The Trump administration is continuing the policy of its predecessor regarding the Crimea issue. U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley is the latest official to confirm that point. In a speech on February 2, Haley emphasized that the United States intended to maintain economic sanctions against Russia until Moscow returned the peninsula to Ukraine. “Crimea is a part of Ukraine,” she stated bluntly. She reiterated Washington’s firm position in remarks to the UN Security Council on February 21.
That stance is nearly identical to the Obama administration’s policy. Former secretary of state John Kerry blasted Russia’s action from the outset. “You just don"t in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” he fumed. “Russia is in violation of the sovereignty of Ukraine. Russia is in violation of its international obligations.”
I’ve written elsewhere how the Trump administration’s stance on Crimea epitomizes the president’s rapid retreat from foreign-policy realism. But the Crimea case also illustrates a long-standing problem with U.S. foreign policy: a willingness to employ blatant double standards.
Numerous U.S. officials over the decades have insisted that territorial changes achieved through military force are illegitimate, and that Washington will not countenance such behavior. Crimea is merely the latest application of that policy. George H. W. Bush took an uncompromising stance regarding Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait, and unlike the Obama and Trump administrations, even waged a war to reverse the result. Addressing a joint session of Congress to justify America’s entry into the Persian Gulf War, he stated: “A puppet regime imposed from the outside is unacceptable. The acquisition of territory by force is unacceptable.”
However, Washington’s position concerning similar behavior by U.S. allies is markedly different. One might ask, for example, when the United States is going to demand that Israel return the Golan Heights to Syria. Israel seized that area during the 1967 Six-Day War, a conflict that Israel initiated as a preemptive measure because Syria and Egypt seemed to be making preparations for an attack on the Jewish state. Tel Aviv has solid security reasons for wanting to retain the Golan Heights. Syrian artillery emplacements there repeatedly menaced Israeli communities in the valley below.
Nevertheless, it is an indisputable case of a territorial adjustment achieved via military force, and Tel Aviv’s later annexation of the territory confirms that it will never be returned to Syria. Yet in marked contrast to U.S. policy regarding Crimea, Washington never imposed sanctions on Israel. To the contrary, bilateral relations have become extremely close in the intervening years.
An equally flagrant U.S. double standard exists regarding Turkey’s invasion and seizure of northern Cyprus in 1974. In that episode, even a strong security justification was lacking. Ankara used isolated incidents of Greek Cypriot violence against Turkish Cypriots as a pretext to occupy some 37 percent of the country. Although Washington initially imposed mild sanctions on Turkey for its aggression, those measures were soon rescinded and forgotten. Turkey proceeded to establish the puppet Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. That entity’s lack of meaningful sovereignty was underscored when Ankara orchestrated the exodus of more than one hundred thousand settlers from the Turkish mainland to consolidate the occupation.
One might well ask why Russia’s actions in Crimea were so much worse than those earlier episodes that they warranted the imposition of harsh sanctions. Although Moscow’s security rationale for the annexation was not as strong as Israel’s situation regarding the Golan Heights, it was far from insignificant. With the emergence of a staunchly anti-Russian regime in Ukraine, the Kremlin had reason to fear for the future of its crucial naval base at Sevastopol. Moreover, Russian officials were smarting at the unsubtle U.S. and European support for the demonstrators in Kiev that had overthrown the democratically elected, pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych two years before the expiration of his term.
Moreover, Russians point out that Crimea was part of Russia from the 1780s until 1954, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred control to Ukraine. Since Ukraine and Russia were both part of the Soviet Union, that decision didn’t matter much at the time, but with the USSR’s disintegration, having a vital military base in a foreign country became a concern to Russia. Today, Russians have reason to ask why U.S. political leaders and policymakers treat the arbitrary edict made by the communist dictator of a defunct country with such reverence.
Finally, the United States and its NATO allies engaged in a forceful territorial adjustment of their own. NATO waged a seventy-day air war against Serbia in 1999 to detach that country’s restless province of Kosovo from Belgrade’s jurisdiction. Subsequently, in 2008, Washington and its allies bypassed the UN Security Council (and a certain Russian veto) to midwife Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence. That set a crucial precedent, which Moscow seized upon later that year in a war against the Republic of Georgia. That conflict assisted secessionists in two regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, to break free of Tbilisi’s control.
