There are about 240 mln taxpayers in the US. On average, each of them hardly paid more than $6 for assisting Ukraine since 2014.
Rex Tillerson’s question to his French colleague Jean-Marc Ayrault on April 12 about why Americans should care about Ukraine revealed cornerstones of the current White House’s approach to issues of security. It could shortly be labeled as pragmatic, built on cost/benefit analysis and aimed at minimizing a free rider effect, so actively used by US allies to enhance their security at the lowest possible cost.
One can hardly say this is a bad approach. The US strategy has been adapted to recent political developments. “Tit-for-tat” is a ruling principle in world politics: it’s fine for two friends to play bridge, but if one of them shifts to poker, the other one should better do the same.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has shifted to open use of military force, blackmail, and distrust three years ago after taking a decision to occupy the Crimea from neighboring Ukraine, instigate and actively support a war in the east of the country. The US responds by making its foreign policy more concentrated on hard security and less devoted to ineffective and/or expensive support of weak allies. Under such circumstances, how far should American support for Ukraine go?
This should certainly have been a question for Ukrainian policy-makers. The usual Kyiv’s rhetoric has for quite long been aimed at attempts to free ride. Joining NATO, receiving security guarantees from the EU, acquiring a Major Non-NATO Ally status – all these initiatives so far have been fruitless. There’s a good reason for that – Ukraine’s inconsistency in foreign policy. Even in a better form and without a war on its territory, Ukraine would have found it problematic to achieve anything from mentioned above. The world does not trust us enough to provide long-term and effective security guarantees.
We speak a lot about the Russian threat, but these talks are getting cheaper over time. Russia is certainly a challenge for the European states – for some bigger, while for others smaller or almost absent – as well as for the US and a number of other countries which overall benefited from the world order ruined by Moscow’s XIX century style approach. But for no other state Russia is as dangerous as it is for Ukraine. We’re fighting for our independence and our statehood, rather than for European security and freedom. European members to NATO and EU are protected well enough to rely on the outcome of what seems to be a long lasting military conflict in the East of the continent. In a nutshell, Americans and Europeans are much less concerned about Ukrainian problems, than Ukrainians believed.
However, there are still reasons for American taxpayers not only to be worried about Ukraine but also to cover a part – no matter how small – of the country’s security expenses.
First, Ukraine is the decisive momentum for the future world order. If Russia succeeds in Ukraine, global security will never be the same. Rules of the games will change, and these changes won’t be good news for long term American interests. That may well be left unnoticed by taxpayers today, but for sure it will be felt by them tomorrow, when in various parts of the world revisionist aspirations of imagined superpowers would trigger wars, destabilization, and violence.
Secondly, as Jean-Marc Ayrault has rightly pointed out on Tuesday, it is better for Americans to have Europe strong and secure. Europe is America’s most reliable strategic partner in the world of rising challengers to Western values, norms, and influence. Russia’s policies in Ukraine have already turned Europe into an insecure region, the status Europeans haven’t “enjoyed” for so long. The EU turned to be ill-prepared for challenges generated by Ukrainian crisis. Long-term security losses suffered by Europeans will surely affect American taxpayers quite soon.
Thirdly, Ukraine has always been an exceptionally important element in nuclear non-proliferation regime as a state which voluntarily gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from major powers. Russia, one of the guarantors of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, forcefully violated it. Left unchecked, this would significantly undermine any logic behind non-proliferation. In turn, that would bring in new nuclear states, a nightmare coming true for American security strategy. For decades the US was spending a lot of money to enhance security of allies and thus keep them away from nuclear aspirations. Investment into Ukraine’s security will pay off better than money spent for non-proliferation after the regime collapses.
Making Ukraine prosperous, efficient, and fully democratic may prove to be a hard task for its elite and a too expensive enterprise for American taxpayers. But ensuring Ukraine’s stability and survival is well within the reach and is not as much expensive as Americans may think. $400 mln annually spent for assisting Ukraine is not much comparing to, say, about $6 bln annually for rebuilding Iraq. Regional stability and a better non-proliferation regime in return would be a fair result.
It looks like a good deal.
