The West has only been painting the current crisis in Ukraine and Crimea in black-and-white, with Russia attacking and Ukraine’s coup-imposed regime on the defensive. Western powers are depicted protecting a fledgling democracy with Russia vying to trample it to dust. Just how true is this picture? Malcolm Fraser, who served as Australia’s 22nd prime minister between 1975 and 1983, pointed to grave mistakes that Western powers have made again and again since the fall of the Soviet Union, because what is now happening in Crimea has grown directly from the short-sightedness of Cold-War-minded Western governments.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the general sentiment was one of exaltation as many people hoped that Cold-War ideology could finally be consigned to the past, while former rivals tried to build a better world. But these expectations didn’t last.
