Arseniy Yatsenyuk give thumbs-up in Ukraine’s parliament in August, 2014. (AFP PHOTO /PRIME MINISTER PRESS SERVICE / ANDREW KRAVCHENKO”)

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Eric Zuesse

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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he plunging economy of Ukraine has evidently become so bad that Ukrainians now can even feel safe to call publicly for stopping the war against the separatist Donbass region of the country, and for reallocationg those military expenditures so that Ukrainians in the non-rebelling part of the country won’t starve to death. 

On July 23rd, Dmitriy Gordon, a leading Ukrainian journalist, is thus, for the first time, publicly urging that the separatist region, Donbass (consisting of the Donetsk and Luhansk districts), be officially acknowledged to be no longer part of Ukraine. He says that “It is better to dissociate Ukraine from the occupied territories of Donbass, to spend that money on housing and financial aid for immigrants [refugees from Donbass] than to keep the people [the vast majority of residents in Donbass] who hate Ukraine [though they actually didn’t hate Ukraine until Ukraine’s government was violently overthrown in February 2014 and the new government bombed them for not accepting that new government]. … I will tell an unfashionable view. Many people think it, but not everyone will dare to say it out loud. Ukraine does not need Donbass. It shackles the country. … It is like a lizard that lays aside its tail. … We need to get away from Donbass, and move into Europe without this tail.”

The choice between guns and butter becomes easier when there is no butter. And the butter in Ukraine is now gone. So, butter is what Ukrainians increasingly want. Thus, for example, RIA Novosti Ukraine news agency headlined on July 19th, “Ukraine Today: Poverty, Absolute Poverty, and Retirees Dream of Death,”  and reported that, “Two years ago, the average salary of Ukrainians in dollar terms amounted to 275 American money. Now it’s less than 100 dollars.”

This RIAN report says that, “Neither the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, nor Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, nor Speaker of Rada [Parliament] Volodymyr Groisman — none of them — expresses public concern about the lowered living standards; no one has called to review them, much less to improve these economic conditions.”

It goes on to say, “Expert of the Public Safety Fund Yuri Havrylchenko believes that the current level of income of the majority of the Ukrainian population is poverty, and retirees are in a state of slow death from starvation. … [He says,] ‘In Ukraine, all workers live in poverty. The level of their income and consumption is less than 17 dollars a day. With a few exceptions, almost all pensioners live below the absolute poverty line, consumption is less than $5 a day. This means that they are dying of hunger, only slowly. If they do not even have enough to eat, then what can we say about the cost of everything else?'”

[dropcap]M[/dropcap]r. Gordon, for his part, might be attacked for urging separation, if he were blaming Ukraine for the civil war; so, he instead blames the residents of Donbass (the direct victims of the coup-installed government), as the cause of Ukrainians’ misery. He says: “For the most part residents of the region adhere to pro-Russian views. They hate Ukrainians, don’t want to speak Ukrainian, and they reject Ukrainian and European values.” 

He adds, “Criminal psychology is inherent in so many people there … It is no accident Yanukovych was elected so much at the mercy of bandits in the Donetsk region.” Yanukovych had won more than 90% of the votes that were cast in Donbass.

Yanukovych had turned down the offer from the European Union because the economists at the Ukraininian Academy of Sciences had calculated that the EU’s offer would cost Ukraine $160 billion.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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Gaither Stewart, Senior Editor

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(Rome) Though continental populist movements like the Northern League and Five Stars in Italy or Podemos in Spain have planted in the minds of many Europeans the idea of the vulnerability and fragility of both the European idea as expressed in the very term, European Union (EU or simply Europe), and its universal currency, the once powerful EURO, the irresponsible handling of the Greek crisis by Germany and its closest allies, The Netherlands and Finland, et al, have brought to the surface the EU’s wobbly legs and made audible for all to hear the creaking and squeaking arising from its very foundations. Who will be next to fall under German fire and ire emergent political leaders, economists and journalists are wondering. Portugal, Spain, France or Italy?

