Forging a Mature Relationship
The visit to Kyiv of US Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and Assistant Secretary of State, Elizabeth Jones, and the participation of US former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in a Kyiv international conference a month ago and her recent article in The New York Times, and the Foreign Policy Committee session earlier this month in Washington are sure signs of Washington’s renewed interest in Ukraine.
Although most of the US-Ukrainian problems are still the same as they were about five years ago, the overall level of bilateral relations is quite far from that of the late 1990s.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is inclined to believe that Washington has come to the conclusion that it should maintain a meaningful dialogue with Ukraine and that the period of a cool relationship is over. Non-governmental experts in both countries claim that marked changes in the attitude toward Kyiv were also caused by what is going on in Russia. They point out that Russia is now a far longer way from a democratic society than it was a few years ago: the state is attempting to restore an empire and attacking big business (re: the Khodorkovsky case). It is for this reason that Ukraine is again being considered a key state in the region. Many experts say unofficially that “Ukraine must not be lost.” What can be considered indirect proof of the fact that the White House is at least taking these ideas into account is recent public criticism of Russia by US Secretary of State Colin Powell that despite Russia still being of great importance for the United States in terms of international security. That the US seems to have revised some priorities in its policies toward Eastern Europe means that it is closely watching domestic developments in this region’s countries, especially in Ukraine. It is an open secret that this kind of attention reaches its peak during times of parliamentary and presidential elections, and it is quite clear from this perspective why there were and will be so many visits and why the press has evinced much more interest in Ukraine than before. Washington wants to know who and what it will deal with to map out its policies and defend its interests, what rules it will have to play, and to what extent the dialog can be sincere. Approaches like this were once applied to Central Europe, Russia, and Turkey.
As things stand today, it would be in US interests if Ukraine were successfully developing according to overall European standards, which could in turn set the likely limits of relations, that is, partnership for achieving certain concrete goals, long-term partnership and prospective alliance, or just an equitable relationship. It is clear from this perspective why the United States considers every presidential and parliamentary election in Ukraine as crucial: this will show what rules will be established, who will take certain commitments, and the way the latter should be met.
It is for this reason that US officials, while admitting that Ukraine’s decision to send a brigade to Iraq as part of the multinational stabilization force helped the relations to thaw out, have increasingly emphasized of late that Iraq is only one side of the coin, which is not enough to achieve success.
The problems in the relations between the two states can be divided into several blocks.
As to relations in the field of security, the most telling example of their development is Iraq and the fact that almost all US officials have been indicating in the past few months that Washington supports Ukraine’s aspiration for the fullest possible Euro-Atlantic integration. Nobody has ever said, however, what decisions NATO’s Istanbul summit in June will make with respect to Ukraine, for example, whether the NATO Membership and Intensified Political Dialog Plan will be applied to Ukraine. This being a purely political question, Western and Kyiv sources are convinced that the decision will not be made this year. It goes without saying that the United States still continues to play the crucial role in making decision about the future of NATO as a whole, in spite of an apparent crisis of relations in this trans-Atlantic organization. As the United States has never stopped working with Ukraine at the level of experts, one can suppose that US interest in Ukraine’s integration with the Euro-Atlantic space is not just a declaration — especially against the background of the Black Sea region and Middle East situation as well as uncertainty over the development of relations between the West and Russia.
Both political and international security relations contain a number of sensitive points stemming exclusively from the Ukrainian domestic policy. Among them is the closure of Radio Continent, cancellation of the contract between Radio Dovira and Radio Liberty, a conflict between the pro-governmental and opposition groups of Ukrainian politicians, and a logic not always clear of some decisions made by the Ukrainian government.
Over and over again, US official representatives as well as the NATO leadership stress that further dialog with Ukraine will depend exclusively on its domestic development. There is nothing extraordinary in the demands to obey the rules accepted in the community which Ukraine is trying to enter, and it is not at all necessary to devise any ways of our own in this respect.
Economic relations, considered quite good in both countries, might in reality be far better. Ukraine still does not enjoy market economy status, is formally subject to the Jackson-Vanik amendment (it is annually suspended by a special Congress decision at the US president’s request). Ukraine and the US have not yet fully agreed to sign a protocol on mutual access to the markets of goods and services, a must for joining the World Trade Organization. The United States believes Ukraine has not yet achieved the required level of intellectual property protection, does not allow companies to adequately defend their rights in court, and failed to create a favorable and law-governed investment climate. Yet, Washington continues to express its support for Ukraine’s WTO membership. Therefore, the question lies again in the political plane, and Ukraine is expected to take difficult but necessary steps. This would in turn strengthen Kyiv’s ability to protect its own interests as in the much-publicized antidumping cases.
Another aspect of economic cooperation still remains fairly hypothetical: words of thanks for the participation of Ukrainian servicemen in the Iraq stabilization operation have not yet materialized into concrete reconstruction contracts. We know that more than thirty Ukrainian companies have already filed bids for various Iraq reconstruction projects. We also know that this is a difficult thing to do even in the United States itself — suffice it to recall the recent refusal to award an Iraq reconstruction contract to the Halliburton Company. Although the White House keeps promising political support, no tangible signs of progress are in sight.
It is perhaps later that Europe will adequately assess the importance of the Odesa-Brody-Polish territory oil pipeline for its energy needs. This project might have been dead in the water had the US not intervened (also instructive is the story of the attempts to use this transit route in the reverse mode).
Diplomatic sources report that Ukraine takes a calm view of the emphasis the US administration puts on problems of the domestic situation and freedom of expression, for the main thing is to concentrate on specific goals. The problem, however, is that we will certainly not make any progress in achieving these “specific goals” unless we obey a certain set of rules that are the same for all “novices.”
Naturally, a thaw in the current US-Ukrainian dialog can in itself be considered as an achievement for both sides. However, practical results will remain a burning issue even after the elections in Ukraine and the US, which will might have a Democratic administration. All we can assert is that the romantic period in the US-Ukrainian relations has long sunk into history, while a mature relationship requires a basis still to be built.
