“It’s been interesting to observe the large numbers of people who
suddenly think they’re experts on the ongoing crisis in Ukraine—both those on
the left who blame it on Obama for intervening too much and those on the right
who blame it on Obama for not intervening enough.
“As someone who has spent his entire academic
career analyzing and critiquing the U.S. role in the world, I have some news:
While the United States has had significant impact (mostly negative in my view)
in a lot of places, we are not omnipotent. There are real limits to American
power, whether for good or for ill. Not everything is our responsibility. This
is certainly the case with Ukraine.
Delusions of Grandeur
“On the right, you have political figures claiming
that Obama’s supposed ‘weakness’ somehow emboldened Moscow to engage in
aggressive moves against Crimea. Sarah Palin, for example, claims that
Obama’s failure to respond forcefully to Russia’s bloody incursion into Georgia
in 2008 made Russia’s ‘invasion’ possible, despite the fact that Obama wasn’t
even president then and therefore couldn’t have done much. Even some Democrats,
like Delaware senator Chris Coons, claim that Obama’s failure
to attack Syria last fall made the United States look weak.
“In reality, there seems to be little correlation between the
willingness of Moscow to assert its power in areas within its traditional
spheres of influence and who occupies the White House: The Soviets invaded
Hungary in 1956 when Eisenhower was president; the Soviets invaded
Czechoslovakia in 1968 when Johnson was president; the Soviets successfully
pressed for martial law in Poland in 1981 when Reagan was president; the Russians
attacked Georgia in 2008 when Bush was president.
“In each case, as much as these administrations opposed these
actions, it was determined that any military or other aggressive counter-moves
would likely do more harm than good. Washington cannot realistically do any
more in response to Russian troops seizing Crimea in 2014 in the name of
protecting Russian lives and Russian bases than Moscow could do in response to
U.S. troops seizing Panama in 1989 in the name of protecting American lives and
American bases.
“There is an equally unrealistic view of
supposed American omnipotence from some segments of the left in their claims
that the United States was somehow responsible for the popular uprising that
toppled the Yanukovych regime last month. First of all, it’s not true that the
United States government ‘spent $5 billion to destabilize Ukraine,’ as
some agitators have claimed. That figure is the total amount of money provided
to the country since independence in 1991, which includes aid to pro-Western
Ukrainian administrations (which the United States presumably would not have
wanted to destabilize).
“Like most U.S. foreign aid, some of it went for good things and
some for not so good things. There was also some funding through the National
Endowment for Democracy and other organizations to some
opposition groups that were involved in the recent insurrection, but this was
in the millions of dollars, nothing remotely close to $5 billion. And this aid
went primarily to centrist groups, not the far right, so claims that the United
States ‘supported fascists’ in Ukraine are without foundation.
“It’s also unfair to imply that such aid was somehow the cause of the uprising, thereby
denying agency to the millions of Ukrainians who took to the streets in an
effort to determine (for better or worse) their own future. To claim that U.S.
aid was responsible for the Orange Revolution of 2005 or the
more recent revolt is as ludicrous as President Reagan’s claims in the 1980s
that Soviet aid was responsible for the leftist revolutions in Central America.
“The uprising that overthrew Ukrainian
president Viktor Yanukovych and his allied pro-Russian oligarchs was not a
classic nonviolent pro-democracy uprising like those that have toppled scores
of dictatorships in recent decades. Yanukovych was democratically elected, and
the forces that ousted him included—though were not dominated by—armed,
neo-fascist militias.
“At the same time, Yanukovych’s rampant corruption, repression,
and divide-and-rule tactics had cost him his legitimacy in the eyes of the
majority of Ukrainians. The protesters were primarily liberal democrats who
engaged in legitimate acts of nonviolent resistance against
severe government repression, many of whom spent months in freezing
temperatures in a struggle for a better Ukraine dominated by neither Russia nor
the West. To label them as simply puppets of Washington is as unfair as
labeling peasant revolutionaries in El Salvador as puppets of Moscow.
“At the same time, given that the new
government includes corrupt neo-liberal oligarchs along with representatives
of the far right, it would be equally wrong to assume that
the change of government represents some kind of major progressive democratic
opening. And the refusal of the opposition to abide by the compromise agreement
of February 21, which called for early elections and limited presidential
powers, and seize power directly raises questions regarding the legitimacy of
the new government.
“Whether for good or for ill, however, and despite whatever
attempts Western powers have made to influence the outcome, the change of
government is ultimately the responsibility of Ukrainians, not the Obama
administration.
“While the United States and the European
Union no doubt want to lure Ukraine in a pro-Western direction and the Russians
even more desperately want Ukraine to stay within their orbit, Ukrainians
themselves—given the country’s centuries of subjugation—are strongly
nationalistic and do not want to be under the control of Russia or the West.
