Il pericoloso avventurismo dei “progressisti” dell'Unione Europea

Sarà bene che nessuno sottovaluti l'atteggiamento con cui l'establishment dell'Unione Europea - ed in particolare il milieu progressista – sta affrontando la crisi in Ucraina.

Nel leggere le prese di posizione e le indicazioni che vengono da Bruxelles e dalle capitali europee, si ha la netta impressione che la ruota della storia stia girando all'indietro per riportare gli scenari nelle zone temporali più inquietanti della storia recente dell'Europa.

Quando il presidente del Parlamento Europeo Schultz afferma senza problemi che intende dialogare con i fascisti ucraini del movimento Svoboda, indica che si è rotto il meccanismo - anche formale- dei “paletti democratici” sui quali è stato edificato quello che ormai si va configurando come un polo imperialista. I presupposti democratici che l'UE ha opposto per anni all'ingresso della Turchia nell'Unione sembrano materia di un'altra epoca. L'abbassamento si era già verificato sulla situazione interna dell'Ungheria oggi governata da movimenti reazionari. Ma è sull'Ucraina che il mito della funzione progressiva dell'Unione Europea si sta rapidamente sgretolando. E con esso si sbriciola ogni residuo di credibilità

Qualche indizio era già leggibile nell'intervista rilasciata dal pacifista, ecologista ed ex ministro degli esteri tedesco Josckha Fischer sul Corriere della Sera, quando affermava che l'Unione Europea deve capire che “difendere i propri interessi non è a costo zero”. L'oltranzismo di Fischer, che avevamo già visto all'opera nell'aggressione alla Jugoslavia nel 1999, è ancora più esplicito in relazione alla crisi ucraina e ai rapporti con la Russia. “La relazione con Mosca sarebbe molto più semplice se l'Unione Europea fosse più forte e assertiva. Al Cremlino si capiscono sempre meglio i rapporti di forza”. Un linguaggio decisamente esplicito.che invita l'Unione Europea a cambiare atteggiamento nei confronti dell'Est europeo.

Poche settimane fa erano stati i ministri della Difesa e degli Esteri tedeschi, alla vigilia della Conferenza per la Sicurezza di Monaco, a far intendere che non basta più essere una potenza economica per diventare una “potenza globale” e che – ad esempio – l'Africa torna ad essere una area di interesse strategico. Sarà un caso ma i soldati francesi ed ora anche “europei” (tra cui 250 soldati tedeschi) sono ormai presenti in tutti i paesi dell'Africa occidentale e centrale.

Ma se l'establishment della maggiore potenza dell'Unione Europea – la Germania – torna a parlare il linguaggio dei rapporti di forza con la Russia e sull'Europa dell'Est, anche i “progressisti” (vedi il circuito de La Repubblica e dei media di area Pd in Italia) si allineano e arruolano nelle ambizioni da potenza globale dell'Unione Europea.

La crisi in ucraina sembra avere un effetto quasi costituente per tali ambizioni. Una tendenza che, a nostro avviso, era già in incubazione nella volenterosa partecipazione delle potenze europee (Germania, Italia, Francia tutte guidate da governi di centro-sinistra) all'aggressione contro la Serbia nel 1999.

Di fronte ai rischi quasi obiettivi di una secessione dell'Ucraina tra le regioni filo-occidentali e quelle filo-russe, il presidente francese Hollande ha affermato che “In Ucraina e' indispensabile garantire una transizione pacifica, oltre all'unita' ed integrita' territoriale del paese” e che Unione Europea e Russia devono collaborare su questo obiettivo.

Bernard Guetta, ad esempio, scrive sulla rivista di area “progressista” Internazionale, che in Ucraina “La questione va risolta alla svelta, e per farlo l’Unione europea deve mettere la Russia con le spalle al muro proponendole una trattativa, anche segreta se necessario, per stabilizzare l’Ucraina ed evitare un’inutile crisi continentale”.

