... when it should be making the picture more clear and distinct. It is true that relevant and powerful actors in the United States sometimes seem too content with seeing Russia only as the ‘Bond villain country’ it was designated during the Cold War. How else do we account for the constant engagement by American political actors with Ukraine and the relatively limited and dismissive tone taken by those same actors with Russia? Why are the facts above not entering into the discussion when the West tries to ‘resolve’ the crisis and keep violence to a minimum? It is silly ...
Not that anyone would notice, but there is a disturbing and quite frankly depressing reality taking place in eastern Ukraine. While it is true the conflict that rages has been largely downplayed now and shoved off the media spotlight in the West, whatever coverage does emerge tends to be giving a relative free pass to Ukrainian police forces, special operation forces,...
... communities that were down-trodden and ignored. Rather, there has been a grinding inexorable plodding progress, at best, of countries that discovered soon enough that identifying the problems was far easier than actually solving them. In that I suspect Ukraine will be no different, no matter how many elections, reforms, or ‘repositions’ the country goes through. But that is not what is most interesting from an academic perspective. Rather, it is the fairly unique set of structural circumstances ...
... just three days ago, offering ten reasons why ‘no one should believe Putin when he says he is not going to invade Eastern Ukraine’). And this is what prompts my rather presumptuous opinion as to what President Vladimir Putin can do: namely, just ... ... basically without any violence. What is most horrible to these rather dull thinkers still stuck in and/or pining for the return of a Cold War environment full of purpose and dire circumstances is that they won’t get the chance to beat Russia back or deliver ...
Starting to heat up the internet (well, at least in Russia and Eastern Ukraine, while likely not even to be acknowledged in Western Europe) is a hacked telephone call last week between the former Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council Nestor Shufrich and the former Prime Minister, recently-freed-from-prison,...
... discontent. It is ironic to consider that as events continue to unfold in Crimea the path that might hold the most hope for future peace and stability is the one that guarantees all sides being at least somewhat disappointed. Allow me to elaborate:
Why Ukraine should be disappointed: Crimea is done. As the famous Southern saying in America goes, ‘closing the barn door after the horses have left doesn’t do much good.’ Authorities in Kiev are understandably displeased. They will remain ...
... the utmost seriousness and have high personal standards of integrity. The problem, as I mentioned, is a pervasive subconscious Cold War residue that has major influence on how uninformed readers around the world learn about the situation in Crimea and Russia’s ... ... above is the UKRAINIAN Constitution, not the Russian. It does indeed grant the Crimean region effective independence within Ukraine AND the right to determine its own path and relations with whomever it wants. Ukraine wrote those words in the immediate ...
... analysts, and commentators across the transatlantic community may think, it is not because Russia is trying to rekindle the Cold War or desperately grasping at whatever remnants of old Soviet power it used to have. No, I’m afraid Russia doesn’t ... ... It is now warning Russia that ‘there will be costs’ if it acts inappropriately in Crimea and onward with greater Ukraine. One might forgive Russia if it reacts to such warnings with a giant foreign policy yawn. Let us look briefly at Ukraine: ...
... ‘imperialism’ factors prominently: Russia’s motivations in each case were not based on its own national security interests, but were instead founded on its inevitable need to regain its old Soviet ‘imperialistic’ nature. This Cold War residue even made the categorization and scope of the conflicts themselves a source of political discord: Chechnya became ‘Southern Russia,’ South Ossetia became ‘Georgia,’ and Crimea has now become ‘Ukraine.’ In other words, time and again Russia preferred keeping situations more case-specific and minimalized, while the United States (in Russia’s opinion at least) effectively re-characterized the situations so that they seemed more far-reaching ...
