US Options in the Ukraine: trigger a religious war?

[nangyale]

US Options in the Ukraine: trigger a religious war?



http://www.unz.com/tsaker/us-options-in-the-ukraine-trigger-a-religious-war/
http://www.unz.com/tsaker/us-options-in-the-ukraine-trigger-a-religious-war/

Listening to the imperial media one might be excused for thinking that nothing dramatic is happening in the Ukraine and that the crisis has basically leveled off in some way. Well, why not? They just had recent elections and, apparently, that went well, Russia is still showing her usual bad will and threatening behavior towards Europe, but at least Putin was forced to release the Ukrainian Jeanne d’Arc (aka Nadezhda Savchenko), and there is hope that the united front of the EU and NATO will eventually force Putin to stop his aggression against the Ukraine and to comply with the Minsk Agreements. Oh, and the Ukrainian National Bank has announced, I kid you not, a return to growth (by 0.1%) for the first quarter of the year.

Alas, the disconnected between this kind of nonsense and reality is total. Yes, elections did take place, but they were anything but free, the neo-Nazis are now more influential than ever and the fact that Putin did agree to exchange Savchenko for 2 Russian citizens accused of being, I kid you not, GRU Spetsnaz operators, was just a slick way for him to stop Savchenko from being his problem while making her Poroshenko’s (and even Timoshenko’s). As for the Minks Agreements, Russia is not part to them at all, she just is a guarantor along with Germany and France. But yes, Poroshenko is still in power, people are still finding goods in stores and no new “Maidan” has taken place. So, externally, things are not too bad.

The problem with that rosy image is that nobody at Langley really believes it.

The folks at Langley know that the Ukrainian economy is basically dead and coasting to its inevitable breakdown on inertia. They know that the government services are barely kept alive by western aid and that even that is not enough to maintain the authority of the central government which is gradually becoming irrelevant and replaced by local ‘authorities’ (oligarchs and mobsters). Even more importantly, they now have lost any hope of drawing Russia into this conflict and they are seeing clear signs that the “European front” is cracking: France, Italy and others are already showing signs of discontent with the current situation, as has Germany (all these countries have their own “Langleys” who are making exactly the same dire predictions). So the big question for the USA is what to do next?

The initial plan was to make the Ukraine a sort of “black hole” which would suck in all the economic, political, economic and military resources of Russia, ideally by having Russia occupying the Donbass. But now that the Russians have declined to get sucked in, it is Europe which is now threatened with the Ukrainian black hole.

The Americans probably realize by now that it is too late to put Humpty Dumpty together again and they are right. While, in theory, a join effort of the USA, EU and Russia could, at a huge cost, try to rebuilt the Ukraine, political realities make such a joint action impossible, at least for the foreseeable future. They also realize that, courtesy of Mrs Nuland’s candid words, the blame for the disastrous outcome in the Ukraine will be put on the USA (which is not quite fair, the Europeans are also guilty as hell, but such is life). And if “losing Syria”, and was bad enough, then “losing the Ukraine” will do irreparable damage to the USA simply by debunking the myth of the USA’s omnipotence. This is very serious, especially for an Empire which has basically given up on negotiations or diplomacy and which now only delivers ultimatums.

So what are the US options here?

It is hard to predict at this time what the US might try to do. The normal US practice in such a situation is to simply declare victory and leave. That would work in Africa or Asia, but smack in the middle of the European continent that is hardly an option as it would result in a PR disaster.

The second option could be to basically blame the Ukrainians themselves for everything and try to protect Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova from the inevitable consequences of the spreading chaos. The risk here, at least from the US point of view, is that Russia and her Novorussian allies would be more or less free to move in the created vacuum and that is something the USA absolutely cannot accept. The Americans would have visions of Zakharchenko in Kiev or pro-Russian riots in Odessa and that is simply beyond unacceptable.

Which leaves option three: to deliberately blow up the Ukraine.

