Old Wounds

As heartwarming as this image is, let's not forget that these two were responsible in whole or part for equally heinous wars in the Balkans and Iraq.  If you listen closely to Putin, he is using much the same language Clinton used to justify NATO involvement in the civil war in Yugoslavia, and Bush used to justify his invasion of Iraq.  Russia always likes to couch its heinous actions on international precedents, even those it opposed.

Much like Clinton's justification for NATO air strikes in Serbia to protect Kosovo, Putin believes that he is justified to strike Ukraine to protect what he regards as the autonomous Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which has been the nexus of a civil war for eight years.  In Putin's addled mind, these breakaway republics have just as much legitimacy as the republics that arose in the wake of the Balkan Wars in the 1990s.  He used the same arguments back in 2008 when his government recognized the breakaway Republicans of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Northern Georgia (Sakartvelo), similarly initiating a war in the country.

I was once a part of a NYTimes forum group on Eastern Europe back in the early 2000s.  There were quite a few Putin supporters, and one of the sore points they alluded to time again was the Balkan Wars.  The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the portrayal of Serbia as the villain in those civil wars was something they hung on the United States, Bill Clinton in particular.  Putin supporters used these wars to justify Russia's own incursions into neighboring states, as Russia was simply protecting its interests.  They also viewed Putin as a necessary counterweight to US aggression.  

We had these arguments for years.  I kept in touch with one of the persons from that forum group, a Ukrainian living in Seattle.  We actually met back in 2005, when I was briefly living in Seattle.  At the time, Russia didn't seem like that much of a threat and so this was more a difference of opinion than anything else.  I chided him when Putin was elected to a third term in 2012, as my friend was convinced Putin would move to the background of Russian politics and let others take the lead.  Obviously that didn't happen.  I want to broach him on the subject again in the wake of the war in Ukraine, but he recently lost his wife and I don't want to get into such arguments when he has such a great personal loss to deal with.  

The war is dividing Ukrainians and Russians in ways that are strongly reminiscent of the Balkan wars, which saw Yugoslavia shatter into a myriad of pieces rather than the UN try to reconcile the divisions through a canton-system similar to Switzerland.  I remember this was one of the arguments made in the forum.  In the end, six new republics were forged from the old communist country, eight if you count Kosovo and Vojvodina.  Several still struggle to establish any kind of economic and political independence.  Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro and North Macedonia (as it is called now) were all admitted into NATO, further angering Russia.  Politically, Russia still exercises a great deal of influence in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Russia would similarly love to carve Ukraine up, taking parts of it into its sphere of influence.  Putin doesn't seem particularly worried about the consequences, as he feels morally justified in his actions based on what happened to Yugoslavia.

Putin is also using many of the same arguments George Bush used to justify his invasion of Iraq before the UN Security Council in 2002.  The Russian autocrat claims Ukraine is developing weapons of mass destruction with the help of the United States, pointing to biolabs throughout Ukraine, which the US funded to one degree or another.  You get the gist of these claims in this Global Times opinion by Frank Bro.  GT is an English-language propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party.  Putin also claims Ukraine is developing "dirty bombs"  These audacious claims have been debunked, as were Bush's claims that Iraq possessed WMD's.  Nevertheless, Bush invaded Iraq and we are still living with the consequences of this rash act.

This is why these two former US presidents should keep a low profile.  We really don't need them in the discussion.  There is nothing more Putin would love than to pick open these old wounds to justify his invasion of Ukraine.