| 摘要 | Even as President Vladimir Putin is liquidating Russia’s federal system, Russia and the OSCE’s American-led Moldova Mission persist with a project to appoint Russia as main “guarantor” — with troops in place — of a new Moldova-Transdniester “federation.” The project’s proponents in Moscow, at OSCE and at the State Department had reckoned that Moldova’s Communist President Vladimir Voronin, a product of Soviet-Moldovan nomenklatura, would cooperate with this scheme out of respect for Russia.
But after much hesitation, many blunders and much soul-searching, President Voronin and his team have decided to reject the dismantling of the Moldovan state, and are appealing to the West for support. They call for internationalizing the ongoing Russian “peacekeeping” operation, ostracizing Transdniester’s foreign-installed dictatorship, seeking a political settlement that would consolidate a functional, European-oriented Moldova, and moving the negotiations from the Russian-controlled format into an international one with full-fledged U.S. and EU participation. Sotto voce, Moldova is asking the West to ask Russia to withdraw its troops from Moldova. In Moldova until now, only the anti-communist, pro-Western civil-society groups were espousing these views. Now, the Communist leadership has embraced the ideas.
This week, Mr. Voronin told the news media – and his Foreign Affairs Minister told the U.N. General Assembly — that the proposed “federalization” is off the table, and that Moldova calls on the international community to be on guard against forms of conflict-resolution that would create dysfunctional pseudo-states.
The question before Washington, Brussels and European chancelleries has all along been and remains this: Who will determine the political and security order in Moldova, along a 450-kilometer border of NATO and the EU ? “Federalization” as proposed would create a Russian protectorate and military exclave along that border. Thus, Mr. Voronin’s new policy offers the West a strategic opportunity to assist in creating along its southeastern border a friendly, functional pro-European Moldovan state, instead of creating a Russian militarized and criminalized outpost.
This is also an opportunity for the West to advance democracy, instead of colluding in its demise. Moldova, for all its Soviet-bequeathed backwardness and poverty, has demonstrated greater democratic promise than all other ex-Soviet republics. Alone among these, Moldova held internationally-certified free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections from 1991 to date, in which all incumbent governments and presidents lost. Moldova never evolved an authoritarian presidential system (although the 2001 Communist landslide made that a possibility). It never experienced politically-motivated crimes or other forms of violence; and it remains an example of ethnic tolerance.
The proposed “federalization” would legalize Transdniester’s red-brown dictatorship in that region, grant it a share of power in the rest of Moldova, and place this dispensation under mainly Russian guarantees, with Russian troops entrenched. This would kill Moldova’s democratic promise and its European prospects.
For two months now, Western diplomacy has turned a deaf ear to Moldova’s appeals. This is not because the country’s leadership happens to be communist now. The anti-communist opposition’s calls for a democratic, European solution have also been ignored by Western chancelleries. U.S. diplomats and the European Union — along with Russia, Ukraine and the Transdniester leaders — are urging Moldova to return to the negotiating format where the basis for discussions is the Russian-inspired “federalization” draft. It is a format where Russia and its auxiliaries have four seats, Moldova one, and the West none.
In the OSCE’s Permanent Council, Moldova is being told from all sides to return to that format. To be sure, the U.S. and EU display moral indignation over the total suppression of the Latin script in Transdniester; but propose no real countermeasures, ignore the recent forcible takeover of Moldovan railways in Transdniester, and continue treating these events mainly as unwelcome interference with the “federalization” negotiations.
Moldova embarked on this new policy in July when the assault on the last remaining Latin-script schools in Transdniester torpedoed the “federalization” negotiations. This was the trigger, not the cause of Moldova’s decision. Mr. Voronin touched on the causes in a series of media interviews, including one with Radio Free Europe last week when he said: “Russian peacekeeping troops stand behind the Transdniester regime…they provide cover for it, instead of facilitating political settlement. Negotiations in the existing format have long proven to be a dead end; Transdniester, Russia, and Ukraine are aiming to freeze the situation indefinitely.” Mr. Voronin is calling for multinational peacekeeping troops; and an internationally representative format, instead of the 12-year old trap of the Russian-controlled format. He also calls for a UE-OSCE border-monitoring mission to stop Transdniester’s unlawful trade with Ukraine and through Ukraine.
It is a risky but statesmanlike policy for this president to pursue. Mr. Voronin, now completing his first presidential term and heading into elections, has come full circle since taking office in 2001 with deeply ingrained Russocentric views and no training in statesmanship. As president, the novel exposure to the West and shattering experience of dealing with Russia increasingly offset his lifetime’s legacy of Soviet political socialization.
During his first three years in office, Mr. Voronin zigzagged between Russia and the West, apparently torn between the old and the new impulses, while the latter were gradually gaining the upper hand. From 2002 on, Western policies constantly reinforced the old, worst impulses by pushing Mr. Voronin into Russia’s arms through “federalization” with Transdniester under Russian “guarantees.” Moscow’s unilateral Kozak Memorandum of 2003 was worse in degree, not in essence, than the joint Russian-Western offer.
At this stage, Western and international officials handling this issue seem fixated on the Russia-first approach that Voronin now seems to have outgrown. His current stance amounts to an opportunity for Washington and Brussels to reconsider their policies. They need to devise a solution consistent with Euro-Atlantic security, democracy, and a Western-oriented Moldova on the West’s new border. In recent years, however, Washington and Brussels have seemed oblivious to those interests; and, since July, indifferent to that opportunity. |
