No Back-Up Plan for Ukraine

The question that troubles me most these days is, what is the way out of the Ukrainian crisis?

Putin can’t afford to back down. From the outset his leadership was based on the image of the strong man, crushing the Chechen rebels, going to war with Georgia, and taking no nonsense from opponents on the home front. If you like to appear shirtless, flexing your muscles for the TV news, then it’s best not to let the world see that you’ve gone flabby. Politically, Putin has no backup plan.

Ukrainian political contenders can’t afford to back down. No one who is serious about winning the May 25^th elections can appear weak on the Crimean question. While Ukraine has no realistic way to prevent the Russian annexation of Crimea, it also has no politically moderate way to move past it. Although Crimea is meaningless to the Ukrainian economy and most Ukrainians never considered it fully “Ukrainian,” it has now become a crucial political symbol. Politically, Ukraine has no backup plan.

The United States can’t afford to back down. For the U.S., this is about Russia, and not Ukraine. The Cold War still casts a long shadow over U.S. politics, and the reaction of the U.S. to Russian aggression is a potent political symbol. Already the U.S. discourse is about domestic politics, about how Ukrainian events will affect the mid-term elections and even the presidential elections. Politically, the U.S. has no backup plan.

Crimea’s ethnic Russians can’t afford to back down. The ethnic tensions that have been manufactured in Crimea in the past three weeks cannot easily be reversed. Ethnic tensions between Russians and Ukrainians were almost non-existent before the crisis (the relationship of Tatars to both groups is another question). Now, those tensions have been elevated into violent confrontations. The wedge that has been driven between the Russian and Ukrainian population of Crimea means that the perpetrators of the violence cannot back down. If Crimea remains part of Ukraine, they face punishment. Crimean Russians have no backup plan.

I just don't see how this ends well.

 

 

Putinism and Soviet Power

My silence over the last couple weeks is a reflection of the fact that, on the one hand my efforts have all been on chasing news about Ukraine, and on the other, that I have little new to offer beyond what can be found on Radio Free Europe, BBC World news, and the Times. But yesterday I was asked about the relationship between Putinism and the Soviet Union, and here I have some opinions that are perhaps worth sharing.

The question was prompted by as much by Putin’s attempt to create a Eurasion Union to counter the European Union as by the Russian invasion of the Crimea. Ukraine would have been a key partner in that Union (it already includes Kazakhstan and Belarus), and it was Putin’s fear of Ukraine joining the EU instead that prompted Russia to meddle in Ukraine back in November, helping to start EuroMaidan. Russia’s present belligerence in Ukraine is a desperate attempt at creating through force what could not be gained by economic and political bullying.

Whatever the results in Ukraine, there will be no new Soviet Union. The USSR justified its existence to its own people on the basis of ideology. While that ideology was badly corrupted and widely discredited by the last decades of Soviet power, it nevertheless continued to provide shape to government policy at home and abroad.

Putinism has no ideology. Its sole reason for existing is power, and it justifies itself to Russians in narrow terms of economics and national security. For this reason, Ukraine is both essential to Putin, and a major danger to his power.

Economically Putin’s Crimean adventure has already produced significant costs. The ruble is in free fall and the Russian stock exchange is crashing. Any hope of economic cooperation with Ukraine based on rational mutual interests is gone, and with it so is the vision of a meaningful Eurasion Union. Ukraine – or at least that part of it not annexed by Russia – is almost certain to now turn decisively westward.

Which brings us to the question of national security. In the short term Putin may claim a victory in Crimea. But in the long term Putinist adventurism can only lead to danger for Russia. It is already leading to calls for a stronger NATO presence in Poland, and even discussion of reviving American National Missile Defense stations. In Crimea, nationalist Russian rule is noxious to the Islamic Crimean Tatar population, who may not sit quietly by.

Ukraine may lose Crimea in the coming days, but in the coming years Russia is liable to be the big loser.

Olympics Over – Repression Underway

Today in Moscow the police arrested Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, anti-corruption activist Alexander Navalny, and many others. They were rallying to protest the jail sentences handed out this weekend to participants in the 2012 anti-Putin protests in Moscow. Apparently there were similar protests and arrests in St. Petersburg. So far there are few details, but many of the protesters carried signs referring to Maidan, where Ukrainians successfully overthrew their president last week.

The cover of today's Polish Newsweek