The Crimea’s March 16
referendum looms larger each day, but U.S. officials are issuing declarations
and little more. America’s paramount goals over the next few days must be to
make a final serious effort to preserve Ukraine’s territorial integrity—with a
weak hand and very limited time—and to prepare a post-referendum plan to
contain the strategic damage from the Obama administration’s latest fumble. If
the president and his advisors fail, the only beneficiary would be Beijing.
The crisis in Ukraine is a
product of Russia’s desire to restore control over Crimea and of Ukraine’s deep
social and political divisions. But in a manner more reckless than feckless,
the Obama administration has made matters worse at each step. It is fair to say
that the White House “led from behind” as the European Union sought an
Association Agreement with Ukraine by failing to press Brussels to do more to
secure ousted president Viktor Yanukovych’s signature on the deal—something
that could have avoided the crisis and protected key U.S. interests. Once the
protests began, the administration essentially abandoned its efforts to
persuade Russia that Ukraine’s Western orientation would be “win-win” and
instead supported a “winner-takes-all” approach in the streets of Kiev and
other Ukrainian cities—something that quickly backfired when a fractured
Supreme Rada voted to remove Yanukovych without reaching the constitutionally
mandated supermajority and then appointed a new government with only token
representation from Russian-speaking regions. Russia has now deployed troops in
Crimea, where the region’s legislature likewise went around the constitution in
scheduling a referendum on autonomy, and then advancing its date from March 30
to March 16 and adding the option of incorporation into Russia.
After Russian forces
established control in Crimea, Obama returned to a policy process that has
already failed repeatedly elsewhere: 1) make bold and moralistic
pronouncements, 2) put America’s prestige and credibility on the line, and 3)
produce no real policy. U.S. policy toward Syria has been the most visible and
damaging application of this approach so far, but it is far from the only one.
This is how an administration that entered office determined to rebuild
America’s image has instead further marred it, discouraged allies, and
emboldened foes—grand talk and no action. The administration’s peculiar
combination of Bush-era self-righteousness with Obamian instinctive caution,
whether through analysis-paralysis or simple timidity, offers the worst of both
worlds.
Issuing pompous press
statements or fact sheets that approach Bill Clinton’s definition of “is” in their
linguistic parsing may be emotionally satisfying, but it does not help to keep
Ukraine intact. Nor does it impress Russian leaders who are long past caring
about White House bluster or their favorability ratings in Western
public-opinion polls. Posturing is not policy. Worse, it is counterproductive
when it comes to the one person making decisions about Crimea: Vladimir Putin.
Salvaging Ukraine’s unity
requires pragmatic, private and high-level negotiations on significant Crimean
autonomy as part of a comprehensive Ukraine settlement with no further delay.
Synchronizing America’s and Europe’s positions will be extremely important.
In dealing with Russia, U.S.
officials should reiterate that a Russian annexation of Crimea would make
Western-Russian relations newly adversarial and that the coming days will
provide the final opportunity to avoid that outcome by finding a path forward
that preserves Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Specific threats are unwise and
will serve primarily to provoke counterthreats, especially if stated publicly.
At the same time, in conversations with Kiev—including during
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s March 12 visit to Washington—the
administration should urge restraint and flexibility. Keeping Crimea and
calming eastern Ukraine will likely require several steps, including not only
very substantial autonomy for Crimea (with guarantees that Kiev will not
unilaterally revoke this status in the future), but also a lesser degree of
autonomy for some eastern Ukrainian regions and a national-unity government
that includes Russian-speaking political leaders. The administration should
offer expanded assistance to Ukraine to win its support. The $1 billion already
announced is too little.
With Crimea’s regional
government, the United States could offer its own commitment as a guarantor of
Crimea’s autonomy, modest financial assistance, and a dose of reality: if
Russia annexes Crimea, the peninsula will enter a legal no-man’s-land that will
constrain its future development. U.S. officials should also seek to persuade
the Crimean government to delay its referendum and preferably to remove
integration into Russia from the ballot. One option would be to combine a delay
in the referendum with a delay in Ukraine’s national elections, scheduled for
May 25, if Kiev would agree.
