David Francis — Inside the Obama Administration’s About-Face On Arming Ukraine

Looks like the decision has been made to reverse course and go with the neocons. If this is the case, in my view it could result in the unraveling of the American Empire. Germany (Merkel) has already said Nein to military aid, and it will enrage many Europeans that the US playing loose with European security, inviting another European war, and forcing them to join what they see is not only a needless confrontation but a losing one at that. Moreover, Europeans have no intention of being saddled with the cost of Ukraine as either a failed state as presently or a conquered one in the future, so that America can make a point.

Who is behind this madness?

Steve Szabo, executive director of the Transatlantic Academy, told Foreign Policy Wednesday that he suspects more than urgency is behind the report.
“I look at this as a cynical Washington way. This is [Hillary] Clinton’s team trying to distance themselves from Obama’s foreign policy,” he said. “These people are going to play roles in the Clinton administration” if she wins the 2016 presidential race, he added.

This could upend the Democratic Party, too. Many Democrats on the left only vote Democratic to stop the crazier GOP. This could end with a Hillary candidacy.

Foreign Policy
Inside the Obama Administration’s About-Face On Arming Ukraine

David Francis | staff writer

Also

Irrussianality

A Thoroughly Bad Idea

Paul Robinson

There is a strange belief that the best way to solve humanitarian crises caused by war is to hand out even more weapons. This week the United Nations warned that the upsurge in violence in Ukraine is proving ‘catastrophic’. In the United States, meanwhile, both the media and officials such as Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel have been ratcheting up the pressure on President Obama to send weapons to the Ukrainian Army. So far, Obama has resisted, but according to the Washington Post, he is facing a ‘rebellion’ within the Democratic Party. The BBC reports that the president ‘is rethinking his policy’.

The obvious futility of escalating, except for the military-industrial complex and military Keynesianism. The Obama budget tacks on an addition 35 billion.

There is no reason to believe that supplying the Ukrainian Army will help it defeat the rebellion. What it will do is escalate the conflict. Russia has made it very clear that it will not allow the rebels to be defeated militarily, and so far it has provided the rebels with just enough equipment to prevent this from happening. Were the United States to send weapons to Ukraine, it is probable that Russia would retaliate in kind, stepping up supplies to the rebels. This would wipe out any advantage American armaments provided. The scale of violence would increase still further, without actually tipping the balance of power in favour of the Ukrainians.

Mother Jones
Is Obama Getting Closer to War With Russia?
Kevin Drum

The American Conservative
The Folly and Futility of Arming Ukraine
Daniel Larison | senior editor at TAC

What If Putin Doesn’t Back Down?
Scott McConnell | a TAC founding editor

Strobe Talbott in the Washington Post, Ivo Dalder in the Financial Times, the Washington Post editorial board, other major figures from Clinton-land and the permanent government are all on board for a major roll-out.…

I’m not a Russia expert, though I’m not really persuaded that Ivo Daalder and Strobe Talbott and company are either. But they, like much of the Washington political class, are convinced that it is their God-given role as elite Americans to manage the world, to bend it to our neoliberal capitalist sense of what the good society is. They are part of the seamless Washington web—the term military-industrial complex hardly seems adequate anymore—whose role it is to continuously expand the range of human activities that are supposedly Washington’s business, our ” vital interests”—invariably presented as what is best for everyone else.