Springtime in Kiev, or Just Another Winter Storm. By Walter Russell Mead.

Springtime in Kiev, or Just Another Winter Storm. By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, February 22, 2014.

Five Lessons for Kiev from the Arab Spring. By Juan Cole.

5 Lessons for Kiev from the Arab Spring. By Juan Cole. History News Network, February 23, 2014. Also at Informed Comment.

Yulia Tymoshenko Is Freed as Ukraine Leader Flees. By Andrew Higgins and Andrew E. Kramer. New York Times, February 22, 2014.

A new day in Ukraine: Political uncertainty sweeps divided nation. By Phil Black, Steve Almasy, and Victoria Butenko. CNN, February 23, 2014.

Tymoshenko returns to Kiev after president’s impeachment. Video. Reuters, February 22, 2014. YouTube.

Tymoshenko: “Their blood will not beforgotten.” Video. Reuters, February 22, 2014. YouTube.








Cole:

The dramatic overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Saturday, as he fled the presidential palace and it was occupied by extreme nationalists, recalls events in the Middle East in 2011.

 

The crisis in the Ukraine was provoked last fall when Yanukovych reconsidered earlier moves toward integration with Europe. He is from the east of the country, which has many ethnic Russians and which is economically, culturally and historically deeply entwined with Russia. The offer by Russian President Vladimir Putin of $15 billion in aid helped to make Yanukovych’s mind up.

 

In my view U.S. aggressiveness in the past twenty-three years is part of the problem here. The U.S. insisted on expanding NATO by absorbing former Warsaw Pact members and humiliating Russia. The rise of Putin is in part a reaction against that humiliation. Russia is reasserting itself as a great power, carving out spheres of influence in the old nineteenth-century way. Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Syria are in those spheres of influence. In the nineteenth century, wars often were caused by one country not respecting another’s proclaimed spheres of influence.

 

Both liberal and right-wing youth in the west of Ukraine as well as in the southern capital of Kyiv (Kiev) were upset by the turn away from Europe. They hope for Ukraine to become a member of the European Union and entertain hopes that this step would improve their economic prospects. (Given the sad economic state of Spain, Greece and other EU members, including persistent unemployment of a quarter or more of the youth, this conviction is a little difficult to understand). The more extreme nationalists are reacting against what they see as Russian dominance (a mirror image of right-wing Greek politics, which is anti-liberal and anti-EU).

 

Yanukovych was forced to give up the enhanced powers he had grabbed for himself and to restore the 2004 constitution. Parliament immediately acted with its renewed powers, and impeached Yanukovych. Street politics did the rest.

 

The country is now in turmoil. Formerly jailed opposition leader Tymoshenko has been freed from a seven-year jail sentence (she ran against Yanukovych in 2010 and when she lost he imprisoned her). She had played a role in the Orange Revolution a decade ago, but has high negatives and some charge she is corrupt. She has announced she will run for president in elections now scheduled for May.

 

Here are some parallels to the Arab upheavals of 2011 and suggestions for how Ukraine can avoid another failure in transitioning to democracy:

 

#1. It is good that the Ukraine military has declared neutrality. In Libya and Syria military intervention turned peaceful protests into a civil war. In contrast, in Tunisia, the military declared neutrality, which contributed to that country’s peaceful transition.

 

#2. Geographical divisions such as those in the Ukraine can be deadly to political progress. The grievances of the easterners in Libya have affected oil production. Likewise, in Yemen some of the post-revolution violence and protests have come from southerners unhappy at northern dominance. Despite their victory on Saturday, the western forces would be wise to seek a compromise with the east rather than simply attempting to dictate to the latter.

 

#3. The economy is key. People want employment and they want predictable currency rates for imports. Despite the severe economic problems in the European Union and in the U.S., the latter two must step up to help in a serious way or a limping Ukrainian economy could provoke further turmoil. Whereas in Tunisia modest growth was restored in 2012 and 2013, in Egypt a declining pound harmed citizens dependent on imported goods (including food, since Egypt can no longer feed itself). In Tunisia there was a successful transition to new elections. In Egypt, a vast popular movement challenged the elected president and then the military moved against him. Differing economic performance is part of the reason.

 

#4. Political compromise is necessary. Allies of Yanukovych may wish to run in the May elections. They should be allowed to (I’m assuming that since parliament impeached Yanukovych he won’t be eligible to complete his term or run for a new one.) Tunisia’s elite hammered out and abided by difficult compromises.

