Here’s a great and very long inter­view of Russ Bel­lant on the OUN‑B and its ties to both Svo­bo­da and the GOP and why it’s still very rel­e­vant his­to­ry today:

For­eign Pol­i­cy In Focus
Sev­en Decades of Nazi Col­lab­o­ra­tion: America’s Dirty Lit­tle Ukraine Secret

An inter­view with Russ Bel­lant, author of “Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Repub­li­can Par­ty.”

By Paul H. Rosen­berg, March 18, 2014

As the Ukrain­ian cri­sis has unfold­ed over the past few weeks, it’s hard for Amer­i­cans not to see Vladimir Putin as the big vil­lain. But the his­to­ry of the region is a his­to­ry of com­pet­ing vil­lains vying against one anoth­er; and one school of villains—the Nazis—have a long his­to­ry of engage­ment with the US, most­ly below the radar, but occa­sion­al­ly exposed, as they were by Russ Bel­lant in his book Old Nazis, The New Right And The Repub­li­can Par­ty (South End Press, 1991). Bellant’s expo­sure of Nazi lead­ers from Ger­man allies in the 1988 Bush pres­i­den­tial cam­paign was the dri­ving force in the announced res­ig­na­tion of nine indi­vid­u­als, two of them from the Ukraine, which is why he was the log­i­cal choice to turn to illu­mi­nate the scat­tered men­tions of Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments amongst the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, which some­how nev­er seems to war­rant fur­ther com­ment or expla­na­tion. Of course most Ukra­ni­ans aren’t Nazis or fascists—all the more rea­son to illu­mi­nate those who would hide their true natures in the shadows…or even behind the momen­tary glare of the spot­light.

Your book, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Repub­li­can Par­ty exposed the deep involve­ment in the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Nazi ele­ments from Cen­tral and East­ern Europe, includ­ing Ukrain­ian, dat­ing back to World War II and even before. As the Ukrain­ian cri­sis unfold­ed in the last few weeks there have been scat­tered men­tions of a fas­cist or neo-fas­cist ele­ment, but some­how that nev­er seems to war­rant fur­ther com­ment or expla­na­tion. I can’t think of any­one bet­ter to shed light on what’s not being said about that ele­ment. The dan­ger of Russ­ian bel­liger­ence is increas­ing­ly obvi­ous, but this unex­am­ined fas­cist ele­ment pos­es dan­gers of its own. What can you tell us about this ele­ment and those dan­gers?

The ele­ment has a long his­to­ry, of a long record that speaks for itself, when that record is actu­al­ly known and elab­o­rat­ed on. The key orga­ni­za­tion in the coup that took place here recent­ly was the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists [OUN], or a spe­cif­ic branch of it known as the Ban­deras [OUN‑B]. They’re the group behind the Svo­bo­da par­ty, which got a num­ber of key posi­tions in the new inter­im regime. The OUN goes back to the 1920s, when they split off from oth­er groups, and, espe­cial­ly in the 1930s began a cam­paign of assas­si­nat­ing and oth­er­wise ter­ror­iz­ing peo­ple who didn’t agree with them.

As World War II approached, they made an alliance with the Nazi pow­ers, they formed sev­er­al mil­i­tary for­ma­tions, so that when Ger­many invad­ed the Sovi­et Union in June 1941, they had sev­er­al bat­tal­ions that went into the main city at the time, where their base was, Lvov, or Lwow, it has a vari­ety of spellings [also ‘Lviv’]. They went in, and there’s a doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of them par­tic­i­pat­ing in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and round­ing up Jews in that city, and assist­ing in exe­cut­ing sev­er­al thou­sand cit­i­zens almost imme­di­ate­ly. There were also involved in liq­ui­dat­ing Pol­ish group pop­u­la­tions in oth­er parts of Ukraine dur­ing the war.

With­out get­ting deeply involved in that whole his­to­ry, the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists to this day defend their wartime role, they were back­ers of form­ing the 14th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion, which was the all-Ukrain­ian divi­sion that became an armed ele­ment on behalf of the Ger­mans, and under over­all Ger­man con­trol. They helped encour­age its for­ma­tion, and after the war, right at the end of the war, it was called the First Ukrain­ian divi­sion and they still glo­ri­fy that his­to­ry of that SS divi­sion, and they have a vet­er­ans orga­ni­za­tion, that obvi­ous­ly doesn’t have too many of mem­bers left but they formed a vet­er­ans divi­sion of that.

If you look insignia being worn in Kiev in the street demon­stra­tions and march­es to the SS divi­sion insignia still being worn. In fact I was look­ing at pho­tographs last night of it and there was a whole for­ma­tion march­ing, not with 14th Divi­sion, but with the Sec­ond Divi­sion, it was a large divi­sion that did major bat­tle around the Ukraine, and these marchers were wear­ing the insignia on the arm­bands of the Sec­ond Divi­sion.

So this is a very clear record, and the OUN, even in its post­war pub­li­ca­tions has called for eth­no-genet­i­cal­ly pure Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry, which of course is sim­ply call­ing for purg­ing Jews, and Poles, and Rus­sians from what they con­sid­er Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry. Also, cur­rent lead­ers of Svo­bo­da have made bla­tant­ly anti-Semit­ic remarks that call for get­ting rid of Mus­covite Jews and so forth. They use this very coarse threat­en­ing lan­guage that any­body know­ing the his­to­ry of World War II would trem­ble at. If they were liv­ing here, it would seem like they would start wor­ry­ing about it.

Obvi­ous­ly these peo­ple don’t hold monop­oly pow­er in Ukraine, but they stepped up and the Unit­ed States has been behind the Svo­bo­da par­ty and these Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists. In fact the US con­nec­tions to them go back to World War II and the Unit­ed States has had a long-stand­ing tie to the OUN, through the intel­li­gence agen­cies, ini­tial­ly mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, and lat­er the CIA.

Your book dis­cuss­es a cen­tral fig­ure in the OUN, Yaroslav Stet­sko, who was polit­i­cal­ly active for decades here in Amer­i­ca. What can you tell us about his his­to­ry?

Yaroslav Stet­sko was the num­ber two leader of the OUN dur­ing World War II and there­after. In 1959, Ste­fan Ban­dera, who was head of the OUN, was killed and that’s when Stet­sko assumed the lead­er­ship. Stet­sko in 1941 was the guy who actu­al­ly marched into Lvov with the Ger­man army June 30, 1941 and the OUN issued a procla­ma­tion at that time under his name prais­ing and call­ing for glo­ry to the Ger­man leader Adolf Hitler and how they’re going to march arm in arm for the Ukraine and so forth. After the war, he was part of the key lead­er­ship that got picked up by the Amer­i­cans.

There’s a num­ber of accounts I’ve seen, at least three cred­i­ble up reports, on how they were in the dis­placed per­son camp, the Allied forces set up dis­placed per­sons camp and picked up tens of thou­sands of these for­mer allies of Hitler from coun­tries all over the East, Hun­gary, Latvia, Lithua­nia – there weren’t Pol­ish col­lab­o­ra­tors I think most peo­ple know the Ger­mans heav­i­ly per­se­cut­ed and mur­dered mil­lions of Pol­ish res­i­dents – but Bul­gar­ia, Roma­nia, Croa­t­ia, and so forth, Belorus­sia. They had them in these camps they built and orga­nized them, where the Ukraini­ans were assas­si­nat­ing their Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist rival so that they would be the undis­put­ed lead­ers of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist move­ment, so they would get the spon­sor­ship of the Unit­ed States to con­tin­ue their polit­i­cal oper­a­tion, and they were suc­cess­ful in that regard. So when Ban­dera was out of the pic­ture, Stet­sko became the undis­put­ed leader of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists.

The Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists in 1943 under Ger­man spon­sor­ship orga­nized a multi­na­tion­al force to fight on behalf of the retreat­ing Ger­man army. After the bat­tle of Stal­in­grad in ’43 the Ger­mans felt a height­ened need to get more allies, and so the Roman­ian Iron Guard, the Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross, the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists and oth­ers with mil­i­tary for­ma­tions in place to assist came togeth­er and formed the unit­ed front called the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations and again worked on behalf of of the Ger­man mil­i­tary. In 1946, they renamed it the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations, ABN. Stet­sko was the leader of that until he died in 1986.

I men­tion this in part because the OUN tries to say well dur­ing the war we fought the Ger­mans and the com­mu­nists. The fact of the mat­ter is that they were the lead­er­ship of this whole multi­na­tion­al alliance on behalf of the Ger­man the last two years of the war and in the war there­after. All the post­war lead­ers of the unre­pen­tant Nazi allies were all under the lead­er­ship of Yaroslav Stet­sko.

What hap­pened when Stet­sko, and oth­ers like him from oth­er Ger­man allied forces came to the Unit­ed States?

In the Unit­ed States, when they came, his groups orga­nized ‘cap­tive nations’ com­mit­tees, they became, sup­pos­ed­ly, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of peo­ple who are being oppressed in East­ern Europe, the Baltic coun­tries, by the Sovi­et. But they were, in fact, being giv­en an uncrit­i­cal blank check to rep­re­sent the voic­es of all these nations that were part of the War­saw Pact when in fact they rep­re­sent­ed the most extreme ele­ments of each of the nation­al com­mu­ni­ties.

The Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee in Wash­ing­ton DC for instance was run by the per­son who head­ed the Ukrain­ian orga­ni­za­tion of nation­al­ists, that was true in a num­ber of places. In my home­town area near Detroit as well, they played a major role. In the ear­ly 50s, when they were reset­tled in the Unit­ed States, there was at least 10,000 of them that were reset­tled, when you look at all the nation­al­i­ties. They became polit­i­cal­ly active through the Repub­li­can nation­al com­mit­tee, because it was real­ly the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion that made the pol­i­cy deci­sion in the ear­ly 1950s, and brought them in. They set up these cam­paign orga­ni­za­tions, every four years they would mobi­lize for the Repub­li­can can­di­date, who­ev­er it would be, and some of them like Richard Nixon, in 1960, actu­al­ly had close direct ties to some of the lead­ers like the Roman­ian Iron Guard, and some of these oth­er groups.

When Richard Nixon ran for pres­i­dent in 1968, he made a promise to these lead­ers that they would if he won the pres­i­den­cy he would make them the eth­nic out­reach arm of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee on a per­ma­nent basis, so they wouldn’t be a qua­dren­ni­al pres­ence, but a con­tin­u­ing pres­ence in the Repub­li­can Par­ty. And he made that promise through a guy named Las­z­lo Pasz­tor, who served five years in prison after World War II for crimes against human­i­ty. He was pros­e­cut­ed in 1946 by non-Com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment that actu­al­ly had con­trol of Hun­gary at the time. There was a peri­od from ’45 to ’48 when the Hun­gar­i­an Com­mu­nist Par­ty didn’t run Hun­gary. They were the ones who pros­e­cut­ed him. He had served as a liai­son between the Hun­gar­i­an Nazi par­ty and Berlin; he served in the Berlin embassy of the Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross move­ment. This is the guy that got picked to orga­nize all the eth­nic groups, and the only peo­ple that got brought in were the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors.

They didn’t have a Russ­ian affil­i­ate because they hat­ed all Rus­sians of all polit­i­cal stripes. There were no African Amer­i­cans or Jew­ish affil­i­ates either. It was just com­posed of these ele­ments, and for a while they had a Ger­man affil­i­ate but some expo­sure of the Nazi char­ac­ter of the Ger­man affil­i­ate caused it to be qui­et­ly removed, but oth­er [Nazi] ele­ments were retained.

...

Your book was an impor­tant rev­e­la­tion but was not alone. Your book notes that Jack Ander­son report­ed on the pro-Nazi back­grounds of some of the eth­nic advi­sors as far back as 1971, yet when your report came out almost two decades lat­er, every­one respond­ed with shock, sur­prise, and even denial. What lessons should we draw from this his­to­ry of buried his­to­ry? And how should it influ­ence our think­ing about the unfold­ing cri­sis in the Ukraine?

I don’t believe it’s ever too late to become famil­iar­ized and edu­cat­ed about the his­to­ry of this phe­nom­e­non both the wartime his­to­ry and our post­war col­lab­o­ra­tion with these folks. There were a num­ber of exposés writ­ten about the émi­gré Nazis. There was a 1979 book called Want­ed and it did a num­ber of case sto­ries of these peo­ple being brought in to the Unit­ed States, includ­ing the Tri­fa sto­ry. Christo­pher Simp­son did a book called Blow­back that dis­cussed the pol­i­cy deci­sions, it’s an incred­i­ble book. He’s a pro­fes­sor at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty and he did years of research through the free­dom of infor­ma­tion act and archives, and got the pol­i­cy doc­u­ments under which the deci­sions were made to bring these folks togeth­er, and not just into the Unit­ed States but to deploy them around the world.

Like my book, it didn’t get the atten­tion it deserved. The New York Times book review­er was neg­a­tive toward the book. There are peo­ple that real­ly don’t want to touch this stuff. There’s a lot of peo­ple who don’t want it touched. I think it’s real­ly impor­tant for peo­ple who believe in open­ness and trans­paren­cy and demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues, who don’t want to see hate groups come back to pow­er in oth­er parts of the world to know what hap­pened.

There’s not very many Amer­i­cans that real­ly even know that the Waf­fen SS was a multi­na­tion­al force. That’s been kind of kept out of the received his­to­ry. Oth­er­wise peo­ple would know that there were Ukrain­ian Nazis, Hun­gar­i­an Nazis, Lat­vian Nazis, and they were all involved in the mass mur­der of their fel­low cit­i­zens, if they were Jew­ish, or even if they were co-nation­al­ists that were on the oth­er side of the issue of the war. They were just mass mur­der­ers, across East­ern Europe. And that his­to­ry, those facts aren’t even well-known. A lot of peo­ple didn’t even know this phe­nom­e­non even exist­ed.

