By Peter Emerson (Director, The de Borda Institute)
The past
1944. The talks were getting nowhere, so Winston Churchill grabbed a piece of paper and wrote, “Poland, 90% yours, 10% ours; Czechoslovakia and others, 50:50; Greece, 90% ours, 10% yours.” Jozef Stalin looked for a moment and then… tick. The fate of millions, fixed, with a tick – the ‘percentages agreement’. Thus both the UK and the USSR retained their post-war spheres of influence.
Stalin then took control of Eastern Europe, the western border of which Churchill was the first to call the Iron Curtain in 1946. Thus the two allies against Hitler, one a capitalist, one a communist, both imperialists (with a common attraction to alcohol), became the adversaries of the Cold War. Next, Stalin cut off the tail of Czechoslovakia so that Russia had a common border with Hungary, all in anticipation of 1956, when Soviet tanks were to roll into Budapest (while British guns were to fight in Suez).
Inter alia, World War II brought about the beginning of the often painful end of the British and French Empires. One empire remained, however, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union. And another emerged, based on an expanded Monroe doctrine – that of the USA.
Unlike the other three empires, however, the Russian/Soviet domains were always contiguous. Initially, 1,000 years or so ago, Moscow, Moscovy, was a relatively small city state, a colony if you like of Ukraine, part of what was called Kievan Rus’. Later, while European sailors went westward, overseas, to conquer, Russian soldiers marched overland, eastwards, again to conquer. Ivan the Terrible took Kazan in 1552, and they continued, over the centuries, until they reached the Bering Straits (and even Alaska… oops, a step too far, too cold, so they sold it for a pup to the US). In the wake of Lenin’s 1917 coup d’état (revolution), only Finland got her independence, and Moscow retained the rest of its empire and spheres of influence, in the Caucasus for example. It gave lip service to the communists in Spain, who were miles away; and to its ‘comrades’ in Greece, who were also a little distant. But Poland? The old enemy? Right next door and on a common border? No; that had to be in Russia’s sphere. 90%. (And politically, 90% = 100%.) Tick.
So the battle lines were drawn. A few countries managed to stay neutral – Finland, Ireland, Switzerland and others – but pretty well everyone else took sides. Hence, in 1949, the formation of NATO, and in retaliation, six years later, the Warsaw Pact, both sides soon bristling with nuclear missiles.
In 1991, however, the Soviet Union collapsed (as Russia soon might), as did the Warsaw Pact. And NATO? The job done? Nuclear disarmament? Peace dividend? Time to retire, perhaps, to take up golf? Apparently not. NATO was then involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither exactly on the Atlantic seaboard, doing what should have been done, if at all, by the UN.
From Putin’s point of view, therefore – and not only former imperial peoples of the USSR dream of days long gone – 1985 and Mikhail Gorbachev were a disaster: the diminution of the huge Russian empire (even though it still goes all the way to the Pacific Ocean).
Perestroika involved many changes, not least democratisation and the right of self-determination. Now a century ago, Ireland opted out of the UK, and NI opted out of Ireland. In like manner, in 1992, Georgia opted out of the USSR, and Abkhazia out of Georgia. In fact, the first ethnic clashes in the Soviet Union had been in 1998, in Nagorno-Karabakh, with the headline in Moscow’s main newspaper Pravda the next morning, “This is our Northern Ireland,” ‘Вот Наш Оьлстер’. And wars, mainly ethno-religious wars, soon followed, in Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, Tajikistan (and Yugoslavia). In 2008, Georgia wanted South Ossetia back again, so Saakashvili started yet another war. Putin retaliated.
{In 1973, the NI border poll only made matters here worse. The world should have adopted a better form of decision-making. But no, and “all the wars in the former Yugoslavia started with a referendum,” (Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo’s newspaper, 7.2.1999). In the wake of that tragedy, the world should definitely have adopted a preferential form of decision-making. But again no.} Next, in 2014, in Crimea, where Stalin and Churchill had met 60 years earlier, the local Russian-speaking Ukrainians held a referendum, which is what we do – a non-preferential, adversarial, win-or-lose ballot; many of these are meaningless – as often as not, they identify the will, not of the people, not even of a majority of them, only that of the author. The question was pro-Moscow or pro-Kiev; the Tatars abstained; and Crimea was then annexed. Other Russian-speakers then held their referendums, in Donetsk and Luhansk, which is what Scotland was doing – and the word ‘Shotlandiya’ (Scotland, Шотландия) was used by Russian separatists, ‘justifying’ the unjustifiable. As it happened, yet others in Donetsk had yet another referendum – the Russian call it ‘matryoshka nationalism’ (after those famous Russian dolls) – trying to opt out of opting out in order to opt back in again, which of course is how Northern Ireland was concocted, a hundred years ago.
