|
Some Other People’s Thoughts On The U.S. Role In The Ukraine And Europe
Craig Murray correctly states that U.S. president Joe Biden is working on prolonging the war in Ukraine:
The new Ukrainian stance, that there will be no peace deal without recovering the Crimea, has ended for now any hopes of an early ceasefire. It appears to be a militarily unachievable objective – I cannot think of any scenario in which Russia de facto loses Crimea, without the serious possibility of worldwide nuclear war.
This blow to the peace process was a setback in Ankara, and I should say that every source I spoke with believed the Ukrainians were acting on instructions conveyed from Washington to Zelensky by Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, who openly stated he wanted the war to wear down Russian defence capabilities.
A long war in Ukraine is of course massively in the interest of the US military industrial complex, whose dripping roasts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have gone rather off the heat. It also forwards the strategic objective of severely damaging the Russian economy, although much of that damage is mutual.
What Craig misses is that the war is about much more than the weapon industry. It has led to the at least temporary U.S. control over Europe and its sources of energy.
Wolfgang Streeck takes a look at the EU after Ukraine. Describing its evolvement throughout the decades he takes note of the huge mistake it made over the war in Ukraine that allowed the U.S. and NATO to 'lead' the response:
As the tensions increased around Ukraine, visible in the massing of Russian troops on the Ukrainian borders, western European countries, apparently as a matter of course, handed the United States power of attorney, allowing it through NATO to act in their name and on their behalf. Now, with the war dragging on, Europe, organized in a European Union subordinate to NATO, will find itself dependent on the bizarreries of the domestic politics of the United States, a declining great power readying itself for global conflict with a rising great power, China.
The EU totally failed to recognize that the war is waged for U.S. interests and how it is used by it as a weapon against Europe's sovereignty:
What will be the war aims of the United States, acting for and with Europe through NATO? Having left it to Biden to decide on its behalf, Europe’s fate will depend on Biden’s fate, that is, on the decisions, or non-decisions, of the U.S. government.
Short of what the Germans in World War I called a Siegfrieden—a victorious peace imposed on a defeated enemy, as probably dreamed of in the United States by both neocons and the liberal imperialists of the Hillary Clinton school—Biden may go for, or even prefer, a drawn-out stalemate, a war of attrition keeping both Russia and western Europe, in particular Germany, engaged with each other.
A lasting confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian, or “Western,” armies on Ukrainian soil would unite Europe under NATO and conveniently oblige European countries to maintain high levels of military spending. It would also force Europe to continue wide-ranging, indeed crippling, economic sanctions on Russia, as a side effect reinforcing the position of the United States as a supplier of energy and raw materials of various sorts to Europe.
Moreover, an ongoing war, or almost-war, would stand in the way of Europe developing a Eurasian security architecture of its own, inclusive of Russia. It would cement American control over western Europe and rule out French ideas of “European strategic sovereignty” as well as German hopes for détente, both presupposing some sort of Russian settlement. And not least, Russia would be occupied with preparations for Western military interventions, below the nuclear threshold, on its extended periphery.
This unconditional surrender by the EU and its member states to U.S. command and control is bizarre. As the effects of the war set in there will bring a serious backlash against Brussels. Looking at all the contradictions within the EU and its internal conflict with its eastern members the sustainability of the EU project is now in serious doubt. It might still be sustainable, in a reduced form, if Russia decides to de-NATO-size it.
The most serious mistake was made when the EU, before the war, agreed with the U.S. to put sanctions on Russia that would hurt Europe more than they hurt Russia. That completely missed the bigger picture.
Alastair Crooke writes that this will lead to change in the way the 'western' world has worked so far:
The EU leaders must be sensing their predicament: They may have ‘missed the boat’ for getting a political ‘fix’. But they have not ‘missed the boat’ in respect to inflation, economic contraction, and of social crisis at home. These ships are heading in their direction, at full steam. Did the EU foreign ministries reflect on this eventuality, or were they carried along by euphoria and the credentialed narrative issuing out from the Baltics and Poland of ‘Bad Man Putin’?
Here is the point: The fixation with Ukraine essentially is but a gloss pasted over the realities of a global order in decomposition. The latter is the source of the wider disorder. Ukraine is but one small piece on the chess board, and its outcome will not fundamentally change that ‘reality’. Even a ‘win’ in Ukraine would not grant ‘immortality’ to the neoliberal rules-based order.
