Ukrainian Maidans and Why We Should Care About Them

Ukraine

In keeping with my tradition of timeliness (which, in my defense, is improving), we're going to talk about Ukraine, the situation therein, the history thereof, and why it matters to us.  There are a number of reasons that this is a challenging post for me to write.  First, it turns out I don't know that much about Ukraine that doesn't involve a Risk board.  Second, I'm not well versed in foreign policy or the relevant entanglements that the US has in Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  I'm sure it was included in the things that I was taught, but my true love was energy policy and the rest of the world fell into a bucket with economics of "things that are important that I hope someone else is caring about.  That said, when I asked for a topic, I was given a choice between Ukraine and Venezuela, so here we are.

As it turns out, in researching for this post, the little that I do know about Ukraine is not entirely useless knowledge.  [Token side note, Ukraine is typically considered to be derived from the word for "border" as stated by basically everyone who has written or spoken about the situation in the last month.]  Let's start with the Risk board.  Situated neatly as the entirety of Eastern Europe, Ukraine serves as the buffer between Europe and Asia while technically being part of Europe and, while Europe is relatively secure with just their own territories, Asia is essentially uncontrollable unless you also control Ukraine.  [Second side note, it is officially "Ukraine" not "The Ukraine" since 1991.]  While Risk is certainly not the same as reality, the need and desire for Russia to control or influence the country bears a striking parallel, as does the lack of interest from Europe.  Europe is perfectly happy with a Ukraine that is free, independent, and doing it's own thing while Russia really needs a Ukraine that is actively friendly toward it, if not outright dependent.

At this point, it is worth noting that this type of conflict in this region is not new. The Ruin of the 17th Century, The Great Northern War of the 18th Century, The Crimean War of the 19th Century, and the Iron Curtain post WWII in the 20th century.  All of these conflicts or arrangements were, at least in part, over who would control the borderlands.  Come to the present and Ukraine is finally coming into it's own.  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they have been coming in to their own.  They have substantial productive farm land, the third largest total area in Europe, and the 9th largest population.  More importantly, they're one of the few economies in Europe that has been growing consistently since the last crash that hit all of Europe in 2008.

Maidans

So if that's a brief (and probably overly simplified, if not outright wrong) summary of Ukraine, what are the Maidans?  In short, the Maidans that we're talking about are the current protests.  They have been named after the central square in Kiev that has been a focal point for the current movement (as well as most of the ones in the last 30 years, it's a popular place to protest in Ukraine), the Maidan Nezalezhnosti.  So why are they protesting?  That gets complicated, but the short answer is because half of Ukraine wants to take support from Europe while the other half wants to get the support from Russia. The Ukrainian government had been leaning toward Europe, but that angered Russia who started withholding their trading opportunities.  That dramatically hurt their economy which led to a reversal to accept support from Russia instead of Europe.

As it turns out, both sides had strings attached to their financial support.  Europe tied their support to laws requiring Ukraine to become a freer nation, and Russia tied theirs to not being friendly to Europe.  I would imagine that this is a bit like finding oneself trying to choose between the pretentious snob who wants to tell us how we can be a better person and the insecure bully who will take his toys and leave if you're friends with anyone other than just him.  Ukraine is stuck in the middle where what it probably needs is to just be left alone to pull itself together as a modern nation and not be controlled by either side.  The protesters against the Russian influence appear to be of a mind that at least the snob doesn't make threats when he doesn't get what he wants, making Europe the better choice for support.

Then things got messy.  Ukrainians who favored Europe protested, and Russia, for lack of a better term, invaded.  Why Russia invaded is a matter of debate. Russia claims they're just there to keep the peace (or they're not there at all, those soldiers are just pretending to be Russian).  The popular view seems to be that they're hoping to scare enough Ukrainians that the protesters will lose and Ukraine will continue to seek support from Russia.  (Personally, I just think Putin is an egomaniac who wants to reclaim the lost territories of the USSR under the Russian flag, but that doesn't seem to be a popular view.)

Why Do We Care?

Why do we (being the US) care about Ukrainian political protests?  Primarily because Russia, even post cold-war, scares the crap out of us.  We don't want them too weak because we don't want chaos in a country with that many nuclear weapons, but we don't want them any stronger than they have to be either.  If they get stronger we are weaker by comparison.  Our interest is not in the Ukraine, it is in Westernizing the former Soviet Bloc with a long term goal of Westernizing Russia itself.  We don't want a Russia that we're just "not at war" with, we want them to genuinely like us so we don't have to worry about them going rogue (again, they have a lot of nukes).

Why does Europe care? Europe has more pragmatic interests in the area.  A stable Ukraine with a healthy economy and friendly European relations is good for everyone.  That said, Europe doesn't really care if Ukraine is also friendly with Russia.  The stronger the Ukrainian economy, the better for Europe, as long as Europe isn't blocked out of the deal entirely by Russian influence.

It's important for us to care about what is going on on the other side of the world, but it's more important for us to care for the right reasons.  This isn't about us or them. It isn't about whether we want Russia or Europe to come out better in the deal, this is about Ukraine getting the opportunity to decide for itself where it wants to stand and letting it make that decision without the threat of repercussions from outside influences.