Safeguarding Ukraine's Security : Dilemmas and Options

For this text a group of Ukrainian and American scholars have examined a range of problematic security issues confronting Kiev.

Topics covered include Ukraine's grand strategic options; its internal security debate; its relations with Russia; the role of conventional forces, international institutions and arms control in its security policy; and the issues raised by the presence of nuclear weapons on Ukraine's soil.

In December 1991, Ukraine attained its independence, ending several hundred years of nearly unbroken rule by Moscow.

With sovereignty came the need and responsibility to provide for Ukraine's security.

For Kiev, this poses a difficult challenge: It coexists uneasily with its giant Russian neighbour, many of whose citizens appear unwilling or unable to accept the fact of Ukraine's independence; its borders are neither unchallenged nor protected by natural lines of defense; it is ethnically divided, with millions of Russians living on its territory; and it is both economically distressed and enormously dependent on supplies, especially energy, from Russia. Moreover, having achieved independence suddenly, Ukraine does not have a defence establishment or a defence doctrine or even a large community of independent security experts.

Only gradually over the months since independence has Ukraine begun to tackle the question of how it should provide for its security.

The essays in this book should be an important contribution to this current debate.