Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

[smiths]

Ukraine: Follow the Energy (March 4, 2014)

Scrape away the media sensationalism and geopolitical posturing and it boils down to a simple dynamic: follow the energy.
Though many seem to believe that internal politics and geopolitical posturing in Ukraine are definitive dynamics, I tend to think the one that really counts is energy: not only who has it and who needs it, but where the consumers can get it from.

Let's cut to the chase and declare a partition along long-standing linguistic and loyalty lines a done deal. Let's also dispense with any notions that either side can impose a military solution in the other's territory.

Media reports on the weakness of Ukrainian military forces abound (for example, Ukraine Finds Its Forces Are Ill Equipped to Take Crimea Back From Russia), but Russia's ability to project power and hold territory isn't so hot, either.

A knowledgeable correspondent submitted these observations:

RE: Russian Army. Effective draft evasion is running 80%. Morale is low, training is very poor and poorly funded. The Russian army has also gone through 22 years of near continuous contraction.
And this standing army has heavy commitments in the Caucasus and Far East Siberia. Moreover, at least half of these Russian ground troops are short term 12 month conscripts. I don't think these kids will produce many usable and motivated troops. The low morale recently seen in the Ukrainian Berkut and other police will be multiplied by at least 10x.

Russian speaking Ukrainian bands are rumored to already be crossing the borders into Russia territory. They're to be ready to sabotage bridges and infrastructure and generally retaliate. Fluent Russian speakers with many years experience of living in Russia. Who can say for sure if this has already happened or is just being threatened? We can say this is a very real danger. These people look just like "Russians."

And we can also say this threat will seriously complicate Russian rear area security and logistics. And speaking of logistics, the distances in south Ossetia and Abkhazia were very short and the populations were entirely friendly. Neither condition prevails in the Ukraine outside the Crimea.

Supplying moving armored units over hundreds of miles of occupied country is very difficult logistically. The logistics for air assault helicopter units are just as bad. These helo units look mobile but they're a lot like a yoyo being twirled around your head on the string. They only go fast within a fixed radius anchored by logistics that are about as heavy to move as an armored division's supply columns. That is years in the 101st Airborne Division talking. The fuel consumption rates are immense. Stuff starts breaking down fast.

Conclusion: a de facto partition is already baked in because neither side can force a re-unification. Various jockeying and posturing will undoubtedly continue for some time, but the basic end-game is already visible: de facto partition.

Let's move on to correspondent A.C.'s observations about energy.

(On the web site there is a map which rounds out the European energy Rosetta Stone. When they hear that Italian fighter jets are over Tripoli, or that the French Foreign Legion has returned to the deep Sahara Desert, they can can better understand the reasons and real objectives of such operations.)

Many have noted that the Russia economy is critically dependent on oil and gas exports to the EU. It should be noted that the converse is less true every day about EU dependence on Russian oil and gas. The Wall Street Journal even had a line about an EU proposal to push natural gas EAST to the Ukraine. It's hard to understand that passage or where the natural gas could come from unless one understands the North Africa to southern Europe gas pipelines.

The factors bringing the conflict in Ukraine to a head are:

1. The natural gas discoveries in eastern Poland and western Ukraine played the largest role.

2. The reduced importance of the gas pipeline running through the Ukraine to Europe as compared to 2009. Since that time the Nordstream lines have been finished and Gazprom acquired commercial control of the Belarus pipeline. The South Stream lines are well along in development.

3. Fast developing liquid natural gas (LNG) seaport terminal infrastructure.

Events in Libya, Mali and Algeria are not hermetically isolated from this. They are part of a comprehensive energy policy problem being dealt with by the same leaderships. It increasingly looks like a series of peripheral Energy Wars that are being fought out for control of Europe.

LNG exports are going to become a weapon in the struggle for geopolitical influence and control.

This highlights another problem for Russia/Gazprom. Its present natural gas advantage in Europe now rests mainly on its pipeline infrastructure. This advantage is fading due to the current and proposed pipeline projects running through Turkey to Europe, plus LPG terminal & ship developments, plus the five trans-Mediterranean pipelines from Libya, Algeria and Morocco to southern Europe, plus local shale gas plays...

The Ukraine is not the only country becoming less systemically important to Europe for natural gas supply. So is Russia. Current events will only accelerate everyone's efforts to diversify away from such an unstable and apparently dangerous supplier.

I think the long-term fallout from the Ukrainian Crisis will be similar to China's attempt to exploit its temporary low price monopoly position in rare earth metals a few years ago. The result is rare earth metals are becoming less rare by the day as alternate mines outside China are opened and reopened.

Thank you, A.C. Scrape away the media sensationalism and geopolitical posturing and it boils down to a simple dynamic: follow the energy.


http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar14/Ukr ... y3-14.html

[seemslikeadream]

Published on Monday, March 3, 2014 by Common Dreams
Ukraine in Context: What You Don't Know About a New Cold War
In a crisis that betrays simple narratives, analysts hope for solutions that de-escalate the threat of violence while protecting ordinary Ukrainians from the various interests of elite powers

- Jon Queally, staff writer

A Ukrainian soldier stands inside a Ukrainian military base in Crimea as unidentified soldiers, assumed to be Russian, encircle the base. (Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty)

As the events in Ukraine have sent world leaders scurrying to develop and spread narratives that serve their own interests, the complexities of the geopolitical and economic implications—whether from a Russian, American, European or Ukrainian perspective—have become elusive to those trying to understand exactly what's going on inside the country.

While the U.S. media is obsessed with what it likes to describe as the belligerence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the political implications the crisis is having on Obama's foreign policy legacy, much of what is lost in the coverage is a more critical look at how Cold War history, austerity economics, and deep mistrust have emerged to make the situation in Ukraine, as one historian puts it, "the worst history of our lifetime."

