Humiliated and Insulted
PART 2: What Happened To The Good Old Ukrainian ’Balancing’ Foreign Policy?
It seems to me that nowadays — unfortunately — Ukraine doesn’t have its own, independent, well-grounded answer to anything. It hasn’t been able to develop any viable concept or even a ’counter-concept’ in the last 30 years, neither in politics, nor in the energy sector, nor on the so called ’ethnic origin’ issue (reminder: Putin’s essay of 12 July 2021 ’On Russian-Ukrainian Historical Unity’, and Dmytro Kuleba’s response in the Foreign Affairs, which I discussed in Part 1, entitled Geopolitical Predestination).
I am convinced that if Kyiv had developed such concepts in recent decades, and possibly had additional alternative responses, it would certainly be easier for the country to handle the arrogance of the major powers, both Eastern and Western ones, and perhaps to avoid such howling injustices as the U.S.-German Nord Stream 2 (NS2) agreement. I am sure that developing such strategic principles would certainly make it easier for Ukraine to manoeuver in the international space.
Yes, to manoeuver — i.e. to pull the good old ’balancing’ policy out of the bag, the ability which allowed Ukraine to pursue a more or less successful foreign policy for decades, but which by now seems to have been lost.
Let’s take a look at the Ukrainian ’balancing’ policy.
’Balancing’ policy, or strategic manoeuvring, usually has a specific reason and a specific purpose, i.e. something motivates a country using this policy instrument to meet at least to a certain degree two opposing sides’ requirements. And, to achieve a specific foreign policy goal through comforting each partner.
In my opinion this was also the case for the independent Ukraine for quite a long time. Beginning from the second half of the 1990s for at least ten years Kyiv’s foreign policy was dominated by the desire to achieve the strategic aims with the help of the multivectorism.
The period of ’productive’ manoeuvring lasted for about 10–15 years from the second half of the 1990s. Later it was replaced by the era of ’empty’ balancing, when the manoeuvring of Ukraine no longer had any specific purpose, but Kyiv at least earned revenues by this policy, and so it was able to satisfy the various needs of its multi-ethnic population. It should be noted here that policy towards the national minorities was also part of the balancing policy — the point was that everybody would be satisfied to a certain extent. Ethnic discrimination was not allowed, any of the national minorities underwent persecution. (Good old days!)
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Multivectorism may have worked pretty well for a while because everyone knew that Kyiv tried to find a balance between the partners, not provoking any of them. It was comforting for each actor as it brought predictability and stability to the relations.
The signs of the looming end of the Ukrainian multivector foreign policy may have first been outlined in connection with developments in Georgia in 2008. The turning point at that time was that NATO had become too close to Moscow’s sphere of interest. And in 2014, on the Maidan, the EU had got too close to the Ukrainians with the gentle breeze of change — an opportunity for the Ukrainians for the ’European choice’ — which was unacceptable by the then pro-Russian government and its supporters in the Kremlin. (Anyway, no doubt that people did not want the EU itself, with its numerous institutions, they just wished to get access to the real or perceived opportunities offered by the EU, such as unrestricted travel and work, etc., as opposed to the likely Eastward turn of the pro-Russian Yanukovych.)After the annexation of Crimea and the escalation of the situation in Donbas the Ukrainian leadership fully turned towards the U.S., mainly appealing for its financial support. I believe that during Trump’s presidency Ukraine was in real danger. With Biden, this danger seems to pass, or at least one can hope.
President Zelensky’s staff of advisers, which apparently includes a lot of pro-American and pro-Kremlin people too, may have been trying to inspire the Head of State to apply the well-proven ’balancing’ policy when he began to engage in commitments in both directions. But this is no longer the 2000s, and the actors did not settle for apparent promises, and the methods should have been at least a bit more refined. The rules of the game also have changed, even though actor and comedian Zelensky had not been informed about it.
Thus it should come as no surprise that while Zelensky promised ’de-oligarchization’ for the West (which is practically ’mission impossible’ in Ukraine), and spoke with the Lord of the Kremlin by phone, the U.S., Germany, and Russia concluded the Nord Stream-2 agreement settling an old debate.
After all of this Ukraine had no choice but to get annoyed by the unclear wording of the German-American joint statement about Russian gas transit, which could be used as a political weapon, and to wonder what to do next, and how seriously the security guarantees floated by these phoney allies should be taken in the future.
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