Главная » 2014 » Март » 14 » Democrats, Ultra-Nationalists, and Outsiders in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution 2.0
Democrats, Ultra-Nationalists, and Outsiders in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution 2.0
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http://geostrategicforecasting.net/gordonhahn/2014/02/25/democrats-ultra-nationalists-and-outsiders-in-ukraines-orange-revolution-2-0/ Gordon M. Hahn The former Soviet republics, now loosely tied under the CIS, have moved to the top of the agenda in U.S.-Russian relations. Western media tends to cover these issues from the U.S. perspective. Often coverage lacks important aspects regarding Ukraine and Georgia, the most heatedly contested CIS countries between the U.S. and Russia. Below is an overview of the key issues confronting the U.S. and Russia regarding Ukraine and how Ukraine has developed since the collapse of the USSR. The crux of the conflict between Russia and the US lies in the America's superpower status and its ability and willingness to project power and influence across the globe. Inevitably, US perceived interests run up against those of regional powers in other parts of the world – as would happen if Russia took strong interest in turning Canada and Mexico away from America’s field of influence. In the case of the CIS, Russia is deeply intertwined with the history and culture of countries in its region. And those countries have been increasingly courted to come under US influence over the past several years. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine emerged as an independent state for the third time in its history. It emerged briefly with the collapse of the Russian Tsarist Empire in 1917, but this was quickly crushed by the Bolsheviks and incorporated into the USSR by 1920. The only other fully organized Ukrainian state was the 10th-13th century state of Kievan Rus, which had both Russian and Ukrainian roots. Kievan Rus cemented the foundation for the Ukrainians' and Russians' common Slavic linguistic and ethnic heritage and Orthodox Christian religious beliefs, which persisted across the centuries and even through the cruel years of Soviet power. When Russian president BorisYeltsin declared the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, he also signed another declaration on the creation of a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) with the leaders of the two other Slavic republics of the USSR – Belarus and Ukraine. Thus, the post-Soviet period was heralded in by a new loose union based on Russian and Ukrainian partnership, which had roots in centuries of the region's history. The current US presence, particularly when it comes in the form of the expansion of a military alliance into the region and right up to Russia's borders, was bound to drive a wedge not only between Russia and the West, but between Russia and its closest neighbors like Ukraine. This leaves Russia isolated and forced to turn eastward for economic and security allies.
The US/NATO decision to expand the military alliance to Ukraine is especially damaging to Russian interests and therefore provocative. Ukraine remains the base for the Russian navy's Black Sea Fleet, a vital transit point for Russian gas exports to Europe, and the locus of numerous defense enterprises that still produce parts for Russian armaments.
The issue of the Black Sea Fleet was highly contentious in the first years after the Soviet collapse, since both Russia and Ukraine laid claim to possession of the fleet. A compromise was eventually found whereby the fleet was divided, with most of the fleet going to Russia. The costs of maintaining a large fleet are prohibitive for Ukraine's economy. In addition, Russia signed a long-term contract to lease the naval base in Sevastopol through 2016. Notwithstanding, Western governments and media portray the presence of Russia's Black Sea Fleet as an expression of 'Russian neo-imperialism' – despite the fact that many Western countries, including the US, have similar bases and arrangements much further from their territories. Moreover, the latter bases were not established with the mitigating circumstance of the Sevastopol base, which was established not by the post-Soviet Russian state but by the Soviet predecessor state. Furthermore, Sevastopol and the entire Crimea were part of Russian territory for nearly 200 years until Soviet General Secretart Nikita Khrushchev transferred them to Ukraine in 1957 without even using the legal procedure such a territorial transfer required by Soviet law.
The issue of Russia's natural gas transportation through Ukraine and natural gas sales to Ukraine, has been a particularly contentious one. When Moscow increased the price of gas sold to Ukraine in the mid-2000s (which it needed to do to satisfy WTO requirements), Western governments and media portrayed the move as more "Russian neo-imperialism”. The same charge was made throughout the 1990s when Moscow sold gas to Ukraine (and other former Soviet republics) at less than half the world market price. Thus, Moscow was tagged an imperialist whether it sold gas at a bargain or market price – and charged on both accounts with using trade as a political weapon; a practice still common throughout the world. Last, the west ignores the fact that Ukraine has a long history of illegally siphoning off Russian gas and oil from pipelines carrying fuels to Europe. In Ukraine's depressed post-Soviet economy, shattered by the collapse of the Soviet military-industrial complex, Ukraine barely survived, thanks to Russian subsidies, both intended and stolen.
