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Mar 8

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Secession, Recognition, and Ukrainian Politics, Continued

By Bridget Coggins

Yesterday we asked if anyone had questions about the issue of Crimean separation from Ukraine, under the Russian military presence in the Ukrainian autonomous republic. Commenters raised several.

These are all great questions!

Our first question comes from commenter Boaz:

Bridget, What can you tell us about precedents for a territory not asking for independence but to be annexed to another? Sudetenland? Texas?

Scholars use different terms to apply to these similar, but distinct demands. Secession is the demand to separate from an existing country in order to form a newly independent one. Whereas irredentism is a demand to separate from an existing country in order to join another country. So the situation in Crimea is an irredentist conflict.

Here’s where things become muddled. In contemporary politics, it is usually the case that contested irredentism takes the form secession, followed by unification.[1] So, for example, even though many in South Ossetia may ultimately want to join Russia proper, the more immediate goal is independence from Georgia. This is a strategic move because the incorporating countries do not want to be seen as fundamentally subverting another government’s sovereignty (a justification for war or casus belli). Therefore, Russia does not currently claim South Ossetia for itself; it has recognized it as an independent peer. Once an entity becomes independent, it may surrender its sovereignty voluntarily to join an existing country at will. It is usually only a domestic constitutional matter for the joining and incorporating states. This makes the process straightforward and less contested.[2]

In the post-Soviet space, there are a number of these conflicts that straddle the line between secession and irredentism: Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Transniestria also come immediately to mind. In these cases, the would-be annexer (Russia or Armenia) has been content for these regions to claim independence even when their behavior might seem to indicate an eventual plan to incorporate the territory. Although Russia’s strategic interests are clearly more at stake in Crimea, it is curious that it has not pursued a similar strategy vis-à-vis its other would-be territories in Moldova and Georgia.

As for precedent, I can’t think of any previous cases of non-colonial territories where a local referendum and annexation were successful in the long term (i.e. widely recognized as legitimate by most members of the international community). Can you? I’d love to grapple with some possibilities. Sudetenland and Texas seem too far removed in time to provide reasonable analogies.

Second is from commenter H:

If Crimea is being annexed to Russia, via the referendum, then does state recognition even matter? Crimea would essentially be subsumed by Russia, so do you see some states recognizing the “new” Russia?

Yes, recognition still matters here, though in a different way than in purely secessionist conflicts. While it is true that state leaders will not be recognizing a “new Russia” if Crimea is annexed, when diplomatic recognition is first exchanged between states, that recognition applies to the government, territory and its population. Presumably, the United States and many other countries will not be swayed by a pro-Russia referendum and will maintain their recognition of Ukraine as it was constituted when the United States first recognized it.

If the Russian Federation is the only government that recognizes Crimea’s incorporation while the rest of the world opposes it, then it will have to constantly assert and defend its authority there. Further, life will become more difficult for people within Crimea who want to interact with the outside world. It will be harder for them to travel, to do business, and trade without the access that external legitimacy provides. Russia will also likely be subject to additional unilateral and multilateral sanctions as it further incorporates Crimea. At this point, it is not clear how far any of the major players are willing to go to alter Crimea’s status or preserve the status quo. Still, territories with contested sovereignty claims, and especially contested between powerful states (see Kashmir and Taiwan), are notoriously unstable and have historically been the flashpoint for great power war (see Yugoslavia).

And finally, from Batistuta:

Great idea for a thread!

I have one question. As far as I understand, the referendum in Crimea will not be about independence, as in Scotland, but about joining Russia. Do these two kinds of referenda work the same way? Would Russia somehow have to vote on whether or not they accept Crimea into the ‘union’? Are there any precedents for this?

Referenda like this occurring within democratic countries with a coherent government are usually conducted at the national level because autonomous regional governments are not typically endowed with the constitutional authority to make major territorial and jurisdictional changes without the consent of the rest of the country. And this is true in Ukraine’s case; Crimea is not empowered to make this decision on its own. However, where the national government is incoherent, especially in the wake of civil wars various ad hoc referenda have been organized to establish the will of the people and the future political order within a country. There’s no set standard for how these decisions are made, though most aim for universal franchise and tend to strongly favor the status quo.

Since this referendum is, by and large, not going to be accepted as a legitimate indicator of the will of the people of Ukraine, the content of the question put before those in Crimea does not really matter. This stands in marked contrast to other referenda regarding territorial changes in stable democratic states like Quebec-Canada, Scotland-UK, or Puerto Rico-US where the question order, language used, and percentage vote are hotly contested and consequential to the ultimate outcome.

If we look to the Russian Federation’s constitution, we can get a sense of what the domestic process of annexation would look like. It isn’t a foregone conclusion that the Russian Federation would accept Crimea, there are legal hurdles to overcome, but public statements from those within the Duma and Council suggest that there is widespread support. Here are the relevant articles:

Article 65
2. Admission into the Russian Federation and creation of a new constituent entity shall take place in accordance with the procedure established by federal constitutional law.

