The United States of America – Is a Hegemon Devouring Itself?

Half a year before last fall's presidential elections, I argued (see my blog essay "U.S. Presidential Elections and the Future of the West" https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2016/04/2016-us-presidential-election-and.html) that the fate of this country and the entire Western civilization will depend on its outcome. By denying Hillary Clinton the presidency, we must prevent a third term of Obama's Marxist-Globalist policies. The result was one I had predicted and hoped for; Trump won. In a follow-up essay, I explained how the U.S. and the world were supposed to get a respite from the insanity of previous years. 

But a look at Washington D.C. some eight months into Mr. Trump's presidency makes one wonder about wasted chances and failures to implement urgently needed policy promises. It appears that President Trump's pragmatic instincts succumbed to neoconservative imposition from within the White House as well as the Senate and the Congress.

 

Instead of vetoing it and signaling decisive course correction, a seemingly helpless Trump signed a sanctions bill on Russia and had himself bullied by the mainstream media into moral relativism and the absurdity of designating (fascist) right-wing violence worse than (equally fascist) left-wing violence. He disregarded the Virginia governor and Charlottesville mayor's lawlessness, both of whom intentionally and purposefully let a demonstration turn violent by ordering police forces to stand down. 

While fortunately proclaiming the end of nation-building and democracy export, Mr. Trump caved to the pressure for a troop surge in Afghanistan and the continuation of U.S. presence there. 

 

The malice of Never-Trumpers and the hateful obstructionism of Democrats and neoconservative Republicans appear to force Trump to continue the past two decades' terrible policy failures. He seems, at least partially, to abandon the promises he ran on in his presidential campaign. 

 

Given my political philosophy expertise and my participation in educational efforts in Eastern and Southeastern Europe after the end of the Cold War, I have tried to get in touch with the Trump administration since campaign times, particularly since its inauguration. But, alas, to no avail. I admit that I felt the need to do something about Washington's overbearing strategic blunder that has caused so much damage to global affairs. And I was sure that only President Trump gave hope to overcome and defeat the previous administration's wrong ways (after Rand Paul as the best suited among the Republican establishment candidates had dropped out). 

 

As repeatedly addressed in my blog essays, I sensed the lack of philosophical depth in U.S. politics. I had observed the mistakes ill-educated and ideologically disoriented politicians and advisors, liberals as well as neocons, had perpetrated time and again, and from whose apparent failures they refused to learn. I witnessed how the establishment of a post-Cold War New World Order started as an initially well-intended and seemingly meaningful project. In 1991, the transatlantic alliance instituted close relations with Russia in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council/NACC (later on named Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council/EAPC). The creation of NATO/Partnership for Peace (PfP) in 1994 intended to expand the alliance's reach to meet the new challenges Out-of-Area in close cooperation with Russia. 

I shared the initial enthusiasm for building a new stable and just world order by providing educational input in multiple undertakings within the PfP framework. Sadly, those good relations soon became perverted by nothing else than Washington's geostrategic arrogance and hubris.

Propaganda from both sides aside, relations began to sour due to aggressive power projection and the increasing neglect and alienation of Russia's and other global players' strategic and economic interests by the U.S. and its European and NATO allies. Of course, this carelessness happened in combination with the old strategic ploy for vindicating one's unjust policies by reversing actual cause-effect relations. As so often before in history, it resulted in the grounding of U.S. foreign affairs and national security policies on intentional misconceptions and outright lies. While the U.S. pushed NATO closer to Russia's borders and engaged in ever-bolder imperialism, it blamed Russia precisely for what it was doing itself. 

 

Two cases may exemplify this reversal of facts and the blaming of an alleged and yet never existing so-called "Russian aggression" and Mr. Putin's dream of reinstating the boundaries of the "Old Soviet Empire." In the summer of 2008, after Georgia invaded South Ossetia, a tiny province that had won its independence in the 1990s, and Georgian artillery had killed Russian peacekeepers, the Russian army entered and chased the Georgians back into their own country. Since then, Russia has recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, very much to the chagrin of the U.S. and the U.N.  