Russia's decision to stop subsidizing the Ukrainian economy was political. It came on the heels of NATO expansion up to Ukraine's borders, followed by Western talk of Ukraine's inclusion in NATO. This began the power struggle between pro-Western and pro-Russian factions and parties within Ukraine. In successive Ukrainian elections, the contest centered on pro-Western forces (ethnic Ukrainian population dominant in western Ukraine who favored Ukraine’s membership in NATO and joining the European Union) – and pro-Moscow forces consisting mostly of ethnic Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine who were opposed to Kiev’s entry into NATO and Ukraine’s abandonment of close ties with Russia and the CIS.
In 2004, the US indirectly, if not directly, used the State Department’s well-financed international aid and development infrastructure to support, if not foment, so-called ‘Colored Revolutions’ in various places around the world but most often in the CIS or countries with close historical ties to Russia (Yugoslavia/Serbia). Ukraine was the second CIS country to undergo a "peaceful revolution,” likely inspired by Georgia’s 2003 ‘Rose Revolution’ that brought Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to power. In Kiev’s famous 2004 ‘Orange Revolution’, the US used foreign aid and US non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to support, at least indirectly, a pro-Western opposition when it refused to recognize falsified election results, organized mass protests, and forced authorities to run a repeat election the opposition had won.
Thus, Russia’s decision to stop subsidizing Ukraine was driven by the US decision to establish faraway Ukraine and the entire post-Soviet space as a region of ‘vital American interests’, while denying Russia’s geopolitical ‘right’ to a sphere of influence even in a neighboring and culturally-kin state like Ukraine – after which they condemned Russian aspirations as ‘Russian neo-imperialism.’ The actions of all sides – Russia, the US, Ukraine and its various political and ethno-cultural factions – are now driven by the Ukraine’s tortured decision whether to turn east or west.
President Yushchenko’s presidency was plagued by economic decline and division he created with the southeastern Russian-dominated regions by promoting a nationalist-oriented policy that implicitly blamed Russian and Russians for the 1929-33 Soviet-induced famine under Joseph Stalin. Russia’s ‘crime’ was described it as a ‘genocide’ targeting the Ukrainian people, though there were similar famines in Russia and Central Asia. This distortion of history was openly encouraged by Western governments and media. Consequently he was defeated in a free and fair election in 2010 by the now infamous Yanukovich.
However, Yanukovich’s rule was equally plaged but in different ways. The economy continued to fail and massive corruption in Yanukovich’s family and government exacerbated state-society relations. As the country’s trade balance continued in the red, unemployment rose, and currency reserves disappeared Yanukovich turned to the EU for salvation. After trumpeting the salvation to come with the signing of an EU association agreement for two years, he suddenly refused to sign the agreement in November 2013, provoking the first protests that would mushroom into a revolution.
The transition from protest to revolution was sparked in the early morning hours of November 30 when the Ukrainian police’s security force ‘Berkut’ stormed Maidan Square attacking unarmed demonstrators. The demonstrators then responded with violence, which then escalated bringing to the opposition’s side larger numbers of members of Ukraine’s several ultra-nationalist parties and to the regime’s side growing numbers of violent, sometimes paid criminal elements, the so-called titushki. The more moderate democratic parties were unable to contain the radical nationalists. The regime ran out of funds to pay enough Berkut, police, and titushki to fight them and waited to long before it agreed to compromises with the moderate opposition in parliament. Thus, Yanukovich and his Party of the Regions has apparently lost the day and will not see another in power.
Radicals and Outsiders in Ukraine’s Revolution From Below The violent revolution from below – even the so far limited violence of Orange 2.0 in Ukraine – is not an optimal solution. Although Yanukovich’s regime was extremely corrupt and incompetent, Ukrainian citizens’ human, civil, and political rights were protected and more so than in Russia: freedoms of speech, information, and association were honored; elections were free and fair, and the courts were independent. Although Yanukovich is responsible for the first bloodshed, he is far from the only guilty party in the revolutionary crisis that preconditioned it.
Foreign interference from the East (Russia) and the West has played perhaps the larger role in sparking the schism within Ukraine that has exploded on to our television screens and computer monitors in recent months.
