Diplomacy & Crisis News

A new interactive data tool created by the UN University Centre for Policy Research, which shows a mismatch between where modern slavery occurs, and where governments are spending resources to address it, could help make a positive impact on policy debates surrounding the issue.

Le nouveau numéro de Politique étrangère (n° 1/2019) vient de paraître !
Ce numéro spécial, qui examine à travers les contributions des meilleurs spécialistes internationaux quel sera le monde dans 10 ans, comporte aussi l’un des tout premiers textes publié dans Politique étrangère en 1979 (n° 2/1979), année de la création de l’Ifri : Raymond Aron, « En marge des combats douteux ». L’auteur y revient sur des événements importants de la décennie écoulée, comme la guerre du Vietnam. Il développe surtout une réflexion générale sur la place du droit, de la morale, de la force et de l’intérêt national dans les relations internationales.

Les Français en 1954, les Américains en 1973 ont quitté les trois pays de la péninsule indochinoise, désormais soumis à des partis qui se réclament de la même idéologie. Et les guerres continuent, tantôt entre des armées, tantôt entre une armée et des maquisards. Le retrait des Occidentaux n’a pas laissé les peuples à eux-mêmes, à leur volonté d’indépendance ou à leurs querelles. Naguère impliqués par le conflit Est-Ouest, voici les Vietnamiens, les Cambodgiens, les Laotiens, objet de la rivalité entre les deux Grands du marxisme-léninisme.

L’analyste désireux de marquer des points contre le marxisme-léninisme trouve là des occasions propices. Les combattants professent la même doctrine qu’ils réfutent par leurs actes. Le capitalisme par essence impérialiste, le socialisme par essence pacifique : comment accorder ces articles du dogme avec l’expérience ? Les Viets et les Khmers rouges, alliés contre les Américains et les gouvernements soutenus par eux, semblent avoir prévu la nouvelle épreuve de force dès le jour de la victoire commune. Les Chinois avaient soutenu, ravitaillé le régime de Hanoï aussi bien pendant la première guerre contre les Français que pendant la deuxième contre les « fantoches » de Saigon et les États-Unis. Quatre années après la chute de Thieu, voici les Vietnamiens étroitement liés à Moscou, intégrés au Conseil d’assistance économique mutuelle (Comecon) et, du même coup, tenus pour ennemis par les Chinois, formidable voisin auquel ils ont résisté pendant des siècles.

La rivalité Est-Ouest obéissait à des règles non écrites, plus ou moins respectées. La plus rarement violée était celle qui interdisait le franchissement des frontières par des armées régulières. Il semble qu’elle n’inspire plus le respect. Les troupes de l’Inde, gouvernée à l’époque par madame Gandhi, franchirent la frontière de la province orientale du Pakistan, province en révolte contre le pouvoir dit central, établi à Islamabad, à quelque 3 000 kilomètres du Bengale. Fallait-il accuser l’ex-« impératrice de l’Inde » d’agression ? Formellement, à coup sûr. Mais quel était l’autre terme de l’alternative ? Les électeurs de ce qui est devenu le Bangladesh avaient voté massivement pour le parti autonomiste. Les négociations entre le général Yahya Khan et le cheikh Mujibur Rahman, le chef du parti autonomiste, le père de la patrie (depuis lors assassiné) avaient échoué. Ce dernier avait été jeté en prison ; la révolte avait éclaté, la répression aussi ; les insurgés de la province orientale avaient proclamé leur État et entamé la résistance et la guérilla. En l’absence de l’intervention indienne, guérilla et répression se seraient prolongées des années durant. Le jugement légal ne prête pas au doute ; le jugement politique, moral même, hésite. En Afrique, c’est la Tanzanie qui lança ses troupes, accompagnées de réfugiés ougandais, à l’assaut du despotisme sanguinaire du maréchal Amin Dada. Les troupes tanzaniennes ne se sont pas encore retirées et l’Ouganda n’a pas trouvé un gouvernement relativement stable. Fallait-il applaudir à la chute d’un tyran ou craindre que la pratique de justice par les armes fît école ? Si le voisin d’un pays mal traité par ses gouvernants s’érige en justicier, le fondement de la charte des Nations unies s’effondre. Et rarement le justicier agit en tout désintéressement.

L’invasion du Cambodge par les troupes vietnamiennes reproduit en quelque manière les deux cas précédents. La province orientale du Pakistan souffrait d’un régime militaire et brutal, le maréchal Amin Dada méritait tous les châtiments : le régime de Pol Pot infligeait à la population des souffrances monstrueuses. Responsables de la mort d’un ou deux millions de leurs compatriotes, ces gouvernants marxistes-léninistes, ayant à leur tête des demi-intellectuels formés à Paris, bénéficiaient du soutien chinois. En l’espèce, tous les acteurs, Union soviétique, Vietnam, Cambodge, Chine populaire se conduisaient conformément aux préceptes ou aux coutumes de la Machtpolitik ou du machiavélisme le plus radical. L’Union soviétique cherchait, au sud de la Chine, un allié sûr, des bases diplomatiques et militaires. Selon la même logique, la Chine s’efforçait de rompre l’encerclement, donc d’affaiblir le Vietnam, acquis à la cause soviétique. Reste le cas des deux petits, Vietnam et Cambodge. Pourquoi n’ont-ils pas tenté, l’un et l’autre, de se soustraire à la querelle des Grands ? […]

(Re)lisez cet article historique en intégralité ici.

