraine didn't have any other options on the table, the new government obviously
wasn't going to accept Russia's aid package, as Alec Luhn notes at The Nation the IMF conditions
for Ukraine won't include any debt relief and won't impose any haircuts on the country's creditors.
Even with substantial international assistance, Ukraine is going to owe a lot of money to a lot
of different people and it isn't going to have the means necessary to pay this money back.
It's also worth taking a second to remember that the "reforms" demanded by the IMF primarily
amount to harsh austerity measures (primarily cuts in gas subsidies) that are massively unpopular
among Ukrainians and that will have a hugely negative impact on the population's living standard,
which isn't very high to begin with. There's a reason that Yanukovych and every other post-Soviet
Ukrainian leader has obstinately refused to implement these reforms (Ukrainians hate them!) and
it doesn't take a particularly active imagination to devise a scenario in which the reforms
backfire and ultimately cause the onset of yet another political crisis.
The obvious solution to Ukraine's problems would be more generous assistance from the United
States or the European Union, both of which have the means to cover Kiev's needs. But for a whole
host of reasons this is politically unrealistic: given their policies of financial retrenchment,
neither Washington nor Brussels are in a position to open the budgetary spigots on behalf of a country
that, until recently, barely even figured in their calculus. So Ukraine is going to go through
a messy default and a period of wrenching economic reform. It's possible that this could, like
the 1998 crisis in Russia, finally create a foundation for stable market-driven growth, but it's
just as likely that it sends the already weak Ukrainian economy further into a tailspin. So even
if the Russians don't carve out additional chunks of Ukrainian territory, the country is headed
straight for a catastrophe
By the time you read this Russia will have invaded Ukraine. Well, that's what the Supreme Allied
Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, US Air Force General Philip Breedlove, is spinning.
Breedlove Supreme says the Russians are "ready to go" and could easily take over eastern Ukraine.
Western corporate media have already dusted off their Kevlar vests.
Now compare Breedlove Supreme with a grown-up diplomat, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov,
who has called on NATO to please de-escalate the "unreasonable" warmongering rhetoric, which also
includes officially ending all civilian and military cooperation with Russia and planning more military
moves in Eastern Europe.
While NATO - shorthand for the Pentagon's European division - freaks out, especially via its
outgoing secretary-general, Danish patsy Anders Fogh Rasmussen, let's see where we really stand
on the ground, based on leaks from both Lavrov's and US Secretary of State John Kerry's camps.
The heart of the matter - obscured by a rainbow bridge of hysteria - is that neither Washington
nor Moscow want Ukraine to become a festering wound. Moscow told Washington, officially, it has
no intention of "invading" Ukraine. And Washington told Moscow that, for all the demented rhetoric,
it does not want to expand NATO to either Ukraine or Georgia.
Whatever Washington's actions, they won't convince the Kremlin the putsch in Kiev was not
orchestrated in large part by goons allied to Kaghanate of Nulands - aka US Assistant Secretary
of State Victoria Nulands. At the same time, the Kremlin knows time is on its side - so it would
be totally counterproductive to even contemplate "invading" eastern Ukraine.
Compound the vicious catfight among dodgy factions in Kiev, from fascists to Saint Yulia
"Kill all the Russians" Timoschenko; Gazprom raising the price of natural gas by 80%; and the International
Monetary Fund about to unleash some nasty structural adjustment that will make Greece look like
Cinderella playing in a rose garden, and all that Moscow needs to do is sit back, relax and watch
the (internal) carnage.
The same applies for the Baltics - which, as NATO hysteria would have it, might be invaded next
week. As the Baltics are part of NATO, then we would really have the Brussels Robocops going ballistic.
Yet only trademark arrogant/ignorant neo-cons believe Moscow will break complex political/trade
relationships with Europe - especially Germany - risking a hot war over the Baltics. The Germans
don't want a hot or cold war either. Even in the extremely unlikely event that would happen, what
would macho, macho NATO do, under Pentagon's orders? Invade Russian territory?
That does not even qualify as a lousy joke.
By the way, as bad jokes ago, it's hard to top Olli Rehn, vice president of the Kafkaesque European
Commission, stressing that " in the interests to maintain peace and stability on our continent"
the European Union is part of the 11 billion euro (US$15 billion) IMF/disaster capitalism package
to plunder, sorry, "help" Ukraine, and this while EU citizens are unemployed and/or thrown into
poverty by the millions.
As for Berlin's top priority, that is to at least try to steer the EU out of an almighty crash,
which implies keeping the equally economically devastated Club Med and Central Europe on board while
fighting off the rise and rise of nasty, "normalized" neofascism. "Massive undertaking" does not
even begin to describe it. Why add a confrontation with Moscow to this indigestible bouillabaisse?
New axis in the house
Moral high ground epiphanies such as
this
Guardian editorial ("he gained a peninsula but lost a country") are pointless. Same for minion
Poland freaking out and asking for more "protection" from the Brussels mafia.
Predictably, Western corporate media is spinning Putin "blinked" when he phoned US President
Barack Obama to try to set up a solution package - which includes, crucially, a federalization of
Ukraine. The Obama administration - even staffed by astounding mediocrities - knows this is the
only rational way ahead. And no amount of "pressure" will bend Moscow. Those go-go days of imposing
whatever whim over serial drunkard Boris Yeltsin are long gone. At the same time, Moscow is a realist
player - fully aware that the only possible solution for Ukraine has to be worked out with Washington.
So Ukraine is essentially a detail - and "Europe" is no more than a helpless bystander. Who are
you gonna call in "Europe"? That Magritte-style nonentity European Council President Herman Van
Rompuy? Anyone who's been to Brussels knows that "Europe" remains a glorified collection of principalities
bickering in a smatter of languages. Machiavelli would easily recognize it as such.
To top if off, the Obama administration has no clue what it wants in Ukraine. A "constitutional
democracy"? Moscow might even agree with that, while knowing, based on rows and rows of historical/cultural
reasons, it's bound to be a failure. The red line though has been spelled out over and over again:
no NATO bases in Ukraine.
Rational players in Washington - a certified minority - certainly have noticed that if you don't
play ball with Moscow, Russia will play very hard ball within the framework of the P5+1 (the UN
Security Council permanent members plus Germany) negotiations on the Iranian nuclear dossier.
Only the blind won't see that Moscow and Tehran are evolving towards a closer strategic partnership
as much as Moscow and Beijing. There's a real strategic geopolitical axis in the house - Moscow-Beijing-Tehran
- and the whole developing world has already noticed that's where the real action is. But as far
as Ukraine is concerned, the stark fact is this is all about the US and Russia.
The quality of comments in Guardian is by far the highest of discussion of recent events... I think
that by reading Guardian comments and filtering junk and trolls one can get pretty good picture of event
and major viewpoints that surround it. Which not always possibly in NYT or Wash Post. Some commenters
are really knowledgeable about the situation on the ground and do not buy simplistic EU is good, Russia
is bad for Ukraine line of thinking. It is interesting that the danger of Western-supported far right
coup is acknowledged by at least one author.
The
profound and pervasive crisis in Ukraine is a matter of grave concern for Russia. We understand
perfectly well the position of a country which became independent just over 20 years ago and still
faces complex tasks in constructing a sovereign state. Among them is the search for a balance of
interests among its various regions, the peoples of which have different historical and cultural
roots, speak different languages and have different perspectives on their past and present, and
their country's future place in the world.
Given these circumstances, the role of external forces
should have been to help Ukrainians protect the foundations of civil peace and sustainable development,
which are still fragile. Russia has done more than any other country to support the independent
Ukrainian state, including for many years subsidising its economy through low energy prices. Last
November, at the outset of the current crisis, we supported Kiev's wish for urgent consultations
between Ukraine, Russia and the EU to discuss harmonising the integration process. Brussels flatly
rejected it. This stand reflected the unproductive and dangerous line the EU and US have been taking
for a long time. They have been trying to compel Ukraine to make a painful choice between east and
west, further aggravating internal differences.
Ukraine's realities notwithstanding, massive support was provided to political movements promoting
western influence, and it was done in direct breach of the Ukrainian constitution. This is what
happened in 2004, when President Viktor Yushchenko won an unconstitutional third round of elections
introduced under EU pressure. This time round, power in Kiev was seized undemocratically, through
violent street protests conducted with the direct participation of ministers and other officials
from the US and EU countries.
Assertions that Russia has undermined efforts to strengthen partnerships on the European continent
do not correspond to the facts. On the contrary, our country has steadily promoted a system of equal
and indivisible security in the Euro-Atlantic area. We proposed signing a treaty to that effect,
and advocated the creation of a common economic and human space from the Atlantic to the Pacific
which would also be open to post-Soviet countries.
In the meantime, western states, despite their repeated assurances to the contrary, have carried
out successive waves of Nato enlargement, moved the alliance's military infrastructure eastward
and begun to implement antimissile defence plans. The EU's Eastern Partnership programme is designed
to bind the so-called focus states tightly to itself, shutting down the possibility of co-operation
with Russia. Attempts by those who staged the secession of Kosovo from Serbia and of Mayotte from
the Comoros to question the free will of Crimeans cannot be viewed as anything but a flagrant display
of double standards. No less troubling is the pretence of not noticing that the main danger for
the future of Ukraine is the spread of chaos by extremists and neo-Nazis.
Russia is doing all it can to promote early stabilisation in Ukraine. We are firmly convinced
that this can be achieved through, among other steps: real constitutional reform, which would ensure
the legitimate rights of all Ukrainian regions and respond to demands from its south-eastern region
to make Russian the state's second official language; firm guarantees on Ukraine's non-aligned status
to be enshrined in its laws, thus ensuring its role as a connecting link in an indivisible European
security architecture; and urgent measures to halt activity by illegal armed formations of the Right
Sector and other ultra-nationalist groups.
We are not imposing anything on anyone, we just see that if it is not done, Ukraine will continue
to spiral into crisis with unpredictable consequences. We stand ready to join international efforts
aimed at achieving these goals. We support the appeal by foreign ministers of Germany, France and
Poland to implement
the 21 February agreement. Their proposal – to hold Russia-EU talks with the participation of
Ukraine and other Eastern Partnership states about the consequences of EU association agreements
– corresponds to our position.
The world of today is not a junior school where teachers assign punishments at will. Belligerent
statements such as those heard at
the Nato foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on 1 April do not match demands for a de-escalation.
De-escalation should begin with rhetoric. It is time to stop the groundless.
Lolada Lolik
Respect to Graun for publishing it .
FOARP - -> Lolada Lolik
They publish stuff like this all the time. Which doesn't change the fact that Lavrov is basically
making a set of transparent excuses for naked aggression.
DougalEvansCoe FOARP
I think his intention is to remind people of the realities.
The only way to save Ukraine is federalisation. It wouldn't be so hard to achieve. Based
on discussions with Ukrainians, I suggested several weeks ago that Ukraine be divided into four
federal regions, each with around 10 million inhabitants.
Western Ukraine, centred on Lviv
Central Ukraine, Kyiv
Eastern Ukraine, Kharkiv
Southern Ukraine, Odesa
Ukrainian would be the sole official language in Western and Central Ukraine, while both
Russian and Ukrainian would be official languages in Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
The four regions would have roughly the same powers as Germany's Laender. The federal capital
would be Kyiv.
mm58347
and paid kremlin trolls in 3...2...1...
watch for the similarities in english mistakes between supposedly different posters.
grimpeur - -> mm58347
well you seem to have entered the discussion very quickly! Your first post was typically
very simplistic - you obviously have not been following in detail the sequence of events that
have unfolded in this crisis.
One could easily argue that the illegal coup in Kiev, facilitated by the USA and the
EU made constitutional arguments invalid.
The people of the Crimea voted overwhelmingly for secession and the West's actions over Kosovo
made legalistic arguments redundant!
But hey I am not calling you a USA troll, just someone who needs to read more on this crisis
from other news sources besides the dominant western medias which have been singing from the
same hymn sheet.
Try Counterpunch, Global Research, Consortium News, Paul Craig Roberts, the Ron Paul
Institute, and RT News for a countervailing view that can then give you some kind of balance!
Westmorlandia
The west has been needlessly whipping up tension – if we don't co-operate soon, chaos may
take hold
Well, if chaos takes hold then thank goodness for Russia - they will do the the right thing
by annexing Eastern Ukraine and making sure everyone does what they're told. That should sort
it out! Well done, noble Russia.
Russia has done more than any other country to support the independent Ukrainian state
By annexing parts of it? Nice try!
Gil Matos-Sequí - -> Westmorlandia
I doubt Russia will annex any part of Ukraine. However if Europe enjoys having a failed
and broken state on it's borders than it is it's choice.
If most Europeans feel as you do that rather than cooperate with Russia you would prefer
to break a country apart just to prove some point, that is also your choice. I don't see what
is gained by that argument. It is cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. However humans
are ultimately not completely rational beings and hatred is ultimately self destructive.
OccupyEyed
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the "news" coverage of the Ukrainian events has been
ham-handed, obvious propaganda for one power bloc or another. What's missing is a tiny bit of
nuance.
No, it was not a "fascist coup" in the Ukraine; it had elements of a coup and there were
explicit fascist organizations crucially involved...but they were never the majority. Far before
the events of the Maidan, Ukraine was a deeply divided society. Even a brief study of the past
few years reveals this--it's not at all subtle or hard to find evidence showing the turmoil
that led to the Orange Revolt, the imprisonment of Tymoshenko, etc.
Ditto for the Crimea events and now the putative breakaway efforts in some of Ukraine's major
cities. Yes, there are power-bloc actors involved; no, they aren't just conjuring this up from
zilch in the capitols of Russia, the EU, and the US. It would take a long post to begin to do
justice to it all, but this article is a good start. Let more like it follow.
SecondhandEntourage OccupyEyed
in other words, you're spouting the standard leftist bull, that the Kiev regime is legitimate,
and that Crimea's choice was not.
adipocere SecondhandEntourage
leftist? There is nothing left about an IMF putsch.
No, it was not a "fascist coup" in the Ukraine; it had elements of a coup and there were
explicit fascist organizations crucially involved...but they were never the majority.
But they were the most active, most organized and armed, and now are occupying the most
prominent posts in the current Ukrainian government:
From The Guardian:
The Right Sector militants did not appear from nowhere, although many media and liberal
protesters preferred to ignore their existence. They were active participants in the protest
from the very beginning, interested not so much in European association as the "national
revolution". They efficiently infiltrated the volunteer guards of the tent camps.
From Huffington Post:
The Obama administration has vehemently denied charges that Ukraine's nascent regime
is stock full of neo-fascists despite clear evidence suggesting otherwise. Such categorical
repudiations lend credence to the notion the U.S. facilitated the anti-Russian cabal's rise
to power as part of a broader strategy to draw Ukraine into the West's sphere of influence.
Even more disturbing are apologists, from the American left and right, who seem willing
accomplices in this obfuscation of reality, when just a cursory glance at the profiles of
Ukraine's new leaders should give pause to the most zealous of Russophobes.
The Right Sector's proclaimed aims are - No EU, No NATO, No Jews, No Russians ... Russians
(Crimeans) are just well familiar with this sort of gentlemen. Many elderly veterans in Crimea,
Sevastopol, actually fought with them in the past and prefer their children and grand children
to be as far from them as possible.
It's not easy to find it on Guardian side but in view of propaganda complain pursued by MSM this
is an outliner. The event was ignored by NYT as it does not fit the propatanga scheme adopted. It is
really strange that people interviewed provided more or less objective picture of the events. Probably
Guardian brass got new instructions from MI5. Meanwhile, MSM after end of Sochi Olympics completely
forgotten about "the terrible oppression of gays in Russia"
Thousands of pro-Russia protesters gathered in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday for an anti-government
rally. Many demonstrators are calling for a boycott of May's Ukrainian presidential elections. Vladimir
Putin, the president of Russia, has raised suspicions of a possible intention to gain control of
parts of eastern Ukraine after taking over Crimea last month
Stuffy, pompous New York Times columnist forever Thomas Friedman begins his most recent offering
– reprinted in the Kyiv Post, where I saw it – thus: "One thing I learned covering the Middle East
for many years is that there is "the morning after" and there is "the morning after the morning
after." Never confuse the two."
Generally speaking, if you are going to tell porkie pies ("lies", in the rhyming cockney slang
which lends its name to The Porkie Pies News Network, Kremlin Stooge slang for the mainstream media)
in your opinion piece, doing so in the first four words of it is starting a little early. Typically,
you want to soften up your audience a bit before you trot out the whoppers. So, make yourself comfortable
– coffee? Tea, anyone? – while I demonstrate that in reality, Thomas Friedman has learned nothing
at all.
Really, I would have been happy with just leaving a comment on "Putin and the Laws of Gravity",
but the New York Times cuts off commentary ridiculously early, so if you didn't see the piece come
out (it's dated yesterday, or what was yesterday when I began this post) chances are good that comments
will be closed before you get the chance to make your own opinion known. So, that's why we're going
this route, which is all to the good because now I will get to hear your opinions as well.
Anyway, Thomas Friedman has the dubious honour of having a unit of time named after him - a "Friedman",
which represents six months. This unit got its name from his repeated assurances in his NYT columns
that "the next six months" would surely see the United States turning the corner in Iraq; the occupation
which ground on and on like an Yngwie Malmsteen guitar solo would at last bear fruit, the resistance
and sectarian strife would subside and Iraq would settle down to becoming a prosperous, western-oriented
market democracy.
Fern, April 5, 2014
I'm expecting that Obama and Catherine-the-not-so-great-Ashton will soon announce that unless
Russia stops doing nothing, a further round of sanctions will apply.
All the frenzied speculation by politicians and the media about "what will Putin do"
have overlooked the obvious – he doesn't have to do anything at all. Just wait for the whole
caboodle to implode.
There's no question that Russia's annexation of the Crimea is a blatant violation of international
law. However, talk of a new Cold War and of "containing" Russia take our eyes off of more pressing
threats and potential opportunities, namely cutting a deal with Iran and driving a wedge between
a (potentially) revisionist Kremlin and a rising China.
The Obama White House should do three things. In the short-term, reach a settlement that Finlandizes
Ukraine. Next, reassure NATO allies in Eastern Europe that Russia will be kept out of their backyards.
Finally, reengage the Kremlin in order to prevent it from getting closer to Beijing.
Obama got it right when he said that Putin's behavior is driven by weakness. Russia is in a state
of relative economic, military and demographic decline, having squandered the nearly decade-long
oil boom to reposition itself on the international stage. The best and brightest that aren't Kremlin
insiders already voted with their feet and moved to the West-and show little interest in returning
home. In prospect theory-speak, states that are in the domain of losses tend to be more risk acceptant,
and, therefore more aggressive, than rising powers that have time on their side.
First, reach a settlement that recognizes the proverbial "facts on the ground," namely that Crimea
is now part of Russia. While there has been much talk of a Finlandized Ukraine, Cold War Austria
is the better model. Divided between the allies after World War Two, Soviet and Western withdrawal
saw the restoration of the state's independence in exchange for a declaration of neutrality. Ukraine
should end its blockade of critical regions of the Russian-speaking portions of Moldova in exchange
for new territorial guarantees.
Any Ukrainian government would be ill-advised to make amendments to the country's constitution
that provide additional protections to the country's ethnic Russian minority. This would legitimate
Putin's claims that Russian speakers in the Near Abroad are being persecuted and would set a dangerous
precedent. Ukraine would find itself in the same position as the Ottomans after the Crimean War,
when Western states used protection of the country's Christians as a pretext for future interventions.
Second, in order to reassure NATO's Baltic and eastern European allies, the Atlantic alliance
should abandon its agreement in the late nineties to not station forces in Eastern Europe. Instead,
it should establish a set of tripwires along these states' borders with Russia that are similar
to the forces set along the DMZ separating North and South Korea, or the commitment once made to
Berlin. This would not require an increase in troop strength. (During the Carter administration,
the U.S. was able to drawn down on its commitment to the DMZ without abetting aggression from Pyongyang.)
It would, however, signal the maintenance of America's commitment to the eastern European members
of NATO and guarantee U.S. involvement should Russia cross one of these Cold War–style "red lines."
Third, engage and accommodate the Kremlin where possible. This does not mean toeing Putin's line,
but making concessions to Russia over issues of peripheral interest to the U.S. (e.g., Crimea),
and cooperating where we have shared interests, from arms control to Iran.
The reason for this is simple: China.
skydiver (April 3, 2014 - 7:20pm)
Right, "accomodating" Russia by pushing more American troops closer to Russian border is
the way to make Russia feel friendly toward the US. Maybe Soviet Union would attack Japan because
Hitler was so firm and strong in Eastern Europe evidenced by the fact that they sent about 190
divisons into European Russia and apparently was willing to "accomodate" Soviet's geopolitical
ambition by supporting Soviet expansion toward Indian ocean. And Russia doesn't need America
to take Crimea, she already owned it.
By suggesting "recoginzing" Russia's already ironclad hold on Crimea is a "reward" strong
enough to "drive a wedge between Russia and China" is simply lack of common sense. I suppose
the author is the firm believer in people should feel honored to give up every chip they possess
before they even start negotiating with the US as apparently it's the firm belief among many
so called "realists" in good ol' America that good ol' America is so incredibly fabulous that
merely agreeing to talk with you would be "reward" good enough for you to give up your position/nukes/troops,
etc.
They are based on the same line of delusional appraisal of self's importance and attractiveness.
Russia was, is and would continue to see itself as an European power, which means giving up
Siberia to China might be seen as grave loss, giving up European Russia would be effective suicide.
Suggesting Russia would fight to death for Siberia while feeling nice and fuzzy about a even
closer ring of "trip-wire" on her eastern border, where, btw, vast majority of her people and
industry, and ALL of past invasions against her originated, is...... Well, you know.
Larusmarinus (April 4, 2014 - 1:52pm)
In even more recent memory, isn't the United States' invasion of Iraq in 2003 even
more blatant ?
If one admits that Crimea is peripheral to the United States' national interest, then why
all the fuss about Georgia in 2008, and still today about Ukraine as a whole ? Isn't Ukraine
as a whole as peripheral to US interest as Crimea ? '
Why invest 5 billion dollars [Assistant Secretary Nuland at U.S.-Ukraine Foundation Conference
16 December 2013], in a peripheral interest ?
In its eagerness to complete the encirclement of Russia by turning Ukraine into a forward
country for positioning NATO bases, the U.S. is paving the way for fraternal genocide and ethnic
cleansing. A closer strategic alliance between Russia and China may well be the one positive
outcome of the Ukrainian fiasco.
In 1919.... Lenin gave her several Russian provinces to assuage her feelings. These provinces
have never historically belonged to Ukraine. I am talking about the eastern and southern territories
of today's Ukraine.... Then, in 1954, Khrushchev, with the arbitrariness of a satrap, made a
"gift" of the Crimea to Ukraine.... As a result of the sudden and crude fragmentation of the
intermingled Slavic people, the borders have torn apart millions of ties of family and friendship.
Is this acceptable? I am myself nearly half Ukrainian, I grew up with the sounds of Ukrainian
speech.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitysn, Russian Nobel laureate, in an interview on May 9, 1994.
I sometimes get the feeling that somewhere across that huge puddle, in America, people
sit in a lab and conduct experiments, as if with rats, without actually understanding the consequences
of what they are doing.
--Vladimir Putin, Russian President, March 4, 2014.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN was a legendary anti-communist, the man who successfully injected the
word "Gulag" into an intercontinental vocabulary for discussions of the Stalin period, the novelist
who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature as part of the Swedish Academy's anti-Soviet drive
but whose literary merit, like that of Boris Pasternak, was acknowledged even by Georg Lukacs, the
great Marxist philosopher and literary critic. In the passage quoted here from his interview given
in 1994, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he expresses a double regret: that while Ukraine
was still a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), its territory was wrongfully
enlarged by awarding it large chunks of Russian territory and Russian-speaking population; and that
the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union precipitated an unwarranted territorial break-up of
the Union between Russia and Ukraine ("sudden and crude fragmentation of the intermingled Slavic
people" so that " borders have torn apart millions of ties of family and friendship", in his words).
After the recent referendum in the Crimean peninsula and its reintegration into Russia, Mikhail
Gorbachev, the Russian leader who initiated the dismantling of the Soviet system, expressed a similar
view. A historic wrong has been corrected, he said.
We shall return to these issues of the "intermingling" of the Slavic people and the "fragmentation"
of borders and peoples with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Suffice it to say for now that the
United States-sponsored Euro-Nazi coup in Kiev in February 2014 and, in response, the reintegration
of the Crimean peninsula into Russia in March signify something of a turning point, a watershed
event, in the post-Soviet era.
... ... ...
It is quite possible that the E.U. and the U.S. shall get eventually embarrassed by so overt
and dominant a position of fascists and anti-Semites at the helm of a government they have sponsored
in a major European country. Some kind of camouflage and reshuffle is likely. However, two kinds
of mass unrest are also likely in the near future. First, the rampant, loud, vicious anti-Russian
hatred among all sections of the new ruling dispensation is likely to cause social unrest in the
eastern provinces in particular and, more generally, among ethnic Russians thinly spread even in
the western parts. Second, consequences of the IMF-imposed austerity that is so much in the offing
will compound the social unrest in unpredictable ways. Democratic institutions in Ukraine are fragile
enough, all the so-called "liberal" political parties are dominated by criminals and oligarchs,
and the fascists, having tasted power, are not going to go away so easily. Indeed, as various kinds
of social unrest increase, these reorganised fascists may well emerge as the indispensable party
of order for liberals of all stripes, Ukrainian, American, Eurolanders.
In other words, the Ukraine crisis is still unfolding and it is still too early to judge its
eventual contours and consequences, nationally or internationally.
RIGA, Latvia-Security authorities here are investigating allegations of subversive behavior by
one of the nation's European Parliament members who has been accused of being a Russian agent of
influence in the Baltics-underscoring the degree to which tension has escalated in a former Soviet
state with a large ethnic-Russian population.
Tatjana Zdanoka, a member of a political party that recently renamed itself Latvian Russian Union,
is being scrutinized by Latvian security authorities for allegations that she is working to undermine
the Latvian state in her support for Russia, said Kristine Apse-Krumina, a spokeswoman for the security
agency. The investigation followed a formal complaint made by a fellow Latvian in the European Parliament,
Karlis Sadurskis.
Ms. Zdanoka, in an interview from Brussels, said she will return to Latvia on April 10 for questioning.
She characterized his allegations as "completely stupid. This man just wants to raise his popularity."
In a telephone interview, Mr. Sadurskis said he filed the complaint with prosecutors based on
Ms. Zdanoka's alleged activities in connection with Sutj Vremenji, a Russia-based organization that
Mr. Sadurskis said advocates the restoration of the Soviet Union.
"If one wants to renew the U.S.S.R., it is impossible without destroying Latvian statehood,"
he said. Ms. Zdanoka, a 63-year-old native of Latvia, has undermined the nation's constitution and
independence, he said. "There are clear signs of a crime against the state as well as crimes against
peace and humanity."
... ....
She is a well-known politician in Latvia, but as tension rose amid events in Ukraine she has
come under increased scrutiny from others in the Latvian leadership. About a quarter of Latvia's
residents are ethnic Russians, and Russian is the most commonly spoken language in Riga.
I would argue that real patriotism is defending this country and making sure that our freedoms are
not undermined here. Unfortunately, while so many are focused on freedoms in Crimea and Ukraine, the
US Congress is set to pass an NSA "reform" bill that will force private companies to retain our personal
data and make it even easier for the NSA to spy on the rest of us. We need to refocus our priorities
toward promoting liberty in the United States!
Last week Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill approving a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine
and more sanctions on Russia. The bill will likely receive the president's signature within days.
If you think this is the last time US citizens will have their money sent to Ukraine, you should
think again. This is only the beginning.
This $1 billion for Ukraine is a rip-off for the America taxpayer, but it is also a bad deal
for Ukrainians. Not a single needy Ukrainian will see a penny of this money, as it will be used
to bail out international banks who hold Ukrainian government debt. According to the terms of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF)-designed plan for Ukraine, life is about to get much more difficult
for average Ukrainians. The government will freeze some wage increases, significantly raise taxes,
and increase energy prices by a considerable margin.
But the bankers will get paid and the IMF will get control over the Ukrainian economy.
The bill also authorizes more US taxpayer money for government-funded "democracy promotion" NGOs,
and more money to broadcast US government propaganda into Ukraine via Radio Free Europe and Voice
of America. It also includes some saber-rattling, directing the US Secretary of State to "provide
enhanced security cooperation with Central and Eastern European NATO member states."
The US has been "promoting democracy" in Ukraine for more than ten years now, but it doesn't
seem to have done much good. Recently a democratically-elected government was overthrown by violent
protesters. That is the opposite of democracy, where governments are changed by free and fair elections.
What is shocking is that the US government and its NGOs were on the side of the protesters! If we
really cared about democracy we would not have taken either side, as it is none of our business.
Washington does not want to talk about its own actions that led to the coup, instead focusing
on attacking the Russian reaction to US-instigated unrest next door to them. So the new bill passed
by Congress will expand sanctions against Russia for its role in backing a referendum in Crimea,
where most of the population voted to join Russia. The US, which has participated in the forced
change of borders in Serbia and elsewhere, suddenly declares that international borders cannot be
challenged in Ukraine.
Those of us who are less than gung-ho about sanctions, manipulating elections, and sending our
troops overseas are criticized as somehow being unpatriotic. It happened before when so many of
us were opposed to the Iraq war, the US attack on Libya, and elsewhere. And it is happening again
to those of us not eager to get in another cold – or hot – war with Russia over a small peninsula
that means absolutely nothing to the US or its security.
I would argue that real patriotism is defending this country and making sure that our freedoms
are not undermined here. Unfortunately, while so many are focused on freedoms in Crimea and Ukraine,
the US Congress is set to pass an NSA "reform" bill that will force private companies to retain
our personal data and make it even easier for the NSA to spy on the rest of us. We need to refocus
our priorities toward promoting liberty in the United States!
There is no reason for Russia to worry about the western sanctions it is facing now over the Ukrainian
issue since "Moscow has too many other trade partners to work with,"
Jim Rogers explains in this interview, adding that "America is shooting itself in a
foot getting the most of our world to pushing China and Russia closer together." Simply
put, he warns, "I don't see any sanctions strategy that they can use that will hurt
Russia worse than it will hurt the people imposing those sanctions."
Via Voice
Of Russia,
Could China's decision to purchase superjet planes be viewed as a gesture of support following
a series of sanctions imposed by the West against Moscow over the Ukrainian issue?
Of course it is. I'm an American, so I hate to say this, but America is shooting
itself in a foot getting the most of our world to pushing China and Russia closer together.
And you are going to see more and more trade between the two. And that makes the sanctions
against Russia almost impossible, because there are other people who will not play.
And are there chances for the Russia Sukhoi Superjet planes to compete with other major plane-makers?
I don't think that the Russians have enough to compete with Boeing planes yet. But you are
certainly getting better. I mean, as far as cargo planes, you are probably better than anybody
else. And if people are forcing you or forcing other people to buy from you, then, of course,
your costs will go down, your quality will get better and it will only benefit Russia, but not
benefit Europe or America.
I think that's one reason Europe and America are a little hesitant to do too much
about the sanctions, because they know that they may lose more than they will gain.
And there are some articles on the Internet right now where different experts say that the sanctions
imposed by the EU and the US could be bad only for them. What do you think about this sanctions
strategy that the US and the EU are using with respect to Russia?
I don't see any sanctions strategy that they can use that will hurt Russia worse than
it will hurt the people imposing those sanctions.You have many
people who will trade with you – China, Iran, many of your neighbors. America cannot patrol
all of those borders. You can get just about any products you need. Plus, some of the products
that you sell, other people need them very-very badly, such as natural gas and some of the metals.
I think Mr. Obama is making the fool of himself yet again. After
all, Mr. Obama is the one who instigated the coup in Ukraine where there was an elected Government.
Mr. Obama, his diplomats are recorded and we have recordings of them saying – we've got to do
something about this Government. And then, when it went against him, he got angry. And I'm afraid
he is going to shoot himself in the foot yet again.
And if we come back to this Sukhoi Superjet deal, does it mean that Moscow is switching to the
eastern market and what are the other Asian countries that Moscow could cooperate with in the nearest
future, apart from China?
Of course, Russia is being forced to look east and not necessarily because they want
to, but because they have to. If people are going to impose the sanctions and if you look to
the east, you'd see who is out there, who may or may not trade with you. Not just North
Korea, not just China, some other countries –Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam certainly will, Indonesia
certainly will. So, many people that don't have problems with Russia these days, they will be
happy to trade with Russia.
So, this decision to purchase these superjet planes is a gesture of support followed by the sanctions.
And what about China's trade with Ukraine in this regard? Will they stop any economic relations
with Ukraine?
I doubt it. I don't know why they would. I mean, they don't want to be involved in
a trade war. So, I don't see why most Asian nations would cut off Ukraine or Russia,
or anybody else. This is the fight Mr. Obama has picked and, perhaps, to some extent
Mr. Putin. But I don't know why China would stop trading with Ukraine, I don't see
that at all.
Does Obama realize that he is leading the US and its puppet states to war with Russia and China,
or is Obama being manipulated into this disaster by his neoconservative speech writers and government
officials? World War 1 (and World War 2) was the result of the ambitions and mistakes of
a very small number of people. Only one head of state was actually involved–the President
of France.
In The genesis Of The World War, Harry Elmer Barnes shows that World War 1 was the product
of 4 or 5 people. Three stand out: Raymond Poincare`, President of France, Sergei Sazonov,
Russian Foreign Minister, and Alexander Izvolski, Russian Ambassador to France. Poincare` wanted
Alsace-Lorraine from Germany, and the Russians wanted Istanbul and the Bosphorus Strait, which connects
the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. They realized that their ambitions required a general
European war and worked to produce the desired war.
A Franco-Russian Alliance was formed. This alliance became the vehicle for orchestrating the
war. The British government, thanks to the incompetence, stupidity, or whatever of its Foreign Minister,
Sir Edward Grey, was pulled into the Franco-Russian Alliance. The war was started by Russia's mobilization.
The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, was blamed for the war despite the fact that he did everything possible
to avoid it.
Barnes' book was published in 1926. His reward for confronting the corrupt court historians
with the truth was to be accused of being paid by Germany to write his history. Eighty-six
years later historian Christopher Clark in his book, The Sleepwalkers, comes to essentially the
same conclusion as Barnes.
In the history I was taught the war was blamed on Germany for challenging British naval supremacy
by building too many battleships. The court historians who gave us this tale helped to set up World
War 2.
We are again on the road to World War. One hundred years ago the creation of a world war by a
few had to be done under the cover of deception. Germany had to be caught off guard. The British
had to be manipulated and, of course, people in all the countries involved had to be propagandized
and brainwashed.
Today the drive to war is blatantly obvious. The lies are obvious, and the entire West
is participating, both media and governments.
The script that Washington handed to its Canadian puppet has been handed to all of Washington's
puppets, and everywhere in the West the message is the same. "Putin invaded and annexed Crimea,
Putin is determined to rebuild the Soviet Empire, Putin must be stopped."
I hear from many Canadians who are outraged that their elected government represents Washington
and not Canadians, but as bad as Harper is, Obama and Fox "News" are worse.
On March 26 I managed to catch a bit of Fox "news." Murdoch's propaganda organ was reporting
that Putin was restoring the Soviet era practice of exercise. Fox "news" made this report into a
threatening and dangerous gesture toward the West. Fox produced an "expert," whose name I caught
as Eric Steckelbeck or something like that. The "expert" declared that Putin was creating "the Hitler
youth," with a view toward rebuilding the Soviet empire.
The extraordinary transparent lie that Russia sent an army into Ukraine and annexed Crimea
is now accepted as fact everywhere in the West, even among critics of US policy toward Russia.
Obama, whose government overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine and appointed
a stooge government that has threatened the Russian provinces of Ukraine, falsely accuses Putin
of "invading and annexing" Crimea.
Obama, or his handlers and programers, are relying on the total historical ignorance
of Western peoples. The ignorance and gullibility of Western peoples allows the American neoconservatives
to fashion "news" that controls their minds.
Obama recently declared that Washington's destruction of Iraq–up to one million killed, four
million displaced, infrastructure in ruins, sectarian violence exploding, a country in total ruins–is
nowhere near as bad as Russia's acceptance of Crimean self-determination. US Secretary of State
John Kerry actually ordered Putin to prevent the referendum and stop Crimeans from exercising self-determination.
Obama's speech on March 26 at the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels is surreal.
It is beyond hypocrisy. Obama says that Western ideals are challenged by self-determination in Crimea.
Russia, Obama says, must be punished by the West for permitting Crimeans to exercise self-determination.
The return of a Russian province on its own volition to its mother country where it existed for
200 years is presented by Obama as a dictatorial, anti-democratic act of tyranny.
http://on.rt.com/sbzj4o
Here was Obama, whose government has just overthrown the elected, democratic government
of Ukraine and substituted stooges chosen by Washington in the place of the elected government,
speaking of the hallowed ideal that "people in nations can make their own decisions about their
future." That is exactly what Crimea did, and that is exactly what the US coup in Kiev
contravened. In the twisted mind of Obama, self-determination consists of governments imposed by
Washington.
Here was Obama, who has shredded the US Constitution, speaking of "individual rights
and rule of law." Where is this rule of law? It is certainly not in Kiev where an elected
government was overthrown with force. It is certainly not in the United States where the executive
branch has spent the entirety of the new 21st century establishing government above the law. Habeas
corpus, due process, the right to open trials and determination of guilt by independent jurors prior
to imprisonment and execution, the right to privacy have all been overturned by the Bush/Obama regimes.
Torture is against US and international law; yet Washington set up torture prisons all over the
globe.
How is it possible that the representative of the war criminal US government can stand
before an European audience and speak of "rule of law," "individual rights," "human dignity," "self-determination,"
"freedom," without the audience breaking out in laughter?
Washington is the government that invaded and destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq on the basis of
lies. Washington is the government that financed and organized the overthrow of the Libyan and Honduran
governments and that is currently attempting to do the same thing to Syria and Venezuela. Washington
is the government that attacks with drones and bombs populations in the sovereign countries of Pakistan
and Yemen. Washington is the government that has troops all over Africa. Washington is the government
that has surrounded Russia, China, and Iran with military bases. It is this warmongering collection
of Washington war criminals that now asserts that it is standing up for international ideals against
Russia.
No one applauded Obama's nonsensical speech. But for Europe to accept
such blatant lies from a liar without protest empowers the momentum toward war that Washington is
pushing.
Obama demands more NATO troops to be stationed in Eastern Europe to "contain Russia."
http://news.antiwar.com/2014/03/26/obama-wants-more-nato-troops-in-eastern-europe/ Obama said
that a buildup of military forces on Russia's borders would reassure Poland and the Baltic states
that, as NATO members, they will be protected from Russian aggression. This nonsense is voiced by
Obama despite the fact that no one expects Russia to invade Poland or the Baltic countries.
Obama doesn't say what effect the US/NATO military buildup and numerous war games on
Russia's border will have on Russia. Will the Russian government conclude that Russia is about to
be attacked and strike first? The reckless carelessness of Obama is the way wars start.
The position of the government in Washington and its puppet states (Eastern and Western Europe,
Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Georgia, Japan) and other allies purchased
with bagfuls of money is that Washington's violation of international law by torturing
people, by invading sovereign countries on totally false pretenses, by routinely overthrowing democratically
elected governments that do not toe the Washington line is nothing but the "indispensable and exceptional
country" bringing "freedom and democracy to the world." But Russia's acceptance of the self-determination
of Crimean people to return to their home country is "a violation of international law."
Just what international law has Washington and its puppets not violated?
Obama, whose government in the past few years has bullied Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Pakistan,
Yemen, Somalia, Lebanon, Iran, Honduras, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela and is now trying to bully
Russia, actually declared that "bigger nations can not simply bully smaller ones." What does Obama
and his speech writers think Washington has been doing for the entirety of the 21st century?
Who can possibly believe that Obama, whose government is responsible for the deaths of
people every day in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Syria, cares a whit about democracy
in Ukraine. Obama overthrew the Ukrainian government in order to be able to stuff the country
into NATO, throw Russia out of its Black Sea naval base, and put US missile bases in Ukraine on
Russia's border. Obama is angry that his plan didn't pan out as intended, and he is taking his anger
and frustration out on Russia.
As the delusion takes hold in Washington that the US represents idealism standing firmly against
Russian aggression, delusion enabled by the presstitute media, the UN General Assembly vote, and
Washington's string of puppet states, self-righteousness rises in Washington's breast.
With rising self-righteousness will come more demands for punishing Russia, more demonization
of Russia and Putin, more lies echoed by the presstitutes and puppets. Ukrainian violence
against Russian residents is likely to intensify with the anti-Russian propaganda. Putin could be
forced to send in Russian troops to defend Russians.
Why are people so blind that they do not see Obama driving the world to its final
war?
Just as Obama dresses up his aggression toward Russia as idealism resisting selfish territorial
ambitions, the English, French, and Americans presented their World War 1 "victory" as the triumph
of idealism over German and Austrian imperialism and territorial ambitions. But at the Versailles
Conference the Bolsheviks (the Tsar's government failed to gain the Straits and instead lost the
country to Lenin) "revealed the existence of the notorious Secret Treaties embodying as sordid a
program of territorial pilfering as can be found in the history of diplomacy. It appears that the
chief actual motives of the Entente in the World War were the seizure of Constantinople and the
Straits for Russia; not only the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, but the securing of the west
bank of the Rhine, which would have involved the seizure of territory historically far longer connected
with Germany than Alsace-Lorraine had ever been with France; the rewarding of Italian entry into
the War by extensive territory grabbed away from Austria and the Jugo-Slavs; and the sequestering
of the German imperial possessions, the acquisition of the German merchant marine and the destruction
of the German navy in the interest of increasing the strength of the British Empire" (Barnes, pp.
691-692). The American share of the loot was seized German and Austrian investments in the US.
The secret British, Russian, and French aims of the war were hidden from the public,
which was whipped up with fabricated propaganda to support a war whose outcomes were far different
from the intentions of those who caused the war. People seem unable to learn from history. We are
now witnessing the world again being led down the garden path by lies and propaganda, this time
in behalf of American world hegemony.
Over the past month, there has been a lot of "Hilsenrathing", or the biased media urgently "explaining"
to the Western world, just what Russia's actions mean both tactically in response to Ukraine developments,
and strategically as part of Putin's global perspective. So instead of relying on the broken media
narrative which serves merely to perpetuate US corporate interests and rally the public behind this
or that company's geopolitical interests, here, straight from the horse's mouth, in this case Russian
foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, how Russia sees itself in a world in which it is allegedly "isolated",
and "threatening Ukraine" with further invasion but more importantly, how the Russians view the
rapidly changing global balance of power, in which post-USSR Russia has emerged from the backwood
of slighted nations and stormed to the stage of nations who dare defy the former global hegemon,
the US.
Some notable highlights by Lavrov from the interview conducted with Rossiya 24:
"Isolation" is a term invented by our Western partners who act with nostalgic neo-imperial
ambitions in mind. The instant something isn't to their liking they draw out this sanctions
stick. The times when such strategy could be employed are long gone.... I'm surprised at how
obsessively they're trying to – create rather than find – proof of Russia's isolation.
China is a very close partner of Russia. In our joint documents our relations are defined
as comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation. All of China's actions reaffirm its commitment
to the principles we agreed on. If, as you say, the Americans did try to convince China to review
its economic agreements with Russia on the highest level, it's an off-the-scale naïve or brazen
attitude. I would even say that not understanding the essence of Chinese politics and mentality
is just inexcusable for the officials in charge of such negotiations.
At the very beginning China said that it takes into consideration the combination of historical
and political factors. China strongly opposed using non-diplomatic measures and threats of sanctions
to resolve this problem. Our contacts with our Chinese partners show that they not only understand
Russia's rightful interests in this case, but are also hand-in-hand with us in the understanding
of the initial causes of the current crisis in Ukraine. There is no doubt about it.
Over a month ago I raised the issue of the Right Sector and the necessity to dissociate
from the radical forces with our Western partners. I asked them a very simple question: "If
you agree that we need to defuse the situation, why won't you publicly say what the Right Sector
really is?" Same to a degree goes for the Svoboda party, whose platform references The Declaration
of June 30, 1941, which expressed support of Nazi Germany and its efforts to establish a new
world order. According to the party's charter, it's still committed to this principle. US Secretary
of State John Kerry told me that after close scrutiny they concluded that the Right Sector was
trying to become a political movement. The subtext was that it's a good thing, and Svoboda is
moving towards [the] mainstream. That's a quote.
The punchline:
It is wrong for NATO members to be protected with indivisible security and for everybody
else to be treated as second-rate nations, so NATO can act as a magnet to attract new members
and keep pushing the dividing line further to the east.
We were promised that NATO would not bring its military infrastructure closer to
our borders – and we were cheated. We were promised there would be no military installations
on the territory of the new NATO members. At first, we just listened to those promises and believed
them. Then we started putting them on paper as political obligations, and serious people, Western
leaders, signed those documents. But when we asked them how come those political obligations
were ignored and whether we can make them legally binding, they told us, "No, political obligations
are enough, and anyway, don't worry, whatever we do is not against you."
Eastern Partnership – as well as NATO expansion – was simply an instrument used to quickly
take control over geopolitical territory. The EU was ready to push this project through at any
cost. It completely ignored legitimate economic interests of both Ukraine's neighbors, like
Russia and other countries, and even the nations that were part of this program. There have
been many studies on this issue. No wonder even Yatsenyuk says that Ukraine needs to take a
closer look at the economic section of this agreement.
And the next steps in terms of what Russia sees an ongoing response to NATO incursion:
The same will happen with Moldova. They are doing their best to sign a
similar agreement with Moldova this summer, before the upcoming election. And this agreement
they intend to sign with Moldova – it completely ignores the issue of Transnistria. It ignores
the 1997 agreement between Chisinau and Tiraspol which entitled Transnistria to international
trade. It ignores what is happening with Transnistria today: Chisinau and the new Ukrainian
authorities have basically blockaded the territory. But our European partners keep mum about
that. In fact, the European Union and, I think, the United States approve of this policy.
We want to talk to them very seriously about that, because they are escalating tensions
over Transnistria, almost claiming that it will be next. This is outrageous, provocative rhetoric.
Actually, they want to create unbearable conditions for Tiraspol in violation, I repeat,
of the agreements which entitled Transnistrians to certain travel, transit and trade rights.
This is outrageous. They never learn. Once again, they seek to create a sore point in our
relations.
Which Condoleezza Rice is a second rate or even third-rate thinker, this is a very good expousure
of neo-con views. She is lying that Yanukovich was a Putin's man. I think he is more like Ukrainian
version of Gorbachov.
Condoleezza Rice was secretary of state from 2005 to 2009.
"Meet Viktor Yanukovych, who is running for the presidency of Ukraine." Vladimir Putin and I
were standing in his office at the presidential dacha in late 2004 when Yanukovych suddenly appeared
from a back room. Putin wanted me to get the point. He's my man, Ukraine is ours - and don't forget
it.
The "Ukrainian problem" has been brewing for some time between the West and Russia. Since Ukraine's
Orange Revolution, the United States and Europe have tried to convince Russia that the vast territory
should not be a pawn in a great-power conflict but rather an independent nation that could chart
its own course. Putin has never seen it that way. For him, Kiev's movement toward the West is an
affront to Russia in a zero-sum game for the loyalty of former territories of the empire. The invasion
and possible annexation of Crimea on trumped-up concerns for its Russian-speaking population is
his answer to us.
The immediate concern must be to show Russia that further moves will not be tolerated and that
Ukraine's territorial integrity is sacrosanct. Diplomatic isolation, asset freezes and travel bans
against oligarchs are appropriate. The announcement of air defense exercises with the Baltic states
and the movement of a U.S. destroyer to the Black Sea bolster our allies, as does economic help
for Ukraine's embattled leaders, who must put aside their internal divisions and govern their country.
The longer-term task is to answer Putin's statement about Europe's post-Cold War future. He is
saying that Ukraine will never be free to make its own choices - a message meant to reverberate
in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states - and that Russia has special interests it will pursue at
all costs. For Putin, the Cold War ended "tragically." He will turn the clock back as far as intimidation
through military power, economic leverage and Western inaction will allow.
After Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, the United States sent ships into the Black Sea, airlifted
Georgian military forces from Iraq back to their home bases and sent humanitarian aid. Russia was
denied its ultimate goal of overthrowing the democratically elected government, an admission made
to me by the Russian foreign minister. The United States and Europe could agree on only a few actions
to isolate Russia politically.
But even those modest steps did not hold. Despite Russia's continued occupation of Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, the diplomatic isolation waned and then the Obama administration's "reset" led to
an abrupt revision of plans to deploy missile defense components in the Czech Republic and Poland.
Talk of Ukraine and Georgia's future in NATO ceased. Moscow cheered.
This time has to be different. Putin is playing for the long haul, cleverly exploiting every
opening he sees. So must we, practicing strategic patience if he is to be stopped. Moscow is
not immune from pressure. This is not 1968, and Russia is not the Soviet Union. The Russians need
foreign investment; oligarchs like traveling to Paris and London, and there are plenty of ill-gotten
gains stored in bank accounts abroad; the syndicate that runs Russia cannot tolerate lower oil prices;
neither can the Kremlin's budget, which sustains subsidies toward constituencies that support Putin.
Soon, North America's bounty of oil and gas will swamp Moscow's capacity. Authorizing the Keystone
XL pipeline and championing natural gas exports would signal that we intend to do precisely that.
And Europe should finally diversify its energy supply and develop pipelines that do not run through
Russia. --[Neoliberalism in action]
Many of Russia's most productive people, particularly its well-educated youth, are alienated
from the Kremlin. They know that their country should not be only an extractive industries giant.
They want political and economic freedoms and the ability to innovate and create in today's knowledge-based
economy. We should reach out to Russian youth, especially students and young professionals, many
of whom are studying in U.S. universities and working in Western firms. Democratic forces in Russia
need to hear American support for their ambitions. They, not Putin, are Russia's future. --[Support
of fifth column ?]
Most important, the United States must restore its standing in the international community, which
has been eroded by too many extended hands of friendship to our adversaries, sometimes at the expense
of our friends. Continued inaction in Syria, which has strengthened Moscow's hand in the Middle
East, and signs that we are desperate for a nuclear agreement with Iran cannot be separated from
Putin's recent actions. Radically declining U.S. defense budgets signal that we no longer have the
will or intention to sustain global order, as does talk of withdrawal from Afghanistan whether the
security situation warrants it or not. We must not fail, as we did in Iraq, to leave behind a residual
presence. Anything less than the American military's requirement for 10,000 troops will say that
we are not serious about helping to stabilize that country.
The notion that the United States could step back, lower its voice about democracy and human
rights and let others lead assumed that the space we abandoned would be filled by democratic allies,
friendly states and the amorphous "norms of the international community." Instead, we have seen
the vacuum being filled by extremists such as al-Qaeda reborn in Iraq and Syria; by dictators like
Bashar al-Assad, who, with the support of Iran and Russia, murders his own people; by nationalist
rhetoric and actions by Beijing that have prompted nationalist responses from our ally Japan; and
by the likes of Vladimir Putin, who understands that hard power still matters.
These global developments have not happened in response to a muscular U.S. foreign policy: Countries
are not trying to "balance" American power. They have come due to signals that we are exhausted
and disinterested. The events in Ukraine should be a wake-up call to those on both sides of the
aisle who believe that the United States should eschew the responsibilities of leadership. If it
is not heeded, dictators and extremists across the globe will be emboldened. And we will pay a price
as our interests and our values are trampled in their wake.
Diplomatic pronouncements are renowned for hypocrisy and double standards. But western denunciations
of Russian intervention in Crimea have reached new depths of self parody. The so far bloodless incursion
is an "incredible
act of aggression", US secretary of state John Kerry declared. In the 21st century you just
don't invade countries on a "completely trumped-up pretext", he insisted, as US allies agreed that
it had been an unacceptable breach of international law, for which there will be "costs".
That the states which launched the greatest act of unprovoked aggression in modern history on
a trumped-up pretext – against Iraq,
in an illegal war now estimated to have killed 500,000, along with the invasion of Afghanistan,
bloody regime change in Libya, and the killing of thousands in drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen
and Somalia, all without UN authorisation – should make such claims is beyond absurdity.
It's not just that western aggression and lawless killing is on another scale entirely from anything
Russia appears to have contemplated, let alone carried out – removing any credible basis for the
US and its allies to rail against Russian transgressions. But the western powers have also played
a central role in creating the Ukraine crisis in the first place.
The US and European powers openly sponsored the protests to oust the corrupt but elected Viktor
Yanukovych government, which were triggered by controversy over an all-or-nothing EU agreement which
would have excluded economic association with Russia.
In her notorious "fuck the EU" phone
call leaked last month, the US official Victoria Nuland can be heard laying down the shape of
a post-Yanukovych government – much of which was then turned into reality when he was overthrown
after the escalation of violence a couple of weeks later.
The president had by then lost political authority, but his overnight impeachment was certainly
constitutionally dubious. In his place a
government of oligarchs, neoliberal Orange Revolution retreads and neofascists has been installed,
one of whose first acts was to try and remove the official status of Russian, spoken by a majority
in parts of the south and east, as moves were made to ban the Communist party, which won 13% of
the vote at the last election.
It has been claimed that the role of fascists in the demonstrations has been exaggerated by Russian
propaganda to justify Vladimir Putin's manoeuvres in Crimea.
The reality is alarming enough to need no exaggeration. Activists report that the far right
made up around a third of the protesters, but they were decisive in armed confrontations with the
police.
Fascist gangs now patrol the streets.
But they are
also in Kiev's corridors of power. The far right Svoboda party, whose leader has denounced the
"criminal activities"
of "organised Jewry" and which was condemned by the European parliament for its "racist and
antisemitic views", has five ministerial posts in the new government, including deputy prime minister
and prosecutor general. The leader of the even more extreme Right Sector, at the heart of the street
violence, is now Ukraine's deputy national security chief.
Neo-Nazis in office is a first in post-war Europe. But this is the unelected government now backed
by the US and EU. And in a contemptuous rebuff to the ordinary Ukrainians who protested against
corruption and hoped for real change, the new administration has appointed two billionaire oligarchs
– one who runs his business from Switzerland – to be the new governors of the eastern cities of
Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk. Meanwhile, the IMF is preparing an eye-watering austerity plan for the
tanking Ukrainian economy which can only swell poverty and unemployment.
From a longer-term perspective, the crisis in Ukraine is a product of the disastrous Versailles-style
break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. As in Yugoslavia, people who were content to be
a national minority in an internal administrative unit of a multinational state – Russians in Soviet
Ukraine, South Ossetians in Soviet Georgia – felt very differently when those units became states
for which they felt little loyalty.
In the case of Crimea, which was only transferred to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s,
that is clearly true for the Russian majority. And
contrary to undertakings given at the time, the US and its allies have since relentlessly expanded
Nato up to Russia's borders, incorporating nine former Warsaw Pact states and three former Soviet
republics into what is effectively an anti-Russian military alliance in Europe. The European association
agreement which provoked the Ukrainian crisis also included clauses to integrate Ukraine into the
EU defense structure.
Given that background, it is hardly surprising that Russia has acted to stop the more strategically
sensitive and neuralgic Ukraine falling decisively into the western camp, especially given that
Russia's only major warm-water naval base is in Crimea.
Clearly, Putin's justifications for intervention – "humanitarian" protection for Russians
and an appeal by the deposed president – are legally and politically flaky, even if nothing like
on the scale of "weapons of mass destruction". Nor does Putin's conservative nationalism or oligarchic
regime have much wider international appeal.
But Russia's role as a limited counterweight to unilateral western power certainly does. And
in a world where the US, Britain, France and their allies have turned international lawlessness
with a moral veneer into a permanent routine, others are bound to try the same game.
Fortunately, the only shots fired by Russian forces at this point have been into the air. But
the dangers of escalating foreign intervention are obvious. What is needed instead is a negotiated
settlement for Ukraine, including a broad-based government in Kiev shorn of fascists; a federal
constitution that guarantees regional autonomy; economic support that doesn't pauperise the majority;
and a chance for people in Crimea to choose their own future. Anything else risks spreading the
conflict.
The external struggle to dominate Ukraine has put fascists in power and brought the country
to the brink of conflict
I would like to know how Seumas defines fascist and what label he would give the government
of the socialist peoples republic of North Korea ?
Westmorlandia john parnham
Also this:
The far right Svoboda party, whose leader has denounced the "criminal activities"
of "organised Jewry" and which was condemned by the European parliament for its "racist
and antisemitic views", has five ministerial posts in the new government,
Without wishing to say this isn't a problem, it's fair to say that anti-semitism is a noticeable
feature of politics in both Ukraine and Russia - if not usually out of the mouths of politicians,
then certainly overtly from mant of those supporting them. Indeed, many of the Russians denouncing
the interim government as fascists feel the need to warn, in the same breath, that "Jewish oligarchs"
are involved.
If you're looking for an option here that isn't anti-semitic (or uncorrupt, or generally
clean-handed), it doesn't really exist.
So what to do? Avoid supporting anyone too closely, ideally, but absolutely do stand by the
principle that countries aren't allowed to annex bits of other countries just because they're
bigger.
john parnham Westmorlandia
yes agree , but i would still like to know how he would define the government of North Korea
,
Are they any less fascist ?
The latest reports from there are that children have been killed by dogs guarding the concentration
camps . i hope that doesn't cause offence to anyone but i don't know how else to describe them
.
So are they fascist or not ?
pegasusrose2011 john parnham
As with Syria, because there were some fascist factions involved with the rebellion against
the status quo in Ukraine, that means everyone who demonstrated was a fascist.
Milne doesn't mention consistent Russian meddling with Ukrainian politics from the start
of its independence. Does he not remember the poisoning of President Yuschenko or the intimidation
via Gazprom of Tymoshenko or the electoral fraud of Yanukovych?
Ukrainian politics are filthy dirty, with all major political contenders oligarchs of some
kind. Yuschenko and Tymoshenko wanted to get away from Russian influence and so put feelers
out to the EU. Yanukovych tried to play the EU and Russia off against each other and blew it.
That's what actually triggered this showdown, Yanukovych's craven behaviour. It was he who had
Russian backing but caved in under pressure.
Grow up Seamus. The story is far more complex than both pro- and anti-Americans have to say.
And note that most supposed pro-Russians are, like actually anti-Americans. Putin has carte
blanche because he is not America.
RadioPartizan john parnham
North Korea - Authoritarian Stalinist Totalitarianism. NOT Fascism.
Fascism is not just 'authoritarian' or 'dictatorial' - it is also signified by mythologised
ultra-nationalism, fethisisation of militarism and war and obsessive belief in notions of racial
superiority.
e.g - Svoboda and Pravy Sector . Neo-Nazis helped into power by the west. Now running internal
security in Ukraine. Cheery. Thought.
And this just in - being agasint nazis in power in Ukraine does not mean support of Putins
Authoritarian Capitalism.
RichardCrawford10 john parnham
This comment defies belief. So, if you do not support Ukrainian right wingers who are aganst
'the free market, pseudo nationalism, the EU , democratic elections and anti-authoritarianism',
you must support North Korea? Where were you educated?
Diogenes44 Austin15
I agree. As to those Kiev rightwing fascists in the streets day ago, a picture is apparently
emerging, that from those ranks, some shot and killed the protesters, and not Yankovich's people.
Once sentimetnt dies down, it's inevitable that we will get a much clearer picture of what
has and is really going on. However, the US govt has a very bad reputation for instigating these
kinds of things so don't be surprised if that past proves what's happening in Crimea and Ukraine.
Moreover, if the EU can scrap up 11B euros for Ukraine, I wonder how folks in Greece, Spain,
Italy, and Portugal will feel about that expenditure come May 25th.
teaandchocolate
Anything to fight the commies.
Commies in Chile... support a nasty right-wing dictator.
Commies in Cuba... make them suffer and support nasty right-wing deposed dicator.
Commies in South America... support the even nastier right-wing factions.
Commies in Ukraine ... support the neo-fascists.
USA, grow up.
What is needed instead is a negotiated settlement for Ukraine, including a broad-based
government in Kiev shorn of fascists; a federal constitution that guarantees regional autonomy;
economic support that doesn't pauperise the majority; and a chance for people in Crimea
to choose their own future. Anything else risks spreading the conflict.
True. I would not support any conflict where British troops had to fight with Nazis,
no matter how bad Putin is.
RoachAmerican teaandchocolate
To grow for the U S is to face our responsibilities. John Kerry and President Obama are doing
just that.
teaandchocolate RoachAmerican
To grow for the U S is to face our responsibilities
By siding with Nazis? Come on.... they are just looking after business.
RoachAmerican
Two items to think about.
One, Russian signed a non aggression pact and nuclear non proliferation treaty with the Ukraine.
If Russia allowed to invade and dismantle the Ukraine, what is the credibility of current and
future non proliferation treaties ?
Two, the security of central Europe is threatened if Russia is allowed to occupy the Ukraine.
So, despite our failures as nations, the issues are very clear.
As Putin said, " the weak deserve to be beaten ".
So how do we respond ?
DougalEvansCoe RoachAmerican
"If Russia allowed to invade and dismantle the Ukraine, what is the credibility of current
and future non proliferation treaties ?
Two, the security of central Europe is threatened if Russia is allowed to occupy the Ukraine."
The first problem could be solved by the Kiev authorities faster than you can say Yulia Tymoshenko.
All they have to do is agree that Ukraine should become a federal republic with regional autonomy
- as Seamus also counsels.
As regards your "no. 2", I'm in central Europe and I can tell you that people feel more threatened
by the disorder in Kiev, the inclusion of anti-democrats in the new Ukrainian 'government',
and by Svoboda's commitment to a nuclear-armed Ukraine than by the return of Russian 'single-mindedness'.
thebigchil
Agree. The aggressive landgrab for Western/NATO/EU 'soft power' has been the destabilising
factor across the world in the last 15 years. The motives are positive but the politics are
disingenuous and the execution has been clumsy.
Leo Ozolin
By "incredible act of aggression" he probably meant that it was without a single victim.
Sounds like he is envious of Russians. US just can't make any incredible acts of aggression
without mass killings.
The so far bloodless incursion is an "incredible act of aggression", US secretary of
state John Kerry declared. In the 21st century you just don't invade countries on a "completely
trumped-up pretext", he insisted, as US allies agreed that it had been an unacceptable breach
of international law, for which there will be "costs".
That the states which launched the greatest act of unprovoked aggression in modern history
on a trumped-up pretext – against Iraq, in an illegal war now estimated to have killed 500,000,
along with the invasion of Afghanistan,
Indeed, the US and NATO hypocrisy is breathtaking!
scubaM10
"In the case of Crimea, which was only transferred to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in
the 1950s, that is clearly true for the Russian majority. And contrary to undertakings given
at the time, the US and its allies have since relentlessly expanded Nato up to Russia's
borders, incorporating nine former Warsaw Pact states and three former Soviet republics
into what is effectively an anti-Russian military alliance in Europe. The European association
agreement which provoked the Ukrainian crisis also included clauses to integrate Ukraine
into the EU defence structure."
Largely true and about the first time I have agreed with anything that Seamus has written.
NeverReadGuardian
An excellent article! Why nobody in the west is reporting that a telephone conversation was
intercepted in which Estonian FM said to Eshton that the snipers in Kiev that killed people
on both sides were hired by the new government not by Yanukovich? And then she replied: "Oh
Gosh! That is interesting"! But the EU and American officials continued their support for those
criminals.
The current Ukrainian government doesn't include neo-Nazi's?
There are no members of this government interestingly concentrated in areas that will deal
with internal security and policing (head of the NSA, interior minister, defence minister and
chief prosecutor)?
Really?
I am not defending Putin at all, he is a pretty nasty piece of work (although apparently
also able to run rings around the current crop of Western leaders, possibly because according
to an article I read they cannot fathom what the fuck hes doing, but thats by the by) but the
West and Ukrainian transitional government are all the white hats and the Russians are all the
black hats and some Western countries would never do anything to destabilise foreign governments
is frankly becoming childish.
therealsalparadise Menotti
Russia is a dictatorship in all but name run by the security services and the mind-bogglingly
wealthy asset strippers whom London is so keen to court. It pisses on press freedom, personal
freedom, minority rights and anything at all that may upset control of the security services,
the church, and the ultra-wealthy
For a moment there, i was convinced you were talking about Britain...run by the Security
Services and a politicised police force, asset strippers etc. Because i see no difference.
Babeouf
Strangely the core of the article is both sound and ,obvious. The collapse of the USSR led
Western leaders led by Clinton then Bush to believe they had a free hand on planet earth. The
prospect of a war between the west and Russia in Europe demonstrates conclusively(to Europeans
at least) that this belief if false. After the readjustment to the end of the USSR another adjustment
to the reality of Russian power. If they fire off their arsenal of nuclear weapons you won't
be going to work tomorrow or ever again. Nor of course will they. But you won't be dead in the
battle for 'Freedom' you will be dead because Western leaders sponsored a Coup and ballsed it
up.
ID3935003
-> It is so easy ...McCain is a fascist,Kerry is a terrorist,Obama is a mass murderer.
I just copy the idiotic USA propaganda
Vibgyor
Milne is right that about the fascist elements in the Ukrainian government.
But to blame the west for Ukraine's internal problems is frankly ridiculous. Everyone except
dear old Johnny-One-Note can see that Ukraine is a deeply divided country.
Lifesaparty Vibgyor
The US has promised Ukraine to work closer together with Nato from now on and have 'full protection'
what ever that means. The Us has also, though that is obviously a lofty and false perspective,
hinted at that US will provide Ukraine with gas to replace any loss of Russian supply. It's
too silly to be taken seriously but the Ukrainians are comforted by the prospect just the same.
And then there are the promises of fantastical financial contributions...
Taku2 Vibgyor
SM has acknowledged the divisions. His contention that the American and European governments
aided and abetted the overthrow of the probably rotten, but nontheless elected government is
correct.
Of course, we do not have to go east to find rotten and corrupt governments; we only
have to look closer to home. Politics, be it in the east or west, is now mainly about making
money; either for the politicians or those who support them with the money they make from having
the protection of the politicians.
StevenJ19
Hallelujah for Seamus Milne. At long last we have an article which offers a sober tour d'horizon,
shorn of the amateurish attempts to demonise Russian foreign policy, instead focusing on the
real villains of the peace - the US Neocon war-mongers and their EU lackeys, together with the
shadowy bunch of neo-fascists who are now calling the shots in Kiev.
Like or loathe Putin, the Russians have every right to restore the balance of power in their
own backyard.
sambeckett2 StevenJ19
Like or loathe Putin, the Russians have every right to restore the balance of power in their
own backyard.
And the Ukraine doesn't? And in what sense is Ukraine, a sovereign country,
'their own backyard'. They belong to Russia do they?
I trust you'll be making the same argument when the US.invades Cuba.
StevenJ19 sambeckett2
"I trust you'll be making the same argument when the US.invades Cuba."
Well, if you cast your mind back to 1962, a very similiar thing to what is happening in the
Ukraine today happened in Cuba, when a superpower from the other side of the globe placed its
military hardware on America's doorstep - and that almost led to armageddon.
And what did the Americans think Russia would do when they tried to pull exactly the same
trick in reverse?
Do they want a new Cold War? No doubt their paymasters would, as the 'War on Terror' isn't
paying so well nowadays.
Lump
What is needed instead is a negotiated settlement for Ukraine, including a broad-based government
in Kiev shorn of fascists; a federal constitution that guarantees regional autonomy; economic
support that doesn't pauperise the majority; and a chance for people in Crimea to choose their
own future.
