Before condemning Russia for using veto in UNSC, ruling Crimean referendum illegal or blaming Mr Putin for the Ukraine crisis, let us remember our glass houses, or our record of interventionism and above all EU role in creating this crisis in the first place.
ِTwo million voters in Crimea decided by over 97 percent yes in a referendum, to rejoin Russia (going back to 1954 status quo before the peninsula was given to Ukraine by Moscow without the Crimeans being consulted ) one day after Russia vetoed an American sponsored UN Security Council resolution aiming to block the referendum. Given the ethnic balance of the peninsula population the result was no surprise. Even a ‘no’ vote wouldn’t have kept the 1954-2014 status-quo since the other choice would have been more power to Crimea and less rule from Kiev.
While our Foreign Secretary carry on condemning the result, with a growing American size mouth, and threatening nonsensical un-implementable sanctions , and our Fleet Street subs coming up with cold-war-era headlines, let us just remember some historic facts about glass houses, goose and gander and the the like metaphors. We, and our American allies hailed elections in Afghanistan and Iraq ( countries with no traditions of fair elections or fair-play , and who don’t play cricket) as great democratic steps forward, even though they were held under military occupation ( or our & American troops kicking down doors while families having dinner was not “occupation” the same way Arabs and Muslims wouldn’t consider colnialising Spain, Egypt, and formally Christian lands AS occupation, but god’s liberation from infidels?); elections held while and terrible strife going on with car bombs round the corner from almost every polling station.
On the Russian veto in the UN on a Security Council resolution nullifying the result of the referendum before it was held: are we supposed to be surprised, and then rushing to condemn it?
On June 14,1982, we vetoed ( Panamanian-Spanish drafted )UN SC resolution 502 calling for ceasefire, in the Falklands ( USA Abstained contrary to promises made letting us down for their own interest in Latin America) . and the war went on with hundreds of casualties on booth sides. Let us just bear in mind facts on geo-strategic terms: Our main land of Great Britain and Northern Ireland distance from the Falklands to that of Crimea’s proximity to Russia and the peninsula’s strategic importance from a defence view point to Russian mainland and as a base of its mighty Black Sea Fleet.
Before rushing to condemn Vladimir Putin as trying to resurrect “a neo-Soviet Union,” as sound-bitten by boys-commentator still licking OxBridge exam ink off their soft fingers; and BBC hacks peppering their copy and reports with degrading adjectives like the first voters seen ” behind a shabby curtain” in polling booth, and voter ”not folding her ballot paper before depositing it in the box,” let us remind ourselves how did this crisis start, and who has triggered it.
Last week the German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, ” Europe will not allow the annexation of the Crimea to by Russia “. Two days earlier, our Prime Minister David Cameron made a statement to the House of Commons announcing measures against Russia . Measures like freezing the assets of Russian oligarchs who back President Putin, and blocking or freezing visas to enter and stay in UK. He was making a statement after returning from an emergency meeting in Brussels. It seems to be measures to implement the EU strategy to support for Ukrainian nationalists ( and disregarding the rights of a third of Ukrainians who are ethnically Russian, or Russian speakers or by culture ) .
Has Mr cameron, once hailed for vetoing EU attempts to ram the Euro down our national throat has finally made us Brussels’ poodle, implementing a secrete EU agenda while disregarding our own interest; the same way Tony Blair made us America’s poodle for almost a decade?
It is puzzling, both to City of London traders and fiscal experts as why a British leader would rush with measures- or talk of measures that is likely to hurt the economy for the sake of Europe?
Russian Oligarchs have already started to withdraw their assets and investments worth billions from the city and other areas where they might be frozen. They are likely to sell real Estate and property worth billions leading the collapse of real estate values and unemployment in that sector. .
Mr Cameron’s unwise statement ( combined with our Foreign Secretary American size mouth) are giving negative signals to enrich the world’s super rich and international its investors that their money, assets and investments are not as safe in Britain as they have thought. They would turn away from London financial market and the City, through-which half the world money transaction go every day, and invest with our competitors instead. . .
