Multi-vector Approach: A new version
Ukraine’s multi-vector policy has always been criticized. From the geopolitical perspective, Ukraine was doomed to such a policy. Yet, from the historical and cultural perspective, this approach was doomed to never-ending, if not devastating, criticism by the Ukrainians themselves. In any case, the glasses from which the opposite sides drank at the common table always left a bitter taste of disbelief. It is no exaggeration to claim that the Ukrainians’ innate lack of aggression has been saving this country from scores of problems. The followers of the European way never managed to clearly explain their vision of a final break with Russia. The advocates of the Eurasian option, on their part, did not in fact know how to draw a new Iron Curtain and simultaneously keep Ukrainian statehood intact. Both of these roads lead to a blind alley. We have already had the experience of integrating, as an independent state, with Russia in 1654. It never occurred to the champions of that rapprochement that Moscow would gradually undermine the independence of Ukraine, whose military and geopolitical resources were essential for Russia to occupy a prominent place on the European arena. However, all attempts by Ukraine to make a European choice have also failed: the powers have always viewed Ukraine either as an appendage to Poland or as a bargaining chip in the game with Moscow. While the former option sank into oblivion forever after 1991, the latter has been persistently toyed with ever since. When visiting Kyiv, US and most of the European leaders are making a stopover on their way to Russia. And it is wrong to think that this tendency will vanish as Ukraine moves more and more toward the EU. This could only change the transit route a little, laying it through Brussels, Strasbourg, Berlin or, at worst, Warsaw. While Kyiv had to pursue a multi-vector policy before the US and their allies won the Iraq War, now is precisely the right time for such a policy. Still, the groundwork was laid not in 2003 but earlier, when a number of events gave rise to some now-pronounced and ever-growing tendencies.
First, Kyiv’s sound behavior during the Gulf War with our technical and peacekeeping support for the anti-Iraq coalition, at the same time improved relations with Washington and kept those with Moscow at the same level. Let us recall the abrupt US reaction to the snub from Germany, a nuclear-free country just like Ukraine. We can also spot a new crisis in the Russian- Polish relations caused by a series of high-profile statements of the Polish Defense Ministry elated about its own Iraq initiatives. Nothing of the sort has happened to Ukraine: moreover, the Ukrainian military are indeed going to Iraq and in numbers larger than in Kuwait. This will occur not out of a desire to give Moscow the cold shoulder but for the following reasons: a) Warsaw is unable without somebody else’s help to keep its promises to the US and Britain; b) the role of Kyiv in peacekeeping and post-conflict operations has received high praise; c) the Ukrainian military-industrial complex has no rivals in postcommunist Europe (except for Russia, of course); and d) Poland and Ukraine maintain a partnership.
Secondly, the latest US-Polish-Ukrainian meetings hotly debated the energy problem. What should be stressed here is that Kyiv’s fuel transit capacity is the object of a bitter struggle. The more participants the now Ukrainian-Russian-German consortium attracts, the more Ukraine stands to gain. This is why it is in Kyiv, not in Moscow, that US companies are vying for a place in the sun. Moreover, Ukraine has finished building its stretch of the Odesa-Brody oil pipeline, and, as the above-mentioned meetings were in the offing, the Poles engaged PriceWaterhouse Coopers to make a report that confirms the project’s cost effectiveness. Why precisely on this day? Because the Russian rivals have already announced plans to pump oil to Oshemil, although negotiations with Ukrainian partners continue.
Were Ukraine a EU associate member now, Kyiv’s energy policy surely would be serving the common European interest, even though this commonality is quite a vague idea for the EU leading members themselves. And there are no East European countries among Europe’s leaders so far. If Ukraine were bound hand and foot to Moscow like Belarus is, an independent energy policy would be out of the question. The point is that Russia’s main economic might rests on energy resources, and we know only too well after ten years of fuel-related conflicts that to force Moscow make at least some concessions in this field, Kyiv must hold not one or two but all the trumps. Now we also have to deal with France, which wants to know whether Ukrainian gas transit people can speak the language of diplomacy, and Kazakhstan, which proposes an oil transit consortium. All this, as well as passions concerning Iraqi oil and reconstruction contracts, convincingly proves that Kyiv has chosen the right path. Today’s multi-vector approach means that Ukraine, instead of saying yes or no, looks you over shrewdly as if asking you to wait awhile.
Third, the idea of a single economic space has become the subject of tense negotiations not so much between Moscow, Minsk, Kyiv, and Astana as between Moscow and Kyiv. Ukraine refuses to dance to Russia’s tune, thus asserting its own strategic value. Perhaps the Russian initiators failed to take this into account in time. Ukraine shown Europe’s highest average growth of GDP for four years running. Kyiv is slowly but steadily gaining ground in world politics. Perhaps as the September deadline for signing the basic single economic space documents is approaching, Russia will have to adjust its ambitions to Ukraine’s requirements.
