Ukraine 2014 coup and neofascist trends in neocon foreign policy

• Introduction
• What Nulandgate was about
• Ukraine expose the idiocy of neocon vision of "benevolent US hegemony"
• Analysis provided by The Polemicist blog (March 19, 2014)
• Who is Victoria Nuland
• Interpreting the events through the prism of a new Cold War with Russia
• Ukraine as a Cleft Country
• Pressure on Oligarchs as another part of NulandGate
• Khaganat of Nuland
• Some Nuland related humor

Introduction

While moving Ukraine closer to West might be a worthwhile goal, but handing of this geopolitical task by the USA is a classic case of "elephant in china store".

Organizing anti-constitutional coup using far right nationalists from Western Ukraine should be viewed as a case when Obama administration in order to achive geopolitical goal of weakening  and isolating Russia switch to neofascist mode and smashed constitutional order in Ukraine.

Level of incompetence, Chutzpah demonstrated by Nuland and her neocon friends in State Department is simply staggering. With the level of control of Yanukovich they demonstrated during EuroMaydan events, including their ability simply buy some government figures the need to violet overthrow of his government is highly questionable.

As a result, Ukrainians (like Iranian and Libyans before them) became another victim of Washington's geopolitical games. And they are paying for those games with their lives, with dramatically (to the level of starvation of pensioners; and I am not exaggerating) diminished standard of living and destroyed infrastructure, completely broken economic ties with Russia -- which was the major economic partner and major market for Ukrainian goods.

While rise of Ukrainian nationalism was given, taking into account the mere fact of independence, the forms which it took are definitely sub optional. Now they have a civil war in the South East, with all the associated cruelty and destruction. In other words "Somalization" of Ukraine proceeded after February 22, 2014 at full speed. It's very easy to destroy a civil order in a fragile country, but it will take decades to repair the damage and bring citizens back to their previous level of well-being and security.

Victoria Nuland will probably enter the history as a person who instigated the start of civil war in Ukraine. Generally Ukraine proved to be another colossal failure of the USA foreign policy: they tried to hit Russia, but got closer alliance of Russia and China. And like elephant in China store they hit Ukraine first, breaking country into peaces, destroying the economy in the process. And what West needed is a new market for manufacturing, not a new hot spot. Not another failed country that now needs to be financed and maintained by Western loans which have little chance to be repaid. Actually the role of Germany and personally Angela Merkel in all this mess is pretty negative too, although Germans definitely can't match the level of Chitzpah of their transatlantic masters.

Important factor contributing to the failures of the US foreign policy in recent years is the decrease of the intellectual potential of the "foreign policy establishment". To see the trend it's enough to compare Kissinger or Brzezinski, with the current Secretary Kerry and Victoria Nuland. The result is the degradation of quality of the USA foreign policy, which now creates a lot of unnecessary anger and indignation in large part of Europe and Asia. Even when goals of the USA are not that imperialistic per se. Unlike McFaul who got Ph.D, Nuland has just BA from Brown University (1983) where she studied Russian literature, political science, and history. He never served in Russian or any Eastern European embassy. Her major previous position were U.S. ambassador to NATO and State Department spokeswoman. Both positions required very little diplomacy and from formation of her worldview point of view were clearly detrimental to her current role. Especially, her previous position as the U.S. ambassador to NATO which essentially conditions to view Russia only via hairlines. As she lacks real, native diplomatic skills which the following dialogs clearly attests:

• Matthew Lee destroying State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland.
• Matthew Lee of AP criticizes Nuland and SD saying hundreds of people are killed daily in Gaza
• Nuland Grilled on Neo-Nazis in Ukraine & Money U.S. is Spending

The start of this trend toward the intellectual degradation probably has began with the collapse of the USSR. At that time, the USA elite suddenly became the actual "master of the world", which does not need to be engaged in maneuvers in international politics, but can simply to impose their will through various levers of political and economic coercion, and, if necessary, by military operations. The first robin of this degradation was "not so bright" Madeleine Albright -- an interesting example if not a female sociopath, but pretty much borderline personality. Those personalities do not care about building lasting fundament of international relations based on UN (which was created as an effort for preventing the repeat of WWII), they were hell bent on destroying this framework to provide the USA maximum political and economic advantages of the unipolar world. As such they all work toward WWIII ( Jen, July 13, 2014 at 6:11 pm ):

Since when Madeleine Albright (she who uttered the notorious line “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” to Colin Powell) was US State Secretary, the US State Department has more or less acted as a rogue element within the US government. Not that this particular gallery of rogues has been the only one with a mind of its own. The US Treasury is dominated by Goldman Sachs management, some of whose people have investments and links with arms companies and thus clear conflicts of interest. Plus US economic and foreign policies have been dictated by University of Chicago alumni who worship Friedrich Hayek / Milton Friedman free market economics and Leo Strauss’s faux-Platonian Republic political philosophy in which a ruling elite tells lies to its subjects to keep them all under control.

Nuland can also can be viewed as example of a related trend: the trend for the appointment to senior posts in the State Department people on the criteria of loyalty to a particular clan of the political elite to the detriment of the interests of the state as a whole. This trend started under Reagan and which got in full force under Bush II and continued under Barack Obama administration. Victoria Nuland is a member of Cheney' Cabal of Zealots:

'Cabal' of Zealots - Wilkerson calls Cheney’s inner group a “cabal” of arrogant, intensely zealous, highly focused loyalists. Recalling Cheney’s staff interacting in a variety of interagency meetings and committees, “The staff that the vice president sent out made sure that those [committees] didn’t key anything up that wasn’t what the vice president wanted,” says Wilkerson. “Their style was simply to sit and listen, and take notes. And if things looked like they were going to go speedily to a decision that they knew that the vice president wasn’t going to like, generally they would, at the end of the meeting, in great bureaucratic style, they’d say: ‘We totally disagree. Meeting’s over.’” The committee agendas were generally scuttled. And if something did get written up as a “decision memo” bound for the Oval Office, Cheney himself would ensure that it died before ever reaching fruition.”

It does not help that Nuland is married to Washington Post columnist and neoconservative historian Robert Kagan, who helped sell the case for the Iraq War, advised both Mitt Romney and John McCain’s presidential campaigns, and co-founded the Project for a New American Century think tank with Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Obama has spoken fondly of some of Kagan’s work as well, but his credentials in the conservative foreign policy establishment are unimpeachable.

And it does not help that her previous job was State Department spokesmen, the job who would radicalized into right-wing neocon zealot even more moderate person then Nuland was at the moment of her appointment. Now she is definitely far tot he right from her husband Robert Kagan:

Nuland is married to Washington Post columnist and neoconservative historian Robert Kagan, who helped sell the case for the Iraq War, advised both Mitt Romney and John McCain’s presidential campaigns, and co-founded the Project for a New American Century think tank with Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Obama has spoken fondly of some of Kagan’s work as well, but his credentials in the conservative foreign policy establishment are unimpeachable.

"Republicans are good at wielding power, but they're not so wonderful when it comes to the more idealistic motives of liberal internationalism. The Democrats are better at liberal internationalism, but they're not so good at wielding power. I would say that if there were a Joe Lieberman/John McCain party, I'm in the Joe Lieberman/John McCain party."

- Robert Kagan

Leading antiwar blogger Marcy Wheeler called her a “former Cheney hack.” When such people commit errors, some of which had all the signs of intentional crimes, they are swiped under the carpet. This has created favorable conditions for creation of the situation when real national of the USA were sacrificed to the private interests of individual corporations and oligarchic clans, which enriched themselves using "sacred" neoliberal principle: income to private corporations, expenses to the state.