Very incisive, Seamus. And we'll just ask Mr Putin nicely, shall we? Report
MarkB35 Lump
We could sent George Galloway to chair the negotiations!
BrainDrain59 Lump:
That's certainly worth a try. It would probably work if the West stopped encircling Russia as
Milne pointed out. What do you recommend, another European war?
Good article, but the suggested solutions are not realistic:
- "including a broad-based government in Kiev shorn of fascists"
How would anyone at this point get the fascists out? They are in charge in Kiev, they have
no place to go. It is more likely that they will push out the moderates and the neo-liberals.
They have the arms and they like to fight.
- "federal constitution that guarantees regional autonomy"
Too late for that. The "revolution" in Kiev (second one in 10 years by nationalists) has
shown that legal rights are a piece of paper. All guarantees can be forcibly removed by a few
hard men in Kiev. See how they almost immediately outlawed Russian language as an official language.
It could, and would, happen again.
- "economic support that doesn't pauperise the majority"
There is no other way West knows at this point to "reform" an economy except by austerity.
The alternative of expropriating the oligarchs is off the table - they mostly funded the "revolution",
are allied with the West, and form the other half (the neo-liberal one) of the new government
in Kiev.
How about instead we shut down the place and split it into its natural components? Western
Ukraine can become an impoverished National Socialist state living off aid and sending millions
of immigrants to EU. Crimea and maybe a few other areas re-join Russia. Eastern Ukraine becomes
an official post-industrial wasteland with post-Soviet nostalgia theme parks.
And Kiev with suburbs can become a prosperous city-state with Western NGO's, soft speaking
intellectuals, a refuge for the LGBT community, and a live off a few casinos (and the beauty
of the women capital that is so visible in those regions).
EU pays off the debts, oligarchs reunite themselves with their wealth in London and Switzerland.
And everybody lives happily ever after. They can even host the 2018 World Cup.
If Russia dismembers Ukraine and grabs the eastern part, they are pretty much assured
that the western part will (INAUDIBLE) gallop westward. So I'm not sure that is in Russia's
interests. So they may be trying to simply put a heck of a lot of pressure on Kiev to come
up with a government that kind of respects sort of Russian interests in this. As they, you
know, look to cut the deals with the European Union and other things.
So, I think that it is a time for diplomacy. It is time for making sure we don't have
mixed or mixed signals or we don't miss signals. So even though there is a certain grim
inevitability of some of this I think we need to really stay in touch with Moscow. It is
kind of unfortunate we don't even have an ambassador there now. So I think we really, really
need to kind of step up the diplomacy with the Russians right now.
Probably. But what difference would that make? Western Ukraine is poor, has no resources,
a lot of currently very angry people, and it will always be nationalistic.
It would be like having another Poland further east. They would join NATO, be a reservoir
of cheap labor for EU, and the neo-cons with Hillary could visit to wave their dicks and get
all excited.
A former boxer for president and leather jackets with compulsory tattoos as national uniforms.
Add weight-lifting rooms on every corner, some really large crosses, and a weird obsession with
Nazi memorabilia. Very picturesque, call it Banderistan.
Over time, they would hate Poland and EU as much as they hate Russia. Envy, bitterness and
resentment, plus a sense that others owe them higher living standards. At some point they could
petition to join US or Canada directly.
But no financial aid will ever be enough, they will feel that they are owed more. They are
after all, wink-wink, you know, "white", don't the stupid Euro-multi-culti-gay-crats see that?
Don't they see how the Moscovites (they don't recognize the term "Russian") or - wink-wink -
you know who, those people that we don't name in front of Westerners, robbed them. But they
love Israel, it is safely far away. Just don't ask them about the Arabs. Better not. All of
this would reintroduce refreshing "identity" politics to Europe. Their views on non-European
whites would shock most of EU, but their views on the Russians would be a constant reaffirmation
for the Western struggle with that huge, and unliked behemoth.
That the states which launched the greatest act of unprovoked aggression in modern history
on a trumped-up pretext – against Iraq, in an illegal war now estimated to have killed 500,000,
along with the invasion of Afghanistan, bloody regime change in Libya, and the killing of thousands
in drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, all without UN authorisation – should make
such claims is beyond absurdity.
It sure is absurd. I have been laughing my ass off reading the comments of Obama, Kerry,Cameron
etc. Like they are a bastion of justice in the world, its laughable.
They plan to replace Cyrillic alphabet with Latin alphabet for the language
Временная специальная комиссия по подготовке
проекта закона "О развитии и применении языков на Украине" рассматривает вариант о внесении
в законопроект пункта о постепенном отказе от использования кириллицы на территории Украины и
замене ее на латиницу"
Yalensis: "Nebojsa makes an extremely interesting point: That he believes the U.S. State Dept. is
basically making up its own foreign (and military) policy, completely separate from Obama; and basically
Obama is just forced to go along with whatever they do. If this is true (and I think it is), this confirms
my hunch that the American State Dept is ruled by Clilntinoids, and that Obama is basically their vassal."
A geat RT Crosstalk including Alexander Mercouris, and Nebojsa Malic (of the ReISS Institute).
I realize that Nebojsa is not AP-approved which is the best endorsement he could have.
Nebojsa makes an extremely interesting point: That he believes the U.S. State Dept. is basically
making up its own foreign (and military) policy, completely separate from Obama; and basically
Obama is just forced to go along with whatever they do.
If this is true (and I think it is), this confirms my hunch that the American State Dept
is ruled by Clilntinoids, and that Obama is basically their vassal.
I always wondered exactly what the Clintons had on Obama. Or, is he just so incompetent that
he felt he could not establish his own foreign policy without them?
P.S. nice to see Mercouris in fine fettle! You go, Alexander!
The United States condemns the Russian Federation's invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory,
and its violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity in full contravention of Russia's
obligations under the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, its 1997 military basing agreement with
Ukraine, and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. This action is a threat to the peace and security of
Ukraine, and the wider region.
I spoke with President Turchynov this morning to assure him he had the strong support of
the United States and commend the new government for showing the utmost restraint in the face
of the clear and present danger to the integrity of their state, and the assaults on their sovereignty.
We also urge that the Government of Ukraine continue to make clear, as it has from throughout this
crisis, its commitment to protect the rights of all Ukrainians and uphold its international obligations.
As President Obama has said, we call for Russia to withdraw its forces back to bases, refrain
from interference elsewhere in Ukraine, and support international mediation to address any legitimate
issues regarding the protection of minority rights or security.
From day one, we've made clear that we recognize and respect Russia's ties to Ukraine and its
concerns about treatment of ethnic Russians. But these concerns can and must be addressed in a way
that does not violate Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, by directly engaging the
Government of Ukraine.
Unless immediate and concrete steps are taken by Russia to deescalate tensions, the effect on
U.S.-Russian relations and on Russia's international standing will be profound.
I convened a call this afternoon with my counterparts from around the world, to coordinate on next
steps. We were unified in our assessment and will work closely together to support Ukraine and its
people at this historic hour.
In the coming days, emergency consultations will commence in the UN Security Council, the North
Atlantic Council, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in defense of the
underlying principles critical to the maintenance of international peace and security. We continue
to believe in the importance of an international presence from the UN or OSCE to gather facts, monitor
for violations or abuses and help protect rights. As a leading member of both organizations, Russia
can actively participate and make sure its interests are taken into account.
The people of Ukraine want nothing more than the right to define their own future – peacefully,
politically and in stability. They must have the international community's full support at this
vital moment. The United States stands with them, as we have for 22 years, in seeing their rights
restored.
Compare with Kerry speech to access the level of degeneration of US elite.
Ukraine: The Price of Internal Division by Jack Matlock
Posted on
March 1, 2014 by Jack Matlock
With all of the reports coming out of Ukraine, Moscow, Washington, and European capitals, the
mutual accusations, the knee-jerk speculation, and-not least-the hysterical language of some observers,
bordering on the apocalyptic, it is difficult to keep in mind the long-term implications of what
is happening. Nevertheless, I believe that nobody can understand the likely outcomes of what is
happening unless they bear in mind the historical, geographic, political and psychological factors
at play in these dramatic events. The view of most of the media, whether Russian or Western, seems
to be that one side or the other is going to "win" or "lose" Ukraine.
I believe that is fundamentally mistaken. If I were Ukrainian I would echo the immortal words
of the late Walt Kelly's Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us." The fact is, Ukraine is a state
but not yet a nation. In the 22-plus years of its independence, it has not yet found a leader who
can unite its citizens in a shared concept of Ukrainian identity. Yes, Russia has interfered, but
it is not Russian interference that has created Ukrainian disunity but rather the haphazard way
the country was assembled from parts that were not always mutually compatible. To the flaw at the
inception of an independent Ukraine, one must add the baleful effects of the Soviet Communist heritage
both Russia and Ukraine have inherited.
A second mistake people make is to assume that when a given government adopts a particular policy
that policy is in the true interest of that country. In fact, as often as not, policies made in
the heat of emotion, by leaders who feel personally challenged by opponents, are more likely to
be counterproductive than supportive of a country's true interest. Political leaders are not computers
weighing costs and benefits or risks and rewards in objective fashion. They are human beings endowed
with their full share of human weaknesses, including especially vanity, pride and the felt necessity
of maintaining appearances, whatever the reality.
Some Basics
The current territory of the Ukrainian state was assembled, not by Ukrainians themselves
but by outsiders, and took its present form following the end of World War II. To think
of it as a traditional or primordial whole is absurd. This applies a fortiori to the two most
recent additions to Ukraine-that of some eastern portions of interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia,
annexed by Stalin at the end of the war, and the largely Russian-speaking Crimea, which was
transferred from the RSFSR well after the war, when Nikita Khrushchev controlled the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union. Since all constituent parts of the USSR were ruled from Moscow, it
seemed at the time a paper transfer of no practical significance. (Even then, the city of Sevastopol,
the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, was subordinated directly to Moscow, not Kiev.) Up
to then, the Crimea had been considered an integral part of Russia since Catherine "the Great"
conquered it in the 18th century.
The lumping together of people with strikingly different historical experience and comfortable
in different (though closely related) languages, underlies the current divisions. That division,
however, is not clear-cut as it was, for example, between the Czech lands and Slovakia, which
made a civilized divorce practical. If one takes Galicia and adjoining provinces in the west
on the one hand and the Donbas and Crimea in the east and south on the other as exemplars of
the extremes, the areas in between are mixed, proportions gradually shifting from one tradition
to the other. There is no clear dividing line, and Kyiv/Kiev would be claimed by both.
Because of its history, geographical location, and both natural and constructed economic
ties, there is no way Ukraine will ever be a prosperous, healthy, or united country unless it
has a friendly (or, at the very least, non-antagonistic) relationship with Russia.
Russia, as any other country would be, is extremely sensitive about foreign military
activity adjacent to its borders. It has signaled repeatedly that it will stop at nothing
to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine. (In fact, most Ukrainians do not want it.) Nevertheless,
Ukrainian membership in NATO was an avowed objective of the Bush-Cheney administration and one
that has not been categorically excluded by the Obama Administration.
A wise Russian leadership (something one can no more assume that one can a wise U.S.
or European leadership) could tolerate a Ukraine that modernizes its political and economic
systems in cooperation with the European Union so long as (1) this is not seen as having
an anti-Russian basis; (2) Russian-speaking citizens are granted social, cultural and linquistic
equality with Ukrainians, and (3) most important of all, that the gradual economic integration
with Europe will not lead to Ukraine becoming a member of NATO.
So far, Ukrainian nationalists in the west have been willing to concede none of these
conditions, and the United States has, by its policies, either encouraged or condoned attitudes
and policies that have made them anathema to Moscow. This may be grossly unfair, but it
is a fact.
So where does this leave us? Some random thoughts:
It has been a mistake for all the parties, those in Ukraine and those outside, to
treat this crisis as a contest for control of Ukraine.
Obama's "warning" to Putin was ill-advised. Whatever slim hope that Moscow might
avoid overt military intervention in Ukraine disappeared when Obama in effect threw down
a gauntlet and challenged him. This was not just a mistake of political judgment-it was
a failure to understand human psychology-unless, of course, he actually wanted a Russian
intervention, which is hard for me to believe.
At this moment it is not clear, at least to me, what the ultimate Russian intent
is. I do not believe it is in Russia's interest to split Ukraine, though they may want
to detach the Crimea from it-and if they did, they would probably have the support of the
majority of Crimean residents. But they may simply wish to bolster the hand of their friends
in Eastern Ukraine in negotiations over the new power structure. At the very least, they
are signaling that they will not be deterred by the United States from doing what they consider
necessary to secure their interests in the neighborhood.
Ukraine is already shattered de facto, with different groups in command of the various
provinces. If there is any hope of putting it together again, there must be cooperation
of all parties in forming a coalition at least minimally acceptable to Russia and the Russian-speaking
Ukrainian citizens in the East and South. A federation with governors elected locally and
not appointed by a winner-take-all president or prime minister would be essential. Real
autonomy for Crimea will also be required.
Many important questions remain. One relates to the principle of "territorial integrity."
Yes, that is important, but it is not the only principle to consider. Russians would
argue, with some substance in the argument, that the U.S. is interested in territorial
integrity only when its interests are served. American governments have a record of
ignoring it when convenient, as when it and its NATO allies violated Serbian territorial
integrity by creating and then recognizing an independent Kosovo. Also, by supporting the
separation of South Sudan from Sudan, Eritrea from Ethiopia, and East Timor from Indonesia.
So far as violating sovereignty is concerned, Russia would point out that the U.S. invaded Panama
to arrest Noriega, invaded Grenada to prevent American citizens from being taken hostage (even though
they had not been taken hostage), invaded Iraq on spurious grounds that Saddam Hussein possessed
weapons of mass destruction, targets people in other countries with drones, etc., etc. In other
words, for the U.S. to preach about respect for sovereignty and preservation of territorial integrity
to a Russian president can seem a claim to special rights not allowed others. JackMatlock.com http://en.gloria.tv/?media=577204
The escalating crisis in Ukraine has set off reckless missile-rattling and muscle-flexing in
this country. My Post colleague Charles Krauthammer
sees this as a Cold War faceoff, calling for the United States to ante up $15 billion for Ukraine
and send a flotilla to the Black Sea. A front-page headline in The Post on Sunday said that
the crisis "tests Obama's focus on diplomacy over force," quoting Andrew C. Kuchins of the Center
for Strategic and International Studies decrying President Obama for "taking the stick option off
the table."
Right-wing and Republican posturing fills the airwaves.
Let's all take a deep breath before we commit our limited treasure and prestige to an unknown
and still unsettled leadership in a country on Russia's border, harbor to its fleet, that has
had a fragile independent existence for barely 20 years.
That said, Russia's dispatch of military forces to Crimea is a clear violation of international
law, as the Obama administration has stated. Putin justifies the invasion as necessary to protect
Russian citizens and allies, but this is an unacceptable fig leaf. The administration is right
to condemn it, as should the world community, although much of the world will grimace at the
irony of Kerry denouncing the invasion of a sovereign country as unacceptable in the 21st century
when the United States is only now winding down its "war of choice" in Iraq.
Some history would also serve us well if we're to understand fast-moving developments. The
United States is reaping the bitter fruit of a deeply flawed post-Cold War settlement that looks
more like Versailles than it does Bretton Woods, and that settlement was made even worse by
the United States' violation of the settlement by deciding to enlarge NATO and pursue other
triumphalist policies aimed at isolating Russia and ignoring Russian interests.
Fugitive Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was an unpopular, corrupt, compromised
but democratically elected leader of Ukraine. He was leading the country towards membership
in the European Union when, confronted by Russia's substantial financial blandishments, he reversed
course. That led to street demonstrations, spurred in part by the European Union and the United
States, and eventually to the rebellion that sent him packing.
The nature of the new government is far from clear. Ukraine itself is deeply divided. As
David C. Speedie, director of U.S. Global Engagement at the Carnegie Council of Ethics in International
Affairs, says,
"In simple terms, half of the people in Ukraine look to Russia, and the other half look to the
West."The new leaders in Kiev include ultra-nationalists who, in one of their first
acts, voted to repeal the 2012 law allowing Russian and other minority languages to be used
locally. (Not surprisingly, these new leaders are very unpopular in semi-autonomous Crimea,
which is populated largely by Russian-speaking people, and in many parts of eastern and southern
Ukraine.) It is also worth noting that a key ally of the new government, holding central
leadership positions in the parliament and law enforcement, is
the Svoboda party, which the European Parliament has condemned for its
"racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views."
Yanukovych's decision to postpone consideration of joining the European Union was not irrational.
The E.U. Association Agreement
would have forced
Ukraine to decide between Russia and the European Union, flatly rejecting Putin's offer
of a tripartite arrangement that would allow Ukraine to sustain its ties with Russia. In December,
Putin then offered to rescue the bankrupt Ukraine. Ukraine's economy depends heavily on Russia,
which
supplies and subsidizes much of its energy and is
its largest trading partner.
The European Union and the United States, for all the bluster, are not about to replace that
with Western aid and trade.
Americans across the political spectrum will not be eager to send billions of dollars to
Kiev while we are starving investment in education, Head Start and other vital programs here
at home. The European Union, dominated by Germany, has inflicted a brutal austerity on members
such as Greece, Spain and Portugal. And there is good evidence to assume that the union's approach
to Ukraine would be similar. The country might get promises of aid in the crisis, but any sober
government would be worried about how much support would be sustained over the next years.
In a Western media culture that largely disdains context or history, Putin has been made
the villain in the piece. But Russia has legitimate security concerns in its near-neighbor.
The Russian fear is far less about economic relations with the European Union (Russia is a major
source of energy for the Europeans) than about the further extension of NATO to its borders.
A hostile Ukraine might displace Russian bases in the Black Sea, harbor the U.S. fleet and provide
a home to NATO bases. This isn't an irrational fear. Despite U.S. promises by George H.W. Bush
not to extend NATO when Germany was united, the reality is that nine former Warsaw Pact nations
and three former Soviet republics have been incorporated into NATO,
including
a military outpost in Georgia. And the E.U. agreement, advertised as offering access to
free trade, in fact included military clauses that
called for integrating Ukraine into the E.U. defense structure, including cooperation on
"civilian and military crisis management operations" and "relevant exercises" concerning them.
No one should be surprised that Putin reacted negatively to that prospect. No U.S. administration
would put up with Putin cutting a deal with Mexico to join a military alliance with Russia.
We desperately need a strong dose of realism and common sense. There is no "stick" in relation
to Ukraine. Americans have no desire and no reason to go to war with Russia over what happens
in Crimea. The European Union and the United States are not going to supplant Russia's economic
influence in Ukraine. The United States is not going to provide the aid, the trade or the subsidized
energy - and the E.U. austerity regime doesn't offer an expansive or growing region to join.
An unpopular and corrupt leader has been unseated in Kiev, but the new Ukrainian government
is neither elected nor settled. Before this new, fragile and bitterly divided country breaks
apart, the international community should be pushing hard for elections and compromise.
Neoconservatives, politicians and frustrated Cold Warriors filling armchairs in the outdated
"strategic" think tanks that litter Washington will continue to howl at the moon. But U.S. policy
should be run by the sober. The president would be well advised to investigate whether the European
Union, Russia and the United States can join together to preserve Ukraine's territorial unity;
to support new and free elections; and to agree to allow Ukraine to be part of both the European
Union and Russian customs union, while reaffirming the pledge that NATO will not extend itself
into Ukraine. It is time to reduce tensions and create possibility, not flex rhetorical muscles
and fan the flames of folly.
Russia will not go to war with the people of Ukraine, but will use its troops to protect citizens,
if radicals with clout in Kiev now try to use violence against Ukrainian civilians, particularly
ethnic Russians, Putin told the
Putin, who was given a mandate by the Russian senate to use military force to protect civilians
in Ukraine, said there is no need for such an action yet.
Putin cited the actions of radical activists in Ukraine, including the chaining of a governor
to a stage as public humiliation and the killing of a technician during an opposition siege of the
Party of Regions HQ, as justification for Russia to be concerned for the lives and well-being of
people in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Incidents like those are why Russia reserves the option of troop deployment on the table.
"If we see this lawlessness starting in eastern regions, if the people ask us for help –
in addition to a plea from a legitimate president, which we already have – then we reserve the right
to use all the means we possess to protect those citizens. And we consider it quite legitimate,"
he said.
Russia is not planning to go to war with the Ukrainian people, Putin stressed, when a journalist
asked if he was afraid of war. But Russian troops would prevent any attempts to target Ukrainian
civilians, should they be deployed.
"We are not going to a war against the Ukrainian people," he said. "I want you to
understand it unambiguously. If we do take a decision, it would only be to protect Ukrainian citizens.
Let anybody in the military dare, and they'd be shooting their own people, who would stand up in
front of us. Shoot at women and children. I'd like to see anyone try and order such a thing in Ukraine."
Putin dismissed the notion that the uniformed armed people without insignia who are currently
present in Crimea are Russian soldiers. He said they are members of the Crimean self-defense forces
and that they are no better equipped and trained than some radical fighters who took part in the
ousting of Yanukovich.
He assured that the surprise military drills in Russia's west which ended on Tuesday had nothing
to do with the Ukrainian situation.
Sanction threats are counterproductive
Asked about criticism of Russia over its stance on Ukraine, Putin dismissed the accusations that
Russia is acting illegitimately. He stated that even if Russia does use force in Ukraine, it would
not violate international law.
At the same time he accused the United States and its allies of having no regard to legitimacy
when they use military force in pursuit of their own national interests.
"When I ask them 'Do you believe you do everything legitimately,' they say 'Yes.' And I have
to remind them about the US actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, where they acted either without
any UN Security Council mandate or through perverting a mandate, as was the case in Libya,"
Putin said.
"Our partners, especially in the United States, always clearly formulate for themselves their
geopolitical and national interests, pursue them relentlessly and then drag the rest of the world
in, using the principle 'You are either with us or against us.' And harass those who refuse to be
dragged in," he added.
As for the sanctions Russia faces over Ukraine, Putin said those threatening them should think
of the consequences to themselves if they follow that path. In an interconnected world a country
may hurt another country if it wishes, but it would be damaged too.
Threats are counterproductive in this situation, Putin warned. He added that if G8 members choose
not to go to Sochi for a planned G8 summit, that would be up to them.
Putin sympathies with Maidan protesters, rejects coup
Putin stressed that the Ukrainian people had a legitimate reason to protest against Yanukovich's
power, considering the overwhelming corruption and other faults of his presidency.
But he objected to the illegitimate way his ouster took place, because it undermined the political
stability in the country.
"I strictly object to this form [of transition of power] in Ukraine, and anywhere in the
post-Soviet space. This does not help nurturing a culture of law. If someone is allowed to act this
way, then everyone is allowed to. And this means chaos. That's the worst thing that can happen to
a country with an unstable economy and an unestablished political system," Putin explained.
He said that while he personally was not fond of months-long streets protests as a means to pressure
the government, he sympathized with the Maidan demonstration members, who were genuinely outraged
with the situation in Ukraine.
But at the same time he warned that what happens in Ukraine now may be a replacement of one group
of crooks with another, citing the appointments of certain wealthy businessmen with questionable
reputations.
Asked about the presence of snipers during the violent confrontation in Kiev last month, Putin
said he was not aware of any order from the Yanukovich government to use firearms against the protesters.
He alleged that the shooters could have been provocateurs from one of the opposition forces. He
added that what he was sure of is the fact that police officers were shot at with lethal arms during
the confrontation.
Yanukovich is certainly powerless in Ukraine, but legally speaking he is the legitimate president
of the country, Putin said. The way the new authorities in Kiev replaced him did not enhance their
credibility.
Asked if he felt for Yanukovich, Putin said "Oh, no. I have absolutely different feelings."
But he declined to publicly explain what those were. He also refrained from commenting on what mistakes
he saw in Yanukovich's actions, explaining that it would not be proper for him to do so.
At the same time Putin does not see any political future for Yanukovich, which he told the ousted
Ukrainian president himself. He added that Russia allowed him to come to its territory for humanitarian
reasons, because if he remained in Ukraine he could have been summarily executed.
Equal participation in Ukraine's future for all Ukrainians
The Russian government is currently engaging with the self-proclaimed govern of Ukraine with
the goal of preserving economic ties between the two countries. However, any normal relations would
only be possible after Ukraine has fully legitimate branches of government, Putin said. He considers
that he has no counterpart in Kiev now, so he personally has no partner to communicate with.
The Russian president stressed that Russia wants to see equal participation of all citizens of
Ukraine in defining the future of the country. The resistance to the authorities in Kiev, which
is evident currently in the eastern and southern Ukraine, shows clearly that currently Kiev does
not have a nationwide mandate to govern the country.
"Frankly, they should adopt a new constitution through a referendum so that all citizens
of Ukraine feel engagement in that process, have an input on the formation of the new principles
of how their nation should function," Putin suggested. "That's certainly not for us, but
for the Ukrainians and the Ukrainian authorities to decide this way or another. I believe after
legitimate government is formed, after a new president elected, after a new parliament is elected,
they should return to this."
Russia will be watching the planned presidential election in Ukraine, Putin said. If it is conducted
in an atmosphere of terror, Russia will consider it unfair and will not recognize its results, he
warned.
Putin commented on the issue of Ukraine's territorial integrity, which Russia committed to preserve.
He said that Western powers reject Russia's assessment of the events in Ukraine as a coup and insist
on calling it a revolution.
Some Russian experts, Putin warned that if Ukraine had undergone a revolution, then the nation
that came out of it is not the same that it was before, similarly to how Russia transformed after
the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
If this is the case, Moscow may consider itself no longer bound by any treaties it has with Ukraine,
Putin warned.
Let's be real. It's one thing to say that Russia's takeover of the Crimean Peninsula "cannot
be allowed to stand," as many foreign policy sages have proclaimed. It's quite another to do
something about it.
Is it just me, or does the rhetoric about the crisis in Ukraine sound as if all of Washington
is suffering from amnesia? We're supposed to be shocked - shocked! - that a great military power
would cook up a pretext to invade a smaller, weaker nation? I'm sorry, but has everyone forgotten
the unfortunate events in Iraq a few years ago?
My sentiments, to be clear, are with the legitimate Ukrainian government, not with the neo-imperialist
regime in Russia. But the United States, frankly, has limited standing to insist on absolute
respect for the territorial integrity of sovereign states.
Before Iraq there was Afghanistan, there was the Persian Gulf War, there was Panama, there
was Grenada. And even as we condemn Moscow for its outrageous aggression, we reserve the right
to fire deadly missiles into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and who knows where else.
None of this gives Russian President Vladimir Putin the right to
pluck Crimea from the rest of Ukraine and effectively reincorporate the historic peninsula
into the Russian empire. But it's hard to base U.S. objections on principle - even if Putin's
claim that Russian nationals in Crimea were being threatened turn out to be
as hollow as the Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The Obama administration has been clear in its condemnation of Putin's operation. Critics
who blame the Russian action on "weak" or "feckless" U.S. foreign policy are being either cynical
or clueless.
It is meaningless to rattle sabers if the whole world knows you have no intention of using
them. There is no credible military threat by the United States that could conceivably force
Putin to surrender Crimea if he doesn't want to. Russia is much diminished from the Soviet era
but remains a superpower whose nuclear arsenal poses an existential threat to any adversary.
There are only a few nations that cannot be coerced by, say, the sudden appearance on the horizon
of a U.S. aircraft carrier group. Russia is one of them.
If the goal is to persuade Russia to give back Crimea - which may or may not be possible
- the first necessary step is to try to understand why Putin grabbed it in the first place.
When Ukraine emerged as a sovereign state from the breakup of the Soviet Union, it was agreed
that the Russian navy would retain its bases on the Crimean Peninsula. After Viktor Yanukovych,
Ukraine's pro-Russian president,
was deposed by a "people power" revolution last month, it was perhaps inevitable that Putin
would believe the status of those bases was in question, if not under threat.
The new government in Kiev could offer formal reassurances about the naval base in Sevastopol.
More broadly, however, Putin may have decided that allowing Ukraine to escape Moscow's orbit
was too much to swallow. Seizing Crimea does more than secure a warm-water port for Russian
ships. It implies the threat of further territorial incursions - unless the new government in
Kiev becomes more accommodating to its powerful neighbor.
This is not fair to Ukraine. But I don't believe it helps the Ukrainians to pretend that
there is a way to make Putin surrender Crimea if he wants to keep it.
The question is whether there is any way to tip the balance of Putin's cost-benefit analysis.
The Russian leader has nothing to fear from the U.N. Security Council, since Russia can veto
any proposed action. Kicking Russia out of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations
would be a blow to Moscow's prestige but probably would not cause Putin to lose much sleep.
Economic sanctions are more easily threatened than applied. The European Union
depends on Russia for much of its natural gas - a fact that gives Putin considerable leverage.
In a broader sense, there is zero enthusiasm in Europe for a reprise of the Cold War. Putin
knows this.
If Putin really has lost touch with reality, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel
reportedly speculated in a conversation with President Obama, then all bets are off. But
if Putin is being smart, he will offer a solution: Russia gets sole or joint possession of Crimea.
Ukraine and the other former Soviet republics remember that Moscow is watching, and we all settle
down.
Sadly for Ukraine, but realistically, that may be a deal the world decides to accept.
[Mar 03, 2014] Sustaining Ukraine's Breakthrough
George Soros: "Today, Ukraine needs a modern-day equivalent of the Marshall Plan,
by which the United States helped to reconstruct Europe after World War II. Germany ought to play the
same role today as the US did then."
Mar 02, 2014 | George Soros
Following a crescendo of terrifying violence, the Ukrainian uprising has had a surprisingly positive
outcome. Contrary to all rational expectations, a group of citizens armed with not much more than
sticks and shields made of cardboard boxes and metal garbage-can lids overwhelmed a police force
firing live ammunition. There were many casualties, but the citizens prevailed. This was one of
those historic moments that leave a lasting imprint on a society's collective memory.
How could such a thing happen? Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics
offers a fitting metaphor. According to Heisenberg, subatomic phenomena can manifest themselves
as particles or waves; similarly, human beings may alternate between behaving as individual particles
or as components of a larger wave. In other words, the unpredictability of historical events like
those in Ukraine has to do with an element of uncertainty in human identity.
People's identity is made up of individual elements and elements of larger units to which they
belong, and peoples' impact on reality depends on which elements dominate their behavior. When civilians
launched a suicidal attack on an armed force in Kyiv on February 20, their sense of representing
"the nation" far outweighed their concern with their individual mortality. The result was to swing
a deeply divided society from the verge of civil war to an unprecedented sense of unity.
Whether that unity endures will depend on how Europe responds. Ukrainians have demonstrated their
allegiance to a European Union that is itself hopelessly divided, with the euro crisis pitting creditor
and debtor countries against one another. That is why the EU was hopelessly outmaneuvered by Russia
in the negotiations with Ukraine over an Association Agreement.
True to form, the EU under German leadership offered far too little and demanded far too much
from Ukraine. Now, after the Ukrainian people's commitment to closer ties with Europe fueled a successful
popular insurrection, the EU, along with the International Monetary Fund, is putting together a
multibillion-dollar rescue package to save the country from financial collapse. But that will not
be sufficient to sustain the national unity that Ukraine will need in the coming years.
I established the Renaissance Foundation in Ukraine in 1990 – before the country achieved independence.
The foundation did not participate in the recent uprising, but it did serve as a defender of those
targeted by official repression. The foundation is now ready to support Ukrainians' strongly felt
desire to establish resilient democratic institutions (above all, an independent and professional
judiciary). But Ukraine will need outside assistance that only the EU can provide: management expertise
and access to markets.
In the remarkable transformation of Central Europe's economies in the 1990's, management expertise
and market access resulted from massive investments by German and other EU-based companies, which
integrated local producers into their global value chains. Ukraine, with its high-quality human
capital and diversified economy, is a potentially attractive investment destination. But realizing
this potential requires improving the business climate across the economy as a whole and within
individual sectors – particularly by addressing the endemic corruption and weak rule of law that
are deterring foreign and domestic investors alike.
In addition to encouraging foreign direct investment, the EU could provide support to train local
companies' managers and help them develop their business strategies, with service providers remunerated
by equity stakes or profit-sharing. An effective way to roll out such support to a large number
of companies would be to combine it with credit lines provided by commercial banks. To encourage
participation, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) could invest in companies
alongside foreign and local investors, as it did in Central Europe.
Ukraine would thus open its domestic market to goods manufactured or assembled by European companies'
wholly- or partly-owned subsidiaries, while the EU would increase market access for Ukrainian companies
and help them integrate into global markets.
I hope and trust that Europe under German leadership will rise to the occasion. I have been arguing
for several years that Germany should accept the responsibilities and liabilities of its dominant
position in Europe. Today, Ukraine needs a modern-day equivalent of the Marshall Plan, by which
the United States helped to reconstruct Europe after World War II. Germany ought to play the same
role today as the US did then.
I must, however, end with a word of caution. The Marshall Plan did not include the Soviet bloc,
thereby reinforcing the Cold War division of Europe. A replay of the Cold War would cause immense
damage to both Russia and Europe, and most of all to Ukraine, which is situated between them. Ukraine
depends on Russian gas, and it needs access to European markets for its products; it must have good
relations with both sides.
Here, too, Germany should take the lead. Chancellor Angela Merkel must reach out to President
Vladimir Putin to ensure that Russia is a partner, not an opponent, in the Ukrainian renaissance.
Voice of State Department (aka NYT) is pretty predictable. As John Kerry aptly noted: "You just
don't in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped
up pretext..." Actually it was unclear whether he was speaking about Iraq or Ukraine...
Mar 2, 2014 | NYT
There was a lot to criticize about the way President Viktor Yanukovych's government was thrown
out in Ukraine and hurriedly replaced with an interim team. The victorious opposition should have
known how critical it was to reassure all groups in that country that their rights would be respected
in any new order; instead, one of the Parliament's first actions was to abolish a law that ensured
a legal status for Russian and other minority languages, thus raising fears among Russian speakers
that Ukrainian nationalists were taking over.
Yet none of this justifies Vladimir Putin's cynical and outrageous exploitation of the Ukrainian
crisis to seize control of Crimea, nor any other power grab he may be hatching. The United States
and the European Union have few effective levers short of military force, which is not an option,
to compel President Putin of Russia to back down, but they must make clear to him that he has stepped
far outside the bounds of civilized behavior, and that this carries a steep price in international
standing and in economic relations. Whatever else they do, the Western powers must provide prompt
and substantial assistance to the Kiev government, whose treasury was left bare by Mr. Yanukovych.
Mr. Putin's claim of an immediate threat to Ukrainian Russians is empty. There were some scuffles
in the industrial cities where Russians predominate, but nowhere were Russian speakers or Russian
interests seriously threatened - certainly not in Crimea, where Russians are the majority and the
Russian Federation has military bases. If anything, Ukrainians there were in danger. And if the
Parliament in Kiev was for the moment on a nationalist high, new presidential elections are not
far off, and there are plenty of peaceful ways for Mr. Putin to make Russia's legitimate concerns
and national interests clear to the interim rulers.
Mr. Yanukovych fled knowing full well that he would not last long given the public fury over
the killings in Kiev's Independence Square and the shock that would follow once the full scope of
his thievery became public. If he thought he had a shred of credibility left, he should have stayed
and faced the music. Mr. Putin knows this; his defense of the ousted government is a pretext to
tighten Russian control over Crimea, buttress his claims to special rights over what he calls Russia's
"near abroad," and to humiliate Ukraine, the way he humiliated Georgia in 2008, for looking wistfully
westward.
But Mr. Putin is also sensitive to perceived humiliation. President Obama did well in his phone
call with Mr. Putin to combine conciliatory references to Russia's valid interests in Ukraine and
the need for dialogue with the threat that continued aggression will result in "greater political
and economic isolation." Many Russians are keenly aware of the wages of international scorn. A decision
by Mr. Obama and European leaders to move the Group of 8 meeting, scheduled to be held in Sochi
in June, would be felt, especially given the glow that attached to the city after the Olympic Games.
Mr. Obama, NATO and the European Union should seriously consider what else they can do if Mr.
Putin escalates his intervention in Ukraine. Secretary of State John Kerry mentioned excluding Russia
from the G-8, asset freezes or travel bans as some of the measures that could be taken.
There is no telling what Mr. Putin's plans are, but, alas, he has many options. He could demand
more autonomy for Crimea, or annex it outright, or let the Crimean Russians declare "independence,"
the way the breakaway Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia did. He could deepen Ukraine's
economic woes by raising prices for gas and tightening border controls. With each of these actions,
Mr. Putin must know that his government will become more of a pariah, and his country less welcome
in the councils of the world.
Initially, the student who recorded it on a cell phone set up the camera to show basically
just the classroom ceiling.
As the clip begins, Glicker can be heard calmly discussing people who "worked for the ISI,
which is Pakistan's intelligence service."
It becomes clear that the substitute teacher is discussing the September 11 terrorist attacks.
"The ISI is funded indirectly by the CIA so, whether they knew it or not, they were funding
the terrorists," he explains. Then: "One of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, he was not a Muslim
extremist because, (a) He'd been living here for years. He had an American girlfriend. He was
supposedly addicted to cocaine."
Glicker argues that Atta was "not a Muslim extremist" because "if you're a Muslim fundamentalist,
you know, you would stick to, you know, the laws of Islam."
Next, a confused student asks why the September 11 terrorists killed themselves?
"That's where it gets weird," the physics sub cheerfully responds. "That's where I think
it's somewhere along the lines of something like MKUltra where they're, like, brainwashing these
people."
The teacher does not specify who "they" is. However, he immediately goes on to claim that
the CIA was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre, when 909 people drank poison on the orders
of cult leader Jim Jones. He suggests that the incident was "probably just an offshoot of the
MKUltra program."
At about the 1:50 mark, the videographer tilts the camera slightly and shows Glicker writing
on a whiteboard what the sub believes are "the most easy-to-prove" conspiracy theories.
The substitute teacher lists MKUltra and "Operation Gladio," which he describes by saying:
"most world governments, pretty much, they want to start a war so they would use a false-flag
terrorist attack."
At roughly that point, as Glicker turns his back to the class, students can clearly be heard
snickering in disbelief about the bizarre arguments they are witnessing.
Glicker then explains how Franklin Roosevelt and other top U.S. officials let Pearl Harbor
happen as an excuse to enter World War II.
As he wraps Iran-Contra Affair - and more cocaine - into his vast conspiracy theory, the
videographer becomes bold enough to film Glicker directly. The teacher is shown with black hair
and a beard. He is wearing a long necklace.
The last 15 seconds or so is Glicker's (relatively reasonable) portrayal of the ATF gunwalking
scandal-often called in popular parlance "Operation Fast and Furious."
Two students in the class later spoke about what they saw.
"It is inappropriate for him to indoctrinate students without facts or logical discussion,
especially in a physics class," said the student who surreptitiously recorded the rant.
"Personally I feel that all opinions and perspectives should be valued, and yet there is
an appropriate time and place for them," the videographer added. "This was certainly not one
of them."
Another student who was also in the classroom to witness the screed observed that the conspiracy-crazed
sub has continued as a substitute teacher at the high school
"The sub continues to fully participate in Grosse Pointe North," the student said. "For example
he not only taught soon after the incident but he also appeared in the student newspaper."
The reference is to a puff piece in Grosse Pointe North's student newspaper dated Jan. 31,
2013 which speaks flatteringly about four recurrent substitute teachers at the school.
"Substitute teacher Jason Glicker is rarely seen without one of his iconic necklaces on,"
the article explains. "Glicker's jewelry choice stemmed from a hobby of his, which is going
to music festivals."
In the part where Glicker describes himself, he notes that he is an avid fan of the alternative
metal band Tool. He also gives a window into his unique teaching style.
"I like it when kids are engaged and they're actually interested if I have something to say,
they seem like they want to hear it. I will definitely tell them," Glicker tells the student
newspaper.
Now that same-sex marriage is all but a fait accompli in the US - come on, do you really
think that Justice Anthony Kennedy is going to miss his chance to be the swing vote on constitutionalizing
SSM? - it is time to move on to the next frontier: legalizing polygamy. Many SSM proponents have
long been indignant that anybody would suggest that legalizing SSM would lead to legalizing polygamy.
They've depended on indignation to quiet fears of the slippery slope, on the grounds that if people
started thinking through the logic of all this, they might not be so quick to support gay marriage.
Well, now that they've just about won this thing - and I don't know anyone on my side of the
SSM debate who, at this point, holds out serious hope that gay marriage is not going to be the law
of the land soon - it is becoming politically and culturally safer to argue for polygamy. As with
gay marriage 10 to 15 years ago, the groundwork for accepting polygamy will be laid by stories and
essays in the media seeking to challenge the taboo.
While the Supreme Court and the rest of us are all focused on the human right of marriage
equality, let's not forget that the fight doesn't end with same-sex marriage. We need to legalize
polygamy, too. Legalized polygamy in the United States is the constitutional, feminist, and
sex-positive choice. More importantly, it would actually help protect, empower, and strengthen
women, children, and families.
For decades, the prevailing logic has been that polygamy hurts women and children. That makes
sense, since in contemporary American practice that is often the case. In many Fundamentalist
Latter-day Saints polygamous communities, for example,women
and underage girls are forced into polygamous unions against their will. Some boys, who
represent the surplus of males, are brutally
thrown
out of their homes and driven into homelessness and poverty at very young ages. All of these
stories are tragic, and the criminals involved should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of
the law. (That goes without saying, I hope.)
But legalizing consensual adult polygamy wouldn't legalize rape or child abuse. In fact,
it would make those crimes easier to combat.
Here's the crux of it:
Finally, prohibiting polygamy on "feminist" grounds-that these marriages are inherently degrading
to the women involved-is misguided. The case for polygamy is, in fact, a feminist one and shows
women the respect we deserve. Here's the thing: As women, we really can make our own choices.
We just might choose things people don't like. If a woman wants to marry a man, that's great.
If she wants to marry another woman, that's great too. If she wants to marry a hipster, well-I
suppose that's the price of freedom.
And if she wants to marry a man with three other wives, that's her damn choice.
Choice! The Holy of Holies! This is how polygamy is going to become legitimized among the coming
generations of Americans, who are terrified of being judgmental.
I remember from a very young age realizing that I was bisexual, and that I tended to be attracted
to many different people at the same time. I really think that polyamory for me is an orientation,
like being heterosexual or homosexual. Humans in general have a hard time with monogamy. That's
always been the case. We used to have a sense that it was acceptable for husbands to go out
and have other lovers, but with the shift to egalitarianism, rather than to say that woman could
do that too, we've gone in the other direction.
What are the consequences of that, do you think?
I think it's interesting to see the way that when people get into a monogamous couple dynamic,
they often have to neuter their sexual desires. As the initial intensity of a relationship shifts
to feelings of long-term love, you can end up in a sexless marriage, and I think that's a huge
contributor to infidelity and the breakup of a lot of families. We put so much emphasis on a
partner being everything-that this person completes you-and when that doesn't happen it creates
a lot of pressure. I don't think that open relationships are for everyone but it's something
that you should no longer feel ashamed to talk about at a time when so many marriages are failing.
What do your other lovers give you that your primary partner can't?
Well, for example, with my female partners, I feel a different kind of power dynamic. I feel
a protective impulse toward women I'm involved with. It's a different kind of love feeling.
My partner Ed is a wonderful feminist man, though sometimes I'd really like to be out on a date
with the kind of man who wants to open car doors for me and treat me like a princess. I don't
want that all the time, but I might want that once a month.
There's not a single question that remotely challenges anything Diana Adams, the lawyer, thinks,
believes, or is working towards. It's all so cuddly and warm and embracing. Get used to this kind
of thing in the media. We're going to be seeing a lot more of it in the years to come. This is how
you prepare the public to accept something radical that would have caused them to recoil in the
past. If I were pro-polyamory, I would be working the same angle.
Stage one is to tolerate it. Stage two is to legislate it. Stage three is to make opposition
to it intolerable. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The USA has highly qualified and dedicated foreign service staff. Which usually does it best to
achieve the goals that were assigned. Weak ambassador makes their work somewhat more complex but does
not radically change this situation. Knowledge of the language and culture does not make strong ambassador:
a counterexample is the recent ambassador to Russia
Mike McFaul
A century-old debate over whether presidents should reward political donors and allies by making
them ambassadors has flared again after a string of
embarrassing gaffes by President Obama's picks.
The nominee for ambassador to Norway, for example, prompted outrage in Oslo by characterizing
one of the nation's ruling parties as extremist. A soap- opera producer slated for Hungary appeared
to have little knowledge of the country she would be living in. A
prominent Obama bundler nominated to be ambassador to Argentina acknowledged that he had never
set foot in the country and isn't fluent in Spanish.
Presidents have been using ambassador appointments to reward political allies for a long
time.
Even former senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the new U.S. ambassador in Beijing, managed to raise
eyebrows during his confirmation hearing by acknowledging, "I'm
no real expert on China."
The stumbles have highlighted the perils of rewarding well-heeled donors and well-connected politicos
with plum overseas assignments and have provided political fodder for Republicans eager to attack
the White House. The cases also underscore how a president who once
infuriated donors by denying them perks has now come into line with his predecessors, doling
out prominent diplomatic jobs by the dozens to supporters.
"Being a donor to the president's campaign does not guarantee you a job in the administration,
but it does not prevent you from getting one," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters
this week.
For several decades,
presidents have generally followed a "70-30" rule when it comes to such appointments, nominating
career foreign service officers for roughly 70 percent of U.S. missions abroad and reserving the
rest for political allies.
Political appointees account for
37 percent of the ambassadorships
filled so far during Obama's tenure, according to the American Foreign Service Association. The
rate for his second term so far stands at 53 percent, the group said.
The numbers are at the high end for recent presidents, according to the group's data. Ronald
Reagan and Gerald Ford inserted political supporters in about 38 percent of their ambassador jobs;
at the other end of the scale, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter had about 27 percent. George W. Bush
and his father were at 30 percent and 31 percent, respectively.
... ... ...
The troubles began last month, when million-dollar bundler and Chartwell Hotels chief executive
George Tsunis testified at his confirmation hearing to be ambassador to Norway. Tsunis admitted
he had never been to the Scandinavian country and suggested, among other things, that the nation's
Progress Party was part of a discounted "fringe." It is actually part of Norway's center-right ruling
coalition.
Noah Bryson Mamet was asked during his confirmation hearing this month if he had ever been to
Argentina, where he would be ambassador. "I haven't had the opportunity yet to be there," said Mamet,
who raised more than $500,000 for Obama's reelection.
During the same hearing, Robert C. Barber, who raised more than $1.6 million for Obama in 2012
and has been nominated to serve as ambassador to Iceland, said he had never visited the Nordic nation.
Then there is Colleen Bell, the nominee for ambassador to Hungary and a producer of "The Bold
and the Beautiful" soap opera, who raised or contributed about $800,000 to Obama in the last election.
She stammered her way through testimony about U.S. strategic interests in the country, which is
the focus of growing international alarm over far-right lawmakers' attitude toward Jews and other
minorities.
... ... ...
David Wade, chief of staff for Secretary of State John F. Kerry, said in a statement that political
appointees ranging from Shirley Temple to former vice president Walter Mondale had won plaudits
as diplomats. White House officials note that several of Obama's first-term appointees, such as
television executive Charles Rivkin in France and technology lawyer John Victor Roos in Japan, got
high marks.
"It's a strength, not a stigma, that an ambassador spent decades running a corporation or serving
as a governor or senator," Wade said. "The question is the individual, not where they come from,
period."
In addition to donors, recent ambassadorships have been handed to former White House and campaign
aides, including
Patrick Gaspard in South Africa, Rufus Gifford in Denmark and Mark Childress in Tanzania. Obama
has also nominated former deputy White House counsel Cassandra Butts to serve as chief of mission
in the Bahamas.
As in past administrations, some of the non-diplomats have run into trouble. During Obama's first
term, political appointees in Malta,
Luxembourg,
Kenya and the Bahamas all resigned after inspectors general exposed management problems.
"I'm amazed at how the State Department let those people go up so unprepared," said Tom Korologos,
an adviser at law firm DLA Piper who served as the U.S. ambassador to Belgium under George W.
Bush. "When I went up for confirmation as ambassador to Belgium, I knew more about Belgium than
the Belgians did."
All nominees go through what is informally referred to as "ambassador school," where they
learn about the country for which they've been selected and sit with a desk officer at the State
Department to learn about ongoing developments.
There is no specific requirement that ambassadorial nominees, whether career or political, have
visited the country in question. The most recent U.S. ambassador to Argentina, political appointee
Vilma Socorro Martinez, had never been there before taking the top spot. But nominees are often
fluent in the country's language or have some connection to the region.
... ... ...
Pennsylvania State University international affairs professor Dennis Jett said U.S. diplomatic
posts used to be entirely a matter of patronage. President James A. Garfield was assassinated in
1881 by Charles J. Guiteau, who was aggrieved over being denied a European posting. The Rogers Act
of 1924 established a professional foreign service but did not bar political nominees.
Jett, a former career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador in Peru and Mozambique in the 1990s,
said there is no way to eliminate political appointments even though "we're the only serious country
that does it this way." He favors an annual performance evaluation for career and political diplomats
to identify serious problems.
The American Foreign Service Association, which represents career officers, plans to issue proposed
guidelines Feb. 25 laying out basic qualifications for a chief of mission. No set of guidelines
currently exists, though the Foreign Service Act of 1980 says such posts "should normally be accorded
to career members of the Service, though circumstance will warrant appointments from time to time
of qualified individuals who are not career members of the Service." It also says that "contributions
to political campaigns should not be a factor in the appointment of an individual as a chief of
mission."
Association President Robert Silverman said the principles emphasize strong management skills
and the ability to articulate America's strategic interests.
"These guidelines will favor people who have worked their entire professional lives to get ready
for this type of job," Silverman said, though he added they would not bar "the talented outsider
from coming in."
"I see before me the gladiator lie. He leans upon his hand-his manly brow" -- Lord Byron
From comments: "These athletes make their sports look so easy. I think many people don't realize
just how incredibly dangerous what they're doing is." In 2012, Komissarova became the first Russian
woman to win a World Cup medal in ski cross when she finished second in the event at Grindelwald, Switzerland.
Komissarova's crash marks the first major athlete accident of the Sochi Games. In 2010, the Vancouver
Winter Olympics began in tragic circumstances when
Georgian competitor Nodar Kumaritashvili died in a crash during a training run on the day of the
opening ceremony.
Russian freestyle skier Maria Komissarova has undergone more than six hours of surgery after breaking
her back during a training run at the Winter Games in Sochi, the Russian Freestyle Federation spokesman
said Saturday.
Komissarova, 23, fractured a vertebra and dislocated her spine when she crashed
at the PSX Olympic skicross venue at Rosa Kuhtor, federation spokesman Mikhail Vezhba told the state-run
RIA Novosti news agency.
"The operation lasted 6½ hours, and it was successful," Vezhba said. "We'll know more about the
details later."
A source close to the situation earlier told the Russian news agency that Komissarova's condition
was too serious to transfer her to Moscow.
The skier was reportedly in "unbearable" pain when she was rushed to the hospital, the news agency
reported.
Si Yutu
I hope this young woman recovers swiftly.
CommonDog -> Si Yutu
Having had a similar injury, I am very familiar with the pain she would have had to endure.
This is not something I would wish on my enemies.
Justine Beiber? Well, that's another thing.
My thoughts are with you Maria.
C Max
I wonder if she'll lose function due to the damage to the spine. These athletes make their
sports look so easy. I think many people don't realize just how incredibly dangerous what they're
doing is. I wish her a speedy and full recovery!
[Feb 15, 2014] While a parade of both individual athletes and nations ambitions, Olympics is a dangerous
event for participants
Modern Olympics were re-established for altruistic reasons: basically to promote better relationships,
between countries and individuals, and to reinforce values of fair play via sport. During ancient Olympics
all wars between Greek states stopped. But now they push envelope too far and both winter and summer
Olympics sometimes lead to devastating injuries for competitors... And taking about
Evgeni Plushenko we need
to remember Elena Mukhina
Elena Vyacheslavovna Mukhina (Russian:
Елена Вячеславовна Мухина; first name sometimes rendered "Yelena", last name sometimes rendered
"Muchina"; June 1, 1960 – December 22, 2006), born in
Moscow,
Russian SFSR, was a
Soviet - ->
gymnast who won the All-Around
title at the 1978 World Championships at
Strasbourg, France.
Her career was on the rise and she was widely touted as the next great gymnastics star until a 1979
broken leg left her out of several competitions, and the recovery from that injury combined with
pressure to master a dangerous and difficult tumbling move (the
Thomas salto) caused her
to break her neck just two weeks before the opening of the
1980 Summer Olympics,
leaving her permanently quadriplegic
just one month past the age of 20.
Elena Mukhina lost both of her parents by the time she was five years old.[1]
She was raised by her grandmother, Anna Ivanova. At a young age she took an interest in gymnastics
and figure skating. When
an athletic scout visited her school, she eagerly volunteered to try out for gymnastics.[1]
She later joined the CSKA Moscow
("Central Red Army") sports club. In recognition of her accomplishments, Mukhina was inducted into
the CSKA Hall of Fame.[1]
Up until 1975, Elena Mukhina was an unremarkable gymnast. She was not a serious competitor and
Soviet coaches largely ignored her. Then, two separate incidents brought her skills into the forefront
for the Soviet Team: The Romanian dominance over the Soviet gymnastics machine at the 1976 Olympics
(for which the director for Soviet Women's Gymnastics,
Larisa Latynina, was
blamed; Latynina's response was, "it's not my fault that
Nadia Comăneci was born
in Romania"[2]),
and Mukhina's transition to working with men's coach Mihajl Klimenko, who transformed her into one
of the most show-stopping gymnasts of her time.
She burst onto the scene at the
1978 World Championships in
Strasbourg,
France. In one of the most stunning
all-around performances in history, she won the gold medal, beating out Olympic Champions
Nadia Comăneci and top-ranked
Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim,
among others. She also tied for the gold medal in the
floor exercise event
final, as well as winning the silver in
balance beam
and uneven bars.
She made history in this competition by unveiling her signature moves: a full-twisting layout
Korbut Flip on bars; a tucked
double back salto dismount on beam (a move that is still being used over three decades later); and
a full-twisting double back somersault on floor (still an E-rated move in the
Code of Points) dubbed
the "Muchina". Yet, in spite of these innovations, Mukhina maintained the classic Soviet style,
inspired by ballet movements and expressive lines. She quickly established herself as an athlete
to watch for at the
1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
A documentary film of the Soviet national team (1978) features Mukhina talking with her coach,
Mikhail Klimenko, and footage of her rigorous training regimen.[3]
Mukhina's floor exercise tumbling passes were considered revolutionary at the time because they
included a never-before seen combination salto (the "Muchina"), but in 1979, her coach wanted her
to become one of the few female gymnasts doing an element taken from men's gymnastics, the
Thomas salto (a 1 and 3/4
flip with 1½ twists ending in a forward roll, perfected by American gymnast
Kurt Thomas). Even
though she won the All Around title and floor exercises at the 1978 world championship with daring
bar routines, a revolutionary balance beam dismount, and a floor routine with its own signature
move, she was pressured to add this element to her floor exercises by her own coach and other higher-ranking
Soviet coaches. Mukhina soon realized the Thomas salto was extremely dangerous for a woman because
it depended on being able to get enough height and speed to make all the flips and mid-air twists
and still land in-bounds with enough room to do the forward roll, and it took near-perfect timing
to avoid either under-rotation (and landing on the chin) or over-rotation (and landing on the back
of the head). In the 1991 documentary More than a Game, Mukhina spoke of trying to convince
her coach that the Thomas salto was a dangerous element:
"...my injury could have been expected. It was an accident that could have been anticipated.
It was inevitable. I had said more than once that I would break my neck doing that element.
I had hurt myself badly several times but he (coach Mikhail Klimenko) just replied people like
me don't break their necks."[4]
In 1979, while training for the
1979 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, Mukhina suffered a broken leg, which kept her
out of the World Championships in
Fort Worth, Texas,
a competition in which the Soviet team suffered its first defeat at the hands of their archrivals
from Romania, with only
Nellie Kim and
Stella Zakharova able
to medal in apparatus and All Around disciplines. With less than a year until the 1980 Summer Olympics
to be held in Moscow, the pressure was on the Soviet team coaches and doctors to get the previous
All Around champion Mukhina back on her feet and ready for the games. In an interview with Ogonyok
magazine, Mukhina blamed the doctors at TsITO (Central Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics)
who were serving the National Team for attempting to rush her back into training too soon, saying
she begged them not to remove her cast and discharge her because "they're dragging me from home
to workouts" and she knew she was not yet healed. When doctors removed her cast against her wishes
and had her try walking on the leg, she said that she knew she was walking "crookedly" and that
something was not right. The TsITO doctors X-rayed the leg and discovered that the fracture had
not healed properly and would not be able to sustain the pounding of gymnastics in its present condition.
Mukhina was rushed into surgery that afternoon, but the damage had already been done to her reputation;
one of the National Team coaches, she said in the Ogonyok interview, showed up at her bed
the day after surgery and outright stated that she "wasn't conscientious" and that she could still
"train in a cast." Once more against her wishes, the doctors removed her cast prematurely, and Mukhina
returned to training for the Olympics while beginning a strenuous workout program at
CSKA Moscow to lose the weight
she had gained while laid up from surgery.
With lingering weakness in her leg and mounting exhaustion from the grueling weight loss workouts,
Mukhina had great difficulty coming back up to speed on what was to be the new end element of one
of her floor exercise tumbling passes, the Thomas salto. Despite Mukhina's warnings that the element
was constantly causing minor injuries and was dangerous enough to potentially cause major injuries,
she was pushed to keep the element in her floor routine, and she continued to practise it even knowing
it was a dangerous element. On July 3, 1980, two weeks before the Moscow Olympics, Mukhina was practicing
the pass containing the Thomas salto when she under-rotated the salto, crash-landed on her chin,
and her spine snapped. She was instantly rendered a
quadriplegic. Mukhina was
training at the Minsk Palace of
Sport when the injury occurred; her coach Klimenko was not present at the time of the accident.
The Soviet Union awarded
her Order of Lenin in
response to her injury and in 1983,
Juan Samaranch, the
IOC President, awarded her the Silver
Medal of the Olympic Order.
Following the injury, the Soviet Gymnastics Federation remained secretive about the events surrounding
Mukhina's cataclysmic injury, with Soviet Team Coach
Yuri Titov as the point man
discouraging reporters' questions by playing coy regarding Mukhina's condition and deflecting inquiries
about whether she would be trying for a comeback in 1984, even blaming Mukhina's "injury" on attempting
a skill that she "was not able to do but thought she needed to make the team[...]she suffered injury
and missed her chance.[...]All the bad stories, they are not true."[5]
Meanwhile, as word spread among the Olympic community that Mukhina's injuries were far worse than
the Soviet spokesmen were saying, coaches all over the world wondered not only what the specific
injury was, but how the accident had happened. Initial rumors were that she had fallen on approach
to the vault,[4]
then Soviet newspapers reported she had fallen during her dismount from the balance beam and had
a blackout but then got back up to finish her floor exercise without knowing how badly she had been
injured, then finally word emerged that she had fallen catastrophically during the floor exercise.[4]
Mukhina was reclusive following the incident, seldom publicly discussing the accident. In a rare
interview with Ogonyok magazine, she spoke about the Soviet gymnastics program, criticizing
it for deceiving the public about her injury, and for the system's insatiable desire for gold medals
and championships:
"...for our country, athletic successes and victories have always meant somewhat more than even
simply the prestige of the nation. They embodied (and embody) the correctness of the political path
we have chosen, the advantages of the system, and they are becoming a symbol of superiority. Hence
the demand for victory - at any price. As for risk, well... We've always placed a high value on
risk, and a human life was worth little in comparison with the prestige of the nation; we've been
taught to believe this since childhood.[...]There are such concepts as the honor of the club, the
honor of the team, the honor of the national squad, the honor of the flag. They are words behind
which the person isn't perceived. I'm not condemning anyone or blaming anyone for what happened
to me. Not Klimenko or especially the national team coach at that time, Shaniyazov. I feel sorry
for Klimenko - he's a victim of the system, a member of the clan of grownups who are 'doing their
job.' Shaniyazov I simply don't respect. And the others? I was injured because everyone around me
was observing neutrality and keeping silent. After all, they saw that I wasn't ready to perform
that element. But they kept quiet. Nobody stopped a person who, forgetting everything, was tearing
forward - go, go, go!"[4]
Despite this, Mukhina took some of the responsibility for not saying no to protect herself from
further harm, and noted that her first thought as she lay on the floor with her neck severely broken
was, "Thank God, I won't be going to the Olympics."[4]
According to Larisa Latynina's
2004 interview, Mukhina's trainer, Mikhail Klimenko, was affected by her injury. Because of her
devastating injury, Mukhina could not be added to the 1980 Soviet Olympic team roster. There was
little doubt that the Soviet Olympic women's gymnastics team would get the gold medal in the team
competition at the 1980 Summer Olympics, as it did at all previous Olympics. Nevertheless, Klimenko
had desperately wanted Mukhina to make the Olympic team roster because he wanted to become the "Olympic
champion's trainer." Soon after Mukhina's paralytic injury, Klimenko emigrated to
Italy, where he lived with his
children until his death from cancer on November 14, 2007, his 65th birthday.[2]
After Mukhina's paralysis and several other close calls with other Olympic-eligible female gymnasts,
the Thomas salto has been
removed from the Code of Points as an allowed skill for women. It remains an allowed skill for men
as of 2013.
Her condition notwithstanding, Mukhina was a guest columnist for Moscow News in the late
1980s. Her injury was a featured topic in an
A&E documentary More Than
a Game; and her World Championship performance is captured in the
ABC Sports video Gymnastic's
Greatest Stars. Mukhina took a keen interest in children and young gymnasts both before and
after her injury. She also expressed a deep religious faith, and was fond of horses and animated
cartoons. Mukhina was thankful to her former teammates who kept in touch with her, especially Yelena
Davydova who she described as "A real friend".
Mukhina died of apparent complications from
quadriplegia on December
22, 2006(2006-12-22) (aged 46).[6]
As a memorial to one of the greatest Soviet-era gymnasts ever, the biggest sports newspaper in Russia,
Sovietskij SPORT, dedicated the cover of their Christmas 2006 issue to her.[1]
A memorial service was held in her honor on December 27, and she was buried at the Troekourov Cemetery
in Moscow
The WikiLeaks revelations have shined a light on the dark nature of U.S. foreign policy, including,
as Eric Margolis
recently described it: "Washington's heavy-handed treatment of friends and foes alike, its bullying,
use of diplomats as junior-grade spies, narrow-minded views, and snide remarks about world leaders."
As much as I, an American, hate to say it, U.S. foreign policy is actually much worse. It is
aggressive, reckless, belligerent, and meddling. It sanctions the destabilization and overthrow
of governments, the assassination of leaders, the destruction of industry and infrastructure, the
backing of military coups, death squads, and drug traffickers, and imperialism under the guise of
humanitarianism. It supports corrupt and tyrannical governments and brutal sanctions and embargoes.
It results in discord, strife, hatred, and terrorism toward the United States.
The question, then, is simply this: Can U.S. foreign policy be fixed? Although I am not very
optimistic that it will be, I am more than confident that it can be.
I propose a four-pronged solution from the following perspectives: Founding Fathers, military,
congressional, libertarian. In brief, to fix its foreign policy the United States should implement
a Jeffersonian foreign policy, adopt Major General Smedley Butler's Amendment for Peace, follow
the advice of Congressman Ron Paul, and do it all within the libertarian framework of philosopher
Murray Rothbard.
Thomas Jefferson, our first secretary of state and third president, favored a foreign policy
of "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none." This
policy was basically followed until the Spanish-American War of 1898. Here is the simple but profound
wisdom of Jefferson:
"No one nation has a right to sit in judgment over another."
"We wish not to meddle with the internal affairs of any country, nor with the general affairs
of Europe."
"I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or
no diplomatic establishment."
"We have produced proofs, from the most enlightened and approved writers on the subject,
that a neutral nation must, in all things relating to the war, observe an exact impartiality
towards the parties."
No judgment, no meddling, no political connection, and no partiality: this is a Jeffersonian
foreign policy.
U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
After leaving the military, he authored the classic work War Is a Racket. Butler proposed
an Amendment for Peace to provide an "absolute guarantee to the women of America that their loved
ones never would be sent overseas to be needlessly shot down in European or Asiatic or African wars
that are no concern of our people." Here are its three planks:
1. The removal of members of the land armed forces from within the continental limits of
the United States and the Panama Canal Zone for any cause whatsoever is hereby prohibited.
2. The vessels of the United States Navy, or of the other branches of the armed services,
are hereby prohibited from steaming, for any reason whatsoever except on an errand of mercy,
more than five hundred miles from our coast.
3. Aircraft of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps is hereby prohibited from flying, for any
reason whatsoever, more than seven hundred and fifty miles beyond the coast of the United States.
Butler also reasoned that because of "our geographical position, it is all but impossible for
any foreign power to muster, transport and land sufficient troops on our shores for a successful
invasion." In this he was echoing Jefferson, who recognized that geography was one of the great
advantages of the United States: "At such a distance from Europe and with such an ocean between
us, we hope to meddle little in its quarrels or combinations. Its peace and its commerce are what
we shall court."
And then there is our modern Jeffersonian in Congress, Rep. Ron Paul, the only consistent
voice in Congress from either party for a foreign policy of peace and nonintervention. In a
speech on the House floor several months before the invasion of Iraq, Ron Paul made the case for
a foreign policy of peace through commerce and nonintervention:
A proper foreign policy of non-intervention is built on friendship with other nations, free
trade, and open travel, maximizing the exchanges of goods and services and ideas.
We should avoid entangling alliances and stop meddling in the internal affairs of other nations
- no matter how many special interests demand otherwise. The entangling alliances that we should
avoid include the complex alliances in the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO.
The basic moral principle underpinning a non-interventionist foreign policy is that of rejecting
the initiation of force against others. It is based on non-violence and friendship unless attacked,
self-determination, and self-defense while avoiding confrontation, even when we disagree with
the way other countries run their affairs. It simply means that we should mind our own business
and not be influenced by special interests that have an ax to grind or benefits to gain by controlling
our foreign policy. Manipulating our country into conflicts that are none of our business and
unrelated to national security provides no benefits to us, while exposing us to great risks
financially and militarily.
For the libertarian framework necessary to ensure a foreign policy of peace and nonintervention,
we can turn to libertarian political philosopher and theoretician Murray Rothbard:
The primary plank of a libertarian foreign policy program for America must be to call upon
the United States to abandon its policy of global interventionism: to withdraw immediately and
completely, militarily and politically, from Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, from
everywhere. The cry among American libertarians should be for the United States to withdraw
now, in every way that involves the U.S. government. The United States should dismantle its
bases, withdraw its troops, stop its incessant political meddling, and abolish the CIA. It should
also end all foreign aid - which is simply a device to coerce the American taxpayer into subsidizing
American exports and favored foreign States, all in the name of "helping the starving peoples
of the world." In short, the United States government should withdraw totally to within its
own boundaries and maintain a policy of strict political "isolation" or neutrality everywhere.
The U.S. global empire with its 1,000 foreign military bases and half a million troops and mercenary
contractors in three-fourths of the world's countries must be dismantled. This along with the empire's
spies, covert operations, foreign aid, gargantuan military budgets, abuse and misuse of the military,
prison camps, torture, extraordinary renditions, assassinations, nation building, spreading democracy
at the point of a gun, jingoism, regime changes, military alliances, security guarantees, and meddling
in the affairs of other countries.
