Obama Dictates Terms to Russia To Keep Its Naval Base in Crimea

American Emperor Barack Obama made this public statement on March 6^th:

“The proposed, referendum, on the future of Crimea, would violate the Ukrainian Constitution, and, violate international law. Any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government, of Ukraine. In two thousand fourteen we are well beyond the days when, borders can be redrawn over the heads, of, democratic leaders. While we, take these steps [sanctions on Russia] I wanna be clear that there's also a way to resolve this crisis, that respects the interests of the Russian Federation, as well as the Ukrainian people. Let international monitors, into all of Ukraine, including Crimean, to ensure the rights of all Ukrainians are being respected, including, ethnic Russians. Begin consultations, between the government of Russia and Ukraine, with the participation, of the international community. Russia would maintain its basing rights in Crimea, provided that its abides by its agreements, and respects, Ukraine's, sovereignty and territorial integrity. And the world should support, the people of Ukraine as they move, to elections, in May. That's the path of de-escalation, and Secretary [of State John] Kerry is engaged in discussions with all of the relevant parties, including Russia and Ukraine, to pursue that path. But, if this violation of international law continues, the resolve of the United States and our allies and the international community, will remain firm. Meanwhile we've taken steps to reaffirm our commitment to the security and democracy of our allies in Eastern Europe, and to support, the people of Ukraine.” [video of Obama at bottom]

Now, it isn't easy to capture Obama's speaking patterns in a text transcript. His speech is typically (but not always) jerky, not flowing and smooth, so one must decide how long a pause between words merits a comma. He has pauses of varying lengths between words. Also, what words he emphasizes (which I have italicized) is tricky, since his speech is “cool,” not “hot,” that is, he mostly lectures like a university professor. So should the words on which his voice rises in tone be italicized? Sometimes the second syllable of a word seems emphasized. Anyway, you can watch and listen to him yourself below.

So let's parse this amazing speechlet. He really stands reality on its head in a most mendacious fashion. The chutzpah and hypocrisy would be breathtaking, except that it's more or less routine for U.S. Emperors.

First, he asserts that the referendum on secession would violate the Ukrainian Constitution. What, having a mob overthrow the elected government in Kiev, and then the U.S. anoint its hand-picked choices as a new “government,” is allowed under that Constitution? That just takes a lot of smug and arrogant chutzpah to assert. And I don't know what part of international law bars a referendum asking people to make a decision on their political alignment. On the other hand, international law might have something to say about foreign powers subverting and overthrowing a government and replacing it with one more to its liking. But the real reason the U.S. and its lackeys is so hysterically opposed to the referendum is because they know the majority in eastern Ukraine look set to vote in favor of it- hence the need to brand it as “illegitimate” and “illegal” in advance.

Then he refers to this puppet U.S.-installed “government” as “the legitimate government of Ukraine.” Not the elected one the U.S. just helped overthrow. And this new “government” is to have a veto on even holding a referendum in Crimea, the apparent meaning of his second sentence. His third sentence absurdly called the U.S.-installed, unelected puppets “democratic leaders.” I guess if you interpret “democratic” as code for “U.S.-controlled,” then it makes sense. The elected leader was overthrown. Most people equate “democratic” with “chosen by the people.” Which you would think would require an election. Obama promises a May election (which was already scheduled before the coup). Given that a fascist-led mob now wields significant power in Kiev, and just engineered a unanimous “vote” in the parliament there to endorse the coup, one is entitled to wonder how free and fair- and legitimately contested- the May election will be. After all, the mob now deemed “the legitimate Ukrainian government” by the U.S. and its lackeys couldn't even wait until that election to seize power.

As for borders: Obama doesn't have a problem with Israel redrawing its borders, in blatant violation of international law, to absorb its conquests of 1967. In fact the U.S. is paying it to do so, and protecting it, and arming it, so it can.

Next, feigning reasonableness, Obama tries to steer Russia down the path of surrender to the U.S. Let so-called “international monitor” into Crimea (and the rest of Ukraine, because Obama is SO fair and even-handed, you see) he demands, “to ensure the rights of all Ukrainians are being respected.” I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. I think it means “so we can veto secession in the name of the 'Ukrainian people.'” They're frantically calling the referendum “illegitimate,” apparently because they think the eastern Ukrainians will vote to split off from the coup puppet government in Kiev. Obama and his Eurolackeys just put a cop-killing mob in power in Kiev. Now he's prattling about “rights.” Obviously all he cares about is power. This is a guy who picks Americans to assassinate, who defends his right to imprison American citizens in military gulags without trial or charges indefinitely, who blows up wedding parties in other countries, and he wants us to believe he cares about the rights of Ukrainians? Are there sentient beings on this planet who still give the slightest credence to such guff?

