Denna artikeln 10/6 av den erfarna geopolitiske analytikern Finian Cunningham RT: Biden knows Ukraine would make a bad NATO ally; he encouraged corruption & helped make it the dysfunctional state it is today har identifierats och vänligen översatts av Jan-Erik Gustafsson. Är Cunninghams bedömningen den rätta då? Framtiden får visa det. Cuninghamn nämner inget om eventuell pragmatisk hänsyn till Rysslands uppfattning. Man har svårt att tro att Ukrainas nazisttolerans spelar någon större roll för Biden än den gör för Läfvén. Skulle inte bli förvånad om USA kör på och försöker få med Ukraina. Ursprungsartikeln på engelska finns också med denna gång.

Finian Cunningham

är en prisbelönt journalist. I över 25 år arbetade han som underredaktör och författare för bland annat The Mirror, Irish Times, Irish Independent och Britain’s Independent.

Biden såg Ukraina som en dålig kandidat till Nato. Stöd till korruption och till att göra Ukraina dysfunktionellt?

Om det finns en västerländsk ledare som känner till korruptionens djup i Ukrainas politik måste det vara USA: s president Joe Biden. Hans egensinnige son Hunter mjölkade landet medan pappa cementerade statskuppen 2014 i Kiev.

Presidenten vet att glada samtal om reformer för att gå med i Nato är meningslösa plattityder  för att dölja en dysfunktionell stat som han hjälpte till att skapa.  Biden har försenat  bjudit in Ukrainas president Volodymyr Zelensky till Vita huset nästa månad trots störande rapporter om Zelenskys censurering av media och yttrandefrihet och nedläggning av demokratisk opposition. Dessa överträdelser stör uppenbarligen inte Onkel Sam. Men det som är problematiskt – men inte utåt – är Ukrainas oförbättrande korruption. Och gissa vem skulle veta allt om det?

Joe Biden var strategen för Ukrainas ”reformer” under Obama-administrationen när han var vice president, efter den västerstödda kuppen i Kiev mot en demokratiskt vald president i februari 2014.

Dessutom använde den näst högst rankade amerikanska tjänstemannen vid den tiden (Biden) sitt politiska inflytande för att få sin son Hunter i styrelsen för det ukrainska gasföretaget Burisma med en inkomst på 50 000 dollar per månad, en förmögenhet i Europas näst fattigaste land – trots att  Hunter Biden inte hade någon relevant yrkeserfarenhet.

Tack vare de i stort sett pro-demokratiska företagsnyhetsmedierna har den skandalen om politiskt inflytande och korruption begravts – avfärdats som en konspirationsteori som drivits av Donald Trump och hans republikanska anhängare. De senare är verkligen benägna till galna teorier. Ändå är historien om Bidens knä-djupa  korruption i Ukraina tillräckligt verklig.  Biden  skrattade till och med offentligt om hur han när han var vice president personligen avskedade statsåklagaren i Ukraina som råkade utreda korruptionen i Burisma-företaget i vars styrelse Hunter Biden satt.

Redaktör Romelsjö: Publicerat Historien om Joe och Hunter Biden, censureras av USA-pressen…?

Denna bakgrund skulle kunna förklara det senaste avvisandet av Ukrainas strävan att gå med i Natos militära allians. Ukraina har inte kunnat formellt ansöka om medlemskap på flera år, trots Nato-medlemmar som levererar dödliga vapen och militära tränare till Ukraina, vilket i alliansens ordalydelse beskrivs som en ”förstärkt möjlighetspartner”.

Fortfarande gäckar hela NATO-medlemskapet den tidigare sovjetrepubliken mycket till Kiev-myndigheternas frustration.

Den här veckan tvingade Vita huset Zelensky att göra en pinsam  återkallelse av hans version av ett telefonsamtal med Biden. Zelensky hävdade inledningsvis att den amerikanska presidenten stödde att ge Ukraina en medlemskapshandlingsplan för att gå med i 30-medlemsblocket. Men det visade sig att Biden inte gjorde det. Kiev var sedan tvungen att erkänna att det missuppfattat telefonsamtalet.

Den Brysselbaserade men USA-ledda alliansen förutsätter att det finns strikta kriterier för kandidatländer. Dessa inkluderar att kandidatlandet inte är inblandat i någon aktuell intern civil konflikt och inte har en tvist med en angränsande stat. För framgångsrik antagning måste också blivande medlemmar ha fungerande ” liberala demokratier ” och marknadsekonomier samt militära standarder som kan jämföras med befintliga Natos styrkor.

Ukraina misslyckas på alla sätt. Landet har uthärdat en sjuårig konflikt med Donbass-regionerna i öst och de stora klagomålen – mestadels konstruerade – om Ryssland, som stöder republikerna men inte erkänner dem som oberoende. Ukrainas politiska ekonomi är långt ifrån att möta en västerländsk hälsokontroll på grund av att den är inblandad i korruption och cronyism. Dess militär har paramilitära nynazistiska formationer som den ökända Azovbataljonen. Och Zelensky inför en  lag som inte inkluderar etniska ryssar på listan över Ukrainas infödda folk.

Zelensky har också valt att utfärda ett presidentdekret för att stänga av den politiska oppositionen. Han beordrade nyligen stängning av media som är kritiska för sin styrning i vad som har fördömts som en attack mot yttrandefrihet.

Väst (och Sveriges)  krav på reformer har fallit för döva öron, och om något så glider Ukraina mot att vara en dysfunktionell stat. Som sagt har dock ingen av Natos förmodade standarder hindrat överenskommelse om tidigare medlemskap.

Länder som Portugal och Turkiet antogs till Nato trots att de hade militära diktaturer vid den tiden. Turkiet och Grekland har en långvarig territoriell tvist om Cypern och  områden i Medelhavet. Nyare medlemmar från Balkanregionen, Albanien och Nordmakedonien, är också belamrade med rykten om korruption och hyser territoriella tvister med grannar.

Vad är det därför som gör Ukrainas ansökan till det USA-ledda militärblocket så problematisk? Och varför bestämde sig Biden den här veckan för att säga nej till  Kievs förhoppningar om medlemskap?

Skillnaden är Bidens personliga kunskap om Ukrainas endemiska korruption. Han vet från sin egen familjs slumriga engagemang och berikning att landet förblir oföränderligt under den västsponsrade regimens rådande politik.

USA: s utrikesminister Antony Blinken – som tidigare var en nyckelmedlem i Barack Obama-administrationen under kuppen 2014 i Kiev –  hänvisar desillusionerat till Ukrainas ” interna hot ” som härrör från systematisk korruption.Människor som Biden vet exakt  vilken korg som den ukrainska regimen tillhör. Trots tillgången på vapen och läpptjänster om att stödja Kiev mot ”rysk aggression”, vet den 46: e presidenten mer än någon annan hur galet det skulle vara att ta emot Ukraina i Natos led. Eftersom Biden är delaktig i skapandet av denna trasiga stat och dess irrationella russufobi, som kliar för att inleda ett krig med Ryssland.

Ukraina som en tagg i Rysslands sida är en sak. Att skapa en casus belli genom Nato är en helt annan. Biden förstår faran alltför väl från det oseriösa stat han var med och odlade 2014.

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Biden knows Ukraine would make a bad NATO ally; he encouraged corruption & helped make it the dysfunctional state it is today

Finian Cunningham

is an award-winning journalist. For over 25 years, he worked as a sub-editor and writer for The Mirror, Irish Times, Irish Independent and Britain’s Independent, among others.

10 Jun, 2021 10:49

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FILE PHOTO: Joe Biden in Kiev ©  REUTERS/Sergei Supinski/Pool

If there’s one Western leader who knows the depth of corruption in Ukraine politics, then it has to be US President Joe Biden. His wayward son Hunter milked the country while daddy cemented the 2014 coup d’état in Kiev.

The president knows cheery talk about reforms for joining NATO are meaningless platitudes to conceal a dysfunctional state that he helped create.

Biden has belatedly invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House next month despite disturbing reports of his censoring media and free speech and shutting down democratic opposition. Those infringements evidently don’t bother Uncle Sam. But what is problematic – though not outwardly stated – is Ukraine’s incorrigible corruption. And guess who would know all about that?

Joe Biden was the point man for Ukraine’s ‘reforms’ during the Obama administration when he was vice president, after the Western-backed coup in Kiev against a democratically elected president in February 2014.

On top of that, the second-highest-ranking US official at the time then used his political influence to get his son Hunter on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma with a $50,000-a-month income, a fortune in Europe’s second poorest country – even though Hunter Biden had no relevant professional experience.

Thanks to the largely pro-Democrat corporate news media, that scandal of political influence-peddling and graft has been buried – dismissed as a conspiracy theory pushed by Donald Trump and his Republican supporters. The latter are certainly prone to wacky theories. Nevertheless, the story of the Bidens being knee-deep in corruption in Ukraine is real enough. Biden even bragged in public about how when he was vice president, he personally ousted the state prosecutor in Ukraine who happened to be investigating corruption at the Burisma company on whose board Hunter Biden was sitting.

This background would explain the latest rebuff to Ukraine’s aspirations to join the NATO military alliance. It has not been able to formally apply for membership for years, despite NATO members supplying lethal weapons and military trainers to Ukraine, which is described in alliance parlance as an ‘enhanced opportunity partner’.

