--- amadeus amadeus <amadeus482000 at yahoo.com> wrote: Are you saying that global capitalism, under the guise of the "free market" has no desire to consolidate and expand wherever it can and by whatever means it can get away with? --
Hi Wolfgang,
Certainly not. But I can have a desire to be able to flap my arms and fly to the moon, and that does not mean I can do see or am even trying to do so.
Here's what's happened in Ukraine, as far as I can tell. What is Ukraine? It is a quasi-mafia state run by oligarchic clans and an astoundingly corrupt government -- rather like Russia in the 1990s, only poorer because Ukraine has much less stuff. This issue with the election was secession. Kuchma knew, much like Yeltsin knew in 1999, that, unless he succeeds in covering his ass and getting some member of his clan to come over to him, whatever rival oligarchic clan seized power would a) definitely take all his stuff and b) quite possibly jail him, which they could probably do legally as Kuchma's career has been so astoundingly sleazy. (Alternatively, he could have taken the Lukashenko route and made it possible to serve another term, but that was unfeasible -- it would have caused public protest like that we have recently seen, but on an even larger scale -- Luk can still do this kind of thing because he is still pretty popular, whereas K is probably the most hated man in Ukraine.) That's what Yanukovich was. He was Kuchma's ass-cover. Yushchenko represents the clan of Timoshenko -- I suspect she would have run for president herself but for her gender and the period she served in jail. Although he likes to present himself as an outsider, he is very much a part of the same corrupt mafia world -- he was PM a coiple of years ago, for God's sake. Timoshenko's clan want control of even more loot, the stuff that's in the hands of K's clan and that of his son-in-law whose name I can't remember.
Yushchenko depended on working up popular discontent over a corrupt regime, and on playing on Western Ukrainians' fear and resentment of Russia, plus fanciful promises of EU membership (the EU won't even let in Turkey!). (He also said that if Yan. won, Ukrainians would be drafted by Russia and sent to fight in Chechnya -- how's that for lame?) Yanukovich played on Eastern "Ukrainians'" (i.e. mostly ethnic Russians) fear and resentment of Ukrainian nationalists, plus fanciful promises that Eastern Ukraine, which is where the economy is, would "stop feeding those parasites in the West." Russia supported Yan. because Russia ALWAYS supports the incumbent. I can't think of a singlr election in the recent past anywhere, including Spain and the US, in which Russia hasn't supported the incumbent -- this is because politics as Moscow knows it depends on backroom deals, and if a new guy is in, you have to do the deals all over again, and stability in international relations is very very important for Russia. The EU and the US supported the new guy, as they _always_ do in the CIS, I think for regions of ideology and lack of knowledge. (And they didn't support him very much -- $16 million is not a whole lot of money even in Ukraine. Timoshenko probably blows that much on a typical vacation.) Yushch. seized on this as a means to work up his crowd and say "look! the world is with us! We'll get EU membership next Tuesday!"
Like I said before, the foreign politics of countries like Ukraine do not depend on the guy in power (mostly). Why did Kuchma go from being "pro-Western" to "pro-Russian"? Not out of choice. It was because the EU told him that Ukraine would NEVER be in the EU. Why did Shevardnadze become "pro-Russian"? Not out of choice. It was because nobody but Russia is willing to do business in Georgia.
Look what happened to Georgia's "Rose Revolution." What has changed in terms of foreign policy? Nothing, except that Tbilisi is much more cooperative with Russia about Chechnya on borders and the Pankisi Gorge. Who is putting money into Georgia? Russians. What companies are investing in Georgia? Russian ones (largely state-owned, so they can operate at a loss). Who is Georgis's economic minister? Bendukidze, a Russian oligarch! (Georgian by ethnicity, but a member of the Russian oligarchy.)
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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