INTERVIEW: Taras Kuzio of the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Kyiv (PART I) (11/29/98)

INTERVIEW: Taras Kuzio of the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Kyiv

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

The NATO Information and Documentation Center was opened in Kyiv in May 1997, immediately prior to the signing of the special charter between Ukraine and NATO. Its current director, Dr. Taras Kuzio, assumed his post in September, after the untimely death of the first director, Roman Lischynsky, a Ukrainian Canadian who died in an automobile accident in Ukraine in December 1997.

Mr. Kuzio, 40, is a Ukrainian Briton born in Halifax, England, who was a senior research fellow with the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Birmingham in England in 1995-1998 before moving to the NATO Information and Documentation Center in June 1998. From 1993-1995 he served as editor of the Ukrainian Business Review and directed the Ukrainian Business Agency. He also has worked as a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in 1992-1993 and prior to that headed the Ukrainian Press Agency in Great Britain.

The following interview, published in two parts, was conducted by Roman Woronowycz at the NATO office in Kyiv.

PART I

Q: What is the primary purpose of the NATO's of Information and Documentation Center?

A: The objectives of the Information and Documentation Center are wide-ranging, dealing with everything from our relations with the [political] elites to the common person.

In terms of the elites, we have a relatively easy job, I would say, in that the bulk of Ukraine's elites - and I don't include the Communists in the elites here - are pro-West and pro-NATO, to varying degrees, of course, which makes our job easier than the job of the office in Moscow.

Of course the main difficult area for us is Parliament. There we will be attempting to do much more work, particularly with the parliamentary arm of NATO, the North Atlantic Assembly. That will primarily be work with the factions in Parliament and work with the defense and foreign affairs committees, but also to bring members of Parliament on visits to NATO headquarters in Brussels.

In terms of working with elites, we can help and we would like to help to work in areas such as helping to promote more widespread debate on Ukraine's security policy. As we know, Ukraine inherited far fewer experts in the foreign policy field than Russia, because Russia inherited everybody who was in Moscow and Moscow sucked up everybody from Kyiv and elsewhere in the old Soviet Union.

For example, the Ukrainian media only began touching foreign policy issues in the last three to four years. There is a case here of Ukraine moving out of its provincialism, one that was forced upon it in the Soviet era, and reaching out to the outside world.

There is great progress in the foreign policy debate in Ukraine with the creation of new institutions and new publications. I think we have a role to play in taking part in that discussion and in trying to help Ukraine in various ways. An example of that is the roundtable we held on Kosovo the other day, which was attended by security policy experts here. Originally we had thought that only 20 were going to turn up and in the end 80 turned up.

Dealing with the public at large is a more complicated matter. I wouldn't say that the public at large is hostile to NATO because public opinion polls only give about 20 percent as the figure of those hostile to NATO. And those tend to be the older generation, they tend to be in the Donbas and Crimea, they tend to be lower educated and Communist Party members. Really, you are not going to be able to change their viewpoint.

And, after all, in many Western countries such as Greece, Italy, Spain, the Communists are hostile to NATO as well, so it's not a purely Ukrainian phenomenon.

The secretary general of NATO was, or is, a member of the Socialist Party of Spain, and in his past he was opposed to Spain joining NATO. So people's views evolve, but we should never expect that 100 percent of Ukrainians will support NATO. That's normal in a democratic society.

But there is approximately 50 percent of the population, according to opinion polls, who have no real information about NATO. Foreign policy concerns in the old Soviet Union were the preserve of the elites, and that's still true to some extent in Ukraine today. So a huge number of people have no idea what NATO is all about, what it is, why it's still around.

They have a bit of a better idea about the European Union, because it's more about economics, but even there a lack of information exists. So we have a potentially large area in which to work.

That can be done in many, many ways. It can be done in academic conferences and seminars; translations of publications into Ukrainian and into Russian for Crimea; working with television and radio; working through the military, dealing with conscripts and officers in the education sections of the army. So there is a huge area within which to work, potentially far more, in fact, than we have resources for. It is an open field in which we could do a lot more.

I would even include in that a very important area, which is working within the education curriculum. We get many requests from lecturers and teachers at both the school and university level, as well as in the military, asking for course work, for textbooks because the old ones can't be used any more. There is a lack of information on many things, such as the history of Europe after World War II, which, of course, includes the history of NATO, the history of the Cold War. There is great interest and demand, but that is still in the process of being created.

Q: Going back to an earlier comment you made, why do you not include the Communists in your definition of political elites?

A: The ruling elites of Ukraine do not include the Communists. By the ruling elites you really are talking about, for example, the party of power, the government, the executive, the various ministries. The only foothold the Communists have in the elites is within Parliament.

Q: What about the Communists' presence in the middle echelons of the Cabinet?

A: I would not say that they are influential in the Cabinet, the left maybe are. But what we are talking about here is foreign policy-creating elites.

As far as I understand, the committees in Parliament that deal with foreign policy have very little influence over the day-to-day running of Ukraine's foreign policy. Even there the foreign affairs and the defense and security committees are led by Communists, in both cases now, but with representatives on the committees from many different factions, so they cannot promote a single Communist view.

I think that Ukrainian foreign policy is in the process of transition, and I would divide it into two groups: a romantic group and a pragmatic group.

The romantic group is more the center-right: maybe Rukh, the western Ukrainian point of view, which is that, regardless of the current domestic situation, we should already begin making noises about joining Western structures such as NATO. Of course, Mr. [Ivan] Zaiets, is probably the best proponent of that point of view.

And then you have this more liberal, centrist, social-democratic viewpoint associated with Kuchma and his people, and the National Democratic Party, New Ukraine and such, which is more pragmatic and says that we should adopt a profile of neutrality, non-bloc status, as an interim position that will allow us, on the one hand, to keep Russia and the CIS security structures at bay, and on the other, give us breathing room to eventually, in the future - when that will be no one knows - join Western security structures.

Q: What do you see that needs to be done vis-à-vis NATO-Ukraine relations at the macro level? There is the NATO-Ukraine Charter, there is the implementation of the Partnership for Peace Program, but there is no evidence that relations have stabilized. What are the outstanding issues?

A: They haven't stabilized because this is an ongoing learning process for both sides. The charter was signed only a year ago. NATO is evolving as we speak beyond its Cold War profile into more of a political-military structure.

Cooperation with partner countries, such as Ukraine and Russia, is a relatively new thing for NATO, as it is for Ukraine. I believe that there is a great deal of will and interest on both sides for that cooperation to take place. And that cooperation includes a huge variety of areas, for example, ranging from questions of military and defense reform, a seminar on which took place in Kyiv for two days this past week, to science and environment, to civil-military relations, to civil emergency planning, to information and press, and to many other areas within NATO, political consultation, for example.

All of these areas are in the process of developing between NATO and Ukraine. They are in the early stages of their foundation. So I am not surprised that there are going to be nuances and various problems on both sides, which I think are perfectly natural. Both sides are still finding their way. I think what is important is that both sides realize the importance of cooperation. NATO, unlike unfortunately the European Union, has adopted a clear understanding of Ukraine's strategic importance.

Ukraine, on the other hand, has clearly signaled under President [Leonid] Kuchma since 1995 its desire for cooperation with NATO and other Western structures, such as the European Union.

I think that if we were to have this interview in a year or two years' time, we'd be surprised at the extent of the progress we would see because of the great interest and cooperation on both sides.

CONCLUSION

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