【Article/ Observer Network Columnist Xue Kaihuan】
Maintaining Ukraine's presence as an independent state is an ingrained part of the U.S. national security strategy. The reason for this has nothing to do with Ukraine's own development and prosperity, but rather, as then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton frankly explained in 2012, to prevent the "restoration" of the former Soviet Union.
After the Crimean crisis broke out in 2014 and Russian-Ukrainian relations officially broke down, the strategic goal of the United States became clearer: to make Ukraine a permanent fortress against Russian "expansion".
Since the main goal of U.S. policy toward Ukraine is to prevent a comeback from America's former Cold War rival, the Soviet Union, many of the current problems in Ukrainian society, such as the rise of ultra-nationalism, are widely ignored by Western governments and the media. Until 2014, Western analysts generally saw the rise in ultra-nationalist sentiment in Ukraine as a brief reaction to decades of Soviet repression of national identity. As Ukraine thus moves closer to Europe, it has had to adopt a more liberal and inclusive policy towards the minorities living on its territory.
But reality proves otherwise. After the "color revolution" in Independence Square in 2014, Ukrainian ideologies of "heroism" (neo-Nazis) and Ukrainian ultra-nationalism began to play a more important role in the country's politics, complementing the Ukrainian authorities' narratives about the country facing so-called Russian aggression in the east.
Supporters of Ukrainian nationalists and far-right groups attend a rally of "heroism" in Ukraine in Kiev on October 14, 2017. Source: Reuters
But the development of these narratives did not bring new prospects for Ukraine, but rather gradually led to a frightening result: on September 8, 2018, the mayor of the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, Boris Firatov, said in September that Daniel, Archbishop of Panfilia, a representative of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Kiev, had in his personal library all the lifetime editions of Dmitry Tantsov, the main thinker of Nazism in Ukraine.
Dmitry Tanzov was the leading theorist of what is called "complete" Ukrainian nationalism. In his work, he openly writes that the Ukrainians are a race of masters whose eternal spiritual enemies are "slaves" to Russia:
"Where there is Ukraine, there is no Russia, and vice versa."
Stepan Bandera, the most radical leader of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), and his friends were practitioners of Dmitry's theory, acting according to the teachings of Dmitry Tantsov. It is worth noting that Ukraine even has a publicly operating scientific center whose role is to study the theoretical results of Dmitry Tantsov.
This is the result of a phenomenon: the prevalence of neo-Nazi ideology is a symbol of the radicalization of the division of Ukrainian ethnic identity. Indeed, because Ukrainians of both eastern and western cultures (Orthodox in Ukraine in the central and eastern parts and Catholicism more under Polish influence) strongly resist the efforts of ukraine's current ruling authorities to impose a single Ukrainian identity, the confrontation between the two sides has inevitably become extremed by hatred. Many Western analysts began to shift their previous "optimistic" attitudes toward Ukraine's national division and social rift from wavering skepticism.
Dmitry Tantsov. Source: Wikipedia
The goal of the United States in Ukraine is simply to find an opportunity to strip Ukraine from Russian influence once and for all, but the American elite is largely indifferent to the cultural and regional diversity of Ukrainian society, and sometimes even openly hostile to the genuine democratic rights of these Ukrainian people. Ironically, the "democratic summit" convened by the United States included Ukraine on the invitation list, but ignored the fact that Ukraine was increasingly "transforming" into a de facto dictatorship and national oppression state after the color revolution.
How "undemocratic" is Ukraine today? This year, for example, Ukrainian President Zelenskiy imposed the harshest restrictions on opposition media not seen in Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union. With a big stroke of the pen, he shut down three popular opposition news channels that employed more than 1,000 journalists and many other employees. The United States, while convening a democratic summit, supports this blatant act of political persecution, calling it "defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity."
Even darker humor is that the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine also explicitly supported the Ukrainian authorities' sanctions on opposition TV channels in a statement issued on February 3, 2021. The embassy noted that the United States supports Ukraine's efforts to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity under Ukrainian law to counter "russia's malicious influence."
