Ukraine/Russia: Is the US in the wrong?

General General Discussion
1

I offer this article not because I agree with it but because it offers a viewpoint 180 degrees opposite of what most people in the US and the west probably believe:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger

Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his “updated summary of the record of US foreign policy” which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.

Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington’s planned seizure of Russia’s historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.

Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a CIA theme park – run personally by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev, with dozens of “special units” from the CIA and FBI setting up a “security structure” that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup.

Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev junta’s defence secretary, Andriy Parubiy – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party – boasted that attacks on “insurgents” would continue. In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow “trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation”, according to William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama’s grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its “remarkable restraint” after the Odessa massacre. The junta, says Obama, is “duly elected”. As Henry Kissinger once said: “It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but what is perceived to be true.”

In the US media the Odessa atrocity has been played down as “murky” and a “tragedy” in which “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) attacked “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says”. Propaganda in Germany has been pure cold war, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warning its readers of Russia’s “undeclared war”. For the Germans, it is a poignant irony that Putin is the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe.

[b]So, is the US causing this, or at least ratcheting things up? Did the west miscalculate the likely outcome of courting Ukraine to one day be a NATO member? Is the US and/or NATO doubling down on a situation that can only end in an ugly way?

I don’t have an opinion on this yet. I’m one to normally say “USA all the way”; however, I know that wars are not only fought for moral ideologies but also practical economic and political reasons.

What say you? Should the US/NATO/the West concede Ukraine and let Putin “win this one?” Or is this as necessary a fight as the one against Hitler right before World War II?

The answer may be the most important one facing civilization right now.[/b]

2

When it comes to an intelligent and coherent foreign policy, the US has been wrong for a good long while now.

http://kunstler.com/cluster****-nation/whose-client-state/

"My country can cry all it likes about yesterday’s referendum vote in eastern Ukraine, but we set the process in motion by sponsoring the overthrow of an elected Kiev government that was tilting toward Russia and away from NATO overtures. The president elected in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych, might have been a grifter and a scoundrel, but so was his opponent, the billionaire gas oligarch Yulia Tymoshenko. The main lesson that US authorities have consistently failed to learn in more than a decade of central Asian misadventures: when you set events in motion in distant lands, events, not policy planners at the State Department, end up in the driver’s seat.

And so now they’ve had the referendum vote and the result is about 87 percent of the voters in eastern Ukraine would prefer to align politically with Russia rather than the failing Ukraine state governed out of Kiev. It’s easy to understand why. First, there’s the ethnic divide at the Dnieper River: majority Russian-speakers to the east. Second, the Kiev government, as per above, shows all the signs of a failing state

…The USA and its NATO allies would apparently like to have Ukraine become a client state, but they’re not altogether willing to pay for it. This kind of raises the basic question: if Russia ultimately has to foot the bill for Ukraine, whose client state is it? And who is geographically next door to Ukraine? And whose national histories are intimately mingled?

I’m not persuaded that Russia and its president, Mr. Putin, are thrilled about the dissolution of Ukraine. Conceivably, they would have been satisfied with a politically stable, independent Ukraine and reliable long-term leases on the Black Sea ports. Russia is barely scraping by financially on an oil, gas, and mineral based economy that allows them to import the bulk of their manufactured goods. They don’t need the aggravation of a basket-case neighbor to support, but it has pretty much come to that. At least, it appears that Russia will support the Russian-speaking region east of the Dnieper."

3

Yes the policy makesrs in D.C. miscaculated big time. They wanted to bring NATO right to Putin’s doorstep and cut him off from the Med by taking away his port at Sevastipol and he decided not to have any of it and took steps to keep his port. He could’ve annexed all of eastern Ukraine about ten times by now but he hasn’t, why? Because their economy is total shit and the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. Annexing eastern Ukraine would hurt Russia’s economy and if it actually became a shooting war with NATO it would be even worse for Putin. All his talk about protecting ethnic Russians in Crimea was total BS, he could care less about them. But he has to have that port.

This is a damned tragedy for the people of Ukraine as they are caght between to nations that could not give any less of a shit about them…

4

Very naive to think that a government should “do good” everywhere.

Democracy, human rights, women’s rights, the rule of law… these are foreign concepts in many parts of the world. Whenever and wherever convenient, the US has backed these horses. In other instances, they’ve backed the horses that offered good deals on cheap oil (and other things), even if it meant going against those values we should hold so dear to our hearts.

Oil is a basic necessity. If we don’t get the oil we need when we need it, the economy grinds to a halt. No gas or diesel means no food at your local grocery store, no police and firemen when and where they are needed, no medications in pharmacies and local hospitals, no vaccines, crops rotting in the fields, no grain to fed the cattle, cattle starving in ranches. The value of cash would also come crumbling down. It is a strategic necessity. Good or bad, we need it.

Of course the Ukraine situation can be seen from different viewpoints. I kind of agree that eastern Ukrainians are probably hopping mad at having their preferred candidate ousted. In a perfect world, both sides of this fiasco are at fault. It really doesn’t matter who is right or wrong. What matters is who is left alive to tell the story in 20-30 years, because the truth is told by the victors, not by the just.

