After capping a 40-year career in the U.S. State Department in February as coordinator of sanctions policy, Daniel Fried is a sought-after voice of wisdom given his experiences as U.S. ambassador to Poland, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia and a National Security Council senior director under two presidents, among other posts.
Fried has now found a professional home as a distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, D.C.
In an Aug. 8 interview with the Kyiv Post, Fried discussed U.S. policy with Ukraine, the effectiveness of Western sanctions in ending Russia’s war against Ukraine, why Ukraine didn’t succeed as well as Poland after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and other topics in an hour-long telephone conversation.
Considered a hardliner against Kremlin aggression, Fried said he believes that sanctions have worked in deterring Russia, that the U.S. should supply Ukraine with defensive weapons and that it’s understandable that the U.S. Congress sought to stiffen and codify sanctions against Russia into law given suspicions about U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s praise for Russia.
Fried is also encouraged by Trump’s nomination of A. Wess Mitchell, president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis, to succeed Victoria Nuland as America’s top diplomat for Europe and Eurasia.
He also has high hopes that Kurt Volker, the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine with whom Fried worked for several years, can work with European allies in breaking the impasse in ending Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The following is an edited version of the interview:
Kyiv Post: How do we get Russia out of Crimea and the eastern Donbas?
Daniel Fried: “One of the best appointments that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has made is of Kurt Volker as special representative to Ukraine. Kurt and I worked together for many years, he was my deputy for seven years, at the National Security Council and at the State Department. If the Trump administration is serious about helping Ukrainians regain control of all of their country, you want someone who is credible and serious in the way of diplomacy.”
Fried said the new Russian sanctions bill passed into law by the United States keeps the pressure on Rusia and “will help give some weight to Kurt Volker’s insistence that Russia help implement Minsk.”
(The 2015 peace agreements reached in Minsk, Belarus, call for a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, an end to Russian support of separatists, the withdrawal of Russian weaponry and troops and the return of Ukraine’s eastern borders to Kyiv’s control, among other provisions, none of which the Kremlin has honored.)
KP: Why haven’t sanctions worked to end Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine, which has killed 10,000 Ukrainians since 2014 and dismembered the nation?
DF: “The sanctions worked in two ways and have not worked in a third way. They worked to limit Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The credit for that — stopping where they did — goes first with the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian military’s resistance. The sanctions helped because they symbolized the West’s solidarity with Ukraine and willingness to make Russia pay for the aggression. They had an influence in Russia’s decision not to push militarily further than they did. Second, they helped pressure Russia to agree to the Minsk framework. But third, they have not convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin to respect Minsk and he has not done so.”
KP: What is Putin waiting for?
DF: “From Russia’s perspective, Minsk gives us something, but not what we went to war for, which is to put an end to Ukraine’s European future. Under Minsk, Ukraine is still free and Donbas is free, even if Crimea is under Russian occupation. From their point of view, if Ukraine’s will to resist collapses, or Europe’s will, or the American will to resist Russia collapses, Russia could get much more than they could through Minsk. They’re waiting to see if the will to resist collapses. If all are going to stand firm; the odds of a settlement go up, which means the sanctions bill passed by Congress has the singular virtue of foreclosing this option. The president would be unable to unilaterally lift sanctions and break faith with Europe and Ukraine…I think Europe will actually hold firm… My sense is Ukraine will continue to fight for its integrity and fight to be a free country.”
KP: What about Crimea?
DF: “First things first. With Crimea, to be realistic, that will take a lot longer and be a lot harder. The sanctions on Crimea were designed to be separable from the sanctions imposed because of the war in the Donbas.”
KP: Since the Kremlin considers Crimea as part of the Russian Federation, how do you practically separate sanctions involving Russia and Crimea? Look at what happened with Siemens, the German industrial company that sold four gas turbines to Russia that ended up in Crimea.
DF: “The transfer of the turbines was a violation of the sanctions. Siemens has said so publicly. The European Union has added new sanctions to take account for that. I don’t think Siemens behaved as a responsible and sophisticated company would behave and needs to take steps to restore its credibility. Siemens clearly was at fault here.”
KP: What sanctions have been the most effective and least effective against Russia?
DF: “Our sanctions were of four types.
