Michael O’Rourke 🪶The current political imbroglio following NATO puppet Zelensky’s cocaine induced meltdown in the White House meeting with Donald Trump is no shock to anyone not following mainstream media lies.
In actuality it is the beginning of the unravelling of the fake media narrative surrounding the NATO proxy war against the Russian population of Donbass and Russia. Naturally too, the Irish media led by the pro-Unionist/pro-NATO RTE have been in the forefront of this lying hoax of Russian aggression on Ukraine. The pro-NATO lie of the war in Donbass being started by Russia has been maintained mainly by US/UK imperialism and its media outlets, despite the indisputable fact that the war began with the Kiev coup regime’s genocidal onslaught on the Russian population of eastern Ukraine. It began with the Nazi coup in 2014, not February 2022 with the Russian Special Military Operation.
The Banderite regime started by banning the Russian language and culture although Russian is spoken by nearly half of the population. It closed all TV channels, news outlets and political parties not directly subscribed to the Stepan Bandera Nazi ideology. They then attacked the civilian population of Donbass with airstrikes, artillery and fascist militias, murdering thousands of Russian Donbass civilians in a land that was always Russian, not part of the state of Ukraine that only came into existence after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The Donbass Oblasts were forced to secede from the illegal fascist coup regime and become independent republics resisting the Nazi genocide. The republics asked to be accepted back to their own nation’s state, the Russian Federation, but Russia adhered to the Minsk Two agreement that provided for the Donbass republics to remain in Ukraine as autonomous regions, and for the Kiev regime to desist from its bombardment of Donbass civilians. The Ukrainian Nazis not only did not desist, but stepped it up instead killing many more thousands. This was the beginning of the NATO proxy war, 2014–2015.
After eight years of genocidal bombardment on Donbass by the Ukrainian Nazis killing over fourteen-thousand people, the two Donbass republics were returned to their Russian motherland as oblasts of the Russian Federation just prior to the SMO to provide for the legal intervention by Russia. During the interim period from 2014–2022 there were two Minsk peace treaties between Ukraine and the Donetsk/Luhansk republics to end the slaughter by the Kiev regime, but both treaties were reneged on by Ukraine. It was admitted later on by Poroshenko, the then President of Ukraine, and Angela Merkel of Germany one of the treaty mediators along with President Hollande of France, that they had no intention of applying the ceasefire terms; they were just buying time to allow for the massive build-up of the Ukrainian army with NATO arms. The stated aim of the Kiev regime and the Western powers was the destruction of the Russian Federation into smaller states in order for the West to exploit Russia’s vast natural resources, and remove Russia as a power capable of a rivalling Western hegemony. To achieve this the US/UK through their intelligence/terror agencies CIA and MI6 had orchestrated and financed the Maidan coup led by the Ukrainian Nazi paramilitary battalions. In addition NATO nuclear missiles were to be deployed in Ukraine only five minutes striking distance from Russian cities, while the Crimean port of Sevastopol where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based would be taken by NATO. The war emphatically is a NATO proxy war on Russia, headed by US/UK with the rest of the Western, lesser imperialist powers, and is the incipient WW3.
This proxy war is fully supported by the Irish government and media. It is also supported by Sinn Féin and a large part of the Irish-Left, both of whom, though not especially regarded as politically important, have played a significant role as enablers, giving the government and the lying media a free run with no opposition. The government and the fake-opposition of Sinn Féin accompanied by their People before Profit colleagues are at one with the government’s pro-NATO belligerence and subservience to US/UK warmongering.
