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| Europe |
| Ukraine coalition collapses under Russian pressure |
| 2008-09-03 |
| The dominoes are falling all over EUrope. Will we see them put aright in our lifetime? President Victor Yushchenko angrily denounced his former ally, the Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko for siding with the pro-Russian opposition in a series of parliamentary votes. "Yesterday, a political and constitutional coup began in parliament," he said. "I consider the events in the Ukrainian parliament a formal beginning of the formation of a new parliamentary coalition." In a televised address to the nation after his political party withdrew from the government, Mr Yushchenko threatened to call an election within two months. His comments had greater impact because they came a day before the US vice president Dick Cheney was scheduled to arrive in Kiev to shore up Western allies threatened by Russia. "I will use my right to dismiss parliament and announce early elections," he said. The success of Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" in 2004 was based on his bond with Mrs Tymoshenko, but relations started to fray soon after they took office. Although he sacked Mrs Tymoshenko, he was forced to reappoint her late last year after her party won the largest share of the vote in the general election. Their feud was reignited by Russia's invasion of Georgia last month. Ukraine, like Georgia, has risked the Kremlin's wrath by applying to join Nato. But while Mr Yushchenko flew to Tbilisi to show his support for Georgia, Mrs Tymoshenko refused to criticise Russia's actions. Instead, she formed an alliance with the man he replaced as president in 2004 - Victor Yanukovich and his former Communist allies. In the run-up to that election, Mr Yushchenko was maimed after suffering dioxin poisoning - an attack attributed to Kremlin agents. "The new coalition formed by Tymoshenko, Yanukovich and the Communists will not serve Ukraine's interests," he said. "Citizens will see that their policies will not protect Ukraine's territorial integrity, its independence and its European integration course." For her part, Mrs Tymoshenko has accused the president of recklessly antagonising Russia and said there was no justification for the crisis. "A democratic coalition was ruined yesterday on his instructions," she told the weekly cabinet meeting. "This is panic. A democratic coalition has to work. "The president and his office have used every means to ruin the coalition. It is a pity that the president is behaving irresponsibly." A flamboyant figure, Mrs Tymoshenko is Ukraine's most popular politician and the current dispute could free her from a pledge not to challenge the president's re-election bid in 2010. With a large Russian-speaking minority and a pro-Western political elite, Ukrainians are deeply divided over their relations with their powerful neighbour. Ukraine's leaders fear that Moscow's aggressive protection of its passport holders in the Georgian enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia could be replicated in its own province of Crimea. Mr Yushchenko has threatened to evict Russia's Black Sea fleet from Sevastopol, the Crimean port with an ethnic Russian majority. However, as Mr Cheney arrives in the region, America's position has been weakened by the political squabbling in Kiev. Mrs Tymoshenko is growing in influence. She has been careful to send Moscow a more calibrated message, condemning her rival's decision on Sevastopol and agreeing to meet Vladimir Putin later this month. New elections would bring about a final schism between the leaders of the Orange Revolution, paving the way for Mrs Tymoshenko to challenge for the presidency in 2010. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #31 Finally, I don't believe the relationship between the two countries is likely to get that strained. Fundamentally, what I was getting at is that diplomacy and war are just two different ways of achieving a country's goals. And with the Chinese, re-acquiring lands lost to neighboring countries is an important item on the national agenda. Treaties are merely a way of postponing conflicts (until China is strong enough to take what it wants) rather than resolving them. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-09-03 23:37 |
| #30 TW: Certainly the avalanche of posters from Russia that arrived here following the Russian invasion of Georgia was not inclined to make me believe uncomfortable facts as readily available in Russia as is ideal. The geopolitical disputes of the world have little to do with misunderstandings. Each party understands his adversaries' position. It's just that each party believes his position should prevail. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-09-03 23:31 |
| #29 Merely rivaling the other's arm forces is insufficient for successful territorial conquest. I use the word rival as a form of understatement. In fact, I believe the Chinese will have forces that are four to five times larger than Russia's combined with superior quality and technology (which isn't too difficult when you're talking about Russian equipment). And they will benefit from the West's indifference to Russia's fate, since no one really sees Russia becoming a part of the West now. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-09-03 23:28 |
