Last month, the Obama administration had backed away from deploying antimissile defense systems in Central Europe. Naturally, this move was deemed spineless appeasement before the Tsarist power by all the right people on the editorial pages of the WSJ and Washington Post. But such a policy decision would simply be too sensible; other factors were at work. As I then noted:
While the administration’s announcement may have cast a sinister shadow on the catered luncheons of think-tanks in our nation’s capital, the disturbance will pass. Obama’s team has said nothing of respecting legitimate Russian concerns in its sphere of interests. Secretary of Defense Gates spoke mainly of repositioning and optimizing anti-missile architecture. This new initiative would likely include sites offshore and in southeastern Europe, with the possibility of system deployment somewhere in the Caucasus. Global democracy enthusiasts should take heart; they can still look forward to a potential standoff with Russian forces in the Black Sea basin.
Surprise! The Pentagon might be considering placing a radar facility in Ukraine as part of its new anti-missile defense architecture. Alexander Vershbow, former ambassador to Moscow and now the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, announced yesterday that officials in Kiev had expressed interest in joining the project.
Who might these “officials” in Kiev be? It’s a safe guess that any probe for stationing US forces in Ukraine came from President Viktor Yushchenko’s administration. Yushchenko, who is stridently anti-Russian, would be just the man to make such an offer*. However, the leader of the Washington-scripted Orange Revolution has limited time, and his room for maneuver keeps shrinking. Presidential elections are slated for January 2010, and Russia has been influencing the process to its advantage. Yushchenko’s statesmanship has led to approval among the Ukrainian population in the low single digits. He is effectively blocked from taking effective action by other factions in the Rada (parliament), including that of the mercenary Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko and pro-Russian regional leader Viktor Yanukovich.
Yushchenko has attempted to compensate for this weakness through posturing in defense and foreign policy. The Ukrainian security services and military have attempted to impede the operations of Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet, which has led to additional tensions. The presidential administration makes continual noise about the end of Russia’s basing contract for Sevastopol in 2017 and just held exercises to suppress a “rebellion” in the Crimea a day after the Russians completed theirs. Yushchenko seems determined to make historically and ethnically Russian Crimea, Khrushchev’s frivolous gift to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954, a flashpoint with the Kremlin.
DOD then backtracked on Vershbow’s statement, saying it only spoke generally of radar facilities in the region. This isn’t terribly convincing- Vershbow is the former US ambassador to Russia, and he knows what to say and when to say it. No matter the origin of the proposal, it is clear that Washington is still set on a course of confrontation. One likely calculated aspect of the announcement is its intended psychological effect: the Obama administration is trying to pressure Moscow into acquiescing to its plans for Iran. The Russians didn’t consider September’s US decision against deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic any kind of grand bargain, and correctly so. The US continues its policy of encroachment in the Russian sphere of interests, from Kiev to Tbilisi and Ashkhabad.
Our foreign policy elites apparently learned nothing from last year’s Georgian war. They will no doubt be aflame in indignation when the Kremlin takes countermeasures to secure its own neighborhood, especially strategically and culturally vital Ukraine. The national security establishment is simply too invested in provoking Moscow to consider the dangers of such a reckless approach.
*Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports that Yushchenko announced that Ukraine has received no US proposals. It’s a roundabout way of saying that Kiev initiated the offer, which may just give Washington some cover of deniability.
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Pentagon Plans for Ukraine
Last month, the Obama administration had backed away from deploying antimissile defense systems in Central Europe. Naturally, this move was deemed spineless appeasement before the Tsarist power by all the right … [Read More]
Posted by Mark Hackard on October 09, 2009
The Usual Suspects