A Pig in a Poke

            Russia is annexing Crimea, and some of our prominent politicians are saying, “Let ‘em have it.”  Well, I’m beginning to think that maybe they’re right.   International law violations aside, the question becomes, “Is Russia buying a pig in the poke?”

            Russia has coveted Crimea ever since it transferred it to Ukraine in 1954.  With Murmansk iced-in half the year, there’s no doubt Russia could use a warm water port with access to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.  But is it worth the price?

            First, Crimea is not self-sustaining.  Until now, 40% of its economy has come from Ukraine in the form of subsidies.  This is about to come to a screeching halt.  Russia will have to pick up the tab.

            Second, one of Crimea’s prime sources of income is tourism, 60% of it from Ukraine whose sun worshipers have flocked to Crimea’s Black Sea beaches in the summer.  This also will end with annexation.

            Third, Crimea’s water, electricity, and most of its food comes from Ukraine across a narrow strip of land that will become an international border once Russian annexation is complete.  If Russia can cut Ukraine off from Russian natural gas, Ukraine can cut the Crimean peninsula off from food, water, and electricity.  Tit for tat.

            Third, Russians have no land access to Crimea.  To get there by land they must cross Ukrainian territory, something Ukraine will not easily permit.  The alternative is to build a three-mile bridge across the Kerch Strait.  Russia built such a bridge in 1944 after it liberated Crimea from Germany.  But the bridge collapsed only two years later because of ice.  A new bridge would take three and a half years to build at a cost of $3.5 billion.  That would no doubt put a big dent in Russia’s already shaky economy.  Russian sunbathers will have to wait.

            Another way to solve the access problem is for Russia to annex Ukraine’s eastern provinces, again under the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians.  Ukraine is not going to permit that without a fight.  So now we await Russia’s next move.

            

Ukrainians Remember

          When I was a student in Belgium in the early 60s I became friends with two young men who spoke proudly of their Ukrainian heritage.  As children they had managed with their families to escape the repressive Soviet regime in the country of their birth and find refuge in America, one in Cleveland and the other in New York.  With the help of government grants, they were working toward university degrees that would enable them to lead productive lives in their adopted country.  What I remember most about my two friends was their hatred for Russia.  The history of their homeland was imprinted on their souls.

          As we contemplate the incursions of Russia into the independent nation of Ukraine, we must not forget the atrocities Ukrainians endured over the centuries, none worse than the one at the hands of Stalin in 1933.  That atrocity was forced starvation.

          It shouldn’t have happened in a land called “the breadbasket of the USSR.”  But in the 1920s Stalin had replaced the Ukrainian political and cultural elite with Russian cadres, liquidated the Orthodox clergy, and imposed collectivization of the farms.  The peasants who resisted were either killed or sent to Siberia to pay for their effrontery.  Russia then set farm quotas on the collectives, letting the Ukrainians keep whatever they produced above the quotas.  When the quotas became impossible to meet, the Ukrainians starved.  The famine resulted in the loss of 10 million Ukrainian lives.

          Then the Germans invaded Ukraine in 1941 on their way to Moscow.  The Ukrainians welcomed them as liberators, but the Nazis were less interested in making friends than in finding and killing one million Ukrainian Jews.  By the time the Russians, unforgiving of infidelity, swept back through Ukraine, another 7 million Ukrainian civilians and 1.7 million soldiers lay dead.

          After World War II, the Soviet Union transformed Ukraine into an important center for arms production, hi-tech research, and nuclear weapons.  Ukraine even gave the Soviet Union two important leaders in Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev.  Tragically, in 1986 it also gave the world Chernobyl.

          Following the fall of Communism and the dismantling of the Soviet Union, Ukraine regained its independence in 1991, but continued to rely heavily on Russia, especially for its energy.  But when Ukraine began to lean toward an economic alliance with Western Europe, Russia decided to put a stop to it.  We know the rest of the story.

          I still have a vivid memory of my Ukrainian friends giving passionate demonstrations of native Ukrainian folkloric dances, and today I marvel at the resilience and tenacity of a people who, through all the invasions, the slaughters, and the mass starvation, have managed to retain their language and their culture, not to mention their lasting enmities.  The question now is whether or not it will retain its independence.     

Weak, Weak, Weak

          History is a valuable teacher.  But if we don’t learn its lessons, we are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past.

          Ironically, it was near the beautiful Crimean seaside resort of Yalta that a sick and soon-to-die President Roosevelt failed to confront Joseph Stalin in 1945.  Roosevelt said, “I think that if I give him everything that I possibly can and ask nothing in return…he won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world of democracy and peace.”   Wishful thinking.  Stalin went on to gobble up all of Eastern Europe, which the Soviet Union kept in virtual slavery for the next half-century.

          Has President Obama learned anything from mistakes of the past?  Apparently not.  His weakness in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine mirrors that of his predecessor at Yalta.  Stalin didn’t play nice.  Neither will Putin.