Article 137
1. Amendments to Article 65 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation which determines the composition of the Russian Federation shall be introduced on the basis of a federal constitutional law on the admission to the Russian Federation and the creation within it of new constituent entities of the Russian Federation, or on changes in the constitutional and legal status of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation.

Article 108
2. A federal constitutional law shall be considered to have been adopted if it is approved by a majority of not less than three-quarters of the total number of members of the Council of Federation and not less than two-thirds of the total number of deputies of the State Duma. An adopted federal constitutional law shall be signed by the President of the Russian Federation and promulgated within fourteen days.

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Mar 7

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Friday Reverse Puzzler: Secession, Recognition, and Ukrainian Politics

By Bridget Coggins

Many Fridays we take a single puzzling question on contemporary political violence and take a go at answering it together. This Friday, I’m going to alter that format a bit and offer answers to your questions regarding the conflict over secession and recognition in Ukraine. As it turns out, my forthcoming book addresses just this kind of international political wrangling over self-determination and, if I can, I’m happy to help clarify the situation.

I’ll start with a question from Twitter:

First, as we say on the Internet, “IANAL (I am not a lawyer).” A Lawyer will likely give you a different answer than this political scientist.[1] Still, I am an expert in this particular area of the law, so here goes.

The Obama Administration is not against a referendum on independence for Crimea per se; it is opposed to the particular circumstances surrounding the referendum planned for March 15th. Unlike most constitutions, the Ukrainian constitution actually does contain a provision for a countrywide referendum on issues like secession and territorial change. It requires, in addition to other criteria, that 3 million signatures be collected in support of an issue before a national referendum will be scheduled. This referendum has not met that standard, nor is it planned for the entirety of the Ukraine; instead it appears that the vote will be limited to the population within Crimea. When the Obama administration argues that the referendum violates Ukrainian law, this is likely what they are referring to.

Russia is in violation of international law because it has contravened Ukrainian territorial integrity and sovereignty through its military intervention. There is little grey area here insofar as the law is concerned, but many political scientists question the true power of the sovereignty norm in practice. Stephen Krasner has gone so far as to label it “organized hypocrisy” because state leaders violate the norm so often. Any referendum that takes place at the barrel of a gun though, is probably not likely to be free or fair in any conventional sense of the term.

This situation is different from that between North and South Sudan along a number of dimensions, but the most relevant is probably that the Bashir government ultimately yielded to international pressure for South Sudan’s referendum in accordance with the CPA and further agreed to abide by the results. Because the decision to separate was decided via a mutually agreed upon domestic process, external recognition was quickly granted to the South. There is no such agreement in this case. And it seems likely that a national referendum would not yield independence for Crimea; even the public within Crimea is not decisively pro-Russian Federation accession.

As for external recognition, this has always (to the chagrin of many international jurists) been up to the discretion of the individual country granting it. Even where there is unambiguous popular sovereignty, outsiders are not compelled by law to recognize its existence or to establish diplomatic relations with the new state (or new government in the case of revolution). As one of the foremost international legal scholars on the topic Gerhard von Glahn argues, diplomatic recognition is really “a political act with legal consequences” and not a purely legal act. This is why some actors that seem like independent states are denied formal membership in the international community and others, perhaps like your South Sudan example, that don’t seem to exercise much control and authority at all nevertheless have full seats in the United Nations.

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Mar 7

A Not-So-Bad Solution to Syria

By Barbara F. Walter

An Egyptian peacekeeper in North Darfur, Sudan, 2011. UN photo by Albert Gonzalez Farran.

An Egyptian peacekeeper in North Darfur, Sudan, 2011. UN photo by Albert Gonzalez Farran.

One of the tragedies of the Syrian civil war is that there appear to be no attractive solutions to end it. If President Assad emerges victorious, he will rule over a large Sunni Muslim population that hates him and is better armed than prior to the war. Assad is likely to heavily repress this majority, but these citizens will now have the motive and the opportunity to try to undercut his government at every turn. If the opposition wins, the likelihood of continued violence is also high. The Sunni majority could choose to exact revenge on the Alawite minority and its supporters. They could also turn on each other as factions within the Sunni camp squabble for power. Either way, Syria is not likely to return to the relative peace it experienced pre-2011.

President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are hoping that a diplomatic solution based on power-sharing will avoid both outcomes. The problem is that a settlement based on power-sharing between the minority Alawites and the majority Sunnis has almost no chance of success. Why? First, existing battlefield conditions don’t incentivize either side to accept a compromise settlement. Both still think that they can win the war at an acceptable cost, and both have funders willing to support them to this end.

The bigger reason, however, has to do with how difficult it will be to enforce a power-sharing agreement over time. Even if all sides had strong incentives to negotiate in good faith (which they would have if a military stalemate set in or outside funding were removed), a power-sharing arrangement would still likely fail. That’s because a power-sharing agreement would be unenforceable over time by the parties themselves. How could Assad credibly commit not to jail opposition leaders as soon as they demobilized? And how could Sunni leaders credibly commit not to consolidate power once Assad opened up the government?

In the past, third parties (i.e., UN peacekeepers) have helped solve this problem by reassuring opposition forces that the government would not exploit them as they demobilized. But the UN Security Council will not gain agreement from its five permanent members to send peacekeepers, and in the absence of this, no country is likely to volunteer to send its own peacekeeping force. Knowing this, both the Assad government and the opposition will shy away from any settlement that leaves them vulnerable to exploitation now and in the future.

There is a potentially way around this. A number of studies have found that civil war combatants are more likely to sign and implement a peace settlement if each of the main combatants are given significant territorial autonomy. This arrangement allows combatants to maintain political control over their own piece of territory as well as maintain control over their own security forces. This arrangement creates a situation where former combatants are able to enforce a peace on each other even if no third party exists to help them. The result is likely to be more willing negotiating partners and a more defensible peace.

This is not a perfect solution. Roeder and Rothchild found that political decentralization, while helping to end conflict in ethnically divided countries, can also hinder the consolidation of peace and democracy over time. There’s no guarantee that competing factions within the Sunni camp would remain at peace, or that one side wouldn’t try to re-start the war in the future. However, in a world where the options are bad, worse, and downright impossible, a situation where the warring sides have some ability to deter continued bad behavior and self-enforce a peace might not be so bad.

Mar 6

14 Comments

Boarding Up Windows of Opportunity in Ukraine

By Andrew Kydd

Is Ukraine destined for partition or even war? Powerful forces are driving the situation in that direction, and it is not clear that there is an alternative that all sides can agree on. In seizing Crimea, Putin has jumped through a window of opportunity. Windows of opportunity combine present temptations with future fears, and generate powerful incentives to act. To board up this window will take concerted action both within Ukraine and internationally.

Ukraine is roughly evenly divided between a nationalist, anti-Russian west and a Russophone pro-Russian east. In 1991, Leonid Kravchuk helped Boris Yeltsin break up the Soviet Union and led Ukraine’s first independent government. In 1994 he was defeated by Leonid Kuchma in a presidential election that was decided along regional lines; Kravchuk won the west and Kuchma the east. Kuchma won reelection in 1999 with much broader support, including from the western regions. In the 2004 election, Viktor Yanukovych, who was then prime minister, was declared the winner, but the results were contested. The resulting Orange Revolution brought greater democracy to Ukraine and shifted the balance to the west, but eventually discredited itself with corruption, mismanagement and incompetence. In 2010, Yanukovych ran again with support from the east and this time won a reasonably fair ballot, much to the dismay of the western Ukrainians. Their opposition was galvanized when, under Russian pressure, he walked away from an agreement with the EU, and the Maidan protest movement was born. That movement then succeeded in pushing him from power, shifting control back to western, nationalist Ukrainians. This time, things looked even worse for the eastern Ukrainians. Given their overthrow of an elected leader, the western forces seemed unconstrained by constitutional rules or democratic procedures. Given their immediate move to demote Russian as an official language, their anti-Russian agenda seemed clear as well.

Yanukovych’s overthrow therefore was a serious blow to Russian national interests. Russian speakers in the east might eventually be reduced to second-class citizens. Russia’s ability to continue to use the Black Sea naval port in Sevastopol was in jeopardy as well. Ukraine was heading to the West and might join the EU and NATO. Was there anything to be done?

As it so happened, there was. The revolution also weakened Ukraine, leaving it vulnerable to intervention. This presented a temptation to Putin to use force to secure a better outcome for Russia than an outright western Ukrainian victory. But why actually use force, why intervene? Why not just threaten to use force, and strike a deal with the new government on the issues of concern, such as protection for the eastern Russophones and indefinite basing rights for the Black Sea Fleet?

The problem with negotiations is that Ukraine’s weakness is temporary. Eventually the new regime will consolidate power and increase its ties to the West, possibly joining the EU or even NATO. At that point, intervention would be prohibitively risky and Russia would simply have to live with the loss of Ukraine. Therefore any deal struck now would some day be reneged upon by the Ukrainian regime. It would certainly want to, given its internal and international orientation. And it would eventually have the power to, given its consolidation and integration with the West.

This seems to leave Putin no choice but to intervene now and press his advantage to the point of peaceful partition, if the Ukrainians do not resist, or civil/international war if they do. Windows of opportunity are powerful things. When you combine demonstrated hostility, present weakness and future strength, the incentive to act can be overwhelming.

