Quotable notes (10/29/06)

Quotable notes

"... Like Moldova and the western Balkans, Ukraine also suffers from the tendency of both Washington and Brussels to isolate what they do not understand. Since the early 1990s the United States has pursued a manic-depressive policy toward the largest country in Eastern Europe - and for that matter toward the country with the largest Jewish population remaining in Europe.

"At first, in the infamous 'Chicken Kiev' speech, delivered by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, we advised Ukraine to remain part of the Soviet Union.

"We then celebrated Ukraine's independence and its common-sense president, Leonid Kuchma - until we decided that Kuchma was an autocrat who sold radars illegally to Saddam Hussein. It turns out that this did not happen, but you get the point.

"The same unpredictable volatility characterizes the ups and downs of our response to the coalition government in Kiev [sic] today.

"Seventeen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States and Europe cannot maintain a consistent policy toward Ukraine from one day to the next. ...

"The problem of Europe's East is simply the loss of political vision in Washington and Brussels and the failure to keep the commitment to a Europe that is whole, free and at peace. ..."

- Bruce P. Jackson, president of the Project on Transitional Democracies and the U.S. Committee on NATO, in an op-ed titled "Our Failure in Europe's East," The Washington Post, October 8.

| Home Page |