Whither Ukraine? Whither the principle of self-determination?
If Ukraine can win the war, can it still win the peace?
Photo: Much like Wales, Nagorno-Karabakh has been pervaded with a secessionist mood.
Where is Ukraine headed?
Things are going well for the Ukrainians, at the moment at least. Its mastery of the peace may well prove a greater challenge than its conquest of the enemy. But its challenges do not end there. They end on the Sea of Azov.
Ukraine surprised Mr Putin, and it surprised virtually all of the other 8 billion people on this planet, including the rest of Russia's population. The world, which cringed as Russia advanced, has unhid its eyes and, at first peeking between fingers, and then removing its hands completely from its field of view, is looking on in stunned amazement, at Ukraine's resilience, bravery, determination, capability, resolve and suffering, and at its un-knock-downability, at the honour in which it holds its fallen and its evacuees, and its women and its men and its children. Its lost generation of children. Ukraine is the paragon, without question, of social adhesion at this time, a time at which its society is being rent apart. The Brothers Grimm could tell no tale more inspiring than Ukraine's battle against all the odds.
Many are the pundits, encouragers and detractors advancing theories, prognostications, predictions and raw hopes as to the outcome of the war. Few, if any, that I have heard or read have however given any predictions as to what the outcome of the war really will be, and that is a defeat of neither Russia nor Ukraine. Wars are not fought for fighting them. They are fought for afterwards, and it is the afterwards here that no one seems yet brave enough to predict. Yes, there are predictions of what Russia will do next, how Ukraine's security can or cannot be assured, indeed that of Europe and the world as a whole. But what of Ukraine herself?
They will first mourn. Then they will resume sowing seeds to grow wheat. They will rebuild schools and universities, homes and factories, lives and livelihoods. They will prosecute the war criminals they can get hold of and, there, my predictions end. For, what other seeds will they sow?
Will they prosecute fairly, according to a decent rule of law? Will an economy once synonymous with corruption expunge corruption? Will the solidarity in battle find echo in solidarity in peacetime? Will liberal democracy thrive in a land so long under the thumb of totalitarianism? Will they forgive, or will they seek revenge? Against Russia? Against their detractors?
I cannot answer any of these questions. No one can. I cherish hope in my heart that Ukraine will win the war. And I cherish hope that Ukraine will be worthy of the peace, when it comes. From what I've seen thus far, I do not think that either of these hopes is misplaced. But between winning the war, on the one hand, and living a peaceful outcome, on the other, it is the latter that could in fact well prove the greater challenge. There's many a country elsewhere that bears witness to that.
Meanwhile, they have my hearty "Hurrah" and one day I shall go to pay homage to the fallen, who fell for Ukraine - and who fell for me. I will greet them in their language and say "Dyakuyu. Vid moho sertsya. Ne prosto smertʹ, a y zhyttya." Thank you. From my heart. Not merely death - but life as well. Everlasting life, in peace.
Anarchy in the UK-raine
In a previous article, I pondered black lines: the lines that slice up our world into nation states and territories owned by nation states; how they came about; how they have prevailed; how they have changed; and how they have, through warfare, been changed.
It is a plea for peace and, like many pleas for peace that have gone before, it will like as not wither and die and be drowned out by the thunder of guns and the cries of those sentenced to misery and of those expressing misericordia.
Prince William is the Prince of Wales, and no doubt we shall see his official investiture in due time. He is English, born in England of British nationality; in fact it was Owain Glyndŵr who was the last Welsh Prince of Wales, and he died in 1415, the year of the Battle of Agincourt, at around the age I am now. By 1500, Wales was English.
Wales is a stunningly beautiful country. It is famed for its valleys, for having the highest but one peak, Snowdon, of all the mountains in Britain, for its music and male voice choirs, for its undaunted spirit of pride, for its rain and its coal, its trains and its soul. It won a degree of self-government in 1999 at the same time as the Scottish parliament was “re-convened” at Holyrood after a gap of nearly 300 years, albeit both the Senedd and the Pàrlamaid na h-Alba were far removed from what they had been at the time of Glyndŵr and Scotland’s parcel of rogues, as Robert Burns called them, the quislings who sold Scotland to London.
“Let’s do the show right here.” It’s an oblique reference, but one to a line of films starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney (depicted above). If all you have is a barn, and you want to do a show, then in the barn is where the show must be done. To complete the metaphor: that’s the Sunny Side of the Street. To some, Mickey Rooney was an all-rounder who excelled at nothing. To others, he was Mickey-Rooney-cheese. Cheese, but tasty cheese.
Hollywood was always jolly good at painting a picture of paradise, and, for “Ann & Mickey”, a barn is where the sun, it did shine. But let us with that return to the real, or rather the unreal, world.
What made Garland and Rooney such evergreen, ever green heroes was their undaunting – that word again – ability to make of meagre circumstances the best of their world. And if all you have is a barn, then your world is that barn. Ukraine has many barns, many of which lie in cinders. It has a large agricultural industry, one of global importance. Russia would have it that that industry belongs to it, that the land on which that industry is pursued also belongs to it. And it does so by maintaining that the black line that men drew on the map between them in 1991 ought not to exist. It does so by denying the claims of those west of the line to want to farm the land for themselves, and by defying the pleas of other nations that they should desist from forcing the erasure of that line, such as it is recognised by them.
What that line betokens is an assertion by Ukraine of its right to self-determination and, besides the material benefit brought by husbanding land to produce produce, Russia’s denial of its existence is allied to its denial of any other potential black line that any other portion of its nation might assert elsewhere within the Russian Federation.
