Ceasefire in Gaza, No Ceasefire in Novorossiya

"They're destroying our buildings." That is the line that filled my head as I awoke this morning. My wristwatch alarm had gone off at the usual time, 4 AM, but then I went back to sleep and dreamed of being out on the desert hardpack at Burning Man with Sergey Brin.

"They're destroying our buildings" refers to the chief strategy of U.S. allies Israel and Ukraine. An Egyptian-brokered ceasefire in Gaza was announced yesterday. Despite vows from both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas that they would never again accept a return to the status quo ante, that is exactly what happened. Jodi Rudoren reports in "Cease-Fire Extended, but Not on Hamas’s Terms" that

A statement from Egypt’s Foreign Ministry describing the deal included only vague language about “the aspirations of the Palestinian people” and the need to create “an independent Palestinian state to achieve peace and security in the region.” Hamas’s call for a seaport and airport in Gaza, and Israel’s call for demilitarization of the coastal territory — along with an exchange of Israeli soldiers’ remains for Palestinians in Israeli prisons — were put off for discussion within a month if the truce holds.

***

Though Egypt, Israel and the United States have all said a cease-fire should strengthen Mr. Abbas and give him the leading role in rebuilding Gaza, he was not mentioned in the Egyptian statement. The statement also said nothing about Gaza’s southern Rafah crossing with Egypt, whose frequent closings since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in Egypt have been a prime Palestinian complaint.

The agreement restores the six-nautical-mile fishing zone off Gaza’s coast that Israel agreed to in 2012 but later cut back. It also says that Israeli-controlled border crossings will be opened to allow the “quick entry” of humanitarian aid and materials to reconstruct Gaza, where more than 11,000 homes and scores of schools and mosques have been reduced to rubble. A senior Israeli official said the entry of cement and concrete would be monitored to ensure it was used for civilian purposes, because “we’re not interested in allowing Hamas to rebuild its military machine.”

It is hard to know why exactly the Palestinian side caved in so badly. Maybe there is a secret agreement on the release of Hamas prisoners. After all is said and done the place to look is the obvious. The longer the Israeli bombardment lasted the more Gaza became an uninhabitable landscape of rubble:

The agreement followed a week of renewed fighting after the collapse of an earlier cease-fire. Israel killed several top Hamas military commanders and felled three high-rise buildings in audacious airstrikes, while more than 100 rockets a day pounded its battered south. 

*** 

“The human catastrophe is just very immense, it’s getting worse and worse every day, and I think that’s one of the reasons Hamas took into consideration in accepting the cease-fire,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City. “The mood is very critical of Israel, but they are also asking questions of Hamas: Why did we have to go through all this? Why is there no cease-fire? Why did we provoke Israel into this war? More and more questions are in the minds of the Palestinians, especially in this last week.”

There was an excellent story at the beginning of the month by Rudoren and Fares Akram, "Conflict Leaves Industry in Ashes and Gaza Reeling From Economic Toll," that highlighted the Israeli strategy of targeting Palestinian industry in Gaza for destruction. All of this -- targeting civilian homes and industry -- is a war crime. And it worked to bring about the best Netanyahu could expect to achieve, a ceasefire with a vague promise to allow construction material through the blockade to rebuild what will be destroyed again at a later date.

The ballyhooed meeting yesterday in Minsk between Putin and Poroshenko turned out to be, at first blush at least, little to do with securing a ceasefire in the Donbass and more about the reasons Russia has for opposing Ukraine's newly-signed association agreement with the European Union. Niqnaq has a illuminating post today, "minsk in a nutshell," that lays out Putin's arguments, the foremost of which is that duty-free products from Europe will flood Ukraine where they be misleading re-labeled Ukrainian goods and exported to Russia:

As soon as Ukraine introduces zero import duty on goods from Euia, a step envisaged right after the ratification of the agreement that would apply to 98% of all the goods, there will obviously be a sharp increase in the supply of Euian goods to the Ukrainian market. We understand our Euian partners: they have already developed the Ukrainian market rather well, and would like to get hold of whatever is left and squeeze out everyone else. Besides, less competitive Ukrainian produce will also be squeezed out from its own market. Where to? Primarily to Russia and the other Customs Union states, but primarily to us. We should not rule out the risk of illegal re-export to the Customs Union market of goods from Euia under the guise of Ukrainian produce, either.

