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THE CLASH IN CRIMEA IS THE FRUIT OF WESTERN EXPANSION
[ Part 2.2: "Attached Text" ]
Published on Wednesday, March 5, 2014 by The Guardian
The external struggle to dominate Ukraine has put fascists in power
and brought the country to the brink of conflict
by Seumas Milne
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/05/clash-crimea-western-ex
pansion-ukraine-fascists
[troops-under-russian-comm-012.jpg] Troops under Russian command
fire weapons into the air in Lubimovka, Ukraine. (Photograph:
Sean Gallup/Getty Images)Diplomatic pronouncements are renowned for
hypocrisy and double standards. But western denunciations of Russian
intervention in Crimea have reached new depths of self parody. The
so far bloodless incursion is an "incredible act of aggression",
US secretary of state John Kerry declared. In the 21st century you
just don't invade countries on a "completely trumped-up pretext",
he insisted, as US allies agreed that it had been an unacceptable
breach of international law, for which there will be "costs".
That the states which launched the greatest act of unprovoked
aggression in modern history on a trumped-up pretext - against Iraq,
in an illegal war now estimated to have killed 500,000, along with the
invasion of Afghanistan, bloody regime change in Libya, and the killing
of thousands in drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, all
without UN authorisation - should make such claims is beyond absurdity.
It's not just that western aggression and lawless killing is on another
scale entirely from anything Russia appears to have contemplated,
let alone carried out - removing any credible basis for the US and
its allies to rail against Russian transgressions. But the western
powers have also played a central role in creating the Ukraine crisis
in the first place.
The US and European powers openly sponsored the protests to oust the
corrupt but elected Viktor Yanukovych government, which were triggered
by controversy over an all-or-nothing EU agreement which would have
excluded economic association with Russia.
In her notorious "fuck the EU" phone call leaked last month, the
US official Victoria Nuland can be heard laying down the shape of
a post-Yanukovych government - much of which was then turned into
reality when he was overthrown after the escalation of violence a
couple of weeks later.
The president had by then lost political authority, but his overnight
impeachment was certainly constitutionally dubious. In his place a
government of oligarchs, neoliberal Orange Revolution retreads and
neofascists has been installed, one of whose first acts was to try and
remove the official status of Russian, spoken by a majority in parts
of the south and east, as moves were made to ban the Communist party,
which won 13% of the vote at the last election.
It has been claimed that the role of fascists in the demonstrations
has been exaggerated by Russian propaganda to justify Vladimir
Putin's manoeuvres in Crimea. The reality is alarming enough to need
no exaggeration. Activists report that the far right made up around a
third of the protesters, but they were decisive in armed confrontations
with the police.
Fascist gangs now patrol the streets. But they are also in Kiev's
corridors of power. The far right Svoboda party, whose leader has
denounced the "criminal activities" of "organised Jewry" and which was
condemned by the European parliament for its "racist and antisemitic
views", has five ministerial posts in the new government, including
deputy prime minister and prosecutor general. The leader of the
even more extreme Right Sector, at the heart of the street violence,
is now Ukraine's deputy national security chief.
Neo-Nazis in office is a first in post-war Europe. But this is
the unelected government now backed by the US and EU. And in a
contemptuous rebuff to the ordinary Ukrainians who protested against
corruption and hoped for real change, the new administration has
appointed two billionaire oligarchs - one who runs his business from
Switzerland - to be the new governors of the eastern cities of Donetsk
and Dnepropetrovsk. Meanwhile, the IMF is preparing an eye-watering
austerity plan for the tanking Ukrainian economy which can only swell
poverty and unemployment.
>From a longer-term perspective, the crisis in Ukraine is a product of
the disastrous Versailles-style break-up of the Soviet Union in the
early 1990s. As in Yugoslavia, people who were content to be a national
minority in an internal administrative unit of a multinational state
- Russians in Soviet Ukraine, South Ossetians in Soviet Georgia -
felt very differently when those units became states for which they
felt little loyalty.
