Saturday, February 11, 2017

Neocons Use Ukraine To Reverse Trump Plan and Wage Global War - By Joachim Hagopian

After three weeks as president, Donald Trump has turned out to be “same as the old boss,” definitely when it comes to US foreign policy. The short explanation is every US president merely plays a puppet figurehead role, taking his orders directly from the New World Order elite and their neocon surrogates, fast moving us towards one world government tyranny that will be the ultimate outcome of a simultaneous collapse of the global economy timed with the launch of another world war.
Just as there was no difference between the same neocon interventionist aggression displayed under Obama and the war crime-ridden Bush-Cheney administration, President Trump is now also marching quickstep down that same seamless path towards world war as did Obama. Regardless of who or what party occupies the White House, the one constant is an aggressive foreign policy delivered by deep state neocons entrenched in Washington power for many decades now. And the neocons take their orders from the ruling elite.
Trump, the candidate promised a major shift in US foreign policy towards a far more sensible, even planet-saving, non-interventionist, “America first” approach, avoiding the constant meddling entanglements in other nations’ internal affairs that only polarizes the geopolitical chessboard towards increasing global conflict. It appeared as though the United States might finally be free of the near four decade-long bipartisan neo-conned control bent on maintaining US Empire at all cost, insisting on the status quo of unipolar sole world superpower hegemony and full frontal military dominance. The neocons refuse to live in a world where power is shared with emerging regional players Russia and China.
And since neocons are still in control in Washington, after just three weeks in the White House, it’s already disturbingly clear that the Trump presidency will be no different from the rest, racing full speed ahead, plunging the earth straight into a homicidal if not suicidal course toward World War III. Be it through escalating existing wars in Syria and Ukraine that lead to bigger wars with Iran, China and Russia, the Bush-Obama-Trump regime seems hell bent on world destruction. Meanwhile, even at home, Washington’s ever-rising authoritarian control and the violent anti-Trump mania are creating conditions ripe for even a domestic civil war to break out.
Evidence of this disastrous road we’re already traveling at breakneck speed on is overwhelming. Just the fact that Elliot Abrams, a neocon from way back to the Reagan-Bush senior-Iran Contra days is currently up for consideration as deputy secretary of state, speaks volumes that we’re about to be pushed off the doomsday cliff.
This presentation will focus on specific actions that the Trump administration has already completed that provide more than enough proof that we’re perhaps just weeks if not months away from escalating yet more catastrophic war. This analysis addresses the likelihood of imminent global war based on the three-year-old violent conflict in Ukraine ratcheting up now, and how that hotspot is being used to undermine, neutralize and effectively reverse promises that Trump the candidate made to cooperate with Putin. The bottom line is neocon forces greater than the president still holds the agenda to continue to demonize Putin in their race to global war.
Reminiscent of the tag team duo of the corporate press working in tandem with the federal government, first we had Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham over in Ukraine egging on the US illegally installed puppet neo-Nazi regime in Kiev to launch yet another offensive into the former Ukraine eastern provinces, now the Donbass region on January 2nd as a new year’s prelude of what’s to come in 2017. Then like predictable, synchronized clockwork, US mainstream media as typically represented by a February 1st Foreign Policy article was quick to claim that Putin delivered the Trump administration its first foreign policy test. The hit piece falsely charged Russia with firing off the countless rocket and artillery rounds at Ukrainian forces, killing a dozen Kiev soldiers the last few days of January. Another MSM war propaganda headline, this time Newsweek’s, read “While Trump Fiddles, Putin Steps Up The War In Ukraine.”
These articles emphasize that the renewed volley of Russian “aggression” came just one day after Trump and Putin’s hour long first phone conversation agreeing to work peaceably together as partners fighting the common ISIS/al Qaeda enemy as well as forging a plan to diminish hostilities in Ukraine. As is typical of Western press to vilify Putin, Foreign Policy conspicuously plants the notion that Putin launching artillery strikes in Ukraine has already proven he is betraying Trump’s trust.
The piece goes on to report that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) contends that Russia unilaterally stepped up its shelling against Kiev forces to the extent that after 2600 counted rounds fired on January 29th, so many came later that OSCE lost track. As far back as a decade ago Putin exposed OSCE as a propaganda front for Western aggression in Ukraine as well as throughout Eastern Europe to further its own imperialistic and geopolitical interests to encircle, isolate and weaken Russia. Of course, that has been the US foreign policy all along with both Russia and China.
The 2014 conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine after the Russian ethnic majority residing in Donetsk and Lugansk voted in a spring referendum for their independence from Ukraine, prompting the Kiev government to invade the Donbass region to oppose the freedom fighting separatists. Once again the West backing Ukraine is lined up on the wrong side of history as Kiev has engaged in ethnic cleansing and as of two years ago killed over 10,000 civilians in Donbass. In the meantime, Kiev has made repeated accusations that OSCE is failing its assigned task as a neutral monitoring observer but instead favors the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) military. This underlying dynamic may contribute to OSCE now pointing the finger at Putin as the latest aggressor, as a demonstration to Kiev and the West that it can act “impartially.”
In any case, an anonymous defense official reiterated the Pentagon’s position that it was anticipating Putin aggression in Ukraine designed to assess what he could get away with early on in the Trump administration. The US defense propagandist stated to FP:
This is all very calculated to have this open, bleeding sore on Ukraine’s body politic that will allow [Russia] to manipulate the situation and the politics of the country, and thereby keep Ukraine in this post-Soviet kleptocratic orbit.
The FP article goes on to innocuously slip in a sentence that’s clearly intended to soften Ukraine’s long planned Donbass offensive backed by US war hawks McCain and Graham, clearly violating the 2014 Minsk cease-fire agreement:
Ukrainian forces also appear to be advancing into the no man’s land separating government-controlled territory from rebel-held areas…
Reports from on the ground indicate that the real aggressor on January 28th was the Ukrainian army that began shelling DPR forces. The Kiev military moved on the offensive south of Donetsk, only to encounter minefields, in large part accounting for the couple dozen fatalities. Accusing DPR of a false flag attack was mainly to recruit Western sympathy, material support and more mercenaries for the unstable Poroshenko regime that’s steeped in political corruption and economic upheaval.
Earlier in the month the McCain-Graham envoy had promised additional support for another campaign into Donbass despite never having any legal authority, as still acting President Obama at least officially did not send them abroad. Thus, the bobsy twins may have in effect violated the Logan Act of 1799 which prohibits Americans in foreign countries operating outside presidential authority to interfere with foreign policy as set by the president. For their undermining the Trump presidency and ceaseless warmongering, even Trump called them out for their latest devious ploy to trigger World War III.
The fact that Trump has made statements during his campaign indicating that he would be open to normalizing relations with Moscow, lifting sanctions and advocates disbanding NATO poses a serious threat to the likes of the two treasonous senators and their nucleus of neocon policymakers who’ve been consistently aiming to provoke war against Russia for over three years now. Ever since the February 2014 US induced Kiev coup and a month later Putin’s legal annexation of Crimea after the ethnic Russians in Crimea voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia (which from 1783-1954 Crimea had always been part of Russia). And then even from 1954-1990, Crimea was part of the Soviet Union as a USSR state within Ukraine, but still belonged to the nation that was the USSR.
While Obama was still president and the chicken hawk senators snuck over to Ukraine, Kiev then waited till after Trump’s inauguration before unleashing its greenlighted invasion further into Donbass. The Kiev military incursion has far more to do with testing what Western-backed Ukraine can get away with on both Trump and Putin’s watch than any Putin testing of Trump waters. After all, Putin once again is not the aggressor. The offensive was solely executed so Empire neocons could sabotage the Trump-Putin relationship and prevent peace from breaking out. Only war is permitted by the Washington evildoers.
As part of the anti-Moscow propaganda to justify the latest Kiev military campaign, the Ukraine defense minister accused a Russian oil rig in the Black Sea of firing upon and damaging a Ukraine Navy transport plane. A Russian defense ministry spokesperson denies any Russian ground fire occurred, reporting that the Ukrainian plane was merely warned with four flash signals by rig security that the plane was flying too low, endangering Russian personnel working on two oil rig platforms and nearly hitting a rig tower in two simulated fly-overs. These types of aerial aggression stunts are common forms of intimidation and provocation used for propaganda purposes as yet another false flag to further justify war escalation and retaliation. The just retired NATO deputy secretary general pounced on it, claiming the incident proves that Russia is not at all interested in peace with Ukraine. In his words:
[The Kremlin] may be trying to test the new administration to see if they distance themselves from Kiev, and tell [Ukraine President] Petro Poroshenko that he has to make the best deal with Russia, which of course would destroy him politically.
Last week formerly disgraced CIA director General David Petraeus testified before the House Armed Services Committee. It’s a bad sign when Congress seeks the “expert” testimony from a top US spy who lied to the FBI after violating the Espionage Act, breaching national security by handing over highly classified material to his mistress. Prior to that crime, the war criminal was a military war commander on two fronts. Petraeus was singularly the most responsible general for causing the sectarian civil war in Iraq that eventually led to the ISIS Sunni invasion as well as contributed to the US still ongoing military defeat in Afghanistan. Petraeus trained Shiite death squads that killed thousands of Sunnis who later became Islamic State terrorists.
