Good for the Gander: Ukraine’s Demise Accelerates (Part 2)

 RT is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government <—Note Youtube's Ministry of Truth little pigeon poop to supposedly protect us, children, from those insidious Russkies...who might plant incorrect ideas in our little unsullied brains. How good of them!—Editor

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Muzychko was killed on March 25^th, in a raid on the Three Carp Café in Barmaky by members of the Sokil (Falcon), the interior ministry’s special task force. Some witnesses say he was pulled from his car, handcuffed, and then shot in the heart twice. The interior ministry, after saying he was killed in a shootout when police returned fire, settled on a suicide story, that “he had shot himself in the heart [twice?] as police tried to bring him to the ground after a chase.”²⁷(Here’s a link to what purports to be the killing of Muzychko captured on surveillance video. As you might expect, it’s difficult to make out exactly what is happening in it.)

Right Sector had no doubt about what happened. Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh, himself now Deputy Chief of the National Defense and Security Council and a declared presidential candidate, called it "Our brother-in-arms Oleksandr Muzychko's murder,” carried out by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov as part of the “counterrevolutionary pressure on maidan and Right Sector as the vanguard of our revolution.” Yarosh announced: "We cannot silently accept the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's active counterrevolutionary activities. In this connection, we demand Interior Minister Arsen Avakov's immediate dismissal, and we demand the arrest of the Sokil special task force commander and all those guilty of [Muzychko's] murder.”

As Andrew Higgins points out in the New York Times: Muzychko’s militancy “struck a chord with some ordinary Ukrainians, who wonder when Ukraine’s revolution will bring tangible benefits.” Right Sector and other neo-fascists stormed the parliament vowing to "take revenge on Avakov for the death of our brother," calling for Avakov’s resignation and the arrest of all agents involved in the killing of Muzychko, and for a "second maidan." As the Times put it, a lot of Ukrainians saw his killing as a “‘pre-ordered hit’ orchestrated by establishment forces,” who wanted to silence an uncompromising rebel who wanted to oust not only Mr. Yanukovych, but an entire class of politicians and civil servants he viewed as irredeemably corrupt.” Higgins quotes one “veteran Ukrainian nationalist”: “This is an unfinished revolution and he [Muzychko] wanted to carry it through to its logical conclusion.”²⁸

Avakov, for his part, held firm. His interior ministry and the SBU (Ukraine's domestic intelligence agency) had previously demanded that all maidan activists hand in illegal weapons, and he now called armed militants "bandits," suggested banning Right Sector, and ordered arrests of many of their militants.

As Interior Minister Avakov is a member of the Fatherland Party, controlled by America’s sweetheart, Yulia Tymoshenko, this looked like the beginning of the turf war in which Western-approved, well-coiffed, oligarchs of the respectable right would attempt to show their wolfsangel-wearing comrades who’s really the boss. Was prying Sashko Bilyi’s Kalishnikov from his cold, dead hands a message from Yulia, via Avakov, to Dmytro and his Right Sector: What happened in the maidan stays in the maidan. Time for a conscious uncoupling. If so, Dmytro’s response, via his street posse, was sharp: We’re still in the maidan. “Until the end.”²⁹

Did this mark the beginning of the end of the mutually-instrumental marriage during the winter games in the maidan between the western-backed oligarchic elite, whose only real goal was the EU/IMF program, and the populist neo-fascist movements, who are focused on a program of purified ethnic Ukrainian nationalism, but are quite willing to take up the fight against corruption, privilege, and social penury that is the real concern of most people? An end to this dramatic alliance, which itself diverted attention from the fundamental contradictions that affect the social future of the country?

I thought it was. I thought we were in for a hell of a fight. I also had a pretty good idea of who would win it: As Sashko Bilyi learned, and as his death was meant to teach others, guys who strut around in camo waving their rifles usually don’t stand a chance against gentlemen and women in bespoke suits, who command whole armies, and the banks that pay them. Usually, suits beat camo.

Usually. In this case, however, the neo-fascists have gained a lot of credibility and traction. Svoboda and Right Sector might be hard to break up. Both factions share the same mass constituency, based in the same stridently right-wing nationalist mythology that has been promoted by oligarchic governments themselves for twenty years. Most importantly, the populist neo-fascists have “struck a chord with some ordinary Ukrainians” who see that they share the deep suspicion that the corrupt oligarchs and international elite are only out to continue screwing the country. I wish the Ukrainian socialist left had a serious presence, but right now, who else do “ordinary Ukranians” see who might complete what they know to be an “unfinished revolution“?

So it looked like the oligarchs and their Euro-American sponsors would have to go to the mattresses, and do a whole lot of nasty wet work, mobilizing all the reinvigorated agents of state-sanctioned violence, Three-Carp style. Easy enough to portray it as a righteous campaign against fascists—who were now to be noticed and rejected—in a way that would, again, win the quick assent of Western liberals and the Western media. Of course, it would also be a diversion—another cover for the less telespectacular, but real and incessant, anti-populist and anti-democratic campaign to entrench the strict authoritarianism of the neo-liberal state, without the embarrassing wolfsangel. It’s the kind of thing we’ve seen, for example, in “anti-Islamist” campaigns in Arab countries.

It seems now, however, that the oligarch-fascist divorce is on hold. Call it a trial reconciliation, until the east is retaken. Since eastern Ukrainians are as willing and capable of occupying buildings, arming themselves, and resisting the armed forces of the state as their western compatriots, and, since the regular army—which the elected Yanukovych government was not, but the unelected new government is, wiling to send against its own people—seems to be reluctant to fire on those people, it’s necessary to call on the hard cases. Time for the suits to call on the camos.

So Right Sector has moved 150 or so militants into Slavyansk, which looks like it’s becoming the central point of contention in the east. Right Sector has also moved its main headquarters to the eastern city of Dnepropetrovsk, in order to “closely monitor” developments. There, they’ve organized a new paramilitary squadron of 800 fighters. This will link up, presumably, with the new “special battalion” of “local patriots” formed by Igor Kolomoysky, the oligarch appointed as governor of the region by the new Kiev regime. These are part of a new structure of fighting forces outside of the regular army that include a 60,000-man National Guard “recruited from ‘activists’ in the anti-Russian protests and from military academies,” under the control of Svoboda leader, Andriy Parubiy.

Right Sector leader Yarosh says: “We coordinate all of our actions with the leadership of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Security service of Ukraine.” Interior minister Avakov is on board, speaking of groups like this as comprising: “The new structure of special divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs…the answer to saboteurs, ‘green little men’ and to the other gangs tasked with attacking statehood and integrity of Ukraine.”

So the oligarchs and the neo-fascists are forming a common fighting strategy for eastern Ukraine. They even have a social program! Oligarch-governor Kolomoysky’s deputy, after “thinking a lot about events in Donetsk and Lugansk,” has called for “a revolution of the poor, the rebellion of tired and desperate people, unheard by the government”—by which he means paying off the “poor” rebels who turn in their weapons ($1000 for a Kalashnikov) or evacuate government buildings ($200,000). The capitalist dream: the “revolution” will be cashed in.³⁰

 

The Eastern World, It Is Exploding…

All of this complicated maneuvering of forces is because of scenes like this:

KievSendsTankstoSubdueNovorussia

(under 2 minutes)
Editor's Note: This video appears on Jim Kavanagh's site, The Polemicist, but its original version, on Youtube, has been withdrawn by the censors, already. The hand of thought control is now increasingly palpable throughout US social media. See below the notice that Google/Youtube leave behind after eliminating unwelcome information (for the oligarchs):

Nice, uh? Welcome to the Orwellian States of America.

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^{Text by Jim Kavanagh resumes here.} 

The assumption in the new Kiev government, its Western backers, and most of the world, that, Crimea aside, resistance to the new status quo would be minimal, and easily dispersed with a show of force by the Ukrainian army, turned out to be another self-delusion. Crimea might be a one-off, they thought, because Crimean resistance was purely a Russian product, an epiphenomenon of Russia’s military concerns over its naval base. Russia isn’t as interested in Slavyansk as it is in Sevastopol, so not to worry. We’ll accept a kind of neo-Yalta regarding Crimea, negotiated from on high, and show the eastern Ukrainians who’s the boss now with some armored columns and helicopter gunship flyovers. Surely eastern Ukrainians know—what Russia and all the post-Soviet states knew in the 90s, and what every Serious person in the West still knows, and every American NGO still teaches—that There Is No Alternative.

So when eastern Ukrainians stood up to it rather than laid down for it, it was clear that a lot of things had changed since email was invented. In the great movie, Burn! [If you haven’t seen it, you must.], Marlon Brando’s character said: “Ten years suddenly might be enough to reveal the contradictions of a whole century.” Well, the last twenty years have been a generation of learning about what can be expected from the ostensibly only alternative: wars and austerity, forced compliance (via the IMF and “the market”) to finance capital, and forced compliance (via bombers and drones) to American hegemony. For many of those years now, people have lived through, have been able to read and see enough alternative reports and analyses of the world, and are now primed to reject the purported inevitable.

Patrick Smith put it nicely in Salon: “The Western allies — and this always means the Americans with the Europeans in tow — have come up against a post–Cold War limit that has been lying out there in the middle distance since the triumphalist 1990s. The neo-liberalization of planet Earth is not a go.”³¹ At least not without a fight.

Let’s consider what we’ve seen in confrontations like the above in eastern Ukraine. Demonstrators telling reporters: “People came out of the village and stood in front of the tanks because they do not want them in their village,” and telling soldiers, “You are fulfilling criminal orders”; soldiers who “lack the heart” to fire on their own people, and who say “I am a soldier. I protect the people. I won’t shoot you.” In short, citizens disarming and turning back their national army—which was sent to crush their resistance by a unelected government that had designated them as “terrorists”—without firing a shot or setting anyone on fire.³²

Isn’t this the kind of once-in-a-generation sight that would astound with joy anyone who proclaims a belief in “democracy”? Isn’t this a remarkable display of popular resistance, at least as remarkable as anything we saw on the maidan?  These eastern Ukrainian uprisings are clearly popular and widespread, and are using similar tactics of occupation and resistance as were used by the maidan insurrectionists—with less violence, and without the wolfsangel. Good for the gander, no?

^{And yet, the NYT reporter who recorded the quotes in the paragraph above calls this an “insidious mix of unconventional tactics.” And let’s remember the American president, a few months ago, “Urge[d] Ukraine's military not to get involved in a conflict that must be resolved politically,”33  and, wag of the finger and all, spoke thusly to Ukraine’s elected government about what Daddy “the leader of the ‘free world’” expects of them (9 seconds): (This by Obama is of course not censored)}

Then, after cringing at how sick sovereign nations must be of patronizing American leaders who lecture them like disobedient children, let’s marvel at how that same leader now has his highest diplomatic and intelligence officials endorsing his now-favored, unelected, Ukrainian government’s characterization of their citizen protesters as “terrorists,” and giving material and political support to that government’s use of its military in “a conflict that must be resolved politically,” under the guise of an “anti-terrorist” campaign. Nothing “insidious” about that. Tip of the hat, not wag of the finger.

Should we be surprised by the resistance of eastern Ukrainians? Not how we expected them to behave? The revolt of eastern Ukraine reveals, once again, the dangerously foolish arrogance of neocon American imperialism. Apparently it did not occur to the Nulands and Kerrys and other architects of the American empire, whose leader seems to have deluded himself into believing that the Kiev government was “duly elected” [!],³⁴ that eastern Ukrainians—who are not sorry the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany, have not been blessed with the education in “democracy” provided by Western billionaires and NGOs, and don’t like crooks or fascists—would be shocked and repelled by the overthrow of their democratically-elected (in a “good and competitive election”³⁵) government by a coalition of oligarchs, Kiev liberals, Europhile austerians, and neo-fascists.

