Early signals for the relationship were not promising. In March 2009, Secretary Clinton reiterated support of a key policy initiative held over from the Bush administration—Ukrainian accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It seemed that inertia rather than change and fresh thinking would be the hallmark of Obama’s foreign policy vis-à-vis the countries of the ex-Soviet Union.
In view of later developments, that first impression may have been inaccurate. No doubt strongly influenced by Washington’s need to "reset" relations with Moscow, and the accession to office of Yanukovych, a new approach to Kyiv has proved unavoidable for Washington.
It seems Clinton understands that. Asked about the April 2010 agreement between Kyiv and Moscow to extend the presence of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol—an action that would have enraged the Bush Administration— Clinton coolly termed it part of a "balancing act" by Kyiv: "I think given Ukraine’s history and Ukraine’s geographic position, that balancing act is a hard one, but it makes sense to us…"
Clinton, thus, has come to a realistic perception of Ukraine’s position, in marked contrast to the previous U.S. administration, which seemed at times almost deliberately blind to obvious political realities. In view of her own record of support for "humanitarian interventionism" (the Democrats’ equivalent of Republican "neo-conservatism") in the Balkans and the Middle East, her apparent openness to new realities is a pleasant and somewhat unexpected development.
The Secretary will travel from Kyiv to Krakow to attend the 10th anniversary celebration of the so-called "Community of Democracies." COD is the brainchild of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the personification of everything that went wrong with U.S. policy in the Clinton and Bush years as the U.S. sought to impose "benevolent global hegemony"—in the name of "democracy," of course—around the world. It was “democratism” that landed Ukraine in a state of suspended animation for five years. Now a decade old, this fossil of a bygone era in U.S. foreign policy should be laid to rest once and for all.
So let’s hope Clinton’s stopover in Krakow is only a rhetorical parenthesis as she conducts real business in Kyiv, Yerevan, Baku, and Tbilisi. Coming on the heels of the Barack Obama-Dmitry Medvedev "hamburger diplomacy" in northern Virginia just prior to the Toronto G8 and G20 meetings, it is no accident that Clinton has been dispatched to the capitals (excepting Yerevan) once assigned leading roles in the previous U.S. administration’s efforts to strategically encircle Russia, in part through the absurd and now-moribund GUAM organization (Georgia-Ukraine-Azerbaijan-Moldova).
Obama has abandoned the policy towards Russia that underlay GUAM: "President Medvedev and I are deliberately trying to avoid framing U.S.-Russian relations in zero-sum terms," he said, referring to the notion that what is good for one of the powers is ipso facto bad for the other.
Accordingly, Yanukovych should receive Secretary Clinton in the expectation that U.S. policy will continue to respond to the balanced, prudent and realist course he has set for Ukraine. It may be too much to expect that she will withdraw NATO’s invitation to Kyiv to join the Alliance, issued in 2008 at Bucharest. Great powers do not like to admit mistakes, but hope springs eternal. At the same time, Yanukovych can take the opportunity to tell his American visitor that GUAM is a dead letter. And perhaps both can agree on U.S. cooperation with Kyiv, Moscow, Berlin, and Paris on a new security architecture for the whole pan-European realm.
President Yanukovych and Secretary Clinton should also address important matters of joint economic cooperation. The recent announcement of a new agreement between the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the Ukrainian Development Network (UDN) to provide financing for small and medium-sized enterprises doing business in Ukraine is a positive development. So too Kyiv’s recent announcement of a significant privatization of state assets.
The bottom line is that freed from a sterile and counterproductive geopolitical agenda, U.S.-Ukrainian partnership can now be placed on a constructive track. The OPIC agreement and Kyiv’s privatization plans indicate the direction in which Ukraine needs to go. Secretary Clinton’s task in Kyiv is to expand U.S.-Ukrainian cooperation according to a new, refreshingly realist bilateral agenda.
Anthony T. Salvia is executive director of the Kyiv-based American Institute in Ukraine. Previously he served as an appointee of President Ronald Reagan to the US Department of State and at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich and Moscow. The organization’s website iswww.aminuk.org.