This reduction of the intellectual potential of the American elite contributed to gradual replacement of real experts in the higher echelons of power with incompetents who are sometimes called "effective managers" - people with close, often family connection to powerful clans (such as neoconservatives) and who after obtaining particular position try to advance interests of those clans on international arena. Occupying senior positions, such "effective managers" select the relevant employees. Both Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland can be viewed as examples of this trend.

Foreign policy became yet another area in which, in best traditions of neoliberalism, the objective interests of the United States as a state are sacrificed to the interests of private corporations. for example by driving the United States into military conflicts, in result of which the country suffers tremendous losses -- both material and image-related -- and only certain corporations reap huge profits (Iraq). There are similar signs of the same intellectual degradation in other areas, for example development of new types of military hardware based on unproven technologies. Which gives zero results but still generating huge profits for military-industrial complex.

This intellectual degradation strengthen Messianic elements in the USA foreign policy, the confidence that only the USA should solely determine all the elements of the new world order in all countries. And for this trend EuroMaidan in general and Victoria Nuland in particular is a textbook example.

What Nulandgate was about

The USA tried to change legitimate government of Ukraine using yet another color revolution. The strategic goal was an elegant chess combination with Ukraine as a sacrificed pawn: to use German orchestrated push for enlarging EU market for weakening of EU and Russia by creating a zone of instability in Ukraine and poisoning the relations between European countries and Russia. See how Jen Psaki was grilled about it:

• 'This is what you cook for Ukraine' State Dept Psaki grilled over leaked tape - YouTube

Here is Veterans Today take on the incident:

• Victoria Nuland on Ukraine – F–ck the EU!

In any case, the issue is can be viewed in geopolitical terms: Should Ukraine be part of the European Union, or should it knit strong ties with Russia? Is there any change for the government dominated by far right nationalists, and Western Ukrainian neoliberals such as Nulands's protégé Yatsenyuk be less corrupt and less authoritarian? Would not Yatsenyuk sell whatever he can for pennies on a dollar to Western partners and move with a chunk of stolen money to California, where his Scientologist sister reside ?

Moreover, it's a real shame that the United States used it vast capabilities to hijack and pervert genuine Maidan protest against oligarchy and neoliberalism and stage a neo-fascist coup behind the backs of EU negotiators. See EU-brokered agreement on ending crisis

YouTube is now featuring a tape in which the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, is shown discussing U.S. political strategy and personal composition of new Ukrainian government in Ukraine vis-à-vis EU with the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev . In this tape, Ms. Nuland poses the issue as a geopolitical struggle between the United States and Europe (and more particularly Germany).

EU, which actually pursued its own neoliberal expansion agenda in this case, was inclined to wait until the next Presidential election, while the US were hell-bent of staging color revolution "now and here". She is caught in a diatribe against EU, in which she says "F*&k the EU" - the Europeans, not the Russians. So Ukraine was used to create a wedge between EU and Russian and successfully block strengthening of economic relations between them. This suggests that the ugly, neofascist edge of February 22 coup in Kiev was directed against Germany as much, if not more as against Russia. As Immanuel Wallerstein noted:

Let me therefore propose that Ukraine is merely a convenient excuse or proxy for a larger geopolitical division that has nothing whatsoever to do with its internal schism. What haunts the Nulands of this world is not a putative "absorption" of Ukraine by Russia - an eventuality with which she could live. What haunts her and those who share her views is a geopolitical alliance of Germany/France and Russia. The nightmare of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis has receded a little bit since its acme in 2003, when U.S. efforts to have the U.N. Security Council endorse the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 were defeated by France and Germany.

Victoria Nuland, a close Cheney associate, was installed in the position of Deputy Secretary of State for Europe by non other then "a schoolgirl giggling at the brutal of murder of Kaddafi" Hillary Clinton (aka Madeleine Albright II: On May 12, 1996, Albright defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied "we think the price is worth it."). Here is another relevant Immanuel Wallerstein quote:

... She is a surviving member of the neocon clique that surrounded George W. Bush, in whose government she served. Her husband, Robert Kagan, is one of the best-known ideologues of the neocon group. It is an interesting question what she is doing in such a key position in the Department of State of an Obama presidency. The least he and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry were supposed to do was to remove the neocons from such a role.

Nuland's position is a key diplomatic post that essentially allows people who stand behind Nuland (who is by-and-large is a willing marionette of more powerful interests behind her) to shape the USA Eastern European policy:

"Of course Nuland is not the ruling class, merely the face and voice of it. Of course she did not invent ruling class policies any more than she did its interests. But she shapes and develops policies intended to promote those interests."

While in Kiev some time before February 7, 2014 Victoria Nuland made an amateurish blunder (for which she should have been fired) of using regular phone for discussion highly confidential details of US foreign policy with Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador in Ukraine. Due to this blunder some other player (Ukrainian SBU as well as Russian FSB are suspected; nobody knows who it was for sure) intercepted the conversation and managed to exposé the level of control by "Washington Obcom" (as locals call the US embassy in Kiev) of the opposition in this color revolution and other dirty underlining of US policy in Ukraine.

In the intercept we heard Victoria Nuland and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine on the phone actually choosing the after-coup prime minister of Ukraine.

This blunder discredited "Washington Obcom" to the extent that it made their operations in Ukraine more difficult although they eventually went va-bank and installed puppet regime in Kiev on February 22, 2014 via armed putsch. Disastrous result followed and in May, 2014 the county was in grip of low intensity civil war (which might be a design to bind Russia to the conflict). but Russian made a surprise move and after referendum Crimea joined Russian federation. the event which, of course, none in Washington like as exerting pressure and possible evicting Russian feel from Sevastopol naval base was a an important part of the game.

As CBS noted (CBS)

Feb 7, 2014

WASHINGTON -- Two senior American diplomats, thinking their conversation about the Ukraine was secure and private, were caught disparaging the European Union in a phone call that was apparently bugged

"Fuck the EU!" phone call:

• Fuck the EU! - Exactly! - Victoria Nuland & Geoffrey Pyatt
• Fuck the EU! (original File) - Victoria Nuland phoning with Geoffrey Pyatt

Ukraine expose the idiocy of neocon vision of "benevolent US hegemony"

Victoria "F*ck EU" Nuland is dyed in the wool neocon, former Cheney associate. Neocons are guided by what Professor Bacevich Called the "Washington Rules" the credo that the USA has to "lead, save, liberate, and transform" (which means engaging is permanent war for permanent peace) the world to assure international order and peace. The "catechism of neocon thinking" consists of three dogma:

• the world must be organized the way the USA consider to be the best.
• only the U.S. can do it,
• this includes dictating principles and those who do not to accept those principles are rogue nations that should be squashed by military force if necessary.

These assumptions take the form of the "credo" -- which holds that the United States has the unique responsibility to intervene wherever it wants, for whatever purpose it wants, by whatever means it wants

The "sacred trinity" of global military presence, global power projection, global interventionism is used to achieve those ends, using his "Washington Rules" as the template. The Jimmy Carter segment was particularly eye-opening. Neocons have an attitude that the USA is uniquely qualified to take on the worldwide foes of peace and democracy, forgetting, revising, or ignoring the painful lessons of World War II, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. they believe that such war mongering will lead the USA into period of unprecedented peace.

And the consequences of such actions in Ukraine can serve as yet another illustration of "the idiocy of neocon vision of benevolent US hegemony" as Michael S Rozeff noted in his article at LewRockwell.com:

Neocons deny having a political philosophy, but this is a ruse. They have core beliefs and ideas that guide their policies. See here for one analysis.

