Earlier this year in March John Kerry criticized Putins invasion of Crimea on Meet the Press stating, “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.” The irony of this seems to have been lost on John Kerry and a vocal percentage of the American public who seem to have forgotten about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the following American occupation based on trumped up and ultimately false accusations of WMDs. Similar (and more accurate) accusations were leveled against Syria’s admittedly brutal dictator and Russian ally Bashar Al Assad as an excuse to support radical armed groups in the region. As a direct result of U.S. intervention in Iraq, Syria and Libya radical Islamist groups such as ISIS have taken an upper hand against the moderates and hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions displaced.
US foreign policy is either comically inept or ruthlessly effective depending on its goal. If we are trying to promote, stability, peace and democracy we are comically ineffective. If we are looking to enrich the MIC while curbing the expansion of power of rivals like China and Russia we are incredibly effective. Everywhere where we have intervened in the last 10 years has been a disaster from a humanitarian standpoint: Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria however we have removed Russian allies Gaddafi, Saddam and ex Ukrainian president Yanukovych. Although paying lip service to anti-terrorism, human rights and democracy, In practice the U.S. favors the existence of dangerous and unpredictable jihadist groups like ISIS than decent leaders like Gaddafi who lean towards Russia.
The rhetoric is escalating rapidly in regards to Ukraine and the U.S. is looking for an excuse for further intervention while trying to prevent further Russian aggression. While they are portraying Putin as an aggressor what most pundits fail to mention are the details of how the U.S. and the E.U. actively worked to destabilize Ukraine and oust ex Ukrainian president Yanukovych as he decided to pursue closer ties with Russia instead of the E.U. Currently Ukraine is divided in ethnicity and language with many ethnic Russians residing in Eastern Ukraine and in favor with closer ties with Russia, while many in the west are ethnic Ukrainians with a desire to have closer ties with Europe. Given this information a split of Ukraine and the annexation of the more Russian parts into Russia does not seem like an irrational solution and is not likely to result in the devastating consequences our own interventions have had.