A Nasty Civil War
Nuland's "guy" Yatsenyuk became the new prime minister and pushed through both the IMF "reforms" and the EU association agreement. But the price was high, with Ukraine descending into a brutal civil war with ethnic Russians of eastern and southern Ukraine resisting the imposition of the new order in Kiev.
The voters of Crimea overwhelmingly passed a secession referendum and rejoined Russia with the help of Russian troops stationed in Crimea at the naval base at Sebastopol. Two areas of eastern Ukraine also voted to secede but were not accepted by Moscow, though it provided military and non-lethal assistance when the Kiev regime launched an "anti-terrorism operation" that incorporated some of the neo-Nazi storm troopers into "volunteer militias."
The Ukrainian civil war not only has claimed thousands of lives but revived the specter of a new Cold War. The U.S. State Department pressed the EU to join in economic sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea, a plan that Merkel and the EU adopted after the July 17 shoot-down of MH17, which was hastily blamed on Putin.
Tit-for-tat economic sanctions also pushed the EU toward its third recession since the 2008 financial crisis. They also have contributed to economic pain in Russia. But the worst victims are the Ukrainians who are facing a cold winter with scant supplies of fuel, little money and widespread joblessness.
"In one of the most important questions facing European foreign policy, Germany had failed," Der Spiegel admitted in its review of how the crisis evolved from the botched negotiations a year ago. The magazine cited a speech last December by the new Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, saying: "We should ask ourselves ... whether we have overlooked the fact that it is too much for this country to have to choose between Europe and Russia."
Der Spiegel also quoted a key figure in the Ukraine talks, European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fule, as conceding that the EU confronted Ukraine with an impossible choice. "We were actually telling Ukraine ...: 'You know guys, sorry for your geographic location, but you cannot go east and you cannot go west,'" Fule said.
"More than anything, though, the Europeans underestimated Moscow and its determination to prevent a clear bond between Ukraine and the West," Der Spiegel wrote. "They either failed to take Russian concerns and Ukrainian warnings seriously or they ignored them altogether because they didn't fit into their own worldview."
This more tempered assessment by Der Spiegel -- though a marked improvement from the hysteria of last summer -- still falls far short of the highest standards of journalistic objectivity. But it suggests that perhaps a more rational attitude toward the Ukraine crisis is finally taking hold in Europe.
U.S. Media Hysteria
That does not appear to be the case in the United States where major news outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, continue to be little more than propaganda megaphones for the hawks in the State Department and the ever-influential neoconservatives.
For instance, on Wednesday, the Post's neocon editors published a lead editorial aimed at both Putin and President Barack Obama with what you might call neocon trash-talking. In the Post's print edition, the sneering headline was "The 'invincible' Mr. Putin. With no new pressure from the West, the Kremlin acts as if it has nothing to fear." The online title was even more direct: "Prove to Mr. Putin that he is not 'invincible.'"
The editorial continued the year-long campaign to demonize Putin and agitate Obama into taking more aggressive action toward destabilizing Russia.
The Post, which has become the neocon flagship publication, was following the neocon strategy of destroying what had been constructive behind-the-scenes cooperation between Putin and Obama on issues such as reaching a political settlement in Syria and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran.
If that Putin-Obama relationship were not obliterated, it carried grave dangers for the overriding neocon strategy of "regime change" across the Middle East, to eliminate nations and movements regarded as threats to Israel.
But the biggest risk to the neocons from Putin and Obama working together would be the possibility that the two leaders could join forces to pressure Israel into a peace agreement with the Palestinians, rather than continue Israel's inexorable seizure of Palestinian land.
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