US and Russia fail to reach Ukraine deal on day of frantic diplomacy
John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov to resume talks on Thursday as pressure
grows on EU to pass punitive measures against Moscow
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/05/russia-us-talks-ukraine-crisis-kerry-lavrov?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2>
No War, says Putin as US Threatens Sanctions over Ukraine
As US Secretary of State arrives in Kiev with 1 billion dollar loan
package, Putin explains Russian intentions in Crimea
Published on Tuesday, March 4, 2014 by Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/03/04
The fascist danger in Ukraine
6 March 2014
A politically sinister propaganda offensive is underway in the media
to either deny the involvement of fascists in the US-backed coup in
Ukraine or present their role as a marginal and insignificant detail.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/03/06/pers-m06.html
Leaked phone call suggests opposition snipers killed Maidan protesters
6 March 2014
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/03/06/ukr2-m06.html
Amid Ukraine crisis, US launches military escalation in Eastern Europe
6 March 2014
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/03/06/ukra-m06.html
--0--
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/03-2
Published on Monday, March 3, 2014 by Consortium News
What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis
by Robert Parry
President Barack Obama has been trying, mostly in secret, to craft a
new foreign policy that relies heavily on cooperation with Russian
President Vladimir Putin to tamp down confrontations in hotspots such
as Iran and Syria. But Obama's timidity about publicly explaining
this strategy has left it open to attack from powerful elements of
Official Washington, including well-placed neocons and people in his
own administration.
The gravest threat to this Obama-Putin collaboration has now emerged
in Ukraine, where a coalition of U.S. neocon operatives and neocon
holdovers within the State Department fanned the flames of unrest in
Ukraine, contributing to the violent overthrow of democratically
elected President Viktor Yanukovych and now to a military
intervention by Russian troops in the Crimea, a region in southern
Ukraine that historically was part of Russia.
Though I'm told the Ukraine crisis caught Obama and Putin by
surprise, the neocon determination to drive a wedge between the two
leaders has been apparent for months, especially after Putin brokered
a deal to head off U.S. military strikes against Syria last summer
and helped get Iran to negotiate concessions on its nuclear program,
both moves upsetting the neocons who had favored heightened
confrontations.
Putin also is reported to have verbally dressed down Israel's Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Saudi intelligence chief Prince
Bandar bin Sultan over what Putin considered their provocative
actions regarding the Syrian civil war. So, by disrupting neocon
plans and offending Netanyahu and Bandar, the Russian president found
himself squarely in the crosshairs of some very powerful people.
If not for Putin, the neocons - along with Israel and Saudi Arabia -
had hoped that Obama would launch military strikes on Syria and Iran
that could open the door to more "regime change" across the Middle
East, a dream at the center of neocon geopolitical strategy since the
1990s. This neocon strategy took shape after the display of U.S.
high-tech warfare against Iraq in 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet
Union later that year. U.S. neocons began believing in a new paradigm
of a uni-polar world where U.S. edicts were law.
The neocons felt this paradigm shift also meant that Israel would no
longer need to put up with frustrating negotiations with the
Palestinians. Rather than haggling over a two-state solution, U.S.
neocons simply pressed for "regime change" in hostile Muslim
countries that were assisting the Palestinians or Lebanon's Hezbollah.
Iraq was first on the neocon hit list, but next came Syria and Iran.
The overriding idea was that once the regimes assisting the
Palestinians and Hezbollah were removed or neutralized, then Israel
could dictate peace terms to the Palestinians who would have no
choice but to accept what was on the table.
U.S. neocons working on Netanyahu's campaign team in 1996, including
Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, even formalized their bold new plan,
which they outlined in a strategy paper, called "A Clean Break: A New
Strategy for Securing the Realm." The paper argued that only "regime
change" in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary
"clean break" from the diplomatic standoffs that had followed
inconclusive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
In 1998, the neocon Project for the New American Century called for a
U.S. invasion of Iraq, but President Bill Clinton refused to go
along. The situation changed, however, when President George W. Bush
took office and after the 9/11 attacks. Suddenly, the neocons had a
Commander in Chief who agreed with the need to eliminate Iraq's
Saddam Hussein - and a stunned and angry U.S. public could be easily
persuaded. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Mysterious Why of the Iraq
War."]
So, Bush invaded Iraq, ousting Hussein but failing to subdue the
country. The U.S. death toll of nearly 4,500 soldiers and the
staggering costs, estimated to exceed $1 trillion, made the American
people and even Bush unwilling to fulfill the full-scale neocon
vision, which was expressed in one of their favorite jokes of 2003
about where to attack next, Iran or Syria, with the punch line: "Real
men go to Tehran!"
Though hawks like Vice President Dick Cheney pushed the
neocon/Israeli case for having the U.S. military bomb Iran's nuclear
facilities - with the hope that the attacks also might spark a
"regime change" in Tehran - Bush decided that he couldn't risk the
move, especially after the U.S. intelligence community assessed in
2007 that Iran had stopped work on a bomb four years earlier.
The Rise of Obama
The neocons were dealt another setback in 2008 when Barack Obama
defeated a neocon favorite, Sen. John McCain. But Obama then made one
of the fateful decisions of his presidency, deciding to staff key
foreign-policy positions with "a team of rivals," i.e. keeping
Republican operative Robert Gates at the Defense Department and
recruiting Hillary Clinton, a neocon-lite, to head the State
Department.
Obama also retained Bush's high command, most significantly the
media-darling Gen. David Petraeus. That meant that Obama didn't take
control over his own foreign policy.
Gates and Petraeus were themselves deeply influenced by the neocons,
particularly Frederick Kagan, who had been a major advocate for the
2007 "surge" escalation in Iraq, which was hailed by the U.S.
mainstream media as a great "success" but never achieved its
principal goal of a unified Iraq. At the cost of nearly 1,000 U.S.
dead, it only bought time for an orderly withdrawal that spared Bush
and the neocons the embarrassment of an obvious defeat.
So, instead of a major personnel shakeup in the wake of the
catastrophic Iraq War, Obama presided over what looked more like
continuity with the Bush war policies, albeit with a firmer
commitment to draw down troops in Iraq and eventually in Afghanistan.
From the start, however, Obama was opposed by key elements of his own
administration, especially at State and Defense, and by the
still-influential neocons of Official Washington. According to
various accounts, including Gates's new memoir Duty, Obama
was maneuvered into supporting a troop "surge" in Afghanistan, as
advocated by neocon Frederick Kagan and pushed by Gates, Petraeus and
Clinton.
Gates wrote that Kagan persuaded him to recommend the Afghan "surge"
and that Obama grudgingly went along although Gates concluded that
Obama didn't believe in the "mission" and wanted to reverse course
more quickly than Gates, Petraeus and their side wanted.
Faced with this resistance from his own bureaucracy, Obama began to
rely on a small inner circle built around Vice President Joe Biden
and a few White House advisers with the analytical support of some
CIA officials, including CIA Director Leon Panetta.
Obama also found a surprising ally in Putin after he regained the
Russian presidency in 2012. A Putin adviser told me that the Russian
president personally liked Obama and genuinely wanted to help him
resolve dangerous disputes, especially crises with Iran and Syria.
In other words, what evolved out of Obama's early "team of rivals"
misjudgment was an extraordinary presidential foreign policy style,
in which Obama developed and implemented much of his approach to the
world outside the view of his secretaries of State and Defense
(except when Panetta moved briefly to the Pentagon).
Even after the eventual departures of Gates in 2011, Petraeus as CIA
director after a sex scandal in late 2012, and Clinton in early 2013,
Obama's peculiar approach didn't particularly change. I'm told that
he has a distant relationship with Secretary of State John Kerry, who
never joined Obama's inner foreign policy circle.
Though Obama's taciturn protectiveness of his "real" foreign policy
may be understandable given the continued neocon "tough-guy-ism" that
dominates Official Washington, Obama's freelancing approach gave
space to hawkish elements of his own administration.
For instance, Secretary of State Kerry came close to announcing a
U.S. war against Syria in a bellicose speech on Aug. 30, 2013, only
to see Obama pull the rug out from under him as the President worked
with Putin to defuse the crisis sparked by a disputed chemical
weapons attack outside Damascus. [See Consortiumnews.com's "How War
on Syria Lost Its Way."]
Similarly, Obama and Putin hammered out the structure for an interim
deal with Iran on how to constrain its nuclear program. But when
Kerry was sent to seal that agreement in Geneva, he instead inserted
new demands from the French (who were carrying water for the Saudis)
and nearly screwed it all up. After getting called on the carpet by
the White House, Kerry returned to Geneva and finalized the
arrangements.[See Consortiumnews.com's "A Saudi-Israel Defeat on Iran
Deal."]
