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Samuel Huntington says Eastern Ukraine
belongs to Orthodox Civilization & Russian Zone
This material is at
http://mailstar.net/Huntington-Ukraine-cleft.rtf
(1) Samuel Huntington says Eastern Ukraine
belongs to Orthodox Civilization & Russian Zone
(2) Samuel Huntington on Ukraine as Cleft between Catholic
West & Orthodox East
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(1) Samuel Huntington says Eastern Ukraine
belongs to Orthodox Civilization & Russian Zone
- by Peter Myers, February 10, 2015
Obama, pushed by McCain and the Neocons, seems to be about to militarily
intervene to try to stop eastern Ukraine
from seceding and joining
Russia.
They are forgetting the lessons of Samuel Huntington on cleft countries
- i.e. countries torn between two or more civilizations.
Yugoslavia
was cleft between three - Catholic, Orthodox and Islamic. The
US
and Western Europe helped split it into
the three zones.
Huntington
said that Ukraine was
cleft between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East. He thought that
it might survive that way, but US and German leaders stoked the Maidan
rebellion which wanted to win the whole of
Ukraine
for the West.
The eastern provinces would not have it, and US leaders are now trying
to stop them from joining the Russian zone.
Their minds are on Brzezinsky's chessboard, rather than Huntington's cultural
realism.
Poles, squeezed between Germany
and Russia
- enemies which have invaded them - have a characteristic animosity to
both. Brzezinsky seems motivated by that Polish animosity to Russia.
It's clear now that the Cold War did not end in 1991. The Russian block
stopped fighting, believing in a higher union of East and West,
Gorbachev being an advocate of One World. But the
US
block kept on fighting, picking off one Soviet ally after another
(Milosevic, Saddam, Gaddafi, Libya).
The Russian people now realize that they were conned; with their backs
to the wall, they have drawn a line in Ukraine and said "No More". Obama,
McCain and the Neocons don't like their plans being thwarted.
It's a dangerous showdown between nuclear powers. But Western leaders
would stop their anti-Russia campaign if they took Samuel Huntington's
advice on board.
With similar realism, Moldova has split into a pro-West
western part and a pro-Russia eastern part (Transnistria).
(2) Samuel Huntington on Ukraine as Cleft between Catholic
West & Orthodox East
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
Samuel P. Huntington
Simon & Schuster, New York,
1996
{p. 138} Ukraine
is divided between the Uniate nationalist Ukrainian-speaking west and
the Orthodox Russian-speaking east.
In a cleft country major groups from two or more civilizations say, in
effect, ‘We are different peoples and belong in different places.’ The
forces of repulsion drive them apart and they gravitate toward
civilizational magnets in other societies.
{p. 158} The most compelling and pervasive answer to these questions is
provided by the great historical line that has existed for centuries
separating Western Christian peoples from Muslim and Orthodox peoples.
This line dates back to the division of the Roman Empire in the fourth
century and to the creation of the Holy Roman
Empire
in the tenth century. It has been in roughly its current place for at
least five hundreds years. Beginning in the north, it runs along what
are now the borders between Finland and Russia and the Baltic states
(Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and Russia, through western Belarus,
through Ukraine separating the Uniate west from the Orthodox east,
through Romania between Transylvania with its Catholic Hungarian
population and the rest of the country, and through the former
Yugoslavia along the border separating Slovenia and Croatia from the
other republics. It is the cultural border of Europe, and in the
post-Cold War world it is also the political and economic border of
Europe
and the West.
The civilizational paradigm thus provides a clear-cut and compelling
answer to the question confronting West Europeans: Where does Europe end? Europe
ends where Western Christianity ends and Islam and Orthodoxy begin.
{p. 163} The successor to the tsarist and communist empires is a
civilizational bloc, paralleling in many respects that of the West in Europe. At the core, Russia, the equivalent of France and
Germany, is closely linked to an inner circle including the two
predominantly Slavic Orthodox republics of Belarus and Moldova,
Kazakhstan, 40 percent of whose population is Russian, and Armenia,
historically a close ally of Russia, In the mid-1990s all these
countries had pro-Russian governments which had generally come to power
through elections. Close but more tenuous relations exist between
Russia and Georgia
{p. 164} (overwhelming Orthodox) and Ukraine
(in large part Orthodox; but both of which also have strong sense of
national identity and past independence. …
Overall Russia
is creating a bloc with a Orthodox heartland under its leadership
and a surrounding buffer of relatively weak Islamic states which it will
in varying degrees dominate and from which it will attempt to exclude
the influence of other powers.
Russia
also expects the world to accept and to approve this system. [...]
{p. 165} Apart from Russia
the most populous and most important former Soviet republic is Ukraine.
At various times in history
Ukraine
has been independent. Yet during most of the modern era it has been part
of a political entity governed from
Moscow. The decisive event occurred in 1654
when Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Cossack leader of an uprising against Polish
rule, agreed to swear allegiance to the tsar in return for help
against the Poles. From then until 1991, except for a briefly
independent republic between 1917 and 1920, what is now Ukraine was controlled politically from Moscow. Ukraine,
however, is a cleft country with two distinct cultures. The
civilizational fault line between the West and Orthodoxy runs through
its heart and has done so for centuries.
At times in the past, western
Ukraine was part of Poland, Lithuania, and the Austro-Hungarian
empire. A large portion of its population have been adherents of the
Uniate Church which practices Orthodox rites but acknowledges
{p. 166} the authority of the Pope. Historically, western
Ukrainians have spoken Ukrainian and have been strongly nationalist in
their outlook. The people of eastern Ukraine, on the other hand, have
been overwhelmingly Orthodox and have in large part spoken Russian.
