THE NOMENKLATURA OF DISCONNECTION FACES A CHOICE IN UKRAINE
TM Lutas has correctly identified the oppressive rulers of Gap states not as barriers but Gatekeepers, reaping enormous fortunes by cutting special deals to secretive bad actors in the Core – the Implicit Villains – who want expoitative access to Gap markets and resources. The Gatekeepers of the Gap do have an achilles heel, the corruption and self-interest of their own supporters:
“The West’s most effective tool in pressuring for a recount may be to target individual Ukrainian businessmen, especially those with ties to Yanukovych’s business clan, based in the eastern city of Donetsk, by freezing bank accounts and denying visas. ”
The Gatekeepers need their supporters whom they pay off with a slice of the profits, creating in effect a “ Nomenklatura of Disconnection ” with a vested interest in maintaining the disconnected status quo. The flaw in the scheme is that Nomenklatura – the bullies, thugs and petty bureaucrats who make a despotic system ” work” are themselves ” connected ” to the Core and end up a) valuing the connection that provides them with various goodies and b) awakens in them, when the gravy train is threatened by the erratic behavior of the Gatekeeper, a sense of class interest. They become a group that is separable from the Gatekeeper if the Core can find the right wedge.
Communist Romania’s answer to Dracula at a Party Congress, Nicolae Ceaucescu, was done in by his own Nomenklatura in 1989 who saw which way the wind was blowing. Slobodan Milosevic, the butcher of the Balkans, withstood NATO bombing but not the threat to the ill-gotten assets of his supporters ensconced in Western banks and invested in multinational corporations.
Kuchma and his bloated mafiya stooge are equally vulnerable.
