At the Edge of the World

At the Edge of the World


The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Listening to the interview with Kimberly Marten, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Washington University, an expert on Eurasian politics, on the current situation in Ukraine.


When it comes to current sensitive geopolitical issues, any professor of political science or history begins to sound like a fool. Or a politician.


From the first take that she had made in the beginning of the interview it became clear that Kimberly Marten was not the person to talk seriously or candidly or in depth of the current geopolitical situation in Crimea, Ukraine. Perhaps, it was the very stupidity of that first statement of hers -- that President Putin had “lost and nobody could figure out why he took such a big risk for such little gain -- that made it so obviously disappointing... The alacrity and the matter-of-factness with which the silly thing was exclaimed only made it sound worse. Unfortunately for her, even when Mr. Stewart made a surprised retort -- as is his wont when interviewing his guests -- trying to help her out of such an early predicament, she only took it as a complement and, vividly amused, cackled with laughter. The interview might as well have ended then.


Jon Stewart proceed with the question about the nature of the aforementioned risk only to hear an answer that had completely destroyed any hope of a serious and expert conversation on the topic. According to Kimberly Marten, it was the risk of 1). a single arbitrary shot by a soldier triggering WWIII and 2). Mr. Putin losing his veto in the UN Security Council. With this, Kimberly Marten did not give Jon Stewart any opportunity to put in his warning remark. Instead, she proceeded to expand on that crazy notion.


The fact that Russia has not invaded Ukraine, as next mentioned by Jon Stewart, did not seem to matter to Ms Marten not a least bit. And Jon’s allusion to the fact that the soldiers that are already in Crimea look and speak Russian might look suspicious did not seem to have triggered in the Professor any normally anticipated professional reflex to bite on that bait.


This is where Jon Stewart jumped in and decided to take the lead in bringing accusations against Mr Vladimir Putin of giving up “the moral ground, if he had any” and compared the situation in Ukraine to that in Iraq of 2003 when the U.S. had completely disregarded the position of the UN Security Council and invaded the country. Apparently, Jon Stewart expected that the “expert” across the table would duly elaborate on his premise. But one could already see signs of doubt mixed with alarm in his eyes. It was not really that surprising that a College Professor of Political Science turned out to be superficial and disinterested. But it was a pity that time was about to be wasted on platitudes and common things when the topic was genuinely pressing.


His worries were no ungrounded. The bedeviled Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Political Science had managed to say only one sentence that did not made her sound like a complete idiot. But she quickly made up for that by stating that the interim regime that had occupied government buildings in Kiev by force is “actually relatively a democracy”. After admitting that the previous constitutionally elected government was unconstitutionally toppled by a group of conspirators, who had used the force of Nazi storm troopers to storm the government buildings and establish themselves in as the new rulers of Ukraine. A mention of a “majority vote in parliament” as a legitimizing factor in favor of the new “government” in Kiev, whose militant activists had taken all the government buildings and now were roaming the streets of the capital city terrorising law enforcement officers and hunting down elected officials and anybody who opposed the new rulers, sounded ludicrous and unconvincing.


A country that is ruled by a group of conspirators, who had taken power in the capital city through a classic coup by resorting to sheer physique of specially trained Nazi storm troopers and fascist-minded youth from western regions of the country, in defiance of the Constitution and existing laws, cannot be called a democracy by any means. Especially so when the majority of the population in the greater part of the country is actively opposed to such a coup. More so, when those of the opposing peaceful and befuddled majority who dare to question the legitimacy of the armed takeover of the government buildings are immediately physically assaulted, intimidated, beaten up, tortured and sometimes even killed by the regime’s militant activists. That immediately reminds one of the Nazi Germany of the 1930s.


Russian-speaking population in the east and south of the country, and Crimea were among the first to voice their indignation. In the absence of the law enforcement authorities and a constitutionally legitimate government in the country, the Russian leaders in Crimea have announced that they are willing to join Russian Federation and become part of Russia to be protected against the intimidation and murderous policies on the part of the illegal and unconstitutional regime that has brought Ukraine to the brink of destruction.


In the atmosphere of political and economic uncertainty, the Russian population has all but become outlaws on their own land thanks to murderous and chauvinistic activities of some of the most radical nationalists on the part of the residents of the western regions of the country. Mostly made up of fascist-minded storm troopers from the western parts of Ukraine (Galicia), Russia-haters have begun to penetrate the Russian-speaking regions in the East and South, including the Crimea peninsula. They were trying to smuggle arms and explosives in the areas and to intimidate local Russian-speaking population. Such attempts are still being made by certain fascist-minded groups but they have met with resistance by the local population.


