Who’s the greater threat to Ukraine?

'Experts' on Ukraine

by Alexander J. Motyl

An astoundingly large amount of nonsense has been written about Ukraine ever since it came to occupy center stage in the public mind. That’s not surprising: most people in most countries barely knew the place existed or assumed it was “really” Russia. The number of Ukraine specialists outside of Ukraine is probably no greater than a few hundred in the entire world. Their expertise was of little interest to people who had no interest in or use for the country.

Now that Ukraine is in the news, it’s equally unsurprising that non-experts with an abysmal knowledge of Ukraine are claiming to be able to speak authoritatively about it. Media that feature such people are doing their consumers an enormous disservice. No one would ask a plumber to speak about nuclear weapons or a nuclear physicist about plumbing. And yet it doesn’t seem to occur to news outlets that Professor Stephen F. Cohen, a life-long specialist on Russia who has never written anything academic about Ukraine, might be unqualified to opine about Ukraine. Worse, it doesn’t trouble Cohen, who has spent a good part of his distinguished academic career insisting that evidence and expertise are indispensable to genuine knowledge. Nor does ignorance of Ukraine keep Henry Kissinger from producing a Washington Postop-ed that gets nearly everything wrong about the country.

Here’s a rule of thumb for media, policymakers, and consumers of news. Before you listen to, read, or watch self-styled experts discussing this topic, first find out whether they read Ukrainian, or at least Russian, and whether they’ve actually written anything serious about Ukraine.

The latest two examples of such blather come from two professors, David Hendrickson and Robert English. Like Kissinger, they are specialists in international relations; their views on Ukraine’s place in the world order might therefore be trustworthy. Naturally, neither evinces any deep knowledge of Ukraine’s history, politics, or culture.

Both scholars set off alarm bells discussing the presence in Ukraine’s government of several members of right-wing political organizations, Svoboda and the Right Sector. English even thinks that their presence is more dangerous than Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine’s southernmost province, Crimea. Both say these organizations are fascist.

One cannot help but wonder if either scholar has read any of the official Ukrainian-language statements or programs of either organization. For myself, I am fairly certain that neither has availed himself of the extensive academic literature on Ukrainian nationalism. Hendrickson cites one scholar, Per Rudling, whose views on Ukrainian nationalism are as extreme as Noam Chomsky’s on American foreign policy. There’s nothing wrong with reading Rudling (one suspects Hendrickson didn’t read too closely, though, as he misspells Rudling’s name twice), but, as any serious scholar and journalist knows, one should always familiarize oneself with a variety of perspectives.

Are Svoboda and the Right Sector fascist? Let’s compare them to a bona fide fascist regime.

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