Ukraine: The Only Way to Peace by Anatol Lieven

 

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/may/05/ukraine-only-way-to-peace/

Ukraine: The Only Way to Peace

Jerome Sessini/Magnum Photos Ukrainian soldiers, Belbek, Crimea, March 4, 2014

As the first heavy fighting begins in eastern Ukraine, with an attempt by Ukrainian forces to retake the town of Sloviansk, and as violent clashes spread elsewhere, including now Odessa, in the country's southwest, there is a growing sense that a larger confrontation, one that could involve Russia and the West, may be unavoidable. Such a perception is a terrible mistake. There is nothing inevitable about the future course of the conflict. It is absolutely essential for Western governments to focus on what they can do to avoid war, preserve democracy, and keep Ukraine united.

What they cannot do is help the government in Kiev to win with military force in the east. The rebel forces that have taken control of cities of the Donbas, the Russian-speaking industrial and mining region in the east, appear well organized, have much local popular support, and are implicitly backed by the 45,000 Russian troops deployed to the Ukrainian border. It would take many months—more probably, many years—for Ukrainian forces to reach sufficient strength to retake the Donbas swiftly and relatively bloodlessly, or to defeat a Russian invasion of the east and south of the country. Moves to raise Ukrainian nationalist volunteer forces should be strongly discouraged by the West. The intervention of such groups would risk repeating what has just happened in Odessa, where dozens of people were killed in street battles on May 2. It would make a Russian invasion a certainty.

And the West itself will not fight for Ukraine. All the blowhard posturing of US and European government officials cannot hide this essential fact. In these circumstances, to give the unelected interim government in Kiev the idea that we are giving it military backing is irresponsible, immoral, and contemptible. Did we really learn nothing from the experience of Georgia in 2008? For that matter, did we learn nothing in the playground at the age of six?

If Ukrainian forces continue their assault on rebel strongholds in eastern Ukraine, then only three things can happen, separately or in sequence: they will be beaten back with the help of Russian weaponry—such as that used to shoot down two Ukrainian helicopters at Sloviansk on Friday; they will retake one or two towns, after which Russia will reinforce other towns with lightly-disguised Russian special forces, making their capture much harder; and if Ukrainian forces resort to heavy weaponry to blast the rebels from their positions, Russia will invade. The only question then will be where the Russian army will stop: whether Moscow would be content to hold the Donbas, as it previously held South Ossetia and Abkhazia as quasi-independent statelets formally still part of Georgia, or whether it would go on to seize half of Ukraine.

What is truly strange and terrible about this looming disaster is that all the leading players already know and agree about what the only solution can be, even if they disagree on the details and the timing: a federal Ukraine with elected regional governments and robust protection for regional interests. This, not further separation, is what Moscow is proposing; and this is what the Ukrainian interim president, Olexander Turchynov, has publicly hinted at for the Donbas. Although the rebels in Donetsk and other eastern cities have declared the Donetsk Republic and are now planning an independence referendum on May 11, many easterners, too, have indicated that they want some kind of federalization and not independence or annexation to Russia. As interviews published in Sunday's New York Times make clear, even some rebel commanders themselves hope to keep Ukraine united.

It is extremely important to note that regional autonomy—accompanied by a threat of independence—is what the government of the western region of Lviv, controlled by Ukrainian nationalists, declared for itself back in February, when it seemed that President Yanukovych would remain in power and take Ukraine into the Russian-dominated Eurasian Union. If Lviv could demand this as an insurance for its identity and interests when the national government was going in a direction it did not like, it is very hard to argue that Donetsk does not have the right to do the same. Nor is there any moral reason why the West cannot support federalization. The United States, Germany, Canada, and half a dozen other Western democracies are all federal states. Of course, we all know that a fundamental moral principle of Western foreign policy is that sauce for the goose can never under any circumstances be sauce for the gander—but to oppose a federal solution for Ukraine on such grounds is ridiculous.

Indeed, a constitutional solution to the crisis has already been supported by all sides—including Russia, the US, and Ukraine—in the Geneva Declaration of April 17, which called for Ukrainians from all parts of the country to disarm and take part in a national dialogue that would recognize regional interests. The problem with Geneva is that it did not set out an outline of the constitutional settlement—which will have to be agreed in advance before the rebel militias in eastern Ukraine will put down their weapons. There is also of course profound disagreement on the process by which constitutional change should be introduced, and how much regional autonomy should be granted.

President Turchynov suggested a referendum on autonomy for the Donbas to accompany the new presidential elections planned for May 25; but after the latest developments in Odessa and east Ukraine, it must surely now be acknowledged that these elections cannot take place on schedule, or until peace is restored. Nor, given the precedent in Lviv and the current protests elsewhere in Ukraine, can a case be made for a special status for the Donbas region alone. Far better to have an equal federation across the whole territory of Ukraine. (As for Crimea, we will have to content ourselves with formal statements to the effect that we regard Crimea as still legally part of Ukraine, while in practice making Crimea the subject of separate processes and talks—rather as with the northern Cyprus issue in the past. Unfortunately, if we make a peace process in Ukraine conditional on Russia giving up Crimea, there will be no peace process.)

Reality, and the long experience offered by such conflicts, shows that agreement on a new federal constitution for the country as a whole must be reached first, and ratified by a national referendum. The rebel militias in eastern Ukraine and the camp of demonstrators on the Maidan in Kiev should both agree not to use force and not to disrupt such a solution–-since clearly neither regional nor national democracy is possible if governments have to submit for approval to unelected crowds. Elections for the presidency, parliament, regional assemblies, and regional governorships can then be scheduled to take place simultaneously later in the year. Ideally, some kind of observer force would need to be put in place with United Nations backing to report on compliance by all sides.

Since the tragic killings in Odessa, it is no longer possible to deny that the Ukrainian crisis involves a serious threat from extreme nationalist groups as well as pro-Russian ones—and some of the extreme nationalists are sitting in the present interim government in Kiev. On the other hand, Russia undoubtedly has armed local allies in eastern Ukraine, which it has strengthened with some disguised Russian officers. But the masses of civilians who have blocked the path of Ukrainian troops in the Donbas show that the rebels also enjoy a very considerable measure of local support.

What all this reveals is something that should have been blindingly obvious ever since Ukraine became independent in 1991 and that is deeply rooted in Ukrainian history: Ukraine contains different identities, and cannot be ruled unilaterally by one of them alone, or pulled in a single geopolitical direction, without risking the breakup of the country itself. The huge demonstrations in Kiev this winter showed that Yanukovych's and Moscow's hope of taking Ukraine into the Eurasian Union was impossible, because many Ukrainians would literally give their lives to prevent it.

Now, events in the east and in Odessa make clear that a Ukrainian state that defines itself purely in pro-Western and anti-Russian terms is also out of the question, because a great many Ukrainians will not tolerate this either. In these circumstances, it is no good for one side to hope for absolute victory. When Russia tried for this with Yanukovych, the result was a fiasco, which among other things destroyed Russia's influence over Ukraine as a whole. The West is now risking an even greater failure in the opposite direction.

Critics of federalization say that it would allow Russia to block Ukrainian moves toward NATO and the EU. What is surely apparent however is that Moscow and its allies in Ukraine have already done this. The goal of the West must be to get all the opposing forces in Ukraine off the streets and back within a legitimate democratic process that is recognized by a majority of Ukrainians, and that will allow the possibility of economic and political reforms by democratic means. Time is short. We saw again and again, in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and elsewhere in the 1990s, that once fighting begins, previously possible solutions quickly become impossible. This would be a tragedy—Ukraine does not need to be Yugoslavia or Georgia.