What follows is a brief roundup of some of the contours missing from the surface coverage by voices that take a tougher and more in-depth look at the still unfolding situation.

NATO Encroachment, Not Russian Aggression

For his part, Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University who has long focused on Russia, says what is constantly missing from most mainstream coverage in the U.S. is the very real perception by many in Russia who see a European takeover of Ukraine as a direct military encroachment by the NATO powers on their western border.

This, he says, may be lost on an American audience, but the seriousness of it is not lost on those who know the history of War World I and the bloodshed along the Russian front after War World II that led to the Cold War.

Appearing on CNN this weekend, Cohen told viewers that it is U.S. and European policy in recent years, not what Putin is now doing, that deserves the most severe criticism. He said:

We are witnessing as we talk the making possibly of the worst history of our lifetime. We are watching the descending of a new cold war divide between west and east, only this time, it is not in far away Berlin, it's right on Russia's borders through the historical civilization in Ukraine. It's a crisis of historic magnitude. If you ask how we got in it, how we got into the crisis, and how therefore do we get out, it is time to stop asking why Putin - why Putin is doing this or that, but ask about the American policy, and the European Union policy that led to this moment.
Asked to elaborate, Cohen continued:

I don't know if you your listeners or views remember George Kennan. He was considered [a] great strategic thinker about Russia among American diplomats but he warned when we expanded NATO [under Bill Clinton], that this was the most fateful mistake of American foreign policy and that it would lead to a new Cold War. George lived to his hundreds, died a few years ago, but his truth goes marching on. The decision to move NATO beginning in the 90's continuing under Bush and continuing under Obama, is right now on Russia's borders.

And if you want to know for sure, and I have spent a lot of time in Moscow, if you want to know what the Russian power elite thinks Ukraine is about, it is about bringing it into NATO. One last point, that so-called economic partnership that Yanukovych, the elected president of Ukraine did not sign, and that set off the streets - the protests in the streets in November, which led to this violence in and confrontation today, that so-called economic agreement included military clauses which said that Ukraine by signing this so called civilization agreement had to abide by NATO military policy. This is what this is about from the Russian point of view, the ongoing western march towards post Soviet Russia.
Jonathan Steele, writing for Guardian, argues that both the US and the EU need to ratchet down both their rhetoric and threats. He contends the only real solution to the turmoil in Ukraine is one which respects the rights and aspirations of all Ukrainians. Matching Cohen's analysis in some way regarding NATO's encroachment, Steele writes:

Both John Kerry's threats to expel Russia from the G8 and the Ukrainian government's plea for Nato aid mark a dangerous escalation of a crisis that can easily be contained if cool heads prevail. Hysteria seems to be the mood in Washington and Kiev, with the new Ukrainian prime minister claiming, "We are on the brink of disaster" as he calls up army reserves in response to Russian military movements in Crimea.

Were he talking about the country's economic plight he would have a point. Instead, along with much of the US and European media, he was over-dramatising developments in the east, where Russian speakers are understandably alarmed after the new Kiev authorities scrapped a law allowing Russian as an official language in their areas. They see it as proof that the anti-Russian ultra-nationalists from western Ukraine who were the dominant force in last month's insurrection still control it. Eastern Ukrainians fear similar tactics of storming public buildings could be used against their elected officials.

Kerry's rush to punish Russia and Nato's decision to respond to Kiev's call by holding a meeting of member states' ambassadors in Brussels today were mistakes. Ukraine is not part of the alliance, so none of the obligations of common defence come into play. Nato should refrain from interfering in Ukraine by word or deed. The fact that it insists on getting engaged reveals the elephant in the room: underlying the crisis in Crimea and Russia's fierce resistance to potential changes is Nato's undisguised ambition to continue two decades of expansion into what used to be called "post-Soviet space", led by Bill Clinton and taken up by successive administrations in Washington. At the back of Pentagon minds, no doubt, is the dream that a US navy will one day replace the Russian Black Sea fleet in the Crimean ports of Sevastopol and Balaclava.
As for Russia's involvement, it should at least be seen in light of its own interests and the legality of the military intervention. Even if not justified, says Steele, it must be compared to that of other world powers who now wave their finger at Moscow with such hypocrisy. He concludes:

Vladimir Putin's troop movements in Crimea, which are supported by most Russians, are of questionable legality under the terms of the peace and friendship treaty that Russia signed with Ukraine in 1997. But their illegality is considerably less clear-cut than that of the US-led invasion of Iraq, or of Afghanistan, where the UN security council only authorised the intervention several weeks after it had happened. And Russia's troop movements can be reversed if the crisis abates. That would require the restoration of the language law in eastern Ukraine and firm action to prevent armed groups of anti-Russian nationalists threatening public buildings there.

The Russian-speaking majority in the region is as angry with elite corruption, unemployment and economic inequality as people in western Ukraine. But it also feels beleaguered and provoked, with its cultural heritage under existential threat. Responsibility for eliminating those concerns lies not in Washington, Brussels or Moscow, but solely in Kiev.
In Crimea: 'Not separatists... Federalists.'

Another aspect that has created controversy is whether the Russian military presence in Crimea and the rejection of the new Kiev government in other places in the south and east of the country is pretext for a secessionist movement within those provinces. Others worry that the political split between east and west could lead to all out civil war or a regional conflagration with the Ukraine army in the west, backed by the EU and US, facing off against Russian-backed forces in the east.

But Nicolai Petro, a professor of politics at the University of Rhode Island and currently a Fulbright research scholar in Ukraine, says those opposing the takeover in Kiev are not interested in splitting Ukraine, but instead are concerned about losing key rights, including their ability to retain their Russian heritage under new legal edicts. And, says Petro, those with close economic ties to Russia seeing those interests subjugated by a government beholden to European interests does little to inspire confidence in the emerging government that has taken control in Kiev.

Despite those worries, however, those characterized as 'Pro-Russian' do not want to secede, argues Petro in The Nation. He explains:

The regions in the South and East that oppose the [new government in Kiev] are not demanding to leave Ukraine. [...] They seek a more formal recognition of their rights. A popular slogan at a recent anti-Maidan meeting in [eastern city of] Kharkiv was ‘We are not separatists. We are federalists.’

Even in Crimea, the government recently put in place by local ‘self-defense forces’ has asked only for a referendum, citing the need to guarantee its autonomy ‘under any changes in central authority or the Constitution of Ukraine.’ The referendum question in fact stipulates that Crimea ‘is part of Ukraine on the basis of agreements and accords.’

In this context being ‘pro-Russian’ does not mean joining Russia. It means speaking, worshiping, and going to school in your own language, in your own country — Ukraine.
Whose Crony-Capitalism?

Lastly, informed observers note that what's really driving the crisis in Ukraine is about the country's faltering economic conditions more than anything else. What should not be lost, they suggest, is the fact that Ukraine—guided by the interim government in Kiev—is now on the verge of taking on billions of dollars in public debt by accepting financial bailout packages from the International Monetary Fund and European banks.

The Wall Street Journal reports Monday that an IMF team is en route to Kiev to begin discussions with the interim government there over the possible details of such a financial package.

As the economist Michael Roberts noted recently, "the people of Ukraine [were] left with Hobson's choice: either go with KGB-led crony capitalism from Russia or go with equally corrupt pro-European 'democrats'".

Roberts continued:

The collapse of the pro-Russian regime of Yanukovych is a big defeat for Russia national interests. Putin sees Ukraine as a satellite of Russian crony capitalism. As he once told the then-US President George Bush: “Ukraine is not even a state”. In public, Mr Putin can’t bring himself to call Ukraine anything but a “krai,” the Russian word for territory. He was determined to stop Ukraine coming under the wing of German-led European capitalism. But his man, Yanukovych could not deliver.

Now the pro-European bourgeois leaders in Kiev will prostrate themselves before the EU and IMF in order obtain ‘aid’. These politicians are just as much in the hands of Ukraine’s billionaire oligarchs as the ousted pro-Russian government were. As the German journal, Der Spiegel has explained, two oligarchs, Akhmetov and Firtash, between them control over 90 MPs in the Ukraine parliament. Akhmetov is worth $15 billion and is head of the holdings company System Capital Management, which controls more than 100 companies with some 300,000 employees. They include metallurgical and pipe factories, banks, real estate firms, mobile phone enterprises and a large media company. He is the de-facto ruler of Donbass, the home of Ukrainian heavy industry and owns the football team Shakhtar Donetsk.

These oligarchs soon realised well before the current crisis that Yanukovych would not be around for much longer. They began carefully looking around for alternatives.
But as Andrej Nikolaidis, a Bosnian who says the situation in Ukraine reminds him all too much about what happened in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990's, says in a piece in the Guardian on Monday: "When common people find themselves in the middle of a geopolitical storm – as the citizens of Ukraine do now, or my family back then in Bosnia – the dilemma "is this glass half empty or half full?" is irrelevant: soon, it will be broken."

And Nikolaidis continues with a warning:

In their struggle to overcome Russian occupation and survive all the Trojan horses from the institutions of global capitalism, it is to be hoped that people in Ukraine learned a thing from the war in Bosnia – that a deus ex machina from the west will never land, solving the situation and leading them into the promised land of the EU.

Bosnia today is a poor and divided country, even more so than it was back in 1992. Former soldiers, hungry and sick, are gathering and protesting. "While we were bleeding, they were stealing," says one. In the past, they were ready to die for their nation and its bright future. Some Bosnians saw their future under the Bosnian and EU flag, others under the Croatian and EU flag, and others still under the flag of The Great Serbia. Lots of flags, but only one poverty for all.
What's needed in that context, according to Petro's assessment, is a diplomatic and economic solution that caters to the interests of all Ukrainans, not one driven by discussions that take place "in New York, Brussels or Moscow."

"The partners that need to resolve their differences are all inside Ukraine," he says, "and the issue they need to address is full equality between the two major cultural components of Ukrainian identity, Ukrainian and Russian. Only this can provide the basis for a common vision for the future shared across the entire land."

[Peachtree Pam]

:

http://en.itar-tass.com/economy/721798

Gazprom says disruptions of gas supplies to Europe possible

MOSCOW, March 03. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s gas giant Gazprom said on Monday it did not rule out possible disruptions of gas supplies to Europe over Ukraine’s political situation.

“Simmering political tensions in Ukraine, that are aggravated by inadequate economic conditions, may cause disruptions of gas supplies to Europe,” the monopoly said in its materials, adding that it would do its utmost to reduce export risks. “We will further invest into other export-oriented projects such as South Stream and will enhance our LNG (liquefied natural gas) production and export capacity. We also increase our access to underground gas storage facilities in Europe.”

Andrei Kruglov, Gazprom’s chief financial officer, said at the moment Russia had been supplying gas to Ukraine according to schedule, although the latter failed to fulfil its debt obligations.

On March 1, Gazprom’s spokesperson Sergai Kupriyanov said the gas holding could cancel its gas supply discount for Ukraine as its overdue debt for gas reached $1.5 billion. This figure includes debts not only for last year’s supplies, but also for the current deliveries.

In late January, Ukraine asked Russia for deferral of payments for gas supplied in 2013 and in early 2014. President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine’s debt totalled $2.7 billion then.

[Peachtree Pam]

From Zero Hedge

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-0 ... ik-ukraine

Submitted by Anatole Kaletsky via Evergreen-Gavekal,

Sentences in bold are by the author

Oscar Wilde described marriage as the triumph of imagination over intelligence and second marriage as the triumph of hope over experience. In finance and geopolitics, by contrast, experience must always prevail over hope and realism over wishful thinking. A grim case in point is the Russian incursion into Ukraine. What makes this confrontation so dangerous is that US and EU policy seems to be motivated entirely by hope and wishful thinking. Hope that Vladimir Putin will “see sense,” or at least be deterred by the threat of US and EU sanctions to Russia’s economic interests and the personal wealth of his oligarch friends. Wishful thinking about “democracy and freedom” overcoming dictatorship and military bullying.

Financial markets cannot afford to be so sentimental. While we should always recall at a time like this the famous advice from Nathan Rothschild to “buy at the sound of gunfire,” the drastically risk-off response to weekend events in Ukraine makes perfect sense because Russia’s annexation of Crimea is the most dangerous geopolitical event of the post-Cold War era, and perhaps since the Cuban Missile crisis. It can result in only two possible outcomes, either of which will be damaging to European stability in the long-term. Either Russia will quickly prevail and thereby win the right to redraw borders and exercise veto powers over the governments of its neighbouring countries. Or the Western-backed Ukrainian government will fight back and Europe’s second-largest country by area will descend into a Yugoslav-style civil war that will ultimately draw in Poland, NATO and therefore the US.

No other outcome is possible because it is literally inconceivable that Putin will ever withdraw from Crimea. To give up Crimea now would mean the end of Putin’s presidency, since the Russian public, not to mention the military and security apparatus, believe almost unanimously that Crimea still belongs to Russia, since it was only administratively transferred to Ukraine, almost by accident, in 1954. In fact, many Russians believe, rightly or wrongly, that most of Ukraine “belongs” to them. (The very name of the country in Russian means “at the border” and certainly not “beyond the border”). Under these circumstances, the idea that Putin would respond to Western diplomatic or economic sanctions, no matter how stringent, by giving up his newly gained territory is pure wishful thinking.

Putin’s decision to back himself into this corner has been derided by the Western media as a strategic blunder but it is actually a textbook example of realpolitik. Putin has created a situation where the West’s only alternative to acquiescing in the Russian takeover of Crimea is all-out war. And since a NATO military attack on Russian forces is even more inconceivable than Putin’s withdrawal, it seems that Russia has won this round of the confrontation. The only question now is whether the new Ukrainian government will accept the loss of Crimea quietly or try to retaliate against Russian speakers in Ukraine—offering Putin a pretext for invasion, and thereby precipitating an all-out civil war.

That is the key question investors must consider in deciding whether the Ukraine crisis is a Rothschild-style buying opportunity, or a last chance to bail out of risk-assets before it is too late. The balance of probabilities in such situations is usually tilted towards a peaceful solution—in this case, Western acquiescence in the Russian annexation of Crimea and the creation of a new national unity government in Kiev acceptable to Putin. The trouble is that the alternative of a full-scale war, while far less probable, would have much greater impact—on the European and global economies, on energy prices and on the prices of equities and other riskassets that are already quite highly valued. At present, therefore, it makes sense to stand back and prepare for either outcome by maintaining balanced portfolios of the kind recommended by Charles, with equal weightings of equities and very long-duration US bonds.

Looking back through history at comparable episodes of severe geopolitical confrontation, investors have usually done well to wait for the confrontation to reach some kind of climax before putting on more risk.

In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the S&P 500 fell -6.5% between October 16, when the confrontation started, and October 23, the worst day of the crisis, when President Kennedy issued his nuclear ultimatum to Nikita Khrushchev. The market steadied then, but did not rebound in earnest until four days later, when it became clear that Khrushchev would back down; it went on to gain 30% in the next six months.

Similarly in the 1991 Gulf War, it was not until the bombing of Baghdad actually started and a quick US victory looked certain, that equities bounced back, gaining 25% by the summer. Thus investors did well to buy at the sound of gunfire, but lost nothing by waiting six months after Saddam Hussein’s initial invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990.

Even in the worst-case scenario to which the invasion of Crimea has been compared over the weekend—the German annexation of Sudetenland in June 1938—Wall Street only rebounded in earnest, gaining 24% within one month, on September 29, 1938. That was the day before Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich, brandishing his infamous note from Hitler and declaring “peace in our time.” The ultimate triumph of hope over experience.

[kelley]

zero hedge is consistently featuring the best commentary on this crisis.

[seemslikeadream]

America’s Staggering Hypocrisy
March 4, 2014

Exclusive: Official Washington is in deep umbrage over Russia’s intervention in Ukraine after a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected president. Some top neocons want a new Cold War, but they don’t want anyone to note their staggering hypocrisy, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Since World War II – and extending well into the Twenty-first Century – the United States has invaded or otherwise intervened in so many countries that it would be challenging to compile a complete list. Just last decade, there were full-scale U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, plus American bombing operations from Pakistan to Yemen to Libya.

So, what is one to make of Secretary of State John Kerry’s pronouncement that Russia’s military intervention in the Crimea section of Ukraine – at the behest of the country’s deposed president – is a violation of international law that the United States would never countenance?

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland during a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, on Feb. 7, 2014. (U.S. State Department photo)
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, a leading figure in supporting the coup against Ukraine’s President Vicktor Yanukovych. (U.S. State Department photo)
Kerry decried the Russian intervention as “a Nineteenth Century act in the Twenty-first Century.” However, if memory serves, Sen. Kerry in 2002 voted along with most other members of the U.S. Congress to authorize President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was also part of the Twenty-first Century. And, Kerry is a member of the Obama administration, which like its Bush predecessor, has been sending drones into the national territory of other nations to blow up various “enemy combatants.”

Are Kerry and pretty much everyone else in Official Washington so lacking in self-awareness that they don’t realize that they are condemning actions by Russian President Vladimir Putin that are far less egregious than what they themselves have done?

If Putin is violating international law by sending Russian troops into the Crimea after a violent coup spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias ousted Ukraine’s democratically elected president – and after he requested protection for the ethnic Russians living in the country’s south and east – then why hasn’t the U.S. government turned over George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and indeed John Kerry to the International Criminal Court for their far more criminal invasion of Iraq?

In 2003, when the Bush-Cheney administration dispatched troops halfway around the world to invade Iraq under the false pretense of seizing its non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. touched off a devastating war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and left their country a bitterly divided mess. But there has been virtually no accountability.

And, why haven’t many of the leading Washington journalists who pimped for those false WMD claims at least been fired from their prestigious jobs, if not also trundled off to The Hague for prosecution as propagandists for aggressive war?

Remarkably, many of these same “journalists” are propagandizing for more U.S. wars today, such as attacks on Syria and Iran, even as they demand harsh penalties for Russia over its intervention in the Crimea, which incidentally was an historic part of Russia dating back centuries.

The WPost’s Double Standards

A stunning example of the U.S. media’s double standards is the Washington Post’s editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt, who pushed for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 by treating the existence of Iraq’s non-existent WMD as “flat fact,” not an allegation in dispute. After the U.S. invasion and months of fruitless searching for the promised WMD caches, Hiatt finally acknowledged that the Post should have been more circumspect in its claims about the WMD.

“If you look at the editorials we write running up [to the war], we state as flat fact that he [Saddam Hussein] has weapons of mass destruction,” Hiatt said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review. “If that’s not true, it would have been better not to say it.” [CJR, March/April 2004]

Yes, that is a principle of journalism, if something isn’t true, we’re not supposed to say that it is. Yet, despite the enormous cost in blood and treasure from the Iraq War – and despite the undeniable fact that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a clear violation of international law – nothing happened to Hiatt. He remains in the same job today, more than a decade later.

His editorials also continue to state dubious points as “flat fact.” For instance, the Post’s belligerent editorial on Monday, entitled online as “President Obama’s foreign policy is based on fantasy,” resurfaces the discredited claim that the Syrian government was responsible for a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.

The Post wrote, “Since the Syrian dictator crossed Mr. Obama’s red line with a chemical weapons attack that killed 1,400 civilians, the dictator’s military and diplomatic position has steadily strengthened.”

Note how there is no attribution or doubt expressed regarding either the guilt of the Syrian government or the number of casualties. Just “flat fact.” The reality, however, is that the U.S. government assertions blaming the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad for the poison gas attack and the death tally of 1,400 have both crumbled under examination.

The U.S. casualty figure of “1,429” always was regarded as a wild exaggeration, since doctors on the scene cited a much lower death toll of a few hundred, and the Wall Street Journal later reported that the strangely precise number was ascertained by the CIA applying facial recognition software to images of dead bodies posted on YouTube and then subtracting duplicates and those in bloody shrouds.

The problems with this “methodology” were obvious, since there was no way to know the dates when the YouTube videos were taken and the absence of bloody shrouds did not prove that the cause of death was poison gas.

More significantly, the U.S. claims about where the missiles were launched – more than nine kilometers from the impact site – turned out to be false, since expert analysis of the one missile that was found to carry Sarin gas had a maximum range of around two kilometers. That meant that the launch site was within territory controlled by the Syrian opposition, not the government. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mistaken Guns of Last August.”]

Though it remains unclear which side was to blame for the chemical attack, the Syrian government’s guilt surely was not a “slam dunk” anymore than the Iraqi government’s possession of WMD in 2003. In such a case – especially on sensitive matters of war or peace – responsible journalists reflect the uncertainty, not simply assert an allegation as “flat fact.”

However, since Hiatt was never punished for his earlier journalistic violation – even though it contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including some 4,500 U.S. soldiers – he is still around to commit the same offenses again, in an even more dangerous context, i.e., a confrontation between the United States and Russia, two nuclear-armed states.

Pushing for a New Cold War

And, what do Hiatt and other neocons at the Washington Post say about confronting the Russians over the Ukraine crisis, which was stoked by neocon holdovers in the U.S. State Department, such as Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, which was founded in 1983 to replace the CIA in the business of destabilizing targeted governments? [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]

The Post is demanding a new Cold War with Russia in retaliation for its relatively non-violent interventions to protect pro-Russian provinces of two countries that were carved out of the old Soviet Union: Georgia where Russian troops have protected South Ossetia and Abkhazia since 2008 and in Ukraine where Russian soldiers have taken control of Crimea. In both cases, the pro-Russian areas felt threatened from their central governments and sought Moscow’s assistance.

In the case of Ukraine, a neo-Nazi-led putsch – representing the interests of the western part of the country – overthrew the democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, who came from the eastern region. Then, under the watchful eye of the neo-Nazi storm troopers in Kiev, a rump parliament voted unanimously or near unanimously to enact a series of draconian laws offensive to the ethnic Russian areas in the east and south.

Having fled Kiev for his life, Yanukovych asked Russia for help, which led to Putin’s request to the Russian parliament for the authority to deploy troops inside Ukraine, essentially taking control of Crimea in the south, an area that has been part of Russia for centuries.

Though the Russian case for intervention in both Georgia and Ukraine is much stronger than the excuses often used by the United States to intervene in other countries, the Washington Post was apoplectic about Russia’s “violation” of suddenly sacred international law.

The Post wrote, “as long as some leaders play by what Mr. Kerry dismisses as 19th-century rules, the United States can’t pretend that the only game is in another arena altogether. Military strength, trustworthiness as an ally, staying power in difficult corners of the world such as Afghanistan — these still matter, much as we might wish they did not.”

The Post also laments what it sees as a “receding” tide of democracy around the world, but it is worth noting that the U.S. government has a long and sorry record of overthrowing democratic governments. Just a partial list since World War II would include: Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Allende in Chile in 1973, Aristide in Haiti twice, Chavez in Venezuela briefly in 2002, Zelaya in Honduras in 2009, Morsi in Egypt in 2013, and now Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2014. The next target of a U.S.-embraced “democratic” coup looks to be Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela.

Perhaps the closest U.S. parallel to the Russian intervention in Ukraine was President Bill Clinton’s decision to invade Haiti in 1994 to reinstall Haiti’s elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to office, though Russia has not gone nearly that far regarding Yanukovych in Ukraine. Russia has only intervened to prevent the fascist-spearheaded coup regime in Kiev from imposing its will on the country’s ethnic Russian provinces.

Also, in the case of Aristide, the U.S. role wasn’t as pro-democratic as Clinton’s invasion on his behalf might suggest. Clinton ordered the action to reverse a 1991 military coup that ousted President Aristide with the support of President George H.W. Bush. Aristide was deposed a second time in 2004 in a coup partly engineered by the administration of President George W. Bush.

In other words, Clinton’s intervention on behalf of a popularly elected leader in Haiti was the anomaly to the more typical U.S. pattern of collaborating with right-wing military officers in the overthrow of elected leaders who don’t comply with Washington’s wishes.

Thus, the overriding hypocrisy of the Washington Post, Secretary Kerry and indeed nearly all of Official Washington is their insistence that the United States actually promotes the principle of democracy or, for that matter, the rule of international law. Those are at best situational ethics when it comes to advancing U.S. interests around the world.

[Peachtree Pam]

http://www.zerohedge.com/


Putin Advisor Threatens With Dumping US Treasurys, Abandoning Dollar If US Proceeds With Sanctions

While the comments by Russian presidential advisor, Sergei Glazyev, came before Putin's detente press conference early this morning, they did flash a red light of warning as to what Russian response may be should the west indeed proceed with "crippling" sanctions as Kerry is demanding. As RIA reports, his advice is that "authorities should dump US government bonds in the event of Russian companies and individuals being targeted by sanctions over events in Ukraine." Glazyev said the United States would be the first to suffer in the event of any sanctions regime. “The Americans are threatening Russia with sanctions and pulling the EU into a trade and economic war with Russia,” Glazyev said. “Most of the sanctions against Russia will bring harm to the United States itself, because as far as trade relations with the United States go, we don’t depend on them in any way.”

[seemslikeadream]

Published on Tuesday, March 4, 2014 by Inter Press Service
US Hawks Take Flight over Ukraine
by Jim Lobe

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in this file photo.
WASHINGTON - A familiar clutch of hawks have taken wing over the rapidly developing crisis in Ukraine, as neo-conservatives and other interventionists claim that President Barack Obama’s preference for diplomacy over military action invited Russian aggression.

At stake in the current crisis, according to these right-wing critics, are not only Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, but also Washington’s “credibility” as a global superpower and the perpetuation by the U.S. and its western allies of the post-Cold War international order.

"[It] makes about as much sense as saying that a proper response to a terrorist act by an Afghanistan-based group is to launch a war against Iraq.” —Paul Pillar
Some right-wing commentators, such as Michael Auslin of the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which played a major role in drumming up support for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, have even compared Russian President Vladimir Putin’s moves to occupy the Crimean peninsula to Adolf Hitler’s absorption of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland as a result of the notorious Munich agreement in 1938.

“The toxic brew of negative perceptions of Western/liberal military capability and political will is rapidly undermining the post-1945 order around the world,” he wrote on the Forbes magazine website Monday.

“One can only assume that China, Iran, and North Korea are watching Crimea just as closely as Putin watched Washington’s reactions to East and South China Sea territorial disputes, Pyongyang’s nuclear provocations, and Syria’s civil war,” according to Auslin, echoing a line of attack against Obama that has become a leitmotiv among his fellow interventionists.

“(T)here is more than (Russian Prime Minister Vladimir) Putin to think about,” according to Elliott Abrams, a leading neo-conservative who served as George W. Bush’s top Middle East aide, wrote Monday on the National Review website.

“Tyrants in places from Tehran to Beijing will also be wondering about the cost of violating international law and threatening the peace and stability of neighbors. What will China do in neighboring seas, or Iran do in its tiny neighbor Bahrain, if actions like Putin’s go without a response?” he asked.

As yet there have been few voices in favour of taking any military action, although both the lead editorial in Monday’s Wall Street Journal and Freedom House President David Kramer called for Obama to deploy ships from the U.S. Sixth Fleet into the Black Sea, and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called for reviving Bush-era plans to erect new missile defence systems along Russia’s European periphery.

But the president, who spent 90 minutes on the phone with Putin Saturday in an unsuccessful effort to persuade the Russian leaders to send Russian troops in Crimea back to their barracks, is being pressed hard to take a series of tough actions against Moscow.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who traveled to Kiev Tuesday in a show of support for its new government— including one billion dollars in U.S. aid—as part of a much larger Western economic package to be led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), listed a number of moves Sunday that Washington has already taken or is actively considering adopting.

In addition to coordinating international – particularly European – condemnation of Putin’s moves against Ukraine, Kerry also said Washington had cancelled upcoming bilateral trade talks and is considering boycotting the G8 summit that Putin is scheduled to host in Sochi in June, if not suspending or formally expelling Russia from that body.

If Russia doesn’t “step back” from its effective takeover of Crimea, he said Sunday, “there could even be, ultimately, asset freezes (and) visa bans” against specific individuals and economic enterprises associated with the current crisis. He called Russia’s move “an incredible act of aggression.”

“We are examining a whole series of steps — economic, diplomatic — that will isolate Russia and will have a negative impact on Russia’s economy and its status in the world.,” Obama himself warned Monday during a joint press appearance with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the same time, however, he stressed that he was still looking for a diplomatic way out of the crisis – possibly with the help of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that reportedly began sending monitors to the Ukraine Monday evening — which could reassure Moscow regarding the protection and welfare of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine and Crimea in whose interests Moscow has justified its actions to date.

The administration and most analysts here agreed that Washington’s freedom of action in reacting to the current crisis must necessarily be coordinated with its European allies, some of which, including the continent’s economic powerhouse, Germany, are strongly disinclined to escalate matters. Germany gets about one-third of its gas supplies from Russia and has long considered a cooperative relationship with Moscow to be critical to maintaining stability in central Europe.

Such constraints clearly frustrate the hawks here, even as some of them, such as Sen. John McCain, acknowledged Monday that Washington had no ready military option and would, in any event, have to coordinate closely with Brussels as the crisis unfolds.

But, speaking before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), McCain also blamed Obama’s alleged timidity – particularly his failure to carry out his threat to take military action against Syria last September – for the situation. “(T)his is the ultimate result of a feckless foreign policy in which nobody believes in America’s strength anymore,” McCain said to thunderous applause from the hawkish audience whom Netanyahu will address Tuesday.

Indeed, Israel-centred neo-conservatives, for whom Obama’s “weakness” and “appeasement” in dealing with perceived adversaries have become a mantra over the past five years, have been quick to use the Ukraine crisis to argue for toughening Washington’s position in the Middle East, in particular.

“In the brutal world of global power politics, Ukraine is in particular a casualty of Mr. Obama’s failure to enforce his ‘red line’ on Syria,” according to the Journal’s editorial writers, who stressed that “(a)dversaries and allies in Asia and the Middle East will be watching President Obama’s response now. …Iran is counting on U.S. weakness in nuclear talks.”

“Like Putin, the ayatollahs likely see our failure to act in Syria … as a sign that they can drive a hard bargain indeed with us over their nuclear weapons program, giving up nearly nothing and getting sanctions relief,” wrote Abrams on his Council on Foreign Relations blog over the weekend.

“And now they see us reacting (so far) to Russian aggression in Ukraine, sending troops across the border into the Crimea, with tut-tutting,” he added in a call for Congress – likely to be echoed by Netanyahu here this week — to pass stalled legislation imposing new sanctions against Tehran.

“That makes about as much sense …as saying that a proper response to a terrorist act by an Afghanistan-based group is to launch a war against Iraq,” replied Paul Pillar, the intelligence community’s top analyst for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, on his nationalinterest.com blog Monday.

[Peachtree Pam]

http://www.zerohedge.com/

To Celebrate Detente Russian Navy Blocks Channel Between Crimea And Russia
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/04/2014 - 10:02

It took just a few short hours after Putin's Cold War 2.0 "detente" overtures for Russia to show that there is a difference between actions and words. In this case, and as always, the former continue to outperform the latter, and Reuters reports that Russian navy ships have blocked off the Kerch Strait which separates Ukraine's Crimea region and Russia.

[seemslikeadream]

Published on Tuesday, March 4, 2014 by Common Dreams
What the US Media Won't Tell You About Ukraine
by Ted Rall

Armed men in military uniform walk outside a Ukrainian military unit near Simferopol, Ukraine, on Sunday, March 2. Hundreds of armed men in trucks and armored vehicles surrounded the Ukrainian base Sunday in Crimea, blocking its soldiers from leaving. (Photo: Getty Images)
As usual, America's foreign correspondents are falling down on the job.

Stories devoid of historical context cast Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a naked act of neo-Soviet aggression. Considering that the relevant history begins a mere two decades ago, its omission is inexcusable.

The spark that led to the takeover of Crimea was not the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovich. It is what happened the day after.

A 2012 law gave the Russian language official status in regions where Russians comprise more than 10% of the population. This is the case in most of eastern Ukraine and particularly in Crimea, where 59% are ethnic Russians.

One week ago, Ukraine's rump parliament (members of Yanukovich's party, hiding from opposition forces and in fear for their lives, didn't show up) took advantage of Yanukovich's downfall to overturn the language law. Americans didn't notice, but Russians did.

"Attack on the Russian language in Ukraine is a brutal violation of ethnic minority rights," Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry's commissioner for human rights, tweeted that day.

Seems a little over-the-top, right?

Sure, but only if you don't know that millions of ethnic Russians in former Soviet Republics have suffered widespread discrimination and harassment since the 1991 collapse — and that their troubles began with laws eliminating Russian as an official language.

Laws like the one passed last week in Ukraine.

The demise of the Soviet Union left 25 million Russians stranded in 14 newly independent states, in such countries as Belarus, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Ukraine. These new countries had to scramble in order to create the trappings of national identity virtually overnight. They designed new flags, composed national anthems and printed new currency.

To instill a sense of loyalty and patriotism, the governments of many of the freshly-minted republics resorted to rank nationalism.

Nationalism isn't just about what your country is. It's also about what it isn't. This requires defining some things — some people — as outsiders. Unwanted. Scapegoats. Enemies of the state.

Turkmenistan, a Central Asian dictatorship and former Soviet republic in Central Asia, is one example. It instituted a policy of "Turkmenization" after 1991. Russians, a privileged group before independence, were now refused work permits. A 2000 decree banned the use of the Russian language in official business; since Turkmenistan is a totalitarian state and all business is legally governmental, this reduced Russians who didn't speak Turkmen to poverty and low-status jobs.