U.S. foreign policy can be fixed. The United States would never tolerate another country building
a string of bases around North America, stationing thousands of its troops on our soil, enforcing
a no-fly zone over American territory, or sending their fleets to patrol off our coasts. How much
longer will other countries tolerate these actions by the United States? We have already experienced
blowback from the Muslim world for our foreign policy. And how much longer can the United States
afford to maintain its empire?
It is time for the world's policeman, fireman, security guard, social worker, and busybody to
announce its retirement.
As a U.S. senator and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton often followed a neocon-style foreign
policy, backing the Iraq War, teaming up with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on an Afghan War "surge,"
and staking out an even more hawkish stance than Gates on Libya, Robert Parry reports.
...Representing New York, Clinton rarely if ever criticized Israeli actions. In summer 2006,
as Israeli warplanes pounded southern Lebanon, killing more than 1,000 Lebanese, Sen. Clinton shared
a stage with Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman who had said, "While it may
be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that
nearly all terrorists are Muslim."
...Gates then reported on what he regarded as a stunning admission by Clinton, writing: "The
exchange that followed was remarkable. In strongly supporting the surge in Afghanistan, Hillary
told the president that her opposition to the surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing
him in the Iowa primary [in 2008]. She went on to say, 'The Iraq surge worked.'
...Clinton expressed delight when she received the news of Gaddafi's capture during a TV interview.
Gaddafi then was brutally assassinated – and Libya has since become a source for regional instability,
including an assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, that killed U.S. Ambassador
Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. personnel, an incident that Clinton has called the worst
moment in her four years as Secretary of State.
In the decade following the Bush administration's ill-starred adventure in Iraq, the U.S. was
routinely, and with some justification, accused of imperial overreach. The hoped-for change from
an interventionist foreign policy did not materialize with the advent of the Obama administration
in 2009. The Afghan surge and an undeclared drone war which stretches from the plains of the Maghreb
into the heart of mountainous South Central Asia have put paid to those hopes.
Europe, too, has not been immune to bouts of imperial hubris, as the 2011 intervention in Libya
showed. Yet with the exit of the interventionist Nicolas Sarkozy from the Elysee Palace in 2012,
there was perhaps cause to hope for a return to a European foreign policy that was at once both
prudential and ethical. Yet the continuing crisis taking place in Kiev indicates that European foreign
policy has, again, abandoned prudence and accommodation in favor of a zero-sum mentality that may
well anticipate an era of conflict and competition with Russia over the states of the former Soviet
bloc.
In its efforts to defend-or at least marginally legitimize-Tom Perkins' claims via a letter to
the editor of a direct parallel between "class wafare" against the very rich and eliminationist
anti-semitism, the Wall Street Journal has now gone to an expert for a
new op-ed on the subject, Harvard professor Ruth Wisse.
I think they should pack it in before they provide an endless parody meme for The Onion.
I was going to write about this
very interesting essay by David Rieff in The National Interest today, and weave in
another
fascinating piece by William Lind in The American Conservative – unfortunately, necessity
has dictated another course.
The response to our fundraising drive
has so far been quite disappointing. If this goes on – well, I don't even like to think about it.
I think we deserve a lot better – so let's take a look at our history.
Antiwar.com was founded in 1995
by our webmaster,
Eric Garris,
in response to the
wild-and-crazy
interventionism of the Clinton years – which in many ways prefigured, both in
rationale
and style, the "humanitarian" meddling of the
present administration. Although the Soviet Union was gone, and the cold war supposedly ended,
Washington wasn't willing to give it a rest – indeed, the Kremlin's collapse emboldened the empire-builders
on the Potomac to push their sphere of influence ever-eastward. They found a ready pretext in an
alleged "humanitarian crisis" festering in
the former Yugoslavia.
This is not to deny that there was real suffering in the region. The Serbian leadership which
had dominated the region was being challenged by restive Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, and Kosovars,
all of whom had their dreams of independence during the long years of
Communist rule. Washington took those dreams, in the case of the Bosnians and Kosovars, and
turned them over to their sock-puppets – and the results, some sixteen years later, aren't pretty.
Both
Bosnia and
Kosovo, the two stepchildren of Bill and Hillary Clinton, are the mutant offspring of this "liberal
imperialism," as David Rieff calls it: the region is plagued by violence, worsening poverty, and
some of the worst corruption on earth.
At the time almost no one opposed the "humanitarian" mission of our wise rulers: oh, there were
a few
Republican congressmen, but their opposition, for the most part, was dictated by partisanship
of the worst sort, and soon dissipated. The commentariat, including the "mainstream" news media,
was firmly in the interventionist camp, and played their all-too-familiar role as servitors of the
State (Department). Indeed, the chief foreign correspondent for CNN, Christiane Amanpour, was
married
to top State Department official James Rubin: it was later
revealed that
the government was using CNN as a cover for a "psyops" scheme to influence public opinion.
In short, Washington used the suffering of the Yugoslav peoples to impose yet more suffering
– in the name of "liberation."
We here at Antiwar.com saw through this "humanitarian" Potemkin Village – and quite clearly foresaw
the ruin of what had been a relatively prosperous and peaceful part of the world. Back then I was
writing a daily column
entitled "Wartime Diary,"
and the pace of work was furious: we had no time to edit, proofread, or do all the things a real
news organization must do in order to gain the confidence of our readers. But we won that confidence
anyway, I guess on the sheer strength of our drive to get the real story out there. We didn't fundraise
– we didn't have time. People sent in money anyway, unsolicited.
Eric was still working at his Real Job, and clandestinely doing Antiwar.com at his desk: the
Internet, back in those days, was a New Thing, the significance of which hadn't quite dawned on
most people, and certainly not on the mandarins of the legacy media, who still lorded it over the
national discourse. This ignorance, we knew, was our secret weapon: well, perhaps I shouldn't say
"we," because I was initially a skeptic of the new medium. Eric, however, had
the vision to see
that the world of Dead-Tree Media was doomed to obsolescence, and that we were in the vanguard of
a revolutionary new technology that would take down the media mandarins before too long.
He was right. Antiwar.com's readership grew by leaps and bounds, extending our reach into the
darkest corners of the world. At this point, we began to try and professionalize the operation:
thanks to the
Center for
Libertarian Studies, which took us under their wing, we were granted nonprofit tax-exempt status,
and later branched out on our own with the
Randolph Bourne Institute. Thanks to the really incredible generosity of our longtime friend
Colin Hunter, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, we had a paid staff – and a real organization,
due entirely to Alexia Gilmore, Colin's partner, who not only kept the books but also herded all
these libertarian cats into some semblance of order.
So we were in great shape, but American foreign policy – not so much. Clinton was periodically
bombing
Iraq, and, worse, setting up the
legislative framework
for Ahmed Chalabi and his fellow "heroes in error" to pull off one of the biggest
con jobs in recent history.
With the enthusiastic support of the Clinton administration and both parties in Congress, Chalabi
and his gang were put on the US
payroll, and the regime change operation went
into motion,
not stopping until George W. Bush proclaimed "Mission accomplished!" – and over
half a million dead littered the Iraqi landscape (not
counting those
murdered
by the sanctions).
The Bush years were the worst. The 9/11 attacks pulverized the antiwar movement, which we had
been patiently helping to rebuild, and the remnants were driven into shocked silence – except for
us,
Susan Sontag, and a few other brave souls, who were soon pilloried in the court of public opinion.
In the days and weeks after September 11, we received hundreds of death threats – a period coinciding
with the beginning of the FBI's "preliminary
investigation" into Antiwar.com and its staff. In addition, this site was subjected to constant
denial-of-service attacks on an almost daily basis: we soon had to switch to a new server and upgrade
our security.
On the other hand, an amazing thing happened: our traffic doubled, then tripled, and then went
straight up into the stratosphere. Suddenly we went from addressing an audience of thousands to
one in the hundreds of thousands. Too busy with the added work load to stop long enough to be intimidated,
we soldiered on,
arguing
against the occupation of Afghanistan, and, when Iraq was targeted,
insisting that there
were no "weapons of mass destruction" hidden under Saddam's palace, as the neocons and their liberal
interventionists allies claimed with little solid evidence.
We were attacked from the left as well as the right: professional "anti-extremist" witch-hunter
Chip Berlet stupidly labeled us "Buchananite isolationists" and the neocon right chimed in, calling
us every name in the book. Oh, they knew we were libertarians, but back then libertarianism wasn't
such a Big Thing, and in the general hysteria surrounding 9/11 it was relatively easy to bamboozle
their indoctrinated followers into believing anything.
The smears came thick and fast, with neocon David Frum leading the charge in National Review
with a cover story on the "treason" of a long list of conservatives and libertarians – including
this writer – who foresaw the double disaster that would soon engulf Iraq and Afghanistan.
Writing at the height of the neocons' triumph, Frum said conservatives must "turn our backs"
on the "traitors" in their midst, including not only Pat Buchanan but also Bob Novak, Tom Fleming,
and Joe Sobran, as well as myself. Frum's evidence of my "treason"? Let him
speak for himself:
"The week after the fall of Kabul, Raimondo acknowledged that though the Afghan war seemed to
have succeeded, disaster lurked around the corner: 'The real quagmire awaits us. . . . When the
history books are written, Operation Enduring Freedom will be hailed as a great success – provided
it doesn't endure much more than a few weeks longer.'"
In retrospect, my prediction
is spot on: however, in the springtime of the neocons – Spring of 2003 – this was not so readily
apparent. Not that I'm claiming to be Nostradamus or anything: at the time, it was clear to anyone
with even a half-baked knowledge of Afghanistan's history that the Americans' attempt to remake
the country would ultimately fail. It was only a matter of time, as
the Russians and
the British had learned the hard way, and plenty of intelligent people knew this – but few were
willing to speak out publicly. Those who were willing didn't have much of a platform. Antiwar.com's
writers had both the platform and the nerve.
In the end, we were proved right – but not after a long, exhausting struggle against the Conventional
Wisdom and its enforcers. And there was little satisfaction in such a Pyrrhic "victory" – not only
was Iraq
in ruins, with hundreds of thousands dead, but the political landscape at home was no friendlier
to opponents of US intervention abroad. Already the war drums were beating, this time exhorting
us to
attack
Iran.
The age of Obama presented us with new opportunities – and new and bigger problems. What had
been the antiwar movement
evaporated with such swiftness that it was almost possible to believe the huge demonstrations
had all been but a dream. Yet the war danger was unabated, as we said from the beginning – and that
was yet another lesson it took Americans a bit of time to learn.
Yet learn it they did – with not a little help from Antiwar.com. Years of tirelessly exposing
the neocons' con game finally began to achieve some measurable results: articles about their secretive
little movement and their dubious motives began appearing in the "mainstream" media, and as the
wars went from bad to worse "neocon" became a term of opprobrium.
While I don't normally toot my own horn, in this case I won't shy away from taking some degree
of credit for this: I don't know how many columns I wrote detailing the history and methods of the
neocons, but it was
a lot. I also wrote a book about how they had succeeded in hijacking the conservative movement
and turning it into what I called the War Party.
Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movementreceived high
praise from George W. Carey, and earned a second edition from ISI Books along with an introduction
by the influential Georgetown University professor. Although I didn't get rich on the royalties,
the book had more of an impact than I ever imagined it would: first published in 1993, it is still
in print and selling well.
But this isn't about me: I'm just a cog in the Antiwar.com machine, and a relatively small one
at that. The team that puts this site together hasn't changed much over the years, except for one
thing – it's gotten smaller. Some have moved on to new careers –
Jeremy Sapienza, who used to do much of the technical work as well as blogging, opened up
a really cool café in Brooklyn – while the
necessity of making cutbacks due to our financial situation led to some big layoffs more recently.
With our staff cut down to the bone, and with all the added political problems brought on by the
ascension of Obama to near godhood on what
used to be the Left, we basically had to start all over again – but I think we have risen to
the occasion.
One of our biggest successes occurred during the Syrian "crisis." When the President announced
his plans to bomb Syria, we worked day and night to mobilize our readers around a telephone campaign
to
pressure
Congress into voting "No!" And our readers responded: in coalition with a wide range of other
groups, few of which had access to an audience as large as ours, we inundated members of Congress
with calls until their lines were tied up for hours.
The war was called off by a White House that could clearly see it had been decisively defeated
– and the world breathed a sigh of relief. No, we aren't taking all the credit for this, of course:
but we did more than our share, and we have good reason to be proud of our work.
This is an example of what we can do, of what the American people are capable of when they are
awakened. Yet someone must do the awakening – and, in this age of "liberal" interventionism, that
job has been largely left to a very small group of publicists and activists, including us.
The problem is we can't do our job
without your support – that is, your financial support. It's all well and good to cheer
us on from the sidelines, but we frankly need something a bit more substantial. Antiwar.com doesn't
have any billionaire backers who regularly pump funds into our perpetually empty coffers – although
we would certainly have nothing against such a comfy arrangement, we don't expect it. Not after
nearly two decades of swimming against the tide and holding off our creditors until the last possible
moment.
Look, I would much rather be writing about other things, but as I said at the start: necessity
calls. This fundraiser has been quite scary, so far, and I need your help to bring Antiwar.com through
it. I've tried to outline what I believe are our successes, even while acknowledging we're very
far from perfect. What I'm trying to say, in my halting way, is that I believe Antiwar.com has
earned your support. Over the years we've provided our readers with an invaluable service:
a survival guide to the Age of Constant Warfare. That's worth something.
Your donation to Antiwar.com is one-hundred
percent tax-deductible: instead of giving all your tax dollars to the War Machine, you have
the option of donating it to the cause of peace and civil liberties. Do I have to say anything more?
Only this: the fate of Antiwar.com is in your hands. Please make your contribution by
going here.
A lot of interesting pictures by a member of US Olympic team... Along with unique Olympic fire tower,
the roof of the Bolshoy Ice Dome, the main home of Sochi's Olympic ice hockey tournament, fully lights
up at night. It is is studded with 38,000 LED lights. The score -- with each country's flags to help
viewers know who's playing -- displays on the entirety of the outside of the arena every time a team
scores. At night, the lights make in interesting effects.
OK, so maybe that doesn't count as a creative title but at least it's DIFFERENT than the last
three.
It's been an incredible 24 hours. Time is flying. By the time I finished blogging yesterday I
had about 10 minutes to get dressed for opening ceremonies. It was a little frantic. Luckily the
time we were requested to be ready had a built in cushion before we actually needed to leave. They
must know that promptness is a struggle for some of us. The extra time gave us a chance to take
some group pictures. Kris Freeman, Torin Koos, Liz Stephen, Holly Brooks, Sadie Bjornsen and Kikkan
Randall all decided they couldn't afford the time and energy to go to the ceremonies. I respect
their decision, but I'm so glad I chose to go. Liz, Holly, Kikkan and Sadie got dressed in their
outfits to take pictures with us before we headed down. Here is our entire team less Kris, Torin
and Simi Hamilton (who was down visiting his family before the ceremonies). (Top row left to right:
Bryan Gregg, Andy Newell, Erik Bjornsen and myself; bottom row left to right: Holly, Sadie, Kikkan,
Liz, Sophie Caldwell, Jessie Diggins and Ida Sargent.)
Marx was completely wrong about the revolutionary role of proletariat, but he has very deep insights
into the nature of capitalism, which converts everything including people into sellable goods.
January 30, 2014 | rollingstone.com
Here are five facts of life in 2014 that Marx's analysis of capitalism correctly predicted more
than a century ago:
1. The Great Recession (Capitalism's Chaotic Nature)
The inherently chaotic, crisis-prone nature of capitalism was a key part of Marx's writings.
He argued that the relentless drive for profits would lead companies to mechanize their workplaces,
producing more and more goods while squeezing workers' wages until they could no longer purchase
the products they created. Sure enough, modern historical events from the Great Depression to the
dot-com bubble can be traced back to what Marx termed "fictitious capital" – financial instruments
like stocks and credit-default swaps. We produce and produce until there is simply no one left to
purchase our goods, no new markets, no new debts. The cycle is still playing out before our eyes:
Broadly speaking, it's what made the housing market crash in 2008. Decades of deepening inequality
reduced incomes, which led more and more Americans to take on debt. When there were no subprime
borrows left to scheme, the whole façade fell apart, just as Marx knew it would.
... ... ...
3. The IMF (The Globalization of Capitalism)
Marx's ideas about overproduction led him to predict what is now called globalization – the spread
of capitalism across the planet in search of new markets. "The need of a constantly expanding market
for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe," he wrote. "It must
nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere." While this may seem like
an obvious point now, Marx wrote those words in 1848, when globalization was over a century away.
And he wasn't just right about what ended up happening in the late 20th century – he was right about
why it happened: The relentless search for new markets and cheap labor, as well as the incessant
demand for more natural resources, are beasts that demand constant feeding.
4. Walmart (Monopoly)
The classical theory of economics assumed that competition was natural and therefore self-sustaining.
Marx, however, argued that market power would actually be centralized in large monopoly firms as
businesses increasingly preyed upon each other. This might have struck his 19th-century readers
as odd: As Richard Hofstadter writes, "Americans came to take it for granted that property would
be widely diffused, that economic and political power would decentralized." It was only later, in
the 20th century, that the trend Marx foresaw began to accelerate. Today, mom-and-pop shops have
been replaced by monolithic big-box stores like Walmart, small community banks have been replaced
by global banks like J.P. Morgan Chase and small famers have been replaced by the likes of Archer
Daniels Midland. The tech world, too, is already becoming centralized, with big corporations sucking
up start-ups as fast as they can. Politicians give lip service to what minimal small-business lobby
remains and prosecute the most violent of antitrust abuses – but for the most part, we know big
business is here to stay.
5. Low Wages, Big Profits (The Reserve Army of Industrial Labor)
Marx believed that wages would be held down by a "reserve army of labor," which he explained
simply using classical economic techniques: Capitalists wish to pay as little as possible for labor,
and this is easiest to do when there are too many workers floating around. Thus, after a recession,
using a Marxist analysis, we would predict that high unemployment would keep wages stagnant as profits
soared, because workers are too scared of unemployment to quit their terrible, exploitative jobs.
And what do you know? No less an authority than the Wall Street Journal
warns, "Lately, the U.S. recovery has been displaying some Marxian traits. Corporate profits
are on a tear, and rising productivity has allowed companies to grow without doing much to reduce
the vast ranks of the unemployed." That's because workers are terrified to leave their jobs and
therefore lack bargaining power. It's no surprise that the best time for equitable growth
is during times of "full employment," when unemployment is low and workers can threaten to take
another job.
It's a message Paul delivers often, from colleagues on the Senate floor and evangelical pastors
in Des Moines to African American students and immigration reform activists, and could be his ticket
to the presidential campaign trail in 2016. The Republican candidate who can effectively capture
the imagination of conservative voters in Iowa and unite them with center-right Republicans in New
Hampshire--the first two electoral contests on the presidential nomination calendar--will be in
a strong position heading into the primary season. It's far too early to tell, of course, whether
Paul can pull it off.
Looking to 2016, he arguably has an advantage over his father, who made three unsuccessful White
House bids during his political career. The younger Paul's "fusionist" approach-wedding libertarian
economics, traditional values and novel policy ideas- could appeal to a broader set of Republican
voters. And it might also, critically, alienate fewer of them.
"Free market economics" Does not work anymore than centralized economic planning works. You
have to have a good balance of free market and regulation. Allowing monopolies to exist because
they were "the bigger fish" would stifle the possibility of new businesses and new jobs and
increase prices. Ayn Rand zealots don't care about facts or common sense.
From political point of view neoliberalism vision is close to Communists vision. The only difference
is that now the capital of the world is the USA and it is the USA government that controls the rest
of the world. Other states are just vassals who implement directions from benevolent "Washington Obcom"
and install leaders recommended, or (YouTube)...
Funny that it was communists who actually put a major effort in implementing this vision via the dissolution
of the USSR.
Feb 07, 2014 | Reuters/Yahoo
... ... ...
Modern Ukraine is divided between eastern provinces that were districts of Russia for centuries
and where most people speak Russian, and Western sections that were annexed by the Soviets from
Poland and the former Austrian empire, where most people speak Ukrainian and many resent Russian
domination.
Although many Ukrainians say they dream of integration with the West, the Soviet economic legacy
gives Moscow extraordinary leverage: Ukraine's heavy industry depends on imports of energy, above
all Russian natural gas.
Moscow portrays the anti-Yanukovich demonstrators as paid Western agents and seems to be pushing
for Yanukovich to order a crackdown to clear the streets.
In some of the sharpest language yet, the Kremlin's point man on Ukraine, Sergei Glazyev, urged
the Ukrainian leader to stop negotiating with "putschists". He accused Washington of arming, funding
and training the opposition to take power.
Nuland called the remarks "pure fantasy".
"He could be a science fiction writer," she said.
Re-Ran:
When any empire ends under the guise of "renewal" organizations tend to show up, like a parasite
they eat the legacy of the empire alive often from within. There are remarkable similarities
to most if not all A.D. Empires, From the beginning first pioneers of them up to the final conspicuous
consumer populations that eventually become a burden on the state of the empire. They all have
6 stages and in total last around 200-250 years before collapsing. The age of pioneers, the
age of conquest, the age of commerce, the age of affluence, the age of intellect, ending with
the bread and circus' campaigns of the age of decadence. The age of decadence is amazingly similar
throughout most empires. This involves an undisciplined, over extended military, a continuous
conspicuous display of wealth, a massive and ever growing disparity between rich and poor, desire
to live off a bloated state, and a cultural obsession with sex. More importantly the most similar
trend throughout empires in the age of decadence is the aggressive debasement of that empires
currency. Once the backing resource of an empires currency is abandoned, the denominations go
through a continuous corruption, until even the officials who once backed the people, become
more fixated on the accumulation of as much wealth as possible. With this corruption comes distractions.
Like Rome and their Gladiatorial events used to keep the public eye off of state affairs
and economy, this is a classic trait of declining empires. Today in the U.S. there is an ever
prevalent emphasis on all kinds of television shows, sports, and celebrities. Just like today's
celebrities and sports stars earn vast sums of wealth, so did the Roman charioteers, one in
the second century gained so much wealth, it would equate to several billions today. And ironically
like Rome before it's collapse we even make celebrities out of our chef's. We have been lulled
into a lethargy and have completely accepted it. through un fettered consumerism, continuous
economic bubbles, and the desire for everlasting youth, the "baby boomer" generation squandered
their inheritance from the prior. "and our posterity" became "just for us" and part took in
the largest misallocation of capitol in our time, and future generations will pay the price.
richard d
The inmates are not only running the asylum, they own it. Obama and his administration need
to be Baker Acted. Welcome to the modern day 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'.
As an ambassador for the US under the current geopolitical circumstances, I am sure Mcfaul
performed admirably and deserves all the respect due his diplomatic station.
With that said, it is fortunate that Russia is maintaining a countervailing position regarding
US unilateral "impositions" on foreign soil. Russia is unique and has secured top tier historical
relevance, allowing for substantial global political, social, and economic "authority."
Any representative of a post modern industrial nation with embedded foreign 'in-culture'
exposure would be in concurrence with such a proclamation.
Samurai:
"Neoliberalism have mastered the British colonial-era double-speak of "liberty", "democracy", "markets",
etc. "Market liberalization" is nothing more than armed robbery. And "investment" is really nothing
more than "asset stripping". The Adam Smith phraseology of free-trade and free markets is used, much
like their British predecessors, to recolonize the world. Chossudosky shows how the "Washington Consesus"
has embarked on a foreign policy strategy of economic sabotage and "strangulation." As Kissinger famously
ordered, in the now declassified National Security Memorandum 200, Africans should be kept from becoming
consumers of their own raw materials. "
I was originally born in Uganda and I can assure you that Africans have always been suspicious
of the so-called "aid" they receive since it almost always comes after a crisis that they can't
quite explain (like how did a bunch of poor, illiterate preteens get the money to buy those
fancy weapons, or why won't aid agencies buy food from the local farmers and distribute THAT).
Suspicions and rumors are insufficient to counter what appears, on the surface, to be international
generosity. That is why I am grateful for Chossudosky's contrarian masterwork. It confirms the
fears and suspicions regarding a return to colonialism and economic slavery. The fact that Chossudosky
was willing to put his career on the line to write this hard-hitting book is worthy of our attention.
He shows, without a shadow of a doubt, that there is a deliberate and systematic campaign
of "economic genocide" against Africa and all other resource-rich regions.
Neoliberalism have mastered the British colonial-era double-speak of "liberty", "democracy",
"markets", etc. "Market liberalization" is nothing more than armed robbery. And "investment"
is really nothing more than "asset stripping". The Adam Smith phraseology of free-trade and
free markets is used, much like their British predecessors, to recolonize the world.
Chossudosky shows how the "Washington Consesus" has embarked on a foreign policy strategy
of economic sabotage and "strangulation."
As Kissinger famously ordered, in the now declassified National Security Memorandum 200,
Africans should be kept from becoming consumers of their own raw materials.
Stephen A. Haines:
"There are none so blind . . . ", March 29, 2004
With the North American governments and their media flacks noisily championing "economic
liberalisation", dissenting voices are muted. The voices of those most directly affected by
"globalisation" are fainter yet. Michel Chossudovsky attempts to overcome the raucous proponents
of "international free trade" with an examination of just what it does and how it impacts civil
societies. The picture he provides isn't pleasant. However, turning away will not cause it to
fade from lack of our attention. In fact, reading this book is an eye-opening, if not eyebrow
raising experience. The formation of the IMF gave financiers, chiefly North American, a cudgel
to change governments, force farmers and pastoralists to convert to cash crop economies, and
reduce or eliminate government services. The initial steps were instituted by the Bretton Woods
conferences designed to restore nations devastated by World War II. Private financial institutions
imposed conditions on loans granted to recovering countries.
"Recovering" countries rapidly expanded into "developing" countries as these institutions
recognised the value of cheap labour in them. Accepting "foreign investment" led to indebtedness
difficult to repay. Defaulting was unacceptable to both borrower and lender, leading to
new rounds of loans. These, however, rarely reached the borrowing nation since the new funds
were set against the older debt.
"Servicing the debt" meant imposition of stringent conditions, ranging from privatisation
of services, amalgamation of small land holdings to produce crops to be purchased cheaply, but
sold at inflated prices. The consumers of these goods are you and your neighbours.
Each of the nations Chossudovsky examines suffers the same schedule of "structural adjustment
programmes" imposed by the IMF. These SAPs outline the changes a nation must endure to receive
the "benefits" of globalization. Restrictions on outside investment must be eliminated, with
the concomitant privatisation of state-owned facilities and services. Where workers aren't laid
off, their wages are frozen or reduced. Local currencies must be adjusted to American dollars,
which has the impact of intense inflation spirals almost overnight.
The result is a populace under increasing pressure, marginal or famine-stricken and powerless.
Civil unrest isn't an option, since disruption brings reprisals - often, of course, the withdrawal
of investment, failure to renew loan guarantees or simply real military action.
Although the repetitive nature of the manipulations of the financial institutions on national
sovereignty leads Chossudovsky to some redundancy, the reader should understand we are dealing
with a global crisis. "Bitter medicine" and "bitter irony" recur, because the circumstances
he describes are redundant. An imposing and sometimes intimidating account, he is careful to
shift the responsibility to institutions rather than consumers. It is, however, the developed
country consumer that provides motivation for many levels of the problem. Chossudovsky's analysis
is thorough, well-founded and expressive.
He shows why social unrest in "developing" countries is the result of imposed conditions,
not unstable populations and environments. That he offers little in the way of solutions for
the predicament the world now suffers is only testimony to the immensity of the task ahead.
[stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Doug Welch (San Francisco, CA United States)
The US Military Industrial Complex in the 21st Century, June 2, 2013
F. William Engdahl is a clear writer on geopolitics and strategic affairs from a perspective
outside that of mainstream media or establishment academia. In this volume he tackles the United
States' ongoing policy of global hegemony, or is it is called in Pentagon policy papers: Full
Spectrum Dominance.
Besides the US outspending all potential competitors and allies combined on defense, the
US has been using means other than warfare to exert its power in volatile regions worldwide.
If you have read Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard, Engdahl asks the corollary questions about the
expansion of US power into Central Asia and he asks what purpose this expedition into the "Graveyard
of Empires" might serve.
Aside from outright military intervention other means of US goals being achieved include
peaceful revolutions and swarming coups. This book was written in 2009 but serves well to educate
the reader into some of the actions of the "Arab Spring" of 2011. One will never be able to
think of NGOs as neutral uninterested parties in foreign affairs after examining this book.
Most of all Engdahl examines the contours of US strategic policy since the end of the Cold
War where he posits the the Cold War never ended, just went into a new hyper-power phase where
the triumphant US has decided to "make a go" at being a global hegemonic power, devoting so
much to military supremacy and global dominance that any emerging power wold break their bank
attempting to catch up to US military technological supremacy.
This book might be a difficult read for an uniformed layperson, but do yourself a favor and
familiarize yourself to these concepts if you want to understand unstated motives in international
affairs.
Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium)
An obsessive military agenda, January 23, 2010
As in his other books, F. William Engdahl exposes vital aspects of the world today and, in
the first place, the battle for total control of our planet and the space around it.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, important segments of the US establishment panicked as
their power base (national security and the Cold War) fell apart: how to justify the huge arms
spending and a massive intelligence apparatus without a direct enemy?
The solution for them was to replace the Cold War by a geopolitical agenda: Full Spectrum Dominance.
Crucial aspects of this agenda are control of the Eurasian Heartland, the encircling of Russia
and control of China's lifelines (oil tanker traffic). With the help of their diabolical media
machine, this agenda was sold to the public under the veil of colonial liberation, democracy
and free markets, and partly realized by false flag operations. A major aspect of this agenda
is also Nuclear Primacy (First Strike).
As V. Putin stated: `today almost uncontained hyper use of military force in international
relations is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.' Adds Russian general
L. Ivashov: `terrorism is simply a new type of war in order to install a unipolar world, a pretext
to establish the rule of a world elite.'
According to Z. Brzezinski, those who control Eurasia control Africa, the Middle East and
global oil and gas flows (the economic artery system of the world).
The Balkan, Kossovo and Afghanistan wars, as well as the installation of military bases in the
`Stans' were (are) major pieces in an encircling network of Russia. The Yukos - Khodorkovsky
affair was a battle for the control of Russian oil and gas (Yukos would have been partly sold
to foreign private interests).
The wars in Africa (Congo, Darfur) as well as the Myanmar issue (control of the coastline of
the Strait of Malacca, good for 85 % of Chinese oil tanker traffic) are indirect confrontations
with China and its vital economic interests.
Ultimately, F. William Engdahl poses the cardinal question: can the US survive this obsessive
and costly military agenda?
This book is a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
M. Lachlan White :
Urgent and Essential Reading, June 21, 2009
FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE is a rare and essential book -- one that orients readers quickly
and deeply to the world we live in, and how we arrived here. William Engdahl presents the historical
background of policy making and decision analysis that explains how the United States arrived
at its present "mission" in the world. The value of Engdahl's brilliant book is not only that
it familiarizes American readers with a history that is not usually revealed to us, but it also
guides us through the many overt and covert tactics employed by the US for regime change-- primarily
via the Pentagon and its nefarious weapons contractors, but also through various think tanks
and foundations with innocuous names disingenuously referring to "democracy" and "freedom."
The "full spectrum" of tactics and deceptions and tricks -- both violent and non-violent --
is revealed here. Needless to say, this book falls within the honorable tradition of political
histories that blow the cover off America's much vaunted pretense and propaganda about serving
the cause of "freedom" and "democracy" around the world! It is the only book available today
that covers ALL of this, with ample quotations and documents from the architects of US policies,
in just 250 well written pages.
FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE is unique in presenting the evolution of CIA tactics, ranging from
its crude "coups" of yesteryear (as in Iran and Guatemala) to its current -- and perhaps more
insidious -- use of "non-violent" electronically manipulated technological "crowd control" via
cell phones and (as is currently evident on the streets of Tehran) Twitter. If Americans are
woefully ignorant of the full range and dangerous extremes of American violence around the world,
of American interventions into and manipulations of other countries' elections and environments
and economics, then there is no longer any excuse for such ignorance. FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE
is a "must read."
To understand pipeline politics, the critical importance of Eurasia to US defense contractors,
read this book. To understand how and why America has become such a rapacious and violent empire
with bases all over the world and tens of thousands of agents provocateurs doing its dirty work
from Tibet to Tehran, manipulating elections, staging phony "revolutions" to surround Russia
with hostile Made-in-USA regimes, propping up American-trained puppets or fomenting chaos from
Myanmar to Congo and from Ukraine to Iran -- read this book!
Submitted by George Washington
on 01/31/2014 19:16 -0500
We've previously noted that General Electric should be held partially responsible for the Fukushima
reactor because
General Electric knew that its reactors were unsafe:
5 of the 6 nuclear reactors at Fukushima are General Electric Mark 1 reactors.
Thirty-five years ago, Dale G. Bridenbaugh and two of his colleagues at General Electric
resigned from their jobs after becoming increasingly convinced that the nuclear reactor
design they were reviewing - the Mark 1 - was so flawed it could lead to a devastating
accident.
Questions persisted for decades about the ability of the Mark 1 to handle the
immense pressures that would result if the reactor lost cooling power, and today
that design is being put to the ultimate test in Japan. Five of the six reactors at the
Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has been wracked since Friday's earthquake with explosions
and radiation leaks, are Mark 1s.
"The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design of the containment,
they did not take into account the dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of
coolant," Bridenbaugh told ABC News in an interview. "The impact loads the containment would
receive by this very rapid release of energy could tear the containment apart and
create an uncontrolled release."
***
Still, concerns about the Mark 1 design have resurfaced occasionally in the years since
Bridenbaugh came forward. In 1986, for instance, Harold Denton, then the director
of NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, spoke critically about the design
during an industry conference.
"I don't have the same warm feeling about GE containment that I do about the larger
dry containments," he said, according to a report at the time that was referenced Tuesday
in The Washington Post.
"There is a wide spectrum of ability to cope with severe accidents at GE plants," Denton
said. "And I urge you to think seriously about the ability to cope with such an event if
it occurred at your plant."
***
When asked if [the remedial measures performed on the Fukushima reactors by GE before
2011] was sufficient, he paused. "What I would say is, the Mark 1 is still a little
more susceptible to an accident that would result in a loss of containment."
The New York Times
reported that other government officials warned about the dangers inherent in GE's Mark
1 design:
In 1972, Stephen H. Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic
Energy Commission, recommended that the Mark 1 system be discontinued because it presented
unacceptable safety risks. Among the concerns cited was the smaller containment design,
which was more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup in hydrogen - a
situation that may have unfolded at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Later that same year,
Joseph Hendrie, who would later become chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
a successor agency to the atomic commission, said the idea of a ban on such systems
was attractive. But the technology had been so widely accepted by the industry
and regulatory officials, he said, that "reversal of this hallowed policy, particularly
at this time, could well be the end of nuclear power."
This faulty design has made the Fukushima disaster much worse.
A particular feature of the 40-year old General Electric Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor
model – such as the six reactors at the Fukushima site – is that each reactor has a separate
spent-fuel pool. These sit near the top of each reactor and adjacent to it ….
Former Babcock-Hitachi engineer Mitsuhiko Tanaka said in a
Greenpeace video about a
flawed reactor vessel Hitachi made for Fukushima: "when the stakes are
raised to such a height, a company will not choose what is safe and legal. Even if it is dangerous
they will choose to save the company from destruction."
Investigative reporter Greg Palast also
notes that Toshiba was one of the main designers of the failed diesel generators which failed
during the earthquake and tsunami ... and that the generator design was faulty.
A 1,400-person lawsuit has just been filed to hold GE – as well as 2 other companies responsible
for Fukushima reactor construction, Toshiba and Hitachi – responsible.
About 1,400 people filed a joint lawsuit Thursday against three companies that manufactured
reactors at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant ….
The 1,415 plaintiffs, including 38 Fukushima residents and 357 people from outside Japan,
said the manufacturers - Toshiba, GE and Hitachi - failed to make needed safety improvements
to the four decade-old reactors at the Fukushima plant ….
They are seeking compensation of 100 yen ($1) each, saying their main goal is to raise awareness
of the problem.
Postscript: If these companies are not held accountable, they will
do it again and
again. For example, the Department of Justice
announced earlier
this month:
General Electric Hitachi Nuclear Energy Americas LLC (GE Hitachi) has agreed to pay $2.7
million to resolve allegations under the False Claims Act that it made false statements
and claims to the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
concerning an advanced nuclear reactor design. GE Hitachi, a provider of nuclear energy products
and services headquartered in Wilmington, N.C., is a subsidiary of General Electric Company
(GE) that is also partially owned by Hitachi Ltd., a multinational engineering and manufacturing
firm headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. GE is headquartered in Fairfield, Conn.
***
The government alleged that GE Hitachi concealed known flaws in its steam dryer analysis
and falsely represented that it had properly analyzed the steam dryer in accordance with applicable
standards and had verified the accuracy of its modeling using reliable data.
[Feb 02, 2014] Bully
Nation By Yale Magrass and Charles Derber
On international arena its not simply bulling. It is also divide and counque strategy that is in
works.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has appropriately been called a bully. This has implications
well beyond Christie. His calling out has the potential to shift the growing public conversation
about bullying from a psychological narrative about abusive individuals to a new discourse on institutionalized
bullying, carried out by ruling institutions and elites.
The current focus on bullying - like much of the discussion about guns and gun violence - has
tended to focus on individuals and mental health. It is a therapeutic narrative. Bullying is seen
primarily as a psychological problem of individuals. The victim needs therapy, better communication
or adaptation skills. Bullies are characterologically flawed and need therapy or perhaps legal punishment.
But there is little or no discussion of larger social or cultural forces in the United States
and the American institutions or leaders who bully other countries or workers and citizens at home.
Institutionalized bullying is endemic to a capitalist hegemonic nation like the United States
and creates death and suffering on a far greater scale than personal, everyday bullying, as important
and toxic as the latter might be.
Moreover, much of the everyday bullying that is the current media focus must be understood as
the inevitable consequence of a militarized corporate system that requires a popular mind-set of
bullying to produce profit and power. The individual bully is the creation of the bully nation.
The United States openly views itself as the world police force, a benign hegemon morally ordained
to impose its interests and values on the rest of the world and justified in the name of freedom,
human rights and antiterrorism to do to weaker countries what it wants. It spends more on weapons
than its next 20 largest competitors combined. President Obama proclaimed "[S]o long as I'm Commander-in-Chief,
we will sustain the strongest military the world has ever known." To peasants living in small countries
in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia - where the United States has sent
armed forces, used drones to bomb, and often overthrown the government - polls show that a majority
of people see the United States as the greatest threat to their security, and fear it. Hegemony
here seamlessly unfolds as morally sanctioned, institutionalized bullying.
America makes heroes of bomber pilots like John McCain and offers them as role models for children
and adolescents to emulate. They see the media applaud the bullying behavior of their own government
that dispatches police, soldiers, FBI and CIA agents into foreign nations to kill and wreak havoc
- from Afghanistan to Somalia to Columbia. If you kill enough, whether in a just war or not, you
may win the Congressional Medal of Honor.
If bullying brings esteem to a nation, then surely that is a behavior to strive for. Potential
recruits for an aggressive military need to be immunized against scruples over violence and bullying.
This becomes an implicit part of their education, whether or not it is ever publicly admitted. Accordingly,
schools and adult authorities often turn a blind eye toward bullying. After two world wars, the
Army lamented that a majority of combat soldiers never fired a weapon. They called for a change
in the training of soldiers and the education and upbringing of children to correct that. By that
measure, they have been successful. In Vietnam, Iraq and Afganistan, the majority of combat soldiers
killed.
Sports has played a vital part in preparing children for institutionalized aggression, bullying
and combat. In football, the goal is to attack the opponent and knock them down, a hard hit that
keeps the opponent dazed on the ground is sometimes encouraged by coaches and cheered by the crowd.
In schools and campuses, the athletes are often the popular heroes and also the bullies, involved
too often in sexual violence or drinking binges in bars that lead to fights or crimes.
Only recently would they expect sanctions against bullying. Indeed, the more they bullied, the
more popular they would be. Even before World War I, President Theodore Roosevelt insisted that
elite universities like Harvard would have to enhance their football teams if America were to dominate
the world. He declared: "We cannot afford to turn out college men who shrink from physical effort
or a little physical pain." For the nation needed men with "the courage that will fight valiantly
against the foes of the soul and the foes of the body."
The aggression and competiveness of bullying pervades civilian life as well as military. As the
beacon for the rest of the world to emulate, the culture the United States wishes to export is capitalism.
Capitalism's staunchest defenders proclaim competition to be its fundamental operating principle.
The monopolistic corporations and the wealthiest 1% have been the most aggressive, bullying anyone
who stood in their way by outsourcing their jobs, lowering wages, stripping away benefits and firing
those seeking to organize unions.
The bully demonizes their victim. In American capitalism, elites have long defined the
losers in the competitive struggle with the words used by Mitt Romney to defame the 47%: undeserving
"moochers." They are weak and lazy and don't have the stuff to prevail. As victims, they deserve
their fate and must submit to the triumphant. Those, like the wolves on Wall Street who bully their
way to the top, should be there; those who couldn't or don't, belong where they are.
Bullying is the means through which the corporate empires were built. Carnegie and Rockefeller
intimidated and threatened their rival capitalists to cede them an ever-larger share of the market.
They brought in Pinkerton goons to beat striking workers into submission. Workers were forced to
either sign "yellow dog" contracts and pledge not to join unions, or be thrown into the street.
Similar bullying practices continue today. Corporations warn entire communites they will shut down
factories and undermine the local economy if they do not accept low wages and minimal regulations.
Banks entice consumers to borrow through predatory loans and then raise interest rates and threaten
foreclosure. The corporations are clear they have the power and will not tolerate challenges from
weaklings who fail to know their place.
Bullying enhances the ideology that the strong are strong and the weak are weak, and each deserves
to be where they are. This attitude pervades America's culture, government, military, corporations,
media, schools, entertainment, athletics and everyday life. The first step to a solution is shifting
the conversation to institutional bullying, moving beyond simply a therapeutic narrative to a political
one aiming toward transformative social change. As long as the United States embraces militarism
and aggressive capitalism, systemic bullying and all its impacts - abroad and at home - will persist
as a major crisis.
First, democracy may be "captured" or "constrained". In particular, even though democracy clearly
changes the distribution of de jure power in society, policy outcomes and inequality depend not
just on the de jure but also the de facto distribution of power. This is a point we had previously
argued in "Persistence of Power, Elites
and Institutions". Elites who see their de jure power eroded by democratization may sufficiently
increase their investments in de facto power, for example by controlling local law enforcement,
mobilizing non-state armed actors, lobbying, or capturing the party system. This will then enable
them to continue their control of the political process. If so, we would not see much impact of
democratization on redistribution and inequality. Even if not thus captured, a democracy may be
constrained by either other de jure institutions such as constitutions, conservative political parties,
and judiciaries, or by de facto threats of coups, capital flight, or widespread tax evasion by the
elite.
It looks like the authors understand effects but do not understand
The Iron Law of Oligarchy. They state: "democracy
may be "captured" or "constrained". ... Elites who see their de jure power eroded by democratization
may sufficiently increase their investments in de facto power ... to continue their control of the political
process. ..."
Democracy vs. Inequality, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson: ... That ... widening gaps
between rich and poor should be taking place in established democracies is puzzling. The workhorse
models of democracy are based on the idea that the median voter will use his democratic power
to redistribute resources away from the rich towards himself. When the gap between the rich
(or mean income in society) and the median voter (who is typically close to the median of the
income distribution) is greater, this redistributive tendency should be greater. ...These strong
predictions notwithstanding, the evidence on this topic is decidedly mixed. Our recent paper,
joint with Suresh Naidu and Pascual Restrepo, "Democracy,
Redistribution and Inequality" revisits these questions. ...First, democracy may be
"captured" or "constrained". ... Elites who see their de jure power eroded by democratization
may sufficiently increase their investments in de facto power ... to continue their control
of the political process. ...Finally, consistent with Stigler's "Director's
Law", democracy may transfer political power to the middle class--rather than the poor.
If so, redistribution may increase and inequality may be curtailed only if the middle class
is in favor of such redistribution. ...What about the facts? This is where the previous literature
has been pretty contentious. ... Overall, our results suggest that democracy does represent
a real shift in political power away from elites and has first-order consequences for redistribution
and government policy. But the impact of democracy on inequality may be more limited than one
might have expected. ...The ... Director's s Law is unlikely to explain the inability of the
US political system to confront inequality, since the middle classes have largely been losers
in the widening inequality trends.Could it be that US democracy is captured? This seems unlikely
when looked at from the viewpoint of our typical models of captured democracies. But perhaps
there are other ways of thinking about this problem that might relate the increasingly paralyzing
gridlock in US politics to capture-related ideas.
Dave:
Yes, US democracy has been captured. There's a very simple solution to this in the medium
term, but it takes a movement to make it happen: we need more political parties. Lots more.
It requires changes to our election system within the constitution.
I'm not sure why people have such a hard time grasping why a 2-party system is so easy to
capture. All of our political algorithms are geared towards this system, and it was only a matter
of time before it would be captured. Adding a third party doubles the complexity of capture
algorithms. Adding 2 new parties makes it even harder. The more parties, the harder it is to
capture.
Yet, seemingly smart people cling to this 2-party system that they fight every day. I think
they cling out of fear, because they too would lose their ability to confine and capture the
part of the system they have captured.
cfaman:
Isn't it an error to describe the US as a democracy?
"It's a republic, ma'am, if you can keep it."
A republic with institutional anti-democratic constitutional construction and provisions.
A republic that never leaned against wealth until FDR pulled the thems that owned the country
into his office and told them what he had to do to save their necks. A few sunny decades for
the ordinary guy. An unwinding. A return to the old world order.
The thems of Europe following our lead.
Antiderivative:
I am ignorant on this literature, but my hunch is that the mixed results found in the literature
boils down to defining democracy.
Democracy is defined as equal participation among citizens. One one hand, the US is very
democratic; one-person, one vote.
However, our democracy is not strictly contingent on votes. It is also based on how many
resources you own and how you can use those resources to influence politicians via think tanks,
advocacy groups, lobbying, bribes, etc.
Most citizens simply cannot participate in this type of democracy since they lack the resources,
making the US system highly undemocratic.
Therefore, if you are just looking at votes rather than actual ability to fully participate,
then you the US (and probably other countries) become much less democratic. If all citizens
could participate equally in a democracy, then I believe we would find more equitable outcomes.
Evidence shows that our democracy is more responsive to people who have more resources. Is
this really surprising?
There is a negative cycle at work. Politicians need two things, money and votes. As government
checks out more and more from helping ordinary people, they become disillusioned and just stop
voting. That leaves all politicians, including the Democrats who may actually be inclined to
do good things for ordinary people, at the mercy of money.
If progressives are ever going to make headway, they need to demonstrate to disillusioned
potential voters how they are digging their own graves by staying away from the polls and conceding
control of government to money. Standard get-out-the-vote campaigns are important but not sufficient.
A massive campaign to make people understand they need to vote if the power of money is going
to be reduced is necessary. They also need to understand that it's going to be a long slog,
and must persist in the face of inevitable disappointments. Massive turnouts, besides turning
Republicans out of office, will also tend to make Democrats live up to their name.
Charlie Baker:
It seems that this is an important insight that Acemoglu and Robinson could widen, particularly
to understand the political capture in the US:
"Elites who see their de jure power eroded by democratization may sufficiently increase their
investments in de facto power, for example by controlling local law enforcement, mobilizing
non-state armed actors, lobbying, or capturing the party system."
I would add to this list:
-- increasing corporate control and concentration of the mass media
-- increased use of so-called "voter fraud prevention" methods to effectively disenfranchise
various voting groups
-- funding of think tanks to promulgate policy positions that favor capital over labor
-- focused effort at the state level to counter popular will at the federal level (such as gerrymandering)
I'm sure there are more and subtler methods by which elites can counter the popular will.
To my mind, the gridlock in the US is an expression that it takes enormous de facto effort to
counter the popular will.
The unemployment insurance extension offers a current example. Polls show majority support
for the extension:
Yet there is little notice of this in our capital, and little notice of this discrepancy
in the media. In point of fact, those who oppose such an extension are favored to do well or
make gains in the next election.
Richard:
There are two points that have not received enough emphasis,First the U.S. constitution was
designed to favor the creation of an upperclass. Hamilton and Washington were afraid of "the
rabble" taking over the government. Rereading the Federalist papers would be useful for doubters
here. George Mason was afraid that the constitution would create an oligarchy. We only became
a middle class society after the New Deal which was at least the third attempt, after reconstruction
and the square deal, to topple the oligarchy.
Second the New Deal has been undermined by two very powerful forces: Globalization and the
steadily increasing cost of politics. It's amazing to me that in the last 40 years the cost
of running for Congress in a contested race has gone up in dollar terms about thirty fold. Globalization
of course has shattered the regulatory system which reduced fraud and made the middle class
possible.
Jim Harrison:
My read of history is that elites are always in charge but at some junctures the elites favor
democracy because they recognize that the widened participation of the people makes for a more
dynamic and worthwhile community. An old thought: Herodotus made the same point about Athens
in his History, though he called the Athenian system isonomia rather than democracy. Our elites
have lost faith with the democratic ideal. Ergo oligarchy.
Jeffrey678:
"Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political
Systems"
The idea that it is possible to translate concentrations of economic power into political
power . When commercial capital occupies a position of unquestioned ascendancy, it everywhere
constitutes a system of plunder.
Ferguson claims the problem is that voters are too poor, not too stupid or too lazy, to get
what they want.
It seems to me that Paul's greatest advantage over other Republican politicians is that he has
reliably been an early and vocal opponent of unnecessary wars. Unlike every other Republican in
elected office today, Paul was on record as an opponent of the Iraq war from the beginning. Today
even most Republicans
acknowledge that the war was a failure, and there is clearly no appetite for anything like that
again. While other Republicans were berating Obama for intervening in Libya too slowly, Paul
was opposed to the war, and he was likewise an early critic of attacking Syria and arming the opposition.
This has put him on the right side of public opinion and distinguished him from the Obama administration
on a few high-profile issues.
At the same time, Paul has been careful to talk about war in a way that so-called "Jacksonians"
are supposed to appreciate and understand. When he
spoke to the Center for the National Interest earlier this month, he said this:
There is certainly a time for war. But the threshold should be high, and the cause
clear [bold mine-DL].
Colin Powell was fond of saying that "war should be the politics of last resort. We should
have a purpose our people understand and support."
When America is attacked or our interests directly threatened, our country should and will
defend itself with the force and authority of our collective wills. We will seek no other military
objective than complete victory over our attackers.
There are also probably many more Republicans in agreement with Paul's position on Iran than
Dueck
believes. The Iran debate gives Paul the distinction of being virtually the only Republican
in Congress to argue against undermining diplomacy. Earlier this week, Sen. Paul
said that he was opposed to the new sanctions bill while negotiations are ongoing. He
said:
I think while they're negotiating, and if we can see that they're negotiating in good faith,
I don't think it's a good idea to pass sanctions while we're in the midst of negotiations. I
think the bottom line is we should give negotiations a chance. My hope is that sanctions will
avoid war. We've been involved in two long wars in the Middle East. And I think it would
be best if we can do anything possible to try to avoid another war now.
Philip Giraldi: "The addition of 40,000 soldiers and cops at this point, just two weeks before
the Opening Ceremonies, is more cosmetic than effective... Ultimately, fear of terrorism should
impel us to behave cautiously, but it is a manageable risk and should not become a reason to avoid doing
the things one wants to do."
The last time the Olympic Games were confronted with a serious, capable, and active terrorist
movement was at the 1992 Barcelona Games, when the Euskadi ta Akatasuna (ETA) threatened to stage
attacks to highlight its demands for an independent Basque homeland. Currently, the Russian Olympic
sponsors of the Sochi Games, which open on February 7th, are confronted by what is quite
possibly an even greater threat.
... ... ...
I was the CIA's principal officer in Barcelona for the 1992 Games and also worked with the Chinese
National Police in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Based on those experiences, I would
note that the addition of 40,000 soldiers and cops at this point, just two weeks before the
Opening Ceremonies, is more cosmetic than effective. They will not know what to do and will
be, in a sense, little more than additional targets. Even the estimated total of as many as 100,000
security personnel being in place do not guarantee good results. Olympic security planning, alas,
should begin soon after the bid is accepted by the International Olympic Committee and there is
no quick fix for it. I spent three years in place in Barcelona doing little beyond working with
my Spanish counterparts to plan and eventually implement security arrangements that included physical
barriers, intelligence gathering, crowd control, and training of personnel. The Spanish devoted
considerable resources to the effort and one of the first permanent facilities set up to support
the Games was a fusion center where intelligence could be shared and decisions could be made in
real time in response to any perceived threat.
The security for a large scale public event like the Olympic Games is particularly difficult
as there must be relatively free access to events combined with protection for visitors and participants.
It generally is structured in concentric rings, incrementally increasing the level of scrutiny as
one proceeds. The outermost level is static and consists of heavy police and military presence at
the fringes of the target area to serve as a deterrent and tripwire for any terrorist attempt.
Sochi benefits from being geographically isolated, but it now appears that Putin will also extend
the security perimeter outward to include checks on all roads and rail lines entering the region
from the mountains behind the city and along the shoreline of the Black Sea. The approaches from
the water and the port will be under the control of the Russian Navy and Coast Guard.
Sochi International Airport is modern and has excellent security, with connecting flights from
most major Russian cities. One can expect anyone transiting any Russian airport on the way to Sochi
to encounter intense scrutiny, so it might be advisable to fly with Austrian Airlines or Turkish
Airlines, both of which connect to Sochi. The Russians will also
require visas from nearly all foreign visitors, which will be used as a security tool. The screening
of arrivals from abroad will be intense, requiring evidence of jobs, income, and other relevant
documents.
Once inside the perimeter, there will be two basic levels of security. Sports venues and the
Olympic village will have physical and procedural measures in place, including fences, CCTV, and
metal detectors as well as security badges linked to access controls. Other public spaces such as
hotels, city parks, and squares will have highly visible security in place, but it will be less
proactive. One should assume that anyone who appears to be central Asian in origin and any woman
wearing Islamic garb will likely be stopped repeatedly, as the Russians are unlikely to be concerned
with issues like "profiling."
The United States government has offered to work with the Russians on Sochi but has been
politely turned down because the Russians believe, correctly, that they understand their own security
environment very well. One can assume that they have been doing NSA-type intensive monitoring
of electronic transmissions and phone calls for at least the past year. And the Federal Security
Service (FSB) no doubt has a host of informants on tap to provide information on groups operating
in or potentially threatening Sochi. In spite of the Russian desire to go it alone, it is nevertheless
my understanding that there will be both Russian-speaking CIA and FBI personnel in the Sochi
fusion center to provide assistance upon request, together with representatives from a number of
European countries. The U.S. Navy will also have ships in international waters in the Black
Sea to provide support, or even an evacuation, if called upon.
The principal challenge for Sochi is the relatively new threat posed by the suicide bomber. Since
the date for the Games has been known for years, it should be assumed that parts for bombs might
have been smuggled into Sochi weeks or even months ago, so the threat might materialize both
inside and outside the security perimeter. Suicide bombers who are able to approach a security
checkpoint pose a unique threat in that they can create a major incident just by virtue of detonating
their explosives even if they only kill themselves, accomplishing their goal of creating uncertainty
over the Russian handling of the security of the Games.
... ... ...
Ultimately, fear of terrorism should impel us to behave cautiously, but it is a manageable
risk and should not become a reason to avoid doing the things one wants to do.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National
Interest.
Thomas O. Meehan , January 28, 2014
What gets lost in some narratives, but not this one, is that THESE ARE THE OLYMPICS! For
those of us who revere our western heritage, they are part of our patrimony. Beyond this, the
whole civilized world recognizes the high-minded significance of these games. Free men and
women should travel to the Olympics wherever they are held, showing solidarity with the spirit
of athletic excellence pursued in peace and mutual respect.
Let the barbarians plot.
Fran Macadam, January 28, 2014
It's too bad that cooperation between American and Russian expertise has been undermined
by a resurgence of anti-Russian enmity that our own propaganda had us convinced was anti-Soviet
and genuinely ideological. In addition, it's credible for the Russians to believe that
the voracious American penchant for surveillance would mean that cooperation would be a subterfuge
of only secondary interest, with the real interest being intelligence penetration efforts. Overreach
is counterproductive, distracting and ultimately wasteful as well.
Hooly says:
If the Chinese can pull off a safe Olympics, then I'm sure the Russians can as well.
Philip Giraldi
John – The State Department says pretty much the same thing in its travel warning for Sochi
– suicide bombers will want to inflict maximum casualties so they will go for buses, trains,
etc and large groups of people. If you want to be safe, avoid buses & trains and use taxis or
walk.
RadicalCenter2016 says:
Philip: Really enjoy your writing and rely on your expertise. But I don't see how someone
attending the Olympics can possibly avoid large crowds!
Beijing Expat
-> If the Chinese can pull off a safe Olympics, then I'm sure the Russians can
as well.
I was living in Beijing already in 2008. And the Olympics were a paranoid, lifeless affair
to many locals. I mean: On top of the usual annoyances. "No fun" sums it up best and there was
not much of a "welcome" spirit going around. I skipped the whole thing.
-> If you want to be safe, avoid buses & trains and use taxis or walk. If you
see a crowd gathering go the other way. When entering a venue, wait until there is no or a short
line to enter so you are constantly moving. By public spaces I mean avoid areas in squares or
parks where people are congregating in groups.
Yep. Sounds like a lot of fun again. Add in graft & greed and my question is:
Why would I bother please?
Andrew:
@Philip Giraldi
Saudis are in any position to instigate any attack using the Chechens.
Saudis do finance "wahabization" of Russia's Muslim minorities. It is documented fact. Hattab
was definitely a big shot in Chechnya until he was sent to 72 virgins. The problem here is more
in the loss of "agility" by FSB. Today they are "fat cats" of Putin and many themselves are
a security risk.
VikingLS says:
Philip any comment on the threat Prince Bandahar is said to have made to Putin re the Olympics?
No matter how events play out in Kyiv in the coming days, the crisis in Ukraine points to three
fundamental issues that sloganeering about democracy, a "European choice" or torpedoing Putin's
Eurasian dream does little to address. If tomorrow Viktor Yanukovych were to resign the presidency
of Ukraine (he
has now taken "sick leave"), depart the country into exile, and turn control over to opposition
politicians, Ukraine's nightmare would be far from over.
In December, speaking at a roundtable on Ukraine at
the Center for
the National Interest, former U.S. ambassador Steven Pifer suggested that the formation of a
government of national unity might create the political will needed for Ukrainians to get through
the crisis and to take the painful measures needed to implement an association agreement with the
European Union. Belatedly, Yanukovych finally took this advice, when his prime minister Mykola Azarov
resigned and key cabinet positions were offered to leading figures in the opposition. Not surprisingly,
however, this offer was rejected. This highlights the first of the three issues: whoever holds power
in Ukraine must therefore take direct responsibility for the state of the economy. And the news
is not good. The currency continues to depreciate; business confidence in the country's political
stability (and thus a willingness to continue to invest) has been shaken; and Standard and Poor's
has downgraded the country's ratings and assigns a negative outlook to Ukraine's economic prospects.
Some of the measures needed to restore Ukraine to economic health would include slashing government
spending and pushing to raise tariffs on energy - which would both prove highly unpopular throughout
the country. In addition, even if the majority of Ukrainians have European aspirations, the livelihood
of many Ukrainians is directly tied to industries and sectors that either trade with Russia or which
depend on access to Russian inputs (starting with energy). How the opposition might somehow miraculously
navigate the difficulties of ratifying the EU accession agreement over Russian objections without
triggering Russian economic sanctions and retaliation-a maneuver Yanukovych was seemingly unable
to achieve-is not at all clear. The resumption of checks at the Russian-Ukrainian border-which has
slowed trade-also seems to be a deliberate signal that Ukraine's recovery would remain dependent
on keeping a good relationship with Russia. Even without further disruptions, Ukraine's growth
is already predicted to be an anemic 1.8 percent in 2014-so a renewed trade spat with Russia could
plunge the economy into worse straits.
Significantly, Russia has only, so far, purchased some $3 billion in Ukrainian bonds (out of
the commitment to put $15 billion forward) to help Ukraine bridge its short-term liquidity problems.
Despite a promise at the EU-Russia Summit that Russia would honor its full pledge, Moscow has now
suspended further disbursements of its financial rescue package for Ukraine, pending the formation
of a new government. Moreover, if the opposition repudiates the deal Yanukovych reached with Russia
in December, or otherwise indicates that it might not honor the bonds already issued to Russia's
National Welfare Fund, the Russian side would most likely stop the further disbursement of any additional
funds, putting Ukraine in serious risk of defaulting on its obligations and further cratering
the economy. And Ukraine, by the end of March, will need to assemble some $3.8 billion in external
financing.
Moreover, Ukraine's leverage vis-a-vis Russia in terms of energy transshipment
has eroded. In contrast to 2004, when over 80 percent of Russia's natural gas exports to Europe
passed through Ukraine, today the figure is less than 50 percent. If the opposition were to come
to power and repudiate Yanukovych's agreements with Russia (including the provision for discounts
on imports of Russian energy), Russia could reduce some of its gas shipments to Ukraine (and increase
supplies via alternate routes like the Nordstream line, which directly connects Russia to Germany)
without risking the wrath of Western European customers who would be shielded from the impact of
a Russia-Ukraine spat.
The second reality concerns both the nature of the opposition and its degree of control over
the protestors. Yanukovych has faced a formidable troika in Vitali Klitschko (the head of UDAR),
Oleh Tyahnybok (the leader of the Svoboda party) and Arseniy Yatsenyuk (who has taken over the helm
of the Fatherland party from the imprisoned former prime minister Yuliya Tymoshenko). Yet these
three groups do not share a common political or economic program other than opposition to Yanukovych
and a rejection of closer ties with Russia. A coalition government would be potentially very unstable.
In addition, recent developments in Kyiv suggests that the demonstrators and protestors are becoming
radicalized and less responsive to the direction of the opposition leadership. Would a political
compromise that leaves Yanukovych in power to finish out his term of office, for instance, be acceptable
to the foot soldiers of the EuroMaidan? Given the protestors' desire for a clean sweep versus the
politicians' understandable lack of enthusiasm for being handed control of Ukraine in its current
economic state (with a preference for Yanukovych to continue to be held responsible for the situation
so as to destroy any chance he may have for reelection in 2015), the only outcome that might work
is the promise of immediate Western aid and assistance should the opposition come to power to help
mitigate any of the measures Russia might employ.
This, however, touches on the third reality. European political leaders are quick to offer moral
support but are in no position to offer the concrete economic assistance Ukraine needs and that
the opposition, should it come to power, would require in order to stave off a short-term economic
crisis. One reason why S&P downgraded Ukraine was their assessment that Ukraine would not be able
to pay its debts if the "expected financial support from Russia is not realized and no alternative
funding sources can be found." Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is lobbying other European capitals
to put together a more comprehensive aid package for Ukraine, but the expectations of some European
leaders that Russia can be persuaded to let Ukraine go through with its EU association agreement
while continuing to offer Ukraine a financial bailout and lower prices for natural gas seem quite
fanciful.
The history of the recent crisis in Ukraine is one of miscalculations: the EU's belief that Russia
would not oppose Ukraine signing an association agreement; Yanukovych believing that he could repudiate
the agreement with no political cost (which sparked the EuroMaidan protests in the first place)
and then assuming that he could use the crisis to strengthen his government's power-which revitalized
protests that had begun to lose some of their enthusiasm). The risk now is that the opposition will
fall prey to miscalculations-particularly about how easily or quickly Ukraine can recover from crisis
should they force Yanukovych from power.
Nikolas K. Gvosdev, a contributing editor at The National Interest, is a
professor of national-security studies at the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed are entirely
his own.
The "concern" for "human rights" in Ukraine is really rich. Is shooting cops and throwing burning
gasoline on them not being allowed enough in Ukraine? Too many members of western and especially US
elite are drunk on delusions that they can create reality through their will and propaganda.
"It seems astonishing that protesters are risking their lives to join the EU whilst southern
Europeans are bankrupt, unemployed and taxed to the hilt at the hands of Brussels."
Beware of Revolutionaries – Better Yet, Beware of Everyone
The current unrest in the Ukraine is very reminiscent of the failed 'Orange Revolution' that
pushed current pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich (then prime minister under president Leonid
Kuchma) from power when the opposition candidate approved by the West, Viktor Yushchenko, won the
2004 election. Prior to the 2004 election, Yushchenko's handlers launched a propaganda story
about how their man was allegedly poisoned with dioxin. It later came to light that the story was
very likely made up, but it sure helped his election victory along.
'Our' man was finally in power – and soon turned out to be an even worse leader than his predecessor.
The economy tanked and his political supporters split into different factions. Yushchenko's prime
minister Julia Tymoschenko, another darling of the West, apparently got involved in shady deals
– at least that is what the Ukrainian court that sent her to jail in 2011 claims (it involved a
gas deal with Russia – politicians robbing the country blind once they are in power is a well-worn
tradition in the Ukraine and if memory serves, her protestations of innocence were not very convincing).
In fact, both the Kuchma and Yushchenko governments have been referred to as 'kleptocracies' in
US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks.
Yushchenko, the former hero of the revolution, received only 5% of the vote in the 2010 election,
which makes it all the more likely that his power-grab was largely orchestrated (although it is
undoubtedly true that people were fed up with Kuchma and there was probably some hope that things
might change for the better at the time of Yushchenko's election). The main opponent of Yanukovich
in the 2010 election was in fact Ms. Tymoschenko, and he in turn probably mainly won because many
people regarded him as the lesser evil at that point.
The current 'revolution' started after Yanukovich refused to sign a deal with the EU (which
involved more than just trade – he would have had to make various unrelated concessions) and took
what appeared to be a far better deal offered by Putin ($15 billion better at a minimum). We
certainly cannot blame him for not wanting to have anything to do with the socialistic Moloch in
Brussels. It is by the way pretty astonishing that EU politicians feel called upon to make imperious
demands of Yanukovich because he is confronted with street protests. If EU governments were to immediately
resign upon facing massive street protests, neither Rajoy nor Samaras would be in power today.
Former president Viktor Yushchenko and former prime minister Julia Tymoschenko: Orange Revolution
disappointment
(Photo via snb.nu / Author unknown)
Corrupt to the Core?
However, it is a very good bet that Yanukovitch is also upholding the above mentioned
political tradition of robbing his country blind. We can't prove it of course, but plenty of
rumors to this effect certainly exist. If so, then he cannot afford to loosen his grip on power,
otherwise he will run the risk of suffering the same fate as Tymoschenko down the road. Still, he
could presumably lose the next election when Vitaly Klitschko – the ex-boxer who has become the
new revolutionary leader – stands against him and wins. Provided of course that there is no election
fraud – allegations of election fraud tend to surface in every election as it were.
As an aside, as a teenager, Yanukovich was once sentenced for participating in a robbery and
three years later he was again sentenced for assault ('mistakes of youth' according to him). He
also holds academic titles that he seems to have obtained under what appear to be rather dubious
circumstances; his publications are listed by the national library, but cannot be found. His
military rank of major is belied by the non-existence of any military service on his part (all this
is independent of the fact that he could have easily joined the cast of 'Goodfellas' on his looks
alone).
Viktor Yanukovich, who looks like he would make a good bouncer
(Photo credit: Reuters)
Not surprisingly, the Ukraine is listed as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, tied
with Bangladesh, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and Syria. On the surface, the conflict
in the Ukraine is between the Russian-speaking half of the country (where Yanukovich's main support
base is) and the more pro-Western Ukrainian-speaking half.