The aggressor was not Vladimir Putin but Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, a megalomaniac and now stateless sociopath who had been brought to power in 2004 by one of the US-engineered color-coded revolutions, at the time under Bush II. By annexing those two provinces, Georgia as an ally to the West would have enlarged its national territory and moved NATO-friendly terrain closer to Russian borders, despite a tendency in those provinces that broke from Georgia in the early 1990ies for ethnic and other reasons, to instead ally with Russia. The same applied to Transnistria and Moldova, both of which show interested in joining the Russian Federation. Thus, the question arises, astutely asked by Pat Buchanan, why in a time of peoples' self-determination, the U.S. (and the transatlantic community for that matter) support every ethnic group or fledgling republic that secedes from Russia, but considers any ethnic group or little state moving toward Russia a threat, a traitor, and insinuates it could only take place because of Russian imperialism? The only viable answers are:

 

• A paranoid and untenable Russophobia endures in Washington.
• A misconceived strategic design for a post-Cold War global setting dominates national security circles.
• An astounding lack of any sound political philosophy of international relations abounds among Washington's elites who to this day impose their unreasonable concepts on the White House and the U.S. State Department. 

 

 The distorted narrative on foreign affairs and Russia's role is kept alive by the paranoid Washington elites at all costs. It became tangible in early August this year when the honorable Vice-president Pence, speaking in Montenegro, the tiny nation in the Balkans that had just become the newest member of NATO. He repeated the apparent national security lies about Russia vis-à-vis Georgia. As was to expect, he also replicated the falsehoods about Ukraine to justify the offensive deployment of forces and missiles to Poland and the Czech Republic, and other Eastern European Nations. In Ukraine, President Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup, which had ousted a democratically elected political ally of Russia. He bloodlessly seized the pro-Russian Crimea where Moscow's Black Sea fleet was present by Treaty. The West alienates Russia and Putin now over a reaction it could have easily foreseen, had it only pursued just and wise policies that acknowledge the existential interests of other global players. I commented on all this in more detail in several earlier blog entries ('Russophobia - Achilles' Heel of US-Russia Relations of February 17, 2017, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2017/02/us-russia-relations-russo-phobia.html and 'Ukraine - Another Failure of Western Interventionism' of February 22, 2015, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/02/another-failure-of-western.html).

 

Not Russia, but the U.S. has become the primary threat to world peace and global stability through aggressive policies of indifferent power projection that neglected legitimate geopolitical and geostrategic claims of other international players. Over the last two decades, the old buffers of the Soviet Union toward the West, most of all Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and not to forget the Baltic States, have all become full-fledged NATO members; with only minor diplomatic resistance from Russia and clearly no intent to invade those countries or reinstate the boundaries of the old Soviet bloc. It is of strategic importance for Russia and a core consideration for her national interest to keep Ukraine, an important geopolitical region that it designated the 'Near Abroad' somehow in a militarily neutral state. 

 

But the foreign relations experts in Washington do not rest contented with all the strategic blunder on the ground and in military terms. They pair their misguided policies with economic foolishness by way of economic warfare through sanction regimes that impact not only the U.S. but allies and partners in Europe and beyond as well. Just ignorant politicians could jubilee over the significant disruption of Russia's economy, the Ruble's inflation, and working "trade barriers." What they forget or perhaps willfully put on the line is the fact that the European Union is, by far, Russia's leading trade partner and accounts for about fifty percent of all Russian exports and imports and seventy-five percent of all foreign investments in Russia. From whatever angle, it sure comes at too high a price to prop Russia as an artificial enemy for one's own failed imperialism and as the scapegoat for a presidential election's unsuccessful outcome. After all, the presidential candidate herself as secretary of state had caused the blunder in cooperation with the presidential predecessor. 

