Much has been written of late about the West-Ukraine-Russia triangle. Ukraine, it seems, is viewed as a kind of a bridge between the cult of total success and the mysterious Russian soul, something which cannot be measured by generally accepted yardsticks. It is, however, the Ukrainians who view their country as a bridge. Our political neighbors take a different measure of our role, interpreting it their own ways.
A two-year old headline in a respectable French monthly Monde Diplomatique gives the bottom line of the European perception of Ukraine, “Ukraine: A Deadlocked Society.”
The European press typically writes about
— hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainian prostitutes in the West;
— the flood of illegal guest workers from Ukraine;
— Ukraine serving as an easy channel for immigrants from Asia and Africa to Europe; Ukraine as a venue for the future AIDS epidemic, increased drug-addiction, and crime;
— a country of unpredictable laws and unbearable investment climate; and
— a country where democracy is curtailed and the press is harassed and censored.
Given this uncomplimentary picture, would anyone be surprised by the West Europe’s intentions to build a new Iron Curtain along the Schengen corridor? The recent Ukraine-EU summit in Paris made it clear that any of Ukraine’s plans for the economic integration into EU could be abandoned for the time being. Ukraine is constantly being lectured to abide by EU quotas on the import of metal scrap and textiles (EU imposed these quotas to protect its domestic markets) and to cancel Ukraine’s export duty on sun- flower seeds. The only area where there is some cooperation is the military sector, but Ukraine’s defense industry is excluded. The saga with the Antonov 7X plane project is abundant evidence of such policy.
The picture of Ukraine as painted by our big northeastern neighbor’s mass media is none the better, including such standard tags as:
— the former younger brother who will always live with an eye to NATO, no matter how much you feed him;
— the country which is poking sticks in the wheels of Russia’s naval base located in the “city of the Russian glory,” Sevastopol and is laying claims to Russia’s segment of the world arms markets.
Suffice it to have a street chat with Russians living in Ukraine on everyday matters to realize the effectiveness of Russia’s brainwashing campaign in this country, which had succeeded in building up a steady hostility to things Ukrainian in all layers of our society.
WHO ARE THE JUDGES?
That is the question which springs to mind on acquainting oneself with such dreadful pictures of Ukraine as have been painted by the Western and Russian mass media, regardless of the extent of its truthfulness (which, honestly, is pretty high, although one cannot miss the fact that the information is not complete and thus biased).
Incidentally, where do Ukrainian ladies of the night go? Half to the soft-spoken West — Germany, Italy, the Netherlands. Do you want to say there is no corruption there? Not petty corruption, to be sure. When the United States tried to assess the damage from lost contracts which their Western European partners snatched from under Uncle Sam’s beard due to higher kickbacks, The International Herald Tribune story named the “ modest” figure of $100 billion.
The West did not bat an eye when Yugoslavia was turned into a testing ground for state-of-the art weaponry without any appropriate UN sanctions. The West turned a blind eye to the extermination of his own people by Indonesia’s President Sukharto, and similarly ignoring Turkey’s massacre of the Kurds. Double standards, triple standards... The West and, specifically, the United States have imposed a new world order for a bunch of fabulously rich and a mass of undernourished or starving, with the interests of the have-nots well down on the list of priorities. Let us recall how in 1992 the then US president refused to sign a UN convention on biological diversity which provided for the transfer of environmentally safe technologies to the developing countries which would have restricted the patent rights of the US-based multinational corporations. Why should any country’s natural environment be improved at the cost of one’s own rightful profits? Is it no business of the West that the existing global economic system prevents the Third World countries from catching up with the technological level of the G-7? The world money function of the West’s major currencies is a Jesuitical element in the mentioned global system, Russia’s analyst Aleksandr Kozenko writes (Politika, No. 40, September 2000), allowing the West to sponge on the material assets of most other countries. With the cash mass of Western countries exceeding the cost of their material resources, Third World states borrowed these reserves at a loss to themselves in exchange for their material higher- cost assets with the result that now their national wealth is being gradually siphoned off to the West. Russia is no windfall at all and hardly a sample of a balanced democracy, as the concentration of the levers of state power President Vladimir Putin has reached absolute proportions. Putin has planted his representatives in the regions to limit the authority of governors and to suppress the oligarchs, especially those who do not want to toe his line. As Yevhen Vovk, a political analyst for the Spadshchina (Legacy) Fund writes, “Putin apparently wants to combine the Asiatic and the Latin American government models.” While Sergei Karaganov, director of the Russia Federation Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, believes that the essence of Putin’s economic policy is “to renationalize property by the state.” All this exists despite the loudly voiced declarations about the wish to implement market reforms. Russia’s oligarchs continue to worm their way into Ukraine’s economic space trying to acquire control over the country’s blue chip aluminum, gas trading, oil refining, and steel enterprises.
HOW COULD THE SHARP ANGLES BE MADE BLUNT?
These are the angles in the Ukraine-Russia-West triangle. Contrary to the traditional geometry rules, all these angles are sharply edged and uncomfortable. Such is the triangular wheel using which Ukraine intends to take a ride to the global geopolitical space. Such a wheel would look all right only in pictures drawn by abstract artists. Its mechanical performance leaves much to be desired.
Following the resignation of a pro-Western foreign minister, analysts forecast that Ukraine’s foreign policy will become more Russia-oriented, leaving the West a secondary partner.
However, no quantitative or spatial changes can bring about qualitative ones and lead to a better situation. The starting point is definitely Ukraine itself. It is in this country that we can see to it that there is a single powerful pragmatic foreign policy vector, not a set of mutually incompatible foreign policy priorities. The task is to create normal conditions for small and medium business. Ukraine has no better way for the primary accumulation of capital. For Ukraine, this is basically the agricultural and processing sectors.
It is high time the government stopped beating the dead horse of Ukraine’s mammoth and obsolescent enterprises of the Socialist era which consume oceans of energy. Recall the economic wonders of China, South Korea, and the ever- present Japan in the sixties and seventies. Many countries of the world have got on their feet due to consumer goods production.
India is gaining a positive profile due to its well-balanced training program for computer experts. There is much money here for Ukraine in this area. I read on Business Wire October 5 a segment about an American company located in Ashland, a town near Boston. The town’s prosperity is based on the work of the Kyiv-educated computer wizards. When shall we start to make full use of Ukraine’s talent?
We need a clear-cut and realistic program aimed at overcoming the present socioeconomic slump, a program based on Ukraine’s realities. Only such a program can make both the West and Russia perceive Ukraine as a reliable business partner who honors its commitments and can realistically evaluate what future developments might be.
So far, we do not have any such program. And this spells further rough going for Ukraine’s foreign policy triangular wheel over modern history’s potholes.