Contrary to what is said in much of the Western media, most of Russia's allies in eastern Ukraine are not separatists. Rather, what many in the Donbas fear is that a government in Kiev—one that is either unelected or elected by a small majority, and which is under the sway of extreme nationalist demonstrators—will be able to decide their fate unilaterally. Thus, they are deeply opposed to the interim government in Kiev, but many of them continue to envision being a part of Ukraine in which they would have greater autonomy and recognition of regional rights and interests, rather than full independence. Until now, every opinion poll and election in the east has also suggested this.

But once a few hundred people have been killed, this reasonable position will quickly be destroyed. To return power to a reasonable majority, the international community must put forward the outline of a constitutional settlement on which a majority of Ukrainians can agree. It is hopeless to expect that the opposing sides themselves will be able to abide by a compromise proposal on their own, without outside help. The question then is whether Russia, the US, the EU, and the various parties in Ukraine including the Ukrainian government can reach agreement on the outlines of a federal constitution, which the UN Secretary General could then put forward. This will be an immensely difficult task in the days and weeks ahead. But the alternative could be catastrophic.

Argument

Sorry, America, the New World Order Is Dead

Putin isn't dragging the world back to the 19th century. Obama just needs to stop pretending it's 1991.

• BY Eric A. Posner
• MAY 6, 2014

 

Russia is dragging the world back into the 19th century, at least according to Barack Obama's administration. "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext," said Secretary of State John Kerry, following Moscow's annexation of Crimea. "What we see here are distinctly 19th- and 20th-century decisions made by President [Vladimir] Putin to address problems," added another senior administration official. "Sending in troops and, because you're bigger and stronger, taking a piece of the country -- that is not how international law and international norms are observed in the 21st century," President Obama declared a few weeks later.

As Moscow continues to threaten a broader invasion -- most recently demanding that Kiev withdraw its troops from eastern Ukraine -- America's indignant response reveals a great deal about how its leaders think about international norms.

Unfortunately, it is the Americans, not the Russians, who are trapped in a time warp.

Unfortunately, it is the Americans, not the Russians, who are trapped in a time warp. They believe that the legal norms promoted by the United States during its brief period of global hegemony -- which started in 1991 and has eroded over the last decade -- are still in force. They aren't.

In the 1990s, it was possible to believe that a new international order had replaced the bipolar system of the Cold War. Memorably dubbed the "new world order" by President George H.W. Bush, it was characterized by the peaceful settlement of disputes through international courts, universal human rights, international criminal justice, and free trade and investment. Above all, the new liberal order emphasized international rule of law -- the idea that international law and legal institutions would be the major source of global organization.

It was not a coincidence that this order emerged after the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving the United States the sole superpower -- and American politicians, commentators, and intellectuals supremely enthusiastic about it. Today, this order is breaking down, the result of the decline of U.S. power and hence America's ability to enforce its values and interests abroad. While many American intellectuals believed that the order reflected the consent of foreign elites to a self-evidently superior system of international organization, it in fact represented their acquiescence in the face of superior power. Now that this superior power is gone, so are the norms that it promoted.

The first pillar of the post-Cold War liberal order was the international court. The idea that countries should use international tribunals rather than war to settle their disputes actually dates back to the 19th century, when the United States and Britain successfully used arbitration to resolve their differences. But after World War I, and then again after World War II, the victors established permanent international courts with jurisdiction over all disputes that could arise under international law. The most prominent such court has been the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a U.N. organ established in 1945. In the 1990s, more than 100 countries established a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement mechanism aimed at resolving disagreements over trade barriers. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which was given jurisdiction over maritime disputes, began operations in the same decade.

But though such forums have helped resolve trade disputes, it is clear now that the broader ambition of international tribunals -- to provide a peaceful avenue for resolving quarrels that might otherwise lead to war -- has failed. The ICJ has successfully handled some minor border disputes, but when the interests of powerful countries are at stake, it has been evaded at every turn. When the court ruled against the United States in a dispute with Nicaragua in 1986, for example, the United States simply disregarded the judgment and withdrew from the ICJ's jurisdiction. Today, the two most dangerous sources of conflict are Russia's and China's relations with their neighbors. Neither country has been willing to submit those conflicts to international courts. The reason is simple: International law favors the status quo allocation of territory and the sovereignty of states, while Russia and China seek to enhance their power by exerting influence over foreign countries or areas. Because the United States and other countries are not strong enough to compel Russia and China to embrace international tribunals -- and these countries have no independent interest in doing so -- the forums gather dust.

The second pillar of the post-Cold War order was recognition of human rights. Under international human rights law, all governments must respect the rights of their citizens. While the number, nature, and scope of those rights are contested -- and while many countries that signed onto human rights treaties argued that rights must be interpreted in light of their own religious, traditional, or practical commitments -- the new liberal order envisioned a world that abided by the basic terms of liberal democracy. The Soviet Union's collapse seemed to provide spectacular vindication for this view and to portend its universal acceptance.

Yet the human rights regime has failed as well.

Yet the human rights regime has failed as well. It has become increasingly clear that many countries simply disregard their human rights commitments. Russia, for example, has moved toward authoritarianism despite its ratification of universal human rights treaties and its accession to the relatively robust European Convention on Human Rights, which empowers people to bring cases against their governments. China has certainly not liberalized. Most developing countries lack the capacity to implement their human rights commitments, even when their governments and publics support them. Even Western countries violated the spirit of these treaties by taking harsh measures against al Qaeda in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The failure of the human rights regime has put the West in a difficult position. When violations become too obvious to ignore -- as was the case in the Balkans and Rwanda in the 1990s and in Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria in the 2000s -- the West faces a choice between ignoring them and thus violating its commitment to human rights, and launching a military intervention that violates its commitment to peaceful resolution of disputes. The only escape from this dilemma is the U.N. Security Council, which alone possesses the legal authority to launch wars against countries that do not comply with their human rights obligations.

But the United Nations functioned effectively only during the early 1990s, when other members of the Security Council feared U.S. might. It was in 1991 that the Security Council authorized a military intervention in Iraq, following Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. But today the Security Council is as frozen as it was during the Cold War, and declining U.S. power has made it difficult for the West to defy Russia, China, and world opinion as NATO did in 1999, when it intervened in Kosovo, and as the United States and its allies did in 2003 by invading Iraq. A small bright spot was the Security Council's 2011 authorization of military force in Libya, a resolution from which Russia and China abstained. But that brief period of cooperation quickly descended into acrimony as Moscow and Beijing accused Western countries of exceeding their authority to protect the civilian population and instead using military force to overthrow the Libyan government. Now both adamantly oppose intervention in Syria.

The third pillar of the liberal order was international justice: the idea that people, especially national leaders, who commit or order atrocities such as torture or genocide, or who launch illegal wars, should be tried and punished before an international criminal tribunal. The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II were the first to embody these ideas, but they were not expanded upon or replicated until after the Cold War. In the 1990s, the United Nations set up two ad hoc tribunals to try people accused of committing atrocities during the Balkan wars and the Rwanda genocide. In 2002, an international treaty signed by 139 countries entered into force to create a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC).

But international criminal justice has also ground to a halt. The tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda are being wound down. Although the ICC has launched a number of investigations and held a few trials, it is increasingly clear that it will never be more than a marginal institution. Only weak African countries seem to have anything to fear from it, and their leaders resent the court's nearly exclusive focus on them. Inevitably, the ICC has come to be seen as a tool of imperialists. It will never try Russians, Chinese, or Americans, because their governments never ratified the treaty. Moreover, the ICC depends on powerful countries to support it, to send it business through U.N. referrals, and to arrest suspects. It cannot risk offending them.

The fourth pillar was free trade and investment. After World War II, Western countries entered a legal regime, then known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, that required them to gradually lower tariffs. This regime was strengthened in the 1990s, when the WTO was established. Efforts were also made to bring international investment under legal control -- encouraging rich countries to invest in poor countries by preventing poor countries from expropriating those investments. In recent decades, hundreds of bilateral investment treaties have been signed, both protecting investments and providing for arbitration in case of dispute.

