| Current issue |
|---|
|
Volume 4, issue 08 August 2010 Kharkiv was not originally included among Ukraine`s four first choice Euro 2012 host cities, but the East Ukrainian capital forced itself into contention by pushing ahead impressively with a variety of infrastructure projects. This determination was finally rewarded when Kharkiv replaced Dnipropetrovsk as a UEFA host city in 2009.
|
| Most viewed |
|---|
| Economy |
|---|
|
Metalist maracles win UEFA respect
|
| Economy |
|---|
|
Kharkiv airport: ready for take off
|
| Monthly photo diary |
|---|
|
23:24 Saturday, September 4, 2010 |
|
Politics Au revoir, EU?
Can ties with Brussels survive the EU’s expansion exhaustion and Kyiv’s new geopolitical agenda?
Taras Kuzio Volume 4, issue 6 June 2010
It is becoming increasingly commonplace in Kyiv to hear opponents of the Yanukovych presidency ask the question: “Why has the West abandoned us?” As the new political realities of the Yanukovych era begin to sink in, many former Orange supporters and policy makers have apparently decided that the West can no longer be relied upon to support the growth of a modern democratic political culture in Ukraine. But while relations with the West are clearly undergoing a reevaluation following the arrival of the Yanukovych administration, has the West really given up on a democratic and European Ukraine and could the country’s pro-democracy opposition be doing more to argue its case in Western capitals? Russian realpolitik replacing Orange optimism I discussed this recently at a Washington DC seminar for members of the US State Department and the responses I received stressed that the US continues to support Ukraine as emphatically as ever. Ukraine has certainly received considerable American support and attention over the past 19 years and remains very much on the White House geopolitical radar – as witnessed by the planned July visit of Hilary Clinton to Kyiv. The only period of time when the US pursued a “Russia-first” policy towards the region was under President George Bush (senior) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, critics of the current US president have argued that his efforts to reset relations with America’s regional rivals throughout Eurasia and South America have come at the expense the interests of smaller nations and traditional allies like Ukraine. This is perhaps harsh as the current US policy of resetting relations with Russia is not the same as adopting a Russia-first approach and 2010 is certainly not the same geopolitical environment as the early 1990s when the USSR was in the process of disintegrating. But while Ukraine may not have been forgotten, today’s America is preoccupied with domestic economic issues and is still fighting two major wars – with Russian support for supply lines vital to success in Afghanistan. Consequently the days when American presidents would rattle the saber over Ukrainian democracy now seem to belong to an earlier era of post Cold War democratic expansionism, and it is becoming accepted wisdom in Kyiv and other former Orange strongholds that the recent period of relatively unqualified support from the West has given way to a new epoch of realpolitik. Onus now on Ukraine’s shell-shocked political opposition By heaping blame on the West for allegedly betraying Ukraine, the political opposition is essentially seeking to deflect responsibility away from itself, particularly from the mistakes and inter-elite squabbling which led to such limited results from five years of Orange power. Herein lies the problem faced by Ukraine’s opposition: the country’s defeated Orange leaders appear to have been unable to undertake a post-election internal audit of why they lost. Without such a critical review of their activities, particularly the reasons for their failures during the last five years, the opposition will remain unable to re-connect with voters and mobilize the electorate to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty and democracy. In Washington I repeatedly heard the view that the US currently has “nobody with whom it can work” in Ukraine. This is a problem that has been growing throughout the past five years of political chaos and infighting which has done so much to foster a sense of Ukraine fatigue in the West. Opposition leaders will continue to be perceived as “damaged goods” by the West and by Ukrainian voters until they can go through a democratic audit and re-connect with their voter base. Crusading Orange leaders fail to meet their own high standards In retrospect, defeated candidate and self-styled champion of Ukrainian democracy Yulia Tymoshenko actually did herself no favours in the eyes of the international community by not accepting defeat after these international organisations had declared the elections to have been held in a ‘free and fair’ manner. The dragging out of court battles after the second round amid allegations of voter fraud damaged Tymoshenko’s democratic credentials in the West. Whenever I have pointed out that President Yanukovych also dragged out the post-election process in January 2005 by his refusal to accept defeat, the typical response from Western diplomats is: “We expect that from him but not from her.” If Yulia Tymoshenko still wants the West to believe that she is a European-style democrat with whom they can do business then she should act in a way which differentiates her from President Yanukovych. While making numerous