Ukraine's military and civilian officials participate in Harvard security program (12/21/97)

Ukraine's military and civilian officials participate in Harvard security program

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Ukraine's presidential advisor on special military issues, the deputy chief of the General Staff of Ukraine and a lieutenant general who also serves as a national deputy to the Verkhovna Rada are among 30 top military and civilian officials participating in a program at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government that is aimed at assisting national security efforts in Ukraine.

The first of an annual three-year initiative to assist Ukraine's democratic reform efforts, the Harvard Ukrainian National Security Program will support the country's leaders in formulating global strategy and strategic doctrine. The program, which began on December 1, will explore policies and issues surrounding the country's civil-military relations.

"There is a small window of opportunity in Ukraine in which a new generation of military and civilian officials, free of the old Soviet constraints, is shaping the form of democracy that will take root there," said Joseph S. Nye, dean of the Kennedy School.

Underwritten by grants from the Smith Richardson Foundation and the U.S. Institute for Peace, as well as with additional support from the U.S. Department of Defense and the Ukrainian National Security Council, the program has grown out of a university-wide initiative to examine how to help emerging democracies not only in scholarly work, but in outreach efforts as well. Additional assistance has been provided by Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute.

"With independence in 1991, Ukraine had to establish its own national security structure independent from that of Russia. Ukraine is a major strategic player in Europe, and its interactions with Russia, with its neighbors in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and with Western Europe will profoundly affect European security as a whole," said Nancy Huntington, director of the program.

"As the first delegation of such high officials attending such a program at an American institution of higher education, the program provides a much-needed opportunity for dialogue between U. S. and Ukrainian policy-makers and experts on national security affairs," she added.

In the program's opening session, Catherine Kelleher, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, said, "The program reflects the 'strategic partnership' that the U.S. and Ukraine have forged in the last five years and the future cooperation to which the two countries are mutually committed."

The Harvard Ukrainian National Security Program has also arranged four days of special briefings by Pentagon officials in Washington, following the session at the Kennedy School.

The program has arranged a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels, as well as stops at the British Defense Ministry and Foreign Office, and at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

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