Kitabı oku: «Ukraine vs. Darkness», sayfa 2

Yes, it’s yet another turn of Europe’s newest history where Ukraine has a role to play. The role of someone who stands up for what she believes in and who shows that caving in to the enemy isn’t necessarily inevitable. In a pragmatic (some might even say, cowardly) world, we fight and bleed for freedom. And who knows, maybe Ukraine’s readiness to do that, will eventually remind some people in the “free world” that freedom is worth fighting for.

1 https://www.amazon.com/Diplomacy-Sir-Harold-George-Nicolson/dp/0934742529

2 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/01/stephen-hawking-dangerous-time-planet-inequality

3 https://www.kiwi-verlag.de/verlag/rights/book/joschka-fischer-der-abstieg-des-westens-9783462052923

4 https://www.cfr.org/article/liberal-world-order-rip

5 https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

For Whom the Bell Tolls

The world had a good run in 1990–2010. Not without setbacks, like the Balkan war or Putin’s ascent to power in Russia, with the ensuing bloodbath in Chechnya and the assault on Georgia—but in general, those were the two decades characterized rather by optimism and growth than despair and downturn. The USSR-led “Empire of Evil” ceased to exist. Democracy was on the march. Many Central and Eastern Europeans found freedom, prosperity, and a new geopolitical home in the EU and NATO. The globalized humankind grew richer, lived longer, traveled more, got to know each other better. Even the global financial crisis of 2008 didn’t sour the mood in the world.

In 2008, Fareed Zakaria’s beautifully written monograph “Post-American World”1 envisioned the dawn of a new era, where the rise of the West and the rise of the “rest” wouldn’t be mutually exclusive anymore. Probably back then, Mr. Zakaria wasn’t wrong; this kind of a win-win reality was indeed within reach. If only all of the “rest” had wanted it!

Well, a new era did come. But not the one Fareed Zakaria hoped for.

Vladimir Putin’s speech in Munich of 2007 and his invasion of Georgia in 2008 were the writing on the wall, but most people in the West chose to misread it. We know why. On the one hand, the EU was created in the post-World War Two world not to tackle enemies but to find compromises, to balance things out for the sake of a peaceful co-existence. The NATO predicated on the assumption that Russia is a difficult partner of a new kind and not an unsolved problem from the past. The very idea that despite the West’s peaceful demeanor and rhetoric, the Russian Federation would eventually switch from Khrushchev-like speeches to Hitler-like annexations was unimaginable in the mid-2000s. It probably didn’t occur even to EU’s gloomiest eggheads.

On the other hand, for the United States, all of a sudden seeing Russia for what it was (a reborn, resurgent, vengeful enemy) amid the 21st century would be tantamount to recognizing that the Cold War wasn’t really won by America, but rather put on hold during the Yeltsin rule in the 1990s and restarted under Putin in the 2000s. It would also require recognition that Putin’s nationalist resurgence had not been duly treated politically or militarily by the United States (or anybody else, for that matter). Neither Brussels nor Washington were ready to admit their mistakes or rethink their perception of Russia, let alone their perception of history. So, many decision-makers chose to be deaf and blind to the new growing threat. Even Putin’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 didn’t stop the West from starting yet another reset with Moscow (i.e. forgiving what Moscow did).

“The ex-captive nations”, as Edward Lucas has appositely called Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia,2 were less enthused than others in these two decades. And this for two reasons. First, in the era of global growth, their people remained poor. Second, in the age of other Eastern and Central Europeans moving towards the EU and NATO, the future of these countries remained unclear. The EU failed to provide them with even the vaguest roadmap towards membership (although even a mere informal “Once you will be ready, you will be in” pat on a shoulder would have sufficed), and NATO didn’t dare accept them. They were left back in EU’s and America’s blind spot—while Putin’s resurgent Russia kept pressing on. So, it was your classic “between the rock and a hard place” kind of a situation.

The in-between countries seemed like a possible battlefield—not because the West saw this region as its part of the global pie and was willing to fight for it, but rather because dropping this part of the pie altogether would have been too messy and too humiliating. And yet it was “dropped”. And it got messy. And it got humiliating—at first in Syria, where the EU and NATO were remarkably absent and where the United States was actively confronted by the Russian Federation but chose not to push back. And then Ukraine got attacked and was left bleeding—for sticking up for the West and undermining Putin’s chances of rebuilding a USSR 2.0.

