The Russians and their sympathizers are claiming that the
West is being “hypocritical” in opposing the referendum for independence of Crimea after supporting independence for Kosovo. The West is being entirely consistent in
supporting liberty and self-determination, while the Russians and those who
sympathize with them are the ones who are being inconsistent.
First of
all, hypocrisy, which is the most
overused and misused word of our time, means a “false show of morals.” A referendum for independence is not a moral
issue, but even if it were, the West’s support for Kosovo’s independence was
sincere, as is its repugnance of the Crimean referendum because the former
represented self-determination while the latter does not. What the Russians and their sympathizers mean
is to accuse the West of inconsistency.
The West’s
principles in regard to self-determination are two-fold. First, overthrowing a government or declaring
independence is justified only when liberty is not respected, which was the
rationale behind the American Declaration of Independence, for example. Second, self-determination by a people
necessarily is expressed only if the choice is freely made. Unlike in Kosovo, neither of these two principles
was present in the case of Crimea .
Kosovo had
been an autonomous province of mostly ethnic Albanians within Yugoslavia (later Serbia ) with a significant minority
of Serbs, as well as others. The Serbs,
led by Communist Slobodan Milosevic, had stirred up antipathy against the
ethnic Albanians, as they had against Croats and Bosnian Muslims during the
various wars in the former Yugoslavia
in the 1990s, which led to an independence movement and the declaration by the
Kosovar government of independence after Yugoslavia had stripped the
territory of its autonomy. There were
incidents of genocide against Kosovar Albanians, as well as forced deportations,
which represented the same type of “ethnic cleansing,” as ethnic Serbs had
committed in other parts of the former Yugoslavia . After a N.A.T.O.-led air assault against Serbia in 1999,
a truce took hold, backed by international peacekeepers under United Nations
mandate.
The U.N. administered the mostly
autonomous territory with the intent to determine the territory’s final status,
including independence, and monitored popular elections until Kosovo’s popularly
elected government declared independence in 2008, nine years after the end of
Serb rule. Kosovo chose not to merge
with neighboring Albania ,
which had not invaded it, and to respect minority rights, including those of
Kosovar Serbs. In short, Kosovo,
protected by peacekeepers, had freely chosen independence democratically, not
union with the nation-state of its mother tongue, only after its liberty had
been violated, after a lengthy period of transition, while guaranteeing the
liberty of ethnic and religious minorities.
In Crimea ,
by contrast, there has been no genocide or forced deportations or any credible
threats to ethnic Russians there. The
referendum was conducted hastily, without the opportunity of any significant
public debate, which deprived the opposition an opportunity to organize and
campaign, and without any international observation, unlike Kosovo’s
elections. In contrast to Kosovo’s
declaration of independence, Crimea ’s
referendum did not represent a free choice because it was conducted without
sufficient press freedoms or freedoms of assembly, with the Crimean people
surrounded by Russian troops who had recently invaded it with the intent to
annex it. Furthermore, the Crimean
referendum also did not permit a free choice because the options on the ballot
were only two: greater autonomy in the ethnic Russian-controlled territory (de
facto control by the Russian Federation )
or independence (with the intent to be annexed by Russia ). There was no option for the status quo of
autonomy within Ukraine . The ethnic Russians in Crimea
were stirred up by nationalist Russian propaganda that the Ukrainian government
were “fascists” who threatened them. It
was not clear how many of the Russians were aware of the lack of liberty in
authoritarian Russia
they voted to join. Not surprisingly,
ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars mostly boycotted the referendum, meaning that the
supposed 97% vote in favor of independence represented only the ballots cast by
some of the 60% Russian electorate. There
is no guarantee by Russia ,
in contrast to Kosovo, of minority rights in Crimea .
Indeed, no ordinary citizen in Russia enjoys
freedom fully.
Unlike Kosovo’s declaration of
independence, the referendum in Crimea was
neither justified, nor a free choice.
Therefore, the West’s support for the former and opposition to the
latter is consistent with its belief in liberty and self-determination. The West could support Crimean independence
only if it were justified as being necessary and the choice were free. Moreover, the United
States had agreed to protect Ukraine ’s
independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity in 1997, an agreement to
which Russia
was also a party.
In addition to violating its
agreement to recognize Ukraine ’s
borders as including Crimea , Russia ’s opposition to Kosovo’s declaration of
independence is inconsistent with its annexation of Crimea . Russia
had opposed Kosovo’s independence because it supported the Communist government
of fellow Slavs Serbia ,
despite Serbian crimes against humanity.
Russia
had also opposed independence for other former Yugoslav territories that were
not allegiant to it. The brutal Russian
suppression of the independence movement in the Russian territory of Chechnya
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