Posted on 03/02/2014 5:43:04 AM PST by Kaslin
Ukraine is in the news and that’s not a good thing.
I’m not a foreign policy expert, to be sure, but it can’t be a positive sign when nations with nuclear weapons start squabbling with each other. And that’s what’s happening now that Russia is supposedly occupying Crimea and perhaps other parts of Ukraine and Western powers are complaining.
I’m going to add my two cents to this issue, but I’m going to approach it from an unusual angle.
Look at this linguistic map of Ukraine. The red parts of the country show where Russian is the primary language and most people presumably are ethnically Russian.
Now look at these maps (from here, here, here, and here) showing various election results in the country.
Like I said, I’m not overly literate on foreign policy, but isn’t it obvious that the Ukrainians and the Russians have fundamentally different preferences?
No wonder there’s conflict.
But is there a solution? And one that doesn’t involve Putin annexing – either de facto or de jure – the southern and eastern portions of the nation?
It seems there are two options.
1. Secession - The first possibility is to let the two parts of Ukraine have an amicable (or at least non-violent) divorce. That’s what happened to the former Soviet Union. It’s what happened with Czechoslovakia became Slovakia and the Czech Republic. And it’s what happened (albeit with lots of violence) when Yugoslavia broke up.
For what it’s worth, I’ve already suggested that Belgium should split into two nations because of linguistic and cultural differences. So why not the same in Ukraine?
Heck, Walter Williams has argued that the same thing should happen in America, with the pro-liberty parts of the nation seceding from the statist regions.
2. Decentralization - The second possibility is for Ukraine to copy the Swiss model of radical decentralization. In Switzerland, even though there are French cantons, German cantons, and an Italian canton, the various regions of the country don’t squabble with each other because the central government is relatively powerless.
This approach obviously is more attractive than secession for folks who think that existing national borders should be sacrosanct.
And since this post is motivated by the turmoil in Ukraine, it’s worth pointing out that this also seems to be a logical way of defusing tensions across regions.
I confess I have a policy reason for supporting weaker national governments. Simply stated, there’s very strong evidence that decentralization means more tax competition, and when governments are forced to compete for jobs and investment, the economy is less likely to be burdened with high tax rates and excessive redistribution.
Indeed, we also have very strong evidence that the western world became prosperous precisely because the proliferation of small nations and principalities restrained the natural tendencies of governments to oppress and restrain economic activity.
And since Ukraine (notwithstanding it’s flat tax) has a very statist economic system – ranking only 126th in the Economic Freedom of the World index, maybe a bit of internal competition would trigger some much-needed liberalization.
P.S. If you’re intrigued by the secession idea promoted by Walter Williams, you’ll definitely enjoy this bit of humor about a national divorce in the United States.
P.P.S. If you think decentralization and federalism is a better option than secession, the good news is that more and more Americans have unfavorable views of Washington.
P.P.P.S. The tiny nation of Liechtenstein is comprised of seven villages and they have an explicit right to secede if they become unhappy with the central government in Vaduz. And even the statist political crowd in the United Kingdom is considering a bit of federalism.
I’d be curious as to the history behind the Russian speaking eastern Ukraine areas. Are they that way because Stalin wiped out the Kulak’s via murder and shipped off to Siberia, and then confiscating the food production for years causing mass starvation in the area............and then of course after the population vaccumn was then filled by ethnic loyal Russians, with todays demographics the end result.
Will this same discussion be about America one day?
This is why immigration matters. When you move millions of your ethnicity into an area, you make it “yours” via ownership regardless of the political boundaries.
It would be easier for Mexico to demand large portions of the U.S. now that there are millions of people who identify as Mexican living in border states. And in many counties, they are a majority.
Immigration can change political borders, through sheer dominance.
Good analysis of the situation.
Perhaps, but Putin may have his sights set on Mexico as a satellite puppet regime. And what is our limp wristed girlie man president going to do about that if that happens?
Television and the Internet are radically shrinking the world. TV has in fact killed the Southern accent in Texas so that I hear it only amongst people over 60; I expect TV and the internet to kill most of the world's languages in the next 30 years. My guess would be that languages which will still be in use by 2050 will include:
In particular, I don't see Ukranian surviving another 30 years. There isn't any great opera or literature in Ukranian and anybody in the Ukraine who isn't retarded can speak Russian now. The difference between Russian and Ukrainian is similar to the difference between our English and Chaucer's.
"Do you have any clue why the russians settled in the Eastern part of Ukraine? How about having the russians go back to russia and let Ukrainians have their land?"Many of these Russians have settled and have family ties over hundreds of years, older than the United States itself. What would they go back to? Back to Peter the Great? Its not cut and dry like that.
most of all of Europe follows a model that our Liberals love - a very big central government and weak vassal provincial/U.S. state governments
true federalism - as our founders intended for us, not as it has become, could help defuse things in Ukraine
I somehow doubt that idea will find a majority behind it in Ukraine.
All of the pipelines through Ukraine feeding Europe go through the western part of Ukraine. Partition would not solve Russia’s current gas transport problem. It would actually intensify it because control would pass to the most anti-Russian portion. In that area, you need to speak Ukrainian to fit in. They do speak Russian but they have a habit of ignoring Russian speakers who aren’t from there. Think of them as Slavic French with regard to language.