When addressing the US Congress in September 2014, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko asked America to supply Ukraine’s army with lethal weapons to push back against Russian aggression. He uttered the words that went viral in political Washington: Ukrainian soldiers “need more military equipment—both non-lethal and lethal. Blankets and night-vision goggles are important, but one cannot win a war with blankets”. The State Department wasn’t happy. Poroshenko wasn’t supposed to ask for lethal weapons—and yet, he did. He did what a president does: he said what was on his citizens’ minds. But on the minds of the State Department apparently was: let’s not anger Russia!

I know this because I wrote that speech—and was almost certain that “the blanket” part would be left out (working outside of Poroshenko’s presidential administration, I couldn’t follow up and be sure what would happen with the text). I was criticized later for that line. Frankly, I still don’t know why it didn’t get kiboshed and why the speech was read almost exactly as I wrote it. But an even bigger mystery to me is this: how could a mere mentioning of giving Ukraine—America’s key partner in the region—a weapon to defend herself in a truly existential fight, cause this kind of reaction?

Ukraine and Syria weren’t just “a canary in the coal mine”. The two nations chose freedom over despotism and both were punished for it. One was bombed out; the other is being destroyed in a more sophisticated way. In the meantime, nothing has changed: the “free world” wants to be partners with the side who destroys freedom. How is this even possible?

The Trump presidency hasn’t been a good time for Ukraine-US relations, largely due to Mr. Trump’s personal animosity towards Ukraine and apparent affinity with Russia. Ukraine doesn’t have a problem with Donald Trump and even less with the Republican party—it was the US president who seemed to personally have a problem with Ukraine. But again, it all started before the 45th president got elected. In 2014, when asked by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, what happens if President Vladimir Putin rolls his troops into Ukraine, Barack Obama responded that in that case, there would be new sanctions and that “trying to find our way back to a cooperative functioning relationship with Russia during the remainder of my term … [would] be much more difficult.”3 This cold, passionless response amid August 2014, the bloodiest month of Russia’s war on Ukraine’s freedom, left many Ukrainians speechless.

With all due respect, I think that if America wants to be seen as a leader of the West, if it is worried about the “cooperative functioning relationship” not only with murdering dictators, but also with the freedom-loving countries who get harassed by those dictators; if the very term “free world” isn’t to end up in the dustbin of history—then the United States and the West more generally can’t afford to be so vague in drawing the line between good and evil. Even more so, they certainly can’t afford to draw no line at all, as happened during the infamous Putin/Trump press conference in Helsinki, 2018.

In Georgia, Ukraine and Syria, Putin declared a global war on freedom. A war that the West chose not to see in its true dimension because it wasn’t the West who was bleeding. After Ukraine, it was the turn of Belarus. Hundreds of thousands got beaten, suppressed, and harassed in Minsk and other Belarusian cities, with Russia’s clear backing. Meanwhile, “the free world” was almost openly looking for a compromise with Moscow over the destiny of this sovereign nation. Remember the numerous tweets and articles discussing whether “the Armenian model” (a full and official refusal to pursue the EU- and NATO-membership in exchange for Russia’s support) would be the right “deal” for Belarus? Ironically, right after this, the Armenian-Azerbaijani war flamed up.

Time and again, the West tries to find something that doesn’t exist: a compromise between freedom and unfreedom. The sad irony is: Moscow doesn’t bother to give the West even an appearance of a “deal”. Time and again, it sends the West a clear message: in the post-Soviet space, in “Russia’s backyard”—and at any place in the world that it proclaims its “zone of interest”—Moscow doesn’t compromise. It wants it all, and it wants it now—while the West can discuss “mutual face-saving options”, “diplomatic solutions”, “multilateral negotiation formats” till it’s blue in the face—and make a reset after a reset after a reset. Reset is what politicians do when they don’t know what to do. Or if they don’t have the guts to do the right thing.

