OBAMA’S UKRAINE BLUNDER
Result: Another USA sponsored dysfunctional state. Economic decline in Ukraine. Festering war in Donbass, Ukraine’s loss of Crimea to Russia, Ukraine loses access to Azov Sea, Ukraine loss of commercial port of Mariupol. Revenge of Mr. Putin on Obama and Clinton in 2016 elections.
Yeah great work Obama! Perhaps you and Ms Nuland of the State Department better scratch off any trips to the Ukraine.
In 2014 the Obama Administration whose State Department was shot through with neocons, and Clinton arm-chair warriors—a sinister group who never let an opportunity to create conflict around the world escape their attention and the attendant economic chaos, human suffering, death and destruction that goes with it. One wonders how these folks were not summarily fired when Obama—who campaigned against such policies—was elected.
The now infamous Bush-Cheney crowd had led the USA into what is now known as the worst foreign policy blunder in all of US history—the Iraq War. Somehow Obama inherited these folks, but being a novice had little expertise or gumption to fire them. Sadly, they led Obama into more foreign adventurism, this time to interference in a nation on the border with Russia—the Ukraine. I guess the swathe of failed states, death and destruction they had sown across the Middle East was not enough of a sad display of the limits of American military might for them. This Obama group turned their attention to the Baltic and Eastern Europe as another area to create dysfunctional states, where the blunt force of American might could be squandered. Obama agreed to it.
Obama and his CIA spent millions of dollars to help destabilize the government of Ukraine’s moderately pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovitch. Obama’s intention appears to have been an attempt to lure Ukraine out of the Russian economic sphere and encourage it to join NATO. This was a clearly seen in the EU (and in Russia) as an existential threat to Russia—and was sure to be strenuously resisted.
The Obama policy of poking the Russian bear in the eye was the act of a bad chess player and a novice foreign policy team. To this day it remains unclear.what the Obama strategy was—or was there a strategy? Ukraine is a border nation, with a powerful neighbor. It is a state where a large portion of the population is of ethnic Russian extraction, and whose social, religious and economic ties to the powerful eastern neighbor are very old and very strong. Imagine the Russias trying to lure Canada away from USA economic dominance and into the sphere of the Russian federation. What hope would it have of success? And how would we react?
Obama’s Ukraine policy was clearly not a well thought out. Did it rise to the stupidity of the Bay of Pigs, the Iraq War, and Johnson’s Vietnam fiasco? Perhaps not, but it is up there high on the list, near the top..
Within a short time of the Obama Administration’s intervention, pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovitch, was driven from office by street demonstrations and riots which turned violent. Obama immediately helped install the pro-western regime of former candy manufacturer turned politician Petro Poroshenko.
At the time of the unrest and fall of the legitimate government, DC talking heads touted the actions of covert American operatives in the Ukraine as a foreign policy victory for Obama—but very soon it became clear to all that it was a Pyrrhic one. In the end Obama and the USA were outfoxed by Mr. Putin (who is a much better chess player).
What were the end results of Mr. Obama’s foolish attempts at intervention in the Ukraine ? A festering war in eastern Ukraine known as the Donbass War (thousands killed, over two million displaced and no end in sight), economic downturn and disaster for Ukraine, the loss of strategically critical Crimea to Russia, the loss of Ukraine of access to a good part of its coastline in the Azov Sea and the important commercial ports of Mariupol in that body of water. The Azov Sea has now become in effect a Russian sea...effectively closing off the large Ukrainian ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk from normal traffic. Finally, Mr. Putin even seems to have attempted to extracted his revenge upon Mr Obama and Ms Clinton with his well published attempts at Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections.
Perhaps the present hatred for all things Russian in Washington DC appears to have its source in the Obama Blunder.
Big looser that Obama! But the present Administration should not make us all losers by continuing the failed and foolish policies of past administrations.
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