For optimists, Ukraine could find hopeful signs in the confirmation hearing of Rex Tillerson, the Exxon-Mobil chief executive who is U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of state. If he follows through on his Senate testimony, it’s possible – but not certain – that the U.S. policy of support for Ukraine and sanctions will continue against Russia for its war and annexation of Crimea.
No one knows, of course, because wild-card Trump is such a narcissist that he will likely base foreign policy on whether he likes a foreign leader or the foreign leader likes him, rather than national interests. And no one knows whether Tillerson means what he says.
But Tillerson at least said the right words when he condemned Russia for its military invasion and annexation of Crimea, his recognition that the peninsula belongs to Ukraine and his correct assessment of the West’s weak response to Russian aggression. He said that the United States and NATO should have had a more muscular response to the Kremlin’s land grab in Crimea. He said he would have advised Ukraine to mass their military might on the eastern border with Russia. He said he favored supplying Ukraine with modern defensive weapons, backed by air surveillance from the West. Instead, the West’s weak response to the Crimean takeover invited Russia to instigate war in the eastern Donbas.
Seemingly in response, outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 11 and said that the Barack Obama administration responded much more strongly to Russia’s war against Ukraine than the George W. Bush administration did to Russia’s war against Georgia in 2000. Trump, in his Jan. 11 press conference, said it’s far from certain that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin will get along. These may be thin reeds of hope, but that’s what we have so far in 2017.
