Ukraine - Another Failure of Western Interventionism

As I've made clear in my previous blog of March 2014 below, by overthrowing a democratically elected government in Ukraine, Washington, with support from the European Union's leading powers, has brought the United States and the West into a confrontation with Russia.

In about a year, the West has managed to topple the democratically-elected Ukraine government, install the Washington and Berlin-backed Poroshenko administration in Kyiv, and drive the nation into a fratricidal civil war. It turned the country into a failed state, virtually destroyed its economy, and severely damaged Russia's.

In its usual reversal of cause-effect realities, the mainstream media, in its typical reversal of cause-effect facts, blamed Russia and Putin's aggression and expansionism for protecting incumbent administrations and concealing their sad and ill-defined policies. Had the U.S. and Europe conducted just and wise policy procedures, they could have foreseen the support of Ukrainian separatists and annexation of Crimea by Russia as inevitable for its national interest.

Think about this: A year before scheduled presidential elections through which the Ukrainian people could have gotten rid of president Yanukovich's allegedly corrupt administration and chosen an administration espousing a more EU-oriented course, the U.S. and E.U. instigated an unnecessary coup. Why, for what reasons? To install a Western puppet administration that the people of Ukraine might have never elected themselves? To prevent a Russian-prone government (that was simultaneously establishing good relations with the West) from being democratically confirmed in OSCE-monitored elections? To put Ukraine into NATO and E.U. and drive Russia out of its Black Sea ports in Crimea?
 
Whatever the reason or ensemble of reasons, the applied policies provide evidence of a colossal misunderstanding of foreign affairs in a post-Cold War global setting and an astounding lack of any practical political philosophy of international relations in Washington. However, the incompetence and dilettantism that is hiding behind the democratic principle is widespread and not limited to the White House. Senators and politicians of both parties in Washington are pushing the notion of arming Ukraine and an increased show of force in Eastern Europe by the U.S. and NATO. GOP Senator James Inhoffe just introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate to arm Ukraine with "Lethal Military Aid" against pro-Russian separatists, which means the hawks are doubling down on the political foolishness. They perpetuate the damage to global affairs and continue to push Ukraine into a proxy war with Russia.

However, the overbearing arrogance and hubris of Washington appear to drive a wedge into transatlantic relations, as ever more European nations distance themselves from the idea of arming Ukraine and potentially dragging NATO into war with Russia. Western Europe's economic ties with Putin's country are too close, and a significant portion of Russia's natural gas delivery to Europe runs through Ukraine. Aside from that, European nations, even when NATO-members, know that their populations are not ready to subscribe to go to outright war with Russia over Ukraine.

What are the options for future development? From Ukraine breaking apart with the eastern and separatist parts integrating into Russia to outright war between the West and Russia over Ukraine, almost anything appears possible. Given the strength and commitment of the Russian-backed separatists, it seems unlikely that the Ukrainian Armed Forces, lacking in coherence and dedication to the cause, would reconquer the eastern and southeastern parts of the country. A diplomatic solution along the lines of the Minsk negotiations results will depend on the ending of military and armament support from the U.S. and other western nations. I am convinced, though, that the arms support will seize soon or never get up to speed as it has become quite clear by now that Kyiv has lost and is unable to wage a full-scale war with or without weapons from the West. While the U.S. and individual European nations might be willing to prolong the agony, Kyiv can't fight a war without the will of its people behind. And in the long run, even the most hawkish politicians in Washington couldn't possibly want to throw NATO in and fight World War III against Russia over some folly and utter political blunder they have instigated and committed in Ukraine by themselves in the first place?

It is mind-boggling to note that, like in the Middle East, western political authorities could have easily prevented the meaningless bloodshed in Ukraine and the state's unnecessary disintegration. The hubris of liberal interventionism and U.S. activism worldwide - resulting from distorted interpretations of history, misguided doctrines of international relations, and an unjustifiable sense of moral superiority - appears unconquerable.

No matter how many times history proves them wrong and presents the horrendous damage, these policies are causing worldwide, self-righteous pride and defiant inertia prevail over any judiciousness or informed judgment.

