Ukraine and Leadership

Some ancient (it's been attributed to many) is reputed to have said, “There go my followers.  I must hurry to catch up with them, for I am their leader.”  We laugh at that as a slap at timidity in leadership.  We've always had the idea that the role of leaders is to lead the charge, flag high and sword waving.  But we wouldn't relish our leadership leading a rush of lemmings, including us, over the cliff.  We want bold leadership without bad consequences.  Leadership of lemmings is probably best done from behind.  It was a wiser Machiavelli who said, “Fortune sometimes favors the man who acts boldly, and sometimes favors the man who is cautious, but always favors him who knows when to be bold and when to be cautious.”  That’s the kind of leader we rationally would prefer, but our gut instinct is to cheer on the flag waver.

That’s the dilemma the Obama administration faces these days.  We elected Obama to get us out of foreign entanglements after sobering up from several years of overindulgence in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Yet we chafe at the bit to jump into Syria and Ukraine.  I've noted before that going into Syria is like jumping feet-first into the middle of the 30 Years War, with angry factions shooting at you from all sides no matter what you do and no way of knowing what actually is the right thing to do.  It’s relatively easy from a historical perspective to know that we have to tread cautiously or not at all in the Middle East these days, but we still have that urge to knock heads and fix that mess.  Ukraine is harder.

Viewed one way, the Ukrainian protests remind us of our own American Revolution, with Putin as George III and Kiev as Boston, though Yanukovych is no George Washington or Sam Adams.  It’s hard not to grab your musket and become a Minute Man.  It’s a middle class revolution against foreign tyranny, economic consequences be damned, and from our own history we love it.  Yanukovych is concerned about Ukraine’s indebtedness, and is willing to surrender some of Ukraine’s freedom of action to get rid of it by putting Ukraine back in Russia’s orbit rather than joining the EU.  We, with our history, don’t relish the idea of selling your heritage for a mess of porridge.  But oddly enough, that’s something like what Scotland did in the 1890s when, to rid themselves of debt, the Scots surrendered supremacy of the Scottish parliament to the English parliament in foreign policy.  Scottish separatists are still regretting that more than a century later, but it’s worked in the meantime.  With memories of Edward long shanks, Bonnie Prince Charlie and the fall of the Stuarts, it wasn't easy for the Scots either, but their financial concerns outweighed their history.  There isn't only one right choice.

From another perspective, Ukraine resembles Russia’s Cuba.  With historically grounded paranoid fears of invasion from the south, Russia has always maintained its own Monroe Doctrine by cultivating, coercively or not, a row of allied buffer states.  Ukraine, like Cuba to the U.S., would be a key loss.  We remember how we felt and acted when the Soviet Union began cultivating Cuba and threatened to place missiles there.  It’s an honest concern on Russia’s part, and understandable.  What is less understandable is Yanukovych ignoring the expressed will of his own people.

Once again, Machiavelli reminds us of the value of knowing when to be bold and when to remain cautious.  Ukraine is a matter clearly involving Ukraine itself, the Russians and the EU.  Intruding the U.S. into that volatile mix merely roils the waters without solving anything.

The broader question is when to act boldly in a multi-polar world.  Veering too far toward caution simply leads to isolationism, itself a dangerous course in a constantly changing geopolitical environment.  An obvious set of tests are that resolving the situation is in our national interest, the situation demands action on our part, our action will be decisive and there is a clear exit strategy – somewhat akin to the Powell Doctrine.  In diplomacy, however, those tests are themselves complex and capable of multiple interpretations.  Every hot spot around the world does not require our intervention, and in many a proper course of action is not obvious.  We are no longer caught up in a zero-sum game with the Soviet Union, where each loss for them is a victory for us.  Analysis requires cool heads, and action needs to be unimpeded by domestic overheated rhetoric.  Mobs do not seek for nuances, but sometimes in diplomacy nuanced action is necessary. 

 American politics has never lacked for rhetoric but the level of it has grown much worse since Vietnam gave the press and politicians license to suspect everything.  Younger people may not remember that until Vietnam American presidents avoided domestic criticism by travelling abroad.  The saying was that inside the U.S. the president was head of his party and abroad he represented all of us.  Foreign policy was mostly considered bipartisan territory.   Now senators and celebrities take their own trips abroad to muddle the waters and political criticism does not die down no matter how far the president has travelled.  It sometimes includes even the expression on his face as he meets foreign leaders.  It leaves our friends confused and our enemies chuckling.

The greatest loss is the ability to act cautiously.  Obama showed, to universal acclaim, his ability to act boldly with the raid on the Ben Laden compound.  Every cautious step he takes is heaped with domestic criticism.  But John Wayne is not the model for our diplomacy.  Showing the flag is no longer appropriate to every situation in a multi-polar world.  Obama could do a much better job of explaining the whys of acting cautiously, but he needs political room at home to do so.  The real test of his leadership is his ability to get the American people to understand and go along with his proposed actions.  For that, he needs our ears and minds, not our partisan rhetoric.   We need to provide them.