Moreover, Kyiv has proved itself able to take a firm and independent stand, for example, concerning WTO membership.
This would not have happened if Ukraine had been just blazing the European trail: in that case the EU enlargement agency would be deciding the destiny of our eastern markets. The European-Ukrainian meetings in Athens proved that Europe is interested in us. But it now takes this interest differently, not like in the case of small Central European countries which German, Austrian, and French business giants swallowed up long ago. Nor does it resemble the case of Greece and the two parts of Cyprus, which the EU has been trying to hastily incorporate in order to avert a potential conflict in Europe’s backyard. They consider us a business partner and, if Europe ever forms its own armed forces (which is rather unlikely), we will be an irreplaceable partner.
Naturally, we are interested in a common economic space with Russia, but if we had been marching all these years towards Moscow down the path Minsk has trod, the Europeans would be discussing Ukraine in Moscow and the Russians would be doing so in Berlin or wherever. Unfortunately, instead of conducting free trade with some restrictions, we and Russia are waging a trade war over some exceptions. Yet, while Russia’s other partners are unable to withdraw due to their own underdevelopment or absolute dependence, our trade turnover with Russia drops each year in favor of Europe. This means that now the ball is in Moscow’s court.
Ukraine’s current multi-vector approach is changing in an unusual but favorable system of foreign policy coordinates.
First, the industrial North’s military security depends today on the US, whose armed forces have proved — and are likely to prove more than once in the future — their combat effectiveness. US energy security in turn depends on Middle East countries, but the US is unable to control all aspects of their development. This is why the US needs allies in Europe, especially after France, Germany, and Russia opposed the Iraq War. Poland was the first to try to balance between the US and the EU. Ukraine can do even more in balancing between the US, the EU and Russia.
Secondly, the North’s economic security now depends not on the US but on a dynamic Europe which, instead of overspending on defense, is seeking ways to procure energy resources for decades ahead at least. The failure of European policies in the Gulf means that Europe’s eastward trade corridor has received a powerful impetus to expand by way of Russian energy resources. But Europe and Eurasia cannot bypass Ukraine which, full of facilities old and new, is wedged precisely between them. This signals the beginning of a great game, which Kyiv can only lose if it really tries to do so and ruins all that it now controls. Well, thank God, we are not so naive as we were five or so years ago.
Thirdly, further long-term growth in post-Soviet Europe and — in broader terms — post-Soviet Eurasia is increasingly dependent on the relations between Moscow and Kyiv. It is imperative that we do not quarrel over the WTO, Europe, and so forth. Yet, what remains the main goal is the well-being of Ukrainian citizens, who can no longer depend on the unstable foreign market situation. It is for this reason that the current government should get WTO membership, with or without Russia. It will be good if the single economic space resembles the Visegrad zone and better still if it follows the EU pattern. Yet what should remain the crucial element in Ukrainian foreign economic policy is preservation of the current growth rate and qualitative changes in our exports and imports. A multi-vector approach still being the best way to achieve this, it would be silly to cling to Russia, Europe, or the US alone. For, in the immediate future, Kyiv needs very specific and down-to-earth things from all three of its strategic partners.
We want the EU to grant us the status of a market-economy state, associate membership (if possible), and allow us to be a party to the Schengen Agreement.
We want Russia to harmonize fuel prices with us, solve the most alarming trade conflicts, and ensure a trouble-free implementation of energy transit and aerospace projects.
As to Washington, Kyiv hopes to establish pragmatic and optimal partnership with it. Interestingly, Warsaw is beginning to play a role in Ukrainian-American, not Ukrainian-European relations.
One way or another, it will be clear in the near future that Ukraine can only increase its clout in cooperation with the world’s political leader. The second Gulf War set in motion a process that could bring Ukraine into the team of serious partners, if not allies, of the US. Now America has only a handful: in Europe they are Great Britain and Poland, its current and prospective military allies. All the rest are busy with their own small problems (for example, Madrid is preoccupied with the Basque conflict). Ukraine also has a small but very serious problem that the US can help solve: the Jackson-Vanik amendment which hinders full-fledged trade with the global leader. Further theoretical and practical development of the multi-vector approach gives Ukraine a chance to become at last, in two or three years, a country free from this problem, as are the states which put their citizens’ interests above everything else even though they have neither nuclear weapons nor a trillion-dollar GDP.
In sum, the more Kyiv’s foreign policy resembles traffic lights, the more sizable commercial, informational and financial resources will flow along the Europe-Asia-Europe line. The only way for Ukraine to strengthen its political and military role in the contemporary world is to join US efforts in removing signs of instability in international relations — at least while the current US administration remains in office.