Germany’s admitted cruelty and intransigence toward Greece lead me to conclude that the real tragedy of Europe as a whole, as a viable social idea—if not ideology—is Germany itself. Germany, in whose vision the next crisis is just around the corner, which in turn will require another turn of the screw of austerity. Austerity and more austerity, at all costs.

Germany, severe and sensitive to criticism. Germany, always right. Germany, both amnesiac of and obsessed by its own past that most of Europe has not yet forgotten either. Germany, possessed by its unrelenting need for order, control … and austerity. Germany, ready to abandon the idea of a social Europe and accept a role of subservience to the USA. Germany, in the grips of an enduring unilateral vision of reality. Germany, culturally and ideologically isolated; perhaps expressed by its tortured past and by its language on the one hand, and obsessed by its nature of order and austerity on the other.

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It must also be said that, by negotiating on its knees, like a supplicant, the Greek government has only succeeded in arousing the domineering instinct in the German establishment. ———eds.

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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Greek crisis will not simply go away. It will remain like a landmark, a marker of the distance from the original European social idea, which Germany, and Germany practically alone, has now devastated in order to crush Greece and put it up for sale. Occupy it in the 1940s and buy it in 2015! Many Germans must be experiencing their Dr. Strangelove-like economic king, [Wolfgang] Schäuble’s assumed role of the mean Master Sergeant with both awe and fear and trembling, while other Europeans as a consequence are concluding that they do not want to cede their fiscal and economic sovereignty to a German-speaking, German-controlled EU in Brussels. Italians do not want to see the Coliseum used someday as a warranty for repayment of its great national debt,

It has been said that Schäuble and Merkel and their political allies could not behave otherwise, themselves victims of the false vision of reality the German establishment and its media have projected on the continent for decades: that is, that the German taxpayer has been financing Greece for years. A completely untrue claim. Despite corruption and tax evasion Italians taxpayers pay as much … or more. The German public does not know the truth. The political parties and the media have maintained silence on the reality of the German role in Europe. For example, in Europe in general, but allegedly also in Germany, the public is not even aware of the widely hated and feared International Monetary Fund’s unexpected appeal to reduce the Greek debt.

Germany today seems torn between the idea of being the leader of an expanded Europe or opting for the tempting vision of a major role in alliance with Russia and the Heartland reaching to and including China. As leader of tiny Europe— historically called “the continent of Europe”, but in reality just a peninsula attached to the Eurasian Heartland—Germany is the big fish in a little pond, a role it has long played, too long in its estimation. For beckoning in the distance is Russia, the object of eternal attraction of ambitious, imperial-minded Germany.

The question in any case remains still unanswered today, 70 years after its defeat in World War II: Is Germany—like Japan— a sovereign nation or a pledged vassal of the USA?

 

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Time of Exile, the third and concluding volume of his renowned Europe Trilogy. (Punto Press). 

 

 

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OPEDS | Theodoros Karyotis  |  Roarmag.org

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Now that Syriza has caved in to the creditors, the need for grassroots mobilization is more urgent than ever. A new cycle of struggles is ahead of us.

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or two weeks now, political time has been condensed in Greece, and citizens live on the edge of their seats, struggling against forces that appear well beyond their control. On June 27, the Syriza-led government put the ultimatum of the creditors to a referendum and campaigned for a NO. The outcome of the referendum — a resounding rejection of perpetual austerity and continued debt bondage — will go down in history as an outstanding moment of dignity of a people under vicious attack by European creditors and the Greek elite.

Despite the patriotic overtones, this outcome was the culmination of five years of resistance to the steady downgrading of our lives. It signified breaking free of the choke-hold of the mass media, rising above fear to make the people’s voice heard. It ratified the absolute discrediting of the political elites that have been ruling since the democratic transition of 1974, which campaigned for a YES.

