Defending Independence
There are really only two differences between Leonid Kuchma and me. First, he is a citizen of Ukraine and I am not, which gives him a right to vote in this country, a right I have in another country, and, second, he is the Constitutionally elected president of Ukraine, which gives him some right to speak on behalf of those who collectively chose him as their leader, a right I have never sought nor been offered. In other ways, however, he has the right to criticize or praise me and I him as the occasion calls for. In this sense our equality as free individuals is a rule of the democratic society everybody says that they want to see built here. Incidentally, I have my own president, for whom I did not vote, nor did most of those who voted in the United States. But Ukraine has a different Constitution from that of the United States.
This time the occasion calls for praise of Mr. Kuchma. He has blocked Anatoly Chubais’ plans to swallow a large gulp of Ukraine’s energy grid for the purpose of what the prospective purchaser called the building of a liberal empire with its center in Moscow. Going along with this would have been no better an idea for Ukraine than would it have been for Canada if the United States had enunciated its desire to build a liberal empire, whatever that might be, with its center in Washington, and then decided to buy one of the keys of Canadian independence. One of the defining moments of my life will ever remain many years ago when my mother said that, while it was quite good that I had signed up for conscription into the army, if they tried to conscript me to the war then going on in Vietnam — one we both viewed as truly stupid — she would somehow scrape up the money to buy me a bus ticket to Canada, which was ready to accept anybody refusing to fight against whom they had nothing worth fighting about. When one looks at the Chechnya War, where 100% of the population ostensibly voted for the current governor installed by Russia, one is truly amazed that not one single person ready to strap bombs to their belts showed up to vote. Look at the reports by human rights organizations that are much less reticent than I and decide how the world is being defended from terrorism and decide whether it is not worthwhile having a Canada, to which it is worth buying a ticket on the bus. Ukraine is in this sense in the role of Canada. Ukraine might quarrel with those who might not want to be part of it, but it does not do such things as other neighboring states have been seen to do.
Russian, with its elections in which its administrative resource was so visible, has shown the world precisely how democratic it is. The United States only weeks before through its ambassador told the world how difficult it is for it to cooperate with regimes that do not share its values of democracy. Yet, in all truth, it seems to have little trouble in doing so with Russia. If America wants to promote certain values, it must first demonstrate that it adheres to such values itself and defends them equally everywhere.
Meanwhile, Ukraine would do well to see to its own independence in support of the values it defends for itself. Leonid Kuchma has done well in defending Ukraine’s energy independence and territorial integrity in the Straight of Kerch. In a world of independent states, one in which one can find the world’s strongest state promising one’s territorial integrity one day in exchange for renouncing the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal and then leaving the one thus promised to one’s own resources when the issue comes to defending some island, one should look upon what another promises only in light of how the one so generous with promises actually conducts itself. On Tuzla and with electricity Mr. Kuchma has defended Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity. Mr. Kuchma and I might well disagree tomorrow — we each retain that right — but today we have every reason to agree.
