National Security Council is a must

Fifteen years ago Ukraine saw the establishment of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC), a leading think tank that was supposed to analyze risks and challenges for this country. Meanwhile, political scientists have asked either a rhetorical or a provocative question in connection with this date: does the NSDC have a future after the 15 years of existence?

Political scientist Yurii Ruban, ex-director of the National Institute of Strategic Studies, answers this question in the affirmative: if this country needs an intellectual entity to ensure its defense and security, it cannot do without the NSDC. “The NSDC is indispensable because it is a powerful think tank to make decisions in a very specific sphere, where you cannot pre-calculate everything,” Ruban says. At the same time, he notes that the current ruling class no longer has to address such issues as choosing between war and peace “in the field of truth.” In his view, this field has essentially narrowed, boiling down to, say, the IMF loan problem. Accordingly, the NSDC is now mostly focusing on economic problems. Ruban believes that the president of Ukraine, ex officio head of the NSDC, should encourage the political class as a whole “to crystallize a consensus about the foundations of national security, about what our national interests are.” The expert fears that the NSDC may be drawn, as it has already occurred before, into a political debate, for example, about “whether a certain court ruling is right or wrong.” In Ruban’s view, this approach is tantamount to a catastrophe.

Viktor Chumak, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Public Politics, says it is a positive tendency to cut the NSDC staff threefold in order to streamline decision-making and even suggests incorporating (on an experimental basis) opposition representatives into this body so that “analysts give the president a generalized picture.” The expert also notes: “The NSDC’s future depends on the way the president will use this body for making difficult decisions in the realm of national security.”

Asked by journalists why the NSDC seems to be taking a low profile in the current difficult condition, Chumak did not agree to this view and stressed that “seven decisions of a very important or even strategic nature have been made in the past year. It is making a few, but quite important for the country, strategic decisions that can make society consider [the council] an important body again.”

But Ruban thinks the NSDC is still unable to recover from the shock caused by the Ukrainian leadership’s political decision to drop the NATO membership bid. In his opinion, even if parliament restored the old version of the law on national security, admission to this organization would be impossible. “It never happens in history that you return two years back without any losses,” he told The Day. “The road to NATO is now blocked from the other side. Our partners will never take in a country that can zigzag its course like this. We used to think that, with due account of our not-so-combat-ready army, entry into NATO will guarantee our security. But now we just do not have any armed forces that could really ensure our security. And joining NATO is no longer an aim. Now the aim is to establish close cooperation with that bloc at all levels.”

Experts also point out that the NSDC’s field of work and effectiveness depend, to a large extent, on the president’s personality as well as on the charisma of this body’s secretary and the relations the latter maintains with the president. The Day asked the experts to draw sort of a rating list of NSDC secretaries. Chumak considered it unethical to answer this question, while Ruban lavished praise on Volodymyr Horbulin, Vitalii Haiduk, Petro Poroshenko, and Raisa Bohatyriova, noting that all the NSDC secretaries are very powerful politicians and “children of their times and circumstances.” As for Yevhen Marchuk, the experts said “he led the NSDC in a very difficult situation. And it is his great personal effort that helped Ukraine to continue pursuing a general course towards Euro-Atlantic integration and maintaining partnership with the US at the time of the Kolchuga radar scandal. Incidentally, that period of time somewhat resembled the present day. And Marchuk managed to resist the pressure of various political sides, keep the uniformed services from being involved in political confrontations at the turning points, and keep a democratic balance in this country.”