Constantine Pleshakov: The Crimean Nexus

The third problematic approximation concerns the character of modern Ukraine. Difficult for Russians, nation-building is precarious for Ukrainians. Contrary to the well-meaning patriotic mythology, Ukraine was never independent prior to 1991. Its territory is a quilt of lands ceded by (in chronological order) Turkey, Poland, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. It has been a battlefield for the past six centuries. In 1709, Russian tsar Peter the Great and Swedish king Charles XII fought the decisive battle of the Russo-Swedish War in the core of Ukraine, Poltava. After losing the battle, Charles fled to the Ottoman domains close to modern Odessa. It is hard to believe that Sweden’s and Turkey’s spheres of influence ever overlapped—yet in Ukraine they did. The last time Poles occupied Ukraine’s capital city of Kiev was in 1920. What is happening in Ukraine now is tragic, but neither novel nor unexpected, and the more propagandists insist on the intrinsic unity of a Ukrainian nation, the dimmer the prospects for a true settlement.

Transition to sovereignty can be (relatively) smooth only when the birth of a nation-state is preceded by the emergence of a nation. That was certainly not the case with Ukraine. A state but not yet a nation, Ukraine struggles like a forced bulb. In this condition, encouraging it to choose between Russia and Europe means exerting too much pressure on the fragile domestic balance. In 2013–2016, that pressure brought unendurable distress.

Ukraine is a divided nation, but its divisions are more intricate than the “pro-European” west and the “pro-Russian” east. Every conflict on its territory involves numerous regional agents. Conflated and fluid local identities make Ukraine’s territorial integrity frail. In foreign policy, this makes it a swing state. Domestically, the power of regional actors undercuts the authority of the central government in Kiev. Henry Kissinger writes: “Ukraine has been independent for only 23 years; it had previously been under some kind of foreign rule since the 14th century. Not surprisingly, its leaders have not learned the art of compromise, even less of historical perspective. The politics of post-independence Ukraine clearly demonstrates that the root of the problem lies in efforts by Ukrainian politicians to impose their will on recalcitrant parts of the country, first by one faction, then by the other.” [5] Henry Kissinger, “To Settle the Ukraine Crisis, Start in the End,” Washington Post , March 5, 2014.

Parties to a long conflict may think of themselves as oil and water that do not mix, but on a territory that keeps changing hands, they do. Ceded for a decade or a century, a region becomes culturally transformed, and when it returns to the country that had lost it, it does so with a new face and character. Several cultures had overlapped on the territory of modern Ukraine, resulting in peculiar, region-specific cultural molds.

It is this state without a nation, unused to independence and self-governance, that has now become subject to the “Monroe doctrines” of regional powers, NATO and European Union eastward expansion, and attempts at regime change.

Russia responded to the collapse of the USSR with an incarnation of the Monroe Doctrine: all of the former Soviet republics were defined as the “near abroad,” and part of Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence. All had once shared a continuous human and economic space, and Russia, as the former imperial core, had a particularly big stake in keeping the legacy. Every attempt by a foreign power, whether the United States, China, Iran, Germany, or Turkey, to step into Russia’s backyard was deemed poaching, a provocation, brinkmanship. When in 1995 NATO announced plans to expand eastward, Russians reacted as Americans did when Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba. [6] Andrew C. Kuchins and Igor A. Zevelev, “Russian Foreign Policy: Continuity in Change,” Washington Quarterly , Winter 2012, 151; Nicholas V. Riasanovsky and Mark D. Steinberg, A History of Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 672.

The “near abroad” concept has been deservedly criticized as neo-imperialist, yet immorality does not necessarily invalidate realpolitik. Many failing empires of the past had cushioned their disintegration precisely by creating a “near abroad.” The British Commonwealth is a good example. Second, contemporary great powers, such as the United States and China, maintain and guard their periphery zealously and determinedly (the United States in the Caribbean, China in Southeast Asia), so it makes little sense to hold Moscow to a higher standard. Finally, in the end of the Cold War, both American and Western European leaders had led Russians to believe that they would have preferred the Soviet Union to stay undivided (minus the Baltic countries, whose right to secede no one in the West doubted). Pretty much like the Entente in 1919, they now suspected that the disintegration would lead to geopolitical chaos. As a veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service, former ambassador Jack F. Matlock, puts it, “The Soviet Union collapsed as a state despite the end of the Cold War, not because of it.” In 1991, in a speech in Kiev, President George H. W. Bush advised the non-Russian Soviet republics to keep a democratic federation with Moscow. Aggressive U.S. involvement in nation-building in the post-Soviet space would not start until Bill Clinton’s presidency. [7] Jack F. Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (New York: Random House, 2004), 318–319.

Just like the Monroe Doctrine, the “near abroad” was a response to new ideological and geopolitical challenges. For the United States in 1823, those challenges came from the reactionary politics of European powers after the downfall of Napoleon, and the formation of the Holy Alliance. For Russia in the 1990s, the ideological challenge was the worldwide triumph of Western universalism, with NATO a new Holy Alliance. [8] Elihu Root, “The Real Monroe Doctrine,” Proceedings of the American Society of International Law at Its Annual Meeting (1907–1917), vol. 8, 428.

What worried the United States in the 1820s was the possible return of old foes to the Americas, and this is why President James Monroe proclaimed that the American continents were not “to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” He warned that the United States “should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and security.” A similar rationale stood behind the “near abroad”: after seventy years of forced absence, Western powers were returning to Eurasian heartlands. [9] MacMillan, Paris 1919 , 9; Root, “The Real Monroe Doctrine,” 427.

No newly independent nation in the near abroad is more intertwined with Russia than Ukraine. A Russian ambassador to the United States said that Russia’s relations with Ukraine were “identical to those between New York and New Jersey.” A deputy foreign minister warned: “Remember, anything between us and the Ukrainians is a family affair, and any disagreement we have is a family feud.” The most prominent American realist, Henry Kissinger, concurs: “The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. …Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia.” [10] Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2003), 80; Kissinger, “To Settle the Ukraine Crisis.”

Russia does not have a right or a duty to remain Ukraine’s custodian, and its military and economic superiority are not going to last forever. Nor should Russia’s pretentions go unquestioned or unchallenged. The point is that for Russians, Ukraine is part of their continuous national space, not unlike what Canada is for the United States, but even closer.