Amid the somewhat predictably anti-American rhetoric in the Russian National Security assessment that Vladimir Putin signed on New Year’s Eve, one statement stood out: that the US and the EU had supported an “anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine” that led to the division and conflict that have plagued the country ever since.
Leaving aside the fact that Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea hasn’t exactly helped calm the situation, it is worth remembering that however popular it may have been with a large section of Ukrainians, the ousting of Viktor Yanukovich was, in legal terms, exactly that – an anti-constitutional coup.
He very clearly won the 2010 presidential election – all the more remarkable given that his removal from office had been the focus of the Orange Revolution in 2004. Then, Mr Yanukovich accepted the verdicts of the courts and resigned as prime minister. This time around, his opponents may have won a majority in a parliamentary vote to impeach him, but they did not meet the constitutionally required supermajority. His eviction was illegal.
Why then, does almost no one – apart from Russia and some of its allies – say so? If the answer is because much of the international community prefers those who took his place, and think they more properly represent the Ukrainian people, that still leaves an awkward question: when is a coup not a coup? Or to put it another way: when is an intervention acceptable?
We are, after all, in an era when they are nowhere near as commonplace as they were in the post-war decades, when the West commonly supported them if they were deemed anti-communist; and, indeed, had a hand in directly fomenting quite a few. Today, however, even Nigeria’s president, Mohammadu Buharu – whose first stint as head of state, before being democratically elected last year, was when he seized power in a military coup in 1983 – condemns them.
“I think it is very clear that coups are no longer fashionable,” he charmingly put it in September, before adding that they are “no longer acceptable. In fact, it is punishable to take power by force”.
In my opinion, there have been at least two notable interventions in the last few years that have been accepted by the international community.
The first of the two, in the Maldives, is lesser known. Indeed, the paucity of knowledge about the country was one of the factors that enabled the illegal transfer of power to take place. In February 2012, Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically elected president, was forced to resign at gunpoint.
As the new government announced that Mr Nasheed had voluntarily left office, and the former president was not able to speak publicly until the next day, the narrative was immediately set. The new president, Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, asked: “Do I look like the sort of person who would plan a coup?”
The international community believed the Stanford-educated former UN official, and by the time the truth came out it was too late.
As outlined in JJ Robinson’s excellent new book, The Maldives: Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy, the coup enabled the old autocratic regime to return to power. It has now so thoroughly consolidated itself through controlling and misusing all the institutions that ought to provide checks and balances, that it is hard to imagine when the country will ever be able to return to the democratic path it embarked upon in 2008. This was not a coup without a cost.
The second, in Egypt in 2013, was a very different case. The widely held view was that the administration of Mohammed Morsi was trying to subvert the constitution.
The move to remove his government had the support of key institutional figures, including the Grand Sheikh of Al Azhar and the Coptic pope, and was a truly popular, nationalistic attempt to save the country.
As The Economist put it: “An apparent majority of Egyptians saw the putsch [as] the execution of the people’s will.” That is why it was mostly welcomed in the region and in the western capitals that have long regarded Egypt as a friend and ally.
While it was widely supported and meant to uphold the spirit of the constitution, it was, nevertheless, an intervention. In this context it is relevant to consider the reverence Americans display for their constitution. That adoration sometimes appears to border on obsession, insanity or both.
But there is sense in their devotion to their great founding document. It has bound them together, through the Civil War, the Great Depression, military misadventure and the threat of terrorism.
It provides a very important set of rules, including that if you want to change the government, you must do so through the processes that have been enshrined in a charter that has a higher standing than the verdicts of temporary majorities.
Such a constitution is the best guarantee of stability and continuity and that the will of the people will, ultimately, be reflected in the executive, judicial and legislative branches of the state. And that is why we should revere our constitutions and uphold the principle of sternly rejecting coups that violate them.
That is not to say that we should suddenly reject the administration in Kiev, which sought a genuine mandate through elections in May 2014.
But it is to remind ourselves that it would have been better for both changes to have occurred through the constitutionally-mandated electoral and democratic processes.
Some may scoff at his supposed hyperbole, but Mr Putin was correct to call the ousting of Yanukovich a coup. It makes us uncomfortable. We would rather forget about it. But we should not deny that it is the truth.
Sholto Byrnes is a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia
