1. FAREWELL TO THE LAST DECADE
On the winter night of December 31, with clinking champagne glasses and countless firework displays, the world bade a light-hearted farewell to the first decade of the 21st century. Dozens of prestigious international periodicals offer varying analyses of the start-up decade and its meaning for the new epoch. Some think it was a productive time, when the foundations of an essentially new world order were set down, others consider this a wasted decade, with no importance for History. A Russian journalist, who tried “unsuccessfully to understand why the inhabitants of other countries continue to dislike Russia,” cantankerously labeled the decade as The Time of Big Lies and Fake Hysterics, during which the notions of international law and democracy lost their value, when people lost the sense of decency and became estranged to each other (Izvestia, 28.12.2009).
Yet time is never pitted, empty or one-dimensional, black-or-white. Time never stops, it also never jumps over its own measurements, like an impish boy jumping over the spring puddles. The decade had its beginnings and ends, its portion of joy for some and suffering for others, its own logic, its own secret purpose, the meaning of which will be revealed perhaps in few decades. Let us recall the first decade of the 19th century, which started with the Bonaparte revolution on the 18th of Brumaire 1799, and lasted under the noise of Napoleon’s drums and guns, bayonets shining, which were bearing the “revolutionary” redistribution of European borders and actually marked an attempt to create a new continental empire.
The first decade was enough for the explosion of the blister of arrogant French grandeur, fed on human blood. In the middle of the next decade, at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 (something like Yalta and Potsdam in 1945), the winners enforced a long-lasting draconian reactionary order in Europe. However, the peaceful 1900s are insignificant from a geopolitical point of view, with only a stir [in Russia] in 1905 before the brutal revolution in the name of Red Utopia. This led humanity directly to the deafening explosion of the First World War, to the leap forward in military technology (aircraft, tanks, machine guns, heavy artillery, radio, submarines, etc.), which defined further military and scientific development of the twentieth century.
So what is the secret code hidden in the first years of the century? The world stage, cluttered with old settings of the Cold War, the bloc confrontation, desolate ideological dummies of the past (communism), was being cleared for new conflicts in accelerated tempo: the old “world order” was broken to pieces, and the new world order had not yet emerged.
It was the time of post-modernism, marked by ironic grimace. The neoliberal fairy-tale by Francis Fukuyama about the “end of history”, the victory of the forces of good globalization and the wisdom and omnipotence of the market. The westernization of the world turned for the United States in 2001 into the beginning of a bloody clash with radical Islam and ended in 2009 with four (!) wars — in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, and a huge financial disaster which is still ongoing and without end in sight.
Samuel P. Huntington, the author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon and Schuster, 1996), had much deeper and insightful thoughts which turned out to be prophetic.
I will never forget October 1999, when I met the Huntingtons in Kyiv: a quiet, slender, modest Harvard professor-prophet and his energetic wife, Nancy, who had helped a lot of Ukrainian experts in the sphere of security to study at Harvard. Dr.
Huntington was able to discern the ripening of the new, unseen in the twentieth century type of international conflict long before September 11,
2001. Huntington’s book (I have a signed copy which I treasure) was noticed in the world, but few people believed the author’s predictions. The professor lived to see his prophecy come true, as Americans, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis died in a fierce battle at the beginning of the 21st century. The Harvard prophet died in December 2008, aged 81. It is quite possible that the world’s conflict zones of the 21st century will develop exactly along the lines of rupture of the nine (according to Huntington) civilizations: Western, Latin American, African, Islamic, Chinese, Indian, Orthodox, Buddhist, and Japanese.
In one of the chapters Dr. Huntington broaches the subject of Russia and Ukraine. Referring to Yeltsin’s relatively liberal and nonaggressive rule (1992-94), the author claimed that Russia will build a bloc of former Orthodox Soviet Republics and the world will accept this system. In regard to Ukraine, the author divided it into two parts – “the more Catholic/Uniate western Ukraine” and “Orthodox eastern Ukraine,” – and Huntington forecasted three possible options for the future:
1. Armed conflict with Russia (unlikely in view of the author);
2. Division of Ukraine into two separate state entities, with the accession of the eastern part of Russia;
3. Ukraine maintains its unity and independence and works closely with Russia
Even Huntington with his singular intuition could not foresee the astounding twists in Russian history of the first decade of the 21st century – the Decade of Putin: antagonistic conflict with Islamic movements, cruel “reconciliation” of the North Caucasus, full-scale terrorist acts on Russian territory — all these paradoxically sublimate into the hostility and hatred towards Orthodox neighbors, Georgia and Ukraine. Russia’s war against Georgia and the Kremlin’s unprecedented hostility against “nationalist” Ukraine completely contradict Huntington’s idea of the “clash of civilizations.”
