Evil Empire Revisited

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson's haughty editorial page piece?"Ukraine's Transition is Unfinished"?in the International Herald Tribune's Independence Day issue declared: "In pursuing a path to European integration there can be no democratic shortcuts." Robertson's opinion set the tone for his visit to Kiev the following day to talk to the Ukrainians about their future accession to the Euro-American military pact. His editorial goes on: "The entry rules are based on shared values of pluralist democracy, respect for the rule of law, free and open markets and press and political freedom."

The notion that the majority of Ukrainians are clamoring to join NATO?an organization that destroyed the sovereignty and economic infrastructure of their Slavic Orthodox brethren in Yugoslavia?is ridiculous. All indications are that NATO is highly unpopular in Ukraine. Robertson is essentially suggesting that popular opinion in a highly literate country should be swept aside in the interests of "pluralist democracy."

Lord Robertson's preaching echoes U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's message to the Ukrainian government in early June. During his very brief visit to Kiev, Rumsfeld "laid down the law" to President Leonid Kuchma about democracy and reform. The message to Kuchma?that the U.S. was "watching"?was all about how "we understand" the "difficult path" of creating "free political and free economic institutions" in an ex-Soviet country, and about how Washington was willing to show patience toward this troublesome child. The real message, of course, had nothing to with democracy.

Although the official American worldview is that the "free market" and "free trade" are great democratizing forces inseparable from law-governed society, this is only a smokescreen for the West's goal of plundering small states to transform them into impoverished dependencies, helpless to protest the looting of their economies for fear of feeling NATO's boot. What Washington cares about in Ukraine is not a "free market," but a Ukrainian government prepared to flog the country's national wealth on the cheap to Americans. Since the Russians have been offering more money for Ukraine's productive resources than Americans have (in accordance, oddly enough, with the "free market"), Ukraine hasn't sold to Uncle Sam. What the U.S. thinks Kuchma should be doing is letting American businesses "privatize" Ukraine's largest enterprises, shut them down and prevent them from competing. Evidently, too few Ukrainians are unemployed for Washington's liking.

As far as lecturing other countries on the rule of law is concerned, the U.S. enjoys a reputation in Ukraine as an organizer of coups d'etat, such as the one executed in Yugoslavia in October 2000. Politically informed Ukrainians talk about America attempting to apply the "Yugoslav model" to their country and providing political and financial backing for fringe groups to stage anti-Kuchma demonstrations. The objective: to force Kuchma to resign over the disappearance of an obscure journalist and replace him with pliant, pro-Western Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, wealthy ex-chairman of the Ukrainian National Bank and husband of an American, believed by Ukrainians to be a State Dept. employee.

After staged riots failed to bring about Kuchma's ouster, and Yushchenko was removed from office in a parliamentary no-confidence vote (in accordance, oddly enough again, with the rule of law), Rumsfeld made Washington's displeasure known to the Kiev leadership. Rumsfeld's Ukrainian hosts must have used well-justified epithets behind his back as he was leaving. If Ukrainians or any other ex-Socialist-bloc people ever looked on the West as a fosterer of the rule of law, those memories were surely long ago buried under the mountain of post-Cold War lies.

Unfortunately, Ukraine's next bout of revolutionary drama could be more serious. Many Western NATO-phile commentators view Ukraine as the linchpin of the West's entire strategy in the former USSR. Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who dreams of a Russian Federation broken up into pieces smaller than his native Poland, views Ukraine's geopolitical stance as the determinant of Russia's imperial status. Neither democratic opinion nor the lives of ordinary Ukrainians are relevant in the eyes of the frighteningly shrill, vaguely Nazistic "Zbig." Kiev, the birthplace of Russian civilization, cannot be allowed to live within Moscow's "sphere of influence."

While many Ukrainians were upset and disturbed by perceived Western provocation during the anti-Kuchma riots, they've probably only seen a warmup for what's to come. America will most likely back insurgencies in the west of the country, rocking the Kiev regime with the aim of toppling it. Western propaganda conveys western Ukraine as highly "nationalistic," depicting rare demonstrations by handfuls of skinheads as serious affairs. In reality, western Ukraine is overwhelmingly pro-Russian, much like the rest of the country.

The Big Lie will be that an authoritarian, pro-Russian regime is suppressing Ukrainian national self-determination and somehow threatening "freedom and democracy" around the globe. Money and guns will pour into the hands of extremists with no popular base among the peaceful inhabitants. NATO's path of destabilization and destruction will add to the flashpoints already riddling the world, thus feeding the interests of America's defense sector, whose stock value depends largely on the perception that the U.S. is under constant, imminent threat of large-scale attack from all sides. Globally, this strategy will continue to damage democracy, the rule of law and all the other grand notions to which people like Rumsfeld and Robertson regularly pay lip service. Then again, maybe they'll get their "free market."