En artikkel hvor den franske filosofen og forfatteren Bernard-Henri Lévy går i rette med det han mener er to dårlig underbygde argumenter i debatten om Ukraina, ble nylig publisert i Huffington Post, Le Point, El País og Corriere della Sera.

Det første angår selvbestemmelsesrett for befolkningen på Krim-halvøya:

1. Why should the Crimeans be denied the right to decide their fate? If they feel they are the Russians’ brothers because they speak the same language, and if they feel greater affinity for the country of Putin than for the Europe of Robert Schuman and Vaclav Havel, why on earth should we object?

Lévy påpeker at en befolkning ikke står helt fritt til å bestemme sin egen fremtid idet det utsettes for en invasjon, og at disse omstendighetene neppe er helt ideelle for en folkeavstemning. Stemmer man fritt når en pistol sitter løst i hylsteret, om den ikke akkurat er rettet mot nakken?

Dertil kommer konsekvensene av å godta dette argumentet, fortsetter BHL:

What answer could we then give if, emboldened by this precedent, the Basques of Spain and France were to demand unification or if the Hungarians of Transylvania, the Albanians of Macedonia, the Turks of Bulgaria, the Russian speakers in the Baltic states, and the Flemings of Belgium, relying on this example, were to demand to change countries?

And even without invoking Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland on the basis of the very same linguistic nationalism, which occurred just before Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, it is clear that to give in to Putin on Crimea would send out a shockwave that would ensure that no border in Europe would remain secure or recognized, thereby eating away at the continent’s equilibrium.

Argument nummer to vedrører omverdenens reaksjon på Bosnias og Kosovos selvstendighet:

2. Bosnia, Kosovo. Are those not two recent cases of self-determination blessed by the international community? And how can the same people, including this author, who 20 years ago asserted the right of the Bosnians and Kosovars to take their own destiny in their hands, now deny the same right to Crimea?

Etter Lévys oppfatning er argumentet dels irrelevant, og dels bygger det på utilgivelige utelatelser:

I will pass over the case of Bosnia, which I fail to see how anyone can invoke as being even remotely relevant in light of the fact that ever since the Big Bang that was the collapse of communism in all of Europe, and perforce in Yugoslavia, the whole challenge was and remains to prevent what we are now being asked to swallow in Crimea — namely the secession of the Serbs of the Republika Srpska and their annexation by their Serbian «big brother.»

Å sammenligne Krim med Kosovo etter BHLs oppfatning enda mer graverende. Man må late som om det ikke fant sted massakrer eller etnisk rensing:

In Kosovo, by contrast, it is accurate to say that the same people who are arguing today against the Russian coup and in favor of the integrity of Ukraine accepted and even encouraged Pristina’s desire for independence. But how dare one compare the two situations?

How can one ignore the fact that the international community came around to the cause of independence for the Kosovars only after a decade of ethnic cleansing, of large-scale massacres of civilians, and of the deportation of almost 800,000 men and women whose sole crime was to be born Muslims? In other words, what relation is there between Milosevic, who, at the time of his death, was facing the punishments reserved by the International Criminal Court for those who commit crimes against humanity and the leaders of a new Ukraine whose unarmed soldiers we witnessed, in stirring images that have rocketed around the world, peacefully confronting the heavily armed rabble that had just landed in Sebastopol?

Det hele koker ifølge den franske tenkeren ned til folks rett til ikke å bli massakrert, samt til ikke å bli skaltet og valtet med av despoter.

Let’s Not Yield to Putin on the Truth