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Ukraine: Recommended Reading
Sometimes I to read too much to write. Therefore just a few reading recommendations about Ukraine.
The empire is pissed that its puppets in Ukraine fail to fight: One month on, Ukraine military fails to rout rebels
Now the U.S. believes the oligarchs are coming to help its aims: Ukraine’s richest man enters dispute in eastern region
The steelworkers’ patrols seem to mark a turn in the conflict, but Akhmetov’s decision to use his clout may be more significant. […] But with his decision to put his workers on the street, he may be saying enough is enough with the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine.
Idiots. Why should the Ukrainian military fight its own people? Why would Akhmetov, who’s companies for depend on good relations with Russia, work against Putin? Hint: He doesn’t. The National Interest: The Battle for Ukraine: Who Is Winning?
The May 25 election is in Russia’s interests, because it will give Western policy makers their desired short-term victory on the ground, and then American leaders can begin to direct their attention elsewhere. It also saves European leaders from having to make economic sacrifices as part of sanctions nobody genuinely wants to impose on Russia. Vladimir Putin is signaling that Moscow will play along if Ukraine agrees to give it that which it has largely conceded on the ground. Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s most powerful oligarch and largest employer in the Russian-speaking regions, has finally come to the rescue by using his workers to seize control in Mariupol from the separatists. He supports the restoration of order, and constitutional reform to give the regions greater autonomy, but not independence. His forces are a welcome change, but it is the bargain Vladimir Putin has been offering all along, just better wrapped to make it easier for Kyiv to accept.
Most realists in the West would have already taken this deal, and settled in for the long game in Ukraine. The rest will likely come around after realizing that at the moment they are being taken for a ride by Kyiv, Moscow, or both.
But the real “western”, read U.S. target is more than Ukraine. It is full spectrum dominance. Ideological neoliberalism used for U.S. imperial ambitions.
Today’s must-read: Michael Hudson: The New Cold War’s Ukraine Gambit
There is no single paragraph in that long piece to quote. It is a tour de force binding together the historical and economic context of the conquest attempt we are witnessing in Ukraine. Today’s recommended reading.
Has anyone read Israel Shamir’s latest ‘Ukraine in Turmoil: War May Come at Any Time as It Came Twice during the Last Century?
Shamir is exasperated with Putin:
Putin’s respect for others’ sovereignty is exasperating. I understand this sounds like a joke, you heard so much of Putin as a new Hitler. As a matter of fact, Putin had legal training before joining the Secret Service. He is a stickler for international law. His Russia interfered with other states much less than France or England, let alone the US. I asked his senior adviser, Mr Alexei Pushkov, why Russia did not try to influence Ukrainian minds while Kiev buzzed with American and European officials. “We think it is wrong to interfere”, he replied like a good Sunday schoolboy.
It is rather likely Putin advisors’ misjudged public sentiment. « The majority of Novorossia’s population does not like the new Kiev regime, but being politically passive and conservative, will submit to its rule”, they estimated. “The rebels are a small bunch of firebrands without mass support, and they can’t be relied upon”, was their view. Accordingly, Putin advised the rebels to postpone the referendum indefinitely, a polite way of saying “shove it”.
They disregarded his request with considerable sang froid and convincingly voted en masse for secession from a collapsing Ukraine. The turnout was much higher than expected, the support for the move near total. As I was told by a Kremlin insider, this development was not foreseen by Putin’s advisers.
Ukraine it seems, is Plan B after Plan A, Syria went pear-shaped. Ditto Venezulea (so far). Either way, this is a showdown, or rather, this is the showdown.
After all, isn’t this the culmination of a process initiated by the US after WWII? Either, the US achieves total global hegemony, or it doesn’t and in order to do that, it has to remove both Russia and China from the equation. Again, either they roll over and play dead (eg Russia and China over the invasion and destruction of Libya by NATO), or they stand up. What’s it to be?
Shamir continues:
A few months ago, Russia had made a huge effort to become, and to be seen as, a very civilised European state of the first magnitude. This was the message of the Sochi Olympic games: to re-brand, even re-invent Russia, just as Peter the Great once had, as part of the First World; an amazing country of strong European tradition, of Leo Tolstoy and Malevich, of Tchaikovsky and Diaghilev, the land of arts, of daring social reform, of technical achievements, of modernity and beyond — the Russia of Natasha Rostova riding a Sikorsky ‘copter. Putin spent $60 b to broadcast this image.
The old fox Henry Kissinger wisely said:
Putin spent $60 billion on the Olympics. They had opening and closing ceremonies, trying to show Russia as a normal progressive state. So it isn’t possible that he, three days later, would voluntarily start an assault on Ukraine. There is no doubt that… at all times he wanted Ukraine in a subordinate position. And at all times, every senior Russian that I’ve ever met, including dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky, looked at Ukraine as part of the Russian heritage. But I don’t think he had planned to bring it to a head now.
However, Washington hawks decided to do whatever it takes to keep Russia out in the cold. They were afraid of this image of “a normal progressive state” as such Russia would render NATO irrelevant and undermine European dependence on the US. They were adamant about retaining their hegemony, shattered as it was by the Syrian confrontation.
Most crucially, Shamir says:
The Ukraine is not a foreign entity to Russians, it is the western half of Russia. It was artificially separated from the rest in 1991, at the collapse of the USSR. The people of the two parts are interconnected by family, culture and blood ties; their economies are intricately connected. While a separate viable Ukrainian state is a possibility, an “independent” Ukrainian state hostile to Russia is not viable and can’t be tolerated by any Russian ruler. And this for military as well as for cultural reasons: if Hitler had begun the war against Russia from its present border, he would have taken Stalingrad in two days and would have destroyed Russia in a week.
/../
The Washington hawks still hope to force Putin to intervene militarily, as it would give them the opportunity to isolate Russia, turn it into a monster pariah state, beef up defence spending and set Europe and Russia against each other. They do not care about Ukraine and Ukrainians, but use them as pretext to attain geopolitical goals.
The Europeans would like to fleece Ukraine; to import its men as “illegal” workers and its women as prostitutes, to strip assets, to colonise. They did it with Moldova, a little sister of Ukraine, the most miserable ex-Soviet Republic. As for Russia, the EU would not mind taking it down a notch, so they would not act so grandly. But the EU is not fervent about it. Hence, the difference in attitudes [from the US’].
Shamir reckons that,
Putin will try to find an arrangement with the West for sharing authority, influence and economic involvement in the failed state. This can be done through federalisation, or by means of coalition government, or even partition. The Russian-speaking provinces of Novorossia are those of Kharkov (industry), Nikolayev (ship-building), Odessa (harbour), Donetsk and Lugansk (mines and industry), Dnepropetrovsk (missiles and high-tech), Zaporozhe (steel), Kherson (water for Crimea and ship-building), all of them established, built and populated by Russians.
There’s more, I really do recommend reading it.
Posted by: William Bowles | May 18 2014 13:52 utc | 48
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