by D.J. Webb
I am not sure to what extent relations with Russia and the Ukraine are relevant to British libertarians. If they are, the relevance is likely to be this: that our interests in Russia and its backyard do not go beyond the maintenance of free trade. The existence of NATO, and its extension ever further east, are an outright provocation to Russia. While no country is likely to use nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future, this does not justify relentless and thoughtless provocation of a country that can destroy us, for no discernible purpose.
I have to make a disclaimer: that I studied Russian at university, although my Russian is rusty after nearly 20 years without speaking it. I spent three months abroad in Voronezh in 1994 as part of my degree, and also visited Moscow, Kiev and Odessa at that time. So I have my own reasons to object to an anti-Russian foreign policy, although I can hardly expect my own history of Russian interest to have an impact on British foreign policy and the wider preferences of libertarians in the UK.
The folding up of the Soviet Union
It is clear to me that Mikhail Gorbachev expected Russia to be accepted into the counsels and councils of the West after the fall of Communism. If you recall the siege of Leningrad during World War Two, when the people of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, were reduced to eating cats and dogs, then you will wonder why Gorbachev allowed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to become independent. These territories are vital to the defence of St. Petersburg, and Estonia and Latvia in particular had large Russian minorities of over 40% of the population, whose interests Moscow might have been thought likely to take into consideration. The Latvian capital, Riga, was overwhelmingly Russian and served as the headquarters of the Soviet Baltic fleet. None of these countries had been independent save for a brief period between 1918 and 1940. They were historically part of Russia.
I am not arguing against Baltic independence or for the retention of recalcitrant territories in a nation’s borders. I am pointing out that there were good reasons why the Soviet government might not have wanted to allow these nations to resume their inter-war independence. In addition to the reasons cited, the fact that Russia gained part of East Prussian Königsberg after the war, now the region of Kaliningrad, meant that Lithuania in particular divided the main part of Russia from one of her territories. In short, Gorbachev allowed the Baltic states to become independent because he did not anticipate the treatment Russia would receive in the post-Soviet period.
There was an attempt to keep the rest of the Soviet Union together—and that was ratified by a referendum in the USSR—but ultimately all 14 of the non-Russian republics became independent, including the Ukraine and Byelorussia, both core parts of the Eastern Slav heartland, and, like Russia, heirs to the mediaeval Eastern Slav state of the Kievan Rus. The Baltics were not core parts of the mediaeval Rus in the same way, and it is clear that the loss of Kiev in particular was keenly felt by Russia, as Kiev had been the original capital of the Eastern Slav peoples.
The loss of these territories could be justified in Moscow by the consideration that they represented a buffer zone between NATO and Russia, and so Russia had defensible borders, at least in so far as NATO forces would have to take the whole of the Ukraine before they approached Russia proper. This calculation becomes nugatory once an attempt is made to bring the Ukraine into the EU and NATO. Given the Soviet loss of around 30m people in World War Two, it is unsurprising that the Russian government would regard such a development as a total unpicking of all the gains of the Second World War in a way that threatened Russia security more keenly than at any point since the Mongol Yoke period when large parts of Rus were conquered by the Golden Horde.
The irony is that it is not clear that the “West”, such as it, wishes to subsidise the Ukraine sufficiently to allow that country to become a prosperous part of the EU. US figures have frequently been quoted saying that Russia will never be an empire without the Ukraine, and so, whatever the intentions of countries like Germany, the US has sought to destabilise the Ukraine and prevent its consolidation as part of a pro-Russian sphere of influence.
The borders of the Ukraine
If we look at the Ukraine historically, we note that the Ukrainian territories formerly part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that reunited with Russia in 1654 comprise less than half of the modern territory of the Ukraine. Kiev and all points West are the traditional Ukraine. Cities such as Kharkov and Lugansk, only a few miles from the Russian border, were part of Russia before 1654, although the city of Kharkov itself was founded during the disturbances that led to the 1654 reunification of the Eastern Slavs, and so its population has from the beginning comprised both Russians and Ukrainians fleeing the disturbances further West. Consequently, the city is almost entirely Russian-speaking, although the majority of the population is “ethnic-Ukrainian”, meaning they have Ukrainian surnames, revealing their ultimate ancestry to be Ukrainian in much the same way as someone called “James Murphy” in London could be described as “ethnic-Irish”, by virtue of having a single Irish ancestor 3 or 4 generations ago. In reality, there is not much difference between the Russian-speaking ethnic-Ukrainians and the ethnic-Russians themselves.
Other parts of the Ukraine were conquered jointly (from the Turkish Empire) after the reunification of the Eastern Slavs, and so became called Novorossiya, or “New Russia”. These territories include Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, the Crimea and Odessa—all territories that are majority Russian-speaking and that have never been Ukrainian-speaking. If you go far enough back, you can find a time when the Tartars, Greeks and Armenians had a larger ethnic presence in these territories. But these cities are Russian-speaking today, although surrounded in some cases by Ukrainian-speaking countryside. Odessa itself had a large Jewish presence before the Holocaust, and so was roughly 50:50 Yiddish- and Russian-speaking, with the Ukrainian language coming nowhere.
Consequently, the Ukraine has “inherited” Soviet-era borders that do not correspond to the historical Ukraine and are not coterminous with the borders within which the Ukrainian language is spoken. Why did the Soviets award so much territory to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic? This was probably because, firstly, they wished to include Russian-speaking territories in the Ukraine, to bind it into the USSR, and secondly, the far-flung Russian-speaking cities of the Ukraine do have Ukrainian ethnic majorities (in the same way that English-speaking Cardiff has an “ethnic-Welsh” population, in so far as it may be presumed that people with surnames like Parry are of Welsh descent). The only part of the Ukraine to have an ethnic-Russian majority tout court was the Crimea, which has now been reabsorbed into Russia, reversing Khrushchev’s absurd decision to give it as a present to the Ukraine in 1954 to mark the three-hundredth anniversary of the reunification of the Eastern Slavs in 1654.
The Russian language in the Ukraine
For these reasons, therefore, Russian is not really a minority language in the Ukraine. The 2001 Ukrainian census—the last—showed only 29.3% of the population reporting Russian as their native language. However, the issue is politicised, and many or most people are bilingual, and so it seems that only people who reported only speaking Russian were listed in the census as Russian-speaking. All others, including bilinguals, were reported as Ukrainian speakers. It is for this reason that polls in the Ukraine show much higher levels of preference for Russian. The 2004 opinion poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed that 43-46% of the population reported using Russian in the home, similar to the proportion using Ukrainian. In addition to the Crimea (97%), the regions of Donetsk (93%), Lugansk (89%), Odessa (85%), Zaporozhie (81%) Kharkov (74%), Dnepropetrovsk (72%) and Nikolaev (66%) all reported being majority Russian-speaking. I don’t have the figures for the Kherson region, directly adjacent to the Crimea, but that region is likely to be majority Russian-speaking too. In all cases, the larger cities are much more solidly Russian-speaking than surrounding countryside. More nuanced polls (such as that undertaken in 2005 by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences) show that 36.4% spoke mainly Russian in the home, 21.6% spoke both languages in the home, and the balance only Ukrainian.
Consequently, attempts by the government in Kiev to maintain Ukrainian as the only official language of the country are contrary to the linguistic reality on the ground, not forgetting that most of these areas have never been Ukrainian-speaking at any point in history. Interestingly, the 2001 census listed around 25% of the Kiev population as native speakers of Russian, but polls taken since and much anecdotal evidence shows that Russian is the preferred language of the street in Kiev, in much the same way that French has the edge over Flemish in Brussels. It is completely false to pretend that Russian is a minority language that has no valid place in the culture of the Ukraine. Other studies have shown that over 80% of books and newspapers published in the Ukraine are in Russian, and that over 70% of television programmes are in Russian. Ukrainian is largely a spoken language, and Russian is used in writing and in the media all over the Ukraine.
I am at a loss to work out why the mulish Ukrainian government refuses to allow a policy of official bilingualism, similar to that that obtains in Finland, where Swedish, a language spoken by less than 6% of the population, has official status. There is an extremist tinge to Ukrainian nationalism, associated with the alliance of Ukrainian nationalists with the Nazis in World War Two. (Close observers will note that nearly all of the remaining concentration camp guards being hunted down to this day tend to be ethnic-Ukrainians, which tells its own story.) It is possible that the extremist edge to Ukrainian nationalism was accentuated by the deaths of millions of Ukrainians in an artificially generated famine in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s. Nevertheless, to this day, there is no spirit of compromise on the language issue.
Toppling Yanukovych
When the democratically elected pro-Russian president of the Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was toppled from power in February 2014, he had only a year left to run of his presidential term. In a culturally divided nation, there will always be stiff opposition to the government, but opposing forces could have allowed his presidential term to finish before putting up a strong candidate against him in 2015. In the event, the rage against his refusal to sign an economic agreement with the EU that would have had negative repercussions on the Ukrainian economy, opting instead for a more generous package from Russia, led to a sustained campaign to eject him from power.
It is certain that the protests in Kiev’s Independence Square were masterminded by the US government, which the US Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, stated had spent US$5bn on destabilising the Ukraine (or, in more positive terms, forging civil-society institutions). A tapped phone call even showed that Arseniy Yatsenyuk had been identified by the US in advance as the future prime minister of a pro-Western Ukraine. The protests in the Independence Square lasted for months, and eventually included the occupation of government ministry buildings, until Yanukovych fled to Russia. The speaker of Parliament assumed the presidential role, and the US candidate for the prime ministership, Yatsenyuk, became prime minister in February 2014, well before any attempt to hold a general election to ratify such a change.
It is important for libertarians to understand the concept of sustained occupation of central areas. I’m pretty sure many libertarians would subsume this under the right to protest. But sustained occupation is not just a quick demonstration of opinion, but an existential challenge to a sitting government. Another example that can be cited is the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square in the Chinese capital, Beijing. At some point, and particularly when ministry buildings began to be invaded, the sustained occupation of Independence Square took on a putschist dimension. Either the government would be toppled, or the square would be cleared. The protesters were embedded in, camping in the square, and using burning tyres to prevent police clearance operations. It was no longer a strictly peaceful demonstration, and was one being controlled by a foreign embassy. Consequently, I would argue, and probably face stiff “libertarian” resistance, that this was not an exercise of free speech, but an operation to achieve a coup d’état by ejecting an elected government from office. This issue deserves discussion by libertarians.
The separatist régimes in the East
We have since seen Russian intervention establish proto-régimes in parts of Donetsk and Lugansk, although I believe Russian-speaking Kharkov, only 30 miles from the Russian border, to have proved a significant disappointment to the Russian government of Vladimir Putin, largely because of quick action taken by that city’s government to prevent the occupation of government buildings in Kharkov by pro-Russian protesters. Of course, the occupation of government buildings in Donetsk and Lugansk is no better than similar actions taken by pro-EU forces in Kiev, but once the national government had been toppled, a wider free-for-all was set in motion. It makes no sense to approve of a putsch in Kiev, but not in Donetsk and Lugansk. Odessa is also a firmly pro-Russian language region, and we have seen the burning alive of 42 pro-Russian protesters in a building in Odessa in May—an action that had it taken place in Donetsk and the victims been pro-Kiev protesters would have attracted much more Western media comment. It is amazing how this event has sunk without trace.
Ukrainian attempts to reconquer the separatist-held areas have also been conducted with blithe disregard for civilian lives, including the use of cluster bombs, banned in most countries, in civilian areas, and aerial bombardment of the separatist militias, who don’t have aircraft. We can imagine the Western response if the Assad regime in Syria were using aerial bombardment of rebel-held parts of Syria to bring them to heel: the use of aircraft against those who have no way of responding, other than trying to bring down the planes bombing them, is highly provocative. Could Britain have bombed the Falls Road in Belfast in the 1970s to defeat the IRA? For this reason, I blame the Kiev authorities for the attack on a Malaysian airliner flying over the rebel territories: had the Ukrainian government not been engaged in aerial bombardment of Donetsk and Lugansk, the Malaysian plane would not have been brought down, and the Ukrainian government had no business assuring foreign airliners it was safe to fly over territories where it knew separatists were trying to shoot down its own military aircraft.
Putin would probably be happy with an agreement that the Ukraine not join the EU or NATO and that it allow Russian to become a joint official language of the republic. These are reasonable demands. Yet we have seen constant attempts by Western governments to up the tempo of the dispute and nudge Kiev away from a settlement. Given that the whole of the Ukrainian coast is Russian-speaking, the long-term outcome of such brinkmanship could be Russian occupation of the entire Black Sea coast of the Ukraine, reducing a rump Ukraine to its Ukrainian-speaking heartland, and turning it into a landlocked state. This would also allow Russia to incorporate the Transdniestrian Republic, a breakaway Russian-speaking part of Moldavia that adjoins Odessa.
Sanctions as economic warfare
The response to these moves by Putin—largely in reaction to Western intervention—has been a ratcheting up of “sanctions”, with Britain’s own David Cameron doing his level best to stoke tensions in the Ukraine. Sanctions are economic warfare: they are intended to destroy the Russian economy. We should not kid ourselves on this. It is only Russian weakness that prevents a stronger response. Governments who aim explicitly to destroy the economies of neighbouring states are at war with them, economically at least. It should not be our aim to destroy Russia, not least because the long-term threat to Britain comes from, if anyone, Germany, and Russia has historically shown itself to be a reliable ally against German expansionism. It is worth recalling promises made to Russia in 1990-91 that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe, let alone former members of the Soviet Union. As a weaker state, Russia has evolved a military doctrine that permits it to use tactical nuclear weapons to force NATO to stand down in a confrontation and accept a return to the status quo ante. In the event of war, this could see the use of smaller tactical nuclear weapons against countries such as Poland that have sought to stoke the conflict in Kiev, leaving the US to determine whether “mutually assured destruction” by responding with a nuclear strike on Russia was worth it.
It is time that NATO be wound up. Britain should rescind all of its fatuous military guarantees to countries like Poland. As far as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are concerned, we should warn them that, no only will we not intervene militarily in their defence, but that their long-term security would be enhanced by their taking steps to improve their relationship with Russia, instead of constantly provoking Russia by mistreatment of their own ethnic-Russian minorities. Some of these countries are behaving like young boys wielding an implied threat by their older brothers to come their defence in playground arguments. Just as the Scandinavian countries are no longer under Swedish rule, but the countries of the Nordic region manage to get along and even see each other as allies, it is appropriate for ex-Soviet nations to maintain a broadly pro-Russian policy, designed to establish a relationship between them and Russia similar to that that exists between Finland and Sweden today. For the Ukraine or Lithuania to turn themselves into anti-Russian states is a threat to their own long-term survival—we should not attempt to give them any blank cheque in the forms of money, arms and men that would encourage them to continue to behave in this fashion.
It is high time, therefore, that we looked beyond the EU and NATO and sought the creation of a Europe of trading nations that maintained their national sovereignty and independence from each other, in the interests of their own nations and identities. As a long-term policy, the alienation of Russia is lousy—what is Britain’s geopolitical strategy for the world in 2050 or 2100?—and, in the final analysis, this behaviour amounts to no more than a desperate attempt to keep the Western Alliance under the fading hegemony of the US. A new world is emerging, and it won’t be run by the West, and we need to carve out our future in that world without looking back.
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A brilliant and well-informed essay. My only dispute would be that I regard British relations with Germany to be just as potentially friendly as with Russia.
I agree, especially about the German People, who always ought to have been our friends, and were tragically misled into utter disaster, twice.
Russia is not Western civilization. They place no value on truth telling. There is no shame in lying. The shame goes not to the lair but to the person who believed them. Westerners are considered hopelessly weak and naive for believing Russian promises, like the promise to recognize Ukraine’s borders (1996), the promise not to hold fake referendum just weeks before holding fake referendums, the denials that invasions were underway, the promises of a cease fire which are usually violated within hours.
If Britain has an interest, it is keeping the frontier of western civilization as far to the east as possible.
Regarding the essay:
– The language issue is completely made up and not reflective of reality.
– Relize that NATO expasion was not aggressive. The populations into which it expanded BEGGED for protection, having known the hell on Earth the Kremlin had created in those societies.
I think you can make an economic case against NATO expansion, but not a moral one.
I agree with the analysis of this essay: http://romaninukraine.com/the-myth-of-russian-humiliation-and-nato-expansionism/
(disclosure: I’m ethnically Ukrainian and live in Ukraine.)
Roman, I take your point.
But I wonder if Russia might conceivably become, properly, part of Western Civilisation – a thing that we British Libertarians devoutly hope to help to preserve? This could perhaps come about, if all the nasty traces of socialism in its worst form, that are yet left in the Russian body-politic like cancer, were deleted?
Former Russian Intelligence general Ion Mihai Pacepa claims that in 2004, Russian had an FSB (former KGB) officer for every 297 Russians. They are now mobilized to prevent a Ukraine style protest against Moscow. They’ve created volunteer citizen patrols to help people rat out their neighbors: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-ukraine-maidan-scenario-patrols/26566852.html
I would certainly like to think that good ideas about liberty and dignity and economics would spread, but Russia 1. seems determined and able to prevent it, 2. has historically valued the appearance of strength above all else.
I’ve been thinking about this classification. I think it’s accurage:
Russian ethic: appear strong
German ethic: do your duty
English ethic: what is the truth (you guys had the luxury of being an island people)
American ethic: everyone is my customer
Jewish ethic: say what is necessary (because we are outnumbered)
Chinese ethic: say what is appropriate
I think, Roman, you may be too generous in your appraisal of the English ethic – which is not “say whatever is the truth”. It is closer to “say whatever allows you to grab the moral high ground”.
Truth-telling in the English tradition there, DJ 😉
Roman, you point us to an essay whose analysis you agree with – but you didn’t state that it is your own essay and your own website. I just want that to go on record – that is your own website. Your website is an interesting source of information from the Ukraine. I notice on July 31st you pointed out that locals in Donetsk were tiring of the separatists (although being bombed by Kiev might not win them over to the Kiev side either). So I take that sort of information as good first-hand information. I have read your blog a number of times, and I recall you saying that the Ukraine was better off without Donetsk and Lugansk – but I can’t find the exact article in which you said that. You have your own perspective, and you may indeed have reasons to be annoyed with Russia – but it is not in the interests of the UK to antagonise Russia, and like it or not, the Ukraine is part of Russia’s backyard and cannot opt out of that geographical reality.
I agree that Russia is not really part of Western civilisation – but neither is the Ukraine. Whatever civilisation Russia belongs to – so does the Ukraine. You could consider the Orthodox world a related civilisation, but not part of Western civilisation. Maybe the Uniate church in the Ukraine is a sign that historically there have been attempts to bridge the gap between Orthodoxy and the West – but this is just clearly not the West.
Mr. DJWebb,
>you point us to an essay whose analysis you agree with – but you didn’t state that it is your own essay and your own website
It’s not my essay. It’s an essay by Anna Applebaum (author of ‘Gulag’) which I exerpted onto my website for your convenience. 🙂
> although being bombed by Kiev might not win them over to the Kiev side either
I know from both headlines and friends serving in Ukrainian artillery units that some residential areas have been bombed. But it’s also true that reports of this are exaggerated.
This propaganda is a centerpiece of Russia’s strategy. I have a pretty big collection of links here: http://romaninukraine.com/russias-strategy-of-creating-massacres-to-blame-on-ukraine-collection/
You can here Putin himself articulate the strategy of putting civilians in the line of fire. You canread the online instuctions of merceneries leader Pavel Gubarev which included: “Don’t pass up any opportunity to engage in some atrocity that can be blamed on the junta’s fighters.”
And you can link to many videos of Russians fighting from residential areas. In one of the videos, they chase out the residents of the apartment, and then set up a sniper position.
The last link on the page takes you to a collection of news reports from Russia — they publish footage from their own massacres in Chechnya, Georgia, from Syria, Bosnia, from movies, and claim it’s Ukrainians killing civilians.
In audacity of lying, they are second only to North Korea.
