Olexiy Haran, Petro Burkovskyi
Almost 20
years ago, Sherman Garnett, the former deputy assistant secretary of state
Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, listed the security measures that America
had to take in Ukraine if it wanted to avoid a major regional crisis:
Yet the long-term character of Ukrainian-Russian relations is unsettled
and potentially unsettling for Europe. The internal distractions that prevent
Russia from exerting its power are not permanent. As they disappear, basic
differences over the relations will have to resolve.… A stronger, more
assertive Russia would have real levers of influence over Ukraine, especially,
if the latter had not used its “breathing space” for sweeping political and
economic reforms. (Sherman Garnett, Keystone
in the Arch:
Ukraine in the Emerging Security Environment of Central and Eastern Europe, 1997,
p. 82)
The Obama
administration, as well as its Republican predecessors, ignored early warnings
of an emerging crisis in Ukrainian-Russian relations. Instead of using institutional
ties and keeping their distance, American diplomats informally engaged in
Ukrainian politics. As a result, before the end of Obama’s first term, Russia
had the upper hand in Ukraine. The situation is getting worse, too, because
America is now stuck in the role of mediating Ukraine’s squabbling political
factions. It is a Sisyphean task, and is not making the region any safer.
As Democrats
returned to the White House in 2009, Obama’s foreign policy took on a familiar
tone and was guided by many of the same technocrats who had populated the
Clinton administration in the 1990s. They had dealt with the region before, and
— especially in the case of Ukraine — were equipped with a post-Soviet playbook
informed by Sherman Garnett and his contemporaries.
Years earlier, Garnett had
recommended establishing a trilateral platform for the United States, Ukraine,
and Russia to discuss issues of mutual concern. Any talks should hinge on three
principles: that the participant states be democratic and act in the interests
of their people; that predictable behavior by each country made regional safety
easier to create and manage, as a loose cannon could ruin the entire process;
and finally, and most importantly, that two states could not collude against
the third.
In 1996,
Washington established a strategic partnership with Ukrainian president Leonid
Kuchma. The bilateral commission, chaired by U.S. vice president Al Gore,
concentrated on the gray zone of insecurity along the Russia–Western European
fault, just ahead of the entry of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary into
NATO. The partnership did not work out well. Kuchma, looking to increase his
personal power and wealth, broke Garnett’s first principle by shutting down
independent media, political opponents, and his family’s economic rivals. For
the United States, the last straw came via a leaked phone call in which
Kuchma’s office was heard considering highly illegal arms deals with Iraq. The
commission dissolved.
From that low
point, American-Ukrainian relations bounced back, if only in a limited way. In
2003, Ukraine backed the Bush administration as it waged war in Iraq, sending a
special brigade to help U.S. troops capture Kut Province, south of Baghdad. One
year later, U.S. lawmakers saw the 2004 Orange Revolution as an opportunity to
wrest Ukraine out of Russia’s hands, and supported Kyiv’s decision to join NATO
by backing a proposed expedited process for its entry.
Russia looked
on with growing resentment. For Putin, the push for Ukraine’s NATO membership
was simply another example of American adventuring in Russia’s exclusive sphere
of influence — the latest in a string of aggressions dating back to the Cold
War. Russian authorities decided to guard themselves against “American
unilateralism” by striking out, unpredictably and unilaterally — by breaking,
almost to the word, Garnett’s second principle. Russia’s salvos included
cutting off the flow of its gas lines into Ukraine, suspending the Treaty on
Conventional Armed Forces, invading Georgia, and launching a massive cyberattack against
Estonia.
Acording to
the opinions of experts from both Republican and Democratic camps, such as Ariel Cohen and Steven Pifer, by the time of Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009,
two of the three pillars of U.S.-Russia-Ukraine relations had crumbled. With
wide concerns about Russian resurgence and low confidence among European
allies, the new administration launched a “reset” policy to ease tensions. The
next round of talks began in 2009 with the inaugural meeting of the
U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership Commission. That July, Vice President Joe Biden first signed the commission into being on his first
state visit to Kyiv, a remarkably effective gesture designed to reassure
Ukraine that America had not abandoned it.
Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, however, did not seem to share Biden’s good faith; the
partnership she forged with Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych seemed too
pragmatic, plainly aimed at getting Ukraine (and its stocks of highly enriched
uranium) on board with Obama’s pet project on global nuclear security.
Clinton’s warm missives to Ukraine came despite early warning signs that Kyiv
might destroy its own democratic institutions. As Yanukovych’s government
substituted a foreign policy in the national interest for one purely in the
interests of wealthy businesses, it broke the first principle of Garnett’s
playbook, just as Russia had broken the second.
