When No Means Yes
If Ukraine were a woman and Russia her former husband, this piece by Jenni Russell in The Times is really arguing is that the 'male of the species' has an ongoing right to control his ex-wife's life.
Now women aren't countries or even nation states, but I have no doubt that President Putin would approve of the underlying logic which is that people can be regarded as property and that the former 'owner' can still decide what's in his ex-wife's best interests, even if she has decided to leave.
I can't resist singling out the following paragraph from the article because it is so wonderfully condescending and middle-class:
"I sympathise with the desire of many Ukrainians for a closer relationship with Europe and with the West’s willingness to offer one. I would hate to live in a country as riven by corruption as Ukraine has been, under the chilling shadow of Putin’s authoritarian state. I would much prefer a Ukrainian future where discussion was open, politics and business were honest and people were free to spend their holidays or their lives in French or German or indeed Ukrainian cafés, discussing Rousseau or Hello! or Marx."
Any sensible person would agree with the need for countries like to be sensitive about their neighbours' security needs - for example the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when the Soviet Union attempted to place nuclear missiles on America's doorstep forcing President John F. Kennedy to react.
But the Cuban Missile Crisis is light years away from what was happening in Ukraine and the way to resolve problems of self-determination (whether in Ukraine, Crimea, Scotland or Catalonia) is through a peaceful political process of negotiation and diplomacy.
Instead Jenni Russell is condoning the use of force and strong-arm tactics in Ukraine and her central message that there are times when no really means yes is not the way to conduct either personal or international relations.
I can't resist singling out the following paragraph from the article because it is so wonderfully condescending and middle-class:
"I sympathise with the desire of many Ukrainians for a closer relationship with Europe and with the West’s willingness to offer one. I would hate to live in a country as riven by corruption as Ukraine has been, under the chilling shadow of Putin’s authoritarian state. I would much prefer a Ukrainian future where discussion was open, politics and business were honest and people were free to spend their holidays or their lives in French or German or indeed Ukrainian cafés, discussing Rousseau or Hello! or Marx."
Any sensible person would agree with the need for countries like to be sensitive about their neighbours' security needs - for example the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when the Soviet Union attempted to place nuclear missiles on America's doorstep forcing President John F. Kennedy to react.
But the Cuban Missile Crisis is light years away from what was happening in Ukraine and the way to resolve problems of self-determination (whether in Ukraine, Crimea, Scotland or Catalonia) is through a peaceful political process of negotiation and diplomacy.
Instead Jenni Russell is condoning the use of force and strong-arm tactics in Ukraine and her central message that there are times when no really means yes is not the way to conduct either personal or international relations.
Realpolitik and violence on our streets is one thing, but giving people the green light to behave in such way quite another.
Blame the West for its meddling in Ukraine
By Jenni Russell
Of course Russia would react aggressively to attempts to pull its neighbour towards the EU
Nothing is more lethal to successful foreign policy than soggy goodwill, moral indignation and an inability to think through the consequences of words and actions. All three have been on display in the West’s conduct of the Ukrainian crisis. We have substituted naivety and self-belief for cold calculation. It’s not surprising that we have been so completely wrong-footed as it unfolds.
Three months after Ukrainians took to the streets to demand that their Government sign the association agreement that the EU had offered them, and nine months after David Cameron declared that there was no reason why the EU should not extend from the Atlantic to the Urals, our attempted embrace of this former Soviet territory has splintered into potentially lethal shards. Russia has annexed Crimea and seized its military bases, Ukraine is being governed by a temporary leader, anxious eastern Ukrainians fear a war over their territory, Russia’s neighbours to the north of Ukraine are apprehensive about their security and a menacing President Putin has had standing ovations for denouncing the West’s belief in its right to decide the destiny of the world. No strategist would call this a success.
I sympathise with the desire of many Ukrainians for a closer relationship with Europe and with the West’s willingness to offer one. I would hate to live in a country as riven by corruption as Ukraine has been, under the chilling shadow of Putin’s authoritarian state. I would much prefer a Ukrainian future where discussion was open, politics and business were honest and people were free to spend their holidays or their lives in French or German or indeed Ukrainian cafés, discussing Rousseau or Hello! or Marx.
But I would also like to see world peace, an end to rape and a ban on dredging in the sea. What matters isn’t what we want but whether what we want is feasible, and what we would have to do to get there.
This basic assessment has been fatally missing from the start. Ever since Putin took power in 2000 he has been moving away from the model of East-West co-operation that he inherited from Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev before him. Gorbachev dissolved the Soviet Union; Yeltsin withdrew Russian troops from the Baltic states and allowed many of the former Soviet states to join Nato; both men talked of a partnership with the West.
Putin, a steely, suspicious, competitive man, has never had a benign view of this relationship. He has come to see it as a humiliating process where the West continually expects to expand its power and influence while Russia is expected to surrender hers. Whether over Kosovo, the Gulf War, Libya or Syria, Putin has watched the West attempting and often succeeding in outflanking Russian alliances and interests.
It has increasingly enraged him. He has described the break-up of the former Soviet Union as one of the greatest disasters of the 20th century. Six years ago he tested the West’s willingness to retaliate when he marched into Georgia; there were international denunciations but Russia still controls a fifth of the country. That emboldened Putin. The West was awash with words, but its threats were empty. Meanwhile Russian militancy was hugely popular at home.
This is the context in which the West decided to offer closer ties to Russia’s largest and most strategically important former state. Putin was never going to welcome that. He sees that Russia will be diminished if Ukraine can detach itself further. And there is nothing politically neutral about signing a formal association with the EU. It’s a long time since the EU could be presented principally as a trading bloc rather than an economic and political project. Indeed, ever since the Lisbon treaty was signed five years ago, its members have had a mutual defence clause. This was a slippery slope. Putin didn’t want Ukraine to take it.
This, then, was a raw power struggle in the making. It seems that both the EU and the US failed to anticipate that. They don’t seem to have asked themselves the most basic of questions: what’s at stake here, for ourselves and our political opponents, and how far might each of us be prepared to go to achieve it?
The stark fact is that Ukraine’s loyalties matter much more to Russia than they do to us. While we dither over travel bans, visas and sanctions, Russian troops are said to be massing near Ukraine’s border. It is clear from the hints in Putin’s speech that if Russia feels its interests are sufficiently threatened, it will fight. It is equally obvious that no one in the West wants to get caught up in a war. Putin is raising the stakes, and we won’t match them.
We have been meddling carelessly in a situation we didn’t grasp. We’re in a weak position because, whether we should or not, we don’t intend to pay the ultimate price in Western lives. Given that, the sooner we stop grandstanding and start negotiating, the higher the chance that Russians and Ukrainians won’t also lose theirs.
Of course Russia would react aggressively to attempts to pull its neighbour towards the EU
Nothing is more lethal to successful foreign policy than soggy goodwill, moral indignation and an inability to think through the consequences of words and actions. All three have been on display in the West’s conduct of the Ukrainian crisis. We have substituted naivety and self-belief for cold calculation. It’s not surprising that we have been so completely wrong-footed as it unfolds.
Three months after Ukrainians took to the streets to demand that their Government sign the association agreement that the EU had offered them, and nine months after David Cameron declared that there was no reason why the EU should not extend from the Atlantic to the Urals, our attempted embrace of this former Soviet territory has splintered into potentially lethal shards. Russia has annexed Crimea and seized its military bases, Ukraine is being governed by a temporary leader, anxious eastern Ukrainians fear a war over their territory, Russia’s neighbours to the north of Ukraine are apprehensive about their security and a menacing President Putin has had standing ovations for denouncing the West’s belief in its right to decide the destiny of the world. No strategist would call this a success.
I sympathise with the desire of many Ukrainians for a closer relationship with Europe and with the West’s willingness to offer one. I would hate to live in a country as riven by corruption as Ukraine has been, under the chilling shadow of Putin’s authoritarian state. I would much prefer a Ukrainian future where discussion was open, politics and business were honest and people were free to spend their holidays or their lives in French or German or indeed Ukrainian cafés, discussing Rousseau or Hello! or Marx.
But I would also like to see world peace, an end to rape and a ban on dredging in the sea. What matters isn’t what we want but whether what we want is feasible, and what we would have to do to get there.
This basic assessment has been fatally missing from the start. Ever since Putin took power in 2000 he has been moving away from the model of East-West co-operation that he inherited from Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev before him. Gorbachev dissolved the Soviet Union; Yeltsin withdrew Russian troops from the Baltic states and allowed many of the former Soviet states to join Nato; both men talked of a partnership with the West.
Putin, a steely, suspicious, competitive man, has never had a benign view of this relationship. He has come to see it as a humiliating process where the West continually expects to expand its power and influence while Russia is expected to surrender hers. Whether over Kosovo, the Gulf War, Libya or Syria, Putin has watched the West attempting and often succeeding in outflanking Russian alliances and interests.
It has increasingly enraged him. He has described the break-up of the former Soviet Union as one of the greatest disasters of the 20th century. Six years ago he tested the West’s willingness to retaliate when he marched into Georgia; there were international denunciations but Russia still controls a fifth of the country. That emboldened Putin. The West was awash with words, but its threats were empty. Meanwhile Russian militancy was hugely popular at home.
This is the context in which the West decided to offer closer ties to Russia’s largest and most strategically important former state. Putin was never going to welcome that. He sees that Russia will be diminished if Ukraine can detach itself further. And there is nothing politically neutral about signing a formal association with the EU. It’s a long time since the EU could be presented principally as a trading bloc rather than an economic and political project. Indeed, ever since the Lisbon treaty was signed five years ago, its members have had a mutual defence clause. This was a slippery slope. Putin didn’t want Ukraine to take it.
This, then, was a raw power struggle in the making. It seems that both the EU and the US failed to anticipate that. They don’t seem to have asked themselves the most basic of questions: what’s at stake here, for ourselves and our political opponents, and how far might each of us be prepared to go to achieve it?
The stark fact is that Ukraine’s loyalties matter much more to Russia than they do to us. While we dither over travel bans, visas and sanctions, Russian troops are said to be massing near Ukraine’s border. It is clear from the hints in Putin’s speech that if Russia feels its interests are sufficiently threatened, it will fight. It is equally obvious that no one in the West wants to get caught up in a war. Putin is raising the stakes, and we won’t match them.
We have been meddling carelessly in a situation we didn’t grasp. We’re in a weak position because, whether we should or not, we don’t intend to pay the ultimate price in Western lives. Given that, the sooner we stop grandstanding and start negotiating, the higher the chance that Russians and Ukrainians won’t also lose theirs.
