President Barack Obama won a small victory at the G7 Summit in the Bavarian Alps today when his reluctant European partners and Japan backed a united front warning Russia to stop interfering in Ukraine.
The warning fell on deaf ears with a Kremlin spokesman claiming that the seven summiteers were far from united against Russia and produced no “new theses”.
Russia and Ukraine took up nearly two thirds of the Summit’s time on foreign policy and Obama won support for his position with difficulty. The clearest gain for Washington was Japan, which sat on the fence for over a year, and now backs unmistakable resistance to Moscow’s annexure of Crimea since it fears similar actions by China against Japanese islands in neighboring seas.
European Union ministers will meet later this month to renew current sanctions against Moscow until January 2016 but without tightening them.
Summit host Angela Merkel of Germany, Britain’s David Cameron and Francois Hollande of France stood by Obama but each seems to think that his harder line is partly aimed at appeasing conservative hawks in Washington. They have qualms about letting him go too far on economic sanctions against Moscow because their economies have strong trade and financial ties with Russia.
Obama’s rhetoric was harsh compared to his usually measured tone on diplomatic clashes with other major world powers. He pulled no punches against Russia’s Vladimir Putin. “He’s got to make a decision,” Obama told reporters.
“Does he continue to wreck his country’s economy and continue Russia’s isolation in pursuit of a wrong-headed desire to recreate the glories of the Soviet empire, or does he recognize that Russia’s greatness does not depend on violating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other countries.”
The Kremlin flatly rejects such accusations. It spokesman’s counter was to note that “it’s impossible now to get together in seven or eight people and effectively discuss global problems.” He was referring to the rising influence of non-Western countries in global affairs. Russia has already turned towards China, Iran and India to reduce the impact of Western sanctions against its economy and trade.
The Summit’s final statement said that the seven Western powers – Germany, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and the US – “stand ready to take further restrictive measures in order to increase (the) cost on Russia should its actions so require.”
Merkel was firm saying Germany and other Europeans are ready to impose harsher sanctions, “should the situation escalate”. Before adding sanctions, the EU wants to see whether Putin will increase support for the East Ukraine rebels fighting Kiev government troops or enable them to capture more territory ahead of final peace talks whenever they occur.
So far, the major European powers reject banning Moscow from using the Brussels-based SWIFT financial system or shipping lethal weapons to Kiev’s forces. The chances of imposing enough pain on Putin to change his behavior are slim without those two moves.
For instance, Iran came to the negotiating table for talks about limiting is nuclear programs only after it was banned from using SWIFT and the New York-based dollar clearing network.
Just as Putin’s huffing and puffing has failed to bring down Kiev’s regime, the G7’s threats and current sanctions do not have the bite needed to make Moscow blink.
The war in Ukraine is turning into a long drawn conflict of attrition and will start to wind down only when Putin is convinced that Kiev will refrain from becoming an economic and military ally of the US. Until then, he will keep the rebellion alive to ensure instability in Ukraine and use the entire territory as a buffer zone between Russia and Europe.
His policies will be very costly for Russia but hard liners in Moscow see a united Ukraine heavily influenced by the EU and Washington as an existential threat for their country, regardless of Washington’s assurances of peaceful motives.
The insistence of Obama and his allies on international laws and treaties about the inviolability of national borders remains a hard sell in Moscow. Things might change when Putin loses power but that is not yet on the horizon.
In addition to Putin’s intransigence, the biggest obstacle to stability in Ukraine is the Kiev government’s inability to escape the clutches of local oligarchs and end deeply entrenched corrupt practices. The result is poor governance made worse by the war effort.
Reporters from the front say that the most effective pro-Kiev fighters are two militias financed by oligarchs. (President Petro Poroshenko is himself an oligarch but not among those financing militias.) Some suggest that the regular Ukrainian army fights poorly partly because of low motivation and the leadership’s refusal to heed advice from Western military experts.
Ukraine’s economy is also a basket case. It has already received a $40bn aid package from the IMF, US and EU and will need at least the same amount again. By next year, even Merkel, Hollande and Cameron might tire of the financial burden their tax payers must bear to uphold Washington’s tougher positions against Putin.
In the end, peace might happen in Ukraine simply because outsiders become fed up of paying for the warring sides.