This thought-provoking article by Robert Parry at Lew Rockwell.com was sent to me by Mr. V.T., a regular reader, and it's worth having a close look at his thesis:

Neocons’ Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit

While there is much in Mr. Parry's article that deserves careful consideration, I want to draw the reader's attention to two things. The first is how geopolitics was used to split the Obama-Putin nexus:

"Though the Ukraine crisis has roots going back decades, the chronology of the recent uprising — and the neocon interest in it – meshes neatly with neocon fury over Obama and Putin working together to avert a U.S. military strike against Syria last summer and then brokering an interim nuclear agreement with Iran last fall that effectively took a U.S. bombing campaign against Iran off the table. "With those two top Israeli priorities – U.S. military attacks on Syria and Iran – sidetracked, the American neocons began activating their influential media and political networks to counteract the Obama-Putin teamwork. The neocon wedge to splinter Obama away from Putin was driven into Ukraine. "Operating out of neocon enclaves in the U.S. State Department and at U.S.-funded non-governmental organizations, led by the National Endowment for Democracy, neocon operatives targeted Ukraine even before the recent political unrest began shaking apart the country’s fragile ethnic and ideological cohesion."

Thus, Mr. Putin had to be "put in play":

"So, the troublesome Putin had to be put in play. And, NED’s Gershman was quick to note a key Russian vulnerability, neighboring Ukraine, where a democratically elected but corrupt president, Viktor Yanukovych, was struggling with a terrible economy and weighing whether to accept a European aid offer, which came with many austerity strings attached, or work out a more generous deal with Russia."

As Mr. Parry correctly notes, the Yankovich government in Kiev had negotiated a better financial deal with Moscow when the West pulled the plug on his regime, and staged what can only be said to be a coup, using covert operations and cut-outs. The plan has, of course, significantly backfired as the "new" Nazis in Kiev have overplayed their hand in private telephone calls(recall Ms. Tymoshenko's call to kill 8,000,000 Russians with nukes), and the subsidiary goal of de-fanging Russia's ability to project power in the region via its Black Sea Fleet failed with the Crimean referendum, which, as Mr. Putin pointed out, was clearly legal within the terms of treaty obligations.

The unsung hero in the drama, however, is President Obama.

Yes, you may quit rubbing your eyes in disbelief. Readers here know I have no love lost for the president's policies, but the fact remains, that he has held the line against the warmongers, and avoided drastic actions against Iran and Syria that would have led to an unnecessary bloodbath for both countries, and the probable high loss of American lives. Such madness would only have further weakened the American position both financially and militarily. If it be doubted that there is a real struggle going on between the Administration and the neo-con rogue element within the institutions of American government and media power, consider only that the President, in imposing sanctions, took the unprecedented step of imposing sanctions only on certain Russians and institutions. It is, of course, the move of a politician walking a tightrope, trying to appease those interests on the one hand, and to avoid open economic warfare with Russia, which holds some powerful cards should that have happened, such as a threat to dump dollars. For this, the President has been mercilessly villified in the neo-con lamestream media (principally Faux news and other networks) as being weak, and of course the media campaign to portray Mr. Putin as some sort of throwback to Stalin continues.

But the other point of the article should not be overlooked:

"On Feb. 21, in a desperate attempt to tamp down the violence, Yanukovych signed an agreement brokered by European countries. He agreed to surrender many of his powers, to hold early elections (so he could be voted out of office), and pull back the police. That last step, however, opened the way for the neo-Nazi militias to overrun government buildings and force Yanukovych to flee for his life. "With these modern-day storm troopers controlling key buildings – and brutalizing Yanukovych supporters – a rump Ukrainian parliament voted, in an extra-constitutional fashion, to remove Yanukovych from office. This coup-installed regime, with far-right parties controlling four ministries including defense, received immediate U.S. and European Union recognition as Ukraine’s “legitimate” government. "As remarkable – and newsworthy – as it was that a government on the European continent included Nazis in the executive branch for the first time since World War II, the U.S. news media performed as it did before the Iraq War and during various other international crises. It essentially presented the neocon-preferred narrative and treated the presence of the neo-Nazis as some kind of urban legend."

But these groups, I am bold to suggest, are not "Neo"-Nazi at all. They represent a continuation of those front groups created by General Reinhard Gehlen's Fremde Heere Ost in the final days of World War two, front groups that were disguised as "nations in exile" and which included Byelo-Russian fronts, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian fronts, and, of course, Ukrainian groups with historical associations to Bandera and the Vlasov army of World War Two. These exilee groups, as Russ Bellant detailed in his study Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, became prominent financial supporters of the American right during the Reagan and Bush eras. What has surfaced in Kiev, in other words, isn't "neo"-Nazi at all, it is just plain ole' Nazi, and it's high time we recognize the fact by dropping the use of the word "neo" in that respect. What has surfaced through all of the covert operations and all the coups, is our good old "friend", the Nazi International, and behind it, that old "rogue element" within the American "notional security" complex that Premier Krushchev warned about in the aftermath of the downing of Francis Gary Powers' U-2, that President Eisenhower warned about upon leaving office, that Valerian Zorin stated was behind the assassination of President Kennedy.

Fascism is Fascism, folks, and it's high time we recognize that World War Two's end did not constitute some sort of rupture, or break, either in the philosophy, or its institutional organization, history, or power.

See you on the flip side.