Their philosophy, among other things, has this warmongering element:

“In other words, the United States should wage war in order to combat creeping nihilism. In the revealing words of Kristol and Kagan, ‘The remoralization of America at home ultimately requires the remoralization of American foreign policy.’ Going to war, sacrificing both treasure and blood in order to bring ‘democracy’ to strangers—this is a mission worthy of a great nation.”

This mission, put into practice in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and now Ukraine, has failed. Democracy has not been brought to these nations. Death, destruction, refugees, chaos, instability, continual strife, civil wars and increased terrorism have all been the results of implementing this one facet of neocon political philosophy.

The neocons told the world precisely what they were after and how to get it. When the U.S. government followed their theories, utter failure resulted. This means that neocon political theory must be utterly wrong. The outcomes it expected didn’t happen. In fact, we observe very nearly the opposite of their projections.

One summary of neocon theory appears in the mission statement of Keep America Safe, formed by Elizabeth Cheney and William Kristol:

“Keep America Safe will make the case for an unapologetic approach to fighting terrorism around the world, for victory in the wars this country fights, for democracy and human rights, and for a strong American military that is needed in the dangerous world in which we live.”

These policies actions were supposed to result in benevolent American hegemony. Neocon theory calls for American hegemony, based on the idea that such hegemony is benevolent. This presumes that nations subjected to such hegemony find it beneficial and to their liking.

We know that these ideas have failed in country after country. They must be wrong ideas. What’s wrong with them?

Neocon theory treats foreign peoples as if they could be manipulated like robots or puppets. It doesn’t take into account their systems, cultures, histories and their natural responses to having their countries invaded. It doesn’t take into account their divisions. It ignores the reasons for their existing political system and equilibrium among competing forces.

The neocons act as if they think that American force and know-how somehow overcome all the political, social, economic, moral, cultural, language, tribal, ethnic and religious issues present in these foreign lands. This is a completely wrong idea.

Neocon theory ignores the methods, mainly warfare and subversion, by which hegemony is imposed. It assumes that invasions and subversion are done in such ways that the affected nations have no cause for complaint. This assumption is completely false.

A war begun by the U.S. in some foreign land is assumed to create hordes of surviving people in the affected country who are gratified by having been “freed” by American applications of force. These people are assumed to be homogeneous enough to install a stable democracy. The people are assumed to be democrats-in-waiting who get together to form a democratic government that is superior to the previous regime. These assumptions are all utterly wrong.

The theory completely overlooks the destruction initiated by the U.S. that goes on to create the new political environment. This destruction and errors of American administration are assumed to have negligible affects on the behavior and psychology of this newborn people. This assumption is wrong.

The foreign peoples are assumed to share certain values that form a stable basis for a new state. This has never been the case in any country in which the U.S. has intervened.

The neocons believe that a number of the new leaders of the nation who have been educated in western universities will be lauded by their peoples and form a new government that will command the respect and loyalty of their peoples. This does not happen. This is another false assumption.

The new leaders chosen and blessed by the U.S. are presumed to have values that are American political values. This is usually not the case, but even if it is the case, the assumption that the peoples of these countries are going to fall all over themselves to support their puppet leaders and the American system of values and government is a false assumption.

The neocons believe that arms can be distributed into friendly hands and kept there, so that select local forces will support the new state or bring it about. This assumption has been proven false.

The neocons believe that if American force do not create the democracy and the rights, then American money and advice will. This has never been the case. Instead, vast waste, debt, mismanagement and corruption ensue.

This is not an exhaustive list of fallacies, errors and faults in neocon thinking. It hardly scratches the surface. It doesn’t delve into other and deeper faults and limitations of their philosophy. But this is enough to suggest that neocon policies have failed because the theories and assumptions they are based upon are utterly false to reality.

There are other rival and complementary theories concerning neocon policies. There is the theory that neocons have a strong Zionist component that has supported Israeli aims of creating chaos in certain Middle Eastern nations. This theory has evident support, but it doesn’t explain the full range of policies and countries in which the U.S. has intervened. It doesn’t explain the full range of persons who are neocon supporters. Nevertheless, this has been a significant factor as has been the influence of AIPAC and Israel. This theory of Zionist sympathy doesn’t explain the methods chosen in intervening in so many countries and it doesn’t explain the size and scope of the resources committed. A very large amount of American force, wealth and energy has gone into trying to build democracies and/or states sympathetic to U.S. aims and influences. If the production of chaos had been the goal, it could have been achieved much more easily.

A related theory has it that the neocons always wanted the chaos that has been produced. They lied. This is a very implausible theory. For each intervention, there can be found many neocon statements from diverse pundits and officials in support, pointing out what would be accomplished and saying that the results would be rather easy to achieve. It is implausible to believe that all were programmed to lie about their intentions, hopes and forecasts. Furthermore, in specific cases we see that instability occurred only after various errors were made or various difficulties encountered that go back to the false assumptions outlined above. Americans tried very hard to achieve success in these lands. They failed because they were operating with false assumptions about the peoples and lands involved.

Ukraine is the latest example of neocon failure. There is abundant evidence that the intent of American intervention was to bring Ukraine into the American fold — benevolent hegemony. Democratization and removal of corruption have been two of the aims. There is strong evidence that these attempts have mushroomed into a confrontation between West and East. Was this planned by neocons all along? It’s very doubtful. They thought they’d gain Iraq at low cost and easily and they thought the same about Ukraine. They assumed away the many issues that relate back to divided peoples in these countries.

This neocon failure to gain Ukraine easily doesn’t imply that neocons will not now attempt to take advantage of this East-West confrontation to weaken and ensnare Russia, to demonize Russia and to ramp up a proxy war with Russia. The neocons are opportunistic. However, if the analysis above is correct about the false assumptions that neocons habitually make as they implement their philosophy, what we can expect is that they will misjudge Russia. They will ignore the uniquely Russian traditions, strengths and reactions to American pressures. They will treat the Russians like robots or as beings who merely calculate costs and can be induced to behave as instructed in order to remove sanctions. The neocon policies applied to Russia will produce perverse results on a larger scale than ever.

Analysis provided by the Polemicist blog (March 19, 2014)

Good analyses on Nulandgate was provided in the article Charge of the Right Brigade: Ukraine and the Dynamics of Capitalist Insurrection from The Polemicist blog (March 19, 2014):

Let’s recall the name of arch-neocon Victoria Nuland (wife of arch-neocon Robert Kagan), Assistant US Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, whose leaked “Fuck the EU!” conversation with the American ambassador in Ukraine brought her out of the shadows as the behind-the-scenes point person for US management of the Ukrainian “revolution.”

In December, 2013, after her third trip to Ukraine in five weeks (including the one where she passed out cookies to Maidan protestors), Nuland reminded a meeting of the International Business Conference that the US “had ‘invested’ more than $5 billion and ‘five years worth of work and preparation’ in achieving what she called Ukraine’s ‘European aspirations.’” She also said she “made it ‘absolutely clear’ to Yanukovych that the US required “immediate steps” …to ‘get back into conversation with Europe and the IMF.’” As Renee Parsons puts it, it was “As if [Nuland was] intent on providing incontrovertible evidence of US involvement in Ukraine.”⁴⁶

In regard to the leaked phone conversation, American media focused on the Nuland’s salty language, but the more important substantive point of her remarks, as Peter Lee points out,

“was that Nuland was calling for the EU to be sidelined because it was not being sufficiently aggressive on the issue of threatening pro-Russian figures with sanctions.” She also wanted the more popular Vitalyi Klitschko and Svoboda leader Oleh Tiahnybok to step aside and allow the more “economically experienced” (i.e., IMF-friendly) Arsenyi Yatsenyuk take the leading role in the new Ukrainian government. She also specifies the supporting role the UN is being assigned. She got everything she asked for.⁴⁷

Nobody who hears this tape can credibly deny that the United States, through Nuland, was intimately involved in micro-managing the outcome of this independent, nationalist, Ukrainian movement:

Yats is the guy that who’s got the economic experience the governing experience he’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tiahnybok on the outside he needs to be talking to them four times a week you know.

