Cold War or Hot Deal: The World's Options in the Ukraine Crisis, Part 1

a policy paper

Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Gangale and Marilyn Dudley-Flores
@ThomasGangale

PART 1

The authors have considerable experience in publishing in academic journals; however, the approval and publication process usually takes several months and can consume as much as a year. The authors are concerned that the 2014 crisis in Ukraine is developing rapidly into the most serious threat to international order since the Second World War. Accordingly, the authors have chosen to self-publish on the Internet as quickly as possible. If the ideas contained in this policy paper can be of value to national decision-makers, this would be far more important than adding one more professional publication to our curricula vitae.

INTRODUCTION

As the world spirals deeper into the Ukraine crisis, if it is serious about upholding international law and rolling back the most brazen land grab since the 1940s, the world needs to come to terms with the prospect of a Second Cold War with Russia and hunker down for another long, twilight struggle. If the world develops an effective strategy and executes it properly, the Second Cold War need not take as long nor be as costly to win as the First Cold War.

FACTS ON THE GROUND

In violation of the agreement between Ukraine and Russia regarding the stationing of Russian military personnel in Crimea, Russian troops deployed beyond the confines of their bases and rapidly seized control of strategic buildings and facilities in key Crimean cities. That Russian military personnel may have been aided by sympathizers in the Crimean population does not absolve the Russian military personnel of the international crime of aggression against the sovereign state of Ukraine.

RUSSIAN AUDACITY AND MENDACITY

That official Russian statements have been inconsistent regarding this crime of aggression in itself shows them to be fabrications. On one hand, it is claimed that these thousands of uniformed, well-armed and well-organized troops are local Crimean militia; however, it is not credible that such a large local militia could have equipped and trained itself while escaping the notice of Ukrainian authorities. Due to the massive influx of troops bereft of insignia and with no official cover, Ukrainians have taken to referring to them as “little green men” as though they dropped down from Mars.

On the other hand, Russian authorities assert the right to intervene in any part of Ukraine where a substantially Russian population may be threatened by the deterioration of civil order. This or indeed any pretext is clearly prohibited by Article 11 of the Montevideo Convention, and such action constitutes the use of force against the territorial integrity of Ukraine in violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter.

Yet a third excuse offered up by Russia is that it is upholding the right of self-determination of Crimea’s Russian population. This is a deliberate distortion of the meaning of the principle of national self-determination in international law; the right of self-determination is not a right of secession from a sovereign state. Certainly the principle of self-determination has gained in importance in the course of the past century; however, this right, as with all rights, is not absolute, and the application of this principle as it conflicts with the principle of territorial integrity of a sovereign state is highly problematic. Particularly with regard to democratic states, whether unitary or federal, international law presumes that a people can exercise their right of self-determination within the political system of the sovereign state. In 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada concluded that the province of Quebec did not have a right to secede either under international law or under the municipal law of Canada. In the same vein, Crimea does not have a right to secede under international law, or under the municipal law of Ukraine unless approved in a nationwide referendum. It is important to note that the 16 March 2014 referendum on Crimean secession from Ukraine was not nationwide, and therefore it was illegal under Crimean law. It is also important to note that Crimea enjoys considerable autonomy under the Ukrainian constitution. It is not at all clear that Crimea would enjoy a greater level of self-determination, or even an equal one, as a constituent part of the Russian Federation given the Russian state’s control of the media and its increasingly brutal crushing of dissent. Perhaps the strongest case that was ever made for secession was penned by Thomas Jefferson. “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” Such a case was not, and cannot be, made for Crimea. There could have been no “patient sufferance” of a “long train of abuses and usurpations,” given that the Crimea’s secession referendum occurred only a few weeks after the formation of the new government in Kiev that Crimean Russians allegedly feared.

As for the Russian claim that in annexing Crimea it rights a historical wrong, consider the following analogy. A parent gave a family heirloom to a cousin who was a minor. The parent’s minor child resented this, feeling that the parent should have passed down the heirloom to him. Decades later, the parent having died, the grownup child breaks into his cousin’s house and robs him at gunpoint. At his trial he asserts that he merely righted a historical wrong. You be the judge.

Cold War or Hot Deal: The World's Options in the Ukraine Crisis, Part 2
Cold War or Hot Deal: The World's Options in the Ukraine Crisis, Part 3
Cold War or Hot Deal: The World's Options in the Ukraine Crisis, Part 4