Ukraine Should Vote on Partition
Update: “Careful What You Wish For in Ukraine” (Asia Times Online)
Excerpt:
Western governments are jubilant over the fall of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, a Russian ally. They may be underestimating Vladimir Putin: Russia has the option to hasten Ukraine’s slide into chaos and wait until the hapless European Union acquiesces to – if not begs for – Russian intervention.
That leaves the West with a limited number of choices. The first is to do nothing and watch the country spiral into chaos, with Russia as the eventual beneficiary. The second is to dig deep into itspockets and find US$20 billion or more to buy near-term popularity for a pro-Western government – an unlikely outcome. The third, and the most realistic, is to steer Ukraine towards a constitutional referendum including the option of partition.
Judging from Russian press coverage, Moscow already has washed its hands of the feckless Yanukovich. Russia Today whimsically observed on February 22 that Yanukovich lacked the sangfroid of Mikhail Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia and an ally of the West:
Yanukovich could also have dispersed the protesters and maintained public order in the country, whatever criticism it might have brought. This is how the then Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, acted in 2007. He brutally suppressed a peaceful protest and called an early presidential election, which he won, instead of an early parliamentary election, which the opposition demanded and which his party could well have lost. Unlike the Georgian leader, Yanukovich hesitated even when the Ukrainian protest turned Kiev into a battlefield. [1]
Moscow has no need of allies with weak stomachs. But it will withdraw the offer of $15 billion worth of Ukrainian debt purchases and subsidies for natural gas exports to Ukraine and leave the nearly bankrupt country to the ministrations of the West. Careful what you wish for, Russia is telling the West.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that Ukraine should get money from the International Monetary Fund: “We consider that such a situation would meet the interests of Ukraine, would put the country on the path toward major structural reforms. We wish them success in this undertaking and in the rapid stabilization of the political and social situation.”
Siluanov is being mischievous. Twice in the past six years, the IMF suspended promised loans to Ukraine after the country refused to cut salaries and pensions and raise energy prices. Russia had offered a loan without conditions; any money the West offers will require austerity measures that no Ukrainian government is capable of enforcing.
I’ve argued for years that partition is the best solution for Ukraine, which never was a country but an almalgam of provinces left over from failed empires–Russian, Austrian, Lithuanian, Ottoman–cobbled together into a Soviet “republic” and cast adrift after the collapse of Communism. Lviv (Lemberg) was a German-speaking city, part of Silesia; before World War II a quarter of its people were Jews. Jews were two-fifths of the population of Odessa.
A fifth of the population, mainly in the East, are ethnic Russians; a tenth, mainly in the West, are Uniate Catholics, who have a special place in Catholic policy since the papacy of John Paul II. Ukrainian nationality is as dubious as Byelorussian nationality: neither of them had a dictionary of their language until 1918.
The country also is a basket case. At its present fertility rate (1.3 children per female), its 47 million people will shrink to only 15 million by the end of the century. There are presently 11 million Ukrainian women aged 15 to 49 (although a very large number are working abroad); by the end of the century this will fall to just 2.8 million. There were 52 million Ukrainian citizens when Communism fell in 1989. Its GDP at about $157 billion is a fifth of Turkey’s and half of Switzerland’s. Ukrainians want to join the European Union rather than Russia so they can emigrate. It is of no strategic, economic, or demographic importance to the West.
Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, whose “F*** the Europeans” remark earned her 15 minutes of fame recently, ought to be fired for being plain dumb. I am no admirer of European diplomacy, but Europe will have to pay a good part of the bill for Ukraine’s problems one way or the other. I don’t see Congress offering $15 billion to support Ukraine’s foreign debt as Russia did last month. The Russians won’t abandon Ukraine, which they consider part of their territory, and they certainly won’t abandon Russian-speakers “orphaned” by the collapse of the Soviet Union. What does Ms. Nuland propose: land paratroopers? Just what are we offering to the Ukrainian opposition? American policy has alternated between indifference and impotent posturing. The Nuland tape was painful to hear for its sheer stupidity.
We cannot ignore a humanitarian disaster in a European country. But the idea that we can influence matters by promoting one or another opposition leader, as in the Nuland tape, is ridiculous. There is something we can do, however: Propose a referendum in which the people of Ukraine can choose constitutional alternatives–partition, confederation, or status quo. And the person who should act for the West is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for several reasons. First, she has credibility; second, she has guts (she came into politics through the democracy movement in East Germany); third, she speaks Russian and understands Vladimir Putin; fourth, she has more brains than anyone in Washington (a doctorate in quantum chemistry).
Russia never will permit the integration of Ukraine into NATO; were it to come to that, Russia would use force, and the West would stand by cursing. But Russia will settle for half a loaf, namely a Russian-allied Eastern Ukraine. Whatever we do, Ukraine will continue its slow, sad slide into oblivion. The diplomats have the dour duty of managing this decline with the minimum of friction.





It sounds like we're replaying 1939 all over again. England and France had no business 'giving' anything to anyone. 'Giving' in that sense is nothing less than capitulation - a 'move' that suits Obama/Kerry well and serves nobody but them. Substitute Sudetenland for Ukraine and its Déjà vu "all over again!"
I don't trust Putin one iota. Give him an inch and he'll turn into another Hitler. Given the feckless nature of the boneheads that currently run DC I don't see a good ending for this.
Who's next Mr. Chamberlain?
I wasn't aware we owned Ukraine to be able to trade it.
Hmmm . . .
I remember another time the U.S. "traded" countries to the Russians in the name of cooperation and shared hegemony.
The result was the Cold War, with the Warsaw Pact and NATO.
Yes, Ukraine is a hodgepodge of ethno-linguistic groups.
Yes, it is pretty much just the leftovers after Poland, Russia, and Rumania settled on "permanent" borders, at the expense of Lithuania, Austria, the Ottomans, and each other.
Yes, it would probably do better if it were split up, perhaps even letting some sections merge with neighboring countries.
That doesn't mean they should be casually bought and sold, or that we should casually buy and sell them.
And as for how that will de facto justify Russia's imperial policies, sanctioning its establishment of exclaves hither and yon, and selective seizures of more, from Kalingrad to Transnistria to South Ossetia. Accede to Russian annexation of eastern Ukraine and the Crimea and you set the stage for Russia to nickel-and-dime its way back to claiming all of the former Soviet Union and more in the name of "protecting" Russian minorities/citizens anywhere and everywhere. From there it will be a short step from Putin declaring himself the "protector" of Slavic peoples everywhere, establishing hegemony over them and pursuing military options, just as Russia interceded to "protect" Serbia in 1914.
"Americans play monopoly, Russians chess" indeed.
http://www.wnd.com/2014/02/ukraines-chief-rabbi-has-warning-for-jews/
WND: Chief Rabbi in Ukraine warns Jews to avoid protests
And I am not going to dignify the rhetoric of a Galician fascist commenter here who insist frail Russian babushkas deserve to be ethnically cleansed from Western Ukraine or Kiev on account of their parents or grandparents having settled in the region when it was the Russian Empire or USSR.
Calm down conservatives itching for a new fight with the Eternal Evil Empire and the comforting chill of a New Cold War. There AREN'T going to be any Russian tanks crossing the frontier rolling into Kharkiv and then turning south east toward the Crimea, despite the threats to the FT which were mostly meant as a warning for the Lviv crowd.
The reason is simple. Any Lviv 'Banderisti' or Kiev militias that take the 500 kilometer trainride to Kharkiv and attempt to impose the writ of a Tymoshenko or Maidan government through force, including the imposiition of EU tariffs that would destroy eastern Ukrainian industry, will be met with fierce resistance, ironically using the SAME TACTICS the Maidanists used to stop mercenaries from the East reaching Kiev. Going into Sevastapol to put down a revolt backed by armed volunteers from the Russian Black Sea Fleet will prove suicidal and have few takers.
