The present crisis in Ukraine has intensified. The US and the European Union (EU) failed to engineer the emergence of a moderate, pro-western Ukranian government. Instead, the democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown by a coup engineered by neo-fascist militias. He was forced to flee after requesting urgent protection from Russia. The way was opened for a rump parliament to pass laws under the watchful eyes of the neo-Nazi militias that controlled the government buildings.
Russia refused to recognise the interim government in Kiev and continued to regard president Yanukovych as Ukraine’s legitimate president.
The rise of anti-Russian sentiment, the adoption of anti-Russian laws, and the fall of central government in Kiev to the xenophobic fascist and neo-Nazi elements, created an atmosphere of fear for the Russian minority consentrated in Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
The rising power of the fascist elements in Ukranian politics was embodied in the anti-Russian ideology of the so-called Right Sector (a coalition of ultra right groups led by the former Organisation of Ukranian Nationalists whose members fought the Second World War alongside the Nazis and against the Red Army of the Soviet Union). Following the overthrow of Yanukovych the Right Sector militias destroyed the monument commemorating the Red Army’s liberation of the Ukraine.
Invoking the rising chaos and the atmosphere of fear and vulnerability in which the Russian population of Ukraine lived, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops to reinforce existing Russian military bases in the Crimean region. Washington’s reaction was as swift as it was sharp. US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and National Security Adviser Susan Rice, were joined by a large number of officials and law makers, anxious to condemn Moscow.
Obama said the Russian action was not on the right side of history. Rice warned that a Russian invasion of the Ukraine would be “a grave mistake”. Kerry, as his want, distinguished himself by moral outrage enveloped in over-confident affirmations (recall his statements about chemical weapons used by the Syrian regime; when the accusations could not be confirmed, moral outrage metamorphosed into deafening silence). Taking liberty with his statements, Kerry condemned the Russian action as a 19th century act committed in the 21th century. Importantly, Kerry affirmed that the Russian action represented a breach of international law.
Clearly one ought to be perfectly entitled to be outraged at the obvious double standards applied here. One may ask for example where was the recently awakened moral outrage when president George W. Bush, in defiance of the international community, and in disregard of the UN Charter’s ban on the use of force sent American troops to occupy Iraq — a war estimated to have cost the American taxpayers over $2 trillion (Dh7.344 trillion), and one million Iraqi lives.
Where was the moral outrage when then Secretary Madeleine Albright of the Clinton administration told the CBS News programme 60 Minutes, in 1996, that the death of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children as a result of the sanctions imposed on Iraq, was a price worth paying to weaken Saddam Hussain’s hold on power. The argument that we should be outraged by violations of international law when committed by our enemies but not when committed by us or by our friends, is indefensible.
Furthermore, this is the type of argument that will continue to delay a truly universal respect for international law. As long as some countries — Israel and the US are good examples — continue to hold themselves above the law, the hope of bringing to international law the eminently democratic principle of equality, shall remain just that — a hope.
Some critics of the Obama administration and the Putin regime rushed to conclude that the crisis may get out of control,and push the two superpowers to nuclear confrontation, which could mean the end of life on earth.
It is precisely because of this new reality that there is no stake whatsoever that is more valuable than life itself that a nuclear war between two superpowers is most unlikely.
This begs the question: What could any country gain from destroying an enemy and destroying itself in the process. In nuclear and strategic studies this logic is called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). For the first time in human history war no longer makes any sense. In the past, war — as cruel as it may sound — could be explained as serving some purpose: competition for resources,water, land, petrol. food, riches, and self-glorification. Nuclear war provides none of the above; on the contrary it destroys everything in its path.
I was astonished by the belligerent tone of the so-called influential newspaper such as the Washington Post, which supported the America invasion of Iraq with no proof whatsoever that the weapons of mass destruction were real. In this case the Washington Post goes as far as to actually encourage the use of force to defend national interests.
The editors of the Post could do well to recall Leo Tolstoy’s ‘Seven Sevatople Stories’, which take place during the Crimean War. Tolstoy wrote: “you will see war not as a beautiful, orderly and gleaming formation, with music and beaten drums ... but war in its authentic expression--as blood, suffering and death”.
Adel Safty is distinguished visiting professor and special adviser to the rector at the Siberian Academy of Public Administration, Russia. His book, Might Over Right, is endorsed by Noam Chomsky and published in England by Garnet, 2009.