The opposite of what the strategic calculus of Washington wanted to achieve is happening – not only is the global standing of the U.S. diminishing, but the hegemonic superpower harms itself in various policy fields. Putin increasingly writes off the U.S. and the West and enters into a Russian-Chinese strategic alliance. And if Washington continues to ignore and alienate Russia, the European Union and individual European countries will have to weigh their commitment to the North-Atlantic Alliance against their own economic and security interests. The latter process is what has commenced in Europe right now. It is relatively easy to comprehend that if Washington is not coming to its senses, a continuation of this policy will drive a wedge into transatlantic relations. 

 

Will President Trump be able to stand up against all these war-mongering and Russia-hating Democrats, Neoconservative Senators and Congressmen, Brass-Officer advisors, and Military-Industrial lobbyists? Will he bring home the troops from Afghanistan and Syria and end the aggressive posture of U.S. and NATO forces in eastern and southeastern Europe and the Baltic Region? After all, he was elected to complete the conglomerate of provocative, aggressive, and, indeed, unethical policies the United States has pursued in recent years.  

 

Not forget we must that the appalling course of U.S. foreign affairs policy of late runs parallel to the deterioration of internal politics in the United States. The civil war over ideas and convictions – a real culture war – is in full swing and seems to intensify day by day. Relentlessly dishonest and Trump-hating news outlets push it, above all CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, and, the most abysmal and painfully foolish of all, MSNBC. The degree of disinformation and corruption is mind-boggling in its unreasonableness and almost inconceivable in its blatant immorality. The Washington swamp is real. It is so bad that certain commentators even identify an ongoing silent coup to oust Trump by the joint conspiracy of mainstream media, deep-state exponents, liberal politicians, and radical left-wing interest groups. The latter, who organize protests wherever Trump appears and carry out counter-demonstrations with the explicit aim to instigate violence, which they blame on Trump, are funded by billionaires like George Soros or Mark Zuckerberg. 

 

The pigheadedness of never-Trumpers and all those politicians, pundits, and commentators who were so wrong about Trump never being able to win the presidency seems boundless. These people give precedence to their stubbornness and political and ideological inertia over the nation's best interest. Insight into one's wrongs and judgment errors, learning from mistakes and wising up, and notions like critical self-reflection no longer count or even exist in certain people's consciousness. Instead, they are doubling down on stances that experience has proven wrong. Unprecedented obstructionism not only from the opposition party but from the GOP's ranks – the most despicable example provided by the traitor senator John McCain on the repeal vote on the Affordable Care Act – dominate the domestic political landscape. 

 

 A look into U.S. politics, not even a year into Trump's presidency, reminds one of a young and fledgling republic in some Third World region of the globe. In the previous blog essay entitled 'A Sick Republic' of July 5, 2017 (https://edwinseditorial.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-sick-republic-yeah-dude-im-talking.html), I outlined the parameters of this profoundly flawed political system and the unmatched decay of intellectual and moral political standards in the U.S., which continues to push the nation toward more violence and outright civil war. 

 

Who or what could remedy this state of affairs of division and hatred in the United States society that goes far beyond any acceptable measure a functioning republic could withstand in the long run? How can we overcome this mental tyranny of the left that denounces everybody and everything running counter to their views? How can we break the vicious collaboration of forces on the political left to remove Trump from office, even at the cost of throwing this country into mayhem and internal violent conflict? The only answer I can come up with is "success." 

 

 To improve relations and defeat obstructionism, President Trump and his allies in Senate and Congress will have to be successful in pulling off a significant tax reform for businesses and working citizens. Furthermore, they will have to push through a decisive modification of the healthcare system, in both cases with immediate and tangible results that can no longer be hidden from the public, not even by hostile news media outlets. A new paradigm in foreign and security affairs is overdue. It should feature pragmatic strategic prudence and restraint rather than globalist adventurism. The U.S. has to disentangle from the continued involvement in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and bring troops home. It should abandon regime change interventionism and come to a new understanding in US-Russia relations. These steps should enable the nation to recover and find political and social stability. 

 

The United States finds itself at a crucial crossroads at this point. The significance of the moment goes far beyond saving Mr. Trump's presidency and marks a juncture that determines the future not only of this nation but the future direction of Western civilization as a whole. 