At the same
time, the Obama administration set aside the priority of Ukraine’s relationship
with western Europe and concentrated on “resetting” bilateral U.S.-Russian
relations. This strategy was successful in a limited way; for instance, the
United States got Russia to play a constructive role in negotiations with Iran,
but it did not relieve the new security challenges that Russia posed to many of
the former Soviet republics.
The neglected
regional dialogue led to a security vacuum that a resurgent Russia immediately
filled. Intimidated by the Kremlin’s surging power and tempted by Russian gas
and oil reserves, friends of Russia shot into power across the region. This
happened not only in Ukraine, but up and down the continent’s East-West fault
line: the left-wing presidency of Milos Zeman in the Czech Republic, the
right-wing government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and the center-left
governments of Robert Fico in Slovakia and Plamen Oresharski in Bulgaria. Each
reoriented their foreign policy to build stronger ties with Russia. Only the
institutional and legal framework of the European Union, and a dependency on
European markets, kept these countries from unmitigated Russian vassalage.
Ukrainian
authorities had very little wherewithal to take on Russia unaided. Certainly,
neither the United States nor the European Union can be blamed for the poor
economic showing and authoritarian misrule of the Yanukovych government, but
the West’s mistakes made that backsliding all the easier.
Umder
Secretary Clinton, the U.S. State Department’s policy toward Ukraine was
heavily dependent on personal relationships with powerful members of Kyiv
society who could offer exclusive information. Clinton’s recently disclosed emails have revealed a number of these
direct links between Ukrainian oligarchs and top American
diplomats:
Pinchuk, who has pledged more than $10 million to the Clinton Foundation
in recent years, met with a top Clinton aide to speak on behalf of Ukraine’s
strongman president and to try to soothe tensions with Washington over that
country’s human rights record and its growing closeness with Russian President
Vladimir Putin while resisting Europe. “I wanted to tell you that I met with
Pinchuk who was asked by [then–Ukrainian president Viktor] Yanukovych to convey
his strong continuing interest in integrating with Europe,” Melanne Verveer,
the Clinton aide, wrote on Sept. 26, 2011, in an e-mail to Clinton. The message
acknowledged that the Ukrainian leader had “antagonized all sides in the last
few weeks,” partly because of an upcoming trial of an opposition political
leader. Verveer wrote after her conversation with Pinchuk that the Ukrainians
are “looking for a way to get beyond” the human rights fallout from the trial. (Tom Hamburger, Washington Post,
October 5, 2015)
In that sense,
it seems that little has changed since the uprising that forced out Yanukovych.
Eighteen months after the strongman left Ukraine, investigative
reporter-turned-parliamentarian Serhiy Leshchenko acknowledged that the
American ambassador is consulted each and every time on government reshuffles.
Another prominent journalist, Serhiy Rakhmanin,
revealed that it was an American diplomat who insisted on striking a deal with
Yanukovych over the interim government.
We would argue
that true strategic partnership demands building permanent structures of
communication not only between executives but, more importantly, between Congress
and the Ukrainian parliament. This may help to calculate better cost-efficiency
of the bilateral economic and security projects and have value for the American
taxpayers money.
Another area
of concern has been when and how to stand between Russia and Ukraine when
Russia has the upper hand. The 2008–9 recession, for instance, exposed
Ukrainian dependency on Russian energy supplies. In 2010, the Kremlin used this
weakness to impose on Ukraine an unequal agreement that extended Russia’s naval
presence in Crimea until 2042. For Ukraine, the alternatives to Russian energy
dependency offered by the United States and European Union — reverse gas flows
and shale gas exploration — did not become priorities of the relations agenda.
The reverse gas deals came to life only in 2014, when the European Union and
the United States specifically endorsed those measures and gave their financial
guarantees. Concerning shale gas exploration, U.S. contractors (notably,
Chevron) turned a blind eye to Yanukovych’s personal interest in an energy
deal; without Yanukovych in office and easing the way for Chevron, the shale deal fell through.
Garnett’s
first principle, that all negotiations be fundamentally democratic, fell by the
wayside in the energy crisis. Ukraine cannot withstand Russian pressure without
Western energy, but if that energy comes loaded with private interests and
me-first qualifications, it has no effect.
As far as
military and security cooperation goes, the annexation of Crimea and the
invasion in Donbas has placed Ukraine under the permanent threat of war. Regime
change or another round of rewriting Ukrainian borders poses a serious threat.
Not only is Ukraine’s sovereignty at risk, but the whole region faces the
possibility of serious humanitarian catastrophe — and as the Syrian refugee
crisis in Europe has shown, such catastrophes have no simple fix.
The question,
then, is not only how to apply Garnett’s principles of diplomacy, it is whether
commitment to rearm Ukraine and a maintain sanctions regime pays off with
long-term stability and containment of Russia, or whether “strategic patience,”
which presumes Ukraine’s fate as a Russian vassal, will buy the West some vital
time to brace itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment