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Whether he likes it or not, President Barack Obama’s trip to Europe will be about Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and American power.
He may not stoop to pick up the geopolitical gauntlet thrown down by the Russian leader. He probably will set out new red lines – warning Mr Putin not to mess with NATO. ~ Mark Mardell (BBC)
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Any objective reading of the Ukraine conflict suggests that, contrary to Mark Mardell and rest of the EU and US media, it is the USA that has thrown down the gauntlet by expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders, breaking agreements entered into after the end of communism.
The Warsaw pact which was disbanded has been expanded by NATO, and now has beefed up even further to Moscow’s doorstep!
American chest thumping, a la Bush Jr., still suits the warmongers. Israel’s apartheid state still gets lots of support from the rabid right evangelicals in the US. Plus, the old Marxist-Socialist canard thrown in to boot – this spells the machinations of today’s Western media.
This whole conflict is simple. It is about the US battle for Revenues of State. Nobody seriously expects a nuclear power like Russia to be dictated to by NATO. That ends in nuclear war.
The only end game is another cold war. Who benefits? Those who are needed: the US Military and its Industrial Complex. It is desperately cynical, all the more so because it is transparently obvious. The Western media are right along with it.
But let us get to the crux of the matter.
When did Ukraine become part of “we” in the EU and in the US? This is no small point of order. Almost all of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) journalists are speaking of Ukraine as if NATO has some kind of obligation to engage in the Ukraine.
That is new policy and from an African perspective it is intolerant. Hopefully the rest of the world sees this. It is highly intrusive, and must be characterized as aggressive. If you start intruding where you did not exist before, that is aggressive.
Europeans and Americans are being sold aggressive war as defense policy by their media.
Ukraine is not a candidate country to join the European Union or NATO. Nor is Belarus which has just signed a closer association agreement with Russia. We are not aware that there is massive enthusiasm in any European country, two of which have just voted against closer European Union, for a war against Russia.
Additionally, being a member state of the European Union does not mean a nation is an independent country! Nor does being a member of NATO make a sovereign state. Mr. Obama has admitted this fact to the USA at WestPoint. Some have chosen to ignore and deny it.
No man (or country) is an island.
But Western journalist in their ill-informed articles, in this attempt to mar Putin’s character in haste, continue to forget that Russia was an ally of European countries against Germany in the last war.
Putin has been in power since 1999. If the EU and the US believe that his desire is ‘to conquer the world’ on the basis that this year he agreed to the annexation of the Crimea then they probably also still believe that Iraq is capable of deploying its massive Chemical weapons arsenal to their back garden in 9 minutes.
To arrogantly and continually surmise that Europe is part of the US is childish. The US legal remit ends in the USA and does not extend outside of it. Can we implore the US to do the matured thing – kindly withdraw its troops, close its bases, go home and mind its own business?
US law has no reach outside the US and it is only spineless countries, especially those in Africa and Latin America that acquiesce to this bullying and give them the brass neck to try it on.
Crimea was a response to Crimean wishes coupled with the political and economic destabilization in the Ukraine. None of these was instigated by Russia.