Obama references the “crisis,” that is entirely of his and his Eurolackeys' making, and tells Russia what it has to do to “resolve” it. Russia has to pretend that the coup government is legitimate, and beg it to let Russia keep its naval base in Crimea. We can dismiss the empty rhetoric about “respecting the rights of all Ukrainians.” A fascist-led mob just overthrew the elected government and took over Parliament, and the U.S. installed a client regime. This blather about “respecting the rights of all Ukrainians” is horseshit. It is the RIGHT of the eastern Ukrainians to secede from this Western neocolonial creation if they so choose, just as it was the right of the southern Sudanese to secede (the U.S. supported that secession), for example, or the right of the Kosovar Albanians to secede from Serbia (again, with U.S. support). And those secessions were done by force of arms, not by referendum. (We're already being brainwashed to think that a Russian gun will be pointed at every eastern Ukrainian's head to make him or her vote for secession. The fact that Western propagandists- aka “journalists”- are freely roaming the Crimea makes me doubt that picture of repression.)

Then comes some doubletalk, starting with a demand: “Begin consultations between the government of Russia and Ukraine, with the participation, of the international community. Russia would maintain its basing rights in Crimea, provided that its abides by its agreements, and respects, Ukraine's, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Now in one sentence he's ordering Russia to talk to Ukraine. In the next sentence he says Russia “would” keep its naval “basing rights,” (not “base,” see the subtle difference?). Well how does Obama magically know in advance what the outcome of “consultations” between Russia and the “government of Ukraine” would be? Because it's a puppet government, and the U.S. said that for now Russia won't be immediately shoved out of Crimean.

But look at the poison pill Obama inserted, the conditions for the U.S. to allow Russia to keep its Black Sea Fleet and access to the worlds seas and oceans from there: “provided that its abides by its agreements, and respects, Ukraine's, sovereignty and territorial integrity.” And who will be the judge of that? The U.S., obviously. And given how distorted the U.S. view of reality is, how could the Russians breath easy over that? The mere presence of Russian troops in Crimea has already been denounced, repeatedly, as “a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.” And if the easterners vote to secede? Why, that would be a “violation of blah blah blah.” The puppet “prime minister” who Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told the U.S. ambassador to install, in that infamous intercepted phone call (that the Western media has conveniently chucked down the memory hole) has already made noises about abrogating the base treaty with Russia. The rump parliament voted to demote the Russian language from having official status in Ukraine, jamming a thumb in the eye of millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians (hey Obama, who exactly is violating whose rights here?) which the “prime minister” had to hurriedly reverse, no doubt on U.S. orders.

And let's remember, that this business of moving NATO right up to the borders of Russia violates the understanding Gorbachev thought he had with the U.S. when he allowed the Soviet Empire to collapse peacefully. The U.S. wasn't supposed to push the edge of its empire right to the Russian border. Now, not only is Russia not to be permitted any buffer zone at all from Western encroachment, it is not even to be allowed to maintain its naval base on the Black Sea, through which it transits to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean. This is the thanks Russia gets for aiding the U.S. in its war in Afghanistan (quite a generous gift, considering what the U.S. did to Russia there!). It doesn't pay to do the U.S. any favors, would seem to be the lesson. (Iran can draw a similar lesson from the help it extended to the U.S. after 9/11/01 when the U.S. went to war against the Taliban. The U.S. is an arrogant ingrate which thinks that all its demands are merely its due.)

The U.S. basically recognizes only its own interests as legitimate- and of course Israel's, which are Super-legitimate, superseding even the U.S.' own.

Obama throws in “the international community” a few times. Which is just a way of saying “the whole world against Russia.” The U.S. always uses that rhetoric. It seems that whichever nation the U.S. is attacking at the moment, it's always THE WHOLE WORLD against the target nation. Because the U.S. is so morally righteous and good, of course the WHOLE WORLD is always behind the U.S. I don't think there's ever been a nation as arrogant as the U.S. But “the international community” here really means the EU. Ever since World War II, Europe has been nothing but a collection of U.S.-flunky nations. We see that again here, as we have in the “war on terror,” where even Sweden- Sweden!- helped the CIA kidnap “terrorists” from Swedish soil and spirit them away to secret torture dungeons. (Some of those torture dungeons were in Europe too.) And thanks to Edward Snowden, we find that the European secret police help the NSA spy on the people of Europe, whose rulers supposedly care so much about human rights. Well, pleasing the Master comes first, I suppose. Politicians aren't really human beings. They are creatures of power. So they line up with the natural direction of power, like iron filings in a magnetic field.

Obama ends his peroration with a hackneyed faux-”stirring” pledge of support for “the people of Ukraine.” Well, the U.S. certainly supports some people of Ukraine- namely the new puppets it anointed as the “legitimate government” of Ukraine. And those satraps can rely on U.S. support until the U.S. decides not to support them. That happens sometimes. It happened to Diem in “South” Vietnam, where the U.S. gave permission for his assassination in a military coup. It happened to Ferdinand Marcos, dictator of the Philippines. It even happened, eventually, to the white racist rulers of apartheid South Africa, even though their regime was not much different from the “Jim Crow” U.S. South. Sometimes even the most iron-clad U.S. “guarantee” rusts away. [2]