Trade is the one bright spot in the current international environment.

Trade is the one bright spot in the current international environment. No one is reverting to protectionism, as countries did prior to World War II. The WTO dispute settlement mechanism continues to function. But efforts to improve on past successes have nonetheless foundered. Investment law has also faced problems, as countries have begun to disregard adverse judgments from arbitration panels.

Back in the 1990s, at the height of optimism about international law, academics believed that they had to answer a puzzle. The four pillars of the new international legal system self-evidently embodied a liberal worldview that countries like China and Russia did not subscribe to and that indeed most countries outside the West had traditionally rejected. So what would compel these countries to obey international law? An enormous number of theories were produced, with their accompanying buzzwords: Countries complied with international law because their leaders had internalized the law. Or because they were bound by cooperative networks of judges and bureaucrats from different countries. Or because domestic and international NGOs put pressure on violators. Or because countries had become interdependent. Or simply because it was fair. At the heart of all these theories was the assumption that all countries complied with international law more or less equally.

The most obvious explanation for legal compliance was all but ignored. Countries obeyed international law in the post-Cold War period because the United States and, to a lesser extent, Europe forced them to do so. Part of the explanation, of course, was that with the Soviet Union's collapse, the liberal order gained significant prestige. But much of the explanation lies in the fact that countries feared that if they did not play by the rules set by the West, they would be deprived of aid, investment, technical cooperation, and opportunities to trade -- and, in extreme cases, might be threatened with sanctions and military force.

If this explanation wasn't clear in the 1990s, it is clear now. As the United States loses power, it has become obvious that no one else will guarantee the peaceful settlement of disputes, enforce human rights, or ensure that international criminals are tried and convicted. Indeed, the one exception among the collapsing pillars of the liberal order -- international trade -- proves the rule. The United States, Europe, Japan, and China are the four great trading blocs, and they cooperate with each other because they know that if anyone reverts to protectionism, others will retaliate. The system functions because it never depended solely on enforcement by the United States. The United States is just one of several countries that enforce the rules through the threat of mutual retaliation.

Put another way, the liberal order that was born with the Soviet Union's collapse rested on a fiction: that all nations were equal and submitted to the same rules because they reflected universal human values. In reality, of course, the rules were Western rules, and they were enforced largely by the United States, which was no one's equal. Today, the fiction has been exposed, and the world order looks increasingly like the one that reigned during the 19th century. In this order, a small group of "great powers" sets the rules for their relations with each other and interacts under conditions of rough equality. Smaller countries survive by establishing client relationships with the great powers. The great powers compete with each other over these client relationships, but otherwise try to maintain conditions of stability that allow for trade and other forms of cooperation. The major challenge for the great powers is to ensure that competition for clients does not erupt into full-scale war. In the late 19th century, the great powers were Russia, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States. Today, they are the United States, China, Russia, and Europe.

The implications of this new-old order are significant. The great powers will settle their disputes through diplomacy (one hopes) or war, not with courts. Human rights and international justice will prevail only in the Western sphere of influence, at least until people in China and Russia decide that these ideals are attractive to them. But we can expect trade and investment to continue to flourish, as they did at the end of the 19th century up until World War I.

From this standpoint, many of today's conflicts, which seem inexplicable from the perspective of the post-Cold War order, are not hard to understand. In its disputes with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and other neighbors over various islands in the Pacific, China refuses to submit to a tribunal because its goal is not to vindicate international law, but to extend its power over its neighborhood. The same is true for Russia with respect to Georgia and Ukraine. Syria used chemical weapons against its own citizens because its government saw an advantage in doing so. President Bashar al-Assad does not fear the International Criminal Court because he enjoys the protection of Russia. North Korea provokes South Korea and the West in order to gain concessions in diplomatic negotiations; it does not fear the U.N. Security Council or the International Court of Justice because it can rely on China's support. Governments throughout the Middle East -- Egypt, Turkey, Libya, Iraq -- are cracking down on dissent because they are more worried about local disorder than about their obligations under human rights treaties. And Western powers share the fear of disorder and so will not pressure them to improve human rights.

These are the facts -- it's time for theory to catch up.

 

 

 

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/06/sorry_america_the_new_world_order_is_dead_russia_ukraine

 

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA400LI20140505?irpc=932

Ukraine moves special forces to Odessa, helicopter downed in east

By Aleksandar Vasovic and Maria Tsvetkova

ODESSA/SLAVIANSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - Pro-Russian rebels shot down a Ukrainian helicopter in fierce fighting near the eastern town of Slaviansk on Monday, and Kiev drafted police special forces to the southwestern port city of Odessa to halt a feared westward spread of rebellion.

Ukraine said the Odessa force, based on "civil activists", would replace local police who had failed to tackle rebel actions at the weekend. Its dispatch was a clear signal from Kiev that, while tackling rebellion in the east, it would vigorously resist any sign of a slide to a broader civil war.

Odessa, with its ethnic mix from Russians to Ukrainians, Georgians to Tatars a cultural contrast to the pro-Russian east, was quiet on Monday. Ukrainian flags flew at half mast for funerals of some of the dozens killed in clashes on Friday.

But in the east, fighting intensified around the pro-Russian stronghold of Slaviansk, a city of 118,000, where rebel fighters ambushed Ukrainian forces early in the day.

The Interior Ministry said five paramilitary police were killed. Separatists said four of their number had also died.

The sound of an air-raid siren could be heard in the center of Slaviansk, and a church bell rang in the main square.

Russia's foreign ministry called on Kiev to "stop the bloodshed, withdraw forces and finally sit down at the negotiating table". It also published an 80-page report detailing "widespread and gross human rights violations" in Ukraine over the past six months for which it blamed the new government and its Western allies.

CONCERNS FOR KIEV

Russia denies Ukrainian and Western charges it is seeking to undermine the country of 45 million and using special forces to lead the insurgency, as it did before annexing Crimea in March.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he feared neither side could now control forces unleashed.

"I'm convinced we are struggling against a situation that has taken on a dynamic of its own. There are groups in eastern Ukraine that are not listening to either Kiev ... or Moscow."

The self-declared pro-Russian mayor of Slaviansk Vyacheslav Ponomarev told Reuters by telephone: "(The Ukrainians) are deploying ever more forces here. Recently there was a parachute drop... For us, they are not military, but fascists."

Ukraine's Defence Ministry said rebels had shot down a military helicopter, the fourth since Friday, with heavy machine gun fire. The helicopter crashed into a river and the crew was rescued but there were no details of their condition.

Diana, 15, who lives near Slaviansk in a single-storey house at the strategic junction of the road between Kharkiv and Rostov, said she saw Ukrainian tanks fire on rebel cars. A fuel tank at a petrol station exploded and fighters fired at houses.

"My father was injured in the head by glass splinters. It's terrifying. There's just nowhere to live now. Everything is broken, our television, our computer; they shot at our car."

The violence in Odessa marked a watershed for Ukraine.

It increased fears that trouble could spread to the capital in the approach to Friday's celebrations of the Soviet victory in World War Two, an event that could kindle tensions over Kiev's relations with its former communist masters in Moscow.

Over 40 people were killed in Friday's clashes, the worst since pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovich fled to Moscow in February amid protests by Ukrainians demanding closer ties to Europe. Most were pro-Russians killed when the building they occupied was set ablaze by petrol bombs.

It is not clear who started the fire, but Moscow accuses Kiev of inciting violence.

On Sunday, hundreds besieged a police station where fellow pro-Moscow activists were held after street fighting that led up to the house blaze. Police freed 67 of them, infuriating Kiev.

"The police in Odessa acted outrageously," Interior Minister Arseny Avakov wrote on his Facebook page. "The 'honour of the uniform' will offer no cover."

