One of the downsides of the US “regime change” business is that when you break it, you often have to buy it. It’s all fun and games when you wander through the streets of Kiev with a bag of cookies encouraging the people to overthrow their government, or when you appear on stage before a riotous mob and alongside avowed national-socialists violently overthrowing a democratically-elected government.
What gets messy is when you get your way, the old government is overthrown, your “guys” seize power, and it turns out corruption and economic mismanagement are worse than before the US-backed “liberation.”
So what do you do when interventions go badly? If you are the US government spending other people’s money, you simply escalate. In Libya and Iraq, that means going back in with US boots on the ground.
With Ukraine, it’s simply a matter of tossing another billion dollars into the burning wreck of a runaway train. So today the US announced that the US taxpayer would guarantee its third $1 billion dollar loan to the Ukrainian government.
US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, who played a key role in engineering the Maidan revolt in Ukraine, had this to say about spending more of other people’s money on the Ukrainian train wreck:
The guarantee sends a strong signal of the United States’ continued support for Ukraine as it pursues reforms that fulfill the Ukrainian people’s aspirations for a prosperous and democratic future.
What that means is anyone’s guess.
For his part, US-backed president Petro Poroshenko boasted back home that he was able to secure this extra billion dollars while meeting with President Obama in April. He said:
This bears testament to the fact that the United States and Ukraine are reliable strategic partners.
Careful there, Poroshenko. The US doesn’t have the best record when it comes to “strategic partners.” Ask Saddam, Gaddafi, Noriega, and so on…
