If it was 1982, I would be all in for the Ukies, since my hatred for anything Russian was practically inborn – but something happened since then – what was it? Both the world and I changed in those 40 years and you can read that if interested – http://www.crushlimbraw.com
Some call it Globohomo. Its advocates call it everything from “the Western Democracies” to “the neo-liberal world order” to “the international rules-based community”. I prefer to call it, as Philip K. Dick did, The Empire That Never Ended. But whatever you call it – and Vladimir Putin calls it the Empire of Lies – it is clear that the President of Russia knows who and what it is.
American politicians, political scientists and journalists themselves write and talk about the fact that a real ’empire of lies’ has been created inside the United States in recent years. It’s hard to disagree with that; it’s true. But do not be modest: the United States is still a great country, a system-forming power. All her satellites not only resignedly and dutifully assent, sing along to her for any reason, but also copy her behaviour, enthusiastically accept the rules he proposes. Therefore, with good reason, we can confidently say that the entire so-called Western bloc, formed by the United States in its own image and likeness, all of it is the very ’empire of lies’.
As for our country, after the collapse of the USSR, with all the unprecedented openness of the new modern Russia, the readiness to work honestly with the United States and other Western partners, and in the conditions of virtually unilateral disarmament, they immediately tried to squeeze us, finish off and destroy us completely. This is exactly what happened in the 90s, in the early 2000s, when the so-called collective West most actively supported separatism and mercenary gangs in southern Russia. What sacrifices, what losses did all this cost us then, what trials did we have to go through before we finally broke the back of international terrorism in the Caucasus. We remember this and will never forget.
Yes, in fact, until recently, attempts have not stopped to use us in their own interests, destroy our traditional values and impose on us their pseudo-values that would corrode us, our people from the inside, those attitudes that they are already aggressively planting in their countries and which directly lead to degradation and degeneration, because they contradict the very nature of man. It won’t happen, no one has ever done it. It won’t work now either.
Now a few important, very important words for those who may be tempted to intervene in ongoing events. Whoever tries to hinder us, and even more so to create threats for our country, for our people, should know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences that you have never experienced in your history. We are ready for any development of events. All necessary decisions in this regard have been made.
I don’t know what Putin knows that we don’t. But despite the endless, relentless series of lies being tirelessly pushed by the Empire’s propaganda machine, he is engaged in the same struggle that everyone who loves the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, and everyone who fears God, is engaged.
My dear TV western armchair generals,
I get it, I promise. I really do!
Your entire life you have been trained to see a successful military operations like so:
Victory US style!
Begin by bombing the shit of the “hadjis” or “sand niggers” with bombs and missiles, then flatten their town à la Fallujah, then move in with heavy armor and shoot everything which still moves or breathes.
Then distribute chewing-gums to a few kids while on video.
Then take the city center, drop a statue in front your embedded presstitutes, and then declare victory.
Then, after declaring victory, stay another 20 years or so (Blinken was clearly projecting!), ruin it completely, then leave it again and declare another brilliant victory.
And don’t forget to declare urbi at orbi that you reserve the “right” to bomb the shit out of them anytime you deem it is needed. And fuck their sovereignty or anybody else’s while we are at it!
Lastly, once home, don’t forget to “thank” your “veterans” for their “service”.
I get it.
Now YOU try, please!!
Now, in spite of this conditioning, please at least try to understand the following points:
First, the Russians do not see Ukrainian as Hadjis but as their own brothers.
Second many/most LDNR soliders have relatives in the Nazi occupied Ukraine.
Third, yes, Russia can turn any Ukrainian city into Fallujah, but who do you think will then have to pay for its reconstruction?
Fourth, please understand that the double goals of 1) denazification and 2) disarmament implies that any person which is not a Nazi or is not armed and hostile is not, repeat, NOT the target of the Russian armed forces.
Fifth, the Ukie military was 80% defeated on Day 1. Get that? It was gone as a coherent fighting force. THAT is why they are blowing up bridges, distributing weapons and releasing convicted criminals. NOT because they are winning! I mean – how stupid are you if you believe that? Ukie stupid?
