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Notes -
"It's not that war has made patriots out of corrupt oligarchs. There is a war because a surprising number of corrupt oligarchs were already nationalists even before 2014."
This irrelevant to my post about economical prospects, nationalist corrupt oligarchs are still corrupt oligarchs that prevent any meaningful raising of quality of life. "
"Between a confluence of crisis letting the government act, unique access and leverage by westerners pressing reforms, and domestic political support for the both, Ukraine has been undergoing major legal and structural shakeups no previous president of the last decades has matched."
This is a good point and you can say that maybe western oversight in relation to war will fix things generally. I personally don't believe because western influence while helping to win wars generally doesn`t fix corruption, but this can be special case because of the closeness of Ukraine to Europe, so there only way to test this is wait a couple of years.
"To the front, to salaries, to infrastructure and item purchases, and many other things needed in a war."
I know why would you think that I am talking about recent military help by US but I not. This text could have been written and posted before the war with almost no changes. I'm talking aid and loans that were given before and didn't help Ukraine reach at least Belarus level. Military aid mostly goes to the front because it is question of survival to the corrupt elites(and many civilians but they aren`t people who decide) and most of them are nationalists.
"Appealing to the 90s, when Ukraine's elite and public were very indifferent about European association (and the European Union did not exist), and not 2014"
Do you disagree with the factual statement talks of the euro integration started in the 90s? In my opinion this is objectively true and this is why I written it like I did. I don't say that ascendancy to EU is impossible in the next 20 years. I just showing of countries like Montenegro that widespread support isn`t enough to join quickly. If war related campaigns will succesfully pressure European countries into accepting Ukraine with all of its barrage of problems than it will be great but I don't think this is likely.
"The question is not 'why', but rather 'why are not you aware of the following?'"
You can list similar benefits for any country bordering the EU problem along this pros there are cons, some them not so obvious.
"To start, being poor is not the issue for Ukraine"
But why is it poorer than Belarus - this is the issue. And actually it very much the problem for people who live there and that's why they are trying to escape it, sometimes going through the occupied territories because borders of their own country are closed for half of population.
"The Europeans engage in their own corruption a plenty"
For some reason corruption perceptiveness and other indexes don`t show it. Corruption in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus is staggering, you can't talk about it lightly. You at least should agree that your view of EU is quite unusual.
This is entirely relevant, because nationalist corrupt oligarchs have priorities greater than solely self-enrichment. Hence the qualifier.
You didn't talk about any specific sort or amount of aid. Raising military aid as an example demonstrates the shortcoming.
Are you? Because you're not actually identifying any specific aid packages, by any specific amount, with any targetted goal that they failed to meet. You're continuing to conflate different types and targets of aid, and inventing a metric they failed by. This is basic assuming the conclusion.
Even the metric you're probably referring to- GDP per capita- doesn't actually speak to corruption or failure of aid. Belarus is a country of about 10 million people, whose economy is a not particularly impressive but still established manufacturing economy in value-adding industry. Ukraine is a country of about 40 million, but far more of a farming and resource-extraction based economy, much further down on the value chain. The fact that Belarus has a GDP per capita of about $8.5k USD to Ukraine's $5k USD is neither particular surprising.
Nor does it indicate a failure of aid, because- again- you're not identifying any actual aid amounts give, or what their target effects are. Raising to $5k GDP/capita could be an amazing result, or a normal result, or a terrible result- you're not indicating. Raising GDP per capita may not be the goal of aid at all- the aid could be going to other purposes, like developing civil society institutions, or developing state capacity, or other things for which raising average citizen salaries is neither the point or the goal.
Sure. I disagree it's the relevant facts to assessing or characterizing the situation that you are describing, and thus an unfit argument. If you are almost two decades out of date of relevant context, you are two decades out of date.
The nature, characteristics, level of social and government commitment, and reciprocal interest in Ukrainian association with the EU is entirely different between now and the 90s. Making a like-to-like argument of the conversations of the 90s to today is a false comparison, even if individual facts are true.
