Western hypocrisy has gone into overdrive. And the media are in lockstep with their governments. We've had a 'humanitarian' intervention into Libya that toppled a government (still illegal under international law, by the way, without a specific UN resolution) and left a country in chaos, then we had a cheering of Egyptian 'activists' while the Western paid military toppled another government (elected, this time) and massacred civilians without a single sanction being imposed by the US or Europe (and with US politicians talking about the military 'restoring democracy'). We had Syria being stirred into civil war by outside hands, but again described as a 'people's uprising', with the West immediately recognising the opposition as the legitimate government (shortly before they fragmented). And now we have the Ukraine, with EU and US dignitaries repeatedly visiting the demonstrators in Kiev and offering encouragement and support (can you imagine Russia and China coming to New York or London to encourage the Occupy protesters? No, me neither), referring to them as the 'people of Ukraine' (never mind the East Ukrainians), with the Western media gushing over their demands (to topple an elected president) while failing utterly to mention the far right groups within the protester camps, and with everyone in the West referring to the parliament that formed afterwards under the occupation of the protesters as 'the interim government'. When the Ukrainian president was in power, the media here quoted the protesters. Now that the president has been ousted and the Eastern Ukrainians are starting to protest, the media here now quote 'the interim government'.
The bias is so obvious, I don't know how any news reader can keep a straight face on the TV anymore.
But the other thing to mention here is the sheer incompetence of Western meddling (I can't dignify it by calling it diplomacy). Libya is reeling (as is Iraq, that other 'successful intervention'), Egypt is a military state and Syria is so bad that even the liberal and neo-con interventionists hesitated to demand more intervention.
The West has been encouraging the separation of Ukraine from Russia (like they did with Georgia, and look how that turned out), and now they are surprised that Russia has mobilised to support ethnic Russians in Ukraine and the strategically vital zone of the Crimea.
Western commentators are currently bleating about Russia crossing red lines, threatening stability in the Ukraine, and threatening the Ukraine itself.
The US backed Georgia not so long ago and hinted that they might lend it NATO support. Russia struck across its border, and US promises never materialised. Now the EU is promising Ukraine entry into its market and the US (via the IMF) is promising loans. Meanwhile the Russian army has mobilised on the border and 'armed men' have seized control of airports in the Crimea. What do you think will come of the West's promises now? Hmmm?
Western hubris, arrogance and sheer stupidity have pushed Russia into a corner and forced it to act. Russia was never going to abandon either its ethnic population in Ukraine nor it's vital Black Sea base in the Crimea. The Ukrainian economy was in meltdown, and the EU was never going to give it the money it needed to avoid crashing, and neither will the US. What an earth were these people hoping to gain from this? The US have warned Russia against military action, but there are no NATO forces nearby that can make that threat credible. They can't threaten Russia with sanctions, because it's too big, supplies Europe with most of its gas and oil, and is a UN security council member.
Both halves of Ukraine are going to come to blows, and Russia will not let its side fall. If the tension is not resolved in the next couple of days, then the only way to prevent civil war on a Syrian scale will be to partition the country, with Russia getting Crimea and the industrial east, and Europe (and NATO) getting the EU-friendly west. And this partition would have to be done pretty quickly.
And what is the West going to do with its side of the Ukraine (apart from complain about Ukraine immigrants flooding into the EU as cheap labour)? Does it even really want it?
They said the world changed after 9/11. It did. The leaders of the US and the EU, both on the left and the right, got a whole lot more stupid, infinitely more arrogant and a whole lot more hypocritical. And they also forgot all the most basic rules of diplomacy.
Diplomacy is about the art of the possible, not the fulfilment of ideological fantasies.
You know, if you stripped away all the ideology, all the rhetoric, and just concentrated on the actions, you'd think the West was already at war with Russia - or rather, that the Cold War never ended. Because they're not treating it as another sovereign nation in a global forum - they're treating it as an enemy that must be outwitted, outmanoeuvred and defeated. They think that Russia must step down and surrender its interests or be considered an irrational enemy, regardless of its case. And all this while both NATO and the EU blatantly expands towards Russia's borders.
And after Russia, China is next.
What are our leaders (and the idiot media commentators who cheer them on and deliberately misreport on their behalf) thinking?
Weren't two world wars enough?
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