The Economist asks a very interesting question. What is Ukraine worth to the United States and Europe?
The West’s reluctance to offer more money reflects mounting frustration over Ukraine’s haphazard reform efforts. After the election in October politicians took a month to form a coalition government, causing the IMF to put its programme on hold. Some progress has been made, including simplifying the tax code. But energy remains unreformed. The budget for 2015 was passed only at 4:30am on December 29th. The IMF is back in Kiev trying to revive its programme.
Default would sap domestic confidence in Ukraine’s leadership and roil the currency markets again. George Soros, a financier, is arguing for aid before reforms and promoting a $50 billion package. Such a sum has little chance of being found, but he raises a big question about Ukraine’s importance. A Ukrainian collapse would prove Mr Putin’s contention that Western promises mean little and that change in the post-Soviet world leads only to pain. The West may soon have to decide: what is Ukraine worth?
IMO the answer is pretty obvious. Ukraine is worth a lot to Russia and very little to Europe or the United States except as a means of poking Russia in the eye which by some unknowable alchemy has become an objective of U. S. foreign policy.
I also think that the U. S. and Europe are finally realizing that the present Ukrainian regime is not a whit better than its two predecessors and is almost as bad as Putin said it
No value to us. Just another place to send aid and get nothing in return.
Steve
Russia was providing several economic bailouts for Ukraine, and there were few strings attached. They were providing subsidized gas also. Somebody engineered a coup, and it was not Twitter and Facebook users. Somebody is benefitting from Ukraine becoming a debt slave to the US and Europe.
The delusional hawks and certain fiction writers do not understand Russian history or the Russian people. The sanctions will never work. The only way to force Russia to submit is to put every man, woman, and child to the blade. Anybody left alive will blend into the scenery, and they will re-emerge when the danger has passed. They will pick up where they left off.
Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, and Eastern Ukraine will be part of the Russian Empire. It will take time, but it will happen. These have always been buffer states for somebody – Russia, Poland, Hungary, Sweden, Finland, or NATO. Presently, they are buffers to the buffers. They will never be fully functional independent states.
A few days ago I would have said that the Ukraine was worth no more than an under-inflated football, but since that’s worth a Super Bowl berth – now I’m not so sure!
I also think that the U. S. and Europe are finally realizing that the present Ukrainian regime is not a whit better than its two predecessors and is almost as bad as Putin said it [was.]
Well, why should this Ukrainian government play by the rules? It’s not like anyone else is getting ahead by fair play, why should they believe themselves to be the first to do so?