 

Let's make no mistake. The election of Donald Trump to become the 45th President of the U.S. came at a point of existential significance as to the future course of our civilizational development. It is the defining moment of decision between, on the one hand, liberal-Marxist globalism in conjunction with cultural decadence and the rise of moral relativism in ever more secularized social milieus; and in contrast, on the other hand, the furtherance of orderly (international) relations among sovereign nations with western countries grounding their pluralism in traditional morality and a minimal nucleus of their Christian heritage. 

 

It is clear before the power of our reasoning that both opposing sides in this ongoing culture war over principles and values cannot claim the same amount of validity for how they envisage our Western-style democracies' future path. Opposing concepts in all kinds of social and political realms – immigration, the rule of law, gender and race relations, education, economics, international affairs, etc. - cannot be equally meaningful. The course of social and political 'progressivism' that we have witnessed in recent years is either the right one for a prosperous future or a pernicious concept that destroys our societies and our civilization in its entirety. Yet, who could honestly believe, considering the evidence of societal mayhem, confusion, and polarization regarding open border globalism in recent years, that cultural progressivism is the right way as we advance? 

 

It might be wise for the left to end their demonization of conservative politics and specifically of President Trump, and give the man and his program a chance to succeed. But for this to happen would require the mainstream media to stop its one-sided anti-Trump crusade and bethink their exact principal role as an unbiased and objective interface for information and dialogue between people and government. 

Furthermore, perhaps even more importantly, it will take the ceasing of obstructionist efforts from certain Republicans in Congress. Full support of Mr. Trump's by his party, whose representatives have to set aside personal vanities and sanctimonious reservations, and a constructive political opposition that recovers at least some minimal sense of fairness decency, appear to be immediate requirements for success. 

 

The period of trial and error and political and social experimentation with the radical ideas of the left, domestically and internationally, has to end. It is high time that the Washington elites and stakeholders come to their senses, intellectually and morally, and refocus on this country's common good, which is so closely related to the entire western hemisphere's well-being.

What the Hell is Wrong with President Trump and His Foreign Policy?

Without a doubt, bombing the airfield in Syria and dropping the giant bomb on the I.S. stronghold in Afghanistan demonstrates to the world that with the new President in charge, the game has changed. Trump showed that he cannot be messed with and is determined to lead and to take action.

However, in a time of cyber manipulation, with mainstream media operating as ideological propaganda tools and politics deteriorating into a madhouse of hateful obstructionism and partisan malice, reality can only be grasped by sound intuition good judgment in combination with inclusive and critical reflection. 

The so-called facts presented by news outlets, intelligence services, and congressional investigative boards too often make up facts, intentionally distort, and tailor them to political expediency. Utilitarian convenience has created a climate that condones lying and cheating, the shirking of accountability, and the denunciation and demonization of political opponents, including their opinions. Certain media outlets, the CIA, the FBI, have all lost their credibility. Nothing they present can be taken cum grano salis anymore. The primary requirement for professionally operating government organizations - political impartiality and neutrality - is no longer a given. No doubt, in many respects, the political culture in the U.S. has deteriorated to alarming lows. 

In light of all this, one has to ask who is advising President Trump and what happened to Trump's pragmatic judgment? Rhetorical excellence is, for the most part, natural talent, and Trump's plain and straightforward language might serve him well in certain respects. But how is it possible that a sitting president calls the President of another country an animal and a butcher? Somebody should advise Mr. Trump that if he makes such statements, they ought to be put in a conditional form: "If President Assad has personally ordered the gas attack, we would certainly have to consider him to be a merciless butcher, a vile individual?" 

