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Main Conclusions and Recommendations
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Main Conclusions and Recommendations
The Strategic Priorities of Ukrainian National Security and Foreign Policy for the Future
The strategic tasks and goals of Ukrainian foreign policy represent a direct outgrowth of basic national interests and geopolitical priorities.
The basic national interest, geopolitical priority and strategic task of the course of Ukrainian foreign policy is its survival and development as a sovereign independent state in the modern world. It is determined by the maintenance of Ukraine's national values, comprehensive protection over its economic and political sovereignty and over its own socio-cultural identity. Today this basic national interest is becoming generally accepted by the ruling é lite as well as by public opinion. Its realization is the main precondition for ensuring prosperity, security, and socio-cultural progress for all citizens of Ukraine regardless of their ethnic, denominational or racial belonging.
The consolidation of Ukrainian state sovereignty in foreign policy demonstrates Ukraine's real return to the world's community of developed nations as a full-fledged and active geopolitical subject.
In particular, this provides for the formation and active implementation of independent foreign policy, based on national interests and priorities, as well as resolute counteraction to uncontrolled foreign economic, political, informational and cultural penetration into Ukrainian territory. The formation of any kind of critical dependence by Ukraine on other states is unacceptable. This entails the prevention by all means possible of the expansionist intentions of any world and regional powers to implement their domination over our country.
The preservation and strengthening of state sovereignty does not mean self-imposed isolation from the outside world. To the contrary, it preconditions the comprehensive and dynamic development of relations with other countries according to the generally accepted norms of international law and a native understanding of national interests based on mutually beneficial cooperation and security.
Vitally important priorities of Ukrainian geopolitical strategy include:
1. The revival of a European identity; comprehensive integration into European and Euro-Atlantic political and social structures; the strengthening of the economic and political potential, and of Ukraine's " capability" in a wide understanding of this term, including intensification of internal development, participation in European security structures; the conclusion of bilateral and multilateral treaties, along with the receipt of corresponding assurances and security guarantees etc.; the priority of an orientation toward integration into the EU and the WEU; the enhancement of a distinctive partnership with NATO, including as a first phase a course toward joining the political structures of this organization, as a cornerstone of European security. Ukrainian integration into European structures has to proceed with a comprehensive program of measures directed to assist an entry into European socio-cultural space, an openness of the state not only to economic investments but also to those of a cultural and informational nature, and foresees the purposeful formation of universal Euro-Atlantic values and social and cultural orientations in the public consciousness.
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2. The policy of active neutrality. The most rational and effective Ukrainian political line concerning the actualization of its own national interests should be a step-by-step implementation of the strategy of " active neutrality" . In contradistinction to the official policy of " self proclaimed neutrality" (mainly passive by nature) this strategy provides for a status similar to the Swedish one in its relations with European security structures. In this case formally neutral Ukraine gradually and systematically increases the level of its cooperation with NATO in the framework of EAPC, PfP and its status of a distinctive partnership (Ukraine-NATO Charter).
It is important for Ukraine to activate diplomatic efforts in order to foster reasonable perceptions in the West that the absence of an opportunity to directly join NATO can bring significant political damage, in owr opinion, to Ukraine and can undermine the reforms that are taking place here. In our opinion, in the process of accepting new members (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic), it would be rational for the North Atlantic Alliance to announce further opportunities for expansion, to clearly indicate possible candidates of the " second wave". The " second wave" could consist of new Central European states that clearly or implicitly express their will to become full members of the Alliance.
It is necessary to promote fuller analyses in NATO countries of the difficulties and hardships that remain in the way of Central European states' (Ukraine included) possibilities for membership in the Alliance. These actions must be based on the thesis that these countries separately will not be able to solve the numerous problems that lie along this path. Thus, NATO states could take preventive measures by developing a specific strategic course for each potential member-state of the Alliance.
3. The consolidation and development of a strategic partnership with the USA. Today the USA is the only superpower in the world that is able to exert direct and indirect multilateral influence over Ukraine. The USA is the main factor in and guarantor of Ukrainian integration into Euro-Atlantic structures. Strategic partnership with the USA has to become priority number one of the foreign policy of Ukraine. The urgency of this Trans-Atlantic priority will not only not contradict our general course toward advanced regional policy but will also promote it, due to the extraordinary possibilities and role of the USA. The level and intensity of Ukrainian cooperation with the USA and West-European states is an integral indicator of a presence or an absence of a political will in Ukraine to continue the policy of European integration, to conduct economic and political reforms, and to instill democratic norms and principles into Ukrainian life.
