BOOK REVIEW: Ukrainian security questions in the regional context (09/28/97)

BOOK REVIEW

Ukrainian security questions in the regional context

Keystone in the Arch: Ukraine in the Emerging Security Environment of Central and Eastern Europe by Sherman W. Garnett. Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1997. ISBN 0-87003-101-5, viii+145 pp. , $14.95.

by Taras Kuzio

This book is an important addition to the growing volume of literature dealing with Ukrainian security questions. Sherman Garnett is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington where he specializes in the security policies of the successor states to the former USSR with particular emphasis on Ukraine and Russia. Before joining Carnegie he was employed for a decade in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and in 1993 he became deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. (Tor Bukkvall, author of "Ukraine and European Security" another recent valuable publication worked in the defense sector as well, in Nowary.) Mr. Garnett is critical of the traditional Western approach to view Ukraine as a part of Russia, arguing instead in favor of having more Western governments both appreciate Ukraine's strategic centrality to European security and treat Ukraine as an entity in its own right.

The book is divided into six individual chapters that discuss the domestic sources of instability, Ukrainian-Russian relations, the newly emerging security environment in Central and Eastern Europe, the failed policies of Western governments and proposals for a new relationship between Ukraine and the West. Mr. Garnett argues early on in his study that, "...Ukraine is the keystone in the arch of the emerging security environment in Central and Eastern Europe. It is a state that is too large and too geographically central to this emerging security environment to be ignored" (p.7).

The author backs Zbigniew Brzezinski's now well-known linkage of an independent Ukraine to Russia's continued democratic transition where Ukraine's strategic importance is paramount in view of the fact that Russia can be an empire with only Ukraine's incorporation. Despite widespread dire predictions about Ukraine's impending disintegration in 1992-1993, the country's stability has been its enduring feature (p.36).

Although Mr. Garnett discusses the alleged "Great Divide" in Ukraine along "deep ethnic, cultural and economic faultlines" (p.15) he, like Mr. Bukkvoll (but contrary to most earlier Western analyses of Ukraine), believes that the inherited divisions are not a threat to Ukraine's independence. This is not only because there are no clear-cut faultlines, but also because all regions are in competition for scarce resources. Like Mr. Bukkvoll, therefore, Mr. Garnett argues that separatism is largely a myth and is exaggerated in eastern Ukraine; the only exception to this rule is in Crimea.

In addition, this inherited regionalism has both negative and positive features because it rules out Ukraine ever attempting to build an exclusive, ethnic state while these, "divisions within Ukrainian society are an effective restraint against extremist politics" (pp. 23-24). But here Mr. Garnett's analysis becomes confusing when he rejects Ukrainian nationalism as the glue that could be used to unite Ukraine (p.124). Much, of course, depends upon one's definition of "nationalism."

Purely civic states do not exist in practice. All democratic states, including Switzerland, the U.S and Canada, are a combination of both civic and ethnic elements, and here Ukraine will be no different. Political-economic reform are closely bound up with nation-state building in Ukraine because civil society cannot exist without national identity or where national consciousness is either weak or non-existent. State-building and the problem of fashioning new elites from the "party of power" is a problem peculiar to all of the Soviet successor states, not only to Ukraine. Mr. Garnett outlines Ukrainian security policy as "defensive," aiming to "preserve a favorable external situation that supports, or at least does not interfere with, state-building and internal consolidation. To complete these tasks Ukraine needs time" (p.43).

At a time when Russia is still relatively weak, Ukraine has sought to obtain Russia's recognition of Ukraine's sovereignty and territory integrity, thereby ending the historical cycle of mistrust and suspicion. Ukraine has consequently not opposed NATO enlargement seeing in it a counterweight to Russia that "helps to preserve Ukraine's breathing space and permits it to consolidate its independence" (p.101). Unfortunately, Mr. Garnett's excellent discussion of Ukraine's border and other problems with Russia and Romania were resolved just after the book was published when both their presidents signed inter-state treaties with Ukraine (although these are still subject to parliamentary ratification in all three countries). Nevertheless, this does not damage the coherence of his arguments.

The monograph ends with a call to Western governments to not treat Ukraine only within the context of NATO enlargement or its relations with Russia. Instead, Mr. Garnett offers six proposals for Western governments: defining Western interests in the former USSR, expanding vehicles for cooperation and dialogue, encouraging Western Europe to take a more active interest in Ukraine (to date only Germany and the United Kingdom have), preserving military stability, determining clear policies and views on CIS integration, and strengthening bilateral U.S.-Ukraine relations.

Taras Kuzio is a research fellow at the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham and author of "Ukrainian Security Policy" (Washington: Praeger and the CSIS, 1995).

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