[Shadow_Group] Explaining the Ukraine Debacle

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

  > November 29, 2004
  >
  > Poll Results Aren't the Real Issue
  >
  > Ukraine and Inter-Imperialist Rivalry
  >
  > By GARY LEUPP
  >
  > "Russia plus Ukraine is the Russian empire, which can never be a 
  > democracy."
  >
  > David Frum, neocon ideologue, advocating preemptive expansion of the 
  > U.S. empire
  >
  > Many are declaring the Ukraine crisis the nadir of post-Cold War 
  > U.S.-Russian relations. Surely it is that. But the clash over Ukraine 
  > between Presidents Bush and Putin is not one pitting "freedom" vs. 
  > "dictatorship," or capitalism vs. something else, as the neocons 
  > might have us believe. Rather, it pits U.S. ambitions for hegemony 
  > over the innermost circle of Russia's historical sphere of influence 
  > (including Belarus and Moldova as well as Ukraine) against Russia's 
  > ambitions to maintain a buffer zone against a relentlessly expanding 
  > NATO.
  >
  > Mainstream journalism dwells on a closely contested election, 
  > evidence of vote fraud, and inconsistencies between exit polls and 
  > announced election results. Colin Powell protests that the vote did 
  > "not meet international standards." Critics of Bush foreign policy 
  > are having a field day noting the irony of the charges in light of 
  > the last two scandal-dogged U.S. elections, and particularly the large 
  > discrepancies between exit polls and announced results in the last 
  > vote. But no foreign government is in a position to reject the 
  > substandard American elections, while the U.S. is strong enough to 
  > challenge lots of regimes' legitimacy---before moving in to change 
  > them.
  >
  > The outgoing regime of President Leonid Kuchma and his Prime 
  > Minister, Viktor Yanukovych, stands for a closer relationship with 
  > Russia. Yanukovych ran a tight race with opposition candidate Viktor 
  > Yushchenko, who favors NATO and EU membership, concluding with a 
  > reported victory of 49.46 to 46.61%. Yanukovych has been politically 
  > aided by Moscow, Yuschenko by Washington. Ian Traynor in the Guardian 
  > reports a "U.S. campaign behind the turmoil in Ukraine," and labels 
  > the Yushenko campaign "an American creation, a sophisticated and 
  > brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing 
  > that, in four countries in four years [Serbia, Georgia, Belarus, 
  > Ukraine], has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple 
  > unsavoury regimes." He points out that "Richard Miles, the U.S. 
  > ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role" in toppling Milosevic in 
  > Serbia, and later as U.S. ambassador to Tbilisi, toppling 
  > Shevardnadze in Georgia. Then "the U.S. ambassador in Minsk, Michael 
  > Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in 
  > Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the 
  > Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko." This one failed, but the 
  > experiences gained have "been invaluable in plotting to beat the 
  > regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev."
  >
  > Washington's propaganda apparatus made it clear in advance that the 
  > only legitimate victory would be that won by its man. This article of 
  > faith ignored the very substantial social base that Yanukovych 
  > enjoys, especially among the ethnic Russian voters in the eastern 
  > half of the country.
  >
  > I've seen a host of reports defending and attacking the integrity of 
  > the Ukrainian electoral process, including some surprising ones. The 
  > British Helsinki Watch Group found more irregularities on the 
  > opposition side, whereas a majority in the Ukrainian Parliament 
  > target the government.
  > I have no personal opinion on the count, but just assume massive 
  > fraud on both sides. I have no greater hostility for one or the other 
  > candidate. The fundamental issue here in any case isn't who got how 
  > many ballots. Just imagine what would happen if Porter Goss received 
  > a CIA report suggesting that Yanukovych indeed won more votes, that 
  > Goss duly reported that to Condoleezza Rice, and that Condi decided 
  > to bring it to her boss's attention. Especially if Karl Rove was in 
  > the room at the time. Would Bush and Powell reverse course and 
  > announce that the election had in fact met "international standards"?
