Tag Archives: foreign policy

About the Ukraine Crisis

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Zbigniew Brzezinski had some thoughts in Foreign Affairs. In 1994.

Insurance is needed against the possibility, one might even argue the probability, that the weight of history will not soon permit Russia to stabilize as a democracy, and that the single-minded cultivation of a partnership with Russia, while downgrading other interests, will simply accelerate the reemergence of an ominously familiar imperial challenge to Europe’s security….

The crucial issue here, one that might well come to a dramatic head in the course of 1994, is the future stability and independence of Ukraine. It cannot be stressed strongly enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire. American policymakers must face the fact that Ukraine is on the brink of disaster: the economy is in a free-fall, while Crimea is on the verge of a Russia-abetted ethnic explosion. Either crisis might be exploited to promote the breakup or the reintegration of Ukraine in a larger Moscow-dominated framework. It is urgent and essential that the United States convince the Ukrainian government, through the promise of substantial economic assistance, to adopt long-delayed and badly needed economic reforms. At the same time, American political assurances for Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity should be forthcoming.

Let’s see, now. Russia already has occupied Crimea, and it’s investing eastern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government has been trying to mend its ways and to join with, and learn from, the West, via its nascent alignment with the EU and its desire to join NATO.

And yet….

 

h/t The Wall Street Journal

What Does Europe Owe Ukraine?

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The crisis in Eastern Europe…is now entering its 10th month. What began with the collapse of an association agreement between the European Union and Ukraine can now be called a war.

Emphasis added.

All Ukraine wanted was to be free. Free from Russia; free to chart its own course; free to begin to escape its own history of governmental corruption; free to align itself with, learn from the association, and perhaps to prosper in its freedom. The EU implied, with that agreed association, that it would help Ukraine work toward those goals, using that association and EU’s vasty trade market.

When the collapse of the agreement occurred, the Ukrainian people tossed the mendacious government that had collapsed it—and those people—in favor of returning to the Russian sphere; in retaliation against the Ukrainians’ making their wishes, their demands, their very sovereignty over government known, Russia invaded Ukraine. First, the Russians occupied Crimea and then partitioned Ukraine, incorporating Crimea into itself. Then the Russians invaded eastern Ukraine, initially by supplying arms and ammunition to Russian “separatists” already present in the region, then by supplying Russian soldiers “on holiday,” and now openly, driving a Russian held corridor through southern Ukraine stretching along Ukraine’s erstwhile Sea of Azov coast from Russia to Crimea.

What is Europe doing about this? They’re talking. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin 25-35 times, to engage in idle chit-chat. The EU has applied pinprick “economic sanctions.” They do not supply arms and ammunition. The openly say they will not supply troops—which Ukraine already has said they do not want, but still….

What is the value of Europe’s agreements when they dishonor the implications of an association agreement? Even the one that was signed by the government which the Ukrainian people put in place a couple short months ago?

The PRC’s Aggressiveness

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…extends to reaching inside sovereign nations and trying to influence internal matters. And the People’s Republic of China is using its manufactured grudge (based on events of 70 years—three generations—ago) to manufacture justification for this…intrusion.

China’s government on Thursday called on Japan to “break clean with militarism” after Tokyo confirmed that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a note earlier this year to a ceremony honoring more than a thousand World War II-era war criminals praising their contributions.

Will the PRC also “break clean with militarism” and cease their grabs for the East and South China Seas?

Whether the dead honored at the Koyasan Buddhist temple are war criminals, as the post-WWII tribunal says they are, or they are not, as Japanese domestic law says (both then and now, in plain view of the PRC), is beside the point. This is an internal domestic matter, and the Chinese intrusion is not well brought-up behavior. They’ve missed a good opportunity to shut up.

“We Don’t Have a Strategy Yet”

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President Barack Obama reiterated, in his speech Thursday, his reluctance to strike Syria, whether to support good-guy rebels or to attack ISIS forces there.

He also reiterated his reluctance to go beyond “humanitarian” air strike potshots in northern Iraq, whether to support the Kurds or to attack ISIS forces there.

He also ruled out any sort of military help for Ukraine by the US in the face of the now open Russian invasion of that country.

He also reiterated his reluctance to provide arms and ammunition to the Ukrainian forces so they could defend themselves, even if by themselves.

He didn’t address Iran’s nuclear weapons program at all.

He didn’t address the People’s Republic of China’s increasingly aggressive sea grabs in the East and South China Seas and its increasing harassment of American surveillance flights—in international airspace, albeit above those claimed waters.

This is after two years of butchery in Syria; after four years of watching, according to a West Point report, the growing strength and organization of ISIS; six years after Russia’s invasion and partition of Georgia and six months after Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea oblast; over a year after the PRC began its aggression in those Seas.

We don’t have a strategy, yet.

YGTBSM

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This is what happens when you have a motor boat skipper for a Secretary of State. John Kerry, speaking through his spokeswoman, Marie Harf, had this to say about whether ISIS is at war with the United States:

(Unnamed) Reporter: I mean, even they are announcing, ISIL people in their message, whatever, the recorded message, other messages, that now we are in a war with America.
Kerry/Harf: This is not about ISIL versus the United States. They are killing anyone who gets in their way….
(Unnamed) Reporter: But they are announcing that it’s a war against America. Right or wrong, that’s what they are saying.
Kerry/Harf: Well, they can say whatever they’d like, but what I am making clear is that’s not what ISIL represents. And they don’t represent any religion. They are at war with everybody they come into contact with.

If our professional and chief diplomat can’t even understand when an enemy declares its war against us, how are we supposed to be able to fight back, much less crush that enemy?