When we examine the two major powers in the post-Soviet world, Russia and Ukraine, the situation is less chaotic but potentially more dangerous. Among the minor states, the post-imperial twilight has brought a persistent disorder and insecurity, a relative isolation from European and global politics, severe limits on economic growth, and political systems that curtail civil liberties and human possibilities.
In the major states, however, there is a superficial stability. There are significant populations and resources, and both Russia and Ukraine are connected to international markets and politics. The failure of Russia or Ukraine could produce secondary effects which could harm the Euro-Atlantic, and this is what seems to be happening.
In Ukraine, there are many of the same facets of Soviet political culture, but they have been assembled in a Ukrainian way to produce dysfunction at the political level rather an economic breakdown. Despite the lack of an IMF bailout, staggering gas prices, and lacking an agreement with the EU on free trade, Ukraine’s economy still functions. Grain, steel, coal, and pipes still get to market, and there is always the option of siphoning Russian gas from the pipelines. The same cannot be said for the political class, whose dysfunction is staggering.
Former President Kuchma once told me that the only thing that I needed to know about Ukrainian politics was that every major politician (Viktor Yanukovych, Viktor Yushchenko, Pavlo Lazarenko even Yulia Tymoshenko) worked in his Administration. The composition of the governing elite has been remarkably stable over time. And all have governed in much the same way as the rest of the elite: with a combination of populist rhetoric, questionable financial deals, redistribution of property by the state, selective prosecution, and consummate skill in playing audiences in East and West off against each other.
Since Ukraine’s independence, a form of the Regions Party has won the vast majority of elections. The permanence of a Regions majority reflects the consistency of a political culture with a distinct hierarchy of interests: First, the oligarchic business groups insist that the government provide political stability for them to pursue business. Second, they want the state to provide subsidies, pensions, and basic services to ordinary Ukrainians to prevent social disorder, which is bad for business. Third, the oligarchs want protection from the greed of the state, for which they are prepared to pay by ceding claims to the Russian gas trade from which the governing elite can enrich itself. Under President Kuchma, this system worked imperfectly most of the time, but it began to break down during the endlessly acrimonious political divorce of Victor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko.
The tipping point was reached in January 2009 when then-Prime Minister Tymoshenko, under pressure of the approaching Presidential Elections, signed an exorbitant gas contract with then-Prime Minister Putin. Tymoshenko agreed to buy a large amount of gas at by far the highest price in Europe on a “Take it or pay for it all anyway” basis. Russia picked up a 60 billion dollars windfall over European market prices which it can now ill-afford to give up. And Ukrainian business picked up an annual bill for 6 billion dollars in additional energy costs which it can ill-afford to pay.
To shorten a long story, the gas deal led directly to the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko when power changed hands to Yanukovych in 2010 and to the enduring political crisis with Europe which continues to this day. But, the dramatic rise in gas prices also accelerated the breakdown of the post-Soviet political system.
First, with gas prices around 480 dollars for the next ten years, the oligarchic business groups can no longer make money, stability or not. Second, with a sliding economy and the alienation of Europe, the government in Kyiv cannot meet the social needs of average Ukrainians. Finally, with Russia bypassing the leaky and corrupt Ukrainian pipelines, the state cannot enrich itself and, therefore, begins to steal from foreign investors and Ukrainian business.
Here again, the foundation of the post-Cold War Ukrainian state is starting to give way. The political culture which this generation of Ukrainian leaders inherited from the Soviet Empire proved an unreliable basis for a political system bordering on the prosperous and politically powerful European Union. Increasingly, the Ukrainian government cannot meet the demands of its core constituencies nor can it satisfy the conditions which Europeans require for access to their markets and institutions.
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If Vienna is anything like Washington, the news that the two most consequential states of the post-Soviet world are teetering on the precipice will not engender a period of soul-searching among policymakers. Editorial pages will not ask, “How could we have handled Russia and Ukraine so badly?”
To the contrary, democracy promoters and human rights advocates will be delighted that Yanukovych’s Ukraine may fall apart. Hardliners in both parties in Washington will be delighted that Gazprom is going out of business and that the gates of Moscow will soon be thrown open to the corporate armies of the West.
In terms of public opinion, our misplaced enthusiasm for the various hues of revolutionary change in 2004-05 has been replaced by a constituency for indifference about what becomes of Russia and Ukraine. Obviously, this complacency is occasioned by our profound disappointment with political developments throughout the post-Soviet world, but it is reinforced by serious geo-economic factors. In Washington, there is the view that our newly discovered energy independence makes the post-Soviet world less important, that our recessionary economy limits our interests in Europe, and that the rise of Asia commands our attention elsewhere.
It is this final thought that links the period of irrational exuberance to the current period of withdrawal and complacency. In the course of less than a decade, Western policymakers first believed that democracy would necessarily triumph in the post-Soviet world, and then became firmly convinced that decline and disintegration were just as inevitable. In the first instance, certainty was advanced as a reason for political activism and, in the second instance, as the justification for diplomatic inaction.
In both policies, we are misinterpreting the East. The dire straits of the post-Soviet world are at a minimum bad news for Europe and United States. Conceivably, a Great Recession in Russia and Ukraine could be disastrous for the West. Our influence over political developments in Ukraine will not increase; it will disappear altogether. A breakdown in Putin’s economy will not produce a more docile and studious Russia, it will produce a more unpredictable and dangerous neighbor.