Yes, I’ve said many times that the rest Ukraine would be better off without the East. http://romaninukraine.com/collection-of-surveys-about-sentiment-in-e-ukraine/
> Ukraine was better off without Donetsk and Lugansk
Yes. I still feel that the *rest* of Ukraine might be better off with these two historically corrupt regions. That feeling is tempered by two things:
1) Though significant minories (25%) have been sympathetic toward joining Russia (I’m told annecdotally that this number has fallen after residents have had to live with mercenaries), the majorities of people in these regions want to remain with Ukraine. Here is a collection of surveys by international, Ukrainian, and one Russian organization. All of them show approximately the same data: http://romaninukraine.com/collection-of-surveys-about-sentiment-in-e-ukraine/
Most people have now forgotten the savagery with which pro-Ukrainian protests were crushed in those cities. As the protests was breaking up, groups of Ukrainians were surrounded. They were beaten, fire-bombed, forced to kneel, urinated up, and two (both natives of the city) were stabbed to death. Subtitled eye witness account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gL_tBcg8lc
2) The Russian will only stop when they meet violent resistance. Any compromise is perceived as weakness. Believing Russian promises is perceived by the very people making them as weakness and naivety.
> I agree that Russia is not really part of Western civilisation – but neither is the Ukraine.
Ukraine has the desire and respect for truth, which, I would argue is the basis of Western civilization.
> Whatever civilisation Russia belongs to – so does the Ukraine.
I cannot allow that.
Excuse me, Roman. Anne Applebaum is the wife of Radek Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister who flew into Kiev to provoke the coup d’état!!!!
I’m sure everything else you say is correct – and I agree too that “frozen conflict” in the east will leave the people there in the hands of mercenaries with no rule of law. I’ve read of people being shot by the separatists for no real reason. All the more reason for Kiev to agree that it will not apply for EU or NATO membership in an attempt to reach a negotiated deal with Moscow.
It would be nice to believe the Russian forces would leave Lugansk and Donetsk – but those areas have now become a Russian “asset”. If Putin leaves now, in the future he won’t be able to manipulate people in those regions so easily, and so the Euromaidan putsch has led to Lugansk and Donetsk falling under mercenary control unfortunately. This is the direct result of manipulation of Kiev protesters by Nuland, Sikorski and others.
I’m not anti-Ukrainian – I’m sympathetic to the plight of ordinary people on both sides of the cultural divide – but none of this needed to have happened. And further Western intervention will just lead to an escalation which will result in more areas of the Ukraine falling under militia control.
Quite simply, the Ukraine should do what your own blog has suggested: full autonomy for all regions and forget about Lugansk and Donetsk. Russian and Ukrainian should be joint official languages and the Ukraine should declare itself a neutral territory. This is the only way to safeguard your independence in the longer run.
I don’t completely trust Applebaum. She is part of what some of our colleagues call the Cathedral. But I agree with her points in this particular essay. There was no agreement against Nato expansion, and it was very, very welcome by the people where it expanded.
Regarding a coup de’etat — no. Whatever help we received was minimal and very welcome.
This is a long essay making the point and addressing most of the evidence of western involvement, but I really poured my heart into it: http://dailyanarchist.com/2014/04/10/putins-libertarians/
It address the coup de’etat claim pretty exhaustively. And if you want more, here’s the followup essay: http://dailyanarchist.com/2014/10/10/when-your-former-libertarian-hero-calls-you-a-nazi/
As I said, Ukraine sees a prosperous, law abiding Poland to the West, and a poor, savage, corrupt, propaganda-satured Russia to the east. The desire for a better life is not a CIA conspiracy.
You are right – there was no treaty to say NATO would not expand east – only verbal assurances given by the US Secretary of State, James Baker, and mentioned in his memoirs. A verbal promise is, in fact, worthless, and the Russians now realise that!! We may be talking at crosspurposes: I’m sure the Kiev protesters were genuinely angry (although they had no right to topple a government – and should have waited for the presidential election due in 2015) – but the US does not spend $5bn for nothing. Even if it couldn’t be proven that the Maidan was “orchestrated” by the US – that would assume that the people on the ground had no opinions or motivations, when clearly they did have their reasons to oppose the government – sending Western ministers to the Maidan to hand out biscuits sent a clear message of support. And Sikorski played a dreadful role in the events too.
To be quite honest, the US embassy has spent money cultivating civil-society groups in Russia too – and for that reason Putin must know that, in the right circumstances, this “investment” by the US would pay off. Look! Whatever happened in Kiev in February has subsequently been legitimised by the following presidential and parliamentary elections, which have produced a majority in favour of the new pro-Western stance.
> they had no right to topple a government
We had a duty to topple the government, and we surprised everyone, including ourselves, in suceeding against all odds.
The protests were as peaceful as a typical American Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street protest (meaning, mostly peaceful) until the government turned into a tyranny and declared all types of protest illegal. Protesters had already been kidnapped and beaten to death.
Frankly, I think you’re speaking from the perspective of a spoiled brat who has never had to fight for anything.
“[Kiev protesters] . . . no right to topple a government.”
This is really a pathetic statement. I think you Brits need to grow back your balls if you want to restore order in your country.
Roman – Since you live there, you know more than I do, and perhaps more in detail than David Webb does. On the other hand, though we may deplore them, power relationships must be taken into account. Russia is the local big power. The British and American ruling classes may choose to make trouble in the region, but have neither means nor will to do more than destabilise these relationships in ways that lead to violence. I can’t speak for America, but I know that, after the Iraq and Afghan disasters, the British public will turn very nasty if it is even hinted that British soldiers might be sent off to try to give the Crimea back to Ukraine, or to keep the east of the country from breaking away or being nibbled away. I also doubt there is the slightest will, at any level, to honour the guarantees made to the new NATO members. We learned our lesson the last time we issued a Polish guarantee.
This being said, the Government of Ukraine should be encouraged to make the best accommodation available with Moscow. The Russians will simply not allow Ukraine to become a branch of the American New World Order. Any accommodation will probably include something like full internal autonomy. You will remember that the Soviets invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia when they seemed about to become unreliable military allies. But, so long as the Warsaw Pact obligations were honoured, they were afterwards willing to let the Hungarians run a less socialist economy than the other satellites. The Czechoslovak Government could have become more economically liberal under Husak, but chose not to.
Modern Russia is not a liberal democracy. Mr Putin doesn’t put up with much in the way of opposition. But the revealed strategy of the Soviet Union is likely to be much more so the strategy of Russia, which, after all, is not formally committed to the export of a universalist ideology. What Russia wants is security from Western attack.
I turn to the new NATO members. Bearing in mind their demographic problem and their strategic worries about their southern borders, I think it inconceivable that the Russians would move back into Eastern and Central Europe without the most extreme provocation. All they want is security. This could be obtained by the neutralisation that seems to have been agreed between Messrs Bush and Gorbatchev. They don’t want to flood these places with Russian Orthodox evangelists, and set up an Orthodox inquisition. They don’t care if these places adopt the Euro and legalise gay marriage. All they want is a big demilitarised zone.