I was wrong. I thought Putin was going to make a deal with Poroshenko at Minsk. But now it appears that while Putin was in Minsk Moscow has committed itself even more to Novorossiya by opening up new fronts. According to Andrew Higgins and Michael Gordon in "Putin Talks to Ukrainian Leader as Videos Show Captured Russian Soldiers":

The release of the videos [of junta-captured Russian soldiers] and the high-level talks came a day after Ukraine accused Russia of sending an armored column across the border toward the coastal city of Mariupol. That, along with other Russian moves, prompted Geoffrey R. Pyatt, the United States ambassador to Ukraine, to express alarm on Twitter. “The new columns of Russian tanks and armor crossing into Ukraine indicates a Russian-directed counteroffensive may be underway. #escalation,” he wrote. 

Western officials said the purpose of the push toward Mariupol, which is far from the main conflict zone, was to open a new front that would divert Ukrainian forces from Donetsk and Luhansk, and possibly to seize an outlet to the sea in the event that Russia tries to establish a permanent separatist enclave in eastern Ukraine. 

Two other Russian incursions, the officials said, were aimed at breaking the siege of Luhansk by Ukrainian forces and opening a supply corridor to Donetsk. 

To support the counteroffensive, Russia has deployed a sizable amount of artillery within range of Ukrainian forces near Luhansk. The Ukrainian forces were out of range of artillery based on Russian territory, so Moscow moved the units into Ukraine. 

“Russian military units with self-propelled artillery have entered eastern Ukraine and have established an operational presence in the Krasnodon area, an area controlled by Russian separatists,” a senior Obama administration official said. 

The videos released by Ukraine could make it more difficult for the Kremlin to stick to its approach of denying that it has any hand in the fighting, though a state-run Russian news agency cited an unnamed Defense Ministry official as saying the soldiers had crossed into Ukraine by accident.

Colonel Cassad reports the hot phase of fighting will last through Ukrainian parliamentary elections in October. No politician can afford to be seen suing for peace until then. This means the humanitarian crisis in Novorossiya will deepen since all the junta military has proven it can do is shell civilian structures using heavy artillery. Power and water has been out for weeks in Luhansk. Unless the counteroffensive of the Novorossiyan self-defense forces is a smashing success and the junta is routed thoroughly we can expect more destroyed homes and high rises and civilian slaughter.

Russian Aid Convoy a MacGuffin

Yesterday, Thursday, August 14, might be looked back on as the day Novorossiya died. Putin was in Yalta giving a speech to the State Duma; he said, “We will do all we can to end the conflict as soon as possible, to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine.” This was widely interpreted as Putin's capitulation. For instance, as quoted by Andrew Roth and Andrew Higgins in "Russian Convoy Draws Stern Warning From Ukraine and Stops Short of Border," Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs, says “It was indirect confirmation that Russia will not intervene.”

But then you have the reports of Russian armored personnel carriers entering Ukraine near where the Russian aid convoy now sits at a military base outside the town of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky. The junta says that Ukrainian border guards are inspecting the trucks; others within the junta deny this. This is from a recently filed story by Higgins and Roth, "Border Inspection of Russian Convoy Begins, Ukrainian Military Says":

The Ukrainian military announced Friday that border guards had begun checking the contents of a convoy of more than 250 Russian trucks said to be carrying humanitarian supplies, but other officials said the trucks had not moved from a Russian military base where they were parked and inspections had not yet begun. 

In a statement posted on the military’s Facebook page, officials said that 59 customs officers would inspect the trucks on the Russian side of the border before the convoy would be allowed to proceed to the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, currently controlled by pro-Russian separatists and suffering from shortages of food, water and electricity.

The statement said the inspectors included 41 representatives of Ukraine’s border control service and another 18 from customs.

But other Ukrainian officials said that the trucks had not moved from the Russian Army post to the border town where inspections were set to take place. The officials said that Ukraine was waiting for documents from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was in turn awaiting documents from Moscow.

