Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia

A decidedly more forward American posture in post-Soviet Eurasia – in part a by-product of the Bush administration’s global prioritisation of counter-terrorism and democracy promotion – chipped away at the Clinton-era tradition of self-imposed restraints and consideration of Russian sensitivities. In the spring of 2002, for example, Washington embarked on the Georgia Train and Equip Program (GTEP), spending some US$65m and sending in several hundred US special forces to participate. It was designed to modernise the Georgian military and get into shape four battle-ready battalions that could do their bit in the war on terror. The immediate assignment was to pacify the restive Pankisi Gorge abutting the Russian republic of Chechnya, where a war against separatists was raging. Putin mouthed tentative support (his government had long complained about Chechen rebels taking refuge in Pankisi), but Russian attitudes cooled once new projects replaced GTEP and Georgian forces were enlisted in the American adventure in Iraq. ‘The minuscule U.S. presence in Georgia had a symbolic significance far greater than was warranted by its size, and presaged a trend that became increasingly visible during the decade and increasingly worrisome to Moscow.’[83]

Also reflective of lowered inhibitions was the American decision to build a bridge to the Russo-sceptic GUAM group. In December 2002 the US and the GUAM foreign ministers entered into a framework programme ‘of trade and transport facilitation, ensuring border and customs control, combating terrorism, organized crime and drug trafficking’. The centrepiece was a US-bankrolled GUAM Virtual Center designed to conduct activities along these lines. The financial commitment was trifling, and the impact even more so, but that did not keep Russia from seeing it as a suspicious probe.[84]

One effect of this US policy shift was to embolden Russia’s neighbours to bid more overtly for Western support and for inclusion in Western institutions. A pair of In-Betweens blazed a declaratory trail toward the EU and even NATO, where Russian tolerance for deviation from the status quo would certainly be scantiest. In 1998 Ukraine’s president Kuchma asserted EU membership as a strategic objective, and in 2002 let it be known that he wanted his country sooner or later to join the NATO alliance; Shevardnadze staked similar claims for Georgia in 1999 and 2002, respectively.

In a third country, Moldova, a bruising scandal broke out in 2003 over resolution of the Transnistria conflict. At the invitation of the Moldovan president, Vladimir Voronin, a senior adviser to Putin, Dmitry Kozak, drafted with local allies a plan to bring the mutinous district back into the fold by adopting a new federal constitution for the country. The Kozak Memorandum would have resulted in an asymmetric federation; Transnistria and Gagauzia (the small homeland of a Turkic-speaking people) were to be granted considerable autonomy along with a veto over some central decisions via a new upper house of parliament. In a late addition, Russian peacekeepers, and not the multinational force the Moldovan authorities preferred, were to be stationed in Transnistria until 2020. Western officials, prominently Javier Solana, the EU’s high representative for common foreign and security policy, were vehemently against the plan, while OSCE mediators could not arrive at a position. Voronin, having given preliminary approval to the scheme, torpedoed it in November 2003. His decision came as a Kremlin airplane was preparing to ferry Putin to Chisinau to witness the signing. As William Hill, then the head of the OSCE mission to Moldova, later recalled, ‘What was for most Western capitals a relatively minor incident for the Russians was a personal affront to their president and a denial of Russia’s right to play an independent political and diplomatic role in a part of the world that had once been theirs exclusively.’[85]