After eight years of genocidal bombardment on Donbass by the Ukrainian Nazis killing over fourteen-thousand people, the two Donbass republics were returned to their Russian motherland as oblasts of the Russian Federation just prior to the SMO to provide for the legal intervention by Russia. During the interim period from 2014–2022 there were two Minsk peace treaties between Ukraine and the Donetsk/Luhansk republics to end the slaughter by the Kiev regime, but both treaties were reneged on by Ukraine. It was admitted later on by Poroshenko, the then President of Ukraine, and Angela Merkel of Germany one of the treaty mediators along with President Hollande of France, that they had no intention of applying the ceasefire terms; they were just buying time to allow for the massive build-up of the Ukrainian army with NATO arms. The stated aim of the Kiev regime and the Western powers was the destruction of the Russian Federation into smaller states in order for the West to exploit Russia’s vast natural resources, and remove Russia as a power capable of a rivalling Western hegemony. To achieve this the US/UK through their intelligence/terror agencies CIA and MI6 had orchestrated and financed the Maidan coup led by the Ukrainian Nazi paramilitary battalions. In addition NATO nuclear missiles were to be deployed in Ukraine only five minutes striking distance from Russian cities, while the Crimean port of Sevastopol where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based would be taken by NATO. The war emphatically is a NATO proxy war on Russia, headed by US/UK with the rest of the Western, lesser imperialist powers, and is the incipient WW3.
This proxy war is fully supported by the Irish government and media. It is also supported by Sinn Féin and a large part of the Irish-Left, both of whom, though not especially regarded as politically important, have played a significant role as enablers, giving the government and the lying media a free run with no opposition. The government and the fake-opposition of Sinn Féin accompanied by their People before Profit colleagues are at one with the government’s pro-NATO belligerence and subservience to US/UK warmongering.
However, at the time of writing Micheál Martin has indicated a slight change in the tenor of his pro-war rhetoric. He is now emphasising peace along with the usual lies and demonisation of ‘’Putin’’, the constantly used metonym for Russia as though it was run entirely by one man and was not the huge multi-layered parliamentary complex and presidential governmental system which it is.
Simultaneously Mary Lou McDonald, sensing the change of narrative and hedging her bets, expressed her opposition towards German aristocrat Ursula von der Leyen’s insane pronouncement of the EU raising €800 billion to re-arm Europe for war against Russia. What stands out here for Irish republicans and socialists is the appalling lack of basic honesty and principle, not only from the establishment parties but from those political parties who claim to represent Ireland’s historic cause and the cause of the Irish working class. Clearly at this time they do not represent those principled causes, they represent the opposite of that, having put themselves on the same side of Ireland’s eternal enemy, British imperialism.
Sinn Féin are now supporting the British military in Ukraine as are their colleagues in PBP who are essentially an off-shoot party of the British-Left party SWP. This is not just an abstract political matter. In real terms it makes all of the parties: the government, the opposition TD’s and media, complicit by their political support, and their deliberate silence on the war crimes committed by the fascist Kiev regime. They repeat the same insouciance as the imperialist politicians towards the tens of thousands murdered by the Kiev Nazis and towards the Ukrainian conscripts violently pressganged into Zelensky’s front lines to die, unable to retreat because they will be shot by the Azov Battalion fascist blockers at their rear to enforce Zelensky’s murderously insane order to fight until they die. But which in reality is actually the orders of the Western leaders such as crypto-fascist Starmer, the EU Commission and the US administration of Biden now followed by Trump, whose role briefly is to find a way of salvaging US imperialism’s position from the wreckage of their military defeat by Russia. This reality underlies the political imbroglio mentioned at the beginning of this article.
Yet while all of this is happening, the Irish government with no opposition in the Dáil continue to send money to Zelensky’s utterly corrupt regime, to the amount of €454 million. This is now to be topped up with another €100 million to purchase military equipment and for von der Leyen’s insane €800 billion fund for war on Russia.
