The Ides of August

The Ides of March became famous in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar assassination at the Roman Forum allegedly for his autocratic tendencies. Ironically, his death paved the way for the emergence of the Roman Empire under the autocracy of the Caesars.

Our Ides of August labels the demonization of Russia, and the blame for MH17 to its current President, Vladimir Putin. Russia subsidized Ukraine as a former federation member of the defunct Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. Ukraine in turn sold gas to EU, and EU promised a financial loan on favorable terms and mutual access to markets. Russia was not pleased. Viktor Yanukovych, then elected President, reneged on the EU financing and returned to Russia’s fold. He was run out of Kiev. Civil unrest pitted Ukraine west of the Dnieper, to eastern Ukraine bordering Russia.

While in Calgary, a Husky Oil executive shared pew at Ascension Parish’s Mass and revealed how pleased he was to learn of Russia and China inking an agreement to pipe natural gas from the Russian Far East to China’s Manchuria. He revealed that massive natural gas had been discovered in Canada, and with Putin a persona non-grata to EU since the civil war in Ukraine and the return of Crimea to the Russian Federation fold, Canada looks for contracts to deliver the gas supply European industries require.

Meanwhile, Ukraine wants Crimea back; it unleashed its military might against the pro-Russian separatists on the Russian border. Separatists feel that since its declaration of independence has been ignored and its air space often violated, it extended its pro-Russian political sentiments to reliance on military training and arsenal from across the border.

A historical footnote. Ukraine was ancient Russia to the tsars, the medieval state of Kievan Rus’, where they wintered between Moldova and Krasnodar. Its most recent celebrated son was Nikita Khrushchev who presided over the USSR until he was sidled to the side by Andrei Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev, themselves shelved by Andrei Gromyko and Mikhael Gorbachev of perestroika and glasnost that led to the dissolution of the Union, the ascendancy of reformist but incontinent alcoholic Boris Yeltsin, who was followed by our current controversial Russian head Vladimir Putin.

There is no denying that it is CIA’s policy to attract former members of the USSR in Eastern Europe to NATO and EU, and to continue ala U2-spying on Russian military movements. EU federation leaders want to merge the financial assets of the north to the abundant labor in the south and southeast, and the productive capability of the east-northeast. Putin, however, drew the line in the Baltic and the Black Sea as historical allies to Russia, and if NATO continues with a story that claims credit to the dissolution of the USSR, and Russia west of the Urals as a contradiction remaining to be chastened rather than as a partner to be allowed to bloom on its own, then Russia will assert influence on former allies in the old Union, from the Caucasus, the Black and Baltic Seas and points in between.

Meanwhile, economic globalization moved faster than the redefinition of political lines that included Ukraine’s independence in 1991. Threats and counter-threats from nations came to naught for as long as the global financial system stays intact, rendering the suffering of a part to mean the suffering of all. 

In the blame game that the West loves since Zoroaster defined good and evil, decreed right and wrong as a part of creation, Putin has been personified as the devil, and the former KGB official has no shortage of detractors who would not mind to see him deposed.

Khrushchev was sidelined for an ill-advised war with China. Putin and Moscow’s apparatchik, with Xi and Beijing’s China dreamers, share tea in their old imperial rooms, joining Brazil, India, and South Africa in creating another financial system and instrument that would distance the world’s dependence on the U.S. dollar as the global currency of exchange. The euro tried doing the same but it remained tied to Uncle Sam’s aprons and dependent on NATO/Pentagon’s extensive military might in Europe. The euro showed more promise than possibility.

We are too financially intertwined with China to make it an enemy so we urge Abe of Japan to rearm its military and reignite its nationalistic fervor. Its recent White Paper just identified China, DPKR, and Russia as a threat to Japan’s security. Abe is playing to role!

All these on Obama’s watch and those of us who supported what we thought he represented are stunned by this diabolical transformation. Each year, he vows to close Guantanamo but cannot, which leads us to believe that Obama is politically astute in playing the tune of whoever butters his toast but is helpless to go against their will. Feeling betrayed, we learn sadly that integrity is not the basis of political choices. We still need a devil to blame. Vladimir Putin gets the honor of being drawn with horns.