John Bolton is a veteran U.S. diplomat and foreign policy hawk. As the man’s Wikipedia page notes, he is “an advocate for military action and regime change by the US in Iran, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen, and North Korea”. So you could say he wants America to ‘have a role in the world’.
Bolton served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, and as National Security Advisor to President Trump from 2018 to 2019. But he spends most of his time writing op-eds calling for the U.S. to bomb various countries, or to topple their governments.
While Bolton is known for his provocative statements (such as when he openly called for “regime change” in Iran), yesterday he really said the quiet part out loud.
Discussing the events of January 6th with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Bolton denied that Trump was behind a “carefully planned coup d’etat”. Tapper retorted that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup”. And Bolton replied, “I disagree with that. As someone who has helped plan coup d’etats – not here, but you know, other places – it takes a lot of work.”
Perhaps even more amazing than Bolton’s admission was the fact Tapper – a leading American journalist with over 3 million Twitter followers – just nodded along while he was speaking. Tapper then asked Bolton a friendly follow-up question about his “expertise having planned coups”, while the two chuckled. This is what speaking truth to power looks like at CNN.
Of course, the levity with which Bolton and Tapper treated the former’s admission is extremely ironic given the subject they were discussing at the time: the alleged coup at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th – which many people (including Tapper himself) regard as a ‘fundamental attack on democracy’.
For Tapper, then, attempting a coup in the U.S. is a ‘fundamental attack on democracy’, but attempting coups in other countries – ah, well, that’s just something America gets up to every now and again. It’s certainly not something he should be concerned about.
What’s the relevance of all this? As I’ve noted before, the event that put Ukraine and Russia on a collision course was the 2014 Western-backed coup. The ‘Revolution of Dignity’, as it’s officially known, saw the replacement of Ukraine’s democratically elected (though highly corrupt) pro-Russian government with a government made up of (similarly corrupt) pro-Western nationalists.
Incidentally, we know it was a ‘coup’ thanks to the leaked phone call between Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, in which the former specifies who the new Prime Minister of Ukraine will be two weeks before the pro-Russian government was toppled. (What we don’t know is whether the U.S. had prior knowledge of the Maidan Massacre.)
Fast forward to 2022, and we have John Bolton bragging on TV that he has “helped to plan coup d’etats”. Now, I have no evidence that Bolton was involved in the ‘Revolution of Dignity’. After all, the U.S. plans a lot of coups, so different people may be involved in each one. But his statement shows there’s nothing conspiratorial about pinning regime change on the U.S.
Now, you might say, ‘The U.S. deeply cares about democracy, which is why they backed the 2014 coup’. But that argument doesn’t work. Ukraine was already a democracy (albeit a highly corrupt one). And if the U.S. really cared about democracy, they would back coups in places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Instead, the U.S. buys oil from those places, and sells them weapons – which they then use (in Saudi Arabia’s case) to bomb civilians in Yemen.
No, the most plausible reason why the U.S. backed the 2014 coup was to antagonize Russia, since the long-term goal of many neoconseratives (like Bolton) is to “see Russia weakened” or even to partition that country.
Don’t get me wrong: just because the U.S. was trying to antagonize Russia, doesn’t mean Russia’s invasion was justified. As Aaron Maté notes, “Even if a case could be made that Russia has the right to defend besieged ethnic Russians, that argument is undercut by Russia’s decision to attack far deeper into Ukrainian territory.”
But it does suggest this war might have been avoided if the U.S. hadn’t sought to change the status quo in 2014.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Don’t forget that US companies are not the only ones that sell weapons for use in Yemen.
The origins of this war, arguably, go back as far as the Great War 1914-18, the effects of which have been reverberated around the entire world ever since.
But, definitely, the actions of Clinton and Blair with regard to Kosovo would have had a major impact on Putin, far more so than events within Ukraine itself.
That said, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was simply an expedient attempt by a totalitarian dictator to remove the threat to his regime that a neighbouring capitalist democracy, with a higher growth in living standards, represented.
And we know that he then plans to move on Transnistria because one of his Generals made that clear.