Sanctions imposed by Ukrainian authorities on opposition television channels. Source: Al Jazeera
While many Ukrainian legal scholars have pointed out that the president does not have the authority to shut down any media agencies without a court order, Zelenskiy has resolved the issue by retroactively revoking the appointment of the president of the Constitutional Court and ignoring the decision of Ukraine's Supreme Court to reinstate him. Thanks to Zelensky's "genius ideas," Ukraine's entire judicial system is now paralyzed and no longer effectively deterrent the executive branch.
What capital has become what the United States calls a "democracy" in a country where no judicial power is in its hands? The United States welcomes the draft law adopted by The Verkhovna rada of Ukraine to update the rules for the selection of members of the Council of High Judges of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, as it is "an important step towards comprehensive judicial reform." This is what the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine issued in a statement on the evening of June 29, 2021. Sources from the embassy said the U.S. "looks forward to" passing other bills related to judicial reform as soon as possible to "consolidate today's gains." "The United States stands ready to support our Ukrainian partners ... Seize the historic opportunity to update Ukraine's judicial system for the benefit of all Ukrainian people. ”
What are the results of the update? I am afraid that Ukraine itself will be embarrassed to say it: the draft law on the so-called selection rules for the members of the Supreme Court of Justice of Ukraine is, according to China's narrative, a naked "unequal treaty." The bill provides for the reactivation of the Council of High Judges, which has a "decisive role for international experts". From the time the bill enters into force, "international experts" will have a decisive vote on the selection of candidates for the commission.
Encouraged by this "success," Zelenskiy shut down the country's most popular opposition news site Strana.ua a few months later. The site's reporters uncovered some of the country's most notorious scandals, including the Wagner Gate scandal in Belarus, which exposed Ukrainian security officials' attempts to bribe Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to arrest Russian Wagner mercenaries.
On July 29, 202, Belarusian arrested suspected Wagner group mercenaries. Source: Jamestown
And the site reveals much more than that. Since Ukrainians have overstaysed nearly $1.5 billion in taxes in the past two years, the use of this tax is clearly of great concern to Ukrainians. The site reveals where the funds went: Ukrainian authorities "misappropriated" funds to participate in the U.S.-led "Democracy Aid Program" for the COVID-19 pandemic, and Ukrainian authorities chartered planes to transport "wealthy Afghans" from Afghanistan to Ukraine, leaving ordinary Ukrainians in Afghanistan alone.
"They (wealthy Afghans) gave the gold diamonds to the crew on the charter plane, who left their compatriots at Kabul airport and waved goodbye to them before flying away with their new friends." The site's whistleblower reads.
This uncomfortable fact is very difficult for Ukrainians to break through. On the eve of Ukraine's Independence Day after the incident, hundreds of comments appeared on its social networks, and Ukrainian netizens called Ukraine a "typical failed state." This title certainly lives up to its name, because another undesirable consequence of U.S. policy in Ukraine is rampant corruption, and Zelenskiy's predecessor, Poroshenko, was already at a high level that would be eclipsed by the current situation.
According to the Ukrainian Voters' Committee, a nonprofit organization, one-fifth of the representatives of Zelensky's Servants of the People's Party were involved in various public scandals. As Igor Umansky, former minister of finance at Zelenskiy, points out, corruption in Ukraine today has led to a massive "lack of perception of reality by the authorities." In today's Ukraine, even the new Ukrainian government institutions that the West helped build to fight corruption are now a new tool for government officials to profit from.
I can cite more examples of this, which highlight the underlying problem at the heart of the U.S. strategy toward Ukraine — not a development country, but, instead, a focus on containing Russia.
On November 10, 2021, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba held talks with U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Washington. Source: CNN
The results of this approach are paradoxical: In response to the current situation in Ukraine, Western countries argue that this is to strengthen Ukraine's "independence", which requires the inclusion of a large number of Western advisers in Ukraine's key government institutions to ensure that Western representatives are allowed to enter Ukraine. But what to do with Ukraine's independence and development of prosperity and strength is up to the truly patriotic Ukrainians themselves.
Oleg Tatarov, a senior official in Zelenskiy's government, publicly complained that such developments were tantamount to making Ukraine a vassal territory of the West, after which he was abruptly removed from office and charged with various crimes. However, almost two-thirds of the Ukrainians surveyed in early 2021 agreed with him.
