Response to Walrus on US goals in the Ukraine (by CP)

"In retrospect, the big question that needs to be asked is whether the entire Ukraine crisis didn’t turn out to be ultimately a botched-up ‘color revolution’. The US got in  their man in power in Kiev to replace the ousted government – Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk – but at what enormous cost and of what avail? The principal strategic objective of establishing US military presence in Crimea and vanquishing Russia’s Black Sea Fleet altogether (which Catherine the Great had established in 1783) couldn’t be realized. The successor regime in Kiev is indeed under American thumb but is unable to stabilize the situation. Meanwhile, the agenda of getting Ukraine into the EU and NATO got frustrated. Ukraine itself is irrevocably split and its economy is in free fall. The IMF’s painful therapy may only aggravate the socio-economic tensions leading eventually to a popular uprising."

I think that M K Bhadrakumar is up to something here.

Ever since the Bushmen wrecked the train with their harebrained idea to remake Iraq and the Middle East proper, the US had their hands full with juggling with the wreckage and their various surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the wake of Bush's eventual and inevitable withdrawal from Iraq, they consequently suffered from a lack of leverage in the Middle East and a lack of relevance frankly.

Being preoccupied with the Middle East, the US weren't very present or active in Europe, nor were they really missed. Europe was preoccupied with the economic crisis and itself. The security situation was settled. NATO was business as usual, a habit more than a necessity.

The vaccuum left by Bush in the Middle East had allowed Russia to fill in, and they seized the opportunity to play a more active role in the Middle East. Russia held a prominent position in the negotiations with Iran. Their leverage allowed them to negotiate the Syria Chemical weapons compromise, skillfully thwarting State Department supported war plans. The US assented to the deal - after all it spared Obama an unpoular and messy war - but grumbled^* and would not let that stand.

I think that what was basically the latest in a string of skillfull Russian foreign policy coups at US expense in effect triggered a rabid US counter-reaction to Russia's assertiveness. The Hegemon wanted to get rid of that hassle some meddler crossing his designs and cut Russia down to size.

I believe that the US had identified as the means by which the Russians projected their power: (a) access to the Mediterranean, (b) through the Iran negotiations and (c) the leverage given to Russia by their energy exports into Europe and (d) their relations with Cuba. They chose to attack all four.

An additional bonus was that (e) they would make NATO relevant to Europe again.

(a) Crimea

Anatol Lieven has said that as far as Ukraine as a guaranteed market for Russian goods and as a security buffer is concerned, Crimea was a very small consolation prize, all the more for taking a larger number of ethnic Russians out of the Ukrainian elections, reducing Russian influence in Ukrainian affairs. While that may be true for Russia - what about the US and NATO?

As far as cutting Russia out of the Middle East is concerned, by denying them their access to the Mediterranean, for NATO, Crimea would have been THE BIG PRIZE. It would have made Russia a regional power, in the sense of a continental power, in one swift stroke. Seizing Crimea would have cut Russia out of Syria, denied Russia access to Mediterranean and by extension the Gulf, would have granted NATO control of the Black Sea, and expanded NATO control of the Mediterranean. No more stopping of Russian naval vessels in Cyprus - to get there they'd have to come all the way from the Baltic.

In seizing Crimea, the Russians thwarted the US/NATO's main objective, albeit at a high price.

(b) The Iran deal

If the US makes a deal with Iran, they draw Iran closer into their orbit - and out of Russia's. The US could for two decades live well with an isolated Iran, despite all the Israeli and neocon histrionics to the contrary. That could have gone on. I think that is what makes the Iran deal doubly attractive for Obama would invest so heavily in such a periphral issue. On effect of an Iran deal will be to roll back Russian influence on Iran and in the Middle East.

It used to be that in the early Cold War, Iran was a pro-US bastion  at Russia's southern flank. Why not again? Coming to terms with Iran means reducing Russia's leverage, and Israel's while at it. How handy.

(c) Russian energy revenues

The sanctions over Ukraine do their part, but the probably US inspired Saudi led lowering of oil prices hurts Russia and hurts its revenues more. It also make it cheaper for the US , their surrogates and Europe to import energy, lessening Russian leverage on them.

That the US would do that at the expense of American shale oil only suggest that the US pursue something they hold more worthwhile - and after all, the oil remains in the ground, does it not? Not pumping it now, leaves energy reserves for the future. And as long as the price is low, the economy won't suffer.