So the idea that Putin’s invasion is a simple push back against U.S. provocation does not withstand scrutiny.
Putin has the long term goal of restoring the USSR in territory if not in name. Consequently he would have invaded Ukraine at the most propitious moment whatever the actions in Ukraine of a U.S. clearly intent on prioritising the Pacific region for some time now.
Ukraine did not have “higher growth in living standards”.
GDP growth is no measure of living standards.
Quality of life index, Ukraine 112 Russia 102
In any case, there are a number of different takes on the numbers.
‘The annexation of Crimea in 2014 coupled with plummeting oil prices in 2014-2015 cut Ukraine’s GDP by over 50% from its all time high in just two years. Though Russia’s economy is about ten times larger than Ukraine’s in terms of GDP, Ukraine’s GDP grew 70.8% from 2015 to 2020 while Russia’s advanced by only 8.8% in that same timeframe’
NASDAQ.com
70.8% compared to 8.8% might stoke a bit of paranoia in a totalitarian dictator on meds?
GDP per capita (measured in constant dollars) is the most objective measure for tracking “growth in living standards”. As to your main argument above, this article of mine may be of interest.
GDP per capita is an average and averages overrepresent outliers.
For a contrived example demonstrating this, let’s assume there’s a country named Aistan with a GDP of $100 and four inhabitants. This means the GDP per capita for Aistan is $25. A neignouring country, Beland, also has four inhabitants and a GDP of $100, hence, it’s GDP per capita is also $25. The difference between both is all inhabitants of Beland contribute $25 to the GDP. In Aistan, one inhabitant is extremely rich and contributes $97, the other three are very poor and contribute only $1. The general standard of living in Beland is thus much higher than that of Aistan despite the GDP per capita is the same for both.
You are using small sample sizes to distort the figures, congratulations you could apply to be on SAGE. When you scale up the numbers to a population size sample the data is a good indicator.
I’m using a contrived example to demonstrate a property of averages. That’s why I referred to it as contrived example, by the way. This property doesn’t magically go away when people start bullshitting with large numbers. How good or how bad an average is actual estimator of a so-called central tendency depends entirely on the distribution of values being averaged. At the very least, one would need to know the so-called standard deviation to interpet it correctly. And for something like GDP per capita, the standard deviation can’t be calculated as the actual value distribution is unknown.
Asserting correctness by handwaiving based on ignorance is an actual SAGE tactic, BTW (and of similarly disposed groups of propagandists).
No, it’s not the best measure, it’s not even a very good measure given the multiple flaws in the GDP estimates.
Multiple health measures, life expectancy being top of the list.
Many micro-economic measures provide better information on the well being and growth of a country.
Also, the time periods are often too short to tell a reasonable story. Ukraine’s GDP will have exploded this year because of the war expenditures and when the war ends they will fall, does that mean that they are worse off if the war ends?
‘Ukraine’s GDP grew 70.8% from 2015 to 2020 while Russia’s advanced by only 8.8% in that same timeframe’
NASDAQ.com
Though Russia’s economy is about ten times larger than Ukraine’s in terms of GDP, Ukraine’s GDP grew 70.8% from 2015 to 2020 while Russia’s advanced by only 8.8% in that same timeframe.
There’s no contradiction here: The GDP growth rate of a much larger economy will tend to be lower than that of a smaller one because the former needs a lot more absolute growth for each % gained than the latter. Assuming someone owned £1 and gained £1, his fortune grew by 100%. The fortune of someone who had £100 and gained £10 only grew by 10% despite that someone not only had more money than the first person but also gained ten times the amount.
But, quite clearly, given the respective sizes of these two economies, that does not explain away 70% growth compared to 9% over a five year period
In your world it seems quality of life has nothing to with endless intimidation by Ukrainian government backed gangs of Nazi aping thugs; or indeed being forbidden to even use your native tongue, ie Russian spoken as the first language by 40% of Ukrainians. Also how does the murder by Ukraine since 2014 of 14,000 of its own citizens by indiscriminate shelling, reflect in the quality of life reckoning you cite?
