The latest saga in a series of failed Washington-ideas over Transnistria is a plan to make Moldova democratic and prosperous in order to lure Transnistrians who then, the thinking goes, will discover a hitherto non-existing desire to join with Moldova.
This brand new Moldova 2.0 will be so attractive that no other conflict resolution strategy is required: The rush of eager Transnistrians petitioning for unification with Europe's soon-to-be prosperous beacon of light will presumably be unstoppable.

Throwing money at a problem which, at its heart, is not about money is a favorite pastime of us Americans. It is also stupid: Especially when the idea has already been tried before, between Moldova and Transnistria for sixteen years starting in 1924, and it failed.

A better option would be to consider the long-standing taboo on openly and honestly discussing independence for Transnistria. There are pros and cons to such an option, just as with most other foreign policy options.

We can not take advantage of the pros and diminish the cons before we face up to reality and engage the actual players on the ground based on their very real "de facto" sovereignty over the areas they control and the political support that their policies enjoy from their respective constituencies. But given today's geopolitical circumstances it is not realistic to expect an overnight reversal of State's commitment to a Moldova which includes Transnistria. Here, as in so many other conundrums that State finds itself drawn into by circumstances not of its own making, U.S. policy is set using a formula where political expediency is given preference over international law.

By insisting on a map of an independent Moldova which makes no rhyme or reason under any historical or ethnic analysis, we are creating enemies among a people who rightly expose our double standards. At the very least, someone like Robert Boehme, head of the Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus desk at the US State Department, owes the people of Transnistria an explanation for why - and on which legal arguments - he wants them to be ruled by an independent country that they have never been part of in the past, which they have no wish to become a part of, and which no one ever asked them if they wanted to be part of.

The era of bureaucrats drawings maps in faraway capitals, and forcing people to become part of new countries that they never wanted to be part of, should have ended with Hitler and Stalin and their ill-fated Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Otherwise, it is paramount upon Foggy Bottom to explain carefully to the people of Transnistria what sort of international law argument is used to defend a "territorial integrity" of a map that was created by Hitler and Stalin through a pact which Moldova itself has already, time after time, denounced as being completely illegal under international law.

Unfortunately, a U.S. policy change based on a realistic assessment of Transnistria's statehood claim under international law isn't really an option at this point. The best we can do is try to mitigate the downside which our painting-ourselves-into-a-corner insistence on the Moldova/Transnistria union has created among the majority of the population in Transnistria. The way to do that is with a well-designed strategy of communicating with the people whose independence-desire we hope would go away. It's called "public diplomacy" and the Bush Administration does a lousy job of it.

I know that "winning hearts and minds" sounds like leftist lunacy to some people. Here's the problem: there is no other way out of the current mess. We cannot kill half a million Transnistrians. We tried to starve them, by putting economic pressure on them and forcing them to give up their independence dream. This only had the opposite effect of steeling their resolve - as anyone familiar with America's own war of independence could have predicted. Today, we are trying a policy of throwing money at Moldova (and none to Transnistria) in the hopes that this will be a magic bullet.

The plan (if that is the right word) is to make Moldova prosperous and attractive, and at the same time withhold cash from Transnistria so it becomes clear to everyone there that they are being punished for having the temerity to dream of their own independent and sovereign country.

To the tune of $1,2 billion of funds, mostly from Washington, the lights will be burning a lot brighter in Moldova and, hopefully, or so its backers believe, not burn at all in Transnistria.

The only problem is that this stroke of genius has already been tried once before on the Dniester ... and it didn't work. In 1924, the Soviet Union created the Moldavian ASSR, a beach-head to tempt the Moldovans to join the Soviet Union. Choosing a deliberately misleading name (a more accurate name would have been "Ukrainian" or "Slavic", since Ukrainians and other Slavs made up the majority of the population in the new autonomous republic. It only had 172,000 Moldovans, which represented 30.3% of the population - less than today, where Transnistria has a Moldovan population of 31.9%).

This "Moldavian" ASSR didn't include an inch of Moldovan land, and Moldovans themselves were in a minority among Russians, Ukrainians and other Slavs. The capital was Tiraspol and the border - just like today - was the Dniester river.

The Soviet Union, although poor at the time, poured huge sums of money into the new border republic in an attempt to create the illusion of progress and prosperity. Cities facing the Dniester river - Rybnitsa, Dubossary, Tiraspol and Grigoriopol - got new housing for workers. Luxurious by the standards of the day, the worker housing was placed right on the river bank. Factories were constructed and special electrical lighting was put up with no other purpose than to show the Moldovans, on the other side of the river, that their brothers in the Soviet Union lived better. From 1924 until its disbandment in 1940, the lights burned brightly every night throughout the whole night. They were never turned off: Even in periods of economic trouble, the lights were constantly on - it was a political ploy, along with a strong propaganda radio station and pro-Soviet newspapers written in Romanian, created to tempt the Moldovans to join the Soviet Union.

They didn't take the bait. In the end, it took Stalin's troops and a military invasion to force Moldova to join with the MASSR in a new, expanded MSSR. The capital was moved from Tiraspol to Chisinau, and the whole experiment was only kept alive by the power of a gun. When the Soviet dictatorship crumbled, so did the forced and artificial union of Transnistria and Moldova.

But no one knew this in 1924. When the new ASSR was created, the purpose was explained in an article of Odessa Izvestia in 1924, in which a Russian politician by the name of Vadeev wrote that "all the oppressed Moldavians from Bessarabia look at the future Republic like at a lighthouse, which spreads the light of freedom and human dignity".

With a few word changes, this is the same policy now followed by the U.S. State Department: Throw money at Moldova, help prosperity and democracy flourish, and the oppressed Transnistrians (who by the way suffer constantly under a dictatorship with oppressive human rights violations, says Washington) will rush to join the Republic of Moldova ... spreading the light of freedom and human dignity, as it were.

It is a sad day on C Street when the best we can come up with for Moldova is a carbon-copy of a failed Soviet experiment from 1924.

There is nothing inherently anti-American, or even anti-Moldovan, in the culture, religion or mindset of Transnistria. They are united against Moldova only because Moldova still stubbornly refuses to recognize Transnistria's right to choose its own path forward. This is where America can help. But until we figure out the best way to do that, this conflict will not end. It will only get worse.

Also by John Moynihan:
» Memo to State: Face up to reality [1]
» The Fourth World: Invisible countries [2]
» Ending the Transdniester frozen conflict [3]
» Double standards over Kosovo [4]