We Will Have To Do Something...

The NATO-Ukraine Action Plan has finally been made public. This is one of the two documents endorsed in the wake of the session of the NATO-Ukraine Commission during the summit of the alliance in Prague on November 21-22, last year. “We approve of the publication of the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan, since it is aimed at effecting reforms in Ukraine and promoting Euro-Atlantic Integration of the state,” Michelle Durres, director of the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Ukraine, told The Day. As he put it, the Action Plan, which incorporates the elements of the NATO Membership Action Plan and is imbued with the philosophy of reforms, is fundamental for Ukraine and it is essential that as many people as possible familiarize themselves with it. He went on to say that the alliance was ready to publicize this document. The fact that it was made public only now, two months after the Prague summit, is not a bad sign, since allowances should be made for the time required to properly translate the text, as well as for other technicalities. When the document was in the works, representatives of both NATO and Ukrainian leadership were almost unanimous in their assessment of the Plan as a very ambitious document, which makes it possible to embrace a new format of relations between Kyiv and the alliance. As The Day learned from Yevhen Marchuk, secretary of the National Defense and Security Council, this format is, in fact, a long-term program incorporating the achievements of European standards. The bottom line of most comments on this document is that to a great extent it points to the volume of homework Ukraine still has to do.

The document consists of five chapters, Political and Economic Issues, Security, Defense and Military Issues, Information Protection and Security, Legal Issues, and Mechanisms of Implementation. Each chapter lists the principles and objectives which, it is planned, will be achieved by way of implementing the clauses of the document.

In part, Ukraine’s objectives listed in the first chapter include strengthening democratic and electoral institutions, fostering judicial authority and independence, promoting the continued development of civil society, the rule of law, promoting fundamental human rights and freedoms of citizens, ensuring religious freedom, ensuring freedom of assembly, strengthening civilian and democratic control over the Armed Forces and the whole security sector, fighting corruption, money laundering, and illegal economic practices, taking the necessary steps to be removed from the FATF blacklist, and ensuring the balance of power between the three branches, legislative, executive, and judiciary, by way of effecting constitutional and administrative reform.

In the sphere of foreign policy, the objectives include updating Ukraine’s foreign and security policy to reflect its goal of full Euro-Atlantic integration, reforming state security structures to reflect the Euro-Atlantic Policy of Ukraine, making Ukraine a key contributor to regional stability and security, full observation of international arms control obligations, enhancing participation in the international fight against terrorism, and taking the required internal measures to combat terrorism, in part, by way of strengthening border and export controls. Ukraine must bring its internal legislation into compliance with EU and NATO regulations and procedures.

Economic objectives include creating conditions required for the accession to the WTO, imposing a moratorium on draft laws on tax concessions, creating an institutional environment that would stimulate business activity, effecting economic and structural reforms, and creating the preconditions required for the formation of the middle class.

Improving and ensuring guarantees of the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free expression of opinion, and access to information, ensuring unimpeded gathering, publication and broadcasting of information via the mass media are among the information objectives, deepening the informational dimension of NATO-Ukraine cooperation, as well as increasing public awareness of NATO through NATO-Ukraine cooperation in the information sphere.

The need to reorganize the Armed Forces and strengthen civil control of the Armed Forces is stressed in the second chapter (Defense and Military Policy Issues). The same chapter outlines the objectives of military cooperation with NATO. They include achieving full compliance with NATO standards, increasing the level of military training of the Armed Forces, increasing Ukraine’s role as a key participant in regional operations aimed at eliminating the consequences of natural calamities, and promoting cooperation between scientists.

Thus, the Action Plan is before all a program for effecting radical internal reforms; “a large-scale home task,” as they would call it in Prague. The Target Action Plan for 2003, the second document endorsed in Prague, outlines principles and goals for the current year. It is expected to be publicized within two to three weeks.

The implementation of the Plan will mean its transformation from an internal strategy for Ukraine into a trump card that Kyiv will be able to lay onto the negotiating table. Accordingly, a failure to fulfill it will only confirm the old thesis of skeptics to the effect that Kyiv officials like to make declarations instead of meeting their commitments.

It does not take an expert to see that the fundamental clauses of the Action Plan bear a resemblance to the so-called Copenhagen criteria of accession to the EU. The criteria get even more difficult to meet with each passing year, which is, in all probability, due to the ever-growing standards of the European environment. Even last year, Ukrainian diplomats stressed that while the development of relations with the EU is 90% dependent on domestic policy and merely 10% dependent on diplomatic efforts, in relations with NATO it is the other way round. With the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan endorsed and publicized, whose fulfillment alone will enable us to speak about Ukraine joining the Membership Action Plan, it is obvious that the role of diplomacy in the process of Euro- Atlantic integration is not all that important. And the role of military cooperation is also gradually losing its preeminence.

Recent statements made by Nicholas Berns, US Ambassador to NATO, and by other representatives of Western states to the effect that in the near future Ukraine will not be able to join NATO, are firstly due to the fact that the Action Plan will take far more than two or three years to fulfill. Essentially, the Action Plan approved by NATO is simply a blueprint for building a normal state in a country that deserves to be dealt with. Thus, having made the first move in drafting this document, we need to move ahead and prove to ourselves and others that we are capable of implementing it.