‘Kiev Spring’ Deserves Western Support
Posted: 04/03/2014 | Author: The Political Idealist | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: crimea, democracy, EU, John Kerry, moscow, news, Obama, putin, Russia, social justice, trade, ukraine, United Russia, US, Warfare, world news |Leave a commentIn eastern Europe, people living under an authoritarian regime grow restless and force their political class to move towards reform, and towards liberal Europe. Russia’s similarly authoritarian and corruption-ridden government, desperate to retain its political and economic domination over ‘its’ half of the continent, sends in its army to crush the fragile new liberal democracy. Does this story sound familiar?
That’s because it has happened before.
There are several parallels- albeit limited ones- between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and the USSR’s oppression of Czechoslovakia following the Prague Spring half a century ago. In both cases, small countries’ right to determine their own destinies were denied by a superpower determined to make examples out of them in order to secure its own position.
Although Russia insists that it is merely “defending” the large Russian minority in eastern Ukraine, the pretext is a flimsy one. There is no evidence that the Russian community in Ukraine has anything to fear from the new government: indeed, many Russian Ukrainians support the cause of reform. It was in Russia’s power to demand referenda in Ukraine for the secession of the nation’s Russian-populated east and Crimea from Ukraine. Military intervention would be completely pointless… Unless Putin and his government are seeking to remove the new Ukrainian government and annex Crimea.
Personally, I think the international community is resigned to the predominately pro-Russia Crimea being annexed. However, I am saddened that such a feeble approach to defending the sovereignty of Ukraine has been taken by the US-EU axis. To be clear, I think it would be wrong to send in our own armies into Ukraine “with all guns blazing”- outright warfare must always be an absolute last resort, particularly when the world’s second biggest nuclear-armed power is involved. We should think very long and hard about the lengths the West should go to to defend the freedom of the Ukranian people. We are talking about the borders of the European Union, after all.
That is why I approve of the White House’s plans to impose economic sanctions on Russia unless it pulls out of Ukrainian territory. However, I note that the US is much less interdependent on Russia than Europe is, which is perhaps why the British government (which is also virtually owned by Russian oligarchs) is opposed to any restriction on trade with Russia whatsoever. Such a stance renders British foriegn policy morally bankrupt. A war between democracy and kleptocracy; underdog and giant; right and wrong is about to rage on our doorstep, and our leaders just shrug, doing nothing for fear of annoying the “Londongrad” billionaires club?! It’s true that Europe would endure some turbulence due to sanctions on Russia, not as much as the target. If Putin suffered the perfect storm of losing his nation’s oil and gas revenues, his friends complaining that their assets in London had been frozen, and the national humiliation of becoming the world’s outcast I think it would be him, not the West, that would blink first. Whatever help we offer to Ukraine, let it be more useful than empty words.
