Editor: This article, more than our other postings on the Ukraine crisis, has stimulated quite a few readers to reply with thoughtful comments. Here are a few of the responses, lightly edited for style.
Gerry:
Excellent analysis. It indicates a political orientation and program but does not spell it out.
Russell:
I believe that the U.S. and the West are creating a situation that is bringing the world closer to a 3rd world war. The U.S. takes a stand that they set the policy for the rest of the world; they violate other countries’ sovereignty with what they feel is impunity. Russia had to take a stand, otherwise they will be surrounded by NATO’s expansion.
Dave:
A good piece, perhaps the first balanced left-wing analysis I’ve seen and a useful summary. Right-wing commentators here in the UK have generally eschewed it but most of the left has shamefully endorsed anti-Russian jingoism.
A couple of quick points—As you suggest, the EU has been leaning heavily on Ukraine’s back for a decade at least and is, I learn, actively doing the same to Georgia and Moldova. However, it’s not quite accurate to suggest that it has offered Ukraine “only a free trade Association Agreement.” The deal whose rejection led so rapidly to regime change represents a major shift in Ukraine’s polity and is an essential precursor to the integration process. No country that has signed one has NOT later gone on to full EU membership.
(Recall by the way crass EU support in the early 1990s for the far-right Trudman regime in Croatia and its aggressive stance on Serbian minority rights. Last year, on the day that Croatia formally joined the EU, UK prime minister David Cameron delivered a speech in Khazakstan boasting that Europe’s eastern border would soon be the Urals.)
All that said, many informed commentators here agree that US/EU bellicosity is bluster. What CAN they do? Bomb Moscow? Stop importing gas? Ethnically cleanse Londongrad? OK, OK, they can boycott the Winter Olympics.
Interesting comments from Russia’s EU ambassador to be found on this scarily right-wing but very well informed site.
