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Ukraine: What Might Be The Outcome?
Noirette comments at the end of the last Ukraine thread:
I’m less optimistic than b.
Actually running that election was vicious provocation.
It spells, from the coupists – we control the “State” (such as it is) and we do as we like, you people are of no account and we will vanquish. I think, before the election there might have been a small chance of “pacification” and it is possible that time might have helped. But after the election, no.
Of course, officially or ostensibly the election was carried out to legitimize the Kiev-koupists with a democratic masquerade, as well as to provide a new interlocutor for Putin and the West, which is how most people seem to see it.
Poroshenko’s problem is not that he is Jewish but that he is the worst kind of criminal oligarch. Candy Tycoon, ha ha, according to the western press. In short, exactly what the people of the Ukraine do not want and have been fighting against.
Imho, any hopes of a ‘united’ or ‘unitary’ Ukraine are now slim. Remember, Yanukovitch tried to keep the status quo and it fell apart (1). The ‘federalization’ proposal (Putin and others), with a weak central state plus high independence for “Regions” (the oblasts are too small imho) is moot.
Right now, there isn’t a legitimate Gvmt. but a void, which sucks in all kinds of actors. That will continue and degenerate, despite an ‘elected’ President, creating more fault lines. The difficulty as I see it is not so much language, culture, or politics (political parties in the Ukraine are mostly arrangements between oligarchs) but the idea of ‘finlandization’ or what the French call a ‘tampon’ (buffer) state.
How can that status quo ante be restored, after so much interference? How many of the different parties actually wish this? The Kievcoupist find themselves in the position of creating this state of affairs and refusing any proposition other than ‘a united Ukraine’, really this can only be deliberate, and Poroshenko appears on board with it, and has western support. (Moreover, not that anyone at all seems to care what Ukrainians want, my guess is they don’t like this idea.)
(1) Just one illustrative detail from history. Yats, Yulia and Yushenko requested to join NATO in Jan 2008. The request was supported by Bush, Obama and McCain. Subsequently, because of internal opposition, the Ukr. parliament was blocked and non-acting from 25 Jan to Mar 4. At the NATO summit in April the request was turned down, the British and the French nixed it.
My view: That is all well and right by then there is reality, economic reality which the Brookings Institute tried to explain.
Ukraine has already been pressed out like a citrus and the latest IMF and World Bank loans will only last so long. Neither the U.S. nor the EU are willing to pick up the bill for some 40 million Ukrainians. There is therefore in the end no other way for Kiev, whoever rules there, than to make nice with Russia and accept its conditions. Ukraine needs Russian gas and oil and it needs the defense cooperation with Russia. I have yet to find an argument that contradicts this and would support a different conclusion.
The neocons will of course try to get to some different outcome and will push this or that lunatic stand. But they, as we all know and have seen elsewhere, have no sense for realities on the ground and those are the ones that will win out.
In the Brookings piece ‘B’ link, it mentioned three option for Ukraine, Ukraine as Poland, Finland or small Russia. However, there is another option. That is Korean option, the partition of Ukraine in a bloody civil war. I strongly suspect that that was their plan all along. And if it is the case, things are still working according to their plan.
I wrote this about 2 weeks ago.
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/35398109
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In spite of everything else, Luke Harding did one great service by revealing the real plan of the Kiev regime when he reported this.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/ukraine-donetsk-pro-russia-militants
Todorov – a supporter of Ukrainian statehood – said he was deeply pessimistic about his country’s future. He said he doubted presidential elections due to be held on 25 May would take place, at least not in the east. And in Kiev, he suggested, there was a growing feeling that Ukraine would be better off dumping its troublesome eastern provinces and creating a modern European country without them.
I don’t think dumping the eastern provinces is an ad hoc reaction to the present crisis. It could be their plan from the beginning.
They learned their lesson from the Orange revolution. They cannot secure their power and move Ukraine to the west with the Russian speaking parts within Ukraine. Therefore they are going to lose them this time.