And it was Petraeus who wrote the war bible – the US Army Counter-Insurgency (COIN) manual – that strategically defined how America’s twenty-first century wars would be fought and lost, at enormous costs and wastes replacing many military functions with private civilian security contractors (such as hired mercenaries like Blackwater) in a failed “nation-building” attempt to imperialistically “democratize” the Middle East, proving a complete humiliating disaster in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But Petraeus’ notorious career of abject failures has now apparently earned him the status of a foreign policy guru. On February 1st the guru warned the House:
[Putin] understands that, while conventional aggression may occasionally enable Russia to grab a bit of land on its periphery, the real center of gravity is the political will of major democratic powers to defend Euro-Atlantic institutions like NATO and the EU.
You can see where all this is going. Petraeus reporting that Russia, China, Iran as well as the terrorists all pose an “unprecedented threat” is part of the staged war prepping narrative. The Washington political war machine is in full swing, ensuring that an alliance with Russia can never happen, despite whatever Trump the candidate may have uttered. That was then, this is now. So war in Ukraine once again becomes the bogus rallying cry to ensure the US-EU-NATO glue sticks together against those “imperialistic, warring” Russians bent on splintering centuries’ old allies. The elite and their neocons will not allow Brexit, strained Washington-Brussels relations or Trump nationalism ever get in their way.
Western press explains the enormous troop buildup of US-NATO forces complete with US-German-NATO tanks amassed along the Baltic state-Russian border to “protect” NATO allies from big bad Russian expansion. This again is all fabricated prewar propaganda prepping us for the war to come. Trump the candidate grumbled how once he becomes president, Europe will need to pay for its own defense. The former secretary general of NATO called that “a breach of solidarity” with Europe, warning:
The Russians would see that as a bonanza that they would try and exploit by convincing countries like Bulgaria and the Czech Republic that the US couldn’t be counted on.
Another lockdown to prevent thawed Russia-US relations is the rigid adherence to extending economic sanctions against Russia over Crimea and Donbass. After Trump the candidate had hinted to lift the sanctions, UK Prime Minister Theresa May rushed to Washington to ensure they stay in place and that Trump renews US commitment to NATO. GOP faithful like McCain threatened to pass laws to codify the sanctions should Trump let up. So you can see that the anti-Putin vilification and cold war still rage on with the latest lying rhetoric and external threats brought to bear against the US president to stay with status quo or else.
And to prove that Trump the president has succumbed to holding the anti-Russian hardline, Trump’s brand new UN ambassador Nikki Haley on her very first day at the office sounded the alarm at the UN Security Council, mimicking the same broken record as her neocon predecessor Samantha Power:
I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia. It is unfortunate because it is a replay of far too many instances over many years in which Unites States representatives have needed to do that… Unites States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea. Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine.
In response a Russian senator tweeted:
It looks like the new US representative at the UN came with remarks that were written by Power.
Nikki Haley obviously received her orders from above to slam Russia despite the US-Kiev collusion to recently renew aggression towards the citizens of Donbass. She also showed ignorance in failing to know that Crimea’s Ukrainian history was short. It was illegally annexed by Ukraine in 1990, thus the Black Sea peninsula was forcibly part of Ukraine for less than a quarter century. Yet the entire pretext for the US condemning Russia over Ukraine is completely based upon a lie. So are the sanctions, and so will the coming war. Again, this entire anti-Russian false narrative is such a nauseatingly tiresome US theme.
American exceptionalism means the murderous world bully can continue operating with total impunity while wrongly accusing Russia constantly, or any other nation in its crosshairs, of the exact same sinful crimes that Empire perpetrates every single day of the year. Empire’s European vassals and smaller intimidated countries must silently toe the line or else they too will be unjustly targeted with lies and punishment in the form of illegal invasions and wars (be it US boots on the ground or proxy allied mercenary terrorists), inhumane economic sanctions, trade embargoes, regime change coups and assassinations.
The only guilty nation that remains judge, jury, and executioner in this world of other countries is the United States. And Trump has already demonstrated as the White House figurehead that he is not in control but follows his globalist marching orders. Thus Trump is powerless to change rigid foreign policy still being dictated by the neocons. Nothing will change in Ukraine except more death and violence will escalate to the larger arena. Russia is still the West’s scapegoat as is every other nation that asserts its own will and independence free of the killing Empire. Only the US has invaded dozens of sovereign nations, initiated more wars and maintained the most aggressive foreign policy of any nation on earth over the last century. But it’s always Russia that’s the falsely accused aggressor that Washington and its corporate media endlessly hype in order to further justify Empire aggression and violence. After all, war has always been an American agenda.
Joachim Hagopian [send him mail] is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.com.