Let nobody in the West fool themselves that what is happening in the Ukraine is a good idea. A legitimate democratic government favoured by half the population has been overthrown by street protestors from the half who did not like it. The fact the regime of the ousted president was corrupt, had tinkered with the constitution and had centralised power is a factor certainly, but in a democracy, elections or impeachment are the basis of change, not and never the mob. New regimes born out of violence and disorder are fractured and incapable of fair government. They are obsessed with vengeance and rent by conflicting rivalries and diverse objectives.
Egypt, which is ahead of Ukraine, but has followed a very similar path, is about to dump its whole revolutionary project and replace it with a tough and popular general. The reason he is popular is that he is going to restore order to the country to enable people to get on with their lives. Freedom will be the price, but it is one the nation will pay, because the chaotic alternative has been tried and people are fed up with it. So it is back to something not that different to Mubarak, who followed Sadat, who followed Nasser.
In Ukraine the German leaning western half presently has the upper hand, but the interim government assembling itself has no democratic legitimacy whatever and must go to the country for a mandate very soon. The protestors must go home and go back to work. Government by helmeted paramilitaries wielding clubs, yelling on the steps of parliament until agitated MPs come outside, then rush back in and enact new laws to meet their demands, which become law in minutes, is not government. It is a fiasco.
As this Blog points out so often, the West has a very bad track record of siding with so called freedom movements which foment national disintegration and then turn out to be too divided and unstable to offer effective government for reconstruction, leading to prolonged suffering of the populations involved. This must not happen in Ukraine. There is no doubt elements of the EU helped stoke up the protests. Now a more nuanced message is coming both from the EU and also from Moscow. This is good and it needs to go a long way further. Partition of the Ukraine into two would be a defeat and should be a solution of very last resort.
Meanwhile bankruptcy looms for this traumatised nation. Bailouts must be conditional on organising fair, democratic and inclusive government which reconciles differences and heals splits. Russia has already said as much. The Western financial authorities need to do likewise. They must not let the fear of the impact a Ukrainian default on their own undercapitalised and overleveraged banking system drive them to invest in a future of continued chaos, with dipartite factions struggling to get on top of each other.That would throw good money after bad and make the eventual bust even bigger.