So, how would they achieve this goal?
Starting a civil war which will force the Russian speaking parts to leave Ukraine.
From the moment they took power, the Kiev regime has been systematically weakening and dismantling the state institutions of power, and replacing them with right wing militias. This is a sure recipe for a civil war. It all reminds me of the disbandment of the Iraqi army after the US invasion.
One Wurmser, a neocon staff of the vice president Cheney’s office, was kind enough to explain the true nature of Iraqi plan.
http://prospect.org/article/vice-squad-0
Wurmser argued that toppling Saddam was likely to lead directly to civil war and the breakup of Iraq, but he supported the policy anyway… Yet Wurmser explicitly urged the United States and Israel to “expedite” such a collapse. “The issue here is whether the West and Israel can construct a strategy for limiting and expediting the chaotic collapse that will ensue in order to move on to the task of creating a better circumstance.”
The Kiev regime is following the same plan. They disbanded the riot police, Berkut. This created a power vacuum which was filled by the right wing militia. Also without riot police, any confrontation with mass protest will be quickly militarized. Not to mention that the members of disbanded Berkut went to Crimea and joined the pro-Russian militia.
Then they repeated the same feat again with the 25th airborne brigade. The unit which refused to shoot unarmed civilians and made a nice gift of 6 armored vehicles was disbanded. I guess their equipment was given to right wing militias. I am sure many of the released personnel of the paratroopers will join the rank of the southeastern rebels.
In their place, they created the National guard, and various other militia formations, and gave them the status of nationally sanctioned armed force.
These militia formations are useless against the much hyped Russian invasion, but very good at committing atrocities against civilians.
If you want to maintain the unity of a country, you maintain the institutional cohesion of its armed force. However maintaining the institutional cohesion of the armed force also imposes certain limits on your action.
Yanukovych understood this. That is the reason why he refused to use the army to put down the Maidan protest. Once army is used against civil unrest, you cannot guarantee its loyalty and its institutional cohesion could be destroyed.
The Kiev regime also understand this. That is the reason why they are replacing the police and the army with right wing militias.
The job of these militia formations is not winning the civil war. If they win, they will end up with the unwanted Russian speaking parts again. Their job is committing enough atrocities against the Russian speaking population so that they will want to leave Ukraine.
They want bloody destruction of Ukraine and rebirth of a new pure Ukraine nation from the ashes shorn of the impure eastern parts. And they will blame it on Russia whether Russia directly intervenes or not.
Also they count on the full support from Europe and the US, once Ukraine explodes in blood and becomes the frontline garrison state in the new cold war with Russia.
It is the same deal they had with Nazi Germany. It is also the same deal South Korea got, another garrison state on the frontline of the old cold war. Because of the status as a frontline garrison state, South Korea could escape the worst of neo-colonial exploitation and could achieve impressive economic development. The Kiev regime may be expecting the same deal. At least, that is their calculation.
Therefore the Kiev regime will never participate in any negotiation which will preserve the unified Ukraine.
They can be stopped only by Europe saying in no uncertain terms that they will not get any support from Europe for their plan for divided and nationally pure Ukraine.
Therefore, Putin’s move is not aimed at the Kiev regime which is not interested in negotiation anyway. It is aimed at Europe. If Europe denies any hope for a special deal as a frontline garrison state, the Kiev regime will collapse on itself.
However European leaders are still meekly following the US leads, hoping that the procession to the slaughter house will stop at the gate. They behave like a deer caught on headlights. When will they wake up? We need their action now, before it is too late.
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Those neocons may look stupid, but they are not. They appear stupide because they are doing something unthinkable, and people don’t understand what they are doing. They are not stupid. But they are not smart, either.
There are reasons why certain things remain unthinkable.
But they think by doing something unthinkable, they can outsmart people. For this, they think they are smart. But any fool can do that and think himself smart. That is fool’s smartness.
Posted by: PuppetMaster | May 26 2014 18:04 utc | 10
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