Tag: Ukraine
What to do about whoppers
The Russian Foreign Ministry tweeted this today:
#Lavrov: Active Russian involvement in European affairs has always brought long periods of peace and growth to all European countries.
He must have lived through a different Cold War than the one I experienced, along with millions of Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians. Not to mention Ukrainians. In another whopper, he denies that there are Russian agents in southeast Ukraine.
NATO today gave the lie to Moscow’s claims that it has not built up military forces on the Ukrainian border by publishing satellite photos. Moscow appears to be hesitating to use them, because it knows as well as any Ukrainian that invasion (and its aftermath) will not be a cakewalk. Instead it is bargaining for a federal Ukraine, one that affords the eastern and southern provinces a wide degree of autonomy. That is not the worst idea I’ve heard, but Kiev will have to be careful to ensure that the result is not a kind of stealth independence. Americans may have forgotten where and what Republika Srpska is, but the Russians know and no doubt see it has an attractive model. They are even offering it hundreds of millions in euro loans.
But Ukraine is different from Bosnia. Residents of eastern Ukraine identify as Ukrainians even if relatively few say it is easier for them to speak Ukrainian than Russian. A pre-crisis Bertelsmann Foundation study of language, identity and politics in Ukraine found:
Nothwithstanding any linguistic, political, or cultural differences, the vast majority of Ukrainians consider Ukraine their motherland. Even in the south of the country, 88% believe that Ukraine is their home country. This conviction is even more popular among residents of the allegedly pro-Russian east–93% share this belief, in comparison to the traditionally patriotic west and centre (99%).
Nor is there much difference between Russian and Ukrainian speakers in Ukraine on the importance of democracy (both rank it close to 8 on a 10-point scale) or satisfaction with how democracy has performed in Ukraine (4.6 on a 10-point scale). Crimea was “poles apart” from the rest of the country on whether Ukraine should favor a Russian or European orientation.
The question is what can be done to prevent a Russian invasion and to make one unsuccessful if prevention fails. Moscow is working hard to polarize opinion in eastern and southern Ukraine, trying to ween Ukrainians from their Ukrainian identity and promote the Russian alternative. Kiev has to be careful not to make that task easier. This means caution in dealing with Russia-supporting protesters, who are occupying government buildings in several eastern cities. It also means avoiding legislation or other moves that would infringe on existing rights to speak and use Russian. The right posture if Ukraine wants to avoid invasion is one that is welcoming and friendly to Russian speakers, ensuring as much as possible that they retain their Ukrainian identities.
But invasion may not be avoidable. Some have talked of an armed insurgency against any Russian takeover in the east or south. The trouble with that idea is that insurgencies take a long time and are far less often effective than nonviolent struggles, as Maria Stephan and Marciej Bartkowski discuss this morning. Nonviolent resistance succeeds quicker, better and more often, regardless of the character of the regime against which it is used. Violence would compel Russian speakers in Ukraine to make a choice between speaking Russian and being Ukrainian. That’s what Moscow wants. Kiev, as well as Brussels and Washington, should not.
Lavrov’s whoppers are advantageous. The more he says things that can be readily and definitively disproved, the less appealing the Russian alternative will be. If Moscow invades, presumably claiming to protect Russian speakers from alleged abuse, the West and Kiev will need enormous self-control to avoid making things worse. Washington should be supporting pro-Western civil society groups in eastern and southern Ukraine even now. They will be the nucleus of any nonviolent resistance that emerges later.
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Is Syria like the Balkans?
I have long resisted parallels between the Balkans, in particular Bosnia, and Syria. Here are the notes on the subject I prepared for a recent presentation on the subject:
1. Context counts. One sense in which the context is similar is that the Balkans and Syria were once part of the Ottoman Empire. Their populations were not homogenized into nation states. They preserve distinct ethnic and sectarian characteristics to a far greater extent than in Western Europe.
2. But otherwise the context really is different
• Ethnic nationalism was a cause of the war in Bosnia, among the most important of them. Heightened sectarian and ethnic feeling is a consequence of the war in Syria.
• In Bosnia, the neighbors were actively trying to divide the territory. In Syria, the neighbors are supporting proxies but still trying to avoid getting too involved and fearing division of the territory.
• Russia is supplying and financing the regime in Syria. It was not playing nearly so active role in supporting the Serbs in Bosnia.
