Common Grounds

Our Friday News Analysis | In Search of a Nation's Soul (Part 6)

October 14, 2022

Building the Bridge – The Road Toward Co-existence

What does Russia want?

Russia wants to protect and liberate the Ukrainians of Russian descent from Ukrainian tyranny, especially in East Ukraine.
Russia wants to secure access to the Black Sea.
Russia wants to control its shipping lanes and pipelines to ensure the flow of oil, gas, wheat, and other natural resources to the West.
Russia wants to fortify its relationship with the European Union (EU), committed by Mr. Vladimir Putin since his inauguration as President of the Russian Federation on 7 May 2000.
Russia wants to interdependently co-exist with the EU-US/NATO Axis, Russia's customers, and trading partners, which Russia has referred to as its 'Western Partners.'

What Does the EU-US/NATO Axis want?

None of the above. Instead, the EU-US/NATO Axis wants to rule Ukraine as its 31st NATO Country, which is NOT what the Russian Federation wants – too close for comfort – as expressly stated by the Russian Federation as early as 2008.

"If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."

Before the war, most likely since 2014, the EU-US/NATO Axis has treated Ukraine as a de-facto NATO state and equipped the Nationalists in West Ukraine with weapons of mass destruction and a regiment of military advisors. The strategy! The best defense is a strong offense. Ukraine was ready to go on the offense. By maneuvering its might through Ukraine, the EU-US/NATO Axis lured the Russian Federation to respond in kind. As the EU-US/NATO military complex inside Ukraine increased in magnitude and strength, the Russian Federation expanded its military base along the borders of East Ukraine. On 24 February 2022, the Russian Federation preemptively struck Ukraine.

The EU-US/NATO Axis intends to remain on top of the hill and dominate Russia. The United States cannot especially permit Russia to engage in a cooperative working relationship with the European Union. Should the European Union and Russia become one, the United States will have to play second fiddle.

What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive?

By Abraham A. van Kempen, featuring Europe, more than Putin, must shoulder the blame for the energy crisis, by British Journalist Jonathan Cook based in Bethlehem.

Cape Canaveral, 14 October 2022 | If you know of any story that is decisive, tell the world. We're still searching.

Almost none of my close acquaintances here in Florida understand what is going on between the EU-US/NATO Axis versus the Russian Federation, with the civil war in Ukraine smack in the middle. I've grilled more than a dozen Floridians, eyeball-to-eyeball. None realized that Ukraine is at civil war, the 'Nationalists' in the West versus the 'Separatists' in the East. It's been brewing since 1991. It's gotten worse when the Nationalists decreed that the Russian language had become unlawful in the workforce and that Russian may no longer be taught in public schools.

The Nationalists in the West intend to homogenize all Ukrainians into their culture and language. They neither dignify nor respect the multiculturalism that has been characteristic of Ukraine for centuries. Until recently, 12 million of the 44 million Ukrainians were of Russian descent. Today, most live in East Ukraine, some for three to five generations. At last count, a significant part of East Ukraine is 90 percent Russian. Since last week, 86 percent of the people living in East Ukraine have voted to become part of Russia.

Why?

Especially since 2014, the Nationalists in the West have tyrannized Ukrainians of Russian descent. Imagine being a Ukrainian of Russian descent stuck in the West of Ukraine. My sources in Ukraine claim that since 2014, 14,000 Ukrainians of Russian descent, accused as undesirables – collaborators, saboteurs, separatists – have been executed allegedly by Ukrainian neo-Nazi sympathizers.

Building the Bridge – The Road Toward Co-existence

The EU could have averted war with the Russian Federation. The EU could have and STILL CAN NOW:

Guarantee Russian access to the Black Sea.
Guarantee the safety of Ukrainians of Russian descent.
Guarantee the purchases of Russian oil and gas.
Mitigate the conflicts between the Ukrainian Nationalists in the West and the Ukrainian Separatists in the East.
Restrain the US obsession to impose a monopolar world order dominated by the US.

As the largest economy on earth, an economy more extensive than the United States and China combined, the EU could have moderated and softened the blows between the warring factions. Instead, the EU bet on the wrong horse. NATO! And NATO continues to arm Ukraine to kill and get killed, which clashes with the EU’s principle of ‘live, let live.’ By pointing NATO’s weaponry against Russian targets, Ukraine incites Russian retaliation with 10:1 lethal retribution. Ukraine commits national suicide each time it uses NATO artillery against Russia. And the EU has forfeited the rich abundance and unlimited supply of Russian gas and oil. The clowns in Brussels and their stooges in Washington, DC, are scrambling to find alternate energy sources to meet its insatiable demands. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia even rebuffed the President of the United States when he begged the Crown Prince to reduce the price of oil.

