Opinion
Lawrence Journal-World l LJWorld.com l Thursday, May 22, 2014
10A
Neutrality a valid choice in Ukraine
EDITORIALS
Good investment Restored state funding may be a vote of confidence in the Kansas Bioscience Authority’s new investment strategy.
G
ov. Sam Brownback’s decision to veto plans to transfer $5 million earmarked for early childhood programs into the Kansas Bioscience Authority’s budget has drawn praise from children’s advocates across the state. As it turns out, the veto not only was good news for childhood programs but also not-so-bad news for the KBA. According to news reports, KBA still will get its $5 million, but that money will come from state reserves rather than from the Kansas Endowment for Youth Fund, which was created with revenue from the state’s tobacco settlement. The even better news is that the $5 million is just a portion of the $34 million in state funding approved this year for the KBA. That’s about what KBA was receiving from the state for a number of years after its founding in 2004. However, funding for the agency created to promote the bioscience industry in Kansas had declined dramatically in recent years. KBA received only about $4 million in state funding for the current fiscal year. The increased funding approved for the next fiscal year appears to be a vote of confidence in the new leadership and new direction of the KBA. Duane Cantrell took over as KBA’s chief executive officer in November 2012 and recently was rewarded with $150,000 in bonuses by the group’s board of directors. The bonuses were justified, the board said, by Cantrell’s success in meeting goals related to repositioning the agency in response to state budget cuts. Cantrell examined KBA investments and de-committed $59 million to companies that weren’t hitting their development goals. The plan was to move the KBA toward a more market-based and self-sustaining future as a venture capital organization. Those efforts may have impressed state legislators. Taking more money from the state’s already strained reserves may not be desirable, but the additional $5 million is a good investment in the state’s bioscience efforts. The additional state funding approved for next year will shore up KBA operations and help it make more investments that hopefully will assure its continued operation and success after state tax support sunsets in 2019.
Washington — After months of war fever over Ukraine, perhaps the biggest surprise is that citizens there will be voting to choose a new government in elections that observers predict will be free and fair in most areas. This electoral pathway for Ukraine seemed unlikely a few weeks ago, given Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his covert campaign to destabilize the Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine. There were dire warnings of a new Cold War, and even of a ground war in Ukraine. The country seemed at risk of being torn apart. Putin appears, at this writing, to have decided that Russia’s interests are better served by waiting — for the nonaligned government he expects will emerge from Sunday’s elections — than from an invasion or some radical destabilization. The Russian leader may be ready to accept a neutral country, between East and West, where Russia’s historical interests are recognized. During the Cold War, such an outcome was known as “Finlandization.” If this Finland-like status is what Ukrainians support (and recent evidence suggests their new leaders may indeed choose this course) then it should be a welcome outcome for the West, too. Ukraine’s problems are internal; it needs ideological coherence more than territorial defense. It needs the breathing space that nonalignment can pro-
David Ignatius
davidignatius@washpost.com
“
Ukraine’s problems are internal; it needs ideological coherence more than territorial defense. It needs the breathing space that nonalignment can provide.” vide. The Ukrainian people can’t be barred from seeking membership in NATO or the European Union, but it’s unimaginable that either body would say yes, perhaps for decades. So Putin can breathe easier on that score. Maybe the elections will dull the self-flagellating domestic rhetoric in America that Putin’s menacing moves were somehow the fault of President Obama and his allegedly weak foreign policy. Obama has made mistakes, especially in the Middle East, but his Ukraine policy mostly has been steady and correct. He recognized that the U.S. had no military options and fashioned a strategy that, with German help, seems to have deterred Putin from further recklessness. If the election goes forward (with Putin maintaining his
current “wait and see” stance), Obama deserves credit for crisis policymaking of the sort recommended by the respected British strategist Lawrence Freedman. “The basic challenge of crisis management is to protect core interests while avoiding major war,” Freedman wrote in a March essay on the blog “War on the Rocks.” He argued, even then, that criticism of Obama’s allegedly weak stance was “overdone.” The case for “Finlandization” emerges in a monograph prepared recently by the State Department’s Office of the Historian. It argues that “Finnish foreign policy during the Cold War successfully preserved Finland’s territorial and economic sovereignty, through adherence to a careful policy of neutrality in foreign affairs.” Ukraine’s new government may pursue a similar nonalignment, judging from the leading candidate, billionaire oligarch Petro Poroshenko, who has pro-Western ties but also served in the Moscow-leaning government of deposed president Viktor Yanukovych. The State Department study also noted that nonalignment allowed Finland “to serve as a bridge between the Soviet bloc and the West.” Helsinki became a meeting ground for arms-control and human-rights talks that eventually transformed Eastern Europe. A similar bridging role for Ukraine would be welcome, as it would draw Russia west, away from an atavistic strategy of creating a Eurasian trade bloc to re-es-
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— David Ignatius is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.
