Sveriges agerande i Ukraina-frågan är en säkerhetspolitisk katastrof

I januari 1918 förklarade 96 procent av den myndiga befolkningen på Åland att de ville förenas med Sverige. Här i landet ansåg då många, även på vänsterkanten, att vi borde besätta öarna militärt. Som historieböckerna berättar överlämnades ändå frågan till internationell medling och ölandskapet kom att förbli en del av Finland men med vidsträckt språklig och kulturell autonomi.

Ålandsfrågan har vissa likheter med dagens Krimkris. Då som nu fruktar en folkmajoritet att kulturell särart och lokalt självbestämmande hotas och vill därför helst förenas med ett gammalt moderland. Hade det funnits en internationell och oberoende medling i dagens konflikt hade den möjligen resulterat i att Krim stannat inom Ukrainas gränser men med en autonomi motsvarande Ålands.

Nu vet vi att ett sådant scenario varit omöjligt. Vare sig den ena eller den andra sidan ville ha några opartiska aktörer med i spelet. Det faktiska försök till medling som gjordes av Frankrikes, Tysklands och Polens utrikesministrar och som undertecknades av ledande ukrainska politiker förkastades av gatans parlament. Ultranationalisterna krävde en radikaliserad lösning, brandbomberna haglade, regeringen svarade med väpnat våld, statschefen flydde och revolutionen var ett faktum. Och tre ledande europeiska utrikespolitiker fick förödmjukade lära sig att deras underskrifter inget betydde. ”Fuck the EU”, som Victoria Nuland, frånUSA:s Europaavdelning vid USA:s utrikesdepartement, redan dessförinnan konstaterat.

Hade Finlands riksdag 1918 beslutat att avskaffa svenskan som officiellt nationellt språk hade naturligtvis ålänningarna inte en sekund tvekat om vart de ville ta vägen. Det var när det radikaliserade parlamentet i Kiev hastigt beslöt att avskaffa ryskan som officiellt språk som varningsklockorna började ringa på Krim och andra ställen i östra Ukraina. Nu stötte beslutet lyckligtvis på presidentens veto men skadan var redan skedd. Extremisternas signaler om en förestående kulturell likriktning var ändå tydliga.

Vad får dig att tro (om du nu inte tror 100% på propagandan..) att Ryssland skulle attackera andra länder??

When the Ukrainian president was replaced by a US-selected administration, in an entirely unconstitutional takeover, politicians such as William Hague brazenly misled parliament about the legality of what had taken place: the imposition of a pro-western government on Russia's most neuralgic and politically divided neighbour.

Putin bit back, taking a leaf out of the US street-protest playbook – even though, as in Kiev, the protests that spread from Crimea to eastern Ukraine evidently have mass support. But what had been a glorious cry for freedom in Kiev became infiltration and insatiable aggression in Sevastopol and Luhansk.

After Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, the bulk of the western media abandoned any hint of even-handed coverage. So Putin is now routinely compared to Hitler, while the role of the fascistic right on the streets and in the new Ukrainian regime has been airbrushed out of most reporting as Putinist propaganda.

So you don't hear much about the Ukrainian government's veneration of wartime Nazi collaborators and pogromists, or the arson attacks on the homes and offices of elected communist leaders, or the integration of the extreme Right Sector into the national guard, while the anti-semitism and white supremacism of the government's ultra-nationalists is assiduously played down, and false identifications of Russian special forces are relayed as fact.

The reality is that, after two decades of eastward Nato expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west's attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defence structure, via an explicitly anti-Moscow EU association agreement. Its rejection led to the Maidan protests and the installation of an anti-Russian administration – rejected by half the country – that went on to sign the EU and International Monetary Fund agreements regardless.

No Russian government could have acquiesced in such a threat from territory that was at the heart of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Putin's absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive, and the red line now drawn: the east of Ukraine, at least, is not going to be swallowed up by Nato or the EU.

In fact, one outcome of the crisis is likely to be a closer alliance between China and Russia, as the US continues its anti-Chinese "pivot" to Asia. And despite growing violence, the cost in lives of Russia's arms-length involvement in Ukraine has so far been minimal compared with any significant western intervention you care to think of for decades.

The risk of civil war is nevertheless growing, and with it the chances of outside powers being drawn into the conflict. Barack Obama has already sent token forces to eastern Europe and is under pressure, both from Republicans and Nato hawks such as Poland, to send many more. Both US and British troops are due to take part in Nato military exercises in Ukraine this summer.

The US and EU have already overplayed their hand in Ukraine. Neither Russia nor the western powers may want to intervene directly, and the Ukrainian prime minister's conjuring up of a third world war presumably isn't authorised by his Washington sponsors. But a century after 1914, the risk of unintended consequences should be obvious enough – as the threat of a return of big-power conflict grows. Pressure for a negotiated end to the crisis is essential.