WhirledView

Finnish Model isn’t a Solution for Ukraine

By Jyrki Iivonen, Guest Contributor

(Jyrki Iivonen was Director for Public Policy at the Finnish Ministry of Defense from 2002-13 and Minister Counselor at the Finnish Embassy in Washington, DC from 1996-2000.  He was editor-in-chief of Maanpuolustus (National Defense Journal) from 2007-2012 and is a columnist, writer and docent of international politics at the University of Helsinki and political science at the University of Tampere.) - See more at: http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2014/03/russia-and-ukraine-a-view-from-finland.html#sthash.ogAFhTYZ.dpuf

(Jyrki Iivonen was Director for Public Policy at the Finnish Ministry of Defense from 2002-13 and Minister Counselor at the Finnish Embassy in Washington, DC from 1996-2000.  He was editor-in-chief of Maanpuolustus (National Defense Journal) from 2007-2012 and is a columnist, writer and docent of international politics at the University of Helsinki and political science at the University of Tampere.) - See more at: http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2014/03/russia-and-ukraine-a-view-from-finland.html#sthash.ogAFhTYZ.dpuf

Jyrki Iivonen was Director for Public Policy at the Finnish Ministry of Defense from 2002-13 and Minister Counselor at the Finnish Embassy in Washington, DC from 1996-2000.  He was editor-in-chief of Maanpuolustus (National Defense Journal) from 2007-2012 and is a columnist, writer and docent of international politics at the University of Helsinki and political science at the University of Tampere.

This article was originally published by Ukraine Crisis Media Center in Kiev, June 27, 2014 in Ukrainian, Russian and English.  

(Jyrki Iivonen was Director for Public Policy at the Finnish Ministry of Defense from 2002-13 and Minister Counselor at the Finnish Embassy in Washington, DC from 1996-2000.  He was editor-in-chief of Maanpuolustus (National Defense Journal) from 2007-2012 and is a columnist, writer and docent of international politics at the University of Helsinki and political science at the University of Tampere.) - See more at: http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2014/03/russia-and-ukraine-a-view-from-finland.html#sthash.ogAFhTYZ.dpuf

Two eminent American diplomats and experts of international relations and diplomacy, Henry Kissinger and Jack Matlock, proposed in March of this year that a solution to the Ukrainian-Russian crisis after the annexation of Crimea by Russia should be based on a “Finnish model”.  They obviously believed that Russia would be trustworthy negotiating partner and that an escalation of the crisis was preventable.

The question is, however, what Kissinger and Matlock meant by the “Finnish model”. This reference has been used to describe the Finnish-Soviet relationship during the Cold War, during which time Finland accepted certain limitations on its sovereignty, especially in the areas of foreign and security policy. Because of these limitations, Finland did not join any Western military alliances and had difficulties gaining access to membership in some European economic arrangements.

A “Finnish model” is based on a hierarchical relationship between two parties. The weaker party is forced to accept that the stronger one has the power to dictate what the weaker one is able and allowed to do. To preserve its democratic political system and market economy, during the Cold War Finland did not have autonomy in foreign affairs. The model also required that Finland publicly endorse this model and praise the good nature of its relationship with its Eastern neighbor.

It is not surprising that the Soviet Union was happy with this arrangement. In official Soviet-Finnish communiqués the arrangement was described as “a positive example of the fruitful nature of peaceful coexistence between countries belonging to different social systems.” The formulation never mentioned the hierarchical nature of the relationship, but it was certainly present. Finland’s freedom and room for manoeuvre were limited and included an obligation to make sure that any dissatisfaction with the Soviet system could not emerge. So, when this Finnish model is given as a solution to Ukraine, six important points must be taken into consideration.

First, the model is based on Cold War structures. Its aim was to cement existing structures, to prevent any uncontrolled or undesirable changes to take place.

Second, the model is hierarchical, presuming that all parties are not equal. In the post-Cold War world, however, the relationships between states should be based on equality and on reciprocal and voluntary acceptance.

Third, the new European system has been built on new multilateral arrangements and agreements between all European states. If any party of that system breaks these rules, it cannot expect that its conduct will be accepted as a fait accompli.

Fourth, stable and reciprocally accepted arrangements in the long run benefit all parties. In the opposite case, the impact is negative for all parties.

Fifth, normal neighborly relations cannot be created if one or the other party is denied the right to decide matters belonging to its power as an independent state. For example, a membership in NATO or the European Union cannot and should not be an obstacle to having normal relations with Russia.