 

#5. Extremists can play spoiler. The Ansar al-Sharia in Libya and other extremist groups have made it difficult for that country to move smoothly toward a new Brazil. The equivalent group in Tunisia, by assassinating two left wing politicians, roiled politics in 2013.

 

It turns out that it is easier to get rid of a government you don’t like than to actively acquire a government you do like.

The Two Ukraines: Strategic Consequences. By Walid Phares.

The Two Ukraines: Strategic Consequences. By Walid Phares. History News Network, February 22, 2014. Also at WalidPhares.com.

Will Ukraine Break Apart? By Masha Lipman. The New Yorker, February 20, 2014.

Is It Time for Ukraine to Split Up? By Brian Whitmore. NJBR, February 21, 2014.


Phares:

The world is now experiencing the reality of two Ukraines rising out of this former Soviet Republic. The main overarching question to be considered from the Kremlin to the White House is about the strategic consequences. How will these two entities coexist, who will become their allies, how will this divide affect regional alliances and international politics? Another series of perhaps even more dramatic questions may also arise regarding the distribution of power between these two entities—as it pertains to Moscow’s position, possible intervention and reaction to what it may consider a Western advance into its southern flank. It may be too early for daily observers and political analysts focusing on the tactical considerations to weigh in. There is an endless number of situations that may go awry and clashes to calm down—not to mention the rising tensions between the West and Russia over Ukraine, but on the global scale, in a historic perspective, the dice have been irreversibly rolled: the two peoples forming the Ukrainian nation have now separated on the ground after the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych from his presidential palace in Kiev. Two authorities have been declared within the country, one declared by the parliament and the other by eastern local governments in the provinces. After months and weeks of confrontation in Kiev’s downtown, a violent outburst between the demonstrators and the police forces led to a long-brewing explosion. The clashes showed the depth of disagreement, but they did not create it. European mediations and road maps were not expected to succeed since the issue was not about a new election or even about corruption. Such political crises are omnipresent within all countries experiencing transition, but the problem in Ukraine was one on a greater scale.

 

Historically, from before, during and even after the end of the Cold War, there were two cultural views in the country that became Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Western Ukraine, a land of farmers and Catholics, has been looking toward Europe—where other former Eastern bloc members Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic ended up after the Cold War. Eastern Ukraine, closer to Russia, industrial and mostly Orthodox, has been looking toward Moscow as their historical ally. These were, in fact, two nations contained in one set of borders, a phenomenon experienced by dozens of official nation-states around the world, such as in Czechoslovakia, Georgia, former Yugoslavia and Cyprus. Some of these bi-national states can manage the internal differences as relative successes of institutionalized liberal democracies, such as in Canada and Belgium. Others descend into violence and chaos—as in Syria, Lebanon and Sudan. Czechoslovakia underwent the swiftest separation in the history of the world between its two “peoples.” But Ukraine’s politicians, dismissing the fact that their constituencies were culturally divided, vied for two decades for “all of Ukraine.” Both sides claimed the entire country as part of their universal views. Governments and oppositions succeeded in power, but the deeper issue of identity was never addressed. Each camp accused the other of corruption, un-patriotism and violence, and both sides felt they represented the “true values of the country.” But it was a country of two peoples, a matter Ukrainian politicians and many of their intellectuals refused to admit.

 

The 2014 urban explosion in Kiev and across the country unleashed the profound realities, rocketing them to the surface. The president represented the “Eastern side” of Ukraine, and the opposition and its bloc in parliament represented the “Western side” of the same country. The deepening clashes in the capital ignited the underlying cultural differences into political action. Within days, the towns and villages along the Polish borders declared their rejection of Kiev’s government. And after the capital fell into the hands of the protesters, backed by their lawmakers, the provinces in the East gathered under one leadership to reject the new government. Ukraine is now two—regardless of how events develop from here.