It appears to an outside observer rather as though various criminal gangs are vying for control
of the State so that they can steal without fear of retribution.
BNP Paribas international financial group represented by UkrSibbank PJSC expresses its deep
respect and is forced to appeal to you for protecting its rights as a reliable strategic investor
of banking system that promotes the development of Ukrainian economy with credit resources.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the largest financial investor in Ukraine,
owns a 15% stake in UkrSibbank PJSC.
Taken the importance you traditionally pay to the investment climate in the country, we hope
that you will not leave without attention an egregious situation that has been developed in
business relations between UkrSibbank PJSC as a lender and the actual owners of AIS corporation
Dmitriy Svyatash and Vasiliy Polyakov as unscrupulous borrowers who have been evading repayment
of debt totaling USD 100 mln for nearly 5 years.
Such loans were granted by our bank in 2007-2009 under personal guarantees of Messrs Svyatash
and Polyakov being the actual owners of AIS corporation, managing its current activities and
now serving as the People's Deputies of Ukraine. However, instead of complying with the terms
and conditions of loan agreements, during all this time the borrowers have been committing acts
qualified by the lawyers as persistent refusal to meet their obligations. They have commenced
bankruptcy proceedings of companies-borrowers and many assets pledged to our Bank have been
illegally transferred through offshore structures to new companies. Messrs Svyatash and Polyakov
are currently continuing their business under `AIS` corporate brand based on newly incorporated
companies that formally bear no indebtedness to UkrSibbank PJSC and report an annual turnover
amounting to USD 800 million. Messrs Dmitriy Svyatash and Vasiliy Polyakov continue making attempts
to evade repaying their debts therefore discrediting the government system of Ukraine they actually
represent in the parliament.
Numerous shifting of dates of court and other proceedings without warning the bank's lawyers,
groundless rejection of their petitions, other procedural irregularities, and finally the cynical
appointment of a court hearing on the national weekend and a holy holiday for all Orthodox Christians,
the Christmas eve, on the 6th of January – this is an incomplete list of facts evidencing that
court decisions are biased and passed in favor of unscrupulous borrowers.
The utmost injustice with regard to UkrSibbank PJSC was the decision of the Court of Appeal
of Kyiv adopted at the hearing on January the 6th when the judge Anna Kryzhanovskaya has de
facto sanctioned the fraudulent schemes and allowed Messrs Svyatash and Polyakov not to repay
USD 100 mln to the Bank. Unfortunately, according to the trend of making judicial verdicts,
we fear that our appeal against this decision will not be treated on a fair basis.
That is why, Mr. President, we are writing to you as the guarantor of observance of legality
in the country to intervene in the situation and help restore the justice.
We hope for your support and assistance in practical confirmation of commitment of the Ukrainian
State to the rule of law. We believe that the willingness of the President of Ukraine, the Government,
and the higher judicial institutions to advocate for the rights of banking institutions will
have a positive impact on the international image of Ukraine and its system of state power.
In addition, this will serve to strengthen the confidence in the judicial and law enforcement
system of the country, which demonstrate its impartiality, the ability to make fair decisions
regardless of political affiliation of the parties.
Jean-Paul Sabet
Chairman of UkrSibbank Supervisory Board"
It remains to be seen whether Yanukovich will intervene on behalf of BNP, but this is quite
a story. Shaking down a big powerful Western bank for $100m. in broad daylight takes some
chutzpa, and the way in which it was done certainly seems to confirm the validity of the Ukraine's
corruption ranking.
Naturally, it seems quite likely that there is genuine frustration in the population over the
state of political affairs in the country. In other words, the protests likely are rooted in genuine
grievances, even though Western powers may have had a hand in their timing. Here is a
BBC update on the latest
developments. One reader sagely commented:
"It seems astonishing that protesters are risking their lives to join the EU whilst southern
Europeans are bankrupt, unemployed and taxed to the hilt at the hands of Brussels."
It is not merely 'astonishing', it really strains credulity. In other words, we don't believe
for a second that people have been standing in the cold for weeks and engaging in battles with the
police because they love Brussels and Herman 'damp rag' Rompuy so much, in spite of his undeniable
haiku-writing talent. It seems far more likely that they are simply hoping that finally a perhaps
somewhat less corrupt political group will take over. That seems quite a tall order considering
the disappointments of the Yushchenko/Tymoschenko era.
There is nationalist revolt going on in Ukraine. MSM is silent on it.
Various futbol hooligan gangs and skin head gangs and other nationalist organiztions are
basically taking over local municipalities and establishing "folk rule". The so called leaders
of ukrainian opposition are all in western jewish pockets on the one hand, while the ruling
party is in the hands of Putin and his russian jewish friends.
The people on the streets are fighting both sides to establish a rule in Ukraine, in Putin's
own words at recent EU-Russia summit, without
"negroes, moscals
(Russians) and kikes".
Here in England some elements of the media have a fascination with `football hooligans`.
Although our indiginous species stopped fighting and started hugging once alcohol was removed
from sale at games and the drugs Ecstacy and MDMA became popular.
A recent TV documentary examined the culture of tribal/gang violence among football supporters
in different nations. I understant the episode made in Ukraine was cut short for the safety
of the film crew. Properly scary urban violence out there.
If anybody missed this link yesterday (hat tip to original poster) the images are of incredible
quality and content.
Just an observation: BNP failed to mention that the money they loaned was made up out of
thin air. If it ever had repo-able collateral behind it, they would have attached it already.
So who's the crook?
BNP wants the crooks who stole their funny money to promise to shake down Ukrainian taxpayers.
That's between the lines.
My God I do love it so.
When the oligarchs 'stage-manage' mass revolts and takeover the regime, the big losers
include the democratic electorate and most of the protestors. Leftists and progressives,
in the West or in exile, who had mindlessly supported the 'mass revolts' will publish their
scholarly essays on 'the revolution (sic) betrayed" without admitting to their own betrayal
of democratic principles.
If and when the Ukraine enters into the European Union, the exuberant street demonstrators
will join the millions of jobless workers in Greece, Portugal and Spain, as well as millions
of pensioners brutalized by "austerity programs" imposed by their new rulers, the 'Troika'
in Brussels. If these former demonstrators take to the streets once more, in disillusionment
at their leaders' "betrayal", they can enjoy their 'victory' under the batons of "NATO and
European Union-trained police" while the Western mass media will have moved elsewhere in
support of 'democracy'.
No matter what it really is that is happening in Ukraine, you can fucking well bet that there's
a 13th Tribe effort to keep the pot stirred...from all sides of the equation. That's what they
do. Profit$ of Conflict.
imperialism is when strong countries use any and all means to influence the economics of
a target country.
bribery,
spymanship
threat of x,y,z covert
threat of outright open destruction invation.
weakest non-imperial countries are rife with internal corruption not only because corruption
exists as part of the human condition, but because it is a result of proliferation of imperial
influence.
the strong countries, have their own internal corruption as well. but any purifying influence
of the public condemnation of corrupt behavior is at least more valuable viz-a-viz the influence
of outside imperial minority interests.
thus, as a sheeple of the usa, you are not dealing with the ukranian or russian governments
influence. --only the internal corruption of your home country for the most part.
as a sheeply in ukraine , you have influence peddling of many imperial actors running against
you.
to start off with Martin Armstrong must have has his brain matter severly tweaked at Fort
Dix prior to his release and hasn't been capable of any coherent thinking since his release.
but to the point. was it merely fortuitous that the present turmoil was instigated around the
time of the latest IMF Article IV consultations with the Ukraine government and large financial
institutions on December 13, 2013? probably not. referring to IMF documents themselves concerning
the vast indebtedness incurred and accruing exponentially due to IMF structual adjustments,
the noose has been tightened significantly with the IMF, so called "donors", hedge funds et
al... calling as usual for significant "concessions" such as increased taxation, gutting of
government pension funds, currency depreciation and rising interest rates, along with wage and
price controls leading to endemic unemployment. the IMF pulling all these economic levers
is the 800 pound gorilla in the room which no one seems to notice,
resulting in the predictable and inevitable IMF economic destabilization and accompanying riots
which have been the template for the past several decades in third world and "emerging" economies
and most recently in the Eurozone. The gangster Yanukovich and his various satraps ensconced
in the banking system are the economic hatchet men and hegemons for the IMF overlords while
engaged in the favorite IMF recompense, gratuitously looting the national treasury and privatizing
state resources and utilities at the expense of national development. as in Krygyzstan in 2010,
when the Basiev family after their particular "color revolution" played the Russians off against
the Americans after eviscerating the economy, plundering the treasury and transferring the assets
and physical wealth of the Kumtor gold mine to foreign donors and themselves and their cronies
the result was massive social unrest, urban violence and sanguinary, ethnic strife.
"What for some of us might appear then to be merely another titillating third world IMF
riot á la Joseph Stiglitz suddenly assumes a larger proportion, perhaps foreshadowing the
rapidly evolving and inevitable confrontation brewing between the U.S., China, and the resurgent
Russian federation as the world economic structural collapse accelerates and access to dwindling
energy, food, and water resources becomes an increasingly essential concern of national
security agendas."
As Ukraine heads toward the presidential election scheduled to take place in 2015, political
developments in Ukraine probably will continue to be shaped by opposition and public anger over
the Yanukovych administration's abuse of power, the need for Yanukovych to maintain the loyalty
of key elites, and his efforts to balance Ukraine's relationship with Russia and the West. Political
developments in Ukraine will increasingly be shaped by public protests over Yanukovych's refusal
to sign the Association Agreement (AA) and the presidential election scheduled to take place in
2015.
Yanukovych backed away from signing the AA with the EU at the Eastern Partnership Summit in November
2013, probably because Moscow offered the only option for immediate financial support to avert a
financial crisis that would threaten his reelection bid.
Firmly intent on maintaining his hold on power, Yanukovych will probably resort to coercion,
extralegal means, and other tactics to tilt the playing field in his favor and ensure his reelection,
threatening a further erosion of democratic norms.
The first tranche of Russia's $15 billion aid package that Kyiv and Moscow signed in December
will allow Kyiv to stave off a fiscal crisis in the short term but risks increasing Ukraine's economic
dependence on Moscow. Russia's aid package removes incentives for Kyiv to enact painful economic
reforms necessary to spur growth, and the ambiguous terms of the bailout leave Kyiv more vulnerable
to Russian pressure, particularly on energy issues.
We've been here before. For the past couple of months
street protests in Ukraine
have been played out through the western media according to a well-rehearsed script. Pro-democracy
campaigners are battling an authoritarian government. The demonstrators are demanding the right
to be part of the European Union. But Russia's president Vladimir Putin has vetoed their chance
of freedom and prosperity.
It's a story we've heard in one form or another again and again – not least in Ukraine's western-backed
Orange revolution a decade ago. But it bears only the sketchiest relationship to reality. EU membership
has never been – and very likely never will be – on offer to Ukraine. As in Egypt last year, the
president that the protesters want to force out was elected in a poll judged fair by international
observers. And many of those on the streets
aren't very keen on democracy at all.
You'd never know from most of the reporting that
far-right nationalists and fascists have been at the heart of the protests and attacks on government
buildings. One of the three main opposition parties heading the campaign is the hard-right antisemitic
Svoboda, whose
leader Oleh Tyahnybok claims that a "Moscow-Jewish mafia" controls Ukraine. But US senator John
McCain was happy to share a platform with him in Kiev last month. The party, now running the city
of Lviv, led a 15,000-strong torchlit march earlier this month in memory of the Ukrainian fascist
leader Stepan Bandera, whose forces fought with the Nazis in the second world war and took part
in massacres of Jews.
But Ukrainians are deeply divided about both European integration and the protests – largely
along an axis between the largely Russian-speaking east and south (where the Communist party still
commands significant support), and traditionally nationalist western Ukraine. Industry in the
east is dependent on Russian markets, and would be crushed by EU competition.
It's that historic faultline at the heart of Ukraine that the west has been trying to exploit
to roll back Russian influence since the 1990s, including a concerted attempt to draw Ukraine into
Nato. The Orange revolution leaders were encouraged to send Ukrainian troops into Iraq and Afghanistan
as a sweetener.
Nato's eastward expansion was halted by the Georgian war of 2008 and Yanukovych's later election
on a platform of non-alignment. But any doubt that the EU's effort to woo Ukraine is closely connected
with western military strategy was dispelled today
by Nato's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who declared that the abortive pact with
Ukraine would have been "a
major boost to Euro-Atlantic security".
Which helps to explain why politicians like John Kerry and William Hague have been so fierce
in their condemnation of Ukrainian police violence – which has already left several dead – while
maintaining such studied restraint over the killing of thousands of protesters in Egypt since last
year's coup.
Not that Yanukovych could be mistaken for any kind of progressive. He has been
backed to the hilt by billionaire oligarchs who seized control of resources and privatised companies
after the collapse of the Soviet Union – and fund opposition politicians and protesters at the same
time. Indeed, one interpretation of the Ukrainian president's problems is that the established oligarchs
have had enough of favours granted to
an upstart group known as "the family".
It's anger at this grotesque corruption and inequality, Ukraine's economic stagnation and
poverty that has brought many ordinary Ukrainians to join the protests – as well as outrage at police
brutality. Like Russia, Ukraine was beggared by the neoliberal shock therapy and mass privatisation
of the post-Soviet years. More than half the country's national income was lost in five years and
it has yet fully to recover.
Whether that calms or feeds the unrest will be clear soon enough. But the risk of the conflict
spreading – leading political figures have warned of civil war – is serious. There are other steps
that could help defuse the crisis: the creation of a broad coalition government, a referendum on
EU relations, a shift from a presidential to a parliamentary system and greater regional autonomy.
The breakup of Ukraine would not be a purely Ukrainian affair. Along with China's emerging challenge
to US domination of east Asia, the Ukrainian faultine has the potential to draw in outside powers
and lead to a strategic clash. Only Ukrainians can overcome this crisis. Continuing outside interference
is both provocative and dangerous.
andyman85
And there was me thinking the BBC and other mainstream outlets had made it perfectly clear
that Ukraine is very divided, that the opposition does not present a unified movement with a
clear program, and that the protests include violent far-right elements.
Must've imagined that coverage, unless the author is just following his usual game of trying
to twist anything and everything round to somehow blaming "the West" (presumably he's still
sore about the collapse of his beloved USSR).
Swedinburgh -> andyman85
Oh have they indeed? Most mainstream outlets have been going gaga about Vitaliy Klitschko's
involvement as a spokesman for the opposition and kept the likes of Svoboda well out of sight.
JoeProp11 -> andyman85
Quite right. And I'm not aware of any media talking about EU membership for Ukraine, this
is just something that ignorant people assume because they have no real knowledge of how the
EU works. All the info is out there if people want to read it.
I read this article like this author's previous work: everyone is awful, "the West" (as if
we are all represented by failed presidential candidate McCain) are the most awful, blah blah
blah. Tiresome.
spiralpad
Like Russia, Ukraine was beggared by the neoliberal shock therapy and mass privatisation
of the post-Soviet years
It was looting, pure and simple - the theft of assets worked for and paid for by the people.
nonanon1 -> spiralpad
I'm no friend of neoliberalism but what went on in Ukraine and Russia was larceny on grand
scale. Ukrainians look to Europe as an alternative to the Russian kleptocratic model of all
pervasive corruption, violations of human rights, obscene inequalities and democracy which is
nothing more than a crumblig facade.
They look at other post soviet block countries, such as Poland, where by the way the shock
theraphy was also applied post 1989, and see that democratic and relatively prosperous future
is possible. There is geopolitics and unsavory faces of ukrainian nationalism but peoples aspirations
studiously ignored by the author are real enough.
PapaQuebec -> nonanon1
Ukrainians look to Europe as an alternative to the Russian kleptocratic model of all
pervasive corruption, violations of human rights, obscene inequalities and democracy which
is nothing more than a crumblig facade.
Does the phrase "Physician, heal thyself" not come to mind?
terziev -> nonanon1
Alternative? I am Bulgarian citizen, EU member from 2007. We have 'kleptocratic model of
all pervasive corruption' with French, Austrian, US and even Russian corporations championing
it.
Lifesaparty
God! (not you, though, Seumas) It's so good to read a sensible article about this affair.
I started to wonder if, and I too came to think of Egypt, if people are completely mad when
they so fullheartedly embrace any uproar and any demonstration against 'The Government'.
Lifesaparty
Only Ukrainians can overcome this crisis. Continuing outside interference is both provocative
and dangerous.
That is the best that I have ever heard about this and the reason is that it seems that both
the EU and the USA are jumping up at every opportunity to meddle and bring 'order' to other
countries, despite that hard experience should tell us that so far our meddling has brought
many things but peace and order aren't among them.
NeverReadGuardian
This is an excellent article. These so called "protests" are a nationalistic coup and
as such primarily anti-Russian rather than pro-European as these extremests are cynically claiming.
That's why the "protests" will not end until Yanukovich resigns even if he offers further
concessions and that is why the West is so keen for the protest and violence to continue. Putin
should abolish the promised bailout and then those "democrats" committing the acts of violence
should explain the Ukrainians why their beloved EU is not helping!
exiledoffmainstreet
Milne's commentary is spot on as usual. He has pinpointed the fact that the neoliberal expansionist
forces are not averse to using outright fascists in their effort to destabilise the situation.
The "received wisdom" won't accept this. Instead, professional lackeys such as Fogh Rasmussen
and thugs such as McCain are there inciting another conflagration.
richardofbirmingham
Bearing in mind that Europe embarked on a terrible conflict nearly one hundred years ago
in circumstances that bear some analogy to this fracas, should not the Westminster Parliament
be setting aside time to reflect upon where this might be taking us all.
Its not something to be left to either the Commission or State Department to decide as regards
our own involvement nor for that matter our own Foreign Office whose recent track record is
looking distinctly lacking in sure footedness.
Rozina
There are other steps that could help defuse the crisis: the creation of a broad coalition
government, a referendum on EU relations, a shift from a presidential to a parliamentary
system and greater regional autonomy.
Dear Seumas,
President Yanukovych did offer Batkivshchyna Party leader Arseny Yatseniuk the position of
Prime Minister which the other man refused. Probably no wonder then that the current PM Mykola
Azarov resigned.
As for greater regional autonomy, that would not necessarily benefit Ukraine as a whole:
there are many factors that don't encourage pan-Ukrainian cohesiveness. The eastern and southern
parts of the country (which support Yanukovych's Party of Regions) are more industrially developed
and have higher percentages of Russian speakers among their populations; the western parts (pro-Orange
/ Euro Maidan protests) are poorer and more nationalist, and have a diaspora population that
supports a nationalist agenda and might be interfering in Ukrainian politics. The western and
eastern parts don't have much in common to begin with and regional autonomy is likely to lead
to a permanent split.
The eastern part probably subsidises the western part and might be happy to see the west
split off and become the EU's ready supply of unskilled low-wage white slave migrant labour,
prostitutes and mercenaries for future wars in distant lands.
A split would create problems - one such being which part of Ukraine gets Kyiv as its capital
(we see this problem elsewhere with, for example, Jerusalem being claimed in its entirety by
Israel and in its eastern part by Palestinians) - and there would be no guarantee that either
part would be content with its territory and would try to subvert the government of the other
part on spurious historical or cultural grounds to "reunite" Ukraine.
Shifting from a presidential system to a parliamentary system might just be a another way
of re-arranging the SS Titanic's deck-chairs in the current Ukrainian context. The UK's current
Westminster system of parliamentary politics didn't exactly stop Tony Blair from developing
delusions of grandeur.
Poland has a GDP per capita three times that of Ukraine as a whole and the Western Ukrainians
know this. They believe that with better government and as part of an EU they would be better
off then they are now.
I know many people from western Ukraine, they are intelligent and well educated and to describe
them in the terms that you do is insulting.
Seamus Milne's 'Hitler made the trains run on time' statement :-
"For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and
elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances
in social and gender equality. It encompassed genuine idealism and commitment... Its existence
helped to drive up welfare standards in the west, boosted the anticolonial movement and provided
a powerful counterweight to western global domination"
Mussolini made the trains run on time (apochraphally), not Hitler.
Otherwise you are correct, looking back to the USSR as some sort of Nirvana nullifies
history and stamps on the graves of the victims. If I were to say it is evil I would get
modded, so I won't.
Rozina
Not that Yanukovych could be mistaken for any kind of progressive. He has been backed
to the hilt by billionaire oligarchs who seized control of resources and privatised companies
after the collapse of the Soviet Union – and fund opposition politicians and protesters
at the same time.
Millionaire / billionaire heads of private or privatised companies backing both sides of
politics? Par for the course in most Western countries.
mojahataskraju
Thank you Seumas for the honest analysis of Ukrainian pro-EU "revolution".
It's very rare event in western media today. Everybody is apparently looking for personal
profit in a political turmoil. The nation was fooled once in 1991 with the promises of prosperity
on a "cakewalk" to capitalism and independence. Now it is ready to be cheaply sold on "European
values" in the time of economic crisis. New round of privatization will bring more wealth for
wealthy and more belt-tightening for the rest. The country may even split in a violent civil
war skillfully incited from abroad. Western mass media will then have plentiful opportunities
to write about hungry, displaced, terrified people.
JonCymru
"I can only imagine what the reaction would be if in the heat of the crisis in Greece
or Cyprus, our foreign minister came to an anti-European rally and began urging people to do
something. This would not be good," Putin said. "I'm sure the Ukrainian people will sort this
out and Russia is not going to interfere."
Well he has a point, as I understand it, if Ukraine held a referendum on closer ties with
the EU and eventually joining the people who want in would loose, and this wouldn't be one of
those mickey mouse referendums that Brussels can turn round and say "vote again till you get
the right answer". It's all very well sending nobodies like Ashton over there but the silence
from actual European leaders speaks volumes, they don't have the appetite for another eastern
country joining up, they can't sell that to the electorate so are keeping their gobs shut.
The full speech is here: http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/6575
. Future historians will be shaking their heads over Western hysteria and hypocrisy one day. As
one commenter put it: "Brussels is trying to undermine the Ukraine, aided and abetted by Big Banks,
Big Business, Big Pharma, and Big Bureaucrats. The EUSSR wants 'lebensraum' to join in with its Utopianist
expansive plans of a new Holy Roman Empire off Semi-autonomous States within the EU." Reminds me the
the situation before WWI. Looks like it took 70 years for Western European leaders to forget the lessons
of previous war. Europe uber alles is in fashion again. Now correspondents of major Western MSM are
used by their bosses as sort of a dead skunk that a feuding neighbor throws into your yard.
"The more intermediaries there are, the more problems there are," Putin said. "I am not sure
Ukraine needs intermediaries." He pointedly noted that European leaders would complain if Russia
sent envoys to mediate in the Greek crisis of the past four years.
... ... ...
Azarov, who has described protesters as "terrorists", had offered his resignation. He said he
hoped the move would help achieve a peaceful resolution to the crisis that has gripped the country
for more than two months.
"The conflict situation which has come about in the country is threatening the economic and social
development of Ukraine, creating a threat to the whole of Ukrainian society and to each citizen,"
he said.
IGrumble
Absolutely - Brussels is trying to undermine the Ukraine, aided and abetted by Big Banks,
Big Business, Big Pharma, and Big Bureaucrats. The EUSSR wants 'lebensraum' to join in with
its Utopianist expansive plans of a new Holy Roman Empire off Semi-autonomous States within
the EU.
It will all fail in the coming years, just like the Eurozone will.
Klasco
Pretty surprised by the amount of pro-Russia comments in the Guardian. Would thought
u guys would all over at RT jerking off to its coverage of 'the terrible rotting West'. EU may
have its problems but Russia as an alternative? ..right.
Yes EU and RU are going to meddle in things, Putin saying EU should stay out is like a politician
telling his opposite that they should stop playing politics, of course they are both playing
politics cos they are both politicians.
The protest going isn't just about the EU and RU anymore its about the dumb way the Ukraine
gov played its cards as well.
pillau -> Klasco
Klasco, Russians will stay with Russia. Two thirds of Ukraine are Russians. Therefore, making
them part of Europe and asking them to fight the rest of Russia is exceedingly stupid thing
to do. By swallowing Ukraine EU will develop severe indigestion that eventually will kill it.
The whole propaganda campaign of the past 20 years, subsidized by EU, was to make Russian
Ukranians speak the language of Ukrainian Taliban from the mountains. They do not want to, and
elected Yanukovich.
Current 'protests' are a very well organised campaign to intimidate the majority who voted
for the government which decided to choose the only path that can save Ukraine from immediate
collapse , and that is to take a loan from Russia.
The only path to avert a civil war is to split the country in 2.
EU will not allow this, and thus will assure near permanent instability and misery for Ukraine.
Continent
@sepiae
With £9bn promised to the Ukrainian government and thus having it by the leash Putin has
quite some balls spouting such remarks.
With £9bn Putin made just the better offer. In December 2013 the Ukraine was on the brink
of bankruptcy and had asked the EU for €20 billion in aid to offset the cost of signing the
EU deal The most Brussels has so far offered is €610 million in macro-economic assistance.
""We will abide by our commitments," he said. "The loan and reduction in gas prices are not
based on a particular government but desire to help people, in contrast to IMF."
The Russian leader agreed with calls on the Ukraine government not to use force against protesters
but also demanded that the EU condemn Ukrainian nationalists taking part in the protests.
"In the west of Ukraine a priest is urging the crowd to go to Kiev and to start storming
the government, the Russians and the Jews," he said.
"This is an extreme expression of nationalism it is completely unacceptable in the civilised
world."
Why has the Guardian cut this bit out? It sounds a reasonable comment to me.
Jeremn
The actual quote is this;
"For example, a priest in Western Ukraine was calling on the crowd to go to Kiev and topple
the Government so as to – using his own words – "prevent negroes, russkies and yids from telling
us what to do in our own home". First of all, it is astounding to hear this from a religious
figure. Second, this is radical nationalism of a kind that is totally unacceptable in the civilised
world. We should call on the Ukrainian Government and President Yanukovych to use civilised
methods, but at the same time, we should look at what his political opponents are doing too
and call on them to also use civilised methods to fight their political battles."
Putin is very worried obviously, an EU Ukraine is a massive threat to the national security
of Russia, if the EU is successful then the US will almost have its missile defense shield over
Russia.
Miriam Bergholz
The rise of neo-nazi movements?
I think that it is a good idea to stay away especially after reading an article in "Spiegel"
that enlightens a little bit the mess, and make me wonder why the EU is visiting the protesters:
Prepared to Die': The Right Wing's Role in Ukrainian Protests
"With 10 percent support, Svoboda is the fourth-strongest group in parliament. Klitschko
and the Tymoshenko party need its backing. Plus, the party is a key player in the protests.
But Klitschko plays down Svoboda's right-wing stance. "We have different ideologies, but two
things connect us," Klitschko says. "We are fighting against those in power today and we want
European values for our country."
Flirting with the Right Wing
The Svoboda party also has excellent ties to Europe, but they are different from the ones
that Klischko might prefer. It is allied with France's right-wing Front National and with the
Italian neo-fascist group Fiamma Tricolore. But when it comes to the oppression of homosexuality,
representative Myroshnychenko is very close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, even if he
does all he can to counter Moscow's influence in his country.
Scipio1 -> AnaGram2
Naïve or what! Ukraine is in an awkward geopolitical position insofar as it lies between
the American Empire (sorry I mean the US vassal states of the EU) and Russia. As such these
outside powers use their local proxies as the local political stalking horses in the drama.
Ukraine can either join Oceania (the US/EU) or Eurasia (Russia), it cannot be independent and
it will not be allowed to be independent. As is the case in the middle east.
Russia regards the Ukraine as its legitimate sphere of influence, America does not recognise
any spheres of influence, other than its own of course, which includes the whole globe. So the
Ukraine is up for grabs. Sorry you nationalists, but this is the new global order. Get used
to it, the days of independent nation states is over. Rule from Washington/Brussels or Moscow.
That is the choice. You are just pawns in the game of global geo-politics.
muskoka
Bravo Putin, you're an international statesman of the highest order.
You saved us from an asinine military confict over Syria.
You've tamed the Iranians and gotten them to listen.
You've exposed the Americans for their moral hypocrisy on the world stage, (and in the New
York Times op-ed page too).
And you know what the self-important, unelected, meddlesome bureaucrats in Brussels are in
denial about: the European Union is a sinking ship.
Rialbynot -> ubiktd Jon
Geopoliticists in Berlin have always had an obsession about conquering Ukraine, but I never
thought they would stoop to so flagrantly exploiting the naivety of an elderly Portuguese ex-Maoist,
a Bliarite English plaything, and a has-been Little Russian boxer in order to achieve their
Endziel.
HauptmannGurski -> Rialbynot
This ex-Berliner can tell you that Berlin is not about conquering - any more. There are some
people who are capable of learning. Admittedly it was made easy by the results, the ruins amongst
which I grew up. Photos of the time are still prominently displayed and update the learning
process to current generations.
And besides, nobody can say that in public but knowing my former countrymen and women they'd
say behind closed doors "Who'd want these people in the tent? Every time they don't like something
they throw a tantrum? And then they come to us for money to build it up again? No thanks." There's
a German term 'wes Geistes Kind' which doesn't translate terribly well, but means they're displaying
a mentality and attitude that leaves a lot to be desired.
ChukTatum
Putin's clearly getting very nervous with the Sochi olympics, the protests in Kiev, and all
the fuss generated about gay and other human rights in Russia. This is the moment for the EU
and the US to forget their differences about the spying and join in to stick it to Putin and
his thug regime. This could become his
Ceaucescu
moment, spreading out from Kiev, where the Ukraine puppet regime is wobbling and in the
process of capitualting, onto Moscow and St Petersburg. As McCain said, your time is up Vlad!
The upcoming
NATO security conference in Munich would be the perfect opportunity to put on a very ostentatious
and public display of western democratic unity and harmony and for the old democratic allies
EU+US to bury the hatchet and their differences and declare moral war on Putin's fascist gangster
state.
HelloLenin -> ChukTatum
Oh the smell of Russophobia in the morning!
HelloLenin -> ChukTatum
I'm well aware that the RF is capitalist.
But Russia is anti-imperialist, I will stand with them and multipolarity against the west.
200gnomes -> ChukTatum
There are no differences on the NSA spying only full cooperation from our european leaders.
Putin is democratically elected, and the USA hmm, fascism being the merger between corporate
interest and state check, gangster check and what moral highground exactly? Guantanomo bay or
illegal warfare, highjacking the world with a war on drugs, 1% of its citizens incarcerated,
higher income difference than Brazil. On what moral ground do you mean exactly, my little angel?
maureenincork
Catherine Ashton? Never stood for election in her life but, nevertheless, she's
on the top EU echelon now. It's who you know, not what you know in this European Project, you
serfs and villeins. This woman is titled, don't you know, and should be addressed as Baroness
Upminster although Putin might not care for this high-falutin' stuff.
putinhero -> maureenincork
Her husband runs Yougov. Think of that next time you read some opinion polls.
richardofbirmingham
Most of us probably hope for harmonious and close relations with the Ukraine ( and Russia
), and, in the Ukraine's case even at some future point an association with the eu once the
British have managed to get it to reform so as to row back from the super state fixation.
However who authorised the eu's Brussels representative to meddle; did the UK. How does it
correspond with our interests.
This has some similarities with how the First World War started. Its also worth remembering
that expansion ' to the east ' was a principal driver for the Second World War in which this
part of the world was a major element.
AnaGram2 -> richardofbirmingham
Excuse me, but are you asking the right questions here? Just who has authorised PUTIN to
meddle? Putin is the one who's brought us to this juncture. He just had to go and meddle, and
in a really big way, in Ukrainian affairs at the time Ukraine was negotiating with the EU. Quite
understandably, people were enraged. Whether Russian or Ukrainian by nationality, most people
in Ukraine prefer a closer association with the far less corrupt European Union than with corrupt
Russia and its horrid little dictator (and whoever wants to argue about that should go and check
their facts first). Now, by "warning" off a European mediator, Putin is trying to act like he
has some kind of authority over Ukraine.
TheRussianGirl -> AnaGram2
You think only from one perspective. Try look at this from a different angle. Of course Putin
is not saint and any person can get enraged by his action. But why shouldn't he think about
Russia in this case. Sorry to tell you but most production in Ukraine won't sant european standards
and all their goods will be sold where? To its nearest neighbors? To us? I mean Russia. Not
everything but a big part of it will go to our country. Do we need it? Well, not really, because
we have our own production and our own economy. Was it a blackmail? You can think whatever you
want. He probably should not have said that just to see how Ukrainian economy would collapse.
But he said a lot of thing because he is all those things you like to name him. Your rage won't
do him any harm.
putinhero
Putin is completely anti-gay.
First of all he has stopped Western interference in Syria. That was totally anti-gay.
Then he has restored the Orthodox Church in Russia, after 80 years of Churches being forcefully
destroyed by Communists. That was totally anti-gay.
Then Putin has worked for peace with other nations. Totally anti-gay.
But Putin defends Russian interests. Totally anti-gay.
Also now we have British, French, Americans all attacking Ukraine and causing riots. They
hope to make a civil war that will then affect Russia. That will only cause a repeat of the
Russian revolution in Russia today. That is all the worst traits of Bolshevism brought back
to today. Totally gay.
detroitobama
These are the actual quotes from Putin:
The more intermediaries there are, the more problems there are. I am not sure Ukraine
needs intermediaries. I can only imagine what the reaction would be if in the heat of the
crisis in Greece or Cyprus, our foreign minister came to an anti-European rally and began
urging people to do something. This would not be good. I'm sure the Ukrainian people will
sort this out and Russia is not going to interfere.
The headline makes it sound like Putin is going to start a war with EU over this issue. But
his quotes reflect common sense and refute the idea that the headline is trying to convey.
OneTop
The delusional and very dangerous EU should stay in Brussels. Are they not satisfied with
destroying the EMU member nations or do they really want to do in the Ukraine as well?
AuntieSmurf
Hang on a minute. Wasn't some Euro apparatchik on here only yesterday telling us all how
the EU had kept the peace for 60 years? And now they're trying to start a war with Russia!
HelloLenin
When it's Egypt, the leadership is a "military government." When it's Ukraine or Syria, it's
a "regime."
It's not rocket science.
For the western imps, the integration of Ukraine into their orbit means:
* expansion of Western business opportunities
* growing isolation of Russia, one of the few countries strong enough to challenge amerikkkan
hegemony.
* influence over transit of Russian gas exports to Europe
* military strategic advantage.
putinhero -> HelloLenin
Not only that. It is the end of nation states in the world. There is no conspiracy. The world
is changing to a world without borders. No more nation states. It will be a brutal hell on earth.
sitarlun
Europe is making a huge mistake by inciting revolt in Ukraine. the Russian's under Putin's
leadership will not tolerate such intrusion into to their neighborhood. The western alliance
tried it before in Georgia and the Russians crushed that country.
Also most of those involved in this revolt are from Galicia and during the ww2 these ultra
right wingers collaborated with the Nazis by fighting a guerilla warfare against the red army.
detroitobama -> whitehawk66
The west would definitely like to see Putin go. They would prefer Russia being ruled by a
traitor like Gorbachev or Yeltsin. Putin is a strong leader who wouldn't bend over for the western
elites who want to control Russia in their quest for global domination. When the west says Russia
should be more democratic what it means is that the country should allow the west to loot them
more (by sending economic hitmen for example).
The fact is Russia has improved a lot since Putin became their leader. The nation is at it's
best since the nightmare of communism and Yeltsin's rule ended.
Lifesaparty
The president of the European council, Herman Van Rompuy, insisted Lady Ashton would seek
to reconcile the two sides in Kiev on the basis of "democratic rules" and aim to prevent an
escalation of violence.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
catveryverybigone2 -> Lifesaparty
What could possibly go wrong with that?
=======
wrong is that she is a side in the conflict....a mediator should be unbiased - for example
some Philipino diplomat or Brazilian diplomat etc - a side of a conflict can't be a mediator
of this conflict...
MartynInEurope
I would guess that quite a few people would not be happy about the Russian Federation meddling
in the relationship between the UK and Ireland, never mind between England and Scotland.
On this issue, Putin is bang on the money.
Lifesaparty -> MartynInEurope
And he makes Ashton and v Rompuy to look like the idle meddling busy bodies that they are.
MartynInEurope -> Lifesaparty
That too, although we've know it for quite a while now, especially in Pants case.
RedMangos
Victoria Nuland has been seen handing out cakes to 'protesters' in Keiv
Imagine that senior figure form a foreign country acting this way.
Think about it, what would London say if Hu Jintao turned up in Berwick-upon-Tweed agitating
for Scottish secessionism.
It will be unacceptable and rightly so.
London will be rightly furious.
Nuland needs to go back to her own country and make sure Americans have getting enough to
eat and an education.
Babeouf
Putin isn't getting nervous he's staying consistent. His message over Libya was that Western
interference would prove a disaster for the Libyans. His message about Ukraine is the same.
Already people in the Crimea are forming self defense youth groups led by ex army officers.
These are to provide support for its succession should the 'Western Coup' prove successful.
The triumph of the opposition will mark the end of Ukraine's integrity. As happened in Georgia
part of Ukraine will unite with Russia. And certainly Putin has plans for just this outcome
Why would he be nervous unless the German army is to march East.
Vaska Tumir
Putin expressly and publicly tell the EU that he sees no conflict between Ukraine's economic
co-operation with both EU and the Euro-Asian trading bloc Russia's building up -- and both the
Western press and the Russophobes who post here claim that Russia is trying to force Ukraine
into something.
Future historians will be shaking their heads over Western hysteria and hypocrisy one
day.
zelazny
This comes down to whether western financial capitalists will control the Ukraine or
the Russians. The Russians will win in the long run. Financial capitalism hasn't long to
live in this world.
Rich Ukrainians want to ally themselves with Europe and screw the poor in their country.
Things don't change. It works like that in every capitalist country, where the rich have the
most, followed by their middle class supporters, and the rest or the majority have little or
nothing.
itsmerob
Vlad knows that the Ukrainian issue is a geopolitical issue. This is about isolating Russia,
with the unelected EU bureaucrats and US playing a dangerous game of provoking Russia in ways
that they themselves would find unacceptable if the roles were reversed. Russia was investing
in the Ukraine, its infrastructure and for the benefit of the Ukrainian people, albeit for their
own benefit, which includes stopping NATO's drive to the east. The EU/US do what they always
do, give money to the country's elites to get there way. It's the Neoliberal way, a rich corrupt
elite and a disenfranchised population. The Ukraine inside the EU would be disastrous for them.
Do they really want to be another Greece, Ireland, Portugal? Asset stripped and tied into debt
slavery. The Ukraine would also be expected to host US missiles aimed at Moscow, thus making
themselves a target for the Russians. Say what you like about Putin, but hes not stupid and
isn't easily pushed around.
VoiceFromNowhere
I wonder why the authors of this article have written these words:
Yanukovych's biggest concession to the opposition, … a promise to repeal draconian laws criminalising
protest and freedom of speech.
It's common knowledge these Ukrainian laws are much more lenient than the corresponding European
ones. So my question is "Is it an indirect and somewhat veiled way to criticizing the relevant
European laws, for example the French ones?"
Kaikoura
The real mystery is why the EU is remotely interested in having Ukraine as a club member.
Aretoussa -> Kaikoura
Cheap labour for VW's next factory abroad surely. Export market for Mercedes' cars. Opportunity
for Siemens to build more power plants. It is all about benefitting Germany's economy. But Russia
is too big a fish, even for Ms Merkel. Besides, Germany heavily relies on gas imports from Russia,
and Russia is an important export market for German goods. So after Brussels makes a bit of
fuss, they will back off.
Aretoussa
Is Europe/Brussels the good knight on a white horse?! I don t think so. Germany's big companies
surely want access to the Ukraine as the next big market for their cars and machines.
And Putin has a very valid point! When Russia offered to co operate with Brussels, to help
finance the rescue of the Greek and Cypriot economy, Germany said no, because Ms Merkel and
Mr Schaeuble don t want Russia in their back garden. Well then, stay out of Russia's back garden
now.
VoiceFromNowhere
Azarov, who has described protesters as "terrorists", …
I've always said the former Prime Minister, Azarov, was the only adequate and gutsy man among
them. He's not afraid of calling a spade a spade and terrorists terrorists.
There's also that bold woman, Elena Lukash, the Minister of Justice. If I were Ukrainian
and she ran for President I'd probably vote for her. She would immediately send spetsnaz to
beat all the opposition shit out of them...
steavey
The weakness of the EU's position with Ukraine is having unelected leaders in Van Rompuy,
president of the European council and the EU commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso and Baroness
Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief discussing Ukraine with elected presidents of
both Ukraine and Russia.
That puts both presidents of Ukraine and Russia in a much stronger position because they
have a legitimate mandate because they were elected. And nit was not too long ago, democratically
elected western leaders were always preaching to the Russian dominated USSR with the Ukraine
as a former member about the need to be democratically elected - how times have changed.
ReachFreedom
Yeah, Putin, this is your reward for stopping airstrikes in Syria...now we'll get to work
in your own back yard. Which tool should we use today? Well, let's use the EU.
jb10001 -> ReachFreedom
And we'll bad-talk the Olympics and scare everyone away....make sure it's a flop; the price
to pay for harboring Snowden!!!
AndyAjna
Why do people assume the EU and EC are the angels here? They have destroyed the sovereignty
of nations and wealth of their own citizens using unelected insiders. Ireland booted them out
and is now growing. Ditto Iceland. The long-term game plan has always been to take control away
from citizens and give their money to the banks. Russia, along with China, Brazil, India, has
been standing up to this western neocon elite. While his anti-gay stance is a huge worry, I
don't assume the EU isn't a snake in the grass either. Classic financial war going on. With
western gold holdings nearly zero now, BRICS are leading the way to stabilize the global currencies
with assets via gold-backed SDRs. Western bankers are trying to retain control. This is the
back story.
HauptmannGurski
This is really tragic because the Ukrainians do not seem to understand that they'll lose
a lot of their hard won sovereignty in the EU, first to Brussels and then to the trans-Atlantic
trade pact which enables companies to take governments to court if they do not produce compliant
legislation. Rather than pay billions in compensation for 'wrong' legislation, they'd enact
what the companies want. They might as well forget about the idea of a parliament when the investment
protection court in Washington tells them what laws they can have and which not. (See Swedish
firm Vattenfall against the German government, challenging valid legislation).
Surely Ukrainians cannot be so ignorant as not to know what trap the EU is? The secret trans-Atlantic
trade pact negotiations are only set aside for three months, not cancelled. And to top it all
off, this is set up as a one way street. If any country would want to exit that trade pact if
it doesn't deliver, each and every EU country would have to agree; so in practice nobody can
leave.
Ciarán Here
This article is extremely pointed and does not reflect what was said in a balanced way. Other
news media across the globe gives a more balanced view of what putin actually said. The
headline on this article is farcical even if putin believed what this bias article highlights
the man putin is not dumb and would not say it as it written in this article. Jealousy, envy
and English patristic sentiment are on show in this article. Putin envy
worldtraveler01
Guardian is reporting a false statement (completely opposite to what Putin said at the press
conference).
At the press conference and Putin said "we will maintain 15 billion agreement with Ukraine
regardless of the political party hat will come to power"
Guardian: "We would most likely fail to maintain the preferential agreements with Ukraine
if it signs the [EU] association agreement," he said.
SingDave -> worldtraveler01
That's two different points;
1: He will maintain the funds regardless of which Party takes power.
2: He will withdraw funds if that Party signs an EU association agreement.
The Guardian were correct in their reporting.
worldtraveler01 -> SingDave
While these points appear to be different, they are closely related. Reporting only half
of truth and ignoring the inconvenient half is not good journalism practice.
Socialist4ever
When are the US and its followers in Europe going to finally stay out of other people's business?
Russia has no recent history of invading other countries- maybe those that have should mind
their own business.
AuntieSmurf -> Socialist4ever
Nice attempt to switch the blame to every Guardianistas favourite bogeyman. But this isn't
about the US, it's about that flabby wannabee superpower, the EU.
slorter
Would America tolerate this type of interference if it was happening in Mexico?
vFUZZYv same
You see the classic propaganda offered by Brussels. Their public relations is brilliant.
They create a problem and then they come in with flying colours with an answer only helpful
for their selfish desires. Who is to blame Putin for protecting a country once part of the Soviet
Union?
The political elite feed off minor nations and Britain America along with several European
Union countries plot only for their selfish desires.
khoechsmann
What lies was I fed in school? Was Kiev ever the capital of Russia? Did Muscovites not found
a new centre up north, less vulnerable to Mongol invaders, and take the name of "Russia" with
them, leaving behind their home territory as a "march"?
If this were true, it would be no wonder that Moscow keeps meddling in the affairs of Kiev.
But did not the deal cut by Messrs. Molotov and Ribbentrop bloat that march by a fair chunk
of fiercely Roman Catholic Poland? If that were also true, who can be surprised at ethnic, linguistic,
and religious tensions?
marco00018
I spoke with my friends from Ukraine last night,everyone knows that the EU and US are making
trouble. One of my friends is a University student, he told me that he and his friends were
offered money to go to demonstrations. Where is this money coming from?
There is nothing that president Yanukovych can do to stop the demonstrations unless he agrees
to the EU.
It is interesting that the EU and US are trying to overthrow a president that was elected
freely, so much for democracy.
InfoOps -> marco00018
Thats it your right.
There is nothing that president Yanukovych can do to stop the demonstrations unless he
agrees to the EU.
Once poor Yanukovych signs the EU agreement Those fools that are the protestors will go home
wherever they came from and i doubt these protestors are Ukrainians to begin with.
The only thing that Yanukovych can do is to cut off all the US based NGOs in Ukraine and
watch McCain go nuts.
mygirl
Here we go again. Ukraine has at least three groups within its populace
Those who look east to mother Russia
Those who look west to Europe
And the ultra nationalist xenophobes and anti Semites
... ... ...
Luuukke
I'm not European but one thing I know for sure this man Van Rompuy is a dangerous man and
I hear that he's not even elected yet wants to mediate in a democratic process in Ukraine....Can't
you people in the EU see what's wrong with this picture ?? Do not be sheeple....It began the
same way in the 1930's and the rest is history.....Live and learn...
grumpyben
Interesting notion, for those who trumpet that the EU has kept us from a war that was never
going to happen; German/Russian rivalry re asserting itself again.
Forth come the shades of SS Division Nordland, Wiking, Charlemagne...
VladimirM
I think that those in Europe who support this "rioting for the sake of democracy" should
be more conscious. Because its a clear sign given to all radicals and anarchists in their countries
that it works.
ASLEFshrugged
I can only imagine what the reaction would be if in the heat of the crisis in Greece or Cyprus,
our foreign minister came to an anti-European rally and began urging people to do something
The question in Ukraine is whether to join the EU so it's understandable that the EU should
send someone along. In Vlad's example the question in Greece would be whether to leave the EU
not whether they become part of Russia so why would Russian envoys be relevant?
Also Ashton is going in an attempt to mediate between the two sides, not speak at an anti-Russian/pro-EU
rally.
Ukraine might have a long, long wait before it gets full EU membership, just look how long
its taken Turkey, 1987 and still not part of the club......
edwardrice -> ASLEFshrugged
The question in Ukraine is whether to join the EU
Ukraine isn't joining the EU. Membership isn't being offered. There is a EU/Ukraine trade
agreement attached to economic 'reforms' on the table.
ASLEFshrugged -> edwardrice
Thank you for the correction, amend my previous comment to "the question is whether to enter
into a trade agreement with the EU".
Gosh, really, all this fuss over a trade agreement?
terziev
Not only civilians were killed!!! Why there is no mention of the dead policemen and the scores
that are seriously injured? Guardian, please do not join the wicked chorus. Remember why you're
respected news source
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.comment
[Jan 29, 2014] An interesting discussion from Kremlin Stooge
AP, you run a steam roller over fairly well constructed arguments with abandon as you rush
to your unalterable conclusions. The EU and US are all over the place urging the protests
on and doing their best to throw a monkey wrench into lawful process. Ukraine is awash
in coercion ranging from the US Senate to an endless stream of Western media black propaganda.
Why does it seem Western Ukraine has more info than the rest of the country? Are those Russkies
jamming Radio Free Europe again? I do agree that elements in Western Ukraine have been mobilized
but it is toward violence and intimidation – not very democratic of them.
Polls may be, when properly administered, a useful indicator of public opinion, My point
is that public opinion is not reliable indicator of what may be best for the population. Please
reread by post as it was very clear about that. To give a very well known example. the Nazi
in Germany were quite popular pre-WW II yet they were supporting an utterly disastrous policy.
I think you are being disingenuous when you claim that you would support Russia if the polls
indicated such in Ukraine. My understanding is that the opinion split in Ukraine is fairly close.
So you will jump on the Russian bandwagon with equal gusto if the polls swing by 10-20%? With
all respect, that is utterly ridiculous.
Regarding who would have a greater interest in developing the Ukraine economy, in addition
to what others have mentioned, Russia would likely invest and grow the space technology sector
(ZENIT rocket development and production for example) the aerospace sector and the nuclear power
sector. EU would likely wish to dismantle these sectors simply to eliminate the competition.
Why would the EU build up the Ukraine's economy when its own economy is stumbling towards
a 1930 style depression?
Moscow Exile:
"The EU and US are all over the place urging the protests on and doing their best to throw
a monkey wrench into lawful process. Ukraine is awash in coercion ranging fro the US Senate
to an endless stream of Western media black propaganda."
US, European diplomats meet with radicals in Kiev, see 'no threat' from them
Western diplomats have once again come to Kiev's Independence Square, the epicenter of protests
which have evolved from democratic rallies into violent riots. Ambassadors reportedly met with
radical leaders who are now at the core of the demonstrations.
American, Canadian, and European diplomats arrived to Independence Square – also known as
Maidan – on Sunday, the opposition Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party said in a statement. The
square is the site of ongoing anti-government and pro-EU protests.
marknesop:
Of course the rebel leaders are going to be able to show their guests a Maidan innocent of
weapons – it's not as if this were a surprise visit. There are plenty of pictures and video
clips of demonstrators with weapons, including handguns. But naturally the foreign guests are
quickly convinced that the rebels mean no harm and all the violence is being perpetrated by
the government. It makes me sick to read it, and you know they do not have Clue One about what
is actually going on and do not take the trouble to inform themselves, because it's politics
and the political decision has already been agreed upon between the allies that it would be
in their best interests if Yanukovych were removed and a liberal coalition government which
would quickly sign the association agreement were to replace it.
They probably watched an entertaining movie or slept on the flight over, then received a
quick directed briefing from opposition leaders and political figures which gave them their
talking points, then a quick photo-op on the Maidan, to run as a background while they sermonize
about the need for "dialogue with the opposition and addressing of their concerns" when they
have made it clear they want no dialogue with Yanukovych unless it consists of "I resign. Here's
the keys".
They still cannot take Ukraine unless Yanukovych gives it to them. And I don't think
he's going to do that.
marknesop:
Well, call me an optimist, but I still don't think that's going to happen. It's hard to maintain
momentum in a riot; sooner or later the locals begin to notice that all their stuff is getting
smashed and burnt and destroyed, and unless a stable government comes to power there is no possibility
of replacing it or repairing the damage – nobody has any money. Klitschko sure doesn't have
any, and he's the best hope. Russia isn't going to lend $15 Billion to Klitschko. Or nerd-boy
Yatsenyuk. Certainly not to Tiagnibok. Going on a rampage and busting up shit is eventually
expensive, when tempers cool and people realize, hey: we're living in the middle of busted-up
shit. Who's…uhhh…going to pay for this?
Meanwhile, in case people's memories are getting hazy, the EU offered 600 Million euros.
Not even enough to stave off a massive slide in the value of the Hryvnia, not even worth discussing
in the framework of improving wages (allegedly the complaint du jour of the rioters), and let's
not forget the EU has a longstanding demand that Ukraine's leadership hike gas prices by eliminating
subsidies. God knows why they want that, except just as an exercise in do-as-we-say power masturbation,
since Ukraine's consumption rates are of no concern to the EU while Ukraine is not a member
state and in its role as a transit station for Russian gas. Trust me that nobody, but nobody,
has thought about how they are going to keep the utilities on and public transit running and
the banking system from collapsing and the million and one other things that constitute civilization,
without money. The opposition is like a dog chasing cars – if you catch one, what are you going
to do with it?
For all the jabbering and deliberate misdirection about the EU "standing with Euromaidan"
and the U.S. Senate promising to have the demonstrators' backs if they succeeded in overthrowing
their democratically-elected government, none of them are offering any money, and a newly-crowned
King Klitschko who is confronted by supplicants asking for higher wages is going to be confronted
by a simultaneous epiphany: what's he going to pay them with? Perogies? If the Ukrainian government
falls, Russia will withdraw its loan, and nobody else has any of the ready.
SFReader:
In my view, Yanukovich is going to win this one and eventually he will restore control over
the whole country.
However, without lasting political solution (which doesn't seem likely now), there will be
an armed insurgency in Western Ukraine as in 1950s.
teo:
I have been reading your posts with great interest for some time. Very interesting analysis
and a great reading. Now I think I have something to add.
I do not believe that Yanukovich is either weak or stupid.
The entire fight is one for legitimacy. Opposition and their Western backer intended
/intend to paint him as a murderous dictator killing his own people. It is a well tested approach,
media knows the story by hard having told and retold it countless times.
What the government had to do was just give them enough rope so that they could hang themselves.
This means in practice:
Be as peaceful as possible. Neo nazi interpret this as weakness. They smell blood.
Try to harm them as little as possible. Police will be hurt inevitably. Some of them
might be burned alive – didn't happen until now.
Seeing that they can burn and crack heads with impunity, the shock troops of the revolution
( can insert NATO ) get very bold and empowered. Large wave of violence is predictable.
President continues to beg for peace and restoration of public order. He is refused
and attacks continue. It might seem that the brave extremist's commandoes are taking over
the country.
But…. the power structures are intact. Repression forces are itching for a fight. They
have been burned and beaten for some time now. Hospitals are full of their comrades. And
majority of the people gets sick of seeing the punks playing civil war on their streets.
What follows next is easy to predict.
What I wrote above happened in almost the same form in 1941 in Romania. Extreme right party
tried to take over the country by the same means as we see today..
Their main opponent , general Antonescu let them take over government buildings, newspapers
etc , cried for a peaceful solution. He even called them my children, pls pls do not be violent.
:):) Brave neo nazis sensed blood. So they burned and killed.
Even managed to burn some soldiers alive.
But their behavior only scared people and made the repression forces – army in that case
– hate them like poison. They got crushed in a few hours when Antonescu felt the right moment.
They went so far that Hitler himself approved their destruction.
The Ukrainian case is not so extreme. Level of violence is significantly lower for now. US
has not approved the repression of their local stooges.
So a moderate level of repression is to be expected. Of course from Yanukovich's point of
view there is no hurry. The longer it drags the more embolden the shock troops from the streets
will feel. The more empowered. So they might try to punish their enemies. Might even succeed
in burning alive some Berkut operator.
Government is in no danger. The chances that the police officers might side with the goons
trying to burn them alive is exactly zero. And cleaning the streets would be a very easy operation
taking only a few hours.
So there is no hurry to chase the far right rebels from the streets. The entire fight is
one of perceptions. Branding yourselves as mindless thugs hell bent on destruction and oblivious
to the voice of reason does not help ones cause. Why would an enemy stop you prematurely when
you do such a good job scaring people and delegitimizing yourself?
His only logical line of action is to help you. Prevent police from intervening. Cry and
beg for peace and a stop to violence in order to embolden the aggressors. And so on and on….until
moment when even such a kind and peaceful man is forced to take actions.
I do not know how strong are Yanukovich's nerves. This is a unique opportunity. The best
idea for him would be to let the neo nazi bring the country to the brink of colapse and civil
war.
Better that everyone sees them for real before they take the levers of power.
I do not know if his nerves will hold but from what we have seen until now it seems he can
do it.
marknesop:
Welcome, teo! That is an interesting analysis, and I tend to agree broadly with it – especially
that this is a war for legitimacy. If so, then the opposition has lost it already, because they
are hardly even in the news any more except as bananas that have been offered a government post
and turned it down. It is plain that they can exercise no control over the mob, and I also agree
it is smaller than it is being made to seem in the news.
I agree, too, that if the issue is brought forcefully to a close by Yanukovych and the government,
there is a better chance the mob will become martyrs to the cause of a great and free Ukraine,
while if they continue to caper and hoot like children in their road-warrior costumes and wooden
weapons it is more likely they will be seen as fools who cannot cope with the world as it is
and so have to make it a fantasy video game of good versus evil. Let the people see who would
rule them if they had their way. The English-speaking media is doing its very best to make patriots
and heroes of them, but it is proving to be hard going when they cannot show a human face of
the "revolution", just rock-throwers and hoodlums who look like some kind of mutants in their
gas masks.
I also believed that a few years of EU association would teach Ukraine a bitter lesson it
would never forget, because the EU cannot give it the massive infusions of cash it needs to
pull itself out of its slump. Perhaps that will not be necessary if the violence and anarchy
continue, because – as you say – ordinary Ukrainians will see the "movement" for what it is
and become disgusted with it, and ask the government to restore public order. I would still
keep the Maidan as it is, with its burnt-out vehicles and piles of cobblestones and soot and
filth everywhere. I would advertise it as a monument to free speech, but really it would be
a constant reminder of mob rule and mob mentality.
patient observer:
Interesting analysis and a hopeful one at that. Not to diminish the Ukraine government but
I wonder about the importance of Russia in this possible strategy. They are a major stake holder
(bigger than the EU for sure) in the future of Ukraine so one must presume they are providing
input to the decision making process. Not to rush to conclusions but if the analysis is correct
and it succeeds, it would be a brilliant and very Putin-like move. Fingers crossed and time
will tell.
marknesop:
According to one of the comments on the Moon of Alabama story, John Kerry mentioned that
U.S. diplomats are working with Yanukovych, "trying to defuse the crisis". Therefore – assuming
that is accurate – I doubt there are any Russians onsite whispering in Yanukovych's ear. If
there were, the western diplomats would already have blatted the story to the papers that Russia
was "meddling in Ukraine's sovereign affairs" (without any sense of irony whatsover, doubtless,
because the right of western democracies to intervene in sovereign affairs is well-established
and they always mean well and never, never act out of self-interest or to satisfy their own
foreign policy objectives). That's not to say, of course, that Russia is not contributing to
decision-making, because Yanukovych is free to talk to whoever he likes. Presumably he is smart
enough to use the the night janitor's cellphone or carrier pigeons or some means of communication
the NSA will not be listening in on. The only thing arguing against it is that Putin and Yanukovych
are said to strongly dislike one another. But presumably both could put their personal feelings
aside for such an important matter affecting so many people.
AP:
Your analysis is brilliant but unfortunately based on the false premise that these protests
are driven by neo-Nazi extremists who don't have the support of the local population. While
this is what some people here believe, it isn't true. People from Kiev certainly don't have
that impression. But what do they know, compared to what readers of anti-Maidan blogs know.
patient observer:
You are definitely in the running for a Gold Medal in smugness. Regardless, Ukraine looks
like simply another color revolution concocted in EU and US government offices and corporate
board rooms and executed with the usual assortments of 1% wannabes, opportunists and a good
sprinkling of dupes. The Nazis add a little zest to what would otherwise be a bland bunch of
demonstrators.
Moscow Exile:
The Euromaidan drafts an ultimatum for Yanukovich
yalensis:
Ha ha! To put in context, here is the original that is being spoofed.
(painter Ilya Repin, "The Cossacks compose a mocking letter to the Sultan".)
Moscow Exile:
Note in the spoof who the scribe is that is penning the insulting and vulgar letter: Captain
America, no less!
Moscow Exile:
Ukrainian Minister of Energetics and the Coal Industry tells representatives of 50% (allegedly)
of the Ukrainian population where to go after they had decided to "occupy" his ministry building
and to "regulate" the supply of nuclear energy :
Minister: Don't you realize that nobody will be able to live…Get out of here – all of you!
(Turns away)
Knobhead: We have to determine the work procedure of the ministry…
Minister (turning back to knobhead): According to Ukrainian law I have been delegated to
determine the work procedure here and your action here is illegal … Don't you realize what the
results of your actions will be?…It will be like terrorism.
The fighters for freedom and democracy left.
yalensis:
Gee, that's disappointing that the radicals were forced to leave, I really think that a random
guy off the street wearing a ski helmet and goggles would be more qualified to run the nuclear
energy plants. Or maybe they could put Homer Simpson in charge of the nukes? I mean, it's not
like you need a PhD or anything….
Moscow Exile:
Quite! I mean nuclear physics ain't exactly rocket science.
Just ask Peter.
(Only kidding, Peter! :-))
reggietcs:
LOL.
That AP's boys for you. Democracy hard at work!
yalensis:
And the really funny thing is that the Energy Minister is a dead ringer for Tahnybok.
patient observer:
For a brief moment I thought I saw Putin.
yalensis:
Ukrainian Jewish leaders worried about security after a couple of Jews were attacked outside
synanogues, hence they are cancelling annual holocausat memorial. Prudent move, given the rampant
anti-Semitism of the Banderites who control the central part of Kiev:
Заявление Леонида Финберга о провокациях вокруг антисемитизма в Украине
26.01.2014, Антисемитизм
Ложью в последние месяцы удивить нас трудно. Репрессивные законы, направленные на сворачивание
прав и свобод граждан, нелегитимно принятые парламентским большинством, называют развитием демократии.
Убийц активистов Майдана выгораживает маразматик-премьер, публично заявля о том, что это провокация
опозиции. В этом же ряду гнусной лжи намеки в заявлениях псевдолидеров еврейских организаций
о причастности участников мирных протестных акций к организации нападений на двух прихожан синагоги
на Подоле. Конечно же, никаких доказательств – они все знают заранее, до событий: главное –
нужно "мочить" опонентов власти. Только так – в существующей системе – они могут сохранить свои
криминальные бизнесы. Бог им судья, а еще, надеюсь, их дети, близкие, для которых многократно
тиражируемая ложь очевидна.
Весь мир видит и понимает, что Майдан – это мир человеческой солидарности и достоинства.
Это акция противления злу и насилию, даже ценой жизни и здоровья. Во имя нормальной человеческой
жизни в правовом государстве, а не в феодальном общаке люди пришли на Майдан. И не удивительно,
что руководство оппозиции и самообороны Майдана предложило охрану синагог, зная намерения провокаторов.
Не удивительно, что на Майдане выступал, среди других, и клезмерский ансамбль "Пушкин Клезмер
Бэнд". Там же в общем молебне молились вместе священники различных церквей, раввин и муфтий
– за мирную Украину для всех ее граждан, а не для бандитов. Этот список легко продолжать. Но
лжецов и иуд, продающихся за серебряники, это не интересует. Зато интересует нас – всех, кто
мечтает об Украине – демократической стране, где будут нормально жить и христиане, и иудеи,
и мусульмане, и язычники, и атеисты, и все, все, все. Обязательно будут, несмотря на все провокации
всех негодяев, в том числе и еврейских. Об этом когда-то предупреждал Зеев Жаботинский: "Как
и у всех иных народов у нас есть право иметь своих негодяев". Слава Богу, их не так много.
Леонид Финберг,
директор Центра изучения истории и культуры восточноевропейского еврейства
Национального университета "Киево-Могилянская Академия",
член Генерального совета Евроазиатского еврейского конгресса
yalensis:
Yeah, yeah, it's not like the Banderites actually hate Jews, or anything like that.
All the anti-Semitic outbursts must have been committed by the Titushki.
Moscow Exile:
Covering Kiev: Jews fear opposition's anger might turn against them
Ukrainian Jews Fear for Their Safety – 'We Are on High Alert'
Given the two recent violent attacks on Jews, there are some who suggest that "some pro-governmental
forces are behind the attacks in order to then blame the nationalists and ultra-nationalist
groups associated with Maidan protesters to denounce their legitimacy," Kliger told JNS.org.
"Yet another version suggests the opposite, namely that some radical groups like neo-Nazis
and ultra-nationalists are behind the attack, which they then can blame on the government,"
Kliger said.
Historian, politologist, and EAJC member Vyacheslav Likhachev said in an EAJC op-ed published
Jan. 19 that the former is more likely than the latter.
"The large-scale civil protests known under the title 'Euromaidan' really do include groups
of radical youths whose slogans and actions repel even the nationalistic All-Ukrainan 'Svoboda'
Union Party," Likhachev wrote. But he also wrote that such activists have been heavily occupied
with protecting the center of the Maidan protests and preparing for confrontations with government
forces. On Jan. 20, President Yanukovych agreed to form a cross-party commission to try to bring
an end to the conflict, but the opposition may not participate in talks without the president,
according to reports.
"Considering the general direction of what is happening on the Maidan, I believe that even
the most thuggish of the protesters are not interested in Jews at the moment," Likhachev wrote.
But since the Ukrainian government has been portraying protestors as a threat to minorities,
according to Likhachev, pro-government forces may be instigating anti-Semitic incidents to then
be able to blame the protesters for them.
"It is possible that the second, more cruel incident happened due to the first not having
enough resonance in the media," although "15 years of experience in monitoring hate crimes tell
me that usually hate crime is just a hate crime and not an element of some complex and global
political plot," wrote Likhachev.
Josef Zisels, chairman of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities (Vaad)
of Ukraine, emphasized in an official statement translated from Russian that the anti-Semitic
attacks were synchronized with the adoption of new legislation initiated by Yanukovych late
last week that outlaws many forms of protests. The law bans wearing hardhats or masks, building
tents or stages, and disseminating "extremist information" about the Ukrainian government.
"Journalists and public figures, including those acting on behalf of the Jewish community,
rushed without any factual basis to tie the assaults with the campaign of peaceful civil protests,"
Zisels said in the statement.
"Based on the fact that now the topic of anti-Semitism is being used heavily in the cynical
political technology campaigns aimed at discrediting the political opposition and the public
protest movement, the Jewish community must remain increasingly vigilant," he said.
Both AJC and The National Conference Supporting Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States
& Eurasia (NCSJ) issued statements condemning the anti-Semitic attacks and asking the Ukrainian
government to investigate the incidents and bring the perpetrators to justice.
NCSJ Executive Director Mark Levin told JNS.org that "no one really knows the full truth"
yet about who is responsible for the attacks, but that he is not surprised by the incidents.
"Anti-Semitism unfortunately remains an issue in Ukraine. It ebbs and flows," Levin said.
reggietcs:
The latest from Alexander Mercouris:
"The Justice Minister has meanwhile said that she now wants a state of emergency declared.
I suspect the Interior Ministry wants the same. Let us be quite clear it is Yanukovych who is
stopping it from happening. There are apparently now just 2,000 people on Maidan square. The
number on Hrushchevsky has fallen to a few dozen. There's a couple of hundred now scattered
in the 6 occupied buildings. If the police were given the order they could clear the center
of Kiev in one or two hours."
It's TIME to do it. Get this crap over with.
Moscow Exile:
I see the game's afoot!
So, let's to it pell-mell:
If not to heaven, then hand-in-hand to hell!
For those, who don't speak Polish, short description of what the article says.
Ukrainian protesters near the Polish border set fire to car tires on the Yavorov-Krakovec
road causing huge traffic jam.
Polish tour bus got stuck in traffic jam, but they asked truck drivers to let them through
and after an hour, the bus slowly arrived to the cause of this jam – enormous fire barricade
on Novoyavorov intersection. Some 20 drunk Ukrainians surrounded the bus, cursing the driver
and all Poles.
Several protesters entered the bus terrorising everyone with drunken threats.
