Vlad Trumps the West Once Again

Yesterday at the Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a financial aid agreement between their two nations. Russia will purchase $15 billion in Ukrainian bonds and provide a 33% discount on natural gas exports. The Putin deal is better than anything the EU and IMF can offer. The EU and IMF, before abandoning negotiations with Yanukovich, were pushing for Ukraine to raise the price of natural gas and cut the salaries of public workers. The muted response from protesters occupying Kiev's Independence Square is proof once again of Putin's political skill. Andrew Kramer and David Herszenhorn have the story, "Ukraine’s Prime Minister Hails Deal With Russia":

It was a bold but risky move by Russia, given the political chaos in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, where thousands of demonstrators remain encamped on Independence Square, protesting their government’s failure to sign political and free trade accords with Europe, which had been seen as an alternative to the Russian deal. 

The protest continued on Wednesday much as it has in previous days, but seemed in a state of drift. Fires in drums burned in the central streets and square and protesters occupied three large buildings, including City Hall. Protest leaders, speaking on Tuesday evening, announced no new actions on the street to counter the government’s defiance of their demands.

The Putin deal eviscerates the opposition, who are now threatening to block the agreement in the Ukrainian Parliament, because protesters will be unable to avoid the unfavorable spotlight of protesting for austerity, something that makes no sense other than as a form of quasi-religious public self-flagellation. And make no mistake, this is what Europe has to offer. The Gray Lady's anti-Putin Kramer and Herszenhorn can barely conceal their resentment:

While Mr. Putin portrayed Russia’s assistance as a gallant move, requiring Ukraine neither to commit to the customs union nor to put in place any of the austerity measures demanded by the I.M.F., the rescue plan carries serious long-term economic and political risks. Experts say that unless Ukraine carries out overhauls, including increases in household utility rates, limits on government spending and pension increases, and improvements in the business climate, the country’s economic problems will continue, raising the likelihood that the aid will be wasted.

For an idea of what is in store for Ukraine should Yanukovich accept a deal with the IMF and sign an association agreement with the European Union all one has to do is scan the coverage surrounding Irish premier Enda Kenny's Sunday night announcement that Ireland was exiting after three years its IMF-EU engineered bailout. A particularly good story was in the New York Times itself. Written by Liz Alderman and appearing last week, "Hardships Linger for a Mending Ireland" is chock full of statistics regarding austerity's impact on Ireland's economy, but it also contains vivid accounts of the everyday travails of a guy like John Donovan who lost his hardware business, got retraining, but still has to shoot pigeons and grill them on an outdoor barbecue to get by. According to Alderman:

As the austerity measures have played out, the number of people in need has jumped. Homelessness is up nearly 20 percent since 2010. A study by Growing Up in Ireland tracking 11,000 families with young children found 67 percent could not afford basic necessities, and were behind on utility bills, rent and the mortgage. 

Consumer spending has been flat. Through the end of the third quarter this year, 18.5 percent of homeowners had missed a mortgage payment and 12.5 percent were three months or more behind on their repayments, according to the central bank. Half of all loans to small- and medium-size business are also in arrears. 

More than 200,000 of Ireland’s population of 4.6 million have emigrated since 2008. Youth unemployment is 28 percent. Over 60 percent of job seekers have been out of work for a year or more. And 20 percent of children now live in households where neither parent works, the highest rate in the European Union.

This is what signing an association agreement with Europe entails, something you won't find in the "think" pieces written by Gray Lady apparatchiks like Bill Keller who Monday penned a lengthy tirade, "Russia vs. Europe," against a Stalinist, homophobic, atavistic Putin bent on dominating Ukraine. Keller treats the pitfalls of joining Europe in the following two sentences: "It is true that during the recent years of recession and austerity Europe has lost some of its dazzle. But it is still more alluring than Ukraine’s threadbare economy, presided over by an ineffectual and corrupt governing class."

Keller should read his own paper.

West Trying to Make War Worse

"Diplomatic Stirrings on Syria," an unsigned editorial that appears in today's New York Times, is interesting in what it reveals about the confused and contradictory positions that the paper has staked out on the Syrian civil war. Calls for escalation (Bill Keller's embarrassingly superficial Monday column) are combined with warnings about those "who would lead the country unwisely into war"; Assad is accused of using chemical weapons without a word about Carla Del Ponte's Sunday bombshell that evidence of the use of nerve gas exists but it points to the rebels; Russia is blamed exclusively for the continuation of the conflict because of its support for Assad but not a word about the gulf states acting as quartermaster for Wahhabi jihadists threatening a region-wide Sunni-Shiite sectarian war.

As John Kerry makes phone calls in Rome in an attempt to organize his peace conference, Russia is planning a sale to Syria of advanced S-300 missile batteries, an obvious response to Israel's multiple unanswered bombing runs and warhawk agitation in the West for a no-fly zone. On the ground, Hezbollah fighters are proving superior to the rebels. All in all it's not going the Empire's way. What is cause for concern is that the West, unable and unwilling to acknowledge its limitations, will continue to pursue its confused and contradictory positions and make the war worse.

Del Ponte Says Syrian Rebels Likely Used Sarin

The canard coming out of Israel is that yesterday's airstrike on military installations in Damascus is not an Israeli insertion into Syria's civil war but a message to Iran and Hezbollah. In other words, those huge bombs that killed your soldiers and terrorized you in the dark, they're not really about you. This from Jodi Rudoren and Isabel Kershner's story, "Airstrikes Tied to Israel May Be Message to Iranians":

Analysts said they did not see the airstrikes as the opening of a new war front, or as an attempt to prop up the Syrian rebels against the Syrian government of Mr. Assad. Rather, they tended to see it more as an extension of the long-running “shadow war” against Iran and Hezbollah, a tit-for-tat of terror attacks and assassinations that has stretched over decades and around the world. 

“This shouldn’t be seen as Israel intervening on behalf of the rebels or against Bashar,” said Jonathan Spyer, a senior research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzilya. “This is an escalation in a conflict we know about, and that is the conflict between Israel and Iran.”

This is the official cover story. It's absurd. Yesterday's airstrikes are most definitely an Israeli/U.S. attempt to bolster the jihadists who took a drubbing last week. In none of the commentary can one find mention of the story coming out of Geneva that United Nations investigators have evidence of the use of sarin gas by the rebels, not the Assad government. This from a Reuters story, "Syrian Rebels May Have Used Sarin":

United Nations human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria’s civil war and medical workers indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said Sunday.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces using chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said Carla Del Ponte, a commission member.

“Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals,” Ms. Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television. “According to their report of last week, which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated.” 

“This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” she added, speaking in Italian.

This is going to queer the pitch for the U.S. How do you justify an illegal intervention based on non-existent proof of Assad using poison gas on his own people when there is proof that the people you are intervening on behalf of have used said poison gas? You can't. So expect an effort to hush it up or discredit the UN commission of inquiry (possibly similar to the smear campaign against Hans Blix in the run up to the invasion of Iraq).

For a particularly shameful example of greasing the wheels of war, read Bill Keller's piece, "Syria Is Not Iraq," in the Opinion page this morning. Keller implores us to suspend our hard won disbelief, coming so soon after our disastrous experience in Iraq, in the efficacy of military force in resolving issues of state. He maintains the false hypothesis (based on bald assertion) that Syria will certainly disintegrate unless we do something, leading him to the nonsensical conclusion that in order to prevent Syria's disintegration we must first hasten it by military intervention:

For starters, President Obama articulates — as he has not done — how the disintegration of Syria represents a serious danger to America’s interests and ideals. The United States moves to assert control of the arming and training of rebels — funneling weapons through the rebel Supreme Military Council, cultivating insurgents who commit to negotiating an orderly transition to a nonsectarian Syria. We make clear to President Assad that if he does not cease his campaign of terror and enter negotiations on a new order, he will pay a heavy price. When he refuses, we send missiles against his military installations until he, or more likely those around him, calculate that they should sue for peace.

All of this must be carefully choreographed and accompanied by a symphony of diplomacy to keep our allies with us and our adversaries at bay. The aim would be to eventually have a transition government, stabilized for a while by an international peacekeeping force drawn mostly from neighboring states like Turkey.

I don’t mean to make this sound easy. It might well be that the internal grievances are too deep and bitter to forestall a bloody period of reprisals. But that outcome is virtually inevitable if we stay out.

But one could plausibly argue just the opposite: that popular support for the jihadi rebels is rapidly waning (doesn't Keller read his own newspaper?); that the Syrian military was racking up victory after victory the last couple of weeks; that barring outside intervention Assad was looking to restore control of his territory.

Once again the elites are leading us into war. There is no popular support for this; that, and direct Western military intervention can only make things worse. But none of this matters. War is how rulers rule.