PLAYING THE UKRAINIAN CARD

PLAYING THE UKRAINIAN CARD

Timoshenko should be writing a thank-you note to Putin for the success of her U.S. visit.

COMMENTARY: By Nina L. Khrushcheva
Nina Khrusheheva teaches international affairs at the New School in New York.
International Herald Tribune
Paris, France
March 15, 2007

NEW YORK: As Russia appears to turn its back on reform and the West, the United States has begun to look for ways to curb the Kremlin's new assertiveness in what Moscow calls the "near abroad."

A recent visit to Washington by Yulia Timoshenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister, appears to have given the Bush administration hope that the United States has found a leader among Russia's immediate neighbors with the will to stand up to Vladimir Putin's increasingly receding democracy.

Until recently, the United States had relied upon the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, to protect Ukraine's independence.

In Washington, Yushchenko is now seen as spineless and directionless, not the sort of traits that give confidence, particularly if you are supposed to be someone protecting the interests of the West against Putin.

For Timoshenko, her U.S. trip was bound to be tricky. Foreign travel is never easy for the leader of any political opposition. Your hosts often seek to keep you at arm's length. <truncated here>

This certainly seems to be the case with Timoshenko, who up to now has not been an American favorite because she is perceived as a social democrat, not an economic liberalizer.

Timoshenko should be writing a thank-you note to Putin for the success of her visit. The Russian president's tough- minded speech on America's role in the world in Munich last month, and the threats senior Russian generals have been making against Poland and the Czech Republic because of their willingness to provide sites for U.S. antiballistic missiles, has tipped the American debate about Putin definitively toward the negative.

Timoshenko's trip to Washington appears to mark the beginning of an American attempt to forge a new Euro-Atlantic strategy in a vitally important region that lies at the crossroads of Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East.

Indeed, the Black Sea region, of which Ukraine is the heart, is the Euro-Atlantic community's eastern frontier with the wider Middle East. Anchoring democracy and security in these borderlands has become an imperative for both the United States and the European Union.

ut playing the Ukrainian card alone will not secure the West's interests in the lands that were once part of or bordering on the Soviet empire. Energy and political security will only come with a policy that engages the Kremlin, and which spells out the costs of its imperial ambitions as well as the benefits of turning Russia, at long last, into a normal country.

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You may read the entire editorial at: : http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/15/opinion/edkrush.php