Crimea crisis shows Harper at his best
Prime minister, along with Baird, has taken principled, authoritative position
Stephen Harper has drawn few accolades and many brickbats for his government’s performance over the past 18 months, and rightly so. But on the Ukraine file, since Russia’s illegal, duplicitous and reckless invasion of Crimea, the prime minister has been at his best. Both he and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird deserve credit for the clear, principled and authoritative position they have taken, up to and including championing Russia’s indefinite suspension from the G8, now again the G7.
Some will say all of Harper’s moves thus far have been obvious. What else could he have said? What else could he have done? But that would be neither fair, nor true.
Let’s consider, first, the arguments for cynicism. There are four, principally.
The first is that Canada is a paper tiger. With not a single aircraft carrier, broken submarines, fighter jets held together with baler twine, Ottawa brings no hard power to this contest. Much like Harper’s promise two months ago to stand with Israel through “fire and water,” the hymns of loyalty to Ukraine are hollow, if not backed up by a willingness or ability to send guns, planes and tanks.
Second argument: This crisis is the fault of NATO countries, led by the United States and tacitly endorsed by Canada, for daring to entertain that Ukraine might move gradually into the European sphere, and that Ukrainians might one day enjoy some of the same benefits we enjoy as citizens of a western democracy. Had the West not “pushed east,” goes this line of thinking, Russia would not be pushing back.
Third, apologists for Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea note the region was part of Russia before 1954, when it was made part of Ukraine within the larger Soviet empire by Nikita Khrushchev. Therefore, Crimea’s status within Ukraine was a historical accident and oddity of the past half century, not a true fact on the ground. And as a result its detachment therefrom is not such a big deal, really.
Fourth, relatedly, comes the argument that a clear majority of Crimean people are ethnic Russians, who speak Russian and want to be Russian if forced to choose one way or the other. Whatever one may think about the Potemkin referendum March16, few would disagree with that statement. Who are Harper and Baird to tell Crimeans which flag they should want to salute?
It’s all good fodder for chatter. None of it holds any water.
On the military question, it’s fair to say that Canada will need to build much more aggressively and quickly in the Arctic than it has since Harper became prime minister if Russian expansionism becomes the new geopolitical reality. But the engagement in Ukraine is not military on the part of the western powers. Because of history and geography and proximity, no one can credibly argue that NATO should go to war to push Putin out of Ukraine any more than going to war with the Soviets in the 1980s would have been a good idea.
The playing field here is moral and economic. And on that field Canada has a role to play. Doing so forcefully will come at unknown cost to Canadian businesses operating in Russia. But Harper has said, essentially, that global peace and security trump commerce. He’s right.
It’s all NATO’s fault for “extending its sphere of influence” eastward? Ah. But where are the guns? Where’s the coercion? In other words, the shift in Ukraine toward Europe has to all appearances been internally driven — a democratic movement, made concrete in the most visceral fashion by a spontaneous street revolution against a corrupt Russian-backed regime. While we’re on that subject, the Russian ruling clique itself is corrupt, is it not? How else can one describe Putin’s perpetual status as Russia’s pre-eminent leader, whatever official bonnet he happens to be wearing at the time?
If we’re pointing fingers, therefore, why not say it’s Putin’s fault for providing Russians with such abysmal leadership that Ukrainians were driven to look westward?
Arguments three and four, those of Crimean Russian identity and legitimate nationalist aspirations, are trumped by this simple fact: Putin used guns. A political drive for greater Crimean autonomy within Ukraine, eventually a referendum on separation sanctioned by independent observers, would have been within international norms. Instead, Putin moved thousands of armed men under false flag — for they were never acknowledged to be Russian military — into another sovereign state and held its soldiers and officials at gunpoint until they surrendered. Ukrainian outposts that did not surrender were stormed. It is nothing more and nothing less than a mugging and theft, on an international scale, and perpetrated by a Great Power.
As the second-longest-serving head of government in the G7 (after Germany’s Angela Merkel), Harper knows the players. He has earned his international bully pulpit. It is to his credit, and to Canada’s, that he has used it to lay down clear markers about what is acceptable, and what is not, among civilized people.