The Kiev Gambit Faltering Empire Seeks Meaning

The Kiev Gambit

Faltering Empire Seeks Meaning

by Nebojsa Malic

The statement signed last week in Geneva was correctly seen as an attempt to buy time by all the parties involved – Russia, the Atlantic Empire, and the coup regime in Kiev. But while Moscow may have stalled to give the volatile situation on the ground time to calm down, Washington and Kiev sought to use the truce as a chance to regroup for another attack.

Let Slip the Dogs of War

On April 12, following the visit of CIA director John Brennan to Kiev, the coup regime attacked the demonstrators in Slaviansk in what they termed an "anti-terrorist" operation. It was a resounding failure: the armored troops sent to quell the protest against the Maydan junta were stopped by unarmed civilians, and some soldiers even defected. So the junta tried again, this time following the visit by Deputy Emperor Biden.

Coincidence? Unlikely, especially considering the very selective memory of the mainstream media in the West. Just days before the February coup, the Emperor was calling on the Ukrainian military not to get involved in the Maydan crisis. When it was Washington’s thugs seeking to overthrow an elected government by force, it was all about "dialogue." As soon as the deed was done, however, the US and EU started calling on Kiev to "establish the authority of the state." It’s not repression when our people do it…

Yet the Imperial establishment can’t possibly be so stupid as to believe that the Maydan junta can actually crush the millions in the east of the country refusing to submit to its authority. What do they think this is, Krajina? Kosovo? Perhaps they do. Only this time, there is a ready, willing and able Russia right across the border, nursing a justified grudge.

Could that be the point? One analyst thinks the entire purpose of the Empire manipulating its Maydan stooges is to draw Russia into actually invading Ukraine, hoping perhaps this would push the vast majority of undecided Ukrainians into the pro-Empire camp currently run by the militant Banderites.

Fighting Words

So, after Washington has backed a forcible overthrow of the Ukrainian government by a violent junta, backed that junta in trying to oppress its own people, and basically treated the country like a sock puppet, Secretary of State John Kerry accused Russia of doing all that.

To hear Kerry, all of this has been a sinister Russian plot from day one: Moscow is secretly manipulating Ukraine, Russian anti-Semites are handing out anti-Jewish flyers, RT is a propaganda machine, and there are photos proving Russian troops are on the ground. Except not.

In fact, none of this bears any relation to actual reality. It is pure propaganda. And as Jacques Ellul wrote in his seminal 1962 study, a propagandist doesn’t accuse his opponent of just anything, but of the very thing the propagandist himself is planning to do (or already doing).

For its part, Russia has condemned Kerry’s malingering, and warned Washington to stop playing with fire. But the warnings are unlikely to be heeded.

Dangerous Delusions

Why? Because the Atlantic Empire establishment may be looking for a new Cold War as a way to give the Empire meaning. Everything else has failed: from the white-knighting to "stop genocides everywhere" and impose "democracy" and "end of history," to the wolves of Wall Street.

As the first decade of the 21st century has demonstrated, the imperial state considers its ideal state to be one of perpetual war. Laws of nature and economics alike, however, dictate that such a state is simply unsustainable. After two decades of bombing campaigns, invasions, occupations, and "color revolutions," the Atlantic Empire has found its power in the world diminished, not expanded. The Empire has squandered both lives and treasure of its people, while its destruction of law has led to the loss of "mythic authority" on which its legitimacy was based. Finding itself not on the path of triumph but a long retreat, the panicked Imperial policymakers are seeking solace in comfortable fantasies.

The 1990s white-knighting in the Balkans was supposed to be a reenactment of WW2 – at least a Spielbergean version of it, in which the Nazis were fought because of the Holocaust, and defeated by Private Ryans instead of Ivans, Sergeis, and Georgis. When that narrative was no longer enough, the Empire turned to "ending evil" and spreading "democracy" throughout the world.

Now the Imperial establishment is clutching at the straw of the Cold War narrative. In their minds, it was the best kind of conflict, in which the national security apparatus expanded exponentially, the military-industrial complex grew fat on government contracts, and the eventual victory of the West was foreordained by the superiority of morals and values.

Nothing can bring back those days, but the armchair warriors in Washington are so delusional, they believe they can. "The hubris of the American political class," notesJustin Raimondo, "doesn’t allow them to understand the implications of their own ignorance: they think they are master puppeteers, and that they can manipulate the strings of history in an endless morality play written and directed by their all-powerful selves."

The problem with this, as one German blogger notes, is that all this writing and directing ends up in what seems like a "marketing campaign for World War III."

When normal people wish to escape into fantasy, they pick up wargaming, join theSociety for Creative Anachronism, or play MMOs. The Imperial establishment, apparently, pines for Global Thermonuclear War.

http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2014/04/25/the-kiev-gambit/