LibriumArcana.Games

As the first heavy fighting begins in eastern Ukraine, with an attempt by Ukrainian forces to retake the town of Sloviansk, and as violent clashes spread elsewhere, including now Odessa, in the country’s southwest, there is a growing sense that a larger confrontation, one that could involve Russia and the West, may be unavoidable. Such a perception is a terrible mistake. There is nothing inevitable about the future course of the conflict. It is absolutely essential for Western governments to focus on what they can do to avoid war, preserve democracy, and keep Ukraine united.

What they cannot do is help the government in Kiev to win with military force in the east. The rebel forces that have taken control of cities of the Donbas, the Russian-speaking industrial and mining region in the east, appear well organized, have much local popular support, and are implicitly backed by the 45,000 Russian troops deployed to the Ukrainian border. It would take many months—more probably, many years—for Ukrainian forces to reach sufficient strength to retake the Donbas swiftly and relatively bloodlessly, or to defeat a Russian invasion of the east and south of the country. Moves to raise Ukrainian nationalist volunteer forces should be strongly discouraged by the West. The intervention of such groups would risk repeating what has just happened in Odessa, where dozens of people were killed in street battles on May 2. It would make a Russian invasion a certainty.

And the West itself will not fight for Ukraine. All the blowhard posturing of US and European government officials cannot hide this essential fact. In these circumstances, to give the unelected interim government in Kiev the idea that we are giving it military backing is irresponsible, immoral, and contemptible. Did we really learn nothing from the experience of Georgia in 2008? For that matter, did we learn nothing in the playground at the age of six?

If Ukrainian forces continue their assault on rebel strongholds in eastern Ukraine, then only three things can happen, separately or in sequence: they will be beaten back with the help of Russian weaponry—such as that used to shoot down two Ukrainian helicopters at Sloviansk on Friday; they will retake one or two towns, after which Russia will reinforce other towns with lightly-disguised Russian special forces, making their capture much harder; and if Ukrainian forces resort to heavy weaponry to blast the rebels from their positions, Russia will invade. The only question then will be where the Russian army will stop: whether Moscow would be content to hold the Donbas, as it previously held South Ossetia and Abkhazia as quasi-independent statelets formally still part of Georgia, or whether it would go on to seize half of Ukraine.

What is truly strange and terrible about this looming disaster is that all the leading players already know and agree about what the only solution can be, even if they disagree on the details and the timing: a federal Ukraine with elected regional governments and robust protection for regional interests. This, not further separation, is what Moscow is proposing; and this is what the Ukrainian interim president, Olexander Turchynov, has publicly hinted at for the Donbas. Although the rebels in Donetsk and other eastern cities have declared the Donetsk Republic and are now planning an independence referendum on May 11, many easterners, too, have indicated that they want some kind of federalization and not independence or annexation to Russia. As interviews published in Sunday’s New York Times make clear, even some rebel commanders themselves hope to keep Ukraine united.

It is extremely important to note that regional autonomy—accompanied by a threat of independence—is what the government of the western region of Lviv, controlled by Ukrainian nationalists, declared for itself back in February, when it seemed that President Yanukovych would remain in power and take Ukraine into the Russian-dominated Eurasian Union. If Lviv could demand this as an insurance for its identity and interests when the national government was going in a direction it did not like, it is very hard to argue that Donetsk does not have the right to do the same. Nor is there any moral reason why the West cannot support federalization. The United States, Germany, Canada, and half a dozen other Western democracies are all federal states. Of course, we all know that a fundamental moral principle of Western foreign policy is that sauce for the goose can never under any circumstances be sauce for the gander—but to oppose a federal solution for Ukraine on such grounds is ridiculous.

Indeed, a constitutional solution to the crisis has already been supported by all sides—including Russia, the US, and Ukraine—in the Geneva Declaration of April 17, which called for Ukrainians from all parts of the country to disarm and take part in a national dialogue that would recognize regional interests. The problem with Geneva is that it did not set out an outline of the constitutional settlement—which will have to be agreed in advance before the rebel militias in eastern Ukraine will put down their weapons. There is also of course profound disagreement on the process by which constitutional change should be introduced, and how much regional autonomy should be granted.

President Turchynov suggested a referendum on autonomy for the Donbas to accompany the new presidential elections planned for May 25; but after the latest developments in Odessa and east Ukraine, it must surely now be acknowledged that these elections cannot take place on schedule, or until peace is restored. Nor, given the precedent in Lviv and the current protests elsewhere in Ukraine, can a case be made for a special status for the Donbas region alone. Far better to have an equal federation across the whole territory of Ukraine. (As for Crimea, we will have to content ourselves with formal statements to the effect that we regard Crimea as still legally part of Ukraine, while in practice making Crimea the subject of separate processes and talks—rather as with the northern Cyprus issue in the past. Unfortunately, if we make a peace process in Ukraine conditional on Russia giving up Crimea, there will be no peace process.)

Reality, and the long experience offered by such conflicts, shows that agreement on a new federal constitution for the country as a whole must be reached first, and ratified by a national referendum. The rebel militias in eastern Ukraine and the camp of demonstrators on the Maidan in Kiev should both agree not to use force and not to disrupt such a solution–-since clearly neither regional nor national democracy is possible if governments have to submit for approval to unelected crowds. Elections for the presidency, parliament, regional assemblies, and regional governorships can then be scheduled to take place simultaneously later in the year. Ideally, some kind of observer force would need to be put in place with United Nations backing to report on compliance by all sides.

Since the tragic killings in Odessa, it is no longer possible to deny that the Ukrainian crisis involves a serious threat from extreme nationalist groups as well as pro-Russian ones—and some of the extreme nationalists are sitting in the present interim government in Kiev. On the other hand, Russia undoubtedly has armed local allies in eastern Ukraine, which it has strengthened with some disguised Russian officers. But the masses of civilians who have blocked the path of Ukrainian troops in the Donbas show that the rebels also enjoy a very considerable measure of local support.

What all this reveals is something that should have been blindingly obvious ever since Ukraine became independent in 1991 and that is deeply rooted in Ukrainian history: Ukraine contains different identities, and cannot be ruled unilaterally by one of them alone, or pulled in a single geopolitical direction, without risking the breakup of the country itself. The huge demonstrations in Kiev this winter showed that Yanukovych’s and Moscow’s hope of taking Ukraine into the Eurasian Union was impossible, because many Ukrainians would literally give their lives to prevent it.

Now, events in the east and in Odessa make clear that a Ukrainian state that defines itself purely in pro-Western and anti-Russian terms is also out of the question, because a great many Ukrainians will not tolerate this either. In these circumstances, it is no good for one side to hope for absolute victory. When Russia tried for this with Yanukovych, the result was a fiasco, which among other things destroyed Russia’s influence over Ukraine as a whole. The West is now risking an even greater failure in the opposite direction.

Critics of federalization say that it would allow Russia to block Ukrainian moves toward NATO and the EU. What is surely apparent however is that Moscow and its allies in Ukraine have already done this. The goal of the West must be to get all the opposing forces in Ukraine off the streets and back within a legitimate democratic process that is recognized by a majority of Ukrainians, and that will allow the possibility of economic and political reforms by democratic means. Time is short. We saw again and again, in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and elsewhere in the 1990s, that once fighting begins, previously possible solutions quickly become impossible. This would be a tragedy—Ukraine does not need to be Yugoslavia or Georgia.

Contrary to what is said in much of the Western media, most of Russia’s allies in eastern Ukraine are not separatists. Rather, what many in the Donbas fear is that a government in Kiev—one that is either unelected or elected by a small majority, and which is under the sway of extreme nationalist demonstrators—will be able to decide their fate unilaterally. Thus, they are deeply opposed to the interim government in Kiev, but many of them continue to envision being a part of Ukraine in which they would have greater autonomy and recognition of regional rights and interests, rather than full independence. Until now, every opinion poll and election in the east has also suggested this.

But once a few hundred people have been killed, this reasonable position will quickly be destroyed. To return power to a reasonable majority, the international community must put forward the outline of a constitutional settlement on which a majority of Ukrainians can agree. It is hopeless to expect that the opposing sides themselves will be able to abide by a compromise proposal on their own, without outside help. The question then is whether Russia, the US, the EU, and the various parties in Ukraine including the Ukrainian government can reach agreement on the outlines of a federal constitution, which the UN Secretary General could then put forward. This will be an immensely difficult task in the days and weeks ahead. But the alternative could be catastrophic.

