Choosing enemies, propaganda, regime change and plain dumb policy - by Confusedponderer

 

"Why will we not listen to the Syrian government?"

That is an interesting question. Of course it would be reasonable for the US to come to terms with Assad, but hostility towards Assad was a choice the US made a while back. However, there was nothing inevitable about it, and one has to be clear about the fact that this hostility was a choice the US made.

In a sense, this is emblematic for a number of wrongheaded trends in contemporary US foreign policy that I have been watching first with incredulity and finally with terror over the years.

Self-imposed cul-de-sacs

A US standard operating procedure is one of personal demonization of the leaders of countries designated as enemies. Once the label has been put on such a country, my impression is that US media start to want to help, and they then start to amplify government propaganda, and self-censor by not reporting things that may shed a good light on such countries.

As it is with propaganda, it works best at home. As far as the US is concerned Russia is Putin, Iraq was Saddam, Afghanistan is Karzai, Iran was Ahmadinejad, Syria is Assad, Libya was Gadhafi, Egypt was Mubarak, Mursi and now Sisi. People live there too, but that’s details. What counts is that every single one of these leaders is another Hitler. In light of that it is probably not an accident that US citizens consistently poll poorly on matters concerning the rest of the world.

This is a self-inflicted wound. It makes changes of policy, necessary in case of observable failure, a tough sell. So tough in fact that once a policy it is set on course in then US, it usually runs almost on autopilot. There is no re-examination, no course correction. Cuba is a case in point.

It appears that the US are ill advised to demonize opposing leaders. It limits freedom of movement politically. Also, words have consequences, a lesson lost on DC, considering the invective heaped on Putin by what the US nowadays employs as diplomats. But maybe the destruction of trust and the deliberate squandering of goodwill is the very point of the exercise.

Staying on course probably is just too much fun: Assad is evil. Putin is a KGB thug. Deal with such a guy??! LOL. #putinstinks. ROFL. Kin Yong Il has a funny hairdo. *snicker*

What else is left to say after that? Well, a lot actually.

 

Debilitating oversimplification and debating fiction

The US theme is one of debilitating oversimplification. The effect is best described in the old adage: "Garbage in, garbage out."

I think that one of the more troubling aspects of the American political discourse on foreign policy right now is a propensity for propaganda and deliberate and obvious lies that has become a permanent feature of DC foreign policy announcements. A rather recent example was the denial that there are no neo-Nazis in Ukrainian government. Right. As if to top things off, Kerry cites as evidence things he has seen on Youtube. Of course. I wouldn’t start a war based on anything less.

Instead of "5 o'clock follies" we now get the same in a 24h news cycle. While the US propagandizes herself mindlessly, government secrecy controls the message.

In the net result, we see a concerted effort by media and administration to degrade their own capability to come to a reality based understanding of a situation and to make informed foreign policy decisions about it. One could see that already when the Bushmen leaked those stories on the Aluminium tubes to Judith Miller and then referred to this as evidence. "It is not just us, everybody is saying this - and you doubt it?" That was pervasive during the run up to the war.

As a result, congress and media were essentially talking about fiction when they debated the equally fictious question how great exactly a threat Saddam posed. That was no debate about reality. Indeed, by putting out their narrative, the Bushmen created their own virtual reality. But that didn’t change Iraq, or its demographics, its society or the fact that Saddam didn’t have WMD. What it did was to generate public support for the war against Iraq.

The Obamaites act in much the same way when they blather about Ghouta being Assad’s handiwork, when it is by now pretty much clear that that was not the case.

The corrosive effect all this has on the idea that policy ought to be debated openly in congress should be obvious. To put it pointedly: When half of the info is secret, and the other half nonsense, the resulting dysfunction should not surprise anybody. In that spirit, the authorization to use military force was enacted without the matter having been debated rationally at all.

The usual suspects and their usual prescriptions

Of course, all that is not so if one asks the culprits: The messes today and their familiar prescriptions for how to deal with them reflect that sorry state of affairs.

On one hand there are the self-pitying self-justifiers like Tony Blair, which can be summed up with very little exaggeration as follows: “Iraq went bust? Well, it is a very complicated situation, and, I have spent a lot time on this, you must know, and let me tell you: Things are hazy, and there are no easy solutions and who could have known what would happen. You are as surprised as I was. You cannot begin to understand how difficult this all was, and how heavy the burden of responsibility weighed on my shoulders! But in conclusion I have to tell you – whatever we did was perfectly right and we feel vindicated! I was so right – in fact I would do the same thing today, without hesitation!” The man knows no shame.

And then there are the concrete heads: Sanctions don't work? Then more sanctions will do! Cuba is a model case for how well that works. Iraq is an utter mess and the US were kicked out and now it is unstable? Well, that is so because Obama betrayed that nation by abandoning it. He lost Iraq! That's why the US needs to go back in! What a remedy. US support of rebels incited a civil war in Libya, which is now split into two feuding Jihadistans, and which spilled over into neighbouring Mali? Easy – find a good guy to support. US support of rebels incited a civil war in Syria, which bred ISIS? Just as easy – that is because the moderate rebels need still more support, and perhaps a bombing campaign! Of course, this time it’ll work!

Einstein’s definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” By that standard US foreign policy is insane.

Regime change NOT a surrogate for having a foreign policy

For whatever reason, there appears to be conviction abound in DC that a goal of regime change is a surrogate for a policy. Regime change is an ideé fixe that persists and festers in US foreign policy brains like a malignant tumor that rots mental faculties.

It’s as simplistic as it gets: Whenever a country is doing things the US doesn’t want it to do, and the leaders are not going to change their mind, the US is going through the motions:

First these leaders are being scolded, but this may be skipped on occasion. When that doesn’t work, pressure is being applied - legal, extralegal, illegal - and when that country still persists in resisting, and since the US backing down is not ever an option, sanctions follow, and support for the opposition etc pp. If that doesn’t work there is the silver bullet – regime change.

The idea must be that if only that troublesome leader in question goes away, everything will be peachy. The prime example would be Iraq. A splendid success obviously, though I doubt we’ll see McCain shopping at the Baghdad Bazaar again anytime soon.

Fiction, false perceptions and delusion                                         

When one listens to US policy pronouncements there appears to be little concern for why foreign leaders act as they do. Their and their countries interests don’t matter. They are more like a stage for the US to act out their global reach and play to their domestic audiences.

Just take for instance Syria and their alliance Hezbollah and Iran. Why is Syria allied with Iran? How important is this alliance for Syria? Never mind, the US want to roll back Iran, and Hezbollah (for the Israelis and the Saudis, one of the more peculiar alliances of our days), and Syria is with Iran, so Syria either falls in line or into chaos.

What does the US offer as an alternative to Syria’s alliance with Iran and Hezbollah? Well, unconditional surrender of course. Compromise is not on the table. And in face of such a generous offer Assad won’t accept US terms? Just because doing so would probably mean death for him, his wife, kids, their extended family and persecution of religious minorities, including Christians, in Syria by Jihadi fanatics? What’s not to like!

If one accepts the wisdom of John Kerry and the US media, the reasons why some foreign leaders just won’t fall in line remain mysterious, and are usually attributed to personal flaws rather than matters of policy – which in turn leads to ridiculous theses like: Putin wants to recreate the USSR, and he’s a thug – he was in the KGB! – that’s why he is being so nasty. It’s nothing that the US does and could stop doing. NATO’s creeping expansion towards Russia’s borders is just an accident.

Plain dumb policy

It's not that US policies are just bad because they consistently don't work (as the various Middle Eastern messes underline). They are often just plain dumb. Often it could and should have been quite clear from the onset that they would not work, usually because they ignore realities on the ground as a matter of course.

The examples for that are plentiful – starting with seeing sympathy for Hashemite kings were there isn’t any, or not seeing holy places where there are many and (sadly) not ending with seeing moderates where there only is the Muslim pendant to the Khmer Rouge.

As a result, in US policy prescriptions and the media descriptions there is that one bad guy, the demonized leader, and then there are the good guys. Like ISIS. On which folks like McCain say that, at least, they are not working with Iran. Well, thank God for that.

