Barack Obama and Saudi Arabia: Behind the Scenes of the Visit

Igor PANKRATENKO |

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

The conversation between the U.S. president and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia did not last very long. The ninety-year-old king walks with the help of a walker; during his meeting with Obama, a respirator was standing by for the monarch in the next room. However, besides the king, the two highest-ranking representatives of the dynasty also took part in the negotiations - Crown Prince Salman and the foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, whose words are sufficient for the making of any decisions in the Kingdom.

Even a brief list of the main points of the agenda speaks of the importance of the meeting: relations with Tehran, changes in the approaches to the civil war and foreign intervention in Syria, future policy with regard to Cairo and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, joint actions in Lebanon, «anti-terrorism» operations in Yemen, the situation in the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC), and, finally, the question of questions: joint plans with regard to diversifying supplies of energy resources to NATO member countries and agreeing on actions for lowering gas and oil prices.

The official commentary on the visit boils down to assurances of the inviolability of the strategic alliance between America and Arabia. In terms of bilateral sales volumes (52 billion for the first three quarters of 2013), the Saudis are among the top ten most important trade partners of the U.S. Military cooperation between Riyadh and Washington under the 338 contracts currently in force is worth 96.8 billion dollars. The U.S. military contingent has been withdrawn from the Kingdom, but American instructor and «consultant» missions continue active operation, especially in the security field, in close cooperation with the Saudi Ministry of Internal Affairs, intelligence and anti-terrorism divisions, conducting joint operations in Yemen. Finally, almost 74,000 Saudi students are studying in the U.S.; these are the future executives, whose talent pool, ideology and value systems are established in America.

With such a level of cooperation and intertwinement of capital (U.S. companies have around 400 joint projects with the Saudi dynasty in the Kingdom with a total volume of approximately $44 billion), there is no question of any serious disagreements between the American establishment and the Saudis. It is more accurate to speak of disagreements between the ruling dynasty and the Obama administration. But here during the visit a serious shift took place, and satisfaction literally oozes between the lines of the official commentaries on the negotiations.

The parties are to maintain the volumes of military and technical cooperation and increase coordination of military intervention in Yemen, the situation in which is a key factor for the security of Saudi Arabia and at the same time a threat to the ruling dynasty. Washington also approved the monarchy's actions in «subduing» Qatar; the mass repressions in Bahrain which, according to the Saudis, is now the front line in resisting Shiite expansion into the countries of the Persian Gulf; and the expansion of Saudi presence in Lebanon for the same «anti-Shiite» (read: anti-Iran) purposes. 

However, these are questions of a mostly tactical nature. The strategy of joint actions is defined in the questions of Egypt, Syria and oil. Each of them is significant not only for the Middle East, but for the rest of the world as well.

American-Saudi disagreements with regard to Egypt came to the surface last year, and the reason for them, according to the official American explanation, was  Obama's non-acceptance of the overthrow of Muhammad Morsi in a military coup. Like most American explanations, this one has little in common with reality. It is well known that on the day of the coup both Morsi and the Egyptian military spent several hours in telephone negotiations with Riyadh and Washington (the same thing happened, incidentally, in Qatar during the dynastic reshuffle), only after which did the military began to take key objects in Cairo, Port Said and Alexandria under its control. Yes, one of the first to congratulate new acting president of Egypt Adli Mansur was King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia. However, the U.S., although it sent no congratulations, also reported a day later that it was prepared to give the new Egyptian leadership «all possible support».

Differences between Washington and Riyadh on the Egyptian question arose from the scale of the repressions which the Egyptian military leaders, who had undergone training in U.S. academies, rained down on the Muslim Brotherhood. Washington was counting on the participation of the Brotherhood in a coalition government and using the organization's capabilities in its other geopolitical configurations, for example, in Turkey or Syria. But Cairo and Riyadh did not plan on leaving such loopholes for their political opponents, preferring to «pull the weed out roots and all», including the recent death sentences pronounced against over five hundred Brotherhood members. 

During Obama's recent visit, the «misunderstandings» on Egypt were resolved. Riyadh promised that the repressions would be scaled down and that the further development of Egypt would follow the path of «building democratic institutions and reforming the economy in accordance with market demands», for which the Saudis, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have already allocated over 15 billion dollars in aid and loans, and they recently signed an agreement with the Egyptian military leadership on 40 billion dollars for a long-term housing construction program.

The topic of Syria dominated the negotiations between Obama and Abdullah, as here the greatest number of disagreements had accumulated with regard to how to overthrow al-Asad. However, it seems that the main disagreements have now been resolved.  

For the most part, the Saudis only wanted one thing from the U.S. with regard to Syria: approval for supplying the rebels with heavy weaponry, including anti-tank systems and MANPADs. Riyadh believes that expanding the list of deliverables will create the main condition for victory over al-Asad. Indeed, changing the balance of power in favor of the rebels will make it possible to solve the two main problems at once. First, military successes achieved by the «secular opposition» with a new level of armament will seriously weaken the position of the radical Islamists, with whom the «secular» rebels are now fighting just as zealously as with the government troops. Second, those same military successes will enable the rebels to finally establish themselves in one of the regions bordering on Turkey and create a support base for the «new democratic government of Syria» there. This «government», naturally, will be recognized by many countries, and it will be able to obtain any kind of armaments on a legal basis, as it were. But the main thing is that it will be able to just as «legally» create a «no-fly zone» over the territory it controls before an attack on Damascus by the coalition of rebels and «foreign volunteers». 

Official sources report that during the negotiations with King Abdullah, President Obama only rejected the idea of direct U.S. military strikes against Syria.  Obama considered everything else, including the delivery of MANPADs to the rebels, to be possible. White House representatives do not speak plainly about this; they begin to prevaricate, but the question can essentially be considered resolved. After the negotiations, it is clear that this summer Riyadh and Washington, in partnership with other «friends of Syria», will once again try to use weapons to «close the issue» of al-Asad and of the Syrian Arab Republic in its current form…

As a result of Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia there is news for Russia as well. The time when Washington and Riyadh agreed, albeit grudgingly, to Russia's participation in the Middle Eastern process, with Moscow having the indefinite status of «cosponsor of peaceful regulation», has ended, and it ended after the Crimean referendum and the reunification of Crimea and Russia. All regional-level issues discussed in the Royal Garden in Riyadh were discussed as if Russia was no longer a factor in the region, and Moscow was a hindrance which must be removed from the region once and for all. As for the question of Saudi participation in the fight to lower prices on energy resources and the Gulf monarchies substituting their oil and gas for the volume Russia now provides to other strategic partners of the U.S., it was decided to consider that separately. Essentially, the Saudis have given their consent on this. The question will be worked out on the level of informal expert groups, which will be the ones who propose a plan for this fight to lower prices. Russia has approximately a year to develop and implement countermeasures in the field of energy strategy. Later, when the informal agreements are formalized in plans and protocols, Russia could end up in a defensive position, which is clearly worse…

Vérités ukrainiennes

Vérités ukrainiennes

LE POINT SUR L’UKRAINE

Des vérités qui peuvent déranger

Ex: http://www.terreetpeuple.com

Cet article vient en prolongement du dossier « Pourquoi l’Eurasie » du n° 59 de Terre et Peuple Magazine, en raison de l’évolution de l’actualité de ce pays. On s’y référera pour connaître tous les tenants et les aboutissants de la crise ukrainienne. En bref, l’Ukraine constitue un enjeu géopolitique primordial dans la guerre politico-économique sans merci que livre l’Occident américanisé et mondialisé à la Russie identitaire de Poutine. On connaît bien les preuves de ce containment : adhésion des pays d’Europe de l’Est à l’OTAN, installation d’un bouclier antimissile aux portes de la Russie (Pologne, Roumanie, Turquie), soutien aux révolutions de couleur de toutes sortes (Serbie, Ukraine, Géorgie…) destinées à affaiblir la Russie dans son environnement direct.

Mais les Occidentaux sont allés trop loin et ont offert à Poutine l’occasion de laver l’humiliation vécue avec le bombardement des villes serbes et l’expulsion des Serbes du Kosovo en 1999. Poutine est un grand joueur d’échecs et un champion de judo, la première qualité lui donne l’avantage d’agir avec deux coups d’avance, la seconde lui permet d’esquiver les coups et d’utiliser la force de l’adversaire pour la retourner contre lui. La fessée infligée, en 2008, à la petite Géorgie trop amoureuse de l’oncle Sam, qui a permis de russifier les deux provinces séparatistes d’Ossétie du Sud et d’Abkhazie, aurait dû servir de leçon aux Occidentaux. Que nenni ! Ils ont cru pouvoir arracher l’Ukraine à l’influence du Kremlin.

La première tentative de 2004, dite « révolution orange » permet de mettre au pouvoir des pantins pro-occidentaux, Viktor Iouchtchenko et Ioulia Timochenko. L’incurie et la corruption de leur gouvernement poussent le premier à l’exil et la seconde à la prison. En 2009, par effet de balancier, le prorusse Viktor Ianoukovitch (tout aussi corrompu) revient au pouvoir à l’issue d’élections irréprochables.

Le 21 novembre 2013, Ianoukovitch refuse de signer l’accord d’association avec l’Union européenne. En fait, il n’a pas le choix : cet accord impose à l’Ukraine de pousser progressivement les forces russes hors de Crimée (où, évidemment, l’OTAN ne tarderait pas à s’installer). Dès le lendemain, comme par hasard, la place Maïdan est occupée par des manifestants pro-occidentaux, très bien encadrés. Car, il est vrai que, depuis vingt ans, nombre d’ONG américaines sont à la manœuvre. C’est Victoria Nuland, l’envoyée spéciale judéo-américaine elle-même, qui a déclaré que les Etats-Unis avaient investi plus de 5 milliards de $ dans la révolution ukrainienne et qu’il était temps d’en retirer les fruits (propos auquel elle ajouta la délicieuse phrase : « I fuck European Union » !).

Le 21 février, Ianoukovitch signe un accord avec trois plénipotentiaires de l’Union européenne, le Polonais Sikorski, l’Allemand Steinmeier et le Français Fabius. Cet accord, destiné à ramener la paix civile, met en péril le plan judéo-américain qui exige l’éviction de Ianoukovitch et son remplacement par un gouvernement fantoche. Le lendemain, la place Maïdan s’enflamme, les bâtiments officiels sont attaqués et Ianoukovitch s’enfuit. Des observateurs neutres (il ne s’agit pas des médias français…) remarquent des tireurs sur les toits qui visent systématiquement les policiers ; certaines sources dénoncent la présence d’anciens agents du Mossad pour encadrer les émeutiers (une vieille tradition israélo-étatsunienne). Les forces de l’ordre paient un prix élevé : 17 morts et près de 500 blessés. Mais la démocratie et la liberté sont passées (sic). Tous les pays de l’UE, y compris ceux qui ont signé l’accord de la veille, s’empressent de reconnaître le gouvernement provisoire, au mépris des lois internationales, car il ne s’est agi que d’un coup d’Etat qui a chassé illégalement un président légitimement élu. Qu’à cela ne tienne !

Mais le scénario occidental, si huilé est-il, n’a pas envisagé l’inenvisageable. Comme le renard de la fable « Le corbeau et le renard », Poutine annexe, sans coup férir, la Crimée, acte irréversible s’il en est. Cela lui permet de ramener à la mère-patrie la population russe de la presqu’île, mais surtout de sécuriser la base de Sébastopol et ses annexes. L’ours russe reprend donc le contrôle de la mer Noire et s’ouvre en grand la porte vers la Méditerranée (et la base syrienne de Tartous).

Pour les Ukrainiens, le bonheur promis par l’Union européenne n’est pas pour demain. Comme prévu, Gazprom augmente le prix du gaz russe de plus d’un tiers. Mais les « amis » du peuple ukrainien ne se montrent guère plus généreux : le FMI impose à l’Ukraine un régime drastique avant de verser le premier dollar. Les Ukrainiens auraient dû écouter les Grecs, les Chypriotes et les Espagnols avant de se jeter dans les bras de l’UE. L’avenir de l’Ukraine est d’être un pont entre l’Europe et la Russie, pas d’être la dernière roue de la charrette bruxelloise ou un porte-avions américain au cœur de l’Eurasie.

Voici pour l’état des lieux, en évolution permanente. Mais il faut aussi s’attarder sur quelques zones d’ombre. Les nationalistes ukrainiens sont-ils sincères et manipulés, ou bien sont-ils complices des menées occidentales ? Certains d’entre nous sont fascinés par les mouvements Svoboda ou Praviy Sektor. Les voici déchirés entre leur poutinophilie et une certaine nostalgie. Je vais donc leur permettre de régler ce dilemme. Il ne suffit pas de se promener avec des tatouages et des colifichets pour avoir une conscience politique. La question est plutôt : « dis-moi qui tu hantes et je te dirai qui tu es ».

Le 7 février, soit deux semaines avant le coup d’Etat, Oleh Tyahnibok, leader de Svoboda, parade aux côtés de Victoria Nuland, d’Arseni Iatseniouk, son poulain (futur Premier ministre du gouvernement provisoire) et accessoirement membre de la Trilatérale, et enfin de Viktor Klitschko, le boxeur président du parti UDAR, qui est soutenu par l’International Republican Institute et le National Democratic Institute, tous deux bien connus pour être des courroies de transmission du Département d’Etat américain. On ajoutera que les trois interlocuteurs de Tyahnibok sont juifs, ce qui explique sans doute le soutien indéfectible que leur prodiguent nos produits maison, Fabius et Lévy. De quoi faire se retourner dans sa tombe Stefan Bandera, fondateur de Svoboda, qui ne passait pas pour être philosémite.

Ce n’est pas la première fois que des mouvements qualifiés de populistes, et même de fascistes et de néonazis, se commettent avec les sionistes. Je rappellerai l’étrange voyage en Israël, en 2011, de 35 leaders européens des dits partis : Geert Wilders pour le PW hollandais, Filip Dewinter pour le Vlaams Belang flamand ou Heinz Christian Strache pour le FPÖ autrichien, parmi d’autres (Suédois, Allemands…). J’y ajouterai le pèlerinage de Louis Aliot, vice-président du FN, à Yad Vashem, la même année.

Quant à Praviy Sektor, son cas est encore plus intéressant. Né « spontanément » à l’automne 2013 de l’union de quelques groupuscules qui jugeaient Svoboda trop mou, il est subventionné par la diaspora ukrainienne des Etats-Unis (sic). Bizarrement, en mars 2014, Praviy Sektor fonde une nouvelle structure, Russian Legion, formée de Russes et destinée à lutter contre Poutine, y compris par des actes terroristes en Russie, notamment la destruction de pipelines. Pire encore, Dmitry Yarosh, le chef de Praviy Sektor, a fait alliance avec l’islamiste tchétchène Dokou Oumarov dans le but de « créer un front antirusse de l’Ukraine au Caucase ». Pour finir, j’ajouterai que Yarosh et des leaders du mouvement ont été reçus par l’ambassadeur d’Israël à Kiev, Reuven Din El, et se sont engagés à « lutter contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme ». Ce qui fait tache pour de soi-disant néonazis !

Quant à nous, notre positionnement est clair : les amis de nos ennemis (et les ennemis de nos amis) ne sont pas nos amis. Entre l’Occident (Etats-Unis, UE, Israël et quelques autres) qui veut imposer aux peuples une société mondialisée, déculturée et métissée, et un Poutine qui prône une révolution conservatrice et défend l’identité européenne et blanche, en rejetant l’immigration allogène et en réduisant l’islam conquérant, notre choix est fait.

Il y a vingt ans, j’avais tenté de convaincre mes amis croates et serbes de ne pas se tromper d’ennemis, à savoir les Bosniaques musulmans soutenus par « l’Occident ». Cela n’empêcha pas les néo-oustachis et les néo-tchetniks, les uns partisans de la Grande Croatie et les autres de la Grande Serbie, de s’entretuer au nom de toutes les haines accumulées. Il n’y eut que des vaincus : les Croates ne purent annexer la province d’Herceg Bosna et furent contraints de cohabiter avec les musulmans (qu’ils haïssent), et les Serbes durent abandonner la Krajina et la Slavonie, avant de perdre le Kosovo. Que ceci serve de leçon à tous les nationalistes dont le regard se limite aux rancœurs du passé, particulièrement à l’est de l’Europe.

Il serait ainsi dommage que les nationalistes ukrainiens soient aveuglés par leur russophobie, même si celle-ci est justifiée par le traitement infâme que leur ont infligé les Soviétiques pendant plus de 70 ans. Car l’Ukraine a le malheur de se situer au mauvais endroit tout en étant le « grenier à blé » de l’Europe de l’Est et un réservoir énorme de ressources naturelles. L’Ukraine a tout pour attiser les convoitises. Mais elle est aussi extrêmement fragile, car fracturée entre deux peuples inassimilables : l’Ouest catholique, dont l’histoire et la culture regardent vers la Pologne, la Lituanie et l’Autriche, et l’Est orthodoxe, qui n’a d’yeux que pour Moscou. Ce qui est donc en jeu, c’est un risque immense de guerre civile. Et pire encore. Qu’on se souvienne de ces mots de Jacques Benoist-Méchin, dans L’Ukraine, fantôme de l’Europe : « Et dans ce décor d’enfer, qui défie toute description, cinq armées différentes, venues de tous les coins de l’horizon, vont passer et repasser « comme une râpe » sur le corps sanglant de l’Ukraine : armée polonaise de Pilsudski, armée ukrainienne de Petlioura, armée blanche de Denikine et de Wrangel, armée noire des paysans anarchistes de Makhno, et enfin armées rouges de Staline et de Budienny ». L’Histoire n’est qu’un éternel recommencement.

AC

Why Obama paid a visit to Riyadh?

Why Obama paid a visit to Riyadh?

 

by Alexander Orlov

Ex: http://journal-neo.org

The deterioration of the situation in Ukraine made substantial changes in the agenda of talks of U.S. President Obama with Saudi leadership in Riyadh on March 28 this year. The main subject of the discussion included the situation around Ukraine, possible joint steps to decrease energy prices, in order to weaken Russia’s economy, promotion of Iran’s moving to a more pro-Western position, to weaken Tehran’s cooperation with Moscow, and only then about Syria and the situation in the GCC. Obama’s support of the coup in Ukraine and the tough American opposition towards Russia in Ukrainian affairs, led to Washington developing the idea of urgent mobilization of the resources of its rich Arab allies – to oppose Moscow. This is because it turned out that the U.S. and its allies in NATO and the EU had no financial or political leverage, for exerting pressure on Russia.

That is why the White House’s decision, urgently to revive its relations with those major Arab partners, with whom they have not been good recently, seems logical. The more so that, although Riyadh and Washington had differences in the approaches to some international and regional issues, the two countries reduced neither their energy nor military cooperation, as well as intelligence interaction was not stopped in the war being conducted by the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against Iran and Syria. In addition, the White House decided to try to form a united front with the leading country in the Arab world against Moscow, and to neutralize Tehran at the same time.

As it became known, in the course of the conversation, Obama suggested that the ruling Saudi dynasty “take vengeance” on Russia for Crimea, by making strikes on three fronts. In Syria, in order to take it out of the orbit of influence of Moscow and Tehran, and to put the whole Levant under the U.S. and Saudi control. To provide financial assistance to the new government in Kiev, in order to make Ukraine an outpost of anti-Russian activities in Eastern Europe. To decrease oil and gas prices significantly, which would be a serious blow to Russia’s state treasury, and to achieve substantial reductions in the consumption of Russian oil and gas by the West.

Washington is well aware that Obama cannot act in any of these areas without Riyadh, especially in terms of using the “energy weapon” against Moscow. In exchange, Obama offered to “give a free hand” to the KSA in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. The more so, that Riyadh has been granted the right to build a special relationship with Egypt, after the overthrow of Mursi’s government. In general, the U.S. and the West have turned a blind eye to the harsh crushing of the protests of Shiites in Bahrain and the Eastern Province of the KSA. The Saudis received the right to carry out an operation to “subdue” Qatar and to defeat the Muslim Brotherhood. Moreover, the White House has admitted Riyadh to work on the question that is the most important issue for it and Israel, i.e., the Israeli-Palestinian settlement, by giving the Saudis a “green light” to work with Jordan, which now has a special role in the new scheme to settle the Palestinian issue.

However, the rulers of the KSA want much more, and above all, they want Assad’s regime to be destroyed, and American help in order to stop the growing influence of Iran, as well as to form a “Shiite Arc” in the region. Only then can Riyadh recover from the strongly shaken position of the kingdom in the Islamic world. And the overthrow of Assad and capturing Damascus by the pro-Saudi Islamist opposition in Damascus are the only things that can strengthen the position of Saudi Arabia as a leader among the Arab states. This would allow the implementation of its plans for further regional expansion – from establishing a Jordanian-Palestinian federation to the formation of an anti-Shiite league from the Arabian Peninsula to India.

In addition, the Saudis have their own logic here – since Syria can play a key role in supplying Qatari gas to Europe. In 2009-2011, Damascus was the main obstacle to the implementation of a project for the construction of a pipeline from Qatar’s North Field to the EU, which would have allowed a strike at “Gazprom”, via a sharp increase in supplies of cheap Qatari gas to Europe. For various reasons, Damascus did not consent to laying of a gas pipeline through its territory from Qatar to Turkey and the Mediterranean coast of the SAR for further transit to the EU. Thus, while B. Assad stays in power, the construction of the gas pipeline from Qatar to the Mediterranean coast of Syria is impossible. Energy experts calculated back in 2009-2010, that if Sunnis came to power in Syria, instead of the Alawite regime of Bashar Assad, the gas pipeline ‘Qatar – Saudi Arabia – Jordan – Syria – Turkey’ would be built in two years. This would result in huge financial losses for Russia, whose gas cannot compete with Qatari gas, due to the extremely low cost of the latter. Hence, Saudi Arabia is trying to subdue Qatar, through a conflict within the GCC, in order to cut off another option – the construction of a gas pipeline from Iran (South Pars) through Iraq and Syria, which could be a joint project with Russia. Doha would play only a secondary, supporting role, being dependent on Tehran.

Therefore, in Obama’s negotiations with the Saudi rulers, the latter sought U.S. consent to a large increase in the comprehensive assistance provided to Syrian rebels. In particular, to supply heavy weapons and man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), which would reduce to naught the superiority of the Syrian government forces in terms of firepower, and its complete superiority in the air, and thereby change the military balance in favor of “the anti-Assad opposition”. After that, it would be possible to act under the tested scheme: the creation of no-fly zones near Turkish and Jordanian borders, turning this area into a stronghold of militants, supplying arms and sending large mercenary forces there and the organization of a march on Damascus. In this case, according to the logic of the Saudis, Iran would be forced to move to a strategic defense, which would satisfy Riyadh at this stage, before the next move – arranging a coalition aimed at stifling the Islamic regime in Tehran. Obama asked the Saudis to give $15 billion, in return for all that, in order to support current Ukrainian authorities, explaining that the KSA would be compensated for these financial costs and a temporary drop in oil prices later, by the energy “isolation” of Russia and Iran.

The more so, that there was a precedent for this, when President Reagan and Saudi King caused a sharp decline in oil prices by the dumping of Saudi oil on the world market in the mid-1980s, because Soviet troops were sent into Afghanistan, which ultimately led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, because of the subsequent economic problems. Today, a much smaller decrease in oil prices – from the current $107 per barrel to around 80-85 dollars – would be enough to make Russia suffer huge financial and economic damages. This would allow the U.S. president not only to get revenge for Crimea, but also to undermine significantly the economy of the Russian Federation, which would be followed by negative domestic political consequences for the current Russian government.

Earlier, American billionaire George Soros said that the U.S. strategic oil reserves are more than twice larger than the required level, and the sale of a part of these reserves would allow exerting pressure on Russia. That is, the blows would hit Moscow from two directions – from the United States and from the Persian Gulf. However, later on, the U.S. Secretary of Energy denied this possibility.

