The West’s Historical Amnesia, Moral Collapse, and Criminal Culpability in Syria

Today the Guardian in its trademark handwringing fashion is marking the fourth anniversary of the Syrian conflict: 200,000 dead, 3.5 million refugees.  

The Guardian should also commemorate three and a half years of bloodshed, destruction, and misery inflicted upon Syria by the United States, the EU, and the GCC—make that murder, war crimes, and collective punishment IMO--much of it enthusiastically endorsed by the Guardian and its media brethren.

Think I’m exaggerating?  But first read the piece (reproduced below) that I wrote in November 2011, when it was clear that the domestic uprising was headed for defeat and the West and GCC faced the crucial choice whether to let Assad cobble together some reconciliatory process…or try to bring him down with a foreign-supported insurrection.

We all know—or should know—what choice was made.

And we should know—but probably don’t know—the actual cost.

Consider these numbers: 7,000…and 193,000.

7,000 is the estimated death count for the Syrian unrest after the Syrian government had crushed the rebel enclave in Homs in February 2012 and shattered the domestic uprising.

193,000 is the death toll since then…since the United States, the GCC, Turkey, and their enablers began pumping money, arms, and diplomatic support into the various Syria-based paramilitaries that eventually encompassed not only the hapless Free Syrian Army but Al-Qaeda, IS, and their affiliates and allies.

When you read my piece, you’ll see some bad pennies turning up again.  Like Victoria Nuland, charged with inciting the Syrian opposition to ignore reconciliation.  Like Abdelhakim Belhadj who, on his long march from anti-Qaddafi Islamist to reputed head of IS Libya, shows up in Turkey to succor the Syrian opposition.

A lot of death…a lot of murder…has been packed into those 3 ½ years.

7,000 versus 193,000.

As I mentioned on my twitter feed, I wonder if there’s any second thoughts in the US State Department about spurning the reconciliation route in Syria.

I doubt it.  The US foreign policy regime deals in consequences, not causes, so it can shirk responsibility for its failures and claim victories instead.

But remember those numbers : 7,000 vs 193,000.

Here’s another number to remember: 5,400.

That’s the quasi-official death toll for the Ukraine conflict (though unofficial estimates are much higher).

As of now.

Here’s hoping thee and a half years on we won’t see another bloody imperial folly play out in Ukraine.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Syrian Revolution Hijacked

The Syrian revolution—a broad-based, non-sectarian, democratic anti-despot national movement—has failed.

Mass demonstrations never materialized in Damascus and Aleppo.  The military and security forces didn’t crack.  The Alawite on Sunni crackdown (Alawites form the backbone of the army/security forces/irregular goon squads) fomented sectarian divisions, with most non-Sunnis minorities cleaving desperately to the Assad regime.  Prosperous Sunnis have presumably been hedging their bets by donating to the anti-government cause in recent days but have not explicitly abandoned the regime.

The Gulf powers and the West would have welcomed a Ba’athist regime collapse at the hand of domestic anti-government demonstrations.

That didn’t happen.

As the peaceful democratic movement has faltered, there has been no move from the Western/Gulf powers to encourage reconciliation and reforms.

Quite the contrary, in fact.

Whenever Assad makes an offer of reform, the Western powers dismiss it as too late and/or insincere.

Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokesperson, counseled Syrian dissidents to defy the Assad regime’s offer of an amnesty in return for handing in illegal weapons, as the LA Times reported:

Syria accused Washington of "inciting sedition, supporting the acts of killing and terrorism," the official Syrian news agency said, quoting an official source at the Foreign Ministry.

…
The comments came a day after State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland declared that she would counsel Syrians to reject the amnesty, in which those the government terms arms violators were asked to turn themselves in with their weapons "to the nearest police station" during a one-week period that began Saturday. Those who surrender and have not killed anyone "will be released soon," the Interior Ministry vowed.

"I wouldn't advise anybody to turn themselves in to regime authorities at the moment," Nuland told reporters in Washington.

Nuland, by the way, is married to PNACer and neocon pundit Robert Kagan.  Recalling Dick Cheney's enthusiasm for driving to Damascus post-Iraqi Freedom, maybe we should call the Syria enterprise Clean Break II: The Do-Over.

Anyway, democracy didn't work.  Time for Plan B.

The foreign powers interested in Assad’s fall—and stripping Iran of a regional ally--have made the decision to piggyback a foreign-supported, foreign-funded insurrection on the faltering anti-government movement.  

More accurately, the democratic revolution is now an uncertain and unwilling passenger on the Gulf-funded military machine rumbling toward Damascus.

Havens for anti-Assad fighters have materialized in Turkey, and arms and money are flooding in from all over the place.

Weapons and money for anti-Assad insurrectionists has been trickling in for months, to the blissful disregard of western news outlets fixated on the images of democracy demonstrators struggling against oppression.

Now that the political option is sliding off the table and it is clear a foreign-funded insurrection is needed to remove the Assad regime, the gusher of arms and cash has become too big to ignore.

But the story doesn’t require old-fashioned reporting anymore.


Just go down to a Turkish foreign ministry presser for tea, cookies, and a targeted backgrounder.

Turkey has positioned itself as the indispensable Western/Gulf proxy on Syria’s northern border.

Iran’s IRNA news agency passed on a report in Turkey’s Millyet tabloid a major Turkish news outlet.  IRNA is sometimes selective and/or inaccurate in its presentation of international news, so I’m passing it on with a caveat, but the report as presented passes the smell test for me:

According to Milliyet, as cited by IRNA, France has sent its military training forces to Turkey and Lebanon to coach the so-called Free Syrian Army -- a group of defectors operating out of Turkey and Lebanon -- in an effort to wage war against Syria's military.