(d) Cuba

If the US succeed in normalising relations to Cuba they will also reduce Russian influence. In effect, it will be a first step in cutting them out of Central America and it will draw Cuba into the US orbit again.

That thrust becomes all the more apparent by the US policy against Venezuela: While they end the sanctions/regime-change eforts aimed at Cuba because "they failed", they install a sanctions/regime-change policy against Venezuela? It is not the policy that concerns them - they love sanctions and regime-change - but that, in the case of Cuba, it perpetuates Russian influence - i.e. wouldn't it be for Russia, Cuba probably would remain sanctioned.

It remains to see how well the Cubans will be able to resit the gravitational pull of the US, particularly economically. Best luck to them. They may find out soon that they got more than they bargained for. Moreover, the deal with Cuba has many benefits in its own right. The policy of isolation has failed and was a festering sore in America's approach to Caribean America that long needed addressing.

(e) Giving NATO a purpose

The Ukraine crisis has had the effect of giving NATO a purpose again by providing a credible threat. This may or may not have been intentional. I wouldn't put it past the US to have expected to fully succeed and take Russia by surprise, creating facts on the ground before Russia could react.  IMO the focus was on expansion first, and antagonism second.

A revitalised NATO also increases US influence on the EU through the smaller, insecure members on its eastern periphery. To the extent that the russophobes in NATO were concerned, the Russians were the enemy anyway and they didn't need any US encouragement to be paranoid. For the NATO enlargers, there is another added benefit in that pro-US elements in Sweden and Finland now ponder about abandoning neutrality and joining NATO.

~*~

In sum, these moves cumulatively weaken Russia's position, and strengthen the position of the US. I think that these are some key elements of the - rather aggressive - US strategy vis a vis Russia.

The drawback in it is that, as the US is pivoting to Asia, they are driving Russia in to the Arms of China, and solve two major Chinese problems - the lack of a serious ally (and Russia is a serious ally) and China's dependence of sea bound energy supply (that would have in case of a confrontation run the gauntlet of US controlled sea lanes). One would think that if they wanted to weaken China, they wouldn't want to do that. Ah!

The salient point is that the US position is basically still the one the neocons formulated in their Defense Planning Guidance, or Wolfowitz Doctine - that it is unacceptable for the US to have a peer competitor that or a state that could deter them from intervening. For a very long time now we are no longer speaking of actual threats to the US, but merely about obstacles to preferred (read: maximalist) US policies.

by confusedponderer

* Which means that, probably, as far as the enthusiasts at the State Department are concerned, toppling/bombing Assad is just postponed. The old hostility continues unabated.

Comments

[BabelFish]

Posting this again, from my inclusion on the last Open Thread. A lot of open discussion on how to prevent Vladimir P. from invading the Baltics.

From Information Dissemination:

""RAND’s Terrence Kelly published an excellent opinion piece at U.S. News & World Report last month outlining analysis-derived requirements for a NATO conventional deterrent in the Baltics:""

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2015/03/20/stop-putins-aggression-with-us-forces-in-eastern-europe

[confusedponderer]

I am unpersuaded by Kelly's essay. IMO the idea that Russia will invade the Baltic states is simply fearmongering, probably for the purpose of making a case for forward stationing US troops in the 2004 NATO expansion states. And then there's this Putin, Putin, Putin.

***Russia***, not Putin, did annex Crimea. They did so ***reactively*** to pre-empt an expulsion of Russia from Crimea by the coup government in Kiev who would have likely cancelled the lease agreement.

***Russia***, not Putin, has no comparable and no comparably important stake in the Baltics.

This talk about Putin, not ***Russia***, being bent on restoring the USSR in pursuit of lost glory is BS imo. What Russia does is simply trying to maintain its sphere of influence in face of US encroachment, not more, but not less. They are not an expansive power, but a conservative one.

The ***expansive*** character of US and NATO policy is being underlined by the fact that Ukraine and Georgia are being marked for NATO ascension i.e. ***NATO expansion***.

[BabelFish]

CP, I agree with all of that. I continue to be both amazed and nauseated by the freaking war drums in the U.S. We seem to have become fully addicted to poking Russia and, apparently, never expecting a negative result.

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks CP for this post and thread comments.

IMO [probably of little value] US understanding of the EU's driving force [its members want to be a cafe society discussing world affairs without responsibility for them, and the military fecklessness of NATO members [NATO currently the world's biggest figleaf] is just exactly what the US FP and military leadership want. So in fact the USA likes to dwell in its ignorance of another world area that might just be of crucial importance to the USA.