However, there is the question: Did the U.S. President manage to agree with Saudi Arabia to increase oil supplies to the world market to bring down prices? Does the KSA have a possibility to offer significant volumes of oil on the world market, for example up to 3-4 million b/d?

The fact is that the price of $110 per barrel is just the thing that Saudi Arabia needs, because the leadership of the kingdom has extensive socio-economic obligations. And if the standard of living of the Saudis decreases somewhat, due to the fall in oil prices and due to the fall of oil income, the country would be very much at risk to fall into the situation of the “Arab Spring”, like it was the case in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt. And the Saudis are afraid of a repetition of the Arab revolutions. Apparently, the Saudis are not going to offer additional oil on the market in order to bring down the price, just due to the hatred of the United States for the Russian Federation – as this is not profitable for them at all. They could agree on other things, including Qatari gas, Syria and Iran. In addition, the available production capacity of the KSA is not engaged now. This is about 4 million barrels per day. However, it would be impossible to do this quickly. It could take up to one month to increase the production. This is about as much as Iran produced at one time. However, now Iran is going to increase its production, due to lifting a part of the sanctions, and the Saudis are likely not to increase, but to reduce their production to keep oil prices high. And the prices will remain within the range they have been for quite a long time already. They will be in the range from 100 to 110, as this is the most comfortable range for both consumers and producers. Many countries, especially those that can influence the prices, via some manipulations with supply, are extremely interested in having high level of prices. Socio-economic programs are carried out in Venezuela at a price level of about $120 per barrel. In Iran, this figure is 110, and the same in Saudi Arabia. Thus, no one is interested in bringing down prices.

As for Iran, only one thing is clear for the time being: President Barack Obama has reassured Saudi King Abdullah that he would not agree to a “bad deal” with Iran on the nuclear issue. That is, Riyadh did not get what it wanted even on the Iranian issue. After the two leaders discussed their “tactical disagreements”, they both agreed that their strategic interests coincide, said an administration official. The statement of the White House on the results of the two-hour talks reads that Obama reaffirmed the importance for Washington of strong ties with the world’s largest oil exporter. At the same time, the administration official said that the parties had no time to discuss the situation with human rights in Saudi Arabia during their negotiations. In addition, a trusted source in the U.S. State Department said that Washington and Riyadh also discussed the conflict in Syria. According to him, the two countries carried out good joint work aimed at reaching a political transition period, and the support of moderate factions of the Syrian opposition. As for a possible supply of man-portable air defense systems to opposition militants, an informed source in Washington said that the U.S. still was concerned regarding the provision of such weapons to the rebels. However, there is information that Obama’s administration is considering the possibility of lifting the ban on the supply of MANPADS to the Syrian opposition. According to this source, the recent successes of the Syrian Army against the opposition forces may force the U.S. president to change his point of view.

Apparently, Obama and King Abdullah failed to reach clear and specific agreements on all issues on the agenda. There are differences, and the financial and economic interests are more important to Saudi Arabia than helping Washington in implementing its “revenge” on Russia for Crimea. Riyadh is well aware that Moscow and its partners on energy matters have things with which to respond to Saudi Arabia if the kingdom is blindly led on a string by the White House. And it is aware even more that Moscow has levers of political influence in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. The U.S., in turn, is not ready to resume its confrontation with Iran, especially when Tehran is fulfilling agreements to freeze its nuclear uranium enrichment program. In addition, Washington cannot work actively on Syrian affairs now, in the conditions of ongoing tensions in Ukraine. In addition, the chemical arsenal of the SAR has been half destroyed. And, apparently, Obama saw for himself during his, albeit short, stay in the kingdom that great changes are coming there, associated with the upcoming replacement of the current elderly generation of rulers by another one, which might be accompanied by unpredictable internal perturbation in the KSA. Hence, there is almost complete absence of victorious statements about the “historical” success of the U.S. President’s visit to Saudi Arabia.

Alexander Orlov, political scientist, expert in Oriental Studies, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Pourquoi la Russie a raison

Pourquoi la Russie a raison

par Guillaume Faye

Ex: http://www.gfaye.com

Les provocations anti russes

En 1991, au moment de la fin de l’URSS, du Pacte de Varsovie et des menaces qu’ils représentaient, l’Otan aurait dû se dissoudre. Les vrais buts de l’Otan, instrument géostratégique de Washington, apparurent alors : non pas tant la défense de l’Europe que l’encerclement et l’endiguement de la Russie et le recul vers l’Est de sa sphère d’influence. Contrairement à ce qu’avait promis aux Russes Helmut Kohl, au nom de l’Occident, d’anciens pays de la zone ”socialiste” entrèrent dans l’UE (erreur économique de l’élargissement à tout le monde) et surtout dans l’Otan, ce qui apparut comme une provocation.

Seconde provocation dont les Russes se souviennent : la guerre de Yougoslavie menée par l’Otan (sans que l’Onu eût voix au chapitre) qui démembra la Yougoslavie, arracha le Kosovo à la Serbie, permit le bombardement de Belgrade. Puis ce furent l’affaire du ”bouclier antimissile” américain installé en Europe centrale, et les révolutions ”orange” en Ukraine et ”rose” en Géorgie, financées et pilotées par Washington, toujours pour grignoter la sphère géopolitique russe et ravaler la Russie post soviétique au rang de puissance régionale moyenne. Les mains tendues de Gorbatchev (la « Maison commune ») et de Poutine (la « Grande Europe ») furent repoussées avec mépris. En effet, le cauchemar de l’administration américaine est une union euro-russe, économique et militaire, de l’Atlantique au Pacifique, et la dissolution de l’Otan qui s’ensuivrait. Serviles, les chancelleries européennes ont suivi, abdiquant toute indépendance, piétinant leurs propres intérêts, la France reniant sa tradition gaullienne. 

On comprend, dans ces conditions, que le Kremlin, surtout depuis le principat de Poutine, s’estime être l’agressé. Jusqu’à présent, jamais les Russes n’avaient réagi à ces provocations, faisant profil bas. Jamais la Russie n’avait menacé l’Ouest ni tenté d’y pousser ses pions. L’Occident, piloté par Washington, a pratiqué le deux poids, deux mesures et la diplomatie à la tête du client.

Sans réfléchir, l’UE s’est alignée, comme toujours, sur les Etats-Unis, sans comprendre que son intérêt est l’alliance continentale russe et non pas l’alliance américaine de soumission. Si les vrais gaullistes étaient toujours au pouvoir en France, ils auraient fait une politique rigoureusement inverse. Le but, logique, de Washington est de casser tout renouveau de puissance russe et d’empêcher à tout prix un axe euro-russe. Donc, de réveiller la guerre froide.

Le but constant des Américains, que suivent les Européens serviles : empêcher la Russie de redevenir impériale, comme du temps des Tzars et de l’URSS, et la contenir dans un rôle de station-service, style super-Arabie du Nord. Il est logique que tout président américain, qu’il soit démocrate ou républicain, suive cette politique, qui est la logique même du tropisme thalassocratique (1).  Les USA sont peut-être maladroits dans la tactique mais remarquablement constants dans leur stratégie mondiale, depuis Wilson.

Le seul point où la Russie paraît avoir tort concerne l’irrespect du ”Mémorandum de Budapest”. Elle le signa en 1994 avec les USA et la Grande-Bretagne pour garantir l’intégrité territoriale de l’Ukraine contre l’abandon par cette dernière de l‘arsenal nucléaire hérité de l’URSS. Mais les raisons de cet abandon sont parfaitement compréhensibles d’un point de vue de russe puisque l’Occident n’a pas respecté sa parole.

Les craintes d’une menace militaire russe de la part des anciens pays du glacis soviétique, notamment les pays baltes où résident des minorités russophones et de la Pologne membres de l’UE, sont parfaitement infondées et surjouées.

On se scandalise que Poutine veuille rétablir la puissance et le prestige de la Russie en restaurant son influence dans l’ancien espace soviétique, de manière ”impériale”, en faisant obstacle à toute avancée de l’Otan et de l’UE dans ses marches géopolitique de l’Est. Mais enfin, cette visée est parfaitement légitime et correspond à l’histoire russe. Les Etats-Unis, eux, ne se gênent pas pour essayer d’établir leur ”empire” sur l’Amérique latine et une partie du Moyen-Orient, au prix d’interventions militaires brutales ou de déstabilisations. Deux poids deux mesures.

Ce n’est nullement la Russie de Poutine qui voulait la relance de la guerre froide : il s’agit d’une stratégie élaborée à Washington dès l’an 2000 lorsque Poutine a pris la succession de l’impotent Eltsine. Les Américains, au moins, défendent leurs intérêts de puissance. Alors que les Européens ont abandonné toute realpolitik au profit de lubies idéologiques, humanitaro-pacifistes.  Les Européens, aveuglés, dans le déni de leur déclin, se laissent abuser par une pseudo menace russe, alors que la véritable menace vient du Sud. Il n’est pas besoin de faire un dessin. 

Le rattachement légitime de la Crimée

La Crimée est russe depuis le XVIIIe siècle et la manière dont elle fut cédée à l’Ukraine par l’URSS de Kroutchtchev en 1954 contrevient au droit des peuples et n’a pas de valeur. Concernant le président ukrainien pro-russe, Ianoukovitch, certes un satrape – mais pas plus, voire moins, que des dizaines de dirigeants dans le monde courtisés par l’Occident – il fut élu régulièrement et il a été renversé illégalement. Issu d’émeutes et de la rue, le nouveau gouvernement provisoire ukrainien est illégitime. La décision prise en février par le nouveau pouvoir de Kiev de priver les russophones de l’officialité de leur langue fut non seulement une provocation irresponsable mais une mesure répressive violant toutes les règles de la démocratie. Les dirigeants occidentaux, partiaux, ne s’en sont pas émus. Cette mesure illégale a d’ailleurs été l’amorce des événements actuels.     

Contrairement à la propagande, l’armée russe n’a jamais envahi la Crimée. La présence des forces russes à Sébastopol était conforme aux traités internationaux. Certes, des milices pro-russes ont désarmé (pacifiquement) les forces ukrainiennes, mais nul ne peut contester la validité du référendum populaire de rattachement de la Crimée à la Russie. Poutine n’a rien manipulé du tout, il a saisi la balle au bond. C’est au contraire l’Occident qui a jeté de l’huile sur le feu en attisant une confrontation manichéenne entre une Russie impérialiste et agressive et une pauvre Ukraine victime. Tout cela dans le but de réveiller la guerre froide, afin d’affaiblir une Russie dont le retour de puissance offusque Washington et l’Otan.

Ce n’est pas la Russie de Poutine qui a décidé d’annexer illégalement la Crimée, c’est la Crimée qui a décidé, à la faveur d’une réaction ukrainienne russophobe attisée par l’Occident, de rejoindre sa mère-patrie, la Russie. De plus, en aucun cas les minorités ukrainiennes ou tatars de Crimée n’ont été menacées. Elles seront parfaitement protégées, y compris dans leurs droits linguistiques, par les autorités russes. Ce sont au contraire les russophones d’Ukraine qui prennent peur. 

En soutenant le coup d’État de Kiev, les démocraties occidentales (et avec elles l’inconstant BHL) ont passé par pertes et profit le fait que le gouvernement autoproclamé est en partie constitué de membres de Svoboda, un parti néo-nazi. Ce qui conforte parfaitement la prétendue ”propagande” russe. Oleg Tiahnybok, le président de ce parti, adepte sur les tribunes de quenelles en position haute, c’est-à-dire de saluts hitlériens, avait déclaré l’urgence de « purger l’Ukraine de 400.000 juifs ».

Le principe de l’intangibilité des frontières européennes qui, en 1992, après l’indépendance de l’Ukraine, avait interdit à la Russie de demander le retour de la Crimée en son sein, a été violé par l’Occident après la reconnaissance de l’indépendance du Kosovo arraché à la Serbie malgré l’opposition de Moscou, mais aussi de l’Espagne et de la Grèce. Ce qui a donné une bonne raison à Poutine d’annexer sans un seul coup de feu la Crimée, après un référendum incontestable.

D’autre part, la récupération, sans usage de la force, de la base navale absolument vitale de Sébastopol était parfaitement compréhensible : la menace de la résiliation du bail par les autorités ukrainiennes et la possibilité très sérieuse de voir cette base enclavée et donc neutralisée dans un pays risquant d’être inféodé à l’Otan étaient inacceptables pour les Russes. 

Moscou a raison de refuser de négocier avec  un gouvernement provisoire autoproclamé, russophobe, qui a fait voter une loi inique retirant au russe son statut de langue officielle dans les régions russophones. Le droit international est une matière encore plus complexe que le droit pénal. Dans cette affaire, s’il n’a pas été entièrement respecté par la Russie, il l’a été moins encore par l’Occident qui, depuis l’invasion de l’Irak, n’a pas de leçons à donner.

En annexant la Crimée, la Russie a-t-elle perdu l’Ukraine ? C’est le leitmotiv constant des commentateurs occidentaux. Rien n’est moins sûr. L’Ukraine dépend économiquement et financièrement de la Russie bien plus que de l’Occident. L’industrie ukrainienne, par exemple, fournit largement l’armée russe. Le marché russe est indispensable à l’industrie ukrainienne. Sans l’aide financière russe, l’Ukraine ne peut pas s’en sortir. Les Occidentaux se contentent de promesses de prêts alors que Moscou a déjà prêté 3 milliards de dollars et les banques ukrainiennes ont été abondées de 20 milliards.

Faire miroiter à l’Ukraine la possibilité d’entrer dans l’UE – ce qui est une aberration économique – a été l’amorce de la crise. Il s’agissait d’une provocation à l’égard de la Russie, qui souhaitait depuis 1991 (avec l’accord des Occidentaux) maintenir ce pays frère dans la CEI-Communauté des États indépendants, bloc économique autour de la Russie.

En signant le 21 mars l’accord (économiquement irréalisable) d’association de l’Ukraine à l’UE avec le premier ministre ukrainien Arseni Iatseniouk, document que l’ex-président Ianoukovitch avait renoncé à signer le 21 novembre sous la pression russe, les Vingt-Huit ont commis un geste délibéré d’hostilité récidivée envers la Russie.  Les réactions de cette derrière sont d’ailleurs assez modérées.

Le salaire minimum en Ukraine est inférieur de 30% à celui des Chinois. Faire entrer l’Ukraine dans l’UE, comme la Géorgie, après des accords bidons d’association et de libre-échange avec Bruxelles, assortis de  promesses de prêts de la part d’une UE déjà financièrement exsangue, relève du mensonge diplomatique. L’intérêt de l’Ukraine est l’alliance économique avec la Russie.

Des sanctions économiques inappropriées 

Les Européens, en suivant les Américains dans des sanctions économiques absurdes, inefficaces, insultantes et ridicules contre la Russie, se tirent une balle dans le pied et nuisent à leurs intérêts. La Russie est le troisième partenaire économique de l’Europe. Les Allemands ont un besoin vital du gaz russe et les Britanniques des investissements russes dans la City. Le piètre chef de la diplomatie française, M. Fabius (qui avait voté contre Maastricht, donc contre l’élargissement inconsidéré de l’UE et qui maintenant veut y arrimer l’Ukraine !), est en train de torpiller le renouveau des relations franco-russes, au nom d’une conception pervertie de la ”démocratie” et par obéissance à ses maîtres. Les socialistes français – qui critiquaient le retour de la France dans le commandement intégré de l’Otan – s’alignent servilement sur la position de Washington et de Bruxelles (même entité) au mépris de l’indépendance nationale et des intérêts de l’Europe, entendue dans son vrai sens.        

À moyen terme, les sanctions économiques contre la Russie vont nuire à cette dernière : baisse des investissements en Russie, recherche d’autres fournisseurs de gaz et de pétrole, déstabilisation monétaire et financière. D’autant plus que la Russie a un besoin vital d’investisseurs étrangers car son tissu économique, hors industrie primaire d’hydrocarbures, est très insuffisant, surtout dans les nouvelles technologies. Néanmoins, les Occidentaux et notamment les Européens commettent deux lourdes erreurs : dépendants à 25% du gaz russe, ils s’exposent à une crise très grave d’approvisionnement ; d’autre part, les sanctions vont pousser les Russes à privilégier les investisseurs et exportateurs chinois au détriment des entreprises européennes. La Chine se frotte les mains. L’Empire du Milieu reste neutre, réarme et  compte les points.

Mais Washington  est un joueur de poker un peu nerveux et trop pressé. Car l’administration américaine a laissé voir son jeu le 26 mars lorsque Mr. Obama a déclaré aux dirigeants  agenouillés de l’Union européenne que les USA offraient leur gaz de schiste à la place du gaz russe (une source d’énergie que la France frileuse refuse d’exploiter sur son sol !), en poussant les licences d’exportation ; ce qui a pour but de faire signer aux Européens les accords de libre-échange unilatéraux et inégaux USA-UE. Le jeu de Washington est assez clair, sans vouloir sombrer dans la théorie du complot, et banalement machiavélien : créer une crise entre l’Europe et la Russie, les découpler ; 2) affaiblir les liens économiques euro-russes au profit d’exportations américaines sans contreparties.

Pour la France, ces sanctions sont très ennuyeuses : elles risquent de remettre en cause le marché de fournitures de navires de guerre porte-hélicoptères BPC à la marine russe. Ce qui va parfaitement dans le sens des intérêts de Washington, furieux de voir la France – pays de l’Otan – entamer une large coopération militaire avec la Russie, ce qui est complètement contraire au logiciel géostratégique américain. 

La nouvelle russophobie 

Mais une des raisons de la russophobie qui s’est emparée d’une partie des élites occidentales est que le régime russe ”poutinien” ne respecterait pas la démocratie et les valeurs humanistes. Ce syndrome idéologique fait bien rire les géostratèges cyniques de l’Administration américaine. L’hypocrisie est totale : on ne pousse pas ces cris de vierges effarouchées quand on reçoit en grande pompe le président chinois ou quand on traite avec les monarchies arabes despotiques. Notre clergé droit-de-l’hommiste se scandalise de l’interdiction de la Gay Pride ou de la propagande homo dans les écoles russes mais fait peu de cas de la peine de mort réservée aux homos dans maints régimes islamiques ”amis”.  

On rabâche avec une exagération ridicule que ” Poutine se comporte comme un despote du XVIIIe siècle ”, qu’il musèle les médias, que la Russie n’est pas un État de droit, etc. On a même comparé les récents événements à l’intervention soviétique en Tchécoslovaquie en 1968 et à la politique hitlérienne en 1938-39. Pourtant, le régime russe et sa politique  sont largement plébiscités par la population ; ce qui n’est pas le cas pour les dirigeants français, imbus de leur suffisance morale. Mais, vous comprenez, ce n’est pas de la ”démocratie”, c’est du populisme. C‘est-à-dire du néo-fascisme, n’est-ce pas ? En France, la démocratie, ce n’est pas l’opinion du peuple mais celle des élites éclairées, ”républicaines”.

Poutine exaspère l’hyperclasse intellectuelle, politicienne et médiatique, parce qu’il défend des valeurs identitaires, parce qu’il traite de décadentes les sociétés européennes, parce qu’il adopte les positions de la révolution conservatrice.  Parce qu’il veut redonner son rang à son pays. Péché capital.  Bien sûr, la Russie n’est pas le paradis terrestre (le sommes-nous ?) mais la présenter comme une dictature dirigée par un nouveau Néron qui a tort sur tous les dossiers relève de la désinformation la plus inconséquente.   

 Notes:

(1) Contrairement à l’idée véhiculée par tous les journalistes, le Président des USA  ne ”dirige” pas, comme peut le faire par exemple le PR français. Il est plutôt le porte-parole des forces qui l’ont élu et surtout le jouet, en politique extérieure principalement, des influences croisées de la CIA, du State Department et du Pentagone, qui sont les gardiens du temple (cf mon essai Le Nouvel impérialisme américain, Éd. de l’Aencre). On l’a bien vu avec Bush junior : isolationniste avant d’être élu, les néoconservateurs et le Pentagone l’ont forcé à retourner sa veste et à se lancer dans les campagnes militaires que l’on sait. De même, Obama, qui se désintéressait de la question russe et voulait un apaisement, a été forcé de se réaligner sur la position anti-russe. Une position qui est d’ailleurs de plus en plus critiquée par beaucoup d’analystes américains, pour qui la russophobie est une impasse dramatique. Mais c’est un autre débat.    

L'atlantisme est un piège!...

L'atlantisme est un piège!...

par Bertrand Renouvin

Ex: http://metapoinfos.hautetfort.com

Nous reproduisons ci-dessous un point de vue de Bertrand Renouvin, cueilli sur son blog et consacré à l'atlantisme et à ses œuvres...

L'atlantisme est un piège

Les manifestants de Kiev qui brandissaient des drapeaux bleus ont obtenu ce qu’ils voulaient : la signature du volet politique de l’accord d’association entre l’Union européenne et le pouvoir né de l’insurrection. Ils feraient bien de lire ce texte et de le mettre en relation avec les conditions posées par le Fonds monétaire international au début des discussions sur le prêt à l’Ukraine.

Il va presque sans dire que l’accord signé le 21 mars détruit définitivement l’illusion d’une intégration de l’Ukraine dans l’Union. En attendant la signature du volet économique qui devrait avoir lieu après l’élection présidentielle du 25 mai, les Ukrainiens noteront qu’ils sont désormais soumis aux principes de l’économie de libre marché (titre I, article 3) et qu’ils sont engagés dans une coopération impliquant des contacts militaires (titre II, article 5) avec des pays qui sont membres de l’Otan. Il s’agit donc d’un accord d’association européo-atlantique, qui réjouit les plus occidentalistes des Ukrainiens, soucieux de trouver assistance et protection contre le voisin russe. Leur joie sera de courte durée. Ils ont déjà constaté que l’Occident n’a pas empêché le rattachement de la Crimée à la Russie et ils auraient déjà dû s’apercevoir que l’économie de marché est celle du renard libre dans le poulailler libre. Pourquoi ?

Parce que le FMI exige, comme d’habitude, les « réformes » qui entraînent l’appauvrissement et le pillage des pays qui les acceptent : privatisations, annulation des subventions, augmentation des taxes, augmentation de l’âge de la retraite, augmentation des tarifs du gaz et de l’électricité,  réduction de la protection sociale et des dépenses d’éducation… Choisi par les Etats-Unis et soutenu par Bruxelles, Arseni Yatseniouk, qui fait fonction de Premier ministre, a déjà engagé un programme de restrictions budgétaires pour prouver sa pleine et entière collaboration à cette sauvagerie programmée.

L’Ukraine est dans la mâchoire du piège atlantiste. La France aussi.

A Kiev, l’accord d’association et le prêt de 15 milliards de dollars constituent l’appât. A Paris, il se présente sous la forme du Pacte transatlantique sur le commerce et l’investissement (PTCI). Avec d’autres peuples européens, nous sommes confrontés à la même idéologie libre-échangiste assortie de la même promesse d’avenir radieux par les progrès de la concurrence sur le marché dérégulé. En France et dans d’autres pays, nous constatons que le gouvernement des Etats-Unis est le maître de la manœuvre commerciale et financière comme il est, avec l’Otan, le maître de la manœuvre militaire. La solidarité avec les Ukrainiens insurgés n’est pas plus gratuite que le partenariat transatlantique : il s’agit d’assurer la domination américaine sur un territoire européen aussi étendu que possible afin qu’un bloc atlantique puisse être opposé à la Chine – par ailleurs bordée par le Partenariat transpacifique.

Il ne s’agit pas d’un complot machiavélique mais d’une logique de puissance qui s’est réaffirmée après l’effondrement de l’Union soviétique. Au mépris de la promesse faite par James Baker à Mikhaïl Gorbatchev, l’Otan s’est étendue à l’Est, puis l’influence américaine s’est renforcée dans les Balkans, la France, divine surprise, est revenue dans le commandement militaire intégré et il a paru possible de rejeter la Russie encore plus loin vers l’Est par une révolution en Ukraine en attendant de faire la même opération en Biélorussie. Le Partenariat transatlantique ferait quant à lui l’affaire des multinationales américaines dans des secteurs-clés et permettrait à l’Allemagne de réorienter son approvisionnement énergétique. Alors que la France a tout à redouter d’un accord qui mettrait en péril ses secteurs les mieux protégés, François Hollande a souhaité une conclusion rapide des négociations pour éviter « une accumulation de peurs, de menaces, de crispations ». Cela signifie que, comme le retour dans l’Otan sous Nicolas Sarkozy, le PTCI doit être adopté sans débat public, à l’insu des peuples qu’on espère berner par la promesse d’un « plus de croissance ».

