GEOPOLITICS instead of BS on Russia

[yurbud]

Crucial reading that includes quotes on neocon defense strategy that seems to have changed little from Bush to Obama. Obama has a better grasp of the English language and slightly subtler methods, but on foreign policy he's still pursuing the same business-first, unipolar world policy.

In Russia's case, it's about getting in the way of their oil and gas business to divert the profits to the "right" companies, keep Europe and Asia from integrating economically, and keep that income away from Russia to keep them from emerging as a new superpower or even regional power.

I didn't vote for that.

In fact, I thought I was voting for the exact opposite when I voted for Obama.

Putin’s main interest in Ukraine is commercial. 66 percent of the natural gas that Russia exports to the EU transits Ukraine. The money that Russia makes from gas sales helps to strengthen the Russian economy and raise standards of living. It also helps to make Russian oligarchs richer, the same as it does in the West. The people in Europe like the arrangement because they are able to heat their homes and businesses market-based prices. In other words, it is a good deal for both parties, buyer and seller. This is how the free market is supposed to work. The reason it doesn’t work that way presently is because the United States threw a spanner in the gears when it deposed Yanukovych. Now no one knows when things will return to normal.



The overriding goal of US policy in Ukraine is to stop the further economic integration of Asia and Europe. That’s what the fracas is really all about. The United States wants to control the flow of energy from East to West, it wants to establish a de facto tollbooth between the continents, it wants to ensure that those deals are transacted in US dollars and recycled into US Treasuries, and it wants to situate itself between the two most prosperous markets of the next century. Anyone who has even the sketchiest knowledge of US foreign policy– particularly as it relates to Washington’s “pivot to Asia”– knows this is so. The US is determined to play a dominant role in Eurasia in the years ahead. Wreaking havoc in Ukraine is a central part of that plan.

Retired German Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jochen Scholz summed up US policy in an open letter which appeared on the Neue Rheinilche Zeitung news-site last week. Scholz said the Washington’s objective was “to deny Ukraine a role as a bridge between Eurasian Union and European Union….They want to bring Ukraine under the NATO control” and sabotage the prospects for “a common economic zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”

Bingo. That’s US policy in a nutshell. It has nothing to do with democracy, sovereignty, or human rights. It’s about money and power. Who are the big players going to be in the world’s biggest growth center, that’s all that matters. Unfortunately for Obama and Co., the US has fallen behind Russia in acquiring the essential resources and pipeline infrastructure to succeed in such a competition. They’ve been beaten by Putin and Gazprom at every turn. While Putin has strengthened diplomatic and economic relations, expanded vital pipeline corridors and transit lines, and hurtled the many obstacles laid out for him by American-stooges in the EC; the US has dragged itself from one quagmire to the next laying entire countries to waste while achieving none of its economic objectives.

FULL TEXT

[polly7]

1. Kick and recommend! nt.

[newthinking]

2. The (Western)Oligarchs would also love to frack the deep gas deposits they are said to have as well.

[jakeXT]

3. As posted recently

President Harry Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson, not renowned
for bluntness, let slip his own similar assessment of America’s electorate.
“If you truly had a democracy and did what the people wanted,” he said,
“you’d go wrong every time.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024935074

[Igel]

4. Again, a cardboard cut-out of an argument.

Everything that's important in life is money.

I've known people like that. I was born to one.

BTW, all the same arguments were made about Georgia, minus the number that seems to give the argument greater credence this time around. What you get is that the Georgians are fascists because they don't learn the appropriate "regional" language for integration and they, the logical best choice for being the Eurasian bridge, are choosing otherwise. They were manipulated. They have no self-will. Not only is the only important thing in life money, but the only people that really qualify for sentient are the top-dog Westerners and their top-dog foes. Everybody else essentially have the role of chimps to organ grinders.

If you want to be reductionist, don't let the other side off the hook. They're also not paragons of virtue, worthy of having us clean between their toes with our tongues or the tongues of our firstborn. Russia had a vassall state and Russia wants to retain its vassal state. You can reduce the argument to one variable if you drop out evidence or result to "what's really going on" style of arguments to repurpose and reformulate evidence. At least they dropped the argument in the '90s that was used to beat some people over the head in the West--that the USSR wasn't basically the Russian empire. So all the people arguing against a non-imperialist USSR wound up with egg on their faces. They wanted to fall for a ruse. Just like a lot want to fall for a reductionist "it's all about X, and we're the only bad people" ruse.

I'm not saying that Putin, like a lot of Americans, don't think that money is really, really important. He's just more complex than money because he doesn't think money is the only thing that's important. (He's not such much a cardboard cut-out as bas relief. Emphasis on "bas." Humans can do far better than that.)

[yurbud]

5. Russia and Putin are no paragons of virtue, but to say we are backing a right wing coup

government in Ukraine because of a concern for democracy and human rights is an insult to Americans intelligence and flies in the face of the historical record.

That's very cleverly constructed argument and I agree in one sense--there have to be real people with motives of their own to be manipulated.

But not all the people need to be manipulated. You just need a minority who can be bought or who find a common interest (mostly the first).

Your argument about Russia's vassal states being held by force was either such a minor part of our propaganda or absent in the mainstream media that I missed it during my Cold War era youth.

All I heard about was the Evil Empire that would last forever and could kill us and/or take over the world at any moment instead of collapse at any moment from from internal conflict and economic problems.

The over-simplifications overwhelmingly come from official sources, especially when they are trying to sell a new policy.

[yurbud]

6. If money isn't most important in DC, which average American hangs with Obama more than Jamie Dimon?

especially an average American who committed fraud that broke our and the world economy?

I wish Washington were about more than money, but they appear to only listen to the rest of us when we are angry about something they are doing and our numbers are overwhelming--the people's supermajority.

The rest of the time they tell embarrassing lies to cover their tracks and throw us just enough crumbs to placate us or at least confuse and distract us for a few moments.

[newthinking]

7. No doubt the oligarchs want Ukraine. But there are also Neo-con dreams involved.

[yurbud]

8. yep--break Russia into little pieces and make China and Iran our bitches

what could go wrong with that?