Given the multiple cases of a blatant double standard, the moral foundation of Washington’s policy regarding forcible territorial adjustments is exceedingly weak. And the current rigid stance regarding Crimea makes no sense from a practical standpoint either. U.S. leaders need to accept the reality that Russia will not relinquish Crimea. Nor will Serbia be able to reclaim Kosovo or Syria regain the Golan Heights from Israel. Despite the latest round in periodic negotiations over the decades, it is also unlikely that the Cypriot government will ever regain sovereignty over its northern territories.
It does not benefit America to persist in a stubborn, futile demand that Russia return Crimea to Ukraine. Washington’s hypocrisy on that issue in light of positions it has taken toward similar territorial seizures by Western powers (including the United States itself) makes that stance even more repellent.
Unless the U.S. government’s lies about Crimea — the ‘Russia seized Crimea’ narratives — become acknowledged to be lies, war between the U.S. and Russia can only continue to become increasingly likely, because the world is sliding toward World War III based upon these lies, and will therefore inevitably continue that slide until these lies are publicly repudiated by the U.S. government, which is their sole source. The liar on this is clearly the U.S. and not Russia: the U.S. is the entire source for the alleged cause for war between the U.S. and Russia.
The preparations for war between the U.S. and Russia continue naturally apace until the United States publicly acknowledges that Russia had not ‘seized’ Crimea — acknowledges that the cause for all of these war-preparations by the U.S. and its NATO and other allies against Russia is fake, a U.S. lie, and that Russia is purely America’s victim in this entire matter and acting in a 100% defensive way against America’s aggressions in this matter.
Anyone who is closed-minded to the possibility that the U.S. is lying and that Russia is telling the truth about the relationship between the two countries, would therefore be simply wasting time to read here, because the solid documentation that will be provided here will prove that that’s not only a possibility; it is the fact, and those widespread false beliefs will, indeed, be disproven here. Proving that, is the purpose of this article. Therefore, a warning is needed beforehand, for any reader who is closed-minded about that possibility — any such person would be wasting time to read this article. Here it is:
(WARNING: The following article asserts many things that are propagandized almost universally in The West to be false, and in each such instance the documentation of the assertion’s being true is provided in a link, so that any reader who doesn’t already know its truth can easily come to know that he/she had previously been deceived about that particular matter — the reader can come to know this just by clicking onto the link. This article depends upon its links, which are rooted in the most-reliable evidence on the given topic — far more reliable than any of the ‘evidence’ that’s cited by defenders of The West’s position, lies on these matters. The links are provided so that a reader can easily connect to the actual evidence, and decide on one’s own, whom the liars are, and are not. It all depends upon the evidence. Any reader who doesn’t want to know the evidence, would be just wasting time to read here.)
PRESENTATION OF THE CASE
Obama-Trump economic sanctions against Russia are based upon the lies that are to be exposed as lies, in the links here. So too are the NATO movements of U.S. troops and missiles right up to Russia’s very borders — ready to invade Russia — based especially upon the lie of ‘Russian aggression in Crimea’. All of the thrust for WW III is based upon U.S. President Barack Obama’s vicious lie against Russia: his saying that the transfer of Crimea from Ukraine to Russia was not (which it actually was) an example of the U.N.-and-U.S. universally recognized right of self-determination of peoples (such as the U.S. recognizes to apply both in Catalonia and in Scotland, but not in Crimea) but was instead an alleged ‘conquest’ of Crimea by Russia. (As that link there documents, Obama’s allegation that it was ‘Putin’s conquest’ of Crimea is false, and he knew it to be false; he was well informed that the people of Crimea overwhelmingly wanted their land to be restored to Russia, and to be protected by Russia, so as not to be invaded by the Ukrainian government’s troops and weapons, after a bloody U.S. coup by Obama had — less than a month earlier — overthrown the democratically elected President of Ukraine, for whom 75% of Crimeans had voted. Obama’s own agents were behind that coup; they were doing his bidding. The aggressor here is entirely the U.S., not Russia, despite Obama’s lies.)
