![Ukrainian army personnel dispatched to reclaim a city from pro-Russian forces decided instead to defect to the Russian side. [Credit: AFP/Getty]](https://i0.wp.com/www.dougsbriefcase.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/credit-afp-getty.jpg)
Ukrainian army personnel dispatched to reclaim a city from pro-Russian forces reportedly defected to the pro-Russian side. Last night’s tentative agreement will put an international organization — including Russian, American and European monitors — at the lead in returning the cities to Kiev’s control. [Credit: AFP/Getty]
Shortly after Russia invaded Crimea, Secretary of State John Kerry said, “The people of Ukraine will not sit still for this. They know how to fight.”
Evidently not.
Which may be why Kiev, along with the US and EU, was more than happy to cut a tentative deal last night that gives Russia pretty much everything it wanted in exchange for getting its government buildings back. The agreement stipulates that pro-Russian toughs who relinquish control of facilities in 10 eastern Ukraine cities will be granted amnesty. For its part, Moscow made no commitment to remove its troops from Ukraine’s border and it won a process for moving toward constitutional reforms similar to what was agreed to, then scrapped by the new government in Kiev, on February 21. In addition, US and EU leaders have said that they will hold off on additional economic sanctions against Russia, pending the return of facilities to Kiev’s control.
Despite last month’s outcry, the agreement makes no mention of Crimea. The West appears to have capitulated on this point, which is what initially prompted the imposition of sanctions and which occasioned Kerry’s boast that Ukraine would not “sit still” for Russia’s action.
The agreement is tentative. An Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission, which will include the participation of Russia, the EU and US, will “play a leading role” in seeing to it that the buildings are returned, a good move given the incapacity of the Kiev government to accomplish this on its own. Should that orderly transfer not occur in the coming days, the agreement could unravel.
If it holds up, it will mark a significant victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin. By placing 40,000 troops near the Ukraine border and inspiring pro-Russian hooligans to occupy a handful of government facilities, he stirred panic in Kiev and in Western capitals. Russian seizure of eastern Ukraine would have been a blow to American and Western European prestige, as well as to Kiev and its moribund economy. The economic output of Ukraine’s eastern oblasts far exceeds that of oblasts in the west. The per capita GDP of the anti-Russian city of Lviv, for example, ranks below that of Nigeria and Sudan and just ahead of Chad and Kyrgyzstan. Shorn of some of its most important industrial assets and on bad terms with its Russian neighbor, Ukraine would have found itself in very bad shape indeed.
Perhaps Putin never had any intention of invading eastern Ukraine. Perhaps he just wanted to assure that Russia would enter yesterday’s round of negotiations (unlike those that concluded in February) holding all the cards. If so, it worked. Key to the agreement is a commitment to a process for writing a new constitution, in which pro-Russian citizens will participate:
The announced constitutional process will be inclusive, transparent and accountable. It will include the immediate establishment of a broad national dialogue, with outreach to all of Ukraine’s regions and political constituencies, and allow for the consideration of public comments and proposed amendments.
Pro-Russian factions will insist that the new constitution devolve more power to the regions at the expense of the central government. Failure to do so will rekindle tensions that Kiev and the West will no doubt be eager to avoid. A constitution to Putin’s liking is the most probable result of this process, although it is by no means guaranteed. This much is: if Putin doesn’t get what he wants, there will be further unpleasantness.
Putin is controlling events in part because he knows what he wants and is willing to use force to get it. He is a garden-variety tyrant, no different from a thousand others throughout history. His interest is in his own power – seizing it, grasping it, enlarging it. He has, for all intents and purposes, ruled Russia for 14 years; he intends to rule it until he departs this earth. And he will do whatever it takes to fulfill that ambition, including repression at home and aggression abroad.
Western Europe’s divisions and economic malaise, coupled with a weak American President, together created an opportunity for Putin to assert himself in Ukraine. The West handed Putin a credible grievance with its lamentable decision to scuttle a multilateral accord for constitutional and electoral reform in favor of a dubious government instituted to appease demonstrators. Russia had played by the rules of Western diplomacy and suffered humiliation when the West reneged on the agreement, all during a Winter Olympics that were a celebration of Russian pride.
The US and EU somehow failed to foresee that Putin would react to these events and they were completely unprepared when he did. The West has been on the defensive ever since, vaguely threatening force and explicitly saying that it would compel Russia to pay a “cost” for its misbehavior. When all that the US and EU could produce was a risible list of individuals who would be denied visas and banking privileges, Putin doubled down on thuggery. Having pocketed Crimea, he began to make trouble in Ukraine’s eastern provinces.
President Obama is at a great disadvantage in taking on Putin. Putin knows what he wants; the President just wants this all to go away. His greatest disability is that, in the sixth year of his presidency, his foreign policy remains vague and detached from reality. Not being George W. Bush is not a foreign policy, as Peggy Noonan has noted. Yet that seems to best describe the President’s approach, along with a preference for catchy metaphors — pivots, resets, Arab Springs — over the formulation of clear objectives. A metaphor also is not a foreign policy. Metaphors are catchy, memorable and entirely vacuous if not rooted in a coherent and realistic framework. They are of little use among the cranks, kleptocrats, brutes, megalomaniacs, despots and lunatics who populate the “international community.” They sound perfectly reasonable until a Syrian tyrant, an Egyptian General or somebody named Vlad tells us where we can stick our metaphor. Which is what just happened in Ukraine.
Walter Russell Mead has summarized the President’s folly as pivoting:
“away from a Europe that didn’t need us and a Middle East that didn’t want us into an Asia that both needed and wanted our presence. These days the White House is facing a harder but perhaps more durable truth: the United States needs to pivot back toward the world.”
With nearly three years still remaining in his term, the President has the opportunity to make one more pivot. Perhaps the dreadful episode in Ukraine will persuade him to take it.