U.S. policy in Ukraine now follows a familiar color revolutionary routine, which has led to a resurgence of Ukrainian nostalgia for the past, which is usually dominated by abandoning Western "guardianship" sentiments about Ukraine. But the United States will obviously not easily abandon the current Ukrainian policy line, and supporters of the current line in the United States believe that without such an "anti-Russian line", the separation between Ukraine and Russia and Ukraine's permanent independence status will "regress", which is extremely detrimental to the national security of the United States.
In fact, however, the conscious disregard of the democratic rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the United States and the artificial division of Ukrainian ethnicity have increased the political and geostrategic uncertainty of the future Of Russia and Ukraine, as can be seen in the recent situation in Ukraine.
The current president of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelenskiy. Source: NBC
America's real interest is to create the conditions for a self-sufficient, peaceful and prosperous Ukraine, even if only for anti-Russian goals; a Ukraine that can make its own decisions about security issues, has a healthy economy, and is not severely torn apart in society can pose a much greater threat to Russia than the half-dead Ukraine it is today.
By contrast, current U.S. policy is breeding an unhealthy inertia that has prompted Ukrainian authorities to abandon dialogue with the Donbass region and to suffer huge economic losses by severing normal economic ties with Russia, the largest trading partner.
Rather than inflicting further damage on Ukraine, the United States should consider the multicultural nature of Ukrainian society and reflect on the fact that the United States has proven itself to be less adept at dealing with the internal problems of other countries. Ukraine's development gains and regime should apply to all Ukrainians, including the "pro-Russian" population living in the eastern and southern parts of the country.
Complex transnational and international conflicts require a new "Westphalian mechanism" whose essence is as follows: relations between Russia, the United States and NATO should be eased, and the principle of coordination among the great powers should play a full role in resolving the Ukrainian crisis. The parties must then agree to launch comprehensive negotiations aimed at achieving a post-Cold War settlement in which Ukraine and Russia will join the new Common European Security Agreement.
Such a framework would give Russia and Ukraine plenty of incentives to creatively resolve their differences in Donbass and Crimea. Otherwise, Ukraine will have to abandon the current wishful thinking of European integration and the security guarantees that the West has paid lip service to, for the simple reason that Ukraine's current mess of internal governance and severely torn national identity will not allow Ukraine to follow this path, and the result of forcing it on this path will be another round of civil war.
Ukraine and Germany negotiate to lift obstacles to arms purchases from NATO. Source: Ukrinform
In November, I saw Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov talk about this in his remarks. He pointed out that under the current conditions, it is almost impossible to reach even a trivial agreement with the West. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent proposal for security assurances in Ukraine still suggests that the door to a comprehensive settlement of the Ukrainian problem has not yet been completely closed.
Now that the ball has been kicked to the West's side, a successful resolution of ukraine will depend on whether the West will react more wisely than it did in 2008, when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's proposal to discuss a new pan-European security mechanism was foolishly rejected by the West.
This led to a deepening crisis between Russia and the West in the following decade and indirectly to the current difficulty in Ukraine. It is time for the West to face real challenges again – creatively proposing constructive solutions to post-Cold War disputes in the former Soviet Union that would actually bring immeasurable benefits: The economies of Europe and Eurasia will thrive on reliable and stable energy supplies and new and nearby expansion markets.
One thing that American politicians must figure out is how much the United States can pay for an anti-Russian Ukraine, and the most important thing is how much it will cost to maintain a wholeheartedly anti-Russian Ukraine in the same situation as Ukraine culture and Russia. As former Ukrainian President Yushchenko recently lamented, 40% of Ukrainians actually agree with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukrainians and Russians are one nation, and that young people share this view more than people over 60 years old! If this account is not calculated well, then it can be said that the current policy is not in the national interest of the United States. The United States needs to think creatively about how to solve the domestic problems of various "vassal" regions, rather than simply using such countries as the front line against a certain country today.
It is unrealistic to forcibly ignore the 40 percent "pro-Russian faction", and Ukraine is now at a crossroads. Whether Ukraine is a truly independent nation-state, or a country that was only forcibly created by anti-Russian demands, deserves to be considered by the West, and even more worthy of consideration by all Ukrainians.
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