Russia-Ukraine-United
States and the West
“There’s
Plenty Of Blame To Go Around—Now Is The Time for Mature Leaders
To
Step Forward To Take The Right Action For The Future”
April
2014
The most recent turn in the “up
and down” relationship among Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the West
has been a dismaying sight over the past month or so. It is the culmination of a number of decisions that might
have been different and some historical realities that won’t change. And, as I reflect how this current
situation might have been avoided, there is, I believe, “plenty of blame to go
around.”
It is vital to view the situation
from the perspectives of all sides, bearing the historical realities and
current circumstances of all parties in mind.
Looking back at the almost 25
years of involvement I have had in Russia and the ex-Soviet Union since 1989,
there have been many times when I believed the United States could have done
things differently.
During the challenging ‘90s, we
could have provide greater financial, technical and moral support. We could have gone further in recognizing
Russia as a partner. We
never did anything approximating what is now being offered to Ukraine ($27
billion; I only hope that it will happen; similar “promises” have gone wanting)
or what we did in the Marshall Plan.
As then-Ambassador Jack Matlock reflected on the United States’
role in the reconstruction of Russia’s economy*: “My point is not that the Bush administration, or the
Clinton administration that followed it, is responsible for the mistakes that
were made as the Soviet Union abandoned the command economy and Russia
subsequently created a market economy.
They are not. However, it
is clear that most of the assistance and advice given by the West was not
particularly helpful. It was based
more on a free-market fundamentalism than on the real problems of creating a
market economy out of a collapsed command economy, much of the initial advice
was not only useless, but sometimes actually damaging.”
Following that, the West moved
to expand NATO into the bordering regions around Russia, including Poland
(1999), the Baltics (2004) and Romania (2004) and Bulgaria (1994). Then, and of greatest concern to
Russia, we advanced the idea of extending NATO to Ukraine and Georgia as well
as installing ABM launchers in Poland and the Czech Republic. With the animosity still overhanging
from the Cold War era, this might have been seen in the U.S. as akin to the
Soviet Union’s earlier extending the Warsaw Pact to Cuba or Central America.
*”Superpower Illusions” (pg. 110)
Yes, the expansion was done
with a benign intention (defensive) but, to a country that had been attacked
many times, it looked to many like a surrounding effort. At a minimum, it fueled the animus of those who wanted to
interpret it that way. It fed the
worst fears and allegations of those who wanted to “go back.”
As former Secretary of War,
Robert Gates, says in his new book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War”: “When I took
office in 2007, I had shared with the president my belief that from 1993
onward, the West, and particularly the United States, had badly underestimated
the magnitude of Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War and then in the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, which amounted to the end of the centuries-old
Russian Empire. The arrogance,
after the collapse, of American government officials, academicians,
businessmen, and politicians in telling the Russians how to conduct their
domestic and international affairs (not to mention the internal psychological
impact of their precipitous fall from superpower status) had led to deep and
long-term resentment and bitterness.”
Gates continued: “What I didn’t
tell the president was that I believed the relationship with Russia had been
badly mismanaged after Bush 41 left office in 1993. Getting Gorbachev to acquiesce to a unified Germany as a
member of NATO had been a huge accomplishment. But moving so quickly after the collapse of the Soviet Union
to incorporate so many of its formerly subjugated states into NATO was a
mistake. Including the Baltic
states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary quickly was the right thing to do,
but I believe the process should then have slowed. U.S. agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian governments
to rotate troops through bases in those countries was a needless provocation
(especially since we virtually never deployed the 5,000 troops to either
country). The Russians had long
historical ties to Serbia, which we largely ignored. Trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly
overreaching. The roots of the
Russian Empire trace back to Kiev in the ninth century, so that was an
especially monumental provocation.”
It was also natural for Putin
to view the West’s strong support for Kosovo’s separating from Russia’s
long-supported ally of Serbia as violating the rights of the Serbian
state. (To be clear, in my view,
Kosovo’s achieving independence was the right outcome.) And especially in hindsight, Russia
viewed the invasion of Iraq as an unsanctioned act by the United States and by
some Western countries to overthrow a sovereign leader based on weak, if not
manufactured, allegations that Saddam Hussein was in the final stages of
developing weapons of mass destruction.
These realities were combined
with enormous and, for me, overblown sensitivity on Putin’s part, grown in
part, I suspect, from his career in the KGB. To say that he became paranoid about the intentions of the
United States would not be an over-statement. And he surely saw it as a means of strengthening his own
popularity at a time when it was declining.
More recently, I believe Putin
has greatly exaggerated the mistreatment of Russians in Ukraine, including
Crimea. Characterization of the
folks who went into Maidan Square as “Russia-phobes and Neo-Nazis” has been
hyperbolic. Surely there were some
such people there, but to define the entire group in these terms in
ludicrous. Most of them surely simply
wanted release from a corrupt and ineffective government.