I have been of the opinion that the fate of this aid convoy will tell us a lot about the future of Novorossiya. If the junta allows it across the border and it rumbles on into Luhansk without an incident, offloads its cargo of cereal and sleeping bags with a temporary lull in the shelling and then returns to Moscow, Kiev will have won and Putin will have clearly telegraphed that the rebellion is over.

If, however, the junta, which is anarchic and prone to enormous gaffes, fucks up and escalates its conflict with Russia, as it did in a bellicose response to Putin's pacific Crimea speech, by perhaps shelling the convoy, mistakenly or not, or seizing it, then, well, it is hard to say.

But more and more the Russia's humanitarian aid caravan seems to be a classic MacGuffin, a plot device going nowhere meant only to distract.

Which brings us back to yesterday. The big news was Igor Strelkov, military mastermind of the Novorossiyan forces, was reported to be seriously wounded, and then he was reported to have been replaced. The Gray Lady reported the latter:

The Ukrainian military has made steady progress in recent weeks, with Mr. Lysenko, the military spokesman, asserting on Thursday that territory controlled by the rebels had shrunk to a fifth the size of what it was earlier this year. He also said the rebel leadership faced growing disarray in its ranks, a claim that was bolstered Thursday by the resignation of Igor Strelkov, one of the top separatist leaders, as “defense minister” of a rebel enclave in Donetsk.

This was followed by a report by Colonel Cassad where he offered the opinion that Strelkov's absence was only temporary and that he would return within a week. Several commentators took this information as proof that reports of Strelkov's near-death injury and sacking were junta fabrications meant to sow discord in the rebel ranks.

Niqnaq, who has been so good on keeping everyone abreast on all aspects of the war for Novorossiya, posted a translation of Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin's interpretation of events. Dugin thinks Novorossiya has been sold out by the Kremlin. The battle now is between a crushing defeat delivered by the junta personified by "Kolomoisky with the Right Sector" backed up by neocons in the Obama administration versus an Akhmetov-led truce followed by folding the Donbass back under Kiev's wing: "The position of Akhmetov is: a truce in exchange for a United Ukraine. The position Kolomoisky is: take it all, and immediately. And tomorrow Crimea."

In any event, the situation in Luhansk is dire. A ceasefire must come shortly or there will be a great deal of death. Andrew Kramer reports from the besieged city:

Luhansk is indeed a grim place, besieged and partly abandoned, with no electricity or running water, where hospitals are packed and the streets are patrolled by twitchy gunmen looking for spies. 

But the shelling remains the greatest danger and the most trying aspect of daily life. The separatist government reported Thursday that 40 people had been killed in the shelling in the previous 24 hours. 

On the main boulevard, rebels tear about in trucks mounted with Grad rocket launchers, moving from one site to another inside the city, to avoid the inevitable return fire. 

The Ukrainian forces are in the countryside all about, dug into positions in the open steppe. In their trenches and armored vehicles, they are all but impervious to even the most intensive rebel shelling.

Arab Spring Upside Down, Plans for Starvation of Gaza

There are two noteworthy stories in today's paper on Israel's ongoing invasion of Gaza. The first is David Kirkpatrick's "Arab Leaders, Viewing Hamas as Worse Than Israel, Stay Silent." For me, David Kirkpatrick and the Arab Spring are synonymous. His reports from Cairo's Tahrir Square in 2011 provided an excellent window on the Egyptian Revolution for Western readers. At that point, the Gray Lady and the U.S. government were in support of the people's movement to topple corrupt strongman Hosni Mubarak.

But times have changed, as Kirkpatrick makes clear in his article. The ferocity of Israel's Gaza invasion is bolstered by the support of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Both nations despise Hamas:

Although Egypt is traditionally the key go-between in any talks with Hamas — deemed a terrorist group by the United States and Israel — the government in Cairo this time surprised Hamas by publicly proposing a cease-fire agreement that met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group. Hamas was tarred as intransigent when it immediately rejected it, and Cairo has continued to insist that its proposal remains the starting point for any further discussions. 

But as commentators sympathetic to the Palestinians slammed the proposal as a ruse to embarrass Hamas, Egypt’s Arab allies praised it. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt the next day to commend it, Mr. Sisi’s office said, in a statement that cast no blame on Israel but referred only to “the bloodshed of innocent civilians who are paying the price for a military confrontation for which they are not responsible.” 

