{"id":40187,"date":"2014-03-03T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2014-03-03T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=40187"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:11:02","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:11:02","slug":"clever-clever-was-the-ukraine-coup-americas-main-event-at-the-sochi-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/03\/clever-clever-was-the-ukraine-coup-americas-main-event-at-the-sochi-olympics\/","title":{"rendered":"Clever, Clever – Was the Ukraine Coup America\u2019s Main Event at the Sochi Olympics?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my previous essay<\/a> on events in Ukraine, I speculated that the US and EU orchestrated the climax of the Ukraine crisis to occur while Vlad was preoccupied with presiding over his beloved Olympics, and unwilling or unable to destroy the soft power vibe by intervening forcefully in the Ukraine, or even giving the matter his more complete attention.<\/p>\n

Clever, clever America, if this was the case.<\/p>\n

Of course, with what we know now about the aggressive Western destabilization effort in Ukraine\u2014which included subversion, coercion, and even comfort and aid to violent insurrectionists against Yanukovich\u2019s hapless elected government\u2014it is rather ironic that the Western media anointed Putin History\u2019s Greatest Monster February 2014 Edition.<\/p>\n

You remember that, don\u2019t you?\u00a0 The mean, anti-democratic, gay-hating, Pussy-Riot whipping autocrat who might unleash tyrannical Russian might against the freedom fighters in Maidan Square?<\/p>\n

Well, it is also ironic that Putin preached non-intervention and let Ukraine (and Yanukovich, obviously not his BFF) stew, while it was the West and the ever-reliable Western media that engaged in active cheerleading and more, intervening in Ukraine to facilitate the overthrow of an elected government on Russia\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n

Wait a minute.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s too<\/i> ironic.\u00a0 Maybe it was intentional.\u00a0 Maybe the Western campaign against Putin and Sochi was part of the pre-emptive framing effort to depict events in Ukraine as a struggle of freedom-loving Euro-Ukrainians against the Evil Empire.<\/p>\n

I always thought the ostensible reason for the near universal boycott of the Sochi opening ceremonies by President Obama and the EU states always smelled a little fishy.\u00a0 As I recall, the guy who runs Belgium was the only Atlantic leader who showed up.<\/p>\n

Of course, nobody said We\u2019re boycotting.\u00a0 It was just, we\u2019re too busy, (F*ck you Vladimir).<\/p>\n

There was considerable rumbling in the Western press, I recall, that the forces of freedom were dumping on Putin and Sochi because of the anti-gay propaganda law, a justification that has a few holes in it, considering that the legal position of LGBTs is more protected in Russia than it is in several US states.\u00a0 And let\u2019s not forget the brutal oppression of stray dogs\u2014cute, cuddly puppies!\u2014by the heartless Russian bear.<\/p>\n

Maybe the Sochi-time hostility was more a matter of making sure that Putin and Russia were on the wrong side of global opinion\u2014and less likely to risk spoiling the optics of the Games by throwing themselves into a regional crisis\u2014when Ukraine finally blew up.<\/p>\n

As to why the United States was so keen to hand Russia a geopolitical loss, maybe it has to do with support for the EU\u2019s long-standing desire to wrench Ukraine into the Western column.<\/p>\n

I hope so.<\/p>\n

Because an alternate possibility is that the United States did it for revenge, to punish Putin for not going along with the US program on Syria.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not great because, if so, the decision might have been made out of short-sighted spite, and the West might have taken sole custody of the Ukrainian tar baby just as its finances are teetering to collapse and the split between eastern and western Ukrainians threatens to turn into a permanent rift.<\/p>\n

It would be\u2026ironic! There\u2019s that word again!\u2014if punishing Putin over Syria turned Ukraine into another Syria.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think this revenge scenario is too outlandish.\u00a0 President Obama seems to be a man who likes his revenge served cold\u2014icy cold\u2014and maybe underneath that controlled fa\u00e7ade he was itching to show Putin that Russia could not lightly defy US demands to withdraw support from Assad and collapse the Syrian government.\u00a0 I believe personal disdain and the need to assert his credentials as world\u2019s numero uno big boss drives President Obama\u2019s foreign policy with regard to Putin, with the Chinese leadership (ever since he was subjected to a finger-wagging tirade by China\u2019s chief climate negotiator for America\u2019s botched outing at the Copenhagen summit in 2010), and of course, his counterproductive crusade\u2014now in its third dismal year with a promise of further escalation\u2013 to destroy Syria and further destabilize the Middle East in order to punish Bashar Assad for refusing to go when Obama told him to go.<\/p>\n

One hopes that twelve-dimensional chess is guiding US moves in the Ukraine.\u00a0 But if that policy is in the hands of a crude neo-con like \u201cFuck the EU\u201d Victoria Nuland, maybe we\u2019re looking at another one of those \u201cnobody could have foreseen\u201d bloody foreign policy botches that the US seems to specialize in nowadays.<\/p>\n

And Putin might have the last laugh, withholding Russia\u2019s promised contribution of $15 billion while the EU scrambles to come up with the $30 billion Ukraine needs to get through the year (amazingly, the US has to date made no commitment to provide financial aid, something the EU is probably noticing; and thinking Thanks a Billion! Not! Vicky Nuland, since the aggressive US strategy blew up the transitional government negotiated by the EU that might have kept Russia in the game and on the hook).<\/p>\n

A year from now it might be Vladimir Putin who\u2019s saying Thanks! Victoria Nuland.\u00a0 Thanks to you I was spared the cost and trouble of propping up a dysfunctional pro-Russian government in the Ukraine.\u00a0 I saved $15 billion bucks\u2026turned a nice profit since I could drop concessional pricing in the new gas contracts\u2026and I picked up east and south Ukraine as new Russian provinces for free!<\/p>\n

Clever, clever\u2026maybe too clever America.<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

Peter Lee<\/i>\u00a0edits China Matters. His ground-breaking investigation into the NSA, The NSA and Its Enablers, appears in the October issue of CounterPunch magazine. He can be reached at:\u00a0chinamatters (at) prlee. org.<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clever, clever America, if this was the case. Because an alternate possibility is that the United States did it for revenge, to punish Putin for not going along with the US program on Syria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-balkans-eastern-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}