THE WESTERN STATES DOUBLE STANDARDS POLICY. ESTIMATING DEMOCRATIC PROCESSES IN UKRAINE

The Telegraph ^ | 8/04/2011 | Bremmer

[bremmer]

The modern history is able to provide many eloquent examples of use of practice of double standards in an international policy. First, it concerns ambiguity of approaches of influential western powers and the leading international organizations as to the estimation of election campaigns, and other democratic processes taking place in the states of the former USSR. Therefore, at elections in the countries where the ruling political regime is pro-Western, the international observers recognize that elections meet the European and international standards. On the contrary if a ruling regime or the winner of election has not pro-Western orientation, observers, as a rule, find numerous infringements at election. For example, M. Saakashvili’s victory on elections in Georgia has been named as “triumph of democracy”, while A. Lukashenko’s victory in Belarus was considered a result of ballot rigging. In both cases, extraordinary high (from the western point of view) percent of voices for the candidate was represented as the proof. It is worth to note that last years the similar situations, when the leading international organizations and their representatives show the prepossession in such important question as comprehensive and objective estimation of an election situation, as well as of results of all election campaign as a whole, took place in other former-Soviet states, especially in Russia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, etc. In February of the current year, the MFA of Russia has made a statement, that “Office for democratic institutions and human rights (ODIHR) of the OSCE loses trust as applies double standards in estimation of an election situation in Estonia”. This document states that “almost 100 thousand Russian-speaking inhabitants of the country have stood aside of a political life and are deprived of the right to influence the results of election to legislative authority of the Estonian Republic”….

[bremmer]

A policy of double standards is the unjust application of different sets of principles for similar situations. That means the situation when the estimation of the same actions of subject changes depending on relations of this subject between the estimating person. Thus, actions of “good guy” that is loyal in relation to estimating person, are given justification, and the same actions of “stranger” are blamed and considered as inadmissible one. In context of international relations, the policy of double standards usually acquires the shape of accusation of infringement of principles, conventions, obligations, “violation of universal values”, “infringement of human rights”, “deviation from provisions of international law” demonstrating ignoring of absolutely similar own actions or actions of allies, against undesirable political modes .

[goldstategop]

If the pro-Western candidate doesn’t win... its said to be a lack of democracy.

In Ukraine, we can expect the Party Of Regions from the Russian east of the country to do very well.

Will that invalidate democracy?

[The_Reader_David]

In Slavic parts of the former Soviet bloc, anti-Western is usually Slavophile (in the classical sense of seeing the Slavic Orthodox Churches as the bulwark of truth and morality against Western degeneracy). The double standard phenomenon is part and parcel of a prejudice that dates to the middle ages when the Latin church split from the Church, which has recently been dubbed “pravoslavniphobia” = the irrational fear or hatred of Orthodox Christians (esp. Slavic Orthodox Christians).

Note that our Balkan policy since the Clinton administration has been based on this prejudice: turn a blind eye to atrocities committed against Serbs, magnify atrocities or rumors of atrocities committed by Serbs into an accusation of “genocide”. So strong is this prejudice (both natively and reinforced by all Soros-backed NGOs — Soros hating Orthodox Christianity even more than he hates the American republic) that we backed Al Qaeda linked organizations in the Balkans.