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November 29, 2004

Poll Results Aren't the Real Issue

Ukraine and Inter-Imperialist Rivalry

By GARY LEUPP
http://www.counterpunch.org/


"Russia plus Ukraine is the Russian empire, which can never be a
democracy." David Frum, neocon ideologue, advocating preemptive
expansion of the U.S. empire


Many are declaring the Ukraine crisis the nadir of post-Cold War
U.S.-Russian relations. Surely it is that. But the clash over Ukraine
between Presidents Bush and Putin is not one pitting "freedom" vs.
"dictatorship," or capitalism vs. something else, as the neocons might
have us believe. Rather, it pits U.S. ambitions for hegemony over the
innermost circle of Russia's historical sphere of influence (including
Belarus and Moldova as well as Ukraine) against Russia's ambitions to
maintain a buffer zone against a relentlessly expanding NATO.

Mainstream journalism dwells on a closely contested election, evidence
of vote fraud, and inconsistencies between exit polls and announced
election results. Colin Powell protests that the vote did "not meet
international standards." Critics of Bush foreign policy are having a
field day noting the irony of the charges in light of the last two
scandal-dogged U.S. elections, and particularly the large
discrepancies between exit polls and announced results in the last
vote. But no foreign government is in a position to reject the
substandard American elections, while the U.S. is strong enough to
challenge lots of regimes' legitimacy---before moving in to change them.

The outgoing regime of President Leonid Kuchma and his Prime Minister,
Viktor Yanukovych, stands for a closer relationship with Russia.
Yanukovych ran a tight race with opposition candidate Viktor
Yushchenko, who favors NATO and EU membership, concluding with a
reported victory of 49.46 to 46.61%. Yanukovych has been politically
aided by Moscow, Yuschenko by Washington. Ian Traynor in the Guardian
reports a "U.S. campaign behind the turmoil in Ukraine," and labels
the Yushenko campaign "an American creation, a sophisticated and
brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing
that, in four countries in four years [Serbia, Georgia, Belarus,
Ukraine], has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple
unsavoury regimes." He points out that "Richard Miles, the U.S.
ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role" in toppling Milosevic in
Serbia, and later as U.S. ambassador to Tbilisi, toppling Shevardnadze
in Georgia. Then "the U.S. ambassador in Minsk, Michael
Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in
Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the
Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko." This one failed, but the
experiences gained have "been invaluable in plotting to beat the
regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev."

Washington's propaganda apparatus made it clear in advance that the
only legitimate victory would be that won by its man. This article of
faith ignored the very substantial social base that Yanukovych enjoys,
especially among the ethnic Russian voters in the eastern half of the
country.

I've seen a host of reports defending and attacking the integrity of
the Ukrainian electoral process, including some surprising ones. The
British Helsinki Watch Group found more irregularities on the
opposition side, whereas a majority in the Ukrainian Parliament target
the government.
I have no personal opinion on the count, but just assume massive fraud
on both sides. I have no greater hostility for one or the other
candidate. The fundamental issue here in any case isn't who got how
many ballots. Just imagine what would happen if Porter Goss received a
CIA report suggesting that Yanukovych indeed won more votes, that Goss
duly reported that to Condoleezza Rice, and that Condi decided to
bring it to her boss's attention. Especially if Karl Rove was in the
room at the time. Would Bush and Powell reverse course and announce
that the election had in fact met "international standards"?


The Turf Battle

No, it's not the question of electoral purity, surely a matter of
indifference to both Putin and Bush. It's a matter of turf. Look at
Ukraine on a map. This nation of 48 million is Europe's second largest
country, almost as big as Texas, and is bordered by Belarus, Moldova,
Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. It's a European, Slavic country
with strong linguistic and cultural ties to Russia; indeed the first
Russian state (Kievan Rus) grew up in Ukraine and the name itself
means "borderland." With Belarus and Russia, it launched the
Confederation of Independent States (CIS) in December 1991, confirming
its intimate links to the other two even before the breakup of the
Soviet Union. With its rich soil, it was the Soviet breadbasket.
Hugging the northern coast of the Black Sea, including the Crimean
Peninsula, it constitutes what the CIA Factbook calls "a strategic
position at the crossroads between Europe and Asia." Its natural
resources include iron ore, coal, manganese, natural
gas, oil, salt, sulfur, graphite, titanium, magnesium, kaolin,
nickel, mercury, and timber.

U.S. policy is very clear. Washington wants to gain control over the
flow of oil from the Caspian Sea, especially Turkmenistan, and to do
so, vies at every step with Russia. Backing regime change in Georgia
earlier this year, it has increased its leverage in that former Soviet
republic. It woes the former Soviet republics to join its NATO
military bloc, which with the end of the Cold War would seem to have
little raison d'être except to contain friendly capitalist Russia.
While Eastern European allies once buffered the USSR from NATO, the
alliance now borders Russia in the Baltics (Estonia and Latvia), and
Washington would like to expand it to include Belarus, Ukraine,
Georgia and Azerbaijan, encircling Russia's western flank. Meanwhile
it stations U.S. troops and acquires military bases in the former
Soviet republics in Central Asia, pursuant to the unpredictably
expanding "War on Terrorism." A compliant Ukraine abetting its
objectives would be a major prize for the Bush administration.

