Moved to Opinion, where all blog references should go.
The widespread knee-jerk reaction to recent events in Ukraine has been dismaying, to say the least.
It's no surprise to see liberals and progressives parroting the Obama/Kerry party line on the Great Satan Russia, but the me-too response of many conservatives is another matter. Don't they realize they are being led around by the nose with this "Putin is evil" meme the media have ginned up?
I'm not saying that we have to embrace Vladimir Putin like a big warm fuzzy Russian teddy bear. Mr. Putin is the ruler of Russia, after all. He rules in the time-hallowed Russian tradition. He is shrewd, ruthless, and autocratic. He is also very intelligent -- more intelligent than any of the prep-school boys the West puts up against him -- and is adept at playing a long-range game of geopolitical chess against opponents who can't even manage to put up a checkerboard.
Just because some of us choose to see what is happening in Ukraine with a clear-eyed realism doesn't mean that we have to think Mr. Putin is a wonderful, shining example of political heroism, flowing with the milk of human kindness. We can understand the current train of events and follow each move in the game without having to root for the Kremlin.
There seems to be a widespread tendency (especially in the USA) to be unable to reassess a grotesquely negative political view of someone without turning that person into a glorious saint. As if there were no other choice than a Manichaean Good/Evil pair.
Reality doesn't generally fit into that schema. Understanding what Vladimir Putin is doing doesn't require converting a media Beelzebub into a media St. Francis. It does, however, demand that we spit out the simple-minded gruel peddled by the MSM and the well-coiffed spokesbeings for the Washington-Brussels Axis of Putty.
...I predict: sometime in the next couple of weeks, we will watch a replay of Syria, but with Ukraine as the pawn this time. Mr. Putin will hand Mr. Kerry an offer he can't refuse, and it will get prominent play in the New York Times and on CNN. A third-party mediator will propose some face-saving measure that will allow Washington and Brussels to proclaim "we have achieved true democracy in Ukraine" while Russia gets everything it wanted in the first place. Then, for the next twenty or thirty years, ordinary Ukrainians will enjoy the "austerity" regime imposed on them à la Greece as the price for being handed all those billions and billions of dollars and euros.
...Understanding what Russia is up to is not rocket science, but it does require removing the Cold War blinders to take in a wider view.
Despite his career as a loyal KGB officer, Vladimir Putin is not a Communist ideologue, and the Soviet Empire is no more. Mr. Putin is not trying to spread a totalitarian ideology by force over the entire globe. His goals are to consolidate his own power and secure the state interests of Russia.
And, yes, this means that he will engage in ugly and violent behavior in the "Near Abroad" in order to assert Russian control (or at least neutralize any threat to Russian dominance) on its borders. He will be -- as Russian despots have been since time immemorial -- underhanded, deceitful, duplicitous, and willing to do business with anyone in order to secure his goals.
But those goals include the protection and advancement of the Russian people, which is why Mr. Putin remains so popular in his country, despite his autocratic ways.
Can you think of any Western leader who unequivocally promotes the protection and advancement of his own nation and people? Is Israel "Western"?
[DAWN] The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) may have been born in the tribal agencies, it might have even ruled Swat, but it is Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... that has been crucial to the TTP's perpetuation of power across the country. It is Karachi that helped fund the TTP's war in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... , as the organization routinely conducted bank heists to generate finances. It is also Karachi where members of the TTP found sanctuary as security forces pounded their hideouts. Slowly but surely, the largest city of Pakhtun people has witnessed three factions of the TTP taking control of a number of areas and exert their influence in many others. This is a process that has spanned more than half a decade; it promises to decisively shape the future of the city.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2014 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
