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| From: Irish Political Review: Editorials |
| Date: January, 2014 |
| By: Editorial |
Europe And The Ukraine |
Europe And The Ukraine The European Union is hell-bent on expansion. It only knows what it is if it is expanding. It has lost the power to consolidate. The idea that it is a union for mutual benefit of countries with similar cultures became a lie many years ago. It has long been out of the business of bringing together nations with compatible interests. It is now in the business of nation-building, and in order to build it must first destroy. The policy of random expansion was embarked upon under British influence. Britain, which knows what it is, was made profoundly uneasy by the fact that Western Europe was getting to know what it was. If the integrated development of the original Six in Europe had continued, the basic British foreign policy of three centuries—the balance-of-power game which kept the major European states in conflict with each other—would no longer be operative. Then Britain, which had refused to take part in the original European structure, insinuated itself into the successful EEC and initiated the policy of random expansion. And, while encouraging expansion, it resolutely opposed any developments tending towards the formation of a European state. But random expansion by a body which is not a state could only lead to incoherence. It is no longer Britain that is driving expansion. Britain's work has been done. Expansion is now all that the EU knows. Britain can sit back and let it happen. There were no British representatives manning the barricades in Kiev. They could leave that to frenzied Germans, and to Americans. The British presence was more discreet. The Ukraine, which has had no historic existence as a state, was given its present borders by the Soviet Union. It was functional as part of the Soviet Union. It did not achieve separate national existence through its own efforts. Existence was thrust upon it by Communists in the Kremlin who became capitalists overnight, made a capitalist market by giving chunks of the socialised economy to each other, and created nation states by dissolving the multi-national state into its bureaucratic parts. Ukraine had its post-Soviet period, which in some respects was not entirely different from its Soviet period. Then it had its Western-inspired Orange Revolution. And a Russian capitalist oligarch in exile (Berezhovsky), who had fallen out with oligarchs at home, founded a kind of Capitalist International (the Foundation for Civil Liberties, based in New York) and made the Orange Revolution the jumping off point for an assault on what remained of the Soviet state. But the Orange Revolution came to nothing. It was a revolution led by billionaires who had got their billions by plundering the economy of the Soviet state. It was, in other words, a revolution of corruption. The corrupt oligarchs fostered an idealism for the masses and used it for their own benefit. That was something that was done in the original development of capitalism in its land of origin, England. But the English oligarchs had clawed their way to the top and were able to handle the masses whose ideals, or illusions, they manipulated. But the Ukrainian oligarchs, who began at the top, lacked that necessary skill—besides which the masses had been accustomed to food, shelter and cultural opportunity by the old state. And Julia Timoshenko failed to seize her moment of destiny and found herself in jail for corruption. Eventually something like a normal election was held in the Ukraine. The EU did not declare it to be invalid. The present Government was elected. It engaged in negotiation to fit the Ukraine into some larger economy. The illusions of the Orange Revolution were centred on the EU. The practicalities of the existing Ukrainian industrial economy directed it towards Russia. The conflict in Russia following the abolition of socialism was between the laissez faire capitalism of the oligarchs, under which the Russian economy would lie open to the developed capitalism of the USA and the EU countries, and a form of Bukharinist capitalism, in which the needs of the Russian national economy was taken into account. The latter required the restoration of an effective state in place of the oligarchic anarchy, established by Yeltsin (in which each oligarch had his own mafia and acted as a state). When Yeltsin was persuaded to retire, with a guarantee against prosecution for corruption on a mass scale, the restoration of the national state was undertaken under Putin's leadership. Berezhovsky, in his base area in London, retained an abysmally vulgar form of Marxism from his days as a Communist big-wig—economic determinism. He declared that Putin hadn't a hope of succeeding, because the Russian economy had been made a laissez faire region of international capitalism and political life would be determined by that fact. His fellow-oligarch, Khodakovsky, who remained in Russia while Berezhovsky went abroad to operate on Russia from the outside, trusted to economic determinism and lost. Putin built up a strong political movement, from the victims of oligarchic capitalism, to take the place of the Bolshevik Party. That movement was predictably described as fascist by the media of the US/EU capitalism whose predatory interests in Russia it threatened. But it was maintained, and it carried the day against economic determinism. Far too many parties had been spawned in Russia under Yeltsin for functional representative government. Those mushroom parties—of which there were scores—came and went from one election to another. Democracy is functional only with a small number of parties which have continuous existence throughout a series of elections. That is how the electorate gets an effective choice and stable representative government is made possible. Putin's organised movement gradually overcame the anarchy of the fifty and more parties that was the heritage from Yeltsin. It had continuous existence; its stood for something definite; its programme made sense to the disrupted populace; and it won elections. This did not suit the interest of the EU, which at the end of the Cold War committed itself to expansion eastwards, both economically and militarily. (The EU has military existence as part of NATO, which ceased to be a defensive force in 1990 and became an aggressive force. The distinction between the EU and NATO is now practically meaningless, though the Irish Governments engage in Jesuitry to make out that there is a real difference.) The EU therefore made propaganda against Russian elections, claiming that they were rigged. But, as Putin's system bedded down, evidence of rigging got harder to find. After the last election all the EU could find to say was that the result of elections should be uncertain and that everybody knew Putin was going to win. The reason why that was so—as commentators admitted in late night radio programmes—was that there was no rival party to Putin's within the established system to which the electorate had become accustomed. In elections within stable democracy the system is hardly ever at stake. The parties seriously contesting elections almost always stand for nothing more than marginal modification of the established system. In Ireland Fine Gael/Labour implemented the policy inaugurated by Fianna Fail, and said in the election campaign that it would do so (Michael Noonan said it, and who else mattered?) And in Britain the Tory and Labour Parties regularly steal each other's clothes. When a rival party, that is committed to upholding the system with a few modifications, emerges in Russia, the outcome of elections will presumably become uncertain, as in US/UK/EU. In the Ukraine the Government, returned by an election which the EU recognised as being fairly conducted, bargained between the EU and Russia about its economic future. If it linked itself with Russia, its economic development could continue without basic alteration. If it went to the EU, its industrial economy would be destroyed, and it would furthermore be deprived of the favourable trading links it had already established with Russia. It put itself on offer to the EU for a sum that would compensate for the loss of industries that would not be viable in the EU and for the loss of subsidised energy from Russia. When the EU would not meet its terms, it turned to Russia—and the EU went frantic. Its representatives went to Kiev, made propaganda, and helped to build barricades at the centre of the city. The fact that the Russian Federation would erect tariff barriers against the Ukraine and charge it world market prices for energy if it joined the EU was presented as Russian intimidation of the Ukraine. But it was simply an expression of the fact that the Russian national economy, which protects itself from EU/US, would have to extend that protection to its borders with the Ukraine if the Ukraine joined the EU—an EU which is contemplating a free trade agreement with the US, with NATO in the background. If the Ukrainian deal with Russia firms up, the event is likely to be traumatic for the EU. If expansion is blocked, what will there be to hold it together? It has Moscow in its sights—like Napoleon and Hitler before it. But, if bourgeois-democratic Moscow becomes the centre of Eurasian development—As Tsarist and Bolshevik Moscow were before it—Europe would have to find something else to be than the vanguard of NATO. And it is obvious that it hasn't a clue what that might be. And what about Ireland? Its official mind disintegrated in 1970 through inability to cope with the situation brought about by British misgovernment of the Six Counties, and it sought to escape from itself into Europe on Britain's coat-tails. And now its European refuge from itself is likely to be overcome by existential uncertainty. Pat Cox, who played a prominent part in subverting the European Commission—the directing body of integrated EU economic development—by means of hysterical corruption scandals—was in Kiev on behalf of the EU, supporting the anti-Russian barricades, and propagating the illusory ideology which became the European stock-in-trade after the Commission was made ineffective. And the Taoiseach warns that, if Russia tries to deal through the Irish Stock Exchange in its financial assistance to the Ukraine—something from which the Irish economy would profit—he will consider intervening to prevent it. He will seriously consider cutting off his nose to spite his face. The career of the EU, once it committed itself to unlimited expansion as the vanguard of NATO, was certain to end in failure. The only question was how catastrophic it would be. Meanwhile, within the EU but essentially independent of it, there is a smaller body trying to develop—the Eurozone. If it succeeds, then something like the development envisaged by the Steel and Coal community back in the 1950s may yet be brought about. CONTENTS Europe And The Ukraine. Editorial The Smithwick Tribunal. Angela Clifford Mandela Owed Gerry Adams, And Nelston Repaid The Debt! Manus O'Riordan Readers' Letters: An Independent Scotland. Wilson John Haire Roy Foster In Cork. Jack Lane Shorts from the Long Fellow (Buying Ireland; Pent-Up Demand?; Third Quarter Results; NAMA; Tom Gilmartin; Newspapers On-Line; Nelson Mandela; British Intelligence That Pro-Treaty Crowd. Wilson John Haire (Review of The Dublin/Monaghan Bombings, 1974) Amigos. John Morgan, Lt. Col. Ret'd. (Report of a function) A Connolly Association Meeting. (Report) The Connolly Association, As Seen From Another Perspective. Brendan Clifford The Chinamen And The Connolly Association. Wilson John Haire John Regan's Myth. Brendan Clifford Biteback: The Great War. Report of letter by Pat Maloney Labour Comment: The Pillars Of Society. Seán Ó Riain Trade Union Notes McGrath Blasts Economic Sovereignty Myth. Press Release Mandela: The 'Revered'; O Bradaigh: The Reviled! |