As it often happens, a state entity fighting an enemy for too long runs the risk of ending up just like it. In my professional view as an historian, this seems to be more and more the case of the United States, especially after the implosion of its Cold War archenemy, the USSR. This unfortunate tendency is clearly visible with regards to Ukraine.
Initially created as a republic by the bolsheviks, Ukraine declared its independence in 1991 with the ideological help of Orest Subtelny, a Ukrainian-American historian.
At that time, Ukraine automatically incorporated into its national territory large areas belonging to Hungary, Romania, Poland and Russia. During the second world war these areas and their populations had been forcibly severed from the states to which they belonged by Stalin, who until 1941 acted as Hitler's ally. Large territories like Crimea which was Russian or Bugeac which was Moldavian , were also arbitrarily gifted to the Soviet republic of Ukraine during the fifties by subsequent Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who happened to be Ukrainian by birth.
After the disappearance of the Tsarist and Austro-Hungarian empires, a host of new nations appeared in Central Europe and the Balkans, such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The Kingdom of Romania doubled its territory through the addition of former Austro-Hungarian (Transylvania, Bucovina) or Russian provinces (Moldova), overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Romanians.
In a bizarre twist of events, however, the implosion of the Soviet Union was not followed in Eastern Europe by a reallocation of territory according to the ethnicity of inhabitants, with a few exceptions. Instead, an ultranationalist Ukraine replaced the Soviet Union in the region, steadfastly refusing since 1991 to allow territories like for example Transcarpathia or northern Bucovina to be reunited with Hungary or Romania, originally dispossessed by Stalin. The fact has created continuous ethnic tensions between Kiev and the Russians, Romanians and Hungarians forced to live under a new, Soviet-style yoke, that of the current Ukrainian regime. The presence of the 14th Russian army in Tiraspol also ensured that Moldova would not be reunited with Romania, as it was the case before 1940.
Romania's case is probably the most dramatic of all. Thus, if in 1918 after the Versailles Peace Treaty its total territory was 296,000 square kilometres, this was diminished by Stalin to 237,000 sq.km. - a situation kept unchanged even after the fall of communism and of the USSR. In Ukraine, Romania has close to one million inhabitants living in Bucovina and Hertza. After 1991 the Romanian parliament timidly tried to ask Ukraine to revoke the territorial theft perpetrated by Stalin, to no avail. In fact, independent Ukraine decided to keep all its neighbours' territories which had been gifted to it by the communist dictators, and even victimised the hapless ethnic minorities unfortunate enough to find themselves within its borders.
As the sole superpower left after 1991, the United States chose to endorse the theft of territories perpetrated by the Soviet communists, together with the Nazis, against the nations of Central and Eastern Europe mentioned above. In principle, the inviolability of borders is guaranteed by international law. However, the State Department should not pretend - in Ukraine's case - as if its current borders are its natural established borders. Almost all of Ukraine's neighbours have legitimate, long-standing territorial claims against it. In overlooking these facts, the State Department is enforcing in that region the policies of the defunct Soviet Union, to the detriment of its own NATO members.
This anomaly was highlighted on Wednesday by former Romanian foreign minister, the philosopher Andrei Marga, who is a sincere and committed supporter of democracy. Marga also has a preference for monarchy as a form of government. Now, everyone could agree that being a promoter of democracy and being sympathetic to monarchism does not make Marga a supporter of Vladimir Putin, who is staunchly opposed to both. Still, that is exactly the accusation levelled at the Romanian philosopher in the wake of his declaration.
The State Department and the US polity should be well advised to think twice before unleashing the media dogs against a well-meaning and highly informed Romanian opinion leader. After all, Marga has done more for the promotion of democracy in Eastern Europe than many American intellectuals I am aware of. Assisting Ukraine to hang on to territories which do not rightfully belong to it is morally wrong and geopolitically dangerous, as current events amply demonstrate.
To be sure, Mr. Marga is neither pro-Russian nor anti-American. This episode can better be understood in all its complexity by comparing two American Democrat presidents, Woodrow Wilson and Joe Biden, who both left their mark on the history of Central and Eastern European nations.
Woodrow Wilson led the United States at the start of American hegemony in world affairs. Joe Biden today presides over the demise of American unipolarity, but without displaying the traditional Anglo-Saxon skill and restraint exercised by Great Britain, for example, when it lost its global pre-eminence.
Thus, if one hundred years ago President Wilson enforced the principle of peoples' self-determination, the current US president inveighs against the right of the Russian population from Donbass to hold referenda concerning their future, among other things. In so doing, he forces the US to go against its own principles in the conduct of international affairs, and to act more as a de facto heir of the defunct USSR, "prison of nations and ethnic groups".
It should come as no surprise, for example, that Soviet-born and educated communist nostalgics are not only welcome in the USA these days, but even proposed by the current Administration for positions of great trust within key federal institutions.
