Maidan is U.S. anti-Russian front

Maidan is U.S. anti-Russian front

Ex: http://en.fbii.org

Washington's attention is now focused on the events in Ukraine. For more than a month Ukrainian citizens have rallied at Independence Square in Kiev to protest President Victor Yanukovich’s delay to sign an economic agreement with the EU. However, the U.S. has long prepared for such an eventuality, providing Ukrainian opposition with funds. Let’s try to understand, why Washington needs Maidan.

U.S. Assistance Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has been spotted in Kiev’s main opposition site in Independence Square, where she was handing out buns and cookies to Ukrainian protesters. U.S. Senator John McCain met Ukrainian opposition leaders in Kiev and voiced support for protesters camped out for weeks in the capital, a move sure to anger Moscow for what it sees as Western meddling in its backyard. McCain met opposition leaders - the ex-boxing champion Vitaly Klitchko, former economy minister Arseny Yatsenyuk and far right nationalist Oleh Tyahnybog - who are calling for Yanukovich's government to resign and for early elections. Ambassador Jeffrey Wright says something about the unbreakable friendship between peoples and newcomers of State Department officials are eyeing magnets with Maidan symbols...

Indeed, why should the West come to the rescue of Ukraine? The only thing they care about in the Western capitals is the prevention of   further rapprochement between Ukraine and Russia. The paradigm offered by Zbigniew Brzezinski is popular among Western decision makers. In the Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives written in 1997 he wrote that without Ukraine Russia ceases to be empire, while with Ukraine - bought off first and subdued afterwards, it automatically turns into empire… According to him, the new world order under the hegemony of the United States is created against Russia and on the fragments of Russia. Ukraine is the Western outpost to prevent the recreation of the Soviet Union. The main goal of Ukraine’s association with the European Union is not improving the common people’s well-being but rather pursuing the geopolitical mission of weakening Russia. No wonder that Mr. Brzezinski and the State Department’s members were invited to the U.S. Senate, where a few days ago parliamentary hearings on the Ukrainian events were hold. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a mover of these hearings.

Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland’s and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Tom Melia’s testimonies contained the usual cliches, “First let me express our gratitude to this committee and to the U.S. Senate for your leadership on Ukraine, and for the superb working relationship between the executive and legislative branches of government on this issue,” “I also want to thank and commend Senators McCain and Murphy for bringing that bipartisan support directly to the people of Ukraine on a key weekend in December, and engaging with President Yanukovych, his government, the opposition, the business community and civil society in support of a peaceful, democratic way out of the crisis” etc.

Taken together, the testimony of Nuland and Melia seem to rest on a number of questionable assumptions:

- Clear and identifiable U.S. national interests are at stake in the debate currently being played out in Maidan Square.

- Without U.S. financial and moral support the opposition to the Yanukovych regime is unlikely to succeed.

- Russia, by offering the Ukrainian government a more attractive bailout package than that proposed by the European Union (EU) and IMF, was acting in bad faith.

- The protesters in Maidan speak for all Ukrainian people, the vast majority of whom desire to be integrated into the EU.

- The outcome of the current crisis will have a definite effect on Russia’s future development; if Ukraine chooses a European future, so too (someday) will Russia.

The Q&A portion of the hearing left little doubt that these assumptions are shared by committee chairman Robert Menendez, ranking member Sen. Bob Corker, and not surprisingly, Sens. Chris Murphy and John McCain, fresh off their recent trip to Kiev.

The less said about McCain’s questions, the better. After asserting that Ukraine “is a country that wants to be European, not Russian” and that the Ukrainian people “cry out for our assistance,” he went on, in a bizarre aside, to mention not once, but twice, that Russia was “embargoing” supplies of chocolate to Ukraine. It was that chocolate embargo that really seemed to stoke his outrage.

For their part, Menendez and Corker stayed more on point. Menendez threatened sanctions against the Yanukovych regime and was incredulous as to why the administration hadn’t already filed a complaint against Russia in the WTO. Corker’s first order of business was to scold the State Department for not adding names to the Magnitsky list, which, he said, it was supposed to do “under law.” Yet he made clear that he concurred with the witnesses’ views that “Ukraine is an incredibly important country” and the outcome of the current crisis “could be the thing that shapes policy inside Russia itself.”

At no point was there any evidence, either in the senators’ questions or in the respondents’ answers, that any thought had been given to whether it was at all appropriate for the U.S. government to get ever more deeply involved in the political life of a sovereign state halfway around the globe. No doubts were expressed over whether the choices that a democratically elected government makes with regard to its trading partners, elections, and security are the proper objects of American scrutiny. As Princeton emeritus professor Stephen F. Cohen has trenchantly noted, “It is not democratic to overthrow a democratically elected government. It’s the opposite of that.”

Nor was there any recognition that Ukraine is deeply and almost evenly divided between Ukraine’s westernizers in the urban centers such as Kiev and Lviv, and the Russophiles in the South and East, never mind the fact that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus all have common roots which trace back to the Kievan Rus in the 9^th century, The American Conservative says.