Retrouvez le sommaire complet ici.

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Many have been lamenting the dark path that Europe and the transatlantic relationship are currently on, but there hasn’t been much discussion of where that path leads. European weakness and division, a strategic “decoupling” from the United States, the fraying of the European Union, “after Europe,” “the end of Europe”—these are the grim scenarios, but there is a comforting vagueness to them. They suggest failed dreams, not nightmares. Yet the failure of the European project, if it occurs, could be a nightmare, and not only for Europe. It will, among other things, bring back what used to be known as “the German question.”

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On March 31, Ukrainians went to the polls to elect a new president. Front-runner Volodymyr Zelenskiy, an inexperienced 41-year-old comic television actor, came out on top, with even higher numbers than predicted. The results give the comedian 30 percent of the vote. Incumbent President Petro Poroshenko came in second with just under 16 percent. Because no candidate crossed the 50 percent threshold, Zelenskiy and Poroshenko will face off in a second-round runoff on April 21.

All of this was to be expected. Zelenskiy had been leading in the polls for two months, and Ukrainian presidential incumbents don’t enjoy an advantage as they do in other systems. Since gaining independence in 1991, Ukrainians have reelected only one president.

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With the rights and lives of millions of women, children and men uprooted by conflict every year, the UN Security Council held a special meeting on Monday to examine ways to promote and strengthen the rule of law, especially in the humanitarian field.

http://www.quiz-maker.com/QMHNVAQ

The post Foreign Affairs Quiz appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The United Nations is highlighting the important role that population trends play in promoting sustainable development, during the annual Commission on Population and Development, which began at UN Headquarters in New York on Monday.

Proposed changes to Brunei’s penal code to incorporate punishments under a strict interpretation of Islamic law - including death by stoning - should be halted, the UN’s top human rights official, Michelle Bachelet, said on Monday.

La rédaction a le plaisir de vous offrir à lire ce second article, « Le crépuscule de l’universel », écrit par Chantal Delsol, professeur émérite de philosophie politique et membre de l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques, et paru dans notre nouveau numéro de Politique étrangère (n° 1/2019), un numéro spécial 40 ans de l’Ifri, « 2019-2029 – Quel monde dans 10 ans ? ».

Après la saison révolutionnaire, autrement dit pendant deux siècles, la culture occidentale a revendiqué son statut universel pour s’étendre sur toute la Terre. Nos conquêtes se donnaient des allures de mission, dans le sillage de notre tradition – depuis Périclès apportant la démocratie aux villes sujettes, jusqu’aux Chrétiens menant la croisade au nom de la Vérité. Les droits de l’homme représentaient le nouveau discours prosélyte, porté par ses apôtres. Et le message passait. Après Pierre le Grand occidentalisant de force la Russie, on vit le Japon ou la Turquie en faire autant. L’ensemble des cultures extérieures, en l’espace de deux siècles, non seulement s’occidentalisait plus ou moins volontairement, mais bien souvent revendiquait nos principes et vocables.

Tous les régimes, y compris les plus autocratiques, s’affichaient « démocrates ». Les gouvernants occidentaux en tournée pour distribuer des leçons de droits de l’homme, se voyaient accueillis par des protestations de bonne tenue démocratique. Le sentiment général d’une sorte de vertu attachée à la culture occidentale, venait de l’idée de progrès. Tous désiraient être « modernes ». Même l’histoire en était relue. Peut-être par diplomatie davantage que par convictions, à l’époque de la Déclaration de 1948 les Chinois avaient été jusqu’à se targuer d’avoir fait partie, au XVIIIe siècle, des initiateurs des Lumières.

Tout cela était vrai jusqu’au tournant du siècle. Depuis à peine une vingtaine d’années, la réception du message occidental a changé. Et cela, sur tous les continents : en Chine et chez plusieurs de ses voisins, dans une grande partie des pays musulmans, en Russie. La nouveauté est celle-ci : nous trouvons en face de nous, pour la première fois, des cultures extérieures qui s’opposent ouvertement à notre modèle, le récusent par des arguments et légitiment un autre type de société que le nôtre. Autrement dit, elles nient le caractère universel des principes que nous avons voulu apporter au monde et les considèrent éventuellement comme les attendus d’une idéologie. Cette récusation, non pas dans la lettre mais dans son ampleur, est nouvelle. Elle bouleverse la compréhension de l’universalisme dont nous pensons être les détenteurs. Elle change la donne géopolitique. La nature idéologique de la fracture ne fait guère de doute : c’est notre individualisme qui est en cause, avec l’ensemble de son paysage.

Plusieurs observations s’imposent, qui permettent de mieux cerner cette situation inédite. Les pôles culturels en question avancent, pour délégitimer l’Occident, des arguments analogues. Ils nous mettent en cause en tant que culture de l’émancipation et de la liberté, et défendent les uns et les autres les communautés, petites et grandes. On dirait qu’il s’est ouvert en face de l’Occident individualiste un vaste ensemble holiste. Certes, le monde bipolaire de la guerre froide, qui avait laissé place au monde unipolaire d’après la chute du Mur, est devenu multipolaire. Mais avant de voir ici un « conflit des civilisations », il faut d’abord constater l’ampleur du mouvement anti-occidental qui s’exprime partout, et ouvre une nouvelle ère.

Nous nous trouvons devant une rivalité entre deux paradigmes. L’individualisme occidental, libéral et mondialiste, se trouve en face de plusieurs cultures distinctes qui le combattent au nom chaque fois d’une forme d’holisme et d’enracinement. Par ailleurs, les arguments déployés contre l’Occident font écho à ceux que déployaient toujours les adversaires des Lumières et de la modernité occidentale. Par exemple, certains penseurs Chinois d’aujourd’hui stigmatisent la démocratie et défendent le pouvoir autoritaire avec des arguments que l’on trouvait au XIXe siècle chez Joseph de Maistre ou louis de Bonald. Mais il y a plus : l’Occident moderne rencontre aussi son antithèse en interne, aujourd’hui même, chez ses opposants illibéraux, qui s’allient volontiers avec ses adversaires extérieurs (par exemple les alliances d’une certaine droite française avec la Russie de Poutine, ou des pays d’Europe centrale avec la Chine).

L’Occident des Lumières a toujours trouvé en face de lui des contradicteurs, plutôt à l’intérieur de ses frontières. Nous avons devant les yeux rien moins qu’une énième tentative de récusation. Mais elle est puissante et multiple. Du temps où les Occidentaux se distribuaient le monde comme des gangsters se partagent une banlieue, les pays colonisés ne rêvaient guère que de nous ressembler. Une littérature abondante a été écrite sur les heurs et malheurs de l’occidentalisation. Mais aujourd’hui nous nous trouvons devant des volontés affichées de non-occidentalisation, ou de désoccidentalisation. Outre que cette situation impose aux politiques de baisser pavillon, elle oblige les philosophes à s’interroger sur notre statut universel. […]

Lire l’article dans son intégralité ici.

> > Découvrez le sommaire du nouveau numéro de Politique étrangère ici < <

 

Since the terror attack that killed 49 Muslims and wounded dozens at Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, French authorities have been investigating what connections, if any, the killer, Brenton Tarrant, may have had in France.

We know that Tarrant visited the country during the presidential campaign of 2017, witnessing the defeat of what he called “the nationalist camp” (that is, Marine Le Pen). Tarrant traveled to several countries at the time, including Israel, but France impressed him the most—so much so that he made his final decision to “do something” to stop the Muslim invasion of the West on his way back from France. France is where he claims to have had the revelation that the West was “invaded” by the “nonwhites,” a problem to which French politicians offered only a “farce” in guise of a solution. In language disturbingly close to that emerging from the anti-Semitic corners of the “yellow vest” movement in recent months, Tarrant also meditates on French President Emmanuel Macron, whom he sees as “a globalist, capitalist, egalitarian, an ex-investment banker was [sic] no national beliefs other than the pursuit of profit.”

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Attending the Summit of the League of Arab States in Tunis, Tunisia, on Sunday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, recognized the critical importance of the region on the international stage and called for even stronger cooperation between the UN and the Arab States.

https://www.ibidem.eu/en/reihen/gesellschaft-politik/ukrainian-voices.html

The book series “Ukrainian Voices” publishes English- and German-language monographs, edited volumes, document collections and anthologies of articles authored and composed by Ukrainian politicians, intellectuals, activists, officials, researchers, entrepreneurs, artists, and diplomats. The series’ aim is to introduce Western and other audiences to Ukrainian explorations and interpretations of historic and current domestic as well as international affairs. The purpose of these books is to make non-Ukrainian readers familiar with how some prominent Ukrainians approach, research and assess their country’s development and position in the world.

The series was founded in 2019, and the volumes are collected by Andreas Umland, Dr. phil. (FU Berlin), Ph. D. (Cambridge), Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Сooperation in Kyiv.

Please, send your inquiries and proposals to: andreas.umland@stanfordalumni.org

https://www.facebook.com/events/862647664078016/

The post Call for manuscripts for the new book series “Ukrainian Voices” published by ibidem-Verlag & distributed by Columbia University Press appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

War, like politics, makes for strange bedfellows. Israel is currently preparing for a potentially dramatic faceoff with Hamas. Over the past week, the group has launched rockets into Israel, and it has called for a million man march this weekend  along the Israeli-Gaza border to mark the anniversary of last year’s March of Return. The protests may either fizzle or spark an intensified round of conflict. Whatever happens though, it will not undermine the curious, co-dependent relationship that has evolved between Hamas and the Israeli government, especially under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These two key Middle East actors despise yet depend on one another.