Finally, we should not be surprised
at the reaction that Putin and others in Russia had to the overturning of the
agreement that had been reached on February 22 by Yanukovych and other Western
countries before the ink was scarcely dry. This agreement would have probably led to an election by the
end of the year which would have voted Yanukovych out of office. If one believes, as Putin certainly does
(and there are reasons for this belief), that the movement in Maidan Square which
led to the ouster of Yanukovych was incited to some degree by the West, one
could take it as license to act.
And that’s exactly what Putin
did. I believe he seized on this
as an “excuse” to move into Crimea.
It is obviously a purely personal judgment, but I don’t believe if that
agreement had been allowed to unfold through the end of the calendar year,
Russia would have moved to have the referendum for independence in Crimea or
have absorbed it as they have.
What’s more, I believe,
Putin’s/Russia’s absorption of Crimea will prove to be a costly mistake for
Russia and its people. It will be
a financial drain in its own right.
It has already produced sanctions, capital flight, a weaker ruble and it
will, at least for a time, dampen foreign direct investment. Nevertheless, we are where we are.
Stepping back, Russia has always
had and always will have different interests than the United States and the
West; some geographical, some ideological in nature. For example, Russia is far more dedicated to the
preservation of existing governments—to very strong governments--that are more autocratic
than we believe is right. The
United States acclaims much greater allegiance to individual democracy,
to individual rights, to everyone speaking up.
But, with all that, there are two
things that are of paramount importance:
1. There are many critical issues such as
nuclear proliferation, combating terrorism, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, on which it
is absolutely critical that Russia, the United States and the West and the
entire world work together on cooperatively.
2. Alienating and isolating Russia will significantly
impede that cooperation.
********
So, what now?
1. We need to clearly define what we will not
tolerate (e.g., any incursion into Ukraine or other independent country).
2. We should recognize that Russia’s annexation
of Crimea is not going to be overturned.
3. We need to try to agree on what is in the
common interest of our countries and the world.
4. We need to identify the specific agenda items
which we need to work together.
5. We need quiet, tough-minded, no-nonsense,
respectful interchanges among leaders in Russia, Ukraine, the United States and
the West—leaders who understand each other’s history, culture and contemporary realities.(1)
I would like to add here the
excellent perspective provided to me by a Professor of Russian History at the
University of Cincinnati, Willard Sunderland.
“The only point I’d suggest
adding to your piece is that we should do everything we can to de-emphasize the
neo-Cold War rhetoric and casual anti-Russian prejudice that has crept into the
way our politicians and journalists/pundits tend to describe Russia. There are too many simplifications in
the way we are representing things, and there’s the risk that our
simplifications will work against us.
Russia today is not the Soviet Union. We are not on the edge of a titanic
global contest between “our way” and “their way.” You are absolutely right – we have nothing to gain from
isolating the country. Likewise,
though Putin is most definitely not a
Western liberal or conservative, as all our TV talking heads are telling us,
he’s also not a Brezhnev or an Andropov.
I see him as a Russian statist conservative in the mold of the last
great tsarist premiere Petr Stolypin.
He wants a strong Russian state and a stable international neighborhood,
while also supporting Russia’s full engagement with the world. I do not think that there’s a plan
afoot to gather up the lands of the old USSR motivated by some sort of imperial
nostalgia. He’s not interested in
a lot of difficult and costly border changes. He is a pragmatist more than he is an ideologue. And he’s also, in my view, far from in
charge of everything we’re seeing.
He’s hardly a grand master poring over a would-be chess board, moving
every piece exactly where he wants it.
I think he and the Russian power establishment were as shocked by
Yanukovich’s flight from Kiev as anyone else. Much of what’s happened since then has been more opportunism
than master strategy. Putting all
of this together, I see a situation in which there is every reason to work with
Putin rather than to double-down against him. To that end, I think your last point is dead on: firm engagement is the key. Quiet, persistent, firm engagement.”
That is what we need now!
(1) I’d
note this is the kind of interchange that in times past was conducted by
leaders like
George Schultz and Eduard Shevardnadze. I believe former U.S. Ambassador to
Russia, Jack Matlock, was absolutely right in crediting the cultural
sensitivity of certain U.S. leaders as a key factor in establishing good
relations with their Russian counterparts: “One of the keys to the success that Reagan, Schultz, Bush
and Baker had in engaging the Soviet leaders,” Matlock writes, “was their
attention to this factor [culture].
Reagan may not have mastered every detail of every arms control
negotiation…but he spent as much time trying to understand Gorbachev’s thinking
and the political constraints on his behavior as he did studying the
‘substance’ of the issues. George
Schultz was acutely aware that Eduard Shevardnadze, a Georgian, was immensely
proud of this cultural heritage.
By showing interest in it and respect for it, Schultz was able to
establish a degree of personal rapport with the Soviet Foreign Minister that
helped them come to terms on issues that had resisted solution for
decades. James Baker picked up
where Shultz left off and continued the relationship that benefitted both
countries.”*
*”Superpower Illusions”
(pg. 74)
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