26. We get a few sentences from a 2015 Russian documentary about Putin where he opines sentiments similar to Mao's political power grows from the barrel of a gun or TR's walk softly but carry a big stick. The host of the documentary then says Putin is the leader of "the conservative part of both European and American society." [This really is Russian over-reach as Putin represents conservative Russian nationalism; the Europeans have their own nationalisms and he certainly isn't a leader of any group of American conservatives as both Liberals and Conservatives in the US are anti-Russian and pro Western and don't see Russia as basically "Western".]
27. Putin says the elites of foreign countries only like Russia when it is weak and don't like it when "we start talking about our interests." They don't like feeling there is competition.
28. In February 2014 a Western-supported coup drove the elected president of the Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, from office. The authors follow the CIA line in explaining what happened next (they quote the former deputy director Michael Morell.) The CIA is famous for wire-tapping, but Morell can do better. He can tap Putin's brain and tell us what he was thinking when Yanukovych was driven from office. Putin was thinking "Yikes, this could happen to me! I have to crush these upstart Ukrainians."
29. The road to Kiev lies through Damascus. This is an unimaginable paragraph once it is deconstructed. It maintains that Russia intervened in Syria not because it intended to defend its national interests (its alliance with Syria and its Mediterranean naval bases, but because Putin wanted to prevent the overthrow of "dictators." The Russians wanted "to halt a trend that had started with the invasion of Iraq and continued through the downfall of dictators in Egypt and Libya." This is a completely imaginary trend. Iraq wasn't invaded to get rid of a dictator but to try and get control of its oil and to assert American imperial interests in the region, and lies about its WMDs and nuclear intentions were offered as the excuse. The country was virtually destroyed and has been in a state of war and turmoil ever since due to the incompetence of the US military's handling of the situation created by the Bush and Obama administrations. The same goes for Libya and Afghanistan. The trend is one of the US overthrowing governments and leaving anarchy and mayhem behind (the excuse in Libya was a fictional plot to massacre civilians). Egypt was an entirely different situation. A non-violent uprising by the Egyptians themselves, without outside intervention, to get rid of an American-supported dictator. The US did not approve and only grudgingly supported the movement after the fact. Egypt is now run by a fully supported dictator who has reimposed the previous military regime. In another case of mind-reading an anonymous US official reveals that Putin thought the US was behind all the governmental changes "right through Libya" and was determined to stop this trend in Syria. Sergey Shoigu, the Russian Defense Minister, is quoted as saying the Russian intervention put an end to the US backing of "color revolutions." There is no room here to go over the history of "color revolutions" but suffice it to say unlike genuine popular "revolutions" such as in Tunisia and Egypt, or wars of aggression as in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, "color revolutions" are uprisings whose success depends on outside funding and support by US-imperialist interests. The paragraph ends with some hypocritical musings about the battle to rid Aleppo of jihadists with no mention of the similar abuses of the US-sponsored attempt to rid Mosul of its jihadists. One thing both battles have in common is that they are the result, in the last analysis, of US policies and interventions in the Middle East.
30. This paragraph deals with "contentions" between the Pentagon and the White House over "what to do about Russia." Since we are not supposed to be a military dictatorship and the President is the commander in chief, there shouldn't be any "contentions" over in the Pentagon about how the "White House" decides to deal with Russia. The generals wanted to send "advanced weaponry" to the Ukraine and the President didn't. Somewhere in this discussion the issue may have been what were the risks of turning the Ukraine into another Syria since Russia would certainly see to it that the Russian-speaking population in the Ukraine, fighting for autonomy and the preservations of its rights that the new nationalist government in Kiev threatened, would not be out-weaponed by US intervention. The issue, however, was not the wellbeing of the Ukraine but the maintenance of US control of the "international order" and the unwritten principle that only the US and its surrogates had the right to militarily interfere in other countries. Here is a the quote from Evelyn Farkas, the Pentagon's "most senior policy officer for Russia," to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: she wanted more American force in Ukraine because Russia's behavior was "an affront to the international order that we and our allies have worked to build since the end of the Cold War." The fact that this order is an American creation that does not benefit the vast majority of humanity [endless wars, destruction of the climate and environment, increases in military expenditures, relief and preventions of famines and plagues as well as the aftermaths of natural disasters not adequately planned for and funded] is beside the point. Any country that resists this American order must be militarily confronted if diplomacy fails to ensure compliance. The "White House" was not necessarily questioning this doctrine, only that the timeline had not reached this point yet and that sanctions might still induce the Russians to cooperate.
31. Obama thinks, "with considerable justification," that escalating the military conflict in Ukraine won't make the Russians back down and will ultimately hurt Ukraine. Farkas doesn't agree, can't change Obama's mind, and resigns and joins the Clinton campaign as "a policy advisor." Clinton, as clueless as Farkas with regard to the likelihood of a disastrous military confrontation with Russia, "sometimes favored the use of military force when Obama did not." [Fresh from her success in getting a military intervention in Libya, HRC was now advocating a no-fly zone in Syria and potential conflict with the Russian air force. Happy days are here again.] Farkas liked HRC because "she got it on Russia." [Whatever domestic disasters we may have to endure, Clinton's defeat in November may well have saved the world a major and unthinkable war: our election was really a choice between a rock and a hard place!]
This is the end of part three. From reading part three of The New Yorker article you will not have learned anything at all about whether or not the Russian government or Putin had anything to do with the "hacking" of the DNC or if they interfered with our elections. Maybe we will learn something in part four.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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