The majority of speeches and discussions on the second day of this annual security event have been devoted only to Ukraine’s problematic east, Crimea and
potential solutions to this rapidly growing criss on the European soil.
But the
uniform condemnation of the apparent Russian involvement in eastern Ukraine did
not translate into a wide agreement on what needs to be done.
The main question
that emerged is: to arm or not to arm?
The answer shows that the divide between old Europe and
the United States could not have been deeper.
During her speech, German Chancellor Angela Merkel firmly
stated that this crisis cannot be resolved by military means. And this is after
her rather disappointing visit together with France’s Francois Hollande to
Moscow on Feb. 6.
When asked by a journalist about the Russian
guarantees on a cease-fire, the German leader acknowledged that there are no
guarantees since “what we have seen after the Minsk agreement was only
disappointment.”
German cautiousness stood in complete contrast to
America’s expressed eagerness, especially by the Republican representatives at
the conference, to arm the Ukrainian troops. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, challenged Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s denial
of the presence of the Russian troops in Ukraine.
“The Russian position is intellectually unsound,
factual untrue and the Ukrainian people are dying,” Graham said, pointing to a sound
consensus in the U.S .to support Ukrainians in their struggle for their future.
U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden defended Ukraine’s right to self-defense. “Too many times President Putin promised peace
and delivered war. We do not believe in a military solution to the Ukrainian
crisis, but we do believe in the Ukrainian people’s right to defend
themselves,” Biden said.
The views of the American officials resonated well
with the demands of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who did not only come to the conference
with hard-core evidence of the Russian presence in Ukraine (passports of
detained Russian citizens), but also asked for support in the form of defensive weapons.
In contrast to the firmly expressed German view on
no military support for Ukraine, the positions of eastern European leaders of
Lithuania and Bulgaria, namely Dalia Grybauskaite and Rosen Plevneliev,
revolved around the need to support the Ukrainians in their struggle to defend
themselves. But no specifics were provided on how this could be achieved and
who might be involved.
I had a chance to discuss this clear
trans-Atlantic divide on Ukraine’s militarization with the former president of
Latvia, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga. After all, the experience of post-Soviet Latvia
that rather quickly embraced NATO and European Union membership could serve well Ukraine
and its leaders.
Latvia’s former president pointed to Ukraine’s
conscious decision to play on both fronts in regards to its foreign policy,
leaving Ukraine susceptible to Russian influence:
“The nation as large as Ukraine should have been
thinking about its defense from the moment of the collapse of the Soviet Union
and getting its independence. The Baltic countries certainly realized that
neither they could change its location nor the psychology of the Russian people
could be changed very quickly. I remember when I visited as a president, Ukraine
tried to remain between the two worlds and not to have to make a hard choice. I
would say that Ukraine has wasted time by sitting on the fence and thinking
that they could keep their independence, keep their friendly relations with the West, and not to annoy Russia.”
She also added that the finlandization
of Latvia (or choosing a non-aligned status) would not work for Latvia as it
did for Finland since Russian has presented a very real threat to the country.
NATO and EU memberships represented the only viable solutions, according to the
former president:
“The decision on the EU for Latvia was rather
political and linked to security. I did as I felt that this is the cultural
space to which we belonged and in many ways, but to be quite honest we were worried
about what is currently happening in Ukraine would happen to us. To be quite
frank about it, people would ask whether I was afraid of Russia, I would say
I was not afraid of the big wolf. But of
course we were afraid…”
The Munich Security Conference will end on Sunday,
while difficult decision-making on Ukraine will remain. Besides the need for a
trans-Atlantic consensus, the Ukrainian leadership will have to demonstrate its
clear and consistent foreign policy commitment to its people and the rest of
the world.
Irina Pavlova of Poltava, Ukraine, is a freelance journalist living in Munich, Germany.
