US-based Nigerian scholar says Ukraine needs own voice
A Nigerian academic, historian, author and professor of African History at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, Professor Moses Ochonu, has said the Ukrainian people should be allowed to voice out their inclinations rather than be torn between external voices shouting from Russia or the West.
Ochonu wrote in a Facebook post on Monday that the arguments being thrown around concerning Ukraine’s NATO membership as part of the reasons Russia launched its military operation are neither here nor there. He wrote:
Far-left commentators say the West is to blame for Ukraine’s troubles in the hands of Putin because the West allegedly wooed/lured/blackmailed/forced/recruited Ukraine away from Russia’s orbit and into the West’s.
The argument is that the West should have made Ukraine neutral and reconfigure it as a buffer between Russia and the West.
Another strand of the far-Left argument alleges that the West reneged on an agreement not to expand NATO to Ukraine, never mind that there is no such agreement, just a verbal understanding that Russia should respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the West should reciprocate by keeping keeping Ukraine out of NATO. This is the diplomatic equivalent of a gentleman’s understanding consummated with a handshake.
This was not an agreement, and in any case by annexing Crimea and openly arming and supporting the separatists in Ukraine, Russia had already destroyed the verbal understanding about reciprocal gestures. At any rate, Ukraine has not applied (yes, a country willfully applies to join and is not invited, much less dragged into it) to join NATO, so why react to something that has not occurred yet? But I digress.
Yet another genre of the far-Left pro-Russia argument claims that the West provoked Putin by pushing Ukraine away from him and closer to the West.
Far-right commentators, for their part, argue that Putin should simply be given what he desires, a demilitarized Ukraine, Crimea, Luhansk, and Donesk, and should be allowed to have his way and weaken Ukraine’s economically, politically, and militarily.
The far-Right people are Putin’s cheerleaders, being admirers of strongman fascism, so it’s not surprising that they simply want the Ukrainians to roll over and surrender their country to the powerful bully next door.
The far-Right folks also blame the West for allegedly making false promises to Ukraine, leading them on, seducing them away from Russia, and using them as a pawn against Putin, only to abandon them when the maniacal dictator pounced on them. They argue that, having tragically tricked Ukraine, the West should prevail on it to appease Putin by giving in to his demands.
Although motivated by different ideological leanings and political instincts, the two positions have one thing in common: they both infantalize the Ukrainians, seeing them as people who lack the capacity to choose for themselves, people for whom decisions have been made by others and should be made by others—the West and Russia.
Both narratives cast Ukraine as a robotic automaton being programmed and reprogrammed by Russia and the West, with no thought, preference, or interest of its own.
Why is it that the Ukrainians are being stripped of agency and voice? Does it not matter what the Ukrainians want or express about what kind of country they want to be and who they want to align with?
Why do these two aforementioned narratives begin from the premise that the Ukrainians are simply tools in the hands of others, or minors who don’t know what’s best for them and are being pushed and pulled and led by the nose?
Why have we not bothered to ask what the Ukrainians want in terms of their relations with the rest of the world? Is it not paternalistic soft bigotry to dismiss or ignore the clearly expressed preference of the Ukrainian people or to subordinate this preference to the whim and interests of Russia or the West?
The country has had multiple elections and parliamentary votes that express clearly that they want to choose a Western path and want to leave Russia’s orbit. They even had a revolution that sacked a government perceived to be too cozy with Putin and too reluctant and slow to pursue EU membership.
Why is it so difficult for commentators in the West, Left or Right, to accept the sovereign will and rational preference of non-Western people?
Even if we invalidate these prior expressions of a pro-Western bent, has it not emerged clearly from the reaction of the Ukrainians to the Russian invasion that they want nothing to do with Putin’s Russia and instead want to join the Western alliance? Again, do the expressed interest and will of the Ukrainian people mean anything in our hifalutin ideological analysis?
The trope of agency denial and infantalization is familiar to me because, as an Africanist and African scholar, I know how Africa and Africans are routinely infantalized by both Left and Right discourses as entities to be paternalistically cuddled and protected from ideas or influences emanating from the West or the East (Right and Left).
Each group of commentators talks about Africa and her peoples in broad strokes abstract terms as part of geopolitical permutations, but no group references or centers what African peoples and countries themselves want in their analysis and calculus.
It is a technique of erasure and power exhibited by people who arrogantly think they know what’s in the best interest of Africans and what’s in their worst interest.
That’s the analytical technique being applied to the people of Ukraine, who are not being consulted or given a chance to contribute to the discussion of what’s in their best or worst interest, who they should befriend or avoid, and the geopolitical positioning that would best suit them.
Why can’t we humbly defer to the Ukrainian people themselves to tell us what they want and to educate us on why they want that path and not the alternative?
Nothing exemplifies this irritating analytical arrogance and the tendency to usurp the voice and will of perceived inferiors than the notion that Ukraine’s best position is as a neutral buffer between the West and Russia.
Which nation simply wants to be a buffer between two identity formations instead of being its own entity with its own self-fashioned identity informed and underpinned by its own choices?
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