Sixth, Finland has today normal political and economic relations with Russia. But it is disturbing that in spite of assurances by the highest level of state leadership, there are voices in Russia that want to restrict Finland’s rights in this respect. Russia has also shown that it does not want to give such rights to all its neighbors.

To conclude, the so-called “Finnish model” that has been proposed is a solution that belongs to the past and does not solve the crisis in Ukrainian-Russian relations. Ukraine can build good relations with Russia. All that is needed is for Russia to accept proposals put recently forward by the Ukrainian leadership. This too would be in Russia’s interest.

What's the big secret with the State Department's diversity statistics and why?

By Patricia H Kushlis

Important Update September 17, 2014:  It's recently come to my attention that the reason State is keeping its Foreign Service diversity statistics secret is because the department somehow exempted itself from providing such statistics publicly several years ago.  Can anyone explain why or under what provision the Office of Personnel Management agreed to such a request? 

Could there be a possible FOIA request in the offing or would State like to rethink this unnecessary secretiveness?

This past summer, the State Department claimed that it publicly released its aggregate promotion data for 2013 in The State Department Magazine, its trade magazine.  There is just one problem: the statistics on diversity and gender were, as usual, missing.  I noted this in two different posts this summer: one on discrimination against Hispanics in the Foreign Service and an earlier one on continuing gender inequality.

For the first time after writing about the Department’s Bureau of Human Resources dismal performance beginning in 2008 (see The Troubled State of State on WV’s left sidebar), I received a note from a representative of the bureau.  This came in the form of an e-mail from HR Public Affairs Officer Brenda Greenberg.  According to Brenda, I had made a mistake:  that State had indeed published the data.

The only problem with Brenda's message was that the information in it was (and remains) wrong. To prove her point, she referenced the same SBU link that I had found a month earlier in the State Department Magazine and included in the post. 

Here's a copy of our e-mail exchange:

In Reference to Whirled Vew Blog: Letting You Know about 2013 Promotion Statistics

---

Greenberg, Brenda L <[email protected]>	Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 5:17 AM
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Regarding: “Going back to 2000, the only year that State published promotion figures based on gender and ethnicity was in 2012, when they appeared in the June 2012 issue of State Magazine.  Those statistics disappeared from State Magazine in 2013 and 2014. “ The 2013 promotion statistics are available on page 32 of the June 2014 online issue of State Magazine at http://digitaledition.state.gov/publication/ and the 2013 Foreign Service promotion statistics will also be published in the July-August 2014 print and digital issue of State Magazine.  The 2014 promotion statistics are simply not out yet.  The promotion boards have just convened. Brenda Greenberg HR Public Affairs 202-647-4282

---

Pat Kushlis <[email protected]>	Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 9:16 AM
To: "Greenberg, Brenda L" <[email protected]>
Brenda - I most appreciate your e-mail.  Correcting the record is vital for us. I would have done so now had the links you provided in your e-mail, in fact, corrected it.  I cited the first and had included the link to the same State Magazine article in my most recent post on women's promotions. If you did not read it, I've included the link below.  http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2014/06/states-female-proof-glass-ceiling-breaking-into-the-good-old-boys-diplomatic-club-is-still-hard-to-do.html I also did not write - in my post on Hispanics in the Foreign Service - that the statistics from the 2014 boards were available for precisely the reason stated in your final paragraph.  What I wrote was that promotion statistics had not appeared in the public record, e.g. State Magazine in 2013 and 2014.  Meaningful statistics that are kept behind a hard wall and made available only to someone with an SBU clearance and State Intranet access fail to meet that criterion. I certainly hope that State will be more transparent and forthcoming with its EEO data from the 2014 boards than those for 2013. Thanks and I hope you keep reading WV.  Patricia Kushlis -- Patricia H. Kushlis www.whirledview.typepad.com [email protected]

  What is SBU?

For anyone unfamiliar with the SBU designation, it is an administrative classification akin to the old LOU, to which one needs a special clearance to access the document in question.  This means the information the document contains is not repeat, not accessible to the public. Furthermore, it is only accessible through State’s internal intranet website.  As Diplopundit noted recently in that blog’s second article complaining about the same problem, the Great Firewall remains intact.

Moscow and Mearsheimer – A Reality Check Needed: the West did not cause the Current Crisis in Ukraine

By James Schumaker, Guest Contributor

James Schumaker, a retired Foreign Service Officer, has served in various capacities in the United States Government over the past several decades, with professional experience in the Soviet Union, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia.