To restate- you're not giving relevant facts, because the relevant fact isn't 'widespread support,' but a collection of dynamics of which 'widespread support' is just one. You did not make the argument on the basis of broader contexts.
Of course I can, but the topic of your post isn't other countries bordering the EU, it is Ukraine, and you were the one making on argument on the reasons, or lack of reasons, for the Europeans to consider it.
If you intend to make an effort post on the pros and cons of Ukraine, I expect you to be able to competently speak to the pros.
While I am always pleased to see a motte and bailey alive in the wild, this is not the issue you were basing your argument on before, and is not actually an obstacle to joining the European Union. It's also appealing to a selective metric- while GDP per capita is poorer than Belarus, GDP is richer, and this is without considering other factors like the ongoing consequence of the multi-year war.
Of course it is. It's also coming from someone unusually well read, and unusually interested in understanding how states interact. It doesn't change that "treason never prospers, for if it prospers none doth call it treason" has been an insight older than most of the modern states of the EU.
The reason that corruption perceptiveness doesn't register for most forms of corruption is because they aren't perceived as corruption by the societies doing them. It's 'just a way of business,' or cultural tradition, or some other euphism. What makes corruption distinct is that it is treated as a pejorative... but if it's treated as a euphism, or a beneficit thing, it's categorically different. That's why it's a corruption perception index, and not a patronage network index, even though patronage networks are one of the most classic forms of corruption.
In the European Union, one of the various systemic patronage network on the continent is the European Cohesion Fund. Between 2021-2027, it is allocated a 48 billion euro budget. The description of the fund, in its own words is: The Cohesion Fund provides support to EU Member States with a gross national income per capita below 90% (EU-27 average) to strengthen the economic, social and territorial cohesion of the EU. It supports investments through dedicated national or regional programmes.
This is not some secretive conspiracy. It's proudly announced in the European Commission website, including a nifty map graphic tool to look up individual projects to see just how much is being spent in your country or region:
https://commission.europa.eu/funding-tenders/find-funding/eu-funding-programmes/cohesion-fund-cf_en#budget-and-performance
It American political terms, this is pork barrel projects. In systemic power structure terms, this is a 8-billion-euro-a-year patronage network system in which richer countries pay the poorer countries for deference and continued alignment with the policy preferences of the EU's leading (donor) powers... and, as demonstrated in 2022, punish the poorer dissenters by withholding the patronage until compliance improves, when Hungary and Poland had their cohesion funds suspended (or threatened to be suspended). This is power of the purse politics.
In outsider terms, this is also a pretty basic form of monetary influence influence over elected leaders. Legitimately elected politicians are variously being bribed to support policies their electorates may nor, or being fiscally punished to coerce them into changing policies that do have electorate support. This is being done across levels of society to create parallel influence structures outside of electorate control, as these pressures can be used to target national leaders (nationally-distributed funds) but also bypass national leaders to pressure select regions or targeted dependencies (regional funds) to apply political effects in exchange for cash. These funds are broadly going into efforts that are not, and would not be, economically viable without these grants, developing dependencies by special interest groups hooked on maintaining, and expanding, these artificial funding stream and do so by applying influence from the inside of the power politics in favor of external monetary interests.
But it's not going to be perceived as corruption to most Europeans because this is accepted business, and the petty nuances of political policy changes in exchange for money aren't bad if you use the right words. It's about Fortifying Democracy, or Countering Far-Right Governments, or Restoring Rule of Law. It's Good Things, and thus cannot be corruption because Corruption is Bad.
But it's still a patronage network aimed at creating political effects in favor of the patrons. Corruption is a pejorative, but at its heart most corruption at a social level is various forms of patronage networks and groups making deals with eachother. Corruption is just what people call these dynamics when they don't approve of them- it's just a 'who, whom' instead of actual opposition to patronage networks trying to influence politics.
It can be relevant to political discussion, it is not to discussion about Ukranian economy.
The point in the post that you replying served only to answer sentiment that bright future for Ukraine is guarantied because of American and European aid. I don't need to delve in the specifics, I just need to cite the existance of aid before and that this didn't help economical development of Ukraine. Maybe its givers didn't have this as a goal, but this is one of the many explanations of ukrainian poverty that I decided to not list to limit size of the post.
