Henk Hofland en de Massa 62

Freedom is not merely the chance to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them — and then, the opportunity to choose. That is why freedom cannot exist without an enlarged role of human reason in human affairs. Within an individual's biography and within a society's history, the social task of reason is to formulate choices, to enlarge the scope of human decisions in the making of history. The future of human affairs is not merely some set of variables to be predicted. The future is what is to be decided — within the limits, to be sure, of historical possibility…

Beyond this, the problem of freedom is the problem of how decisions about the future of human affairs are to be made and who is to make them… The ultimate problem of freedom is the problem of the cheerful robot, and it arises in this form today because today it has become evident to us that all men do not naturally want to be free; that all men are not willing or not able, as the case may be, to exert themselves to acquire the reason that freedom requires. 

Under what conditions do men come to want to be free and capable of acting freely? Under what conditions are they willing and able to bear the burdens freedom does impose and to see these less as burdens than as gladly undertaken self-transformations? And on the negative side: can men be made to want to become cheerful robots?

C. Wright Mills. The Sociological Imagination. 1959

Deze fundamentele aspecten van het menszijn worden door de westerse mainstream-opiniemakers nooit ter discussie gesteld. Zij komen niet verder dan bijvoorbeeld Geert Mak's kreet 'Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel,' of Henk Hoflands mening dat 'Zowel in West-Europa als in Amerika bij een zeer groot deel van het publiek de vaderlandslievende eerzucht en de strijdlust verloren [zijn] gegaan.' De verpolitiekte bewustzijnsvernauwing van de massamedia en hun publiek tekent de huidige tijdgeest. Desondanks verkondigt het westerse journaille dat 'Een natie niet zonder een politiek-literaire elite [kan],' en zo zit de postmoderne mens gevangen in een virtuele werkelijkheid die zelfs niet eens meer de schijn van 'vrijheid' bezit. Vandaar dat Mak als geschiedschrijver van het vaderland publiekelijk en onweersproken kan stellen dat hij en zijn collega's als 'chroniqueurs van het heden en verleden, onze taak, het "uitbannen van onwaarheid"' niet 'serieus genoeg' nemen, terwijl Hofland kritische stemmen als volgt criminaliseert: 

internet heeft het machtsgevoel van de ontevredenen vergroot. Nu kunnen ze de wereld in hun wrok laten delen. Deze bloggers zijn de permanent wrokkenden in digitale gedaante.

De door zijn 'politiek-literaire elite' tot 'beste journalist van de twintigste eeuw' uitgeroepen kalende éminentie van de polderpers, wiens wraaklust legendarisch is, haat internet omdat het zijn monopolie op de opinievorming van het publiek ernstig heeft aangetast. Hij constateert met minachting: 

De ‘nieuwe media’ met de mening van de bloggers zijn voor een groot deel van de publieke opinie toonaangevend geworden. Dit is de gedigitaliseerde stem des volks… 

Het gevolg is, naar zijn mening, dat 

[b]estuurders zich in het nauw [voelen] gedreven, aan de ene kant doordat het onvermijdelijke internet ook een middel tot voorbarige openbaarheid kan zijn, aan de andere kant doordat ze daarmee worden uitgeleverd aan het onmiddellijke oordeel van de dan plotseling goedgelovige massa. De verborgen zwakte van internet is dat het oorzaak kan zijn van een laaiende volkswoede. 

Ook hier is Hofland niet in staat oorzaak en gevolg van elkaar te scheiden. De 'laaiende volkswoede' wordt volgens hem niet veroorzaakt door de walging over de corrupte macht, maar door het communicatiekanaal 'internet.' Hij wil zijn eigen publiek ervan overtuigen dat pas door kritische berichtgeving via 'internet' er 'plotseling' sprake is van een 'goedgelovige massa.' Zolang de 'massa' evenwel naar de opiniemaker van de gevestigde orde blijft luisteren is de 'massa' kennelijk alles behalve 'goedgelovig.' De boodschapper van de macht functioneert vanuit het geloof dat mensen 'cheerful robots' kunnen worden gemaakt, mits ze natuurlijk de 'juiste' informatie krijgen. Dan zal 'de vaderlandslievende eerzucht en de strijdlust' onder 'het volk' weer toenemen, en zal het afgelopen zijn met het verderfelijk 'populistisch alarmisme,' dat tot de ondergang van het 'vrije' en 'vredestichtende Westen' leidt, en zal het 'gedigitaliseerde' volk beseffen dat '[h]et dus noodzaak [is] voor het Westen om grenzen aan de Russische expansie te stellen.' Immers 'We naderen het stadium waarin van Poetin alles te verwachten valt,' aldus Hofland in al zijn absurde eenvoud. 

