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Council On Foreign Relations: The Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s – Not Putin’s – Fault
We’ve previously reported that it’s the West’s encirclement of Russia – breaking a key promise which led to the break-up of the Soviet Union – which is behind the Ukraine crisis.
We’ve also noted:
The U.S. State Department spent more than $5 billion dollars in pushing Ukraine towards the West. The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (Geoffrey Pyatt) and assistant Secretary of State (Victoria Nuland) were also recorded plotting the downfall of the former Ukraine government in a leaked recorder conversation. Top-level U.S. officials literally handed out cookies to the protesters who overthrew the Ukrainian government.
And the U.S. has been doing everything it can to trumpet pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian propaganda. So – without doubt – the U.S. government is heavily involved with fighting a propaganda war regarding Ukraine.
The news is starting to go mainstream …
Specifically, the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) is a very mainstream, hawkish group.
CFR’s flagship publication – Foreign Affairs – has just published a piece blaming the Ukraine crisis on the West.
The piece by John Mearsheimer – in it’s September/October 2014 issue – accurately notes:
The United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine — beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 — were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president — which he rightly labeled a “coup” — was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West. Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics.
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U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.
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The West’s final tool for peeling Kiev away from Moscow has been its efforts to spread Western values and promote democracy in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, a plan that often entails funding pro-Western individuals and organizations. Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, estimated in December 2013 that the United States had invested more than $5 billion since 1991 to help Ukraine achieve “the future it deserves.” As part of that effort, the U.S. government has bankrolled the National Endowment for Democracy. The nonprofit foundation has funded more than 60 projects aimed at promoting civil society in Ukraine, and the NED’s president, Carl Gershman, has called that country “the biggest prize.” After Yanukovych won Ukraine’s presidential election in February 2010, the NED decided he was undermining its goals, and so it stepped up its efforts to support the opposition and strengthen the country’s democratic institutions.
When Russian leaders look at Western social engineering in Ukraine, they worry that their country might be next. And such fears are hardly groundless. In September 2013, Gershman wrote in The Washington Post, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.” He added: “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”
The West’s triple package of policies — NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and democracy promotion — added fuel to a fire waiting to ignite. The spark came in November 2013, when Yanukovych rejected a major economic deal he had been negotiating with the EU and decided to accept a $15 billion Russian counteroffer instead. That decision gave rise to antigovernment demonstrations that escalated over the following three months and that by mid-February had led to the deaths of some one hundred protesters. Western emissaries hurriedly flew to Kiev to resolve the crisis. On February 21, the government and the opposition struck a deal that allowed Yanukovych to stay in power until new elections were held. But it immediately fell apart, and Yanukovych fled to Russia the next day. The new government in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the core, and it contained four high-ranking members who could legitimately be labeled neofascists.
Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington backed the coup. Nuland and Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after Yanukovych’s toppling that it was “a day for the history books.” As a leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated regime change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in the new government, which he did. No wonder Russians of all persuasions think the West played a role in Yanukovych’s ouster.
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Putin’s actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.
Washington may not like Moscow’s position, but it should understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia — a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made crystal clear.
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In [a] 1998 interview, [the top American expert on Russia, George] Kennan predicted that NATO expansion would provoke a crisis, after which the proponents of expansion would “say that we always told you that is how the Russians are.” As if on cue, most Western officials have portrayed Putin as the real culprit in the Ukraine predicament.
Mearsheimer gives a way out of this mess:
There is a solution to the crisis in Ukraine, however — although it would require the West to think about the country in a fundamentally new way. The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer between NATO and Russia, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War. Western leaders should acknowledge that Ukraine matters so much to Putin that they cannot support an anti-Russian regime there. This would not mean that a future Ukrainian government would have to be pro-Russian or anti-NATO. On the contrary, the goal should be a sovereign Ukraine that falls in neither the Russian nor the Western camp.