In this essay, Professor John Mearsheimer explains to us why the Ukraine crisis is all the West's fault, and why Putin's Russia is only reacting to Western aggressive moves, and justly so.

If I were on the editorial board of Foreign Affairs, after reading this draft I would have told Professor Mearsheimer to go back to the drawing board.  In particular, I would have recommended that he leave his Ivory Tower and try doing a little field work for a change, which might give him a more grounded sense of reality.

For those who are unfamiliar with Professor Mearsheimer's work, he is what is called an "offensive realist." In other words, he believes in amoral "balance of power" politics, where the Great Powers establish spheres of influence with only the faintest of consideration for the desires of the smaller powers who might get in the way.  Also, he does not believe that ideology or domestic politics should be considered when making foreign policy decisions, and he downplays the ability of individual personalities like, say, Hitler or Putin, to affect the course of world events.

This is essentially an elitist view of foreign policy that has a certain congruence with the later views of George Kennan, but in the case of Europe, lacks Kennan's depth of knowledge of the Soviet Union and its successor states. In some cases, Mearsheimer's policy prescriptions have been spot-on, as when he supported the 1991 Gulf War and opposed vigorously the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  In other cases, particularly when it comes to European affairs, Mearsheimer seems to have lost his way.

For example, in 1990 he predicted the imminent demise of NATO.  We're still waiting. 

Similarly, while he does have a story to tell with regard to the current Ukraine-Russia crisis, it is almost laughably out of date, and gets the story of what has happened almost completely wrong.  The only people who might agree with Mearsheimer's account would be Putin apologists like Dr. Stephen Cohen or the editors of Russia Today, since he repeats Putin's propaganda line virtually word for word.

Mearsheimer also fails to analyze the Ukraine-Russia problem correctly because ideology (democracy vs. messianic Russian nationalism) and personality (Putin) have tremendous roles to play in the current crisis, and upset all of his tidy social-science calculations.

Mearsheimer would do well to go to Ukraine and actually talk with a few Ukrainians before he dismisses their interests as unimportant as compared to those of Russia. The current crisis in Ukraine is not the West's fault, and it is not because of some mythical Western desire to surround Russia and bring Ukraine into NATO.

The fault lies wholly with Putin's Russia, and with Putin. As Kennan himself said, "Russia can have at its borders only enemies or vassals."  Ukraine doesn't want to be a vassal anymore, and so it is an enemy. That's not our fault, and it's not Ukraine's, either.  Mearsheimer should revise his theory of international relations to reflect that reality.

See also: Anders Aslund, “Is the West to Blame for Russia’s Aggression in Ukraine?  Of course not” August 20, 2014

Contributor Note: Excerpts from James Schumaker's personal memoirs can be found on his blog.

 

 

 

Novorossiya = Fuzzy Thinking + Disastrous Consequences

By Patricia H Kushlis

What, precisely, does Novorossiya mean?

The recreation of the Old Soviet Union?  The resurrection of the Russian Empire ruled by Moscow but under a 21^st century name?  Or does it mean the Russian Federation will offer special protections to Russian speakers living outside its borders along the lines of the 19th century practice of extraterritoriality?

In reality Novorossiya is a fuzzy concept, but at root it is based on the premise that irredentism is just fine as long as it’s my country that’s being the irredentist.  Which means: the term Novorossiya has far reaching and dangerous consequences for international peace and stability.

For a single country to decide that it will upset the international apple cart through aggression against its neighbors in pursuit of ill-defined, grandiose ultranationalist visions breaking internationally agreed upon rules is far worse than just opening Pandora's Box or shouting fire in a crowded theater. 

If Russia can pull off such a grand scheme then there’s no reason others can’t, and won’t, follow suit.

In a Hobbsian world of might makes right, why then shouldn't the Chinese decide to unilaterally invoke a Novokitaiskaya that includes not just the disputed islands in the South China Sea and the Senkakus, off the coast with Japan, but also land ceded to Russia by China along the Usseri River in the 1960s or more that’s been under contention for decades if not centuries?

Why shouldn’t the Finns decide to establish a Novofinlandia (Uusi Suomi or perhaps Suuri Suomi) to include the now Russian province of Karelia, once part of Finland until an earlier Russian land-grab, from where the Finnish and Estonian Kalevala, or national narrative, derives.  Hey, I still have one of those pre-World War II greater Finland road maps that I bought from the map store when I lived in Helsinki at the end of the Cold War.