Georgia, Syria, Ukraine, Belarus …—the list will inevitably grow with years, as the world’s nations won’t stop choosing freedom over unfreedom. At some point, Russia might be on the list too. How long is the “free world” planning to look away, as the Russian leadership, these empty-eyed ex-KGB operatives, will cement despotism wherever their tentacles reach? And their tentacles get longer with every year.

Vladimir Putin has created a kind of an around-the-clock global repair service for broken dictatorships: the number one go-to destination for failing authoritarian leaders the world over. So far, it does the job, with thousands of people dead, with new democracies bleeding, and with the West either passively watching or eagerly co-financing this political enterprise via joint ventures like the Nordstream-2 pipeline.

At some point, the US and EU will have to face the bitter truth: Russia chose to confront the West. It wasn’t forced to. It had other options—plenty of those. Yet it chose a covert global face-off instead of a win-win world. It decided on a strategy to undermine the West wherever it can. There is nothing the West can do to change this decision. It can either push back or look away, as Russia pushes on. No number of resets, peaceful speeches, friendly handshakes, and visits to the May 9th Victory Day parade in Moscow will make Putin reconsider his attitude. This for one simple reason: the confrontation mode is the one in which the Kremlin functions best and feels most comfortable, and through which the world makes most sense for today’s Russian leadership (for their electorate too, for that matter). All the friendly gestures aimed at assuaging the hostility will only persuade Russia that Putin was right in pegging the West as weak and corruptible.

No, the Soviet Union isn’t back. Not yet. Not without Ukraine—and Ukraine, despite all her flaws, isn’t budging. Ukraine has the guts to stand her ground. However, in some respect, today’s Russia is even more dangerous than the Soviet Union—primarily because it is more capable of getting inside the minds and souls of Western citizens, inside their pocketbooks and notebooks, inside their television and social media.

That’s why, by the way, the whole “We need to partner up with Russia to tackle China” argument doesn’t hold water. First of all, China is still a closed book for the West, and the West is a closed book for China. If China wants to undermine the West one way or another, it is impeded by the fact that it is so different mentally and historically. And vice versa. Second of all, China has a different sense of time. It can wait—unlike Russia, who sees this moment of the West’s weakness as a unique, historic opportunity to go on the offensive. Third of all, for Russia, this is payback time. For China, payback for what? Unlike Russia, China is not beset by an inferiority complex. China is a success—Russia isn’t, far from it. More than this, China became successful together with the West and because of the West, not despite it. So, once again—why destroy the world order that made China a success?

Whenever I hear the phrase “Russia isn’t the problem, China is!” I know I deal with someone who doesn’t know Russia (let alone China). And sometimes—with someone who has a vested interest in appeasing Putin and belittling the danger he represents. Did China bomb Syria and annex Crimea? Did China proclaim and adopt the “Gerasimov Doctrine”? Did China hire and inspire a whole army of “talking heads” in the news outlets and think tanks to undermine western societies? Did China fill social media with trolls posing as Americans, Germans, Brits? Did China finance anti-EU political parties all over the continent?

All the loose strings that the West has—Moscow knows how to pull them. From exploiting the interracial tensions to messing with democratic elections and from cultivating political intolerance to spreading the QAnon crackpot ideas. Provided the right mindset and a lot of money (both of which Putin has), the West has turned out to be a surprisingly easy target. At least, as long as the United States and the European Union put up with things going this way. Victory is an accomplishment—failure is a decision. So, dear America and Europe, be careful what you decide at this critical juncture of history!

Russia won’t stop till it’s made to stop. And there is a simple way to reach that goal if one has the guts to do it: make the sanctions as personal as possible. Let the Russian decision-makers, propagandists, oligarchs, and their families spend their vacations on Kamchatka and Chukotka, not in their England castles and Italian villas. Cancel their “golden passports”. Go after their money, cut them off from their wealth—via SWIFT, via visa bans, via freezing their bank accounts. Make not only their reputations toxic, but their money too.