Finally they demanded from every Pole on the bus to shout "Glory to the Ukraine. Glory to
heroes" (Banderite slogan) threatening they would set the bus on fire if they didn't.
The poor Poles cried and did as told. And then the bus was given 10 second to cross the fire
barricade.
Pretty nasty stuff. I think this means that there is no longer any functioning police left
in Western Ukraine and the countryside is now effectively ruled by armed thugs.
AP:
Kresy iorganizations generally belong to the militant fringe far-right in Poland. It's the
equivalent of far-right German ex-Danzigers bitter about the loss of East Prussia. Not a reliable
source for info.
SFReader:
Активісти заблокували міжнародну трасу Львів-Краковець: палять скати і не пускають транспорт
Від учорашнього вечора й донині проїхати по міжнародній автотрасі Львів-Краковець неможливо:
біля міста Новояворівська Яворівського району Львівської області мітингувальники палять скати
й не пропускають автотранспорт ні в держави ЄС, ні звідти.
Про це повідомили сьогодні, 24 січня, власкорові IA ZIK мешканці міста Новояворівська.
За словами учасників акції, вони у такій спосіб вирішили висловити свою підтримку побратимам,
яких силовики вбивають у Києві, на Грушевського.
Правоохоронці скеровують автотранспортні засоби на Мостиськ.
Обабіч перегороди на трасі зібралося близько півсотні великогабаритних автомашин, яким годі
розвернутися й податися на об'їзну дорогу.
So, no confirmation about the anti-Polish actions? It might have happened, or it might have
been exaggerated. But if your only source is kresy, that's not very convincing.
BTW, your kresy website loves the antisemite Roman Dmowski:
That was the "Titushki" again, they were paid to start a quarrel with Poland.
Those Titushki are everywhere…
I think there is even one underneath my bed…
marknesop:
Ha! You beat me to it. Thanks a lot for letting me cycle extra-fast to work, giggling to
myself all the way at the prospect of reporting that it was another Titushki provocation, only
to scoop me while I was enroute.
karl1haushofer:
"Result would be: the West Ukraine ruled by vicious Banderites, some Eastern regions breaking
away, and the Crimea returning to Russia."
I'm not so sure. Putin does not seem like a leader who wants open confrontation with the
West. Russia "annexing" Crimea and Donbass would not go easy in the West and Russia would face
some serious sanctions and hostilities.
Drutten:
I heard some rumor about a clause in a post-USSR agreement between the Ukraine and Russia,
that if Ukraine screws up then Crimea would be free to return to Russia as it was pre-1954 (and
once again become Krimskiy Oblast). Sounds far fetched in my ears, but what do I know.
At any rate, Crimea is extremely Russian as it is, and the anti-Maidan sentiment there is
strong. Last thing I heard was that people chased away some groups of activists trying to lay
siege to an administrative building in Sevastopol, and now some local biker gang has set up
a perimeter around that building to prevent them from trying again. Funny.
I do wonder about the Tatars in Crimea though, what do they think about this all? I heard
that they were going to stage some kind of demonstration in Simferopol this week, but I don't
know what they would be demonstrating for/against.
yalensis:
There is supposedly some clause in the "Khrushchev's Gift" treaty whereby Ukraine and Russia
must belong together within the same Union.
There is also some clause about a plebiscite being invoked to revoke the treaty.
I don't have time to research it right now, maybe later, if I have time….
(unless somebody else wants to do the research; I'm sure it's available online)
In any case, I am pretty sure Russia could put together a convincing legal argument to take
it back. Not that that would impress NATO very much… In my mind, I can already hear them squealing
like pigs.
Moscow Exile:
Here are some Crimean citizens saying they'd vote for Yanukovich/the Party of Regions if
there were a Ukrainian general election election now. There are a couple of Tatars amongst them,
I'm sure.
I must say though, they're all old and appear to be a right motley crew all who've just been
paid off a pirate ship.
The last gang of blokes the interviewer approaches look like they were just about start off
on an al fresco samogon session.
There are Tatars at the Maidan. Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian nationalists have been allies
for a long time. Remember that local Russians weren't very pleased when all of those Tatars
started coming back after independence and there has been tension between the Tatar and Russian
communities in Crimea.
"Putin does not seem like a leader who wants open confrontation with the West. Russia "annexing"
Crimea and Donbass would not go easy in the West and Russia would face some serious sanctions
and hostilities."
Quite possibly, unless a leader with legitimacy in each of those regions stepped forward
to announce that it was the will of the people, and presented polling data to prove it. That
is democracy, the will of the majority, and the west cannot stand against it. It would have
to be done quickly and decisively, too – otherwise the west would start a rebel movement in
the regions and cry that the will of the people had been usurped by corrupt leaders.
Moscow Exile:
УПА опубликовала ультиматум с требованием выдать Януковича
[UPA Has Published An Ultimatum That Yanukovich Be Handed Over]
UPA takes responsibility for the murder of a policeman on 01/24/2014 next to the "Berkut"
police division. This act is a revenge for the killing of protesters and torture of prisoners.
After all, what police officers did last week, was disgrace to any normal person. The police
turned into a punitive apparatus of the occupation regime existing for intimidation, torture
and murder of Ukrainians. Police does not perform no law enforcement functions anymore, only
supports anti-people regime.
Given the above, we, the rebels of UPA, demand following from the police:
Lay down their arms or surrender to revolutionary maidan, removing all the epaulets,
chevrons, cap badges.
Release and deliver to the territory of the revolutionary maidan all political prisoners,
prisoners during 2011-2014 ( V.Zaporozhets "VASILKOVSKY terrorists" A.Biletsky, "defenders
Rymarslcaya" VPrlmenko family Paulichenka "Melitopol arsonists," "Nezhin Robinhood", "Sumy
artists" Ya.Pritulenko, A.Dzindzya, , V.Smaly,V.Cadura, O.Odnorozhenko and others arrested
in January 2014, the list of which is replenished daily).
Arrest or give maidan revolutionary forces ability to arrest Yanukovych , Azarov, V.
Zakharchenko Pshonka, A.Yakimenko, IClyuyeva , Lulcash and other major criminals of the
country.
Advertise our ultimatum in the media.
In case of failure of our ultimatum, we will have to continue to rebel-guerrilla warfare,
killing several police officers weekly. We will not take part in open opposition, we will continue
to fight underground.
If our ultimatum left unanswered, next week every policeman In uniform or not will be a potential
target for the UPA. Unlike the police, we are not sadists and nonhuman, so we will not torture
anyone, humiliate, we will not touch the civilian population and someone close, but we will
kill police if they continue their criminal activities (serving the criminal regime in any form
is in itself is already a crime against the Ukrainian people.)
We emphasize once again that we are not connected with euroMaidan and those imaginary "terrorists
– extremists", which recently reported by the press – the Interior Ministry, but we support
any movement against the regime of Yanukovych. In the case of acceleration eurornaydan our work
will not be stopped, it will only give us reason to be more active.
We are not a terrorist organization and do not want to continue fighting weapon. We are happy
to lay down our arms but only on the fulfillment of all our requirements and only at the call
of the future Ukrainian Revolutionary Board.
"Titushki" again?
marknesop:
I don't believe I ever said the entire city was razed to the ground. Is every undamaged building
going to be pressed into service as a testimonial that the rebels are gentle and mean no harm,
and only want the best for all Ukrainians? There should not be any damage at all, because the
Maidan itself is public property paid for with taxpayer funds and maintained with taxpayer funds.
The streets are torn up all around the Maidan to furnish bricks to be thrown at the police –
we have seen the rioters do it often enough – and the Maidan itself looks like downtown Beirut
in the 1980′s.
Citizens are emboldened to resist the police because the police have obviously been directed
to act like persuaders rather than enforcers of the law. Protesters are constantly squealing
that they want the rule of law and that is a gift Europe will bestow on them, but they seem
to have decided they only want laws which are imposed upon them by foreigners, and that they
will not obey anything that comes from the government. Tell me about any city in America where
you have lived where resisting arrest would be tolerated, or ordinary citizens interfering to
prevent an arrest. Journalists were arrested during the Occupy protests in the USA simply for
filming arrests. Here's a fine example of police patience and forbearance, from New Orleans.
You must have seen those pictures from the Maidan, all those jerrycans of gasoline stockpiled
and apprentice bombers filling wine bottles with gas and attaching cloth wicks; how do you suppose
those cans of gasoline get to the Maidan? People carry them there, possibly concealed in large
bags such as the man the police were initially questioning was carrying.
Moscow Exile:
"The streets are torn up all around the Maidan to furnish bricks to be thrown at the police…"
TITUSHKI!
"You must have seen those pictures from the Maidan, all those jerrycans of gasoline stockpiled
and apprentice bombers filling wine bottles with gas and attaching cloth wicks; how do you suppose
those cans of gasoline get to the Maidan? People carry them there, possibly concealed in large
bags such as the man the police were initially questioning was carrying."
TITUSHKI, TITUSHKI!!!
AP:
"Tell me about any city in America where you have lived where resisting arrest would be tolerated,
or ordinary citizens interfering to prevent an arrest"
You once again base your comments on the false assumption that the police in Kiev are comparable
to the police in a normal American town. In America or other places the police are not viewed
by average citizens as agents of an illegitimate regime. They are seen that way only in minority
areas with histories of persecution. This is why ordinary citizens in America generally don't
come to the defense of someone being arrested, as we see happening in Kiev. In Kiev, most of
the population is feels itself to be persecuted.
marknesop:
Of course. What was I thinking?
Moscow Exile:
So these "agents of an illegitimate regime" were recruited en-masse after Yanukovich had
been elected and will likewise be replaced when and if a truly legitimate, democratic regime
(sorry!) – government is elected by the people, thereby ensuring that when a policeman attempts
to arrest a citizen, his arrest will not be "thwarted" by an irate citizenry?
However, if, as I suspect, very many – or perhaps even the vast majority – of cops now serving
(or should that be "persecuting"?) in the Ukraine are those self-same cops as served during
the heady days of prime ministers Tymoshenko (formerly known as "The Gas Queen") and Lazarenko
("Mr. Fifty Per Cent" – remember him?) – not forgetting the former president, Yushenko (you
know, he who elevated Bandera to the status of a "national hero") continue to serve as law enforcement
agents (which I think very likely) under a new, truly democratic government, will they undergo
a sudden, almost miraculous, change in their perceived moral stature and find themselves greatly
respected by the citizenry as guardians and enforcers of law and order and, therefore, not suffer
vengeful, murderous attacks by the formerly oppressed citizenry?
Or better still, will there be a purge, a celebratory blood letting as it were, after the
election of a new and trusted and truly democratic administration and government, whereby a
guillotine will be erected on the Maiden in order to mete out to all those foul lackeys of the
vile Yanukovich regime their just deserts?
Just wondering.
marknesop:
They're just following the playbook; announcing that they do not recognize the government
of their country as legitimate, setting up a framework for an alternate government, and then
waiting with bated breath for the critical next step – for the western democracies to accept
their handiwork, and announce in their turn that the alternative new government is the one true
government, and that they will not do business with nor recognize the previous government.
And just like that, laddie, you're pushed out, it's just that simple. We've seen it happen
a couple of times fairly recently. But I don't think that next step is going to happen, because
in other cases the west had managed pretty completely to isolate the target country so that
it was friendless and alone. That is not true in this case, and it actually has quite a powerful
friend who has made its interests clear.
Moscow Exile:
So you are saying that Kiev citizens consider themselves to be immune to arrest, that it
is their right not to be arrested?
You say they are "thwarting arrest". Why should thy wish to do this?
In England what they were doing was resisting arrest – a crime – and obstructing officers
in the course of their duties – another crime. Furthermore, a charged person's obstruction of
a police officer and resisting arrest is counted against that person if found guilty.
And if that had occurred in the "Free West", and most certainly in the UK, the person taking
photographs would have very likely been warned to desist. In my experience, police don't like
their pictures being taken when they are arresting people.
On what grounds did those people feel that they should not have been arrested? Why did they
feel justified in resisting arrest? Do they really think that they could get away with such
behaviour in the "free world"?
Drutten:
Excellent find! Evidently the man has screwed up, this has been acknowledged and the relevant
people are now moving in to see what should be done about it. Russia adheres to international
practice, and by the looks of it they're doing a mighty fine job. ;)
I have to say, upon first reading the headline my immediate thought was "is this the same
"plagiarization" as Putins alleged ditto?" You know, the little farce that turned out to be
a total invention by some random guy out to make headlines.
Or the US equivalent – US Vice President Joe Biden ran into difficulties at law school for
"plagiarism" (i.e. failing to provide accurate sourcing).
marknesop:
Or western icon of sage diplomacy Tony Blair, whose entire case for war with Iraq was lifted
from the work of graduate student Ibrahim al-Marashi, entitled, "Iraq's Security and Intelligence
Network; a Guide and Analysis". More recently, Blair is accused of plagiarizing his own fictional
self from the 2006 film, "The Queen".
None of these incidents seems to do much damage to the Teflon former PM, and isn't he now
Special Envoy to the Middle East or something, upon which he frequently speaks with authority?
I reckon that bodes well for Astakhov's retirement plans.
Moscow Exile:
AZAROV QUITS
Klitschko reckons it's "a step towards victory".
marknesop:
You could sort of see that coming: what dignified option did he have left after Yanukovych
offered to give his job to a pop-eyed nerd like Yatsenyuk while he wasn't even the country,
presumably without even the courtesy of discussing it with him first?
I didn't much like him anyway, although I can't think of anyone better to replace him either.
If this is all an act of appearing to be panicky and confused on Yanukovych's part, the man
is a hell of an actor.
1. Any violence seems to be initiated by provocateurs known as "titushky". Titushky is a
Ukrainianian slang term describing athletic men used as thugs to start fighting among peaceful
protests. The attacking titushky wear masks and are often armed with batons. There have been
hidden videos posted on Youtube showing how operatives were soliciting men to serve as titushky
on the side streets of Kyiv. It is not clear who is paying the titushky - for now, it's speculation.
marknesop:
Ha, ha!!! Hidden videos showing operatives soliciting men to serve as Titushki!! Will these
be like the hidden videos of ballot-stuffing in the Russian Duma election, all uploaded from
a server in California, with no context to show where or what they represented and none showing
anything that could be said to be ballot-stuffing? Say what you like about the western press,
when it decides as a collective on a narrative, it sticks with it, and now apparently anyone
who is wearing a mask and carrying a club, throwing bricks and gas bombs at the police, is Titushki
paid off by the Ukrainian government to make innocent flowers-and-beads protestors look aggressive
and violent. Clever use of Titushki also to seize government buildings from the police; in fact,
the police should all be fired and the Titushki could simply take their place! You have to admit
they are damned effective. "Titushki" may well be the only Ukrainian word that comes out of
the conflict that western journalists can pronounce – except for "Kiev" – as if they are actually
familiar with it.
marknesop:
So those carrying banners and shouting "Glory to Ukraine – Glory to Heroes" are the REAL
heroes! And Tetyana Chornovol, before her brief moment in the spotlight as beaten opposition
journalist, was secretly a Titushki collaborator! Just when you think you have a grip on the
situation, you realize you know nothing.
And what's remarkable is Yanukovych's intelligence apparatus – somehow, whenever the demonstrators
stage a raid of some government building somewhere in Ukraine, there are the Titushki, in the
forefront, masked and carrying clubs and attempting to wrest the police officers' shields out
of their hands. It must be reallyb difficult for Yanukovych to pretend to be such an idiot,
when in reality he knows the opposition's every move before they make it. He must, in order
to get his Titushki there for every opposition action.
Moscow Exile:
Policeman stabbed in Khersones dies.
Damned Titushki!
Moscow Exile:
One of the three policemen who were stabbed during a protest in Khersones, southern Ukraine,
on Monday, died in hospital, Ukraine's Interior Ministry said, as quoted by Itar-Tass.
Moscow Exile:
Ukraine's Parliament Repeals Anti-Protest Laws
Capitulation?
Moscow Exile:
Next bulletin: Russian demands return of $15 billion loan?
marknesop:
Not yet, but keep that one in the typesetter frame in case we need it in a hurry. Yanukovych
is either a strategic genius with ice water in his veins, or the kind of sad-sack buffoon who
can reach into a barrel of money and come out with handcuffs.
marknesop:
Sure looks like it to me. One more step toward preserving the Maidan as it is for ever and
ever as a monument to what free men can achieve (with the help, of course, of Titushki) against
an ossified and corrupt government.
cartman:
My dream Kiev home is now a war zone. But I'm not quitting
The "snipers on rooftops" is a long debunked lie. The picture was taken four years ago in
Kyrgyzstan.
"These snipers have already ruined the sight of some 20 demonstrators and five journalists."
LOL sniper fire would kill you. This essay is a load of shit, and a cue for the commentators
to call everyone paid "Kremlin stooges" when confronted with facts. Titushki!
marknesop:
I didn't see any pictures of snipers. But you're right that it is beyond comical to suggest
they are so accurate that they can shoot your eyes out without killing you, what a joke, as
they are said already to have done more than 20 times.
But you can already see the narrative changing again, which is interesting. According to
the author, 90% of the demonstrators feel (no substantiation for how this figure was obtained)
that the opposition leaders do not represent their interests, and what they really, really want
and in fact insist on is that Yanukovych call early elections. That's because the western backers
of this absurd movement are aware that is the only legitimate means of removing Yanukovych –
if he himself consents to early elections, and loses. Then who would come to power? Klitschko,
to all appearances, a leader of the opposition who does not even live in Ukraine and who according
to the author does not represent the interests of 90% of the demonstrators. But the west would
not care, because Klitschko would sign the association agreement as quickly as it could be put
in front of him, and to those who complained that Yanukovych was forced out by western bullying
they would reply, "What are you talking about? Yanukovych himself called early elections, and
lost in a democratic process that was free and fair. The people have spoken".
Patrick Armstrong:
Read the comments. He's not selling his point very well (and lots of readers wonder how snipers
can blind).
My thinking is that the propaganda, that was pretty easily swallowed in previous "democratic
uprisings", has gone stale.
This guy, for example, reminds that we've seen the movie before.
I also lived in Kiev and have lots of friends from both sides, and everyone knows that protester
leaders are no better than Yanukovich. I was doing business there for several years, nothing
changed in terms of corruption after 2004 Orange Revolution – it became even worse, cose new
"hungry" orange inspectors came to positions. And I am sure that thing will become worse after
"EuroMaidan" win for ordinary people. The oligarchs will rule either way – only the names is
going to change.
marknesop:
Yes, one of those comments is mine, but I noticed that several have questioned the deadeye-snipers-for-evil
premise, and it will probably just go quietly away like so many of the other trial balloons
floated to see how gullible the audience can reliably be.
AP:
"I was doing business there for several years, nothing changed in terms of corruption after
2004 Orange Revolution – it became even worse, cose new "hungry" orange inspectors came to positions.
Yes, this is what I've heard also. However things got even worse, if you can imagine, after
Yanukovich became president.
"And I am sure that thing will become worse after "EuroMaidan" win for ordinary people. The
oligarchs will rule either way – only the names is going to change."
Who knows. Klitschko at least is not one of them.
marknesop:
"However things got even worse, if you can imagine, after Yanukovich became president."
That so? Here's Ukraine's unemployment rate since 2008. From 9.8% when Yanukovych took over
to 7.6% now. Which is better – a higher unemployment rate, or a lower one? Here's average monthly
wages; you'll have to adjust the start value to 2010 yourself. Which is better – a low wage
or a higher one? Ukrainian wages are terrible, but there is no sensible argument to be made
that wages got worse under Yanukovych; wages reached an all-time high for Ukraine in July of
2013. Or did he just raise the wages of all the non-Orange people, which would be cheaper since
they are less than half the population and getting smaller every minute? Here's the inflation
rate – once again, you have to adjust the start date to 2010. After a struggle which took Ukraine
through most of 2011, Yanukovych got inflation under control and it dropped steeply – too far:
it went into deflation, and has since corrected to about .5%, which is a little lower than the
actual target rate for the U.S. economy (about 2%) although it cannot achieve it at present
because it dares not raise interest rates. Is 12% inflation better than .5%? Ukraine's balance
of trade is horrible, but it was in the negative when Yanukovych took over and has gotten only
marginally worse. Which contributes more to a negative trade balance – a trade surplus with
Russia or a trade deficit with the EU? Because Ukraine sells more to Russia than it buys from
Russia, while it buys more from the EU than it sells to it – and don't forget, Yanukovych is
still paying off Yushchenko's IMF loan.
What you mean is, according to my friends in Kiev, who hate Yanukovych and want him out,
things got even worse under Yanukovych. The national picture tells a somewhat different story.
Moscow Exile:
Putin: Russia ready to support Ukraine, regardless of govt
Is that a signal from the Kremlin that Yanukovich is ready to abdicate power?
If that be true, oh what fun and games there will follow in the Ukraine amongst the "leaders"
of the "opposition" and the Maidan mob.
Prepare now for the break up of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
East Pakistan and West Pakistan springs to mind – but without an armed conflict.
Moscow Exile:
Harding's in his element again over this in the Grauniad, where he's back on form making
unsubstantiated claims and using anonymous sources:
The opposition responded cautiously to Azarov's resignation, saying it was unclear who would
replace him. Russia, meanwhile, piled further pressure on Yanukovych by announcing that it might
not fulfil its pledge to pay a £9bn bailout to Ukraine if the government falls, the Wall Street
Journal reported, citing Russian government sources. The money is desperately needed to keep
Ukraine's struggling economy afloat.
One former Ukrainian foreign ministry official said that the Kremlin was exerting massive
pressure on Yanukovych behind the scenes, and had been urging him to deal more harshly with
anti-government protesters. "Ukraine is out of money. If Russia stops financing Yanukovych he
will be unable to pay his loyal supporters in the east," the official said.
See: Ukraine's president accepts resignation of PM after protest laws annulled
And this is what WSJ says today, Tuesday, 28th January: Putin: Russia to Fulfill Obligations
to Ukraine Despite Changes to Government
Russia intends to fulfill its financial obligations to Ukraine despite changes in its government,
Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the EU-Russia summit in Brussels Tuesday.
"I will give you a direct answer to the question of whether we will be reconsidering our
agreements on loan and energy, if opposition comes to power (in Ukraine)? We won't," Mr. Putin
said in Brussels during a televised press conference.
(Russian mother-tongue translator, I suspect: intonation question [usually only used in English
to express surprise or shock] and there should be no comma before the subordinate condition
clause, as there is in Russian.)
That question that Putin asks himself in the above WSJ extract is Putin's Russian intonation
question directly translated into English; I would have translated the question thus: "Shall
I give you a direct answer to the question of whether we will be reconsidering our agreements
on loan and energy if the opposition comes to power (in the Ukraine)? We won't."
Harding reports that WSJ has cited anonymous "Kremlin sources" that have stated that "Russia
might not fulfil its pledge", yet WSJ quotes Putin as saying the pledge won't be changed because
of a change of government in the Ukraine.
Harding and I must speak a different kind of English in view of the way he reads the WSJ
report differently to the way I do.
Talking of which language, is it usual US English to spell "fulfil" thus: "fulfill"?
That's how WSJ spells it above.
reggietcs:
Frankly, polls have shown that the Russian public seems to be very unhappy with this 'loan"
and Putin has failed to provide a clear explanation to them as to why Ukraine should be granted
such a massive loan from public coffers while the Russian economy is facing stagnation.
I hope this doesn't come back to bite Putin, because there's a chance that he could be looking
at his first diplomatic failure this year if an opposition figure comes to power & signs the
Association agreement in spite of the Russian loan. Russia can and most likely would find it
impossible to get its loan repaid.
I don't like this one bit.
Moscow Exile:
Looks like that loan's gone down the Swanee.
marknesop:
Frankly, I don't think the EU would offer an associatiation agreement if Ukraine were beholden
to and underwritten by Russia. Poland and the Baltic States took IMF loans, and those always
come with strings that allow the IMF to influence and direct the leadership. Ukraine under Yushchenko
also took a big IMF loan, and would have taken a second one except the IMF withheld it because
Yushchenko misbehaved and did not make reforms he had been directed to make, and refused to
withdraw the gas subsidy for home heating.
The EU no longer has lots of lolly to throw around to bail out struggling economies, and
probably dares not even utter the word "bailout" for fear of a furious German rebellion. But
I think an opposition government – if it comes to power, which I still don't think is going
to happen – would find itself confronted with the choice of accepting large loans from Russia
or imposing harsh austerity on Ukrainians to pay for costly reforms.
reggietcs:
I'm pretty sure Putin has his own Russian meals prepared on his presidential jet. I doubt
he's salivating at thought of sampling some of those exquisite European dishes.
Not serving a sitting head of state a meal is absolutely comical and in my opinion shows
just how toothless and tacky the EU bureaucrats have become.
marknesop:
Never mind – it would have to be quite the exquisite meal for it to be enjoyable considering
the company with whom he would have to share it. Did you see those phonies Barroso and von Rompuy
smiling and simpering as if they were all the best of friends, and as soon as the summit is
over they'll be huddled with The Guardian or some such rag giving them the inside dirt on the
2.5 hr. meeting and it will be all Putin's fault for everything including bad weather.
I remember I disliked Dick Cheney even more (I already thought he was a huge dick) when he
told Patrick Leahy on the House floor, "Go fuck yourself", because after a bitter argument about
his Halliburton ties, bla, bla, bla, Leahy approached him all smiles as if that was all just
business, no hard feelings and the smiley-face was the real Patrick Leahy.
But now, although I couldn't agree it was the best thing Cheney ever did, I think I kind
of understand him a little. It must be tremendously liberating to not have to pretend that you
like people who are assholes, and can just say, "You're an asshole. Don't smile at me, because
assholes do not have the muscles it takes to smile".
Moscow Exile:
What's the betting NATO will be in the Ukraine before the year's out?
marknesop:
I say not a chance. But if they could split Ukraine off from Russia and get it NATO membership
– quite different from association – if they had the money they would have a military base there
as fast as they could build it. And they can always seem to find the money, despite austerity,
when it's for something they really want.
Nice map showing where the income in Ukraine is. Those titushki seem to know more about making
a living compared to the Banderite neo-Nazis rioting in Kiev.
Fern:
There was an interview earlier this week with a hospitalised demonstrator in Kiev who lost
an eye to a rubber bullet – I'd imagine that this actual incident has become inflated into the
'snipers shooting out eyes by the light of burning tyres' story.
The EU may have denied Putin dinner but it seems entertainment was provided. Two topless
women from Femen staged a protest against what Reuters describes as 'Putin's role in the Ukraine
crisis'. Their bare-chested messages were 'Good job Putin' and 'Putin Killer of Democracy' –
the second message suggests a lady with implants. Extract from the 'person specification' for
the post of President of the Russian Federation – the ability to cope with endless insults and
demonisation with the occasional interjection of the surreal.
I'd imagine that the formal agreement between Russia and Ukraine for the purchase of $15
billion Eurobonds in tranches contains clauses which provide for non-payment of the next tranche
if Ukraine fails to make interest payments. I think Putin was saying that, in principle, Russia
has no problem dealing with a Ukrainian government of a different political stripe but that's
not a commitment to continue with the funding if Ukraine fails to meet the terms and conditions
of the loan.
Like reggietcs I think the granting of this loan was a mistake and I hope Russia doesn't
have to pony up the full amount. One can see already that whoever eventually takes power in
Ukraine will be egged on by the EU & US to refuse repayments thus further exacerbating tensions
with Russia.
marknesop:
Perhaps "Putin Killer of Democracy" was simply written with a smaller font. Or so as to take
advantage of the curvature – there's no law says you have to write right across centre-mass.
I still think the EU will be unhappy with a Ukraine which relies on Russia for its financial
well-being, because the EU prefers not only a compliant leader who is susceptible to "suggestion"
– although that's a nice start – but an economy dependent on loans from western-controlled institutions.
That way, even if the leadership changes to one which is not so compliant (or so simple-minded
that it can be flattered and cajoled into stamping the desired policies), you still have the
people by the goolies and they know which side their bread is buttered on. If the leader won't
play ball, it's easy to start a popular revolt and have him or her overthrown, because the EU
controls the purse-strings.
As the borrower rather than the lender, Ukraine – and by extension, the EU – is in no position
to demand guarantees from the lender; it's very much the other way around, and I doubt Putin
is so foolish as to have committed to an arrangement whereby Russia has to give Ukraine the
full amount. It is customary for loans to be secured, and Russia is not simply loaning Ukraine
money, it is buying Ukrainian debt. China had a similar arrangement for some time with America,
although it has scaled back, buying American debt in the form of treasury notes. You see how
much dictatorial power America exercises over China, and how when America complains about the
human-rights situation vis-a-vis Tibet, the Chinese knuckle their foreheads, say "Yowzah" and
jump right to it. Not so much, right? In fact, when China had the Olympics, a lot of allegedly-downtrodden
special-interest groups had it in mind to make the Chinese games all about human rights the
way Sochi has been made all about gay rights and corruption. These groups, of course, needed
the support of the western press to make that happen. You saw how well that worked out for them.
To be fair, that was not entirely about the disadvantageous financial position in which China
had the USA, but it also had much to do with China's potential as an investment moneymaker for
American corporations, which have heavy money in China and so in the end the soft-pedaling China
got boiled down to money.
It is encouraging that the EU heavyweights had essentially nothing to say following the summit
but that there was "good dialogue" (politicalese for "bla bla bla") and the appointment of expert
panels (I imagine Aslund will be on one, as he is fancied to be a great economist even though
he could not make the connection between monkey scat at the zoo and the presence of live monkeys)
to study the problem further. This is shorthand for "We didn't get what we wanted". Which was
for Russia to pay the toll while Ukraine drove over the EU bridge, smiling and waving.
This far from incompetent in "Ukraine kitchen" guy does not even understand how right he is in one
case. Why not to adopt Marshall plan for Ukraine, if it is geo-strategically so important? The rest
of article is junk: repetition of trivialities and propaganda clichés. All this 24x7 propaganda
bombing from Jene Sharp textbook is looking stale...
If the EU agreement in Vilnius had been signed, there was a chance that European democratic standards,
transparency and rule of law in Ukraine would take hold irreversibly. If that happened, the
contrast with life in Russia could have become very apparent – both for Ukrainians and for Russians
themselves.
Looks like a very successful move by US diplomacy, despite the label Biden carries as for his foreign
policy "successes". Some laws were repealed the same day. It might well be that he held some trump card
in his sleeve, such as approval of IMF loans for Ukraine. Kind of reversal of Nuland's paternalistic
SNAFU of distributing cookies on Maidan (which was nicknamed "Let them eat cakes") which pissed off
a lot of Ukrainians.
January 27, 2014 | whitehouse.gov
Vice President Biden called Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to express U.S. support for
on-going negotiations between the government and the opposition to end the current standoff and
bring about a peaceful, political solution to the crisis.
He underscored that the U.S. condemns the use of violence by any side, and warned that declaring
a State of Emergency or enacting other harsh security measures would further inflame the situation
and close the space for a peaceful resolution.
Underscoring that no time should be lost, the Vice President urged President Yanukovych to pull
back riot police and work with the opposition on immediate measures to de-escalate tensions between
protesters and the government. He also urged the government to take concrete steps during tomorrow's
parliamentary session to respond to the full and legitimate concerns of the Ukrainian people,
including by repealing the anti-democratic laws passed on January 16.
Finally, the Vice President reaffirmed the unwavering support of the United States for a Ukraine
that rejects violence and that respects the human rights and dignity of its citizens in accordance
with their European aspirations and their desire to restore their country back to economic health.
As UNIAN informs on January 28 MP Vadym Kolesnichenko (Party of Regions) registered in the Verkhovna
Rada a draft law "On organizations receiving funding from abroad."
Text of the document has not yet been made public, but we know that it is registered under
the number 4041.
Initial version of the law (Kolsnichenko Oleynik law) was canceled along with others by votes
taken on January 16.
January 16 Rada adopted one resolution and 11 laws . Tuesday, January 28 deputies canceled nine
laws, and four of them adopted again by the second (now electronic) voting.
Cancelled five laws:
Vladimir Oleynik and Vadim Kolesnichenko law on protection of judges and law enforcement
officers. It contains a lot of changes in the administrative and criminal codes that relate
to journalists, NGOs and the protesters. For example , the law prohibits the media to operate
without a license, impose liability for defamation, prohibits go protest in the mask and helmet.
The law also offers to sell SIM cards for passports.
A law that restricts parliamentary immunity of depities who committed crimes. It
was proposed to solve this problem using abbreviated procedure in the session hall, without
committee hearings.
The so-called "letters of happiness " law for drivers - mailed penalties based on
automatically detected traffic violations .
Law on football fans . Cabinet has offered to sell tickets for the matches only using
identification and to toughen the penalties for football hooligans including obligatory prohibition
to attand matches on the stadium where they committed offence for two years.
Also abolished absentee introduction of criminal proceedings of absent persons which allow
the courts to hear the case without the defendant.
Statement "Under the constitution, the departure of the prime minister means the resignation of
the entire government." The government automatically gets the label "provisional" and continue to function
until new elections. So without new Prime minister appointment this essentially purely formal procedure
that changes nothing.
In back-to-back moves to try to resolve Ukraine's political crisis, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov
submitted his resignation on Tuesday and parliament repealed anti-protest laws that prompted violent
clashes between protesters and police.
The twin moves were significant concessions to the protesters who have occupied the capital's
main square for two months and fought sporadically with police for the last 10 days. Yet key issues
remain unresolved in Ukraine's political crisis, including the opposition's repeated demands for
President Viktor Yanukovych to resign and a new election to be held.
"The conflict situation which has come about in the country is threatening the economic and social
development of Ukraine, creating a threat to the whole of Ukrainian society and to each citizen,"
said Azarov, adding that he had personally asked Yanukovich to accept his resignation.
Under the constitution, the departure of the prime minister means the resignation of the
entire government.
Yanukovych has been under increasing pressure since he pushed the tough laws through parliament,
setting off clashes and protests in other parts of the country in a sharp escalation of tensions
after weeks of mostly peaceful protests over his rejection of a deal to deepen ties with the 28-nation
European Union.
Azarov's resignation has yet to be accepted by the president, but that appears to be only
a formality. Yanukovych last week offered the premiership to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, one of the opposition's
top figures. Yatsenyuk turned down the offer.
The prime minister's resignation would remove one of the figures the opposition most despises,
and the repeal of the anti-protest laws should remove a severe aggravating factor in the crisis.
Yatsenyuk hailed the move, saying: "We have repealed all the laws against which the whole country
rose up."
Another potential sticking point is that the proposed amnesty for arrested protesters will not
be offered unless demonstrators stop occupying buildings and end their round-the-clock protests
and tent camp in Kiev's central Independence Square.
Protest leaders say scores of people have gone missing, presumably arrested.
Three protesters died in the clashes last week, two of whom were shot by hunting rifles, which
police insist they do not use.
"Ukraine's parliament has repealed anti-protest laws that set off violent clashes between protesters
and police after they were put in place this month." Looks like only five laws out of 12 were repealed.
See above. One law was immediately reintroduced in new redaction (Kolesnichenko
reintoriuduced the bill on organizations which are financed from abroad)
KIEV, Ukraine) - Ukraine's parliament has repealed anti-protest laws that set off violent clashes
between protesters and police after they were put in place this month.
I still think that was the war of choice, but more the war for access to markets and valuable commodities
that other empires had have and Germany badly needed. And European Union has some similarities with
Austro-Hungary
Not why but how - the depressing tale of how political ineptitude produced the great
war, January 25, 2014
At the moment there is a deluge of books attempting, so it would seem, to cash in on the
outbreak of the 1914 war rather than to advance its study. "Sleepwalkers" is an exception to
this. In the introduction to the book Christopher Clark writes that its purpose is not to explain
why the First World War happened. Rather it is to show how it came about by looking at the complex
relationships between the main players and the outcomes they produced, culminating in the declarations
of war that brought about the war.
Complex the relationships certainly are. Clark's meticulously argued work though places the
key focus on the Balkans and the relationships that developed and festered there between Austro-Hungary,
Serbia and Russia. By 1913 several points emerge that would have an impact on the decisions
of June/July 1914:
Russia was becoming a growing threat to an increasingly unreliable stability between
the Great Powers. It's apparent support for Serbia in the Balkan Wars alienated Austro-Hungary
just as its incursions into Persia antagonised Britain. Thanks to French loans it was undergoing
a massive programme of military rearmament and revival (at the time believed to be greater
than it actually was). This in turn helped contribute to the German rearmament programme
of 1913 which in turn led to further French and Russian expenditure on weapons and tweaking
of war plans.
The French saw supporting greater Russian involvement in the Balkans as in their
interests for if war broke out between Russia and Austro-Hungary, Germany would become involved
in support of Vienna. If Russia then tied up German forces in the east this would give
France the opportunity to attack and defeat weaker German forces in the west.
Recent experience had taught Austro-Hungary to believe that using a realistic threat
of force was the only means of getting its way against an increasingly militant, nationalist
and aggressive Serbia.
... ... ...
There was a signal lack of clear leadership in each major power so that ambiguity of intentions
and the nature of likely outcomes reigned as the final fateful decisions were made. Britain
was perhaps the most perfidious of all, Foreign Secretary Grey encouraging Germany to believe
Britain might not get involved, whilst at the same time leading France and Russia to think the
opposite. The Alliances were uncertain, not always what they seemed to be.
It would appear that the generation born in the 1880's and 1890's and who would die by the
millions were let down not just by the quality of the wartime military leadership but also by
that of their pre-war politicians. As "Sleepwalkers" reaches June and July 1914 it is the politicians
lack of prescience that brings the peace to an end. Clark suggests a key role in the encouragement
French President Poincare gives to Russia as ensuring what might have remained a local Austro-Hungarian
conflict with Serbia becoming a continental war...
...Britain and France, who considered themselves "nation-states" (although they were not,
they were colonial powers), gave not a single chance of survival for the Austrian multiple state.
The later European Union has many similarities with Austria-Hungary...
Gryphonisle (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
Brilliant, In Depth Work Examining How Europe Stumbled Into WW!, December 29, 2013
... ... ...
American readers who don't go in for a lot of history should remember two things:
1) Most of what we know about WW1 comes to us from the propaganda mills of London and Washington,
which accounts for the durability of the idea that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian
throne, was a minor character whose assassination was of little import or consequence. Clark
goes to great lengths to straighten this out and many will accuse him of being an apologist
for the Germans; such is the resilience of cultural beliefs.
2) When looking at Europe's long arc of history, most Americans forget that the United States
is older than most of its modern European allies: The French Republic didn't gel until after
WW2---most senior citizens are older than France; Italy came together only in 1885; and the
Austrian Empire kept Germany divided into 39 separate states to prevent the rise of what they
knew would be the powerhouse of Europe, Germany, that unified nonetheless in 1867. Think
about it: Germany was all of 47 when war broke out in 1914, no wonder why none of the European
capitals took it seriously.
Most of what took the world over the brink of war was a group of European Imperial leaders,
all of whom viewed their neighboring powers through stereotype and highly biased histories.
Worse, there was often no clear line of authority when it came to statecraft, and as a result
a mind-boggling welter of individuals had their hands on the tools of diplomacy, often working
at cross purposes with their own governments; and of course, many had their own agendas and
biases. Fact checkers were largely ignored. Case in point:
The Ottoman Empire "the Sick Man Of Europe": Propped up by various European capitals
who saw the maintenance of the critical waterways at Istanbul in Turkish hands (as opposed to
European hands) key to European stability. Everyone knew it was on its last legs and it was
Italy's invasion of Serbia (following Austria's formalization of it's control over former Ottoman
Bosnia-Herzegovina) that set off the land rush in Ottoman territories that set the clock running
towards the Great War.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire: The Other Sick Man Of Europe. Everyone considered Austria
to be near collapse as well, which is why no one wanted to risk European stability by allowing
Austria to attack Serbia after the murder of the Archduke in Sarajevo. That and the fact that
no one, even in Austria, liked the Archduke.
Russia: By all accounts, Russia had not only recovered from its humiliating defeat
at the hands of Japan in 1904, but its economic and military might was surging forward at such
a level, everyone fully expected Russia to surpass the dramatic growth of the United States,
causing France and Britain to worry that soon Russia could act on its own and not need allies.
Say What? Yep. That most of these fanciful reports came from known Russophiles (who were also
Germanophobes) did not seem to give rise to any skepticism amongst the European leaders.
Germany: At 47 and with no empire, nobody took Germany seriously. It didn't help that
Kaiser Wilhelm, with his congenital "foot in mouth" syndrome, was the George W. Bush of the
era. Yet the numbers show that Germany was everything people thought Russia was, it was indeed
becoming the economic powerhouse of Europe, and worse, as Hitler would later demonstrate, capable
of taking over all of Europe.
Germany and Britain: Both were so obsessed with the Russian threat, neither really
gave proper consideration to the threat they posed to each other. In the end, it wasn't the
Russians that would bedevil either, and finally, it was the British blockade at the beginning
of the war, not a feared Russian invasion that never came, that would cause Germany to surrender
without defeat.
Clark goes through all the stories, event by event, switching from capital to capital to
provide the perspective through which each government filtered the events as they saw them,
starting with the regicide of the entire Serbian royal family by a shadowy group of arch nationalist
that would eventually murder the Archduke; he re-examines the life of the Archduke, illuminating
his anti-social behavior, and also his competence and credible reformist credentials. And, as
events heat up after the assassination of the Archduke, how the deluded, self defeating leaders
of Europe kept making the wrong choices and acted on them without regard for the reactions they'd
create amongst the other capitals of Europe.
Current events illustrated this mindset with Obama's "Red Line In The Sand", when proof of
chemical weapons use by the Assad regime of Syria, compelled Obama to seek a military response,
as if there was no other. Clearly caught up in his own rhetoric and mis-reason, Obama kept pushing
towards what everyone knew would be a disaster, even after the British Parliament issued a wake
up call and voted "Hell No". It was only when President Putin (always one to relish a chance
to rub America's nose in the dirt) saw such an opportunity and presented the workable solution
that saved Obama's butt, and who knows how many lives.
At the same time, Clark only gives scant mention to the Fischer Hypothesis---a 1960's assertion
by a German academic, who researched documents showing that German leaders from Bismark to Hitler
shared the same racist genocidal beliefs and that Hitler, far from being a blip in history (however
fatal) was instead the culmination of a long existing blood thirst. It's a convenient theory
for people who want an unnaturally evil Germany, but one could look at the US and come up with
the same story. Slaves but 3/5ths of a human being? Slavery? The genocidal westward expansion
(which inspired Hitler to the extent that he referred to the Volga as his Mississippi River),
Jim Crow, lynchings; the murder of 750,000 to a million Filipinos in 1901; the fire bombing
of North Korea in 1952---where do we stop? The only thing we lack is an American Hitler to complete
the straight line, and according to Fischer's idea, one must be on the way...
It's not a pretty picture, and the attention to detail is at times exhausting for the reader.
Still, Clark makes a very good argument and backs it up with no shortage of details, and for
the most part it's a very good read. No, he doesn't point a finger of blame and I agree with
the idea that there's more than enough of that to go around, I would even add that there were
no good guys in World War One, not from what I've been reading. But that's for you to decide,
and this would make a very good addition to a library examining the tortured path the 20th Century
presented to humanity's voyage to where we are today, with the modern state of Israel; the borders
of the Middle Eastern Arab nations; and the never ending strife in the Middle East, not to mention
a world almost bereft of Monarchies and without any options to Capitalist Consumerism. World
War One.
ReasonableGuy (Long Island, NY)
Excellent Start Compromised by a Disappointing Finish
This is a difficult review to compose. The difficulty lies in the fact that Professor Clark
starts off very well. He covers the deep political background of the war thoroughly. He lays
out the tangled rivalries, ambitions, agendas and animosities in a manner that gives the reader
a good understanding of the historical context within which the 1914 assassination crisis will
unfold. The first 2/3rds of the book rate a solid 4 to 5 stars.
Unfortunately, things go downhill after that.
... ... ..
The assignment of responsibility/guilt is something with which Professor Clark is not comfortable.
In this context, he acknowledges the Fischer thesis/school, which does assign responsibility,
but makes no concerted effort to come to grips with it. Instead, Clark simply writes, "Recent
studies of the resulting Fischer controversy have highlighted the links between this debate
and the fraught process by which German intellectuals came to terms with the contaminating moral
legacy of the Nazi era, and Fischer's arguments have been subjected to criticism on many points"
Pardon me, but SO WHAT?! The point is utterly irrelevant. A far more pertinent question is what
about the mountain of documentary evidence Fischer assembled to support his argument? Forget
the "Fischer controversy", it's the evidence that requires our attention -- the cables,
the letters, the memoranda, all of which are produced during the crisis by the actual participants
in the crisis.
The problem is that I think that in his fervent desire to steer clear of the "blame game"/Fischer
controversy, Professor Clark failed to spend enough time assimilating the full weight of Fischer's
evidence or its implications. The point is that the documentary evidence makes it very clear
that the "sleepwalking" thesis is not tenable. Decision-makers in Germany and Austro-Hungary
knew well in advance that they would be crossing the threshold into armed conflict, and that
crossing would be made by choice.
They had ample time to change course if they so desired. There is ample evidence of bad faith.
There's no "sleepwalking" going on here. There's a valid question about the ultimate personal
intentions of Wilhelm II. There's a valid question about whether particular individuals expected
the war to expand as far as it did. However, there's no sleepwalking with respect to the
decision to go to war with Serbia.
Do the other states share equivalent responsibility? Do they all carry their own "smoking
guns" as Professor Clark claims?
Here I have to ask a question...
What specific choice or action did any of the other powers undertake which precluded the
possibility of a peaceful resolution of the assassination crisis between the assassination on
June 28, and the July 23 publication of Austro-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia? Remember,
without the ultimatum, subsequent actions by the other powers become moot. There is no
context for response, no reason to consider mobilization. So what, if anything, did they do
that made a peaceful resolution of the crisis impossible? What we have to remember is that just
because they had their own ambitions, agendas, hatreds, or contingency plans, doesn't mean that
they're guilty of pushing the baby over the cliff.
The thing is, it really does make a difference. If people absorb the meme that the First
World War is an accidental war brought about miscalculation, militarism, and rivalries run amok,
it fosters one set of suppositions about war and peace-keeping. However, if it's understood
as a war of choice, a whole different set of lessons recommend themselves.
Frank Furedi's libertarian ideas about the way we should view the first world war are missing
the point
The centenary of the
first world war, "the war to end all wars", with its terrible tally of 16 million dead and 20
million wounded, andous origins and outcomes, has recently seen renewed wrestling in the comfortable
trenches of the commentariat. A motley crew that includes
Michael Gove, the education secretary;
Tristram Hunt, historian
and Gove's shadow; comedian
David Mitchell; Jeremy
Paxman and refugees from Blackadder have been exercising their opinions about the causes
and meaning of the four-year debacle that ended in nations paralysed by grief and no lasting peace,
only a postponement of hostilities. As Marshal Foch remarked of the Treaty of Versailles, "This…
is an armistice for 20 years."
First World War: Still No End in Sight by Frank Furedi
Sociologist Frank Furedi in
First World War: Still No End in Sight is not focused on whether Britain fought a just war
in defence of democracy and liberalism (main ally tsarist Russia? 40% of the British troops yet
to have the vote?) or the merits or demerits of patriotism and the officer class sending Tommies
"over the top" to certain death. Instead, he warns that there is a danger in treating the past mainly
as a lamp to illuminate the present. Modern wars such as the global "war on terror" (recently
renamed the "overseas contingency operation" by the American administration, adopting managerialism
in a vain attempt to distract from the rising death count) and the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and
Afghanistan are viewed by many today as incomprehensible and unpopular, influenced by "contemporary
attitudes of cynicism, apathy and mistrust of any cause or belief", Furedi writes. (Tell that to
the young men and women leaving Britain to take up arms in Syria.) As a result, there is a concerted
effort to pin the same label of incomprehensibility on 1914-18.
That is misguided, Furedi argues. The public showed "remarkable" support for the conflict at
the outbreak of war, "because they believed that it would provide them with a cause that had true
meaning" (and employment and food in the belly without much harm done – or so 15-year-old volunteers
thought). "Many young people believed that this was a cause worth fighting and potentially even
dying for."
What Furedi contests with brio, unlimited pessimism and references to an army of intellectuals
that span the century, is that the first world war has never ended. It heralded the death rattle
of empire, deference, white racial superiority and the docility of the masses. It fostered a fear
of populism (rising again today) and, as the late
Tony Judt reminds us in
Ill Fares the Land, the first world war was followed by epidemics, revolutions, the
failure of states, currency collapses, unemployment, dictatorship and fascism. Democracy, however,
has proved resilient if battered.
Those seismic shifts, Furedi is not the first to argue, have influenced the way we think about
our cultural and political life; our values or lack of them; our national identity and the draining
away of trust in our institutions and notions of authority. "After the bitter experience of a century
of conflicts," Furedi writes, "tackling the question of how to ensure that popular consent serves
as the foundation for authority remains the question of our time."
Furedi's broad, stimulating and ambitious canvas is framed by his own
politics. Self-described
as a libertarian, he has roots in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and is now a prominent
figure in the Institute of
Ideas (IoI). Furedi is prolific. Many of his books reflect the IoI's contrarian and anti-"problem-mongering"
position. His books, built on convincing grains of truth, include
Paranoid Parenting (too much of it),
Therapy Culture (too much of it) and
Politics of Fear (too much of it). Essentially the message is that the ordinary man
and woman are becoming fearful, risk-averse, infantilised, bossed about by self-appointed experts
at a cost to democracy, science and reason.
In Still No End in Sight, however, it is not problem-mongering that is the target for
trenchant criticism but "the culture wars", lifestyle choices that delineate a traditionalists-versus-progressives
civil war on "hot-button" issues such as abortion, homosexuality and marriage. Culture wars, he
argues, have filled the vacuum created by the demise of ideologies and the exhaustion of left and
right.
What Furedi terms "lifestyle" issues, however, may also personify an individual's politics;
the personal is political. The values of a radical Islamist and how he may or may not gel with
the values of an emancipated feminist secularist, both of whom are part of British citizenry, neither
of whom may wish to trade off personal convictions, is not a concern about "segmented lifestyles"
but part of a dynamic that – along with reshaping capitalism so that the social compact is infinitely
fairer – are among the major issues of our democratic times. Yet Furedi concludes that we have to
"consign cultural and lifestyle issues to the margins" and "re-politicise the ideal of democracy
and public life" or risk violent conflict and war. That, surely, is as surreal as taking the bullets
out of a gun and still squeezing the trigger to fire?
RedSperanza
These former Revolutionary Communists turned right wing libertarians are not to be taken
seriously. There is a book to be written on the exotic fringe world existence of British political
cults that emerged in the 1970s - various fascists on the one side, motley sub-Marxist oddballs
on the other. The Revolutionary Communist Party would merit a chapter, maybe, but mostly for
reasons of light entertainment.
Otherwise ... honestly, to grant Frank Furedi a serious Guardian book review is a little
like granting David Brent a serious music review.
hoddle1
Depressing to think how much WW1 garbage will surface this year in all media. 99% of it to
make a fast buck. And the anniversary of the start of the war is still months away. God help
us then..
fairshares
' It heralded the death rattle of empire, deference, white racial superiority and the
docility of the masses.'
Eh? It seems to me that most of these issues are still with us, albeit called by other newspeak
names. They never went away.
...On the centenary of the catastrophe, numerous new studies have been published which try to
render the incomprehensible comprehensible. They detail the calculations of those then in power
in Europe's capitals, the rash predictions of a swift military campaign and the misjudgments on
all sides
...The outbreak of war in 1914 put an end to the initial phase of globalisation. Europe's economies
and cultures were so closely intertwined that at the time, war seemed impossible, irrational
and against each country's own interests. Yet it still broke out.
...Having a sober view not only of one's own interests, but also of one's neighbours interests,
acting responsibly and thinking about consequences with a level head are vital to safeguarding peace.
Avoiding the hasty adoption of positions and constantly seeking new room to compromise are two fundamental
principles of diplomacy. The history of 1914 provides a vivid insight into what happens when we
ignore them.
TheManagement
Europe is the central stem of modern civilisation.
JamesHardman -> TheManagement
Civilisation seems to equate to the development of sophisticated methods of killing third
world natives at long distance.
War without war or legitimacy or justification or end.
Mkubwa
The things that kept the peace in Western Europe from 1945 until 1991 were firstly, NATO
and secondly, fear of the Russians and communism.
Mkubwa HappyValley
the creation of the EU and then the fall of the Iron Curtain
Fall of Iron Curtain 1991, creation of EU 1993. So that doesn't work.
Drahdiwaberl -> Mkubwa
I almost agree with you.
In 1914 the imperialist states of Europe went to war and they lost Russia (and almost Germany)
to communism.
In 1939, they went to war again, and they lost half of Europe to communism.
So it makes sense to say that it wasn't Nato or the EU that "kept the peace", it was their
fear of what would happen if the European capitalist powers ever went to war again that led
to the formation fo the EU.
Strummered
..."Having a sober view not only of one's own interests, but also of one's neighbours
interests, acting responsibly and thinking about consequences with a level head are vital to
safeguarding peace"....
Eminently sensible, something tub thumping reactionary politics manifestly ignores.
mrwicket
The loss of trust in the European project which has accompanied the economic crisis in
Europe, in recent years particularly prominent in the young generation hit by unemployment
and the lack of prospects in large parts of the EU, holds great danger. In such an atmosphere,
it is easy to fall back on nationalist rhetoric, sung to the catchy tune of criticism of
Europe. Given our history, we must firmly resist this.
I imagine it is easier to resist if you are not in Southern Europe like me. I've always been
pro-EU and pro-Europe but am wholly against what they are doing now.
Did the July crisis have to lead to catastrophe? Probably not. Yet emotive rhetoric overrode
the courage to pursue a laborious balancing of interests. Can we rule out something similar
happening today? The answer depends solely on us, on us being responsible and on the lessons
that we take from history.
Who is this 'us' though? Some of 'us' will decide for the rest and although that in itself
is hugely problematic, what they decide will determine the outcome.
TheGreatCucumber
Hearing the EU pat itself on the back for keeping the peace in Europe is some of the most
sickening self-congratulatory drivel you could possibly hear. It's not the EU that kept
the peace in Europe throughout the second half of the 20th century, it was the certainties of
the cold war with the constant threat of communist invasion.
Chasing European integration (With the ultimate goal of creating a European superstate) in
some attempt to keep peace throughout Europe is idiotic. We should remember that political union
is no guarantee of peace, as Yugoslavia and all the civil wars throughout history have demonstrated.
Of course you won't be trusted. I don't trust my own politicians so why the hell would I
trust a load of EU ones?
BlueBalloons
We and the author of this article should remember that it was not nationalism that was
the cause of the 2nd world war but imperialism. Hitler's invasion of sovereign nations
and intimidation and threats.
We the people of this nation are being denied a referendum till the mass immigration is enough
to swing the vote.
many millions of people here long for a free United Kingdom no longer under threat of EU
directives and interference and with borders that are under our control not yours and your like
Mr Frank Walter Stenmeier
herero
France wasn't in NATO for an extended period so let's not big NATO up too much.
The main reason for stability is that France and Germany having fought each other in 3 bloody
wars from 1870 to 1945 decided to talk instead. The European project played a large role in
that.
thetrashheap
What the EU has done to Greece has helped bring fascists back into political positions
for the first time.
The free movement of labour has increase bigotry because instead of being angry at the political
class for shafting them many are wrongly angry at the migrants themselves.
The fact is it's breeding instability not creating it.
That said the yanks would crush anybody who tried to militarize or empire build in Europe
against its wishes so it ain't going to happen EU or no EU
thinkingloud
As a result of a member of an elite family being killed, millions of people were coerced
into trying to kill each other. Doesn't the ignorance of the masses and propaganda from elites
have a little bit to do with war? Trying to build peace within a framework of unbridled capitalism
allied to debt-based compound-interest money is impossible because these systems can only function
though abuse, exploitation and the extension of poverty and environmental destruction. Continuing
with them will lead to more austerity, civil unrest and if left unchanged war. Whether the EU
institutions serve EU citizens or Europe's finance institutions and corporations will determine
the direction and the rate of development to true peace or war.
itsamadmadworld
For some, the pursuit of compromises around negotiating tables in Brussels is too
arduous, protracted and unwieldy.
Try a more accurate version:
For many, the pursuit of compromises around negotiating tables in Brussels is too secretive,
undemocratic and often corrupt.
joseph1832
What is he saying? Unless we support ever greater integration, Germany will dust off the
Schlieffen Plan?
I once read that the nearest thing to an incontrovertible rule of international diplomacy
is that democracies do not fight each other. So unless he is saying that without the EU in its
present (or a more integrated form) then democracy will fall apart in a country big enough to
wage war against the rest, it doesn't really work.
Just a mixture of hubris and scaremongering.
ProductiveTime
WWI, WWII, EU. All attempts by Germany to take over Europe.
spinneroo
Very strange . The EU hasn't made war unimaginable. What made it unimaginable was the
total and appalling destruction of Germany during the last war and the learning that came
from that, together with a huge US and NATO presence in Europe , acting as guarantor
Biggsthe2nd
Personally, I'd rather be governed by the Germans than the Tories.
Having lived in a few EU countries over the last 25 years, I'm happy with Europe. Most EU
countries are more democratic than Britain. The EU needs to be reformed but if it didn't exist
we would have to invent something similar.
But what needs reforming and democratizing most, is Westminster.
TarsusB
The stupidity of many of the comments here are just one reason most states do not run direct
democracies.
Affirmative -> TarsusB
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He
would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you
might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
Mark Almonds: ""a sinister, cynical political power game about the Ukraine, which has implications
for the functioning of the constitutions of the Western Europe, for the functioning of our own democracy."
The loss of trust in the European project those action can cause holds great dangers. If EU became viewed
as colonial master all bets are off. On the centenary of the WWI catastrophe as
Frank-Walter Steinmeier put it "numerous new studies have been published which try to render the
incomprehensible comprehensible. They detail the calculations of those then in power in Europe's capitals,
the rash predictions of a swift military campaign and the misjudgments on all sides.... The outbreak
of war in 1914 put an end to the initial phase of globalization. Europe's economies and cultures were
so closely intertwined that at the time, war seemed impossible, irrational and against each country's
own interests. Yet it still broke out." And if I remember correctly
Gavrilo Princip was a Serbian
nationalist.
"the so-called liberals and moderates are playing with fire," Almond concludes, saying that the
extremist mob now clashing with police in the streets might turn against them, too. "It's a very
unstable situation, and I think that Vitaly Klitchko, Yatsenyuk, Parshenko - these leaders whom
the West courts - are playing with fire, and so is the West," Almond believes.
"They want a collapse of Yanukovich's government, a revolution of a sort. They, of course, then
want to glide safely into the presidential office and into the seats of power, but they will have
depended upon the heavy mob, these extreme nationalists of Ukraine who chant anti-Russian slogans,
anti-Jewish slogans, and who of course have got a taste of violence, and, who will see themselves
if they are able to overthrow Yanukovich, as the people who brought about the revolution," he told
RT. "And of course we've seen in the past once you move from having elections as the basis of political
power to the crowd in the street, to the storming of the government buildings, that can slide out
of control: the people who think they are the leaders today could find themselves marginalized,
the people who today are willing to use incitements to violence by denouncing the current government
as being tyrants could find themselves being targeted by the same people who are throwing Molotov
cocktails tomorrow."
Mark Almond also points out that the situation is "a sinister, cynical political power game about
the Ukraine, which has implications for the functioning of the constitutions of the Western Europe,
for the functioning of our own democracy.
Also published in Slate. No insights but a good summary of Polish elite views (the voice of Polish
Foreign Office): "These events are so harsh, and so contrary to what anyone expected, that they should
lead us to abandon immediately some of the illusions we have long held about this part of the world.
First and foremost, it's time to abandon the myth of the "color revolutions": the belief that peaceful
demonstrators, aided by a bit of Western media training, will eventually rise up and nonviolently overthrow
the corrupt oligarchies that have run most of the post-Soviet orbit since 1991."
January 24, 2014 | Washington Post
The Ukrainian parliament recently passed legislation directly modeled on Russian precedents.
The laws curb demonstrations, using language broad enough to apply to almost any gathering. They
criminalize "slander," which might mean any criticism of the government. They require the members
of any organization with any foreign funding, including the Greek Catholic Church, to register as
"foreign agents," which is to say spies. These laws were passed at night, with a show of hands.
Deputies did not discuss them or, in some cases, even read them.
Within days, the center of the capital, Kiev, became a war zone. Men with truncheons used clouds
of tear gas to break up protesters who have been demonstrating against corruption and Russian influence
since November. Priests said Mass before the barricades; buses burned in the snow. Riot police shot
people with rubber bullets. Then they shot them with real bullets. Others were hauled away and beaten.
Anyone standing near the scene Tuesday received a text message from the phone company: "Dear subscriber,
you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance." So far, five people are dead.
These events are so harsh, and so contrary to what anyone expected, that they should lead us
to abandon immediately some of the illusions we have long held about this part of the world. First
and foremost, it's time to abandon the myth of the "color revolutions": the belief that peaceful
demonstrators, aided by a bit of Western media training, will eventually rise up and nonviolently
overthrow the corrupt oligarchies that have run most of the post-Soviet orbit since 1991. The history
of Ukraine, from the 2004 Orange Revolution until now, has proved this belief to be false.
In fact, corrupt oligarchs, backed by Russian money and Russian political technology, are a lot
stronger than anyone ever expected them to be. They have the cash to bribe a parliament's worth
of elected officials. They have the cynicism to revive the old Soviet technique of selective violence:
One or two murders are enough to scare off many thousands of demonstrators; one or two arrests will
suffice to remind businessmen who is boss. They have also learned to manipulate media (as the Russians
do) to multiply their money in Western financial institutions (as the Russians do), even to send
threatening text messages. They have crafted a well-argued, well-funded, alternate narrative
about Western economic decline and cultural decadence. A friend jokingly calls this the "all your
daughters will become lesbians" line of argument, but it is surprisingly powerful.
... ... ...
From Wikipedia:
Anne Elizabeth Applebaum (born 1964) is an Polish American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning
author who has written extensively about communism and the development of civil society in Central
and Eastern Europe. She has been an editor at The Economist, and a member of the editorial
board of The Washington Post (2002–2006) and Slate Magazine. She is married to Poland's Minister
of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski.[3]
David Kremer was in the past Undersecretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Human Rights, he also
worked in State Department in Europe and Eurasia. As a member of the Bush team, his views are more
radical than in the current US administration. But his proposals sooner or later finds their way
into steps of the current US administration. Kramer was the first to call for sanctions on December
3, the last year - and approximately a month later, US administration announced the first restrictions
for Ukrainian officials.
In addition to these activities, the organization led by Kremer prepares an annual report on
freedom around the world, to which the U.S. authorities refer in public justification of policy
steps toward the "problem" countries.
In an interview with "Ukrainian Pravda" David Kramer predicts that further steps will be taken
by the U.S. authorities against Yanukovych - and gives advice on whom Washington ahouls concentrate
its pressure as soon as possible.\
Q: Mr. Kramer, how President Yanukovychas is now perceived in Washington ?
A: Yanukovych looks very bad due to latest events. He looked bad when he decided to stop the
process of the EU integration, he looked bad when it was first used force on November 30, and then
on December 9. He looked bad throughout all past months.
Now it starts to look like a leader, who will do everything to stay in power. The use of force
against protesters is unacceptable. And when the West is saying that something is unacceptable,
that we do not accept it, we have to do something about it.
I think that Yanukovych lost the confidence of the West, and any possibility of signing the association
agreement with the European Union lost. Now the question is whether Yanukovych is able to conduct
a dialogue for the peaceful resolution of the conflict - or pressure should be applied to those
around him to try to remove him from power.
To remove peacefully, without coup d'état. I tend to think that the attempts to negotiate the
settlement will not work, no matter how much I want them to happen. I think that too much blood
has been spilled, too much violence occurred. So the question on the agenda is how to put pressure
on its close cicle.
Q: Not to him personally ?
A: To him as well. But I would start with the people around him and who are very close to him:
his family. And then just increase the pressure from that point.
Q: Did he reached the point of no return ?
A: I think so.
Q: What does this mean?
A: In 2010, Yanukovych won legitimately, in election which were considered by most observers,
including me, democratic. I was there during the two rounds of elections. But to win a legitimate
election - it does not guarantee legitimacy fo the rest of the life! I would say that today Yanukovych
lost legitimacy due to his behavior.
From the early event in Ukraine my organization was for his resignation and early presidential
elections, but not for his overthrow and not for forceful removal of him from power by protesters
or by military or anyone else.
For him it's time to draw the correct conclusions: admit that he ruined his own legitimacy and
now is the time to resign. He created this reality by himself, not that somebody else created it
for him.
The West should apply pressure on him - and those around him - so that it became clear to him
and his close circle that human rights violations, violence against protestors entail consequences.
If we do not do that - the situation will only became worse.
Q: What is the future for Yanukovych?
A: I still think the best option for him is to resign, allowing to run for another term in the
new elections if he wants to. Let the voters to decide whether they want him back in office. But
we can not pretend that nothing happened. We can not wait until next March for new presidential
elections.
Q: Should the opposition give him some guarantees?
A: This probably will be not a popular idea among opposition supporters to do so. But I would
be inclined to say that they have to provide them.
Q: What are the guarantees?
A: For example, that before the new presidential elections there will be no investigation of
Yanukovich actions. And only after elections independent investigators should determine whether
there are grounds for such an investigation or not. The key now is to stop the violence. And if
that condition is achieved, there should be such guarantees, if Yanukovych agreed to resign.
Q: Party of the Regions reply to all the statements of Western leaders that in Europe and
America to the police would act similarly in the case of such disturbances.
A: You can not compare democracy in the United States and Ukraine . Our democracy is built over
time, we have an independent judiciary , we have separation of powers, we have a system of checks
and balances , we have a strong civil society, a strong media. Ukraine has only some of this.
I think that civil society manifested itself impressively in the last few years. Journalists
like you and others behaved remarkably well despite the existence of a real threat. But Parliament
is not a truly independent, judicial system is abused by the government. As long as there is no
real separation of powers in Ukraine, and the courts did not become independent, our countries can
not be compared.
Q: Also, the Ukrainian government said that in America there is the same legislation that
passed the Party of Regions. For example, criminal liability for defamation.
A: First, in the USA slander is not a criminal offense. This is a civil issue , which is decided
by the court, and a person may be awarded damages. Second, approval of legislation on Jan. 16 was
totally undemocratic, untransparent, just by vote. This was really stupid.
Why Yanukovych went for it ? I think they would use the law to begin the attack on protesters.
Although it would be far better to leave them alone. After all demonstrations lose momentum if they
do not face countermeasures. However, this legislation added fuel to the fire.
Of course, there should be no violence by the protesters, but they also has the right for defence
in case the fire at them. We should not equate the violence of a small minority of protesters to
the level of violence committed by the authorities entrusted with a great responsibility.
Q: What will be the next step towards Ukraine USA ?
A: The U.S. announced the first round of visa sanctions, we do not know against whom specifically.
Not even the number of persons named in this list. I hope that the U.S. will announce another round
of visa sanctions, but more importantly - the freezing of assets, the introduction of financial
sanctions. I know there are steps in this direction, some work on it. I hope they will be announced
soon, although in my view they should already be annonced. I have worked in government for eight
years and I know that those things take longer than some people would like.
Q: During your work in the Bush administration do you have any experience of implementing
sanctions ?
A: Yes, with respect to Belarus. Ukraine is not Belarus , but unfortunately , getting closer
and closer to it. Yanukovych is behaving more and more like Lukashenko. But Lukashenko, if you remember,
was hit by visa sanctions and asset freeze not only the U.S. but also from the European Union.
