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Fukushima and Crimea — Crisis Mis-Management 101

By William Boardman  — Reader
Supported News

Governments find it hard to do the right thing for
their people — why? 

There are those who say
that the idiots running western and allied governments (the “civilized” countries)
are pitching the world towards a pair disasters, the full realization of either
of which, in its most extreme form, would likely change life on earth for the
worse for most folks, whether it’s the continuing, unabated nuclear meltdowns
in Fukushima or the continuing, unabated political meltdown over Ukraine that
risks nuclear war. There are also those who don’t say that these leaders are idiots.
We’ll see how things turn out.

As mid-March 2014 unfolds,
neither Fukushima nor Crimea is yet at the brink of global catastrophe,
apparently, but neither seems subject to safe and sane response from people in
authority, either. That’s not to predict an end-of-the-world scenario for
either disaster, just to remind people that, at the extreme end of these
uncontrolled events, there are horrendous logical risks that our leaders are
amiably accepting (or urging) on behalf of the rest of us.  And they seem to expect our gratitude,
for their efforts in Ukraine or their lack of efforts in Fukushima, more or
less equally. 

Even though it’s Japan’s
third largest prefecture, Fukushima is a relatively small place, as those
things go: 5,321 square miles, a little smaller than the state of Connecticut.
With a population of about two million, Fukushima is comparable to New Mexico
(Connecticut has 3.6 million people). Fukushima is unique in the world in having
suffered the March 11, 2011, earthquake/tsunami/triple meltdown at the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. This three-part event has so far
killed some 20,000 people, with 2,600 more still missing, and it’s turned another
300,000 people into internal refugees with little
or no hope of returning home (terrible numbers that pale in comparison to Syria,
whose disaster started about the same time). The world’s response to Fukushima
has, in all respects, been spotty and ineffective.  Japan’s response to the needs of its own people has been
spotty and ineffective, except for the robust insistence on re-starting all its
nuclear reactors. 

U.S. considered using radiation as a weapon in
World War II

And of course the release
of radioactive isotopes into the air and water around Fukushima continues,
unevenly but without let up in its fourth year. In the run-up to the atomic
bomb, physicist Robert Oppenheimer weighed the comparable effectiveness of just
irradiating enemy populations, rather than obliterating them and their cities.
There was little doubt that spreading plutonium on people would kill or injure
them in effective numbers, but the dying might be too slow militarily and the ground
would be poisoned against future occupation.  

One might think the
unceasing release of radioactive substances that potentially threaten the
health and safety of people around the globe to a greater or lesser extent
might get more attention (at least as a health concern if not as an event
tantamount to an act of war), but then one would not be thinking like an
international leader.

In terms of geopolitical
significance, it matters more to those in charge that people are living under
their politically preferred ideology than if they’re being exposed to excess
radiation that will make them sick, give them cancers, or kill them. Fukushima
is the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl (which just happens to be in
Ukraine). The 1986 meltdown of just one nuclear reactor left a radioactively
contaminated “dead zone” of more than 1,000 square miles from which
evacuation was compulsory (although some 200, mostly elderly “samosely” are
allowed to remain). Other danger zones, from which the government compels or
assists resettlement, exist outside the “dead zone” and have yielded more than
100,000 nuclear
refugees. [There is at least one other, 834 square mile “dead
zone” in Belarus, which received an estimated 72% of the early heavy
fallout from Chernobyl, contaminating 25% of the country. Additionally, more
than two million people in Belarus still live in radioactively contaminated
areas that have been made “safe” by the government’s arbitrarily raising
radiation limits. The Belarus and French governments, together with the United Nations and nuclear
industry interests (including the
IAEA), run a program (secret before 2004) to resettle
people into radioactive areas. Reportedly, the Japanese
government, TEPCO, and U.N. agencies are considering resettling
Fukushima the same way, by defining danger away.] 

Crimea has NEVER been an integrated, satisfied part
of Ukraine

Almost twice as big as
Fukushima, Crimea is still a relatively small place, but with a character all
its own. Crimea’s 10,404 square miles represent less than one-twentieth of
Ukraine (233,000 square miles, bigger than California, smaller than Texas). Chrenobyl,
not that far from Kyiv, has always been more or less part of Ukraine. By stark
contrast, the history of Crimea’s integration with Ukraine is all but non-existent
in history.  In the mid-1400s,
Crimea was a Tatar state founded by a descendant of Genghis Khan. In 1478,
Crimea became a tributary of the Ottoman Empire until 1774, when it became an
independent state, essentially liberated by Russia (until Russia annexed it in
1783). Crimea remained part of Russia until 1917, when it declared its
independence again (which lasted about a year, before it was occupied by the
Soviet Union, then the Germans, then the Soviet Union again).

In 1921, Crimea was
granted “autonomy,” which was interrupted by the German occupation (1941-43),
then stripped by the Soviet Union in 1945.  Still part of the Soviet Union in 1954, Crimea was organizationally
transferred to Ukraine, also part of the Soviet Union. In 1991, Crimea became
the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, within the Soviet Union, followed by a power
struggle with the Kyiv government in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s
break-up. In early 1992, the Crimean Parliament proclaimed its independence as
the Republic of Crimea and adopted its first constitution (which it amended the
same day to say Crimea was part of Ukraine); within weeks, Crimea dropped its
proclamation of self-government in an apparent trade-off for greater autonomy
from Kyiv, but the dispute over the status of Crimea continued to feed
political turmoil until Ukraine executed a constitutional coup. On March 17,
1995, the Kyiv government scrapped the Crimean constitution, sacked the Crimean
president and eventually established, with obvious irony, the “Autonomous
Republic of Crimea” — which still had periodic anti-Kyiv eruptions and now (as
of March 16) has voted
to join the Russian Federation. 

Contrary to many media
reports that the Crimean
referendum offered no real choice, the actual ballot had two rather
different and nuanced choices: 

1.  “Do you support rejoining
Crimea with Russia as a subject of the Russian Federation?”

2.  “Do you support restoration of the 1992  Constitution
of the Republic of Crimea  and Crimea’s status as a part of
Ukraine?”

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