 |
| Ukrainian protesters leave Kiev city hall that they have occupied for two months. ( REUTERS/GLEB GARANICH) |
I sometimes ponder whether the American political mind could ever handle true “chaos,” in the way that so much of the world understands it. We so often find middle-aged upper class men in suits bickering over talking points in front of TV cameras, as the clock ticks towards some “doomsday” deadline, as the height of instability. For all of last week, the entire chattering class and its followers were all but completely focused on the political theatre surrounding the latest showdown over the debt ceiling (we even wrote about it here): would Speaker Boehner successfully pitch a strategy that the House Republicans could rally around?; would Paul Ryan lead the majority of the conference to side against the leadership?; would Mitch McConnell come forward and vote to invoke cloture over a Ted Cruz filibuster?
The answers to the first two quickly became no and yes, respectively. With some reluctance, Senator McConnell did come forward and give a “yay” to end the threat of a default. Yay for him, crisis averted through parliamentary procedure; and there are those who would say we’ve never had it so bad.
Lucky us; in the Ukraine, the opposition doesn’t seem quick to bother with gumming up the works through “prolonged debate,” though they do seem adept at holding the floor over an extended period of time. Just this morning, anti-government protesters ended a two-month occupation of Kiev’s city hall and agreed to “partially” open a road to government headquarters. In exchange, (per Reuters) “Criminal charges would be dropped against those protesters for violations committed between December 27 and February 2, it said - a period that includes a week of clashes in which six people were killed and hundreds of police and protesters injured.”
Not included on that list of casualties is Aleksandr Lobodenko, who not long ago sentenced two protesters to house arrest after they attempted to seize the city hall in Kremenchug (about 180 miles down the Dnieper from Kiev). Overnight on the 12th, he suffered a gunshot wound to the spine and died in the hospital; I don’t think I’m going too far in siding with the establishment in assuming that his two mysterious assailants might be connected to the movement he was involved in punishing.
Of course, deadly riots and political assassinations don’t just spring up for nothing; in this case, President Viktor Yanukovich found his government pressured by the Kremlin over attempts to leaves their sphere of influence and build closer ties with the EU, until he finally backed out of the publicly-popular pact with western Europe on November 21st.
The
protests began almost immediately, organized by opposition leaders including
heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, and were largely peaceful until government
forces began a quickly-escalating crackdown that ended largely in failure by the
middle of December, when riot police were forced withdraw after being beaten
back at the protest line. Aside from the occasional extreme beatings, and of course the deadly shootings that began in January, the lines haven’t shifted
back very much.
The
situation is precarious; President Yanukovich was forced to back down from a contested presidential election once before a decade ago. Now, entrenched in
power, it seems unlikely that he would simply give in second time. For
themselves, the Ukrainian people at-large are fighting to make the fateful
decision whether their country, geographically situated as it is, will be held
under the thumb of Putin’s increasingly neo-statist Russia, or if it shall tie
its fate to the more open and democratic ways of the EU (Nigel Farage may
dispute that point slightly).
For now, as the new amnesty goes into effect and Yanukovich prepares to offer Klitschko and the crowd new concessions, we wait.
* * *
Meanwhile, in Egypt, the new regime is
making moves towards the direction that I for one will go out on a limb and
call progress, though I remain infinitely disappointed in this White House’s
utter failure to provide the regime with some productive direction. To call
this a “new Egypt” really would be something of a fallacy; the current government
isn’t really distinct from old Naguib/Nasser/Sadat/Mubarak Egypt as it is a new
spin on it after a brief interruption.
At the head of the new government is the
man behind the non-coup coup, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; though surely
not perfect, he embodies the idea of (to steal a line from Thatcher) the “man
we can do business with.” His ouster of bumbling Islamist President Mohamed
Morsi early last July was a welcome exception to the sad rule of the “Arab
Spring” of late (somewhat humorously evoking in my mind master Yoda’s “At an
end your rule is, and not short enough it was” line).
Sisi has since severely cracked down on
the Muslim Brotherhood, which I was glad to see declared an illegal terrorist
organization on Christmas day, and other militant groups. He has taken his
crusade not only into the Sinai peninsula, but even as far as Gaza, launching operations against Hamas in his ruthless campaign against radical elements.
This fierce opposition to enemies of
both American interests and our Israeli allies should easily make Sisi something
of a friend to us—and he is just as disappointed as I that the Obama administration has not played a strong hand in backing the new regime, going as far as accusing the White House as having “turned [their] back on the Egyptians.”
The new government’s cast net has proven
wide. At the moment, twenty journalists, including Al-Jazeera employees, are standing trial on charges of abetting the Muslim Brotherhood regime via biased reporting of human rights abuses; meanwhile, an Egyptian employee of the United States embassy in Cairo who acted as a liaison to the Brotherhood has been held without charge for roughly three weeks.
With obvious room for improvement shown
by a regime that is most certainly a bit rough around the edges, it would unequivocally
be in the best interest of the United States government to cultivate strong and
productive relations with the Egyptian government before it is too late; Sisi's preparing a run for President, with large public support, and President Putin is already backing his yet-undeclared run. For the United States to allow
Russia the opportunity to become a major guiding force in Sisi’s campaign
against extremism is too big a risk to justify making.
* * *
If Egypt is moving somewhat in the right
direction in the absence of a coherent American strategy in the Mid-East,
Afghanistan is moving in the exact opposite direction. The past few years have
been nothing but a sad and steady downward slide in relations between the
United States and our supposed allies in Kabul.
I am proud to have supported the mission
in Afghanistan until the bloody end, but I cannot proclaim that there is much
more room for American involvement without delving into complete pointlessness.
President Karzai, once a capable partner during the Bush years, has evolved into
something of a foe; members of the Afghan security force, once presented as the pride of the nation’s future, now regularly turn their guns on the American soldiers who trained them.
Simply exiting the war is even turning out
to be as much of a complicated mess as the larger conflict itself. Karzai stubbornly refuses to sign any kind of bilateral agreement with the United States on the question of long-term security and troop presence, making a final withdrawal that much more difficult.
While we wait, he makes himself busy
with further undermining our interests wherever possible. While calls from both
Washington and inside Afghanistan for security talks have fallen on deaf ears,
Karzai made for Iran last month to begin “negotiating an economic and security ‘pact of friendship’” with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani; last week, he rejected US pleas and went ahead with the release of 65 suspected Taliban militant prisoners. Karzai responded to American criticism with a statement expressing his “hope that the United States will stop harassing Afghanistan’s procedures and judicial authority. Afghanistan is a sovereign country. If Afghan judiciary authorities decide to release prisoners, it’s of no concern to the U.S.” In
other words, we have all but entirely lost control over a government whose
existence is owed to us.
It now seems likely that we will have to
wait until after the election of Karzai’s successor this April to move forward
with talks. Possibly the most unfortunate side to this is that, in all
fairness, there is no clear alternative path for the White House to follow from
here.
The larger lesson in all of this should
be clear: the United States stands at a precarious point, lacking a clear international
directive, and quickly losing control and influence over a region that has
spent the past half-decade riding repeated fierce waves of instability, while a
resurgent Russia asserts its own growing influence over the geopolitical sphere.
If we do not quickly bring an end to this directionless movement, we cannot
have much of a right to complain when world our influence over world events
continues to erode, and will have little say in the glove shaped by rising new superpowers.
-Mitch
Carter is an Illinois State Scholar and an Associate Member of the Kendall
County Young Republicans.
Twitter @CartersCornerPR
No comments:
Post a Comment