One of the snags with being a student of geopolitics is that there can be far too much too study and far little time to do so. My dissertation (as I mentioned last month) discusses Syria, a situation that is fast evolving and difficult to keep up with given the relative sloth of social research alongside current affairs. More difficult still then would be to alter the study to focus on Ukraine, a situation which fascinates me but for now sits beyond my reach. Always the pragmatist I decided to scratch this itch by trying my hand at current affairs blogging here, with a political geographer’s perspective.

Ukraine can be perceived as a classic case of diplomatic binaries obscuring empirical realities. A vast spectrum of discussion hinges upon big issues such as the inviolability of international boundaries and the legal status of Putin’s Crimean incursion, with accusations of hypocrisy abound. Russia is accused of violating the terms it pushed so strongly for in the 1975 Helsinki Accords for Europe (“The participating States will likewise refrain from making each other’s territory the object of military occupation”, for example). Indeed, any Russian recognition of Crimea would call into serious question its refusal to offer the same diplomatic courtesy to Kosovo. Meanwhile, the USA and NATO are accused of denouncing an incursion that is qualitatively no more or less legal than their own invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the latter case this is only partially fair – after all, Barack Obama won the democrat nomination in 2008 in no small part due to his opposing war in Iraq.

In more grounded terms, are the EU/USAs aims really any more favourable than those of Moscow? The new right-wing authorities in Kiev contain considerable neo-Nazi elements, the more extreme (for example the Svoboda party) declaring Ukraine under threat from organised Jewish (0.15% of the population) ‘plots’. Is this an uprising we really ought to be supporting, and is this any less desirable than a separatist, pro-Russian movement in Crimea?

The likely outcome of these diplomatic and local political complications is a stalemate situation wherein Crimea takes on an ambiguous, quasi-state existence not unlike that of the Kurdistan region of Turkey/Syria/Iraq/Iran or the Republika Srpska zone of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Given the decades of diplomatic and economic difficulties this situation has been demonstrated to create it is difficult to see it outcome that any side would desire.

I naturally make no pretence that this comment is as polished or authoritative as those of writers with decades of experience in the area. What I do hope is that it makes apparent the sort of thinking around a subject that one is encouraged to engage in as a postgraduate geographer at Newcastle, as well as the role history/geography play in world affairs.

(A final note – I should probably add that none of the above in any way represents the views of anyone at Newcastle University other than myself.)