“If there were a moral to be drawn from the Crimean War which might apply to the present it would be this: in a war between Russia and the West, it is the powers which keep out who will the be the real gainers…” AJP Taylor, February 1951
The issue of Crimea has been back in the news of late, but if Professor Taylor’s insight is anything to go by, perhaps it never really went away […]
As Solzhenitsyn makes clear, the US has been trying to pull not only Crimea but the Russian naval port city Sevastopol into the West’s sphere of influence for the past thirty years. Solzhenitsyn notes that the American ambassador to Ukraine, an ethnic Ukrainian by the name of Roman Popadiuck…
…had the gall to declare that Sevastopol rightly belongs to Ukraine. Based on what historical erudition or relying on what legal foundations did he pronounce this learned judgement?—he failed to clarify. Why should he, when the State Department immediately supported his opinion? This—regarding Sevastopol, which even the madcap Khrushchev did not conceive of “granting” to Ukraine, for it was excluded from the Crimea as a city under Moscow’s direct administrative supervision. (May one ask: what business is it of the State Department to comment on Sevastopol at all?)
All of this is simply to point out that the issues surrounding the status of Crimea are far more complicated than as usually presented in the American press. Indeed, the best course of action with regard to Crimea may well be that as suggested by AJP Taylor some seventy years ago. Läs artikel