Ukraine Gets New Face Overnight

Yesterday the world awoke to find a new parliament and new Parliament Speaker attempting to straighten out the tangled disarray resulting from months of violence between government forces and demonstrators. Oleksander Tuchynov is the new Ukrainian Parliament Speaker and will hold the position until elections which are scheduled for May 25. The parliament will not have an easy task especially in the first initial weeks as they try and put the Ukraine back on a normal footing and return the society to a normal routine which has been impossible during the months of demonstrations. This will be even more difficult as the demonstrations melded together some disparate groups which each have their own agendas with some of them being so opposite as to be impossible to satisfy simultaneously. Some of the initial changes were the foreign minister Leonid Kozhara and the education minister Dykmitro Tabachnyk have been relieved of their posts, sixty-four protestors have been released from jail, and the president’s estate at Mezhyhirya has been nationalized. They have also declared that Ukrainian will be the sole official language of the Ukraine thus removing recognition of Russian usage in official circles. It will remain to be seen if there will be any place for the Russian language going forward though such is highly doubtful.

 

While it will very probably be many weeks before normalcy will have returned to Kiev, the rest of the Ukraine should have somewhat easier task of returning to normal as outside of the capital the demonstrations were less disruptive for much of the period only gaining power in the final weeks. The real question will be over the eastern and southern provinces where the population includes many Russians. There is a chance that these provinces may decide to split from the Ukraine and might even petition to become a part of Putin’s Russia or an autonomous state aligned more closely to Russia than to the Ukraine. It has been reported that there were some in these areas who had requested Russian protection should the protests break out in their regions. The reactions from the eastern and southern regions will require delicacy; something that could easily turn ugly if not handled deftly and with some degree of understanding. Making such tasks even more difficult will be the fact that the demonstrators do not come from one viewpoint and some of the groups who had banded together consisted of far right nationalists with a separate vision than many of the other parties and groups. The three main political parties, UDAR, Fatherland and Svoboda, which had claimed to have been working jointly during the demonstrations to oust President Yanukovych, will now be in direct competition in order to field and win the most seats they can in the upcoming elections.

 

The initial problem of removing the thuggish and dictatorial Presidency of Yanukovych and his cronies has now been realized may eventually prove to be of great benefit for the future of the Ukraine but right now it simply leaves a plethora of unanswered questions and a tangled web of new problems. Those tasked with putting the Ukraine in general and Kiev particularly back together and operating for the mutual benefit of all the people will be an uphill slog challenging those who are assuming power. The election in May is a mere quarter of a year, three months, into the future but the people will be expecting progress from their newly emplaced leaders before then and they will not be given much of a grace period. The real peril right now is the potential for a strong populist leader offering to solve all the problems if the people will simply trust them and give them the tools with the power to wield them effectively taking the elections and becoming an even worse problem than they just removed. This will become even more pressing of a possibility should the new government elected in May result in an ineffectual problematic governance that is basically a failure both economically and in keeping order. Should inflation become an even larger problem and start to run rampant, then there will be the situation which is susceptible to favor such a solution being adopted. It was just such a scenario with rampant hyperinflation and ineffectual governance of the German Weimar Republic after World War I that led to the rise of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler. The Ukraine currently has an enormous debt and a very weak economy that has suffered greatly from the disorder of the months of demonstrations. Their situation was partially due to the economic downturn which struck much of the world just over five years ago and the Ukraine still has not fully recovered. The economic recovery should be the first order of business once a newly elected government is in place. The only advice that they should receive is that government is more likely to be the problem than it is to be the solution. The best track for the government to take would be to make themselves as unobtrusive as possible, reduce regulations to a bare minimum, lower taxes on both the people and businesses and rely on free trade and unburdened free enterprise to lift the entire nation and people providing the best opportunity for a healthy economy. They should try to take a path which allows them to maximize their abilities to trade with the entire world and take steps to increase foreign trade relations as much as possible. This will require tactful handling of Ukrainian relations with Russia but they need to tell Putin that the Ukraine expects to continue to do business with Russia but also expects to be free to trade with the rest of the world as well. Europe also may need to step up and take steps to assure that the Ukraine will be accepted and thus allow them an alternative to survive any pressures from Putin and Russia. The one thing I am sure of is I am glad I will not be elected to any position in the next Ukrainian government and I wish those who are the best of luck.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Update: The Russian government, which means Vladimir Putin, has recalled their Ambassador to the Ukraine to Moscow for consultations on the “deteriorating situation” in Kiev. In the United States National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, issued a warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin against attacking Ukraine in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” where she was quoted stating, “the United States is on the side of the Ukrainian people” having democratic elections with “the opportunity for the people of Ukraine to come together in a coalition unity government” representing them honestly after former President Yanukovych was removed ending his questionable Administration.