And because the newsies are not much brighter, the inglorious architects of these various messes are reinvited on TV again and again, and not shamed and marginalized as it would befit bumblers and fools and as accountability would suggest. Obviously, in America a record of delusion is no obstacle to be invited as an expert on TV.

Red lines and fecklessness

Another troubling aspect is Obama’s fecklessness, and I am not referring to it the way the neocons and Republicans mean it.

It is true that Obama’s threats have been devoid of substance (which has been good on the particular cases, but which is bad as a whole). What is just as bad if not worse is that most of the time Obama’s threats have been uttered needlessly. Don’t threaten people unless you’re willing to back your words with actions, or you might find yourself in more trouble than you bargained for. That rule ought to work as well in a bar as in foreign policy.

The neocons, in their usual shamelessness, bemoan that Obama showed weakness by not backing up his red line in Syria with overwhelming force. Indeed, time to smash some crappy little country at the wall again as Mr. Ledeen would perhaps put it.

Well, the intelligent reply would be that Obama – if he had had his wits together – should have never uttered the red line in the first place, even less so if he was unwilling to follow through with it anyway.

There was no need at all for this red line on Syria. The only conceivable purpose for that red line was to facilitate an intervention, which was quite obviously the point. Kerry or one of the Amazons must have carried the day in some inter administration meeting. The rebels then, apparently with Turkish aid, went to work at Ghouta and created for Kerry the casus belli that the red line was designed to provide and to, finally, allow for a massive bombing campaign against Syria. That must have been the plan all along, which explains handily not only Kerry's incredulity over Syria accepting the chemical weapons deal, but also his outrage of having been robbed his splendid little war! Again!

And back to Kerry winning this day, and Burns winning another day - there is no unity of purpose and no unity of command short of Obama having the last word. There is no coherent US foreign policy vis a vis Russia or Iran or Syria or Israel. Obama is a reed in the wind. That is why his foreign policy looks like he is rolling dice.

The matter of trustworthiness

As if the Bush times were not bad enough, the US under Obama have proven to be a thoroughly treacherous ally. The US under Obama has kicked in the teeth about anybody who has helped them so far. That record is a liability in itself. Americans are well advised to finally understand it as such.

The US and Libya

Ghaddafi's fate, after he came in from the cold, is a good example. The US got him killed. Why? Because, regime change. Well, and because the US wanted to be seen vanguarding the Arab spring, lest it takes a direction the US couldn't control. Or so they thought. Ambassador Stevens could tell a story about how well steering that one worked, if he was still alive. And then there was that surprising spillover into Mali. Oopsie.

The US and Iran

The US flirt with Iran suffers from the America being afflicted with bipolar disorder. It's a near marvel that the Iranians put up with the way the US have conducted themselves, and IMO their persistence only shows how serious they are. Naturally, the Obamaites are split between those who support a deal and those who oppose it, with the latter probably seeing the negotiations as signs of Iranian weakness and are eagerly trying to poison the deal by moving the goalposts. Probably they think that there is a chance that this perceived weakness may, finally, lead to regime change.

And of course, for the Likudniks it suffices that hostility with Iran is good for Israel, because as long as that lasts, they need not talk about occupied territories and other unpleasant things of that sort.

The US and Russia

The US relation to Russia likewise suffers from US bipolarity. US-Russian cooperation prevented wear against Syria and Iran, and probably made that US-Iranian flirt possible in the first place. Russia helped the US resupply Afghanistan. They helped against Islamist terrorism. But despite all that, the quaint idea that good relations with Russia are sensible (not only because they have a lot of nukes) and useful was apparently shared only by some folks in the NSC, with the State Department and the rest of the administration remaining hostile, and Obama, ever hedging, presiding over his rivalling rivals, refusing to decide anything but in the last moment lest he needs to take sides in their infighting.

The result? The US rewarded Putin for his help by kicking loose the mess in Ukraine. Why? Because, regime change. Because regime change has been the default setting for the last decade anyway. And probably nobody had a better idea. The odds are that, if anybody was supervising Nuland, he or she may have just liked what she did. A display of unadulterated brilliance.

