Large-scale collapse of Ukraine is inevitable
The Ukrainian crisis, which forced experts to talk about the new Cold War, caused in the domestic establishment a reasonable dispute over what Russia might lose if it were applied to it with full-scale Iran-type sanctions. The very possibility of their very doubtful - Russia in all respects is not Iran. It is far less vulnerable, plays a significantly larger role in the global economy, has a nuclear potential and is capable of inflicting damage to any probable enemy.
Until recently, such a "cooling" seemed to Russian Euro-optimists impossible by definition. But the discussion about sanctions, measures to minimize their impact, and the lessons that Russian leaders could draw from the current conflict situation can be useful in itself. Especially if the discussion is conducted taking into account the analysis of the system of relations between the United States and other NATO countries with opponents and allies during the second half of the XX - beginning of the XXI century.
An impartial analysis of US relations with its closest allies, including France and Britain, as well as with non-allied Israel, shows that despite their compliance with all criteria, the criteria of Western democratic society, which Russia, according to critics, does not fit The system of these relations goes far beyond the acceptable between the partners, all the more equal.
USA as an ally-dictator
Rather, it is a question of unilateral domination, in which the senior partner (USA) cares little about the interests of the allies. As the analysis of the Israeli political scientist Dr. Epstein showed, the leadership of the United States has neglected and is ready to neglect Israel even in situations that are fatally dangerous for the existence of the Jewish state. At the same time, as can be observed in the situation with Ukraine, the matter concerns not American national interests, but only departmental or personal ambitions of politicians and officials.
In addition to what happened throughout stories Israel’s repeated refusal by the United States to ensure the security of this state and direct blackmail of its leaders during negotiations with Egypt, Syria and the Palestinian leadership, mediated by the Americans, is important for the United States to establish control over the Israeli military-industrial complex. In particular, Washington forced to sign an agreement on mandatory notification of export contracts of Israeli defense corporations and the coordination of their plans with Washington.
Also, the Americans actually forced the Israelis to abandon the creation of the Lavi fighter-bomber, the drawings of which were sold to China in the 2000s, despite the Americans' attempts to prevent this deal. Experts believe that thereby disrupted the production of the aircraft, which surpassed the American Phantom in a number of parameters. As a result, about six thousand engineers and technicians were left without work in Israel, a significant part of whom were forced to emigrate to the United States. It is difficult to assess the damage caused by the abandonment of the project “Lavi” national aviation industry and high technology.
At the same time, the United States tried to carry out the same operation against tank industry of Israel. The preservation of the Merkava project, which in the fourth modification is one of the best tanks in the world, is regarded by professionals as an accident. For some reason, the price of American cars offered in return for Israeli developments was much higher. Since the Israeli Ministry of Finance could not agree on a purchase for the needs of the IDF, the relevant industry of the military-industrial complex was saved.
As is known, under the direct pressure of the White House in 90-x and 2000, transactions for the supply of aircraft of joint production with Russia, as well as Israeli UAVs to the PRC, were broken, which for a long time closed the Chinese market for Jerusalem. This period also includes the failure of the tender, under which a batch of Russian-Israeli-made helicopters, superior in combat qualities to their American counterparts, was to enter Turkey. As for the latest examples, in May 2014 was lost to Israel in favor of the United States for the supply of equipment for the renovation of Poland’s air defense systems for 13 billions of dollars.
It is characteristic that American politicians have made and are making special efforts to thwart or complicate military-technical cooperation with Russia, especially if joint products may turn out to be shipped to China. Only in situations where the Russian Federation and Israel are direct competitors, as in the supply of weapons and military equipment (CWT) to India, and especially where the US cannot compete directly, does Washington not object to potential deals.
In the most sensitive nuclear area for Israel, the White House has been opposing a Middle Eastern ally for decades. Let's leave outside the scope of this article the political aspect of the problem. Blocking relevant anti-Israel resolutions in the UN and the IAEA for the US official is only a tool that can gradually get access to information about the real situation with the Israeli strategic arsenal. However, the country's nuclear program from the very beginning was developed secretly from the United States. This is also because the level of confidence in the ability and desire of American friends to keep Israel’s national secrets is zero.
There are many examples of authorized and unauthorized leaks of information on the most important aspects of foreign and defense policy for ensuring Israel’s security. The most recent and painful is the plum in the press from the White House of information on the preparation by Jerusalem of operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The leak could be resolved only by the President of the United States. This is understandable, given Obama’s actual refusal of obligations regarding the security of Saudi Arabia and Israel given by the previous administration. Moreover, the leadership of the United States has recently had the necessary information to fully control what is happening in Israel in the military sphere.