After all why would the same units that refused to stick their necks out to fight to the death for Yanukovich now do the same for another corrupt politician, this one merely more pro-Western and anti-Russian? It doesn't make a lick of sense and the Ukrainians are if nothing else survivors, even in Western Ukraine there are likely going to be few volunteers to go fight recalcitrant Russophones besides the Spilna Sprava fanatics from Lviv.
So get used to it Leon Aron, Ariel Cohen and you other two faced professional Russophobes who keep your mouths shut about the Jew haters and Banderist/SS Galician division reenactors of Svoboda/Right Force (Aron) or pretend they won't have any influence in the new post-coup government (Cohen). If Kharkiv and Sevastapol decide to flip Tymoshenko et al the bird, there won't be a damn thing the EU/NATO/US can do about it. You'll just curse Putin more. And Odessa will likely remain just fine and quiet unless some Lviv thugs come in to start ethnically cleansing the Russian-speakers from the city, in which case spetsnaz will come in from the Black Sea Fleet and shoot the fascist Soros-backed bastards. And Radek Sikorski will tell ITN the troublemakers got what they deserved. Remember Radek isn't stupid enough despite all his sheepdipping in Beltway neocon circles to have forgotten that the Banderists assassinated Polish generals pre-Hitler Stalin Pact, when Lviv was still under Polish sovereignty.
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No, "trolling" under another name would be a lie, and I've never lied here.
Russia should Westernize on classical liberal lines, as should the whole of humanity. If Russia not merely will not, but insists on attempting to re-instate the Warsaw Pact, then there should be war with the West, and I think they will lose. It would certainly be right and just if they did.
"Remember Radek isn't stupid enough despite all his sheepdipping in Beltway neocon circles to have forgotten that the Banderists assassinated Polish generals pre-Hitler Stalin Pact, when Lviv was still under Polish sovereignty."
Why, when the Poles were in the Ukraine and the Ukrainians wanted them to leave, shouldn't they have been assassinating Polish generals? It's just a question, goes to your warped state of mind/.
"You'll just curse Putin more."
Well he certainly can't be cursed enough, now can he? Not even if we could get some Po219 in his tea.
Russophobe? As opposed to Russophile? What's to love?
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2009/05/confessions-of-a-coward
"If Russia not merely will not, but insists on attempting to re-instate the Warsaw Pact, then there should be war with the West, and I think they will lose." What Warsaw Pact, with whom? People like you rely on the intellectual laziness and stupidity of millions for whom Russia will always be locked in 1983, who have never been to Moscow and seen that it isn't like that anymore, and who are happy to volunteer American blood or at least treasure in support of tribes that incessantly demand to be absorbed into the modern day USSR, the Evropitsky Soyuz. In Russian it sounds quite like the original, doesn't it?
What if the Bolsheviks are on the other side this time? What if it's the Michael D. Weiss' and Jamie Kirchick's of the present who are advocating aggression and worldwide revolution like Trotsky?
Anyway, the fact that your rationalize Ukrainians both shooting Poles pre-WWII AND allying with Hitler says a lot about you.
I can't imagine why you think I need to be informed about what is Spenglerian, I know his views--his views apply to all societies which are not classically liberal. They have no applicability to what societies are such.
Those are evergreen.
"People like you rely on the intellectual laziness and stupidity of millions for whom Russia will always be locked in 1983"
That's where Putin wants them locked, and it's exactly how Putin is.
"What if the Bolsheviks are on the other side this time?" There is only one side an actual Bolshevik can be on, it's their own and for their own evil purposes.
"Anyway, the fact that your rationalize Ukrainians both shooting Poles pre-WWII AND allying with Hitler says a lot about you."
Yes, I recognize Patton should have been told to go East and stop when he got to Vladivostok.
As I guessed, you are pro-Soviet.
