With Crimea boiling, there's very little accurate information on the day to day. After hearing false reports of explosions in Simferopol last night, I began a live blog. Attempting to verify information was the most frustrating task I ever engaged in as a blogger. Both sides are engaged in such strong disinformation campaigns that it's nearly impossible to discern what's really happening day to day.
Both the Russians and Ukrainians are engaged in this disinformation. The Ukrainians are posting hoax videos of Russian choppers, and are claiming that Greater Ukraine is being invaded. It is not. They're claiming that the military standoffs at bases in Crimea are turning bloody. They are not.
Similarly, the Russians are claiming that the Ukrainians are "Fascists" and "Ultra Nationalists." They are not. They are claiming that the Ukrainian Government has outlawed Russian, and have cancelled Russia's right to use the base at Sevastopol. They have not.
Crimea is a messy, complicated situation. I hope to give an accessible overview to that situation in this post.
The most important thing to note is that this is not some conflict in a black sea backwater. This will have global consequences.
The most important, and most ignored people in Crimea: The Tatars
The Flag of the Crimean Tatars flies over the Barricades in Kyiv
I'm very surprised every time I read news stories saying that the Tatars are "Divided" or feel themselves "Pulled from all sides" and that no one really knows who they're going to support.
I find that surprising because not only are the Tatars completely capable of speaking for themselves, they have, loudly, and on multiple occassions. The best source for information on the Tatar Tribes is from their Ruling Body, the Mejlis, who have said that the annexation of Crimea by Russia is an existential threat to the Tatar people.
There is absolutely no reason for the Tatars to support Russia, at all, and that's because the Russians have been involved in an ongoing Genocide against the Tatars since 1944.
About 20,000 Tatars served in the Red Army, fighting in the Ukrainian and Crimean fronts. About 400 of those Tatars deserted, and joined the Germans. Another 9,000 or so tatars were conscripted by the Germans or Volunteered. Over a Million Russians and Ukrainians, served with the Germans during the Second World War, yet most of the blame was placed on the shoulders of the Tatars by Stalin and Beria.
ПОЕЗД СМЕРТИ 2 [Death Train 2]
Rastem Eminov
At Beria's suggestion, the entire Crimean Tatar population was forcibly removed from their homes. Many were sent to Uzbekistan, and many were sent into the Gulags. The Tatars claim that half of their population died during this process. The homes and apartment blocks that Russians live in in Crimea rightfully belong to the Tatars who were ethnically cleansed from their homeland.
That's why the Tatars make up only 12-20% of the population of Crimea, and the numbers aren't clear because some of them are undocumented, illegal immigrants in their own ethnic homeland.
And that's why the Tatar Flags flying from Barricades in Kyiv scare the Russians of Crimea so much. They're afraid that the Tartars want to evict Russians from the homes they live in.
The Tatars don't want to evict Russians from the homes they live in.
The Tatars have been setting up shantytowns in Crimea on public land and have been trying to get deeds to the spartan cinderblock buildings they've been constructing. They don't care who their neighbors are as long as they get to live in their ethnic homeland. They're not trying to regain the property stolen from their parents and grandparents by Stalin. Just being allowed to exist in Crimea is enough for them.
But they're afraid that if the Russians take Crimea again, Russian racist fear of "those fascist Tatars" will see them all deported back to Uzbekistan.
So when the Tatars say that the Russian annexation of Crimea is an existential threat, they're completely serious, and we need to take them seriously.
The Mejlis has been releasing press release after press release, but the press is widely ignoring them. You can read what the Tatars have to say, in poorly written English, here. They're so desperate to get their point of view out that they've set up an English-language portion of their website.
And their point of view is this: If the Crimean Tatar people are going to have any future at all, Crimea must remain within Ukraine. Anything else will lead to permanent exile, and eventual assimilation with the Uzbeks.
If Crimea is annexed, the Mejlis believes that their people will cease to exist.
