Long trajectories - bad news for Ukraine, the South China Sea, Migrants

Cases I write about often have long trajectories, that is, they unfold over long periods of time rather than being sudden eruptions of events, as you can see from my earlier posts. If you are an adult, news of "Middle East conflict" has hit you in the face for years and years. Well, there are other cases, maybe more worthy of attention. Here I offer three examples: migrants crossing the Mediterranean, the Chinese 'sea-grab' in the South China Sea, and the Ukrainian progression from bad politics to worse. 

Take the Ukrainian case.

Yesterday (dateline April 16) the BBC wrote about 'smash-and-grab' robberies from cars stuck in traffic in the Landy tunnel in Paris. This apparently lucrative business has been going on for several years. The most recent victim was from Taiwan, but what caught my eye was one of the other victims, Kristina Chernovetska, whose father was at the time mayor of Kiev. She was relieved of a handbag full of jewelry said to be worth €4 million. 
Now, I am sure this is not news to anyone who follows celebrities, but to me it is. More important, it says a lot about Ukraine, though BBC did not mention it. What in heaven's name is a Ukrainian nobody doing in Paris with millions of euros? What other European country might even conceivably be the home of a politician's daughter on the lam like that? To her compatriots she was evidently best known as the director of a charity retirement home. Elsewhere the adage is that charity begins at home, but Ukraine is strong proof the old wisdom needs amendment. Most signals say the new government is not on a new course. Judy Dempsey had strong words on the subject yesterday, @Judy_Dempsey, comparing how Poland and Ukraine started out roughly at the same level in 1991, now being galaxies apart in economic development, oligarch structure and corruption being the main reason. We all need to see that Ukraine is not the candidate for change and innovation that George Soros believes it to be. Before we do more to help Ukraine, Kiev needs to make the country help itself. The long run prospect of a country evidently so culturally bound to mismanagement can only be much worse before it gets better. You will be hearing bad news from Ukraine for years to come, and the war in the east will be over long before the rest begins a turn for the better.

South China Sea
Next case: China's role in the South China Sea is another long trajectory. Ever since 1947 China has claimed sovereignty over the ocean the Anglo-Saxons call the South China Sea, but only more recently has the claim been taken seriously, partly because China has backed it up with force. Though verbally committed to the UN Convention on the law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to which China is a party, the policy of Beijing has long been to claim the entire South China Sea for itself, under Chinese sovereignty, with all its islands and resources. This type of claim over a maritime area far from one's own shores is unheard of in our time, whether within the legal realm or the political. It is as if the UK were to have claimed all of the North Sea, or even the Bay of Biscay, for itself. 

The geographic features of the South China Sea makes it all the more intriguing, with large areas being quite shallow and most islands mere reefs and sandbanks, often submerged at high tide. Oil and gas resources in the underground seem not too promising, but nobody knows for sure. And meanwhile more than half of all the goods shipped by sea globally passes through the South China Sea. This motivates even outside powers to concern about what happens in the area. China's claims have been disputed by the other littoral states, most vigorously by the Philippines, who have launched legal proceedings, and by Vietnam. Since the 1990s, frail buildings have been erected on some of the larger islands. Clashes and intentional collisions between fishing boats and coast guard vessels have long been the order of the day. And China refuses to respond to the International Court of Arbitration which is considering the complaint brought by the Philippines.

Instead, last year a new type of venture was launched by China: dredging up sand around smaller reefs to create artificial islands big enough for airstrips. The best known case is Mischief Reef -  appropriately named. Clearly China, as its Foreign Ministry declared last week, is convinced of its right to do what it is doing, and equally convinced that its actions in the South China Sea are fully supported by international law. Clearly also, none of China's neighbors is up to the task of physically resisting the regional superpower. This is clearly another puzzle that is most likely to become a bigger headache before it gets smaller.

Migrants
Finally, consider the case of the migrants, refugees from the worst civil wars in memory in Syria, Iraq, Libya and more. The horror of the disaster on April 19 with nearly 700 lives lost is heightened by the tragic fact that their boat capsized as they were about to be rescued. 

No longer a case for simple immigration control, the wave of desperate people waiting in Libya was said last week to approach one million. This is no longer a matter of how nice we at the receiving end want to be. Thousands of lives will probably be lost, the EU will be most gravely affected and no solution seems to be in sight, except at the national level in Spain, Italy and Greece. Stopping the boat refugees before they get out to sea for real in their dangerous vessels must be the way to go, as shown by Italy's operation Mare Nostrum last year. Still even that is not satisfactory, unless paired with more drastic efforts onshore. The difficulty, of course, is the lack of governmental authority in Libya. That makes it possible for the human trafficking racket to go on. 

This conundrum makes it necessary for the EU to move ashore in Libya, with or without the agreement of the powers that be, and take control of ports and related facilities, establish humanitarian centres and organize the transfer of immigrants to the EU according to the criteria in force. Military force may have to be used. The model is the idea suggested, perhaps half jokingly after 9/11 by Robert Cooper, to recolonize the "third world" or at least part of it. That would mean getting serious about the selection of migrants to take into Europe, and about others to reject, to send back to their country of origin if possible, and in the meantime to feed and house and protect from harm in refugee camps on African soil. This kind of authority-grab is the only solution possible unless we want to see endless waves of bodies floating ashore in Italy, Malta or Libya. Of course, such action would be illegal and not doable for a multiheaded, multiwilled monster like the EU.

Spain has chosen a policy of return of refugees by agreement with its neighboring countries in Africa. Somehow this works, but it only works because these countries have governments that still function. A rocky but basically good neighborly relationship with Morocco - often shaken by migrants storming the Spanish enclaves Ceuta and Melilla - has been especially important. But until the government of Libya has been effectively restored, the choice in the Eastern Mediterranean is chaos or humanitarian intervention, which is the only truthful name for the policy needed.