Apparently, these doyens of democracy did not understand, or simply assumed they could ignore, the specific contours of Ukrainian politics and culture, including the fact that, as Patrick Cockburn points out: “Every election in Ukraine since …1991 has shown that the country is almost equally divided between pro-Russians and pro-Westerners with each side capable of winning closely fought elections.”³⁶

Apparently, American regime changers could not anticipate that eastern Ukrainians would not only reject the insult to their democratic rights represented by the Kiev coup, but would also foresee, and resist, the threat to the industrial heartland and their livelihood within, represented by the IMF program. As AFPnoted, in its paean to the new “free market efficiencies” the IMF program will produce: “One of Yatsenyuk's main outstanding worries is that higher gas prices and limited state subsidies will most dramatically impact the big steel mills and other heavy industries that dot the heavily Russified southeast.”³⁷ That’s why, as Robert Parry points out: “eastern protesters have said they are resisting the imposition of power from Kiev, which has included the appointment of billionaire ‘oligarchs’ as regional administrators, and … a harsh austerity plan from the International Monetary Fund that will make their hard lives even harder.”³⁸

Apparently, American democracy promoters figured that eastern Ukrainians would be down with the oligarchs appointed to rule them by the new unelected Kiev government, and eager to vote for presidential candidates like America’s Top Oligarch (and unindicted co-conspirator), Yulia, who, when asked: “What should we do now with the three million Russians that stayed in Ukraine?” (reportedly) replied: “They must be killed with nuclear weapons.”³⁹

I think Cockburn has it about right: “It was also self-deceptive and irresponsible for EU and US officials either not to see or not to care about the explosive consequences of backing the takeover of an unelected pro-Western government in Kiev, propelled into office by groups including extreme ultra-nationalists, and then to treat it as if it has total legitimacy.” This is another result of the “false belief by outside powers that they could win cheap victories, and a failure to appreciate that their chosen partner locally was a self-interested faction with many enemies.”⁴⁰

The rebellion in eastern Ukraine is the result of deep divisions in Ukrainian society that were dramatically exacerbated by the Maidan coup, which was itself supported—and, to a great extent, politically managed—by the United States. To pretend that the eastern uprising was conjured up by Russia is, as Cockburn describes it, “dangerous self-deception.” It’s also a way of diverting attention from the ways in which US neocon policy disrupts already-fragile societies.

American leaders were “surprised” by the tumultuous reactions in eastern Ukraine because for them, as Patrick Smith puts it: “Ukraine was never about Ukraine... Ukraine was merely the next job” in “the spread of the neoliberal order on a global scale, admitting of no exceptions.” That’s the project to which America’s “foreign policy cliques remain wholly committed,” and it doesn’t admit to much nuance about national specificities. If it we can sell it in the beltway, they figure, we can sell it everywhere.

In other words, once again, with its trademark arrogance and ignorance, America has intervened in a foreign country to achieve its agenda, and the regime change that it wants, ignoring—or, again, dismissing as insignificant—the specific internal tensions within the country it seeks to “correct.”

The Sunni-Shia divide in Iraq? The Sunni-Shia-Alawite-Christian tensions in Syria? The balance of secular and fundamentalist religious forces in Afghanistan, Libya, and throughout the Middle East? And now the West-East division in Ukraine? The ethnic differences? The (never-to-be-ackowledged) class contradictions? Not to worry. We’re here to color you democratic. We’ll dissolve all your internal divisions in the acid of “democracy”—which really means integrating you into the US-dominated neo-liberal capitalist order, an “international community” in which all US-compliant cats are painted “democratic” gray.  We’re bringing you our freedoms. Isn’t that what everybody wants?

And when some significant section of the population fights back against the new, American-approved regime? Well, they’re just “dead-enders” and “terrorists.”

Mediaocrisy

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]articularly precious is the complaint, now ubiquitous in the American commentariat, that eastern Ukrainians are being fooled into their resistance by the “relentless propaganda” of Russia Today (RT).  Really, the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government was achieved with the help of $5 billion of American government money and “five years’ worth of work and preparation,” and with the personal visit to and endorsement of the Kiev insurrectionists by the Assistant Secretary of State and other representatives of the American government; it was achieved after being fed years of missionary education in America’s version of inevitable capitalist “democracy” provided by Western liberal billionaires (Soros, Omidyar), congressionally-funded Institutes (NED, IRI, NDI, etc.), and the State Department.⁴¹ It was also nourished by the relentless praise showered upon the maidan rebels by the entire Western media establishment and echoed from the stages of FOX, MSNBC, and the Academy Awards, and the first thing the new American ambassador did in August was to fund an online television outlet to support the maidan uprising.⁴² After this complex propaganda matrix, whose reach and power no other country or force in the world can touch, was put at the service of the Kiev insurrectionists, the US government and media are now going to complain that RT is on the air? They’re going to say that eastern Ukrainians are standing in front of tanks because Abby Martin told them to?

This doesn’t pass the laugh test. Is RT a media outlet with a product that’s circumscribed by a particular national agenda?  Yes, as is the New York Timesand the rest of that immensely more powerful Western propaganda matrix. RT has as much right to tell the story its way as does the New York Times. Kiev insurrectionists and eastern Ukrainian separatists, and a world audience, will listen to both, and their actions will be influenced, but not determined, by one or the other.

The US is complaining because there are now enough other channels of information and analysis in the world to compete seriously with those which are committed, whether explicitly or implicitly, to the American agenda. To cite Patrick Smith again, referring to outlets like RT and Al Jazeera, which he finds people around the world increasingly turning to: “The West’s monopoly on perspective is collapsing….The monopoly on consciousness the West has long enjoyed is also drawing to a close.”