Do you pretend that after the Holomodor, the Ukrainians should not have initially seen even the Nazis as saviors? Some kept that opinion, but almost none did. Do you think the Ukrainians had no right to throw off the Poles? Should the Finns have let Uncle Joe walk all over them?
German boots bad, Russian boots good, that's what you boil down to, isn't it?
The easternmost rim should be given a plebiscite on secession, Russia should be offered free 111 year leases on her naval facilities, and extraterritoriality for forces in transit corridors.
Regardless of the vote, Putin will not be satisfied with such, and war will ensue. Via Poland, covert support should be given the Ukrainians. If Russia objects in an effective fashion, Poland should receive NATO support, and if she does not, then the US should forward base our ETO forces in Poland, with NATO then effectively defunct.
If you think Putin will risk general war for the sake of keeping the whole of the Ukraine in Moscow's orbit, I think you are wrong.
If you think we have no national interest there, I disagree far more. Putin is determined to maintain the appearance of Russian international relevance, eminence even, by screwing with us wherever we are. We have no internal lines of communication to the world, Canada and Mexico excepted. Far better to occupy Putin where we have allies with firm grudges against Russia of long standing, and themselves a direct national interest in fencing the Bear. Perhaps Poland and Lithuania both are good candidates, I seem to recall the forces of Poland-Lithuania once did the West a very great service (not that there's any evidence they were much appreciated then either...).
If Russia insists on keeping a bone in it's nose, instead of adopting the very slightly more cultured political stylings of Rousseauan-Endarkenment Europe, then it should expect to see spears pointed at it wherever it lunges.
America, to the very limited extent it still represents actual progress in political economy--the spirit of 1776, the Revolution that Worked(TM)--as opposed to the imported and adopted Progressive political style of Europe; America has in interest in reducing the influence of every lesser political philosophy, because all others have in interest in reducing us.
Not that any of that means anything...Obama would not personally be opposed to Putin sailing untroubled up the Seine and Thames. He likely could not by internal political pressure be made to care.
Running a roving street battle Maidan against poorly paid cops who know they're serving a corrupt politician and an Army that refuses to deploy heavy weapons is one thing. Hurling brownshirts at Kharkiv home guards backed by Russian special forces "volunteers" and tanks is gonna be something else entirely. Tommy I don't think your boys from Galicia have it in them to do more than ethnically cleanse some Russian-speaking babushkas penniless enough to have had no place to flee to in the east.
"The US should support pro-western forces with arms in that war."
The US isn't going to do that, not because as Col. Ralph Peters insists because Obama is simply awed by the raw bullying of Putin, but because the US government is broke and our ability to print dollars to fund any adventure we like is about to get curtailed harshly by China, along with Russia.
That's the line Putin's organs have been pumping out for days, can't imagine anyone buying it unless they find Russia can do no wrong.
"Tommy I don't think your boys from Galicia have it in them to do more than ethnically cleanse some Russian-speaking babushkas penniless enough to have had no place to flee to in the east."
You know if it came to that, that'd be fine. They are only there because Stalin shipped them in, let Stalin's heir Putin take them back.
"The US isn't going to do that,"
Oh I know that, like I said, I doubt if Obama personally would be troubled by Putin claiming the Thames or Seine as internal Russian waters.
And America is not broke, the Progressive Blue Nation is broke. That's a good thing really, it lets us become classical liberals again--clearly Rousseau's alternative is a bad idea.
the Eastern Ukrainians just toppled all their Lenine statues too
so there is one Ukrainian identity, and it ain't EUropean, nor Russian
They want to be a sovereign state
Now if any knucklehead sunzab-tches from Lviv can be kept out of Odessa, Kharkiv and the Crimea, perhaps any further nonsense can be averted. Riot police who wouldn't shoot Maidanists and risk dying for 700 bucks a month salary certainly aren't going to team up with the demoralized Ukrainian army to brutally surpress a 'Putin inspired uprising' of Russian-speaking Ukrainians flipping Kiev and the EU the bird in Kharkiv.
Apparently both McInsane and Nuland were too stupid to think that far ahead while they poured $5 billiion worth of gasoline on the Maidan fire and now there isn't going to be anything they can do if E. Ukraine declares total autonomy or independence from Kiev. Let the rump parliament invade Kharkiv themselves, the demoralized Berkut and the Ukrainian Army won't do it for them!
they have to find a modus vivendi that can suit all
they all have been on phone during days and nights long for the las couple of days
It won;t be pro-Western Ukrainians invading east, but the east trying to suppress the west.
Not even if we can temporarily get assistance from Moscow about Iran by cutting the Ukrainians off at the knees.
Do we sell out Poland next, if Moscow starts to help out Tehran again? Do we abandon Budapest then?
A week ago it was RUSSIA warning the U.S. to respect the 1994 treaty. Now elections don't need to happen so soon, because some Party of Regions deputies have been bribed to go the other way and sell out their constituents, while the brownshirts among the Maidan presume nobody in the East has the guts to use the same type of tactics or non-violent civil disobedience against THEM. Well they're about to find out eastern Ukrainians can halt trains too.
You Galician ultranationalists made this bed, you seized parliament through force, now lie in it. Or blame Putin when the most industrialized parts of the country and the Crimea decide that since Lviv gets to de facto secede so do they!
"A week ago it was RUSSIA warning the U.S. to respect the 1994 treaty. "
And I should care because...?
"You Galician ultranationalists made this bed, you seized parliament through force, now lie in it."
Keep beating that strawman. You'll kill him.
Stop claiming eternal victimhood and take charge of your country, if you are Ukrainian, and leave the U.S. and my tax money out of it! Stop whoring for Soros and tolerating neo-Nazis!
You don't know anything, do you?
And really, a Qatari/Saudi puppet in Syria sounds a lot better than either current main side winning--the Saudis and Qataris have a lot to lose. Short of that, I prefer shipping enough arms in to each side to make sure no one wins--that way Iran doesn't either.
"Stop whoring for Soros and tolerating neo-Nazis!"
While I'm personally doing neither, we have only your and Putin's word that wanting liberty from Moscow means Ukrainians are pro-Nazi.
I think he may be a little too self interested to take at face value.
And were those ethnically Ukrainian, or ethnically Russian?
The falling statues do not themselves prove your point.
None had interest that it degenerated, and the religious on both sides are working to appeasement
Fedorovski has a warning:
http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2014/02/22/1824585-il-s-agit-d-une-menace-pour-la-paix-mondiale.html
"is Putin really a puppet-master..."
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/21/opinion/dougherty-putin-headache-ukraine/index.html?sr=sharebar_facebook
When he is trying to be the only question is who does he want to put strings on and should we help, oppose, or not care. If it's the Ukraine, we should oppose as strenuously as possible.
Which, with Obama in charge, as I've pointed out, means doing nothing.
Appease Putin, you worthless traitor. Maybe you can room with him in hell.
On yer way out, want your hat?....'>>.......
No.
"Extremely tense and emotional events unfolding on Maidan tonight. According to the announced plan for tonight, a funeral service for the men who lost their lives yesterday in battles against the regime was supposed to be held. The three opposition party leaders (Yatseniuk, Klitschko, Tiahnybok), Poroshenko and other politicians were invited onto the stage together with priests. The crowd (40-50 thousand people) whistled at them, and demanded explanations regarding today's "deal" with Yanukovych. Most people in the crowd are, to put it mildly, not happy that an agreement was signed with the person they see as responsible for 77 dead and several hundred injured civilians. The funeral service was interrupted when one of the coffins was brought directly to the front of the stage during Klitschko's speech, and the crowd began shouting "who will answer for this?!". Then a "Sotnia" (unit) commander who had personally fought with riot police during the past days, forced his way onto the stage. His short emotional speech, during which he stressed that his unit was very well armed, ended with an ultimatum to the opposition leaders: either force the President's resignation by 10 am tomorrow, and renounce your deal with Yanukovych (according to which an election is scheduled for 10 months from now), or this commander's Sotnia will advance ("storm") the government quarter. Dmytro Yarosh from the Right Sector then came onto the stage and proclaimed essentially the same thing. It should be noted that this morning, over 1000 Interior Ministry troops were withdrawn from the government quarter, and this afternoon those troops who were from southern Ukraine were transported home. However, significant numbers of well armed government troops remain inside the Presidential Administration and Cabinet of Ministers buildings. It is now clear that the opposition's "negotiations" are not acceptable to Maidan, and the political leaders are NOT in control. Heaven help us, but I feel we're in for more bloodshed - soon."