He said he had sent the newly formed Kiev-1 force to Odessa after sacking the entire Odessa force leadership.

The units Avakov referred to emerged partly from the uprising against Yanukovich early this year.

That could fuel anger among the government's opponents, who accuse it of promoting "fascist" militant groups, such as Right Sector, that took part in the Kiev uprising over the winter.

Alexander, a man in his mid-20s who said he took part in the anti-Kiev actions, agreed with Avakov that police had done nothing.

"But this special new battalion, they're stormtroopers from Western Ukraine who'll be hunting our people all over the city."

ODESSA'S ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE

Loss of control of Odessa would be a huge economic and political blow for Ukraine, a country the size of France that borders several NATO countries and aspires to join the military alliance, a primary source of concern for the Kremlin.

A city of a million people, with a grand history as the cosmopolitan southern gateway for the tsars' empire, Odessa has two ports, including an oil terminal, and is a transport hub.

Many on the city's streets were shocked by the violence.

"People who brought this to our city were not and are not and will not be true citizens of Odessa," said Alexei, 40, an ethnic Russian. "We are Odessa, and this is a special place."

Rabbi Fichel Chichelnitsky, an official with Odessa's 70,000-strong Jewish community, said: "I'm hoping these deaths serve as a stern warning to everyone that this is not a game."

The chant "Odessa is a Russian city!" was heard at pro-Russian demonstrations through the weekend.

Many Russians agree. Founded by Empress Catherine the Great, it has played a key role in Russian imperial history.

Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein set scenes of a massacre of civilians during a 1905 uprising on the grand steps that sweep down to the port. The images from "The Battleship Potemkin" are among the most famous in cinema history.

Diplomacy continued over the weekend.

Germany said on Sunday it was pressing for a second meeting in Geneva to bring Russia and Ukraine together with the United States and European Union. Moscow and Kiev accuse each other of wrecking an earlier accord on April 17.

Berlin said it was doing what it could to make sure a presidential election planned for May 25 went ahead.

"The election would be not just a means for stabilization but also a strong signal for a better future for Ukraine," Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

He said a referendum planned by pro-Russian separatists in the eastern city of Donetsk, where rebels have proclaimed a "Donetsk People's Republic", would only increase tensions.

Certainly, failure by Kiev authorities to conduct the election in rebel-controlled eastern cities would give Moscow grounds to question the legitimacy of any government emerging, just as it challenges the present administration.

(Additional reporting by Ralph Boulton, Natalia Zinets and Elizabeth Piper in Kiev, Maria Tsvetkova in Slaviansk and Matt Robinson in Donetsk; Writing by Ralph Boulton; Editing by Will Waterman) nL6N0NR1KX

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/05/obamas-bloodbath-in-odessa/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=obamas-bloodbath-in-odessa

As Guilty as Anyone in Kiev

Obama's Bloodbath in Odessa

by MIKE WHITNEY

"As the building was engulfed in flames, photos posted on Twitter showed people hanging out of windows and sitting on windowsills on several floors, possibly preparing to jump. Other images showed pro-regime elements celebrating the inferno. Some jeered on Twitter that "Colorado beetles are being roasted up in Odessa," using a derogatory term for pro-Russian activists wearing St. George's ribbons."

– Mike Head, Washington responsible for fascist massacre in Odessa, World Socialist Web Site

"I think what's happening now shows us who's actually been orchestrating the process from the beginning. At first, the United States preferred to stay in the shadows, but now they've exposed themselves as the leaders of this whole process."

– Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Members of the fascist Right Sector set fire to Odessa's Trade Unions House on Friday killing 40 anti-coup activists who had retreated to the building to escape escalating street violence. Witnesses say that members of the Ukrainian security forces withdrew from the scene allowing the rightwing radicals to block the exits and firebomb the building forcing many to jump from open windows to the pavement below where they died on impact. The few who survived the fall were savagely beaten with clubs and chains by the nearly 300 extremist thugs who had gathered on the street. Much of the murderous provocation was caught on video including footage of the terrified occupants leaping to their deaths.

Just hours after the bloodbath took place in Odessa, President Obama praised the brutal crackdown in a joint-press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Obama announced that, "The Ukrainian government has the right and responsibility to uphold law and order within its territory." The president made no mention of the 40 victims who were burned alive or who jumped to their death trying to escape the fire. Nor did Obama offer his condolences to the families who lost loved one's in the Nazi-ignited blaze. Instead, the president demanded that heavier penalties be levied on Moscow for its 'defiance' in Crimea where people were allowed to choose their own future through a referendum. Here's a clip from the press conference transcript:

"We are united in our determination to impose costs on Russia for its actions, including through coordinated sanctions….And as Ukrainian forces move to restore order in eastern Ukraine, it is obvious to the world that these Russian-backed groups are not peaceful protesters. They are heavily armed militants who are receiving significant support from Russia. The Ukrainian government has the right and responsibility to uphold law and order within its territory, and Russia needs to use its influence over these paramilitary groups so they disarm and stop provoking violence… if the Russian leadership does not change course, it will face increasing costs as well as growing isolation, diplomatic and economic." (Wall Street Journal)

None of the victims of the tragedy were armed. None of them were Russian nationals. All of the people who were killed were identified as locals. There is no factual basis for Obama's allegation that the "protestors… are heavily armed militants who are receiving significant support from Russia." Obama's claims are uncorroborated nonsense, fabrications and outright lies.

According to Obama, the coup government has "the right and responsibility to uphold law and order", but (apparently) not to provide security for unarmed protestors who are burned alive by neo Nazis arsonists that perform their homicidal ritual in broad daylight while security troops look on approvingly. Do you see the flaw in Obama's reasoning?

And what prompted Right Sector goons to stage the massacre when they had never done so before? Doesn't that suggest that they must have gotten the green light from Kiev, which means, the attack must have been approved by Washington as well?

Is that where the bloody footprints lead; to the Oval Office?

Let's suppose for a minute, that the White House was involved in the Odessa bloodbath. Wouldn't that explain why the facts of the incident have not been accurately reported in any of the major media? Wouldn't that explain why Obama failed to mention the incident in his press conference, or why the White House has not issued a statement condemning the perpetrators, or called for an independent investigation, or tried to interview any of the hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw what happened and reported the facts on Russian media?

Who authorized the attack on Odessa's Trade Unions House? That's what we want to know. Why did the Ukrainian Security Services withdraw and allow the fascist thugs to burn down the Zuccotti Park-like tent city in front of the building, chase the occupants into the building, painstakingly barricade the exits, and then hurl Molotov cocktails and stun grenades through the windows until the entire edifice was engulfed in flames?

Street fighting thugs don't typically waste their time barricading exits unless it is part of a plan, a plan to create a big-enough incident to change the narrative of what is going on in the country.

But how does "changing the narrative" benefit Washington?

Well, just think of 9-11, for example: a "Pearl Harbor-type event" that changed all the rules and created the rational for curtailed civil liberties, authoritarian rule and perpetual war. Someone benefited from those changes, didn't they?

Indeed. But how does that apply Ukraine and the Odessa tragedy?

Let's say that Obama and his neocon advisors wanted to conceal what they're really up to. Let's say they felt they needed an excuse to justify NATO expansion, to block further EU-Russian economic integration, and to transform Ukraine into an anarchic, ungovernable failed state controlled by external powers. Let's say Obama's goals are not really altruistic after all, that he doesn't really give a damn about democracy or freedom; that the real motive is the "pivot to Asia", the dismemberment of the Russian Federation, the seizing of vital resources, and the control of China's growth. So how does one achieve those goals without hoodwinking the public?