Seriously?
Right now you are the object of probably the biggest PSYOP operation in history. If you realize that and treat these PSYOPs as you should, that is as “informational warfare from the bad guys” you will be able to tell your kind and grandkids “I never believed that crap”. Good for you!
But if you don’t, well then, just don’t tell too much about you in 2022 to your kind and grandkids, save yourself the ridicule and embarrassment…
That’s it. My very last attempt to wake you up. From now on, I will pretend like you don’t exist and instantly ban any comments parroting kind of self-evident nonsense.
Now I will quietly leave your room, switch off the lights, and let you watch your TVs.
Andrei
PS: I know the blogs load slow. We made hardware changes and we might have to do more. But that costs (lots) of money and time. We are doing our best with our means, but with both UncleShmuel and Soros out there to “get us” to the tune of billions of dollars spent, they are definitely winning and holding the upper hand in this informational war. Wanna help? SPREAD THE INFO as much as you can and SEND MORE MONEY for our IT. That is what “Biden” and Soros have that we don’t: many people and many dollars. That’s just a fact.
https://thesaker.is/open-
It’s impossible to even begin to understand why Russia has invaded Ukraine without understanding the recent history of Ukraine and the Donbass republics.
April 5 and May 1, 2014 was the heart of the Ukrainian “Maidan” debacle. Elements of the junta, governors appointed from Kiev, moved southeast to the Donbass to take the profitable firms there to sell them off to the west to pay debts. A quickly organized revolt was labor’s answer and an armed uprising was the result. Russian volunteers, especially Cossacks, quickly came to the aid of the Donbass and reinforced their armed forces. On March 16, a referendum in Crimea overwhelmingly joined with Russia, as the population there had always been pro-Russian. Early May was the first failed Kievan attempt to retake the area. In response, a group of thugs burned alive more than 40 sympathizers in Odessa on the same day as the invasion failed.
While referendums were the norm in the Donbass and Crimea, in Kiev, no elections were ever held. The billionaire oligarch Poroshenko was appointed president by western bankers who held Ukraine’s debt. Russian gas chief Alexei miller said little had been paid on the Ukraine’s gas debt. Russia offered a loan to Ukraine to assist them since, by early April, Ukrainian economic production had come to a halt. Foreign aid was her only means of staying afloat.
As with the protests of 2004, all promises made by the leaders of the coup were immediately discarded and broken. In Kiev, the new government decreed 20-40% cost increases on public transportation. Prices went up by about 30% the first week. Most hospitals operated at 20-30% capacity. Volunteers were needed to staff what remained. Hot water and heat went up by 65%. Ministry of Finance of Ukraine admitted that drug prices increased by 60-70% in the country in the first week of the Junta. Over the past two months, Ukraine has not officially admitted 13.5 thousand. Russian citizens, 98 of them are denied entry into the country for long periods. The pharmacy chains in Kiev more than three-fold increased sales of antidepressants. Drug prices in Kiev have increased by 1.5 – 2 times, there is a shortage of essential drugs, including insulin. To cover for this, Ukrainian media continue fanning hysteria and intimidation. One headline from the online news agency “UNIAN” (owned by the Jewish oligarch Kolomoisky): “Russia instructed the separatists to kill 100-200 people” and that “Kievan s should construct bomb shelters” due to the alleged invasion of Ukraine.2
The governor of Dnepropetrovsk region, the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, promised $10,000 for each DNI soldier or sympathizer killed. Oleg Tsarev was the coordinator of the Southeast resistance in the Ukraine. The Coordination Center will be located in Donetsk. The oligarch Kolomoisky was paying mercenaries to attack the DNI, since most of the Ukrainian army fled or went over to the rebels. Kiev was promising Berkut members $100,000 and up to attack DNI positions. The general Staff in Kiev wrote themselves bonuses amounting to almost 10 million hyrvna.