There was, by the way, a joke circulating in Finland at the time about agreeing to meet someone on the Finnish-Chinese border.

Thoughts on Mike McFaul's Op-ed on Ukraine, and the Putin apologists who follow him around

By James Schumaker, Guest Contributor

(James Schumaker, a retired Foreign Service Officer, has served in various capacities in the United States Government over the past several decades, with professional experience in the Soviet Union, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia.)

I don't agree with everything Ambassador McFaul says in his recent New York Times op-ed, but I do believe he is on the right track.

I also see that a lot of the featured commenters on his Op-ed are swallowing whole the Russian line that somehow Eastern Ukraine is naturally Russian because a majority there speaks Russian, and that Ukraine is not really one country but two.  The fact is that while a minority of Eastern Ukrainians would like to move closer to Russia, a majority are for a united Ukraine, and favor closer connections with the West.

This is why Putin has had to move in Russian equipment and "volunteers" to keep the separatist movement going, and this is why the separatist leaders themselves are mainly Russian citizens with ties to Russian intelligence (Strelkov, Bezler, Borodai, et al),  I can understand why NYT readers would want to avoid war, but it cannot be done at the expense of sacrificing another country to Vladimir Putin's brand of messianic nationalism. 

After all, Putin has already indicated that he wants to reverse the results of the Cold War.  He has his eye not just on Ukraine, which he has repeatedly said is not a state, but on all the formerly Soviet-dominated countries on Russia's border. 

We'll have to stand up to him sooner or later, and sooner would be better. In my opinion, neither the Europeans nor the Americans have been sufficiently active in supporting Ukraine.  This does not mean that we have to intervene militarily, but it does mean that we should step up our economic and military assistance markedly. 

For example, while it is obvious that Ukraine could not win a conventional war against Russia,  if Ukraine's ability to conduct a guerrilla war against invading forces were significantly enhanced, this would act as a strong deterrent to some of Putin's darker fantasies. 

 We also need to be ready to step up the penalties on Putin’s Russia should he opt to continue making trouble in Eastern Ukraine.  Russia’s suggestion to open “humanitarian corridors” from Russia into separatist-controlled areas is just the latest gambit to prolong the instability there and give Moscow’s agents a chance to recover.  The longer we delay in exercising leadership, and in leading the way to help Ukraine, the more Putin will take advantage of the chaos he has created.

Excerpts from James Schumaker's personal memoirs can be found on his blog.

See also David Remnick's "Watching the Eclipse" in the August 11 & 18, 2014 New Yorker.

 

The Wily Vladimir Putin: A Brie Ban and a Trojan Horse

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

For a whole year (just one?) Moscow will not import meat, poultry, dairy, fruit or vegetables from countries that have slapped economic sanctions on Russia.  In short: hold the butter; keep sending arms.  Re the latter, given the state of Russian industry, how else will Vladimir Putin pursue his imperial ambitions, which presently center on creating a Ukraine so weak and divided that Kiev will have no choice but to depend on Russia?

We should thank Vladimir Putin for giving us a hint of what he really fears.  I suspect he’s gambling that the financial pain from the loss of agricultural exports will be deep enough to prevent Europe from joining the U.S. in imposing yet more and yet more biting sanctions for instigating separatism in Eastern Ukraine. It’s common knowledge that major European manufacturing sectors, especially in Germany, but also in France, have for months put profit over principle when it comes to the plight of Ukraine.  But that commitment to pure self-interest may be eroding.

A Game Changer?

The downing of a Malaysian airliner blown to bits mid-air by Russian-trained rebels with Russian-supplied equipment changed the equation.   Nearly three hundred people died.  As if that weren’t bad enough, the rebels barred international inspectors and humanitarian agencies from the debris field, hoping most likely that any evidence clinging to the wreckage would be washed off by rain or abraded by dust.  Moscow colluded via silence at the very least.  Naturally. Chemical residues would have led to Russian origins.  This callous delaying action, more than the actual downing, which could have been accidental, was the game changer.  The mutilated bodies of the dead lay on the ground where they had fallen, neglected and putrefying, day after day.  In time the whole world recoiled, which left the profit-maximizing European holdouts no choice but to go along with the U.S. and up the sanctions.  The question is: will the unanimity continue?

It’s been hard to measure the impact of the economic sanctions so far.  Moscow, quite naturally, denies any effect of consequence.  However, foreign investment in Russian has declined markedly, and Russian money has been flowing to safer places.  None of this is good for the weak Russian economy.

