RUSSIA MEDDLING—PAYBACK FOR USA MEDDLING IN UKRAINE?

RUSSIA MEDDLING IN US ELECTION IS PAYBACK FOR OBAMA MEDDLING IN UKRAINE

We have just learned today (Friday 2-17-18 that special investigator Robert Muller has indicted 13 Russians for interfering in our election of 2016.  The report has every talking head on TV and opinion makers in  print calling for retribution against the Russians.  Their comments make us look liike week victims of aggression.  We are not.  These commentators all totally ignore the US  activities in this area.  We are the experts.  But let us  ignore all the times the USA has “meddled” in other nations’s elections, killed off their leadership, or simply went to war for “regime change”.  Such acts are only “terrible” when we  are the targets of  election foreign meddling.  (For a good run down on US activities in this are see the Los Angles Times, Dec 21, 2016. “The US is no stranger to interfering in the elections of other countries” , and a piece by Ovwn Jones entitled “Americans can spot election meddling because they have been doing it for years. in the Guardian (Jan 5, 20170).

But here I take up our most recent episode of election meddling and regime change that may have stimulated a “pay back” by the Russians and precipitated the 13 months of political and governmental turmoil we have suffered since the last election.

To find the likely motive for the Russian’s most recent attempts to meddle in our election we must go back  back to the Obama Administration’s foolish policy decision to try to wrest Ukraine, out of Russia’s  sphere of influence and into the west in 2010.  Ukraine is situated  on the most sensitive part of Russia’s western border, and has a long history of  cultural, linguistic, and economic ties to that much larger and more powerful state.  (The analogy of the US and Mexico, (our similarly close neighbor) would not apply—the Ukraine and Russia are much closer religiously, culturally and politically.)   The Obama policy of  “westernization” of Ukraine was very troubling for the Russian state.  In 2010 President Victor Yanukovych—a more or less pro-Russian politician—-was legitimately elected President of Ukraine.  As the head of a state on the border of a powerful neighbor, Yanukovych attempted tp keep a neutral position between Russia,  the west and east European US allies already pulled into close ties with the west—and some of which had become NATO members as well.

President Obama and his anti-Russian State Department aggressively and unrealistically plotted (meddled) in Ukrainian politics...supporting political  demonstrations, and supplying monetary support for political opponents of President  Yanukovych in an attempt to  change the regime and move Ukraine to turn westward toward Europe and the EU and to ultimately join NATO.   Putin complained bitterly that this US policy was an attempt to “encircle Russia”.  Imagine how we would respond if Russia attempted to perhaps  bring Cuba into its sphere of influence.  How would we respond?  Oh Yes!  That actually happened with Cuba!  And how did we react?  We went ballistic..near nuclear war.

Obama’s policy of  “meddling”,  fomenting disturbances and demonstration in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev ultimately destabilized the Yanukovych Presidency, brought down the legitimate government and caused the legitimately elected Yanukovych to flee for his life.  His motorcade was fired upon at one point.   After this American-aided coup, a pro-American president was installed in the Presidential place.  Ukraine descended into civil war when the eastern (ethnically and more pro- Russian) portion of the Ukraine attempted to secede and the whole nation erupted into warfare.  In a response, to the loss of the pro-Russia government in Ukraine,  Putin  invaded and annexed the Crimea where Russia maintained a naval presence. .  The political and regime change (meddling) instigated and supported by the Obama Administration was a disaster which led to civil war, displacement of large portions of the population,  and thousands of deaths.  It also may have been the motive which generated was a diplomatic disaster which led to some of the evens that we are experienceing here in the USA since the 2016 election.

Had Obam and his State Department been more circumspect and had a more realistic appreciation of how Russia would respond to what it saw as an existential threat with the attack on the Ukraine...there would have been no Russian meddling in the 2016 election as “pay back” for the Ukraine fiasco.

Newton’s Third Law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In politics the law applies as well. Obama’s failed and foolish policy was the action—the “equal and opposite” reaction was the Russian pay back. Could it be that some elelments of the Clinton loss, the Trump win, the gutting of Obama’s legislative legacy, and the continuing disruption to our nation’s political stability are in some way the outcome of an unwise attempt by Obama to push the Russians into a corner.