Melia went furthest (Nuland, a former State Department spokesperson, was marginally more nuanced), stating that the committee’s attention to Ukraine was warranted not only because it lay “at the center of Europe” but because it was also a “valued” and “important” partner to the United States. If those assertions didn’t raise eyebrows, then the dollar figures he cited certainly should have.

According to Melia, since the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, the U.S. has spent - the term of art Melia used was “invested” - over $5 billion on assistance to Ukraine, $815 million of which went towards funding democracy and exchange programs. Further, since 2009 the Obama administration has funneled $184 million to programs ostensibly aimed at supporting civil society, human rights, good governance, and the rule of law in Ukraine.

It is logical to assume that the Euromaidan today spends the same money. A huge stage with lighting and acoustics, militants’ equipment, hot meals, thousands of beds, heating, medical equipment, high-speed internet, warm clothing, the buses that take militants to crush administrations of other regions... Obviously, even one day of actions at Maidan costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In support of this version, with reference to the Ukrainian security services, detailed scheme of Maidan funding is posted on the Internet: “Every leader of resistance team was promised a cash reward. $200 per day for each active fighter, and an additional $500, if the group is over 10 people, have been promised. Coordinators have been to pay minimum $2,000 per day of riots provided the controlled group performs direct offensive actions targeted at law enforcement officials and representatives of the public authorities. The U.S. Embassy in Kiev received cash. Active fighters and leaders were transferred payments to their personal accounts.” The information about the management of militants along with their bank accounts is also posted on the Internet.

Fmr. 16-year Member of U.S. Congress, two-time U.S. Presidential Candidate Dennis J. Kucinich reveals the far-reaching U.S. plans: “While the draft of the EU “Association Agreement” is being sold as an economic boon for Ukrainian citizens, in reality it appears to be NATO's Trojan Horse: a massive expansion of NATO's military position in the region. What's more, the Agreement occurs under the cover of nebulous economic promises for a beset population hungering for better wages.

In a country where the average monthly minimum wage stands at about $150 USD, it's not hard to understand why Ukrainians are in the streets. They do not want to be in Russia's orbit, nor do they want to be pawns of NATO.

But is the plight of Ukrainians being exploited to usher in a new military agreement under the guise of economic reform?

For NATO, the goal is expansion. The prize is access to a country that shares a 1,426-mile border with Russia. The geopolitical map would be dramatically reshaped by the Agreement, with Ukraine serving as the new front for Western missile defense at the doorstep of Russia. Should the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran fall apart, Ukraine could be employed in larger regional disputes, too.

When military spending goes up, domestic spending goes down. The winners are unlikely to be the people of Ukraine, but instead the "people" of Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and other defense interests. The Ukrainians didn't go to Independence Square to rally for NATO. Yet NATO's benefit is clear. Less clear is whether Ukrainians will receive key economic benefits they seek.”

“The Ukrainian government made the correct decision to stay out of the EU.  Ukraine’s economic interests lie with Russia, not with the EU. This is completely obvious,” an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate Paul Craig Roberts says. “The EU wants Ukraine to join so that Ukraine can be looted, like Latvia, Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, and Portugal. The U.S. wants Ukraine to join so it can become a location for more of Washington’s missile bases against Russia.”

“If we know fully the story of what happened, we probably came – we the United States, because that was kind of a proxy war – as close to war with Russia as we had since the Cuban missile crisis,” Stephen F. Cohen, a professor emeritus at New York University and Princteon University, states.

How long Washington will hide their involvement in the riots in Kiev? What could be the next steps of the U.S.?

The fear of U.S. troops moving into Ukraine national territory could result in another war like situation where another blood battle for control could ensue. The fear of such a step by the United States government has been sparked by the statement by John Kerry earlier in Davos, Switzerland.

Kerry had clarified that the myth of U.S. having a change in its foreign policy should be debunked. He added that America is not standing down from its policy on engaging itself in areas where there is violence and escalated human rights violations. Kerry was straight forward in his response when he said that absence of excessive troop movements or lack of threatening responses does not indicate a disengaging attitude from U.S.

The United States is considering a range of options to respond to Ukraine's crackdown on opposition protests, including possible sanctions, the State Department said. Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel also warned Kiev against using military force on demonstrators “in any fashion,” and urged restraint in December.

Several petitions, that require sending U.S. peacekeepers to Ukraine, are registered on the White House's website. Although this idea still has relatively few votes - a total of several thousand - no one can completely eliminate the option of humanitarian action involving the U.S. Army in Ukraine.

Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria... Washington typically uses a phased intervention scenario. First, the head of state is subjected to international obstruction. Then, giving the country leader’s fails, the country faces an economic embargo. Alongside this, the chaos is inspired in its territory. Finally, a proposal to introduce peacekeepers in order to end the suffering of citizens is made by NATO...