Please look after this bear
Will Ukraine be the next battleground in the New Cold War?
Mark MacKinnon
Much of the Western world was stunned in August when Russian tanks rolled across their frontier, first into the breakaway region of South Ossetia, then into Georgia proper, quickly routing the overmatched, though NATO-trained, armed forces of its former colony.
With much of the planet transfixed by the spectacle of the lavish opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, it was a war that seemed to come from nowhere. And just as quickly as it began, it was over, with Russia’s flag briefly fluttering over Georgian military bases before its forces triumphantly started withdrawing.
Western media quickly distilled a simple story: big, bad, authoritarian Russia had invaded its tiny neighbour, hoping to crush the nascent democracy there. There’s a lot of truth to that, but it overlooks two crucial points: that Georgian troops instigated the fighting by shelling Russian peacekeepers stationed in South Ossetia, and that the conflict had been made almost inevitable by years of myopic Western policy in the region.
In fact, the lightning Russo-Georgian conflict was only the militarization of an eight-year-old struggle in which Moscow, more often than not, has been on the defensive. This New Cold War began not in August, but back in 2000, after ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin took power and George W. Bush, son of a former CIA boss, was elected. Forget the talk about Bush looking into Putin’s soul and seeing a “trustworthy” friend. From day one, each side saw in the other an old enemy in an old competition.
After nearly a decade of pushing Moscow around through the eastward expansion of NATO, the active undermining of pro-Moscow governments in the region, Western recognition of the independence of Kosovo, and the planned installation of a controversial new missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, our policy makers shouldn’t have been caught off guard when Russia pushed back in Georgia. Nor should they be surprised when the next battle in this new Cold War is fought in Ukraine, quite likely around the looming parliamentary and presidential elections there. (In October, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko proposed mid-December elections, however many suspect they will take place in the new year.)
Ukraine, which has ties to Canada dating back to 1991, when Ottawa led the world in recognizing its independence from the old USSR, is in the Kremlin’s sights for the same reasons that Georgia was. Both countries are former Soviet republics, and both countries have recently seen pro-Western popular revolutions that the Kremlin feels — quite defensibly — were nudged forward and bankrolled by the U.S. government.
While Russia’s policies in Ukraine and Georgia can be described as dangerously expansionist, American concerns in the region are crudely commercial. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, among the longest and costliest ever built, runs across Georgia, pumping crude oil drawn from the Caspian Sea basin by the likes of BP, Chevron and Total to markets in the West. It’s an expensive geopolitical miracle that allows the West to pull hydrocarbons from a region sandwiched between Russia and Iran without having to pay a nickel to either country. Similar forces are at work in Ukraine, where another oil pipeline pumps that same oil from the Caspian region to Poland and Western Europe. If Kiev defers to Moscow, as it currently does, the pipeline reverses course and carries Russian crude out to the Black Sea.
While these conflicts aren’t completely about oil, the media shouldn’t buy the simplistic democracy-versus-authoritarianism line the State Department is flogging either. It’s a clash of empires, one falling from the height of its power, the other rising from the rubble of defeat. In this increasingly overt battle, national prestige and natural resources trump the will of Georgian and Ukrainian voters.
This isn’t a call for appeasement. If Russia interferes in Ukraine’s elections, it needs to be confronted with tough diplomacy or even sanctions. But the same rules should apply to Western governments, who in 2004 not only unequivocally backed President Viktor Yushchenko, but also poured money (as they did during Georgia’s revolt a year earlier) into youth groups that led street protests against the pro-Russian regime. Unlike in 2004, we shouldn’t seek to vanquish Russia and its allies in the country. Instead, Ukraine’s leaders should be coaxed toward a power-sharing arrangement that reflects the truly divided nature of the country.
