Day: April 23, 2014

The Long Game: Ukraine as a Geopolitical Pivot

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24 April 2014 — Dispatches from the Empire

Writing in 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski predicted that the Ukraine would become a serious candidate for EU and NATO membership sometime between 2005 and 2015. He further predicted that, beyond 2010, the Ukraine could link up with France, Germany and Poland to establish a ‘critical core’ for Europe’s future security and provide an ‘Eastern anchor’ for ‘Atlanticist Europe’. (See Brzezinski The Grand Chessboard and Foreign Affairs Sept-Oct 1997). Later that year he wrote that Ukraine had no realistic chance of pursuing a ‘multi-vector’ policy, of facing both East and West. It would either be reintegrated into the CIS, or it would become a de facto Central European State. The latter would enable the Ukraine to become an ‘integral part of the Euro-Atlantic community’ (See Brzezinski ‘Ukraine’s Critical Role in the Post-Soviet Space’ Politics and the Times 1997).

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Putin’s Dilemma By Mike Whitney

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23 April 2014 – Counterpunch

Fending Off the United State’s Imperial Hand

“The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world’s paramount power.” (p. xiii)

“Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia — and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.” (p.30)

Excerpts from The Grand Chessboard : American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 1997

“We were promised in Munich that after the unification of Germany, no expansion of NATO would take place in the East. Then NATO expanded by adding former Warsaw Pact countries, former U.S.S.R. countries, and I asked: ‘Why are you doing that?’ And they told me, ‘It is not your business.’?”

– Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow press conference, April 2014

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Global media promote New York Times propaganda photos on Ukraine By Alex Lantier

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23 April 2014 — WSWS 

Yesterday, global media trumpeted pictures published by the New York Times, purporting to show Russian Special Forces involved in pro-Russian protests in east Ukraine.

This wave of positive coverage was all the more significant, in that the dossier is nothing but propaganda. The Times issued low-resolution pictures of bearded fighters, allegedly among Russian forces in Georgia and then in Ukraine, then asserted they were the same men and thus proof of armed Russian intervention in Ukraine. It was based on a crude trick noted on the Reddit Internet forum: the photos in the Times were downsampled versions of higher-resolution images circulating online, which show that the men in the different pictures are in fact different.

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