Ukrainians have been naïfs - believing the West supported their struggle for national self-determination, to return the Ukrainian state to its rightful place in Europe. Over the past 3 years, at the cost of tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, they have finally realized this was self-delusional.
Lessons from ancient history
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In the mid-late 1980s, I examined British Foreign Office archives at the Public Records Office. I was interested in what the mandarins of the Northern Department recorded about the Ukrainian Canadians who volunteered for overseas service during the Second World War and remained in Europe afterwards, determined to rescue Ukrainian displaced persons from forcible repatriation to the Soviet Union.
Many British officials, I learned, took a jaundiced view of these Ukrainian Canadian efforts, although they never let on publicly. Wondering why, I sought out Thomas, Baron Brimelow and during a walk in the park I asked him why he treated Ukrainian Canadians like Flight Lieutenant Bohdan Panchuk sympathetically while he and his colleagues were indisposed to the cause of Ukrainian independence and found Ukrainian Canadian lobbying an unwelcome complication as they structured post-war relations between the UK and the USSR.
Brimelow said he remembered Panchuk and even admired him. Then he shut me down with one line: “Young man, you have never read Thucydides’s “History of the Peloponnesian War.”
Ukraine Must Be Part of Peace Talks to End Putin’s Terror
I left fuming about British humbug, muttering about “perfidious Albion.” But he was right, I hadn’t. So, I did.
Brimelow wanted to teach me something about politics and power and that was why he referred to what the Athenians said to the Melians just before savaging their polis: “... the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.” He also reminded me of Lord Palmerston’s words before the House of Commons in 1848. Great Britain has “no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
Lessons from less ancient history
Nowadays, I appreciate what this consummate diplomat had to say about national interests - states don’t necessarily do what is fair, just, or even good for peace. For example, knowing about famine conditions in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933 - the Holodomor - the British buried the truth, Laurence Collier minuting “... there is no obligation on us not to make it public. We do not want to make it public, however, because the Soviet Government would resent it and our relations with them would be prejudiced.”
Democratic US President Theodor Roosevelt’s administration recognized the USSR on Nov. 16, 1933, even as the Stalinist genocide against Ukraine was reaching its apogee. Reviewing Anglo-American diplomatic archives confirms the West never felt it needed a free Ukraine. What campaigning politicians trot out before diaspora audiences or what diplomats prattle about in public isn’t real.
Lessons from recent history
William Safire, of The New York Times, understood this, deriding President George H W Bush for his “Chicken Kiev” speech of 1 Aug 1991. Only a few months before the Soviet empire exfoliated, Bush opposed Ukrainian independence, warning Ukrainians about their “suicidal nationalism.” They didn’t listen.
In an article titled “Moderation and neutrality – but hang on to the nuclear arms,” published in The Globe and Mail, on 15 Nov 1991, I tried to warn those soon-to-be-independent Ukrainians against giving up their nuclear weapons, surrounded as they were by predatory neighbors. They didn’t listen.
Some even mocked me as a “warmonger.” Among them were those who applauded as Ukraine was given security “guarantees” for signing off on the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Look, they crowed, the USA, the UK and even Russia have pledged to respect the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Ukrainian state.
Today’s Ukrainians know better, having learned the hard way. On 4 April 2023, even former President Bill Clinton admitted: “I feel a personal stake because I got them [Ukraine] to agree to give up their nuclear weapons. And none of them believe that Russia would have pulled this stunt if Ukraine still had their weapons.”
Putin’s genocidal agenda
The Russian war against Ukraine and Ukrainians started in 2014 before escalating to the full-scale invasion on 24 Feb 2022. That Vladimir Putin, the KGB man in the Kremlin and president-in-perpetuity of the so-called Russian ‘’Federation” has a genocidal agenda has become all-too evident.
Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced, the country’s infrastructure is fractured, and tens of thousands of innocents have been maimed or killed defending their homeland. Yet, as observed by many others, the “Free World” has given Ukrainians only enough aid to make sure they don’t lose the war, never enough to win it. Thousands perished as President Joe Biden dithered.
An end to Ukrainian naïvety
President Trump is now in charge. Supposedly to broker peace, he phoned the monster in Moscow, a wanted war criminal and the open ally of Washington’s supposed enemies in Tehran and Pyongyang. He and his confederates take a much different view of what America’s interests are than I do. But I am not an American and have no wish to live in “Uncle Sam’s” 51st state - no offence intended to the majority of Americans. I know they are good neighbors and most support Ukraine’s wholly defensive war.
I predict Ukrainians won’t accept any deal that Donald slaps together with Vlad. Ukrainians did not start this war. Ukraine did not invade Russia. Ukrainians never were, nor are they now, nor will they ever be Russians. Their national anthem, Щене вмерла України - “Ukraine is not yet lost!” - should remind foes and friends alike of their indomitable valor. There can be no peace until Ukrainians are done liberating their homeland.
That will take time. And wealth. And blood, sweat and tears. Theirs. They know it.
Where to now for Kyiv?
Three things need to happen to secure Ukraine’s survival and undo Russia’s imperial project.
Ukrainians need to recognize they have no eternal allies or perpetual enemies. What they have are interests, the most fundamental being survival as a sovereign nation-state in Europe. To achieve this, Ukraine must increase the size, competency and armaments of its military and acquire battlefield nuclear weapons.
NATO membership, oft-repeated promises notwithstanding, is not coming soon, if ever, and, in any case, President Trump has already gutted the alliance. Only an independent Ukrainian nuclear arsenal and robust armed forces will offer a credible deterrent to any future Russian aggression. Think of Ukraine as now becoming a “second Israel.”
Above all President Volodymyr Zelensky, “Ukraine’s Moses,” needs to make a phone call of his own, to the only world leader who can help Ukraine today, President Xi Jinping, of the People’s Republic of China.
I don’t like communists, but if Donald wants to pow-wow with Vladimir, then our Volodymyr, betrayed by those he once believed were friends, should explore what Xi can do for Ukraine. In anticipation of that development, I am going to find the Chinese Ukrainian dictionary I secreted away on my library’s shelves – I think it is going to come in handy.
Ukrainians were naïfs. They won’t be anymore.
Lubomyr Luciuk is a retired professor of political geography from the Royal Military College of Canada but remains a Senior Research Fellow with the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. He was declared a persona non grata by the Russian Federation on 28 April 2022.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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