  >
  >  
  >
  > The Turf Battle
  >
  > No, it's not the question of electoral purity, surely a matter of 
  > indifference to both Putin and Bush. It's a matter of turf. Look at 
  > Ukraine on a map. This nation of 48 million is Europe's second 
  > largest country, almost as big as Texas, and is bordered by Belarus, 
  > Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. It's a European, 
  > Slavic country with strong linguistic and cultural ties to Russia; 
  > indeed the first Russian state (Kievan Rus) grew up in Ukraine and 
  > the name itself means "borderland." With Belarus and Russia, it 
  > launched the Confederation of Independent States (CIS) in December 
  > 1991, confirming its intimate links to the other two even before the 
  > breakup of the Soviet Union. With its rich soil, it was the Soviet 
  > breadbasket. Hugging the northern coast of the Black Sea, including 
  > the Crimean Peninsula, it constitutes what the CIA Factbook calls "a 
  > strategic position at the crossroads between Europe and Asia." Its 
  > natural resources include iron ore, coal, manganese, natural gas, 
  > oil, salt, sulfur, graphite, titanium, magnesium, kaolin, nickel, 
  > mercury, and timber.
  >
  > U.S. policy is very clear. Washington wants to gain control over the 
  > flow of oil from the Caspian Sea, especially Turkmenistan, and to do 
  > so, vies at every step with Russia. Backing regime change in Georgia 
  > earlier this year, it has increased its leverage in that former 
  > Soviet republic. It woes the former Soviet republics to join its NATO 
  > military bloc, which with the end of the Cold War would seem to have 
  > little raison d'être except to contain friendly capitalist Russia. 
  > While Eastern European allies once buffered the USSR from NATO, the 
  > alliance now borders Russia in the Baltics (Estonia and Latvia), and 
  > Washington would like to expand it to include Belarus, Ukraine, 
  > Georgia and Azerbaijan, encircling Russia's western flank. Meanwhile 
  > it stations U.S. troops and acquires military bases in the former 
  > Soviet republics in Central Asia, pursuant to the unpredictably 
  > expanding "War on Terrorism." A compliant Ukraine abetting its 
  > objectives would be a major prize for the Bush administration.
  >
  > Similarly a very friendly Ukraine would serve Russian "national 
  > interests." Moscow envisions a modest revival of the late USSR, the 
  > demise of which Putin calls "a tragedy," centering around Russia, 
  > Ukraine and Belarus. The neocons absolutely oppose this. David Frum 
  > (former Bush speech writer, author of the notorious "axis of evil" 
  > line, implacable foe of a Palestinian state, public proponent of the 
  > allegation that Yasser Arafat died of AIDS, Richard Perle associate) 
  > has recently written the National Review Online that "independent 
  > Russia can be a normal country with a democratic future: [but] Russia 
  > plus Ukraine is the Russian empire, which can never be a democracy." 
  > (Emphasis added.) Frum is not necessarily expressing the thinking of 
  > administration officials; obviously the latter find no contradiction 
  > between the empire in general (surely not the one they're busily 
  > expanding) and "democracy" as they perversely conceptualize it. And 
  > they realize that the differences between Russia and the U.S. at this 
  > point are not ideological, Russia having long since thoroughly and 
  > very painfully embraced capitalism. But I expect that such officials 
  > will publicly opine that, indeed, a bloc led by Moscow, even limited 
  > to the immediately adjoining Slavic lands with intimate historical 
  > ties to Mother Russia, is somehow antithetical to democracy and must 
  > be prevented. They will emphasize Putin's manipulation of the Russian 
  > press (hoping no doubt it doesn't raise the issue of the U.S. press's 
  > slavish deference to Bush), and the lack of political opposition in 
  > Russia (as though there were some here).
  >
  > Inter-imperialist rivalry is again the order of the day, as it was 
  > before the Russian Revolution, before the socialist alternative and 
  > the Cold War. Powerful nations struggle, not over radically different 
  > ideas about society, but over mere lucre: markets, labor-power and 
  > resources. Few governments want the U.S. to control Iran and Iraq; 
  > other major powers seek at least a share in the pie. So they keep 
  > standing in Washington's way, or trying to. So far Russia has been 
  > patient, allowing France to lead international opposition to the war 
  > against Iraq. Putin has accommodated U.S. expansion, trading support 
  > for most aspects of Bush's Terror War for Washington's acceptance of 
  > Russia's "anti-terrorism" Chechnya policy. But it's one thing to 
  > concede Southwest Asia to the American juggernaut, another to fork 
  > over the borderlands, even if the loss takes the form of some paltry 
  > poll result.
  >
  >  
  >
  > U.S. Rejects "Irresponsible" Democracy Anyway
  >
  > Recall how Henry Kissinger, back in June 1970 declared of the Chilean 
  > elections, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country 
  > go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people." He 
  > was speaking about a country in the Western Hemisphere, which U.S. 
  > administrations have always considered their turf, and he as Secretary 
  > of State had no problem abetting the fascist coup of Sept. 11, 1973 
  > which toppled the "moderate Marxist" regime of Salvador Allende. The 
  > CIA had put at least $ 10 million into anti-Allende propaganda. Then 
  > as now, the U.S. government interferes in foreign politics in pursuit 
  > of what it believes are its interests. It does so now with far 
  > greater means and efficacy than can Russia.
  >
  > U.S. governments since 1823 have asserted their right to lead the 
  > hemisphere and thwart the efforts of external (European) powers to 
  > interfere. Chile is 4000 miles from Texas, but when a presidential 
  > candidate marginally more sympathetic to the USSR than to Washington 
  > took power, Washington toppled him without moral qualms. Russia has 
  > long dropped the Brezhnev Doctrine (a variation of the Monroe), but 
  > understandably wants its closest neighbors to be friendly. Ukraine is 
  > to Russia what Mexico (rather than Chile) is to the U.S., and Putin's 
  > behavior should be seen in that light, as he twice congratulates 
  > Yanukovych on his triumph even as U.S. and UE leaders announce they 
  > refuse to accept the Ukrainian election result.
  >
  > A falling out among thieves is not necessarily a bad thing, and I 
  > would just as soon that Putin, who has curried favor with the Bush 
  > administration in the past even by collaborating disinformation, 
  > give the hyperpower a run for its money in this contest over the 
  > Ukraine. A contest not between two politicians, but two powers, one 
  > triumphantly ascendant, the other cautiously defensive but following 
  > repeated setbacks and humiliations maybe prepared to mount a fight in 
  > its own neighborhood. One can only hope that the big power contention 
  > doesn't impose a great price on the people of the Ukraine, and that 
  > they make use of the situation to truly advance their interests.
  >
  > * * * *
  >
  > My surname is Swiss, and my roots mostly Scandinavian, but I have 
  > German ancestors too, who emigrated to the U.S. not from Germany 
  > directly but from the Ukraine. There were many ethnic Germans there, 
  > their ancestors invited by Russia's Czarina Catherine in the late 
  > eighteenth century. Many left for the American Midwest in the late 
  > nineteenth. These "Russian Germans," who contributed enormously to 
  > the history of Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and the Dakotas, often 
  > left to avoid conscription. Family lore indicates my ancestors were 
  > draft-dodgers. They didn't want their youth fighting for Imperial 
  > Russia, so they came to America seeking freedom.
  >
  > I understand that attitude, which brought a lot of immigrants here. I 
  > do not want my teenage kids ever fighting for one imperialism against 
  > another, in some far-flung place. What irony there would be in their 
  > coerced involvement in such a fight, especially if it took place in 
  > this currently contested spot important to my family history. I can't 
  > believe it will come to that, but after all, there are crazy people 
  > in power, surely crazier in Washington than in Moscow or Kiev.
  >
  > Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct 
  > Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, 
  > Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male 
  > Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and 
  > Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 
  > 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless 
  > chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial 
  > Crusades.
  >
  > He can be reached at: gleupp at granite.tufts.edu

_
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/shadowgroup-l/attachments/20041129/9bc27d63/attachment.html>