Following independence Ukraine’s leaders acquired the instrument of strategic partnership to find friends in the international arena. As a result, Ukraine currently has almost 20 strategic partners, selected and announced regardless of the foreign policy strategy. Ukrainian “strategic partnerships” exist not as components of the political process but as separate parts of a missing system.
The European Union, which is by the way not listed among our strategic partners, can be viewed as an example to follow in how to use the instrument of partnership. European bureaucrats do not waffle. Relations within the framework of “strategic partnerships” are referred to by European leaders as the “club of the selected,” and are built based on detailed technical bilateral documents. At present the club comprises nine countries, each one being a powerful international or regional leader: Brazil, China, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the USA, and Canada. For all the other important players, including its neighbors, there exist other definitions: associated partnership, partnership and cooperation, Eastern partnership, and others. A different kind of policy applies towards those categories.
In Ukraine the instrument of partnership does not work in the nation’s interests and is being used unsystematically and chaotically. Strategic partnership with Ukraine is loosing its value for those countries who could be really useful for Ukraine.
Most of the announced partnerships are of declarative character. The existing memorandums, declarations, and charters are general documents which do not define a concrete sphere of cooperation and do not have detailed plans for its realization.
There is no official list of countries which are Ukraine’s strategic partners. While there are 20 declared partnerships, there are only eight real bilateral documents, signed with Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Canada, Poland, the Russian Federation, the USA, and Uzbekistan. The rest of the partnerships have either only rhetorical confirmation, as in the cases of China, Israel, Finland, Argentina, Slovakia, Germany, and India, or are viewed as sharing common features – mainly Ukraine’s geographical neighbors. These are referred to in the decree of the Verkhovna Rada “On Main Vectors of Ukraine’s Foreign Policy.” Such an approach is as absurd as, let’s say, the oral adoption of laws, and as a result devalues strategic partnership as an instrument of foreign policy.
The depth of relations with some strategic partners does not compare to that with others. It is not surprising that Viktor Yanukovych, on his first visit to Brussels as President of Ukraine, didn’t mention Argentina or Georgia while speaking about Ukraine’s foreign policy priorities. The foreign policy priorities that were mentioned included integration with the European Union, renewing friendly relations with Russia, establishing good-neighborly relations with neighboring countries, and strategic partnership with the US. Argentina and Georgia cannot compare with the EU and the USA in the level of development of relations with Ukraine. Thus, in this case they are not actual strategic partners.
Thus, what is called strategic partnership in international practice does not exist in Ukraine. The strategic partnership for us has no essential differences with simple partnership or functional bilateral relations. In order for the declared strategic partnership to start working it is necessary to either extend them or to revise them equally for all.
A solution to this problem could be the elaboration of a strategy for foreign and domestic policies, which would define Ukraine’s national interests, goals, and partners in achieving them. A law of this kind is now being prepared and was promised to be presented in early June. However, it is not clear what facts and convictions are being considered in the preparation of this document and whether it will be realistic. If it is not, any strategic partnership with Ukraine will remain an attractive package without any sense and it will discredit Ukraine as an international partner, preventing deep bilateral relations from having common goals and purpose.
