One of the downsides of the US “regime change” business is that when you break it, you often have to buy it. It’s all fun and games when you wander through the streets of Kiev with a bag of cookies encouraging the people to overthrow their government, or when you appear on stage before a riotous mob and alongside avowed national-socialists violently overthrowing a democratically-elected government.
What gets messy is when you get your way, the old government is overthrown, your “guys” seize power, and it turns out corruption and economic mismanagement are worse than before the US-backed “liberation.”
So what do you do when interventions go badly? If you are the US government spending other people’s money, you simply escalate. In Libya and Iraq, that means going back in with US boots on the ground.
With Ukraine, it’s simply a matter of tossing another billion dollars into the burning wreck of a runaway train. So today the US announced that the US taxpayer would guarantee its third $1 billion dollar loan to the Ukrainian government.
US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, who played a key role in engineering the Maidan revolt in Ukraine, had this to say about spending more of other people’s money on the Ukrainian train wreck:
The guarantee sends a strong signal of the United States’ continued support for Ukraine as it pursues reforms that fulfill the Ukrainian people’s aspirations for a prosperous and democratic future.
What that means is anyone’s guess.
For his part, US-backed president Petro Poroshenko boasted back home that he was able to secure this extra billion dollars while meeting with President Obama in April. He said:
This bears testament to the fact that the United States and Ukraine are reliable strategic partners.
Careful there, Poroshenko. The US doesn’t have the best record when it comes to “strategic partners.” Ask Saddam, Gaddafi, Noriega, and so on…
Daniel McAdams is director of the The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity. Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
The idea that Yanukovych had any democratic credentials is laughable, a man with a criminal past, robbing government coffers, changing the constitution to bolster his power, shooting and killing demonstrators. Extreme right elements in Ukraine are a small number with little power unlike Russia with its ideology of Eurasianism (Alexander Dugin) supported by Putin. In Ukraine there is an opposition to the govenment in parliament whereas in Russia there is no opposition to speak of. Putin has completely crushed his opposition, silenced most of the media that is critical of his regime. So in which country does fascism reign supreme? The answer is – Putin’s Russia hands down!!
Ha!…. Oh, you were serious.
Look Lucky, whether you like Mr. Putin or not (As an anarchist and an anti-imperialist, I have mixed feelings myself), he was fairly elected by the Russian people and so was Mr. Yanukovych, for that matter. The influence of Dugin in the Kremlin has been wildly over-exaggerated (not to mention largely unproven) by the Western media. The reason for this is simple, Dugin is quite literally the only semi-influential Russian figure who’s philosophy mirrors our feckless little conspiracy theory of an Imperial Russia.
If Putin were truly a Eurasianist he would have taken all of Ukraine by now. It wouldn’t have been hard to do and nearly half of Ukraine would have welcomed it. But no, Putin stopped at accepting Crimea’s (democratic) choice to rejoin Russia. If Putin were truly a Eurasianist he would have crushed Georgia like a walnut after they launched an attack against South Ossetia. But no, once again Putin showed restraint. He liberated South Ossetia and Abkhazia from illegal Georgian rule, then promptly returned home.
Putin is not a Eurasianist, or a fascist, or an imperialist, or whatever. Putin is just the first Russian leader since Andropov with the guts to take one the American Empire. That is what has thrusted him to the top of the US’ sh*tlist and that is what has earned him the begrudging admiration of even a queer anarchist such as myself. It’s refreshing to see anyone bloody that bully Uncle Sams nose, even if he is a homophobic, statist technocrat.
With the Crimea safely back in Russia’s hands The black sea is still under Russia control . Russia could not have had it any other way .
“The idea that Yanukovych had any democratic credentials is laughable” Hmm, I believe he won a fair election whether you or your puppetmasters like it or not.
Well as I pointed out earlier there is no alternative to Putin in Russia. he conveniently got any opponents out of the way by murder or imprisonment. Even if not directly guilty he certainly set the tone and circumstances for this. There is no independent judiciary in Russia. Decisions in court re dissidents to the regime are simply made on expedient political grounds. Explain Nemstov’s murder on Putin’s doorstep? These men held by the authorities are just the ones who may have carried out the killing – but who ordered this crime?? Crimea only had a quickly organised referendum at the barrel of a gun. And now minorities in Crimea as the Tatars suffer represssion. All this must be very democratic to you – but for me these are the traits of a brutal oppressive regime – call it fascist or not. Certainly nothing to do with democracy.
Instead of making up stories why dont you ask the people who actually live in Crimea and also in East Ukraine on whether they would prefer to belong to Poroshenko democratic government ruled by non Ukrainains or with Russia’s democratically elected Authoritarian Government?
I know you are very concerned about the Taters who are suffering such repression but they could off course just go to Ukraine just like Timoshenko wanted all the Russian speaking Ukrainians to go to Russia.
And now minorities in Crimea as the Tatars suffer represssion.
Oh Really? Been reading the NYT again? Well, take a look at this:
Trigger Warning: Crimean Tatars Support Russia
Anyway, a billion for nothing in an election year sounds like Soros has placed a call or two. But it’s freshly printed, so who is counting?
You can keep your pro-Putin anti-semitic articles for your own reading. Why don’t you read some Russian articles or watch Russian TV? Then you might have a slightly different view. These people are completely divorced from the real situation in Ukraine and Russia. Second hand interpretation will just not do. Fanatasising in some remote offices in the US and Europe is not a substitute for what actually goes on in Ukraine. Have you actually been there. Speak the language?? Then how can you make an objective judgement!! How could you have a real objective survey of Tatar, Ukrainian or Russian attitudes in Crimea is beyond me in today’s situation is beyond me. No person living there would now give you their true opinion as they live under a repressive illegitimate regime. An uprising in Donbas – what nonsense!! These plans to snatch Donbas from Ukraine had been ready many years ago!! ANd this antiUkrainian drivel “Ukronazis” when Hitler’s birthday is openly marked in Russia is complete rubbish.
It is very clear that, “democracy” from Obama’s point of view, is more about him selecting a foreign nation’s government than any actual will of the people in any given nation. In the nation Ukraine we can clearly see that Obama’s anti terrorist operation was to ensure the disappearance of millions of ethnic Russian-Ukrainian voters. Whether they were murdered or fled to Russia wasn’t important, it was just important that they they could no longer vote. According to the Rand Corporation memo this was the plan all along to allow the ethnic cleansing of voters to create an entirely new makeup of Ukraine’s government, a government that was totally beholden to America.
As we all know from the Victoria Nuland tapes Obama had already selected Arseniy Yatsenyuk as his man to run the new fascist Ukraine so any existing elected government that stood in his way had to be removed, along with their most ardent supporters, the people of the Donbass who voted 90% for the government that Obama threw out in a violent bloody coup.
Ethnic cleansing and genocide has been the tool of Obama since his first days in office, look at Libya, Syria, etc etc etc. If you kill enough voters you can bring any group to power including Nazi’s (Ukraine) and Terrorists (Syria), you just have to be evil enough to do it.