October 16 marked the 45th anniversary of the death of the distinguished American politician Gen. George Marshall. He served as Chief Military Aide to US Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, but won international acclaim as the author of the plan to assist European nations in rebuilding their economies and political modernization in the wake of World War Two, which came to be known as the Marshall Plan and earned Gen. Marshall the 1953 Nobel Peace Prize. After the collapse of the USSR, Western financial aid was once again channeled into CIS countries. American foundations provide grants to civic organizations committed to building a civil society. The European Union assists neighboring countries with technological development through its TACIS program. Yet many experts claim that the complex nature of democratic transformations has been underestimated in both Ukraine and the West. As a post- genocidal nation, Ukraine needed its own Marshall Plan. In recent times the West has been complaining with increasing frequency that Ukraine’s democratic and economic reforms are not progressing as intensively as expected. What are the reasons behind this? Where did the West go wrong in its policy toward Ukraine? The Day approached several independent experts with this question.
Janusz ONYSZKIEWICZ, Vice President of the European Parliament:
“The Western countries underestimated the importance of explaining to Ukraine its prospects for EU and NATO membership and giving some definitive signals in this connection. But it’s worth noting another important aspect, i.e., the fact that accession to the EU is advantageous, yet very complex. At the same time, accession to NATO is much simpler, as it requires compliance only with political criteria. It is not necessary to live up to economic standards to join NATO. I therefore believe that Ukraine stands a good chance of joining NATO. Accession to the EU could be the next stage. Thus, the West’s biggest mistake is that it hasn’t given Ukraine any signal that soon it can become a NATO member. Moreover, there have been too few signals to indicate that the EU’s door is open to Ukraine. If accession talks begin with Turkey, Ukraine will have every right to call the EU eccentric in classing Turkey as a European country while shutting out Ukraine.”
Jerzy Marek NOWAKOWSKI, editor of the foreign affairs section at the Polish weekly Wprost:
“The West views Ukraine from a slightly different perspective than Poland or Ukraine itself. Two years ago I was leafing through the travel section of an American magazine. The ads for trips to the East featured the Baltic nations, Georgia, and Armenia, while Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were featured under a common entry of ‘travel to Russia.’ To some extent this reflects the Western attitude toward Ukraine. The West does not pay enough attention to Ukraine. Aside from a limited number of political elite representatives, Western countries are not aware of Ukraine’s historic role. After all, the West views the entire post-Soviet space through the prism of its relationship with Russia. The West has made the mistake of no longer treating Ukraine as a potential partner. But Ukraine itself did too little to attract attention. What little attention the West did focus on Ukraine was exclusively in connection with shady deals, murders of journalists, etc. As a result, all this has created a certain image for Ukraine, and we Poles, Ukraine’s good friends, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, have failed to convince the world that Ukraine is part of the Western community. This is the biggest mistake with respect to Ukraine.
“As for Poland’s policy, which is also part of Western policy, our biggest mistake has been the policy of gestures instead of a policy of concrete deeds. There has been too little economic cooperation, too few joint initiatives — economic, educational, and political. Instead, there have been too many symbolic political gestures.
“Today the West is pursuing a policy of rejecting Ukraine, as the latter is turning its back on the West. Since Ukrainian politics are currently seesawing between West and East, the less Ukraine looks toward the West, the less interest the latter will show. This is obvious even in the ongoing presidential campaign. Unfortunately, I can’t see that the West is having a significant influence on it. Many politicians find it not to their advantage, because they feel more comfortable dealing with Russia instead of bothering to find out who else is in the East besides Russia. Yet Poland has a different view because we are Ukraine’s neighbors and know of the consequences of Ukraine being ruled from abroad.”
Yury KOCHUBEI, president of the Ukrainian Foreign Policy Society:
“The West has made mistakes with respect to Ukraine and continues to do so. This is primarily due to the fact that it knew and still knows very little about Ukraine even in its fourteenth year of independence. First, it is not aware of Ukraine’s potential as a country in the global, and primarily European, civilization. This is due to the fact that for the past three centuries Ukraine was in a state of colonial dependence, with the colonists doing a good job of preventing everybody from learning anything about it, and about most of Russia’s regions as well. Besides, the West had the wrong idea about Ukraine’s possible role in the resolution of present-day international problems. After all Ukraine can help find the balance that Europe is looking for. The Europeans’ mistake is that they have a faulty understanding of their own interests, as they are not inclined to think that Ukraine belongs with the European nations. But if they want to build another pole in the world — a European pole — Ukraine must be in this pole. So today it seems strange for Ukraine to be outside the process of building the European identity.”
Oleksandr SUSHKO, director of the Center for Peace, Conversion, and Foreign Policy of Ukraine:
“For some time the West believed in a process of transition from the Communist past to a bright future of democracy and market economy, and that this process was inevitable. It was all a matter of speed and depth of transformations. In any case, this transition from totalitarianism to democracy was regarded as linear progress. However, a whole group of post-Communist nations, including Ukraine, apparently do not quite match the theory of democratic transition. Now the West is facing the dilemma of what to do with the countries that did not justify hopes that they would become “normal” countries in the Western sense of the word. It was the mistake of adopting a simplified approach to the democratization of post-Communist countries that resulted in over-inflated expectations and wrong directions of cooperation in individual cases. As a result, much time was wasted.
“Such countries as Ukraine need somewhat different forms of influence from the West. For a long time structural reforms in the economy and politics were delayed in Ukraine because the Ukrainian ruling elite was not motivated enough to implement them. Domestic motivations did not suffice. So ten or twelve years ago the West could have provided clearer motives to Ukraine’s elite to pursue European-style reforms. For example, the West could have grouped Ukraine with the countries that were promised EU membership in the early 1990s, when they signed the so- called European Accords. Meanwhile, the West grouped Ukraine with the post-Soviet states, with which it signed a partnership and cooperation agreement without any prospects for membership. Thus, it was twelve years ago that the West, specifically the European Union, struck Ukraine off its lists. Of course, we can’t blame the West for the failure of market reforms in Ukraine. Yet some measure of responsibility must undoubtedly lie with those politicians in Western Europe, who at one time did not help Ukraine become part of a large-scale European project that would have culminated this year in Ukraine’s accession to the EU. Had the West adopted a different attitude toward Ukraine in the early nineties, perhaps the scenario of Ukraine’s political and economic development would also have been somewhat different.
“As for the West’s current policy toward Ukraine, judging from the interests of Ukraine as I see them — the interests of Ukraine in Europe as a community of which it is a part — one may say that the policy being pursued by the leading countries and centers of influence in the Western world is ineffective. The majority of Western goals in Ukraine are never achieved. Thus, one may say that this policy is weak, lacks focus and necessary resources, and therefore is ineffective as compared to Russia’s policy toward Ukraine. There are in fact many people in the West who think that Ukraine is unimportant. Discussions of this issue are underway there. In contrast, despite a multitude of approaches to the policy toward Ukraine there is general agreement in Russia that Ukraine is of vital importance to Russia. Europe does not have such an understanding, which is the reason why it always loses. In this case it is losing Ukraine, and hence part of its own future, thereby promoting the schism of Europe into a democratic West and an authoritarian East. This is laying the groundwork of a threat to the future of all of Europe.”
