Europe
Ukraine – Law of the Jungle is not good enough

credit: quebec.huffingtonpost.ca
Each story has two sides. Each revolution has two perspectives. Ukraine does not deviate from this rule. From the US/Europe side, Crimea can be seen as the new Sudetenland. From Moscow perspective a new Cold War can be a good geopolitical option, because during that period USSR was perceived as being strong. Everything in foreign affairs is about perception and power.
President Obama said that there will be costs for a Russian military intervention in Ukraine. The reality is that the West has few options in Ukraine and the real costs of this crisis are supported by regular Ukrainians. They fought for something, maybe democracy, maybe for better living conditions or for European integration and they deserve more, but they will not reach a positive result any time soon. Ukraine is a geopolitical battlefield.
To fight or not to fight?
From a military perspective, Ukraine does not have enough capabilities to face Russia: a non-nuclear nation versus a country which has more than 1.400 deployed strategic nuclear warheads; around 700 battle tanks against more than 2500 and so on. Nobody wants a war in Ukraine, not even Moscow. President Putin acted in this way in order to reassert Russia’s position. He justified his interventionism by saying: We reserve the right to use all means at our disposal to protect our people. According to some Ukrainian officials under the all means category we can place 30.000 Russian troops which are controlling Crimea at this moment. The biggest problem is the fact that during the last ten years we had a new wave of precedents which are opening a new uncharted territory: drones, the war from Georgia and now, Crimea – how can we define the role of the United Nations here? How can we apply the principles generated by the international law in this type of situations?
International law and democracy
Democracy is going through a period of setbacks. Societies from all over the world are trying to create a new governing paradigm. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the shock wave which followed raised many questions about the viability of the Western way of living. Are the United States still capable to project their capabilities like they once did?
Saddam violated the integrity of Kuwait and the result was The First Gulf War. When Serbia exploded and Kosovo was fighting for international recognition, president Medvedev said that in international relations, you cannot have one rule for some and another rule for others. International law is subject to interpretation because each story has two sides. From the international law perspective, Russia undermined Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Crimea has a local governing autonomy. The peninsula has around 2.5 million people from which approximately 60 percent are Russian. Also in Crimea we can find the city of Sevastopol, which is one of the biggest naval ports in the region (the home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet). Before the Maidan revolution Crimea was already a hot spot. The revolution added the necessary sparks needed to transform this hot spot into a fire. At the beginning of March, Crimea’s parliament decided to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. In order to make this process as democratic and transparent as possible a referendum was scheduled. This process should be based on the idea crafted during the World Forum on Democracy: the will of the people is the basis of the authority of the government. We shall see if the will of the people is crafted using the law of the jungle or not.
If we look at Ukraine, we can see a very interesting occurring pattern. During the last 5 years we witnessed many revolutions, riots and popular movements. Communities from different countries and regions, from all over the world, started to fight and die for BIG IDEAS like democracy, freedom and better living conditions. After a while, the majority of this movements collapsed into chaos. Why? Because democracy is a hard lesson. Look at countries which entered into democracy more than 20 years ago when the Soviet Union collapsed, countries like Romania, Poland or Bulgaria, they are still learning what democracy truly is. This governing system is not only about free elections and the freedom of speech, democracy is a way of living and doing things. This perspective can be seen as a corny one but within it we can find the true face of this BIG IDEA.
There are so many unanswered questions. Which is the right path for Ukraine? How can we avoid the creation of a failed state near the heart of Europe? Is this the beginning of the Cold War 2.0?
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