“1. Against individuals: Associates of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, Russian officials involved in the war and Putin cronies. The most interesting there are the sanctions against the cronies because they demonstrated to Russians that we could target people close to Putin and are willing to do so.
“2. Sectoral sanctions: Sanctions on certain oil extraction technology. The oil sanctions were less effective than we thought because oil prices dropped and the oil projects we went after were not profitable.
“3. Financial sanctions against large state banks. The financial sanctions were somewhat more impactful than we anticipated because Russian tax revenue dropped and state bank borrowing was restricted when they needed it.
“4. Military equipment and technology transfer. That will have a cumulative impact over time.
“Taken together, the sanctions are serious. They are not designed to create a crisis in the Russian economy but they do put significant pressure on the Russian economy and we leave ourselves escalatory headroom. The Trump administration’s sanctions maintenance list in June (expanding the number of targeted individuals and companies) is a strong list. Professionals in government were doing their jobs under the Trump administration as they were under the Obama administration.”
KP: Poland and Ukraine started out in similar positions after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now Poland’s economy is four times larger and it is a member of NATO and the European Union. Where did Ukraine go wrong?
DF: “I think we Americans and Europeans both underestimated the difficulty of post-Soviet transformation. We looked at Ukraine in 1991 and thought it would be like Poland. There’s a big difference between post-Soviet and post-communist. In Poland, a post-communist country, there was a living memory of pre-communist Poland, people in their 60s or 70s who remember a European Poland. Communism came and went in their lifetime. That memory was largely gone in Ukraine. There was some memory in western Ukraine. The post-Soviet transformation has turned out to be much more difficult in that Ukraine did not have the advantage of Poland — a large, organized opposition that existed for years, composed of tens of thousands of highly educated professionals and educated citizens. Ukraine’s dissidents were far less numerous, less organized, scattered. It’s not their fault. It took awhile for us to understand the differences.”
KP: How does the West construct a policy to get Ukraine’s ruling elites to put the national interests first, to combat corruption, establish rule of law and create strong democratic institutions?
DF: “That is a good question. U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch is skilled and knows the ground. I am more concerned by the pace of Ukraine’s domestic reforms. A strong Ukraine must have the strong institutions of a free state – to have a strong economy, the rule of law needs to be strong. If I could fix one thing in Ukraine, it would be domestic reforms. If Ukrainian reforms advance, the economy would grow. Then time would be working for and not against Ukraine.”
KP: Is it too late for Ukraine?
DF: “It is most certainly not too late. People who say that remind me of people in 1989 and 1991 who predicted that Poland would not succeed. They were wrong then. They’re wrong now. It’s possible (for Ukraine to succeed), just more difficult.”
KP: Is President Petro Poroshenko one of the good guys or bad guys?
DF: “He’s one of the leaders I don’t know. I just wish he would be able to lead his country in the way I think it ought to go. But it’s not for me to lecture.”
KP: Did U.S. President Barack Obama make a mistake by not visiting Ukraine?
DF: “I would have recommended that President Obama go to Kyiv and do what (ex-Vice President) Joe Biden used to do: Put one arm around their shoulder and one foot on their back (to push for reforms). I think President Obama, like President George W. Bush before him, wanted a better relationship with Russia but was not willing to sacrifice other countries on the altar of that better relationship. It was an honorable and honest policy.”
KP: Shouldn’t the West have been tougher on Putin much earlier, especially after his war against Georgia in 2008?
DF: “That’s a fair question. I think that in the Georgian war, the Bush administration was out of time and steam. Frankly, the West was divided. German Chancellor Angela Merkel didn’t think highly of (then-Georgian President Mikheil) Saakashvili.”
KP: Is the lesson for Ukraine that life outside of the European Union and NATO is very dangerous?
“I don’t want to advise Ukraine to give up its national aspirations to draw closer with the West and transatlantic community. Ukraine needs to work on all the things in its power – reforms as well as defending its country. The EU and NATO are not in a mood to encourage enlargement to Ukraine. That’s a fact. Ukraine doesn’t have to like it. But I would not counsel despair. Do what you can do in the historical moment you’re given and things may change. The 1990s were a golden decade (of NATO and EU expansion). Ukraine wasn’t there. But not all is lost.”
