This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
Tagged with: Ukraine
Biden’s challenge is to maintain the consensus view of Putin and Ukraine by continuing to show the American people the horrors of what is occurring in Ukraine and why it is imperative that the US do something about it. The latter is more difficult than the former, but if Biden cannot do that, then the transformation of his presidency will be brief and the return to stalled policy proposals and low approval ratings will be swift.
It is true that sometimes presidents have to place good policy over short term political gain; and the war in Ukraine is certainly one of those times when that calculation might be necessary, but Biden could do more to reduce some of the possible political harm of these policies.
A Ukraine reeling from invasion and possibly occupation would be weak, unstable and have no chance of further integration into NATO and the EU. That may be Putin’s goal, but it may not be all he is trying to do. And, Ukraine is not the only country that could end up weaker and less stable due to this war.
Given Russia’s role in destabilizing American politics in recent years, it is certain the Kremlin understands the President, and the country’s, vulnerability at this moment. That may not be the primary reason they have chosen now to loudly beat the drums of war in Ukraine, but it has certainly informed their thinking.
Apparently, the allegation against Giuliani is that he was paid by Ukrainian clients to persuade Donald Trump to fire Marie Yovanovich, the American ambassador to Ukraine, who Trump dismissed in May of 2019. Yovanovich had served in the foreign service for many years and was very broadly respected for her excellent work. However, in Ukraine her strong positions in support of that country in the face of Russian aggression, and her failure to go along with Trump’s hare brained and corrupt scheme to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden, led to Trump firing her. Giuliani has denied all of these allegations while his former client, Donald Trump, with his usual eloquence, has described the investigation of Giuliani as “like, so unfair.”
Sanctions, cyberattacks, freezing assets, reinvigorated rhetorical and material support for key allies, notably Ukraine, a larger presence in regions like Central Asia and the South Caucasus, will all be part of the menu of options facing a potential Biden administration, but while all of those will send a message to Moscow, they will not undo the damage that the Kremlin-GOP access had done to the US over the last five years or so; nor will these actions go unanswered by Moscow.
The decision by the non-Trump leadership of the Republican Party to cast their lot with Russia and Trump rather than with the US, and indeed with traditional conservative, even right-wing policies is baffling, but only if one ignores the corrosive influences of bigotry, ignorance and anti-democratic sentiments in the GOP since long before spring of 2015.
Most significantly, there is little indication that anything that has happened in the last weeks has done in any way moved any Republican Senator towards voting to convict and remove Trump from office following his inevitable impeachment by the House. Even the initial concerns raised by Republican Senators like Mitt Romney of Utah have faded away as the inquiry has continued. For this reason, it remains almost certain that Trump will be acquitted on essentially a party line vote by the Senate.
What was once a question of whether or not the President sought to withhold military assistance for an ally unless they agreed to investigate Joe Biden, is now a scandal about corruption within the Trump administration that is so widespread that impeachment seems like only the beginning of a long judicial process. It is a scandal that ties together the avarice and greed of Trump and his cronies with their disturbing willingness to pursue policies that support Russia’s interests while simultaneously revealing their continued contempt for America election law, mores and processes.
The biggest political question is what impact a House impeachment and Senate acquittal would have on the presidential election. There is no way to tell, but we know that impeachment proceedings would last well into 2020, and the political impact well beyond that, thus making it very likely that the campaign would not primarily be about climate change, health care, education, guns or any other issues that are good for the Democrats, but about impeachment. That might help the Democrats, but it seems apparent that there is no guarantee of that. In fact, it may be precisely what Trump wants.
The incoherence of Trump’s ideas, and his struggles to present them in a reasonably clear and informed way, also preclude what should be a meaningful discussion between the candidates. It would be valuable for the American people to hear the central arguments of the foreign policy establishment, of which there is no better representative than the Democratic nominee, challenged. However, between Trump’s inability or refusal to do anything more than speak in seemingly random superlatives, insults and promises about foreign policy, and Matt Lauer’s obsession with a political scandal about which every American has already made up their mind, we missed this opportunity yet again.
While people in Eastern Europe can’t vote in this election, Polish Americans, Latvian Americans, Ukrainian Americans and other Americans with roots in countries that feel threatened by an aggressive Russia do. Many of these voters are part of the very demographic groups upon whom Mr. Trump will rely on for his path to victory against Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump needs a record proportion of white votes to win this election; and he particularly needs them in states of the upper Midwest, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that have long had large numbers of voters with roots in Eastern Europe.
At first glance, this seems like a minor event. The resignation of a non-president of a non-state in a small and poor region of the Caucasus is not the kind of thing that generally grabs headlines. The broader context, however, suggests that we should pay a bit more attention to these events, particularly as the West is increasingly concerned about Russian aggression.
A Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine would put Putin’s assertions about Ukraine to the test; conversely, the Ukrainian state and society would be put to the test as well. If the Ukrainian people rise up in an insurgency, the occupation would fail, leaving Russia either stuck in a long and unwinnable conflict or forced to retreat. The outcome of such a conflict could also threaten Putin’s own hold on power within Russia. On the other hand, if there is no insurgency following the invasion, then Putin could claim vindication that, despite more than twenty years of de jure independence, Ukraine was never really a state.
The debate in the U.S. about how to respond to the Russian invasion has shows the complete self absorption of much of the American political establishment. Russia invaded Crimea primarily because of Russia's interest in Ukraine, domestic political issues in Russia, and as a reaction to recent political events in Ukraine. However, the response in Washington, particularly from the right, has suggested that Russia acted because of America's, and specifically President Obama's, weakness. This assertion was, of course, more about politics in the U.S., than anything happening in Ukraine, but it nonetheless demonstrated that for many what happened in Crimea had to be attributable to something that the U.S., and the Obama administration, did or did not do.
Statements from various American politicians and organizations with whom Gharibashvili met contained the usual platitudes about Georgia’s strides towards democracy and the strength of the bilateral relationship. The most significant thing about those statements, however, may well have been what was not said. Only a few days before the trip, former Georgian Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili, a very close ally of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and for most of the previous decade the second most powerful man in Georgia, was sentencedhttp://www.eurasianet.org/node/68094 to five years in prison for various abuses of power.
Russia's invasion Ukraine has set off paroxysms of frustration, anger and incredulity in the west, not least in Washington. Some policy makers and pundits are struggling with ways to constructively address the problems raised by Russian action, others struggle to ensure that somehow President Obama is blamed for these events, and many are trying to figure out the complexity, context and background of these events. Understanding the conflict in Crimea, and the best way forward for the US, requires holding several, conflicting, and often unappealing, ideas in one's head at the same time. These are four of the most important of these ideas.
These are serious challenges blocking Ukraine's hopeful path to stability - never mind democracy. They are not insurmountable, but it remains as likely as not that Ukraine's next chapter will resemble the lost years of 2004-2010 - minus a few eastern territories. If the country is to remain united, powerful passions in Kiev, however righteous, must be tempered in favour of pragmatism.
The challenge for the new Ukrainian leadership is not to strike a decisive victory for the West and democracy and somehow defeatRussia, but rather to build a new consensus in the country that doesn’t treat half the population as absolute winners and the other half as absolute losers. Ukraine has to move beyond the cycles of alternating victories for forces from western and eastern Ukraine, ephemeral wins that have stymied the political development of the nation in the past decade.
Yet, the West rarely recognizes that Russia, like countries in the West, has its own interests. To Westerners, Russia’s actions are part of a storied narrative: It consistently acts in outrageous ways to thwart not Western interests, but also moral and political good in Ukraine. There’s a big problem with that view: By recasting a struggle between two political forces and interests as one simply between right and wrong, the West makes it more difficult to understand and combat Russian influence. If the U.S. and Europe want to change Russia’s behavior, they must toss those antiquated, Cold War notions, and accept that modern tensions are substantially based on economic and political interests, not just on latent Russian anger, or its alleged inferiority complex. That means accepting, for example, that scolding Russian leaders for breaking Western rules and expectations won’t provoke changes in Moscow. More dramatically, it may require the U.S. to recognize the limits of its ability to influence outcomes in Ukraine or other countries where Russia also has interests at stake.