Yet, there is no evidence that Assad ordered the use of chemical weapons. There is not even clear evidence that Syrian government troops used those weapons. Instead, every reasonable calculus points to the fact that the rebels exploited an air attack by a Syrian government fighter jet to release chemical substances themselves to blame the government and, at the eleventh hour, reverse the fortunes of war. Everybody knew that the government forces, with Russian support, were winning and pushing the insurgents back. Everybody knew that it would be outright insane and counterproductive for the Assad regime to use chemical weapons at this point. Not only would it not serve any meaningful purpose as conventional warfare was doing the job, but it would also turn the public opinion against the government. Who would order such a stupid move, even at the chance that the public would blame the use of chemical weapons on the rebels? 

Undoubtedly, the ideas of neoconservative hawks, dangerous madmen like John McCain or Lindsay Graham, most likely pushed by lobbyists of the military-industrial complex, have somehow found their way into the White House and have clouded the judgment of advisers and the President himself. When an American Secretary of State shows up in Russia and, as far as the government of Syria and its support by Russia is concerned, stipulates an ultimatum of virtually unconditional surrender, he leaves the Russian counterparts no room for negotiations. Moreover, he also compromised the principles of diplomatic conduct.

Aside from demonstrating to the world that President Trump is a strong leader, the reaction to the use of chemical weapons in Syria has been an unjustifiable one, strategically as well as morally. 

One of the Pax Americana's pernicious errors attempted since the end of the Cold War was the disregard for international players' legitimate strategic interests. While other global players might pretend to bow in the face of the U.S.'s overwhelming military might, it certainly does not help establish a just and balanced world order. It only accomplishes further destabilization and weakening of international relations and increases the animosity toward the United States in many parts of the world. 

Trump raised hope and was elected not the least for the essential turnaround in U.S. foreign affairs policy after the dreadful Obama years. With Trumps premature and gullible reaction to the use of chemical weapons in Syria, his excessive interpretation of U.S. national security interests, and his further alienation of Russia, he is about to betray the expectations for the urgently needed change in U.S. foreign policy along the lines of stopping regime change and nation-building around the world. Instead, what he should pursue is cooperation with Russia and China and the partners in Europe and NATO to fight the real threat – radical Islam and its affiliated terrorist organizations. 

At this juncture of events and less than three months into Mr. Trump's presidency, the only hope remains that the President and his advisers and foreign affairs counselors come to their senses. Mr. Trump must live up to his campaign promises and disentangle the U.S. from the endless involvements in unjust wars in the Middle East, stop regime change interventions, and overcome the Russophobe stance in U.S. foreign affairs.

New Despotism - The Tyranny of the Mob

A new form of totalitarianism is upon us. It has arrived in the form of ideological despotism, wielded by the aggressive and intolerant leftist mob. It is the bold attempt of the culturally and morally degenerate of our time to implement a kind of 'mental dictatorship.' The plebeians of our day are no longer a class of citizens unable to read and write. They are those ill-educated and ignorant, rationally and/or morally wanting individuals who can potentially come from all strata of society teachers, journalists, and academia, scientists and politicians. 

 

Besides third-wave feminists, Black-Lives Matter activists, and Never-Trumpers, the most prominent representatives of this vast group of misguided people, who combine education with moral deficiencies, are well known. I count many of the Democrats (Reid, Clinton, Pelosi, Schumer, and the like) and Republicans (McCain, Rubio, Graham, to name a few) in Congress and Senate plus the neo-conservative and neo-liberal nomenclature in the State Department to this group. Yet, to be found at the peak of this particular deprivation was the previous holder of the most powerful political office globally, B. Obama.  

In recent years, the intellectual-educational and moral-ethical decline in culture and politics became ever more tangible in all society and state segments. In my blog entries, I have criticized the idiocies regarding the destruction of the nation-state by open border policies and the interventionist foreign affairs approach, combined with astonishing neglect of strategic and geopolitical parameters in international relations by the U.S. government and the transatlantic alliance. I also addressed the self-destructive equating of the Muslim religion, the bewilderment over (trans-) gender relation, and the general cultural decline in western societies.  

The confusion reached a sad apex in the race for the White House and specifically in the open war waged by the bulk of the mainstream media against the new president and his administration since his inauguration. The level of injustice and sheer destructiveness of the political opposition and most of the press is almost incomprehensible. It has reached a degree indeed unparalleled in Western post-World War II societies and is seriously putting in question the U.S. political system's maturity and proficiency. 

What shook up our civilization's societal fabric to such a degree and corrupted the sanity and sound judgment of politicians, educators, communicators of essential parts of the citizenry? I have addressed the reasons in my blog essays over the past few years. I alluded, among others, to the absurdities of the ideological tools such as the exploitation of political correctness, the undifferentiated interpretation of the notion of equality, the anything-goes of value relativism, the socialization of the young generation along the lines of egotism and individual hedonism, the absence of character-building efforts at home and in the places of education and culturization. Finally, I addressed the corruption of the educational culture by depriving it of classical art instruction ingredients. In other words: At the bottom of the dilettantism in politics and political relations in domestic and international affairs lies the utter lack of philosophical depth and wisdom.

  

The political illiteracy and moral confusion led to the described and criticized follies in domestic (i.e., immigration) and foreign affairs (i.e., support of insurgents and destruction of nation-state structures). Based on their misconceptions regarding the ontology of political and social coexistence (see my blog essay of November 2015 https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/11/immigration-us-and-europe-governed-by.html), governing authorities in the U.S. and Europe engaged in unjust interventions in the Middle East, in the Caucasus, in Asia, severely damaged the social fabric of the U.S. and European societies, and widened the domestic ideological divide to the point of irremediableness. 

The portrayed intellectual and moral decline became forcibly apparent in the wake of the U.S. presidential elections. Blind individual prejudice and pride, assertiveness, and stubbornness seem to be more important than objectivity, dignity, truth. Personal vanity not to have been wrong seemingly trumps all insight and appears to override all disabusing by experience and learning from actual failure. People and governments maintain their positions of prejudice and ideological bias at all costs. Political discourse appears to have degenerated into nothing more than turf warfare over partisan policy notions and the constant denial of responsibility for failed decisions (shining example in its negativity again B. Obama - Syria, Libya, ACA)

The epitome of the intellectual and moral carnage that has characterized the political rivalry of recent weeks, months, and indeed years is the apparent attempt to delegitimize conservative opposition and virtually destroy the newly elected U.S. president and his administration. Instead of partaking constructively in the political business and contributing to the bonum commune despite contrasting and opposing stances, large parts of society engage in outright destruction and annihilation, including media and representatives of the legislative estate. The decadence has reached an alarming degree. 

Short of outright civil war, things could barely get worse. Think about this: The oscillation of governments is natural to democratic republics. Thus, the alteration of governing regimes astounds only the under-educated and ideologically stultified. And probably those few who fantasize about an authoritarian one-party rule in the People's Republic of China style. The apparent attempt to disregard the outcome of the presidential elections and delegitimize President Trump's governance is not just the political left being a sore loser and incapable of accepting the rebuke of their Marxist-utopian globalist ideas by the electorate. In essence, it is a fascistic move on the part of those liberal and progressive elements in society and state who, in their arrogant hubris to govern unimpeded for the foreseeable future, might not even be consciously aware of the baseness of their doings. 

As I made clear in my blog essay below on "Truth in Life and Politics," to acknowledge existential verities and show dignity in the face of a legitimate opponent's victory requires proper knowledge and understanding of human relations and necessitates ethical disposition and moral strength. The current state of social and political affairs in the United States of America demonstrates most ostensibly the interconnection between the theoretical and practical judgment, the inescapable bond between knowledge and action, cognition, and morality. 

When the intent to see elected officials fail becomes more important than helping them succeed, an existential threat emerges. When, in a democratic political system, partisan dogmatism and party-political arrogance gain the nation's best interest over partisan dogmatism and party-political arrogance, the disconnect between those two intrinsic components of sound practice and meaningful human behavior amplifies.

The victory of Donald Trump has shocked the radical left in this country and united them in their desperation. The plebeians of our day have taken to the streets. Countrywide demonstrations peak in calls to remove Trump from office, with individual exponents even bluntly calling for his assassination. Rather than bringing people to their senses and quelling the riot, pundits and elected representatives stir the hatred and encourage the firebrand.  

