God Bless George Bush! God Bless America!

Filed under: Russia

The Associated Press reports that U.S. President George Bush, visiting Kiev today, has "vowed full support for Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations, saying Russia would have no veto over the ex-Soviet states' membership bids." Bush is shown above warmly greeting Ukraine's president Viktor Yushchenko, whose face is disfigured after surviving a Kremlin assassination attempt via Dioxin poisoning. The American leader proclaimed unequivocally to his Ukrainian counterpart: "Your nation has made a bold decision and the United States strongly supports your request. In Bucharest this week, I will continue to make America's position clear: we support MAP for Ukraine and Georgia. My stop here should be a clear signal to everybody that I mean what I say: It's in our interest for Ukraine to join."

Glory, glory Hallelujah! At last, the truth is marching on. Better late than never, Mr. President. If you work really hard for the next nine months, you can give birth to a whole new legacy.

Another day, another devastating defeat for Vladimir Putin's Russia.

President Bush meets with some students from a Ukrainian school he visited during his trip. Baseball caps! Yeah! Go team, go!

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elmer says:

well --- yes.

misha says:

Bush really went to Ukraine to give Victor Yushchenko the bad news that Ukraine will not be getting an invitation to join NATO. Bush just wanted to make a spectacle by publicly raging that "Russia will not stop Ukraine from joining..." Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Russia just get finished doing just that?

Bush went to give his "moral support," but the fact still remains that less than 25% of Ukrainians strongly favor NATO membership and over half are strongly opposed. The people in Ukraine do not want to be enemies with their northern neighbor with whom they have a long history of strong Slavic brotherly relations. Russia retains enormous capacity to mobilize the millions of Russians living in Ukraine, who are violently opposed to the pro-western tendencies of Yushchenko (the president installed by the US in the CIA-sponsored Orange Coup).

Photo: Bush gently consoles his puppet Victor Yushchenko (where's the violin?): http://img.rian.ru/images/10267/20/102672051.jpg

Hans says:

"...president Viktor Yushchenko, whose face is disfigured after surviving a Kremlin assassination attempt via Dioxin poisoning."

Actually in Ukraine it is widely known that Yushchenk's face got disfigured when he went in for a round of Botox injections during the campaign season but the Ukrainian doctor substituted some other Ukrainian miracle drug for the Botox. Yushchenko obviously couldn't deny that something had happened, with his face looking the way it did, so they made up the story of his "poising," and even then they never claimed it was "the Kremlin" that did it, but only Yushchenko's political opponents in Ukraine.

Leopolis says:

Misha, you're right on NATO, and wrong on everything else.

"Installed by the US in the CIA-sponsored Orange Coup" is nothing short of giving Bush more credit than he is ever worthy of. If the CIA managed to get millions of Ukrainians out on the street (for no money) for three weeks in the freezing snow, then it did an incredible job. But I don't believe it, nor do the millions like me who witnessed the Orange Revolution.

The Russian FSB failed to install their puppet Yanukovych in 2004 (where's the violin?). Russia manufactures its own elections, so naturally the US did the same in Ukraine, right? Luckily, many of us are more clever than to believe this cheap propaganda.

The "long history of strong Slavic brotherly relations" is lifted from Soviet-era textbooks. Misha, do you speak Ukrainian? If you don't that doesn't sound very brotherly of you! Maybe you should be doing more to learn about your fellow Slavic brothers? Or should they all just be like Russia?

Funny thing about those Ukrainians. People did not want a version of Putinism in their own independent sovereign country, so they elected Viktor Yushchenko. They are against NATO, but overwhelmingly voted for Ms. Tymoshenko. Sounds to me like they can think for themselves.

Leopolis says:

By the way Misha, where is the violence? Where are the 'millions' on the streets rising up against the orange leaders in support of Big Brother Russia?

So far, the anti-NATO protests have been staged by the Communists and Bloc Vitrenko, but where is Party of Regions? Aren't there only several thousand protesters? Where is the violence?I don't see Russia 'mobilizing' them today, just like Russia failed to 'mobilize' Ukrainians against Yushchenko in 2004.

Tim Farthy says:

Since Bush screws up everything he touches (the Iraq war, finding Bin Laden, fixing New Orleans, running the economy) I think Russia should, in fact, celebrate this announcement since it means that there is no way in hell Ukraine will ever successfully enter NATO!

misha says:

"I don't see Russia 'mobilizing' them today..."

