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John Roberts Didn't Save Obamacare - He Gutted It |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=30217"><span class="small">Jim Newell, Salon</span></a>
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Monday, 14 April 2014 13:47 |
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COMMENTTHREE
Chief Justice John Roberts. (photo: Larry Downing/Pool/AP)
John Roberts Didn't Save Obamacare - He Gutted It
By Jim Newell, Salon
14 April 14
Time to stop saying he "upheld" healthcare reform. He could have killed it more, yes, but here's what he really did
 early two years ago, by a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court allegedly “upheld” Obamacare. More specifically, the thinking at the time went, it was Chief Justice John Roberts who, in a herculean act of statesmanship, cast the deciding vote to “uphold” Obamacare. Celebrations ensued among supporters of the law; President Obama himself delivered remarks saying, “the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.”
John Roberts certainly could have done much more damage to the law, had he chosen to. He could have joined the four other conservatives on the bench who were prepared to take down not just the individual mandate, but the entire law itself. What a peach.
Still, as early estimates of the newly ensured under Obamacare’s implementation are rolling in, it’s time to write a second draft of history — one that doesn’t include anything about John Roberts “upholding” or “saving” Obamacare. Because that’s an odd way to describe a decision that gutted the most effective part of the law.
While the White House was popping champagne over the survival of the law’s requirement for individuals to obtain health coverage or suffer a tax penalty, Republican-held state governments were more focused on that “other” part of the majority decision: the one that allowed states to opt out of the law’s Medicaid expansion and suffer no consequences to its pre-expansion Medicaid funding. The White House, at least publicly, blew this off. “Senior Obama administration officials downplayed the impact of the Medicaid portion of the court ruling, saying as a practical matter it is not particularly significant,” the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. After all, the thinking went, what state would be crazy enough to turn down all this money — an expansion that the federal government would fund 100 percent of in the beginning, and 90 percent of permanently?
Two years later, we have the answer: Many, many states would be precisely that crazy! Let’s call it two dozen. The Kaiser Family Foundation breaks it down as 19 states “not moving forward at this time,” while the issue is under “open debate” in five states. And it is definitely not certain that those “open debates” will produce Medicaid expansions.
When the law was crafted, it was estimated that the Medicaid expansion — covering all those up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level — would add 17 million to the rolls of the insured, comprising approximately half of the total. This was the law’s broadest, bluntest instrument for reducing the uninsured, targeting those who needed relief the most: the poor.
And a number of estimates are coming in now confirming that Medicaid, not the individual exchanges, has been the more successful tool for bringing down the country’s percentage of uninsured.
The Rand Corp.’s latest survey finds that the nation’s uninsured rate dropped from 20.5 to 15.8 percent from September 2013 to mid-March 2014. And of those who were previously uninsured but are now insured, 3.6 million can be accredited to Medicaid, while 1.4 million found insurance through the exchanges.
The Urban Institute’s survey — which, like the Rand Corp.’s, does not cover the late-March surge in enrollment – found that ”5.4 million U.S. adults gained health insurance since September 2013,” and had this to offer about Medicaid:
States that implemented the ACA’s Medicaid expansion saw a larger decline: their uninsurance rates for adults dropped 4.0 percentage points since September, compared with a drop of 1.5 percentage points for the nonexpanding states. The average uninsurance rate for adults in the 24 nonexpanding states was 18.1 percent in March 2014, well above the 12.4 percent average in the expansion states.
(There is one caveat: “[T]he difference in coverage gains between the states that did and did not expand Medicaid should not be entirely attributed to that policy decision,” the Urban Institute adds. “There were other policy choices that likely affected enrollment. For example, many of the nonexpansion states did not set up their own marketplaces and therefore did not get the same access to outreach and enrollment assistance funding.” Nevertheless, even if the gap isn’t “entirely” attributable to the Medicaid decision, it’s certainly a hefty chunk of it.)
All this good news about the success of the Medicaid expansion for the states that did accept it only amplifies the damage done by the states that didn’t – again, a choice offered to them by the so-called heroic savior of Obamacare, Saint John Roberts.
Just how many are being left off the rolls thanks to Roberts’ decision that “upheld Obamacare”? The Kaiser Family Foundation puts it at 5 million, in just the next year.