• Russia was Yeltsin’s, not Putin’s: it was retreating from the world stage, not trying to force its way on.
• The United States in the 1990s was at the peak of its unipolar moment. Today it faces serious challenges throughout the Middle East and in Asia and war fatigue at home.
3. The Dayton negotiations produced a territorial division of Bosnia along ethnic lines and saved the Serbs from defeat.
• Milosevic came to Dayton suing for peace, because he feared a mass exodus of Serbs from Bosnia along the lines of what had happened a few months before in Croatia.
• The Americans compelled President Izetbegovic to agree to a settlement he regarded as unjust.
• Almost 20 years of effort has not reversed the ethnic cleansing and separation caused by the war, whose territorial dimension is a major barrier to peace implementation.
4. If there is a parallel to Syria in the Balkans, it is Kosovo, not Bosnia.
• There Milosevic was trying to assert control over territory that belonged to Serbia.
• He violated even minimal standards of decency by attacking civilian populations, chasing people from their homes and rendering something like half the population refugees.
• The US took advantage of the unipolar moment to launch a war without UN Security Council approval. Milosevic was indicted at The Hague Tribunal during the war.
• The outcome in Kosovo was not ethnoterritorial, except for a small portion in the north that is now being reintegrated with the rest of the territory.
• Ethnoterritorial separation may look desirable to end a war, but it creates conditions in which a real peace process is difficult if not impossible to implement within the context of a single sovereign state.
5. The military intervention against Yugoslavia was a vital prelude to the Kosovo settlement.
• Serbia became concerned that damage to its infrastructure from NATO bombing would be irreversible, making it difficult for Milosevic to remain in power.
• The Serbian army withdrew from Kosovo, Belgrade lost all control of the situation there, and the refugees returned en masse.
• Though defeated militarily, Milosevic remained in power for another year or so, until his own people brought him down at the polls.
• He fell at an election, having allowed local observers and vote counting at the polling places.
6. Nothing like these conditions exist today in Syria.
• Assad is winning, not losing. From the opposition perspective, leaving him in power is not an option. From the regime perspective, removing him is not an option.
• Military intervention by Iran and Russia continues. Any definitive military intervention on behalf of the opposition seems far off.
• An election in Syria today would unquestionably produce an outcome favorable to Assad, with many people not voting and the polling far from free and far.
7. (only if needed) A quick word also about Crimea.
• President Putin’s playbook there is not borrowed from the Americans in Kosovo, as he sometimes implies.
• The US did not in Kosovo unilaterally occupy and annex a province. There was no quicky referendum, but rather a well-coordinated declaration of independence after eight years of UN administration and several years of UN-led negotiation.
• Kosovo is now recognized by over 100 sovereign states.
• Putin’s playbook is copied from Milosevic, who used military force claiming to protect co-nationals and re-establish full control over territory he regarded as rightfully his own.
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Peace Picks March 31 – April 4
1. Ground Truth Briefing: The U.S.-Saudi Relationship: Too Big To Fail?
Monday, March 31 | 9 – 10am
Woodrow Wilson Center; 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
In the wake of President Obama’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, please join us as three veteran observers and analysts of the Saudi and Washington scenes assess the state of relations between the two countries and prospects for the future.
What ails the U.S.-Saudi relationship? Can it be fixed? Or are we witnessing the weakening of one of America’s special relationships in the region?
SPEAKERS
David Ottaway, Senior Scholar
Middle East Specialist and Former Washington Post Correspondent
Abdulaziz Sager
Chairman, Gulf Research Center, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Jim Smith
Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (2009-2013) and USAF Brigadier General, retired
Jane Harman; Director, President and CEO
Aaron David Miller, Vice President for New Initiatives and Distinguished Scholar
Historian, analyst, negotiator, and former advisor to Republican and Democratic Secretaries of State on Arab-Israeli negotiations, 1978-2003
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Ukraine isn’t over
With the G7 countries issuing a strongly worded statement yesterday against Russia’s annexation of Ukraine, optimists will want to go back to worrying about Malaysia Airlines flight 370. That would be a mistake. Despite President Putin’s disavowals, there is still serious risk to Ukraine from a Russian push into its southern provinces, perhaps as far as the Russian-occupied Transnistria area of Moldova:
Why? Let me count the gains to Moscow:
- Crimea would no longer be cut off from Russia proper.
- The southern provinces of Ukraine are home to heavy industries that cater in part to Russia’s military.
- Having annexed Crimea, pro-Russian political forces are unlikely in the future to win any national elections in Ukraine, so “protection” of Russian speakers requires their incorporation into Russia.
- Ukraine would be reduced to a landlocked remnant with little prospect of being more than a burden to the European Union and the United States.
- Rump Ukraine will find it necessary to make its peace with natural gas supplying Russia.
If thinking along these lines predominates in Moscow, it is hard to imagine anything the EU and US could or would do to prevent a Russian military move. The Ukrainian army is in no position to resist. Washington and Brussels imagine that Ukrainians would mount an insurgency against Russian occupation. That could be a sanguinary affair that could last a decade or more.
It is not easy to come up with reasonable policy options. Deployment of observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is already in progress, is a good idea. But if Putin decides to move, they will stand by to document how many tanks and armed personnel carriers have entered and where they are located.
Military options are out. Though the credibility of the Alliance is at stake, NATO has no obligation and few means with which to defend Ukraine, even though it is a member of Partnership for Peace. The Alliance will have its hands full protecting its Baltic and other easternmost neighbors. It may be able to provide some intelligence and logistical support to Ukraine, but that’s about it.
Thoughts fly to the money Kiev owes Moscow. Does it really have to pay its debts if Russia invades? Probably not, but it would then have to worry about where to find natural gas for heating next winter. There is no quick alternative available, so far as I know.
The ruble and the Russian stock market are already down, but that is likely to be a temporary response with no substantial long-term impact. Only if the EU and US come up with sanctions that really bite Russian banks hard is Moscow likely to pay attention. That’s unlikely, as the Europeans export too much to Russia and depend too much on Russian gas to get serious about financial sanctions anytime soon.
It looks as if we are in for a long-term response to the annexation of Crimea and whatever other parts of Ukraine Putin goes after. We’ve been in this situation before. We had no really good policy response to the Soviet occupation of the Baltics at the end of World War II, of Hungary in 1956 or of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Nor have we done anything substantial about South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which declared independence from Georgia in 2008.
What we had going for us during the Cold War was strategic patience. In the 1950s, I was taught in junior high school that the Baltics were “captive nations.” It seemed quixotic at the time to imagine that they would ever be free. But they were liberated at the end of the Cold War and have since become NATO and EU members.
We have wanted to believe that the ideological contest that gave us strategic patience is gone. Unfortunately, a new one appears to be taking its place. Autocrats like Putin are not relying any longer on state-controlled economies. They are not even pretending to read Marx or Engels. They are enjoying the fruits of at least partly free economies, under the control of their favored oligarchs. We may need even more patience than in the four decades or so of the Cold War in order to see the backs of Putin and his like.
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All deliberate speed, please
UN Secretary General Ban is marking the third anniversary of the Syrian uprising, which by my reckoning is March 15, by appealing to Russia and the US to revive peace talks. That’s his job, but prospects are not good.
The Asad regime continues to make slow progress on the battlefield. The opposition continues to insist that he step down to initiate a transition to democracy. There is no “zone of possible agreement.” Asad is preparing to conduct what he will call an election this spring to reconfirm his hold on power. The conditions in regime-controlled areas will not permit the election to be anything like free or fair. The conditions in liberated and contested areas won’t allow an election to occur at all. But Asad will claim legitimacy. Russia will concur.
In the US, consciousness of the horrors occurring in Syria is growing. The recent reports of the Save the Children and UNICEF boosted the case for humanitarian relief. The US has already been generous, even to a fault, as it appears to be buying tolerance for the failure to bring about a political resolution of the conflict. Russia, more committed to realpolitik, continues to arm, finance and provide political support to the regime. The crisis in Crimea leaves little oxygen in Washington for Syria. There is an argument for replying to Putin’s moves in Ukraine by strengthening opposition efforts in Syria, but I am not seeing signs that it is winning the day.
Some key members of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (Etilaf) will be in DC next week making the case for more support, including to the more moderate fighters. What Etilaf needs to do is convince the Obama Administration that vital American interests are at risk in Syria. The two most striking are the risk of extremism putting down deep roots in Syria and the risk of state collapse, both of which would affect not only Syria but its neighbors, especially Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. Perhaps eventually also Turkey and even Israel, whose boundary with Syria in occupied Golan could become hotter than it has been for many years.
Etilaf has not yet convinced Washington that it can be an effective bulwark against these threats. The Coalition has precious little control over even the relative moderates among the fighters. It has little to no capacity to counter Jabhat al Nusra or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the former the official al Qaeda franchisee and the latter its Iraq-based competitor. Etilaf favors preservation of the Syrian state, but with every passing day that becomes less likely. Nor has Etilaf demonstrated a lot of traction with the ad hoc administrative councils that pop up in liberated areas.
Where Etilaf showed itself to best advantage was at the Geneva 2 talks, where it outmaneuvered the Asad regime and scored lots of good points in favor of a managed transition and against the horrors of what Asad is doing. There is irony then in Etilaf emphasizing the limits of diplomacy, which is the arena in which it has done best.
That is not however a good reason to revive the talks, which really went nowhere. Nor can they be expected to, given what is happening on the battlefield. Until Iran and Russia are convinced that they risk more by continuing to support Asad rather than abandoning him, Tehran and Moscow will provide the edge he needs to continue to gain ground, albeit slowly. This is a formula for more war, not less.
A couple of weeks ago, the Obama Administration was thought to be looking at new options for Syria. There is no sign they have emerged from the “interagency” labyrinth. That’s not surprising. It took 3.5 years for something meaningful to emerge from the National Security Council in Bosnia, and depending on how you count at least that long in Kosovo. Only in Afghanistan and in Iraq have such decisions proved quick, mistakenly and disastrously so in Iraq.
Deliberation is wise. But if it takes too long, vital American interests in blocking extremists and maintaining the states of the Levant may suffer irreparable damage. Not to mention the harm to Syrians, who deserve better. All deliberate speed, please.
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Putin’s playbook
I wouldn’t want to impugn Russian President Putin’s originality, but his playbook does seem borrowed from Slobodan Milosevic. Ukraine is not really a country. Nor was Bosnia to Milosevic. The threat to Russian-speakers in Ukraine (and Georgia and Moldova) requires that they be protected. So too the Serbs in Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia. Russia did not start what is happening in Ukraine–it was the West that chased President Yanukovich from Kiev. So, too, for Milosevic it was Croatian President Tudjman who precipitated things in Zagreb, Bosnian President Izetbegovic in Bosnia and of course rioting Albanians in Kosovo: “no one should dare to beat you again!”
There is of course some degree of truth–I won’t go into how much–in each of these allegations. In revolutionary situations, there are bound to be bad moments, bad actors, bad provocations. The playbook requires that you overreact: mobilize paramilitaries, occupy territory, saturate the airwaves with justification and crush any hint of violent response on the part of a far weaker enemy. This is Machiavelli, suggesting ways to seize control of territory as quickly and inexpensively as possible and ensuring by whatever means you can get away with that it remains yours.
There is one play missing, so far: ethnic cleansing. So far as I am aware, the Russians are not, yet, expelling Tatars or Ukrainian speakers from Crimea. For the moment they are reported to be taking the soft power approach, trying to convince the Tatars to support them and arresting relatively few Ukrainian speakers and oppositionists, even as they box in or take over Ukrainian military installations. But that may change. With what I anticipate will be an overwhelming victory of the independence referendum in Crimea Sunday, Moscow may see the development of some real resistance to its plan to absorb Crimea into Russia as well as clashes in other parts of Ukraine between Russian and Ukrainian speakers. If it doesn’t happen spontaneously, Moscow can of course make it happen.
That’s when I would expect the next play. It is still early in the Ukraine saga. Things can get much worse and likely will. Crimea is more philo-Russian than other provinces in eastern and southern Ukraine. It already had autonomy and governed itself in many ways. It is not a great leap to independence, or to returning to the Russia from which it originated. The contestants will be more evenly matched in other provinces, requiring removal at least some of those who won’t cooperate.
Russian troops are said today to be massing and exercising near Ukraine’s eastern border. Success in Crimea could well embolden Putin further, tempting him to take a few more provinces piecemeal. If he does, his need to expel Ukrainian speakers and others who oppose Moscow’s rule will be greater than in Ukraine. We are far from the worst that can happen.
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