The Turkmen government abolished dual Turkmen-Russian citizenship, leading to the mass exodus of panicked Russians in 2003. Denaturalization — the stripping away of citizenship — followed. "Many people…were having to sell houses and apartments at far below market values in order to leave by the deadline," reported the UN. Hundreds of thousands of people lost everything they owned.

"Over the past decade Russians have been systematically discriminated against, and currently hold no positions in Turkmenistan's government or state institutions," says the report.

Russians who remained behind after 2003 fared poorly. "On the streets of the eastern city of Turkmenabat, Russians appear to be rapidly becoming an underclass in a nation mired in poverty. Many scrape a living as taxi drivers, waitresses or in other low paying, insecure jobs."

Harassment of Russians is rife throughout the former USSR. Every other Commonwealth of Independent States nation has abolished dual citizenship.

In the former Soviet Union, everyone knows that the road to statelessness, unpersonhood and poverty begins with the official elimination of Russian as an official language.

National language statutes targeted against Russian speakers are analogous to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg Laws, which prevented Jews from holding jobs or even owning a radio: the beginning of the end. At the end of the Soviet period in 1989, the Tajik SSR passed a law establishing Tajik as the sole official language. Less than two decades later, 85% of ethnic Russians had left the country.

"The linguistic nationalization carried out in each republic provided a strong impetus to emigrate…Even if schools systematically introduce children to the official language today, the [former Soviet] states have established no programs to train adults," Seymour Peyrouse noted in a 2008 report for the Woodrow Wilson Institute about the Central Asian republics. "It seems that the principal cause of emigration remains the absence of a future, or the perception of such, for the younger generations."

Given recent history, it shouldn't surprise anyone that ethnic Russians freaked out when one of the first official acts of Ukraine's parliament was a linguistic nationalization law.

As for Russia's response, you need to know two facts. First, Ukraine isn't as independent of Russia as, say, Poland. None of the former Soviet republics are. "Kiev is an ancient Russian city," Masha Gessen writes in Vanity Fair. "It is an overnight train ride from Moscow — closer than 90% of Russia is to the Russian capital. Russian citizens haven't needed visas or even foreign-travel passports to go to Ukraine — the way U.S. citizens can enter Canada with only a driver's license. Every store clerk, waiter, and taxi driver in Kiev speaks Russian." And of course there's the Black Sea Fleet. Really really independent countries don't have 11,000 foreign troops stationed on their soil.

Had it been possible for rational diplomats and demographers to manage the Soviet collapse, Crimea probably would have wound up in Russia.

Until half a century ago, after all, Crimea was Russian. Nikita Khrushchev "gifted Crimea to Ukraine as a gesture of goodwill to mark the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's merger with tsarist Russia. Not surprisingly, at the time, it did not occur to anyone that one day the Soviet Union might collapse and that Ukraine would again be an independent country," writes The Moscow Times.

It's easy to see why Vladimir Putin would invade, why Russian public opinion would support him, and why neither cares what America thinks. Back in September, after all, most Russians told pollsters Crimea is part of Russia.

Why are American reporters covering Crimea ignoring the big picture, and instead so focused on secondary distractions like how it makes Obama look and whether there's a chance of a new Cold War?

Four horsemen of the journalism apocalypse afflict overseas reporting:

Journalistic stenography, in which attending a government press conference constitutes research.

Kneejerk patriotism, where reporters identify with their government and are therefore less likely to question its actions, while reflexively assuming that rivals of the U.S. are ill-intentioned.

Jack-of-all-trades journalism, in which the same writers cover too many different beats. A few decades ago, there would have been a bureau chief, or at least a stringer, who knew Ukraine and/or the former Soviet Union because he or she lived there.

American ahistoricism, the widespread and widely acceptable ignorance of politics and history — especially those of other countries.

[Julian the Apostate]

Is it possible to be ok with Russia annexing Crimea, but not ok with Germany annexing Sudetenland? Apart from some trivial historical differences they are very similar. If so could someone please explain it to me? Thanks

[RocketMan]

Is it possible to be ok with Russia annexing Ukraine, but not ok with Germany annexing Sudetenland? Apart from some trivial historical differences they are very similar. If so could someone please explain it to me? Thanks

I guess we'll have to see whether Putin invades Poland before we continue that discussion.

[Julian the Apostate]

Is it possible to be ok with Russia annexing Ukraine, but not ok with Germany annexing Sudetenland? Apart from some trivial historical differences they are very similar. If so could someone please explain it to me? Thanks

I guess we'll have to see whether Putin invades Poland before we continue that discussion.

There are 13,000 ethnic Russians in Poland. Perhaps they need "protecting" too.

(joking)
((kind of))

I certainly wouldn't want to be a former soviet republic with a large population of ethnic Russians right now...

[Julian the Apostate]

BTW I edited my original post to say Crimea instead of Ukraine. Important difference. I think Ukraine's best case scenario is Putin gets away with Crimea and the rest of Ukraine stays intact. A worse case would be Russia gets Crimea and also Eastern Ukraine.

[kelley]

NATO's goal since the early '90s has been to encircle russia. internecine ethinc differences in ukraine complicate that strategy, and russia has no interest in a NATO satellite on its western border. ethnic russians in eastern ukraine view this as an existential threat not unlike the great patriotic war. elements in the west seize upon chaos to destabilize the entire region. if putin is 'weakened' by the loss of ukraine it will spell the end of his regime. better the devil one knows than the devil one doesn't? maybe, but this is how the strategy announced by rumsfeld in his comments re: 'new europe' were designed to play out, and wall street simply cannot abide resource profits remaining in russian hands.

btw, this new yorker story gives fantastic insight into the jockeying for resource control in the region:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014 ... fact_bruck

very pertinent.