Comment by 11001 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 11001 | Hacker News Reader

Here is an ELI5 version of what's going on in Ukraine:

Ukraine doesn't have any money, it needs to borrow it. It can ask the west, but the west gives back a list of conditions to be satisfied (human rights, economical, etc) that are incredibly hard for the governmnet to achieve given deeply rooted corruption on all levels.

There is another source for the money: Russia (which, despite some westerners' beliefs, is a very rich country). In return Russia's demands are to make sure that the deeply rooted corruption on all levels works in Russia's favour. That is much easier to achieve.

Hence the recent $15 billion loan from Putin, that officially appears to be unconditional.

Another point I'd like to make is that many people in the east (I come from one of the big industrial cities in the south-east), don't just dislike Europe and like Russia. It's that their jobs literally depend on Russia, most of the industrial exports go straight to Russia, that's why people there are terrified of any sanctions.

> Ukraine doesn't have any money, it needs to borrow it.

Most of the places where something like that's said, it's disingenious. Are people there starving? (From the news, it does not look like so.) If they are not, they have no such need to borrow.

Of course, even if they don't need it, it might actualy be a godd idea to borrow some money. But looks like the people don't think it is.

Do you suggest that if people are not starving but the country has no money to maintain the infrastructure (which in turn is what allows businesses to grow, and creates jobs) they should be made to give up their personal money before any money is borrowed from elsewhere? That's a pretty socialistic approach.

One of the conditions for joining the EU are reforms that require Ukraine to borrow $150 billion from the IMF to "re-structure" the country. Conditions on that include austerity and freezing wages. It's no surprise support for joining the EU is only in the 40-45% range.

The government of Ukraine doesn't have enough money to pay its debts. It needs to borrow money to pay its debts or default.

sorry, what about policy brutality? kidnappings? tortures? murders? corruption? hiring of thugs? beating of journalists? Dmytro Bulatov was found with a part of his year cut off, cheek slashed and crucified by ukrainian police. The Cossak that was undressed? This isnt just an economic protest, dont reduce to such. Those tendencies finished a long time ago, it has now turned into something completely different.

Of course not. In fact the police brutality towards a few peaceful student protesters was what triggered the mass protests in Kiev and all over Ukraine, it wasn't about any particular agreement as many people wrongly believe. I'm just talking about the Russia vs the West politics in Ukraine.

Ok, it's well-meaning EU vs. corrupt Russia. Culturally, Ukraine seems to be much closer to Russia than to EU. So I think the end result will be similar to what happened with Arabic Spring revolutions, when the West hoped to see Western standards of democracy implanted into foreign cultures that could not possibly adhere to them (although they declared so initially). So I doubt very much that after the association with EU Ukraine will resemble even Poland or Hungary - in terms of economy or levels of corruption. I guess EU realizes that, too, and it's all about geopolitical games with Russia, after all.

No, democracy is not like making Ukranians or Egyptians love baseball, bullfighting and bratwurst. It's not some oddity from western cultures. It means rule of the people as opposed to the rule of some small group of thugs with guns (aristocracy, apparatchiks, the mafia, military dictators, religious leaders, etc). Everyone, everywhere in the world understands that by now.

What is specific to western cultures is that we don't expect the thugs to always prevail. All that talk about democracy as a foreign implant is a glaringly obvious and self serving attempt by the ruling thugs to present the status quo as an inevitability so they can keep lining their pockets without interference by the people. Let's not fall for it.

> It means rule of the people

This definition is wrought with controversies. Let's say it's a rule of law? Then everything falls into place.

You seem to think that democracy is some God-given quality, universal to all people, and you can introduce it into any country just by invading it or inducing a regime change in some other way.

I think it is a social institution that can evolve over long time, and only in certain societies, which do not suffer of civil wars, foreign invasions, ethnic or religious conflicts, poor economy, etc. A country that does not have these democratic traditions will not be able to suddenly accept them, simply because there are different traditions of making things work.