L'Unione Europea dunque sembra attraversata da un demone a doppia faccia. Da un lato la consapevolezza che una rottura con la Russia sarebbe un boomerang sul piano delle forniture energetiche e della destabilizzazione economia dell'Ucraina, dall'altro le crescenti ambizioni ad agire come potenza globale – soprattutto nella propria area di influenza – fa crescere le posizioni interventiste che spingono ad un confronto duro e diretto con Mosca per farle capire che “in Europa l'aria è cambiata”. Il dramma è che questa seconda posizione – come fu per il Mussolini "socialista" e interventista nella prima guerra mondiale – vede impegnato proprio il milieu progressista europeo più che le forze conservatrici, come accade in Jugoslavia quindici anni fa e come accadde in Europa un secolo fa. E' molto più di uno scenario inquietante.

Will coup in Ukraine divide U.S. and German imperialism?

German media campaigns for war in Ukraine

By Ulrich Rippert 
7 March 2014

So-called liberal German media outlets such as the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, which is close to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and the Green Party-aligned TAZ have responded to the intensification of the crisis in Ukraine with a vehement campaign for war. As though they had received their training in Goebbels’ propaganda ministry, some commentators are openly defending fascist parties, hailing anti-Semitic militias as freedom fighters, and calling for a military strike against Russia.

On Monday, TAZ Russian correspondent Klaus-Helge Donath railed against “Berlin’s cuddly diplomats” in a lead article. He accused the German government of allowing Putin to lead them “around the arena by the nose.” On the title page, an oversized telephone receiver was featured, designed to show that Berlin’s policy was restricted to diplomatic efforts.

The west could no longer allow Putin “to make a fool of them,” TAZ insisted.

Donath explicitly justified collaborating with fascists. “No one disputes that there are influential, radical right-wing forces,” he wrote. “But are there not several groups in the Ukraine as in other European democracies?”

When violent groups overthrew the President in Kiev two weeks ago, Donath defended the Ukrainian fascists, who enjoy close ties to the German government. He described them as “an active part of Ukrainian society,” which had driven forward “the protests of Ukrainian society against a pro-Soviet, kleptocratic autocracy.”

In the same vein, Stefan Kornelius went on the offensive in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. He described the overthrow of Yanukovych as a “revolution” which had to be defended. By contrast, he accused Russian President Putin of knowing only the language of violence, striving for a counter-revolution and being intent on war. Therefore, he had to be forcibly resisted.

That Kornelius dares to describe the fascists as national revolutionaries, in Ukraine of all places, where names like Babi Yar recall some of the worst Nazi crimes, is not only deeply repugnant but also politically criminal.

Yet Kornelius is aware that the right-wing putsch in Ukraine was guided by external forces, above all by the deliberate actions of the German and American governments. He wrote in his comment that the previous power relations in Ukraine were overturned by a “political intervention.”

The course of this political intervention is well known. When Viktor Yanukovych refused last November to sign an association agreement with the European Union (EU), the governments in Washington and Berlin began a systematic campaign of destabilisation. They supported the pro-EU opposition which organised protests against Yanukovych. Along with Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland and Vitali Klitschko’s Udar, both right-wing parties with close ties to Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, the fascist Svoboda party of Oleg Tyahnybok was also included.

The fact that Svoboda employs neofascist symbols, rails against foreigners, Jews, Poles and Hungarians, maintains close ties to the French National Front, and that it was compared with Greece’s Golden Dawn and Hungary’s Jobbik by the World Jewish Congress did not prevent the German and American governments from publicly supporting Tyahnybok.

Kornelius defended this collaboration with the fascists and was supported by his editorial colleague Daniel Brössler. In the same paper, Brössler demanded, “The west has to set limits for Putin.” Brössler demanded that the west had to “establish a state of emergency” for Russia. This meant sanctions at least.

On Wednesday afternoon, Kornelius went one better. In an online comment, he called on the German government “not to accept the facts created by Putin.” Then he posed the question, “Can Russia only be impressed by counter measures if the navy is sent quickly?”