About 5 million people will be without health care next year that they would have gotten simply if they lived somewhere else in America.
They make up a coverage gap in President Barack Obama’s signature health care law created by the domino effects of last year’s Supreme Court ruling and states’ subsequent policy decisions.
The court effectively left it up to states to decide whether to open Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor and disabled, to more people, primarily poor working adults without children.
Twenty-five states declined. That leaves 4.8 million people in those states without the health care coverage that their peers elsewhere are getting through the expansion of Medicaid, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation estimate. More than one-fifth of them live in Texas alone, Kaiser’s analysis found.
The numbers so far make it clear that the Roberts court’s decision to let states opt out of the Medicaid expansion — Obamacare’s single most effective tool for slashing away at the uninsurance rate — has directly blocked many millions from access to health coverage.
So never again should Roberts be given credit for “saving” or “upholding Obamacare.” His role in the case should be described as providing the swing vote to “gut” Obamacare. When the Roberts court invalidated Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act last year, for example, no one said “John Roberts upholds the Voting Rights Act” or “John Roberts saves the Voting Rights Act.” The takeaway, quite accurately, was that John Roberts’ opinion in the 5-4 case “gutted” the Voting Rights Act by taking away its most effective tool. How is what he did to Obamacare any different?
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Another Pipeline, Another Leak |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Monday, 14 April 2014 13:44 |
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Pierce writes: "We should miss no opportunity to remind ourselves that pipelines leak, and that the people who own them do not care a great deal whether they do or not, because that's just a sunk cost of doing the pipeline business."
Demonstrators calling for the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, 2011. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Another Pipeline, Another Leak
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
14 April 14
 ccasionally, as we consider the fate of our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel that will bring the world's dirtiest fossil fuel through the heart of some of the richest farmland in the world, we should miss no opportunity to remind ourselves that pipelines leak, and that the people who own them do not care a great deal whether they do or not, because that's just a sunk cost of doing the pipeline business. This is a rule so hard and fast that the fact that, when a pipeline leaks and does extensive damage, it doesn't even qualify as a national news story any more.
For example, Hamilton County, Ohio has been glopped up for almost a month from a spill that occurred in the middle of...wait for it...a wildlife refuge.
The cost for cleanup could be steep. Crews will need to "build a
road" to get heavy machinery into the spill area, a part of the Oak
Glen Nature Preserve, to vacuum up the oil and dig up contaminated soil.
With rain in the forecast, a containment structure will be built to
capture oil and keep it from reaching the Great Miami River, just some
500 feet away, or spreading out on the site, said Heather Lauer, a
spokeswoman for the Ohio EPA.
In other words, they have to do some more environmental damage to keep the original environmental damage from doing some more environmental damage. Lovely. And, of course, this is a case of corporate recidivism, because it always is.
Federal records show inspectors last checked the pipeline in 2011;
the records do not include any current or ongoing inspections. A
system-wide inspection of the 1,119-mile-long pipeline in 2009 resulted
in the company paying a $48,700 fine in 2012 for failing to address
corrosion problems in the pipeline at the Oregon refinery for three
years. In addition, the operator was issued three warnings
stemming from the 2009 inspection. One of them was for failing to
inspect the pipeline crossing under the Ohio River between Addyston and
Hebron for more than five years. Pipelines that go beneath bodies of
navigable water must get additional scrutiny under federal regulation.
The pipeline was not checked by running an inspection device through it
from May 2004 until August 2009. In addition, the federal records
show Mid-Valley received a warning in 2006 for not having pipeline route
markers along a pipeline section in Hebron where people could reach it.
And it was fined $35,000 in 2006 for a 2002 inspection where the
operator was cited for failing to run a proper program of continuing
education reminding people that the pipeline runs through parts of
Kentucky and Ohio. The operator had sent calendars to residents living
near the pipeline, but didn't include any public agencies or excavation
services in the program. From 2006-13, leaks and spills from the pipeline caused $7.5 million in
property damage, $1.3 million done in 2008 in Burlington. In the
previous 39 accidents, 88 percent of the oil spilled was recovered.
And the inevitable epilogue entitled, "OK, so it's more than we said it was."
