THE DIFFICULTY IN BEING WRONG

COMMENTARY

Response to New York Times "The Difficulty of Being Ukraine” by Mark Medish, 23 December 2009 

by Gordon Hahn

It is difficult to be wrong and more difficult to acknowledge it.  On December 23^rd the New York Times gave us at ROPV a Christmas gift of sorts by unwittingly vindicating what we have said regarding the one-sided Washington concensus on Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian relations, and NATO expansion.  Mark Medish’s “The Difficulty of being Ukraine” implicitly reiterates points ROPV has been making:

(1) that the Orange Revolution was not a revolution at all (Ukraine’s January “presidential elections” are “likely to spell the epitaph of the Orange Revolution”). 

(2) that the ‘revolution’ brought little, if any political or economic reform, and that Ukraine’s economy is no more market-oriented or transparent than Russia’s state capitalism (Ukraine “has been one of the hardest hit by the global financial meltdown, suffering a sharp currency devaluation and a projected 14 percent drop in G.D.P. this year.”)  Recall that Russia’s being hard hit by the crisis is heralded as proof of Russia’s unrestructured economy.

(3) that under conditions of NATO expansion Kiev could not sustain political stability or good relations with its ethnic Russian population or with Russia.  Thus, the Ukrainian people have turned against Ukraine’s ‘Orange’ and Russophobic president Viktor Yushchenko, who faced Ukrainians with an impossible choice: Russia OR the West.

A better policy - and one likely to come - is: Russia and the West.  Such a policy could have been facilitated by bringing Russia into NATO in the early 1990s.  Both leading candidates (enemy of the Orange “Revolution” Viktor Yanukovich and former darling of the West and Orange “Revolution” leader Yulia Tymoshenko) are strongly in favor of repairing Ukraine’s strained relationship with Russia and will oppose NATO expansion for Ukraine unless a referendum backs such a move, which won’t happen.  They will not, however, oppose cooperation with NATO and may propose measure of their own to bridge the NATO-Russia gap.

Unfortunately, Medish’s piece is not a mea culpa. He is a former Clinton administration official who helped design and implement NATO expansion without Russia and still persists in many of the one-sided perspectives that populate the Washington concensus.  Medish blames Russia for the earlier gas crises with Ukraine that led to the halt of gas supplies to Europe in the dead of winter.  He ignores the fact that Russia had to stop sending natural gas through Ukraine’s pipelines because Kiev was stealing gas from the pipeline and because of the expiration of contracts for gas and transport prices. Further there was a failure to conclude new contracts “due to the bitter political impasse between Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko.”  Now the IMF has experienced something similar and has had to suspend its $16 billion lending facility to Ukraine, as Medish notes, “due to the bitter political impasse between Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko.”

Neither the NYT, nor Medish, nor any other past proponent of NATO expansion, colored revolutions, and the Orange Revolution acknowledges their policies were wrongheaded, impractical, and geostrategically bankrupt. 

However, Medish does move in this direction by saying: “By putting more emphasis on the symbolism of a failed NATO membership bid than the unglamorous work of energy reform, the U.S. did no favor for Ukraine’s security.”  Unfortunately, the all too pervasive American hubris persists, as Medish adds: “It should be clear that an independent Ukraine must not consume Russian-sourced energy as though it were still part of the Soviet Union.”  Here, a former U.S. official and a member of the policy advisory community in Washington seems to be meddling in Ukraine’s affairs. 

No matter, Medish proceeds to blame “Russian meddling” for fueling the winter gas crises and the Orange “backlash”.  He also mentions unidentifed Russian “sabre-rattling over Crimea.”  The only specific rattling he can muster is a never-sourced comment “reportedly” made at a NATO meeting last year by Vladimir Putin to former U.S. president George W. Bush: “’You understand, George, that Ukraine isn’t even a country. What is Ukraine? Part of its territory is Eastern Europe, and part of it, a significant part, was given by us.’”