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On the morning of Sunday March 10, thousands of people gathered in the center of Moscow to protest proposed new legislation cracking down on Internet freedom. They waved placards saying “Save the Internet, Save Russia,” “Isolation—It’s Death,” and “NO to Digital Enslaving.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, who was watching the protests on his TV, was unpleasantly surprised. “One of the speakers at the rally claimed that the Kremlin wanted to press a button and switch the Internet off,” he told the Russian wire agency Interfax. “It is absolutely wrong! Why aren’t they concerned that somebody on the other side of the Atlantic will press this button?” 

Peskov was echoing official propaganda, which claims that the new legislation is essential to stop the United States from cutting Russia off from the Internet. But the protesters have good reason to believe that it is the Kremlin, not some Western conspiracy, that is endangering their Internet access.

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It is remarkable that large corporations do not employ many people in their organisations that have the foresight to warn their Directors that what they might be doing will not only subject them to record breaking fines by the EU, but will also cost them billions. I had time to ponder this while going through several evasive security checks the other day at a bank that was one of the past winners of an EU fine. The EU not only sets a fine on large corporations for violations of competition and anti-trust, they also will target fines on violations of GDPR to anyone worldwide who does not respect the privacy rights of a European citizen or company connected in some way to the EU. Fines have a set standard but could be more or less broad, often involving a certain percentage of the company’s global value. Because the EU will go after profits the company obtained outside of the EU, it makes these fines very large, and theoretically acts as an effective deterrent against the problematic actions taken by the company. This week, Google received its third penalty from the EU and was fined 1.5 billion Euros for abusing its market dominance by restricting third-party rivals from displaying search ads between 2006 and 2016.

While the EU is known for setting strict fines, and the US anti-trust authorities often target the same violations and add fines independently themselves. It is not as if EU penalties are a new phenomenon, as record breaking fines by the EU have been placed over ten years ago on companies like Microsoft. With the GDPR it becomes even more interesting. In theory, someone who was born in Germany over forty years ago but lived abroad the entire time might be able to file a complaint against the country they immigrated to for violating their privacy rights via a foreign non-EU bank operating in that third country. An evasive non-European government policy that affects someone connected to the EU may produce a right for the EU to penalise the other government if they violate the privacy rights of an EU citizen. Theoretically, if a foreign government allowed a large corporation to violate the GDPR of one of its citizens abroad, with support of the foreign government, it could allow the EU to punish corrupt foreign practices via a privacy rights violation. This would be a very broad and unlikely application of the GDPR or the role of the EU Commission itself, but companies should assume the risk in any case.

Sanctions as well as penalties are often justified in order to limit financing of organsations that create harm to individuals and groups. Effective application of these acts and pieces of legislation promote open and transparent governments, even when those same governments block access to duly owed information or act in the interests of a private company over the interests of people and their democracy. It is hard to justify that the actions of a large company or a government bending the rules to support that company benefits citizens. Even if the action was done in the past, the damage to their competitors and consumers was done. Even if done in the past, damage to a democratic system has taken hold, and if a large fine is the best or only method to challenge such power, it should be that companies take responsibility for their own actions, and pay when they violate everyone else’s rights.

The post So You’ve Been Fined Again by the EU appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The flag of the All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” (Freedom).

Ever since the beginning of its armed struggle against Moscow during World War II, the Ukrainian far right has been used by the Kremlin as a bogeyman. The political radicalism, war-time mass crimes, fascist leanings, and manifest militancy of historic Ukrainian ultra-nationalism has been employed by Soviet and post-Soviet Russian agitation among Russian and Western publics, otherwise largely ignorant about Ukrainian matters. The Banderite label, derived from the surname of the one-time leader of Ukrainian nationalism’s most radical wing, was and is being used to stigmatize Ukrainians from Galicia and Volynia, Ukrainian patriots, in general, or even merely self-ascribed Ukrainians, as universally xenophobic, antisemitic and genocidal.

As a result of decades of relentless
campaigning, the term “Banderite” (banderivets,
banderivka) eventually become defiantly adopted, as a self-description, by
many Ukrainians. This is in spite of the fact that most of today Ukraine’s self-ascribed
“Banderites” share little to nothing with historic Stepan Bandera’s political aims,
beyond their common goal of Ukrainian independence. Parts of the Western public,
nevertheless, continue to see little difference between, on the one side, liberationist
as well as emancipatory, and, on the other side, extremist and ethno-centrist, impulses
of Ukrainian nationalism and their related diverging political permutations, in
the past and present.

