The Crimean Referendum: Illegal, but not unexpected

So it seems that the Russian annexation of the Crimea is now a done deal – the blatantly fixed referendum has passed (and with a mere 96% of the vote, a very poor show compared to the 100% that Kim Jong-un received in the North Korean election a few days before), Russian troops completely control the region, and Crimea will soon become part of the Russian Federation, with the EU and the US issuing little more than cursory denunciations. The next step may well be for Russia to foment similar unrest in Donetsk and other eastern Ukrainian cities too, in the hope of pulling off the same stunt twice.

This is almost the exact opposite of what we hoped would happen in previous blogs on this topic. Instead of unity, Ukraine now has only a worsening division. Instead of peace, the government is calling up a national guard to prepare for an undeclared war. And instead of security, ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars are having to decide between fleeing Crimea or suddenly finding themselves in a country they do not wish to be in.

But as much as the west complains, it really only has itself to blame for the situation. After the invasions of Afghanistan (somewhat justified by the 9/11 attacks at least) and Iraq (completely unjustified by any measure), the attacks on Libya, the proposed attacks on Syria, and the constant pressure to conform being put on other sovereign states like North Korea and Iran, it would be foolish to expect other superpowers not to look at the way the US (and to a lesser extent the EU) behaves and to decide to copy them. After all, if one large, powerful, and well-armed country can get away with invading others for their own personal gain, then why can't the rest of them?

This kind of muscular geopolitics was common on both sides throughout the Cold War of course. Just as Russia annexed Ukraine and much of the rest of Eastern Europe at that point, so the US considered the Caribbean and Latin America to be its own 'sphere of influence', and American presidents had no qualms about sending troops to crush even minor deviations from the free-market capitalist script on tiny, defenceless islands like Grenada, or funding death squads and propping up dictators in Nicaragua or Chile.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine, the Baltics, Hungary, and more all became relatively free of Russian influence and able to follow their own path. However, the USA continued to go along with the now outdated idea that they had a right to interfere in the affairs of other countries – they were still playing the geopolitics of the Cold War, only without any real opposition anymore. But as the years have gone by, Russia has begun to flex its long-dormant muscles again, hoping to gain back some of the power it has lost over the past twenty years. The war with Georgia in 2008 was the first, relatively small, step. The Ukraine situation is a much larger one. And Russia's role model throughout all of this – the US and its continuing imperialist actions.

So the western politicians and newspapers are correct from a purely neutral standpoint. The Crimean referendum is a sham with no basis in international law. And Russia is pursuing a blatant policy of expansionism. But before we complain too much, we perhaps need to take a long look in the mirror and ask ourselves – where did they get the idea for that from? What influenced them to start expanding again? And we might just find that the answer is closer to home than we like to admit.

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