Can we have a Ukraine/ Russia/ Crimea thread for dummies?

[chicaguapa]

In other words, could someone explain the situation in really simple terms please. I don't understand it but feel it's important and I should know what's going on.

And because DD(12) asked me this morning and I couldn't answer.

mathanxiety, the whole policy is about destabilisation. That is its purpose - to weaken and set back countries by decades, just as was done in Iraq. And just as Orwell said, eventually after the "creative destruction" (originally a Marxist term), the capitalists will rebuild destroyed countries like Syria and profit from the destruction.

The Ukraine policy of backing far-right elements is not about reaching agreement, because Russia cannot reach an agreement with them. It is a policy of confrontation and destabilisation. It will gharm and isolate Russia and harm Ukraine. It will drive a wedge between the EU and Eussia and benefit the US.

Owen Jones says that Libya is a disaster, but Owen jones is just a naive left wing newspaper commentator of a Marxist persuasion. He is not a geostrategic analyst like Brzezinski. Owen Jones writes for the Independent and Brzezinski talks to top planners and strategists. There is no comparison between the two.

And Sisi is backed by Saudi Arabia and many other Arab countries apart from Qatar. Some conspiracy theorists say that Morsi, educated in the US, was a CIA backed puppet, but they overthrew him, just as Saddam, the Baathist, was once a CIA puppet who was overthrown when his time was up.

Owen Jones writes for the Independent

Not any more. He's now at The Grauniad.

The IMF are going to loan Ukraine $14-18Bn over the next two years, with the proviso of massive austerity. Inflation is set to rise to 14%, GDP will fall by 3% and gas is to go up by 50%. Madness! It's the usual neoliberal ideology of blaming the poor for causing something they had nothing to do with. Again we see crapitalism for the poor and socialism for the corrupt banks.

Has he moved? The Guardian is a step up, so it is a good move.

Agree, DoctorTwo, but that is how the bankers take control of countries. If countries weren't in financial hardship and didn't need any emergency loans, then their assets could not be taken and their policies could not be controlled.

The world is a racket.
If Al Capone owes you money, you don't ask him to pay up.
Real power is military power, not monetary power, because money can always be stolen by force of arms.

Obama made a speech today saying that Russia is outdated because it is following the principle of "might is right". But in the same or another speech, Obama said that Russia is not a world power, just a regional power.

In effect, Russia does not have that much might. It has been forced into a corner. The US has the might and of course it uses it to achieve its objectives and maintain its hegemony.

There truly is no accounting for western European stupidity in allowing itself to be dragged along with American posturing.

"The greater European space as a whole risks being dragged back into a struggle over spheres of interest and influence with the EU/Nato and Russia on either side and countries like Ukraine and to some extent Turkey, sitting uncomfortably alongside or between both," [a study by former EU government ministers] said.

"The additional danger is that such continued divisions on our continent will condemn the countries of Europe to global irrelevance or at least to peripheral status."

Or American stupidity in risking the economies of Europe.

'President Barack Obama has described Russia as no more than a "regional power" whose actions in Ukraine are an expression of weakness rather than strength'

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/25/barack-obama-russia-regional-power-ukraine-weakness

I think Obama is right. The coup was backed by the West and that forced Russia into a corner and forced them to take action that will eventually backfire on them. Russia was outplayed and outsmarted and has won a Pyrrhic victory. They were forced into their actions through weakness and the US played them like a violin.

And of course the EU is exactly the same. They have been played like a violin by the US because the EU will be weakened and the Euro could easily be weakened and the EU has been shown up once again as a paper tiger without independence and without the ability to protect its own interests. Even Germany, the most powerful European country, has been played like a violin and has gone along with backing a government that contains some neo-nazi style elements. You couldn't make it up. Russia, which would have been a good economic partner for Germany with its huge market and resources has now been cut off from Germany.

The US has played a blinder and it is able to do so because of its might which is crucially backed up by military might.

I think China is also weak and also no more than a regional power and therefore it will not be able to do anything because just like Russia, it is comparatively weak.

Obama is blowing smoke out his backside. US weakness was demonstrated by the smackdown delivered by China:

'As world leaders gathered in The Hague to discuss nuclear security issues, U.S. President Barack Obama sought to encourage Chinese criticism of Russia on Ukraine. Chinese President Xi Jinping in turn pressed Obama about a reported U.S. breach of the servers of China’s largest phone-equipment maker.

China has always held a “just and objective attitude” toward the Ukraine crisis, Xi said in the meeting with Obama, according to a report yesterday from China’s official Xinhua news agency. The world’s biggest energy user, China abstained from the United Nations Security Council resolution that declared the Crimean succession referendum illegal. Russia vetoed it.'
(posted upthread from Bloomberg)

The US has not played a blinder if it causes damage to the economy of the EU by its aggressive interference in Ukraine. It has shot itself in the foot. Further, it has set in motion events it has as little hope of controlling as it had hope of controlling in Egypt or Libya.

We can see that a clear objective of all of this is to harm Russia financially. The sanctions and isolation are intended to harm Russia and to eventually control it by deposing Putin. A strong Russia is not in the interests of the US.