Q: How would you start this policy of sanctions ?
A: Ideally, the U.S. and the EU should work together. America must take the lead because the
EU comprises 28 governments. And to reach agreement in a team is difficult, while the U.S. has only
one government and the agreement is much easier to find . After the U.S. does, the EU would be easier
to follow it .
Q: How long does it takes for sanctions to be in full force?
A: In Belarus, it began after the presidential elections in March 2006, and the financial and
visa sanctions take effect in June. That is, it takes a few months. But it should not take so long
in the case of Ukraine, at least I hope so.
Q: Do you think that Yanukovych is afraid of sanctions ?
A: I do not know whether Yanukovych fear of sanctions. But I think people around him do have
the fear of sanctions.
Q: Whom do you mean ?
A: I mean some of the oligarchs. Such as Akhmetov, Firtash, Kolomoysky sons of Yanukovych, and
we can continue this list up to Yanukovich personally. So we have to build up pressure , affecting
the way those people think.
Q: An the goal should be a revolt of oligarchs against the President ?
A: I think I should try to push those people out of the circle of Yanukovych, to make them understand
that it's time to make the most important decision in their life: on which side they want to be
? And we can help them make that decision, hinting that there inevitably will be consequences for
the events which are now happening in Ukraine.
Q: How would you rate the work of opposition in the current situation ?
A: They are in a difficult position. The question is to what extent they control the protesters.
I think some of them behaved courageously - remember how Klitschko put himself between protesters
and police. The key is to unite the opposition - they must show that there is an alternative to
Yanukovych, who has already communicated that he is determined to stay in power at any cost . I
hope he will understand what is on the wrong track.
How is Europe to deal with all those displaced by U.S. / NATO wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya,
Syria ? What responsibility does Greece have for the refugees of the West's new world order ? Forced
into debt, Greece is additionally burdened by several hundred thousand displaced people seeking
refuge. Of these about fifty thousand are officially noted as "refugees" by the UN Refugee Agency.
A recent poll shows popularity of the extreme-right political party, "Golden Dawn," has risen
from 7% (435,000 votes) at the last election to 13.5%. With the same formula as the "Jobbik" Party
in Hungary, or Geert Wilders' "Party for Freedom" in the Netherlands, "Golden Dawn" appeals to the
majority's racial, religious, language identity, and rises through making vulnerable groups scapegoats
for political gain. Once started, this mechanism extends as additional groups are sacrificed to
deflect populist anger. Historically the parties are a danger to refugee, immigrant, Roma, Jewish,
Muslim and LGT communities, and find power to effect their policies through parliamentary alliances
with establishment conservatives. In Austria the far-right now includes "Team Stronach," recently
founded by the Austrian/Canadian auto-parts magnate. As the crushing austerity programs are forced
on Greece, a nationalist extreme right gains power to serve the enforcers. The European Commission
against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) describes "Golden Dawn" as a "neo-Nazi, racist and xenophobic
political party."
To protest "Golden Dawn," Mouvement Antiracist EuropИen / European Grassroots Antiracist Movement
(EGAM), has called for a march in Athens, December 15th at 3 PM, from the Greek Parliament to the
Acropolis. EGAM (egam-eu.blogspot.ca/) attempts to mobilize decency beyond ideologies in a European
society suffering from anti-communism, Disneyland, the Heimat syndrome, and austerity programs.
In France EGAM has organized for Roma pride. Last May thousands internationally, signed its petition
"We are all Greek Jews" (still open to signature at http://weareallgreekjews.eu ). But to understand
what decency is up against, consider what "Golden Dawn" is:
In WWII, EAM (the Communist Party and aligned resistance) freed Greece from occupation. The Allies
formed an army of royalists and the right wing to fight against EAM, and won after resistance groups
fought each other. The resulting 'democracy' was taken over by NATO supported Greek special forces,
and a military junta ruled from 1967 to 1974. Return to democracy allowed superficial stabilization.
In the 1980's "Golden Dawn" was initially sponsored by the imprisoned leaders of the military junta.
Covert military organizations were officially dissolved in 1988, but their chain of command, loyalties,
and m.o., were not reliant on Greek officialdom. Could remnants of these have been activated to
"control" the influx of refugees ?
NATO operations in Greece have shown some parallels to descriptions of the CIA's Operation "Gladio"
throughout Europe, which left covert paramilitary units in each country at the end of WWII to fight
Communist takeovers. These were used to counter the democratic election of Communist candidates.
With proven application in Italy, operational tactics included destabilization, assassination, false
flag operations, terrorizing voters, mobs with a purpose, individual murders, car burnings, chaos,
which shifted the voting public to the right. "Gladio" elements were based in right wing fringe
parties, police, military and intelligence networks. To quote Wikipedia on Gladio in Italy:
According to The Guardian [Ed Vulliamy, Dec. 5, 1990],"General Geraldo Serravalle, a former
head of 'Office R', told the terrorism commission that at a crucial Gladio meeting in 1972,
at least half of the upper echelons 'had the idea of attacking the communists before an invasion.
They were preparing for civil war.' Later, he put it more bluntly: 'They were saying this: ''Why
wait for the invaders when we can make a preemptive attack now on the communists who would support
the invader?''' The idea is now emerging of a Gladio web made up of semi-autonomous cadres which
√ although answerable to their secret service masters and ultimately to the NATO-CIA command
√ could initiate what they regarded as anti-communist operations by themselves, needing only
sanction and funds from the existing 'official' Gladio column."
Their alleged operations were not unlike those subsequently in evidence in Rwanda. Amid the overwhelming
materials of Peter Erlinder's Rwanda Documents Project, is "Operation Order no. 11" from the UN
Mission to Rwanda, of May 1994, which finds a "Third Force" in the war between Paul Kagame's RPF
and Rwandan Government Forces (RGF) during the genocide:
(2) There is however a third element or force that has significantly affected the overall
situation behind the RGF lines. This force has been mixing with the general population and seems
to have its base in the political militia, youth wings and the local quarter self-defence groups
with some overt support of the Military/Gendarmerie. These groups have often demonstrated fanatical
and ruthless actions and quite often are under the influence of alcohol and drugs while at the
barricades or while roving the streets and hillsides. They seem to have been the principle authors,
as far as can be ascertained, . [sic.] of the terrible atrocities and destruction throughout
most of the country.
(3) Each individual military or self-defence cell seem to have a self appointed leader who
does not necessarily obey or take orders from anyone in the normal chain of authority. They
are mostly armed with traditional weapons but several of them carry arms and grenades. They
seem to have enough money. [sic.] to sustain their sections. ...etc.
Faced with a huge influx of people escaping NATO's destabilization of devastated countries, the
Greek government is pursuing its policy of deporting and detaining those the media call "illegal
immigrants." These are often refugees, with the human rights of refugees. In the tradition of Festung
Europa, Frontex (The European Union's collective border defense force ) is deployed. The Greek government
is building 50 new detention camps.
The screw of fascism's advance is tightened in Greece with "Golden Dawn's" overt racist insults
in Parliament, epithets, provocations and public acts of violence against innocents. Some of these
events are widely reported or shown on TV. Extreme right wing street tactics instill fear. The Church
of Greece speaks from both sides of the aisle. Police inaction pushes the frightened to cooperation.
Nationalist curricula are introduced into schools. A tactic of Greeks-only economies is developing.
While "Golden Dawn" is the only party that takes to the streets to feed people (the press doesn't
reveal its funding), to be fed you have to be Greek, white, and not LGT, and you have to speak Greek.
Refugees, migrants, immigrants, are not fed. With a cloak of thuggery and neo-fascism, "Golden Dawn"
puts aside decency to effect a single group's agenda without implicating its masters.
In its early stages "Golden Dawn" seemed to operate as a psychological warfare unit. Initially
a tiny group, the smooth transition from a fear unit to political machine garnering 435,000 votes
suggests a pre-planned operation, with deep organization and funding.
On December 15th, hundreds perhaps many thousands of Greeks will join the professors and teachers
who have signed with EGAM to walk the walk from Parliament to the Acropolis. Last week a "Golden
Dawn" office was bombed with a crude device. Anti-fascist protests continue to occur throughout
Greece. Anti-fascist motorcycle club patrols appear in Athens. In September shipyard workers storm
the defense ministry for their pay. In October 70,000 protest austerity measures at Parliament.
On November 17th to mark the killing of a student which started the uprising against the military
junta nearly forty years ago, 20,000 march on the U.S. and Israeli embassies. In Thessaloniki, November
28, 8000 people protest resource extraction by Canada's Eldorado Gold Corp. In Athens the Federation
of municipal employees calls a strike for Dec. 14th . Migrants in two of the detention centres riot
because conditions are unsanitary. No one can adequately protest the closing of fifty hospitals.
The strength of resistance remains with the students, the Unions, the people at large.
By John Bart Gerald, Dec. 12, 2012
Author posted Dec. 12, 2012
An understanding of the so called "stay behind groups", clandestine right-wing paramilitary and
terrorist groups, supported by NATO, CIA, State Security services and criminal groups (among others),
is essential in a way to understand post-WW2 Europe.
This stuff is genuinely fucked up.
This
documentary is a pretty good piece of work for a basic understanding on the subject, focusing
mainly on Italy and Belgium, though there where similar groups and organisations in pretty much
every European country.
Operation Gladio (Italian:
Operazione Gladio) is the codename for a clandestine
NATO "stay-behind"
operation in Europe during
the Cold War. Its purpose
was to continue anti-communist
actions in the event of a Soviet invasion and conquest. Although Gladio specifically refers
to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an
informal name for all stay-behind organizations. The name Gladio is the
Italian form of
gladius, a type of
Romanshortsword.[1]
Operating in many NATO and even some neutral countries,[2]
Gladio was part of a series of national operations first coordinated by the
Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), founded in 1948. After the creation of
NATO in 1949, the CCWU was integrated into the
Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), founded in 1951 and overseen by
SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe), transferred to Belgium after France's
official withdrawal from NATO's Military Committee in 1966 – which was not followed by the dissolution
of the French stay-behind
paramilitary movements.
The role of the
Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) in sponsoring Gladio and the extent of its activities during the
Cold War era, and its relationship
to right-wingterrorist attacks perpetrated
in Italy during the "Years
of Lead" (late 1960s to early 1980s) and other similar
clandestine operations,
is the subject of ongoing debate and investigation but has never been proven. Switzerland and
Belgium have had parliamentary inquiries into the matter.[3]"·
"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people
far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn
to the state to ask for greater security."
This was the essence of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of terrorism and
deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West -- against their own populations. Hundreds
of innocent people were killed or maimed in terrorist attacks -- on train stations, supermarkets,
cafes and offices -- which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents.
The purpose, as stated above in sworn testimony by Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was to demonize
designated enemies and frighten the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for government
leaders -- and their elitist cronies.
First revealed by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in 1991, Gladio (from the Latin for
"sword") is still protected to this day by its founding patrons, the CIA and MI6. Yet parliamentary
investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have shaken out a few fragments of the truth over
the years. These have been gathered in a new book, "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism
in Western Europe," by Daniele Ganser, as Lila Rajiva reports on CommonDreams.org.
Originally set up as a network of clandestine cells to be activated behind the lines in the event
of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, Gladio quickly expanded into a tool for political repression
and manipulation, directed by NATO and Washington. Using right-wing militias, underworld figures,
government provocateurs and secret military units, Gladio not only carried out widespread terrorism,
assassinations and electoral subversion in democratic states such as Italy, France and West Germany,
but also bolstered fascist tyrannies in Spain and Portugal, abetted the military coup in Greece
and aided Turkey's repression of the Kurds.
Among the "smoking guns" unearthed by Ganser is a Pentagon document, Field Manual FM 30-31B,
which details the methodology for launching terrorist attacks in nations that "do not react with
sufficient effectiveness" against "communist subversion." Ironically, the manual states that the
most dangerous moment comes when leftist groups "renounce the use of force" and embrace the democratic
process. It is then that "U.S. army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations
which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent
danger." Naturally, these peace-throttling "special operations must remain strictly secret," the
document warns.
Indeed, it would not do for the families of the 85 people ripped apart by the Aug. 2, 1980 bombing
of the Bologna train station to know that their loved ones had been murdered by "men inside Italian
state institutions and ... men linked to the structures of United States intelligence," as the Italian
Senate concluded after its investigation in 2000.
The Bologna atrocity is an example of what Gladio's masters called "the strategy of tension"
-- fomenting fear to keep populations in thrall to "strong leaders" who will protect the nation
from the ever-present terrorist threat. And as Rajiva notes, this strategy wasn't limited to Western
Europe. It was applied, with gruesome effectiveness, in Central America by the Reagan and Bush administrations.
During the 1980s, right-wing death squads, guerrilla armies and state security forces -- armed,
trained and supplied by the United States -- murdered tens of thousands of people throughout the
region, often acting with particular savagery at those times when peaceful solutions to the conflicts
seemed about to take hold.
Last month, it was widely reported that the Pentagon is considering a similar program in Iraq.
What was not reported, however -- except in the Iraqi press -- is that at least one pro-occupation
death squad is already in operation. Just days after the Pentagon plans were revealed, a new militant
group, "Saraya Iraqna," began offering big wads of American cash for insurgent scalps -- up to $50,000,
the Iraqi paper Al Ittihad reports. "Our activity will not be selective," the group promised. In
other words, anyone they consider an enemy of the state will be fair game.
Strangely enough, just as it appears that the Pentagon is establishing Gladio-style operations
in Iraq, there has been a sudden rash of terrorist attacks on outrageously provocative civilian
targets, such as hospitals and schools, the Guardian reports. Coming just after national elections
in which the majority faction supported slates calling for a speedy end to the American occupation,
the shift toward high-profile civilian slaughter has underscored the "urgent need" for U.S. forces
to remain on the scene indefinitely, to provide security against the ever-present terrorist threat.
Meanwhile, the Bushists continue constructing their long-sought permanent bases in Iraq: citadels
to protect the oil that incoming Iraqi officials are promising to sell off to American corporations
-- and launching pads for new forays in geopolitical domination.
Perhaps it's just a coincidence. But the U.S. elite's history of directing and fomenting terrorist
attacks against friendly populations is so extensive -- indeed, so ingrained and accepted -- that
it calls into question the origin of every terrorist act that roils the world. With each fresh atrocity,
we're forced to ask: Was it the work of "genuine" terrorists or a "black op" by intelligence agencies
-- or both?
While not infallible, the ancient Latin question is still the best guide to penetrating the bloody
murk of modern terrorism: Cui bono? Who benefits? Whose powers and policies are enhanced by the
attack? For it is indisputable that the "strategy of tension" means power and profit for those who
claim to possess the key to "security." And from the halls of the Kremlin to the banks of the Potomac,
this cynical strategy is the ruling ideology of our times.
So the Baltics are training camps for militants operating in Ukraine and Russia. So this
is what the Baltics are good for.
yalensis
Interesting…. that piece claims that NATO is training Ukrainian terrorists/militants at a
camp in Estonia. Sounds extremely plausible. They must have been planning this uprising for
a long time..
Also quote from Tahnybok
Вони не боялися як i ми зараз не маємо боятися, вони взяли автомат на шию i пішли в тiї лiси,
вони готувалися i боролися з москалями, боролися з нiмцями, боролися з жидвою i з iншою нечистю,
яка хотiла забрати в нас нашу українську державу… Треба вiддати Україну, нарештi, українцям.
Отi молодi люди i ви, сивочолi, оце є та сумiш якої найбiльше боїться москальско-жидiвська мафія,
яка сьогоднi керує в Українi".
I don't really know Ukrainian, but I think it goes something like this:
TRANSLATION
They were not afraid, like we should not be afraid, they strapped an automatic rifle around
their neck and took off into the forests, then they fought against Moskali, they fought against
Germans [yalensis: that bit is a lie], they fought against Jews [perojative term] and with the
other scum who wanted to take away from us our Ukrainian state. Ukraine must be given back to
the Ukrainians. [not sure about the next sentence, something about] Moskal-Jew [perojative]
mafia, which currently [?] in Ukraine….
END OF TRANSLATION
yalensis
One of the commenters pointed out that Ukraine officially sided with Gruzia in 2008 in the
Russia-Gruzia war. Hence, it is not surprising to learn that NATO has been preparing Ukrainian
armed revolutionaries since 2006, or earlier.
The West/NATO clearly have not been idle, and have been preparing to overthrow Yanukovych,
just waiting for the right pretext.
This also explains the relative sophistication of the current Ukrainian "militants" in their
battles with the police, given that they have specialized training in urban warfare.
If these guys were fighting against somebody like Assad, then they would lose, because Assad
has nerves of steel. Yanukovych does not have nerves of steel. He doesn't even seem to know
what to do. Hence, there is a very real chance that the revolutionaries will win, and succeed
in overthrowing Yanukovych.
Result would be: the West Ukraine ruled by vicious Banderites, some Eastern regions breaking
away, and the Crimea returning to Russia.
That might be for the best, although the downside would be NATO front line advancing as far
as the Dnipr River. But Russia could counter that, by placing a lot of rockets and air defenses
near that new border.
Jen:
Global Research a few months ago had something on Russian-speaking mercenaries being trained
by NATO in Lithuania and then sent to Syria to pose as fake Russian mercenaries working for
Bashar al Assad's government.
Not too hard to imagine that these mercenaries might also be switched back to Lithuania or
to Estonia for more training and briefing, eventually to be sent to Ukraine.
marknesop:
Kiev is the biggest city in Ukraine. If the protests are broadly supported by most of its
citizenry, why do they have to bus in supporters all the way from Lviv and Ternopil, and still
have only maybe 20,000? Oh, right: passive support. Which is awfully convenient considering
it cannot be measured.
This alternative reality of yours is not uncomfortable to me. If Ukraine wants to be ruled
over by a big dumb prizefighter directed by EU and other western leaders, enforced by a mob
of skinheads, so be it. A decade or so of that lifestyle will teach it a lesson it will never
forget.
Speaking of alternate realities, we had guests for lunch; one told me that a mutual friend
(who is a Ukrainian) informed her the Berkut are being secretly augmented by Russian Alfa personnel,
wearing Berkut uniforms. That's a new one to me – I wonder which Kyiv Post columnist came up
with it? That sounds like Motyl.
That is an interesting graphic . The same "colour by revolution" playbook, the same graphic
aids. Caption in Arabic on the left (this was the copy used in Syria), on Ukrainian on the right.
The caption reads "Necessary clothing and equipment."
As Moon points out, The Empire uses outside Al Qaeda jihadists to destablize Syria; whereas
in Ukraine they have access to internal neo-Nazi cadres, who, as we now know, were trained in
camps in Estonia by NATO special forces instructors.
teo:
I have been reading your posts with great interest for some time. Very interesting analysis
and a great reading.
Now I think I have something to add.
I do not believe that Yanukovich is either weak or stupid.
The entire fight is one for legitimacy. Opposition and their Western backer intended /intend
to paint him as a murderous dictator killing his own people. It is a well tested approach, media
knows the story by hard having told and retold it countless times.
What the government had to do was just give them enough rope so that they could hang themselves.
This means in practice:
1. Be as peaceful as possible. Neo nazi interpret this as weakness. They smell blood.
2. Try to harm them as little as possible. Police will be hurt inevitably. Some of them might
be burned alive – didn't happen until now.
3. Seeing that they can burn and crack heads with impunity, the shock troops of the revolution
( can insert NATO ) get very bold and empowered. Large wave of violence is predictable.
4. President continues to beg for peace and restoration of public order. He is refused and attacks
continue. It might seem that the brave extremist's commandoes are taking over the country.
5. But…. the power structures are intact. Repression forces are itching for a fight. They have
been burned and beaten for some time now. Hospitals are full of their comrades. And majority
of the people gets sick of seeing the punks playing civil war on their streets.
6. What follows next is easy to predict.
What I wrote above happened in almost the same form in 1941 in Romania. Extreme right party
tried to take over the country by the same means as we see today..
Their main opponent , general Antonescu let them take over government buildings, newspapers
etc , cried for a peaceful solution. He even called them my children, pls pls do not be violent.
:):) Brave neo nazis sensed blood. So they burned and killed.
Even managed to burn some soldiers alive.
But their behavior only scared people and made the repression forces – army in that case – hate
them like poison. They got crushed in a few hours when Antonescu felt the right moment.
They went so far that Hitler himself approved their destruction.
The Ukrainian case is not so extreme. Level of violence is significantly lower for now. US has
not approved the repression of their local stooges.
So a moderate level of repression is to be expected. Of course from Yanukovich's point of view
there is no hurry. The longer it drags the more embolden the shock troops from the streets will
feel. The more empowered. So they might try to punish their enemies. Might even succeed in burning
alive some Berkut operator.
Government is in no danger. The chances that the police officers might side with the goons trying
to burn them alive is exactly zero. And cleaning the streets would be a very easy operation
taking only a few hours.
So there is no hurry to chase the far right rebels from the streets. The entire fight is
one of perceptions. Branding yourselves as mindless thugs hell bent on destruction and oblivious
to the voice of reason does not help ones cause. Why would an enemy stop you prematurely when
you do such a good job scaring people and delegitimizing yourself?
His only logical line of action is to help you. Prevent police from intervening. Cry and beg
for peace and a stop to violence in order to embolden the aggressors. And so on and on….until
moment when even such a kind and peaceful man is forced to take actions.
I do not know how strong are Yanukovich's nerves. This is a unique opportunity. The best idea
for him would be to let the neo nazi bring the country to the brink of colapse and civil war.
Better that everyone sees them for real before they take the levers of power.
I do not know if his nerves will hold but from what we have seen until now it seems he can do
it.
Looks like BBC like in days of
Munich Pact is afraid to
utter the word as long as actions are compatible with UK geopolitical agenda. And see analogy with Golden
Dome. See also Resurgence of ideology of neo-fascism
The prime mover in organizing Kiev opposition protesters in bloody clashes with the security
forces has been a shadowy far-right group called Right Sector rather than Ukraine's established
anti-government leaders.
The trio of opposition leaders who spearheaded two months of anti-government protests since late
November were taken by surprise by the clashes that broke out on Sunday, blaming the authorities
for the unrest but steering clear of condoning violence by the protesters.
Instead the main group involved in the clashes has been an organisation known as Pravy Sektor
(Right Sector), a group which has an avowed aim of overthrowing the "occupation" regime of President
Viktor Yanukovych, if necessary by force.
It seeks to give Ukraine "people's rule" by Ukrainians, free of the slightest trace of Russian
influence.
It does not share the mainstream opposition's enthusiasm for EU integration, seeing Ukraine as
a strong, independent state.
"We, the nationalists, have to throw off the regime of internal occupation in a revolutionary
way, no other way is available," one of its leaders, Andriy Tarasenko, 31, told AFP in an interview
in Kiev.
The two months of protests in Ukraine that erupted over the government's rejection of an EU deal
have radicalized in recent days amid the inability of opposition leaders to bring about change.
Traditional opposition groups sidelined
Little-known until the last days, the group does not seek to cooperate with any of the opposition
parties, accusing them of being unable to counter the authorities effectively.
It has no link to Ukraine's traditional ultra-nationalist party Svoboda (Freedom) and its leader
Oleg Tyagnybok, who has taken a far lower profile in recent days after the clashes broke out.
It regards the two other main opposition leaders, world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko and
Fatherland party leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk with even more disdain.
"People came out to protest to act, while those (opposition leaders) occupying the stage over
two months did everything not to change the situation," said Tarasenko.
Klitschko, Yatsenyuk and Tyagnybok found themselves whistled by protesters at a mass rally on
Sunday.
Right Sector -- which includes groups of hard core football fans -- organizes its actions on
the Internet through Facebook and other social networks.
It is an offshoot of a group named Trident which says it is based on principles of "traditional
Ukrainian Christianity and the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism".
Trident says it draws its inspiration from the hugely controversial leader of the anti-Soviet
wartime rebel group the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), Stepan Bandera, whose organisation fought
the Soviet authorities in World War II and even into the 1950s.
Ukraine's deputy interior minister said this week that there were at least 500 activists of Right
Sector and similar groups in Kiev, living in municipal buildings seized by the protest movement.
In
this wide-ranging interview, John Batchelor speaks with NYU Professor of Russian History Stephen
F. Cohen about the violent turn of Kiev's street protests and terrorist threats at the Sochi Olympics.
According to Cohen, US officials maintain an overly simplified view of the Ukraine protests, failing
to differentiate between the pro-EU and ultranationalist factions, and their interference is exacerbating
tensions between Russia and the United States.
Cohen said, "As this Western/Russian standoff grows into a full-scale confrontation, it spills
over and spoils the opportunities for cooperation in Syria, on Iran and at the Sochi Olympics."
For more on the unfolding situation in Kiev, listen to
Cohen's interview on KPFA 94.1's
Letters and Politics.
-Allegra Kirkland
theshadowknows
Stephen, have you noticed the similarities between what is happening today in the Ukraine
and what happened in the run up to the war against Qaddafi in Libya and the ongoing war against
Assad in Syria? One of the common links is the willingness of the U.S. government under Obama
to recognize so-called "opposition forces" as the legitimate governments of those countries
prior to their assuming power with the help of the U.S.
This is being repeated in the Ukraine, where the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) and its allied operatives of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the George
Soros Open Society Institute are backing the themed, astro-turf protests of the pro-EU Blue
Buckets organized by the CIA and Britain's MI6
But here is why Ukraine is so difficult to read and handle, for all of its neighbors. To start with,
Svoboda (which translates as Freedom), must be
Europe's only neo-fascists who
are also pro-EU. Meanwhile,
Yulia Tymoshenko, the
jailed heroine of the 2004 Orange Revolution, says the EU is wrong to punish Ukraine for her treatment
by freezing its association agreement with the bloc. And the supposedly pro-Russian President
Viktor Yanukovych doesn't
even want to join Russia's customs union, if he can avoid it.
Widening Fissures
Svoboda's success and Yanukovych's behavior are troubling. But for the EU and the U.S. alike,
the priority should be to avoid widening the fissures between the Ukrainian-speaking west and Russian-speaking
east, or driving the government into the arms of
Vladimir Putin, Russia's
President.
Svoboda has cleaned up its act. In 2004 it changed its name from the Social-Nationalist Party
and dropped a Swastika-like emblem. Still, much of its appeal lies in hardcore ethnic- Ukrainian
nationalism and a hatred of Poles, Russians, Jews and gays. These have deep roots in Ukraine's
history and should give pause.
Svoboda's leaders glorify those Western Ukrainians who welcomed the Nazis in 1941, seeing the
Germans as potential liberators from Soviet rule. Those same Ukrainians also collaborated in
the widespread murder of Jews and Poles. As in the Baltic states, there is a sharp division here
over how to interpret the motives of those who worked with the Nazis and how they should be remembered
today.
What the election result shows is a growing risk that disenchanted voters will again mix up Ukrainian
nationalism with xenophobia. Svoboda, led by Oleh Tiahnybok, supported the 2004 Orange Revolution.
It was later expelled from the group surrounding former president
Viktor Yushchenko,
when Tiahnybok made a speech saying that Ukraine was ruled by a "Moscow-Jewish mafia." It was not
the only speech he made that was loaded with this sort of language.
Tiahnybok has said that while he does not regret using those words, he was misinterpreted. He
also says his party is neither xenophobic nor anti-Semitic. In any case, for Svoboda's supporters,
Russophobia remains the party's main attraction. All votes have not yet been counted, but the party
looks set to win about 33 of the Rada's 450 seats.
On election day, while on a trip to Ukraine organized by the
German Marshall Fund,
I went to Irpin, a small town outside
Kiev. There I met Sergeii, a 48-year-old musician, who didn't give his full name because he
was at a polling station. He told me he had voted for Svoboda because he wanted "Ukraine to be a
powerful country, and if we have to choose between Europe and Russia it is Europe for us. Russia
is Asia and I don't trust Asians."
Bedrock Support
The party presents itself as the only one that wants a "Ukraine for Ukrainians," and not
for the ethnic Russians who make up 17.3 percent of the population and who live mostly in the east.
Ethnic Russians form the bedrock of support for the ruling Party of the Regions, but many more are
simply Russian speakers who switch happily between the two Slavic languages, depending on the circumstance.
Selected Comments
Dmitry
Surely, There's a lot of arguments. You'll have just to read their party's programme containing
proposals of death penalty for 'anti-ukrainian' activity - and what is such activity they want
to define themselves. When you read there programme, you always stumble upon^ 'Death penalty',
'ban', 'prohibit'. To ban abortion, to ban the left-wing organisations. 'To ban any protest
or demonstration when it is anti-ukrainian' (and they decide what it means!)!
I've met a lot of them in real life - supporters of the third reich, anti-semits and
nazi-football hooligans. Ukrainian criminal chronicle is full of facts of racist attacks
of the Roma camps, burning down of the Roma people's tents, beating of the opponents.
"Svoboda' in some cities organized a terror campaign against opponents. This party
includes a great number of nazi-hooligans wearing third-reich symbolics. It's leaders like
Michalchishin insist on 'returning of the Polish lands".
That's why Poland is so anxious about the rise of this party. If one wants to get rid of
'mafia regime' - it doesn't mean to support street-gangs of nazists striving to get power.
The past weighs heavily on us. That's the message that I got during the first week of a sabbatical
in southern Europe. Two incidents, one in Rome and the other outside Athens, showed this roving
historian firsthand the real presence of neo-Fascism.
Soon after arriving in Rome, my wife and I took a stroll in the Villa Sciarra. This lovely park
across the Tiber sits on the grounds of a former estate, with a 17th-century villa in the center.
A plaque on the wall of the villa states that the last owner, Henrietta Wurts, donated the estate
to the people of Rome. Oddly enough, two lines of the inscription have been erased. Or not so strangely,
once you look at the date – 1932. That year came smack in the middle of the Fascist era, so it doesn't
take much imagination to fill in the blanks. Signora Wurts gave the estate to
Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, known as "the leader" – Il Duce in Italian. The
only condition was that he make it a public park, which he did.
As my wife and I stood discussing this, a rather disheveled man approached us. Complaining loudly
in Italian about the "shame" of the erasure, the gentleman went on to call the Italian dictator's
expunging from the plaque a "disgrace." He gave Mussolini the term of respect that was used to describe
him in the Fascist era, "il cavaliere Benito Mussolini," that is, Sir Benito. He then pulled out
a small medallion stamped with Mussolini's face. We walked away, slowly.
In a sense, the incident was no surprise. Italy is a wonderful country and the Italians are the
salt of the earth. But society there has never come to grips with its painful past. That an Italian
would openly praise Mussolini to foreign strangers was, sadly, plausible.
Still, I guess the Rome incident could be filed under 'C' for crank - not so the set of events
a few days later in
Greece; they were downright disturbing. What happened was this: We were visiting a small city
near Athens to take part in a historical commemoration. It was a great event. Justly famous for
their hospitality and friendship, the Greeks did not disappoint. A number of different ceremonies
were scheduled over a period of several days. At one of them, representatives of Greece's various
political parties were invited to take part.
We noticed that one group of attendees was wearing black tee shirts, reminiscent of Fascist paramilitary
groups in pre-1945 Europe. They were supporters of Golden Dawn. A political party, Golden Dawn recently
broke into the big leagues, scoring 18 out of 300 seats in this year's parliamentary elections,
making it the fifth largest party in Greece.
Proudly nationalist and openly racist, Golden Dawn follows the motto, "Greece for the Greeks."
Greece has a very large immigrant population, and Golden Dawn opposes immigration. In a country
of 11 million people, 1.5 million are immigrants – many of them non-white, thus adding a racial
dimension. Members of Golden Dawn have been involved in a number of violent incidents against immigrants
and political opponents.
But, as Greek friends have told me, Golden Dawn also engages in charitable works, such as escorting
the elderly to the bank in dangerous neighborhoods. My Greek friends found this as clever as it
is disturbing. It is no surprise that support for Golden Dawn is rising, as is Greek backlash and
concern.
Golden Dawn rejects the label of neo-Fascist or neo-Nazi, but its symbolism suggests otherwise.
On closer look, we saw that its supporters' black shirts boasted a Greek Key design subtly resembling
a swastika. There was certainly nothing subtle about the shout with which they made their presence
known at the ceremony, resembling something between a football cheer and a war cry.
The next day, members of Golden Dawn advertised themselves at another event. Representatives
of political parties had not been invited there. About 50 supporters of Golden Dawn rode by on motorcycles
as dignitaries arrived at a luncheon - an event featuring several Greek and foreign officials. Several
of those on motorcycles carried Greek flags as they passed loudly by.
These were minor incidents, I suppose. Minor, until you consider what they might symbolize.
Golden Dawn openly identifies with the Metaxas dictatorship of pre-World War II
Greece, an authoritarian if not quite fascist regime. No one is talking about another authoritarian
government that ruled Greece more recently. Yet it was only about 40 years ago that Greece was freed
from the dictatorship of the colonels, a military junta that overthrew democracy in a violent coup
in 1967. The colonels fell in 1974 only because they had badly over-extended themselves in a plot
to take over Cyprus. That backfired disastrously, leading to a Turkish invasion of Cyprus that has
divided the island to this day. The colonels collapsed in disgrace and handed power back to civilians.
Greek democracy had thrived since the junta's fall in 1974, until the recent financial crisis,
that is. Now, forced into a drastic and unpopular austerity program by its backers in the European
Union, Greek governments have been battered by the rise of extremists not only on the right but
also on the left, where Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left, nearly won the last parliamentary
election.
Italy's economy is in severe recession, and Greece faces a downright depression. That alone
is no doubt enough to explain the rise of a group like Golden Dawn or the mouthing of a busybody
in a park in Rome.
But neither is enough to soothe the worry that something ugly is brewing in the lands that gave
birth to democracy and republicanism. As the leaders of Europe ponder their next moves, they need
to remember that more than bank balances are at stake. Extremism has exacted a terrible price in
Europe's not-so-distant past. We must not pay it again.
...According to the scholar Fritz Fischer-who became the German Left's darling, despite his background
as a loyal Nazi-the war was planned and initiated by a Germany bent on world domination. What other
belligerents did to get the ball rolling in 1914, Fischer suggests in his 1961 book Germany's Bid
for World Power, was inconsequential. The rest of Europe was pulled into a struggle that Germany
had planned for decades, a conflagration its antidemocratic ruling class and ultranationalist public
happily initiated.
Defenses of the Fischer thesis and other versions of the outbreak of the Great War stressing
exclusive German or Austro-German responsibility have been driven by moral and ideological considerations.
Unfortunately, there are facts that historians until recently tried studiously to avoid. As critics
of Fischer's position were already showing in the early '60s, his singling out of his own country,
already burdened with Nazi crimes, for starting an earlier Euro- pean war was based on questionable
investigative methods.
Fischer and his followers ignored what other European countries did to provoke the Great War,
unfairly blackened the reputation of German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg-who tried earnestly
to iron out differences between England and his country for at least three years before the war
started-and misquoted key German actors in the conflict, such as the Kaiser and the chief of the
German general staff.
In recent decades those who write non-prescribed histories dealing with the outbreak of the First
World War typically ignore Fischer and like-minded interpreters. Niall Ferguson in The Pity of War,
Konrad Canis in his massive three-volume German work on the failures of German diplomacy leading
to the "abyss" in 1914, Christopher Clark in The Sleepwalkers, and Sean McMeekin in The Russian
Origins of World War One have all produced estimable studies about the Great War that are clearly
incompatible with Fischer's stress on exclusive German guilt.
All the Great Powers behaved rashly, and to their credit the most scrupulous historians
do not spare any of the actors on the Allied side. The avoidable disaster of 1914 teaches us, according
to Christopher Clark, how the Great Powers "sleep-walked" their way into a war from which European
civilization never recovered. Russia in its drive to dismantle Turkey and control the Dardanelles;
Britain in its efforts to reduce a rival's power even at the risk of encircling the German Empire
with hostile alliances; Serbia in its attempts to split apart the Habsburg Empire; and France in
its desperate desire to punish the Germans for defeat in the Franco-Prussian War all helped stir
the pot.
Canis has shown in staggering detail how German foreign policy after the fall of Bismarck floundered
for decades. The German Naval Program designed to achieve a 3:5 ratio in relation to the British
navy, which was then the world's largest, was an irritant to British political leaders. It allowed
firebrands like Winston Churchill-who became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911-to exaggerate German
hatred for England, which in fact was never particularly great, as Canis documents by looking at
the German press.
The German government naively thought it could create a large enough navy to force the British
to make an alliance with its fellow Northern European power. The royal families of the two countries
were closely related, and the Kaiser believed his British cousins would never go to war with him-indeed,
they would seek his friendship- if they couldn't blockade his coastline.
The Kaiser was wrong. Although Bethmann-Hollweg managed to halt the German naval buildup by 1912,
the British government still plowed on and plunged their country into further entangling alliances
with Russia against the Germans. The British managed to bottle up the Germans even before the war
began and then imposed what was probably an illegal starvation blockade until 1919.
Niall Ferguson argues convincingly that if Britain and the U.S. never entered the war-and even
if the Central Powers prevailed after a long, bloody conflict-Britain would have remained Europe's
premier power, blessed with an enormous navy, an extensive empire, and an economic lead over other
European countries. No matter the outcome of the war, the U.S. would eventually have become the
greatest world power on the basis of its industrial and agricultural wealth.
As it was, American intervention on the Allied (read British) side was always a matter of time.
The U.S. government, as historians Thomas Fleming and Walter Karp have demonstrated, was never really
neutral. Any crisis that put the Central Powers in a bad light was played up by America's fervently
Anglophile political class. The sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine in 1915 was not a
belligerent act directed against the U.S.: the ship was loaded with arms and other contrabands that
were earmarked for the British. The German government had warned Americans and other neutrals not
to board the ship because it was a fair war target-as indeed it was.
Already in 1914 the American ambassador to London and a close friend of President Wilson, Walter
Hines Page, had announced to British leaders that he would do all he could to bring the U.S. into
the war on England's side as soon as an appropriate pretext could be arranged. No similar assurance
was given by Page's counterpart in Berlin in talking with German leaders.
But Woodrow Wilson and his party were not the major backers of getting the U.S. involved in the
bloodbath. Wilson delayed in the face of Republican hysteria about not moving fast enough to
stand with England for "democracy." Today's neoconservatives are not the first to talk up the
"Anglosphere." One-time Republican celebrities like Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and Henry Cabot
Lodge were demanding in 1914 that we get into a European war we would have done well to stay out
of. The GOP's horrid habits go back a very long way.
President George W. Bush exceeded in his calls for America to liberate the rest of the world
any expression of chauvinism from a major European leader on the eve of World War I. But tactless
behavior has not produced the consequences for us that it did for the "sleep-walking" subjects of
Christopher Clark's history. We are lucky about where our country is located and how much wealthier
and stronger we are relative to other states. What did Bismarck say about God looking after
fools, drunkards and the United States of America?
Paul Gottfried is the author of Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America.
...Moreover, Ukraine remains sharply divided between east and west. In Kyiv, and in central and
western Ukraine, sentiments are overwhelmingly against Yanukovych. There, local governments and
legislatures are likely to declare noncompliance with the orders of his central authorities. And
as has been predicted by Ihor Smeshko, the former head of the Ukraine Security Service (SBU, the
state's main police and intelligence agency), this kind of confrontation increases the risk that
the military and the security services will split along this east-west divide.
Meanwhile, former Defense Minister Anatoly Hrytsenko, who served in that post from 2005 to 2007,
reminded the Yanukovych camp that several million Ukrainians own guns, and that they include a large
number of retired military snipers.
What in unique in the current stage of protest is the extent that organizers of this color revolution
managed to integrate football ultras into the protest. So called Right Sector which includes groups
of hard core football fans and ultra-nationalists. They become a fighting force of opposition and they
now reject opposition leaders such as Yatsenyuk, essentially keeping them hostage.... On the other hand
due to business activities of his son Yanukovich is also on a short leash. He is also hostage, but not
so much of ultras, and Svoboda, as his family fortune. As Lukashenko quipped it is a disaster for the
country if the president children are engaged in running businesses.
Many demonstrators on the streets of Kiev, the capital, including some involved in violent clashes
with the police, have been demanding Mr. Yanukovych's resignation, which he did not offer.
And the fury of the crowd made clear that the leaders would almost certainly have faced a mutiny
had they accepted the deal.
"Shame!" some chanted as Mr. Yatsenyuk began his remarks by saying that the opposition was not
afraid to lead the country. Others shouted, "Betrayer!"
In a further complication, some of the most aggressive demonstrators are supporters of the nationalist
Svoboda Party and its leader, Oleg Tyagnibok, who took part in the talks with Mr. Yanukovych but
was not offered a position.
... ... ...
Mr. Yanukovych's willingness to remove Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who has been his staunch
ally through the more than two-month-long civic uprising, underscored just how much pressure
he has been facing to contain the crisis.
His offer came as protests continued to spread across the country on Saturday, with efforts to
occupy or blockade government buildings underway in at least a dozen cities besides Kiev. In recent
days, it has become increasingly clear that the elite Berkut riot police and other Interior Ministry
troops are outnumbered and would face enormous challenges if asked to enforce a state of emergency.
"Without U.S. financial and moral support the opposition to the Yanukovych regime is unlikely to
succeed." is a credible assumption. "According to Melia, since the dissolution of the USSR in December
1991, the U.S. has spent-the term of art Melia used was "invested"-over $5 billion on assistance to
Ukraine, $815 million of which went towards funding democracy and exchange programs."
Taken together, the testimony of Nuland and Melia seem to rest on a number of questionable assumptions:
Clear and identifiable U.S. national interests are at stake in the debate currently being
played out in Maidan Square.
Without U.S. financial and moral support the opposition to the Yanukovych regime is
unlikely to succeed.
Russia, by offering the Ukrainian government a more attractive bailout package than that
proposed by the EU and IMF, was acting in bad faith.
The protesters in Maidan speak for all Ukrainian people, the vast majority of whom desire
to be integrated into the EU.
The outcome of the current crisis will have a definite effect on Russia's future development;
if Ukraine chooses a European future, so too (someday) will Russia.
The Q&A portion of the hearing left little doubt that these assumptions are shared by committee
chairman Robert Menendez, ranking member Sen. Bob Corker, and not surprisingly, Sens. Chris Murphy
and John McCain, fresh off their recent trip to Kiev.
... ... ...
As Princeton emeritus professor Stephen F. Cohen has
trenchantly
noted, "It is not democratic to overthrow a democratically elected government. It's the opposite
of that."
Nor was there any recognition that Ukraine is deeply and almost evenly divided between
Ukraine's westernizers in the urban centers such as Kiev and Lviv, and the Russophiles in the South
and East, never mind the fact that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus all have common roots which trace
back to the Kievan Rus in the 9th century.
Zbigniew Brzezinski followed Nuland and Melia and for the most part shared the prevailing view
of the hearing, particularly the idea-call it Democratic Domino Theory-that Ukraine's integration
with the West would (somehow) lead Russia to follow a similar path. Yet while overstating Ukraine's
strategic importance, Brzezinski did draw the committee's attention to the lessons Ukrainian Westernizers
might take from the experiences of Poland's Solidarity movement of the 1980s.
Solidarity's distinguishing characteristic was that it was a "national movement for independence
which became institutionalized." So while it was somewhat like Maidan, the key difference was that
the opposition in Poland coalesced around the popular figure of Lech Walesa, who gradually "forced
the ruling Communist regime to negotiate" a path to free elections that set Poland on the path to
where it is today: a NATO member in good standing and a leading voice within the EU.
If the Ukrainian opposition is to succeed, then, it would be well advised to follow the example
of the Solidarity movement-as Brzezinski suggests-and put quite a bit less hope in the fulsome rhetoric
of the American political class that was in abundant supply at last week's hearing.
James Carden served as an advisor to the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at
the State Department from 2011-2012.
It is time to understand why Maidan turned into a brutal Mortal Combat imitation.
In modern history
of Ukraine's there were quite a lot of similar conflicts. Such as "Ukraine without Kuchma ", the
2004 elections, and the struggle for the GPU under the leadership Tsushko, Maidan of entrepreneurs
and assault of BP by Afghan veterans. But never has the country faced with similar riots and the
threat of civil war. Yes, clashes and conflicts occured in the past, but without so much hatred
and corpses .
So today we need to get a reasonable and balanced understanding of the current events, if we
do not want turn Ukraine into Libya or Syria. In the latter case, the recovery will take decades.
Origin of social contradictions
Yes, the social contradictions in our society have accumulated many years. Soviet industrial
legacy gradually disappeared, large part of industrial base was destroyed, the economy stagnated,
excessive and criminal privatization resulted in a predominance of private property ( in most developed
countries, the share of state property varies from 25 to 50 % of the economy, and we have about
5-6 %). Wealth inequality rose to extremes, the point were social caste system was established.
Vertical mobility was destroyed.
Today MPs, judges, high-ranking officials - has already become a de facto closed high caste ,
where rank and position are inherited (sons of Yanukovych, Azarov, Chernovola, Pshonka, daughter
of Orobtsa, brother of Tyagniboka, relatives of Poroshenko and Baloga and so on ) . They have become
untouchable caste for members of which everything is allowed - corruption, beatings, murder, abuse,
rape, pedophilia - there is no such crimes that can't be committed by the representatives of this
caste " with complete impunity.
It is this this caste and its complete impunity (as well as reckless behaviour of the elite and
especially their children) and associated level of social inequality are the real reasons of public
anger the spills on Maidan.
Subjective factors
Along with those real social contradiction unscrupulous and incompetent politicians for many
years fanned several artificial confrontation lines - linguistic, ethnic, geographical , confessional.
Instead of trying to harmonize the society, they tried to increase social division by inciting the
voters to vote "against" opponents and not for anything constructive. We found ourselves in the
current situation solely due to their ineptitude and immorality, the inability to offer any positive
development path for the country, the inability to show their positive qualities ( the conspicuous
absence of any), willingness to use the dirtiest methods of political struggle.
All this is further swelled with the help of irresponsible and corrupt media which not only chased
sensationalism ( and continue to do ), but also openly practiced "allowed themes lists" of their
owners. This shameful practice is especially visible in the main opposition TV channel, "the most
private of all TV channels" the Fifth Channel. Which deteriorated to the
level of non-stop praising his owner and covering any event only under the angle which is profitable
to the owner in best North Korea TV style. If the owner of the channel is in power the current government
is good, when he is in opposition the government is criminal. As simple as that. Yes, primitive
and petty.
Totality of real injustice and artificially pumped up nationalism led to the precipitous growth
of barely concealed resentment and difficult to suppress aggression .
Besides we now have extremely poor quality of education, leading to the fragmentation of knowledge
about the world and uncritical thinking, and dominance of "Hollywood-vision" where life was portrayed
in Western countries only in rose color led to the fact that in Ukraine a whole generation that
mindlessly believe in common "European values", "liberalism" and "democracy" - all the things
that do not really exist. A clear mismatch infantile expectations and harsh reality leads to frustration
, depression and anger.
In western entertainment serials you never see workers in factories or peasants in the field
- it's boring and banal. You see students that spent time in nice cafes and businessmen who earn
fortune in offices, while flirting with secretaries . Moreover, even in the offices the main story
does not revolve around product developed, or optimization of supply chains, but over who booze
with whom and who slept with whom .
Mythology and technology EuroMaidan
On the exploitation of these dreams about possibility of easy, parasitic lifestyle in the West
was based the currently expointed popular myth - the myth of European miracle that awaits us, to
get which we just need to sign (in reality humiliating and very unprofitable for Ukraine economics)
Association Agreement with the EU. All the same troika of Commissars - Yatsenyuk, Klitschko and
Tyahnibok - sing praise and lied non-stop about the abolition of visas, entry into the EU , "European
values" , " European salaries " and other unrealistic things.
Moreover, while Yanukovich was going to sign the Association , the majority of "Svidomitov" were
ready to kiss his hands . On example of those jerks is Alexander Paly ( political scientist, known
for his unsaturable appetite for foreign grants, Russophobe and promoter of the Euro-Atlanticisism
ideas in Ukraine - ed). He even used to wrte a panegyrics to Yanukovych of the type "Let's praise
holy Yanukovych with kind soft words", where he admired his European integration zeal. And they
were ready to forgive him his stealing, his raider activities and all other sins. Sins that became
completely unacceptable to them as soon as he declined to sign this the EU Association Agreement.
Is not something wrong with this abrupt switch?
And when the myth of coming to Ukraine "European Happiness" was unceremoniously postponed till
better times, provocateur Mustafa Nayemnik announced "EuroMaidan". Which was followed by a series
of provocations, with each on consistently increasing the degree of inadequacy and aggression --
both from the government and from the protesters .
And technologies used and the sequence of steps the opposition followed for most sane people
looked suspiciously similar the to the sequence of events during Orange Revolution (Tyahnibok once
uttered something like " "Believe me, we know the right sequence").
Reasons for rejection of EuroMaidan by Southeastern Ukraine
It's very simple and obvious. If Maidan was originally against Yanukovych -- it would have supported
a significant part of the country , dissatisfied with his policies. But Maidan has been tightly
tied to European integration, against which a half of the country objected. And even when it ceased
to be "euro" , many speakers continued to yell mantra of coming European bonanza.
The second obvious reason for rejection of EuroMaidan by the half of the country is the opposition
troika (especially Mr. Tyagnibok) .The union of hated by most people the ultra-liberals by Yatsenuk
" and ultra-nationalists of Svoboda will never be accepted by a significant part of Ukrainian citizens
.
Sorry, but "Svoboda" has done everything possible to Maidan perceived hostilely. Those non stop
chants "Glory to Ukraine, Glory to Heroes", "Death to Enemies", "Let's put Moskals on knives", and
"Who does not jump with us is Moskal", as well as portraits of Bandera and torchlight night rallies.
Majority (85-90%) of the population of Ukraine does not accept aggressive ethnic nationalism (Nazism
) of Svoboda. This is a medical fact. Some people probably tolerate them (not support, but just
tolerate) but a huge number of people can not stand the Nazis.
Similarly, if violent clashes on Hrushevskoho Street occurred without ultras, the opposition
would be supported not by just 10-11 % of the population (data of closed sociology polls, reproduced
withour references ;-), but much higher percentage.
And do not tell me that "The Right Sector" is not running the show. That's not true. All media,
even Maidan-friendly media are packed with photos of people with armbands depicting swastikas, Celtic
crosses. Sam for inscriptions "1488 " on billboards , video shouting "Glory to Ukraine, Death to
Enemies" and stories about how Jews were kicked off EuroMaidan. Therefore it is natiral to blame
radical xenophobic nationalists for the complete rejection EuroMaidan by half of Ukraine and allergy
to it for two thirds of population.
And if Klitschko did not join company of Tyagnibok, his rating would be much higher. Because
such an alliance can only discredits politician. Nationalists will vote for "their" leaders in any
case, but the rest of the country disgusted by such a liaison, now will think twice before voting
for Klitschko .
This analysis of the current situation is confirmed by a new wave if violence during which "Maydawns"
( or how they should be called ? ) tried seize buildings of provincial administrations in many administrative
capitals of Ukraine . They succeeded only in places, where the nationalists have the majority in
the local councils -- in three or four provinces. That is, those actions were meaningless, as all
their other actions Elsewhere in the attempt of "assaults " of regional administration by Svoboda
storm troopers were beaten off, and some places storm troopers themselves were arrested.
An interesting details is that these assaults occurred simultaneously in different areas, so
it is obvious that it is not spontaneous popular demonstrations, but centrally planned actions organized
by local party officers who got the signal from the controlling center. In Vinnitsa, for example,
the assault did not happened at all. There was just a protest meeting, provided with megaphones
and usual parties symbols ( in small amounts ).
Again we see a picture that "Maydawns" really not acting on behalf of all the people (as they
constantly and persistently declare ), but only a small ulta-nationalist minority. The other half
of the people (actually significantly more then the half) does not want a civil war and reject the
idea of domination of nationalists. As well as simple swap of Yanukovych to another representative
of oligarchy more closelyh allied with ultras - and all three of the opposition troika are representative
of the this brand of oligarchic capital. It is difficult to argue with this simple observation.
In reality, people standing on the Maidan as well as their sympathizers only listen to speeches
from the stage , are watching only "their" channels , are reading read only "their" authors and
refuse to accept the idea that they are not expressing the will of the nation as a whole. In other
words it is a sect. In fact, they are unwitting victims of brainwashing by bought and corrupt media,
which does not allow them to assess the facts and situation objectively. Moreover the slogans that
they chant from the stage every five minutes such as "You represent the will of the Ukrainian people"
washes away any remnants of critical thinking ( if there were any). As Gustave Le Bon wrote in his
classic work "The Psychology of Peoples and the masses," the thinking of the crowd is uncritical
and is subject to emotional not rational bias.
Many "Maydawns" think " A little more effort, and we will win", but the victory for them is as
far away as the Second coming of Christ.
Nuances of the current situation
The ultras, as always, try to translate the class conflict, the conflict of "people vs. oligarchy"
into the ethnic conflict (thus saving the oligarchs from the people's wrath). That's why they spread
Russophobia nonsense, such as claims that Yanukovych is a Puppet of the Kremlin, that Berkut is
actually Moscow OMON, and that pro-government protesters are actually ultras from Petersburg Zenith
fan club, that Russian tanks are near Kiev, that Russian tanks are already in Borispol, and so on
and so forth. But for some this is a medical condition. Actually I wonder if "Russian tanks in Borispol"
cry by Lutsenko is not the result of delirium ?
Left activists in Kiev for the past two months have been repeatedly attacked by the "Svoboda
", " Right sector " and other nationalist groups. Calls to beat any who came to Maidan under red
banners sounded even from the scene, and were supported by the EuroMaidan brass. They went as far
as to throw stones at this part of protesters. Therefore, naturally, Left simply can not support
those who attack them at every opportunity (I say this based on conversations with many of my friends
).
Several reckless anarchists who belong to the class of people who do not need real pretext and
just ding for a change to fight the police are probably the only exception, They did take part in
events at Hrushevskoho. But all the rest occupy the neutral position - neither for the one nor for
those .
Left do not support Maidan simply because it in its current state is not directed against oligarchy
and capitalism, but simply offers an opportunity to replace one criminal gang with the another.
And it does not make any sense e to sacrificed health or even lives for this. Let the oligarchs
themselves to fight and chose the winner among themselves. Our people should not participate in
those fights, should they ? .
"Let's dethrone Yanukovich and we will instantly start to live better" is a lie, the same deception
slogan that we have heard nine years ago. And tales about how "The rich will help the poor " after
the events is another outright lie. I laughed at those stupid slogans during Orange revolution,
and now that I'm much more experienced to believe those cheap "confidence tricks". I generally can
hardly imagine how any reasonable person can buy into such a primitive propaganda no matter what
is his/her ideological orientation. We should not be hooked by such propaganda. Simple swap of faces
at the top changes absolutely nothing.
Left must fight against capitalism and imperialism, and the leaders Maidan want us to became
West puppets, another national resources colony. No thanks, those natives do not need another wicked
offer of "mirrors and beads" to sell their treasures to colonizers for nothing. West can now wear
them themselves .
Left might support Maidan only if it get rid of nationalists and adopt a viable social program.
But there are two preconditions:
Maidan should do it by itself voluntarily, sending the Troika packing.
People need to understand that in this case the confrontation will became much more brutal
and the government which is flirting with the current protest and standing behind it oligarchy
will really try to crush the protest with the help of their Western sponsors.
Only in this case there is a chance that Maidan will became an all-national social movement and
enjoy the support of the rest of Ukraine . Can this Maidan to do that ? Can it get free from the
chains of ultra-nationalism and of oligarchic parties? It's not for me to decide.
ODESSA, Ukraine - Both Russia and Ukraine consider themselves European nations, part of
Western civilization, and in both countries pluralities favor membership in the European Union.
So how did the European Union manage to turn such a favorable situation against itself?
By pitting both nations against each other, and then attempting to force Ukraine to choose Europe
over Russia. Instead of adopting a strategy that would have allowed Ukraine to capitalize on its
close cultural, religious and economic ties with Russia, and which could have also served to build
deeper ties between Western Europe and Russia, from the outset European negotiators went out
of their way to turn Union association into a loyalty test.
First, they rejected Ukraine's suggestion - to which Russia initially had no objection - that
accession to the European Union could be compatible with membership in the Customs Union, the precursor
to a Eurasian Union linking former Soviet states. Now they have apparently also rejected President
Viktor Yanukovich's proposal to resolve the remaining issues (the main one being the very real possibility
of European goods being dumped into Russia through Ukraine) through a three-way format that would
include efforts to curb cross-border smuggling - something one would think would also concern Brussels.
Second, instead of highlighting those values that would have honored Ukraine's Slavic European
identity, the European Union actively promoted the notion that accession was a "civilizational
choice" between Russia and Europe. Since the majority of Ukrainians traditionally regard Russia
as their closest and friendliest neighbor, is it any wonder that they balked at such a choice?
Finally, European negotiators made the strategic error of ignoring substantial differences
in traditional and religious values. The fear among a significant part of Ukraine's Christian population
is that the European Union would impose a very liberal moral agenda on the Ukrainian legal and educational
system, including nontraditional family values that many here categorically reject. Spokesmen
for the European Union made no effort to assuage these concerns, and their condescension on this
matter has placed a ticking bomb under European integration efforts throughout the entire region.
In sum, instead of approaching these negotiations as a partnership, the European Union behaved
more like the owner of a country club which, while it might consider allowing Ukraine to caddy,
would never consider granting it club membership. No wonder Mr. Yanukovich called the entire process
"humiliating" for his country.
The most important lesson to be drawn from the European Union's failure is the urgent need to
alter the confrontational mind-set that drives the Eastern Partnership initiative. The response
of Union officials to Ukraine's decision to defer this agreement reveals what many already suspected,
that at its core the initiative is nothing more than an attempt to push Russia out of Europe by
drawing its boundaries further to the East. But since Ukraine and Russia already see themselves
as part of Europe, we can expect both countries to reject what they see as the pointlessly confrontational
choice the European Union is placing before them: that being European means turning one's back on
Russia.
Indeed, this false choice only builds momentum for the Eurasian Union. For one thing, this group
respects the common cultural heritage left from Soviet times, which still holds significant appeal
throughout the region. Second, in an effort to bolster ties, Russia already provides economic assistance
to the region that is an order of magnitude greater than anything the European Union is even considering.
Meanwhile, the final objective of both the European and Eurasian Unions is the same - the formation
of a free trade zone that extends from Dublin to Vladivostok. The only real difference is that,
because of its size, the Eurasian Union will be able to negotiate an agreement with the European
Union on terms that are much more advantageous than those that individual states can extract.
Critics of the Eurasian Union, however, make two additional points. One is that, because Russia
will dominate such a union, it must sooner or later turn into a new incarnation of the old U.S.S.R.
The other is that mutual trade benefits negotiated among former Soviet states must inevitably lead
to economic stagnation.
As the region's largest economy, Russia will always be the driving force of the Eurasian Union,
though less so as more nations join. But the notion that Russia will be able to restore the
former Soviet Union through closer economic and trade ties is simply ludicrous. For one thing,
state sovereignty is the cornerstone of the Eurasian Union. And, in any case, European Union
mandates are already far more intrusive than anything being contemplated by the Eurasian Union.
Therefore, if any group should be suspect of harboring aspirations that undermine national sovereignty,
it is the European Union.
The economic stagnation argument is similarly miscast, for it typically contrasts the entire
European Union to Russia alone, rather than the entire Eurasian Union. Moreover, Russia is already
part of the BRICS coalition (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which analysts say
will be among the world's dominant economies by 2050. Are critics really suggesting that it
is in Ukraine's interest to shun the opportunity to gain access to these rising economic powerhouses
simply because it also happens to expand Ukraine's relationship with Russia? Talk about cutting
off your nose to spite your face!
Advocates for the Eurasian Union also make other key points. First, the Eurasian Union is already
adopting many standards based on those of the European Union, but it seeks to introduce them gradually,
so as not to impoverish the local population, a point that is especially relevant given Ukraine's
fragile social and political balance. Second, they point out that European Union rules are very
narrowly tailored to the needs of member states, which may not be optimal when competing for access
to other markets.
The contrast could not be sharper. The European Union proposes abandoning a common heritage and
adopting unpopular liberal alternatives. It proposes weakening national economic and legal autonomy
in exchange for the ephemeral prospect of membership, which will be decades in coming, if it comes
at all. Meanwhile, many Ukrainian industries will be ruined by the removal of tariffs on European
Union goods.
The Eurasian Union proposes rallying around an existing common heritage. It proposes building
economic partnerships to expand markets and establish new, globally competitive industries. Finally,
it seeks to integrate these into the larger global economy on the basis of collective market strength.
In the meantime, the Eurasian Union, unlike the European Union, is willing and able to offer significant
financial subsidies to countries that wish to build such a transcontinental common market.
In retrospect, the sensible question to ask is not why Ukraine failed to sign the association
agreement, but what possessed its leaders to think that doing so would be a good idea in the first
place?
Nicolai N. Petro, professor of politics at the University of Rhode Island, is currently a
Fulbright research scholar in Ukraine.
...Seems that, despite the academic consensus that free trade is win-win for all, free trade
is not free.
Great nations that have risen to global power by protecting their manufacturing, like Britain
in the early 19th century, have begun their relative decline when they embraced free trade. Between
1870 and 1914, protectionist America and Germany both shoved Britain aside.
Since Y2K, China, which protects its industrial base by keeping its currency artificially cheap,
has surged past Italy, Britain, France, Germany and Japan to become the world's second largest economy.
And they are gaining steadily on us. Free trade appears to be the policy of fading nations.
Perhaps it is time for a profit and loss statement of its costs and benefits.
Undeniably, free trade has been a bonanza for the top 1 percent and many among our top 10
percent.
As U.S. manufacturers shut down scores of thousands of U.S. factories to finance new plants in
Asia, their production costs plummeted. Wages and benefits for Asians were, and are still, but a
fraction of those of American workers.
Health, safety and environmental standards were in some cases almost nonexistent.
The eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh that collapsed in April, killing 1,100 workers,
mostly women, and injuring another 2,500, would never have passed a U.S. building inspection.
After having shifted production overseas and dramatically lowered costs, U.S. transnationals
saw a surge in profits. These were used to push corporate salaries into the stratosphere, increase
dividends to shareholders, and keep the Washington lobbyists working the Hill day and night for
fast track and free trade.
And the lifestyle of our corporate elites changed.
Where their fathers walked sooty factory floors in smokestack towns in World War II, these masters
of the universe fly Gulfstream Vs to Davos and Dubai to dine with titled Europeans, Saudi princes
and Chinese billionaires.
These are America's winners from free trade. The losers?
Middle Americans. The average U.S. family has not seen a rise in real wages in 40 years.
This is directly traceable to the loss of more than one-third of all U.S. manufacturing jobs. And
that loss, that deindustrialization of America, is directly tied to the $10 trillion in trade deficits
since Bush I.
Writers who celebrate how U.S. imports have risen in this month or that year almost never mention
the trade deficit for this month or that year.
Perhaps that is because the United States has not run a trade surplus in four decades, whereas,
in the first 70 years of the 20th century, we never ran a trade deficit.
Trade surpluses add to GDP; trade deficits subtract from GDP.
And when in a company town the company closes the factory, the town often dies. And all the little
satellite businesses - bars, diners, food stores, pharmacies - that rose around the factory, they
die, too.
The tombstones of countless dead towns across America should read: Killed by Free Trade.
Tenured economists on college campuses call this "creative destruction."
The stagnant wages of two generations of U.S. workers also help to explain the crisis of Social
Security and Medicare. For, as workers' wages fail to rise, or fall, so, too, do their contributions
in payroll taxes.
If, as Simpson-Bowles contends, our largest entitlement programs are heading for insolvency,
free trade played a lead role in that American tragedy.
And where is the liberal morality in passing laws to ensure U.S. workers a living wage and clean
and safe conditions, and then, through fast track and free trade, signaling their bosses that they
can evade these laws by shutting factories here, moving their plants to Asia, paying coolie wages,
and subjecting Asian workers to conditions that would earn a U.S. industrialist a tour in Leavenworth?
Whatever happens from free trade is what should happen, free traders say. As Dr. Pangloss explained
to Candide, whatever happens, happens for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
MINNEAPOLIS -- Chester Smolecki was a child when the Germans overran his home town of Rabka,
a resort town in the Gorce Mountains of southern Poland.
Many of the photos in his family scrapbook are relatives he says were murdered during World War
II by members of the SS Galician Division, a group made up almost entirely of ethnic Ukrainians.
"The SS Galician, yes," Smolecki told KARE.
"I remember how they dress. I remember their uniforms, the insignia."
"I remember as a child learning the horrific stories he would share about the war years, he would
tell me that the Ukrainian SS were just as brutal as the German SS," Aggie Smolecki, Chester's daughter,
told KARE.
She reached out to KARE after
the Associated
Press reported that Michael Karkoc of Minneapolis, a 94-year-old Ukrainian immigrant and father
of six, was an SS commander who ordered an attack on civilians in Chlaniow, a different Polish village.
"Mr. Karkoc got to live a full life and raise a family here in America," she explained.
Aggie Smolecki is writing a book about her father's wartime experience, which included sneaking
food to Polish resistance fighters and Jews.
"If he would've been caught he could've be shot, either by the Hitler youth, the Ukrainian SS,
which were all over Rabka, or the German SS," Aggie Smolecki remarked.
The SS was the paramilitary organization most loyal to Adolph Hitler and the Nazi ideology, and
were more feared than regular German army units.
The Germans converted the local high school in Rabka into a training center for the Gestapo,
the dreaded secret police that enforced Hitler's campaign of genocide and rooted out armed resistance
in Germany and territory occupied by the Germans.
"And then I think of my family members who died in the war and they don't have a voice."
Ukraine involvement
The Ukrainian combatants generally regarded themselves as freedom fighters because of mass starvation
and other hardships that had occurred under Soviet rule prior to World War II.
Historians say they allied themselves with the Germans in hopes of regaining their independence
from Russia and autonomy after the war. But the record also shows that many of those Ukrainians
who joined the German effort were involved in suppressing the Poles.
Chester Smolecki said he personally witnessed suppression and murder.
He remembers the night the S-S came looking for his cousin Josef Baran, a Polish army officer
turned resistance fighter. They ended up killing Josef's wife Stefania Baran and daughter Irena
Baran.
"They killed his wife and daughter, the SS Galician, they killed them," Smolecki remembered,
gesturing with his arms.
"They killed them with the butt of the gun and kicking."
He said he saw the young man who lived next door being whipped and beaten by members of the Galician
SS, because the man wouldn't divulge where he had hidden an old pistol. The man's grandmother tried
to rescue him by telling the interrogators where the gun was.
"But they still took him away and shot him in the head."
And there was his uncle Cheslav, a postman sent away for hiding a Jewish infant in his mail bag.
The baby girl was safely smuggled out of Rabka, and is still alive in Europe. But Cheslav didn't
fare as well.
"He was taken away to be interrogated, and then he was taken to Auschwitz, where he was worked
to death," Aggie Smolecki explained.
Chester's scrapbook includes the letter from the Auschwitz camp administration, officially certifying
that his uncle Cheslav died of "heart failure."
In fact many of the names on a war memorial in Rabka belong to Chester's relatives, including
Stefan Kondys and Wladyslaw Baran, both of whom were captured by the SS and murdered.
According to an account written by famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, the Gestapo training school's
commander, Wilhelm Rosenbaum, murdered an entire Jewish family in Chester's neighborhood solely
because they had the same last name.
"They were our friends and neighbors," Chester said. "My father served in the Austrian army with
Mr. Rosenbaum, and Mrs. Rosenbaum was my mother's friend."
