While Russia moves on Ukraine, much of western intelligentsia blames the victims

From: [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 18 2014 - 12:30:20 EST


Roman Serbyn found this gem and posted a link on Facebook.

While Russia moves on Ukraine, much of western intelligentsia blames the victims
http://o.canada.com/news/while-russia-moves-on-ukraine-much-of-western-intelligentsia-b
Andrew Coyne
Published: March 17, 2014, 7:54 pm
Updated: 17 hours ago

As they watch Russia swallow Crimea whole, and wonder whether the rest of the country will serve as the main course, the people of Ukraine can take solace in knowing it was all their fault.

Had they not risen up against their Russian-backed president, especially after the slaughter of the demonstrators in the Maidan; had they not rejected Russia's offer of absorption within its "Eurasian Union" of former Soviet satrapies in favour of association with the European Union; had they simply accepted their fate as part of Russia's "sphere of interest," things would never have come to this.

But perhaps that's too one-sided. Perhaps Ukraine is really the victim in all this: the victim of NATO, that is, whose aggressive expansion into eastern Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union left Russia feeling besieged, threatened -- with a hostile alliance on its very doorstep! -- or at any rate insulted.

True, NATO had punted on expansion into Georgia and Ukraine in 2008, in deference to Russian objections. But even to have considered their applications! Could NATO not have seen that, in the face of this provocation, Vladimir Putin would have no choice but to invade both countries?

Perhaps you will be tempted to dismiss the foregoing as Russian propaganda. Or perhaps it sounds like the sort of thing you'd hear only from Putin's left-wing apologists -- for democracy's enemies will never lack for defenders in the West. I assure you it is not. It is the consensus view of much of the foreign-policy community, the acme of "realist" wisdom, the thing to say if you want to display your superior understanding of the world's complexities.

You do not have to rely only on the testimony of the dire Stephen Cohen, Putin's most enthusiastic Western cheerleader ("Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever so personally villainized?"). Here's arch-realist John Mearsheimer, author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, writing in The New York Times: "The taproot of the current crisis is NATO expansion and Washington's commitment to move Ukraine out of Moscow's orbit and integrate it into the West . . . One might expect American policymakers to understand Russia's concerns about Ukraine joining a hostile alliance . . . Mr. Putin's view is understandable . . . etc etc."

Here's journalist Peter Beinart, writing in The Atlantic: "From Putin's perspective . . . the United States hardly looks in retreat. To the contrary, the post-Cold War period has brought one long march by America and its allies closer and closer to the border of Russia itself." Here's Anatol Lieven, professor of war studies at King's College London, attempting even-handedness: "We're now witnessing the consequences of how grossly both Russia and the West have overplayed their hands in Ukraine." Nevertheless, it's clear he places most of the blame on the West, for "the morally criminal attempt" to force Ukraine to choose between the two. If you doubt how mainstream this view is, here's arch-middlebrow Tom Friedman in the Times, offering his considered view that NATO expansion is "one of the dumbest things we've ever done."

The same people have been saying the same thing for years, of course -- it was very much the thinking behind the "reset," the dropping of the sanctions imposed after Georgia, the unilateral withdrawal of missile-defence bases from Poland and the Czech Republic -- and though Ukraine should reasonably have marked the final discrediting of this school of thought, it has instead only confirmed them in its divine rightness.

Thus, after the unprovoked invasion and annexation of the territory of a neighbouring democracy by a proto-dictatorship, much of the academic and journalistic world responded, not by condemning the aggressors, but by blaming the victims. While NATO's allies in eastern Europe sought renewed assurances of its protection -- and as Sweden and Finland debated joining -- the smart set thousands of miles away in North America was assuring them they had it all wrong: NATO is the problem.

Leave aside the total failure, in any of these pieces, to show a causal link between the two -- why NATO's decision to admit Latvia in 2004 should have precipitated Putin's decision to invade Ukraine in 2014, still less how the rejection of Ukraine's bid in 2008 could have done so. And let us take at face value the occasional disavowals of moral judgment on the part of the writer, who is only considering this "from Putin's perspective" or reminding us how "this is seen in Moscow."

Thus, if NATO is described as "marching" towards Russia, if it is presented as a "hostile alliance," it matters not whether NATO actually fits that menacing description, only that Putin and the people around him view it that way. This takes us beyond relativism: It effectively allows the most paranoid Kremlin view of the world to dictate, not only their policies, but ours.

Well, no. Reality also matters. If NATO is "seen as" a threat, we are obliged at least to ask what sort of threat? NATO is, after all, a defensive alliance: No sane person believes that NATO would attack Russia, not least because it is a nuclear armed state. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet collapse there was serious talk of admitting Russia as a member. If there are countries in its "near abroad" who desire NATO membership, it is not because they intend to invade Russia, but because they fear invasion by Russia, a fear that would today seem well grounded.

The "threat" from NATO, then, consists entirely in the promise to defend these countries from attack. If Putin finds such a benign pledge "provocative," that is rather a point in favour of NATO expansion than against.

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InfoUkes Inc. Gerald William Kokodyniak
Suite 185, 3044 Bloor Street West Webmaster InfoUkes Inc.
Etobicoke, Ontario [email protected]
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