The standoff between Russia and the rest of the world over Crimea and the Ukraine isn’t gung anywhere. The Republicans in this country who are using it to attack Obama are no better than Putin. The reality is that there are no weapons in Obama’s or anyone else’s arsenal other than sanctions and of the three sanctions available, only one is really viable. That one is being used now. It is moderately effective but only over time and in our current poisoned political atmosphere no one is willing to give anything time. This has been proved conclusively by the right’s approach to the ACA.
The fact is that Ukraine, as pointed out by William Boardman is not a real place. It never has been. It’s just a construct, imposed by a series of treaties and armies over several centuries. It has no coherent history as a nation, First inhabited 44,000 years ago it’s most recent history has been as occupied territory
As far as Crimea goes, it has had a military presence by Russia longer than the United States has existed. If there is any parallel to be drawn here it would be with the Soviet presence in Cuba and our reaction to it. Nobody from the other side of Europe was going to put guns in any island off the American coast. Well, Russia feels just like we did only more so because Crimea isn’t even a country, it’s just something that the Soviets gave to Ukraine. Now they want to take it back.
If there is any blame that we have to accept n the Ukraine mess, it is that we gave the Russians the excuse that they have long wanted when we backed the resistance to the legally elected government, a resistance that was too impatient to wait a couple of months for a real election that would have legally put a new candidate into office. This ill-timed, ill-advised uprising, was perfect for Putin and as any smart leader would, he took advantage of it.
So let’s try to take the best, most unbiased position possible, considering that all the real facts will never be known and launch a short history of what the hell is going on in the Ukraine.
The recently deposed government of Ukraine, led by Viktor Yanukovjch was legally elected. That doesn’t mean it was a good government There are plenty of bad, legally elected, governments all over the world. We had one ourselves, from 2000 to 2008, the best current example is Egypt, with Mosi at the helm and the Ukraine with Yanukovjch.
Two forces in the Ukraine collided recently to put this whole upheaval in motion. First, the Yanukovjch government was widely seen as corrupt and it was in the process of driving the country into bankruptcy and secondly there was a strong movement, some say, supported by the same western intelligence agencies that gave us Afghanistan, Iraq, Honduras and Syria, to move Ukraine out of the Russian sphere of influence and into the western European sphere of influence. These two circumstances gave birth to a series of demonstrations that would eventually lead to the overthrow of Yanukovjch and the installation of a new, western friendly but illegal government.
Yanukovjch seemed to want to create a Ukraine that would act as a buffer zone between Russia on the east and NATO members, Hungry, Slovakia and Poland on the west and profit from all. This didn’t really please anyone. The western powers wanted it to declare for the EU and Putin wanted it to keep its mouth shut and stay with Russia. The Ukrainians themselves want their government to stop stealing from them.
The demonstrations, which came out of this, eventually became violent. They were led, for the most part by far right, neo-Nazi militias, searching, not for any nationalistic goal, but like most political movements, simply for power, which they got, when members of these organizations were appointed to four high cabinet posts in the new government. These militias were the ones who actually forced Yanukovjch out of the government buildings and into flight and they were one of the motivating forces, that led Putin to start paying very close attention to what was gong on there. The neo-Nazi militias are real, despite the fact that they have been ignored or poo-pooed by the American media. There is some, unsubstantiated information that they have been armed and financed by western intelligence agencies because Yanukovjch was against the Ukraine joining the EU or NATO.
Putin is an old fashioned guy. A tyrant for sure, but one who still sees and mourns for the days of Soviet dominance, the days of a bi-politic world where the US and the Soviets ruled all. He would naturally be angered and opposed to any movement that attempted to dissipate any of Russia’s influence and when the loyalty of Ukraine was threatened by the insurrection he moved to protect the most strategically positioned of Russia’s interests, the Crimea, home to a 60% Russian speaking population, and to one of Russia’s biggest naval bases, a region that has a long history of allegiance to mother Russia.
Put in the same position, we would have acted exactly as Putin did. In fact we have a long and bloody history to prove it. What we also have in this country is a political party that has abandoned the status of the loyal opposition and turned into a pack of rabid dogs, refusing to support a legally elected president no matter what the issue and by their disloyal actions damaging both the image and the position of the United States in the view of the rest of the world.
It was just over a decade ago that Republican, George Bush took us to war in Iraq by lying to the nation and to the congress. A cornucopia of evidence, much of it from his own party, has shown that Bush and his predator, Cheney, forced us into this war, regardless of consequences and that he was supported, initially, by both the GOP and many congressional Democrats who understood that their duty to the county was to support the President when he is involved in international affairs, or until his motives, as in Bush’s case, are seen to be false and ulterior. That was at the beginning of his term. At the end George Bush watched silently and motionlessly a Russia took over Georgia. He didn’t threaten sanctions, he didn’t send troops, he didn’t do squat. So where the hell do the Republicans get off attacking Obama over the way he is dealing with this mess which has been created, at least partially by the signals Bush sent during the takeover of Georgia and more recently by the interference with the Ukrainian nation by right-wing neo-con elements in our intelligence community.
Obama has done what he realistically can do, especially in view of the situation in Western Europe. That group of countries, led by Germany are unwilling, (they claim unable), to go with further sanctions because it would damage them economically. They are all getting most of their gas and oil from Russia. These countries, right on the Russian border are unwilling to put up with some economic discomfort to hold Russia in abeyance, why should we take up the responsibility of saving their butts once again. We’ve already done it in two hot wars and one cold war. Isn’t it time for Europe to do its own dirty work?
But the fanatic Right doesn’t care where the truth in this situation lies. An upheaval in the Russian sphere of influence, which actually has noting to do with us, was taken by them as an excuse to attack our president for doing exactly what they would have done if they were in office. I say they would have done the same thing because it is the only reasonable thing to do, the only legitimate course of action. But that doesn’t make any difference to the crazies and the self-seekers like Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and Lindsay Graham. They are looking for votes and they don’t care what they say, true or false; or who they hurt. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians don’t mean spit to them, nor does the truth.
The problem politically is that if you speak to 20 different members of congress you get 20 different interpretations of what is going on, what Putin’s goals are, and how Obama is doing. This is because none of those interpretations are based on what is actually going on but on the viewer’s political goals. This is too typical of today’s political scene in this country where a congress that has accomplished absolutely nothing in the last five and a half years is now all but announcing that nothing is going to be done in the almost seven months left before the 2014 election in November. It’s April, for Christ’s sake. You have half a year. Get off your butts and do some work for your exorbitant paychecks. Or better yet do what you’re doing a let us vote you all out of office.