按：有人崇拜基辛格，但此文論證了基辛格對烏克蘭的嚴重誤讀：基辛格的歷史是殘缺的，邏輯是不通的。基辛格的文章發表之后，普金已經耍陰強奪了克里米亞，證明了基辛格的預測離譜到好笑。他的解決方案不光浮湥俏ｋU，誘導普金繼續蠶食烏克蘭和其它小國，最后害人（烏克蘭）害己（自由世界）。
其實基辛格現在判斷力的水平，從他不久前還和薄熙來打的火熱就可以看出，不値得崇拜。
Kissinger Misunderstands Ukraine
Alexander J. Mot
When a renowned American statesman such as Henry Kissinger exhibits alarming ignorance about Ukraine, you’ve got to worry. In a March 5th op-ed in the Washington Post,
Kissinger got just about everything wrong, even though, remarkably, his
prescriptions for resolving the Russo-Ukrainian standoff still managed
to be worthy of consideration.
Consider this passage:
The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a
foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus.
The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia
for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of
the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the
Battle of Poltava in 1709, were fought on Ukrainian soil.
Russian history did not begin only in Kyivan (or Kievan) Rus, as
Kissinger says. It began in many places, including Russia. Similarly,
America’s history began in England as well as in many other places.
Every country’s history has multiple roots: Belarusian history also
began in Kyivan Rus. Kissinger’s mistake is to advance a tidy—and
anti-historical—view of history that justifies imperial Russia’s
standing claims to Ukrainian territory. According to his logic, America
would be justified in claiming Ontario. By the way, “what was called
Kievan-Rus” was in fact a state, one of Europe’s largest at that time.
Pace Kissinger, the Russian religion did not spread from
“what was called Kievan-Rus.” What spread was Orthodox Christianity and
it spread from Constantinople, thanks in no small measure due to the
proselyting efforts of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, both Greeks. True,
Ukraine “has been part of Russia for centuries,” but it’s been no less a
part of the Mongol empire, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish
Commonwealth, the Habsburg Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. The Battle of
Poltava was a battle between two empires, the Swedish and Russian, and
had nothing to do with “Russian freedom” or independence. Imperial
struggles never do. And if anyone lost their freedom as a result of the
battle, it was the Ukrainian Cossacks under Hetman Ivan Mazepa, who
sided with King Charles XII against Czar Peter I.
There’s more:
Crimea, 60 percent of whose population is Russian, became part of
Ukraine only in 1954, when Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian by birth,
awarded it as part of the 300th-year celebration of a Russian agreement
with the Cossacks. The west is largely Catholic; the east largely
Russian Orthodox. The west speaks Ukrainian; the east speaks mostly
Russian.
Crimea’s population was 58 percent Russian in 2001; with low birth
rates and high death rates, the Russian probably comprise about 55
percent today. Crimea’s population was mostly Crimean Tatar until 1944,
when Stalin deported the entire Tatar population (numbering around
200,000) to Uzbekistan in a brazen act of ethnic cleansing and genocide
(about half died en route). Moreover, Crimea possessed the status of an
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (with both Crimean Tatar and
Russian as official languages) until 1945, when, cleansed of the Tatars,
it was converted into a Russian province and rapidly populated with
Russian settlers, mostly veterans.
Khrushchev was not a Ukrainian, but an ethnic Russian born in
Ukraine. The Ukrainian west is as Orthodox as it is Catholic; the east
is not “Russian Orthodox,” but simply “Orthodox,” with parishes being
affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate and the Kyiv Patriarchate. The
west speaks more Ukrainian than Russian, the east speaks more Russian
than Ukrainian, but most people, especially in the center, are at home
with both languages.
One final passage:
The politics of post-independence Ukraine clearly demonstrates that
the root of the problem lies in efforts by Ukrainian politicians to
impose their will on recalcitrant parts of the country, first by one
faction, then by the other. That is the essence of the conflict between
Viktor Yanukovych and his principal political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko.
They represent the two wings of Ukraine and have not been willing to
share power.
The ignorance on display here is especially alarming as it completely
misrepresents the political reality in today’s Ukraine: “the two wings
of Ukraine” are not equally responsible for the mess Ukraine is in.
Responsibility rests squarely with Yanukovych and his criminal Party of
Regions, and for Kissinger to suggest otherwise is to engage in the
greatest of ethical and political obfuscations and moral equivalences.
It is nonsense to suggest that Presidents Kravchuk, Kuchma, and even
Yushchenko tried to “impose their will on recalcitrant parts of the
country.” Kravchuk and Kuchma always walked a fine middle line.
Yushchenko adopted a more pro-western rhetoric, but never had the
political will to impose on the east—or for that matter on anybody else.
Yushchenko shared power with the Party of Regions, and Yanukovych
himself served as Yushchenko’s prime minister from August 4, 2006 to
December 18, 2007. After losing the presidential elections of 2010,
Tymoshenko “shared power” with the winner, Yanukovych, who, one and a
half years later, threw her into jail. And the defining conflict in
recent Ukrainian politics is not that between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych
but between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko.
Fortunately, Kissinger does have some sensible things to say about resolving the ongoing war:
1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe.
2. Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it last came up.
3. Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with
the expressed will of its people. Wise Ukrainian leaders would then opt
for a policy of reconciliation between the various parts of their
country. Internationally, they should pursue a posture comparable to
that of Finland. That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce
independence and cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully
avoids institutional hostility toward Russia.
4. It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for
Russia to annex Crimea. But it should be possible to put Crimea’s
relationship to Ukraine on a less fraught basis. To that end, Russia
would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. Ukraine should
reinforce Crimea’s autonomy in elections held in the presence of
international observers. The process would include removing any
ambiguities about the status of the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.
All four “principles” are reasonable starting points for a
discussion. Of course, they all assume that President Putin is, as
Kissinger writes, “a serious strategist—on the premises of Russian
history.” (That qualifier is worrisome: one could, by the same token,
say that Adolf Hitler is “a serious strategist—on the premises of German
history.”) If Kissinger is right, then Putin just might be convinced to
come around to considering these four points. If Kissinger is wrong—and
Putin’s warmongering rhetoric, continued military buildup in Crimea,
and incursion into Kherson Province, north of Crimea, are not
reassuring—then nothing short of a firm Western stand to contain Russia
and protect Ukraine can end his imperialist assault on Ukraine and the
international order.
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