Gaza today isnt like a ghetto – it is a ghetto: a discrete area, cordoned off, populated by a group Israel deems undesirable, with Israel controlling everything and everyone going in and coming out. Its blockade is so restrictive that it’s devastated the economy and undermined the life and health of Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians. Gaza is approximately the size and density of a large US city – about 10% larger than Philadelphia, but with 20% more people – and so must depend on imports for food and other vital goods. The unfortunate residents of Gaza – more than 99% of whom are Sunni Arabs – suffer one of the lowest living standards in the world. Malnutrition is common among Gaza’s many children; shortages of fuel and water are chronic.

This situation is entirely attributable to a blockade so tight that smuggling isnt merely profitable – it’s essential to the life of the region. The more Israel constricts the movement of goods above ground, the more the network of tunnels below proliferate – and once built, they can be used for munitions as readily as for food, medicine, fuel and other ordinary goods. Poverty, unemployment and desperation, along with an extraordinarily large number of young people, has turned Gaza into what Israel feared most: the ideal breeding ground for terrorism. This is why some today suggest that the elimination of Hamas would likely lead to something even worse in its place, akin to Al Qaeda or ISIS.

For 20 years, under Israeli military administration, Gaza was poor, densely populated, but relatively tranquil. Palestinians largely accepted the indignity of Israeli occupation, as Israelis and Palestinians became more and more economically integrated, with tens of thousands of Arabs traveling from Gaza into Israel on work permits every day, and goods moving freely between Israel and the occupied territories.

However Israel never sought to normalize the status of Gaza’s then 1 million (now 1.8 million) Palestinians. In fact, numerous policies only made the occupation more and more harsh, with Israel resorting to Nazi-style “Iron Fist” tactics in the face of any incipient Palestinian unrest or organized resistance. Palestinians were frequently arrested, beaten, subject to collective punishment, and otherwise harassed by their military occupiers. Palestinian lands were seized (20% of all of Gaza), and on them, Israeli colonies were built. (Lacking other prospects, Palestinians supplied the bulk of the labor for the building of those colonies.) The first intifada began in 1987 as a surprise to everyone. It had no leadership – rather, it seemed to coalesce from a common dissatisfaction shared by Palestinians about the unfairness of the conditions that Israel had forced upon them. And so it is that present-day Gaza is the product of failed Israeli policies of apartheid, oppression and colonization.

Israeli tactics today are no less awful. In response to the killing of 3 Israeli teenagers, and (generally non-lethal) rocket attacks out of Gaza, Israel has, in its ongoing incursion into Gaza, killed 1000 Palestinians, of whom up to 900 are civilians, and 200 are children. The massacre will serve only to feed the culture of violence, which has gestated during what will soon be a half-century of Israeli military occupation. Violence is now part of Gaza culture – and a culture cannot be met and destroyed on the battlefield. It took decades for Hamas – and Gaza’s many other political factions with a violent bent – to be born in an environment that Israel created. It will take decades more for them and the culture that sustains them to fade away.

The long term cure will only come through open borders, commerce, economic opportunity and, ultimately, Israeli recognition of an independent Palestinian state in Gaza. Instead of rolling in tanks, Israel, if it wants peace, should be liberalizing trade, and investing in Gaza infrastructure and youth programs. Given Gaza’s high poverty rate, sky-high birth rate, unfathomably high unemployment, and utterly desperate living conditions, the cycle of violence may well continue indefinitely – with every act of Israeli aggression leading only to the alienation of moderates within Gaza, and the strengthening of groups like Hamas, and worse.

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza_conflict

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-occupied_territories

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Palestinian_territories

The reason liberals are divided over Israel is that Israel is a democracy – but it is not liberal. Democracy and liberalism have distinct histories, and people in the West today are fortunate to have the rare opportunity to enjoy both. Israel, relative to its region, is to be commended for at least being democratic. But it does not get a free pass for establishing a colonial system of apartheid, denying equal protection of the law to 2.2 million Arabs living in the West Bank; or turning Gaza into a ghetto for what it deems to be its region’s undesirables.

47 years ago, Israel defeated Syria, Egypt and Jordan in the 1967 6-Day War. By the end of hostilities, Israel had taken territory from all 3 countries, including the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt. Since then, the residents of the West Bank have been subject to Israeli rule, but have never been granted citizenship, allowed to vote, nor have any voice in Israel’s government, which continues to exert enormous control over many aspects of their lives. Arabs and Israelis are not treated equally under the law. Arabs – some of whom are now third and fourth generation subjects of Israeli rule – are excluded from driving on certain roads, have limited rights of movement, and restricted access to water resources in an especially arid region.