Sinn Féin are now supporting the British military in Ukraine as are their colleagues in PBP who are essentially an off-shoot party of the British-Left party SWP. This is not just an abstract political matter. In real terms it makes all of the parties: the government, the opposition TD’s and media, complicit by their political support, and their deliberate silence on the war crimes committed by the fascist Kiev regime. They repeat the same insouciance as the imperialist politicians towards the tens of thousands murdered by the Kiev Nazis and towards the Ukrainian conscripts violently pressganged into Zelensky’s front lines to die, unable to retreat because they will be shot by the Azov Battalion fascist blockers at their rear to enforce Zelensky’s murderously insane order to fight until they die. But which in reality is actually the orders of the Western leaders such as crypto-fascist Starmer, the EU Commission and the US administration of Biden now followed by Trump, whose role briefly is to find a way of salvaging US imperialism’s position from the wreckage of their military defeat by Russia. This reality underlies the political imbroglio mentioned at the beginning of this article.
Yet while all of this is happening, the Irish government with no opposition in the Dáil continue to send money to Zelensky’s utterly corrupt regime, to the amount of €454 million. This is now to be topped up with another €100 million to purchase military equipment and for von der Leyen’s insane €800 billion fund for war on Russia.
Homelessness and the non-availability of health services are not a consideration for the government as they pay these sums and bring us ever closer under British military hegemony, i.e. NATO. The latest move in this direction is the announcement by the government to remove the most constraining part of the so-called Triple Lock on sending Irish soldiers abroad: the necessity of a request from the UN. They will no longer need this, and they have increased the number of soldiers from twelve to fifty. But clearly there is nothing to prevent them from increasing it to any number. Irish neutrality is a fiction that cannot be defended ultimately because it is not actually neutrality. Moreover, the six-counties remains a British/NATO colony. However, this is not to condemn those who sincerely believe in it. But in its essence, it amounts to a call for pacifism on moral grounds, and pacifism has never worked throughout history against imperialist militarism, which is before us now.
To summarise: this article is a brief outline history of the current political situation of our time. It is concerned with and mainly addressed to Irish republicans and socialists and is consciously in line therefore with the uncompromising principles of revolutionary republicanism and socialism bequeathed to us by the leaders of the Easter Rising. Accordingly this writer is not pontificating from a position of ignorance or evil sectarianism as some of the Irish-Left supporters of Zelensky’s Nazi regime would imply. And moreover as I have said before, I take no great account of their hysterical backward sniping which is indistinguishable from the mainstream gutter press. I have been engaged with people from Ukraine and Donbass from the beginning of the conflict, some of whom have had life-changing injuries defending their homeland against Ukrainian fascism supported by NATO, and unfortunately supported also by those I have alluded to above.
To summarise: this article is a brief outline history of the current political situation of our time. It is concerned with and mainly addressed to Irish republicans and socialists and is consciously in line therefore with the uncompromising principles of revolutionary republicanism and socialism bequeathed to us by the leaders of the Easter Rising. Accordingly this writer is not pontificating from a position of ignorance or evil sectarianism as some of the Irish-Left supporters of Zelensky’s Nazi regime would imply. And moreover as I have said before, I take no great account of their hysterical backward sniping which is indistinguishable from the mainstream gutter press. I have been engaged with people from Ukraine and Donbass from the beginning of the conflict, some of whom have had life-changing injuries defending their homeland against Ukrainian fascism supported by NATO, and unfortunately supported also by those I have alluded to above.
Regardless of that however I would mention as well two names that come to mind at this time: Russell Texas Bentley, and Mark McCain, both of whom died honourably fighting with the Donbass militia defending the people of Donbass. Texas Bentley was an American communist, who also produced fantastic video footage of the struggle while he engaged in arms against the ‘’Ukrops’’. I sent money to Texas when I could. Mark McCain was one of our own, an Irish republican who kept true to his republican principles and no doubt recognised then the most belligerent imperialists behind the Kiev regime, ours and Russia’s eternal enemy in British imperialism. I remember them with great respect. Beir búa Z.
🖼 Michael O’Rourke is a former POW imprisoned on behalf of the INLA.
This garbage could have been written by Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Nigel Farage, the AfD or anyone of Putin's far right (dare I say neo-fascist or neo-nazis) acolytes.
ReplyDeleteWhat a complete crock of bullshit. In a nutshell, Russia launched an unprovoked war on a peaceful neighbour. It promptly carried out horrendous war crimes and crimes against humanity on civilian populations and targeting civilian infrastructure and essential services. They have abducted tens of thousands of children. After the Ukrainians defied all expectations by holding the Russians off -Countries all over the world began to supply the Ukrainians with various assistance.
ReplyDeleteIf one follows the logic of this wanker -the Brits have a right to invade all 32 counties of Ireland because the majority speak English and not Irish.
Currently, Russia and Trump are effectively on the same side. The so-called Russain/ Trump peace deal is akin to Putin breaking both your legs while stealing your car with your baby in the back seat. Trump pressures you to call it quits if Putin can keep your car and baby. And Trump gets your life savings for negotiating the 'truce'. You are left penniless, with 2 broken legs and your baby is still abducted.
I am utterly sickened that this wanker would write such a heap of lies and bullshit in defence of Putin and his atrocities as a war criminal and child trafficker.
'Unprovoked'? Now that's a 'crock of shit'.
DeleteSome pearlers here,
ReplyDelete"It began with the Nazi coup in 2014, not February 2022 with the Russian Special Military Operation." If that was true why did Russia not attack in 2014?
"He is now emphasising peace along with the usual lies and demonisation of ‘’Putin’’, the constantly used metonym for Russia as though it was run entirely by one man and was not the huge multi-layered parliamentary complex and presidential governmental system which it is."!! LOL...how long exactly has Putin been in power, wasn't it originally a 4 year term?
"They repeat the same insouciance as the imperialist politicians towards the tens of thousands murdered by the Kiev Nazis and towards the Ukrainian conscripts violently pressganged into Zelensky’s front lines to die, unable to retreat because they will be shot by the Azov Battalion fascist blockers at their rear to enforce Zelensky’s murderously insane order to fight until they die."
Sounds a very Russian tactic, Stalingrad anyone?
I wonder if this article had a bit more finesse than panache in the original Russian?
Steve, Russia annexed Crimes and went into the Donbass in 2014.
DeleteA reminder to all - play the ball not the man. Ideas not insults.
ReplyDeleteAh, the cages of the benign observers of imperialist expansionism have been rattled!
ReplyDeleteWe'll civilize all backward peoples, we'll gift them progress and development. We'll gift them our religion. Then we'll gift them our system of government. We'll bring them Christianity. Then we'll bring them Democracy!
By God, they'll all kneel at our altar. And to hell with the consequences!
That I suppose can be read either way - to the imperialist expansion of the West or that of Russia.
DeleteYes, it can be read either way. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!
DeleteIt's also true that geopolitical realism suggests the inadvisability of encroaching too closely upon a greater power.
In such scenarios, international law goes out the window, as evidenced by the 1983 US invasion of Grenada and the later invasion of Panama in '89.
The UN General Assembly condemned both as violations of international law and the European Parliament also condemned the Panama infringement.
...and proved how utterly useless the UN is, and gives an indication of the contempt the US has shown for it for decades.
DeleteA fellow realist, Lawrence Freedman said of Mearsheimer:
DeleteJohn simply can’t explain Russian behaviour because he is too focused on the international system and ignores the domestic forces at play. He suggests that Ukraine was about to join Nato, but it wasn’t, and he seems to find it reasonable to deny Ukraine the right to chart its own course. He also can’t detect Russia’s colonial attitudes towards Ukraine. I would consider myself a realist, but it is a realism based on assessing the situation as you find it rather than how you wish it to be based on some dogmatic theory.
I suppose it is a question of which model we use to interpret the world. The article above confirms to me that for some Marxism is the opium of the Marxists.
Different folks, different strokes.
DeleteSure, we all interpret the world according to the model we've created, but not all narratives or models are equal. The world, by its nature, is hierarchical, and any hierarchy is driven by self-interest. Hierarchies produce predators and victims, winners and losers.
