Ukraine. Some Historical Background, Updated. Plus, a Brief Settlement Proposal
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
NATO enlargement. If you were Russia, wouldn't you feel nervous? And then add Ukraine? Who is next? Finland?
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: Author Not Given) Details Source DMCA
Introductory note: This column is based in part on an earlier column of mine, written just about two years ago, "Ukraine: Some Historical Background" which in turn was based on an even earlier column of mine, "Ukraine? Russia? Keep Your Eyes on the Prize," which went up in 2014. Much of this history still applies to the present situation. Plus, I am adding several important references to support the Russian claims that promises made by various Western governments to the Soviet Union in its final days vis-à-vis the Eastward Expansion of NATO were not kept. Plus-plus, a very brief outline (of mine) for a potential peace settlement. And so, on to the body of the column.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's go back to 2014, and take a look at the US-sponsored "regime change" in Ukraine that set up the current picture. There was at that time an elected Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych. He was apparently quite corrupt and apparently incompetent as well (as well as brutal ---locking up a political rival, Yulia Timoshenko, who had been quite popular with the Ukrainian people). But he was the elected President. (Sound familiar?) Under Russia, physically as well as politically, at one point nevertheless he was open to attempting to negotiate Ukrainian entry into the European Union and possibly even NATO. (For the United States that latter would have been like Mexico joining some Russian-Chinese international military alliance.) But then, thinking better of it in terms of Ukraine's geo-political situation, Yanukovych started considering joining the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, something the U.S. under Obama didn't like so much. And that's when the current version of the Ukrainian "Great Game" (which of course also applied widely to Central Asia in the 19th century) got going in earnest.
The current "Great Game" that is still being played in Ukraine --- the Trump bribery/extortion scandal aside --- began in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was leading what would turn out to be the final campaign of Western Imperialism's 75-Year War Against the Soviet Union. While Reagan was already in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, he was surrounded by a clever bunch of handlers who: a) made sure that the onset of his final illness would be concealed from the US public and perhaps even from Soviet Intelligence, and b) made sure that the US stayed on track for that final offensive.
Part of that final campaign was on the one hand to continue the heavy US military spending program, even throwing in the impossible-to-achieve "Star Wars" program (which would, if it had ever come to pass, have given the U.S. First Nuclear Strike capability), spending that the Soviet Union could never hope to match. At the same time a gullible Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was being lulled into thinking that deals could be made which would allow the pressure to be taken of his country. Unfortunately for the Soviet Union as a nation-state, Gorbachev never did learn the real meaning of Reagan's constantly stated mantra, which he used when talking about dealing with the Soviet Union: "trust but verify." That is that for Reagan, it only went one way: if the Soviet Union agreed to one arrangement or another, their actions had to be "verified," continually. It just happened that the verification process didn't go the other way as well. And so, Gorbachev got sucked in.
George H.W. Bush became President at the time when the Soviet Union, under increasing military-spending pressure from the United States, was entering the final throes of its death as a nation-state. Part of the plan of Western imperialism was to undermine not only socialism in the Soviet Union, but whatever state power was held in the Soviet Bloc nations, not, surely, by truly Communist Parties, but by the variety of governments which nevertheless were beholden in one way or another to the Soviet Union. Among them, the East German government came to be on shakier and shakier ground. Eventually, reunification with the much more prosperous West Germany (whose destroyed industry after World War II had been very quickly restored by the US under the "Marshall Plan," which sent no aid any further east than the Elbe River) and the end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) became inevitable.
The only obstacle to that occurrence was the presence of about 300,000 troops of the Red Army in the GDR. Gorbachev agreed to remove them, allowing German re-unification. In return, he received a promise from G. H.W. Bush that while the re-united Germany would belong to NATO, there would be no expansion of NATO eastward. Unfortunately for the Soviet Union and the successor state of Russia, Gorbachev trusted the West but did not demand verification (see the note above). No such treaty or even agreement was ever put on paper and signed by all parties concerned. And thus, we have the origins of the current situation in Ukraine.
As it happens, that such a guarantee was ever given to the former Soviet Union in any form is a matter of dispute. But here is some evidence that indeed such a guarantee was indeed made. In a current issue of "Russia Today" (an English-language Russian publication), a former (West) German Defense official, Herr Willy Wimmer, is quoted. "Despite their denials, Western leaders did make a promise to the USSR that NATO would not expand to Central and Eastern Europe when Moscow agreed to Germany's reunification, Willy Wimmer, a former vice president of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), has claimed in an interview with RT on Saturday. The veteran politician, who served as parliamentary secretary to Germany's defense minister between 1985 and 1992, said that he personally witnessed this promise when he 'sent Chancellor Helmut Kohl the statement on the Bundeswehr in NATO and NATO in Europe, which was completely incorporated into the treaties on reunification.' "
Further, as supplied by a friend (who happens for many years to have been a senior diplomat at the UN) is another quoted source:
"Here's more documentary evidence about assurances made to [the] USSR about NATO expansion: 'On NATO expansion: A detailed chronicle of assurances made to the USSR in the run-up to German reunification, supported by 30 documents: Click Here. Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion made to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner (emphasis added)."
This is very important information, and one should think that Putin is using it, privately (although he is obviously not using it publicly).
But back to the run-up to 2014. Led by US imperialism under Pres. Clinton, NATO did expand eastwards, right up to Russia's borders, with the Baltic countries, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania as members. Recall that NATO was formed specifically as a US-led military alliance against the Soviet Union in 1949, and its charter requires that an attack on any member be regarded as an attack on all. Thus [as of 2014, and of course still the case] the only major part of Russia's Western/South-Western border that is not with a NATO country is that which is with Ukraine.