Furthermore, the outcome revealed a society divided along class lines: the middle and lower classes, which have so far born virtually all the cost of austerity and structural adjustment, overwhelmingly voted NO. Nevertheless, the outcome resists the attempts of all political parties to capitalize on it; it is the categorical negation of the present political and economic arrangement, the refusal which necessarily precedes all acts of social self-determination.

However, less than a week after the referendum, the Greek government submitted a new proposal of financing to its creditors, tied to a package of austerity measures even harsher than the ones rejected in the referendum. After a weekend of ‘negotiations’, which revealed a rift among Greece’s creditors, a humiliating agreement was reached early on Monday, which all but turns Greece into a European debt colony.

How was this NO metamorphosed into a YES in a matter of days?

Syriza’s dilemma

As many analysts expected, the government’s strategy of using the popular verdict as a means of pressure in the negotiations backfired. Upon returning to the negotiation table, the hardliners around German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble made clear that they are prepared to let Greece go bankrupt — with all the economic and political implications this would have for the Eurozone — rather than see the slightest crack in the neoliberal austerity discipline.

The Syriza-led government found itself in a harsh and pressing dilemma: it would either have to oversee the implementation of a new neoliberal adjustment program, or it would have to assume the political cost of a bankruptcy, with all its disastrous effects on the Greek population.

It opted for the first, thus officially putting an end to this five-month stand-off between the Greek government and its so-called European ‘partners’. The terms of the capitulation are painful, as they go against the totality of Syriza’s campaign promises: the new memorandum, even more so than the previous two, is an extreme experiment in social engineering and in redistribution of wealth in favor of the powerful. It maintains many of the unjust measures implemented by previous governments, such as ENFIA, a transversal tax on small property that has turned the lower class families into tenants within their own homes, or the abolition of the untaxable income limit for the self-employed, which makes it impossible for most skilled workers to get out of the unemployment trap.

The new deal also revamps and possibly renames TAIPED, an institution created to sell off all public assets, with all basic infrastructure, such as ports, airports and the power grid company, due to be privatized. Furthermore, the deal demands the lifting of the moratorium on home foreclosures, opening the road for a raw exercise of dispossession that threatens to create a humanitarian disaster, as we know from the Spanish experience. On top of that, it envisions an increase in indirect taxation, a hike in the prices of foodstuffs and transport as well as cuts in wages and pensions through a rise in social insurance contributions.

All in all, a package of measures designed to further compress the middle and lower classes, increase recession and unemployment, destroy the small and medium businesses, which form the backbone of Greek economy, and hand over all public assets and common goods to transnational capital. All the while perpetuating depression and increasing the debt burden, effectively crippling Greece’s economy and destroying the country’s capacity to get out of the crisis on its own feet.

The creditors went out of their way to ensure the measures are as punitive as possible. To further humiliate their opponents, they demanded the immediate voting in of reform laws and the return to Athens of the Troika supervisors, who were banished by the Syriza-led government in the early stages of negotiation.

The arguments of government officials and party cadres defending the ‘positive’ aspects of the deal are risible, as they echo the arguments of all previous governments that there is long-term prospect for the Greek economy and that the cost of the adjustment will not be transferred to the underprivileged. It is more honest to see the agreement for what it is: a large-scale operation of dispossession, a sacrifice of a whole country in order to maintain the delusions upon which the Eurozone was built.

It seems that this is the end of the road for Syriza’s ‘national salvation’ government. It will be called to vote in and implement an austerity package that not only disregards the struggle of the anti-austerity movements of the past five years, of which Syriza was once a part, but also betrays the verdict of the 61% of Greeks who voted against austerity only a week before.

Of course many would argue that this is a collective gamble gone wrong, and in front of the “partners’” blackmail the government took the least painful way out. There is no doubt that a disorderly Grexit, along with the punitive measures that would be employed by neoliberal hardliners to make an example out of the Greeks, would in the short-term be a disaster, primarily for the popular classes. In any case, political developments will be swift: the government will surely be reshuffled or replaced, and Syriza faces an internal rift that could mean the end of this party as we know it.

