Delusional US "Group Think" on Syria, Ukraine

The Neocon NYT

The neocons also have their claws into the New York Times, both the editorial section and the foreign desk. The Times' coverage of Ukraine, for example, could be a textbook study of biased journalism, presenting the Ukraine crisis as all the fault of Russian President Vladimir Putin who supposedly instigated the trouble in some bid to reestablish the Russian Empire.

In reality, Putin was distracted by the Sochi Winter Olympics in February when the political crisis in Ukraine erupted into major violence. Belatedly, Putin sought to sustain the status quo in Ukraine, i.e., the government of the constitutionally elected President Viktor Yanukovych, but Putin's efforts failed.

It was the United States and, to an extent, the European Union that were pressing for "regime change" in Ukraine. This strategy went back months if not years, with neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland reminding Ukrainian business leaders in December 2013 that the United States had invested $5 billion in their "European aspirations."

Then, in early February, Nuland was caught on the phone to U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who should be in the government after Yanukovych was removed. "Yats is the guy," Nuland said in reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who indeed became prime minister after Yanukovych was ousted in a putsch on Feb. 22. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Powerful 'Group Think' on Ukraine."]

Yet, it is now Official Washington's consensus that Putin instigated the Ukraine crisis out of a desire to reclaim territory lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union -- and that he further plans to seize the Baltic states like some reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.

The "group think" is so absurd that even former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger saw through it. Kissinger said in an interview with the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel that the West was exaggerating the significance of the Crimean annexation given the peninsula's long historic ties to Russia.

"The annexation of Crimea was not a move toward global conquest," the 91-year-old Kissinger said. "It was not Hitler moving into Czechoslovakia. ... Putin spent tens of billions of dollars on the Winter Olympics in Sochi. The theme of the Olympics was that Russia is a progressive state tied to the West through its culture and, therefore, it presumably wants to be part of it. So it doesn't make any sense that a week after the close of the Olympics, Putin would take Crimea and start a war over Ukraine."

Instead, Kissinger argued that the West -- with its strategy of pulling Ukraine into the orbit of the European Union -- was responsible for the crisis by failing to understand Russian sensitivity over Ukraine and making the grave mistake of quickly pushing the confrontation beyond dialogue. But Kissinger also faulted Putin for his reaction to the crisis. "This does not mean the Russian response was appropriate," Kissinger said.

But the neocon editors of the New York Times continue to pin everything on Putin, declaring in a Thursday editorial:

"The United States and the European Union have made clear, and correctly so, that they hold President Vladimir Putin of Russia largely responsible for this state of affairs [in Ukraine]. ...

"There is no question that by annexing Crimea and arming separatists in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Putin has done great damage to East-West relations -- and to his country, which finds itself isolated and in economic trouble. The decision on Monday by the European Union to add more separatist leaders to the list of Mr. Putin's allies barred from Europe may be largely symbolic, but along with the cold reception [toward Putin at the G-20 meeting] in Brisbane, it does let the Russian leader know that the West is not about to let him off the hook."

But it is really the whole world that is on the hook of neocon ideology with the major U.S. news media now incapable of wriggling off and presenting anything approaching an objective analysis of what is happening in either the Middle East or Eastern Europe.