They don't. Hoodwinking the public is an essential part any aggressive, imperialistic strategy, which is why western media has been embedded into the US Command Structure. The roll of propaganda is critical to the shaping of public opinion, garnering support for unpopular wars and policies, concealing the crimes of crooked politicians and outlaw corporatists, and diverting attention from the illicit, expansionist marauding of the Imperial state. In this case, Obama would rather propagate the fictitious narrative of an impending civil war then let people know what his real objectives are. The Odessa massacre fits perfectly into this strategy.

The incident suggests that deep ethnic and ideological differences are brewing just below the surface ready to explode at any minute into a full-blown civil war. But are they? The number of fascists in the country is actually quite small, probably just a few thousand altogether. That's certainly not enough to incite a civil war. But, of course, the coup government can amplify their importance by giving them a free hand to carry out their murderous rampages, just as the media can magnify their importance by portraying their barbarous behavior as a symptom of deeply-rooted ethnic antagonisms that threaten to bubble up and rip Ukrainian society apart.

And that's what they've done, isn't it? The imposter government and the media have taken the rogue actions of a small group of bloodthirsty misfits, and patched together a story of a state that is on the fast-track to disintegration.

This isn't the first time the US has tried to pull something like this off. In 2006, the Bush administration used a similar tactic in Iraq. That's when Samarra's Golden Dome Mosque was blown up in an effort to change the public's perception of the conflict from an armed struggle against foreign occupation into a civil war. Bush wanted to use psy-ops (psychological operation) to shift attention away from US causalities (from an effective Sunni-led resistance) to a fictitious religious war between Sunni and Shia. The bombing of the third most sacred shrine in Islam, was expected to provide the Pearl Harbor-type event that would make the new narrative seem credible.

The media, of course, pushed the civil war trope as expected, even though the story unraveled some years later in an investigative piece that popped up in the New York Times. Here's a blurb from the article titled "One Year Later, Golden Mosque still in Ruins" by Marc Santora:

"A caretaker at the shrine described what happened on the day of the attack, insisting on anonymity because he was afraid that talking to an American could get him killed. The general outline of his account was confirmed by American and Iraqi officials.

The night before the explosion, he said, just before the 8 p.m. curfew on Feb. 21, 2006, on the Western calendar, men dressed in commando uniforms like those issued by the Interior Ministry entered the shrine.

The caretaker said he had been beaten, tied up and locked in a room.

Throughout the night, he said, he could hear the sound of drilling as the attackers positioned the explosives, apparently in such a way as to inflict maximum damage on the dome". (NY Times)

Clearly, if the men were men dressed in "commando uniforms like those issued by the Interior Ministry", then the logical place to begin an investigation would be the Interior Ministry. (which was working hand in glove with US Intelligence agencies.) But there's never been an investigation and the caretaker has never been asked to testify about what he saw on the night of the bombing. However, if he is telling the truth, we cannot exclude the possibility that paramilitary contractors (mercenaries) or special-ops (intelligence) agents working out of the Interior Ministry may have destroyed the mosque to create the appearance of a looming civil war.

The Times also added, "What is clear is that the attack was carefully planned and calculated".

True again. We can see from the extent of the damage that the job was carried out by demolition experts and not merely "insurgents or terrorists" with explosives. Simple forensic tests and soil samples could easily determine the composition of the explosives and point out the real perpetrators.

The Times even provides a motive for the attack: "Bad people used this incident to divide Iraq on a detestable sectarian basis."

Precisely. The Bush administration used the incident to change the storyline from foreign occupation to civil war, thus, creating the rational for ongoing US occupation. The civil war meme provided cover for the "Salvador Option", "the Surge", massive ethnic cleansing, death squads, Abu Ghraib, and more than a decade of US-sponsored terror which turned Iraq into a decimated third world scrapheap incapable of providing food, water or security for its people. "Mission accomplished".

Now it's on to Ukraine where another set of distortions, fabrications and lies are being used to pull the wool over the public's eyes once again. This time "Hitler" Putin is the source of all the evildoing. Forget about the State Department's role in toppling the democratically-elected government in Kiev. Forget about the snipers who killed peaceful protestors in Maidan Square and who are tied to Washington's junta government. Forget about CIA Director John Brennan's visit to Kiev just hours before the first government crackdown. Forget Joe Biden's visit to Kiev just hours before the second government crackdown. Forget that, according to a report on Sunday by AFP, that:

"Dozens of specialists from the US Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation are advising the Ukrainian government…. helping Kiev end the rebellion in the east of Ukraine and set up a functioning security structure…" ("CIA, FBI agents 'advising Ukraine government': report", AFP)

Forget that Obama hasn't produced a shred of evidence to prove that Moscow is involved in the turmoil in the East. Forget that the United States has been at the center of every major conflagration in every part of the world for the last two decades. Forget about the 40 people who were incinerated in a conflict that is 100 percent Washington's doing and for which Barack Obama is personally responsible. Forget all of that and just remember this one thing: "Putin is evil. Putin is Hitler. Putin is cause of everything that's wrong in the world." Putin. Putin. Putin. Bad. Bad. Bad.

Got that?

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, summed up the feelings of many observers who've followed the outrageous developments in Odessa when he said 'the government in Kiev "bears direct responsibility, and is complicit in these criminal activities. They allowed extremists and radicals to burn unarmed people alive. And I stress that these people were unarmed … The people who justify this punitive operation… are up to their elbows in blood." (RT)

Obama is just as guilty as anyone in Kiev. Maybe guiltier.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

 

Washington Intends Russia’s Demise — Paul Craig Roberts

Washington Intends Russia's Demise — Paul Craig Roberts

Posted By pcr3 On May 2, 2014 @ 9:46 am In Articles & Columns | Comments Disabled

Washington Intends Russia's Demise

Paul Craig Roberts

Washington has no intention of allowing the crisis in Ukraine to be resolved. Having failed to seize the country and evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base, Washington sees new opportunities in the crisis.

One is to restart the Cold War by forcing the Russian government to occupy the Russian-speaking areas of present day Ukraine where protesters are objecting to the stooge anti-Russian government installed in Kiev by the American coup. These areas of Ukraine are former constituent parts of Russia herself. They were attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders in the 20th century when both Ukraine and Russia were part of the same country, the USSR.

Essentially, the protesters have established independent governments in the cities. The
police and military units sent to suppress the protesters, called "terrorists" in the American fashion, for the most part have until now defected to the protesters.

With Obama's incompetent White House and State Department having botched Washington's takeover of Ukraine, Washington has been at work shifting the blame to Russia. According to Washington and its presstitute media, the protests are orchestrated by the Russian government and have no sincere basis. If Russia sends in military units to protect the Russian citizens in the former Russian territories, the act will be used by Washington to confirm Washington's propaganda of a Russian invasion (as in the case of Georgia), and Russia will be further demonized.

The Russian government is in a predicament. Moscow does not want financial responsibility for these territories but cannot stand aside and permit Russians to be put down by force. The Russian government has attempted to keep Ukraine intact, relying on the forthcoming elections in Ukraine to bring to office more realistic leaders than the stooges installed by Washington.

However, Washington does not want an election that might replace its stooges and return to cooperating with Russia to resolve the situation. There is a good chance that Washington will tell its stooges in Kiev to declare that the crisis brought to Ukraine by Russia prevents an election. Washington's NATO puppet states would back up this claim.

It is almost certain that despite the Russian government's hopes, the Russian government is faced with the continuation of both the crisis and the Washington puppet government in Ukraine.

On May 1 Washington's former ambassador to Russia, now NATO's "second-in-command" but the person who, being American, calls the shots, has declared Russia to no longer be a partner but an enemy. The American, Alexander Vershbow, told journalists that NATO has given up on "drawing Moscow closer" and soon will deploy a large number of combat forces in Eastern Europe. Vershbow called this aggressive policy deployment of "defensive assets to the region."

