Cold War’s fire is still burning
The Cold War is not quite dead, as recent months’ events in Ukraine reveal. But the fever pitch the situation has reached is illustrated by a leaked conversation between a senior US official, Victoria Nuland and her country’s ambassador, first on YouTube and then on Twitter.
Ms Nuland lambasts the European Union for its passivity in swinging the deal in favour of Ukraine teaming up with the West and discusses the merits of the main Opposition leaders in forming the next government to replace the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych.
Charges and counter-charges fly in ether space and in plain speech. Russia accuses the US of “crudely interfering” in Ukraine’s affairs while America hints at a Russian hand in propagating the embarrassing tape. As an aside, Dmytro Bulatov, a Ukrainian Opposition activist, who claims he was tortured and bloodied by state-sponsored thugs, kept the Cold War fires burning through a press conference in Lithuania where he is receiving treatment.
Behind the surcharged atmosphere between the US and Russia lies the tug of war between the two Cold War antagonists for the last remaining booty in Eastern Europe for the West: to swing the great land mass of Ukraine with historic ties to Russia under Moscow’s very nose to deal a geopolitical blow to Russian interests. In fact, Ukraine is divided down the middle with the western portion pro-West in its inclinations and desirous of being European while the largely Russian-speaking eastern half proud of its Russian-influenced traditions.
Ukraine emerged as, perhaps, the last major Cold War object last November, when a trade deal the European Union had been negotiating was upended by President Yanukovych by his refusal to sign it. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Kyiv had been playing Moscow against the West to get the best deal for itself. Its long negotiations with the EU expectedly provoked Moscow’s ire, which had its own customs union proposal. In any event, Russia made its views known by subjecting Ukrainian imports to long delays and pressed payment for its gas exports.
President Yanukovych thought it wise to pocket a Russian loan of $15 billion for his strapped economy and a handsome discount on gas prices. There was uproar in Western European capitalists, and in Kyiv, where joining up with the European Union had an obvious appeal, demonstrators took over the main square in Kyiv, locally known as the Maidan, to begin mass demonstrations. The initial attitude of the authorities was heavy handed, and irate demonstrators upped the protests braving freezing temperatures by escalating their demands, capturing government offices, among other centres.
Countries of the European Union were not coy in expressing their support for the demonstrators, their foreign ministers ostentatiously mixing with the protesters on the Maidan, and the head of foreign affairs in the EU, Catherine Ashton, made more than one visit to Kyiv. On his part, President Yanukovych offered concessions; his Prime Minister and Cabinet resigned and he asked the Opposition leaders to take over, an offer they refused under his presidency.
The United States felt it best to ride on the shoulders of the European Union, until it lost patience with its slow pace, necessitating the widely quoted expletive Ms Nuland used to describe the EU’s performance (for which she has apologised). For a change, Europe is not the object of American spying; Ms Nuland is at the receiving end in this instance. But Washington, it is clear, is now primed to make the final putsch to gather Ukraine for the West.
Apart from the bad blood the issue of Ukraine is creating between Moscow and Washington, it will cast a long shadow. Unlike the other eastern European countries, which joined the European Union, at least one half of Ukraine is deeply attached to Russia in its faith, language and traditional ties, despite some eastern-based oligarchs recently trimming their sails with an eye on the future. Besides, eastern Ukrainian industries are heavily dependent on the Russian market and could not compete with the West.
The European Union has been less than generous in offering money and concessions to Ukraine, smug in the belief than to aspire for closer relations with the organisation of the future was in itself a prize. It is now the expectation that the United States will do some heavy lifting in terms of organising an attractive financial package. While the US state department spokeswoman called the airing of the embarrassing tape as “a new low in Russian trade-craft”, this tussle to wrest Ukraine from Russia’s traditional area of influence will continue to roil relations between the two countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin is no pushover and will seek to take his revenge if Washington succeeds in its endeavours.
As it is, the state of Russia’s relations with the United States has been a far cry from the days of Hillary Clinton when she with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov famously exchanged a gadget signifying a “re-set” in relations between the two countries. Washington has been signifying the diminishing space for dissent in Putin’s Russia while Moscow has been wary of the reach and depth of American intelligence gathering in the world, including in Russia.
Admittedly, President Yanukovych is on the defensive as the momentum is with the Opposition, strengthened by Western support. An interesting detail the activist Mykola gave of his travails at the hands of thugs was his version of events. He said he was forced to confess under torture that he was an American spy and a US Central Investigative Agency. He said he had lied to save his skin.
For its part, the Russian side has claimed through the Kremlin adviser Sergei Glazyev that recent events were an “attempted coup by American-inspired rebels”. He also charged the US with breaching the 1994 treaty “for collective guarantees and collective action”. The Ukraine issue, deeply felt in Russia, will continue to make life difficult in areas of the world in which the US and Russia need to cooperate to resolve world problems.