In other words: the renewal of the Cold War (and an increasingly hot war by the U.S. against Russia’s ally Syria, and elsewhere) this time against Russia (no longer against the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance, none of which even existed after 1991) is based upon Barack Obama’s refusal to allow democracy for the people of Crimea. The build-up toward WW III is that simple — a vicious U.S. lie, directed against Russia.
And that’s not the only instance where the U.S. government blocks democracy in order to conquer Russia by grabbing Russian-allied nations (first Ukraine, and then, increasingly, Syria). Twice in one day, U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon said that Obama’s demand that Syria’s current President, the Russia-friendly Bashar al-Assad, must be prevented from being even on the ballot in Syria’s next election for President, is unacceptable, and that (as Ban said) «The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people».
Why is the West allowed to dictate to Crimeans, and to Syrians, that they cannot choose their own government?
This is the new, anti-democratic, United States government. This is the reality.
Lawrence J. Korb, who was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense during 1981-1985, quit the Cold War against Russia when the Soviet Union and its communism and Warsaw Pact all ended in 1991, and he wrote on 26 February 2016, headlining «Don’t Fall for Obama’s $3 Billion Arms Buildup at Russia’s Door». He was on the correct side about this, against the Obama-initiated thrust toward WW III, but he understated the evilness, by saying:
There is no Russian resurgence. Washington is playing on your Cold War fears to get you to pay for something the U.S. does not need and can’t afford. In one of the key justifications for the new $600 billion defense spending request, the Department of Defense has fallen back on a tried-and-true Cold War boogeyman: the threat of Russian aggression against allies in Europe. While there is no ignoring the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the Russo-Georgian war in 2008, to interpret these events as some kind of Russian ‘resurgence’ is to grossly inflate the danger Russia poses to NATO and the United States.
Neither in Ukraine nor in Georgia was the U.S. guiltless — to the exact contrary: the U.S. had sparked both of those conflicts on Russia’s borders. And Russia is not grabbing territory on America’s borders; the U.S. is grabbing territory on Russia’s. (Is Russia trying to overturn and replace U.S.-allied governments on America’s borders — Mexico and Canada? Of course not. But the U.S. tries to do it to Russia — and then blames Russia for what are actually appropriate responses to such U.S. aggressions.) Korb went on to say:
Though Crimea has been a historic lynchpin of Russian grand strategy for centuries, its open use of military force and political manipulation there in the midst of the Ukrainian Revolution drew an immediate response in the form of sanctions from the West. Russia is paying a massive economic and diplomatic cost for its aggression against Ukraine.
He ignored there that it was no ‘Revolution’; it was instead a U.S. coup in Ukraine, which overthrew the democratically elected government there and installed an illegal one, which was composed of fascists, who went on to do fascist things.
These euphemisms — the lies calling a coup a ‘Revolution’, and pretending that the breakaway of Crimea from Ukraine wasn’t a direct consequence of that bloody and illegal U.S. coup on Russia’s border — are what the buildup toward WW III is built upon; and, so, it must end now, or else civilization will.
Furthermore, Korb’s implicit assumption there, that post-Soviet (post-Empire) Russia, is no different from the USSR, but all just the same «Russian grand strategy for centuries», is no conclusion that he supports with any evidence, but is instead his purely unsupported assumption, which would severely weaken his case if it were true. It happens to be a false assumption. A person doesn’t become influential in governing circles in The West without buying into certain historical and cultural falsehoods; and Korb would not be cited at all here if he had not been such an influential person.
Similarly, his reference there to Russia’s ‘aggression against Ukraine’ is also a falsehood, which fits into the narrative that ‘Russia seized Crimea’, but repeating such lies is the price of admission into, or retention in, such governing circles. Whether the inclusion of such falsehoods is consciously intended or not, it increases the chances that an article in The West will be published. It’s part of the cultural mythology (such as produces almost all wars).
And, similarly, the rest of America’s Establishment trumpet such dangerous lies to the world. That too must stop, but since the U.S. press are mere stenographers for the U.S. government, the only way that it will stop, is if the U.S. government’s lies stop first.
