Tag: neurtality

Ukraine: Oligarchs, Peace and Sovereignty

~ The Koboi Project

In an article titled “Was Ukraine betrayed by its own elites?,” Lee Jones, Professor of Political Economy and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London, outlines the forces whose interplay has led to the horrific invasion that Ukraine faces today. He implicates both Russia and the West but, ultimately lays the blame at the feet of competing Ukrainian oligarchs. He suggests that the most likely outcome, now that Russia has invaded Ukraine, is the balkanization of the nation along ethnolinguistic lines. Yet he is hopeful that, in the light of the mutual injury inflicted thus far, Russia-Ukraine negotiations might progress, leading to a compromise that will restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity (to the extent that is still possible) and secure peace. He suggests that this will involve –

  1. A Russian withdrawal from Ukraine (this might be limited with respect to the territories of the East and the South).
  2. Pro-Western Ukrainians (elites )and their pro-Russian counterparts find a more consensual way to coexist.
  3. Ukrainians stop internationalizing their internal conflict.
  4. Ukraine genuinely works towards neutrality.
  5. Foreign powers (Russia and the West) cease their meddling.

Image: https://forbes.ua/ratings/100-bogateyshikh-ukraintsev-2021-06052021-1536

https://unherd.com/2022/03/was-ukraine-betrayed-by-its-own-elites/

Ukraine: Chomsky’s view 2

~ The Koboi Project
1901 Political Cartoon

In his interview with Noam Chomsky in Truthout dated March 1st , C.J. Polychroniou asks, with reference to Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of another state, “Can you comment on Putin’s legal justifications for the invasion of Ukraine and on the status of international law in the post-Cold War era?” Chomsky says, “There is nothing to say about Putin’s attempt to offer legal justification for his aggression. Its merit is zero.. Chomsky ranks the Russian invasion of Ukraine as “a major war crime, ranking alongside the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland in September 1939.”

In essence, there is no enforceable legality and certainly, no universal sense of right, on the geopolitical scale. There are only actions and consequences. Chomsky sums up the very narrow range of accepable geopoltical outcomes that remain, now that the threatened invasion has occurred, “The options that remain after the invasion are grim. The least bad is support for the diplomatic options that still exist, in the hope of reaching an outcome not too far from what was very likely achievable a few days ago: Austrian-style neutralization of Ukraine, some version of Minsk II federalism within. Much harder to reach now. And — necessarily — with an escape hatch for Putin or outcomes will be still more dire for Ukraine and everyone else, perhaps almost unimaginably so.’

I worry that Western leaders are unanimously displaying a lack of understanding in the matter of this ‘escape hatch’. They are either intentionally provoking Putin into a quagmire that they believe will be his demise and/or they do not understand the consequences of ‘driving the bear into a corner’ in the way that Chomsky does.

Image https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-russia-anxiety-by-mark-b-smith-review-should-we-fear-the-russian-bear-rjv76qzft

https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-us-military-escalation-against-russia-would-have-no-victors/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56966/speech-all-the-worlds-a-stage