As Kiev burns and the rest of Ukraine takes sides risking civil war, both regime and opposition are reaping the ‘rewards’ of allying themselves with unsavory internal forces and self-interested, opportunist external ones. Beleaguered President Viktor Yanukovich and his Party of the Regions have relied on Russia in their effort to remain in power and avert the crisis that is becoming a catastrophe. The opposition itself is diveded between competing Western ‘allies’, as Ms. Nuland so eloquently demonstrated in her infamous phone chat. Leader of the Ukrainian democratic ‘UDAR’ party, Vitalii Klitschko, has Germany’s backing, while Homeland Party leader Arsenyi Yatsenyuk is backed by Washington.
Worse yet, both sides in Ukraine are feeding the country’s fascization. The authorities have employed the ‘titushki’ hooligans and provocateurs to attack peaceful demonstrators. In February, Yanukovich’s Party of the Regions institutionalized the titushki at its party congress in Kharkov into a National Guard (NG) under a new umbrella organization, the All-Ukrainian Front. Although the NG has functioned defensively in Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk where the titushki were born, they are concentrating in Kiev and reportedly are staffed through police lists of petty criminals and the Kharkov crime group. The latter is allegedly tied to Kharkov Governor Mikhail Dobkin, who warned the opposition: "Once we see that the potential for instituting order by peaceful means are exhausted, we will act differently.”
At the same time, the democratic opposition concluded a devil’s pact with the neo-fascist ‘Freedom Party’ led by anti-semitic and russophobic Ukrainian ultra-nationalist Oleg Tyagnibok. Tyagnibok’s thugs are strong in ethnic Ukrainian-dominated western Ukraine, the epicenter of the democratic and nationalist opposition to Yanukovich. Through their violent actions, including some targeting Jews, Tyagnibok’s black shirts have discredited the demonstrations and raised fears in Russia and Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine. As a result, Ukraine is now closer than ever to all-out civil war and territorial disintegration.
All of this is the result of concrete steps taken by the U.S. and the West, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other hand, which have been pushing the country towards schism since the collapse of the USSR. The first step was the West’s decision in the mid-1990s to expand NATO without Russia and, perhaps more damagingly, to continue to do so right up through the mid-2000s. Especially destabilizing have been the alliance’s efforts to incorporate all the countries bordering Russia, including Ukraine. Once begun, NATO expansion was bound to lead to a Russia-West confrontation in countries with populations divided over historical Russian ties versus aspirations for Europe or by ethnic groups spread across the post-Soviet states’ arbitrary borders. Both those divides run right through Ukraine.
Previously, Russia and Georgia were confronted with Ossetian populations each seeking Russia’s protection from neo-fascist rule of Zviad Gamsakhurdia in the 1990s and the more or less democratic but very nationalist rule of Mikheil Saakashvili. Western efforts to expand NATO into Georgia led Saakashvili to believe that he could start a war with Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia and receive some sort of Western backing sufficient for him to prevail. Now Tbilisi’s breakaway republics are on their way to state independence under Russia’s protection.
Similarly, Ukraine has a substantial ethnic Russian minority of more than ten million people left artificially in Ukraine as a result of Soviet policies and the Soviet collapse. Significantly large ethnic Russian and Tatar enclaves in the country’s southeast and south, respectively, still identify weakly with, and are economically dependent on Russia. They have no desire to reside in a NATO country and little desire to live in the EU. In western Ukraine there is a strong ethnic Ukrainian identity that has had little or no wanted historical roots in Russia and aspires to rid itself of Moscow’s political ad economic shadow and join what it sees as both a more free and prosperous Europe. These ethno-national divisions lie beneath the West’s economic and democracy development explanations for the conflict.
As NATO expansion was put on the backburner by U.S. President Barack Obama, the ethnic divide continued to be plied unintentionally by the West through the EU’s Eastern Partnership program (which excluded Russia) and the ensuing EU association agreement plans. At the same time, in an era of supposed European ‘pluri-nationality’ and multiple national identities, Russia and pro-Russian Ukrainians have been told that Moscow desire to form a mere economic union with some of the former Soviet republics-turned newly independent states is a desire to recreate the USSR. Yet Europe reserves itself the right to expand its both economic and politically-confederative union into the same region. Moreover, it does so hauling in tow the most powerful military alliance in human history – NATO – which will soon incorporate any new EU member-states. Paraphrasing an American phrase: Russia has seen such movies, and they usually do not include a happy ending for Moscow.