And again back to regime change and Russia: How on earth can anybody seriously believe that, if Putin went away, Russia would rediscover their inner Boris Yeltsin, pop up a barrel of Vodka and merrily revive the days of drunken bumdom, rapacious (i.e. Chodorchovskiite) looting and servile subordination to the US that greatly helped to wreck the country after the Cold War ended?

The Russians have interests, and these interests won't go away with Putin. Putin represents a Russian foreign policy consensus, which he admittedly helped shaping, but which is nevertheless a consensus. Regime change won't change that. Neither will it undo NATO expansion, missile defense and continuing NATO encroachment to Russia’s borders. It also won't undo rejection by the EU to let Russia participate in some form in Europe’s common market. And in particular it won't undo US habitual and reflexive hostility towards a Russia with a modicum of assertiveness.

Killing Westphalia

Then there is that other major point that Obama and his people, just as if destabilizing countries by facilitating civil war wasn't enough, are busy at work killing the Westphalian Order, drone strike by drone strike, entirely oblivious or indifferent to the ripple effect that has for international stability and sovereignty.

That is something on which any debate in the US is pretty much nonexistent anywhere but in narrow academic circles. Obviously, for the policymakers hegemony overrides sovereignty, so this is something for lesser countries to worry about.

Well, until China flies drones over the US, but that may take some years. And for so long, bombs away!

http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/06/26/stimson-center-yes-the-drones-are-killing-westphalia/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty

Finally

In closing, if the US started to listen to Assad, he ought to better be careful. The dictum "The only thing worse than being a US enemy is being a US ally" rings true. If Assad ever gets to make a deal with the US, he would be well advised to check the drinks for poison and to have escape routes ready. The US just might try to get him killed anyway if again someone sways Obama at the 11th hour. Because, regime change.

So it is all "Yes we can". What about "No, we shouldn't" for a change. One hopes ...

Well, self-restraint is unheard of in DC for more than a decade. So is prudence.

Confusedponderer

Comments

[kao_hsien_chih]

I can only think of the motive behind the nonsense being spewed by he West--both Washington DC and its European acolytes--as a sort of religious fundamentalism untainted (so to speak) by reason and science. Their cause is right because they say so and anything that says otherwise must be burned at stake, whether they are domestic skeptics or foreign adversaries. Any treachery and deceit in course of this holy secularist jihad/crusade is justified by the end--kill all the unbelievers and the let the great atheist god sort them out, so to speak, seems to be their prevailing attitude.

[R.L. Kirtley]

All..I Think We May Be A Little Too Harsh On The Wonks Who Have Come Up With Our Plans For Syria,Ukraine,Iraq,ect. After All,I'm Sure That Everything Worked Out Perfect On Their Powerpoint Slides...Sarc.

[Ryan]

Confusedponderer,

Well written and well stated.

[Bandolero]

Confusedponderer

That's a brilliant article.

Thank You!

[JohnH]

"For the policymakers hegemony overrides sovereignty." And showing resolve (being intransigent) is policymakers' highest value. According to the conventional version of recent history, Kennedy stared down Khrushchev on Cuba. Reagan made the Soviet Union collapse. Recent American shows of strength forced Iran to cave, Syria to abandon chemical weapons and Putin to knuckle under. Vietnam was lost only because of lack of resolve on the part of American public opinion, which should not have been listened to in the first place.

Most of these narratives are at best questionable, but they show how much being pig headed has trumped sound judgement, learning lessons, and finding win-win solutions. And, of course, any experience (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) that doesn't fit the narrative get swiftly swept under the rug.

It's amazing how strictly prominent politicians and news organizations adhere to this crazy narrative, trapped in their alternative group-thinking universe. Yet no one seems willing to rock the boat and put and end to this nonsensical echo chamber.

[joe brand]

So much of what you describe here -- the self-constructed cul de sacs, the debates over fiction, the aggressive oversimplification, the reliance on regime change as policy -- sounds like a good description of the Dulles brothers and the policies they pursued. So I wonder if it's merely true that D.C. has rejected self-restraint and prudence for "more than a decade." Isn't it more like six or seven?