allegations about the West’s alleged betrayal of Ukraine, the country’s opposition is at the same time not seeking to argue its corner in the West. Supposedly media savvy opposition leaders like Yulia Tymoshenko, Arseniy Yatseniuk and Viktor Yushchenko have all failed to publish a single opinion editorial in any credible Western publication this year. This is surprising for Yulia Tymoshenko in particular as she has previously made skillful use of Western media appearances and certainly needed to re-establish her credentials as a credible opposition leader in the wake of her election defeat. American spin doctors and Eurasian geopolitical agendas This apparent lack of interest among opposition leaders in Western media column inches is mirrored by an absence of Western political consultants among the leaders of the country’s pro-Europe camp. Ironically, it is the ostensibly pro-Russian President Yanukovych who is the only Ukrainian politician to have regularly used Western political consultants over the last five years. Both Yushchenko and Tymoshenko have hired Western consultants over the past half decade, but only during election campaigns and even the reportedly without according foreign consultants the necessary authority to make an impact. The same problem is evident in the notoriously high powered Washington DC lobbying circuit, where Ukraine’s erstwhile pro-democracy forces are no longer represented but where President Yanukovych has a number of consultants promoting his interests. No Western illusions about Yanukovych presidency Washington and Brussels appear to have no illusions about President Yanukovych and have not bought into the myth that the last five years have transformed the former Orange Revolution villain into some kind of ‘born again democrat’. However, Western governments will always give newly elected presidents the benefit of the doubt – especially if they were elected in what the OSCE, Council of Europe and EU agree was a ‘free and fair’ election. Indeed, for many Western governments exhausted by EU expansion and looking to foster better energy ties with the Kremlin, there are reasons to cheer an end to Ukraine’s ambitious Euo-Atlantic integration bid. Instead, pragmatism is likely to trump the guarded idealism of the post Orange Revolution period as the EU works out its policy approach to the new Kyiv administration. The West’s lack of illusions about the Yanukovych presidency is clearly evident in the tougher IMF response we have seen in recent months compared to relations in 2008-2009 under Prime Minister Tymoshenko. It is widely asserted that the Party of Regions (together with then president Viktor Yushchenko) collaborated to undermine Ukraine’s cooperation with the IMF via the November 2009 social legislation bill which they pushed through parliament and which destroyed the basis for remaining within budget deficit limits to which the Tymoshenko government had committed itself as a condition for IMF cooperation. The IMF now appears to believe that President Yanukovych has a preference for avoiding large scale reforms and relying instead on a policy of continuing gas subsidies and high social payments. The head of the Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova World Bank office has recently described the current government’s policies as “socially populist” pointing to the ridiculousness of Ukrainian households paying the equivalent of USD 80 per 1,000 cubic metres of gas for utilities when the state buys gas at USD 230. The IMF’s October 2008 Stabilisation Fund had pushed for the subsidy to be reduced but the Tymoshenko government also baulked at taking this step on the eve of elections. Murky bilateral gas trade continues to dominate Ukrainian political landscape The tougher IMF response since the February presidential election comes partly amid concerns about the influence of the corrupt gas lobby in the presidential administration and government. As Anders Aslund wrote in The Moscow Times in May, the IMF: “will only assist Ukraine with loans if Ukraine undertakes serious reform in four areas: exchange rate policy, the central bank, the budget and energy reform.” Reform of Ukraine’s energy sector is crucial better ties with the West but remains impossible when the gas lobby is so apparently influential within both the Yanukovych administration and PM Azarov’s government. The EU and IMF both acknowledge that Yulia Tymoshenko’s March 2009 agreement with the EU to modernize Ukraine’s gas pipelines has been effectively abandoned by the Yanukovych regime which has made clear its preference to deal directly with Russia on energy issues. A three-way consortium for the management of Ukraine’s strategically crucial gas pipeline network remains possible, with most analysts predicting that any consortium would likely serve as a fig leaf for de facto Russian control of Ukraine’s pipelines. Other factors that cause concern in the IMF include the government’s high social expenditure forecasts which stand out in stark contrast to the public sector belt-tightening taking place throughout the EU. Everywhere in the world, the global financial crisis is forcing governments to cut social expenditures - except in Ukraine. Refusing to cut social expenditures pushes Ukraine into the arms of Russia which is willing to provide subsidies and loans in exchange for geopolitical advantages. Fears mounting over possible return to authoritarianism International organizations