The Bear Roars Back

Even during a confrontation approaching catastrophic war, leave it to Secretary of State John Kerry to lighten the mood with a touch of comedy gold. Lashing Russia for its troop surge into Crimea as a response to the latest color revolution in Kiev, America’s top diplomat pronounced with a straight face:

You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text.

Either Kerry should be applauded for his deadpan delivery, or an aide must urgently re-acquaint him with the practical details of US foreign policy. Regardless of century, little seems to change in geopolitics – one hundred and sixty years ago, Britain, France and their Ottoman Turkish allies invaded Crimea to deny Russia access to the Mediterranean Sea and degrade its position in Europe. In 2014 the West, led by the United States, channels popular unrest in Ukraine to orchestrate a revolution and cripple Russia’s revival as an independent center of power with its own sphere of influence. But to the embarrassment of Washington, events haven’t proceeded according to plan.

Now that Senator John McCain, Bernard-Henri Levy and other international luminaries have departed the scene, the euphoria of the Maidan has dissipated into panic and near-chaos. Post-Soviet Ukraine, once known as the fertile breadbasket of Europe, is a basket case racked by economic dysfunction and ethnic divisions. Since Russia has no further reason to either purchase $15 billion worth of Ukrainian bonds or to continue subsidizing gas prices, the replacement regime in Kiev faces default, potential civil war and Kremlin intervention. Billionaire oligarchs who backed the putsch have been directly appointed to stamp out secession movements in the industrial, Russian-oriented east, a measure that reveals the essence of liberal democracy.

With the Ukrainian project in danger of collapsing, US policymakers and the corporate media now fulminate against a Russian bear roused from slumber. In an act of defiance of the Pax Americana, Vladimir Putin refused to acquiesce to strategic encirclement and deployed forces to secure the Russian-majority Crimean Peninsula, a domain of the Tsars through three centuries. As a perennial crossroads of empires, Crimea and its port of Sevastopol would have been an unrivalled platform for NATO power projection into the Eurasian heartland if the new liberal-nationalist coalition in Kiev had managed some prospective expulsion of the Black Sea Fleet. That dream, however, is now in ruins – the Russians aren’t going anywhere.

What the Western public views as the triumph of “freedom” and “people power” in Ukraine was nothing less than a coup d’etat funded and directed by Washington. Viktor Yanukovych, the country’s legitimate president, was both ineffectual and corrupt, and the sentiment against him from ordinary citizens was genuine. Yet Yanukovych was violently overthrown in a mass action almost certainly coordinated by Western intelligence services. If high-level US State Department officials are caught over the telephone arranging the future government in Kiev, then it’s safe to assume the full engagement of case officers, agents of influence and NGO front organizations on the ground. Where there is smoke, there is fire.

Accounting for the subversive nature of US involvement in Ukraine, appeals to the inviolability of state sovereignty from the likes of the White House and Foggy Bottom carry exactly zero weight, and they are especially laughable in the context of American foreign policy. The authors of the bombardment of Serbia and the wanton destruction of Libya, the Masters of the Universe behind the concocted Iraq War, the phony narco-state of Kosovo and perpetual counterinsurgency in the Hindu Kush, the same figures who dispatch jihadists to murder Christians in embattled Syria, have deigned to sternly lecture Russia on the law of nations. Such conceit issuing from the self-styled herald of the end of history is not surprising, even as Ukraine is readied for a devastating cocktail of IMF asset stripping and austerity, violent national chauvinism and the imposition of grotesque cultural norms imported from the postmodern West.

Ukraine represents only the intended prelude to the evisceration of Russia. Witness the Yugoslav model – regional separatism, ethnic and religious hatred and the looting of national wealth by multinationals all pave the way for eventual integration into the control structures of the world financial elite. Once the target of NATO cruise missiles, Serbs now must struggle to preserve their heritage as the Belgrade government largely ignores the fate of countrymen in occupied Kosovo, preferring to seek membership in the EU. In the same way, the United States needs only a Russia prostrate and vanquished, its material resources ripe for exploitation and its people mere demographic material. What use do globalist plutocrats have for such “outdated” notions as faith, family, solidarity and sovereignty?

If the covert planners behind the Maidan takeover hoped to establish Ukraine as another colony of the Euro-Atlantic imperium, they made a grave miscalculation. With survival at stake, Russia has moved decisively to protect its vital interests and compatriots in the heart of its thousand-year culture. And after a sixty-year hiatus induced by the whim of Nikita Krushchev, Crimeans have chosen to reunite with their native land. In the meantime, the Kiev revolutionaries have been put on notice; Moscow will be closely monitoring the safety and well-being of the Russian population on its southwestern frontiers.

While the Washington-Wall Street establishment may rage, the Kremlin has demonstrated a deterrent capability backed by political will. Russia’s active defense of its Orthodox and Slavic identity shows that the banksters’ Novus Ordo Seclorum can be successfully defied – and one day defeated. The bear is roaring back.