Unorthodox Foreign Policy
Obama's unorthodox foreign policy - essentially working in tandem
with the Russian president and sometimes at odds with his own foreign
policy bureaucracy - has forced Obama into faux outrage when he's
faced with some perceived affront from Russia, such as its agreement
to give temporary asylum to National Security Agency whistleblower
Edward Snowden.
For the record, Obama had to express strong disapproval of Snowden's
asylum, though in many ways Putin was doing Obama a favor by sparing
Obama from having to prosecute Snowden with the attendant
complications for U.S. national security and the damaging political
repercussions from Obama's liberal base.
Putin's unforced errors also complicated the relationship, such as
when he defended Russian hostility toward gays and cracked down on
dissent before the Sochi Olympics. Putin became an easy target for
U.S. commentators and comedians.
But Obama's hesitancy to explain the degree of his strategic
cooperation with Putin has enabled Official Washington's still
influential neocons, including holdovers within the State Department
bureaucracy, to drive more substantive wedges between Obama and
Putin. The neocons came to recognize that the Obama-Putin tandem had
become a major impediment to their strategic vision.
Without doubt, the neocons' most dramatic - and potentially most
dangerous - counter-move has been Ukraine, where they have lent their
political and financial support to opposition forces who sought to
break Ukraine away from its Russian neighbor.
Though this crisis also stems from the historical division of Ukraine
- between its more European-oriented west and the Russian-ethnic east
and south - neocon operatives, with financing from the U.S.-funded
National Endowment for Democracy and other U.S. sources, played key
roles in destabilizing and overthrowing the democratically elected
president.
NED, a $100 million-a-year agency created by the Reagan
administration in 1983 to promote political action and psychological
warfare against targeted states, lists 65 projects that it supports
financially inside Ukraine, including training activists, supporting
"journalists" and promoting business groups, effectively creating a
full-service structure primed and ready to destabilize a government
in the name of promoting "democracy." [See Consortiumnews.com's "A
Shadow US Foreign Policy."]
State Department neocons also put their shoulders into shoving
Ukraine away from Russia. Assistant Secretary of State for European
Affairs Victoria Nuland, the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan
and the sister-in-law of the Gates-Petraeus adviser Frederick Kagan,
advocated strenuously for Ukraine's reorientation toward Europe.
Last December, Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that, to
help Ukraine achieve "its European aspirations, we have invested more
than $5 billion." She said the U.S. goal was to take "Ukraine into
the future that it deserves," by which she meant into the West's
orbit and away from Russia's.
But President Yanukovych rejected a European Union plan that would
have imposed harsh austerity on the already impoverished Ukraine. He
accepted a more generous $15 billion loan from Russia, which also has
propped up Ukraine's economy with discounted natural gas.
Yanukovych's decision sparked anti-Russian street protests in Kiev,
located in the country's western and more pro-European region.
Nuland was soon at work planning for "regime change,"
encouraging disruptive street protests by personally passing out
cookies to the anti-government demonstrators. She didn't seem to
notice or mind that the protesters in Kiev's Maidan square had
hoisted a large banner honoring Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian
nationalist who collaborated with the German Nazis during World War
II and whose militias participated in atrocities against Jews and
Poles.
By late January, Nuland was discussing with U.S. Ambassador to
Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt who should be allowed in the new government.
"Yats is the guy," Nuland said in a phone call to Pyatt that was
intercepted and posted online. "He's got the economic experience, the
governing experience. He's the guy you know." By "Yats," Nuland was
referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who had served as head of the central
bank, foreign minister and economic minister - and who was committed
to harsh austerity.
As Assistant Secretary Nuland and Sen. McCain cheered the
demonstrators on, the street protests turned violent. Police clashed
with neo-Nazi bands, the ideological descendants of Bandera's
anti-Russian Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazi SS during
World War II.
With the crisis escalating and scores of people killed in the street
fighting, Yanukovych agreed to a E.U.-brokered deal that called for
moving up scheduled elections and having the police stand down. The
neo-Nazi storm troopers then seized the opening to occupy government
buildings and force Yanukovych and many of his aides to flee for
their lives.
With these neo-Nazis providing "security," the remaining
parliamentarians agreed in a series of unanimous or near unanimous
votes to establish a new government and seek Yanukovych's arrest
for mass murder. Nuland's choice, Yatsenyuk, emerged as interim prime
minister.
Yet, the violent ouster of Yanukovych provoked popular resistance to
the coup from the Russian-ethnic south and east. After seeking refuge
in Russia, Yanukovych appealed to Putin for help. Putin then
dispatched Russian troops to secure control of the Crimea. [For more
on this history, see Consortiumnews.com's "Cheering a 'Democratic'
Coup in Ukraine."]