In the West, especially the U.S., the ethno-national Ukrainian-Russian aspect of the schism is poorly understood and ignored. Viewed purely through the prism of the democracy/authoritarianism dichotomy, the American instinct is to push democracy as far east and as quickly as possible. Democracies make good political and business partners for the U.S., conflating calculations of U.S./Western self-interest and American idealism.
Moreover, America’s democracy-promotion idealism is driven by very different histories of revolution in the U.S. and the West as opposed to the East. The French and especially the American experience of revolution assume that revolutions lead to freedom and democracy even if, as was the case in France, for example, no small amount of blood-letting occurred. Today, after the drama of the collapse of communism, the West and Americans especially have developed a kind of revolutionism, tending to idealize revolutions. Recall our initial reaction to the Arab ‘spring.’
In the East, especially in Russia, and even in some parts of the West (Weimar-to-Nazi Germany), people recall numerous cases when their ancestors’ revolutions brought new regimes that made the old authoritarian ones seem democratic. Moreover, the revolutionary road to totalitarianism regime was paved with the blood of hundreds of thousands, even tens of millions of compatriots. From the revolution from above that brought the Soviet collapse and today’s Russia, Russians remember an economic depression deeper than the American Great Depression, inter-ethnic civil wars, coups, and near communo-fascist seizures of power.
Unfortunately, Moscow has behaved little better in trying to preserve the status quo in Ukraine, regardless of Russia’s perhaps greater ‘right’ to get involved in the domestic politics of a state that afterall is on its border and is linguistically, culturally, and historically tied closely to Russia. Although hardly a unique approach, Moscow used Ukraine’s energy and economic dependence to keep Kiev in its orbit. More recently, it did so to dissuade Kiev from signing the EU association agreement, though in reality that document was disadvantageous for Ukraine in the short- and mid-term.
Ultimately, President Yanukovich deserves much of the blame for the crisis by having promised and touted the association agreement to Ukrainians for some two years and then backing out at the last second. His corruption and unleashing of the ‘Berkut’ militia when protests began last fall deprived him of legitimacy, but these are hardly good reasons for violent revolution or civil war. The causes of those tragedies lie outside the country – to both the East and West.
Everyone who is willing to be honest will acknowledge that Ukraine’s inclusion into the EU is the first stage in Ukraine’s entry into NATO. Although most Ukrainians support future EU accession, they are sceptical about NATO. Opinion polls show that opponents of NATO number about 60 per cent of the population compared with the supporters’ 20 per cent. But these generic numbers mask a starker ethno-political divide between the Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine and Ukrainian-speaking west. The overwhelming majority of those Ukrainian citizens who support Ukraine’s entrance into NATO are ethnic Ukrainians (Ukrainian-speakers), reside for the most part in western Ukraine, and tend to be Uniate Catholic or Ukrainian Orthodox in religion. At the same time, those Ukrainian residents who oppose NATO membership for Ukraine are primarily ethnic Russians (Russian-language speakers), reside for the most part in eastern Ukraine and Kiev, and are overwhelmingly Russia Orthodox in religion. Thus, EU and NATO expansion have been driving a wedge between two ethno-national communal groups, provoking inter-communal tension, conflict and even separatism.
Thus, we have seen in recent years the rise of the ultra-nationalist, indeed neo-fascist party to apex of Ukrainian politics in Oleg Tyagnibok’s opposition, anti-Semitic, and Russophobic ‘Freedom Party’ powerful in western Ukraine. Tyagnibok and the Freedom Party are one of the four pillars of the opposition along with two democratic parties, the also ultra-nationalist ‘Right Sector’, and the Maidan protestors themselves. In response, the Yanukovich regime organized the titushki first loosely and informally and more recently in a more structured and formal way under the National Guard based in Kharkov under the newly formed Ukrainian Front, created as a counter to the overall opposition. These extremist groups explain most of the violence that has occurred during the Ukrainian crisis.
Raising the temperature in such multicommunal hothouses is fraught with grave dangers for international stability. In addition, nuclear Russia’s geostrategic position at the center of this arc of instability raises the specter of Moscow’s intervention, either political or military, and the risk of war, instability in Moscow, and the heightened possibility of the proliferation of chemical, biological, nuclear, or radiological materials or weapons of mass destruction.