For many years, most Americans thought that the weakening of Russia both politically and economically would be a pretty good thing. As this outcome becomes more than a theoretical possibility, it does not look nearly so attractive. A breakdown inside Russia would return Russia to 1991. Russian energy supply would become more unreliable. Germany would have to write off its sizable foreign direct investment in the East, which would be a massive loss to German banks. EU-Russian trade would drop precipitously. Europe would enter a more profound recession. China may see its advantage in the Far East. Certainly, the Chinese will claim the energy resources in Turkmenistan and Central Asia. At a minimum, the loss of Russian energy, trade, and economic growth will put a gigantic hole in the Euro-Atlantic system and will retard recovery on both sides of the Atlantic.
In short, a functioning and prosperous twilight Russia wherein we suffer the annoyances of post-Soviet political culture and persistent corruption is far preferable to a moonless economic midnight stretching from the Carpathians to the border of China.
The situation in Ukraine is not much different. No country has ever been the bemused recipient of more Western sermonizing and proven less capable of an appropriate response, than Ukraine. But our single-minded pursuit of shared political values has neither engendered these values nor has it resulted in freeing the former Prime Minister from prison.
The first problem lies in selecting a test case to summarize all the differences the West has with the lamentable political and human rights standards of Ukraine. An emotional case such as Tymoshenko’s more often than not leads to the alienation of the West and the isolation of the country in question rather than to a breakthrough on political values. More to the point, the test case we had forced upon us in Ukraine has not served to accomplish our objectives or protect our interests. While Tymoshenko should certainly be released, the West has other interests in Ukraine at least as important as the fate of a particular Ukrainian politician. After all, what is the point of making a woman whom we do not really know the threshold condition for larger interests which we have not yet defined?
And this is the question that divides Europe in the summer of 2013. On the one hand, the politically suspect prosecution of Tymoshenko is an affront to Western values. On the other hand, rejecting Ukraine on political grounds (and implicitly supporting the legality of the Russian gas contract) pushes Ukraine back to Russia or into bankruptcy or both.
Few European politicians want a choice between “Abandoning a defenseless woman or re-constituting the Soviet Union.” Certainly not President Jose Manuel Barroso who picked up the phone in February to talk things over with President Viktor Yanukovych. It is too early to say whether these talks will produce more attractive choices at Vilnius, but Barroso has already negated Chancellor Angela Merkel’s stern policy on shared values.
It seems that Merkel was mistaken. The Europe Union seems prepared to be perfectly appalled by the judicial mistakes of the Yanukovych government and still willing to compete aggressively with Russia for the political affection of Ukraine. Expressed in another way, the European Union seems to have chosen a circumscribed engagement policy over a political confrontation ending in sanctions.
Without doubt, we have grossly misinterpreted the politics of Europe’s East after the fall of the Soviet Union. We were wrong to think that a wholly new political system had appeared overnight across the Eurasian landmass so different from its Soviet predecessor that even the term “post-Soviet” was misleading. We were wrong to assume that the maturation of these nascent democracies would proceed in much the same way that Western Europe developed after World War II or Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And, we were completely wrong to see the Color Revolutions as the reflections of our own political imagination.
The post-Soviet world is the legacy of the Czarist and Soviet empires that preceded it and remains a rough fabric sewn piecemeal from the tatters of older imperial culture. For twenty years, this world has not developed as our models predicted, and our policies and well-intended advice have had the opposite of their intended results. As a consequence, our geopolitical influence and the reach of our institutions have declined inexorably over the past two decades.
Now, we have a stark policy choice. Do we allow the two leading states in the post-Soviet world to enter into crises likely to bring the post-Soviet period to an end, and then just hope for the best? Or, do we now accept that political cultures change over centuries (not merely with the fall of an empire) and that the democratic change we hope will come to the post-Soviet world will arrive over decades of trade, association, and cultural exchange? If the latter, we will have to accept that Putin will never share our view of human rights and political values. If the latter, we will not to be able to sacrifice relations with 43 million Ukrainians over a single court case despite our sympathies.
It seems to me that the failure of the West after the fall of the Soviet Union was first indifference and then the inflation of our expectations beyond what was politically conceivable for the post-Soviet states. What should be our objective is an extended period of limited engagement with the most promising of the post-Soviet states. This engagement will take place in areas of agreement: trade, security, conflict resolution. In this manner we can gradually shape new states – possibly even European states – in the post-imperial twilight. If we decline this chance through pique or malice, Norman Davies warns us that it could be five hundred years before a new culture appears to replace the hapless, thuggish, but nonetheless imitative barbarians.
No doubt there are difficult choices to be made in striking the right balance between the imperative of long-term engagement and the protection of our values in the course of engagement. This predicament was anticipated long ago by the poet Cavafy who asked:
Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
In this sense, Europe is substantially ahead of the United States in recognizing that whatever happens in the post-Soviet twilight will begin with people who do not share our values: the “barbarians,” for lack of a better word. Nothing that will happen to the barbarians or to their fragile world is foreordained or inevitable. Nevertheless, their political culture will be shaped and redirected over long periods of time by the influences of trade, travel, language, and education. Indeed, the sum of these soft, liberal forces has been known to change political culture. This is a kind of solution.
