Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 22 – For months,
Moscow officials and commentators have complained about what they say is a
double standard on the part of the West, arguing that Western governments and
writers are condemning Russia for doing in Ukraine exactly what the US and the
West more generally have done elsewhere.
Such complaints are in every case false
or at least overstated, but they are plausible enough to ring true with many Russians
and even with some in the West who then invoke them to argue that their
governments must refrain from criticizing the Russian government’s actions
because their governments have done the same or, in the eyes of some, even
worse.
But however that may be, the double
standards about which the Russians complain and some in the West talk about are
not the most important double standards now on display in the West: those are
the very different and all too real double standards Western governments and
analysts apply to Moscow, on the one hand, and Ukraine and other post-Soviet
states, on the other.
In this case of double standards,
Moscow is routinely held to lower standards than the others, is subjected to
far less criticism than is directed at the others, and is not given the
constant improving lectures on how it must behave domestically and
internationally if it is to be a partner of the West.
Fresh examples of this appear on a
daily basis. Here are just three. First,
the Russian Federation has by Vladimir Putin’s own acknowledgement used
military force to annex Ukraine’s Crimea and although Moscow denies it has used
cover military and security operatives to destabilize the southeastern portions
of Ukraine.
If any other country had done that,
the West would have classified that as an invasion, a clear violation of
international law, and asked itself first and foremost what it could do to
repel the invaders. But in this case, many Western politicians and commentators
have gone out of their way to understand the aggressor and condemn the
victim.
These politicians and commentators
gone so far in many cases that they have accepted Russian propaganda and blamed
the victim rather than the victimizer, accepting without checking false Russian
claims about “oppression” of Russian speakers by Ukraine and about the ludicrous
notion that Crimea was somehow “Russian anyhow” from time immemorial.
To see how much this reflects a
double standard, imagine how these same Western writers would have reacted if
instead of Russians, Ukrainians had advanced the same arguments about Russian
treatment of ethnic Ukrainians and Ukrainian speakers in the Russian Federation
or sent forces into that country to destabilize it.
Second, the Russian government has
made a mockery of elections and other elements of the democratic process, it
has restricted the constitutional rights of its citizens, and it is one of the
most corrupt countries on earth. Ukraine
is not perfect on any of these measures, but it is far better on all these
measures than is the Russian Federation.
But anyone reading Western coverage
or commentaries would be unlikely to reach that conclusion. Instead, to the pleasure of Moscow, such an
individual would assume that the problems of Ukraine are uniquely bad and sui
generis rather than part and parcel of the badly mishandled transition there
and elsewhere from communism to democracy and free markets.
In reality, Ukraine has had real
elections in which the opposition has sometimes won, something that hasn’t
happen in Moscow. It has not restricted the rights of its population the way
the Kremlin has been doing, and the level of corruption in Ukraine pales into
insignificance when compared that plague in the Russian Federation.
To see how much a double standard this
reflects, ask oneself when was the last time that anyone in talking about
Ukraine pointed out Vladimir Putin’s lack of legitimation by free and fair
elections, when Kyiv shut down opposition media outlets and stifled the
Internet, and what Russians would find if they broke into one of Putin’s
palaces.
Such comparisons, however, are not made
on a regular basis. Instead, Western governments and media outlets routinely
instruct Kyiv on how important it is to ensure that the upcoming presidential
elections are handled well, how important it is to support Russian-language
media in Ukraine, and how important it is to fight corruption in Ukraine.
And third – and this is perhaps the most
offensive aspect of this double standard – Western governments and writers
routinely tell Ukrainians they must constantly take Russian feelings into
account and accept the neutralization and partial dismemberment of their
country rather than pursue their own dream of integrating their country whole
and free in the West.
Two corollaries of this are even more telling.
On the one hand, most of the West accepts de facto the Russian Anschluss of
Crimea even if some still say they will never recognize it. Indeed, in the
coverage of the events of Donetsk and Luhansk, Crimea has virtually disappeared
as an issue in the West.
And on the other, many Western
governments and commentators seemingly can’t restrain themselves from suggesting
that Vladimir Putin is “defusing the crisis” by pulling his troops back from
the Ukrainian border. He created a crisis for which he has largely escaped
personal blame and then he is given credit for supposedly ending it.
(Those who say such things should
remember the classic “Krokodil” cartoon from 1956 after Khrushchev’s secret
speech about the crimes of Stalin. In the drawing, a young boy is complaining
to his teacher that she’s given him a zero on a test. “Why did you do that, he asks plaintively,
after all, I’ve admitted all my mistakes.”)
Note that no one is telling Moscow and
the Russians that they must take Ukrainian feelings into account, must respect
the wishes of the Ukrainian people as well as respect international law, and
must not use subversive measures to try to prevent the Ukrainians from
achieving their goals.
Those defending this very different
treatment of Russia and Ukraine will point out that Russia has nuclear weapons
while Ukraine does not, that Russia is or at least was a great power and that
Ukraine is not, and that the West has a great deal of business to do with
Russia and that it does not with Ukraine.
But there are some deeper and even
uglier reasons lying behind this approach: a desire for a foreign policy on the
cheap that requires Western deference to regional powers or bullies, and an
often unspoken contempt for the countries in between Russia and the West based
on their pasts or on the assumption that they are somehow not as “real” as
Russia is.
Russian commentators are right that
there are double standards about in the world today. But they are wrong about
the nature of these double standards. And neither they nor often those in the
West who apply them are willing to acknowledge that the real double standards now
operating work to the benefit of Moscow rather than Ukraine or the West itself.
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