“There is clearly a convergence of interests of these various regimes with Israel,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to Palestinian negotiators who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. In the battle with Hamas, Mr. Elgindy said, the Egyptian fight against the forces of political Islam and the Israeli struggle against Palestinian militants were nearly identical. “Whose proxy war is it?” he asked. 

The dynamic has inverted all expectations of the Arab Spring uprisings. As recently as 18 months ago, most analysts in Israel, Washington and the Palestinian territories expected the popular uprisings to make the Arab governments more responsive to their citizens, and therefore more sympathetic to the Palestinians and more hostile to Israel. 

But instead of becoming more isolated, Israel’s government has emerged for the moment as an unexpected beneficiary of the ensuing tumult, now tacitly supported by the leaders of the resurgent conservative order as an ally in their common fight against political Islam.

So there you have it, direct from a foremost scribe of the Arab Spring: the Arab Spring has been rolled back, with Israel, operating in concert with the corrupt Gulf monarchies as well as Egypt, a prime beneficiary.  The July 3, 2013 Sisi coup will be seen in years to come as a critical turning point in the Middle East.

None of the grievances that motivated the popular revolt against the Mubarak regime in Egypt have been addressed. People are being overawed by force of violence. That will continue to be the prescription going forward. And that is why the United States has radically shifted its stance since February 2011. The United States is no longer championing democracy. The Obama administration is more concerned with getting rid of Maliki in Iraq than it is about the rise of Islamic State -- which should tell us something. The plan going forward is for all of us to live in some form of totalitarian society. Whether religiously fundamentalist and anti-technocratic, or hyper-technocratic and profane, it doesn't make any difference to the plutocratic elite pulling the wires.

The second noteworthy offering on the Gaza war by the Gray Lady is Jodi Rudoren's exploration, "Quest for Demilitarization of Gaza Is Seen Getting Netanyahu Only So Far," of what Israel wants to achieve with its current war-crimes orgy. Demilitarization is the stated goal of the Netanyahu government:

Dore Gold, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, said demilitarization had worked elsewhere in the Middle East, pointing to United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which required Saddam Hussein to give up weapons of mass destruction after the first gulf war in 1991, and President Bashar al-Assad’s agreement in Syria to turn in chemical weapons last summer. Mr. Gold said that in demilitarization, Mr. Netanyahu now had “a very clear strategic goal.”

The problem is that there is no clear path to that "very clear strategic goal." Unless of course one could imagine Israel driving Gaza's 1.7 million Palestinians into the Sinai, something which might seem unthinkable now but maybe not after a few more weeks of IDF atrocities.

The problem with demilitarization is that it is unenforceable, particularly now since Israel, faced with a return of an Intifada-level of unity among Palestinians, will have to loosen its blockade of Gaza in any lasting ceasefire agreement. Buffer zones won't work because Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets can be fired from anywhere within Gaza and reach Israel.

No, Israel is not going to bargain. Israel will maintain its campaign of terror and carnage. The only way to break the spirit of the Palestinian people at this point is through mass starvation, and that appears to be option being seriously discussed within Israel:

In the years since, and particularly after Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006 and routed opposition forces from Gaza the next year, Israel has maintained an uneasy occupation. It restricts fishing and farming zones; monitors goods going in and out, ostensibly for security; and gives rare exit permits, mainly for medical treatment. But it is also Israeli power lines that provide Gaza’s limited electricity and Israeli trucks that, even during the raging fighting of recent days, ferry in milk, rice and sugar. 

“You cannot win against an effective guerrilla organization when on the one hand, you are fighting them, and on the other hand, you continue to supply them with water and food and gas and electricity,” said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser. “Israel should have declared a war against the de facto state of Gaza, and if there is misery and starvation in Gaza, it might lead the other side to make such hard decisions.” 

Mr. Eiland has long argued that Israel should engage Hamas as the government of Gaza rather than try to isolate it, and advocated a Marshall Plan to rebuild the battered territory. Until recently, his was a rather lone voice. 

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s right-wing foreign minister, proffered a plan that would lift all limits on Gaza but seal its borders with Israel, essentially pushing the territory toward Egypt. Others imagined that making life in Gaza miserable might lead to Hamas’s downfall. But that approach failed as poverty helped foment violence, because Israel’s occupation of the West Bank hardly made it seem like paradise, and because the Palestinian struggle is inspired by ideas about liberation and identity. 

