Ukraine: is a diplomatic solution still possible?

Rome, 28 March 2014

 

Almost a month since protesters in Kiev forced President Viktor Yanukovich to flee for his life to southern Russia and almost a fortnight since Crimea’s referendum on secession, the crisis in Ukraine looks no closer to resolution. On the contrary, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision last week formally to annexe Crimea to the Russian Federation, and the sanctions which the United States and the countries of the European Union have imposed—albeit some more reluctantly than others—in response, reflect a hardening of positions on both sides.

Western leaders still speak hopefully of a ‘diplomatic solution’, but there was little evidence of a desire to talk in the G-8’s suspension on Monday of Russia from its meetings or President Obama’s spirited rejection in Brussels of the reasons Russia has advanced for its actions. With Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s eastern borders, war seems not less likely, but more.

In his Brussels speech, Mr Obama claimed boldly that ‘no amount of propaganda can make right what the world knows to be wrong’. This is a funny way to go about diplomacy. A precondition for negotiations is an understanding of your opponent’s position, a willingness to put yourself in his or her shoes and see the issue under contention from his or her point of view. The problem is that Western leaders have rarely given the impression of taking Russia’s position or its concerns seriously. By failing to do so, they share a large share of the blame for the polarization that has since resulted.

When, for example, Russia declares—as it has done for over two decades—that it identifies a core national interest in Ukraine not acceding to either NATO or the EU, or that Crimea, the home of its most important fleet, is of key strategic value to it, it’s not announcing a global challenge to democratic values or its intention to upend the international system: it’s just doing what all countries do and wondering why nobody in the White House or Brussels is listening. Neither, in responding to Russia’s claims, is the West being asked to make a moral or ethical judgement about the quality of Russian democracy or the accounting practices of its leaders. It’s simply being asked to treat Russia’s interests as a state with the same respect it seeks for its own.

The point is that, for all the rhetoric about democracy and international law, the West is asking Russia to part with far more of its national security than the United States, or any other Western country, would be prepared itself to do. Consider, for example, that when the United States announces, as it has, the deployment of more F-14 and F-16 fighter jets to Poland and Estonia, American pilots will, in the latter case, be patrolling the skies a mere 150km from Russia’s second city and former capital, St Petersburg. Were Russian planes based anywhere near as close to Los Angeles, Chicago or Dallas, the United States would protest furiously.

The fifty-six-year old American embargo on Cuba demonstrates the kind of punishment the United States is prepared to impose on neighbours who choose their foreign partners wrongly. In fact, the embargo, which America still enforces and which cuts off almost all American trade with the country, was Washington’s fall back after its preferred option—invasion—was scuttled at the Bay of Pigs. This ought to throw Russia’s threatened gas cut-off to Ukraine into some relief, without excusing either.