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Can Arseniy Yatsenyuk Save Ukraine from Itself?
by Webster Brooks
Unless a transformational figure emerges to capture the imagination and majority of Ukrainian voters in the January 2010 national elections, Kiev’s drift back to Russia will accelerate and the Orange Revolution will perish in its infancy. Five years after millions of Ukrainians defiantly overturned a fraudulent election orchestrated in Moscow to usher in Victor Yushchenko’s reform movement, corruption is rampant, chaos reigns in government and nostalgia to re-establish the bonds of affection with Russia is metastasizing across Ukraine. While Ukraine has been a strategic battleground between Europe and Russia, it is Kiev’s dysfunctional leadership that has furnished the means of its own nation’s destruction. Today, the one leader who is uniquely positioned to save Ukraine from itself may be Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whose meteoric rise is altering the political calculus of Ukraine’s upcoming elections. If Yatsenyuk enters the race, his road to the presidency will be as difficult as it is unlikely.
Ukraine’s next president will inherit a nation in the throes of a spiraling economic crisis still searching for the bottoming out point. With the fourth highest debt level on the planet, industrial output plummeting 30 percent last year, inflation at 24 percent and its national currency (the hryvna) in free fall; economic circumstances in Ukraine couldn’t be worse. The January gas crisis with Moscow that shut off natural gas flows to twenty European countries has exacerbated Ukraine’s problems, and made it an unreliable provider of energy transiting to Europe. While Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko valiant attempt to reassure the European community at the recent Munich security conference that Ukraine has the capacity to shoulder its energy transiting responsibilities to the west, plans are moving forward on three natural gas pipelines from Russia and Central Asia that would all bypass Ukraine. Further, when the IMF conditioned the release of the second tranche of Ukraine’s $16.4 billion package to re-capitalize the banking sector and service its external debt, Ukraine was obligated to submit a plan for a balanced budget. Prime Minister Tymoshenko’s government presented a plan riddled with account deficits; prompting the resignation of Ukraine’s Finance Minister.
The gas crisis and Ukraine’s embarrassing proposal to the IMF are just two revealing examples of how deeply Ukraine’s political leaders have been living in a fantasy world since the Orange Revolution. The Yushenko-Tymokshenko Orange coalition disagreed on virtually everything once they took power in 2004. Since Tymoshenko was tossed out after the first eight months in office the two leaders and factions haven’t stopped fighting. Worse than the Ukrainian government’s incompetence is the atmospherics of adolescent carnival its leaders have exhibited in conducting the nation’s affairs. Their governmental decorum has all the dignity of a primary school dining hall food fight. In short, Ukraine is not ready for rapid ascension into the European Union or NATO, nor is NATO ready to receive Ukraine. Even Russia has its doubts about its dealings with Kiev. On February 16, Ukrainian leaders threatened to expel Russian Ambassador Chernomyrdin after his recent criticism of the nation’s leadership as totally disorganized.
President Yushenko’s fight for the supremacy of the Ukrainian language, uniting Ukraine’s Orthodox Church and building international recognition of the 1932-33 Holodomor as Soviet genocide will do nothing to solve the Ukraine’s crisis. That is precisely why his popularity in the polls is down to three percent. Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is a far superior administrator of state affairs than Yushenko and former Prime Minister Yanukovych. She managed
to unite with Yanukovych’s Regions Party in 2007 to form a governing coalition and then defeated the Regions Party’s recent attempt to topple her from the Prime Minister’s post with a “no confidence vote.” Tymoshenko also deserves credit for negotiating a deal with Russia to end the gas crisis, eliminating energy transit middlemen who were gouging profits and attempting to restore credibility to the nation’s wages and pension system. But Tymoshenko is distrusted by vast numbers of Ukrainians who view her as part of the problem and are fatigued by her constant fighting with President Yushhenko and Yanukovych.
Going forward to the Ukraine’s national elections, Yulia Tymeshenko’s bloc does not have enough parliamentary seats and she doesn’t have the nationwide support to forge an effective governing coalition and lead a genuine reform movement. While Victor Yanukovych’s Region’s Party has a slim parliamentary majority he also lacks sufficient support to form a governing coalition. He is currently running behind Tymoshenko in the polls by a few points, and is facing a backlash in his party for fumbling the last attempt to dipose Timoshenko from office. As for President Yushenko, his spectacular fall from grace has virtually sunk his “Our Ukraine” coalition.