 

The geopolitical consequences, hard to discern in the fog of confrontations to come, are nevertheless projectable. The Europe Union will move to link up with and absorb Western Ukraine. It may be slow and gradual, but it will eventually happen. Millions of skilled workers in those provinces are needed by Europe’s economies. Russia will cast its strategic umbrella over Eastern Ukraine and notify the West that any further advance into their core ally will be a crossing of a red line, prompting Moscow’s direct intervention. Western Ukraine will become a partner of European countries, and some will welcome them warmly, such as Poland and the UK.  Others, such as France, will be more cautious partners, fearing Ukraine’s Russian sympathies. Eastern Ukraine will find itself a direct ally of Russia and will insure to the latter greater facilities on the Black Sea. In fact, the core strategic interest Moscow has in Ukraine—with or without President Putin—are the seaports of the Black Sea, the only operational bases for Russia’s southern fleet throughout the year. If these ports fall under Western Ukraine, Russia will consider it as a casus belli, and Russia may move militarily on the ground. If these ports remain under Eastern Ukraine’s Kharkov’s control, the balance of power may be seen as maintained.

 

The battle for Ukraine could have an impact on many strategic levels in the Middle East and other regions. In Syria, Assad’s regime will lose meaningful Russian logistical support if Crimea goes west. Iran’s Ayatollahs would also feel the impact if Russia emerges weaker from the confrontation. The impact could be felt as far as Venezuela and the Pacific depending on how Ukraine’s domestic strife evolves or resolves. The hope now is that Washington will play smart cards and transform the dividends of the outcome into gains for freedoms around the world. The last few steps in U.S. foreign policy, however, have not been encouraging.

Wikimedia Commons.

The Outdated Business Model of Diversity, Inc. By Victor Davis Hanson.

The Outdated Business Model of Diversity, Inc. By Victor Davis Hanson. National Review Online, February 20, 2014.

Hanson:

In today’s divided society, universities would be wise to stress unity and academic rigor.

 

Diversity has become corporatized on American campuses, with scores of bureaucrats and administrators accentuating different pedigrees and ancestries. That’s odd, because diversity  no longer means “variety” or “points of difference,” in the way it used to be defined.

 

Instead, diversity has become an industry synonymous with orthodoxy and intolerance, especially in its homogeneity of political thought.

 

When campuses sloganeer “celebrate diversity,” that does not mean they encourage all sorts of political views. If it did, faculties and student groups would better reflect the U.S.’s political realities and might fall roughly into two equal groups: liberal and conservative.

 

Do colleges routinely invite graduation speakers who are skeptical of man-made global warming, and have reservations about present abortion laws, gay marriage, or illegal immigration — if only for the sake of ensuring diverse views?

 

Nor does diversity mean consistently ensuring that institutions should reflect “what America looks like.”

 

If it did, all sorts of problems could follow. As we see in the NBA and NFL, for example, many of our institutions do not always reflect the proportional racial and ethnic makeup of America. Do we really want all institutions to weigh diversity rather than merit so that coveted spots reflect the race and gender percentages of American society?

 

Does anyone care that for decades the diverse state of California’s three most powerful elected officials have been most undiverse? Representative Nancy Pelosi, Senator Barbara Boxer, and Senator Dianne Feinstein are all mature women, quite liberal, very wealthy, married to rich professionals or entrepreneurs, and all once lived within commuting distance of each other in the Bay Area.

 

Is the University of California, Berkeley, ethnically diverse? If it were, Asian students might have to be turned away, given that the percentage of Asian students at UC Berkeley is about three times as great as the percentage of Asian residents in California’s general population.

 

Gender disparity is absolutely stunning on American campuses. Women now earn about 61 percent of all associate degrees and 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees. With such disproportionate gender representation, do we need outreach offices on campus to weigh maleness in admissions? Should college presidents investigate whether the campus has become an insidiously hostile place for men?

 

Diversity, Inc. is also based on a number of other shaky fundamental assumptions. Race, gender, and politics are supposed to count far more in a diverse society than other key differences. Yet in a multiracial nation in which the president of the United States and almost half the Supreme Court are not white males, class considerations that transcend race and gender often provide greater privilege.

 

Is the daughter of Hillary Clinton in greater need of affirmative action or diversity initiatives than the children of the Oklahoma diaspora who settled in Bakersfield? So-called “white privilege” might certainly describe the elite networks of insider contacts who promote the scions of Al Gore, Chris Matthews, or Warren Buffett. But how about the son of an unemployed Appalachian coal miner? Not so much.

 

If ethnic, rather than class, pedigrees provide an edge, how do we ascertain them in today’s melting-pot culture? Does the one-quarter Latino student, the recent arrival from Jamaica, or the fourth-generation Japanese American deserve special consideration as “diverse”? And if so, over whom? The Punjabi American? The Arab American? The gay rich kid? The coal miner’s daughter? Or the generic American who chooses not to broadcast his profile?

 

Does Diversity, Inc. rely on genetic testing, family documents, general appearance, accented names, trilled pronunciation, or just personal assurance to pass judgment on who should be advantaged in any measurement of diversity?

 

In such an illiberal, tribally obsessed, and ideologically based value system, it is not hard to see why and how careerists such as Senator Elizabeth Warren and activist Ward Churchill were able to fabricate helpful Native American ancestries.

 

Diversity came into vogue after affirmative action became unworkable in the 1980s. Given the multiplicity of ethnicities, huge influxes of new immigrants, and a growing rate of intermarriage, it became almost impossible to adjudicate historical grievances and dole out legal remedies. So just creating “diversity” — without much worry over how to define it — avoided the contradictions.

 

But diversity is not only incoherent; it is ironic. On a zero-sum campus short of resources, the industry of diversity and related “studies” classes that focus on gender or racial differences and grievances crowd out exactly the sort of disciplines that provide the skills — mastery of languages, literature, science, engineering, business, and math — that best prep graduates for a shot at well-compensated careers.

 

Red/blue state divides have never been more acrimonious. The number of foreign-born citizens is at a record high. The global status of the United States has never been shakier. To meet all these existential challenges, American institutions — the university especially — would be wise to stress unity and academic rigor.

 

People in the Balkans, Rwanda, and Iraq certainly championed their ethnic differences in lieu of embracing concord and ethnically and religiously blind meritocracy.

 

Tragically, these are also examples of where the logic of privileging differences, and dividing and judging people by the way they look and what they believe, ultimately ends up.

Yesterday’s Man: An Imagined Dialogue Between Warren Christopher and Hafez al-Assad. By Thomas L. Friedman.

Yesterday’s Man. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, March 19, 1995.

Yesterday’s Man: The Sequel. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, March 22, 1995.

Revised and expanded version in The Lexus and the Olive Tree. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Pp. 271-275.

Andrew Klavan’s One-State Solution: Give the Middle East to the Jews.

Andrew Klavan’s One-State Solution: Give the Middle East to the Jews. Video. PJ Media, June 2, 2011. YouTube.

Muslims Demand “Right of Return” to Spain.

Muslims Demand “Right of Return” to Spain. By Soeren Kern. Gatestone Institute, February 21, 2014. Also at Real Clear World.

Spain: Sephardic Jews are Welcome Back . . . Maybe. By Soeren Kern. Gatestone Institute, February 12, 2014.

Ukrainian Medic Olesya Zhukovskaya, Who Tweeted After Being Shot, Returns to Twitter to Say “I’m Alive!”

Ukrainian medic Olesya Zhukovskaya, who tweeted after being shot, returns to Twitter to say “I’m alive!” By Adam Taylor. Washington Post, February 21, 2014. Also here.

“I am alive!” - medic injured in Kiev tweets after surviving bullet wound. By Elena Cresci. The Guardian, February 21, 2014.

Olesya Zhukovskaya

Capitalism for the Masses. By David Brooks.

Capitalism for the Masses. By David Brooks. New York Times, February 20, 2014.

“Be Open-Handed Toward Your Brothers”: A Conservative Social-Justice Agenda. By Arthur Brooks. Commentary, February 2014.

Breakfast Before the MOOC. By Thomas L. Friedman.

Breakfast Before the MOOC. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, February 18, 2014.

Friedman:

Beginning March 2, Prof. Hossam Haick, will teach the first ever massive open online course, or MOOC, on nanotechnology in Arabic. What’s more interesting, though, he explained to me the other day over breakfast is some of the curious email he’s received from students registering for his MOOC from all over the Arab world. Their questions include: Are you a real person? Are you really an Arab, or are you an Israeli Jew speaking Arabic, pretending to be an Arab? That’s because Haick is an Israeli Arab from Nazareth and will be teaching this course from his home university, the Technion, Israel’s premier science and technology institute, and the place we were having breakfast was Tel Aviv.

 

His course is entitled Nanotechnology and Nanosensors and is designed for anyone interested in learning about Haick’s specialty: “novel sensing tools that make use of nanotechnology to screen, detect, and monitor various events in either our personal or professional life.” The course includes 10 classes of 3 to 4 short lecture videos — in Arabic and English — and anyone with an Internet connection can tune in and participate for free in the weekly quizzes, forum activities and do a final project.

 

If you had any doubts about the hunger for education in the Middle East today, Haick’s MOOC will dispel them. So far, there are about 4,800 registrations for the Arabic version, including students from Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and the West Bank. Iranians are signing up for the English version. Because the registration is through the Coursera MOOC website, some registrants initially don’t realize the course is being taught by an Israeli Arab scientist at the Technion, said Haick, and when they do, some professors and students “unregister.” But most others are sticking with it. (MOOC’s have just started to emerge in the Arab world via Coursera, edX, Edraak, Rwaq, SkillAcademy and MenaVersity — some with original content, much still translated.)

 

Asked why he thought the course was attracting so much interest in the neighborhood, Haick said: “Because nanotechnology and nanosensors are perceived as futuristic, and people are curious to understand what the future looks like.” And because nanotechnology “is so cross- and multi-disciplinary. ... It offers a large diversity of research opportunities.”

 

Haick, 38, whose Ph.D. is from the Technion, where his father also graduated, is a science prodigy. He and the Technion already have a start-up together, developing what he calls “an electronic nose” — a sensory array that mimics the way a dog’s nose works to detect what Haick and his team have proved to be unique markers in exhaled breath that reveal different cancers in the body. In between that and teaching chemical engineering, the Technion’s president, Peretz Lavie, suggested that Haick lead the school into the land of MOOCs.

 

Lavie, Haick explained, “thinks there is a high need to bring science beyond the boundaries between countries. He told me there is something called a ‘MOOC.’ I did not know what is a MOOC. He said it is a course that can be given to thousands of people over the Web. And he asked if I can give the first MOOC from the Technion — in Arabic.”

 

The Technion is funding the project, which took nine months to prepare, and Haick is donating the lectures. Some 19 percent of the Technion’s students today are Israeli Arabs, up from 9 percent 12 years ago. Haick says he always tells people, “If the Middle East was like the Technion, we would already have peace. In the pure academy, you feel totally equal with every person. And you are appreciated based on your excellence.” He adds without meaning to boast, “I have young people who tell me from the Arab world: ‘You have become our role model. Please let us know the ingredients of how we become like you.’”

 

I know what some readers are thinking: nice bit of Israeli propaganda, now could you please go back to writing about Israel’s ugly West Bank occupation. No. This story is a useful reminder that Israel is a country, not just a conflict, and, as a country, it’s still a work in progress. It has its lows, like the occupation and economic discrimination against Israeli Arabs, and its highs, like the collaboration between Haick and the Technion, which is providing a tool for those in the Arabic-speaking world eager to grasp the new technologies reshaping the global economy. Those, like members of the B.D.S. — boycott, divestiture, sanctions — movement who treat Israel as if it is only the sum of how it deals with the West Bank and therefore deserves to be delegitimized as a state, would do well to reflect on some of these complexities.

 

For me, though, Haick’s MOOC is also a reminder of what an utter waste of money and human talent has been the Arab-Israeli conflict. Look how eager all these young Arabs and Persians are for the tools and resources to realize their full potential, wherever they can find that learning. Arab dictators so underestimated their people for so long. That’s what fueled the Arab awakening. It makes you weep for the wasted generations and pray this will be the last of them.

Putin Is Russia’s Reagan. By Andranik Migranyan.

Putin Is Russia’s Reagan. By Andranik Migranyan. The National Interest, February 21, 2014.

Is It Time for Ukraine to Split Up? By Brian Whitmore.

Is It Time for Ukraine to Split Up? By Brian Whitmore. The Atlantic, February 20, 2014.

Wikimedia Commons.

Is Russia’s Destiny Autocratic? By Robert Kaplan.

Is Russia’s Destiny Autocratic? By Robert Kaplan. Real Clear World, February 20, 2014.

Kaplan:

In 1967, the late British historian Hugh Seton-Watson wrote in his epic account, The Russian Empire, 1801-1917, “If there is one single factor which dominates the course of Russian history, at any rate since the Tatar conquest, it is the principle of autocracy.” He goes on to explain how the nations of Western Europe were formed by a long struggle between “the monarchial power and the social elite.” In England, the elite usually won, and that was a key to the development of parliamentary democracy. But in Russia it was generally agreed that rather than granting special privileges to an elite, “It was better that all should be equal in their subjection to the autocrat.”