Ok. He’s now gotten both [Dutch diplomat Robert] Serry and Ban ki-Moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. That would be great I think to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, fuck the EU.

But anyway we could land jelly side up on this one if we move fast.⁴⁸

[all quotes from Nuland]

Throughout the crisis, the US was pushing hard for the EU to take punitive measures against the Ukrainian government, and to impose sanctions on its key officials and oligarchical backers. Peter Lee describes Nuland’s strategy as an effort “to remove the initiative in Ukraine negotiations out of the hands of Germany and the EU.” He speculates—reasonably, I think—that this had to do with accommodating the American military, as well as the neo-liberal economic, agenda: “Victoria Nuland, in allegiance to her neo-con roots, aggressively facilitated a government that was simultaneously pro-US, anti-Russian, and non-EU-oriented and would therefore see no problem with facilitating a cherished US objective—evicting the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Crimea.” The Germans were certainly pissed off about the high-handed American attitude.⁴⁹

So the Americans may have been attempting a delicate triangulation, in which the hard anti-Russian sentiment of the ultranationalist Ukrainian right was instrumental for their military agenda, without being so obvious as to lose any support of less confrontational Euro-liberal parties.

But they may have been too clever by a third.

Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that Russia saw what was going on, and acted pre-emptively to stop it. The scent of brewing trouble between Ukrainian neo-fascists and their cosmopolitan patrons in the Euro-American politico-economic elite wafts forth from Right Sector’s rejection of the “cult of profit and depravity” as well as what the English captions of their video clumsily describe as “any integrations on terms that dictates not Ukraine.” The Ukrainian right, embodied in both Svoboda and Right Sector, is, after all, ultra-nationalist, and has a very good idea of the national serfdom that awaits Ukraine in the EuroAmerican-IMF neo-liberal global village. Ukrainian rightists, too, are ready to say “Fuck the EU!” They want Ukraine to be a strong, morally and ethnically pure, a brick in the wall of the GRE—the Great European Reconquest.

As Jack Rasmus points out, however:

Both the EU and USA want reliable (and pliable) capitalist politicians in Parliament and the Ukrainian government. That means politicians who will follow their economic policies and integrate the Ukraine into the western economic orbit. In other words, politicians that respond correctly when threats to freeze their personal assets in Switzerland and Luxembourg are raised, as has been the case in the days immediately preceding February 20.

The west’s gamble is their hope they can exclude the radical, ultranationalist and proto-fascist forces on the ground that served as the battering ram to bust down the door of the Yanukovych regime; or at least minimize their influence in the government. But that task that will not prove so easy, they may find.⁵⁰

The far-right has its claws deep in the new political order in Ukraine. After all, it considers that it has the right to rule. It may not be so easy to co-opt or push aside, and it is capable of causing a lot of trouble.

Of course, the more astute neo-fascist leaders will make various purring sounds to persuade their anxious Euro-American patrons that they can play nice. Thus, as Blumenthal recounts, Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok—eager to deflect any notion that their anti-“Muscovite Jew” Banderist ideology has anything to do with anti-Semitism, and knowing that there’s no better way to please the American government than to show one’s belly to Israel—recently hosted the Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine. In what, for those who have a “historical complex,” is one of the saddest of ironic moments, Tyahnybok appealed for solidarity thusly: “I would like to ask Israelis to also respect our patriotic feelings… Probably each party in the [Israeli] Knesset is nationalist. With God’s help, let it be this way for us too.” Birds of an ultranationalist feather, and all.⁵¹

The showdown will likely come, however, over whether the neo-fascist right will be tame enough to roll over for the IMF-friendly neo-liberal oligarchs and their political henchpersons. To prepare for the eventualities, the US and friends will want to shower the interim government with beefed-up police equipment and training, in order to make sure that no street protest can get anywhere near the traction of the maidan of the last few months. You know, to protect the now-democratic (unelected) government against an undemocratic popular insurrection.

On the other hand, as Julie Hyland reports, the far-right is now entrenching control of its own national military force, in the form of a 60,000-strong National Guard, “recruited from ‘activists’ in the anti-Russian protests and from military academies.” This force was just established by the Ukrainian parliament, and will be overseen by Svoboda’s own Andriy Parubiy.⁵² Ukraine’s neo-fascist right may have been a tad too well nourished on Victoria’s baked goods, and the US’s neo-liberal plans may not get swallowed so easily. These guys are ready to fight. They may be inclined to be independent of, and resistant to, an EU-IMF agenda. The Russian reaction in the Crimea has already taken the US off-guard, and the new armed forces of the Ukrainian right can now create a lot of trouble throughout the Ukraine, which could provoke the wider conflict with Russia that they are itching for, and that Europe, and even the US, can ill afford.

I’ve got no happy ending. As I said above, possible war and perpetual tension is what’s in store for the Ukraine. And America’s cookies may land jelly-side down.

Who is Victoria Nuland

Victoria Nuland is not interesting per se, but only as a representative of certain (close to vice president Cheney) forces in the USA foreign policy (aka neocons) which seems now fully control the State Department; forces which are so divorced from President Obama policies that are can talk about hijacking of the US foreign policy by a group of ideologies. One hallmark of those forces is close cooperation with far right (including openly neo-Nazi) elements in Europe and elsewhere. In this sense Victoria Nuland became a symbol of neocon forces within the State Department in Obama administration, providing amazing (but fully explainable within the concept of "deep state") continuity of foreign policy, policy that contradicts not only Barack "yes we can" Obama election promises but also his later statements. In a way it became symbol on complete inability of Obama to shape foreign policy during his presidency term, exposing him as a mere "placeholder" of POTUS position.

The majority is not even aware of the folly of our governments, especially now that the media are burying the Ukraine dossier headlines under the tritest domestic news, and censoring disapproving comments. A casual or less informed reader/viewer (the vast majority) most likely has no idea of how our politicians are playing with fire and supporting the new Nazis, or that the Ukraine story is more important than all the other news items.

As an Austrian I find this situation particularly infuriating. For all my five decades I've had to listen to reproaches that my people did not stand up to the Nazis' takeover of Austria, and now that Nazis are once again marching in Europe with swastikas and all, who is supporting them? The very countries that were acting oh-so-disdainful and morally superior (as well as our own clueless politicians), and the most supposedly "liberal" media.

Another thing - there has been so much fake crying of "wolf" in calling populist right parties Nazis (I vividly remember the "sanctions" on Austria in 2000), that now the real thing has apparently emerged, nobody is taking the danger seriously any more. And suddenly, it's Russia that has to be sanctioned, not the real-life fascists.

The hypocrisy of all this is breathtaking in its audacity and scope.

On the other hand, we now have a better idea how long and patiently the US/UK must have worked to get all the important media and politicians suborned, blackmailed or paid off - a huge number of ducks must have been put into a row for this moment, and they are probably furious that the propaganda is still not getting enough traction internationally.