I think all Amer­i­cans have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to know what their gov­ern­ment is doing in the for­eign pol­i­cy in Europe as well as else­where around the world, as well as Latin Amer­i­ca as well as Africa. Since our pol­i­cy was to uphold apartheid in South Africa why weren’t Amer­i­cans chal­leng­ing that more? They began chal­leng­ing that in the 80s, but the apartheid regime was run by the Nazi par­ty. They were allied with Ger­many in World War II, they were the Nation­al­ist par­ty and they took pow­er in 1948 and the Unit­ed States backed that for decades. We backed the death squads in Latin Amer­i­ca, even though they mas­sa­cred tens of thou­sands of peo­ple – 30,000 peo­ple in Chile alone. Amer­i­cans aren’t being atten­tive to what their gov­ern­ment is doing abroad, even though it’s been doing done with their tax dol­lars and in their name, and I think we just have a gen­er­al respon­si­bil­i­ty.

I went to these meet­ings, I went to these con­fer­ences, I went over a peri­od of years. I met with them direct­ly, most of the peo­ple I wrote about, I met with them per­son­al­ly or in group meet­ings. Peo­ple can’t afford to do that on their own, time­wise, but there’s enough lit­er­a­ture out there they can read and pur­sue it, they will get enough enough of a han­dle to get what the real pic­ture is, to demand change. I’m not total­ly par­ti­san in this, but I think the Repub­li­can Par­ty was extreme on this, but the Democ­rats fold­ed and didn’t chal­lenge this when they knew it was going on.

There is an old Roman poet that once said truth does not say one thing and wis­dom anoth­er. I’m a believ­er in that. Tell the truth and wis­dom will fol­low.

There are all sorts of good rea­sons for keep­ing fas­cists out of your gov­ern­ment. For instance, fas­cist chief pros­e­cu­tors might have trou­ble remain­ing impar­tial:

Kyiv Post
Nation­al­ist Svo­bo­da Par­ty mem­bers of par­lia­ment assault First Chan­nel TV man­ag­er (VIDEO)

March 19, 2014, 3:45 p.m. | Ukraine — by Olga Rudenko

Sev­er­al mem­bers of the nation­al­ist Svo­bo­da Par­ty scan­dalous­ly assault­ed the act­ing CEO of state-owned First Nation­al TV chan­nel. On March 18, law­mak­ers Ihor Mirosh­nichenko, Andriy Illenko and Bohdan Beniuk arrived at the TV head­quar­ters with sev­er­al oth­er men and forced Olek­san­dr Pan­te­ley­monov to quit his post.

In the video, which was first pub­lished by Svo­bo­da spokesman Olek­san­dr Aronets and repub­lished by Ukrain­s­ka Prav­da after Aronets removed it, the mem­bers of par­lia­ment are seen ques­tion­ing Pan­te­ley­monov in his office about Per­shiy broad­cast­ing Russ­ian President’s Vladimir Putin’s speech about Crimea sep­a­ra­tion that took place in Moscow on March 18.

“Our view­ers have the right to know…” Pan­te­ley­monov starts mum­bling expla­na­tions, but gets inter­rupt­ed by the law­mak­ers shout­ing “Know what? Know what?”

In the video, Pan­te­ley­monov is seen try­ing to explain him­self and speak­ing polite­ly, while the law­mak­ers sur­round him and shout rude­ly.

Mirosh­nichenko, the lead­ing voice of the group, pro­ceed­ed to accuse Pan­te­ley­monov of direct­ing an edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy aimed at dis­cred­it­ing the Euro­Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion at the behest of the for­mer state author­i­ties and demand­ed that Pan­te­ley­monov leave his post imme­di­ate­ly.

Pan­te­ley­monov refused to do so and men­tioned that it was the Cab­i­net of Min­is­ters that con­trolled the TV sta­tion.

“Cab­i­net of Min­is­ters is over. I’m telling you — write the paper,” Mirosh­nichenko shout­ed in the manager’s face as he grabbed him and pulled him through the room to his desk.

Mirosh­nichenko then pushed Pan­te­ley­monov into his chair, Beniuk held him by the neck and Illienko passed him some paper. As Pan­te­ley­monov refused, Mirosh­nichenko and Beniuk beat him and slapped his face.

Even though the video doesn’t show it, the law­mak­ers did force the man­ag­er to quit.

As soon as the video was post­ed on the evening of March 18, it went viral and the actions of the law­mak­ers were wide­ly con­demned. Many were con­cerned that such actions com­ing from one of the par­ties that were brought to pow­er after the Euro­Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion would fuel Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da that has focused on vio­lence and nation­al­ism in Ukraine.

“These are not our meth­ods. The actions of these law­mak­ers are unac­cept­able,” was the reac­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Arseniy Yat­se­niuk, Svoboda’s polit­i­cal ally.

The assault was also con­demned by Ukraine’s Inde­pen­dent Media Union.

Even Svo­bo­da par­ty head and Miroshnichenko’s friend Oleh Tyah­ny­bok con­demned the attack. “Such actions were fine yes­ter­day (dur­ing the protests), but now they are inap­pro­pri­ate,” Tyah­ny­bok said in offi­cial state­ment.

After the scan­dal erupt­ed, Svoboda’s Aronets delet­ed the video and all the eyes turned to the pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al Oleh Maknit­skiy. Also a Svo­bo­da par­ty mem­ber, Maknit­skiy is now expect­ed to impar­tial­ly inves­ti­gate the assault.

On the morn­ing of March 19, Makhnitskiy’s office released a state­ment promis­ing to just­ly deal with the case. Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Arsen Avakov also con­demned the assault and said he was ready to have police help the pros­e­cu­tor general’s office in inves­ti­gat­ing the case.

...

It begins. Hide the chil­dren.

Yep!

Ukraine-Europe deal may cause unrest in east
Charles McPhe­dran, Spe­cial for USA TODAY 12:19 p.m. EDT March 21, 2014

KHARKIV, Ukraine – Hav­ing lost con­trol of Crimea, Ukraine moved Fri­day to strength­en ties to Europe in a pact that may spark polit­i­cal unrest in the east­ern part of the coun­try where sub­stan­tial pop­u­la­tions of eth­nic Rus­sians want to secede as well.

The Euro­pean Union and Ukraine signed ele­ments of a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic agree­ment Fri­day, com­mit­ting Ukraine to a deal that Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych had reject­ed in favor of bet­ter ties to Moscow.

That rejec­tion sparked mas­sive protests in the Ukrain­ian cap­i­tal of Kiev, where most peo­ple favored clos­er ties to Europe. The protests led to Yanukovy­ch’s over­throw but also gave rise to anti-Kiev protests in Crimea and a vote there Sun­day to secede.

Fri­day, Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin offi­cial­ly annexed Crimea.

In the east­ern Ukrain­ian city of Kharkiv, pro-Rus­sia and and pro-Europe pro­test­ers have clashed spo­rad­i­cal­ly for weeks. The city, near the bor­der with Rus­sia, was for decades under con­trol of the com­mu­nist Sovi­et Union, Rus­si­a’s pre­de­ces­sor, and signs of this past are every­where.

Sovi­et-style archi­tec­ture is omnipresent as are stat­ues of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Sovi­et dic­ta­tor­ship, which dis­solved in 1991. Unlike in Kiev, where Lenin’s stat­ue was torn down and its bust scrawled with graf­fi­ti, in Kharkiv, the Sovi­et founder tow­ers over the city’s cen­tral Free­dom Square.

In late Feb­ru­ary, pro-West­ern demon­stra­tors want­ed to pull down the stat­ue but decid­ed against it because they wor­ried it would have col­lapsed the roof of the sub­way below.

