EXTREME MANIPULATIONS OF SELF-DETERMINATION
(…cause fission impacts on existing hegemonic order)

The ongoing international crisis over the situation in the Ukraine, and the recent developments in its Crimean appendage, shows how volatile things can get whenever extreme manipulations of self-determination…cause fission impacts on existing hegemonic order.

We’ve seen it many times before in such disparate parts of the world as Timor, South Sudan, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Somalia, Kashmir, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Philippines, the outer fringes of China, Cyprus, Kurds…and a host of others besides.

The flotsam and jetsam of ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and sectarian enclaves, scattered within the matrixes of larger economic and political entities has always been a problem, especially when the economic and political structures of such entities also fail to provide effective means to equitably accommodate and incorporate them into those larger matrixes. And when that is further aggravated by corrupt and unresponsive governance, and repression of dissent or protest against that, the undercurrents of discontent become very susceptible to either internal or external manipulations to create violent opposition…or even popular uprisings…more often than not leading to civil war…as we’ve seen in Syria, and now, the Ukraine, as clear examples of what happens under such conditions.

Russia’s opportunistic manipulation of those conditions in the Ukraine, as a means of shoring up the eroded façade of its former hegemony in that region, is the main cause unleashing this crisis, but it isn’t the sole culprit in this affair. Internal factional conflicts within the Ukraine, all jockeying for power, all contributing to massive corruption and ineffective governance, led up to the violent upheavals in Kiev, the collapse of what passed for a national government, replaced by disunity and chaotic anarchy, allowed Russia to step in and manipulate the “self-determination” inclinations of the Russian-speaking elements within the Ukraine and Crimea to react as they have to these conditions.

Few countries in today’s world are totally immune from that “self-determination” bug, no matter how dormant or inert it might be. The Bretons of France, the Basques straddling France and Spain, the Scots in England (not to mention the Irish in its Ulster province), the Quebecois, in Canada…all are just as susceptible to what is happening with the Ukraine and the Crimea. The only defense against it is to ensure that any so-called pluralistic society is actually…pluralistic…in the way it treats those minority elements within it.

Perhaps the best defense and guidance to guard against such separatist fissions may be found in the ideal of the American motto – E Pluribus Unum – Out of Many…One.

None of that, of course, immediately resolves the situation with Russia in its present rampaging grizzly mode. Sanctions will perhaps have some impacts upon it, but these won’t really address the fundamentals involved, and since military confrontations with it are not a viable option, a broadly designed diplomatic arrangement may be the only way to bring it back into a workable co-existence with it.

One such diplomatic formula perhaps might be to propose the creation of an economic –cordon sanitaire – or buffer zone, between Russia and the rest of Western Europe as the proper answer. One that would combine all the former Soviet states from the Baltic to Georgia, into a – Middle Europe Free Trade Zone -, composed of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, not only for an economic and customs association between themselves, but with both the EU and Russia as well. Along with that, it would be made a completely neutral zone devoid of any political or military association or alliances with either the EU or Russia.

The creation of such a less centralized and looser economic buffer between itself and the EU would probably do much to drastically reduce Russia’s paranoid perspectives about NATO’s “drang nach osten” type expansion, and, without that irritant, Russia might then become much more amenable to better integrate itself with the rest of the European community.

In any event, such an approach would help defuse a dangerous situation, and, over time, provide the stability and prosperity everyone, including Russia, so desperately wants.

CENTURION