Neither idea, in any case, accounted for the fact that Palestinians see Gaza as an integral part of their future state, as promised by the Oslo Accords signed in the mid-1990s. 

“The Gaza Strip is not viable on its own, it’s certainly not viable being blockaded, and it’s not viable if it’s disconnected from the West Bank,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who lived in Gaza for more than a year and is now based in Ramallah, in the West Bank. “Violence is not just for the sake of violence. Violence is because there are political issues that haven’t been dealt with.”

The Third Intifada will have to pick back up within Israel and the West Bank. Such an uprising is starting to take place, but it is not being reported. Outside of a McClatchy story I saw on Niqnaq's blog, I haven't seen anything about protests by Palestinian Israelis. But they are happening, and they need to grow larger because, as Kirkpatrick makes clear, no state actors are coming to Gaza's rescue.

Chalk Up a 'W' for Great Satan and Expect the Fighting to Rage On

Before getting to the Russian sanctions postmortem, the shape of a future geopolitical order is becoming discernible. The world is to be divided between the United States on the one hand and the Saudis, as the principal Gulf Sheikhdom controlling Islamic State as it stretches from the Mediterranean to Pakistan, on the other. A Greater Israel will be part of the mix. The chief adversaries to be twisted and broken will be the BRICS.

As for the sanctions that Europe approved yesterday, Obama took to the airwaves to announce Russia's isolation from the international community. Certainly Europe pressed harder than in the past. Russian majority-owned banks will be cut off from Western medium- and long-term loans. But the Chinese have plenty of capital. The dual-use technology ban that Europe put into place is being touted on the front page of the Gray Lady as damaging to Russia's ability to tap its Arctic fossil fuel reserves. No one but the West apparently has the know-how and tools to deal with drilling in shale or at deep sea or in the Arctic.

But it seems to me that the technology moratorium is largely a public relations stunt. The big BP and ExxonMobil deals appear to be untouched, and Europe included an exemption for any items that pertain to the gas industry. This is from "Coordinated Sanctions Aim at Russia’s Ability to Tap Its Oil Reserves," by Peter Baker, Alan Cowell and James Kanter:

The American and European actions were intended to largely, though not precisely, match each other. The United States cut off three more Russian banks, including the giant VTB Bank, from medium- and long-term capital markets and barred Americans from doing business with the United Shipbuilding Corporation, a large state-owned firm created by Mr. Putin. The Obama administration also formally suspended export credit and development finance to Russia. 

The European Union adopted similar restrictions on capital markets and applied them to Russian state-owned banks. It imposed an embargo on new arms sales to Russia and limited sales of equipment with both civilian and military uses to Russian military buyers. Europe also approved new sanctions against at least three close Putin associates, but did not identify them publicly.

European governments moved ahead despite concerns that Europe would pay an economic price for confronting the Kremlin more aggressively. While their actions went far beyond any previously taken against Russia over the Ukraine crisis, they were tailored to minimize their own costs. The arms embargo, for instance, applies only to future sales, not to the much-debated delivery by France of Mistral-class helicopter carriers that resemble bigger aircraft carriers. And the energy technology restrictions do not apply to Russian natural gas, on which Europe relies heavily.

Still, Great Satan has to be given his due. The United States was able to stampede Europe, notably Germany's Angela Merkel, into adopting its position. I didn't think this possible. I thought Germany's economic interests were too great and the U.S. too heavy handed, but I was wrong. The only thing that I can hang my hat at the end of the day is that Germany did not go "all in." Gazprom has been shielded.

What was critical in shifting Europe was MH17. Even though as the crash date of July 17 recedes it appears that the Kiev junta was certainly responsible, the traumatic event is what pitched the EU into the U.S. camp. Neil MacFarquhar, the Gray Lady's minister of propaganda stationed in Moscow, reports today in "As Sanctions Pile Up, Russians’ Alarm Grows Over Putin's Tactics" that

“They were not anticipating the West to make radical moves, costly moves,” said Nikolai Petrov, an independent political analyst. “What is happening is different from what they wanted and what they expected.” 