How many of the US Presidential candidates [declared or otherwise] speak and read fluently any language west of the Urals?

And as to the Ukraine how well has the best globalized link of all been explained to the American polity--specifically the tight links between US, EU, Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs and the tightest of all Russian, Israeli, US and EU organized criminal activity. All of it funded at least in part by a clueless or complicity US Federal Reserve and EU CB [central banks]!

And speaking of ownership, do we really want the Saudi owned Clinton and Bush families to again run the federal government?

[Babak Makkinejad]

confusedponderer:

on you (b) - not likely at all.

In my opinion, Iran is there with China and Russia for the foreseeable future.

[S.E.]

From the Northern Flank: an op-ed signed by the defense ministers of Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Norway declare extended military cooperation in order to counter Russian agression. An analyst (who is advisor to the Norwegian defence minister), comments that "The cooperation described, including military exercises, is as far as you can go in pulling the non-NATO members Sweden and Finland into a community, without explicitly stating that it is a NATO-community.

However, in the case of these two countries, this looks like a preparation for membership in the alliance, says Haaland Matlary. (...) She says Russia will perceive the message from the Nordic ministers as agressiveness. - You have to take into account that there will be negative reactions from the Russian side; this however should not be emphasized, according to Haaland Matlary."

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/Russian-aggression-Nordic-states-extend-their-military-cooperation-7975109.html

[Babak Makkinejad]

The reason that they are a café society is because their dwelling places are so small.

It also has to do with the need to keep their private lives compartmentalized; you can meet with the same people for years in a café regularly but never have been invited to their homes.

[confusedponderer]

Babak,
given the bad experiences Iran has had with the US, you are probably right. And you're right to point out that Russia and China share Iran's enirely justified concern about and interest in maintaining its political independence. Natural allies indeed.

But it stands that Russia will lose the ability to leverage the US through Iran negotiations once Iran has come to a deal with the US.

[A Pols]

CP;
I agree with just about everything you've said, but with one small difference..
I think it unlikely for Iran to come to a deal with the US. Reason: I think the negotiations are a Chinese Fire Drill, a simulacrum designed to show that we tried.
In the end, the deal will be same sausage, different length. We will never accept anything less than the insistence on complete capitulation on their part. They will take their toys and go home. In a way, I think maybe they have no real expectation of a deal they can live with; they too want to show they tried so the BRICS will have cause to repudiate the sanctions. This country just won't let go on the question of true sovereignty for Iran.
I enjoyed your analysis very much BTW...

[Ursa Maior]

My question is how much freedom -economic or other will- the EU members give up to counter the russian threat? What will the population think of the concessions given to the US for relative security?

[ex-PFC Chuck]

What I find so appalling is the lack of historical perspective that apparently enshrouded the US move on Ukraine. Access to the year-round warm water of the Black Sea has been a Russian strategic imperative since at least the reign of Peter the Great three hundred years ago and it took them almost a century to acquire it. Did the numbskulls in Washington even consider that Russia under any leader would not take a threat to that access lying down? Especially since Crimea was transferred from the Russian SSR to the Ukraine SSR in the 1950s as a happenstance? And did they not realize that the Banderaites with whom they instigated the coup are loathed and distrusted by a majority of other Ukrainians who see them as the spiritual and biological descendents of Nazi collaborators?

[BabelFish]

At the risk of exposing my limited military education, these countries have good air forces and some very sophisticated naval assets (subs, frigates). What I fail to see them having is "boots on the ground" power. If we can believe an intervention would be a military one (do not believe that), their combined ability to resist Russian armored brigades appears to be limited.

[The Twisted Genius]

CP,

I agree that the neocons saw the Crimea as the big prize, the cherry on the chocolate sundae, so to speak. I have no doubt that Nuland and the rest of the cabal were sure that Yats would soon kick the Russians out of Sevastopol and the Black Sea would soon become an American lake. That would have been a tremendous blow to Russia and a real feather in the cap of Nuland. Putin obviously realized the same thing and acted quickly and efficiently. The hard part is figuring out how to mitigate the fiasco of Nuland's coup without dancing any closer to the nuclear fire.

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks Babak!

[William R. Cumming]

CP! Wondering if USA hoping for proxies and Iran might just be one 100 years down the road?

