{"id":46917,"date":"2014-09-08T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=46917"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:30:38","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:30:38","slug":"the-whys-behind-the-ukraine-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/09\/the-whys-behind-the-ukraine-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Whys behind the Ukraine Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"russia-ukraines-dream-energy-chevron\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Given the very high stakes of\u00a0a\u00a0nuclear confrontation with Russia, some analysts wonder what\u2019s the real motive for taking this\u00a0extraordinary risk over Ukraine. Is it about\u00a0natural gas, protection of the U.S. dollar\u2019s dominance, or an outgrowth of neocon extremism?<\/em><\/p>\n

A senior U.S. diplomat told me recently that if Russia were to occupy all of Ukraine and even neighboring Belarus that there\u00a0would be\u00a0zero impact on U.S. national interests. The diplomat wasn\u2019t advocating that, of course, but was noting\u00a0the curious reality that Official Washington\u2019s current war hysteria over Ukraine doesn\u2019t connect to genuine\u00a0security concerns.<\/p>\n

So why has so much of the Washington Establishment \u2013 from prominent government officials to all the major media pundits \u2013 devoted so much time this past year to pounding their chests over the need to confront Russia regarding\u00a0Ukraine? Who is benefiting from this eminently avoidable \u2013 yet extremely dangerous \u2013 crisis? What\u2019s driving the madness?<\/p>\n

Of course, Washington\u2019s conventional wisdom is that America only wants \u201cdemocracy\u201d for the people of Ukraine and that Russian President Vladimir Putin provoked this confrontation as part of an imperialist design to reclaim Russian territory lost during the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. But that \u201cgroup think\u201d doesn\u2019t withstand examination. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cWho\u2019s Telling the Big Lie on Ukraine?<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

The Ukraine crisis was provoked not by Putin but by a combination of the European Union\u2019s reckless move to expand its influence eastward and the machinations of U.S. neoconservatives who were angered by Putin\u2019s collaboration with President Barack Obama to tamp down confrontations in Syria and Iran, two neocon targets for \u201cregime change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plus, if \u201cdemocracy promotion\u201d were the real motive, there were obviously better ways to achieve it. Democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych pledged\u00a0on Feb. 21 \u2013 in an agreement\u00a0guaranteed by three European nations \u2013 to surrender much of his power and hold early elections so he could be voted out of office if the people wanted.<\/p>\n

However, on Feb. 22, the agreement was brushed aside as neo-Nazi militias stormed presidential buildings and forced Yanukovych and other officials to flee for their lives. Rather than stand behind the Feb. 21 arrangement, the U.S. State Department quickly endorsed the coup regime that emerged as \u201clegitimate\u201d and the mainstream U.S. press dutifully demonized Yanukovych by noting, for instance, that a house being built for him had a pricy sauna.<\/p>\n

The key role of the neo-Nazis, who were given several ministries in recognition of their importance to the putsch, was studiously ignored or immediately forgotten by all the big U.S. news outlets. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cUkraine\u2019s \u2018Dr. Strangelove\u2019 Reality.<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

So, it\u2019s hard for any rational person to swallow the official line that the U.S. interest in the spiraling catastrophe of Ukraine, now including thousands of ethnic Russians killed by the coup regime\u2019s brutal \u201canti-terrorist operation,\u201d was either to stop Putin\u2019s imperial designs or to bring \u201cdemocracy\u201d to the Ukrainians.<\/p>\n

That skepticism \u2013 combined with the extraordinary danger of stoking a hot war on the border of nuclear-armed Russia \u2013 has caused many observers to search for more strategic explanations behind the crisis, such as the West\u2019s desires to \u201cfrack\u201d eastern Ukraine for shale gas or the American determination to protect the dollar as the world\u2019s currency.<\/p>\n

Thermo-Nuclear War Anyone?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The thinking is that when the potential cost of such an adventure, i.e. thermo-nuclear warfare that could end all life on the planet, is so high, the motivation must be commensurate. And there is logic behind that thinking although it\u2019s hard to conceive what financial payoff is big enough to risk wiping out all humanity including the people on Wall Street.<\/p>\n

But sometimes gambles are made with the assumption that lots of money can be pocketed before cooler heads intervene to prevent total devastation \u2014 or even the more immediate risk that\u00a0the Ukraine crisis will pitch Europe into a triple-dip recession that could destabilize the fragile U.S. economy, too.<\/p>\n

