Those looking for the real deal on Russia, Ukraine and the USA need look no further.
We all know that Russia invaded Ukraine and might not stop there, right? Except that is not quite the case. The sheeple all believe that, as this is what Western media pedals.
A mistake that most people are making and the single most spectacular success of the propaganda being fed to you is this:
What started out as interference in the domestic politics of an independent state by the US has now been successfully re-framed to the sheeple in the west as actions on the part of Russia. The whole narrative is now framed in terms of Russia initiating processes.
This re-framing makes it very hard for those affected by this fictional worldview to consider what is actually happening, even when they have access to verifiable, accurate inputs about the actions of the various players.
In this context it is thus almost impossible for USAians to see what Russia is doing as a reaction to the inputs of the US. The effect is that Russia is implicitly cast as an aggressor. The truth is rather different. Russia has been forced into taking actions because of the inputs from the west. Those reactions are, in comparison to what we would expect from, for example, the UK or US in a similar situation, hugely restrained and very low key. That is why, in part, the west, led by the US has been ratcheting up the stimuli, upping the inputs in the hope of getting a non-linear response from Russia that better suits the chosen US narrative.
To be honest, I do not think that the US strategists are up to managing a scenario of the type I outlined in my previous post. However it would fit the stated goals of the US and frame the US in a positive light while marginalising Russian influence and casting the Russians as villains.
The way in which language is used to frame the ability to think about and therefore discuss a topic is very interesting. I read about it many years ago but it had no real relevance to me until I started writing a particular document a couple years ago. The research for that work made it clear that using language to manage the way that people were able to think was going on. Seeing the practical effect upon ordinary people was informative. Since then I have come to understand how such management is pretty much the norm in the US these days and is becoming so in the UK. This is one reason why I do not dumb down what I write and why I refuse to use a narrow vocabulary because by reducing the variety of words we use we reduce our ability to transfer shades of meaning.
In this case now, every discussion, no matter the standpoint of the participants, is framed in terms of Russian aggression. That aggression is the “accepted truth” so we have people defending Russia but still accepting a reality of Russian aggression meaning that each discussion starts with a participant on the defensive. The reality is that we should be working from an implicit acceptance of an almost diametrically opposite perspective. A reality in which none of this would have happened if the US had not imposed regime change in Ukraine.
We understand that the US was paying for regime change in Ukraine in order that US foreign policy goals might be more easily attained. I think few of us now think that what happened in Maidan was a spontaneous outpouring of Ukraine solidarity, etc., etc. – even if many of the participants thought that was the case.
Given that we know the US put at least $5billion into the pot to pay for that process what does that tell us about Yanukovych?
You see there’s a thing.
The US may seem to be run by fools, but they are not, they are evil (If you do not think that provoking a coup d’etat and civil war is not an act of evil then we have different moral compasses), and they are above all pragmatic.
If there was a budget to enable US goal attainment in Ukraine who do you think was approached first when the US decided to put Ukraine into play?
Yes, those who shouted out “Yanukovych” win the prize of a free vacation in Cancun.
The money put on the table by the US would have first been offered to Yanukovych. Maybe he was willing to go along with the Americans, but at a point he refused. That was when the US started getting serious about regime change.
So, we know and understand that the current crop of kleptocrats in Ukraine are bought and paid for tools of the US, just as happened during and after the Orange Revolution. We know that Yanukovych was around before the Orange Revolution – did he turn down the US money back then as well? Was that the trigger for the Orange Revolution?
If you knew that the guy was willing to stand firm against the US, knowing the personal outcome for him and for is country, what happens to your perception of the guy?
Do you start to see the current crop as rather less patriotic and maybe that Yanukovych was somewhat more principled and patriotic than we might have thought him before?
You see, I tend to think that people tend to do that which is the easiest. If the US could attain their goals by paying Yanukovych don’t you think they would’ve?
This tells us Yanukovych could not be bought!
What is being missed by many, but not, I am certain by those who are nearer to the top of the food chain is this:
The US, as part of its expressed foreign policy goals wants NATO to include Ukraine (and a couple of other places).
NATO can not extend membership to states that have non-NATO military bases on their territory.
Ergo, as of this moment Ukraine can not join NATO.
This means that either Ukraine does not join NATO, which is counter to US foreign policy OR Russia’s military bases leave Ukrainian territory.
It is unlikely in the extreme that Russia could be inveigled out of its bases on the Black Sea. They WILL go to a shooting war for those – that’s Russian foreign policy. Russia is legally in those bases, they have a multi-year agreement to be there and they pay their rent. It is not easy to get rid of them for many years.
The truly Machiavellian among us might wonder if the US is playing an absolute blinder here, they are perhaps playing in a different game of chess than the one we and the Russians think they are playing?
We know that Russia’s expressed foreign policy precluded annexing any part of Ukraine because they want and need a buffer between Russia and NATO and they understand that NATO is not an option as long as the Russian bases are in Crimea.
However, if Russia were driven to a place whereby they felt it necessary to take over Crimea then Ukraine would no longer have non-NATO bases on her territory. NATO could sign up Ukraine and Russia would lose their buffer state. Checkmate.
We know because they have already done it, that the US has no qualms about destroying countries for their own foreign policy goals. A few hundred thousand deaths is irrelevant, after all they are not Americans and thus not proper humans. The money is a bagatelle, even in the US’s straitened situation. This way no boots on the ground. Ukraine will become a client state of the EU and will be pillaged for the next few decades while a succession of kleptocrats keep the country ticking over.
If this is true then we will see a lot of bluster and threats from the US but little more. There may be some more violence stirred up to keep the pot boiling and tempers high – angry people don’t think much.
Andrew Wilson writing from Estonia.