Exclusive: Heading into the last quarter of his presidency, Barack Obama must decide whether he will let the neocons keep pulling his strings or finally break loose and pursue a realistic foreign policy seeking practical solutions to world problems, including the crisis with Russia over Ukraine, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
The year 2015 will surely mark a watershed in relations between the United States and Russia, one way or the other. However, whether tensions increase to war-by-proxy in Ukraine or an even wider war or whether they subside depends mostly on President Barack Obama.
Key to answering this question is a second one: Is Obama smart enough and strong enough to rein in Secretary of State John Kerry, the neocons and “liberal interventionists” running the State Department and to stand up to the chicken hawks in Congress, most of whom feel free to flirt with war because they know nothing of it.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, by contrast, experienced the effects of war at an early age. He was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) eight years after the vicious siege by the German army ended. Michael Walzer, in his War Against Civilians, notes, “More people died in the 900-day siege of Leningrad than in the infernos of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki taken together.”
Putin’s elder brother Viktor died during the siege. The experience of Putin’s youth is, of course, embedded in his consciousness. This may help to account for why he tends to be short on the kind of daredevil bluster regularly heard from senior Western officials these days many of whom are ignorant both of suffering from war and the complicated history of Ukraine.
This time last year, few Americans could point out Ukraine on a map. And malnourished as they are on “mainstream media,” most have little idea of its internal political tensions, a schism between a western Ukraine oriented toward Europe and an eastern Ukraine with strong ties to Russia.
Let’s start with a brief mention of the most salient points of this history before addressing its recent detritus — and making a few recommendations as the New Year begins. Less than three weeks after the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9. 1989, President George H.W. Bush invited Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev to a summit in Malta where they cut an historic deal: Moscow would refrain from using force to re-impose control over Eastern Europe; Washington would not “take advantage” of the upheaval and uncertainty there.
That deal was fleshed out just two months later, when Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker persuaded Gorbachev to swallow the bitter pill of a reunited Germany in NATO in return for a promise that NATO would not “leapfrog” eastward over Germany. Former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, who was witness to all this, told me in an email, “I don’t see how anybody could view the subsequent expansion of NATO as anything but ‘taking advantage.’”
This consummate diplomat, who took part in the critical bilateral talks in early 1990, added that the mutual pledge was not set down in writing. Nonetheless, reneging on a promise written or not can put a significant dent in trust.
Why No Written Deal
Last year I asked Matlock and also Viktor Borisovich Kuvaldin, one of Gorbachev’s advisers from 1989 to 1991, why the Baker-Gorbachev understanding was not committed to paper. Matlock replied:
“There was no agreement then. Both Baker and West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher were putting forth ideas for Gorbachev to consider. He did not give an answer but just said he would think about them. … The formal agreements had to involve others, and they did, in the two-plus-four agreement, which was concluded only in late 1990.”
Fair enough.
In an email to me last fall, Kuvaldin corroborated what Matlock told me. But he led off by pointing out “the pledge of no eastward expansion of NATO was made to Gorbachev on consecutive days when he met first with Baker and then with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl [on Feb. 9 and 10, 1990].” As to why this pledge was not written down, Kuvaldin explained:
“Such a request would have sounded a little bit strange at that time. The Warsaw Pact was alive; Soviet military personnel were stationed all over central Europe; and NATO had nowhere to go. At the beginning of February 1990 hardly anybody could foresee the turn of events in the 1990s.”
Again, fair enough. But when I met Kuvaldin a few months earlier in Moscow and asked him out of the blue why there is no record of the promises given to his boss Gorbachev, his reply was more spontaneous and visceral. He tilted his head, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “We trusted you.”