In the case of Crimea, which was only transferred to Ukraine by
Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, that is clearly true for the Russian
majority. And contrary to undertakings given at the time, the US
and its allies have since relentlessly expanded Nato up to Russia's
borders, incorporating nine former Warsaw Pact states and three former
Soviet republics into what is effectively an anti-Russian military
alliance in Europe. The European association agreement which provoked
the Ukrainian crisis also included clauses to integrate Ukraine into
the EU defence structure.
That western military expansion was first brought to a halt in 2008
when the US client state of Georgia attacked Russian forces in the
contested territory of South Ossetia and was driven out. The short
but bloody conflict signalled the end of George Bush's unipolar world
in which the US empire would enforce its will without challenge on
every continent.
Given that background, it is hardly surprising that Russia has acted
to stop the more strategically sensitive and neuralgic Ukraine falling
decisively into the western camp, especially given that Russia's only
major warm-water naval base is in Crimea.
Clearly, Putin's justifications for intervention - "humanitarian"
protection for Russians and an appeal by the deposed president -
are legally and politically flaky, even if nothing like on the scale
of "weapons of mass destruction." Nor does Putin's conservative
nationalism or oligarchic regime have much wider international appeal.
But Russia's role as a limited counterweight to unilateral western
power certainly does. And in a world where the US, Britain, France
and their allies have turned international lawlessness with a moral
veneer into a permanent routine, others are bound to try the same game.
Fortunately, the only shots fired by Russian forces at this point have
been into the air. But the dangers of escalating foreign intervention
are obvious. What is needed instead is a negotiated settlement for
Ukraine, including a broad-based government in Kiev shorn of fascists;
a federal constitution that guarantees regional autonomy; economic
support that doesn't pauperise the majority; and a chance for people
in Crimea to choose their own future. Anything else risks spreading
the conflict.
(C) 2014 Guardian News and Media Seumas Milne
Seumas Milne is a Guardian columnist and associate editor. His most
recent book is The Revenge of History: The Battle for the 21st
Century. His previous books include, The Enemy Within and Beyond
the Casino Economy (co-authored with Nicholas Costello). He tweets
@SeumasMilne
[ Part 2.2: "Attached Text" ]
Published on Wednesday, March 5, 2014 by The Guardian
The external struggle to dominate Ukraine has put fascists in power
and brought the country to the brink of conflict
by Seumas Milne
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/05/clash-crimea-western-ex
pansion-ukraine-fascists
[troops-under-russian-comm-012.jpg] Troops under Russian command
fire weapons into the air in Lubimovka, Ukraine. (Photograph:
Sean Gallup/Getty Images)Diplomatic pronouncements are renowned for
hypocrisy and double standards. But western denunciations of Russian
intervention in Crimea have reached new depths of self parody. The
so far bloodless incursion is an "incredible act of aggression",
US secretary of state John Kerry declared. In the 21st century you
just don't invade countries on a "completely trumped-up pretext",
he insisted, as US allies agreed that it had been an unacceptable
breach of international law, for which there will be "costs".
That the states which launched the greatest act of unprovoked
aggression in modern history on a trumped-up pretext - against Iraq,
in an illegal war now estimated to have killed 500,000, along with the
invasion of Afghanistan, bloody regime change in Libya, and the killing
of thousands in drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, all
without UN authorisation - should make such claims is beyond absurdity.
It's not just that western aggression and lawless killing is on another
scale entirely from anything Russia appears to have contemplated,
let alone carried out - removing any credible basis for the US and
its allies to rail against Russian transgressions. But the western
powers have also played a central role in creating the Ukraine crisis
in the first place.
The US and European powers openly sponsored the protests to oust the
corrupt but elected Viktor Yanukovych government, which were triggered
by controversy over an all-or-nothing EU agreement which would have
excluded economic association with Russia.
In her notorious "fuck the EU" phone call leaked last month, the
US official Victoria Nuland can be heard laying down the shape of
a post-Yanukovych government - much of which was then turned into
reality when he was overthrown after the escalation of violence a
couple of weeks later.