Why Foodstuffs?

Until the recent round of sanctions, Putin had repeatedly threatened to retaliate without following through.   This time, perhaps, he felt he had to respond or become a laughing stock.   And so: Begone brie! Down with Danish butter! Take that, American chicken farmers!  Actually, blocking foodstuffs from entry is not a radical step.  Agricultural commodities play a fairly small role in overall Europe-Russia trade.  Though the ban will hurt some countries more than others, maximal punishment it is not.  Why did the macho Putin of all people choose to respond so delicately?  Is there, perhaps, some reason for choosing the lesser thrust over the greater?  

I think there is.  To feed his vision of Russia’s imperial greatness (and to wage the war he has very carefully not quite declared in Ukraine) Vladimir Putin needs to import sophisticated military-related items as well as other industrial goods.  He needs know-how, too.  As for food,  he doesn’t need it.  Not for calories.  Not for politics. As Putin well remembers, Russians spent decades on a strictly locavore diet during the Soviet regime.  They can do it again.  At least, Putin’s rural supporters can.  They’ll hardly notice the difference.  They’ll happily make borscht (which is delicious) out of the sturdy root vegetables that grow at Russia’s northern latitudes.  They’ll hunt for mushrooms, swill kvass and toss down the vodka.  All very traditional. Who needs fancy wines?  Under Putin they'll gorge on dreams of recapturing the glory days of the Soviet Union.   Oh for the good old times when Moscow inspired respect, fear and obedience from its neighbors—and even made the U.S. tremble.   

The considerably enlarged urban middle class of Russia is another matter.  From the Putin point of view, in fact, these people are entirely too well integrated into European culture and expectations.  They will hate a diet without the delicacies the West produces.  They will not happily endure a return to the bad old Soviet days of queuing in sub-zero temperatures to buy a few oranges or a kilo of tough stew beef in order to support a huge military machine.  But so what?  They aren’t Putin supporters and never have been—and when they try to protest against his increasingly despotic regime he uses fair means and foul to defeat them.
 
So the butter bit is a clever gambit, co-opting a possible Western sanctions move, while doing very little domestic damage and hopefully (from Putin’s standpoint) leading European industrialists to fear really painful retaliation should the West attempt to impose harsher sanctions on Russia’s already shaky economy.  

Russia to the Rescue!

But the wily Mr. Putin didn’t stop there.  He had a one-two in mind, evidently.  He’s found another way to aid the separatists while pretending to be uninvolved.  This one’s a real beaut.

After consistently making it difficult or impossible to funnel international aid to the besieged people of Syria, Vladimir Putin proposes to send an aid cavalcade to succor civilians in Donetsk and other areas held by his hostage-minded separatist allies.  You’ve got to hand it to Vladimir Putin.  He’s ingenious and very hard to predict. In this case, the best way to call his bluff is to thank him effusively, then insist on inspecting every item at the border and transferring it to international aid workers for distribution to the needy.  If Putin objects, we’ll know his real intent.  He wants to sneak in well-trained agents disguised as humanitarians.  He wants to bolster the rebels’ firepower.   

In anticipation of a jaundiced response, perhaps, it’s been announced that the Red Cross will serve as an escort for the aid caravan.  In this case, another question needs to be posed and answered.  The International Red Cross or a purely Russian branch?  If the latter, be aware that there is no such thing as a truly independent non-governmental organization in Russia.  Careful search is in order.   

Can you say Trojan Horse?  

C.I.A. Director John Brennan: Bad Choice, Time to Go

By Patricia Lee Sharpe


     (1)   “We tortured folks.”  President Barack Obama.

     (2)  “I have full confidence in John Brennan.”  President Barack Obama.

Let’s get something straight, Mr. President.  We didn’t torture anybody, although John Brennan was somewhere in the chain of command when torture was the order of the day.  For that reason, he should never have been elevated to head the Central Intelligence Agency.  Many of us objected to that appointment.  You pushed it forward anyway, Mr. President, thus putting yourself in surprising company, or so we thought, briefly, recalling your very different pre-election personna.  We now know that you are really one of them.  
 
You, Mr. President, seem to have  joined Dick Cheney’s take-off-the-gloves “dark side,”  but we didn’t torture anybody.  We believed that we were living in a country whose Constitution provides no exception to the prohibition against ”cruel and unusual” punishment (not even in the wake of a vicious terrorist attack) and where lying to Congress under oath is a crime and a very serious one, because society cannot function without trust.  By appointing and continuing to express confidence to a man who lies to Senators, raids their computers and does his energetic best to suppress a full and accurate report on the torture years, you not only betray us, Mr. President, you undermine our system of law.  You invite the chaos and/or authoritarianism that disfigures too many countries today.  Where there is effectively no law, when government institutions are a laugh, the Kalashnikov rules.

No Collective Guilt
      
Get this absolutely straight,  Mr. President, we did not torture anyone.  The collective guilt brush doesn’t apply here, so kindly put it aside.  We weren’t consulted.  We weren’t informed.  When we began to get hints of really bad stuff happening, evidence was destroyed. We the people were fed lie after lie about that, too, meaning denials of the existence as well as the destruction of evidence.  

Americans voted for hope in the person of  Barack Obama.  Not all of us were enraptured by that vacuous promise, but even we expected that you, Mr. President, once elected, would clean up the swamps and dungeons of the Bush years.  We expected that a president who had been  a constitutional law professor, no less, would not only repudiate the Bush administration’s addiction to cruel and unusual punishment but  also—and this was critical, in order to prevent repetition—would prosecute all those who’d had a hand in it.  Yes.  All of them.  From  the delicately-distanced decision-makers in the executive offices right on down to the more obviously dirty-handed guys in the ultra secret “black hole” torture chambers, whether C.I.A. operatives themselves or contractors employed for the purposes of “plausible deniability.”

The Dark Side Rules

But you didn’t, Mr. Obama.  You pretended to take the high road, persuading a gullible public that we should just write off the mistakes of the past and concentrate on doing better in the future.  You weren’t even willing to prosecute the C.I.A. operatives who destroyed the torture tapes or their equally culpable immediate supervisors, a very serious crime you were happy to overlook.   Had we correctly foreseen the astonishing future, the very near future, we wouldn’t have been surprised.  What you had in mind, it seems, was the creation of a bigger, better rogue state, an even more perfect police state:  you brought the N.S.A. into the picture.  Soon our own government was spying on all of us all the time.  No warrants needed.  Too inconvenient.  

Russia and Ukraine - a dangerous game's unintended consequences

 By Patricia H Kushlis

Whoever convinced Vladimir Putin that it would be a cup of afternoon tea by the samovar to send arms and irregulars into Ukraine in the name of "protecting" the greater Russian speaking population and then to hive off the country's east because its population would welcome them with rose petals and vodka should be off the Kremlin payroll.  True, the takeover of Crimea had been all too easy and Russia's war with Georgia was a thing of the past.   Eastern Ukraine, however, is turning out to be a different story.

A dangerous card game

It's not that the Russian special forces sent there were not battle hardened fighters – it’s clear from their backgrounds and swagger that they had had considerable experience on various killing fields at home and in the neighborhood apparently acting under Moscow's tutelage - if not command.

Presumably the decision to send them across the porous borders was only made after Ukrainians had had enough of the corrupt Viktor Yanukovich. Yanukovich who fled in the dark of night over the Russian border to save his skin had quietly done Moscow's bidding all the while living in secret splendor on an estate outside of Kiev.  (Why is it that corrupt East European autocrats tend to prefer villas surrounded by fields and forests stocked with game and complete with zoos full of exotic animals?)

Yet the pursuit of one country's ultra-nationalist goals - whether on the cheap or otherwise - sets an entire region on edge.  Especially when the mantra is the reestablishment of the Russian (or any other) Empire based on the all too friendly embrace of native speakers living outside the country’s borders.

Playing the nationalist card is popular for leaders, particularly those in trouble at home.  This has been true for decades if not centuries.  The problem comes when it's time to put that genie back into the bottle.  The trick is how to stay in power without losing even greater credibility than before the divisive adventurism designed to shore up popularity among the home folk began.

Nationalism is after all about ethnicity which usually translates as linguistic, cultural and religious sameness. It has its purposes when used to protect the homeland from attack or internal disaster but when unleashed abroad it becomes a dangerous game with far reaching ramifications and unintended consequences.

In the real world, however, there is no ethnically pure country. Would someone please remind the Kremlin that this includes Russia itself.   81 percent of the Russian population is ethnically Russian. This leaves another 19 percent who are not. At least some living on this huge territory that stretches across 14 time zones would prefer to go their own way given the choice.  At the very least, even Russian speakers living far from Moscow itch for the greater autonomy they had pre-Putin, when their governors were elected; not imposed from the center.