{"id":109940,"date":"2014-03-22T01:32:51","date_gmt":"2014-03-22T01:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=109940"},"modified":"2014-03-22T01:32:51","modified_gmt":"2014-03-22T01:32:51","slug":"neocons-ukraine-syria-iran-gambit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/neocons-ukraine-syria-iran-gambit\/","title":{"rendered":"Neocons\u2019 Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Parry\u00a0<\/strong>
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

You might think that policymakers with so many bloody fiascos on their r\u00c3\u00a9sum\u00c3\u00a9s as the U.S. neocons, including the catastrophic Iraq War, would admit their incompetence and return home to sell insurance or maybe work in a fast-food restaurant. Anything but directing the geopolitical decisions of the world\u2019s leading superpower.<\/p>\n

But Official Washington\u2019s neocons are nothing if not relentless and resilient. They are also well-funded and well-connected. So they won\u2019t do the honorable thing and disappear. They keep hatching new schemes and strategies to keep the world stirred up and to keep their\u00a0vision of world domination \u2014 and particularly \u201cregime change\u201d in the Middle East \u2014 alive.<\/p>\n

Now, the neocons have stoked a confrontation over Ukraine, involving two nuclear-armed states, the United States and Russia. But \u2014 even if nuclear weapons don\u2019t come into play \u2014 the neocons have succeeded in estranging U.S. President Barack Obama from Russian President Vladimir Putin and sabotaging the pair\u2019s crucial cooperation on Iran and Syria, which may have been the point all along.<\/p>\n

Though the Ukraine crisis has roots going back decades, the chronology of the recent uprising \u2013 and the neocon interest in it \u2014\u00a0meshes neatly with neocon fury over Obama and Putin working together to avert a U.S. military strike against Syria last summer and then brokering an interim nuclear agreement with Iran last fall that effectively took a U.S. bombing campaign against Iran off the table.<\/p>\n

With those two top Israeli priorities \u2014 U.S. military attacks on Syria and Iran \u2014 sidetracked, the American neocons began activating their\u00a0influential media and political networks to counteract the Obama-Putin teamwork. The neocon wedge to splinter Obama away from Putin was driven into Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Operating out of neocon enclaves in the U.S. State Department and at U.S.-funded non-governmental organizations, led by the National Endowment for Democracy, neocon operatives targeted Ukraine even before the recent political unrest began shaking apart the country\u2019s fragile ethnic and ideological cohesion.<\/p>\n

Last September,\u00a0as the prospects for a U.S. military strike against Syria were fading thanks to Putin, NED president Carl Gershman, who is something of a neocon paymaster controlling more than $100 million in congressionally approved funding each year, took to the pages of the neocon-flagship Washington Post and\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0that Ukraine was now \u201cthe biggest prize.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Gershman added that Ukraine was really only an interim step to an even bigger prize, the removal of the strong-willed and independent-minded Putin, who, Gershman added, \u201cmay find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad [i.e. Ukraine] but within Russia itself.\u201d In other words, the new hope was for \u201cregime change\u201d in Kiev and Moscow.<\/p>\n

Putin had made himself a major annoyance in Neocon World, particularly with his diplomacy on Syria that defused a crisis over a Sarin attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. Despite the attack\u2019s mysterious origins \u2014 and the absence of any clear evidence proving the Syrian government\u2019s guilt \u2014 the U.S. State Department and the U.S. news media rushed to the judgment that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad did it.<\/p>\n

Politicians and pundits baited Obama with claims that Assad had brazenly crossed Obama\u2019s \u201cred line\u201d by using chemical weapons and that U.S. \u201ccredibility\u201d now demanded military retaliation. A longtime Israeli\/neocon goal, \u201cregime change\u201d in Syria, seemed within reach.<\/p>\n

But Putin brokered a deal in which Assad agreed to surrender Syria\u2019s chemical weapons arsenal (even as he continued to deny any role in the Sarin attack). The arrangement was a huge letdown for the neocons and Israeli officials who had been drooling over the prospect that a U.S. bombing campaign would bring Assad to his knees and deliver a strategic blow against Iran, Israel\u2019s current chief enemy.<\/p>\n

Putin then further offended the neocons and the Israeli government by helping to facilitate an interim nuclear deal with Iran, making another neocon\/Israeli priority, a U.S. war against Iran, less likely.<\/p>\n

Putting Putin in Play<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, the troublesome Putin had to be put in play. And, NED\u2019s Gershman was quick to note a key Russian vulnerability, neighboring Ukraine, where a democratically elected but corrupt president, Viktor Yanukovych, was struggling with a terrible economy and weighing whether to accept a European aid offer, which came with many austerity strings attached, or work out a more generous deal with Russia.<\/p>\n

There was already a strong U.S.-organized political\/media apparatus in place for destabilizing Ukraine\u2019s government. Gershman\u2019s NED had 65 projects operating in the country \u2014 training \u201cactivists,\u201d supporting \u201cjournalists\u201d and organizing business groups, according to its\u00a0latest report<\/a>. (NED was created in 1983 to do in relative openness what the CIA had long done in secret, nurture pro-U.S. operatives\u00a0under the umbrella of \u201cpromoting democracy.\u201d)<\/p>\n

So, when Yanukovych opted for Russia\u2019s more generous $15 billion aid package, the roof fell in on him. In a speech to Ukrainian business leaders last December, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Nuland, a neocon holdover and the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, reminded the group that the U.S. had invested $5 billion in Ukraine\u2019s \u201cEuropean aspirations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, urged on by Nuland and neocon Sen. John McCain, protests in the capital of Kiev turned increasingly violent with neo-Nazi militias moving to the fore. Unidentified snipers opened fire on protesters and police, touching off fiery clashes that killed some 80 people (including about a dozen police officers).<\/p>\n

On Feb. 21, in a desperate attempt to tamp down the violence, Yanukovych signed an agreement brokered by European countries. He agreed to surrender many of his powers, to hold early elections (so he could be voted out of office), and pull back the police. That last step, however, opened the way for the neo-Nazi militias to overrun government buildings and force Yanukovych to flee for his life.<\/p>\n

With these modern-day storm troopers controlling key buildings \u2014 and brutalizing Yanukovych supporters \u2014 a \u00a0rump Ukrainian parliament voted, in an extra-constitutional fashion, to remove Yanukovych from office. This coup-installed regime, with far-right parties controlling four ministries including defense, received immediate U.S. and European Union recognition as Ukraine\u2019s \u201clegitimate\u201d government.<\/p>\n

As remarkable \u2014 and newsworthy \u2014 as it was that a government on the European continent included Nazis in the executive branch for the first time\u00a0since World War II, the U.S. news media performed as it did before the Iraq War and during various other international crises. It essentially presented the neocon-preferred narrative and treated the presence of the neo-Nazis\u00a0as some kind of urban legend.<\/p>\n

Virtually across the board, from Fox News to MSNBC, from the Washington Post to the New York Times, the U.S. press corps fell in line, painting Yanukovych and Putin as the \u201cblack-hat\u201d villains and the coup regime as the \u201cwhite-hat\u201d good guys, which required, of course, whiting out the neo-Nazi \u201cbrown shirts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neocon Expediency<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some neocon defenders have challenged my reporting that U.S. neocons played a significant role in the Ukrainian putsch. One argument is that the neocons, who regard the U.S.-Israeli bond as inviolable, would not knowingly collaborate with neo-Nazis given the history of the Holocaust (and indeed the role of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators in extermination campaigns against Poles and Jews).<\/p>\n

But the neocons have frequently struck alliances of convenience with some of the most unsavory \u2014 and indeed anti-Semitic \u2014 forces on earth, dating back to the Reagan administration and its collaboration with Latin American \u201cdeath squad\u201d regimes, including work with the World Anti-Communist League that included not only neo-Nazis but aging real Nazis.<\/p>\n

More recently in Syria, U.S. neocons (and Israeli leaders) are so focused on ousting Assad, an ally of hated Iran, that they have cooperated with Saudi Arabia\u2019s Sunni monarchy (known for its gross anti-Semitism). Israeli officials have even expressed a preference for Saudi-backed Sunni extremists winning in Syria if that is the only way to get rid of Assad and hurt his allies in Iran and Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

Last September, Israel\u2019s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post that Israel so wanted Assad out and his Iranian backers weakened, that Israel would accept al-Qaeda operatives taking power in Syria.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,\u201d Oren said in\u00a0the interview<\/a>. \u201cWe always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren\u2019t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oren said that was Israel\u2019s view even if the other \u201cbad guys\u201d were affiliated with al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n

Oren, who was Israel\u2019s point man in dealing with Official Washington\u2019s neocons, is considered very close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reflects his views. For decades, U.S. neocons have supported Netanyahu and his hardline Likud Party, including as strategists on his 1996 campaign for prime minister when neocons such as Richard Perle and Douglas Feith developed the original \u201cregime change\u201d strategy.\u00a0[For details, see Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cThe Mysterious Why of the Iraq War<\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n

In other words, Israel and its U.S. neocon supporters have been willing to collaborate with extreme right-wing and even anti-Semitic forces if that advances their key geopolitical goals, such as maneuvering the U.S. government into military confrontations with Syria and Iran.<\/p>\n

So, while it may be fair to assume that neocons like Nuland and McCain would have preferred that the Ukraine coup had been spearheaded by militants who weren\u2019t neo-Nazis \u2014 or, for that matter, that the Syrian rebels were not so dominated by al-Qaeda-affiliated extremists \u2014 the neocons (and their Israeli allies) see these tactical collaborations as sometimes necessary to achieve overarching strategic priorities.<\/p>\n

And, since their current strategic necessity is to scuttle the fragile negotiations over Syria and Iran, which otherwise\u00a0might negate the possibility of U.S. military strikes against those two countries, the Putin-Obama collaboration had to go.<\/p>\n

By spurring on the violent overthrow of Ukraine\u2019s elected president, the neocons helped touch off a cascade of events \u2014 now including Crimea\u2019s secession from Ukraine and its annexation by Russia \u2014 that have raised tensions and provoked Western retaliation against Russia. The crisis also has made the continued Obama-Putin teamwork on Syria and Iran extremely difficult, if not impossible.<\/p>\n

Like other neocon-engineered schemes, there will surely be much collateral damage in this latest one. For instance, if the tit-for-tat economic retaliations escalate \u2014 and Russian gas supplies are disrupted \u2014 Europe\u2019s fragile recovery could be tipped back into recession, with harmful consequences for the U.S. economy, too.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the certainty\u00a0that congressional war hawks and neocon pundits will press for increased U.S. military spending and aggressive tactics elsewhere in the world to punish Putin, meaning even less money and attention for domestic programs or deficit reduction. Obama\u2019s \u201cnation-building at home\u201d will be forgotten.<\/p>\n

But the neocons have long made it clear that their vision for the world \u2014 one of America\u2019s \u201cfull-spectrum dominance\u201d and \u201cregime change\u201d in Middle Eastern countries opposed to Israel \u2014 overrides all other national priorities. And as long as the neocons face no accountability for the havoc that they wreak, they will continue working Washington\u2019s corridors of power, not selling insurance or flipping hamburgers.<\/p>\n

Investigative reporter\u00a0Robert Parry<\/strong>\u00a0broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America\u2019s Stolen Narrative, either in\u00a0print here<\/a>\u00a0or as an e-book (from\u00a0Amazon<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0barnesandnoble.com<\/a>). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry\u2019s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America\u2019s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Parry\u00a0 RINF Alternative News You might think that policymakers with so many bloody fiascos on their r\u00c3\u00a9sum\u00c3\u00a9s as the U.S. neocons, including the catastrophic Iraq War, would admit their incompetence and return home to sell insurance or maybe work in a fast-food restaurant. Anything but directing the geopolitical decisions of the world\u2019s leading superpower. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-109940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}