Ukraine: a doomed neocon cattle-raid

Neoconservatism promotes a special kind of democracy, one that screws the people. In Ukraine it may have overreached by using that country as a means to an even bigger prize in Russia.

Until recently, it had done well out of the 2014 Maidan ‘revolution’. Interviewed a little while ago by left-wing website GPE Newsdocs, Professor Prabhat Patnaik argued that the IMF, once simply an international rescue-bank, is now used to enforce ‘investor-friendly’ economic restructuring on the borrower; and in Ukraine’s case this has entailed reforms such as cutting spending on education and health and slashing the gas price subsidy to its consumers. Patnaik claimed that the IMF deliberately loaned more than Ukraine could ever repay, so paving the way for taking land and mineral resources in lieu; it would end, he said, by turning Ukraine into Greece and the economy would be disrupted as masses emigrated for a better life:

The Russian invasion may therefore have accelerated a process of depopulation that was already inevitable, for despite being very rich in natural resources Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe, as measured by per capita GDP.

This apparent paradox is explained simply by corruption and corporate looting, says Chilean-American commentator Gonzalo Lira, who disappeared for a week after his arrest by Ukraine’s SBU security force but thankfully emerged alive, perhaps because of highlighting by a prominent independent journalist, Canadian Eva Bartlett:

Here, Lira discusses an article purportedly written by President Biden and says the US’s recent commitment to send a few missile systems to Ukraine is a token gesture because, he alleges, the Americans know the war is effectively lost.

Lira says the conflict is grinding down Ukraine’s armed forces to the point where they will become so weak and demoralized that they will not be able to prevent Russia (if she wishes) seizing the whole country. He speculates that the Poles might cross the border but in that case they will be obliterated and that would trigger Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, opening the way for full-scale multinational war.

Actually, that triggering is not automatic. The exact wording says that each individual NATO member ‘will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary.’ There is plenty of scope there to step back from the brink.

Thanks to this long proxy aggression - one openly admitted by former US Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta - the US and its Western allies face another humiliating disaster. We could see Russia grow much stronger by the acquisition of all that agricultural land, the coal, oil, gas and valuable minerals, and a big foothold on the north of the Black Sea, from the shores of the Azov Sea to the west of Crimea.

In April, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) published a study of the Russian incursion subtitled ‘The Death Throes of an Imperial Delusion.’ In my amateur view this is what we British call ‘balls.’

Firstly, Russia is not going to die, or if she does she has said clearly that she will take the rest of us with her. Secondly, Russia would be mad to embroil herself in the toxic historical cesspit of European squabbling; her ambition is for greater economic integration with near-Asia, in a Eurasian version of the EU.

Once Russia’s western borders have been secured against further creeping subversion, she will turn east and ignore us. It’s even possible that as the EU itself begins to crumble, Germany will tire of being its main paymaster (France is always in the toilet when it’s her turn to buy the drinks) and seek an accommodation with Moscow.

Well done, neocons: as Oliver Hardy was wont to say to Stan Laurel, ‘This is a fine mess you've gotten us into.’