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Europe
Ukraine Should Vote on Partition
2014-02-22
I've argued for years that partition is the best solution for Ukraine, which never was a country but an almalgam of provinces left over from failed empires--Russian, Austrian, Lithuanian, Ottoman--cobbled together into a Soviet "republic" and cast adrift after the collapse of Communism. Lviv (Lemberg) was a German-speaking city, part of Silesia; before World War II a quarter of its people were Jews. Jews were two-fifths of the population of Odessa.

A fifth of the population, mainly in the East, are ethnic Russians; a tenth, mainly in the West, are Uniate Catholics, who have a special place in Catholic policy since the papacy of John Paul II. Ukrainian nationality is as dubious as Byelorussian nationality: neither of them had a dictionary of their language until 1918.

The country also is a basket case. At its present fertility rate (1.3 children per female), its 47 million people will shrink to only 15 million by the end of the century. There are presently 11 million Ukrainian women aged 15 to 49 (although a very large number are working abroad); by the end of the century this will fall to just 2.8 million. There were 52 million Ukrainian citizens when Communism fell in 1989. Its GDP at about $157 billion is a fifth of Turkey's and half of Switzerland's. Ukrainians want to join the European Union rather than Russia so they can emigrate. It is of no strategic, economic, or demographic importance to the West.

...Russia never will permit the integration of Ukraine into NATO; were it to come to that, Russia would use force, and the West would stand by cursing. But Russia will settle for half a loaf, namely a Russian-allied Eastern Ukraine. Whatever we do, Ukraine will continue its slow, sad slide into oblivion. The diplomats have the dour duty of managing this decline with the minimum of friction.
I commented at Instapundit and copy it here:

A partition that involves a vote of the Ukrainian people will fail.

As several other commenters have pointed out, a vote is almost certainly going to be suborned: the Russians will ensure that the east votes to join them and will put in oar into the western half; the Euros will likewise try to get the west to vote to be 'free'. The vote will be contested, questioned and then ignored. It's a pointless exercise that will only inflame all Ukrainians one way or another.

If a Higher Power could partition Ukraine into what makes some objective sense -- a western/northern half that is independent and nominally neutral, with ties to the West, and an eastern/southern half that becomes federated into Russia -- one might see peace for a time. One might be able to convince the Russians to leave the western half alone (the good riddance theory). One might be able to convince the Ukrainian nationalists to quiet down and implode demographically.

But an election simply guarantees the civil war that many are trying to avoid.

Sorry, I know I sound anti-democratic, and I do think that in the end the western and eastern parts of the Ukraine can't live together in peace. But an election guarantees more blood. The adults in that country have to fix the problem.
Posted by:g(r)omgoru

#4  State can't support a partition cause the question will arise, why not here too?
Posted by: Procopius2k   2014-02-22 23:16  

#3  Black Sea bases staying Russian is pretty much a given. Being realistic about it, there will have to be an "accommodation" there regardless of what else happens.

Resolving this would be a possibility if we had a decent diplomatic corps and an adept SecState. Problem is we have neither. Foggy Bottom is a rats nest of leftys and poseurs, and Jon F'n Kerry is an empty suited gigolo who hasn't a clue how to perform his function as SecState.
Posted by: OldSpook   2014-02-22 21:20  

#2  I see a split as almost inevitable. Hence the sooner the better.

Russia will do whatever it takes to hang on to its Crimea naval bases.
Posted by: phil_b   2014-02-22 20:56  

#1  At this point, perhaps if we had a real president and Sec State we could whisper into Putins ear that we would not oppose the Eastern (Russian) part's secession and plebiscite to become part of Russia, providing they leave the western part alone (with pipeline security guaranteed for Gazpom) and keep Crimea separate and neutral (a la WW2 Finlandization). The rest of it can either form up or split off into Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, etc, leaving a rump republic for the ethnic Ukrainians.

This has been brewing since the a Orange revolution and the backlash that followed.
Posted by: OldSpook   2014-02-22 19:46  

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