Guarantees of sovereignty

A lead editorial in Washington Post, 'Potemkin drawdown: The West must hold Russia to a real withdrawal from Ukraine,' charged that 'the rebellion in the east is manufactured by Russia to undermine Ukraine's sovereignty. The United States and Britain guaranteed support for that sovereignty in 1994 when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons.'That claim brought my thoughts back to a conference of distinguished scholars at the US-Russia Forum in the Hart Senate office building on June 16. With Professors Stephen Cohen and Robert Legvold presenting, it was the most sensible discussion of the Ukraine imbroglio that I have witnessed to date.The point was made that Russia had violated the Budapest agreement in annexing Ukraine. But were the Russians the only culprits? What about the rest of the story? Russia, the UK and the US all pledged 'to respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine?' Okay. Gotcha on Putin considering the 'existing borders.'But what about the political destabilisation supported by the US government, including the $5 billion that Assistant Secretary of State Nuland publicly announced had been invested in Ukraine's 'European aspirations' - or the scores of projects financed by the US-funded National Endowment for Democracy, training activists, supporting 'journalists' and organising business and political groups.During the crisis, US officials even showed up in Kiev's Maidan square to urge on the protesters seeking to overthrow Yanukovych. Sen John McCain gave a speech on a platform of the right-wing Svoboda party under a banner hailing the late Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. Nuland went so far as to pass out cookies to the demonstrators and discuss with the US ambassador to Ukraine who should be take over after Yanukovych was ousted.How does this overt and covert interference square with the Budapest pledge 'to respect the independence and sovereignty ... of Ukraine?' And how do the strong-arm tactics of the EU square with the commitment 'to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty?'Luckily, at the US-Russia Forum, I was able to go first during the Q and A. I said: 'I have a brief question having to do with the Budapest agreement and also in the perspective of Vladimir Putin being more in a reactive mode than anything else. He's been accused, of course, of violating that agreement because of the Crimea [annexation].'I'm wondering, if you look at the putsch, if you look at the coup d'etat of Feb 22, supported to the tune of $5 billion by outside forces over the course of several years, of course, could that not also be regarded as a violation of the Budapest memorandum?'Columbia University Professor Legvold's answer was, I think, instructive - instinctive, perhaps. His first thought was to associate my point with an argument the Russians have made. For many listeners, that might put me in the category of some kind of apologist for Putin.I know Legvold well enough to doubt this was his intent. But still: Is Putin's account of the Feb 21-22 events to be dismissed out of hand simply because it is from Putin?The main takeaway for me from the forum was the Cohen-Legvold common assertion that we have already entered a New Cold War. Cohen was very direct in exposing the extraordinary abuse regularly accorded to scholars and specialists who try to discern and explain honestly Moscow's point of view.Legvold suggested it would be 'naïve' not to recognise that the new Cold War is already upon us, that it will be 'immensely expensive and immensely dangerous.'That endeavor of averting the costs and the risks of Cold War II might well start with a truthful narrative of what happened, not the one-sided account that the American people have been seeing and hearing in the US media.Excerpt from: 'Guaranteeing Ukraine's Sovereignty', courtesy Commondreams.org

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