I can just imagine the secret briefings to new US Presidents where they get handed a list of US "assets" including many of the "free" world's leading politicians, and told that all these are firmly "under our control". This would explain much of the hubris and arrogance we have all observed.

Victoria Nuland (born in 1961), a former the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, is a pretty interesting female chicken hawk among Washington's neocons in a sense that she continued the policy started with unforgettable Madeleine "not so bright" Albright who started disastrous interventionist line in US foreign policy by bringing the US into "humanitarian" bombing of Serbia. This line later was expanded by decimation Iraq (with approximately a million people killed and wounded), bombing of Libya and then supporting jihadists in Syria. In line with Madeleine tradition, Victoria Nuland policies essentially managed to bring the US in partitioning of Ukraine business.

In now way I would claim that she is inept. She was top student in a prestigious university and generally all State Department employees that I used to know were really highly competent and dedicated civil servants. Here we can talk about "attained institutional idiocy", kind of groupthink. There was recently a good discussion in The Guardian about type of people to which Nuland belongs:

Beckow -> NOTaREALmerican

13 May 2014 10:20pm

US government means well, after all they say so all the time. The scary thing is that they are - most of them - probably quite sincere in this narcissistic delusion. The elites in Washington are not as much evil (there is a bit of that), as they completely lack experience. They misunderstand history, they live in clichés, they like to argue with slogans. So "bombing" other people for freedom are just words they throw around. Any rival is always demonized, any lie will do.

The media mostly acts to elaborate on existing stereotypes, otherwise people simply couldn't grasp what is going on. It is the lazy leading the ignorant. As long as the good fortune and wealth lasts, it is an amusing spectacle. But what if one day the goodies are gone?

These elites lack real experiences with life. Their education is based on simplistic good-bad formulas, with a heavy doses of myths. Their understanding of other people's history is dismal. They think WWII was won by US invasion of Normandy and fought over Holocaust. They don't get other people because they simply don't get complexity, nuance, local histories. They still don't understand the concept of "ethnic" identity. So they break stuff and retreat to their ignorance.

There is also the acquisitive angle: give us your resources, buy our stuff, borrow and pay us back, after all US is primarily a business. There are too many around the world who dream of getting something from the benevolent Americans, and some do. Enough to keep this latter day cargo cult going. In Ukraine this mindless US approach hit a wall, so they are angry. When people with no real experiences and a great sense of self-worth and entitlement get angry, it can be scary. But I still think at the end they will pull back, they have a short attention span and there are other, easier places to liberate and plunder.

Joel Parker -> Beckow

13 May 2014 11:57pm

I pick up a bit more true evil from the people you describe as just stupid. I must believe there are a few more evil for evil sake type of people on the earth altogether.

Beckow -> Joel Parker

There is some evil, sure. Mostly just selfishness and careers. There is also an enormous external ethnic lobby that comes into this, some just emotional, others with old agendas, etc... This ethnic angle probably causes more damage than anything else.

But, do not underestimate how ignorant some of these decision makers are. They are trained to come across as "knowing", they talk a lot, some are even eloquent, but their knowledge and experience is often an inch deep. Plus, they are hyper-conformist, that's really why they made it that far. So they are trained to spout the official line. No real thinking required. So they get manipulated.

Here are a couple of relevant quotes

• Victoria Nuland’s Wedding with Christian al-Qaida by Ronald Thomas West
  (contains several very interesting photos)

  "...insofar as Nuland working as an assistant to Cheney, it bears noting she had been at the center of this world class criminal’s epoch of invasion, destruction, kidnap and murder. And let us not forget Nuland’s buddy ‘Condi’ has worn many hats, including authorizing CIA rendition to torture:

  “Nicolo Pollari, former head of the Italian military intelligence service SISMI, asks for former US national security adviser and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify in his defense in a kidnap case. The case concerns the 2003 rendition from Italy to Egypt of Islamist extremist Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (see Noon February 17, 2003). SISMI and the CIA worked together on the abduction and several operatives of both organizations are now on trial for it. Rice approved the operation shortly before it was carried out”

  In this case, it should be no stretch of the imagination to arrive at hypothesis of who is actually behind what was certainly a ‘false flag’ sniper attack murdering both police and protestors in Kiev…

  …considering the photo of close Bush buddy, erstwhile CIA director Robert Gates, pinning a medal on Victoria Nuland taken together with the aggregate facts, recalling CIA and the Department of State are Siamese twins, I think it is a safe presumption to say Nuland profiles as having been the senior CIA coordinator/operative running operations to take Ukraine over for the Christian domionists who run CHEVRON. Particularly when she’d been leaked giving instruction to the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine on who to put in the post of Prime Minister.

• Wikipedia article

  Victoria Nuland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  Nuland is a career Senior Officer of the United States Foreign Service and has worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations. During the Bill Clinton administration, Nuland was chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott before moving on to serve as deputy director for former Soviet Union affairs.

  During the George W. Bush administration, she served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and then as U.S. ambassador to NATO. During the Barack Obama administration, she was special envoy for Conventional Armed Forces in Europe before assuming the position of State Department spokesperson in summer 2011, which she held until February 2013.^[3]

  She was nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in May 2013 and sworn in to fill that role in September 2013.^[4]

  The strange appointment of Victoria Nuland as State Department Spokesperson - WhirledView

  But why would Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration agree to appoint to this politically sensitive position someone who willingly served such a controversial figure in supporting and implementing the “war on terror” and all the baggage that comes with it? Furthermore, how reliable is a Talbott reference anyway? After all, I understand that he just helped his friend Robert Kagan, Nuland’s neocon husband, get a job at Brookings and Talbott is also a friend of neocon writer Marc Gerecht, the husband of Diane Zeleny who also just latched onto a likely sweetheart deal sort of appointment as Head of External Relations and Congressional Affairs at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Whether Zeleny deserves or is qualified for the position or not.

  From what I know about the Department, an FSO doesn’t just get detailed to the staff of a highly charged and ideological Vice President unless that detailee agrees to follow the boss’s dictates. Cheney’s were all too often forceful and odious. Furthermore, does anyone really think that Cheney –with his penchant for super loyalty and secrecy - would have ever accepted Nuland (or anyone else) for the position without some kind of loyalty test?

  Surely the State Department under Hillary Clinton could have found equally (or likely even better) qualified career candidates who do not carry Nuland’s political baggage.

  Behind the scenes trade off?

  Or was this some kind of behind the scenes deal – a trade off for who knows what - that those of us innocents outside the inner circles are not privy?

  Regardless, there are several particularly unique – or just plain peculiar – unsettling things about this appointment depending upon the way one looks at it:

  • First, Nuland comes from what has turned out to be an under-the-radar-non-job as a Special Envoy to the moribund multilateral Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Talks. This position is nowhere equivalent in stature to that of Ambassador to NATO a prestigious and high profile position she held under W and Rice after leaving Cheney’s office.

  Since she’s been Special Envoy, the CFE Talks seem to have gone exactly nowhere. They were supposed to have ended some time ago and morphed into new talks about European troop levels and numbers of non-nuclear weapons. But it doesn’t look as if that has happened either.

  Such a Special Envoy position does not appear to have required Senate confirmation. Certainly I could find no evidence it did. Basically it even sounds like a demotion of sorts – not another rung up on the hierarchical ladder to State’s stratosphere.

She continues the tradition set by Madeleine_"Not so Bright" Albright of bellicose Secretaries of State and successive female Secretaries of State such as Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Rodham Clinton

In foreign policy Nuland looks more or less like an Albright clone ( a female with a deep but suppressed desire to prove that she can be tougher then men in their bellicosity; and tougher then nails when dealing with Russia and other "undesirables".)

