Modern Ukraine: What's just and democratic - a people's right to self-determination in the face of authoritarian dictates or a post-Soviet state's insistence on immutable territorial integrity?

 

Modern Ukraine: What's just and democratic - a people's right to self-determination in the face of authoritarian dictates or a post-Soviet state's insistence on immutable territorial integrity?

Gregory Krasovsky

February 24, 2022

  

I don't often cite or share articles from CounterPunch (see below), but when I do...it's just food for thought.
 
BTW, the American in me has always favored a people's right to self-determination -- which, IMHO should be applied honestly, fairly, without bias and consistently -- over a country's government-protected right to territorial integrity.
 
So does the Ukrainian in me who spent the first four years of his life living in a coal-mining village near the city of Luhansk in the Donetsk Coal Basin (Donbas) of Eastern Ukraine.
   
But throughout history, Monarchs, Emperors, Kings & Queens, Kaisers, Caesars, Tsars, Sultans, Khans, Pharaohs and many a Supreme Leader or just a local Feudal Lord cringed at the concept of a people's right to self-determination and tried to nip in the bud or chop off that pesky thought whenever it started to rear its democracy-oriented head.

What? You people think that you can just hold a people's referendum and leave my/or country, kingdom, empire, republic, or union?
 
Without my/our permission?

How dare you?

Who gave you the right?
 
What makes you people think that you can make this decision locally without getting the approval of the rest of us (who don't live in your land) and our government/sovereign?
 
How ungrateful can you be for all that I/we have done for you?
 
How can you betray my/our rule and state?
 
Would you leave our state and then plot or ally against us with our enemies?

   
Doesn't this sound like some dialogue right out of the Game of Thrones?
 
Forget about Hollywood!
 
Remember when the African slaves rebelled in Haiti against France back around 1802?

And France instituted a naval blockade of Haiti -- with the support of newly founded democratic U.SA., whose Southern states (full of plantations & African Slaves) got a little worried that the Haitian revolt might become contagious?

And then demanded that the Haitian slaves pay France in reparations the market cost for each slave?

And milked Haiti until the 20th century without any U.S. objections even after slavery ended in the U.S. after the Civil War in 1865?
 
What happened to the Haitian slaves' right to freedom and self-determination?
 
The Vietnamese learned that as well when they had to fight against their French colonial masters after WWII.
 
What about Native/Indigenous Americans ("American Indians")?

Would today's America, after the Civil Rights Movement (50+ years have already passed!), BLM, Critical Race Theory (CRT) and WOKE-ism, ever permit a Native American tribe to exercise their right to self-determination, become truly sovereign from the U.S. and live independently of our country?
 
Remember when during President Obama's term in office (Hilary Clinton was the Secretary of State), a Native American tribe from Upstate New York and Canada wanted to travel to England for the World Lacrosse championship (a Native American game, by the way) with their Native American Passports?
 
And even though the British were willing to let them enter the UK with those passports, the post-9/11/01 U.S. would not provide written guarantees that it would permit these Native Americans to re-enter the U.S. (presumably at JFK airport) with these non-U.S. passports ("What if they're Al Qaeda?") in transit to their reservations (tribal lands)?
 
After all, America
 

- supported Taiwan in its independence & refusal to rejoin communist China,
 
- encouraged & facilitated the break-up of the Soviet Union,

- Supported the Tibetan people's struggle for independence from Communist China,
 
- encouraged the break-up of former communist/socialist Serbian-ruled Yugoslavia (into Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and [North] Macedonia) and then helped Kosovo separate from Serbia (Pro-Russian) with a massive bombing campaign & war that killed thousands of civilians,
 
- Encouraged the Chechen war for the Republic of Ichkeria's independence against Russia (even though it was funded and partially fought by Islamists, Wahhabis, and some of those who survived went on later to join Al Qaeda and ISIS)

- Eventually supported East Timur's independence from Indonesia,
 
- helped South Sudan (with oil deposits) separate from the North.

