UKRAINE A LESSON FOR THE WEST
China Daily, 16 April 2014
By Tom Plate
'Ukraine Isn't Armageddon." Now, how bold and
direct is that?
This is the banner headline splashed over the most
incisive piece of journalism I have read on Russian President Vladimir Putin
and the crisis in Crimea. It led the April edition of Le Monde Diplomatique,
the sharp monthly news magazine published in Paris.
You won't find anything like its analysis in the
mostly war-baiting US media. Being left-leaning, the Paris magazine is not even
remotely interested in defending Putin. And being French, it is determined to
be contrarian.
But on the Putin-Crimea issue, the French paper is
persuasive. "Media treatment of recent events in Ukraine," reads the
analysis by Olivier Zajec of France's Institut de Strategie Comparee,
"confirms that some in the West see international crises as Armageddons,
conflicts between good and evil where the meaning of history is enacted, rather
than as signs of differences of interest and perception between parties open to
reason."
In the juvenile Manichean dialectic found in the
main media outlets Americans read, see or listen to, Russia is the bad guy in
the black hat and the West is the good guy. And sometimes - as we know - the
good guy in the white cowboy hat simply has to pull out his six-shooter (if he
is any kind of real man) and blow away the evil.
Le Monde Diplomatique writes: "The cliches of
the Western press - not just since the start of the Ukrainian crisis but over
the last 15 years - may be all that most readers know of Russia's current
foreign policy. This negative view, verging on caricature, is a
well-established tradition, based partly on analyses that emphasize the
totalitarian and 'insincere' compulsions of Russian culture, and partly on the
supposed continuity from (Josef) Stalin to Putin - a favorite theme of French
columnists and US neo-con think tanks."
Whoever Putin may be and whatever he is, he is no
Stalin. "It may be time," suggests Le Monde Diplomatique, "to
banish the words 'Cold War' from articles on Russia. This historically
inappropriate shorthand explains the repeated expression of old
fantasies."
Reverting to foggy Cold War clichés not only blurs
a sharper sense of the historic Russian interest in keeping Ukraine as a bridge
to the West - and not permit it to become a NATO ally; it also tends to cloud
our understanding of Asia-Pacific dynamics, where some in the West demonize
China and de-colorize the entire Asian canvas into a childish diorama of black
and white.
Implicit in this fearful assumption is the
suggestion that if only the United States were more forceful against Russia,
less "bad things" around the world would happen. This is fantasy. It
is calculations of national interests (and often pent-up domestic pressure)
that drive such decisions. On the contrary, US caution and restraint can
contribute to stability: that is, there is no world clock ticking, as if you
had better "do it" before someone (and who else might that be?) stops
you.
Reluctance to press a military option near the
borders of Russia strikes the Chinese as wise, not weak. Note that in the UN
Security Council debate on Ukraine, China chose to abstain from the vote on the
resolution denouncing the Crimean referendum. This is not our fight, said
Beijing. After the Security Council vote, Liu Jieyi, China's representative,
explained that Beijing favored a "balanced" solution to the conflict,
proposed the creation of a coordination group and a support package for
Ukraine, and urged countries to refrain from action which could further
escalate the conflict. In effect, his view echoed that of UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon, ever the pragmatic realist.
Closer to the crisis in Crimea, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel distanced herself from stupid talk and, like the Chinese, sought
a way out. "Their positions may be fundamentally opposed," wrote Le
Monde Diplomatique, "but Merkel saw this as a reason to talk and
negotiate, rather than insult each other." The tools of diplomacy are not
given to diplomats to discuss only that on which there already exists
agreement!
All honest Americans need to recognize that Western
interventions in other countries often send out mixed moral messages as well.
The US went stubbornly to war against Iraq even though the George W. Bush administration
lacked international approval. Western interventions in Libya and Afghanistan
also raised issues of international law. Those who live in glass houses should
be the last to throw stones. The West needs to start looking at itself in the
mirror instead of just looking down its nose at everyone else.
The US fools no one (perhaps except itself) with
high-minded condemnations of Putin's obvious amorality when its own sense of
international political morality is usually defined by cold calculations of national
interest - much like every other country's.
The
author is Loyola Marymount University's distinguished scholar of Asian and
Pacific Studies and the author of the Giants of Asia book series.
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