Thursday, February 12, 2015

Minsk 2.0 as a lesson in (Nazi) state and nation building

Some of the crystal ball readings of Minsk 2.0 assume without some good reasons for it that Minsk 2.0 was something, which Putin either initiated or demanded. I am aware of nothing notable which would support this idea. The parsimonious (simple) explanation is that Minsk 2.0 was initiated and imposed by the West 1) in response to the coming-to-be catastrophe for the junta troops in Debaltzevo, 2) the perceived need to bring to an end the "sabotage" of Minsk 1.0 on the part of Russia, and the DPR and LPR. The series of meetings between Poroshenko and the Western leaders were well sequeled and coordinated so were the sudden ultimatums and the renewed anti-Russian rhetoric. After all, Minsk 1.0 was an agreement on "certain principles" (however unprincipled I would see them), and the rest is tightening of the screws and presenting Minsk 1.0/2.0 etc. as the "only rational and viable option" left (I am citing by memory from Brzezinski's blueprint where this very strategy/tactic is emphasized). If in Spring, as some Russian commentators noted (was it El Murid?), Russia had a number of possible options and possible moves in front of herself, then the list or options left has since then been reduced significantly, while the uprising and resistance to the junta, which, last Spring, was rising from Odessa to Kharkov, has been effectively contained and cornered in a smaller portion of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. The Nazi junta now has a firm grip on and control of the whole state apparatus mightily assisted by a new phenomenon of armed, trained, and very motivated Nazi paramilitaries, organizations, and their activists. Their professionalism has also dramatically increased and expanded. The insufficiently appreciated fact is that the Kiev regime with the help of all kinds of experts, helpers, and minders has been intensively working on a new "nation-building" and Nazi state-building, however perverse and criminal this process is. At the same time, nation- and state-building in the DPR and LPR has been often torpedoed or put on brakes. As a result, despite great odds, while the militia is being at last transformed into something that begins to resemble an army (which ought to be undone under Minsk), the building of institutions and the state is very behind. Should these partial and inadequate attempts be further aborted or exchanged for changing the would-be republics into regions, which the original junta's law on their special status was actually turning into zones under ATO military command, then anti-fascist resistance and opposition would be simply reduced to a state of organizational impotence, chaos and disorder.

A seemingly realistic, but politically dishonest and intellectually lazy response to the question about Minsk 2.0 and the apparent lack of other possibilities and good options would be to say that there are no good options left, that all are bad and that the one we are left with is the least bad under the given conditions. One can explore and find several objections to this. One from the more obvious and readily available is that this least bad option, though seemingly a clever one, is a result of the diplomatic and political initiative and offensive undertaken by the Empire. And while the flare of the visible diplomatic activity that led to Minsk 2.0 started seemingly only some two weeks ago, the present move has been in the works for months since last Spring.

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