Failing to understand the hierarchical nature of the world or the gravitational pulls of the universe will exacerbate problematic challenges. Any model or ideology that doesn't factor in these existential truths is inherently flawed.
There are different forms of hierarchy. Marxists and Realists agree on the existence of hierarchy but see widely different factors shaping it, varying strategies employed maintain the hierarchies, and different objectives for the hegemons. Others see the world as more interdependent, and from their perspective think such interdependence curbs the power of hierarchies.
DeleteSure, that's all true ... when it works! When rules and contracts are respected and honoured it's all grand, rules-based order and all that.
DeleteThe 'I-ness' and 'We-ness' both need to be acknowledged. Prioritising one over the other is where difficulties arise. Interdependence, if you drill down far enough, you'll find is grounded in enlightened self-interest too.
I think it is less about a rules based order and more about the dynamic pushing it. Realism under Kissinger and Morgenthau had its heyday but became increasingly unpersuasive in the face of explanatory gaps. Interdependence is very much grounded in self interest but the calculations for pursuing that self interest are vastly different. Same as with a capital driven logic as in Marxism or a power and security driven one as in Realism.
Delete"I think it is less about a rules-based order and more about the dynamic pushing it."
DeleteCan you say more about the dynamic pushing it?
I'm having difficulty grasping the thrust of your response.
At its most basic, the drive for profit will give rise to different outcomes to the drive for power and security. In the Marxist view the dominant actor is not the state but international capital. In the pluralist view there is a multiplicity of actors reaching across national boundaries and establishing relations that limit the ability, even the need, of the nation state to be as proactive. In the realist perspective the dominant actors are like billiard balls perpetually determined to clash and bounce of each other. In the pluralist view the actors behave more like a cobweb pulling each other into relationships where all see benefit to the point of not wanting to change it. Realist decision making is said to be carried out by rational state actors whereas pluralist decision making processes are not always rational but the outcome of bureaucratic manoeuvring by competing interests within a state that is not itself unified. Realism is not driven by human rights concerns or feel a need to intervene in the domestic situation of other countries unless the country in question produces a regime that will threaten power and security. Kissinger is a good example of a realist practitioner on the international arena.
DeleteIn brief, realists see the nation state as the dominant actor shaping all foreign policy. With Marxism and pluralism, the state is only one actor and not always dominant. Wars might be started in their view not because of power and security but because of the need to acquire markets or because there is a powerful military industrial complex that needs war or the threat of war to justify its own existence.
I studied all of this about 40 years ago when I was doing World Politics and found the competing perspectives fascinating. When I wrote my PhD, I used Marxist social protest theory to account for the IRA but Realism to explain the actions of the British state.
Thanks AM, for that mini tutorial. Appreciated.
DeleteI'm out on the road tomorrow and Friday. I'll chew that over and see if I can digest it and maybe come back with a response then.
Never Worry HJ. I found the usefulness of each model lay less in what it said about itself but in how it demonstrated the limitations of the others. Depending on the case study each had strong explanatory power. I always found Realism the easiest to work with but balked from its practitioners: Kissinger and Co. That said, the Marxists laid some truly bad eggs as well.
DeleteThanks for developing your response further.
DeleteSure, I can understand and see the value of the models now. As you say, their greatest utility is in comparison.
I still think that Mearsheimer's position is more than valid. Power and security clashes lead to this proxy war between the old Cold War adversaries. Furthermore, despite the attempts at point-scoring, there are several verifiable historical facts in Michael O'Rourke's piece above.
Chomsky in this interview supports his analysis.
HJ - I am familiar with that Chomsky interview. To my memory he was scathing of Putin in it, comparing his invasion to that of the Nazi invasion of Poland in the 1930s. In his first comments on the war he described it as the supreme international war crime. He offers some useful explanatory mitigation for Russian actions but little else.
DeleteMearsheimer, even within the Realist school, is regarded as being toe structuralist in his perspective. I tend to agree with that assertion despite favouring structuralist explanations myself.
Ukraine either has a right to exist as an independent nation free from external aggression or Russia has the right to deny that to Ukraine. I side with the Ukrainians for the same reason I side with the Palestinians, no more buying into Israel's justifications than Russia's.
Mearsheimer as you are aware has been excellent on Israel-Palestine - even labeled an antisemite for his efforts.
It's undeniable that it's a war crime. Chomsky equates it with the US invasion of Iraq and several other US crimes, as well as previous Russian transgressions. He also lays out the development of the evolving political circumstances that led to the conflict. Many of the points he makes are similar to Mearsheimer's analysis, and albeit in a less stringent manner not dissimilar to those made by Michael O'Rourke.
DeleteChomsky rejects the Western analysis without buying into the Russian one. Which makes him all the more persuasive. He is more scathing of Russia in this conflict.
DeleteThe attempt by Michael to depict the Kiev regime as Nazi and the Russian one as somewhere progressive seems an eyes wide shout way of viewing the world. Russia is a right wing authoritarian regime not without its own Nazi contingent. The suggestion from any quarter that for the first time in history a capitalist regime has waged a war of humanitarian intervention speaks for itself. Some Marxists in the past have tried to uphold the concept of progressive imperialism.
Chomsky like some of the realists paints an accurate enough picture of the lead up to Russia's invasion but it takes account for a range of agental factors that Mearsheimer seems to overlook or downplay in his analysis.
Though they differ greatly from Michael O'Rourke in their tone and expression, Noam Chomsky and John Mearsheimer are all pretty much on the same page as him in their recall of many of the salient facts.
DeleteThe Kiev regime did repress the use of the Russian tongue and did impose extreme censorship on those who opposed and rejected these impositions. This resulted in sections of the citizenry of the Donbass engaging in revolt. The regime responded by waging war on the rebels. They bombarded opposition strongholds for eight years before Russia intervened.
I think all three would also all agree that prior to Russia's intervention in 2014, Western Intelligence agencies exacerbated the situation further by becoming heavily involved in events that precipitated the Maidan coup.
All three are pointing out that none of the parties to the conflict have clean hands.
Mearsheimer and Chomsky sound as if they are trying to help others understand the war whereas this piece seems PR. Chomsky and Mearsheimer are savvy enough to know that Russian 'intervention' took place long before 2022. Mearsheimer himself said 'Russia invaded Ukraine and started the war'. His argument about NATO provoking Russia by seeking to bring Ukrainians has been dismissed by his fellow realists. Some of those insist there was a lot of provocation which had little to do with NATO expansionism and more to do with the West seeking to humiliate Russia. A more Marxist take sees that Putin's response not being to NATO enlargement which was merely a dance of the seven veils but to the West's assignation of Russia to a lowly place in the capitalist world order.
DeleteRecalling salient facts is less important than how such facts are interpreted. How a war supposedly designed to curb NATO expansionism increases NATO expansionism was crafted begs questions which leads to a search for other explanations which do not rule out provocation. I think provocation came in the form of one capitalist bully wanting to put manners on another and remind it of its place in the international capitalist order.
I admire both Mearsheimer and Chomsky for their moral courage. They have refused to buckle under serious pressure and become shills for US foreign policy.
"I think provocation came in the form of one capitalist bully wanting to put manners on another and remind it of its place in the international capitalist order".
DeleteAnd on that, we're in complete agreement.
Neither the West nor Putin has clean hands in this.
It is hard to think of a conflict in which the hands of the West were clean. It leaves us wondering how best Western values might be protected from the Western political class.
DeleteI am reminded of teh Munich betrayla of Czechoslovakia where the equivelent of teh Putin-Trump deal was made in 1938. After, what remainned of Czechoslovakia was swallowed by Germany. Th etreatment of Zelensky reminds me of "In the evening of 14 March 1939, Hitler summoned President Hácha to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.[1] Hitler deliberately kept him waiting for hours, while Hitler watched a film.[6] Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, in his memoirs, recalled that when Hácha arrived, Hitler said that "he was going to let the old gentleman rest and recover for two hours," which was incomprehensible to Keitel.[7] Finally, at 1:30 a.m., on 15 March 1939, Hitler saw the President. He told Hácha that as they were speaking, the German army was about to invade Czechoslovakia.[1]
ReplyDeleteHitler then gave the Czech President two options: cooperate with Germany, in which case the "entry of German troops would take place in a tolerable manner" and "permit Czechoslovakia a generous life of her own, autonomy and a degree of national freedom..." or face a scenario in which "resistance would be broken by force of arms, using all means."[8] Minutes of the conversation noted that for Hácha this was the most difficult decision of his life, but believed that in only a few years this decision would be comprehensible and in 50 years would probably be regarded as a blessing.[9] According to Joachim Fest, Hácha suffered a heart attack induced by Göring's threat to bomb the capital and by four o'clock he contacted Prague, effectively "signing Czechoslovakia away" to Germany.[10] Göring acknowledged making the threat to the British ambassador to Germany, Sir Nevile Henderson, but said that the threat came as a warning because the Czech government, after already agreeing to German occupation, couldn't guarantee that the Czech army would not fire on the advancing Germans.[11] Göring however does not mention that Hácha had a heart attack because of his threat.
The French Ambassador, Robert Coulondre, reported that according to an unnamed source considered reliable by Coulondre, by half past four, Hácha was "in a state of total collapse, and kept going only by means of injections."[12] Coulondre described the scene at the Reich Chancellery:
"The German ministers [Göring and Ribbentrop] were pitiless. They literally hunted Dr. Hácha and M. Chvalkovsky round the table on which the documents were lying, thrusting them continually before them, pushing pens into their hands, incessantly repeating that if they continued in their refusal, half of Prague would lie in ruins from bombing within two hours, and that this would be only the beginning. Hundreds of bombers were waiting the order to take off, and they would receive that order at six in the morning if the signatures were not forthcoming".[13]". The so-called Donbas pro Russians are the equivalent of the 6 County Loyalists. Lie Ulster,all of it, the majority voted for Ukraine independence.
I generally agree the ball ought be played, on this occasion I think someone representing Putin's FSB Covert Geopolitical Operations could be rightfully trashed talked trying to spread Putin's lies and disinformation.
ReplyDeleteIt is inexcusable to defend Russia genocidal war on the Ukrainians - to deny their existence, attacking civilians and infrastructure -including hospitals, mass graves, gang rapes and tortures and abducting Ukrainian children. This FSB asset tries to spin common universal revulsion at Russian atrocities is all a NATO conspiracy --hogwash. By defending Putin's war and trying to spread false information - player, by default makes himself the ball.
Russian Imperialism is wrong for all the same reasons British Imperialism was wrong. If existence of Russian speakers justifies Putin's invasion -- I was wrong to limit the Brits right to invade all 32 counties --that rational would justify the Brits invading everywhere English is spoken and not just Ireland.
Finally, the Ukrainians are not responsible for NATO. Ive said before, in the brinkmanship between Russia and NATO, Russia blinked first and badly miscalculated its invasion of Ukraine --and resulted in doubling the NATO/Russian border -it's sour-grapes for this FSB idiot to blame NATO for an own goal Putin created.
I agree with Steve's query: "I wonder if this article had a bit more finesse than panache in the original Russian?"
Better to trash the argument rather than the man. TPQ has a duty of care to all its writers regardless of what we feel they write.
DeleteAM, Noted:
ReplyDeleteMichael O’Rourke I am sorry for my personal attack on you. Your arguments are based on Russian disinformation and propaganda to deny Ukraine the right to exist and self determination while committing war crimes and atrocities on the civilian population.
Nice touch
DeleteHenry Joy "The Maidan coup" narrative is apologism for Putin . It was a popular uprising against a pro-Russian kleptocrat who vetoed a popular demand for closet Ukrainian ties to the EU. It was put down by snipers who killed 100 protesters. Putin annexed Crimea and the Donbass afterwards
ReplyDeleteI can understand your position on this, Barry.
DeleteBut I still hold that it takes two to tango. The cause of this unholy war, which is having ever-increasing consequences for the whole of Europe, needs to be more evenly distributed.
HJ - every war has at least two doing the tango, one of which is usually the aggressor and the other the aggrieved. Even distribution rarely applies to any conflict. Occam's razor might suggest Ukraine has the right not to be invaded. Russia has no right to invade. The West has no right to provoke.
DeleteBarry - this is one area where Mearsheimer is most heavily criticised - a glaring absence of consideration given to internal factors and agency. The same sort of criticism is also levelled at the Marxist IR observers. Lev Golinkin while in tandem with all your points regarded Maidan as a coup against a democratically elected government. It seemed to be very much a popular coup against a corrupt and repressive government which at the same time allowed the far right to come into their own.
I don't share the enthusiasm for some who from the comfort of their homes want these wars whether fought in Gaza or Ukraine to be fought until the last drop of somebody else's blood. So I think myself and Henry Joy are on the same page of feeling a bad peace is preferable to a good war, whatever that might be.
HJ - you might like Thomas Meaney on NATO. Best listened to on Podcast if the piece is too long.
DeleteHe portrays it in a very different light from its shills do.
Thanks for the link. I listened with interest as I tended to the garden this afternoon. Took me a while to acclimatise to the AI-generated voice-over though. Looking forward to reading it and digesting it further.
DeleteHenry Joy, there was as much provocation involved over Russia's invasion of Ukraine as there was over Nazi Germany's conquest of Czechoslovakia and Poland; Japan's invasion of Manchuria and China and Italy conquest of Abyssinia in the 1930s. NONE. Nor was there "any provocation" involved in Western countries' conquest of African countries in the "Scramble" for that continent in the late 19th century. It was straight forward imperial aggression and conquest. The United Nations and other institutions of the much derided post 1945 rules based international order were formed to prevent the recurrence of territorial land grabs defined at Nuremberg as the supreme war crime of aggression. No matter which way you slice it, the Russian war on Ukraine falls squarely into that category.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Barry. Going by UN criteria, it was a war crime.
ReplyDeleteIf you believe there was no provocation, then that's your call.
When there is so much evidence of provocation the inference is that it can only be missed by viewing events through a Western ideological lens rather than looking at facts. We should no more accept at face value what an ideology says of itself than we would what a man says of himself.
DeleteRevisiting Mencken should help: he said of religion that we should respect the other person's only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
Same with all ideology including Western liberal democracy.
HJ and MickO
ReplyDeleteUkraine did not provoke Russia. I think both of you are mis-attributing Russia/NATO rivalry as the responsibility of Ukraine. Maybe, we could say that between Russia and NATO, Russia blinked first in a catastrophic move for both itself and Ukraine. Rather than keep NATO away from the Russian border, in an own goal, Russia more than doubled the Russian/NATO border. Russia has no legitimate claim over Ukraine or right to occupy its territory.
Any defence or justification for Russia's unprovoked war of aggression by blaming Ukraine is just bullshit.
Could have been avoided if at the collapse of the Berlin Wall NATO instantly granted Russia membership.
Delete@ Christy
ReplyDeleteI'd like you to please read my comments more carefully Christy. Nowhere in this thread have I attributed responsibility for the conflict to Ukraine.
"Power and security clashes lead to this proxy war between the old Cold War adversaries."
@ Steve R
Indeed Steve, Chomsky in his interview with Lex Fridman supports your analysis. (See my hyperlink to that interview in a previous comment.) In that interview, he states that Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a demilitarised Europe