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#18 - RW 12-24-05 - RW Home
Moscow News
www.MN.Ru
December 22-28, 2004
A Freeloading Superpower
By Vladimir Nadein
Are we going to believe the rumor that the Ukrainian Security Service
poisoned Viktor Yushchenko at the FSB's instigation? Many of us will believe it,
but the majority will probably not.
Are we going to believe the theory that the CIA poisoned Yushchenko with the
sole aim of making the world believe that it was an FSB operation? The majority
will believe it, although many will doubt it.
Let us put it into broader perspective. Will the Russians believe that
Belgian or Norwegian secret services are involved in this? Will anybody be able
to sell the Americans a theory about saboteurs from Romania, the Czech Republic,
or Japan? This would be an exercise in futility.
I am not talking about whether Viktor Yushchenko was in fact poisoned or
whether Vladimir Satsyuk, deputy chief of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU),
who was instantly fired and kicked out from the Verkhovna Rada (national
parliament), was in fact involved in this. He might be made into a scapegoat.
But this is unlikely. We are probably in for the latest in the Kiev
thriller/cliff-hanger.
But this will come later. For the time being, Nicholas D. Kristof, of The New
York Times, writes: "There's no evidence that Russia was involved in the
poisoning, or even that he [Yushchenko] was poisoned at that dinner. But Russia
managed to insert itself into every other aspect of the [election] campaign, so
it's a possibility that Ukrainians are murmuring about it."
Being a respectable publication, The New York Times is being somewhat
ambiguous, but the world press is much blunter: Russia Wanted To Kill Yushchenko;
Russia Picks Up the Baton from Mussolini, Franco, and Pinochet, and so on and so
forth.
I for one am greatly irked by this. I have read so much rubbish written about
Russia in the world press. For example, about a submarine delivering Colombian
cocaine to the U.S. coast. The only solace in this sea of lies was that when
something of the kind happened to the United States, the international uproar
was just as vociferous. Europeans, Asians, and Africans - everyone assailed the
last superpower. Or maybe not the last? Maybe herein lies the root cause of all
our problems?
I get the impression that we hastened to say goodbye to our own great-power
status. We are longing for something that we, unfortunately, have not lost as
yet. We have not as yet lost the overriding suspicion that without us, the
Ukrainians (Uzbeks, Georgians) will ruin our Ukraine (Uzbekistan, Georgia). We
have not as yet lost the obsessive idea that the enemy is around the corner and
is going to attack us at any moment. We are indulging in the grand illusion that
our caves are still packed with countless riches. We don't know how to be a
normal country - e.g., like Norway, which is just as northerly as we are, but
unlike us, is much richer; or like the hitherto miserable Chukhna, now the
prosperous Finland. That we don't know how to be a normal country is only half
the problem. What is worse is that we don't want to be one. We are afraid that
the world will stop fearing us. We keep saying that the world does not have
enough poles and that without us "multipolarity" will not come to pass.
I hope that Russia has nothing to do with Yushchenko's disfigured face. But I
am at a loss how to convince, e.g., the Belgians that this is indeed the case.
The Europeans are poisoned with an aversion to great and belligerent states.
They are ready to forgive them their gorilla-like muscles, but only in exchange
for money comparable with their body mass. What they cannot tolerate in
principle is a freeloading superpower. They are a party pooper that can spoil
any enjoyment - from successful poisoning to admission to the WTO.
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