The hard truth is that Ukraine was one of the prosperous regions of the Soviet Union and once free of Soviet interference its future should have been bright, but instead it has ended up as Europe’s biggest basket case. Under many years of US tutelage Ukraine has been reduced to living from day to day on handouts from the US and the EU, much of which is milked off by corrupt oligarchs and greedy officials. Some quality of life for sure, perhaps you should move there and give it a whirl.
“with endless intimidation by Ukrainian government backed gangs of Nazi aping thugs”
The Ukrainian state has in fact passed several anti right and left extremism laws. Please back up this ‘government backed endless neo Nazi intimidation’ allegation with evidence.
“or indeed being forbidden to even use your native tongue, ie Russian spoken as the first language by 40% of Ukrainians”
Nobody is forbidden from speaking Russian in Ukraine in private, and most countries have either legal or de facto monopolistic public languistic practices (eg English in the UK).
“Also how does the murder by Ukraine since 2014 of 14,000 of its own citizens by indiscriminate shelling”
You are wildly propogandising and misrepresenting the overall casualties from the Russian-backed Donbass insurrection / Ukrainian civil war.
Of the 14000 total you mention just over 3000 were civilians, and those killed by both sides.
Moreover the vast majority of these casualties occurred in the earliest part of the conflict (c 2014-15), by 2021 (when the Putin regime was amassing its invasion force on Ukraine’s borders) civilian deaths in Donbass through direct military action were down to a grand total of 7 (again caused by both sides).
Not that all this horror is a numbers game, but how do you think the above noted roughly 3000 civilian deaths (and concommitant disruption and destruction) over 8 years stacks up against that caused over the last five months in Ukraine by the Russian invasion launched on Feb 24 2022?
You are, of course, entitled to your view, even though it may seem a bit of an eccentric one to many.
‘Ukraine’s GDP grew 70.8% from 2015 to 2020 while Russia’s advanced by only 8.8% in that same timeframe’
NASDAQ.com
You are correct to say that total GDP growth is no measure of living standards. But that is not the same as GDP per Capita.
70.8% compared to 8.8% might stoke a bit of paranoia in a totalitarian dictator on meds?
This only works if you start in 2015, which is when the economy bottomed out. after halving between 2013 and 2015.
Yes. You think the paranoia started well before that?
…I am so tired of this crap…if it was a border skirmish in Africa…no one would give a toss! Stop trying to imbue it with rights and morality it simply doesn’t have…
Its an American proxy war, one of many..they don’t care about all the stuff you seem to care about…not one jot!
Europe is shooting itself In the foot making it Into something it isn’t…the USA will happily watch Europe bankrupt itself, and be happy to build on its ashes…..the saddest thing is that all this won’t help Ukraine one iota…..
Maybe we should let the Ukrainians decide that? Oh! They already did!
You may be happy, in the company of Putin, to renege on international agreements. Fortunately there are still many in this country who are not.
’Putin has the long term goal of restoring the USSR in territory if not in name.’
Sorry, I don’t agree and don’t think there’s any evidence for this. I think Putin’s Russia wants to corner oil and gas supply in Eurasia and is willing to play dIrty (like literally every other resource rich country in the world) to ensure this. I believe the Russians when they talk about the strategic significance of Ukraine and I also believe that they (quite understandably) see NATO and US meddling as an existential threat. I don’t think this was about expanding territory; what does Ukraine have that Russia needs so much it would risk WW3 for?
Putin and his Generals have been perfectly clear about their intentions.
And they will continue to look for opportunities to expand Russia in pursuit of the ‘de-europeanisation’ of their near neighbours if we continue to display pusillanimity, weakness, for which they rightly have the utmost contempt.
Talk about rubbing our faces in it.
yep…even when they tell you ‘exactly’ what they are doing…people still like to pretend there is some good or bad, or higher purpose boll**ks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pNnFfOcYXs
Irish MEP Mick Wallace…telling it like it is…
NATO is a war machine….
The same John Bolton who said in 1994…..”The point that I want to leave with you in this very brief presentation is where I started, is that there is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interest, and when we can get others to go along. And I think it would be a real mistake to count on the United Nations as if it is some disembodied entity out there that can function on its own.”
