Daniel Larison: US interests are not the same as Ukraine’s
David Adesnik follows up on his earlier argument with a new article at The Daily Caller:
The U.S. and Europe should continue to stand behind the Ukrainian majority [bold mine-DL], because our interests and theirs are now the same.
There are a few problems with this. First, it isn’t at all clear that “the Ukrainian majority” wants the association agreement with the EU or the early dismissal of the current government and president. That is what the opposition wants, but the U.S. should always be wary of assuming that what opposition groups prefer represents the majority of a country. This is even more important when dealing with countries that have democratically elected governments, since such governments possess a degree of political legitimacy that unelected governments do not. For what I would think are obvious reasons, the U.S. shouldn’t want to encourage opposition parties to force a change in government through street protests when they have the option of competing in normal elections. There isn’t much of an argument for the U.S. taking sides in this dispute, but the argument for siding against another country’s majority is even weaker.