Tag Archives: Europe

Get to know a geopolitical flashpoint: Moldova

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A Russian-dominated breakaway region of another former Soviet Republic, just up the river from the Black Sea and a short hop from Crimea, has formally requested the Russian Federation follow up on its Crimea annexation by doing the same there.

Although many Western observers initially thought the continuing buildup of Russian troops near Eastern Ukraine was intended for a possible invasion of Eastern Ukraine, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, said today that he is worried it may in fact be the Russian Army positioning itself for another intervention on the other side of Ukraine and Crimea, in the Transdniestria region of Moldova.

A month ago I would have said that was nonsense — and it still feels strategically and logistically less likely than the Crimea takeover — but a month ago, few were expecting such a brazen seizure of Crimea by the Russian Federation. So with that in mind, I thought it would be a good time to expand upon my “Beginner’s Guide to the Post-Soviet ‘Near Abroad'” prepare some research on Transdniestria and Moldova.
Transdniestria-Eastern-Europe-Map-March-23-2014
The landlocked Eastern European country of Moldova is wedged between southwestern Ukraine and northeastern Romania. The predominant language is Moldovan, which is effectively the same language as Romanian and since 1989 has used the Roman alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet (previously enforced by Moscow). The country has been independent since 1991 when the Soviet Union ended, but it changed hands and was carved up many times in the past 500 years. At various points, parts of the country were ruled by the Ottomans, the Romanians, the Lithuanians, the Polish, the Ukrainians, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union.

The borders have also changed quite a few times in that time and Moldova has struggled to find its geographical place in the region. Part of the country had long been a Russian Empire border zone (on the edge of Ukraine) and was absorbed into Soviet Ukraine and the Soviet Union right after World War I, when the Russian Empire collapsed and was replaced by the communist government. The rest of the country was part of Romania during the interwar years. After World War II, the parts of what are now Moldova today were fused together into a Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the smaller of the USSR’s member republics.

So, as you can imagine, by the end of the 1980s and start of the 1990s, things were pretty confusing and jumbled. There wasn’t a clearly defined national identity because there wasn’t even a clearly defined historical area or legacy of self-rule. It was possible that Moldova might even try to rejoin Romania, which has the most in common with the bulk of the country and had previously controlled it several times. After late 1989, when Romania’s totalitarian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu had been executed, it seemed to Moldovan nationalists like a good escape route from Soviet/Russian domination, which had not yet ended.

This plan, unfortunately, didn’t sit well with the longstanding Russian population from the other side of the Dniester River, the zone that had not been part of Romania during the interwar years (having been almost immediately brought into the Soviet Union by 1924). This was a place that had been a militarized frontier of the Russian Empire since 1793 and had suffered greatly under Axis-Romanian occupation during World War II — experiencing forced Romanianization and the murders of over 100,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews in Axis concentration camps built in the region.

This geographical area, the narrow strip of land between the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border, effectively Moldova’s Russianized East Bank (and a few communities on the Moldovan side of the river), is known in English as the Trans-Dniester region or Transdniestria/Transnistria and other variants adapted from the Romanian point-of-reference to “the area across the Dniester.”

The bulk of the rest of Moldova, the Dniester’s West Bank, is the non-Russian-speaking area referred to as “Bessarabia” — which has changed hands far more often than Transdniestria. By the early 1990s, Transdniestria’s Russian population, despite now being separated from the Russian Soviet Federal Republic by the entirety of a newly independent Ukraine, still saw itself as the Western-most outpost of historical Russia, and felt very threatened by the pro-Romanian nationalism of the Moldovan independence movement that had broken the country away from the Soviet Union.

They promptly declared independence from Moldova as the USSR was breaking up and — after some initial skirmishes in the first politically chaotic months — the new Moldovan military tried to invade the Transdniestria region.

Below: The current flag of the breakaway region.
Flag-of-Transnistria

Complicating matters was the giant, heavily armed elephant in the room: The fact that the Soviet Union’s 14th Army had been stationed in eastern Moldova (Transdniestria) at the time of independence and was assigned to Russia, rather than Moldova, when the former Soviet states were divvying up the old USSR’s Army and Navy.
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National Geographic, Crimea, and the politics of geography

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crimea-ukraine
Above: Wikipedia’s map showing Crimea as part of Ukraine.