In other words, here we have again the lie that the Russian government is going to forget all about its difficulties in Ukraine and launch attacks on Poland, the Baltic States, Romania., Moldova, and on the central Asian states of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The dissembler Vershbow wants to modernize the militaries of these American puppet states and "seize the opportunity to create the reality on the ground by accepting membership of aspirant countries into NATO."

What Vershbow has told the Russian government is that you just keep on relying on Western good will and reasonableness while we set up sufficient military forces to prevent Russia from coming to the aid of its oppressed citizens in Ukraine. Our demonization of Russia is working. It has made you hesitant to act during the short period when you could preempt us and seize your former territories. By waiting you give us time to mass forces on your borders from the Baltic Sea to Central Asia. That will distract you and keep you from the Ukraine. The oppression we will inflict on your Russians in Ukraine will discredit you, and the NGOs we finance in the Russian Federation will appeal to nationalist sentiments and overthrow your government for failing to come to the aid of Russians and failing to protect Russia's strategic interests.

Washington is licking its chops, seeing an opportunity to gain Russia as a puppet state.

Will Putin sit there with his hopes awaiting the West's good will to work out a solution while Washington attempts to engineer his fall?

The time is approaching when Russia will either have to act to terminate the crisis or accept an ongoing crisis and distraction in its backyard. Kiev has launched military airstrikes on protesters in Slavyansk. On May 2 Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Kiev's resort to violence had destroyed the hope for the Geneva agreement on de-escalating the crisis. Yet, the Russian government spokesman again expressed the hope of the Russian government that European governments and Washington will put a stop to the military strikes and pressure the Kiev government to accommodate the protesters in a way that keeps Ukraine together and restores friendly relations with Russia.

This is a false hope. It assumes that the Wolfowitz doctrine is just words, but it is not. The Wolfowitz doctrine is the basis of US policy toward Russia (and China). The doctrine regards any power sufficiently strong to remain independent of Washington's influence to be "hostile." The doctrine states:

"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power."

The Wolfowitz doctrine justifies Washington's dominance of all regions. It is consistent with the neoconservative ideology of the US as the "indispensable" and "exceptional" country entitled to world hegemony.

Russia and China are in the way of US world hegemony. Unless the Wolfowitz doctrine is abandoned, nuclear war is the likely outcome.

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Article printed from PaulCraigRoberts.org: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org

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http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/05/02/washington-intends-russias-demise-paul-craig-roberts/

The Ukrainian Civil War has started

The Ukrainian Civil War has started.

The massacre in Odessa and other acts of violence in the east of Ukraine on the behest of the western backed junta in Kiev crossed the Rubicon. Now it is a proxy conflict with zero easy answers. By the end of this calendar year (maybe as easy as August) Ukraine may cease to be a sovereign state in any meaningful sense.

The illegitimate use of force by the illegitimate regime in Kiev (aka "Nuland's Plan") has no political solutions and is counting on its western allies to come to its aid. It is probably safe to say Washington is preparing some kind of lethal aid package as I write this. There are numerous and reliable reports western mercenaries and contractors are already on the ground.

To thwart Kiev's "militia assault" on the east and south I suspect Russia will (through proxies) supply what is ever necessary to protect civilian populations. Keep in mind events being played out in Ukraine is a domestic political issue for Russia. The Kremlin simply can't walk away. In the meantime, the east and south Ukraine have read the writing on the wall: the Kiev junta is more than willing to spill blood. I cannot see how the east and south will ever trust Kiev again.

Additional thoughts:

Ukraine's oligarchs are the only "winners" in all of this. Their economic and financial fiefdoms could very easily turn into unrecognized statelets.

Note that the "Washington Consensus" going epileptic over all this, while the rest of world remains large quiet about Ukraine.

The planned presidential election is a farce. It will be impossible to conduct a poll under current and worsening conditions.

The economy is in free fall. The inked IMF deal will be very difficult, if not impossible, to implement. Time is against the Kiev junta – and it is painfully aware of this.

More western sanction against Russia – there is only one sensitive sector and it's banking. (Depending on how banking sanctions are adopted, it impossible we could see Russian money in the west flee back to Russia – interesting boomerang!)

The global security order that come into place at the end of the Cold War is in tatters. Moscow is now the officially the enemy (again). However, in this environment Russia has options. This is an important moment of the "Global South.)

Peter Lavelle

 

Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)

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Cold War Again: Who's Responsible?

Stephen F. Cohen | April 1, 2014

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Barack Obama meets with Vladimir Putin during the June 2013 G8 Summit in Northern Ireland. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

The East-West confrontation over Ukraine, which led to Moscow's annexation of Crimea but long predated it, is potentially the worst international crisis in more than fifty years—and the most fateful. A negotiated resolution is possible, but time may be running out.

A new Cold War divide is already descending in Europe—not in Berlin but on Russia's borders. Worse may follow. If NATO forces move toward western Ukraine or even to its border with Poland, as is being called for by zealous cold warriors in Washington and Europe, Moscow is likely to send its forces into eastern Ukraine. The result would be a danger of war comparable to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

Even if the outcome is the non-military "isolation of Russia," today's Western mantra, the consequences will be dire. Moscow will not bow but will turn, politically and economically, to the East, as it has done before, above all to fuller alliance with China. The United States will risk losing an essential partner in vital areas of its own national security, from Iran, Syria and Afghanistan to threats of a new arms race, nuclear proliferation and more terrorism. And—no small matter—prospects for a resumption of Russia's democratization will be terminated for at least a generation.

Why did this happen, nearly twenty-three years after the end of Soviet Communism, when both Washington and Moscow proclaimed a new era of "friendship and strategic partnership"? The answer given by the Obama administration, and overwhelmingly by the US political-media establishment, is that President Vladimir Putin is solely to blame. The claim is that his "autocratic" rule at home and "neo-Soviet imperialist" policies abroad eviscerated the partnership established in the 1990s by Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. This fundamental premise underpins the American mainstream narrative of two decades of US-Russian relations, and now the Ukrainian crisis.

But there is an alternative explanation, one that's more in accord with historical facts. Beginning with the Clinton administration, and supported by every subsequent Republican and Democratic president and Congress, the US-led West has unrelentingly moved its military, political and economic power ever closer to post-Soviet Russia. Spearheaded by NATO's eastward expansion, already encamped in the three former Soviet Baltic republics on Russia's border—and now augmented by missile defense installations in neighboring states—this bipartisan, winner-take-all approach has come in various forms.

They include US-funded "democracy promotion" NGOs more deeply involved in Russia's internal politics than foreign ones are permitted to be in our country; the 1999 bombing of Moscow's Slav ally Serbia, forcibly detaching its historic province of Kosovo; a US military outpost in former Soviet Georgia (which, along with Ukraine, was one of Putin's previously declared "red lines"), contributing to a brief proxy war in 2008; and, throughout, one-sided negotiations, called "selective cooperation," which took concessions from the Kremlin without meaningful White House reciprocity and followed by broken American promises.

All of this has unfolded, sincerely on the part of some of its proponents, in the name of "democracy" and "sovereign choice" for the many smaller countries involved, but the underlying geopolitical agenda has been clear. During the first East-West conflict over Ukraine, occasioned by its 2004 "Orange Revolution," an influential Republican columnist, Charles Krauthammer, acknowledged, "This is about Russia first, democracy only second.… The West wants to finish the job begun with the fall of the Berlin Wall and continue Europe's march to the east.… The great prize is Ukraine." The late Richard Holbrooke, an aspiring Democratic secretary of state, concurred, hoping even then for Ukraine's "final break with Moscow" and to "accelerate" Kiev's membership in NATO.

