Is this really in dispute? We have leaked phone conversations from the US ambassador to Ukraine talking about what leader we’re going to install and how we can best stir up shit to successfully enact a pro-western coup in Ukraine.
The government lapdog US media isn’t reporting this, but I was under the impression that anyone who was up to date with the subject knew this.
If that isn’t a satire site, it sure reads like one. “Gangsterism…” :Dand here I thought rhetoric like that was gone from the world (outside North Korea).
Is the “World Socialist Web Site” for real, or a parody site? It’s so hard to tell sometimes…
Sorry, my bad on the url. I just googled “leaked ukraine us coup phone call” or something like that and grabbed the first link. Here’s one from the BBC.
Is it seriously in contention that the US and the west in general were active players in the Ukrainian coup?
The idea that the State Department determines who gets power in another country is just nuts, whether it is the Kremlin or the World Socialist Web Site making the claim. The State Department is lucky if it can decide what cafeteria food it will offer next Thursday without convening six study groups on the matter.
If you look at the actual conversation (not the opinions offered by Troskyists) it is about having the opposition leaders stick together, as opposed to this Russian conspiracy theory about the US carving up Ukraine.
When it comes to power and influence I think there is a broad spectrum of victory. Right now our position is good, but it could be made even better.
America’s hard power is mostly uncontested. But not absolute, as we saw when Russia took a part of Ukraine and destabilized another region. Russia still has influence around its borders.
I think soft power is the real opportunity for growth. And by this I mean economic and cultural influence as well as the buildup of friendships and shared ideals.
Someone will say this cannot be accomplished through war and I agree in the short term. I also believe that memories of past generations fade quickly and over the long-term, we can build allies through military means.
What would those be? ISTM the Russian government has no ideology any more but Russian nationalism.
Their only ideology is “What Putin wants!” He makes use of nationalism and Orthodox Christianiy, but it stll all comes down to what that scumbag wants.
Russia didn’t overthrow any Cuban government, ever. The Soviets didn’t support (or think much of) Castro until he was well established in power. The Soviet proxy in Cuba was the Communist Party, which was weakly supportive of Batista and opposed Castro’s revolution. (Castro later purged the communist party and took it over, once he was in charge).
They don’t determine, they influence, or try to, to the best of their ability. So too (to the best of their ability) do the French, the British, the Russians, and for that matter the Cubans, when they feel like they have something at stake. It’s just that as the most powerful country in the world, America has more influence on other countries’ politics than any of the rest of them.
This might be a news flash for you, but we didn’t overthrow the Ukraine government either…or even offer them much in the way of support while Russia was trying to slice off large chunks of their territory.
[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
Is it seriously in contention that the US and the west in general were active players in the Ukrainian coup?
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I think there is serious contention that the US and the West weren’t active players in the ‘Ukrainian coup’. You can check out earlier threads on this subject if you want to see that not everyone was buying this line.
Putin couldn’t have said it better himself. 
What a load of horseshit though.
We have no war boner. Throwing our weight around in response to Russian aggression before it becomes a war/no war scenario is the opposite of a war boner. We prevent war by showing strength. We encourage war by allowing them to get to the point where the next step is invading a NATO country where we MUST go to war.
Because the Cold War was thoroughly, endemically, spectacularly stupid. On every front, and in every aspect.
Like, seriously. For real.
[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
The current Russian aggression is largely the result of Western interference in trying to subvert the Ukranian government and to set up a pro-western government.
[/QUOTE]
lolwut ?
… what coup ?!
As opposed to what - “Hey, Moscow, if you want West Germany, it’s yours?”
You previously said that the US was talking about what leader we were going to “install” and how to “stir up shit” to generate a coup. Seems to me like you’re backing off the idea that we were “installing” a leader, but I’d sure like you to say that yourself.
Putin’s been remarkably frank with his position in his recent speech to the Valdai international discussion club. Here’s a full translation. It also includes a translation of the question and answer session that followed.
Basically Putin argues that since the cold war the US has engaged in aggressively promoting it’s self interest at the expense of all other nations and to the detriment of the international institutions established post World War II. He sees this as a dangerous path and leading to great instability and conflict. I find this answer to a question form Seumas Milne particularly interesting:
Some interesting perspectives from Garry Kasparov, via Twitter. (He is, to put it mildly, no fan of Putin’s - nor of the current response to him.)
Kasparov’s remarks aren’t ‘interesting perspectives’, they’re vacuous sound bites. Even by the standards of Twitter, which is an exceptionally low bar. I’m missing where he provides any arguments for his claims.
I believe it was SenorBeef that said that, so I’ll clarify: I don’t think we ‘installed’ the new bunch of ‘leaders’ of the Ukraine. We did our best to influence the situation, but that influence was mostly limited to exhortations, moral support, economic aid and so forth.
I’m not particularly interested in anecdotes from ‘your friends and family who were involved in Euromaidan’. They’re wrong. If they were involved in Euromaidan, they should be ashamed of themselves for being on the same side as Right Sector, Svoboda, and the ideological descendants of the people who welcomed Operation Barbarossa.