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Going To Extremes

France went Left and Greece went Right.

Well, not exactly, but that's the short of it for short-attention-span writers breaking it down for what they hope are short-attention-span readers. The truth, as always, is more complicated, and complicated doesn't sell product.

The French did vote to go Left, but only by comparison with the Right of Le Sarkozy, which leaves a lot of territory to cover before anybody sees the second coming of the guillotine. Francois Hollande is a Socialist, but he is not necessarily a socialist. He comes from the same background as Sarkozy, shares many of the same friends, and will keep many of the same policies. However much he talks about revising the economic deal Sarkozy made with Angela Merkel, he'll have as much luck as Obama would have if he tried to revise NAFTA, and Hollande knows this. It will be one of those campaign promises he made but had to know he wouldn't get to keep, and he'll be fine with it. What that means is that other, achievable campaign promises, such as taxing the rich and withdrawing French troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, will get priority. While some might call these measures "socialist", they are far more pragmatic than anything else.

The Greeks did vote to go Right, way to the Right, but they also voted way Left. What they really did was vote for anyone promising to end Austerity Fever. The romantic notion of right-wing economics that you can and should starve the beast into submission has done nothing but put the weight of the economic crisis on the backs of the lowering classes. Like the French, they gave austerity a good faith effort, and also like the French, they've had their fill of rich people telling them how important it is not to spend money.

The Greeks feel, with a lot of justification, that they are powerless in a larger Europe. The bigger, more powerful, centrally located economies, led by Germany's Merkel, have run roughshod over the lesser countries on the fringes, and have dictated changes rather than offering help as equal partners. A partnership of equals is something a federation such as the European Union is supposed to promise, but that too is a promise made to be broken. Hyper-nationalists always get a little more attention when times get tough, and they actually win when voters are made to feel powerless by careless, short-sighted, foreign politicians. Will Greece leave the E.U.? Probably not. Unfortunately for them, though, their next parliament will look a lot more like the fractious European parliament than it did before. The Greeks are panicking, and this election should be taken as a protest (and just maybe as a cry for help).

Three years ago, as economies started to collapse, a funny thing happened in Eastern Europe. Russia and Ukraine had a fight about natural gas pipelines and Russia shut down its natural gas exports running through Ukraine to the the rest of southeast Europe, damaging the already faltering economies of those countries, which included Greece. Well, ok, maybe not so funny. If you didn't notice when it happened, that's ok, too. You probably had a lot on your mind, like your own imploding economy.

The now-failed 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine had been led by Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, who in early 2009 were serving, respectively, as President and Prime Minister. Yushchenko, you may recall, survived a poisoning attempt during his electoral campaign, one linked to his rival, the incumbent Viktor Yanukovych, who also tried to rig the election. Both attempts failed, exposing a corrupt, petty leadership, and the Ukrainian people embraced the new, and pointedly anti-Russian, leadership. At least, they did as much as Ukrainians are likely to. The west of Ukraine is where most of the ethnic Ukrainians live; it is also rural and relatively poor. The east, by contrast, is where most of the money is concentrated, is where most of the ethnic Russians live, and is decidedly pro-Russian.

Yanukovych wasn't driven out of politics, let alone into exile, by the "revolution". On his way out of office he rushed through a new constitution taking power away from the presidency, a constitution which lasted throughout Yushchenko's one, ineffective term. At one point, Yanukovych served as the more powerful prime minister. When he successfully regained the presidency in 2010, the constitution reverted back to the one in which the president has most of the power. Such is the political world of Ukraine.

Tymoshenko never really got along with Yushchenko, something that hurt both of them. As Angela Merkel can attest, being a woman in the brutal world of politics requires a thick skin and sharp elbows. It's possible that neither Tymoshenko nor Yushchenko could share the spotlight after the adulation of 2004. It's also possible that you don't get to be president or prime minister in Eastern Europe without getting in bed with some nasty, private citizens, and their respective supporters were the ones not getting along. Whatever the reason, neither was as successful in office as in getting there, and by 2011, both were out.

For Tymoshenko, who had to negotiate with Putin over the natural gas, this meant she was open for retribution from Yanukovych. Yanukovych's political allies pushed abuse of power charges against Tymoshenko for signing the new agreement with Putin, a crime for which she was sentenced seven years. The charges suggested that Tymoshenko had rigged the deal to profit her supporters' pipelines, and that she may have colluded with Putin to manufacture the crisis for political gain. That the charges are a joke is belied by the current prime minister's complete refusal to renegotiate the deal; had there been any malfeasance, renegotiation would not only have been necessary but a political bonus for Yanukovych.

Looking back, the gas crisis was yet another example of then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's extortionate behavior, taking advantage of worldwide panic to remind everyone just how dependent on Mother Russia they really are. He has a resource and he knows that extremes of dependency are how Russia will maintain its hold on its former satellites. One must cut off those resources every once in a while, just to teach a lesson about power.

Yulia Tymoshenko is now testing that theory. She is on a water-only hunger strike to protest her conviction. Support for her is still strong in the west of Ukraine and in the central and western Europe it favors. A European economic summit set for Ukraine has already been postponed after 13 countries pulled out. The European football championships, also set for Ukraine, may be affected, too. The result would further isolate Ukraine from the E.U., making it more dependent on Russia. In the short term.

- Daniel Ward