A federation is a bonding together, like Judy and Mickey’s mates in their films, of individual peoples who see the benefits of union as outweighing the disadvantages and concessions that they must accept by compromising their aspirations in line with those of their federated friends. The idea is akin to saying: it may be a barn, but it’s going to be one hell of a show. And Ukraine is certainly one Hell of a show.
A friend of mine was just here and is having to leave his current abode because the friend he shares it with and in whose name the lease is registered has failed to pay the rent. The friend must leave, and so must my friend. His friend is no longer so much of a friend. He is no philosopher but he took a moment to philosophise, and Kurt is partly what has given rise to my writing this: his parents in his youth were not well off and would holiday in places by responding to signs in German windows that advertised Zimmer frei. He admitted that the success or otherwise of such a vacation was dependent in part on the need for accommodation being met in the moment of need by the existence or otherwise of such a sign in such a window. It’s chancy, but cheap. And, he said, it’s a win-win. The unoccupied accommodation, which would otherwise be unused, becomes a source of income; the wandering traveller, with money in his pocket for his Kost, however little it may be, can rest from his plight, from wind and water, tight, for the night, at modest cost.
But, if a compromise it is, I countered, it must surely be a lose-lose? For a compromise is always a lose-lose - otherwise where is the compromise? And I posited that, unoccupied though it may be, the Zimmer was for the duration of the holidaymakers’ stay, not frei for occupation by anyone else or by the proprietor, and the holidaymaker himself was out of pocket, albeit for valuable consideration – the wind and water-tight housing. Zimmer frei is only a win-win situation, said I, for those who consider the room as otherwise remaining empty and useless, and the potential high cost of a luxury hotel. On balance, however, Kurt’s argument is right: of all the accommodation his parents could have taken, Zimmer frei afforded a holiday at meagre cost; and anyone prepared to rent out a room must also be prepared to acquiesce in its occupation. It is a win-win, one of the few in the land of compromise. The question for now in Ukraine is whether a compromise in Donetsk and Luhansk offers any kind of valuable consideration.
Those who band together should do so voluntarily. Enforced union is like a gunshot wedding, and is even one with a partner whom one has never met before, and that’s certainly an oddity to cause pause for thought. Ukraine’s independence was a divorce and, at the time, there wasn’t a gunshot to be heard. All seemed to be quietly acquiesced in, and so the recent events there have come as a double surprise. Events in Yugoslavia were less surprising because they came in the throes of the argument itself. But, what of Catalonia and, where we started, Wales, and Scotland, or Ulster and its divided yearning for Ireland? The Northern and Southern California debate, once heated and now tranquil? What about the far from tranquil Crimea, and the Donbas republics?
Mr Zelenskiy is adamant in his rhetoric about the “return”, as he calls it, (presumably “to the fold”) of all Ukrainian territory. That doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t acquiesce in a compromise if it seemed politic to do so, I guess. But, is the self-determination right of, or indeed the yearning to belong to another federation harboured by, Donetsk and Luhansk any less worthy than Ukraine’s own self-determination right and its yearning to belong to NATO or to the European Union?
The Yugoslav question was ultimately resolved after much bitterness in a split into ethnic peoples, some of which leaned towards union with the EU and some of which did not, some going into NATO, some demurring on the opportunity. The Russian argument here is that it and Ukraine are not split ethnic peoples, hence the black line is out of order. Zelenskiy’s is “If we weren’t before, we bloody are now.” To each his own, so often heard when those who demur demur, can be as rare as a hen’s tooth when a central power, wielding central power, decries voices of self-determination against a backdrop of potential disintegration.
It’s a dilemma faced in many quarters. It was faced in Sudan, and it is faced in Artsakh (or Nagorno-Karabakh), the United Kingdom, Spain and increasingly, though not yet violently, in France and in Belgium. Its commonness does not mean that every claim is right and separatists often deny the counterclaims of those who wish the status quo to remain, at least ante bellum. Just which each, then, is to get its own?
Cynics decry Mr Putin’s idea of referenda in Donetsk, Luhansk and the Crimea as a “device”, a “ploy”. On one score, that is what they are and their validity as a barometer of mood in those places would require oversight by independent monitors, a situation hardly practicable as things stand in the (battle)field. And yet, it is the mere question of whether or not belligerent activity ought to continue on that battlefield that is so much at stake in such a referendum, for, if it were to be shown fairly and conclusively that Mr Zelenskiy’s assertion of sovereignty over those republics were unwanted in those republics and, hence, unwarranted, then the res publica of the republics would surely be to secede from Ukraine, in much the same manner as Ukraine herself seceded from Russia.
Once the battle is over and the smoke has cleared, as have any remaining mirrors and smokescreens, then it might behove Mr Zelenskiy to still accord those republics their referenda, if only to assuage the lingering insistence of demands for independence, or for union with Russia, and give those who demurred on that independence the opportunity to find employment and a new life in what remained of the Republic of Ukraine – God knows, there’s enough to do.
In the Great Depression, the poor of the Midwest of America sallied forth to the fruit groves of California in search of a new life, and the tale is told in Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. Well, there has been much wrath in Ukraine, and much sallying forth, and for all of Ukraine, whatever comes, it will come in the shape of a new life. Not as old wine squeezed from sour grapes in new bottles, but of new life squeezed from blood in old cities.
I fear that, if Mr Zelenskiy denies Donetsk and Luhansk the privilege he has claimed for Ukraine, he will be doing Donbas and Ukraine a disservice. It may lose its steelworks and its coal mines, which the Welshman Hughes founded and flourished with, but it will preserve its honour, its esteem and its ever-vaunted ... glory.