In the Ukraine case, the temptation has been to think that Moscow \u2013 hit with escalating economic sanctions \u2013 will back down even as the EU and U.S. energy interests seize control of eastern Ukraine\u2019s energy reserves. The fracking could mean both a financial bonanza to investors and an end to Russia\u2019s dominance of the natural gas supplies feeding central and eastern Europe. So the economic and geopolitical payoff could be substantial.<\/p>\n

According<\/a> to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Ukraine has Europe\u2019s third-largest shale gas reserves at 42 trillion cubic feet, an inviting target especially since other European nations, such as Britain, Poland, France and Bulgaria, have resisted fracking technology because of environmental concerns. An economically supine Ukraine would presumably be less able to say no. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cBeneath the Ukraine Crisis: Shale Gas.<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

Further supporting the \u201cnatural gas motive\u201d is the fact that it was Vice President Joe Biden who demanded that President Yanukovych pull back his police on Feb. 21, a move that opened the way for the neo-Nazi militias and the U.S.-backed coup. Then, just three months later, Ukraine\u2019s largest private gas firm, Burisma Holdings, appointed<\/a> Biden\u2019s son, Hunter Biden, to its board of directors.<\/p>\n

While that might strike some of you as a serious conflict of interest, even vocal advocates for ethics in government lost their voices amid Washington\u2019s near-universal applause for the ouster of Yanukovych and\u00a0warm affection for the coup regime in Kiev.<\/p>\n

For instance, Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, dismissed<\/a> the idea that Hunter Biden\u2019s new job should raise eyebrows, telling Reuters: \u201cIt can\u2019t be that because your dad is the vice president, you can\u2019t do anything,\u201d<\/p>\n

Who Is Behind Burisma?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Soon, Burisma \u2013 a shadowy Cyprus-based company \u2013 was lining up well-connected lobbyists, some with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry, including Kerry\u2019s former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.<\/p>\n

As Time magazine reported<\/a>, \u201cLeiter\u2019s involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry\u2019s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry\u2019s son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to investigative journalism<\/a> in Ukraine, the ownership of Burisma has been traced to Privat Bank, which is controlled\u00a0by the thuggish billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who was appointed by the coup regime to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central province of Ukraine. Kolomoysky also has been associated with the financing of brutal paramilitary forces killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Also, regarding this energy motive, it shouldn\u2019t be forgotten that on Dec. 13, 2013, when neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their \u201cEuropean aspirations,\u201d she was\u00a0at a conference sponsored by Chevron. She even stood next to the company\u2019s logo.<\/p>\n

So, clearly energy resources and the billions of dollars that go with them should be factored in when trying to solve the mystery of why Official Washington has gone so berserk about a confrontation with Russia that boils down to whether ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine should be allowed some measure of autonomy or be put firmly under the thumb of U.S.-friendly authorities in Kiev.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the issue of Russia\u2019s interest in exploring with China and other emerging economies the possibility of escaping the financial hegemony of the U.S. dollar, a move that could seriously threaten American economic dominance. According to this line of thinking, the U.S. and its close allies need to bring Moscow to its geopolitical knees \u2013 where it was under the late Boris Yeltsin \u2013 to stop any experimentation with other currencies for global trade.<\/p>\n

Again, the advocates for this theory have a point. Protecting the Mighty Dollar is of utmost importance to Wall Street. The financial cataclysm of a potential ouster of the U.S. dollar as the world\u2019s benchmark currency might understandably prompt some powerful people to play a dangerous game of chicken with nuclear-armed Russia.<\/p>\n

Of course, there\u2019s also the budgetary interest of NATO and the U.S. \u201cmilitary-industrial complex\u201d (which helps fund many of Washington\u2019s \u201cthink tanks\u201d) to hype every propaganda opportunity to scare the American people about the \u201cRussian threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, it\u2019s a truism that every major international confrontation has multiple drivers. Think back on the motives behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Among a variety of factors were Vice President Dick Cheney\u2019s lust for oil, President George W. Bush\u2019s psychological rivalry with his father, and the neocons\u2019 interest in orchestrating \u201cregime change\u201d in countries considered hostile to Israel. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cThe Mysterious Why of the Iraq War<\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n

There are also other reasons to disdain Putin, from his bare-chested horseback riding to his retrograde policies on gay rights. But he is no Stalin and surely no Hitler.<\/p>\n

