Post by Moses on Jan 6, 2005 8:51:52 GMT -5
Yushchenko's wrong move
By Ira Straus
Outside View Commentator
Washington, DC, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- Mixed in with the enormously hopeful changes in Ukraine, inevitably there are also some worrisome matters. President-elect Viktor Yushchenko has pledged friendly relations with Russia and with the Russian-speaking east and south of Ukraine. Despite the temptation to punish Russia at this time, he needs to follow through on his promise.
A dangerous sign instead is his sharing of the New Year's podium with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, the leader of Georgia's "Revolution of Roses" in November 2003. It is like waving a red flag in front of the Russians.
Saakashvili came to Kiev to enjoy the revolutionary atmosphere and to talk with the new and old leaders. This is his right. However, it was unnecessary to have him standing alongside Yushchenko as they delivered addresses to the revolutionary crowd in Independence Square. It is the kind of symbolism that could damage Yushchenko's prospects of conciliation with Russia -- and with the 40 percent of his own people who voted for a more pro-Russian candidate.
To be sure, Yushchenko said in his campaign that he would strive for good relations with Russia; but then, so did Saakashvili before coming to power. What Yushchenko needs to show, to Russians and Eastern Ukrainians who have been massively propagandized to view him as an anti-Russian bigot, is that he, unlike Saakashvili, will keep his campaign promises about conciliation.
To this end, Yushchenko needs to distance himself from Saakashvili. The latter, after coming to power, proceeded quickly along a confrontational path toward Russia. He was uncompromising in his pursuit of Georgian claims to regain sovereignty over Abkhazia and Ossetia. Their separation was the frozen product of the initial independence regime in Georgia of the ultra-nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who rejected the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States, cut off normal relations with Russia, and provoked conflicts with practically every national minority extant in the country. Georgia and Russia jointly created the Abkhaz and Osset secessions.
Gamsakhurdia's successor, President Eduard Shevardnadze, later restored normal relations with Russia and left the problem areas quiet. However, after coming to power, Saakashvili not only pressed the Georgian national claims; he quickly got into skirmishes with Russia over the two areas, and made threats of escalation that raised fears of war. He was energetic in pressing his arguments to the West; reports speculated that he hoped to get the West to blame Russia for any fighting and to support Georgia in war. Fortunately, he was restrained, not least by cautions coming from the United States that it would not back him if he got into a conflict with Russia.
Saakashvili still shows little awareness that there are legitimate historic Russian interests at stake, in addition to the interests of Georgia and of the national minorities. He makes no suggestions of compromise with Russian interests, despite Russia's continuing deep involvement in the realities on the ground. And there is no guarantee that the restraints will hold him back very long.
Yushchenko has every right to maintain expectations of doing much better than Saakashvili with Russia. It would be foolish to squander this right. By his actions in this period, Yushchenko will either confirm or confute the campaign propaganda in the eyes of Eastern Ukrainians and Russians. Now is when he will make the impression that will endure.
If, during the Ukrainian election campaign, the Yushchenko-Saakashvili equation had stuck, and if Saakashvili had proceeded with further fighting with Russia, the Ukrainian people would have likely voted against Yushchenko: Very few Ukrainians would want to elect someone who might lead their country into war with Russia.
As president-elect, Yushchenko should be looking for specific ways to follow a different, conciliatory path. He should be attentive to legitimate Russian interests and seek out ways to make constructive compromises with them.
The United states, NATO and the 25-nation European Union should let it be known in the event Ukraine were to drift toward a confrontational approach, they would push Yushchenko back toward compromise and cooperation, as they did with Saakashvili. This would be a helpful reassurance to Russia.
What the West needs to show above all is that it will not push Yushchenko into damaging Russian interests in his pursuit of integration with the West. It is not just a matter of deliberate damage; the main problem is that it could happen entirely inadvertently. If the West integrates Ukraine along a line of least resistance, without creative effort in reconciling the Ukraine-West integration with Ukraine-Russia interrelations, legitimate Russian interests could suffer grievous damage.
The solution to the danger is -- tautologically -- to make the necessary creative effort to reconcile the two different integration equations. This sounds obvious and simple enough, but it would in fact require a major exercise of willpower on the part of the NATO and EU bureaucracies. Once they made it through the difficult processes of lining themselves up in the 1990s to agree on how to proceed on expansion, they tended to become reluctant to reopen the issue: It could mean going through the whole process all over again, with no guarantee of arriving at a consensus again.
Fortunately, in the case of NATO and EU expansion, there is no need to revise the formal path to membership laid out in the 1990s, namely, the standards elaborated then for new members to meet. Instead, there is simply a need to apply more seriously the criteria of good relations with neighboring states and good treatment of ethnic minorities.
These criteria were half-waived for the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia when it came to relations with Russia and with Russian-speaking minorities. They will need to be applied more actively in Ukraine, so as to achieve genuine reconciliation with the ethnic Russian minority and genuine conciliation with the external Russian state. This is where creative effort will be required, and willpower inside NATO and the EU.
For example, Yushchenko has indicated a willingness to consider state status for the Russian language; the West should encourage it. The benefits would be enormous in terms of Russian sentiments toward the West; the costs are harder to see, even if there will be well-entrenched interest groups, in the West as much as in Ukraine, that will be heatedly against it.
Making these efforts would be worth the trouble for the West, and indeed for Ukraine as well. It is important for the future of Ukraine as a unified country and for the future of the West's relations with Russia. Unfortunately, recent habits and current trends give little reason to think that the trouble will be taken.
