STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 3 March 2014

[Demeter]

11. Crimea, the Tinderbox By CHARLES KING NYT

I'D SAY, LESS A TINDERBOX, MORE A TAR-BABY FOR THE WEST

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/opinion/crimea-the-tinderbox.html


...Crimea is routinely described as “pro-Russian,” given that an estimated 58 percent of the population of two million is ethnic Russian, with another 24 percent Ukrainian and 12 percent Crimean Tatar. Many of its inhabitants, regardless of ethnicity, are actually Russian citizens or dual-passport holders. But the picture is even more complicated. A vital naval base run by another country, a community of patriotic military retirees, a multiethnic patchwork, a weak state and competing national mythologies — that mixture is why a Crimean conflict has long been the nightmare scenario in the former Soviet Union and now represents the gravest crisis in Europe since the end of the Cold War... Affirmations about territorial integrity and cries of foreign invasion are empty mantras at a moment when a major European country — unbuilt by a string of fatuous governments and now further destabilized from abroad — has ceased to exist as a functionally unified state. NATO cannot possibly extend security guarantees to a government that does not control its own territory. Yet even in the midst of a standoff, Russia and the West have a clear common interest: forestalling a civil war in the heart of Europe...

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If you were able to make your way through the closed airspace, past the demonstrators and Russian-run checkpoints, you could visit a spot that symbolizes why Crimea matters. The Cathedral of St. Vladimir rests on a small hill on Crimea’s southwestern coast. The church is a modern creation, gilded and graceless, but it stands on an auspicious site: the place where, it is thought, Vladimir adopted Christianity in 988 as the state religion of his principality, Rus.

To Russians, Vladimir is the first national saint and the truest progenitor of the modern Russian state. To Ukrainians, he is Volodymyr the Great, founder of the Slavic civilization that would eventually flourish farther north, in medieval Kiev. His church overlooks the expansive ruins of Chersonesus, an ancient Greek settlement that is one of modern Ukraine’s most convincing claims to continuous membership in the Western world.

Just around the headland is Sevastopol, the protected port and naval base where Tolstoy once served on the ramparts. During the Second World War, it was besieged and leveled by German bombers despite a heroic stand by the Soviet Army and partisans. It remained the seat of the Soviet Black Sea fleet after the war, and when the Soviet Union disappeared, the Russian and Ukrainian navies divided up the ships and berths. For generations, sailors and marines have returned from sea to retire in the city’s leafy neighborhoods.

An hour’s car ride away is Yalta, where czars vacationed and Chekhov wrote “The Cherry Orchard.” An hour farther is Stary Krym with its centuries-old mosque and the splendid palace at Bakhchisarai — two of the principal historical sites of the Crimean Tatars, the Muslim community that ruled Crimea for centuries before the Russians arrived. In 1783, when Catherine the Great wrested control from the Tatar khan and the Ottoman Turks, hundreds of thousands of Tatars fled the advancing Russian armies. A century and a half later, in 1944, those who remained behind were scooped up by Stalin and deported to Central Asia. Their children and grandchildren eventually returned to their ancient lands and now fly the blue Tatar flag, with its distinctive cattle-brand seal, alongside Ukrainian and Russian ones in the crowds of clashing protesters who have come into the streets of Sevastopol, Simferopol and other cities.

ONE THING THE US REALLY DOESN'T UNDERSTAND ABOUT EUROPE...HISTORY IS ALIVE THERE, AND HISTORY MATTERS.

IN THE US, THERE IS NO HISTORICAL TRADITION OF ANYTHING WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTIONS OF BIGOTRY AND CON GAMES. THE US IS THE WORLD'S CALVIN