Two separate news stories in recent weeks got me thinking about an important foreign policy issue on Europe’s doorstep which does not receive as prominent consideration as perhaps it should.
The first story was the news that as a consequence of higher temperatures in the Arctic Sea the European Space Agency observed the simultaneous melting of ice in Canada’s Northwest Passage and Russia’s Northern Sea Route to an unprecedented extent. In the case of Russia’s Northern Sea Route there was such a reduction of ice in July and August this year, that a succession of super tankers carrying natural gas from the North West port of Murmansk were able to sail along the Siberian coast en route to Thailand. This cuts transit time and radically enhances Russian shipping’s connectivity with the global economy. Building on the emergence of newly viable sea lanes Russian Foreign Ministry Sergei Lavrov recently wrote of using Northern Sea Routes as Russia’s national integrated transport communication in the Arctic.
The second story was the conviction of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on charges of corruption. Mrs Tymoshenko was a leading light in the Orange Revolution who found herself targeted by the authorities following her failure to defeat the strongly Kremlin-backed Viktor Yanukovych in the 2010 presidential election .
Taken together these two disparate news stories brought two issues to the fore; the perpetual proxy influence Russia seeks over Ukrainian domestic affairs, and the long-term trend in Russian foreign policy going back centuries, of a desire for access to a so called “warm sea port”, which would be accessible throughout the year. Considering these issues together leads me to the foreign policy challenge on Europe’s doorstep I referred to earlier – the Crimea.
A geographical quirk of the expanding Russian empire in the 17th and 18th century was despite acquiring an ever greater land mass it was boxed in from the sea. Its north-western facing ports were subject to ice flows prohibiting accessibility at various times of the year. The strategic imperative for an accessible port drove the Russian empire south to the Crimea and the temperate Black Sea, largely controlled by the Ottoman Empire at the time, which via the Bosporus provided access to the Mediterranean. Russia’s first permanent presence in the Crimean peninsula was a garrison in Kerch in 1772 under the terms of the 1772 Treaty of Karazubazar with the Ottomans. What followed for the next decade was a proxy battle for indirect control by both empires via the installation, propping up and toppling of Crimean Tartar Khans amenable to one side or the other, and their eventual expulsion. Tired of this struggle and conscious of the strategic imperative of not being pushed out of the Black Sea, Catherine the Great resolved the issue by annexing and incorporating Crimea wholesale into the Russian empire.
The rigid commitment to remaining in the Black Sea, the proxy engagement in Ukrainian politics, and the tension between direct and indirect rule – all of these are manifested today in the politics of the Crimea. Crimea was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954 as a ‘gift’ by Stalin. This administrative move would have been a mere footnote in history had the Soviet Union not collapsed less than forty years later, leaving a large ethnic Russian population and the headquarters of the 300 ship strong Black Sea Fleet in Sebastopol, beyond the borders of a diminished Russia.
The ensuing dispute over Russian naval basing rights was temporally resolved in 1997 by a 20 year agreement between the two countries that was applauded in the Russian parliament and furiously contested in the Ukrainian parliament as an abandonment of Ukrainian sovereignty. Arrangements for post-2017 basing rights have waxed and waned dependent on whether pro-Russian or pro-Western elements are in the domestic Ukrainian ascendency. Viktor Yuschenko, the leader of the Orange Revolution who was Ukrainian President between 2005 and 2010 made it clear there would be no extension to the 1997 deal. Within two months of Viktor Yanukovych, his pro-Kremlin successor, taking the presidency in 2010 the ‘Kharkiv Agreement’ was signed whereby basing rights were extended until 2047 in exchange for cheaper Russian gas supplies. This again sparked protest including public demonstrations outside the Ukrainian parliament
For now the pro-Kremlin turn in Ukrainian politics appears locked in once again. But given that this is not inevitable, and given the foothold on the Black Sea is engrained in Russian strategic thinking since time immemorial, serious consideration has to be given to the consequences for stability in the area if Russia were to start losing the proxy struggle in Ukraine. What happens if a pro-Western leader decides to renege on the Kharkiv Agreement? What would Russia do in order to defend their basing rights? What levers will they pull to keep Ukraine pliant? Persistent threats to energy supply perhaps. What impact would this have on economic development and Ukraine’s alignment with European Union countries? Equally pertinent to ask is what would or could we in the West do?
Strategic fault lines like the Crimea rarely disappear; they merely go into deep freeze. The Karkhiv Agreement has probably achieved this in the short-term. Perhaps changing geopolitical realities like the opening of Arctic sea routes will weaken the Russian disposition to retain a naval footprint on their southern flank.
However, an observation from history should cause us to treat this with caution. When conflict in the Crimea flared up again in 1788 between Russia and the Ottoman’s, the Russian general pressured Catherine the Great to enact a tactical withdrawal from the peninsula in the hope of taking it back at a later date. Catherine stood firm and wrote back; “when you are sitting on a horse there is no point in getting off it and holding the tail.” Were anyone to present the contemporary Russian leadership with the same pressure they would no doubt respond as Catherine did – regardless of the wishes of the Ukrainian people and parliament. It is for this eventuality that more serious consideration needs to be given by foreign policy makers across Europe.
MaynardMP 