Andrew Sorokowski recently wrote an overview in his column forThe Ukrainian Weekly, starting with “the clash in Paris between fanatically fundamentalist religion (Islam) and official state secularism” — as if that outrage had nothing to do with France’s longstanding checkered legacy in the Mideast and in “Algerie Francaise.”
He attributed the Paris massacre to“binary thinking” that sees the world as black and white.
Another binary example he visualized is when free-market capitalism is seen as the only alternative tocommunism. And then he makes aquantum leap: “This approach, common in today’s Ukraine, sees every attempt tomoderate the excesses of unregulated big business as supporting the restorationof Soviet communism.”
Every attempt? By and large, the ongoing reformist effortsin Ukraine, encouraged by the West and aimed at breaking up the stranglehold ongovernment by oligarchic cronyism, have no noticeable connection to political ideology.
Sorokowski also brought up LBGT issues, and made a validpoint that the controversy that needs and can be resolved is not in thephilosophical domains of ethics or religion, but in the language in theproposed Ukraine’s Labor Code to protectthe LBGT community against discrimination. He also suggested: “Would it not beenough to say (require) that citizens must be protected from violence andunwarranted discrimination based on sexual attitudes or conduct?”
That last subject apparently triggered a response from Zenon Zawada (“False binaries and naivety”, letter, Jan. 10), in which he muses that “Sorokowski naively says a solution to a debate over homosexual rightsis needed, rather than a false binary promoted by the West.”
That debate, Zawada writes, is between the left and traditional Christian values.
He continues: “Like its Bolshevik predecessors, the left isn’t interested in a solution. The left is engaged in an ideological battle to annihilate traditionalWestern and Christian values.”
Not to be confused by who is who in this faceoff, today’sliberal part of the West (under the influence of the ;eft, I surmise) is the opposite of traditional Western values. Zawada then concludes: “This is a battle that will result in a winner and a defeated force, likely to be determined in the 2016 elections.” This sounds rather quick.
Two highly critical responses to Zawada’s letter were subsequently published in The Ukrainian Weekly on Jan. 31. One of them stated “the fact” that legalizing homosexual marriages should not hasten the decline of Western civilization. The other writer found similarities between Zawada’s views and Vladimir Putin’s recentc rocodile tears over the decline of Christian values in the West.
For Ukraine at least, more important at this time is the struggle for independence and freedom than the battle between the left and Christian values. In fact, hardly anyone takes a stand against Christian values in Ukraine, and no significant political force exists on the left, except in the breakaway Donbas. At the same time, there is at present no organized political party in Ukraine capable of challenging and curtailing the political power of established oligarchic business elite and efficiently govern the country. Populist sentiments is not enough.
After collapse of the Soviet economy in 1991, politicians of all stripes left it up to the emerging oligarchs and gangsters to chisel a new business model, starting from privatization that built fortunes with money borrowed from banking connections and repaid with devalued junk.
Even if Ukraine were not at war with Russia, there is no one in Kyiv like Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont in the USA to inspire themasses and organize a broad support and financial base for election campaign withoutties to oligarchs. His campaign is now scaring and shaking America’s bothtraditionally established political parties that are largely connected to bigbusiness and Wall Street.
Sanders may or may not win the Democratic Party nomination andthe White House, but his ongoing “democratic revolution” has struck a chord with America’s younger generation. At the same time, Sorokowski is not wrong inhis assessment: “Unfortunately, the United States has little to offer by way ofexample. Binary thinking has impoverished our political discourse.”
While the contest between Sanders and Clinton shakes up the limousine liberals in the Democratic Party, the Tea party conservatives havethe established moderates within the Republican Party on the ropes. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama, in his last year in the White House, is trying to salvage what he can in his pet domestic projects. This leaves the US foreign policy in astate of improvisation, with Secretary of State John Kerry, for instance,appealing to Russia to go easy in Syria, while Assad’s forces are gainingground after four years of stalemate.
Concerning Vladimir Putin’s intentions in Europe, a recent RandCorporation report (quoted in “TheTelegraph,” Feb. 3 ) warns that “NATO cannot stop Russian tanks in the Baltics” and they could reach Riga and Tallinn within 60 hours. Actually, this surprises no one. Even at its peak during the Cold War, NATO was not the primary shield against Soviet threat. The main weapon of the West was America’s strategic nuclear power and the threat of mutual annihilation.
In a conference on Feb. 2, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter placed Russia as the top security threat to the United States. Only one battle-ready American brigade (about 5,000 troops) is now on the ground inEurope, and the Pentagon has a plan to spend $3 billion in the next fiscal year (up from $789 this year) to “rotate” it in eastern NATO member-states. The Rand report estimates that if Russian forces invade and quickly overrun the Baltics, NATO would not have any good options to respond.
But “options” exist right now to increase the NATO battle-ready force to a realistic size, aboutseven brigades that could stop Russian thrust or discourage it, as the Rand reportsuggests. As things stand, the possibility of more sanctions would not stopPutin. Most Russians very likely would accept a rationale why belt tighteningis needed as part of patriotic effort.
For the time being, Putin probably figures that securing Russia’s position in Syria, as the gate into the Mediterranean, is geopolitically mor eimportant for Russia than ramping up pressure on Ukraine and the Baltics — especially if the US gets tired and offers him a backroom deal on Ukraine (along Minsk 2 lines) that would, if effect, push it closer towards Russia’s orbit.
With domestic initiatives driving the agenda of the Democratic Party in the USA, and Donald Trump’s buffooneryleading the ruckus among money-bags within the Republican Party, the US foreign policy appears to be stuck in a limbo.
