Ukraine, the limit of the New World Order: What is at stake? What is the principle at issue?

As long as one does not understand the true character of what is at stake, one is bound to fight wrong battles in wrong ways, for wrong motives, with inadequate determination and misplaced strategies and likely even on the wrong side. Inversely, this also means that one of the most fundamental war strategies is to sell the enemy a wrong idea about the nature of the conflict and what is at stake—for example, by trivializing “the principle at issue.”

The trivialization of the principle at issue is well visible on the part of Russian diplomacy (as the Russian government treats the crisis as a matter of foreign, external policy). The basis for this was laid down in the Geneva Agreement signed Russia, US, Ukrainian, and EU foreign ministers on April 17, 2014, which, bracketing the anti-Russian oligarchic coup (presented by its Western and Ukrainian organizers as a democratic revolution), were reducing the deep geopolitical stand-off and fundamental political controversy to two problems: 1) “disarming of the illegal groups,” and 2) “returning all illegally seized buildings to legitimate owners” and “vacating all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns.”[1]

            On the occasion of signing the Geneva Agreement, Lavrov introduced Moscow’s official line, which has been then repeated with minor variations for months to come. According to Lavrov, it was the new Nazi junta who should “show the initiative,” be more friendly, sit down and just listen more and talk more: “Those who took power in Kiev as a result of a coup—if they consider themselves as representing the interests of all the Ukrainians—must show the initiative, extend a friendly hand to the regions, listen to their concerns, and sit down with them at the negotiation table.” The fact that the Russian government did not dare to even formulate the nature and cause of the conflict was presented as an act of statesmanship. For Lavrov, it was actually the junta itself that ought to be from now on “responsible for the stability in the country” and to sort out demands for language rights: “We did not use any terms… [our goal is only] to send a signal to the Ukrainians that they are responsible for stability in the country and must ensure that each region can protect its history and language.” Lavrov also expressed his confidence that the US and the EU which just installed in Ukraine an openly and aggressively anti-Russian regime as a foil for regime change in Russia, if not for her destruction, are “genuinely interested in a trilateral cooperation with Russia aimed at convincing the Ukrainian to sit down at the negotiation table.”  The fact that the new regime in Kiev was a US proxy and thus also controlled by the US in implementing a long geopolitical strategy against Russia should, according to Lavrov, help resolve the crisis: the Americans now have a “decisive influence” on the Kiev authorities, and that should be used for resolving the crisis. In this connection, Lavrov still called Ukraine—now under a Nazi oligarchic regime—“a friendly state.”[2] Similarly, on September 13, Lavrov claimed that “Poroshenko is interested in a peace deal and needs support, primarily from the West,” since the Russian government already supports him.[3]

In the similar vein, Evgeny Primakov, a former member of Gobarchev’s Presidential Council, a Russian foreign minister (1996-98) and Prime Minister (1998-1999) and Putin’s personal mentor, argued that the early mandate for President Putin to use military force in Ukraine, if necessary, was exclusively tied to Crimea only. Russia “has to do all that is needed to absorb Crimea.” According to Primakov, the Kiev regime knew all along that Russia would not use its troops in south-east Ukraine and thus Russia’s military force was never a means of pressure against Kiev. Russia’s more decisive help to the people in Donetsk “would lead to a dead end” and would also “completely abrogate those good tendencies, which are now developing in the West, tendencies of some withdrawal from the line pursued by the United States.” Primakov is convinced that the Russian media and propaganda exaggerated the nature of the conflict. According to Primakov, “the main task for Russia is to create all conditions for technological development in the country where Russia is lagging behind.” Other issues have to be evidently subordinated to this. Primakov believes that the relations between Russia and Ukrainian would be soon normalized (the interview was given on June 25, 2014) by meeting some economic and cultural demands of the people in Donetsk, but within one state under the preserved rule of the current regime. This foreseen “normalization” would “certainly not satisfy those who would want to create their own state within the state or to separate one part from Ukraine.” In Primakov’s view, the junta would and could resolve the crisis “constitutionally.”[4]

In his interview, Primakov made sure that he avoided all fundamental political, geopolitical, or even ideological issues. What he emphasized instead were issues of technology and trade. Alxeander Dugin appraised Primakov’s take on the crisis—the greatest geopolitical threat to Russia since the end of the Cold War—in the following way:

The speech by Primakov on Ukraine was completely false, invalid and shallow. These are the words of a traitor. Thank God that this man is old and he does not influence any decisions. But he sharply stinks with the era of Gorbachev and Yeltsin: under such talking points [which he used yesterday] Gorbachev and Yeltsin were dismantling the country. The current fifth and sixth columns appeared in the USSR as early as the 80s. And clearly Primakov like Shevardnadze, Yakovlev and others were all accomplices in this in those distant years. In comparison with the excesses of the oligarchs and Yeltsin in the 90s, Primakov still seemed to have a "grand style". But this too was, as it gradually became clear, but an optical illusion.[5]