Crooke quotes former Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Münchau who admits that he and the 'west' completely misjudged Russia economic role in the global marketplace:
The western sanctions were based on a formally correct but misleading premise, one that I believed myself at least up to a point: That Russia is more dependent on us than we are on Russia. Russia has more wheat than it can eat, and more oil than it can burn. Russia is a provider of primary and secondary commodities, on which the world has become dependent. Oil and gas are the biggest sources of Russian export revenues. But our dependency is most acute in other areas: food and also rare metals and rare earths. Russia is not a monopolist in any of the categories. But when the largest exporters of those commodities disappears, the rest of the world experiences physical shortages and rising prices.
…
Did we think this through? Did the foreign ministries that drew up the sanctions discuss at any point what we would do if Russia were to blockade the Black Sea and not allow Ukrainian wheat to leave the ports? Did we develop an agreed-upon response to Russian food blackmail? Or did we think we can adequately address a global starvation crisis by pointing the finger at Putin?
…
I have concluded that we are all too connected to be able to impose sanctions on each other without incurring massive self-harm. You may argue that it is worth it. If you do, you sound like the tenured economics professor who argues that a rise in unemployment is a price worth paying.
The catastrophic results of the sanctions was predictable and has been predicted.
Now, as the horse is out of the barn, we should not close its door, says Münchau, but offer something that woos the horse to voluntarily come back in:
Unless we cut a deal with Putin, with the removal of sanctions as a component, I see a danger of the world becoming subject to two trading blocs: the west and the rest. Supply chains will be reorganised to stay within them. Russia’s energy, wheat, metals, and rare earths will still be consumed, but not here. We keep the Big Macs.
I am not sure the west is ready to confront the consequences of its actions: persistent inflation, reduced industrial output, lower growth, and higher unemployment. To me, economic sanctions look like the last hurrah of a dysfunctional concept known as the west. The Ukraine war is a catalyst of massive de-globalisation.
Europe instead is discussing how to best burn its barn down.
The Anglo-US Masters of the Universe believe that Putin and Xi are temporary aberrations who will be replaced by the “right sort” of comprador in time.
For them, the “rules-based international order” is the future; the aforementioned leaders are regressive ideologues (nutcases; losers; wannabes).
Putin will be replaced by a compliant neoliberal group (Kudrin would be ideal) later when Putinism collapses; Xi will be replaced by a more pragmatic, less ideological, group of Shanghai gangsters when he retires – because they will be able to make more money for themselves by collaborating with Western oligarchs.
This divide and conquer strategy – rely on the avarice of sociopaths in other cultures to sell out their fellows – has been an incredibly successful strategy for 500 years. I don’t see this strategy failing in the long-term if there is insufficient understanding of this on the highest levels.
I linked to the House of Lords Select Committee transcript from 2018 on the previous thread.
The statements by Sir Andrew Wood (former RU Ambassador) illuminate this (sociopathic, narcissistic, ruthless, shrewd, supremely self-confident) Western mentality perfectly:
“My first point would be that Russia is ruled by an opaque and shifting power structure that is centred on the Kremlin. It is now devoid of authoritative institutions that would enable it to develop into a fully functional state or to work out a reliable or accountable way to ensure a creative succession to Putin in 2024.
Secondly, much-needed structural economic change is essentially not on the cards. Without it, Russia’s growth will be mediocre at best, and the natural pathology of the Putinist power vertical is for repression and corruption to continue to rise.
[…]
We should be particularly cautious about drawing parallels between our experience of the Cold War and the experience we have now. The Soviet Union was an organised state. It was not to my taste, but it was an organised state overseeing and commanding a bloc of substantial countries in Europe, which Russia is not.
[…]
I do not think that there is a great deal of profit at the moment in discussing with Moscow a possible solution to Ukraine. There is a so-called process that is not working, but we owe it to Ukraine, and ultimately to Russia, to allow that country to do its best, which is more than Russia is doing; that is, to arrive at new solutions to its own problems for itself.
[…]
Russia is moving towards a fate in which in a sense it will have no Government. As I began by pointing out, it will have a small group at the top which is devoted to its own interests and has no tangible structure to produce a legally based, answerable and accountable society.
[…]
Experience shows that on the whole you get better investment if there is a proper legal structure to protect and encourage it. If you have a structure that is essentially and increasingly corrupted, that is an inhibition to the proper development of society as a whole.I do not think we have to argue that—it is just true. The Russians do not actually have a proper system in that sense now. Their reliance on the Russian Orthodox Church as a validating idea is pretty hollow.
