East-West impasse over Ukraine

S Nihal Singh

Western-aligned Europe, as opposed to the United States, is gradually waking up to the fact that the turmoil in Ukraine and the gamut of East-West relationship dependent upon it will need a new approach. For one thing, the sanctions regime on Moscow and banning it from the Group of Eight are not the answers to a complex problem.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Moscow-supported rebels in eastern Ukraine are expressions of a simple fact: the successor state to the Soviet Union, diminished as it is, feels that it is sought to be contained by the West. The West transgressed the accepted Westphalian notion of nation states to create Kosovo by force of arms, and last spring Russia similarly transgressed in annexing Crimea to protect its vital interests as it saw them.
Similarly, Russian support for the rebels in Eastern Ukraine in various ways, including arms transfers and injection of its forces, stemmed from President Vladimir Putin’s belief that the West was seeking to absorb the land mass of Ukraine into the European Union and ultimately NATO was a strategic attack on vital Russian interests.
Thus far, the West led by the United States, has taken the narrow view of Russian transgressions, and Germany's Angela Merkel has been hard in berating President Putin. But both the German trade lobby and some of its strategic thinkers are having a second look at Berlin's approach. Without doubt, the burgeoning Russian-German trade has suffered, dramatically reducing the healthy figures. Second, the virtues of a politically neutral Ukraine, given its geography and intimate relationship with Mother Russia, have been forgotten in Western capitals in the euphoria of having won the Cold War.
Historically, Moscow could do little to protect its strategic interests after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a supplicant at Washington's court and the symbol of this phase was the tragic-comic figure of Boris Yeltsin. Russia was infamously dismissed in America as “a Saudi Arabia with nukes”. After Russia recovered from the shock of its reduction in size and influence, a Vladimir Putin would have had to be invented if he had not presented himself.
The truth is that Ukraine is a divided nation between the western portion seeking to embrace everything Western and a more traditional and, until rather recently, an umbilical part of Russia. What upended a peaceful transition was the forceful ousting of President Yanukovych in something approaching a coup and the taking power of a new dispensation. The change has been legalised after a fashion by holding elections, boycotted in the eastern region. The most dramatic symbol of the Maidan uprising was a senior US State Department official distributing hamburgers to the demonstrators thus broadcasting Washington's intention.
Russia sees the situation in Ukraine from a very different perspective. The latter's membership of NATO is a totally no-go area and Moscow has suggested a federal arrangement in which the provinces would enjoy a great measure of autonomy, fulfilling the eastern provinces' desire to maintain close trade and cultural ties with Mother Russia.
The buzz phrase of a new Cold War is very much in circulation reflecting the impasse in East-West relations. Even American strategic thinkers are coming round to the view that having triumphed in the Cold War, the US was loud in blowing its trumpet. President Putin is now reminding Washington that it or its allies cannot treat Russia — a vast land mass encompassing large parts of Europe and Asia — as a vanquished nation.
A tentative suggestion Chancellor Merkel has made is that the European Union and the Russian-led Eurasian trade bloc could begin discussions once a measure of peace returns to eastern Ukraine. She is in part answering her domestic critics, but the idea is pregnant for the future. Obviously, the two sides in the new East-West confrontation must talk to resolve a problem that cannot be settled by force or through sanctions alone.
The Western suggestion that the era of major powers exercising areas of influence in the 21st century is over is hogwash. In the old days, we had the classic instance of US reaction to the then Soviet Union placing nukes in Cuba, the nearest the world came to a nuclear war. But even today, Washington would have little patience with an inimical power seeking a military alignment with a major Latin American country. The fact that the West took NATO to the very borders of Russia, including countries that were part of the Soviet Union such as the Baltic states, is no guideline for the future.
Germany represents a dramatic post-World War II development in securing its position as the most powerful and richest country in Europe. Willy Brandt, whom I met in Bonn during his stint as Chancellor, became a symbol of the new Germany. For obvious reasons, he had sought to punch below its weight giving the political primacy for a time to France. But power inevitably gravitated towards Berlin overriding its Nazi past.
Indeed, Ms Merkel has her task cut out for her, not only in seeking reconciliation with President Putin but also, and crucially, in convincing Washington that it is time for a new approach. The trade sanctions are biting Russia as they are up to a point the European Union with counter-sanctions from Moscow. Despite the Western fashion of dismissing Russia as a regional power with limited influence, Moscow's power is greater than Washington publicly acknowledges.
President Putin has tried to look East towards China to seek to balance its frigid ties with the West. This provides some comfort to Moscow but is no substitute to its relations with Western Europe because it very much remains a European power. Besides, Beijing, in its new position of power, is a hard bargainer, as the new major oil and gas deal has revealed and is now pressing Moscow for latest military technology and equipment.
The question that remains to be answered is: Who will make the first move? The onus is on the West and, in European terms, on Ms Merkel.