Against the backdrop of Ukraine’s crumbling economy and gross malfeasance in leadership, Arseniy Yatsenyuk has a tremendous opening to break out as a uniting force to save Ukraine’s flagging ship of state. While Yushenko, Yanukovych and Temoshenko fight, Ukraine is sinking and Yatsenyuk’s popularity is rising. As a former banker, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Speaker of the parliament, the 34 year-old Yatsenyuk is experienced and conversant in Ukraine’s byzantine politics. He is young, relatively scandal free and has the best chance to represent the next generation of a new post-partisan Ukrainian leadership.
But can Yatsenyuk be the sober visionary leader who can impart a new sense of realism that implores Ukraine to clean up its own financial house? Does he have the charisma to inspire Ukrainians to take their destiny in their own hands and not look to Europe or Russia for salvation or blame them when things go wrong? Can he reign in Ukraine’s oligarchs who have ravaged the country in the same way that Russia’s oligarchs did during the transition from state ownership to free enterprise without Putinizing the system? Will Yatsenyuk finally craft a sensible forward-leaning Ukrainian energy policy that modernizes its infrastructure and restores its credibility in Europe? Can Yatsenyuk try to articulate a vision that bridges the cultural and religious divide between Ukraine and Russian nationals? And can he lead a parliament to get things done with significant numbers of members from the Tymoshenko Bloc and the Regions Party?
Although Yatsenyuk lacks money, party organization and a program for Ukraine’s resurrection, he has two things working in his favor; the Ukrainian peoples’ desperate search for new leadership and his political rival’s incessant infighting that makes him a more attractive alternative. What Yatsenyuk needs now is a clear and compelling vision of a new Ukraine, and a new theory of nation-building that departs with the failed attempts of the past. He cannot simply split the political difference between the major parties. He can be a radical pragmatist proposing solutions that benefit all Ukrainians struggling under severe economic conditions, but he cannot be a soft centrist who tries to be all things to all Ukrainians. The fact that Yanukovych and Tymoshenko have started attacking Yatsenyuk instead of ignoring him now provides him with greater opportunities to highlight policy differences and new reforms, rather than engaging in personal smears. Yatsenyuk can and will have to be tough in taking on his detractors; he cannot be equally as dirty.
Yatsenyuk has formed a new organization called the Change Front Citizens Initiative. Unlike the Orange Coalition that was powerful enough to overturn a corrupt government in 2004, but too weak and too divisive to govern effectively; Yatsenyuk must build his own independent base of disaffected citizens and Ukraine’s youth that are anchored to his core vision. By doing so early in the process, he can position his campaign to break off sections of Ukraine’s other
major and minor parties on principle and policy to forge a winning coalition as the January 17 elections draw near.
In many ways the locus of Yatsenyuk’s path to victory that stresses ending the political rancor between the Region’s Party and the Tymoshenko Bloc, and building a new sense of national unity and purpose mirrors Barak Obama’s road to the White House in the 2008 election. Can Arseniy Yatsenyuk be the change that the new Ukraine believes in?
Read the Historic G-20 Summit Communique
Obama and European Union's Growing Economic Crisis
Critics charging that President Obama’s cancellation of the missile defense shield system in Poland and the Czech Republic marked capitulation to Russia and weakened Europe’s defense against Iranian and Russian missile attacks are dead wrong. Quite the opposite, the President’s new plan deploys a more potent, high tech, land, sea and space-based system to defend all of Europe and the Caucuses. Obama’s revised “Star Wars” plan is more mobile, less detectable and will be deployed faster than the original plan for ten ground-based interceptor missiles in Poland and forward-based X-band missile radar in the Czech Republic. Arguably, the Obama-Gates universal interceptor missile system will put the United States on the cusp of uncontested global military superiority by making itself and its allies highly impenetrable to Russian, Chinese, North Korean and Iranian missile attacks.