C. Wright Mills mag dan wel stellen dat 'the problem of freedom is the problem of how decisions about the future of human affairs are to be made and who is to make them,' maar voor de Hoflanden en Makken bestaat er geen wezenlijk probleem met betrekking tot de vrijheid in het Westen. Sterker nog: volgens Geert Mak is het Westen zo vrij dat 'meneer Poetin' met zijn 'expansionisme' op dit moment 'Europa [dwingt] om meer aan defensie uit te geven.' Pas door nog meer miljarden te spenderen aan het westerse militair industrieel complex dat met zijn NAVO steeds verder oostwaarts oprukt en nu heel Rusland omsingelt, zal de 'vrijheid' in het Westen kunnen worden gegarandeerd. Als Koude Oorlogsprofeten hebben de Hoflanden en Makken slechts een uiterst beperkte, verpolitiekte visie op het fenomeen 'vrijheid.' Het mainstream simplisme kenmerkt de consensus onder de woordvoerders van de economische elite. Er bestaat een wereld van verschil tussen de 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder en de ware intelligentsia buiten Nederland. Het ontbreekt de dames en heren van de 'po-li elite' in de polder aan elementaire intellectuele twijfel. Daarbij valt telkens weer op hoe erg de charlatan zich typeert door zijn pedanterie. Hij is het vlees geworden bewijs van Mills' constatering dat 'all men are not willing or not able, as the case may be, to exert themselves to acquire the reason that freedom requires.' Wat de opiniemaker wil is niet de vrijheid, maar het aanzien, de status,  de bewondering, de bevestiging van zijn vluchtige ego. C. Wright Mills:

In our time, must we not face the possibility that the human mind as a social fast might be deteriorating in quality and cultural level, and yet not many would notice it because of the overwhelming accumulation of technological gadgets? Is not that one meaning of rationality without reason? Of human alienation? Of the absence of any free role for reason in human affairs? The accumulation of gadgets hides these meanings: those who use these devices do not understand them; those who invent them do not understand much else. That is why we may not, without great ambiguity, use technological abundance as the index of human quality and cultural progress…

The values involved in the cultural problem of individuality are conveniently embodied in all that is suggested by the ideal of The Renaissance Man. The threat to that ideal is the ascendency among us of The Cheerful Robot. 

The values involved in the political problem of history-making are embodied in the Promethean ideal of its human making. The threat to that ideal is twofold: on the one hand, history-making may well go by default, men may continue to abdicate its willful making, and so merely drift. On the other hand, history may indeed be made — but by narrow élite circles without effective responsibility to those who must try to survive the consequence of their decisions and of their defaults, 

aldus meer dan een halve eeuw geleden één van de grootste sociologen van de twintigste eeuw. Vandaag de dag weten we dat de geschiedenis inderdaad wordt bepaald door 'narrow élite circles' die geen 'verantwoordelijkheid' dragen voor de consequenties van hun daden waarvan miljarden andere wereldbewoners slachtoffer zijn. Daarbij wordt deze 'elite' ideologisch gesteund door corrupte praatjesmakers als Hofland en Mak en hun 'politiek-literaire elite' van ordebewakers die er nauwlettend op toezien dat de waanzin van de kadaverdiscipline gehandhaafd blijft. Gezien Hoflands en Mak's mediahetze tegen de Russische Federatie is het interessant om de visie van een vooraanstaande deskundige op het gebied van de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek, te weten John Mearsheimer, hoogleraar politieke wetenschappen aan de Universiteit van Chicago. In het prestigieuze Amerikaanse tijdschrift Foreign Affairs van september/oktober 2014 schreef hij: 

Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault

The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin

John J. Mearsheimer

According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine.

But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine — beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 — were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president — which he rightly labeled a 'coup' — was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.

Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics. They tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the twenty-first century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy.

But this grand scheme went awry in Ukraine. The crisis there shows that realpolitik remains relevant—and states that ignore it do so at their own peril. U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.

THE WESTERN AFFRONT

As the Cold War came to a close, Soviet leaders preferred that U.S. forces remain in Europe and NATO stay intact, an arrangement they thought would keep a reunified Germany pacified. But they and their Russian successors did not want NATO to grow any larger and assumed that Western diplomats understood their concerns. The Clinton administration evidently thought otherwise, and in the mid-1990s, it began pushing for NATO to expand.

The first round of enlargement took place in 1999 and brought in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. The second occurred in 2004; it included Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Moscow complained bitterly from the start. During NATO’s 1995 bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs, for example, Russian President Boris Yeltsin said, 'This is the first sign of what could happen when NATO comes right up to the Russian Federation’s borders… The flame of war could burst out across the whole of Europe.' But the Russians were too weak at the time to derail NATO’s eastward movement—which, at any rate, did not look so threatening, since none of the new members shared a border with Russia, save for the tiny Baltic countries.

Then NATO began looking further east. At its April 2008 summit in Bucharest, the alliance considered admitting Georgia and Ukraine. The George W. Bush administration supported doing so, but France and Germany opposed the move for fear that it would unduly antagonize Russia. In the end, NATO’s members reached a compromise: the alliance did not begin the formal process leading to membership, but it issued a statement endorsing the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine and boldly declaring, 'These countries will become members of NATO.'

Moscow, however, did not see the outcome as much of a compromise. Alexander Grushko, then Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said, 'Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.' Putin maintained that admitting those two countries to NATO would represent a 'direct threat' to Russia. One Russian newspaper reported that Putin, while speaking with Bush, 'very transparently hinted that if Ukraine was accepted into NATO, it would cease to exist.'

U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a

Western stronghold on Russia’s border.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008 should have dispelled any remaining doubts about Putin’s determination to prevent Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who was deeply committed to bringing his country into NATO, had decided in the summer of 2008 to reincorporate two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But Putin sought to keep Georgia weak and divided—and out of NATO. After fighting broke out between the Georgian government and South Ossetian separatists, Russian forces took control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow had made its point. Yet despite this clear warning, NATO never publicly abandoned its goal of bringing Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance. And NATO expansion continued marching forward, with Albania and Croatia becoming members in 2009.

The EU, too, has been marching eastward. In May 2008, it unveiled its Eastern Partnership initiative, a program to foster prosperity in such countries as Ukraine and integrate them into the EU economy. Not surprisingly, Russian leaders view the plan as hostile to their country’s interests. This past February, before Yanukovych was forced from office, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the EU of trying to create a 'sphere of influence' in eastern Europe. In the eyes of Russian leaders, EU expansion is a stalking horse for NATO expansion.

The West’s final tool for peeling Kiev away from Moscow has been its efforts to spread Western values and promote democracy in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, a plan that often entails funding pro-Western individuals and organizations. Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, estimated in December 2013 that the United States had invested more than $5 billion since 1991 to help Ukraine achieve 'the future it deserves.' As part of that effort, the U.S. government has bankrolled the National Endowment for Democracy. The nonprofit foundation has funded more than 60 projects aimed at promoting civil society in Ukraine, and the NED’s president, Carl Gershman, has called that country 'the biggest prize.' After Yanukovych won Ukraine’s presidential election in February 2010, the NED decided he was undermining its goals, and so it stepped up its efforts to support the opposition and strengthen the country’s democratic institutions.

When Russian leaders look at Western social engineering in Ukraine, they worry that their country might be next. And such fears are hardly groundless. In September 2013, Gershman wrote in The Washington Post, 'Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.' He added: 'Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.'

CREATING A CRISIS

The West’s triple package of policies — NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and democracy promotion — added fuel to a fire waiting to ignite. The spark came in November 2013, when Yanukovych rejected a major economic deal he had been negotiating with the EU and decided to accept a $15 billion Russian counteroffer instead. That decision gave rise to antigovernment demonstrations that escalated over the following three months and that by mid-February had led to the deaths of some one hundred protesters. Western emissaries hurriedly flew to Kiev to resolve the crisis. On February 21, the government and the opposition struck a deal that allowed Yanukovych to stay in power until new elections were held. But it immediately fell apart, and Yanukovych fled to Russia the next day. The new government in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the core, and it contained four high-ranking members who could legitimately be labeled neofascists.

Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington backed the coup. Nuland and Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after Yanukovych’s toppling that it was 'a day for the history books.' As a leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated regime change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in the new government, which he did. No wonder Russians of all persuasions think the West played a role in Yanukovych’s ouster.

For Putin, the time to act against Ukraine and the West had arrived. Shortly after February 22, he ordered Russian forces to take Crimea from Ukraine, and soon after that, he incorporated it into Russia. The task proved relatively easy, thanks to the thousands of Russian troops already stationed at a naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Crimea also made for an easy target since ethnic Russians compose roughly 60 percent of its population. Most of them wanted out of Ukraine.

Next, Putin put massive pressure on the new government in Kiev to discourage it from siding with the West against Moscow, making it clear that he would wreck Ukraine as a functioning state before he would allow it to become a Western stronghold on Russia’s doorstep. Toward that end, he has provided advisers, arms, and diplomatic support to the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, who are pushing the country toward civil war. He has massed a large army on the Ukrainian border, threatening to invade if the government cracks down on the rebels. And he has sharply raised the price of the natural gas Russia sells to Ukraine and demanded payment for past exports. Putin is playing hardball.

THE DIAGNOSIS

Putin’s actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.

Washington may not like Moscow’s position, but it should understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia — a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made crystal clear.

Officials from the United States and its European allies contend that they tried hard to assuage Russian fears and that Moscow should understand that NATO has no designs on Russia. In addition to continually denying that its expansion was aimed at containing Russia, the alliance has never permanently deployed military forces in its new member states. In 2002, it even created a body called the NATO-Russia Council in an effort to foster cooperation. To further mollify Russia, the United States announced in 2009 that it would deploy its new missile defense system on warships in European waters, at least initially, rather than on Czech or Polish territory. But none of these measures worked; the Russians remained steadfastly opposed to NATO enlargement, especially into Georgia and Ukraine. And it is the Rus- sians, not the West, who ultimately get to decide what counts as a threat to them.

To understand why the West, especially the United States, failed to understand that its Ukraine policy was laying the groundwork for a major clash with Russia, one must go back to the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration began advocating NATO expansion. Pundits advanced a variety of arguments for and against enlargement, but there was no consensus on what to do. Most eastern European émigrés in the United States and their relatives, for example, strongly supported expansion, because they wanted NATO to protect such countries as Hungary and Poland. A few realists also favored the policy because they thought Russia still needed to be contained.

But most realists opposed expansion, in the belief that a declining great power with an aging population and a one-dimensional economy did not in fact need to be contained. And they feared that enlargement would only give Moscow an incentive to cause trouble in eastern Europe. The U.S. diplomat George Kennan articulated this perspective in a 1998 interview, shortly after the U.S. Senate approved the first round of NATO expansion. 'I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies,' he said. 'I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anyone else.'

Most liberals, on the other hand, favored enlargement, including many key members of the Clinton administration. They believed that the end of the Cold War had fundamentally transformed international politics and that a new, postnational order had replaced the realist logic that used to govern Europe. The United States was not only the 'indispensable nation,' as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it; it was also a benign hegemon and thus unlikely to be viewed as a threat in Moscow. The aim, in essence, was to make the entire continent look like western Europe.

And so the United States and its allies sought to promote democracy in the countries of eastern Europe, increase economic interdependence among them, and embed them in international institutions. Having won the debate in the United States, liberals had little difficulty convincing their European allies to support NATO enlargement. After all, given the EU’s past achievements, Europeans were even more wedded than Americans to the idea that geopolitics no longer mattered and that an all-inclusive liberal order could maintain peace in Europe.

So thoroughly did liberals come to dominate the discourse about European security during the first decade of this century that even as the alliance adopted an open-door policy of growth, NATO expansion faced little realist opposition. The liberal worldview is now accepted dogma among U.S. officials. In March, for example, President Barack Obama delivered a speech about Ukraine in which he talked repeatedly about 'the ideals' that motivate Western policy and how those ideals 'have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power.' Secretary of State John Kerry’s response to the Crimea crisis reflected this same perspective: 'You just don’t in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext.'