Is there anything that can be done to board up this window and prevent Putin from jumping all the way through? One strategy is to attempt to make the intervention so costly that Putin will eventually decide to accept the loss of Russia’s interests in Ukraine. Domestically, Ukrainians can resist the invasion, either peacefully or by fighting back and making a war of it. A lot will hinge on whether the Russian incursion is popular, or at least tolerated, in the Russophone areas. If it is not popular, the intervention may turn out to be much more costly than Putin anticipated, which may lead him to withdraw. Internationally, sanctions and diplomatic isolation are a first step, but these tools will take time to have an impact. Military action by the West appears to be off the table; even the many critics of the Obama administration are not suggesting the use of force. This is therefore a long-term strategy, and Putin is quickly establishing facts on the ground.

An alternative strategy is to attempt to provide Putin with credible guarantees for the future, so that the future-oriented incentive to take advantage of Ukraine’s present weakness is reduced. Can a negotiated deal that preserves Ukrainian territorial integrity while at the same time guaranteeing Russia’s interests be made to stick into the future? Putin must be persuaded that Ukrainian promises can be trusted despite the fact that they have the incentive and will have the power to break them. The usual way that governments are constrained in democratic systems is through constitutions and federal systems that empower minority veto players. A Ukrainian constitution that embodied a veto for the eastern regions on any move towards the West or any move to reorient Ukrainian security policy would in theory be attractive to Russia. Western Ukrainians would have to explain why they would abide by the new constitution when they failed to abide by the previous one. A further set of guarantees might be provided by the international community in the form of an agreement to neutralize Ukraine, that is, to reverse the 2008 decision to eventually offer it NATO membership.

All this smacks of appeasement of course, but it is appeasement back to a status quo that for 20 post-Cold War years was deemed basically tolerable, certainly internationally and by many inside Ukraine. There may be no going back to that option, but the alternative is a costly confrontation with an uncertain outcome.

Mar 5

12 Comments

Power, Violence, and the Outcomes of National and Insurgent Movements

Guest post by Peter Krause

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine fighters, 1969. Photo by Thomas R. Koeniges for LOOK Magazine, via Wikimedia.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine fighters, 1969. Photo by Thomas R. Koeniges for LOOK Magazine, via Wikimedia.

Two of the most puzzling news stories to emerge from the Syrian uprising and the Palestinian national movement involve infighting between Al-Qaeda-linked factions and Hamas detaining members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Gaza who were launching rockets at Israel. How could two ideologically aligned groups who share the aim of overthrowing the Assad regime expend more effort on killing each other than killing members of the Syrian military? Why would Hamas, the group who is most associated with political violence against Israel over the past two decades, now restrain violence against Israel by the PFLP? Indeed, what explains variation in armed groups’ use and restraint of political violence, as well as the success and failure of their affiliated movements?

Scholars and policymakers still lack adequate answers to these questions. Hamas has not undergone a change in leadership, its ideology and objectives have not been amended, and Israel’s counterinsurgency tactics in Gaza have not been transformed. In fact, existing scholarship would suggest that the PFLP and Hamas should have reversed roles, given that the PFLP is over twenty years older than Hamas and has historically espoused a communist ideology, rather than an Islamist one.

In terms of movement outcomes, some suggest that the Syrian and Palestinian movements should be gaining more concessions given their internal fragmentation, whereas others claim that they need to unite to achieve greater success. The latter argument has served as the foundation of US policy in Syria amidst numerous failed attempts to unite Syrian factions.

As I explain in a new article in International Security, one key factor overlooked by scholars and policymakers alike can help provide better explanations of both group behavior and movement outcomes: the internal distribution of power. Groups care more about their own position of power within their movement than the movement’s collective success, because greater power increases their chances to survive and capture private benefits. Weaker challenging groups are therefore more likely to initiate escalatory violence that they hope will change the game and whose costs others are more likely to pay, whereas the leading group has strong incentives to restrain escalatory violence and focus on strategic victory. The movement’s power hierarchy is likely to replicate itself in any new regime or new state, leaving the strongest group in line to inherit the benefits of office, wealth, and status, while the weaker groups have the perverse incentive to spoil movement success due to their future subordinate position.

This explains why Hamas is now trying to restrain escalatory violence by the weaker PFLP and jihadist groups in Gaza, just as Fatah tried to restrain a weaker Hamas in the 1990s, just as Fatah tried to restrain a weaker PFLP in the 1970s, just as the PLO and PFLP-precursor the Arab Nationalists Movement tried to restrain a weaker Fatah in 1965 and 1967. What changed across these campaigns was not the group leader, or the group ideology, or the group age, or the strategy of the state enemy, but rather the position of the groups within their movement hierarchy.