I think that similarly, too strong a Germany or Europe is not in the interests of the US and a close partnership between Germany and Russia is not in US interests, and this Ukraine situation has created a wedge that will weaken Germany, Europe and Russia. Europe will be left with a basketcase Ukraine with some extreme rightwing elements to deal with and to integrate into a democratic relationship.

Everyone has been played off, nearly everyone is a loser apart from the US. If that is not a blinder, I don't know what is.

Sorry, there is one other winner apart from the US - the bankers. They always win.

The US can't win if it keeps on losing as it is now doing through failure to follow through its initial support for regime change everywhere. It failed in the Russian Federation once before during the Yeltsin years (though it came close to destroying Russia), and so far it has failed in Egypt and in Libya. The civil war in Syria, initially encouraged by the starry-eyed US but now hijacked by Islamists, rumbles on.

Like all good kleptocracies, the US fails to factor in the impact of its interference in other countries on the poor when forming policy or in fact on anyone other than corporations and the very wealthy and fails to grasp that democracy works both ways. It also fails to grasp that not all electorates are as unattuned to their own best interests as American electorates are and that when people keep their savings in a currency other than that of their own country they are smarter than most Americans are.

Good point, the US is not successful everywhere.

I'm not sure about Egypt. The US didn't seem to act too strongly about the military takeover against the democratically elected government, and it has backed the Ukrainian coup against a democratically elected government. Now that the Egyptian military has staggeringly sentenced hundreds of people to death, where is the global outcry or sanctions or UN condemnations? If Assad did that, the BBC would not stop reporting it.

Similarly with what is happening in Libya. We don't hear that much about it. If it was in US interests, I think the US would be able to sort it out.

The Islamists get help from countries like Saudi Arabia. I am sure the US could put pressure on the Saudis to curtail the Islamists.

I think it is in America's, or rather in its ruling elite's interests to keep some countries poor and divided.

There are different views in America. Conservative politician, Pat Buchanan, believes the US should pull out of many cuntries and become more isolationist and less interfering, but he is not a part of the ruling elite.

At the end of the day, the decisions are taken by a ruling elite.

The US cannot put any pressure on Saudi Arabia at all for anything.

Noises stage right

Mathanxiety - i thought they could on the Royal Saudi family, just not on the population?

I agree, BreakingDad77

The US could topple Saddam, they can back coups, I think they could certainly create a coup and topple the Saudi rulers if they wanted to and if they acted against their interests.

If you think they could have toppled Saddam with a coup, why do you suppose they wasted all that money on an invasion?

I didn't say coup for Saddam, I said topple him
coups for other countries

'why do you suppose they wasted all that money on an invasion?'

War is business. The Saudis and other countries paid a lot of money in the Iraq War and the military industrial complex made money and so did oil companies after the war etc

more about Mr Putin's background and aspirations

"Putin too has espoused principles, then dropped them when they proved inconvenient. In Iraq in 2003, he made a stand in defence of international law, opposing any invasion without UN approval. In Georgia in 2008, he sent in the troops without even pretending to consult with the Security Council.

Last year, intervention in Syria was out of the question. This year, intervention in Ukraine is justified and unimpeachably legitimate. It may be that principles have never been the issue - and that Putin's objective has always been to maximise Russian power, and to defy Western attempts to rein Russia in...."

"He does not understand that the collapse of the Soviet system was predetermined, therefore he believes his mission is to restore the Soviet system as soon as possible," he says.

As a middle-ranking KGB officer who loved the Soviet Union, Putin lacked the perspective of senior officers, who knew full well the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own inefficiency rather than because of Western plotting, Bukovsky says.

"It leads him exactly to… repeat the same mistakes. He wants this whole country to be controlled by one person from the Kremlin, which will lead to disaster," he says.

Putin's decision to invade Crimea was taken quickly and impulsively, by a small group of his favoured top officials. That means Putin has no one to warn him of the long-term consequences of his actions, and until he finds out for himself, he will maintain his course. That means relations with the West will remain uncomfortable, especially in areas he considers to be his "zone of legitimate interests".

I think Russia had of lot of oil contracts in Iraq and so some say that's why they didn't want an invasion, as obviously they all got torn up once coalition got in etc.

Obama was talking about Putin needing to remove forces stationed in Russia on Ukrainian border. On Tuesday Reuters said US and Russia drew a line on Ukrainian crisis, but this sounds like continuous tension.

Russian response is reminiscent of worst days of cold war. It talks about OSCE verifications and then states:

"What is the sense of verifications in the military and defense policy sphere if their results do not influence political practices, including the formation of U.S. and NATO approaches to the situation around Ukraine? ... Or are these very same leaders so susceptible to emotions that they might ignore facts in favor of own political tastes and preferences?"
en.itar-tass.com/russia/725755

Is that just chartering or are they actually saying NATO prepares for war in Ukraine?

Well, Russia already has prepared for war in Ukraine by massing Russian troops on the eastern border, handy for seizing the Ukrainian oil and gas fields.

Perhaps the next Russian military invasion will be into Ukraine again. Where do you think it will be?