5

We have us a winner…

6

Our nation’s “leaders” don’t give a shit about other nation’s sovereignty.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wants to see more than hashtag messages voicing displeasure over the abduction of nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls by the terrorist group Boko Haram. He wants to see U.S. troops go into Nigera and rescue the girls, even if it means doing so without permission from the Nigerian government.

‘If they knew where they were, I certainly would send in U.S. troops to rescue them, in a New York minute I would, without the permission of the host country,’ McCain said Tuesday. Referring to Nigeria’s president, McCain added: ‘I wouldn’t be waiting for some kind of permission from some guy named Goodluck Jonathan.’…

‘I would not be involved in the niceties of getting the Nigerian government to agree, because if we rescue these people, there would be nothing but gratitude from the Nigerian government, such as it is,’ McCain said.

7

Some interesting facts and info to ponder; http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/ Here’s another one; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4dJRnI-X8Q

8

That all sounds good in a vacuum, but not so good when either you or all those that you love need to be sacrificed to feed the machine.

Second point, it isn’t oil. It is power that is the commodity at stake. We spent $5B to destabilize the Ukraine. We don’t want it, we just want to **** with it as a means to an end - just like Syria.

The power come through the same play book we have always used - we destabilize, we loan them money on terms we know they can not repay - backed by the US taxpayer, when the US banks stand to loose in the default, we recapitalize and re amortize the loan - a perpetual state of servitude. Sweetheart deals for American corps, on the ground politians that are merely pointmen.

This has been the standard play since 1913, and it is b/c of the FED that the most powerful are able to **** over everyone else.

Here is some shit that flew by the masses today:

WH says ‘No conflict of Interest’ - Biden’s son named to board of Ukraine gas company
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/white-house-denies-conflict-hunter-biden-article-1.1791465

Meanwhile ‘US Taxpayers go on the hook for $1 billion in Ukraine Bonds (which are designed to be defaulted on)’

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-14/ukraine-just-issued-1-billion-bonds-backed-us-taxpayer

9

Warring for the new world order just causes death to those that should know better.

10

Double post - delete

11

It’s stunning how much the excuse of “local corrupt leadership” is used by countries as an excuse to start running things give that Obama and Putin are perhaps two of the most corrupt world leaders. Does that mean justification exists for China to show up and start fixing things? Not that I’m suggesting China isn’t also run by a terribly corrupt leadership.

Every time we get involved with some country thinking we are going to improve it, we usually make it worse. Countries have to fix themselves. Every time Obama tries to flex his influence, he mostly demonstrates how weak he actually is and encourages those he’s hoping to deter.

The cynic in me thinks world leaders have already decided “spheres of influence” and all of this is just “scripted political drama” for media consumption. But if that is true, Obama has certainly given away most of the store in return for nothing.

12

According to Zbigniew Brzezinski that is pretty much how it works. While the major players are always looking for dominance over a region, the conflict happens in otherwise meaningless pivot states (Hint - gas to the EU via Syria in order to f*ck w/ Russia). The saddest part is it is the bankers that sit in the middle and finance all sides, from the ramp up to the conflict, through the war, and then the reconstruction. The lives of the little people mean less than nothing. It is evil.

13

Lots of good points in this thread. I especially agree it is the central bankers stirring the shit pot and reaping the harvest if loans and permanent debt and servitude. I think the 13 years in Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed the brazen callousness and senselessness of our puppet-masters. It is tiresome the meddling they do and expect us to get whipped up in a lather at the mention of democracy and corrupt leaders when they themselves make mockery of every good thing.

14

I think we should plainly evaluate risk vs. gain when making a decision to interfere with a foreign government or get ourselves directly involved in an armed conflict.

Questions that should be asked:

  1. Was the U.S. the victim of an attack on our soil?
  2. Would our failure to intervene inhibit our ability to feed our citizens?
  3. Would our failure to intervene place the ability of our citizens to cloth themselves or heat their homes financially out of reach?
  4. If we fail to act now, is it a tactical error in which we will have to commit more resources to regain lost ground in the future?

The older I get, the more I think like an isolationist.

15

I realize that Putin’s Russia is trying to expand its influence again, but I’m skeptical of what I’m hearing and reading. I’d tend to keep a warry eye toward festering antisemitism that we’'re starting to read about. One thing that I think would make a difference would be to offer to sell Europe American-produced natural gas. That would stimulate our economy and ding Russia’s. It might further cause Western Europe to grow some testosterone-producing glands.

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk

16

Oh yes, I do understand that it wasn’t oil this time. A broke client state on the border with a major regional power is useful to have. I can understand this, particularly if you are planning to implement ABM technology there at some point anyway.

I do understand how we are standing to probably be left holding the bill if our adventure in stirring the pot fails. Big multinational banks will always win, no matter what.

17

^^^ And for what it’s worth, I got your points too