Weekend Economists Waiting for Godot March 7-9, 2014

[Demeter]

52. Obama and Putin: Liar’s Poker

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/03/obama-putin-playing-chicken-liars-poker.html

Obama and Putin Are Both Bending the Truth

Obama has certainly lied about the Ukraine crisis. As Yves Smith notes:

Bush the Senior cut a deal with Gorbachev to facilitate the peaceful unwind of the USSR, which was that NATO would not move into former Warsaw Pact states. The Clinton Administration broke the pact, something that even dedicated cold warrior George Kennan regarded as a disastrous error. Destabilizing Ukraine, a country that had been part of Russia and is on Russia’s border, was taking the stealth battle against Russia too close to its doorstep.

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the US appears to have the unrealistic expectation of getting Putin to pull troops out of Crimea, when their numbers, if not necessarily their location, are within treaty boundaries.

Obama has also pretended that the Ukrainian protests which led to the ouster of the old president were peaceful, and comprised solely of everyday Ukrainians. But even the BBC is now admitting that the leading spear of the protests were neo-Nazi fascists:

But Putin has now been caught lying, as well. As Martin Armstrong notes:

For Obama to claim that a public vote in Crimea would violate the Constitution of Ukraine and International Law is really just as absurd that the same argument put forth by Putin that nothing in Kiev was legal because it was not signed by Yanukovych. There should be a vote, but it should be monitored independently to ensure it is real. To argue that no state may move to secede from a federal government is ridiculous. Obama said:

“Any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government of Ukraine. In 2014, we are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders.”

Texas has the ABSOLUTE right to secede from the United States if it so desired and the Washington has no right to invade Texas to prevent that – although they too would in the blink-of-an-eye. There are no “democratic” leaders in Kiev as of yet because this is a grass-roots uprising that distrusts anyone who has EVER been in government before.

Meanwhile, you cannot say the people have no right to decide their own fate because this violates the will of “democratic” leaders. No elected official has the right to trump the wishes of the people and let us call a spade a spade ….

Putin also said that he was withdrawing all of the Russian troops in Crimea back to their bunkers. But today, Russians troops allegedly tried to storm a Ukrainian air force base in Crimea. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail, and will prevent war. And Russia is supposedly enacting a law labeling journalists as terrorists. (Even if true, Russia would simply be joining Japan, U.S. and Britain.) In reality, it’s hard to know what’s really going, because there is so much propaganda flying on both sides …