As a podcast on iTunes, listenable/downloadable onscreen at Taki’s Magazine, or as a transcript here.
In this week’s broadcast I cover the protests in the Ukraine.
There’s a little paradox in the case: All over Europe there’s been increasing support for nationalists, who are hostile to the EU and its arrogant trans-national bureaucracy — most especially to its open-borders policies. Nationalists in the Ukraine, on the other hand, look to the EU to help them against Putin and Yanukovych. Nationalists looking to trans-nationalists for support! But where else can they look?
Well, there’s Uncle Sam. Our State Department did seem to be trying to get involved earlier this month, with one of John Kerry’s people trying to herd cats there, the cats in this case being Ukraine’s innumerable opposition political parties, all of which can, as George Orwell said of their pre-WW2 French equivalents, be bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese. The idea was to get a coalition together strong enough to thwart Yanukovych and Putin. We know all about this because the meetings were bugged and transcripts were posted on the Internet, probably by Putin’s people.
It didn’t work, and probably couldn’t have. I feel for the Ukrainian protestors. I wish just as fervently as they do that they could be a normal European country instead of a Russian satrapy competing with Nigeria and Iran in the corruption rankings. It’s Putin’s turf, though. He has all the options, not to mention all the oil and gas. Our choices are very limited. We can make angry faces in the U.N., that’s about all. The EU is of course a paper tiger, as Kerry’s point person said rather coarsely on the bugged conversations.
Listeners old enough to remember the 1964 presidential election may recall Barry Goldwater’s proposal to, quote, “liberate the Ukraine.” With all due respect to Senator Goldwater, it wasn’t a very realistic U.S. policy goal then, and it still isn’t.
The full Radio Derb playbill:
It’s all there at Taki’s Magazine.