These shifts in behavior have resembled groups changing roles in a play with same strategic finale of failure, however, due to continued internal fragmentation. History tells us that unity among autonomous near equals will make little difference in outcome, either. The Algerian national movement did not succeed when it was united in 1944; it won after the FLN brutally eliminated its Algerian rivals and gave the French no other party to deal with in order to end the brutal insurgency. The Zionist movement historically experienced little unity among its armed factions — the Haganah, Etzel, and Lehi — but achieved significant strategic gains amidst little infighting and outbidding due to the concentration of military power in the hands of the Haganah and the Labor Zionists. The Palestinians themselves gained their most significant strategic concessions during Fatah’s hegemony of the late 1980s and early 1990s, while the movement has fared comparatively poorly in the united and fragmented years before and since.

For those supporting insurgencies and national movements, the implication of this research is to not just recognize the pitfalls of fragmentation, as most do, but also to recognize that alliances between autonomous non-state actors are short-lived and generally have little impact on movement outcomes. Instead, movements should seek internal hegemony, even if it will be difficult to achieve because it requires groups to willingly disband or destroy others who share their strategic goal. Those seeking to combat insurgencies and national movements must recognize that preventing movement success requires different policies than preventing violence. If a state wants to prevent the strategic progress of a movement, then it should push for a fragmented movement adversary to engender the infighting and outbidding that will expend scarce movement resources on internal feuds. If a state wants to prevent violent attacks, then it should push for a hegemonic movement adversary that will have little motivation to use violence for internal ends, but will also be in a better position to coerce concessions.

For observers of the Syrian and Palestinian struggles, the key development to watch is not the umpteenth attempt at movement unity hosted in Cairo, Doha, or Istanbul, but rather whether a single organization rises to dominate and lead the movement. Short of this, although new faces may come and go, the dynamics and outcomes of these movements are likely to remain strikingly familiar.

Peter Krause is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston College. 

Mar 4

12 Comments

Group Emotions and Violence

Guest post by Brent Sasley

Last month Rose McDermott wrote an important piece in these pages arguing that some individuals (particularly men) are more likely to be interested in violence, based on their biological make-up, than most IR scholars think. This, she continues, is because we tend to focus on larger, macro structures and processes and so miss individual-level determinants of behavior. Her analysis isn’t wrong; it’s incomplete. As IR scholars, we want to know not why individuals act violently, but why large groups do. This is because national and international politics are affected only when groups, not individuals, act violently.

McDermott is right, but we still need to think more about what makes a collection of individuals fight, go to war, act violently. It may be that some individuals react more aggressively to others and to events, but if these individuals are not leaders of groups, including states, and cannot also get large numbers of other individuals to follow their orders to fight and kill, then their aggressive inclinations are less likely to manifest on a large scale.

One way to build on McDermott’s argument is by considering the effects of social emotions. Social identity theorists and social psychologists have found plenty of evidence that individuals will react to events or other actors that affect other members of their group. That is, when individuals identify as members of a group — when they feel as part of the group — they react when other group members are hurt, attacked, abused, victorious in sports, and so on — even if they have not personally experienced any of these actions. The perception isn’t that individuals absorb punishment or reward; it’s that the group does. Collective memories operate the same way.

Think of how people react to sports matches. It is common for individuals sitting in their homes and playing no role at all in their home team’s efforts to share in the pride or in the frustration when their team wins or loses, toasting “their” success or throwing items at the television. Other clinical experiments by social psychologists have shown that individuals who consider themselves part of different departments in the same university view themselves as part of different universities in the same country, or identify as citizens of different countries react emotionally on the basis of how they perceive their own group — that is, other group members — to have been affected by events.

Because emotions are so powerful, they lead group members to prefer a given response over others (an “action tendency” in psychology’s terms). In the aftermath of violence against the group, group members feel anger, resentment, and fear, which in turn have been found to transform into stereotyping, prejudice, aggression, and hostility. These emotions do not lead automatically to a given behavior or policy — such as violence or war — which can be conditioned by other factors (such as relative strength of different groups). But they do make a specific behavior or policy more likely.

Consider the widespread support in Crimea for the Russian intervention. It is not likely that all the Russians and Russian-speakers who are cheering Moscow’s suddenly-expanded military presence in Crimea have been physically or verbally attacked by others, so that they have been seething for years and hoping to be saved by Moscow. But their reaction — joy, pride, excitement, affection — is a direct result of their identification with a Russian communal identity (however they define it).

There haven’t been any large-scale clashes in Crimea yet, but one can easily imagine their occurrence on the basis of a relevant trigger. We can expect that Russian-speakers will respond with fear and anger if other Russian-speakers or their property are attacked in some way. Vladimir Putin’s dangerous escalation makes such triggers more likely. And if Russian-speakers attack, we can expect others in Crimea to respond, which in turn might bring the Ukrainian and Russian armies into a direct clash. Inter-group emotions make it that much easier for communities to physically confront each other, and that much harder to restrain.

