PERSPECTIVES: Chess or poker, and Ukraine's global position (08/13/00)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

Chess or poker, and Ukraine's global position

In popular imagination, world leaders play chess on a global scale. When you look at history and see how dictators like Napoleon captured countries as if they were pawns, bishops and rooks, it's easy to see how that perception was born. I'm not much of a chess player, so I prefer to see global competition more as a poker game. Leaders push chips onto the table, then play their cards as they maneuver and bluff their counterparts from other countries. Whatever analogy you prefer, it's revealing to apply those perspectives to Bill Clinton's final trip to Europe as president and consider how the world's geopolitical architecture has changed in the last decade.

On June 1 Mr. Clinton stopped first in Portugal. Next it was off to Germany to accept the Charlemagne Prize and to attend a conference in Berlin on the 21st century. The president then flew to Moscow for a meeting with Vladimir Putin and to address the Duma before a quick trip to Kyiv on June 5 to meet with Ukraine's leaders and deliver a speech to the country's youth.

Europe has more than 30 countries. Why did the president choose these four to visit, and how did Ukraine get on that exclusive list? Portugal is easy. Prime Minister Antonio Guterres is currently president of the European Union, so it was just its turn. Germany is arguably Europe's most important country economically and its continued leadership is critical to the cause of European unity. Russia, although vastly weakened, is a formidable power because of its nuclear arsenal - second only to America's. And, finally, there's Ukraine. How come?

As far as I can see, there are two reasons. First: an independent Ukraine - more than any other country - contributes to a more stable, more peaceful, democratic Europe. The second reason: America owes Ukraine a great deal.

For a long time, to use a chess metaphor, Ukraine was a pawn on the Eurasian chessboard. For its neighbors - particularly Russia and Germany - Ukraine was a key factor in their imperial designs. That's why Ukraine became such a horrific battlefield for a good part of the 20th century. In World War I and the years immediately following, Imperial Russia, the German Reich, the Austrian Empire, Bolsheviks, Poles the Entente and, of course, independence-seeking Ukrainians fought for control of this rich and strategically located territory.

Twenty years later, in pursuit of his vision of a Thousand-Year Reich, Hitler invaded Poland as a gateway to Ukraine, which he projected as "Lebensraum" (living space) for a growing German nation. Those plans crashed at Stalingrad, Normandy and Kursk. Stalin and his successors picked up the pieces and applied Ukraine's manpower and resources to the Cold War struggle for global domination.

For the USSR and its expansionist policy, Ukraine was an irreplaceable linchpin. The Kremlin knew that all too well. That's why a disproportionate number of Ukrainians was in Soviet labor camps and prisons, and that's why the KGB waged such a vigorous campaign, including assassinations, against the Ukrainian diaspora in the West.

American policymakers - with the notable exception of Zbigniew Brzezinski - never understood Ukraine's critical role in the viability of the Soviet Union. It was literally days before the empire unraveled, when America's foreign policy elite finally discovered Ukraine's importance to the survival of the USSR. Apparently, they found the prospect of a world without the Soviet Union so unsettling that President George Bush himself went to Kyiv to cajole and lecture Ukrainians to stick with Moscow. That speech, dubbed "Chicken Kiev" by The New York Times columnist William Safire, was one of the biggest foreign policy gaffes in U.S. history.

Now, nine years later, President Clinton is well aware of the key role Ukraine plays on the Eurasian chessboard. Mindful of the lives and enormous resources America invested in the war against national socialism and communism, any president has to protect against the revival of imperialism in whatever form. Germany's aspirations for global domination died with Hitler in bombed-out Berlin. Most Russians, on the hand, are still nostalgic for their country's great power status. Incredibly, there are even those who yearn for Joseph Stalin.

The prospect of a renewed Russian Empire, of course, sends shivers down the spines of Poles, Balts and other Europeans. Ukraine, therefore, must remain independent if Russia is to turn from empire toward democracy. In the global chess game that an American president plays, Mr. Clinton went to Kyiv to show Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin and all the world that Ukraine's future as an independent country is important to America.

President Clinton's visit was also payment on the debt America owes Ukraine. Forgive me if I mix metaphors, but when the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine ceased to be a pawn and, instead, as the world's third largest nuclear power, took a seat at the international poker table. Most of those weapons were in the form of missiles aimed at the United States and its NATO allies.

In a fateful decision no other leader has ever made, President Kravchuk then pushed a pile of chips on the table - Ukraine's entire nuclear arsenal - and bet his country's future on a close relationship with the United States. The price was the elimination of all his nukes, knowing full well that Russia - Ukraine's age-old enemy - continued to deploy a vast array of nuclear arms.

Ukraine's decision to give up its nuclear weapons has contributed immeasurably to America's and the world's security. In the short term, at least, it has contributed to Ukraine's security as well. The United States - the world's only superpower - brought Ukraine into the NATO-sponsored Partnership for Peace, provided generous levels of foreign aid, gave support in International Monetary Fund negotiations and sent unmistakable signals to Russia to back off on territorial claims or from applying military-economic pressure on Ukraine.

That's what Bill Clinton's visit to Kyiv was all about. The rest is now up to Ukraine.

On August 24, Ukraine celebrates its ninth year of independence, soon after the Republican and Democratic party conventions here. In January, we will have a new president with his own team and policies. Will President Al Gore or President George W. Bush continue the Clinton policy toward Ukraine? A lot is riding on the answer to that question for America, for Ukraine, for the configuration of the global chessboard. Poker anybody?

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