The Russians have been subjected to severe discrimination and attempts to drive them off their own land in eastern and southern parts of the country. In the current situation of political anarchy and statelessness and in view of the utter unconstitutionality of the interim government, people in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine -- which for the most time in the past have been historically part of Russia -- voiced their intention to rejoin Russia to ensure their own safety and political, and economic security.


President Vladimir Putin made it clear all along that he would use military force if necessary to ensure the safety and peace of Russian-speaking residents in Ukraine, especially in the eastern and southern parts of the country where the majority of the population is ethnic Russians. In the face of mortal danger, if and when the majority of Russian people in Ukraine express their will to rejoin Russia, it is Putin’s duty to do so! That is the right thing to do!


In a situation when the regime clearly lacks legitimacy simply for the fact that by taking power it has violated the Constitution, the new leadership has no right to speak on behalf of the whole of the population of the country. The military junta that has taken power and intends to hold on to that power by the force of military brigades of fascist storm troopers cannot guarantee a free and just elections. They have taken over the country by force thereby delegitimizing both the Constitution that they have violated and the statehood of the country itself. Ukraine, by virtue of the coup that destroyed the previous political establishment, has become a different political entity, now.


If the new regime, yet nonlegitimized as its, was capable of finding a compromise of interests of all the members of the former state, then there would be grounds to talk about waiting for elections. But if the ruling junta overtly supports one part of the population to the detriment of the other, openly persecuting and killing a certain ethnic entity in a genocidal way, even to the point of starting a civil war and triggering a break up and disintegration of the state as a whole, then such regime proves that is doomed. A regime that leads its country toward civil war and disintegration does not deserve to exist.


People that have found themselves entangled in this predicament where the new rulers have turned out to be unable to control the political situation and have not learned the art of compromise do not need to suffer indefinitely, though. If the newly emerged regime is so incompetent that it cannot make the two parts of the country to cooperate with each other and there is no way to reconciliation, in a situation when one faction inevitably seeks domination over the other to the point of mutual disintegration, then a wise policy toward such a state would be consolidation of respective parts by outside partners. This way the integrity of the state would be preserved through the preservation of the separate parts.


Ukraine is that kind of state. It is not a big traditional state in European sense. Historically, it has existed as a conglomeration of slavic tribes that had been parts of different larger and stronger political entities, including Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, Crimean Khanate, the Tatar Golden Horde, Genghis Khan’s Mongol empire, and Venetians and Genoese.


Whenever those lands were not under someone else’s direct rule, war and anarchy reigned over the territory. Between 1917 and 1919, after the fall of the major empires in the region, not one but several separate Ukrainian republics manifested independence.


As the area of Ukraine fell into warfare again, it was also fought over by German and Austrian forces, the Red Army of Bolshevik Russia, the White Forces of General Denikin, the Polish Army, and local anarchists led by Nestor Makhno.


Kiev itself was occupied by many different armies. The city was captured by the Bolsheviks on 9 February 1918, by the Germans on 2 March 1918, by the Bolsheviks a second time on 5 February 1919, by the White Army on 31 August 1919, by Bolsheviks for a third time on 15 December 1919, by the Polish Army on 6 May 1920, and finally by the Bolsheviks for the fourth time on 12 June 1920.


The defeat in the Polish-Ukrainian War and then the failure of Warsaw to oust the Bolsheviks during the Kiev Operation led almost to the occupation of Poland itself in 1920. Polish-Soviet War led to the signing of the Peace of Riga in March 1921, and after that a part of Ukraine west of Zbruch had been incorporated into Poland, and the east became part of the Soviet Union as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.


The Western part of the country was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939. Crimea, became part of Ukraine only in 1954 , when Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian by birth, awarded it as part of the 300th-year celebration of a Russian agreement with the Cossacks.


Thus, after having previously been under some kind of foreign rule since the 14th century, Ukraine has been independent for only 23 years now.



The population is ethnically and culturally diverse. The west of the country is largely Catholic while the east is largely Russian Orthodox. The west speaks Ukrainian. The east speaks mostly Russian. Population: Ukrainians - 80%; Russians - 20%.


Population of the currently disputed Crimea: Russians - 60%; Ukrainians - 25%; Tatars - 15%.


The state of Ukraine is by no means a strong or self-sustainable political entity. In fact, this area has never been one throughout the history of the tribes living there. It is not only because of the ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity of the peoples living there. The area is geopolitically a crossroads, a natural bridge between the West, the East, the North, and the South. Everybody, from western Venetians to eastern Mongols to northern Swedes to southern Turks at some point in history had tried to control the “edge” of their empire in a land, which served as a gates to other parts of the world.


But there has been only one country that had a most natural right to this place by virtue of her birth -- and it was Kievan Rus. As Henry A. Kissinger has rightly acknowledged in one of his recent articles, “to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709, were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black Sea Fleet — Russia’s means of projecting power in the Mediterranean — is based by long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia”.



According to Henry A. Kissinger, “far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them”.


In the past, the empires, either in the West or in the East or in the South or in the North, recurrently and insufficiently had reached out to this area each from their respective end of the world just to loose this territory eventually. Old time empires just did not have enough resources to sustain their rule over this “edge” of the world. Today, we have a unique opportunity to link our efforts over this area in order to sustain this place politically and economically on a permanent basis, all four parts of the world standing at the “edge” of Kiev with respective responsibilities shared between the European Union (representing the West and the North), Turkey (representing the South), and Russia in the east.


In order to keep the “gates” of the world secure a workable scheme is required. Preserving the integrity of Ukraine is not an end objective in itself. The country is too diverse to imagine that its people in different parts of the country are genuinely willing to entertain the thought that they are one nation. They are not. And they have never been, in a natural course of history. Catholics belong to the West and to the North. Russian Orthodox belong to the East. Tatars belong to the South. And this is not just a geographic reality of the Ukraine itself, which has always been “on the edge” of the wide swath of the territory of one empire or another (“Ukraine” in Russian language is consonant with the word, meaning “edge, brink”). Moreover, it is not just the reality of the combined continents of Europe and Asia. Given today’s degree of global interconnectedness, it is the reality of the whole world. Ukraine has turned out to be that “edge” of the world where all the major global powers have come together.


Ukraine should certainly have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe. But by Ukraine we should see separate ethnic groups within the country, rather than the country as a whole. Let Ukraine freely choose its economic and political associations with Europe, Turkey and Russia but not as one state, which it has struggle to be for the past 23 years and has failed predictably. Because it had never existed as one state, there is really no reason for it to try to, if there is no existential need for such an experiment. The western and northern ethnic Ukrainians (Catholics) want to be with the European Union, so let them be. The eastern and southern Russians want to be with Russia, so let them be. The southern Tatars want to be in Crimea and with Turkey, so let them, too, along with Russians.


This is the most natural outcome that has to be facilitated by the world’s leading powers in a controlled and civilized way, peacefully and to the mutual benefits of all parties involved. The fact that Russia is willing to risk its immediate economic benefits from trade relationships with Europe -- which is so difficult to understand for people looking at this place from other parts of the world -- attests to the unique position of Russia with regard to Ukraine, as mentioned earlier by Kissinger. The reality of the Russian part at the “edge” of the Russian world that cries to reunite with the main body of the East in this virtual center of the world is far more vividly and clearly seen from Russia, which has never been alien to Ukraine.


Looking from Europe, let alone North America, the inevitability of reunion of the western ethnic Ukrainian Catholics with the Catholic Europe does not appear to be as necessary and as dramatic and logical as it actually is. But if looking at this problem from the premiss of the alleged need to preserve the integrity of what we know today as the state of Ukraine, the aroused difficulties make this problem seemingly unsolvable. Whereas, in reality there is no need whatsoever to maintain the artificial status quo and western Catholics should be aloud to associate politically and economically with Europe just as easily as the eastern Russian Orthodox with Russia.


Henry A. Kissinger wrote:

“Leaders of all sides should return to examining outcomes, not compete in posturing. Here is my notion of an outcome compatible with the values and security interests of all sides:

1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe.

2. Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it last came up.

3. Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the expressed will of its people”.


These three conditions in a place like this “edge” of the world, can only be met if all three socio-cultural entities there -- Ukrainians, Russians, and Tatars -- each is given an equal opportunity to freely choose their economic and political associations, as well as to be free to create its own state government, comparable with the expressed will of its people.


There is only one way to do it to the fullest of the expression of the will of all of the three ethnic entities in the area. There should be two separate states, joined by a border line: Western Catholic Ukraine and Eastern Orthodox Russia. Once the situation with the Western Catholics and the Russian Orthodox in the East of Ukraine is resolved in a positive way, the situation with the Western Europe and Russia in general will also be resolved, and subsequently all the kind of questions that had existed with regard to the Tatars in Crimea before will be resolved as well.


Unfortunately, the situation around Ukraine is often discussed in terms of short-term economic benefits. Whereas, it is a geopolitical as well as an economic problem with long-term consequences. Any talk today about preserving what we know as Ukraine as one state entity, with or without a greater autonomy of its constituent regions, including the Crimea peninsula, is incompatible with the realities of the existing world order and provocative in its effect.