The U.S. Has Harnessed Ukrainian Nationalism

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

On April 28, U.S. President Joe Biden asked Congress for $33 billion in aid to Ukraine, two thirds of it for military assistance. He also proclaimed that Ukraine is “vital to the defence of the United States.”

It’s amazing what short memories people have. Almost forgotten today, as Russian armies are embroiled in Ukraine, is that at the time the Soviet Union was collapsing, President George H.W. Bush tried to convince those who sought sovereign states in the Baltic and Ukraine to remain within the USSR.

The American administration took the position that nationalism, rather than Soviet despotism, was the real problem for the people of Eastern Europe.

Indeed, in the case of Ukraine Bush even traveled to Kyiv in 1990 to lecture the Ukrainians about the dangers of seeking independence from Moscow, while decrying the supposed nationalist threat.

It remains true that in most instances nationalism remains a negative doctrine in the minds of North Americans and West Europeans. One often sees the term applied in derogatory terms – for example “white nationalism.”

But when nationalism is convenient for NATO, as in today’s Ukraine, we are told that nationalism is a force for good.

In 1991, the U.S. had not yet decided to actively promote nationalism as long as it is anti-Russian nationalism. But back then, it sided with Moscow in efforts to stifle or discourage local nationalist efforts to break with the Soviet state.

By 1989, in a rapidly disintegrating Soviet polity, ethnic Armenians and Azeris were already embroiled in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh that continues to this day. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sent Soviet tanks into Baku in January 1990, to prevent the Azerbaijani Popular Front from taking power.

Yet instead of Washington pundits instructing Americans to stand with Azerbaijan, they were told the real threat was nationalism. Old nationalistic impulses were “dangerous ghosts” from Europe’s past and ethnic tensions could lead to geopolitical anarchy.

On August 1, 1991, Bush delivered what has become known as the “Chicken Kiev” speech. In this address in Kyiv to the Supreme Soviet of what was still the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, he tried to persuade the Ukrainians on the need to accept rule from Moscow and reject nationalism.

Bush endorsed an agreement reached the previous April between Gorbachev and nine of the republics, including Ukraine, that committed to a new Union Treaty establishing a more decentralised Soviet Union.

He contended that the agreement “holds forth the hope that republics will combine greater autonomy with greater voluntary interaction” rather than “pursuing the hopeless course of isolation.”

Bush told his Ukrainian listeners that “freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.” It would result in an outbreak of “chaos” and “instability.”

The panic over nationalism in the former USSR didn’t persist, however, once Washington realized it could extend its “unipolar moment” by expanding NATO eastwards.

Nationalism could be harnessed to serve the ends of NATO expansion, so it was transformed into a feature of “sovereignty, territorial integrity,” and the “rules-based international order.”

But ethnic nationalism is a two-way street. What about the Russians and Russophones in Ukraine, located mainly in the Donbas and Crimea, whose own identity pulls them towards Moscow?

To get Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table at all, Ukraine’s borders would be up for discussion. After all, basing today’s international frontiers on what were internal borders in the USSR, drawn up by Communist leaders precisely to prevent Soviet republics and regions from being viable independent states, has led to the present catastrophe.

In her recently published Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, Cambridge University political economy professor Helen Thompson sees NATO in terms of American power rather than as a purely defensive shield against Russian marauding. She’s right.

U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin April 24 stated Washington’s goals in the war were not only to protect Ukraine but also to “weaken” Russia. This much is certain: if Russia loses this war it will become a second-rate power and the NATO-European Union hegemon will dominate the globe.