Face au déni de démocratie, face au piège atlantiste, nous développerons, avec nos amis, le projet salutaire d’une confédération européenne des Etats nationaux de l’ensemble du continent. L’avenir de l’Europe ne doit plus s’écrire à Washington.

Bertrand Renouvin (Blog de Bertrand Renouvin, 25 mars 2014)

The U.S. Empire Is Trying Desperately To Contain the Eurasian Alliance

The U.S. Empire Is Trying Desperately To Contain the Eurasian Alliance of Russia, China, Central Asian Nations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan

By Jack D. Douglas

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

The U.S. and its puppets, especially the E.U. and Nato, have been trying to weaken the rebuilding Russian empire as much as possible to contain it, while maintaining the  U.S. Global Empire.

This has become a vital, crucial goal because of the rapid growth of Chinese power and the ever closer Alliance of Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Central Asia, Pakistan, etc.

The U.S. and E.U. are desperate to stop Russia from rebuilding its vast Central Asian states within the Russian Federation and this new Alliance, especially because of the vast Caspian Sea oil and gas. The E.U. is highly dependent on Russia for gas and on Russia, Iraq, Iran and the pro-Russian Caspian Sea powers, especially Kazakhstan. The Russian move into the Black Sea is another major step in that direction. Kazakhstan publicly supported the Russian move to reunite with the Crimea. Kazakhstan is the great prize, with 30% of its population  Russian and a vast border with Mother Russia. Russia is probably not at this time trying to reunite Kazakhstan with Russia, since that would involve many more problems, but simply to keep it as a close ally, as the Ukraine was until the violent overthrow of the Kiev government by the U.S. supported coup.

Russia, Iran, Iraq, and their Central Asian allies are close to a vast oligopoly on the oil and gas exports of the world, especially to the E.U., U.K., China, India, etc.

Saudi Arabia is desperate to break the growing Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hizbollahp-Russian-Central Asian power block. Right now it is trying desperately to build its own military forces to offset the U.S. withdrawal from the region, but that is absurd. In the long term, Saudi Arabia will align with Russia-China-Iran-Central Asia or be overthrown from within by those who will become reasonable.

China, now firmly in the Russian-Central Asia-Iran-Iraq block with gas lines from Russia, etc., is moving forcefully into all of the South China Sea to control oil and gas there. The U.S. is desperate to stop that, but China keeps moving out.

All of that puts the dying U.S. Empire on a collision course with the vast Russian-Chinese-Iranian-Central Asian Alliance. Pakistan has become very anti-U.S. because of the U.S. attacks in Pakistan and is allying more and more with China. Even India is working more and more closely with Iran and its allies to get the gas they need. Just yesterday the president of Iran spoke in Afghanistan calling for a great regional entente, working together more and more closely. That is the likely route for Iranian oil and gas to India.

Ultimately, the U.S. Empire must withdraw from its vast over-stretch to save itself financially and economically, politically and militarily.

The E.U. knows that, so Germany’s Prime Minister talks privately with Putin in German and Russian about the American Global Crisis. [She knows Russian and he knows German, so it's easy.] Germany, the E.U. and Russia are moving toward a long run understanding once the crippled U.S. implodes financially or withdraws to save itself. The CEO of Siemens, the giant and vital German technology corporation, has just visited with Putin in Russia and made public statements of strong plans to continue working with Russia very closely. Other German CEO’s have done the same, acting as informal reassurances from the Prime Minister that her public words going along with the U.S. more or less do not mean any kind of break with the close relations with Russia.

The Best of Jack D. Douglas

President Xi calls on China, Germany to build Silk Road economic belt

President Xi calls on China, Germany to build Silk Road economic belt

(Xinhua) - Ex: http://www.chinadaily.com

 

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping (center) visits Port of Duisburg of Germany March 29, 2014. [Photo/Xinhua]

 

DUSSELDORF, Germany - Chinese President Xi Jinping Saturday called on China and Germany to work together to build the Silk Road economic belt.

Xi made the remarks during a visit to Port of Duisburg, the world's biggest inland harbor and a transport and logistics hub of Europe.

 

 

The Chinese leader expressed the hope that Port of Duisburg will play a bigger role in the China-Germany and China-Europe cooperation.

Xi witnessed the arrival of a cargo train at the railway station in Duisburg from the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing. The train had travelled all the distance along the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe international railway.

The Chinese president, accompanied by Vice German Chancellor and Minister of Economics and Energy Sigmar Gabriel, was warmly welcomed by Hannelore Kraft, premier of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, and Soren Link, mayor of the city of Duisburg.

Kraft and Link, in their speeches at the welcome ceremony, said the state and the city will grasp the opportunities that the initiative on the Silk Road economic belt brings to them, and step up the cooperation with China.

Revue Conflits: que veut Poutine? ...

Revue Conflits : que veut Poutine? ...

Le premier numéro de la revue Conflits, dirigée par Pascal Gauchon et consacrée à la géopolitique vient de sortir en kiosque. Une belle initiative à soutenir !

Présentation de la revue Conflits

Pourquoi une nouvelle revue de géopolitique ?

La géopolitique est à la mode. Peut-être trop. Peut-elle échapper au règne de l’immédiat et à la superficialité ?

C’est ce que nous espérons faire à Conflits. Nous entendons apporter une réflexion de fond sur cette discipline qui constitue d’une certaine façon la culture générale de notre époque, ce qui nous permet d’avoir un regard synthétique sur le monde.

Pour cela nous voulons faire de Conflits le carrefour de toutes les géopolitiques, celle des universitaires, celle des militaires, celle des hauts fonctionnaires, celle des entreprises, car la géopolitique ne se réduit pas aux relations entre Etats.

Le « manifeste pour une géopolitique critique » que nous définissons dans le premier numéro fixe nos principes d’analyse :

- géopolitique du temps long qui se méfie des émotions immédiates,

- géopolitique du terrain qui assume ses liens de filiation avec la géographie,

- géopolitique globale qui étudie l’ensemble des forces à l’œuvre, politiques, économiques, sociales ou culturelles,

- géopolitique réaliste qui se méfie des bons sentiments,

- géopolitique du soupçon qui cherche à déceler les intérêts à l’œuvre derrière les discours…

Principes fondateurs : Fondée sur des principes solides, Conflits n’est cependant pas une revue destinée aux seuls spécialistes. Nous entendons attirer à la géopolitique non seulement les étudiants, mais aussi le grand public averti. Notre présentation en témoigne, mais aussi l’originalité de beaucoup de nos rubriques : « grande stratégie» qui présente la géopolitique d’un Empire ancien, «géopolitique fiction » qui imagine l’avenir à partir d’un événement possible (pour ce numéro, la tentative d’annexion de Taiwan par la Chine), « tourisme géopolitique» qui présente une grande ville sous l’angle de son rayonnement et de sa puissance, « polémique » qui défend une thèse inattendue voire paradoxale à laquelle nos lecteurs peuvent réagir sur notre site Internet.

Conflits présente ainsi un visage original et attrayant de la géopolitique. Elle entend démontrer que la géopolitique est partout (une rubrique qui apparaîtra dès le numéro 2), que partout le rapport de forces structure l’espace, de la maison familiale à la Lune en passant par les stades comme par les musées. C’est une autre façon de voir le monde que nous proposons à nos lecteurs.

L'équipe de Conflits:

L’équipe des rédacteurs comprend une quinzaine d’auteurs permanents, pour la plupart jeunes enseignants auxquels s’ajoutent des militaires et des cadres d’entreprise. La moyenne d’âge de ce «noyau dur » est de 34 ans. Ils partagent la même conception de la géopolitique et sont en relation permanente. Plusieurs articles sont le fruit d’un véritable travail d’équipe, ainsi la chronologie qui figure au début de la revue.

Conflits fait par ailleurs appel à des spécialistes pour des articles précis et interrogent des personnalités reconnues de la géopolitique.

C’est ainsi qu’interviennent dans le numéro 1 Yves Lacoste, « père de la géopolitique » française, François Godement, spécialiste de la Chine, Pascal Marchand, spécialiste de la Russie, Xavier Raufer, spécialiste de la criminalité internationale, Pascal Lorot qui a popularisé la notion de «géoéconomie » ou Christian Harbulot, créateur de l’Ecole de guerre économique.

 

Au sommaire du numéro 1 :

Editorial

Actualité 

Enjeux

Entretien. Yves Lacoste

Polémique. Barack Obama, un grand président ! par Thomas Snégaroff

Portrait. L’inconnue Xi-Jinping par François Godement

Afghanistan. Les Américains ont-ils mieux réussi que les Russes ? par Mériadec Raffray

Afrique. Guerres ethniques ou guerres religieuses ? par Mathieu Lhours

 

Histoire et prospective

Grande stratégie. La géopolitique des Chevaliers Teutoniques par Sylvain Gouguenheim

Bataille. Koulikovo : la Russie sort du bois par Pierre Royer

Encarté

Dossier

Eurasie. L’Europe doit-elle regarder à l’est ?

Lu, vu, entendu, visité

Le nouvel ordre américain

Livres

Revues, colloques, sites

Cinéma, séries, jeux

Géotourisme. Berlin et la nouvelle puissance allemande par Thierry Buron

Rusia, Crimea y un baño de Realpolitik

Rusia, Crimea y un baño de Realpolitik

por Santiago Pérez 

Ex: http://paginatransversal.wordpress.com

Ultrarrealismo en la crisis ucraniana y en la política internacional de hoy.

La caída de Víktor Fédorovich Yanukovich al frente del gobierno ucraniano generó movimientos en la estructura de poder de la más alta política internacional. Con su alejamiento, Moscú perdió un confiable aliado, quien protegía sus intereses y mantenía al país del este europeo bajo la esfera de influencia del Kremlin. El asenso de Oleksandr Turchínov a la presidencia y su intención de acercamiento a occidente dispararon, en forma virtualmente automática, los mecanicemos de defensa rusos.

No quedan dudas que el proceso interno ucraniano se vio de alguna forma influenciado desde el exterior. Se trata de un país estratégico tanto para la Unión Europea como para la OTAN y la Federación Rusa, tres poderosos actores que, como es de esperar, mueven sus piezas dentro el tablero geopolítico mundial. Pero, al mismo tiempo, sería impreciso adjudicar en forma excluyente a estos jugadores la crisis interna del país. Las diferencias culturales que conviven en el seno de la sociedad ucraniana han alimentado innegablemente las tensiones. En Ucrania hay quienes desean acercarse a occidente y hay quienes desean acercarse a Rusia, elementos suficientes para generar un conflicto, más allá de lo que hagan o dejen de hacer las potencias extranjeras. En definitiva, el fin del gobierno de Yanukovich puede definirse como un fenómeno multicausal, impulsado por fuerzas tanto internas como externas.

Pero más allá de las idas y vueltas de la sociedad ucraniana, el hecho relevante de esta crisis para el análisis de la política internacional es la rapidez, efectividad y contundencia con la que ha operado el Kremlin. Sin prestar mayor atención al derecho internacional (como es esperable de cualquier gran potencia) y a pocas horas del cambio de gobierno en Kiev, fuerzas especiales rusas “ocuparon” en una acción unilateral la estratégica península de Crimea. La relevancia de la cruzada para el equilibrio político regional ha colocado a ucranianos y rusos en el centro de la escena global. Todos los actores de peso dentro del sistema internacional están hoy con la mirada depositada en Crimea.

¿Ha actuado Moscú dentro de la legalidad? ¿Es este accionar legítimo? Desafortunadamente estas son preguntas que poco importan al momento de leer el escenario en cuestión. La anarquía del sistema internacional y la lógica ultrarrealista de Vladimir Putin han permitido que, de facto, sea Rusia quien ejerza la soberanía sobre Crimea. Los reclamos de occidente y del flamante gobierno ucraniano difícilmente puedan superar la etapa retórica o argumentativa. No hay nada que hacer para la Unión Europea, Estados Unidos, el G7 o la mismísima OTAN: los rusos han desembarcado y no se apartarán. La defensa de la base naval de Sebastopol es un tema demasiado delicado para los intereses geoestratégicos de Moscú como para colocarlo sobre la mesa de negociaciones. La única forma de desplazar a los rusos sería por la fuerza, pero los costos de intentar semejante acción transforman a esta alterativa en absolutamente inviable. Nadie en Washington (y posiblemente en ningún lugar del mundo) está pensando seriamente en una acción militar.

Al no ser reconocido ni por occidente ni por la propia Ucrania el referéndum celebrado en la península funciona principalmente como un elemento de presión política. En los hechos, Simferópol dejó de responder a Kiev inmediatamente después de la ocupación rusa, situación anterior a la votación que supuestamente aportó legitimidad y legalidad a la escisión. En otras palabras, con o sin referéndum, la anexión ya se había materializado.

Más allá de reconocerla diplomáticamente o no, las potencias occidentales acabarán por aceptar de hecho la soberanía rusa sobre Crimea y diseñarán sus estrategias de defensa en consecuencia. El statu quo regional se ajustará naturalmente a las nuevas circunstancias y las Relaciones Internacionales continuarán su curso.

Ya lo dijo el canciller ruso, Sergei Lavrov. “Crimea es más importante para Rusia que las Islas Malvinas/Falklands para Gran Bretaña”. Un mensaje conciso, de alto contenido político y emitido en el idioma que solo hablan las superpotencias. Cuando de intereses estratégicos se tarta, el poder (por sobre la legalidad) es lo único que realmente importa.

Fuente: Equilibrio Internacional

http://twitter.com/perez_santiago
http://facebook.com/lic.perezsantiago

Eurasisme, Alternative à l'hégémonie libérale

 

Deutscher Altkanzler Schmidt zeigt Verständnis für russische Krim-Politik

Deutscher Altkanzler Schmidt zeigt Verständnis für russische Krim-Politik

Thema: Die Zukunftsentscheidung auf der Krim

© RIA Novosti. Andrey Stenin - http://de.ria.ru

 

MOSKAU, 26. März (RIA Novosti).

Der deutsche Ex-Bundeskanzler Helmut Schmidt nimmt die Wiedervereinigung der ukrainischen Schwarzmeerhalbinsel Krim mit Russland verständnisvoll auf und hält die westlichen Sanktionen gegen Moskau für dumm. 

Das Vorgehen Russlands auf der Krim sei „durchaus verständlich“, sagte Schmidt der Zeitung „Die Zeit“. Dagegen kritisierte er das Verhalten des Westens im Krim-Konflikt scharf und bezeichnete die Sanktionen der EU und der USA gegen Russland als „dummes Zeug". Weiter gehende wirtschaftliche Sanktionen würden ihr Ziel verfehlen und „den Westen genauso wie die Russen treffen“.

Auch kritisierte Schmidt, der 1974 bis 1982 Bundeskanzler der Bundesrepublik Deutschland war, die Entscheidung der G7, die Zusammenarbeit mit Russland einzustellen. Die G8 sei in Wirklichkeit nicht so wichtig wie die G20, bei der Russland weiter Vollmitglied ist. Die Situation in der Ukraine ist laut Schmidt „gefährlich, weil der Westen sich furchtbar aufregt.“ „Diese Aufregung des Westens sorgt natürlich für entsprechende Aufregung in der russischen öffentlichen Meinung und Politik.“

Die politische Krise in der Ukraine war eskaliert, nachdem das Parlament (Oberste Rada) am 22. Februar die Verfassung geändert, Staatspräsident Viktor Janukowitsch für abgesetzt erklärt und einen Oppositionspolitiker zum Übergangspräsidenten ernannt hatte. Oppositionsfraktionen stellten eine Übergangsregierung.

Von Russen dominierte Gebiete im Osten und Süden der Ukraine haben die neue, von Nationalisten geprägte Regierung in Kiew nicht anerkannt. Auf der Schwarzmeer-Halbinsel Krim stimmten mehr als 96,7 Prozent der Teilnehmer eines Referendums für eine Abspaltung von der Ukraine und eine Wiedervereinigung mit Russland. Kurz danach unterzeichneten Russland und die Krim einen Vertrag über die Eingliederung der Halbinsel in die Russische Föderation. Die USA und die Europäische Union verhängten daraufhin Sanktionen gegen Russland. Unterdessen haben Tausende Demonstranten in mehreren Großstädten der Süd- und Ostukraine ein Referendum nach dem Vorbild der Krim gefordert.

mehr zum Thema

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• Weltbank erwartet rasante Kapitalflucht aus Russland bei Eskalation von Krim-Konflikt
• Krim: Russische Flaggen über allen Garnisonen
• Russlands Innenminister Kolokolzew lässt Innenministerium der Krim bilden
• Kreml: Ukrainische Militärs können Krim ungehindert verlassen

 

 

 

Lo que se juega Alemania en Rusia

Ex: http://www.elespiadigital.com

6.200 empresas alemanas comercian con Rusia o han realizado inversiones en el país y 300.000 puestos de trabajo alemanes dependen del negocio ruso. La inversión germana en Rusia se cifra en 20.000 millones, por eso la aplicación de sanciones contra Moscú tendría consecuencias desastrosas para la primera economía europea.

Como es habitual antes de la celebración de un Consejo Europeo, Merkel ha comparecido ante el Bundestag para dar cuenta de las negociaciones que se llevarán a cabo en Bruselas. Pasados los peores batacazos de una crisis económica que Alemania todavía no da por superada y con una Unión Bancaria en ciernes, el grueso de las conversaciones de la cumbre de marzo se centrará en la gestión de la crisis abierta en Ucrania.

Los socios europeos encaran este encuentro dispuestos a aplicar la tercera fase de las sanciones contra Rusia, que se extenderían al ámbito económico. Este es un paso que Berlín observa con preocupación y que Merkel ha intentado evitar por todos los medios insistiendo en sus últimas apariciones públicas en que, de forma paralela a las sanciones impuestas, debe permanecer abierta la vía del diálogo. Sin embargo, en su última intervención, este jueves en el Bundestag, la canciller ha abandonado el discurso tibio de los últimos días, llegando incluso a dar por suspendido temporalmente la celebración del G-8.

En la crisis ucraniana Angela Merkel está jugando un papel principal, actuando como mediadora ante Moscú para evitar un agravamiento de las relaciones entre este y oeste. Sus constantes comunicaciones vía telefónica con Vladimir Putin también habrían servido para templar los ánimos del sector empresarial, preocupado por las consecuencias económicas que podrían derivarse de un aislamiento de Rusia.

En Berlín, la crisis abierta en Ucrania preocupa no solo por la dependencia energética de Moscú -Alemania importa de Rusia el 35% del gas que consume- sino también por sus enormes intereses empresariales en el país. Alemania tiene mucho que perder si se materializa una espiral de sanciones económicas contra Rusia.

6.200 empresas alemanas comercian con Rusia o han realizado inversiones en el país y 300.000 puestos de trabajo alemanes dependen del negocio ruso. El volumen comercial bilateral se sitúa en los 76.400 millones de euros, con exportaciones valoradas en 36.000 millones e importaciones en 40.400 millones. En total, los alemanes han invertido en Rusia 20.000 millones de euros, según ha confirmado recientemente Anton F. Börner, presidente de la Asociación Federal Alemana de Comercio Exterior y Al Por Mayor (BGA), en un encuentro con medios extranjeros en Berlín, entre ellos, la Cadena Ser.

Rusia es el undécimo socio comercial de Alemania, un país al que la locomotora europea exporta, sobre todo, bienes de consumo de alto valor, maquinaria, productos electrónicos y coches. De aplicarse sanciones contra Moscú, la economía alemana podría resentirse en 2014. "Calculamos que las exportaciones alemanas aumentarán un 3% y las importaciones un 2% este año, por lo que se daría una balanza comercial con un superávit de 215.000 millones de euros, unos planes que se podrían ir al traste en caso de la crisis en Ucrania continúe escalando", señala Börner.

En su opinión, la crisis abierta no debe solucionarse a favor o en contra de Rusia, sino "con Rusia" y teniendo en cuenta que el recrudecimiento de las relaciones también afecta a los intereses económicos rusos en Europa. No en vano, Alemania es el tercer socio comercial de Rusia y las exportaciones de energía de Rusia suponen más de la mitad de los ingresos públicos del país y un 25% su PIB. "Más de un 80% de las exportaciones de energía rusas van a parar al oeste, el volumen comercial de entre Europa y Rusia es de un 1% del PIB de la UE mientras que supone el 15% del PIB ruso", recuerda el presidente de la BGA.

Fuente: Cadena SER

Le basculement de la Crimée est-il le premier d’une longue série?

Auteur : Al Watan (Syrie)
Ex: http://www.zejournal.mobi

Au-delà des pleurs emphatiques de l’Occident face à l’adhésion de la Crimée à la Fédération de Russie, le vrai enjeu est de savoir s’il s’agit d’un événement orphelin ou s’il préfigure le basculement de l’Europe orientale vers Moscou. N’ayant plus que l’asservissement à la bureaucratie bruxelloise à offrir, Bruxelles craint que ses actuels clients soient attirés par la liberté et l’argent de Moscou.

Les Occidentaux s’époumonent à dénoncer l’« annexion militaire » de la Crimée par la Russie. Selon eux, Moscou, revenant à la « doctrine Brejnev », menace la souveraineté de tous les États qui furent membres non seulement de l’ex-URSS, mais aussi du Pacte de Varsovie, et s’apprête à les envahir comme il le fit en Hongrie en 1956 et en Tchécoslovaquie en 1968.

Est-ce bien vrai ? Manifestement, les mêmes Occidentaux ne sont pas convaincus de l’imminence du danger. S’ils assimilent en paroles l’« annexion » de la Crimée par Vladimir Poutine à celle des Sudètes par Adolf Hitler, ils ne pensent pas que l’on se dirige vers une Troisième Guerre mondiale.

Tout au plus ont-ils pris des sanctions théoriques contre quelques dirigeants russes —y compris criméens— en bloquant leurs comptes, au cas ou ils voudraient en ouvrir dans des banques occidentales, ou en leur interdisant d’y voyager, si l’envie leur en prenait. Le Pentagone a bien envoyé 22 avions de combats en Pologne et dans les États baltes, mais il n’a pas l’intention de faire plus que cette gesticulation, pour le moment.

Que se passe t-il au juste ? Depuis la chute du Mur de Berlin, le 9 novembre 1989, et le sommet de Malte qui l’a suivie, les 2 et 3 décembre, les États-Unis n’ont cessé de gagner du terrain et, en violation de leurs promesses, de faire basculer un à un tous les États européens —sauf la Russie— dans l’Otan.

Le processus a débuté quelques jours plus tard, à la Noël 1989, avec le renversement des Ceau?escu en Roumanie et leur remplacement par un autre dignitaire communiste subitement converti au libéralisme, Ion Iliescu. Pour la première fois, la CIA organisait un coup d’État aux yeux de tous, tout en le mettant en scène comme une « révolution » grâce à une nouvelle chaîne de télévision, CNN International. C’était le début d’une longue série.

Une vingtaine d’autres cibles allaient suivre, souvent par des moyens tout aussi frauduleux : l’Albanie, l’Allemagne de l’Est, l’Azerbaïdjan, la Bosnie-Herzégovine, la Bulgarie, la Croatie, l’Estonie, la Géorgie, la Hongrie, le Kosovo, la Lettonie, la Lituanie, la Macédoine, la Moldavie, le Monténégro, la Pologne, la Serbie, la Slovaquie, la Slovénie, la Tchéquie et l’Ukraine.

