Ukraine gets out

A New York Times editorial points to Ukraine for a story that's a lot less enticing to the U.S. administration than Viktor Yuschenko's electoral victory. Ukraine is the latest country to pull out of the 'coalition of the willing' - and President Leonid Kuchma has "formally ordered his generals" to start pulling his country's roughly 1,600 troops out of Iraq. States the Times: "That was not a surprise because Ukraine has been heading for the door for some time. Still, given that Ukraine has been much in the news and that its contingent was the fifth-largest in Iraq (after the United States, Britain, Italy and Poland), the exit is worth noting." Cynically, methinks, this explanation also provides a clever justification for why most of the U.S. news media will ignore this development, leaving Americans in the dark about just how shaky this "coalition" is becoming. But here's the Machiavellian part that really makes the heart sink, though:

It's the end of a cynical marriage of convenience. From the outset, there was an assumption that President Kuchma joined the coalition largely to buy slack from Washington over his notoriously corrupt rule. Then, in the recent brutal elections, the reformist and West-leaning Viktor Yushchenko, who defeated Mr. Kuchma's candidate, made pulling out of Iraq one of his issues. Mr. Kuchma, on the verge of leaving office, evidently saw no point in letting Mr. Yushchenko reap the plaudits from Ukrainians, who overwhelmingly oppose the war.

Ukraine's withdrawal punches a major and potentially fatal hole in the much-ballyhooed multinational division that Poland volunteered to lead in Iraq. Spain was the first to drop out, and Ukraine had the second-largest contingent after Poland itself. The coalition has also lost Hungary, the Philippines and Honduras, among others, while Poland itself, long regarded as second only to Britain in its fealty to the United States, is talking of cutting back. Several other countries intend to reduce their participation in the next few months.

I note the Times's use of the word "fealty" in relation to Poland and Britain. A widespread defintion for "fealty" is "the loyalty that citizens owe to their country (or subjects to their sovereign)." Makes you think about just which country, and whose sovereign, the Poles and Brits are really fighting for.