In 1990/1, the old Soviet Union was no more. There was the coup in Moscow, and on 24.8.91, the first party secretary Stanyslav Hurenko in Ukraine said, “Today, we will vote for independence, because if we don’t we’re in the shit.” Thus Ukraine became independent… and democratic… and divided into two. What had been a nation all Slav (apart from a few like the Tatars in Crimea) and, post-91, all Christian, split: on the left-bank of the Dniepr were the Orthodox, Russian-speakers; on the right bank, the Catholic/Uniate Ukrainian-speakers. In all, the differences were/are tiny: they are all Christian, and the two languages – Ukrainian and Russian – are very similar. But democracy, as practised, can mean division; and then it’s win-or-lose, as in war.
In 2004, it was the pro-West Yushchenko versus the pro-Moscow Yanukovich; the former won by a whisker. Well, in majoritarian democracies – 50% + 1 and all that – the winner gets everything and the loser gets nothing. Next it was Timoshenko against Yanukovich, and now the latter won, and won everything. Hence Maidan. Which Russia lost. Hence the above referendums, the break-away regions, and today, war – a totally unjustifiable war. But just as Karadžić said he would fight if he lost the referendum in Bosnia, so now Putin resorts to violence.
As always, the first victim is the truth. The people of Donetsk are the same ethnically, as those of Kiev. If ‘ethnic difference’ is sufficient justification for independence, then should not Chechnya be a separate state, or the land of the Buryats (near Lake Baikal), or that of the Chuckchis on the shores of the Pacific, or even that of the European Udmurts, a non-Slav people related to the Finns who live on the western side of the Ural Mountains? Indeed, to say the River Volga is Russian is like saying the Danube is Serbian.
Putin is a democrat, he says. He was elected, many times. Let’s take 2004: there were six other candidates, all of them, in his opinion, useless. So why have an election? He therefore issued a decree: he wanted at least 70% support of a minimum 70% turnout… because 70 x 70 = 49% which is as near as damn it 50%, a majority, which is what we believe in. And in any constituency which did not get 70 of 70, “those who are responsible will be punished,” he declared. (“Тот кто ответственный будет наказанным.”) Those responsible? The voters? No no; the officials, the election officers. As Stalin used to say, “It’s not the people who vote that count; it’s the people who count the votes.” It is all so easy to do, especially when the voting system is non-preferential. The result was, again, the elected dictator. He won by 71%.
The present
So, with Russian tanks yet again rolling across borders, what do we do now? The danger is that Putin, half-crazed, will not stop. He might even resort to nuclear war. It is all so horribly dangerous.
There is, therefore, no military solution. NATO posturings won’t help. In fact, they may just exacerbate the problem. It would be wiser to encourage Ukraine to offer a conditional surrender. And if it works, to then wait for Putin to die.
A further danger exists: a Gavrilo Princip figure – the teenager who started WWI in Sarajevo – in Estonia, say, or more likely in Georgia, might create a provocation. But if it’s in Estonia, which is in NATO… It is indeed horribly dangerous.
There is a distant hope, of course, for Ukraine has the best weapon of all – innocence. And the Russian army, notorious for its low morale at the best of times, may dissolve. May.
But what can we do? Well, the more immediate hope must surely lie in the peaceful protests now taking place in many cities in Moscow. We should therefore do everything we can to help them. That means, inter alia, ambassadors and business people and tourists and anyone else already in Russia should join those protests. (This, of course, is against the rules; but in going to war, Putin himself has already broken the law.)
In addition, our presidents and prime ministers could hand over to their deputies; then, with bishops, imams and rabbis, professors, writers, film stars and sports celebrities – old people in the main – they could go to Moscow, (or at least the Belarus border), to try and meet Putin. They might have to wait. They might need to fast. They might be killed. They might indeed, as real leaders/servants, have “to lay down their lives.”
The future
The lessons from this and earlier conflicts are many. If only Ukraine had had all-party power-sharing, in 1991, or at least in 2014, at the time of Maidan. Alas, initially, the EU was committed to majoritarianism – rule by a majority based on majority votes – (the Russian word for which, by the way, is ‘bolshevism’, большевизм). The EU changed its mind only in February 2014, now to advocate power-sharing. Too late. They arrived in Kiev on the very day that Yanukovich ran into exile.
Suffice here to suggest just a few reforms.
+ Never allow anyone individual to stay in power for more than, say, ten years. Sometimes it’s ok, as with Angela Merkel; but with too many others – Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the Emperor Kangxi and then Máo Zédōng in China, etc. ad nauseam – 10 years is often (more than) enough.
+ Recognise the right of self-determination, yes of course, but never imply that a territory can use a binary referendum to exercise that right. (And one of the reasons why China is not supporting Russia in the UN is because China would not want the Uighurs in Xīnjiāng, for example, to hold such a vote, let alone Hong Kong.)
+ Never allow just one individual to have total rule, with the power to re-shuffle his/her cabinet (as if appointing a personal praetorian guard). Rather, insist on all-party power-sharing. This would suggest we should always elect at least two people – both a president and a vice-president (the original US system) – or better still, let the entire parliament elect an all-party executive.
+ Remove the veto powers of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Indeed, if they used preferential voting, there would be no veto.
So lastly but most importantly,
+ never use single-preference voting systems, neither in elections nor in decision-making, and certainly not in constitutional referendums as per the Belfast Agreement.
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Written 27.2.2022