Her appointment was very strange and raised a lot of questions about Obama administration in general and, especially, about who controls Obama foreign policy. Looks like this is not Obama. Again she was a former Cheney associate. So it is both quite surprising and telling that she not only survived in Obama administration but was promoted to a more powerful, more critical position despite her obvious bellicosity (or may be due to it) and lack of real diplomatic experience. Which makes some people talk about nepotism ;-)

Interpreting the events through the prism of a new Cold War with Russia

Like was the case with neocons in Iraq, Nuland incompetence and recklessness endanger the USA interests both in the short and in a long run (and that means strategic interests of the country). She allowed the USA foreign policy to be manipulated by "yulki"( the gang of close to Timoshenko politicians, as criminal as Gar Princess herself) for their own advantage. Here is a good assessment of Nicolai N. Petro, professor of politics at the University of Rhode Island, is currently a Fulbright Research Scholar in Ukraine.

By interpreting current events in Ukraine through the prism of a new Cold War with Russia, the Obama administration has already achieved one of that conflict’s most unfortunate byproducts—the manipulation of external power by local actors seeking maximum advantages for themselves.

But Russia is not the USSR. In an odd historical twist, in the current crisis, it is defending the rights of local populations to be heard by their government, whereas the West is defending the removal of a legitimately elected president. Significantly, all this is taking place in an area of the world that retains strong sympathies for Russia.

An extensive survey of Russian-speaking areas in April 2014 shows that while 70 percent do not support secession, if a referendum were held today only 25 percent would want to join EU, whereas 47 percent would prefer to join the Russia-led Customs Union. Only 15 percent feel that Ukrainian relations with Russia should be the same as with any other county, whereas three-quarters say the two countries should have open borders, and 8 percent feel the two should be one country. Most worryingly for the prospects of the military campaign against the rebels being conducted in the East, while nearly three-quarters say they do not support the introduction of Russian troops, only 10 percent say they would take up arms to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

This is the minefield within which the United States and the EU are now trying to maneuver—deep in the historical heartland of the Russian empire, where popular sympathies for Russia are both vast and deep, and where the West has yet to define any clear strategic objectives.

Historians of the future will wonder greatly at the forbearance that Russia has shown in wielding its potentially vast influence (the ease with which Crimea was taken by Russia should be highly instructive), in contrast to the boldness verging on recklessness with which the United States and EU have sought to manipulate the political outcome in Kiev.

Recognizing the indigenous nature of Ukraine’s current problems, which often go back to promises left unfulfilled by past Ukrainian governments, is therefore a necessary first step toward dealing with them realistically. But it is only the first step. The next is to apply meaningful pressure on the interim government to do what it has thus far refused to do—establish a government of national unity.

Understandably, it is not easy for those who came to power on the wave of revolutionary enthusiasm, to admit that many of their countrymen regard what they did as illegitimate. Fortunately, however, most people in the East and South are still eager to reach an accommodation in the name of national unity. But they feel that such an accommodation should be based on concrete actions taken by Kiev that demonstrate that law and order is actually being restored, and that the interim government is not under the thumb of radical nationalists. Presently, the number one concern of people in the East and South is fear of “rampant banditry;” i.e., falling prey to the violence unleashed in Kiev in January and February, and the lawlessness they are witnessing there today.

A second critical step is making Russian Ukraine’s official second language. This one gesture would reassure the predominantly Russian-speaking regions of the country that their cultural legacy is indeed fully accepted in today’s Ukraine. Such a step has been promised by many presidential candidates since Ukraine’s independence, but has always been opposed by Ukrainian nationalists. That is why its advocates now demand that it be enshrined in the constitution.

A final step is political and economic decentralization, which some identify as federalism. The essential difference between regional autonomy and federalism is that the latter is a compact between regions and the central government stipulated in the constitution. Some types of federalism are very broad, while other types are very narrowly defined. If autonomy is not constitutionally established, its advocates say, any new group of legislators could rescind what was previously granted, as happened with Crimea in 1998.

The interim government, however, cannot accomplish these urgent tasks on its own. It is too strongly beholden to the radical nationalists and pro-revolutionary street forces that brought it to power. Let us not forget that the latter even approved the current government. Since any move toward a true government of national unity will have to be taken against the wishes of one of the interim government’s core constituencies, it will require political cover, and this can only be provided by its major supporters—the United States and the EU.

Recognizing the indigenous nature of Ukraine’s problems therefore leads directly to a radically different strategy toward Russia — one of cooperation rather than confrontation in the pursuit of a strong and independent Ukraine. Last, but certainly not least, it could put to rest once and for all the calls for a new Cold War.

Ukraine as a Cleft Country; Supply chains as a new battleground

Another key thing that Nuland failed to understand is that Ukraine belong to the class of so called "cleft countries". See National Interest article by Robert W. Merry Ukraine and Latvia Welcome to The Clash of Civilizations:

As Huntington pointed out, “Cleft countries that territorially bestride the fault lines between civilizations face particular problems maintaining their unity.” That describes Ukraine precisely. It is a tragically split nation facing both ways in frontier territory between the Western and Orthodox civilizations.

It was never going to be easy maintaining an equilibrium in that country, but it would have been best if that effort had been carried out under Russian auspices, given Ukraine’s large Orthodox population and its centuries-long position within Russia’s sphere of interest. It was inevitable that the effort would be marked from time to time by corruption and violence, as indeed it has been, but those things are endemic in the region and ultimately the Ukrainians must make their way through their own tragic circumstances.

That’s why Western meddling in the country was so unfortunate. The United States has spent a reported $5 billion in “democracy promotion” in Ukraine, designed to leverage the Western-leaning populations to lure the country away from Russian influence. In concert with Europe, it dangled the idea of Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO, an incendiary concept to Russian sensibilities and Russian interests. When Russia responded as any nation would (including the United States), moving to protects its vital strategic interests in its immediate neighborhood, the neocons and Wilsonians waxed bellicose, as if the problem was Russian aggression and the solution was for America to employ “get tough” policies.

This lack of understanding of possible consequences it probably the key reason why they committed another blunder -- rushed with coupe d'état on Feb 22 essentially taking the risk of creation of illegitimate far right controlled government (junta) to following much better EU brokered plan (Real "F*ck EU" attitude). What they saw is weakness and inaptitude of Yanukovich government. What they fail to see a fail lines between West and East of Ukraine. With EU plan after all Yanukovich capitulated and they just need to pickup low hanging fruit. But they pushed coupe d'état as they don't want the government of national unity, they want their puppets in power. Then the US faced consequences in Crimea which they don't like and later low intensity civil war started in South East provinces with such shocking event as Odessa Massacre of May 2, 2014

Dr Nafeez Ahmed (Guardian, 6 March 2014) stressed the US elite interest in controlling Ukraine in order to control energy flow to Western countries from Russia:

Russia's armed intervention in the Crimea undoubtedly illustrates President Putin's ruthless determination to get his way in Ukraine. But less attention has been paid to the role of the United States in interfering in Ukrainian politics and civil society. Both powers are motivated by the desire to ensure that a geostrategically pivotal country with respect to control of critical energy pipeline routes remains in their own sphere of influence.

Much has been made of the reported leak of the recording of an alleged private telephone conversation between US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland and US ambassador to Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt. While the focus has been on Nuland's rude language, which has already elicited US apologies, the more important context of this language concerns the US role in liaising with Ukrainian opposition parties with a view, it seems, to manipulate the orientation of the Ukrainian government in accordance with US interests.

Rather than leaving the future of Ukrainian politics "up to the Ukrainian people" as claimed in official announcements, the conversation suggests active US government interference to favour certain opposition leaders:

Nuland: Good. I don't think [opposition leader] Klitsch should go into the government. I don't think it's necessary, I don't think it's a good idea.

Pyatt: Yeah. I guess... in terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I'm just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok [Oleh Tyahnybok, the other opposition leader] and his guys and I'm sure that's part of what [President Viktor] Yanukovych is calculating on all this.

Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the... what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in... he's going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it's just not going to work.

[...]

Nuland: OK. He's [Jeff Feltman, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs] now gotten both [UN official Robert] Serry and [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, Fuck the EU.

Pyatt: No, exactly. And I think we've got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude, that the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it.

As BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus rightly observes, the alleged conversation:

"... suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals... Washington clearly has its own game-plan.... [with] various officials attempting to marshal the Ukrainian opposition [and] efforts to get the UN to play an active role in bolstering a deal."

But US efforts to turn the political tide in Ukraine away from Russian influence began much earlier. In 2004, the Bush administration had given $65 million to provide 'democracy training' to opposition leaders and political activists aligned with them, including paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet US leaders and help underwrite exit polls indicating he won disputed elections.

This programme has accelerated under Obama. In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington DC last December as Ukraine's Maidan Square clashes escalated, Nuland confirmed that the US had invested in total "over $5 billion" to "ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine" - she specifically congratulated the "Euromaidan" movement.

So it would be naive to assume that this magnitude of US support to organisations politically aligned with the Ukrainian opposition played no role in fostering the pro-Euro-Atlantic movement that has ultimately culminated in Russian-backed President Yanukovych's departure.

Indeed, at her 2013 speech, Nuland added:

"Today, there are senior officials in the Ukrainian government, in the business community, as well as in the opposition, civil society, and religious community, who believe in this democratic and European future for their country. And they've been working hard to move their country and their president in the right direction."

What direction might that be? A glimpse of an answer was provided over a decade ago by Professor R. Craig Nation, Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, in a NATO publication:

"Ukraine is increasingly perceived to be critically situated in the emerging battle to dominate energy transport corridors linking the oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian basin to European markets... Considerable competition has already emerged over the construction of pipelines. Whether Ukraine will provide alternative routes helping to diversify access, as the West would prefer, or 'find itself forced to play the role of a Russian subsidiary,' remains to be seen."

A more recent US State Department-sponsored report notes that "Ukraine's strategic location between the main energy producers (Russia and the Caspian Sea area) and consumers in the Eurasian region, its large transit network, and its available underground gas storage capacities", make the country "a potentially crucial player in European energy transit" - a position that will "grow as Western European demands for Russian and Caspian gas and oil continue to increase."

... ... ...

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed

Pressure on Oligarchs as another part of NulandGate

Here is an interesting quote from http://los-oxuenos.livejournal.com/636710.html (slightly edited Google translation):

Why Putin tyrannized officials with the necessity to close foreign accounts

Journalist Yuri Butusov on his Facebook page says that Tsenzor.Net source close to diplomatic circles, said details of the negotiations between Newland and Akhmetov held in Kiev.

Nuland informed that in case of police enforced clearing of EuroMaidan, U.S. and EU leaders agreed on a common position - immediate sanctions against leading politicians and oligarchs close to President Yanukovich. And the list will be continually updated so as to cut off all contacts with the EU and the United States not only for those figures authorities who participated in the police initiated dispersal of protesters, but also for those who did not defende peaceful continuation of protests scenario. This is a very important addition that will not allow anyone to shirk responsibility in the leadership of the Party of Regions and its sponsors.

Akhmetov said at the meeting that on Monday he was trying to keep President Yanukovych from using force against EuroMaidan, but Yanukovych refused to accept it. Nuland demanded organize a round table with the opposition and civil society from the leadership of the PR directly - even in defiance of Yanukovych. Forced dispersal of EuroMaidan should out of possible options.

Nuland promised not only sanctions - she also has clarified this threat, presenting the list of people who get together with their families will be target of the sanctions in the first place .

These are:

1. Rinat Akhmetov .
2. Vadim Novinsky .
3. Andrei and Sergei Klyuyev.

Why them? Because Akhmetov controls 55 PR MPs and Klyuyev has a mandate from the "young team" to manage the rest of the faction.

U.S. expects that the Party of Regions faction will support all four of the opposition's demands , after which can be initiated peace talks :

1. Announcement of early presidential elections.
2. Early parliamentary elections.
3. Tymoshenko liberation and complete recovery of her civil rights.
4. Criminal cases against all members of the MUP and "Berkut" , who took part in the crackdown on "peaceful demonstrations".

Nuland categorically stated that the failure to meet those conditions will put a big question every company's operating performance and DTEK "Metinvest " which Akhmetov owns abroad. Nuland clearly noted : these companies have placed assets in Europe , the U.S. and Europe are for them the major markets, the top brass of those companies have a property abroad and Akhmetov's family are tax residents of the UK. Metinvest and DTEK has major liabilities to international investors in the form of foreign currency bonds .

Thus, not just the first time the U.S. announced an ultimatum oligarchs surrounded by Yanukovych , but this time they are described in detail, in what form and at what level these sanctions will be applied.

Khaganat of Nuland

Victoria Nuland is married to prominent neocon Robert Kagan of scion a powerful Kagan family (which include his father Donald Kagan and brother Frederick Kagan; see also Frederick Kagan is an Unqualified Fraud Read His CV Here).

Robert Kagan is another chickenhawk who never served in the army but is as bellicose as Senator McCain, if not more. It is really frightening that people believing such nonsense as Mr. Kagan (in Robert Kaplan Writes In Defense Of Slavery he try to present arguments that slavery was good for mankind) have considerable influence in the US political establishment.

As Philip Girardi noted "The Kagans are classic neocon entrepreneurs who rely on nepotism and cronyism to work their way through the system."(The Forever Wars of Frederick & Kimberly Kagan The American Conservative)

That the Kagans are beating the drum for war and still more war is not surprising as that is how they make a living, but it is more disturbing when newspapers and media outlets that pretend to be reputable persist in providing a forum for their cheerleading. The Kagans are likely familiar to many readers of TAC, having been leading neoconservative spokesmen since 9/11. Kimberly is currently president for the oddly named Institute for the Study of War while Fred, who claims to have been a co-creator of the surge policy that was applied in Iraq, is the director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. Fred’s brother Robert is at the Brookings Institution and has also been a foreign policy adviser to both John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Like his younger brother Robert Kagan promotes typical neocon views about the necessity and desirability of US hegemony in all spheres of life. Very smooth talker who try to present complex issues on the level of kindergarten or worse -- essentially a talented propagandist of neocon views "with fuzzy generalizations, debatable assertions and self-important declarations of the obvious"(). He is a firm believer in American exceptionalism and advisor to Mitt Romney. As MICHIKO KAKUTANI noted in her NYT review of the book:

Mr. Kagan’s sometimes shaky reasoning is combined with a failure to grapple convincingly with crucial problems facing America today, the very problems that observers who worry about American decline have cited as clear and present dangers, including political gridlock at home, falling education scores, lowered social mobility and most important, a ballooning deficit.

Mr. Kagan hops and skips around such issues, placing way more emphasis on the military aspects of power as a measure of a country’s health and global sway.

... ... ...