Also, the idea of democracy as we understand it—the vote being decisive and necessary—has been greatly weakened. In my view, the foundation of democracy is a proper, accountable legal system. That is how we started, even when we had King Richard II or whoever. That was the basic philosophy behind it. The Russians have never had that and they have a fundamental problem in deciding who they are, what they are for and so on, which is compensated for by a huge number of mythical assumptions about their superiority, their messianic traditions and so on. I do not think there is now, as there was in Soviet times, a serious discussion between a communist system and a western system. I think they are struggling to find any answer to that.
We do talk to them and try to determine in which areas it might be useful to work with them. It has been very difficult to identify any such area, in part because the basic aim is clear. It is to make Russia great again, to use a nice phrase, but it is not actually much more than that. Other than that, it is about dominating neighbouring countries, and I do not see how that helps us to come to a better world.
It is the agenda that is missing, for me. I do not think that that is our fault particularly. I think it is a result of the system that the Russians have concocted for themselves. I do not think that that system is going to last for ever. Quite how it changes is beyond me. It could easily change in more of a Maduro than a Gorbachev direction, but it will change.”
Straight from the horses mouth.
Sir Wood ruthlessly identifies the weak points of the RF – Putinism and anti-communism.
The strategy is that with Western pressure the Putin regime will collapse one way or another and the RF will be made compliant, one way or another.
Why change this strategy? The EU removing itself from the scene as a Great Power is excellent news for the Anglo-American Empire – which is progress, the future, better than anywhere else in every way, and entirely through the virtue of its political philosophy.
Without a progressive ideology such as what the Soviet Union had – Russia is just a bunch of sore losers. Winners don’t want to have anything to do with losers.
Putin – for all his managerial ability and intelligence – still yearns to be respected by the West and is sentimental instead of ideological.
If the Russian peoples don’t recreate a reformed Communist bloc – in collaboration with China – they are toast in my opinion.
Posted by: moaobserver | Jun 7 2022 16:42 utc | 28
The words “neo-liberal” and “neo-conservative” fascinate me. They appear to be synonyms. They appear to describe the same polices and the same people. In America, the trend has been constant in the same direction across Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden. If you plot American policies, and on the big stuff that is never debated in elections, you get a straight line. A straight line to hell if you ask me, but definitely a straight line.
And yet, if you read writers from the right, the problem is all from the ‘neo-liberals’. And if you read writers on the left, the problem is all from the ‘neo-conservatives’. It appears to be more equivalent to the style of the writer, than to any real difference between the ‘neo-liberals’ and ‘neo-conservatives’.
Of course, there is nothing remotely ‘liberal’ about ‘neo-liberals’, nor is there anything remotely ‘conservative’ about neo-conservatives.
Liberals believe in ‘progress’, in building a better future, with more freedoms and rights. And yet, ‘neo-liberals’ tear down and destroy all previous progress. For instance, in the dismantling of the post-Watergate, pro-democracy reforms, in the dismantling of the post-Great-Depression banking reforms, and the dismantling of the cold-war legacy arms control agreements and structures.
Likewise, conservatives always think the past was better, and want to go back to when things were great. And yet, these ‘neoconservatives’ want a radical, new vision of the the world which has never been seen before. An empire spanning the whole world with no one else left able to stand and challenge them … that is a radical notion, not something that repeats often through history.
The key part is the ‘neo’. That tells you that even the Orwellian bullsheeeet artist who came up with these words knew that they couldn’t sell this under the old words, so they had to create a new word, and thus a new meaning, by prepending ‘neo-‘ to the old word.
And yet, writers on both the left and the right are so stuck in their style and rhetoric that these identical policies and otherwise identical people are called this either this new, anti-liberal, form of ‘liberals’ by the writers with right-wing style. And this new, radical, anti-conservative form of ‘conservatives’ are called ‘neo-conservatives’ by the writers of the left wing style.
The main thing that this tells me is that these writers, on both sides, are so stuck in old political arguments that they can only rant against ‘liberals’ or ‘conservatives’, even if they have to do so by sticking a ‘neo-‘ in front of the new made-up word.
Congressman Ron Paul once had a great line, when he described Hillary as “Lindsay Graham in a skirt” on foreign policy. Is that the only difference between a ‘neo-liberal’ and a ‘neo-conservative’? To me, the use of the words tells me much more about the writer than the subject.
Posted by: GeorgeO | Jun 7 2022 18:14 utc | 71
|
