Remember Seinfeld? One of the sitcom's most obnoxious characters is Kramer, the neighbor who thinks everyone likes him, who always intrudes and always has an opinion on everything ... even when no one asked or even care.

In the sitcom, Kramer is known for his lack of tact and for always knowing how to fix the world. In his own mind, he is always right and everyone else always wrong. Fortunately, it is all just in good fun and it doesn't affect the lives of real people. It is on TV, it is fiction, and you can turn it off any time to want and go on with your own business.

Now, however, a real-life Kramer is telling next-door neighbors Moldova and Transdniester how they have to sort out their differences. And just like the sitcom dufus, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Kramer claims to be everyone's friend but at the same time refuses to listen to the opinions of at least one of the affected populations.

Visiting Chisinau, Washington's very own Kramer stated that the United States is a friend of the people of Transdniester and that the United States has no problems whatsoever with the people of Transdniester.

This is news to many in Tiraspol who, rightly or wrongly, blame U.S. intransigence for at least a large part of Transdniester's delay in being recognized as an independent, sovereign state.
Washington repeatedly makes claims that support Moldova's territorial integrity, yet Moldova is not a successor state to the Moldavian SSR. First, because the SSR wasn't ever a country in the legal sense. Secondly, because the Republic of Moldova declared independence unilaterally at a time when the Soviet Union still existed; in the process violating the territorial integrity of an existing country which at the time was a signatory to the Helsinki Final Act protecting the inviolability of the borders of its signatories - all of them sovereign states whose borders were established well before they signed on to the treaty together.

Moldova's territorial claim to Transdniester fails a thorough examination under international law. Real countries from the Cold War - such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia - have since split up. Their many component parts have subsequently been diplomatically recognized by the international community as new and separately independent states. In light of history, it makes no sense for the United States to insist on defending a bizarre Stalin-creation that wasn't even a country to begin with.

"The only way to have a friend is to be one," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. This is worth remembering the next time Washington blindly digs up the copy-paste stock phrases about Moldova's so-called territorial integrity over a territory which never was part of Moldova in the past, and which Moldova has not exercised sovereignty over at any time since its foundation as a country in 1991.

A friend is someone who goes with you in the good times and bad times, and for Trandsniester the U.S. pledge of friendship would mean more if it was accompanied by a willingness to actually listen to the wishes and desires of the people of Transdniester, and their aspirations for how they want to be allowed to govern themselves in freedom and democracy in the future.

"The language of friendship is not words but meanings," said Henry David Thoreau. What does Washington's claim to friendship mean if it does not take the will of the people into account? The people of Transdniester overwhelmingly voted for independence and a rejection of Moldova. A true friend is not obliged to agree, but he would at least respect his friend's right to have an opinion.

The basis for peace - and friendship - is that we respect the opinions of others. And when we do so, my opinion is not more right than yours. Both are equally valid. Just as Moldova was allowed to unilaterally declare independence, Transdniester must have the same right under equal conditions. The two can develop side by side as equals, without one imposing itself on the other and forcing it to follow a path which the people already decided is not the path that they want to take.

A quote by Elisabeth Foley sums it up: "The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart."

When will Moldova and Transdniester be able to retain a friendship of mutual respect and as equals? Only when they both realize that their future is not tied to a marriage which one side does not want. This is how Britain and Ireland live side by side today, after a bloody independence struggle which is now thankfully buried in the past. The same universal truth repeated itself with Singapore and Malaysia, with Bangladesh and Pakistan, and with many many more countries which have found that they can not live together under the same roof, but that they can live and prosper peacefully side by side. As good neighbors, each will come to realize that geography forced them to be friends but not to live under the same government. Equality and mutual respect are the only attitudes that can erase resentment and pave the way for strong and lasting peace, security and friendship in the region.

An American statesman, former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, knew this.
"You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality," said Woodrow Wilson. Some good old Wilsonian statecraft is now sorely needed in the current State Department where a change in Transdniester strategy is urgently overdue.

Also by Michael Garner:
» Winning hearts and minds in Transdniester [1]
» Echoes from Kosovo reach Pridnestrovie, bringing new hope to status talks [2]
» Rethinking America's Transdniester policy [3]
» Right to self-determination vs. inviolability of borders [4]
» No precedents in the unique case of Transdniester [5]