Condoleezza Rice came to Kyiv with a message for Ukrainians: “You have to govern.”
In an interview with the Kyiv Post on the sidelines of the Yalta European Strategy conference on Sept. 15, the former U.S. secretary of state under President George W. Bush said that Ukrainians “have to address” corruption, which is “very corrosive to the democracy, very corrosive to the standing of the leaders.”
But, Rice told the Kyiv Post, Ukrainians need to decide for themselves the most effective approach to combatting corruption, such as whether to establish an independent anti-corruption court or not. She is encouraged that President Petro Poroshenko started new institutions to fight corruption, such as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.
“Now they actually have to operate,” Rice said. “It’s still a relatively new set of measures, going back only a couple of years and so hopefully they will really start to operate. If you put something new in place, it should have meaning.”
Rice supports conditionality on Western aid to Ukraine, such as through International Monetary Fund lending programs. “Sometimes conditionality applied wisely with the IMF programs and the like can be very useful. Ukrainians have had very good people come into government, particularly on the economic side. You have to encourage creation of an environment in which real business can be done, not just state sector business; I would say it’s better than it was, but it’s got a long way to go.”
While the United States should always oppose Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its military invasion of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas, Rice said that Ukraine can still develop its economy and democratic institutions.
As an example, she cited the post-World War II division of Germany. The Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer “didn’t wait until they could unify to govern wisely.” So when reunification of Germany came in 1990, Rice said, the country was able to do it successfully because of the “powerful engine” of the Federal Republic of Germany.
She reinforced the point at a later energy session in which she said Ukraine should not expect that Western sanctions against Russia will last forever, so the nation’s political leaders should use their time wisely to strengthen the nation before sanctions are lifted.
As for stopping Russia’s war against Ukraine, Rice told the Kyiv Post that she is encouraged by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s appointment of her former subordinate, Kurt Volker, as special envoy to Ukraine for the Donald J. Trump administration. Volker starts with a “clean sheet of paper” to spur a peace process that will get Russia to call of its war.
In retrospect, Rice said, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s designs on Ukrainian territory have existed for years.
“I will never forget in 2008 at the (NATO) Bucharest summit. Putin gave a talk at the beginning. At some point, he said ‘Ukraine is a made up country.’ I was listening in Russian and thought, ‘Did I just hear that?’ That should have been a little bit of a signal that he didn’t respect the territorial guarantees that his country had signed onto with a series of agreements in 1994-1997.”
Putin will, however, be difficult to dislodge given his motives and attitude towards Ukraine.
“He does not mind frozen conflicts,” Rice told the Kyiv Post. Stabilizing eastern Ukraine “is not the goal. For him, an unstable eastern Ukraine is just fine. It keeps Kyiv distracted and unable to govern the country effectively. That’s why I say it’s very difficult. You need to govern wisely. That’s your best lever against this.”
She personally favors supplying Ukraine with defensive weapons, but she didn’t want to criticize the U.S. government for refusing to do so.
“When you are out of government there are many thing you can’t follow,” Rice said. “I believe when people want to defend themselves, they should have the means to do it
Isolating Putin completely is not a good option, she said.
“He’s the president of Russia and you have to deal with him,” Rice said. “But Ukraine’s situation has to stand on its own terms. The idea of trading Ukraine for this and that — first, it doesn’t work, secondly, nobody thinks that way.”
The bottom line, however, is that the West needs Russian cooperation in North Korea, Syria and other places, even though it’s clear he’s an “authoritarian leader with a clearly aggressive foreign policy that is throughout anti-American and anti-Western.”
