Andreas Umland: Ukraine and the EU Need Each Other
[Andreas Umland has been published in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Prospect Magazine, the Moscow Times, and elsewhere. He is general editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” (www.ibidem-verlag.de/spps.html).]
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s dictum that, without Ukraine, Russia is no longer an empire is well-known in Europe too. Yet, its topicality for European security seems insufficiently appreciated in Brussels. While the EU cannot directly influence relations between Russia and Ukraine, any more than it can solve her problems, its Eastern policies do nonetheless affect both Kyiv’s foreign affairs and Ukrainian domestic politics.
Whether it likes or not, the EU exerts influence on the whole process of Ukraine’s post-Soviet transformation – as it did in post-communist Central Europe. To be sure, the successful Central European transformations of the ’90s sometimes led pro-European observers to overestimate the relative weight of EU membership conditions, within these post-Soviet democratisations. But for Ukraine today, the Brussels-Kyiv relationship and the policies of the EU Delegation in Kyiv have an impact that goes beyond mere foreign relations.
While the EU, of course, supports current Ukrainian reforms with various programmes and agreements, Kyiv is still being denied any official membership perspective. For EU politicians and officials the difference between intensive cooperation and targeted preparation for joining may be philosophical.
But for Kyiv’s elite, as for many ordinary Ukrainians, the difference between an official “yes,” on the one side, and a “perhaps” or even “no,” on the other, is considerable. Moreover, it has relevance for the future of Ukrainian statehood – and, thus, for the security of Eastern Europe as a whole....
Recently, however, the enthusiasm of Ukrainians who were once outspokenly pro-European has started to wane – presumably because of the EU’s restrictive visa policy, and the way it has continued keeping a distance to Kyiv....
Sooner or later Ukraine will have to choose one of the politico-economic blocs. Kyiv will be unable to carry on for long with its current many-vector policies, although the EU is pressing it to do just that. NATO in its turn will in the medium term be unable to offer Kyiv an alternative integration model: for several years now the possibility of NATO membership has, unlike EU membership, been refused by more than half the population....
There is a danger of this happening in respect to Ukraine’s European perspective too. If the EU continues to lose favor in Ukraine, parts of the population, especially the political and economic elites of the east and south, might start supporting the idea of a new alliance with Russia. This might seem acceptable or even desirable to some Western observers and EU officials. But it would be a risky course of development – not only for Ukraine.
Scepticism, if not antipathy, towards the current Russian government has become deeply rooted in many members of the West and Central Ukrainian political and cultural elites, because of the two countries’ controversial common history.
In addition, more and more Ukrainians, especially the young, see a resumption of the Russian connection as being inexpedient, not only for national-historical reasons. These people have become socialized under democratic conditions: they have pluralistic views and recognize that the current authoritarian Russian model of development has no future, and that Russia is thus an unreliable long-term partner....
Worrying though this sounds, such a development cannot be completely ruled out. A deepening crisis in Ukraine combined with continued EU uncertainty could lead more and more Ukrainians to question their country’s ability, in isolation, to continue operating as an effective state.
This would encourage separatist tendencies in places like Crimea where most of the population is of Russian extraction and ambivalent about the peninsula being part of the Ukrainian state.Were tensions to escalate and to draw in ethnic Russians, not to mention citizens of the RF, this could lead to Kremlin intervention along the lines of the Georgian conflict of August 2008....
The alternatives to a gradual integration of Ukraine into Europe through provision of official prospect of EU membership are uncomfortable. Against such a background, current West European policies towards Kyiv appear as short-sighted. A continuing neutral status, a new liaison with Russia, a formal division of the country: none of these are acceptable futures for the territorially second biggest state in Europe. Were Ukraine to disintegrate, this would surely ignite Russian irredentism and at worst lead to the resurrection of the Russian Empire as being feared by Brzezinski. The consequences for European, or even world, security would be grave...
Read entire article at Foreign Policy Journal
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s dictum that, without Ukraine, Russia is no longer an empire is well-known in Europe too. Yet, its topicality for European security seems insufficiently appreciated in Brussels. While the EU cannot directly influence relations between Russia and Ukraine, any more than it can solve her problems, its Eastern policies do nonetheless affect both Kyiv’s foreign affairs and Ukrainian domestic politics.
Whether it likes or not, the EU exerts influence on the whole process of Ukraine’s post-Soviet transformation – as it did in post-communist Central Europe. To be sure, the successful Central European transformations of the ’90s sometimes led pro-European observers to overestimate the relative weight of EU membership conditions, within these post-Soviet democratisations. But for Ukraine today, the Brussels-Kyiv relationship and the policies of the EU Delegation in Kyiv have an impact that goes beyond mere foreign relations.
While the EU, of course, supports current Ukrainian reforms with various programmes and agreements, Kyiv is still being denied any official membership perspective. For EU politicians and officials the difference between intensive cooperation and targeted preparation for joining may be philosophical.
But for Kyiv’s elite, as for many ordinary Ukrainians, the difference between an official “yes,” on the one side, and a “perhaps” or even “no,” on the other, is considerable. Moreover, it has relevance for the future of Ukrainian statehood – and, thus, for the security of Eastern Europe as a whole....
Recently, however, the enthusiasm of Ukrainians who were once outspokenly pro-European has started to wane – presumably because of the EU’s restrictive visa policy, and the way it has continued keeping a distance to Kyiv....
Sooner or later Ukraine will have to choose one of the politico-economic blocs. Kyiv will be unable to carry on for long with its current many-vector policies, although the EU is pressing it to do just that. NATO in its turn will in the medium term be unable to offer Kyiv an alternative integration model: for several years now the possibility of NATO membership has, unlike EU membership, been refused by more than half the population....
There is a danger of this happening in respect to Ukraine’s European perspective too. If the EU continues to lose favor in Ukraine, parts of the population, especially the political and economic elites of the east and south, might start supporting the idea of a new alliance with Russia. This might seem acceptable or even desirable to some Western observers and EU officials. But it would be a risky course of development – not only for Ukraine.
Scepticism, if not antipathy, towards the current Russian government has become deeply rooted in many members of the West and Central Ukrainian political and cultural elites, because of the two countries’ controversial common history.
In addition, more and more Ukrainians, especially the young, see a resumption of the Russian connection as being inexpedient, not only for national-historical reasons. These people have become socialized under democratic conditions: they have pluralistic views and recognize that the current authoritarian Russian model of development has no future, and that Russia is thus an unreliable long-term partner....
Worrying though this sounds, such a development cannot be completely ruled out. A deepening crisis in Ukraine combined with continued EU uncertainty could lead more and more Ukrainians to question their country’s ability, in isolation, to continue operating as an effective state.
This would encourage separatist tendencies in places like Crimea where most of the population is of Russian extraction and ambivalent about the peninsula being part of the Ukrainian state.Were tensions to escalate and to draw in ethnic Russians, not to mention citizens of the RF, this could lead to Kremlin intervention along the lines of the Georgian conflict of August 2008....
The alternatives to a gradual integration of Ukraine into Europe through provision of official prospect of EU membership are uncomfortable. Against such a background, current West European policies towards Kyiv appear as short-sighted. A continuing neutral status, a new liaison with Russia, a formal division of the country: none of these are acceptable futures for the territorially second biggest state in Europe. Were Ukraine to disintegrate, this would surely ignite Russian irredentism and at worst lead to the resurrection of the Russian Empire as being feared by Brzezinski. The consequences for European, or even world, security would be grave...