It hardly bodes well for national unity in Ukraine that the pro-Western parliament is now calling not only for closer ties with Europe but also for Yanukovych’s arrest on charges of mass murder. Indeed, bear in mind that the country was virtually split down the middle at the last election in 2010—with those in the West voting for Tymoshenko and closer ties with Europe (and the United States), those in the East for Yanukovych and closer ties with Russia. Yanukovych won.
Therefore, despite open and notorious flirtation with European leaders, it should have come as no surprise that he ultimately got into bed with Vladimir Putin, who clearly fancies himself the de facto leader of a Soviet Union that, in his mind, never died. But what if Tymoshenko had won and got into bed with … Obama, which in turn incited pro-Russian Ukrainians to do to her what pro-Western Ukrainians are doing to Yanukovych? Do you think Western leaders would be voicing their support?
(“The Orange Revolution Turns Red … with Blood,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 23, 2014)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has 40,000 to 60,000 troops revving up their tanks on Ukraine’s eastern boarder awaiting his order to invade … if civil unrest continues. He has operatives all over eastern Ukraine spreading pro-Russian propaganda and fomenting that unrest.
No wonder he’s winning – not just the hearts and minds of pro-Russian Ukrainians, but also the psychological war he has been waging against Ukraine’s pro-Western leaders ever since they ousted his puppet president, Viktor Yanukovych, three months ago.
‘It is hard to accept but it’s the truth. The majority of law enforcers in the east are incapable of performing their duties.’
With [Ukraine’s acting president] Mr. Turchynov’s acknowledgment that a significant chunk of the country had slipped from the government’s grasp, the long-simmering conflict in Ukraine seemed to enter a new and more dangerous phase.
(New York Times, April 30, 2014)
But, having conceded that eastern Ukraine is effectively lost, it’s clearly foolhardy for pro-Western leaders in Kiev to continue ordering troops to wage plainly feckless battles to retake government buildings in eastern Ukraine, which thugs have seized and claimed as property of their separatist pro-Russian republic. Nothing dramatizes this fecklessness quite like having old, basket-swinging, pro-Russian babushkas continually repel their military advances.
It’s equally foolhardy for Obama and Western leaders to continue threatening Putin with economic sanctions … if he continues to do what he seems determined to continue doing. These, after all, are the leaders who stood by as Putin annexed Crimea (without firing a shot), and are standing by as he effectively annexes the rest of eastern Ukraine (with the proverbial one thousand little cuts).
Incidentally, it would be so surreal as to be absurd to hold a presidential election on May 25 for all of Ukraine when half the country is pledging allegiance to Russia.
Which is why, in addition to sanctions to cripple Russia’s economy the way they’ve crippled Iran’s, Obama and Western leaders should prevail upon Ukrainian leaders to give up eastern Ukraine – just as they gave up Crimea. They should then have the Ukrainians fortify and prepare to defend their western border.
This would mean that Pro-Western and pro-Russian Ukrainians would effectively partition Ukraine – just as Western powers and the Soviet Union partitioned Germany after World War II. (Granted, while there might have been many pro-Western Germans, there were probably very few pro-Russian Germans. Hence, East Germans spent most of their lives under Soviet/Russian dominion longing to be reunited with West Germans, which finally happened in 1990. By contrast, chances are very good that, despite inevitable buyers’ remorse, pro-Russian Ukrainians will evince no such longing if/when Russia annexes eastern Ukraine.) The key point here is that Western powers should do everything necessary to make western Ukraine as appealing when juxtaposed with eastern Ukraine as they did to make West Germany appealing when juxtaposed with East Germany.
Most important, though, Obama and Western leaders should fast-track Ukraine’s request for NATO membership. Because Putin has made it plain that economic sanctions will do nothing to stop him from trying to occupy all of Ukraine – just as Hitler initially annexed Sudetenland and eventually occupied all of Czechoslovakia.
What’s more, they should invite all remaining non-NATO republics of the former Soviet Union (from Belarus and Moldova in the North to Tajikistan and Kirghizstan in the South) to apply for membership; that is, if they fear Russia doing to them what it has now done to Georgia and Ukraine. In other words, lay down NATO red lines all around Putin’s Russia and dare him to cross them, which would trigger World War III as surely as Hitler crossing a red line into Poland triggered World War II.
This would effectively checkmate (or contain) Putin’s neo-Stalinist ambition to reconstitute the former Soviet Union. More to the point, given that NATO has already absorbed all countries of the Russian-led former Warsaw Pact into its protective vortex, he will have relatively little to show for turning Russia into an even more isolated and withering pariah state than Iran is today.
That said, let me hasten to clarify:
I’m on record decrying the way NATO gobbled up the non-Russian members of the Warsaw Pact after the disintegration of the Soviet Union — like vultures gobbling up the carcass of an elephant. This was unnecessarily provocative. What’s more, continuing the Hitler-Putin analogy I delineated in “Putin as Hitler, Crimea as Sudetenland” on February 26 below, it was easy to see how Putin would’ve found this as much a national humiliation as Hitler found the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which Western powers imposed on Germany after WWI.
But just as the humiliation Germans felt was no justification for Hitler to invade neighboring countries, the humiliation Russians felt is no justification for Putin to do so. Moreover, Russia is not entitled to a “sphere of influence” over other countries just because it wielded that influence during the Cold War, or because people of Russian descent comprise a significant percentage of the population in those countries. Hell, Mexico could invoke historical and cultural ties to lay claim to California just as Russia did to annex Crimea.
Not to mention that, if Putin had done a better job of ruling Russia over the past 15 years, neighboring countries like Ukraine might’ve been clamoring to join his Eurasian Union instead of trying to avoid any association with Russia like the plague.
Related commentaries:
Orange revolution…
Europeans appeasement of Putin…
* This commentary was originally published on Monday at 8:05 am