Ukraine: A lynchpin in Europe’s ‘Manifest Destiny’?

Ukraine is one of the largest and most populous countries on the fringes of the European Union. Although with an area comparable to France, and a population of just under fifty million, Ukraine has nevertheless suffered a cruel fate during much of the previous century. Long part of the Russian empire, the nation was ruled firmly from Moscow, and suffered the vices of dictatorship, Russification and forced famines, especially under the regime of Joseph Stalin. With the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Soviet Russian power deteriorated, enabling the Ukrainians to gain their independence in December 1991. Nominally free from the Kremlin’s interference, the Ukrainians’ future looked brighter than their more unfortunate past.

Alas, poverty and corruption stalled progress, as did relaxed European engagement with the new Ukrainian authorities. To some extent, this was predictable. Preoccupied during the 1990s, the European Union was itself evolving, and set on a path of massive expansion with enlargement into Central and Eastern Europe, with several countries in Europe’s periphery queuing up to gain accession. This was compounded by the tumultuous events in the Western Balkans, meaning the European Union saw Ukraine as either too far away, or simply—and appallingly—as another country in Russia’s so-called ‘near abroad’, otherwise known as a ‘sphere of influence’. Yet with the ‘big bang’ enlargement complete in 2004, the time was surely ripe for Brussels to take a more considered and active stance towards the largest country in Europe’s backyard? Unfortunately, has failed to materialise: instead, Romano Prodi, the former president of the European Commission, notoriously declared that Ukraine ‘has as much reason to be in the EU as New Zealand.’ At best, his comments were obtuse, short-sighted, and severely lacking of vision. At worst, they were merely an impoverished but calculated attempt to appease the increasingly aggressive leadership in the Kremlin, on which several European Union Member States—including Italy—depend so hazardously for their oil and gas supplies.

Rather than promises of accession, the Ukrainians were bestowed with a ‘Partnership Agreement’ in 1998, and later given a place in the European Neighbourhood Policy. This was an attempt to provide countries around Europe’s frontiers with progressively more integration into the European economy, but little or no place within the constitutional structures, particularly the common political institutions in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg. The trouble is that this policy—while tailored to each respective country—is nevertheless geographically ‘one-size-fits-all’. That is to say, it includes European countries like Ukraine and Moldova, alongside those in the Middle East and North Africa like Morocco, Egypt and Jordan.

Even at the height of the ‘Orange Revolution’ between November 2004 and January 2005, when the struggle between the pro-European reformer, Viktor Yushchenko, and the pro-Russian regressive, Viktor Yanukovych, was at its most intense, it was the United States, and not the European Union, which was in the real driving seat for change. America threw its full support behind Mr. Yushchenko in the face of clear Russian opposition, thereby providing a stamp of legitimacy for the ‘Orange’ reformists. While it would be unfair to say that Europeans merely mumbled quietly about the ‘dirty tricks’, which they suspected of having been employed by the ‘Orange’ reformists’ opponents, they were certainly less than visible in a time of crisis—when European support for the forces of progress in Ukraine could have secured a decisive victory for the supporters of Mr. Yushchenko. What is more is that had European support for the ‘Orange Revolution’ been clearer, more organised and ultimately, sustained, then the new pro-European government in the country might have been helped to bed-down more successfully, providing the Ukrainian people with something to work towards—not least eventual accession into the European Union itself.

We—Europeans—could have thrown our full support behind the reformists under Mr. Yushchenko, setting out a clear set of criteria for Ukrainian accession into the Union, with Brussels as the tutor. We could have offered greater political support, in the form of legal specialists, economists and experts in the area of civil society. We could have even offered Ukraine a full security guarantee against Russian meddling, providing the authorities in Kyiv with a clear agenda for modernisation for the Ukrainian people. With the full might of our continent behind them, many of the destabilising influences occurring after the ‘Orange Revolution’ may have been prevented or averted, or may have been less dramatic. Such considerable, if only incremental, change, in Ukraine would potentially have transformed the country for the long-term, creating from a precariously volatile former Soviet republic an increasingly democratic, prosperous and stable country on our borders. Unfortunately, this opportunity was lost on the part of the European Union, and the consequences may not yet have been fully played out.

