Andrew Wilson: The Dangers of a Sinn Féinist Ukraine

Andrew Wilson, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) writes for New Eastern Europe:

The Dangers of a Sinn Féinist Ukraine

(Sinn Féin – Irish for “ourselves alone”)

After two years under Viktor Yanukovych, Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Hryshchenko’s recent article in Dzerkalo Tyzhnia this March is the closest thing we have to an intellectual definition of Ukraine’s new foreign policy direction – or lack of direction. It is therefore worrying that his argument is so incoherent.

Hryshchenko’s first gambit is to bracket Ukraine with Turkey, a supposedly natural pair of big powers on the edge of Europe. He argues that the alternative “Polish model” of modernisation in close partnership with the EU (or under the tutelage of the EU) is currently blocked – more because of “emotions than rational calculation” – and “the transatlantic West is in crisis” anyway. Ukraine should therefore follow “the Turkish model of modernisation (by European benchmarks, independent from implementation)”. In plainer English, Ukraine should modernise on its own, rather than through adopting the acquis communautaire via a painful process of step-by-step conditionality with the EU.

To read the full article: https://www.neweasterneurope.eu/node/301