The attempt angered Ukraini­ans who look fond­ly on the days of the Sovi­et Union, some of whom hold a dai­ly vig­il at the stat­ue. The most­ly aging crowd accus­es pro­test­ers in Kiev of being vio­lent fas­cists and thugs try­ing to destroy a cul­ture that ven­er­ates Sovi­et dic­ta­tor Josef Stal­in’s vic­to­ry over Adolf Hitler in World War II.

“My father says he would cut his pen­sion in half, so riot police have mon­ey to throw rocks at pro­test­ers,” said young com­mu­nist Max­im Androsovsky, who went to Kiev to take part in protests against the pro-Euro­pean group Maid­an, named for the square where the anti-gov­ern­ment protests were cen­tered.

“There’s no such thing as a peace­ful Molo­tov cock­tail,” he added, refer­ring to home­made gaso­line bombs thrown by pro-West­ern pro­test­ers.

In a refu­ta­tion of pro-Moscow sen­ti­ment Fri­day, Ukrain­ian Prime Min­is­ter Arseniy Yat­senyuk signed in Brus­sels core chap­ters of the agree­ment with the EU that Yanukovych reject­ed. Por­tions of the agree­ment on free trade will be signed after Ukraine has held pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in May.

Her­man Van Rompuy, the Euro­pean Coun­cil pres­i­dent, said the agree­ment would bring Ukraine and its 46 mil­lion peo­ple clos­er to a “Euro­pean way of life.”

...

Yes, accord­ing to the EC pres­i­dent, “the agree­ment would bring Ukraine and its 46 mil­lion peo­ple clos­er to a ‘Euro­pean way of life’ ” which would be pret­ty excit­ing if that was­n’t a ref­er­ence to the post-2008 ‘Euro­pean way of life’ so you have to won­der how long this dis­con­tent with clos­er EU ties is going to be lim­it­ed to Ukraine’s eth­nic Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion.

Because the sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine just was­n’t Orwellian enough...

Mash­able
Ukraine just cre­at­ed its own ver­sion of Orwell’s ‘Min­istry of Truth’

By Christo­pher Miller
12/2/2014

KIEV, Ukraine –- The Ukraine gov­ern­ment has estab­lished a depart­ment that crit­ics are call­ing the “Min­istry of Truth” — bor­row­ing a term from George Orwell’s clas­sic dystopi­an nov­el 1984.

Offi­cial­ly called the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy, the new office will be head­ed by Yuriy Stets, head of the Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty Depart­ment of the Nation­al Guard of Ukraine. A close ally to Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko, Stets was for­mer­ly chief pro­duc­er of the TV chan­nel that Poroshenko sill owns.

While its main objec­tive appears to be con­fronting Russia’s for­mi­da­ble pro­pa­gan­da machine, the Min­istry is like­ly to also restrict free speech and inhib­it jour­nal­ists’ work — par­tic­u­lar­ly in war-torn east­ern Ukraine, accord­ing to observers.

...

At a demon­stra­tion out­side par­lia­ment, Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ists decried the new min­istry, which deputies approved in the Verk­hov­na Rada late on Tues­day, along with the rest of the country’s Cab­i­net of Min­is­ters.

About 40 jour­nal­ists and activists from Ukrain­ian watch­dog groups Ches­no (Hon­est) and Stop Cen­sor­ship! held posters that read “Hel­lo, Big Broth­er.” They urged law­mak­ers enter­ing the par­lia­ment ahead of Tuesday’s ses­sion to vote against appoint­ing Stets as its head.

The cre­ation of the min­istry comes on the heels of crit­i­cal reports from jour­nal­ists and rights groups about its use of con­tro­ver­sial weapons in east­ern Ukraine, as well as pos­si­ble war crimes com­mit­ted by its armed forces.

Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment is clear­ly frus­trat­ed with by its lack of suc­cess in dis­sem­i­nat­ing its mes­sages. “You must under­stand, we are being killed by [Russ­ian] guns as well as their pro­pa­gan­da,” a top secu­ri­ty offi­cial told Mash­able when explain­ing why he sup­port­ed the cre­ation of the min­istry.

A report released last month by The Inter­preter web­site describes just how Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da works, and how effec­tive­ly it is being used as a weapon of the Krem­lin. The report out­lines a “hybrid war” that com­bines dis­in­for­ma­tion “to sow con­fu­sion via con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and pro­lif­er­ate false­hoods” with “covert and small-scale mil­i­tary oper­a­tions.”

...

Still, there are some in the gov­ern­ment who do not endorse the min­istry. A senior offi­cial in the Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion, who spoke anony­mous­ly because he feared reper­cus­sions from offi­cials for talk­ing to a jour­nal­ist, said he was “very con­cerned” about the min­istry and how it would be used.

“Hon­est­ly, I’m not sure such a min­istry is need­ed,” the offi­cial said, adding that oth­ers inside the admin­is­tra­tion have also ques­tioned the move.

“The way to fight Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da is with hon­est­ly and trans­paren­cy, not try­ing to beat Rus­sia at its own game.”

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy was pushed through with lit­tle notice and even less debate on the par­lia­ment floor. That could be because the pres­i­dent him­self pushed the con­cept on mem­bers of his par­ty, the largest fac­tion in par­lia­ment, and has great sway over the rul­ing coali­tion.

Deputies whom Mash­able spoke with ahead of the par­lia­ment ses­sion on Tues­day said Poroshenko per­son­al­ly urged them to sup­port the min­istry in a tense last-minute meet­ing called late Mon­day night.

...

For­mer inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist turned law­mak­er Ser­hiy Leshchenko, who was elect­ed in last month’s vote on the tick­et of the president’s par­ty, was present at the meet­ing. He says Poroshenko “was very seri­ous” about con­firm­ing Stets the fol­low­ing day in par­lia­ment.

...

Oksana Roma­niuk, direc­tor of local media watch­dog Insti­tute of Mass Infor­ma­tion and Ukraine rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Reporters With­out Bor­ders, told Mash­able that “the gov­ern­ment wants to con­trol the media’s mes­sages first, and sec­ond, they want to con­trol access to the mes­sages.”

Details on how the min­istry will oper­ate are murky. No doc­u­ments were made avail­able to the pub­lic or deputies, and Stets did not reply to Mash­able’s requests for com­ment. But Roma­niuk fears the gov­ern­ment has giv­en itself “carte blanche.”

Reporters With­out Bor­ders said it “firm­ly oppos­es” the infor­ma­tion min­istry. “Putting the gov­ern­ment in charge of ‘infor­ma­tion pol­i­cy’ would be major ret­ro­grade step that would open the way to grave excess­es,” said Christophe Deloire, the watch­dog orga­ni­za­tion’s sec­re­tary-gen­er­al.

...

“Dear team Poroshenko, the pur­suit of absolute pow­er in this coun­try means a final career,” Tatyana Niko­laenko, chief edi­tor at Ukraine’s Insid­er mag­a­zine, wrote on Face­book. “If you cre­ate this ‘Min­istry of Truth’ the pres­i­den­t’s rat­ing will col­lapse as quick­ly as it rose in the win­ter of this year.”

She added: “You can not win the infor­ma­tion war [against Rus­sia] with it, because with the cre­ation of the Min­istry you’ll give Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da end­less ref­er­ences to [Nazi Min­is­ter of Pro­pa­gan­da Joseph] Goebbels and Orwell.”