In essence, the two sides have been operating with different play-books: Putin and his compatriots have been thinking and acting according to realist dictates, whereas their Western counterparts have been adhering to liberal ideas about international politics. The result is that the United States and its allies unknowingly provoked a major crisis over Ukraine.

BLAME GAME

In that same 1998 interview, Kennan predicted that NATO expansion would provoke a crisis, after which the proponents of expansion would 'say that we always told you that is how the Russians are.' As if on cue, most Western officials have portrayed Putin as the real culprit in the Ukraine predicament. In March, according to The New York Times, German Chancellor Angela Merkel implied that Putin was irrational, telling Obama that he was 'in another world.' Although Putin no doubt has autocratic tendencies, no evidence supports the charge that he is mentally unbalanced. On the contrary: he is a first-class strategist who should be feared and respected by anyone challenging him on foreign policy.

Other analysts allege, more plausibly, that Putin regrets the demise of the Soviet Union and is determined to reverse it by expanding Russia’s borders. According to this interpretation, Putin, having taken Crimea, is now testing the waters to see if the time is right to conquer Ukraine, or at least its eastern part, and he will eventually behave aggressively toward other countries in Russia’s neighborhood. For some in this camp, Putin represents a modern-day Adolf Hitler, and striking any kind of deal with him would repeat the mistake of Munich. Thus, NATO must admit Georgia and Ukraine to contain Russia before it dominates its neighbors and threatens western Europe.

This argument falls apart on close inspection. If Putin were committed to creating a greater Russia, signs of his intentions would almost certainly have arisen before February 22. But there is virtually no evidence that he was bent on taking Crimea, much less any other territory in Ukraine, before that date. Even Western leaders who supported NATO expansion were not doing so out of a fear that Russia was about to use military force. Putin’s actions in Crimea took them by complete surprise and appear to have been a spontaneous reaction to Yanukovych’s ouster. Right afterward, even Putin said he opposed Crimean secession, before quickly changing his mind.

Besides, even if it wanted to, Russia lacks the capability to easily conquer and annex eastern Ukraine, much less the entire country. Roughly 15 million people — one-third of Ukraine’s population — live between the Dnieper River, which bisects the country, and the Russian border. An overwhelming majority of those people want to remain part of Ukraine and would surely resist a Russian occupation. Furthermore, Russia’s mediocre army, which shows few signs of turning into a modern Wehrmacht, would have little chance of pacifying all of Ukraine. Moscow is also poorly positioned to pay for a costly occupation; its weak economy would suffer even more in the face of the resulting sanctions.

But even if Russia did boast a powerful military machine and an impressive economy, it would still probably prove unable to successfully occupy Ukraine. One need only consider the Soviet and U.S. experiences in Afghanistan, the U.S. experiences in Vietnam and Iraq, and the Russian experience in Chechnya to be reminded that military occupations usually end badly. Putin surely understands that trying to subdue Ukraine would be like swallowing a porcupine. His response to events there has been defensive, not offensive.

A WAY OUT

Given that most Western leaders continue to deny that Putin’s behavior might be motivated by legitimate security concerns, it is unsurprising that they have tried to modify it by doubling down on their existing policies and have punished Russia to deter further aggression. Although Kerry has maintained that 'all options are on the table,' neither the United States nor its NATO allies are prepared to use force to defend Ukraine. The West is relying instead on economic sanctions to coerce Russia into ending its support for the insurrection in eastern Ukraine. In July, the United States and the EU put in place their third round of limited sanctions, targeting mainly high-level individuals closely tied to the Russian government and some high-profile banks, energy companies, and defense firms. They also threatened to unleash another, tougher round of sanctions, aimed at whole sectors of the Russian economy.

Such measures will have little effect. Harsh sanctions are likely off the table anyway; western European countries, especially Germany, have resisted imposing them for fear that Russia might retaliate and cause serious economic damage within the EU. But even if the United States could convince its allies to enact tough measures, Putin would probably not alter his decision-making. History shows that countries will absorb enormous amounts of punishment in order to protect their core strategic interests. There is no reason to think Russia represents an exception to this rule.

