Ukraine has troubles enough of its own, but democracy is on the ropes in several other European countries, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Under President Trump, the United States has been at best indifferent to the challenges to the fledgling democracies or, at worst, even supportive of the rising autocrats, such as Hungary's Viktor Orbán.
Concerns about Ukraine's well-being and its geopolitical importance in confronting Vladimir Putin's Russia were at the heart of the damning testimony that the National Security Council's top Ukraine expert Alexander Vindman gave last week [Oct. 29] to the House impeachment inquiry. Vindman, a Harvard-trained lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, confirmed in his six-page statement that Trump asked Zelensky to open politically charged investigations into Hunter Biden's role in the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma in exchange for Trump's releasing the held-up delivery of U.S.-made antitank Javelin missiles.
The Ukrainian-born Vindman, a refugee from the Soviet Union era, told the House committees conducting the impeachment inquiry that Trump's role in the call left him "worried about the implications for the U.S. government's support of Ukraine." An investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, he realized, "would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained."
Vindman, who was awarded a Purple Heart for wounds suffered from an IED in Iraq, arrived at the Capitol for his closed-door deposition in full military uniform, with four rows of commendation-signifying ribbons plainly visible. He explained to the assembled lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike, that he worried that reduced U.S. support for Ukraine "would . . . undermine U.S. national security."
Zelensky's "landslide" election as president in late April, Vindman explained, was an auspicious sign for Ukraine's political stability on the strength of his winning a majority in every region of the country. Zelensky's party won another landslide victory in parliamentary elections on July 21, prompting what was supposed to be Trump's congratulatory phone call four days later.
For Trump, the withheld military aid was a bargaining chip to be used in shaking down Zelensky after he had taken office just two months earlier. For Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines, however, Trump's tactic was a psychological jolt that undermined confidence in U.S. support. "It was very unpleasant to hear this," one officer remarked in a story by the New York Times reporter Andrew E. Kramer.
Trump also used Zelensky's hope for an invitation to the White House as a second inducement to bend the Ukrainian leader to his will. With no promise from Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader was denied a White House visit and given instead the sop of a meeting at the United Nations in New York City in late September. Sitting alongside Trump, Zelensky did the best he could to preserve his dignity and political standing at home by claiming, with lapdog obedience, that he had not felt pressured by Trump's phone call.
Trump's seeming indifference to Ukraine's precarious political conditions is of a piece with his attitude toward the challenges to the other fledgling democracies that emerged from Soviet domination after 1989. "The Trump administration has moved away from human rights issues," according to Susan Corke, director of the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington. "It's pretty clear that they don't care about internal human rights issues."
Corke was among a dozen experts at a recent Freedom House event in Washington [October 17] who fretted about the setbacks for democracy in Europe and the Trump administration's indifference. Trump "has no interest in promoting democracy," according to Timothy Garton Ash, a leading commentator on European affairs as a professor of European studies at the University of Oxford.
The Obama administration was critical of autocratic tendencies in such countries as Hungary and Poland, but Trump decided instead to "warm up relations" with the anti-democrats. Hungary's autocratic Orbán got the White House visit that Zelensky was denied. In the meantime, the administration has failed to spend money that Congress has appropriated to counteract Russia's efforts to disrupt democratization in its former satellite nations.
Corke calls for providing more funds to civil society groups, including independent media, to strengthen democratic impulses in the former Iron Curtain countries and to speak out against anti-democratic moves. "Where countries are actively flouting their democracy and human rights commitments," she explains, "there have to be repercussions by publicly holding them accountable and diplomatically raising those issues."
Vindman closed his testimony with a vision of the United States and Ukraine as "strategic partners, working together to realize the shared vision of a stable, prosperous, and democratic Ukraine that is integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community." Trump's vision, sadly, was different, but his shameless shakedown appears to have backfired thanks to the backlash not just from Vindman but from others in the administration shocked to discover that Trump cared more about his political fortunes than Ukraine's.
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