 

This profound anti-democratic tradition of Russian political culture has its roots in geography, or as Seton-Watson prefers to explain it, in military necessity. Between the Arctic ice and the mountains of the Caucasus, and between the North European Plain and the wastes of the Far East, Russia is vast and without physical obstacles to invasion. Invasion of Russia is easy, and was accomplished, albeit with disastrous results, by Napoleon and Hitler, as well as by the armies of the Mongols, Sweden, Lithuania and Poland. As Seton-Watson argues, “Imagine the United States without either the Atlantic or the Pacific, and with several first-rate military powers instead of the Indians,” and you would have a sense of Russia’s security dilemma. Whereas in America the frontier meant opportunity, in Russia, he says, it meant insecurity and oppression.

 

Because security in Russia has been so fragile, there developed an obsession about it. And that obsession led naturally to repression and autocracy.

 

Russia’s brief and rare experiments with democracy or quasi-democracy were failed and unhappy ones: Witness the governments of Alexander Kerensky in 1917 that led to the Bolshevik Revolution and of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s that led to Vladimir Putin’s neo-czardom. Truly, Russia’s fare has been autocracy, and given the utter cruelty of czars and communists, Putin is but a mild dictator. When Western pundits and policymakers say they are unhappy with his autocratic arrangement, they are basically making a negative judgment on Russian history. For by Russia’s historical standards, Putin is certainly not all that bad.

 

Putin now represents an autocrat in crisis, a familiar story in Russia. His problems are, for the most part, unsolvable, like those faced by Russian autocrats before him. And there are many of them.

 

Controlling the ultimate destiny of Ukraine is of paramount importance to him, for reasons both geographical and historical. Russia grew out of ninth century Kievan Rus, located in present-day Ukraine. Ukraine’s population density (compared to immense tracts of Russia) and geographical position make it a crucial pivot for the Kremlin, if it wants to permanently dominate Eastern Europe and the Black Sea. Yet, Putin finds that he cannot wholly control Ukraine or further undermine its sovereignty. There is simply a very substantial element in Ukrainian politics and society that demands a shift closer to Europe and the European Union. Putin has various tools to undermine Ukraine, such as erecting trade barriers and rationing deliveries of natural gas. But it is hard work, and he probably can never achieve an outright victory.

 

Putin fears the westward, pro-NATO and pro-EU stirrings inside the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova. He fears unrest in former Soviet Central Asia, where reliably autocratic, Soviet-style regimes may soon face increasing turmoil at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists – the very force Putin fears could destabilize Russia itself. Russia needs stability and compliance in its near abroad, and both will be increasingly at risk in Central Asia: Witness Kazakhstan’s recent currency crisis. Putin not only worries about Russia’s possible deteriorating position in world energy markets in the long term, but of the rising demographic weight of Muslims in Russian society over the long term, too.

 

Putin worries about an American-Iranian rapprochement, given how the estrangement for so long between those two countries has been so convenient to Russia’s interest. Oh, and here’s what Putin really isn’t happy about: internal interference in Russian politics by American, pro-democracy nongovernmental organizations. What the United States considers human rights activity, he considers foreign subversion. And that goes for what American NGOs are doing in Ukraine also.

 

Putin wants to engage in cynical geopolitical deal making; instead he often gets lectures on morality from the West.

 

Could Putin actually be toppled? Not likely. The unhappiness with his rule that the Western media fervently wants to believe in is probably manageable, and a really free and fair election today in Russia would probably return him to power. He is only 61 years old and lives a relatively healthy life, unlike Yeltsin, who drank to excess. Sure, Putin is under extreme levels of stress. But you don’t rise to his position in a place like Russia without the ability to handle levels of intrigue and anxiety that would psychologically decimate the average American politician.

 

The United States has every right to hate Putin for the Snowden affair alone. But, as I’ve indicated, Washington may be dealing with Putin for many years yet. As his dictatorship continues, he is liable to become more embattled, and rather than move toward reform, he is more likely to retreat further into a corrosive, authoritarian model. For that is a Russian historical tendency – something Seton-Watson would have understood. If that is the case, Russian institutions and civil society, such as they exist, will further deteriorate. And with that, a post-Putin Russia, whenever it comes, could be a Russia in some substantial degree of chaos.