A contradictory relationship

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or about three years, grassroots social movements in Greece had deeply contradictory sentiments towards the electoral rise of Syriza. On one hand, the prospect of a left government was an opportunity to bring the conflict to an institutional level; after all, many of the demands of the struggles were reflected in Syriza’s program and the party always kept a movement-friendly profile.

On the other hand, Syriza has been an agent of demobilization, ending the legitimation crisis that gave a protagonistic role to the social creativity and self-determination of the movements, and by promoting the institutionalization of the struggles, the marginalization of demands that did not fit into its state management project, and the restitution of the logic of political representation and delegation, which promoted inaction and complacency.

At the same time, Syriza cultivated the illusion that real social transformation was possible without breaking with the mechanisms of capitalist domination, without calling into question the dominant economic paradigm, without building concrete bottom-up alternatives to capitalist institutions, without even calling into question the country’s permanence within a monetary union that by design favors the export-driven economies of the North in detriment of the Europe’s periphery.

Syriza’s leaders detached themselves from the party base and their former allies within the movements, and stubbornly resisted a public debate on the elaboration of a ‘Plan B’ outside the Eurozone, should the ‘Plan A’ of an ‘end to austerity within the Eurozone’ fail, for fear that this would be used against them by the pro-austerity opposition as proof that they had a hidden agenda from the very start.

Unfortunately, recent developments tend to confirm the views of those who claimed that, given the extreme delegitimation and fragility of the previous government, a new memorandum was only possible through a new and popular ‘progressive’ government. This is probably the role that Syriza unwillingly ended up playing, using its ample reserves of political capital.

Lifting the veil of illusion

Syriza’s failure to deliver on any of its campaign promises or to reverse the logic of austerity lifts the veil of illusion regarding institutional top-down solutions and leaves the grassroots movements exactly where they started from: being the main antagonistic force to the neoliberal assault on society; the only force capable of envisioning a different world that goes beyond the failed institutions of the predatory capitalist market and representative democracy.

Undoubtedly many honest and committed activists are linked to the Syriza party base. It is their task now to acknowledge the failure of Syriza’s plan, and to resist the government’s efforts to market the new memorandum as a positive or inevitable development. If Syriza, or a majority part of it, decides to stay in power — in this governmental arrangement or in some other, more servile, put in place by the creditors — and oversee the implementation of this brutal memorandum, it is the task of the party base to rebel and unite with other social forces in search of a way out of barbarity, to break the ranks of a party that might quickly be turning from a force of change into a reluctant administrator of a brutal system they have no control over.

The role of the left, broadly defined, is not that of a more benevolent manager of capitalist barbarity: after all, that was social democracy’s original purpose, a project that exhausted itself already in the 1980s. There can be no ‘austerity with a human face’: neoliberal social engineering is an attack on human dignity and the common goods in all its guises, right-wing and left-wing.

I have argued elsewhere that the NO in last week’s referendum was ambivalent, and the struggle to give meaning to it has only just begun. Hours after the announcement of the result, Prime Minister Tsipras interpreted the verdict as a mandate to ‘stay within the Eurozone at any cost’. It is evident, however, that the new ‘bailout’ package obviously is outside his mandate: Plan A, Syriza’s only plan, envisioning an end of austerity without challenging the powers-that-be, has utterly failed.

Plan B, promoted in various forms by Antarsya, the Communist Party and Syriza’s own Left Platform advocates a productive reconstruction outside the Eurozone. Although increasingly popular after the inflexibility of the European project has been made evident, it is still a productivist, state-centric, top-down plan that doesn’t put into question the dominant meanings of capitalism: endless capitalist growth, an extractive economy, the expansion of production, credit and consumption. Furthermore, by promoting national entrenchment it entails the danger of authoritarian deviations.