This is not a “clash” of civilizations but a clash of paranoid ideas of racial, ethnic, and national superiority of Moscow over yesterday’s “brothers,” the clash of nuclear Messianism with the common sense of peoples who want to be free and independent.
Having lost traditional Orthodox allies such as Bulgaria, Serbia and Georgia, Moscow does not seem to be considering the possibility of abandoning attempts to exert both soft and hard pressure on Ukraine, with an eye to building a new empire sometime in 2010-19, evening the score, and emerging triumphant.
But the victory may prove to be the disaster. Any destabilization of the precarious balance between Russia and Ukraine will turn into Europe’s catastrophe. In the meanwhile, the Caucasus is re-emerging from under the control of Russia: the number of terrorist acts there increased by 30 percent in 2009.
2. UKRAINIAN SUMMARY
Only two events will go down in our state’s history in the first decade of the century:
1. The Orange Revolution in 2004, which was a spontaneous outbreak of national peaceful protest against the swarm of scoundrels who wanted to continue to shamelessly neglect the “scum,” which, in their opinion, should have confirmed their “right“ to rule in Ukraine.
How primitive and antihistorical are the attempts of the Russian KGB staff in power to convince themselves and the population of Russia that the Orange Revolution was just a conspiracy of U.S. intelligence agencies, not the mass democratic movement of the Ukrainian people who refused to live under the Soviet principles of “managed democracy,” without human rights or freedom of choice.
Absurd, spy-like statements, which flaunt the role of Western intelligence agencies, are refuted by the Russian example. After all, events similar to those on the Kyiv Maidan were happening in Moscow in 1991, in front of the White House, when the people spontaneously arose against the State Committee of the State of Emergency [generally known in the West as the Gang of Eight], and a huge blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine hung in the Moscow sky together with the Russian three-color one. What was that? Was it a CIA spy-game or a global conspiracy?
The events on the Maidan are only the beginning of a multi-staged revolution that will end with a new political earthquake somewhere in the year 2012-2015. They may resemble the violent peasant revolt against the rich in 1905, rather than the peaceful, heartfelt and hope-inspiring Orange Revolution of 2004.
2. The second most important (and close in spirit to the Maidan) event of historic importance is the enlightenment of millions of Ukrainians about the origins and characteristics of the building of our state. Despite all attempts of forces that are in power to hide the truth about the state of the nation in the tinsel of glamour TV pop-shows, people are slowly but inexorably beginning to understand that a sharp deterioration in the internal political situation in Ukraine is linked to:
— A disparity between the model for post-Soviet Ukrainian state building and European standards and requirements of the 21st century;
— The absence of reforms in the political and economic systems;
— Mounting corruption in governmental and judicial bodies;
— The feudal nature of the oligarchic system of power, under the guise of quasi-party organizations;
— The broadening conceptual and regional split among the ruling groups and mounting struggle for power, but not in the interests of Ukraine;
— Significant activization of pro-Russian forces in Ukraine (political parties, groups and agents of influence) that are called “the fifth column” of Moscow and which are deliberately destroying the foundations of the government.
As aptly put by a Western analyst, while Soviet ideology was eliminated, the Soviet methods remained unchanged. The disappointment of people in the state, alienation from government, and despair of politicians are among the most difficult outcomes of the first decade.
No face-lifting of the rotten system, no cosmetic repairs during the next presidential and parliamentary elections will help the situation. The interim nature of the next presidential and parliamentary rule combinations is obvious. History gives Ukraine a choice between either the new explosion of popular anger, this time with great losses of lives, material losses and setting paramilitary power, or the arrival of new leaders, leaders who are still trusted in the east and west of the country, leaders who will be able to lead the country out of the post-Soviet collapse.
During these changes, the communist ideology and practice will be condemned on a par with those of the Nazis. The existing parties (business clubs based on common interests) will be eliminated and new nationwide organizations of liberal, social democratic and national-democratic orientation will appear in their place.
