Ukrainian Tragedy and a New Cold War

File Photo of Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama Seated Before Russian and U.S. Flags

Subject: UKRAINIAN TRAGEDY AND A NEW COLD WAR
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2014
From: George Enteen <gxe1@psu.edu>

UKRAINIAN TRAGEDY AND A NEW COLD WAR
George Enteen
Professor Emeritus of Russian History
Penn State University

The appalling events in Ukraine have but a single explanation in the minds of Americans – Russian aggression. This is personified and dramatized in the unattractive figure of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s sometimes shirtless president. This simple explanation, expounded by government spokesmen of both of our political parties and by journalists from right to left, is simplistic. It provides no sense of the complexity of events, which need to be seen in context. I wish to present a rival interpretation of events and motives that scarcely ever finds public expression. The expansion of NATO toward the Russia, despite promises to the contrary, since the collapse of the Soviet Union is a context of primary importance.

Though little known, the explanation I propose has excellent credentials from right to left. George Kennan, in 1988, foretold tragic results if NATO were to expand toward the Russian border. Henry Kissinger, who survived the Nixon administration to emerge as a respected authority on matters of international politics, argues that Ukraine should retain its historical role as a bridge between Russia and the West.(Washington Post, 3/5/14) This standpoint was presented in even stronger terms by Senator Rand Paul, who suggested that our government initiated the uprising in Kiev that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine. (Town Hall, 8/5/14 or Johnson’s List, 169) As far as I know, this perspective has found public expression in National Interest and in the Nation in a series of articles by the Russian specialist, Stephen F Cohen, and very recently in the Baltimore Sun (7/15/14 and in Foreign Affairs, Sept.-Oct, 2014.

Most important perhaps is the opposition stance of Jack Matlock (In Box 6/30/14), Reagan’s appointee as Ambassador to Russia during the negotiations that led to the end of the Cold War and the demise Soviet Union itself. Matlock is acknowledged by all for his profound and extensive knowledge of Russia and his refined understanding of politics. By 2008 NATO had enlisted a dozen East European nations into its ranks, and it placed Ukraine and Georgia on the “fast track” for membership. This intention has been placed on hold but never abandoned.

Simon Shuster in the respectable news magazine, Time[8/4/14]wrote that Putin’s “increasingly overt goal is to splinter Europe, rip up the NATO umbrella and restore Russian influence around the world.” Schuster offers no words of Putin or of any Russian strategists that point to such specific goals. What he seems to have in mind are the oft-quoted remark by Putin that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest political tragedy of the twentieth century.” On arbitrary and insufficient grounds, these words are widely taken to reveal the essence of Putin’s aspirations. But their meaning has been widely misunderstood. They were not a defense of communism, which the Soviet peoples (with a large assist from the United States) had been discarded step by step under Gorbachev, before the final collapse of the USSR. The KGB, (Putin’s home base) had concluded that communism ill-served the national interests of Russia; it was in large measure responsible for Russia’s backwardness. The collapse of the Soviet Union was, in fact, a disaster for millions of people. Many who delighted in the elimination of communism suddenly found that the nation they had grown up in no longer existed. Let the reader try to imagine the shock. Moreover, about twenty-five million ethnic Russians found themselves outside the borders of the new Russian Federation. About fifteen million of them remain there to this day. And the various republics that had constituted the Soviet Union had been woven into a single economic system. The Republic of Georgia, for example, had possessed a steel industry, but it possessed neither coal nor iron ore. This had been Stalin’s means of welding his native land into the Soviet whole. I was told, when I visited Georgia that the massive hardship led many young males to emigrate, and a significant number of suicides occurred during those unhappy years. Georgians, an industrious people, were able to get the economy back on its feet.

The overworked words of Putin, quoted above, are usually accompanied by the assertion in the American press that Russia had invaded Georgia in 2008. However, a European commission established that it was the Georgian army that had initiated hostilities. Russia overreacted to be sure, occupying a significant block of Georgian territory. But overreaction is the norm in international relations, especially when the cannons roar. It seems that the Russian military was determined to destroy the weapons that had been installed by the United States.

The annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia is also taken as a mark of Putin’s far-reaching ambitions, a step toward the annexation of Eastern Ukraine if not the entire Ukraine. Or even perhaps all the territories of the former Russian Empire. Once again this theory gives too much weight to his remarks about the tragedy of the Soviet collapse. Other words of Putin have scarcely been heard in our country. “But tomorrow Ukraine might become a NATO member, and the day after tomorrow missile defense units of NATO would be deployed in this country.” And Putin added, “And NATO ships would dock in Sevastopol.”

There was some justification for the annexation; nevertheless it was not justified. It was unwise, a foolish action on Putin’s part, furthering the isolation of Russia and enlarging the scope of sanctions sponsored by our government. But the fact remains that most of the population of Crimea preferred inclusion into Russia, or rather its return into Russia. Crimea had been integral to Russia until 1954, when the communist leader, Nikita Khrushchev, on his own, granted the territory to Ukraine as a gift from the Russian people. Ambassador Matlock paid heed to Putin’s word. If the new government in Ukraine were to join NATO, Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol would be lost to it. It would become, in effect, an American base. Matlock asserts that without the expansion of NATO to the East, the annexation of Crimea would not have occurred.

Some of us remember the attempt by the Soviet Union to implant missiles ninety miles from our shore, on the Island of Cuba. We risked, or appeared to risk, nuclear war in order to have those missiles removed.

The agony of Ukrainians is dispiriting to observe, and the poisoning of the future between these two historically interlocked nations is disheartening to contemplate.. It is probably less consequential, however, than the reigniting of the cold war. The colossal military expenditures, a renewed arms race, as though we did not already have a sufficient number of nuclear-armed missiles overhead. It also promises the end of collaboration with Russia in the war against terrorists, in the effort to curb nuclear proliferation and to cooperate with respect to energy security and climate change. China alone can benefit from estrangement between the United States and Russia.

Lest the reader presume that I favor Putin; I hasten to state my enmity. He has trampled the spirit of freedom and the sprouts of democratic institutions that sprung up after the collapse of communism. And he has facilitated the rebirth of the darkest and most obscurantist sentiments and ideologies of the Russian past. But as Kennan foretold, American policy does not help the situation in Ukraine. The broad terms of a settlement have been evident from the outset. First, a modification of the Ukrainian constitution that reflects the historical differences between Western Ukraine, which faces Europe, and Eastern Ukraine, which faces Russia. That is to say, a measure of decentralization is in order. Second, a disavowal by Ukraine of any intention to join NATO.

Map of Ukraine, Including Crimea, and Neighbors, Including Russia Map of Commonwealth of Independent States, European Portion

 

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