By Seumas Milne Guardian/UK March 5, 2014
Diplomatic
pronouncements are renowned for hypocrisy and double standards. But western
denunciations of Russian intervention in Crimea have reached new depths of self
parody. The so far bloodless incursion is an "incredible act
of aggression", US secretary of state John Kerry declared. In
the 21st century you just don't invade countries on a "completely
trumped-up pretext", he insisted, as US allies agreed. That the states which launched the greatest
act of unprovoked aggression in modern history on a trumped-up pretext –
against Iraq, in an illegal
war now estimated to have killed 500,000 should make such claims is
beyond absurdity.
It's not just that western aggression and
lawless killing is on another scale entirely from anything Russia appears to
have contemplated. But the western powers have also played a central role in
creating the Ukraine crisis in the first place.
The US and European powers openly sponsored the protests to oust the
corrupt but elected Yanukovych government, which were triggered by controversy
over an all-or-nothing EU agreement which would have
excluded economic association with Russia.
The president’s overnight
impeachment was certainly constitutionally dubious. In his place a government of oligarchs, neoliberal
Orange Revolution retreads and neofascists has been installed. Fascist gangs
now patrol the streets. But they are also in Kiev's
corridors of power. Neo-Nazis
in office is a first in post-war Europe. But this is the unelected government
now backed by the US and EU. And in a contemptuous rebuff to the ordinary
Ukrainians who protested against corruption and hoped for real change, the new
administration has appointed two billionaire oligarchs – one who runs his
business from Switzerland – to be the new governors of the eastern cities of
Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk. Meanwhile, the IMF is preparing an eye-watering
austerity plan for the tanking Ukrainian economy which can only swell poverty
and unemployment.
From a longer-term perspective, the crisis in
Ukraine is a product of the disastrous Versailles-style break-up of the Soviet
Union in the early 1990s. And contrary to
undertakings given at the time, the US and its allies have since
relentlessly expanded Nato up to Russia's borders, incorporating nine former
Warsaw Pact states and three former Soviet republics into what is effectively
an anti-Russian military alliance in Europe. The European association agreement
which provoked the Ukrainian crisis also included clauses to integrate Ukraine
into the EU defence structure.
Western military
expansion was first brought to a halt in 2008 when the US client state
of Georgia attacked Russian forces in the contested territory of
South Ossetia and was driven out. The short but bloody conflict signalled the
end of George Bush's unipolar world in which the US empire would
enforce its will without challenge on every continent. Given that background, it is hardly
surprising that Russia has acted to stop the more strategically sensitive
Ukraine falling decisively into the western camp, especially given that
Russia's only major warm-water naval base is in Crimea.
Clearly, Putin's justifications for
intervention – "humanitarian" protection for Russians and an appeal
by the deposed president – are legally and politically flaky, even if nothing
like on the scale of "weapons of mass destruction." But Russia's role as a limited counterweight
to unilateral western power certainly does. And in a world where the US,
Britain, France and their allies have turned international lawlessness with a
moral veneer into a permanent routine, others are bound to try the same game.
Fortunately, the only
shots fired by Russian forces at this point have been into the air. But the
dangers of escalating foreign intervention are obvious. What is needed instead
is a negotiated settlement for Ukraine, including a broad-based government in
Kiev shorn of fascists; a federal constitution that guarantees regional
autonomy; economic support that doesn't pauperise the majority; and a chance
for people in Crimea to choose their own future. Anything else risks spreading
the conflict. [Abridged]
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/05/clash-crimea-western-expansion-ukraine-fascists
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