Example of Ritual Integration
Something previously discussed by so many has finally become a reality. Presidents Leonid Kuchma, Vladimir Putin, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Aliaksandr Lukashenka signed an agreement establishing a Single Economic Space shared by Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Russia, and Belarus. The agreement reads that everything must be kept in accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine. This is easily perceived as the reservation put forth by the Ukrainian delegation. Moldova’s President Vladimir Voronin responded to the Yalta 2003 summit, saying, “The CIS prospects look rather apparent; the idea of eventually upgrading this Commonwealth has been finally discarded, never to be considered again... Needless to say, we must resort to more decisive actions in the direction of the European Union.” There has been no formal response from the West, although prior to the Yalta summit doubts were voiced, among other things about whether the SES would prove a viable entity and questioning Ukraine’s membership, noting that it might impede its approach to Europe.
There is a web site with the Yalta summit minutes. It leaves one in doubt as to Ukraine having played the wrong game — and continuing to do so. President Lukashenka is quoted as saying that “Putin has urged us to return home.”
Mr. Putin thus expressed his view on the situation, according to Interfax [Ukraine], at a meeting with leading Russian functionaries: “If we succeed in transferring the SES accords, thus signed, to the plane of actual implementation, the other partners will show an increased interest, accordingly, so there will be a chance to develop CIS integration trends at a qualitatively new level.”
All this in itself points to the ritual character of the whole process of signing the SES agreement. Ukraine has not seen any expert findings showing precisely what SES would give or take away (except that it would cause this country to lose some of its sovereignty by consenting to the setting up of a certain regulatory authority, the authority of which is still anyone’s guess, as well as to the coordination of the customs, trade, currency, and business policies).
All the discussions held failed to make any impact on the principal players of the SES game — the President of Ukraine, First Vice Premier, and the Minister of Finance (the latter being responsible for preparing the agreement for being signed by the contracting parties). The general public was never informed about the reasons for this radical approach, not even after signing the document. The overall impression is that the public has been ignored.
All we can learn from the media today can be divided into three clauses: (a) the SES is not supposed to impede Ukraine in its progress toward Europe — on the contrary, it is expected to foster its economic growth; (b) Ukraine is allegedly primarily interested in forming such a free trade zone; (c) Ukraine is likewise interested in receiving Russian energy supplies at costs like to those charged in Russia.
It does not take an expert to see the weak points. Russia wants large- scale resources to modernize its economy; anticipated energy supply proceeds have been included in the budget bill every year, so that nothing has produced a significant impact on Moscow’s resolute stand on the issue. Kazakhstan and Belarus cannot under any circumstances be suspected of having any of the progressive technologies, innovations, or free investment resources actually required to bring about such modernization and economic success. The CIS has passed a number of free trade zone resolutions, and all have effectively come to naught.
There is one point left to be considered. For Vladimir Putin, there are things even more important than winning two election campaigns — the parliamentary one this fall and the presidential marathon in the spring of 2004 (as no one doubts that he will get his next term). One has to bear in mind the utter failure of Mr. Putin’s concept of rallying the nation round the idea of combating Chechen terrorism, meaning that the idea would never work again, meaning that something new had to be engineered, an idea that the nation would be likely to buy. One like “gathering the Russian lands,” something Russia’s man in the street would always take close to heart. President Putin must have also made it clear to his Ukrainian counterpart that he had been the only one, in the entire political world, to back him during the Kolchuga and cassette scandals, when Ukraine, and above all its political leadership, found themselves “softly” isolated from the rest of the international community.
The document signed in Yalta does not in any way mention that the four signatories will undertake to introduce the free trade regime anytime soon. Instead, it contains provisos mentioning integration rates varying in rate and level, something everybody can interpret however he wants.
Last but not least, there is the clause about the SES agreement being kept in accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine. Ukrainian Finance Minister Khoroshkovsky said in an interview with the BBC that the agreement must pass the Constitutional Court of Ukraine in the first place, adding that the stated document had clauses where certain concepts were misinterpreted. “What they mention as a free trade zone is actually a customs union,” he stated.
One thing is apparent. The SES agreement from the outset was not meant to be implemented, at least not in full. In other words, there is the threat of political pressure being brought to bear on Kyiv — if and when the Ukrainian side fails to comply with its contractual obligations (thus giving the claimant [a.k.a., Russia] the privilege of keeping its energy supplies to Ukraine at the world market level). The more so that the Russian government is far from likely to influence the price-setting policies of all those oil and gas companies. Another risky factor is that Ukraine’s being even formally involved with the SES project will postpone its WTO membership to an indeterminate date. Experts have made it clear that Ukraine being prevented from entering WTO before Russia is actually one of the objectives of the ongoing process — as well as the possibility of a number of Russian companies to buy Ukrainian assets, paying only token money. Now this was something to cause serious concern in the Ukrainian business quarters.
One could, in fact, agree with Voronin saying that CIS no longer exists, as finally evidenced by the Yalta agreement.