Whatever they think of Stalin, the Russians haven’t forgotten that they were invaded from the West in 1941; and most of the them seem rather proud of those concrete war memorials. Among other things, they fought for security from Western invasion, and they won’t give up that security.
Reasonably considered, there ought to be few overlaps of interest between the Chinese and the Russians and the Iranians and the Russians. What our governments are presently doing is to turn Russia from an aloof and eccentric friend into a paranoid enemy.
To conclude, I’m not saying that the Ukranians ought to be on their own. What I say is that, ultimately, they are on their own. The sooner this is recognised, the better it will be for everyone.
I’ve written the “Ukraine is on their own” idea too, here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/06/caught-between-empires-ukraine-can-t-rely-on-the-west-for-its-independence.html
Though I wish it weren’t so. I’ve also gone through great pains to dismiss some of the errors people in our circles makes — first and foremost that Ukraine’s revolution was orchestrated by the West. This is a lie. Help was minimal and appreciated.
My heart really went into this essay: http://dailyanarchist.com/2014/04/10/putins-libertarians/
From Ukraine’s perspective, there’s a prosperous, law abiding Poland in the west, and an impoverished, savage, corrupt, propaganda saturated Russia in the East who, within living memory, created hell on Earth in Ukraine.
The desire for a better life is not a CIA conspiracy.
I have to say Roman, I full agree with the Daily Beast article you linked to in your reply to Dr Gabb. You made clear that the Ukraine will have to find its own accommodation with Russia, and that Russia’s desire for a buffer zone with the West is a reasonable one.
An article in The Economist recently showed the Ukraine is poorer now than in 1990. This is quite an achievement, although obviously a negative one. Over the longer term, economic reform will be the only way in which the Ukraine can emerge as a prosperous state, thus eventually making it easier for the country to defend itself.
I’m not familiar with that Economist article, but there’s NO WAY Ukrainian is poorer now than in the 1990. Absolutely not.
Roman, there are many ways to measure prosperity (inflation adjusted, adjusted for differences in price levels), and it is also possible that official statistics do not capture the real standard of living on the ground. Anyhow, see http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/11/ukraines-economy It says there “The average Ukrainian is probably 20% poorer than she was when the Soviet Union collapsed. If we look at the total size of the economy (measured in real GDP terms) the decline is even sharper—30% since 1991.” It is likely that that analysis is based on official statistics. In any case, the Ukraine has not done as well as Poland economically, and this is probably what the Ukrainian government should be concentrating on – and yet, with the war in the East, it seems the last thing they are able to focus on. It is pretty annoying that that Economist article insists on saying “she” in reference to “the average Ukrainian” – I don’t accept such usage as good English.
Thank you for the link. It indeed shows that Ukraine’s GDP has dropped.
However the standard of living between today and 1990 is night and day. There’s no comparison. It’s absurd to even suggest. I’m not sure how to square this with GDP. Perhaps a large black market. Perhaps GDP is too thin a statistic.
Regardless, quality of life between now and 1990 is night and day. I don’t think anyone here in Ukraine would dispute this.
Thank you for your reply on that. I strongly expect you are right in what you say on that, possibly because the black market is not included, or for other reasons. I would be interested in all detailed comment you had to make on life in the Ukraine, standards of living, the impact of the recession, etc.
GDP is a terrible statistic. It is a crude proxy for growth when conditions roughly remain the same, but it is basically a measure of spending that only works at all due to fiat expansion. It is a survey of the order books of large businesses, plus government spending. As Milton Friedman pointed out, if we accept the reasonable argument that money velocity is usually pretty constant, it’s just a strange measure of the money supply. (Sometimes velocity isn’t constant; a large cause of the famous Weimar inflation was escalating velocity as people demanded to be paid, and then spent, their money, more and more rapidly to “beat the inflation”).
If we had an entirely stable money supply (e.g. on a gold currency without new gold being added), GDP would remain an entirely static measure regardless of how many goods and services were being produced (since the increase in unit output would be precisely balanced by the reduction in unit prices). One of the worst elements of the current funny money clusterfuck is the obsession with the GDP figure, which is every bit as insane and monomaniacal as the earlier 20th century obsession with the Balance Of Payments that vexed politicians of the Butskellite Era.
Ian, I was going to respond to your comment, but then I saw the descent into expletives later in the comment, and so I will not violate my rule of not participating in Internet conversations conducted on a vulgar level. I enjoy Takimag, but nearly every article I start reading by a Gavin Innes (if I recall correctly) has to be abandoned within about two sentences because of that person’s low cultural standards, with which I cannot get along, and which I will not tolerate.
You won’t like Richard Blake, then. On the other hand, I welcome your stand for civilised values. Our new blog still hasn’t been blacklisted by Starbucks.
Well that’s a pity then, because such words play a crucial role in the English language as intensifiers, so you’re basically shutting out part of our heritage. Which is entirely your perogative, of course. You only have to ask whether “Never Mind The Nonsense” would have been as effective an album title as “Never Mind The Bollocks” to see the vital role that those words deemed “expletive” by our matronly rulers serve.
The first wave of “political correctness”; that which we now call Victorian Values- was characterised by a severe compromising of the English language by moralists. This is a very effective mind control tactic. It is not just, as Orwell said, about depriving people of the words with which to express themselves. The damnation of colourful language is designed to stifle the expression of forceful speech and emotion itself. One can see this in those terrifying middle class environments in which everybody is scared to let an emotion out; they want to call the person across the table a fuckwit, but the inhibitors cut in, so they waffle off into ineffective euphemism about “I see your point but in my opinion in some sense I feel I must disagree a trifle…”, neutering themself verbally.
The very term “vulgar” gives away the origin. Vulgar of course simply means “common”- itself a perjorative. It is a means of imposing a class behavioural system. “I am better than you. I am not common“.
So as a libertarian of the populist kind, I can’t be bothered with that kind of cuntishness.
Roman – There are several questions in the Ukraine dispute that are best separated:
1. Whether the Ukraine has the right to turn West;
2. Whether it is wise for the Ukraine to turn West;
3. Whether we have the right to intervene to assist the Ukraine;
4. Whether it is wise of us to intervene;
5. Whether we have the will to make an effective intervention.
I’m sure there are other questions, but these are the ones that come most readily to mind. My answers are:
1. Yes;
2. No;
3. No;
4. No;
5. No.
I think much argument is wasted among people who mix up these questions and answers.
“Have a right”. “Is wise”.
You speak more like a priest than an analyist.
The basic point here for me really is that while people of a conservative bent are trying to undo the political correctness imposed since around 1960, I have a rather grander project of undoing the political correctness imposed since about 1800.
This comment somehow ended in the wrong bit of the thread (threadlet, whatever); it should be under my one about expletives replying to David Webb. Apologies.
I found the discussion of the linguistic issues a bit lacking in context. One example that strikes me as particularly apt, much more so than the recognition of Swedish as an official language of Finland. That would be the major push by Ireland to revive and extend the Irish language after independence from Britain. And, at least on first impression, we got no consideration of the difference between being a Russian-speaking citizen of Ukraine and being a citizen of Ukraine who preferred to be a citizen of Russia.
