Ukraine and European Security

The demise of the Warsaw Pact, the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia, and the end of communist rule in virtually the whole of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have drastically altered the security context in Europe. No longer, for example, do two hostile blocs confront each other over an ideological divide. The proliferation of independent states in the eastern portions of the continent has created many new actors there with varied experiences and with a firm desire to chart their own courses in international affairs. Moreover, Western political and economic ideas have penetrated widely within these areas and have formed the basis for expanded and complex interaction across the old divide.

Europe has historically been a source of both instability and conflict. The two most destructive, prolonged, and geographically extended wars of this century began in the center of Europe. The post-World War II peace in Europe was bought only at the price of the continuous threat of a possible third, even more destructive war. Many of the causes of friction between peoples in Europe were not addressed during the period of stasis in the Cold War, when Europe was divided between the two superpower adversaries.

The United States (US) has been engaged continuously in European security affairs since the early 1940s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt skirted US neutrality laws to provide military aid to Great Britain, and more openly after Pearl Harbor, when Roosevelt overruled those calling for an Asia-first strategy to make defeat of Nazi Germany America’s primary war objective. After World War II, the US remained engaged in European affairs, although that it would do so was not a foregone conclusion. In 1945–46, US troops were rapidly withdrawn from the continent and demobilized, and there was strong isolationist sentiment in the Congress and the public.¹

For the several decades of the Cold War, Europe was the main arena of global confrontation. Such a situation produced a clear political, ideological, and military division of the continent and dependence of European security on the superpowers. At the same time, West European integration and the development of comprehensive transatlantic interdependence influenced both the global and European balances of power and the outcome of East-West competition.

At first glance, the answer to the question of what strategies Europe should employ to deal with the security issues that it will confront over the next ten years seems obvious. Europe must be politically united, economically wealthy, and militarily mighty to be able to face these security issues. This apparent simplicity, however, quickly leads to complexity.

The focus of the policy of the United States (US) during the Cold War was on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a military organization, and the US committed a substantial portion of its forces to that task. But the security needs of the post-Cold War era dictate that the focus now shift to a more comprehensive view of European security. NATO, to be sure, should continue as the basis on which the US pursues its fundamental or vital security interests. However, the US also has an interest both in helping to develop within NATO other activities that contribute to security, in a wider sense of the term than prevailed during the Cold War, and in providing leadership to broaden the traditional approach of the US and its European allies to organizations outside yet complementary to NATO that reinforce stability on the continent.

With the end of the Cold War, Europe has entered the age of common security. The logic of bipolar deterrence had presumed a community of risk between East and West and hence encouraged a degree of shared prudence, but once Europe began to emerge ‘whole and free’ in the early 1990s, it could contemplate developing multilateral regional institutions to reflect its new East-West unity and to nurture a true security community commensurate with it.

As NATO moved toward a decision in July 1997 to enlarge eastward, Russia sought at first to prevent any enlargement and then to bargain over its conditions. One of the attempted approaches to stopping it — as well as a chip in the bargaining process — was a nuclear weapons free zone (NWFZ) in Central and Eastern Europe.

Since gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine has firmly established itself as an actor in international politics. The country has succeeded in developing relations with all of its immediate neighbors, including Russia. Moreover, it has made evident since 1996 that it seeks ultimately to integrate itself fully into Western economic and security structures. As of the late 1990s, a strategic partnership with the United States (US) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is far more attractive to President Leonid Kuchma than one with Moscow. The West treats Kyiv as an equal partner and since the mid-1990s has increased its efforts to stabilize the country’s economy, while Russia continues to regard Kyiv as a junior partner that should accept Moscow’s dominant role in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). However, Ukraine still has a long way to go to meet the criteria laid down for complete integration into NATO and the European Union (EU), for the political and economic reforms carried out by the Ukrainian leadership to date fall short of the targets for real integration into the West.

The structure of international relations is shaped these days by two opposing tendencies that manifest themselves on both the global and regional levels. The first is disintegration and decentralization of the totalitarian system that existed in Eastern Europe and Asia in Cold War times. As a result of this tendency, a number of multi-ethnic states of the former socialist camp instantly fell apart, and many new states, mostly mono-ethnic, emerged in the place of each of them. This change has brought immense and very fast changes in the map of Eurasia, and recent events in the Caucasus and former Yugoslavia indicate that the outlines of this new map have not yet been completed.