Appearing with President Obama at the September 17 announcement, Defense Secretary Gates stated “We have now the opportunity to deploy new sensors and interceptors in northern and southern Europe that in the near term provide missile defense coverage against more immediate threats from Iran or others." Given that Iran is nowhere close to fielding long-range missiles, Gates reference to “others” was obviously directed at Russia. Gates outlined the new plan that will deploy Aegis class warships equipped with SM-3 mobile missile interceptors that can be moved from one region to another. The U.S. has fifteen destroyers and three cruisers equipped with the Aegis combat system which is being developed into a worldwide, sea based, rapid deployable missile shield structure. These new capabilities are being coordinated with Norway, Spain, Australia, Japan and South Korea. Indeed, in February 2008, the USS Lake Erie, an Aegis class guided-missile cruiser, shot down an American satellite in space in its testing phase. Further, Gates said Phase 2 of the universal interceptor missile system will include “upgraded land-based SM-3s” by 2015.
In addition to deploying the universal interceptor missile system, the Obama Administration and NATO are upgrading the integrated European Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) with current Patriot and Nike Hercules components. MEADS will include forward-based X-band radar, 360 degree surveillance radar, missile launchers and next-generation Patriot interceptor missiles. MEADS will be interoperable with other defense systems, including the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and the Aegis sea-based missile defense systems. Obama has requested and will receive $600 million in funding from Congress for MEADS in the next fiscal year. Doubters concerned about President Obama’s commitment to missile defense should also take comfort in the August announcement of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency that its modified Boeing 747-400F airplane was successfully deployed with a laser weapon that "found, tracked, engaged and simulated an intercept with a missile seconds after liftoff.’ This fall the first live attempt to bring down a ballistic missile will be tested. As for the “defenseless” Czech Republic and Poland, the Pentagon has already opened talks with both countries about hosting a land-based version of the SM-3 missile interceptors and other components of the system. American plans call for 96 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles in Poland, capable of selecting, targeting, and homing in on the warhead portion of an inbound ballistic missile.
Obama’s detractors that claim Poland and the Czech Republic were betrayed in exchange for Russian support for sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program should think again. It’s true that Russian President Medvedev applauded President Obama’s decision to “cancel” the missile defense shield system. After all, he’d look foolish criticizing what Russia had so publicly demanded. On September 22, Medvedev also suggested Russia would consider supporter tougher sanctions against Iran. But behind the walls of the Kremlin there are growing concerns about Russia’s encirclement by the U.S./NATO buildup of a global missile interceptor system. Moscow has seen this movie before. President Reagan’s original Star Wars plan set off a run of defense spending in the USSR that contributed significantly to the economic hollowing out of the Soviet state. When Russia responded to the Poland-Czech Republic missile defense shield by threatening to place Iskander ballistic missiles in Kaliningrad on Poland’s border, it evoked a sense of an escalating Cold War buildup. If Russia ultimately supports damaging sanctions against Iran it won’t be because they feared ten fixed-site land based missile interceptors and a radar installation outside of Prague; Putin and company have a larger strategic imperative to counterbalance.
Notwithstanding all the rhetoric about the Polish and Czech people being abandoned to the Russians, surveys consistently demonstrate that a majority of Poles opposed the stationing of American missiles inside their borders. In the Czech Republic, over two-thirds of the public opposed the basing of the interceptor missile radar. For those who are still not clear about President Obama’s capacity for flexing American military might, he defended his vision of Star Wars 2 universal missile interceptor system by saying, “President Bush was right that Iran's ballistic missile program poses a significant threat. And that's why I'm committed to deploying strong missile defense systems which are adaptable to the threats of the 21st century. This approach is also consistent with NATO's missile defense efforts and provides opportunities for enhanced international collaboration going forward and we are bound by the solemn commitment of NATO's Article V that an attack on one is an attack on all.” Commenting on the new missile defense system, the conservative Wall Street Journal recently stated that “Never has Ronald Reagan’s dream of layered missile defenses – Star Wars, for short – been as close, at least technologically, to becoming realized.”
America’s military buildup of ground forces and the largest CIA station in Afghanistan and its aggressive push to place military installations across Central Asia are exerting enormous pressure on Russia, China and Iran. In the final analysis, President Obama will not be able to stop Iran’s drive to master the uranium enrichment cycle or develop a nuclear weapons program. What we are witnessing now with the deployment of Obama’s Star Wars 2 missile defense system is a rapid buildup to contain the emerging Eastern Axis in Tehran, Beijing and Moscow. ******
Obama's Critics on Missile Defense Shield Cancellation are Wrong
by Webster Brooks
September 28, 2009