Rostislav Ishchenko, in my opinion the best specialist of the Ukraine on the planet, has recently began warning that such a mechanism is already in place: to turn the civil war into a religious war pitting not Latins (“Roman Catholics”) against the Orthodox, but various Orthodox group against each other. Let me explain.

Like everything else in the Ukraine, the history of the various Orthodox jurisdictions in the Ukraine is very complex and goes far back into the centuries. I cannot go into a detailed discussion of this very interesting topic here, but I want to offer some key pointers.

There are three main groups which all call themselves the “true” or “canonical” Ukrainian Orthodox Church: the biggest one is the Autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, followed by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate and, finally, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Of course, all three of these churches claim to be the true representative of the legitimate Ukrainian Orthodoxy.

[Full disclosure: I personally don’t consider any of them to be legitimate or truly Orthodox so I don’t have a personal stake in this one].

They are:

The AUOC-MP is the biggest of the three. It is self-governing, but not fully independent. It is probably the biggest of the three churches and it is in full communion with all of the other “official” (read: “state approved”) Orthodox Churches out there. The AUOC-MP is viewed as the “hand of the Kremlin” by the nationalists.

The UOC-KP was founded by a former Bishop of the Moscow Patriarchate, Filaret Denisenko who created a “schism” (a unilateral separation in contradiction to the Canons of the Church) from the Moscow Patriarchate (which is ironic since Filaret was a former “deputy” (locum tenens) to Patriarch Pimen I of the Moscow Patriarchate and even considered a front-runner to succeed him). Even by Soviet standards Filaret was always known to be an exceptionally immoral, corrupt and unprincipled man, but the Moscow Patriarchate only excommunicated him when he broke-off from the MP to create his own “church”.

The UAOC is basically a 1921 creation of the Ukrainian National Republic of 1917 (just as the Moscow Patriarchate is a 1937 creation of the Bolshevik state of 1917) and it represents the “non-Soviet” version of Ukrainian Christianity and several of its clergymen have been persecuted by the Soviet state.

What makes this situation truly unique are two factors:

• Historically, the territory which is today known as the Ukraine has mostly been part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople between the 10th and 17th century (this is a gross simplification, but basically correct).
• The modern Patriarchate of Constantinople is in a desperate quest for relevance (by itself it is tiny and subject to the Turkish authorities) and has extremely bad relations with Moscow

There is, therefore, at very real risk that the authorities in Kiev will decide to declare the AUOC-MP as an “aggressor country Church” and that they will order all the parishes, monasteries and other building currently owned by the clergy of the AUOC-MP to be forcibly transferred to either the UOC-KP and/or the UAOC. There is also a possibility that the Patriarch of Constantinople might decide to “heed the cries of the faithful” and recognize either the UOC-KP and/or the UAOC as an autonomous part of the Constantinople Patriarchate thus basically taking the entire Ukraine under his control. And even if the authorities in Kiev don’t formally declare the AUOC-MP as a fair game for pogroms and illegal expropriations, they can just look away and let the neo-Nazi death-squads (like the infamous “Aidar”) do the dirty job for them.

How big is this risk?

I would assess it as high. To create civil disturbances is the ideal way for the regime in Kiev to blame the “hand of Moscow” for all the problems. The spineless Europeans would have to follow the (US) party line and blame Putin for “stirring up the Russian-speakers” in the Ukraine and “using the pro-Moscow Russian minority initiate a new phase in the hybrid war against the sovereign Ukraine”. Such a confrontation would also allow to unite the oligarch controlled political factions with the real neo-Nazis who are currently in a “moderate opposition” mode. For the oligarchs, they would be the perfect opportunity to murder their neo-Nazi opposition (Savchenko for example) and blame it on “Moscow’s agents”. Last but not least, the eruption of intra-Orthodox clashes would be the perfect pretext to further unleash the SBU (Ukie KGB) against any opposition party.

Just as in the war against the Donbass, Putin would be put under tremendous pressure inside Russia to “do something about this” and some will not shy away form demanding that Russian tanks be sent to Kiev. Of course, Putin would never agree to such a folly, but that refusal would most definitely hurt him in the Russian public opinion, yet another good result from such an intra-Orthodox conflict in the Ukraine.

For the time being, the Empire is limiting its anti-Russian informational war to petty actions like the banning of Russian athletes from the Olympics in Brazil, focusing solely on Russian hooligans in France and giving the Eurovision to a political singer against all Eurovision rules. These are annoying for sure, but they are very limited in their effects: yes, it makes Russia look like the “uncivilized bad guy” in the eyes of the TV-watching idiots in the West, but a lot of people are not buying into this and see straight through it all, and it just servers to consolidate the support of the Russian people for Vladimir Putin. At the end of the day, turning the Western public opinion against Putin is useless. What the Empire would really want is to turn the Russian public opinion against Putin – that is The Prize, at least for the folks in Langley.

So what better way would there be to set the Ukraine (further) ablaze while giving the Russian people the impression that “Putin has betrayed the Orthodox people”, than to trigger a religious war ?

We all know the famous words of a US officer in Viet-Nam “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it”. There is now a real risk that the US might decide to destroy the Ukraine in order to “save it”, especially if the Neocons re-take full control of the Executive under Hillary.

The Saker

 

[That Guy]

"Listening to the imperial media"

AAAAAANNNNNDDDDDD I lost interest.

 

[Itachi]

"Listening to the imperial media"

AAAAAANNNNNDDDDDD I lost interest.

lol don't look at the word choice. It's a nice article considering current/past(for the last 4-10 months) PDF article standards.

@nangyale Please try to cite the article/words of any author yourself and try to write it in your own words. If you just copy and paste long pages of info, any reader (including me) will lose interest. FYI I just read till the "imperial media" part too and went to the bottom looking for bolded parts.

So yeah, either bold the important parts or condense the whole article (a combo of both will be great too!).

 

[Desertfalcon]

banning of Russian athletes from the Olympics in Brazil

That sentence alone tells me that the OP text cannot be taken seriously. So the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is somehow, inexplicably, part of some sort of imperial anti-Russian conspiracy because Russia's athletes were caught red-handed, in doping? Ya' and when the cops pull me over for speeding 30 mph over the limit...it's all just a government plot against me!

 

[Itachi]

caught red-handed, in doping

You of all people should know that doping occurs in many levels of sports (since as any other part of human endeavor, it too can have corrupt people). The main point of OP's post was why were the Russians "caught" at that instance in the point of time. Why not before?

On the other hand, why hasn't the IAAF caught other athletes (of different nationalities) that use the same method (or various other methods) employed by them? Again, the main point of OP was/is to point out the sidelining of Russian athletes at such a coincidental point in time that it makes them look bad.

 

[jhungary]

lol don't look at the word choice. It's a nice article considering current/past(for the last 4-10 months) PDF article standards.

@nangyale Please try to cite the article/words of any author yourself and try to write it in your own words. If you just copy and paste long pages of info, any reader (including me) will lose interest. FYI I just read till the "imperial media" part too and went to the bottom looking for bolded parts.

So yeah, either bold the important parts or condense the whole article (a combo of both will be great too!).

lol, I sincerely you are joking about what you just said. As that is what this article is, a joke.

Wording aside, the "assumption" on what US would do and what US should do is completely wrong, let alone what the article claim on what the Russian and American did to the separatist.

If people look at the situation both geopolitically and strategically, you will see what has and actually did happened in Ukraine is actually extremely favour the US.

The article suppose the US need to do something or anything to further destabilise Ukraine, but the truth is, did the American need to when the Russian already did a very good job on it and quite destabilised the eastern Ukraine. The US basically need not to do anything at all and simply just wait for the Ukrainian move toward them now. Strategically, Why the US need to do anything at all when it was the Russian Border Ukraine share, not the US nor most of the Western Europe. Bear in mind, in a strategic sense, the Eastern Europe is a buffer line for Western and Central Europe defend against the Russian. Ukrainian saw that, that's why they refused to join EU and NATO like any other Baltic state and try to remain neutral and play both side. However, as long as there is a threat in Eastern Ukraine, basically it will draw the whole Ukraine will tend to lean into the West and the US, which is why before the Civil War, most Ukrainian were oppose joining the West, but most of that make a 360 after the civil war.

Geopolitically, Ukraine serve the US and NATO better as a constant reminder to other former Eastern Bloc country that "It could be you next" speech. Keep Ukraine as chaos as it could would serve as a prime example to remind the former bloc just how aggressive Russia still are. And you know what the best part is? That Russia is willingly to play along.

Everybody knows the US does not care about the Ukraine, Ukrainian knows that too, that why it was neutral and pro-Russia before the civil war. Now, we can all see the 360 the Ukrainian make, and all that thanks to the Russian.

There is a reason for the different between how Russian Handle Crimea and How they handle the Eastern Ukraine part. See how quickly Russian Annex Crimea and see how this civil war drawn on for over 2 years and yet, and the Russia does not yet annex Eastern Ukraine? And you know who actually suffer in all of this? People in Eastern Ukraine.

 

[Desertfalcon]

You of all people should know that doping occurs in many levels of sports (since as any other part of human endeavor, it too can have corrupt people). The main point of OP's post was why were the Russians "caught" at that instance in the point of time. Why not before?

On the other hand, why hasn't the IAAF caught other athletes (of different nationalities) that use the same method (or various other methods) employed by them? Again, the main point of OP was/is to point out the sidelining of Russian athletes at such a coincidental point in time that it makes them look bad.

1. Referring to my analogy; lots of people speed but if I am the one who gets pulled over, the law is not going to think much of my argument of why all the others weren’t' pulled over either.

2. The IAAF does catch other athletes who are engaged in doping. Indeed, they catch and ban dozens upon dozens from every conceivable country. The Russian team in question was especially egregious in their violations and more to the point, it was done team-wide and not just by individual athletes on the team.

 

[nangyale]

lol don't look at the word choice. It's a nice article considering current/past(for the last 4-10 months) PDF article standards.

@nangyale Please try to cite the article/words of any author yourself and try to write it in your own words. If you just copy and paste long pages of info, any reader (including me) will lose interest. FYI I just read till the "imperial media" part too and went to the bottom looking for bolded parts.

So yeah, either bold the important parts or condense the whole article (a combo of both will be great too!).

Thanks for the advice.

Although I would like people to read the understand what is being written by the original author. I do the highlighting to kindda summarize.

I can try and condense such into my own words. But due to time factor that's mostly not possible for me.

lol, I sincerely you are joking about what you just said. As that is what this article is, a joke.

Wording aside, the "assumption" on what US would do and what US should do is completely wrong, let alone what the article claim on what the Russian and American did to the separatist.

If people look at the situation both geopolitically and strategically, you will see what has and actually did happened in Ukraine is actually extremely favour the US.

The article suppose the US need to do something or anything to further destabilise Ukraine, but the truth is, did the American need to when the Russian already did a very good job on it and quite destabilised the eastern Ukraine. The US basically need not to do anything at all and simply just wait for the Ukrainian move toward them now.

The US was the country which encouraged and sponsored the overthrow of the legitimate Ukrainian government. The Russians only reacted to the situation which was created on their doorstep and took necessary measures to safeguard their legitimate interests.

While the original US idea was to turn Ukraine a rabid anti-Russian entity, kick Russia out of Crimea and turn the Black Sea into a NATO lake similar to the Med. They failed in all their designs due to prompt Russian reaction. And are now left with the big headache of a failing state which they can neither embrace nor let go of.

Strategically, Why the US need to do anything at all when it was the Russian Border Ukraine share, not the US nor most of the Western Europe. Bear in mind, in a strategic sense, the Eastern Europe is a buffer line for Western and Central Europe defend against the Russian. Ukrainian saw that, that's why they refused to join EU and NATO like any other Baltic state and try to remain neutral and play both side. However, as long as there is a threat in Eastern Ukraine, basically it will draw the whole Ukraine will tend to lean into the West and the US, which is why before the Civil War, most Ukrainian were oppose joining the West, but most of that make a 360 after the civil war.

Geopolitically, Ukraine serve the US and NATO better as a constant reminder to other former Eastern Bloc country that "It could be you next" speech. Keep Ukraine as chaos as it could would serve as a prime example to remind the former bloc just how aggressive Russia still are. And you know what the best part is? That Russia is willingly to play along.

Everybody knows the US does not care about the Ukraine, Ukrainian knows that too, that why it was neutral and pro-Russia before the civil war. Now, we can all see the 360 the Ukrainian make, and all that thanks to the Russian.

If the US actually didn't care about Ukraine then it wouldn't spend billions of dollars to de-stabilise the country. Maybe you can tell us what Victoria Nuland was doing all along?

 

[jhungary]

The US was the country which encouraged and sponsored the overthrow of the legitimate Ukrainian government. The Russians only reacted to the situation which was created on their doorstep and took necessary measures to safeguard their legitimate interests.

While the original US idea was to turn Ukraine a rabid anti-Russian entity, kick Russia out of Crimea and turn the Black Sea into a NATO lake similar to the Med. They failed in all their designs due to prompt Russian reaction. And are now left with the big headache of a failing state which they can neither embrace nor let go of.

Oh well, the CIA speech again, I have heard but so many time before.

You can say whatever you want, but anyone have a working brain and two eyes will tell you Russia is at underhand after Eastern Ukraine involvement. Unemployment went sky high, and the war torn Eastern Ukraine are not even remotely rebuild

I am just going to tell you what my mentor in NSA told me,

YOU CANNOT INITIATE A COLOUR REVOLUTION WITHOUT PEOPLE AGREEING WITH YOU.

US of course can encourage and sponsor the overthrown of the so called 'Legitimate" Ukraine Pro-Russian regime, but it is up to Ukraine whether or not take this bait. If there are no substantial anti-Russian movement to begin with, would you think the US can do it?? You can blame the American government for that, but at the end of the day, it is simply betting on the right horse, if Ukraine are so Pro-Russian they would not go with the US in this sense, you need to know not all Ukrainian are stupid.

For the US of A, they don't care whether or not Ukraine is pro or anti-Russia, they are literally at the edge of Eastern Europe. But if the situation present itself like this, you cannot blame the American cash in with the situation.

Would I say Ukraine is a fail state? I lived in Kiev and I still have friend living there, I can say this, Kiev Winter is 600% better than winter in Donetsk and Moscow.

If the US actually didn't care about Ukraine then it wouldn't spend billions of dollars to de-stabilise the country. Maybe you can tell us what Victoria Nuland was doing all along?

Yeah, the Jew-Jew Conspiracy.

Ukraine is a country, an independent country, whatever US State department doing in Ukraine is between the United States Government and Ukraine Government. State Speaker visited China December last year too, I wonder if the US is prepping a Colour Revolution in China too?

And lol, if you have to say, don't ever forget Ukraine is an independent country long before being part of Soviet Union, it was Russian who destabilise Ukraine first, before the American even got their hand on. So......how about that?

 

[Jaanbaz]

Ukraine is providing a safe heaven for far right Europeans to come and gain military experience. So technically USA is backing the Neo Nazis.

 

[Penguin]

The Unz Review: An Alternative Media Selection
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media

With columnists that hide behind covernames like 'The Saker' ...

About Ron Unz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Unz

In November 2013, Unz launched the website The Unz Review, a blogging platform.