In an article published in the Washington Post, George Will
asked: “Can NATO restrain Russia ?”
and the next day, Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Putin's
Revealing Speech.” She was not responding to Will but was expressing that she
saw things from a position opposite to that of her counterpart. The Will
article came down on March 27, 2014 without a subtitle whereas the Noonan
article came down with the subtitle: “At the Kremlin, he makes the case for an
increasingly aggressive Russia .”
It was published on March 28, 2014.
Will makes no bones about what he means to say: Vladimir
Putin has proved to be in league with Hitler; one of the worst bandits in all
of human history. And he uses his entire article to draw parallels between what
happened in the early to mid-parts of the Twentieth Century, and what is
happening now in the early parts of the Twenty First Century. As to Noonan, she
makes use of the Putin speech to describe a situation that makes the reader
wonder if this is not more like a soap opera of epic dimensions.
What George Will is describing is revanchism in the sense
that Russia lost some
territory and is trying to take it back by force of arms like the dangerous
kidnapper that should be dealt with harshly by America , the policeman of the
world; and by NATO, his squad of special operations. But Noonan conveys the
sense that this is a family feud which promises to run for several episodes
with plenty of love-and-hate emotions generate among members of the family, and
plenty of fear generated by the meddling of outside forces.
Come to think of it, Crimea was given as a gift to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev while Ukraine itself did not separate from the Russian Federation .
Instead, it was Boris Yeltsin of the Federation that wanted to be free of the
old Soviet Union , and when the other republics
refused to break loose, he used a provision of the Soviet Constitution to break
the Federation away from the other republics.
Well, this sounds more like a messy affair of separation,
divorce and wooing back to the family nest than the definition of revanchism as
given by some dictionaries. In fact, it sounds more like revanchism in the
French sense of the word because the events are a testament to the rivalry that
still exists between the two old camps of the Cold War than they are of a lost
territory which Russia
is trying to take back by force of arms.
And so, there should be no doubt that what is happening on
the Eurasian Continent is a human drama that is played out not by individual
characters, but by groups of various ethnic backgrounds and various languages;
groups that lived together as a family for hundreds if not thousands of years.
They tried separation, even divorce but in the end, came back to square one
which is the uncertainty about what it is they really want to do.
What is complicating matters is the meddling by some members
of the European Union as well as NATO, acting in a manner reminiscent of the
old rivalry between that organization and its counterpart, the now dissolved
Warsaw Pact. These members view the events unfolding on the Eurasian Continent
through the same prism as that of George Will. They assert that the divorce
between Russia
and the old Republics is definitive, and that the latter have remarried to NATO
and to the European Union. Where the marriage has not been consummated, as is
the case with Ukraine and Georgia , it
will soon be because it is how it must be.
As in all human affairs, it is how you view a situation that
determines how you react to it, therefore what the ultimate outcome will be. In
the Will-Noonan dichotomy, neither extreme would be a good choice to make,
which is why the dichotomy must be rejected. Therefore, a case must be made for
an alternative that will make it clear that no matter what happened to have
caused the break-up of the old Soviet family, getting it back together by means
that fall outside the norms established by international law is unacceptable.
But that does not mean if you're not a saint you're a demon.
It simply means that Russia
should not overreact, and that NATO and the European Union should not do
anything that will provoke Russia .
The situation must be handled with understanding, intelligence and deft.