Still, full NATO membership keeps eluding the former Soviet republic much to the frustration of the Kiev authorities.

This week, the White House forced Zelensky to make an embarrassing retraction of his version of a phone call with Biden. Zelensky claimed initially that the American president backed giving Ukraine a Membership Action Plan to join the 30-member bloc. But it turned out that Biden did not. Kiev then had to admit that it mischaracterized the phone conversation.

The Brussels-based, but US-led, alliance stipulates that there are strict qualifying criteria for applicant nations. These include the candidate country not being involved in any current internal civil conflict and not having a dispute with a neighboring state. Also, for successful admission, prospective members must have functioning ‘liberal democracies’ and market economies as well as military standards comparable to existing NATO forces.

Arguably, Ukraine fails miserably on every count. It has endured a seven-year conflict with the breakaway Donbass regions in the east as well as major grievances – mostly contrived – with Russia, which supports the republics but doesn’t recognize them as independent. Ukraine’s political economy is far from meeting a Western health check due to being mired in corruption and cronyism. Its military has paramilitary neo-Nazi formations like the notorious Azov Battalion. And Zelensky is introducing a law that does not include ethnic Russians on the list of Ukraine’s native peoples.

Zelensky has also taken to issuing presidential decrees to shut down political opposition. He recently ordered the shuttering of media outlets critical of his governance in what has been denounced as an attack on free speech.

Western calls for reforms have fallen on deaf ears, and, if anything, Ukraine is sliding towards being a dysfunctional state.

That said, however, none of NATO’s supposed standards have prevented past memberships from being agreed upon.

Countries like Portugal and Turkey were admitted to NATO despite having military dictatorships at the time. Turkey and Greece have a long-running territorial dispute over Cyprus and Mediterranean waters. More recent members from the Balkan region, Albania and North Macedonia, are also tainted with reputations for corruption and harboring territorial disputes with neighbors.

Therefore, what is it exactly that makes Ukraine’s application to the US-led military bloc so problematic? And why has Biden moved firmly this week to quash Kiev’s membership hopes?

The difference is Biden’s personal knowledge of Ukraine’s endemic corruption. He knows from his own family’s sleazy involvement and enrichment that the country is irreformable under the prevailing politics of the Western-sponsored regime.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken – who was also formerly a key member of the Barack Obama administration during the 2014 coup in Kiev – refers darkly to Ukraine’s “internal threats” as stemming from systematic corruption.

People like Biden know intimately just what a basket case the Ukrainian regime is. Despite the supply of arms and lip service about supporting Kiev against ‘Russian aggression’, the 46th president knows more than anyone just how insane it would be to admit Ukraine into NATO’s ranks. Because Biden is complicit in the making of this messed up state, and its irrational Russophobia, which is itching to start a war with Russia.

Ukraine as a thorn in Russia’s side is one thing. Creating a casus belli through NATO is quite another. Biden understands the danger all too well from the rogue state he cultivated in 2014.

Who’s your daddy? Here’s why European leaders are swooning like giddy submissives over Biden’s warmongering ‘back to normal’ team

Finian Cunningham

is an award-winning journalist. For over 25 years, he worked as a sub-editor and writer for The Mirror, Irish Times, Irish Independent and Britain’s Independent, among others.

25 Nov, 2020 18:12

FILE PHOTO: Joe Biden makes a joint statement with European Council President Donald Tusk ahead of a meeting at EU Council headquarters in Brussels February 6, 2015 ©  REUTERS/Yves Herman

The EU is trembling in anticipation at the prospect of a Joe Biden administration, like Ana Steele in Christian Grey’s Red Room of Pain, despite the policies he espouses being precisely the cause of their problems.

Their rushing to congratulate him, even before the presidential result is certified, speaks volumes of their delight that ‘daddy’ is back in the White House.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen could barely contain her joy over what she said was a “new beginning in EU-US global partnership.”

Charles Michel, the European Council president, said it was time to “rebuild a strong EU-USA alliance” and he hastily invited Biden to a European summit in Brussels in the new year, even though the American election has not yet been formally concluded.

Other European national leaders had already congratulated Biden two weeks ago, only days after the November 3 ballot, despite the controversy of incumbent Donald Trump vowing legal challenges over alleged voting fraud.

European elation grew this week with the unveiling of Biden’s would-be cabinet picks. Which seems incredible, given that the incoming White House team is made up of people associated with the Obama administrations (2008-16) for which Biden had served as vice president. Incredible, because several of Europe’s contemporary pressing problems stem from wars in North Africa and the Middle East that the Obama administration fomented.

Appearing defensive about that, Biden in his first in-depth interview as president-elect asserted that “this is not a third Obama administration.” The fact remains, though, that his cabinet nominees are Obama-era holdovers, with names like Antony Blinken for Secretary of State and Jake Sullivan as national security adviser who advocated wars or destructive interventions in Libya, Syria and Ukraine. These conflicts and others in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Biden personally endorsed as a senior senator or exacerbated while vice president to Obama, have led to myriad problems in Europe, from blowback jihadist terrorism to racial tensions with Muslim communities, to straining of resources dealing with a massive influx of refugees from war zones.

This week, while European leaders were cooing over the next Biden administration, French police caused shocking headlines by brutally forcing hundreds of mainly Afghan refugees from a makeshift encampment in the heart of Paris. Such problems stem directly from the illegal wars that were the handiwork of Obama, Biden and his reprised team of warmongers.

Thus, the question is why are European politicians so craven in welcoming the return of conventional American imperialists? Forget all the Biden team hype about “working with allies” and “multilateralism is back”. The Europeans will be treated as they always have been: adjuncts to Washington’s pursuit of its own “interests.”

It’s the political equivalent of “Who’s your daddy?” The European leaders are rolling over for more abuse and gladly doing so, too.

But why?

There are several factors. A deluded nostalgia for “normalcy” after four years of fraught and nerve-fraying relations with maverick Trump. The personal umbrage of Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders from being antagonized by boorish Trump over NATO expenditures and trade tariffs is part of the relief they are feeling at getting rid of him. Also, European politicians and diplomats will see Biden and his team as people they are reconnecting with in career paths going back several years. Unlike the shambolic and confusing Trump administration, a Biden one will bring coherence and continuity – regardless of the legacy of wars – which makes for smoother personal, political interaction. Better the devil you know.

Don’t forget, too, that there are plenty of European Atlanticists who, from an ideological conviction, truly believe in the strategic benefits of an US-EU axis. These kind of European deep-state politicians and bureaucrats are credulous believers in NATO and American claims of “leading the free world” against, formerly, the Soviet Union and Red China, and now Russia and Belt & Road China. So, when they hear Biden declaring “America’s back” and “renewing alliances” it is music to their ears.

One specific upside is talk from President-elect Biden of returning the US to the Iran nuclear deal. Trump’s trashing of the 2015 accord cost European states a lot of business and investment hopes with Iran. Also, their image of presumed independence was dented from Trump wielding secondary sanctions against Europeans doing business with Iran, humiliating them to toe his line. With Biden, the Europeans see an opening for resuming economic interests in Iran. That remains to be seen, however.

Another possible upside under Biden is his seeming willingness to enter into arms-control talks with Russia. In particular, renewing the New START treaty curbing strategic nuclear weapons. Trump’s reckless walking away from arms-control conventions, including the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and the Open Skies Treaty, caused much anxiety across Europe of a new arms race and a threat to continental security. Biden, therefore, may bring some stability on arms control, even though he and his team have made numerous aggressive sounds towards Russia.

But perhaps the most appealing thing that European leaders see in Biden is that the removal of Trump from office is a harbinger for countering the rise in European populism which has been gravely undermining the EU project. The European liberal establishment refers to the various movements as “far-right” which is an unfair broad brush. Some are rightwing, some leftwing, but generally there is a popular sentiment of alienation from the EU and national political establishments over issues related to neoliberal capitalist failure and seemingly uncontrolled immigration which is connected to endless American wars aided and abetted by European NATO powers.

Former European Council President Donald Tusk expressed this view: “Trump’s defeat can be the beginning of the end of the triumph of far-right populisms in Europe. Thank you, Joe.”

Trump was detested by European establishment politicians because they saw him as a mentor for populist, nationalist parties across Europe. His outspoken support for Brexit rankled the EU. Trump’s former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, openly advocated for Germany’s Eurosceptic AfD party. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former political aide, tried to rally a populist revolt across Europe.

In short, Trump and his America First policy was seen as a malign influence corroding the pillars of the EU bloc.

Biden, however, is a return to conventional trans-Atlanticism, where European nations are at least treated with a modicum of respect – albeit in reality subordinates who will be told by Washington when, where and how high to jump. That’s a degrading relationship but, for the European establishment, they see it as the best way to preserve their order by taking the political oxygen away from populists. Never mind the wars, the refugees, the multicultural tensions, the economic austerity, being a sub for Uncle Sam is a comfort of sorts.

The tragic irony is this not-so “new beginning” in EU-US relations will inevitably lead to more internal contradictions down the road because Biden’s politics are predicated on more interventionism and imperialism under the banner of “leading the free world,” which is the root cause of Europe’s instability.

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