Clinton must change policy on Ukrainians - need for improved relations - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 8, 1993 | by Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Arguably among the most important of the many bits of unfinished foreign policy business Bill Clinton has inherited from George Bush is the question of relations with Ukraine. If the new administration follows the lead of the just-departed one in this area, however, chances are that bilateral ties will become dangerously strained. If so, the principal beneficiary will be the ascendant hard-liners in Moscow.

The Bush administration most recently was using intense diplomatic, financial and political pressure to try to coerce Ukraine to turn over to Russia strategic nuclear weapons Kiev inherited with the breakup of the old Soviet empire. The reasons for such heavy-handedness are said to include concerns that:

* A failure by Ukraine to do so might create grave instabilities in will destroy the foundation upon which the START I arms control agreement was predicated (namely that only Russia would retain the former Soviet strategic arsenal) and, in the process, threaten the recently signed follow-up agreement, START II.

* Ukrainian insistence on retaining such weapons would undercut its stated commitment to subscribe to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and, it is argued, create a new impetus for other nations to acquire atomic and/or thermonuclear arms.

* Ukraine's nuclear chauvinism may provide pretexts for hard-line elements in Russia to steer Kremlin policy in more militaristic and hegemonistic directions.

Are these concerns well-grounded? Do they justify the kind of knee-breaking in which the Bush team engaged? And, more to the point, if this approach ultimately succeeds, will long-term U.S. strategic interests be advanced -- or will they actually be disserved?

My own heretical view is that the answer to each of these questions may be no. At the very least, the assumptions that prompted the Bush administration to answer them in the affirmative should be analyzed and debated more carefully than they have been to date -- certainly before the Clinton administration starts shaping policies predicated upon them, too.

For starters, Ukraine is one of the most important countries of post-Cold War Europe. Its geographic size (equivalent to that of France), its rich agricultural potential, its large (even if, as with all former Soviet industry, overly militarized) industrial base and its well-educated and reasonably productive population would make Ukraine a significant player even without nuclear weapons. What is more, Ukraine also has physical control over the world's third-largest inventory of strategic arms.

Incredibly, despite these factors, U.S. policy toward Ukraine has not changed appreciably from the days when it was a vassal state of the Soviet empire. This policy was best characterized -- even caricatured -- by President Bush's notorious "Chicken Kiev" speech in July 1991, a month before the coup in Moscow.

On that occasion, he questioned the sanity of Ukrainians who yearned for independence from Moscow and strenuously urged that Ukraine give up its nationalist aspirations and remain part of the Soviet Union. Seemingly spiteful at having been proven wrong, the Bush administration scarcely deviated in the post-Gorbachev period from its Moscow-centric approach. When Ukraine is considered at all, it appears to be as an afterthought -- or, worse, as a nasty impediment to smooth relations with the Kremlin.

This attitude has not been improved by Kiev's mounting unease over political developments in Russia. Washington has been infuriated that its own dubious arms control agenda might be jeopardized by Ukrainians challenging the wisdom of surrendering their stockpile of powerful nuclear arms to a historical enemy -- particularly one increasingly dominated by the sorts of people who previously have used military power to enslave Ukraine.

Whether the United States likes it or not, Ukraine has serious and, to a considerable extent, legitimate concerns about Russia's future course. Particularly with the ascendancy of enemies of structural reform in Moscow, Ukrainians have ample grounds to be cautious about Western-promoted policies that may, at best, reduce Kiev's negotiating leverage and, at worst, put its sovereignty at risk.

The time has come to challenge the assumption that U.S. and Western interests will necessarily be best served by insisting that Ukraine turn over all remaining long-range nuclear weapons to Russia. An independent, strong Ukraine may in fact prove to be the best bulwark against revanche by Moscow -- something the U.S. should fear as much as the Ukrainians do. Kiev's continued physical control of nuclear arms may prove a deterrent to renascent aggressiveness in Russian foreign policy.

At the very least, before the Clinton administration takes up the Bush team's cudgel against Kiev, it should think through the strategic implications of disarming Ukraine. If it does so, the conclusions just may be that militarism is on the rise in Russia (whether Ukraine retains its nuclear weapons or not), that the reductions called for in START I and START II are not likely to assure the desired stability or U.S. deterrent capability in the face of those developments in Moscow, and that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a function of the appetites and resourcefulness of people like Saddam Hussein or Kim Il-sung -- forces not appreciably influenced by ineffectual, unverifiable treaties or well-intentioned breast-beating from Washington.