Chester said he had played often with the Rosenbaum's son, and that his sister in Poland kept
some of the Mrs. Rosenbaum's china and a necklace, in hopes relatives would one day claim them.
Chester Smolecki grew up to be a chemist, immigrated to the US in 1963 and raised a family here.
He was surprised to learn that Michael Karkoc lives only one block from him in northeast Minneapolis.
"Yes, this is something, isn't it?" he said, shaking his head.
Associated Press Karkoc probe
Karkoc, in his 1995 memoir, wrote that he fled his native Ukraine to Poland, where he was drafted
into the German Army. After fighting on the Russian front he said became disillusioned with the
Germans, and decided they weren't any better than the Soviets.
He said he deserted the German army while home on leave, and joined the Ukrainian Self-Defense
Legion, which took up the fight against the advancing Red Army. At some point the legion agreed
to join the Germans, in hopes of stopping the Soviet forces.
According to the Associated Press investigation, the attack on Chlaniow was in retaliation for
the murder of Siegfried Assmuss, an SS field commander in that part of Poland. Karkoc, in his memoirs,
recalled the murder of Assmuss.
But his memoirs do not mention the attack on Chlaniow, where 42 civilians were murdered.
And, while Karkoc has not granted interviews, he told families he was not involved with the attack
on Chlaniow.
The opposition leaders, who represent minority factions in Parliament, had initially criticized
the violence against the police, but after the fruitless meeting with Mr. Yanukovich they demanded
that he offer concessions within 24 hours or apparently they would join the confrontation.
Standing on a stage in Independence Square, which protesters have occupied since early December,
opposition leaders addressed the crowd with a sense of foreboding.
"I will not live in shame," said Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, the leader in Parliament of Fatherland,
the party of the jailed former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko.
Selected Comments
WimR, Netherlands
The rule of law and the monopoly of violence for the government are central preconditions
for any democracy. The Western countries who have supported the protesters despite them
behaving in a way that they would consider absolutely unacceptable in their own countries have
been actively undermining Ukraine's democracy.
It seems we are still living in the neo-colonial era where democracy elsewhere is only
considered acceptable when it brings the results that we want.
I certainly don't condone the clumsy way in which the Ukrainian government is removing the
barricades. But I believe they are right in believing that they should be removed. There is
a difference between the right protest and mob rule.
Eugene, NY
Tyagnibok is leader ultra right opposition who said many time they will kill Russian and
Jewish. Why our government support this people around the world on taxpayer money?
Sergiy, Dnipropetrovsk
These guys who fights "for the Freedom" on Grushevskogo st are trained members of UNA-UNSO
and other nazi organizations, mostly from western part of the country. They do not listen to
anyone, lost links to reality and they are trained to kill and make chaos in special training
camps. I'm not happy with mr. Yanukovich, but any other alternative is much worse the country.
Any revolution is a chaos and a lot of good people suffer from that.
I do not want Egypt scenario in my country and I ask everybody who is concerned about situation
- do not express compassion to these revolutioners as you do not express such to terrorists
and fashists. Do not support them.
Please support Ukrainians and let us resolve our problems ourselves, without mass-media pressure
from outside.
Pierre Anonymot, Paris
Oh my goodness, now the Ukraine after Greece and Syria, and Khazakstan, Mexico, Egypt, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Bahrein, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Thailand, Pakistan, Indonesia, the
Phillipines, and on and on. Nobody is doing what we told them to do. What's the matter with
these folks. I've not even mentioned Russia & Iran? They don't listen to us either.
Our NSA would have squelched all that dissent in a hurry. Maybe we should rent out copîes
of the Department heads to some of these countries. It might help amortize the costs.
Nat, Ukraine Yesterday
After the events on the street Hrushevskoho 254 policemen sought medical assistance, 104
of them were hospitalized. There are suffered diagnosed closed head injuries, fractures, burns,
stab wounds and poisoning unknown substances.
Also last day sought medical treatment only 25 protesters in Kiev. 12 of them were hospitalized
with various injuries. 25 injured extremists. So, it is truth. They were activists when they
stood and listened. When they are throwing Molotov cocktails and beat law enforcement - they
are extremists.
Militants-ultras specialize only on massacres and war with " Berkut " with more and more
barbaric methods . Mingling to a combustible mixture to the Molotov cocktails available means
"Krot", which is a caustic alkali, militants make a hell of a blend that not only combust but
also leaves horrific chemical burns on burnt skin areas.
War takes unconventional character. Militants-ultras distributed web addresses and phone
numbers of relatives and close associates "Berkut" with calls to violence against them. They
call to patrol subway in order to reset the law enforcement officers under the train .
Is this peaceful meeting?
What would be the reaction of the United States, if it happened in New York?
Babeouf, Ireland Yesterday
The violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine is being led by
a Neo Fascist party. With plenty of support from outright Fascists. If you look at the pictures
from the demonstrations you can actually see people wearing helmets modeled on those worn by
the German troops who occupied Ukraine during the Second World War.
Naturally governments of the EU states have publicly endorsed those leading this attempted
Coup. As in Egypt its not recognized as a 'Real' democracy if its not part of the West. The
idea that Russia will sit by as a Fascist anti Russian regime forms on its borders is imbecilic.
Alla, Ukraine
First of all: If you want to hear Ukrainian people you have to listen to everyone, not to
limited (scanty) amount of them. The Eastern part, the Crimea, the great part of Kiev inhabitants
do not support protesters. The protesters belong to radical right parties which proclaim chauvinism,
anti-Semitism. Their device (motto) is: "проти жидів та москалів". There are several cases in
Kiev of assault and battery of Jews (Jew-bating in 2014 and with the USA and EC approval!).
The protesters set fire on a shop and the domestic house it was in. A woman in the 5th floor
cried and asked the protesters to step away and let the fire-fighters and fire engineering to
come. Since the 19.01.2014 the protesters've catched people (they said about 200-300 people),
taken them away, searched, beaten them with wooden sticks, humiliated - and showed it on TV,
proclaiming that they are fighting for...
By the way, what are they fighting for? The laws they are figthing against are the same the
citizens of the USA and EC follow. Citizens of New York - consult your laws - is it permitted
to wear masks and hoods during protest actions? Is it permitted to cry: "Men! Take guns and
come to streets!" Is it permitted to write in a blog and comments: "if you don't kill a policemen
you waste your day"?
Perhaps Mr. Putin could put his masterful diplomatic skills to work in Ukraine and leave
Syria to the U.S.
atolstoy, Maryland
May be this is the goal of the US in these events ?
Dave, NYC
I'm beyond infuriated at the ECB/EU for their part in making this inevitable. While Putin
held out a "no strings" loan for Ukraine, the ECB simply couldn't resist insisting upon
an austerity program like the ones that have wreaked social and economic havoc in Ireland, Spain,
Italy, Britain, and more. Austerity doesn't work to reduce deficits, doesn't boost the economy,
and results in greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.
How could they give Yanukovich the opportunity to look like he's pursuing the sensible option
by going to Putin? The western-looking protesters in the streets know that there *are* strings
attached to Russia's aid - strings that seek to turn Ukraine back into a subservient province
of a new Russian empire - but imagine how much stronger their hand, if they could say "We can
reject Russian imperialism *without* destroying old age pensions, education, and health care
for the bankers in Frankfurt!"
... "the opposition demands widened to include the firing of Azarov's government and the holding
of early elections for president. The next regularly scheduled elections are in 2015." The USA has the
power to decide the winner. The question is whether the USA continue the support of insurgents via NGO
and media or they will follow President
George H. W. Bush recommendation:
"Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with
a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred."
Elsewhere, demonstrators
seized administration buildings in the cities of Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Khmelnitsky
and Rivne, and made an effort to take the local government building in Zhytomyr and Cherkasy. In
Lviv, the opposition promptly started building a stage on the square in front of the building they
had seized.
The simultaneous eruptions in provincial cities appeared to be coordinated. And they
came even as the government of President Viktor Yanukovych pressed his demand at the bargaining
table that protesters leave the government buildings they have occupied.
... the opposition demands widened to include the firing of Azarov's government and the holding
of early elections for president. The next regularly scheduled elections are in 2015.
===
BillVann:
Just be thankful that we live in a country where you can erect barricades of burning tires
and police buses outside the White House and beat cops senseless with clubs and not have our
right to protest trampled upon.
Where Ian Tranor is right that in the observation that Yanukovich regime is corrupt, as all neoliberal
regimes are. But what he does not understand that this is a rule, not an exception. Saying that
"But it is as much about power and money for the Yanukovych clan faced with broad popular disgust at
the corrupt and self-serving regime the president embodies." he conveniently forgot that pro-Western
Yushchenko clan was the same and was sent packing by Ukrainians for the same reasons.
State control of large parts of the economy coupled with a neoliberal capitalism model meant rewarding
supporters with "cheap" privatization of state property and punishing opponents. This pattern of blatant
corruption is typical for all neoliberal regimes in xUSSR space and existed continuously from 1991.
Kiev has been a reliable political partner for the USA, which is obsessed with seeing its own national
security to be based on global dominance. The prospect of "losing" Kiev would be a major strategic disaster
for both the United States and Europe. But the tragedy is that it is also the major strategic disaster
for Russia which consider Ukrainians as a "sister" nation, tied by centuries of common history. But
it is the USA which has a trump card as money stolen from Ukrainian people by neoliberal politicians
are all in Western banks. So in a sense Yanukovich clan and all Ukrainian oligarchs are on short leash.
So the statement that "...Barroso's options appear very limited" is wrong. The problem is alienating
Russia as an externality of playing this card.
...Barroso's options appear very limited. What can Europe do except put Yanukovych in the same
box as the dictator next door, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, and blacklist his cronies and
oligarch financiers to stop them shopping in London, skiing in Switzerland or holidaying in the
Mediterranean?
Whether Iran, Zimbabwe, Belarus or Syria, travel, financial, and economic sanctions have in recent
years become the EU's default option in dealing with unsavory regimes.
Carl Bildt, the activist Swedish foreign minister who is outspoken on Ukraine, is calling for
sanctions against the Yanukovych regime, although broadly and regularly he is skeptical about the
utility of sanctions as a diplomatic tool. The German government official dealing with Ukraine pooh-poohed
the idea of sanctions.
The EU's longstanding policy towards Ukraine and several other post-Soviet states, known as the
eastern neighborhood policy, has been shredded as a result of the past two months. Brussels has
been outwitted by Moscow and Kiev. That much is likely to be demonstrated next week when Russia's
president, Vladimir Putin, comes to Brussels for a summit with the EU.
If Europe is split, its policy also appears half-baked and in need of a radical rethink.
"There remains deep uncertainty over the longer-term nature of the relationship between the
EU and the countries of the eastern partnership, such as Ukraine," says a new study, not yet
published, by the European Leadership Network and signed by several former foreign and defense ministers
of Britain, France, Germany, Poland, and Russia.
"The absence of a vision for Europe's future as a whole increases the risk that the current sense
of drift will become a fundamental drifting apart. This could embed a conflictual and competitive
dynamic in Europe."
Senior diplomats in Brussels admit that Ukraine has triggered unusually red faces and agonizing
at the top of the EU. They just did not see the Yanukovych volte-face coming, whereas Putin knew
exactly what was happening. It was the same, if less noticed, in September when Armenia abruptly
ditched years of negotiations on similar pacts with the EU and collapsed into Moscow's arms.
The Ukrainian conflict is conventionally seen as cultural and geographical – Yanukovych and
the pro-Russian east against the educated classes of Kiev and the pro-European west of the country.
But it is as much about power and money for the Yanukovych clan faced with broad popular
disgust at the corrupt and self-serving regime the president embodies.
In terms of quick and easy fixes to such a contest, the EU struggles to be nimble, while Putin
can open the gas taps and write cheques instantly.
Putin offered Yanukovych €15bn (£12bn) , cheaper gas supplies, and trade benefits now, while
the EU pacts amount to a medium-term modernisation and reform programme which may benefit Ukraine
once Yanukovych is long gone.
In any case unspoken basis for the problems discussed should be not pro-UE vs pro-Russian orientation
but the religious and cultural differences with East and tribalism of West Ukraine. Ukraine can easily
be bribed in EU association agreement for the same 15 billion that Russia promised to Ukraine, but EU
wanted it cheap; it does have the political will to buy Ukraine wholesale, which Yanukovich was ready
to do. BTW Yanukovich actually for three years was a rabid and unconditional supporter of EU integration
and forced it on the people of Eastern part of Ukraine. But conditions of association and absence of
financial assistance in a form of new loans from IMF were harsh enough for Yanukovich to step back at
the last moment (promise of Russian credits probably played a major role in this "emergency braking"
as at this point Ukraine was just several months from the bankruptcy). As the result Western Ukraine
with help of obvious forces staged revolt and he got "color revolution" on his doorsteps. Of course,
tribal extremism is an acute problem not just in Ukraine but around the world. They reject democratic
process. Galichia+Volhynia is less the 1/4 of Ukrainian population and has little chances to prevail
democratically. But nationalists are well organized politically, control MSM and are well financed by
some oligarchs and NGOs. As of Jan 24 at some point supporters of EuroMaidan manage to occupy 11 out
of 24 of provincial administrations (later they were kicked out of 5 of them). Now what ? It might well
be that "gang of three" (Sweden, Poland, Lithuania) got EU into a trap ... George H. A. Bush (who is
a veteran of WWII) warned the problem of "suicidal nationalism" in his
Chicken Kiev speech:
ultra nationalists might be
way too sharp tool
for achieving EU geopolitical goals.
Poland has distinct
experience with them. As insurgents fighting Soviets after WWII they proved to be the force to be
reckoned with: they are as determined and as unwilling to any compromises as Muslim fundamentalists.
And can be as brutal. After WWII they attacked civilians and killed indiscriminately supporters of Soviets
in large numbers. It took Soviet Army approximately 10 year to crush the insurrection (1945-1955).
...This extraordinary story is also about Russia's power and identity, and Mr. Putin won't let
Ukraine go easily. What can Europe do? It can't buy Ukraine; nor can it openly promote regime change
- Mr. Yanukovich, after all, is an elected leader. But Europe has other assets.
Its diversity, often seen as a burden, is one. At the time of President Bush's "Chicken Kiev
speech" in 1991, the European Union was still the 12-member European Community, an elite club of
rich countries. In 2004, the year of Kiev's Orange Revolution, the European Union absorbed 10 more
members, including six former Warsaw Pact countries. Today, some of the younger members - Sweden,
Poland, Lithuania - are important players in this drama, bringing new expertise to Brussels.
Stefan Fule, who, as the European Union's commissioner for enlargement, handles negotiations
with Ukraine, is a 51-year-old Czech, trained in the 1980s at Moscow's State Institute of International
Relations. The European Union's ambassador to Kiev is an accomplished Polish diplomat, Jan Tombinski.
This is the new Europe, already bringing East and West together.
Also on Europe's side is prosperity. In 1990, Poland had roughly the same gross domestic product
per capita as its neighbor Ukraine. Today, Poland's is three times higher - and there for all Ukrainians
to see. If, one day, the Ukrainians catch up with the Poles, their Russian counterparts will take
note.
Above all, the European Union is a force for democracy: For all its recent economic misery, the
European Union retains a formidable power of attraction to citizens on the outside. A sea of protesters
proudly waving the star-studded blue flag of Europe may have been a startling sight for Europeans,
but for these Ukrainians, the dull bureaucracy of Brussels meant the rule of law, government without
corruption and solidarity - and they were ready to fight for this Europe.
Ukraine cannot become the European Union's 29th member state tomorrow. But the revolt in Maidan
shows that there must be a clear prospect of joining the European Union once proper conditions are
met, even if that is 30 years away.
European leaders must also work out how to deal, collectively, with Mr. Putin. For some member
states, that means seeking the moral high ground instead of putting business interests with Russia
first. Europe can outwit Mr. Putin, but it will take strategic thinking, patience and subtlety -
rather than a show of force from America's Cold War playbook.
Like the citizens of Kiev, the European Union is in for the long haul. It should actively support
Ukraine's maturing civil society by opening up: It can provide Ukrainians with visas and scholarships
and offer training in political dialogue, social solidarity and clean government - all things
that Russia's rulers comprehend very little.
When Mr. Yanukovich went begging to Moscow on Dec. 17, Mr. Putin offered him a big fish, in
the form of $15 billion in loans and discounted natural gas, which Ukraine's president happily
took home. The European Union will not give Ukraine a big fish, but Europe can teach Ukraine how
to fish for itself. We owe this to all the pro-European protesters in the freezing cold of Maidan.
Sylvie Kauffmann is the editorial director and a former editor in chief of Le Monde.
The kind of calculation that the "realist" foreign policy of George H.W. Bush was about. He warned
against independence if it only changed a distant tyrant for a local one: "Americans will not support
those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will
not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred."[10]. Or in short, the essence
of Bush message was that Western (and particularly U.S.) involvement in the internal disputes of xUSSR
space is counterproductive. A wiser and more mutually beneficial policy would be neutrality.
The Chicken Kiev speech[1]
is the nickname for a speech given by the United States president
George H. W. Bush
in Kiev, Ukraine, on August 1, 1991, months before a
December referendum in which Ukrainians voted to withdraw from the Soviet Union, in which Bush
cautioned against "suicidal nationalism".[2]
The speech was written by
Condoleezza Rice –
later Secretary of State under President George W. Bush – when she was in charge of Soviet and east
European affairs for the first President Bush.[3]
It outraged Ukrainian nationalists and American conservatives, with the conservative columnist
William Safire giving
it the nickname of "the Chicken Kiev speech" in protest at what he saw as its "colossal
misjudgment".[4]
... ... ...
Bush set out his policy towards reform in the Soviet Union: "I come here to tell you: we support
the struggle in this great country for democracy and economic reform. In Moscow, I outlined our
approach. We will support those in the center and the republics who pursue freedom, democracy and
economic liberty." He warned against independence if it only changed a distant tyrant for a local
one: "Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny
with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic
hatred."[10]
It was later reported that Bush himself had added the phrase "suicidal nationalism" to the
speech which his staff had drafted, seeking to warn the Ukrainians about the need to avoid
what had happened
in Yugoslavia.[11]
I think approximately one forth of Ukraine (and all Galichina) does wants to join NATO whatever
the costs. And this part of the country is better organized politically and disproportionally benefited
from the Ukraine Independence. So Kuchinich might be wrong stating "They do not want to be in Russia's
orbit, nor do they want to be pawns of NATO." The country has split personality.
In a country where the average monthly minimum wage stands at about $150 USD, it's not hard to
understand why Ukrainians are in the streets.
...For NATO, the goal is expansion. The prize is access to a country that shares a 1,426-mile
border with Russia. The geopolitical map would be dramatically reshaped by the Agreement, with Ukraine
serving as the new front for Western missile defense at the doorstep of Russia. Should the U.S.
nuclear deal with Iran fall apart, Ukraine could be employed in larger regional disputes, too.
For instance, in the draft of the Agreement, foreign and security policy mandates:
"The Parties shall explore the potential of military and technological cooperation. Ukraine
and the European Defence Agency (EDA) will establish close contacts to discuss military capability
improvement, including technological issues."
The draft of the Agreement's preamble links Ukraine to "ever closer convergence of positions
on bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest" including the Common Foreign
and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)
-- which underscores the military nature of the agreement.
Since 22 of 28 members of the EU have NATO membership, there is little doubt that Ukraine is
being drawn into the broad military arrangement with EU nations.
If the EU Agreement is ratified, Ukraine will inevitably spend a higher percentage of its GDP
for military purposes, steering critical resources from social programs and job opportunities. In
2012, Ukraine's military budget already
increased 30 percent
-- to $2 billion, representing a comparatively low 1.1 percent of GDP. NATO members agree to spend
at least 2 percent of GDP on defense.
When military spending goes up, domestic spending goes down. The winners are unlikely to be the
people of Ukraine, but instead the "people" of Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and other
defense interests. The Ukrainians didn't go to Independence Square to rally for NATO. Yet NATO's
benefit is clear. Less clear is whether Ukrainians will receive key economic benefits they seek.
To wit, the preamble to the Agreement is hazy on the implementation of visa-free travel for citizens
of Ukraine, a crucial incentive for struggling workers seeking better jobs. The draft of the Agreement
is vague, calling for the visa issue to be introduced "in due course." It also asserts that EU nations
could block the movement of self-employed Ukrainians to other job markets.
For Greece, Spain and others, EU membership hasn't turned out to be a shining economic savior.
The return of austerity policies reminds one of Naomi Klein's warning about the perils of disaster
capitalism, in which instability opens the door for exploitation from outside forces.
For the protesters in Kiev, standing tall for democracy and economic opportunity, there's suddenly
a new worry: Disaster Militarism. Ukrainians may be pro-EU, but are the EU and NATO pro-Ukrainian?
Dennis J. Kucinich is a former 16-year member of Congress and two-time U.S. presidential
candidate. Visit his website
www.kucinichaction.com.
This article written in 2006 now looks surprisingly current. Hat hip to Anatoly Lieven... If current
events are a gambit to use the situation when Russia hands are tied with Winter Olympics in Sochi and
the fact that Yanukovich clan is more worried about personal prosperity (and preservation of state assets
grabbed by "family") then the destiny of the county, the resulting blowback might surprise the strategists...
As events since the Orange Revolution have demonstrated, Ukraine remains a volatile and unconsolidated
democracy.
With the Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute now settled, in a murky but apparently satisfactory fashion,
it is time to reflect on what the affair says about the West's relations with Russia and, still
more important, the West's relations with Ukraine.
The reason a serious debate is necessary is that the West's strategy toward Ukraine has been
founded on a bizarre illusion: that Ukraine would leave Russia's orbit and "join the West," and
that Russia would pay for this process.
Consider the figures: Until the latest price hike for gas, Russia was supplying Ukraine with
a de facto annual energy subsidy estimated by independent experts at somewhere between $3 billion
and $5 billion a year. That is more than the whole of the European Union's aid in the 14 years since
Ukrainian independence.
As for U.S. aid, last year it stood at a mere $174 million--and this after all the talk of U.S.
admiration and support for Ukraine's Orange Revolution. Even after the latest price rise, Ukraine
will remain greatly favored by international standards, though now more at the ultimate expense
of Turkmenistan than Russia.
Equally important for the Ukrainian economy have been the remittances sent back annually
by the millions of Ukrainians working legally in Russia. Once again, contrast Western approaches
to this question: It remains extremely difficult for Ukrainians to gain permits to work legally
in Western countries. When the last German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, tried to relax the
terms for entry into Germany, the result was an outburst of chauvinist hysteria about a supposed
flood of Ukrainian criminals and prostitutes.
Recent days have seen a great deal of moralizing in the U.S. and European news media about Russia
using energy as a political tool. It would be better if the Americans and French in particular turned
the question round and asked themselves whether there would be the slightest possibility of their
countries giving aid on this scale without expecting concrete geopolitical and economic returns.
The underlying thinking in Brussels and Washington concerning Ukraine is rather different, with
Europeans holding the prize for cynicism and Americans for recklessness.
Under all the talk about Ukraine's European path, a majority of West European governments and
EU officials privately hope that any real prospect of Ukrainian membership in the European Union
can be postponed virtually indefinitely--or at least until after Turkish membership, which may come
to the same thing. They are certainly not going to ask their voters to come up with anything like
the massive aid that Ukraine needs in order to reform its economy along Western lines.
Nor of course is the United States going to take up this burden. Instead, a growing number
of U.S. officials and politicians seem to see early NATO membership for Ukraine as a cheap alternative,
with little economic cost to the United States, and that little offset by benefits to U.S. arms
manufacturers.
This, however, would mean taking into what remains in effect an anti-Russian alliance a country
which is still deeply entwined with Russia economically, demographically and culturally; where in
the last round of the presidential elections, 44 percent of the population voted against a Western
path and in favor of alliance with Russia, and where, according to opinion polls, an overwhelming
majority of the population is opposed to NATO membership.
In addition, as events since the Orange Revolution have demonstrated, Ukraine remains a volatile
and unconsolidated democracy, whose political and business elites remain deeply ambivalent about
real economic reform. And a future world economic crisis, especially one consequent on international
energy sources, could completely redraw both the political and geopolitical maps of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, unless Russia can somehow also be integrated into the West, Ukraine's successful
move out of the Russian orbit would face Russia with another set of terrible economic, cultural
and geopolitical defeats, including in the long term the loss of Ukrainian markets for Russian goods.
That does not make Russia's opposition to this process correct, but certainly understandable,
especially to France and America.
International justice will lose all credibility if powerful states continue to benefit from total
ime case of the United States is emblematic: political aggression, inhuman treatment, illegal detention
are all "international crimes" for which the guilty must be pursued, according to the United Nations
Charter and the Geneva Conventions.
International Justice and Impunity: The Case of the United States, edited by Nils Andersson,
Daniel Iagolnitzer and Diana G. Collier is must reading for anyone who is concerned about the
role the United States plays in the world today. The book covers the proceedings of an international
conference on the issue of impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity that was held
in Paris in September, 2005. It is divided into three parts: From Hiroshima to Guantanmo, Humanitarian
Law: Legal and Moral Values to Defend, and In Pursuit to an End to Impunity. A total of 26 articles
are presented.
The list of contributors includes Ramsey Clark, Samir Amin, William Blum, Stephane Hessel,
Jan Myrdal, Michaei Parenti, Tadatoshi Akiba, Antoine Bernard, and Genevieve Sevrin. These individuals,
both personally and as representatives of their organization, make a compelling case that the
United States has acted with impunity from at least the closing days of WW II in order to impose
its worldview on others. The violence that American has perpetrated continues unabated and unpunished.
The book also provides a primer on international law and as such provides important information
for anyone seeking to understand humanitarian law from an international perspective.
While the book may be faulted as providing only the prosecution side of the case against
the United States, given that country's failure to acknowledge its crimes and its strong propaganda
machine, the book is an important and valuable commentary. Further, coming as it does at the
end of one of the most inhumane and unjust political administrations in American history it
can serve as a lesson to the next American government if it will only pay attention.
Has the United States been ignoring international law? "International Justice and Impunity:
The Case of the United States" claims so. Recent American acts in the middle east are skirting
the Geneva Conventions and even inducing the torture of prisoners - a black mark on the country
that used to be the champion of the United Nations. A scholarly work with contributions from
people in various levels of the government and from around the world, "International Justice
and Impunity: The Case of the United States" is highly recommended for community library International
Studies and Political Science collections.
Oh, and terrorism. There was a brief suspension of the daily braying about the incredibly dangerous
climate in Sochi, centered immediately around the latest double bombing in Volgograd, in which the
U.S. State Department released a brief "We are all Volgograders Now" type statement and in which
foreign leaders expressed solidarity with fighting terrorism: then it was straight back to towing
the gay-rights, homosexual-advancement bandwagon through the streets, and encouraging everyone to
jump on.
At around the same time – attacking on another front – U.S. President Barack Obama announced
that he would not attend the Olympic Games in Sochi (which he was not likely going to attend anyway;
he sent Vice-President Biden to Vancouver in 2010 and First Lady Michelle to London in 2012), at
the same time appointing "openly gay" athletes to the American delegation, for the sole purpose
of "tweaking",
"slamming"
and "sending
a message to" Russia and Putin.
What message would that be, Mr. President? I mean, I'm sure Billie-Jean King will be all over
it like Mr. T on…well, anything shiny, because attention is the lifeblood of politics and her escalation
to leadership of the American delegation will focus attention on
her new Political Action Committee, launched in 2012. LPAC is intended to channel funding to
political candidates who support lesbian rights. Not human rights, or even women's rights. Lesbian
rights. LPAC "distinguishes itself from existing women's and LGBT groups - such as EMILY's List
and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund - by specifically targeting lesbians."
According to Ms. King herself, speaking as a homosexual, only 50% of homosexuals know who they
are by the age of 13. I'm not sure where that statistic comes from, but since it is offered by a
gay icon who should know what it is like to be gay, we are forced to give it due consideration.
The remainder, she says,
do not know
until they are adults, presumably when some watershed moment reveals to them their true desires.
If we assume that to be a fact, I am damned if I can understand why Billie-Jean King is throwing
her weight behind opposition to a law which says you may not market homosexuality as a behavioral
norm to children under 16. In theory, some 4% of children will be homosexual, and of those 4%, 50%
will not realize their true orientation until they are adults. But in order to be comfortable with
their orientation, children should receive reassuring information on same-sex relationships before
they are 13, and since 50% of them will not even know they are gay until they are adults, you pretty
much have to pitch it to them all, right? However, about 96% of them will actually be heterosexual.
Is there any harm done by informing heterosexual children who are 13 and under about the pleasures
of homosexual love? I couldn't say; I'm not a psychologist. But if I were asked, as a parent, if
I thought basic sex education in schools taught kids what they needed to know about sex as a reasonable
supplement to instinct, I would say I think so. If I were asked did I think a homosexual supplement
should be added to the school curriculum, I would say I did not think so.
By her own admission, Ms. King knew she was a lesbian by 1968, but she kept it a secret until
a lawsuit revealed it in 1981, 13 years later. Why? Because America was homophobic, and her parents
were homophobic. Although she asserts that it cost her all her endorsements within 24 hours of the
lawsuit's being filed and at least $2 million – more than she made in prize money over her entire
career – she dealt with it to the best of my recollection with courage and dignity, for which she
deserves the respect such courage earns. I can't help wondering, though, if she was bitter about
her secret being blown to the world…and what she would have thought in 1981 of a bunch of crusading
foreign busybodies trying to impose their "national values" on America, and insisting she come out
immediately and be free.
It reminds me of one I heard years ago, to the effect that a struggling sports team intended
to draft Linda Lovelace as their coach. When asked why, the team captain reported that although
she would probably blow a few, she would not choke on the really big ones.
I really have no problem with Billy-Jean King; as I said, she mostly behaved with courage
and fortitude when she was on the losing end of gay persecution herself, and it is only natural
that she should want to see an improvement in gay rights and an end of being persecuted because
of your orientation. However, I submit that day has come and gone, and that it is not an issue
in Russia any more than it is in the United States, while the crusaders overlook behavior that
is several removes worse on the part of repressive Middle-Eastern monarchies who are valued
allies. We will see if there is a big gay-rights push by the USA when Qatar has the World Cup
– which I understand has now been moved to winter rather than summer despite fierce arguments.
I daresay much more important issues will occupy Americans than gay rights by that time.
Has there ever in history been a sillier campaign than the one for the boycott of the Sochi
Olympics on the basis of this law? I suppose there has but off the top of my head I can't think
of it. Has there ever been a sillier case of posturing and grandstanding than the US decision
to pick LGBT athletes like Billy-Jean King to head the official US delegation to Sochi? Bear
in mind that Billy-Jean King's heyday came at a time when the USSR did not participate in international
tennis competitions so she is probably not well known in Russia anyway. Even if most Russians
have heard of her, as I said previously it is simply delusional to think that the great majority
of Russians know or care whether she is or any other American athlete is gay or lesbian or not.
For the record consensual sex between women was never prohibited in the USSR even during
the Stalin era so what Billy-Jean King and Navratilova got up to between the sheets was never
a crime in the USSR. For the further record consensual sex between men was actually decriminalised
in the USSR in the 1920s (when it was a crime in the UK and the US) until it was recriminalized
by Stalin in I believe 1933. It was then decriminalised again in 1993 to almost complete indifference.
A gay Russian man I know (who is now a UN official) and who lived and was brought up in the
USSR during the late Soviet period has told me that provided gays like him maintained a certain
discretion the police during this period left them alone. If so then this was unlike the situation
in Britain where until homosexual activity was decriminalised the police actively hounded and
searched out gays. The Soviets seem to have made little use of allegations of homosexuality
to discredit their opponents in their own political conflicts even during the political trials
of the Stalin era whilst I can't say I have ever heard of a prominent Russian or Soviet artist
who was ever ruined or harassed by the authorities simply because he was homosexual. Certainly
I know of no Russian or Soviet case remotely comparable to those of Oscar Wilde or of the recently
posthumously pardoned scientist Alan Turing and nothing that resembles the unceasing harassment
by the police of gay cultural figures in Britain like the actor John Gielgud before homosexuality
was decriminalised.
I say all this because I do sometimes wonder whether part of the explanation for the hysteria
in the US and Britain about to the new law may be because LGBT people in the US and Britain
make assumptions about Russian treatment of LGBT people based on their own historical experience
in their own countries. If so then that may be a serious mistake. However even if it is the
case this can only form part of the explanation. That the recent western campaign against Russia
and for the boycott of the Sochi Olympics has in reality little to do with the new law is shown
by the way supporters of this campaign constantly misrepresent it.
Having said all this, I think we can now say confidently that barring a major international
crisis or a major terrorist incident a boycott of the Sochi Olympics is not going to happen.
There are two further points I want to make about this campaign, which concern its impact
in Russia itself:
This whole ugly campaign has had the unfortunate effect of encouraging some unpleasant
people like the television personality who is an ex priest and who has just called for homosexuality
to be recriminalized to come crawling out of the woodwork. Given how trivial this law
is I am pretty sure this would never have happened if there had not been in the west this
extraordinary campaign against it. Thankfully I don't think anyone takes this call
seriously or sees in it anything other than a self publicity stunt. Fortunately the extent
to which this sort of thing is happening has been limited and so far this looks like an
isolated case.
By contrast the Russian LGBT community have shown astonishing good sense and political
maturity in the face of this provocative campaign. They have staunchly refused to join
in it or be drawn into it or be used by it in a way that speaks highly of their patriotism
and good sense. This contrasts sharply with the way the liberal opposition in Russia last
year foolishly supported the Magnitsky law. This is a major plus and promises much good
for the future of the country.
;Jen
Dear Alex: It's worth knowing that while the dancer Rudolf Nureyev was still living and working
in the Soviet Union, he was shadowed by the KGB for suspected disloyalty to the Communist Party
and for associating too freely with Westerners. According to some Internet sources I have seen,
the KGB knew that he was gay and had been tracking his movements but the sources don't say if
the agency did so with a view to blackmailing him (and using him to inform on others) or because
it believed his contacts with other homosexual people were encouraging his disloyalty and rebellious
nature.
The FBI also had a file on Nureyev as it suspected him of being a spy for the Soviets. It's
quite possible that at those moments when Nureyev believed the KGB was after him, it was actually
the FBI spook who was on his trail!
The Los Angeles Times article linked to notes that when Diane Solway (Nureyev's biographer)
asked for both the KGB and the FBI files on Nureyev, the KGB file arrived promptly, was uncensored
and acknowledged mistakes made at senior levels; the same could not be said of the FBI file.
Thanks, Alex, and as usual a very perceptive and thoughtful analysis. That's a good point
about Billie-Jean King's name value in Russia – I didn't think of that, and you're probably
right; most Russians will have no clue who she is because they were not involved in the sport
at the time she was a big deal. It is likewise an interesting suggestion that bitter gay activists
in the west are projecting because of their own treatment in the past. And finally, it is also
an insightful observation that the Russian gay community has behaved in an exemplary fashion
– the interview with the owner of The Lighthouse gay club in Sochi, linked by Moscow Exile,
offers an excellent glimpse – by refusing to let themselves be used as a stick with which to
beat the government, and have probably in so doing achieved far more acceptance by Russians
than external pressure would ever have done.
Historically even brutal regimes have looked the other way on same-sex activity between women,
and in my opinion it has always seemed simultaneously less harmful and less perverted to even
harsh judges than the same activity between males. Even now the more repressive Middle Eastern
nations are relatively accepting of lesbianism (probably perceiving it as a college-experimentation
dalliance type of thing which sometimes happens whenever large numbers of young women get together,
and which they will "grow out of") than they are of gay male activity.
yalensis
Dear Alex, that was a most EXCELLENT and well-reasoned comment.
A couple of points:
Taking it as self-evident that homosexuality is a trait (genetic or hormonal, of whatever)
that persists from generation to generation, that each society in human history comes to deal
with this in its own way. Soviet Union/Russia dealt with it in a certain way that involved a
certain amount of compromise, and a certain amount of discretion.
Many western societies (such as Britain and America) were quite vicious towards homosexuals,
as you point out. The American film
Brokeback Mountain,
which depicts a love affair between two (grown-up) male cowboys takes place between the years
1963 to 1981. The film is fictional, of course, but based on realities of the time. One of the
cowboys describes how his father tried to steer him away from becoming gay by showing him a
vicious hate crime that the townspeople had perpetrated against a gay guy, torturing him and
killing him. This was supposed to be a warning to the boy that he had better try to pretend
to be heterosexual, otherwise he could be tortured and murdered himself.
The Brits were possibly even more vicious towards homosexuals than the Americans, as
you point out with your examples of Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing, who were literally hounded
to death, in spite of their outstanding accomplishlments.
So now, I think these Western societies are trying to atone for these past crimes, and maybe
even bending over backwards; but unfortunately they are projecting their guilt onto a country
like Russia, which always handled the issue of homosexuality in a different way.
In conclusion, the Americans are being ridiculous by sending a self-professed "gay" delegation
to Sochi, thinking this will shame Russia by boasting how diverse America is.
Russia should respond as follows:
Treat the delegation with the utmost respect and the usual generous Russian hospitality.
Send them back to America with only positive impressions of Russia and Russians.
(Well, in the case of Johnny Weir, that's redundant, because he is already a Russophile!)
Turing has become an iconic figure amongst homosexuals and liberals in the UK. I often get
the impression that some of these people even try their hardest to suggest that Turing was a
mathematical genius because of his homosexuality, that homosexuality is concomitant with
genius; that without homosexuality, "we would have lost the war". Needless to say, I have seen
that argument put forward by several "Guardianistas". I have also heard the same proposition
concerning Tchaikovsky's homosexuality and his musical talent.
As regards the law in the UK concerning homosexuality, I also think that liberals there often
try to rewrite history and to be absolutely frank, they sometimes tell downright lies about
this matter.
It was not an offence to be a homosexual in the UK, only to engage in certain homosexual
acts. The Buggery Act of 1556 applied to its eponymous activity. The Criminal Law amendment
Act of 1885, popularly known as the Labouchere Amendment and covering other kinds of homosexual
sex acts, was introduced after a wave of sensational cases of upper-class, middle-aged men corrupting
young boys. From 1885 to the reform of 1967, 85% of all prosecutions under the act involved
soliciting or activity in a public place. One must remember that Turing was man in his middle
forties and his "partner" in the offence that led to his conviction was an unemployed young
man aged 19.
Furthermore, Turing's chemical castration was not ordered by the courts, as the common opinion
in the UK has it, but was the result of a plea bargained and suggested by Turing's barrister
as an alternative to prison.
Regardless of Turing's contribution to the allied war effort and to computer science, his
homosexuality caused great concern to many. He was fond of boys (there exists correspondence
between Turing and one of his homosexual chums in which Turing writes about the "scrumptious
boys" at a school where he had been appointed to a post as mathematics teacher), though there
is no evidence that he practised paederasty. Nevertheless, he had been warned to be discreet
as regards his "cottaging" activities (seeking partners for homosexual acts in public toilets
and locations known to be meeting places for male homosexuals). He chose to ignore this advice,
and, as the law stood at the time, he paid the price.
When the UK 1967 Sexual Offences Act received Royal Assent, Lord Arran, a co-sponsor of that
act, said: "…I ask those [homosexuals] to show their thanks by comporting themselves quietly
and with dignity… any form of ostentatious behaviour now or in the future or any form of public
flaunting would be utterly distasteful… ".
It is indeed extremely unfortunate for Turing that the said Act, together with Lord Arran's
sage advice, came too late for Turing, who was recently granted a Royal pardon for his conviction.
Interestingly, there has been no mention of a pardon for Turing's 19-year-old partner in
the performance of a homosexual act in Manchester, which act led to Turing's conviction. Unlike
the bourgeois, highly educated mathematical prodigy Turing, however, that 19-year-old was a
member of the working class.
I wonder what Lord Arran would have said as regards the lurid and, to my mind, extremely
offensive displays perpetrated in public by homosexuals these days, an example of which being
displayed in the photograph above accompanying Mark's article that leads this thread?
Quoting Ernest Hemingway, Prime Minister Azarov expressed his grief for the wounded police,
and his anger against the "provocateurs".
Official data gives the number of 250 casualties on both sides of this street war.
Including 2 reported deaths, one of them was a 22-year-old man who accidentally fell off a colulmn
of the Dynamo stadium, where he was perched while lobbing molotov cocktails at the poloice.
[yalensis: File this one under "Darwinian natural selection at work".]
The other death is said to be a person who was shot, but this information has not been confirmed,
according to KP.
Apart from the fact that what is happening in the Ukraine is the business of Ukrainians,
do the writers of that article really believe that no help whatsoever is forthcoming from abroad
to help those in their anarchic, criminal actions? I mean, who feeds them? Have they no jobs
to go to? Or do they appear on the Maidan in shifts, and if that be the case, what are the logistics
involved in undertaking this action?
Or is at all the spontaneous action of "freedom lovers"?
The journalists who wrote the article seem to think that they are protesting in Kiev against
the Ukrainian government decision not to agree to the terms of association offered to the Ukraine
by the EU; however, the anarchists and fascists on the Maidan have for a while now been claiming
that they are not protesting over the Ukraine not becoming some associate of the EU, but against
"Yanukovich's "bandit regime" against whose depredations they are defending Kiev, Kievans and
their "honour", namely:
"…мы выходим ни за то, чтобы нас взяли в Евросоюз, ни за Юлю, Виталика, Арсения и
Олежку… Не против России и Русских!!! Мы выходим – ЗА КИЕВЛЯН, ЗА НАШ ГОРОД, ЗА НАШУ
СТРАНУ, ЗА НАШУ ЧЕСТЬ!"
[We have not come out here so as that we be accepted into the European Union; nor for
Yulia, Vitalik, Arseny and Olezhka... We are not against Russians or Russia!!! - WE ARE
FOR KIEVANS, FOR OUR CITY, FOR OUR COUNTRY, FOR OUR HONOUR!]
So what should the EU do about this?
And should McCain fly over again in order to give them a little pep talk, perhaps?
Or maybe a gaggle of Polish and Lithuanian politicians should turn up and give a helping
hand with filling the empty bottles with petrol or smashing up the paving on the square so as
the brave freedom fighters do not fall short of ammunition?
By the way, as regards Kiev cops allegedly striking a Polish journalist,
this photograph was taken during the British miners' strike in 1984, at the so-called Battle
of Orgreave.
By the time that "battle" took place, some "human-rights" minded folk took it
upon themselves to form a "police watch" in order to give credence to strikers' claims of violence
meted out to them by "Thatcher's Private Army".
One of these people, armed with a camera, is pictured in the linked photograph. Her name
is Lesley Boulton and
here's her story as told to the BBC some 20 years after the event.
The cop attempted to strike her across the head just after the shot was taken. Strangely
enough, the picture was hardly published by the British news media at the time.
The miners' union quickly got copies of the photograph, though, but the reaction of the public
at large who saw the picture at the time was to voice the opinion that it was a doctored photograph
or that she must have been doing something wrong that made that nice policeman attempt to strike
her.
Here's
a shot taken just after his baton had skimmed past Ms. Boulton's head.
Political analyst
Rostislav
Ishchenko believes that the Ukrainian radicals (="Right Sector") have seized control of
the Maidan movement and no longer pay attention to the troika of regular Opps leaders (Yatsenuk-Tahnybok-Klichko).
Next to these fascist freaks, even Tahnybok looks like a limp-wristed moderate.
Also interesting, as I commented above, that American State Department has washed their
hands of "Right Sector". I admit, that surprised me. Of course, until about a week ago,
I had never even heard of "Right Sector". But it turns out, they were there all along. They
were the muscle and the bouncers and the bully-boys behind the Maidan. And now they're running
wild and unleashed, like some kind of Godzilla.
marknesop:
That's because what they are there for is the confrontation and the fighting and the smashing
and the damage. They could not give a toss for joining the EU unless it also gave them opportunities
to break things and beat people up. They live for the violence. But if Yanukovych can keep his
head and not waver, he may be able to come out of this with the opposition troika of tools holding
all the blame. Yanukovych told them to clear off the maidan and go home, but they insisted on
making a big EuroShow out of it, and now it has slipped way out of their control and they can't
stop it because the bully-boys are in charge, and they just want anarchy (where's Pussy Riot
when you need them) and fighting. The police are more than a match for them as long as they
are not hampered by rules that treat people throwing rocks and gas bombs as if they were gentle
old ladies, and some of them are going to be very sorry they ever started this. If it shapes
up to be too much for the police, there's always the army. Russia has said they're staying out
of it unless they are asked to assist, but you can bet some units have been given the word to
get ready to go, and you can bet Yanukovych will never be so foolish as to ask.
Things just keep rolling Yanukovych's way, if he has the wits to take advantage of opportunities,
and he has had one dropped in his lap which will allow him to get rid of Klitschko. All
he has to do is blame the whole escalation-of-violence on him, and it will stick because the
Party of Regions in its entirety stayed conspicuously away from the Maidan, while Klitschko
was all over it, promoting himself. Now it has slid sideways into a pile of shit, and Yanukovych
need not own any of it if he is clever. Yatsenyuk is still going to find himself in hot water
eventually over the Chornovol dash-cam video and his deliberate withholding of evidence, and
he was not much of a danger anyway because he is about as charismatic as Vin Diesel. Only a
really pasty and nerdy-looking Vin Diesel. Tiahnybok is not going to pull any significant amount
of votes, although he will probably stay popular with his base. The people of Kiev have to be
getting pretty fed up with all this burning and smashing, and would probably like to see things
get back to normal. Whoever gets there first is going to do himself some good. Wake up, Yanukovych
– I'm not your campaign manager.
...not since the Qing Dynasty moved to block imports of opium has the British press has been
so apoplectic about moves by foreign governments to protect themselves from Anglo-Saxon market vultures.
Kevin de Bruxelles
Yanukovich government can't win this fight. Because it is no alternative:
Maidan yells "Slava Heroyam" and organize a torchlight procession. But who allowed the
march UPA in Kiev long before the Maidan ?
On Maidan they chant "who does not jump is Moskal", but it is the current government
which is actively engaged in Anti-Russian propaganda.
Who cried about Moscow blackmail?
Who jailed Markov ?
Maidan screaming about Europe, but who created the Ministry of European integration
?
Maidan desecrated graves of Arsenal fighters, and who every year goes to Kruty?
So the power that be and Maidan are not that different. Almost. Except in one respect. One
have power, and the other don't. That's the whole difference. Even so, I am against Maidan,
because it is better the Devil we know, then a new hungry and bloodthrusty Devil.
Polling from late December shows that while 43% of Ukrainians do want to join the European Union
now (13 points higher than any other option), fully 50% of Ukrainians do not support the Kiev protests.
That latter statistic marks a turnaround in Ukraine's tolerance for the protest-only weeks prior a majority
had supported them. More significantly, only 31% of Ukrainians believe that the outcome of the protests
will be positive for Ukraine.
By their nature, protests are an attention-seeking instrument and the Ukrainian protests have
been the focus of much media interest. But Mr. Yanukovych is counting on the silent portion of the
country to support him in quelling dissent, quieting the bothersome protests and returning Ukraine
to some semblance of stability (95 percent of Ukrainians have called the country's political situation
"unstable" or "explosive"). His gamble is well-founded. Polling from late December shows that while
43% of Ukrainians do want to join the European Union now (13 points higher than any other option),
fully 50% of Ukrainians do not support the Kiev protests. That latter statistic marks a turnaround
in Ukraine's tolerance for the protest-only weeks prior a majority had supported them.
More significantly, only 31% of Ukrainians believe that the outcome of the protests will be positive
for Ukraine.
Today's violent protests may only strengthen ordinary Ukrainians' desire to see an end to the
bedlam. Many are only too happy to trade freedoms that they rarely use for peace and quiet. Cognizant
that, in a nation where stability sells, events like today's do not acquit the opposition forces
well, the movement's leaders have called on protestors to refrain from violence. They warn that
many of the angry young men in the street are provocateurs paid by Yanukovych's party to create
chaos and turn the tide of public opinion fully against the protest movement.
Surprisingly, there is an abundance of homespun wisdom on the subject of childish behavior in
adults. "Behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing thoughts and
motives, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication", said
Abraham Maslow, psychological pioneer and developer of the "Hierarchy of Needs" model. If you prefer
your philosophy a little more lighthearted, P.J. O'Rourke says, "I like to think of my behavior
in the sixties as a learning experience. Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I have done
as a learning experience. It makes me feel less stupid". German writer Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe said simply, "Behavior is a mirror in which everyone displays his own image".
What, then, are we to make of western behavior as it strives ever more stubbornly for a boycott
of the Sochi Olympic Games in Russia, under the aegis of gay rights?
Oh, and terrorism. There was a brief suspension of the daily braying about the incredibly dangerous
climate in Sochi, centered immediately around the latest double bombing in Volgograd, in which the
U.S. State Department released a brief "We are all Volgograders Now" type statement and in which
foreign leaders expressed solidarity with fighting terrorism: then it was straight back to towing
the gay-rights, homosexual-advancement bandwagon through the streets, and encouraging everyone to
jump on.
A senior Italian member of the International Olympic Committee has slammed the US for mixing
politics with the Olympics in its "absurd" decision to include openly gay athletes in its official
delegation to the Winter Games in Russia's Sochi.
In a comment that has caused quite a stir, Mario Pescante also described President Barack Obama's
move as political extortion, according to Italian media.
"It's absurd that a country like that sends four lesbians to Russia just to demonstrate that
in their country gay rights have [been established]," Mario Pescante said at an Italian OC
meeting on Wednesday, reported Associated Press, citing local press. "The games should not be
an occasion and a stage to promote rights that sports support daily."
Later, Pescante downplayed his rhetoric saying that he used the "wrong terms" and that
his words were taken out of context, wrote RaiSport.
Clarifying his comments to AP, the Italian IOC member said "of course" he was not against
gays.
"I just wanted to make the point not to let politics interfere with the Olympics," he
told the agency via phone.
USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky refused to comment on the matter.
For the first time since 2000, the American delegation to the Olympics will not include the president,
vice president or first lady. Among the delegates that Obama picked to represent the nation in Sochi
are two openly-lesbian athletes – tennis legend Billie Jean King, and hockey player Caitlin Cahow
– and, also figure skater Brian Boitano who came out as gay ahead of the Games.
The decision is interpreted as a snub to Russia over the ban on propaganda of non-traditional
sexual relations among minors passed in the country last summer. The law - dubbed the "anti-gay"
law in the West – is seen as discriminatory towards LGBT community by its critics. Gay rights activists
and some politicians called to boycott the Olympic Games in Russia in protest against the law.
"We've seen boycotts, concerns over Aboriginal rights in Australia, the Tibet issue in China.
It's enough already," Pescante told AP. "There are always going to be issues wherever the
games are held, but the best way to combat these issues is by letting the games unfold and sending
thousands of journalists to these places to report on what is going on there," Pescante, the
head of the IOC's International Relations Commission and a former IOC vice president said.
Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly said that no one will be discriminated against in Sochi. President
Vladimir Putin reiterated Friday that gay people have nothing to fear coming to the Olympics. He
emphasized that there is no criminal or administrative responsibility for homosexual relations in
Russia, unlike many other countries.
"We don't outlaw anything and don't nab anyone," Putin said at a meeting with Sochi Olympics
volunteers. "That's why you can feel safe and free here but please leave our children in peace."
Putin also recalled that just like Russians respect foreign traditions, Russian culture and traditions
should be respected by foreigners.
"We have our traditions and our culture," he said. "We treat any of our partners with respect
but we request that our traditions and our culture also be treated with respect."
"Yet another [jerks] can't sleep because of cost overruns..."
Jan 17, 2014 | topwar.ru
Sorry but again, we need to touch the theme of Olympics in Sochi...
Well, what we can do if new reasons to discuss it was provided by our foreign "partners" , many
of which just can't sleep because this most important international sporting event is held in Russia
One imagining that in Russia on every corner people with a long beard in hard boots and ugly
"fufayka" , tied with hemp instead of morning coffee drink the blood of gays and transvestites and
lesbians, sharing it with tame bears. Other are preoccupied with the vision of Vladimir Putin personally
shooting with "Maxim" machine gun right on the Red Square Russian sportsmen who lost their events
on Olympics.
Yet another [jerks] can't sleep because of cost overruns that the sad fact that gold and treasure
which were safely hold in the distant mines since the time of Ivan the Terrible were wasted on Sochi
Olympics; by modest estimated no less that a kvadragintillion dollars ...
EuroMaidan for power that be is the "fifth column ", which seeks to shed blood in the streets
.
journalist Svyatoslav Tseholko wrote this in his Facebook page says , referring to the arguments
which operate in the Party of Regions (PR).
"During an interview with the leader of the Party of Regions faction Oleksandr Yefremov had showen
the set of assumption which PR uses for the event. Fron which one can logically deduct that EuroMaidan
means for ruling party a fifth column, which seeks to shed blood in the streets . This fifth column"
try to stick on the government labels "dictatorship" and discredit law enforcement bodies
They view announcement of persons as persona non grata, sanctions of Western institutions, the
work of NGOs, speeches of prominent foreign officials within Ukraine, as well as criticism of the
MSM and social networking sites as a preplanned operation against legitimate government. With the
explicit purpose of a " liquidation of the ruling power," which considered desirable outcome of
the actions.
Also, the PR leaflet describes the role of the West as " curator of the revolution ." They remind
about analogies with Arab Spring in North Africa and the Middle East, "color " revolutions in Georgia
, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Belarus, Moldova and Russia in 2011, Lebanon, Tunisia, Libya.
PR leaflet also states that "the current situation in Ukraine points to the typical scenario
of use of technology of color revolutions."
"The emergence EuroMaidan is due to a interaction of subjective and objective internal factor
with external factors including the geopolitical interests of foreign powers" - the PR materials
state.
"Based on reading of the leaflet it is clear that the Party of Regions is concerned about "weakening
of positions of Russia" on the territory of Ukraine due to by funding of various Ukrainian NGOs
by American organizations such as USAID, IRI, NDI"
"Tyahnybok and Svoboda party are far-right, in fact even further right than the Golden Dawn party
in Greece. You are looking at Ukraine falling in the hands of the man who is one of the most far-right
leaders in world politics."
With growing popularity of neo-Nazi Oleg Tyahnybok, leader of the Ukrainian far-right Svoboda
party, Ukraine is falling into an extremely dangerous situation, journalist and blogger Graham Phillips
told RT.
"We are looking at a tinder box which might go up and we are looking at a man [Tyahnybok]
who's standing there and waiting for that to happen," Phillips said, describing the current
situation in Ukraine.
"At the moment, the landscape of Ukrainian politics can be compared to the Wizard of Oz,"
he said.
"You've got three leaders: you've got [Vitaly] Klichko, [Arseniy] Yatsenyuk and [Oleg] Tyahnybok,
and of course you've got Timoshenko if you like. And they all are missing something: Klichko doesn't
have intelligence, but he has charisma, Yatsenyuk has intelligence, but he has no charisma, Tyahnybok
has intelligence and charisma but he is an extremely dangerous Neo-Nazi figure. And Timoshenko is
still pulling the strings and still orchestrating things from behind bars, but where she fits into
the whole picture is not clear."
Klichko and Yatsenyuk are the guys at the front, "very much on the stage, in front of the
camera," and what you've got behind it is only Tyahnybok, Phillips told RT. Back in the October
2012 elections when Tyahnybok didn't really capitalize, his party only got around 40 MPs in the
Rada, but now Tyahnybok is a strong politician who's waiting for his moment to seize power, Phillips
said.
"Tyahnybok is waiting for the other leaders to knock themselves out and then he's going to
step over them to seize control. It's a very big likelihood. He is just staying behind, observing
the situation and he's quite prepared to let his enemies rip out each other's throats. He's in a
very powerful position and has a dominating role in Ukrainian politics. He's taking a back seat
but he is waiting and playing a waiting game, waiting for the right time to make his move. Believe
me, he has something up his sleeve, and this is something intrinsic in terms of the future of Ukraine,"
he said.
If the future of Ukraine is Tyahnybok, you are looking at an extremely dangerous situation, Phillips
said, whereby Ukraine would move closer to the EU under the opposition.
"Tyahnybok and Svoboda party are far-right, in fact even further right than the Golden Dawn
party in Greece. You are looking at Ukraine falling in the hands of the man who is one of the most
far-right leaders in world politics."
Having forfeited responsibility for war's design and conduct, the American people may find that
Washington considers that grant of authority irrevocable.
Apathy is carefully cultivated as a tool to escape top 1% from the control of the rest of population.
Without citizen soldiers, and personal stake in foreign wars, plutocracy rises unchecked. "Public
apathy presents a potential opportunity," making it possible to prolong "indefinitely" conflicts in
which citizens are not invested.
With the ongoing "war" approaching the 10-year mark, the U.S. economy shed a total of 7.9 million
jobs in just three years. For only the second time since World War II, the official unemployment
rate topped 10 percent. The retreat from that peak came at an achingly slow pace. By some estimates,
actual unemployment-including those who had simply given up looking for work-was double the official
figure. Accentuating the pain was the duration of joblessness; those laid off during the Great Recession
stayed out of work substantially longer than the unemployed during previous postwar economic downturns.
When new opportunities did eventually materialize, they usually came with smaller salaries and either
reduced benefits or none at all.
As an immediate consequence, millions of Americans lost their homes or found themselves "underwater,"
the value of their property less than what they owed on their mortgages. Countless more were thrown
into poverty, the number of those officially classified as poor reaching the highest level since
the Census Bureau began tracking such data. A drop in median income erased gains made during
the previous 15 years. Erstwhile members of the great American middle class shelved or abandoned
outright carefully nurtured plans to educate their children or retire in modest comfort. Inequality
reached gaping proportions with 1 percent of the population amassing a full 40 percent of the nation's
wealth.
Month after month, grim statistics provided fodder for commentators distributing blame, for learned
analysts offering contradictory explanations of why prosperity had proven so chimerical, and for
politicians absolving themselves of responsibility while fingering as culprits members of the other
party. Yet beyond its immediate impact, what did the Great Recession signify? Was the sudden appearance
of hard times in the midst of war merely an epiphenomenon, a period of painful adjustment and belt-tightening
after which the world's sole superpower would be back in the saddle? Or had the Great Recession
begun a Great Recessional, with the United States in irreversible retreat from the apex of global
dominion?
The political response to this economic calamity paid less attention to forecasting long-term
implications than to fixing culpability. On the right, an angry Tea Party movement blamed Big Government.
On the left, equally angry members of the Occupy movement blamed Big Business, especially Wall Street.
What these two movements had in common was that each cast the American people as victims. Nefarious
forces had gorged themselves at the expense of ordinary folk. By implication, the people were themselves
absolved of responsibility for the catastrophe that had befallen them and their country.
Yet consider a third possibility. Perhaps the people were not victims but accessories. On the
subject of war, Americans can no more claim innocence than they can regarding the effects of smoking
or excessive drinking. As much as or more than Big Government or Big Business, popular attitudes
toward war, combining detachment, neglect, and inattention, helped create the crisis in which the
United States is mired.
A "country made by war," to cite the title of a popular account of U.S. military history, the
United States in our own day is fast becoming a country undone by war. Citizen armies had waged
the wars that made the nation powerful (if not virtuous) and Americans rich (if not righteous).
The character of those armies-preeminently the ones that preserved the Union and helped defeat Nazi
Germany and Imperial Japan-testified to an implicit covenant between citizens and the state. According
to its terms, war was the people's business and could not be otherwise. For the state to embark
upon armed conflict of any magnitude required informed popular consent. Actual prosecution of any
military campaign larger than a police action depended on the willingness of citizens in large numbers
to become soldiers. Seeing war through to a conclusion hinged on the state's ability to sustain
active popular support in the face of adversity.
In their disgust over Vietnam, Americans withdrew from this arrangement. They disengaged from
war, with few observers giving serious consideration to the implications of doing so. Events since,
especially since 9/11, have made those implications manifest. In the United States, war no longer
qualifies in any meaningful sense as the people's business. In military matters, Americans have
largely forfeited their say.
As a result, in formulating basic military policy and in deciding when and how to employ
force, the state no longer requires the consent, direct participation, or ongoing support of citizens.
As an immediate consequence, Washington's penchant for war has appreciably increased, without, however,
any corresponding improvement in the ability of political and military leaders to conclude its wars
promptly or successfully. A further result, less appreciated but with even larger implications,
has been to accelerate the erosion of the traditional concept of democratic citizenship.
In other words, the afflictions besetting the American way of life derive in some measure from
shortcomings in the contemporary American way of war. The latter have either begotten or exacerbated
the former.
Since 9/11, Americans have, in fact, refuted George C. Marshall by demonstrating a willingness
to tolerate "a Seven Years [and longer] War." It turns out, as the neoconservative pundit Max Boot
observed, that an absence of popular support "isn't necessarily fatal" for a flagging war effort.
For an inveterate militarist like Boot, this comes as good news. "Public apathy," he argues,
"presents a potential opportunity," making it possible to prolong "indefinitely" conflicts in which
citizens are not invested.
Yet such news is hardly good. Apathy toward war is symptomatic of advancing civic decay,
finding expression in apathy toward the blight of child poverty, homelessness, illegitimacy, and
eating disorders also plaguing the country. Shrugging off wars makes it that much easier for
Americans-overweight, overmedicated, and deeply in hock-to shrug off the persistence of widespread
hunger, the patent failures of their criminal justice system, and any number of other problems.
The thread that binds together this pattern of collective anomie is plain to see: unless the
problem you're talking about affects me personally, why should I care?
"Back in the Cold War, almost all groups opposing western domination were called communists. Today,
al-Qaida has replaced communism as a hot button name. "
January 11, 2014
How did al-Qaida, a tiny anti-Communist group in Afghanistan that had no more than 200 active
members in 2001 become a supposed worldwide threat?
How can al-Qaida be all over the Mideast, North Africa, and now much of black Africa? This after
the US spent over $1 trillion trying to stamp out al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
The answer
is simple. As an organization and threat, al-Qaida barely exists. But as a name, al-Qaida and
"terrorism" have become the west's handy universal term for armed groups fighting western influence,
corruption or repression in Asia and Africa. Al-Qaida is nowhere – but everywhere.
... ... ...
Back in the Cold War, almost all groups opposing western domination were called communists. Today,
al-Qaida has replaced communism as a hot button name. The widespread – but probably mistaken – belief
that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida was responsible for the 9/11 attacks has made anything "linked"
to al-Qaida fair game for liquidation.
Branding your foes "terrorists" is a fine way of de-legitimizing them and denying them any political
or humanitarian rights. Israel did this very effectively with the hapless Palestinians,
who foolishly cooperated by bombing civilians.
However, the obvious problem here is that doing so creates an endless supply of "terrorists"
and pressure to take action against them. That and oil are the reason US special forces are now
beating the bush all over black Africa. It's the never-ending "long war" that America's militarist
and neocon circles want, and against which President Dwight Eisenhower so presciently warned back
in the 1950's.
Annual report on
the meeting, "Mercury Club " by Yevgeny Primakov was devoted to harsh criticism of neoliberalism
in Russia - mostly of its economic policy . "Especially acute is the problem of combatting the neoliberal
policies in Russia", - said Primakov actually accusing neoliberals with sabotaging the Putin reforms.
Academician enumerated the main efforts of the Kremlin during the last year directed on prevention
of another round of neoliberal reforms in Russian economy -- the new privatization binge was postponed,
the attempts of weakening and watering down of policy of social protection which was declared in
May's presidential decrees were stopped.
...In fact, Primakov stated fundamental differences between the Kremlin and the White House -
and as these differences are ideological, it is impossible to get rid of them by just agreeing on
some of the median line, the general course. That is why Primakov's diagnosis can be regarded as
an indictment of liberal course - the course that Medvedev's the government persistently persue...
He said:
" Can I assume that in modern Russian market mechanisms by themselves without state participation
are able to provide growth and balanced development of economics, and that a low level of competition
is sufficient to achieve the technical and technological progress? Definitely not . Of course,
this does not mean state domination of the economy should last forever. But it is necessary
in certain historical periods, and I believe that today we are in that period. In addition,
our neoliberals do not take into account the lessons of the crisis of 2008-2009. It is known
that in the U.S. and in the EU during the crisis government's influence on the economy greatly
increased. This trend continues . "
Putin's return to the Kremlin was not in the plans of the neoliberals - that's why Russian White
revolution was undertaken before the lections. Unable to stop Putin's liberal part of the elite
was forced to obey and to pretend that it will hold a new "illiberal" course Putin stated in his
election papers. But in fact for more than one and a half years, the government is sabotaging Putin's
reforms, in words agreeing with statist Putin's policy, but in reality trying to continue all the
same liberal policy and even trying to "deepen and expand " on it.
Primakov said that
"Pushing for dramatic and immediate reduction of the state's role in the economy, our neoliberals
attempted to launch a new large-scale privatization of state property; they, insist on the maximum
inclusion into the privatization of major state-owned enterprises for the country," and recalled
that in order to prevent privatization plans, in June last year it was necessary a special law
" containing adjustments to government policy", essentially cutting privatization appetites
short. This decision was not initiated from within the government. "
In other words the Kremlin forced the government to change its policy to prevent "the sale of
the motherland." But it was a just a single, albeit a very important skirmish, while the whole ideology
of the Medvedev's entourage about role of the government in the economy did not actually change
...
"Neo-liberals tend to emphasize the monopoly inherent in natural monopolies, but do not pay
attention to the" "oligarchic" monopolies of private business, which, for example, through supermarkets
push to higher prices for food and other goods. That's what one of the direct causes of inflation
in Russia. Growth of municipal tariffs that exceed growth of inflation has also become a significant
factor pushing inflation up, rising costs and leading to the loss of competitiveness of our
producers ...
High and ever-increasing tariffs, not only hit population pockets, particularly pensioners
and low-paid workers, but also are a major constraint on economic growth. Meanwhile, the neoliberal
position was that the state refused to fix municipal tariffs, offloading this function the market
mechanism. Opposition to this is the president's decision to bind tariff increase to the level
of inflation. "
Primakov recalled and that Mededev's government tried to limit investment activities of state
companies, despite the fact that "due to currect economic situation large, usually public companies,
have more investment opportunities to play a major role in economic growth. Here we are speaking
primarily about the implementation of mega-projects, which can and should spur economic growth.
"
Indeed, all the major infrastructure projects that have been proposed in the last year came from
the president, and not from Medvedev's government. It was Putin at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum
last summer announced plans to channel funds from the Russian stability fund for the reconstruction
of BAM and Trans-Siberian Railway, construction of a new Ring Road in Moscow and other major investment
projects, and in December, said the priority development of Siberia and the Far East. Large scale
industrialization is possible only on public funds - the West will not invest in our industry, and
a large part of the domestic private sector will neither as they prefer to move capital offshore,
despite the threats of Vladimir Putin. Indeed, why go back to their homeland, when their families
and they themselves have long lived abroad? It is absurd to expect that the West will be invested
in our roads and MIC (even forgetting about current Great Recession in the West) -- why they would
strengthen a competitor?
... ... ...
Refusal of re-industrialization domestic neoliberals sometimes try to sell as a boon - it supposedly
should allow Russia to enter directly into the post-industrial stage . Hence the "Skolkovo" as a
replacement for their own aircraft industry . " Neoliberals , in fact, ignore the need to restore
the destroyed in the 90s Russia industries , primarily manufacturing, - Primakov said . - Post-industrial
society - it's not just high-tech and service industries. In the same post-industrial United States
today there is a clear tendency to try to recover domestic manufacturing, previously off shored
to developing countries . "
The definition of economic neoliberalism which has been presented focuses heavily on economic
policies and has little to say about non-economic policy (other than that they should not be allowed
to interfere with the running of the free market). A more extreme form of economic neoliberalism
advocates the use of free market techniques outside of commerce and business, by the creation of
new markets in health, education, energy and so on.[89]
This point of view takes the belief, that the only important freedoms are market freedoms, to
its logical conclusion. In doing so, however, this took neoliberalism into a more philosophical
direction where it came to resemble more of a religion or culture than an economic theory.