One of the deadly sins of the ruling groups of the first decade (one is hard put to refer to them as elite) is the unwillingness to cultivate, within Ukrainian society, the idea of modernization and the idea of a continuous race for the best place in the international arena. Absolutely no efforts were made to mobilize Ukrainian society and unite it around the big goals. Nobody explained to the citizens how harmful the long holiday of beggars and relaxed loafers is in a world where rapid changes take place and the ruthless struggle for resources, new technologies and fresh knowledge is going on.
Dozens of countries used the time of peace offered by globalization to strengthen their economic and geopolitical position. For example, China, the world’s second superpower; Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, India, South Korea, Poland and South Africa consistently reformed their economies and built democratic institutions. The GDP per capita growth (in direct monetary terms, not according to the PPP index) in Turkey was from 3,210 dollars in 2001 to 9,370 dollars in 2010; in Bulgaria from 1,890 to 6,720 dollars; in Romania from 1,770 to 8,680 dollars; in Poland from 4,866 to 12,490 dollars. This is incommensurable with the miserable “progress” in Ukraine, where GDP per capita in 2001 was 642 dollars, and 2,670 dollars in 2010 (The World in 2010-19. The Economist.) Figures similar to those in Ukraine in 2010 can be found in countries like Indonesia (2,440 dollars per capita), Sri Lanka (2,410 dollars), Bolivia (1,940 dollars), Paraguay (2,140 dollars), Egypt (2,500 dollars) and war-ravaged Iraq (2,910 dollars).
The conclusion is self-evident:
— Ukraine is robbed by the ruling oligarchic system and cynically thrown by “compatriots” into poverty, dominated by children’s malnutrition, tuberculosis, AIDS, lack of medicines and funds for the army;
— The prices for food are 2-3 times higher in Ukraine than the average in Europe, the United States and Canada, and are disproportionate with Ukrainian salaries. The country suffers from lack of openness, which is smartly and tightly organized by the Mafia of Commerce and Industry. This dooms Ukraine to occupy the last place in Europe according to the main parameters of human development. The basis for this “blockade” is the lack of competition, which is justified by talk about “the interests of domestic producers”.
— Ukraine preens itself about its remarkable success of democracy — in particular freedom of speech — while having to make do with the input starvation rations of private media channels, which, with few exceptions, fail to provide any reliable data analyses concerning events within and without Ukraine, although this is precisely the way the agenda for a new decade is formed. There are almost no serious political and economic investigations. We do not know what is happening in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Uzbekistan, Armenia, and Kazakhstan. What we have instead is pseudo-political talk shows clogged with mutual accusations, a flow of lies and hatred. Ukraine has turned into a sedimentation tank for Russia’s primitive pop culture and has practically no access to quality television products from London, Toronto, Warsaw or Berlin. What kind of European identity we can speak of in such circumstances?
During the past decade Ukraine gradually disappeared from the intellectual map of Europe and the world. Something well to be expected, considering that Ukrainian television programs in English for foreign audiences could not be arranged by those who had stolen billions of taxpayer hryvnias. Foreign Policy’s 2009 list of the world’s top 100 intellectuals mentions people from the United States, Japan, Brazil, Iran, Germany, Peru, Canada, China and other countries, but not Ukraine. Our neighbors are represented by the Czech Vaclav Havel and the Pole Adam Michnik. Our country is not on the list. We are accustomed to the absence of Ukrainians amongst Nobel laureates. Millions of compatriots escape abroad not only in search of higher wages, but also fairer, cleaner living conditions and prospects for their children.
Ukraine in the first decade witnessed the appearance of raider-politicians representing different political parties, but strikingly similar to the SS (not least because of facial scars), Chekist officers of punitive squads, vociferous Goebbels— or Zhdanov-type propagandists ready to leap at the throat of anyone who stood in their way to power. Ukraine is a European leader in terms of hair-raising car accidents, impunity to road offenders, prostitution and child pornography exports.
Any sober-minded person can see that these conditions are unbearable. State, nation and society are falling apart, and the finale of this process can only become a new servitude, criminalization, and loss of statehood. Ukraine’s destiny will be decided in the upcoming decade.
3. REGIONAL SECURITY
The new global “icebreaker” of world history is China. A country whose GDP has increased by 12.6 times over the past twenty years; industrial production – by 19 times, industrial exports – by 28 times; and whose currency reserves are close to one trillion dollars. China has become a second global military power, armed with nuclear, space and other modern weapons, manufacturing the latest fighter (an improvement on the best Russian models) and warships. Naval bases to be built in Pakistan, Kenya and the Seychelles will ensure the reliability of energy and strategic raw materials supplies from Asia and Africa.