The Rise and Fall of
the Freedom Party

The entry, in 2012, of the radical nationalist
and explicitly anti-Russian All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” (Freedom) into
Ukraine’s parliament, with 10.44% in the proportional part of the elections,
and appearance, in 2014, of new extra-parliamentary far right groups, like the
Right Sector and Azov battalion, provided new fodder for Moscow’s campaign.
Especially, the first leader of the Right Sector, Dmytro Yarosh, was singled
out, by Kremlin-controlled mass media, as allegedly posing, in spite of his
origins in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk oblast, a deadly threat to Russophones in
Ukraine. Russian TV’s frantic propaganda crusade against him made Yarosh – an
actually minor figure in Ukrainian politics – a celebrity of sorts, in Ukraine
and beyond.

Yet, the surprisingly weak performance of
Yarosh in the May 2014 presidential elections (0.7%) and of his Right Sector
party in the October 2014 parliamentary elections (1.8%) took the steam out of
the Kremlin’s defamation campaign. Even more astonishing (and, perhaps, for the
Kremlin also curiously disappointing) were the only somewhat less meagre
results of Svoboda and its head Oleh Tyahnybok in the presidential and
parliamentary elections – 1.16% and 4.71% respectively. The latter result was below
the parliament’s 5% entry barrier and has thus led to the disappearance of the far
right’s short-lived faction in the Verkhovna Rada which has since only contained
some individual ultra-nationalists who do not cooperate much with each other, within
the legislature.

Svoboda’s decline, if compared to its 2012
result, was even more surprising in view of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the
ongoing war in the Donbas, and its repercussions in Ukrainian society. In spite
of heightening patriotism, rising irregular armed groups, and spreading Russophobia
(fear of Russia) within Ukraine’s population, Svoboda lost percentagewise more
than half of its popular support, in October 2014. In fact, it lost actually overall
even more because voters on Crimea and in much of the Donbas – i.e. those parts
of the Ukrainian electorate with especially little sympathy for Svoboda – did
not take part in the elections. The frustration among the far right may have
been especially high in view of the fact that Svoboda and the Right Sector had,
in sum, received more than 5% in the parliamentary elections. Had they formed a
united list, they might have been able to jointly pass the entry barrier and to
thereby preserve a far-right faction in parliament.

Towards a United
Ultra-Nationalist Front

In March 2017, so it seemed, Ukraine’s radical
nationalists had finally learned their lesson, and adopted a joint so-called National
Manifesto. The heads of the three main parties, Svoboda’s Oleh Tyahnibok, the
Right Sector’s Andriy Tarasenko and the National Corps’s Andriy Biletskii,
signed – in a solemn ceremony, at Kyiv’s House of Teachers – a common
programmatic document. It demanded, among others, creating a Baltic-Black Sea
Alliance of East European countries, as well as reestablishing Ukraine as a
nuclear-weapons-state. The novel coalition now explicitly united the two
parties that had run separately, in the two 2014 national elections.

Until recently, this alliance also included the
National Corps, a dynamic new party that had grown out of the Azov movement and
is continuing the tradition of the pre-Euromaidan racist groupuscules “Patriot
of Ukraine” and Social-National Assembly also once headed by Biletskiy. The new
tripartite alliance was  joined by three additional
minor far right groups – the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, Organization
of Ukrainian Nationalists, as well as C14, a notorious neo-Nazi grouplet. Conspicuously
though, another notable nationalist group, the so-called Statesman Initiative
of Yarosh, a split-off from the Right Sector, was absent at the March 2017 unification
meeting, and did not sign the joint Manifesto. Yarosh’s demonstrative
non-engagement turned out be a harbinger of things to come.

Throughout 2018, the far right’s leaders and
activists were discussing a joint strategy for the 2019 presidential and
parliamentary elections. Much of their public rhetoric was about the ultra-nationalist
groups’ need to campaign jointly and run united. A major issue though remained
who of their two most popular leaders, Tyahnybok or Biletskiy, would be the far
right’s single presidential candidate. Tyahnybok (b. 1968) is a veteran
Ukrainian politician from Galicia who had prominently participated in the 1990,
2004 and 2014 Revolutions on the Granite, in Orange and of Dignity. He also had
10 years of experience as a Rada deputy until 2014. Biletskiy (b. 1979), in
contrast, is from Kharkiv, did not participate in high politics until after the
Euromaidan, and acquired his fame only in 2014 as commander of the Azov
volunteer battalion, as a result of which he won a single-member district in
Kyiv’s Obolon district, in that year’s Rada elections. While Biletskiy has little
political experience, he apparently pretends to play a role equal or superior to
Tyahnybok, within the united ultra-nationalist camp.

At first it seemed that the far right had found
a solution to the thorny of selecting only one joint presidential candidate. It
nominated by, in November 2018, neither Tyahnybok nor Biletskiy, but a third
prominent politician, Ruslan Koshulynskyi (b. 1969), as its candidate for
President of Ukraine. Like Tyahnybok, a Galician Svoboda leader, Koshulynskyi
had been Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada in 2012-2014. He had acquired
national recognition and a good reputation in that function and as a volunteer soldier
in the Donbas.

Koshulynskyi thus seemed like a good choice.
Yet, it became soon apparent that Koshulynskyi’s nomination by the signatory
organizations of the far right’s 2017 National Manifesto had, for one reason or
another, either not at all or insufficiently been agreed with Biletskiy’s
National Corps. Svoboda and its allies, on the one side, and the National
Corps, on the other, have since accused each other of sabotaging the
coordination process before Koshulynskyi’s nomination.

In any way, for the presidential elections,
neither the apparent break of the 2017 coalition nor Dmytro Yarosh’s public
support for Koshulynskyi candidacy since are of much political importance. In
fact, Koshulynskyi’s possibly weak performance in the upcoming elections could turn
into a public relations disaster for the far right. In an opinion poll released by the reputed
Razumkov Center on 20 February 2019, Koshulynskyi had the support of only 0.9% of
those intending to vote in presidential elections. With such a result,
Koshulynskyi would remain even below the already embarrassing result of 1.16% that
his party colleague Tyahnybok had obtained during the 2014 presidential
elections. It would be stunning, if Koshulynskyi will indeed receive so little
support although he, unlike Tyahnybok who in 2014 competed with Yarosh, does
not have a competitor on the far-right flank. Neither Biletskyi nor Yarosh or
any other prominent ultra-nationalists decided to also run, in the presidential
elections.

The by far most important aspect of the current
tensions between the National Corps, on the one side, and the other
ultra-nationalist groups, on the other, is thus that it could mean that they
run separately in the parliamentary elections, in October 2019. Such a division
of their vote could repeat the far right’s fiasco of 2014. In fact, it is not
entirely clear that even a fully united far right list would be able to pass
the 5% threshold.

That is because, in the words of prominent Kyiv
political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, “Petro Poroshenko’s broad campaign
is build on militant patriotic rhetoric as well as on support for the candidacy
of Ukraine’s incumbent President by some influential nationalists [which]
greatly diminishes Koshulynskyi’s chances, in the presidential elections, and
the chances of Svoboda, not to mention other nationalist parties, in the
parliamentary elections.”

In the words of the Vienna political scientist
Anton Shekhovtsov too, the far right has now “low chances to get into the Rada
because, above all, the political system of Ukraine is again extremely
polarized (as was the case in the 1990s and early 2000s). The conflict in the political center
is currently so intense that there is, for all peripheral parties, little hope
to join this confrontation within the center and thereby enter the national
debate. In some way, the situation of ‘Svoboda’ and the National Corps is
similar to that of small liberal parties like the Democratic Alliance or ‘Power
of the People.’ They too have no chance – and not so much because they do not
unite, but because the current system’s center is battle field of much stronger
political players. Moreover, it is important to remember that ‘Svoboda’ managed
to enter the Rada in 2012 because it was helped by the President Viktor
Yanukovych. Today, nobody needs the right-wing radicals apart from certain
business projects that require their services for raiding attacks or similar
practices.”

The Ambitious National
Corps

As of February 2019, the summary support of
those intending to vote in parliamentary elections for Svoboda (1.4%), the
National Corps (0.2%), the Statesman Initiative of Yarosh (0.1%), and the Right
Sector (0.0%) was, in the mentioned Razumkov Center poll, altogether just 1.7%.
To be sure, Ukraine’s far right has sometimes performed much better in real elections
than in pre-electoral surveys. Yet, the currently measured support for the far
right would have to triple during the actual voting, in order for a united
list, to pass the 5% threshold.

In spite of the sobering polling results,
Biletskyi seems to be currently still planning a separate list of his party in
the upcoming parliamentary elections. A representative of the National Corps
reportedly asserted, in November 2018, that his organization’s “potential and human resources are
much larger than those of all the other [signatory organizations of the far
right’s 2017 National Manifesto] combined.” A competition between the National Corps, on
the one hand, and a united list of the remaining parties, on the other, could
become significant, if Poroshenko is not reelected in April 2019 and a less
militantly patriotic candidate becomes President. In such a case, nationalist
voters currently attracted to the incumbent President could decide to support
the ultra-nationalists in subsequent elections. This could provide the far
right with an opportunity to regain a faction, in the next parliament. However,
if, in such favorable conditions, Biletskyi’s National Corps runs an effective
parallel campaign, Svoboda’s list – the currently most likely and most
prospective option – could, in October 2019, again miss the 5% barrier, as it
did in October 2014.    

Much of this is, so far, however, speculation.
Ukrainian party politics and national elections are notoriously unpredictable
matters. The first two months of 2019 and meteoric rise of Volodymyr Zelenskiy,
within only a few weeks, have shown how fast and radical, the “correlation of
forces,” as a prime term of Soviet political analysis goes, can change, in
post-Soviet Ukrainian domestic affairs. Moreover, it is likely that Moscow
will, in one way or another, try to leave its imprint on, at least, the
parliamentary elections in October. Such attempts may not necessarily be
successful, in terms of the Kremlin’s interest. Yet, they could change public
opinion and the party-political constellation – perhaps, even to the advantage
of the far right. As of late February 2019, notwithstanding, it looks as if Ukraine’s
far right may perform calamitously in both, the spring presidential and autumn
parliamentary elections.

