Russian President Vladimir Putin is behaving like a mafia boss. In invading, occupying and finally annexing Crimea, he pointed Russia’s guns at Ukraine and said: Your territorial sovereignty or your life. So far, extortion has worked — and Putin knows it.
Indeed, in his speech announcing the annexation of Crimea, Putin spoke his mind: His regime fears no punishment and will do whatever it pleases. Crimea is just the first step toward realizing his dream of revived Russian greatness.
His address in the Kremlin was a tissue of lies and manipulation, though a subtle analysis would be a waste of time. The simple fact is that the president of one of the world’s most powerful countries has embarked on a path of confrontation with the entire international community. His speech smacked of the fevered, paranoid world of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Demons, conjuring as it did a delusional alternative universe — a place that does not exist and has never existed.
What does Kosovo, where the Albanians suffered persecution and ethnic cleansing, have in common with the situation in Crimea, whose people have never been oppressed by Ukrainians?
What is the point in displaying open contempt for Ukraine’s government, parliament and people?
Why label Ukrainian authorities “fascist and anti-Semitic?”
Crimean Tatars pay no heed to the fairy tales about fascists ruling Ukraine; they can still remember the brutal and murderous mass deportations of their parents and grandparents, ordered by former Soviet leader Josef Stalin and carried out by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, better known by its Russian acronym NKVD.
In Putin’s mind, the whole world has discriminated against Russia for the past three centuries. Russia’s bloody despots — Catherine II, Nicholas I and Stalin — apparently never discriminated against anyone.
Putin also warns that “you and we — the Russians and the Ukrainians — could lose Crimea completely.” Yet he fails to specify who — perhaps Poles and Lithuanians again — are setting their sights on Sevastopol.
Russia could not, according to Putin, leave the people of Crimea “alone in their predicament.” These words prompt a sad smile; former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev used precisely the same phrase in August 1968 to justify the Red Army’s intervention in Czechoslovakia to help beleaguered communist hardliners there crush the Prague Spring reform movement.
“We want Ukraine to be a strong, sovereign and independent country,” Putin said.
Stalin said the same thing about Poland in 1945. Brave Russian democrats who have not yet been silenced have already remarked on the similarity between Putin’s appeal to ethnic solidarity in annexing Crimea and Adolf Hitler’s stance during the Anschluss and the Sudeten crisis in 1938.
This is the real end of history — the history of dreams about a world governed by democratic values and the market economy. Unless the democratic world understands that now is not the time for faith in diplomatic compromise, and that it must respond strongly enough to stop Putin’s imperial designs, events could follow a logic that is too dreadful to contemplate. It takes force to stop a thug, not sharp words or cosmetic sanctions.
I commend and take pride in Poland’s prudent and determined policy and the attitude of its public, which do us great credit. However, we must recognize that the best quarter-century in the past 400 years of Polish history is about to end before our very eyes. A time of tectonic shifts has begun. We must appreciate what we have managed to achieve — and learn to protect it.
Mafia bosses often meet an unhappy fate, and I do not think that Putin will fare much better in the end. Unfortunately, many people are likely to be hurt in the meantime, not least those who now support him.
Adam Michnik was one of the leaders of Solidarity and is the founding editor of Gazeta Wyborcza.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention. If it makes headlines, it is because China wants to invade. Yet, those who find their way here by some twist of fate often fall in love. If you ask them why, some cite numbers showing it is one of the freest and safest countries in the world. Others talk about something harder to name: The quiet order of queues, the shared umbrellas for anyone caught in the rain, the way people stand so elderly riders can sit, the
Taiwan’s fall would be “a disaster for American interests,” US President Donald Trump’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy Elbridge Colby said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday last week, as he warned of the “dramatic deterioration of military balance” in the western Pacific. The Republic of China (Taiwan) is indeed facing a unique and acute threat from the Chinese Communist Party’s rising military adventurism, which is why Taiwan has been bolstering its defenses. As US Senator Tom Cotton rightly pointed out in the same hearing, “[although] Taiwan’s defense spending is still inadequate ... [it] has been trending upwards
Small and medium enterprises make up the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, yet large corporations such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) play a crucial role in shaping its industrial structure, economic development and global standing. The company reported a record net profit of NT$374.68 billion (US$11.41 billion) for the fourth quarter last year, a 57 percent year-on-year increase, with revenue reaching NT$868.46 billion, a 39 percent increase. Taiwan’s GDP last year was about NT$24.62 trillion, according to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, meaning TSMC’s quarterly revenue alone accounted for about 3.5 percent of Taiwan’s GDP last year, with the company’s
In an eloquently written piece published on Sunday, French-Taiwanese education and policy consultant Ninon Godefroy presents an interesting take on the Taiwanese character, as viewed from the eyes of an — at least partial — outsider. She muses that the non-assuming and quiet efficiency of a particularly Taiwanese approach to life and work is behind the global success stories of two very different Taiwanese institutions: Din Tai Fung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). Godefroy said that it is this “humble” approach that endears the nation to visitors, over and above any big ticket attractions that other countries may have
RSS