He and others pointed to the downing of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 over embattled southeastern Ukraine on July 17 as upsetting the balancing act that Mr. Putin had managed to pull off to maintain support from the public, hard-line nationalists, the security services, the oligarchs and the more liberal business community. 

“Until this catastrophe, Putin’s calculations were pretty good in terms of being able to win any tactical battle,” Mr. Petrov said.

***

“In my opinion, we face a critical situation today,” Lev Gudkov, the director of the Levada Center, an independent polling organization, told a weekend seminar audience. “But our society does not realize it against a backdrop of patriotic and chauvinistic euphoria.” 

That euphoria was rooted in the relatively bloodless, seemingly costless annexation of Crimea in March. The public expected that the rest of the crisis in Ukraine would be resolved with similar ease. 

“The situation began changing dramatically after the crash of the Boeing,” Mr. Gudkov said. “According to our research, reaction inside the country was quite weak, but the Western European public has drastically changed its attitude towards Russia.”

Indeed, poll results released Tuesday by the Levada Center showed the Russian public barely concerned about sanctions. More than 60 percent of respondents thought they would have little or no impact on them. Mr. Putin remains hugely popular.

Note that the content of MacFarquhar's reporting actually refutes the headline to his story. Russians are unperturbed about the possibility of greater sanctions. This happens more often than you would expect at "the newspaper of record," a sure sign of propaganda.

As fighting rages around the wreckage of MH17, and the junta baldly lies that it is not violating the ceasefire governing the crash site, word is that Kiev has given carte blanche to a contingent of armed Dutch and Australian military personnel to roam the crash site war zone. Niqnaq has the story, "this is the scenario i have in mind":

… ITAR-TASS is reporting that Kiev has cut a deal with the Dutch to allow them to mount a 700-member armed investigation force of military and non-military specialists, and allow them free rein to move through Ukraine. The Ukrainians don’t even need to send a sniper to deliberately shoot at the investigators on-site. Just the fact that 700 angry and armed Australians and Netherlanders marching into a war zone from the enemy side will inevitably provoke a violent response from the rebels. As soon as blood hits the ground, an ‘outraged’ NATO will come charging in, and total war will erupt. It’s pretty clear now why Poroshenko didn’t stick to the ceasefire. Who needs a false flag operation when you have such compliant pawns to sacrifice …

So while Great Satan can celebrate a victory, his work of despoliation is not yet through. Novorossiya still has to be smashed to pulp. Here is where the United States best proceed with caution, something that MH17 proves it is not prone to do. Russia will not accept a Western military garrison or an ascendant Nazi junta on its border. So expect the fight to continue.

Suffering through Keith Jarrett's "Mirrors." Saved by The Lemonheads' "Nothing True." World War IV.

I can't say that I am Keith Jarrett expert. I do like his music. But this morning I went out, iPod earbuds attached, for an hour-plus run, half of which was accompanied by "Mirrors" off Keith Jarrett's Arbour Zena (1975), and I suffered acutely. It felt like I was being tortured. The strings of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra cloyed like diethyl ether; Jan Garbarek's sax waddled and dribbled; and Jarrett's keys tinkled like a fat crazy housewife alone with her ironing board on a weekday afternoon.

To top it off, I was exhausted and gasping for breath. I'm working my way back from a significant injury. And if I am not at absolute zero, I'd say I'm definitely below five on a scale of ten, with ten being god-like conditioning and 5.5 being the ability to run at an eight-minute-mile pace over a distance of 5,000 meters.

"Mirrors" lasts for almost 28 minutes. I became transfixed with its interminable length. When was it going to end? Would it ever end? The morning was overcast. A drizzly rain fell. Hardly anyone was out. My run slowed to a jog. The jog slowed to a septuagenarian shuffle. The shuffle towards the end became a mummy's plod.

Finally, relief came in the form of "Nothing True" off The Lemonheads' first LP, Hate Your Friends (1987). What a difference. The harmonizing of a young Evan Dando is unparalleled. 