[anna-marina]

Most likely, the bureaucrats were indeed ignorant. There are legends about some influential Soviet leader and his family member that was taken to a concentration camp to see a real doctor instead of a politically-relaible medical practitioner. The process of getting a powerful position can be detrimental to real professionalism.
The Ukrainian debacle made the US' administration talks about bad Nazis a joke. Who would imagine that the State Dept. could finance neo-Nazi groups and help them to get power in Kiev. In Kiev for all places, the suburbs of which are punctuated with huge mass graves of the victims of the Nazis. The whole story in Ukraine is a tremendous insult to the WWII veterans.

[S.E.]

I probably know less of this than you, but believe you are right, With the exception of Finland. They have a huge reserve compared to the other Nordic countries. That, and memories of the wars between Soviet and Finland during WW2, probably make Finland less of a pushover in Russian eyes. Norway, according to a former top defence official, only has an army on paper.

[Ex-PFC Chuck]

WRC:
At the rate we'going there won't be a USA in 100 years.

[FB Ali]

CP,

Col Lang's oft-expressed opinion is that there are no such deep, far-seeing, complex plans underlying US foreign policy.

However, there is one area in which certain sectors in the USA show unmatched ability in formulating and executing complex moves and strategies, namely, making money. One thing that all these developments you've listed have in common (along with the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, et al) is the humungous need they've created for increased military spending (by the US and its allies and clients) on weapons and military materials (manufactured by you-know-who).

Between the Wolfowitz Doctrine or other neocon plots and the simple needs of the military/security-industrial complex, I would choose the latter as the underlying cause and driver.

[S.E.]

I can speak only from a Norwegian perspective. We are not a member of the EU, so no conflict of loyalty here. We have no fear of having to give concessions to the US, who have been Our closest ally since WW2. We have a deep trust in and are happy to follow US policy. Experience does not seem to be able to shake this trust. We had much more political opposition to the US and Nato during the sixties, seventies and eighties than now. Under communism, we had an idea what the Soviet Union was about, ideologically, and some People liked that idea. We have no idea what Russia is about, except Putin, who is always depicted as bad, a huge military force, oligarcs and nationalism With imperialist tendencies (Crimea, Ukraine). Not much to like. There are almost no dissenting voices heard, not other Pictures being painted.

[Akira]

Excellent podcast here that includes some discussion of the economic vultures descending on Ukraine, the looming austerity package from the IMF, and how US trained neo-liberal apparatchiks from Georgia (the country) are flooding into the Ukraine Gov.

http://seansrussiablog.org/2015/04/09/post-maidan-ukraine-and-belarusian-nationalism/

Excellent article from here on the looming collapse of Ukraine:

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/europes-nightmare-ukraines-massive-meltdown-12597

[turcopolier]

FB Ali

"...the simple needs of the military/security-industrial complex" With respect, what are these "simple needs?" Mercantilist/imperialist seizure of markets and resources? I think not. American military contractors want government contracts. Is that a surprise? Business seeks to make money and that is all business is about. We went to war in Iraq so that KBR and Halliburton might have contracts in that country? We did not. We went to war there so that the neocons might have their fantasy of a utopian world. We backed NATO intervention in Libya for what? For what commercial interest did we do that? Was it so that bomb makers could sell more bombs? pl

[Amir]

I entirely agree with your proposition. In the eyes of some of the Iranian population and most of their leadership, in light of the newly instigated Yemeni war, the insincerity of the administration is again proven. They look at Sec. Kerry accusing Iran of the nefarious actions, taken by Saudi Arabia while the administration is seen to figuratively and literally (re)fuel the conflict.

[FB Ali]

The "simple needs" I was referring to were to sell their products and services and make money.

For the last couple of decades the US has been engaging in one military enterprise after another. The immediate drivers of these have been varied, but the outcomes have been constant - instability in the local arena, and the creation of more enemies for the US. I doubt if anyone can claim that they have increased US security and its standing in the world.

The one area in which the US has continuously gained throughout this period is in the development and prosperity of its military production and security sectors.

When a country possessing unmatched intellectual resources continues to follow a course of action that repeatedly fails to produce the results that are stated to be the goals of this policy, it is logical to ask: what is really going on?

I think it is reasonable to suspect that those who gain from these military ventures might be encouraging them. I am not suggesting any deep conspiracy, just that the constituents of a certain powerful and influential sector in the US tend to push in the same direction, and they have enough individual clout to influence the policy makers, especially in the military and defence fields.

[anna-marina]

It is hard imagine that the final deal would be generously beneficial for Iran.