West destroys its moral authority

French President Francois Hollande

By Jim W. Dean

 

Every day it continues. We see Western leaders making bad decisions in regards to their own citizens for some ulterior purposes that remain disguised.

Europe is showing this disease in a variety of ethnic flavors. It sometimes looks like their sense of fairness demands that for every victim in Ukraine or Russia, from violence or economic attack, there must be corresponding suffering in the West. Just ask the sanction victim there if you want confirmation.

Personally I feel such leaders should be institutionalized for the safety of the rest of us. They are just too crazy and dangerous to let run around loose. And then we make it even worse by giving them diplomatic immunity so there are no legal consequences for what they inflict upon the rest of us, friend and foe alike.

The French are leading with the most stellar example of "how not to do things", with Hollande’s bungling of the Russian Mistral ship contract and putting a key segment of its export economy at risk. After standing up to Washington's early pressure to renege on the first ship's delivery, based on national pride and protecting years of investment in cultivating Russian military contracts, the French did an about-face.

Their thin veil of cover was to deny that it was a contract annulment, but just holding off delivery until the official contract date in late October. But with their next breath we learned that the delivery would be contingent upon evidence of a permanent ceasefire. And then that demand escalated in a few days to the more substantial “peaceful resolution of the Ukraine crisis.”

Thus, the French have added a new “Jack-in-the-box” stealth clause to their military export contracts, that they can be used as a gun to the head in geopolitical disputes. Hollande's approval numbers almost being in the single digits could have established him as the perfect sacrificial political lamb, as his political career has hit a brick wall. We also saw the French poll last week that National Front leader Marine Le Pen was out-polling all the other presidential contenders, and that shocked the country.

Furthermore, if I were in India's government, with their $10-billion fighter jet contact with France's Dassault Aviation and with another $10 billion in equipment add-ons in the pipeline, I would be reconsidering that deal. With India and Russia working on a 5th-generation fighter together, if the East-West manufactured hostilities continue their current path, could not France be pressured or enticed to renege on those deliveries, too? How could India take that chance after watching the Russians being twisted in the wind on the Mistral deal?

But let's move East now to Ukraine for Poroshenko's entry for further bizarre arms follies. In what I can only suspect was a desire to pump up his flagging political prestige at home with his NATO wheeler-dealer skills, when pressed to divulge the names of the countries he claimed were going to supply the coup-meisters with state of the art weapons, his aide Yuri Lutsenko spilled the beans... the US, Germany, Italy, Poland and Norway.

Skeptics of the cease-fire process were quick to take advantage of this huge diplomatic goof by reminding the public how Poroshenko cruelly used the last ceasefire to resupply and reposition all of his military forces for what he thought would be the final push to crush the Republic Forces. We know now the West was fully supportive of this plan because after the initial meeting, not a finger was lifted to pursue any real negotiations. It had been a cheap delaying maneuver.

This diplomatic treachery makes Kiev's Western supporters fully complicit in the unnecessary suffering and slaughter of East Ukrainian civilians. As the overconfident Kiev forces were fought to a standstill with substantial casualties, they pulled back and then adopted a civilian area bombardment campaign to punish the Defense Forces for fighting too well.

This is right out of the Zionist playbook on collective punishment, as they were inflicting on Gaza at the time. While Obama did eventually work to put the brakes on Israel's attacks by grounding flights into Ben Gurion airport and canceling the Hellfire missile resupply shipments, we are aware of nothing done by him or the EU to stop Kiev's senseless destruction and killing.

On the contrary, the West ran cover for Kiev, with its endless charges of Russians massing on the border and having crossed it with armored columns. These were usually made to cover the defeats and surrenders of Kiev's forces, where their equipment had ostensibly made the defense forces stronger. When the breakaway Republics finally committed their reserves into the battle to fight in larger formations, the tide of battle turned completely around in a week.

Only then did the West begin working to stop the fighting, but not for the sake of the E. Ukrainians. War protests had begun in Kiev, because the country's descent into economic oblivion was becoming obvious to all, and thoughts were turning to what the winter would be like with continued hostilities -- the gas pipelines still shut down and the coal reserves way below what was needed.

So all the false claims of the Russian invasions of Ukraine were the usual psyops -- this time to pave the way for NATO expansion to face up to the Russian bear. I did Press TV's The Debate show last week with a retired Marine Colonel who pitched that NATO was doing nothing to threaten Russia at all. He claimed it was only trying to block the Russians from reconquering their former Soviet states and threatening Europe. Even an old warhorse like me was stunned at the utter lunacy of that propaganda from a man who was a Fox News darling, trying to play us all for fools.

The good news is we will not have to wait for the historical postmortem on how the West threw away the last vestiges of its moral leadership. The history of this period will have “fools parade” stamped all over it, as lists are being archived of the mistakes that were made. But we will not forget the history. Alexander Mecouris has already started with a recent article in RIA Novosti, where I will share just two of the key points that he made.

We remember how European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso protested when former Ukrainian President Yanukovych wanted to delay signing the EU Association agreement so as to include the Russians in a tripartite attempt and to not burn bridges by escalating the application process. He said on November 29, 2013, “Russia’s inclusion in the talks on setting up an association between the EU and Ukraine is fully unacceptable.” He and Catherine Ashton held the line on freezing Russia out of the process and the resulting mayhem.

So now we have the physical destruction of much of E. Ukraine, estimates already in the billions to repair, and the initial loans to Kiev wasted on the stupid war to crush those in the East who did not want to live under the boot of the new Western puppets. And only when Kiev's forces are being carved up on the battlefield do we finally have a tripartite meeting in Minsk to start a process that could have been done last year and could have avoided the carnage to both East and West.

We remember when the West criticized Yanukovych for wanting to negotiate continued gas discounts as dependency, but we see the West supporting their new puppet government in wanting to do the same thing now because they are more broke than Yanyukovych was. That is what all the anti-Russian threats have all been about -- to blackmail Russia into soaking up the red ink Tar-baby that the West has lashed itself to. They want Moscow to pay tribute to the West, because that is what it is always about with the Western elites... the money. Russia's gas subsidies basically funded the EU trade surplus with Ukraine, and the EU wants to keep that going.

Now the EU needs the money even more because the sanctions not only have backfired but triggered both a Russian domestic production replacement drive, like Iran was forced to go through with amazing results... and replacing EU suppliers from BRICS and the non-aligned, non-sanctioning countries. Europe will carry the scars for their failed leadership in this sad episode.

The Western crowd seems to have learned nothing as they are doubling down on their NATO push eastward, which will just assure more such wasteful debacles in the future. Maybe that is what the EU elite handlers want, for some reason. If EU citizens are smart, they will have a badly needed political revolution there. But they have to be careful that it is not a self-destructive one, or they will slide toward Ukraine and death by unfriendly fire.

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