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It's time for chicken in Ukraine

by vladimir Tue Apr 22nd, 2008 at 04:33:37 PM EST

Russian Information Agency (http://en.rian.ru/) just released a statement made by Alexei Ostrovsky, the head of the State Duma committee on CIS affairs:

"Russia could claim Crimea if Ukraine joins NATO - MP
A senior member of the Russian lower house of parliament said on Wednesday that Russia could claim the Crimea if Ukraine was admitted to NATO."

This is the beginning of Ukraine's disintegration process. After the Crimea, it's likely that Eastern Ukraine will follow suit. In my opinion, this is precisely the outcome that US and European hawks are hoping for. A fratricidal war between Russia and the Ukrainians would weaken both and likely make it much more difficult for Russia to throw its diplomatic weight in other areas of the globe.

Real power is the ability to preserve peace in your own territory.

Diary rescue by Migeru

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It's time for chicken in Ukraine | 21 comments (21 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (4.00 / 2)
Anyone want to give the geographically challenged of us from the far side of Europe a clue about the relationships here?
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Apr 9th, 2008 at 04:57:40 PM EST
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (none / 1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea

It's a start, anyway...

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

by poemless on Wed Apr 9th, 2008 at 05:01:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (4.00 / 2)
Here's a link to a good rundown.

History of a Long Dispute

by Anthony Williamson on Tue Apr 22nd, 2008 at 05:34:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (4.00 / 3)
More from the RIAN article

"If Ukraine's admission to NATO is accelerated, Russia could raise the question of which country the Crimea should be a part of," Alexei Ostrovsky, the head of the State Duma committee on CIS affairs, said in a radio interview.

"The Russian Federation has legal grounds to revise agreements signed under Khrushchev."

Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who grew up in Ukraine, made the Crimean Peninsula - a territory of 26,100 sq km washed by the Black and Azov seas - part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. The peninsula had formerly been a part of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.

The Crimea, now an autonomous region within Ukraine, is a predominantly Russian-speaking territory. Since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, the Crimea has unsuccessfully sought independence from Ukraine. A 1994 referendum in the Crimea supported demands for a broader autonomy and closer links with Russia.

The Russian Black Sea Fleet retains a Soviet-era base in Sevastopol in the Crimea. Disputes between Russia and Ukraine over the lease of the base are frequent.

However, Ostrovsky admitted that Ukraine was unlikely to join NATO any time soon, saying that the Ukrainian president, prime minister and parliamentary speaker were the only people in the country seeking membership of the Western military alliance. His comments referred to recent opinion polls that have indicated that about 70% of the population is opposed to joining NATO.

To the diarist:  does anyone really think Ukraine will join NATO?  Not a rhetorical question.  What are the actual chances of that happening?


"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

by poemless on Wed Apr 9th, 2008 at 05:07:11 PM EST
Not likely (4.00 / 5)
Germany made that pretty clear. Thankfully.


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Apr 9th, 2008 at 05:14:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Not likely (none / 1)
Here's an Op-Ed by a German in the Kyiv Post: German deferment vote based on reality, not Russian bias (April 17 2008)
Since April's start, Germany has become considerably less popular in Kyiv and Ukraine's western oblasts.

Patriotic Ukrainian elites are largely correct in their evaluation of the effects of recent German foreign policy.

At the NATO Summit in Bucharest, Germany's refusal certainly was not the least important factor in not extending Ukraine a Membership Action Plan (MAP), postponing consideration until the December meeting.



When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Apr 22nd, 2008 at 04:39:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (4.00 / 2)
So why is Bush wasting his breath? I don't think that the State Department misinformed him about the German attitude.
I think the jackals are playing their usual game - softening the victims.
by Svetozar on Wed Apr 9th, 2008 at 05:21:46 PM EST
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (4.00 / 4)
I'm not sure Bush knew. After all, the US regard NATO as simply a rubber-stamp organisation providing a fig-leaf of notional independence to America's Foreign Legion. It probably never occured to him that a european leader could refuse him and make it stick.

And he wanted to go and stick it to Russia cos it amuses him to think he can push the old Bear around. He doesn't do it cos it's good politics; he's just a frat-boy bully, he does it cos he can get away with it.

It turns out to be bad politics for the US now. Germany stood up and said no. I doubt things will be quite the same again.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Apr 10th, 2008 at 09:00:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Chicken in Ukraine (4.00 / 3)
Wouldn't that be called Chicken Kiev?
by Magnifico on Tue Apr 22nd, 2008 at 04:40:24 PM EST
Re: Chicken in Ukraine (none / 1)
A чотири for you!

