Is Crimea about to explode? The mainstream media reports that Russia has amassed
troops on the border with Ukraine and may be spoiling for a fight. The Russians
claim to have stopped a Ukrainian sabotage team that snuck into Crimea to attack
key infrastructure. The Russian military is holding exercises in Crimea and
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a visit to the peninsula at the end of
the week.
The Ukrainians have complained to their western supporters that a full-scale
Russian invasion is coming, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he
may have to rule by martial law due to the Russian threat.
Though the US media pins the blame exclusively on Russia for these tensions,
in reality there is plenty of blame to go around. We do know that the US government
has been involved with "regime change" in Ukraine repeatedly since the break
up of the Soviet Union. The US was deeply involved with the "Orange Revolution"
that overthrew elected president Viktor Yanukovych in 2005. And we know that
the US government was heavily involved in another coup that overthrew the same
elected Yanukovych again in 2014.
How do we know that the US was behind the 2014 coup? For one, we have the
intercepted telephone call between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria
Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. In the recording, the
two US officials are plotting to remove the elected government and discussing
which US puppet they will put in place.
You would think such undiplomatic behavior could get diplomats fired, but
sadly in today's State Department it can actually get you promoted! Nuland
is widely expected to get a big promotion – perhaps to even Secretary of State
– in a Hillary Clinton administration, and Geoffrey Pyatt has just moved up
to an Ambassadorship in Athens.
Ambassador Pyatt can't seem to control himself: Just as tensions were peaking
between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea this month, he published a series of
Tweets urging Ukraine to take back Crimea. Is this how our diplomats overseas
should be acting? Should they be promoting actions they know will lead to war?
When the mainstream media discusses Crimea they are all lock-step: that's
the peninsula Putin annexed. Never do they mention that there was a referendum
in which the vast majority of the population (who are mostly ethnic Russians)
voted to join Russia. The US media never reports on this referendum because
it produced results that Washington doesn't like. How arrogant it must sound
to the rest of the world that Washington reserves the right to approve or disapprove
elections thousands of miles away – meanwhile we find out from the DNC hacked
files that we don't have a lot of room to criticize elections overseas.
What should we do about Ukraine and Russia? We should stop egging Ukraine
on, we should stop subsidizing the government in Kiev, we should stop NATO
exercises on the Russian border, we should end sanctions, we should return
to diplomacy, we should send the policy of "regime change" to the dustbin of
history. The idea that we would be facing the prospect of World War III over
which flag flies above a tiny finger of land that most US politicians couldn't
find on a map is utterly ridiculous. When are we going to come to our senses?
