But when we look around in Europe today, we see that not only is Europe not whole and free, we see the ghosts from the painful 20th century returning to our midst. Ghosts that we thought we’d never see again, that we had buried deep in history’s trashbin.
Today, when we look around us, we see it all again. The annexation of territory, the violation of borders, religious conservativism pairing with political authoritarianism and imperialist bravado. 80% of Russians support annexation through military aggression in Crimea, where the Anschluss – and I use that term most seriously here – the Anschluss of territory was justified by the presence of co-ethnics. Moreover, there is widespread support for an anti-liberal attack against decadent Western “permissiveness,” be it in freedom of speech or choice of life-partners. Indeed, we see that liberal democracy has not only failed to win the battle of ideas against authoritarianism, it has failed even to prevent the resurrection of that once vanquished demon, fascism. The nationalist fervor east of us is expressed in arts in a way that makes Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will look like a liberal programme – I suggest you look at the video of the so-called “biker show” staged on August 8 this year in Sevastopol. It is on You Tube. It is a genuine Gesamtkunstwerk. Everything is there – music, art, ballet, motorcycle gangs, it’s all there.
– Estonian President Toomas Hendrik
Mr Putin is indeed engaged in the undermining of Estonia (and all the Baltic States) – partly by manipulating the Russian minority, partly by other means.
Those “libertarians” (normally Black Flaggers) and “conservatives” (also Black Flaggers – of another sort) who (de facto) side with Putin against places such as Estonia, are sickening.
I still think Putin can’t afford to get very involved militarily in the West when he has China – with a larger manpower base, sizeable military, and good technology – eyeing Siberia.
Not that he won’t walk in where there’s no serious resistance.
Putin will take what he can get away with given western Europe’s lack of any real will and the United States’ lack of even a semblance of political leadership, dare I say statesmanship. We can expect more of the same until the adults return. Hopefully, before it’s to late.
If Hilary Clinton DOES become President, what would she do in Europe, and the Muddle East?
And what would the Republicans do, if they win?
There is a case for eastern Ukraine to become independent or part of Russia. The West should acknowledge this and state that there must be a truce followed by an internationally monitored referendum in a year or so under peaceful conditions – possibly with some presence of international peacekeepers. This is not to deny the point that was being made, just saying that there is a valid case for separation, just as there is in the Scoxit case (although there too there is a fair amount of jingoism).
Peter T. – no one is fighting for an independent eastern Ukraine (that is not what Mr Putin is paying for – any more than he did in the break away areas of Georgia or elsewhere).
And please do not say “Russia” when you mean the Putin regime (which has destroyed the infant Civil Society that was emerging in Russia after the nightmare of the Soviet period ended).
What will convince you that Mr Putin (not the West) is the problem?
Will Mr Putin’s activities in the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) convince you?
Or are you going to do the full Rothbard and blame the West for that as well?
As for a “truce” – how it that going to work with large numbers of armed thugs (both official Russian troops and local criminals that Putin has paid to fight) on the ground?
The campaign of looting and murder (by Putin’s thugs) in eastern Ukraine is on a large scale – and a few “international peace keepers” are not going to stop it.
Absolutely Paul. I tend to think of Putin’s mob as an attempt at USSR 2.0.
I’ve just had word from somebody in Sakhalin that the region’s reservists have been called up for a 2-week exercise on 1 day’s notice. The local companies have been decimated as 4,000 men have been drafted, and they’re all moaning like hell.
I think it’s good. Three days ago they’d have been cheering Putin for his Ukraine invasions and annexations. Maybe now the dumb fucks might stop and think about who they’re supporting.
The current crisis in Europe began when the US/EU engineered the coup d’etat that overthrew Ukraine’s only legitimate, democratically elected government. That resulted in the rebellion in the east and Crimea. This rebellion was then amplified and exploited by Russia.
The Ukraine is a deeply divided country. This was exposed by the election of Yanukovych. He got majorities of over 60% to over 90% in the east and Crimea and lost by similar majorities in the west.
While the coup was and is welcomed by many in the western Ukraine, it was and is opposed by many in the east. The easterners want to maintain good relations with Russia, and the westerners want a closer relationship with Europe.
This split goes back at least to Stalin’s early regime and the collectivization of the farms, which involved mass genocide of Ukrainian farmers in the west. In Operation Barbarossa, western Ukrainians joined the Nazi armies en mass to fight against the USSR. Their grandchildren are still at it.
If the US/EU had not intervened, Yanukovych would still be president, the Crimea would still be part of Ukraine, and the Ukraine would be a peace.