Deal with it. Shouldn’t American progressives agree that: “This is a good sign. A multiple world lives only in multiple perspectives, even as multiplicity is deadly to the neoliberals”?

Really, anybody who thinks that, say, the NYT, is intrinsically more trustworthy than RT must have forgotten the outright lies the former has endorsed and propagated—from the Gulf of Tonkin to Iraq WMDs to the Syrian chemical attack, to, in this case, the NYT story last week that purported to “prove,” with photos, the existence of “masked” Russian spies in Ukraine—until two days later the photographer spoke up, and the Times had to had to admit the story was false.⁴³ RT has Abby Martin; the NYT has Roseanne Roseannadanna Judith Miller. Never mind.

Regarding the American media’s coverage of Ukraine, I must agree that: “You need a machete these days to whack through the thicket of misinformation, disinformation, spin, propaganda and straight-out lying that daily envelopes the Ukraine crisis like kudzu on an Alabama telephone pole,”⁴⁴ and that it’s “the most despicable misrepresenting in the public media of anything that I’ve ever seen.”⁴⁵  In the bizarro world of American journalism, “chaos and danger” in the Ukraine began when eastern Ukrainians took to the streets and seized government buildings. The Kiev chaos that came before “can be forgotten as irrelevant to the case,” and the only “extraordinary propaganda campaign” in play is that which results from “a new brazenness on the part of Russian officials”⁴⁶:

[A]nd it is like so totally not really fair because some people actually believe this stuff — CIA Director John Brennan being in Kiev, for instance … Subtext: Please stop believing the Russians when they mention things such as Brennan’s Kiev visit. … it only looks as if the Russians have a more sustainable account of the Ukraine crisis.⁴⁷[emphasis in original]

History and propaganda begin and end when the righteously brazen American government says it does.

Unfortunately for the American regime, too many honest observers like Smith, who has had a prestigious career in establishment journalism (The International Herald Tribune, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Nation, five books), can see that “The more I scrutinize it, the more the American case on Ukraine is held together with spit and baling wire,” and “The Russian take in the Ukraine crisis is more truthful than the artful dodge Washington attempts.” How unfair. So we’ll refuse to answer the RT correspondent when she asks a perfectly reasonable question about the Brennan and Biden visits.

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Who Didn’t Start The Fire

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]merica’s regime-change architects also dismissively ignore the inevitable effects of their projects on the countries and peoples that neighbor or have close relations with the country being “corrected.” Changing one regime means changing a web of geopolitical relationships. As Cockburn remarks: “[S]tates do not exist in isolation. Occupy them – as happened in Kabul and Baghdad – or become the predominant influence, as the US and EU have been doing in Kiev, and you transform the political geography of a whole region.”

Whatever one thinks of the Iranian regime, Iran did not start the Iraq war. It gained by it, and adjusted its geopolitical strategy in reaction it, but it was reacting, as any nation would, to profound changes that were forced upon the region by the United States and its Allies. To say that is not in any way to endorse the Iranian regime.

Similarly, despite the bizarre narrative now being pumped out by the American media, Russia did not start the Ukraine fire. It is ludicrous to believe that “chaos and danger…would not exist except that Russian propaganda created them.”Russia did not spend five billion dollars over many years to produce the regime change it wanted in Kiev. It did not send its diplomats and parliamentarians to cheer on, and literally feed, a rebellion. It did not spend twenty years adding America’s neighbors to its military alliance, and encroaching that alliance steadily towards America’s borders. It’s the US and western capital that “induced a convulsion to shake a nation loose.”⁴⁸ Blaming Russia for the consequences of this policy is like blaming Iran for the Iraq war.

Russia is now reacting to events in a neighboring state, part of its historical territory, that is crucial to its defense and energy industries, the home of millions of its citizens. Any nation—and certainly the United States—would reactvigorously to such upheaval:

There is no question that if the roles of the United States and Russia were reversed, Washington would be threatening to intervene against a pro-Russian regime in its neighborhood. …Is there any question that if Russia somehow backed a putsch to install a client regime in Mexico City, which sent the army to crush opposition protests along the US-Mexico border and threatened to annihilate US citizens with nuclear weapons, Washington would intervene?⁴⁹

The US, let’s not forget, has brazenly claimed the right to prevent any political changes that threaten its energy interests in the Middle East, thousands of miles away. Good for the gander?

Is Russia trying to steer events in a radically-changing Ukraine in directions that minimize harm to itself?  Is it politically and materially supporting the pro-Russian population of eastern Ukraine?  It would be astounding if it weren’t!  Let’s see: British MI6 and Defence Intelligence agents are “on the ground” in eastern Ukraine, although—pinky swear—“unarmed.”⁵⁰ The CIA—the head of the CIA—made an attemptedly clandestine, but he assures us non-interventional, visit to the new unelected Kiev government a few days before it launched its first “anti-terrorist” offensive. It may just be that he was the only CIA agent to show up in the last few weeks, and that the Kiev government is not coordinating its strategy closely with American and British intelligence. And the mercenaries from Greystone (aka Academi, aka Blackwater) who have been reported arriving in eastern Ukraine may have come to visit the Potemkin Steps.⁵¹ So, is every vaguely concerned party from countries thousands of miles away permitted to see after its interests in Ukraine, while we expect Russia to watch from the sidelines, obediently passive?

This has nothing to do with whether Russia is wonderful or Putin evil. These are childish distractions. Putin is watching Russia’s defense and energy interests being undermined, and its citizens, ethnic confrères, and historical supporters coming under the rule of a regime that they oppose, and that hates—I mean despises—everything Russian. Here’s the darling of western liberals, Saint Yulia, again, in an undisputed rant:

It’s about time we grab our guns and kill go kill those damn Russians together with their leader… I will use all of my means to make the entire world raise up, so that there wouldn’t be even a scorched field left in Russia…[I’m ready to] grab a machine gun and shoot that motherfucker [Putin] in the head.⁵²

Again, change “Russians” to “Americans,” “Putin” to “Obama,” put those words in the mouth of the influential leader of a pro-Russian coup in Mexico who was attacking Americans and their supporters as “terrorists,” and tell me the US government wouldn’t get all up in it. Intellectually-honest, adult observers should be able to understand, as Michael Hudson puts it:

You can be a bad guy and still have your position forced and you can still be attacked. … even if you don’t like Vladimir Putin, you can say Vladimir Putin can also be …forced into a situation where he has to protect himself and his own position….It’s absolutely crazy. It’s as if Obama has decided to reinvigorate class war by taking the side of the Nazis in World War II, by these neo-Nazi groups that said “We’re sorry, the wrong side won World War II. We wished Germany conquered Russia”. Well, you can imagine the effect this has on the Russians.⁵³

Russia hasn’t had an elaborate, decades-long program for regime change in Ukraine, or for invading eastern Ukraine, but it may well find it difficult to stand by and watch the regular Ukrainian army and/or neo-fascist militias overrun what it considers to be the righteous resistance of ethnic Russians to an undemocratic and aggressively unfriendly regime that’s a stalking horse for NATO.

It’s the US and the West who have bitten off more than they expected, and created a mess they do not know how to solve. They’ve got a government that’s hated by half its people, is losing a lot of its territory to separatist movements, and is rated at risk of “imminent default.” The IMF has no answer to this except austerity, subsidy cuts, and more debt. The US has no answer except sanctions that will hurt its European partners more than anyone,⁵⁴ and some American companies (Boeing, for example) quite a bit. And it can of course make empty—or worse, serious, and in any case, dangerous—military threats. The US is very good at that. It’s going to be a little difficult, however, to persuade Americans, who are fed up with wars based on packs of lies, and who can’t get a $10 an hour minimum wage, to fight with their lives and/or treasure for Yulia and Right Sector.

In fact, the US and the West need Russia—to whom Ukraine owes a lot of money, which the IMF will have to pay off—to help solve the Ukraine problem they have created for themselves. And they are, unbelievably, demanding that Russia do so, at whatever cost to its own interests. A little harsh in tone, but Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts are on point:

So Mr. Obama and the Secretary of State [tell] Russia [it] must give its gas free to the Ukraine. It must give a half-a-billion dollars a month free and not charge anything so that Ukraine will have enough money to buy military arms and invite NATO in to put hydrogen bombs on our border, so we can bomb you if you don’t do what we say.⁵⁵ (Hudson)

Washington is demanding that the Russian government pull the rug out from under the protesting populations in eastern and southern Ukraine and force the Russian populations in Ukraine to submit to Washington’s stooges in Kiev. Washington also demands that Russia renege on the reunification with Crimea and hand Crimea over to Washington so that the original plan of evicting Russia from its Black Sea naval base can go forward. In other words, Washington’s demand is that Russia put Humpty Dumpty back together again and hand him over to Washington. This demand is so unrealistic that it surpasses the meaning of arrogance. The White House Fool is telling Putin: “I screwed up my takeover of your backyard. I want you to fix the situation for me and to ensure the success of the strategic threat I intended to bring to your backyard.”⁵⁶ (PCR)

The hubris here is matched only by the confusion. While Obama & Co are trying to play some kind of liberal-interventionist-neocon-neoliberal 10-dimensional chess on the Starship Free Enterprise (ignoring the Prime Directive), Putin is calmly gathering his forces at the center of the board on planet Earth.

I have no brief for Putin or his Russia, which is mired in what I consider its own defects of oligarchy-lite capitalism and reactionary if not-so-fascist nationalism. This is more like the pre-World War I tension between competing great powers than any epic battle for democratic socialism or national liberation. Of course, that means there’s still a risk of a serious conflict. And I do think that Andrew Levine is onto something, when he says that: “Putin is no less pro-capitalist than anyone else in the liberal fold.” I also agree with Levine’s shrewd perception that “he is as fine a conservative leader as one can be in today’s world,” perhaps “the closest approximation the world now has to the great conservative leaders of the past.”⁵⁷ Within the world of capitalist power, we’re seeing an object lesson in political realism versus the neocon imperial delusion that drives the American leadership.

Too bad that “No one can entertain any illusion … that America’s conduct abroad stands any chance of changing of its own in response to an intelligent reading of the emerging post–Cold War order.”⁵⁸

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Blind Man’s Bluff

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he idea of a hot war with Russia seems surreal, and yet the danger becomes more palpable every day. A situation has arisen in which “sides” have been formed, and it looks like one side will have to suffer a clear setback, something that the parties involved are loathe to accept.

On one side is the Kiev government, allied with the EU/IMF-US/NATO—a very complicated relationship.

It’s important to recognize how the “US/NATO” part of that “side” represents a surplus of American hegemony, in excess of the economic conditions required by the EU/IMF. The US is enforcing a marriage of the NATO agenda of military encirclement of Russia with the EU/IMF economic agenda. It’s a conflation that the EU accepts, even though many EU countries find it in serious tension with their independent economic and security interests (as well as their conflict-averse populations),⁵⁹ because the EU accepts its own submission to American hegemony.

The US insists on the sanctity of this marriage precisely because it wants to keep EU countries from succumbing to the allures of forming dangerously independent liaisons with the rising economic powers of Eurasia. Everyone should be aware, and wary, of the harsh particularity of the American agenda, which should be obvious by now. As Pepe Escobar says, the US is “trying to scotch the full economic integration of Eurasia.”⁶⁰ Mike Whitney warns: “This is about military expansion into Eurasia, this is about pipeline corridors and oil fields, this is about dismantling the Russian Federation and positioning multinational corporations and Wall Street investment banks in Asia for the new century.”⁶¹ John Pilger refers to the US pursuing a new "manifest destiny," its “longstanding ambition to dominate the Eurasian landmass, stretching from China to Europe.”⁶²

These guys did not dream up this “longstanding ambition.” They can trace it back to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperative. In it, Brzezinski’s identified Eurasia as “the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played,” and Ukraine as a “critically important geopolitical pivot” that the US had to control, because “it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus also of challenging America.”⁶³ Because American primacy is imperative.

The US may be particularly insistent about enforcing the marriage vows between EU and NATO interests because, pace Zbig, it’s not 1997, and America’s own prodigious potency has been flagging lately. For example [continuing the metaphor], the, um, block it experienced in Syria, which has held so far, was, as I discussed in a previous post, a serious interruption in the imperial agenda. Neocons seethe with jealous rage against Putin, who was instrumental in preventing the consummation of their Syrian plans, even though adamant popular resistance, starting with England just saying No!, was the real deal-breaker. The US does not want the impasse in Syria, along with the hesitation over Iran, along with the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with its economic decline, along with its seeming inability to actually win anything, to add up to the real turning point in imperial karma many of us hope it is. It needs to know that Europe is committed to this relationship.

At any rate, the Kiev provisional government is both entirely dependent on, and fundamentally undermined by, this EU-NATO ménage, into whose embrace it has thrown itself. One the one hand, the oligarchs have cast their lot with the EU-IMF agenda, and absolutely need the backing of NATO to maintain their precarious hold on power; on the other hand, they absolutely need that backing because the insurrection that brought the EU-IMF program into power has infuriated half the country, and it won’t be too long before the EU-IMF program itself will infuriate the other half.

It’s too bad, because another destiny for Ukraine might have been possible.  As Escobar suggests, Ukraine could have developed its “borderland” identity in quite productive ways: “In a sane, non-Hobbesian environment, a neutral Ukraine would only have to gain by positioning itself as a privileged crossroads between the EU and the proposed Eurasian Union – as well as becoming a key node of the Chinese New Silk Road offensive.” But that’s not in the American primacy program, and, “Instead, the Kiev regime changers are betting on acceptance into the EU… and becoming a NATO forward base.” Another pawn on the Grand Chessboard.

So the Kiev regime “side” is likely to be forced by US/NATO, as well as by the ultranationalist tendencies within, to forcibly defeat any separatist uprising, and crush even any “federalist” demands—or anything that smells like a concession to “Russia.” We have to understand the word “Russia” now as Ukrainian-nationalist- and American-media-speak for anything that might allow some regions to wriggle out of either the IMF neo-liberal austerity program, or the American/NATO Eurasian primacy agenda. It’s looking like the US is intent on a confrontation that will demonstrate the continued viability of its big stick, and stanch any perceived bleeding of its imperial power.

This is going to require the Kiev government to crush the eastern uprisings with all the force necessary, including unleashing the otherwise embarrassing neo-fascists and accepting overt NATO military support (arms, munitions, intelligence, drones, and special ops including mercenaries). It will be ugly and deadly—much more so than the maidan. It will severely damage the Kiev regime, and result in a broken state, with a sullen population, no part of which will get anything for it.⁶⁴

But, hey, for the US, it was never about Ukraine. Sure, the US would like—and Europe would really like—to have Ukraine as a stable, passive, and compliant field of exploitation, but if that’s not in the cards, they’ll take a broken state. The US does not want a full-on war with Russia, but civil war in Ukraine, a chaotic polity, constant tension with Russia, even sporadic guerilla actions—all that craziness can well serve the neocon imperial agenda. It will help to prevent the formation any kind of strategically significant Eurasian bloc. Better a Ukraine that’s a broken borderland than a Ukraine that’s a “privileged crossroads” in a network of Eurasian economies not subject to American primacy. Cook the goose to spite the gander.

Besides, another broken state will also justify military spending, American exceptionalism, opportunistic demonization of the Eurasian devil-of-the-day, and divert Americans’ attention from their real social problems and enemies at home. It’s a strange effect of the neocon strategy: America “wins” when everybody else loses.

Haven’t we seen this time and again—in Iraq, Libya, Syria. It’s not an accident.

I’m not saying this will really “work,” in some “sane, non-Hobbesian” way, but from their point of view this kind of upheaval has always worked to their “Hobbesian” advantage, and they are fairly convinced it will continue to do so.

On the other “side” are the eastern Ukrainian dissident populations and their only possible patron, Russia. Russia may support them, but it does not control the situation on the ground. They want to resist the government of crooks and fascists. The depth of Russia’s commitment to those people will be a key factor in what happens next. The Russians, too, are trapped by the excesses of US policy.

Putin doesn’t want or need war of any kind. He knows he would lose a direct confrontation with the US military, and any serious invasion or sustained support of an insurgency would drain Russia economically and politically. Whatever faults or ambitions Russia has, they do not produce anything like the neocon agenda.

There is an argument that Russia cannot afford to let the EU destroy and cannibalize Ukrainian industry and agriculture, or allow the US and NATO to tighten its indisputably threatening grip around the country—that now is as good a time as any to have the fight that’s inevitable, if Russia doesn’t want to agree to be a subsidiary of the American empire.

There’s the counter-argument, of course, that Russia would do just as well to let the Kiev government and its American patrons deal with a hateful and rebellious eastern population, let the costs of IMF austerity sink in across Ukraine and Europe, and let its own reasonableness pay off in the long term.

Both arguments are plausible. Neither course of action would make for a particularly “evil” Russia, and or a particularly “good” result.