The president had by then lost political authority, but his overnight
impeachment was certainly constitutionally dubious. In his place a
government of oligarchs, neoliberal Orange Revolution retreads and
neofascists has been installed, one of whose first acts was to try and
remove the official status of Russian, spoken by a majority in parts
of the south and east, as moves were made to ban the Communist party,
which won 13% of the vote at the last election.
It has been claimed that the role of fascists in the demonstrations
has been exaggerated by Russian propaganda to justify Vladimir
Putin's manoeuvres in Crimea. The reality is alarming enough to need
no exaggeration. Activists report that the far right made up around a
third of the protesters, but they were decisive in armed confrontations
with the police.
Fascist gangs now patrol the streets. But they are also in Kiev's
corridors of power. The far right Svoboda party, whose leader has
denounced the "criminal activities" of "organised Jewry" and which was
condemned by the European parliament for its "racist and antisemitic
views", has five ministerial posts in the new government, including
deputy prime minister and prosecutor general. The leader of the
even more extreme Right Sector, at the heart of the street violence,
is now Ukraine's deputy national security chief.
Neo-Nazis in office is a first in post-war Europe. But this is
the unelected government now backed by the US and EU. And in a
contemptuous rebuff to the ordinary Ukrainians who protested against
corruption and hoped for real change, the new administration has
appointed two billionaire oligarchs - one who runs his business from
Switzerland - to be the new governors of the eastern cities of Donetsk
and Dnepropetrovsk. Meanwhile, the IMF is preparing an eye-watering
austerity plan for the tanking Ukrainian economy which can only swell
poverty and unemployment.
>From a longer-term perspective, the crisis in Ukraine is a product of
the disastrous Versailles-style break-up of the Soviet Union in the
early 1990s. As in Yugoslavia, people who were content to be a national
minority in an internal administrative unit of a multinational state
- Russians in Soviet Ukraine, South Ossetians in Soviet Georgia -
felt very differently when those units became states for which they
felt little loyalty.
In the case of Crimea, which was only transferred to Ukraine by
Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, that is clearly true for the Russian
majority. And contrary to undertakings given at the time, the US
and its allies have since relentlessly expanded Nato up to Russia's
borders, incorporating nine former Warsaw Pact states and three former
Soviet republics into what is effectively an anti-Russian military
alliance in Europe. The European association agreement which provoked
the Ukrainian crisis also included clauses to integrate Ukraine into
the EU defence structure.
That western military expansion was first brought to a halt in 2008
when the US client state of Georgia attacked Russian forces in the
contested territory of South Ossetia and was driven out. The short
but bloody conflict signalled the end of George Bush's unipolar world
in which the US empire would enforce its will without challenge on
every continent.
Given that background, it is hardly surprising that Russia has acted
to stop the more strategically sensitive and neuralgic Ukraine falling
decisively into the western camp, especially given that Russia's only
major warm-water naval base is in Crimea.
Clearly, Putin's justifications for intervention - "humanitarian"
protection for Russians and an appeal by the deposed president -
are legally and politically flaky, even if nothing like on the scale
of "weapons of mass destruction." Nor does Putin's conservative
nationalism or oligarchic regime have much wider international appeal.
But Russia's role as a limited counterweight to unilateral western
power certainly does. And in a world where the US, Britain, France
and their allies have turned international lawlessness with a moral
veneer into a permanent routine, others are bound to try the same game.
Fortunately, the only shots fired by Russian forces at this point have
been into the air. But the dangers of escalating foreign intervention
are obvious. What is needed instead is a negotiated settlement for
Ukraine, including a broad-based government in Kiev shorn of fascists;
a federal constitution that guarantees regional autonomy; economic
support that doesn't pauperise the majority; and a chance for people
in Crimea to choose their own future. Anything else risks spreading
the conflict.
(C) 2014 Guardian News and Media Seumas Milne
Seumas Milne is a Guardian columnist and associate editor. His most
recent book is The Revenge of History: The Battle for the 21st
Century. His previous books include, The Enemy Within and Beyond
the Casino Economy (co-authored with Nicholas Costello). He tweets
@SeumasMilne