Israel seems intent on treating the West Bank as if it were its very own Louisiana Purchase. Like the US, it shows no regard for the region’s indigenous population, from whom it has stolen land in a grand colonization effort. Since the Oslo Accords 20 years ago, Israel’s colonial population in the West Bank has tripled. The problem is not that Israel has stolen land from another country. (Jordan relinquished its claim on the West Bank years ago.) The problem is that about one-third of the land taken by Israeli colonizers is privately owned by Arabs – Israeli “settlements” constitute a theft committed by the state of Israel, to the detriment of one ethnic group, for the benefit of another.

As America did with its Native American population, Israel continues to shutter up West Bank Arabs into a shrinking territory, which every day more closely resembles a system of reservations – while controlling their movements between designated spaces, and denying them access to water. After attempts to colonize Gaza failed (Gaza is too dense, and Hamas is too incorrigible), it was turned into a ghetto, with Israel straining to control everything and everyone that goes into and comes out, severely harming the economic life and health of its inhabitants. In the cycle of violence of Gaza rocket attacks on Israel, and Israeli retaliation, people in Gaza suffer ten times as many casualties, a large fraction of whom are innocent women and children. Such an analysis must also consider the severe impact of Israel’s blockade on Gazan life expectancy and infant mortality.

Pragmatically, Israel remains a close and vital US ally. But no matter the expedience of maintaining a pro-western government in the heart of the middle-east, the US’s long term interest is in the proliferation of liberty, human rights, and the rule of law – not merely democracy. Israel is an unfortunate example of one problem democracies too often succumb to: tyranny of the majority. Liberals are therefore right to continue their criticism of the state of Israel – until Israel follows rule of law, and treats all people subject to its authority equally.

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-occupied_territories

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlements#Land_ownership

The Field Guide thanks the US State Dept for furnishing invaluable information and insight toward the composition of this article.

There is no side to be taken in the ongoing Israeli-Gaza war. Israel has occupied Gaza in varying degrees for 47 years. Since its 2005 pullout, Israeli has maintained a blockade that severely hinders economic life and health in Gaza. Hamas emerged after 20 years of Israeli occupation, during the first Palestinian uprising in 1987. It has since risen to become Gaza’s dominant political group. Hamas are religious extremists, with little skill for governance, and no regard for human life. Perceiving that their popularity increases with Israeli aggression, Hamas deliberately provokes Israeli attacks by firing rockets into Israel from Gaza.

Israel’s ongoing blockade constitutes an act of war. Firing rockets into Israel is the only way that that Hamas, the democratically elected leadership of Gaza, can fight back – Israel has proven unresponsive in negotiations absent the use of force. Israel, for its part, reasonably insists that it needs to control imports into Gaza to keep out materials used for making rockets. If Israel lifted the blockade, one might reasonably expect armaments to flow into Gaza, to be used on Israelis. Hamas, and practically every other political group in Gaza, is intent on lobbing ordinance onto Israelis. It’s a vicious circle: the blockade, intended to reduce rocket attacks, remains itself a justification for such attacks. The rocket attacks, intended in part to retaliate for the blockade, remain itself a justification for the blockade.

A half-century of Israeli occupation came with the usual perks. For 27 years (1967-94), the Israeli military directly administered most government functions. Israel colonized Gaza with 21 settlements, whose combined population only maxed at about 8000. Those settlements nonetheless controlled 20% of all the land in Gaza – leaving more than 1 million Arabs to share the other 80%. Despite international condemnation of their occupation, Israel would have been content to occupy and colonize Gaza indefinitely. It was Palestinian resistance that brought Israel to the bargaining table in the 90s, and drove them out in 2005.

Israel’s differential treatment of Gaza and the West Bank is driven by demography, geography and history. Gaza, with 1.7 million people living in 139 square miles, has the same size and population of 1960 Detroit. The West Bank is fifteen times larger (about the size of Delaware), with an Arab population of 2.1 million; it also encompasses the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria, not to mention East Jerusalem. In short, Gaza is 10 times more densely populated than the West Bank, which is therefore much more attractive for Israeli colonization. While Israel has abandoned its Gaza settlements, it continues to expand its colonization of the West Bank, with 500,000 settlers and direct control of 40% of the territory.

