This book examines the inherently trilateral nature of US policy toward Ukraine. For Eugene M. Fishel, the intrusion of Russia disrupts both Ukraine and Russia policy through a specific set of faulty assumptions he calls the “Moscow factor.” These assumptions include notions that presume Russia's view of the region and its interests, granting its understandings of Ukraine and Ukrainians as undeserving a state and so deeply intertwined into Russian culture and history as to prevent success on their own.
Fishel demonstrates the malign influence of these faulty assumptions on US policy by examining Washington's response to four key turning points in recent Ukrainian history: the recognition of Ukraine as a sovereign state; the denuclearization of Ukraine; the Orange Revolution; and Russia's intervention in eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. These events occurred under Republican and Democratic presidents (from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama).
Fishel's case for the influence of the Moscow factor is a strong one, though it is difficult to unravel this influence from other factors of great power relations, nuclear weapons, and internal U.S. politics that make their way into relations with Ukraine. The book is at its strongest when insisting that we are still laboring under views of Ukraine and the region that reflect Russian political and foreign policy interests.
The first Bush administration, with the exception of Dick Cheney, made plain its preference for Mikhail Gorbachev and a reformed Soviet Union to an uncertain future of new and unpredictable states like Ukraine. It wanted above all a unified command and control of nuclear weapons. While these priorities reflect an understandable hedge against an uncertain future, Fishel underscores the role the Moscow factor played in the thinking of the president and most of his senior advisors, one that led to Ukraine being cast as the potential source of “suicidal nationalism” (13) and nuclear backsliding. This approach distorted Ukrainian conditions and ended up making denuclearization more difficult.
Fishel is more sanguine about the Clinton administration's management of the process of Ukrainian denuclearization, though he is critical of assumptions the administration made that seem to continue the Bush administration's reliance on the Moscow factor. However, the Clinton administration quickly came around to greater engagement with Ukraine, showing Kyiv both “carrot and stick” with respect to the future of US-Ukrainian relations with and without denuclearization. Though Fishel is skeptical of the trilateral process as an extension of the Moscow factor, American formal presence in the talks on denuclearization made negotiations steadier and provided greater support for Ukraine at a time when Russian voices were questioning existing borders and the status of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. Leaving the process solely to the Russians and Ukrainians would have courted disaster.
The Orange Revolution of 2004–2005 brought the Ukrainian people into the streets to denounce a manipulated and corrupt election. Fishel notes that this crisis was preceded by a period of stagnation, corruption, arms sales to Iran, election manipulation, and malfeasance by the Leonid Kuchma administration, stalling momentum in domestic reforms and US-Ukrainian relations. Though Fishel again concentrates on the role of the Moscow factor in US deliberations, he rightly praises the Bush administration's condemnation of the corrupt presidential election and support for the popular protest and rerun of the final round of voting. It later made the case for Ukrainian membership in NATO.
Fishel is most critical of the Obama administration's reluctance to provide Ukraine lethal aid in response to Russia's 2014 military intervention in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. He sees Obama as choosing engagement with Russia over the Iranian nuclear deal and resupply of US forces in Afghanistan rather than facing the serious security repercussions of Russia's actions in Ukraine. There are many who would agree with Fishel that the Obama response was tepid and strategically short-sighted, though whether the Moscow factor was decisive here is more of a question.
Fishel's book makes a persuasive case for the existence of the Moscow factor, one that should make policymakers pause to consider assumptions that lie at the base of policy options. The book stops before analyzing the turning points in Ukrainian policy in the Trump administration or the current Russian war against Ukraine, key test cases for examining the continued influence of the Moscow factor, as well as its interaction with other factors at work within the US shaping notions of Russia, Ukraine, and larger European security issues.