Medish emphasizes that Washington and other Western capitols need to balance their desire for ‘reset’ relations with Moscow with a policy that supports the independence and sovereignty of  Ukraine and all other former Soviet republics.  It is important to stress that Moscow does not seek to reintegrate Ukraine or any other former Soviet republic into the Russian Federation any more than the European Union seeks to integrate Europe.  Washington has no policy to prevent European integration, so why should it have one against Eurasian integration as long as it is accomplished voluntarily?  President Dmitry Medvedev and Premier and former president Putin have acknowledged Ukraine’s independence repeatedly.  If Ukraine or any other former Soviet republic wishes to join a tighter union than the present Commonwealth of Independent States, that should be its choice, not Washington’s.  The unity of Ukraine and Russia is no more abhorrent than that of England and Ireland or that of tens of states in an increasingly centralized EU.  The free unification of states is much less a destabilizing factor than is the expansion of a powerful military alliance like NATO.  This is especially so when the region said alliance is expanding to is fraught with numerous inter-ethnic tensions and conflicts, sovereignty issues, weak states, and a regional power opposed to outside meddling.  The policy is especially out of place, if that great power is one that the West seeks to integrate into Western institutions, as the Washington concensus tirelessly asserts.

Medish concludes heralding Ukraine's "Euro-Atlantic identity."  He does not elucidate what exactly this identity's contents might be.  Ukraine's identity is defined largely by its Slavic and Christian Orthodox origins and therefore is not significantly less distinct from the West than Russia's own identity.  If one detaches western Ukraine from the discussion, that significance is reduced to nearly to nil.  Earlier in his piece, Medish himself mentions Ukraine's "deep identity issues."  So why is Ukraine so persistently courted for NATO membership and why was Russia not courted in the early 1990s when its democracy was more than conducive for an alliance with 'Euro-Atlantic identity'?  The answer:  The West was (and is) not up to the challenge of incorporating Russia and its perception of its interests into the Euro-Atlantic community'.

Reviewed by Gordon M. Hahn – Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; Senior Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program and Visiting Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California; and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group. Dr Hahn is author of two well-received books, Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007) and Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002), and numerous articles on Russian and Eurasian politics.

ARTICLE IN QUESTION:

New York Times
December 23, 2009
The Difficulty of Being Ukraine
MARK MEDISH
Mark Medish, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, served as senior director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council under President Clinton.

Ukraine holds presidential elections next month, and the outcome is likely to spell the epitaph of the Orange Revolution. The euphoria of 2003-04, when a grand display of “people power” reversed a rigged election, has long faded.

The country of 46 million has been one of the hardest hit by the global financial meltdown, suffering a sharp currency devaluation and a projected 14 percent drop in G.D.P. this year.

President Viktor Yushchenko, once the Orange hero, is now polling in low single digits. Much like Lech Walesa in Poland a generation ago, the out-of-touch Mr. Yushchenko has unceremoniously morphed from national icon of change into political footnote.

The January ballot is likely to lead to a run-off between Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a feisty populist, and Viktor Yanukovich, a drab but steady former prime minister and Yushchenko rival, whose Party of Regions boasts the strongest organization.

Both are pragmatic leaders. But whichever wins will face enormous challenges, foremost restarting the anti-crisis program with the I.M.F., which suspended its $16 billion lending facility last month due to the bitter political impasse between Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko.

The winner will also need to remember that to lead Ukraine is to balance East and West. This imperative reflects the pressures of both external geopolitics and internal demographics.

Russia and the United States tend to view Ukraine as a key battleground in a cosmic proxy war between East and West. Both have a bad habit of trying to pick winners in Ukrainian politics. These interventions, naïve in their own ways, tend to backfire, often at Ukraine’s expense.

Russian meddling fueled the Orange backlash against the mediocre Leonid Kuchma and his cronies and ended in a series of crippling winter gas cut-offs and sabre-rattling over Crimea.

Meantime, the U.S. expected far more from Mr. Yushchenko than he could deliver, deepening his isolation at home. The curse of U.S. foreign policy idealism, whether neoconservative or liberal, is to make the best the enemy of the good.

By putting more emphasis on the symbolism of a failed NATO membership bid than the unglamorous work of energy reform, the U.S. did no favor for Ukraine’s security. It should be clear that an independent Ukraine must not consume Russian-sourced energy as though it were still part of the Soviet Union.

