http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/james-sherr-it-is-time-we-stopped-praising-ukraine-for-exercising-restraint-340991.htmlKP: So, you agree with the view of Putin’s former adviser Andrey Illarionov who said that if Ukraine wants the West to defend it, Ukraine should start defending itself?
JS:
Ukraine is getting assistance from the West now, more than most people realise, and it will continue to augment. But assistance will come much more readily if Europe sees that Ukraine is taking the hard and necessary steps—and not just military ones— to defend itself. More importantly, Russia needs to see that Ukraine will defend itself, whatever it takes.
This is not a soft power contest. War is a tool of policy, but it is also war, and as Clausewitz said, it has its own syntax. Economic and institutional reforms take time to work, and they won’t work if, by the time of the elections, half the country is transformed de facto into Novorossiya [lands north of the Black Sea incorporated into the Russian Empire by Catherine II]. Ukraine and the West have a few months to change the dynamic: not to prevail, mind you, but change the dynamic. If we do that, our struggle becomes easier, and Russia’s becomes more difficult. Russia’s strengths are short-term. Like Hitler, Putin fights short wars. He is a treacherously agile tactician who tries to gain strategic advantage from tactical steps. But in a prolonged contest with Ukraine and the West, Russia’s weaknesses will prove telling. The challenge is to get to that point. We need to reach what Churchill called ‘the end of the beginning.’ And we will do so only if Ukraine and the West raise their game.
It is frustrating that in these conditions of national emergency, some are still pinning their hopes on EU membership perspectives and MAP. These things are beside the point. Even if they were politically realistic, they would do nothing to help. In June 1940, the British War Cabinet declared: ‘Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of Great Britain, every British subject will become a citizen of France.’ Did that help France? Perhaps somebody in the Kyiv Post will draw a cartoon: one man drowning and another on the shore holding a document entitled ‘EU Membership Perspective.’ Ukraine needs tangible assistance and as quickly as possible. It will not be saved by grand gestures.
