Western support does not equate to having orchestrated something. You do not organize a revolution by supplying lawn chairs, tents, and pelmeni, in a country of 50 million people. Lawn chairs, tens, and pelmeni that Tymoshenko, the billionaire (and now traitor, according to Yushchenko, head of Ukraine's highly dysfunctional "it's a tuesday, let's collapse" government), could have supplied out of her back pocket).
The Orange Revo was a war between Eastern and Western Ukrainian business clans appealing to the pro- and anti-Russian opinions of their respective regional demographics, not about geopolitics. Geopolitics was made an issue because the respective business groupings hoped to get foreign muscle in on their side, and after the fact because the Bush Administration, which had had no foreign policy successes whatsoever other than Russian (and sub voce Iranian) help in Afghanistan, needed some example to say that its "democracy promotion" policy was working.
The Orange Revo succeeded because the Ukrainian nationalists are better organized than the pro-Russian majority population of Ukraine. Just as in the United States Evangelicals pull weight well out of proportion to their numbers. The same reason why Ukraine keeps trying to ban Russian-language media and even pop music, even though Ukraine is about a quarter ethnic Russian, a third of ethnic Ukrainians speak Russians as their main language, Russian is the only language you will hear spoken on the streets of Kiev, and Ukrainians favor economic union with Russia over EU membership by a factor of 2 to 1 (and over NATO membership by a factor of 3 to 1). Because the nationalists around Lviv are organized and passionate, and the rest of Ukrainians are not.
This "CIA plot" theme is downright silly in the case of Georgia, where the CIA supposedly contrived a coup to oust... a pro-American government.
--- On Thu, 6/18/09, Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] paranoia
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, June 18, 2009, 6:46 PM
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 6:57 PM,
> Chris Doss<lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > The Orange Revolution was neither a CIA plot, nor did
> it gain anything for Ukraine, the government of which
> collapses every couple of months. If it was anybody's plot,
> it was that of the highly organized Western Ukrainian
> nationalists and nationalist Ukrainian Diaspora in Canada
> and the United States.
>
> Chris: I´m sure the article author would appreciate your
> feedback.
>
> Plus, there´s this:
>
> Ukraine's Orange Revolution, NGOs and the Role of the
> West
> http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/ccam/2006/00000019/00000001/art00004
>
> "This article examines the role of Western support for
> domestic
> non-governmental organisations during the 2004 Ukrainian
> election and
> the Orange Revolution. It critically assesses the thesis
> that Western
> support and the groups who received Western money were
> overly biased
> towards a particular candidate, namely Viktor Yushchenko"
> Source: Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Volume
> 19, Number
> 1, March 2006 , pp. 21-32(12)
>
> Unfortunately, I don´t have $30 to spend on this PDF
> paper.
>
> FC
>
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>