Ukraine’s 2004 orange revolutionaries, when in power demonstrated limited democracy regarding any decision to join NATO. It rejected a popular plebiscite that the then Yanukovich-led opposition demanded. In a failed attempt to force then President Viktor Yushchenko’s orange administration to adopt a law requiring such a referendum, the Ukrainian opposition boycotted parliament, paralyzing legislative work in a country that sorely needed a functioning parliament. Presaging today’s events, it threatened to take call its supporters onto the streets.
The present revolution has not been fully played out, but already some 100 have been killed and 700 wounded. The possibility of many more casualties and the rise of another authoritarian regime in place of the old suggests there is a certain element of hubris and folly in the West’s revolutionism and democracy assistance programs. The West’s democratic status does not give it a right to destabilize or support directly or indirectly the destabilization of any country it deems insufficiently democratic.
What Is To Be Done? In future, U.S. and Western policymakers must resolve that the stakes should be very high before approving such the risky policy of supporting a prospective revolution. The massing of tens of thousands of people on the central squares of a country’s big cities is not an automatic good. The nascent Ukrainian revolution, like most revolutions from below, is fraught with the risk of being hijacked by radical or extremists groups inclined towards violence. Peaceful revolutionaries and demonstrators can be overwhelmed by radicals, who would steer the movement in a very different direction.
Several factors should condition any support for oppositions. First, Western support for ‘color revolutions’ should only be offered when unprovoked brutal regime violence or gross violations of civil and human rights have occurred. The West should be careful in supporting opposition movements whose substantive grievances are limited to political rights under a soft authoritarian regime. In many such cases, it is but a small coterie of opposition activists whose rights are violated, and the regime could very well democratize in an evolutionary and revolutionary way. Unless when there is deep, countrywide support for the overthrow of a regime and the regime is particularly brutal in its authoritarianism should policymakers support peaceful (and perhaps violent) revolution from below.
Second, in considering whether and to what degree such support should be rendered, the value of any existing regime to American and Western interests and the effect on regional or international security should be taken into account. In cases involving a regime that is both brutally authoritarian/totalitarian and is threatening U.S., Western, and/or international security interests, the decision to support a revolutionary movement would be more or less clear. In cases where neither of these conditions is met, decisionmaking would be much less so. When only the first condition is present, the moral imperative is there, but the imperative of realpolitik is not, making support for a revolution a bad bet. When only the second condition is present, the realpolitik urges action against the regime, but the soft nature of the authoritarian order renders a decision to back regime change risky for America’s reputation as a supporter of international stability and security. In the latter case, charges of American-led Western meddling and subterfuge get a better reception among the local populace. Moreover, a failure of the revolution will guarantee an even harder line against the West.
In sum, in cases where rights’ violations are not grievous and American interests and global stability are vested in continuing survival of a particular regime, our instinctual revolutionism and even the aggressive assertion of democratization support must be reined in. If adopted as policy, democracy assistance should be coordinated with the authorities as much as is possible without underming the effort, and it should be rendered sparingly and fashioned carefully such that it will not be tainted by charges of undue foreign meddling in the internal affairs of a foreign state.
For now, assuming the revolutionary phase of destruction of the old regime is nearing completion, the question is whether the democrats can seize control of the revolution during the phase of constructing the new regime from the radical nationalists, who threaten more bloodshed. Tyagnibok’s ‘Freedom’ Party, the Right Sector, and other radical groups must be shunned and isolated.
After stabilization Moscow and Washington should also cease their interference in Ukraine. Neither is able to listen to the other anymore. When they dominate an issue, they for the most part, tend to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution, as in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere. The prospects for a larger European crisis and conflict will grow if there continues to be an excess of outside interference and a surfeit of statesmanship. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gordon M. Hahn is an Analyst and Advisory Board Member of the Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation as well as a Senior Associate, Russia and Eurasia Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.; Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; Senior Researcher and Adjunct Professor, MonTREP, Monterey, California; and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, San Jose, California. Dr Hahn is author of two well-received books, Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002) and Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), which was named an outstanding title of 2007 by Choice magazine, and the forthcoming The ‘Caucasus Emirate’ Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland Publishers, 2014). He has authored hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and other publications on Russian, Eurasian and international politics and publishes the Islam, Islamism, and Politics in Eurasia Report (IIPER) at CSIS at http://csis.org/program/russia-and-eurasia-program. This entry was posted in Ukraine on February 25, 2014.