The threat to bring Ukraine into NATO, with the expected Russian response, had been what the US was counting on ever since the whole sordid adventure started back with the overthrow of the constitutional, however awful and corrupt, but elected, former government of Ukraine. A major figure in the regime change was one Victoria Nuland, a protégé'' of Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State, who became Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and retained that post under Secretary of State John Kerry. (As it happens, she is now Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs.)
At the time of the so-called "color revolution" in Ukraine in 2014, it was Nuland who, when Yanukovych was overthrow, famously proclaimed over an open phone line: "Yats is our guy." Indeed, she was central to the so-called color revolution that overthrew the existing elected government. The coalition behind it was indeed a fairly broad one. It actually happened to include fascists, especially the "Azov Battalion," openly neo-Nazi, and a direct descendant of the Ukrainian battalions that fought with the Wehrmacht in World War II. They not only participated in the overthrow of the Constitutionally-elected government, but engaged in very apparent false-flag events, like the sniper killings and the burning alive of opponents of the overthrow in a hotel, to which was turned a blind-eye (at best), then covered up in the Western media.
Ukraine has forever been a bi-lingual nation, Ukrainian being the national language but Russian being the lingua franca spoken in the Eastern provinces of what is called the Donets Basin. (Indeed, there are Russian speakers living in Kyiv. Further, the Western portion, centered on Lvov, had from time-to-time been part of Poland [and through it in the 19th century of partitioned Poland, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire], so there are presumably Polish speakers in that part of the country.) Rarely mentioned in the Western Media was the fact that the right-wing elements of the new government wanted to make Ukrainian the single national language, essentially outlawing Russian and ending its teaching the schools, nationally.
One of the early demands of the Eastern provinces after the government-overthrow was that the dual-language system, as in Quebec (actually on paper for the whole of Canada) for example, be continued. The Eastern provinces also demanded a significant degree of home-rule, given the nature of the new government as they saw it, at a higher level. In part at least, it was the refusal of the new central government to countenance such arrangements that led to the separatist movement earlier in the last decade. Of course, this is still of course major issue in the current conflict.
As for Crimea and the Russian annexation, Russia's only warm water port is at Sevastopol, at Crimea's Southern tip. In 2014, Russia was holding the port only on a 30-year lease from Ukraine. With a frankly anti-Russian government installed in Kyiv, Putin obviously had to move quickly before that government, under US/NATO influence, could move to cancel the lease. And so, the very quick referendum to have Crimea secede from Ukraine and join Russia (probably pretty truly representing the wishes of the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking people of Crimea, particularly given the attitude of the government in Kyiv towards the Russian-speakers in the Donets Basin to the North).
And so, we come down to the present time. Pres. Putin is pushing very hard to get what he wants: that is no-Ukraine-in-NATO, as was originally promised when the German-peace-deal was made (although the West adamantly refuses to recognize what seems to be fact --- see the documentation above); protection for the interests of the Eastern Russian-speaking provinces (which, as I was writing this version of this column he has now recognized as independent from Ukraine the Eastern Russian-speaking provinces (and do note that if a peaceful settlement of the issue had been reached, it is highly unlikely that this would have happened), and recognition of the incorporation of Crimea into Russia.
Let me finish by saying that I still think that Putin is not nuts, and hardly wants war which, given the relevant strengths of the Russian and Ukrainian Armed forces would end up with, among other things, an occupation-situation which would be impossible for Russia to maintain (and Putin knows it. Of course, maybe he is nuts, in which case all bets are off.) But, as he meets with continuing firm US/UK resistance to meeting his demands (much less firm in reality, regardless of what their leaders say), he is playing it very tough. But it is not over --- yet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Addendum I: A very brief outline for what I think a final settlement short of war might be:
"Here's a possible compromise (assuming that there is one [that is that Macron is able to pull it off]): Ukraine commits to not join NATO for a minimum of 10 years; that local govt. powers are guaranteed to Luhansk and Donets; that the status of Crimea remains the status quo; that Russia and Byelorussia commit to guarantee the territorial integrity of Ukraine for as long a Ukraine does not join NATO; that Russia guarantees Ukraine unhindered access to their ports on the Seas of Azov and transit through the Kerch strait; that some sort of overarching super-power guarantee is provided for the agreement."
Addendum II (2/22/22 - note the unusual date, which occurs only once for as long as the Gregorian Calendar [the current one] remains in use.) Note that above I wavered on the matter of whether Putin is nuts. His speech yesterday [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/22/putin-russian-president-ukraine-speech-western-diplomats-scrambling] which presented a complete mis-representation of Russian-Ukrainian history (making him sound remarkably like his puppet Trump on such matters) inclines me to think that maybe he is crazy. Maybe he does want more than simply a guarantee of no further NATO expansion Eastward and a guarantee of some devolved rights for the people of the Eastern provinces and recognition of Crimea as part of Russia. In my view these are reasonable demands for reasons previously stated. However, his fictional/fanciful historical thinking, that, for example, Ukraine has always been part of Russia, which in his mind may well be used to justify a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, if implemented on the ground, would be extremely dangerous for all of us. Also of note was the fact that there apparently was no opposition in the Duma (parliament) to the content of his speech, which meant that the Russian Communist Party, which has seats in the Duma, and of which at least some members know the true history of Russia/Soviet Union/Ukraine, was silent on the matter. Indeed, in this case at least, the Duma is nothing but terrified window dressing for the kind of dictatorship that the Trumpites would so much like to have established in the United States.