(In 2005 he became a UN ambassador!!?)
I think this is US policy in it’s entirety…and for UN just transpose NATO or any other entity the USA is involved in…..it really believes the ‘world’ can’t function without it in the lead…and it desperately needs that to be true.
I think a lot of what is happening worldwide at the moment is the ‘rest of the world’ saying that they believe they can do without USA hegemony.
’The West’ comprises of around 11/12% of the worlds population….versus ‘the rest’…
Of course I can’t know what will happen, I’m watching things the same as everyone else, but I cannot for the life of me fathom that people think the USA proxy war in Ukraine, has anything to do with caring about the Ukraine….or Europe, or sovereignty or any other tosh people want to believe…
Nothing, absolutely nothing in their history, shows that they give a damn for any other country, other than it’s oppression, or destruction, to suit their purpose.
Ukraine is done….it was from the first US interference, and John Mearsheimer was entirely correct when he said that they would be led down the Primrose Path by the US….they won’t survive, no matter what happens…and the UK’s part in their demise is shameful
I think that its clear why you can’t use your real name when you post nonsense like this:
“Nothing, absolutely nothing in their history, shows that they give a damn for any other country, other than it’s oppression, or destruction, to suit their purpose.”
…as if you 77th use real names!! LOL……
Hi, I’m John Smith. Is that.better for you?
I think it’s clear you can’t give me examples…so I’ll start…explain the utter destruction of Libya…a thriving country until the USA decided it shouldn’t be…care to discuss Hilary Clinton’s e-Mails on the matter?
How about Afghanistan? Shall I go on?…….
With every line you display your stunning level of ignorance.
Libya was prompted by Cameron and Sarkozy and Obama just supplied the bombs but not the aircraft.
Thanks for drawing attention to this shocking clip which I encountered somewhere on Telegram yesterday. What a disgraceful murderous criminal this man is. I sometimes stray on to Quora, which is right now full of rabidly anti-Russian jingoistic Americans eagerly exchanging various fantasy ways to destroy Russia from their armchairs.
When I politely point out that what happened in February came after an eight-year period of sustained violence and instability caused in large part by the US State Dept., they get very angry and call me a Russian troll and other silly names. They are also incapable of contextualising this within the decades of naked imperialism carried out by their own leadership and want to pretend that history started in February 2022. It seems that more and more countries are seeing it from Russia’s perspective. If it wasn’t for the associated Great Reset dampening everyone’s hopes and dreams, I would be happy to see the end of the American Empire.
Would the world have been better off if Hitler had been topped in a coup after taking control of Germany with 34% of the vote?
Or if someone deposed Kim Jong-il was deposed in North Korea before perfecting his ICBM tech?
Mr. Carl has the luxury of not being a decision maker. He’s not responsible for the well being of a country and this allows him to apply his faculty lounge morality to world affairs.
Bolton’s point was that the January 6th riot was a riot, not a coup. It was always a ludicrous proposition to describe an unarmed mob attacking a legislative building as a coup. Congress doesn’t run anything and they barely manage to legislate anything. Taking control of the Pentagon might have been significant but it would also have been easily stopped in its tracks.
The January 6th nonsense is just the last gasp of the Trump derangement syndrome crowd. A complete waste of time and irrelevant in a world with massive real problems that need to be addressed.
LOL…do you read this virtue signalling nonsense off a script?
There isn’t the slightest comparison between a World War, and the border skirmish that is now going on……
The real difference is the massive propaganda machine working around it…trying to tell us what to think…..(what a surprise!)
Explain why you think the ‘West’ gets to decide which country or leader is right or wrong? What imbues them with the power to know?…who exactly should make these decisions and why?
You are correct, the world has very real problems…and one of Russia’s was their real security fear of being threatened by an ever expanding NATO…..who are even now threatening China and stability in the Pacific…
If the world has problems, the world has to collectively sort them out…this takes discussion, compromise, detente…actual adults talking!……none of which has been applied in this case….
No one country or tiny cabal, has the right to impose its will on the rest of the world.