What's the possible end game of the Ukrainian civil war?

As the civil war in the Eastern Ukraine drags on, German Chancellor Merkel and French President Hollande made a last ditch attempt at peace. They travelled to Kiev first, and then to Moscow to consult with Presidents Poroshenko and Putin. The absurdity of this war lies in its lack of purpose for all parties involved. Despite some cold war rhetoric from the US State Department, Russia has no interest in a war at its borders. Almost a million Ukrainians have now fled to Russia and are causing serious problems to the Russian government in terms of provision of food, shelter and medical supplies. Russia has nothing to gain from a civil war, only to lose, as NATO is ramping up the rhetoric and strengthening its defence capabilities in the Baltic.

The worst that could happen now is that the US government, in a move motivated by a lack of interest and public anxiety about perceived weakness, starts to supply weapons to the Ukrainian government. As the German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen recently noted, there is no lack of weapons in the region.

So why the rhetoric on the Russian side? On one hand, Putin has no other option but to support Russian speaking Ukrainians fighting the government in Kiev. His authority is poorly legitimated and based on demonstrating strength in foreign affairs. A fall of the Ukrainian rebels would be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Yet, more importantly, the cause of the Ukrainian rebels is a question of principle. When Kosovars fought against the Serbian government, they were granted autonomy and, eventually, semi-independence by European governments. So it is in this case. Ukrainians in the East of Ukraine will not want to return to live under a government that has shelled their homes indiscriminately and fought a civil war against its own population.

The only feasible outcome is similar to what happened in Kosovo. Autonomy for Eastern Ukraine that gradually morphes into full independence. The earlier the EU and the US recognise this, the better for everyone involved.

Ukrainian president abandoning its own people in the East

The crisis in Ukraine defies simple explanations. The country does not suffer a lack of powerful and destructive personalities, pulling it into different directions. On top of that, her affairs with its menacing neighbour Russia are at breaking point which leaves little time to attend to the rampant corruption and nepotism that has plagued Ukraine ever since it has plied herself loose from the former Soviet Union. As the eastern provinces of the country move away further from the government in Kiev, the Ukrainian president has now embarked on a high risk policy of cutting Eastern Provinces off from government aid and support. Proshenko has ended pension and wage payments as well as ordered the central bank to cease money transfers to local banks in the irredentist areas.

This can only lead to more disenchantment there and drive more people into the arms of rebels. Why the president decided to practically withdraw government authority from the rebel areas is difficult to understand. In effect, Poroshenko thus acknowledges that Ukraine is now a divided country with little chance to be reunited in the near future. The logic behind this step is obscure to say the least. It may just be another nail in the coffin of Ukraine.

The ironies of US foreign policy

Secretary of State John Kerry is reported to be a man with little humour so it does not surprise me that the manifest irony of what he recently announced completely escaped him. Here is what he said about Russia's intervention in the Crimea:

'You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests'

Errmmm, yes you do! The US has time and again proven that she does and gets away with it. The list of  countries invaded by the US (note: only invasions without UN mandate) is long. I remember vividly the reports on a small Caribbean island that had just freely and fairly elected a government which displeased the US. It is called Grenada and it only took the US a few weeks to find a ham fisted pretext, or shall we call it the pretext of all pretexts? Allegedly, Grenada had to be invaded because there were a couple of hundred students from the US on the island who felt threatened by the new government. It was never quite clear what the nature of the threat was (sit an exam? read a book?), yet the US did not just invade to repatriate her students from there but toppled the elected government too, just for good measure.

The next exhibit is of course Iraq, for which the likes of Kerry and Clinton (Hilary Rodham) bear direct responsibility since they voted for the war in Iraq on the even grander lie that Saddam Hussein would have weapons of mass destruction. Yes, those WMDs again. Naturally, Saddam never had any, but that did not concern Kerry much since he voted for the war and never apologised for this illegal adventure which cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. But never mind the collateral damage...

This does not complete the story of pretexts yet. The last exhibit is a tiny autonomous enclave in Serbia, called Kosovo. In 2008, the local commander of the Kosovoan Liberation Army declared the need for a referendum on the secession of Kosovo from Serbia. A sham referendum was held and Kosovo declared itself independent in violation of all international treaties that have ever been looked at by an incumbent of the US State Department. Yet, the US government promptly recognised the Serbian province and urged the European Union to open membership negotiations with Kosovo. Never mind, that the Kosovo government was composed of people for whom arrest warrants by the International Court of Justice (Den Haag) were pending for extortion, money laundering, and all the other niceties that people happen to do when they are part of a mafia.

So, where does this leave Ukraine and Russia? Well, not in too bad a place. I might misremember but I think there was a treaty signed by all parties in Ukraine that anticipated free and fair elections in December. If I recall correctly, there were even the foreign ministers and various representatives in the room from France, Germany, Poland and Russia. Twenty four hours later, the Western foreign ministers feigned ignorance and the legitimate Ukrainian government takes flight. What we are left with now is a medley crew of 'opposition leaders' that claim to be the Ukrainian government (some of them positively obnoxious people who can only be called Neo-Nazis, displaying openly SS insignia). Nothing strikes me as 'legitimate' about this government so unless everyone returns to the negotiating table, I cant see why Russia shouldn't cash in on the ironies of US policy and organise a referendum in the Crimea. It would only be a further exhibit in the long list of might over right.

The BBC, peacocks and the Ukrainian 'revolution'

If I hear one more time from BBC correspondents that people in the West of Ukraine are looking to the West and people in the East are looking East, I will probably throw my television out of the window.

The recent events in Ukraine have prompted the BBC into a journalistic 'dumbing down fest' that borders on wilful distortion. This is not the first time the BBC news coverage feeds simplistic interpretative patterns. Not so long ago, Libya was reported to be experiencing a conflict between Western oriented revolutionaries and the forces of a (previously courted) dictator. We know where that one ended.

So why is the BBC wedded to simplistic journalism? One reason is probably the poor calibre of its personnel. Most of their staff are anchors of general news programmes rather than well informed specialists. This should not be a problem, if they would not be so tone deaf when it comes to listening to their own studio guests or interviewees. The BBC still invites commentators from a reasonably wide political spectrum, and this should inform the quality of its own presenting. Alas, little of that is felt when it comes to ad hoc reporting. What we get instead is BBC reporters telling us that the president's compound in Kiev has peacocks (what else?) and a golf course. Shocking! You would not find this at Chequers or Kennebunkport of course!

This poor journalistic work is not the exclusive domain of anchormen. Even otherwise respectable journalists like Matt Frei succumb to it, twittering ceaselessly (and pointlessly some might say) about the duck houses in the presidential residence just outside Kiev.

As somebody who lived through the so-called 'revelations' of the 'excesses' of the East German leadership in 1989, I fail to be impressed by the alleged 'largesse' of East European leaders or the reports about it in the BBC. What looks like 'high society' at first glance usually turns out a result of poor taste and the preferences of the 'nouveau riche'. The real largesse is not the way in which a president lives but the millions of dollars that have been siphoned off and safely tucked away in Swiss bank accounts.

No doubt, Yanukovich will have something for a 'rainy day', but so undoubtedly has his opponent, the newly declared 'democrat' and hero of the Western media, Yulia Timoshenko. After all, she happens to have amassed tens of millions of dollars and her business partner was convicted of embezzlement of 'epic proportions' (the judge's words) in a US court.

So, why does this matter? It matters because the poor quality reporting from the BBC reflects a lack of understanding of the real fragmentation of the country, a split that does not run between East and West but between those who belong to a tiny political elite who have treated the state as their personal fiefdom and the rest of the population.

