AMU Europe Homeland Security Intelligence

Needed: A Ukrainian Scorecard

By Donald Sassano
In Homeland Security Contributor

Not long after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a splashy new clash-conscious text by Harvard’s Samuel Huntington mocked realism’s all-encompassing statist paradigm. Realists’ laser-like focus on the state as central actor, argued Huntington, could no longer fully account for heightened global instability, including what realists believed to be an emerging security competition between Russia and Ukraine. Instead, Huntington turned to examine the “civilizational fault lines” that often divide states, including Orthodox eastern Ukraine and its Uniate west. Absent communism and bi-polarity, Huntington argued that “identity” conflicts would become more prevalent, yet would likely be misidentified by realist and liberal camps alike.

And so Huntington characterized the former Soviet republic as an example of a “cleft” country, a place where “major groups from two or more civilizations say, in effect, ‘We are different peoples and belong in different places’”. He drew a bright line on a map of Europe, slicing and dicing from the Barents to the Mediterranean and reminded us that western Ukraine, paralleling its eastern half, has significant civilizational ties of its own — Poland, Lithuania, remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire — all firmly of the West. Battle lines for a new century were drawn.

With time, Huntington’s thesis was dissed principally due to rising violence within civilizations, especially the Muslim world of the Greater Middle East. Realists feasted. But fast forward to 2014 and it seems Huntington nailed it, at least regarding Ukraine and Georgia, with possibly more to come. What would Huntington’s advice to U.S. policy makers be were he alive today? Almost certainly: take care not to muck around beyond Eastern Europe’s civilizational divide lest fault line conflicts explode into great power war. Halt NATO expansion. Stop EU creep. Ditto Asia.

In contrast, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski looked at the same map and saw a Ukraine due its rightful place within Europe, although he acknowledged its status as “geopolitical pivot” and precarious position sitting astride East and West. He famously wrote that an independent Ukraine would transform Russia. Into what, one now asks? Shorn of any pretense of Orthodox empire absent a compliant Kiev, will Russia grudgingly choose to become part of the West? One big Norway, perhaps? Seems laughable, although Brzezinski continues to hold out hope that generational change (an emerging cosmopolitan post-Putin elite) will lead the country beyond historic enmities and into Europe. Don’t bet the farm on it. Civilization-shifting is a dicey game, Huntington would surely counter. Moscow will likely again attempt to reconstitute the remnants of empire, any empire, perhaps by looking south and east.

Here matters take a strange turn. Those familiar with Brzezinski’s work know his delight in bashing neoconservatives and the world they have wrought – rightly so, in my opinion. Yet in February and at the height of the crisis Brzezinski compared Crimea to Munich circa 1938, the automatic default position of American exceptionalists disdainful of pursuing diplomacy with our foes, also known as “talking to evil” in neocon-speak. His words: “And these consequences [of Russian annexation of Crimea] have to be very serious because, otherwise, some years from now, we will be regretting failure to act the way we regretted the failure to act after Munich in 1938 and 1939, and we know what followed”. A short-lived anger at Russian irredentism may have overtaken the old Cold Warrior.

Brzezinski’s neoconservative cross-dressing moment was certainly a shocker, but I’d venture a guess he’d walk back the unfortunate comparison given half a chance. No less interesting is the Putin admiration society that now binds far left and right. The latter camp admires Putin’s swagger and decisiveness, qualities not possessed by our President, they claim. Never mind that Putin is a creeping authoritarian, a trait they ironically attempt to pin on Obama. Moreover, they see the Russian leader as a sort of kindred spirit, a defender of Christianity and traditional values heroically beating back Western European decadence and a gay tide. Why can’t we get us one of those Putins? Sarah Palin probably asks herself.

The former camp is ably represented by NYU Professor Stephen Cohen, archetype New York liberal intellectual, Nation Magazine contributor, and Katrina vanden Heuvel spousal unit. Cohen’s extravagant defense of Putin has surprised many, but he possesses the historian’s ability to assess Western behavior through Kremlin eyes, Russia’s legitimate security interests, and the provocation surrounding NATO’s twenty-five year expansion eastward. He has noted Putin’s exemplary treatment of Russia’s Jews (never a strong suit of course, and a key indicator of Russian malevolence), and the ongoing cooperation Russia provides with our Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria portfolios. Reflexively stand up to Russia as the Washington consensus urges? Expect a new Cold War, he warns.

There you have it – the ongoing atomization of Ukraine analysis. Huntington reclaimed. Brzezinski’s Dick Cheney moment. Nation Magazine scribe clasps hands with Pat Buchanan, Sarah Palin, and Rudy Giuliani. It’s a new world out there.

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