Have we forgotten during the Falklands war, how America, to protect her interests within the Organisation of the American States, left us diplomatically isolated, when UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick abstained instead of joining UK to veto a resolution ( which would have kept our troops on Royal navy task-force ship in the middle of Atlantic winter for months) the vary moment president Ronald Reagan was sitting next to Prime Minister Thatcher for dinner at the G7 summit in Versailles?
So why did Mr Cameron put our economy at risk instead of taking a leaf off America’a own self interest book.?
Unlike Tony Blair’s ideological conviction ( like his liberal interventionism doctrine ) Mr. Cameron foreign policy has been, so-far, pragmatic and balanced. He often follows given advice by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ( FOC traditionally don’t like Downing Street meddling in foreign policy fearing party politics might unlock their centuries-long work, and it became a bone of contention with the late lady Thatcher ) . This explains why he is less popular in the American media and public-opinion over there than Mr Blair, as Mr Cameron treads a more independent path safeguarding British national interests compared to Mr Blair’s policy which made Great Britain a poodle following the ” the Colonies” .
( For example, despite pressure from Jewish organisations and many backbenchers on all sides before his visit to Israel to recognise the ” Jewishness of Israel as the Jewish state ,” officially, Mr Cameron followed the FCO instructions and steered away from the subject and sympathised with Israel personally in a tactful speech well balanced with equally sympathetic with the Palestinians. No 10 lobby briefings and spokesman referred to ” his visit to the occupied territories ” the FCO traditional line as defined by British drafted UNSC resolution 242 of 1967).
Given Mr. Cameron pragmatic approach to foreign policy, why would he put the interests of his country in second place to that of NATO/EU and give in to Brussels and Washington pressure over Russia ?
Same question arises regarding the German Chancellor ( no evident pressure from Brussels) . Russia has become the number one trade partner with Germany ( and vice versa ) ; Russian gas and oil imports make 20-30 % (depending on season) of German energy after the unwise decision to close most of the nuclear power plants to win the votes of the left and the Greens ( which is ideology rather than scientific studies or economic reasons ) .
The answer in the analysis had not been dealt with or looked at by vast majority of British commentators. which is a mysterious. The handful of commentators who looked at it found the answer in the strategic undeclared long-term plans of the European Union Commission (a non- elected group of authoritarian bureaucrats, with no mechanism to hold them accountable neither to European Parliamentarians or to national parliaments who representing voters and taxpayers in their own countries. national parliaments, like our House of Commons who are becoming powerless by the day to contradict rules and directives issued by the EU commission let alone gaining back power lost thanks to Lisbon Treaty – the name given to the EU constitution to get leaders who promised a referendum on the EU constitution to spit in the electorate’s eye and welsh back on the election promise ) .
The defacto chief of staff of this strategy in the Brussels’s expansionist bunker is non but Frau Merkel her self, with her country’s economic might guaranteeing the loans to countries in southern Europe , which is sinking economically such as Greece and Spain or bribing the newer eastern members. .
What we joined in (January 1, 1973) was a Common market for goods and trade, and majority of people were convinced it would be another Commonwealth of Europe, and nobody dreamed that one day our House of Commons would be powerless before unelected overpaid commission ( and that is why near 60% voted in 1975 labour government referendum to remain in the European Common Market NOT in a Federal European Union ) has been evolved by EU commission into a strategy to create a Federal Super-State, or the United States of Europe, without consulting electorate, or without a democratic mandate by the voters . As if by itself isn’t bad enough, the EU expansionist strategy is to go after almost all former Soviet Union Republics, west of Russia, to include them in what American commentators frequently refer to as ” the United States of Europe” and not once were corrected by BBC presenters interviewing them.
When it comes to media debates, academic studies or school essays in Germany, Europe is not a foreign policy issue but an internal one as the public psyche in Germany has been programmed to accept, by media and in schools where German children are taught to think of themselves as Europeans form Bavaria or the Black Forest before they are German .
Of course, once can not overlook psychological motivations and weight of history of chauvinistic aspects of post World War One German nationalism which gave birth to the criminal Nazism . However it is also a German strategy to economically underpin – if not fully promote- the project of the 21 Century of a grand Federal Europe from The Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea and and rom the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea , which ( if not fully controlled by Berlin) would give Germany a chance to achieve, BY economical power fiscal muscles what it failed to do in two world wars: controlling a United Federal Europe, and creating massive economy, and a market matching , if not surpassing the U.S. economy .
In the 21st century, Frau Merkel is seeking to achieve an ambitious and an upgraded larger version of Otto Von Bismarck ‘s dream of European hegemony of the 19th century.
Since the end of the cold war by the fall of Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact , Brussels hastened the pace of expansion eastward ( There is a Commissioner office for expansion and enlargement —- headed by as usual unelected commissioner Stefan Fule, a german speaking Czech while the first commissioner of the expansion was the German Gunter Vergheugen ) .
The EU strategy is to continue expansion to include the countries of the Warsaw Pact , and then swallow the republics of the former Soviet Union , western borders of Russia .
Such Strategy satisfy America (and help ease off tension over the World Trade agreement dispute over imports ) and deploying high tech strategic defence equipment on Mr Putin’s lawn, while placing Europe under U.S. Strategic Defense umbrella gives European nations’ an opportunity to reduce the defence budget ( including our own to keep betraying our armed forces as they did for 30 years).
President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB man, became aware of the EU ‘s ambition. Thus he offered ten billion to Ukrainian over-thrown President Viktor Yanukovych to prevent the EU plan to swallow Ukraine’s full membership in the European Union . he saw the step not only as to deprive Russia, for a 200 years buffer zone against threats from the west, but also threatens a divisive war. Residents of the eastern and north eastern Russian majorities or Russian culture and linked economically with Russia . Unlike what our politicians claim,. it is in Mr Putin’s interest to keep Ukraine united, at least asa buffer zone with a hostile west, instead of costly blood war and bringing backed Nato hostile new state on his borders.
As for the Crimea , it is a red line President Putin, like any Russian leader before him, will not allow anybody to cross..
It is no secret to the European Commission, in its expansionist strategy that no Russian leader – since the time of Catherine II the Great ( Yekaterina Alexeevna) will; permit eyes to fall upon the sight of US Sixth Fleet battleships docking in Sabestapol base of the mighty southern Russian Fleet,or let Russian navy ships shadowed in the water of the Back Sea by American war ships. You only need to see how Mr Putin holds his nose and backs a dictator like Assad in Syria in order to keep the one base in the Mediterranean to realise that there is no way he’d give up the bases in the Crimea.
Moscow did not cause the crisis in Ukraine as much as it was caused by the expansion strategy of the European Commission , in agreement with NATO , to create a Super European Federation looking the Russians eyeball to eyeball .
Not being consulted in any democratic forum, or election on this strategy, which could lead to another cold war It is one main reason that that peoples of European nations, already distrust their leaders who dare not hold a referendum on EU membership..
Mr Blair reneged on a campaign pledge to hold a referendum. The referendum was also in the Conservative manifesto , Cameron too used his predecessor signing the Lisbon Treaty as an excuse to get out of his promise but offers a referendum in 2017 if re-elected in May 2015 , which is not guaranteed. Leader of HM opposition, Ed Miliband referendum promise is joke that not even worth discussion.
Had the European Commission been in a position ever to face the electorate it wouldn’t have been in a position to take on Mr Putin. Russia’s modest powerful, dertrimend nationalist leader since the 1950s , who also commands large popularity in confronting the west.
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©Copyright Adel darwish 2014, not to be reprinted, reproduced,or copied in whole or in part without the author’s permission