Sincethefall semester of 2008,I have been lecturing about the Ukrainein my Geography 302 course.As part of the courseI like to highlight various areas of potential conflict in the world.Already it was pretty clear that Russia and the Ukraine had plenty to bicker about, but at the time,it was mostlyover unpaid natural gas debt.However, at the end of that lecture I had a small coda.It was a section on the Crimea.
When the Russian state formed inthe ninth century, Kiev – now in the Ukraine – dominated.Its presence was souncontested in this early federationthat it lends its name to the era: Kieven Rus.For centuries, though, Russia was ruled by ruthless overlords from the east, the MongolianledTatars, who decimated the cities, murdered countlessSlavsand enslaved the rest.The end of the 15thcentury saw the rise of Moscow, and after centuries of fighting,they finally expelled the last Tatar rulers in 1783 and,in the process,also reclaimed the Crimea.
In 1954,the Crimea,then a part of Russia, was reassigned to the Ukraine, itself a Soviet Republic.At this juncture,the Soviet leaders thought nothing of the exchange; they were all part of the same Moscow-dominated nation.It would be like taking money out of your left pocket and putting it in the right.
Less than four decades later, though, their20thcentury experiment in a centrally planned Communist government rapidly came to an end.As they were going their separate ways, the problemof who was allowed to leavearose.The Ukrainesevered itself fromthe USSRin August 1991, but the Crimea was forced to stay with the Ukraine, even though they attempted to declare their independence in 1992.And in 1994, when the Crimea passed a constitution that called for secession from the Ukraine, the parent nation annulled the constitution, once again going against the wishes of the people.A similar fate happened to Tatarstan and Chechnya, but in those instances,Russia was the bully.And, something akin to what is going on now in the Crimea occurred in 2008 when Russia went to war with Georgia over South Ossetia, an area that wanted to link up with their kin in Russia,the North Ossetians.
At the end of the Great War,President Woodrow Wilson tried to convince the European powers ofthe merits of “self-determination.”However, nationsonlysupport self-determination when it reinforces their interests and does not pose a viable threat.The Latin American Spanish colonies were allowed to separate from Spain,and Greece was aided in its rebellion against the Ottomans in the early19thcentury, while Cuba through the American military threw off Spanish rule at the end of that century.Yet in the second half of the20thcentury,Vietnam and Algeria were not allowed to leave without a significant fight.
As Christians,we should always oppose the use of violent force, speaking out against it and finding Christlike ways of resisting.But though Putin engaged the Russian military in this maneuver, the people of the Crimea do not seem to beopposingit.Theirparliamentvoted unanimously to join Russia, and in a fewdays,a vote will be put to the people.So does the United States, or any other governing body, have the right to intervene?The Ukraine is the perceived victim in this matter, but if they had simply allowed the Crimeans to part in the early 1990s, instead of tightly holding on, we wouldn’t be facing this situation today.And any armed foreign intervention will likely make this conflict heat up.
So, when you read about Sarah Palin telling people “told ya so,” you can know that there was nothing clever or particularly prescient about that prediction, since a good many people, myself included,had already come to the same conclusion.And when Hillary Clinton remarks that what Putin is doing is like what Hitler did concerning Czechoslovakia,you can know that she’s making stretches of her own.We historians rankle at those types of comparisons because they manipulate and distort the reality of situations to an extreme degree, doing a disservice to everyone.Putin is simply acting like a leader of Russia,which hasalways been expansionist.You don’t get to be the largest country, concerning landmass, without having an expansionist agenda.
We Christians can rest assured that our prompts and guidance donot come from any political leader,but from the Bible.Jesus said,”You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:43-45).
Let’s wait and see how this situation plays out.Can weargue with the voices of over 2 million Crimeans?Even if we disagree with their choice, isn’t givingthem the choice at the heart of democracy?The Cold War is over, and there is no more “Evil Empire.”We don’t need to worry about what might happen;we only need to be faithful to God by responding with loveand prayer.