That’s it. That’s all it takes. Start defending yourself—and be bold enough to not be greedy! Russia quickly penetrates your world because it can think like you; it knows how you tick. It wants to live like you and among you, too—without being your friend or even an honest partner. It’s a quintessential love/hate relationship. They hate you, but at the same time, you are their “promised land”, the place where they want their children to study and to live. Ban the decision-makers personally from the “promised land”—and they will be forced to change their decisions, their whole attitude towards the outside world. On the other hand, embrace them—and they will despise you even more.

Meanwhile, Ukraine (Putin’s sweatiest dream and sweetest bonus) is doing what she can on her own—fighting her own demons and the demons of the post-truth world simultaneously. The nation is never full of herself. Yet she is full of surprises. Whenever you think Ukraine is toast, she rises from the ashes. Whenever you think Ukraine is rushing into a new positive future, she finds a new political or moral crisis to stop and argue about. The world thinks of Ukraine as a corrupt nation—and yet, as I pointed out before, during Ukraine’s two revolutions, not a single store was looted. With the police off the streets, with Kyiv’s posh boutiques, shops, and supermarkets being at the mercy of the protesters in 2004 and 2013–14, not only were they not robbed—by some accounts, the usual burglary rate even decreased in those months.

So, who are we really—the corrupt ones or the idealists who fight for freedom and respect other peoples’ private property even when no one is watching? Well, we are both so far. With a large part of Ukraine’s political elite living a lie, we have been living a lie, too. But ultimately, Ukraine wants to live in truth. Hence, the two revolutions. Hence, Putin’s inability to buy or seduce us. Hence, the lingering hybrid war between Ukraine and the post-truth world embodied by Russia and its eager helpers in the West.

With the right leadership, with the right words and deeds on the part of the elite—Ukraine can turn the corner and enter a better future real fast. We are like a plane chained to the ground by two things: bad governance and corruption (caused by bad governance). Break these chains—and the plane will fly. What we need are reforms to Ukraine’s institutions, which nurture the corruption. We need to bring in the ministers and their deputies, the mid-level decision-makers who have the vision, reputation, and the guts to say no to the oligarchs and to the daily seductions of the public service. Once this happens, things will improve drastically and precipitously. Later on, I demonstrate in more detail how this can be done.

We Ukrainians know our sins. No one is more critical of Ukraine than we are. Yet, sometimes we deny our country even the credit she deserves. Sometimes we are blind to how much power and potential we have inside. That is why we are the “surprise nation”. We have surprised ourselves and the outside world in the past. And we are not done yet, far from it. I don’t only mean the two Maidans that changed the run of history in our region.

Most importantly, Ukraine is the bulwark in Putin’s way to reconquering what he deems as rightfully and historically his. If he can’t control Ukraine, all his other accomplishments are, if not completely worthless, then at least not as inspirational for future generations as he wants them to be. Without Ukraine, his whole legacy would be questionable. Without Ukraine, his entire organization, this horde of KGB/FSB orcs, war-mongering “girkins” and “borodais,”4 who stand behind him and look up to him, would question whether the boss got too old and lost his grip.

Ukraine and Russia have much in common. That is why the Ukrainian revolution is, to some extent, the Russian revolution too. It’s not like bringing a revolution to Russia, and changing it from the ground up must be the West’s goal. Far from it. Yet the line in the sand must be drawn: the world must make sure that neither Russia nor anyone else messes with other nations’ free will. International law must be respected again. At least, if we want to live in a world that is not 100% hypocritical.

On the other hand, no matter where you draw the line and how high or low you put the new plank of “international rules” in the post-Crimea reality, in every case, Ukraine is the West’s indispensable partner in the region, its “Israel” in the post-Soviet space. So, don’t look away when Ukraine gets assaulted. Don’t buy into Putin’s narrative that Ukraine and Russia are the same. They are not.

As Putin has shown in the last two decades, it’s not only about how wealthy, successful, and militarily advanced you are in today’s world, but also the sheer cunning and audacity of your plans and actions. In his case, it was the audacity of the destruction of the collective West. The destruction was his plan from the moment he entered the Kremlin in 2000. He took his sweet time. Stashing the necessary funds while the oil price was soaring during his first two presidential terms, crushing any dissent, making Russian oligarchs a mere extension of the FSB-controlled government, taking Russian media under full control during the 2000s—and only then coming down to the business of putting the ex-captive nations back into Russia’s captivity. The months after the Sochi Olympics were supposed to be a kind of a “D-Day”, after which Putin’s FSB/KGB would go on the offensive in erecting a USSR 2.0. Ukraine’s resistance slowed them down but didn’t swart this plan altogether.

