John Kerry admits defeat: The Ukraine story the media won’t tell, and why U.S. retreat is a good thing
▻http://www.salon.com/2015/05/19/john_kerry_admits_defeat_the_ukraine_story_the_media_wont_tell_and_why_u_s_re
Ukraine, like Syria, got 10 percent of Kerry’s time in Sochi. I would have thought more, but this is what I am advised by sound Moscow sources. Of all the questions Kerry raised in Sochi, indeed, the new stance on Ukraine amounts to capitulation as well as a request for cooperation.
Readers will recall a rapid-fire sequence of events earlier this year. As the week of February 1 opened, the administration let it be known via a Times story—a straight feed, newspaper as bulletin board—that it was considering arming the Kiev regime. Next day came an announcement that Kerry was traveling to Ukraine, due for meetings Thursday. The topic seemed obvious.
That Wednesday things got interesting. Chancellor Merkel called François Hollande, the French president, and told him to fly to Kiev immediately. Why interesting: These three—Kerry, Merkel and Hollande—were there the same day, talking to the same government, and did not meet. All three then went to Moscow, again separately.
So far as I can make out, all that has occurred since flowed from that week. Merkel, Hollande and Putin convened another round of ceasefire talks with the Ukrainians in Minsk, where the Minsk II agreement was signed on February 11. Short work, which tells us something. Minsk II is fragile but still in effect and remains the basis for a negotiated settlement.
The Americans were excluded from Minsk—point blank, so far as one can make out. And I love the Times sentence on this in Monday’s paper: “Russia, Germany and France previously made it clear that they did not necessarily welcome the Americans at the negotiating table…” It reminds me of Hirohito announcing the surrender on Japanese radio: “The war has not necessarily proceeded to our advantage.”
At the moment described a long-simmering confrontation between the Europeans and Americans was about to boil over. It was the suggestion that American arms might begin to flow into the Ukrainian conflict that prompted Merkel, with Hollande behind her, to tell Washington, “Enough. Cut it out. We are not with you. We settle this at the table, not with missile systems.”
What we saw in Sochi was Kerry’s acceptance that Washington has been trumped in Ukraine: No one else will any longer stand by as Washington agitates for a military solution, no one is on board for ever-heightened confrontation with Moscow and—miss this not—no one else will any longer pretend that the Poroshenko government is other than a new crop of corrupt incompetents.