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Minneapolis Star Tribune
Feb 13 2015
On Ukraine, the best first step is to form a strategy
by: ROSS WILSON
It might be a good idea to send arms, but figure out what road we'd be on.
Arming Ukraine, as this newspaper, prominent Washington think tanks
and Sen. John McCain have argued, may be right. The case for doing so
appears compelling. The country is being savaged by a bullying Russia,
thousands are dying, and President Vladimir Putin's redrawing of
political boundaries is violating the political order in Europe.
However, the matter of arming or not arming the authorities in Kiev
ends up being the wrong issue, or at least a premature one. What
should come first is some thinking through of the broader problem of
Russia and its neighbors, where American interests lie, and what
capabilities we have. These represent the harder work of formulating a
strategy.
Putin has one.
He aims to promote Russia's welfare and role in the world by keeping
its neighbors away from the West. No more creep of the European Union
or NATO further into the former Soviet bloc, which his foreign
minister, Sergey Lavrov, declared in 2008 to be Russia's zone of
"privileged interest." Roughing up and punishing Ukraine is a means to
that end. It sends a blunt message to all of the neighbors about where
their interests had better lie -- or else. Seemingly over-the-top
Russian actions caution Europeans, whose reluctance to challenge
Moscow goes all the way back to German unification in 1990 and before,
against further outreach to the east.
That's what the mauling of Georgia was about in 2008. It's why Moscow
has supported criminal separatists in tiny Moldova since 1991. These
priorities lie behind more subtle policies, too. Russia's arming of
both Azeri and Armenian forces around the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh
region reinforces the protagonists' dependence on it and therefore the
Kremlin's role in the Caucasus. Promoting a Eurasian Economic Union
that now includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan keeps them commercially focused on Russia and reduces their
options elsewhere. Putin's making nice to friendly regional autocrats
who dislike Western hectoring about human rights and democracy is an
easy gesture that fits this strategy, too.
Is arming Ukraine the right response? Maybe, but steps to do so should
flow from a broader policy and strategy regarding that country and
Russia. It is not enough to give arms to help Ukraine better protect
itself or to hope that doing so will convince Putin that aggression
will not go unchecked. What happens if this military aid is not
sufficient to make a difference -- what do we do then? What does
"checking" aggression mean, and where might it end? It isn't
appeasement or cowardice to insist on thinking through the
implications of confrontation with Russia in its back yard -- any more
than it would be wise blithely to disregard the risks of failing to
take a stand now against Kremlin aggression.
We need at least some semblance of a strategy on all this -- a plan of
action that relates what we would like to see with what our
capabilities are for realizing that outcome. It should address a
number of questions.
What are America's interests with respect to Ukraine, what are
Russia's and where are our trans-Atlantic allies? How should the fact
that the Kremlin retains thousands of nuclear warheads affect our
calculus? What are Ukraine's inherent attributes and problems, and how
can we affect those? Is that country sui generis, or should U.S.
policy also focus on Georgia and/or others among the former Soviet
states -- and, if so, which ones, and what do we then make of their
democratic and other failings? What other ways could we add to the
pressures Putin faces already -- with regard to Syria, Russia's energy
markets in Europe or even relations with China -- to influence his
behavior?
What risks elsewhere in the world -- for example, on the Iran nuclear
issue -- might we run by taking a more robust stance against Putin's
actions, and how can we mitigate these? If we lack sufficient military
or other instruments to affect developments, how can we add to our
capabilities and undermine the other side's? If there is a problem
with public support for a robust policy on Russia in the United States
and Europe, how can that be changed -- not in the firmament of partisan
politics, but in reality?
This is not to argue that military support for Ukraine is a bad idea.
It may be a very good idea. A compelling case can be made that the
United States and its trans-Atlantic allies need fundamentally and in
every way to resist Kremlin aggression and efforts to subjugate
Ukraine and other neighbors -- to recreate in some measure a Soviet
Union-like entity whose collapse 23 years ago represented a great
windfall for security and prosperity in Europe and all over the world.
But the U.S. government needs to have worked up some kind of strategy
on Russia and explained it to the American people. And if we're not
prepared to go a very considerable distance down the road of
confrontation with Russia, then we should be careful about adding to
expectations in Kiev that we may ultimately not be prepared to follow
through on.
Ross Wilson, a Minnesota International Center board director, served
as U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan during a 30-year career in
the U.S. Foreign Service.
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/291919321.html
Feb 13 2015
On Ukraine, the best first step is to form a strategy
by: ROSS WILSON
It might be a good idea to send arms, but figure out what road we'd be on.
Arming Ukraine, as this newspaper, prominent Washington think tanks
and Sen. John McCain have argued, may be right. The case for doing so
appears compelling. The country is being savaged by a bullying Russia,
thousands are dying, and President Vladimir Putin's redrawing of
political boundaries is violating the political order in Europe.
However, the matter of arming or not arming the authorities in Kiev
ends up being the wrong issue, or at least a premature one. What
should come first is some thinking through of the broader problem of
Russia and its neighbors, where American interests lie, and what
capabilities we have. These represent the harder work of formulating a
strategy.
Putin has one.
He aims to promote Russia's welfare and role in the world by keeping
its neighbors away from the West. No more creep of the European Union
or NATO further into the former Soviet bloc, which his foreign
minister, Sergey Lavrov, declared in 2008 to be Russia's zone of
"privileged interest." Roughing up and punishing Ukraine is a means to
that end. It sends a blunt message to all of the neighbors about where
their interests had better lie -- or else. Seemingly over-the-top
Russian actions caution Europeans, whose reluctance to challenge
Moscow goes all the way back to German unification in 1990 and before,
against further outreach to the east.
That's what the mauling of Georgia was about in 2008. It's why Moscow
has supported criminal separatists in tiny Moldova since 1991. These
priorities lie behind more subtle policies, too. Russia's arming of
both Azeri and Armenian forces around the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh
region reinforces the protagonists' dependence on it and therefore the
Kremlin's role in the Caucasus. Promoting a Eurasian Economic Union
that now includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan keeps them commercially focused on Russia and reduces their
options elsewhere. Putin's making nice to friendly regional autocrats
who dislike Western hectoring about human rights and democracy is an
easy gesture that fits this strategy, too.
Is arming Ukraine the right response? Maybe, but steps to do so should
flow from a broader policy and strategy regarding that country and
Russia. It is not enough to give arms to help Ukraine better protect
itself or to hope that doing so will convince Putin that aggression
will not go unchecked. What happens if this military aid is not
sufficient to make a difference -- what do we do then? What does
"checking" aggression mean, and where might it end? It isn't
appeasement or cowardice to insist on thinking through the
implications of confrontation with Russia in its back yard -- any more
than it would be wise blithely to disregard the risks of failing to
take a stand now against Kremlin aggression.
We need at least some semblance of a strategy on all this -- a plan of
action that relates what we would like to see with what our
capabilities are for realizing that outcome. It should address a
number of questions.
What are America's interests with respect to Ukraine, what are
Russia's and where are our trans-Atlantic allies? How should the fact
that the Kremlin retains thousands of nuclear warheads affect our
calculus? What are Ukraine's inherent attributes and problems, and how
can we affect those? Is that country sui generis, or should U.S.
policy also focus on Georgia and/or others among the former Soviet
states -- and, if so, which ones, and what do we then make of their
democratic and other failings? What other ways could we add to the
pressures Putin faces already -- with regard to Syria, Russia's energy
markets in Europe or even relations with China -- to influence his
behavior?
What risks elsewhere in the world -- for example, on the Iran nuclear
issue -- might we run by taking a more robust stance against Putin's
actions, and how can we mitigate these? If we lack sufficient military
or other instruments to affect developments, how can we add to our
capabilities and undermine the other side's? If there is a problem
with public support for a robust policy on Russia in the United States
and Europe, how can that be changed -- not in the firmament of partisan
politics, but in reality?
This is not to argue that military support for Ukraine is a bad idea.
It may be a very good idea. A compelling case can be made that the
United States and its trans-Atlantic allies need fundamentally and in
every way to resist Kremlin aggression and efforts to subjugate
Ukraine and other neighbors -- to recreate in some measure a Soviet
Union-like entity whose collapse 23 years ago represented a great
windfall for security and prosperity in Europe and all over the world.
But the U.S. government needs to have worked up some kind of strategy
on Russia and explained it to the American people. And if we're not
prepared to go a very considerable distance down the road of
confrontation with Russia, then we should be careful about adding to
expectations in Kiev that we may ultimately not be prepared to follow
through on.
Ross Wilson, a Minnesota International Center board director, served
as U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan during a 30-year career in
the U.S. Foreign Service.
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/291919321.html