 

President Obama Supporting Terrorists not the People

The Obama Administration through the State Department has confirmed to the press that funding for the Egyptian government will be cut by hundreds of millions of dollars over the current situation pertaining to the military takeover of the government and removing President Morsi. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki provided additional information including that delivery of certain large scale military systems would be postponed along with the suspension of funding until “credible progress” was made towards the set up of free and fair elections restoring Egyptian democracy. Currently the United States provides $1.5 billion in annual aid to Egypt which can be utilized to purchase weapons systems or for training troops. The aid was part of the Camp David Accords which were signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on 17 September 1978. The military aid to Egypt was supposed to keep Egypt closely aligned with the United States and thus prevent the Egyptians or Israelis from launching an attack on the other. By withholding the aid moneys President Obama is making the situation on the border between Israel and Egypt less stable. Add to that, President Obama is acting in a manner which aligns him with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt calling for the reinstating of deposed President Morsi and the reacceptance of the Muslim Brotherhood control.

 

President Obama has been playing a dangerous game where he has not quite completely and totally rejected the military installed government which was put in place in response to the demonstrations and signed petitions all calling for the removal of President Morsi and carrying the signatures or backing of tens of millions of Egyptians who also protested in the streets. President Obama has decried the violence which has rocked Egypt from border to border with barely a city, town or village escaping the violence. It has appeared that President Obama blames the military as the root from which the violence spreads when in fact much of the violence has been instigated by the Muslim Brotherhood who have taken it upon themselves to take vengeance on those they feel were instrumental in removing President Morsi and supplanting the Muslim Brotherhood control. Many in the Muslim Brotherhood as well as from the Salafists Muslims are convinced that much of the problems resulted from Christians, Shiite, and other non-Sunni Muslims, thus have set out to victimize these minorities with the Coptic Christians facing the worst of the assaults. Despite many of the films of the anti-Coptic violence showing the attackers waving the Muslim Brotherhood banner along with the al-Qaeda black banner, President Obama continues to place the blame for the violence in the streets on the military.

 

This has led to many confused and troubled Egyptians who cannot understand the United States position. They have asked members of the press when they are interviewed to explain how it is the President of the United States can continue to act to support the oppressive rule by the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, claiming to stand for liberty and equality before the law. A good number of these Egyptians appear to have read some of the United States founding documents and gained a solid grasp of the principles underpinning personal freedom and the personal responsibility such freedom requires for a nation to continue. Sometimes you find truth and justice defined precisely in places one would never have thought to seek it. It is these young Arabs and other youths around the world who are awakening to the principles of freedom, liberty, personal responsibility and self-governance. Will these young people win the day and install a system of rule which applies the best and most just governance ever founded by mankind? Unfortunately, the answer is no and a lot of that has to do with the current leaders who still believe that if government is given sufficient funds, there is never sufficient funds, given ample shares of power, even all the power would prove inadequate, and given every arm of enforcement, education, media, and anything else their imaginations believe is necessary, they would still at the end of the day fail and blame it on those who dared to be different, those who love freedom and liberty. Perhaps the real reason that President Obama is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood at every turn is because he craves their systematic application of power resulting in near total control, or perhaps it is simply that President Obama has no clue what he is doing.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Egypt in the Balance

There are at least five disparate groups within Egypt but only two of them have any possibility of ending up in control and neither of them will have the people’s interests at their heart. The two heavyweights are obvious, the Military which has a long history and practice at running Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood which believes that they are the arm of Allah and as such are the sole rightful rulers of Egypt and the only moral and just choice for Egypt. There are the Shiite Muslims who are a minority amongst the Muslims and would be faring far worse except for another group. That other group are the Coptic Christians whose only hope is that they be left alone and are the Egyptians most invested that everything go smoothly and with no hardships as they inevitably are blamed for every single societal ill despite their inability to have any great influence. The final group consists of the young Twitter and Facebook generation who long for the good life they glimpse through their media connections and whose desires to change Egypt into a modern, industrial, democratic, functional nation were the originating driving force behind the transformation pushing Mubarak from power only to watch their movement sidetracked by the Muslim Brotherhood who were waiting in the wings to hijack the revolution at the critical junction taking over the elections.

 

The first duel started when the pro-democracy youth demonstrated and started the so-called Arab Spring transformation. They were sidelined and the first duel was won by the revitalized and newly returned Muslim Brotherhood. The second duel was again initiated by the pro-democracy youth but this time backed by the working Egyptians who have watched their nation’s economy collapse before their eyes and have been facing economic hardships and a government which could not have shown less respect for their troubles. Responding to the outcry from the people the Egyptian Military threw down the gauntlet when they arrested the Muslim Brotherhood backed President Morsi and finished the challenge to the Muslim Brotherhood with the violent removal of the pro-Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood supporting demonstrations and vigils. What is to be answered next is how vehemently the Muslim Brotherhood response to the Military action will be. We may have our answer to that question today or we may have to wait until after Friday prayers or even longer, but rest assured the day will dawn when the Muslim Brotherhood once again strives to take what they believe is their rightful place as leaders of Egypt initially and the entirety of the Muslim world should Allah will it.

 

The question in much of the western world is what can we do to repair the problems in Egypt and end the needless violence. The unfortunate answer to that question is that first off, you are asking the wrong question, and secondly, there is nothing that can be done as this is one of those conflicts that will only be resolved once one side actually surrenders and accepts they have been utterly defeated. The question that should be asked by anyone outside of Egypt is what can we do and should we do to assist the innocent who will become the victims of the coming conflagration. The only thing that can be done would be to offer the Christians a place to restart their lives should they choose to leave their longtime home country of Egypt. Many Coptic Christian families have lived in Egypt since the first century and leaving their home would be unthinkable and for those people we can offer aid but unfortunately we would reap more problems for them as well as for us if we were to intervene on their behalf. The rest of the world which lies outside the Middle East and Northern Africa who are witness to the carnage and tragic consequences of the power struggles plaguing countries such as Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and to a lesser extent Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan and others either already or soon to come have to realize that any intervention will not serve to resolve these conflicts and any governance put in place via such interventions will eventually fall and the conflict recommence and the only way for these violent upheavals to end is through producing victor and the rest of the fighting factions realizing they have been inexorably defeated, and if the world is lucky those who are defeated will never again rise up. These nations are going through the same revolution in governance which Europe experienced starting with the Magna Carta, continuing through the American Revolution followed by the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the rest of the conflicts which eventually brought down the Monarchs, Czars, Kaisers, Emperors and other dictatorial leaders and eventually led to the current representative governance be it parliamentary, democratic or constitutional republic. Just as it would have been unlikely for the transitions that swept through Europe and the Americas over a period of close to two and a half centuries to have been avoided had aliens from some planet revolving around Sirius or one of the stars of Orion’s Belt landed and imposed the exact same form of governance on each nation that eventually came to pass through revolution would have kept the peace once they lifted off to return home. The same reasons resonate now in the growing pains thrashing through much of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