As to the slogan "democracy is rule of the people as opposed to a small group of thugs concerned only about their pockets", I assure you that Stalin, for example, subscribed to that, too. It is a very abstract phrase, and you can hide almost anything behind it.

I don't think democracy is God-given, but I think the idea is now deeply ingrained in (almost) all cultures on earth. Not necessarily as a reality, but as a possibility. It's not foreign to Ukraine, that's for sure.

In many countries that are now solid democracies, democracy has not evolved over a long time. It came with a bang and that was possible because the idea was already widespread.

Invading a country for whatever reason is a whole different matter. That's very rarely a good idea and certainly not to enforce or introduce democracy.

But if you find "rule of the people" too abstract then then I can remind you that "culture" is no less abstract. In a globalized information and media society with massive global migration it's not even clear what "foreign culture" really means any more.

By democracy I mean principles like a multi-partite political system, free speech, commitment to securing human rights. I am not talking about freedom as such - surely the idea of freedom is "deeply ingrained" in every person, regardless of culture.

My point was that these principles cannot be just implanted in a country where traditions are very different (e.g, tradition to give some political power to religious leaders), and where the circumstances are very different from the West (e.g., poor economy).

> democracy has not evolved over a long time. It came with a bang and that was possible because the idea was already widespread.

So it was God-given?

> it's not even clear what "foreign culture" really means any more.

On the internet, probably not. But when it comes to actually running a country, factors such as family clans, nepotism, ethnic or religious factions, are still very strong in many countries, and I don't think the internet is going to change this any time soon.

>So it was God-given?

Is all sudden change an act of God in your opinion? I'm talking about revolutions, not miracles. The _idea_ of democracy has evolved over a long time, but most countries did not have a long local tradition of applying it or building institutions at time it became political reality. Britain and the U.S are not typical examples of how democracy is introduced.

In many cases it was an idea that took hold in the minds of a smallish group of political activists and thinkers who observed what happened elsewhere and adapted it. In fact, one of the most pressing problems of those activists has always been how to get "the people" interested in it at all. And most of the time it wasn't democratic principles that got people interested but economic interests.

In other words, the introduction of democracy was rarely very democratic or purely homegrown or very principled or very peaceful or free of foreign influence. The old powers were often toppled under rather chaotic and opportunistic circumstances. That slow cultural process you're describing, which supposedly only works when there are no civil wars, foreign invasions, ethnic or religious conflicts or poor economy, is the exception, not the rule.

Also, the whole concept of "foreign" is flawed when it comes to ideas. Picking up "foreign" ideas and applying them somwehere else has always been part of every culture on this planet, and that has nothing to do with any gods.

Ok, so you don't mean it's the God suddenly introduced democracy in new countries, but revolutions; the revolutions started because the population was unhappy - not about the lack of democracy, but about poor economy. I agree with that. I can also add that the countries where the democratic principles developed slowly and organically (US and Britain) happen to be rich (strong economy is a condition where people can start to think about democracy and human rights, poor economy is where people think about basic security) and it was these countries that induced the democratic changes in other countries (e.g., post-WW2 Germany), using their wealth to stabilize their economies, and eventually transplanting their own democratic traditions to these new countries.

So this works fine as long as the revolution-inducing country is rich enough to sponsor the economy of the country where the revolution is taking place. In addition to economy, there are other factors, such cultural norms (e.g., family clans), that will need to be overcome, but this worked as long as the cultures are not too different (US and Germany, or Western Europe and Central Europe, for example).

So basically, we seem to agree that Western-style democracy is not something that can now be organically implanted in Ukraine, not without massive amounts of money poured into it by the West (which is problematic given the size of the country), and even then this will be difficult because of huge differences in traditions to run a country.

> Culturally, Ukraine seems to be much closer to Russia than to EU.

The south-east of Ukraine, that is.

The western regions of Ukraine seem to be much closer to Central Europe (Poland and others).

I am not sure about that. Yes, they are oriented towards the West, but they too were in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union for a long time, except Western-most regions that were part of Poland until WW2.

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