What Ukrainian election?

There has been a deafening silence about Ukraine's presidential election from the Beltway cheerleaders for NATO expansion, ever since the first round in January catapulted their long-time bête noire, Viktor Yanukovych, into first place with 35 percent of the vote in a field of eighteen candidates.  Voters ignominiously ousted incumbent president Viktor Yushchenko, one-time hero of the 2004 "Orange Revolution" and Ukraine's most vociferous champion of NATO membership, giving him barely five percent of their votes.

Yanukovych's election yesterday, narrowly edging out prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the run-off, spotlights the folly of Washington conservatives who pressed single-mindedly to lock Ukraine (and Georgia) into the Western military alliance during the Bush administration.  They discounted deep ambivalence among Ukrainians themselves and sought to override overt opposition from NATO's leading members in western Europe. 

Like insects trapped in Baltic amber since dinosaur days, American conservatives remained frozen in a comfortingly simple cold-war view of the world:  Russia is incorrigibly suspect and must relentlessly be hemmed in by American power.  "Watch Ukraine," Senator John McCain said as he threw down the gauntlet in the second presidential debate of 2008.  "We've got to show moral support for Ukraine.  We've got to advocate for their membership in NATO." 

The problem was, Washington wanted Ukraine in NATO much more than most Ukrainians did.  Britain's foreign secretary, David Milliband, alluding to opinion polling showing Ukrainians' queasiness about entering NATO, summed up Europeans' more cautious approach:  "Nato said it would welcome you--if you want it."  And while president Yushchenko clearly wanted it, even prime minister Tymoshenko hedged her bets, insisting Ukrainians should dispose of NATO membership by referendum.

Galling as it may be to American conservatives, the French were right--and Germany's Angela Merkel too.  They had fought off Bush's insistent demand to put Ukraine on course to early entry into the alliance, seeing it as unnecessarily provocative to a Russia that saw all the signs of hostile encirclement.  They were relieved when Barack Obama dismissed conservatives' fevered imagining of Russian military threats to Ukraine and promptly pressed the reset button on relations with Russia.

By speaking in Russian at his victory speech last night, Yanukovych signaled pretty unmistakably that NATO membership will not be on Ukraine's near-term agenda.  That is just as well.  But he also seemed to suggest that the derailment of his apparatchik electoral machine five years ago has also made him rather more sensitive to the need to respect the spirit of democracy, and not just toy with its form. 

With Ms. Tymoshenko still commanding a majority in parliament, Yanukovych will have to learn the arts of political cohabitation if Ukraine is to deal effectively with the problems its people are facing--the problems that both candidates were compelled to address in the course of their presidential campaign.  NATO never made their list.

  

Comments

[Lew]

Good analysis, Jeff.
Sadly, Yanukovych's criminal record makes him a dubious partner, as Nina Khrushcheva wrote recently. It appears that he may be more open to Western support, as you hint, given that Julia Tymoshenko appears for her part to be seeking Kremlin support. The people of Ukraine are clearly pretty evenly divided - many countries share this feature in a world where governing effectively is getting harder.
The West would do well to remain open to approaches from Ukraine, but cautious in proffering "solutions".

[Ruth Thomas]

Hi, Jeff.

Your article and various accounts of the Ukrainian election reminded me of my experience at a concert by the Kyiv Symphony and Chorus at the War Memorial in November 2000. I would have to call it "exuberantly eclectic." The late Donald Delany, Trenton Times classical music critic and absolute master of damnation by praise, described it as having "thrilled the War Memorial audience [packed with Ukrainian New Jerseyans, of course] with playing and singing unlike any heard there in recent memory." And then some, I'd say!

I wouldn't be surprised that what I observed there was an example of the endemic public culture.

Of course, the electorate wouldn't see any joy to joining NATO forces in the mountains of Afghanistan, and, well, as military partners for us...a completely insane idea from the start, from the authors of so many other insane ideas.