After the follies in the Middle East – letting down the established political leaders in Egypt, Libya, and Syria and supporting dubious insurgent movements – the U.S. and the European Union's irreparable foreign policy screw-ups continue in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
The Ukraine debacle, instigated by the U.S. and the European Union, is being exacerbated by the U.S. The respective governments have maneuvered themselves into seemingly irreversible positions. In the U.S., the disregard for geopolitical factors and geostrategic interests appears to be ubiquitous. In addition to the always clueless U.S. president and his administration – this author has long stopped wondering what type of "experts" advise this government – a host of senators and congressmen from both parties joined the inane chorus of foreign policy ignorance. Many pundits and op-ed writers set the stage for yet another policy failure when they pushed Russia's pathetic hostility and the Russian president.
How about some perspective on the whole affair? Besides the historical fact that the Crimean peninsula has been Russian and under Russian influence ever since Catherine the Great?
Mr. Yanukovych, the legitimate president of Ukraine, was elected in 2010 in free and fair elections as attested to by the OSCE. However, he sealed his fate when he chose a custom union offered by Putin over a deal presented by the E.U. - $15 billion in loans and favorable rates on natural gas and oil versus loans and credits tied to economic reforms monitored by the IMF but no certainty of full E.U. membership.
The protesters subsequently forming in Kyiv – not all of them, but many of them – struck up tents and quarters, set up barricades, engaged the police in violent struggles by using Molotov cocktails, seized and burned down the headquarters of the ruling political party, and demanded the overthrow of the regime. It didn't help President Yanukovych much that he approved a full amnesty to all those arrested during the uprisings and offered to form a coalition government with the opposing party until the new presidential elections scheduled for 2015. The radical left overthrew Viktor Yanukovych, impeached him after seizing the parliament, and chased him out of the country. Does this look like democracy in action or rather like a coup d'etat no sovereign nation could accept? Is this the kind of political demonstration to which US-senator McCain should lend his support by flying into Kyiv and help taking sides against a legitimate government?
It is not the alleged old-Soviet type of imperialism of the ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin that has maneuvered him into this precarious situation of possibly losing Ukraine and forcefully annexing the Crimea and perhaps the eastern parts of Ukraine, alienating himself and setting the stage for a new Cold War. The transatlantic realm's failed policies generated this quagmire and pushed it to the point of no return. If anybody finds themselves on the wrong side of history in all this, it is Mr. Obama in conjunction with Democratic ideologues and Republican neocons.
This author participated in the educational civil-military efforts within the framework of NATO's Partnership for Peace initiative in the 1990ies in eastern and southeastern Europe. He knows all too well what would have to happen now had the proponents of ignorant foreign policies gotten their way and brought Ukraine (and Georgia for that matter) to full NATO membership.
The military outreach of Russia to Crimea and probably other parts of Ukraine would invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, meaning an attack on one is considered an attack on all. Armed intervention and an outright war would now be inevitable.
The Ukraine debacle, instigated by the U.S. and the European Union, is being exacerbated by the U.S. The respective governments have maneuvered themselves into seemingly irreversible positions. In the U.S., the disregard for geopolitical factors and geostrategic interests appears to be ubiquitous. In addition to the always clueless U.S. president and his administration – this author has long stopped wondering what type of "experts" advise this government – a host of senators and congressmen from both parties joined the inane chorus of foreign policy ignorance. Many pundits and op-ed writers set the stage for yet another policy failure when they pushed Russia's pathetic hostility and the Russian president.
How about some perspective on the whole affair? Besides the historical fact that the Crimean peninsula has been Russian and under Russian influence ever since Catherine the Great?
Mr. Yanukovych, the legitimate president of Ukraine, was elected in 2010 in free and fair elections as attested to by the OSCE. However, he sealed his fate when he chose a custom union offered by Putin over a deal presented by the E.U. - $15 billion in loans and favorable rates on natural gas and oil versus loans and credits tied to economic reforms monitored by the IMF but no certainty of full E.U. membership.
The protesters subsequently forming in Kyiv – not all of them, but many of them – struck up tents and quarters, set up barricades, engaged the police in violent struggles by using Molotov cocktails, seized and burned down the headquarters of the ruling political party, and demanded the overthrow of the regime. It didn't help President Yanukovych much that he approved a full amnesty to all those arrested during the uprisings and offered to form a coalition government with the opposing party until the new presidential elections scheduled for 2015. The radical left overthrew Viktor Yanukovych, impeached him after seizing the parliament, and chased him out of the country. Does this look like democracy in action or rather like a coup d'etat no sovereign nation could accept? Is this the kind of political demonstration to which US-senator McCain should lend his support by flying into Kyiv and help taking sides against a legitimate government?
It is not the alleged old-Soviet type of imperialism of the ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin that has maneuvered him into this precarious situation of possibly losing Ukraine and forcefully annexing the Crimea and perhaps the eastern parts of Ukraine, alienating himself and setting the stage for a new Cold War. The transatlantic realm's failed policies generated this quagmire and pushed it to the point of no return. If anybody finds themselves on the wrong side of history in all this, it is Mr. Obama in conjunction with Democratic ideologues and Republican neocons.
This author participated in the educational civil-military efforts within the framework of NATO's Partnership for Peace initiative in the 1990ies in eastern and southeastern Europe. He knows all too well what would have to happen now had the proponents of ignorant foreign policies gotten their way and brought Ukraine (and Georgia for that matter) to full NATO membership.
The military outreach of Russia to Crimea and probably other parts of Ukraine would invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, meaning an attack on one is considered an attack on all. Armed intervention and an outright war would now be inevitable.