The insistence on the importance of the mid-17th century absorption of the Polish-:Lithuanian Commonwealth into the Russian Empire also struck me as a bit odd. That event wasn’t so very much longer ago than the absorption of Scotland into the UK which remains a matter of controversy even though English is spoken by all concerned. . .
There are a number of other complications to this matter of where borders ought to be vs. where historical borders were. Much of this was a result of Soviet policies, some of it went back much earlier under the czars. Massive removals of local populations from strategic points and their replacement with ethnic Russians were almost routine.
The sad thing is that Russia was not able to be integrated more effectively – culturally and economically – into the West in that brief window between Gorbachev and Putin. The opportunity, if it ever truly existed, is now lost.
I couldn’t discuss everything. But do you know that many Finnish families have swapped to Finnish over the past 100 years or so? The Fennoman vs. Svecoman debates of the time led many Swedish speakers to consciously stop speaking Swedish and to change their surnames to Finnish equivalents. I wonder if Russian intervention in the East will lead bilingual families – who already can speak Ukrainian – to emphasise Ukrainian more. Roman would know if that is happening.
But it makes no difference – the number of people who prefer Russian in the Ukraine is much higher than the 5.9% who prefer Swedish in Finland. And even if the Ukrainians feel their language has been sidelined and they are having to give it higher priority as a consequence now, it is not appropriate to ignore the large numbers of people especially in Donetsk and Lugansk and also in Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa – and even Kiev – who prefer to speak Russian.
And as your comment almost highlighted, speaking Russian is not the same thing as welcoming conquest by Russia. Roman has shown that most people in Donetsk did not want to be ruled by mercenaries. So had the Kiev authorities shown compromise since the early 1990s, none of this would have happened. Unfortunately, like all tragedies, the Ukraine’s fate is one that it has chosen and brought on itself. I’m not anti-Ukrainian, by any means – I like all European nations and I studied one year of the Ukrainian language at university as one of my elective subjects – but I can’t analyse this from an anti-Russian point of view either.
Thank you. I didn’t men to say that all blame was on the Russian side, altho Russian actions, both czarist and Soviet, exacerbated things. If colonialism was a messy process,, so was do-colonialism; wherever you look in the world (East Timor for example).
If looking at today’s troubles in Ukraine tell us something about the late 1930s (the Sudetenland crisis), it may be that the takes today are very different. The real issue at Munich, seldom mentioned in the sort histories, is that the Czechoslovak Army was one of the most potent in Europe. No guarantee to Poland could possibly make sense unless the Czechoslovak force was intact.
Once that was taken out of the equation, the situation of Poland was hopeless, Britain and France would be unable to reach her with aid in a timely manner. The current situation in Ukraine does not have the same strategic significance.
No one has picked up on the question whether sustained occupation should be considered an exercise of free speech. There was an interesting comment on this on Spiked Online (http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/incompetent-imperialists-reign-in-ukraine/14734#.VHsPQY9kfsY):
“Furthermore, people do have a right to protest, to assemble and speak out, but they do not have a right to occupy a public space on a permanent, ongoing basis. Groups that set up such camps – even Occupy types in the West – are effectively throwing down a challenge to the government about who runs society. Such a challenge might be necessary at times, especially if the occupiers have the mass of people behind them and there is no alternative, but those who do so shouldn’t be shocked when they are eventually confronted by the police or military. As it happens, street occupiers sometimes know full well what they are in for: at times they are an unrepresentative minority that seeks to prod the government into responding in a heavy-handed, repressive manner in order to gain sympathy and support that they are not able to achieve through public debate or the ballot box.”
I think this analysis, by Sean Collins, is correct. We shouldn’t argue it is always wrong to “occupy” central squares – but it is a challenge to the government of a qualitatively different sort from a demonstration, and the degree of popular support behind the movement then becomes relevant in determining the legitimacy of sch actions. For example, in Hong Kong, most people want the demonstrators to go home after two months of disruption – there is little legitimacy is trying to force an issue in that way. In the Ukraine, the Maidan occupiers had support in some parts of the country – but other parts were strongly against them – can you see the problem?
Being anti Putin does not make someone anti Russian – after all Mr Putin has harmed Russia and Russians more than he has harmed most other people (more on that later).
Mr Putin has always been hostile to the West, long before the situation in the Ukraine – as anyone who has seen his propaganda service “Russia Today” would know. I was baffled by the repeated efforts of Mr Blair and Mr Bush to make friends with Putin – did they not know what “RT” was broadcasting about the West? But then most of what Mr Blair and Mr Bush did baffled me – it very rarely made any sense.
Let us imagine what an American version of Mr Putin would have done.
Got rid of elected State Governors – no more people such as Governor Abbot in Texas or Governor Brownback in Kansas.
Maintained conscription – in a particularly brutal and perverse form of military service.
Got rid of all trial by jury (not just in some trials – but in all of them) trial by jury promised by Yeltsin, but quietly buried by Putin.
Got rid of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal and Talk Radio – indeed all major dissent in the media. Including ordering the murder of dissenting journalists – and of other dissenters as well.
Nationalised natural resources and sent their private owners (such at the Koch brothers) to prison camps.
Invaded neighbouring countries (such as Georgia and the Ukraine) and annexed land and people.
Now Barack Obama may want to do some or all of the above – it would not surprise me if he did, But he can not, because he does not (quite) have the power of a dictator such as Mr Putin.
Sean Gabb asks if we have the “right” to help the Ukraine – the answer is obvious “yes”. Sean types “no” – but I am sure that is a typo as only a pig would type “no” we do not have the RIGHT to help the Ukraine against the forces that Mr Putin has sent against them (who dance around statues of Lenin and might as well be wearing “we are evil” shirts). The question really is “is it sensible to help the Ukraine or should we wait till Mr Putin hits somewhere else”. The British government (and the American government) have the RIGHT to help people anywhere who are attacked – the question is it SENSIBLE to do so?
It could be argued that the Ukraine is such a mess that it would be better to wait till when, and if, Mr Putin starts to hit the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) which are NATO members – the Ukraine is not (by the way the idea there was agreement not to allow countries in Eastern Europe to join NATO is a total myth – indeed before the Putin dictatorship was established there was even talk of Russia itself one day joining NATO).
Lastly (because I will not be engaging in a discussion of this matter on this site) Mr Putin has been clumsy.
Mr Putin is not a Marxist (he has no political philosophy – he is best seen as organised crime boss who had taken over a country, and whose fellow ex KGB people now control BOTH sides of “the law” in Russia as they both controls the organs of the state and the major organised crime gangs) – yet he has been clumsy.
There was no need to employ Marxoids (“Marxists” would be the wrong word) in the Ukraine who dance round (drunk – out of their minds) the statues of great evil doers (people who murdered TENS OF MILLIONS of people in Soviet times) and use terms such as the “People’s Republic” of …..
Mr Putin could have employed better thugs, more subtle ones, – and annoyed people far less. Yes still murderers – but there is such a thing as a subtle murderer, as opposed to the “look how many people I murder – I am really evil” types that Mr Putin has employed in the Ukraine. I am quite serious – if one has to be a Organised Crime boss one should be like “The Commission” that was set up in the 1930s – not like Al Capone (who annoyed everyone so much, by being so blatant, that they had to move against him).
Also in his actions (such as ordering the abduction of Estonia security officer from Estonia itself – shades of the Nazi operation to abduct MI5 officers from inside then neutral Holland at the start of World War II) Mr Putin has been clumsy and provocative – needlessly so.
Even the propaganda from “RT” has become more shrill and clumsy (it used to be far more subtle and effective). I think that Mr Putin is losing his touch – I would not go so far as to say he has “missed the bus” (as I do not want to end up looking like Prime Minister Chamberlain in 1940), but I suspect that he may not be quite so dangerous to the West as many people (including myself) had once supposed. Indeed if Mr Putin does not improve his game he may end up in a “higher position”.
Hanging from a lamppost – put there by the Russian people themselves.
Of course the “nuclear matter” complicates the Putin problem – as does his alliance with China and Iran.
Large numbers of nuclear weapons would have made Mr Mussolini (whom Mr Putin resembles far more than he does Mr Hitler) a far more serious matter than he was.
As for the alliances with China and Iran – these are NOT in the interests of Russia (they are, in fact, directly against the interests of Russia and the Russian people).
However, Mr Putin does not care about Russia or the Russian people – he cares about himself and his gang (his criminal associates – the KGB types who control both Organised Crime in Russia and the organs of the state) and the latter only in so far as they serve the former (himself).
This is all an interesting problem that needs solving – but, I believe, that Russians themselves will have to take a leading role in solving it.
Hello Mr Webb. thanks for a considered and reasonable analysis. Of course, you are right. I too have a degree in Russian and spent a semester at Leningrad U. In my case, I was tiled somewhat far to the left and sympathetic to socialism, and was looking forward to being able to tell my friends back home that his experiment was working. But I quickly saw that this was not true. So Russia was my turning point, bringing me back to an appreciation of the free market. Today, Russia represents a much more free market economy than anywhere in the West. So to be anti-Russia is in many ways to be anti-capitalist and an opponent of the free market. Yet the Russophobes continue to spout their poison that the Soviet Union is still alive and well. Yes. In their minds.
My own view is pretty simplistic; the West had no business orchestrating the coup in Ukraine, that Putin’s response was predictable, and that having caused this mess we should not make any more of a mess and should stay out of it, having learned a valuable lesson. The behaviour of both the EU and USA was an absolute disgrace.
You didn’t orchestrate the coup. Help was minimal and very appreciated. I address pretty much every bit of bogus evidence on which Russian propagandists build their “western orchestrated coup” theory here: http://dailyanarchist.com/2014/04/10/putins-libertarians/
But I realize most people aren’t interested in the refutation. The Russians produce bullshit faster than I can shovel, and most people are happy to believe it because it’s easier for them.
Roman, you frequently insist the West didn’t orchestrate the coup – but read what you yourself wrote in your article you link to: “I have no illusions that western intelligence agencies aren’t heavily involved here. I can’t imagine a scenario in which they wouldn’t be. Can you? It is correct to say that Western intelligence/EU/NATO/globalists/World Bankers have worked to bolster and direct Ukraine’s revolution. It is incorrect to claim they orchestrated a coup.”
I think we are playing games here. They directed the coup, but didn’t orchestrate it? The most you can mean is that the people on the Maidan weren’t just puppets or employees of the CIA – which no one alleges, rendering your argument nugatory – and that, yes, they did have their own independent reasons to try to topple Yanukovych. Against that background, you then accept the Western agencies were “directing the revolution”.
Indeed, it is possible to accept that there was more genuine popular input in the Kiev Maidan than in the Donetsk/Lugansk takeovers – the latter appearing to be almost wholly by employees of the Russian state. None of this changes the fact that the Western states have successfully destabilised the Ukraine – and this business of funding “civil society” is really about appointing Western-compatible governments. There have been many revolutions around the world that had great popular participation, for the participants only to realise later they were being used by forces they didn’t understand.
None of this matters a bean – the Ukraine is still in the Russian sphere of influence, where it will remain. Any attempts to act as if the Ukraine is not in a Russian sphere of influence are simply provocative and inflammatory. Think along the lines of Finlandisation. Look around your country – one of the most corrupt in the world, with a long-term rate of economic growth among the world’s lowest – you would be lucky to end up like Finland during the period of Finlandisation.
I’m not sure you guys are aware of the brutal Russification underway in Russian occupied territories: http://romaninukraine.com/dear-daniel-mcadams-who-is-ethnic-cleansing/
In Soviet times, there was an expression — beat a Polish man long enough, he becomes Russian.
Given such a neighbor you can understand why Ukrainians have a different view on this war than you islanders.
Roman, I ticked this comment up – as I’m sure you are right that there are human-rights abuses in the separatist-controlled territories. It was no part of my argument to argue that those proto-governments were sweetness and light. Some kind of deal with Russia, which gives Russia what it wants, in exchange for a proper devolved administration in Donetsk and Lugansk, based on a verified election and not on an election whose results are proclaimed by a band of mercenaries, would seem to be in everyone’s interests (however unlikely now).
The degree of intervention is not something that can objectively be measured, due to differences of opinion and inadequate information available. The best thing we can say (or at least, I would) is that Western powers could and should avoid getting blamed for involvement by not getting involved at all. This policy of direct involvement in other nations’ affairs developed during the Cold War. It is one thing to spy on potentially troublesome foreign lands. It is another step entirely to directly intervene in them by subterfuge, destablising governments and training insurgents and gun running, and so on. From a libertarian perspective, we generally consider the idea that governments can centrally plan their own nations as fatally flawed. It is doubly foolish to think that one can plan foreign nations to produce perceived desirable outcomes.
All planners think that if they do X, some outcome Y will be achieved. This doesn’t work in our own economies and polities, producing wildly unpredictable results (in the economic case, disastrous booms and busts, for instance). It works even less well when attempting to achieve outcome Y when dealing with radically unpredictable foreign peoples and governments. In the Ukraine case, the outcome Y that Western powers seem to have expected was that Putin would be stymied and humiliated, losing all influence over Ukraine and left, weakened, with a bloody nose. That is exactly what did not happen. It was extremely naive; and this brings us back to the problem that the people most likely to believe in “planning” are usually woefuly naive. The dominant Neoconservatives in the USA seem to be a toxic mixture of vanity and naivety. They think they can run the rest of the world like a board game. This may well be a conceit easily aquired when one is sitting planning the future in a warm office in the USA, surrounded by a chorus of approval.
Probably the classic example of this mindset is the disastrous “handling” of Iran in which two coups/revolutions, backed by “the West”, turned the nation from a fledgling Islamic democracy into, first, an oppressive monarchy and secondly an oppressive, extreme, theocracy.
I thus say very simply that Western powers should simply stop meddling. We can argue all day and night about the degree of it. It should stop entirely.
Agreed. I’d only go further and say that, even if “desirable” outcomes could be achieved, it still wouldn’t be the right of our governments to intervene. Their sole obligation is to look to the welfare of the nations of which they are trustees.
Indeed. If it did work, it would at least be selfishly tempting though. Doing something wrong that doesn’t work either is doubly bad.
I feel extremely aggrieved to read of the extent of the economic crisis being inflicted on Russia (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11266746/Capital-controls-feared-as-Russian-rouble-collapses.html). It seems to me totally wrong-headed as foreign policy to pursue the deliberate long-term alienation of Russia. The only libertarian foreign policy worth its salt is strict neutrality.
I’m wondering if Russia can just decide to default on (unilaterally cancel) all its foreign debt – thus saving itself from having to pay back hundreds of billions of dollars falling due over the next few years. ie the Argentine solution. I’m not sure where Russia’s forex reserves are invested – does anyone know? If they’re invested in US Treasuries, or in other Western instruments, they might not be able to do that so blithely, as all Russian assets abroad would be seized wherever possible.
The Western approach to Russia is economic war. We shouldn’t be surprised if they respond in kind. Then we might find out this economic crisis that Osborne claims is over is only half-way through. I feel in my bones the Ukrainian affair will eventually, one way or the other, lead to the next stage, precipitating a wider economic collapse. I can’t prove this of course – and I probably do spend too much time reading zerohedge.
Roman Skaskiw – just in case you do not know….
No evidence or arguments you can produce will have any effect on this site – none whatever.
You are working on the assumption that you are dealing with people who are ill informed and that you can present information and arguments that can correct that. This is not the case – the people here (the main people here, not all of them, but the most of them) know perfectly well that the West is not responsible for XYZ around the world – but they will say it is anyway.
I say the above on the basis of many years of experience of Sean and co Roman Skaskiw. Of course you can spend your time here if you have nothing better to do with it (I do that myself) – but do not think that any arguments you can offer, or evidence you can present, will have any effect on them. They already know what they are saying is wrong – and they do not care that it is wrong.
When dealing with this site (or quite a number of other “libertarian” things) always keep in mind the Soviet era term “false flag operation”.
Someone like Frank Meyer would carefully refute the lies, the anti American and anti British propaganda and disinformation (about the Soviet invasion of Finland and so on) of someone like Murray Rothbard, but Rothbard would simply repeat the lies (and get a thousand other people to repeat the lies also – again and again and again) and young students would end up believing the lies – and continue to believe them when they were not so young.
So the young (and some of the not so young) believe that Western foreign policy is determined by the influence of “big business” and that the world would be a better place if it was not for evil America, evil Britain (and evil Israel of course). Not just the socialists teach this (one would expect them to teach such lies), but many of the so called “libertarians” (and not just the open “left libertarians”) teach exactly the same thing. The “alternative” to the socialists is teaching (in slightly different language) the same thing as the socialists are teaching.
Sometimes in the “competition of ideas” lies win – in fact this is often the case (it is one of the many things that J.S. Mill was mistaken about). One can, and should, fight on – but be aware of it (if you are aware of it already).
For those who doubt this, for example in the context of domestic American politics, check who funds “Libertarian” candidates in American elections – “follow the money” as the saying goes.
“Oddly enough” the money trial often leads to people who want a much bigger government at home (bigger – not smaller) and a free hand for Putin, the Chinese and the Islamists overseas.
Vote splitting – try and reduce the Republican vote so the Dems win (not a complex tactic – but it does not have to be complex). “Only RINO Republicans like Bush” – no, sadly not. Even the most conservative Republicans have “libertarian” campaigns directed against them – to try and split the vote.
Also discredit candidates (or try to discredit them) by telling people (especially young persons – who do not have much practical experience of the world) that conservatives are “tools of big business” and that all their policies (foreign and domestic) are just for the benefit of “the rich” and “big business” (these days even the old lie “for the benefit of the Jews” is coming back, under the mask of “not anti Semitism – anti Zionism”).
And it is not just some American libertarians who have got money from the enemies of the West – some people connected with this site have also.
Ukraine is a difficult case (and Ukraine is not a NATO member) – but it would make no difference, to most of the main people here, if it was, say, Estonia or Poland that was coming under attack from Mr Putin.
Most of the main people here (not all – but most) are not friends of the West. At least not reliable friends. It depends who is paying them – even “Always Faithful” (the motto of the United States Marine Corps) gets the private added words “as long as I am being paid”. With people, for example, saying that they were indeed loyal to their oath to the United States – as long as they were employed (paid) by the government of the United States.
I repeat – just as long as you know.
And, I repeat, it would make no difference to them if it was Estonia or Poland that was coming under attack from Mr Putin.
I don’t often reply to rantings. But 1) Roman Saskiw’s comments have not been ignored. The substance of most of what he has said has been accepted here. I agreed human-rights abuses were taking place in Donetsk and that the Donetsk takeovers had less popular input, and seemed more purely “orchestrated” than the Kiev Maidan. And I pointed him to his own remarks that the Ukrainians shouldn’t expect Western intervention. 2) As for Estonia and Poland – I don’t welcome the impact of war on ordinary people of any nationality. But Estonia has upped the ante by joining NATO and then following domestic policies in relation to the Russian minority there that would have the usual suspects ranting about “racism” were they implemented in other countries towards their minorities. And Poland needs to be careful too – flying into Kiev and encouraging the protesters not to implement a deal just agreed with Yanukovych that could have seen early elections – isn’t that something that Poland could find itself held accountable for under other circumstances? None of this discussion is motivated by anti-Ukrainianism. When I hear of 5-year-old boys killed by shells, I don’t stop to ask if they were ethnic Ukrainians or ethnic Russians – it is unwelcome news in either case. But we MUST now absent ourselves from this geopolitical matter – which has nothing to do with the UK. That is the point.
Now we see what is really going to happen to the Ukraine: three foreign MPs have been “appointed” and made ministers, followed a rushed naturalisation. One of them is the former head of the economics section of the US embassy, who now becomes Finance Minister. See http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-04/fight-breaks-out-parliament-when-ukraine-learns-it-has-quietly-become-newest-us-stat Just as the EU replaced the leaders of Greece and Italy, it seems the US can appoint its own people as ministers in the Ukraine. A Lithuanian banker has been appointed Economy minister. And a Georgian as the Health minister. Some of these people don’t even speak Ukrainian. So let’s have no more discussion of “Ukrainian sovereignty”.