Ukraine and NATO
Ukraine’s joint letter to NATO signed by the president, Rada speaker and prime minister represents a watershed in Ukraine’s long declared goal of integration into trans-Atlantic and European structures. Ukraine finally has a clear foreign policy goal for the country that has clear implications for domestic reform.
The clear goal of seeking NATO membership breaks with the previous vacuous multi-vector foreign policy. As head of the NATO Information office in Kyiv in the late 1990s it was then impossible for us to know what Ukraine wanted which made the task of running an effective information campaign an impossible task to successfully accomplish.
Following the joint letter, unofficial discussions are taking place in Washington on whether to offer Ukraine a Membership Action Plan (MAP) at NATO’s April summit in Bucharest. The indications look positive that Ukraine will receive a MAP.
In effect, the clock in Ukraine-NATO relations has returned to 2006 when the US and NATO expected an orange coalition to be established following the elections, President Bush was to visit Kyiv in June of that year and NATO was to offer Ukraine a MAP at its November 2006 summit in Riga.
The unfulfilled NATO-Ukraine 2006 timetable has been carried into 2008 following the successful establishment of an orange coalition and Tymoshenko government. President Bush may visit Kyiv in April on his way to the NATO summit. Unlike his predecessor, Bill Clinton, Bush has never visited Ukraine during his eight years in office.
The Party of Regions emotionally reacted to the joint letter asking for NATO to consider inviting Ukraine into a MAP. This is both surprising and not surprising. The Party of Regions has been caught out by its duplicity on foreign policy since it entered Kyiv politics in 2002. Yanukovych likes to argue that his Party of Regions adopts consistent policies. Well, we can check the veracity of this claim by watching their attitude to NATO.
In the same year that Viktor Yanukovych first became prime minister (2002) Ukraine officially declared its intention to seek NATO membership. The Yanukovych government, in power until the end of 2004, and the Party of Regions never rejected the official goal of NATO membership.
The Yanukovych government sent Ukrainian troops to Iraq in 2003. The US was grateful to the Ukrainian government for sending the largest military contingent from any non-NATO member country. Ukrainian troops were brought home by President Yushchenko in late 2005.
It was also the first Yanukovych government that put Ukraine on the path to a NATO MAP. The Yanukovych government implemented the first two annual NATO-Ukraine Action Plans in 2003-2004.
Introduced at the 2002 Prague NATO summit these NATO-Ukraine Action Plans are unique to Ukraine. The Action Plans cover military, security and political-economic reforms and therefore could, without too much effort, be converted into a Ukraine-NATO (Membership) Action Plan.
The addition of the word “Membership” to “Action Plan” would be significant in showing that Ukraine was moving towards NATO membership. Then US Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer remembered, “We told Ukrainian officials in early 2003 that the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan agreed at the November 2002 Prague summit was 90-95 percent of a MAP. The main difference was in the title.”
Action Plan or Membership Action Plan, what’s the difference? The issue is one of pure symantics as the tasks asked of Ukraine are the same in both.
When Ukraine eventually joins NATO the then Ukrainian government should put up monuments in central Kyiv to Yanukovych and Kuchma in gratitude for having launched Ukraine’s drive to NATO in 2002-2004. Molodtsi!
Dr. Taras Kuzio is a Research Associate and former Visiting Professor, Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto. furniture Bulgariawww.taraskuzio.net
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Comments
Countries join NATO for different reasons that have more to do with national interest and national security, than pleasing the average Ukrainian.
The three most important reasons are:
1. NATO is the first step on the path to EU membership
2. NATO membership preserves a country’s security. Ukraine would never have to be concerned about Russia again.
3. NATO membership would assist in reforming, modernising and democratising Ukraine’s silovi struktury.
Russia has been hostile top each of the two rounds of NATO enlargement in 1999 and 2004. It is not surprising if it is hostile to NATO enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia.
Taras,
NATO membership may, indeed, be a step to joining the EU, but - given Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Malta, Sweden and Finland - it can’t be said to be a necessary one.
Are you suggesting that the Balitc States are no longer concerned about Russia, or that Russia was quite exercised about their joining NATO?
Furthermore, I’m not sure of the extent to which NATO membership encourages reform in the siloviki of the member states, as there have been serious problems with those of Poland and Latvia.
Thank you for your reply; you have earned from me nothing but respect. You certainly must have a love for Ukraine and its people to devote so much energy to its study. But, allow me to be a bit critical for a moment.
It seems to me that Ukrainians here feel that relations with Russia should be more pragmatic and joining NATO, which is, after all, a military organization will only antagonize those relations. The, if only indirect, involvement of NATO in Iraq, a questionable war, so it seems according to some, and the desire to place of missiles in nearby Eastern European countries doesn’t help the image of the West and its military organization – opinions from Moscow aren’t readily dismissed here. It seems that Ukrainians know their history well and in the past conflicts with Russia usually occurred on Ukrainian soil, suffered by Ukrainians far more than in Russia by Russians. And, considering the continuing problems in Afghanistan and Iraq, which was under UN sanctions before the start of the war, what would occur in the case of a conflict with a more formidable adversary, and what if it becomes nuclear, who will suffer the most? More diplomacy and less military would help, so it seems.
Curious how Ukrainians see a distinction between joining NATO and joining EU, although such division isn’t appreciated so much in the West, and how the western media saw a divide between eastern and western Ukraine during the Orange Revolution, whereas it seems to me most Ukrainians, with whom I spoke, didn’t see such a clear-cut division, despite whatever cultural and linguistic differences there actually are.
When you write that “NATO membership would assist in reforming, modernising and democratising Ukraine’s silovi struktury” you are speaking of its military power structure, aren’t you? Would we want an outside organization to impose its will on Ukrainian organizations? However rudimentary it was, but nonetheless in a real way Ukraine had one of the first democratic organizations in the modern world in the their Zaporizhian Sich, thought by some, and I feel it reflects in the everyday culture of the average Ukrainian.
The capital-ambitious, power-hungry oligarchs is what many feel is the problem here whatever their ties may be with their nearby countries. If you would substitute corporation for oligarch in the last sentence, what some believe are Ukraine’s problems aren’t really much difference from those in the US, I feel.
Hello Taras,
The Nato issue and Tymoshenko’s populism:
According to the Mirror Weekly, the most influential ukrainian analytic periodical, the visit of the new ukrainian PM, Yulia Tymoshenko to Brussel has had the same impact on the Ukraine-Nato relationship as that of the visit of Victor Yanukovich in autumn 2006.
Indeed, during her 2-day stay at Brussel, Tymoshenko has explicitly shown that getting the MP and gainina a full-membership in Nato is not a priority for her the political force she represents. During a question-session in the walls of the European Parliament, Tymoshenko, instead of emphasizing the importance of getting the MP, limited her ambitions to stay that she is supporting and intensive dialogue between Ukraine and Nato. She also let understand that the issue of joining Nato being rather controversial and impopular in Ukraine, her political force is not ready to provide a strong support for the Nato campaign in Ukraine, mainly because of the fear to loose some potential electoral support in the eastern and soutern regions of Ukraine.
She has aslo done everything possible to avoid meeting with the General Secretary of Nato.
As a result, Ukraine has shown another sign of political ambivalence and has further decreased its chances of becoming Nato member, not to say to obtain the MP on the oncoming summit of Nato at Bucharest.
http://www.dt.ua/1000/1550/61933/
Looking forward to reading Taras’ comment on this matter,
Serhiyko
1. NATO is the first step on the path to EU membership
This is a very false and misleading statement. Yes Ukraine should have the opportunity to join the EU BUT NO membership is not a prerequisite and is not the first step toward EU membership. Ukraine should remain independent and continue to work towards EU integration. NATO is very much a outdated organization dominated by the perceived interests of the United States who use NATO as an alternative to the United Nations. It would be i Europe’s interest if hit formed a security organization that was truly European free from USA and Canadian influence. NATO, if anything, has destabilized world security and placed a threat on Europe. The fact that the USA has unilaterally sought to install missile basis i Europe without NATO’s consent demonstrates the level of contempt the USA has for the alliance. Imagine the USA’s response if a foreign country negotiation to install a missile base in say Cuba.
Then there is the specious argument that the MAP is not membership. It’s a bit like saying that a person who participated i a terrorist training camp is not a terrorist.
The USA gave a undertaking that it would not expand NATO into former Eastern European countries. A undertaking that it clearly has breached. Of course NATO expansion and the role played by the USA is seen as a threat to Russia, i the same way that the USA saw the establishment of a millissime base in Cuba in the 1960’s as a threat to its security. America appears to very much be seeking to re-unite a cold war.
Russia has made valid points in relation to NATO’s involvement in Kosovo ad the precedent that has now been set for separatist regions seeking greater autonomy.
Ukraine is better off remaining outside teh formal membership of the NATO alliance. It can play a much more strategic role as an independent state without generating a perceived threat ad instability of the region. If Ukraine continues to pursue the policy of NATO membership without the express will of its people there is a real risk that the situation in the region will only intensify and become more unstable as Russia reacts to defend its national interests. and of course if it provokes a response form Russia the USA will be quick to deflect criticism and claim that it is an aggressive Russia seeking expansion whilst ignoring its role of aggression and world domiation.
NATO must not be allowed to usurp the authority or role of the United Nations.
Could you specifically articulate what benefit it would be to the average Ukrainian, if Ukraine joins NATO considering the antagonism displayed to such a notion by their immediate northern neighbor(s)? I live in Western Ukraine and few here, actually none I’ve talked to, has shown any positive feelings about Ukraine entering NATO. Are Ukrainians just uneducated about NATO as Yushchenko said a while back? Or, are they, in fact, more in tune about current history of Europe and NATO and more aware where a conflict would occur, if such an event would occur, between NATO and Ukraine’s northern neighbors?