***
The United States and its European allies now face a choice on Ukraine. They can continue their current policy, which will exacerbate hostilities with Russia and devastate Ukraine in the process — a scenario in which everyone would come out a loser. Or they can switch gears and work to create a prosperous but neutral Ukraine, one that does not threaten Russia and allows the West to repair its relations with Moscow. With that approach, all sides would win.
Will saner heads prevail, and back away from the abyss before it’s too late?
And see this.
»
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re The United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis.
Enter, Stage Left: Blind squirrel sucking on a truffle.
Europe has got a problem if they want to reduce the costs of goods coming from the far east.Chinese goods take a lot longer to get to the EU by ship and it costs a lot more.If you have sanctions against Russia,those goods aren't going to be coming through to the EU by rail any time soon.China and Russia have already got plans for a super railway system from China to Europe.But then you have this problem called Ukraine that NATO created. Ukraine now stands in the way of Europe getting all its goods by rail from the east.When you are running the EU and you look at Russian sanctions you understand now that it is Europe paying the big costs and its another blow to a recession- economy.It's not the American economy taking the hit.Planned you say?Who knows,except that Europe is headed downhill even faster now.Try a real unemployment rate in Spain of 50% of the population.France's credit situation due to its overtaxed society is going to hell fast.Italy's in a depression now.Don't even get me going on Greece.Europe better wake up to the power of the Agreements that Russia has with China.China just happens to side with Russia in case nobody in Europe knows,and the last thing I heard is that Europe is desperate now for Chinese investment money.And one other small note which Europe should keep an eye on,-China's economy is now almost as big as America's.Uncle Sam is also holding up Europe's bankrupt Banks right now through swap lines with the Fed.Why make it worse for Russia?The Europeans have only cut their own throats because they got sucked-in on right wing neocon policies from the mental migets in The State Department(Victoria pms Nuland).You know,-Fuck the EU!
I believe the US and the UK are the ones behind the plot in Ukraine. Lapdog countries in Europe just went along, albeit with serious reservations.
YES. China has no choice but to go Russia given the EC/US refusal to offer it even a talking seat given their money. China is lusting for the high end tech gears of EC that they want for the next stage of growth. However, they are in no hurry to sit it out and buy them cheaper at recession prices. BTW China is not short of suitors (eg Goldman) that shall broker for them with the right fees. Simply asinine for EC to be still in this one night stand with US and not balance geopolitical/economic realities.
Quite simple. Its all about who's your daddy and where are the incriminating pictures stored.
Winter's coming. Putin gets to do whatever he likes. So who cares.
Respect is required for any lasting agreement . See
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2013/11/respect.html
For neutrality , respect and dominance are required.
See Washington's adroit maneuvers
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2012/03/george-washington.html
More Respect and Washingtons are required.
Wishful thinking, that's what it is. Politically speaking, every peace offering is made of bullets, and this one is no different. It is designed to give a sense of false hope and to through Russia off guard. Germany attacked Russia in less than two years after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. Also, it is important to remember that Jewish Socialist revolutionaries were trying to start a new war between Russia and Germany since 1918 by killing the German ambassador to Russia Wilhelm Mirbach. Lots of Jewish oligarchs are now based in Germany (including Khodorkovsky) where they're actively involved in all sorts of scheming in order to undermine Russia. Germany is as guilty as the US in regards to the current situation in Ukraine.
Leading italics means no voteskis.
It's already too late.
The slip of the tongue by the former Mossad agent about the London bombings occurs at 2:05 in this truly remarkable catch.
http://themillenniumreport.com/2014/08/former-mossad-agent-reveals-direc...
"it's easy to put in a truck bomb as we did, as happened in london". oops indeedy.
probably got another bris, by a weasel, on his return to the old country.
Yes, CFR is up to another strategy. This gives me the creeps. They are all bloody sucking fascists in that institute. Its the elite cabal think tank.