 

In case you missed it, Alissa Rubin filed a story yesterday, "5 Bombs Explode in Baghdad as Dispute Continues With Jordan," which brought home to me how above board World War IV is. Jordan, which does nothing without the explicit clearance from USG, hosted in Amman this past Wednesday Sunni groups allied with Islamic State in its war with Iraq:

The Jordanian government was not involved in the meeting, but after the groups put out a strident statement asking other nations not to side with the Iraqi government in its conflict with Sunni militants, the Iraqis were angry that Jordan had allowed the meeting to take place.

Iraq recalled its ambassador and the Jordanians apologized on Friday, but Iraqi Parliament members are accusing Jordan of knowing the groups were there and not arresting them.

The groups, which included tribes, former Baath Party members and the Islamic Army, a radical group that has carried out multiple attacks against the government, have been willing to tolerate the presence in Iraq of the militants known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, as a means to get rid of the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

Aliya Nusaif, an Iraqi Parliament member from Mr. Maliki’s State of Law Party, criticized the Jordanians for permitting the meeting, saying, “The government of Jordan should be familiar with such activities.” 

That they did not prevent it or even arrest the people participating suggested “that they knew about it,” she said.

Bear this in mind as the United States continues to press its case in public that Russia is to blame for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Rather than working for a ceasefire, the Obama administration seems intent on framing Moscow. For an interesting counterpoint to the Russophobic media onslaught, check out this article, "The crash of the Boeing 777 is a failed global staged act," by Col. Igor Maatev, which I gleaned from Niqnaq's blog.

Geneva Statement on Ukraine Going Nowhere

At first blush the short statement released yesterday in Geneva by the four parties -- Russia, United States, European Union, Ukrainian putschists -- seemed like a Russian capitulation. Emphasis was placed on ending the occupation of public buildings and spaces with only vague language committing the putschists to an open dialogue in any forthcoming constitutional process.

My reaction was that there must be more here than meets the eye. To understand what that it is check out this morning's post "DECONSTRUCTING THE RESULT OF THE FOUR PARTY TALKS" by Da Russophile:

As its text makes clear what this document is in reality is not an an agreement to settle the Ukrainian crisis or even an outline of such an agreement but rather a statement of basic principles around which an agreement should be negotiated. The real agreement (if it comes about) will emerge from negotiations based on the principles set out in this document. 

A number of points: 

1. Kiev’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding, the statement that “all sides must refrain from all violence, intimidation and provocative actions” clearly rules out the “anti terrorist operation” in the eastern Ukraine that Kiev launched on Sunday; 

2. As Lavrov has correctly pointed out the provisions in the third paragraph that require the disarmament and dissolution of armed groups is clearly intended to refer as much to Right Sector and the Maidan Self Defence Force as it does to the protesters in the east. Note specifically that the statement calls for a general amnesty except for those who have committed capital crimes (ie. murder). So far no protesters in the east have murdered anyone. Even Kiev admits that none of its soldiers have so far been killed. The same obviously cannot be said of Right Sector and of the Maidan Self Defence Force even if one disregards their likely responsibility for the sniper killings in Kiev on 20th February 2014; 

3. The document clearly refers to Maidan itself, which it says must be cleared. Specifically alongside illegally occupied buildings the document refers to “all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities”. The reference to “squares” clearly is intended to refer to Maidan, which the militants in Kiev have said they will continue to occupy at least until the elections on 25th May 2014 and even beyond; 

4. Importantly there is NO time line in the document. There is no demand therefore that buildings be evacuated by any particular date or time. That has to be agreed and coordinated with the OSCE monitors on the ground. The people in the eastern Ukraine are therefore entirely within their rights to stay in the buildings at the moment until a timeline is agreed with the OSCE monitors, one requirement of which will surely be parallel evacuations of occupied squares and buildings in Kiev and the west including Maidan. 

5. The referral to the OSCE as the enforcement and mediation agency between the regime and its opponents gives Russia a formal role in the process since it is a member of the OSCE. By contrast the negotiations which took place before 21st February 2014 were negotiated and mediated by the EU of which Russia is not a member; 

6. The reference to the fact that in the negotiations concerning constitutional changes there should be “outreach to all the Ukraine’s regions and constituencies” (note especially use of the word “constituencies”) gives a role to the protesters in the east in the negotiations and not just to those formal official bodies currently recognised by Kiev. 

This document on its face therefore represents a shift towards the Russian/east Ukrainian side. Indeed it basically sets out principles Russia has been arguing for ever since Yanukovitch was deposed on 22nd February 2014.

