JOHN MARONE, KYIV
UKRAINE’S NATO DILEMMA
To be or not to be a member of NATO – that is the question for Ukrainians, who still aren’t in a position to decide the issue.
Public opinion polls conducted in the country continue to show that most Ukrainians are against joining the Western military alliance.
But advocates of NATO membership such as the Ukrainian Defense Ministry insist that Ukrainians have not been given an accurate picture of what the alliance is about.
That’s why Ukraine's military, together with NATO's information center in Kyiv, organized the Day of European and Euro-Atlantic Partnership in the Ukrainian capital on Saturday, which included an exhibition and documentary film.
“As has been underlined more than once, a country, not its armed forces joins NATO. The task of the armed forces is to inform the population about this organization,” the deputy head of Ukraine’s General Staff, Vice Admiral Ihor Knyaz, said during a press conference dedicated to the event.
Knyaz may be right about the task of the armed forces, but Saturday’s event, which included VIP guests such as the US ambassador to Ukraine, isn’t likely to have much of an effect on Ukrainian public opinion.
At the same time, anti-NATO demonstrators were taking a different approach hundreds of kilometers away.
The so-called Odessa anti-Nato committee tried to popularize its cause on Friday by holding a car race in the Russian-speaking port town.
Both events held over the weekend were scheduled to coincide with this year’s Sea Breeze exercise, which has been held in Ukraine under NATO's Partnership for Peace program since 1997.
Last year, the exercise was cancelled at the last minute due to a media smear rooted in domestic politics but illustrative of the larger issues at hand.
Leftists and pro-Russian groups in Ukraine have always been outspoken about NATO expansion, while pro-Western politicians like President Viktor Yushchenko have been timid about clarifying their position to the public.
As a result, Yushchenko’s opponents have attacked the president’s stated policy goal of joining NATO with impunity, picking up points with voters in the country’s Russian speaking east and south along the way.
So when the Defense Ministry, which is loyal to the president, tried to bypass parliamentary approval of the Sea Breeze exercise in 2006, they were hit by a PR campaign that accused them of allowing US troops to set up a base in Crimea.
Embarrassed, the US cancelled the exercise unilaterally.
Although parliament was effectively shut down at the time over a power struggle that featured Yushchenko and his arch rival Viktor Yanukovych, the Defense Ministry should have known that it wouldn’t be allowed to bend the rules on such a sensitive issue.
More importantly, the ease with which Yanukovych’s camp was able to question the propriety of the president’s relations with the alliance showed just how poorly Ukraine’s Western reformers have informed the public of their policy goals.
This year, the Defense Ministry took the precaution of moving the exercises from Crimea, base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, to less politically charged Odessa, in addition to getting parliamentary approval beforehand.
At the same time, pro-NATO officials have stepped up the public relations.
First Deputy Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ogryzko said early last week that, “the more information we give about NATO, the more Ukrainian citizens there will be who support Ukraine’s joining of NATO.”
According to Ogryzko, 80 percent of those who know what NATO really represents are for joining the alliance.
“The Ukrainian population is not against NATO, it is against ignorance of NATO. After all, today, unfortunately, Ukrainian society doesn’t get enough information about what NATO really does,” he said.
However, recent efforts by the alliance to improve its image in Ukraine may be a little too little and a little too late.
Most but by no means all Ukrainians are keen on the idea of Western integration, but few believe that NATO membership is a stepping stone to joining the EU.
To convince them otherwise goes against decades of Cold War propaganda that has survived in the rhetoric of leftist politicians to this day.
At best, the country is split, with pro-Russian politicians in the country’s south and east likely to continue to play a key role in the coalition of Prime Minister Yanukovych, who himself is considered pro-Russian.
Shortly after taking control of the government last summer, Yanukovych made it clear to European leaders that NATO membership was not a priority for Ukraine.
Indeed, European heavyweights like the Germans have sown doubt on what increasingly looks like a US, rather than a Western initiative.
German ambassador to Kyiv Reinhard Steinmeier was recently quoted by the Ukrainian media as saying that NATO entry and EU membership are two different things.
In contrast, the US Congress recently passed legislation on support of Ukraine’s, as well as Georgia’s NATO bid.
Officially, Ukraine is applying for NATO membership, not being recruited. However, as the new geopolitical lines have been drawn following the collapse of the Soviet empire, there is a growing impression that the US is setting up a new sphere of influence for itself between Western Europe and Russia – in Central-Eastern Europe.
While the Germans are deepening energy relations with Russia, the US is negotiating a missile defense system with the Czechs and Poles, whose memories of Soviet occupation are still fresh.
But the Kremlin has grievances of its own. With NATO already breathing down its neck in the Baltics and Balkan, Russia has been one of the harshest critics of further NATO expansion.
Ultimately, however, it’s the Ukrainian people themselves who will have to decide whether they want to join NATO. Yushchenko’s opposition to a referendum on the issue, as proposed by his political opponents, could be justified, as the public is still not clear on the issues.
Many, for example, don’t realize how joint exercises with NATO help to build professionalism among an otherwise demoralized Ukrainian armed forces.
NATO has also funded Ukraine indirectly through various reform programs such as training of personnel and the scrapping of redundant munitions.
Efforts on the part of Ukraine have been less successful.
Ukraine's government only approved the NATO target plan for 2007 last month.
And as early as May, the Foreign Ministry was accusing the Cabinet of diverting funding for a NATO information campaign.
If President Yushchenko cannot convince the public that NATO membership is in their interest, his policy goal will continue to be held hostage to domestic politics, with the US and Russia standing on the sidelines.
John Marone, Kyiv Post Senior Journalist, based in Ukraine.
July 16, 2007
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