Seizing and "Reforming" the Military and Police Power

In addition to training, the Trudeau government stresses that the Canadian Armed Forces will now be "transitioning over time to support strategic institutional reform of Ukraine's defence establishment." CBC reported this March that, "Canada's focus will in time turn to the upper echelon of the defence force to ensure changes in tactics, strategies and ethos are solidified in military culture." This means to bring Canada's military presence in Ukraine under direct control of the United States and to bring those operations into conformity with U.S. plans of hegemony and war. How this was done is worth examining in brief. All military "support" from Canada is actually funneled through the little-known U.S.-Ukraine Military Commission. Formed in 2014, it then invited Canada and Britain to join its ranks. It is now called the "Multinational Joint Commission on Defense Reform and Security Cooperation with Ukraine." Despite the bilateral appearance suggested by the name, it is a U.S. agency that operates outside of NATO and outside of the United Nations.[1] Not only are Ukrainian officers trained by the U.S. and other NATO powers, they are also evaluated as potential candidates to take over top military and civilian positions in the future. NATO gives the U.S. imperialists the "legal" chance to install its agents in the armed forces of its NATO allies, to prepare and carry out military and fascist coups (similar to the one carried out in Greece in 1967). On February 23, 2014 the U.S.-backed coup government of Ukraine appointed Ihor Tenyukh, the admiral and commander of the Ukrainian Navy from 2006 until 2010, to be its Defence Minister. Tenyukh was a member of the fascist Svoboda Party and activist in the Maidan insurgency. Tenyukh had been trained by the U.S. Department of Defense; in 1994, he graduated from the U.S. Defense Language Institute, and in 1997 he became a faculty member at National Academy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to prepare officers on an operational-strategic level. Tenyukh's links with the Americans were consolidated during the "Sea Breeze" exercises when he commanded Ukraine's Black Sea Fleet. The Canadian program to support and "reform" the military and police power involves cooperation with longtime fascist leaders who are integrated into the structures of the Ukrainian state. Formally, the President of Ukraine presides over the National Security and Defence Council and is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Members of the council include the Prime Minister, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of Defence, the director of the SBU Intelligence Service and high-ranking military officials. The chair of the council designates a secretary or director. From March to August 2014 Andriy Parubiy was officiated as secretary of the National Security and Defence Council. Parubiy co-founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991, a neo-Nazi party which glorifies the wartime activity of anti-Semitic collaborators in the Second World War. Later, he was considered the "commander of the Maidan" to overthrow the Yanukovych government in 2014 and was shown on television personally beating Communist-led demonstrators. He organized the coup regime's "anti-terror missions" in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, which were launched immediately following the April 2014 visit of then-CIA Director John Brennan. In his role as Speaker of the Ukrainian Rada, Parubiy was officially welcomed by both the Harper and Trudeau governments in 2015 and 2016 respectively, where he appealed for more arms. Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of Right Sector and commander of the extremist "Tryzub" ("Trident") organization since 2005, was named assistant to Parubiy in March 2014. Svoboda's Oleh Makhnitskiy became parliamentary inspector of the Attorney General's Office. In 2016, the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council adopted a program for the restructuring of Ukraine's arms production as well as the military in line with NATO standards. Soon after, on May 20, 2016, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko declared, "We are beginning real reorganization of the defence and security sector in order to join NATO." He stressed that Ukraine had not been directly making steps for immediate accession to the NATO bloc, but called the move "The Rubicon" that Ukrainian armed forces and the arms industry would have to "pass" to adapt to NATO standards, as reported by TASS. This means that in applying these standards, the Ukrainian government will essentially be reporting to supranational agencies. On May 28, 2016 Poroshenko appointed as his "non-staff" advisor Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was Secretary General of NATO from August 1, 2009 until September 30, 2014. The mechanism to bring about "strategic institutional reform" was then established: the "Joint Commission on Defense Reform and Security Cooperation," chaired by three retired generals from the U.S., Britain and Lithuania: - John Abizaid, former U.S. Army commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and the U.S-led invasion of Iraq, who suppressed the report by Major General Antonio Taguba on the infamous U.S. officially-sanctioned, systematic torture of the detainees at Abu Graib; - Sir Nick Parker of the United Kingdom, former land commander of the British army, a NATO commander in Afghanistan and the Iraq occupation, recipient of a U.S. Meritorious Service Award with previous service in Northern Ireland and the Sierra Leone Civil War; and - Major General Jonas Andri kevicius, former commander of the armed forces of Lithuania (appointed in October 1993 to take that country into NATO through the Partnership for Peace program), which contributed funding to the Maidan. In January 2017, this group added Jill Sinclair, a former Canadian assistant deputy minister of defence and an operative in the Privy Council Office and associated with the Liberal think-tank Canadian International Council and the Canada 2020 Ottawa Forum. Prior to this, she had an extensive career with the Department of Foreign Affairs, including as executive director of the secretariat of Jean Chrétien's International Commission on Responsibility to Protect in 2000. Canada's military deployment has the aim to promote the bankrupt anti-communist theory of "two extremes" to confuse Canadians and Ukrainians alike on the aims and nature of the forces in operation. This operates on two levels: the "separatists" (i.e., communists) and the fascist militia are fighting each other, while the government and state agencies of military and police power are the middle-ground opposed to and above each. Canada's Department of National Defence and media further promote the "reform" of the Ukrainian armed forces with the language of liberal paternalism and "responsibility to protect." They see these "reforms" of the military and police power of Ukraine as a moderate middle ground between the "two extremes" of violence and chaos characterized by maximizing the unfettered fanaticism of the fascist "volunteer" militias of Pravi Sektor and the "top down," "one size fits all," "Soviet era" government military policy-making and its military and police power. It is, in their words, a promising foundation for solidifying "military culture." Note 1. The Globe and Mail reported on December 8, 2014 that "Canada is operating independently of NATO to provide additional military assistance that will help Ukraine defend itself from Russia." Steve Chase, "Canada to offer Ukraine military aid outside of NATO," Globe and Mail , December 8, 2014. (TML Weekly Supplement No. 23, June 24, 2017)