Dear Mr. President:
We have never met but I hope that you will not think it impertinent of me to share with you my experience and observations from my years of employment with the U.S. government.
Let me state at the outset that I have been one of your strongest supporters. Although all my information about you and your accomplishments come from open sources, I have also had the opportunity to vet that material in the light of my own experience and understanding with the ways of government and bureaucracies, and am inclined to be a bit more sympathetic to the problems you face than those who have not.
Your background is remarkable and would put most global leaders to shame. From your student days when you mastered martial arts as a “candidate for master of sport,” to your early establishment (while still in college) of a firm mediating foreign trade contracts, through years of the rough and tumble of building a chocolate and confectionery company that ranks as 20th largest in the world, you demonstrated the stamina, executive ability, and good judgment needed for the even greater challenge of politics. During your political career you served in a variety of elected and appointed positions gaining insight into the workings of government and the problems facing Ukraine. Throughout that whole period you supported a pro-NATO and pro-European Union vector for Ukraine. You even went a step further than most of the other “oligarchs.” You put your and your family’s fortune and future on the line by funding and providing media support for two popular “revolutions” against governmental and oligarchic abuse, corruption, and injustice in Ukraine.
When the EuroMaidan Revolution successfully booted out Viktor Yanukovych, an abusive and venal churl in 2014, you took over from an interim government that had defined itself as “kamikaze” because of the seemingly insurmountable odds the nation faced. Out of 21 contenders for president, Ukrainians, during this darkest hour of their short period of independence, had the good judgment to trust you with 56 percent of their vote.
You may have underestimated Vladimir Putin’s goals and tenacity in his war against Ukraine and hoped that some form of decentralization would satisfy him and peace quickly restored, but the decentralization he wanted was very much different from the one you had in mind. You now faced two major, overwhelming tasks, rather than only the one for which the “heavenly hundred” gave their lives.
In addition to the transformation and reform of Ukrainian society, you now had to rebuild Ukraine’s military from the dispirited, poorly led, trained, and equipped diminutive force of several thousand combat ready troops to one that could hold its own against a super-power. The Minsk Agreement, for all its faults and critics, was indispensable in giving you the crucial time in which to do it.
But here’s the rub. The tools – the personnel and state apparatus – that you “inherited” from your four predecessors and the Soviet era were rusty, blunt, corrupt, demoralized and off-times of dubious loyalty; the nation was close to bankruptcy; the economy had shrunk by 20 percent; and nearly 2 million Ukrainians from Crimea and the war zone sought refuge and sustenance from their already impoverished countrymen. The task of fighting a war with Russia while transforming the nation from what had been described by many as a “failed state” into a modern, European country ruled by law was a colossal task that very few national leaders could have achieved. In your 3.5 years you have accomplished much towards that end.
You committed yourself to a five-year reform agenda: “Strategy for Reforms 2020” consisting of 60 reforms and special programs that touched on the complete spectrum of societal disorders. Anyone who has been regularly tracking progress, including most foreign observers, will agree that the work that has been done and that which you have publicly stated will be completed (including health care reform and a constitutional amendment lifting parliamentary immunity as of Jan. 1, 2020) represent almost all you had set out to do, and are transformational in their scope.. Once they are fully implemented, Ukrainians will have taken their country back from the oligarchs, criminal organizations, and corrupt public servants.
But notwithstanding all that has been done, Mr. President, you can not rest on your accomplishments. Your term of office does not expire for another 18 months and much remains to be done. First and foremost, unless you want history to remember your reforms as nothing more than a shell game, you must protect them from those who are trying to dismantle or circumvent them. Powerful vested interests – oligarchs and public officials – see you as the key foil in a zero-sum game in which your administration’s advocacy for a just and lawful society means a loss of power and wealth for themselves. One of your campaign promises was to reduce the influence of oligarchs in government. You even claimed that you were not an oligarch because you did not seek power to enrich yourself. This, sir, is your moment of truth.
You disdain “populism” but that is not the same as listening to the voices “in the street.” Those are the same voices that gave you their trust and lifted you to the highest honor a nation can offer. The reformist parliamentarians and “activists” share your strategic goals but may differ on the best way to get there. Listening to them is not “populism.” It is not about you. It is democracy in its most elemental form -a model for leaders to follow.
Ukrainians have seen the bright hopes of the Maidan for a better life wither away in the aftermath of war, inflation, and economic decline. They fail to see “the light at the end of the tunnel” though it most certainly is there if you stay on the reform course. Surveys show overwhelming distrust of government. Ukrainians have reason to be distrustful….they have been lied to for generations. The only antidote to this is to do better in communicating what is being done and how it will improve the lives of Ukrainian citizens… though it may require patience. You, yourself, are very effective on the stump. Ronald Reagan united the country around him with his frequent use of the “bully pulpit.”
Any individual associated with you and who engages in corrupt practices, discredits you and merits swift prosecution and punishment. I have found that people in high office are blind-sighted by the failure of their subordinates to be fully honest in their reporting, leaving the highest official vulnerable to criticism or scandal. Therefore, on specific issues in which there is great public interest and skepticism as to the government’s truthfulness, the U.S. invokes “Blue Ribbon Panels” consisting of exceptional people free of political influence to investigate, study, or analyze a given question and issue a report. This insulates the president from suspicion of cover-up and often solves issues in a manner acceptable to all. A perfect example is the perplexing failure (after four years) to bring any of the killers and scoundrels of the Yanukovych era to justice. The Prosecutor General’s Office would provide a good subject for a Blue Ribbon Panel inquiry with a mandate to complete the inquiry in 3-4 months.
In addition to such infrequent panels on major issues, the U.S. government, despite all its controls on its bureaucracies, provides for a secondary channel of information concerning wrong-doing within and by its agencies that is completely independent of the agency head. This is the Office of the Inspector General. You may find it useful to establish such an office at the presidential level to report back to you the true state of affairs within government agencies and offer optional remedies. Understandably, you can not and ought not be held responsible for everything that is wrong in your government, but you can certainly put an end to it by letting your appointees know that if they don’t disclose and deal with those problems, you will find out and deal with them yourself.
You have my deepest respect and best wishes, Mr. President, and my prayers go with you into 2018.
George Woloshyn, an attorney and retired naval intelligence officer, had served as a senior executive under three U.S. presidents. Among the positions he held was responsibility for the U.S. government’s civil service personnel security and suitability programs, for domestic preparedness in response to national security threats and disasters, and as inspector general for a bank regulatory agency.