[Denis O'Brien, PhD]

Yes, sir. Well stated and over-due. I don't know if most Americans are to the point yet where they would agree, but it's fast getting to that point.

Confusedponderer: The Obamaites act in much the same way when they blather about Ghouta being Assad’s handiwork, when it is by now pretty much clear that that was not the case.

Obama's red line to Syria on Aug20.2012 was, apparently, impromptu. He made an impromptu appearance at the press briefing and the question was, ostensibly, off the cuff, as was the answer.

Obama: "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/08/20/remarks-president-white-house-press-corps

What people are missing is that the red line was not directed at Assad exclusively. It was, in effect, if any CWs are used, there will be trouble. But a very strong case can be made that CWs were not, in fact, used -- certainly not "a whole bunch." No more than small amounts were employed very locally to promote the insurgents' false flag initiative and to give the UN some sarin samples to take home.

I am trained in neuropharmacology, and I have spent 6 months studying many of the Ghouta videos in excruciating detail. I believe I have made a very strong case that the biological evidence virtually proves that those victims we see -- including scores of kids -- were killed with carbon monoxide or (less likely) cyanide and certainly not sarin or some other organophosphate. My formal conclusion was: "This was a false-flag stunt using murdered children as bait to lure the Americans into an attack on Assad." That conclusion is backed up by a 288 pg treatise titled "Murder in the SunMorgue." I believe this is the most detailed study on the Ghouta Massacre available -- certainly the most detailed pharmacological study.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/230748990/Murder-in-the-SunMorgue

Before ISIS stormed into Iraq and began butchering hundreds or thousands of unarmed people, I don't think most people were willing to accept the thesis that these blood-thirsty Sunni/Salafists/Wahhabi -- whatever -- were capable of murdering scores or hundreds of children (probably Alawites) in a failed attempt to get the US to take on Assad.

Sadly, that thesis does not seem all that extreme today, just a year on. Having replaced their consciences with screwball ideology, they will stop at nothing.

But of course, the American neocons have also supplanted conscience with ideology and killed hundreds of thousands of Muslim children throughout the Levant and ME. So I don't think anyone is entitled to play the holier-than-thou role in this mess. ISIS could just as well point to Americans and the West and say "they will stop at nothing."

[Aka]

reminds me of this
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8xW1Wuae0z4/S3ABmxh569I/AAAAAAAABo4/OgbT-mGVYrA/s1600-h/tr011122.gif

[confusedponderer]

Denis,
"Obama's red line to Syria on Aug20.2012 was, apparently, impromptu. He made an impromptu appearance at the press briefing and the question was, ostensibly, off the cuff, as was the answer."

Ok. But in a way, that'd be even worse. It means that, as far as Obama is concerned, there was no plan, and that Kerry seized the opportunity.

Obama's own warhawks and their allies who want a US intervention in Syria, tried to put him in a bind after he said that. That was what led to Ghouta.

Think of a form for how to get the US into a war:

Is there US treshold for intervention?

What's the treshold:
Massacres (-) they all do it, PR problem with headchoppers.
Children as victims (+) always works
CW use (+) everybody hates gas, reliable PR wise
...

Are these contitions met?
Massacres (+) but too ambiguous
Children as victims (+) but not in a way good for PR
CW use? (-) Assad has announced CW disarmament and let inspectors in
...

Can these contitions be created?
Massacres (+) but too ambiguous
Children as victims (+) but not in a way good for PR
CW use? (+) Well Turkish intelligence knows a guy who knows a guy ...
...

Cheney thought along the same Gleiwitzian lines when he wanted to paint a U2 baby blue to have the Iraqis shoot at it, or when he proposed to have SEALs create an incident with Iran in the Persian Gulf.

If it doesn't rain, make it rain.

But of course, the precondition to have such deceit work is secrecy.

To maintain secrecy, it will probably be necesary to lie about what happened if impertinently pertinent questions are being asked.

Which means that again the debate is about virtual realities and not about what actually did happen. Neither the pulic nor their elected representatives know enough to come to an informed judgement.

[turcopolier]

CP

congratulations and welcome aboard. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

Thank you for including the European governments in this - they bear major responsibility for this and I suppose - in good time - for World War III.

[Ex-PFC Chuck]

Agreed!

[steve]

Thanks for the clear and concise article.

[oofda]

Excellent piece, CP. In addition to demonizing the leaders of countries, the US simply doesn't take the interests of those countries into account. And to those countries, their interests are legitimate, even if our foreign policy elite don't respect them. As observed in the comment:
"The Russians have interests, and these interests won't go away with Putin." The Russians had, now have and will have strong concerns about Ukraine. And Ukrainians have interests in relations with Russia. Remember the elite of old Ukraine used the term "Little Russia" to describe their region, and "Great Russia" for the large Russian mass of the Empire.
Actually, I am probably giving too much credit when I say the US foreign policy elites don't consider other countries' interests- they probably just aren't aware of them.

[YT]

Der Untergang des Abend ist nahe ...

[FB Ali]

CP,

An excellent examination of US policy.

The only other item I would have liked to see discussed is the extent to which some in the policy establishment are pursuing specific agendas of their own, and are able to push the dumb consensus into desired directions.

A couple of days ago Moon of Alabama referred to an article last year by Edward Luttwak in which he argued that unending conflict in Syria best suited US interests; there must be many others who think along those lines. It also serves Israeli interests, as does increased turmoil everywhere in the Middle East; I think it is fairly well-established that there are influential people in the US policy-making structure who push the Israeli agenda.

There are also the moneyed interests, for whom conflict and war mean vast earning opportunities. They also use the dumb majority to further their own purposes.

[Anna-Marina]

The ground for the deceptive narratives is the desire to be absolved of any responsibility. The glaring display of dishonesty, whoring, and pettiness tells everything about the shameless society we live in now, where individual self-serving follies have no responsibilities. Our judicial system is bent towards the power and money. The Internet is thus a wonderful tool to expose the villains. There should be no mercy towards the profiteering buffoons.

[David Habakkuk]

kao_hsien_chih,

Reverting to an earlier discussion, one might say that Tocqueville in his studies of the different outcomes of the American and French Revolutions was wrestling with two curses which the ‘wicked fairy’ of reaction laid on the ‘sleeping beauty’ of egalitarian politics.

One was that ‘liberty’ would naturally degenerate into ‘licence’, creating a Hobbesian anarchy from which the only refuge was absolutism; the other that politics would become a religion, developing the kind of ‘antinomian’ propensities commonly found among adherents of millenarian religious creeds.

To those who believe they have the key to a secular salvation, just as to those who believe they are instruments of the will of God, the doctrine that the ends justify the means can easily come to seem natural, particularly in dealing with non-believers. And it is a doctrine which not only can easily open the door to complete societal collapse – but also, as Tocqueville noted, can provide a perfect apologia for tyrants.

A key part of his polemic was directed to demonstrating that the antidote proposed by many ‘reactionaries’ to dangers they themselves accurately identified – to defend or reconstruct traditional hierarchies – was not only unworkable, but was likely to guarantee the realisation of their own worst nightmares. Part of the reason for this, Tocqueville argued, was that, in the civilisation of the Christian West, the trends making for the disintegration of traditional hierarchical and ‘collectivist’ beliefs and systems were ineluctable.

What he could easily demonstrate was that the example of the United States refuted the case that liberty necessarily produced an immediate collapse into ‘licence’, and that egalitarian politics necessarily became an antinomian pseudo-religion.

After 1945, the notion that the United States was, as it were, the ‘good face’ of democracy, in the sense of egalitarian politics, appeared overwhelmingly compelling to very many people in Europe: including many sometime fascists and communists who had to face up to the bankruptcy of their earlier beliefs.

The fact that, in the aftermath of their triumph in 1989, latent ‘Jacobin’ propensities in the American elite took over – with European elites raising only intermittent protest – completely baffles me.

What makes it much worse is that – as indeed conservatives commonly argued about Jacobinism – a pseudo-religious politics, professing to be leading the world to universal emancipation, seems increasingly to be turning into an instrument of an unbridled ‘licence’: a will-to-power which is all the more dangerous because unacknowledged.

