Ukraine's shadow across
Eurasia By M K Bhadrakumar
Modern Ukraine's most famous son, Soviet
leader Nikita Khrushchev, once said, "He who
cannot eat horse meat need not do so. Let him eat
pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat
horse meat. It's simply a question of taste."
The predicament facing the United States
over the death of the "Orange Revolution" in
Ukraine is somewhat similar. The choice is whether
to do business with the incoming pro-Russian Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovich or to destabilize him
in the coming months by consorting with the
mercurial opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. The
dilemma is acute insofar as Washington doesn't
have a genuine "taste" for either of the two
Ukrainian leaders.
The choice would have
been easy if Moscow had placed its cards on the
table. But Moscow is not helping matters. It is eschewing
polemics and is not stating
preferences. Instead it is putting on a poker face
- an exasperating correct median line. No sooner
had Yanukovich assumed office in Kiev on Friday
than Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov
extended customary greetings and expressed hope
for the development of bilateral ties.
President Vladimir Putin took another
three full days to add his felicitations. On
Monday, significantly, he first telephoned
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko to
congratulate him for putting an end to the
political crisis emanating out of the latter's
rift with his "orange partner" Tymoshenko. And
only then did Putin congratulate Yanukovich.
With characteristic understatement, Moscow
drew attention to the great strategic defeat that
the US has suffered in Ukraine. It is common
knowledge that the US actively worked behind the
scenes after the March elections to put together
an orange coalition of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko.
Washington was eager to see an orange
coalition in power in Kiev so that at the summit
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in
November in Riga, Ukraine could be formally
invited to a membership action plan, which in turn
would qualify Ukraine potentially for full
membership at the 2008 NATO enlargement summit.
But in the event, Yushchenko simply would have no
truck with Tymoshenko.
Fearing that his
popularity, which is already below 10%, might
plummet even further if fresh elections were held
because of a hung parliament, Yushchenko opted for
a grand coalition with Yanukovich despite the US
administration's deep suspicion of the latter as a
menace to the United States' geopolitical
interests. Worse still, as a former American
diplomat put it, "pretty much everybody ... was
surprised" by the undercurrents that swept
Yanukovich to power.
Washington has put a
brave face on the geopolitical shift in Kiev. The
US State Department spokesman claimed satisfaction
that Yanukovich's return to power was "in the
old-fashioned, democratic way" and, therefore,
Washington would seek a "good relationship" with
his government, "just as we would with any other
democratically elected government".
Yet
such grandstanding couldn't hide that in three
broad directions at least, Yanukovich's ascendancy
signifies a shift in Ukraine's policies that
profoundly hurt the US position. First,
developments in Ukraine conclusively debunk
Washington's claims that a wave of US-sponsored
freedom and democracy was on the march. President
George W Bush himself had listed in his 2005 State
of the Union address the "Orange Revolution" in
Ukraine as one of the "landmark events in the
history of liberty".
As Russia scholar
Anatol Lieven wrote, these assumptions on which
the US strategies have been based stand
contradicted today; Ukraine "demonstrated that the
processes which the West has encouraged in Central
Europe and the Baltic states cannot be extended
seamlessly to the former Soviet Union. Societies,
economies and national identities and affinities
are very different, links to Russia are closer,
and both the US and the EU are weaker than
appeared to be the case a few years ago."
Indeed, the reverberations of the collapse
of the "orange project" will be felt far and wide
in the post-Soviet space. Belarussian President
Alyaksandr Lukashenka will feel vindicated in his
assertion that there will be no rose, orange or
banana revolutions in his country. Mikheil
Saakashvili in Georgia, on the other hand, will
worry that "color revolutions" are not
irreversible.
Kurmanbek Bakiyev of
Kyrgyzstan would be gratified that his early
burial of the "Tulip Revolution", and his choice
of indigenous and regional moorings as the
mainstay of power, were after all the correct
choice.
Across the length and breadth of
the post-Soviet space a realization will have
dawned that the era of the "color revolutions" has
ended and that with all its awesome power as the
sole superpower, there are serious limits to the
US influence in bringing about regime changes.
Certainly, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and
Palestine - or, wherever Washington has let the
genie of "democracy" out of the bottle -
pandemonium prevails.
The Bush
administration faces a serious credibility problem
in the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia and
the Caucasus, which will pose a difficult legacy
for the next administration. The less said the
better for Washington's "Greater Central Asia"
strategy or any mediation in settling the "frozen
conflicts" in Moldova or Transcaucasus. (Moldovan
President Vladimir Voronin visited Moscow on
Tuesday to discuss with Putin key issues of
finding a settlement to the Transdnistria
problem.)
Equally Ukraine, with its 50
million people, its advanced military-industrial
complex, its strong agricultural base, its highly
strategic geography, and not least of all its
near-mystic appeal to Mother Russia, should have
been the fulcrum around which an entire
geopolitics was conceived by the US. With Ukraine
cut adrift once again in the midriff of Eurasia,
issues are wide open.
Democracy may or may
not have changed Yanukovich. But one thing is
certain: Moscow is back in serious business in
Ukraine - that is, if it ever was out of it in
real terms. In his first remarks within hours of
assuming office, Yanukovich told the Russian
government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta that
Ukraine-Russia ties will run on an altogether
different track than under the orange regime. He
said: "We need to stop quarrelling with our
neighbors and learn to have respectful discussions
... The new government is not going to foster
anti-Russia sentiments in Ukraine."
Influential Russian politicians promptly
reciprocated. But the chairman of the Russian
duma's International Affairs Committee, Konstantin
Kosachyov, underlined Moscow's cautious approach
not to raise hackles in the West. He commented:
"Yanukovich stands for a balanced foreign policy
of Ukraine. Russian-Ukrainian relations now have a
chance to overcome the crisis and start gradual
development." The emphasis of Russian politicians
was on the "de-ideologization" of
Russian-Ukrainian relations and their pragmatic
development.
All indications are that
Russia will offer Yanukovich's government a new
concept of strategic partnership focusing on the
economic-reform objectives of Ukraine but aimed at
closer integration with Russia in terms of
projects and programs. Russia has an inherent
advantage over all of Ukraine's Western partners
in pursuing such a course. More important, it is a
"win-win" situation, since Russia will also attend
to the top priorities of Ukraine's political
economy.
But US cold warriors seem to be
stopping at nothing to raise the dust in
Russia-Ukraine relations. They see fresh hope in
the "checks and balances" implicit in the
Yushchenko-Yanukovich grand coalition. (They made
more or less the same misplaced assumption in the
case of the Bakiyev-Felix Kulov team in
Kyrgyzstan.) They count on Tymoshenko providing an
"effective critique" of the grand coalition in
Kiev. They insist democracy has changed
Yanukovich's outlook. They calculate that the US
still has its own clientele in the Ukrainian
leadership. They visualize Yushchenko, though an
isolated politician, as still capable of (and
interested in) fighting for the "orange" spirit.
Without doubt, Yanukovich will create a
change in atmosphere in Ukraine's relations with
Russia, especially at the political and diplomatic
level. He will not be enthusiastic about the
anti-Russia regional groupings sponsored by
Washington such as the GUAM group (Georgia,
Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova) or the Community
of Democratic Choice. These regional groupings are
bound to wither away if Kiev doesn't put its heart
in them.
The million-dollar question has
always been about the prospects of Ukraine's NATO
membership. In his first comments, Yanukovich
reiterated his opposition to Ukraine joining the
NATO. He recalled that the orange regime's stance
on the issue "made Russia unhappy" and that his
government must abide by the wishes of the
majority of Ukrainian people who were opposed to
NATO membership.
Yanukovich later
amplified that "NATO is a very sensitive issue for
our society" and, therefore, "balanced and
collective decisions" became necessary involving
the government, president and the parliament. What
all this adds up to is that the NATO enlargement
summit in 2008, which Bush very much hoped to have
as a legacy of his presidency, will have to be
postponed indefinitely.
But NATO expansion
is not merely an issue of Bush's political legacy.
If Ukraine holds back, NATO's eastward expansion
virtually stalls. Ukraine is too big to be
bypassed. And no encirclement of Russia is
realistic without Kiev coming on board.
Furthermore, NATO expansion into Ukraine
was intended to give verve to Poland's claims of a
leadership role in Eurasia, which the US was
counting on, challenging Russia. Eastward
expansion is NATO's strategy; it isn't Ukraine's
strategy. It is a strategy that, essentially
speaking, has nothing to do with the actual
security of member countries. It is political and
has been championed by the caucus involving the
US, Poland and the Baltic states. It is a venture
about which other NATO countries harbor ambivalent
feelings.
Washington hoped that NATO
expansion would give impetus to the United States'
trans-Atlantic leadership and keep burning the
fire of Euro-Atlanticism even in the post-Cold War
setting. Now, if NATO begins to meander for want
of motivation or a clear-cut action plan,
lingering doubts about its raison d'etre
would resurface.
It is not even two years
since then German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
questioned NATO's pivotal role or France
reactivated its NATO links. The challenge is thus
political and, as Khrushchev put it, politics are
the same all over - "They promise to build a
bridge even where there is no river."
M K Bhadrakumar served as a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for
more than 29 years, with postings including
ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
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