Paul Craig Roberts on Crimea, US Foreign Policy and the Transformation of Mainstream Media
Tuesday, 18 March 2014 13:47
By Harrison Samphir, Truthout | Interview Original Here
Russian soldiers in Perevalne, Crimea, Ukraine on March 5, 2014. (Image: via Shutterstock)
The Crimean peninsula was controlled by the Russian Empire from the
18th to 20th centuries until it became part of an independent Ukraine
following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Now the country is
fractured after months of protests, and Crimea has become the reluctant
focal point of a nascent civil war dividing east and west. Fueled by
aggressive posturing by the United States and a defensive-minded Russia
intent on protecting the interests of Ukraine's ethnically Russian
population, the situation has escalated quickly. The future of the
European continent hangs in the balance.
Even to the most astute observer, the current crisis in the
southeastern region of Ukraine is difficult to interpret. The view can
be blurred by geographic distance, muddled by inconsistent reporting and
blinded by prejudice. Because of treacherously unremitting digital and
social media, an understanding of the complex sociopolitical elements is
diluted; independent inquiry loses legitimacy and critical voices enter
an anarchic fray. How can one make sense of this dilemma?
"What has happened in Ukraine is the United States organized and financed a coup."
Paul Craig Roberts is a former assistant secretary of the treasury and associate editor of The Wall Street Journal.
He has been following the situation in Ukraine closely and spoke to
Truthout about the long history of the crisis, the influence of the
mainstream media (in which he worked for decades) and the dangerous
provocations of Western leaders. The author of more than ten books, his
most recent work is called The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism. This interview took place on March 12, 2014.
You have written extensively about the current standoff
between Russia and the West over the situation in Crimea. How do you
assess the current situation? What power struggle is currently
unraveling?
Well, I think it would be a mistake to represent the events in Crimea
as a power standoff between Russia and the United States. What has
happened in Ukraine is the United States organized and financed a coup.
And the coup occurred in Kiev, the capital. Either from intention or
carelessness, the coup elements include ultra-right-wing nationalists
whose roots go back to organizations that fought for Hitler in the
Second World War against the Soviet Union. These elements destroyed
Russian war memorials celebrating the liberation of the Ukraine from the
Nazis by the Red Army and also celebrating Gen. Kutuzov's defeat of
Napoleon's Grande Armée. So this spread a great deal of alarm in
southern and eastern Ukraine, which are traditionally Russian provinces.
Crimea was added to the Ukraine in 1954 by Khrushchev, the general
secretary of the Communist Party. Both of these Russian areas have been
part of Russia for longer than the United States has existed. This may
have been done to water down the pro-Nazi elements in western Ukraine,
because it added a substantial Russian population to Ukraine that tended
to balance out the ultra-nationalists in the west. Also, Khrushchev
himself was a Ukrainian. It didn't make a difference at the time because
it was all part of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed as
a political entity and the weak authorities there - under [US] pressure
– agreed to its breakup, the Ukraine became independent, but it
retained the previously Russian provinces. The population in Crimea is
predominantly Russian, and so is eastern Ukraine. These people said, "We
don't want anything to do with this government in Kiev, which is
banning our language and destroying our war monuments and threatening us
in many ways." They followed the same legal steps; the same UN
procedures, the same international court procedures. So everything that
has occurred is strictly legal. And when John Kerry and Obama say the
opposite, they're lying through their teeth. It's just blatant,
shameful, bald-faced lies. This is not debatable or a question of
opinion. It's a matter of law.
"So there is not an independent media. It cannot take positions on any important issue contrary to the government's propaganda."
So the Parliament in Crimea followed these procedures and has now
declared Crimea to be independent. The vote that [was] given to the
people on [March 16] . ... So there has been no Russian invasion. That's
easily provable. The Russian troops in the Ukraine have been there
since the 1990s. It has to do with the lease arrangements it has on its
Black Sea naval base [Sevastopol], because when Ukraine was granted
independence, Russia certainly wasn't giving up its warm-water port. The
terms of the separation state that Russia has a lease there until 2042.
Sixteen thousand troops were there, and under the agreement with the
Ukraine they can have up to 25,000 along with a certain number of
planes, tanks and artillery. All this is specified and well-known, but
it is subject to lies from Washington - and they are repeated endlessly
in the so-called American media. The remaining problem is in eastern
Ukraine, because there the people are also in the streets demanding
their local governments separate from Kiev. Having realized its
incompetence in Crimea, Washington has rushed in and appointed Ukrainian multi-billionaire oligarchs
[Igor Kolomoisky and Serhiy Taruta] as governors of these Russian
regions [Donetsk and Dnepropetrovs]. Where the issue will be drawn is in
eastern Ukraine because Putin has said he will make no military
intervention unless violence is used against the Russian population in
eastern Ukraine. There isn't much Kerry and Obama can do about this. But
if the result is that eastern Ukraine returns to Russia, western
Ukraine will be captured, subject to an IMF [International Monetary
Fund] austerity plan, looted by the Western banks and stuck in NATO
while US anti-ballistic missile bases will be put in western Ukraine.
This is intensifying the strategic threat to Russia that Washington has
been pursuing since the George H.W. Bush regime when he violated the
agreements that Reagan had given not to take NATO into eastern Europe.
These same agreements were violated when Washington withdrew from the
ABMT [Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty] in 2002 so it could construct an
anti-ballistic missile defense. These are extreme provocations, and they
are reckless. It's the same kind of behavior that gave us the First
World War.
In your latest writings you've discussed the failure of the
so called mainstream or American media in reporting about Crimea
objectively - that is, without displaying a bias toward one side or the
other. Can you discuss the role alternative media has played in relation
to the crisis in Ukraine?
A very important part of it has to do with something that happened
toward the end of [Bill] Clinton's second term. He permitted five mega
companies to consolidate the formerly independent and dispersed US
media. What were once independent networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, they
all became cogs in a larger media empire. The value of these big media
companies is their federal broadcast licenses: They can't go against the
government and expect them to be renewed. Another big change is these
media companies are no longer run by journalists. They're run by
corporate advertising executives and former government officials. And
their only interests are protecting the net worth of the company and the
flow of advertising revenues. So there is not an independent media. It
cannot take positions on any important issue contrary to the
government's propaganda. That's part of the problem right there.
Another part of the problem is that during the long Cold War, the
Soviet Union, which is Russia in most people's minds, was demonized
effectively. This demonization persists. Remember, the initial collapse
of the USSR worked very much to the West's advantage. They could easily
manipulate [Boris] Yeltsin, and various oligarchs were able to seize and
plunder the resources of the country. Much Israeli and American money
was part of that. When Putin came along and started stopping this and
trying to put the country back in place, he was demonized. Also, just as
Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state [for European and
Eurasian Affairs], admitted when she spoke at the National Press Club last December,
the United States has invested $5 billion aligning Ukraine with its
interests since the failed Orange Revolution [2004]. They've probably
spent many times that on NGOs inside Russia. There are at least 1,000
non-governmental organizations in the country that are financed by
Washington. This has persisted for a long time, and it was only last
year when Putin finally said that these organizations that are financed
by US money must register as foreign agents. This is, of course,
American policy. If you operate here with foreign money - unless you're
Israel - you must register as a foreign agent. Yet when Putin applied
the same rules, he was demonized. So you have everywhere this exposure
across American generations of people to propaganda that diabolizes
every aspect of Russia. So if someone tells you the Russians sent the
tanks into Crimea, it just fits a pre-existing narrative.
"The Soviet Union and Communist China existed, and these were huge
constraints on American power. The US couldn't go waltzing in blowing up
countries throughout the Middle East for example."
I am a former editor of The Wall Street Journal and a
columnist at all the major publications as well, and I personally
witnessed the change in the media and the people in it. So I already
know what they're going to say; I can write the scripts before they go
on and mouth them. It's been going on for some time. A similar thing
happened with the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie told
over and over. And everyone repeated it. The New York Times
didn't even go to the weapons inspector we sent to Iraq, Hans Blix!
Instead, Judith Miller repeated a lie endlessly in the pages of the
newspaper. It reflects a total lack of integrity. One of the main
reasons for this is that many of them know they cannot tell the truth,
otherwise they'll be fired. They know it's pointless to take a story
that contradicts the president or the secretary of state or the CIA or
the NSA to the editor. He or she will look at you and say What are you
crazy? Do you want to get us both fired? So they simply don't bother.
It's quite a corrupt milieu, and it must be deadening to the soul. But
that's what it is to be a mainstream journalist today.
Looking back on your time as assistant secretary of the
treasury under Ronald Reagan, how have the global politics of
brinkmanship changed? Are foreign conflicts perceived differently now
than ever before?
Oh, yes, it's changed tremendously, in two critical ways. One is the
Soviet Union and Communist China existed, and these were huge
constraints on American power. The US couldn't go waltzing in blowing up
countries throughout the Middle East, for example. Those constraints on
American power no longer exist. The Cold War is gone, and the alliances
that were part of it have disappeared. When I was in the Reagan
administration, the neoconservatives had not emerged as the ideological
force that they are today; they had not written their position papers
calling for American world hegemony. So there was not an agenda in
Washington or in the Reagan administration of American hegemony over the
world. Reagan's approach toward Gorbachev was not to win the Cold War,
he told us repeatedly. The point was to end it. The neoconservatives did
emerge first during that time, but they had nowhere near the same power
or influence that they did under Clinton, George W. Bush and now Obama.
In fact they caused so much trouble for [Reagan], he fired every one of
them. They were behind the Contras in Nicaragua. Some of them were
actually prosecuted and convicted - such as Elliot Abrams, who was
assistant secretary of state. He and others were later pardoned by
George H.W. Bush, but the Reagan administration itself took very strong
action against neoconservatives. They were fired, thrown out of the
government. Richard Perle was even thrown off of the [President's
Intelligence Advisory Board]. The neoconservatives emerged with the
American attacks on Serbia - what we call the NATO attacks - and the
theft of Kosovo from Serbia and its setup as an American protectorate.
Their influence then exploded in the first years of George W. Bush. The
entire national security apparatus, the entire Pentagon, the entire
State Department were all staffed-up by neoconservatives. The agenda was
there. It had been set out in papers from the Project for the New
American Century, and much of the government was run by its
representatives. The Obama administration has many of the same people,
but now they're able to go further because they have more resources to
fund dissent groups like we've seen in Ukraine.
"There's no evidence that the American people support Washington's
meddling in Ukraine. And they should get out and protest it, because it
could mean a major war and even the use of nuclear weapons."
This is a reckless thing to do. The Russians cannot accept strategic
threats of this sort; it's just too high. I think what Putin is relying
on, if you read his March 4 press conference,
is the Europeans. Since they don't have an ulterior agenda, they don't
want to pay the cost of enabling the United States to start a war,
because it will affect them. The Russians know the United States has
changed its war doctrine to include nuclear weapons, which shifted in
2010 to permit pre-emptive first strikes. Well the Russians know this is
not directed against Afghanistan or Iraq, but against them. When you
keep telling a powerful country you are going to set it up in such a way
that it must be attacked, that is purely reckless behavior.
What can average people do to voice their concerns about the issues you've raised? How will the crisis evolve from here?
They ought to get out into the streets. There's no evidence that the
American people support Washington's meddling in Ukraine. And they
should get out and protest it, because it could mean a major war and
even the use of nuclear weapons. The US government has violated every
norm of international law and almost the entirety of American law. It is
tyranny. Another point: according to Obama and Kerry, and the
mainstream media, Russia is to be damned for intervening in the Crimea.
This we've all heard since the situation began. Well, [March 11] Obama
and Kerry demanded that Russia intervene in Crimea and block the
self-determination of the Crimean people. They asked Russia to stop the
referendum! So now, out of one corner of its mouth, Washington is
damning them Russia for an intervention they didn't make, and out of the
other corner of its mouth, it's demanding they intervene and deny the
people of Crimea the right to self-determination. And if they don't do
that, Kerry said, We will make you pay. This is blatant. And there isn't
a word about it in the major newspapers.
HARISON SAMPHIR
Harrison Samphir is an editor and writer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He holds a B.A. (Hons.) in history from the University of Manitoba. Email him at hsamphir@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @HarrySamphir.