The report added that the French, British, and Turkish authorities “have reached an agreement to send arms into Syria.”

The Turkish daily said that the three have informed the US about training and arming the Syrian opposition.

According to Milliyet, a group of armed rebels are currently stationed in Turkey's Hatay Province near the border with Syria.

The report comes as an earlier report had revealed that the British and French intelligence agencies have reportedly tasked their agents with contacting Syrian dissidents based in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli in order to help fuel unrest in Syria.

Reports also said that French intelligence agents have been sent to northern Lebanon and Turkey to build the first contingents of the Free Syrian Army out of the deserters who have fled Syria.

For those of you who prefer to get your Turkey/Syria news from a reliable Crusader source, here’s an eyebrow-raising item from the Daily Telegraph, albeit via Hurryet on November 27:

Syrian dissidents held secret talks Nov. 25 with Libya’s new authorities and Turkish authorities in Istanbul with the aim of securing weapons and money for their insurgency against Damascus, the Daily Telegraph has reported.

Syrian opposition group requested “assistance” from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers, during the meeting, the daily reported Nov. 25.

“There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” a Libyan source said on condition of anonymity. “There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.”

Preliminary discussions about arms supplies took place when members of the Syrian National Council (SNC) – the country’s main opposition movement – visited Libya earlier this month, said the daily.

“The Libyans are offering money, training and weapons to the Syrian National Council,” said Wisam Taris, a human rights campaigner with links to the SNC. Last month, Libya’s interim government became the first in the world to recognize Syria’s opposition movement as the country’s “legitimate authority.”

Large shipments of weapons have not yet been sent, said activists, mainly because of logistical difficulties.

But proposals for a “buffer zone” inside Syria, monitored by the Arab League, or the likely emergence of an area inside the country controlled entirely by rebels, could solve this problem. “The [Libyan] council’s offer is serious,” said Taris.

Sources in the Libyan town of Misrata suggested that some weapons may already have been sent. Some smugglers were caught selling small arms to Syrian buyers in Misrata, said a man who trafficked guns to Libya’s rebels during the country’s civil war.

Libyans feel closely aligned to the Syrian cause, said Hameda al-Mageri, from the Tripoli Military Council.


The Tripoli Military Council is the creature of Islamist strongman Abdelhakim Belhadj.

Belhadj is the preferred in-Libya muscle of the Gulf States—“proxy” is perhaps not too strong a term.  He recently found it expedient to issue a non-denial denial that Qatar had dispatched nine planeloads of arms to Tripoli for the exclusive use of his forces.

Belhadj was denied a seat in the new Libyan cabinet thanks to Western anxiety over any overtly Islamist tinge to the proceedings. In an inspiring demonstration of the give-and-take of new Libyan democracy, a representative from Zintan was able to leverage his town’s continued and suspiciously prolonged local custody of Saif Qaddafi into a winning bid for the defense slot.

Instead, Belhadj now has the opportunity to pursue profitable mischief in Syria on behalf of the Gulf states and their anti Sh’ia/anti-Iranian counter revolution (and perhaps dissipating the intimidating shadow of Belhadj and a number of his well-trained and hardened fighters from the streets of Tripoli).

In an amusing sideline, Belhadj--presumably on his way to the Istanbul meeting--got a friendly hazing at the airport from his Zintan buddies.  The brief detention was noted by the local Libyan press; the thing about the money was apparently glossed by a pro-Gaddafi website (they still exist!):

The battalion of Zintan men has arrested him after the discovery that the passport is registered with the competent authorities and carrying fake name. 

After the arrest the rebels received a call from the President of the Council Mustafa Abdul Jalil asking the Alzentan and officials at the airport in Tripoli to allow Hakim Belhaj to leave the country, this has been found on the large sum of money inside the bag Khuwaildi Belhadj.

The democratic revolution ship has sailed.  What’s going on today is a foreign-supported insurrection.

The Chinese and the Russians have a clear-eyed understanding of what’s going on.

The PRC is loath to get on the wrong side of Saudi Arabia, its largest energy supplier, by going too far to defend Syria.

Moscow, which has a real stake in its Iran alliance and cares about the fate of Assad’s regime, has shown no such qualms.

A selection of headlines from RIA Novosti gives an idea of what a responsible multi-lateral response on Syria—as opposed to a hurried military ass-kicking enabled by global anti-Iranian forces meant to obscure the failure of a peaceful "color revolution"—would have looked like:

Syria welcomes Russia as intermediary in reconciliation talks 

Syrian opposition should not boycott reforms—Russian FM 

Moscow calls on Arab League to work for peace in Syria


None of this is happening, of course.

As to where this all ends up, I will outsource the increasingly plausible endgame--Turkey is ready to invade Syria--to the estimable M. Badhrakumar of Asia Times (and his personal blog, Indian Punchline):


Turkey and its western allies are transferring the Libyan fighters whom they trained and armed to depose Muammar Gaddafi to Syria. Around 600 Libyan ‘volunteers’ have entered Syria. Daily Telegraph reported that secret meetings were held on Friday in Istanbul between the Turkish officials and the Syrian opposition representatives and the Libyan fighters. Large-scale infiltration of weapons from Turkey and Jordan have been going on for months to create civil-war conditions in Syria, but this is the first move to introduce ‘volunteers’.  

The move is necessitated by the failure to induce defections form the Syrian armed forces, except a mere handful. Turkey and the western powers are desperate to create the myth of a ‘Syrian resistance’ force without which their blatant aggression will be in full display. 

…

Things seem to be heading for a flash point, indeed. The sure sign is that US V-P Joseph Biden is heading for Ankara in the weekend. It is a major signal of the US giving the go-ahead to Turkey to act on Syria without fear. Again, Jordanian King, Abdullah, travelled to israel. He is Saudi Arabia’s ‘back channel’ to Israel and a key regional ally for the western intelligence. 

Turkey is indeed shedding its fear of the unknown and is coming out into the open on the Syrian situation. Turkish FM Ahmet Davitoglu indicated today for the first time that Turkey is all set for invasion of Syria once it gets the green signal from its western allies. He said this before heading for the combined meeting of EU foreign ministers and Arab League representatives (read Saudi Arabia and Qatar).  

The day Davutoglu spoke, November 29, will stand out as a notable date in the chronicle of the Turkish Republic that Kemal Ataturk founded. Ataturk’s ‘red line’ used to be that Turkey should never get entangled in the affairs of the Muslim Middle East but should instead concentrate on its own ‘modernization’. Evidently, the Islamist government in power today thinks Turkey is today ‘modern’ enough already and can now go back and reclaim its Ottoman legacy. 

A Turkish army moving into an Arab country - it is a historic point. It is a century after the Turks were driven out by the ‘Arab revolt’. The matrix is dripping with irony. The Arab revolt against the Turks was instigated by Great Britain. And Britain, although a far weaker power today, is still playing a seminal role - except, it is encouraging the Turks to return to the Arab world. One hundred years ago, Britain successfully pitted the Arabs against the Turks. Today, Turks join hands with some Arabs who have a grouse against some other Arabs.  

The Syrian revolutionaries were too weak to get the nation they wanted.

They’ll have to make do with whatever state that Turkey, the Gulf powers, and the western democracies decide to give them.

Ukraine is Chockablock with Fascist Formations; Better Deal With It

 The Guardian published an adulatory feature on “The Women Fighting on the Frontline in Ukraine”.

One of the women profiled was “Anaconda”, fighting in the Aidar Battalion bankrolled by Igor Kolomoisky:

Anaconda was given her nickname by a unit commander, in a joking reference to her stature and power. The baby-faced 19-year-old says that her mother is very worried about her and phones several times a day, sometimes even during combat. She says it is better to always answer, as her mother will not stop calling until she picks up.

 “In the very beginning my mother kept saying that the war is not for girls,” Anaconda says. “But now she has to put up with my choice. My dad would have come to the front himself, but his health does not allow him to move. He is proud of me now.”

…

 Anaconda was photographed in combat dress resolutely holding an assault rifle in front of a rather decrepit van.   

 

The caption read: 

“Anaconda says she is being treated well by the men in her battalion, but is hoping that the war will end soon.”

As reported by the gadfly site OffGuardian, several readers posted critical observations on the van’s insignia in the comments section of the piece.  One, “bananasandsocks”, wrote:

“We learn from Wikipedia that the image on the door is the “semi-official” insignia of the 36^th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS…” and also pointed out the neo-Nazi significance of the number “1488”.

“bananasandsocks” seemingly temperate comment was removed by the Guardian for violating its community standards, as were several others, apparently as examples of “persistent misrepresentation of the Guardian and our journalists”.

But then the Guardian thought better of it.  While not reinstating the critical comments, it quietly deleted the original caption to the photo of Anaconda and replaced it with: 

Anaconda alongside a van displaying the neo-Nazi symbol 1488. The volunteer brigade is known for its far-right links.

Problem solved?  Maybe not.  Maybe it’s more like “Problem dodged”.  Specifically, the problem of the pervasive participation of “ultra-right” paramilitary elements in Kyiv military operations, which even intrudes upon the Guardian's efforts to put a liberal-friendly feminist sheen on the debacle of the recent ATO in eastern Ukraine.

As to “1488”, I’ll reproduce the Wikipedia entry:

The Fourteen Words is a phrase used predominantly by white nationalists. It most commonly refers to a 14-word slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children."  It can also refer to another 14-word slogan: "Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth.”

Both slogans were coined by David Lane, convicted terrorist and member of the white separatist organization The Order. The first slogan was inspired by a statement, 88 words in length, from Volume 1, Chapter 8 of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf:
…
Neo-Nazis often combine the number 14 with 88, as in "14/88" or "1488". The 8s stand for the eighth letter of the alphabet (H), with "HH" standing for "Heil Hitler".  

Lane died in prison in 2007 while serving a 190 year sentence for, among other things, the murder of Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg.  David Lane has considerable stature within global white nationalist/neo-Nazi/fascist circles as one of the American Aryan movement’s premier badasses (in addition involvement in to the Berg murder—in which he denied involvement—and a string of bank robberies to finance the movement—also denied, Lane achieved a certain martyr’s stature for enduring almost two decades in Federal detention, frequently in the notorious Communications Management Units).

And David Lane was a big deal for the “ultra-right” & fascists in Ukraine, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Lane's death touched off paeans from racists around the country and abroad. June 30 was designated a "Global Day of Remembrance," with demonstrations held in at least five U.S. cities as well as England, Germany, Russia and the Ukraine. 

Judging by this video, the march/memorial on the first anniversary of his death, in 2008, organized by the Ukrainian National Socialist Party in Kyiv, was well enough attended to merit a police presence of several dozen officers.  The sountrack to the clip, by the way, is an elegy to David Lane performed by Ukraine's premier white nationalist metal band at the time, Sokyra Peruna.

There is a photograph of a shield inscribed “1488” at Maidan. 

 

More significantly, perhaps, the name of the armed wing of the Svoboda Party, C14, apparently invokes Lane’s “14 words” .  