...

But Kiev sees the cre­ation of the min­istry as a nec­es­sary move to fight Russia’s inces­sant pro­pa­gan­da, which has been par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful over the course of the ongo­ing cri­sis.

The con­cept was first float­ed on Sun­day, when Inte­ri­or Min­istry advi­sor Anton Herashchenko men­tioned it in a post on Face­book. In it, he men­tioned the need to counter the Russ­ian mes­sage.

“There is an idea to cre­ate the struc­ture of the Cab­i­net of Min­is­ters Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy, whose main task is the pro­tec­tion of Ukraine’s infor­ma­tion space of the Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da and counter-pro­pa­gan­da in Rus­sia, in the tem­porar­i­ly occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries of Crimea and [east­ern Ukraine]. This issue is long over­due and I would even say too late,” Herashchenko wrote.

Stets relayed his thoughts on the new min­istry in his own Face­book post on Mon­day.

“I see it this way: dif­fer­ent states with dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al expe­ri­ences in times of cri­sis came to need to cre­ate a body of exec­u­tive pow­er that would con­trol and man­age the infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty of the coun­try,” Stets wrote.

Accord­ing to Stets, none of the cur­rent state struc­tures could effi­cient­ly han­dle those tasks.

“The infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions space remain unco­or­di­nat­ed now, full of con­tra­dic­tions and influ­ence of for­eign agents, and under con­di­tions of geopo­lit­i­cal wars becomes a weak part of the coun­try, a sub­ject of ene­my attacks,” he added.

So the “Min­istry of Truth” idea was first float­ed on Sun­day and made into law with lit­tle par­lia­men­tary debate the next day? Bra­vo.

Uh oh, this prob­a­bly isn’t going to help with the Russian/Turkey ten­sions:

Morn­ingstar Online
Grey Wolves Fas­cist Killed Russ­ian Pilot

Nov 2015, Fri­day 27th
post­ed by James Tweed­ie in World

Turk­men Brigade mur­der­er a Turk­ish cit­i­zen with far-right links

THE rebel leader who boast­ed of mur­der­ing a Russ­ian pilot shot down over Syr­ia is a mem­ber of the Turk­ish Grey Wolves fas­cist para­mil­i­tary group.

The Morn­ing Star can reveal that Alparslan Celik (right) — deputy com­man­der of the Turk­men Brigade that shot at the para­chut­ing crew of the Su-24 tac­ti­cal bomber downed in a Turk­ish ambush — is a Turk­ish cit­i­zen from Elazig province.

Lieu­tenant Colonel Oleg Peshkov — ear­li­er incor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied as Major Sergei Rumyant­sev — was killed by Turk­men forces after eject­ing from his jet on Tues­day.

His nav­i­ga­tor Cap­tain Kon­stan­tin Murakhtin was cap­tured but res­cued by Syr­i­an and Russ­ian spe­cial forces on Wednes­day — the first known use of Russ­ian ground forces in Syria’s civ­il war.

Mr Celik quick­ly claimed that his sup­pos­ed­ly native Turk­men mili­tia had killed both pilots.

But Turkey’s Dogan news agency report­ed last year that he is a Turk­ish cit­i­zen whose father Ramazan was may­or of Keban munic­i­pal­i­ty for the ultra-nation­al­ist Nation­al Move­ment Par­ty (MHP).

The Grey Wolves is the para­mil­i­tary wing of MHP and has been linked to the mur­ders of hun­dreds of left-wing and lib­er­al activists since the 1970s.

Celik Jnr has post­ed pic­tures of him­self per­form­ing a Grey Wolves salute and his father report­ed last year that he had gone to fight “until mar­tyr­dom, if nec­es­sary.”

The Turk­men Brigade had been los­ing ground to Syr­i­an army forces backed by Russ­ian air pow­er in north­ern Latakia province — close to the Turk­ish bor­der — in the days pri­or to the inci­dent.

Col Peshkov has been posthu­mous­ly award­ed the Hero of Rus­sia medal, the nation’s high­est mil­i­tary award.

Cpt Murakhtin and Naval Infantry­man Alexan­dr Pozyn­ich, who was killed in the res­cue oper­a­tion, were award­ed the Order of Courage.

...

“But Turkey’s Dogan news agency report­ed last year that he is a Turk­ish cit­i­zen whose father Ramazan was may­or of Keban munic­i­pal­i­ty for the ultra-nation­al­ist Nation­al Move­ment Par­ty (MHP).”
Yeah, it’s prob­a­bly not going to help ten­sions when it turns out that Alparslan Celik, the head of the Turk­men mili­tia unit who was boast­ing of killing the para­chut­ing Rus­sia pilot, was fea­tured in a Dogan news agency report from last year about being the sone of the MHP may­or of Keban and trav­el­ing to Syr­ia. Espe­cial­ly since his rel­a­tive­ly sparse twit­ter feed includes tweet of Grey Wolves founder Alparslan Turkes in March of 2013 and then no pub­lic tweets until a Jan­u­ary 2015 tweet of Alparslan and his Turk­men mili­tia mem­bers show­ing the Grey Wolves hand ges­ture.

And just today a major pro-Kur­dish Turk­ish lawyer, Taher Elci, was just assas­si­nat­ed while mak­ing a speech call­ing for an end to the hos­til­i­ties between the Turk­ish state and the PKK (which Gary Brech­er, a.k.a. The War Nerd, see as “state killing” writ­ten all over it). So we could be look­ing at a peri­od of increased vio­lence and aggres­sion from the Turk­ish Deep State and affil­i­at­ed fas­cists and Islamists.

But also note some­thing else rather sig­nif­i­cant that’s hap­pen­ing in par­al­lel: Erdo­gan has made it clear for a while now that a redraw­ing of the Mid­dle East­’s bor­ders is some­thing he has in mind. Recall, for instance, his speech last year when he declared Lawrence of Ara­bia a big­ger threat to peace in the Mid­dle East than ISIS and endorsed redraw­ing the Mid­dle East­’s map:

The Dai­ly Beast
Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Declares Lawrence of Ara­bia a Big­ger Ene­my than ISIS
In a stun­ning speech, Erdo­gan railed against West­ern “spies” and jour­nal­ists and seemed to endorse the ISIS plan to redraw the region’s bor­ders.

Jamie Dettmer
10.13.14 1:00 PM ET

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan took on the icon­ic Lawrence of Ara­bia Mon­day in a furi­ous anti-West­ern dia­tribe. The Turk­ish pres­i­dent com­pared the out­side med­dling in the region now to the role the renowned British army offi­cer played dur­ing the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans dur­ing World War I. And West­ern diplo­mats here say the tirade bears a rather strik­ing resem­blance to some of the pro­pa­gan­da that has come out of the so-called Islam­ic State, wide­ly known by the acronym ISIS or ISIL.

Last week, stung by West­ern crit­i­cism of Turkey’s con­spic­u­ous absence from the U.S.-led air com­bat against the ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion, and the refusal of the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment to res­cue the besieged town of Kobani, just across the Syr­i­an bor­der, Erdo­gan insist­ed he had no sym­pa­thy for the jihadists.

