Kevin alleges that I “concede the legitimacy of Russia’s proprietary interest in the foreign relations of its neighbors. I myself am not willing to concede that. I don’t think it is any business of Moscow’s what international organizations Ukraine — or Lithuania, or little Montenegro — belong to.”
Sure. What business of the United States was it that Cuba wanted to host Russian nuclear missiles? It was a sovereign nation, wounded by our sanctions.
Countries have interests about what military alliances their neighbors make. Does anyone think we would let Canada join a Chinese-led security pact, and do nothing as China put Canada on the fastest military buildups in post-war history?
GMAFB.
From Russia’s perspective it is the United States that took a proprietary interest in the relation of Ukraine with its neighbors. When Ukraine was seeking to make its future a decade ago, it sought an EU economic association agreement. Russia countered with its own set of blandishments, billions in aid and discounts on energy. Ukraine’s government signed with Russia, which kicked off real protests from its public. But the U.S. and its allies assisted that Maidan revolution, knocking over the fairly elected (if now unpopular) government, and by the end our assistant Secretary of State was informing the new government who should and shouldn’t be in high office.
As I argued previously, intelligent statesmen who run those smaller nations where geography and history place them close to their former oppressors or potential conquerors often decide on neutrality as the outer limit of their foreign policy. See: Ireland, Switzerland, and until recently, Ukraine. Where that has proved impossible you get results like North and South Korea.
Kevin notes that my position is unfalsifiable. Indeed. Sometimes, one has to admit that the policy has gone so far down a road you dislike that your suggestions for course correction are already useless; you’ve lost already.
Kevin also asks what I think Russia might be doing without NATO. Again, I doubt there is a possibility of going back, but ideally Europe would have a looser security system in which Russia had a stake, and we could induce them to cause more problems for China. Chinese interests are a real threat to Russia’s far east and China is a serious competitor against Russia for providing energy into Central Asia. But alas, an enormous military buildup in Ukraine is higher on their concerns.
But these alternate histories are like dreams, as we get dragged into Europe’s endless fratricides again, and our dependence on China grows.