It should be said that Lane’s views, including those that inspired the 1488 tag, are esoteric even within the fascist/Neo-Nazi/white supremacist world he inhabited. 

In a letter from prison, Lane wrote:

You know that the three greatest movements of the last 2,000 years have been Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Judaism allowed Jews to conquer and rule the world. I believe only a religious fervor can save our kind now. The 14 Words must be a divine command of Nature's God whom we call Wotan Allfather.

…

As the 666 man, and the Joseph Smith of Wotanism my rewards will be zero. Death in prison, scorn from those with no vision, and hate from the stupid goyim and their kosher masters. But sometimes a man is condemned to a higher cause. And cheerfulness in adversity is still a virtue. Take care. 14 - 88

Lane composed his “88 Precepts” to instruct believers in the ways of white nationalism.  While apparently riffing off the 88 word Mein Kampf passage and “88=HH=Heil Hitler”, it also refers to Lane’s numerological/messianic preoccupations.

Ukrainian fascists’ admiration for Lane is a reflection of the pervasiveness of indigenous Ukrainian fascism, which looks for models and partners internationally while drawing plenty of strength and inspiration from its own profoundly deep historical and ideological local roots. 

 

As I wrote in a piece for CounterPunch, Ukrainian fascism seems almost inevitable:  

Ukrainian fascism is more durable and vital than most.  It was forged in the most adverse conditions imaginable, in the furnace of Stalinism, under the reign of Hitler, and amid Poland’s effort to destroy Ukrainian nationality.

Ukrainian nationalism was under ferocious attack between the two world wars.  The USSR occupied the eastern half of Ukraine, subjected it to collectivization under Stalin, and committed repression and enabled a famine that killed millions.  At first, the Soviets sought to co-opt Ukrainian nationalism by supporting Ukrainian cultural expression while repressing Ukrainian political aspirations; USSR nationalities policies were “nationalist in expression and socialist in essence”.  Then, in 1937 Stalin obliterated the native Ukrainian cultural and communist apparatus in a thoroughgoing purge and implemented Russified central control through his bespoke instrument, Nikita Khrushchev.

Meanwhile, the western part of the Ukraine was under the thumb of the Polish Republic, which was trying to entrench its rule before either the Germans or the Russians got around to destroying it again.  This translated into a concerted Polish political, security, cultural, and demographic push into Ukrainian Galicia.  The Polish government displaced Ukrainian intellectuals and farmers, attacked their culture and religion (including seizure of Orthodox churches and conversion into Roman Catholic edifices), marginalized the Ukrainians in their own homeland, and suppressed Ukrainian independence activists (like Bandera, who spent the years 1933 to 1939 in Poland’s Wronki Prison after trying to assassinate Poland’s Minister of the Interior).
Ukrainian nationalists, therefore, were unable to ride communism or bourgeois democracy into power.  Communism was a tool of Soviet expansionism, not class empowerment, and Polish democracy offered no protection for Ukrainian minority rights or political expression, let alone a Ukrainian state.

Ukrainian nationalists turned largely toward fascism, specifically toward a concept of “integral nationalism” that, in the absence of an acceptable national government, manifested itself in a national will residing in the spirit of its adherents, not expressed by the state or restrained by its laws, but embodied by a charismatic leader and exercised through his organization, whose legitimacy supersedes that of the state and whose commitment to violence makes it a law unto itself.

It’s not just a matter of historical sentiment or inclination.  Ukraine’s contemporary fascists share a direct bloodline with the fascists of the Soviet era, especially in the matter of Roman Shukhevych, the commander of Ukrainian nationalist forces fighting with the Nazis during World War II and also responsible for horrific atrocities while attempting to cleanse Galicia of Poles in the service of Ukrainian independence.   From my CounterPunch article:

In February 2014, the New York Times’ Andrew Higgins penned a rather embarrassing passage that valorized the occupation of Lviv—the Galician city at the heart of Ukrainian fascism, the old stomping grounds of Roman Shukhevych and the Nachtigall battlaion, and also Simon Wiesnthal’s home town—by anti-Yanyukovich forces in January 2014:

Some of the president’s longtime opponents here have taken an increasingly radical line.

Offering inspiration and advice has been Yuriy Shukhevych, a blind veteran nationalist who spent 31 years in Soviet prisons and labor camps and whose father, Roman, led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army against Polish and then Soviet rule.

Mr. Shukhevych, 80, who lost his sight during his time in the Soviet gulag, helped guide the formation of Right Sector, an unruly organization whose fighters now man barricades around Independence Square, the epicenter of the protest movement in Kiev.

Yuriy Shukhevych’s role in modern Ukrainian fascism is not simply that of an inspirational figurehead and reminder of his father’s anti-Soviet heroics for proud Ukrainian nationalists.  He is a core figure in the emergence of the key Ukrainian fascist formation, Pravy Sektor and its paramilitary.

And Pravy Sektor’s paramilitary, the UNA-UNSO, is not an “unruly” collection of weekend-warrior-wannabes, as Mr. Higgins might believe.

UNA-UNSO was formed during the turmoil of the early 1990s, largely by ethnic Ukrainian veterans of the Soviet Union’s bitter war in Afghanistan.  From the first, the UNA-UNSO has shown a taste for foreign adventures, sending detachments to Moscow in 1990 to oppose the Communist coup against Yeltsin, and to Lithuania in 1991.  With apparently very good reason, the Russians have also accused UNA-UNSO fighters of participating on the anti-Russian side in Georgia and Chechnya.

After formal Ukrainian independence, the militia elected Yuriy Shukhevych—the son of OUN-B commander Roman Shukhevych– as its leader and set up a political arm, which later became Pravy Sektor.