Aucun document ne fut signé lors du sommet de Malte, mais le président Bush Sr., conseillé par Condoleezza Rice, prit l’engagement oral qu’aucun membre du Pacte de Varsovie ne serait accepté dans l’Otan. En réalité, l’Allemagne de l’Est y entra de facto, par le simple jeu de son adhésion à l’Allemagne de l’Ouest. La porte étant ainsi ouverte, ce sont aujourd’hui 12 États ex-membres de l’URSS ou du Pacte de Varsovie qui y ont adhéré et les autres qui sont en attente de rejoindre l’Alliance.

Cependant, « les meilleures choses ont une fin ». La puissance de l’Otan et de son versant civil, l’Union européenne, vacille. Certes l’Alliance n’a jamais été si nombreuse, mais ses armées sont peu efficaces. Elle excelle sur de petits théâtres d’opération, comme en Afghanistan, mais ne peut plus entrer en guerre contre la Chine, ni contre la Russie, sans la certitude de perdre comme on l’a vu en Syrie cet été.

En définitive, les Occidentaux sont stupéfaits de la rapidité et de l’efficacité russes. Durant les jeux Olympiques de Sotchi, Vladimir Poutine n’a stoïquement livré aucun commentaire sur les événements de la place Maidan. Mais il a réagi dès qu’il a eu les mains libres. Chacun a pu alors constater qu’il abattait des cartes qu’il avait préparées durant son long silence. En quelques heures, des forces pro-russes ont neutralisé les forces pro-Kiev de Crimée tandis qu’une révolution était organisée à Semferopol pour porter au pouvoir une équipe pro-russe. Le nouveau gouvernement a appelé à un référendum d’autodétermination qui a enregistré une immense vague pro-russe, population tatare incluse. Puis, les Forces officielles russes ont fait prisonniers avec leurs matériels les soldats se réclamant encore de Kiev. Tout cela sans tirer un coup de feu, à l’exception d’un sniper ukrainien pro-Otan qui fut arrêté à Semferopol après avoir tué une personne de chaque bord.

Il y a vingt ans, les mêmes Criméens auraient certainement voté contre la Russie. Mais aujourd’hui, leur liberté est bien mieux assurée par Moscou que par Kiev, où un tiers du gouvernement revient aux nazis et les deux autres tiers aux représentants des oligarques. En outre, leur économie en faillite a immédiatement été relevée par la Banque de Russie, tandis que, malgré le FMI et les prêts des États-Unis et de l’UE, Kiev est condamné à une longue période de pauvreté. Il n’était pas nécessaire de parler russe pour faire ce choix et, malgré la propagande occidentale, les musulmans Tatars l’ont fait comme les russophones. C’est également le choix de 88 % des militaires ukrainiens stationnés en Crimée, qui se sont ralliés à Moscou avec la ferme intention de faire venir leurs familles et de leur obtenir la nationalité russe. C’est aussi le choix de 82 % des marins ukrainiens qui se trouvaient en mer, trop heureux de pouvoir devenir Russes, ils se sont ralliés à Moscou avec leurs bâtiments sans y être contraints d’aucune manière.

La liberté et la prospérité, qui ont été les arguments de vente de l’Occident depuis presque 70 ans, ont changé de camp.

Il ne s’agit pas d’affirmer ici que la Russie est parfaite, mais de constater que pour les Criméens et en réalité pour la plupart des Européens, elle est plus attractive que le camp occidental.

C’est pourquoi l’indépendance de la Crimée et son adhésion à la Fédération de Russie marquent le retour du balancier. Pour la première fois, un peuple ex-soviétique décide librement de reconnaître l’autorité de Moscou. Ce que craignent les Occidentaux, c’est que cet événement ait un effet comparable à la chute du Mur de Berlin, mais dans l’autre sens. Pourquoi ne verrait-on pas des États membres de l’Otan —comme la Grèce— ou simplement de l’Union européenne —comme Chypre— suivre le même chemin ? Le camp occidental se déliterait alors et sombrerait dans une très forte récession —comme la Russie d’Eltsine—.

En outre, la question de la survie des États-Unis ne manquerait pas de se poser. La dissolution de l’URSS aurait dû entrainer celle de son ennemi et néanmoins partenaire, ces deux super-puissances n’existant que l’une face à l’autre. Or, il n’en fut rien. Washington étant débarrassé de son compétiteur se lança à la conquête du monde, globalisa l’économie et installa un Nouvel Ordre. Il fallut deux ans et un mois à l’Union soviétique pour se dissoudre après la chute du Mur de Berlin. Verrons-nous bientôt la dissolution des États-Unis et de l’Union européenne en plusieurs entités, ainsi que l’enseigne Igor Panarin à l’Académie diplomatique de Moscou ? L’effondrement sera d’autant plus rapide que Washington réduira ses subventions à ses alliés et Bruxelles ses fonds structurels.

Personne ne doit craindre l’attractivité de la Russie, car c’est une puissance impériale, mais pas impérialiste. Si Moscou a tendance à rabrouer les petits pays qu’il protège, il n’entend pas étendre son hégémonie par la force. Sa stratégie militaire est celle du « déni d’accès » à son territoire. Ses armées sont les premières au monde en termes de défense anti-aérienne et anti-navale. Elles peuvent détruire des flottes de bombardiers et de porte-avions. Mais elles ne sont pas équipées pour partir à la conquête du monde, ni déployées dans quantité de bases extérieures.

Il est particulièrement étrange d’entendre les Occidentaux dénoncer l’adhésion de la Crimée à la Fédération de Russie comme contraire au droit international et à la Constitution ukrainienne. N’est-ce pas eux qui démembrèrent l’URSS et le Pacte de Varsovie ? N’est-ce pas eux qui rompirent l’ordre constitutionnel à Kiev ?

Le ministre allemand des Affaires étrangères, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, déplore une prétendue volonté russe de « couper l’Europe en deux ». Mais la Russie s’est débarrassée de la dictature bureaucratique soviétique et n’entend pas restaurer le Rideau de fer. Ce sont les États-Unis qui veulent couper l’Europe en deux pour éviter l’hémorragie vers l’Est. La nouvelle dictature bureaucratique n’est plus à Moscou, mais à Bruxelles, elle se nomme Union européenne.

D’ores et déjà, Washington tente de fixer ses alliés dans son camp, il développe sa couverture de missiles en Pologne, en Roumanie et en Azerbaïdjan. Il ne fait plus mystère que son « bouclier » n’a jamais été destiné à contrer des missiles iraniens, mais est conçu pour attaquer la Russie. Il tente aussi de pousser ses alliés européens à prendre des sanctions économiques qui paralyseraient le continent et pousseraient les capitaux à fuir… aux États-Unis.

L’ampleur de ces ajustements est telle que le Pentagone examine la possibilité d’interrompre son « pivot vers l’Extrême-Orient », c’est-à-dire le déplacement de ses troupes d’Europe et du Proche-Orient pour les positionner en vue d’une guerre contre la Chine. Quoi qu’il en soit, toute modification de sa stratégie à long terme désorganisera encore plus ses armées sur le court et le moyen terme. Moscou n’en demandait pas autant, qui observe avec volupté les réactions des populations de l’Est de l’Ukraine et, pourquoi pas, de la Transnistrie.

- Source : Al Watan (Syrie) - traduit par Réseau Voltaire

Putin’s Triumph

Putin’s Triumph

Ex: http://orientalreview.org/

By Israel SHAMIR (Israel)

Nobody expected events to move on with such a breath-taking speed. The Russians took their time; they sat on the fence and watched while the Brown storm-troopers conquered Kiev, and they watched while Mrs Victoria Nuland of the State Department and her pal Yatsenyuk (“Yats”) slapped each other’s backs and congratulated themselves on their quick victory. They watched when President Yanukovych escaped to Russia to save his skin. They watched when the Brown bands moved eastwards to threaten the Russian-speaking South East. They patiently listened while Mme Timoshenko, fresh out of gaol, swore to void treaties with Russia and to expel the Russian Black Sea Fleet from its main harbour in Sevastopol. They paid no heed when the new government appointed oligarchs to rule Eastern provinces. Nor did they react when children in Ukrainian schools were ordered to sing “Hang a Russian on a thick branch” and the oligarch-governor’s deputy promised to hang dissatisfied Russians of the East as soon as Crimea is pacified. While these fateful events unravelled, Putin kept silence.

He is a cool cucumber, Mr Putin. Everybody, including this writer, thought he was too nonchalant about Ukraine’s collapse. He waited patiently. The Russians made a few slow and hesitant, almost stealthy moves. The marines Russia had based in Crimea by virtue of an international agreement (just as the US has marines in Bahrain) secured Crimea’s airports and roadblocks, provided necessary support to the volunteers of the Crimean militia (called Self-Defence Forces), but remained under cover. The Crimean parliament asserted its autonomy and promised a plebiscite in a month time. And all of a sudden things started to move real fast!

The poll was moved up to Sunday, March 16. Even before it could take place, the Crimean Parliament declared Crimea’s independence. The poll’s results were spectacular: 96% of the votes were for joining Russia; the level of participation was unusually high – over 84%. Not only ethnic Russians, but ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars voted for reunification with Russia as well. A symmetrical poll in Russia showed over 90% popular support for reunification with Crimea, despite liberals’ fear-mongering (“this will be too costly, the sanctions will destroy Russian economy, the US will bomb Moscow”, they said).

Even then, the majority of experts and talking heads expected the situation to remain suspended for a long while. Some thought Putin would eventually recognise Crimean independence, while stalling on final status, as he did with Ossetia and Abkhazia after the August 2008 war with Tbilisi. Others, especially Russian liberals, were convinced Putin would surrender Crimea in order to save Russian assets in the Ukraine.

 

Vladimir Putin delivering his address on reunification with Crimea. Source: Kremlin.ru

But Putin justified the Russian proverb: the Russians take time to saddle their horses, but they ride awfully fast. He recognised Crimea’s independence on Monday, before the ink on the poll’s results dried.  The next day, on Tuesday, he gathered all of Russia’s senior statesmen and parliamentarians (video) in the biggest, most glorious and elegant St George state hall in the Kremlin, lavishly restored to its Imperial glory, and declared Russia’s acceptance of Crimea’s reunification bid. Immediately after his speech, the treaty between Crimea and Russia was signed, and the peninsula reverted to Russia as it was before 1954, when Communist Party leader Khrushchev passed it to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.

This was an event of supreme elation for the gathered politicians and for people at home watching it live on their tellies. The vast St George Hall applauded Putin as never before. The Russians felt immense pride: they still remember the stinging defeat of 1991, when their country was taken apart. Regaining Crimea was a wonderful reverse for them. There were public festivities in honour of this reunification all over Russia and especially in joyous Crimea.

Historians have compared the event with the restoration of Russian sovereignty over Crimea in 1870, almost twenty years after the Crimean War had ended with Russia’s defeat, when severe limitations on Russian rights in Crimea were imposed by victorious France and Britain. Now the Black Sea Fleet will be able to develop and sail freely again, enabling it to defend Syria in the next round. Though Ukrainians ran down the naval facilities and turned the most advanced submarine harbour of Balaclava into shambles, the potential is there.

Besides the pleasure of getting this lost bit of land back, there was the additional joy of outwitting the adversary. The American neocons arranged the coup in Ukraine and sent the unhappy country crashing down, but the first tangible fruit of this break up went to Russia.

A new Jewish joke was coined at that time:

Israeli President Peres asks the Russian President:

-        Vladimir, are you of Jewish ancestry?

-        Putin: What makes you think so, Shimon?

-        Peres: You made the US pay five billion dollars to deliver Crimea to Russia. Even for a Jew, that is audacious!

Five billion dollars is a reference to Victoria Nuland’s admission of having spent that much for democratisation (read: destabilisation) of the Ukraine. President Putin snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and US hegemony suffered a set-back.

The US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power screaming at the Russian counterpart Vitaly Churkin after Russia has blocked the US draft resolution “on situation in Ukraine” at the Security Council meeting on March 15, 2014.

The Russians enjoyed the sight of their UN representative Vitaly Churkin coping with a near-assault by Samantha Power. The Irish-born US rep came close to bodily attacking the elderly grey-headed Russian diplomat telling him that “Russia was defeated (presumably in 1991 – ISH) and should bear the consequences… Russia is blackmailing the US with its nuclear weapons,” while Churkin asked her to keep her hands off him and stop foaming at the mouth. This was not the first hostile encounter between these twain: a month ago, Samantha entertained a Pussy Riot duo, and Churkin said she should join the group and embark on a concert tour.

The US Neocons’ role in the Kiev coup was clarified by two independent exposures. Wonderful Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek showed that the anti-Russian campaign of recent months (gay protests, Wahl affair, etc.) was organised by the Zionist Neocon PNAC (now renamed FPI) led by Mr Robert Kagan, husband of Victoria “Fuck EC” Nuland. It seems that the Neocons are hell-bent to undermine Russia by all means, while the Europeans are much more flexible. (True, the US troops are still stationed in Europe, and the old continent is not as free to act as it might like).

The second exposé was an interview with Alexander Yakimenko, the head of Ukrainian Secret Services (SBU) who had escaped to Russia like his president. Yakimenko accused Andriy Parubiy, the present security czar, of making a deal with the Americans. On American instructions, he delivered weapons and brought snipers who killed some 70 persons within few hours. They killed the riot police and the protesters as well.

The US Neocon-led conspiracy in Kiev was aimed against the European attempt to reach a compromise with President Yanukovych, said the SBU chief. They almost agreed on all points, but Ms Nuland wanted to derail the agreement, and so she did – with the help of a few snipers.

These snipers were used again in Crimea: a sniper shot and killed a Ukrainian soldier. When the Crimean self-defence forces began their pursuit, the sniper shot at them, killed one and wounded one. It is the same pattern: snipers are used to provoke response and hopefully to jump-start a shootout.

Novorossia

While Crimea was a walkover, the Russians are far from being home and dry. Now, the confrontation moved to the Eastern and South-Eastern provinces of mainland Ukraine, called Novorossia (New Russia) before the Communist Revolution of 1917. Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his later years predicted that Ukraine’s undoing would come from its being overburdened by industrial provinces that never belonged to the Ukraine before Lenin, – by Russian-speaking Novorossia. This prediction is likely to be fulfilled.

Who fights whom over there? It is a great error to consider the conflict a tribal one, between Russians and Ukrainians. Good old Pat Buchanan made this error saying that “Vladimir Putin is a blood-and-soil, altar-and-throne ethno-nationalist who sees himself as Protector of Russia and looks on Russians abroad the way Israelis look upon Jews abroad, as people whose security is his legitimate concern.” Nothing could be farther away from truth: perhaps only the outlandish claim that Putin is keen on restoring the Russian Empire can compete.

Putin is not an empire-builder at all (to great regret of Russia’s communists and nationalists). Even his quick takeover of Crimea was an action forced upon him by the strong-willed people of Crimea and by the brazen aggression of the Kiev regime. I have it on a good authority that Putin hoped he would not have to make this decision. But when he decided he acted.

The ethno-nationalist assertion of Buchanan is even more misleading. Ethno-nationalists of Russia are Putin’s enemies; they support the Ukrainian ethno-nationalists and march together with Jewish liberals on Moscow street demos. Ethno-nationalism is as foreign to Russians as it is foreign to the English. You can expect to meet a Welsh or Scots nationalist, but an English nationalist is an unnatural rarity. Even the English Defence League was set up by a Zionist Jew. Likewise, you can find a Ukrainian or a Belarusian or a Cossack nationalist, but practically never a Russian one.

Putin is a proponent and advocate of non-nationalist Russian world. What is the Russian world?

Russian World

Pavel Ryzhenko “A photo in memoriam” painting (2007) depicting the last Russian Emperor Nikolay II with family visiting a military camp during WWI.

Russians populate their own vast universe embracing many ethnic units of various background, from Mongols and Karels to Jews and Tatars. Until 1991, they populated an even greater land mass (called the Soviet Union, and before that, the Russian Empire) where Russian was the lingua franca and the language of daily usage for majority of citizens. Russians could amass this huge empire because they did not discriminate and did not hog the blanket. Russians are amazingly non-tribal, to an extent unknown in smaller East European countries, but similar to other great Eastern Imperial nations, the Han Chinese and the Turks before the advent of Young Turks and Ataturk. The Russians did not assimilate but partly acculturated their neighbours for whom Russian language and culture became the gateway to the world. The Russians protected and supported local cultures, as well, at their expense, for they enjoy this diversity.

Before 1991, the Russians promoted a universalist humanist world-view; nationalism was practically banned, and first of all, Russian nationalism. No one was persecuted or discriminated because of his ethnic origin (yes, Jews complained, but they always complain). There was some positive discrimination in the Soviet republics, for instance a Tajik would have priority to study medicine in the Tajik republic, before a Russian or a Jew; and he would be able to move faster up the ladder in the Party and politics. Still the gap was small.

After 1991, this universalist world-view was challenged by a parochial and ethno-nationalist one in all ex-Soviet republics save Russia and Belarus. Though Russia ceased to be Soviet, it retained its universalism. In the republics, people of Russian culture were severely discriminated against, often fired from their working places, in worst cases they were expelled or killed. Millions of Russians, natives of the republics, became refugees; together with them, millions of non-Russians who preferred Russian universalist culture to “their own” nationalist and parochial one fled to Russia. That is why modern Russia has millions of Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, Tajiks, Latvians and of smaller ethnic groups from the republics. Still, despite discrimination, millions of Russians and people of Russian culture remained in the republics, where their ancestors lived for generations, and the Russian language became a common ground for all non-nationalist forces.

If one wants to compare with Israel, as Pat Buchanan did, it is the republics, such as Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Estonia do follow Israeli model of discriminating and persecuting their “ethnic minorities”, while Russia follows the West European model of equality.

France vs Occitania

In order to understand the Russia-Ukraine problem, compare it with France. Imagine it divided into North and South France, the North retaining the name of France, while the South of France calling itself “Occitania”, and its people “Occitans”, their language “Occitan”. The government of Occitania would force the people to speak Provençal, learn Frederic Mistral’s poems by rote and teach children to hate the French, who had devastated their beautiful land in the Albigensian Crusade of 1220. France would just gnash its teeth. Now imagine that after twenty years, the power in Occitania were violently seized by some romantic southern fascists who were keen to eradicate “800 years of Frank domination” and intend to discriminate against people who prefer to speak the language of Victor Hugo and Albert Camus. Eventually France would be forced to intervene and defend francophones, at least in order to stem the refugee influx. Probably the Southern francophones of Marseilles and Toulon would support the North against “their own” government, though they are not migrants from Normandy.

Putin defends all Russian-speakers, all ethnic minorities, such as Gagauz or Abkhaz, not only ethnic Russians. He defends the Russian World, all those russophones who want and need his protection. This Russian World definitely includes many, perhaps majority of people in the Ukraine, ethnic Russians, Jews, small ethnic groups and ethnic Ukrainians, in Novorossia and in Kiev.

Indeed Russian world was and is attractive. The Jews were happy to forget their schtetl and Yiddish; their best poets Pasternak and Brodsky wrote in Russian and considered themselves Russian. Still, some minor poets used Yiddish for their self-expression. The Ukrainians, as well, used Russian for literature, though they spoke their dialect at home for long time. Nikolai Gogol, the great Russian writer of Ukrainian origin, wrote Russian, and he was dead set against literary usage of the Ukrainian dialect. There were a few minor Romantic figures who used the dialect for creative art, like Taras Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka.

Solzhenitsyn wrote: “Even ethnic-Ukrainians do not use and do not know Ukrainian. In order to promote its use, the Ukrainian government bans Russian schools, forbids Russian TV, even librarians are not allowed to speak Russian with their readers. This anti-Russian position of Ukraine is exactly what the US wants in order to weaken Russia.“

Putin in his speech on Crimea stressed that he wants to secure the Russian world – everywhere in the Ukraine. In Novorossia the need is acute, for there are daily confrontations between the people and the gangs sent by the Kiev regime. While Putin does not yet want (as opposed to Solzhenitsyn and against general Russian feeling) to take over Novorossia, he may be forced to it, as he was in Crimea. There is a way to avoid this major shift: the Ukraine must rejoin the Russian world. While keeping its independence, Ukraine must grant full equality to its Russian language speakers. They should be able to have Russian-language schools, newspapers, TV, be entitled to use Russian everywhere. Anti-Russian propaganda must cease. And fantasies of joining NATO, too.

This is not an extraordinary demand: Latinos in the US are allowed to use Spanish. In Europe, equality of languages and cultures is a sine qua non. Only in the ex-Soviet republics are these rights trampled – not only in Ukraine, but in the Baltic republics as well. For twenty years, Russia made do with weak objections, when Russian-speakers (the majority of them are not ethnic Russians) in the Baltic states were discriminated against. This is likely to change. Lithuania and Latvia have already paid for their anti-Russian position by losing their profitable transit trade with Russia. Ukraine is much more important for Russia. Unless the present regime is able to change (not very likely), this illegitimate regime will be changed by people of Ukraine, and Russia will use R2P against the criminal elements in power.

The majority of people of Ukraine would probably agree with Putin, irrespective of their ethnicity. Indeed, in the Crimean referendum, Ukrainians and Tatars voted en masse together with Russians. This is a positive sign: there will be no ethnic strife in the Ukraine’s East, despite US efforts to the contrary. The decision time is coming up fast: some experts presume that by end of May the Ukrainian crisis will be behind us.

Source: CounterPunch

Neocons’ Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit

by Robert Parry

Ex: RINF Alternative News

You might think that policymakers with so many bloody fiascos on their résumés as the U.S. neocons, including the catastrophic Iraq War, would admit their incompetence and return home to sell insurance or maybe work in a fast-food restaurant. Anything but directing the geopolitical decisions of the world’s leading superpower.

But Official Washington’s neocons are nothing if not relentless and resilient. They are also well-funded and well-connected. So they won’t do the honorable thing and disappear. They keep hatching new schemes and strategies to keep the world stirred up and to keep their vision of world domination – and particularly “regime change” in the Middle East – alive.

Now, the neocons have stoked a confrontation over Ukraine, involving two nuclear-armed states, the United States and Russia. But – even if nuclear weapons don’t come into play – the neocons have succeeded in estranging U.S. President Barack Obama from Russian President Vladimir Putin and sabotaging the pair’s crucial cooperation on Iran and Syria, which may have been the point all along.

Though the Ukraine crisis has roots going back decades, the chronology of the recent uprising — and the neocon interest in it – meshes neatly with neocon fury over Obama and Putin working together to avert a U.S. military strike against Syria last summer and then brokering an interim nuclear agreement with Iran last fall that effectively took a U.S. bombing campaign against Iran off the table.

With those two top Israeli priorities – U.S. military attacks on Syria and Iran – sidetracked, the American neocons began activating their influential media and political networks to counteract the Obama-Putin teamwork. The neocon wedge to splinter Obama away from Putin was driven into Ukraine.

Operating out of neocon enclaves in the U.S. State Department and at U.S.-funded non-governmental organizations, led by the National Endowment for Democracy, neocon operatives targeted Ukraine even before the recent political unrest began shaking apart the country’s fragile ethnic and ideological cohesion.

Last September, as the prospects for a U.S. military strike against Syria were fading thanks to Putin, NED president Carl Gershman, who is something of a neocon paymaster controlling more than $100 million in congressionally approved funding each year, took to the pages of the neocon-flagship Washington Post and wrote that Ukraine was now “the biggest prize.”

But Gershman added that Ukraine was really only an interim step to an even bigger prize, the removal of the strong-willed and independent-minded Putin, who, Gershman added, “may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad [i.e. Ukraine] but within Russia itself.” In other words, the new hope was for “regime change” in Kiev and Moscow.

Putin had made himself a major annoyance in Neocon World, particularly with his diplomacy on Syria that defused a crisis over a Sarin attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. Despite the attack’s mysterious origins – and the absence of any clear evidence proving the Syrian government’s guilt – the U.S. State Department and the U.S. news media rushed to the judgment that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad did it.

Politicians and pundits baited Obama with claims that Assad had brazenly crossed Obama’s “red line” by using chemical weapons and that U.S. “credibility” now demanded military retaliation. A longtime Israeli/neocon goal, “regime change” in Syria, seemed within reach.

