Two Reflections on Ukraine

The present standoff in Ukraine makes me think of two things. First, in 1994 Ukraine voluntarily gave up its control of Soviet nuclear weapons then stationed on its territory under American pressure. Kiev wanted to please Washington, which wanted only one nuclear successor state for the Soviet Union rather than four (Belarus and Kazakhstan were the other two republics with nuclear weapons). For the sake of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, Washington wanted Moscow to assume complete control of all Soviet nuclear weapons. I remember thinking that given Russian history, Ukraine was crazy to give up control of its deterrent to Moscow--the capital that had twice in the past strangled Ukrainian sovereignty. Had I been an adviser in the Clinton administration I would have urged Clinton not to pressure any of the three republics to give up their weapons for a few years until Moscow had proved its good intentions.

Putin the Bumbler

Putin once said that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was the greatest disaster of the Twentieth Century. Putin was a man formed by the Soviet Union, by the secret police that he spent his career in. Unlike Boris Yeltsin who appointed him prime minister in December 1999 he was never comfortable with the idea of freedom. Unlike Aleksander Solzhenitsyn who looks back to Russian history before the Soviet Union, Putin's scope of history is limited to the period after November 1917. So which Soviet leader does Putin see as his model? There are several who might come to mind.