A censura a que assistimos na Europa, em total indiferença de mais ou menos todos – com o “Regulamento Europeu [EU] nº 2022/350 do Conselho Europeu de 1 de Março”, a informação que aparecia nos canais censurados (“suspensos”, como eles dizem…) e que aqui denunciei no dia 4 de Março, logo que tomei conhecimento-, é completamente impensável nos Estados Unidos.
Não surpreende, portanto, que ao contrário do que sucede entre nós, a dissensão não seja mais ou menos criminalizada como delito de opinião.
(O texto de Stephen F. Cohen que reproduzo sob estas linhas pode ser copiado e transposto para o google translator)
_______________________________
“The late
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said: "Everyone is entitled to
his own opinions, but not to his own facts." The US establishment's new
Cold War orthodoxy rests almost entirely on fallacious opinions. Five of these
fallacies are particularly important today.
Fallacy No. 1: Ever since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington has
treated post-Communist Russia generously as a desired friend and partner,
making every effort to help it become a democratic, prosperous member of the
Western system of international security. Unwilling or unable, Russia rejected
this American altruism, emphatically under Putin.
Fact: Beginning in the 1990s with the Clinton administration, every American
president and Congress has treated post-Soviet Russia as a defeated nation with
inferior legitimate rights at home and abroad. This triumphalist,
winner-take-all approach has been spearheaded by the expansion of NATO
accompanied by non-reciprocal negotiations and now missile defence -into
Russia's traditional zones of national security, while excluding Moscow from
Europe's security system. Early on, Ukraine and, to a lesser extent, Georgia
were Washington's "great prize."
Fallacy No. 2: There exists a "Ukrainian people" who yearn to escape
centuries of Russian influence and join the West. Fact: Ukraine is a country
long divided by ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, economic, and
political differences - particularly its western and eastern regions, but not
only those. When the current crisis began in late 2013, Ukraine was one state,
but it was not a single people or a united nation. Some of these divisions were
made worse after 1991 by a corrupt elite, but most of them had developed over
centuries.
Fallacy No. 3: In November 2013, the European Union, backed by Washington,
offered Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych a benign association with
European democracy and prosperity. Yanukovych was prepared to sign the agreement,
but Putin bullied and bribed him into rejecting it. Thus began Kiev's Maidan
protests and all that has since followed.
Fact: The EU proposal was a reckless provocation compelling the democratically
elected president of a deeply divided country to choose between Russia and the
West. So too was the EU's rejection of Putin's counter proposal for a
Russian-European American plan to save Ukraine from financial collapse. On its
own, the EU proposal was not economically feasible. Offering little financial
assistance, it required the Ukrainian government to enact harsh austerity
measures and would have sharply curtailed its longstanding and essential
economic relations with Russia. Nor was the EU proposal entirely benign. It
included protocols requiring Ukraine to adhere to Europe's "military and
security" policies-which meant in effect, without mentioning the alliance,
NATO. Again, it was not Putin's alleged "aggression" that initiated
today's crisis but instead a kind of velvet aggression by Brussels and
Washington to bring all of Ukraine into the West, including (in fine print)
into NATO.
Fallacy No. 4: Today's civil war in Ukraine was caused by Putin's aggressive
response to the peaceful Maidan protests against Yanukovych's decision.
Fact: In February 2014, the radicalized Maidan protests, strongly influenced by
extreme nationalist and even semi-fascist street forces, turned violent. Hoping
for a peaceful resolution, European foreign ministers brokered a compromise between
Maidan's parliamentary representatives and Yanukovych. It would have left him
as president, with less power, of a coalition reconciliation government until
early elections in December. Within hours, violent street fighters aborted the
agreement. Europe's leaders and Washington did not defend their own diplomatic
accord. Yanukovych fled to Russia. Minority parliamentary parties representing
Maidan and, predominantly, western Ukraine-among them Svoboda, an
ultranationalist movement previously anathematized by the European Parliament
as incompatible with European values-formed a new government. Washington and
Brussels endorsed the coup and have supported the outcome ever since.
Everything that followed, from Russia's annexation of Crimea and the spread of
rebellion in southeastern Ukraine to the civil war and Kiev's
"anti-terrorist operation," was triggered by the February coup. Putin's
actions were mostly reactive.
Fallacy No. 5: The only way out of the crisis is for Putin to end his
"aggression" and call off his agents in southeastern Ukraine.
Fact: The underlying causes of the crisis are Ukraine's own internal divisions,
not primarily Putin's actions. The essential factor escalating the crisis has
been Kiev's "anti-terrorist" military campaign against its own
citizens, mainly in Luhansk and Donetsk. Putin influences and no doubt aids the
Donbass "self-defenders." Considering the pressure on him in Moscow,
he is likely to continue to do so, perhaps even more directly, but he does not
fully control them. If Kiev's assault ends, Putin probably can compel the
rebels to negotiate. But only the Obama administration can compel Kiev to stop,
and it has not done so.
In short, twenty years of US policy have led to this fateful American-Russian
confrontation. Putin may have contributed to it along the way, but his role
during his fourteen years in power has been almost entirely reactive - a complaint
frequently directed against him by more hardline forces in Moscow.
***
In politics as in history, there are always alternatives. The Ukrainian crisis
could have at least three different outcomes. The civil war escalates and
widens, drawing in Russian and possibly NATO military forces. This would be the
worst outcome: a kind of latter-day Cuban Missile Crisis. In the second
outcome, today's de facto partitioning of Ukraine becomes institutionalized in
the form of two Ukrainian states-one allied with the West, the other with
Russia. This would not be the best outcome, but neither would it be the worst.
The best outcome would be the preservation of a united Ukraine. It will require
good-faith negotiations between representatives of all of Ukraine's regions,
including leaders of the rebellious southeast, probably under the auspices of
Washington, Moscow, the European Union, and eventually the UN. Putin and his
foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, have proposed this for months. Ukraine's
tragedy continues to grow. Thousands of innocent people have already been
killed or wounded.”
Stephen F. Cohen, “War with Russia: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump
& Russiagate”, Hot Books, 2019, pp. 31-34