          But Obama’s weakness in his management of America’s foreign policy is nothing new.  It began with the president’s embarrassing apology tour and his denial of America’s exceptionalism, followed by scrapping plans for a missile defense program in Poland and the Czech Republic, leading from behind in Libya, and multiple failures of nerve in Egypt, Syria, and Iran.  Add to this the failure to secure a lasting peace in Iraq, the resurgence of al Qaida, and the enormous waste of treasure and lives in Afghanistan.  And to top it off, we now have proposals from the White House and the Pentagon to reduce our active military to a pre-World War II level.  

          Meanwhile, we wince at the travails of our quixotic Secretary of State (knight of the mournful countenance, as George Will calls him) as he interrupts his bumbling diplomacy to tilt impotently at climate change, an imaginary foe he proclaims is threatening the world with mass destruction.     

          With this kind of leadership, is it any wonder we face a world with enemies who do not fear us and allies who do not trust us?  Can adventurism in China and North Korea be far behind?

Putin's Grip

          Russia invaded Crimea and conquered it without firing a shot.  If Vladimir Putin wanted to, he could invade and take over the rest of Ukraine as well, with or without firing a shot.  Any local resistance would be crushed by Russian forces, and nobody—not Western Europe and not the United States—would do anything about it. 

          Why wouldn’t Western Europe come to Ukraine’s rescue?  Because Putin has Germany, France, and Great Britain by the testicles, and any move by them would be extremely painful.  Putin’s grip is through Gazprom, the world’s biggest single producer of natural gas, which is a major supplier of Western Europe’s gas and is controlled by the Russian government, i.e., Putin. 

          How did Germany, France, and Great Britain get themselves into such a vulnerable position?  Because of their short-sighted energy policies.  Following the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, they decided that a reliance on nuclear energy to produce electricity was too risky, so they began to shut down nuclear power plants and shift to natural gas.  The problem was that their natural gas production had been falling since 2005, for example, by 53 percent in the U.K. and 43 percent in Germany.  But instead of adopting policies that would promote the exploration and extraction of natural gas in their own countries, they turned to Russia.  In one year alone, from 2012 to 2013, Gazprom’s share of the European gas market jumped from 25% to 30%.  

          Now consider the folly of France’s ban on fracking or the United Kingdom’s unwillingness to drill for on an estimated 1,000 trillion cubic feet of gas in its Bowland Basin.  Even if Europe were to reverse its nonsensical energy policies today, it would take years for it to ramp up its production of oil and gas.  Meanwhile, Mr. Putin shows no sign of relaxing his grip.

          What about the United States?  Couldn’t it come to the rescue now that it is about to produce more natural gas than it can consume?  Unfortunately, that would require a complete change in the energy policies of this administration, which is engaged in a war on fossil fuels and does not permit the exportation of natural gas.  That policy is not going to change until after Obama is out of office.  Can Europe wait that long?

Despicable

          Despicable.  That’s about as negative a term as one can use to describe another person.  For me it’s worse than hateful, vile, or corrupt.  I have had only two people in my life that I truly despised.  One was a former boss who bullied, intimidated, and otherwise abused everyone around him.  Not a tear was shed when he was fired for grossly unethical behavior.  The other rose to the top of my list in July, 1972.

          How can anyone of my generation forget Jane Fonda praising North Vietnam while posing next to an anti-aircraft gun and calling American military leaders criminals?  How soul-crushingly awful was it for her to accept messages on tiny pieces of paper from POWs only to turn them in to their captors who then beat them mercilessly and even killed some for their effrontery?  And how did the surviving POWs feel upon their return to be called hypocrites and liars when they told the world of Ms. Fonda’s treachery?  It doesn’t get any more despicable than that.

          “Hanoi” Jane was in the news again lately.  At 77 she still looks gorgeous, thanks to breast implants and multiple facelifts.  But now she says she can’t stop crying as she comes to terms with her mortality.  Boo hoo!  Does she think that her celebrity as a Hollywood icon gives her a pass on the inevitable?

          It is only natural for people coming close to the end of their years to examine their legacy.  They may look beyond death for solace, but even a belief in an afterlife can’t change the past, neither the good nor the bad.

          In Jane Fonda’s case, I suspect she may have moments when she contemplates the treasonous part of her life and regrets this blot on her legacy.  That contemplation would bring tears to my eyes, too, had I given aid and comfort to the enemy the way she did.  Perhaps she is horrified at the thought of surviving veterans of the Vietnam conflict lining up to spit on her grave when she is finally put in the ground.  Unfortunately, there are some things we can’t ever take back.  We can only hope that in the end the good will outweigh the bad.  Such is life.

          A good man I knew passed away a short time ago.  I will always remember him as a man of great dignity, class, warmth, and generosity.  His funeral was attended by his loving family and over a hundred of his friends who came to mourn his passing but also to celebrate his life.  The scales of his legacy definitely tilt heavily to the good side.  Would that ours be so inclined when the time comes, and the tears of grief be mixed with those of love, hope, and grace, as they were for my friend.