Former U.S. official says issue of Ukraine's security has been back-burnered (02/20/00)

Former U.S. official says issue of Ukraine's security has been back-burnered

by R.L. Chomiak
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The United States has a promise to fulfill in the sphere of Ukraine's security, but lately this issue has been pushed to the back burner, accordins to one of the authors of this promise.

Ashton Carter, professor of science and international affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, spoke February 7 at the inaugural Zenovia Sochor Parry Memorial Lecture at Harvard. During the first Clinton administration (1993-1996) Dr. Carter served as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, and was intimately involved in helping Ukraine become a non-nuclear state, with American and Russian guarantees of Ukraine's security.

Now back in academia, Dr. Carter is concerned that Ukraine's security is not receiving the attention it deserves within American security strategy. In fact he characterizes this strategy as "confused." Kosovo, Bosnia and East Timor, he noted, are on the "A list" of issues, whereas he would put them on his "C list." These hot spots may appear regularly on all-news networks, but Dr. Carter does not see them as top problems for the United States. The A list he said, includes "the part of the world where Ukraine is," international terrorism and China. (His B list, incidentally, includes the Persian Gulf).

The A list issues are not of imminent military threat, he said, but they are "problems that if not addressed, will grow." He and his former boss William Perry, who was secretary of defense, are co-directors of the Stanford-Harvard Preventive Defense Project. They also have published a book, "Preventive Defense," in which Ukraine is one of the case studies. The idea explained Dr. Carter, is the same as in preventive health care: rather than treating an illness you try to prevent it.

Dr. Carter has made numerous trips to Ukraine over the past six years, and was scheduled to travel there again on February 12. In his Sochor Parry lecture he focused on four trips he made to Pervomaisk, one of the facilities in Ukraine housing long-range missles, where in 1994 there were 700 nuclear warheads targeted on the United States.

At that time, he noted, Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world - more powerful than France and China - "but Ukraine elected to enter the world as a non-nuclear state." The American side suggested bringing Russia into the negotiations on Ukraine's non-nuclear security, and Ukraine agreed. (The Russians, he said half in jest, were even more concerned about Ukraine's nuclear status than the Americans, "because the Ukrainians had a reason to attack them.") The result was the trilateral agreement among the United States, Ukraine and Russia to guarantee Ukraine's security after it gave up its warheads.

As part of the agreement, Dr. Carter explained, the United States funded a facility in Dnipropetrovsk to destroy long-range rockets, and paid for the destruction of rocket silos, building of housing for the rocket base's military personnel - "so they would go along with denuclearization," he claimed - and for turning around the area that once held "700 warheads aimed at the U.S." into a sunflower farm. On June 30, 1996, the last nuclear warheads were shipped to Russia, making Ukraine a non-nuclear state.

But all this, Dr. Carter contended does not yet fulfill the promise the United States made to Ukraine in 1994. Ukraine, he said, should command A-list attention in American security strategy and it is not getting it. He blames this on "a natural tendency to relax" on issues that are not crying for immediate attention. The Nunn-Lugar program, authored by Sens. Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, that was used to fund Ukraine's denuclearization and the bilateral U.S.-Ukraine defense relationship will stop, he warns, once the U.S. Congress decides that there is no more money for it. But to prevent problems in the future, he said he feels that the program should be expanded.

Dr. Carter's prescription for preventive defense with a view to Ukraine includes more joint military exercises that allow sharing of military craft between American and Ukrainian forces, developing Ukraine's non-commissioned officer corps ("NCOs make the U.S. military run," he observed) and converting the Ukrainian armed forces to an all-volunteer formation, which means writing a military budget for it, paying for training in the civilian-military relationship, civil society building, counter terrorism and counterproliferation.

He also is a proponent of NATO'S Partnership for Peace program and said he is unhappy with the latest NATO enlargement that has overshadowed it. (Dr. Carter added that he would like to see NATO enlarged all the way to the Pacific Ocean - eventually. However, the latest enlargement, he commented, was premature, and it put Ukraine on the frontier.)

Dr. Carter said that he believes NATO and Ukraine can do a lot together even without Ukraine being a member of the alliance. He cited Ukraine's participation in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, and added that "we should make Ukraine's experience in NATO as close as possible to membership in NATO."

He also is a supporter of regional relationships, like the recently established Ukrainian-Polish battalion, and would like the United States to support a similar military arrangement within the GUUAM grouping, regional arrangement comprising Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova.

But no less important, he contended, are good relations between Russia and Ukraine. Thus, he continued he would like to see joint military activities of Ukraine, the United States and Russia. In fulfillment of its promise regarding Ukraine's security, he stated that the United States must be prepared to mediate Ukraine-Russia issues, including denuclearization and the Black Sea Fleet, as well as unforeseen issues in the future. The United States also should help Ukraine with reforms, he added, including the conversion of the neglected defense industry to civilian uses.

In addition, Dr. Carter is concerned about the future. He said he would like to see the next American president as conscious of Ukraine's strategic importance as the last two, George Bush and Bill Clinton, have been, and would want the White House occupied by a person who "will fulfill the promise" to Ukraine.

Dr. Carter was uniquely qualified to inaugurate the Zenovia Sochor Parry Memorial Lecture series at Harvard, noted Dr. Lubomyr Hajda, associate director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI), which administers the lecture endowment. Dr. Carter received an undergraduate degree in medieval history from Yale University, then earned a doctorate in theoretical physics at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In his academic and government work he has bridged science and humanities.

The late Dr. Sochor Parry, or Zenia Sochor, as she was known to her friends, was born in Brody, Ukraine, in 1943, but grew up in Philadelphia. She held degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, London School of Economics and Columbia University.

She was a professor of political science at Clark University, an associate of HURI, and taught at the Nationall University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in the Ukrainian capital and concentrated her research on political developments in Ukraine. She was married to architect and town planner David Parry; they had a daughter, Katrusia.

In 1998 she died of cancer while working on a study of the emergence of independent Ukraine. Her family and friends established a name fund in her honor for annual lectures on Ukrainian politics to continue the work to which she dedicated her professional life.

| Home Page |