Instead, Europe is on the brink of nuclear war, not because of Putin, but because of Obama, Hollande, Cameron, Merkel, Rasmussen (the drooling lunatic), Van Rompuy et al.
Which is the line parroted by the Kremlin of course.
But no one can explain to our chums who were in the Euromaidan quite how they were ‘engineered’ to do what they did however, and if there were payouts of €uros and Dollars involved, where to they apply for their cut, because clearly they did not get the memo! It would be fair to say the US/EU were supportive of what was by any rational definition a local anti-Kremlin-backed-Stooge mass movement, but still not seeing how it was ‘engineered’ by the Dark Forces the Kremlin loves to mutter about since times of yore.
Which divisions crossed what border? And is the US State Department or the clown of the EU actually capable of putting large numbers of people from many different political parties on the streets in Kiev? Are they really?
Truly you might as well be getting paid in roubles for that. But yes if large numbers of Ukrainians had not ejected Yanukovych and instead just accepted their Russian client-state status, none of this would have happened.
I’m going to get flamed for it from the usual suspects, but let me double-down on Toomas Hendrik: when Viktor Orban sides with Putin, he knows exactly what he’s doing, as he consciously chooses to stamp on freedom for dictatorial power. When Alex Salmond sides with Putin simply for momentary political advantage on a poll, he knows that he’s french-kissing the devil. And when Angela Merkel tells the Ukrainians that they are morally obligated to engage in 50/50 compromise with the pawns of an invading power on the fiction that said terrorists are valid political actors engaging in popular separatism morally equivalent to that of Scotland, Catalan, or the Basques, she knows PRECISELY what she is doing, and she DESERVES to be called “Frau Ribbentrop.”
It sounds suspiciously like Mr. Hendrik is bundling in a few other causes with his legitimate ones. Have I missed the part where Russian-backed militias are in Ukraine over their opposition to same-sex unions?
Or is this just an attempt to get the various Socialist-led countries to oppose Russia and the Putin-Orthodox alliance?
Instead, Europe is on the brink of nuclear war, not because of Putin, but because of Obama, Hollande, Cameron, Merkel, Rasmussen (the drooling lunatic), Van Rompuy et al.
George Kennan wrote back in the 1940s that Russia can only accept two types of states on its border: vassals and enemies. Once the Ukrainians decided they didn’t want to be a vassal, Putin decided to treat them like an emeny.
Preisdent Ilves of Estonia knows this all too well: when Estonia tried to move the statue of a Soviet soldier from a central square to the war cemetery back in 2007, the neo-Soviets responded with a DDoS attack against the entire .ee domain. The ~250K ethnic Russians in the country who are the descendants of people moved into the country to destabilize Estonian ethnic identity also agitate for the Russian line quite regularly. Perhaps Ilves ought to remind Putin of the history of forced deportations that the Soviets engaged in.
He appears to lament limits to the European Union. Does he equate the EU with freedom? I think HokiePundit is onto something. I have long had a soft spot for Estonia, but this chap sounds like just another Europhile, and one not averse to casting his own slurs.
I am astonished at the people who are astonished at our proclivity for evil.
I for one am an inherently evil hairless monkey mutant with a taste for gin, bad women, lies and stealing stuff from other hairless monkeys if they are weaker or their attention is elsewhere. I also say ‘fuck’ a lot. I restrain myself most of the time.
So, I, Putin and the Russians are perfectly normal.
Yes Perry – “libertarians” and “conservatives” repeating the Kremlin line is deeply depressing. It is not just the man-in-Kent (vile though he is) – it is broader than that. It reminds me of the “Right Club” in the 1930s – who viewed supporting Fascist Italy, National Socialist Germany and giving British military secrets to the Empire of Japan as “patriotic” (as Britain was a “puppet state of the Jews” – and only by the victory of the Axis could Britain be “liberated”). To such people Winston Churchill was the enemy – and they mocked him with all the “clever” methods they could.
Fred Z – the key words in your comment are “I restrain myself most of the time”. Mr Putin sees no reason why he should restrain himself – his language (straight from the prison camps – about “…… them in the bogs” for killing enemies), with its gloating references to his nuclear weapons and castrating foes, shows he has no moral restraint. And he sees the West as weak and decedent – no practical reason to restrain himself.
He also sees the West as hopelessly divided – that we need not be feared. So the idea that he is just after the Ukraine is absurd.
Close, and I agree with the sentiment, but not all of Estonia’s Russians were the descendants of those bussed in by the Soviets. There has always been a Russian presence in Estonia, and I happen to know one of the descendants who is pretty pissed off at being treated like a foreign usurper in the country her family have been in for years. The Soviets have one hell of a lot to answer for, and by that I mean Russians in Moscow.
The last Estonian interwar cenus listed something like 900K ethnic Estonians and 100K ethnic Russians. The last Soviet census had something like 900K Estonians and 400K Russians. I don’t think all of the quarter million-plus who came in the intervening years stayed after 1991, though.
It is a difficult question of how differently to deal with those whose ancestors were their before 1939 and those whose ancestors weren’t.
PeterT @ September 10, 2014 at 8:43 am:
There is a case for eastern Ukraine to become independent or part of Russia.
And there was (actually was) a legitimate case for the anschluss of Austria and the transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany.
But that case did not validate Hitler’s nationalist aggression. Nor does the present case justify violent rebellion, much less Russia crypto-invasion.
I agree completely Rich.
Remind me again of the legality of the violent overthrow of the prior Kiev government by the current government?
All this talk of Hitler and Munich and all.
Do you not know that Czechoslovakia was an artificial nation stitched together from some of the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It had no reason to exist but power politics. Keeping the Sudetenland Germans out of Germany was just done to keep Germany weak. No more.
Do not forget that the 3 million Sudetenland Germans were ethnically cleansed after WWII, and that completely artificial nation, Czechoslovakia, broke itself up as soon a
s it was able after the fall of the USSR.
Do you not know the account of the Munich conference by Neville Henderson, the English ambassador to Germany? Hitler was ranting about the necessity of giving Germany the Sudetenland without a referendum. The one thing he didn’t want was to give the German ethnics in Czechoslovakia a vote on their own fate. Neville Chamberlain surprised Hitler and said you can have it, no referendum. Hitler was taken aback for a few seconds. Then he said (What class?)
Es tut mir viel leid, aber es gehts nichts mehr.
The offer was no longer good enough, because Hitler had promised parts of Czechoslovakia to Poland, and I believe, Hungary.
The real problem for the English was that Hitler’s demands were actually “reasonable.” There was no reason, other than pure power politics, not to allow the Sudetenland
Germans to become part of Germany, if they wanted.
Chamberlain didn’t “sell out” the Czechs, whoever they are. He sold out the Germans in Czechoslovakia.
And, who, BTW, appointed Chamberlain the keeper of the borders in Eastern Europe. England was a sea power for God’s sake.
Anyway, you guys don’t know any history, so you are condemned to repeat it.
Wasn’t the German Reich an artificial nation stitched together, which then sew up Austria into it as the Ostmark?
Where does this reasoning end?
Chamberlin made mistakes. Could anyone else have done better? What would Churchill have done? Threaten him with tanks that the British didn’t yet have? Sent a gunboat up the Rhine? Letter-bombed the Germans into submission?
It’s all so easy for others to say that Britain should have done nothing. Should we also have done nothing after Poland was invaded? Neutrality would have allowed Hitler to send more troops against Russia- and Britain wouldn’t have sent any supplies through Archangel to help Stalin. Russia might have been reduced to just Siberia, with plenty of living rooms for the Aryans to occupy.
Remind me of the legality of the violent overthrow of the prior government in the Thirteen Colonies in America?
…said the wise history teacher whose geo-political wisdom is the equivalent of insisting “the Ukraine was wearing a short skirt, so it is wrong to blame the poor Russia for raping her, the slut was asking for it”. Yeah, I will not take it personally if you do not bookmark this site.
“Chamberlain did not sell out the Czechs, whoever they are”
And scum like that comment writer pretend they are not Nazis.
Neville Chamberlain the war monger against poor innocent Mr Hitler………… (Rothbardian “history” – like blaming the Korean War on “Western Imperialism”).
The person-in-Kent is welcome to his swastika loving fan club.
“Violent overthrown of the Ukrainian government” – the exact opposite of the truth, I watched (on independent television stations that have no connection with the West – indeed even television stations that HATE the West such as Al Jazeera) regime gunmen shoot down protestors (people who were protesting against Putin’s puppet regime)- this led to the Ukrainian Parliament (including some members of the “Party of the Regions” itself voting No Confidence in the regime – the “President” fled to Russia, and his palaces were found to be full of ill gotten gains, rather like the palaces of Saddam Hussain).
As for what Chamberlain (and the French) should have done.
He should have kept his commitment to defend against the expansion of National Socialist Germany – without the Sudetenland the county was defenceless against Nazi Germany (all the defences were built there).
The road was open for the taking of the Czech (“whoever they are” – I see so they are non-people “joel”) specialist factories – which were vital for Hitler’s plans for the war machine.
Without these factories Nazi tanks actually broke down on the road to Prague – the betrayal of Czechoslovakia in 1938 (had the allies stood up to Hitler the German armed forces would have overthrown him – as they knew they were not ready for war) made World War II inevitable.
And scum like that comment writer pretend they are not Nazis.
Actually, the commenter made his comment in defense of the neo-Soviets.
This is one of the meta-contexts that drives me up a wall. Fascism (in general, and Nazism in particular) and Communism are both forms to totalitarian collectivism. But because one came putatively from the right side of the political spectrum, everybody knows that it’s evil beyond redemption, its functionaries need to be hounded to the end of the earth, and how dare anybody say anything to try to mitigate its totalitarianness. While on the other hand, the other one came putatively from the left, so you’re expected to say that it had good intentions and to mitigitate its totalitarian evil; and how dare you suggested the people who ordered murders should be prosecuted for it.
People who make excuses for Communism need to be treated as just as much deserving of shunning as those who make excuses for Nazism or other forms of Fascism.
Ted – I quoted “Joel” in relation to the 1938 betrayal, he took a pro Nazi view of the origins of World War II and I called him on it (I do not let Rothbardianism pass unchallenged).
That he is also pro “neo Soviet” (pro Putin) I do not deny.
It is possible to be BOTH.
Rothbard (and the person-in-Kent) sneered at Churchill and pretended that World War II was the fault of the West – AND he took the Soviet line in relation to the Cold War (the Korean War and so on).
This is the practice that is still followed in some “libertarian” circles on both sides of the Atlantic.
The followers of the Black Flag (whether they call themselves followers of Islam, or Fascists, or “anti Capitalist anarchists”) are bad people.
It is possible to overthink this – it is not that complicated.
If one asks one of these Black Flag types (whether they call themselves “ethnic nationalists” or “anti capitalist anarchists” or whatever) “what do you think of Walmart?” or “what do you think of the Koch brothers?” their faces twist with hatred.
This is all we need to know about the followers of the Black Flag – whatever they call themselves.
But we can also see them – off they go at the “Occupy” events marching side-by-side with the followers of the Red Flag (in the Teachers Unions and so on) – blaming everything on Jewish (sorry “Zionist”) “Capitalists”.
Even though the people who they attack (such as Rupert Murdoch or the Koch Brothers) are NOT actually Jewish – and the people who (indirectly – via the Tides Foundation and so on) fund both the Black Flaggers and the Red Flaggers sometimes ARE of Jewish origin (such as George Soros – a man consumed with hatred for Jews, who is himself of Jewish origin).
The hatred of some very rich people for “capitalists” and “capitalism” is another long standing problem. Karl Marx (that he wasted his money does not alter the fact that he money – his living conditions were self inflicted) with his “the capitalist is an inwardly circumcised Jew” is a classic example.
I will be blunt – I wish these anti capitalist rich people would just hang themselves, so the world would be spared their outwardly directed self-hatred.
As for Russians – they are the chief victims of Mr Putin, after all it was the emerging civil society in Russia (emerging after the nightmare of the Soviet period) that Mr Putin destroyed – destroyed all independent institutions and made every large scale business person have to support the regime (or have their business confiscated and themselves imprisoned or murdered). For example, most of the journalists that Mr Putin has had murdered have been Russians.
I wish the Russian minority in Estonia (and elsewhere) could understand this – some can, but too many are stuck in “he is Russian, I am Russian – therefore I should support Putin against my own neighbours” tribal thinking.
Like so many Germans living outside Germany (including some in the United States) in the 1930s.
In the end it is the RUSSIANS who will have to deal with Mr Putin – for it is their freedom he has crushed.
“In the end it is the RUSSIANS who will have to deal with Mr Putin – for it is their freedom he has crushed.”
True. The question is whether they have enough of a freedom tradition to do anything about him. I’m not sure that they do, as they have never really had any sort of representative government or free enterprise system. Their entire history (with a very brief interregnum before Putin seized power) is one of serfdom, whether under the Czars or the communists. I have zero confidence that any sort on non-totalitarian government will ever arise in the Middle East (with the exception of Israel, of course), and I’m far from convinced that the Russians will fare any better.
Even before the liberation of 1861 (if memory serves on the date) most Russians were not serfs.
Before the First World War the Russian economy was the fastest growing in the world (admittedly from a low base) and was already the number four world economic power.
The Soviets attempted to slime the Russian past (which included trial by jury and a lively press), sadly most Russians seem to have internalised the Soviet narrative – and believe they have never been free (so it is just a matter of supporting a strong master – such as Putin).