US expert: Poroshenko’s military move eastward a mistake

Kadri Veermäe
, välisuudiste toimetaja
Copy
Please note that the article is more than five years old and belongs to our archive. We do not update the content of the archives, so it may be necessary to consult newer sources.
Photo: Flickr

By launching a military campaign against separatists, the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko made a mistake, Postimees is told by Matthew Rojansky, an analyst at the reputable US Wilson Centre think-tank and recent speaker at Riga Security Conference.  

These days, the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko promised the country would get Crimea back. How realistic do you think this will be?

He really said that? This is one lousy statement. From the time the political campaign started in Ukraine and Mr Poroshenko promised a military victory against the separatists, I’ve felt very uneasy. He did call it an anti-terrorism operation, but the name makes no difference. Mr Poroshenko promised that force will end separatism, and in my opinion this was a mistake. I have said this repeatedly – this was a serious miss, for two reasons. Any time violence is used as part of a solution – even when this is unavoidable –, it claims human casualties, civilian ones included. Very fast, Mr Poroshenko has created hundreds of thousands of refugees. We may indeed argue this was done by Russians or separatists, but that makes no difference. Now, Ukrainians are part of it all, they are part of the situation that created the refugees. Also, they have damaged their infrastructure and, let’s be honest, also killed lots of people. Makes no difference if the victims were civilians or separatists, based on the bodies we know they were all Ukrainians. Those dead are citizens of Mr Poroshenko’s country. In my opinion, Mr Poroshenko pursued a stupid policy. As, all told, Mr Poroshenko is supposed to be the president of all of Ukraine, his initial stand should have been this: we will not allow the separatists to advance further, but we will negotiate with them. Even if it takes ten years.

Mr Poroshenko’s problem was he was partially victim to the illusion that Maidan was so powerful that no desire of Maidan’s could co unfulfilled. Maidan demanded a violent solution as, let’s be honest, they did spawn violence themselves. Maidan was a violent revolution. Partly, it was peaceful, but by the end the authorities were shooting and the people shot back, and threw Molotov’s cocktails.

I feel Mr Poroshenko did not believe he had a choice; he thought that acting otherwise he’d have shared the fate of Viktor Yanukovych. Now he is giving unrealistic promises but he is lucky because I believe by now all have realized he is not much different from any former Ukrainian politician. Which means he is naturally handing out promises which he cannot fulfill, as this is what the Ukrainian politicians do. They have all done that – Yanukovych, Viktor Yuchchenko, Yulia Tymoshenko. So it’s actually normal that Mr Poroshenko may start lying and all will realize that okay, we are back to life as usual. Secondly, I don’t think there’s the slightest chance Mr Poroshenko could organize a military strike at Crimea. That’s a crazy idea, there’s not the slightest chance of victory. Probably, Ukrainian soldiers would refuse to go there, as Crimea is a fortress. It is almost totally surrounded by sea and Russia has warships – so they’d better forget it. Hopefully, Mr Poroshenko realizes that and is just talking the way politicians do.

Do you think Eastern Ukraine is moving towards a frozen conflict?

That’s the big question at the moment. It is very hard for me to figure out how the Ukrainian conflict might turn out anything but a frozen conflict type of a process. Something like Transnistria 5+2 or OSCE Minsk group with Nagorno-Karabakh. Sadly so. With Russia sending thousands of its troops, tanks and rockets into Ukraine, they made it crystal clear to the latter: you will not win this conflict militarily. A look at the frontier maps of Eastern Ukraine, it is obvious they have now created quite a wide corridor for the separatists. Earlier, Ukrainians had Donetsk and Lugansk isolated, but now these are again connected. While earlier the Ukrainians wanted to close the border – there was just this tiny section where things could cross over –, now it is wide open. In a situation where Ukrainians are unable to change the situation by military means and political negotiations will take time – and these will definitely take a lot of time –, we stand faced with something like a frozen conflict. But this one is bigger, much much bigger than other such areas – just the city of Donetsk alone has the population of Transnistria – and the economy is a lot larger.

Recently, Mr Putin announced an arms modernization program, also managing to accuse the USA in wanting to launch an arms race.

It’s true, actually. Let’s be honest, for 25 years the USA has been thinking we have no real adversaries; there are no superpowers that could endanger us, and basically all the main countries want to be our friends. Not the best friends, perhaps, but still friends.

During these past couple of years, senior US officials have published evidence regarding China especially, but also Russia, taking 25 years to develop the capacity to threaten that of the USA. To each of our air, land, sea, submarine and rocket capacity, they now have a response which is able to block it and in some cases also prevent it. And I think I am revealing no secret as I say the US government and Congress deem this is unacceptable. We are unwilling to live in a world where the USA will forego what we call ascendancy – that we dominate in all areas of the military. To me, at least, this looks like arms race. The fact that Mr Putin is responding to that means he’s joining in. But in this he is not mistaken – the USA is dedicated to arms race. It is the conventional kind of arms race, but I do not know if in today’s world conventional will mean anything anymore...

What will that lead to?

To a very bad situation. Indeed, this may lead to the Cold War arms race kind of results when we got some nice things like the space program – which basically came to be because of the arms race. In times of peace it is unthinkable for billions of dollars to be spent just to send a man to the Moon. And why – to hoist a flag there? So perhaps they’ll be creating good communication technologies, perhaps I’ll be able to fly to work…

But, mainly, it leads to the risk of conflict. Chekhov said it, I think: if there’s a gun on the stage in Act One, in Act Two there’ll be a bang. It raises the risk, but will guarantee nothing; all it may amount to is a huge waste of money.

What do you think of Mr Putin’s plan to develop a new nuclear weapon?

On the one hand it is troublesome as the development of new nuclear weapons means people are dedicating to creating these, not the other way round. On the other hand, there’s this perverse logic behind the nuclear weapons: in order to successfully carry out nuclear disarmament and avoid unintended nuclear escalation, one needs full assurance in ones arsenal. So it’s good in a way that Mr Putin has less but new reliable nuclear arms which he isn’t using – than him having thousands of Soviet-era ones which may fall apart, cause accidents and are of such poor quality that he’d believe if not immediately used – on Ukraine, for instance – he may never ever get the chance to use them. So sometimes when it comes to nuclear safety, it is better to allow improvement of arms within agreements. By the way, the Russians aren’t lying when they claim the Americans are also violating treaties – we drew back from the antiballistic missiles treaty as we wanted to have missile shields. If we can have them, they can have them.

What might that arms race mean to countries bordering with Russia, like Estonia? 

The «Zapad» exercises by Russia and Belarus are common knowledge, of course; luckily, you are slightly out of the main thrust which is towards Poland, actually. But when they go about installing new weapon systems, it will probably be in the Western part of Russia, and in Belarus. That will surely happen and I understand your deep concern. For instance, if a neighbor daily plays real loud music and one day he comes home carrying these extra huge speakers, you’d be alarmed. Even if they aren’t playing anything, you know the next time that happens it will be horrible. I’m sad to say it, but I do feel this is the situation.   

When Mr Obama was in Estonia, he mentioned the NATO article five as something valid. How do you comment the statement?

I would not doubt the words of a US President, the President has the power to guide national security policy. So if he says Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius are the same as Paris, London and Berlin, I believe he means business. But I will have to always remind our Baltic friends that what is important in our common defense program is that very quality of being common. So the two percent – and I’m surprised it’s two as originally it was three but that seems to have been forgotten – requirement is not as if we believe you can defend yourself with two-three percent of GDP. Of course you can’t! Even at a 100 percent you could not defend yourself. You need help. But if you don’t do it, we can’t help. It’s like with saving the banks – you can’t tell taxpayers they ought to save a bank while the bank has wasted money and issued bad loans. The same here – you must take responsibility for your part, so that we could take responsibility for our part. 

I’m mo general of defense planner, of course, but common sense would dictate that in case of war the Baltics would be frontline – which means the Baltics would suffer terribly. There is no perfect defense strategy and, therefore, I don’t think it makes sense for Baltic governments to think of defense first and only then of prevention. It would seem a lot more logical to minimize the possibility of a conflict. In Estonia and Latvia especially, there’s this huge responsibility to secure a situation where the condition of the Russian minority will not look like in Crimea or Eastern Ukraine. In other words – the Russian minority must be so well integrated, so satisfied, so well educated and informed as to be next to impossible to manipulate. This must be the goal. And if with this you act irresponsible, it will be very hard to convince us Americans why we should save you from your own mistakes. Sounds cruel, but that’s the way it is.

Estonians give two percent of GDP, but the Latvians put in 0.9 and the Lithuanians 0.8; could we then say that, by thus doing, they are endangering Estonian security as well?

That’s true, absolutely. Any alliance is as strong as its weakest link, and some countries are definitely not keeping their promises. On the other hand, you have the same problem as in financial crisis. You just can’t turn your back on the others.

Due to the events in Ukraine, a host of personality analyses have been done on Mr Putin, and people have attempted to figure out where he’s coming from. These all seem so simplistic, like he’s after restoring the Soviet Union etc. But what might his ambitions be?

I may say what it think is probable and what’s not. I think in his statements he is saying what he wants us to know. It’s not what he actually wants, but Mr Putin wants us to think so.

In my opinion it is impossible to do his personality analysis, like that he’s former KGB spy. That’s his own domain. He is an expert, he knows exactly how to present himself so that no-one will get who he is or what he wants. It is very dumb to do these personality tests on Mr Putin. As I sometimes jokingly say, he’s the ultimate CEO – not some crazy nationalist –, but like a CEO – all he wants is a profit and he’s no democrat.

He talks a lot about his concern that Russia would me cornered into excessive weakness. And, thinking about the state Russia was in before Mr Putin came to power, one may understand that – back then, it was territorial separatism, the Caucasian states trying to split, the Siberian rulers who threatened to exit, eurozone was creating its own currency. With Mr Putin talking about Russia’s territorial integrity threatened by factors domestic and foreign, one may understand what the man means. As assessed by Mr Putin, Yeltsin made a mistake not standing stronger against the expansion of EU and NATO.

After all, Mr Putin is making declarations which hint at him not being a lunatic, not wanting a world at war. He does not want to live in an isolated Russia, like a giant North Korea. But, as is obvious from his writings and statements, he does not trust the West. We may negotiate as enemies.  

But let me ask, what positive have we done towards the Russians, actually? Have we made travel easier for them? Have we paid money to create cultural exchange programs or broadcastings? No, we have done nothing but negative stuff. And while you keep doing negative stuff, you keep getting negative results. So I think this is a mistake. With the sanctions also, I think we are targeting the wrong people at times. We target the people who have assets in the West. But many of these are the most pragmatic people in Russia – with these we would want to communicate and desire that they come to the West, not impose visa bans on them. When they are forced back to Russia, they will only have one option left – to make a deal with Mr Putin to protect themselves.

Matthew Rojansky

•    Director of the Kennan Institute Wilson Centre, USA. 

•    An expert of US relations with former Soviet states, especially with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova.

•    In 2010–2013, deputy director for Russia and Eurasia program at Carnegie Foundation. While there, initiated the Carnegie Ukraine Program.

•    Studied law at Harvard and Stanford.

•    Has articles published by Guardian, International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, Foreign Policy etc.

Comments
Copy
Top