How Possible is a Ukrainian Paradox?

There has been so much going on in the last couple of weeks, it was difficult to know what to write.  However, the events in the Ukraine with a presidential election vote have led some to cast a worrying glance to eastward.  A great deal has been spoken with regards to the motives and designs of Russian President Vladimir Putin, including a couple of articles on this blog.  However, with the election, the question has to be asked about the intent and abilities of the new Ukrainian president.  How does one live next to a ravenous neighbor like Russia?  The Ukraine might want to consider the path taken by Finland as suggested by some but such a path is fraught with danger.

Former Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau once compared his country’s proximity to the U.S. with sleeping with an elephant – always keeping one eye open in the event it rolls over in the middle of the night.  The Ukraine finds itself in a similar situation.  In the years after World War II, Finland under the leadership of Juho Paasikivi and Urho Kekkonen navigated its relationship with the Soviet Union through a policy of capitulation and deference while maintaining its independence.  Certainly when one compares Finland to the besieged countries of Eastern Europe, the Finns held a special status.  The Ukraine’s political leaders can certainly endeavor to mollify the Russians but the country lacks the military strength and the united population that Finland enjoyed.   

The Ukrainian government must consider this because as the leadership of the U.S. and Europe are presently constituted, there is little chance that the former Soviet republic would get military help in the event of an invasion.  Unless the Ukrainians can build up a military that can force the Russians to hesitate, a la Finland or Cold War-era Yugoslavia, they must accept Russian dominance.  By recent news accounts, the new president of the Ukraine is the chocolatier magnet Petro Poroshenko and giving his connections in the eastern part of the country, he can follow the Finnish model of first placating the Russians.  First, he must reject NATO.  The Ukraine joining NATO is not going to happen without a more aggressive Russia knocking on its doors.  Mr. Poroshenko can then incorporate a neutral approach – to become the new Switzerland of Europe.  This would require the Ukraine to also reject military cooperation with the Russians but in order to build trust with its eastern neighbors.  The more committed to neutrality the Ukraine is, the less concerned the Russians will be.   

Post World War II, the Finns accepted the idea that the Soviets needed to be appeased.  Finland had a fairly united population which made the moves easier if not still controversial.  President Kekkonen’s “Finnish Paradox” which stated the closer Finland grew towards Russia, the freer they would be can only be achieved with a unified population.  It is just not there for the Ukraine.  For one, the vast majority of Ukrainians are more westward focused.  We are not talking about a large segment of the population that is supporting the thugs in the east – even in the east.  If, however, the new president made some innocuous gestures to the Russians, that might help alleviate tensions.  President-elect Poroshenko could renew natural gas talks with the President Putin and promise to regulate the country’s interactions with the European Union.  The western, pro-Europe Ukrainians will be nervous but there is a new reality with which to deal.  

Though some pundits have brought up Finland, it is not a fit here.  The Ukraine does not have the military prowess nor the united population that allowed Finland to remain more-or-less independent throughout the Cold War.  However, there are political maneuverings and neutrality options that could ease the concern of the Russians.  This said with the understanding that the U.S. and the Europeans have neither the will nor the leadership to take a stronger stance.  Given the limited options available to the Ukraine, it could be the best course of action to take.

Shadows of Munich

In 1938, a group of diplomats and leaders met in Munich, Germany.  The occasion was Adolf Hitler’s claim on the western part of Czechoslovakia – the Sudetenland.  Germany, Italy, France and the United Kingdom were represented.  The Czechs were not there; a group forced to watch in the background as their country was torn apart for the sake of peace.  The Americans were there, unofficially in the form of U.S. ambassador Joseph Kennedy, and quietly went along with the agreement.  That pact would eventually give way to the wisdom that appeasement only makes the aggressor stronger.  Against this axiom, the European powers and the U.S. made the ravenous Russian beast stronger and the implications could be quite dire. 

Since the showdown in the Crimea, events that smack of the demands for breathing room by the Nazi government, the Russians have grown increasingly aggressive towards its former state.  Russia has also tacitly approved of the actions of pro-Russian mobs who, throughout eastern Ukraine, have been pushing buttons, pushing around Ukrainian authorities and generally increasing tensions throughout the region.  The Europeans and the Americans have been content with sanctions in hopes that Mr. Putin will realize the folly of his ambitions.  However, the Russian president has been making threats of his own in the form of the gas supply to the Europeans.  If European leadership and President Obama cannot think beyond sanctions, I fear history might repeat itself.  

In the last couple of days and after weeks of pro-Russian gangs running rough-shod over the Ukrainian civil government, the Ukrainian forces struck back in Slovyansk, in the eastern part of the country.  This follows attempts by the government to mollify pro-Russian protestors with the promise of more autonomy.  However, as the mobs’ takeover increased and solidified, special forces were employed to eject the protestors from government and police buildings as well as destroy barricades and checkpoints.  The Ukrainian government has been placed in a winless scenario as pro-Russian forces within the country have created havoc and Russian forces along the border have orchestrated more threats and pressures.  