The Neocons\u2019 \u2018Samson Option\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, while it\u2019s reasonable to see multiple motives behind the brinksmanship with Russia over Ukraine, the sheer recklessness of the confrontation has, to me, the feel of an ideology or an \u201cism,\u201d where people are ready to risk it all for some larger vision that is central to their being.<\/p>\n

That is why I have long considered the Ukraine crisis to be an outgrowth of the neoconservative obsession with Israel\u2019s interests in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Not only did key neocons \u2013 the likes of Assistant Secretary Nuland and Sen. John McCain \u2013 put themselves at the center of the coup plotting last winter but the neocons had an overriding motive: they wanted to destroy the behind-the-scenes collaboration between President Obama and President Putin who had worked together to avert a U.S. bombing campaign against the Syrian government a year ago and then advanced negotiations with Iran over limiting but not eliminating its nuclear program.<\/p>\n

Those Obama-Putin diplomatic initiatives frustrated the desires of Israeli officials and the neocons to engineer \u201cregime change\u201d in those two countries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even believed that bombing Iran\u2019s nuclear plants was an \u201cexistential\u201d necessity.<\/p>\n

Further, there was the possibility that an expansion of the Obama-Putin cooperation could have supplanted Israel\u2019s powerful position as a key arbiter of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Thus, the Obama-Putin relationship had to be blown up \u2013 and the Ukraine crisis was the perfect explosive for the destruction. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cWhy Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia<\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n

Though I\u2019m told that Obama now understands how the neocons and other hardliners\u00a0outmaneuvered him over Ukraine, he has felt compelled to join in Official Washington\u2019s endless Putin-bashing, causing a furious Putin to make clear that he cannot be counted on to assist Obama on tricky foreign policy predicaments like Syria and Iran.<\/p>\n

As I wrote<\/a>\u00a0last April, \u201cThere is a \u2018little-old-lady-who-swallowed-the-fly\u2019 quality to neocon thinking. When one of their schemes goes bad, they simply move to a bigger, more dangerous scheme. If the Palestinians and Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah persist in annoying you and troubling Israel, you target their sponsors with \u2018regime change\u2019 \u2013 in Iraq, Syria and Iran. If your \u2018regime change\u2019 in Iraq goes badly, you escalate the subversion of Syria and the bankrupting of Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust when you think you\u2019ve cornered President Barack Obama into a massive bombing campaign against Syria \u2013 with a possible follow-on war against Iran \u2013 Putin steps in to give Obama a peaceful path out, getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and Iran to agree to constraints on its nuclear program. So, this Obama-Putin collaboration has become your new threat. That means you\u00a0take aim at Ukraine, knowing its sensitivity to Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou support an uprising against elected President Viktor Yanukovych, even though neo-Nazi militias are needed to accomplish the actual coup. You get the U.S. State Department to immediately recognize the coup regime although it disenfranchises many people of eastern and southern Ukraine, where Yanukovych had his political base.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Putin steps in to protect the interests of those ethnic Russian populations and supports the secession of Crimea (endorsed by 96 percent of voters in a hastily called referendum), your target shifts again. Though you\u2019ve succeeded in your plan to drive a wedge between Obama and Putin, Putin\u2019s resistance to your Ukraine plans makes him the next focus of \u2018regime change.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cYour many friends in the mainstream U.S. news media begin to relentlessly demonize Putin with a propaganda barrage that would do a totalitarian state proud. The anti-Putin \u2018group think\u2019 is near total and any accusation \u2013 regardless of the absence of facts \u2013 is fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, by risking a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia \u2014 the equivalent of the old lady swallowing a horse \u2013\u00a0the neocons have moved beyond what can be described in a children\u2019s ditty. It has become more like a global version of Israel\u2019s \u201cSamson Option,\u201d the readiness to use nuclear weapons in a self-destructive commitment to eliminate your enemies whatever the cost to yourself.<\/p>\n

But what is particularly shocking in this case is how virtually everyone in U.S. officialdom \u2013 and across the mainstream media spectrum \u2013 has bought into this madness.<\/p>\n

________________________<\/p>\n

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America\u2019s Stolen Narrative, either in\u00a0print here<\/a>\u00a0or as an e-book (from Amazon<\/a> and barnesandnoble.com<\/a>). The trilogy includes America\u2019s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Given the very high stakes of a nuclear confrontation with Russia, some analysts wonder what\u2019s the real motive for taking this extraordinary risk over Ukraine. Is it about natural gas, protection of the U.S. dollar\u2019s dominance, or an outgrowth of neocon extremism?<\/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-46917","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\/46917","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=46917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}