INTERVIEW: Taras Kuzio of the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Kyiv (CONCLUSION) (12/06/98)

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 center's 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. In 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.

CONCLUSION

Q: There has been some talk in the press about a training facility for NATO in western Ukraine. I remember that even President Leonid Kuchma seemed to be lobbying for such a facility in public remarks he made earlier this year, during which he invited NATO to come. And I understand that NATO is also considering other countries. What is the status of such a project?

A: As far as I know, no official decision has been made on that base. There are basically, I believe, two problems. Firstly, there are many redundant training bases, such as the one at Yavoriv, available throughout the former Communist world. Armies have been downsized, there is no longer a Warsaw Pact, and so Yavoriv is one of many that has been proposed to NATO. So there is that aspect.

Secondly, there is the political aspect. There have already been articles in the Russian press claiming that [Yavoriv] is going to be NATO's first military base on former Soviet territory, which of course it's not. So there is a sensitive political angle to this question, as always. These things have to be balanced out.

I believe that there will be a positive decision made on that training facility, but it will be a training facility for Partnership for Peace exercises and will not be a NATO military base.

There is a broader importance to it, which I believe is important to stress because in this part of the world perceptions are very important and Ukraine perfectly understands this. Therefore, when Ukraine develops a degree of cooperation with NATO, including getting NATO interested in Ukraine's security, this sends signals to certain countries. This, I think is an important aspect to the entire cooperation process.

It's obviously no coincidence, everybody realizes this, that [Russian] President [Boris] Yeltsin came to Kyiv in May 1997, only two months before NATO's Madrid Summit. The two things are very closely linked, as everything is in this part of the world.

But NATO is only too happy that Ukraine used the NATO card to obtain at least executive securement of the border with Ukraine.

Q: How does NATO gauge the strength of those forces in Ukraine who are against closer ties with the Atlantic Alliance?

A: What works in the West's favor in Ukraine is that there isn't an overarching political culture that is anti-Western, or continually debates its attitude and its relationship to Europe.

I recently reviewed a book by Ivan Newman, published in London, called "Russia and Europe," which traces the debates in Russia since the 18th century to this day over Russia's attitudes towards Europe. Those debates have not changed from the 18th century to this day. They are the same debates going round and round. Those debates don't exist in Ukraine. Therefore, there is less of this overall hostility to NATO - NATO enlargement, NATO as an institution.

That's also helped by the fact that, unlike in Russia, Ukraine did not inherit many personnel in the foreign policy field from the Soviet Union. This actually was a plus for Ukraine. Russia did inherit these people, but it inherited them with a Cold War mentality towards NATO. You can see this in the different attitudes between Russia and Ukraine towards NATO enlargement and NATO as an institution.

The kind of hostility to NATO and NATO enlargement that one sees in Ukraine is in reality only linked to one political party, the Communists. And I say this as one who follows the party political press in Ukraine.

In the mainstream of Ukrainian media one does not encounter hostility of that kind toward NATO. It is more a question of lack of information, or disinformation, for example on questions such as Kosovo. I see a huge range of public opinion, ranging from the left-center faction of Parliament to the Social Democrats and Greens, who are not hostile to NATO. They are either ambivalent or have a lack of information.

These are the Greens, Hromada, Social Democrats, left-center, the Peasant Party, including the speaker of Parliament. This is a whole group of people whom I would not consider hostile, who are probably related to the Kuchma pragmatic camp, who believe that it is important to maintain a cooperative relationship with NATO but where that goes from there we'll see. I believe it leaves Ukraine in a much better position in that sense.

Q: You include the left-center faction in that group?

A: I think the left-center is a very mixed group of people.

Q: But when one talks about a political party, or a faction in this case, doesn't one talk about its leadership to some extent?

A: To some extent, yes. The speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, [Oleksander] Tkachenko, who is a leading member of the Peasant Party, his views on NATO, which I have been following for the last few months, are not really hostile.

Q: But he has stated that he is against too much turning toward Europe, towards NATO, more than once.

A: He says things at different times, I agree. It depends on who is in town. Yes, [the left-center] are the more problematical of that group of factions I talked about. But I still think there is a big difference between the left-center and the Communists.

Even within the Communists there is a mixture of attitudes today. For example, Borys Oliinyk has been to Brussels. In September, when I was in Brussels, Leonid Grach (leader of the Communist Party of Crimea) came, and I have attended lunch with him on many occasions. He was relatively moderate, when he was in Brussels at least, when discussing the whole question of NATO.

We are talking about a mixed group of people and a certain evolution of views. There needs to be a lot of work done with these people.

Q: There have been proclamations from NATO, and all around for that matter, that even with Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joining NATO in a matter of months, Ukraine does not need to worry about becoming a buffer zone. But the fact remains that Ukraine is the single country between what will be the new NATO border and Russia, and that Moscow has not as yet shown any great interest in working with NATO.

A: NATO has adopted, ironically, a far better position on this question than the European Union. Unlike the European Union, which came out very quickly a couple of years ago and defined two groups of countries that are future potential members of the European Union, neither of which included Ukraine to the great consternation of Ukrainian officials, NATO has adopted a different approach, which NATO has defined as the open-door approach.

We have three countries joining in 1999, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The door is left open for future waves of new members. These new members can be anybody. NATO rejects the idea that Russia or any country can have a veto over the membership of another country.

The future waves leave the question of new members open. It, therefore, doesn't turn Ukraine into a buffer zone because the areas of cooperation will remain. Ukraine will still be as active as it is today after the introduction of new members next year. There will be no border established in Europe between new NATO members and Ukraine. That is more a problem between these new members that will join the European Union and customs borders.

Q: Can Ukraine realistically ever expect full membership in NATO?

A: At this moment in time Ukraine has not applied for membership, and it is really for the Ukrainian side to make the first approach on this whole question.

The Baltics, Slovenia and Romania have openly asked about membership, and Ukraine has not. So in many ways it is a hypothetical question.

There are, of course, many areas that have to be dealt with before this is a serious question. I believe that these include the following. First of all, NATO must continue to evolve from its Cold War structure, which it is doing very radically at the moment. Secondly, an important factor for all of the countries within the former USSR is the Russia question. To put it simply, the more Russia evolves along its democratic path, the easier it will be for Ukraine to join Western security structures.

I think it is wrong, like some believe, that the worse it is in Russia, the easier it will be for Ukraine to join the West. I think that the West is not interested in buffer states, or shall we say anti-Russian buffer states. The West much more prefers the idea of bridges, and as Russia is a nuclear power it will always be important to Western foreign policy.

The third factor is the domestic situation in Ukraine. There is a big gap between Ukraine's declared strategic objectives, which is propounded by its elites, of integration into Western structures and its domestic policies.

I am not sure that it always understands that. There is this gap between declared aims and domestic policies. I define domestic policies not only as economic reform and democratization. In the NATO case one must also have resolved border questions and have no ethnic minority disputes as well, and civilian control over the military.

But in the Ukrainian case there is also the question of nation-state building. All opinion polls in Ukraine show a direct link between those who have a degree of national identity, which shall we say is Ukrainian, and that doesn't have to be necessarily Ukrainian-speaking, but national identity, that is identifying with Ukraine, and those who have a Western orientation in their foreign policy outlook. There is a clear correlation between the two.

Unfortunately, I don't believe that the Ukrainian authorities always understand that there is a direct linkage between all of these four aspects of Ukraine's transformation process.

PART I

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