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 élite 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.

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).

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.

7. The formation of a strategic Polish - Ukrainian - Turkish trianglewith 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.

Theoretical Backgrounds

The optimization of state building as well as of current transformation processes in Ukraine demands the formation of a clear vision of the role and place of Ukraine in the contemporary world. This vision together with consistent analyses of the dynamics of Ukraine's interaction with the international environment could create the basis for a resolute geopolitical strategy for Ukraine's future.

Today, the problems of the formation and implementation of this national strategy, the exact definition of geopolitical priorities and of vital national interests, and the problems of stimulating the awareness of the political élite to the Ukrainian role and place in the global geopolitical realm are becoming core imperatives and decisive factors in Ukraine's historical and political future.

Geopolitics is traditionally regarded to be the discipline that deals with the spacial-geographical aspects of international relations and with the problems of external political expansion by means of power (first of all, by military means). Nevertheless, today the necessity for the development of a new geopolitics, free from the complex of geographical determinism, has become obvious. In this broadened understanding geopolitics can be defined as the focused activity of the subject of international relations in the context of the totality of external and internal factors that allows this subject to exert control over territory with the aim of realizing its own vital interests. The ability of the state to utilize the available advantages of material and non material (power and non-power) factors to pursue a definite political goal is a precondition for its effectiveness in the foreign arena.

On the other hand, the new geopolitics underlines the importance of internal factors in the process of the formation of state foreign policy, as the concentration of resources and efforts that are necessary to achieve goals in interstate relations can be found directly in this sphere. In other words, the effective functioning of all public institutions and mechanisms results in the state's competitiveness in its environment. This is why geopolitics deals with the problem of the "conversion" of the state's internal potential (primarily in the economic, technological, and informational spheres) into its external potential.
In geopolitics, the refusal to dominate in terms of power and geography leads to certain changes in the treatment of the concept of "national security". The new geopolitics tends to regard national security not only as the level of the protection of the person, of society, or of the state from definite threats or as the absence of threats to generally accepted public values, but also as a system of the maximization of interactions between perceived threats and the resources that society has to counter them. Because threats to society always exist, and the level of protection from these threats never reaches its maximum, national security represents a dynamic means of pursuing and supporting the balance between real and potential threats on the one hand, and the subject's ability to counteract them on the other.

One of the factors that undermines the ability of the state to neutralize threats to its national security is an increase in the interdependency of states upon each other and their openness to external influences. One of the main challenges to the state is that it is no longer the monopolist (and sometimes not even the main player) within its own territory. State influence is becoming increasingly narrowed, corrected, neglected by the actions of other states, international organizations and corporations, non-governmental bodies, informal groupings (pressure groups, lobbies etc.), organized criminal groups and so on.

The growing complexity of the modern state's social structures causes the non-identity of economic and political powers, and of the economic and political structures of society. The tendency to encourage the dispersal of power leads on the one hand to the formation of a system of different élite groups that vie for influence in their specific area of activity. On the other hand, the ruling élite becomes more and more heterogeneous. The centers and the groups of influence within this élite compete with each other, attempting to widen their spheres of interest and to enhance their own positions within the structures of official power.

Something similar happens in the system of interstate relations: the influence of separate states or of international institutions/corporations on the internal policy of foreign countries increases proportionally to the weakening positions of local ruling institutions.

States that are ideologically, institutionally and economically weak suffer from double pressure, because their power and influence are being eroded and distorted before even having been formed. On account of this it can be asserted that the conflict between the need "to develop the state" and the compelled necessity "to level the state" becomes the core challenge to the national security of these states. The continuing development of this conflict can take an undesired direction: a state is not able utilize the technological, economic, sociological and cultural advantages of globalization, instead it absorbs all of its negative features.

They include the degradation of state power, the anomalous promotion of non-governmental political and economic sources of influence, the development of technological backwardness into strategic backwardness, the erosion of national identity.

In this way, the openness that could potentially foster the receptance of new ideas and technologies, and interdependence as a potential tool in obtaining a rightful place in interstate relations turn into vulnerability, and a threat to the protection and independence of the state.

The strengthening of the connections between political, economic and social subjects both inside the country and in the international arena has a fundamental influence on the process of the determination and realization of the state's national interests. Today the classical conception according to which the state, like a single player, defines its own interests and follows them in international policy does not seem to be working. The state is not a homogeneous formation: not only separate political, social and regional alignments, but also separate institutions of State machinery carry out their own policies and proclaim their own interests that only conditionally can be grouped together under the generalized concept of "the national interest".

On the other hand, the development of a relatively stable, non-contradictory and self coordinated system of national interests, priorities and goals, and the strengthening of their consolidation in the public consciousness is the decisive task of the national élite in the process of state creation. Moreover, in a situation where the generally accepted national idea remains in a formative state, while the national mentality is split among numerous dimensions and parameters - ecological, political, territorial, ethnic, social, religious etc., a self coordinated complex of national interests, priorities, and goals could promote the consolidation of society around mutually generally accepted, existential values such as "survival", "prosperity", "equality", "freedom", "development", "justice", which are understandable and acceptable to any person.

National interests and correlated values and goals have to form the basis of any sustainable integrative strategy of national security, while the legislative and executive branches of government have to ensure its effective implementation.

Taking into account all of the above, the basic theoretical premises of the present research could be defined in the following way:

1.A clear definition and consolidation in the public consciousness of basic geopolitical priorities and national interests is one of the most important preconditions for the development of an effective external and internal political strategy for the future. Unfortunately these interests and priorities not only have not been consolidated in the national Ukrainian consciousness, but have not even been adequately developed and defined on the state level.

As J. F. Kennedy justly accentuated: "the national interest is more important than ideology". "The point of departure of the foreign policy of any country should be the concept of national interests defined in terms of power", stressed H. Morgenthau, the father of political realism. The formation of a relatively stable, non-contradictory and self coordinated system of national interests and geopolitical priorities is the indispensable precondition for the optimization of state building processes and the elaboration by Ukraine of an effective foreign policy strategy.

2.The survival of Ukraine as a free and independent nation in the contemporary world with its fundamental national interests intact, its economic and political sovereignty and socio-cultural identity secure should become the major principle of Ukrainian strategy in the actualization of its national interests. Another task is the transformation of Ukraine from being an object of great power geopolitical games into a full-bodied subject (independent actor) that defines its goals and behavior itself (taking into account both its own possibilities and the international environment).

3.The only possible priority model for analysis has to be the egocentric model. From the point of view of political realism both the romantic utopianism of the first years of independence and current cowering before large states and international structures and organizations should be rejected. The main problems here include the traditional complex of low self-esteem and the younger brother syndrome. In any case Ukraine is and will remain one of the largest and most powerful countries of Europe. This should be the major premise that sets out Ukraine's basic objectives and manner of behavior. The analysis of Ukraine's interaction with its regional and global environment has to begin with the belief that only its own territory (as a center and a starting point) and its own interests, that are absolutely paramount, can form the core premises for such an analysis.

Paraphrasing a well-known British statement about democracy, it can be maintained that "perhaps the egocentric model is not entirely optimal, but all others are inferior".

4.The popular thesis that Ukraine as a regional power has only regional interests must be regarded as fundamentally wrong. Ukraine has wide-ranging and entirely concrete global interests.

The growing political, economic, scholarly-technical and other presence of Ukraine from Australia to Argentina and Canada, from Norway to South Africa and the Antarctic is evidence of this. It is another matter is that the correlation between regional and global interests in the geopolitical and foreign political strategy of Ukraine somewhere differs from that of the USA, China, or Russia.
5.The geopolitical situation and the historical heritage of Ukraine objectively determine the multidimensional character of Ukrainian foreign political orientations. Nevertheless, this multidimensional element should not appear as a lack of principle and an attempt to ride two horses, moving in opposite directions, at once. These are not original attempts, historically having occurred a number of times and as a rule, with unfortunate endings. Simultaneous orientation on opposing power centers and the balancing on contradictions are dangerous and have always proven to be an effective temporary tactic but poor strategy. Moreover, to be successful this tactic demands an extremely sophisticated political culture and refined "Byzantine" modus operandi, which Ukraine unfortunately lacks.

6.The spread of information technologies today takes a thoroughly important significance. Information as a strategic product appears both as a subject of competition and as a means of defense and the introduction of basic national interests. The ability of society to gather, process, analyze, systematize and accumulate information becomes the core precondition for social and technological progress, a factor in ensuring national security, and the basis for a successful foreign policy.

State passivity and inadequate reaction to the claims and demands of the information age lead to its marginalization in the world's informational sphere, and define backwardness in all other spheres of action - political, economic, and cultural. Progress in the information technologies leads to a high inconstancy in the informational sphere and in this manner forces the state to swiftly adapt to new conditions. Otherwise the state is threatened by the possibility of becoming subject to the domination of another state's (or group of states') informational system, a relegation to a constant sojourn in a foreign informational shadow.

Providing the governmental system and civil society institutions with information, and facilitating the exchange of information between these two key actors in public life becomes one of the decisive factors in the sustainability and effective implementation of an integrated strategy of national state security.

7.Practical implementation has always been and still remains as the basic criterion of any theoretical formulations. This concerns geopolitical as well as foreign and domestic political concepts, strategies and programs. This is why the results of concrete sociological research concerning the geopolitical and foreign political orientations and preferences of the Ukrainian population, and the monitoring of the dynamics of change in public opinion on regional and national levels are widely used as an empirical background for this work.

On the other hand, developed theoretical approaches have formed the basis for a conceptual awareness of new sociological programs for studying the structure and dynamics of the changes of Ukrainian national interests.