Russia is too big; Vanuatu more up to our level

Jack Waterford Editor-at-large, The Canberra Times

"How horrible, fantastic and incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war."

So said British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on September 1938, about the Czechoslovakian crisis, a few days before he, and the French prime minister sold out Czech interests to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, at Munich. It was, perhaps, the most awful moment of the appeasement of Hitler of which many, including some whose parents fought for Hitler, are now reminding us should not be repeated over separatist or irredentist efforts in the Ukraine. 

Not least because of Chamberlain, not many citizens of the world are these days completely indifferent to what happens in other Caucasian countries, even when they are far away and were for more than half a century securely behind the Iron Curtain. Mostly our politicians reserve our indifference and disregard for Africa, Sri Lanka and the Hindu Kush. 

There are perhaps 40,000 Australians of Ukrainian birth or descent. The majority came to Australia as displaced people a bit more than six decades ago, after World War II. Ukraine has long been a Russian twin, even if its language is somewhat different. It suffered awfully from communist efforts to collectivise agriculture between World War I and II, and perhaps 10 million people, about a third of the population, died either from starvation, deportation or purges of nationalist, intellectual or members of the old middle class, or communist action against the more wealthy landholders.

The war itself saw the deaths of perhaps another six or seven million, including several million Jews. Some western Ukrainians welcomed the German invasion after the collapse of the German-Russian non-aggression pact, but most Ukrainians fought with Russia. Most of the warfare on the southern front took place in land inside or alongside modern Ukraine. While the great and bitter struggle with Germany is still a central part of Ukrainian as much as Russian history, most of those who arrived in Australia, like a good many other other former citizens of Soviet satellites, were bitterly anti-communist and bitterly anti-Russian.

That's understandable enough, given the history, but it is worth remembering that Ukrainian Australians, even if now reconnected to their motherland, have been far from representative of their country's demographic and politic. They have also tended to be from Ukraine's west, its most sophisticated area, and the part which has always looked more towards Europe and away from Asia. The further across the eastern plains one goes, the thinner the population, the less prosperous the agriculture and the higher the proportion of the inhabitants who identify with Russia. All of the old Soviet republics, including Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, have long-time Russian minorities, many transplanted three generations ago. Others speak Russian as fluently as any local languages; some, in any event, not much more than dialects of Russian.

The break up of the Soviet Union, and the establishment of democracies and capitalism, has been as traumatic, difficult and still a project in motion for the Ukraine as much as Russia or for any number of failed former Soviet states. New politicians, sometimes old ones, have ravaged many of the new nation's resources, and have murdered opponents. Not a few, westward as much as eastward looking, have been incompetent; many were deeply corrupt. There were carpetbaggers galore, and a vicious kleptocracy looting many of the means of production and exchange. The break-up of the USSR was, in any event, a reflection of the exhaustion of the whole federation, and incapacity to keep up with the west. Even after 25 years since the collapse, most parts of the old empire are barely back on to their knees. Even those with the semblance of democracy – and the Ukraine based in Kiev has not much more than that – have leaders deeply compromised by corruption, mismanagement and associations with organised crime, private militias and seriously sinister people.

As in the Middle East, a fairly safe rule of thumb is to consider that most of what one side says about its enemies has more than a germ of truth. By contrast, one can trust little said about a side's own credentials. From the point of view of Russians, or a good proportion of those in eastern regions of the Ukraine, the government of Kiev is essentially illegitimate. It was put in place by illegal coup. It is also under the influence of some ferociously right-wing types. Russians have always seen the Ukraine as synonymous with Russia itself; indeed, for many years Kiev was Russia's capital.

On the other hand, western Ukrainian suspicions are that Russia's approach is essentially imperialistic and bullying, and focused on preventing any economic, social or political shift of a duty of allegiance away from Moscow and towards the west. It sees Russia as fomenting most of the trouble and strife in the west and in effective control of the separatist movements, and able, and willing to directly intervene. 

Australia's sympathies are with the Ukrainians, naturally enough. But it is a sympathy that should be leavened with common sense. We sympathise with "our" allies in Baghdad, or Kabul, but we know very well  that "our chaps" are probably at least as roguish and crooked as their chaps. We would invite few home to dinner. 

Americans have somewhat ruefully recognised that it would prove as difficult and dangerous for their military power to intervene in Ukraine's crisis as it has been in Georgia or in other former Soviet trouble spots. Moreover, while the US does not strictly adhere, except on its own account to notions of countries falling inevitably in another's sphere of influence, it had until recently never calculated that it could wrest Ukraine from the Bear. Even now its main interest in doing so is not for the peace, order and good government of the wonderful people of Ukraine so much as a way of annoying an increasingly cranky, erratic and irascible Vladimir Putin.

NATO will be agonising over the weekend about the future of the Ukraine at Cardiff, Wales – about as far west, geographically, as one can get from Sebastopol while claiming to be on land near near Europe. They will be guided by the wise counsel of Julie Bishop, from a nation about as far east away from the Ukraine as one can get without being to its west. There will be tough talk about sanctions, maybe threats of military action. Tony Abbott is even threatening the Russians that Australia will offer the Ukrainians military advice.

Given that Australian troops have not engaged anyone at even battalion level for more than 50 years, and that the great battles in Ukraine 70 years ago engaged millions at a time, I should imagine that the Ukrainians will be very grateful and the Russians very terrified.

I, for one, reckon that this is yet another opportunity for a war we should pass up, in favour of an enemy – Vanuatu perhaps – more up to the speed, capacity and strategic and tactical expertise of our political and military establishment.

Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/russia-is-too-big-vanuatu-more-up-to-our-level-20140906-10cdso.html#ixzz3CZnWs5dh