As Paul Treanor explains:
As you would expect from a complete philosophy, neoliberalism has answers to stereotypical
philosophical questions such as "Why are we here" and "What should I do?". We are here for the
market, and you should compete. Neo-liberals tend to believe that humans exist for the market,
and not the other way around: certainly in the sense that it is good to participate in the market,
and that those who do not participate have failed in some way. In personal ethics, the general
neoliberal vision is that every human being is an entrepreneur managing their [sic]
own life, and should act as such. Moral philosophers call this is a virtue ethic, where human
beings compare their actions to the way an ideal type would act – in this case the ideal entrepreneur.
Individuals who choose their friends, hobbies, sports, and partners, to maximise their status
with future employers, are ethically neoliberal. This attitude – not unusual among ambitious
students – is unknown in any pre-existing moral philosophy, and is absent from early liberalism.
Such social actions are not necessarily monetarised, but they represent an extension of the
market principle into non-economic area of life – again typical for neoliberalism[89]
Corrupted neoliberalism
The rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s as a practical system of government saw it implemented
in various forms across the world. In some cases, the result was not anything that could be identified
as neoliberalism, often with catastrophic results for the poor. This has resulted in many on the
left claiming that this is a deliberate goal of neoliberalism,[95]
while those on the right defend the original goals of neoliberalism and insist otherwise, an argument
that rages to this day, rendering this section highly controversial. This section attempts to provide
an unbiased overview of this discussion, focusing on all the forms of neoliberalism that are not
in any way neoliberal, but which have come to be associated with it, as well as the reasons for
why this has happened.
One of the best and least controversial examples of "neoliberal" reform is in
Russia, whose reforms in 1989
were justified under neoliberal economic policy but which lacked any of the basic features of a
neoliberal state (e.g. the rule of law, free press) which could have justified the reforms.
General liberal failure
The least controversial aspect of neoliberalism has often been presented by modern economists
critical of neoliberalism's role in the world economic system. Among these economists, the chief
voices of dissent are Joseph
Stiglitz[96]
and Paul Krugman.
Both use arguments about
market failure to justify
their views on neoliberalism. They argue that when markets are
imperfect (which is
to say all markets everywhere to some degree), then they can fail and may not work as neoliberals
predict, resulting in some form of
crony capitalism. The
two chief modes of failure are usually due to imperfect
property rights and
due to imperfect information
and correspond directly to Friedrich Hayek's assertion that classical liberalism will not work without
protection of the private sphere and the prevention of fraud and deception.
The failure of property rights means that individuals can't protect ownership of their resources
and control what happens to them, or prevent others from taking them away. This usually stifles
free enterprise and results in preferential treatment for those who can.
Crony capitalism
The most blatant form of
crony capitalism is
the creation of a liberal economic system in which only some people ("cronies") are permitted property
rights by the government in return for support for the regime, allowing supporters of the regime
to expropriate any capital held by opponents. This is a useful method of control which is usually
seen in its purest form in countries with
dictatorships, where the
regime can create a liberal system of markets and government without ceding any control of either.
Such reforms can also be used to add a sprinkling of liberal legitimacy for the regime and open
the country to external capital.
This form is useful to explain neoliberal reforms in countries where either the will or ability
to enforce property rights is lacking, such as the problems of post Soviet Russia, in which reformist
politicians colluded with politically connected business people. In return for backing democratic
free market reforms, these business figures could expropriate resources in a country where ownership
was not clear and sporadically enforced, leading to the rise of the
Russian oligarchs.
Corporatocracy
Some claim that neoliberalism is a form of
corporatocracy, the rule
of a country by and for the benefit of large corporations. Since large
corporations tend to fulfil
all the conditions of a wealthy entity, they accrue many of the same benefits over smaller businesses.
In addition, multinational
corporations enjoy the benefits of neoimperialism on the international stage and can also move
their base of operations from a country if that country pursues policies that it deems to be unfriendly
to business, a threat which they provoke governments to enact upon.
Although classical neoliberalism rests on the free flow of information, the neoliberal era has
been marked by an unprecedented expansion of intellectual property and copyright, an expansion of
libel laws to silence criticism (e.g.
libel tourism) and expanding
corporate secrecy (e.g. in the UK corporations used contract law to forbid discussion of salaries,
thereby controlling labour costs), all of which came to be seen as a normal part of neoliberalism,
but are wholly against its spirit.
Finally, the fact that many media outlets are themselves part of large corporations leads to
a conflict of interest between those corporations and the public good.
Class project
Not all members of a society may have equal access to the law or to information, even when everyone
is theoretically equal under the law, as in a liberal democracy. This is because access to the
law and information is not free as liberals (such as Hayek) assume, but have associated costs. Therefore,
in this context, it is sound to say that the wealthy have greater rights than the poor.
In some cases, the poor may have practically no rights at all if their income falls below the
levels necessary to access the law and unbiased sources of information, while the very wealthy may
have the ability to choose which rights and responsibilities they bear if they can move themselves
and their property internationally, resulting in
social stratification,
also known as class. This tendency to create and strengthen class has resulted in some (most famously
David Harvey[64])
claiming that neoliberalism is a class project, designed to impose class on society through
liberalism.
Globalization
In practise, less developing nations have less developed rights and institutions, resulting in
greater risk for international lenders and businesses. This means that developing countries usually
have less privileged access to international markets than developed countries. Because of this effect,
international lenders are also more likely to invest in foreign companies (i.e.
multinational
corporations) inside a country, rather than in local businesses,[97]
giving international firms an unfair competitive advantage.[98]
Also, speculative flows of capital may enter the country during a boom and leave during a recession,
deepening economic crises and destabilizing the economy.
Both of these problems imply that developing countries should have greater protections against
international markets than developed ones and greater barriers to trade. Despite such problems,
IMF policy in response to crises, which is supposed to be guided by neoliberal ideas such as the
Washington Consensus,
is to increase liberalization of the economy and decrease barriers, allowing bigger capital flight
and the chance for foreign firms to shore up their
monopolies. Additionally, the
IMF acts to increase moral
hazard, since international involvement will usually result in an international bailout with
foreign creditors being treated preferentially, leading international firms to discount the risks
of doing business in less developed countries[99]
and forcing the government to pay for them instead.
The view of some that international involvement and the imposition of "neoliberal" policies usually
serves to make things worse and acts against the interests of the country being "saved", has led
some to argue that the policies have nothing to do with any form of liberalism, but hide some other
purpose. The most common assertion given by opponents is that they are a form of
neocolonialism, where
the more developed countries can exploit the less developed countries. However, even opponents
do not agree. For example, Stiglitz assumes that there is no neoimperial plot, but that the system
is driven by a mixture of ideology and special interests, in which neoliberal fundamentalists, who
do not believe that neoliberalism can fail, work with financial and other
multinational
corporations, who have the most to benefit from opening up foreign markets. David Harvey, on
the other hand, argues that local elites exploit neoliberal reforms in order to impose reforms that
benefit them at the cost of the poor, while transferring the blame onto the "evil imperialist" developed
countries,[64]
citing the example of Argentina in 2001.
Policy implications
Neoliberalism seeks to transfer control of the economy from public to the private sector,[100]
under the belief that it will produce a more efficient government and improve the economic health
of the nation.[101]
The definitive statement of the concrete policies advocated by neoliberalism is often taken to be
John Williamson's "Washington
Consensus."[102]
The Washington Consensus is a list of policy proposals that appeared to have gained consensus approval
among the Washington-based international economic organizations (like the
International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and World
Bank).[103]
Williamson's list included ten points:
Fiscal policy
Governments should not run large deficits that have to be paid back by future citizens, and
such deficits can have only a short term effect on the level of employment in the economy. Constant
deficits will lead to higher inflation and lower productivity, and should be avoided. Deficits
should only be used for occasional stabilization purposes.
Redirection of public
spending from subsidies (especially what neoliberals call "indiscriminate subsidies") and
other spending neoliberals deem wasteful toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor
services like primary education, primary health care and
infrastructure investment
Tax reform – broadening
the tax base and adopting moderate marginal tax rates to encourage innovation and efficiency;
Interest rates
that are market determined and positive (but moderate) in real terms;
Trade liberalization
– liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination of quantitative restrictions
(licensing, etc.); any trade protection to be provided by low and relatively uniform
tariffs; thus encouraging
competition and long term growth
Liberalization
of the "capital account" of the balance of payments, that is, allowing people the opportunity
to invest funds overseas and allowing foreign funds to be invested in the home country
Privatization
of state enterprises;
Promoting market provision of goods and services which the government cannot provide as effectively
or efficiently, such as telecommunications, where having many service providers promotes choice
and competition.
Deregulation –
abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition, except for those
justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and prudent oversight of
financial institutions;
Interview with Germany's new Russia policy coordinator, Gernot Erler
The fight over Ukraine's
international orientation – a tug of war between Russia and the EU – has led to massive demonstrations
in Kiev. We ask Social Democrat and Russia expert Gernot Erler about where Europe went wrong with
Ukraine. He warns that German and European politicians are making a mistake
IP: Mr. Erler, the news is dominated by events in Ukraine. Germany's President Joachim
Gauck has just announced that he will not attend the Olympic Winter Games in Russia. You are well
known as a Russia expert and friend...
Gernot Erler: …that sounds almost like an accusation.
IP: No, that wasn't intended. But we would like to ask you to explain Russia to us.
Have Germany and Europe chosen the right tack?
Erler: The continuity on Russia is much greater than is the public sometimes
realizes, both in Germany and at EU level. For many years, successive German governments have pursued
essentially the same policy on Russia. Economic cooperation is the first of three contributing factors.
Every German government has, together with the business community, always had an interest in strengthening
economic ties. The second factor is based on our need for Russian cooperation on certain international
tasks. There is the issue of transit rights for German soldiers, for instance. The Bundeswehr is
planning to bring back a good part of its equipment from Afghanistan over land. Recently, Russia
has also played a very constructive role in dealing with international conflicts.
IP: Please explain.
Erler: Russia has made a constructive turn-around on Syria. That has done much
to make it possible to have a Syria peace conference in Geneva in January. Without Russia, Syria
would not have relinquished its chemical weapons, either. Russia has played also an important role
with Iran. It remains true that we will only be able to deal with global challenges like climate
change, energy security, water resources or food security if we work with countries like Russia
or China. That's the third pillar of continuity. That's why Germany and the EU have a strategic
partnership with Russia.
IP: Yet Russia's domestic policies are becoming ever more questionable.
Erler: Here, there is a lot to be criticized. There are the constraints on civil
rights, the discrimination of minorities and the attempt to criminalize part of the opposition.
This darkens Russia's public image. We continue to need a critical dialogue with the Russian government
about these issues. But none of that really changes the political realities I have listed. That's
why the main lines of German and European policy remain unchanged.
IP: What role does the conflict over Ukraine play?
Erler: The situation in Ukraine has reached an impasse. Very possibly the EU
did not recognize the problems in time.
IP: Could you explain?
Erler: It all began with the Eastern Neighborhood Program in 2009, which was
initiated by Poland, with strong support from Sweden. Warsaw wanted to open the EU up to giving
Ukraine an accession perspective. From a Polish point of view, that was very understandable. But
the other EU countries did not go along. They rejected giving Ukraine any perspective of EU accession.
IP: Instead, Kiev got offered an association accord.
Don't forget the intention behind all the EU's neighborhood policies: the EU wants to foster
cross-border cooperation out of its own historical experience. The Eastern Partnership was meant
to improve regional cooperation so that progress could be made on the dangerous frozen conflicts
in Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abchasia and Nagorno-Karabach. But that didn't work. None of these
conflicts have been solved. Instead, intense work started on the association accords. The EU offered
Ukraine a very far-reaching free trade agreement to compensate for not giving it an accession perspective.
It was meant as a kind of sweetener. But in Russia, this set off alarm bells.
IP: How did Moscow react?
Erler: In 2011, Putin proposed setting up a Eurasian Union, a kind of customs
union of Eastern countries. But that creates new problems. Mainly for technical reasons, it is not
possible for Ukraine to join the Eurasian Union while being part of a far-reaching free trade agreement
with the EU. One of the reasons is that Kazakhstan and Belorussia aren't members of the World Trade
Organization. Yet the EU never raised the point that Eurasian Union and EU agreement were mutually
exclusive.
IP: Until the Vilnius summit.
Erler: Yes. Ahead of that summit, Putin put the screws on. Gas prices were one
example. Ukrainian chocolate which had been exported for decades, suddenly turned into a faulty
product. At the same time, however, the International Monetary Fund also intervened. It suddenly
imposed new conditions on Ukraine for further credits. In turn, the EU had made its lending commitment
contingent on an agreement between the IMF and Ukraine. This meant that Ukraine suddenly caught
fire from both sides: from the East and the West.
IP: In the end, President Yanukovich renounced signing the EU association accord.
Erler: That's true. But Ukraine isn't going to join up with the Eurasian Union
immediately, either. That would mean slamming the door on the EU. What will happen instead is Yanukovich
continuing to seesaw. And we should use this time of see-sawing to investigate whether there can
be any kind of a middle road. Whether there are ways of granting the Ukraine substantial trade advantages
without alienating Russia's interests. That's a technical process which needs to be clarified.
IP: But the real issue is Ukraine's independence from Russia. That's not a technical
question.
Erler: Of course not entirely. One basic problem is the Russian view. Russia
sees the rapprochement of Ukraine toward the EU as a kind of border violation. You can't just ignore
the centuries of relations between Russia and the Ukraine. That isn't something that can be fixed
through a technical process. But the first thing is to get out of the current cold war-type situation.
We need steps toward détente, steps that get us out of this problem of mutual exclusiveness. People
in Kiev believe that demonstrations can force the government to sign the EU association accord after
all. But if that happens, Russia will take considerable measures. How do you get out of this situation?
Not by increasing pressure. Not by saying every day that the door is open. It's obvious that the
door is open. We would do better to talk about how to make the Eurasian customs union and the EU's
free trade agreement compatible.
IP: Should Russia be included in these talks?
Erler: That's what Russia has demanded. The EU had been negotiating with Ukraine
for years, and both sides were just about ready to sign. And then Russia came and said: let's have
trilateral talks about all of this. In this immediate situation, the EU could not possibly give
in to those demands. In the longer term, however, one will have to include the Russian side in the
mediation process.
IP: At this point in time, mediation doesn't look very likely. Germany and the EU
have very clearly taken the side of the Ukrainian opposition.
Erler: I think it was wrong that Mr. Westerwelle visited the demonstrations.
If you visit a country, it is normal to meet representatives of the opposition as well as people
from the government. But to go out into the street and join a demonstration – that's unusual. Quite
apart from the fact that Swoboda ("Freedom"), one of the parties in the Ukrainian opposition, is
clearly a nationalist and far-right organization. If Mr. Klitschko works with them, that's his business.
Mr. Westerwelle should have looked more closely.
IP: The EU's Top Diplomat Catherine Ashton also visited the demonstrations.
Erler: There is one thing I do not understand: how can you offer to mediate
and, at the same time, clearly take one side? That lacks credibility. On Ukraine, the EU has made
too many misjudgments. The EU also thought that it could impose a precondition for signing the association
agreement, namely getting Yulia Timoshenko released. But due to Russian pressure, among other factors,
Ukraine didn't intend to sign anyhow, so there wasn't any way of imposing conditions.
IP: Timoschenko will remain in prison?
Erler: That's what I assume, at least as long as the current government is in
power.
IP: If you consider the enormous expectations that Ukrainians have vis-à-vis Europe:
Will the EU to be able to continue saying no to Ukraine's wish for accession?
Erler: That's what it will do. Right now, there is absolutely no support in
Europe for new promises to other countries. It would be unrealistic to expect anything different.
And it would provoke the Russian side even more if the EU didn't just offer association and free
trade, but accession to the EU, The political class in Russia would see this as absolute provocation
and do anything to stop it from happening.
The reality is that the US and west never stopped waging the Cold War.
We broke the understanding with Russia and pushed NATO eastward, even incorporating parts of
the former USSR into NATO.
Then we tore up the ABM treaty and put anti-missile bases in Eastern Europe claiming we were
doing that because of Iran. The Russians didn't find that laughable claim one bit funny and
understood that the west was seeking to negate their nuclear deterrence.
NATO has been used offensively both inside and outside of Europe and shows that it has nothing
to do with "defense".
We portrayed a rag-tag group of Muslim fundamentalists as some sort of existential threat
to the US and west, but now the US gov't has made a "pivot" and is portraying China as militarily
aggressive because they are squabbling over some worthless islets with their neighbors. It's
clear that China is the focus of a new Cold War.
It's clear the US is in search of a "new enemy" because that's what keeps Americans distracted
from how much we waste on our military and our continuing economic decline.
"Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American
military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some
other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American
economy."
-- Ambassador to the USSR and US State Dept. strategist George F. Kennan.
What is the most obvious analogy between JFK assassination and 9/11? I think this is destruction
of evidence and the speed with which patsies were revealed... And the most interesting question is conditions
under which three letter agencies go out of control and become an unelected government of the country.
Short of direct confession by co-conspirators, Palamara's book is as close as we may get
to understanding what went wrong in Dallas. Derived from direct interviews with Secret Service
agents serving on the president's Dallas detail, applied to sworn testimony, photographic evidence,
documented historical facts, meticulous research, careful study, and detailed analysis, Survivor's
Guilt serves as the only researched and documented historical study applying independence of
thought, impartiality of opinion, and integrity of character to our understanding of the frailties.
fallibility, and failures of those key government security specialists, ostensibly superior,
selected, trained, avowed and committed to sacrificing their own lives in protection of the
president's, as well as the much flawed service in which they worked.
A half-century after the event, we now have official documents detailing the many assassination
plots against President Kennedy in 1963, including testimony from his secretary, aides, and
associates of telling him about a pending plot in Dallas, Texas. John Kennedy was aware that
he had enemies lying in wait to assassinate him. Yet he chose to go to Dallas, he explained,
for three reasons:
"I cannot serve as president living in fear";
"A president must feel free to openly travel anywhere in the country he serves"; and
most importantly,
"I have to trust that the Secret Service will do their job in protecting me."
President John F. Kennedy placed his life in the hands of his protective service - wholly,
without reservation, restriction, or restraint. And they failed him - some, as Survivor's Guilt
strongly and pointedly evidences, purposefully.
Of all books about, including, and especially by JFK's Secret Service protective detail during
his Dallas trip, only Survivor's Guilt tells the true story, with nothing to hide, excuse, rationalize,
or reason away. And this I know for a fact, having myself interviewed several of the late president's
aides and associates, including those who watched him being gunned down in Dallas. Palamara's
book dares to refute the revisionist claims now being made by agents who, having failed to protect
JFK, now choose to posthumously assassinate him by blaming him for their lack of action via
falsely claiming that he ordered them away from his vehicle. There is absolutely no truth to
such pathetic revisionist claims, and Palamara's work provides thorough refutation of these
agents' scurrilous self-serving lies. As Palamara makes clear, there may have been mitigating
factors in Kennedy's character and performance as president that contributed to Secret Service
failure to protect him, but a direct order superseding their own imposed protective procedures
was most definitely not one of them.
I am former U.S. Secret Service and also federal law enforcement with an extensive background
in U.S. Customs and exposing corruption within OUR Government.
I also spent over 15 years as well as over 25 years in law enforcement and private practice
as a private investigator.I was USSS at 21 years of age, then SDPD, U.S. Mint Police/Treasury,
U.S. Customs & Immigration and then Private Investigator, now a consultant since 2007.
This book is by far the most detailed and researched book on the JFK assassination ever to
date.!!
I, personally, have researched the JFK assassination since 1963 when I was only 10 years
old and especially when joining the USSS in September 1974 in Washington,D.C.(Working at the
FMD and later WHD) Presidents Ford And Carter.
Of all the information I am aware of and researched, Vincent Palamara has done more research
to prove that not only were "Mistakes" made in Dallas that day on 11-22-63, but some things
that may have been done intentionally and criminally negligent. I have also verified this through
other law enforcement resources as well.
The cover up on the JFK assassination is one of the most damaging things to have occurred
to our country and to know that even our own U.S. Secret Service may have participated in the
assassination directly or indirectly has impacted on the future of this once great country.
Procedures could have been followed and President Kennedy would still be alive today.
It is obvious to me that there was more than one shooter and that many others were involved
and a few that were "rewarded" when LBJ was sworn in as President. (Facts are just now coming
out about LBJ as well too!)
I am personally aware of information that shows evidence was altered and then Government
witnesses were later assassinated by U.S. Military Special Forces with regards to medical autopsy
reports witnessed and viewed by Naval Personnel and FBI agents. This was a "coup" not a
"lone gunman" theory. That is ALL "black Ops" and cover ups.
My hat is off to Vincent and all his research and tenacity for uncovering what I see as the
Truth about our Government which has come to control more than agencies, but our own lives.
A book well worth reading and keeping to teach our children what the real Truth is regarding
the assassination of John F. Kennedy and possibly others.
HE BEST DOCUMENTATION AVAILABLE ON THE SECRET SERVICE & JFK'S MURDER!, December
26, 2013
Vince Palamara was able to interview many of the SS agents before they passed
away just in time to refute the recent descriptions of Gerald Blaine & Clint Hill that blame
JFK for calling off his own protection. Blaine was not in Dealy Plaza during the shooting &
his book has been totally sliced & diced by Mr. Palamara.
Clint Hill is the living agent that disturbs me most - he surely knows that some of the shots
came from the right front - he heard the shots & saw the back of the president's head blown
off. Hill also refuses to acknowledge that he was one of the four who were out drinking at the
Cellar the night before the assassination & also refuses to state for the record who was responsible
for ordering the agents off the back of the car. Hill must also know more about the role
of Emory Roberts in calling off Don Lawton from the SS back-up car - Hill was called off of
JFK's car just as Lawton was at Love Field - watch the video!
It is ironic that the 1997 ABC program "Dangerous World" as well as Seymour Hersh's book
"The Dark Side of Camelot" which featured agents Joseph Paolella, Tony Sherman, Larry Newman,
& Tim McIntire (who rode in the SS backup car) openly criticizing JFK for his affairs - takes
place during the time period when the movie "JFK" & the Final Report of the ARRB are released
for the public to consider. An obvious smear campaign against a president who was murdered
(along with his brother Robert) who are unable to defend themselves.
There is little doubt that JFK had affairs - but again - Gerald Blaine's book is released
during the same period as Mimi Alford's book describing her affair with JFK as a White House
intern. What is also ironic is that Allford makes a Cold War charge very similar to SS agent
Elmer Moore who stated to researcher James Gouchenaur in 1970 that "its a shame that people
have to die" & strongly implied that JFK was a traitor to the communists. Alford stated that
JFK told her "he would rather have his children alive & red than dead" - another attempt to
smear JFK as a traitor to the Communists.
Some final observations: Why Emory Roberts - in charge of the SS car during thr Asassination
- switched to LBJ right after the limousine arrived at Parkland Hospital & then became LBJ's
quasi Chief of Staff? Why was Gerald Behn (Head of the White House SS Detail) given his
first vacation in three years the weekend of the Texas trip - his second-in-command Floyd Boring
was also back in Washington? Pierre Salinger (JFK's press secretary was in a plane near Hawaii)
- he never would have approved of the changes in the motorcade - including the cancelling
of the open press truck that would have had photographers taking pictures & films of JFK while
riding right in front of the presidential limo. Was SS agent Winston Lawson soley responsible
for the motorcycles being reduced in number & pushed to the rear bumper of JFK's car or was
SS David Grant - lurking in the shadows responsible for these changes in security? These questions
& others need further inquiry!
Mr. Palamara has provided an excellent service to the continuing search for the truth & I
quote him extensively in my book "J. Edgar Hoover: The Father of the Cold War".
Well done Vince!
R, Andrew KIel
F. A. S. Vagas (NZ) - See all my reviews
Essential Reading., December 12, 2013
Vince Palamara is recognised the world over as the leading civilian expert on the Secret
Service. On more than one occasion he has proven that the Secret Service were wrong on their
own testimony and memories of events. Vince Palamara has interviewed Secret Service agents on
their recollections, and collected more data than they could ever remember on their own, nor
collaborate with their team members. More than once Vince has proven beyond doubt that the S.S
could not back up their own gross claims of JFK being hard to protect and dismissive of their
protection methods. A notable account of Vince's research being that Kennedy did not banish
the S.S from the back of his car.
Vince has shown that deep research always wins out over eye witness testimony, truly or deceptively
given to investigating bodies.
The S.S had one job, and Vince shows conclusively, in his book, Survivor's Guilt, that they
not only failed, but that the S.S actively and purposely covered up this failure.
I personally look forward to any more of Vince Palamara's work and commend him for his work
so far. If you have any further interest I can only suggest you check out Vince's interviews
in Black Op radio archives, contact Vince directly, and invest in this valuable book for your
own collection. Survivour's Guilt is a book you will reference time and again.
"Our foreign and national security policy has become too militarized, the use of force too easy
for presidents. ...On the left, we hear about the "responsibility to protect" civilians to justify
military intervention in Libya, Syria, Sudan and elsewhere. On the right, the failure to strike Syria
or Iran is deemed an abdication of U.S. leadership."
Is former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates becoming a non-interventionist? Has he taken the
hard road to conversion that begins with all faith in US power projection and coercive influence
and ends up with frenzied and joyous clicking through the pages of
LRC and
RPI?
That is probably being too optimistic -- though our doors are always open. Nevertheless there
is much to fascinate in what we have seen from his new memoir -- and no, it's not the silly personality
conflicts and "dissing" Obama with which the mainstream media is obsessed.
For example, Secretary Gates
writes (emphasis added):
Wars are a lot easier to get into than out of. Those who ask about exit strategies or question
what will happen if assumptions prove wrong are rarely welcome at the conference table when
the fire-breathers are demanding that we strike-as they did when advocating invading Iraq, intervening
in Libya and Syria, or bombing Iran's nuclear sites. But in recent decades, presidents confronted
with tough problems abroad have too often been too quick to reach for a gun. Our foreign
and national security policy has become too militarized, the use of force too easy for presidents.
Today, too many ideologues call for U.S. force as the first option rather than a last resort.
On the left, we hear about the "responsibility to protect" civilians to justify military
intervention in Libya, Syria, Sudan and elsewhere. On the right, the failure to strike Syria
or Iran is deemed an abdication of U.S. leadership. And so the rest of the world sees
the U.S. as a militaristic country quick to launch planes, cruise missiles and drones deep into
sovereign countries or ungoverned spaces. There are limits to what even the strongest and greatest
nation on Earth can do-and not every outrage, act of aggression, oppression or crisis
should elicit a U.S. military response.
It is a tried and true phenomenon that Washington insiders who enjoy power and prestige while in
office will upon retirement tell us what they really thought, and how bad things really were. Often
they toss political correctness and caution aside like a cheap coat. It is easy to deride such activity
as being self-serving and even self-exculpatory.
However there is also a reasonable argument, to fmr. Secretary Gates, that the only way to prevent
the real crazies from taking over is to stick within the system and try to thwart the most dangerous
of the other factions.
For an excellent example of the latter, we who follow the "cruise
missile Left" stylings of Samantha Power can only applaud Gates as the "grown-up in the room"
warning the Pentagon to keep as much information as possible away from "experts" like Power. In
the run-up to the US attack on Libya he ordered his staff:
Don't give the White House staff and [national security staff] too much information on the military
options. They don't understand it, and 'experts' like Samantha Power will decide when we should
move militarily.
In the end, however, Power and her gang won the day and Libya's "liberation" has proven as successful
as the other US efforts in the region -- see: Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria, etc.
Likewise,
Gates's assessment of uber-interventionist Vice President Joe Biden, the comedic king of verbal
blunders. Writes Gates on Biden:
I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over
the past four decades.
To the degree that Biden's every impulse, every response to foreign events is informed by his sense
of American exceptionalism and
extraordinarily
biased Middle East views, it is hard to argue with Gates's assessment.
So we should not feel reassured that the Obama Administration's rejoinder comes by way of NSC
spokesman Caitlin Hayden:
President Obama relies on [Biden's] good counsel every day
Oh...well perhaps that explains more than she intended.
What is useful in what we have seen thus
far from Gates's book is that beyond the sloganeering of the Left-humanitarian interventionists
and their "US leadership" counterparts on the Right, there is still some sense of the limits of
US hard -- and perhaps even soft -- power among those who are actually tasked with carrying out
the orders cooked up and served by the ideologues.
Let's hope Gates continues on his path and eventually finds himself in our camp, where we seek
the real US security that comes from confidence, commerce, diplomacy, defense, and non-intervention.
It's always interesting to read about current Ukrainian events from a specialist in color revolutions
who was one of the architects of coup d'état of 2004 (aka Orange revolution). Especially if you can
read between the lines. BTW he managed to state the essence of neoliberalism in one quote: "the best
place to enjoy the wealth that you stole from your fellow citizens - is not Ukraine, but Paris, London
or New York". In other words plunder of the country is a national idea of any neoliberal government,
be it Ukrainian or the USA. It's interesting to read that he considered "Orange Junta" just slightly
lighter shade of grey (aka criminality and corruption) then Kuchma's gang (which included such odious
figures as Pavlo Lazarenko
and his protégé Yulia Timoshenko, who later broke the ranks). Reminds me Roosevelt famous"Somoza
may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."
Note: This is slightly edited Google translation of Interview by Serg Leshchenk
(SL) of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine in 2003-2006 John Herbst (JH) published by Ukrainian
Pravda
John Herbst was the U.S. ambassador in Kiev during the Orange Revolution, and was personally
involved in many processes that shaped the new political realities in Ukraine. During his tenure
as an ambassador there was tightening of the screws in the last two years Kuchma , when there were
rigged elections, when Maidan occurred, then the war of self-destruction within Orange movement
started ...
Perhaps, his work in Kiev considered with the most interesting epoch in Ukrainian politics, when
hopelessness was replaced unprecedented rise, and then - a deep disappointment. In memory of those
days Herbst office is decorate with the greeting card from Maidan with 2005 New Year wishes. The
picture orange triumph, and Viktor Yanukovich leaves the stage. At the top of the picture. you can
guess, are the signatures of victorious duet - Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Timoshenko. If only they
knew then, where they will be in ten years ...
After his stay in Kiev John Herbst landed at the National Defense University - he heads the
Center for complex operations , but unofficially remains one of the most influential Ukraine
experts in Washington. Who is extremely valuable as he has personal contacts and knowledge
of all major political figures in Ukraine.
Herbst's office is located at a military base McNair in the southeast of Washington, DC, where
the author of this interview managed to get without any pre-accreditation - I just need to show
my passport .
While working in Kiev Herbst was laconic in dealing with the press. So it was pretty surprising
to hear from him now direct answers to many questions, which diplomats, even retired, try to avoid
SL: Mr. Herbst, you were the US ambassador in Kiev during the Orange Revolution. Now a new Maidan
in Kyiv is taking place. What are the similarities and differences between those two events?
JH: What are the similarities with the events of 2004 ? First of all there is the same
reason for the protests that existed before the Orange Revolution - corrupt government , which causes
the resentment of people.
Also both then and now there are powerful opposition forces in Ukraine. Both then and now the
protests were triggered by single unique event. In 2004 it was election fraud. Now it was President
Yanukovych's decision to stop talks with the European Union.
But current events have clear differences from the Orange Revolution. In 2004, the opposition
was preparing his actions beforehand, because they knew about the authorities' plans to steal the
election. Now the protests in the street are more like an unplanned surprise. These protests were
spontaneous, they are more like the Arab Spring than the Orange Revolution (really like Arab
Spring up to instructions to protesters translated from Arabic, but having the same pictures --
NNB ;-)
In 2004 the opposition knew what they want to achieve as a result of the protests - and fair
election rerun of the second round. On EuroMaidan there no such a clear goal. First, the opposition
demanded that Yanukovich left. But it was never a realistic goal . Yanukovich won a fair election
in 2010. You can say that to refuse an agreement with the EU - it is a political mistake. You can
say that to forcefully disperse protesters is a political crime. But even this is not enough to
demand the resignation of the president. Yes, it may be grounds for removal of the Minister of Internal
Affairs, which is not an elected position, but not the President.
Today protesters on Maidan lack far reaching, but a realistic goal that would resonate with the
majority of Ukrainians . This - the main difference from 2004 , and this is the reason the current
dead end of EuroMaidan.
SL: But how could avoid this dead end, if the current protests arose spontaneously ?
JH: Opposition leaders should be realistic - Yanukovich is not going to fold and we must
honestly admit it. But at the same time, a gift from Putin to Yanukovich did not satisfy people
on Maidan. There should be realistic demands of the opposition. For example, the first is the release
of Yulia Timoshenko, the second - the resignation of the Interior Minister and the Prime Minister,
the third - guarantee of participation of Vitali Klitschko in the presidential elections.
SL: But Yanukovich grabbed the powers of the Constitutional Court - is not that a usurpation
of power ?
JH: In Ukraine, such things happens. And people, when it happened in the past, did not
protest as much as they are now .
SL: But these conditions - release Timoshenko, guarantees for Klitschko and resignation of the
government -- together they look like capitulation of Yanukovich.
JH: Yanukovich today is weaker less than two months ago. Despite the gift from Putin.
Under a strong leader, people are not gathered by the thousands each day to protest against his
policies (does he hints on Occupy Wall -Steet dispersal ? -- NNB). Yanukovich should offer something
to Maidan as the price the normalization of the situation in the country. The opposition should
give Yanukovich space for compromise , as it was in 2004.
Meanwhile, the opposition demands has been unrealistic, and Yanukovich decided that protests
will disappear by themselves. This is predictable tactics by Yanukovich, because it is difficult
to keep people on the streets for a long time. Orange Revolution lasted just 17 days -- from the
beginning of the protests to the point where it was found a compromise (here by compromise Herbst
means Yanukovich capitulation --NNB). And now it's almost two months of EuroMaidan. The question
whether the opposition is ready to keep people on the street further? If the opposition is able
to do so, and can put a more realistic demands, Yanukovich will eventually be forced to make concessions.
If not - he will just wait until people disperse.
SL: There are repeated calls to attack the administration of President Yanukovich or residence
because peaceful protest did not lead to any tangible results ...
JH: People who are calling for the assault are essentially the Party of Regions pawns,
even if they identify themselves as opponents of Yanukovich. If they use violence, they untie the
hands of Yanukovich is to use the power up to sweeping up all of the Maidan clean. The only successful
tactic of the opposition is a peaceful protest. Because society will not understand the use of force
against peaceful demonstrators (why he is still thinking in terms of
Gene Sharp, despite a blow
in the face State Department got in Russian in 2011-2012, not in terms of Lebanon or God forbid
Libya -- NNB).
In early December, Yanukovich tried to disperse the Maidan, but realized that it only increases
the number of people on the street. Today we have the individual attacks against activists and journalists.
Even if the government says that they has nothing to do with those attacked, everybody understand
that those who perform these attacks support Yanukovich. And shadow of those actions falls on his
reputation. If demonstrators use force, they will destroy their position. Yanukovich - is a smart
man. And the violence only play into his hands.
SL: What do you mean calling Yanukovich a smart politician?
JH: While I was ambassador, we saw each other may be even more frequently than I saw Yushchenko.
I met with him as often as I met with Timoshenko. Yes, Yanukovich is not an intellectual. Both Timoshenko
also can't be called an intellectual. And we did not met to discuss Immanuel Kant. But everyone
agrees that Timoshenko is street smart. However, much less people understand that Yanukovich is
also street smart. He is street smart in the sense that he had a good understanding of issues in
hand, and has a vision of politician. We could talk with him about NATO, the energy complex, tax
issues. He neve need a cheat sheet in his hands from which to read talking points [ is this a hidden
swipe at Obama? --NNB]. We talked with him, as I am talking with you now, about very complex issues.
People used to laugh at him, because they did not like him - and they were wrong.
SL: What do you think about the idea of sanctions against Ukrainian authorities?
JH: Individual sanctions in 2004 worked very effectively. And now they will be effective
against the "siloviki" block in the Yanukovich team.
SL: Please tell us more about sanctions used in 2004...
JH: You know, the people who rigged elections in 2004, they thought about their own
material interests, not about the implementation of the platform of the Party of Regions. They were not willing to any sacrifices to achieve their goal, they goal was to falsify election
in order to be in power and enrich themselves by robbing the Ukrainian citizens.
If these people know that they may be subject to sanctions, they will be careful not to look
in the eyes of the West "evil doers". Because the best place to enjoy the wealth that you stole
from their fellow citizens - is not Ukraine, but Paris, London or New York . And if the United
States impose sanctions, they will not be able to visit America, and quite possibly Europe, which
might also close the door to them. Therefore, the threat of sanctions is a very serious tool .
Despite his unpopularity Yanukovich can to win elections
SL: Many fear that Yanukovich in the coming months to begin to tighten the screws ...
JH: If Yanukovich start arresting people for taking part in the protests, he would be
severely criticized by the U.S. and EU. Does he care ? I think the answer is yes, because Yanukovich
does not want to be a pawn of Putin. Yes, he can take help from Putin, but only to solve internal
problems. Influential people in Yanukovich close circle should explain to him that if Ukraine is
too close to the Kremlin, that will be against their interests.
Yanukovich used to hold a pro-Russian position, because it was profitable for him as a politician.
Such a position is supported by the part of the electorate - in Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk and Odessa.
SL: And what is actually his platform ?
JH:Grab larger and better pieces for yourself and your friends. Such politicians
exists everywhere, even in the U.S. Now Yanukovich and his oligarchs realized that it would be very
bad for their business, if they became members of the Customs Union. Because people today who are
very influential in Kiev, will have very little influence in Moscow. And the Russian oligarchs,
who are also very intelligent, and who have a good relationship in the Kremlin, will use their influence
in Moscow to swallow assets of Ukrainian oligarchs.
Therefore, even after all the recent events, Yanukovich does not want to be a pariah in the
West. But if Yanukovich will undertake the forceful dispersal Maidan, I will support the imposition
of sanctions - and not only against "sloviki" block in Yanukovich government. If sanctions will
be imposed against one or two specific individuals, and in the case of forceful dispersal such sanctions
will be imposed - it will have a very serious impact.
SL: Does Yanukovich have a chance for re-election in 2015?
JH: Despite its unpopularity today, he can win a fair election. Year is a long time in
politics. I was in Ukraine in January 2005, when the people around Yanukovich called him a man without
a future . But I told them - look, maybe you 're right, but Yanukovich has campaigned, even losing,
in the South and East , working with their constituents . His career is not over yet. And he won
the democratic elections in 2010.
It is important that in 2015 honest elections were held. I think in the Party of Regions there
are people who will try to rig the elections . But in my opinion, the strength of the opposition
is growing. Ant it will be ready to respond effectively in the event of tampering.
SL: Should now the opposition to Yanukovich guarantee non-prosecution ?
JH: As part of the compromise, which I mentioned , it would be good to Yanukovich
knew that he and his family safe.[Does he propose a kind of buy-out, kind of leveraged buy-out to
install a new Orange Junta in power -- NNB]. But this compromise must include the release of
Timoshenko, the granting of the right to run for Klitschko and fair elections . This does not mean
that everything he did or Yanukovich acquired his family for the last five years, to be forgiven,
but some reasonable assurance must be provided Yanukovich.
Otherwise, he will do everything possible to stay in power at any cost. And it's worse for Ukraine,
then the situation when a politician knows that he can safely retire.
SL: You were an ambassador, when Kuchma resigned as president. He was given any assurances from
the orange junta?
JH:I do not possess any information about this.[ looks like they bought Kuchma wholesale
-- NNB]. Kuchma behaved very cleverly and morally in the last two or three months on the job.
He was under pressure from the people from Yanukovich close cycle to break the resistance at the
Maidan. But he did not use force and earned the historical respect.
Q You say that Klitschko must get guarantees that he can participate in the presidential elections.
What do you think of him? There are accusations that Klitschko does not possess the knowledge required
for the presidency ...
JH:Klitschko - not stupid. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a very successful U.S.
president. Seems American judge Oliver Wendell Holmes once said about Roosevelt - a first-class
temperament, but a second-rate intellect (the quote second-class intellect but a first-class temperament
might be false; see
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Champion of Freedom - Conrad Black - Google Books). If Klitschko
will pick a team of professional people , it might be able to reach any goals.
President Jimmy Carter was a very smart president. But he lost the election. Franklin Roosevelt
was not so smart, but was a very successful president.
I am not sure that orange junta was more moral than Kuchma's team
SL: We already talked about Klitschko and Yanukovich. What do you think about Yulia Timoshenko,
based on your experience as an ambassador ?
JH: She was extremely creative, energetic and hell-bent on achieving her goals.
SL: She's a Democrat ?
JH: After the Orange Revolution, she provided a lot of pressure to deprive Kuchma oligarchs
some assets. Even when there was no convincing evidence that they got this property dishonestly.
I have no doubt that many officials broke the law, including those who were on the side of the Orange
Revolution. However, they were not prosecuted. Such selectivity is undemocratic and wrong.
SL: You could then imagine that in a few years after the Orange Revolution, Yulia Timoshenko
will be in prison?
JH: I was an unusual U.S. official. I used to say that Yushchenko is a Democrat, and everybody
said that, so there was nothing unusual here. But I can not say that Timoshenko had the same democratic
instincts as Yushchenko. And I also stated that I am not sure that all the Orange team (aka Orange
junta --NNB) was much more moral than Kuchma's gang.
The Americans are used to black and white thinking with just two categories such as good and
evil. But what I said is that Yushchenko is just a lighter shade of gray, while Kuchma and Yanukovich
are slightly darker shade of gray. Many oligarchs in Yushchenko's team are not much different from
the oligarchs in Yanukovich team. And Yulia Timoshenko was also oligarch - the way she made her
money is not much different from the ways in which they are made by Kuchma oligarchs .
But that was 15 - 20 years ago. In 1994, nearly all of the oligarchs earned money illegally.
And if any new government announces the fight against the oligarchs, it only applies to those who
are not allies of the current regime. As a result, the oligarchs only worried that their party won
at any cost at the next elections.
SL: Why, then, the United States supported the Orange Revolution ?
JH: We support the democratic process. There is no doubt that Kuchma's administration
in 2004, help an unfair elections, supporting the candidate Yanukovich. If Yanukovich won fairly
in 2004, we would have welcomed his election.
SL: It is true that even after the Orange Revolution, Yulia Timoshenko few years could not enter
the United States, fearing arrest ?
JH: Yeah, I also understood this situation the same way. I do not know the situation in
detail. It is known that Lazarenko was convicted of money laundering in the United States . But
Timoshenko part of her career worked with Lazarenko. And American law enforcement officers wanted
to question Timoshenko. And she did not want to testify. That meant that for a while she could not
get in the USA legally.
SL: Why "the Orange fairy tale," as everybody all perceived the events on Maidan, was dead on
arrival ?
JH: People have been disappointed with how the new government struggled with corruption.
They were no better than their predecessors. And yet in stark contrast to what happened after the
victory of Saakashvili in Georgia. Unlike Yushchenko, Saakashvili was not a democrat. But Saakashvili
very seriously fought corruption. And ordinary Georgians could feel it. For example, the absence
of corruption among traffic police in Georgia.
In order honest officials worked and Ukrainian taxes were spend on citizens, not channeled to
the Cayman Islands, you need only 10 thousand honest bureaucrats.
SL: 10 000 that way too many!
JH: You need 500-1000 honest officials at the top, and they can select another 10 people
each. However, no matter what were the reasons, Yushchenko failed in his anti-corruption campaign.
SL: How do you see the future of Ukraine ?
JH: In 10 years, Ukraine will be slightly less corrupt, slightly more democratic and a
little richer.[ unless with the help of EU it will not became considerably poorer -- NNB ;-)]
You make two steps forward then a step back, one step forward -- two steps back . The fact is that
the most influential people in Ukraine are still motivated by their narrow personal interests.
The Ukrainian society is not strong enough to seek punishment of those " influential people",
who go too far. The strength of the middle class in Ukraine is gradually increasing -- but slower
than everyone wants. Therefore, while Ukraine will continue to move forward, she'll be stumbling
all the way .
It's been awhile since we've checked in with Robert Reich:
Why The Republican's Old
Divide-and-Conquer Strategy - Setting Working Class Against the Poor - Is Backfiring, by Robert
Reich: For almost forty years Republicans have pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy
intended to convince ... the working class that its hard-earned tax dollars were being siphoned
off to pay for "welfare queens" ... and other nefarious loafers. The poor were "them" - lazy,
dependent on government handouts, and overwhelmingly black - in sharp contrast to "us," who
were working ever harder, proudly independent..., and white.
It was a cunning strategy designed to split the broad Democratic coalition that had supported
the New Deal and Great Society, by using the cleavers of racial prejudice and economic anxiety.
It also conveniently fueled resentment of government taxes and spending.
The strategy also served to distract attention from the real cause of the working class's shrinking
paychecks - corporations that were busily busting unions, outsourcing abroad, and replacing
jobs with automated equipment and, subsequently, computers and robotics.
But the divide-and-conquer strategy is no longer convincing because the dividing line between
poor and middle class has all but disappeared. "They" are fast becoming "us."... Three decades
of flattening wages and declining economic security have taken a broader toll..., unexpected
poverty has become a real possibility for almost everyone these days. And there's little margin
of safety. ...
Race is no longer a dividing line, either. ... Most people are now on the same losing side of
the divide. ...
Which means Republican opposition to extended unemployment insurance, food stamps, jobs programs,
and a higher minimum wage pose a real danger of backfiring on the GOP. ... It's not hard to
imagine a new political coalition of America's poor and working middle class, bent not only
on repairing the nation's frayed safety nets but also on getting a fair share of the economies'
gains.
Darryl FKA Ron:
...This means sudden and unexpected poverty has become a real possibility for almost
everyone these days. And there's little margin of safety. With the real median household
income continuing to drop, 65 percent of working families are living from paycheck to paycheck.
Race is no longer a dividing line, either. According to Census Bureau numbers, two-thirds
of those below the poverty line at any given point identify themselves as white...
...The new economy has been especially harsh for the bottom two-thirds of Americans.
It's not hard to imagine a new political coalition of America's poor and working middle
class, bent not only on repairing the nation's frayed safety nets but also on getting a
fair share of the economies' gains.
[So, we are finally getting racial equality one way or the other.
'Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.' - MLK
I still like Reich. I tend to think that he has gotten this one correct, eventually at least.
Like most things that must eventually happen, it is always just a matter of time.]
djt:
It's too bad there's no political party to represent the alliance of poor and working people.
If they had senators and representatives elected to congress, they might be able to pressure
those congresspeople. Unfortunately, there is no such party, and there is enough corporate largess
to keep the two business parties in control.
DrDick:
While I generally like Reich, I am far less sanguine about this. The Republican base is increasingly
in the South, where race and class are still major issues. Even in Ohio and Wisconsin, they
have successfully used these tactics to seize power and enact radcial agendas penalizing the
working classes and poor.
Dan Kervick -> DrDick...
Yeah, I know several Republicans, and some of them are so crazy that they frighten me. It's
almost impossible to exchange information with them about political issues because everything
that doesn't fit into the paranoid scheme they have already adopted is some kind of "false flag"
or other evil liberal mind control scheme. And being a struggling white person doesn't seem
to bring them into any solidarity at all with struggling black and brown people - just the opposite.
ken melvin:
He's right about the repubs using the poor and working class to work against their own best
interests. Nothing much has changed as far as I can tell. Even if they did watch the News Hour
they'd hear Judy Woodruff speaking to the dangers of government waste for fiscal outlays for
infrastructure.
What's missing is some shill being payed $2million a year to rant on and on about how the
repubs blew $2trillion on on misbegotten adventures to war while cutting taxes for the rich
and now are demanding that the poor make up the short fall via cuts in SS, medicaid, unemployment
benefits, ... and keep saying this until it soaks in.
mrrunangun:
Poverty is mainstream now. Forty-five percent of US babies were born on Medicaid last year.
GOP clearly has nothing on offer. No job program, no unemployment benefit, no Medicaid expansion
but instead a reduction in safety net support. But what Dems offer is vague and the current
administration has been less than reliable about connecting rhetoric with policy. If LBJ or
Hubert Humphrey were in the White House, policy efforts would be more forceful in The direction
of job growth, unemployment support, Medicaid expansion, etc. and they would probably have done
something about carried interest and the like instead of making speeches about how these things
needed to be stopped while doing nothing of substance to stop them.
Of 534 current lawmakers on Capitol Hill, at least 268 had an median net worth of $1 million
or more in 2012, the analysis by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics found. That's
up from 257 members - or about 48% of lawmakers - in 2011 and marks the first time that a majority
of politicians on Capitol Hill were in the millionaire's club.
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which
dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the
laws of our country."-- Thomas Jefferson
Buying into the gamemanship of a two party system is clearly buying into a system run by
a power elite. Our government is not effectively serving, as mandated, The People of the United
States of America.
The Blaze-One conservative college professor's support for traditional marriage was enough for
one online commenter to brand him "the biggest embarrassment to higher education in America."
How the professor responded was pretty fantastic.
While I respect your right to conclude that I am the biggest embarrassment to higher education
in America, I think you're wrong," Mike Adams, professor of sociology and criminology at the University
of North Carolina at Wilmington told "Edward" in an
open
letter. "In fact, I don't even think I'm the biggest embarrassment to higher education in the
state of North Carolina. But since you're a liberal and you support 'choice' – provided we're talking
about dismembering children and not school vouchers for those who weren't dismembered – I want to
give you some options."
He then laid out nine examples of truly outrageous antics by other professors, administrators
and campus groups in North Carolina to see how he stacks up, including:
1. In the early spring semester of 2013, a women's studies professor and a psychology professor
at Western Carolina University co-sponsored a panel on bondage and S&M. The purpose of the panel
was to teach college students how to inflict pain on themselves and others for sexual pleasure.
When you called me the biggest embarrassment in higher education, you must not have known about
their bondage panel. Maybe you were tied up that evening and couldn't make it.
2. At UNC Chapel Hill, there is a feminist professor who believes that women can lead happy lives
without men. That's nothing new. But what's different is that she thinks women can form lifelong
domestic partnerships with dogs and that those relationships will actually be fulfilling enough
to replace marital relationships with men. I can't make this stuff up, Ed. I don't drop acid. Well,
at least not since the late 1980s. But I promise this story is real and not an LSD flashback.
3. At Duke University, feminists hired a "sex worker" (read: prostitute) to speak as part of
an event called the Sex Workers Art Show. After his speech, the male prostitute pulled down his
pants, got down on his knees, and inserted a burning sparkler into his rectum. While it burned,
he sang a verse of "the Star Spangled Banner." I believe that stripping incident was almost as embarrassing
as the other one involving the Duke Lacrosse team.
4. A porn star was once paid to give a speech at UNCG. The topic was "safe sodomy." After her
speech, the feminist pornographer sold autographed butt plugs to students in attendance. I'm not
sure whether the ink could contribute to rectal cancer. I'm no health expert. But I do know it was
pretty darned embarrassing when the media picked up on the story.
Despite some reports that Edward was a student, Adams - who has spoken at CPAC and appeared on
the "Glenn Beck Program" - told TheBlaze he's actually a commenter who wrote in response to one
of Adams' columns at Townhall.com. Adams corresponded with him, but then wrote the new column open-letter
style and didn't send it directly to him.
Police usually ensure that neo-Nazis and counter-protesters keep their distance during demonstrations.
Right-wing extremists, however, increasingly manage to overcome these barricades, but instead of
applying force, they simply show their press badge. This card allows them to get up close with their
enemies and journalists reporting on the event. Neo-Nazis videotape them and take pictures, and
then threaten them.
Press card abuse has grown steadily over the past year, journalist Felix M. Steiner told DW.
Steiner writes for Watchblog Publikative.org, the German public broadcaster NDR and Zeit Online's
Störungsmelder, a blog on Nazi activity, among others. Steiner mainly reports on right-wing extremism.
"If a journalist reports on a right-wing extremist demonstration, it is common practice to be
molested, threatened or physically attacked," he said. He has experienced that himself. The press
card allows people to enter the journalists' safe space, making it easier to intimidate people.
It's also much easier to videotape or to take pictures up close from journalists and counter
demonstrators. Neo-Nazis use these pictures to check up on them later: who are they, where do they
live? Some journalists have later spotted themselves - including their full names and addresses
- on right-wing extremist websites.
The neo-Nazi's presence in those press areas disturbs the journalists' actual work. And they
don't just show up at press areas at demonstrations. They also force their way into court rooms,
as Steiner has heard from colleagues. There, they effectively hinder reporting; for instance, by
smearing camera lenses.
And there is another potential risk: They could try to obtain information they should not be
allowed to get, for example, on certain police tactics.
That's just another stepping stone in the neo-Nazi scene's strategy of creating a "counter public"
that discards professional media and instead focuses on the neo-Nazi's viewpoints. That's why they
make use of blogs, social networks or regional papers free of charge.
"Then, all of the sudden, citizens inform themselves via the free NPD paper that offers a mix
of regional and national topics and initially doesn't raise suspicions," Steiner said. That's why
the NPD has taken root in some of Germany's regions.
Press cards for everyone?
But how do neo-Nazis get these cards? "The press card is not protected by law – and neither is
the term journalist. Everyone can create a document that has the term "press card" on it - or buy
it from dubious vendors," the spokesman of the German Federation of Journalists (DJV), Hendrik Zörner,
said. He can't offer numbers, but confirms these cases have indeed increased.
It's not forbidden to create press cards, but usually a person with such a makeshift card doesn't
get very far and shouldn't make it to the press area. But for that to happen, police or court clerks
would need to be able to recognize a reputable press badge; for instance, the cards issued by DJV,
the German Journalists Union (DJU) of labor union Verdi, or the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers
(BDZV).
But that doesn't always work. Journalist Andrea Röpke said that it has happened before that the
"real" press person was asked to leave because police thought he or she was the troublemaker - and
not the neo-Nazi.
Zörner says it is not impossible for neo-Nazis to obtain a DJV card, although he hasn't heard
of any concrete case where they got a DJV press badge. For such a document, the person applying
for the card needs to prove that the main occupation is indeed journalism. "That's only possible
through an employment agreement or payment invoices." Those documents clearly have to state the
employer – "and we know all the extreme right publications," Zörner said.
In order to make it easier for people to spot legitimate press cards, DJV is lobbying for a reintroduction
of a nationwide press badge. It should only be given to full-time journalists to ensure there are
"no free riders anymore," Zörner said.
See also
Experts call for official tracking of hate crimes in Germany Experts say that collecting
official data on hate crimes could help in the fight against violence motivated by prejudice.
Recent studies suggest that anti-Semitism and xenophobia are on the rise in Germany. (20.11.2013)
Neo-Nazis form expanding networks beyond national borders The cooperation between
right-wing extremists from different countries is gaining strength. Experts warn that this phenomenon
could have dangerous consequences. (21.09.2013)
'Germany must wake up to neo-Nazi threat'Germany is flat-out ignoring the threat of
neo-Nazism, argues author and journalist David Crossland. With his debut novel, a gripping and
violent political thriller, he hopes to shake the country awake. (19.09.2013)
It's one of the fundamental rights of EU citizens that they can look for work in any of the member
states. By joining the bloc, the people of any new member are granted this right - though not necessarily
with immediate effect. Other countries in the 28-member bloc have to the option to somewhat restrict
that freedom of movement for a maximum of seven years. In the case of members Romania and Bulgaria,
nine of the older members have done so - among them Germany and the United Kingdom.
The German debate was marked by a defensive fear, explained Andreas Pott, director of the Institute
for Migration and Intercultural Studies of Osnabruck University. He told DW that when compared to
other countries Germany was less relaxed in its handling of migrants.
In Spain for instance, there are hardly any such debates although the country is itself suffering
from high unemployment levels. According to OECD figures, the country has seen some 51,000 Bulgarian
and 327 Romanian immigrants between 2007 and 2011. In Italy, the restriction was lifted in 2012
and in the past decade one in four immigrants was Romanian and there was no debate on the issue.
In Germany, however, where unemployment is at relatively low 5 percent, the debate is all over the
media.
Traditionally closer ties between Romania and Italy or Spain may play a role in those countries
more welcoming attitude. What probably is more decisive though is that an economically strong country
like Germany might be more attractive for prospective immigrants.
"In Italy and Spain it is currently very difficult to find a job. Where there are no
jobs, there's little immigration for jobs," said OECD migration expert Thomas Liebig. In Germany
however, there's actually need for workers and employees.
However representative of the people Parliaments and Congresses may be in all that concerns the
internal administration of a country's political affairs, in international relations it has
never been possible to maintain that the popular body acted except as a wholly mechanical ratifier
of the Executive's will.
The formality by which Parliaments and Congresses declare war is the merest technicality.
Before such a declaration can take place, the country will have been brought to the very brink of
war by the foreign policy of the Executive. A long series of steps on the downward path, each
one more fatally committing the unsuspecting country to a warlike course of action, will have been
taken without either the people or its representatives being consulted or expressing its feeling.
When the declaration of war is finally demanded by the Executive, the Parliament or Congress could
not refuse it without reversing the course of history, without repudiating what has been representing
itself in the eyes of the other states as the symbol and interpreter of the nation's will and animus.
To repudiate an Executive at that time would be to publish to the entire world the evidence
that the country had been grossly deceived by its own Government, that the country with an almost
criminal carelessness had allowed its Government to commit it to gigantic national enterprises in
which it had no heart. In such a crisis, even a Parliament which in the most democratic States
represents the common man, and not the significant classes who most strongly cherish the State ideal,
will cheerfully sustain the foreign policy which it understands even less than it would care for
if it understood, and will vote almost unanimously for an incalculable war, in which the nation
may be brought well nigh to ruin.
That is why
the referendum which was advocated by some people as a test of American sentiment in entering
the war was considered even by thoughtful democrats to be something subtly improper. The die had
been cast. Popular whim could derange and bungle monstrously the majestic march of State policy
in its new crusade for the peace of the world. The irresistible State ideal got hold of the
bowels of men. Whereas up to this time, it had been irreproachable to be neutral in word and
deed, for the foreign policy of the State had so decided it, henceforth it became the most arrant
crime to remain neutral.
With the ongoing "war" approaching the 10-year mark, the U.S. economy shed a total of 7.9 million
jobs in just three years. For only the second time since World War II, the official unemployment
rate topped 10 percent. The retreat from that peak came at an achingly slow pace. By some estimates,
actual unemployment-including those who had simply given up looking for work-was double the official
figure. Accentuating the pain was the duration of joblessness; those laid off during the Great Recession
stayed out of work substantially longer than the unemployed during previous postwar economic downturns.
When new opportunities did eventually materialize, they usually came with smaller salaries and either
reduced benefits or none at all.
As an immediate consequence, millions of Americans lost their homes or found themselves "underwater,"
the value of their property less than what they owed on their mortgages. Countless more were thrown
into poverty, the number of those officially classified as poor reaching the highest level since
the Census Bureau began tracking such data. A drop in median income erased gains made during
the previous 15 years. Erstwhile members of the great American middle class shelved or abandoned
outright carefully nurtured plans to educate their children or retire in modest comfort. Inequality
reached gaping proportions with 1 percent of the population amassing a full 40 percent of the nation's
wealth.
Month after month, grim statistics provided fodder for commentators distributing blame, for learned
analysts offering contradictory explanations of why prosperity had proven so chimerical, and for
politicians absolving themselves of responsibility while fingering as culprits members of the other
party. Yet beyond its immediate impact, what did the Great Recession signify? Was the sudden appearance
of hard times in the midst of war merely an epiphenomenon, a period of painful adjustment and belt-tightening
after which the world's sole superpower would be back in the saddle? Or had the Great Recession
begun a Great Recessional, with the United States in irreversible retreat from the apex of global
dominion?
The political response to this economic calamity paid less attention to forecasting long-term
implications than to fixing culpability. On the right, an angry Tea Party movement blamed Big Government.
On the left, equally angry members of the Occupy movement blamed Big Business, especially Wall Street.
What these two movements had in common was that each cast the American people as victims. Nefarious
forces had gorged themselves at the expense of ordinary folk. By implication, the people were themselves
absolved of responsibility for the catastrophe that had befallen them and their country.
Yet consider a third possibility. Perhaps the people were not victims but accessories. On the
subject of war, Americans can no more claim innocence than they can regarding the effects of smoking
or excessive drinking. As much as or more than Big Government or Big Business, popular attitudes
toward war, combining detachment, neglect, and inattention, helped create the crisis in which the
United States is mired.
A "country made by war," to cite the title of a popular account of U.S. military history, the
United States in our own day is fast becoming a country undone by war. Citizen armies had waged
the wars that made the nation powerful (if not virtuous) and Americans rich (if not righteous).
The character of those armies-preeminently the ones that preserved the Union and helped defeat Nazi
Germany and Imperial Japan-testified to an implicit covenant between citizens and the state. According
to its terms, war was the people's business and could not be otherwise. For the state to embark
upon armed conflict of any magnitude required informed popular consent. Actual prosecution of any
military campaign larger than a police action depended on the willingness of citizens in large numbers
to become soldiers. Seeing war through to a conclusion hinged on the state's ability to sustain
active popular support in the face of adversity.
In their disgust over Vietnam, Americans withdrew from this arrangement. They disengaged from
war, with few observers giving serious consideration to the implications of doing so. Events since,
especially since 9/11, have made those implications manifest. In the United States, war no longer
qualifies in any meaningful sense as the people's business. In military matters, Americans have
largely forfeited their say.
As a result, in formulating basic military policy and in deciding when and how to employ
force, the state no longer requires the consent, direct participation, or ongoing support of citizens.
As an immediate consequence, Washington's penchant for war has appreciably increased, without, however,
any corresponding improvement in the ability of political and military leaders to conclude its wars
promptly or successfully. A further result, less appreciated but with even larger implications,
has been to accelerate the erosion of the traditional concept of democratic citizenship.
In other words, the afflictions besetting the American way of life derive in some measure from
shortcomings in the contemporary American way of war. The latter have either begotten or exacerbated
the former.
Since 9/11, Americans have, in fact, refuted George C. Marshall by demonstrating a willingness
to tolerate "a Seven Years [and longer] War." It turns out, as the neoconservative pundit Max Boot
observed, that an absence of popular support "isn't necessarily fatal" for a flagging war effort.
For an inveterate militarist like Boot, this comes as good news. "Public apathy," he argues,
"presents a potential opportunity," making it possible to prolong "indefinitely" conflicts in which
citizens are not invested.
Yet such news is hardly good. Apathy toward war is symptomatic of advancing civic decay, finding
expression in apathy toward the blight of child poverty, homelessness, illegitimacy, and eating
disorders also plaguing the country. Shrugging off wars makes it that much easier for Americans-overweight,
overmedicated, and deeply in hock-to shrug off the persistence of widespread hunger, the patent
failures of their criminal justice system, and any number of other problems. The thread that binds
together this pattern of collective anomie is plain to see: unless the problem you're talking about
affects me personally, why should I care?
Gotta admit that when I first encountered Michael Auslin's piece in Politico Magazine
suggesting-to all appearances, seriously-that America
needs a monarchy to create some symbol of national unity, I didn't immediately start guffawing
like
Esquire's Charlie Pierce did.
If we could somehow import Britain's system, with not only a figurehead monarch but a parliamentary
system, I'd be all for it, given all the recent illustrations of the dysfunctions associated
with our own system in a period of closely contested partisan and ideological conflicts.
Another factor is the tendency of Americans to want their leaders to look and act like Royals;
I used to joke that maybe we could ask the Kennedys ...
jrepin sends this excerpt from an opinion piece at OSNews: "Late last year, president Obama
signed a law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without any form
of trial or due process. Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been
labelled as terrorists by the authorities. Initiatives like SOPA promote diligent monitoring
of communication channels. Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project,
and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics
were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia - but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs
have become reality."
I have yet to see a nation or government take the official stance that Occupy are terrorists.
Squatters, freedom-of-speech-abusers, illegal encampments, yes, but not terrorists.
Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists
by the authorities
While I decry the NDAA and SOPA as much as anyone, I'll not buy into the Occupy claims of
victimization and persecution when they squatted for TWO MONTHS before the police were sent
in to clear them out. You have a right to protest, to share your ideas, and to educate the public.
You do NOT have the right to squat in public spaces until the world does things your way, or
we'd still have grey-haired hippies camped out all across the nation demanding that you "free
the weed."
I certainly won't buy any paranoid claims that they're going to be locked up as terrorists.
Which is a completely false headline, if you actually read the police newsletter that it
references. Even if it *were* true that the London police had classified them as terrorists
(which, I repeat, they did not), that's still a far cry from the hysterical "Occupy movements
all over the world have been labelled as terrorists by the authorities" claim in the summary
of *this* article. Geez, people, take a breath between your rants.
blahplusplus
Yes because we all know no one ever got shot in the head @ occupy.
Iraq veteran seriously injured by police projectile is lucid and responding but brain
swelling still a risk, say doctors
"Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists
by the authorities"
Are there examples of this?
I've heard them labeled as (paraphrasing) shiftless, stupid, smelly losers costing taxpayers
money.
rsilvergun
For the record (5, Informative)
they used the Patriot Act against the Occupy Wall Street protestors :).
trout007
The best part of this legislation is you can't bring it before the Supreme Court. You have to
have standing to bring the lawsuit but if you have standing it means you are locked away without
access to an attorney indefinitely.
You should listen to the interview. Stephen Cohen is one of the few specialists in the region. Here
are some point made: Stephen Cohen thinks that McCain visit to Ukraine was essentially bipartisan attempt
to continue the Cold War. As Georgia War was a proxy war cheerleader by the same players, the same is
true about Ukraine. People like "We are all Georgians" McCain are not only unwise, they are reckless.
European deal offers Ukraine only austerity. It is not democratic to overthrow a democratically elected
government is anti-democratic. Both EU and US are hypocritical and anti-democratic in their support
of Maidan. Economically Ukraine is a basket case with over 18 billion of debt coming due the next year.
Russian and East and central Ukraine is one civilization. West is playing hardball. Ukraine is for sell.
And Russia make better offer. This is not bulling, that's bidding. Moreover there are two Ukraines.
There are at least at least two nations in Ukraine, the fact there is ignored in Western media. Eastern
Ukraine heavy industry will die if Ukraine joins association with EU. It will slowly die. Cold War never
really end. Starting from Clinton administration US administration pursued "winner takes all" policy.
This is a disease of the US political elite. The great example here is senator McCain, with his pathological,
obsessive hate for Russia. Magnitsky act is another move if the same direction,
McCartyism in disguise. Senator
Schumer is the same, despite belonging to other party. It's bipartisan disease. The US elite is enemy
of peace in post war space.
As Ukraine remains divided over whether or not to sign an agreement with the European Union,
the US media continues to spread myths about the protests surrounding the conflict, according
to Stephen Cohen.
The Russian studies professor and Nation contributor joined Between the Lines to debunk those
myths and explain what the protesters are actually demanding and what role the United States is
playing, adding to his critique of the US media's coverage of the protests on the John Batchelor
Show last week.
-Rebecca Nathanson
theshadowknows
Great comments on the continuation of the Cold War under the Obama Administration. And you
thought it ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall!
Sheila
A very helpful interview. I'm glad it pointed out how useful the continuing cold war has
been for the military-industrial complex. It's also been useful to the Ayn Rand bunch. I'm amazed
these people have been getting away with this for so long. They should be laughed out of town
-- together with their stinky cold war zombie.
Dienne
That's what we do. Promote anti-democratic action.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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