Europe, more than Putin, must shoulder the blame for the energy crisis

October 06, 2022
Source: Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-europe-putin-energy-crisis-blame

By Jonathan Cook
Published September 14, 2022

The same arrogant, self-righteous posturing from the West that fuelled the Ukraine war is now plunging Europe into recession

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky appears on a giant screen as he addresses a Nato summit in Madrid, 29 June 2022 (AFP)

“If the West were an individual,
the patient would be diagnosed as suffering from a severe personality disorder,
one with a strong impulse for self-destruction.”

Outraged western leaders are threatening a price cap on imports of Russian natural gas after Moscow cut supplies to Europe this month, deepening dire energy and cost-of-living crisis. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Europe will “freeze” this winter unless there is a change of tack.

In this back-and-forth, the West keeps stepping up the rhetoric. Putin is accused of using a mix of blackmail and economic terror against Europe. His actions supposedly prove that he is a monster who cannot be negotiated with and a threat to world peace.

Denying fuel to Europe as winter approaches, in a bid to weaken the resolve of European states to support Kyiv and alienate European publics from their leaders, is Putin’s opening gambit in a plot to expand his territorial ambitions from Ukraine to the rest of Europe.

Or so runs the all-too-familiar narrative shared by western politicians and media.

Europe’s arrogant, self-righteous posturing over Russian gas supplies, divorced from any discernible and tangible geopolitical reality, reflects precisely the same foolhardy mindset that helped provoke Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in the first place.

It is also the reason why there has been no exit ramp - a path to negotiations - even as Russia has taken vast swaths of Ukraine’s eastern and southern flanks – territory that cannot be reclaimed without a further massive loss of life on both sides, as the limited Ukrainian assault around Kharkiv has highlighted.

The western media has to carry a significant share of the blame for these serial failures of diplomacy. Journalists have amplified only too loudly and uncritically what US and European leaders want their public to believe is going on. But maybe it is time Europeans heard a little of how things might look to Russian eyes.

Economic war

The media could start by dropping their indignation at “insolent” Moscow for refusing to supply Europe with gas. After all, Moscow has been only too clear about the reason for the shutdown of gas supplies: it is in retaliation for the West imposing economic sanctions - a form of collective punishment on the wider Russian population that risks violating the laws of war.

The West is well practiced in waging economic war on weak states, usually, in a futile attempt to topple leaders they don’t like or as a softening-up exercise before it sends in troops or proxies.

Iran has faced decades of sanctions that have inflicted a devastating toll on its economy and population but have done nothing to bring down the government.

Meanwhile, Washington is waging what amounts to its form of economic terrorism on the Afghan people to punish the ruling Taliban for driving out US occupation forces in a humiliating fashion last year. The United Nations reported last month that sanctions had contributed to the risk of more than a million Afghan children dying from starvation.

There is nothing virtuous about the current economic sanctions on Russia any more than about the blackballing of Russian sportspeople and cultural icons. The sanctions are not intended to push Putin to the negotiating table. As US President Biden made clear in March, the West is planning a long war, and he wants to see Putin removed from power.

Instead, the goal has been to weaken his authority and - in some fantasy scenarios - encourage his subordinates to turn on him. The West’s game plan - if it can be dignified with that term - is to force Putin to over-extend Russian forces in Ukraine by flooding the battlefield with armaments and then watch his government collapse under the weight of popular discontent at home.

But in practice, the reverse has been happening, just as it did through the 1990s when the West imposed sanctions on Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Putin’s position has been bolstered, as it will continue to be whether Russia is triumphing or losing on the battlefield.

The West’s economic sanctions against Russia have been doubly foolish. They have reinforced Putin’s message that the West seeks to destroy Russia, just as it previously did Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. A strongman is all that stands between an independent Russia and servitude, Putin can plausibly argue.

And at the same time, the sanctions have demonstrated to Russians how artful their leader is. Economic pressure from the West has primarily backfired: sanctions have barely made an impression on the rouble's value. At the same time, Europe looks to be heading into recession as Putin turns off the gas spigot.

It will doubtless not only be Russians quietly rejoicing at seeing the West get a dose of the medicine it so regularly force-feeds others.

Western conceit

But there is a more troubling dimension to the West’s conceit. It was the same high-handed belief that the West would face no consequences for waging economic warfare on Russia, just as earlier assumed it would be pain-free for NATO to station missiles on Moscow’s doorstep. (Presumably, the effect on Ukrainians was not factored into the calculations.)

Over the past two decades, the decision to recruit more east European states into the NATO fold broke promises made to Soviet and Russian leaders. It flew in the face of advice from the West’s most expert policy-makers.

Ukrainian soldiers carry the coffin of a serviceman from the ultra-nationalist Azov regiment killed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Lviv, on 29 July 2022 (AFP)

Guided by the US, NATO countries closed the military noose around Russia yearly, claiming that the noose was entirely defensive.

NATO flirted openly with Ukraine, suggesting it might be admitted to their anti-Russia alliance.

The US had a hand in the 2014 protests that overthrew Ukraine’s government, one elected to keep channels open with Moscow.

With a new government installed, the Ukrainian army incorporated ultra-nationalist, anti-Russia militias that engaged in a devastating civil war with Russian communities in the country’s East.

And all the while, NATO secretly cooperated with and trained that same Ukrainian army.

At no point in the eight long years of Ukraine’s civil war did Europe or the US care to imagine how all these events unfolding in Russia’s backyard might look to ordinary Russians. Might they not fear the West just as much as western publics have been encouraged by their media to fear Moscow? Putin did not need to invent their concern. The West achieved that all by itself.

The encirclement of Russia by NATO was not a one-off error. Western meddling in the coup and support for a nationalist Ukrainian army increasingly hostile to Russia were not one-offs either. NATO’s decision to flood Ukraine with weapons rather than concentrate on diplomacy is no aberration. Nor is the decision to impose economic sanctions on ordinary Russians.

These are all of a piece, a pattern of pathological behavior by the West towards Russia - and any other resource-rich state that does not utterly submit to western control. If the West were an individual, the patient would be diagnosed as suffering from a severe personality disorder, one with a strong impulse for self-destruction.

Bogeyman needed

Worse still, this impulse does not appear open to correction - not as things stand. The truth is that NATO and its US ringmaster have no interest in changing.

Their purpose is to have a credible bogeyman that justifies continuing the massive wealth redistribution from ordinary citizens to an elite of the already ultra-rich. A supposed threat to Europe’s safety justifies pouring money into the maw of an expanding war machine masquerading as the “defense industries” - the military, the arms manufacturers, and the ever-growing complex of the surveillance, intelligence, and security industries. Both Nato and a US network of more than 800 military bases around the globe just keep growing.

A bogeyman also ensures the western public is unified in their fear and hatred of an external enemy, making them readier to defer to their leaders to protect them - and with it, the institutions of power those leaders uphold and the status quo they represent.

Anyone suggesting meaningful reform of that system can be rounded on as a threat to national security, a traitor, or a fool, as Britain’s former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn found out.

And a bogeyman distracts the western public from thinking about more profound threats, ones that our leaders - rather than foreigners - are responsible for, such as the climate crisis they not only ignored but still fuel through the very military posturing and global confrontations they use to distract us. It is a perfect circle of self-harm.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union, the West has been casting around for a useful bogeyman to replace the Soviet Union, which supposedly presents an existential threat to western civilization.

Iraq’s weapons of mass distraction were only 45 minutes away - until we learned they did not exist.

Afghanistan’s Taliban harbored al-Qaeda - until we learned that the Taliban had offered to hand Osama bin Laden over even before the 9/11 attacks.

There was the terrifying threat from the head-choppers of the Islamic State (IS) group - until we learned that they were the West’s arm’s-length allies in Syria and were being supplied with weapons from Libya after the West liberated it from its dictator, Muammar Gadaffi.

And there is always Iran and its supposed nuclear weapons to worry about, even though Tehran signed an agreement in 2015 putting in place strict international oversight to prevent it from developing a bomb - until the US casually discarded the deal under pressure from Israel and chose not to replace it with anything else.

Braced for recession

Each of these threats was so grave it required an enormous expenditure of energy and treasure until it had served its purpose of terrifying the western public into acquiescence. Invariably, the West’s meddling spawned a backlash that created another temporary enemy.

Like a predictable Hollywood sequel, the Cold War is back with a vengeance. Russia’s President Putin has a starring role. And the military-industrial complex is licking its lips with delight.

European leaders are telling ordinary people and small businesses to brace for a recession as energy companies once again clock up “eye-watering” profits.

As with the financial crash nearly 15 years ago, when the public was required to tighten its belt through austerity policies, a crisis provides ideal conditions for wealth to be redistributed upwards.

Like other officials, NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has sounded the alarm about “civil unrest” this winter as prices across Europe soar, even while demanding public money be used to send more weapons to Ukraine.

The question is whether the western public will keep buying the narrative of an existential threat that can only be dealt with if they, rather than their leaders, dig deep into their pockets.

This article is available in French in Middle East Eye French edition.

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Next week, the American Soul Versus the Russian Soul. Stay tuned!

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Related Articles Recently Posted on www.buildingthebridgefoundation.com:

Our Friday News Analysis | 'In Search of a Nation's Soul (Part 5),' 7 October 2022

Our Wednesday News Analysis | 'Why Palestinian children throw stones,' 12 October 2022.

The Evangelical Pope | 'Christ Gift to Mediate and Reconcile' 10 October 2022.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of the Building the Bridge Foundation, The Hague.

Common Grounds

Our Friday News Analysis | In Search of a Nation's Soul (Part 6)

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