Federal environmental officials now estimate more than 20,000 gallons
of crude oil - double the initial estimates - leaked from a pipeline
into a nature preserve in southwest Ohio. Meanwhile, Sunoco
Logistics said Monday that the pipeline has been repaired and reopened.
Sunoco shut off the stretch of Mid-Valley Pipeline from Hebron, Ky., to
Lima, Ohio, early March 18 after a leak was confirmed. Sunoco
spokesman Jeff Shields said under a federally approved plan, a specially
engineered clamp was placed on the 20-inch diameter pipeline, which had
a 5-inch crack that leaked oil. The clamp was tested before oil flow
resumed Sunday evening. Shields declined to say how much of the
oil supply was disrupted in the last week in a system that runs about
1,000 miles from Texas to Michigan. He said the information is considered internal company business.
Oh, well alright then.
Those fines are a joke. The companies involved can shake 35 grand out of the sofa cushions in the lobby.
Anyway, heard about this?
I didn't think so.
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Our Big, Fat, Not-So-Secret War in Africa |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7517"><span class="small">Nick Turse, TomDispatch</span></a>
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Monday, 14 April 2014 13:43 |
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Turse writes: "What the military will say to a reporter and what is said behind closed doors are two very different things -- especially when it comes to the U.S. military in Africa."
US Army special forces with troops from the Central African Republic and Uganda, in Obo, Central African Republic. (photo: AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
Our Big, Fat, Not-So-Secret War in Africa
By Nick Turse, TomDispatch
14 April 14
 hat the military will say to a reporter and what is said behind closed doors are two very different things -- especially when it comes to the U.S. military in Africa. For years, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has maintained a veil of secrecy about much of the command’s activities and mission locations, consistently downplaying the size, scale, and scope of its efforts. At a recent Pentagon press conference, AFRICOM Commander General David Rodriguez adhered to the typical mantra, assuring the assembled reporters that the United States “has little forward presence” on that continent. Just days earlier, however, the men building the Pentagon’s presence there were telling a very different story -- but they weren’t speaking with the media. They were speaking to representatives of some of the biggest military engineering firms on the planet. They were planning for the future and the talk was of war.
I recently experienced this phenomenon myself during a media roundtable with Lieutenant General Thomas Bostick, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. When I asked the general to tell me just what his people were building for U.S. forces in Africa, he paused and said in a low voice to the man next to him, “Can you help me out with that?” Lloyd Caldwell, the Corps’s director of military programs, whispered back, “Some of that would be close hold” -- in other words, information too sensitive to reveal.
The only thing Bostick seemed eager to tell me about were vague plans to someday test a prototype “structural insulated panel-hut,” a new energy-efficient type of barracks being developed by cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He also assured me that his people would get back to me with answers. What I got instead was an “interview” with a spokesman for the Corps who offered little of substance when it came to construction on the African continent. Not much information was available, he said, the projects were tiny, only small amounts of money had been spent so far this year, much of it funneled into humanitarian projects. In short, it seemed as if Africa was a construction backwater, a sleepy place, a vast landmass on which little of interest was happening.
Fast forward a few weeks and Captain Rick Cook, the chief of U.S. Africa Command’s Engineer Division, was addressing an audience of more than 50 representatives of some of the largest military engineering firms on the planet -- and this reporter. The contractors were interested in jobs and he wasn’t pulling any punches. “The eighteen months or so that I’ve been here, we’ve been at war the whole time,” Cook told them. “We are trying to provide opportunities for the African people to fix their own African challenges. Now, unfortunately, operations in Libya, South Sudan, and Mali, over the last two years, have proven there’s always something going on in Africa.”
Cook was one of three U.S. military construction officials who, earlier this month, spoke candidly about the Pentagon’s efforts in Africa to men and women from URS Corporation, AECOM, CH2M Hill, and other top firms. During a paid-access web seminar, the three of them insisted that they were seeking industry “partners” because the military has “big plans” for the continent. They foretold a future marked by expansion, including the building up of a “permanent footprint” in Djibouti for the next decade or more, a possible new compound in Niger, and a string of bases devoted to surveillance activities spreading across the northern tier of Africa. They even let slip mention of a small, previously unacknowledged U.S. compound in Mali.