But on one very impor­tant point of his­to­ry and geog­ra­phy it now appears there’s a seri­ous con­ver­gence of views between ISIS and Erdo­gan. In his speech Mon­day at a uni­ver­si­ty in Istan­bul, the Turk­ish pres­i­dent blast­ed the Sykes-Picot Agree­ment, a secret under­stand­ing (signed behind Lawrence’s back) that divid­ed up the Mid­dle East after World War I between British and French spheres of influ­ence. That deal opened the way for a British vow to estab­lish a Jew­ish home­land in Pales­tine and led to bor­ders drawn by the Euro­pean pow­ers that cre­at­ed mod­ern Syr­i­an and Iraq. His­to­ri­an David Fromkin summed up the mess that result­ed in the title of his book The Peace to End All Peace.

“Each con­flict in this region has been designed a cen­tu­ry ago,” said Erdo­gan. “It is our duty to stop this.”

In point of fact, T. E. Lawrence was opposed to the secret Anglo-French agree­ment, because it reneged on promis­es giv­en the Arabs by Lon­don in a bid to per­suade them to revolt against Ottoman Turk­ish rule. He tried might­i­ly to sab­o­tage the deal. But Erdo­gan is either unaware of that or sought to sim­pli­fy his­to­ry.

ISIS, mean­while, has done some sim­pli­fy­ing of its own, and on sim­i­lar lines. Its mil­i­tants say explic­it­ly they are out to erase the bor­ders that Sykes-Picot estab­lished across most of the mod­ern Mid­dle East. In the sum­mer, after sweep­ing in from Syr­ia to seize Mosul, the sec­ond largest city in Iraq, they pro­duced a video called, yes, ”The End of Sykes Pico,” in which they blew up a bor­der out­post and lev­eled part of the earth­en bar­ri­er on the Iraqi-Syr­i­an bor­der. They declared tri­umphant­ly they would bull­doze oth­er West­ern-imposed bor­ders as well.

The Erdo­gan speech was suf­fused with an angry anti-West­ern narrative—he also tilt­ed at West­ern jour­nal­ists, accus­ing them of being spies—and will no doubt thrill some of Erdogan’s sup­port­ers. In south­ern Turkey, some local offi­cials in his Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP) express sym­pa­thy for ISIS. But it will ring alarm bells in West­ern cap­i­tals at a time coali­tion offi­cials are redou­bling their efforts to try to per­suade a reluc­tant Turk­ish gov­ern­ment to play a for­ward-lean­ing part in the Amer­i­can-led war on the jihadists.

Turkey is con­sid­ered cru­cial if Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s war aim to “degrade and defeat” ISIS is to be accom­plished. The coun­try has been the main logis­ti­cal base for the Islam­ic mil­i­tants, the main tran­sit coun­try for for­eign fight­ers to enter neigh­bor­ing Syr­ia and a key source of it’s rev­enue from the smug­gling of oil tapped in cap­tured oil fields. In his deter­mi­na­tion to top­ple Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad, Erdo­gan has been accused of at best turn­ing a blind eye to the rise of ISIS and at worst active­ly encour­ag­ing it.

At the week­end U.S. offi­cials announced a break­through in their efforts to per­suade Turkey to become a front­line ally, say­ing the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment had agreed that a NATO air­base at Incir­lik could be used by the anti-ISIS coali­tion. But the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment was omi­nous­ly silent Mon­day on that score and just hours after Erdogan’s speech Turk­ish offi­cials denied they had agreed U.S. war­planes could use Incir­lik air base for attacks on Islam­ic mil­i­tants.

Erdogan’s com­ments Mon­day give a glimpse into the Turk­ish leadership’s rea­sons for deny­ing the use of Incir­lik. And they augur bad­ly for the over­all effort, reveal­ing the deep lev­el of dis­trust the Turk­ish pres­i­dent har­bors for the West. Cer­tain­ly the speech sug­gests that Amer­i­can hopes of per­suad­ing Turkey to come ful­ly on board are mis­placed.

...

Erdo­gan argued there are mod­ern-day Lawrences in Turkey right now “dis­guised as jour­nal­ists, reli­gious men, writ­ers and ter­ror­ists.” And the remark was espe­cial­ly omi­nous on the day five for­eign journalists—three of them German—were hauled before a court for a pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing in the south­east­ern Turkey of Diyarbakir, fol­low­ing their arrests at the week­end by anti-ter­ror­ist police. They had been cov­er­ing Kurds protest­ing Turkey’s refusal to help save the besieged Syr­i­an bor­der town of Kobani, where Kur­dish men and women have fought off an ISIS onslaught for 28 days.

“We were pho­tograph­ing Kur­dish pro­test­ers build­ing a bar­ri­cade and we were accused of being provo­ca­teurs and of encour­ag­ing them to do so and of engag­ing in espi­onage,” says Ger­man free­lance pho­tog­ra­ph­er Chris­t­ian Grodotz­ki. “As they arrest­ed us they pushed us around and punched two of us and some Ger­man tourists were there and they kicked one of them in the stom­ach. It was a pret­ty rough arrest. They tried real­ly hard to get us to con­firm we were spies or trick us into sign­ing false con­fes­sions.”

The jour­nal­ists have now been released but the cas­es against them will be con­tin­ued. Grodotz­ki says Erdogan’s remarks about jour­nal­ists being spies is like­ly to be seen by the police as the go-ahead for a no-holds barred approach towards the West­ern media.

“This isn’t a speech one expects from an ally, espe­cial­ly when there are del­i­cate nego­ti­a­tions going on,” says an Istan­bul-based Euro­pean diplo­mat. “It reveals stark­ly what we are up against when it comes to Erdo­gan.” Anoth­er diplo­mat said: “The Turks are deter­mined to ensure that what­ev­er hap­pens in Syr­ia post-Assad, it is seen as their sphere of influ­ence and they have two aims: to keep Iran at bay and keep the West out.”

“Erdogan’s com­ments Mon­day give a glimpse into the Turk­ish leadership’s rea­sons for deny­ing the use of Incir­lik.”
Yes, that resusal to allow the use of the Incir­lik air­base for anti-ISIS oper­a­tions may very well have to do with a desire to not just see ISIS top­ple the Assad gov­ern­ment but also redraw the map of the Mid­dle East in a man­ner con­sis­tent with ISIS’s ambi­tions. As the diplo­mat puts it at the end:

...
“The Turks are deter­mined to ensure that what­ev­er hap­pens in Syr­ia post-Assad, it is seen as their sphere of influ­ence and they have two aims: to keep Iran at bay and keep the West out.”

And based on Erdo­gan’s speech, it appears that redraw­ing the maps of Syr­ia and Iraq (and pos­si­bly more) just might be seen as one way to achieve those aims. Of course, Turkey and ISIS alone can’t force a redraw­ing of the Mid­dle East­ern map. But if, say, the larg­er neo­con­ser­v­a­tive estab­lish­ment in the West was to get behind the idea, well, that could cer­tain­ly make a post-Sykes Picot world much more pos­si­ble. So it’s worth not­ing that one of the biggest neo­con­ser­v­a­tives around, John Bolton, just endorsed the Turkey/ISIS plan of break­ing up Iraq and Syr­ia and cre­at­ing a new Sun­ni state:

The New York Times
John Bolton: To Defeat ISIS, Cre­ate a Sun­ni State

By JOHN R. BOLTON
NOV. 24, 2015

Amer­i­ca is debat­ing how to respond to the ter­ror­ist attacks in Paris. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, both Pres­i­dent Obama’s cur­rent pol­i­cy and oth­er recent pro­pos­als lack a strate­gic vision for the Mid­dle East once the Islam­ic State, or ISIS, is actu­al­ly defeat­ed. There are no answers, or only out­mod­ed ones, to the basic ques­tion: What comes after the Islam­ic State?