So far the pro-Russian forces have continued to operate in and through the Ukrainian electoral and political system. They have not taken on a military or separatist orientation. But that is certainly a very real possibility, especially with Russia's urging.

As I said, not more than 25 percent of Ukrainians are strongly in favor of NATO membership while over 50 percent are strongly opposed to it. That hardly sounds like a recipe for a "happy marriage" between NATO and Ukraine to me. (Indeed anyone who would even propose such a marriage must have a loose screw.) If NATO tries to bring Ukraine into its orbit (against the will of the majority of Ukrainians) it simply goes too far.

There is no rational argument that such a move strengthens European collective security. Instead it simply reveals NATO for what it blatantly is, an American-lead anti-Russian pact (even though Bush constantly denies this fact). Germany and France get this well enough, and since Russia is their neighbor, and will always be their neighbor, they are looking to avoid confrontations and expand relations. But Washington wants to drag them kicking and screaming into some new Cold War confrontation that they want no part of and from which they will not benefit in any way.

The simple fact is, as I said, that millions of Russians are living in Ukraine. Even if Ukrainians don't feel any Slavic brotherhood for their Slavic Russian brothers, with whom they are historically joined at the hip, for better or worse, the millions of Russians in Ukraine, who have Ukrainian citizenship, obviously do feel some brotherly connection to the motherland.

Here is the Ukrainian election map. Notice that the blue areas, which includes the Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine, is where the pro-Russian Party of Regions enjoys majority support.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Ukraine_ElectionsMap_Nov2004.png

misha says:

Victor Yushchenko is also 10 cm shorter than George W Bush is. But in all the staged photo-ops, Yushchenko is standing on a platform as well as wearing platform shoes, which is designed to give the impression that he is 1 or 2 cm taller than the American president is.
http://publiuspundit.com/02bush.650.jpg

This is obviously a shameless attempt by the USA to bolster the embattled Yushchenko and his unpopular pro-US positions.

The fact is that all Ukrainian politicians are backed by various factions of Ukrainian oligarchs. This is true of Yushchenko no less than it is of Yanakovich and Юлия Тимошенко. All of them are backed by oligarchs of different stripes. Yanakovich is backed by the eastern Ukrainian industrialist, who have strong commercial ties to Russia, where Tamochinko is backed by gas oligarchs (She made her fortune by reselling Russian gas to Europe, which Russia sold to it's Ukrainian brothers for pennies on the dollar, to help them out.)

Bush is only throwing his support behind Yushchenko because it is Yushchenko that best serves Washington's interests (like any little American poodle dog). Ukrainians see right through this at once and they would thank the Americans to stop interfering in Ukrainian domestic politics. Isn't there some place you should be like bombing or attacking or something? There has got to be some third worlders somewhere who you can bother who are marshaling their shiny new "WMD" against the defenseless American nation.

http://img.rian.ru/images/10267/20/102672051.jpg

elmer says:

In Ukraine, Tymoshenko is polling higher percentages than anyone else - including the Party of Regions.

That's because people are finally beginning to realize in far greater numbers than before that the Party of Regions is nothing but a bunch of crooks and thugs, who think that government is their own private little personal piggy bank.

Freedom of the press is a very big thing in Ukraine, unlike in Russia.

It leads to, and supports something wonderful - freedom.

And more and more people in Ukraine are realizing it.

Sarkozy says:

While Tymoshenko is quite popular in the polls (which coincidentally do not reflect the cynicism most Ukrainians associate with her and all other political parties, choosing instead to style this new, stylish representative of the oligarch avant-garde simply as “Yulka”), fact remains that the vast majority of Ukrainians do not support NATO membership. Yulka herself has recently stated that Ukraine will not join NATO without a referendum. There is no other way to spin this. Coincidentally, I find your apathy and general repugnance for the Party of Regions deeply amusing, since without it, Ukraine would remain a one party system, ever so reminiscent of that lumbering giant everyone is so fearful of at the moment.

I gather George Bush’s comments came as a great surprise to someone who hasn’t been keeping up with American policy towards NATO expansion, the statements of the White House press secretary, and deeply moving monologues of Condoleezza Rice. To those of us who did, his conclusions are most ordinary. Or perhaps you had a different scenario in mind? Allow me to indulge: Bush holds Yushchenko firmly by the shoulders, as spit rains from his mouth onto the Ukrainian president. Yushchenko delivers a bone shattering uppercut to the Texas native, and both men crumble to the ground, sobbing for dear life. Were these your fantasies?