Written down or not, it was a matter of trust and of not “taking advantage.” Kuvaldin’s boss Gorbachev opted to trust not only the U.S. Secretary of State, but also the West German government in Bonn. According to a report in Der Spiegel quoting West German foreign ministry documents released just five years ago:
“On Feb. 10, 1990, between 4 and 6:30 p.m., Genscher spoke with [Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard] Shevardnadze. And, according to the German record of the conversation, Genscher said: ‘We are aware that NATO membership for a unified Germany raises complicated questions. For us, however, one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east.’ And because the conversation revolved mainly around East Germany, Genscher added explicitly: ‘As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general.’”
NATO’s Growth Spurt
Some of us though a distinct minority know the rest of the story. Generally overlooked in Western media, it nevertheless sets the historical stage as background for the upheaval in Ukraine last year. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the break-up of the Warsaw Pact Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2004. Albania and Croatia joined in 2009. And the Kremlin’s leaders could do little more than look on impotently and seethe.
One can hardly fault those countries, most of which had lots of painful experience at Soviet hands. It is no mystery why they would want to crowd under the NATO umbrella against any foul weather coming from the East. But, as George Kennan and others noted at the time, it was a regrettable lack of imagination and statesmanship that no serious alternatives were devised to address the concerns of countries to the east of Germany other than membership in NATO.
The more so, inasmuch as there were so few teeth left, at the time, in the mouth of the Russian bear. And not least of all a promise is a promise.
As NATO expansion drew in countries closer to Russia’s borders, the Kremlin drew a red line when, despite very strong warnings from Moscow, an April 3, 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest declared: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” Both countries, former Soviet states, press up upon Russia’s soft southern underbelly.
Often forgotten in the West, but not in Russia is the impulsive reaction this NATO statement gave rise to on the part of Georgia’s then-President Mikheil Saakashvili, who felt his oats even before the NATO umbrella could be opened. Less than five months after Georgia was put in queue for NATO membership, Saakashvili ordered Georgian forces to attack the city of Tskhinvali in South Ossetia. No one should have been surprised when Russia retaliated sharply, giving Georgian forces a very bloody nose in battles that lasted just five days.
Ultimately, Saakashvili’s cheerleaders of the George W. Bush administration and then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who had been egging Saakashvili on, were powerless to protect him. Instead of drawing appropriate lessons from this failed experiment, however, the neocons running the foreign policy of Bush and remaining inside the Obama administration set their sights on Ukraine.
One Regime Change Too Many
It is becoming harder to hide the truth that Washington’s ultimate objective to satisfy Ukraine’s “Western aspirations” and incorporate it, ultimately, into NATO was what led the U.S. to mount the coup of Feb. 22, 2014, in Kiev. While it may be true that, as is said, revolutions “will not be televised,” coups d’état can be YouTubed.
And three weeks before the putsch in Kiev, U.S. State Department planning to orchestrate the removal of the Ukraine’s duly elected President Viktor Yanukovych and select new leaders for Ukraine was placed chapter and verse on YouTube in the form of a four-minute intercepted telephone conversation between Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and the yes-ma’am U.S. Ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt.
Hearing is believing. And for those in a hurry, here is a very short transcribed excerpt:
Nuland: What do you think?
Pyatt: I think we’re in play. The Klitschko [Vitaly Klitschko, one of three main opposition leaders] piece is obviously the complicated electron here. … I think that’s the next phone call you want to set up, is exactly the one you made to Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk, another opposition leader]. And I’m glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario. And I’m very glad that he said what he said in response.
Nuland: Good. I don’t think 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 … just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff. … We want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok [Oleh Tyahnybok, the other main opposition leader, head of the far-right Svoboda party] and his guys …
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. …
And so, surprise, surprise: “Yats” turned out to be Nuland’s guy just three weeks later, being named prime minister right after the putsch on Feb. 22. And he still is. Talk about luck!
However transparent the dark arts of the “Maidan Marionettes” (the title Russian translators gave the images accompanying their version of the conversation on YouTube), these particular heroics are rarely mentioned in “mainstream” U.S. media (MSM). Instead, pride of place is given to Moscow’s “aggression” in annexing Crimea, a move that followed Crimea’s voters overwhelmingly choosing to bail out on the coup-imposed regime in Kiev and seek to rejoin Russia.
