In its recent article the Economist gloomily recounts Ukraine’s losses: “After six months of fighting, Ukraine has lost at least 3,000 men and control over a swathe of territory in the east, as well as being forced by Russia to delay the full implementation of its association agreement with the European Union.” This is all true. And what hurts the most, as I’ve already mentioned, is that there was no need for any of this. Ukraine’s suffering all these losses because last year the EU chose to ignore Russia’s concerns about non-taxed goods from the EU leaking into the Russian market through Ukraine and about Ukraine joining NATO.
But why did the EU choose to ignore the “Russia problem”? Although the common Europe was conceived as an idealistic political project, the EU actually started as an economic union, and today it is run not by politicians but by lawyers, economists, and bureaucrats. These are mostly people with no grand political ambitions beyond getting their party reelected, or personal ambitions beyond a nice salary and a good retirement plan. Contrary to what Nietzsche might have thought, we now know that being ruled by a faceless, depersonalized bureaucracy is better for the most part than having to endure the whims of politics as was the case with Europe before WW2; it’s much safer, more predictable. However, bureacrats often fail when faced with a non-trivial task such as, in this case, the need to find a common ground with the Russian Bear. This isn’t in the manual that EU commissioners and civil servants have to study when they are hired. So above all the Ukraine crisis is a failure of the EU as a political entity and a family of nations.
Still I don’t quite agree with the statement above from the Economist. Yes, there have been losses but Ukraine could have lost a lot more. Just a few months ago Russian observers speculated that after the May 25 election Ukraine would descend into a political crisis, that it would be appropriated by the extreme right, or that the whole Eastern part of Ukraine would secede. A lot of these concerns were grounded in reality, albeit not necessarily imminent. Now, with Ukraine having survived the first months of its real independence, these same observers are worried that Ukraine might freeze during the winter, fall apart due to political in-fighting or be rejected by Europe. I don’t think there is a significant chance of any of this happening. President Poroshenko presents the middle ground between Yanukovich’s Ukraine and the new Ukraine that will come with a new political generation. Poroshenko has demonstrated that he can deal with his Western and Eastern partners. Spurred by the US, Europe, too, is helping. And for now, this is more than enough.
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