Unlike the West Bank, Gaza is too small and too densely populated with Palestinians to be attractive for Israeli colonization. It will for a long time to come be very poor, and very hostile to Israel. The purpose of Israel’s present incursion is political: the Israeli government hopes to convince Israelis that they’re doing their best to end the rocket attacks out of Gaza. Beyond that, it will accomplish nothing. Hostility toward Israel, whether in the form of suicide bombers or rocket attacks, are the consequence of a political movement, which will never be defeated on the battlefield. It took decades of Israeli occupation to create Hamas. It will takes decades more for them to go away. The US should condemn Israel’s invasion of Gaza – not because it’s unjustified, but because it’s futile.

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Palestinian_territories

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_statistics_for_Israeli_Gaza_Strip_settlements

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank

At a fundamental level, the US struggles with radical Islam today are the same as its struggles with communism during the Cold War. Radical Islam is a POLITICAL movement – as was communism. And like communism, it will never be defeated militarily, but only through politics – a long, slow process that takes decades.

During the Cold War, socialism was popular the world over. The US often had to choose between accepting a democratically-elected socialist government, or working to overthrow that democracy to install a dictator who was sympathetic to the US (and antagonistic to the USSR). While paying lip-service to democracy, the US spent decades subverting it across the globe – in countries such as the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Chile, Iran and Nicaragua – whenever a population had the poor taste to elect socialists.

Egypt is the most obvious post-Cold War analog, where the popularity of radical Islam was borne out in democratic elections that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in 2012. It took more than 4000 years of Egyptian history to produce Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first elected leader – but just one more year to overthrow him. The US responded much as it did to Hugo Chavez’s short-lived coup in Venezuela: given the choice between democracy and a US-friendly government, the US did not hesitate to turn its back on democracy, as it did for decades during the Cold War. The US just did the same thing in Ukraine too, validating the overthrow of a democratically elected pro-Russian government; and embracing the pro-Western leadership that emerged from the revolution.

Syria is playing out as a variation on the same theme. A client-state of the USSR during the Cold War, its poor US-relations were cemented by its role in the Six-Day (1967) and Yom Kippur (1973) Wars. Assad would otherwise be a natural US ally, given that he’s a secular leader, opposed to radical Islam. As Syria descended into civil war, the US could not take a side, because Assad’s overthrow would almost surely bring radical Islamists to power. Faced with a choice between Assad and radical Islam, the US has done nothing – which is good policy. In Syria, the US can do little more than put its own infantry in the way of two warring factions – a futility whose lesson was learned in Vietnam.

Which brings us to Iraq, where the dynamics today are all too familiar. A secular democracy is under siege by radical Islam. Unlike Syria, the US considers the secular leadership of Iraq to be an ally. But it hardly makes a difference, because, again, the root of the conflict is political – and foreign armies make for especially bad politics. See how decades of military confrontation have failed to quell anti-Israeli movements in Gaza and the West Bank. There simply is no role for the use of US military force in Iraq. US infantryman would serve as little more than targets, to the tune of hundreds, if not thousands of casualties per year; meanwhile their very presence would fuel radical Islam’s recruitment efforts.

Chaos in Syria and Iraq today is the direct and foreseeable consequence of Bush Duh’s foolish 2003 invasion. Once the Hussein regime was toppled, everything that’s since happened was inevitable: factionalization, civil war, the rise of religious extremists, and their spread across national borders. The US has no good options. The popularity of radical Islam will not be made to pass with bombs and bullets. The US infantry cannot today win the fight for secular democracy in Iraq, any more than it could win the fight for pro-Western governance in Vietnam in 1968.

Market economics and democracy have arisen the world over – but it takes years for people and their leadership to be won over to that set of policies and principles. There is, unfortunately, no short cut between where we are now – with nascent radical Islamic movements across many countries in the Middle East – and where we hope to be one day.

Throughout the Crimea crisis, there have been two competing theories on Russian motives: (1) they are regaining their empire; (2) they are saving face, in the wake of their worst geopolitical setback in decades. While the former got lots of airplay for its drama, and for its consonance with the consensus view of Putin as rageful autocrat; in the end, the latter was correct – the crisis is passing, and Russia seems not to be planning to move into Ukraine’s ethnically Russian eastern provinces.

Crimea’s annexation complete, Putin is once again collegial. When commenting on new US sanctions against Russia, he said explicitly that Russia would nonetheless permit the US military to use Russian airspace in support of operations in Afghanistan, as they have for the past decade. Putin tacitly accepts that there had to be consequences for annexing Crimea – he’s likely appreciative that US sanctions have been so anemic. He likewise expects the US to accept the annexation as the price of the swiping Ukraine out of the Russian sphere.

