Administration officials said the internal debate was not whether to penalize Russia for its actions — there is broad consensus for that, one that hardens with each passing day — but when, and how hard. Beyond freezing assets of individuals, the administration could sanction banks and potentially cut the country off from the dollar economy.
Peter Baker
The putschist prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk peddles ass today in D.C. In addition to an Oval Office ménage à quatre with Biden, Kerry and Obama (scheduled for 2:45 PM EST), "Yats" will indulge in an evening orgy on Capitol Hill hosted by New Jersey's finest "Rent-a-Senator," Bob Menendez. There is a competition underway in Congress between the House and the Senate to see who can bring back the Cold War back the quickest. Menendez, as Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, is backing legislation that, if passed, would guarantee future hostilities with Russia. He outlined his bill in a Washington Post opinion piece yesterday:
Our policies toward Russia require urgent reexamination. Congress has a particular role to play. Legislation I’m offering includes the following components:
●It provides for loan guarantees for Ukraine, consistent with the $1 billion announced by the Obama administration in recent days and mirroring just-passed House legislation.
●It directs the Obama administration to assist the Ukrainian government in identifying, securing and recovering assets linked to acts of corruption by former prime minister Viktor Yanukovych, members of his family or other former or current Ukrainian government officials.
●It authorizes $50 million for democracy, governance and civil society assistance and $100 million for enhanced security cooperation for Ukraine and other states in Central and Eastern Europe.
●It provides for additional sanctions, complementing the president’s executive order, against Ukrainians and Russians alike responsible for violence and serious human rights abuses against anti-government protesters and those responsible for undermining the peace, security, stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.
●It imposes sanctions on Russians complicit in or responsible for significant corruption in Ukraine.
●It includes needed reforms to the United States’ participation in the International Monetary Fund, which would allow Washington to leverage significant support from the IMF for Ukraine today and for similar crises in the future.
Russian actions at home and abroad must be viewed in a broader context, not as isolated incidents but as connected events in a troubling pattern of behavior that cannot continue unchecked.Arguing against this approach, which funds more skullduggery in the form of "democracy" and "civil society assistance," is the United States Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers. This is from the Peter Baker story at the top of the post:
But American businesses are warning against overreaction. Representatives of groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the United States-Russia Business Council have been holding meetings at the White House or in Congress to share their views.
They are urging policy makers to be sure that any sanctions would actually have an impact on Russian behavior, that the costs not outweigh the benefits and that they be multilateral. “We are working closely with policy makers on both sides of the aisle to safeguard manufacturing employees and manufacturers’ investments around the world,” said Jay Timmons, president of the manufacturers association.
Although the United States does only $40 billion in trade with Russia each year, American businesses argue that the amount understates the real economic ties. Ford, for instance, has two assembly plants in Russia that make cars with material that comes from Europe, so that would not be reflected in import-export figures.
Boeing has sold or leased hundreds of planes in Russia and projects that the republics of the former Soviet Union will need an additional 1,170 planes worth nearly $140 billion over the next 20 years. Moreover, the company has a design center in Moscow, has just announced new manufacturing and training facilities in Russia and depends on Russia for 35 percent of its titanium.The Deep State battle shaping up is between the hawks (the neocon national security state) versus the doves (in this case, American big business).
Then there is Europe. To my mind, though Germany, France and Britain are making the appropriate noises of fealty to the U.S. and the idea of economic warfare on Russia, I don't see how they can go along with the kind of Nouveau Cold War advocated by Menendez and the neocons. Europe's level of economic integration with Russia is too significant to hurtle thirty-years backward.
But in the end, I think that is the dynamic we are going to be dealing with -- the United States wants a return of the global polarity provided by the Cold War -- great powers locked in a long struggle marked not by World War III but covert warfare in the developing war -- a replay of Uncle Sam's salad days following World War II. I think this is what Obama's Asia pivot was designed to do to begin with. Some form of great power theater is demanded if only to obscure what has become obvious over the last year in Syria: our purported existential enemy, Al Qaeda, is actually an irregular force dispatched by Uncle Sam's partners in the Persian Gulf, the wealthy oil sheikhdoms. Like Hydra or A.I.M. in Marvel Comics, the Wahhabis provide a perpetual foil for our superheroes in the national security state. So the comic books keep coming . . . .
But the problem with the Nouveau Cold War is Europe. Europe cannot go along with this comic book. And in that there is hope; hope that after the vote in Crimea on Sunday and the U.S. responds by slapping economic sanctions on Russia, we will catch the first glimpse of a new multi-polar world, as Europe goes her own way.
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