            Primakov’s position, which he himself sees as being largely shared by the highest Russian leadership, was foreshadowed already in his early March 2014 response to a letter by Ukraine's former National Defense and Security Council Secretary Volodymyr Horbulin. Primakov first emphasized that he does not want to “consider the events in Ukraine from the point of view of average people, but [in] the way [of] those who dedicated many years of their lives to politics.” According to Primakov, “Moscow was sincerely hoping that [the February 21] agreement would defuse the tension in Kiev.” The agreement, as recognized by Primakov himself and similarly by President Putin, was practically Yanukovich’s capitulation act in the face of the joint pressure from the Nazi-allied oligarchs, the putschists, and the West. Primakov then assured Horbulin, a high ranking intelligence officer representing the new regime in Kiev, that he was, indeed, in close contact with Putin, and concluded  ”Putin will do whatever it takes to find political means to resolve this grave crisis”—by means of ”a compromise.”[6]

            Such Lavrov’s and Primakov’s mediating messages do, however, severely contradict other assessments, as voiced, for example, by Sergey Glazyev, an adviser to Russian president Vladimir Putin. Glazyev’s portfolio includes Ukraine. On, on March 17, 2014, the next day after the Crimean status referendum, Glazyev was one of the first seven persons placed by President Obama under executive sanctions over Ukraine. Back on March 24, 2014, Glazyev characterized the conflict in these stark, but honest terms:

Our feeling of danger for U.S.-Russian relations is based on more than business relations and sanctions. … The thing is, the entire crisis in Ukraine was orchestrated, provoked, and financed by American institutions in cooperation with their European partners. They financed neo-Nazis. For fifteen years, the U.S. and Europeans financed neo-Nazis’ training, their camps, and preparation. … This work led to the sad situation that now in Ukraine neo-Nazi and neo-fascists ideas prevail, as does admiration for, more than anything, Stepan Bandera’s associates who in their time murdered Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, and whomever they wanted, burning or otherwise killing them under Nazi leadership. This is very dangerous. We do not understand why the U.S. and the American ambassador for many years and months systematically supported those neo-Nazi ideologies and even methodically trained their followers. … That neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine now is impossible to work with. What we presently see in Ukraine is a symbiosis of neo-fascist groups on the one hand and pro-Western ones on the other … In this way, America created the symbiotic relationship between neo-fascists and pro-Western leaders that make up the basis of the current regime, supported an illegal power take-over—a coup, and is further prodding this regime to go to war with Russia. … So, while they blame us that we have taken over Crimea, where a referendum took place that showed virtually unanimous support for the restoration of sovereignty and joining Russia, at the same time what the EU and U.S. are doing is perpetrating an economic and military-political annexation of the entire Ukraine by imposing on it a treaty that sacrifices its sovereignty and mandates that it follow European policy in foreign and military policy, as well as obey all European directives on trade, the economy, and technical regulations. And actually, the signing of such a partnership from a legal point of view would necessitate changes to the Ukrainian constitution in at least five articles; the current constitution does not allow it. We are watching how our Western and American partners are wittingly forcing on Ukraine illegitimate decisions, signing illegitimate agreements, supporting an illegitimate government, while law violations, violence and terror sweep over the country.[7] 

Just two days before Primakov tried to announce a coming “normalization” or appeacement with Ukraine, Glazyev noted something very different:  

All in all, any our attempts to come to a mutually acceptable agreement with the current Kiev regime ... turn out not only completely unsuccessful, but they are also perceived as a demonstration of weakness and lead to more inadequate demands, unacceptable ultimatums, and furher  growth and escalation of the conflict potential. … The fighters in the people’s militia of Donbass are defenders of the Russian Mir who have been forced to stand on the frontline of the new world war. … People are dying there not only for Donbass—they are also dying for the whole Russian Mir, for the whole mankind, truing to save us from a new worldwar. We should not assume that, if Russia betrays Donbass, she would thus obtain peace at her borders and tranquility inside the country. … We [therefore] need to act decisively, strongly, and precisely.[8]

            While Moscow’s official leadership tried to downplay and dodge the seriousness and meaning of the direct geopolitical threat to Russia by the joint campaign mounted by NATO and new Nazi oligarchy led by the US, Poroshenko, the new president of the Kiev regime on whom the Russian government has been relying for some way-out (scripted by the US anyway), continues to make calls for a Western joint war on Russia. Thus, during his visit to the US, Poroshenko exhorted a mightily applauding U.S. Congress to wage a war of Western civilization against Russian “barbarism.” In doing so, he succeeded to mention the war twenty seven times:

Make no mistake: Europe’s, and the world’s, choice right now is not a choice between a uni-polar and a multi-polar order. Neither is it a choice between different kinds of civilizations. It is a choice between civilization and barbarism. And while standing at this juncture, before this great trial – the democratic world cannot shrink or hesitate! We do not want to see all the democratic accomplishments of the last decades to be erased and to have been for nothing. The free world must stand its ground. And with America’s help – it will! …

The post-war international system of checks and balances was effectively ruined [by Russian’s actions]. The world was plunged into the worst security crisis since the US-USSR stand-off of 1962. Today, we are witnessing another attempt at dividing the world, and Ukraine stands at the center of this attempt. … These Ukrainian army, these young boys (underequipped, and often unappreciated by the world) are the only thing that now stands between the reality of peaceful coexistence and the nightmare of a full relapse into the previous century and a new cold war. And should that happen, then this would neither be the end of it, nor the worst of it. …[This] is Europe’s, and it is America’s war, too. It is a war of the free world – and for a free world! … Human dignity is the one thing we have to oppose to the barbarism of those attacking us.[9]

            On May 4, 2014, the Kiev regime’s Prime Minister Arsenyi Yatsenyuk paid a visit to Odessa just barely one day after the Odessa massacre, when hundreds of Nazi paramilitaries in coordination with the junta’s police and secret service first trapped around three hundred antifacist activists and then burned and beat to death over one hundred of them (officially just over 40). In the wake of the massacre, Yatsenyuk declared that there is a state of war between Ukraine and Russia and he called this war “a hybrid war.” In his interview to Sky News, Yatsenyuk furher stated that “Russia was waging a real war against Kiev.” The massacre of the unarmed civilians by the Kiev regime was ostensibly part of Russia’s aggression, which was “well planned and plotted.” Sky News did not fail to mention though that, in the immediate aftermath of the myahem, the junta’s police detained and charged the surviving victims (at least 67 of them) with violence. No one from the hundreds of the Nazi troopers who carried out the killings were detained or charged. Yatsenyuk used the massacre carried out by his own regime and its very place for making this message to the world: “This is the war [with Russia]. And we are the wartime cabinet. This is the truth.”[10] Yatsenyuk’s statement was carried around the world via Western media, which made sure that they did not talk to any of the survivors.

Christopher R. Hill, whose career includes positions of a former US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, US Ambassador to Iraq, South Korea, Macedonia, and Poland, a US special envoy for Kosovo, a negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and the chief US negotiator with North Korea from 2005-2009, described the geopolitical stand-off over Ukraine nothing less than “the end of the New World Order.”[11] For Hill, this means that the 25-year long post-Cold War period is over. It was an era of “Russia’s acquiescence and commitment to the ‘new world order’ …” In this New New Order, as in the previous “New Order,”

Americans would be hard pressed to find Ukraine on a map, [but] they don’t need to.  Americans do need to understand the challenge they are facing from a Russia that no longer seems interested in what the West has been offering for the last 25 years: special status with NATO, a privileged relationship with the European Union, and partnership in international diplomatic endeavors.  … Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be settling in for a long diplomatic winter. The US needs to prepare for it, especially in shoring up partners and allies, and ensuring as best it can that Ukraine is Russia’s last victim, not its first.[12]

            In its analysis, Lignet (“Langley Intelligence Group Network”) also asserts that,  Crimea’s reunification with Russia and Russia’s resistance to the US transformation of Ukraine into its bridgehead (as Brzezinski defined it in his Grand Chessboard plan) signifies “a rejection by Russian President Vladimir Putin of the Western conception of world order since the end of the Cold War.”[13] Thus, according to a solid consensus of Western strategists and analysts, the war in Ukraine is not only a rejection of the New World Order by Russia and/or by far the greatest and most direct challege to it so far, it is also (because of that) today’s key “battle for the New World Order.”[14]

While many pro-Novorossiya supporters and analysts do also see the war as a defense of Russian civilization as such, Stephen Cohen, a well known expert and authority on Russia in the US foreign policy establishment, also believes what is being fought over is “absolutely essential in Moscow's view to its national security and even to its civilization.” From this he also infers that the “the kinds of miscalculations, mishaps and provocations the world witnessed decades ago will be even more fraught with danger.”[15]

Fom behind the media clichés, what we see as an emerging realization what is happening in Ukraine concerns the very foundations of the world order and its possible fundamental change. Ukraine does mean a frontier, and the world order is not here at its limit and breaking point.  The crisis challenges the “order and orientation” of the existing geopolitical system. The hitherto existing system is being unhinged, and one of the reasons is the strange comeback of fascism as a potent political force standing at the edge of the evolution of the post-Soviet oligarchic regime. 