Failed US Foreign Policies Result in New Form of Radicalized Warfare

When talking to friends before the presidential election in 2012, I repeatedly stated that if Barack Obama had character and proper self-awareness, he would resign. He would declare to his people that he found out that he was totally in over his head during his first tenure and realized his utter incapability to carry out the most powerful job in the world. While the option for him to resign is still on the table, albeit with minuscule probability, I ascribed his reelection to colossal political illiteracy on the part of the majority of American people. 

It demonstrated that irrational ideological prejudice and preconceived notions of politics control Americans' minds. The seed of liberal socialization and the lunacy of political correctness yield their fruits and cloud, if not incapacitate, sound political judgment. 

Yet, not even I, in my deep cultural pessimism about the decline of the Western world, was able to anticipate the utter disaster the Obama presidency, quite often not only supported by his party but rather by equally misguided politicians from the other side of the aisle, was going to bring about. I've been commenting on the blunder of Obama policies in domestic affairs (e.g., immigration, healthcare, same-sex marriage) and foreign affairs (e.g., Egypt, Libya, Syria, Ukraine) in previous blogs. While I am not happy that the catastrophes that unfolded inside and outside the U.S. proved me right, I shall not repeat myself. But the hope lives on that readers will scroll down and read expositions that can usually neither find in mainstream media nor high school and college education, for that matter. 

Here I focus on international relations and elaborate on another most destructive effect yielded by the Obama regime's failed policies. An outcome that moves into the limelight of international politics, especially after the Caucasus and the Middle East have become engulfed by raging conflagrations far beyond warfare's usual stakes. 

 

The encouragement and even unconditional military support and armament of the opposition forces at first in Libya, then in Syria, the childish announcement of "Assad must go" by Obama and his silly drawing of a red line regarding chemical weapons has caused irreversible damage. It brought the war back to Iraq and more or less nullified the progress achieved there in the past decade. But it also generated a new kind of asymmetrical threat, one that is far worse than the asymmetrical warfare against global terrorism we have become used to ever since September 11, 2001. The Obama administration has radicalized smoldering conflicts by taking out established regimes or politically emboldening and militarily strengthening dubious insurgent forces. They removed or significantly weakened regionally pacifying governments and political administrations that usually contain armed conflict or at least keep it within certain bounds and on a politically controllable level. 

The emergence of the I.S. - the Islamic State, a terrorist group that initially appeared on the scene as ISIS/Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) - would not have been possible without the incoherent and misguided foreign policy of the Obama administration. It ushered the Middle East into a new era of asymmetrical warfare that has a direct global impact and should concern the U.S. as well as the entire occidental world. 

The I.S. replaced the pinpointed and mostly arbitrary violence of terrorism with the horror of planned persecution of religious, foremost Christian minorities and magnitude and barbarity of killings that include crucifixions and the beheading of children. (For my article on the history of ideas of terrorism, go to the Homeland Security Digital Library at https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=455848). The brutality and destructiveness of I.S.'s operations have even scared away the Iraqi army, who did not put up a decent fight despite superiority in numbers and trained by American instructors. 

A self-appointed conglomerate of radical Islamist thugs, using to significant degree weapons sent to Syrian opposition forces by the U.S., made the established and decently trained, organized, and equipped regular Iraq army run. Human atrocities committed by the I.S. are accompanied by targeted vandalism, destruction of churches and other cultural treasures, causing irreversible damage to humankind's cultural heritage. I counted the armament of Syrian rebels as one of the disastrous foreign policy failures in my post of May 10, 2013 (https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2013/05/disastrous-foreign-policy-failures.html). 

It is mind-boggling to be aware that almost all of this could have been prevented. Alas, the ignorance of the incumbent political administration is stunning. A strategically overwhelmed president at the helm who has no sound concept of international affairs and cultural interrelations in his mind caused damage whose magnitude is mind-boggling, given the brevity of the few years he has been in office. If ever, it might take generations to correct the committed errors.

However, the fact is that fundamental misconceptions about political (and thus profoundly human) affairs magnify themselves in implementing political ideas. For preventing further damage to global issues, a swift turnaround must bring American (and Transatlantic, for that matter) foreign policy to its senses. 

Given Mr. Obama's stubbornness and hubris and conceitedness, there is little hope things will get better in the two years he has left in office. Unless, of course, his ignorance and ideological prejudice will be reined in by the Senate, by Congress, and by a significant majority of the American public.