Nice omission there, don't mention the demographic changes driving growth and politics in the EU (mass tax-parasite Muslim African immigration).
Who sets EU immigration and social policy? CFR?
NATO is the "asset collections arm" of the EU, it only needs to expand when the EU needs resources it can't secure through commerce but force.
The EU non-state business model of selling EU residency & benefits is broke and needs resources to sustain its growth agenda.
Without NEW Russian gas & oil & resources the EU would have to curtail its mass immigration agenda.
Unbelievable fucking bullshit from CFR. Looks like switching scenarios. Who is going to be sacrificed?
Welcome:
YATS---en-------YUK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy7yNnQghs8
he told us he wanted to nuke eastern Ukraine
Never seen a nuke like that with a directional plasma stream, it burnt kinda slow like an air-fuel bomb, I think that was a big scud like Saddam used, we would have heard the radiation signature as well as the EQ sine wave
CFR = Communists From Russia, RIIA
29 weeks and 6 days
Using the Mayan calendar , how many cubits is that, in light years?
420 parseconds.
What, common sense? Now I've heard it all.
Somehow they have changed tactics, they pivot to US internal Marxist Revolution instead.
Mearsheimer was co-author with Walt of a book entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" which was highly critical of Zionist control of that policy.
His views in the piece above are entirely consistent with his earlier viewpoint.
My take? Russian sanctions are a danger to tribal interests and thus Mearshimer is being dusted off and thrust into the public eye. Europe may bolt and Germany may finally rebel against its status as an occupied country.
Just because Foreign Affairs runs an article by Mearsheimer doesn't mean the CFR would endorse his opinions. When he wrote his book denoucing the influence of the Israeli lobby on US politics, he was widely vilified. He was a member of the CFR at the time. Does that mean the CFR endorsed his criticism of the Israeli lobby? Hardly.
I wouldn't jump to too many conclusions about what Mearsheimer's article on the Ukraine implies about the CFR and the US foreign policy establishment. But I am glad there is at least one prominent US foreign policy thinker who takes a sane and sensible approach to the Ukrainian mess (a mess entirely of our own making).
The CFR never endorses the opinions of fellows or "guest" contributors. That's not the way the FP game is played in DC. John didn't get the desired traction out of the NYT article a while back, this is the next escalation, and it's a serious escalation in terms of influencing thought in DC, shifting the neocon/lib/realist front lines in DC is a long shot (Bernard Lewis in 1992 was an exception), but FA has a much broader readership than Foggy Bottom and the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, which is precisely the target audience for the piece. .
Good comment. Of course, he and Walt were right about the "Israel Lobby." In fact, they were understating the issue.
glad there is at least one prominent US foreign policy thinker who takes a sane and sensible approach...
Do you suppose MH17 stuff will disclose further embarrassing and undeniable truth? Or perhaps the CFR is trying to blunt the stolen Saudi secrets and pave the way for their full disclosure? It could be this single voice of a rodent on an ill-fated CFR craft is not so much jumping ship as scurrying to find passage on one capable of weathering the storm.
jmo.
Yes, I think the truth will come out on MH17, just as it came out on Assad's non-use of Sarin gas on his own people. The truth about Assad, when it came, was buried on page 37, but MH17 is bigger than that. It it transpires that the Ukies brought down MH17, our embedded, regime MSM will do their level best to ignore the story, but this would still be a bombshell that would utterly discredit Washington.
Regarding Mearsheimer, I have the impression he's an honest guy. He's not at all neo-con, but stands for a realistic, national-interest-based foreign policy and is well aware of the limits of US power. His worldview has been consistent for years; he's not a rat seeking to abandon the ill-fated CFR, nor is he scurrying for safety on a craft more capable of weathering the storm. I don't seem him as an opportunist, but as a guy who means what he says, and says what he means.
a guy who means what he says, and says what he means...