But Putin brokered a deal in which Assad agreed to surrender Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal (even as he continued to deny any role in the Sarin attack). The arrangement was a huge letdown for the neocons and Israeli officials who had been drooling over the prospect that a U.S. bombing campaign would bring Assad to his knees and deliver a strategic blow against Iran, Israel’s current chief enemy.

Putin then further offended the neocons and the Israeli government by helping to facilitate an interim nuclear deal with Iran, making another neocon/Israeli priority, a U.S. war against Iran, less likely.

Putting Putin in Play

So, the troublesome Putin had to be put in play. And, NED’s Gershman was quick to note a key Russian vulnerability, neighboring Ukraine, where a democratically elected but corrupt president, Viktor Yanukovych, was struggling with a terrible economy and weighing whether to accept a European aid offer, which came with many austerity strings attached, or work out a more generous deal with Russia.

There was already a strong U.S.-organized political/media apparatus in place for destabilizing Ukraine’s government. Gershman’s NED had 65 projects operating in the country – training “activists,” supporting “journalists” and organizing business groups, according to its latest report. (NED was created in 1983 to do in relative openness what the CIA had long done in secret, nurture pro-U.S. operatives under the umbrella of “promoting democracy.”)

So, when Yanukovych opted for Russia’s more generous $15 billion aid package, the roof fell in on him. In a speech to Ukrainian business leaders last December, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Nuland, a neocon holdover and the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, reminded the group that the U.S. had invested $5 billion in Ukraine’s “European aspirations.”

Then, urged on by Nuland and neocon Sen. John McCain, protests in the capital of Kiev turned increasingly violent with neo-Nazi militias moving to the fore. Unidentified snipers opened fire on protesters and police, touching off fiery clashes that killed some 80 people (including about a dozen police officers).

On Feb. 21, in a desperate attempt to tamp down the violence, Yanukovych signed an agreement brokered by European countries. He agreed to surrender many of his powers, to hold early elections (so he could be voted out of office), and pull back the police. That last step, however, opened the way for the neo-Nazi militias to overrun government buildings and force Yanukovych to flee for his life.

With these modern-day storm troopers controlling key buildings – and brutalizing Yanukovych supporters – a  rump Ukrainian parliament voted, in an extra-constitutional fashion, to remove Yanukovych from office. This coup-installed regime, with far-right parties controlling four ministries including defense, received immediate U.S. and European Union recognition as Ukraine’s “legitimate” government.

As remarkable – and newsworthy – as it was that a government on the European continent included Nazis in the executive branch for the first time since World War II, the U.S. news media performed as it did before the Iraq War and during various other international crises. It essentially presented the neocon-preferred narrative and treated the presence of the neo-Nazis as some kind of urban legend.

Virtually across the board, from Fox News to MSNBC, from the Washington Post to the New York Times, the U.S. press corps fell in line, painting Yanukovych and Putin as the “black-hat” villains and the coup regime as the “white-hat” good guys, which required, of course, whiting out the neo-Nazi “brown shirts.”

Neocon Expediency

Some neocon defenders have challenged my reporting that U.S. neocons played a significant role in the Ukrainian putsch. One argument is that the neocons, who regard the U.S.-Israeli bond as inviolable, would not knowingly collaborate with neo-Nazis given the history of the Holocaust (and indeed the role of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators in extermination campaigns against Poles and Jews).

But the neocons have frequently struck alliances of convenience with some of the most unsavory – and indeed anti-Semitic – forces on earth, dating back to the Reagan administration and its collaboration with Latin American “death squad” regimes, including work with the World Anti-Communist League that included not only neo-Nazis but aging real Nazis.

More recently in Syria, U.S. neocons (and Israeli leaders) are so focused on ousting Assad, an ally of hated Iran, that they have cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s Sunni monarchy (known for its gross anti-Semitism). Israeli officials have even expressed a preference for Saudi-backed Sunni extremists winning in Syria if that is the only way to get rid of Assad and hurt his allies in Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Last September, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post that Israel so wanted Assad out and his Iranian backers weakened, that Israel would accept al-Qaeda operatives taking power in Syria.

“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren said in the interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”

Oren said that was Israel’s view even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda.

Oren, who was Israel’s point man in dealing with Official Washington’s neocons, is considered very close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reflects his views. For decades, U.S. neocons have supported Netanyahu and his hardline Likud Party, including as strategists on his 1996 campaign for prime minister when neocons such as Richard Perle and Douglas Feith developed the original “regime change” strategy. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]

In other words, Israel and its U.S. neocon supporters have been willing to collaborate with extreme right-wing and even anti-Semitic forces if that advances their key geopolitical goals, such as maneuvering the U.S. government into military confrontations with Syria and Iran.

So, while it may be fair to assume that neocons like Nuland and McCain would have preferred that the Ukraine coup had been spearheaded by militants who weren’t neo-Nazis – or, for that matter, that the Syrian rebels were not so dominated by al-Qaeda-affiliated extremists – the neocons (and their Israeli allies) see these tactical collaborations as sometimes necessary to achieve overarching strategic priorities.

And, since their current strategic necessity is to scuttle the fragile negotiations over Syria and Iran, which otherwise might negate the possibility of U.S. military strikes against those two countries, the Putin-Obama collaboration had to go.

By spurring on the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president, the neocons helped touch off a cascade of events – now including Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and its annexation by Russia – that have raised tensions and provoked Western retaliation against Russia. The crisis also has made the continued Obama-Putin teamwork on Syria and Iran extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Like other neocon-engineered schemes, there will surely be much collateral damage in this latest one. For instance, if the tit-for-tat economic retaliations escalate – and Russian gas supplies are disrupted – Europe’s fragile recovery could be tipped back into recession, with harmful consequences for the U.S. economy, too.

There’s also the certainty that congressional war hawks and neocon pundits will press for increased U.S. military spending and aggressive tactics elsewhere in the world to punish Putin, meaning even less money and attention for domestic programs or deficit reduction. Obama’s “nation-building at home” will be forgotten.

But the neocons have long made it clear that their vision for the world – one of America’s “full-spectrum dominance” and “regime change” in Middle Eastern countries opposed to Israel – overrides all other national priorities. And as long as the neocons face no accountability for the havoc that they wreak, they will continue working Washington’s corridors of power, not selling insurance or flipping hamburgers.

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’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Who Has Been More Aggressive?

Who Has Been More Aggressive?

By Michael S. Rozeff

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

Who has been more aggressive, George H.W. Bush in Panama or Vladimir Putin in Crimea? Who has been more aggressive, the U.S. in its actions against Noriega or Russia with respect to Crimea?

These two situations differ but they are comparable in important respects. The U.S. launched a full-scale invasion of Panama. Russia, whatever it did in Crimea, it didn’t launch a full-scale invasion. The U.S. was trying to get rid of Noriega for some years. Russia had not been trying to annex Crimea. It acted in response to Ukraine events in a region it deemed very important just as the U.S. acted in a region it deemed important for reasons of its own. What were they? I won’t go into the detail this invasion deserves. Let’s see what George H.W. Bush’s invasion message said.

“For nearly two years, the United States, nations of Latin America and the Caribbean have worked together to resolve the crisis in Panama. The goals of the United States have been to safeguard the lives of Americans, to defend democracy in Panama, to combat drug trafficking and to protect the integrity of the Panama Canal Treaty. Many attempts have been made to resolve this crisis through diplomacy and negotiations. All were rejected by the dictator of Panama, Gen. Manuel Noriega, an indicted drug trafficker. Last Friday, Noriega declared his military dictatorship to be in a state of war with the United States and publicly threatened the lives of Americans in Panama. The very next day forces under his command shot and killed an unarmed American serviceman, wounded another, arrested and brutally beat a third American serviceman and then brutally interrogated his wife, threatening her with sexual abuse. That was enough.”

The Russians have made the claim too of safeguarding Russians as well as their bases. They too have made the claim of safeguarding democracy and there has been a vote to back that claim up. No drug trafficking is involved in Crimea, but that was a poor excuse for Bush to have used anyway. Russia has made the claim that the coup in Ukraine introduced a rogue government just as the U.S. made claims against Noriega. Bush mentioned the failure of negotiations. Whatever they were or weren’t or how they were handled, let’s note that the Ukrainian government had reached an agreement on Feb. 21 that was soon broken by violent mob activity. This was in Ukraine, not Crimea, but there is a political link and it does provide Russia with a parallel rationale that it has used.

These comparisons suggest, at a minimum and understating the case, that the Russians have not behaved in a way that differs that much from how the U.S. has behaved. But in fact the Russian actions have been much milder. There has been no big invasion. A vote was held. The Russians had standing treaty rights in Crimea.

Bush also claimed that Noriega declared war against the U.S. This claim inverted the truth. Noriega said that the U.S. had declared war on Panama. See author Theodore H. Draper’s work on that claim. I quote Draper:

“As I have now learned, Bush’s statement was, at best, a half-truth, at worst a flagrant distortion. On December 15, Noriega had not simply declared war on the United States. He said, in effect, that the United States had declared war on Panama, and that, therefore, Panama was in a state of war with the United States. Just what Noriega said was known or available in Washington by December 16 at the latest. How Noriega’s words came across as a simple declaration of war is a case history of official management of the news and negligence by the press.

“The key passage in Noriega’s speech on December 15 accused the President of the United States of having ‘invoked the powers of war against Panama’ and ‘through constant psychological and military harassment of having created a state of war in Panama, daily insulting our sovereignty and territorial integrity.’ He appealed for ‘a common front to respond to the aggression,’ and stressed ‘the urgency to unite as one to fight against the aggressor.’

“The resolution on December 15 by the Panama Assembly also took this line—’To declare the Republic of Panama in a state of war for the duration of the aggression unleashed against the Panamanian people by the US Government.’”

This war item may appear to digress from the comparison because the Crimean situation doesn’t involve antagonism between Russia and Crimea, whereas the Panama-U.S. situation did. Its relevance is that the U.S. went considerably further militarily in Panama than Russia did in Crimea, using a false and exaggerated claim as an important reason.

Let us reach a conclusion. If the U.S. could launch a large-scale aggression against the government of Panama for some reasons similar to those invoked by Russia (protection of citizens and democracy) and for one unjustifiable reason (drugs), and also with a lie or half-truth (Noriega unilaterally declaring war on the U.S.), then do not the Russian actions in Crimea, where it has treaty rights for bases and military personnel and where it has a longstanding interest in an adjacent strategic region, appear not to be anything excessive as such things go and far milder than the U.S. action in Panama? This seems to be an inescapable conclusion.

If Russia is the big bad bogeyman in Crimea, what was the U.S. in Panama in 1989? If the U.S. claimed noble aims and getting rid of a criminal in Panama’s government, how far different are the Russian claims that the Crimeans have a right to dissociate from a criminal gang in Kiev and to do so by a peaceful vote? Whose actions are milder, those of the Russians in Crimea or those of the U.S. in Panama? Whose actions are more aggressive, those of the Russians in Crimea or those of the U.S. in Panama? It may be that the Russians will invade Ukraine itself, in which case they will be open to much greater and more severe criticism. For the moment, we are addressing Crimea.

There is a difference between Panama and Crimea in that Crimea has voted to join the Russian Federation whereas Panama was a separate country and remains so. However, the U.S., having once invaded the country, obviously has reserved its option, by violence if necessary, to make and unmake Panama’s government at its will and according to its interests.

Seen against this comparison, the statements being made by top U.S. officials or former officials like Hillary Clinton, that Putin is a new Hitler, are wild exaggerations. If Russia has violated international law through its activities surrounding the Crimean vote, as the warmongers in the U.S. shout, how much more did Bush’s invasion of Panama violate international law? And, by the way, how could Bush invade Panama and then inform Congress when it is Congress that must declare war? And how could Bush invade Panama without a U.N. Security Council Resolution authorizing it? This U.S. invasion was not even a case of applying the already-expansive Monroe Doctrine, for there was no foreign force invading this hemisphere.

I have not explained why Bush invaded Panama or why the U.S. was so concerned about Noriega in the years preceding that invasion. I have limited the discussion to one question, which is this. Who has been more aggressive, George H.W. Bush in Panama or Vladimir Putin in Crimea? I think it’s evident that Bush was far more aggressive.

Before too many U.S. officials get too upset over Putin, before they absorb too much of the neocon warmongering nonsense and exaggerations, before they lead the U.S. into dangerous confrontations for which there is no need, before they shock the world’s economy with armed confrontations, it would pay them on behalf of Americans in this land to study their own history as well as that of Russia and to gain some much needed perspective so that they can behave with at least some degree of maturity and statesman-like wisdom.

The time is long past for those in Washington and throughout this land who understand and despise the neocon ideas to stand up against them and marginalize them. The neocons should be viewed, not as a constraint on appropriate political actions and responses, but as a spent moral force lacking in moral standing that has been wrong time and again in recommending actions that supposedly benefitted Americans but in reality have dragged this country further and further down.

Remaking the world, freeing peoples, playing global saviour, acting as the world’s policeman, and attempting to be the world’s conscience have all got to be seen as bad and wrong for any state. States cannot do any of these things without becoming monsters of power who are creatures of their own interests and their own bureaucracies who oppress the people they rule. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Syria should all attest to that. Even the Vietnam War should attest to that.

A  state that has the power to do supposedly good things will invariably have the power to do very bad things, and it will. This is both basic human nature and the basic outcome of bureaucratic governments. Power corrupts. Of equal importance is that any such state will consist of bureaucracies that do the actual ruling, and they become self-perpetuating and separated from the interests of the people for whom they are supposedly doing good. Instead, they become unjust, out for themselves, corrupt, slow to act, inconsistent in their actions, and impervious to accountability.

The basic neocon idea is that of an expanding U.S. hegemony according to U.S. political ideas and blueprints. The idea is a monopoly of power, a superpower. This is the basic idea of empire, and it is both bad and wrong, practically and morally. A monopoly on power is the wrong way to strive for the good. The good needs to be constantly discovered and re-discovered at a decentralized level, within each person’s mind and conscience. A person’s own life and willing associations with others provide more than ample scope for challenging a person to figure out what is good and bad as well as what is right and wrong. No one person and certainly no one powerful state knows the good or can achieve it. The good is not provided in any blueprint. It is always a work in progress, dependent on local and individual details and conditions that are unknown to state powers. The attempts by states to achieve the abstract good must fail. They are going against the nature of the human condition.

America has a very serious problem, which is that both parties stand for the empire and the neocon ideas are very much tied in with the ideas that ground the empire. Right now, the empire is viewed by far too many people as good and right. As long as those who might separate themselves from neocon ideas and criticize them strenuously remain locked in support of the empire and/or reluctant to take issue with it, both parties are going to be tools of neocon thinking.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

La Crimée épicentre d’un séisme mondial… Vers la guerre ?

par Jean-Michel VERNOCHET

Ex.: http://www.bvoltaire.fr

Ex-chef des Services de Renseignement ukrainien, le général Smeshko ne mâche pas ses mots : « Poutine place l’Europe au bord d’une Troisième guerre mondiale ».

Ce n’est pas un quelconque tabloïd qui publie ce propos mais Le Figaro, et le jour du printemps ! N’est-ce pas un peu vite dit ? En tout cas Paris, toujours aussi bien avisé, se propose d’envoyer des avions de combat en Pologne aux abords de la frontière ukrainienne à l’instar du Pentagone qui a déjà acheminé douze F16 et 300 GI’s… au prétexte de manœuvres.

« On » voudrait faire monter la tension que l’on ne s’y prendrait pas autrement. Au demeurant on ne se prive pas de dire que « Poutine ne comprend rien à l’Ukraine » [ibid.Smeshko]. Il n’en demeure pas moins que ce sont les gens de Bruxelles qui ont mis le feu aux poudres en aguichant les Ukrainiens avec un accord de partenariat que l’Union voulait exclusif, cela sans tenir le moindre compte des réalités géopolitiques et historiques.

Bravo donc Catherine Asthon qui a su faire miroiter aux Ukrainiens une manne céleste pourtant aujourd’hui introuvable… mais que distribuait naguère, et avec largesse, les eurocrates aux pays du Sud de l’Europe… ceux qui justement, Grèce, Portugal, Espagne, Italie des Pouilles et de la Calabre, tous à présent dans la plus noire panade.

Bref, n’y avait-il pas là, de la part de du Moloch bruxellois, une sorte d’escroquerie morale qu’il convient d’épingler ? Comment en effet une Europe envasée dans l’actuel marasme structurel qui est le sien, aurait-elle pu utilement venir au secours de Kiev ?

Cependant, ce serait faire une injure trop grande aux technocrates que de leur imputer une erreur aussi grossière consistant à sous-estimer la capacité de réaction du Kremlin. Surtout après l’annexion manquée d’août 2008, celle de l’Ossétie du Sud par la Géorgie.

Il va de soi que nul, en tel domaine, ne refait deux fois les mêmes erreurs. Notons que, suite à leur déconfiture géorgienne, les Européens échaudés – à rebours – par la « crise du gaz » de l’hiver 2008/2009, ont pris dès cette époque des dispositions pour réduire à la fois leur dépendance vis-à-vis des fournitures russes, mais également pour palier toute éventuelle rupture d’approvisionnement en modifiant en conséquence les réseaux de gazoducs en Europe orientale.

Deux autres conflits gaziers russo-ukrainiens – en 2005/2006 et en 2007/2008 – avaient précédé l’épisode de 2009. Épisodes qu’il serait d’ailleurs vain d’interpréter ou d’analyser en faisant abstraction du contexte géopolitique régional et de l’attraction déjà exercée par la sphère occidentaliste sur les Ukrainiens et plus encore sur leurs puissantes oligarchies.

Pendant que la classe dirigeante française joue à la bataille navale et règle leurs comptes dans ce qui ressemble de plus en plus furieusement à une « voyoucratie » politicienne, le séisme dont l’épicentre se situe sur la Péninsule de Crimée, commence ainsi à faire sentir ses inquiétantes répliques un peu partout… à Venise et en Transnistrie tentées à leur tour par l’autodétermination. Cette dernière, entité séparatiste pro-russe de Moldavie – l’État qui n’existe pas – donne des sueurs froides à Kiev, et pas seulement.

Ici la question se pose de savoir si un détramage général de l’Europe n’a pas été enclenché pas sur le Maïdan de Kiev ?

Comment en effet ne pas penser aux Flandres, à la Catalogne, au Pays basque ? Samedi 22 mars des soldats russes investissaient la base aérienne de Belbek en Crimée. Les choses vont vite, très vite. Pour l’heure, l’Union européenne n’a à opposer aux forces qu’elle a libérées que sa mauvaise humeur et sa mauvaise foi.

Tel est pris qui croyait prendre : la ville de Donetsk, capitale économique et industrielle du Donbass et de l’Ukraine, se mobilise, bannières russes flottant au vent. La foule ne demande pour l’instant que le retour du président déchu Viktor Ianoukovitch, mais les choses pourraient aussi ne pas en rester là !

Corporate Interests Behind Ukraine Putsch

Corporate Interests Behind Ukraine Putsch

Ex: http://consortiumnews.com

Behind the U.S.-backed coup that ousted the democratically elected president of Ukraine are the economic interests of giant corporations – from Cargill to Chevron – which see the country as a potential “gold mine” of profits from agricultural and energy exploitation, reports JP Sottile.

By JP Sottile

On Jan. 12, a reported 50,000 “pro-Western” Ukrainians descended upon Kiev’s Independence Square to protest against the government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Stoked in part by an attack on opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko, the protest marked the beginning of the end of Yanukovych’s four year-long government.

That same day, the Financial Times reported a major deal for U.S. agribusiness titan Cargill.

Despite the turmoil within Ukrainian politics after Yanukovych rejected a major trade deal with the European Union just seven weeks earlier, Cargill was confident enough about the future to fork over $200 million to buy a stake in Ukraine’s UkrLandFarming. According to Financial Times, UkrLandFarming is the world’s eighth-largest land cultivator and second biggest egg producer. And those aren’t the only eggs in Cargill’s increasingly-ample basket.

On Dec. 13, Cargill announced the purchase of a stake in a Black Sea port. Cargill’s port at Novorossiysk — to the east of Russia’s strategically significant and historically important Crimean naval base — gives them a major entry-point to Russian markets and adds them to the list of Big Ag companies investing in ports around the Black Sea, both in Russia and Ukraine.

Cargill has been in Ukraine for over two decades, investing in grain elevators and acquiring a major Ukrainian animal feed company in 2011. And, based on its investment in UkrLandFarming, Cargill was decidedly confident amidst the post-EU deal chaos. It’s a stark juxtaposition to the alarm bells ringing out from the U.S. media, bellicose politicians on Capitol Hill and perplexed policymakers in the White House.

It’s even starker when compared to the anxiety expressed by Morgan Williams, President and CEO of the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council — which, according to its website, has been “Promoting U.S.-Ukraine business relations since 1995.” Williams was interviewed by the International Business Times on March 13 and, despite Cargill’s demonstrated willingness to spend, he said, “The instability has forced businesses to just go about their daily business and not make future plans for investment, expansion and hiring more employees.”

In fact, Williams, who does double-duty as Director of Government Affairs at the private equity firm SigmaBleyzer, claimed, “Business plans have been at a standstill.”

Apparently, he wasn’t aware of Cargill’s investment, which is odd given the fact that he could’ve simply called Van A. Yeutter, Vice President for Corporate Affairs at Cargill, and asked him about his company’s quite active business plan. There is little doubt Williams has the phone number because Mr. Yuetter serves on the Executive Committee of the selfsame U.S.-Ukraine Business Council. It’s quite a cozy investment club, too.

According to his SigmaBleyzer profile, Williams “started his work regarding Ukraine in 1992” and has since advised American agribusinesses “investing in the former Soviet Union.” As an experienced fixer for Big Ag, he must be fairly friendly with the folks on the Executive Committee.

Big Ag Luminaries

And what a committee it is — it’s a veritable who’s who of Big Ag. Among the luminaries working tirelessly and no doubt selflessly for a better, freer Ukraine are:

–Melissa Agustin, Director, International Government Affairs & Trade for Monsanto

–Brigitte Dias Ferreira, Counsel, International Affairs for John Deere

–Steven Nadherny, Director, Institutional Relations for agriculture equipment-maker CNH Industrial

–Jeff Rowe, Regional Director for DuPont Pioneer

–John F. Steele, Director, International Affairs for Eli Lilly & Company

And, of course, Cargill’s Van A. Yeutter. But Cargill isn’t alone in their warm feelings toward Ukraine. As Reuters reported in May 2013, Monsanto — the largest seed company in the world — plans to build a $140 million “non-GM (genetically modified) corn seed plant in Ukraine.”

And right after the decision on the EU trade deal, Jesus Madrazo, Monsanto’s Vice President for Corporate Engagement, reaffirmed his company’s “commitment to Ukraine” and “the importance of creating a favorable environment that encourages innovation and fosters the continued development of agriculture.”

Monsanto’s strategy includes a little “hearts and minds” public relations, too. On the heels of Mr. Madrazo’s reaffirmation, Monsanto announced “a social development program titled “Grain Basket of the Future” to help rural villagers in the country improve their quality of life.” The initiative will dole out grants of up to $25,000 to develop programs providing “educational opportunities, community empowerment, or small business development.”

The well-crafted moniker “Grain Basket of the Future” is telling because, once upon a time, Ukraine was known as “the breadbasket” of the Soviet Union. The CIA ranks Soviet-era Ukraine second only to Mother Russia as the “most economically important component of the former Soviet Union.”

In many ways, the farmland of Ukraine was the backbone of the USSR. Its “fertile black soil” generated over a quarter of the USSR’s agriculture. It exported “substantial quantities” of food to other republics and its farms generated four times the output of “the next-ranking republic.”

Although Ukraine’s agricultural output plummeted in the first decade after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the farming sector has been growing spectacularly in recent years. While Europe struggled to shake-off the Great Recession, Ukraine’s agriculture sector grew 13.7% in 2013.