A decisive turning point

As always, the Greek crisis is a turning point regarding the future of the European project. The Eurozone hardliners insist on blaming the people of the European periphery for the structural defects of the single currency and their own insistence on socializing private debt through the euphemistically called ‘bailout packages’. At the same time they have poisoned the minds of the people of the North of Europe with a neocolonial moralistic discourse propagated through the mass media.

The perceived loss of political power over their lives is turning many Europeans towards reactionary xenophobic parties that promise a return to the self-contained authoritarian nation-state. The European left looks on perplexed as its hopes of an EU based on solidarity and social justice vanish along with Syriza’s bid to negotiate a humane way out of the Greek debt crisis.

Now is the moment for a broad alliance of social forces to bring forward a ‘Plan C’, based on social collaboration, decentralized self-government and the stewardship of common goods. Without overlooking its significance, national electoral politics is not the privileged field of action when it comes to social transformation.

The withering away of democracy in Europe should be complemented and challenged by the fortification of self-organized communities at a local level and the forging of strong bonds between them, along with a turn to a solidarity- and needs-based economy, and the collective management and defense of common goods. The social counter-power of the oppressed should confront the social power of capital directly in its privileged space: everyday life.

Within Greece, after a full circle, the debate on our future beyond austerity has only now started. The resounding 61% rejection of austerity serves to remind us that this debate is now urgent, and the reactivation of the social movements that envision new social relationships built from below is imminent, after some years of relative demobilization. We have ahead of us a new cycle of creative resistance, of forging collective subjects and of tireless experimentation for the bottom-up transformation of our reality.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

[box] Theodoros Karyotis is a sociologist, translator and activist participating in social movements that promote self-management, solidarity economy and defense of the commons in Greece. He writes on autonomias.net and tweets at@TebeoTeo.[/box]

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JOAQUIN FLORES | Simulpost with Fort Russ

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“Instability and failed states is one of the most favored US methods of maintaining control…”

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[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n Rostislav Ishchenko’s latest brief titled: К событиям в Мукачево (The Events in Mukachevo), he gives us his view of what the headline grabbing situation in Mukachevo represents, what can be gained or lost from it, what is behind, and what the potential outcomes of it can be.

Ishchenko offers some good ideas, and some of the dynamics he describes are useful.  Problematically though is that the foundation of the ideas in his brief rely on several essentially wrong assumptions about the way the US operates, what its goals are, how it understands power, and of course the question of who is behind the Pravy Sektor in the first place.  This also places into question the entire understanding of the events leading up to and following the coup, and how the US orchestrated some things and yet was forced to react and compromise on others.

First it is important to say that in many cases it is generally not generous to critique a brief for the things it does not include. On any given subject, there are many variables which a brief cannot possibly cover.  But underlying assumptions are evident in his piece, and furthermore  by enumerating the options which lead to definite predictions, these seem to exclude other variables. Upon reflection, Ishchenko may even agree with elements of this rejoinder brief – which hopefully can be read by all as an addendum.

To understand what is incomplete in the Ishchenko brief, and what can be added, first we will look precisely at what was stated.

To summarize Ishchenko’s view, he essentially provides this: The fact that the Pravy Sektor and the Kiev Junta are having an open conflict is both inevitable and good.  We are given three possible outcomes:

“1.  Suppression of the Pravy Sektor.   
2. The overthrow of Poroshenko.   
3. A temporary compromise.”

It is stated that the third is not so good, but will inevitably lead to either 1. or 2. because the 3rd option only puts off the inevitable for a temporary amount of time.

He is optimistic about these developments because in the case of 1., then the Kiev Junta loses support of the Pravy Sektor, and because the war effort relies on their support, the Junta’s (i.e. Poroshenko’s) war efforts are doomed to fail.

In the case of 2., it is stated that this will lead to the establishment of a “Radical Nationalist Dictatorship”, which neither the US or Europe will be able to ignore.

