The Wall Street Journal blog today is running a piece on European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso’s statement that the natural-gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine could cause a major crisis in the European Union ‘in weeks, not months’.
Ukraine has already started stockpiling gas to ensure supplies for next winter, and Naftogaz had hoped to receive support from international financial institutions to fund a $4.2-billion loan that would enable the country to fill its underground storage facilities with Russian gas, but Barroso, speaking earlier today at summit of EU leaders in Brussels, says the EU simply doesn’t have enough cash. And that it isn’t their problem.
The European Union will not help Ukraine pay for Russian gas imports but international financial institutions may help avert a looming crisis, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
“That is not our responsibility, I should make that clear,” Barroso told reporters when asked about EU help at a summit of leaders on Friday.
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Well, it’s got to be -somebody’s- responsibility, since it is increasingly evident that Ukraine cannot pay their bills without being subsidized by -somebody-.And since the Ukrainian government likes to vituperate Russia, that -somebody- is no longer Russia.And so we see that, though the West says many fne words about supporting Ukrainian independence, they are not willing to do anything to actually help Ukraine pay their bills.
Indeed, the West is not going to support Ukraine. And someday they will regret not having done that, just as they probably now do regret not having supported Russia when she was the one who couldn’t pay her bills. (It can happen to anyone, you see, it’s not inherently in Ukraine’s nature.)I hope the West reconsiders and lends a more helping hand to Ukraine. But frankly, I don’t think it will. Really: what a pity.
It’s always amusing to me when people bring up the whole “United States didn’t help Russia enough” stuff from the 1990s. On the one hand, the US is demonized for any intervention or relationship it ever makes with a foreign country, while on the other hand, we can retrospectively slam them for NOT doing enough, whenever it suits our needs. Russia is responsible for Russia being Russia – enough of the excuses, and time for this government to stop behaving like kids. I hate to say it, but they should take a page from China, India, and Brazil and realize they can do so much more for their countries by ditching all the unnecessary confrontations and ambitions to control some sort of sphere of influence …. like some growing democracy on their borders means anything more threatening than increased trade and security.
Dowjo, there is a lot of truth in what you’ve written — I certainly do think that Russia is the primary responsible agent in what happened to Russia in the 1990′s. I don’t want to remove their responsibility in any way.Yet I do think the United States could have done more. Considering how things developed–an authoritarian regime again taking hold in Russia–I feel it’s a shame that the US (and, for that matter, the EU) didn’t do more support and strengthen Russia in her moments of need–just as the US did support Western Europe after WWII in their moment of need.You may argue that too much help could also have been too much influence — as if the US were ‘buying’ Russia. And that’s a good point. I think, however, in retrospect, if it had worked, we’d all be quite happy about it. Nobody complains about the Marshall Plan in Europe, or about how the US introduced democracy in Japan after WWII. Not even the Europeans and the Japanese.One could have argued that Europe’s problems were Europe’s fault, and that America should have left the Europeans and the Japanese to solve their problems by themselves. Considering the results, however, I think we all agree that would not have been the best decision, even if it could be argued to be “true” — the problems that the Europeans and the Japanese had were their fault, they brought it onto themselves.Likewise, the chaos that overtook Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union was the fault of the Russians themselves: the communist economical catastrophe, the lack of knowledge about how free markets, a free economy and democracy really work, a lack of capable, efficient leaders… and a culture still tainted by the duplicity and corruption inherited from communist (and even pre-communist) times.Maybe the turning back to authoritarianism and xenophobia was unavoidable. But I like to think that there were other possibilities; that, if the US and the EU had welcomed Russia as one of them (as the Western leaders had welcomed Gorbachev, and initially also Yeltsin, as one of them — before Yeltsin turned into an incompetent drunkard), things might have been different.At least, that is my opinion. What do you think?
Yes, though I am frequently motivated to play devil’s advocate, you are pretty much saying what I am thinking here. Or perhaps you had me all the way up until the whole “authoritarianism as inevitable” part. The fall of the Soviet Union represented a transition unprecedented in history, and one that may take some 30 years of corrections before they can finally get it right. Russia’s fate is not cast, and it’s up to the people to decide if they want/need/have the ability to demand political plurality and a different kind of government.
Well, when Russia’s economic policy was being written by USAID and USAID contractor personnel, from top-level economic policy down to the privatization plans of individual enterprises, and when the US Embassy wants that policy imposed by Yeltsinian decree rather than expose it to the chance that the legislative branch elected by the Russian people would vote it down, then I figure that the US shares quite a lot of responsibility for the destruction of both the Russian economy and the destruction of Russia’s early democracy.Janine Wedel’s “Collision and Collusion” is very good on this, showing how pervasive the influence the US Treasury and State Departments had over Russia’s economy in the 1990s.And Yeltsin, by education and experience, was in no position to see that accepting US “aid” and “advice” would bring premature death to millions of Russians, and render tens of millions more destitute.Here’s a BBC report of a study done by “The Lancet”, on the impact “Shock therapy” had on Russia:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7828901.stmAnd here’s Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz amplifying the point:http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/stiglitz-on-death-and-privatization-in-the-eastern-bloc/