Ukrainegate: The Return of Impressive Tradecraft

Submitted by Steve Brown…

According to Glenn Kessler’s September 27th Washington Post article, ‘A quick guide to Trump’s false claims about Ukraine and the Bidens’, “Biden was among the many Western officials who pressed for the removal of Shokin because he actually was not investigating the corruption endemic to the country..”

That is, Ukraine corruption as alleged by Obama’s US State Department, alleged versus Yanukovych who had good relations with Russia. Meanwhile Biden, Clinton, and Kerry engineered their Maidan coup versus Yanukovych in 2014 …otherwise called “Impressive Tradecraft” by Victoria Kagan-Nuland’s own words. That US coup resulted in an even more unstable and corrupt regime in Ukraine, namely Yatsenyuk’s, and then Poroshenko’s.

Make no mistake, the United States engineered that 2014 Ukraine coup beginning in 2011, and thus destabilized the Ukraine by 2014 where Yanukovych fled, eventually replaced by Yatsenyuk. Consequently, Yatsenyuk and his truly corrupt government feared Trump’s candidacy when Trump made overtures to Russia, after Trump emerged as US presidential candidate by June of 2015.

Yatsenyuk, fearful of a Trump presidency friendly to Russia, actively endorsed cyberwarfare versus Trump’s candidacy and presidency. Yatsenyuk took to social media to discredit Trump on many occasions, and as Prime Minister from 27 November 2014, to 14 April 2016, Yatsenyuk instructed the Ukraine’s own cyberwarfare networks – among the most advanced in the world – to use social media and other means to target Mr Trump.

In 2015, Yatsenyuk’s fears about a Trump candidacy turned to panic when a GOP statement about military support for the Ukraine disappeared from the GOP’s campaign platform. But Trump eventually bowed to his Neocon masters and agreed to supply weapons to the Ukraine in 2017.

For Trump’s part, his populist 2015 campaign appealed to a broad swath of Americans on many issues, including better relations with Russia, upon which most all informed Americans agreed; that is, outside the Beltway, major media, and DC political circles.

While that pro-Russia stance provided many popular votes to Trump, it was a surprise to most when he won the presidential election.  That surprise particularly impacted Democrats, and so followed Russiagate… now history. Considering the foregoing in light of that history, this new “smoking gun” Ukrainegate scandal can only be described as a new setup and trap into which Mr Trump has fallen.

Now it is certain that no major media outlet wishes to revisit the history of Kagan-Nuland’s debacle in the Ukraine, even though Washington considers the Ukraine tragedy to be its brightest Tradecraft moment in many years. To revisit the Ukraine narrative will embarrass not only Biden… but Obama, the DNC, and the entire DC cess pit, inclusive of both parties Republican and Democrat. And that is the magnitude of the sinking ship Trump finds himself in, far more treacherous than any swamp.

That is in no way to defend Donald Trump. Mr Trump has made many grievous errors. From moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem; illegally endorsing Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan; treacherously jettisoning the JCPOA; failing to confront Saudi Arabia and US State support for terror in the Middle East including Libya and the Sudan; hiring John Bolton and Mike Pompeo; appointing his son as advisor to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; failing to disengage from Syria and Afghanistan while turning a blind eye to Saudi aggression in Yemen; inciting tensions with Iran; general indecision and lying, etc.  The only real success Mr Trump has had is by keeping the US out of new wars, that the Neocons and Neoliberals constantly push for.

The Washington establishment appears to be prevailing here, however the political class must be careful about what it wishes for, and the end game too. Do they have a plan?  If so, what could it be? One threat that the political class faces is the possibility that some minimal fairness still exists in the US political system, where Trump’s clumsy and rather stupid overtures to Zelensky will be seen as unimpeachable and the swamp creatures will be forced to move on, nothing to see here.

More likely, the political class will simply use this Ukrainegate ‘scandal’ not to impeach, but to tighten screws further. One possibility, Elites can use this opportunity to force Trump into a trade deal with China on China’s terms. Or more sinister yet, Elites could push for new US aggression in Syria — or for a war with Iran. Any such event will push Ukrainegate out of the headlines, which will be welcomed by Trump, and by the political class, if they have no real plan.

Regardless, we are now experiencing a major media frenzy of disinformation to the extreme, where virtually nothing published about Ukrainegate can be trusted or believed. Even alternative media sites are publishing claptrap unrelated to reality, true history, or an accurate narrative on the Ukraine. It is a form of revisionist history and psychological warfare on the public that is not only dangerous, but demeaning to the people.

That Mr Trump or his associates might somehow present the true narrative about what happened in the Ukraine and how that history transpired, in truth, seems unimaginable. The American public seem incapable of knowing or accepting the truth about the Ukraine, and they certainly will not be presented with that truth by the major media. Trump too has somewhat boxed himself into a corner at a time when trade tensions and many other geo-political concerns are raging.

The question is whether US Congress is smart enough to see that an impeachment inquiry is pointless and damaging, and that dredging up Ukraine history is like dredging up a can of worms… a particularly nasty can of worms that will only look bad for Washington, and send the US further into its accelerating political decline.

Steve Brown is the author of “Iraq: the Road to War” (Sourcewatch) editor of “Bush Administration War Crimes in Iraq” (Sourcewatch) “Trump’s Limited Hangout” and “Federal Reserve: Out-sourcing the Monetary System to the Money Trust Oligarchs Since 1913”. Steve is an antiwar activist, a published scholar on the US monetary system, and has appeared as a guest contributor to The Duran, Fort Russ News, and Strategika51.