Guest post by Dr. Benjamin L. Schmitt
Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University
Former European Energy Security Advisor, U.S. Department of State
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Center for European Policy Analysis, Washington
The New Europe Center, a Ukraine-based think tank, asked six American experts to comment on the implications of the U.S. Presidential election for Ukraine. Commentary included that of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and Stanford fellow Steven Pifer, which can be found on the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation webpage. Harvard’s contribution came from former U.S. State Department official and current Harvard Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Benjamin L. Schmitt. It has been published on European Pravda in Ukrainian and in Russian, and the full paper can be found on the New Europe Center website.
Note: These are the views of the author and may not represent those of the Institute.
Since the emergence of an independent Ukraine in 1991, the United States and Ukraine have developed a strategic partnership that has been vital to the national security of both nations. The events of the past decade have especially underscored the importance of the Washington-Kyiv relationship as a bulwark against Russian aggression along NATO’s Eastern Flank. This strategic reality will hold regardless of whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump assumes the U.S. Presidency on January 20, 2021.
Ukraine’s security cooperation with the United States and Europe’s liberal democratic states has enabled it to retain its sovereign status (however precariously) in the face of Russia’s long-term campaign to undermine Ukraine’s stability – a campaign marked by the illegal annexation of Crimea, aggression in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine, and persistent military, economic, and geopolitical pressure. For Washington, support of Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations remains paramount to Transatlantic national security interests, rooted in a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace.
Ukrainian national security leaders have proven themselves as invaluable partners to the United States and other European countries in coping with Russia’s hybrid malign activities: cyber, information, and energy warfare tactics; as well as election interference. The Ukrainians have longstanding, real-world experience of responding to these Russian actions. The lessons learned and shared across the West by Ukrainian leaders and experts have been central to the development of comprehensive Transatlantic strategies for advancing democratic resilience. The Kremlin’s recent reckless actions against both domestic political opposition leaders and Western democratic norms suggest that the partnership between the United States and Ukraine will only grow in importance over the next four years.
In this context, can we expect that the foreign policy and national security posture of the United States toward Ukraine will change dramatically depending on the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election? If recent history is any guide, the likeliest answer is “no.” Ukraine has received a high-level of bipartisan support from both chambers of Congress over the past decade, and this backing across a variety of policy areas has been reflected in the largely continuous policy actions taken by both the Obama and Trump administrations. For example, under the Obama administration, the U.S. Government quickly ramped-up its support of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression. The Trump administration continued to support Ukraine, even giving its approval of lethal defensive arms sales to Ukraine in late-2017. In response to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and aggression in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine, the Obama administration led the coordination of Transatlantic sanctions designations against the Russian Federation, which have also been continued by officials leading the U.S. Departments of the Treasury and State under the Trump administration. We can expect both a future Biden administration and a continued Trump administration to maintain diplomatic engagement aimed at pressing for increasing sanctions actions to deter further Russian aggressive behavior in Ukraine and beyond.
In support of Ukraine’s energy sovereignty, the Obama administration coordinated the vital reverse flows of natural gas volumes to supply Ukraine from the EU in the face of cutoffs by Gazprom. At the same time the Obama administration was heavily involved in working with European Union counterparts in support of broader energy infrastructure diversification development across Eastern Europe. The Trump administration has continued with this policy. Furthermore, both the Obama and Trump administrations have been vocal opponents of the Kremlin-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline aimed at ending Russian gas transit to Europe via Ukraine, which would undermine Kyiv’s economic and strategic security interests. Nord Stream 2 supporters have attempted to paint this opposition and the 2020 U.S. National Defense Authorization Act sanctions that thus far have been successful at stopping the Kremlin pipeline from completion as a policy stemming from President Trump himself. By attempting to paint U.S. opposition to Nord Stream 2 as a polarizing ‘Trump-led’ issue, they may hope to erode support for the policy among Congressional Democrats, as well as among project opponents across Europe that have concerns with Mr. Trump. It’s a “guilt-by-association” tactic, as President Trump is deeply unpopular in many European countries. In fact, however, opposition to Nord Stream 2 and support for broad, technology-calibrated sanctions to stop the project enjoys bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. There is no reason to doubt that this support will remain regardless of the outcome of the U.S. elections. Notably, Vice President Biden himself, in an August 2016 speech in Stockholm, called Nord Stream 2 a “bad deal for Europe.”
The greatest disparity that we can expect from the two leaders is really in their personal commitment and rhetorical support for Ukrainian political stability and sovereignty. On this score, President Trump has demonstrated an abysmal record. Mr. Trump has displayed little interest in standing up to Putin by condemning his misdeeds in Ukraine and across the West more broadly. A second Trump administration would likely extend this trend, perhaps making harmful concessions to the Kremlin regarding Ukraine that would be impossible due to political constraints in Trump’s first term. Instead, Mr. Trump actively solicited support from Ukrainian President Zelensky to open a politically-motivated investigation aimed at harming Mr. Biden – which led to Trump’s impeachment in late 2019. More recently, Trump and close personal associates, including former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, have actively spread disinformation narratives advanced by pro-Russian Member of the Ukrainian Rada Andrii Derkach, on whom Trump’s own Treasury Department imposed sanctions for Russia-linked election interference. In terms of personal support for Ukrainian national security, President Trump himself has modeled behavior that has been destabilizing for Ukraine, and repeatedly threatened to erode essential bipartisan support for it.
By great contrast, Vice President Biden himself has been a staunch supporter of Ukrainian sovereignty, in both word and deed. As Vice President, Mr. Biden was placed in charge of Ukraine policy, and was viewed across the international community as a champion of supporting Ukrainian territorial integrity against Russian aggression, while working with leaders across the European Union and multiple international financial institutions to fight corruption in Ukraine and thus support its own domestic democratic resilience. Mr. Biden’s personal empathy and support for Ukraine’s young, pro-reform leaders following the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity was perhaps no better captured than in his historic December 2015 address to the Rada in which he hailed the present as “Ukraine’s moment,” calling on Ukrainian leaders to “seize the opportunity [and] build a better future for the people of Ukraine.” More broadly, since leaving government in 2016, Vice President Biden has repeatedly spoken out in support of Ukraine’s national security interests and against Vladimir Putin’s hybrid aggression against the Transatlantic community.
So while we can be assured that official U.S. political support for a strong and free Ukraine will continue under either a Biden or Trump Administration post 2020, the support and attention Ukraine receives from the President himself is likely to be the biggest difference that Ukrainian leadership can expect to encounter over the next four years. In either case, it will remain paramount that U.S. and Ukrainian diplomats and national security officials at all levels continue their work toward positive strategic cooperation as we proceed into the new decade. Our mutual success and security depend on it.
Benjamin Schmitt is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Project Development Scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). From 2015-2019 he served as European Energy Security Advisor in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Energy Resources, where he also has served as the IEEE Department of State Science and Technology Policy Fellow. Schmitt has provided expert European energy security commentary for both print and television media, including most recentlyThe New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and Deutsche Welle, and has been a guest on CEPA’s Power Vertical podcast. Schmitt is also the 2019 Amicus Poloniae Award laureate, a recognition by the Government of the Republic of Poland for outstanding efforts to promote development of cooperation between the Republic of Poland and the United States of America, and has received both Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards from the U.S. Department of State.