The US supported Yushchenko during the election fiasco in December, convinced the world community to get the Russians off his back, and supported a new election. Now, he’s visiting the US to meet with every critical decision-maker in the political, security and economic arms of the U.S. government, and discuss foreign investment with U.S. business representatives. He was with President Bush yesterday and will address Congress tomorrow.
Yushchenko is rewarding the United States by withdrawing Ukraine’s 1,600 troops from Iraq to fulfill a campaign promise he made to those charming street demonstrators we romanticized this last winter. Other countries have suffered sanctions and criticism, yet we hardly lift a finger in protest. What gives? Stratfor.com offers this curious, neo-realist explanation:
What many in the West—but few in Russia—fail to grasp is that without Ukraine, Russia is completely indefensible. It does not matter that no Western power currently is capable of launching a serious invasion of Russia; if Ukraine is aligned with the West, such an attack theoretically could be successful. The loss of Ukraine as a buffer also, among other things, would choke central Russia’s access to the northern Caucasus, split off part of its core industrial heartland, deny Moscow its only warm deepwater port, and in general make strategic planning downright depressing (even by Russian standards).
Can that be it? I suppose we are eager to pull Ukraine into the western sphere and eventually have them join the EU. And there isn’t any other explanation—is there?.
ADDITIONALLY: Mutant Frog reveals an important geopolitical realignment in the making over in East Asia. Check it out.
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