UKRAINE AND THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY

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 END-JUSTIFIES-THE-MEANS – BUT ONE PROBLEMATIC PRINCIPLE IN POLITICS

A quite enticing and seemingly reasonable, yet damaging and destructive principle usually dominates human action. It is the most unethical maxim of the-end-justifies-the-means. In the political world, representatives of all ideological provenance and political parties follow this enticing yet so destructive principle. They follow a merely consequentialist approach. 

 

While it is necessary and intelligible that we strive for desired outcomes and intend our actions' consequences, we should always weigh the means to attain the desired result. Whatever means we use should always weigh against an unshakable background built by idealistic notions such as fairness, justice, impartiality, honesty, integrity. While we can err in applying these dimensions, we demonstrate the willingness to take others' rights into account and thus moderate the use of means applied to one's cause. 

In the political realms of domestic and foreign politics, the following factors and insights can serve to moderate the often pernicious effects of mere consequentialism, to name a few:

 

• The dignity of the office and political function.
• The humanity of political opponents and the legitimacy of political opposition.
• The good of the nation.
• Capacity for self-criticism, including the acknowledgment of own mistakes and failed policies.
• The admission of guilt and the acceptance of personal accountability.
• Understanding of the nature of a democratic and open society that can only prosper on the grounds of a minimal amount of bipartisanship and mutual respect among political opponents, and so forth. 

 

For epistemological reasons, it is quite clear that we find the application of the-end-justifies-the-means maxim mostly where a habitually unbalanced and unilateral worldview predominates and a transcendent dimension of reflection and temperance is lacking. The linear perception of historical development and a one-dimensional grasp of social reality does not pose many hindrances to applying this merely consequentialist approach in decision-making. 

Whenever the consequentialist attitude prevails, everything it takes short of physical violence, and quite often even including violent means, appears to be justified in achieving one's goals – lying, cheating, denunciation, distortion, defamation, slander, slur! 

The current political landscape – domestically (i.e., Affordable Care Act implementation; immigration debate; government shutdown and budget) as well as internationally (i.e., Libya/Benghazi; Iran) – provides ample opportunities to study the damage caused by mere consequentialism and its detrimental impact on all levels of social and political coexistence.

Irrespective of individual political belief systems and ideologies, the fact remains that we confront inferior human and political morals whenever we face the intemperate application of consequentialism.

Disastrous Foreign Policy Failures Continue in Syria

The United Nations has estimated that the two years of civil war in Syria generated about 15,000 casualties among the military and security forces and 10,000 insurgent casualties. Civilian casualties numbered 45,000. 

 

In light of what had happened previously in Egypt and Libya, where weak and divided governments came to power, a prediction for Syria would have come easy. Any objective observer could have foreseen that the opposition to Bashar al-Assad's autocratic regime in Syria would soon be hijacked by Islamic extremism, leading to uncontrolled violence. While the demonstrations in Syria in 2011 might have been peaceful and moderate in their initial stages, extremist forces linked to Al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood soon infiltrated the movement. They began to utilize it for their purposes. Lakdhar Brahimi, the Special Envoy to Syria for the UN and the Arab League, reports that the rebel forces comprise individuals of some 38 different nationalities, among them Muslims from the United Kingdom and continental Europe. 

 

The Supreme Military Council set up by the opposition shows overwhelmingly Islamist tendencies, and the opposition-controlled areas of Syria are already subject to Sharia Law. Meanwhile, the United Nations and the UK are confident that it was the jihadist rebels, not government forces, who fired a chemical weapons grenade into Khan-al-Assal. 

 

Against this backdrop, it appears absurd that the US and other Western governments are contemplating supplying arms and weaponry to the rebel forces. There is no way to discern pro-western opposition forces from Muslim extremists and channel armament accordingly. In their desperation over the chaos that evolved over the past two years, the US, France, the UK, and Turkey recognized the Syrian National Coalition as Syria's interim government, even though heavily dominated by members linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. 

  

In commenting on the Libyan situation (see respective essays from March 2011 https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2011/03/us-and-european-foreign-policy-blunder.html and October 2011 https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2011/10/lessons-from-muammar-gadhafis-demise. html), I warned about politically and militarily supporting dubious insurgent radicals in Egypt and Libya. In analogy, the warnings correspondingly apply to the Syrian case as well. 

I argued that transatlantic foreign policy, led and dominated by the United States, is politically short-sighted, unethical in principle, and ideologically driven. The sheer irrational belief in democracy as the panacea for all problems is devoid of deeper considerations of sound political philosophy. The West keeps waging an unjust and meaningless war in Afghanistan, continues to back insurgents in Egypt and Libya, and now lends support to Syria's unjust, violent campaign.  

 

Instead of supporting established political leaders in Egypt, Libya, and now Syria, dubious insurgent forces, pretending democratic goals while pursuing radical objectives, receive political, diplomatic, and even military support. We are facing the results of these failed policies in the whole region: Loss of human life and the amount of human suffering far outweigh the practicality of the conflict; affected nations are worse off than before; radical Muslim forces gain influence; Al-Qaeda is on the rise; Iran feels emboldened; Western power diminishes. 

 

Whether we can ever neutralize the past years' foreign policy failures is doubtful, yet remains to be seen. For now, it appears more likely that particularly the mishandling of the case of Syria will entail the most hurtful consequences as the country is a significant landmark where strategic interests of East and West collide.

Religion and Science

No Reason! That's the true religion. No Reason! 

What an extraordinary grace has Heaven bestowed upon you!

-- Charles de Saint-Evremond (1728)

 

Secular progressivism is on the rise. Its proponents speak out loud, and their aggressiveness penetrates our political and educational realms. In denial of their ignorance and the shortcomings of their half- or even quarter-knowledge, it peaks in silly comments like, for instance, the one made by Bill Nye, the Science Guy on TV, in September 2012, who warned that creationist views might threaten science education and innovation in the US! 

As we will find out, precisely the opposite is true. The attempt to drive out religion from science classes, get rid of intelligent design, and focus exclusively on a theory of evolution, deprives the western culture of its holistic and spiritual depth. It diminishes rather than enhances our approach to deal with existential challenges of whatever kind. 

The problem is rooted in an epistemological misconception that entails ideological abuse and produces severe moral and ethical consequences, impacting all realms of human affairs. It demonstrates that education that does not comprise profound instruction in the history of Western thinking ideas is not worth much. 

Let us step back for a moment and ask what the cause for all this is? What brought about this "Disenchantment of the West" (Max Weber)? What is the reason for the emergence of the rational scientific mind that claims to be the all-encompassing model for comprehending reality? What led to the hubris of rejecting the transcendent dimensions of our existence by so many?

Against the backdrop of the history of ideas, it becomes clear that empiricism's dominant philosophical mainstream has dominated the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-American tradition for the past two hundred years. With its limitation of reality on the observable and experimentally provable, it dominated the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-American tradition for the past two hundred years. It prevented it from reaching a more holistic understanding of this world, and it pretends that the final truth can be attained based upon scientific experience alone. Nevertheless, Europe is not much better off. The prevailing philosophy of rationalism, culminating in the Hegelian idealism whose dialectic dynamic of rational progress, brings about the same result – autonomous reason asserts to produce truth out of itself. Essentially, the western mind got stuck in realism and materialism in one extreme and abstract idealism in the other, or a combination of both.

 

Warnings like Friedrich Nietzsche's to withstand the temptations of science "for science lives in a profound antagonism towards the eternalizing powers of art and religion" (Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, Cambridge 1997, p. 120), were thrown into the wind. Forgotten were the insights provided by transcendental philosophy and its most prominent representative, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who has drawn, once and for all, the formal boundary between what can become reliable and unswerving knowledge for us and what cannot.

 

The bulk of intellectuals and educators of all scientific disciplines still behave as if Kant had never lived. If they only neglected or ignored Kant's teachings! It instead looks as if the core findings of transcendental philosophy are no longer even known and dealt with in the processes of science education and academic scholarly work. Who still finds it worthwhile to deal with the Platonic dimension of the dual aspect of the universe, for which transcendental philosophy introduced the terms noumenal (the real world, independent of experience) and phenomenal (the world of experience)?

 

In the present quagmire of a seemingly deadlocked discourse on the subject of religion versus science, only the findings of transcendental philosophy can illuminate us. Transcendental philosophy stipulates that no direct causal nexus exists between the two sides as the noumena do not cause phenomena. Instead, phenomena are how our mind perceives the noumena by way of its processes. Our mind applies the formal categories of time, space, and causality as a priori qualities and thus predetermines any object's cognition. Transcendental idealism recognizes that the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it are dependent upon the mind's processes. What becomes knowledge for us, particularly the systematic knowledge that science provides for us, must remain within the mind's operations' formal qualities. Consequently, human knowledge and scientific findings can never reach a final goal or arrive at the world's innermost nature, the noumenal, as the confines of the phenomenal world bound them. 

In more pragmatic terms: the religious claim for transcendent (beyond all possible experience) truth can never and will never be endangered by science; yet, scientific truth can rest contented as it will never be threatened by transcendent verities either. Both claims belong to different sides of this one world in which we all live. It is a colossal error of evolutionists to believe that we can overcome this epistemological dualism and obliterate its boundaries by scientific progress and development. It represents their fatal pretension. It is a utopian hope that can only befall those who, for whatever reason, remained or had to stay in the immature state of mind in which one finds himself when getting stuck in realism and materialism in the one extreme, or abstract idealism in the other.

However, there is also a more practical reason for why the scientific mind intends, consciously or not, to oppress, if not eliminate, the more spiritual stance on existential matters. As the transcendental view on the world is far-reaching and entails immense consequences, there are also ideological forces that prevent its influence from taking hold. It is because the transcendental view dismisses realism and its social-political manifestation, materialism in all its forms, as fundamental absurdities and limits the control of knowledge over nature and man. It is adversarial to unlimited progress and the perfectibility of man and society and stands in the way of ever-wider secularism. 

Hard as it may be to accept that progress does not take place in all things, and future-making is limited, the discomforting re-orientation is inevitable if the Western man wants to find a worldview that unmasks the pretensions of functional rationality as dogmatic speculation and puts all the spiritual faculties and forms of cognition given to man back into their rights. 

In more pragmatic and more easily comprehensible terms, the most fundamental insight transcendental philosophy provides for us is this: There will forever be dimensions to our existence that cannot become the subject of verified knowledge. So we will never prove God's existence as an undeniable fact of scientific evidence. Though neither His non-existence. There will always be a demarcation line between what can be known and what can only be believed. No matter how far we push it, the scientific horizon will never encompass the entirety of human existence. 

Therefore, to creationists, I will say this: neglecting the reality and significance of the empirical world and the impact of science investigating it is naïve; but evolutionists (materialists, atheists) I need to tell the following: disregarding the confinements of science and overlooking the ineradicable relevance of metaphysical-religious and intuitive-prerational realities, is intellectually untenable, morally irresponsible and politically dangerous.

Ideological Misuse of Federalism leads to Bad Governance

When endorsing same-sex marriages, President Obama concurrently embraced the principle of federalism and expressed his personal belief that states have the right to define marriage. While this smells like shirking political responsibility, it begs the following question: "Why does the issue of gay marriage deserve special consideration in a concept of federalism?

 

Why is the same amount of attention not given to immigration, voter registration, health care, or abortion? Suppose Mr. Obama supports a more vital role of state legislation in political affairs. Why does he have his Justice Department sue a state that passed an immigration law to meet its specific challenges regarding illegal immigration? Why don't the states have the right to choose their immigration laws, decide the issue of abortion, or extricate themselves from Obamacare?

 

The answer is as simple as evident. If it corresponds with Mr. Obama's and his administration's ideology or spares them a political price to pay, they emphasize federalism and the vital role of sovereign states. If they disapprove of state decisions and legislation, they fight and engage in federal prevention.

 

However, apart from the ideologically driven appreciation of state rights and irrespective of the incumbent administration, the whole concept of federalism seems to need urgent review. Issues require decisions according to their actual material content along the lines of the concept of subsidiarity as an essential principle of good governance. The material content of an issue – and not ideological intent – must determine which level of (political) organization has to legally decide the matter. If individual states face specific immigration challenges, they should have leeway in safeguarding and enforcing federal immigration laws. Profound social and cultural issues – like abortion and same-sex marriages – that concern the entire nation and pertain to all citizens alike have to be subject to federal if not constitutional legislation.

 

Suppose the states continue to decide issues of nationwide relevance individually, with obviously different outcomes. In that case, the central government will have to reorganize the relations between federal and state authorities, and it will become inevitable to determine who legislates what.