NEWS AND VIEWS: The Bush administration and Ukraine (03/14/04)

NEWS AND VIEWS: The Bush administration and Ukraine

by Ihor Gawdiak

In a recent op-ed piece in The New York Times, Secretary of State Colin Powell indicated that the Bush administration's first foreign policy resolution in 2004 is "to expand freedom," and to "support [its] consolidation in many new but fragile democracies. Surely the administration's list would include Ukraine, a country that is vital to the strategic interests of the United States and Europe. This former Soviet republic of 48 million, once the world's third largest nuclear power, now stands at a most critical crossroads, but judging by the recent actions of a crucial U.S. government agency, the U.S. is about to make a big foreign policy mistake.

Just how fragile the situation is in Ukraine was clearly explained last month in a Washington Post editorial which cautioned that the country's president, Leonid Kuchma, "appears to be looking for ways to curtail Ukraine's democracy so that he can prolong his own hold on power when his term expires this year." Linking Mr. Kuchma to "corruption," "strong-arm tactics," "serious human right violations" and running an "economy warped by clans of oligarchs," the Post further wrote that his aim is to "neutralize the country's most popular leader, Viktor Yushchenko, who, polls say, would win the next presidential election if it were fairly held."

As the Post concluded in its editorial, "[f]reedom could be consolidated this year in Ukraine or slip away," and that the outcome very much depends on the actions of this administration.

The U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) oversees all of the U.S. government's non-military international broadcasting activities. On February 3 it became known that the BBG decided to implement an earlier decision to cut U.S. international radio broadcasts to Central and Eastern Europe. However, it is difficult to understand why the BBG chose at this critical time to reduce broadcasts to Ukraine, where they are considered by many to be a much- needed counterbalance to the country's mostly government-controlled media.

Last February when the cuts were originally announced, BBG Chairman Ken Tomlinson wrote that broadcasts will be eliminated or curtailed to "democracies of Eastern Europe where free speech is practiced and where the process of joining the NATO alliance is under way." Unfortunately, this statement alone raises the question to what extent Mr. Tomlinson and other BBG members are familiar with the situation in Ukraine. Although Ukraine has voiced its intention of joining NATO, its record on free speech is dismal indeed.

Apparently, the BBG has either not read or does not believe our own State Department's Annual Human Rights Report or any of the countless other resources that describe Ukraine's severely restricted media environment and that rate President Kuchma among the top 10 enemies of the press. The BBG also either doubts or has chosen to ignore the urgings of Ukraine's opposition leader, Mr. Yushchenko, who during a visit to Washington last February pleaded with administration officials to leave U.S. government radio broadcasts to Ukraine intact.

One of the U.S. government's broadcast services affected by the cuts is the Voice of America (VOA). VOA director David Jackson sent a (BBG-inspired?) memo that calls for reducing VOA Ukrainian broadcasts by half, beginning March 1, 2004. The service is to "retool its programming and expand its multimedia capabilities," presumably to include television and the Internet.

While catch words like "retool" and "multimedia" might have an attractive ring to them, Mr. Jackson and apparently the BBG have ceased to take into account the fact that in a country where the average monthly salary is still around $60, few people have access to the Internet.

Similarly, in order to get television programming on the air in Ukraine, the U.S. must depend on Ukrainian State TV or channels owned by oligarchs aligned with President Kuchma. Given this reality, it is therefore highly unlikely that the U.S. will get any TV program on the air in Ukraine that, even if balanced, could in any way be critical of the country's government.

And what would be the point of VOA doing a TV program if it could not include any opposition voices or a healthy debate of Ukraine's problems? Whom would our efforts - funded by U.S. taxpayers - be serving? As for the Internet, a better approach for Mr. Jackson and the BBG to take would be to complement, and not supplant, existing VOA radio programming, which remains more widely accessible to Ukrainians.

As Mr. Jackson and presumably the BBG assure us, however, VOA's Ukrainian Service "will be well positioned to provide full multi-media coverage of this year's presidential elections, both in the United States and Ukraine. ..." What does "well-positioned" mean in this context? By the looks of it, it means that the BBG would like to be able to report back to Congress that VOA's Ukrainian Service has gone "multi-media."

However, what the BBG probably won't mention is that in order to be able to experiment with political television and the Internet it will have to decimate VOA Ukrainian radio programming, which happens to be the one vehicle that has proven itself effective in penetrating Ukraine's restricted media environment.

The BBG might counter that VOA is not the only U.S. media outlet that broadcasts to Ukraine. The other one is Radio Liberty (RL), but that service also has sustained some cuts. More unfortunate, however, is that its programming has just been dropped from its FM affiliate network in Ukraine, relegating its presence mostly to shortwave. Coincidentally, the network that carried RL programming on FM in Ukraine had just come under new management. Its new boss is said to be an associate of President Kuchma's chief of staff.

VOA's FM affiliate network in Ukraine, unlike RL's, is somewhat more diversified in that it consists of stations that are not under a central management structure. This might help it survive on FM airwaves a little longer, but as opposition forces in Ukraine point out, efforts to muzzle the country's remaining independent media outlets ahead of the presidential elections in October, have really just begun (the campaign does not start until May). And, if VOA, like RL, ends up getting kicked off FM airwaves in Ukraine, there will all the more reason to strengthen the presence of both broadcasters on shortwave - a medium that has proven it can go far in penetrating the high walls built by regimes afraid of a free and open press. Cutting back on U.S. international radio transmissions like VOA only helps rulers like Mr. Kuchma to keep those walls in place.

The fact that the BBG seems to have somehow missed all of this and that it is currently investing monies and human resources into projects that, unlike radio, will have little or no impact in a restricted media environment like Ukraine's raises some serious questions as to whether an appointed, part-time body of what appears to be a group of domestic media executives with limited foreign policy backgrounds can effectively run the U.S. international broadcasting establishment. The BBG's own website (www.bbg.gov) notes that one of its members "helped launch Fox News Sunday" and worked as a vice president for a cosmetic, toiletries and fragrance association foundation-such "qualifications," frankly, pretty much speak for themselves.

Under current law the BBG exists an independent body, but its decisions should at least be in line with the administration's New Year's resolutions. If anything, U.S. radio broadcasts to Ukraine should be increased rather than diminished.

Should anyone still doubt the gravity of the situation in Ukraine, the statements made by Mr. Yushchenko on February 18, are well worth noting: "Ukraine has turned into a lawless and undemocratic state. ... I think that only the people who do not know what the Voice of America is and how important the position of this radio station is for providing objective and timely information to the people of Ukraine can make such [a] decision, ... taking the latest developments at Radio ... into consideration, it becomes clear that this is how independent mass media are [currently] being pressured and persecuted."

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