Ukraine’s agriculture economy is hot. Russia’s is not. Hampered by the effects of climate change and 25 million hectares of uncultivated agricultural land, Russia lags behind its former breadbasket.

According to the Centre for Eastern Studies, Ukraine’s agricultural exports rose from $4.3 billion in 2005 to $17.9 billion in 2012 and, harkening the heyday of the USSR, farming currently accounts for 25 percent of its total exports. Ukraine is also the world’s third-largest exporter of wheat and of corn. And corn is not just food. It is also ethanol.

Feeding Europe

But people gotta eat — particularly in Europe. As Frank Holmes of U.S. Global Investors assessed in 2011, Ukraine is poised to become Europe’s butcher. Meat is difficult to ship, but Ukraine is perfectly located to satiate Europe’s hunger.

Just two days after Cargill bought into UkrLandFarming, Global Meat News (yes, “Global Meat News” is a thing) reported a huge forecasted spike in “all kinds” of Ukrainian meat exports, with an increase of  8.1% overall and staggering 71.4% spike in pork exports. No wonder Eli Lilly is represented on the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council’s Executive Committee. Its Elanco Animal Health unit is a major manufacturer of feed supplements.

And it is also notable that Monsanto’s planned seed plant is non-GMO, perhaps anticipating an emerging GMO-unfriendly European market and Europe’s growing appetite for organic foods. When it comes to Big Ag’s profitable future in Europe, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

For Russia and its hampered farming economy, it’s another in a long string of losses to U.S. encroachment — from NATO expansion into Eastern Europe to U.S. military presence to its south and onto a major shale gas development deal recently signed by Chevron in Ukraine.

So, why was Big Ag so bullish on Ukraine, even in the face of so much uncertainty and the predictable reaction by Russia?

The answer is that the seeds of Ukraine’s turn from Russia have been sown for the last two decades by the persistent Cold War alliance between corporations and foreign policy. It’s a version of the “Deep State” that is usually associated with the oil and defense industries, but also exists in America’s other heavily subsidized industry — agriculture.

Morgan Williams is at the nexus of Big Ag’s alliance with U.S. foreign policy. To wit, SigmaBleyzer touts Mr. Williams’ work with “various agencies of the U.S. government, members of Congress, congressional committees, the Embassy of Ukraine to the U.S., international financial institutions, think tanks and other organizations on U.S.-Ukraine business, trade, investment and economic development issues.”

As President of the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, Williams has access to Council cohort — David Kramer, President of Freedom House. Officially a non-governmental organization, it has been linked with overt and covert “democracy” efforts in places where the door isn’t open to American interests — a.k.a. U.S. corporations.

Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy and National Democratic Institute helped fund and support the Ukrainian “Orange Revolution” in 2004. Freedom House is funded directly by the U.S. Government, the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Department of State.

David Kramer is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and, according to his Freedom House bio page, formerly a “Senior Fellow at the Project for the New American Century.”

Nuland’s Role

That puts Kramer and, by one degree of separation, Big Ag fixer Morgan Williams in the company of PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan who, as coincidence would have it, is married to Victoria “F*ck the EU” Nuland, the current Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.

Interestingly enough, Ms. Nuland spoke to the U.S.-Ukrainian Foundation last Dec. 13, extolling the virtues of the Euromaidan movement as the embodiment of “the principles and values that are the cornerstones for all free democracies.”

Nuland also told the group that the United States had invested more than $5 billion in support of Ukraine’s “European aspirations,” meaning pulling Ukraine away from Russia. She made her remarks on a dais featuring a backdrop emblazoned with a Chevron logo.

Also, her colleague and phone call buddy U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt helped Chevron cook up their 50-year shale gas deal right in Russia’s kitchen.

Although Chevron sponsored that event, it is not listed as a supporter of the Foundation. But the Foundation does list the Coca-Cola Company, ExxonMobil and Raytheon as major sponsors. And, to close the circle of influence, the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council is also listed as a supporter.

Which brings the story back to Big Ag’s fixer — Morgan Williams.

Although he was glum about the current state of investment in Ukraine, he’s gotta wear shades when he looks into the future. He told the International Business Times, “The potential here for agriculture/agribusiness is amazing … production here could double.  The world needs the food Ukraine could produce in the future. Ukraine’s agriculture could be a real gold mine.”

Of course, his priority is to ensure that the bread of well-connected businesses gets lavishly buttered in Russia’s former breadbasket. And there is no better connected group of Ukraine-interested corporations than American agribusiness.

Given the extent of U.S. official involvement in Ukrainian politics — including the interesting fact that Ambassador Pyatt pledged U.S. assistance to the new government in investigating and rooting-out corruption — Cargill’s seemingly risky investment strategy probably wasn’t that risky, after all.

JP Sottile is a freelance journalist, radio co-host, documentary filmmaker and former broadcast news producer in Washington, D.C. His weekly show, Inside the Headlines w/ The Newsvandal, co-hosted by James Moore, airs every Friday on KRUU-FM in Fairfield, Iowa and is available online. He blogs at Newsvandal.com or you can follow him on Twitter, http://twitter/newsvandal.

The NATO Syndrome, the EU’s Eastern Partnership Program, and the EAU

Kto Kogo?*

 

The NATO Syndrome, the EU’s Eastern Partnership Program, and the EAU

By Anne Williamson

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

In 2009, Poland and Sweden, ever attentive to the US’s geostrategic goals of isolating Russia and gaining control of China thereafter, initiated the Eastern Partnership program, which its sponsors said was intended to tighten ties with former Soviet Republics, such as Moldova, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine.  A trade pact is a part of the Partnership’s Association Agreement (AA) deal.

What the Russians saw in the EU initiative was a repeat of the “NATO Syndrome,” in that what was promised would soon be betrayed, i.e. no NATO expansion in exchange for a Soviet agreement to the reunification of Germany.

To Russian eyes, NATO’s 1999 expansion throughout Eastern Europe and the subsequent celebratory bombing campaign against Serbia, inaugurated just one month later, and the still later Albanian annexation of Serbia’s heartland province of Kosovo, were altogether the Clinton Administration’s triple-combo opening salvos in an American campaign to recreate the Versailles Treaty’s cordon sanitaire.  And the 2009 Association Agreement is but a Trojan horse whose only practical purpose is to advance US and EU interests at the expense of the former Soviet republics’ naïve hopes and Russian security.

Dangling the Association Agreement’s implied – but not certain – right of eventual EU membership before the economically struggling former Soviet republics was but a means to beguile them into the EU orbit and thus US control with a future as NATO base hosts and IMF lab rats.

When the terms of the AA are examined, Russian skepticism is understandable.  The 350 laws alone that Ukraine would be required to institute over a ten-year period at a cost of twice the nation’s projected GNP in the same time period would overwhelm the struggling country, few of whose industrial and manufacturing products are either wanted or needed in the EU.

But whether or not Ukraine ever managed to fulfill EU conditions for membership would be of no importance to the U.S.  Once bound tight with IMF conditions and saddled with World Bank loans and perpetual debt, thereafter the west could leave the AA’s signatories to rot in limbo for years while their territory, cheap labor and resources were put to other, alien purposes.

The Russians saw as well that both the countries of the former Soviet Union and Russia, sandwiched as they are between large geopolitical units (China and the EU,) are disadvantaged when negotiating trade treaties and other matters.  Thus was born the idea of a new structure, the Eurasian Union (EAU), which began with the establishment of a Customs Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2010.  The Russian plan was to inaugurate the Eurasian Union in 2015 with the inclusion of Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine.

It is the Russian EAU initiative which is said to be Putin’s ham-fisted attempt to re-establish the Soviet empire, and not the plan of a man who accepts the world’s current political configuration and is attempting to place his country within that configuration as advantageously as possible.  It’s been a hard sell.

Without Ukraine, a Eurasian Union is at risk of never coalescing usefully, leaving the former republics and Russia vulnerable to neocon and globalist raids and incursions, possibly under cover of staged terrorist events.  In effect, the consequences might not be dissimilar from the days when Russian princes were run ragged repelling Tartar incursions from the south or the east, only having to turn and race westerly to beat back Lithuanian or Polish brigands.

By the week of the EU’s Eastern Partnership’s signing debut at the end of November 2013, Vladimir Putin had told Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich that he could continue flirting with the EU, if he wished.  But if Ukraine wanted a trade agreement with Russia, with whom the lion’s share of Ukraine’s trade actually occurs, $15 billion in the coming year, cut-rate gas prices, industrial co-operation projects, and possible further credits, the country would agree to the EAU.  Compared to the $200 million the EU offered out of a total of $799 million for all eight targeted Association Agreement signers and a certain decade in EU cold storage while the country underwent an IMF-directed mauling, Yanukovich made the prudent choice.

When the Ukrainian president informed the EU that Ukraine’s participation in the AA would require further discussion, a reasonable position considering the AA as drafted, and that the country had agreed to the join the EAU, thousands of misguided and confused protestors appeared in the Maidan.  Once the terms of the Russian offer were made public, the protests began petering out.

But in both the Russians’ EAU game plan and that of the US’s effort to sabotage the EAU, Ukraine is key.  Protest crowds on the Maidan began to grow again amid reports that many in the crowd were working for a daily wage.  Whether paid or unpaid, bussed in from Moldova or fresh off the Kiev city tram, it’s certain Ukrainians were not demonstrating for the establishment of NATO bases or IMF agreements, a number of which have already floundered and failed.

Recent events are not the first time the US has used Ukraine in an attempt to displace Russia as a significant power by piercing its sphere of influence.

In 2004, Putin and then Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich had begun to tackle the politicized supply structure Stalin created to make permanent the Soviet Union.  By changing national borders and spreading key industrial components over two or more republics, Stalin bound the Soviet empire together.  When the 15 constituent republics that made up the Soviet Union became independent nations in 1992, this cross-border supply structure created havoc.

Mighty Soviet aluminum smelters were located in Siberia, but supplies of bauxite were to be had only in Ukraine.  A component an electronics manufacturer in Kharkiv needed could only be obtained from a manufacturer in Vilnius.  Multiplying the complications for obtaining key inputs throughout the industrial and manufacturing sectors of 15 nascent and bankrupt governments gives a fuller understanding of why the former republics have failed to successfully restructure their national economies.

Putin’s and Yanukovich’s initial efforts were beneficial, particularly to eastern Ukraine, in which the republic’s industrial sector is concentrated.  In 2004, Ukraine experienced a 12% increase in GNP, and the national currency, the hryvnia, enjoyed a modest appreciation.

The US-sponsored 2004 Orange Revolution put paid to the Putin-Yanukovich initiatives, and the Ukrainian cycle of state officials’ theft and oligarchical favoritism began anew under US-presidential pick Viktor Yushchenko, a recent tradition of sorts which Yanukovich was eager to honor, as well.

Fast forward to 21 February 2014, the day of the Yanukovich government’s violent ouster.  Earlier that day, Germany, France and Poland had brokered a compromise agreement between the elected Ukrainian government and the protestors’ spokesmen.  Having already agreed and executed much of the protestors’ agenda, the pre-2004 Ukrainian constitution was to be restored and Yanukovich, in turn, would stay in the diminished office of the presidency until new elections could be organized.

Within 12 hours of the agreement’s signing, dozens of corpses of demonstrators and police killed by sniper fire were reported in the Maidan.  On Saturday, in an un-constitutional procedure the Ukrainian parliament impeached Yanukovich, who then fled to Russia in fear of his life.

The Russian Foreign Ministry Russian Foreign Ministry observed that the Friday agreement was used “with the tacit consent of its external sponsors” as a “cover to promote the script of a forced change of power in Ukraine.”  In other words, the Russians smelled a high-stakes trick.

Now that the Ashton-Paet tape has leaked, and despite its being obediently ignored by the mainstream media, one wonders what other actions the west may have known about, but left unremarked on that Friday. Did the EU negotiators know that the opposition they were then championing in accordance with US preferences had possibly directed snipers into the Maidan to murder demonstrators and policemen alike?

Russian warnings to the US and the EU about the rough crowd in Kiev they’d taken up with were ignored. An arrogant Washington, in accord with a famous Leninism regarding the expediency of temporary alliances, sees no problem.  Once Ukrainian hotheads and thugs have been bled of all possible utility, they will be eliminated. Think Egypt.

In response to the coup, Moscow swiftly drew a red line so bright it might as well have been flashing in neon: within a day of Yanukovich’s shambolic impeachment 150,000 Russian soldiers were engaged in military exercises not so very far from Russia’s border with eastern Ukraine, almost overnight Crimea was under Russian military control, a bottled-up Ukrainian navy was registering little alarm at their predicament, and further payments on the remaining $12 billion of the $15 billion cash infusion and cut-rate prices for Russian gas Putin had earlier agreed with the overturned Yanukovich government were shelved.

What the US and the EU immediately claimed was a Russian invasion of Ukraine was a long term leaseholder’s defense of its property right.  Even with 16,000 troops in Ukraine, Russia is not in violation of the terms of its lease on the Sevastopol naval base.  The lease, a treaty in fact, permits the stationing and multiple movements on Crimean territory of as many as 25,000 Russian troops.

The west’s claim of a Russian invasion of Crimea is intended to support Ukrainian control of the Kerch Strait, a waterway at the northern end of the Black Sea which separates Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula from the coast of Southern Russia and is one of Ukraine’s three potentially oil-producing provinces. Gas reserves lie offshore of the peninsula.

The US believes Ukraine’s long term needs for energy and income can be satisfied by cutting deals with Big Oil to drill for oil and gas, which can then be shipped through Ukrainian pipelines to the EU, and Europe’s dependence on Russian gas a forgotten inconvenience.

Complicating western media scripts, the Crimean parliament voted on 6 March to rejoin the Russian Federation.  A public referendum on Sunday, 16 March, confirmed the parliament’s earlier vote and the 96.7% of the electorate that voted its approval tallies with a 93.2% approval when the same question was put to the electorate in a 1991 referendum.  In the run-up to the recent public vote, 1000s-strong pro-Russian demonstrations erupted in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Lugansk at which possibly western mercenaries hired by wealthy Ukrainian oligarchs played the role of spoilers.

Without foreign largesse, the new Ukrainian coup government can’t even pay the nation’s light bill much less a single Ukrainian soldier’s combat pay.  In fact, the cost of tidying up a Ukraine that has been criminally misgoverned for over two decades in order to accommodate EU standards and procedures is in the neighborhood of a $200 billion, years-long taxpayer liability.

To date, the US has pledged $1 billion and the EU is planning a $1.5 billion emergency transfer to tide the coup government over prior to an IMF agreement and all before the 25 May elections.  Within a week of their elevation-by-mob, interim government leaders embarked on a palms-out Grande Tour of sorts.  A combined sum of $35 billion in promised IMF loans is now the west’s opening bid.

US policy achievements on behalf of American taxpayers for their $5 billion investment to date:  State Department-approved Ukrainian coup government officials have asked for money to finance an “independent Ukraine,” the US and the EU have offered up a promise of $35 billion to insure an “independent Ukraine,” and an “independent Ukraine” has agreed to take the money.

Where are the Pravy Sektor defaulters when you need them?  Hmm?

Over the horizon lies a propaganda campaign devoted to browbeating at least some of the Ukrainians’ requested billions from Russia’s earlier deal with the Yanukovich government on what will be said to be a “humanitarian” basis.  Rather like the ancient practice of the condemned paying the executioner’s fee, it will be an effort to maneuver Russia into paying the initial costs of Ukraine’s first steps towards EU membership.

When the Ukrainian people understand that the price for daydreams of strolling the Champs d’Elysées with a pocketful of euros is an IMF restructuring that entails the devaluation of the hryvnia, cuts in pensions, benefits and salaries to state employees, raising of the retirement age, the removal of subsidies to coal and other underperforming industries, the growth of natural gas prices, and other toxic rules and conditions that will translate into a life harder and colder than it now is, more turmoil is guaranteed.

Turmoil is the very aim of contemporary US statecraft.  In the “divide and rule” political schemata of empire, US blunders are but new opportunities to tighten the screws on what the US policymakers regard not as nations, but as subject territories.

What is extraordinary is that EU officials are persisting in the attempt to squeeze agreement with the IMF and to the Eastern Partnership from Ukraine’s coup government prior to the 25 May elections, and thereby secure their agents’ permanent presence in the country as a thing done.  The EU rush speaks to the insincerity and weakness of any substantial EU commitment to aid Ukraine or her people.

The Russians’ refusal to recognize the coup government is correct; doing so would only work to support the inevitable US effort to trade a Ukrainian agreement to the AA to Russia in return for Ukraine’s acceptance of the loss of Crimea.

In the wake of the Crimean referendum, a hysterical western and specifically US-aligned media has been shouting warnings of a sudden Russian grab for eastern Ukraine.  Stalin could have written the script – for the Americans, who without any foreign influence whatsoever long ago established their own history of provoking attacks.

Confused overnight media reports of the death of a Ukrainian soldier in Crimea, which imply that Russian troops are responsible, but which locals say was a tragic consequence of a dust-up with Crimean self-defense forces and an unknown sniper,  are indicative of the Russians’ concern that the west will create the evidence that compels Putin to make good his promises of protection of Russians in western Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russian support for an OSCE observer mission in Ukraine is based on the need “of preventing provocations by ultranationalist and radical forces against Russian speakers and our compatriots in southeastern Ukraine and other regions.”

Contrary to western media’s repeated provocations, Russia has no interest in a divided Ukraine.  A divided country would only open Russia to endless enmity from western Ukrainians, and ongoing cross-border violence.  A division would be a tragedy for western Ukraine, which would bring increased economic misery and leave the country subject to a possible Polish annexation.

In truth, US scheming and bellicosity in Ukraine have only worked to drag the world back to the tired rhetoric of the cold war and to that era’s nuclear dangers and destructive tit-for-tat policies of economic sanctions, asset freezes, and boycotts.  The only bit of “new” is the threat of kicking Russia out of the irrelevant G-8’s treehouse.

The experience is rather like watching dinosaurs crashing about in a Steven Spielberg film.

The world is de-centralizing, and neither the rapidly changing times nor the world’s finances favor out-of-date multinational organizations, run-a-muck central banks, or rolling superpower seditions and military aggressions.

If so, then what explains Germany’s support of the US lead?  Since Russia supplies a third of the gas for Germany’s economy, risking Russia’s alienation seems unwise.

The cat western media doesn’t let out of the bag is the fact that Germany has a full tank of gas, and there’s plenty more from where that came from.

Gazprom’s Baltic Sea ‘Nord Stream’ project is complete and is now transporting Russian gas to Germany through a pipeline that transverses the bottom of the Baltic Sea, and the pipe’s capacity is double the amount of gas Germany purchased from Russia in 2012.  Since 2005, the chairman of the supervisory board of the management company of Nord Stream is Gerhard Shröder, the former German chancellor.

Gazprom in conjunction with Italy, France and Germany is building a second pipe, South Stream. The former SPD mayor of Hamburg, Henning Voscherau, plays the same supervisory role at South Stream Transport AG as Shröder does at Nord Stream.

Interestingly, the Financial Times reported that the City’s skittishness in the wake of John Kerry’s idiotic ultimatum to Putin to renounce in advance the results of the referendum in Crimea put ‘half a dozen live deals to fund some of Russia’s biggest companies” in limbo.”  But the FT article highlighted one deal that was not put in limbo:  “South Stream announced that it had signed a contract worth about EUR2 billion with Saipem of Italy to build the offshore stretch of the route under the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria. Construction is scheduled to start in June.”

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller has been quoted as saying that the two projects in combination with the already-existing Belorussian “Beltansgaz” pipe would turn Ukraine’s network of gas pipelines and biggest strategic asset into “scrap.”

In other words, Germany’s verbal support for the west’s initiatives costs Germany exactly nothing.  Any actions beyond the symbolic would cost Germany.  Therefore, there will be no EU sanctions of consequence.  Even were Germany on side for a US-decreed suicide mission, twenty-eight nations’ governments are not going to agree to economic policies that will take the cost out of their own hides. In other words, no State Department neo-con princess is going to ‘’F**k the EU.”

With the Nord and South stream projects in hand, Germany, which has prospered mightily from the euro, but whose taxpayers are weary of bankrolling the sinking Mediterranean countries’ loans made by the prosperous north’s banks, has positioned itself remarkably well; in an EU financial pile-up, exiting the EU wouldn’t amount to much more than a fender bender.

Now that west has adopted Bolshevik political tools, the Russians ought to keep turning the tables and counter with what the west advocates only with words, i.e. freedom and economic competition.

An EAU based on free trade in which there are no tariffs, no quotas, and no favoritism by or for any member and which allowed for associate members would put the Soviet boogieman back in the closet.  A free trade pact would allow Russia and the former republics to reap the benefits of the spontaneous order that the world’s people are building daily on the internet without any state’s direction or even much of an awareness of what they are doing.

There would be costs to Russia for such an arrangement, and a subsidized energy program for certain former republics would have to be included initially, (and would be difficult to retire when no longer needed.)  But those initial costs would be less than the long term ones of state-managed trade agreements at which literally thousands of government lawyers and bureaucrats labor continually in order to first design and then police the treaties, which protect and favor individual nation’s corporate political funders at consumers’ expense.

An unhindered market-driven trade block would quickly rationalize the last vestiges of Stalin’s cross-border supply system at no cost to the Kremlin.  Endemic corruption would diminish since no bribes need be paid for permissions no longer required.  Overall, commerce and enterprise would be favored throughout the EAU.

A trade apparatus in which competing private entities provide reliable and efficient transport, short and intermediate term trade finance, goods insurance, and rapid dispute resolution in private courts would work to swell EAU membership rolls.  An EAU supportive of co-operative and unfettered trade would draw foreign investment, and new applicants for membership both within and outside of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States).

Would Russia ever initiate such a system?

The Russian love of everything big rather than the small and the quick argues against.  An unfortunate predilection towards monopoly, a modern manifestation of the legacy of the votchina structure of property rights established in the ancient Kievian state of ‘Rus, also posits a no.  Ditto the exhaustively detailed agreements covering every right and every duty between contracting parties. These elements all boil down to, for instance, Gazprom’s cultural and business preference for signing a single, complex, multi-year contract with Germany’s Ruhrgas, and not many agreements with a plethora of independent suppliers.

Still, the west would be wrong to write off the possibility of having to compete with a lean and mean EAU trade block.  Russia has demonstrated a capability for surprise.

After all, who would have thought in 2001 that the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, would liberate the greatest number of people on the planet?

“Say what!?” you ask.

If any reader knows of another leader of a major power, who instituted a flat tax of 13% or less, and thereby liberated his people from the necessity of burdensome record keeping and government tracking, while eliminating from households’ budgets the grievous costs of accountants, tax lawyers, offshore scams, and sparing everyday life the social costs inherent in a society riven by the divisiveness that comes of progressive taxation, then, dear reader, please do email me that name.

_____________________________________________________________

Kto kogo? was one of Vladimir Lenin’s favorite expressions. Literally, the phrase means “Who of whom,” and is perhaps best translated as “Who will triumph (over whom)?”  The ‘g’ in kogo is pronounced as a ‘v’.

The Best of Anne Williamson

 

Anne Williamson [send her mail] has been observing the international aid institutions since their arrival in Russia after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Currently she is expanding and revising her opus on the post-Cold War era, Contagion: The Betrayal of Liberty; the United States and Russia in the Post-Cold War World, to be published by Poor Richard's Press this coming autumn. She no longer lives in the United States.

Copyright © 2014 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

Previous article by Anne Williamson: Don't Cry for Boris Yeltsin

Crimea’s Reunification with Russia and National Self-Determination Trends in Europe

Crimea’s Reunification with Russia and National Self-Determination Trends in Europe, Time for Peoples to Decide Their Own Fates

Dmitry MININ

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

The Crimea’s return to Russia is a hot issue, but it’s not something absolutely extraordinary for Europe. Pretty soon the international community’s attention will switch over to other important and unexpected events related to the desire of peoples to implement their right to self-determination. 