He did not provide a direct answer, but noted that all diplomatic and psychological efforts or the “restricted pinpricks of sanctions” were failing to achieve anything. “A brutal but calculated duel” was necessary. He demanded that decisiveness be answered with decisiveness, leaving no doubt that he was talking about military escalation.

Similar war propaganda came from Eric T. Hansen in Die Zeit. He wrote that although reason, caution and compromise were good virtues, Europe had “to learn power politics.” The article went on: “We convince ourselves that the world works generally on a rational basis, with lots of compromise and consideration.” This is false. “Man is not a moral animal, but an animal of power.” The EU stood at a crossroads, Hansen continued. “Does it have the guts to meet power politics with power politics? Or will it withdraw into the old patterns, like the Germans in the Cold War?”

He wrote of post-war Germany with disdain. “Above all that means peace demonstrations, and statements, and anger, and talk shows. Oh god, the talk shows! All of this is called moral politics, and the emphasis is on moral.”

To leave no doubt about for what he was calling for, Hansen wrote, “Now I know what you’re thinking. Hansen wants to take us to war. But that is the moral politician in you who is speaking. He screams ‘war, never again’ at every opportunity, he can’t do anything else.”

This is explicit. When Hansen ridicules “moral politicians,” he means the replacement of the demand “war, never again,” which became deeply imbedded in the population after two world wars with hundreds of millions of dead, with the call, “we want war again!”

As with Kornelius and Klaus-Helge Donath, Hansen speaks for a super-rich layer at the top, who set the tone in politics and the media, and, as in the 1930s, are crying for war and dictatorship. At that time, many lackeys of the Nazis sat in the editorial offices and at university lecterns.

As one reads such comments, the angry remark of Max Liebermann springs to mind. When he saw the hordes of the SA marching through the Brandenburg Gate in 1933, he said, “I can’t eat as much as I would like to throw up!” But anger and outrage are not adequate to combat the cheerleaders for war. The working class and youth must take up the struggle against war and fascism on the basis of an international, socialist programme.

The events in Ukraine since November 2013 are so astonishing as almost to defy belief.

An legitimately-elected (said by all international monitors) Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovich, has been driven from office, forced to flee as a war criminal after more than three months of violent protest and terrorist killings by so-called opposition.

His “crime” according to protest leaders was that he rejected an EU offer of a vaguely-defined associate EU membership that offered little to Ukraine in favor of a concrete deal with Russia that gave immediate €15 billion debt relief and a huge reduction in Russian gas import prices. Washington at that point went into high gear and the result today is catastrophe.

A secretive neo-nazi military organization reported linked to NATO played a decisive role in targeted sniper attacks and violence that led to the collapse of the elected government.

But the West is not finished with destroying Ukraine. Now comes the IMF with severe conditionalities as prerequisite to any Western financial help.

After the famous leaked phone call of US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland with the US Ambassador in Kiev, where she discussed the details of who she wanted in a new coalition government in Kiev, and where she rejected the EU solutions with her “Fuck the EU” comment,[1] the EU went it alone. Germany’s Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier proposed that he and his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, fly to Kiev and try to reach a resolution of the violence before escalation. Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski was asked to join. The talks in Kiev included the EU delegation, Yanukovich, the three opposition leaders and a Russian representative. The USA was not invited.[2]

The EU intervention without Washington was extraordinary and reveals the deeping division between the two in recent months. In effect it was the EU saying to the US State Department, “F*** the US,” we will end this ourselves.

After hard talks, all major parties including the majority of protesters, agreed to new presidential elections in December, return to the 2004 Constitution and release of Julia Tymoshenko from prison. The compromise appeared to end the months long chaos and give a way out for all major players.

The diplomatic compromise lasted less than twelve hours. Then all hell broke loose.

Snipers began shooting into the crowd on February 22 in Maidan or Independence Square. Panic ensued and riot police retreated in panic according to eyewitnesses. The opposition leader Vitali Klitschko withdrew from the deal, no reason given. Yanukovich fled Kiev.[3]

The question unanswered until now is who deployed the snipers? According to veteran US intelligence sources, the snipers came from an ultra-right-wing military organization known as Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).