The post Will Ukraine’s Far Right Parties Fail Again in 2019? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Diplomacy may be one of the world’s oldest professions, but it’s also one of the most misunderstood. It’s mostly a quiet endeavor, less swaggering than unrelenting, oftentimes operating in back channels, out of sight and out of mind. U.S. President Donald Trump’s disdain for professional diplomacy and its practitioners—along with his penchant for improvisational flirtations with authoritarian leaders such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un—has put an unaccustomed spotlight on the profession. It has also underscored the significance of its renewal.

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In a worst-case
scenario, political-technological trickery could, after the first round of
Ukraine’s upcoming presidential elections, unsettle social stability in Ukraine.
Cynical puppet masters are prepared to risk the outbreak of a major domestic
civil conflict for the sake of securing re-election of Ukraine’s incumbent
president.

The relatively pluralistic political competition
that emerged after the collapse of the USSR has seen the emergence of new political
manipulation strategies outlined in Andrew Wilson’s seminal monograph Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in
Post-Soviet World (Yale UP, 2005). This type of distinctly cynical usage of
various deception and falsification tricks for the sake of achieving an electoral
victory has become known under the label “political technology” – a major
vocation for thousands of alumni of post-Soviet “politology” departments. The
roots of “political technology” go back to tactics of the KGB for promoting disarray,
mistrust and factionalism among anti-Soviet dissidents and emigres. While the prime
social function of traditional political science is to help making democracy
work, the purpose of post-Soviet political technology is to prevent democracy
from working as it is supposed to do.

What Is in a Name?

A major instrument of “political technologists’”
ruses, over the last thirty years, has been to subvert fair political
competition via purposefully misleading voters, via word games, about the
choices they are making on election day. Post-Soviet politics has a rich
history of the creation of pseudo-parties associated with names and programs specifically
chosen to confuse electorates about the identities and ideologies of real competitors
in elections. The, perhaps, most infamous such example is Vladimir Zhirinovskii’s
ultra-nationalist “Liberal-Democratic Party” that the Soviet ancien regime invented in 1990, initially
as a mere instrument, to discredit and obscure the real liberal-democratic
movement emerging, in the late USSR, at that time. Since then, there have been hundreds
of examples of elections, in the post-Soviet space, muddled by the appearance
of so-called “technical” parties and candidates the names or/and programs of
which sounded similar to those of some genuine political force whose electoral
support they were designed to dilute.

One would have hoped that Ukraine has overcome
this pathology, at least on the national level, after almost 30 years of
independence, and its three pro-democratic upheavals since then, the so-called Revolution
on Granit of 1990, Orange Revolution of 2004, and Revolution of Dignity of
2013-2014. Alas, this year’s presidential election sees a surprisingly egregious
revival of dirty political deceit strategies, among them the use of, at least,
two especially “technical” candidates. The 2019 presidential candidacies of the
two political nobodies Yuri Tymoshenko, a volunteer soldier, and Yuliya Lytvynenko,
a TV journalist, have clearly the purpose to confuse the voters on election day.
Every Ukrainian citizen has, of course, the right to propose her or his candidacy,
in the elections. Yet, these two candidates are such marginal political
personalities that they are not even mentioned in most opinion polls published
in the run-up to the elections.

The appearance of these two names on the ballot
sheet that voters will be filing in, on 31 March 2019, is a plain attempt to mislead
some of those who would like to elect Yuliya Tymoshenko. A certain amount of voters
will probably make their marks on the wrong line, in the list of presidential
candidates, and mark not Yuliya Tymoshenko, but the minions Yuri Tymoshenko or
Yuliya Lytvynenko. To be sure, both of them have biographies that do not make
them entirely inapt participants of Ukrainian politics. Yet, most Ukrainians
would not be able to identify these two persons who have neither sharp public
profiles nor a political organization or campaign, behind them.

The False Tymoshenko

The re-appearance of such dirty electoral manipulation
strategies could be seen as a minor incident. But the phenomenon is noteworthy
for, at least, three reasons. First, the successful registration, as
presidential candidates, of Yuri Tymoshenko and Yuliya Lytvynenko would not
have been possible without the silent approval from the very state that
currently benefits from large-scale Western support. Ukraine’s president, parliament,
government, general procuracy and electoral commission are permitting or even advancing
this and other trickery, in the run-up to the presidential elections, in spite
of their loud adherence to “Western standards” and “European values,” as well
as pompous claim for soon accession to the EU and NATO. That this and other “political-technological”
deceit is still being actively used in a country with a ratified and especially
far-reaching Association Agreement with Brussels and a Strategic Partnership
Charter with Washington should give Kyiv’s Western partners reason for pause.

