Submitted by David Stockman
Pat Buchanan’s take re-posted below is so cogent and clear. Contrary to the bombast, jingoism and shrill moralizing flowing from Washington and the mainstream media, we have no interest in the current spat between Putin and the mobs of Kiev. For several centuries the Crimea has been Russian; for even longer, the Ukraine has been a cauldron of ethnic and tribal conflict, rarely an organized, independent state, and always a meandering set of borders looking for a redrawn map. Surely Washington jests when it threatens to organize another feckless set of economic sanctions against a nation that’s got the gas which Europe needs.
The source of the current calamity-howling about Russia is the Warfare State–that is, the existence of vast machinery of military, diplomatic and economic maneuver that is ever on the prowl for missions and mandates and that can mobilize a massive propaganda campaign on the slightest excitement. The post-1991 absurdity of bolstering NATO and extending it into eastern Europe, rather than liquidating it after attaining “mission accomplished”, is just another manifestation of its baleful impact. In truth, the expansion of NATO is one of the underlying causes of America’s needless tension with Russia and Putin’s paranoia about his borders and neighbors. Indeed, what juvenile minds actually determined that America needs a military alliance with Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania!
So the resounding clatter for action against Russia emanating from Washington and its house-trained media is not even a semi-rational response to the facts at hand; its just another destructive spasm of Warfare State maneuver and propaganda that can have nothing but ill effect.
Tune Out the War Party!
By Patrick J. Buchanan
March 4, 2014
With Vladimir Putin’s dispatch of Russian troops into Crimea, our war hawks are breathing fire. Russophobia is rampant and the op-ed pages are ablaze here.
Barack Obama should tune them out, and reflect on how Cold War presidents dealt with far graver clashes with Moscow.
When Red Army tank divisions crushed the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956, killing 50,000, Eisenhower did not lift a finger. When Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall, JFK went to Berlin and gave a speech.
When Warsaw Pact troops crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, LBJ did nothing. When, Moscow ordered Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski to smash Solidarity, Ronald Reagan refused to put Warsaw in default.
These presidents saw no vital U.S. interest imperiled in these Soviet actions, however brutal. They sensed that time was on our side in the Cold War. And history has proven them right.
What is the U.S. vital interest in Crimea? Zero. From Catherine the Great to Khrushchev, the peninsula belonged to Russia. The people of Crimea are 60 percent ethnic Russians.
And should Crimea vote to secede from Ukraine, upon what moral ground would we stand to deny them the right, when we bombed Serbia for 78 days to bring about the secession of Kosovo?
Across Europe, nations have been breaking apart since the end of the Cold War. Out of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia came 24 nations. Scotland is voting on secession this year. Catalonia may be next.
Yet, today, we have the Wall Street Journal describing Russia’s sending of soldiers to occupy airfields in Ukraine as a “blitzkrieg” that “brings the threat of war to the heart of Europe,” though Crimea is east even of what we used to call Eastern Europe.
The Journal wants the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush sent to the Eastern Mediterranean and warships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet sent into the Black Sea.
But why? We have no alliance that mandates our fighting Russia over Crimea. We have no vital interest there. Why send a flotilla other than to act tough, escalate the crisis and risk a clash?
The Washington Post calls Putin’s move a “naked act of armed aggression in the center of Europe.” The Crimea is in the center of Europe? We are paying a price for our failure to teach geography.
The Post also urges an ultimatum to Putin: Get out of Crimea, or we impose sanctions that could “sink the Russian financial system.”
While we and the EU could cripple Russia’s economy and bring down her banks, is this wise? What if Moscow responds by cutting off credits to Ukraine, calling in Kiev’s debts, refusing to buy her goods and raising the price of oil and gas?
This would leave the EU and us with responsibility for a basket-case nation the size of France and four times as populous as Greece.
Are Angela Merkel and the EU ready to take on that load, after bailing out the PIIGS — Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain?