Large-scale violence through the use of official state militaries is only a little different. Military discipline does mostly ensure that soldiers follow orders to engage in routine violence. But often there is more to it than that. For example, in his new book on Israel, Ari Shavit looks at the atrocities the Israelis committed in the Arab city of Lydda during the first Arab-Israeli war. His discussion highlights the individual fears, frustrations, anger, and hostility that individual Israeli troops felt regarding the war’s effects on the Zionist community and the nascent Jewish state. These emotional reactions played a critical role in their violence, leading to a massacre of Palestinians in the city and their expulsion from it.

McDermott is right that some individuals, including leaders, might be more willing to act violently. But without being able to motivate groups to follow along, individual-level violence will remain contained. Understanding the emotional reactions and action tendencies of many members of a group usefully extends her argument from just individuals to group violence, which is of concern to IR scholars and policymakers.

Brent E. Sasley is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington and tweets at @besasley.

Mar 3

The Problem With Ukraine’s Transition to Democracy

Guest post by Julia Gray

Research on the connection between prosperity and democracy suggests that democracy is unlikely to thrive in Ukraine no matter who is put in power. Why? Studies have shown that liberal democracy is significantly more likely to take hold in countries with some degree of political legitimacy and prosperity. With its lack of reliable options for international economic exchange, prosperity seems a long way off for Ukraine, particularly given the current tensions with Russia.

Any new leader in Ukraine faces two tough international options. He or she can choose to further align with Russia (though this may no longer be politically possible). This would bring much-needed money in the form of oil and other support but at the cost of its international reputation and, possibly, political influence. Or the new leader can choose to align with the West and the EU. This would bring a short-term reputational boost but not nearly enough tangible material benefits, either in the form of aid or trade – not to mention no tangible prospect of EU entry down the road. Either way, prosperity for a majority of Ukrainians will be elusive.

Other post-communist countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia were able to forge a stronger link between democracy and prosperity, but that was in large part because they could more easily align themselves with the West. Each was able to do this because they have two things that Ukraine does not. The first is a relatively homogenous population. In Ukraine, much of the country is home to significant fractions of Russian speakers, giving the country’s eastern and southern regions economic as well as historical ties to the East. This demographic split makes democratic elections a particularly shaky arrangement, and internationally has kept it politically teetering between sides, neither of which is particularly interested in Ukraine succeeding.

The second was a clear path to prosperity through international trade and investment. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many of the post-communist countries were able to reorient their exports to European markets, helping to make quick accession into the EU possible, as well as access to capital and foreign direct investment. Ukraine was not able to do this because of Leonid Kuchma’s long tenure in the presidency after independence, and because enlargement fatigue and tensions in the Eurozone have made EU entry increasingly unlikely for many of the current hopefuls.

Any leader of Ukraine, therefore, will have to balance the country’s west — formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and strongly identified with western Europe– with its Russian-oriented east and south. What’s more, he or she will have to choose between a lukewarm EU deal that offers trade, but not in agriculture (Ukraine’s primary factor endowment) or stronger Russian economic ties that come with Putin’s meddling. Other post-Soviet states that experienced supposed democratic transitions in 2004 and 2005 – specifically Georgia and Kyrgyzstan – have also seen political instability and corruption go hand in hand with limited prosperity (Kyrgyzstan was never able to attract much Western investment, and Georgia’s attempts to position itself in the Western geopolitical structures were not wholly successful).

So democracy absent prosperity has not been particularly successful in Ukraine. Lacking good options domestically as well as internationally, it now seems likely to approach the International Monetary Fund for bailout cash, and its political crisis may result in federation or even war, as Russia takes advantage of the uncertainty by making a grab for Crimea. Ukraine’s crisis shows us that democracy without attendant prosperity (often borne of reliable trade links) may not be worth much to developing nations.

Julia Gray is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her recent book, The Company States Keep, looks at the reputational consequences of membership in international organizations.

Mar 3

8 Comments

The Crisis in Crimea

By Taylor Marvin

Many are deeming it Europe’s most serious security crisis since the dissolution of the USSR.

Russia has taken control of Crimea — “the Crimea” is a politicized term, which I used incorrectly last week — largely bloodlessly, by moving quickly, initially infiltrating deniable forces, and then seizing the peninsula while the Ukrainian military stood by.

The immediate crisis began with Russian flags being raised over Ukrainian Crimean territory; the extent to which this followed a script is unclear. Armed men wearing uniforms without insignia but clearly-Russian kit — later identified as private security contractors working with the Russian military; see Jon Chicky’s later take on non-professionals versus professionals — secured two airports in Crimea. The Russian military quickly moved in to the peninsula before the extent of the operation became clear to the outside world. On Saturday Vladimir Putin secured unanimous parliamentary approval for the use of force, and as of Sunday Russian forces were judged to be in “complete operational control” of the region.