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
by poemless on Tue Apr 22nd, 2008 at 04:58:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Putin told NATO he came in peace (4.00 / 3)

"Peace, baby."

by Magnifico on Tue Apr 22nd, 2008 at 05:27:27 PM EST
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (3.66 / 3)
I don't pretend to a well-informed opinion as to a "fratricidal war between Russia and Ukraine" although it doesn't seem very likely to me.

I think the question that needs asking is, why is the corpse of NATO being revived into a military alliance directed against Russia? Membership for the Ukraine and Georgia? A look at the map of the Black Sea Coast leads me to ask What The FCUK? Inviting those two countries into NATO can no way be considered as anything but a hostile act, tantamount to Canada and Mexico having been invited into the Warsaw Pact. Thankfully, at least one country in NATO chose not to reignite the Cold War. And cold it would be. Hint: where will Germany and Ukraine get their natural gas? The burning fields of Iran?

Then there's the official line from Yesterday's Washington Post, bemoaning the fate of these fledgling democracies, Ukraine and Georgia, as if they were post-war Latvia and Estonia, fer chrissakes, to Stalinist Russia. Western elites will ruin the world yet. Probably, any day now.

by PIGL (stevec@boreal.gmail@com) on Wed Apr 23rd, 2008 at 05:54:13 AM EST
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (4.00 / 3)
I think the question that needs asking is, why is the corpse of NATO being revived into a military alliance directed against Russia?

You mean NATO wasn't always a military alliance against Russia?

The question is what threat Russia poses now that justifies reviving NATO's corpse.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 23rd, 2008 at 06:25:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (none / 1)
Current Russian policy is a threat to Western Capitalist circles because:
  1. it doesn't allow them to exploit Russian natural resources on the cheap (in fact hardly at all)
  2. it's re-asserting its own business interests in central Europe, the Balkans, the Caucuses and the Middle East
  3. it's reinforced with some very sophisticated military gadgets.
by vladimir on Wed Apr 23rd, 2008 at 02:38:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (4.00 / 2)
Why should Russia allow no. 1, not reassert its business interests under number 2 and not have the "gadgets" under no. 3?

Anthony

by Anthony Williamson on Wed Apr 23rd, 2008 at 06:16:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (none / 0)
When has lacking good reasons ever kept the Western(TM) elites from doing things?

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Apr 23rd, 2008 at 11:57:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (4.00 / 2)
Well, NATO was supposedly a military alliance against the Soviet Union, forged out of a re-purposed war time alliance after a barely decent interval had passed to allow the rehabilitation of the Germans.

And clearly you know all this much better than I do, Migeru. I just wonder why the western public is so intensely stupid or indifferent as to tolerate this reflexive reversion of their "alliances" into 19th century Great Game policies. Yet more evidence that the NeoCon dream of repealing the 20th century is close to realisation.

by PIGL (stevec@boreal.gmail@com) on Thu Apr 24th, 2008 at 10:54:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (none / 1)
Stupid or indifferent is, I suspect the answer. Well, that and the fact that those who profit from the Great Game are also the ones who own the press.

That aside, we would likely see a reversion to the Great Game way of doing geopolitics anyway, because we are moving into an era where the global conditions are favourable towards that kind of strategy. In fact, the only people who don't seem to have realised this is the Atlanticists, who seemingly can't or won't accept that in a multi-polar world there is no real reason that Europe can't set itself up as an independent power in a way that were precluded during the bi-polar and uni-polar worlds of (the second half of) the 20th century.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Apr 24th, 2008 at 12:29:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (4.00 / 2)
Every time I see one of these dust ups on Russia's borders, I come back to Zbigniew Brzezinski's recipe for bringing about US imperial hegemony (his term, not mine) in Eurasia. ZB's primer
The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives is always worth consulting in contexts like this one.
by unclejohn on Wed Apr 23rd, 2008 at 06:10:04 AM EST
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (none / 1)
And the most alarming thing is that Zbignew resurfaced as an advisor to Obama...
by jv (euro@junkie.cz) on Wed Apr 23rd, 2008 at 09:51:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's time for chicken in Ukraine (none / 1)
Not at all alarming. All the viable candidates are vetted by the foreign policy elite. It would be surprising if any of them didn't have imperialist advisers. As far as I can tell, if Wall Street doesn't like you and if you don't accept the Post-WWII foreign policy strategy, then you don't get to first base. John Edwards failed the Wall Street smell test. I'm not sure about his foreign policy credentials, as he had much less to say about that than he did about domestic issues of interest to working people.
by unclejohn on Wed Apr 23rd, 2008 at 01:17:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It's time for chicken in Ukraine | 21 comments (21 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)


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