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‘ Over de endemische corruptie in de Oekraïne zijn bibliotheken vol geschreven. Het verhaal van generaal Rob Brauer is leuk voor de etalage (vermoedelijk zit Rutte er trouwens ergens op de een of andere manier achter – waarom zou Rutte spullenbaas van een failliete toko willen worden? Tenzij ….) maarre …. Nou ja, de Oekraïne bestaat de facto enkel nog op papier en in fantasie en de NAVO is bankroet (financieel en moreel) dus waarom goed geld naar slecht geld blijven smijten, nietwaar?
In het boek van Andrew Cockburn is H.7 (Undelivered Goods) gewijd aan de Oekraïne en daar komen namen voorbij waarvan je als normaal mens nog nooit hebt gehoord, maar die sleutelfuncties in het moeras bijken te vervullen. Een naam die we wel kennen, is Victoria Nuland. Een stukje over haar: “[D]espite her enthusiasm for Yatsenyuk, Nuland was clearly well aware of who was really pulling the strings in Ukrainian politics: the oligarchs, who had assembled enormous fortunes out of the wreckage of the Soviet economy. Chief among these were those connected to the import of Russian natural gas, on which Ukraine was heavily dependent, most especially Dmitry Firtash, a multimillionaire and key supporter of the government Nuland hoped to displace. This may explain why, at the end of 2013, Firtash found himself the subject of a US international “wanted” notice, charged with attempting to bribe local officials in distant India. He happened to be in Vienna, and a request was accordingly submitted to the Austrian government for his extradition back to the United States to stand trial.
On the day the request was submitted, Victoria Nuland left Washington on an urgent visit to Ukraine. President Yanukovych appeared to be backtracking on a pledge to sign an association agreement with theEuropean Union—the specific “biggest prize” cited by Gershman in a Washington Post op-ed the month before. If Yanukovych were to be persuaded to change his mind, threatening to put his sponsor Dmitry Firtash behind bars was a potent lever to apply. Four days later, Yanukovych signaled he was ready to sign, whereupon Washington lifted the request to shackle his billionaire ally.
A month later, Yanukovych changed course again, accepting a $15 billion Russian aid package. Street protests in Kyiv followed, eagerly endorsed by Nuland, who subsequently distributed cookies in gratitude to the demonstrators. Yanukovych fled Kyiv on February 22, and four days later the United States renewed the request to the Austrians to arrest Firtash.“
Best leuk om al die (vaak onuitspreekbare) namen bij elkaar in een verband en context te zien.
Verderop: “Although we hear much about corruption in countries such as Ukraine in general terms, a precise, detailed accounting of the means by which an impoverished country has been stripped of precious assets is not usually easy to come by. In this case however, thanks to investigative work by the Ukrainian anticorruption watchdog group Nashi Groshi (“Our Money”), we can actually watch the process by which the gigantic sum of $1.8 billion was smoothly maneuvered offshore, in the first instance to PrivatBank accounts in Cyprus, and thence into accounts in Belize, the British Virgin Islands and other outposts of the international financial galaxy.
The scheme, as revealed in a series of court judgments of the Economic Court of the Dnipropetrovsk region monitored and reported by Nashi Groshi, worked in this way: Forty-two Ukrainian firms owned by fifty-four offshore entities registered in Caribbean, American and Cypriot jurisdictions and linked to or affiliated with the Privat group of companies, took out loans from PrivatBank in Ukraine to the value of $1.8 billion. The firms then ordered goods from six foreign “supplier” companies, three of which were incorporated in the United Kingdom, two in the British Virgin Islands, one in the Caribbean statelet of St. Kitts & Nevis. Payment for the orders—$1.8 billion—was shortly afterward prepaid into the vendors’ accounts, which were, coincidentally, in the Cyprus branch of PrivatBank.
Once the money was sent, the Ukrainian importing companies arranged with PrivatBank Ukraine that their loans be guaranteed by the goods on order.
But the foreign suppliers invariably reported that they could not fulfill the order after all, thus breaking the contracts, but without any effort to return the money. Finally, the Ukrainian companies filed suit, always in the Dnipropetrovsk Economic Court, demanding that the foreign supplier return the prepayment and also that the guarantee to PrivatBank be canceled. In forty-two out of forty-two such cases the court issued the identical judgment: the advance payment should be returned to the Ukrainian company, but the loan agreement should remain in force.” % % einde citaat % %
Nog een boek: Erik S. Herron (202): Normalizing Corruption: Failures of Accountability in Ukraine – ISBN-13: 978-0-19-975622-3. en nog eentje:
Oleg Bazaluk (2016) Corruption in Ukraine : Rulers’ Mentality and the Destiny of the Nation, Geophilosophy of Ukraine. ISBN-13: 978-1-4438-9814-0.
Het thema wapenproducenten en -leveranciers (denk aan Raytheon en Lockheed Martin) en hun netwerken (heel veel oud-generaals die op de loonlijsten staan als expertoloog-deskundoloog-consultant ….. ) beslaat weer een aparte bibliotheek.
Kortom: de Oekraïne is voor sommige gremia een goudmijn, maar voor de bevolking en het land is het een nachtmerrie. Hoe langer “wij” (vanuit onze NOBELE motieven) wapens en geld blijven sturen, hoe langer de nachtmerrie voor hen duurt.’
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Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith (2016) Chapter 6. John Kennedy and Barack Obama: Two Paths of “Peace.” – ISBN 978-1-61039-664-6 (ebook) (het citaat is geredigeerd).
% % citaat % % [E]ven America’s most iconic presidents chose between war and peace based largely on what was good for them rather than whether it was good for “We, the people.” In doing so, they always had to face the difficult calculation of the personal and national expected costs and benefits of war and, as is too often overlooked, the costs and benefits of peace. War, after all, is neither inherently always the wrong course to take, nor is it necessarily the right way to solve foreign—or domestic—crises.
Our central concern continues to be an effort to foster an understanding that even as extreme a policy as deciding to wage war—or to live with an uncomfortable peace—is shaped by calculations of personal political interest above any notion of a national grand strategy or national interest.
Here we shall further illustrate these ideas with two examples that did not lead to war: the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the Ukraine crisis of 2014, each a dispute involving the United States and Russia. Comparing these events will help to nail down the realization that war avoidance— sometimes wisely and sometimes dangerously—follows the same logic that entails all the concerns James Madison so eloquently set forth about the dangers of executive authority over questions of war and peace. Madison, wise man that he was, expressed a clear and compelling judgment of politicians, of which, of course, he was one: “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” % % einde citaat % %
- ‘ Wat meneer Bauer vooral bepleit, is lijkt mij, het in elkaar schuiven van de politieke nomenklatoera en het wapen-productie-complex: een oorlogseconomie. Daartoe zou er eventueel een (semi-permanente) noodtoestad moet worden geïnstitutionaliseerd:
“Wat wij moeten doen is onze economie in een soort oorlogseconomie brengen. Dat is wettelijk lastig. In sommige landen zijn regeringen eigenaar of deels eigenaar van de defensie-industrie. Daar kan de overheid directer druk zetten. In Nederland en Duitsland is het een discussie tussen overheid, industrie en financiers om te investeren in productiecapaciteit. En dat duurt allemaal veel te lang. Het is naïef om te denken dat dit alleen maar het probleem is van de Oekraïners. Het duurt te lang voordat dit op gang komt.”Dan zijn we bij Giorgio Agamben (ISBN 0 226 00924 6; 978 94 92734 12 9) en Kees van der Pijl 978 1 949762 48 8) beland.