The Russian narrative of the conflict is that it was prompted to intervene to protect Russian speakers in Crimea (ethnic Russians, not just Russian speakers, comprise 60 percent of the peninsula, compared to 17 percent nationwide) from the threat of retributory violence. Many locals take this view. “Simferopol doesn’t want fascism here as it happened in Kyiv and it did in fact happen in Kyiv,” one told Voice of America.

So far the Ukrainian military appears to be avoiding resistance that could be construed as provocation, though reservists were called up Sunday. Leaving aside the reliability of Ukrainian military personnel — Ukraine’s navy chief defected Sunday, a day after his appointment — the Ukrainian military outside of Crimea is large enough to impose serious costs on Russian forces in open warfare (via Matt Ford), though of course the Russian military is overwhelmingly larger and more experience.

Like so much else, Russia’s long-term goals remain unclear. Possibilities include: 1) a face-saving move after Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster, to be used as a future bargaining chip and to preserve Russia’s Sevastopol naval base, 2) an attempt to ensure a highly autonomous Crimea that remains a reliable pro-Russia voting bloc within Ukraine, 3) an de facto independent Crimea with limited recognition under Russian domination (tangentially to the rest of Ukraine’s benefit?; see Mark Galeotti below), in the mold of Abkhazia (Kimberly Marten argues against this scenario), or 4) outright annexation, which seems the least likely.

Dmitry Gorenburg cautions that the relative weakness of the Ukrainian military “doesn’t mean that it would not be able to inflict some serious pain on its opponents,” and Mark Galeotti “if Putin either is committed to taking Crimea or finds himself locked into that course of action, it will be an expensive, Pyrrhic victory.”

In a Friday statement President Obama stressed that “any violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be deeply destabilizing” and that Russia’s intervention will prompt “costs.”

Obama also spoke with Putin in a phone call Saturday (readout here). UN Ambassador Samantha Power acidly commented that “it is ironic that the Russian Federation regularly goes out of its way in [the UNSC] to emphasize the sanctity of national borders and of sovereignty, but Russian actions in Ukraine are violating the sovereignty of Ukraine and pose a threat to peace and security.”

On the war in the media: Daniel Nexon calls attention to the fact that “popular Russian understandings of developments in Ukraine are pretty incommensurate with those in Europe and North America.” Like all modern conflicts, social media plays a role. Also, selfies.

Julia Ioffe and Dan Murphy watch the crisis on RT, the Russian government-owned network that in Murphy’s words “doesn’t so much put a pro-Kremlin spin on world events as run its stories through 100 industrial-grade centrifuges.” A widely-circulated Sunday headline sums up RT’s take on the crisis.

Screen Shot 2014-03-02 at 12.38.45 PM

In another widely-shared piece, Julia Ioffe takes a stark view of the situation. Putin is doing this “because he can. That’s it, that’s all you need to know.”

President Obama has threatened that Russia’s actions will incur “costs,” but what will these be? Possible options include US economic sanctions, aid to the Kiev government, the Group of Seven withdrawing from the upcoming G-8 summit, and perhaps expelling Russia from the group altogether. Timothy Snyder (who has written extensively on Ukraine and Russia recently) notes a few more options. Secretary of State John Kerry heads to Ukraine Tuesday.

Given Europe’s dependence on Russian gas, the Russian UN Security Council seat, and the size of the Russian economy, diplomatic measures’ leverage is debatable.

Also see the Council on Foreign Relations’ Issue Guide and liveblogs at the Guardian, the Interpreter, and the BBC.

Mar 2

21 Comments

What’s Putin Up To?

By Andrew Kydd

2011 US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Christopher B. Stoltz.

2011 US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Christopher B. Stoltz.

Russian troops have moved into the Crimean peninsula, but Vladimir Putin is running silent as Clarence Thomas. We can only speculate on his goals and strategy. Is he trying to acquire a beachfront locale for a summer Olympics bid? Probably not, but what other reasons could possibly explain his behavior? The key, I think, is that Putin is determined to overcome Russia’s quarter century of humiliation. He is the anti-Gorbachev, the anti-Yeltsin. He wants to make it clear that he is not averse to using force to prevent westward drift within Russia’s sphere of influence.

Following from this premise are two possible strategies behind the Crimean gambit. First, he could be intending to use Crimea as a bargaining chip with a future Ukrainian leadership that emerges in Kiev. He is clearly not happy with the way things turned out for his friend Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine. Yanukovych was under his thumb, while the current government, such as it is, will want to lean west and away from Russia. Where a Gorbachev or a Yeltsin would have supinely accepted this, Putin bargains harder. By seizing Crimea he can confront an eventual Ukrainian leader with a difficult choice. Go west if you like but you are going to lose Crimea, and perhaps even more provinces in the eastern half of the country. Or you can stop challenging Moscow and we let you keep your country. When Moscow says jump, you say how high? Putin may be hoping that this kind of leverage will suffice to keep Ukraine in the fold, a big Belarus that understands its place in the universe.

