Under the Magnifying Glass: Can the US, Europe and Russia Agree on Ukraine?

Relations between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin hit a wall after Edward Snowden was granted asylum by Russia. How much had the Kremlin failed to discover about U.S. intentions to destabilize Russia?

The mutual trust that Obama had built with Russia through his well-known “perezagruzka” — or reset — is falling apart over Ukraine as a result of the multipolar power sharing in the new world (dis)order.

Obama’s ”perezagruzka” is not confined to Ukraine, although that country may be the most complex and sensitive, given the 576-kilometer border it shares with Russia as well as the cultural and historical ties between those two countries. The same dynamic extends to Syria and Venezuela, as Obama declared in no uncertain terms during a visit to Toluca, Mexico on Feb. 19, when he lashed out against Putin just three days before the fall of the elected government in Ukraine and one day before the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sochi. The geopolitical timeline is pristine.

In my opinion, without going back 10 years to the Orange Revolution in Kiev sponsored by mega-investor George Soros, the events of Feb. 22 did not arise because of regional or local issues in Ukraine. Rather, Obama’s geostrategic defeat in Syria was the trigger, and it caused a reversal in the highly delicate relations between the U.S. and Russia.

Obama had threatened a limited war in Syria, which could have led to World War III. Paradoxically, Obama was rescued in extremis and came out of the situation unscathed thanks to Czar Putin who supported the dismantling of chemical weapons in Syria while sidestepping the issue of Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, not to mention its chemical and biological weapons.

Less than nine months before the November midterm elections, Obama is widely considered a lame duck; he needs to project U.S. relevance within the shifting allocation of power in the new multipolar world order — a new order in which the U.S. is losing ground to Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa (the BRICS group). But Obama overdid it.

Let’s assume Obama’s press conference in Toluca has been correctly interpreted. In discussing the three places on the world stage where Russia concurrently maintains its relative influence — Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela (not to mention the way the new pharaoh of Egypt, General Sisi, has approached Russia, visiting there just 10 days before the fall of Kiev), Obama seemed to be promoting a bit of Paraguay mixed with a little Honduras, like the yarns told by the State Department to the geopolitically naive about “democracy” and “human rights.”

Although currently in a dysfunctional phase, Egypt is still the heart of the Arab world and can recover its laurels with respect to Africa.

The loss of Egypt by Obama has major implications for global geopolitics. There is much at play in Crimea, which is far more important than the Ukraine itself. The Port of Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, is the bridge to the Mediterranean — that is, the presence of the Russian naval facility in Tartus, Syria combined with the new connection with General Sisi from Egypt makes for Russian-style geopolitics in the Middle East, from where Obama is pulling back in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Although not a trapeze artist, deposed President Yanukovich dared to make acrobatic maneuvers between the U.S., the European Union and Russia. He signed a humiliating $10 million agreement with Chevron for shale exploitation. Additionally, the legitimate aspirations of Kiev (the Europhile capital of Ukraine) have unfortunately been tarnished by the $5 billion U.S. “investment” in neo-Nazi groups with the goal of placing a puppet in power, according to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, wife of the neoconservative hardliner Robert Kagan, who insulted the Europeans when she said “F— the EU.”

Without getting into the unsolvable, byzantine discussion about the sex of the angels in Kiev’s new regime — was it a coup and/or a revolution within the executive branch? — it is very difficult to roll back the geostrategic clock.

It would have been naive to think that regime change in Kiev, decidedly in favor of the U.S./NATO/EU, would not have consequences in the Kremlin. Putin’s anticipated counterattack, not coming until after the Sochi games, was the consolidation of Russia’s presence in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (which is predominantly ethnic Russian) where it has a strategic military presence in the Port of Sevastopol.

It was rash of Obama to put Putin in check over Kiev; it also put into question the existence of the very Russian regime. Speaking metaphorically, Zbigniew Brezinski, former national security adviser to [Jimmy] Carter and close confidant of Obama, said that the route to Moscow would be through Kiev.

Does Washington really believe that Putin would have accepted a NATO presence in Ukraine, a true casus belli?

One thing is certain about Ukraine, which is ethnically split between the Europhile western region and the Russophile southern/eastern region: Commercially, it belongs to the EU and/or the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. But it would be quite another thing to see the presence of NATO troops along the Ukraine-Russia border.

Veteran ex-diplomat from India MK Bhadrakumar, a party to the geopolitical movement in Eurasia, feels that Putin called Obama’s bluff on sanctions when the Russian czar made the point that in today’s world, everything is interconnected and co-dependent in one way or another; we can inflict harm on each other, but the harm will be mutual.

Sergei Glazyvez, adviser to the Kremlin, warned that Russia would reduce to zero its economic dependence on the U.S. if Washington imposed sanctions, which would lead to a crash of the U.S. financial system.

According to the Russian agency RIA Novosti, a Kremlin source indicated that Glazyvez had shared his personal opinion and was not sharing an official Kremlin position.

In my opinion, Russia could get rid of its U.S. treasury bonds, worth $200 billion, and stop buying and selling oil with dollars. But who does that help?

Without worrying about the intentions of the U.S./NATO/EU, Putin’s maneuvers in Crimea have impeded the presence of NATO, without supporting the capriciousness of the movement for independence from the eastern Russophile region.

Everything that comes will be negotiable and is likely that there will be a triple accommodation, just as Brzezinski has stated on Twitter:

1. Among opposition groups, which are anything but cohesive and have been overtaken by the neo-Nazis (as it is not admissible that the U.S./NATO/EU alliance supports an ultra-fascist government in any European capital or anywhere in the world, unless it is to destabilize Russia);

2. Between the EU (meaning Germany, which is highly dependent on Russia for oil) and Russia, taking into account the interests of the “two Ukraines” and Crimea;

3. Between the U.S. and Russia.

A substantial part of the new, 21st century multipolar world (dis)order will be defined in Ukraine. All that’s missing is China.