Really? That's funny, because all that rhetoric about a 2014 "coup" against the democratically elected president of Ukraine is precisely what I'd expect from a "process liberal".
And herein lies the problem. I don't really have a problem with whether people believe in process or not. What I do care about is mixing and matching all sorts of arguments about process and ethics and so on in inconsistent ways, with the only consistency being gratifying the actions of the Russian dictator, up to and including apologising for him invading a sovereign nation (three times), slaughtering, raping and looting its civilians, and proposing a resolution that rewards his aggression.
You're not running into trouble here because everyone's a US stooge. You're running into trouble because of the gross hypocrisy and abandonment of values you have otherwise claimed to hold in defence of a truly appalling repressive autocrat, which is obvious to everyone... except, tragically, you.
A comical reach. But OK, we can retread what has been obvious for centuries of Enlightenment and even Classical political philosophy.
Notable Process Liberal and Secessionist Rebel Thomas Jefferson said:
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
Famous Process Liberal and Crosser of Rubicon Julius Caesar said:
If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.
Strangely, coups can be bad without hidebound devotion to process above all. Sometimes noting that there was a coup is a process argument only, but it certainly can go well beyond that. Sometimes it is shorthand to describe a longer or more detailed list of nefarious actions. It would be immensely silly to describe condemnations of the United States's long list of overthrowing governments around the world as arguments that are primarily concerned with disrespect for established processes. Do you actually believe that..? A seizure of power raises a lot of questions in any case. Sometimes those questions can be answered convincingly; such as when a coalition of workers and peasants seize power to the purpose of building a more just economic order in which they are no longer exploited by those who own land and capital. Other times it's just the United States using fascism to protect capitalism while claiming they are defending democracy from communism. Or more often these days, using fascism to protect the narrow interests of the ruling class of the United States (and some other countries) while claiming they are defending democracy from whatever bugbear is nearest.
As I already said with slightly different phrasing, processes can have instrumental utility-- and I'll add now, especially compared to an alternative. We're not talking about a democratic mandate which just happened to conflict with the constitutional order; the Euromaidan was not supported by a majority of the people even by the end according to the Washington Post and, even if it had been, that doesn't justify the manipulation of public opinion in order to inflame ethnic tensions and promote a violent nationalism or, indeed, to coax Ukraine into being the spearhead of NATO threats toward Russia-- it would still be wrong if the financial backing and other support and planning were all domestic oligarchs or crowdfunded by less wealthy Ukrainian fascists, but it was also foreign and thus more clearly in service of a US imperialist agenda. I'm no great lover of Kant, but I do see some wisdom in the idea that rational human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else-- especially in the most extreme cases, such as treating Ukraine and its people as a sacrifice to weaken Russia. This is extremely obvious in its depravity (and for reasons which don't necessarily depend on Kant's ethics), whereas something like for example going on a date with someone to make someone else jealous is not as clearly a moral wrong, never mind a serious one.
To brass tacks:
Yanukovych suffered protests and then a coup for the grave crime of not signing an agreement which would have subjected the people of Ukraine to price increases on various things including the fuel used to heat their homes. This coup was driven by a popular though not majoritary-approved protest and arguably much more important neo-Nazi street violence and false flag attacks, and then threats made against the life of Yanukovych by those same neo-Nazis. But of course the MOST important thing for good process liberals, is that the final vote to remove Yanukovych from office after he had fled the country in fear for his life, is that the parliament was around ten (iirc) short of the number constitutionally necessary for that removal. But again, John Kerry smiled and said it was fine, so no worries!
Do you really think this is primarily a
process argument? If so, I'll clarify. It is not so much that the established process wasn't followed; that could be forgiven for sufficient cause. It is that the process was interrupted for so light a reason to empower so grotesque an opposition, and both anti-Russian and anti-democratic ("decommunization") measures taken in the resulting coup government. There is a pattern of western involvement in coups, assassinations, death squads, and so forth, the first of those at least which could theoretically be justified if it was a matter of Trotskyist permanent revolution against capitalism or some shit. Because that could at least theoretically if not necessarily in practice deliver power to the people; institutions are not sacred especially if they are a means for an exploitative minority to rule over the mass of people. But the history of coups are more often of, by, and for the powerful, not the people. And that's the real problem with them even if, superficially, the objection sounds like a process argument. No, it's just that the text that there is a coup here with the subtext that it lacks sufficient justification (and provide it if you please if you claim otherwise) is short, understandable, and absolutely clear to those not suffering from liberal brain.
And then there's the Donbass: do people there have sufficient cause to separate from Ukraine? Do they need a majority of some arbitrarily defined pre-existing region in order to justify that separation? And does Russia have a justification to help them, and does the scale of that support matter?
On the first point, all that should really be required is a wish to separate. But at the very least, people in the Donbass who opposed Euromaidan had plenty of motivation to at the very least question their relationship with Ukraine; there was just a hostile coup there and protests which had murdered people on their side-- literally burned alive trapped in a building in Odessa-- with no recourse, I might add. (A side note, but neither was there any recourse for the murders of the cops and protestors in Kiev.)
So to the second point: should these people in the Donbass be required to submit themselves to rule by the Ukrainian coup and subsequent governments if they are outnumbered by neighbors which don't want to separate? That's not clear. You can argue that it's not democratic for them to separate in that hypothetical case, and I'd agree in that hypothetical case, but forcing them to remain in Ukraine is not necessarily the right course there either; a better idea might be to adjust the borders of a new state such that it does have a majority of people that want separation.
And does Russia have a justification to help the Donbass republics? Given Ukraine's military response to the separatists, it seems there was such a justification. You can argue about how self-interested it was, how honest some of the claims about Ukrainian atrocities are, and so on, but there is clearly something there and with arguments that mirror US and NATO arguments about their right or even obligation to help Ukraine defend itself.
Does the scale of Russian support for the Donbass republics matter? Why should it, exactly? The people represented by the DPR and LPR either have the right to self-determination or they do not. They either have the right to form diplomatic relationships and receive support in their struggle or they do not. There can be quibbling about what the final borders of these new states should be given the value of trying to satisfy the rights to self-determination of everyone involved-- or indeed any other considerations among a list of other potential outcomes such as the application of the Minsk agreement. And this quibbling can take into account that these separatist governments are under violent threat from and invasion by the Ukrainian state-- literally they are/were under siege and bombardment-- so maybe be a little patient with them when it comes to tranquil questions of protocol while they are at war.
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