Between Elephant and Bear?
After September 11 many have been talking about Ukraine’s increased chance of progress toward achieving its strategic goal of European Union membership. The post-September 11 situation has accorded Ukraine certain new opportunities and, equally, presented some new challenges. Participants in the international conference, Ukraine’s European Choice: Domestic Transformations and the Search for a New Foreign Policy and Security Role, organized by the European and International Studies Center at the Institute of International Relations of Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University, the Institute of International Relations (Rome), and the Center for International Relations (Warsaw), tried to forecast the importance of the current changes in the world for identifying the role of Ukraine in a new Europe.
According to a conference participant Michael Emerson from the Brussels-based Center for European Political Research, Ukraine is now “between the Elephant and the Bear,” where the role of the Elephant is being played by the European Union, a big, strong, somewhat awkward fellow who does not want to hurt anybody on purpose but still can trample one by accident. The Bear is, of course, Russia.
Among the reasons why in the context of the latest global events, according to Polish former Minister of Defense Janusz Onyszkiewicz, the West has stopped regarding Ukraine only as “part of the solution to the Russian problem” is Ukraine’s willing cooperation with the US in intelligence gathering and our membership in GUUAM, an association of countries extremely important for the global antiterrorist campaign.
Simultaneously, in the opinion of Italy’s former Foreign Minister Gianni de Michelis, “Ukraine should look on its European Union membership as not separation from Russia but, on the contrary, as integration with other countries. At the transitional stage, Ukraine will have to accept the idea of a Eurasian space centered around Moscow, and all that this implies for the Black Sea region and the Caucasus.” Mr. De Michelis believes that accelerated European integration will precede the formation of a new, far more expanded and in many ways heterogeneous European Union. The latter, according to the Italian diplomat, is a remote objective, toward which Kyiv should orient itself, accepting the risks and price of the forthcoming transformations. It should be noted, however, that there also are other assessments of Ukrainian prospects.
Mr. Michelis believes that another option for EU development is the establishment of a Fortress Europe, a culturally and politically homogeneous association that excludes Ukraine. Kyiv has long protested against erecting such a wall, but there is still no response from either Brussels or some other neighboring countries.
According to Gianni de Michelis, Italy is extremely uninterested in isolating Southeast Europe. Thus it would be a good idea to establish, for example, an Italian-Serbian-Ukrainian dialogue as part of the Central European Initiative. The Italian diplomat is convinced that Ukraine should be solving its problems together with Rumania, Serbia, and Croatia. Janusz Onyszkiewicz thinks it advisable for Kyiv to participate in the Weimar triangle of France, Germany, and Poland in a 3+1 pattern. Neither Paris nor Berlin have so far invited Ukraine to do so.
The conference has shown that Ukraine, perhaps through its own fault, to a large extent, is not being thought of as an independent player even in a crisis situation. Its much trumpeted geopolitical position is obviously no longer a salable commodity. Moreover, no commodity has so far been offered, which could make both the EU and NATO change the very ideology of their approaches.