Western leaders have also clung to the provocative policies that precipitated the crisis in the first place. In April, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden met with Ukrainian legislators and told them, 'This is a second opportunity to make good on the original promise made by the Orange Revolution.' John Brennan, the director of the CIA, did not help things when, that same month, he visited Kiev on a trip the White House said was aimed at improving security cooperation with the Ukrainian government.

The EU, meanwhile, has continued to push its Eastern Partnership. In March, José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, summarized EU thinking on Ukraine, saying, 'We have a debt, a duty of solidarity with that country, and we will work to have them as close as possible to us.' And sure enough, on June 27, the EU and Ukraine signed the economic agreement that Yanukovych had fatefully rejected seven months earlier. Also in June, at a meeting of NATO members’ foreign ministers, it was agreed that the alliance would remain open to new members, although the foreign ministers refrained from mentioning Ukraine by name. 'No third country has a veto over NATO enlargement,' announced Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s secretary-general. The foreign ministers also agreed to support various measures to improve Ukraine’s military capabilities in such areas as command and control, logistics, and cyberdefense. Russian leaders have naturally recoiled at these actions; the West’s response to the crisis will only make a bad situation worse.

There is a solution to the crisis in Ukraine, however — although it would require the West to think about the country in a fundamentally new way. The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer between NATO and Russia, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War. Western leaders should acknowledge that Ukraine matters so much to Putin that they cannot support an anti-Russian regime there. This would not mean that a future Ukrainian government would have to be pro-Russian or anti-NATO. On the contrary, the goal should be a sovereign Ukraine that falls in neither the Russian nor the Western camp. To achieve this end, the United States and its allies should publicly rule out NATO’s expansion into both Georgia and Ukraine. The West should also help fashion an economic rescue plan for Ukraine funded jointly by the EU, the International Monetary Fund, Russia, and the United States — a proposal that Moscow should welcome, given its interest in having a prosperous and a stable Ukraine on its western flank. And the West should considerably limit its social-engineering efforts inside Ukraine. It is time to put an end to Western support for another Orange Revolution. Nevertheless, U.S. and European leaders should encourage Ukraine to respect minority rights, especially the language rights of its Russian speakers.

Some may argue that changing policy toward Ukraine at this late date would seriously damage U.S. credibility around the world. There would undoubtedly be certain costs, but the costs of continuing a misguided strategy would be much greater. Furthermore, other countries are likely to respect a state that learns from its mistakes and ultimately devises a policy that deals effectively with the problem at hand. That option is clearly open to the United States.

One also hears the claim that Ukraine has the right to determine whom it wants to ally with and the Russians have no right to prevent Kiev from joining the West. This is a dangerous way for Ukraine to think about its foreign policy choices. The sad truth is that might often makes right when great-power politics are at play. Abstract rights such as self-determination are largely meaningless when powerful states get into brawls with weaker states. Did Cuba have the right to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union during the Cold War? The United States certainly did not think so, and the Russians think the same way about Ukraine joining the West. It is in Ukraine’s interest to understand these facts of life and tread carefully when dealing with its more powerful neighbor.

Even if one rejects this analysis, however, and believes that Ukraine has the right to petition to join the EU and NATO, the fact remains that the United States and its European allies have the right to reject these requests. There is no reason that the West has to accommodate Ukraine if it is bent on pursuing a wrong-headed foreign policy, especially if its defense is not a vital interest for them. Indulging the dreams of some Ukrainians is not worth the animosity and strife it will cause, especially for the Ukrainian people.

Of course, some analysts might concede that NATO handled relations with Ukraine poorly and yet still maintain that Russia constitutes an enemy that will only grow more formidable over time — and that the West therefore has no choice but to continue its present policy. But this viewpoint is badly mistaken. Russia is a declining power, and it will only get weaker with time. Even if Russia were a rising power, moreover, it would still make no sense to incorporate Ukraine into NATO. The reason is simple: the United States and its European allies do not consider Ukraine to be a core strategic interest, as their unwillingness to use military force to come to its aid has proved. It would therefore be the height of folly to create a new NATO member that the other members have no intention of defending. NATO has expanded in the past because liberals assumed the alliance would never have to honor its new security guarantees, but Russia’s recent power play shows that granting Ukraine NATO membership could put Russia and the West on a collision course.