As European history shows, the national states normally appear as a result of big wars: Germany and Italy were unified in the 70s of XIX century and new states emerged in the Balkans. As WWI and WWII ended, Europe has been facing vibrant events leading to the creation of new states and reshaping of borders. I thought that the period of 1989 -1992 was the time of the fourth wave of European map reshaping as the Cold War was over and a number of former socialist states dismembered. 23 states have appeared, or 24 entities if Kosovo is counted, in the place of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia as of 1989. The whole Slav world actually has gone through a transition period leading to the emergence of national states. The number is 13 now, but the figure is believed to bring bad luck, something that makes experts believe one more addition to the count – a state of Carpathian Rusyns - would just hit the spot as this is the only Slav nation still destitute of statehood and national identification. 

A group of Western states led by the United States and other NATO members actually inspired the fourth wave using the energy of nationalism to weaken a geopolitical adversary. But once started, a chain reaction is hard to stop. It has not been extinguished during all these twenty years but was rather shouldering waiting for the time to come. Back in history, a national partition used to happen after two-three generations, nowadays one generation is enough. Now the fifth wave of national identification is striking Europe and it is not necessarily linked to wars. Some peoples, especially in the West, continue to face the trends to partition, while others are in the process of unification, like in the case of Russia, for instance. Crimea is a more a left-over from the 1990s, and the main events are expected to take place soon not in the post-Soviet space, but rather in the «united» Europe. The Crimean referendum may influence the situation to some extent, but, in essence, it’ll be a backlash to the process launched by the West. These are the whims of Nemesis, the goddess of revenge. 

First of all, new tensions are getting high where national problems are still waiting for final solutions, or in the states of the Western Europe, and it is a heavy burden to be shouldered by Brussels. The risk of the use of force is high. Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been dreaming about a national entity - the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia - or joining Croatia since the days of the war. Serbs still cherish plans for the Republic of Srpska to become independent or become part of Serbia. Bosnian Muslims have been staging social protests for a few months, it’s not about economy only, they also raise the issue of national identity. The regional Muslim movement for autonomy in the Sanjak situated between Montenegro and Serbia would like to unite with the people of the same religion living in the north to make Greater Bosnia emerge. 

Serbs in In Kosovo-Mitrovica are especially elated by the Crimea events. They intend to intensify the pressure on Belgrade to make it insist they stay out of Pristina control. The Albanians in western Macedonia proclaimed the foundation of the Republic of Illirida in 1990, now they want the status of federal entity. In Bulgaria the trend to claim the larger part of eastern Macedonia is on the rise. Bulgarians believe the land rightfully belongs to them. Romania sets its eyes on Moldavia. Inside Romania the Székely Hungarians have intensified their activities. Almost all of them have Hungarian passports and demand self-determination for a large part of Transylvania as the first step on the way of unification with motherland. Slovakia and Serbian Voevodina face the same problems with Hungarian population. Formally Poland unambiguously supports the Kiev government, but experts have already expressed the opinion that the time has come to return the eastern kresy (borderlands in western Ukraine which is a former territory of the eastern provinces of Poland) into Rzeczpospolita (Poland). 

In Western Europe separatism has two trends: non-recognition of existing borders (in Belgium, Spain, Great Britain, Italy, France, Denmark and Germany) and negative attitude towards the EU itself. The November 2012 survey held in the UK showed the majority (56%) say «no» to the European Union and would prefer to leave. Prime Minister David Cameron has already said it’s a cut-and dried decision to hold a referendum on the issue. Germany follows the trend: 49% respondents there said they would be better off without the EU. Adding the sinking Ukraine to the pile of EU burdens will obviously strengthen the trend. The introduction of large-scale sanctions against Russia will inevitably lead to the general deterioration of economic situation in Europe putting the EU on the brink of disintegration. Some scenarios envision Europe as a federal state comprising 75 national states. This vision belongs to Daniel Cohn-Bendit of Germany’s Green Party and Guy Verhofstadt, former Prime Minister of Belgium, an author of a popular manifest on federal Europe. 

Talking about individual states, the partition of Great Britain is seen as inevitable. Simon Thomas, a Welsh Plaid Cymru party politician, believes that the 2014 referendum in Scotland will become an icebreaker moving across all the parts of the UK. According to him, the promulgation of Scotland’s independence means the partition of Great Britain. He believes that Scotland is the best example. Still Northern Iceland and Wales are in for changes. Simon Thomas thinks that it would be better for Wales to stay in the united Europe in case it leaves the UK. Not much time is left till the referendum slated for September 18 takes place. Scotland is attentively following the events in Crimea. It would be relevant to ask why something allowed once should be forbidden in other cases? Is it that "Gods may do what cattle may not»?

Germany still remains one state due to the inertia of recent unification, but it may not be immune to partition in the long run. It consists of different parts with the dialects that differ more than Russian and Ukrainian languages, for instance. 

The trend is on the rise – those who live in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg don’t want to share with «hangers-on» from other, less prosperous, German lands. Wilfried Scharnagl, a high-standing member of the ruling Bavarian Christian Social Union party, has recently published his sensational book Freedom from Germany trying to wake up the Bavarian political establishment which has been surreptitiously dreaming about independence. 

In Italy the Northern League (Lega Nord) has been gaining strength since the 1960-70s cherishing dreams about separating from loafers, mafiosi and hedonists in the south by uniting into Padania, the land of hard working northerners. These kinds of ideas have become most popular as the crisis set in making the regions tighten their belts to increase aid to southern provinces deep in debt. Alto Adige (South Tyrol) is mainly populated by Austrians; it became part of Italy after WWII. The separatist trends there are on the rise. Venice has already launched a five-day referendum on splitting from Rome. The poll was organized by local activists and parties, who want a future state called Republic of Veneto. This would be reminiscent of the sovereign Venetian republic that existed for more than 1,000 years. 

 

In France, the voices calling for autonomy or even secession from Paris are heard louder in Corse, Alsace and Bretagne. 

In Spain Catalonia is demanding independence with Galicia and the Basque country ready to follow suit. A referendum in Catalonia is slated for November 4, no matter the central government in Madrid opposes the action. Barcelona has no intention to retreat. Here is a one more precedent relevant to the referendum just held in Crimea. 

 The attempts to keep Flanders and Wallonia together as parts of Belgium stymie, and Brussels, the European capital, risks remaining an entity with vaguely defined status. 

There are overseas forces that have fostered the separatist trends guided by the good old «rule and divide!» principle. Of course, the USA would like to see divided the West and the East of the continent. The separatist sentiments, limited by the West against the background of opposite trends picking up steam in the East, hardly meet the Washington’s goals. The US has failed to take into consideration just one thing. The peoples’ right to self-determination does not only presuppose a partition in case they don’t want to live together, but also unification if it meets the prevailing aspirations. Russia has overcome the negative trends emerged as a result of imposed disintegration and stepped on the different path of consolidation. That’s why the White House is so vibrant in its opposition to what is happening around Ukraine. The great strategic plan of «continents big game» is getting frustrated. As the history goes to show – Crimea is just the first step. 

RIFONDARE L’UNIONE EUROPEA

RIFONDARE L’UNIONE EUROPEA

Claudio Mutti

Ex: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org

SOMMARIO DEL NUMERO XXXIII (1-2014) ^[1]

In seguito ai risultati referendari con cui una decina d’anni fa l’elettorato francese e olandese respinse la bozza della “Costituzione europea”, “Eurasia” pubblicò un breve dibattito tra me e Costanzo Preve sul tema Che farne dell’Unione Europea?

Il nostro compianto collaboratore scriveva tra l’altro: “Per poter perseguire la prospettiva politica, culturale e geopolitica di un’alleanza strategica fra i continenti europeo ed asiatico contro l’egemonismo imperiale americano, prospettiva che ha come presupposto una certa idea di Europa militarmente autonoma dagli USA e dal loro barbaro dominio, bisogna prima (sottolineo: prima) sconfiggere questa Europa, neoliberale (e quindi oligarchica) in economia ed euroatlantica (e quindi asservita) in politica e diplomazia. Senza sconfiggere prima questa Europa non solo non esiste eurasiatismo possibile, ma non esiste neppure un vero europeismo possibile”.

Da parte mia osservavo come nel risultato del voto francese e olandese si fossero manifestati non tanto il rifiuto dell’occidentalismo e del neoliberismo, quanto quei diffusi orientamenti “euroscettici” che, essendo espressione di irrealistiche nostalgie micronazionaliste se non addirittura del tribalismo etnico e localista, non solo non possono essere considerati alternativi alla globalizzazione mondialista, ma sono oggettivamente funzionali alla strategia dell’imperialismo statunitense. La mia conclusione, che qui ripropongo, era la seguente.

“La prima cosa da fare, sarebbe cominciare a gettare le basi per la formazione dei quadri di un movimento continentale che agisca per l’unità politica dell’Europa, in relazione solidale con tutte quelle forze politiche (governi, partiti, gruppi ecc.) che negli altri grandi spazi dell’Eurasia lottano per la nascita di un blocco eurasiatico capace di porre termine al tentativo statunitense di conquista del mondo. Solo un movimento politico strutturato su scala europea potrebbe avere la forza necessaria per sviluppare, nei confronti dell’Europa dei burocrati e dei tecnocrati, un’opposizione di senso algebrico opposta a quella degli euroscettici, un’opposizione cioè che sia finalizzata sì a buttar via l’acqua sporca del neoliberismo, ma anche a salvare il bambino europeo, per curarlo, riplasmarlo ed infondergli un’anima migliore”.

* * *

Oggi, a distanza di circa un decennio, l’acqua sporca è più sporca che mai e il bambino sta rischiando di morire. Siamo alla vigilia dell’elezione del nuovo Parlamento e i sondaggi dicono che il 53% dei cittadini europei non si sente europeo. A quanto pare, il “patriottismo costituzionale” teorizzato da Habermas non ha suscitato un grande entusiasmo.

D’altronde l’Europa liberaldemocratica, anziché sottrarsi all’egemonia statunitense ed avviare la costruzione di una propria potenza politica e militare nel “grande spazio” che le compete nel continente eurasiatico, stabilendo un’intesa solidale con le altre grandi potenze continentali, sembra impegnata a rinsaldare la propria collocazione nell’area occidentale ed a perpetuare il proprio asservimento nei confronti dell’imperialismo nordamericano.

L’Unione Europea e le cancellerie europee, dopo aver collaborato con Washington nel tentativo di ristrutturare il Nordafrica e il Vicino Oriente in conformità coi progetti statunitensi, si sono allineate col Dipartimento di Stato nordamericano nel sostenere la sovversione golpista in Ucraina, al fine di impedire che questo Paese confluisca nell’Unione doganale eurasiatica e trasformarlo in un avamposto della NATO nell’aggressione atlantica contro la Russia.

In tal modo l’Unione Europea coopera attivamente alla realizzazione del progetto di conquista elaborato dagli strateghi della Casa Bianca, secondo il quale l’Europa deve svolgere la funzione di una “testa di ponte democratica” [the democratic bridgehead] degli Stati Uniti in Eurasia. Scrive infatti Zbigniew Brzezinski: “L’Europa è la fondamentale testa di ponte geopolitica dell’America in Eurasia [Europe is America's essential geopolitical bridgehead in Eurasia]. Il ruolo dell’America nell’Europa democratica è enorme.

Diversamente dai vincoli dell’America col Giappone, la NATO rafforza l’influenza politica e il potere militare americani sul continente eurasiatico. Con le nazioni europee alleate che ancora dipendono considerevolmente dalla protezione USA, qualunque espansione del campo d’azione politico dell’Europa è automaticamente un’espansione dell’influenza statunitense. Un’Europa allargata e una NATO allargata serviranno gl’interessi a breve e a lungo termine della politica europea. Un’Europa allargata estenderà il raggio dell’influenza americana senza creare, allo stesso tempo, un’Europa così politicamente integrata che sia in grado di sfidare gli Stati Uniti in questioni di rilievo geopolitico, in particolare nel Vicino Oriente. Un’Europa politicamente definita è essenziale per assimilare la Russia in un sistema di cooperazione globale. (…) Un’Ucraina sovrana è una componente di importanza critica in una politica di questo genere, poiché costituisce un sostegno per Stati strategicamente decisivi [strategically pivotal states] come l’Azerbaigian e l’Uzbekistan”1.

Da Mackinder in poi, la strategia geopolitica della potenza talassocratica è sempre la stessa: occorre frazionare la regione-perno, puntando sull’effetto disgregante insito in quelle linee di faglia che corrono all’interno dei cosiddetti “paesi divisi”, cioè di quei paesi in cui consistenti gruppi di popolazione appartengono a culture diverse. Un anno prima che Brzezinski teorizzi la “testa di ponte democratica” in Eurasia, Samuel Huntington, prospettando la possibilità che l’Ucraina “si spacchi in due diverse entità e che la parte orientale del paese venga annessa alla Russia” (2), considera necessario “un forte ed efficace sostegno occidentale, che a sua volta potrebbe giungere solo qualora i rapporti tra Russia e Occidente si deteriorassero come ai tempi della Guerra fredda” (3).

L’interesse vitale dell’Europa non coincide coi piani di conquista nordamericani. L’Europa e la Russia, se vogliono esercitare un peso decisivo sulla ripartizione del potere mondiale, devono instaurare una stretta intesa che obbedisca agl’imperativi della loro complementarità geoeconomica e stabilire un’alleanza politico-militare che contribuisca alla difesa della sovranità eurasiatica. Solo così sarà possibile controbilanciare le iniziative intese a destabilizzare il Continente, risolvere le questioni territoriali, mantenere il controllo delle risorse naturali e regolare i flussi demografici disordinati.

Quando l’Europa lo capirà, una “rifondazione” dell’Unione Europea sarà inevitabile.

1. Zbigniew Brzezinski, A Geostrategy for Eurasia, “Foreign Affairs”, Sept.-Oct. 1997, pp. 53-57.
2. Samuel P. Huntington, Lo scontro delle civiltà e il nuovo ordine mondiale, Garzanti, Milano 2001, p. 241.
3. Samuel P. Huntington, op. cit., p. 242.

XXXIII (1-2014)  

SOMMARIO

Editoriale

Claudio Mutti, Rifondare l’Unione Europea

Dossario – Rifondare l’Unione Europea

Alessandra Colla, Il ritorno dell’antica fanciulla

Ali Reza Jalali, L’UE: evoluzione storica, istituzioni, rapporti con gli Stati membri

Spartaco A. Puttini, Stati Uniti d’Europa o Europa degli Stati Uniti?

Fabio Falchi, Europeismo contro euroatlantismo

Aldo Braccio, Europa non sovrana: il ruolo della Commissione

Stefano Vernole, La Germania e la tentazione dell’Europa a due velocità

Andrea Turi, Dove Europa nacque, l’Europa muore

Alessandro Lattanzio, I Gruppi Tattici ed altre formazioni

Antonino Galloni, Europa, dove ci porti?

Giuseppe Cappelluti, Europa e Russia: un rapporto da ricostruire

Maria Amoroso, Le Relazioni dell’UE con la Russia

Giovanni Armillotta, Multipartitismo e frontismo nell’Europa socialista

Katalin Egresi, Esperienze costituzionali ungheresi e italiane

Giacomo Gabellini, Sciacalli e sicari all’assalto dell’Europa

Documenti

AA. VV., Il ratto di Europa

Jean Thiriart, La geopolitica, l’Impero, l’Europa

Progetto per una più grande Europa

Interviste

Intervista a Vaqif Sadiqov, Ambasciatore della Repubblica dell’Azerbaigian in Italia a cura di Giuliano Bifolchi

Algérie : ça va mal finir

par Guillaume Faye

 

http://www.gfaye.com

Tout le monde ne parle que de la crise Ukraine-Russie, mais il faut se pencher sur ce qui se passe en Algérie. On critique beaucoup M. Poutine, figure emblématique du tyran pour un Occident auto satisfait, mais on semble négliger le régime algérien, ubuesque, incompétent, oligarchique. Avec lequel pourtant la France entretient les meilleures relations, à la limite de la servilité, n’osant pas émettre contre lui la moindre critique (1).

Le 17 avril, le président Bouteflika, 77 ans, rendu impotent par un AVC, se présente pour un 4^e mandat, après 15 ans de pouvoir. Évidemment, il ne pourra pas gouverner, mais il est la marionnette d’un clan, ou plutôt de plusieurs. L’Algérie danse sur une poudrière. Le 15 avril, une manifestation a eu lieu à Alger, avec le mouvement ”Barakat” (”Ça suffit !”), dénonçant une mascarade électorale. Dans le même temps, éclataient à Ghardaïa, à 600 km au sud de la capitale, des affrontements interethniques très violents. Ils opposaient les Mozabites (Berbères) et les Châambas (Arabes). Il y eut plus de 100 blessés graves et des pillages ou incendies de commerces et de maisons berbères. Ce n’est qu’un début.  L’Algérie se dirige vers une très grave crise.

Une nouvelle guerre civile couve, avec trois types d’antagonisme : 1) Islamistes contre laïcs ; 2) Berbères contre Arabes ; 3) luttes de pouvoir au sein de l’appareil d’État, impliquant le FLN, le RND et l’Armée. Depuis son indépendance, l’Algérie, qui aurait pu être la Californie de l’Afrique du Nord, est un pays de malheur. En dépit de ses ressources primaires pétro-gazières qui sont techniquement gérées par des Occidentaux et qui amènent à l’Algérie la majorité de ses devises, ce pays n’a su développer aucun secteur économique national performant. Le chômage y est endémique, la pauvreté persistante, la bureaucratie pachydermique. À l’inverse des pays d’Asie. Il y a donc bien un problème intrinsèque à ces populations. 

 Tout le monde le sait et le murmure mais personne n’ose le dire : du temps de la présence française, les populations d’Algérie vivaient bien mieux qu’aujourd’hui. D’ailleurs, l’importance de l’immigration des Algériens en France témoigne de leur fuite hors de leur propre pays pour venir vivre chez l’ancienne puissance coloniale. C’est à la fois une schizophrénie (ils restent nationalistes algériens tout en détestant le régime de leur pays) et un terrible aveu d’impuissance.

En Algérie, ça va éclater. Une guerre civile, extrêmement compliquée (comme dans tous les pays arabo-musulmans et de l’arc proche-oriental), se prépare. La raison profonde en est une instabilité psycho-ethnique de ces populations, incapables de vivre dans l’harmonie. L’islam ne fait qu’aggraver les choses. La même chose se remarque en Amérique du Sud, zone d’intenses mélanges  ethniques : mais elle est géopolitiquement décentrée, donc  de bien moindre importance que le Maghreb et le Proche Orient.

Pour ne rien arranger, la Libye voisine sombre dans le chaos : effondrement de la production pétrolière, délitement de l’État, éclatement du pays en zones néo-tribales, montée des affrontements, installation de bases armées islamistes. Bravo à ceux qui ont aidé à renverser le régime de Kadhafi. Quant à la Tunisie, les suites du ”printemps arabe”, véritable duperie, s’annoncent sous de très mauvaises augures. (2)

La prédiction que l’on peut faire, c’est que l’Algérie présente de grands risques de s’embraser, encore plus violemment que dans les années 90. Avec, à ses portes la Tunisie et la Libye, elles aussi menacées d’incendie. Et, partout en embuscade, l’islamisme. Pour la France, qui comporte de très nombreuses communautés originaires de l’Algérie et du Maghreb, la nouvelle est inquiétante et les conséquences peuvent être gravissimes. 

Notes:

(1) Deux causes : la mauvaise conscience coloniale de la repentance, fabriquée par les idéologies de gauche, et la présence en France de populations d’origine algérienne qu’il faut ménager.

(2) Pour l’instant, à part le Maroc et les monarchies du Golfe (qui sont toutes des autocraties héréditaires), tous les pays arabo-musulmans, Algérie, Tunisie, Libye, Égypte, Syrie, Liban, Irak sont dans une situation explosive. À l’échelle du monde, 80 % des pays où l’islam est majoritaire ou très présent connaissent un état endémique d’instabilité pouvant dégénérer à tout moment. 

Der Westen, Russland, China und die Ukraine

«Rechtzeitig die bereits brennende Lunte aus dem Benzinfass nehmen»

Der Westen, Russland, China und die Ukraine

Ex: http://www.zeit-fragen.ch

von Willy Wimmer, Staatssekretär des Bundesministers der Verteidigung a.D., Mitglied des Deutschen Bundestages 1976–2009

Die Nachrichten wegen der Ukraine überschlagen sich und der schöne Schein von Sotschi mit den glänzend gestimmten Sportlern ist schneller zerstoben, als das allen lieb sein konnte.
Dennoch sollten wir in der Flut der Nachrichten über Ereignisse gut 700 Kilometer von Berlin entfernt die Meldung über ein fürchterliches Massaker in der chinesischen Stadt Kunming nicht übersehen oder falsch einordnen. Kunming als Hauptstadt der chinesischen Provinz Yünnan beeindruckt eigentlich durch seinen Charme, der an lebenslustige Gebiete am Mittelmeer erinnert. Am letzten Wochenende kam der Tod nach Kunming, als fast 30 Menschen ermordet und mehr als 100 Menschen schwer verletzt wurden. Weit weg?
Erinnern wir uns an den Vorabend des völkerrechtswidrigen Krieges gegen die Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien, dessen Beginn sich in diesen Tagen zum 15. Male jährt. Über Monate hatte es im chinesischen Westen Anschlag über Anschlag gegeben. Tote und Verletzte waren die Folge. Prominente Schauspieler aus Hollywood eröffneten eine Kampagne wegen Tibet. Es war so dramatisch, dass eine kriegerische Auseinandersetzung wegen Tibet erwartet wurde. Nicht nur im Spiegel konnte jeder lesen, dass wohl amerikanische Dienste hinter den Ereignissen im Westen Chinas stünden.
Das, was losbrach, waren die Bombenangriffe auf Belgrad, mitten im europäischen Kerngebiet, und das Vehikel war die albanische Terrororganisation UÇK, auf die die Vereinigten Staaten und später die gesamte Nato gesetzt hatte, um ihre Ziele in der Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien durchzusetzen.

Zeichen an der Wand sind häufiger zu sehen, als uns lieb sein kann. Das bedeutet für uns, dass wegen der gleichzeitig stattfindenden Umbrüche in der Ukraine das Gesamtbild nicht aus den Augen gelassen werden darf.

Es ist etwas ganz Grosses im Gange, das uns alle zerreissen kann. Wer heute Russland aus den G 8 schmeissen will, der hat keine Hemmungen, morgen China mit dem Rauswurf aus der Welthandelsorganisation zu drohen und die Drohung auch wahrzumachen. Es ist Endspiel-Zeit, und es ist geradezu spektakulär, wie der amerikanische Aussenminister John Kerry sich als Schutzengel des Völkerrechtes aufspielt.

Dennoch ist das amerikanische Verhalten seit dem völkerrechtswidrigen Krieg gegen Belgrad und die folgenden, ebenfalls klassischen Aggressionskriege gegen den Irak u. a., keine Ausrede für andere, in amerikanische Muster der letzten Jahrzehnte zu verfallen. Aber tun sie das? Man ist heute schnell bei der Hand, den russischen Präsidenten Putin mit Adolf Hitler zu vergleichen, wie es in diesen Tagen ein ehemaliger tschechischer Aussenminister getan hat. Fürst Schwarzenberg hat gut reden, waren es doch die Russen, die gnadenlos unter Adolf Hitler ihr Blut vergiessen mussten. Peinlicher geht es nicht mehr.

Aber die Ukraine wird uns um die Ohren fliegen, auch wenn es seit Joschka Fischer einen Nato-Modus zu geben scheint, wenn Ziele angeleuchtet werden. Janukowitsch ist weg, und wer will ihm eine Träne nachweinen? Bei den Protzvillen? Als wenn das bis zum Ringen um das Assoziierungsabkommen irgend jemanden in Brüssel, Berlin, London oder Washington gestört hätte. In der Staatskasse noch knapp 300 000 Euro? Wo waren die peniblen Brüsseler Schlaumeier bei der Überprüfung der Kiewer Daten vor dem angepeilten Abkommen zwecks grösserer Nähe der Ukraine zur Europäischen Union?

