Settling balance sheets of history or financing futures
In March 2014, the Wilson Center published 'Why Did Russia Give Away Crimea Sixty Years Ago?' The piece drew on original documents that had come to light after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The analysis compared those documents with official statements the Soviet government had given in 1954, when it transferred Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The documents provided a brief, inaccurate history of events involving the two countries going back 300 years.
The invented histories were a mask for power struggles within the Soviet Union, related to Nikita Khrushchev's manipulations to consolidate power after being elevated to the post of first secretary of the Communist Party in September 1953. The Wilson analysis ends with the observation that the irony of the Crimean transfer in 1954 – that Moscow undertook to strengthen its control over Ukraine – had come to haunt Ukraine.
The irony is elsewhere: Politicians are mired in backward looking strategies to settle balance sheets of history rather than pursue options to finance the future. Europe made this mistake with the Treaty of Versailles and the Munich Agreement, to mention just two.
President Zelensky is making a similar mistake. He insists on adding security clauses to the financial contract that President Trump proposed, believing that this would deter Russia. Yet there is Munich on September 29, 1938.
Neville Chamberlain of England and Edouard Daladier of France signed an agreement with Germany letting it carve out Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler promised not to make further territorial demands in Europe, and then invaded. The League of Nations – the incompetent and toothless version of the present-day United Nations – remained silent on the invasion.
Briefly, clauses in political contracts are toothless. Wars are fought with words, true, but mainly with swords by well-trained and patriotic military.
Israel has no written security agreement with the US (and is not counting on Europe and NATO). Yet, surrounded by ruthless, savage theocratic and other dictatorships, as well as dozens of military organizations roaming neighboring failed countries that had superior manpower, it won wars and deflected terrorist attacks. With its patriotic military, helped mainly by US military equipment, it has been not just winning but even becoming a 'start-up nation.'
With these reminders, take a forward look. As is the case with Israel's leaders, President Zelensky cannot change his country's location. However, he could change its demography. Decades before the Crimea event, Ukraine had Europe's lowest fertility rate, standing at 1.16 in 2000, with 2.5 million young Ukrainians having left between their independence in 1991 and 2014. Since the war, some 6 million more have left, mainly young, and fertility has dropped to 1, when population replacement level requires 2.1. Ukrainian demographers predicted already before the war that the population would rapidly drop from roughly 40 million to 26 million.
Notions of 'fatherlands' and 'motherlands' are nice traditions. But if the younger generations vote with their wombs and feet and move away from these lands, what does a continuing war achieve? Demography is not destiny – but …
So what are the options?
I do not know if former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's recommendations years ago that Kyiv compromise, ceding territory to Russia, drew on the above numbers. Diplomat as he was, if he thought of them, he held them close to his chest or discussed them behind closed doors. Publicly, Kissinger suggested that Ukraine should better accept ceding the eastern territories that it no longer controlled to Russia.
President Trump did not suggest this as a starting point, but offered a strictly commercial/financial contract to use as first step to negotiate a cease fire with Russia – and go from there.
Kissinger, also issued a stark warning to both the Ukrainian government and its Western allies saying that 'Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself,' which is roughly what President Trump said, in more alarming terms, referring to World War III, although Kissinger too mentioned the risk of pushing Russia in China's arms.
Zelensky was harsh on Kissinger too, saying: 'Those who advise Ukraine to give something to Russia, these 'great geopolitical figures,' never see ordinary people, ordinary Ukrainians, millions living on the territory they are proposing to exchange for an illusory peace. You must always see people.'
It never helps when anyone speculates loudly what others might be thinking, feeling – certainly not in an open forum in the Oval Office, implying inhumanity.
President Zelensky does not appear to realize that, while he reiterates his determination for lands and security guarantees, it's he who is giving up on the Ukrainians as the place is getting de-populated.
Few young Europeans volunteer to go and fight there. They hardly have the patriotism to fight for Brussels, or the EU – never mind for Ukraine, notwithstanding chanting slogans in Western European capitals for … whatever.
Henry Ford is far from a historical character I look up to, his entrepreneurial vision and execution notwithstanding, but I agree with his statement in 1916, that 'History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history that we make today.' This observation does not imply lack of feeling for suffering Ukrainians.
However, leaps into the future must be financed, and financing requires retaining and attracting critical masses of young brains, for which political compromises are necessary.
An aging population neither climbs barricades, nor carries hopes for the future.
Kissinger did observe in the Davos speech that 'I hope the Ukrainians will match the heroism they have shown with wisdom.'
Perhaps instead of 'wisdom,' the statement 'matching heroism with a clearer vision of both the country's' demography, and that the future depends on matching young brains with continuous access to finance – and which requires political stability more than territory – offers concrete, less emotional guidance.
Agree or disagree with the way events unfolded in the Oval office, President Trump did offer this forward-looking solution, whereas President Zelensky, unfortunately, got stuck with selective backward-looking failed ideas, believing that clauses on political papers are keys to stabilizing solutions.
The article draws on Brenner's Force of Finance , and 'How to Relink 7 billion People.'
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