International Security
Фото: Larry Downing / Reuters/http://lenta.ru/news/2014/12/24/ukrainenato/
Ukraine pokes Russia, makes move toward NATO. Was it really necessary?
Just
as tensions with Russia were easing, the Ukraine parliament took a step toward
applying for NATO membership. But the move was largely symbolic, since Ukraine
won't be joining NATO anytime soon.
WASHINGTON — The Ukraine parliament’s
vote Tuesday to nullify the country’s non-aligned status is largely a symbolic
gesture and does not mean Ukraine will seek NATO membership any
time soon.
What the vote does
promise is further ratcheting up of tensions between Ukraine and Russia, and between Western
leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin – who considers Ukraine an
inseparable piece of Russia’s backyard, and Ukrainian membership in the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization a red line.
The vote represents
one step toward fulfilling “all criteria of membership” in the North Atlantic
Alliance. Perhaps the biggest impact of the vote will be to stir up waters
that had begun to calm concerning embattled eastern Ukraine, some Russia
analysts say. The vote came just hours after new talks were announced for this
week aimed at ending Ukraine’s conflict with pro-Russian rebels in eastern
Ukraine.
“The real question is, why did this vote
happen now, when the situation in eastern Ukraine is relatively calm?” says
Paul Saunders, director of the US-Russian relations program at the Center for
the National Interest in Washington.
The Ukrainian
government probably felt “a little emboldened” to act as a result of the dire
signs from Moscow concerning the Russian economy, Mr. Saunders says. But he
adds that economic considerations are not likely to moderate Russia’s reaction
to the parliamentary vote.
“From Moscow’s
perspective this is clearly a provocative and inflammatory step,” he says.
Indeed, on Tuesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the vote would
have “extremely negative consequences,” while Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev
wrote on his Facebook page that the vote is tantamount to “an application to
join NATO.”
However, the
parliamentary vote is highly symbolic and has little concrete impact. Ukraine
President Petro Poroshenko has said a decision to seek NATO membership would
come from the Ukrainian people in a referendum vote, and that such a referendum
would not take place before the end of the decade.
But the parliamentary
vote will add to keeping tensions alive because it feeds the perceptions
that each side in the larger Ukraine-Russia conflict has about the other,
Saunders says.
“If we’re objective
about it, how could the Kremlin annex Crimea and not expect a vote like this?”
he says. “On the other hand, no one should be surprised by the Russian
response. No leader,” he adds, “would want to see a neighboring country move
toward joining what people in his country perceive to be a hostile military
alliance.”
Events in Ukraine
like the parliamentary vote are also part of what will be a sustained period of
unpredictable tensions between Russia and the West, other analysts say.
Ukraine is not the
primary cause of a “new rivalry” in Russian-Western relations, but it is “the
main geographical locus and symbol” of it, says Dmitri Trenin, director of the
Carnegie Moscow Center, a regional branch of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace in Washington.
Russia under Mr.
Putin has embarked on a new foreign policy course that aims above all to secure
Russia’s sovereignty and independence from foreign influences and to ensure
Russia’s interests in its “former borderlands,” Mr. Trenin says in a new Moscow
Center paper.
This new course,
which is steering Russia away from any integration into Western institutions,
reflects resurgent nationalism in Russia, Trenin says. But it is also winning
widespread support among ordinary Russians because of the Ukraine crisis and
the Western sanctions related to it, he adds.
Trenin says he sees
no reason to expect “any letup in the US-Russia confrontation” for years to
come, in part because the United States will “not accept Russia carving out a
sphere of influence in its neighborhood.” But at the same time, he says the
Ukraine crisis in particular must not be allowed to “escalate dangerously”
given the potential for a “direct military confrontation of former cold war
adversaries.”
The Ukrainian
parliament’s vote to in effect turn westward may be within Ukraine’s rights,
Saunders says. But he also says the vote illustrates how every party asserting
its rights is not a formula for a secure and stable Europe.
“Ukraine and the
Ukrainian people have the right to decide whether or not they want to join
NATO, NATO countries have the right to decide if they want Ukraine as a member,
and Russia has the right to decide how to react to a decision by Ukraine to
join NATO,” Saunders says.
“But the important
question is not one of rights,” he adds, “it’s whether European security is
strengthened or weakened, whether Europe is more stable or less stable with
Ukraine inside NATO.”
He
says that’s the question all sides with a hand in the Ukraine crisis will have
to think about.
No comments:
Post a Comment