With a population of 45 million and significant agricultural and industrial
capacity, they are not a country that would passively accept foreign
domination.
“Just as U.S. military action in the greater
Middle East in the name of protecting Americans from Islamist extremism has
ended up largely encouraging Islamist extremism, Russia’s actions in the name
of protecting Russians from right-wing Ukrainian ultra-nationalists will likely
only encourage that tendency as well. The United States, therefore, needs to
avoid any actions that could encourage dangerous ultra-nationalist tendencies
among either Russians or Ukrainians. Polls show most Russians are at best
ambivalent about the Kremlin’s moves in Ukraine. Provocative actions by the
United States would more likely solidify support for Russian president Vladimir
Putin’s illegitimate actions…
“[Nevertheless], there does need to be a
strong international response to Russia’s aggrandizement. Unfortunately, the
United States is hardly in a position to take leadership on the matter. For
example, Secretary
of State John Kerry has chastised Putin’s actions in
Crimea on the grounds that ‘You just don’t invade another country on phony
pretext in order to assert your interests,’ adding that Russia’s actions
constituted a ‘direct, overt violation of international law.’
“While this is certainly a valid statement in itself, it is ironic
coming from a man who so vigorously supported
the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq on the phony pretext
that Saddam Hussein had ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Indeed, while Obama, to
his credit, opposed the Iraq War, the fact that he appointed so many supporters
of that illegal invasion and occupation to major foreign policy positions in
his administration has severely weakened the United States’ ability to assume
leadership in challenging the Kremlin on its own unilateral excesses.
“Similarly, in 2004, Kerry, Joe Biden, and other members of
Congress who later became key Obama administration officials unconditionally
endorsed then-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to incorporate large
sections of the occupied West Bank into Israel, a proposal denounced by
international legal authorities worldwide as an illegal annexation. This makes
it very difficult for the Obama administration to be taken seriously when it
denounces the illegality of the proposed referendum to have Crimea incorporated
into Russia.
“There is also the fact that the Obama
administration appears willing to accept Morocco’s
illegal takeover of occupied Western Sahara (under the autocratic monarchy’s
dubious ‘autonomy’ proposal) in defiance of international law, a landmark 1975
World Court decision, and a series of UN resolutions. While illegitimate, the
Russians are at least willing to offer the people of Crimea a choice in a
referendum. By contrast, the United States has effectively abandoned the United
Nations’ insistence that there be a referendum in occupied Western Sahara,
apparently in the recognition that the vast majority of Western Saharans would
vote for independence.
“In short, given the history of U.S. support
for its allies’ land grabs and its own history of illegal invasions, this
leaves the United States with little credibility to take leadership in this
crisis. This in no way justifies or minimizes the seriousness of Russia’s
aggression, of course. However, it underscores the fact that international
leadership is not just a matter of being ‘tough.’
“It means being willing to abide by and defend the same
international legal norms for yourself and your allies as you demand of your
adversaries. Until there is such a change in policies, there is little the
United States can do.”
The excerpts from above article, Straight Talk on the U.S. and Ukraine by Stephen Zunes, is from
Nation of Change.
Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and
International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he chairs the
program in Middle Eastern Studies. A native of North Carolina, Professor Zunes
received his PhD. from Cornell University, his M.A. from Temple University and
his B.A. from Oberlin College.
As to the perspective on the past here, I would quibble only with the idea that the United States had been aiding pro-Western administrations in the Ukraine. As with most United States aid, it did not end when the less friendly administration of Mr Yanukovich came to power.
ReplyDeleteIf the United States must take the stance that there is nothing it can do in this situation, then one must ask both whether there is any situation in which it can do something and whether there is any point in considering any invasion to be a violation of international law. We have here a country whose borders we guaranteed in a specific agreement being invaded on the most transparent of pretenses. Clearly, we played the Ukrainians for chumps and any other country the protection of whose sovereignty has been assured in an agreement with the United States should consider abandoning the NPT and investing in a nuclear deterrent (as my sister has lived in Japan for the last twenty years, I may be more sensitive about this). Now, if there is no action whatsoever that the United States, of all countries, can take in response to a flagrant violation of Ukraine's sovereignty, then what is the point of Chapters VI and VII of the United Nations Charter? Indeed, if such an armed occupation is not at the very least a matter for collective self-defense under Article 51, what is? I suppose that one could say the UN Charter was composed in the heat of the moment, when people were not so broad-minded as we are now about expansionist powers invading and dismembering East Central European countries in response to supposed threats to their ethnic brethren. If there is nothing that can be done by the most powerful country on the planet in precisely the situation that the United Nations was designed to respond to, then we should simply scrap it. I do, certainly, pray for peace in our time, but I also hope it does not come at too high a price.