Post a Comment On: China Matters

Think I understand the U.S. thinking in bulldozing ahead with the Ukraine coup despite the collywobbles of the EU.
The EU wanted to keep Russia on board with the transitional government.
The U.S. said, F*ck the EU, we’re going to make a statement in Ukraine.  So they pushed the coup through to its conclusion and put in power a government that wants to have nothing to do with Russia.
In other words, F*ck Russia.    The objective was to present Putin with an unpalatable choice.
He could either make a spectacle of his impotence by doing nothing, which will probably encourage anti-Russian states in the near beyond and also empower pro-US fans of the “occupy the square and make a ruckus” persuasion in Russia’s allied neighbors like Belarus and maybe in Moscow itself; Or Russia could try a more forcible response, in which case it would be excoriated and ostracized as the bad guy of Eurasia one more time.
I expect that the U.S. response to the EU concern that, by blowing up the transitional arrangement, it was wrecking Ukraine’s best chance to get out of the mess as part of a Western/Russian condominium, is that Putin will be subjected to a vigorous shaming campaign if he doesn’t swallow his resentment and help out the Ukraine.
In order to lay the foundation for this likely development, the Ukrainian coup is getting a PR makeover almost laughable in its rapidity.
To deny any justification for Russian disgruntlement, the coup—which, for months, was clearly pitched as an initiative by pro-European/anti-Russian ethnic Ukrainians in the West to forestall the criminal negligence by the pro-Russian government of putting its eggs in the Russian Customs Union basket instead of proceeding with the EU agreement—is being repackaged as a unified national revolution against the insane kleptocracy of designated fall guy Yanyukovich.
Despite the awkward optics of alleged Queen of the Kleptocrats Yulya Timoshenko taking her place in the new government, the new, improved Ukraine revolution product a.k.a. Coup Two has been simultaneously rolled out in fora as diverse as John Kerry’s press conference in Washington and in the anti-Putin Moscow Times.   
And I expect that the new government will be prevailed upon to deny its undeniable anti-Russian roots by repealing the embarrassing law that superseded the previous acceptance of Russian as an official language with a ban on the use of anything but Ukrainian in government business.
Thesis: If all the Ukrainian revolution wanted to do was kick some corrupt dirtbags out of office and had no grudge against Russia, in other words, how could Vladimir Putin be so mean to the Ukrainians as to let them stew in their own juice?
If Putin gets obstreperous about ethnic Russians in Crimea, the security of the Black Fleet naval base at Sebastopol, renegotiating the concessional price for gas, recognizing the new government, or holding back on the rest of the $15 billion previously promised to Yanyukovich…well, I think the op-eds have already been written.
And if Ukraine turns to ordure as a result of national division, IMF austerity, and an economic rupture with Russia, I can hear Victoria Nuland saying, F*ck Ukraine.  It was already f*cked anyway.
In honor of this development, I’ve written a little poem:
An American Poem for the EU, Russia, and Ukraine

We did the coup;
Nothing you can do.
So ignore the pain
And help out Ukraine
Or we’ll do the work
To make you look like a jerk
And you’ll all be Nulanded together!