and the facebook site for the Maiden revolt supporters
https://www.facebook.com/euromaidanpr
do we owe that to Steinmier, Fabius, Sikorski? or has Putin summoned the Ukraine president,? probably that the unrests would have extended to Russia too
anyways bravo to the diplomacy of the few countries that could put their weight facing Russia, Ashton and the EU are a joke !
There is no political solution without a lot of Russians being killed by Ukrainians, and vice versa, because Putin does not want to see the Ukraine go. You get that? He wants the Ukraine, left-bank, right bank, the whole thing.
"Radek also knows the Banderisti assassinated Polish officers pre-Hitler-Stalin Pact AND the UPA killed lots of Polish civilians and fought the London-supporting anti-Communist Polish Home Army while allied with the Nazis!!!!"
So? The West didn't have the wit to support either the Finns or the Ukrainians, where else should they go for help? To h3ll? Because they were opposing Mother Russia? Mother Russia needed and needs to be reduced in influence if she can only be an inimical influence on the world. Helping the Norks, Iranians, or Syrians or whoever else anytime they need to wedge a little leverage has gotten more than merely old.
And Mr. Goldman, thinking we can get any assistance from the Russians about anything is a fantasy. Pay them once, and the price will be too high once, and you'll need to pay it again and again. The only way to deal with the Russians is with a whip, a truncheon, holdout gun, and a deadman switch on the birds that fly once.
The Ukrainians treated loyal Jews well, as countrymen, so did the Finns. It's Inequitable Files here who forgets, or has never seen, one of the more interesting photographs of WWII--the remnants of the Jewish Brigade of the Finnish Army taking seder under the banners of the Wehrmacht and if I recall the SS at that. The Finns, when asked by the Nazis to hand over their Jew--with the Nazi's their only support against the Russians--the Finns told the Germans no and don't ask again. The Stepan Bandera had a far worse position, but much the same attitude.
"Stupid neocon hacks are constantly trying to rewrite history to glorify their eternal proxy wars against Moscow!"
If Moscow would purge itself of thugs, no American patriot would need to be concerned with what Moscow did with what was legitimately in Moscow's interest. I won't be holding my breath.
You can make a very strong circumstantial case that Russia wants the Crimea back, based on the warnings to the FT and the fiercely pro-Russian movements now massing there, plus years of Moscow Mayor Luzhkov's support for Sevastapol as a Russian city in Ukraine that Kuchma tolerated.
But taking back Kiev, sending in the tanks? Um, no. If Putin intended to do that, why did he allow Yanukovich to be toppled? Your claim of imminent Russian invasion and a fanatical Russian desire to rule over the parts of Ukraine that fear or hate Russia has absolutely no evidence to support it. But if Tymoshenko loses Crimea and Kharkiv her and the Maidanists will only have themselves to blame by making force, not the ballot box, the determiner of who runs parliament!
All these hysterical predictions of Russian aggression -- after 08/08/08 PJM's contributors mostly agreed Putin would take Tblisi and keep rolling on to Kiev, Talinn, Vilnius and Riga -- never came true.
"All these hysterical predictions of Russian aggression -- after 08/08/08 PJM's contributors mostly agreed Putin would take Tblisi and keep rolling on to Kiev, Talinn, Vilnius and Riga -- never came true.!"
You're saying the Russians didn't invade Georgia, or are you saying they left?