{"id":697,"date":"2015-06-12T14:24:38","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T12:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.actvism.org\/?p=697"},"modified":"2020-11-06T17:49:00","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T16:49:00","slug":"ray-mcgovern-g-7-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.actvism.org\/en\/latest\/ray-mcgovern-g-7-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"G-7 or Obama\u2019s \u2018G-1-plus-6\u2032 – Ray McGovern"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As much as President Obama needs President Putin\u2019s help on Syria, Iran and other global hotspots, he has fallen in line behind U.S.\u00a0hardliners in seeking to ratchet up the confrontation over Ukraine and now is trying to bring the Europeans along at the G-7, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.<\/p>\n

The \u201cG-7 summit\u201d at a resort in Germany\u2019s picturesque Bavaria region is likely to show whether \u201cG-7\u201d should be called \u201cG-1-plus-6\u201d \u2013 number \u201cone\u201d\u00a0being what President Barack Obama continues to call the \u201conly indispensable country in the world\u201d; the \u201csix\u201d being those countries that Russian President Vladimir Putin has labeled Washington\u2019s \u201cjunior partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cG-7\u201d \u2013 consisting of Germany, France, Italy, the UK, Japan, Canada and the U.S. \u2013 formerly was known as the \u201cG-8\u201d until Russia was booted last year after being blamed for the violent aftermath of the U.S.-sponsored coup d\u2019etat in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014.<\/p>\n

Last year, the West was in high dudgeon over what it deemed \u201cRussian aggression\u201d and what Secretary of State John Kerry termed Russia\u2019s \u201cNineteenth Century behavior.\u201d After all, the U.S. and its allies are well known for always respecting the territorial integrity of other countries regardless of the circumstances. Okay, well, maybe not.<\/p>\n

However, at the Bavarian summit, the U.S. is hoping to rekindle some of that old outrage to get the European Union to extend economic sanctions on Russia, though they are hurting the EU\u2019s struggling economies, too.<\/p>\n

The main question is whether German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, who have witnessed up-front-and-personal the behavior of Washington\u2019s neocon policymakers and their Ukrainian puppets, will summon the courage to act like adults.<\/p>\n

Will the leaders of Germany and France continue to bend to the U.S. diktat?\u00a0Or are they more likely, this time, to stand up on their own feet and resist pressure from the U.S. and its UK lackey for continued punitive sanctions against Russia?<\/p>\n

Merkel and Hollande have had the chance personally to take the measure of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his client relationship with the U.S.\u00a0At a very different kind of summit on Feb. 11-12 in Belorussia, with U.S. representatives pointedly not invited and only Poroshenko reflecting U.S. objectives, Merkel and Hollande worked out with him and Putin the so-called \u201cMinsk II\u201d package agreement that included a ceasefire \u2013 which pretty much held until just recently \u2013 and a mechanism for resolving the political confrontation between the post-coup regime in Kiev and the ethnic Russian resistance in the east.<\/p>\n

Merkel and Hollande are no political novices.\u00a0And, if they know their history, they know what a P\u00e9tain or a Quisling looks like.\u00a0In any case, they cannot have failed to recognize what Poroshenko looks like and how he continues to do the bidding of the neocons running U.S. policy on Ukraine, who are hell-bent on demonizing Putin and ostracizing Russia \u2013 all with little heed to the economic and longer-term security damage inflicted on \u201cjunior partners\u201d like Germany and France.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Minsk II was signed, the hard-line Ukrainian parliament, led by U.S. favorite Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, approved implementing legislation that was designed not<\/em> to implement the political side of the agreement. A \u201cpoison pill\u201d was inserted that, in effect, required the ethnic Russian rebels in the east to surrender before negotiations proceeded. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cUkraine\u2019s Poison Pill for Peace Talks<\/span><\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n

Pictures: G-7 and STOP TTIP-Demonstration<\/h2>\n