Keep in mind, many of the demonstrators in Kiev came from the western parts. There’s already been talk of a partisan movement in Ukraine to attack the Russians. Russia is also facing a significant Muslim Tatar community in the Crimea. Many of members of their families were sent to Siberia by Stalin. They have absolutely no love for Russians.
Even though Ukraine has only been a nation for almost 20 years, there is a fierce feeling of nationalism. Russians to a degree look down on Ukrainians as inferior. There is also a significant number of Ukrainians that live and work in Russia. Putin needs a quick end.
If it drags on Putin may be looking a another Chechnya of much larger proportions. The Russian military is great when facing a small foe. One of Putin’s fervent goals is to modernize it. Ukraine will not be a pushover.
Ukraine is not a slam dunk for Putin. I read it as a calculated effort to embarrass this country and to extract additional concessions from Ukraine while the West wrings their hands. The key concession would be giving up the idea of fraternizing with the EU and the immediate agreement to join the Russian led trade federation.
Another example in which the delusion that borders drawn by imperial powers (in this case the Soviet Union) somehow actually create nations upon the break up of the empire, even though they enclose linguistically and culturally hetrogeneous populations will cause more grief and bloodshed.
Africa is full of “civil” wars between different nations in the ancient sense stuck inside one nation in the post-WW I sense, likewise the Middle East.
The Hapsburg Empire never worked, and attempts to replicate it with Austrian and Hungarian (and Czech and Slovak and Serb and...) replaced with Igbo and Hausa (and Yoruba and...) or Sunni Arab and Kurd (and take your pick on how to fill this out to get either Syria or Iraq) or even in the present case Ukranian and Russian (and Hungarian and Romanian and ... ) don’t look likely to work either.
The multi-ethnic democratic polities of the New World Anglosphere (both in North America and the antipodes) work because they have Anglo-Saxon law and the ethnic variety is due to people willingly chosing to join a multi-ethnic society (leaving aside the tiny minority of aboriginal peoples who haven’t really fared much better than tiny ethnic minorities in the Old World, and in former times sometimes worse).
The Russians in the Eastern Ukraine were always there. Long ago, Kiev was the center of Russia — perhaps you’ve forgotten, the conversion of the Rus was accomplished by St. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev.
Portions of Ukraine became culturally and linguistically distinct from Russia during a period when the region was part of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, which also enforce the Union of Brest on its hitherto Orthodox Christian subjects, creating what we Orthodox call Uniate churches (liturgically Orthodox, following Orthodox, rather than Latin canon law, but in communion with Rome). Portions didn’t, and remained Russian.
Later, what is now Ukraine was a province of the Russian Empire, except for a little bit which was controlled by the Hapsburgs.
The Crimea was for a long time part of the Ottoman Empire until the Russians conquered it and settled it, and was only added to the Ukrainian SSR by Khrushchev in 1954. In fact until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the only time there was an independent nation of Ukraine was a short-lived, independent Communist state during the Russian Revolution and Civil War.
Telling the Russians in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine to “go back to Russia” is like telling the Maori in New Zealand to “go back to Polynesia”.
The EU was hoping to redistribute all the wealth for them.
Actually, most people in Eastern Ukraine are Ukrainains, they’re just Russified ones due to years of Russian influence.
The only area of Ukraine that’s mostly Russian is the Crimea. Eastern Ukraine is still mostly ethnic Ukrainian albet Russified.
Should have split in 92, like the Czechs and Slovaks.
Maybe the difference isn't language, so much as general outlook and orientation. People talking now about splitting up the US based on ideology ought to be able to understand how that works and why there might be different countries with different ideas about freedom and different religious ideas.
But actually, I'm not sure all those other languages are going to disappear. While knowing English (or Mandarin, I guess) is advantageous today, so is being part of a group that has its own language that foreigners can't immediately understand or easily learn. Language is one barrier against people from anywhere moving in and changing things -- not an insurmountable barrier -- but still, it does stand in the way of globalization.
Wait to find out whether that's actually true. I don't know how powerful or powerless the federal government in Bern actually is right now. And "relatively" is a tricky word -- the Swiss government is powerless compared to what other governments?
Switzerland's political parties have a power-sharing arrangement at the federal level, something that wouldn't fly in the US, Ukraine, or a lot of other countries. That may be a reason why the Swiss don't squabble (or an unsquabbly nature may keep both the language groups and the parties from fighting).
Cantonal arrangements are always being proposed for troubled countries or regions, but they're rarely implemented. If people outside Switzerland don't really want them, there could be reasons that the article doesn't bring out.
At Yalta FDR tried to get better borders for Poland (especially to have Lwow on the Polish side of the border), because he was thinking of all the Polish-Americans concentrated in states with lots of electoral votes. But he had no leverage—the Red Army was already occupying the territory, and he thought Soviet help would be needed to bring the war against Japan to an end.
Partly true. FDR had Alger Hiss, Stalin’s agent as his advisor. (Were there others like Hiss?)
Thirty years from now today's 10-year-old Ukrainian-speakers will be 40 years old and still speaking Ukrainian by choice.
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