| #28 Finally, I don't believe the relationship between the two countries is likely to get that strained. Chinese diplomatic relationship have always been subordinate to territorial ambitions (much like Russian diplomatic relationships). China had an excellent relationship with India on the day China started moving into Aksai Chin in 1959. China had an excellent relationship with the UK the day Deng Xiaoping demanded the return of Hong Kong in the 1980's. Diplomatic relationships will not trump the conquest of millions of square miles of land rich in minerals, any more than it superseded strategic and revanchist rationale behind the acquisition of Aksai Chin and Hong Kong. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-09-03 23:22 |
| #27 Is Desperate Housewives still on, General Comment? I'm afraid I don't actually watch or discuss such things. My parents thought reading more educational, so we didn't have a television, and I never got in the habit of it. Germany's current problems most definitely are not permanent, but it remains to be seen what the German Turks will do. Actually, the expulsion of Germans from the surrounding countries probably has exaggerated what would have happened anyway. But the key is why the ethnic Germans were expelled: because the national misbehaviour had so annoyed the countries round about that as soon as they could they sent them home, with, as a neighbor who had experienced as a small child in Czechoslovakia, only an hour or so notice before they were chased out. When I knew her seventy years later in the village of Bad Soden, she was still traumatized by the event. This is what the poster is telling you Russia's bullying will net all those Russians in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and all those countries in Russia's near abroad, simply in proactive self defence. Today they're likely to get a month or six deadline instead of the hour my neighbor got in 1945. It's not so much opposing points of view that need be available, as information that makes the powers that be uncomfortable. Not the kind of thing that gets shared over conversations about missed television episodes. Certainly the avalanche of posters from Russia that arrived here following the Russian invasion of Georgia was not inclined to make me believe uncomfortable facts as readily available in Russia as is ideal. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-09-03 22:49 |
| #26 Tr_wife. Germany's problems are likely temporary is nature and in any event were not caused by displacement of the Germans after WWII. As for Russia, 99% internet penetration is not required for a voting population to be informed of the opposing points of view. When you miss an episode of "Desperate Housewives" (pun intended) you can still ask your friends about it. People talk. Most of the russia's working population is employed by the mid-size and large size corporations (that's the essence of the authoritarian capitalism, remember, lack of small business owners) who do provide internet access at work. In major cities internet access is widespread outside of work as well. Most of the people also have cell phones with access. Finally, there are tons of newspapers online. |
| Posted by: General Comment 2008-09-03 22:13 |
| #25 Merely rivaling the other's arm forces is insufficient for successful territorial conquest. There has to be a complete qualitative and quantitative supremacy. While China is doing well and harbors territorial aspirations vis a vis Russia, Russia is also not standing still. In twenty years, Russia will not loose land to China. Some of it simply has to do with the fact, that Russia will always maintain enough nukes to make a parking lot out of China. Also, in the area concerning missile development and missile defense Russians will maintain leadership in the next two decades, merely with deployment of S-400 Triumph and its further improvements. As to the airforce, the fifth generation fighter is coming along. Finally, I don't believe the relationship between the two countries is likely to get that strained. |
| Posted by: General Comment 2008-09-03 22:03 |
| #24 Looks like I'd better invest in popcorn futures, Zhang Fei. :-D |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-09-03 22:02 |
| #23 Zheng Fei makes a good point. Sometimes it is difficult to achieve a win-win for all the parties involved. The Chinese, for example, think that Mongolia, which was protected by the Soviet Union and now by Russia as a buffer state, really belongs to China. They also feel that most of the Asian part of Russia really belongs to China. Given Russia's existing inventory of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles for them, the Chinese will not act on their views today. But China's economy is already 2.5 times the size of Russia's. It is supporting a domestic weapons research and procurement that is several times the size of Russia's. In as little as two decades, China's armory will rival Russia's and may even include some form of missile defense. When that happens, China will promptly tear up all territorial treaties with Russia as unequal treaties and move into Mongolia and Russia's Far Eastern territories. And history will resume its onward march. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-09-03 21:48 |
| #22 Zheng Fei makes a good point. Sometimes it is difficult to achieve a win-win for all the parties involved. |
| Posted by: General Comment 2008-09-03 20:51 |
| #21 I love googling myself. It makes me hapi. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2008-09-03 19:46 |
