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Ukraine

butchersapron said:
I think that's entirely the wrong attitude to take and a capitulation to great power conspiracy thought. To understand that you are not going to do anything to change a situation that's now happened is not to say that you engineered that situation. No one was in control of this at the end of january.,
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But hang on a second butchers it's pretty hard to ignore that the "great powers" have been involved in this from day one. This is a big prize Ukraine one that's been sought after by the EU and the West for many years. The EU vocally endorsed this maidan from day one and was quite candid about using the far-right as extra-parliamentary leverage to help put in power whichever set of pro-EU oligarchs they would prefer. The full extent of the financial and political support the government, which did seize power in an unconstitutional and violent way, is yet to be fully revealed but I suspect we'll be finding out more about that in the coming weeks and months. I notice a lot of these criminal oligarchs are now circling western Ukraine like vultures, the latest (reported in the BBC live feed) is billionaire oligarch and one-time Russias wealthiest man Mikhail Khordokovsky who has announced his intention to travel to Kiev as his presense might help prevent a war or something.

I think the lesson we can learn from these events is that the West's preferred method of regime change now is the Astroturf Arab Spring model (Patrick Cockburn wrote at length about this here in the London Review of Books well worth reading) but that for any would-be revolutionary the success or otherwise of your revolution hinges on the extent of the support the West can give. Now I don't want to get into the territory where the hopes and wishes of people who participate in these events are dismissed beneath the High Politics and imperialist game-playing, but it does seem totally crucial to the success of a revolution what kind of support you can get from neighbouring countries. I don't like the idea that in order to "respect the agency" of people" you can't acknowledge a fact when it stares you in the face. I respect the agency of Syrian jihadi's and Ukranian far-right nationalists alike, doesn't mean I'm obliged to support or agree with them.

Anyway, back on point, in Libya the rebels were able to not only mobilise a large amount of people, but to draw in military support from the West. The West was able to give assurances to Russia and China that this wasn't the new post-Iraq regime change precident (a lie, of course, but one that worked). Libya was not an important part of Russian strategic planning either way. However in Syria, because Russia has a biger stake there, and is willing to support it's ally, even though there's a large constituency of people that hated Assad the West weren't able to intervene in a more direct way and so far Assad remains in power. So instead the Western powers relied on Saudi backed jihadi's to do the dirty work, which backfired, as Syrian people seem to hate them quite vociferously and of course these militant's themselves loyalty to the Saudi/Western plan is doubtful. This forced a large amount of people in Syria to rally around an otherwise hated regime, for fear of the alternative, and made direct military support by the West politically very risky.

Likewise in Ukraine, would that protest been able to last so long if they hadn't had the serious backing of a major external power? The right sector and svoboda don't seem to me to have the sort of mass support that on their own could've resulted in this outcome, nor the muscle to actually deal with the Berkut if unleashed. The fatherland party has wider support, even if it's superficial and corrupt, and a certain amount of legitimacy. They have the links to the EU. They are the ones who for instance pushed for a negotiated compromise by inviting the Polish foreign minister to act as a mediator for the deal which was struck, and then prompty rejected, without which the Maidan square would have been cleared at the end of February in what would have been a total bloodbath. In order for this to play out the way it has done has required support from parts of the pro-western leaning Ukranian ruling class, from obviously pro-western stooges like Vitali Klitschko and from the Fatherland lot, and then balancing this support from outside with their reliance on the far-right militia's on the streets of the maidan itself.

And I still get the feeling that this Crimea business might end up with some kind of negotiated settlement, only Putin wants to make sure that he has effective control of the Crimea before of the terms of that settlement are drawn up to increase his bargaining position. I don't think he's acting irrationally or out of touch I think what he's doing was easily predictable week ago if the Ukrainian government fell.

I'm sure the people of Greece will be pleased to see all this EU/IMF money being spent to prop up the Ukrainian economy. Money's always there when they need it. It's just a matter of who needs it.
 
J Ed said:
Financial support/loans with heavy conditions attached in the event of a pro-Western gov
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So you're not saying that this was engineered then? That's how i read your post.

The IMF were in the ukraine before, as were other people - the state wasn't strong enough to impose the conditions on the population. This lad they chased away, he was supposed to do that with russian help.
 
I also feel the Merkel is making 'Putin's on another planet' noises in part because she's mightily despondent concerning all the financial backing which has effectively disappeared down a black hole with nothing to show for it.
 
another just wtf moment: :facepalm:

Ed Miliband is personally to blame for the crisis in Ukraine, senior Conservatives claimed last night.

Allies to David Cameron and George Osborne made the extraordinary claim after Russian president Vladimir Putin authorised military action within the country.

There is a "Direct link between Miliband's cynical vote against Syria motion & Russia's actions on Ukraine," Treasury minister and close aide to the chancellor, Sajid Javid tweeted, adding that this made the Labour leader "Completely unfit to lead Britain".
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http://uk.news.yahoo.com/miliband-blame-ukraine-crisis-tories-094535289.html#qGQoGxW

I suspect a very large amount of money indeed has been lost, along with opportunities to cash in and fleece people. Scapegoats must be found.

Interesting article concerning Bosnia in the Graun

Ukrainians, take it from a Bosnian: the EU flag is just a rag in the wind

If it's anything like Bosnia, Ukrainians will find the world lining up to help, but they could be paying back the debt for many years...
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Desperate stuff from the Tories!

http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/ukraine-and-threat-of-war.html

First things first, let's clear out the nonsense. It says something about the poverty of this country's politics when a government ministeruses the occasion of crisis for desperate point-scoring. But Javid is not alone. Plenty are the armchair brigade who urged war on Syria from Tweetdeck (as opposed to carrier decks) and are making broadly similar claims. The argument goes something like this. Because the US and its allies didn't rain cruise missiles down on Damascus, its opponents in Moscow and Beijing will conclude that the West have lost its nerve, more or less giving them a free hand.

It doesn't stand up to argument. Exhibit one: Afghanistan and Iraq. The Anglo-American invasion and occupation of these unhappy lands didn't clip Moscow's wings. It allowed Putin and Medvedev to crack down on Chechen and Ingush separatism in the name of the War on Terror. Exhibit two: Russia's brief conflict with Georgia and subsequent establishment of puppet states in Abkhazia and South Ossetia proceeded while the West was still bullish and with the neocons in the White House. Now, of course, Putin and his circle of advisors would have weighed up the reaction of "world opinion". But considering the actions of the US is a matter of routine. Russia knows the Americans are not going to intervene militarily in support of the new Ukrainian government, and it has never been a realistic proposition. Hence the "weak West" thesis is a complete red herring. We'd be here whether we'd flung cruise missiles into Syria or not.
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Incidently in legal terms Yanukovitch is still the legitimate President of Ukraine

http://blog.fluenthistorian.com/2014/02/22/yanukovych-legally-still-is-president-of-ukraine/
 
teqniq said:
another just wtf moment: :facepalm:
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No, (but along similar lines) it's Obama's fault

Hawkish Republican senator John McCain blamed what he called the “feckless foreign policy” of the Obama administration as a partial cause of events in the Ukraine during a speech to lobbyists at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington on Monday, Guardian Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts (@RobertsDan) reports:

“What happens in Ukraine is directly related to what happens in the Middle East,” he said, pointing Obama’s failure to take military action in Syria and relaxation of sanctions against Iran as signs of weakness seized on by Putin...
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frogwoman said:
Yeah right.

Do you really think the Russians are this stupid? There were huge protests against Putin last year. Do you really think his support is necessarily gonna go up on the back of this?

and there were loads of people who supported the Falklands, but loads of people who didn't.
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actually there wasn't, Harman's memoirs tell of how hard it was to mobilise against the war.
 
butchersapron said:
wtf has all that got to do with me asking j if he thought it was all planned out, People having interests and acting on them is not the same as planned.
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Well you used this phrase "a capitulation to great power conspiracy thought" and I don't agree with it the idea it's a conspiracy to say the EU and USA and Russia see Ukraine as part of a big geopolitical game. It's not a conspiracy again to see factions within Ukraine getting support from those nations. Maybe that's not what you're suggesting but it seemed like a good starting point for a long post talking about related issues.

I think the danger lies in saying that all these things are planned out in advanced by a shadowy clique in NATO HQ smoking cigars and what have you, and therefore ordinary people are nothing more than pawns and unable to change anything of their own accord. I don't think that is the case here, we've seen ordinary people (even if many of those ordinary people are involved in the far-right) carry the momentum of these protests and it looks like at times the traditional pro-western Ukrainian elites have been following the lead given by those groups. But that doesn't mean we should swing the pendulum the other way, and dismiss any talk of Western or Russian imperialism, or dismiss the idea that ordinary people can willingly seek out the support of these "external" actors.

And incidentally I'm not comfortable with any series of explanations that try to pigeonhole this as "high politics" (politics and international relations between states) and "low politics" (domestic politics within nation-states) because I don't recognise the distinction between the two, which is a bit Marxist of me but I stick by that.
 
Delroy Booth said:
Well you used this phrase "a capitulation to great power conspiracy thought" and I don't agree with it the idea it's a conspiracy to say the EU and USA and Russia see Ukraine as part of a big geopolitical game. It's not a conspiracy again to see factions within Ukraine getting support from those nations. Maybe that's not what you're suggesting but it seemed like a good starting point for a long post talking about related issues.

I think the danger lies in saying that all these things are planned out in advanced by a shadowy clique in NATO HQ smoking cigars and what have you, and therefore ordinary people are nothing more than pawns and unable to change anything of their own accord. I don't think that is the case here, we've seen ordinary people (even if many of those ordinary people are involved in the far-right) carry the momentum of these protests and it looks like at times the traditional pro-western Ukrainian elites have been following the lead given by those groups. But that doesn't mean we should swing the pendulum the other way, and dismiss any talk of Western or Russian imperialism, or dismiss the idea that ordinary people can willingly seek out the support of these "external" actors.

