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Ukraine, Crimea, and Washington’s Pointless Geo-Political Contest With Russia
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John Glaser at antiwar.com
Dmitri Trenin and Andrew S. Weiss at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace give a brief primer on the Crimea situation:
Crimea is a very special—and delicate—case. It is Ukraine’s only autonomous republic, though its autonomy was sharply curtailed in the mid-1990s. Its population of nearly 2 million is about 60 percent Russian, many of whom are retired Russian military personnel. Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol is home to some 15,000 active-duty servicemen, and much of the city essentially lives off of the base. About 12 percent of Crimeans are Tatars, who are generally loyal to Kyiv due to their tragic history. (They were persecuted and repatriated by Stalin for alleged disloyalty at the end of World War II and were only able to return to Crimea at the very end of the Soviet period.) Throughout independent Ukraine’s twenty-plus-year history, Crimea’s residents, only 24 percent of whom are ethnic Ukrainians, have seen themselves as a breed apart from the Ukrainian mainstream.They explain that Russia’s military exercise could be a dangerous move:
It would be a surprise if Russia moved to annex the region outright. Although Putin has maintained his silence on the situation in Ukraine since this past weekend, events on the ground are challenging Ukraine’s territorial integrity and raising the possibility that Russian troops will become directly involved in pulling the country apart.
Putin’s hand could be forced (and conflict could come to the region inadvertently) depending on how the new authorities in Kyiv respond to recent moves by the local population. One can easily imagine a harsh Russian response if Kyiv takes rash steps to reassert its authority in Crimea either by sending in troops or by allowing revolutionary paramilitaries to launch a “people’s march” on Crimea.Today, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel warned Russia not to intervene, failing to mention that
(1) Washington has been intervening in Ukraine from the start, and
(2) it’s really none of our business what Russia does.
“We expect other nations to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and avoid provocative action,” Mr. Hagel said. “That’s why I’m closely watching Russia’s military exercises along the Ukrainian border…”
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In any case, telling Russia to behave itself has about zero chance of helping the situation.
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“Russian leaders believe, rightly that the West drove events in Ukraine to the brink of collapse to secure geopolitical advantage over Moscow,” Trenin and Weiss say. “Thus, Western appeals for Russian restraint in the event of a crisis over Crimea are unlikely to resonate.”