By contrast, Russia’s designs on Ukraine are hardly idealistic. At the NATO summit last year, Vladimir Putin reportedly remarked to former president George W. Bush, “You understand, George, that Ukraine isn’t even a country. What is Ukraine? Part of its territory is Eastern Europe, and part of it, a significant part, was given by us.”

Political bullies can be clever at implanting a grain of truth in their predatory barbs. Like other European nations, Ukraine’s ethnicity is mixed and its borders were not God-given. These things emerged through collisions of tribes, ethnic intermingling and considerable bloodshed over centuries.

Western Ukraine ­ Galicia and Bukovina ­ were Hapsburg lands and never part of the czarist empire. The Crimean peninsula was transferred from the Russian Republic to Soviet Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, when both were part of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine faces deep identity issues. Ethnic Russians are roughly 20 percent of the population, and many more Ukrainians speak Russian. The languages are close, like High German and Bavarian or Danish and Swedish.

Europe prides itself on what Freud called “the narcissism of small differences.” However, Ukrainian nationalists would be wise not to overplay their hand, as Mr. Yushchenko often has done on sensitive language and historical issues.

In the 21st century, Ukraine needs to pursue its own path as a pluralist democracy and emerging market, balancing Western integration with a respect for its older cultural roots and affinities. Despite the present economic crisis and wide dissatisfaction with the political elite, Ukraine has a bright future. It has fertile land, solid industry and well-endowed human capital.

It also has a libertarian Cossack streak that explains how Ukraine came into being ­ precisely because of the proud self-reliance of its diverse people. The streets of Kiev, Lvov, Kharkov, Dniepropetrovsk and Simferopol (forgive the Russian transliterations) today have a distinct whiff of freedom, and they should keep it.

What should the West do to help? The U.S. needs to continue balancing its important “reset” policy with Russia by reassuring its neighbors, foremost Ukraine, of its active commitment.

It is the fate of the post-Soviet countries to be part of what Moscow calls the “near abroad.” While these states will always be near, it must be the policy of the U.S. and European Union to make sure they remain “abroad,” and free and prosperous.

Earlier this year, a senior Ukrainian official, anxious about the reset, asked me whether the Obama administration would “trade us for something like cooperation on Iran.” I told her that the U.S. was rooting for Ukraine even when Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma, less than stellar figures, were its elected leaders. This will not change.

Yet Ukrainians remember lost dreams of statehood during the two great European wars in the 20th century. And they remember the “Chicken Kiev” speech of President George H.W. Bush to the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet on Aug. 1, 1991, just months before the unraveling of the U.S.S.R.

“Freedom is not the same as independence,” Bush said. “Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism.” Bush had uncannily bad timing, but his underlying point about the need for political maturity remains important.

Ukrainians and their Western partners alike should stick to a balanced path of reform and long-term sustainability, not quick fixes and grand gestures. The end of the Orange era will not be the end of Ukraine’s independence ­ nor of its Euro-Atlantic identity.

Comments

[Michael Averko]

Excerpt:

"It also has a libertarian Cossack streak that explains how Ukraine came into being ­ precisely because of the proud self-reliance of its diverse people. The streets of Kiev, Lvov, Kharkov, Dniepropetrovsk and Simferopol (forgive the Russian transliterations) today have a distinct whiff of freedom, and they should keep it."

****

With the appearance of attempting to be objective, the stated "forgive" and some other comments reflect the bias of The NYT article.

As many as 60% of Ukrainian citizens prefer the Russian language. The figures on this particular range from the 60% claim, to a low of 40% Russian, 40% Ukrainian and 20% neutral. Of the two, the referenced 60% IMO appears likely to be more accurate.

-------------------------------------------------------

Excerpt:

"Russian meddling fueled the Orange backlash..."

****

Really?

There's ample evidence suggesting that if anything the reverse was true.

-------------------------------------------------------

Excerpt:

"Yet Ukrainians remember lost dreams of statehood during the two great European wars in the 20th century."

****

More like the idea of a separate Ukrainian identity wasn't as well developed during that time span, as many on Ukrainian territory saw a common kinship with Russia.