<
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/13/the-mess-that-nuland-made/>
The Mess that Nuland Made
July 13, 2015
Exclusive: Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine's
"regime change" in early 2014 without weighing the likely chaos and
consequences. Now, as neo-Nazis turn their guns on the government, it's hard
to see how anyone can clean up the mess that Nuland made, writes Robert
Parry.
By Robert Parry
As the Ukrainian army squares off against ultra-right and neo-Nazi militias
in the west and violence against ethnic Russians continues in the east, the
obvious folly of the Obama administration's Ukraine policy has come into
focus even for many who tried to ignore the facts, or what you might call
"the mess that Victoria Nuland made."
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs "Toria" Nuland was the
"mastermind" behind the Feb. 22, 2014 "regime change" in Ukraine, plotting
the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Viktor
Yanukovych while convincing the ever-gullible U.S. mainstream media that the
coup wasn't really a coup but a victory for "democracy."
To sell this latest neocon-driven "regime change" to the American people, the
ugliness of the coup-makers had to be systematically airbrushed, particularly
the key role of neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalists from the Right Sektor.
For the U.S.-organized propaganda campaign to work, the coup-makers had to
wear white hats, not brown shirts.
So, for nearly a year and a half, the West's mainstream media, especially The
New York Times and The Washington Post, twisted their reporting into all
kinds of contortions to avoid telling their readers that the new regime in
Kiev was permeated by and dependent on neo-Nazi fighters and Ukrainian
ultra-nationalists who wanted a pure-blood Ukraine, without ethnic Russians.
Any mention of that sordid reality was deemed "Russian propaganda" and anyone
who spoke this inconvenient truth was a "stooge of Moscow." It wasn't until
July 7 that the Times admitted <
http://bit.ly/1Skd3Vk> the importance of the
neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalists in waging war against ethnic Russian
rebels in the east. The Times also reported that these far-right forces had
been joined by Islamic militants (OS: <
http://bit.ly/1Skd3Vk>). Some of those
jihadists have been called "brothers" of the hyper-brutal Islamic State.
Though the Times sought to spin this remarkable military alliance - neo-Nazi
militias and Islamic jihadists - as a positive, the reality had to be jarring
for readers who had bought into the Western propaganda about noble
"pro-democracy" forces resisting evil "Russian aggression."
Perhaps the Times sensed that it could no longer keep the lid on the
troubling truth in Ukraine. For weeks, the Right Sektor militias and the
neo-Nazi Azov battalion have been warning the civilian government in Kiev
that they might turn on it and create a new order more to their liking.
Clashes in the West
Then, on Saturday, violent clashes broke out <
http://nyti.ms/1M39Zgu> in the
western Ukrainian town of Mukachevo, allegedly over the control of
cigarette-smuggling routes. Right Sektor paramilitaries sprayed police
officers with bullets from a belt-fed machinegun, and police - backed by
Ukrainian government troops - returned fire. Several deaths and multiple
injuries were reported.
Tensions escalated on Monday with President Petro Poroshenko ordering
national security forces to disarm "armed cells" of political movements.
Meanwhile, the Right Sektor dispatched reinforcements to the area while other
militiamen converged on the capital of Kiev.
While President Poroshenko and Right Sektor leader Dmitry Yarosh may succeed
in tamping down this latest flare-up of hostilities, they may be only
postponing the inevitable: a conflict between the U.S.-backed authorities in
Kiev and the neo-Nazis and other right-wing fighters who spearheaded last
year's coup and have been at the front lines of the fighting against ethnic
Russian rebels in the east.
The Ukrainian right-wing extremists feel they have carried the heaviest
burden in the war against the ethnic Russians and resent the politicians
living in the relative safety and comfort of Kiev. In March, Poroshenko also
fired thuggish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky <
http://bit.ly/1HGHlR8> as governor
of the southeastern province of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Kolomoisky had been
the primary benefactor of the Right Sektor militias.
So, as has become apparent across Europe and even in Washington, the Ukraine
crisis is spinning out of control, making the State Department's preferred
narrative of the conflict - that it's all Russian President Vladimir Putin's
fault - harder and harder to sell.
How Ukraine is supposed to pull itself out of what looks like a death
spiral - a possible two-front war in the east and the west along with a
crashing economy - is hard to comprehend. The European Union, confronting
budgetary crises over Greece and other EU members, has little money or
patience for Ukraine, its neo-Nazis and its socio-political chaos.
America's neocons at The Washington Post and elsewhere still rant about the
need for the Obama administration to sink more billions upon billions of
dollars into post-coup Ukraine because it "shares our values." But that
argument, too, is collapsing as Americans see the heart of a racist
nationalism beating inside Ukraine's new order.
Another Neocon 'Regime Change'
Much of what has happened, of course, was predictable and indeed was
predicted, but neocon Nuland couldn't resist the temptation to pull off a
"regime change" that she could call her own.