If the West wants to stop the Russia-induced decay of the free world, it must summon the courage to stand up for what it believes in. But … what is that exactly?

I can’t get rid of the feeling that at some point between the 1990s and the 2010s, the West lost something important: faith. When a Ukrainian soldier fulfills his duty in Donbas and looks death in the eye, he fights for his freedom, and he believes in what he does. When a Russian invader takes him in a crosshair of his sniper rifle—he believes in his mad cocktail of propaganda lies, too. Like the Bible says, “the demons also believe and shudder”. But what is it that the West believes in?

In the last five years, I kept telling, writing, tweeting out the story of Albert Pavenko, Ruvim Pavenko, Viktor Bradarskiy, and Volodymyr Velychko—the four Ukrainian evangelicals, sadistically murdered by the militants from “Russian Orthodox Army” in Donbas in 2014 for merely going to a “wrong” church. I rang the bell. I contacted and met with religious leaders. I tagged religious organizations in my tweets and postings. Their public response was: silence.

These four young men, brethren of millions of evangelicals worldwide, were tortured and murdered for their faith. Thousands more were harassed and forced to flee—while the spiritual leaders of the West and their faithful followers … did what? Looked with admiration at Putin’s “conservative values”?

Years have passed since Albert, Ruvim, Viktor, and Volodymyr were kidnapped in front of their families as they were leaving their prayer house after the God Service. On a Sunday. On the Day of the Pentecost. It was the last time their kids and wives saw them. The burnt, tormented bodies of these modern days’ Christian martyrs were found in a collective grave when Ukraine liberated Slovyansk. Ever since, more and more churches have been shut in occupied Ukraine. The whole religious groups (like Jehovah Witnesses) were prohibited and outlawed. Where is the outrage? Where is the moral leadership? At a time when the evil has no shortage in leaders, it appears as if the good is utterly leaderless in today’s world.

What you fight for is what you believe in. And what you believe in is who you really are. No, it’s not about dragging America and the EU into yet another costly war. It’s about where your heart is. Where is it?

When freedom is outlawed in Ukraine’s occupied parts—it’s outlawed in Europe, in your world. As you sit in your comfortable cafes in Washington, Berlin, Paris, and Vienna, your world, the world of freedom is being eroded. One prayer house at a time. One human life at a time. One free mind at a time. Are you sure that eventually, the unfreedom won’t knock on your doors physically? I write “physically” because virtually it’s already there—as “Russia Today” in your television, as the growing volume of pro-Russia voices in your political discourse, as the hordes of the Russian trolls in your social media, as the hate that slowly, but surely fills your societies. I know you are convinced they will never come for you physically. “They won’t dare!”. Well, you are probably right at this moment, but who knows what comes next.

“They won’t dare!”—that’s what we Ukrainians kept telling ourselves till we saw: there is nothing Russia “won’t dare” if it sees an ample opportunity. Right now, Putin is busy taking control of Russia’s “near abroad”, i.e., the post-Soviet neighborhood, which also happens to be EU’s neighborhood, too. Once he is done with it, once his “lean, mean annexation machine” is up and running, once the Western societies are split up, weakened and hateful of each other—oh, it will be a different story then.

Barack Obama once said Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was one of his favorite books. Boy, was it a good time when the president of America actually read books! I hope though that President Obama had enough time to reread the novel. And most importantly—how do we get the collective West, the decision-makers of today, to reread Hemingway’s timeless classic? Because, sorry for the pathos, but—“Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls—it tolls for you”!

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post-American_World

2 https://cepa.org/wrong-map/

3 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/opinion/president-obama-thomas-l-friedman-iraq-and-world-affairs.html

4 Igor Girkin, Alexander Borodai—the Moscow-born founding fathers of “Ukrainian separatism”, who were instrumental in the occupation of Crimea and Donbas.