The Future of Ukraine

Tom Friedman, a journalist for whom I have great respect suggested it was far too early to make predictions about the future of Ukraine. He's probably right, but I have less to lose than he in speculating.

First, an update; Putin, in a speech this morning, has vowed not to invade Ukraine proper. Whether this is a tactical move to take the wind out of the sails of the increasingly upset Europeans or whether it is a real commitment is unclear; my money's on the former. He'll let the Europeans think they won a small reprieve (but no rolling back; Crimea will henceforth remain Russian) so that they turn their attention elsewhere.

 The future turns on what happens in Ukraine. If it succeeds in establishing a passably working democratic government, Putin may be content to leave well alone. He has secured the navy's access to the Black Sea, has boosted his popularity at home, and among the Russiophiles in the Crimea. If it fails, unrest may well follow, and Putin may once again feel 'obligated' to look after those being oppressed in a neighboring country; and Russia will invade and annex Ukraine in its entirety. And if it succeeds, and with help from Europe, then it's hard to say what he will do; success would threaten the Russian political and economic model and potentially fuel unrest at home. But he may not be willing to invade a country that is thriving politically and economically without the pretext of saving people from corrupt and thuggish governments; to do so would expose him to more robust international political pressure than he has been so far.

But my guess is that Ukraine may well fail in its bid to Westernize. Since its independence, it has tried two different political parties, both of which by all accounts were corrupt and incompetent. There is little to suggest that the new administration, however well intentioned, will be much different. What is missing are the robust institutions needed to provide constraints on the excesses of elected politicians; that may sound counter intuitive, but a strong (and honest) civil service helps prevent elected politicians from taking first steps on the slippery slope from responsiveness to voters, to pandering to powerful interests to outright corruption.

David Sanger noted that in relying heavily on sanctions, Obama is "playing a long game". But it may be so long that neither he nor Putin will be in office by the time they begin have an effect on policy. Sanger also suggested that Obama is trying to reverse the policy of closer economic integration with Russia. The argument, and extension of that used after the Second World War was the countries whose economies are intertwined won't go to war with one another. While it may have worked in Europe for 70 years, it is a policy that doesn't apply to Russia, largely because of the concentration of wealth. When war between economically coupled countries means everyone suffers, that acts as a deterrent. When wealth is concentrated, the majority have little to lose and the elites have enough not to worry; so economic integration is no longer such an effective brake on military aggression. That's why Obama's bid to isolate Russia economically makes sense.

The End of the Beginning

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is.. ..the end of the beginning”. So said Winston Churchill in 1942. Crimea is gone; the question is “what next”. There is a disconnect between rhetoric and reality. Calls for adherence to international law and threats of 'dire consequences' are falling on tin ears. Can the West get what it wants on its current path?

Competing narratives  

Where the West sees a justified popular uprising, Putin sees the undemocratic overthrow of an elected government. The West characterizes the unrest that led to Yanukovych's departure as spontaneous; Putin charges it was provoked by intentionally destabilizing overtures from the UE and possibly by clandestine activity on the ground (a change lent some credibility by Robert Gates' account of his time a the CIA).  And while the justification for invading the Crimea was trumped up and supported by an ideologically and politically motivated Russian media, Russia isn't the first country to go to war on spurious grounds supported by a biased and fact-free media.

Realpolitik  

Past

Crimea was until 1952, part of Russia. Many there still consider themselves Russian. They have lived in a deteriorating economy whose trajectory has continued downward since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. For this, with some justification, they blame the Ukrainian government.  

Present

In Crimean, the choice for the Ukrainian Russophiles is not between the old Ukrainian government and the new, both of which they distrust equally. It is between the Ukrainian and Russian governments. Whatever the legality or otherwise of the referendum and the wisdom or lack thereof of their choice, the majority of those in Crimea have expressed a preference to return to Russian rule; and Putin is happy to accommodate them. Nothing the West will do, aside from going to war, will change that. And the West will not go to war over the Crimea.   

