Ukraine crisis: Kissinger for ending confrontation, building bridges

As the biggest standoff since the cold war between the West and Russia over the Ukraine crisis continued, famous American statesman Henry Kissinger suggested the area should instead serve as a bridge between the two sides.

"Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West," Kissinger, who as secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 was the architect of US opening to China, wrote in a piece in the Washington Post.

"But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side's outpost against the other - it should function as a bridge between them," he wrote.

Kissinger's advice to Russia not "to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status" and to the West to "understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country," came amid a flurry of diplomatic activity.

Adopting a carrot and stick approach, US President Barack Obama Thursday made an hour-long telephone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin urging him to seek a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine. In his second call to Russia's president concerning Ukraine in less than a week, Obama stressed to Putin that his country's actions in Crimea were a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, the White House said in a statement.

He said there was a solution available that suited all parties, involving talks between Kiev and Moscow, international monitors in Ukraine and Russian forces returning to their bases.

For his part, President Putin said US-Russian "relations should not be sacrificed due to disagreements over individual, albeit extremely significant, international problems."

At the same time, Obama signed an executive order Thursday allowing the US government to impose a host of sanctions on both individuals and entities deemed to be violating Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The executive order is intended to "send a strong message that we intend to impose costs on Russia for this intervention," senior administration officials said in a conference call with reporters.

It will also give the US government "powerful and flexible tools" to target those who are believed to be violating international law, they said,

However, New York Times columnist Peter Baker suggested there was "No Easy Way Out of Ukraine Crisis."

In theory, Obama's "executive order could include everyone up to Putin," but as Baker noted "leaders in Europe, a region dependent on Russian natural gas and with far deeper economic ties to Russia, have expressed reluctance to go along with the toughest sanctions."

Another Times columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, wrote that while he supported "economic and diplomatic sanctions to punish Russia" the US needs "to remember that that little corner of the world is always going to mean more, much more, to Putin than to us, and we should refrain from making threats on which we're not going to deliver."

While "public discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation...the test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins," noted Kissinger advising "leaders of all sides should return to examining outcomes, not compete in posturing."

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)