This past weekend, Sen. John McCain lambasted the president for an increasingly weak and irrelevant international voice, suggesting that sanctions are not enough.  He further suggested that what the president and the Europeans need to do is supply intelligence and weapons to the embattled government.  However, that is not happening.  President Obama has no intention to place troops on the ground as there is little to no support for such a measure in the U.S. but one must wonder why the president has seldom discussed this situation at length.  As the Democrats prepare for the 2014 mid-term elections and the party seeks to salvage those Democrats, especially in the Senate, whose re-election efforts are jeopardized, the attention seems to have drifted away from international concerns.

As an historian, I do not make references to the Nazis and Germany’s pre-World War II behavior lightly.  It is too often referred to and often, incorrectly.  However, given the level of inaction and lack of measures taken by the western powers, it does make one wonder how this farce will eventually play out.  The president has often suggested his uneasiness with the notion of the U.S. as a superpower and the authority and force that comes along.  However, it is countries like the U.S., along with the European powers, which share a responsibility.  Teddy Roosevelt said it was of little use arguing that we hold an international presence but what was most important, is what we did with the duty.  I fear we are ignoring those obligations and the Ukraine will be only the first victim. 

Effectual Man, Ineffectual President

The Presidential Series – Jimmy Carter, the 39^th President of the United States
                                         Democrat, 1977-81

Let us learn together and laugh together and work together and pray together, confident that in the end we will triumph together in the right.

            President Jimmy Carter, Inaugural Address, 20 January 1977

In committing to do a series on various U.S. presidents, it might seem odd and ideologically backwards (considering my blog’s orientation) to begin with the 39^th president.  However, Jimmy Carter as president from 1977 until 1981 is one of our more interesting chief executives.  He was a one-term governor of a small southern state who promised to bring a more decent and morally guided focus to the job of the presidency.  His administration is equally considered one of unprecedented diplomatic success and an abject failure.  Love him or hate him, I’ve met few who are indifferent regarding President Jimmy Carter. 

Most presidents are products of events beyond their control – Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War; Grover Cleveland and the Panic of 1893; Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression; Jimmy Carter and…well…pick one.  Upon entering office, he swore to bring honesty and integrity back to the White House after the tumultuous and frequently illegal administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.  He said that if he were ever caught in a lie, he wanted to be escorted out of the White House immediately.  He was true to his roots as seen during the 1976 campaign when he would return to Georgia every weekend to teach Sunday School class at his home church.  He was different from any other president who took that mantle of responsibility.    

As president, he struggled with domestic issues.  The energy crisis that first perplexed Richard Nixon caused increased grumbling and discontent with a population waiting in line for gas.  He further aggravated the masses with a speech that lectured the Americans on their role in the crisis.  It did not go over well.  His “malaise speech” is one of the defining moments of his presidency.  Later, his presidency was challenged with a nuclear power plant meltdown on Three Mile Island in the middle of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.  Much was made of his navy training as a nuclear engineer but his hands were largely tied as various experts desperately tried to determine what was wrong.  Bravely or foolhardily, he went to the nuclear power plant to speak with experts, giving the impression that things were under control.  A core meltdown was avoided but nuclear energy would suffer a setback it is only now crawling out from under.

Yet, it would be President Carter’s actions in foreign policy that would cement his legacy.  While he was instrumental in the historical Camp David Accords, bringing together Egypt and Israel, a point that cannot be dismissed lightly, and pushing through a divided Congress the Panama Canal treaty, he is remembered by historians as being weak when Iranian revolutionaries took 56 American hostages in Tehran and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan.  He attempted to negotiate with the Iranians but giving asylum to the former shah of Iran poisoned the negotiations.  It seemed Mr. Carter could not muster a response other than strongly-worded missives.  His one attempt at rescue was an overthought, overcomplicated plan that fell apart in the Iranian desert.  Threats and boycotts of Soviet action in Afghanistan had little impact.  The Russians were simply not listening. 

President Carter’s trouble was on display this past week during an interview with Charlie Rose.  Commenting on the situation in the Ukraine and responding to the question of whether President Putin would make a grab for eastern Ukraine, the soon 90-year-old President Carter said it would not happen.  “Mr. Putin said he would not move on eastern Ukraine.  Why would he lie?”  Nothing could better illustrate the president’s naïveté – an attitude that hampered his efforts as president.  His moral compass failed to see the duplicity in others.  Why would they lie?  Why wouldn’t they?  

Reading a list of his achievements prior to and after his presidency, it is easy to see what a decent individual Mr. Carter is. Indeed, if that alone were enough, he could have been one of our greatest presidents.  Yet like Woodrow Wilson, he thought his moral paradigm would influence others – it did as less scrupulous men took advantage of what they perceived as weakness.  Jimmy Carter was trounced in the 1980 campaign by Ronald Reagan and he soon left the lime light.  However, he did not stop working.  President Carter is a good man.  He was just an ineffectual president.