Russia, the West, and ‘Moral Equivalence’
Most of the things I read about this issue are extremely heavily slanted to one side or the other. This article does a pretty good job of weighing up how different what Russia is doing to what the West has done.
First, throughout the Cold War the U.S. did resort to a number of “masked operations,” such as with the Bay of Pigs effort in Cuba or the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran. After 1989 such practices became unnecessary, but Russia is correct in pointing out that many of the activists who instigated and led the Color Revolutions, and now the overthrow of Yanukovych, were sponsored or trained by Western NGOs. One might ask what the problem is with furthering and teaching democratic/liberal values, but the answer is obvious: Russia doesn’t do the same in the West. What would demonstrations against Western governments during the current economic crisis look like if what Gregory calls “lefties” had financing and education provided by rival foreign governments and NGOs? Indeed, when other governments do provide such financing and education, the West cries foul, as with Saudi-funded Wahhabi/Salafist madrassas across the world.
Second, other countries have indeed annexed territory, or tried to, in recent history, including Egypt, China, Indonesia, India, Armenia, or South Africa. Even Western or Western-backed states such as Turkey, Croatia, Morocco, and Israel have made similar moves—not to mention ongoing disputes between a number of Western states themselves, as for example in the occasional tensions around Gibraltar.
Third, the notion of humanitarian grounds is a bit shaky. While the West always reacts with outrage at any major human-rights violation, the truth remains that it is not always ready to act. If human rights were our primary concern, then recent Western interventions should have occurred primarily not in Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East but rather in Africa and Asia, where rule of law and humanitarian norms are truly lacking. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been accused of being an African court because it focuses much more on African war criminals than Western ones. Yet the ICC is guided by a simple principle: “to act where it is most needed.”