Before trans­form­ing Mr. Obama’s inef­fec­tive efforts into a vig­or­ous mil­i­tary cam­paign to destroy the Islam­ic State, we need a clear view, shared with NATO allies and oth­ers, about what will replace it. It is crit­i­cal to resolve this issue before con­sid­er­ing any oper­a­tional plans. Strat­e­gy does not come from the ground up; instead, tac­tics flow deduc­tive­ly once we’ve defined the ulti­mate objec­tives.

Today’s real­i­ty is that Iraq and Syr­ia as we have known them are gone. The Islam­ic State has carved out a new enti­ty from the post-Ottoman Empire set­tle­ment, mobi­liz­ing Sun­ni oppo­si­tion to the regime of Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad and the Iran-dom­i­nat­ed gov­ern­ment of Iraq. Also emerg­ing, after years of effort, is a de fac­to inde­pen­dent Kur­dis­tan.

If, in this con­text, defeat­ing the Islam­ic State means restor­ing to pow­er Mr. Assad in Syr­ia and Iran’s pup­pets in Iraq, that out­come is nei­ther fea­si­ble nor desir­able. Rather than striv­ing to recre­ate the post-World War I map, Wash­ing­ton should rec­og­nize the new geopol­i­tics. The best alter­na­tive to the Islam­ic State in north­east­ern Syr­ia and west­ern Iraq is a new, inde­pen­dent Sun­ni state.

This “Sun­ni-stan” has eco­nom­ic poten­tial as an oil pro­duc­er (sub­ject to nego­ti­a­tion with the Kurds, to be sure), and could be a bul­wark against both Mr. Assad and Iran-allied Bagh­dad. The rulers of the Arab Gulf states, who should by now have learned the risk to their own secu­ri­ty of fund­ing Islamist extrem­ism, could pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant financ­ing. And Turkey — still a NATO ally, don’t for­get — would enjoy greater sta­bil­i­ty on its south­ern bor­der, mak­ing the exis­tence of a new state at least tol­er­a­ble.

The func­tion­al inde­pen­dence of Kur­dis­tan rein­forces this approach. The Kurds have final­ly become too big a force in the region for Bagh­dad or Dam­as­cus to push them around. They will not be cajoled or coerced into relin­quish­ing ter­ri­to­ry they now con­trol to Mr. Assad in Syr­ia or to Iraq’s Shi­ite mili­tias.

The Kurds still face enor­mous chal­lenges, with dan­ger­ous­ly uncer­tain bor­ders, espe­cial­ly with Turkey. But an inde­pen­dent Kur­dis­tan that has inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion could work in America’s favor.

Make no mis­take, this new Sun­ni state’s gov­ern­ment is unlike­ly to be a Jef­fer­son­ian democ­ra­cy for many years. But this is a region where alter­na­tives to sec­u­lar mil­i­tary or semi-author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments are scarce. Secu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty are suf­fi­cient ambi­tions.

As we did in Iraq with the 2006 “Anbar Awak­en­ing,” the coun­terin­sur­gency oper­a­tion that dis­lodged Al Qae­da from its strong­hold in that Iraqi province, we and our allies must empow­er viable Sun­ni lead­ers, includ­ing trib­al author­i­ties who prize their exist­ing social struc­tures. No doubt, this will involve for­mer Iraqi and Syr­i­an Baath Par­ty offi­cials; and there may still be some mod­er­ate Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion lead­ers. All are prefer­able to the Islamist extrem­ists.

...

This Sun­ni state pro­pos­al dif­fers sharply from the vision of the Russ­ian-Iran­ian axis and its prox­ies (Hezbol­lah, Mr. Assad and Tehran-backed Bagh­dad). Their aim of restor­ing Iraqi and Syr­i­an gov­ern­ments to their for­mer bor­ders is a goal fun­da­men­tal­ly con­trary to Amer­i­can, Israeli and friend­ly Arab state inter­ests. Notions, there­fore, of an Amer­i­can-Russ­ian coali­tion against the Islam­ic State are as unde­sir­able as they are glib.

In Syr­ia, Moscow wants to dom­i­nate the regime (with or with­out Mr. Assad) and safe­guard Russia’s Tar­tus naval base and its new Latakia air base. Tehran wants a con­tin­u­ing Alaw­ite suprema­cy, with full pro­tec­tion for Hezbol­lah in Lebanon and Syr­ia.

As for Iraq, Rus­sia and Iran want the Sun­ni ter­ri­to­ries returned to Baghdad’s con­trol, rein­forc­ing Iran’s region­al influ­ence. They may wish for the same in Kur­dis­tan, but they lack the capa­bil­i­ty there.

Sun­nis today sup­port the Islam­ic State for many of the same rea­sons they once sup­port­ed Al Qae­da in Iraq — as a bul­wark against being ruled by Tehran via Bagh­dad. Telling these Sun­ni peo­ple that their reward for ris­ing against the Islam­ic State in Syr­ia and Iraq will be to put them back in thrall to Mr. Assad and his ilk, or to Shi­ite-dom­i­nat­ed Bagh­dad, will sim­ply inten­si­fy their sup­port for the jihadists. Why would they switch sides?

This is why, after destroy­ing the Islam­ic State, Amer­i­ca should pur­sue the far-reach­ing goal of cre­at­ing a new Sun­ni state. Though dif­fi­cult in the near term, over time this is more con­ducive to region­al order and sta­bil­i­ty.

Cre­at­ing an Amer­i­can-led anti-Islam­ic State alliance instead of Moscow’s pro­posed coali­tion will require con­sid­er­able diplo­mat­ic and polit­i­cal effort. Amer­i­can ground com­bat forces will have to be deployed to pro­vide cohe­sion and lead­er­ship. But this would be nec­es­sary to defeat the Islam­ic State even if the objec­tive were sim­ply to recre­ate the sta­tus quo ante.

The Anbar Awak­en­ing and the Amer­i­can military’s 2007 “surge” pro­vide the mod­el, as do Kur­dish suc­cess­es against the Islam­ic State. Local fight­ers armed, trained and advised by the Unit­ed States would com­bine with Arab and Amer­i­can con­ven­tion­al forces.

The mil­i­tary oper­a­tion is not the hard­est part of this post-Islam­ic State vision. It will also require sus­tained Amer­i­can atten­tion and com­mit­ment. We can­not walk away from this sit­u­a­tion as we did from Iraq in 2011.

The new “Sun­ni-stan” may not be Switzer­land. This is not a democ­ra­cy ini­tia­tive, but cold pow­er pol­i­tics. It is con­sis­tent with the strate­gic objec­tive of oblit­er­at­ing the Islam­ic State that we share with our allies, and it is achiev­able.

“If, in this con­text, defeat­ing the Islam­ic State means restor­ing to pow­er Mr. Assad in Syr­ia and Iran’s pup­pets in Iraq, that out­come is nei­ther fea­si­ble nor desir­able. Rather than striv­ing to recre­ate the post-World War I map, Wash­ing­ton should rec­og­nize the new geopol­i­tics. The best alter­na­tive to the Islam­ic State in north­east­ern Syr­ia and west­ern Iraq is a new, inde­pen­dent Sun­ni state.”
When John Bolton backs Erdo­gan’s and ISIS’s calls for a new sec­tar­i­an map, well, we should prob­a­bly con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that mak­ing such a map real­i­ty is a seri­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty. Espe­cial­ly giv­en oth­er thorny real­i­ties like the fact that the Russ­ian mil­i­tary is now mak­ing it very clear hat a mil­i­tary defeat of Assad’s forces isn’t going to hap­pen any time soon.

Also keep in mind this this talk of redraw­ing the map of the Mid­dle East isn’t new from a promi­nent neo­con. Back in 2006, Lt Colonel Ralph Peters (who has called for “mil­i­tary attacks on par­ti­san media” dur­ing wartime, a sen­ti­ment Erdo­gan can prob­a­bly relate to) wrote his “Blood Bor­ders” piece for the Armed Forced Jour­nal which made the case that par­ti­tion­ing the Mid­dle East along eth­nic and sec­tar­i­an lines was the best long-term solu­tion for peace in the region. Trib­al­ism for World Peace! The point being that redraw­ing the map of the Mid­dle East has been an idea bandied about by influ­en­tial peo­ple for a while now and based on what we’ve heard from Erdo­gan it seems rea­son­able that it’s been some­thing he’s had in mind for a while too which is some­thing that might add some con­text to Turkey’s covert but aggres­sive back­ing of a ISIS’s attempts to carve out a new de fac­to state with or with­out the over­throw­ing Assad’s gov­ern­ment.

It also adds some con­text to sto­ries like Pres­i­dent Oba­ma hav­ing to call for Turkey to seal its bor­der in the areas where its known that ISIS fight­ers are flow­ing into and out of Syr­ia. Sure, Erdo­gan might be allow­ing those flows because he’d like to see the down­fall of Assad. But when a redraw­ing of the maps of Iraq and Syr­ia are also one of his goals, sim­ply main­tain­ing the exis­tence of ISIS as a de fac­to state (which is sit­ting on A LOT of oil) that makes putting Iraq and Syr­ia back togeth­er impos­si­ble might alone be enough of a moti­va­tion to keep those bor­ders open and those fight­ers flow­ing. In oth­er words, the mil­i­tary col­lapse of Assad’s forces may not be required for the achieve­ment of Erdo­gan’s strate­gic objec­tives for the region.

Adding to the intrigue is anoth­er very fas­ci­nat­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that’s emerg­ing as world pow­ers nego­ti­ate over the fate of Syr­ia and Iraq: Now that Rus­sia is direct­ly mil­i­tar­i­ly involved in ensure the Assad gov­ern­ment does­n’t mil­i­tar­i­ly col­lapse, the par­ti­tion­ing of Syr­ia and Iraq is prob­a­bly going to be seen as the only pos­si­ble solu­tion but it will be a solu­tion that will effec­tive­ly require the agree­ment of Rus­sia. And that rais­es all sorts of fas­ci­nat­ing poten­tial dynam­ics because Rus­si­a’s claim to Crimea is still con­test­ed by most of the world, not to men­tion the sta­tus of East­ern Ukraine. So...might we be in store for an upcom­ing grand bar­gain of sorts between Rus­sia, Turkey, and the West? Europe and the US rec­og­nizes Crimea as a Russ­ian state in exchange for Rus­sia back­ing a balka­nized Syr­ia and Iraq? Don’t for­get that Turkey has the capac­i­ty to cre­ate quite a few headaches in Crimea giv­en the large pop­u­la­tion of Tar­tars and the ties to pan-Turk­ist move­ments. Also don’t for­get that the down­ing of the Russ­ian jet hap­pened less than a week after some­one blew up pow­er pylon in Ukraine that were feed­ing elec­tric­i­ty into Crimea and it was Crimean Tar­tar activists, along with mem­bers of the Right Sec­tor, who endorsed the sab­o­tage and are block­ing Ukrain­ian repairs. As a result, Crimea is still with­out pow­er and when Rus­sia demand­ed that Ukraine repair the pylons, Kiev respond­ed by declar­ing a block­ade of all goods into Crimea. Also note that the man issu­ing demands on behalf of the Crimean Tar­tar pro­test­ers, Ukrain­ian MP and Crimean Tar­tar rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mustafa Dzhemilev, received Turkey’s high­est state award in April 2014:

Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty
Crimean Tatar Leader Receives Turkey’s High­est State Order

By RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Ser­vice

April 16, 2014

The vet­er­an leader of Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilev, has received Turkey’s high­est state award.

Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Abdul­lah Gul award­ed Dzhemilev with the Order of State of the Repub­lic of Turkey at a spe­cial cer­e­mo­ny in Turkey on April 15.

Dzhemilev, who is a Ukrain­ian law­mak­er, thanked Turkey for its sup­port of Ukraine in “this very chal­leng­ing and dif­fi­cult time.”

Dzhemilev, along with Ukrain­ian pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Petro Poroshenko, dis­cussed the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine with Gul on April 15.

Dzhemilev and Poroshenko told jour­nal­ists that Gul assured them that Ankara will nev­er rec­og­nize the annex­a­tion of Ukraine’s Crimea by Rus­sia, will sup­port Ukraine’s efforts to estab­lish order in its east­ern regions, and will con­tribute to peace and sta­bil­i­ty in the Black Sea region.

“Dzhemilev and Poroshenko told jour­nal­ists that Gul assured them that Ankara will nev­er rec­og­nize the annex­a­tion of Ukraine’s Crimea by Rus­sia, will sup­port Ukraine’s efforts to estab­lish order in its east­ern regions, and will con­tribute to peace and sta­bil­i­ty in the Black Sea region.”
That was then. But this isn’t 2014 and now that Rus­sia is mak­ing a mil­i­tary solu­tion to the Syr­i­an civ­il war very unlike­ly any time soon you have to won­der whether or not Ankara’s pledge to “nev­er” rec­og­nized the annex­a­tion of Crimea is real­ly a pledge to “nev­er” rec­og­nize that annex­a­tion, or whether an agree­ment to break of Syr­ia and Iraq might turn that “nev­er” pledge into a “not at the moment, but we’ll see” pledge. There’s a pret­ty clear ratch­et­ing of ten­sions between Rus­sia and Turkey, but when you con­sid­er the post-Syke-Picot dreams of Erdo­gan and oth­er, there’s a pret­ty clear poten­tial quid pro quo sit­ting there too. And as we saw with ideas like “Blood Bor­ders” get­ting bandied about in 2006, it’s a quid pro quo that quite a few gov­ern­ments or strate­gist have prob­a­bly been think­ing about for a while.

So when we’re think­ing about what could have moti­vat­ed Turkey to shoot down that plane, keep in mind that a ratch­et­ing of ten­sions with Rus­sia also dou­bles as quid pro quo appe­tiz­er.