Von ganz neuer Qualität dürfte jedoch sein, dass nicht nur die US-amerikanische Staatssekretärin Nuland den Überlegungen zur Manipulation der neuen Regierung in der Ukraine freien Lauf gelassen hat. Hier wurde zum ersten Mal in der neueren Geschichte eine Regierung, die nach Bekundungen aller – von der OSZE bis zum Europa-Rat – durch faire und freie Wahlen zustande gekommen war, aus dem Amt geputscht, und alle Abkommen zur Krisenbeilegung wurden beiseite gefegt.

Das geschah wohlgemerkt auch und gerade durch Kräfte, die einen gesamteuropäischen Aufschrei der Abscheu hätten hervorrufen müssen. Noch in der Nacht der Machtergreifung wurde gegen die russischsprachigen Bewohner der Ukraine mobil gemacht. Man hatte nichts Eiligeres zu tun, als ihnen die Zerstörung ihrer Bürgerrechte in Aussicht zu stellen. Es war eben auch der ­politische Mob, der anschliessend drohte, durch die gesamte Ukraine zu fegen.

Wegen des unmittelbar drohenden Finanzkollapses der Ukraine droht sich dort ein Furor breitzumachen, der zwar heute nach dem Westen ruft, aber dem Heulen und Zähneknirschen drohen, wenn ihn die westeuropäische und amerikanische Realität erreicht.
Washington scheint zu den letzten Mitteln vor einer Kriegserklärung an die Russische Föderation greifen zu wollen, wenn man die Herren Obama und Kerry hört. Wäre es wegen der Dimension des von der Ukraine ausgehenden Urknalls für ganz Europa nicht sinnvoller gewesen, die Fäden zusammenzuhalten? Schliesslich war es Moskau, das der maroden Ukraine noch mehr Geld nachwerfen wollte, als der in diesen Dingen äusserst penible Westen.

Und Putin? Hätte er zuwarten sollen, bis die Kiewer Machtübernahme die russische Grenze erreicht hätte? Die Träger des neuen Geistes waren alle auf dem Weg. Was in Teufels Namen hat nach der Kiewer Machtübernahme die neuen Machthaber dazu veranlasst, nun jeden wichtigen Amtsträger im ganzen Land aus dem Amt zu jagen und durch eigene Günstlinge zu ersetzen? Der russische Präsident Putin hat durch die Form seiner Reaktion diesem Tun ein Halt-Signal gesetzt, für das man ihm vielleicht noch einmal sehr dankbar sein wird. Die Souveränität und territoriale Integrität auch der Ukraine stehen ausser Frage. Rechtzeitig die bereits brennende Lunte aus dem Benzinfass zu nehmen, wie es Putin gemacht hat, sollte dann als Chance begriffen werden, wenn das russische Handeln nicht als Gefährdung der eigenen westlichen Absichten gesehen wird.    •

Westeuropäische Medien wie gleichgeschaltet unter US-Oberbefehl?

Offener Brief an die Staats- und Regierungschefs der EU zur Sitzung vom 6. März 2014

Sehr verehrte Damen,
sehr geehrte Herren,
nach den Standards, die in der Europäischen Union bei schwierigen Entwicklungen üblich sind, müssten die Staats- und Regierungschefs bei ihrem Treffen in Brüssel wegen der Lage in der Ukraine festlegen, dass
1.    zu den neuen Machthabern in Kiew auf der Regierungsebene keine Kontakte stattfinden, solange es ernsthafte und begründete Zweifel an der Rechtmässigkeit der neuen Organe in Kiew gibt,
2.    so lange davon ausgegangen werden muss, dass in hohen und höchsten Ämtern der neuen Organe in Kiew sich Personen befinden, deren politische Haltung in ganz Europa Abscheu wegen ihres Gedankengutes hervorruft, sollte ein Boykott der EU […] über die Organe in Kiew so lange verhängt werden, bis diese Personen nicht mehr den im Amt befindlichen Organen in Kiew angehören. Für die Bundesregierung in Berlin ist es nicht akzeptabel, dass vor dem Bundesverfassungsgericht in Karlsruhe ein Verbot der NPD durchgesetzt werden soll, während man gleichzeitig in Kiew mit denen unter einer Decke steckt, die engste Kontakte zur NPD pflegen.
Es ist in hohem Masse bedauerlich, dass in Westeuropa die Medien auf die krisenhafte Entwicklung so reagieren, als wären sie gleichgeschaltet und unterstünden amerikanischem Oberbefehl. […]
In der letzten Woche drohten die Flammen des Maidan in Kiew auf die ganze Ukraine überzugreifen. Eine im Bürgerkrieg versinkende Ukraine hätte ganz Europa mit in den Untergang gerissen. Diese Gefahr ist immer noch nicht vom Tisch, weil die wirtschaftlichen Gefahren erst noch auf alle zukommen. Das besonnene und deutliche Auftreten der russischen Regierung unter Präsident Putin hat Europa und der Welt eine Chance gegeben, Souveränität und territoriale Integrität der Ukraine zu erhalten und uns vor dem Furor eines Bürgerkrieges in der Ukraine zu bewahren.
Die Russische Föderation hat in den Jahren, die mit dem ordinären Angriffskrieg der Nato gegen die Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien vor fast genau 15 Jahren und zu einem friedensbedrohenden und völkerrechtswidrigen Verhalten der USA auch in anderen Teilen der Welt führten, sich zum Völkerrecht und seinen tragenden Grundsätzen bekannt. Ohne dieses Völkerrecht und vor allem die Charta der Vereinten Nationen wird das Schicksal Europas mehr denn je ungewiss sein. […]

Willy Wimmer, Staatssekretär des Bundesministers der Verteidigung a.D., Mitglied des Deutschen Bundestages 1976–2009

La Crise ukrainienne et la troisième voie géopolitique

La Crise ukrainienne et la troisième voie géopolitique

par Jure Vujic

Ex: http://www.polemia.com

«L’Eurasisme russe aurait tout intérêt à ménager les nationalismes européens de cet espace centre-européen et de l’espace pontique de la mer Noire y compris l’Ukraine, plutôt que de nier leurs identités nationales et d’attiser leurs positions russophobes.»

♦ Polémia a reçu de son contributeur franco-croate, Jure Georges Vujic, une analyse géopolitique de la crise ukrainienne. Donner accès à la diversité des points de vue fait partie de notre ligne éditoriale. Nous la soumettons donc à la réflexion de nos lecteurs.
Polémia

Il semblerait que la crise ukrainienne divise la mouvance nationale et eurasiste en deux camps, le premier soutenant l’opposition nationaliste ukrainienne en tant que vivier identitaire et vecteur national-révolutionnaire, le second, le camp des «eurasistes» russophiles, qui, pour des raisons géopolitiques anti-atlantistes, soutiennent l’intervention russe en Crimée. Pourtant, cette vision binaire  demeure quelque peu simplificatrice. C’est pourquoi je réitère « qu’il faut savoir raison garder » et que la démesure dans l’analyse géopolitique, le jusqu’au-boutisme et l’engouement belliciste ne font que conforter une fois de plus l‘hybris  et le conflit entre des peuples européens et, une fois n’est pas coutume, sur la terre européenne.

Bien sûr, il faut rappeler que  suite à la décision du gouvernement élu de ne pas signer d’accords commerciaux avec l’Union européenne, le camp atlantiste et américain a tenté d’orchestrer une seconde « Révolution orange » cette fois-ci en s’appuyant et en manipulant des groupes ultranationalistes ukrainiens aux fins  d’installer un pouvoir pro-occidental à Kiev. Le nationalisme ukrainien extrêmement dynamique est autant antirusse qu’antioccidental alors que les arguments de l’adhésion à l’UE servent uniquement de levier d’émancipation de la tutelle russe. Par ailleurs, l’expérience de la Hongrie de Orban démontre très bien que l’on peut être dans l’UE et mener une politique nationale et souverainiste.

D’une part, je ne suis pas convaincu qu’il s’agisse d’une confrontation entre une vision eurasiste pro-russe et un nationalisme ukrainien pro-atlantiste. Il faut  avoir à l’esprit la question de la légitimité des manifestations du peuple ukrainien systématiquement spolié et paupérisé par des régimes corrompus et oligarchiques successifs, tour à tour pro-occidentaux et pro-russes (la famille du présidentViktor Ianoukovitch s’est enrichie de près de 8 milliards d’euros par an). D’autre part, l’opposition entre le sud-est russophone de l’Ukraine et l’EuroMaidan s’est cristallisée en raison du ressentiment antirusse qui s’est développé dans la partie occidentale de l’Ukraine. Si une partie des habitants s’est organisée en formations paramilitaires et a manifesté contre le nouveau gouvernement de Kiev, c’est parce que la révolution a gagné à ses yeux une connotation antirusse plutôt que pro-européenne.

Il est en effet déplorable que l’Ukraine soit entre le marteau et l’enclume, et  n’ait finalement que le choix entre l’intégration européenne pro-atlantiste et la soumission au voisin russe. C’est dans les leçons de l’histoire européenne qu’il faut peut-être chercher la solution. « L’Ukraine a toujours aspiré à être libre » a écrit Voltaire dans son Histoire de Charles XII, à propos de l’hetman Mazeppa. L’identité ukrainienne s’est cimentée il y a une dizaine de siècles et n’est pas près d’être russifiée, quand bien même son histoire reste étroitement liée à la Russie. L’Ukraine est et restera un pays écartelé entre le géant eurasiatique qu’est la Russie à l’est, et l’Europe centrale beaucoup plus proche de l’Occident. Etymologiquement le nom d’’Ukraine est associé à celui de « marche », et c’est ainsi qu’il faut la traiter en tant qu’espace géopolitique pontique et médian. C’est pourquoi la Russie aurait tout intérêt à traiter le peuple ukrainien et l’identité ukrainienne sur un pied d’égalité et de réciprocité plutôt qu’obstinément nier leur existence nationale, les associer à des «petits Russes», ce qui ne fera qu’exacerber le sentiment ukrainien antieurasiste et antirusse.

La Crimée se prononce pour son rattachement à la Russie

L’identité ukrainienne tout comme l’histoire des peuples cavaliers, de souche européenne, fait partie intégrante de notre héritage indo-européen le plus ancien tout comme le constitue l’héritage slavo-russe et orthodoxe. Il faut rappeler que c’est un chercheur ukrainien Iaroslav Lebedynsky, qui enseigne à l’Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, qui nous a livré de remarquables  récits historiques sur les Scythes, les Sarmates, les Saces, les Cimmériens, les Iazyges et les Roxolans, les Alains, etc. qui témoignent de l’identité pluriséculaire de ces peuples de souche européenne sur cet espace eurasiatique qui va de l’Europe centrale jusqu’aux confins de la Sibérie orientale, espace qui ne possède pas de frontières naturelles comme l’expliquait le général Heinrich Jordis von Lohausen dans son traité de géopolitique. En effet, l’importance géostratégique pontique de l’Ukraine, bordée par la mer Noire et la mer d’Azov au sud et située entre l’Europe occidentale et la masse continentale eurasiatique, dépend en majeure partie de sa configuration frontalière. Les régions historiques ukrainiennes, comme la Volhynie et la Galicie (jadis polono-lituaniennes), la Bukovine (jadis moldave) ou la Méotide (jadis tatare criméenne), s’étendent  également sur les pays voisins, ouvrant ainsi une profondeur stratégique à la Russie au nord et à l’est, à la Biélorussie au nord, à la Pologne, à la Slovaquie et la Hongrie à l’ouest et à la Roumanie et la Moldavie au sud-ouest.

Bien sûr, il convient d’un point de vue géopolitique de soutenir le projet eurasiste russe comme facteur de rééquilibrage multipolaire face aux menées néo-impériales atlantistes, mais ce projet géopolitique grand-européen eurasiste doit être avant tout un projet fédérateur, de coopération géopolitique, fondé sur le respect de tous les peuples européens, sur le respect des souverainetés nationales et sur le principe de subsidiarité. L’affirmation agressive et exclusiviste de la composante slavo-orthodoxe et « grand-russe » dans le projet eurasiste, surtout dans les territoires centre-européens et du sud-est européen catholiques qui gardent un mauvais souvenir de l’expérience soviétique, ne fera au contraire que raviver les tensions entre les peuples européens, ce qui fait le jeu de la stratégie atlantiste qui divise pour régner. Par ailleurs, tout comme il convient de dénoncer la fragmentation ethno-confessionnelle qui est à l’œuvre au Moyen-Orient en tant qu’instrument de domination atlantiste, il convient aussi de se méfier des constructions annexionnistes ou irrédentistes linguistiques « grand-russes » sous prétexte d’unification « des terres russophones » qui peuvent à long terme avoir les mêmes effets dissolvants en Eurasie dans le Caucase et en  Europe centrale, car le même argument linguistique pourrait justifier la revendication séparatiste d’ethnies ou de populations non-européennes sur le sol européen. En effet, le déchaînement du nationalisme ethno-confessionnel à l’ouest de l’Ukraine inquiète les minorités ethniques et notamment les Polonais, les Hongrois et les Roumains. Les Tatares de Crimée qui semblent avoir déjà choisi leur rattachement à la Russie ne peuvent pas rester à l’écart de la recomposition en cours à l’ouest et au sud-ouest d’Ukraine. Ainsi le groupe  ethnique des Gagaouzes qui forment une communauté homogène en Moldavie s’est déjà prononcé par référendum pour l’intégration eurasienne. On assiste également à une montée en puissance du facteur turcophone dans la région du Caucase et dans les Balkans (en Bosnie Herzégovine), plus particulièrement dans le contexte des processus d’intégration dans l’espace eurasien.

Il faut rappeler que l’Ukraine, au-delà du contexte très particulier de ce pays (en réalité constitué de deux ensembles historiquement antagonistes, l’un catholique-uniate, tourné vers l’ouest et l’autre orthodoxe proche de la Russie), constitue un exemple des possibilités de manipulation d’un sentiment national. Pourtant je ne suis pas certain qu’un recentrage « grand-russe » de l’Ukraine constitue un pôle de stabilité géopolitique eurasiatique à long terme dans la mesure où le sentiment antirusse en Ukraine est fortement enraciné et cela depuis plusieurs siècles. La perception du projet eurasiste vu de Paris, Moscou, Vienne, Berlin, Zagreb, Kiev est très différente et variable. Dans les ex-pays du bloc soviétique, l’eurasisme est souvent perçu comme une idéologie néocoloniale «  grande russe  » et post-soviétique, car ces pays ont retrouvé leur indépendance nationale et étatique dans les années 1990 après la chute du Mur de Berlin (et non au XVIIIe ou XIXe siècle), et il est compréhensible qu’ils restent récalcitrants à tout projet fédérateur, multinational et/ou néo-impérial, alors que d’autres pays européens qui ont vécu « leur printemps des peuples » en 1848 ou avant, sont plus ouverts au discours eurasiste grand-continental. Il faut alors tenir compte de ces variables pondérables de psychologie collective (au même titre que les fameuses guerres de représentation) lorsqu’on adopte une position géopolitique  pan-européenne. L’eurasisme ne devrait pas évoluer vers un projet néocolonial et impérialiste (L’idée d’empire n’est pas réductible à l’impérialisme) mais rester fidèle à l’idéal de l’empire en tant qu’unité organique et œcuménique dans la diversité. Cet eurasisme géopolitique n’a jamais été aussi cohérent et  stable que lorsqu’il a été respectueux des idendités, et des diverses composantes impériales comme cela a été le cas lors de l’alliance austro-franco-russe du XVIIIe siècle, de la Sainte-Alliance et de l’Union des Trois Empereurs, voire en tant que projets d’alliance franco-germano-austro-russe de Gabriel Hanotaux (1853-1944), avant 1914.

Il convient également de constater que le projet eurasiste « grand-européen » ne peut reposer uniquement sur un pôle russo-centré, et que si l’on raisonne en termes de continent (de l’Atlantique à la Sibérie), il semblerait que ce projet soit à double vitesse, l’un russo-centré autour de l’union eurasiatique qui s’articule autour de la composante russo-slavo-orthodoxe et l’autre que l’on peut qualifier d’eurasiste-médian ou centre-européen (voire germano-slave mitteleuropéen) qui s’étend de l’Europe occidentale héritière de l’empire Carolingien (héritière de l’Empire romain) et l’eurasisme central-danubien qui s’étend le long de l’ancien limes danubien, à son embouchure dans la mer Noire, jusqu’à l’espace scythien de la Dobroudja, à la charnière de la Roumanie et de la Bulgarie actuelles. Le point de jonction de l’Eurasie russo-centré et de cette Eurasie centre–européenne est l’Ukraine qui de par sa position pontique relie et verrouille ainsi l’espace centre-européen pannonien et la profondeur eurasiatique vers l’est. Pourtant ce qui différencie àl’heure actuelle ces deux projets eurasiens complémentaires, c’est l’héritage historique de l’Union soviétique. En effet l’ensemble des peuples rattachés à la couronne austro-hongroise (Croates, Slovaques, Hongrois, Tchèques) gardent un mauvais souvenir de la férule communiste et des Etats multinationaux fantoches tels que la Yougoslavie titiste et la Tchécoslovaquie en tant que zones tampons et cordons sanitaires créés par la politique britannique dans les Balkans. C’est la raison pour laquelle l’Eurasisme russe aurait tout intérêt à ménager les nationalismes européens de cet espace centre-européen et de l’espace pontique de la mer Noire y compris l’Ukraine, plutȏt que de nier leurs identités nationales et d’attiser leurs positions russophobes.

Ainsi la crise ukrainienne peut être l’occasion ou jamais de réfléchir et de peut-être redéfinir les axes géopolitiques d’une Eurasie triarchique reposant sur la triplice géopolitique carolingienne-occidentale/catholique autro-hongroise et centre-européenne/slavo-orthodoxe eurasiatique.

Jure Georges Vujic
11/03/2014

Correspondance Polémia – 16/03/2014

Turkey and Crimea

Nikolai BOBKIN

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

On 16 March, the people of Crimea will independently determine their own future. Opinion polls show that the overwhelming majority of Crimeans (75-80 percent) have already decided in favour of becoming part of the Russian Federation. Crimea is being given a unique opportunity to reunite with its historic homeland. Several days ago, Barak Obama called the overthrow of the legitimate authorities in Kiev a triumph of democracy. Now Crimea will give President Obama a lesson in democracy... 

By supporting the coup, the US has laid the foundations for a broad restructuring process of the Ukrainian state into a looser confederation of regions. The principle of self-determination, to which the people of Crimea are adhering, is enshrined in international law, while non-recognition of the results of the people’s will would be the latest evidence of the American establishment’s commitment to the project of creating a ‘Ukrainian Reich’ within former Ukraine. The Western media are lying when they talk about the so-called full solidarity of all NATO countries with the American position. In truth, Washington’s position is not supported by many of those with a special interest in Crimea and these include Turkey, since Crimea is home to Crimean Tatars, who are ethnically close to Turks.

Ankara is worried about the risk of deepening the political crisis in Ukraine. While offering to accept the preservation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity as a basis for resolving the conflict, the Turkish Foreign Ministry is nevertheless warning Kiev against creating military tension in Crimea, where «our kinsmen – the Crimean Tatars» live. In the past, Ankara has done much for Crimea to become the Tatars’ homeland again. Kiev, however, has never given the development of Crimea much attention, removing up to 80 percent of the autonomous republic’s revenue and giving nothing back in return. For Turkey, with its highly-developed tourism industry, the deplorable state of tourism in Crimea, as well as the peninsula’s infrastructure, which has fallen into complete disrepair and has not been modernised since Soviet times, are compelling evidence of Kiev’s disdain for the fate of the Crimean people. Many in Turkey well understand why Crimea becoming part of Russia is the natural desire of the overwhelming majority of those living on the peninsula. Turkey’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, believes that «Crimea should not be an area of military tension; it should be a centre of prosperity, tourism, and intercultural relations».

At the same time, the Turkish government is being forced to consider its own position with regard to Crimea, and the internal forces that adhere to the opposite point of view. In some parts of the country, the compatriots of Crimean Tatars are organising demonstrations against Crimea becoming part of Russia. Zafer Karatay, a Tatar member of the Turkish Assembly, is calling for Ankara to intervene in Crimea and a confrontation with Russia. His opponents respond: «What business do we have in Crimea? Why is Crimea so important?» Well, the Kiev scenario of the illegal overthrow of President Yanukovych may well be used by the Americans to change the leadership in Turkey. In this regard, Prime Minister Erdoğan has clearly stated that it is not a case of Turkey choosing between Moscow and Washington or Ukraine and Russia, it is a case of choosing between a tool of destabilisation like the pro-American Maidan protests and adhering to the fundamental principles of international law. 

Many Turkish politicians disliked Davutoğlu’s hasty trip to Kiev immediately following the coup. Given that Ankara does not have an answer to the question «What should Turkey do now?», such a visit is definitely cause for bewilderment. Davutoğlu’s statement, meanwhile, «that Crimean Tatars are currently the main apologists for Ukraine’s territorial integrity» shocked many observers. They reminded the minister of the number of Turkish compatriots in the 46-million strong Ukraine, as well as the fact that Turkey had a strategic partnership with the previous legitimate authorities in Kiev to which neither Turchynov nor Yatsenyuk are able to add anything except a hatred of Russia. Davutoğlu’s assurances regarding the fact that the new regime in Kiev «will take all necessary measures to protect the rights of Turks living in Crimea» has also given rise to scepticism. It is unlikely that the fascist authorities in Kiev currently threatening Ukraine’s multimillion Russian population are going to concern themselves with the fate of the relatively small Crimean Tatar community. Pragmatists in the Turkish government have warned the head of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, who has promised Kiev «political, international and economic support to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity», against any hasty actions and even statements towards Moscow. 

Commenting on events in Kiev, the Turkish Minister for EU affairs, Mevlut Çavuşoğlu, referred to the European’s approach towards Ukraine as completely wrong, and that asking Ukrainians to choose between Europe and Russia was a grave political mistake. «Russia»,Çavuşoğlu pointed out, «is part of the European continent.» Turkey still does not understand why Brussels, which thinks that Turkey does not meet its high democratic standards and for many years has refused Turkey’s accession to the EU, has decided that the new Ukraine is more democratic than Turkey – and that is even after the bloody coup carried out by Western stooges. There is the feeling that supporting the new regime in Kiev could cost Erdogan’s government dearly.

Should Turkey join sanctions against Moscow, the country’s economists are predicting the collapse of the national economy, which is closely tied to Russian hydrocarbon supplies. They consider energy exports from Russia to be «a national security issue» and are warning that even Europe, which is also dependent on Russian gas, has not allowed itself to cross the line of open hostility to Moscow, despite unprecedented pressure from Washington. Turkey is still a growing market for Russia, and its gas supplies to the country increase by 4-5 percent annually and exceed 30 billion cubic metres. There is a desire to diversify Ankara’s sources, but there is no real alternative to Russian blue-sky fuel. America’s promises to replace Russian gas with its own shale surrogate in connection with calls to support anti-Russian sanctions are eliciting a smile from Turkish experts. The infrastructure needed for the supply of liquefied fuel would be more expensive than the cost of Russian supplies for the next 5-7 years. And it is not just Turkey’s energy economy that will lose out. Trade between Russia and Turkey exceeds 33 billion dollars, and nearly four million Russians visit Turkey every year, leaving behind at least USD 4 billion. 

The Turkish media has also made explicit references to the fact that the significance of Ukraine and Russia for Turkey’s foreign policy is incomparable. Turkish political observer Fuat Kozluklu, meanwhile, writes that Russia’s decision to use force if necessary to protect Ukraine’s Russian and Russian-speaking population was a good deterrent to the Ukrainian radicals and the Western politicians watching over them. Putin’s determination to stand up for the interests of Russians in his neighbouring country has revealed Russia’s real strength, while Moscow’s actions have the sole intention of preventing the further escalation of tensions in Ukraine. It is also from this point of view that many Turkish analysts are regarding the forthcoming referendum in Crimea.