If we push Russia out of the tent, to whom do we think Putin will turn, if not China?
This is not a call to ignore what is going on, but to understand it and act in the long-term interests of the United States.
Putin’s actions, though unsettling, are not irrational.
After he won the competition for Ukraine to join his customs union, by bumping a timid EU out of the game with $15 billion cash offer plus subsidized oil and gas to Kiev, he saw his victory stolen.
Crowds formed in Maidan Square, set up barricades, battled police with clubs and Molotov cocktails, forced the elected president Viktor Yanukovych into one capitulation after another, and then overthrew him, ran him out of the country, impeached him, seized parliament, downgraded the Russian language, and declared Ukraine part of Europe.
To Americans this may look like democracy in action. To Moscow it has the aspect of a successful Beer Hall Putsch, with even Western journalists conceding there were neo-Nazis in Maidan Square.
In Crimea and eastern Ukraine, ethnic Russians saw a president they elected and a party they supported overthrown and replaced by parties and politicians hostile to a Russia with which they have deep historical, religious, cultural and ancestral ties.
Yet Putin is taking a serious risk. If Russia annexes Crimea, no major nation will recognize it as legitimate, and he could lose the rest of Ukraine forever. Should he slice off and annex eastern Ukraine, he could ignite a civil war and second Cold War.
Time is not necessarily on Putin’s side here. John Kerry could be right on that.
But as for the hawkish howls, to have Ukraine and Georgia brought into NATO, that would give these nations, deep inside Russia’s space, the kind of war guarantees the Kaiser gave Austria in 1914 and the Brits gave the Polish colonels in March 1939.
Those war guarantees led to two world wars, which historians may yet conclude were the death blows of Western civilization.
but the US is going to put sanctions on Russia…
Russia warns could ‘reduce to zero’ economic dependency on US
Moscow (AFP) – Russia could reduce to zero its economic dependency on the United States if Washington agreed sanctions against Moscow over Ukraine, a Kremlin aide said on Tuesday, warning that the American financial system faced a “crash” if this happened.
Kremlin aide warns US of response if sanctions imposed: RIA Reuters
Putin: Yanukovych has no political future Associated Press
‘Don’t be doormat’ Russia warns cash-starved Kiev Reuters
Oil prices spike on Russia sanctions fears Associated Press
Ukraine mobilises army as West warns Russia AFP
“We would find a way not just to reduce our dependency on the United States to zero but to emerge from those sanctions with great benefits for ourselves,” said Kremlin economic aide Sergei Glazyev.
He told the RIA Novosti news agency Russia could stop using dollars for international transactions and create its own payment system using its “wonderful trade and economic relations with our partners in the East and South.”
Russian firms and banks would also not return loans from American financial institutions, he said.
“An attempt to announce sanctions would end in a crash for the financial system of the United States, which would cause the end of the domination of the United States in the global financial system,” he added.
He said that economic sanctions imposed by the European Union would be a “catastrophe” for Europe, saying that Russia could halt gas supplies “which would be beneficial for the Americans” and give the Russian economy a useful “impulse”.
Pedestrians walk under under a board listing foreign currency rates against the Russian ruble just o
Glazyev has long been seen as among the most hawkish of the advisors to President Vladimir Putin but many observers have seen his hand in the apparent radicalisation of policy on Ukraine since the overthrow of president Viktor Yanukovych.
Economists have long mocked his apocalyptic and confrontational vision of global economics but also expressed concern that he appears to have grown in authority in recent months.
A high ranking Kremlin source told RIA Novosti that Glazyev was speaking in the capacity of an “academic” and his personal opinion did not reflect the official Kremlin policy.
Glazyev descrived the new Ukrainian authorities as “illegitimate and Russophobic”, saying some members of the government were on lists of “terrorist organisations, they are criminals”.
“If the authorities remain criminal then I think the people of Ukraine will get rid of them soon,” he added.
http://news.yahoo.com/russia-warns-could-reduce-zero-economic-dependency-us-083926261.html?vp=1
Apparently, any time, any place that a country feels it necessary to inject it’s military into a nearby zone of instability, it is the obligation of the US to respond, otherwise it appears “weak.”
This is the pathetic truth that passes for statecraft in the US.
Here we go again….
assuming that :
A. mistakes are being made out of ignorance
B. that “Sally” has any say so whatsoever
C. that anyone in new Babylon isn’t investing in ATK, General Dynamics,
Boeing and Northrup…. licking their chops for coming “blood profits”….
All of these satanic mother%#kers should be swept from the face of the earth.
If (HE) is coming, I wish He’d hurry up.
Barack Obama should tune them out, and reflect on how Cold War presidents dealt with far graver clashes with Moscow.
Obomber will do what his handlers want. The US economy is in a depression that’s structural, fixing it would bankrupt the rich, so how about war.
Well said Patrick J. Buchanan, well said. Obango needs to get back to the golf course and leave Putin alone. Obango is neither feared nor respected, his best move is to shut the fuck up. Goading the incompetent bastard to action is a real, real, real bad idea. Note to. SSS please swap out your crazy ass Senator his stupidity is indefensible.
Buchanan’s argument falls short when he states the consequences of Russian actions in Crimea. Why should any “major nation” care, and who is he to say what any “major nation” will do? He goes further to state “lose Ukraine forever”. Really? That’s a long time.
It’s understood the whole of Ukraine is big bite, but did that stop the US in Afghanistan, or Iraq.
It seems even Buchanan is still caught up in the myth of American exceptionalism, and anyone cares what anyone in the US says or does. What is the US going to do, drone strike the entire world? Putin is not some tribal leader in yak country.
For too long, the US has been coddling terrorists to extend hegemony. Welcome to the big stage, Obama. And I suggest taking Buchanan’s advice. Stay out of it. Sanctions will only exacerbate and already charged atmosphere. Thankfully, it’s not anywhere I care about.
Charles Hughes Smith published an interesting article about following the fossil fuels. It’s all about the pipelines. Here, Smith and Obama agree, time is not on Putin’s side, as nations diversify energy needs, although Obama swerves into the hyperbolic.
It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie in this case, and let the Ukrainians work it out for themselves. At least, that’s what China appears to be doing. Perhaps, it’s only because it’s so difficult to insert those sneaky Chinese operatives.
In fact, Putin appears to have called the US bluff, and the entire episode of Kiev independence has been a western operation, or at least gotten their support. When will the US, and the West learn to stay out of other nation’s affairs. Hmm, what’s going on in Venezuela?
The sovereign debt crisis is still the tipping point. No word on an IMF bailout for the Ukraine to repay Russian banks? The US just chipped in $1B.
The loser of the Russian/Ukraine war? The U.S.
But we’re not in the war, you say. But we did support the pro-Ukraine nazis and thugs. We’re giving them a billion, even though Western banksters loaned them money and made them debt slaves like the rest of the EU periphery.
But how, again, are we the losers? Because Russia will now accelerate their dumping of US treasuries and the dollar. So will China. They will swat us off them, economically, like a mosquito. Because we are like a mosquito, sucking oil from Russian veins, and 95% of the goods we buy from China. And we give them dollars, and IOU’s in return, which are soon to be worthless, as the Fed keeps on printing more daily.
Just like the war in Iraq. We lost, China won.
Washington helped arm Afghan rebels against Soviet…Hello Bin laden who then fok us up!! Now we are going to help pro nazis west ukrainians, what is next?
Obama can not get these people to do what he wants ….
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….. but thinks he can influence these guys
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“BWAAAHAHAHAHAHA STOP!! BWAAAHAHAHA YOU’RE KILLING ME BWAAAHAHAHA”
——- Secret recordings I obtained from most of the world’s leaders
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