In either event, whatever government results, it will not have support from key constituencies which it requires to pursue the war effort, or to maintain governmental functions.

He concludes in his bottom line, point 6.:

“ 6. In addition, this incident demonstrates that even the Americans cannot keep the situation under control.”

His last, bottom line point refers  back to the three possible outcomes.

What is missing from his brief is the 4th option:

*Both sides continue hostilities with no end in sight*

This will lead towards an increase in the rate of deterioration of the situation, and general instability.  This is what the US may in fact want.

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]urely, it can back both the Kiev Junta and the Pravy Sektor and any other faction that wants to get in on the free for all, so long as it makes Ukraine an unworkable project, and economically useless – in fact rather a total liability –  to Belarus and Russia.

The Belgrade based public NGO, Center for Syncretic Studies was the first to detail the dynamics of this strategy.

Ishchenko operates from the premise that the US supports or controls Poroshenko, but does not control the Pravy Sektor, and this view is not corroborated either by theory or by the way that the US has operated on the ground.

To understand the actual mechanics, we must explain the following.

The National Endowment for Democracy and Radio Free Europe and its brand ‘Radio Liberty’ also called ‘Radio Svoboda’ is the foreign backbone for the Svoboda Party of Ukraine.

The Svoboda Party is the rebranding of the Social-Nationalist assembly.  A legal party during the pre-coup regime, such as Svoboda cannot have an armed militia within the framework of legal institutions.  This legal party is nominally led by Oleh Tyahnybok.

McCain speaks, Tyahnybok on his right. An appearance similar to his impromptu FSA support meetings in Syria.

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To reconcile this, the US urged the Social-Nationalist assembly groups that did not form under the Svoboda Party brand to maintain independence.  They continued with paramilitary training and preparation.  In the period leading up to the coup, they were re-organized in a unified way that the Social-Nationalist assembly had done, under the umbrella brand ‘Pravy Sektor’.  This is led by Dmytro Yarosh.

The US exerts total control over Svoboda, and uses its ‘hawk’ wing  (McCain, et al)  to support them publicly.  Covertly they support and control the Pravy Sektor through numerous proxies, in-country oligarchs, and various charitable foundations run by fronts.

The US exerts the least control over Poroshenko – although to be clear, they had the most control over him and more so over Yatsenyuk, when compared to other relatively mainstream, i.e. electable people.

The EU also apparently favored Poroshenko, and the May 2014 elections, and the placement of Poroshenko came a whole phase later, a phase which was shaped by two events:

1.) February 2014  – Following the previous marginalization of the EU, the US going against the EU’s compromise with Russia to resolve the crisis peacefully with new elections, infamously characterized with Nulands ‘f*ck the EU’ statement.

2.) March 2014 Crimea surprise – Following  the Crimeans’ vote to separate from Ukraine and join Russia, signaling a robust and clear Russian response.

Yatsenyuk and Klitschko: Nuland’s favorites

The US initially favored Yatsenyuk and Klitschko. That is what the leak clearly indicates from Nuland’s conversation.

Klitschko was the link between Tyahnybok and Yatsenyuk. Tyahnybok was scripted to play the ‘radical’ who pressured the ‘responsible’ Yatsenyuk and Klitschko.  The ‘violence’ of Yarosh must be separated by two links from the ‘responsibleness’ of Yatsenyuk.

Tyahnybok is the  link between Yarosh and Yatsenyuk. Tyahnybok’s leverage on Yatsenyuk would be – in the script – a reasonable response to placate or ameliorate the violence of Yarosh.  In reality, all three are team USA.

Tyahnybok doing what he does best

But the two formative events, above, made this unworkable. To reformulate the plan, the US had to go back to the EU and make a compromise.  The EU also could not make a compromise without some indication from Russia that such a compromise would be acceptable.
…
So the US was pushed back to the EU-Russia agreement of ‘new elections’.  However, they still had the upper-hand because there were new facts on the ground (the coup, new radical formations emboldened, a new narrative, etc.).

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“The Pravy Sektor are the ‘Wahhabis’ in the ‘Ukrainian Spring’…[Wittingly or unwittingly] the Pravy Sektor are US agents of destabilization. That is their assigned role. 

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Poroshenko was the candidate which the US, EU, and Russia could agree to.  That Russia did not recognize the elections in Novorossiya the way they had with Crimea was their ‘proof’ that they were on board with the Poroshenko compromise. In that sense, it was not the old agreement which the US had already ‘f*cked’, but a new agreement which merely resembled the old agreement.

This fact is not widely publicized or discussed, and works against popular pro-Russian sentiments and memes, because of the war-crimes and crimes against humanity that Poroshenko subsequently became responsible for.

Russia would proceed to, in a surprisingly warm tone (in the language of international relations), through Lavrov, ‘welcome’ and recognize the May 2014 Kiev elections as legitimate, even though the constitution stipulates that it is not. It was not really legitimate by Ukraine’s own constitution due to the lack of participation of the rebellious regions, the de-facto martial law, as well as other factors.

Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk – newlyweds already having doubts.

The best analogy for Poroshenko, then, is the EU (not the US) – caught in a tug of war between the US and Russia, but also trying to look out for and define his own interest in the game, all the while being threatened with destruction.

It is most likely that Russia had no illusions that Poroshenko would also be compelled to try to push Russia into a premature or unpopular (in Europe and Russia) intervention. But Poroshenko was more committed to the semblance of normalcy and order – at least west of the Dnieper River – and was inclined to make numerous deals with Russia – including accepting coal and gas subsidies – all to maintain some modicum of a society, even with seriously eroded democratic, civil, pluralistic norms.

Ishchenko’s brief, however, reduces these complexities, recognizes the US’s support for Poroshenko, but does not consider either the degree of support, how it came about, or the way that the US uses the Pravy Sektor as well.

The brief thus points perhaps to the opposite conclusion that it should.

Now we return to Ishchenko’s bottom line, point 6.:

“ 6. In addition, this incident demonstrates that even the Americans cannot keep the situation under control.”

American practice on these matters, in light of the Color-Spring tactic is the role of creative destruction, control through chaos, surfing catastrophe. Ishchenko seems to operate purely from a Color Revolution understanding of the situation.

We can summarize Ishchenko’s understanding as follows:  The US backed a Color Revolution in Ukraine to get ‘its government’ (Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk) into power. It used ‘useful and violent idiots’ of the Pravy Sektor to help with this.  They served that purpose, and also a purpose in the war – but now they threaten to go rogue and do things the US does not want them to do.

This is not correct.  So far we have discussed two US plans, one before the two formative events listed above, and one after.  Both plans rely on total control of the Pravy Sektor as a hedge against any government that thinks that it might do something sane like stop the war, or pursue it half-heartedly.

Ishchenko seems to ignore the last four years in the evolution of the Color Revolution tactic into the Arab Spring tactic – which relies also on a Color beginning, but then transforms a civil opposition into an armed uprising (the FSA) and then creates a distinct force which it also controls like Al-Nusra, ISIS/ISIL and similar Al Qaeda type proxies.

This author was the first to explain that the Pravy Sektor are the “Wahhabis” in the “Ukrainian Spring”.

The goal in this strategy is not to effect some ‘transition of power’, but to make power itself impossible.  It is not to change the government or its commitments, but to make government and commitments impossible to effect.

The Orange Revolution and the experience of Yulia Tymoshenko illustrate this point in the negative.  Even after this traditional Color Revolution tactic was effectively employed, the overall strategy was frustrated by natural tendencies.  Despite a rhetorically and culturally anti-Russian government, the actual policy of Tymoshenko actually engendered an increase of Ukraine-Russia bilateral trade. She is accused of possibly taking bribes from Gazprom officials for making a deal with them that was, perhaps, too good for Gazprom.

