Once More on Strategic Partnership
There has been much talk about strategic partnership and strategic partners lately. It was said, for instance, that all neighboring countries of Ukraine should be its strategic partners, that the United States is about Ukraine’s main strategic partner, and Russia is the super-main one. The European Union is also a strategic partner along with Israel, Turkey, and the GUUAM countries. All in all, the experts of the Ukrainian Center of Economic and Political Research counted 19 countries, and then they concluded that this was too much.
It is too much indeed. The United States, whose possibilities, needs and, the main thing, global influence one cannot compare with Ukrainian possibilities, has five such partners, which to some extent ensures Washington’s presence in key points of the world.
One cannot entirely understand what Ukraine can get from continual use of the magic incantation of strategic partnership. Particularly because its virtual and real partners too much differ from one another in weight category, real interest precisely in strategic partnership, possibility to have unanimity of positions, etc.
Strategic partner Russia considers partnership only a way to pursue its own ends, which by no means often coincide with Ukrainian interests, and it is natural. What disappoints most is that for Ukraine all that turns primarily into ascertaining a simple fact: Kyiv does not have any real means to defend its interests in Russia, which leads either to confrontation, or to strategic dependence, or both. The situation is somewhat different with the USA, for there we have an overt dependence on the goodwill of Washington for whom the interests of Ukraine mean very little. As to the situation with the European Union, there Ukraine is not at all regarded as an independent actor. Moreover, for a country which proclaims entry into the EU its goal, it would be somewhat strange to have this kind of partnership that commits either side to nothing. At that, in the EU they sincerely think that this is the best model of partnership at the moment.
Perhaps the moment has come to understand something: what we expect from partners, why we announce that they are partners, what we are ready to propose ourselves, and what to give up in the name of partnership. Perhaps it is time to understand that others should seek partnership with us, and for that we have to become strong. Strategic partnership can exist only on one condition: when some actual strategy exists. Not only on foreign policy, but also the economy, security, when there is a vision of one’s own future and possibilities, and when there is desire to really move on. I would not say that one has to be more modest. But one indeed has to develop a more realistic outlook of the outside world and place before oneself real goals. In that case there might just be fewer problems with partners.