May 5, 2014, 2:15 p.m.

General Havoc wrote:Well at least there's a variety of things being said in the Western Media, unlike in some...

I don't think this plan is likely to work, frankly. The shooting has already started, on all sides. Unilateral declarations about how one side must now back down completely or else are not going to appeal to anyone, not even if they legitimately are the only way to avert warfare. Yankuvich radicalized the pro-EU factions through six months of repression. It's not surprising they would thus react violently to naked Russian attempts to dismember the country, whatever the US has to say on the subject, and no matter how popular they might be in the eastern part of the country.

The Ukraine was never going to be part of NATO, not even before all of this. Neither was Georgia. That was never in the wings, not ever. But that is apparently not enough.

General Havoc wrote:Yankuvich radicalised the pro-EU factions through six months of repression. It's not surprising they would thus react violently to naked Russian attempts to dismember the country, whatever the US has to say on the subject, and no matter how popular they might be in the eastern part of the country.

The Ukraine was never going to be part of NATO, not even before all of this. Neither was Georgia. That was never in the wings, not ever. But that is apparently not enough.

fgalkin wrote:There is still a chance, but the window of opportunity is slipping slightly. Accepting the Geneva declaration is the only way to avoid civil war. There were others, like not trying to ban the Russian language, or not installing new mayors in East Ukrainian cities, or, hell, not disbanding the army's elite units and slashing salaries across the board and then sending the very same people against the rebels in East Ukraine. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian government has done pretty much the opposite of what it should have at every turn, and that is gone. There is still a chance, but at this point, anything is better than a Yugoslavia-style breakup.

fgalkin wrote:Oh, which one are those? Because I can show you plenty of Russian sources critical of the actions in Ukraine. It's not like a large number of Russia's public figures spoke out against it, or anything...

There is still a chance, but the window of opportunity is slipping slightly. Accepting the Geneva declaration is the only way to avoid civil war. There were others, like not trying to ban the Russian language, or not installing new mayors in East Ukrainian cities, or, hell, not disbanding the army's elite units and slashing salaries across the board and then sending the very same people against the rebels in East Ukraine. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian government has done pretty much the opposite of what it should have at every turn, and that is gone. There is still a chance, but at this point, anything is better than a Yugoslavia-style breakup.

Uh, dude. Ukraine joined MAP and was well on the way to NATO membership before Yanik scrapped that when he got elected.

Lys wrote:That's a very silly thing to say. It implies that Yushchenko's government would not have responded violently to secessionists taking up arms and declaring an independent republic. That's ridiculous, obviously they would have sent in the troops. Force is the default response to rebellion, zero radicalisation on the part of the governing faction required. Had there been civil unrest in the East six months ago, then Yankuvich would have tried to put it down and then thrown himself headlong into the arms of the EU. Just like how when there was civil unrest in the West six months ago, he tried to put it down and threw himself headlong into the arms of Russia.

Really, truth is, events have radicalised both sides, and I think it would have happened regardless who the fuck was in charge. They're all a bunch of kleptocrats, there was never going to be a measured reaction from Kiev to large scale protests such as we saw. That's not particular to Yankuvich or his faction, it's inherent to the system. Yankuvich himself wasn't even that pro-Russian. He was perfectly willing to cozy up to whichever side offered him the better deal, and right up until the EU closed that option, he was gunning for both. Pretty much the same as his supposedly pro-EU predecessors had been doing. To a very real extent the pro-EU and pro-Russia stuff was just a dog and pony show put on by opposing political parties to garner votes. The political reality was that the Ukraine needed to play both sides to keep treading water, and all the politicos knew it and acted like it. Then things changed when they found themselves forced to choose, and the people, frustrated by endless years of corruption and institutional malaise, took to the streets.

