Saturday, January 21, 2006

Another Great Article from Alexander Motyl

"It should now be clear that Russia is authoritarian at home and hegemonic abroad. It should be equally clear that Ukraine is democratic at home and pro-western abroad. Critics of the United States invasion of Iraq questioned the legitimacy of trading blood for oil. Observers of European policy may wonder about the legitimacy of trading democracy for gas."

See full article here.

While the article's purpose is to make a forceful statement as per how the EU should be aligning itself vis-a-vis Ukraine, importantly for me, Motyl also states that there was room for some legitimate criticism of Yushchenko and team; but what is more, he states more or less that the dispute was hardly a legitimate row over market relations, but rather was a situation in which Ukraine was bullied by an authoritarian at home and increasingly imperial-chauvanist northern neighbor.

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