Leopolis says:

Misha,

As I said, you're right on NATO, but wrong on everything else.

You still didn't address my question, "where is the violence?" Where are the 'millions' rising up against the orange politicians over NATO?

You say that "So far the pro-Russian forces have continued to operate in and through the Ukrainian electoral and political system. They have not taken on a military or separatist orientation. But that is certainly a very real possibility, especially with Russia's urging."

Didn't they have the chance to do so in 1991 during independence, 1994 during Crimea's attempted succession, and during 2004 during the successionist steps to create the Southeastern Ukrainian Autonomous Republic? All of these moves failed. So why are we to believe that Russians will revolt in the future?

Thanks for showing me the outdated maps of Ukraine's political division and explaining to me that Tymoshenko is an oligarch, but this is not news to me or anybody else. I was awake when I wrote my masters thesis on Russian-Ukrainian relations. ;)

If Yushchenko is Bush's poodle, then Lukashenko is Putin's... So what? We can have this tit-for-tat discussion for days. Russia pursues its interests just like the US.

Publius Pundit's "God Bless George Bush, God Bless America" propaganda is just as lame as your "Slavic brothers" crap.

Here is a good op-ed (written by a Russian) on the real reasons why Russia is against NATO:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2008/04/02/008.html

elmer says:

Leopolis, the article is a good one.

If you ask people in Ukraine about NATO, they generally don't know what it is.

But some of them are against it.

And - the can't identify any "threats" to Ukraine from joining NATO, other than what the propaganda has told them - that Ukraine would "lose its sovereignty." Which is nonsense, of course.

The commies came out to protest against NATO during Bush's visit. Not very many.

Inside Ukraine, some have suggested that joining NATO is a necessity, in the sense of being a tool for imposing much-needed additional democratic reforms at a faster pace.

In other words, the oligarchs who continue feeding at their own personal piggy trough of government are perma-glued in place, to the great detriment of the general population.

They are the ones who oppose joining NATO and additional reforms.

As President Yushchenko said - corruption is killing the country.

The problem is that the foxes are watching the hen house, and they won't leave.

President Yushchenko mentioned during Bush's visit that during the 20th century, Ukraine tried 5 times to be sovereign and independent.

In the 21st century, NATO is essential for Ukraine to maintain and improve its independence and sovereignty.

misha says:

Leopolis, here's a quote from the Moscow Times article that you linked to: "During a recent meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Putin made an extremely important statement. 'Under modern conditions, when there is no longer confrontation between two hostile systems, an endless expansion of the military and political alliance is not only impractical, but counterproductive,' he said."

Putin certainly gets a receptive audience for such sentiments in Germany and elsewhere in continental Europe. People there are tired of the decades long confrontation between the west and Russia and they are looking to turn the page.

The main feature of the Cold War was the confrontation between the US and its allies (through NATO) and Russia and its allies (through the Warsaw Pact). That confrontation had certain elements of basic economic, political and military competition, such as have existed in the relations between the world's main powers for centuries. But the most important aspect of the Cold War was certainly the deep ideological confrontation between global communism and western capitalism. It was this ideological dimension that allowed the US to assume the high moral ground (rightly or wrongly) and claim to be the world's "defender of freedom" fighting the good fight against the godless evil empire and its drones.

Of course now the USSR no longer exists and in its place 15 independent republics emerged, with Russia being but one of those republics. The Warsaw Pact is nothing but a distant memory. So the obvious question then was what would be the role of NATO, now that its main adversary (and its raison d'être) no longer exists.

It would be absurd to view NATO as an alliance of every country in Europe (and beyond) against one country. What would such an alliance against Russia be based on, if there is no overarching ideological struggle? Russian ethnicity? Russian culture?

Russia is at a crossroads and it must make strategic decisions which will affect its future direction for the foreseeable future. Russia is not only a European country but a Eurasian country, and the majority of Russia's territory is east of the Urals, in Asia. One possible outcome is that Russia could align itself in a strategic partnership with fast-rising China. China is hungry for energy and other natural resources, which Russia has plenty of.

If Russia definitively turns its back on the West then who will be to blame? Who could even blame Russia, when its interests and its protests are continually ignored and trampled upon by the western powers, again and again and again?

