Purposeful coughs and half-swallowed guffaws should rightfully greet every avowal that Ukraine is moving toward ‘Europe’.
Any such assertion is ludicrous on its very face.
Five minutes on the ground is sufficient for even a drunk American business school graduate to surmise that the country isn’t headed in any particular direction, or at least not forward.
Funny then, that hardly anyone in the know laughs at the routine utterances of politicians and diplomats, domestic and foreign, that Ukraine is turning west.
Perhaps, as with any farce grown old, the humor has worn thin. A smirk, it would seem, is the most animated reaction a relatively honest Ukrainian struggling to survive can allow himself when hearing yet more official bilge.
Doubtless, the politicians and diplomats who declare that Ukraine is moving ‘west’ toward ‘Europe’ don’t believe what they’re literally saying. What they really mean is ‘not east’, that is, not toward Russia.
Herein lies the real deal: Russia ceases to be a European power without Ukraine.
The West, the real and rich West, pays the Kyiv ex-Soviets billions of dollars in aid to keep the Moscow ex-Soviets at bay.
The money keeps Ukraine from completely collapsing, which suits the Kyiv aparatchiks, who like running their own show, just fine.
But time is nearly up for the rhetorical trappings surrounding this game.
Europe’s eastern border of the next century was formally penciled in last month at the European Union summit in Luxembourg.
The ex-communist countries of Central Europe, the ex-Soviet Baltic states and the laggard Bulgarians and Romanians were invited by the EU to begin membership talks.
Ukraine, with territory abutting no less than four of the invitees, merited not a mention.
Time then for the West to call a spade a spade, and to come up with a new and more honest strategic packaging for Ukraine. In domestic Ukrainian politics, a more honest benchmark of progress is needed to replace the cheap delusion that the country stands a chance of becoming part of ‘Europe’ in the lifetime of any baby born this year.
But what?
A spin of the globe turns up another infant, misfit of a country that, upon deeper inspection, makes for a compelling parallel case. That country is Palestine. Never mind that it remains a country without borders.
Ukraine, as any of its forthright patriots lamenting the lack of national identity will confirm, can be characterized as borders without a country.
What is important is that, to the West, Ukraine and Palestine are lands of paramount strategic importance.
In the latter case, the West has a vital interest in the creation of a viable Palestinian state. By facilitating Yasser Arafat’s conditional surrender to Israel, America and Europe help stabilize the Middle East and its supply of oil – the very juice which keeps rich countries strong and safe.
Western aid currently keeps both Ukraine and Palestine afloat. That is the big picture.
On the local level, life for ordinary people in both places is miserable, with even running water a luxury. Neither place has a proper economy, leaving adults to run in circles for pauper’s wages and children to study in ramshackle schools.
Both populations are sat upon by outlandishly corrupt politicians ranging from village chiefs to Cabinet ministers.
In Ukraine and Palestine, gangsters masquerade as entrepreneurs with official blessing.
In each place the forms of democracy disguise executive rule. In neither place are journalists truly free to report facts.
Now a modest proposal: why don’t Ukrainian and Palestinian officials engage in mutually rewarding competition. Keeping score, they could race to provide their peoples with reliable basic services.
They could, tit-for-tat, implement the rule of law, with judicial reforms here, public procurement or customs reforms there. They could compare body counts of corrupt officials and criminals sitting behind bars.
The two lands could receive cash prizes from the West, and ultimately compete in weaning themselves of foreign help and becoming bona fide nation states, free of former masters Russia and Israel.
Would President Leonid Kuchma expose himself to ridicule by declaring on national television: ‘I am proud to report that our gallant businessmen now pay 10 percent less bribes to obtain import licenses than those second-rate Palestinian businessmen’?
Probably, there would be laughter.
But that would be progress.
Bill Reynolds is the Kyiv Post’s associate editor.