 

Putin is not like Spain’s Gen. Francisco Franco, who in his latter years methodically laid the groundwork for a less authoritarian, post-Franco era. He is not like the collegial autocrats of present-day China, who have made their country – with all its problems – a relatively safe and predictable place for foreigners to do business and thus aid the development of the Chinese economy. While Russia, with its high literacy rates and quasi-European culture, cannot be compared with the much less developed Arab world, Putin’s Russia does contain a scent of the thuggery and benightedness that characterized former regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Because Putin is not a modernizer – he is building neither a civil society nor a 21st century knowledge economy – he is leading Russia toward a familiar dead end, from which only chaos or more autocracy can issue.

 

Russia is not fated to be governed illiberally forever. Geography is being tempered by technology, and individual choice can overcome – or at least partly overcome – the legacy of history. Though one cannot speculate about which future leader or group of leaders can save Russia, one can outline the shape of a less autocratic yet stable power arrangement. And that shape must feature decentralization. Because of Russia’s very vastness – nearly half the longitudes of the earth – democracy in Russia must be a local phenomenon as well as a Moscow phenomenon. The Far East, oriented around Vladivostok, must be able to carve out its own political shape and identity, the same with other parts of Russia. The center must become by stages weaker, even as the whole Federation becomes more vibrant because of the emergence of a rule of law. Such a Russia would draw in a near abroad united by a legacy of Russian language use from Soviet and czarist times. Centralization is not the opposite of anarchy; civil society is. Thus only civil society can save Russia.

We Are Not Strangers in Our Homeland. By Avi Sagi and Yedidia Stern.

We are not strangers in our homeland. By Avi Sagi and Yedidia Stern. Haaretz, March 23, 2007.

Sagi and Stern:

The wheel comes full circle. Not long ago, we sinned by asserting lordship – “There is no Palestinian people.” Over the years this view was shorn from the marketplace of ideas of the Jewish majority in Israel, and we no longer reject the national identity of these others. Now however, leading figures among Israel’s Arab community are paying us back in a similar coin: Several recently published documents laying out their vision for the future call for the annulment of the Jewish identity of the State of Israel, from which it follows that they are rejecting a central element of identity of the Jewish people in our generation. This is a strategic move by a substantial portion of the leadership of about a fifth of the country’s citizens, and it should be taken seriously.

 

We pushed the Arab citizens into an alley with no exit: they are experiencing prolonged discrimination that cannot be justified. Their right to full civil equality is not being realized. Decent Israelis cannot remain silent in the light of the state’s ongoing failure in its treatment of minority group. Moreover, decent Jews cannot ignore their responsibility to protect the national minority from manifestations of racism. We did not make an effort to consolidate civil partnership; we did not create inviting conditions for honorable coexistence. The outcry of the poor Arab, who is discriminated against as a person and who feels excluded and alienated as the member of a minority group, is resonating across the country. It raises doubts about the depth of our true commitment to the values of a “Jewish state” and a “democratic state.”

 

However, the new initiatives of the Arab leadership in Israel are not making do with a call to rectify the wrongs done to the minority. The central innovation of principle in these documents lies in their categorical assertion that proper equality will not be achieved as long as Israel is a Jewish state. Accordingly, they launch a frontal assault against the state's Jewish character. If the previous generation of Arabs, the “stooped generation,” was content to aspire to civil equality, the present “erect generation” is challenging the right of the majority to maintain a Jewish nation-state.

 

Conspiracy of elites

 

The broad context of the “Future Vision” document arises clearly from its opening lines. The reproof sticks out like thorns in one’s eyes: “Israel is the outcome of a settlement process initiated by the Zionist-Jewish elite in Europe and the West and realized by colonial countries.” The voice that is speaking here is none other than the National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel. These people, Israeli public representatives who live in close proximity to us Jews, believe that the State of Israel is not the realization of generations of Jewish longing to return to Zion, but a conspiracy by elites seeking to impose Western control over the Middle East. “Next year in Jerusalem, As long as deep in the heart . . . My heart is in the East and I am at the ends of the West” – none of these are authentic expressions of the Jewish soul across the generations.

 

This is historical nonsense. Postcolonial theories cannot transform a full life into a fiction. Even those who feel victimized by the Nakba cannot erase the fact that “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped,” as Israel’s Declaration of Independence states. Israel’s Arabs lose our attention if they refuse to recognize the fact that, as the declaration states, “After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it hroughout their dispersion, and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom. We are not strangers in our homeland.”