Sticking with the current policy would also complicate Western relations with Moscow on other issues. The United States needs Russia’s assistance to withdraw U.S. equipment from Afghanistan through Russian territory, reach a nuclear agreement with Iran, and stabilize the situation in Syria. In fact, Moscow has helped Washington on all three of these issues in the past; in the summer of 2013, it was Putin who pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire by forging the deal under which Syria agreed to relinquish its chemical weapons, thereby avoiding the U.S. military strike that Obama had threatened. The United States will also someday need Russia’s help containing a rising China. Current U.S. policy, however, is only driving Moscow and Beijing closer together.

The United States and its European allies now face a choice on Ukraine. They can continue their current policy, which will exacerbate hostilities with Russia and devastate Ukraine in the process—a scenario in which everyone would come out a loser. Or they can switch gears and work to create a prosperous but neutral Ukraine, one that does not threaten Russia and allows the West to repair its relations with Moscow. With that approach, all sides would win.

http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/Ukraine%20Article%20in%20Foreign%20Affairs.pdf 

Professor Mearsheimer's uiteenzetting over de belangen van de Russische Federatie is verhelderend en logischer dan de opgewonden en ongeïnformeerde hetze die Geert Mak en Henk Hofland tegen 'Poetin' bedrijven.  Eén van de belangrijkste redenen waarom beide polder-opiniemakers de volle ruimte krijgen van de Nederlandse commerciële massamedia en de gezaghebbende Mearsheimer niet, is voor de hand liggend: de door de autoriteiten zo geprezen spreekbuizen van de gevestigde wanorde produceren simplistische propaganda die de belangen van de 'elite' dient, terwijl Mearsheimer de wetenschap dient. Hofland 'kiest' zodra het erop aankomt 'instinctmatig,' zoals de journalist Martin van Amerongen schreef, 'voor de man die zijn declaraties tekent,' en wiens brood men eet diens woord men spreekt. Op zijn beurt streeft de miljonair Geert Mak bij elk nieuw boek opnieuw naar een zo hoog mogelijke oplage, elk drukwerk moet en zal een bestseller worden. Daarentegen tracht de internationaal gerespecteerde John Mearsheimer als Amerikaanse hoogleraar Political Science zoveel mogelijk waardevrije wetenschap uit te oefenen. Opiniemakers van het slag Hofland en Mak riskeren liever een desastreuze oorlog tussen nucleaire grootmachten dan dat zij lezers verliezen en niet langer meer in de schijnwerpers staan; zij gedragen zich als dwazen die met vuur spelen, en wel omdat 

het doel van de opinie-organisatoren [is] om de bevolking in een voortdurende staat van emotionele onderworpenheid te houden... Immers, als het maar eenmaal gelukt is om een mentaliteit van volgzaamheid en gehoorzaamheid te kweken, is het niet moeilijk meer om de mensen te doen geloven en te doen voelen wat men maar wil... hun opinies zijn parallel omdat ze alle uit 1 bron afkomstig zijn: die van de media. Nagenoeg alles zullen zij doen om hun mateloze drang naar erkenning te bevredigen. Dat maakt deze mensen zo gevaarlijk. Ze weten niet wanneer te stoppen,

aldus C. Wright Mills. Meer over de malloten de volgende keer.

ECONOMY

37 Ways to Reform the Economy So It’s Not Rigged for the Rich, According to Progressive Economists

Unlike the presidential candidates, Joseph Stiglitz, Elizabeth Warren and the Roosevelt Institute offer specifics. 

By Steven Rosenfeld /  AlterNet

May 13, 2015

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Photo Credit: AFP

A new report written by scores of progressives economists has laid out an detailed agenda to dismantle, reverse and fix how the laws and policies governing the American economy are rigged to benefit the wealthiest individuals and largest corporoation.

The report, “Rewriting The Rules Of The American Economy: An Agenda For Growth and Shared Prosperity,” has just been released by The Roosevelt Institute, where Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio joined its chief economist Joseph Stiglitz at its press conference.

“The American economy no longer works for most Americans… What is causing this dysfunction?” the report opens, then answering that question and making dozens of specific law and policy changes listed below.

“Some point to technological change or globalization,” it said. “Some posit that government has shackled the free enterprise system and hobbled business. Some say that our economy is simply rewarding the risk takers and job creators who have earned the riches coming their way... None of these arguments gets it right.”