 
But then again, America did NOT help and opposed (either actively or tacitly/surreptitiously)
 

- Southern Nigeria (with recently discovered oil deposits) gain its independence from the predominantly Muslim Northern Nigeria and supported the federal Nigerian government in the brutal Biafran War (over 1 million civilians killed in the South) only 7 years after Nigeria won its independence from the U.K.    
 
- The Palestinians establish their own state next door to Israel,
 
- Abkhazians (Pro-Russian Muslim folks) and Southern Ossetians (Pro-Russian with most of their ethnos living in Russian Ossetia next door) gain their autonomy and independence from Post-Soviet Georgia in the early 1990s.

   
Forget about America, just look at all the recent conflicts about a people's right to self-determination and their own country (or desire to join another country), such as

• Northern Ireland,
• Scottish referendum to leave the U.K.,
• Catalonia in Spain, 
• Basque country in Spain,
• The French Canadian's struggle for autonomy in Quebec, 
• Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, 
• The Kurds' struggle for statehood/autonomy in Turkey, Syria and Iraq 
• Western Sahara struggle for independence from Morocco,  
• East Timur's recently won independence from Indonesia, 
• The Shiite Houthi struggle for power and autonomy in Yemen against the Saudi Arabia backed  
• The Muslim Rohingya people's struggle for equal rights in Burma/Myanmar, 
• The Sikh people’s desire to create an independent state from India in Punjab called Khalistan, 
• The Tamil Tigers' struggle to create an independent state, Eelam, in Sri Lanka,   

and etc.    

By now, you probably get the picture.

The U.S. and its allies, including many European countries, who publicly profess to be the staunchest defenders of freedom, human rights & democracy world-wide, end up being very selective -- depending on geopolitics and money from natural resources -- when it comes to supporting a people's right to self-determination of statehood.
 
Western Democracies will support independence movements world-wide only when it fits their geopolitical objectives and/or profitable.

Otherwise, Western Democracies, like most other states, will support territorial integrity (i.e. government/state power over people).  
 
Just imagine Texans voting to leave the U.S.!

Even if the residents of Texas voted 99% to leave the Union, you'd see the full power of the U.S. military remind them how the Confederate States were brought back during the American Civil War in 1861-1865, even though modern Texas doesn't have slaves but just more conservative Republicans than most "Northern" States!
 
The recent situations in East and Central Europe since 1991 are not different, including Ukraine since 2014.

As an example of double-standards, I'd bet my bottom dollar that America and its NATO/EU allies would have supported a pro-Western Anti-Russian L’viv or Carpathian People's Republic if in 2014 "Pro-Russian" Ukrainian President Yanukovich managed to hold on to power and Western Ukraine tried to declare "governmental sovereignty" (i.e. autonomy) against the Ukrainian government.

Which is what the Pro-Russian Luhansk & Donetsk People's Republics did in 2014 (citing the illegal overthrow of lawfully & democratically elected President Yanukovich).

So did the Pro-Russian population of Crimea, who wasn't happy with being transferred to Ukraine by Soviet leader Khrushchev in 1954 and did not want to stay in post-Yanukovich Ukraine governed by Pro-American and Anti-Russian Ukrainian Nationalists.

They exercised the people's right to self-determination.  

Should the people of regions that were un-democratically and forcefully incorporated into modern Ukraine by totalitarian Soviet communist / Bolshevik regimes & leaders (like Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev) be allowed to hold referendums on what country they want their regions to re-join (if not create their own mini-state), like Poland (1939), Slovakia (1945), Hungary (1945), Romania (1945) and/or Russia (1922 and 1954)?
      
So in light of all that, what's the solution?
 
For Ukraine and for any other independence/autonomy/self-governance movement mentioned above?
    
Just as important, how should the United States, its people and allies consistently treat the people's right to self-determination, both at home and abroad, with respect to democratic principles and inalienable human rights?

What do you think?
 
As always, please don't forget to comment and share for thought & discussion!
 
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The Territorial Integrity of States vs. the Self-Determination of Peoples.
by John Whitbeck
CounterPunch
February 24, 2022
 
Two often-cited principles, each with established roots in international law, are frequently in conflict — the territorial integrity of states and the self-determination of peoples.
 
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/24/the-territorial-integrity-of-states-vs-the-self-determination-of-peoples/
 
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