Yanukovich and Timoshenko are part of the former, fighting over the state silver, whilst those on the streets of Kiev hope that a change of the guard will bring an end to corruption and usher in democracy. If the Ukrainian (recent) past is anything to go by, Timoshenko will take the reigns of power, marginalise the current opposition leaders and do what she failed to do the last time when she 'led' a revolution to its inglorious demise: prevent the formation of a proper functioning party democracy and enrich herself and her entourage. And people in the West will stand by and scratch their heads, thinking that this was not what the BBC told us would happen.

Why Western celebrity status is not enough to be a politician

What do the chess master Gary Kasparov, the boxing world champion Vitaly Klitschko, and the singer Yossou N'Dour have in common? They all have, at one point or another, tried to stand for election in their home country, after many years of living in the Western world, and been touted by Western media as the saviour of their country. The former cricketer Imre Khan has just joined the list, feted by The Observer today as the last hope of a country torn between rampant corruption, a failing political elite and an increasingly radicalised population. 

While the list of those who have lived in the West and re-discovered their roots and their electoral ambitions is long, the list of those who have succeeded in winning public office is short. Yet the love the West has for celebrity figures as saviours of their country continues unabated. This despite any evidence to the contrary that those who have lived in the West and are much appreciated by Western media are either qualified to hold political office in their home countries or that it, if they did, would make any difference. 

So what’s at the heart of the West’s infatuation with these celebrity exile politicians? At the heart of it lies a specific patronising attitude, an arrogance about the West’s values and practices, and an (un-)healthy dose of wishful thinking. Let me explain. 

First up is the view that any person who has lived in the West and enjoyed success here, must habour a deep commitment to Western values. It’s easy for all those potential electoral candidates to reinforce this view, all they have to do is to demonstrate their unflinching opposition to corruption in their countries. 

This is so, since our opinion of developing countries is shot through the prism of rampant corruption. So much so that often entire developmental strategies are said to be held up by corruption, while absence of the same is allegedly tantamount to unhindered development and prosperity. This of course is an enormous simplification of reality. Some countries that have made a fist of things after the war, e.g. Japan and Italy, have retained a staggering amount of corruption in politics and business. 

Yet, this is only half the story. Western observers often seem to think that if only the head of state would be incorruptible, everything else would fall in place. Hence the saviour role of these Western based celebrities in turning around the fortunes of their home countries. But corruption is more complicated than this. It is often a symptom of a lack of transparency that pervades the whole of society and unchecked governance structures. In addition, what goes as corruption in one part of the world, is part of conventional business transactions in another. Unclear tax legislation which can be used by the powers that be to persecute opponents and favour others, may equally contribute to corruption as an social ill woven into the fabric of societies. Changing the head of state may make little difference indeed. 

The upshot of this is that parachuting someone who allegedly symbolises Western values into highest office in a developing country is unlikely to show the desired effect. Not to mention the fact that widespread backing from Western media rarely endears these candidates to the local population. 

But there is an additional aspect of arrogance in the Western position when they back one of these celebrity politicians. It is the widely held belief that developing countries are somehow based on clear choices and options, of which the Western path of development and prosperity is the most obvious for the majority of the population. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that any society in the modern world, developing or not, is highly complex and Western views of governance, democratic politics and regulated markets are often faring fairly low in domestic public discourses. Where they are talked about, they are often cited as synonyms of cultural decadence to be avoided, rather than to be accomplished. 

That is why celebrity politicians rarely succeed in gaining high office in countries from which they have often been absent for decades. And perhaps it’s the better for it. The fact is that success in politics anywhere in the world is a matter of finely balancing social and economic interests. Not to mention the need for a powerful constituency that can prop you up in times of trouble. 

Parachute candidates often lack the knowledge and the skills to negotiate this jungle of interests and influences. Their electoral programmes are often little more than ragbags of slogans and populist demands. In a sense, we in the West wouldn’t give them our vote, why should anybody in Senegal or Ukraine?