Unlike Britain and France, Russia’s empire survived World War II stronger than ever, with Moscow as the seat of power of the USSR and its satellites in Central and Eastern Europe. As recently as 1989, Berlin was the line of demarcation between the US and Russian spheres. Since the Berlin Wall fell, the US sphere has moved steadily east, absorbing former Russian allies along the way. Remarkably, except for Russia herself, EVERY former member of the Warsaw Pact is now a member of NATO, and of the EU (except Albania, whose application is pending). Russia accepted this advance, relinquishing its former holdings without a fight.

It didnt have to be this way. The US could just as well have stood by its promise to Gorbachev to respect Central and Eastern Europe as a buffer between Russia and the West. Russia might have forcefully protested Poland’s accession into NATO – and might have responded militarily when the Baltics followed. Russia did not.

President Clinton set an expansionist agenda, effecting it through his brilliantly-conceived (if innocuously-named) “Partnership for Peace.” His successors have followed his winner-take-all approach. In 25 years, the line demarcating the Russian and American spheres has moved 800 miles east, from Berlin to Kiev. To appreciate how far that is, consider that if the line had moved that much in the opposite direction, Russia’s sphere would now reach the Atlantic, and US influence would end at Iceland. While Moscow is more than 1100 miles from Berlin, it is fewer than 600 miles from Riga or Vilnius and only 300 miles from the Ukrainian border.

Crimea is the modest price for another remarkable victory for the US’ aggressive, expansionary foreign policy, which has successfully gambled that Russia would not (much) resist. With the addition of Ukraine, and the exception of Russia and Serbia, the US sphere now encompasses the entire Western World. For 25 years, Russia has lacked the resources and-or political will to fight back against what it reasonably perceived as American aggression – until now.

Ukraine, for Russia, is very different from the rest of Eastern and Central Europe. Ukraine and Russia have been integrated as a single polity for most of the past 300 years, sharing a common history, culture and religion. Ukraine is also far more populous than other countries in Eastern Europe – its 42 million+ inhabitants are comparable to the combined population of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Bulgaria and Romania.

When the US aided protests against Ukraine’s democratically-elected pro-Russian government, it crossed a line. Welcoming that government’s overthrow and recognizing Ukraine’s revolutionary pro-West leadership was an outrage that’s been politely ignored in the media, recalling the attempted coup of Chavez in 2002, during which the US also seemingly blanked on its commitment to democracy and the rule of law – when the opportunity to be rid of a nuisance head-of-state presented itself.

A Russian president could look away as the rest of its former empire was swept up by the victorious West – but to suffer the loss of Ukraine without a fight was unthinkable. The good news for US interests is that Putin, dealt a bad hand, misplayed the little he had. By seizing Crimea, he’s effectively ceded the balance of Ukraine and ruined Russian-Ukrainian relations. He’s also validated the concept of popular secession – which Chechnya and Russia’s many other ethnic enclaves will not fail to notice.

However the US media’s demonization of Putin should end, along with the name-calling (“autocrat”, “bully” and “thug”), which only thwarts popular comprehension of the issues. For more than a decade, Putin has been a good partner in the war against terrorism. He has enabled US policies in Iran, Syria and Afghanistan, and promises to continue to do so. The most unfortunate effect of Crimea’s annexation is that it will be a sticking point in Russian-Western relations – as Cyprus is for Turkey, and the West Bank is for Israel.

To close with an audacious long-term prediction: we arent yet in the end game of NATO/EU expansion. That process will not conclude with Ukraine or Georgia or Belarus – it will end with Russia’s accession. “Russia” as opposed to “The West,” after all, are only plied as terms of art. Russia is, and has always been, an intrinsic, historic part of the West; and according to the logic of the European Coal and Steel Community, Russia will ultimately assume her natural place within NATO and the EU alike, against their common adversary, China; and as well against religious fundamentalism and irredentism.

2 excellent articles from scholars of Russian-American relations:

http://www.thenation.com/article/178344/distorting-russia

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/opinion/getting-ukraine-wrong.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

Things were going badly enough for Russia when Ukraine’s pro-Russian government came ever-so-close to formally embarking on EU membership – nearly following the Baltic states and many former Warsaw-Pact Slavic countries in Central and Eastern Europe into economic and military alliance with the West, expanding the EU and NATO 1000 miles east, right up to the Russian border. To thwart Ukraine’s turn toward the EU, Russia paid through the nose. While the EU was only offering $1 billion in loans conditioned on government reforms, Russia put up $15 billion in unconditional loans, plus other aid. Even though a majority of Ukrainians preferred the path of EU membership, Ukraine’s president took the Russian money – and was deposed by the popular uprising that ensued.

