{"id":23146,"date":"2014-03-26T08:51:03","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T16:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=23146"},"modified":"2014-03-26T09:47:47","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T17:47:47","slug":"where-libertarians-should-really-stand-on-crimea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/26\/where-libertarians-should-really-stand-on-crimea\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Libertarians Should Really Stand on Crimea"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Glaser\u2019s blog post <\/a>on Crimea is typically American \u2013 i.e. it is bathed in unconscious albeit ferocious nationalism.<\/p>\n

He starts out by accusing me of excusing \u201cthe crimes and misdeeds of foreign regimes that Washington sees as antagonistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crimes of foreign governments are the responsibility of the people who live in those countries: my critique of their actions has no power to effect any change as far as they are concerned, and it would be pointless for me to tilt at those particular windmills. I live in the United States, which is currently the main danger to peace and freedom in the world. Glaser admits this later when he writes that Ron Paul is \u201ccorrect, in my opinion, to place criticism of U.S. foreign policy as a priority over that of other governments.\u201d Therefore my criticism is directed at Washington, and yes I do admit \u2013 nay, proclaim! \u2013 my \u201cgrave bias\u201d against the undisputed champion of death and destruction worldwide. The \u201cinvasion\u201d of Crimea produced zero casualties: compare that to what happened when we \u201cliberated\u201d Iraq.<\/p>\n

The rest of Glaser\u2019s piece consists of hand-wringing over the presence of Russian troops in Crimea \u2013 a presence agreed to by Ukraine. If \u201cnobody knows exactly how many\u201d came in after or before the vote, as Glaser puts it, then how do we know there are any \u201cextra\u201d troops present? Glaser doesn\u2019t know, as he admits, yet he uses the word \u201cextra\u201d so as to sound like all the other Washington pundits who sanctimoniously condemn the \u201cinvasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this is just splitting hairs. The underlying reality is that if some past President of the United States had handed over,\u00a0 say, Maine to Canada on a whim \u2013 as Nikita Khrushchev handed Crimea over to Ukraine in 1953 \u2013 would anyone in the US dispute the results of a referendum reintegrating it back into the Union?<\/p>\n

Glaser whines that some voters weren\u2019t sent mysterious \u201cvouchers\u201d enabling them to vote in the Crimean referendum, but this hardly invalidates the vote. Crimeans have voted repeatedly \u2013 when they\u2019ve been allowed to do so \u2013 in favor of reunion with Russia, which has held Crimea since the days of Catherine the Great. The last referendum, called by the Crimean parliament in 1992, was stopped by Kiev\u2019s threat of force. The recent referendum was Crimea\u2019s revenge \u2013 and good for them!<\/p>\n

Glaser continues:<\/p>\n

\u201cCrimeans do have a right to self-determination. And they very well may have voted to rejoin Russia even without Moscow\u2019s meddling and military incursions. But it is just a fantasy to believe this is anything other than an interventionist power grab by Russia. Obviously, this doesn\u2019t mean one ought to support U.S. intervention of any kind. But I think it does mean libertarians, when asked directly, should not defend Putin\u2019s regime.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

This paragraph conflates several different issues. Defending the referendum as legitimate has nothing to do with defending \u201cPutin\u2019s regime.\u201d This accusation is a typical smear tactic designed to discredit arguments that cannot be answered by any other means. Putin is a typical statist, but that doesn\u2019t mean his every action on the world stage is to be condemned. For example, he opposed Obama\u2019s plan to bomb Syria: is giving him credit for that \u201cdefending Putin\u2019s regime\u201d? By Glaser\u2019s standards \u2013 yes. By rational standards \u2013 of course not.<\/p>\n

Contra<\/i> Glaser, everything that comes out of Washington is indeed \u201cwithout merit,\u201d i.e. it is mendacity unadulterated by any meritorious substance, the sole purpose of which is to justify American and European expansionism.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s important about Glaser\u2019s contribution to the discussion \u2013 so far, at least \u2013is what it leaves out: a years long systematic subversion of Ukrainian politics, with millions of US taxpayer dollars pouring into the coffers of groups and individuals who are little more than Washington\u2019s sock-puppets. He doesn\u2019t mention this at all \u2013 yet more evidence of the unconscious American nationalism distorting his view of the Ukrainian events.<\/p>\n

The American people have had it with military intervention, and Washington is adapting to this with characteristic quickness: they\u2019re switching to deploying \u201csoft power,\u201d which can be just as deadly as the hard kind.<\/p>\n

There was nothing “perfectly respectful” about the vicious attack on Ron Paul by the “President” of Students for the State Department<\/del> Liberty: like Glaser, he conflated support for Putin’s “regime” with support for the right of the Crimean people to join Russia if they so wish. This is the latest version of the typical neocon accusation that accompanies all their attacks on those of us who oppose their vision of an world dominated by Washington. That Glaser is echoing this pernicious nonsense is sad indeed.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0silly idea\u00a0that we\u00a0are obligated\u00a0to equally condemn the depredations of all governments everywhere is rubbish: it posits a moral equivalence between some Third World hellhole that never respected human rights and never pretended to with a country — the most powerful in the world — that does much worse in the name of “freedom” and “democracy.”<\/p>\n

UPDATE: I see here <\/a>that Glaser is citing Anthony Gregory, who blogs for the Independent Institute,\u00a0in his defense. But Gregory’s argument is fatally flawed: he cites Tom Paine’s maniacal peroration to the effect that “My country is the world!” A crazy — and completely untrue — statement. This is what the warlords of Washington believe — and act on. But Gregory’s country is most certainly not the world — not if the world has anything to say about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Glaser\u2019s blog post on Crimea is typically American \u2013 i.e. it is bathed in unconscious albeit ferocious nationalism. He starts out by accusing me of excusing \u201cthe crimes and misdeeds of foreign regimes that Washington sees as antagonistic.\u201d The crimes of foreign governments are the responsibility of the people who live in those countries: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-23146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23146"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23152,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23146\/revisions\/23152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23146"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}