The Productive Forces Research Council of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences held an open session in Kyiv on September 11. The session conducted public hearings on a report, The Scientific and Methodological Safeguarding of Ukraine’s Security Resources, now nominated for the 2001 State Prize in Science and Technology.
As one of the study’s authors, Oleksandr Bielov, chief of the Domestic Policy Department in the Presidential Administration, noted, this is the first work of its kind ever done in Ukraine, while the interests of Ukrainian development and of building a new type of society require an integrated approach. Thus the study lays down conceptual views of national security and the development of all social spheres. In addition, Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Finance and Banking Committee Bohdan Hubsky, also one of the authors, said that the idea of a country’s security as barbed wire running along the state’s perimeter is hopelessly outdated. Now a country’s security means above all its economic security based on competitiveness in the world economy; this is now the main criterion of a state’s economic security.
The study puts particular emphasis on economic security issues, because, as Mr. Bielov puts it, economic growth is the only thing that can make it possible to work out a concept of national security. Meanwhile, as The Day was told by Academician Yury Pakhomov, director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, all processes in this country still revolve around the state, which is supposed, under the conditions of a market economy, to recede to the background. Moreover, the experts say, also a threat to this country’s security is the fact that our state pays too little attention to strategic planning, while its task is not only to broaden the horizons of its vision but also setting up strategy-oriented institutions. Out of these institutions, Pakhomov singled out the stock market: if the latter functions normally, money is invested in industrial shares for the long term. Only in this case will investment go at full speed, touching off interest in investing in long-term, strategic projects. The study also deals with the economic security of Ukrainian enterprises, analyzing in detail the financial, personnel, technological, and other components of enterprises’ economic security.
Among the main factors of economic and social development, the study also singled out the human factor, noting that Ukraine’s serious problems have been caused not so much by an overall reduction of the population as by its structural changes, qualitative parameters, and the condition of its human genetic fund.
As Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Serhiy Tulub told the session, this extremely important study had been used to definitively draft the concept of national security that will soon be submitted for a parliamentary consideration.