such as the Council of Europe, OSCE, US Helsinki Commission and Reporters without Frontiers have been quick to sound the alarm over a possible return to state censorship of the Ukrainian media and other authoritarian traits associated with the governments of the former Soviet empire. In the past few months Amnesty International has raised concern at new police tactics, prison conditions and police brutality against inmates, while the State Department and US Helsinki Commission protested over the Security Service’s (SBU) intrusion into academic life when it sent an SBU officer to browbeat the Dean of Lviv’s Catholic University. Freedom House, which upgraded post-Orange Revolution Ukraine to the status of “Free” in 2005, is already warning that Ukraine could return to “Partly Free” status next year for the first time since 2004. Freedom Houses ratings are widely quoted by journalists and policy makers alike and in the event of Ukraine slipping back to “Partly Free” next year it would be a severe blow to President Yanukovych’s international reputation. Ukraine is currently the only CIS country designated as “Free” – an achievement which receives little acknowledgement in Ukraine itself. Elsewhere in the former Soviet Bloc, three CIS member countries are rated “Partly Free” while the remainder are designated as “Not Free”. Geopolitical pendulum swings from West to East The West supports an improvement of Ukraine’s relations with Russia but has been alarmed at Kyiv’s complete re-orientation to the East. Foreign policies pursued by President Yanukovych have already gone some way to reversing the broad Euro-Atlantic integration policies pursued by Ukraine’s first three presidents (All three presidents supported NATO membership – Yanukovych does not). This is not altogether surprising: over the past five years Ukraine learnt the hard way that it could not hope to join NATO or the EU on a Russophobe platform, chiefly because Russophile France and Germany would never permit a country bordering Russia to join NATO and the EU without the express blessing of the Kremlin. At the same time, any country on the EU periphery which seeks to go too far in its rapprochement with Russia, as President Yanukovych is widely seen to be doing, risks damaging its status as a candidate for full-blown integration into Western structures. President Yanukovych is therefore in danger of being perceived by Brussels and Washington as ‘Lukashenka Light’. This perception problem could undermine efforts to sign an Association Agreement and Free Trade Agreement with the EU. Meanwhile, concerns persist in Brussels that President Yanukovych and PM Azarov are actually far more sympathetic towards integration into a CIS Customs Union, membership of which would require little in the way of reform on the part of the Kyiv authorities. Multi-vector policy or closer Kremlin collaboration? In terms of NATO ties, the leaders of the military alliance seem to have reluctantly accepted the inevitability of Yanukovych regime’s decision to no longer seek membership, but the West nevertheless remains confused about Ukraine’s foreign policy approach. One school of thought among Western policy makers believes there is nothing to be concerned about as President Yanukovych will eventually return to Kuchma’s multi-vectorism and Ukraine’s traditional balancing between East and West. As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented, the West is used to Ukraine playing a ‘balancing act.’ Another school of thought which I believe will grow in influence, argues that President Yanukovych should not be seen as ‘Kuchma II’ and has actually passed over multi-vectorism in favour of a single vector pro-Russian foreign policy. A June report on Ukraine by Jakob Hedenskog of the Swedish Defence Research Agency, warned: “One may even ask to what extent Ukraine from now on will be able to pursue a foreign policy independent of Russia.” A man Western leaders can do business with? The West also sees President Yanukovych as unreliable in first opposing NATO Partnership for Peace joint exercises while Yushchenko was president but now supporting them. President Yanukovych’s anti-American campaign in the 2004 elections has not been forgotten, nor have the anti-NATO protests in the Crimea throughout the Orange era organised by his Party of Regions and its local Russian nationalist allies. Brussels and Washington have also noted President Yanukovych’s inconsistent approach to the strategically crucial issue of NATO membership, which he officially endorsed while prime minister in 2002-2004 but has ruled out since becoming head of state. Such abrupt changes in policy undermine the reputations of Ukrainian leaders in the West and are likely to guarantee that ties between Kyiv and the West remain muted during the Yanukovych presidency. Meanwhile, concerns over the Yanukovych administration’s perceived lack of commitment to the democratic norms required to underpin any further EU integration will likely continue to mount. As a result by autumn 2010 the West will likely have adopted a more critical stance towards the Yanukovych administration. Ukraine could then find itself a long way down the road to a similar cooling of relations with the West to that experienced by President Kuchma during his second term in office 1999-2004. Taras Kuzio is Senior Fellow in the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto and editor of Ukraine Analyst.
|