About 5000 Ukrainians a day were applying for visas to move to Russia. Putin and Medvedev sought cooperation to rebuild the moribund Ukrainian economy. In Donetsk to help the defenders of the Donetsk region miners organized themselves into three battalions of 200 people each. Leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic announced the creation of a “people’s army” and the beginning of the preparation of the referendum to be held on 11 May.
Under Donetsk activists with St. George ribbons blocked, and deployed artillery brigade of the Ukrainian army. The authorities began the “anti-terrorist operation” in Slavyansk. The operation began after a confidential visit to Kiev by CIA Director John Brennan. He confirmed that 20 US citizens were lost in the attacks on the DNI from the Blackwater group.
To cover for Ukrainian defeats, the story of a “Russian invasion: was invented from whole cloth. It was covered and repeated without evidence and without question. Ukraine began plans to nationalize Russian assets. Public debt was now 60% of GDP, though the real figure is much higher. Much of Kiev saw regular power outages continually. The Rovno and other nuclear planet sere shut down for lack of personnel and money to operate. In the mining industry and metallurgy the decline in production was about 10.7%; the chemical industry, by 5.3%, in engineering, almost 20%. Gas prices went up 20% further in march.
The Kiev government began a round up and execution of its enemies. From January to February 2014, 5172 were executed in Kiev prisons. 10,000 were killed immediately after the coup and another 5,000 in March. Kiev cut off the canal supplying fresh water to Crimea’;s farmers, ruining the harvest. Strikes in industry and mines in western Ukraine turned pro-Russian….
One of the most bizarre developments in foreign policy in recent memory is the constant demand for war with China and Russia. No one is entirely sure what either nation has done.
Now they’ve got the war that they’ve been demanding, but apparently, not the sort of war they were expecting.
It’s evident that what currently passes for the Russo-Ukrainian war is not over Ukraine’s territory or its people, but rather, is aimed at the neocon-funded Orange Revolution that installed the current regime. The fact that the US, NATO, and EU are all willing to go to extremes to keep the illegitimate Zelensky in regime should suffice to show the delicate state of the neo-liberal world order, just as the fact that the Russians were willing to upset what was a stable and mutually profitable situation tends to indicate either a) something was developing in Ukraine that absolutely had to be stopped by force or b) this limited conflict is simply the first stage, and the initial front, of a much larger Sino-Russian challenge to the global satanists and their imperial disorder.
The Swiss government just sacrificed the historic neutrality of Switzerland on the altar of globohomo:
Switzerland’s historic neutrality is no longer: moments ago Reuters reported that the Swiss government had joined the EU in adopting sanctions on Russia, freezing assets of targeted companies and people effective immediately:
SWISS GOVERNMENT SAYS ADOPTS EU SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA
SWISS GOVERNMENT SAYS FREEZES ASSETS OF TARGETED PEOPLE AND COMPANIES EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY
SWISS GOVERNMENT SAYS ADOPTS FINANCIAL SANCTIONS AGAINST PRESIDENT PUTIN AND OTHER RUSSIAN OFFICIALS
Swiss President Ignazio Cassis said that adopting the EU sanctions against Russia was a unique, difficult step that required careful consideration. Previously, on Sunday, he said that Switzerland’s neutrality must be preserved and it stood ready to offer its good offices for diplomacy if talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials on the Belarusian border do not succeed, for example by reaching an armistice.
This is an unbelievably stupid act that will have negative consequences that last decades. The Swiss people will need to respond strongly to this by passing a referendum forbidding the government from further violating their neutrality in the future.
But it’s not a surprise. The globalists in the Swiss government have been working toward this moment for years, constantly chipping away at the commitment to neutrality through signing up for various NATO, EU, and UN programs that could be defended as not actually taking a side. However, this action, in taking sides at the behest of one belligerent party against another, is a clear and obvious violation of their historic neutrality.
Having abandoned both banking privacy and neutrality, one wonders what the Swiss government will turn against next. Cheese? Chocolate?
This is a massive mistake and there can be little doubt that the Swiss will come to regret it. With one idiotic move, the Swiss just removed themselves from any future involvement on the world stage. That being said, the fact that the globalists are rapidly pulling out all the stops, including some that have never before been pulled out, tends to underline their desperation as well as their impotence.