The first option would require a military move to defeat any Kiev government offensive that threatened to crush the eastern protesters. It would be a strong defense of an arguably legitimate principle of self-determination and, more importantly, of the people fighting for it. It would call what may be America’sand Europe’s bluff, and be a strong challenge to America’s assumption that it can dictate the terms of primacy in Eurasia. If it’s a bluff. It would be extremely dangerous for Russia.

The second would require standing by while a Kiev government military offensive crushes the eastern protesters. It would be an immediate bloody disaster, and a long-term social disaster, for the eastern Ukrainians in revolt. (Can American liberals, who cheered on Obama’s bombing the crap out of Libya, not recognize that if there were ever a case for “humanitarian intervention,” Russia has it here?) It would also undermine Russia as a Eurasian, let alone world, power. Would it also involve a NATO-Ukrainian recapture of Crimea? Could Russia stand for that?

Since a new Kiev offensive has already begun, we will soon find out.

In any case, Ukraine loses. It was never about Ukraine.

[As this is being posted, a new Kiev offensive against the east has already begun. In a particularly horrific incident, at least 38 people have died in Odessa when the “Trade Unions House was set on fire by pro-Kiev radicals after they surrounded and destroyed the tent camp of anti-government activists that stood in front of the building.” Thirty died, “suffocated to death with smoke,” and many burned bodies were found on the upper floors.  Eight were killed jumping out of windows. According to some reports, “those who jumped and survived were surrounded and beaten by football ultras and the Right Sector.”

Using an insulting term for eastern dissidents, pro-Kiev nationalists gloated on Twitter that “Colorado beetles are being roasted up in Odessa.”⁶⁵]

Of course, there was a third alternative: Negotiate a political reconciliation in Ukraine that does not privilege the Kiev insurrectionary government, that acknowledges it was in fact the result of a movement that was not thoroughly representative. Recognize that it will have to be replaced by a regime that issues from the democratic consent of all regions, even if that means some form of federalization. Allow Ukrainians to build a new regime that is not dominated by crooked oligarchs, no matter who their foreign patrons are; that is, in fact, willing to strip the oligarchs of their political power and of the wealth of the county they have stolen; that rejects any integration with NATO and any part in a “new Cold War”; and that commits itself to negotiating economic deals that are transparent, explained carefully in advance, and designed to serve the best interests of the majority of Ukrainians, not foreign financial institutions.

Such an alternative is perfectly reasonable, and would help Ukraine. Of course, that would require the United States to relativize its own actions, to recognize that maybe it was a tiny bit reckless with the fire it lit in Ukraine, and to dampen rather than to double down on the accelerant. Unfortunately, “No one can entertain any illusion … that America’s conduct abroad stands any chance of changing of its own in response to an intelligent reading of the emerging post–Cold War order.”

It was never about Ukraine.

__________________________________
[See previous post on Kiev uprising, at Charge of the Right Brigade:Ukraine and the Dynamics of Capitalist Insurrection]

Notes and Links

1. Michael Hudson Interview,If You Can’t Tap Their Phone, How Do You Know Who To Shoot?, renegade economists | Earthsharing

2. Patrick L. Smith,Thomas Friedman, supreme toady: Also, shameless! - Salon.com

3. ‘Western financial aid won’t save Ukraine’ – former minister of economy - Reality Check - The Voice of Russia: News 

4. Elizabeth Piper, Special Report: Why Ukraine spurned the EU and embraced Russia | Reuters. Many quotes in following paragraphs from this article.

5. Michael Hudson,America’s Deceptive 2012 Fiscal Cliff

6. Michael Hudson,Anti-Russian sentiment a resource play diversion

7. Marilyn Vogt-Downey,Whither Ukraine? An Imperialist Invasion Without an Imperialist Army » CounterPunch

8. Joseph Stiglitz – an interview – Johann Hari

9. Paul Craig Roberts,Western Looting Of Ukraine Has Begun -- Paul Craig Roberts - PaulCraigRoberts.org.

10. Jack Rasmus,The Ukraine Economic Crisis » CounterPunch, and see his detailed analysis of the IMF Standby Agreement with Ukraine of March 27, Ukraine’s IMF Deal Means Greece-Like Depression. In fact, some of the IMF money would go to Russia, to which Ukraine owes a ton for gas.

11. The IMF’s $14-$18 billion bailout for Ukraine is tied to unpopular reforms | GlobalPost

12. Ukraine to hike domestic gas prices by 50 percent to meet IMF demands | Reuters

13. IMF demands and occupation Putin - LB.ua(From an Anti-Russian Deputy)

Yatsenyuk agrees to onerous IMF terms | Новости Украины

Crimean leaders blame Kiev for selling Ukraine off for IMF loans - The Voice of Russia.

The story of how oligarchs and transnational capital have been taking over the rich black soil farmland is tragically emblematic, and a good account of it from 2013 can be found here. That takeover will accelerate dramatically when the new IMF-approved Ukrainian government allows foreigners to buy the black soil farmland that made Ukraine known as the “breadbasket of Europe.” See: Land Grabs in the Black Earth: Ukrainian Oligarchs and International Investors | Heinrich Böll Foundation.  See also, A free land market will destroy the Ukrainian village | Foundation for Effective Governance, and JP Sottile,  Corporate Interests Behind Ukraine Putsch | Consortiumnews

14. Marilyn Vogt-Downey, op. cit.

15. Ukraine’s Economy Would Have Collapsed Without Russian Aid – IMF Chief | World | RIA Novosti

16. A New Cold War? Ukraine Violence Escalates, Leaked Tape Suggests U.S. Was Plotting Coup | Democracy Now!

17. Rasmus,The Ukraine Economic Crisis 

18. Kenneth Rapoza,Washington’s Man Yatsenyuk Setting Ukraine Up For Ruin, Forbes.com

19. Rasmus,The Ukraine Economic Crisis

20. Andrew Foxall and Oren Kessler,Yes, There Are Bad Guys in the Ukrainian Government Foreign Policy.com

21. Emmanuel Dreyfus,Ukraine beyond politics - Le Monde diplomatique - English edition

22. Michael Moynihan,The Swedish Neo-Nazis ‘Volunteers’ of Kiev - The Daily Beast

23. Emmanuel Dreyfus, op. cit.

24. History News Network | Why Germans are More Ambivalent About What’s Happening in Ukraine than Anybody Else,  

Anna Rombach, Popular Discontent Grows with German Media Lies in Ukraine Crisis | Global Research