Russia thought they had the deal sewn up, securing their ancient ally and halting at last the EU’s (and with it, NATO’s) inexorable advance. When Ukrainians rose up and deposed their government, demanding that EU negotiations resume, Russia was left as the spurned lover. Putin, it seemed, did everything he could to obtain his desired result. He used politics and propaganda, applied pressure, and when all else failed, he coughed up a fortune to buy Ukraine’s loyalty – only to fail.

This was not Eastern European business as usual, where strongmen strike deals and ordinary people resignedly accept their lot. When the Ukrainian government adopted a position the Ukrainian people found intolerable, Ukrainians overthrew not just their government – they broke the chains of 300 years of subservience to self-dealing leaders, rejecting Russia and turning to the West.

Putin understands that if oil and gas money cannot buy Russian allies, then she is destined to lose them all. After Ukraine’s revolution turned Russian victory into defeat, Putin seemingly couldnt resist trying to snap off one part of Ukraine that he might be able to keep. Had he been a better tactician, he might have tried to manipulate the formation of Ukraine’s nascent government onto a pro-Russian track – perhaps to find a middle path for Ukraine, between the Western and Russian spheres, as he sought last fall. But his seizure of Crimea now all but guarantees Ukraine’s defection to the West. They would be joining Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia and Croatia – all former Russian allies who have joined NATO and the EU since the USSR’s dissolution.

Russia seems to have learned little from it’s 2008 war with Georgia, when it intervened to aid the secession of two Georgian provinces. The long-term consequence: Georgia, Stalin’s birthplace, is also on track to join both the EU and NATO; its relations with Russia have been ruined for decades to come. Crimea is another monkey-trap for Putin – by seizing it, he has lost Ukraine, and left Russia more isolated than ever, with Western alliances expanded to her border.

One aspect of liberalism implicated by Crimea is a people’s right of self-determination. Abraham Lincoln subscribed to none such, and American historians give him a free pass on it. The USA did not invade and conquer the CSA to end slavery, but as an end in itself. Constitutional scholars past and present are equivocal on states’ right of secession, and the Constitution is of little help in resolving an issue that’s thankfully only come up once. Critiquing the most revered lines of the Gettysburg Address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” H.L. Mencken wrote, “It is poetry, not logic…. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.”

Take away the Russian troops and the Ukrainian revolution and ask a simple question: if Crimeans voted by a supermajority to sever ties with Ukraine, in favor of independence or union with Russia, why shouldnt we validate that choice? After all, states dont really have rights – people do.

What’s playing out in Crimea and across Eastern Ukraine today isnt new – only the players are. Much of Eastern Europe is and has for centuries been a mixed-up place, where ethnicity, language and national identity varies from town to town and province to province, without respect to political boundaries. The archetypal case remains Yugoslavia, which ultimately splintered into 7 different countries. Much of the Balkans were and are fractal – there was never any way to draw clean lines on a map to provide discrete enclaves for distinct ethnicities. Bosnia was the most mixed up of all, lacking a genuine national identity or even a language. War came first – terms like “Bosniak” and “Bosnian language” were post hoc inventions to condemn, condone or otherwise explain hostilities among one people who shared one language and one history.

Like Bosnia, Crimea is a region NOT associated with a specific national identity or language. The last of its late medieval inhabitants – the Tatars – were forcibly displaced 50 years ago, and today constitute about 10% of the total population – most of whom only moved back in the past 20 years. More than half the population describes itself as “Russian”, and three-quarters call Russian their native language. Legally and politically, Crimea was part of Russia from 1783 until 1954 – it was only ceded to Ukraine through a bizarre gesture on the part of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Russian with Ukrainian connections and sympathies. About one-quarter of Crimeans today are ethnically Ukrainian – and that’s the most ever.

