I read the Russian Language news on the Internet and have some thoughts about the Bushification of Eastern Europe. Two Caveats:
- My Russian is not as strong as it might be although I have help.
- The Russian Language Press is not as reliable as it might be. I guess the same could be said of other, more, um, respected news outlets.
For example, I recently read that during Victor Yushenko's (New President of Ukraine) visit to the U.S., Ukraine and the U.S. agreed to mutually support the spread of democracy internationally. Ukraine would support the spread of democracy in Belarus. The U.S., for its part, would foster democracy in Cuba. This agreement was not reported in the English Language press that I could find. Does anyone know anything more about this? I don't know what to make of it. If this is a real thing it only makes me wonder who is more out of touch, Bush or Yushenko?
Anyway, reading Russian Language news, even with a healthy skepticism, leads me to believe that the velvet revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine were fostered indirectly by the U.S. government with funds channeled through NGOs from sources including someone named Lugar Dick. Maybe it was actually Dick Tracy. But this Lugar Dick sounds strangely familiar.
The U.S. is promoting a strategic alliance between Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan for the purpose of fostering democracy and security in Eastern Europe.
The Defense Department has definite plans for basing troops in Kyrgyzstan to protect oil and gas reserves in the area. The force will be called the Caspian Guard.
Recent plans to induct Ukraine into NATO have been largely scuttled because 1) Western Europe wants to form its own Military Alliance under EU auspices and let NATO expire without them and, 2) Russia informed NATO that if Ukraine makes immediate plans to join NATO, Russia will find it necessary to immediately revisit various unresolved issues between Russia and Ukraine including territories illegally transferred from Russia to Ukraine under the authority of the Soviet Union, including the Crimean Peninsula where the Russian warm water fleet is based in Sebastopol.
Plans for Ukrainian membership in the EU have been widely panned in Europe.
Russia is pressuring both Georgia and Ukraine by changing very favorable pricing on energy, oil and gas, and by refusing credit until massive debt for past purchases of oil and gas are resolved. This has left both Georgia and Ukraine with serious power shortages and problems in winter heating and water purification/sewage treatment.
It is reported that Turkey has refused to allow oil tankers to navigate the Bosporus to/from the Black Sea. It is also reported that Russia and Germany have agreed to build a pipeline under the Baltic to bypass Eastern Europe and deliver Russian oil directly to Western Europe, bypassing Ukraine. Ukraine is accustomed to making a lot of money by brokering Russian oil through pipelines under Ukrainian soil to Western Europe. If Russia turns off the source, Ukraine is screwed.
Georgian President Sakashvily is about to be impeached and may not last even until the end of this year. Georgia appears to have no real choice but to realign itself with Russia, politically and economically.
The Orange Revolution in Ukraine has installed a regime as corrupt as the one it replaced. The Yushenko government has unilaterally replaced all national officials and regional governors with its cronies. Many of the new government officials know absolutely nothing about the aspect of government they administer; they were appointed because they are someone's Godfather or such. Even in Crimea, an autonomous, federated republic with its own parliament and council of ministers, the Prime Minister has been forced to resign and parliament pressured to elect Yushenko's man to replace him. This happened after a series of misunderstandings arising from the fact that Yushenko didn't know that Crimea had its own government. Yushenko repeatedly tried to fire the Crimean Prime Minister directly and couldn't seem to get him to go.
Various officials of the previous regime have "committed suicide." One of them notoriously shot himself in the head twice with broken fingers on his right hand.
Clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have taken over Church buildings previously belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church with the backing of the Ukrainian military.
The former governor of Donetsk, a region bordering on Russia and populated almost completely by ethnic Russians, has been arrested for sedition after events during the recent election. There was a popular movement in Donetsk and other regions of Eastern Ukraine to form a federated republic (like the United States) rather than give all power to a centralized government in Kiev run by Ukrainian Nationalists from Western Ukraine.