Information is not power. Influence is not power. Money is not power. Power is power.
https://voxday.net/2022/02/28/
In light of the grotesquely one-sided Ukrainian war news on the MSM, it can be well and truly said that America circa February 2022 has become the land where history died.
From the sophomoric coverage of CNN and NBC, for instance, you would think that Ukraine’s borders have been universally agreed upon by one and all for eons; that the government in Kiev has done absolutely nothing to provoke Russian suspicion and anger; and that Uncle Sam, NATO and the European Union have flitted around the neighborhoods on Russia’s borders merely cheer-leading for democracy and selflessly passing out economic aid and cookies to the long-suffering Ukrainian peoples.
Well, no. Today’s hot war eruption in Ukraine would absolutely not be happening save for the violent coup of February 2014 that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected pro-Russian President; and which coup was funded, organized and choreographed by Washington-based neocons, busy-bodies and arms merchants who otherwise had no reason for even existing in the post-Soviet world.
Moreover, by reviewing the voting patterns of the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election we can see exactly how Washington’s blunderbuss intervention in support of the Maidan putsch put the kibosh on stable governance in Kiev and friendly relations with Ukraine’s historic neighbor and suzerain, Russia. That’s because while the 2010 election reflectedthe stark divisions of the Ukrainian electorate (see map below) it still produced a government that was reasonably acceptable to most of the electorate, and one which proceeded to work toward new arrangements with both Ukraine’s EU neighbors to the west and Russia to the east.
In the end, that tolerable governing balance was abruptly and unilaterally cancelled by Washington’s writ, especially when it then almost instantly embraced and recognized an ad hoc, anti-Russian government which came from the extreme right side of the political/ethnic spectrum.
The effect was to send Kiev on a path toward massive economic and military aid from the US/EU and NATO membership that was bound to produce the adverse Russian reaction that Ambassador George Kennan had warned about two decades earlier.
As to the aid matter, Ukraine received only minor assistance from the west prior to 2014, but upwards of $15 billion since then. That included nearly $3 billion of military aid from the US, $6 billion of development and economic aid from Western donors, $3 billion of subsidized Ex-Im Bank funding from the US and $3 billion of other humanitarian aid. The effect was to turn Ukraine into a ward of Washington—a new post-coup fact on the ground that was blatantly obvious to Moscow.
As to the adverse shock effect of the Maidan coup on Ukrainian governance and external policy, the map below tells you all you need to know. The dark blue parts of the map to the far east (Donbas) indicate an 80% or better vote for Viktor Janukovych in the 2010 election. By contrast, the dark red areas in the west voted 80% or more for the Ukrainian nationalist, Yulie Tymoshenko. That is to say, the skew in the Ukrainian electorate was so extreme as to make America’s current red state/blue state divide seem hardly noteworthy by comparison.
As it happened, the sum of the pro-Janukovych skews from the east and south (Donbas and Crimea) added up to 12.48 million votes and 48.95% of the total, while the sum of the extreme red skews in the center and west (the old eastern Galicia) amounted to 11.59 million votes and 45.47% of the total.
Stated differently, it is hard to imagine an electorate more sharply divided on a regional/ethnic/language basis, but one which still produced a decisive enough victory margin (3.6 percentage points) for Janukovych—so as to be accepted by all parties. That became especially clear when Tymoshenko, who was the incumbent prime minister, withdrew her election challenge a few weeks after the run-off in February 2010. At that point, of course, Russia had no beef with the Kiev government at all because essentially Janukovych’s “Regions Party” was based on the pro-Russian parts (blue areas) of the Ukrainian electorate.
During the next several years the economic basket case which was Ukraine attempted to improve its circumstances by running a bake-off of sorts between the European Union and Russia with respect to aid and trade deals.
And well its leaders might have: Ukraine had become a cesspool of financial corruption in which a handful of oligarchs had robbed the country blind. Its 2013 real GDP consequently fell to $600 billion (2017 $)—a 33% shrinkage from its 1990 level.
Accordingly, the supposedly pro-Russian Janukovych administration initiated in March 2012 an Association Agreement with the European Union that was to provide trade advantages and an IMF aid package. However, the EU leaders insisted that no agreement could be ratified unless Ukraine addressed concerns over a “stark deterioration of democracy and the rule of law”, including the imprisonment of Yulia Tymoshenko in 2011. In order to address these concerns, in fact, President Janukovych urged the parliament to adopt laws so that Ukraine would meet the EU’s criteria.
Ukraine Real GDP, 1990-2019
But it was the parallel $4 billion IMF loan that turned out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. According to then Prime Minister Mykola Azarov “the extremely harsh conditions” of the IMF loan (presented by the IMF in November 2013) included big budget cuts and a 40% increase in natural gas bills. Those proved to be hills too high to climb for all the factions within the fractionated Ukraine polity.
Accordingly, the IMF demands became the clinching argument behind the Ukrainian government’s decision to suspend preparations for signing the Association Agreement with the EU. Instead, Kiev quickly pivoted to a deal with Russia in the fall of 2013, which was willing to offer $15 billion in loans without the harsh IMF pre-conditions. Also, Moscow offered Ukraine a discount on Ukraine’s large gas purchases from Russia.
Moreover, by that point Ukraine was over a financial barrel, facing an external funding gap of $17 billion during the upcoming year—almost the level of the central bank’s depleted currency reserves.
The rest is history, as they say. The Washington neocons were not about to accept a pivot to Russia come hell or high water. So they swung into action bringing all the instruments of the Empire—the CIA, the State Department, NED, the NGOs and favored Ukrainian oligarchs—to bear on scuttling the Russian deal and removing Janukovych from office.
In a later interview with a US journalist, in fact, Ukrainian billionaire oligarch and opposition leader, Petro Porochenko (who later became president), said quite clearly that the plan was to subvert the nation’s constitution and install an unelected, antiRussian government that would deep-six the deal with Moscow:
“From the beginning, I was one of the organizers of the Maidan. My television channel—Channel 5—played a tremendously important role. …On the 11th of December, when we had U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and E.U. diplomat Catherine Ashton in Kyiv, during the night they started to storm the Maidan.”
It should never be forgotten, therefore, that the coup which overthrew the constitutionally elected government in Kiev was a $5 billion all-hands Washington undertaking. It would never have come to fruition as a successful regime change putsch without the heavy hands of the US State Department along with the above mentioned arms of the empire.
Needless to say, nullification of a country’s election—-backed by the stick of NATO’s military might and the carrot of billions from a Washington/EU/IMF consortium—-is big league meddling, but not by the clueless hypocrisy of the Washington foreign policy blob.
Indeed, as former president Obama told CNN at the time, Washington was just going about its “indispensable nation” business. It had helpfully encouraged another “flowering of democracy” and to that end had,
“……brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine.”
Brokered a deal my eye!
This was a blatant and inexcusable breach of so-called “international law” because it served the will-to-power objectives of the Washington neocons and kept the now largely obsolete US foreign policy apparatus in the game—-to say nothing of a new customer for arms sales.
Never mind that Washington’s massive political and financial support for the Maidan uprising on the streets of Kiev, and then nearly instantaneous recognition of the resulting putsch as the official government of the Ukraine was a frontal assault on the nation’s sovereignty.
The late and despicable Senator John McCain even went to Kiev to show solidarity with the Euromaidan activists. McCain dined with opposition leaders, including members of the ultra right‐wing Svoboda Party and later appeared on stage in Maidan Square during a mass rally
There he stood shoulder to shoulder with Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok, who made no secret of his pro-Nazi convictions.
But McCain’s actions were a model of diplomatic restraint compared to the conduct of Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, who, by your way, is back in the same position in the Biden Administration, conducting the same pro-war neocon policies.
