Word to the Wise

The Radio Liberty interview of Gert Weisskirchen, an OSCE Commissioner on Human Rights, says some things that some of my colleagues here might not like but which I think are important. I agree with the distinguished German statesman that the West (and I) erred in thinking Ukraine could do the right things on its own without a push from without. That Western institutions are finally understanding this and making their concerns known can only be welcomed.

Yet, as I always stress to my students, in the real world politics is not some sage leader knowing what ought to be done and then doing it. It is more about the specific alignment of the forces that can prevent something from happening, allow it to, or make it happen. This is why they call politics the art of the possible, and with parliamentary elections in the offing, expect the realm of the possible to narrow. This happens to some extent in every country that has elections, but it is especially so here, where the notion of conflict of interest is unknown and there is nothing to separate the political and personal interests of the players. This also goes to the heart of the discussion begun in this issue by Dr. Oleksandr Voyin and our Editors on what sort of philosophy should guide this society’s development. If this country is serious about its eternally proclaimed European choice, what ought to be done is clear: look at the postcommunist countries that are successfully making it into Europe — Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic — and start doing what they did.

The problem is that Ukraine is a country guided by the locally ubiquitous adage, “Say one thing, think something else, and do yet a third.” I might not like the Fatherland fraction led in Verkhovna Rada by Oleksandr Turchynov, but I deeply respect his model, drawn up years before he threw in with that lot, of how the Ukrainian economy really works: as a triangular symbiosis of official (providing privileges), entrepreneurial (money), and criminal (muscle) entities coming together to form what he called administrative industrial groups dedicated to keeping the competition out. This really is not a bad way of understanding the forces that define what is possible in this country, and their interests do not exactly favor the sort of actions necessary to make Ukraine capable of moving toward the West. I suspect that this might be why what really seems to be happening is a process of shadow integration in the opposite direction.

Returning to the issue of the philosophy of social development, the best I can offer is that everything possible should be done to promote “healthy forces favoring reform” and not necessarily those now claiming the title. It means developing civil society such that still atomized citizens are brought together in strong associations of like- minded individuals outside government and capable of pressing for what they want from it. Only then will the people as such cease to be the object of the political process but real participants. Promoting this will not be simple, and it will not be accomplished anytime soon. But the strategic goal of all who wish Ukraine well has to be steps to promote the creation of a new configuration of forces such that what so clearly needs to be done becomes at least politically possible to do.