Her husband (and arch-neocon) Robert Kagan had co-founded the Project for the
New American Century in 1998 around a demand for "regime change" in Iraq, a
project that was accomplished in 2003 with President George W. Bush's
invasion. ..
(OS: Read the full article here <
http://bit.ly/1L4xQxg>)
.. Nuland saw her big chance on Feb. 20, 2014, when a mysterious sniper -
apparently firing from a building controlled by the Right Sektor - shot and
killed both police and protesters, escalating the crisis. On Feb. 21, in a
desperate bid to avert more violence, Yanukovych agreed to a
European-guaranteed plan in which he accepted reduced powers and called for
early elections so he could be voted out of office.
But that wasn't enough for the anti-Yanukovych forces who - led by Right
Sektor and neo-Nazi militias - overran government buildings on Feb. 22,
forcing Yanukovych and many of his officials to flee for their lives. With
armed thugs patrolling the corridors of power, the final path to "regime
change" was clear.
Instead of trying to salvage the Feb. 21 agreement, Nuland and European
officials arranged for an unconstitutional procedure to strip Yanukovych of
the presidency and declared the new regime "legitimate." Nuland's "guy" -
Yatsenyuk - became prime minister.
While Nuland and her neocon cohorts celebrated, their "regime change"
prompted an obvious reaction from Putin, who recognized the strategic threat
that this hostile new regime posed to the historic Russian naval base at
Sevastopol in Crimea. On Feb. 23, he began to take steps to protect those
Russian interests.
Ethnic Hatreds
What the coup also did was revive long pent-up antagonisms between the ethnic
Ukrainians in the west, including elements that had supported Adolf Hitler's
invasion of the Soviet Union during World War Two, and ethnic Russians in the
south and east who feared the anti-Russian sentiments emanating from Kiev.
First, in Crimea and then in the so-called Donbas region, these ethnic
Russians, who had been Yanukovych's political base, resisted what they viewed
as the illegitimate overthrow of their elected president. Both areas held
referenda seeking separation from Ukraine, a move that Russia accepted in
Crimea but resisted with the Donbas.
However, when the Kiev regime announced an "anti-terrorism operation" against
the Donbas and dispatched neo-Nazi and other extremist militias to be the tip
of the spear, Moscow began quietly assisting the embattled ethnic Russian
rebels, a move that Nuland, the Obama administration and the mainstream news
media called "Russian aggression."
Amid the Western hysteria over Russia's supposedly "imperial designs" and the
thorough demonizing of Putin, President Barack Obama essentially authorized a
new Cold War against Russia, reflected now in new U.S. strategic planning
that could cost the U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars and risk a possible
nuclear confrontation.
Yet, despite the extraordinary costs and dangers, Nuland failed to appreciate
the practical on-the-ground realities, much as her husband and other neocons
did in Iraq. While Nuland got her hand-picked client Yatsenyuk installed and
he did oversee a U.S.-demanded "neo-liberal" economic plan - slashing
pensions, heating assistance and other social programs - the chaos that her
"regime change" unleashed transformed Ukraine into a financial black hole.
With few prospects for a clear-cut victory over the ethnic Russian resistance
in the east - and with the neo-Nazi/Islamist militias increasingly restless
over the stalemate - the chances to restore any meaningful sense of order in
the country appear remote. Unemployment is soaring and the government is
essentially bankrupt.
The last best hope for some stability may have been the Minsk-2 agreement in
February 2015, calling for a federalized system to give the Donbas more
autonomy, but Nuland's Prime Minister Yatsenyuk sabotaged the deal in March
by inserting a poison pill <
http://bit.ly/1LPY9rU> that essentially demanded
that the ethnic Russian rebels first surrender.
Now, the Ukraine chaos threatens to spiral even further out of control with
the neo-Nazis and other right-wing militias - supplied with a bounty weapons
to kill ethnic Russians in the east - turning on the political leadership in
Kiev.
In other words, the neocons have struck again, dreaming up a "regime change"
scheme that ignored practical realities, such as ethnic and religious
fissures. Then, as the blood flowed and the suffering worsened, the neocons
just sought out someone else to blame.
Thus, it seems unlikely that Nuland, regarded by some in Washington as the
new "star" in U.S. foreign policy, will be fired for her dangerous
incompetence, just as most neocons who authored the Iraq disaster remain
"respected" experts employed by major think tanks, given prized space on
op-ed pages, and consulted at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
[For more on these topics, see Consortiumnews.com's "Obama's True Foreign
Policy Weakness" <
http://bit.ly/1HZdiWr> and "A Family Business of Perpetual
War." <
http://bit.ly/1MZut90>]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book,
America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here <
http://bit.ly/1e1Bae7> or
as an e-book (from Amazon <
http://amzn.to/1NgNymN> and
barnesandnoble.com
<
http://bit.ly/1QNY0rx>). You also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the
Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only
$34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this
offer, click here <
http://bit.ly/1BJMEy9>.