Note by Sean Gabb: Other than to deplore the scale of the violence, and to insist on strict neutrality by the British Government, the Libertarian Alliance takes no position on events in the Ukraine. It is not our business to get involved in disputes outside our own legitimate sphere of influence. Indeed, since we face no threat of military invasion for the foreseeable future, there is a good case for still deeper cuts to the military budget. We need a navy big enough to control our sea approaches and protect our remaining colonies of settlement, and an air force under naval control. Beyond that, we need an armed citizen militia in every town and county. Anything more is a blank cheque for the neo-conservatives. [SIG]
Last week two prominent Ukrainian opposition figures were gunned down in broad daylight. They join as many as ten others who have been killed or committed suicide under suspicious circumstances just this year. These individuals have one important thing in common: they were either part of or friendly with the Yanukovych government, which a US-backed coup overthrew last year. They include members of the Ukrainian parliament and former chief editors of major opposition newspapers.
While some journalists here in the US have started to notice the strange series of opposition killings in Ukraine, the US government has yet to say a word.
Compare this to the US reaction when a single opposition figure was killed in Russia earlier this year. Boris Nemtsov was a member of a minor political party that was not even represented in the Russian parliament. Nevertheless the US government immediately demanded that Russia conduct a thorough investigation of his murder, suggesting the killers had a political motive.
As news of the Russian killing broke, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce (R-CA) did not wait for evidence to blame the killing on Russian president Vladimir Putin. On the very day of Nemtsov’s murder, Royce told the US media that, “this shocking murder is the latest assault on those who dare to oppose the Putin regime.”
Neither Royce, nor Secretary of State John Kerry, nor President Obama, nor any US government figure has said a word about the series of apparently political murders in Ukraine.
On the contrary, instead of questioning the state of democracy in what looks like a lawless Ukraine, the Administration is sending in the US military to help train Ukrainian troops!
Last week, just as the two political murders were taking place, the US 173rd Airborne Brigade landed in Ukraine to begin training Ukrainian national guard forces – and to leave behind some useful military equipment. Though the civil unrest continues in Ukraine, the US military is assisting one side in the conflict – even as the US slaps sanctions on Russia over accusations it is helping out the other side!
As the ceasefire continues to hold, though shakily, what kind of message does it send to the US-backed government in Kiev to have US troops arrive with training and equipment and an authorization to gift Kiev with some $350 million in weapons? Might they not take this as a green light to begin new hostilities against the breakaway regions in the east?
The Obama administration is so inconsistent in its foreign policy. In some places, particularly Cuba and Iran, the administration is pursuing a policy that looks to diplomacy and compromise to help improve decades of bad relations. In these two cases the administration realizes that the path of confrontation has led nowhere. When the president announced his desire to see the end of Cuba sanctions, he stated very correctly that, “…we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date. When what you’re doing doesn’t work for fifty years, it’s time to try something new.”
So while Obama is correctly talking about sanctions relief for Iran and Cuba, he is adding more sanctions on Russia, backing Saudi Arabia’s brutal attack on Yemen, and pushing ever harder for regime change in Syria. Does he really believe the rest of the world does not see these double standards? A wise consistency of non-interventionism in all foreign affairs would be the correct course for this and future US administrations. Let us hope they will eventually follow Obama’s observation that, “it’s time to try something new.”
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There was no “U.S. backed coup” in the Ukraine – and Ron Paul (or rather the Rothbardians who control the “Ron Paul Institute” and have made former Congressman Paul their puppet) seem intent on sabotaging the Presidential election campaign of his son Senator Rand Paul. No candidate who was associated with this drivel could get the Republican nomination, it may be unfair to put the sins of the father upon the son, but Caucus goers and Primary voters can be unfair.
Full disclosure – I am strongly sympathetic to the campaign of Senator Rand Paul (because of his stand for the Forth Amendment and other matters), so articles like this (which undermine Rand Paul – via guilt-by-association) are depressing.
What is Rand Paul to do?
If he can not convince his father to free himself from the Rothbardians, he (Rand Paul) is sooner or later going to have to formally break with his father.
As a general rule of thumb Rothbardians (such as the people who control the “Ron Paul Institute”) are on the side of whoever is the enemy of the United States and the West generally.
This did not start with the Ukraine. It can also be seen in the attitude of the Rothbardians to the conflict between Israel and the Islamists – indeed to the Islamists generally (even in the United States itself). And their position in relation to the Cold War, the Second World War, the First World War and even the Civil War.
The specific details of each case (which they always get wrong – following the dishonest propaganda of such collectivist “historians” as Gabriel Kolko and Harry Elmer Barnes) do not really matter to the Rothbardians is finding the enemies of the West (not just the United States) and allying with them.
It does not matter if it is Putin or the IRA – the Rothbardians will rush to take their part.
To be fair to Sean Gabb – his own position has become rather more measured than the rush to ally with the enemy which is the hallmark of the Rothbardians.
I thank you for your measured dissent. However, had you waited before sending the first, you could have avoided the need to write a second comment.
Both my comments were entirely valid Sean.
Although since your patronising “letter of instruction” (i.e. your declaration that the conflict between us is formally back on) I expect responses such as yours.
Rothbard lost his marbles somewhat with his “enemy of my enemy” stuff. Lew Rockwell continues that skein down to today. Lew seems to be –by and large , a decent chap, whose heart is in the right place. He allows his animosity to the US Federal tyranny–an animosity that I share–to blind him to the fact that not everybody who hates the Feds is a good guy. Arseholes like Pilger, Chomsky and others appear all too often. It seems that Lew will take support from anywhere no matter how dodgy. This is a pity and does not help any of us.
As for claims of Rothbardians being “allies” of the IRA, Russia etc. Even turning that phrase into real elastic would have it stretched to breaking point. I don’t think that Lew has ever been on the phone to Martin McGuiness offering to sell raffle tickets for the Semtex fund. Or offering Putin beachfront property so he can land agents off a sub. Lew is a propagandist — and like the rest of us a marginally successful one. If hot air was that potent we would be running the show–not the present political scum.