As Ukraine’s political crisis deepened, Nuland and her subordinates became more brazen in favoring the anti‐Yanukovych demonstrators. Nuland noted in a speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation in December 2013, that she had traveled to Ukraine three times in the weeks following the start of the demonstrations. Visiting the Maidan on December 5, she famously handed out cookies to demonstrators and expressed support for their cause.
Washington’s conduct not only constituted meddling, it bordered on pupeteering. At one point, US Ambassador Pyatt mentioned the complex dynamic among the three principal opposition leaders, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Oleh Tyahnybok, and Vitali Klitschko
Both Pyatt and Nuland wanted to keep Tyahnybok and Klitschko out of an interim government. In the former case, they worried about his extremist ties; in the latter, they appeared to want him to wait and make a bid for office on a longer‐term basis.
Nuland thus famously stated that “I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary.” She added that what Yatseniuk needed “is Klitsch and Tyanhybok on the outside.”
The two diplomats also were prepared to escalate the already extensive U.S. involvement in Ukraine’s political turbulence by bringing in the Big Guy.
Pyatt stated bluntly that,
“we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing [the political transition].”
Nuland clearly had Vice President Joe Biden in mind for that role. Noting that the vice president’s national security adviser was in direct contact with her, Nuland related that she told him,
“probably tomorrow for an atta‐boy and to get the details to stick. So Biden’s willing.”
That is to say, Victoria Nuland didn’t merely tell some undercover operatives to buy ads on Ukrainian social media, as Russia was accused of doing during the 2016 US election. To the contrary, she actually picked Yanokovych’s successor and the entire cabinet!
And we know this from a hacked phone call between Nuland and the US ambassador in Kiev. In discussing who should lead the Washington-installed government, Nuland made clear who the next prime minister would be and who he should be talking to for advice.
Nuland: I think Yats (Arseniy Yatseniuk) is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. … what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know.
As it turned our, the putsch leaders followed Nuland’s advice to the letter, installing “Yats” as the new prime minister. But it also filled four cabinet posts out of eleven with rabid anti-Russian crypto-Nazis.
Indeed, at the heart of the putsch were Ukrainian organizations called Svoboda (national socialist party of Ukraine) and Right Sector. Their national hero was one Stepan Bandera—-a collaborator with Hitler who led the liquidation of
thousands of Poles, Jews and other minorities as the Nazi Wehrmacht made it way through Ukraine toward Stalingrad in the early 1940s.
In fact, another founder and leader of Svoboda, Andriy Parubiy, was given a portfolio which included the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence. That the Kremlin was alarmed by these developments and that the Russian-speaking populations of Crimea and the Donbas (the blue areas on the electoral map above) feared an ethnic cleansing led by the new Ukrainian nationalist government in Kiev—-given the bloody WWII history we have described elswhere—is hardly surprising.
In any event, that’s what real foreign “meddling” looks like, and it is exactly what Imperial Washington does over and over again.
Indeed, the real truth of the matter is that Imperial Washington is now reaping the whirlwind it sowed over decades by massive interference in the internal politics and governance process of countries all over the world—–of which the vignette above about the Ukrainian coup is only the latest flock of chickens to come home to roost.
Contrary to the bombast, jingoism, and shrill moralizing flowing from Washington and the mainstream media, America had absolutely no national security interest—even to this day— in the spat between Putin and the coup that unconstitutionally took over Kiev in February 2014. That changed everything, and knocked the props out from under Washington’s current sanctimonious attacks on Putin for finally resorting to its own game.
Like everything reviewed above, the source of the current calamity-howling about Russia is the Warfare State. That is, the existence of vast machinery of military, diplomatic and economic maneuver that is ever on the prowl for missions and mandates and that can mobilize a massive propaganda campaign on the slightest excitement.
The post-1991 absurdity of bolstering NATO and extending it into eastern Europe, rather than liquidating it after attaining “mission accomplished”, is just another manifestation of its baleful impact, and the approximate reason why the world is now ringing with war and rumors of war.
In truth, the expansion of NATO is the underlying cause of Putin’s paranoia about his borders and neighbors, and it is surely not without merit. After all, would Russian aid to a hostile Mexican government, including para-military agents otherwise known as drug cartels, produce anything short of hysteria here?
