America's backyard

""A democratically elected government, albeit with a lot of blood on its hands, is ousted by an opposition that includes fascists from the Right Sector and Svoboda parties. The new junta, though not elected, is greeted by the western powers as 'the government of Ukraine', its foreign secretary fêted in the Europole." "Meanwhile the US, heir to British imperial ambitions in central Asia, remains in Afghanistan and roundly condemns Russian assertiveness. Sevastopol makes for an interesting comparison with Guantánamo, another naval base leased from its host country (though Havana never cashes the cheques). That of course is in 'America's backyard', which now seems to stretch over to the Aral Sea and beyond: the US, directly or via proxies, has been in Afghanistan for thirty-odd years.""