OLD HOME TOWN
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From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for May 22, 1914: “The Hocker electric line will not be built to Lawrence years this summer. R. W. Hocker, ago president of the company, IN 1914 yesterday denied the rumor that they anticipated early work on the road. Mr. Hocker admits that attempts are being made to finance the project but declared that the plans are nowhere near completion. It looks now as if Lawrence would have to depend upon the Heim line which promises to come into Lawrence from the north side of the river. The Hocker people do not seem to be able to get the money to make the project go.” — Compiled by Sarah St. John
Read more Old Home Town at LJWorld. com/news/lawrence/history/old_home_ town.
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tablish Soviet-style economic hegemony. For all the war talk, Ukraine has really been a test of nonconventional forces and covert action rather than military intervention. Putin, the ex-KGB officer, launched a deniable “stealth” invasion of Crimea in February, using troops without insignia. He continued the pressure in eastern Ukraine by working with pro-Russian irregular militias, though their unruly behavior eventually seemed to worry even Putin. He may have threatened invasion but he never seemed eager to roll his tanks across an international border. What seems to have slowed Putin’s allies in Ukraine is similarly unconventional. It wasn’t Ukrainian government troops that restored order in eastern cities such as Donetsk and Mariupol. The army’s performance was middling, at best. Stability returned because of the deployment in at least five eastern cities of steelworkers and miners apparently dispatched by Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, who opposed a breakup of his country. Obama administration officials stress that this has to be Ukraine’s choice. If Ukrainians seek an accommodation with Moscow, it must be their desire for self-limitation, not a policy imposed by Washington or Berlin. The stabilizing factor here will be a Ukraine that makes its own decisions.
PUBLIC FORUM
Teamwork pays off To the editor: I wish to start by saying “congratulations” to the Oskaloosa High School Lady Bears on winning their Kansas state softball regional tournament in Marysville and earning a trip to the class 3A state championship playoffs. So far this season they are undefeated with a record of 22-0. I have been lucky enough to attend most of their games this season and have truly enjoyed watching this outstanding group of young ladies. I have witnessed them working as a group both on and off the field. Their support for each other has been phenomenal, from the starting nine, to the non-starting players, the coaches, parents and the fan base. Whether winning the games by 20 points or scoring the winning run in the seventh inning, they have always had the mindset of winners. I truly hope that this support for each other and their winning attitude not only follows them in the playoffs, but in life as well. Congratulation, Lady Bears, and let’s go bring home a big trophy. Tony Hickman, Eudora
Bikes, sidewalks To the editor: The Journal-World doesn’t especially like bicycles, judging from its May 19 editorial against the proposed funding for bike paths. It’s even less fond of the proposed sidewalk funding, barely mentioned in the editorial. Those attitudes are common among people who don’t walk or jog or bicycle much. Lawrence has good streets that can
get you any place in town by car with admirable speed, comfort, convenience and safety. We have an adequate bus system that can get you to some (not all) places, but you have to walk to and from the buses. If you have a significant disability you can get most places on the T, safely but with considerable inconvenience. What you cannot do in Lawrence is get very far by foot, bicycle or wheelchair without seriously compromising safety and comfort. That outcome is dictated by the city budget. It dedicates some $12 million a year for roads, parking and transit, but not one cent specifically for sidewalks or bikes. The Journal-World says that’s OK because: l Spending more money won’t affect attitudes or bike usage, l “we” have other spending priorities l the timing is bad. No other reasons were given. This situation may be acceptable to some 60,000 Lawrencians who have cars. However it seriously degrades quality of life for most of the 30,000 Lawrencians who don’t. Those people are disproportionately children, old people, poor people, students, handicapped people — and the retirees our economic developers want to attract to Lawrence. But Journal-World editors have other priorities. I’m guessing they mostly drive to work. David Burress, Lawrence
es to society” deserves our serious consideration — particularly in the area of “producing society’s technical advances.” David will appreciate concrete examples. 1. In about 1650, Abraham Wood departed Jamestown, Va., to explore the interior of what would become the United States. He returned several years later. His westward trek had taken him to a great river, probably the Mississippi. He said a squirrel could run from Virginia to that river in the great forest and never touch the ground. Thanks to “technical advances,” those great forests were replaced by great smokestacks that belched out tons of various carcinogenic gases that harm health and environment. 2. Virginia and Maryland prospered for the next 125 years through “significant advances to society.” In 1775, before our birth as a nation, old Indian trader James Adair published “The History of the American Indians” in London. In his advice to British statesmen, he wrote: “As the lands in Virginia and Maryland are greatly exhausted by raising that impoverishing weed, tobacco, Great Britain may expect to feel a gradual decay in that valuable branch of trade … unless new colonies are settled on the Mississippi.” Westward ho. Hello Indians, hello Civil War — all under the banner of “manifest destiny.” I count it money well spent if academia can educate those born yesterday with a knowledge of fact-based details of the history of those who brought them forth. Thus armed, I To the editor: think they will find a way to make this David Penny and his May 19 obser- a better place. vations on academia’s lack of evidence George Taylor, for providing “any significant advancLawrence
Lessons of history