 

The Arabs’ visions also offer concrete solutions. They are striving to shape Israel as a multicultural state. However, the Arab leadership is not content with protecting certain public spaces, which are populated largely by members of the Arab minority, as areas in which Arab culture and identity will be embodied. They want much more. They are demanding that all the elements of the Israeli space – sovereignty, territory, norms and symbols – be freed of any specific identity. They are unwilling to make do with the rights accruing to a cultural minority. They want the Jewish majority to narrow its identity and apply it only in sub-state spaces. The state will be a neutral playing field, transparent and hollow, possessing a universal character.

 

An attempt to fashion a multicultural state of this kind will not succeed. History shows that multiculturalism has blossomed only when it is cultivated in a stable national-political space. The leadership of Israel’s Arabs is seeking what no one had dared call for: for the overwhelming majority of the country’s citizens to withdraw their collective identity to outside the public space, which is so vital to realize identity. In the absence of another Jewish state, the import of their demand will be to dwarf and diminish Jewish identity in our generation to its private and community dimensions, just as it was for two thousand years, when we were a people in exile.

 

Moreover, states need a unifying national ethos. Without it, a state is liable to become a random federation of communities that will find it difficult to exist as a homogeneous unit. This is even more acute in the Israeli context. The Arab minority is tied to social-cultural communities that exist in the Arab states and it is part of the Palestinian nation, which is in the process of establishing an independent state abutting on Israel. Is it far-fetched to be concerned that the Arab minority is actually interested in a two-state plan: voiding the existing ethos and replacing it, when the time comes, with a different national vision that will integrate into Arab or Islamic visions that are shared by the rest of the Palestinian nation, across the border.

 

If the State of Israel is voided of identity components, it will lose one of the crucial elements of national resilience which that its continued existence in a hostile arena. Will Israeli youngsters – to whom the whole world is open – respond to a mobilization call that asks them to give up their best years, and sometimes also their very lives, for an organizational framework that does not provide them with meaning? The internal centrifugal forces will make us fall apart from within, and the opportunities that beckon in the global village will hasten the process from without.

 

Behind the multicultural rhetoric

 

The suspicion arises that behind the multicultural rhetoric lies the aspiration to liquidate Israel as a political entity. Implicit in it is the ouster of the Jewish nation from the world’s nations. Academic language possessing political charm might turn out to be a weapon in the struggle against the State of Israel. The Arab elite is leading its followers into dangerous realms. They must understand that the members of the Jewish people, including the salient supporters of civil equality for all, will not forgo the realization of their right to self-determination in this space, the cradle of the Jewish nation. The Jewish people has an inalienable right to the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.

 

Israel’s Arab citizens have to demand – and the Jewish majority must agree to – a fair division of the public space between the two groups. The Jewish majority will have the larger part of the realization of identity in this space, and the Arab minority will be left with the smaller part. Any other alternative will undermine, and ultimately void of content, the concepts of identity that underlie multiculturalism.

 

However, not all the public assets are amenable to division between majority and minority. Thus, for example, the definition of the state’s character as “Jewish,” to which the documents of the Arab vision object, is indivisible. This is the source of the argument that the right of the Arab minority to equality in the public space is infringed upon. Even though this is true, it cannot lead us to hesitate in our insistence on preserving the state’s definition as “Jewish.”

 

Isaiah Berlin stated that “[equality] is neither more nor less rational than any other ultimate principle.” The basic point of departure of a liberal society is that equality is the primary value that must be applied, but it is possible to depart from this value if there is sufficient cause. Indeed, in Berlin’s view, the majority of social disputes are related to the question of the nature of the sufficient cause to depart from equality.

 

As we noted, the demand of the Arab minority for civil equality is meritorious because no sufficient cause to justify its rejection is posited against it. In contrast, their demand for equality in the public space, to be achieved by removing the collective identity of more than three-quarters of the country’s citizens from the sovereign space, is intolerable. Posited against it are extremely cogent sufficient causes, above all the discrimination against the Jewish national identity (vis-a-vis either national identities which find expression in a political space, including the Arab identities) and the degeneration it is liable to suffer as a result. To this we must add the concrete concern that the Israeli political state will be disassembled into unconnected sub-units, and the danger that strategic harm will accrue to national resilience.

 

The Arab public in Israel would do well to direct its energy to a struggle for civil equality, in which it will find many partners among the Jewish people. But continuing to build verbal sandcastles in the form of documents of the vision is pointless. The Jewish people does not intend to divest itself of its aspiration to realize its nationhood in the political space of the State of Israel.