| #20 Googling yourself, probably not the first time, eh? /relax Fred, just counting coup ;-) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-09-03 19:36 |
| #19 "For today's Fixed that for ya', Zhang Fei. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-09-03 19:32 |
| #18 Chill, Aris. Don't take me so seriously - or literally. It's called kidding. :-D |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-09-03 19:30 |
| #17 TW: That's nice, Regional Peace. And do most Russians have computers and internet access, or do they get their information from the highly censored Russian television and newspapers? TW, the end of history is not yet at hand. What the end of history incorporates is the idea that everything has come round to the liberal democratic view that we will no longer expand our territories by annexing our neighbors and taking their stuff - we will instead all get rich by trading with each other. Most of the non-Western world hasn't quite come to terms with that view. Freedom of the press isn't necessarily going to change that - the Germans and the Japanese got a lot of exposure to that in the 19th and 20th centuries and still decided that the path to prosperity was via military conquest. The determining factor may have been that getting rich via trade is a positive sum game where all parties benefit - it doesn't necessarily offer the same psychic satisfaction as the zero sum game of armed conquest. For today's non-Western countries, it's not enough to win - others must lose. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-09-03 19:29 |
| #16 Germany is not doing fine, actually, and has been heading in the not-fine direction at least since we lived there in the 1990s. Ever fewer workers are supporting the bulge of retirees and unemployed, companies have been moving operations to Eastern Europe and beyond, and Iran's biggest trading partner is Germany -- not exactly for their cuckoo clocks and lederhosen. As for Russia, all businesses provide their employees internet access? Even in the U.S. that isn't close to being true -- only in the offices of companies large enough to need connection to the internet, whose workers need to be connected for their jobs. I'm only a housewife and I know that much, General Comment dear. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-09-03 19:28 |
| #15 Missed the ";-p" Aris? Just funnin' witcha. (Actually, I was directing my question at the second sentence, not the first. I have no doubt that, living in Greece, you have more opportunity to know about Eastern European countries than many Americans do.) |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-09-03 19:22 |
#14
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| Posted by: Aris Katsari.s 2008-09-03 19:19 |
| #13 "I always hated Russia, you moron, that was ALWAYS my bloody point in these forums: That (using the 1930s analogy) they are the equivalent of Nazi Germany, to America's equivalent of the British Empire." Who are you and what have you done with Aris? ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-09-03 19:08 |
| #12 [online poker has been pooplisted.] |
| Posted by: online poker 2008-09-03 19:05 |
#11
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| Posted by: Aris Katsar.is 2008-09-03 19:02 |
#10
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| Posted by: Aris Katsa.ris 2008-09-03 19:00 |
| #9 "all the various republics of yours Chechnya, Dagestan, etc - will be made independent." Don't care about those - they are the ones in which journalists are sometimes killed. |
| Posted by: General Comment 2008-09-03 18:59 |
| #8 "you'll end up having the Russian minorities expelled throughout the bordering nations (similar to the expulsion of the German minorities after WW2)" Germany is doing just fine now, despite what you perceive as the end of the world. The "containment" theory of yours is bologny. |
| Posted by: General Comment 2008-09-03 18:56 |
| #7 Let nobody say Vladimir-I is not a genius (wonder how long before some Russian genealogist "discovers" that Vlad's grandpa was an illegal Romanov offshoot?). |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-09-03 18:54 |
| #6 Aris is back---and he hates Russia more than USA? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-09-03 18:51 |
#5
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| Posted by: Aris Katsa.ris 2008-09-03 18:33 |
| #4 They all have internet access at least at work. |
| Posted by: General Comment 2008-09-03 18:19 |
| #3 That's nice, Regional Peace. And do most Russians have computers and internet access, or do they get their information from the highly censored Russian television and newspapers? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-09-03 18:14 |
| #2 Every government that supports the ABM suicide will fall. It happened in the 'eighties and it will happen again. Putting the Russians in a launch on warning alert is untenable. Prediction: an overwhelming majority of Republicans will turn against the Neocon party infiltrators if they continue to kneejerk their way into oblivion. FYI: Russia has a free internet service. Alternative views are not censored from their websites. |
| Posted by: Regional Peace 2008-09-03 17:59 |
| #1 Unless they get some decent support, Ukraine will revert to being The Ukraine, a Russian vassel. Remember the Rhineland. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2008-09-03 15:03 |