There’s plenty of indigenous fascism to go around. Interviews with Ukrainian ultra-rights reveal a welter of views befitting the country’s fraught and contested status in central Europe, ranging from “autonomous nationalists” (whose demeanour and tactics mirror on the right mirror those of European anarchists on the left); ultras who emerged from the football club wars; and determinedly theoretical scientific fascists.  The common thread of the diverse and syncretic Ukrainian fascist movement is the conviction that the survival of the Ukrainian people is under threat from a multitude of forces and mechanisms (Russians, Jews, the EU, democracy, capitalism, communism etc.), and can only be assured by autonomous armed force under charismatic leadership; and yes, apparently a shared belief that Adolf Hitler showed how it could and should be done.

Rooting fascism out of Ukraine’s cultural, social, and political matrix is going to take a lot of work.  Unfortunately, the opposite is going on right now.

The leading Ukrainian observer of Ukrainian ultrarights, Anton Shekhovstov, did not deny the presence of ultraright formations at Maidan, but tried to square the circle philosophically by characterizing the Ukrainian conflict as an anti-imperialist/anti-colonial struggle that might elicit and safely incorporate fascist activism.  Then, when the Russian threat had been dealt with, Ukrainian civil society could neutralize the fascist factor.  In January 2014, when Maidan was white-hot, Shekhovstov wrote:

Thus, a fight against fascism in Ukraine should always be synonymous with the fight against the attempts to colonise the country. Those who separate these two issues or crack down on the Ukrainian far right without recognising the urgent need for national independence will never be successful in their attempts to neutralise the far right. Moreover, they can make the situation worse.

However, Ukrainian fascists have not been disempowered and marginalized by the circus of defeat and dysfunction that is the current Kyiv government.  In fact, “ultra-right” is trending upward in Ukraine governance, as Shekhovtsov glumly observed in a recent post discussing the emergence of yet another powerful ultra-right formation:

[T]he electoral failure of Svoboda and the Right Sector [in the recent parliamentary as well as presidential elections] did not mark “the end of history” of the Ukrainian far right…

… The recent developments in Ukraine marked by the rise of the previously obscure neo-Nazi organisation “The Patriot of Ukraine” (PU) led by Andriy Bilets’ky…

… the PU formed a core of the Azov battalion, a volunteer detachment governed by the Ministry of Interior headed by Arsen Avakov. From the very beginning, the Azov battalion employed imagery such as Wolfsangel and Schwarze Sonne that in post-war Europe is associated with neo-Nazi movements…

The political perspective raises troubling questions: Why did Ukrainians elect a neo-Nazi into the parliament? Why did the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior promote the leaders of the neo-Nazi organisation?...

Shekhovtstov finds an explanation for Avakov’s footsie with the PU in the cronyism (and demand for extra-legal street muscle) that permeates Ukraine business and politics.  His conclusion is not a particularly happy one:

Conclusion

Avakov may consider the PU-led Azov battalion as his “private army”, but not everybody in the PU and Azov see the current cooperation with the Ministry of Interior as a goal in and of itself. The PU may benefit from this cooperation, but it still has its own political agenda that goes beyond this cooperation. The PU has also started advertising employment in the Security Service of Ukraine on their webpages. [emphasis added]

Further infiltration of the far right into the Ukrainian law enforcement and other institutions of the state will most likely lead to the following developments. First, the coalescence of the police and the far right who were engaged, inter alia, in the illegal activities will necessarily increase the corruption risks. Second, the growth of the far right within the law enforcement will lead to the gradual liberation of the PU from the personal patronage of Avakov that will likely result in the PU’s independent action.

While Svoboda and the Right Sector have failed in the 2014 parliamentary elections, the infiltration of some other far right organisations in the law enforcement is possibly a more advanced long-term strategy in their fight against not particularly well established liberal democracy in Ukraine.

One of the awkward facts of Ukrainian politics is that Ukraine’s fascists have the ambition if not yet the demonstrated capability of opportunistically using the current regime’s need—and factions’ desires--for effective armed formations to catapult the extreme-right into power.

And it seems that the West has zero strategy for dealing with this problem.  In fact, if disorder and discontent escalate in western Ukraine as a result of the US insistence on confronting Russia and the ethnic Russian opposition in the West, I expect the fascist problem will get worse before it gets better.

And it isn’t going to be solved by ignoring, downplaying, wishing away, or dismissing Ukrianian fascism as an irrelevant historical and political anachronism...or by discretely recaptioning some of its embarrassingly blatant manifestations.  

It’s not just amusing or disturbing that the Guardian appears determined to graft a misleading liberal, Europe-loving image onto the fascist friendly Ukraine adventure; it’s downright dangerous.

I'm trying to avoid the TL;DR trap so I abridged my original piece to supply the excerpt posted above.  But I try to err on the side of inclusiveness and context whenever I can--especially since sources vanish off the web and the Google algorithm sometimes gets dodgy--so I've included the complete original piece below the fold for readers who wish to go deeper.

President Obama Tastes the Bitter Fruit of Appeasement…of Israel, not Iran

Jeffrey Goldberg opined on his twitter feed that the Netanyahu-Obama grudge has its roots in Obama not letting Netanyahu bomb Iran.

That’s BS, I think.

I suspect that if Netanyahu really wanted to bomb Iran’s hardened and dispersed nuclear facilities--and enrage its population and a good chunk of the Muslim world and virtually guarantee that Iran would actually build an atomic weapon--instead of simply engaging in polarizing posturing, President Obama would simply be one in a long line of US and Israeli military and security poohbahs seeking to restrain Israel’s bellicose PM, if not put him in a straitjacket and remove him from office.

No, Netanyahu will never forgive Obama for challenging the security narrative that is so important to Israel’s position in the Middle East and Netanyahu’s own political fortunes: the assertion that a) Israel b) the region c) the world face an existential threat from an unhinged theocracy that wants to bathe the world in blood.

Now, ironically, there is an unhinged theocracy that really wants to bathe the world in blood, but it isn’t Iran, it’s ISIS.  Iran is not only one of the Middle East’s more stable states, functional democracies, and diversified economies; it is the only party that has been able to put reliable, capable, and scalable forces in the field to battle ISIS. 

 

As the US, UK, and Canada talk about dispatching trainers to develop a force of a few thousand loyal praetorians who, hopefully, will appreciate US materiel, leadership, and air support sufficiently not to defect to the ranks of Islamic extremists, Iran is deploying highly effective battalion-strength forces to roll back ISIS in Iraq.

The irony, I suspect, is not lost on Netanyahu, who has compensated by pumping up the rhetoric against Iran and its endlessly purported, alleged, and as yet undemonstrated intentions to develop a nuclear weapon. 

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is chugging along with its long-cherished plans for rapprochement with Iran and confronting Israel with the dire possibility that peace will break out and the US will find better things to do—like pivot to Asia--than continue to support the strategically dire, diplomatically ruinous, and economically unpalatable task of serving as the primary foreign underwriter of Israel’s detested Palestinian policy.

But there are several reason why Bibi, despite holding a pretty weak geostrategic hand, is able to bellow at Barry on his own front porch i.e. visit Washington as an honored guest to promote Israel's Iran-bashing agenda.  Some of it has to do with Israel's PR savvy, Netanyahu's preternatural impudence, and the seemingly limitless cupidity of American politicians; but it also has to do with the feckless US surrender of the tactical initiative and moral high ground in its Iran policy to Israel in 2010.

Early in his first administration, President Obama may have had the leverage, international support, and political capital to shed the incubus of virtually unconditional support for Israel and pursue a more even-handed Iran policy.  Instead, he doubled down on Israel, with the result that Israel not only claims the right to define what is safe and acceptable in US dealings with Iran; its prime minister now asserts that right before the US Congress in defiance of the US president.

The story begins with President Obama's plan to use the institutions and processes of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, reinforced by the UN Security Council and US domestic legislation, to achieve America's strategic objective vis a vis Iran: to make Iran back off from any nuclear weapons ambitions in a conclusive and verifiable fashion, thereby smoothing the way for the US-Iran rapprochement that underlies a lot of common-sense policy planning for the Middle East.

Long ago and in a galaxy far away, President Obama won his Nobel Peace Prize for nuclear non-proliferation.  Not for what he had done, but for what he hoped to do.  And he hoped to perfect and impose the rather unequal and onerous Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (hereinafter NPT) regime on the entire world in a sort of Pax Nukus Americana. 

President Obama’s determination to perfect the NPT regime and impose it on the world was somewhat quixotic, since the United States is not exactly a model for enthusiastic compliance with the treaty.

America’s non-proliferation cred would have to lean rather heavily on President Obama’s shiny Nobel medal, rather than U.S. enthusiastic adherence to the standards and ideals of the NPT.  America’s own ratification of the crucial Model Additional Protocol for IAEA safeguards is gutted by an enormous national security exemption; thanks to DoD resistance, the Nuclear Posture Review posture calls for continued improvement of the US nuclear arsenal instead of its elimination; and ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and negotiation of a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty are distant dreams, given the implacable and united hostility of the Republicans in Congress.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration was determined to shape the NPT into a useful diplomatic tool against Iran and North Korea.  This objective had eluded the intransigently unilateral Bush administration, which had unsuccessfully attempted to unseat the other Nobel Peace Prize NPT-er (and Iran-sympathizer), Mohamed ElBaradei, from his post as director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

I suspect that the flip side of the Obama NPT coin was the hope that in return for the US hammering Iran on sanctions, Israel would oblige the world (and sweeten the pill for Iranian negotiators) by declaring its sizable nuclear arsenal under a sweetheart deal (similar to the one India negotiated with President George W. Bush), thereby confirming the universality, viability, and effectiveness of the rather jury-rigged NPT regime.

Back then, I wrote:

America's most nagging NPT headache probably isn't America's glacial disarmament process, or even Iran: it's Israel. Israel's undeclared arsenal of nuclear warheads has always been an irritant in US's Middle Eastern diplomacy and its efforts to block Iran's nuclear program.

The double standards dilemma has been most acute for Obama, who has designed his geopolitical strategy (and collected a Nobel Peace Prize) around the idea of reducing the threat of nuclear weapons through a combination of enhanced nuclear security, vigorous non-proliferation, and great-power nuclear disarmament under US leadership - anchored by universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Embarrassingly, from an NPT perspective, Israel doesn't compare favorably with Iran at all.

Iran is a signatory to the NPT and an active if unhappy and not particularly candid participant in the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) safeguards program. Its current inventory of nuclear material amounts to less than 2 tons of radioactive dirt, perhaps 11 pounds of uranium enriched to just below the 20% threshold (equivalent to less than 3 pounds of HEU if fully enriched), and 0 pounds of bomb grade material.

Israel is not a signatory to the NPT. It joined the IAEA, but does not participate in any safeguards program, apparently regarding its membership primarily as a useful opportunity to pitch negative intel concerning Islamic nuclear ambitions over the Department of Safeguard's transom. It maintains an undeclared arsenal of at least 200 warheads - perhaps as many as 400.

