The West's Mistakes

[Yervant1]

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]