That Russia's political elite has long held this same menacing view of US intentions makes it no less true—or any less consequential. Formally announcing the annexation of Crimea on March 18, Putin vented (not for the first time) Moscow's longstanding resentments. Several of his assertions were untrue and alarming, but others were reasonable, or at least understandable, not "delusional." Referring to Western (primarily American) policy-makers since the 1990s, he complained bitterly that they were "trying to drive us into some kind of corner," "have lied to us many times" and in Ukraine "have crossed the line," warning: "Everything has its limits."

We are left, then, with profoundly conflicting Russian-Western narratives and a political discourse of the uncomprehending, itself often the prelude to war. Putin has been demonized for years, so little he says on Moscow's behalf receives serious consideration in Washington. His annexation speech, for example, was dismissed as a "package of fictions" by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright. Nothing in Washington's replies diminishes Putin's reasonable belief that the EU trade agreement rejected by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in November, and Yanukovych's overthrow in February by violent street protests, leading to the current "illegitimate" government, were intended to sever Ukraine's centuries-long ties with Russia and bind it to NATO. (Today's crisis was triggered by the EU's reckless ultimatum, despite Putin's offer of a "tripartite" agreement, which compelled an elected president of a deeply divided country to choose economically between the West and Russia, an approach since criticized by former German chancellors Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder. The EU's proffered "partnership" also included little-noticed "security" provisions requiring Ukraine's "convergence" with NATO policies, without mentioning the military alliance.)

Meanwhile, on both sides, belligerent rhetoric escalates, military forces are being mobilized and provocations mount in Ukraine's political civil war, with toughs in black masks, armed militias, "spontaneous" secessionist demonstrations and extremist statements by some of Kiev's would-be leaders. Anything is now possible—actual civil war, Ukraine's partition and worse. Tit-for-tat "sanctions" are mostly a perfunctory sidebar that only exacerbates the situation.

There is a diplomatic way out. Putin did not begin or want this crisis; among other costs, it obliterated the achievement of his Sochi Olympics. Nor did he initiate the unfolding Cold War, which was inspired in Washington years before he came to power. Western policy-makers should therefore take seriously the adage, "There are two sides to every story." Is Putin right, as he also asserted on March 18, that Russia "has its own national interests that must be taken into account and respected," particularly along its borders? If the answer is no, as it has seemed to be since the 1990s—if Putin is correct in angrily protesting, "Only they can ever be right"—then war is possible, if not now, eventually. But if the answer is yes, proposals made by Putin's foreign ministry on March 17 could be the starting point for negotiations.

Briefly summarized, those proposals call for a US-Russian-EU contact group that would press for immediate disarming of militias in Ukraine, as the Ukrainian Parliament ordered on April 1; a new federal Constitution giving more autonomy to pro-Russian and pro-Western regions; internationally monitored presidential and parliamentary elections; and a "neutral military-political" (that is, non-NATO) government in Kiev shorn of its extreme nationalist (some observers think "neofascist") ministers; and maintaining Ukrainian-Russian economic relations essential to both countries. In turn, Moscow would recognize the legitimacy of the new government and Ukraine's territorial integrity, thereby disavowing pro-Russian separatist movements well beyond Crimea, though without returning the annexed peninsula. It would also vote for a UN Security Council resolution affirming the settlement and, possibly, contribute to the multibillion dollars needed to save the country from financial collapse.

The Obama administration's reaction to Moscow's proposals, which it has barely acknowledged publicly, is less than adequate. While accepting the need for some kind of federal Ukrainian Constitution and a presidential election, the White House opposes new parliamentary elections, which would leave the existing Parliament strongly influenced, even intimidated, by its ultranationalist deputies and their armed street supporters, who recently threatened to impose their will directly by entering the building. Nor is it clear how fully Obama shares Putin's concern that militias are further destabilizing the country.

Meanwhile, the White House says Moscow should annul Crimea's annexation (a nonstarter), remove its forces on Ukraine's borders and recognize the unelected Kiev regime. Moreover, nothing the West has said suggests that it no longer intends to expand NATO to Ukraine; indeed, on March 31, NATO's political chief, echoing Krauthammer from a decade ago, declared that the military alliance's "task is not yet complete." Still worse, Brussels may use the crisis to deploy troops deeper into Eastern Europe, toward Russia.

Even if these differences narrow, would Putin be a reliable partner in such negotiations? "Demonization of Vladimir Putin," Henry Kissinger recently wrote, "is not a policy." Nor does it recall that the Russian leader has assisted US and NATO troops in Afghanistan since 2001; supported harsher sanctions against Iran in 2010; repeatedly called for "mutually beneficial cooperation" with Washington; generally pursued a reactive foreign policy; and, as a result, been accused by harder-line elements in his own political class of appeasing the West. (No, Putin is not an all-powerful "autocrat"; and, yes, there is a high-level politics around him.)

Much, therefore, now depends on President Obama. He will have to rise to the kind of leadership capable of rethinking a twenty-year bipartisan policy that has led to disaster, and do so in Washington's rabid anti-Putin, Russophobic atmosphere. There is a precedent. Three decades ago, America's most Cold War president ever, Ronald Reagan, sensing in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev enough in common, resolved to meet him halfway, despite protests by close advisers and much of his own party. Together, those two leaders achieved such historic changes that both believed they had ended the Cold War forever.

 

Read Next: Reporter Dimiter Kenarov recounts getting assaulted by Cossacks in Simferopol [2].

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Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/article/179119/cold-war-again-whos-responsible

Links:
[1] https://subscribe.thenation.com/servlet/OrdersGateway?cds_mag_code=NAN&cds_page_id=122425&cds_response_key=I12SART1
[2] http://www.thenation.com/article/179027/why-i-was-attacked-cossacks-reporting-crimea

 

Putin: Washington behind Ukraine events all along, though flying low

Published time: April 29, 2014 19:26
Edited time: April 29, 2014 20:33

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Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Minsk, on April 29, 2014. (AFP Photo / Alexey Druzhinin)

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The US has been behind the Ukrainian crisis from the beginning, but was initially flying low, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. He added that if sanctions continue, Russia will have to reconsider who has access to key sectors if its economy.

"I think what is happening now shows us who really was mastering the process from the beginning. But in the beginning, the United States preferred to remain in the shadow," Putin said, as quoted by RIA Novosti.

Putin stated that since the US has taken a lead role in resolving the political crisis in Ukraine, it is "telling that they originally were behind this process, but now they just have emerged as leaders" of it.

The "Maidan cookies" policy paves the way to a broader crisis, Putin warned, referring to US officials showing up in central Kiev and encouraging protesters during demonstrations.

"It is necessary to understand that the situation is serious and try to find serious approaches to the solution," he said.

Putin said that he has called on Kiev to start an all-Ukrainian dialogue, adding that other countries should not be blamed for the crisis.

"[They should] treat equally the rights of those living in other areas of Ukraine, first of all, I mean, the east and southeast, establish a dialogue, find a compromise," he told journalists while speaking about the measures necessary to put an end to the crisis. "Here's what you need to do; searching for the guilty outside Ukraine is wrong."

Regarding the last row of sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and the EU, Vladimir Putin said he sees no need for counter sanctions.

"We would very much wish not to resort to any measures in response," he told reporters. "But if something like that continues, we will of course have to think about who is working in the key sectors of the Russian economy, including the energy sector, and how."

At the same time, the US and EU sanctions will not harm the Eurasian integration process, which is meant to lead to the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union, based on a Customs Union and common economic space among Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, he said.

http://rt.com/news/155732-putin-usa-behind-ukraine-crisis/

'Canada out of touch on Ukraine', by Scott Taylor

 

 Esprit de Corps

 

 ON TARGET: Canada out of touch on Ukraine

Scott Taylor
Published April 27, 2014 - 4:43pm
Last Updated April 28, 2014 - 9:59am

 

A Russian soldier patrols near an army vehicle in a field near the Ukrainian border at Novoshakhtinsk, in Russia's Rostov region, on Monday. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

As the political drama continues to unfold around the crisis in Ukraine, Canada remains among the most strident voices stirring up the tension.

