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Before leaving office, outgoing US President George W. Bush will bequeath to his successor and the world yet another headache. As if the Iraq debacle, misconceived "War on Terror," risky recognition of Kosovo, and other doubtful actions were not enough, the US wants to quickly bring Ukraine into NATO.

During his Kyiv visit on April 1, Bush told the Ukrainians, "Your nation has made a bold decision" to join NATO.

This was, as other things we have heard from his administration, wrong.

A majority of Ukrainians continue to reject NATO membership. Moreover, Ukraine's sizeable ethnic Russian minority tends to see NATO as an anti-­Russian organization, and receives propagandistic (and possibly other) support from Moscow.

The American administration's current portrayal of the issue of Ukraine's NATO membership as a conflict between the West and Russia is doubly misleading. Neither is the West unified in its support for Ukraine's soon NATO membership, nor is Russia's refusal to accept such a development the core of the problem.

The current debate about Ukraine's NATO membership is surrealistic. All Ukrainian political forces, including Viktor Yushchenko as well as Yulia Tymoshenko and their political blocs, accept that Ukraine's entry into NATO will have to be decided by an all ­Ukrainian referendum.

However, many Ukrainians, including many supporters of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, continue to tell pollsters to one degree or another they are against NATO membership. This means that Ukraine's pro-­NATO political forces would probably lose such a referendum and implies that no such referendum will happen in the foreseeable future.

Thus within the next years, there will be no serious application by Ukraine for NATO membership, despite what Ukraine's pro­Western elite say. What then is all the fuss about?

As little as four years ago, Ukraine was a country with a dubious political system, one not much more democratic than Russia's is today.

The 2004 Orange Revolution changed this. The popular uprising was successful not the least because the West was unified in its support of a rebellion that had the backing of the majority of Ukrainians. Neither of these conditions apply today.

France and Germany, among others, have their doubts about Ukraine's NATO membership, and only a minority of the Ukrainian population is in favor of it.

Like with earlier actions of the Bush administration, it is not realism, a concept one would think dear to conservatives, that guides US foreign policy.

Rather, the impression is that a misconceived messianic democratic vision drives the White House's behavior on the international scene.

Indeed, the values that Bush purportedly wants to spread across the globe are in themselves those that make the West what it is. Yet the effects of his actions have done little to make our values appealing to non-­Western countries.

Whatever the recent advances in spreading democracy might be, the damage that Bush's and his advisors' arrogant behavior have done to international law, Western-­Muslim relations, and US­Russian cooperation outweighs the gains.

Now the Bush administration is getting into another quagmire that might cause unrest in Ukraine and lead to a breakdown in US­Russian relations. Knowing that the majority of Ukrainian citizens are against NATO membership, the Russians will not compromise on Ukraine's rapprochement with the North Atlantic alliance. The roots of Russian statehood lie (at least in the Russians' view) in Kyiv, and Crimea hosts a major Russian naval base.

Instead of idly talking about non­existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or Ukraine's unrealistic application for NATO membership, the US government needs to get real about the world we live in. Unless Bush and company stop believing in various mirages of their own creation, the post-­Cold War world will slide further down the slippery slope of mutual misunderstanding and international confrontation.

Dr. Andreas Umland teaches at the Shevchenko National University in Kyiv and is a member of the Atlantic Community. He edits the book series "Soviet and Post­Soviet Politics and Society" and compiles the biweekly Russian Nationalism Bulletin.

This article was originally written for the Kyiv Post and published here under the title "Ukraine's unrealistic North Atlantic aspirations a pseudo-issue"

April 6, 2008

Ilyas M. Mohsin, PPP, Platinum Contributor (296)

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I like this comment! What's this?

Umland has frankly highlighted the awful damage done by the neo-cons to the US image/ credibility all over the world. It is worse in the Muslim world due to killing of millions of Muslims in Iraq/ Afghanistan besides the widespread devastation. US Law/ International law all went for a six as is revealed by the recently published John Yoo memo in the US.

Russia' attitude appears to be based on 3 considerations. First, that its backyard must remain its own sphere of influence despite friendly posturing by the US. Hence Georgia/ Ukraine are denied entry in to NATO.
Second, Russia has made Billions of $ per year from energy trade while US has wasted trillions on controversial wars in Iraq/ Afghanistan. In the process the Eu is suffering due to a dangerous spurt in oil prices. Third, only US can lead NATO in a unipolar world beacuse only it has the potential and world-wide interests to defend. In certain areas the US shares some interests with its EU partners in relation to the state of their development/ out-reach. No wonder Merkel sided with Putin.

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