Second, during the last two months, the manipulative
candidacies of Yuri Tymoshenko and Yuliya Lytvynenko have, in view of changing
opinion polling results, acquired a potential importance they had not had
before. As a result of the sudden rise of the recent presidential candidate
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the competition for the second place during the presidential
elections’ first round on 31 March has transformed into the major issue of this
vote. According to surveys, Zelenskiy will most probably win in the first round.
But, so far, it is an open question whether incumbent President Petro
Poroshenko or challenger Yuliya Tymoshenko will take the second position – and thus
also advance to the election’s second round on 21 April. Only the first two
candidates in the March round have a chance to become elected president in the April
final vote.

During the last weeks, opinion polls are
producing contradictory results on who will come second in the first round. In
some polls, Poroshenko is ahead of Yuliya Tymoshenko. In others, she takes
second place after Zelenskiy while Poroshenko falls to the third position. The
latter would mean that the incumbent does not make it to the second round and will
have no chance for re-election. Poroshenko’s and Yuliya Tymoshenko’s shares of
support in most polls, regarding the first round, are close or even very close
to each other.

In such a situation, the hitherto irrelevant “technical”
candidacies of Yuri Tymoshenko and Yuliya Lytvynenko have become politically explosive.
That is because a scenario has become possible in which Yuliya Tymoshenko could
come third in the elections’ first round, but may not be ready to accept such a
result in view of the impact of the two “technical” candidates. An
uncompromising stance by Yuliya Tymoshenko would gain legitimacy in the case
that the difference between her voters’ support and Poroshenko’s winning result
would be approximately similar or even smaller than the percentages acquired by
the political nobodies Yuri Tymoshenko and/or Yuliya Lytvynenko. The problematic
aspect of such an outcome would be especially grave, if Poroshenko would then
go on to win, in the second round, against Zelenskiy. In such a case, it would
become plausible to argue that Yuri Tymoshenko and/or Yuliya Lytvynenko stole Yuliya
Tymoshenko’s presidency.

To be sure, Ukraine has its way to deal with such
a situation. In autumn 2004, the Ukrainian elite and population did not accept
the results of the second round of the presidential elections fraudulently won
by Viktor Yanukovych. What followed was a two-months electoral uprising that
became known as the Orange Revolution – which was, by the way, principally led by
Yuliya Tymoshenko. The second round of the elections was repeated on 26
December 2004, after which Petro Poroshenko’s then patron Viktor Yushchenko was
duly inaugurated as President of Ukraine, on 23 January 2005.

Against the background of this and other Ukrainian
uprisings, it is not unlikely that, in case of a dubiously obtained electoral
advantage for Poroshenko, Ukraine could see new mass protests by disenchanted
Tymoshenko voters. If the difference between Poroshenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko
will be smaller than the share of voters for Yuri Tymoshenko or/and Yuliya
Lytvynenko, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators across Ukraine could start demanding
a repetition of the elections’ first round. A crucial difference of such a new uprising
from that of 2004 would not only be that, given the enormous amount of fire weapons
nowadays circulating among Ukrainians, it could easily turn violent.

After Me the Deluge

A third and the major worrisome aspect of the
candidacies of Yuri Tymoshenko and Yuliya Lytvynenko is that such potentially explosive
political manipulation happens at a time when Ukraine is in a war for survival.
To be sure, the probability of the above scenario is low. Most likely,
Poroshenko will either come third. Or he comes second and the margin of his
lead, compared to Yuliya Tymoshenko’s result, will be sufficiently significant to
avoid fundamental questions. In such a case, Yuliya Tymoshenko could – at
least, in that regard – not plausibly claim that the voters were deceived and
the elections stolen via this particular “political technology.” An ambivalent
situation would only emerge, if Poroshenko overtakes Yuliya Tymoshenko with a very
small margin – a constellation that will hopefully not emerge.

Yet, the likelihood of this outcome, in the
first round, does not equal zero. While the odds of such a scenario are certainly
small, the stakes are massive. A major conflict inside Ukraine between
pro-Western forces, who may even end up using firearms, would lead to ecstatic celebration
in Moscow, and deep frustration in the West. Worse, large civil unrest in
Ukraine could provide the Kremlin with a window of opportunity to snatch
another chunk of Ukrainian territory, or even crush the Ukrainian state in its
entirety. Again, this is not likely to happen, but cannot be fully excluded, in
the case of an obviously illegitimate loss by Tymoshenko, as a result of dirty “political
technology.”

The fact that the current power-holders are
ready to run such an – even if only improbable, yet – enormous risk in order to
preserve their power is not encouraging. It a stark illustration of the
continuing rapaciousness, immorality and pseudo-patriotism of the loudly pro-Ukrainian
incumbent clan nowadays dominating, in Kyiv. Most Western observers hope for a
continuation of Poroshenko’s presidency after April 2019. Their expectations of
his possible second term should, in view of the dangerous tools Poroshenko’s “political
technologists” have been employing to achieve it, not be high.

The post Ukraine’s 2019 Presidential Elections: The Yuri Tymoshenko Risk appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The UN body exclusively dedicated to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment wrapped up its annual session on Friday evening with agreement on ways to safeguard  and improve women’s and girls’ access to social protection systems, public services and sustainable infrastructure.

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