 

Is it easy to watch such horrific scenes as we will witness on the news each night? Obviously it will not be. But for recent proof that intervention will not be the answer no matter how benign the intentions are readily seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan where the recent interventions have either ended or are winding to their completion and already both nations are the scene of renewed fighting and increasing violence. President Washington and President Eisenhower despite their different ages and their different personalities and treatment by history had a strong and steadying approach to foreign entanglements and warned of the same pressures and what they saw as the unsatisfactory potentials of such adventurism and both advised that the United States served best by trading and holding peaceful relations with all and avoid all temptations and even invitations to intervene or ally in with foreign wars. Both men having been Generals of Armies of the United States, George Washington during the Revolutionary War and Eisenhower in Europe during World War II, knew the horrors and destructiveness of war and knew that war was a horror well worth avoiding at all costs short of a threat to the United States, its peoples or their freedom. Both men received entreatment to involve the United States in conflicts on foreign shores and both showed the wisdom of politely deferring to accept these invitations. George Washington refused such a request from France despite the vital aid provided by the French during the Revolutionary War. President Washington had to fight against many in his administration who supported aiding France but he held firm.

 

On a side note, the United States may have recently given an offer in order to entice Israel into allowing for a Palestinian state to be formed in nearly all of the West Bank area also known historically as Judea and Samaria. The fear is that Secretary of State Kerry was authorized by President Obama to assure the Israelis that should they allow the formation of Palestine in close to ninety or ninety-five percent of the territory claimed by the Palestinians including a large part if not all of East Jerusalem the United States would lead a NATO peacekeeping force which would guarantee that the Palestinian State remain demilitarized, terrorism be prevented especially from launching rockets into the heart of Israel which includes well over half of the Israeli population and industry, and allow for Israeli access to the Jewish holy sites which lie within Judea and Samaria. This must not be allowed to become fact as NATO or United States troops stationed in the Palestinian State would be a suicide mission as they would serve as targets for any terrorists opposed to whichever faction held power. If Hamas was in power then Fatah would terrorize any peacekeepers, with Fatah in power then Hamas would terrorize the peacekeepers and PFLP and al-Qaeda would do so no matter who was the ruling group. The peacekeeping force unless numbering in the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands would be unable of preventing terrorist attacks on Israel simply because they would be unable to be everywhere all the time. The peacekeepers would eventually only be preventing the IDF from eradicating terror infrastructure while protecting the terrorists despite their intentions. When American soldiers began returning home in coffins there would be a growing discontent over the stationing of these troops just to protect Israel and there would come a call to remove them post haste. Should such a call be denied and the troop presence as peacekeepers kept in place the eventual result would be growing anti-Semitism as the American Jews would be seen as supporting the stationing of the peacekeepers in harm’s way whether they actually support the efforts or not. It is likely obvious to many that we support Israel and we would like to plead that no foreign troops, be they from NATO, the United States, the United Nations, or Timbuktu never be stationed between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with an emphasis if their duties include peacekeeping or terror suppression. We here at Beyond the Cusp see such a fool’s errand as a guaranteed catastrophe which is to be avoided even if it means the peace process currently being marshaled by Secretary of State Kerry will result in failure without such assurances. Be assured that the average Israeli does not wish to involve any foreign troops, especially from NATO, the United Nations or the United States, at any time in any way that may be construed as assisting Israel. Thank you for any generous offer and do not take this as anything but a friend’s concern for our good relations, but please do not entangle yourselves in our problems. Thank you for all you have done that we appreciate every ounce of assistance but we never want American men and women in uniform to die for any reason that might be construed as in an Israeli interest or in service of the State of Israel.

 

Beyond the Cusp