[IMAGE: Members of UNA-UNSO marching in Lviv.]

Strange Ukraine ‘Nationalists’

The leader of UNA-UNSO, Andriy Shkil, ten years ago became an adviser to Julia Tymoshenko. UNA-UNSO, during the US-instigated 2003-2004 “Orange Revolution”, backed pro-NATO candidate Viktor Yushchenko against his pro-Russian opponent, Yanukovich. UNA-UNSO members provided security for the supporters of Yushchenko and Julia Tymoshenko on Independence Square in Kiev in 2003-4.[4]

UNA-UNSO is also reported to have close ties to the German National Democratic Party (NDP). [5]

Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 the crack-para-military UNA-UNSO members have been behind every revolt against Russian influence. The one connecting thread in their violent campaigns is always anti-Russia. The organization, according to veteran US intelligence sources, is part of a secret NATO “GLADIO” organization, and not a Ukraine nationalist group as portrayed in western media. [6]

According to these sources, UNA-UNSO have been involved (confirmed officially) in the Lithuanian events in the Winter of 1991, the Soviet Coup d’etat in Summer 1991, the war for the Pridnister Republic 1992, the anti-Moscow Abkhazia War 1993, the Chechen War, the US-organized Kosovo Campaign Against the Serbs, and the August 8 2008 war in Georgia. According to these reports, UNA-UNSO para-military have been involved in every NATO dirty war in the post-cold war period, always fighting on behalf of NATO. “These people are the dangerous mercenaries used all over the world to fight NATO’s dirty war, and to frame Russia because this group pretends to be Russian special forces. THESE ARE THE BAD GUYS, forget about the window dressing nationalists, these are the men behind the sniper rifles,” these sources insist. [7]

If true that UNA-UNSO is not “Ukrainian” opposition, but rather a highly secret NATO force using Ukraine as base, it would suggest that the EU peace compromise with the moderates was likely sabotaged by the one major player excluded from the Kiev 21 February diplomatic talks—Victoria Nuland’s State Department.[8] Both Nuland and right-wing Republican US Senator John McCainhave had contact with the leader of the Ukrainian opposition Svoboda Party, whose leader is openly anti-semitic and defends the deeds of a World War II Ukrainian SS-Galicia Division head.[9]The party was registered in 1995, initially calling itself the “Social National Party of Ukraine” and using a swastika style logo. Svoboda is the electoral front for neo-nazi organizations in Ukraine such as UNA-UNSO.[10]

One further indication that Nuland’s hand is shaping latest Ukraine events is the fact that the new Ukrainian Parliament is expected to nominate Nuland’s choice, Arseny Yatsenyuk, from Tymoshenko’s party, to be interim head of the new Cabinet.

Whatever the final truth, clear is that Washington has prepared a new economic rape of Ukraine using its control over the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

IMF plunder of Ukraine Crown Jewels

Now that the “opposition” has driven a duly-elected president into exile somewhere unknown, and dissolved the national riot police, Berkut, Washington has demanded that Ukraine submit to onerous IMF conditionalities.

In negotiations last October, the IMF demanded that Ukraine double prices for gas and electricity to industry and homes, that they lift a ban on private sale of Ukraine’s rich agriculture lands, make a major overhaul of their economic holdings, devalue the currency, slash state funds for school children and the elderly to “balance the budget.” In return Ukraine would get a paltry $4 billion.

Before the ouster of the Moscow-leaning Yanukovich government last week, Moscow was prepared to buy some $15 billion of Ukraine debt and to slash its gas prices by fully one-third. Now, understandably, Russia is unlikely to give that support. The economic cooperation between Ukraine and Moscow was something Washington was determined to sabotage at all costs.

This drama is far from over. The stakes involve the very future of Russia, the EU-Russian relations, and the global power of Washington, or at least that faction in Washington that sees further wars as the prime instrument of policy.

Writer F. William Engdahl is a geopolitical analyst and the author of “Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order”.

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