Indeed, it needs be asked: Precisely what juvenile minds bivouacked in the Warfare State beehive actually determined that America needs a military alliance with Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro and now the mini-state of Macedonia!
So the resounding clatter for action against Russia emanating from Washington and its house-trained media is not even a semi-rational response to the facts at hand; its just another destructive spasm of the nation’s Warfare State and its beltway machinery of diplomatic meddling, economic warfare and military intervention.
At the time the Soviet Union ended, NATO had 16 member nations bound by the Article 5 obligation of mutual defense, but when the Soviet Union and the Red Army perished, there was nothing left to defend against. NATO should have declared “mission accomplished” and dissolved itself.
Instead, it has become a political jackhammer for Empire First policies by expanding to 30 nations—many of them on Russia’s doorstep.
Yet if your perception is not distorted by Washington’s self-justifying imperial beergoggles, the question is obvious. Exactly what is gained for the safety and security of the citizens of Lincoln NE or Springfield MA by obtaining the defense services of the pintsized militaries of Latvia (6,000), Croatia (14,500), Estonia (6,400), Slovenia (7,300) or Montenegro (1,950)?
Indeed, the whole post-1991 NATO expansion is so preposterous as a matter of national security that its true function as a fig-leaf for Empire First fairly screams out loud. Not one of these pint-sized nations would matter for US security, even if they decided to have a cozier relationship with Russia—voluntarily or not so voluntarily.
George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker, were correct back in 1989 when they promised Gorbachev that NATO’s then 16 members would not expand “by a single inch” of territory eastward in return for his acquiesce to the reunification of Germany and the effective end of the Warsaw Pact.
But rather than declare cold war victory and dismantle its NATO machinery once the 50,000 Soviet tanks on the central front were effectively melted down for scrap, virtually the opposite happened. NATO has been expanded to 30 countries including the statelet of Montenegro that has a military half the size of the police force of Philadelphia.
In the context of this relentless and pointless NATO expansion to the very borders of the shrunken Russian state, Washington not only sponsored and funded the overthrow of Ukraine’s constitutionally elected government in February 2014. But once it had unleashed a devastating civil war, it relentlessly blocked for seven years running the obvious alternative to the bloodshed that had claimed 10,000 civilian and military casualties, even before the current hot war commenced.
To wit, Ukraine could have been partitioned with autonomy for the Russian-speaking Donbas provinces—or even accession to the Russian state from which these communities had essentially originated.
After all, the artificial country of Czechoslovakia, created on a political whim at Versailles in 1919, was peacefully and inconsequentially devolved into its separate Czech and Slovakian nations a few years ago. The same is true of Yugoslavia— a polyglot federation that has now devolved into seven nations.
In that instance, the partition was partially owing to American bombers that forcibly separated Kosovo from its Serbian parent. And even then, this Washington-sanctioned partition ended up in the hands of a criminal mafia in Kosovo that makes Putin appear sainted by comparison.
But the point is, there is no threat to America in eastern Europe unless such as Montenegro, Slovenia, or Latvia were to become Putin’s invasion route to effect the Russian occupation of Germany, France, the Benelux and England.
And that’s just plain silly-ass crazy!
Yet aside from that utterly far-fetched and economically and militarily impossible scenario, there is no reason whatsoever for the US to be in a mutual defense pact with any of the new, and, for that matter, old NATO members.
And that gets us to most ridiculous NATO fig leaf of all. The patently bogus claim that Russia’s self-evidently defensive actions in Crimea and the Donbas (eastern Ukraine) back at the time of the coup in 2014 prove that it is an aggressive expansionist. But on that score, Washington’s imperial beer goggles are utterly blind to history and geopolitical logic.
As we have amplified elswhere, Sevastopol in Crimea has been the home-port of the Russian Naval Fleet under czars and commissars alike and was purchased from the Ottoman’s for good money by Catherine the Great in 1783. It is the site of one of Russia greatest patriotic events—-the defeat of the English invaders in 1854 made famous by Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade—-and is 80% Russian speaking.
After 171 years as an integral part of the Russian Motherland, it only technically became part of Ukraine during a Khrushchev inspired shuffle in 1954.
The fact is, only 10% of the Crimean population is Ukrainian speaking, and it was the coup on the streets of Kiev in February 2014 by extremist anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalists and proto-fascists that caused the Russian speakers in Crimea to panic and Moscow to become alarmed about the status of its historic naval base, for which it still had a lease running to the 2040s.
In a word, 83% of eligible Crimeans turned out to vote and 97% of those approved cancelling the aforementioned 1954 edict of the Soviet Presidium and rejoining mother Russia during the March 2014 referendum. There is absolutely no evidence that the 80% of Crimeans who thus voted to sever their historically short-lived affiliation with Ukraine were threatened or coerced by Moscow.
Indeed, what they actually feared were the edicts against Russian language and culture coming out of Kiev in the aftermath of the Washington funded, supported and instantly recognized overthrow of the legally elected government. And exactly the same thing was true of the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking populations of the Donbas.
After all, the good folks of that industrial heartland of the former Soviet Union had always been an integral part of its iron, steel, chemical and munitions industries, and, indeed, their grandparents had been put there by Stalin because most native Ukrainians had not cottoned to his bloody rule.
By the same token, Uncle Joe’s 1930s Russian transplants forever hated the Ukrainian nationalist collaborators, who rampaged though their towns, farms, factories and homes in the Donbas side-by-side with Hitler’s Wehrmacht on the way to Stalingrad.
So the appalling truth of the matter is this: Owing to Washington’s blatantly foolish and reckless coup in February 2014, the grandsons and granddaughters of Stalin’s industrial army in the Donbas were to be ruled by the grandsons and granddaughters of Hitler’s collaborators in Kiev, whether they liked it or not.
But we repeat and for good reason: Without going off the deep-end, you simply can’t make up $550 billion worth of phony reasons for an Empire First national security budget of $750 billion that should be no more than $200 billion under today’s circumstances. You have to invent missions, mandates and threats that are just plain stupid distortions (like the purported Russian “occupation” of Crimea) or flat out lies (like Saddam’s alleged WMDs).
Indeed, you must invent, nourish and enforce an entire universal narrative based on completely implausible and invalid propositions, such as the “Indispensable Nation” meme and the claim that global peace and stability depend overwhelmingly on Washington’s “leadership”.
Yet, is there not a more cruel joke than that?
Was the Washington inflicted carnage and genocide in Vietnam a case of “American leadership” and making the world more peaceful or stable?
Did the two wars against Iraq accomplish anything except destroy Saddam’s tenuous peace between the Sunni, Shiite and Kurds, thereby opening up the gates of hell and the bloody rampages of ISIS?
Did the billions Washington illegally channeled into the rebel and jihadist forces in Syria do anything except destroy the country, create millions of refugees and force the Assad regime to engage in tit-for-tat brutalities, as well as call-in aid from his Iranian, Russian and Hezbollah allies?
In a word, Imperial Washington’s over-arching narratives and the instances of its specific interventions alike rest on a threadbare and implausible foundation; and more often than not, they consist of arrogant fabrications and claims that are an insult to the intelligence of anyone paying even loose attention to the facts.
Then again, Imperial Washington no longer cares about facts, logic, truth and most especially history. At the time of the Bush War on Saddam’s WMD’s, Karl Rove explained the Empire’s New Creed without pulling any punches.
“That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
There you have it. And Rove is no out-of-the-way academic scribbler inventing some high-fluting rationalization for American global hegemony. To the contrary, he’s a lifetime Swamp creature, leading beltway racketeer and the strategic brain trust of the GOP establishment.
Needless to say, Washington continues to create its “own reality” almost weekly, and this one’s a doozy. There manifestly would be no war in the Ukraine today save for Washington’s machinations back in February 2014, but that bit of crucial history is now deader than a doornail.
https://www.unz.com/article/the-land-where-history-died-part-1/