The US answered this question, albeit under very different circumstances, when Kosovo sought independence from Serbia – a move that the US supported and subsequently recognized. (Russia did not and does not.) The US rationale is that Serbian aggression justified Kosovo’s secession – that since there’s been no Ukrainian aggression against Crimea, secession is not rightful. The argument is entirely unpersuasive, and conceals the realpolitik on which US positions are based: Ukraine stands to be an important ally, and so the US takes her side in the dispute; Serbia was an adversary, and so the US recognized Kosovars’ right to self-determination. For what it’s worth, Kosovo was an ethnically Albanian enclave within Serbia – but why should we care about the particularities of nationality, religion or culture – a people’s right to self-determination – much less any right – shouldnt depend on it. And for the moment, we might also put aside the intellectual question as to how small a polity can be to enjoy the right of self-determination. (A province? A city? A block association? A condo? You and your cat?) Crimea is more populous than 10 other European countries – Kosovo among them.

If we’ve learned anything from European history, we should appreciate that in the interest of long-term peace and stability, Crimea should probably be part of Russia – and it should certainly be aligned with whatever state its population prefers.

It is the process that should determine the legitimacy of the end result. Obviously an election to determine Crimea’s allegiances cannot be fairly conducted under the occupation of foreign troops – and so of course the coming referendum will be illegitimate. But the issue should be considered and resolved in the abstract, to apply to all future cases: a people probably should have a relatively unlimited right to disassociate from a polity, to form their own or join another – if only because the alternative is so noxious: the application of coercive force to prevent them from so doing. Such a resolution is good enough for Scotland, which will have been part of the UK for about four-score and two years longer than South Carolina has been part of the US – when it holds a referendum on independence this coming September….

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination#Defining_.22peoples.22

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States

http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/04/do-states-have-a-right-of-secession/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referendum,_2014

Putin surely doesnt mean to do the the rest of the West a favor – but his invasion of the Crimea is a blessing, which the US and EU should receive with cautious gratitude.

From a realpolitik standpoint, the US has much to gain from Russia’s annexation of Crimea. For a nominal cost, this will put a permanent wrench in Ukrainian-Russian relations, which the US and EU (and NATO) can exploit to pull Ukraine firmly into their sphere of influence – especially given that the next round of Ukranian elections will now heavily favor anti-Russian, pro-EU candidates.

Russia subjugated and annexed the Crimean peninsula in 1783 – it had been under Tatar and Ottoman rule for centuries. The Tatars used it as base for their slave trade – Russian peasants had themselves been the Tatars primary commodity. By 1900, Russian colonization had made Crimea an ethnic mix – about 1/3 Russian and 1/3 Tatar. But by the outbreak of WW2, ethnic Russians had become a majority, and have been ever since. In 1944, Stalin forcibly removed all of the ethnic Tatars from the Crimea (killing about half of them in the process), and also deported many other Eastern European minorities, leaving behind a Crimean population that was probably 60-70% Russian and 15-20% Ukrainian.

Ten years later, in 1954, Khrushchev gifted the Crimea from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR. Crimea wasnt then, nor has it ever been, particularly Ukrainian. Crimea’s population today is only about 25% Ukrainian – and that’s the most it’s ever been. The Crimean peninsula has had an ethnically Russian plurality for 100 years, and a majority for 70 years. It is by far the most Russian and least Ukrainian of all of Ukraine’s provinces.

Even as part of Ukraine, the Crimea has had considerable autonomy, briefly declaring its own independence in 1991 before accepting to remain part of Ukraine, with even more autonomy. When Ukraine’s pro-Russian government was overthrown last week, Crimea’s parliament responded by legally dissolving its own government, and reconstituting with more pro-Russian leadership. One of the new Crimean PM’s first acts was to ask Putin for help in guaranteeing Crimean security and stability – inviting the Russian invasion that followed.

Put simply, the Crimean peninsula is largely autonomous and ethnically Russian, and has been for a very long time – that it falls under Ukrainian sovereignty is a historical accident. Furthermore, if ever put to a vote, it’s population would almost certainly prefer to be a part of Russia.

The US needs to tread very carefully here – what’s happening in Crimea today is dangerous as a PRECEDENT – in and of itself, it is of little consequence. The Russian navy already has a huge presence in Crimea. There are no particular moral implications – no human rights have been threatened – and there’s no real reason why the US should prefer that a Russian or Ukrainian flag flies over Sevastopol. Rather, the US should exploit the crisis to its own advantage – tightening up and perhaps expanding its NATO alliances.

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Council_of_Crimea

map showing percentage of Ukrainian speakers by province:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ukraine_cencus_2001_Ukrainian.svg

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/02/27/Crimea-Parliament-Dissolves-Government-Elects-Pro-Russia-Chair

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/28/barack-obama-vladimir-putin-ukraine-russia

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/03/02/284807613/is-it-too-late-for-ukraine-to-take-back-crimea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution