Direct involvement of the US government in fomenting the Euromaidan protests has long been suspected. After all, that $5 Million the US spent on democratizing Ukraine went toward some program there, right? Well, yesterday the White House confirmed that CIA Director John Brennan visited Ukraine over the weekend to meet with high level pro-Maidan factions in Kiev. According to Russian media,

Brennan landed in Ukraine on Saturday under an assumed name and held a ‘series of secret meetings’ with the country’s ‘power bloc’ Interfax reported, citing an unidentified official in the Ukrainian parliament. The unidentified official said that there were “unconfirmed reports” that the U.S. security official was behind the decision to use force in eastern Ukraine after pro-Russian separatist forces took control of the city of Slovyansk.

All is not going as planned for the neocons in charge of advising the new government in Kiev. There have been multiple instances of police, intelligence and military officials refusing to follow orders from Kiev to attack pro-Russian protesters occupying government buildings in major cities in the east. According to the Saker, “Everybody seemed to have refused: local cops, SWAT teams, SBU forces and even the anti-terrorist group ‘Alpha.’ This is quite amazing and extremely encouraging.”

The US government has taken a position diametrically opposed to the protesters in the east as it had to the ones in Euromaidan. The contradictory statements coming from the US about the protests are startling. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has asked the US to explain Brennan’s presence there.

‘We can remember when violence on Maidan (Independence Square in Kiev) that ended with dozens and dozens of deaths was called democracy, while peaceful protests that are ongoing now in southeastern Ukraine are called terrorism,’ he said.

‘The hypocrisy is off the scale.’

Even so, Russia has it’s own credibility issues on the matter and is likely the reason that the rag tag group of angry babushkas in the east has become a more organized, armed faction of political resistance. Which brings me to the main point of this post.

After the fall of Yanukovych, the annexation of Crimea, the entirely possible descent of Ukraine into civil war, and a new iron curtain falling between Russia and “the West”, who ultimately benefits?

This new Cold War isn’t about capitalism vs. communism because Russia and China are already capitalist. Is it our oligarchs against their oligarchs? Is it a resource war? Or is the New Cold War a war for the explicit purpose of an elite minority on both sides profiting from military industry?

In that case, alliance with either side — the US or Russia — is not only utterly pointless, it fuels the continutation of a political system whose purpose is the upward transfer of wealth and downward spiral of violence. No thanks. I’m on the side of peace and prosperity.