Donald Trump, now as America’s new President, continues Obama’s lies. He was different back on 1 August 2016 when Politico headlined «Trump: Taking back Crimea would trigger World War III», and they showed video of him campaigning in Columbus Ohio saying (at 57:50-59:00 in this video) that as President he would drop the Crimea matter, because «I mean, do you want to go back? Do you want to have World War Three to get it back?» So, he was elected on the basis of his conveying to voters that as President he would simply end Obama’s anti-Russia sanctions and NATO threats, not continue those punishments and invasion-dangers against Russians unless and until the Russian government forces Crimeans to become ruled again by Ukraine’s government (now even worse than before — Obama’s government). But once ensconced into office, Trump promptly changed his tune, in his actual follow-through, as the now-President: His agent at the U.N., America’s U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, said at the U.N. on February 2nd:
I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia… The United States stands with the people of Ukraine, who have suffered for nearly three years under Russian occupation and military intervention. Until Russia and the separatists it supports respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, this crisis will continue. … The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea. Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine.
In other words: Trump’s answer to «Do you want to have World War Three to get it back?» is: Yes. He actually does. (Unless he quickly renounces what she said.)
Trump’s commitment there to continue Obama’s vicious lies against Russia, instead of acknowledging that they were and are lies (which acknowledgment must be done if WW III is to be avoided), is extraordinarily dangerous. It is a commitment to WW III, because Russia is in the right here, and will never knuckle under to America’s attempts to coerce Russia to do something shameful, just because the U.S. government demands it.
A matter of fundamental principle is involved here, and the U.S. government is on the evil side of it — even under the new President, who had promised otherwise. That’s a fact, just as much as such a statement as that «Genocide is evil» is a statement of fact, not merely an assertion of ‘opinion’. The U.S. government is on the evil side of the most important matter imaginable — potentially, WW III. (That’s what it will be unless Trump reverses himself yet again, this time with finality, by publicly acknowledging that Obama’s allegations that Russia stole Crimea were lies. That Obama’s whole basis for ‘the new Cold War’ was actually bogus. That the real aggressor in the entire matter was America.)
Anyone who seeks further background on the historical roots of this evil, is invited here to see the following three terrific documentaries that present the essential origins of it:
Those three documentaries provide the fundamental, the most crucial, history behind Obama’s escalation toward war against Russia. However, one of the essential elements of that historical background is absent from those documentaries, and it’s filled in by this article, which covers the post-1991 history — the portion of the operation that Obama was working so hard to culminate. (Another aspect that’s missing from the three documentaries is the connection to ‘terrorism’ or jihadism, and that’s covered in the links to this — and especially to this, which latter focuses on the royal Sauds’ funding of Al Qaeda.)
The basic excuse for this evil is — as the fake-compassionate (and fake-democratic, and fake anti-invasion) Obama phrased it — «There’s no formula in which this ends up being good for Russia. The annexation of Crimea is a cost, not a benefit, to Russia. The days in which conquest of land somehow was a formula for great nation status is over». He had imposed these costs upon Russia, and then he possessed the nerve there to blame Russia for doing what it needed to do, and was ethically required to do, to respond to Obama’s aggression against Russia (by way of Obama’s prior seizure of Ukraine).
If Donald Trump continues Obama’s course on this, instead of publicly acknowledges that it was founded upon the lies that Crimea’s becoming again a part of Russia constituted ‘conquest of land’, then we’re still heading toward World War III, and doing it on the basis of American lies.
The only way to put a stop to it — other than putting a stop to civilization if not to perhaps all animate life on Earth — is for the U.S. government to acknowledge Obama’s lies about Crimea and Russia, as having been Obama’s lies. It means separation from the prior Administration, on the most important issue of all; and this will require Trump to say publicly that Obama was lying about Ukraine and Crimea and Russia.
Trump thus faces a stark choice here. Either he will declare that Obama was lying about these matters, or else there will be war between the U.S. and Russia. It’s his choice.
He’s no longer just a lying and prevaricating candidate, like he was before. He is now the actual President. If he continues imposing the policy of his predecessor, it will be the end of us all. It’s his choice to make; none of his advisors can make it for him.