4. The support and development of equal and mutually beneficial relations with the Russian Federation (RF). Attempts to view relations with RF in a bipolar manner (either as friendship, political and economic cooperation or as confrontation and competition) are fundamentally wrong. It is more accurate to regard them as a complicated multidimensional complex that has its spheres of cooperation and collaboration and its spheres of competition or even direct confrontation (not at all necessarily military).
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Ukraine's policies concerning the Russian Federation should be developed keeping in mind these spheres of cooperation and confrontation in the most diverse of areas of international relations. These are the policies of the interrelations of two equal sovereign countries, which on the basis of the norms of international law are attempting, as possibilities allow, to broaden their spheres of cooperation and co-production, and to narrow their spheres of confrontation, knowing that the latter will in some form always remain.
Both countries, of course, will continue to conduct their own domestic and foreign policies, will independently choose neutral or non-bloc status, will enter economic, political, and military unions, will create alliances, blocs, and unions, doing so, however, on the basis of their own national interests and national security.
5. Strong regional policy includes a course toward alternative leadership in the former USSR and active cooperation with those states that regard Ukraine as a reliable equal partner free from superpower and hegemonic ambitions. The strengthening of economic, political, military and cultural cooperation with new independent states (especially with Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Moldova, whose interests in general are not confrontational but complimentary to Ukraine's) will promote mutually beneficial trade. In the future it will also bring into being a new situation in Ukraine's security sphere, as a certain counterbalance to Russian telurocracy inside the post-soviet space will be created.
In the conditions where a new system of European security has not yet been created the formation of one more community in Eurasian space based on a European model is, from the point of view of national interest, irrational. The closer linkage of Ukraine to a new " strengthened" model of the CIS will mean a renouncing of independent European policy and in time any independence in foreign political and economic affairs. A competitive struggle for geostrategic and geoeconomic influences will undoubtedly appear between the two systems, in which Ukraine will play a peripheral role. It is important for Ukraine to chart courses that will lead to a gradual transformation of the entire Euroasian geopolitical area from the Atlantic to the Pacific into a civilized community of sovereign states free from the domination of a single Center. Ukraine is interested in becoming part of both the high technology European market as well as of the expansive Oriental markets, and particularly in finding an outlet to the Asian-Pacific region via the RF and Central Asia.
6. The strengthening and consolidation of special relations with strategically important neighbors. Of primary concern are Poland, Turkey, the Baltic states, Central and South European states, and the Transcaucases. It is important for Ukraine to promote the formation of a " stability belt" and regional security structures from the Baltic and Black Seas to the Caspian Sea. Close cooperation and collaboration with Central European and Baltic-Black Sea states in the economic realm as well as in the political and security realms has to be regarded as an important transitional stage of Ukrainian integration into Europe.
As a successor of part of the interests, goals and problems of the former USSR in the Caspian-Black Sea region and in the Balkans, Ukraine has to play a significant role in organizing a new system of order in these regions. Both participation in conflict management in this region, and the formation of models of strategic partnership with GUAM states are vitally important for Ukraine.
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7. The formation of a strategic Polish - Ukrainian - Turkish triangle with the possible participation of other strategically important countries. This geopolitical configuration can form the basis for regional stability in the Baltic-Black Sea belt and in CE in general. Flanked in a wing-like manner by two NATO states and feeling the support of Brussels and Washington, Ukraine could play a real role as a key link in a new framework of European security.
8. Active participation in the creation of European and Eurasian transportation corridors. Today the creation and use of new transportation and energy routes along the " Baltic - Black Sea - Middle East" axis as well as along the " Western Europe - Ukraine - Transcaucases - Central Asia - China" axis emerges as one of the most important issues of state economic security.
The issues concerning the diversification of sources of energy and strategic raw materials supply have to be regarded as vitally important questions of national security and placed under strict government control. Further delays in the solution of these problems have to be deemed impermissible. The accelerated development of oil-gas transportation corridors via Ukraine as well as via other states of the Black Sea region (Azerbaijan, Turkey, Turkmenistan) and the creation of conditions for their safe functioning should be regarded as one of the priorities of Ukrainian foreign policy and foreign economic strategy in the 21st century.
9. The support and enlargement of the economic (including military-economic) and political presence of Ukraine in Middle East, Central and South Asian, and APR states. Ukraine's integration into the system of the international diversification of labor is one of the most important factors in overcoming the current crisis and in the subsequent development of the Ukrainian economy. Autarchy, the practical isolation of the Ukrainian economy from international markets of goods, services, capital and technologies remains to be a serious barrier. Ukraine has to struggle for " new economic niches" in world markets. Cooperation with Ukraine could be more attractive to those states that due to various reasons could become geopolitical competitors of the USA, the West in general, or of the RF, as Ukraine does not have a long trail of imperialistic and geopolitical ambitions.
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