{"id":37,"date":"2014-05-04T13:50:08","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T13:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/?p=37"},"modified":"2018-01-24T16:24:11","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T15:24:11","slug":"elections-in-a-divided-society-and-fragmenting-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/2014\/05\/elections-in-a-divided-society-and-fragmenting-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Elections in a divided society and fragmenting state?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are strong signs that Ukraine today is a divided society and a fragmented state. These divisions have not been invented or imposed by the enlargement policy of the EU or the forceful and decisive Russian reaction to this, however divisive those have been and still are.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Without the association agreement Yanukovich would most likely still be the head of an utterly corrupt state, leading a government fully dependent on Russia and confronted by\u00a0 increasing dissatisfaction of the wider public (in East and West Ukraine). Without Russia\u2019s intervention the interim government would most likely have been able to survive until election day, would have contained (if not resolved or fully controlled) civil protest and violent resistance against its interim rule and a new government would have ratified the association agreement soon after elections. <\/span><\/p>\n

The principle disagreement between sizable social groups and their elites on the question of orientation<\/a> towards Russia or towards the West is at least as old as the Orange Revolution<\/a> in 2004. However, as soon as this more philosophical and fuzzy notion of orientation turned into an either-or option of institutional integration<\/a> (customs union<\/a> as starting point for a future Eurasian political union versus association agreement<\/a> with the option of eventual integration into the European Union) disagreement turned into confrontation. Russia single handily added a military dimension to this, challenging international relations by its blitz annexation of Crimea as well as the build-up of an intervention-force<\/a> on Ukraine\u2019s northern, eastern and southern borders and fostered a re-interpretation of the conflict along ethnic and civilizatory lines. <\/span><\/p>\n

Adding to this: <\/span><\/p>\n

(a) the inherent weakness of an interim government installed to significant extent by a mass protest movement that had eventually turned violent and culminated in a bloodbath executed by state security forces; <\/span><\/p>\n

(b) the failure of two political agreements negotiated by high-level diplomatic missions (Agreement on the Settlement of the Crisis in Ukraine, 21st of February<\/a> 2014 and the Geneva Agreement of April 17<\/a> 2014) because of political as well as “objective” commitment problems of the signatories; <\/span><\/p>\n

(c) unnecessary mistakes made by the Kiev interim Government that added to the fragmentation of state and society, most importantly hastily disbanding the special police force Berkut, using the army in botched operations termed as “anti-terrorist operations” (copying the rather cynical and unfortunate lingo of Russia\u2019s second campaign in Chechnya<\/a>), disbanding some formal army units while at the same time trying to organise some kind of peoples defence militia<\/a> (national guard) with strong participations of the Maidan street fighters, declaring that the government lost control<\/a> over many parts of the country while at the same time holding the police responsible for the loss of life in Odessa<\/a> etc..<\/span><\/p>\n

All of the above results into a situation in which elections will most likely not solve the crisis but rather further escalate the confrontation. Elections only work as procedure to temporarily allocate power in a political competition if all involved parties are convinced that the winner is not taking all for the foreseeable future. Since Russia forcefully empowered ethnic interpretations of political divisions voting under current conditions may even lead to more rather than less violence (as it did during the breakup of Yugoslavia). <\/span><\/p>\n

Hence, just because Russia is (generally and specifically) against elections with unpredictable outcomes does not mean that elections in Ukraine under current conditions are a very good idea and should be defined as litmus test for a further escalation of sanctions against Russia<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

A transitional government of national unity would possibly yield better results in terms of stabilizing the situation. Such a compromise government would give Russia to some degree political leverage they are aiming for but would make the option of further covert or overt military intervention less likely.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not what the West had in mind until the crises escalated but since Russia is willing to deploy military force in Ukraine and the West is not it is quite clear that for the foreseeable future Ukraine (or what is left of it) will not integrate into the EU institutional architecture. It is a question of political decency to admit to the limits of political will and capacity to confront Russia over Ukraine. What needs to be avoided is that Ukrainian society pays the price of a war they can only lose only to increase the price Russia will pay for re-asserting dominance over part of its neighbours. <\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, the West should foster its own integration, contain the new ethno-chauvinist Russian policy where it really has the resources to do so, play for the long term in order to weaken the institutionally already demaged current Russian regime. The West should not provide Putin’s government with one key asset it so desperately needs in order to survive the coming economic and political crisis at home: an aggressive and threatening external foe. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are strong signs that Ukraine today is a divided society and a fragmented state. These divisions have not been invented or imposed by the enlargement policy of the EU or the forceful and decisive Russian reaction to this, however divisive those have been and still are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[4,22,23,7,11,12],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-commentary","tag-conflict","tag-elections","tag-eu","tag-international-relations","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":356,"href":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jkoehler.diskstation.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}