(Ira Straus is U.S. coordinator for the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO)
By Ira Straus
Outside View Commentator
Washington, DC, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- Mixed in with the enormously hopeful changes in Ukraine, inevitably there are also some worrisome matters. President-elect Viktor Yushchenko has pledged friendly relations with Russia and with the Russian-speaking east and south of Ukraine. Despite the temptation to punish Russia at this time, he needs to follow through on his promise.
A dangerous sign instead is his sharing of the New Year's podium with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, the leader of Georgia's "Revolution of Roses" in November 2003. It is like waving a red flag in front of the Russians.
Saakashvili came to Kiev to enjoy the revolutionary atmosphere and to talk with the new and old leaders. This is his right. However, it was unnecessary to have him standing alongside Yushchenko as they delivered addresses to the revolutionary crowd in Independence Square. It is the kind of symbolism that could damage Yushchenko's prospects of conciliation with Russia -- and with the 40 percent of his own people who voted for a more pro-Russian candidate.
To be sure, Yushchenko said in his campaign that he would strive for good relations with Russia; but then, so did Saakashvili before coming to power. What Yushchenko needs to show, to Russians and Eastern Ukrainians who have been massively propagandized to view him as an anti-Russian bigot, is that he, unlike Saakashvili, will keep his campaign promises about conciliation.
To this end, Yushchenko needs to distance himself from Saakashvili. The latter, after coming to power, proceeded quickly along a confrontational path toward Russia. He was uncompromising in his pursuit of Georgian claims to regain sovereignty over Abkhazia and Ossetia. Their separation was the frozen product of the initial independence regime in Georgia of the ultra-nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who rejected the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States, cut off normal relations with Russia, and provoked conflicts with practically every national minority extant in the country. Georgia and Russia jointly created the Abkhaz and Osset secessions.
Gamsakhurdia's successor, President Eduard Shevardnadze, later restored normal relations with Russia and left the problem areas quiet. However, after coming to power, Saakashvili not only pressed the Georgian national claims; he quickly got into skirmishes with Russia over the two areas, and made threats of escalation that raised fears of war. He was energetic in pressing his arguments to the West; reports speculated that he hoped to get the West to blame Russia for any fighting and to support Georgia in war. Fortunately, he was restrained, not least by cautions coming from the United States that it would not back him if he got into a conflict with Russia.
Saakashvili still shows little awareness that there are legitimate historic Russian interests at stake, in addition to the interests of Georgia and of the national minorities. He makes no suggestions of compromise with Russian interests, despite Russia's continuing deep involvement in the realities on the ground. And there is no guarantee that the restraints will hold him back very long.
Yushchenko has every right to maintain expectations of doing much better than Saakashvili with Russia. It would be foolish to squander this right. By his actions in this period, Yushchenko will either confirm or confute the campaign propaganda in the eyes of Eastern Ukrainians and Russians. Now is when he will make the impression that will endure.
If, during the Ukrainian election campaign, the Yushchenko-Saakashvili equation had stuck, and if Saakashvili had proceeded with further fighting with Russia, the Ukrainian people would have likely voted against Yushchenko: Very few Ukrainians would want to elect someone who might lead their country into war with Russia.
As president-elect, Yushchenko should be looking for specific ways to follow a different, conciliatory path. He should be attentive to legitimate Russian interests and seek out ways to make constructive compromises with them.
The United states, NATO and the 25-nation European Union should let it be known in the event Ukraine were to drift toward a confrontational approach, they would push Yushchenko back toward compromise and cooperation, as they did with Saakashvili. This would be a helpful reassurance to Russia.
What the West needs to show above all is that it will not push Yushchenko into damaging Russian interests in his pursuit of integration with the West. It is not just a matter of deliberate damage; the main problem is that it could happen entirely inadvertently. If the West integrates Ukraine along a line of least resistance, without creative effort in reconciling the Ukraine-West integration with Ukraine-Russia interrelations, legitimate Russian interests could suffer grievous damage.
The solution to the danger is -- tautologically -- to make the necessary creative effort to reconcile the two different integration equations. This sounds obvious and simple enough, but it would in fact require a major exercise of willpower on the part of the NATO and EU bureaucracies. Once they made it through the difficult processes of lining themselves up in the 1990s to agree on how to proceed on expansion, they tended to become reluctant to reopen the issue: It could mean going through the whole process all over again, with no guarantee of arriving at a consensus again.
Fortunately, in the case of NATO and EU expansion, there is no need to revise the formal path to membership laid out in the 1990s, namely, the standards elaborated then for new members to meet. Instead, there is simply a need to apply more seriously the criteria of good relations with neighboring states and good treatment of ethnic minorities.
These criteria were half-waived for the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia when it came to relations with Russia and with Russian-speaking minorities. They will need to be applied more actively in Ukraine, so as to achieve genuine reconciliation with the ethnic Russian minority and genuine conciliation with the external Russian state. This is where creative effort will be required, and willpower inside NATO and the EU.
For example, Yushchenko has indicated a willingness to consider state status for the Russian language; the West should encourage it. The benefits would be enormous in terms of Russian sentiments toward the West; the costs are harder to see, even if there will be well-entrenched interest groups, in the West as much as in Ukraine, that will be heatedly against it.
Making these efforts would be worth the trouble for the West, and indeed for Ukraine as well. It is important for the future of Ukraine as a unified country and for the future of the West's relations with Russia. Unfortunately, recent habits and current trends give little reason to think that the trouble will be taken.
(Ira Straus is U.S. coordinator for the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO)