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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis
What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis
March 2, 2014--Robert Parry
Special Report: The Ukrainian crisis partly fomented by U.S. neocons including holdovers at the State Department has soured U.S-Russian relations and disrupted President Obamas secretive cooperation with Russian President Putin to resolve crises in the Mideast, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
President Barack Obama has been trying, mostly in secret, to craft a new foreign policy that relies heavily on cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin to tamp down confrontations in hotspots such as Iran and Syria. But Obamas timidity about publicly explaining this strategy has left it open to attack from powerful elements of Official Washington, including well-placed neocons and people in his own administration.
The gravest threat to this Obama-Putin collaboration has now emerged in Ukraine, where a coalition of U.S. neocon operatives and neocon holdovers within the State Department fanned the flames of unrest in Ukraine, contributing to the violent overthrow of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and now to a military intervention by Russian troops in the Crimea, a region in southern Ukraine that historically was part of Russia.
President Barack Obama discusses the crisis in Ukraine for 90 minutes on March 1, 2014, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (White House photo/Pete Souza)
Though Im told the Ukraine crisis caught Obama and Putin by surprise, the neocon determination to drive a wedge between the two leaders has been apparent for months, especially after Putin brokered a deal to head off U.S. military strikes against Syria last summer and helped get Iran to negotiate concessions on its nuclear program, both moves upsetting the neocons who had favored heightened confrontations.
Putin also is reported to have verbally dressed down Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan over what Putin considered their provocative actions regarding the Syrian civil war. So, by disrupting neocon plans and offending Netanyahu and Bandar, the Russian president found himself squarely in the crosshairs of some very powerful people.
If not for Putin, the neocons along with Israel and Saudi Arabia had hoped that Obama would launch military strikes on Syria and Iran that could open the door to more regime change across the Middle East, a dream at the center of neocon geopolitical strategy since the 1990s. This neocon strategy took shape after the display of U.S. high-tech warfare against Iraq in 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union later that year. U.S. neocons began believing in a new paradigm of a uni-polar world where U.S. edicts were law.
The neocons felt this paradigm shift also meant that Israel would no longer need to put up with frustrating negotiations with the Palestinians. Rather than haggling over a two-state solution, U.S. neocons simply pressed for regime change in hostile Muslim countries that were assisting the Palestinians or Lebanons Hezbollah.
Iraq was first on the neocon hit list, but next came Syria and Iran. The overriding idea was that once the regimes assisting the Palestinians and Hezbollah were removed or neutralized, then Israel could dictate peace terms to the Palestinians who would have no choice but to accept what was on the table.
U.S. neocons working on Netanyahus campaign team in 1996, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, even formalized their bold new plan, which they outlined in a strategy paper, called A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. The paper argued that only regime change in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary clean break from the diplomatic standoffs that had followed inconclusive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
MUCH MORE AT:
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/02/what-neocons-want-from-ukraine-crisis/
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What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis (Original Post)
KoKo
Mar 2014
OP
Catherina
(35,568 posts)1. "the neocon determination to drive a wedge between the two leaders has been apparent for months"
Rec'd
xfundy
(5,105 posts)2. Consortium news is a site I found years ago
and forgot about until just now. Thanks for reminding me of that excellent news source!
KoKo
(84,711 posts)3. Same here..I used to read them..lost the link and other stuff was out there..
it's interesting to read him again after all this time...