The former regime's president, Leonid Kutchma, was nearly forced from office in the summer of 2001 because one of his security officers had surreptitiously taped many of the former president's meetings. The Ukrainian press had gotten its mitts on one of the tapes that pretty clearly showed Kutchma complicit in the murder of a journalist. In Late 2001 Ukraine became a member of the coalition of the bribed and Kutchma's position strengthened due to his relationship with BushAmerica. Yes, he was a corrupt and brutal dictator and no one is sorry to see him go.
It appears that the notorious tapes have been obtained by the infamous Boris Berezofsky, one-time Russian oligarch. Berezofsky had to flee Russia and is still wanted by there on criminal charges. He was eventually allowed entry to the UK as a refugee. He officially changed his name and now roams around on his private jet under his new name with his new British passport. He apparently wants to resettle in Ukraine, a slavic country more like good old Russia than the UK. To get permission to immigrate from the Yushenko government in Kiev he offers the tapes to the Ukrainian Justice ministry. One day he is reported to be landing in Kiev with Yushenko and Sakashvily meeting him at the airport. (this is a very strange story indeed!) The next day he is reported to be in Israel. Then he's back in London negotiating on delivering the tapes. It is widely reported that the tapes implicate high ranking members of the Yushenko regime in corruption during the Kutchma regime. Anyway, Berezofsky's odyssey appears to be ongoing and it is anyone's guess what the tapes actually say and what will be reported by the Ukrainian Justice Ministry or by Berezofsky himself.
I was in Ukraine in 1998 and the local currency, the Hyrvna, could be exchanged for dollars at official kiosks - about 2 hyrvna for a dollar. As recently as February the exchange rate was as high as 6 hryvna for a dollar. Suddenly, the official exchange rate is less than 2 hryvna for a dollar and falling. Ukrainian people, who have been stockpiling dollars as a hedge against inflation, are suddenly seeing their nest eggs evaporating and rushing to the currency exchanges to get what they can. Meanwhile, the actual value of the Hyrvna against the dollar is unchanged and the government is reaping a windfall. The spin by Yulia Timoshenko, oligarch and newly minted Prime Minister, is that a strong Hyrvna is good for Ukraine.
Speaking of Timoshenko, she is wanted in Russia in connection with a money-laundering scheme headed by a former Prime Minister, a fellow named Lazarenko. Lazarenko had to flee from the justice of the Kutchma regime and landed in the United States where he promptly bought a multi-million dollar mansion (a practical impossibility for any honest Ukrainian). He was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department on 53 counts of money laundering using U.S. banks. Russia claims to have Timoshenko's signature on wire transfers to Lazarenko's accounts. Of course, Timoshenko denies everything and tells Ukrainians that all of that has been resolved and she is no longer wanted by Interpol. But she didn't try to go to Russia until she received assurances from the Russian government that she would not be arrested.
The standing joke is that the lasting legacy of the Orange Revolution will be a baby boom in the fall of 2005. Too many college kids cohabitating on the streets of Kiev.
A generation ago it was Chile, El Salvador, and even Iraq - to name just a few of America's debacles abroad. Clearly, the banana republics of the neocon era are in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They stretch from Poland in the West to Kyrgyzstan in the East to Iraq and Afghanistan in the south. They are meant to isolate Russia and to secure access to the oil and gas fields of Central Asia for American business interests. The neocons can precipitate regime change, peacefully or otherwise, but they cannot bring the economic development that this part of the world so desperately needs to meet the human needs of the people there. The result is predictable: widespread suffering, corruption, and disaffection with America.
Yes, these guys have a plan. If history is to be our guide we can expect that a generation from now these countries will be dirt poor, hopelessly indebted, and resentful of America if not openly anti-American. That has always been the outcome of their plan. It probably always will be.
As a progressive American I think we need to go a different way. We need to rebuild alliances and work multi-laterally on investing in the growth of emerging economies. People everywhere want the same basic things that Americans want; security, safe food and water, health and healthcare, education, the freedom to live as they choose, following their own faith, speaking their own language, and hope that the future will be better than the present.