The condescending tone of large parts of this book, along with sometimes less than coherent reasoning, distracts attention from Mr. Kagan’s more original and useful ideas, and they make readers ponder the curious development that it happens to be this historian who’s recently found public favor in both the Obama and Romney camps.

In his recent book The World America Made Kagan argues against U.S. decline under neoliberalism (see his oversimplified presentation of complex topics in Robert Kagan on C-SPAN). He maintains that the United States still has one-quarter of the world`s GDP- the same figure that it has had over the past three decades. On the military front Kagan argues that the U.S. remains far superior to any potential rival. Here is a relevant quote from Amazon review:

Mr. Kagan's book (including the title) is a pastiche of assertions to convey his obvious belief that the US must dominate the world, militarily and economically. And that it can and will if only Americans' want it badly enough. Assuming you agree that Kagan's desire for dominance is a great idea, evidence for his assertions is sorely lacking, as is a coherent argument to support his belief and assertions. By the end of this book, I felt like I was listening to Dorothy in 'Wizard of Oz' repeating: 'There's no place like home. There's no place like home...". Like Dorothy, Kagan wants to believe that we can go 'home', i.e. continue to dwell in a world where the US is dominant economically and militarily for decades to come. Even if you agree with him that it is a good idea, where is the evidence for the proposition? Not in his book.

And another

Robert Kagan's sense of history misses a key fact: America's post-1945 dominance in the world came about because the U.S. - of all the industrial nations - emerged unscathed from the Second World War. In short, Kagan is nostalgic for a circumstance dependent on unnatural conditions (unless, of course, he has decided that War is *healthy*, part of the natural order of things ..). His call for the U.S. to assume global leadership is all well and good, but it tends to assume strange forms, such as attacking secular leaders in the Islamic world: Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, President Assad. One of Kagan's ideological soul-mates, Michael Ledeen, has openly declared that it's not in America's interest to have stability in that part of the world, that instability should be sown whenever possible. I disagree with that assessment .. and using Kagan's formula - which includes supporting Saudi ideological imperialism - the end result is the rest of the world rooting for the downfall of the United States (a nation-state currently propped up by the military and its dominance of global financial institutions). The U.S. can either become part of the emerging global economy or risk becoming irrelevant (see also "the Portuguese Empire").

Like Kagans, Victoria Nuland is a female version of neocon entrepreneurs who tries to make her career by beating the drums of war in State Department. One in a long lone of similar figures starting from unforgettable female sociopath Madeleine Albright, who was instrumental in bombing Serbia into stone age. After the war "her investment firm, Albright Capital Management, was preparing to bid in the proposed privatization of Kosovo's state-owned telecom and postal company, Wikipedia) "

It is apparent that if you politically correct then in State Department being wrong repeatedly has no effect on one’s employability. Nuland was a close associate of Cheney and somehow managed to pass a test for loyalty to Obama, which suggest that Obama is probably not Bush-light, but just Bush III. In this role she was instrumental in creating of "war on terror" scam -- permanent war without end as if taken from the pages of Orwell's 1984. And nothing but continuity between Bush and Obama administration in foreign policy can explain the fact that after this career stunt she was appointed to a prominent position in Obama administration.

Some Nuland related humor

SATIRE 10 Reasons Why Victoria Nuland Should Be Seen as Stalin of Today - Russia Insider

10. Both use made up names. Stalin’s family name was Jugashvilli, Nuland’s ancestor’s name was Nudelman. The ancestors of both Nuland and Stalin came from the Russian empire, which probably gave them both the idea that they have a special knowledge of how to handle Russia.

9. Nuland’s right hand man happens to be her husband, Robert Kagan. Stalin’s right hand man was a fellow communist, named Lazar Kagan(ovich). Kagan co-authored “Project for a New American Century” and he obviously wants to realized his vision for Ukraine by implementing what might be called, “Americanization,” that is, the process of bringing in the officials from US and other countries to run Ukraine along the American lines. In his turn, Kaganovich was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR from 1925-1928 and was expected to usher in “New Soviet Century” through the politics of "Ukrainization": creating a new ruling Soviet elite for Ukraine, the elite brought in primarily from other places.

8. Both are clear ideologues: Nuland of “neocon movement”, Stalin of bolshevism. Both went to schooling with the masters and chief ideologues. Nuland worked closely with Rumsfeld and Cheney, starting as Vice President’s senior aide, and eventually serving as his deputy national security adviser. In his essay for Financial Times, Geoff Dyer quotes an former colleague in the Obama administration State Department , who observed that “I have no doubt that when she sits down for a family dinner, she is the biggest neocon at the table.” While Lenin’s widower, Krupskaia, joked that had Lenin re-incarnated when Stalin was already in charge, he would have had put Lenin in jail for deviating from the party line.

7. Both are willing to see through numerous deaths in Ukraine to get the territory under their influence. Stalin together with Kaganovich unleashed forced collectivization upon Ukraine, resulting in mass death of peasants, known as Holodomor. Nuland’s and her fellow neocons’ forced “americanization” resulted in the civil war between Donbass and Kiev, that so far has claimed thousands of lives, destroyed infrastructure, and produced hundreds of thousands of refugees.

6. They both tend to be aggressive and demanding and refuse to take no for an answer. Consequently, they prefer to squeeze their opponents till they break. Geoff Dyer’s quotes Dimitri Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest in Washington DC who observed: “It is clear that her whole approach is to push Russia so hard that it has no choice but to accommodate the US.” Stalin’s ability to squeeze his opponents is, of course, proverbial.

5. According to Stalin’s critic, Abdurakhman Aftorkhanov, Stalin made two mistakes during the WWII. He showed Europe to Russians (soldiers who saw how prosperous it was and realized that they were duped). And he showed Russians to Europe – which got scared, and started NATO, and other programs. The fate of Russia and the rest of the world has changed as the result of these mistakes. Someday, Nuland’s critics will charge her with accomplishing a similar feat. She has fully exposed to the Western world Ukraine’s lawlessness, corruption, and neofascism. And she has amply demonstrated Western World to both Ukrainians and Russians, who will never trust it again: seeing its unscrupulous meddling into their affairs.

4. Both are too arrogant and impatient to waste their time of diplomacy, and prefer to cut to the chase. They dismiss the possible opposition or obstacles with the similar terms. “F..k EU,” famously observed Nuland, in response to the questions about EU attitude toward the regime change in Ukraine. Stalin never hesitated to resort to the foul language, calling Lenin’s wife, “syphilitic whore,” or bragging that in the course of WWII he managed to outsmart Great Britain: “Stalin could always raise a laugh from his courtiers by saying, as he often did: 'We f***ed England!'“

3. Both prefer to rule by decree and appoint the people to the offices. While Nuland boldly proclaimed from the comfort of her office that Yatseniuk will be the future leader of Ukraine: “Yats is the man,” Stalin, of course, went even further, not only assigning Kaganovich, Khrushchev, and others to run Ukraine, but threating Lenin’s widow, Krupskaia, that if she continues to challenge him, he’ll appoint another woman as Lenin’s widow.

2. Similarly to Stalin, who for the sake of strategic purposes made the deal with Nazis (Ribbentrop), Nuland held various meetings with Ukraine’s Right Sector and other ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist organizations; and seems to be very cozy with Svoboda leader, Oleh Tyahnybok.

1. And finally, both Stalin and Nuland tend to present themselves in stunning visual imagery as the good caring parents of the new nation, easily duping the gullible locals. Here is Stalin surrounded by admiring Soviet children who are forever grateful to him for their happy childhood, and here is Nuland, surrounded by happy Ukrainians, whom she feeds with pastry as they are ready to embark on the path toward the new statehood.

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