And incidentally I'm not comfortable with any series of explanations that try to pigeonhole this as "high politics" (politics and international relations between states) and "low politics" (domestic politics within nation-states) because I don't recognise the distinction between the two, which is a bit Marxist of me but I stick by that.
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What did i use that phrase to describe? The idea that all this was pre-planned. Which you now say in many many many more words than me. Get an editor.
 
butchersapron said:
What did i use that phrase to describe? The idea that all this was pre-planned. Which you now say in many many many more words than me. Get an editor.
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Why do you only respond in terse defensive crap like this whenever people try to discuss something you've said at any length? I don't even disagree with you on this just I wanted to make a few points and thought that sentence would be a good place to start with.

And I wouldn't describe it as "pre-planned" in a shadowy conspiratorial way, but planned? Yes I think the EU and the US probably have had various plans about how best to bring Ukraine into the fold. Again going back to my undergrad uni days things like would be discussed quite openly as just how competing states interact. That doesn't mean I think they've directed events on the ground or hold control over it, but there's certainly some level of involvement and it hasn't just happened spontaneously.

Anyway the sad thing is from time to time you can be capable of posting really insightful things, with information from places I wouldn't otherwise get, but then go and fuck it up by picking fights where none exist. And the percentage of good posts to shit posts is getting awfully skewed in favour of the latter when I bother to read your stuff these days.
 
You wrote a massive thing then another massive thing that agreed with me. You prefaced these with 'but hang on'.

Every single person knows that this is part of a wider geo-political battle. And that, as part of that interests are followed. It's what we've been talking about on this very thread. I asked j if he thought it was all planned out. Calm down
 
Delroy Booth said:
Anyway the sad thing is from time to time you can be capable of posting really insightful things, with information from places I wouldn't otherwise get, but then go and fuck it up by picking fights where none exist. And the percentage of good posts to shit posts is getting awfully skewed in favour of the latter when I bother to read your stuff these days.
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You've been saying this since you joined. Look at the sad faces :(
 
butchersapron said:
So you're not saying that this was engineered then? That's how i read your post.

The IMF were in the ukraine before, as were other people - the state wasn't strong enough to impose the conditions on the population. This lad they chased away, he was supposed to do that with russian help.
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Well it's not as if anything can be entirely or mostly engineered but what I was saying was that the financial component was clearly pre-planned, yeah. I'm not totally sure what you're asking me, there has clearly been considerable outside influence as the article you linked about Omidyar showed.
 
J Ed said:
Well it's not as if anything can be entirely or mostly engineered but what I was saying was that the financial component was clearly pre-planned, yeah. I'm not totally sure what you're asking me, there has clearly been considerable outside influence as the article you linked about Omidyar showed.
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Your post read as if every step of the way had been planned. The plan to stay on the square for months, to steadily become more militant, to be attacked by snipers, to take the govt buildings. That's why i'm asking you to clarify because, you surely don't believe that do you?
 
butchersapron said:
You wrote a massive thing then another massive thing that agreed with me. You prefaced these with 'but hang on'.
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And you're so thin skinned that you decided to to focus on those 3 words, and then take umbrdige at it and reply with some snarky defensive comment, rather than the content of the post which actually didn't substantially disagree with the point you were trying to make?

butchersapron said:
You've been saying this since you joined. Look at the sad faces :(
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Mainly because you've been a hostile prick since I joined. Especially confusing too as you had no prior reason to dislike me or act like that but you did and continue too anyway.

How would you expect me to react? By joining your fanclub?
 
J Ed said:
No.
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Excellent. The EU (or German) and the Russia stuff has all been as openly done as secret stuff can be. Everyone knows the game - globally mobile capital knows it too, Everyone makes contingency plans, or plans for the best position possible - the map is not the territory though. The people there made new territory and now people are having to think on their feet.
 
butchersapron said:
Seriously, grown up stuff going on.
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Look, I know that you think you're being pithy when you wheel out your standard obtuse schtick but seriously I am genuinely confused as to your post and may well have misunderstood it in its context.

When you stated the following...

butchersapron said:
I knew it was the jews as well.
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...were you meaning to be anti-Semitic?

Or more to the point, what on Earth did you mean exactly?

I seriously can't believe that you didn't expect to be pulled up on a statement like that! In a politics forum as well...
 
Delroy Booth said:
And you're so thin skinned that you decided to to focus on those 3 words, and then take umbrdige at it and reply with some snarky defensive comment, rather than the content of the post which actually didn't substantially disagree with the point you were trying to make?
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Good lord, you posted reams showing me that i was wrong but agreeing that i was right.

Mainly because you've been a hostile prick since I joined. Especially confusing too as you had no prior reason to dislike me or act like that but you did and continue too anyway.

How would you expect me to react? By joining your fanclub?
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Now, you know that is this is not true. Send your complaints direct to me or on another thread.
 
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