Now, I don't really care if Russia keeps its naval base in Crimea. That's Russia's problem. I don't even believe that the division of humanity into nation-states is necessarily a good thing. I'm not on Russia's “side” in this. I simply don't side with this hyper-aggressive, megalomaniacally arrogant attitude on the part of U.S. imperialists that they should rule the entire planet. It's like the greed of the megarich. Just as the thirst of the megarich for more money is unquenchable, so the lust for more power on the part of the American imperialists can never be satisfied. While the U.S. maintains 750 military bases outside its national borders, an incredible number which is ignored in the western propaganda media, the U.S. want to shove Russia out of its historic Black Sea naval base, which is has maintained for centuries. [1] Crimea was part of Russia, until Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, a native Ukrainian, got it into his head to redraw the internal borders of the Soviet Union and transfer Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Ukraine then was like a U.S. state, like Texas, a political subdivision of a nation, not a nation in its own right. Now suddenly the U.S. says you can't redraw borders. As if borders aren't redrawn all the time! They're lines on a map! And Russia is not redrawing the borders, it is giving the eastern Ukrainians the opportunity to weigh in on whether they want to be dragged against their will, via a coup, into the arms of the EU (and sooner or later, of NATO).

The truth is, it's Russia that has been weak here. Russia has in effect ceded western Ukraine to the U.S.-bloc. Now it is trying to maintain a vitally strategic naval base. It's the hyper-aggressive U.S. that is demanding every inch of Ukrainian soil for itself, against the will of half the population (while Obama and the entire chorus of western politicians and propagandists falsely proclaim the fight is between “the Ukrainian people” and Russian “aggressors.”

Ask any American political scientist in the field of “international relations,” whether it is realistic to expect Russia to cede such a vital strategic interest as access to the sea. The U.S. won't even clear out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which it has no need for and where Cuba has made clear for over half a century the U.S. “presence” (occupation, in point of fact) is not wanted.

It's not a “crisis” if the Ukraine divides in two. The only “crisis” is ENTIRELY a U.S. creation, since the U.S. won't accept a Russian presence outside its own borders, except to fall in line behind the U.S. to gang up on Iran, say, or otherwise act as a U.S. vassal state, as the U.S.' European lapdogs do. It takes the kind of monumental gall that only the U.S. seems to possess, to destabilize the Ukraine, as the U.S. and its Eurostooges did, and then to loudly denounce Russia for “destabilizing” it, and for “interfering” in the Ukraine's internal affairs! I would submit to you that Russia has a far more pressing interest in Ukraine than does the U.S., which is thousands of miles away. Ukraine is on Russia's borders and hosts a vital Russian naval base. Yet Russia hasn't declared a “Monroe Doctrine,” as the U.S. did almost two centuries ago, claiming the entire Western Hemisphere as its exclusive property (“our backyard”). But apparently the fundamental foreign policy principle of the U.S. is- What's Mine Is Mine, What's Yours Is Mine Too.

Update: Kerry is threatening Russia if the secession referendum isn't cancelled. And German chancellor Angela Merkel has been yapping at Russia. Apparently she's forgotten all about how the NSA tapped her cellphone. And Obama never even apologized!

1] In case you were wondering, against the U.S.' 750 bases on other people's lands, the Russians have- count 'em- two. The one in Crimea, and a naval base in Syria. Which they'd have a hard time getting to if the U.S. succeeds in kicking them out of the Crimea.

Oh, and speaking of “occupations,” the people of Okinawa positively despise the U.S. military occupation of their small island, which the U.S. invaded and conquered in World War Two, slaughtering an estimated 100,000 Okinawan civilians in the process. They especially don't like the constant rapes committed by U.S. Marines and sailors. And roaring jets flying low right over the main city every day. Gets annoying. But hey, Russia has to respect the will of “the Ukrainian people!” So says the U.S.! And that's an order!

The best, concise description of Okinawa's condition, still true today, is this segment of a talk by the late Japan expert, Chalmers Johnson, "Okinawa, Japanese Colony under USN-USMC boot heel."

2] Here's an interesting semantical tally. In his self-righteous pronouncement, Obama used the word “violate” or “violation” three times, “respect” or its variations three times, “people,” referring to the Ukrainians, three times, plus a reference to “all Ukrainians.” “Rights” pops up twice. The word “international” appears FIVE times. And naturally the words “sovereignty,” “integrity,” “reaffirm,” “support,” “firm,” “commitment,” “allies,” and “democracy” trot across the stage. A word processing program could have written the speech for him. For all I know, one did. U.S. imperialist rhetoric at this stage of history is a grab bag of trite cliches and bogus hot air, intended to send signals rather than impart meaning.

 

Here's the Ukraine, with the Crimea peninsula, site of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. From there, Russian ships can sail through the Dardanelles (straits that pass through Turkey) into the Mediterranean Sea and from there to the Atlantic Ocean, or through the Suez canal to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and east Pacific.

Here you see the limits of Russian access to the sea. Its northern border is inside the Arctic Circle and is icebound much of the year- although global warming is gradually increasing the passable days. It has access to the Pacific on its far eastern coastline. Ukraine is on the left side, between and below the words "Europe" and "Moscow" on the map.

Here's a larger area view of Asia. You can see how cutting off Russian access to the Black Sea would add many thousands of miles of sea distance to the oil-rich Persian Gulf region for Russian ships.

                                                                 Here's that unctuous Emperor I was telling you about.