How Long Will The World Permit Rampant Aggression In Ukraine?
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During the early 1990s I was fortunate to study an entire academic year in Central Europe. I adored the opportunity to live in Hungary and the Czech Republic–both countries that were emerging from fifty years of Cold War theater on the side of the Soviet Union. It was an exciting time politically, economically, and culturally. The clash of old and new was thrilling.
The region of Europe was also thrilling for another, more sinister reason. A few hundred kilometers south of where I lived concentration camps existed. The Yugoslav Civil War was in full roar. Thousands of people were living in appalling conditions and/or being rounded up and exterminated by the mainly Serbian military machine.
People were asking: How can concentration camps exist in Europe only hundreds of miles from where similar Nazi camps existed fifty years before?
The thinking was, this can’t happen on European soil. The continent has come too far to allow this sort of barbarity.
Isn’t now the right time ask the same question of the situation in Ukraine? How can the world allow this situation to continue?
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Consider a few things:
- Russia launched its campaign of aggression in Ukraine after its political ally in Ukraine (Viktor Yanukovich) lost power.
- Russia annexed a sizable chunk of Ukrainian territory based on a sham referendum.
- While many countries have ignored the United Nations in their pursuit of war–including the United States during the 2003 invasion of Iraq–none has pretended that their aggression wasn’t happening.
- By most reasonable accounts, Ukraine is attempting to modernize itself, improve its people’s economic opportunity, and get along with its neighbors.
Russia is using many of the same strategies that Nazi Germany employed in the run up to the Second World War, including its aim to protect a minority population.
Many of the European powers, those ostensibly most at risk of Russian aggression, however, seem reluctant to challenge this behavior, perhaps due to their reliance on Russian natural gas reserves. The United States has taken a strong rhetorical stance, and deployed certain sanctions, but it’s hard to see these acts shifting Russian policy very much.
Worse, the United Nations, the world body created to preserve international stability and security, seems irrelevant to the entire process.
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It’s easy, unfortunately, in this era to forget about Ukraine. ISIS is on the march in Iraq, Syria is falling apart, Yemen has disintegrated, and the US and China are quarreling over disputed islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Ukraine is a country that signed a treaty in 1994 to give up its nuclear stockpile in exchange for security guarantees from the West. This is a large and vibrant country that has the chance to embrace modernity if it can find internal stability at home.
What do you think? I would especially love to hear from those readers who lives or work outside of the US.
Please share your comments below.
Photo credit: Flickr/Ivan Bandura
To me, this probably sums it up the best: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/press/conference-call-john-mearsheimer-ukraine-crisis
This was also noteworthy to me: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/09/wretched-us-journalism-on-ukraine/
Guy from Latvia, thanks for the comments. I will review these articles. I really enjoy the Foreign Affairs journal.