“Skyrocketing incomes for the 1 percent and stagnating wages for everyone else are not independent phenomena, but rather two symptoms of an impaired economy that rewards gaming the system more than it does hard work and investment," it states. "The roots of this dysfunction lie deep in the rules and power dynamics that have prioritized corporate power and short-term gains at the expense of long-term innovation and growth. The outcomes shaped by these rules and power dynamics do not make the economy stronger; indeed, many make it weaker.”

What follows are 37 specific laws and policy changes to restore fairness and balance to the economy without undermining American capitalism.

Fix The Financial Sector

1. End “too big to fail” by imposing additional capital surcharges on systemically risky financial institutions and breaking up firms that cannot produce credible living wills.

2. Better regulate the shadow banking sector.

3. Bring greater transparency to all financial markets by requiring all alternative asset managers to publicly disclose holdings, returns, and fee structures.

4. Reduce credit and debit card fees through improved regulation of card providers and enhanced competition.

5. Enforce existing rules with stricter penalties for companies and corporate officials that break the law.

6. Reform Federal Reserve governance to reduce conflicts of interest and institute more open and accountable elections.

Incentize Long-Term Business Growth

7. Restructure CEO pay by closing the performance-pay tax loophole and increasing transparency on the size of compensation packages relative to performance and median worker pay and on the dilution as a result of grants of stock options.

8. Enact a financial transaction tax to reduce short-term trading and encourage more productive long-term investment.

9. Empower long-term stakeholders through the tax code, the use of so-called “loyalty shares,” and greater accountability for managers of retirement funds.

Make Markets Competitive

10. Restore balance to intellectual property rights to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship.

11. Restore balance to global trade agreements by ensuring investor protections are not prioritized above protections on the environment and labor, and increasing transparency in the negotiation process.

12. Provide health care cost controls by allowing government bargaining.

13. Expand a variant of chapter 11 bankruptcy to homeowners and student borrowers.

Rebalance The Tax System

14. Raise the top marginal rate by converting all reductions to tax credits and limiting the use of credits.

15. Raise taxes on capital gains and dividends.

16. Encourage U.S. investment by taxing corporations on global income.

17. Tax undesirable behavior such as short-term trading or polluting and eliminate corporate welfare and other tax expenditures that foster inefficiency and inequality.

Make Full Employement The Goal

18. Reform monetary policy to give higher priority to full employment.

19. Reinvigorate public investment to lay the foundation for long-term economic performance and job growth, including by investing in large-scale infrastructure renovation: a 10-year campaign to make the U.S. a world leader in innovation, manufacturing, and jobs.

20. Invest in large-scale infrastructure renovation with a 10-year campaign to make the U.S. a world infrastructure innovation, manufacturing, and jobs leader.

21. Expand public transportation to promote equal access to jobs and opportunity.

Empower workers

22. Strengthen the right to bargain by easing legal barriers to unionization, imposing stricter penalties on illegal anti-union intimidation tactics, and amending laws to reflect the changing workplace.

23. Have government set the standards by attaching strong pro-worker stipulations to its contracts and development subsidies.

24. Increase funding for enforcement and raise penalties for violating labor standards.

25. Raise the nationwide minimum wage and increase the salary threshold for overtime pay.

Expand Access to Labor Markets and Opportunities For Advancement

26. Reform the criminal justice system to reduce incarceration rates and related financial burdens for the poor.

27. Reform immigration law to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers.

28. Legislate universal paid sick and family leave.

29. Subsidize child care to benefit children and improve women’s workforce participation.

30. Promote pay equity and eliminate legal obstacles that prevent employees from sharing salary information.

31. Protect women’s access to reproductive health services.

Expand Economic Security And Opportunity

32. Invest in young children through child benefits, early education, and universal pre-K.

33. Increase access to higher education by reforming tuition financing, restoring protections to student loans, and adopting universal income-based repayment.

34. Make health care affordable and universal by opening Medicare to all.

35. Expand access to banking services through a postal savings bank.

36. Create a public option for the supply of mortgages.

37. Expand Social Security with a supplemental public investment program modeled on private Individual Retirement Accounts, and raise the payroll cap to increase revenue.

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).

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