“Some people have urged the United States to choose between supporting President Gorbachev and supporting independence-minded leaders throughout the USSR. I consider this a false choice,” President George Bush Sr said in his infamous “Chicken Kyiv” speech on August 1, 1991.
“Freedom is not the same as independence,” he told his audience. Americans “will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”
The putsch in Moscow three weeks later, and the events that followed, have shown how mistaken Bush was. Now the US and the West are about to repeat the same error.
At least seven countries, led by the US and Germany, form a blocking group to Ukraine’s entry, Politico has reported. These include those friendly to the Kremlin, like Hungary and Slovakia, and others like Spain, Slovenia, and Belgium.
The West’s modern chicken Kyiv mentality believes that Russia is, was and will forever be there. It always prevails no matter the cost, and nobody wants nuclear war, so we need to negotiate with Russia, and never escalate.
It says that Ukraine is temporary, corrupt, and inefficient — and it cannot win. It is not a “member of the family,” not an ally. It is a neighbor and a partner at best, but in reality, it’s a buffer, expendable in the big game, and a problem.
These Russia-whisperers, enthusiastically amplified by the Kremlin, asks whether the West wants another Iraq-Afghanistan style “forever war?” The lives and destinies of Ukrainians do not matter enough even to deploy troops, and it has already cost too much money with no clear result.
The interests of Europe and the US, this argument continues, are in stability via a global balance of powers, and the absence or containment of major conflicts on Europe’s borders. Democracy, human rights, and international law are secondary considerations to the realities of raw power.
The real issue, these Ukraine-skeptics say, is that China is standing at the door waiting to change the game. Russia, schizophrenically described as both strong and weak at the same time, is a secondary problem. With Ukraine out of the way, Russia could be played off against China in a reverse of the 1970’s Kissingerian accommodation, when derecognition of Taiwan was the price for a change in China’s policy. Will Ukraine be the new Taiwan in a similar deal?
This thinking is an ugly cocktail of cowardice, arrogance, intellectual laziness and greed. It is ingrained into political elites both sides of the aisle in the US and in Europe’s elites. It is accepted in much of the media, academia, and think tanks, and risks becoming mainstream in the US and continental Europe.
The message is simple: Screw Ukraine, stop shooting, turn the page.
As with President Bush’s 1991 speech, there is no willingness to consider the potential collapse of the empire — even as a possible scenario (that would be too escalatory.) While the fall of the Berlin Wall was welcomed by the West, Ukrainians were the subjects of empire — just like Tatars or Buryats are today — and are told to remain as imperial vassals whether they liked it or not.
Without independence there is no freedom — but Europe and the US are not prepared to take responsibility and make more sacrifices for that ideal. Equally, without security there is no prosperity, so membership of the European Union (EU) without membership of NATO will not fly.
Any non-nuclear guarantees to Ukraine will be insufficient, and meanwhile, the core genocidal reasons for the Russian-Ukrainian war will not have been addressed. They will not to be identified or resolved if the West continues to follow the Chicken Kyiv mindset.
Could it even work? Won’t the genocide of Ukrainians, the disappearance of Ukraine as an independent state — turning it into a Russian proxy, sending at least another five million refugees westwards, and the next war with NATO in three to five years — actually recreate the “tensions” EU leaders are trying to avoid?
The destiny of Ukraine will define the destiny of Russia and the destiny of Russia will help decide the destiny of Europe and Asia, and in turn the destiny of the whole world. This is a pivotal moment in the history of mankind. We need to get our thinking straight and elaborate a theory of change.
Ostap Kryvdyk is Royal College of Defence Studies member, MA (King’s College London and Chair, Ukrainian Strategic Initiative think tank, Kyiv Mohyla Academy, Ukraine.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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