INTERVIEW: Nicholas Burns on evolving U.S.-Ukrainian relations
Secretary of State Warren Christopher's March 19-23 trip to Eastern Europe and Russia included one-day meetings with government officials in Ukraine. In Kyiv, Mr. Christopher denounced the Russian Duma's non-binding resolution declaring the dissolution of the Soviet Union illegal, calling the March 15 decision by the Russian Parliament's lower house "highly irresponsible."
Mr. Christopher's March 19 visit with Leonid Kuchma was his third meeting with the Ukrainian president since the beginning of the year. Discussions, tainted by the explosive Duma resolution, centered on Ukraine's relationship with NATO, closure of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, and progress on Ukraine's new constitution.
Accompanying the secretary of state on his European tour was R. Nicholas Burns, State Department spokesman and deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. No stranger to Ukrainian issues, the former special assistant to President Bill Clinton on Russia and Ukraine (1993-1995) told The Weekly in a March 26 interview that "it was great to be back" in Kyiv.
A career foreign service officer, Mr. Burns served on the National Security Council at the White House during the break-up of the Soviet Union until his appointment to the State Department in January 1995. In the fall of 1993, he led an economic delegation to Kyiv that marked the shift in U.S. policy toward Ukraine. In 1994, Mr. Burns traveled to Kyiv five times to enhance the U.S.-Ukrainian economic relationship.
Below, Mr. Burns offers The Weekly his views on U.S. Ukrainian relations. The phone interview was conducted by Weekly Assistant Editor Khristina Lew.
PART I
Q: You accompanied Mr. Christopher on his recent trip to Eastern Europe. Let's begin with your visit to Kyiv.
A: We had two meetings with President Kuchma this year. We saw him in Helsinki in early February, and then he also came to the United States [February 20-22], where he saw President Clinton and Secretary Christopher.
The secretary was on a trip to Europe, both Western Europe, Central Europe and Russia. He wanted to stop in Kyiv. He hadn't been there on his own since October 1993, and felt it was time he went back and had good discussions with the leadership. We spent the entire day last Tuesday in Kyiv, met with President Kuchma, met with Prime Minister [Yevhen] Marchuk. Foreign Minister [Hennadiy] Udovenko had a luncheon and meeting with him, and then he met with [Oleksander] Moroz as well, the Supreme Rada chairman.
In addition to that, we went to the Okhmadit Hospital, which is a hospital that specializes in the care of cancer patients, and a lot of the Chornobyl patients are there.
It was a very good visit. The reason for visiting is because we have determined, and I think we have demonstrated this over the last couple of years, that Ukraine ought to be one of the strongest partners of the United States in Europe. Ukraine is now the leading recipient of American economic assistance in all of the former Soviet Union - more than Russia this year - with $225 million in 1996, compared to about $180 million for Russia.
We have worked very hard to try to get Ukraine to participate actively in the Partnership for Peace. We were glad to announce when we were there that American troops are going to be in western Ukraine this summer for a military exercise with the Ukrainian military, which I think is very important. It's important symbolically. It's also important practically in order to establish closer military relations with Ukraine, which is one of the things we want to do, and build up confidence between our two militaries.
Ukraine is also going to be attending the nuclear summit in Moscow with the G-7 countries in mid-April. That's really at our suggestion. We felt that you couldn't have a summit on nuclear power plant safety and not invite Ukraine.
There were some people who didn't want to invite Ukraine who will go unnamed - some countries. We thought it was very important to invite them. We have developed, over the last two and a half years or so, I think a very good, very solid, relationship with Ukraine.
Q: What is the State Department's position on the fact that Ukraine would like to remain a neutral state? You talk about PFP and how it's very important that Ukraine work with the American military to build closer military relations. What about NATO? If Ukraine is not interested in NATO, how does the United States view that?
A: Our view is that the most important thing is that Ukraine be, now and in the future, a truly independent state, truly sovereign, and that its territorial integrity be respected by everybody, including Russia. What we obviously would never, ever want to see would be any attempt by Russia to subjugate Ukraine or to expand its influence over Ukraine. We think that the emergence of Ukraine as an independent state in Central Europe is a very important development for Europe as well as for the United States.
We understand that Ukraine will probably always have economic ties with Russia. We understand that Ukrainians and Russians have been linked, certainly personally - there are 12 million or thereabouts ethnic Russians in Ukraine by Ukrainian estimates; there are 4 million ethnic Ukrainians in Russia - so there are always going to be very tight links.
But the current Ukrainian government clearly does not wish to see a return of the Soviet Union as some people in the Russian Duma would like to see. They clearly want to have Ukraine maintain its independence from Russia, and they clearly also want to reach out to the West and have ties to the West: economic, political and military.
They have not made a decision about NATO. They have not come forward and said we want to became a member of NATO as have the Czechs, the Poles and the Hungarians, and the Balts for that matter. But they clearly have made a decision that they don't want to be Belarus - they don't want to become a province of Russia, they don't want to give up their sovereignty to Russia, and we support that.
I think that military exercises, the political relationship that we have, the very strong economic support, all that helps to create connections for Ukraine westward towards Europe and North America, which we think are healthy and will strengthen Ukraine as well as strengthen our own national security interests.
Q: There was talk of a special relationship between Ukraine and NATO. Do you see something like that happening?
A: If Ukraine decides in the future that it does not want to become a member of NATO - and that's Ukraine's decision to make, we can't make it for it - I think it would make a lot of sense for Ukraine to have some kind of relationship with NATO outside of membership. We've talked to Russia about this kind of relationship and if we're talking to Russia, we also should talk to Ukraine. We've told the Ukrainians this. There ought to be some kind of military and political relationship that would help strengthen Ukraine's independence, and we'd be very open to discussing that with Ukraine.
Q: During the secretary's visit to Moscow, was there any discussion of the imminent union between Russia and Belarus?
A: There was. We certainly heard a lot of it. We met with some parliamentarians, heard about it from them, certainly read about it in the press. It was really on the margins of all the meetings that we had.
The secretary made a very strong statement in Ukraine, and he spoke out against the resolution of the Russian Duma. He said that the United States was opposed, that we felt that it was the wrong direction to go in, that we would never support that; that the Russians had to understand that any relationship that they would want to have with the former republics, the new independent states of the former Soviet Union, would have to be voluntary on the part of the other states, and that could not be achieved through coercion or intimidation.
I frankly think that the break-up of the Soviet Union was one of the great, positive events of modern times, and that the emergence of these 15 new countries is a very positive development for the United States. The last thing we want to see is the return of the Soviet Union.
Q: Why do you say that it's a positive development for the United States?
A: As the Soviet Union began to implode in 1991, it was clearly the will of the Ukrainian people, the Estonians, the Latvians, the Armenians, the Kazakhs, the Azeris, to be independent of the Soviet Union. All these countries which formally had to live in a totalitarian system, political and economic, at least the great majority of these countries, are now democracies of one sort or another. Ukraine has got a strong democracy - it's had contested elections. Many of them, including the Kuchma government, have decided they want a market economy. And they've decided that they want to have closer relations with the West than was certainly possible before 1991.
All that is good, and all that is in our interest. The Soviet Union was a foe of the United States, and these countries are not. So we're better off. Our security situation is far preferable than what it was before 1991. As an American, if you believe in democracy, and almost all of us do, you can't help but support emerging democracies wherever they are. In this case Ukraine is 52 million people, larger than France territorially, one of the most important countries for the future of Europe.
I have said many times, publicly, that I think if you look at Europe over the next 100 years, Ukraine will become one of the most important European countries because of how big it is, how many people it has, and where it is, in relation to Russia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other countries. That means that we as Americans ought to reach out and have closer relations with Ukraine. That's what we're trying to do.
Q: So the United States has no position on Belarus uniting with Russia?
A: Our position on that is what we've said in the last couple of days. We actually have not received from either the Belarusians or the Russians much detail about what this is. There has been a lot of conflicting information in the press about exactly what this closer relationship will be. Our position is that if Russia intends to have closer relations and uses intimidation or coercion to achieve it, then we oppose that. If it's truly voluntary, and if this country truly wants a closer association, then we, of course, would not be in a position to object.
Now we know that Ukraine does not want this type of relationship with Russia. We know that Armenia does not want this. We know that the Baltic countries do not want this kind of relationship, so therefore it's in our interest, and we will continue to do this, to speak out in support of the independence of these countries.
Frankly, Belarus is a complex situation. It's pretty clear that the president, [Alyaksandr] Lukashenka, wants a closer relationship, but there were 30,000 people demonstrating in Miensk on Sunday [March 24] against the closer relationship. So I think we've got to listen to those voices, too.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 31, 1996, No. 13, Vol. LXIV
| Home Page |