Ukraine a lesson for the West

'Ukraine Isn't Armageddon." Now, how bold and direct is that?

This is the banner headline splashed over the most incisive piece of journalism I have read on Russian President Vladimir Putin and the crisis in Crimea. It led the April edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, the sharp monthly news magazine published in Paris.

You won't find anything like its analysis in the mostly war-baiting US media. Being left-leaning, the Paris magazine is not even remotely interested in defending Putin. And being French, it is determined to be contrarian.

But on the Putin-Crimea issue, the French paper is persuasive. "Media treatment of recent events in Ukraine," reads the analysis by Olivier Zajec of France's Institut de Strategie Comparee, "confirms that some in the West see international crises as Armageddons, conflicts between good and evil where the meaning of history is enacted, rather than as signs of differences of interest and perception between parties open to reason."

In the juvenile Manichean dialectic found in the main media outlets Americans read, see or listen to, Russia is the bad guy in the black hat and the West is the good guy. And sometimes - as we know - the good guy in the white cowboy hat simply has to pull out his six-shooter (if he is any kind of real man) and blow away the evil.

Le Monde Diplomatique writes: "The cliches of the Western press - not just since the start of the Ukrainian crisis but over the last 15 years - may be all that most readers know of Russia's current foreign policy. This negative view, verging on caricature, is a well-established tradition, based partly on analyses that emphasize the totalitarian and 'insincere' compulsions of Russian culture, and partly on the supposed continuity from (Josef) Stalin to Putin - a favorite theme of French columnists and US neo-con think tanks."

Whoever Putin may be and whatever he is, he is no Stalin. "It may be time," suggests Le Monde Diplomatique, "to banish the words 'Cold War' from articles on Russia. This historically inappropriate shorthand explains the repeated expression of old fantasies."

Reverting to foggy Cold War clich��s not only blurs a sharper sense of the historic Russian interest in keeping Ukraine as a bridge to the West - and not permit it to become a NATO ally; it also tends to cloud our understanding of Asia-Pacific dynamics, where some in the West demonize China and de-colorize the entire Asian canvas into a childish diorama of black and white.

Implicit in this fearful assumption is the suggestion that if only the United States were more forceful against Russia, less "bad things" around the world would happen. This is fantasy. It is calculations of national interests (and often pent-up domestic pressure) that drive such decisions. On the contrary, US caution and restraint can contribute to stability: that is, there is no world clock ticking, as if you had better "do it" before someone (and who else might that be?) stops you.

Reluctance to press a military option near the borders of Russia strikes the Chinese as wise, not weak. Note that in the UN Security Council debate on Ukraine, China chose to abstain from the vote on the resolution denouncing the Crimean referendum.

This is not our fight, said Beijing. After the Security Council vote, Liu Jieyi, China's representative, explained that Beijing favored a "balanced" solution to the conflict, proposed the creation of a coordination group and a support package for Ukraine, and urged countries to refrain from action which could further escalate the conflict. In effect, his view echoed that of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, ever the pragmatic realist.

Closer to the crisis in Crimea, German Chancellor Angela Merkel distanced herself from stupid talk and, like the Chinese, sought a way out. "Their positions may be fundamentally opposed," wrote Le Monde Diplomatique, "but Merkel saw this as a reason to talk and negotiate, rather than insult each other." The tools of diplomacy are not given to diplomats to discuss only that on which there already exists agreement!

All honest Americans need to recognize that Western interventions in other countries often send out mixed moral messages as well. The US went stubbornly to war against Iraq even though the George W. Bush administration lacked international approval. Western interventions in Libya and Afghanistan also raised issues of international law. Those who live in glass houses should be the last to throw stones. The West needs to start looking at itself in the mirror instead of just looking down its nose at everyone else.

The US fools no one (perhaps except itself) with high-minded condemnations of Putin's obvious amorality when its own sense of international political morality is usually defined by cold calculations of national interest - much like every other country's.

The author is Loyola Marymount University's distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies and the author of the Giants of Asia book series.