Similarly a very friendly Ukraine would serve Russian "national
interests." Moscow envisions a modest revival of the late USSR, the
demise of which Putin calls "a tragedy," centering around Russia,
Ukraine and Belarus. The neocons absolutely oppose this. David Frum
(former Bush speech writer, author of the notorious "axis of evil"
line, implacable foe of a Palestinian state, public proponent of the
allegation that Yasser Arafat died of AIDS, Richard Perle associate)
has recently written the National Review Online that "independent
Russia can be a normal country with a democratic future: [but] Russia
plus Ukraine is the Russian empire, which can never be a democracy."
(Emphasis added.) Frum is not necessarily expressing the thinking of
administration officials; obviously the latter find no contradiction
between the empire in general (surely not the one they're busily
expanding) and "democracy" as they perversely conceptualize it. And
they realize that the differences between Russia
and the U.S. at this point are not ideological, Russia having long
since thoroughly and very painfully embraced capitalism. But I expect
that such officials will publicly opine that, indeed, a bloc led by
Moscow, even limited to the immediately adjoining Slavic lands with
intimate historical ties to Mother Russia, is somehow antithetical to
democracy and must be prevented. They will emphasize Putin's
manipulation of the Russian press (hoping no doubt it doesn't raise
the issue of the U.S. press's slavish deference to Bush), and the lack
of political opposition in Russia (as though there were some here).

Inter-imperialist rivalry is again the order of the day, as it was
before the Russian Revolution, before the socialist alternative and
the Cold War. Powerful nations struggle, not over radically different
ideas about society, but over mere lucre: markets, labor-power and
resources. Few governments want the U.S. to control Iran and Iraq;
other major powers seek at least a share in the pie. So they keep
standing in Washington's way, or trying to. So far Russia has been
patient, allowing France to lead international opposition to the war
against Iraq. Putin has accommodated U.S. expansion, trading support
for most aspects of Bush's Terror War for Washington's acceptance of
Russia's "anti-terrorism" Chechnya policy. But it's one thing to
concede Southwest Asia to the American juggernaut, another to fork
over the borderlands, even if the loss takes the form of some paltry
poll result.


U.S. Rejects "Irresponsible" Democracy Anyway

Recall how Henry Kissinger, back in June 1970 declared of the Chilean
elections, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go
communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people." He was
speaking about a country in the Western Hemisphere, which U.S.
administrations have always considered their turf, and he as Secretary
of State had no problem abetting the fascist coup of Sept. 11, 1973
which toppled the "moderate Marxist" regime of Salvador Allende. The
CIA had put at least $ 10 million into anti-Allende propaganda. Then
as now, the U.S. government interferes in foreign politics in pursuit
of what it believes are its interests. It does so now with far greater
means and efficacy than can Russia.

U.S. governments since 1823 have asserted their right to lead the
hemisphere and thwart the efforts of external (European) powers to
interfere. Chile is 4000 miles from Texas, but when a presidential
candidate marginally more sympathetic to the USSR than to Washington
took power, Washington toppled him without moral qualms. Russia has
long dropped the Brezhnev Doctrine (a variation of the Monroe), but
understandably wants its closest neighbors to be friendly. Ukraine is
to Russia what Mexico (rather than Chile) is to the U.S., and Putin's
behavior should be seen in that light, as he twice congratulates
Yanukovych on his triumph even as U.S. and UE leaders announce they
refuse to accept the Ukrainian election result.

A falling out among thieves is not necessarily a bad thing, and I
would just as soon that Putin, who has curried favor with the Bush
administration in the past even by collaborating disinformation, give
the hyperpower a run for its money in this contest over the Ukraine. A
contest not between two politicians, but two powers, one triumphantly
ascendant, the other cautiously defensive but following repeated
setbacks and humiliations maybe prepared to mount a fight in its own
neighborhood. One can only hope that the big power contention doesn't
impose a great price on the people of the Ukraine, and that they make
use of the situation to truly advance their interests.

* * * *

My surname is Swiss, and my roots mostly Scandinavian, but I have
German ancestors too, who emigrated to the U.S. not from Germany
directly but from the Ukraine. There were many ethnic Germans there,
their ancestors invited by Russia's Czarina Catherine in the late
eighteenth century. Many left for the American Midwest in the late
nineteenth. These "Russian Germans," who contributed enormously to the
history of Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and the Dakotas, often left to
avoid conscription. Family lore indicates my ancestors were
draft-dodgers. They didn't want their youth fighting for Imperial
Russia, so they came to America seeking freedom.

I understand that attitude, which brought a lot of immigrants here. I
do not want my teenage kids ever fighting for one imperialism against
another, in some far-flung place. What irony there would be in their
coerced involvement in such a fight, especially if it took place in
this currently contested spot important to my family history. I can't
believe it will come to that, but after all, there are crazy people in
power, surely crazier in Washington than in Moscow or Kiev.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct
Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and
Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women,
1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless
chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial
Crusades.


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