MAKING SENSE OUT OF UKRAINE (1)
by Barry Grossman*
For those of us who came of age during the Cold war, recent events in the Ukraine trigger a sense of déjà vu as if we some magically stepped through a time portal. The Hegelian dialogue regarding these events offered through MSM and alternative media alike once again presents with us a false dichotomy which urges us in true Cold war fashion to adopt one of two views as if no other view is valid.
That this false dichotomy is packaged from either end as a choice between “right” and “wrong” when in fact the key proponents of either position are clearly acting entirely out of opportunistic self-interest rather than principle makes this throw back to the unreality of Cold War posturing all the more offensive and delusional.
Given what we have learned about global geopolitics since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we would all do well to avoid buying into the posturing and bellicose doomsday scenarios being touted by special interests on either side and instead focus on such incontrovertible facts as are available to us, even if many of these facts must by their nature be expressed in somewhat sweeping terms. In doing so, we should always be mindful of admonitions in al Qur’an and Hadith which direct us to find some in our analysis of political events and the affairs public officials without engaging in fitna, gossiping, backbiting or lying, especially in times of crises.
Lastly, we also would do well to remember that this is not a football game. There is no reason why we should feel inclined to embrace one side over the other simply because, for example, we are inclined to feel that the recent tactical antics of either have bestowed some short term positional advantage or disadvantage, as the case may be, to interests or causes we personally identify with.
There is no way to polish a “turd.” We cannot claim to be motivated by Islamic ideals and ethics if we embrace the self-interested and corrupt pragmatism of secularists like Putin, no matter how much his tactical machinations may appear to confer some short term positional advantage to causes we support. The notion that “our enemy’s enemy is our friend” is one of the most perverse, absurd and corrupting clichés ever articulated.
The tendency of those who oppose the foreign orchestrated Syria intervention to somehow elevate Vladimir Putin to near hero status as a result of his recent tactical moves, is no less naïve than those who vilify him based entirely on spin from the West’s insincere Ukraine strategy which, through the agency of a few expert individuals managing the project, was crafted by private think tanks like the Council on Foreign relations and the Brookings Institute, while various insiders from the military-industrial complex, roving NeoCons and the ever present insatiable corporate interests are all chomping at the bit to advance their related agendas.
Russian and the USA are secular societies
“Neither the US/European position in the Ukraine nor that of Russia can be held up as examples of principled conduct motivated by a desire for security in a multi-polar world order. While the Russian position on its face appears less objectionable due to its vital security and national interests in the Crimea as well as the West’s ongoing, calculated encroachment on former Soviet territories which remain within the Russian Federation sphere of regional influence, both the US and Russia are clearly playing out a zero sum game like hyena’s fighting over the not quite dead corpus of a corrupt Ukraine which was itself fabricated at Russia’s expense out of the Soviet Union’s collapse.”
Instead of letting our biases get the best of us by embracing the false Hegelian dichotomy implicit in the current narrative, for the sake of argument and understanding, it would be far more sensible to assume that both the US/Eurozone and the Putin/Russian positions are motivated not by principle but rather by self-interested pragmatism and opportunism, which are the very anti-thesis of Islamic ethics. Should anyone be confused about this bald assertion, they should remember that both Russian and the USA are secular societies increasingly dominated by those who have no faith and openly exhibit contempt for the letter and spirit of Islam.
Bearing in mind the established records of the various “players” involved in the current Ukraine Project and those “hard facts” which have emerged, we can safely assume that in fact those advancing both positions in the prevailing narrative are by, Islamic standards of morality, acting improperly and contributing to a conflagration which does not properly serve the interests of legitimate stakeholders, the most significant of which must surely be the silent majority of Ukrainians who it is reasonable to expect want nothing less than a legitimate, uncorrupted political leadership committed to , among other things, protecting the Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity.
In considering their position, we would do well to question who but they has a right to their ancestral lands, property and the fruits of their labour?
What has been happening in the Ukraine and what it mean?
Post-Soviet Ukraine was a completely new entity, created in 1991 both as a state and as a nation during the immediate aftermath of the Soviet collapse. There seems to be a consensus that from the outset the new State of Ukraine was plagued by corruption although there is little agreement about the underlying causes of this corruption which clearly are far too complicated to discuss here.
CFR and the Brookings Institute
“What we see over and over again is the largely corporatized US security apparatus or, if you like, the present manifestation of what President Eisenhower first described as the military-industrial complex, introducing destructive elements into targeted nations which are calculated to dismantle the political status quo while creating other long term problems which eventually can be used to justify further intervention to advance long term US policy which invariably lays the foundations for a full corporate takeover of the targeted nation’s resources, finances, economic policies and markets.”
The dominant view about the Ukraine advanced by the political status quo in the US has been repeatedly articulated by a handful of specialists writing interchangeably for US based Think Tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institute. These private and mostly corporate funded Think Tanks have become the ovens in which what passes as US public policy is baked for implementation by the political, corporate and security apparatus.
Once a particular view has received the imprimatur of the CFR or Brookings Institute, it will almost certainly be embraced by the Davos men and women of the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and, of course, to one degree or another, the political and security apparatus of the US dominated Atlantic World. That is not to imply that there is some kind of conspiracy, as distinct from simply pointing out that this is essentially how what they have long referred to as the New World Order works. It’s a club and is in true colonial fashion the vast majority of us, including anyone who does fully submit to the political status quo, barred from membership.
So what were these expert policy makers saying publicly about the Ukraine before the recent Putsch in Kiev and subsequent secession referendum in the Crimea? The prevailing view which, at least publicly, is said to ground the West’s position is expressed by this extract from the executive summary of a major CFR publication titled “Averting Crises in the Ukraine.” Without in any way endorsing its view, this is a summary of what the CFR had to say about the matter:
“Although [the Ukraine] appeared poised for progress after the Orange Revolution in 2004, it remains gripped by corruption, repression, and oligarchy. Yanukovych won the 2010 presidential election [but] Orange-era infighting had weakened political institutions and fatigued voters, allowing Yanukovych to centralize power with little resistance.” Ukraine’s economy has enough money to make the oligarchs rich, but not the people. Ukraine’s fifty richest citizens control almost half of GDP.
Ukraine has a classic rentier curse. Oligarchs and politicians, often one and the same, extract rents from the transit of energy and other scams. Some prices are market based and others controlled, creating huge opportunities for arbitrage. Various licenses and concessions depend on political favor, facilitating corrupt lobbying, and oligarchs.
Notwithstanding relatively liberal privatization laws, the process came to benefit oligarchs. Most big enterprises were sold by closed discount cash sales. Today, without an effective legal system, all property remains insecure. Violent corporate raiding is widespread; oligarchs use mafia muscle to take over each other’s firms and scare away most foreign investors. The black economy accounts for 40 to 50 percent of official GDP. Ukraine has received support from international financial institutions, but these funds have been small relative to Ukraine’s GDP. The country’s failure to enact reforms has repeatedly marred its relationship with the International Monetary Fund.
The current Yanukovych government has curtailed freedom of assembly and used the security and tax services to harass activists. … Ukraine’s media have generally functioned as an instrument of power rather than an independent force. Many media companies have long been left in private hands under “reliable” oligarchic control, fostering self-censorship. The Orange Revolution allowed a window of media freedom, but today many journalists face bullying and bribery. The law in Ukraine is deliberately capricious and its application arbitrary. Because the population must constantly break the law, authorities can decide whom to prosecute, and they wield this authority to consolidate power. Punishment is used to disable anyone who challenges the system; forgiveness is used as patronage. Most judges are holdovers from the Communist era and continue to respond to instructions from officials. Conviction rates top 99 percent.
Reforms passed in 2010 have increased executive control over the judiciary. Yanukovych created two new courts to bypass relatively independent ones and he purged the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court. Other executive bodies gained control over judicial appointments. The ease with which authorities launched political prosecutions in 2011 and 2012—most prominently against Tymoshenko—showed the new system’s weakness. Today, politicians routinely take bribes from oligarchs or are oligarchs themselves. Members of parliament are immune from prosecution, making public office a gravy train. A place on an electoral list is estimated to cost $5 million in bribes to party leaders.”
The CFR’s complaints about income disparity in the Ukraine surely must ring hollow to anyone informed about income disparity in the United States.
So what of the US/Eurozone position and their conduct in the Ukraine? Can we say with any degree of certainty, as Russia alleges that they have conducted themselves improperly?
Did the US advance an illegitimate policy in the region and conduct itself improperly in the events leading up to the Putsch?
NeoCon’s “Rebuilding Americas Defenses”
We only need to pose the question in order to come up against the first stumbling block to a clear answer. Ideologically and politically, the Atlantic World still embraces a naïve and idealised view of both democracy and capitalism notwithstanding that corrupted versions of both ideal have for more than 30 years been inculcated in the public consciousness by well resourced Neo-Conservatives. Conveniently, this idealised fantasy not only ignores the hard realities of crony capitalism, corporatism, ideological presumption and an ever expanding concept of national security, but it also brokers no competing beliefs which might hold sway in other sovereign states around the world.
First and foremost of those beliefs undermined and rejected by the NeoConservative vision is Islamic Monotheism which stands alone as the last genuine bulwark against a NWO built on amoral pragmatism and corporate domination. In this upside down world of deceptions, the point at which many of our criticisms of US foreign policy and exceptionalism start, tends to be exactly the same point at which those who blindly embrace the paradigm promoted by the take umbrage by arrogantly asserting that Atlantic World interests are only doing that which national security and capitalism require for the betterment of mankind.
While US exceptions are shielded by a corrupted notion of National Security, our morality based exceptions are discounted ab initio by the ideological presumptions implicit Atlantic World’s fraudulent paradigm.
Whether by accident or by design, the US/Eurozone position on the Ukraine and, indeed, on Syria as well as the Middle East as a whole, closely reflects the long standing positions promulgated by the leading private US based think tanks, as well as by the once proud but now publicity shy architects the NeoCon’s Project for a New American Century as set out in its document “Rebuilding Americas Defenses.”
That Yanukovych was corrupt cannot be disputed but the CFR assessment quoted above conveniently ignores the standing US and European polices of encroaching on Russia’s sphere of influence by admitting the transitional democracies of the former Soviet bloc into NATO and the European Union, and establishing a free trade area between an enlarged European Union and North America through the now-defunct, NeoCon dominated, New Atlantic Initiative and through the EU’s Eastern Partnership Program.
The ugly picture painted by the private, US public policy making apparatus and, more importantly, its larger agenda can also be seen as an evolution of the US policy on the former Yugoslavia as set out in President Reagan’s secret 1984 National Security Decision Directive NSDD 133. That directive advocated “expanded efforts to promote a ‘quiet revolution’ to overthrow Communist governments and parties,” while reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into a market-oriented economy. President Reagan’s policy, though modified, has been given new thrust since the 90’s albeit with the underlying agenda of containing what is now anything but a communist Russian Federation having replaced any underlying concern about a resurgent Communist threat.
“Show trial”
The CFR/Brookings Institute position and western press reports also conveniently portray Tymoshenko the innocent victim in a “show trial” by Yanukovych’s Kafkaesque legal system. But leaked recordings of Tymoshenko’s recent telephone conversation in which she talks to her political ally Shufrych about mass killing Russians and machine gunning political adversaries. Conversation create a very different picture of her and one more akin to a maniacal gangster than a political adversary wronged by a corrupt legal system. In the conversation which allegedly took place on 18 March, she reportedly went so far as to says it is “time to go grab guns and kill those damned Russians with their leader” so that “not even scorched earth will be left where Russia stands.”
Translations also capture America’s darling in the Ukraine referring to a political adversary and saying she would “like to grab a machine gun and shoot that ‘man’ in the head.” Referring to Russians more generally, she also reportedly went on to say that “They must be killed with nuclear weapons.” Tymoshenko has acknowledged on Twitter that the phone call was real but said that the content was edited to appear virulently anti-Russian although she apparently failed to explain how such clear and offensive statements could be tempered by context.
More generally, the CFR/Brookings Institute position in no way acknowledges the role played by American NeoCons, the “Young Gun” shock troopers flown in to Moscow in the aftermath of the 1991 Soviet collapse and America’s own security/political apparatus, all of whom helped to engineer the fast tracked structural change and “shock therapy” administered during Yelstsin’s tenure as Russia’s dancing Drunkard-in-Chief facilitating which, in turn, facilitated the emergence of an oligarchic system which US policy makers now disingenuously criticize.
The sophisticated modeling used by t he State Department, Pentagon and dominant US Think Tanks make it reasonable to presume that the emergence of Oligarchs both in Russia and the Ukraine was a foreseeable and perhaps even intended consequence of the prescribed “shock therapy” and seen by Cold War warriors as an irreversible, transitional step towards eventual US style Corporatism in Russia. After all, what better way is there to kill the prospect of resurgent communism than facilitating the handover of massive swaths of public assets to ideologically correct, though morally challenged, oligarchs who exert as much power as the government itself and through shared self-interest stand together as a bulwark against communism?
The dominant US position on the Ukraine also fails to consider the extent to which more recently its own security and corporate apparatus infiltrated and actively promoted the Orange Revolution, the much more recent anti-Yanukovych protests and the recent Putsch in which ultra-Nationlist Fascist elements played a key role. In that regard, public appearances by s string of US politicians in the Ukraine publicly supporting the even Ultra-National Putschists along with leaked recordings exposing, for example, the role of Victoria Nuland-Kagan of the U.S. State Department in engineering political events, have alarmed many observers who had already speculated that the equivalent of regime change was being orchestrated by the US in the Ukraine. (T/BG/E01)
Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)
*Barry Grossman is an international lawyer. He received a B.Comm. from the University of Calgary in 1984 and his LLB from York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in 1987. After working as a litigator at a major commercial law firm in Toronto, he moved to Australia to teach at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Law in 1988. He later worked for several years as a litigation consultant to the national Australian firm of Freehill, Hollingdale & Page before later taking up a full time lectureship at Monash University’s Faculty of Law. Mr. Grossman has written extensively on various legal subject and is a frequent commentator on political affairs. He is often interviewed by Press TV. He resided in Indonesia since 1999. This article was written for the Indonesian based international news service, Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as requested by MINA Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Syarif Hidayat.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of MINA.