The Master Plan
After my brush off by General Bostick, I interviewed an Army Corps of Engineers Africa expert, Chris Gatz, about construction projects for Special Operations Command Africa in 2013. “I’ll be totally frank with you,” he said, “as far as the scopes of these projects go, I don’t have good insights.”
What about two projects in Senegal I had stumbled across? Well, yes, he did, in fact, have information about a firing range and a “shoot house” that happened to be under construction there. When pressed, he also knew about plans I had noted in previously classified documents obtained by TomDispatch for the Corps to build a multipurpose facility in Cameroon. And on we went. “You’ve got better information than I do,” he said at one point, but it seemed like he had plenty of information, too. He just wasn’t volunteering much of it to me.
Later, I asked if there were 2013 projects that had been funded with counter-narco-terrorism (CNT) money. “No, actually there was not,” he told me. So I specifically asked about Niger.
Last year, AFRICOM spokesman Benjamin Benson confirmed to TomDispatch that the U.S. was conducting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR, drone operations from Base Aérienne 101 at Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, the capital of Niger. In the months since, air operations there have only increased. In addition, documents recently obtained by TomDispatch indicated that the Army Corps of Engineers has been working on two counter-narco-terrorism projects in Arlit and Tahoua, Niger. So I told Gatz what I had uncovered. Only then did he locate the right paperwork. “Oh, okay, I’m sorry,” he replied. “You’re right, we have two of them... Both were actually awarded to construction.”
Those two CNT construction projects have been undertaken on behalf of Niger’s security forces, but in his talk to construction industry representatives, AFRICOM’s Rick Cook spoke about another project there: a possible U.S. facility still to be built. “Lately, one of our biggest focus areas is in the country of Niger. We have gotten indications from the country of Niger that they are willing to be a partner of ours,” he said. The country, he added, “is in a nice strategic location that allows us to get to many other places reasonably quickly, so we are working very hard with the Nigeriens to come up with, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a base, but a place we can operate out of on a frequent basis.”
Cook offered no information on the possible location of that facility, but recent contracting documents examined by TomDispatch indicate that the U.S. Air Force is seeking to purchase large quantities of jet fuel to be delivered to Niger's Mano Dayak International Airport.
Multiple requests for further information sent to AFRICOM’s media chief Benjamin Benson went unanswered, as had prior queries about activities at Base Aérienne 101. But Colonel Aaron Benson, Chief of the Readiness Division at Air Forces Africa, did offer further details about the Nigerien mini-base. “There is the potential to construct MILCON aircraft parking aprons at the proposed future site in Niger,” he wrote, mentioning a specific type of military construction funding dedicated to use for “enduring” bases rather than transitory facilities. In response to further questions, Cook referred to the possible site as a “base-like facility” that would be “semi-permanent” and “capable of air operations.”
Pay to Play
It turns out that, if you want to know what the U.S. military is doing in Africa, it’s advantageous to be connected to a large engineering or construction firm looking for business. Then you’re privy to quite a different type of insider assessment of the future of the U.S. presence there, one far more detailed than the modest official pronouncements that U.S. Africa Command offers to journalists. Asked at a recent Pentagon press briefing if there were plans for a West African analog to Djibouti’s Camp Lemonnier, the only "official" U.S. base on the continent, AFRICOM Commander General David Rodriguez was typically guarded. Such a “forward-operating site” was just “one of the options” the command was mulling over, he said, before launching into the sort of fuzzy language typical of official answers. “What we're really looking at doing is putting contingency locating sites, which really have some just expeditionary infrastructure that can be expanded with tents,” was the way he put it. He never once mentioned Niger, or airfield improvements, or the possibility of a semi-permanent "presence.”
Here, however, is the reality as we know it today. Over the last several years, the U.S. has been building a constellation of drone bases across Africa, flying intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions out of not only Niger, but also Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the island nation of the Seychelles. Meanwhile, an airbase in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, serves as the home of a Joint Special Operations Air Detachment, as well as of the Trans-Sahara Short Take-Off and Landing Airlift Support initiative. According to military documents, that “initiative” supports “high-risk activities” carried out by elite forces from Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara. U.S. Army Africa documents obtained by TomDispatch also mention the deployment to Chad of an ISR liaison team. And according to Sam Cooks, a liaison officer with the Defense Logistics Agency, the U.S. military has 29 agreements to use international airports in Africa as refueling centers.
