Weekend Economists Waiting for Godot March 7-9, 2014

[Demeter]

8. Why Russians Are ‘Paranoid’ By Peter Hitchens

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/03/further-thoughts-on-russia-.html

Further Thoughts on Russia PETER HITCHEN'S BLOG

...I would urge readers to study an article by Sir Rodric Braithwaite, the best ambassador this country ever sent to Moscow, profoundly knowledgeable about Russia, who is also more than fluent in Russian, and the author of ‘Afgantsy’, a fine study of the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, writing in yesterday’s ‘Independent on Sunday’.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/ukraine-crisis-no-wonder-vladimir-putin-says-crimea-is-russian-9162734.html

Sir Rodric gives a well-informed and thoughtful explanation of the origin of the dispute, and a cool assessment of our ability to intervene in it. How refreshing this is when compared to the temperature-raising coverage by journalists who cannot even pronounce ‘Simferopol’ , and the alarmist pronouncements of various schoolboy foreign ministers, who really ought to be forced to wear short trousers when speaking in public.... Jonathan Steele in the Guardian is also interesting and a corrective to much of the shouting and screaming going on:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/02/not-too-late-for-ukraine-nato-should-back-off

He rightly points out that public opinion polls in Ukraine have shown a consistent nationwide opposition to NATO membership, not just among Russian-speakers, but in general...I have argued unceasingly here that the World War Two myth has made serious discussion of foreign policy very difficult. So few people really understand what happened during that era, but that does not stop them from believing that they do.Thus they say idiotic things, over and over again. Worse, they think these things are clever...Now, what about Russian ‘paranoia’?

As I sometimes point out, Russia has good reason to be nervous. It has many possible threats to face. One contributor recently chided me for saying that the USSR faced a threat from Japan in the late 1930s and early 1940s. This is a forgivable error. Very few people are even aware of the undeclared war between Japan and the USSR which raged from 1938-1939. It ended (temporarily) at the widely-unknown battle of Khalkin Gol (also known as Nomonhan) in which Georgi Zhukov made his name and learned how to use tanks. Few also recall the severe tensions between the USSR and China which erupted in the 1970s, and may well erupt again, as China regards much of far eastern Russia as stolen territory, and eyes it keenly. Then of course there is the little problem with Germany, as often discussed here....Any visitor to Sevastopol will find it contains many monuments to genuinely heroic defences of that city against invasion (one of those invasions was our more or less incomprehensible incursion into the Crimea 160 years ago, which achieved a good deal less than nothing and cost a great deal of lives). The biggest memorials commemorate the 1941-44 invasion by Germany, which was resisted and eventually expelled at great human and material cost, in battles whose names and nature are unknown to most in the ‘West’...If they knew more about it, they might understand why Russians are ‘paranoid’. The country has no natural defensible borders. A street in southern Moscow, Ulitsa Bolshaya Ordinka (the street of the Great Horde) commemorates to this day the five-yearly visits to Moscow of the Great Horde, to collect tribute from that frontier city. We tend to think that the Urals, supposedly mountains but really rather unimpressive hills, form Russia’s eastern boundary. But it isn’t really true. From every direction, the heart of Russia lies open to invaders. Moscow has been invaded or occupied by Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians, The Golden (or Great) Horde, Crimean Tatars, Napoleon, No wonder the Russian word for ‘security’ (Byezopasnost) is a negative construction (‘Byez’ means ‘without’ ; ‘Opasnost’ means ‘danger’). The natural state of things is danger. This is why Russians were alarmed and perturbed by the NATO meddling in the Balkans, the outer edge of Slavic, Orthodox influence. And several readers have rightly pointed out that the NATO intervention in Kosovo (1998-9) provides an interesting precedent for Russia’s intervention in Crimea. The province was lawfully part of Serbia. But its majority population desired independence. NATO thereupon lent its air force to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), so securing Kosovar independence from Serbia (recognised by the USA, Britain and most EU states), which will perhaps end in a merger with Albania.



One might add that states which supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the attack on Libya, cannot really get very hot under the collar about Russia’s intervention in Ukraine....

A GOOD HISTORICALLY GROUNDED DISCUSSION OF CURRENT EVENTS...READ THE REST!