Seeing No Nazis
In the major U.S. media, the violent coup on Feb. 22 spearheaded by well-organized neo-Nazi militias who killed police and seized government buildings was whitewashed from what the American people got to see and hear. In the preferred U.S. narrative, Yanukovych and his officials simply decided to leave town because of the moral force from the white-hatted peaceful protesters in the Maidan.
So it came as a welcome surprise when an Establishment notable like George Friedman, during a Dec. 19 interview with the Russian magazine Kommersant, described the February overthrow of the Ukrainian government as “the most blatant coup in history.” Friedman is head of STRATFOR, a think tank often described as a “shadow CIA.”
However, in the mainstream U.S. media’s narrative as well as others like the BBC where I have had personal experience with the ticklish issue of Ukraine the story of the Ukraine crisis starts with the annexation of Crimea, which is sometimes termed a Russian “invasion” although Russian troops were already stationed inside Crimea at the Russian naval base at Sevastopol. In the MSM, there is “just not enough time, regrettably” to mention NATO’s eastward expansion or even the coup in Kiev.
The other favored part of the MSM’s narrative is that Putin instigated the Ukraine crisis because he was eager to seize back land lost in the break-up of the Soviet Union. But there is not one scintilla of evidence that the Russians would have taken back Crimea, were it not for the coup engineered by Nuland and implemented by various thugs including openly fascist groups waving banners with Nazi symbols.
Years ago, Nuland fell in with some very seedy companions. The list is long; suffice it to mention here that she served as Principal Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney’s in his shadow national security council during the “dark-side” years from 2003 to 2005.
There Nuland reportedly worked on “democracy promotion” in Iraq and did such a terrific job at it that she was promoted, under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to State Department spokesperson and then to Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, giving her the Ukraine account. Nuland is also married to neocon theorist Robert Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century pushed for the invasion of Iraq as early as 1998. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s True Foreign Policy ‘Weakness.’”]
By December 2013, Nuland was so confident of her control over U.S. policy toward Ukraine that she publicly reminded Ukrainian business leaders that, to help Ukraine achieve “its European aspirations, we have invested more than $5 billion.” She even waded into the Maidan protests to pass out cookies and urge the demonstrators on.
In keeping her in the State Department and promoting her, Obama and his two secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry created a human bridge to the neocons’ dark-side years. Nuland also seems to have infected impressionable Obama administration officials with the kind approach to reality attributed by author Ron Suskind to one senior Bush administration official: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”
This may be the nostrum used by Nuland and Kerry to whom Obama has mostly deferred to run U.S. policy vis-Ã -vis Russia. Ambassador Matlock will find it small solace, but it may help him understand what seems to be going on in policy toward Ukraine.
Writing early last year on the burgeoning crisis there, Matlock said: “I cannot understand how he [Obama] could fail to recognize that confronting President Putin publicly on an issue that is so central to Russian national pride and honor, not only tends to have the opposite effect on the issue at hand, but actually strengthens tendencies in Russia that we should wish to discourage. It is as if he, along with his advisers, is living in some alternate ideological and psychological universe.”
Putin: Little Tolerance for Other Reality
Before finishing with a few recommendations, let’s apply the proven tools of media analysis to see if we can discern how Russian President Putin is reacting to all this. (Hint: He is not going to yield to pressure on the issue of Ukraine.)
At a press conference ten days after the coup in Kiev, Putin complained about “our Western partners” continuing to interfere in Ukraine. “I sometimes get the feeling,” he said, “that somewhere across that huge puddle, in America, people sit in a lab and conduct experiments, as if with rats, without actually understanding the consequences of what they are doing. Why do they need to do this?”
And in a speech two weeks later, Putin said:
“Our colleagues in the West have lied to us many times, made decisions behind our backs, placed before us an accomplished fact. This happened with NATO’s expansion to the east, as well as the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders. It happened with the deployment of a missile defense system.
