ANALYSIS: As Kyiv goes, so goes the East (04/22/01)

ANALYSIS: As Kyiv goes, so goes the East

The article below appeared in The Wall Street Journal's European edition on March 30-31 under the headline "As Kiev Goes, So Goes the East." Reprinted with permission of The Wall Street Journal © 2001, Dow Jones & Co. Inc. All rights reserved.

by Roman Solchanyk

A pesky investigative journalist who criticized the president found decapitated. Concealed tapes that seem to implicate the president in political murder. A clumsy attempt by authorities to stonewall a criminal investigation. Opposition parties demanding the president's resignation. Demonstrators and police clashing in the streets. And, most alarmingly, Soviet-style preventive arrests of student activists.

These are the main ingredients of Kuchmagate, a political scandal named after Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma that has grown into a full-blown political crisis in a country of 50 million that the West has come to view as a linchpin of stability and security in an otherwise precarious zone between Russia and the rest of Europe. With Europe steadily shifting its borders eastward and Russia determined to assert its great power ambitions, the future of this geostrategic post-Soviet state may determine the future frontiers of Europe itself.

The U.S. has led the way in providing both financial and political support to Ukraine. Kiev has long been the third-leading recipient of American aid, after Israel and Egypt. It is the only former Soviet republic besides Russia that has a formal "special relationship" with NATO. But it is also quite clear that, with the exception of the Baltic states, for the time being the new Europe will stop at the borders of the old Soviet Union. The key question for European security is whether this will be a temporary or permanent state of affairs.

Even a cursory glance at the old Soviet neighborhood reveals why Western policy planners believe Ukraine will either be the solid keystone in a regional arch, or become the place where the curtain on the East may come down for good.

Belarus, which like Ukraine shares borders with both Russia and Europe, is run by an outspokenly anti-Western leader who has threatened to redeploy nuclear weapons on its territory in response to NATO enlargement. Miensk and Moscow have been moving toward reunification, a decision that makes little economic or political sense except in terms of a pointed warning to the West. Neighboring Moldova has largely been dysfunctional since gaining its independence because of the Russian-supported separatist movement in its Transdniester province. Last month's parliamentary elections there witnessed a first in the so-called post-Soviet space - a near total victory for the Communists, who want to bring Moldova into the Russia-Belarus union state.

The three Transcaucasian states - Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan - have all been shaken by intermittent and violent domestic crises, and all are embroiled in ethnically fueled territorial conflicts with no end in sight. Armenia is locked into a tight political and military alliance with Moscow. Until recently, most of Central Asia was able to avoid the ethnic strife and political volatility characteristic of many of the other former Soviet republics. But the price for this apparent stability has been the progressive institutionalization of authoritarian, one-man rule throughout the region. Meanwhile, the threat to Central Asia from Islamic rebels has translated into increased dependency on Russian military support, which, of course, comes with a political pricetag.

And then there is Russia itself, where the Kremlin, apart from all else, seems unable to cope with one basic reality: Russia is no longer the Soviet Union. The frustration that comes with being unable to realize global ambitions on a national budget that is less than what the department store chain Kmart takes in annually from American shoppers leaves Moscow playing the role of international spoiler. The latest example is the resumption of arms sales and nuclear know-how to Iran.

Against this background - and compared to most of the other post-Soviet states - Ukraine has had all the markings of a more or less "normal" country. Since its declaration of independence in 1991, Ukraine has held three presidential elections, all of which witnessed the peaceful and constitutionally sanctioned transfer of power. Parliamentary elections were held in 1994 and 1998, and they too passed without incident - no boycotts by the opposition and no tanks in the streets. Although corruption is rife and economic reform is painfully slow, last year GDP increased by 6 percent after a decade of decline. Western financial institutions expect further economic growth this year.

The country has not fallen apart along regional, ethnic and linguistic cleavages, as was widely predicted in the West after 1991. Ukraine is an enthusiastic participant in NATO's Partnership for Peace Program, and its official policy is aimed at integration into European political, security and economic structures, including membership in the European Union.

This "normalcy," however, is only surface deep. What Kuchmagate reveals is that Ukraine is burdened by the same fundamental transition problems stemming from Sovietization as are its neighbors Belarus, Moldova and Russia.

For instance, Ukraine has an unreconstructed and thoroughly Soviet ruling elite that is equally comfortable under conditions of "communism" and "democracy," and that continues to excel at what it knows best - namely, manipulating the levers of state power for the sole purpose of self-aggrandizement. It has a splintered and ineffective national democratic opposition that has proved unable to mobilize either its national or democratic components. It has a mass of citizenry that, after 10 years of pseudo-reforms, largely equates democracy and free markets with impoverishment.

Ultimately, what Kuchmagate reveals is that it is time for the Western allies to undertake a long-overdue review of their policies toward Ukraine and, indeed, the region as a whole. It is in their own interest to move beyond sound bites like "strategic partnership" and on to something that more closely approximates policies that promote, dare I say it, nation-building.

Washington in particular needs to understand that nation-building - including the nurturing of civil and legal society, institutions and democratic norms - is not the same as peacekeeping. Nation-building, as the concept is well understood in Europe, is what can make peacekeeping unnecessary.

The alternative here is to contemplate the possibility that Ukraine will go the way of Belarus and Moldova, which means the consolidation of an unstable gray zone on the periphery of Europe that we can imagine in terms of a "New Eastern Europe." Moscow has already made its choice.

Dr. Roman Solchanyk is an international security policy analyst in Santa Monica, Calif., and the author of "Ukraine and Russia: The Post-Soviet Transition" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

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