The battle for Ukraine is a battle for a new world order in which the continuous existence of existing truths (or clichés) is no longer guaranteed, and neither is the existing system (or the existence of some of today’s states). Ukraine plunged through Maidan (and maidanschik means swindler and thief) into apeiron (or chaos and war) and, at the same time, in Ukraine, the existing order has run into its critical limit, perhaps even into its end (peras). According to McLuhan himself, a moment of such a character means reversal. That is to say, certainly no trivial reversal. It can be thus argued that, with Ukraine, the ground is moving, opening not only a possible abyss, but also opening and revealing the hitherto obscured meanings of Russia, Ukraine, Europe, the EU, the US, but also of capitalism, oligarchy, Nazism, enslavement, and the ambiguous relations in which the media relate either to our political awakening or deeper and deeper slumber. 

In Ukraine, the ground of the new order of human things is now being forged and fought over. The issue and its antagonism is fundamental. It goes down to the very root of the question about what it means to be human. The question has been posed again with a great urgency and it has to be answered. If Nazism is back, then also man’s very best needs to be called up to fight it as well.

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[1] “Text of Joint Diplomatic Statement on Ukraine,” The New York Times,  April 17, 2014, <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/world/europe/text-of-joint-diplomatic-statement-on-ukraine.html?_r=0> Accessed on October 19, 2014.

[2] “Lavrov: Russia, US, EU, Ukraine agree on de-escalation roadmap,” RT, April 17, 2014, <http://rt.com/news/geneva-document-ukraine-deescalation-224/> Accessed on October 19, 2014.

[3] ”Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's interview with the Right to Know programme on TV Centre,” The Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the European Union, September 13, 2014, <http://www.russianmission.eu/en/news/foreign-minister-sergey-lavrovs-interview-right-know-programme-tv-centre> Accessed on October 19,2014.

[4] Interview with Evgeny Primakov, “"Мнение": Евгений Примаков об украинском кризисе,” Rossiya 24, June 25, 2014 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd0zwdz4V3c> Accessed on October 19, 2014.

[5] ”А. Дугин о выступлении Примакова,”  <http://az-pantarei.livejournal.com/1094683.html> Accessed on October 19, 2014.

[6] ”Yevgeniy Primakov: Events in Ukraine are driven by extreme nationalists,” Kiev Post, March 16, 2014, < http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/yevgeniy-primakov-events-in-ukraine-are-driven-by-extreme-nationalists-339549.html> Accessed on October 19, 2014.

 

[7]”An Interview with Sergey Glazyev,” National Interest, March 24, 2014 <http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/interview-sergey-glazyev-10106?page=3> Accessed on October 20, 2014. On Glazyev’s concept of ”Euro-fascism,” the ”bureaucratic empire” of the EU and their roles in the current crisis in Ukraine see also Sergey Glazyev, “ЕВРОФАШИЗМ,” May 19, 2014, Sergey Glazyev’s page <http://www.glazev.ru/sodr_ssn/361/> Accessed on October 20, 2014.

[8] “РЕШИТЕЛЬНО, ЖЕСТКО И ТОЧНО,” June 23, Sergey Glazyev’s page, <http://www.glazev.ru/sodr_ssn/365/> Accessed on October 20, 2014.

[9] Petro Poroshenko,  ”Address by the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to the Joint Session of the United States Congress,” September 18, 2014, Press office of Ukrainian President, <http://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/31252.html> Accessed on October 19, 2014.

[10] Arsenyi Yatsenyuk, “Ukraine PM: We are at War with Russia, a new kind of War,” Sky News, May 4, 2014 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7hjESs1Z4Q> Accessed on October 20, 2014.

[11] Christopher R. Hill, “The end of the New World Order,”  Project Syndicate, April 21, 2014 <http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/christopher-r--hill-calls-on-the-west-to-prepare-for-a-long-struggle-with-a-revanchist-russia> Accessed on October 20, 2014.

[12] Ibid.

[13] ”Putin Mocks World Order With Ukraine Cease-Fire,” LIGNET, September 8, 2014, <http://www.lignet.com/ArticleAnalysis/Putin-Mocks-World-Order-With-Ukraine-Cease-Fire> Accessed on October 20, 2014.

[14] Pavel Felgenhauer, ”Putin: Ukraine is a Battlefield for the New World Order,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, Volume 11, Issue 121, The Jamestown Foundation,  July 3, 2014, <http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42586&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=27&cHash=1ed99b79c929990e4615bf5b96f7b7cc#.VEWTkPnF--6> Accessed on October 20, 2014.

[15] Stephen F. Cohen, “The New Cold War and the Necessity of Patriotic Heresy,” The Nation, August 12, 2014 < http://m.thenation.com/article/180942-new-cold-war-and-necessity-patriotic-heresy> Accessed on October 20, 2014.