25. Max Blumenthal,Is the U.S. Backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine? | Alternet

26. See my,The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights.

27. Oleksandr Muzychko - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

28. Mystery Surrounds Death of Ukrainian Activist - NYTimes.com,

 Anna Nemtsova, Ukraine’s Unfinished Revolution, Foreign Policy,

Ukraine’s Police Crack Down on Nationalist Right Sector After Death Threats | News | The Moscow Times,

Ukrainian radical group demands Avakov’a dismissal, task force members’ arrest for killing its activist, Interfax Ukraine

29. Jeanne Whalen,Protesters Still Hang Out Around Kiev 'Maidan,' Hanging On to Weapons Too - WSJ.com

30. Right Sector arrives in Slavyansk to suppress protests - The Voice of Russia,

Ukraine’s far-right leader moves HQ to the east, forms new squadron — RT News

31. Patrick L. Smith,Liberal media myth officially dead: Brazen propaganda, historical amnesia and the New York Times - Salon.com
32. [1]Andrew E. Kramer, Ukraine Push Against Rebels Grinds to Halt - NYTimes.com

33. Obama Calls On Viktor Yanukovych To Remove Security Forces From Kiev Immediately| AP via Huffington Post

34. Obama Calls Coup Government in Kiev "Duly Elected" - YouTube

35. Ukraine's presidential election meets most international commitments | OSCE

36. Patrick Cockburn,Ukraine: From Crisis to Catastrophe » CounterPunch

37. The IMF’s $14-$18 billion bailout for Ukraine is tied to unpopular reforms | GlobalPost

38. Robert Parry,Prepping for a Ukrainian Massacre. See also, In Ukraine, a crisis of bullets and economics - The Washington Post

39. Time to grab guns and kill damn Russians – Tymoshenko in leaked tape — RT News. 

“Reportedly,” because Tymoshenko has acknowledged the conversation took place, but has denied making this particular statement about the three million Russians. She claims it was the one element of the tape inserted by the FSB. Decide what you think is credible regarding that. Her interlocutor, parliamentarian Nestor Shufrych, told another story, saying: "The conversation didn't take place." So, at least one of these Kiev government figures is lying.

Note here, also, the echo of Svoboda’s nuclear rearmament fixation. I think that restoring the Ukraine as a nuclear power is a another key element, within revanchist Ukrainian nationalism, of restoring national pride.

40. Patrick Cockburn,Ukraine: From Crisis to Catastrophe

41. See Steve Weissman’s great analysis of the intense and continual American nurturing of Ukrainian regime change, inMeet the Americans Who Put Together the Coup in Kiev.

42. Patrick L. Snith,Liberal media myth officially dead

43. Robert Parry,NYT Retracts Russian-Photo Scoop | Consortiumnews

44. Patrick L. Smith,Propaganda, lies and the New York Times: Everything you really need to know about Ukraine - Salon.com

45. Michael Hudsoninterview, op. cit.

46. David M. Herszenhorn,Russia Is Quick to Bend Truth About Ukraine - NYTimes.com

47. Smith,Liberal media myth officially dead

48. Smith,Thomas Friedman, supreme toady

49. Alex Lantier,Kerry’s statement on Ukraine: A lying brief for war - World Socialist Web Site

50. Ukraine crisis: Head of MI6 warns military intervention in Ukraine risks spiralling into ‘all-out war’ with Russia - Mirror Online

51. US mercenaries deployed in Southern Ukraine, and Lanier,Kerry’s statement on Ukraine | WSWS

52. Time to grab guns and kill damn Russians – Tymoshenko in leaked tape — RT News

53. Michael Hudsoninterview, op. cit.

54. Moody’s downgrades Ukraine to ‘default imminent’ — RT Business, France Plays Russian Roulette: Why Europe Is Scared Of Sanctions Against Russia | Zero Hedge

55. Michael Hudsoninterview, op. cit.

56. Paul Craig Roberts,Moving Closer To War -- PaulCraigRoberts.org

57. Andrew Levine,Putin’s Demonizers »CounterPunch.  And I agree that: “the gap between real conservatives and the self-styled ones around us is extreme; they might as well be different species.“

58. Smith,Thomas Friedman, supreme toady

59. Ukraine Crisis Exposes Gaps Between Berlin and NATO - SPIEGEL ONLINE

60. Pepe Escobar,Robocop NATO Dreams of War » CounterPunch

61. Mike Whitney,Directing War Strategies from the Shadows » CounterPunch

62. John Pilger,John Pilger: Nato’s Action Plan in Ukraine is Right Out of Dr Strangelove

63. www.takeoverworld.info/Grand_Chessboard.pdf, See also: Whitney and Escobar, and Chris Ernesto,The Eurasian Chessboard: Brzezinski Mapped Out “The Battle for Ukraine” in 1997 | Global Research

64. Notice, I did not mention the western Ukrainian, EurophileMaidan liberals. That’s because they count for nothing. Their purported concerns will be subsumed within the real Western neo-liberal agenda, the oligarchs who actually run the country will ignore them, the NGOs will go away, the western media will forget about them, and a whole lot, if not most, of the Ukrainian people will end up hating them and what they have wrought. Ask the Russian liberals how they’ve fared since the Yeltsin “revolution.”

65. 38 People Killed As Radicals Set Office On Fire In Ukraine's Odessa, InformationClearingHouse.info