jo van der spek on Sat, 4 Dec 2004 10:12:41 +0100 (CET) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
[Nettime-nl] Ukraine: US-Engineered Coup or European Revolution? |
December 3, 2004, Volume 1, Number 23 DEMOCRACY DIGEST The Weekly Bulletin of the Transatlantic Democracy Network www.demdigest.net -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The "Orange Revolution": US-Engineered Coup or European Model of Peaceful Revolution? Yet the election has revealed a disturbing ambivalence towards democratization on the part of some commentators, particularly in western Europe, as reflected in allegations that democratizing efforts in Serbia, Georgia and now Ukraine have been "funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organizations." "For too long now we have gone along with the idea that spreading democracy on our terms is all good," a former British diplomat complains in The Independent newspaper, decrying European complicity in democracy promotion. In one of the more distasteful contributions to the debate, Jonathan Steele, chief foreign correspondent of the London-based Guardian, suggests that Ukraine's orange revolution is nothing more than a "postmodern coup d'etat." Through tenuous and contentious associations, Steele hints that the pro-Yuschenko forces share nationalistic, secessionist and anti-semitic sentiments. As Timothy Garton Ash notes, observing events through a prism of anti-Americanism distorts one's perspective. "This is a version of our European model of peaceful revolution, with the aim of rejoining Europe, not America," he argues, berating those who complain of US and EU support for Ukraine's democrats. These conspiracy theories--by no means unique to Europe--reveal a mechanistic approach to politics, suggesting that popular movements can be artificially manufactured and that resources determine success. As the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum notes, they not only overrate the influence of US money and organizations, as the example of Belarus attests, but also neglect the countervailing forces of authoritarianism. Unlike any western politicians, Russia's President visited Ukraine twice to campaign for "his" candidate and deployed considerable resources of his own to counteract democratic forces. Interventions by Western or any other agencies will only be effective in mobilizing popular support for democratic change where and when they reflect or feed into otherwise latent demands for change. "People have been suppressed, manipulated, downtrodden for so long, that this is resulting in an explosion of their best instincts," said Nadia Diuk, director for Europe and Eurasia at the National Endowment for Democracy. "People are saying, 'We're not going to take the manipulation of the media, and its control of the citizens, anymore.'" Even the previously quiescent media have grown more assertive. The Ukrainian TV channel 1 + 1 had been "very much in support of the government and the government's candidates," Diuk said. "But last week, news readers and news anchors decided they were not going to read the news just as it was handed down to them."
______________________________________________________ * Verspreid via nettime-nl. Commercieel gebruik niet * toegestaan zonder toestemming. <nettime-nl> is een * open en ongemodereerde mailinglist over net-kritiek. * Meer info, archief & anderstalige edities: * http://www.nettime.org/. * Contact: Menno Grootveld (rabotnik@xs4all.nl).