For the time being this global icebreaker is quietly at anchor within the national borders, perplexing Western experts over its future endeavors: the Chinese military is no laughing matter. The main question is where and when it will move, having received orders. It is believed that this will happen in the 2010s.
There is growing concern within Russian expert circles about Russian-Chinese relations, considering that Russia has been making unprecedented concessions, playing the role of a junior partner and supplier of raw materials for its “big Chinese brother”. There are also concerns about Russia’s territorial integrity — in particular the potential Sinofication of the Russian Far East and Eastern Siberia. Russia, which “arose from its knees” and arrogantly declared un-American, anti-Western, anti-NATO policy, which is in contradiction to its European genotype, is now forced to seek new ways to restore the imperial grandeur it lost in the 2008-09 crisis. Hence the “reset” of relations with the United States: in return for logistical — and other — assistance for the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan, and cooperation in blocking Iran’s nuclear program, Russia was promised that America would keep its distance from the territory of the former USSR — as cynically summed up by Dr. George Friedman, CEO of STRATFOR, a global intelligence company (which is also referred to as a shadow CIA). This, of course, will have its consequences for Poland, the Baltic States, and eventually for Ukraine.
This “reset” faltered because Russia didn’t not want to spoil relations with the Islamic world for the sake of U.S. interests, and because the Americans didn’t want to lose their influence in Eastern Europe. The American state’s “aircraft carrier”, while seriously damaged in the first decade of the 21st century, is still a global power, albeit with somewhat limited financial and military capacity. Discussions are underway about the global G-2 regime, which would involve the United States and China reaching an agreement among themselves and dictating their will on other countries. As for the overloaded relations with Russia, the U.S. suspects their partner of playing a double game aimed at bleeding America and NATO in Afghanistan, while not making any moves to influence Iran. Moscow’s attempts to revise the European security architecture have alarmed the US and demonstrate Russia’s intentions to return to a policy of “spheres of influence” reminiscent of the 19th century, rather than the 21st.
Obama is under growing pressure from critics for making concessions to Moscow in terms of European security, particularly when a given people chooses to exercise its right to enter a defense alliance of their own free will. The new presidential campaign will be held in 2012, with Obama facing the difficult choice between setting course for the American “aircraft carrier” in the 2010s and convincing voters of the feasibility of that course. The main strategic choice regarding Ukraine, Russia and Central and Eastern Europe will be made in 2014-17.
In 2010-19, Russia will continue to drift from the lost position of global superpower to that of a regional one and reduce its impact on world affairs. The crisis, which resulted in Russia fall from BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China — new economic giants — now referred to as BIC), raised the issue of its ineffectiveness in building its economy (giant, hulking state-owned companies) and rampant corruption. The Stabilization Fund, created during the period of prosperity for the oil and gas sector, worth 142.6 billion dollars, currently amounts to 94.5 billion dollars. It is a coveted prize for the Kremlin-friendly crisis-stricken oligarchs. All told, Russia has reduced pre-crisis reserves by 200 billion dollars in order to avoid massive popular protests and living standard instability. Tandemocracy has a decorative character: in 2008 25 percent of Russians believed that the country was being managed by Medvedev; in 2009 only 12 percent did. Western experts believe that Russia is stagnating, reads Andrew Wilson’s Virtual Politics. Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World.
The Kremlin’s paranoid attitude to “color revolutions” (especially the Ukrainian kind) will be strengthened in coming years, with Russian society expecting Khrushchovization or even a Gorbachev-style perestroika. Despondency about the future of Russia’s politics, tightly controlled from above, and command economy prevails.
In fact, Alexander Prokhanov, an outspoken apologist of Stalinism and Russian imperialism, said he felt “the full exhaustion of means by which the authorities manage an exhausted country, which is located under that authority” and warned against a “strategic misfortune.” (Echo of Moscow, December 30,2009.)
David Kramer, an expert of the Washington German Marshall Fund Institute, summed up the decade of Putin’s government saying that the chance to modernize Russia was missed, that Putin did not overcome the endemic corruption, or manage the conflict in the North Caucasus. Most neighbors are afraid of Russia, whose influence in those countries decreased, which is Putin’s failure. German Bertelsmann Foundation’s expert Cornelius Ohman bluntly stated that “Russia is stepping ever closer to the abyss.” (Gazeta Wyborcza, December 31,2009.)