National Geographic, the venerable and often deeply controversial flagship organization of the American field of geography, has generated a new firestorm over its decision to start mapping Crimea as part of the Russian Federation following its illegal and fraudulent annexation of the peninsula. Other options would include marking it as “disputed” or still part of Ukraine. Nat Geo’s justification was that they “map the world as it is, not as people would like it to be.”

Whether or not the de facto status of Crimea is now that it is part of Russia, that’s a cop-out. And as someone who studied the history of geography at the University of Delaware’s nationally prominent Geography Department, I’d like to point out that this cop-out also conveniently absolves National Geographic of its role in the community and the world, one which has historically been both very important and very damaging (in many cases).
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March 3, 2014 – Arsenal for Democracy 75

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AFD-logo-big-newDescription: Bill and Greg discuss discuss the Crimea crisis and Newsweek’s print resurrection. Persephone updates us on the Ley Gallardon abortion controversy in Spain.

 
March 3, 2014 – Arsenal for Democracy 75

 

 

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Crimea: What do you really think we can do about it?

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I noticed a prominent economist tweeted this the other day, reacting to the Russian occupation of Crimea: “Obama vows no tangible help Whatever happened to Democrats like Truman and Kennedy.”

This would be Truman whose Berlin Airlift occurred in a world where the U.S. was the only nuclear-armed country… and then he managed to get us stuck in Korea. And Kennedy narrowly managed to avoid getting everyone nuked over Cuba and our interference there (including his own)… but then still got us stuck in Vietnam.

So, I don’t know, maybe Obama’s handling this crisis pretty ok?

Look, this isn’t a knock against the person who tweeted that. It’s a pretty common frustration right now. I just happened to spot that particular expression of it. It’s a tense and complicated situation over there right now. There’s probably not much we can do. The U.S. isn’t omnipotent. Nor is Russia powerless before us.

Major miscalculations and underestimations following smaller disputes a century ago this year, not far from the Black Sea, brought Europe and later the United States into the devastating first world war. Let’s not repeat that. When major powers go head to head, it’s best to err on the side of doing less rather than making a catastrophic error the world will not forgive us for. And in the nuclear age, there might not be a world left anyway, after a bad call.
crimea-ukraine

Maybe it’s time to calm down a bit and not fall into The Onion’s pointed characterization: “Ukrainian-Russian Tensions Dividing U.S. Citizens Along Ignorant, Apathetic Lines”

Europe and the American death penalty

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death-penaltyTypically, the only countries that try to tell the United States what to do are in the company of North Korea and Venezuela.

Europe definitely doesn’t make a habit of condemning the policies of the U.S. government and certainly not the policies of specific state governments. Part of that is that it would be unlikely to accomplish much. Part of it is a recognition that they would not like the U.S., a peer nation among developed democracies, telling them what to do at home, either.

They may disagree privately or shake their heads, but it’s rare for European leaders to say anything in an official capacity or to do anything substantive about it. This may be changing a bit in light of the NSA scandals, but there’s also actually already been one fairly quiet exception: the U.S. death penalty. They’ve been very firm on the issue and are increasingly ramping up official activism to end it.
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A brief history of the Greek debt coverup

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The problem with not giving anyone central monetary control of a shared currency is that it can become very chaotic and disorganized if everyone is pursuing contradictory fiscal policy at the national level. To avoid this, when the Eurozone was being designed, members agreed that they would have to meet certain deficit and debt targets — keeping the budget deficit (amount spent more than collected) below a certain ratio for a few years — to join and then even below that initial target every year after becoming members.

(Sidebar: The major downside to this strategy is that the economies and parliaments remain separate despite sharing a currency, yet they can’t respond to specific economic conditions in their own countries without violating their deficit and debt targets. This extends recessions in some places, even as other members of the Eurozone continue to do well.)

By 1998, eleven countries had met their targets for joining the Eurozone. Greece was not one of them.

As of 1999, when the currency virtually launched for trading purposes but not ordinary people, Greece had still not met their target to join the Eurozone when it would launch on paper a few years later. In large part, this resulted less from generous social spending and pensions and more from Greece’s chronic inability to collect tax revenues from its citizens – one of the most tax-evading populations in the world.

They were also five years away from hosting the 2004 Summer Olympics, which they had been awarded in 1997. The games had run into huge budget problems and cost overruns, which the government (as a matter of national pride, being Greece) had to help manage. They needed to take on even more debt to pull off the games, which was the opposite of what they needed to join the Eurozone before currency began circulating.