Indeed, I sometimes find myself inclined to parody Kennan’s famous ‘Long Telegram’, and suggest that American elites have become committed to the ‘total destruction of rival power.’ If they cannot pull back, this is likely sooner or later to end in complete catastrophe. That British elites appear totally complicit in this insanity is to me beyond belief depressing for me, although doubtless I should not have been surprised.

[David Habakkuk]

CP,

A very fine post indeed, which gives a lot of nails a resounding bash on the head.

On Ukraine, incidentally, a very interesting article by Nikolai Gvosdev has just been posted on the ‘National Interest’ website.

The conclusion is worth quoting:

‘The worst choice, however, would be to make rhetorical commitments to Ukraine that the West has no real intention of fulfilling. This would only anger both the Russians (who see it as unacceptable interference in their affairs) and the Ukrainians (who have trusted the promises made to them by Western politicians). Putin takes the fate of Ukraine seriously, and has shown he will take major risks to secure the Kremlin’s position. He may be willing to reach an accommodation with the United States – but it is not clear that the United States should or would accept it. But Putin won’t meekly accept that Ukraine, like the Warsaw Pact states before it, will drift into the Western orbit. In his view, Russia, since the end of the Cold War, has signed off on too many compromises and found itself pushed out of Europe. In Ukraine, in 2014, he has drawn the line and effectively said, “This far, and no further.” The decision by the United States – and its allies – to accept that line or to cross it should not be made lightly.’

(See http://nationalinterest.org/feature/ukraines-ancient-hatreds-10736?page=show .)

I don’t like much Gvosdev – I think him a highly intelligent man, without much guts and self-respect. It seems to me he probably understands the crucial point which your analysis illuminates – that precisely what we are doing is ‘to make rhetorical commitments to Ukraine that the West has no real intention of fulfilling.’

On and off, I have spent decades explaining to Eastern Europeans that anyone in the area who ‘trusted the promises made to them by Western politicians’ really is a ‘mug punter’, and that they might usefully read a little history.

What do they want, for God's sake – the guarantees to Czechoslovakia that weren’t honoured, or the guarantee to Poland which precipitated the Nazi-Soviet Pact and destroyed the last chances of avoiding the Second World War, the genocide inflicted on the Jews, and the catastrophe which was unleashed upon Poland and the Baltics?

But it appears that irrational optimism is incurable.

[Castellio]

I agree. While there is nothing "new", the article creates a broad, interwoven, and most importantly, "realistic" platform of analysis. It is trying to create space for a new, badly needed consensus.

[nick b]

CP,

I would posit that one of the main reasons that two, or more, decades worth of US foreign policy has been "plain dumb", is that American voters assess little or no political/electoral penalty on our leaders for getting it consistently wrong.

[Valissa]

David, there is at least one Brit with a clue about today's "pseudo-religious" politics.

I found John Gray's book,'Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia' has some very interesting food for thought. I have several of his books and I typically have little use for political philosophers, but I find Gray enjoyable reading. Perhaps because he came from a working class family he's more lucid and blunt and not as pretentious a writer as so many philosopher types are.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Gray
"John Banville praised Black Mass, saying that 'Gray's assault on Enlightenment ideas of progress is timelier than ever'."

[Valissa]

Oops forgot to add 2 things...

Here is a link to Gray's book at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Black-Mass-Apocalyptic-Religion-Utopia/dp/0374531528/

Thank you Confusedponderer for an excellent essay, and btw, you rarely seem 'confused' to me :)

[confusedponderer]

Well, thank you.

[VietnamVet]

CP,

I could not agree more.

What we are watching is the purposeful destruction of states and sovereignty. In reality bank robbers and war profiteers are running things for their benefit. Governments by and for the people are dead.

You cannot get more dysfunctional than the US government warning about bombs and bombers coming to the Homeland from the Syrian Civil War while at the same time proposing to spend 500 million dollars in tax money to ship bombs to the bombers.

Yes, even Poland now recognizes that it has given the USA a “blow job” for nothing. There is no there, there. We have hollowed out States.