Wiser heads would argue that without any skin in the game, Canadian politicians can beat their war drums with wild abandon, knowing there will be little in the way of domestic consequences regardless of what develops.

For western European countries, the situation is an entirely different kettle of fish. At present, the European Union relies on Russian imports for approximately 40 per cent of current demand. Any full-scale embargo against Russia would trigger a retaliatory stoppage of oil and natural gas exports that would immediately cripple the manufacturing sector in Germany and France.

While there is no doubt that such actions would bite deeply into the profit margin of Russia's Gazprom oil and gas company, I believe the impact of lengthy queues at gas pumps and stalled economies across Europe would generate more political fallout in the short term.

Then, of course, there is the question of this crisis developing into an actual shooting war between Russia and the NATO alliance. God forbid that this ever comes to pass, but it is easier to see why those living on the potential battlefield seem far more eager to find a peaceful solution than Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.

Harper and Baird have made it quite clear that they fully support the interim Ukrainian government in Kyiv, and they have both likened Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea to that of Adolf Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938.

On March 6, Harper and Baird also took the bizarre measure of expelling nine Russian military officers (who were in Canada on language training) with just 24 hours notice.

Closer to my home, literally, on April 7, Harper and Baird declared Lt.- Col. Yury Bezler, assistant military attache at the Russian Embassy, to be persona non grata. Bezler was not given an explanation for his expulsion, but he was given two weeks to pack up his young family and leave the country.

In the interest of full disclosure, just 36 hours before he was expelled, Bezler and his lovely wife Valentina were dinner guests at my home. At a subsequent farewell party on the eve of his departure, Bezler showed a wisdom beyond his 35 years of age when he stated, "A time of crisis is when dialogue is imperative; it is not a time to be cutting ties."

Last week, it was Jason Kenney, Canada's immigration minister, who decided to throw his weight into the fray and join Harper and Baird in their bear-baiting of Russia. In announcing that Canada will send 500 observers to monitor next month's residential elections in Ukraine, tough guy Kenney said, "I hope that Moscow notices."

The message Kenney believes he is conveying is that Canada will stand behind "free and fair" elections in Ukraine and that will, of course, frighten the freedom-hating Kremlin.

Adding to the standard propaganda line that Canada is supporting freedom and democracy, Kenney stated: "The government in Moscow continues with the laughable notion that Viktor Yanukovych is the president of Ukraine."

While it is true that Yanukovych was ousted following violent protests in Kyiv and a subsequent act of the Ukrainian parliament, he is in fact the last elected president.

Yanukovych defeated his rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, in 2010 following two rounds of voting that were monitored by international observers, including 66 Canadians. The advance polls had predicted a victory by Yanukovych despite a drop in popularity in his eastern Ukraine support base.

His eventual success was attributed to more people voting against Tymoshenko rather than voting for Yanukovych. In the five presidential elections held since Ukraine's independence in 1991, the deep division within the country has seen voters vacillate between pro-western and pro-Russian leaders, always with narrow margins of victory.

Contrary to frightening Putin and the Kremlin with his legion of election observers, Kenney could be in for a shock come election day. Some 8.3 million Ukrainian citizens are not just pro-Russian, they are ethnic Russians, and many of those living in eastern and southern Ukraine see resource-rich Russia as a more solid solution for Ukraine's collapsed economy than a precarious and reluctant European Union.

Baird declared early on in this crisis that Canada was not a referee but a player in this game. That may be so, but it is clear that Harper, Baird and Kenney don't have a clue as to the rules of this game, let alone what is at stake.

 

http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1203584-on-target-canada-out-of-touch-on-ukraine?utm_source=website

 

 

http://www.4thmedia.org/2014/04/15/washington-drives-the-world-to-war-cia-intervention-in-eastern-ukraine/

Washington DRIVES The World To WAR CIA INTERVENTION in Eastern Ukraine

The CIA director was sent to Kiev to launch a military suppression of the Russian separatists in the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine, former Russian territories for the most part that were foolishly attached to the Ukraine in the early years of Soviet rule. 

Washington's plan to grab Ukraine overlooked that the Russian and Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine were not likely to go along with their insertion into the EU and NATO while submitting to the persecution of Russian speaking peoples.  Washington has lost Crimea, from which Washington intended to eject Russia from its Black Sea naval base. Instead of admitting that its plan for grabbing Ukraine has gone amiss, Washington is unable to admit a mistake and, therefore, is pushing the crisis to more dangerous levels.

If Ukraine dissolves into secession with the former Russian territories reverting to Russia, Washington will be embarrassed that the result of its coup in Kiev was to restore the Russian provinces of Ukraine to Russia.  To avoid this embarrassment, Washington is pushing the crisis toward war.

The CIA director instructed Washington's hand-picked stooge government in Kiev to apply to the United Nations for help in repelling "terrorists" who with alleged Russian help are allegedly attacking Ukraine. In Washington's vocabulary, self-determination is a sign of Russian interference. As the UN is essentially a Washington-financed organization, Washington will get what it wants.

The Russian government has already made it completely clear some weeks ago that the use of violence against protesters in eastern and southern Ukraine would compel the Russian government to send in the Russian army to protect Russians, just as Russia had to do in South Ossetia when Washington instructed its Georgian puppet ruler to attack Russian peacekeeping troops and Russian residents of South Ossetia.

Washington knows that the Russian government cannot stand aside while one of Washington's puppet states attacks Russians.  Yet, Washington is pushing the crisis to war.

The danger for Russia is that the Russian government will rely on diplomacy, international organizations, international cooperation, and on the common sense and self-interest of German politicians and politicians in other of Washington's European puppet states.

For Russia this could be a fatal mistake. There is no good will in Washington, only mendacity. Russian delay provides Washington with time to build up forces on Russia's borders and in the Black Sea and to demonize Russia with propaganda and whip up the US population into a war frenzy.  The latter is already occurring.

Kerry has made it clear to Lavrov that Washington is not listening to Russia. As Washington pays well, Washington's European puppets are also not listening to Russia. Money is more important to European politicians than humanity's survival.

In my opinion, Washington does not want the Ukraine matters settled in a diplomatic and reasonable way. It might be the case that Russia's best move is immediately to occupy the Russian territories of Ukraine and re-absorb the territories into Russia from whence they came. This should be done before the US and its NATO puppets are prepared for war.

It is more difficult for Washington to start a war when the objects of the war have already been lost. Russia will be demonized with endless propaganda from Washington whether or not Russia re-absorbs its traditional territories. If Russia allows these territories to be suppressed by Washington, the prestige and authority of the Russian government will collapse. Perhaps that is what Washington is counting on.

If Putin's government stands aside while Russian Ukraine is suppressed, Putin's prestige will plummet, and Washington will finish off the Russian government by putting into action its many hundreds of Washington-financed NGOs that the Russian government has so foolishly tolerated.  Russia is riven with Washington's Fifth columns.

In my opinion, the Russian and Chinese governments have made serious strategic mistakes by remaining within the US dollar-based international payments system. The BRICS and any others with a brain should instantly desert the dollar system, which is a mechanism for US imperialism. The countries of the BRICS should immediately create their own separate payments system and their own exclusive communications/Internet system.

Russia and China have stupidly made these strategic mistakes, because reeling from communist failures and oppressions, they naively assumed that Washington was pure, that Washington was committed to its propagandistic self-description as the upholder of law, justice, mercy,and  human rights.

In fact, Washington, the "exceptional, indispensable country," is committed to its hegemony over the world. Russia, China, and Iran are in the way of Washington's hegemony and are targeted for attack.

The attack on Russia is mounting.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/04/14/washington-drives-world-war-paul-craig-roberts/