In the Crimea they've voted by an enormous margin to return to being a part of the Russian machine, a silver cog on the grimy Black Sea. Putin has spoken and apparently the people have spoken and the world has looked on slack jawed. They want to return to the enormous heaving bosom of Mother Russia with all the complexity and contradiction and pain that goes with it. Citizens beat their own breasts, they fly the Russian flag, they sing and light torches, Ukraine no more, we are and always have been Russian; and when communism collapsed (which never quite happened) under the weight of it's own ideological corruption the people of Crimea were swept along as part of a rough cut political piece of expedient reorganisation. Now they want to set things right. Ah! The sound of democratic self determination, that musical piece beloved of the SNP, the Yes people and the chattering classes so unburdened without the weight of academic ideals and anxiety over processes and timescales. There are no proper rules when it comes to who rules. Having an army always helps.
For obvious reasons the rest of Europe and the USA seem to be struggling with all of this. They are smug and disdainful, they dislike what's going on and are wagging long, pointy fingers around. Hurricanes hardly happen in Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire these days, there's just a depressing flood of Tory self righteous rhetoric and rainwater. So because of the rushed, naive and possibly partly corrupted referendum process none this can be approved. It's not cricket or rugby or American football, the Russians have tanks and soldiers and are aggressive (unlike us). They locked the gates and barred the doors and the secret service whispered into two million ears and said “Vote Yes or else you're in with the Ukraine for the next fifty Eurovision Song Contests.”
There were only two questions on the ballot paper and little else to choose, that idea does sound rather familiar. A bit like setting up a Yes or No scenario in a blank landscape and then campaigning on those two fairly easy to understand options. “But where's the debate?” that's the plaintive cry. As if debate before decision ever sorted anything. Debate is argument that ebbs and flows like an unruly tide, then somebody decides regardless of the outcome and the people still vote from the fear or the love that is in their hearts anyway. So it's outside of the rules of international behaviour and worst of all it's a victory and a boost to the cult of (limited/stunted/clever) personality and bully boy tactics that goes with the volatile package known as Vladimir Putin. There are talks of sanctions and a new Cold War, frost and iron, stone faces and the pushing up of gas and oil prices. The hypocritical energy companies will rub their hands at the prospect, ready and willing to squeeze a few pence out of the frightened masses. A little more instability working on the markets, a little more uncertainly over supply lines, a big hike in the prices. That's how we work, that's how the West behaves and dances around to the butterfly effect of some perceived instability in an area that’s seldom seen a stable decade in the last thousand years.
Make no mistake, Russian is on the way back from the brink as we head towards it, the CCCP logo will once again adorn ice hockey jumpers and football strips. Their will be Cossack dances and parades of huge missiles, huge flags will be unfurled and great gas guzzling factories will produce substandard consumer items and first class weaponry. In the West we'll declare a bit of an chilly kind of phony cold war and also rearm and regroup and the balance will be restored and those heavy weight shadow boxing matches of the 50's to the 80's can resume. Doomsday Preppers and arms companies can relax, Sci-Fi and thriller authors can pat themselves on the back and stuff a few more pages into their typewriters. The churches can once again boast of Bible smuggling exploits in discreet Volkswagen campers and emails and social media will be monitored and strangled...and in Crimea? There will be dancing in the streets to the tune of a thousand Lada car horns (those that actually work anyway), then it's down hill all the way once the Coca-Cola syrup runs out and your Ford Focus needs a new clutch plate. It's about then that the Ukrainian minority will start to fight back...
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