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The West's Mistakes

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  • The West's Mistakes

    L'Unita, Rome, Italia
    Jan 2 2014


    The West's Mistakes

    Commentary by Pino Arlacchi

    Goodies against baddies; democratic pro-Europeans against
    authoritarian pro-Russians; coloured revolutions being the forerunners
    of Arab springs, Ukrainian, Georgian, and Kyrgyz demonstrators craving
    freedom, just like Iraqi, Syrian, and Lebanese demonstrators. These
    are the wrong and misleading interpretations that have been dominating
    the Western media, as well as European and US policies since the year
    2000.

    Let us start with Kyrgyzstan. In 2005, the pro-Western and
    anti-Russian goodies led by Kurmambek Bakyev seized power; this was
    the tulip revolution which followed a well-tested blueprint: a series
    of protest demonstrations by opponents of a regime overthrow a
    dictator linked to the communist past, amid European and US applause.
    Sadly, though, Bakyev immediately introduced an equally repressive
    regime, with elections that were just as fake, and with human rights
    violations. He also prevented Kyrgyzstan from siding with the West by
    allowing both Russians and Americans to keep their military bases on
    its soil in exchange for generous aid. Aid for whom? For himself and
    his clan. How did it end? A pro-Russian president has been in power
    since 2010.

    But the narrative on the tulip revolution of 2005 was preceded by the
    one on the carnation revolution in Georgia in 2003 and the orange
    revolution in Ukraine in 2004. The blueprint was always the same:
    disputed elections followed by street demonstrations by students,
    intellectuals, anti-Russian NGOs force the baddies of the old guard to
    give way, via elections, to a young and westernized president. In
    Georgia, former communist boss Eduard Shevardnadze was replaced by the
    37-year-old modernizer Saakashvili, a lawyer who had lived and worked
    in New York. In Ukraine, a corrupt apparatchik linked to Moscow was
    defeated by Viktor Yushenko, a charismatic pro-Western politician
    allied with Yulia Tymoshenko, a very wealthy sexy reformer who is a
    combination of Margaret Thatcher and Claudia Schiffer.

    The success of coloured revolutions in satellite countries of the
    former Soviet Union created such a strong narrative that it was
    exported to Iraq after the fall of Saddam Husayn: the election of 2005
    became the crimson revolution, named after the colour of the ink on
    the index fingers of voters, which prevented fraud, and a gentleman
    called Ahmad Chalabi was hailed as Iraq's Charles De Gaulle. The same
    year there was the cedar revolution in Lebanon, which followed the
    protests over the assassination of the Sunni leader Rafiq al-Hariri.

    This promotion of democracy on the part of the Bush administration and
    its docile EU ally was based on the assumption that the forces in the
    fray in the Middle east and on the borders with Russia, the goodies,
    were all inspired by the ideals of the free market and democracy, and
    were moving united towards the West and against Russia, against Iran,
    and against religious extremism, corruption, and political violence.
    Pity, though, that matters took a very different turn; the forces that
    were unleashed in these contexts were the forces of nationalism,
    tribalism, ethnic division, and political fanaticism masked as
    religious radicalism. All this was led by cynical and corrupt elites
    that were not very different from the ones that had preceded them.

    Saakashvili in Georgia introduced an adventurous authoritarian regime,
    which provoked Russia, and forced the United States to dump him
    quickly. His departure in 2013 took place to the benefit of a
    president who plans to fix ties with Russia. Yushenko and Tymoshenko
    governed by riding the waves of destructive Ukrainian nationalism,
    stealing as much as they could, and doing nothing to make the country
    move closer to Europe. It ended in 2010 with the return of the baddie,
    Yanukovich, who in the interim had become slightly pro-European, while
    Tymoshenko had become pro-Russian after signing a huge energy deal
    that damaged Ukraine to the tune of $20 bn and led her to jail.

    In Iraq, Chalabi soon revealed himself for what he was, a two-faced
    con man, who was soon replaced by governments increasingly attracted
    by Iran, as the country lost its most valuable area - the one
    inhabited by the Kurds - and was shaken by unprecedented sectarian
    violence. Meanwhile the cedar revolution turned into a fierce clash,
    which is keeping Lebanon on the edge, between Sunnis and Christian
    Maronites on one side, and pro-Iran Shi'i and Hizballah on the other.
    This is a sequence of failures, to which one can add Libya,
    Afghanistan, Armenia, and Syria.

    The three basic mistakes of Euro-American policies are clear: there
    was the pretense of exporting something - free-market democracy - that
    cannot be exported because, while on one hand it is already
    potentially present everywhere, since it is universal, on the other
    hand it needs its own timeframe and its own tools to develop and
    become solid; secondly, people have entrusted themselves to local
    forces that were only apparently interested in the values and the
    institutions of the West, but were actually only craving power and
    money, and were ready to change sides and use ultra-nationalism and
    chauvinism to keep afloat. However, the fatal mistake has been that of
    continuing the cold war and the clash of civilizations against two
    major regional powers, Russia and Iran, rather than making a U-turn
    towards cooperation and peace. Nevertheless, there is time to change,
    in particular if the European Union manages to learn its lesson.

    [Translated from Italian]

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