The alternative is that Putin has written off Kiev and western Ukraine but is determined to salvage something from the debacle. Stephen Walt argued that revolutions attract predation from the international system, viz. Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980. When states are weak, as they are in the aftermath of revolutions, aggressors pounce. Ukraine is certainly weak now, and determined to throw off Russia’s yoke. An all-out invasion of Ukraine to restore Yanukovych may seem prohibitively costly, but liberating the Russian-speaking provinces may appear more practical and achievable. It would certainly send a signal that crossing Moscow is very dangerous, and it would bring direct tangible benefits by bringing home Russian territory and populations while greatly weakening the rump Ukraine. Putin, the recoverer of lost territories! Putin as Bismarck!

These two options are related of course. The willingness to pursue the partition strategy is what gives the bargaining strategy its credibility. Putin may be unsure how reasonable the future Ukrainian leadership will be. He may prefer a unified Ukraine under Moscow’s sway to a partition, but be unsure if he can get it. Or he may prefer partition. In either case, Kiev has some real choices ahead.

Mar 1

2 Comments

Let’s Play the NATO Game

By Steve Saideman

Lots of folks are hoping for NATO to do something to stop Putin in Crimea. As always, I am reminded of Mike Lombardi (formerly of NFL.com and more recently formerly of the Cleveland Browns) who reminds us not to confuse hope with a plan.

Still, let’s think about this for a second anyway. Let’s say that folks within NATO want something to be done, either fast-tracking Ukraine into NATO (I almost could not type that amidst my laughs — NATO, fast track!) or deploying NATO troops to the countries bordering Ukraine or something else.

Step 1: 

Get consensus at NATO. Oops. To be clear, what we mean by consensus is not that every country has to agree or contribute (see ye olde NATO book on the latter), but that no country or group of countries feels strongly enough to “break silence” and object to a course of action. Gaining consensus can be very hard to do, especially when countries have very conflicting interests. Who might object to NATO acting?

  • France, because France often is not thrilled at NATO actions that might require folks to pay up. France blocked sending NATO’s AWACS planes to Afghanistan for a while in 2008-09 because of the cost that they might have to incur.
  • Greece. Just because.
  • Turkey. If Greece doesn’t object, Turkey might partly to do the opposite of Greece but mostly because NATO did not respond too energetically when Turkey was attacked. Yes, remember back to when Syria engaged in some violence across the border in Turkey? Remember that NATO did not do that much that quickly, and then finally agreed to deploy a few Patriot batteries? Turkey might not be above being just a bit spiteful.
  • Hungary. Why? Because Hungary is not immediately menaced by Russia’s military actions in Ukraine but is quite vulnerable to Russia’s threats to stop the flow of gas. (Remember back when the Reagan administration was not thrilled about Europe becoming dependent on Soviet gas/oil? Those folks were right about that) Hungary is not alone in this at all, by the way, but has a bit more distance than some others so that it probably focuses more on the gas threat than the conventional military threat (unlike Poland and the Baltics).
  • How about Italy, Portugal, and Spain with their budget problems? They were hardly enthused about Libya.
  • Germany? Hmmmm.
  • The US? Obama does not want any new wars, but I could imagine supporting deployment of something nearby to demonstrate concern. Still, the US recognizes that Ukraine/Crimea is soundly within the Russian sphere of interests.

Anyhow, consensus would be mighty, mighty hard to get. And consensus to do what?

Step 2:

  • Deployment of forces into Ukraine. Please. Not even as a joke. Not going to happen.
  • Fast tracking Ukraine into NATO? This is almost as silly. While I have scoffed (in print) about the conditions imposed upon those seeking to become members of NATO, one basic idea was not to import existing border disputes. Sure, that was a pie crust promise, but this is an entirely different thing here. How many countries have been admitted to NATO with Russian troops engaged in a serious effort to undermine their political system? Last I checked, Moldova was still on the outside.
    • Also, keep in mind that NATO likes to have democracies with civilian control of the military — does Ukraine meet those and other relevant conditions?
  • Deploying forces to Poland, the Baltics. Well, NATO regularly has air patrols based in the Baltics to demonstrate commitment (very much like Iceland). This would have to be careful — to not threaten Russia might but still reassure the nervous members. It would not stop Putin at all, but would make the members a bit less worried, maybe.
  • Sanctions. NATO could coordinate sanctions against Russia, but how long would they last given that Russia is so important for Syria, Iran, and heaps of other issues? It is one thing to cut off trade with a minor country, but cutting ties with Russia? Not likely to last very long. If only we could just not go to the Olympics?

Step 3:

Did any of this make a difference? Not much.

A version of this post first appeared at the author’s blog.

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