Among other things, this information is supplied to the Pentagon by an American radar erected in the Negev desert, which should monitor the situation in the Persian Gulf, the Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the Suez Canal and other areas vital for the smooth operation of the world communications system. Israel, on whose territory the radar is located, has access to the information received only by a special decision of Washington. For American practice, this is not an exception, but the rule of using objects of this kind, it allows you to track your own territory of Israel, preventing excessive, from the point of view of overseas allies, the military activity of the country through the described combinations with information leakage without open conflict.
In the domestic literature, special and popular, the level of cooperation between the United States and Israel is greatly exaggerated. Suffice it to recall that special operations in Iraq against mobile rocket launchers that bombarded Israel during the Gulf war were conducted by the IDF in secret. General Colin Powell, the commander of the Allied forces who fought against Iraq, demanded from Jerusalem not only the refusal to participate in the anti-Iraq coalition (this meant the withdrawal of Arab countries from it, primarily Syria), but also that Israel did not respond to the shelling of its territory.
Accordingly, there was no official reaction to the shelling. But the expectations placed on the Patriot missile launchers, provided to Israel by the Americans, turned out to be too high. A significant part of the Iraqi "Scuds" was able to pass this air defense system. The low accuracy of their hit and the fact that there were no stabilizers in Iraq, without which the use of chemical weapons the missile warheads lost their meaning and were technically impossible; they had nothing to do with the US efforts to protect Israel, much more publicized than real.
This attitude is also manifested in the NATO countries, cooperation with which is non-permanent for Israel. In certain periods in the military-technical sphere, its main partners were France and Germany, the latter being a long time, right up to the present moment. It was cooperation with Berlin that allowed Jerusalem to put into service modern dolphin-class submarines with cruise missiles that, if need be, can be equipped with nuclear warheads. At the same time, the refusal of the Germans to fulfill an agreement on the provision of discounts for the purchase of missile boats, which sounded in May 2014 as a reaction to the disruption of the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations that occurred after the unification of Fatah and Hamas, demonstrated the riskiness of this cooperation.
It is significant that the sharp deterioration of Israel’s relations with France during de Gaulle’s time also began with the incident around the boats that were built for the Israeli Navy, due to foreign policy conditions not transferred and at Christmas 1969 were hijacked by the customer. After that, for a long period, France, which emerged from the Algerian war, developed relations with the Arab countries in the Middle East. Up to the construction of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, which was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 1981 during Operation Opera.
The United States strongly condemned the bombing, as did the Soviet Union and most of the NATO member states. But if the reactor stood in its place and worked in a regular mode, no operation to oust Iraq from Kuwait after a decade could not have been dreamed of and the modern history of the Near and Middle East (BSV) went the other way. With its help, Iraq is guaranteed to become a nuclear power, to attack which, as North Korea shows, even in the modern world, no one decides. Moreover, the anti-Saddam coalition in 1990 – 1991 would be impossible.
It is curious that the United States, having recognized Israel de jure significantly later than the Soviet Union, did not render it any military assistance. On the contrary, Washington imposed an arms embargo on the Middle East conflict zone, which at the end of the 40s meant support from Arab countries. After all, these states received weapons from Europe, primarily from Great Britain, and the most combat-ready units were commanded by British officers. Say, in Jordan, it was General Glabb.
Unlike America and Western Europe, the USSR supported Israel with supplies of military hardware from Czechoslovakia, and this made physical survival in the war of independence possible. When relations between Moscow and Jerusalem deteriorated during the Anglo-French-Israeli operation in 1956, Washington came out in one bond with Moscow against securing the Israelis in Sinai and the return of the Suez Canal to the control of the Franco-British consortium.
Israeli experience is useful to Russia
Returning to the current state of Russian-American and Russian-European relations, we note that the lessons of the past should be taken into account when considering the reaction of the Western community to the course of the Ukrainian crisis and the results of referendums in the Crimea and in south-eastern Ukraine. Any further steps by Russia in the course and at the end of the presidential elections in this country at the end of May, whether they take place or not, regardless of the results, will be evaluated negatively. The reaction to the statements of Moscow and the actions of the Western community in any case will be inadequate, no matter what.
This happens because Russia does not fit into the number of allies of the West in the traditional sense of the word, and it is clearly not suitable for actions under the control of the community included in G7. Including due to independence and concern, first of all, about real national interests, and not about the “interests of the world community” existing in the theory. Opponent of the West, at least for now, despite the extremely hostile rhetoric of Western politicians and the media, is also not. Russia is a part of a civilized space that is united with Europe, although in essence foreign policy and projects implemented on its territory resemble the United States much more.
Adjusted for the size of the country and its considerable independence, relations with Russia resemble Israeli-Western ones. The difference is that Moscow can allow itself actions that Jerusalem does not even dream of, since it is not afraid of blackmail, and the threat of sanctions is precisely blackmail. What, in particular, is proved by the precision, selectivity and dosage of half-measures directed against Moscow, called sanctions, which are discussed and put into effect by US and European politicians and officials of the US and EU foreign affairs agencies.
At the same time, the situation of the collapse of Ukraine has become irreversible and Russia will have to react to it, if only for reasons of its own security. The southeast and central regions of this country may soon turn into the arena of a full-scale bloody civil war. To what extent the Donetsk and Luhansk republics will be able to ensure their independence, which regions will join them later are questions that have no answer. At the same time, militant nationalists and neo-fascist groups in Western Ukraine have every chance of becoming a leading military-political force.
Against the background of the statement by Yarosh, the leader of the Neobander's Right Sector, about the need to deploy a partisan, that is, sabotage and terrorist war against Russia, including the Crimean Tatars, in the southeastern Ukraine, the Israeli experience in curbing this kind of danger beyond its own borders. Applying it to leaders of Palestinian and Lebanese extremist groups saved many lives. With regard to the threats of the Ukrainian radicals, this experience is important.
Condemnation of such actions by the Western community, which (especially in the face of the special services and the US Army) has been practicing strikes against the civilian population in the Middle East for many years, including the use of UAVs, can only be regarded as double standards. Moreover, the electoral accuracy of Israeli retaliation, which, to the extent possible, does not affect the civilian population, even in the most serious cases, is not practiced by Americans. In the operations they carry out, between one-third and one-half of the victims are random civilians.
Among the most consistent supporters of Russia can be attributed to the former head of the Israeli "Nativ" Yakov Kedmi. It is characteristic that a number of leading Western experts believed that the security of Russia could be ensured only if the operation to overthrow President Yanukovich and replace him with someone from the United States and the EU protégés would completely fail, even if Moscow had to temporarily take over Ukraine The holding of a referendum in the Crimea and its reunification with Russia was evaluated by them as a brilliant operation from the point of view of military-political professionalism. The reaction of the West to it is as weak and inadequate.
At the same time, the holding of presidential elections, regardless of their legitimacy and the size of fraud, in terms of this part of the expert community, greatly increases the level of external threat for Russia. At the same time, they note: the idea of what the Kremlin can do in a given situation depends mainly on how highly a politician or an expert evaluates the potential of Russia, primarily military-technical. At the same time, no one in the West has any objective information about him, which in 2008 showed a catastrophic failure of Georgia in an attempt to force control of South Ossetia in a head-on collision with Russia.
It is obvious that the repetition of the situation with the Crimea throughout the territory of Ukraine is impossible and the Russian leadership is well aware of this. The diplomatic efforts of Moscow, which are designed to help stop the Ukrainian civil war, in which it is not excluded, will have to intervene, are intended, despite the way they are perceived in the West, to preserve Ukraine as a single state. However, the chances that the current government in Kiev will hear the proposals of Moscow are not just minimal - they are equal to zero. This also applies to the possibility of carrying out a coordinated policy of Russia, the EU and the USA in Ukraine. Brussels and Washington are set to confrontation.
As a consequence, the economic, political and military collapse of Ukraine is inevitable, as the inevitable emergence of problems with the transportation of natural gas through its territory to the EU countries. Russia's decision to transfer Ukraine to prepay for gas cannot be compensated for either by American shale gas, or by transferring the country's energy sector to reversible supplies from European storage facilities. The first is impossible for at least three to five years, even if we forget about the price of shale gas transported across the Atlantic on the European market. The second, contrary to assurances of European solidarity, simply has no chance of implementation. Ultimately, the outcome of the current Ukrainian crisis will depend on the ratio of the desired and possible for all parties to the conflict, primarily Russia, the United States and the European Union. As throughout history has been with Israel. And this is an example that is extremely encouraging to Russia.
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