The putschists have zero ability to project power by use of force. They will be unable to clear the Maidan; they will be unable to disarm Right Sector. Subsequently, the pro-Russian protesters will refuse to relinquish control of any public buildings in the east. The contours of this impasse are already taking shape. For a helpful roundup this morning consult Niqnaq's "right, let’s start with the post-sellout sitreps." One of the stories Niqnaq refers to appears in The Telegraph, "Russia and West reach surprise deal on Ukraine crisis":

In a demonstration of the difficulties ahead, a separatist leader in eastern Donetsk declared the first concession must come from the revolutionaries that drove out former president Viktor Yanukovych after occupying central Kiev for months. 

Alexander Zakharchenko, a protest leader inside the Donetsk regional government building, said: “If it means all squares and public buildings, then I guess it should start with the Maidan in Kiev. We’ll see what they do there before we make our decision here.”

As Da Russophile predicts,

Unfortunately that does not mean this road map is going to be successfully followed. Already Kiev is trying to argue that the “anti terrorist operation” it has ordered is somehow exempt from it (it isn’t) whilst the US is threatening to impose more sanctions on Russia if following the weekend Russia fails to impose pressure on the eastern Ukrainians to evacuate buildings they occupy without the US undertaking to put any corresponding pressure on its clients in Kiev (shades of Syria here). It is very easy to see how the US and its allies could then blame Russia for the failure of the road map whilst having caused that failure themselves.

The long game belongs to Russia. Recall the Forbes story I linked to the other day, the one about the impending economic collapse of Ukraine:

Ukraine also faces enormous problems re-paying its debts, a substantial portion of which are denominated in dollars and other foreign currencies. Although it attracted little attention at the time, when it bought $3 billion worth of bonds at the end of 2013 Russia inserted a clause that stipulates that the total volume of Ukrainian state-guaranteed debt cannot exceed 60% of its annual GDP. If that threshold is breached, Russia can legally demand repayments on an accelerated schedule. Given the parlous state of the Ukrainian economy and its government’s extremely weak finances, this essentially means that if Ukraine’s debt exceeds 60% of its GDP Russia can legally force it to default. 

Current projections show that Ukraine could stay below the 60% cutoff through 2014. Maybe. The margin of error, however, is relatively small and some combination of weaker growth, a weaker Hryvnia, and a bigger deficit could easily push it past the limit. Given the relentlessly negative trajectory of the entire Ukrainian economy and the fact that virtually every forecast has had to be adjusted downwards, it seems like a safe bet that things will end up worse than the initial projections and that Ukraine’s debts will in fact head perilously close to that 60% limit. Given Russia’s extraordinary aggressiveness on every other front, it’s basically impossible to imagine that the Kremlin won’t use the debt lever to the fullest extent possible.

The same sort of assessment, more from a geopolitical perspective than an economic one, is quoted from a beltway think tank analyst in a story today by David Herszenhorn, "Away From Show of Diplomacy in Geneva, Putin Puts On a Show of His Own":

Mr. Putin’s view that the West has lied to Russia and humiliated him on numerous occasions, including its plans for Libya, explain why he will continue to talk — and act — tough on Ukraine even as he takes diplomatic steps toward resolving the crisis, said Samuel Charap, the senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a research organization in Washington. 

“They are going to keep the boots on Ukraine’s throat until they are 100 percent convinced that they have gotten what they wanted,” Mr. Charap said in an interview. “They believe that if they completely pulled back from the pressure they are applying, tomorrow the West would swoop in and try to steal Ukraine away again.”

Mr. Putin’s willingness to challenge the West aggressively also reflects his relatively strong position — militarily in post-Soviet space, and politically on the domestic front. “He’s at the top of his game,” Mr. Charap said. “In terms of the situation on the ground and Ukraine’s future, they have the upper hand.” He added, “There’s a sense you get watching him of someone who has an 80 percent approval rating and has been supported by the people he cares about most.”

So all in all the talks in Geneva yesterday and the statement that was generated mean very little. Some clock will be burned, some talking points generated, the upcoming debate that will erupt when neither Right Sector nor the People's Republic of Donetsk fade away will have a frame of reference. That is about it.