In the early 1990s Russians made up 22 percent and native Russian
speakers 31 percent of the total Ukrainian population. A majority of the
elementary and secondary school students were taught in Russian. The
Crimea is overwhelmingly Russian and was part of the
Russian Federation
until 1954, when Khrushchev transferred it to Ukraine ostensibly in
recognition of Khmelnytsky's decision 300 years earlier.
The differences between eastern and western Ukraine are
manifest in the attitudes of their peoples. In late 1992, for instance,
one-third of the Russians in western
Ukraine
as compared with only 10 percent in
Kiev
said they suffered from anti-Russian animosity. The east-west split was
dramatically evident in the July 1994 presidential elections. The
incumbent, Leonid Kravchuk, who despite working closely with
Russia’s leaders identified himself as a
nationalist, carried the thirteen provinces of the western
Ukraine
with majorities ranging up to over 90 percent. His opponent, Leonid
Kuchma, who took Ukrainian speech lessons during the campaign, carried
the thirteen eastern provinces by comparable majorities. Kuchma won with
52 percent of the vote. In effect, a slim majority of the Ukrainian
public in 1994 confirmed Khmelnytsky’s choice in 1654. The election, as
one American expert observed, ‘reflected, even crystallized, the split
between Europeanized Slavs in western Ukraine and the Russo-Slav vision of what Ukraine should
be. It’s not ethnic polarization so much as different cultures.
{p. 167} As a result of this division, the relations between Ukraine and Russia could develop in one of three
ways. In the early 1990s, critically important issues existed
between the two countries concerning nuclear weapons, Crimea, the rights
of Russians in Ukraine, the Black Sea fleet, and economic relations.
Many people thought armed conflict was likely, which led some
Western analysts to argue that the West should support
Ukraine’s having a nuclear arsenal to
deter Russian aggression.
If civilization is what counts, however, violence between Ukrainians and
Russians is unlikely. These are two Slavic, primarily Orthodox
peoples who had close relationships for centuries and between whom
intermarriage is common. Despite highly contentious issues and the
pressure of extreme nationalists on both sides, the leaders of both
countries worked hard and largely successfully to moderate these
disputes. The election of an explicitly Russian-oriented president in Ukraine in mid-1994 further reduced
the probability of exacerbated conflict between the two countries.
A second and somewhat more likely possibility is that Ukraine could split along its fault
line into two separate entities, the eastern of which would merge with Russia. The
issue of secession first came up with respect to
Crimea. The Crimean public, which is 70 percent Russian,
substantially supported Ukrainian independence from the
Soviet Union
in a referendum in December 1991. In May 1992 the Crimean parliament
also voted to declare independence from Ukraine and then, under
Ukrainian pressure, rescinded that vote. The Russian parliament,
however, voted to cancel the 1954 cession of Crimea to Ukraine. In January 1994 Crimeans
elected a president who had campaigned on a platform of ‘unity with Russia.’
This stimulated some people to raise the question: ‘Will Crimea Be the
Next Nagorno-Karabakh or Abkhazia?’ The answer was a resounding ‘No!’ as
the new Crimean president backed away from his commitment to hold a
referendum on independence and instead negotiated with the Kiev government. In may 1994 the situation
heated up again when the Crimean parliament voted to restore the 1992
constitution which made it virtually independent of Ukraine. Once again, however,
the restraint of Russian and Ukrainian leaders prevented this issue from
generating violence, and the election two months later of the
pro-Russian Kuchma as Ukrainian president undermined the Crimean thrust
for secession.
The Election did, however, raise the possibility of the western part
of the country seceding from a Ukraine
that was drawing closer and closer to Russia. Some Russians might
welcome this. As one Russian general put it, ‘Ukraine
or rather Eastern Ukraine will come
back in five, ten or fifteen years. Western Ukraine
can go to hell!‘ Such a rump Uniate and Western-oriented Ukraine,
however, would only be viable if it had strong and effective Western
support. Such support is, in turn, likely to be forthcoming only if
relations between
{p. 168} the West and Russia deteriated seriously and came
to resemble those of the Cold War.
The third and more likely scenario is that Ukraine will remain united, remain cleft, remain
independent, and generally cooperate closely with Russia. Once the transition
questions concerning nuclear weapons and military forces are resolved,
the most serious longer term issues will be economic, the resolution of
which will be facilitated by a partially shared culture and close
personal ties. The Russian-Ukrainian relationship is to eastern Europe,
John Morrison has pointed out, what the Franco-German relationship is to
western Europe. Just as the latter provides the core of the European
Union, the former is the core essential to unity in the Orthodox world.
{p. 242} [...] a consequence of the end of the Cold War and the need for
a redefinition of the balance between Russia and the West and
agreement by both sides on their basic equality and their respective
spheres of influence. In practice this would mean:
1. Russian acceptance of the expansion of the European Union and NATO to
include the Western Christian states of Central and Eastern Europe, and
Western commitment not to expand NATO further, unless Ukraine splits
into two countries;
2. a partnership treaty between Russia and NATO pledging
nonaggression …
3. Western recognition of Russia as primarily responsible for
the maintenance of security among Orthodox countries and in areas where
Orthodoxy predominates …
4. Western acknowledgment of the security problems, actual and
potential, which Russia
faces from Muslim peoples to its south and willingness to revise the CFE
treaty and to be favorably disposed toward other steps Russia might need to take to deal
with such threats.
5. Agreement between Russia
and the West to cooperate as equals in dealing with issues, such as Bosnia,
involving both Western and Orthodox interests.
If an arrangement emerges along these or similar lines, neither Russia
nor the West is likely to pose any longer-term security challenge to the
other.
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