That being said, it does not mean that the double-headed eagle is about to release its claws and leave Ukraine to float free, towards NATO, which is in deep crisis. On the contrary, the Kremlin regime may well try to make up for all their internal and external failures by subjugating a weak neighboring country.
Under such conditions, Ukraine should do everything to get stronger and obtain legally binding assurances from Russia, the United States, and Great Britain, as per 1994 Budapest Memorandum whereby Ukraine acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Leaving aside the theoretical debate of my two esteemed colleagues in the diplomatic corps (O. Chaly and V. Vasylenko) on the meaning of the memorandum, it would be reasonable to conduct appropriate negotiations, including a public statement about the possibility of Ukraine’s withdrawal from the NPT and the MTCR (Missile Technology Control Regime) prior to the April 2010 NPT session in New York — if the demands of Ukraine are not satisfied.
Everything else notwithstanding, Ukraine’s top priority is integration with the European Union and NATO membership. Under no external and internal pressure should these specified goals be changed. Ukraine should not be lured by all those misleading and dangerous appeals for neutral status. By the same token, Ukraine should discard any idea of getting involved with, let alone joining, the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s Eurasian bloc.
And so Ukraine won’t be admitted to NATO for another three to five years, so what? This delay shouldn’t affect the political leadership and its determination to uphold national security and get Ukraine out of the gray security zone.
In this second decade, it is necessary to re-equip the Armed Forces of Ukraine, installing non-nuclear-head-super-homing missile defenses, as well as reinforcing the antiaircraft defenses.
Ukraine’s political leadership must hear what the military has to say, including intelligence and counterintelligence reports, otherwise the military won’t be able to respond to politicians’ shouts for help when worse comes to worst.
The future of Russian-Ukrainian relations in the second decade of the 21st century depends entirely on the Russian leadership, the wisdom of Ukrainian leaders, and the position of the EU and the USA. Unfortunately, the ongoing political game is strongly reminiscent of the one played against Ukraine in 1938-39, when the Munich Agreement and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact victimized Czechoslovakia and Poland. I do not want to believe that the 2010s have such a fate prepared for Ukraine, but one must not ignore such possibilities.
It is pointless to make predictions a la Newsweek, concerning coups in Pakistan and Venezuela, a boom in Brazil, or the death of Fidel Castro.
It is much more difficult to plunge into the dark intricacies of the future, having strategic glimpses of unexpected explosions that change the destiny of humankind, as in the case of the Soviet Union’s sudden collapse. It is hard to be a prophet or cruel Cassandra, the bearer of bad news. Yet it seems that the conflicts of the 2000s
— obvious, hidden or “frozen” — can lead to the emergence of a new nuclear force in the Middle East (Iran – Israel), in the second decade of the 21st century. Other hotspots include Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Caucasus and Central Asia, which will attempt to get out from under Russian oil and gas “burns”, as did Turkmenistan, which extended a pipeline to China. You can not exclude the collapse of NATO and the EU through the growth of nationalism, which could lead to an outbreak in the heart of Europe.
Any of these events would necessarily affect the security interests of Ukraine, and only adequate new leadership of the State can successfully defend the national interests (hopefully) of the country.
4. OPTIMISM VS. ANXIETY
The “zero” years began with more than just blood and terrorist attacks. Humankind had entered a new period marked by adjustment to a new world order and fundamental philosophical change. Against the background of television-stupefied audiences, new technologies, and primitive political mass culture, a bright beam of light was cast in 2001, when Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in the history of civilization, was generated. It now has over 10 million entries in 250 languages, being freely used by more than 340 million people around the globe — and this is just the beginning. This is a new world of artificial intelligence where each individual can enjoy a superior degree of freedom and free access to knowledge accumulated over the ages.
When a handful of Kyiv intellectuals gathered to help ward off a hostile takeover of the building accommodating the Ukrainian Encyclopedia editorial office (founded by Mykola Bazhan), they did so to reaffirm the right of anyone, anywhere in the world, to receive information, education, to become creative, to live a life free of violence.
This right makes the difference between humans and beasts, bestowing mankind with the joy of freedom, allowing people to make their choice of their own free will and expect that the next decade will not be as horrible as that of 1910-19.