That's bollocks, setting up Individual Partnership Action Plans with NATO is the definition of membership being in the wings, it's Step 1 of the process. The matter has been in serious discussion for years, both Georgia and the Ukraine were under the impression that would advance to having Membership Action Plans at some point in the future. In fact, after the 2008 Bucharest Conference, the Georgians were so sure that their new friends had their back, that they went for an ill advised stroll into South Ossetia that August. They were quite surprised to find themselves very much alone with an angry bear. If NATO didn't intend to have them join, it did a piss poor job of establishing that this was the case, because all the relevant actors came away with the opposite impression.

General Havoc wrote:If you're going to make things up for me to say, then you can debate this by yourself. I never said nor implied a damn thing about how Yushchenko would or would not have responded to a putative revolt in the eastern part of the country, partly because the possibility of him facing one was next-to-nonexistent. It would be like George W. Bush having to face down a secession of Texas. What he did face was a revolt by the rest of the country, and we saw exactly how he responded to that. My point was that things have proceeded long past the point of radicalization on the part of the side of the forces that ousted Yushckenko.

Euromaidan was shot at and battled in the streets for months before finally ousting the kleptocratic bastard, and it is not surprising that in the aftermath of that, they are in no mood to negotiate rationally with forces they perceive as having been behind those very actions in the first place. Call them stupid or wrong if you like, it remains the position of the current Ukrainian government that this is all a vast conspiracy of Putin's to re-annex the Ukraine and starve them all to death again. That's not a belief that's likely to evaporate in the aftermath of major bloodshed and an external power stirring up revolt in half the country.

That's probably true, by and large. One forgets, in the haze of nationalistic flag-waving just how corrupt the successive post-USSR governments of Ukraine have been. All of them. I seriously refuse to believe that most of the protesters in Kiev at the start of this mess actually gave a damn about NATO or the EU, they just wanted to "throw the bums out", as happens periodically in electoral democracies. Of course, the bums in this case sent in the attack dogs, and the issue got buried under questions of alignment.

Maybe, except Ukraine doesn't have one of those either. And I'm not sure I'd describe them as obvious first steps to admission to NATO. After all, Kazakhstan has one, and I'm not hearing a lot of support for their admission to the alliance. The notion of Ukraine joining NATO was considered and conclusively rejected. Nothing since that decision has advanced the cause unless you define every link between the West and NATO as being "step one on the process to admission", which is paranoid to the point of myopia.

Georgia made a cataclysmic error in 2008, one which you can blame many people for, but if they thought they were "all but" in NATO then they were factually and completely wrong, a fact borne out when Russia backhanded them to the curb and nobody rushed in to start a nuclear war over the matter. But if you're talking about NATO expressing its intentions, I have a hard time seeing how openly and publicly denying the admissions in question is in any way unclear. This was mere months before the Georgia-Russia dustup, I'll remind you. Maybe the tentative "in the future it could happen" offerings were enough to convince Georgia, I don't know, but it's rather hard to get more decisive on the subject than "No", at least in my mind.

Besides, anyone who actually thought the Ukraine was going to join NATO in anything but the long-distance, different-world future had a sadly distorted view of the real world. The process never once went beyond enhanced discussions and bilateral ties of the sort that NATO maintains with a number of countries. Were it possible to do, I'm sure it might have been pushed, but it wasn't possible. Blaming this thing on some sort of "inevitable" NATO ascension buries the actual causes for what happened here under the usual Western-conspiracy rhetoric we hear coming out of the Kremlin.

Lys wrote:Uh, dude, Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko and Victor Fedorovych Yanukovich are not the same person. I can call them by their patronymics if it makes it easier on you. Andriyovych was President of the Ukraine from 2005 until 2010, while Fedorovych is his recently ousted successor. Got it? Okay, the statement I quoted implied to me that the violent response on the part of the pro-EU faction now governing from Kiev is chiefly attributable to Fedorovych's actions over the preceding months. That in turn implies that prior to said actions, say during Andriyovych's government, such an event would not have garnered a like response. I found this silly, because I see their response as chiefly attributable to the fact that they consider themselves the legitimate government. Governments, you see, have this habit of not responding kindly to challenges to their authority.