Over time, the plebeians have managed to turn values and righteousness upside down through their aggressive agitation. They've turned right into wrong, straight into crooked, the upstanding is now considered insincere, and termed the reasonable 'un-American.' 

They deprived our societies of their religious foundation and are fervently working on dismantling any possible common denominator that could serve, beyond the pluralism of values and political stances, as a unifying force. (On that destructive aspect, read my blog essay on "The Crisis of Morality" of March 31, 2015, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/03/the-crisis-of-morality.html). The plebeians of our day usurped the editorial offices of mainstream media outlets, they populate the academic quarters on the college campuses, and they became hateful obstructionists on Capitol Hill. 

At this juncture, perhaps the most pressing question is whether or not this culture war that is in full swing will escalate into what some commentators have already heralded as the Second American Civil War. We shall find out soon if the left's tyranny will ease up on their mental authoritarianism or drag this nation into a large-scale violent uprising and outright civil war.

UKRAINE AND THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY

After the follies in the Middle East – letting down the established political leaders in Egypt, Libya, and Syria and supporting dubious insurgent movements – the U.S. and the European Union's irreparable foreign policy screw-ups continue in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.

The Ukraine debacle, instigated by the U.S. and the European Union, is being exacerbated by the U.S. The respective governments have maneuvered themselves into seemingly irreversible positions. In the U.S., the disregard for geopolitical factors and geostrategic interests appears to be ubiquitous. In addition to the always clueless U.S. president and his administration – this author has long stopped wondering what type of "experts" advise this government – a host of senators and congressmen from both parties joined the inane chorus of foreign policy ignorance. Many pundits and op-ed writers set the stage for yet another policy failure when they pushed Russia's pathetic hostility and the Russian president.

How about some perspective on the whole affair? Besides the historical fact that the Crimean peninsula has been Russian and under Russian influence ever since Catherine the Great?
 
Mr. Yanukovych, the legitimate president of Ukraine, was elected in 2010 in free and fair elections as attested to by the OSCE.  However, he sealed his fate when he chose a custom union offered by Putin over a deal presented by the E.U. - $15 billion in loans and favorable rates on natural gas and oil versus loans and credits tied to economic reforms monitored by the IMF but no certainty of full E.U. membership.

The protesters subsequently forming in Kyiv – not all of them, but many of them – struck up tents and quarters, set up barricades, engaged the police in violent struggles by using Molotov cocktails, seized and burned down the headquarters of the ruling political party, and demanded the overthrow of the regime. It didn't help President Yanukovych much that he approved a full amnesty to all those arrested during the uprisings and offered to form a coalition government with the opposing party until the new presidential elections scheduled for 2015. The radical left overthrew Viktor Yanukovych, impeached him after seizing the parliament, and chased him out of the country. Does this look like democracy in action or rather like a coup d'etat no sovereign nation could accept? Is this the kind of political demonstration to which US-senator McCain should lend his support by flying into Kyiv and help taking sides against a legitimate government?

It is not the alleged old-Soviet type of imperialism of the ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin that has maneuvered him into this precarious situation of possibly losing Ukraine and forcefully annexing the Crimea and perhaps the eastern parts of Ukraine, alienating himself and setting the stage for a new Cold War. The transatlantic realm's failed policies generated this quagmire and pushed it to the point of no return. If anybody finds themselves on the wrong side of history in all this, it is Mr. Obama in conjunction with Democratic ideologues and Republican neocons.

This author participated in the educational civil-military efforts within the framework of NATO's Partnership for Peace initiative in the 1990ies in eastern and southeastern Europe. He knows all too well what would have to happen now had the proponents of ignorant foreign policies gotten their way and brought Ukraine (and Georgia for that matter) to full NATO membership.

The military outreach of Russia to Crimea and probably other parts of Ukraine would invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, meaning an attack on one is considered an attack on all. Armed intervention and an outright war would now be inevitable.