By Dr. Ghoncheh Tazmini
The genesis of the Ukraine imbroglio are clear: The present regime in Kiev and its supporters, backed by North Atlantic and Western European powers have violated the fundamental principle of democratic governance by unconstitutionally ousting a democratically-elected president – Viktor Yanukovich came to power through a free and fair election in 2010.
The struggle that is taking place, however, is not over the Crimea, or the Ukraine, or Russia, but a struggle for world order. It is a struggle to perpetuate the unilateral international system – a system in which an ‘Atlantic-type polity’ has been erected at the zenith of politics, to use Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s words. The conflict is an exercise of political posturing. It is not about establishing political order and stability in the Ukraine, the return of Crimea to Russia or about saving Ukrainians and Crimeans from bloodshed or violence. The Ukraine has become a proxy battleground for the enduring geopolitical rivalry with Russia. What hangs in the balance is the perpetuation of North Atlantic and Western European hegemonic power.
Three imperatives inform Russian foreign policy: Russia as a nuclear superpower, Russia as a world power, and Russia as the central power in the post-Soviet geopolitical space. The overthrow of a legitimately elected president is perceived in Moscow as the attempt by the West to consolidate its hegemony over Ukraine and by Ukrainian nationalists over the Russophone population and to meddle in Russia’s historical backyard.
At the end of the Cold War, as agreed with the western powers, Russia disbanded the Warsaw Pact, its military alliance. However, the United States and NATO breached their word to Russia, by adding most of Eastern Europe and the Balkan states to their own military alliance, and by building military bases along Russia’s southern border. Ever since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the EU and NATO have been intent on surrounding Russia with military bases and puppet regimes sympathetic to the West, often installed by ‘colour revolutions’.
The EU Member States’ foreign ministers, and its special representative, Baroness Ashton, have worked to tie the Ukraine to the EU by an agreement of association. Since the establishment of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) in 2009, the countries to the East of the EU have been under pressure to choose between the EU and the Russian-inspired Customs Union. When this was abandoned by Yanukovich, the EU backed his removal and helped put in place a new government sympathetic to the EU’s objectives. For Russia, closer trade ties between the EU and the Ukraine are perceived as a geopolitical threat and an effort to lure Russia’s near abroad into the Western orbit.
The Ukrainian conflict and the seizure of Crimea pose a challenge to the EU and it exposes Europe’s deepest anxieties. To avoid facing up to its own inexorable decline, the EU, like the United States, has plunged ahead with a radically anti-Russian geopolitical and ideological agenda based on left-wing fantasies about resurgent nationalism in Moscow. More significantly, the Ukraine debacle exposes the failure of the EU to realise an inclusive and pan-European solution that genuinely addresses sovereignty, security and economic order on Europe’s contested borderlands.
Dr Ghoncheh is with the Iranian Heritage Foundation Visiting Fellow. She is also a Just member.