Lys wrote:Whereas the position of the rebels in the East is that the legitimate elected government has just been ousted in a violent coup because the Western Ukraine only respects the democratic process when it comes out in their favour. Now Kiev is in control of Nazi fascists who hate ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers and wish nothing but utter ruin upon them. This is not a belief that's likely to evaporate either.

Just like how the pro-EU side has been radicalized by the violence against the Euromaidan and Russia's opportunistic land-grab in Crimea, the East has too be radicalized by the actions of the de facto government. First there is the matter of overthrowing the de jure government, which was illegal regardless of whether it was right or wrong. Then there were the shenanigans with the new government replacing the legally elected mayors of various eastern cities. Also that law revoking the protected status of the Russian language; the acting President did veto it, but the damage was already done. Side note: Turchynov (the acting President) actually seems like a reasonable fellow, at least based on his public statements. Unfortunately for him there's crazies infesting his cabinet and parliament, particularly the Svoboda who, unlike the Batkivshchyna, actually are fascists.

I should note that aside from the strong ethno-linguistic ties between Eastern and Southern Ukraine and Russia, there are also very strong economic ones as well. These areas were the industrial belt of the Ukranian SSR, and indeed one of the most heavily industrialized areas in the USSR (a nuclear war would have turned it into a parking lot). Soviet industry was built with centralized planning in mind. This largely meant very ridgid and inflexible supply chains to the point that many industries depended on one particular supplier for particular inputs, and in turn produced an output for one particular market. These supply chaines were in many cases severed or interrupted by the sudden appearance of international borders on the break-up of the Soviet Union. It has been no easy matter to redirect these supply chains or retool the factories to work with Western markets, so what industry remains often works along much the same lines it did in the Soviet period. This means that the livelihood of many people out in the East depends on economic ties to Russia (and Belarus). Turning west really could spell ruin for them, though frankly the Ukraine's botched economic transition away from communism has left them with a lot of bad options and no real good ones.

Lys wrote:Meanwhile, a lot of the rebels in the Ukraine's eastern oblasts aren't particularly raring to become Russia's western oblasts. What they primarily want is autonomy and economic security. If they need to wave the Russian flag to get it, then so be it, but it's not their primary objective. Polls taken before the start of all this showed over 40% support for joining the EU, about the same for not joining the EU, and the remainder for forming a customs Union with Russia. It would be difficult to take polls now, but I would not be surprised to find that the middle ground of "neither" has grown much smaller in the intervening time.

I am unsure as to why you are quoting words that do not appear in any post in this thread besides your own...

Lys from earlier wrote:That's bollocks, setting up Individual Partnership Action Plans with NATO is the definition of membership being in the wings, it's Step 1 of the process. The matter has been in serious discussion for years, both Georgia and the Ukraine were under the impression that would advance to having Membership Action Plans at some point in the future. In fact, after the 2008 Bucharest Conference, the Georgians were so sure that their new friends had their back, that they went for an ill advised stroll into South Ossetia that August. They were quite surprised to find themselves very much alone with an angry bear. If NATO didn't intend to have them join, it did a piss poor job of establishing that this was the case, because all the relevant actors came away with the opposite impression.

I would not call the results of the 2008 Bucharest Conference a conclusive rejection of membership for Georgia and the Ukraine. The matter was tabled until December, and the NATO Secretary General stated that they will become members eventually. That effectively constitutes a promise of future membership being in the wings, simply not right away. In fact, that is how it I always see it reported in every mention of that summit with respect to those two countries. Belief that this constituted an actual actionable promise is widespread, and the very article you cite uncritically calls it so in its opening lines. The Russians were understandably upset.

Lys wrote:You must also consider the political context within NATO, because it is not a monolithic entity. The opposition to the membership of the two countries in question came from France and Germany, which makes sense as they are the two NATO members with strongest economic ties to Russia. The UK was ambivalent about the matter, and the US was actively for it. The last part is key, because America is the beating heart and soul of NATO, and to a very real extent the organization serves as a major arm of America's foreign policy. Seen in that light, the tabling of membership for Georgia and the Ukraine can be taken to be the United States buying time to bring France and Germany around on the matter.