Ukraine is now racked with division. It is ‘split’: should it face Europe, or should it tow Russia’s line? Should it become fully liberal and democratic, or would Russian-style ‘sovereign democracy’ constitute a better future? Who can Ukrainians trust: the less-than-decisive Europeans, or the steely and assertive Russians? And who is the most daunting: the often-enfeebled Europeans, or the supposed might of Mother Russia? Our—that is, European—short-sightedness during the latter 1990s, which continues today, has led to the creation between Europe and Russia of something akin to a ‘shatter-belt’, a zone of turmoil stretching from Belarus to the Caucasus, where Russian power expands unrelentingly as Moscow attempts to regain influence lost after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Consequentially, Europe’s Neighbourhood, far from becoming a ‘ring of friends’, becomes instead a group of rickety and incoherent acquaintances. A geopolitical space cannot be shared, especially when the other side is diverging from European values and interests at an alarming rate. Further, Ukraine is an independent country, with clear and growing preferences for a European-oriented future—considerably more than half the population wants Ukraine to become a part of the Union. As such, the Ukrainians deserve our full, indefatigable and active support.

So what is to be done? Ukraine’s government, under President Yushchenko, and his Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, and their coalition of reformists, pro-Europeans, pro-Atlanticists and democrats, wants greater decisiveness on the part of we Europeans. They want an agreement from Brussels, one which explicitly states that Ukraine could and should become fully integrated into Europe, so long as Ukraine’s necessary economic, political, constitution and social reforms have got well underway. They also want greater European support in their frequent tussles with Gazprom and the Kremlin over energy supplies, in order to provide greater domestic security and stability for their people. At the upcoming European Union summit with Ukraine on 9th September 2008, to be held in France under the French presidency of the Union, these two requests should be granted. As Mrs. Tymoshenko said yesterday at a press conference in Kyiv:

We expect certain serious steps to be taken along the lines of preparing the new enhanced agreement and the free trade agreement [between Ukraine and the European Union]…We look forward to the EU flashing the green light for us that would help us on our way forward.[1]

But if not an accession agreement, we must, at the very least, consent to France’s recent proposal that Ukraine be granted an ‘Association Agreement’. This would explicitly align the country with the European Union, if not by way of eventual accession, then certainly through political recognition. European political and economic assistance should also be stepped-up—and dramatically—particularly in the face of growing pressure from Russia. Ukraine cannot and must not fall back into the Kremlin’s grip: it would be unfair on our part to allow this to happen, and it would also further jeopardise European energy security, and our wider strategic interests. Crafting a real European Neighbourhood is a long-term geopolitical and ideological effort, and one Europeans must be ready to accept.

It was said in the nineteenth century by many Americans that they had a ‘Manifest Destiny’ to spread across their continent. Today, Europeans have a similar destiny: to utilise the European Union to make their homeland whole and free. It must eventually stretch from the northern reaches of Scandinavia and Iceland to the depths of southern Turkey; it must expand from the Irish coast through Ukraine and deep into the Caucuses. It must also absorb the remainder of the Western Balkans—and perhaps, one day, Israel too. And far from impeding further political integration, European expansion will spur the project to its logical conclusion, as it has continued to do for the past fifty years. Expansion and integration are not mutually exclusive, but reciprocally reinforcing. We must think more assertively and strategically for the realisation of this incredible vision. As one of the remaining lynchpins, Ukraine needs a firm commitment on our part—and soon.

[1] Cited by: Elitsa Vucheva, 2008, ‘Ukraine has high hopes for French EU presidency’.
* Credit to Muumi at Wikipedia for the main image.