You can propose this as an explanation but is wrong and obviously wrong to any person that lived or lives in those countries, if you don`t could have at least looked at the Wikipedia's page for both nations' economies and than find that in both nations majority of gpd claims service sector(Belarus 51% Ukraine 60%) and agricultural sector being minor differs slightly between countries(Belarus 8% Ukraine 12%). If we decide to compare Ukraine and Belarus we can say that Ukraine has modern service based economy while Belarus still has large industry sector. But this can't be explanation to anything as can't be alternative reality Ukraine where it farming and resource-extraction based economy, they aren't categorically poor.
No, I'm not trying to show pros and cons, only the reasons why I'm not as optimistic about Ukraine's future as an average twitter user(Ukrainian, Russian or American). Pros are already assumed in the context of discussion and I replying to them by showing economic data and trends that show that these benefits didn't help Ukraine before.
You misunderstood me, not poverty, not gpd per capita, not giant shadow economy are issues that are in my opinion are an obstacle to join EU but the cause of these issues, cause that I don't name because nor I nor experts in the field are sure about it.
Thank you for expressing your point and I will not argue with it because while I disagree with it, I'm not well read on this to try to defend my position on EU.
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The practical effect of the Cohesion Fund thus far has been channeling vast amounts of €€€ to the same far-right governments, though, arguably helping them maintain the economic growth that has, in the end, underpinned their rule (and also served as an avenue of corruption, ie. Orban's childhood friends getting real paid and so on). Of course, one can see the (heretofore ineffective) threat to end that money as EU pulling leash... but another way of seeing it is that it really is bad when Orban sends my tax euros to some guy's companies because he can, and it's good if that sort of a thing is ended even if Orban's show of picking conspicuous fights with EU is effective for making it look to some like he's just being punished for loving his country too much.
I don't disagree that you can have that perspective, but this gets back to my point that Orban's sin isn't running a corrupt patronage network, but in running a corrupt patronage network in the wrong way. The patronage network itself is not the problem- the European Union system wouldn't care if Orban was sending your tax euros to some guy's companies if Orban was singing the right tune, just as the American system doesn't really care when the family members of leading politicians end up as well compensated members of corporate or charity boards, or retired from government directly into media gigs of the Fourth Estate supposedly watching them during time in government.
At the end of the day, the European Union, and the governments of Europe that compose it, are groups of people grouped by political alliances and mutually beneficial arrangements. 'I scratch your back and you scratch mine' is one of the oldest quid pro quos there is, and it only sounds nefarious if you call it quid pro quo as opposed to 'compromise' or 'horse trading' or 'coalition building.' Different words can be used to re-characterize the same pushes and pulls of power.
There's actually an argument I've read before that corruption- at least in these more modest forms of mutual benefit- is a key part of building and maintain broad social groups, which would fall apart into zero-sum infighting without the common largess. This does seem to be a deliberate point of the European Project- a sort of bribing everyone to go along and get along- and is one reason the Polish and Hungary 'rebellions' are so politically disruptive. It's not about the money itself, but the rejection of a social contract that used money to mitigate the issues / autonomy of minor states, even as the European Project focused on the highest priority issue of controlling the risk of conflict between the most power (and richest donors), Germany and France (and, to an extent, UK). The EU, as a project designed to keep peace on the continent, has no higher priority than keeping Germany and France at peace, and certainly not beneficit corruption to keep others happy enough.
Where it falls apart, however, is when people start stigmatizing the natural, or the common, and losing sight of what their euphemisms actually decide. When people talk about Ukraine as a corrupt system, it's not a corrupt system in the sense of 'the cartels have intimidated the government into turning a blind eye,' or 'the police chief is always drunk and just does what the occupying army says.' It's important to understand that there are different types of corruption, the types that are relevant in different ways, and how different they are from your own euphisms and accepted practices before you point them out as the Obvious Reasons This Won't Work.
(Which you didn't, but I'm just rambling.)
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