US Investment Bank Goldman Sachs came up with some very elaborate and expensive schemes (see this detailed video explanation of the mechanics from the BBC), which essentially allowed Greece to get the money it needed, while hiding how big their debt (and yearly deficits) had become. This scam allowed Greece to join the Eurozone in 2001, while it was still in its virtual stage, in time to participate when the physical currency launched in January 2002.

greek-euro-10-acropolisOutside observers started exposing the Goldman scam in 2003, and Greek government officials (from a new cabinet) revealed the deal in 2005, but EU regulators essentially pretended it had never happened until well after the crisis hit in 2009 (and continued to deny prior knowledge of it).

Meanwhile, Greece’s already bad debt situation was exploding from 2000 to 2008, as a direct result of the terms of the deal.

In a sense, like so many American homeowners before the end of 2007, Greece was given subprime loans it couldn’t possibly repay. Regulators and monetary authorities failed to perform due diligence ahead of the accession of Greece to the eurozone and then ignored the escalating danger as long as the rest of the global and European economy was doing fine. They only stepped in after the house of cards collapsed and then demanded round after round of budget cuts and other measures that hurt average Greeks who had nothing to do with the bad debt decisions that the rest of the Eurozone should have stepped in to prevent years earlier.

Greece played a part in setting up its own crisis, but the bigger picture is that Greece was failed by its peers and partners in the monetary union, and it was failed by abusive and manipulative lenders, who preyed upon a desperate government and gave them loans it never should have received in the first place.

Ukraine’s decision point

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Protests in Ukraine, active since November, have turned increasingly violent this past week in the face of government crackdowns. As I’ve argued before on this blog, while the Ukraine/EU/Russia triangle is a highly complex and multifaceted problem, a lot of the present crisis ultimately ties back to and derives from Ukraine’s unwillingness to deal seriously with its huge divide between its ethnically Ukrainian population and its ethnically Russian population. No matter which one is in charge, the other is upset and ready to protest.

Yes ethnically Ukrainian protesters should have a right to express themselves peacefully and freely. Yes the current ethnically Russian-led government should be able to enact some major policies its base supports, assuming they don’t oppress the other side or restrict freedoms by group. But the protesters and elected officials — who are mutually antagonizing each other into ratcheting up the stakes and responses — all need to realize that the state should accommodate the interests and acknowledge the views of all its citizens, including both those who elected the ruling party and those who did not.

That means the ruling party sometimes watering down policies more than its base would like (to protect the other side from abuses) and the opposition sometimes accepting that policies will be enacted even if they don’t agree with that course (because sometimes the majority has to get its way).

There has to be a unified, national identity to make the country function and cohabitate peacefully in the long run. It can’t always be about trying to impose the will of one group on the other group or resisting the winning party’s agenda at all costs.

And in turn, however, the West needs to step up to the plate and stop hovering anxiously as if they have no role or influence. They can put pressure on Russia to stop pressuring/intimidating the Ukrainian leadership and its eastern, ethnically Russian population.

They can also reiterate to the pro-Western protesters (and the pro-Russian government for that matter) that there’s a middle ground between never getting your way and getting your way by any means necessary. To be part of the European project, those protesters can’t light the country on fire. That doesn’t fly in liberal-democratic communities. Sometimes you have to be willing to allow for differences of opinions and policy — such as whether to form trade partnerships with Russia versus with the EU — without taking to the streets and brawling with the police.

Right now, Ukraine is standing at a decision point about what kind of a country it wants to be, both politically and as a people. It’s a dangerous moment because the West is dithering and refusing to take action or speak up seriously. It’s time for a public expression of the nuances that come with liberal democracy… as well as a reminder that a unified nationalism, divorced from ethnic divides, will be necessary to make Ukraine work.

Building a nation and a true liberal democracy is tough stuff. There are no easy solutions here. Both sides are intensifying the situation and responding inappropriately (and would likely do the same if power roles were reversed). Everyone needs to step back now and figure out if this path is the one they really want to go down. There has to be something that can bring everyone together as one nation, without regard to language or ethnic differences.

For more discussion, listen to our most recent radio episode, “Arsenal for Democracy 70 – Afghanistan, Ukraine, Christie.”