Salting the Earth of Lebensraum

Do you ever forget what year it is? For a second there I thought it was 2013. But then, rubbing a sore right calf muscle from a race this past Sunday, I remembered that, yes, it is spring of 2014, and we are at the beginning of a New World Order, which is a U.S.-engineered re-creation of the old Cold War. Communism is no longer a global force, and the useful canard of the West being pitted in an existential struggle against Sunni Islamic fundamentalism has been blown to smithereens by the violent Saudi reaction to the Arab Spring; hence, the much-ballyhooed roll out of the "Asia pivot."

But somewhere on the way to the Diaoyu Islands, the Obama administration got caught up in Kiev, and the pivot to Asia became a pivot to Russia. Now, instead of reordering the globe along the lines of a New Cold War with China, the old Russian bear will have to do.

All this by way of saying that the best stop this spring morning for a news consumer to get a sense of the the shift underway is Rick Gladstone's "Russia and Iran Reported in Talks on Energy Deal Worth Billions":

The Obama administration’s strategy of punishing Russia with economic sanctions over the Ukraine crisis encountered a new complication on Monday with word that the Russians are negotiating an $8 billion to $10 billion energy deal with Iran, another country ostracized by American-led sanctions, which partly depend on Moscow’s cooperation to be effective. 

The Russia-Iran energy deal, reported by the Iranian state news media, is the second significant economic collaboration under negotiation between the two countries that could undercut the efficacy of the sanctions on Iran. Those sanctions are widely credited with successfully pressuring the Iranians in the current talks over their disputed nuclear program.

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The Obama administration has expressed anger about a previously reported negotiation between Iran and Russia, worth an estimated $20 billion, under which the Iranians would trade 500,000 barrels of oil a day for Russian goods. Administration officials have said such a barter arrangement would violate sanctions on Iran. There has been no indication that the deal is close to completion.

A critical part of Obama's Asia pivot is to neutralize Iran, get out of the decades-long wars of the Greater Middle East (a preoccupation of Bush II) and refocus U.S. military might on the shipping lanes of the South and East China Seas. All this has been scrambled by the February putsch in Kiev and Russia's quick reaction to it by making sure that Crimea would not fall to the neocons. What is going on in eastern Ukraine, and what explains the intense U.S. wailing that Russia's non-supine response has elicited, is that things have really changed here. This is not cosmetic, though so far U.S./EU sanctions have largely been. The world has changed and a dash is underway to control that change.

The U.S. cannot simply announce "bombs away!" in Ukraine because of Russian conventional force superiority in the region, not to mention that Russia is a great nuclear power. That removes the pro forma U.S. response to every geopolitical issue -- force or the threat of force. Next is war by other means, economic sanctions. Iran serves as a prime example. But the EU cannot do to Russia what it went along with in the case of Iran. Future European growth is predicated on eastward economic integration. Cutting itself off from Russia is not a viable route forward.

The only option for the United States in this situation seems to be to destabilize Ukraine so that Russia and Europe can't couple to create their new Eurasian economy. Call this option, "Salting the earth of Lebensraum." That is why I was worried to read at the end of the C.J. Chivers and Noah Sneider story, "One City Falls to Pro-Russian Militants; in Another, the Mayor Is Shot":

In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the West should be more concerned about the buildup of Ukrainian military forces in the east of the country than with the actions of the self-defense units, a reference to the rebels and separatists who now roam freely in several cities and towns. 

Ukraine has deployed 11,000 troops in the area, plus 160 tanks, 230 armored personnel carriers, at least 150 artillery systems and “a large number of planes,” the statement said. 

Military analysts have said that Ukraine has gradually been shifting its armed forces eastward both to try to address the unrest and in response to Russian military maneuvers taking place just over the border. The Ukrainian military has about 70,000 troops total.

The putsch government in Kiev and the EU would be far better off negotiating a generous settlement with Russia, cutting the U.S. out entirely. I know this is asking for too much; there is too much rationality in it. What remains to be seen is if putschists are so devoid of common sense, so in thrall to the neocons running the show in the U.S., that they attack the city centers being occupied by pro-federalization protesters. Then the carnage will truly begin and Great Satan will get what he wants.