Separating Obama from Putin
The Ukraine crisis has given Official Washington's neocons another
wedge to drive between Obama and Putin. For instance, the neocon
flagship Washington Post editorialized on Saturday that Obama was
responding "with phone calls" when something much more threatening
than "condemnation" was needed.
It's always stunning when the Post, which so energetically lobbied
for the U.S. invasion of Iraq under the false pretense of eliminating
its (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction, gets its ire up about
another country acting in response to a genuine security threat on
its own borders, not half a world away.
But the Post's editors have never been deterred by their own
hypocrisy. They wrote, "Mr. Putin's likely objective was not
difficult to figure. He appears to be responding to Ukraine's
overthrow of a pro-Kremlin government last week with an old and ugly
Russian tactic: provoking a separatist rebellion in a neighboring
state, using its own troops when necessary."
The reality, however, appears to have been that neocon elements from
within the U.S. government encouraged the overthrow of the elected
president of Ukraine via a coup spearheaded by neo-Nazi storm
troopers who then terrorized lawmakers as the parliament passed
draconian laws, including some intended to punish the
Russian-oriented regions which favor Yanukovych.
Yet, besides baiting Obama over his tempered words about the crisis,
the Post declared that "Mr. Obama and European leaders must act
quickly to prevent Ukraine's dismemberment. Missing from the
president's statement was a necessary first step: a demand that all
Russian forces - regular and irregular - be withdrawn and that
Moscow recognize the authority of the new Kiev government. If Mr.
Putin does not comply, Western leaders should make clear that Russia
will pay a heavy price."
The Post editors are fond of calling for ultimatums against various
countries, especially Syria and Iran, with the implication that if
they don't comply with some U.S. demand that harsh actions, including
military reprisals, will follow.
But now the neocons, in their single-minded pursuit of endless
"regime change" in countries that get in their way, have taken their
ambitions to a dangerous new level, confronting nuclear-armed Russia
with ultimatums.
By Sunday, the Post's neocon editors were "spelling out the
consequences" for Putin and Russia, essentially proposing a new Cold
War. The Post mocked Obama for alleged softness toward Russia and
suggested that the next "regime change" must come in Moscow.
"Many in the West did not believe Mr. Putin would dare attempt a
military intervention in Ukraine because of the steep potential
consequences," the Post wrote. "That the Russian ruler plunged ahead
shows that he doubts Western leaders will respond forcefully. If he
does not quickly retreat, the United States must prove him wrong."
The madness of the neocons has long been indicated by their
extraordinary arrogance and their contempt for other nations'
interests. They assume that U.S. military might and other coercive
means must be brought to bear on any nation that doesn't bow before
U.S. ultimatums or that resists U.S.-orchestrated coups.
Whenever the neocons meet resistance, they don't rethink their
strategy; they simply take it to the next level. Angered by Russia's
role in heading off U.S. military attacks against Syria and Iran, the
neocons escalated their geopolitical conflict by taking it to
Russia's own border, by egging on the violent ouster of Ukraine's
elected president.
The idea was to give Putin an embarrassing black eye as punishment
for his interference in the neocons' dream of "regime change" across
the Middle East. Now, with Putin's countermove, his dispatch of
Russian troops to secure control of the Crimea, the neocons want
Obama to further escalate the crisis by going after Putin.
Some leading neocons even see ousting Putin as a crucial step
toward reestablishing the preeminence of their agenda. NED president
Carl Gershman wrote in the Washington Post, "Ukraine's choice to join
Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian
imperialism that Putin represents. Russians, too, face a choice,
and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near
abroad but within Russia itself."
At minimum, the neocons hope that they can neutralize Putin as
Obama's ally in trying to tamp down tensions with Syria and Iran -
and thus put American military strikes against those two countries
back under active consideration.
As events spin out of control, it appears way past time for President
Obama to explain to the American people why he has collaborated with
President Putin in trying to resolve some of the world's
thorniest problems.
That, however, would require him to belatedly take control of his own
administration, to purge the neocon holdovers who have worked to
sabotage his actual foreign policy, and to put an end to
neocon-controlled organizations, like the National Endowment for
Democracy, that use U.S. taxpayers' money to stir up trouble abroad.
That would require real political courage.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 3.0 License.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for
the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The
Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his
sons, Sam and Nat. His two previous books are Secrecy & Privilege:
The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History:
Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'.
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