7 July 2014 — RT

RAND Corp. is hired by Washington insiders to play games for them, indicating that despite all the money spent on national security and intelligence the US government is not up to the task, Chronicles magazine’s Srdja Trifkovich told RT.

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A confidential document on Ukraine by the RAND Corporation was leaked last week. This ‘Memorandum on the advisable course of action’ provides three stages of a military operation in eastern Ukraine, which would ensure that a peace plan confirmed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko would actually fail.

The first stage implies total isolation of the region considering that all local citizens are terrorists or sympathizers. Region should be encircled with troops and sealed off entirely from any flow of goods and persons, whereas all broadcasting services, internet connection, telephone and mobile communications in the region would be shut down.

Under the second stage named ‘Mop-up’, RAND Corporation analysts propose airstrikes against the strategic facilities with possible use of non-conventional arms. The document also provides for internment camps outside the cleared settlements. People featuring traces of combat engagement should be tried in court for terrorism.

During the third stage, ‘Back to Normal’, power supplies and communications would be restored, the borders strengthened to avoid possible provocations, while all the refugees should be checked for possible support for separatists in internment camps. Special focus should be made to information security, and all foreign media blocked.

RT: Should this plan of action be verified? How significant would this leak become?

Srdja Trifkovich: Two points. First of all, I am not shocked at all that Poroshenko is receiving instructions from Washington. In fact, all along it seemed pretty obvious that the likes of Victoria Nuland were dictating the pace of events in Kiev even as the so-called EuroMaidan was turning into terrorist Maidan and the Right Sector Maidan.

What is really interesting is that an institution such as RAND would be hired by the powers inside the Washington beltway to do a scenario, game playing for them, which indicates that in spite of all thousands of billions or trillions of dollars spent over decades on national security and intelligence the government itself is not up to the task.

The second important point to make is that RAND, and this would not be the first time that it has been used in this way, it is a remnant of the old Cold War think-tankery, so to say, and what is particularly interesting is that the steps that they have suggested are not particularly innovative. It is really the old Cold War regime [methods]. 

RT: The document apparently outlines an advisable course of action if the Ukraine peace plan fails. How influential is the RAND Corporation in such matters?

ST: I am pretty convinced that the US government and it minions, consultants are totally devoid of any sense of moral guidance and propriety. In other words they are perfectly happy to contemplate de-facto genocide of Russian-speakers and pro-Russian Ukrainians. And that fits in with their equal ease of consciousness, with which they acted in the Mekong Delta during the Tet offensive in 1968 and its aftermath and elsewhere, not least during the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, of Serbia and Montenegro in 1999.

So what we are looking at is simply a blueprint for making sure that Ukraine is turned into the mirror image of the Bandera style of Galicia and Podolia in western Ukraine. It is a little bit like trying to turn the whole of the US into the mirror image of South Carolina, Georgia in 1861.

RT: How worried are you that foreign advice that’s as intense as this could be taken seriously by Kiev?

ST: I think the current government in Kiev, the putschist government, will be perfectly happy to take this advice because it is dominated by the most extreme nationalist forces in Ukraine. In other words, the whole Kiev control of Ukraine has been effectively hijacked by the followers of Stepan Bandera, by the followers of a notion of the Ukrainian nationalism that treats the Russians, the Jews and the Poles as enemy by definition and that really seeks not to democratize Ukraine, but to turn it into neo-fascist dictatorship that would be based upon the notions of blood and soil, the likes of which we have seen in Europe in 1930s.

What is really shocking, however, is that the US government has condoned such behavior so far. In fact, if you look at the Western media and that of the US in particular, hardly even mentions were made about suffering of civilians in Donetsk, Lugansk, Slavyansk and Kramatorsk. This government is effectively encouraging the Kiev authorities to proceed on this path by not issuing as single word of condemnation and furthermore insisting on the alleged right of the Ukrainian government to defend itself against aggression, which is really aiding and abetting war crimes on a massive scale.

What we have now is a geopolitical battle for the whole of Ukraine. Whole of Ukraine meaning including Donetsk and Lugansk, which the Western and particularly the US decision makers want to win wholesale for the EU and NATO, and to bring NATO troops to Russian south-west borders. There is no mistake about this.

What Russia needs to do is to respond forcefully. It should have done so as soon as the massive crime in Odessa took place on the May 2 and when the Ukrainian government started using the air force against civilian targets. What exactly will be the shape of that response remains to be seen. I am sure that the Kremlin will carefully weigh the available options, but a strong response must come.

If the Kremlin continues talking peace and making conciliate rejections while the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev proceed along this perfectly credible lines, and we are looking again at the picture in which the ultimate objective as I say is to bring Galicia to Russian back door, to exclude Russia completely from the whole of Ukraine and ultimately to open up the soft underbelly of Russia’s geopolitical space for NATO.

RT: Is the document any different to any similar plan of a separatist movement?

ST: Obviously, other separatist movements have behaved brutally and have certainly acted in the way that indicates they want cleansing, in particular the Albanian separatists in Kosovo have ethnically cleansed Kosovo effectively of all Serbs and of all Roma, and likewise the ISIS is actively cleansing the territory under its own control of Shiites and secularists, using very brutal manor in the process.

What is shocking about the Ukrainian scenario is that this is taking place on the advice of the respected US institutions and obviously with a connivance and full knowledge of the US government. That is nothing short of scandalous.

RT: Washington says it’s committed to peace, but if this leak is genuine, and it’s from a leading American policy think-tank, might this undermine efforts so far? And how does it sort with the peace plan announced by Ukrainian President Poroshenko?

ST: The RAND Corporation would not be preparing this package were it not for the fact that it was encouraged to do so by the US government. In other words it is as influential as under the circumstances the US government wants it to be. If the US Department of State is too embarrassed to advise war crimes and ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, it will be perfectly happy to subcontract the job to such an institution as RAND.

You mentioned also Poroshenko’s peace plan. There is not peace plan, for goodness sake. This is really a demand for unconditional surrender. He says that he would talk after the so-called rebels lay down their weapons and allow the Ukrainian authorities to process them and to see who is culpable and who is innocent. That is a joke of a peace plan and even referring to it as a peace plan indirectly condones it, and that shouldn’t be done.

Poroshenko does not want peace. Poroshenko wants unconditional surrender of the eastern self-defense forces, and of course Kiev used the rhetoric of peace, but the kind of peace Poroshenko has in mind has been aptly described by an ancient Roman when he said of the Roman Empire, “They create a desert and they call it peace.” Poroshenko and the Galician fascists want to create a desert in Lugansk, Donetsk oblast and they will then call it “peace” and “a great and glorious victory.” Russia has to intervene. We are way passed the diplomatic niceties and games with the threats of sanctions.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.