I'll admit to a rather jaded and simplistic knee jerk comment regarding this particular person. My impression of the CFR membership lists I've seen in the past reflect people with far different views than mine regarding the use of force, power and their commitment to lord their collective (ill)-will over those they consider inferior. Truly powerful people know the value of gracious beneficence, and I don’t recall that being a prerequisite quality for membership on the council. In fact, it would appear insecurity and pomposity is precondition for appointment.
Lay down with dogs,...
jmo.
Watch this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy7yNnQghs8
Tactical going off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Dq0p4u_uA
Between this and the NY Fed saying the country's basically broke, I fear we're on the precipace of the great reveal of their "final solution".
You mean like a mass kill event? This neighborhood West Point in Liberia was recently quarantined. What all the western reports seem to leave out is that this neighborhood has 75,000 people in it. They are now locked up and waiting to die of Ebola.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201408201403.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Point,_Monrovia
Reminds me of the old movie Outbreak
http://youtu.be/Mj9SUJdpJS4
WTF? These assholes were the people behind it. Suddenly, they're backtracking? You can bet their intentions are anything but honorable or heartfelt. Leaving us to wonder who they're planning to blame for it. Gotta be that stooge Obama...
I personally think this all just part of a bigger plan to destroy the dollar. Just another brick in the wall. Look at all of the foreign policy blunders, the economy destroying moves ie. explosion of debt and Obamacare, the societal trust of government deteriorating ie. police state, NSA revelations, the numerous provocations with several counties that isolate the US. All of this enhances global perception and reality that America's power, values and economic superiority are falling.
Once the dollar and with it the global market collapse, the real plan of one world government and currency can unfold.
CFR or aka the council on treasonous relations, has one objective: one world government..with the advent of CFR if one were to plot the economy, jobs, and freedoms of the common man in the usa ..there is a clear connection to the decent of the USA.
IF you can't dazzle them with brilliance ( or bribe them with other people's money or threaten them with violence ) then you try to baffle them with bullshit.
Then there is the possibility of a buyer's remorse when Biden's son phones home to tell everyone that the plunderable resources are a mirage and that chernobyl is still the proto-fukushima and will require more money than can be extracted from the Ukrainian tax-peasants by the IMF...
Perhaps paving the way for a possible about face after their Ukrainian plot has failed to progress as planned.
The only goal achieved so far seems to be messing up Ukraine's economy and infrastructure, putting down the IMF scheme of extraction.
That is exactly what I was thinking.
Every President (except obama) since Kennedy, every Sec of State, have been CFR. And obama was hand picked by Zbig Brzenski (sp?) at Colombia. Just like Clinton.
The CFR RUNS our foreign policy.
Yup, and they are trying to convince us they are now reasonable people, who are puzzled by all this "destabilization" going on. Who Knew that it would all go so FUBAR? Except people who paid attention, of course.
Obama is expendable and a suitable patsy for the CFR. I wonder if he knows . . .
The media has commented on how 'drawn' he looks. He knows, and fears. That's probably why he's hanging out at the golf course(s).
I'm kinda thinking he's only worried if he can keep playing golf after all this is over. And whether he can get most of his meals for free. He might have to do some speeches (at 250K a pop) to finance his lifestyle. Or maybe he'll claim he's broke like Hitlery?
I feel sorry for all the future secret service guys who'll have to follow this rube around for the rest of his life, and possibly for Palm Springs, if he moves there.
He can always just go social security if his number is valid.
I guess, obviously, they finally figured out what we figured out - that it was the CFR behind it all.. and this is how they get out of it.
Kind of like all the phony mea culpas from recently retired bankstas and regulators...a CYA attempt to salvage reputation.
As for the article itself, the MIC does not approve or endorse this message.
You mean George CFR Soros?...
Aren't they the same group that has members that organized this little sewing circle jerk a few months before that democratically elected government in Ukraine was overthrown???...
sounds reasonable to me.
Rats are abandoning ship....