Unfortunately, the odds for
success with this approach are less than 50-50 and are decreasing on an almost
hourly basis given the scale of the task and the time available. If
negotiations fail, the United States must move swiftly after the referendum and
Russia’s presumptive incorporation of Crimea to deter Moscow from further
intervention and to reassure Ukraine, U.S. allies, and others in the region.
Several important realities should guide America’s response.
First, the United States and
NATO do not have a credible military option to liberate Crimea. Russia’s
military lags far behind America’s, but Moscow is still a nuclear superpower
and Russia would have a much higher stake in an armed conflict, particularly
after taking a public position that Crimea is Russian territory.
Second, while it will be
tempting to punish or to isolate Russia, this could have profound and
destructive unintended consequences. The Obama administration and members of
Congress must consider whether they are prepared to make Crimea’s fate the
organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy—which it will become either
deliberately or by default should the United States take this path. They should
also think carefully about how other nations, including U.S. allies and rivals,
would react.
It is far from certain that
the European Union would join the United States in applying the “crippling”
sanctions some members of Congress are already discussing. Because
Europe-Russia trade and investment are more than ten times greater than
U.S.-Russia trade and investment, Washington would be asking its allies to risk
over $170 billion in foreign direct investment in Russia and over $100 billion
in annual European exports. With only about $10 billion or so in U.S. investment
and an equivalent amount in annual exports, European capitals may not be too
impressed with our support.
Outside Europe, few seem
likely to put their ties to Russia on the line over Crimea. Would Brazil or
India take this approach? How about Japan or South Korea? Hopefully President
Obama does not really believe his rhetoric about standing with a nonexistent
“international community.” Similarly, though Secretary of State John Kerry has
reportedly informed his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov that Crimea’s
annexation “would close any available space for diplomacy,” this does not seem
credible. The Bush administration terminated contacts above the deputy
assistant secretary level after Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia, and America may
do the same again this time. But how long will it last? Obama’s reset ended
that effort after just a few months—for good strategic reasons.
The United States can wound Russia’s sputtering economy, but
Moscow would look for—and find—ways to respond. Threats to seize officials’
assets are nugatory—what self-respecting Russian official who did not move
assets out of the United States after the U.S. Congress passed the Magnitsky
Act over a year ago would not have immediately phoned his or her banker the day
after the White House announced this option? Broader sanctions against Russian
companies could invite disproportionate retaliation against U.S. firms and
their employees, who have few legal protections in Russia. To raise revenue,
Russia would aim to maximize earnings from its most saleable exports: energy,
high-tech and low-tech weapons, and no-questions-asked nuclear power plants
with new proliferation risks.
Ukraine would be the first
victim of any extended confrontation because it would inevitably become a
political, economic and social battlefield, if not a military one. Russia might
start by shutting off its natural-gas exports through the country. Though this
would be costly for the gas monopoly Gazprom, Ukraine would suffer the
most—especially eastern Ukraine, where the country’s industrial cities depend
on steady supplies. Ironically, inflicting the greatest pain on predominantly
Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainians might only further polarize Ukraine’s
divided population. Necessary economic and political reforms would be
considerably harder than they have been in the past. Europe would certainly
survive a disruption in gas supplies, but it would likely be costly and
difficult. Because dependencies and policies vary, it could also stoke
differences inside the EU. Finding new energy suppliers and increasing domestic
production would preoccupy top officials.
In Cold War 2.0, Russia
would exploit asymmetries—making mischief, after all, is far easier than
managing it. Russia might reorient its policy toward Iran, Syria and Venezuela,
where Moscow could create far more problems than it has so far. Supplying S-300
or newer S-400 missiles to Tehran—which Iranian president Hassan Rouhani could
hardly refuse, since his government is suing Russia over a contract to deliver
S-300s that Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev blocked at Washington’s
request—would be only the beginning. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad
doubtless has a long and thus far unfulfilled shopping list too. Post-NATO
Afghanistan, where Russia and Iran have both supported the Northern Alliance,
offers different opportunities for troublemaking.
In this world, U.S.
officials and diplomats would face simultaneous simmering crises. The effect
would be nothing less than vertiginous as they pivoted from Asia to Europe to
the Middle East and back again. For an Obama administration that often can’t
handle individual challenges in isolation, it would almost certainly amount to
a massive system overload. Meanwhile, during this global meltdown, leaders in
Beijing could relax—waiting and watching for the right moments to act on their
own ambitions.
In the end, China’s rise is
much more significant than Crimea’s fate, and the United States should avoid
reacting to the Ukraine crisis in ways that could severely undermine its
ability to manage this paramount priority. China and Russia are not allies
today and Beijing will not publicly support Crimea’s self-determination,
something that Chinese leaders clearly see as contrary to their view of their
own country’s territorial integrity. Nevertheless, there is little doubt about
Beijing’s views of who is to blame for the crisis in Ukraine—the West—or about
China’s sympathy for Moscow. Leaving Moscow no alternative to a far stronger
relationship with Beijing, possibly including new high-tech arms sales and even
diplomatic support of China’s territorial claims, would be a Pyrrhic victory.
Perversely, efforts to displace Russia’s gas exports to Europe, which current
events are likely to accelerate, may make Russian-Chinese deals more likely by
putting new pressure on Gazprom to accept the lower prices China is offering.
As Henry Kissinger recently wrote, the administration should remember that “the
test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins.”
The administration should also consider how long it can maintain
domestic and allied support. Having been a major political beneficiary of
domestic anger over Iraq, President Obama should recognize that a new Cold War
with Moscow could produce similar dynamics at home and abroad—including bigger
defense budgets. After U.S. experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention
in the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, the administration should be thinking not only
about its policy options but also about its exit strategy from a confrontation
with Moscow. This might encourage U.S. officials to stop making threats that
they can’t and won’t deliver on before they further embarrass themselves and
the country.
If Russia annexes Crimea,
this action will bring an end to the cycles of U.S.-Russia relations since 1992
and begin a qualitatively different era. The United States will have no
practical alternative to refusing to recognize the legality of Crimea’s
annexation. Washington will also have to discuss new NATO basing and
deployments that balance credible deterrence of further Russian action and
credible reassurance of U.S. allies and partners with the need to avoid
escalation. This may include some military support to Ukraine, but will also
require brutal honesty with Kiev. If Ukraine’s new leaders choose to act
recklessly—as Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili did in 2008—they will do so at
their own risk. The United States should also work with the European Union to
accelerate U.S. natural-gas exports to Europe, though this will be a long-term
effort and is unlikely to produce immediate dividends. Finally, Washington
should think long and hard about America’s complex relations with China. If
necessary, the United States can confront either Moscow or Beijing, but the
U.S. should avoid a simultaneous break with both—something much more difficult
to manage. We cannot afford further missteps.
Finally, we must keep a
sense of perspective about Russia. Vladimir Putin may have seized Crimea, but
he is not Adolf Hitler. History rarely repeats itself. Still, 2014 looks less
like 1939 than 1914. In the decade preceding World War I, Russia was weakened
by the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese war and its 1905 revolution, and consequently
accepted several humiliating setbacks in the Balkans at the hands of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire and Imperial Germany. In response, Tsar Nicholas II
decided to consolidate his alliance with Britain and France and to modernize
the Russian army. Moscow finally took a stand in August 1914, surprising Kaiser
Wilhelm and Emperor Franz Joseph, who thought that Russia would not dare to
call their bluff. Indeed, the resulting war was suicidal for Russia and its
Tsar, but Nicholas took Germany and Austria-Hungary down the drain with him. In
an era before nuclear weapons, millions of Europeans died. And the war’s
apparent winners—Britain and France—soon faced terrible new challenges.
It’s hardly a pattern that
the Obama administration—or any other power—would want to emulate. If Obama
wants to restore America domestically and internationally, he will need a
different approach to Ukraine—and soon. Otherwise, he will flunk the Kissinger
test by clinging to a policy that has begun badly and could well end even
worse.
Dimitri K. Simes is publisher & CEO of The National Interest. Paul J. Saunders is executive director of the Center for the
National Interest. He served in the State Department from 2003 to 2005.