To build this arsenal, Israel evaded export controls, allegedly diverting heavy water supplied by Norway for peaceful uses to its weapons program and illegally obtaining US krytons (high speed switches) for use in its nuclear weapons program.

And Israel has proliferated. It provided technical assistance and more to the apartheid regime of South Africa that resulted in the construction of six nuclear warheads that could be dropped by bomber on South Africa's many regional antagonists. It was alleged but never officially confirmed that the Israeli government had also agreed to supply six specially fitted ballistic missiles to carry the warheads, and that South Africa's sole nuclear test was a joint South African/Israeli affair.

In May 2009, the Obama administration had taken the significant step of naming Israel as a country that should accede to the NPT, backhandedly confirming the state’s commonly known but never officially acknowledged status as a nuclear weapons power.  Per the Guardian:

A diplomatic row broke out today between the US and Israel after Washington's chief nuclear arms negotiator called on Israel to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), breaking a US tradition of discretion over Israel's nuclear arsenal.

Israeli officials said they were puzzled by a speech to an international conference in New York by Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state, who said: "Universal adherence to the NPT itself - including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea - also remains a fundamental objective of the United States."

By including Israel on a list of countries known to have nuclear weapons. Gottemoeller broke with normal US diplomatic practice. 

Obama’s initiative to put Israel’s NPT status in play—while cozying up the Muslim world--set the alarm klaxons ringing in Tel Aviv.

Perhaps recalling its own experiences, Israel contemptuously riposted that the NPT "has failed to prevent any country that wanted to from obtaining nuclear weapons".

A few months later, apparently, the fix was in.

On October 2, 2009, Eli Lake reported in the Washington Times that President Obama had, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request, "agreed to reaffirm the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy toward the Israeli nuclear arsenal that has prevailed since the Nixon administration: that the United States would passively accept Israel’s nuclear weapons status as long as Israel did not declare or test a device.”

In a sign that US-Israel relations were not running smoothly despite the reaffirmation, Israel dispatched only by a minor government functionary instead of a head of state to the May 2010 Nuclear Security Summit (President Obama’s envisioned forum for groundbreaking nuclear diplomacy and the ritual display of the cherished talisman of American leadership).  Back in Israel, Defense Minister Ehud Barak responded to President Obama's public call for Israel to join the NPT by declaring, "To our friends and our allies we say 'there is no room to pressure Israel into signing the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.'"

In the context of President Obama’s overarching commitment to the NPT—and assembling an international coalition including states closely aligned with Iran, especially the PRC and the Russian Federation, and thereby inclined to look askance at the continued U.S. disregard for Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal--there was hopeful speculation (which I must confess I shared) that, despite Israel's peremptory rejection of the NPT, there was still some possible quid pro quo.

Lake quoted David Albright of ISIS as remarking:

"One hopes that the price for such concessions is Israeli agreement to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty and an acceptance of the long-term goal of a Middle East weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone," he said.

If there was a price to be had from Israel, it was definitely on the deferred installment easy-credit plan.

In early 2010 the Obama administration engaged in repeated, interminable signaling that getting the world to sign on to UNSC Iran sanctions—declared to be the indispensable stick to make Iran serious about satisfying the world’s anxieties about its nuclear weapons capabilities-- was its absolute highest diplomatic priority.

At the insistence of the Obama administration, ElBaradei’s ever-pliant successor at IAEA, Japan’s Yukiyo Amano, punted on the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, referred the Iran dossier to the United Nations Security Council, and opened the door to sanctions. 

Instead of pressuring Israel to make some off-setting concessions that might smooth the diplomatic path, in March 2010, the US adopted a completely opposite strategy.  It allowed Israel to go point in lobbying worldwide for sanctions against Iran—to the PRC, to Russia, even to UNSC non-permanent members like Gabon & Brazil.

The hostile focus stayed firmly on Iran and away from Israel, both at the UN Security Council debate on Iran’s nuclear program in June 2010 and during the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Revision Conference or RevCon, held in New York pretty much at the same time.  Iran’s President Ahmadinejad attended the conference, apparently with the forlorn hope that a charm offensive—and pointed demonstration that Iran was a signatory to the NPT and Israel was not—might forestall the looming UN sanctions. 

The US determinedly knocked back any attempts to bring up the Israel anomaly and persistently knocked on Iran.

On the last day of the conference, the US delegation stated:

We note further that the final document calls on states to comply fully with the NPT in order to uphold the treaty’s integrity and the authority of its safeguards system. In that regard, we recall Secretary Clinton’s statement at the opening of this Review Conference, noting that “Iran is the only country in this hall that has been found by the IAEA Board of Governors to be currently in noncompliance with its nuclear safeguards obligations.” We note that Iran has done nothing to enhance the international community’s confidence in it by its performance in this Review Conference.

Israel, of course, was not “in the hall” and was naturally spared US opprobrium.

 At the conference, Ahmadinejad had discommoded the US by proposing once again that Iran’s uranium be sent overseas for fabrication of replacement plates for the Tehran Research Reactor, thereby serving as a mechanism for addressing the West’s stated concerns about Iran’s “breakout” potential to process the uranium into weapons grade material, and also serve as a platform for peer-to-peer engagement.

This display of reasonableness was, to put it mildly, awkward for the West’s position that only actual—not threatened—sanctions by an adversarial alliance united against Iranian perfidy could ensure meaningful progress.  

The US diplomatic apparatus, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, lobbied frantically to sabotage a concrete deal on the replacement plates that had been brokered by Turkey and Brazil.

In the midst of all this horsetrading and armtwisting, the PRC exploited US panic that the Turkey/Brazil deal might go through to extract some potentially useful concessions from the US, mainly that UNSC sanctions would not explicitly target the Iranian banking and energy sectors, giving the PRC some room for wriggling and backfilling.