Future

The only question is what will Russia do in Eastern Ukraine. The most optimistic scenario is nothing. Here, the West maintains the sanctions it imposed on Monday for a while; then in a few year Europe relaxes them and goes back to buying Russian energy and banking Russian oligarchs' money. New players in Russia replace the old and the individually targeted sanctions cease to be relevant. In five years, the entire episode will be a vague memory for most of us.

A second scenario is that Russia invades Eastern Ukraine. The West then faces a difficult decision; three courses of action seem possible. The first is that it does nothing but make speeches, none of which will have much impact except at the margins. Here, the risk is that Putin will see this as green light to invade the rest of Ukraine and rebuild something like the old empire. To annex the east and leave the West leaving a divided West Ukraine to form stronger ties to Europe would be something Putin would be unlikely to countenance. He may be seeming this endgame as similar to a divided Germany, which ultimately worked out fairly well for West Germany.

The West's second option is to dramatically increase economic and diplomatic pressure. This will be a long game; sanctions against Iran have produced some results but it has taken years and the game isn't over by any means. The efficacy of this course of action is uncertain. At best it will prevent further Russian incursions; but it will never turn the clock back.

A third possibility, but one for which the West likely has no stomach, is to move Nato forces into the threatened areas. While this may be the only way to guarantee a change of course in Putin's odyssey, the risks inherent in such an escalation are almost unimaginable; with the fall of the USSR, the threat of mutually assured destruction was, we thought, behind us; to go this route would put all of that back on the table. If we get there, it will be by accident rather than by design.

China

China has can't be seen to support a  region's self-proclaimed independence, so it cannot support Russia in this. At the same time it has been calling attention to some double standards in international relations. But if there's one thing China needs domestically it's a stable or growing export market. If Russia and the West come to blows, economically or militarily, China's exports will suffer and its own growth, on which the legitimacy and support of the Party depend, will be eroded. So China has a stake in keeping the peace. Indeed some in China are calling for their country to take an active role in mediating between the two side. Were that to happen it would signal a monumental shift in the world order.

Anthony Wedgwood Benn, (2nd Viscount Stansgate)

Tony Benn 1925-2014 I grew up with Tony Benn; or rather he was a prominent, often influential figure, in British politics in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. On the left wing of the Labor Party, he was constant in reminding political leaders of matters of fairness and principle, a constant supporter of the poor, the powerless, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised. His idealism, often at odds with the reality of power and politics, was both refreshing and disheartening. A man of integrity he once said “I would be ashamed if I ever said anything I didn’t believe in, to get on personally”. One of the last of a nearly extinct class of politician, the idealist: “We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values”. (On a personal note, I was surprised to see he was several years younger than my parents; I'd always thought he was older).

Crazy like a fox

Robert Gates pointed out this morning that those like me who saw Putin as wanting to return to the glory days of the Cold War have is wrong; Putin wants the power and influence in his near-abroad without the economic headache of Ukraine's moribund economy.

And while we're on the subject, Robert Gates noted in his book "From the Shadows" that the CIA proposed a series of initiatives aimed at fomenting anti-Soviet sentiment in the USSR's satellite countries, including Ukraine (p91). While he laments that fact that the State Department slowed and watered down the initial proposal, he concludes that: "there was still a significant increase in the quantity of dissident and Western information and literature smuggled into Eastern Europe and the USSR" (p94).

So when Putin claims that the West is interfering and trying to stir up trouble in Ukraine, he may indeed have some basis for that claim. He sees Europe's offer of EU membership as an attempt to drive a wedge between Russia and Ukraine which seems a reasonable assumption; and even if CIA isn't currently fomenting dissent and revolt today, there is historic precedent that given his KGB heritage, may be salient in his calculation.

And in another triumph for self-interested lobbying, Britain is dragging its feet over sanctions (not to mention asset freezing) lest it harm financial interests in the City of London, something of concern to a few wealthy individuals but of relatively little import to the man on the proverbial red omnibus.

"Surprize, surprize, surprize..." !

Alexander Khudoteply/AFP/Getty Image

Russian troops have now unambiguously begun their country's invasion of Ukraine. The Obama's administration has been, regrettably, predictable but in this instance ill-thought out. It's goal of disentangling the US from the ill conceived democracy-building initiatives of the Bush era in Iraq and Afghanistan, while sensible in that context, make little sense in Eastern Europe.