When we contemplate Ukraine’s search for ways to Europe, we need to answer whether integration on a European scale or regionalization will provide a more effective security policy. The processes of constructing an all-European security structure and intensive regionalization are taking place simultaneously. At the very least, we ought to address several issues: (1) Which regional processes do not hinder the all-European process? (2) Which of them obstruct the creation of an effective all-European security system? (3) Will existing all-European or potential all-European institutions be able to cope with negative events (destructive conflicts) within regions, and what changes in these institutions should be made to ensure that even if they do not raise the level of security in the future, they will at least not degrade it? (4) What role will Ukraine play on a regional scale and in the political decisions concerning all-European problems?

The disintegration of the Soviet Union — an absolutely unavoidable consequence of the previous functioning of the totalitarian system and the compulsory imposition of an overarching community — radically changed the situation in the world, creating a new complex of problems. Although the decades of fierce system and interstate opposition between the West and the East were seemingly being replaced finally by a stable period without acute collisions and cold war, the victorious West encountered a multitude of new threats to its own and international security.

The Black Sea basin, though an enclosed, relatively small region, retains major importance for European security in the late 1990s, but the situation there has altered significantly since the late 1980s. Military-political changes in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s diminished the traditionally global dimensions of the Soviet and, prospectively, the Russian naval presence in the Black and Mediterranean Seas. The length of the Russian Federation’s Black Sea coastline has shrunk threefold. Up to 37 per cent of the former Soviet Union’s ship-repairing capabilities lies on the territory of Ukraine (particularly at Nikolaev, Kherson, Kyiv, and Kerch). At the same time, the Black Sea has become the sole outlet to the world’s oceans for an independent Ukraine.

After obtaining its independence, Ukraine, like other post-Soviet states, has faced the problem of its geopolitical orientation. This issue is the hardest and most significant for any state. It is of particular significance for Ukraine as a country that lies at the watershed of two civilizations: Western and Eastern. Unquestionably, Ukraine views its historical path of development as that of a European state and relates itself to European integration. However, Ukraine comes from the Eurasian empire that was first called the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. Therefore, Ukraine’s European future will depend not only on how fast it can adapt to European structures but also on how well it can use the potential created by its old links with Russia and the other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Revolutionary changes in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989–91 ended the postwar Yalta system, as well as the bipolar division of Europe into rival political, economic, and military blocs. By late 1990, the European political and security landscape had been drastically altered. Free elections had taken place in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe (for example, Poland on 4 June 1989, the German Democratic Republic on 18 March 1990, Hungary on 25 March 1990, Yugoslavia on 22 April 1990, Czechoslovakia on 9 June 1990, Bulgaria on 10 June 1990). Several nations of Central and Eastern Europe, including the USSR, had established diplomatic relations with NATO (for example, the USSR and Hungary on 18 July 1990, Poland on 8 August 1990, Romania on 23 October 1990). The Communist Party had relinquished its monopoly on power or was banned in many Central and East European countries. Germany had been reunified (3 October 1990). The Soviet government had stated its readiness to remove all troops from Eastern Europe (11 February 1990). By July 1991 the Warsaw Pact was dismantled, and on 21 December 1991 the USSR was dissolved.

Ukraine is one of the new independent states that emerged onto the international scene after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the appearance of this new state with a population of 52 million people, with a territory larger than France or Germany, with coal, iron, and manganese ore, rare metals, and the most fertile soil in Europe, and with a powerful (according to world standards) military-industrial complex was one of the most significant geopolitical events since the Yalta and Potsdam conferences in 1945.¹

Since the end of the Cold War, the European security agenda has undergone some basic changes. Overly optimistic feelings were eventually replaced by rather pessimistic sentiments, for instead of an anticipated ‘peace dividend’, we have witnessed some new types of insecurity. Not just the general public but policymakers as well were taken by surprise, though foresighted, prepare-for-worse forecasts were widespread during the period when the Cold War was vanishing. Thus, the task of creating a new European security architecture has become central to defining the future of the European continent.

The pattern of commonalties and differences in perspectives that emerges from the preceding pages is complex. In some instances, a major divide separates North American and West European analysts from Ukrainian analysts, although there are at times minor disagreements on one side or the other of that divide. In other cases, the cleavages cut across national and regional lines. This final chapter will point up the key aspects of the pattern and assess their implications.