In the movie Dawn of the Dead all the zombies go to the mall; it's what they did when they were living and now that they are dead they don't know what else to do except to keep the same habits. One can say that the United States is determined to continue to wage the Cold War, simply out of habit if for no other reason, even though the objective ideological basis for such a struggle has disappeared from world history.

How are aggressive and militaristic statements by American presidential candidates helpful in fostering better relations? How is it useful to blatantly disregard Russia's sincere concerns in such areas as missile defense and NATO expansion?

But Russia has long proposed a strategic partnership between NATO and Russia and not outright Russian membership in the organization. The simple fact is that in many areas there is a strong overlap of interests between the west and Russia, such as in fighting terrorism (which has been directed against Russia as much as anyone) and containing Chinese military expansion. But Russia cannot pursue closer relations with a NATO that is envisioned in the west as an intractable opponent of Moscow. Western leaders never miss a chance to declare again that NATO is no threat to Russia and Russia should not be concerned by NATO's continued expansion (all around Russia's periphery). But actions speak louder than words. What reason has Russia been given to believe that NATO is anything other than an anti-Russian club?

Those who envision NATO this way are guilty of waging the last war (if only in their heads and if only with tin soldiers). There seems to be a failure of leadership in certain quarters in the the west, which is characterized by the failure to grasp the significance of the profound changes which have taken place in the world. The challenges and opportunities of today are not the challenges and opportunities of yesterday. Western leaders need to understand these changes and graspe of the opportunities that are present now, instead of just replaying the same old tread-worn "glory days" tape over and over.

Clearly Bush would would not be so boisterous unless some back-room deal had already been done to put Georgia and Ukraine on the path to NATO admission. Bush would not subject himself to such a risk of public humiliation if his proposal failed.

One the one hand Bush is raging that "Russia can't veto Ukrainian and Georgian NATO membership," but on the other hand there is all sorts of buzz about a big comprehensive security deal in the works between the US and Russia, which will see strategic cooperation on missile defense, Afghanistan and in other areas. Bush will be meeting with President Putin in a matter of days, in the Black Sea resort city (and site of the 2012 Olympics) Sochi, Russia.

http://kommersant.com/p-12284/foreign_relations_NATO_summit/
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080402/102790075.html

elmer says:

well, well, well.

Little mouse from the Kremlin goes from NATO being "an American-lead anti-Russian pact" to "there is no reason for NATO to exist because the USSR is gone."

How is it that Ukraine would suddenly become "anti-rooshan" if it became a member of NATO?

And why does roosha have any say-so in what UKRAINE wants?

roosha is trying to bribe the Germans with gas, in order to keep Ukraine out of NATO.

This isn't about any security threat to roosha.

And it isn't about any ideological struggle on the part of roosha.

It's about "saving face," and roosha being extremely worried that noone has to listen any more when roosha barks.

And if roosha started speaking in a human-like way, rather than barking, maybe more people would listen.

misha says:

By the way Leopolis, the Moscow Times is a foreign owned, foreign Language (English) newspaper that is distributed free of charge in Moscow. It is notorious for its relentless anti-Russian bias. It hardly represents the voice of (or expresses the interests of) Russia's elite political and business leaders.

http://mnweekly.ru/columnists/20080228/55313263.html

elmer says:

not so fast, kremlinksi.

NATO postponed action on the MAPs till December 2008. And affirmed that membership for Ukraine and Georgia is not a question of "if."

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0179714620080403

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - NATO leaders agreed on Thursday the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia would one day join NATO despite opposition by former Soviet master Russia.

"We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference, reading from a communique agreed at a summit of the defense alliance's 26 leaders in Bucharest.

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2008/04/f2301cab-6e1d-4d3c-baf5-37f0603f0357.html

Speaking today at NATO's summit in Bucharest, Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the alliance wants to welcome Ukraine and Georgia as members someday. But he said the next step in their process of preparing for membership -- the granting of Membership Action Plans (MAPs) -- would have to await further dialogue.

“Today, we make clear that we support these countries' applications for MAP," he said. "Therefore, we will now begin a period of intensive engagement with both at a high political level to address the questions still outstanding pertaining to their MAP applications. We have asked [NATO] foreign ministers to make a first assessment of progress at their December 2008 meeting.”

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God Bless George Bush! God Bless America!

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