“They are constantly trying to sweep us into a corner. But there is a limit to everything. And with Ukraine, our Western partners have crossed the line. If you compress the spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back hard. Today, it is imperative to end this hysteria and refute the rhetoric of the cold war. Russia has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected.”
On Sept. 8, 2013, when Secretary Kerry swore Nuland in as Assistant Secretary of State, he gushed over “Toria’s” accomplishments, with a panegyric fully deserving of the adjective fulsome. It was a huge hint that Kerry would give her free rein in crafting policy toward Russia, Ukraine, et al.
Fortunately, Nuland was not able to sabotage the behind-the-scenes dialogue between Obama and Putin that enabled Putin to dissuade Obama from attacking Syria in September 2013 by convincing him the Syrians were about to agree to destroy all their chemical weapons. Obama had cut Kerry out of those sensitive talks, but left on his own Kerry continued to try to drum up international support for military action against Syria.
That Kerry was blindsided by the extraordinary agreement worked out by Obama and Putin with Syria, became embarrassingly obvious when Kerry, at a press conference in London on Sept. 9, 2013, dismissed any likelihood that Syria would ever agree to let its chemical arsenal be destroyed. Later that same day the agreement to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons was announced.
Sadly, to some significant degree, the U.S. mischief in Ukraine can be regarded as payback from Kerry, his Senate buddy John McCain, and of course Nuland for Russia’s dashing their hopes for a major U.S. military bombing campaign against the Syrian government.
Putin: Kerry “Knows He Is Lying”
It is rare that a head of state will call the head diplomat of a rival state a “liar.” But that’s what Putin did six days after Obama overruled Kerry and stopped the attack on Syria. On Sept. 5, 2013, as Obama arrived in St. Petersburg for the G-20 summit, Putin referred openly to Kerry’s congressional testimony on Syria a few days earlier in which Kerry greatly exaggerated the strength of the “moderate” rebels in Syria.
Kerry had also repeated highly dubious claim (made 35 times at an Aug. 30 State Department press conference) that the Assad government was behind the chemical attacks near Damascus on Aug. 21, that he had thus had crossed the “red line” Obama had set, and that Syria needed to be admonished by military attack.
About Kerry, Putin took the gloves off: “This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. We talk to them [the Americans], and we assume they are decent people, but he is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad.”
Putin’s stern words about Kerry and the behind-the-scenes Obama-Putin collaboration that defused the Syrian crisis of 2013 appear to have awakened the neocons to the need to shatter that cooperation and the Ukraine coup became the perfect device to do so.
New Year’s Resolutions
Five things for Obama to do for a fresh start to the New Year:
1 Fire Kerry and Nuland.
2 Read the New York Times op-ed by Putin on Sept. 11, 2013, just after cooperation with Obama had yielded the extraordinary result of the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons.
3 Stop the foolish talk about the U.S. being “the one indispensable nation.” (The President said this so many times last year that some suspect he is beginning to believe his own rhetoric. This is how Putin chose to address this feel-good, but noxious, triumphalism in ending his op-ed:
“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”
4 Lean on the Quislings in Kiev to stop their foolishness. One golden opportunity to do that would be to participate in the international summit called for by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Jan. 15 in Kazakhstan, where Putin and the leaders of Germany and France are also expected to take part.
5 Finally, pick a different ending this year for your speeches. How about: “God bless the United States of America and the rest of the world, too.”
Ray McGovern now works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27 years as a CIA analyst, he served as chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, chair of several National Intelligence Estimates, and preparer and White House briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Ray, what makes you think neocons are “pulling his string”?
Here’s an alternative hypothesis: Obama knows exactly what he’s doing and why.
Putin made Obama look like a fool when he outmaneuvered him over the Syrian chemical weapons incident last year. Obama was fully prepared to attack Syria based on KNOWN faulty intelligence about the chemical weapons attack. Only when Obama got pushback from various sources – and Putin proposed Syria give up its chemical weapons – did he back down.
Obama has been described by Norman Finkelstein as a “stunning narcissist”. After the Benghazi incident, the number one priority of the White House staff was admitted to be “making the President look good.”
Obama was undoubtedly enraged over being outmaneuvered by Putin. In addition, Obama is known to be “owned and operated” by his Chicago backers who have financial ties to the military-industrial complex, which has already benefited from the increased tensions resulting from “Cold War 2.0”.
So Occam’s Razor would suggest Obama is fully cognizant of and supportive of the State Department neocons attack on Russia.
Pedophilia in Bush/Reagan White House 1-5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6rKsvNo7NA
I love Ray McGovern, but all I can say is “huh?”. Obama is in charge, he is responsible for everything the US has done the last 6 years. No, it was not an “innocent mistake”. No, Obama was not tricked by evil advisers.
At this point, why should Russia believe anything the US says? The Obama administration has utterly annihilated our trustworthiness. What was once a half-assed reputation for integrity is now just a faint stain on a dirty floor.
That ship of trust has sailed, is now out to sea. Brace for rough weather.
The majority of the American people are too politically naïve and frightened to allow Obama, or anyone else, to have a civilized relationship with any Russian. It would be wonderful for Obama to try just to see what the reaction would be. What he hell he has nothing to lose.
There is no Plan B. Hillary hired Victoria Nuland and Jeb Bush was the lead signatory of the Project for a New American Century. We remember Romney identifying Russia as American’s worst enemy in the Presidential debate. Ther will be no rebuilding of trust with Putin of Medvedev either. This is the new normal. ….and when all else fails we can pluck out the horses eyes and make him sleep and dream….,
There is no Plan B. Hillary hired Victoria Nuland and Jeb Bush was the lead signatory of the Project for a New American Century. We remember Romney identifying Russia as American’s worst enemy in the Presidential debate. Ther will be no rebuilding of trust with Putin of Medvedev either. This is the new normal. ….and when all else fails we can pluck out the horses eyes and make him sleep and dream….,
Again a great detailed article showing the deep problems in US foreign policies. It’s not the point of Obama being smart enough, the problem is he is weak and not a strong leader or decision maker. As president you cannot build decisions solely on consensus YOU have to decide. We saw this before with former president Carter in the freeing of US hostages from Iran which became a disaster.
Another problem is that Obama is surrounded by neocons who have a direct interest in a corrupt, anti-Russia Ukraine and are financially motivated to attack Russia and especially its leader President Putin.
US government with ample cash funding the Coup in Maidan, Kiev bringing in CIA and Blackwater snipers to kill randomly demonstrators and Ukrainian unarmed policemen. In the meantime American taxpayers don’t realize that billions of their taxes are used by Washington to fund secret and undercover operations overseas frequently in cooperation with NATO
On top of that Obama is surrounded by Neocons similar to President Johnson at the start of the Vietnam war where he was lied to by his own advisors. In case of Obama we see a similar development except in case of the Ukraine its more the personal and financial interest of VP Biden and John Kerry in the outcome of Ukraine pro-west policy. Son Hunter Biden and stepson of John Kerry, Devon Archer are working both for Dnepropetrovsk governor, oligarch criminal Kolomoisky and his Burisma Holdings Ltd of Cyprus (see Google) which happens to be the largest holder of gas exploration rights in UA. And guess what these gas reserves are mostly found in the present war zone in East Ukraine or Donbas area of Ukraine.
Finally, no surprise that Biden and Kerry -cash-on-board-flights to Ukraine, Romania and other small anti Russia countries to stop the South Stream pipeline project. Instead Putin decided to build the pipeline to Turkey, so no loss for Russia.
Indeed Obama and his staff don’t seem to be smart either and the fact that USA offers Europe gas from USA must be a joke too since the price will be prohibitive and again one of those empty promises USA cannot keep. Washington now has become the laughing stock of the world, regretfully US politicians don’t realize that including Obama. SMART ???
I can’t get past Ray McGovern’s condescending smarm, and neither can he.
Whatever he says goes completely by me, because you don’t know if it’s said in good faith or whether he is just some CIA plant.
That would be an exceptionally odd plant.
Nations often turn in desperation to their trusted elder statesmen, who can be relied upon to provide wisdom and the objective detachment that comes with age and a sense of historical perspective. So, it was not entirely impossible that I was hallucinating when I read the blurb on the screen crawler at the bottom of my satellite TV program the other day. It was written in a foreign language, so I could have been mistaken. It said, “President Obama considers sending Henry Kissinger on a mission to resolve differences with Putin over Ukraine”. OK, like I said, I could be mistaken. But the words ‘Kissinger’, ‘rapprochement’, ‘Ukraine’ and ‘Putin’ all in the same sentence don’t require a linguistics expert to interpret. The comedic possibilities emanating from this scenario are endless. I can imagine Henry, drooling on his tie as they push his wheelchair into Putin’s office. As they seek to establish the parameters for diplomatic consideration, one of his aids exclaims, “Well…, depends”. Putin asks, “Does he need to change them frequently?” He’d probably have to remind Henry that the Ukrainians have just held another torchlight parade in honor of a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator – “Mr. Secretary, you remember the Nazis, don’t you?” “Of course, Mr. Putin, I remember Argentina and Chile like they were yesterday…or was it the day before?” So, if this is true, the current administration is not just feckless, it’s absolutely delusional. But the interpretation of the events in Ukraine as the disastrous outcome of state-sponsored Neocon ideology definitely seems like a deflection to me. Syria could have provided corporate advantages as a pipeline route, but the British Parliament failed to provide the necessary collusion. Those corporatists care not a tinker’s damn about the costs of war. Rather than a workable geopolitical strategy, Ukraine could only have provided a corporate windfall had the historical and cultural realities to which they are oblivious not mattered. The embryology of the Kagan think-tank inspired imbroglio suggests a financial rather than an ideological strategy – but the geopolitics certainly provide camouflage. Corporate steering of state policy has a domestic parallel as well. In Benton Harbor, Michigan, Whirlpool has systematically disemboweled the local community to abject poverty, has spearheaded privatization of lakefront property and other community resources, has inserted a fascist “emergency management” government to usurp democratically elected representation, and has succeeded in jailing community activist Reverend Edward Pinkney on trumped up charges with a stacked jury, no evidence and no witnesses. The legal system in that community functions as “prerogative justice” at the whim of corporate controlled interests, just as in any dictatorship. Ukraine is the macroeconomic version of what has become the standard fare of corporate controlled politics here at home. There is now a complete disconnect between ‘rule of law’ domestically just as international law no longer restrains foreign policy. The Department of State and the Executive Branch now serve as fronts for corporate interests dictated by “think-tanks”. In Benton Harbor, the strategy was devised and implemented at the behest of The Heritage Foundation. Victoria Nuland, meanwhile, represents The Foreign Policy Institute. Her job at State is merely a cover.
“Smart?” Whatever that is suppose to mean, has little to do with it. Obama is no more-or better, than just another typical neoliberal right -leaning, war-enamored politician. He is certainly ‘capable of doing it but not ideologically inclined to.
The US establishment, financial-corporate-capitalist has been antagonistic to say the very least to the soviets since the Russian revolution, and specifically from Truman onwards. During the rise of Germany’s Nazism our neofascist capitalists were Hitler’s greatest boosters, and financed him well into WW2, with the Bush clan fully involved, with much of the civilian and military leadership preferring a German victory over the Soviets, who took the brunt of the war and quite literally saved the west’s chestnuts.
The disgusting ignorance of those who drink the cool aide of war criminals of the thuggish Cheney and his ilk is disgraceful, and unless we as a public wise up to reality will be the end of any hope to a future worth living.
For all that this country could have been, actually living up to it’s claims, instead we’ve let it slide ever faster over the precipice.
Sure wish Obama cared as much about peace as war. Don’t know how he can live with himself after approving and overseeing the deaths of so very many thousands of people, including so many innocents, and doing his damnedest to bring war to Europe, on behalf of Neo-Cons who never left power after the Bushes. Apparently, given our actions, all decently stable countries need to be interrupted and suffer from unrest, war, death, uprisings, regime change, poverty and the like so that the U.S. may comparatively do well, it seems, to counter and make up for the derelict running of the financial industry by the U.S.’s incredibly corrupt banking and finance interests, who literally get away with murder and theft with the U.S. government’s protection. That’s the definition of fascism, isn’t it? When corporations and government collude toward mutually profitable ends, which has reached the level of global criminal activity we see in front of us today? It breaks my heart. This is not the American I was born in to, but it’s now the dark place I dwell in, sadly and without hope for the future. Obama sure was a neo-con Trojan Horse. Remember how the whole world danced and celebrated when he was elected? It makes me cry when I think of it. Is it really true the U.S. has become the planet’s biggest fascist thug? I can’t believe it’s not a nightmare. This was unthinkable only a decade or so ago, though one could see the forces at work at it.
New Year’s Resolutions
Until I reached that part of the essay, this was a great read. A first class and informative learning experience! But at that point Mr. McGovern veered into wishful daydreaming.
I wish it wasn’t so, and I sincerely hope I’m proven completely wrong, but BHO is who he is, and isn’t about to change his stripes at this point. So my answer to the second question – Is Obama smart enough and strong enough to rein in Secretary of State John Kerry, the neocons and “liberal interventionists†running the State Department and to stand up to the chicken hawks in Congress, most of whom feel free to flirt with war because they know nothing of it. – is a flat NO.
Dear Ray,
as usual I read this article with a lot of interest, though I would like to remark that the course of the future Ukraine politics is not run by US interests only. Although lacking any substantial own military power or capabilities the EU on the economical field tried and surely still tries to set its own agenda.
So its not only the US Administration totally ignoring russian interests. This was and probably still is also the official course of the EU, as this video from 2009 shows clearly (it does actually include an english translation):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_G-uebdSdQ
(Source: http://eu-chronicle.eu/2014/02/eukraine-from-orange-to-brown-revolution/ – with more revealing links).
Thanks for your excellent work and I specially like the idea of turning backs
Wolf-Dieter
As usual, fine article by McGovern. His first New Year’s resolution would be an excellent way to begin the new year but it will not happen. The neocons are so deeply imbedded in senior positions in U.S. government agencies and so closely aligned with the powerful Zionist lobby that, short of McCarthy type hearings on their subversive impact on U.S. policies, they are here to stay.
The rise of neocon Victoria Nuland, wife of uber-Neocon Robert Kagan, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, is an example of how the neocons continue to assert their disastrous policies in spite of their catastrophic failures in the past. Nuland was promoted to her current position by the darling of the neocons, Hillary Clinton, knowing full well her neocon agenda.
Another neocon involved in the Ukraine fiasco is Carl Gershman the head of the NED. The NED was created in 1983 to spread Contra propaganda to the U.S. public under the supervision of a CIA operative (Walter Raymond). Over 30 years later it continues its neocon clandestine operations under the guise of spreading “democracy†headed by the same person since its creation, Carl Gershman, with a budget of over $100 million.
Obama is captured by the special interest lobbies and is unwilling or incapable of challenging the resurgence of the neocons. And, if Hillary wins in 2016 expect her administration to surpass GWB’s neocon driven foreign policies.
Your observations are correct and sobering.
It`s no surprise that his pathetic nation of morons has no clue of what`s going on – just blind of the Jewish controlled media and totally ignorant to the obvious control of our government by those criminal Zionists in Israel.
http://davidduke.com/steve-scalise-lynching-textbook-example-zio-media-lies/