Put-ing 032614

Ancient cold warriors are finally coming in from the cold shouting, “The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, we told you so.”

The issue is the Ukrainian ouster of a Russian puppet and its courtship of the European Union.  Russian president Vladimir Putin seized an instability moment by “liberating”, “protecting” or “supporting” a carefully orchestrated Crimean independence movement. 

When the western powers indignantly objected to Russia’s virtual re-annexation of the Crimea, Putin cried “hypocrisy.” Putin has a point; not that it makes his actions anymore palatable.  When the Soviet Union began to implode in the late 20th Century a gleeful West was quick to embrace the splintering Soviet republics as independent democratic States.  They were neither independent nor democratic and most are still neither.

In an era of instantaneous mass communication the Russians were subjected to decades of denigration by western politicians as the West pushed its influence eastward, ever closer to the Russian heartland.  Freed from the moderating Soviet influence the West engaged in a series of interventions, from Eastern Europe, across Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia that mostly ended in failures.  These failures have led to continuing regional instability.   Driven by both left and right politicians’ rhetoric aimed at domestic audiences along with the surrounding interventions and denigration angered the Russians.  While condemned by the west, Putin’s actions are playing very well with his own domestic audience.

Unfortunately Ukraine and the Crimea are parts of the Russian historical spirit.  The question is when does political history become irrelevant.  Robert Kaplan calls events a return to geopolitics (the politics of geography). Russia seized Ukraine in the late 18th century and Ottoman Crimea in the late 19th century.  Russians emigrated to both but the Ukrainians remained more or less politically on their own until brought under Soviet control in the early 20th century.  Stalin’s purges suppressed independence interest and along with his ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tartars during the war, brought the region firmly under Soviet Control.  When the NAZIs arrived in the Ukraine they were first seen as liberators but their heavy hand soon created an effective Ukraine resistance movement later crushed by Stalin in the post war era. After Stalin’s death surviving Tartars returned to find their homes occupied by Russians. Khrushchev handed the Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, which declared independence upon the Soviet collapse.

For both East and West there are lessons to be learned in the Ukraine.  Historical political justifications have limited validity in the 21st century.  Local political rhetoric has far reaching impacts on international affairs.  Free elections aren’t free in the presents of an occupying army.  Military force is often counterproductive in the long term.  In power politics win-win means you can’t lose, in Asian commerce it means both sides win (a fair deal.)  International affairs can find the Asian model less costly with a little more time spent in open negotiations. Ideologues make poor negotiators.  States have a place at the negotiation table deciding their fate.