And that makes this an even more dangerous situation. If Putin keeps Crimea, you can bet that the currently peaceful Tatars will become partisan fighters for their homeland. They'll probably be trained and equipped by furious Ukrainians. They'll engage in antirussian combat in Chechnya/Dagestan, and we'll end up with another situation mirroring Afghanistan with the Mujahadeen, where fighters from Afghanistan spread out across the globe.
The only way for the Crimean people to live in peace is if Crimea remains part of Ukraine.
What the hell is Putin doing?
When Putin came to power, Russia was falling apart. It is no longer falling apart, though it's certainly not a happy, cheery nation. But I don't think that anyone who looks at Russia in the 90s can say that the government was doing particularly well. Putin has rebuilt its economy, he's rebuilt its military, and now he's trying to reabsorb parts of the old Soviet Union that are full of members of the Rus ethnic group, and parts of the world conquered by the Russian Empire. The Russians consider these areas part of their sphere of influence.
Putin is under intense political pressure to protect the Base at Sevastopol, and he's under pressure to 'save' the Rus ethnics in Crimea from those Ukrainian fascist collaborators and their Tatar allies. That's how the Russian press is spinning this. It's Godwin's law elevated to statecraft. Remember, most of Russia believes the lie told by Stalin that the entire population of Tatars collaborated with the Nazis. Which is why they're calling the Ukrainian government fascist.
If we lived in another world, Putin could make it difficult for us to challenge him over Crimea by declaring a Crimean Tatar right of return, and get the indigenous population on his side. But that's politically impossible even if he wanted to. This is as much about "protecting" Ethnic Russians as it is about protecting the warm water port at Sevastopol. Admitting that Russia committed genocide against the Crimean Tatars, something the Russian government has refused to admit, would damage Putin politically, and would infuriate the Crimean Rus population. So there's no way in hell he's going to make that move, even if it would make it difficult to challenge him internationally.
The one argument that Putin has is that he believes the current Ukrainian government is illegitimate.
On that question hinges the reaction of the world to any diplomatic action against Russia. And the answer is, we don't know. I believe the Ukrainian government to be legitimate, having responded to criminal actions by the president. But I am not a lawyer, and international opinion does not take note of my beliefs.
The Nuclear Angle
Everyone who discusses nuclear weapons is discussing a possible nuclear exchange between the US and Russia.
That's not going to happen. The danger from nuclear weapons in this scenario is far, far more insidious than that.
You see, in the 1990s, Ukraine agreed to Nuclear Disarmament. In exchange, it's sovereignty and it's territory were guaranteed by the United States, the UK, Europe, and Russia. France and China have both unilaterally guaranteed Ukraine's security.
Ukraine is one of the very few post-disarmament states. You can bet that India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea are watching this situation very closely.
If the west and the big nuclear powers fail to defend Ukraine, we are telling the world that the only way for small nations to guarantee their sovereignty and territorial integrity is to acquire nuclear weapons. This can, and will, lead some nations to seek to acquire nuclear defenses.
If our word is not gold on this issue, if we do not find some way to guarantee the independence of Crimea, we will absolutely see nuclear proliferation begin to accelerate.
This is possibly the single most dangerous aspect of the conflict, and it is being completely ignored.
Oh, and another lie: RT and other propaganda engines are reporting that the Ukrainians are attempting Nuclear Rearmament. They're not. But if we don't defend them from Russia there is a chance that they will reactivate their nuclear weapons program.
Domino Effect Touters are Wrong
Here's how the argument goes: Russia took S. Ossetia and Abkhazia. Now it's taking the Crimea. The Russians want to own all of the old Soviet Union and Warsaw pact nations and if we don't fight them over Crimea today, we'll be fighting them over Poland and the Czech Republic tomorrow.
That's simply not true.
The issue here is warm water ports, and access to the Mediterranean.
Russia has the same Relation with Crimea that we have with the Naval Station at Guantanamo. I'm not talking about the Gulag, I'm talking about the Naval Base that helps us protect the Caribbean and keep it free from Pirates a la Oceana and Somalia. Russia for strategic reasons needs warm water ports, and Sevastopol offers the best natural naval port in the Black Sea.
Now, whether in this day and age it's appropriate for superpowers to hold on to pieces of other countries for the purpose of fleet basing is very sadly irrelevant to the diplomatic situation here. The US is not going to give up it's naval bases in Foreign Countries, and Russia is not going to give up Sevastopol. While I think this is a sad holdover from the imperial age, It's more important to guarantee the rights of the Crimean Tartars and the Ukrainian people than it is to fight imperialism everywhere, right now.
Russia has Sevastopol. The US has bases in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Okinawa, Guam, the Philippines, and elsewhere. We have absolutely no moral authority to tell the Russians to move their Black Sea Fleet, and maintaining access to that base is part of what this is all about. For there to be any diplomatic solution to this, we need to guarantee the Russians that they'll be able to keep their naval base. If we can't, they're going to take Crimea.
And as for the Domino Effect folks, there is no place of similar importance to Russia in our NATO allies in the Baltic.
The people saying the US has Zero Options are also wrong.
In 2013, Russia imported $300 billion worth of goods. They Exported $500 Billion.
That is where we hit them. We need to offer the Olive Branch and the Economic Sword. Russia is still developing. Its economy is still fragile, and Globalization makes it more exposed to economic sanction than the USSR ever was.
The Olive branch is this: Russia keeps their bases in Crimea, but the Territory stays Ukrainian. If they don't agree, then we use the Sword, and we have a huge list of economic options to choose from:
We can organize a full ban on Imports from and Exports to Russia. I mean oil and gas. We create an emergency stockpile for the eastern European countries that need heating gas, and use international aid to provide modernization, probably looking towards growth of renewables.
We freeze all monetary assets of Russian Corporations, Government agencies, and wealthy persons outside of Russia.
We stop accepting Russian passports and we institute a travel ban.
We encourage every nation in the developing world to join us in the asset freeze, and tell them that if they nationalize Russian corporate assets, we'll protect their decision to do so.
If we wanted to be extremely stupid, we could funnel materiel support to partisans in Dagestan and Chechnya. Because when we did that with the Mujahadeen, it didn't completely blow up in our faces!
And we tell the Russians that whatever we're doing, it's going to continue until they withdraw their troops from Crimea and Georgia and close their base at Sevastopol. We then negotiate back and forth until the Russians keep Sevastopol and probably parts of Georgia, but Crimea stays Ukrainian.
Ultimately, though, Putin needs a guarantee that he can keep his base at Sevastopol. We've got to find some way to guarantee him that, so that he can pull out of Crimea. And I think that's the direction Kerry is going.
But I'm fairly certain that Putin is going to call Kerry's bluff. He already has Crimea, why does he need to negotiate? What are we going to do, have Merkel send another strongly worded letter?
I think the Western World is incapable of working together to enforce international law.
I think that even if Barack Obama is on board for this kind of strong reaction, I doubt that European leaders have the strength to stand up to Putin, though it's clear that Eastern Europe, the ones who would be effected the most by an end to Russian oil and gas imports, are absolutely on board. I think we'll see tepid hand-wringing from Europe, and no direct economic action against Russia. With the Exception of Eastern Europe, Finland, and the UK, I don't think anyone else is on board. Too, I'm worried that China, eyeing Tibet, Senkaku, and Vietnam, will do everything they can to undermine economic Sanctions against Russia. We can ask them to fulfill their agreements to the defense of a state that agreed to nuclear disarmament, but no one knows what they're going to do.
We need Obama's diplomatic capabilities now, more than ever, if we want to get the Russians to leave Crimea be, if we want to prevent a wave of nuclear proliferation, and if we want to prevent yet another group of people from believing that international law has failed them and engaging in terrorism as a last resort.
And most importantly, we need things to stay peaceful. If this becomes an armed conflict instead of a diplomatic one...
That's really the nightmare scenario.
I don't think anyone really knows what kind of world we live in if the standoff in Crimea turns into a shooting war.