Congress' inability to compromise on a budget in 2011 which has led to sequestration, has required cuts in military spending, and while much less drastic than those proposed by then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and George H.W. Bush in 1990 in 1990, do send a signal that the US is more reluctant that it has been in the last quarter century to intervene militarily.

The administration's response has been bluster and no visible action. That action need not be military; but to make brash public statements and then not follow through (as for example with the red-line and chemical weapons in Syria) has created the same dynamic between Obama and Putin as existed between Kennedy and Khrushchev in 1962. And a strategy as ingenious and robust as Kennedy's is needed now. Instead of speaking softly and carrying a big stick, Obama has been speaking loudly (and publicly) but carrying no stick.

From Putin's perspective, a West-leaning government in Ukraine jeopardizes Russia's strategic interests, given importance of the naval base in Sabastipol and Russia's access to the black Sea and the Mediterranean. Given too, the similarly corrupt nature of the old Ukrainian regime to Russia's plutocracy, it also represents a democratic challenge to the Russian political status quo. Since Putin has relied increasingly on 20th century style approached to the suppression of dissent internally, a democratic putsch in Ukraine encourages domestic dissent that imperils his position at home. So this was never going to end well, that is to say with a diplomatic solution not backed by unpleasant or costly outcomes for Putin and for Russia. Russia's economy may be in bad shape (and Ukraine's in worse) but Europe gets 60% of it's gas from Russia. So Putin thinks he holds test strongest cards; America is war-weary and (traditionally) disinterested in Europe, and Europe is disorganized and held hostage to Russia's gas.

Europe's response
Europe's collective response to developments in the region has been astonishing. Given its proximity and history, a much more robust stance and greater preparedness would have been needed to prevent the situation from reaching its current juncture.

Ironically, the EU as an institution has made a coordinated European response harder; individual nation states in different and contextually appropriately configured alliances would have acted faster and more decisively than the EU as a whole will ever be able to. On March 2, the day after Russian troops invaded, the top story on the EU's website was "Gender Pay Gap stagnates at 16.4% across Europe". The top stories featured on the European Parliament's website were: 'Getting the economy back on track', 'Syria'. 'Air Passenger Rights', 'Data Protection' and 'Quality of life: the vital ingredient'. It was as if nothing in the least bit out of the ordinary was going on.

Europe's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Evangelos Venizelos began his statement on returning from the Ukraine, March 2nd, with this absurd comment: "The meeting gave me the opportunity to better understand the situation and to convey the Greek message as well as the European message." "I made special mention of the Greek community of Mariupol and of the wider region in general, and I am pleased that the transitional Ukrainian government is prepared to deal with these issues." (There are only 92,548 ethnic Greeks in Ukraine, less than 0.2% of the population, according to a 2001 census).

What Now?
Given the likelihood that many Russian government officials and politicians have profited handsomely since the fall of Communism, freezing overseas bank assets would certainly hurt. That would be a start. International recognition of the new Ukrainian government would probably help too. Whether the EU (or the US) want's to get into a bidding war to bail out a country whose economy, by current estimates, needs an injection of $25b is far from clear. Germany's reluctance to foot other peoples' bills, seen clearly in the case of Greece, makes it doubtful that any money will be made available in the next few weeks or even months. The IMF will want to attach financial strings and conditions, arguable harder to fulfill than the political strings Russia attached to its $15b offer of last year.

From here, where?
Crimea will return to Russia; that's already a fait accompli. The only question is whether Russia will invade Ukraine, as it did in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968); and all signs are that absent a more robust response from the US and Europe, that it will. Perhaps the most optimistic scenario is that Ukraine will split along ethnic and religious lines with Ukrainians in one state and Russians in another. A more pessimistic one is that Russia invades the entire country and installs a puppet regime, tightly linked, as during the Cold War, to Russia. Events are moving quickly, much faster than Europe or the US appears able to keep up with. Russia has the initiative and we have been caught napping without an appropriate policy response.