A few more white lies were needed to make sure that Iran’s initiatives failed to gain any traction with NPT signatories outside of the hardcore US/Israel bloc, as I wrote in May 2010:

Little wonder that France's Nicolas Sarkozy - the most enthusiastic member of the anti-Iran axis - used his trip to China to declare that the time for sanctions was, basically, now.

"The whole question is to examine at what point the absence of constructive dialogue, must lead to sanctions in order to enhance constructive dialogue. Everyone is convinced that moment is approaching."

...

On May 4 at the NPT Review Conference, Egypt, speaking for the Non-Aligned Movement, circulated a draft resolution calling for the commencement of negotiations including Israel to make the Middle East into a nuclear-weapons free zone.

As Haaretz reports, the Western powers appear willing to support the conference - as long as there are no negotiations and nothing happens:

One Western envoy said Egypt's insistence on a conference with a negotiating mandate was the main "sticking point," while another expressed the hope that Egypt would compromise during intensive negotiations on the issue in the coming weeks. ...One Western diplomat said the Israelis were "understandably reluctant" to take part, even if the conference's outcome would be merely symbolic.

Egypt can certainly look forward to a month of geopolitical armtwisting, courtesy of the United States, western Europe, and Russia to ensure that the Israel problem is eventually soft-pedaled and a pro-Western consensus prevails at the conference.

Iran will no doubt notice that Moscow is taking the lead with the United States in order to smother developing-world resentment over the Israel double standard with the illusion of consensus, as Reuters tells us:

The United States and Russia, with the support of the other three countries allowed to keep nuclear weapons under the NPT, are negotiating with Egypt to come up with an acceptable compromise proposal, Western diplomats say.

Given Egypt's reliance on US aid and the prospect of a dicy leadership transition as President Mubarak seeks to turn power over to his son, Iran may discover that Egypt's determination to extract genuine concessions on denuclearization in the Middle East might not survive the month of May.

As for that nice conference that was supposed to address the nagging Israeli nuclear weapons problem, fast forward to 2013, and a plaintive op-ed by Mahmud Karem, an Egyptian diplomat who has been involved in nuclear disarmament issues as well as serving as Egypt’s Head of Mission to the EC:

On November 23, 2012 the US announced that the agreed to conference on a Middle East Zone Free from Weapons of Mass destruction (MEWMDFZ), cannot be convened.   This came as a serious blow to collective efforts exerted by many state parties including an appointed Finnish facilitator for the conference, efforts by international organizations such as the OPCW and the IAEA, as well as civil society, to implement a special decision taken during the NPT review conference of the NPT in 2010.  Since the US decision to postpone the conference came only a few weeks before the convening of the conference on December 18, 2012, sabotaging all preparations and pre-conference negotiations, the bitterness felt had ripple effects in the Arab world. "We were all sold out", said an Arab colleague. All those who approved the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995, he added, as part of a package with a specific resolution on the Middle East, should be blamed for believing that the depositories of the NPT would deliver on their commitments.  This particular remark caused severe pain to those who were part of that decision in 1995, myself included.

The biggest victory in the US/Israel campaign was to get the People’s Republic of China—holder of a UN Security Council veto and an important defender of Iran—to throw Iran under the bus by voting for UNSC sanctions in June 2010.

I think we’ll have to leave it to the philosophers as to what role the UNSC sanctions played in the US-Iran (nominally the P5+1) negotiations—if they succeed despite the machinations of Israel and doubts and division in Iran.  Also in the speculative ether is the might-have-been question of what would have happened if the US had tightened the screws on Israel as well as Iran.

"Crippling sanctions" (a term that Secretary Clinton takes pride in coining and claims to have gifted to Prime Minister Netanyahu) has a thrilling ring to it.  But I suspect the PRC's descent into the ranks of crass and opportunistic allies like the Russian Federation (the PRC ostentatiously throttled down its purchases of Iranian oil while profiting nicely from the pricing and currency and barter deals Iran was forced to make with it) as well as the unappetizing prospect of President Obama being replaced in the White House by Hillary Clinton in 2017 were additional important factors that impelled Iran's leadership to decide on another round of negotiations with the P5+1 and the US.  

If President Obama hoped that his harsh line on Iran would be rewarded by Israeli concessions on acknowledging its own program and acceding to various gateway NPT-related programs, he got punked.  Either the Israeli government outright reneged on any promise to make an NPT-related gesture to save Obama’s agenda (and his face), or it made promises so conditional and over-the-horizon they were easy to discard or postpone.

Or maybe Obama got rolled by Hillary Clinton.  Secretary Clinton’s over-the-top enthusiasm for crotch-kicking Iran permeates her memoir Hard Choices and her single-minded pursuit of UNSC sanctions and relentless lobbying of the PRC were, it appears, decisive.

So I would not be surprised if Clinton told President Obama he was welcome to be the first African-American Jimmy Carter in the White House to stand up against Israel but it would be without Democratic support, on a different planet, and for that matter, with a different Secretary of State.

In any case, I believe the reason that President Obama has to watch his bete noir, Benjamin Netanyahu, challenge his policies from the rostrum of the US Congress to an adoring audience today is because, to use a loaded term, the United States appeased in 2010.   

The US appeased Israel, not Iran, thereby enabling Netanyahu’s dicey strategy of ignoring Israel’s nuclear arsenal while characterizing Iran as an existential nuclear threat, emboldening him to polarize the situation as much as possible with his provocative statements and actions, and reaffirming his determination to sabotage an Iran nuclear deal, no matter what.