Whatever government there will be – even Poroshenko is evidence of this – will rely on Russia.  If it also has something that it produces, any export at all, then Russia will benefit from this as well.  This natural tendency, under regular peacetime norms, will bring different players to the table.  The pragmatic tendency will be for any functioning Ukraine to drift back into the Russian sphere of influence.

Recall that in early February 2015, the US warned that “if Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk walk the path of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, they will ‘wash their hands’ of them”. That path was having any kind of normal relations with their largest trading partner, Russia.

That is why there must be a war.  This is not about regime change, but about destabilization.  The Pravy Sektor are US agents of destabilization.  When they take up arms against the Kiev Junta, they are performing their specific role, which is the opposite of going rogue.

As to Ishchenko’s conclusion that whatever outcome will be ‘good’.  That is possible, but also debatable.  Russia certainly has numerous contingencies in play, and enough time has gone by, and several events have unfolded, which tend to favor it over all.  But this is separate from what Ishchenko seems to have in mind.

It is quite strange that the idea that Ukraine could become a Radical Nationalist regime would be something the US could not ignore, in the sense that this would present some problem for the US on ideological grounds.  Europe may have a harder time selling this to the various publics within each European country, but this is still workable insofar as Europe is more finely tuned in the art of sitting in two chairs, opposing things in words which they support in policy, and other duplicitous ways of implementing policy.

It is logical that the US would not establish a Radical Nationalist ‘regime’ in Ukraine – but not for the reasons that Ishchenko thinks; not for its radicalism or nationalism, but for its governmental role as a ‘regime’. Regimes, at any rate, are relatively stable until the US makes them failed states.  The problem for the US is stability, regardless of the governmental form.

The US has in fact  put into power any number of radical nationalist, or authoritarian dictatorships, all around the world.  It hasn’t even arguably done so in Europe since the 1930’s.  But what Ishchenko may not understand is that, even with this, Ukraine is not considered Europe and never will be.  Ukraine is up for standard colonial 3rd world treatment.

However, the US will not install a Pinochet, whether his name is Yarosh or Tyahnybok or Yatsenyuk.  Despite his crimes against humanity, and a program of austerity and privatization inspired chiefly by the Chicago School of Economics and the Austrians, Chile was not a failed state in any sense of the word.

Thus in viewing Ishchenko’s ‘point 6.’, rather than “this incident shows that even the Americans cannot keep the situation under control”, it is the opposite: the Pravy Sektor is one American method of keeping the situation under control.
…
But if one confuses stability for control, then they would have lost the plot.  Instability and failed states is one of the most favored US methods of maintaining control.

If we consider a ‘4th’ possible outcome, adding to Ishchenko, that would be the one that best suits the US if it cannot compel the government of Poroshenko to resume major hostilities in the east of former Ukraine.  The Pravy Sektor is their vehicle to create that mayhem.

This could bleed into, and spin off into, any number of directions. Transcarpathia, Transdniestra; it could pull in Poland as the Pravy Sektor’s conception of greater Galicia includes parts of Poland.  Crimes against the minority Hungarian population in Ukraine’s west could pull in Hungary.  From here, so many more variables would be then included, creating the perfect recipe for the kind of ‘creative destruction’ which the US prefers.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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[box type=”bio”] Joaquin Flores is a Mexican-American expat based in Belgrade. He is a full-time analyst and director at the Center for Syncretic Studies, a public geostrategic think-tank and consultancy firm, as well as the co-editor of Fort Russ news service, and President of the Berlin based Independent Journalists Association for Peace. His expertise encompasses Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and he has a strong proficiency in Middle East affairs. Flores is particularly adept at analyzing ideology and the role of mass psychology, as well as the methods of the information war in the context of 4GW and New Media. He is a political scientist educated at California State University. In the US, he worked for a number of years as a labor union organizer, chief negotiator, and strategist for a major trade union federation.[/box]

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Remember: All captions and pullquotes are furnished by the editors, NOT the author(s). 

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