February 10, 2014
“F….Europe!” Such were the words used in Kiev, Ukraine by Victoria Nuland, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe.
Nuland was referring to the European Union’s reluctance to get too deeply involved in Ukraine’s current strife or to impose sanctions on the former Soviet republic. But Nuland perfectly captured Washington’s sneering view of Europe as a collection of feeble and irrelevant banana republics.
Nuland is a prominent American neoconservative. Like her fellow neocons, she disdains Europe for being unwarlike, mildly critical of Israel, and often insufficiently responsive to Washington’s demands – or even insubordinate, like the awful French.
How delicious was it that Nuland’s pithy reference to Europe and her plans for a new western-confected government in Ukrainian – where the US insists it is not at all interfering – were picked by Russian electronic intelligence and played to the world. How dim for Madame Nuland to speak so thoughtlessly on her cell phone.
Of late, Nuland and other senior US officials have been blasting Moscow for “meddling” in Ukraine. The leaked phone recording has Nuland telling the US ambassador to Kiev which of the three opposition candidates Washington wants to run Ukraine.
Nuland’s plans for regime change in Kiev have been a godsend to Moscow, which claims the US and EU are behind the uprising in Ukraine. She has just undermined the democratic Ukrainian opposition by making them look like American puppets.
Score one for Russia’s spooks. All Nuland could do was splutter about how Russian intelligence had intercepted her cell phone. This after the US National Security Agency was revealed to be bugging the phones and email of most of Europe’s leaders. What goes around comes around.
The loud-mouthed Nuland should resign.
All this was most amusing – except that it highlighted the growing US-Russian confrontation over Ukraine that risks turning very dangerous.
A senior Russian official close to President Vladimir Putin just warned Washington to butt out of Ukraine – or else. Europe is rightfully fearful that the Ukraine crisis could cause a head-on clash by Washington and Moscow – just as the little Russia-Georgia War over Ossetia almost did in 2008.
Interestingly, during that crisis, the US rushed warships to the Black Sea. This time, US Navy warships are back again in the Black Sea under the laughable excuse they are on station to evacuate US tourists to the Sochi Olympics if violence occurs.
Day by day, we see growing rancor between the US and Russia. Most of it is unfair criticism and childish spats, but the overall effect is creating the basis for war fever. The same bickering, cheap criticism and manufactured anger created the psychological basis in Britain for the utterly catastrophic World War I. Three years later, it was repeated in the United States to whip up anti-German fever.
The US media is barraging Russia and Putin with a drumfire of negative stories. The Sochi Olympics have come in for relentless, petty attacks and low-minded carping.
Anyone who knows Russia should be in awe that the normally bumbling, disorganized Ruskis managed to get their Olympic sites finished more or less on time – and that they still remain standing. Russians usually lose a lot of early battles, but they usually end up winning wars.
So what if Russia spent billions on the Sochi Olympics. Who is Washington to criticize Moscow after pouring over $2 trillion into the stupid wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now Syria, with nothing to show but huge debts, armies of refugees, and graveyards?
America’s national security establishment – what used to be known in Britain as imperialists – is now turning its guns on Russia, aided by the US corporate media. Vlad Putin’s Russia has re-emerged as America’s number one enemy. Muslims are out. At times, the Cold War seems to be inching back. The US narrowly escaped a dangerous military clash over President Barack Obama’s intemperate rush to war over Syria.
Nuclear powers must not indulge in such school-yard squabbles. World War I, whose 100th anniversary comes this fall, began just this way.
Putin’s Russia is no Utopia, but do we really want angry, expansionist Russians again on our eastern borders? Better they focus on Olympic games and shopping sprees. Unlike us, they have not started any wars lately.
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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2014
I am in almost daily contact with friends in Ukraine. If this rebellion is being fanned by the U.S., it is only fanning an already hotly burning fire. Ukrainians are generally pissed off with the corruption that is systemic in their country. Even in the northeast of the country, where President Yanukovic has his base of support, there is rebellion. Two of Yanukovic’s previous supporters, successful businessmen with large real estate holdings, including shopping malls, put videos of the demonstrations in Kiev, on the large TV screen at one of their malls. The government shut off all of the electical power to all of the businessmens’ major real estate holdings, and then tried to arrest them on trumped up charges. They fled to Isreal before they could be arrested. And the reason that these businessmen decided to go against the current regime is that a friend and business associate of theirs, who owns a business worth about $100 million, was kidnapped and tortured in an attempt to get him to sell his business to President Yanukovic’s son, for only $35 million. The businessman was able to resist. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The last time that I was in Ukraine was shortly after the Orange Revolution. Russian security officers had threatened to kill a friend of mine who was involved in the feeding of the masses at the main Square in Kiev.
When I drove anywhere on the hi-ways, I would get pulled over in these checkpoints where I had to pay big bribes to the police just to keep them from arresting me for drunk driving even though I had had absolutely nothing to drink, zero, nada. It was their way of beefing up their income, which was about $250 per month.
If the Americans, or anyone else for that matter, can help these badly repressed people who all seem to have huge hearts, then I say, good on them.
Isn’t it time the Nobel Committee demanded that Obama has to return his unearned “peace prize”?