The mutilation of Ukraine
The most dangerous part of Putin’s invasion is his rationale: Russia’s right to protect ‘strategic minorities’ in foreign countries
The date was Feb. 14, and Vladimir Putin was incensed. That Valentine’s Day, there was much love lost between Putin and the West, whom he accused of supporting the “illegal, ill-conceived, and immoral” independence of a new state. “Why do we promote separatism,” Putin queried his fellow Europeans rhetorically. His exasperation that day in 2008 was caused by Kosovo’s independence, to which Russia was fiercely opposed on antisecessionist, pro-sovereignty grounds.
Six years later, this same Putin has invaded the autonomous district of Crimea, which belongs to Ukraine. He has assumed de facto control of Ukrainian territory. His forces, without Russian insignia, have taken over Crimea’s airports and raised the Russian flag over Crimea’s regional parliament. His troops have reportedly given Ukrainian military personnel in the region an ultimatum to surrender. Replace Ukraine with any state that fell to expansionist forces before the Second World War, and the similarities become disturbing: Russia has invaded a sovereign state, dismembered it militarily, and is now occupying a member of the United Nations. Karl Marx was more right on this than Mark Twain: history isn’t rhyming, it’s repeating itself as tragedy.
What is most understated and disconcerting in Russia’s decision is its justification for invading. Moscow did not spout the usual boilerplate arguments for intervention, but offered a very specific rationale: the protection of ethnic Russians living in Crimea (who constitute 58% of the population). For Putin, these Russians are “strategic minorities” and sovereign boundaries do not matter.
Does any of this sound familiar? A nationalist strongman claims that he must defend his nation’s ethnic and linguistic brethren across the border in a weaker country. The strongman mobilizes his forces, quickly defeats the weaker country, and then claims victory. This Greater Nation ideology is known as irredentism, the annexing of foreign territory premised up- on ethno-cultural similarities. Irredentism begins with affinity and ends with expansion. It begins with South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Crimea, but where and when does it end?
The irredentist impulse is a natural corollary of Putin’s foreign policy, which aims to restore the lost glory of the Soviet Union. The perception that Russia was wounded and abused during the 1990s fuels this desire for restored glory. Thus, Putin has said, “The dissolution of the Soviet Union was a national tragedy on a massive scale” and Russians “shouldn’t feel guilty” about Stalin’s purges. (Imagine Angela Merkel saying the equivalent about National Socialism.) Putin’s imperial vision is the creation of a Eurasian Union with Belarusian and Kazakh strongman subsumed under Russian hegemony, a kind of Soviet Union-lite.
Ukraine was meant to be part of the Eurasian Union, which is why its revolution was so threatening to Putin. Recall that the prime mover of the Ukrainian revolution was Victor Yanukovych’s rejection of an economic association agreement with the European Union. Recall further that on Jan. 17, the democratically elected Yanukovych rammed through a series of laws — in violation of parliamentary procedure — limiting free speech, expanding the definition of “extremist activities,” and easing the process by which parliamentary immunity could be revoked. Yanukovych had legislated himself dictator overnight.
While Russia’s politicians and press scorned the demon- strators as fascists and gays, ordinary Ukrainians from every background vigorously protested what they rightly saw as the mortgaging of their country. The Ukrainian journalist who started the original effort against Yanukovych was a Muslim from Afghanistan named Mustafa Nayem. The first protester killed was Armenian. The symbol of the revolution, the Maidan, takes its name from Arabic.
None of this matters with an irredentist policy because romantic notions of “unifying” and “uniting” an ethnic clan are the first priority. The policy Putin is advancing originated in 19th century Italy and was later the chief rationale for Hitler and Mussolini’s expansionism, as well as Stalin’s incorporating of Eastern Europe under the Soviet empire. Saddam Hussein used the exact same logic when he invaded Kuwait in 1991 and claimed it as the 19th province of Iraq. China makes the equivalent claim against Taiwan and is echoed by extreme Zionists who demand a Greater Israel. Last Spring, the spokesperson of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus — a Canadian — showed me the ruin and debris still present after Turkey’s irredentist invasion of Cyprus in 1974. The wounds suffered by the losers of this type of struggle never heal; they only metastasize.
International peace and security are at stake in the current crisis, and many of the institutions born out of the horrors of war and created to manage diplomacy — the EU, UN, NATO — must not be complacent in Ukraine’s mutilation. The Putin of 2013 might even agree, having written in The
New York Times that “force is permitted only in self-defence” and anything else “would constitute an act of aggression.” Of course, ethnic nationalism takes precedence over international law for the Kremlin, and thus Russia’s expansion westwar cannot be met by silence. As a former professor of mine, a scholar on Europe, quipped to me this week: “We do not have to miss the Cold War anymore: it’s back.”
For Ukraine’s sake, and Europe’s, I hope he’s wrong.