Lys wrote:As it turned out, by trying to no unnecessarily piss off the Russians, France and Germany did NATO a huge favour. Had the Georgians acted as they did while under the auspices of an actual Membership Action Plan, rather than merely the impression that they would get one in the future, it would have made things very complicated. Put simply, NATO doesn't want loose cannon within its membership, for reasons that should be obvious when a defensive umbrella of the atomic variety is involved. When the Georgians revealed themselves to be one with their South Ossetian adventure, well it was a simple manner for NATO to wash their hands off them. With a MAP it would have been a lot dicier, as while a MAP doesn't get you Article 5 protection, and neither does being the attacker rather than the attacked, a MAP still implies a certain commitment. If nothing else, it would have been seen as a political blow for NATO to drop a future member the moment it got into a scrap with the Russians.

The whole affair left NATO understandably a bit hesitant on the subject of new members near the Russian border when it came time to review the subject in December 2008. Nevertheless, the following year NATO signed a Declaration to Complement the Charter on Distinctive Partnership with the Ukraine, which establishes a clear link between statements made in the 2008 NATO conferences and the Ukraine's bid for membership. The text gives a fairly clear impression of the matter being a continuing process that was progressing. It was only stopped by the reins of power in Kiev changing hands. On the note of the Ukraine, they technically don't have an IPAP, but the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan is one in all but name. The timing of it leads me to believe it may have actually been the prototype upon which the IPAP initiative was based.

Lys wrote:Curiously, reading on the subject of NATO-Ukraine relations one sometimes gets the distinct impression that a lot of the resistance toward building closer ties came not from NATO but within the Ukraine itself. For example, though Andriyovych pursued the matter with more vigour than his predecessor did, he did not seem anywhere near as eager as Shaaksvili was in pursuing membership for Georgia. Perhaps that is due to Andriyovych being far more canny than the tie-eating Georgian fool, but one wonders what effect Russian influence within Ukranian politics had on this. As I said before, despite his so called Orange Revolution, Andriyovych was quite willing to cozy up to them when convenient, and he very much was attempting to play both sides as much as possible.

General Havoc wrote:I am well aware that they are not the same person, but you were discussing whether or not Yushchenko's government would have responded the way that Yankuvich's did, which is why I brought him up. I don't know where you're getting this impression from, but all I was ever trying to claim was that the situation has been hyper-radicalized. All this nonsense about how I'm actually saying something else entirely is more or less irrelevant when I've explained what I'm saying three times already.

You wrote:I never said nor implied a damn thing about how Yushchenko would or would not have responded to a putative revolt in the eastern part of the country, partly because the possibility of him facing one was next-to-nonexistent. It would be like George W. Bush having to face down a secession of Texas. What he did face was a revolt by the rest of the country, and we saw exactly how he responded to that. My point was that things have proceeded long past the point of radicalization on the part of the side of the forces that ousted Yushckenko.

... excuse me? I was quoting the words you wrote. The ones that are right now on the page under your name.

Lys wrote:Okay my brain managed to dig up the train of thought that lead me to believe that the NUAP was the prototype for the IPAP. Might as well write it down: It's the timing you see, they were both announced in 2002, to be more specific, both of them on November 22, 2002. It's interesting because they're pretty much the same thing, and I say this not because the Ukranian Foreign Minister went out of his way to say it (I wasn't even aware he did), but because I actually compared the documents in question. Now there had to have been talks on the matter of the Ukraine's action plan for months before it was formalized, and at the exact same time it is NATO comes out with this new initiative that's pretty much the same thing. If the message was "We got this great new initiative we want you all to try out, except Ukraine, with whom we concluded separate arrangements" then why are said arrangements not meaningfully distinct in execution? It seems more like, "We concluded this cool arrangement with the Ukraine and we're offering Individualized Partnership Action Plans for anyone who wants in on that action". What I'm thinking happened is that it started with just the Ukraine specifically, and as they were hammering out the deal it occurred to NATO that others may want something similar, so why not just put the package out there for them to take or leave as they see fit? Hence why I think the NUAP is the prototype for the IPAPs, and that's the reason why it's not called one, because it actually precedes the initiative. Ukraine hasn't asked or been offered an IPAP because they already have one, the fact that it's not called one is pretty much immaterial because everyone knows that's what it is.