As part of the webinar for industry representatives, Wayne Uhl, chief of the International Engineering Center for the Europe District of the Army Corps of Engineers, shed light on shadowy U.S. operations in Mali before (and possibly after) the elected government there was overthrown in a 2012 coup led by a U.S.-trained officer. Documents prepared by Uhl reveal that an American compound was constructed near Gao, a major city in the north of Mali. Gao is the site of multiple Malian military bases and a “strategic” airport captured by Islamist militants in 2012 and retaken by French and Malian troops early last year.
AFRICOM’s Benjamin Benson failed to respond to multiple requests for comment about the Gao compound, but Uhl offered additional details. The project was completed before the 2012 uprising and “included a vehicle maintenance facility, a small admin building, toilet facilities with water tank, a diesel generator with a fuel storage tank, and a perimeter fence,” he told me in a written response to my questions. “I imagine the site was overrun during the coup and is no longer used by U.S. forces.”
America’s lone official base on the African continent, Camp Lemonnier, a former French Foreign Legion post in Djibouti, has been on a decade-plus growth spurt and serves a key role for the U.S. mission. “Camp Lemonnier is the only permanent footprint that we have on the continent and until such time as AFRICOM may establish a headquarters location in Africa, Camp Lemonnier will be the center of their activities here,” Greg Wilderman, the Military Construction Program Manager for Naval Facilities Engineering Command, explained.
“In 2013, we had a big jump in the amount of program projects,” he noted, specifically mentioning a large “task force” construction effort, an oblique reference to a $220 million Special Operations compound at the base that TomDispatch first reported on in 2013.
According to documents provided by Wilderman, five contracts worth more than $322 million (to be paid via MILCON funds) were awarded for Camp Lemonnier in late 2013. These included deals for a $25.5 million fitness center and a $41 million Joint Headquarters Facility in addition to the Special Operations Compound. This year, Wilderman noted, there are two contracts -- valued at $35 million -- already slated to be awarded, and Captain Rick Cook specifically mentioned deals for an armory and new barracks in 2014.
Cook’s presentation also indicated that a number of long-running construction projects at Camp Lemonnier were set to be completed this year, including roads, a “fuel farm,” an aircraft logistics apron, and “taxiway enhancements,” while construction of a new aircraft maintenance hangar, a telecommunications facility, and a “combat aircraft loading area” are slated to be finished in 2015. “There’s a tremendous amount of work going on,” Cook said, noting that there were 22 current projects underway there, more than at any other Navy base anywhere in the world.
And this, it turns out, is only the beginning.
“In the master plan,” Cook said, “there is close to three quarters of a billion dollars worth of construction projects that we still would like to do at Camp Lemonnier over the next 10 to 15 years.” That base, in turn, would be just one of a constellation of camps and compounds used by the U.S. in Africa. “Many of the places that we are trying to stand up or trying to get into are air missions. A lot of ISR... is going on in different parts of the continent. Generally speaking, the Air Force is probably going to be assigned to do much of that,” he told the contractors. “The Air Force is going to be doing a great deal of work on these bases… that are going to be built across the northern tier of Africa.”
Hearts and Minds
When I spoke with Chris Gatz of the Army Corps of Engineers, the first projects he mentioned and the only ones he seemed eager to talk about were those for African nations. This year, $6.5 million in projects had been funded when we spoke and of that, the majority were for “humanitarian assistance” or HA construction projects, mostly in Togo and Tunisia, and “peacekeeping” operations in Ghana and Djibouti.
Uhl talked about humanitarian projects, too. “HA projects are small, difficult, challenging for the Corps of Engineers to accomplish at a low, in-house cost… but despite all this, HA projects are extremely rewarding,” he said. “The appreciation expressed by the locals is fantastic.” He then drew attention to another added benefit: “Each successful project is a photo opportunity.”
Uhl wasn’t the only official to touch on the importance of public perception in Africa or the need to curry favor with military “partners” on the continent. Cook spoke to the contractors, for instance, about the challenges of work in austere locations, about how bureaucratic shakedowns by members of African governments could cause consternation and construction delays, about learning to work with the locals, and about how important such efforts were for “winning hearts and minds of folks in the area.”
The Naval Facilities Engineering Command’s Wildeman talked up the challenges of working in an environment in which the availability of resources was limited, the dangers of terrorism were real, and there was “competition for cooperation with [African] countries from some other world powers.” This was no doubt a reference to increasing Chinese trade, aid, investment, and economic ties across the continent.
He also left no doubt about U.S. plans. “We will be in Africa for some time to come,” he told the contractors. “There’s lots more to do there.”
Cook expanded on this theme. “It’s a big, big place,” he said. “We know we can’t do it alone. So we’re going to need partners in industry, we’re going to need… local nationals and even third country nationals.”
AFRICOM at War
For years, senior AFRICOM officers and spokesmen have downplayed the scope of U.S. operations on the continent, stressing that the command has only a single base and a very light footprint there. At the same time, they have limited access to journalists and refused to disclose the number and tempo of the command’s operations, as well as the locations of its deployments and of bases that go by other names. AFRICOM’S public persona remains one of humanitarian missions and benign-sounding support for local partners.
“Our core mission of assisting African states and regional organizations to strengthen their defense capabilities better enables Africans to address their security threats and reduces threats to U.S. interests,” says the command. “We concentrate our efforts on contributing to the development of capable and professional militaries that respect human rights, adhere to the rule of law, and more effectively contribute to stability in Africa.” Efforts like sniper training for proxy forces and black ops missions hardly come up. Bases are mostly ignored. The word “war” is rarely mentioned.
TomDispatch’s recent investigations have, however, revealed that the U.S. military is indeed pivoting to Africa. It now averages far more than a mission a day on the continent, conducting operations with almost every African military force, in almost every African country, while building or building up camps, compounds, and “contingency security locations.” The U.S. has taken an active role in wars from Libya to the Central African Republic, sent special ops forces into countries from Somalia to South Sudan, conducted airstrikes and abduction missions, even put boots on the ground in countries where it pledged it would not.
“We have shifted from our original intent of being a more congenial combatant command to an actual war-fighting combatant command,” AFRICOM’s Rick Cook explained to the audience of big-money defense contractors. He was unequivocal: the U.S. has been “at war” on the continent for the last two and half years. It remains to be seen when AFRICOM will pass this news on to the American public.
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FOCUS | Calm in Ukraine, Who Wants That? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Monday, 14 April 2014 12:34 |
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Boardman writes: "How about mediation to seek a peaceful solution of Ukraine issues? Mediation? Who would do the mediating? And how many parties would have to mediate? Where would any mediation take place? And under whose auspices? And so on...All good questions, to be sure. And all beside the point."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. (photo: Reuters)
Calm in Ukraine, Who Wants That?
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
14 April 14
How about mediation to seek a peaceful solution of Ukraine issues?
 ediation? Who would do the mediating? And how many parties would have to mediate? Where would any mediation take place? And under whose auspices? And so on … All good questions, to be sure. And all beside the point.
What’s the point?
The point is that no one of public stature is suggesting anything of the sort, from which it’s fair to infer that no one is serious about anything but stoking tensions until there’s a real crisis (not just governmental and media bloviating about a new Cold War).
You don’t think so?
Mediation, by definition, requires a neutral third party (to the degree that’s ever possible), namely the mediator. Bi-lateral or multi-lateral talks, whatever good they may achieve, are not mediation. Serious mediation begins with the assumption that all the parties have legitimate interests.
Does anyone involved in Ukraine’s turmoil grant that all the others have legitimate interests?
If there were a seriously peaceful party in the struggle, wouldn’t it be making peaceful suggestions? If not mediation per se, how about bringing it to the United Nations in a neutral form? How about UN peacekeepers in Ukraine, at least along the borders? How about UN observers for the May election? How about any other suggestion designed to calm things down?
If anyone is making such suggestions, you’d think we’d hear about them, somehow, from somebody. (Reportedly, on March 1, the US ambassador to Ukraine called once for observers in Crimea.) So why is actual solution-seeking so clearly off everyone’s table? Let us speculate:
RUSSIA feels threatened by the west, which is both real and paranoid. It took Crimea willingly, without firing a shot. It may also hope to take some of eastern Ukraine without firing a shot. It wants to get paid for its natural gas. It thinks it’s winning.
THE UNITED STATES feels almighty and self-righteous and sees bringing a military alliance (NATO) to Russia’s borders as God’s work or the equivalent. Having engineered a coup d’état in Ukraine, it expects the government’s illegitimacy to be expiated by the May election. It thinks it’s winning.
EUROPE, which would include all the countries, the European Union, and NATO, feels trapped between the US and Russia, with no obvious way out of the trap, except maybe neutrality, which won’t be allowed. Europe is the Rodney King of this situation: “Can we all get along?” It doesn’t think it’s winning, but it hopes it’s not going to lose (at least not lose too much).
UKRAINE is angry about just about everything, depending on which Ukrainian you ask. Ukraine would like to be free, peaceful, not corrupt, and nobody’s puppet – but it has no consensus as to how that can be achieved. The hope and idealism of the Maidan has passed with the coup. Ukraine’s divisions are bitter and ancient. One measure of Ukrainian desperation is their turning over at least part of the government to oligarchs, who became oligarchs by plundering the government. If everyone left Ukraine alone, Ukrainians would go on killing each other, because the extreme factions have one thing in common: they think they’re winning.
THE UNITED NATIONS should be a place for possible conflict resolution, but Russia and the US have Security Council vetoes, so forget that. The General Assembly might try to achieve something like a just solution, but why would they? And even if they did, how much more effective would it be than what they’ve tried to do for the Palestinians? Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has seen the UN help his country (South Korea) recover from war, if not unite it. But he has not been a particularly assertive leader. Maybe he thinks someone is winning – or should win. It’s not clear.
On April 12, 2014, the UN issued the following “Statement Attributable to the spokesperson for the Secretary-General on Ukraine”:
“The Secretary-General is deeply concerned about the deteriorating situation in Eastern Ukraine and the growing potential for violent clashes.
“The Secretary-General stresses that further disturbances will not serve the interests of any side. He therefore appeals to all sides to work towards calming the situation, adhere to the rule of law and exercise maximum restraint. He calls again for urgent and constructive dialogue to deescalate the situation and address all differences.
“The United Nations stands ready to continue to support a peaceful resolution to the current crisis facing Ukraine.”
Like Europe says: “Can we all get along?”
Encouraging blue skies, nothing but blue skies, is not objectionable, but it’s not all that helpful either, and it’s certainly not a practical proposal. If anything, Ban Ki-Moon’s focus only on “Eastern Ukraine,” while rational it its way, is a focus on only a symptom and is more likely than not to make the disease worse. He expressed the same selectivity on April 4, saying he had urged leaders in Kiev and Moscow to de-escalate, but not a word about Washington (which should have de-escalated 20 years ago). That’s not serious statesmanship.
What is serious is that so many of the parties to the conflict think they’re going to win. That is a sure recipe for creating a lot of losers.
According to an unconfirmed report, acknowledged as such by the Voice of Russia on April 8:
The United Nations Security Council has, for the umpteenth time, considered the Ukrainian issue, and experts made a rather unexpected conclusion. It turned out that Ukraine has no official boundaries. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kiev hasn’t demarked its borders. Nor has it registered at the United Nations the demarcation of its borders as a sovereign state.
If it’s true that in some way, legally or geopolitically, Ukraine has no meaningful boundaries with some or all of its seven border states, that might be a good place to start sorting things out. In 2009, the International Court of Justice ruled on a maritime boundary dispute between Ukraine and Romania. The same court issued an advisory opinion in 2010 that a unilateral declaration of independence does not violate international law (that was Kosovo; the Crimean example has not been litigated). In its global summary of international border disputes, the CIA provides partial support for the Voice of Russia assertion.
Meanwhile, Russians users of Google Maps see Crimea as part of Russia, while the rest of the world sees the Ukraine-Crimea border as “disputed.”
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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nyone hoping to understand the long, fierce struggle to win a decent life for the highly exploited men and women who harvest our fruits and vegetables should not miss the recently released film, “Cesar Chavez.” Although technically a feature film, it’s actually a documentary, in that it vividly recreates – and accurately – key events in the struggle led by Chavez and the United Farm Workers union he headed.
