Veteran Officials of Republican Administrations Urge Reality Check on Ukraine—Kissinger; Paul Craig Roberts

http://larouchepac.com/node/30093

Veteran Officials of Republican Administrations Urge Reality Check on Ukraine—Kissinger; Paul Craig Roberts

March 7, 2014 • 10:06AM

Two quite different individuals who served as officials in Republican Administrations — Henry Kissinger of Harvard, the Rockefellers, and the foreign policy "realist" faction, and maverick veteran of the Reagan Administration's "Reaganomics" team Paul Craig Roberts — published articles, Thursday, on the danger of false assumptions guiding what passes for U.S. policy regarding Ukraine.

Kissinger says at the outset of his op-ed in the Washington Post, that"Public discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation. But do we know where we are going? In my life, I have seen four wars begun with great enthusiasm and public support, all of which we did not know how to end and from three of which we withdrew unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins."He goes on in "on the one hand, on the other hand" style to lay out the interests and failings of the various parties to the crisis — the U.S., the Russians, the European Union, and the Ukrainians, themselves. Among his statements about the Ukrainians is that the politicians are unwilling to compromise and share power, and he comments,"A wise U.S. policy toward Ukraine would seek a way for the two parts of the country to cooperate with each other. We should seek reconciliation, not the domination of a faction."He continues:

"Russia and the West, and least of all the various factions in Ukraine, have not acted on this principle. Each has made the situation worse. Russia would not be able to impose a military solution without isolating itself at a time when many of its borders are already precarious. For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one."

Kissinger offers four points for consideration along these lines, on how to proceed. Notably, in light of the current trend in Western policy, he says that Ukraine should not join NATO.

Paul Craig Roberts in his article, yesterday, continues his series of exposés on the Washington-organized coup in Ukraine, with a focus on one of his themes: the role of the intense disinformation by the "mainstream media" which has been a crucial support of the coup. In his denunciation of the "press-titutes," he repeatedly debunks the fundamental lie now underpinning U.S. policymaking, that Russia has invaded Ukraine — a point made soto voce in Kissinger's remarks quoted above, about what would happen were Russia to try to impose a military solution.

Roberts, after an extended denunciation of the press-titutes, remarks that even exceptions to the rule such as Glenn Greenwald and Russia Today's Abby Martin — for both of whom he expresses great admiration of their intelligence and courage — "cannot fully escape Western propaganda."

He then cites the cases of these two being taken in by the Western propaganda that Russia had invaded Crimea—when "The fact of the matter is that those 16,000 Russian troops have been in Crimea since the 1990s. Under the Russian-Ukrainian agreement, Russia has the right to base 25,000 troops in Crimea."

Roberts drives the point home by reporting on the wiretapped phone call between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and Catherine Ashton, which blows a gaping hole in the West's propaganda. [A review of the U.S. press yesterday indicates that, contrary to press in the rest of the world, no other American press outlet covered the explosive Paet-Ashton revelations!]

Roberts recapitulates the current situation in his closing paragraph:

"What has happened in Ukraine is that Washington plotted against and overthrew an elected legitimate government and then lost control to neo-nazis who are threatening the large Russian population in southern and eastern Ukraine, provinces that formerly were part of Russia. These threatened Russians have appealed for Russia's help, and just like the Russians in South Ossetia, they will receive Russia's help. The Obama regime and its presstitutes will continue to lie about everything."