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I am no supporter of the widely held opinion that Ukrainian foreign policy has been a failure since the Orange Revolution, but clearly there have been problems in implementation. Despite frustrations and setbacks over the past five years, I remain convinced that the country’s Orange foreign policy has been right in essence but has simply been lacking in terms of presentation and execution.An additional factor complicating the issue has been the consistent failure in Kyiv to comprehend how Ukrainian foreign policy decisions will impact on the country’s key partners. \
Decisive policy needed after Kuchma era inertia

After the relentless inconclusiveness of the Kuchma era, the agenda proposed by President Yushchenko since his arrival in office in 2005 has been more precise and clear. Its backbone – European integration – was supported by the majority of the Ukrainian people. When considering another crucial component of his agenda – integration to NATO – it is important to note that despite what has been a massive campaign against Ukrainian membership of the alliance, the number of enthusiasts for Ukrainian membership of NATO has actually increased. This is in contrast to attitudes among members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, where the number of those supporting Ukraine’s membership has actually fallen.

Although appropriate in its fundamentals, the Yushchenko foreign policy agenda has lacked style. Public controversies with Russia, unending allusions to double standards on the part of EU and NATO states and the appearance of being offended when dealing with key European countries have combined with stubborn attempts to prove to Western colleagues that Russia was the one who started each and every squabble to create an overwhelmingly negative overall impression. All these factors are certainly appealing to a portion of the Ukrainian electorate, but nevertheless the results have been quite annoying for the country’s foreign partners and damaging for Ukraine’s longer term foreign policy objectives.

This Ukrainian straightforwardness is a style which might have won support among adherents to similar foreign policy behaviour such as Polish president Lech Kaczynski, but it has not been appreciated by those who are not so used to mixing their own ideas with the details of real politik, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In terms of sporting metaphors, it has often appeared that President Yushchenko has been trying to play golf with both the West and Russia, while the West has been playing poker and the Russians have been playing rugby.

Ukraine and the West: A question of mutual fatigue?

Another challenge which has encumbered President Yushchenko’s foreign policy has been the mutual unpreparedness of Ukraine and the West to address a genuine, rather than virtual, European and Euro-Atlantic integrationist agenda. The difference here is that Ukraine in 2004 was mentally ready to move in a European direction, whereas the West did not appear ready to move the mental boundary of the EU further east beyond the Polish border. This problem has remained a consistent obstacle throughout the past five years despite assurance by some European politicians that psychological barriers to Ukraine’s EU integration had been taken down thanks to the Orange Revolution.

The European Union has repeatedly articulated what it expects Ukraine to do in order to match the well-publicized Copenhagen criteria for future member states, but despite these apparently clear guidelines many European politicians do not seem to know how to help Ukraine reach the finish line. Ukrainians, meanwhile, have been clear on what they wanted to find upon reaching the EU integration finish line, but have not always demonstrated an appreciation of how much effort they should apply in order to achieve these goals. As a result, the long-term objective of Ukrainian membership of the European Union has become an illusive issue for both Kyiv and Brussels. Today, it is difficult to gauge just who is suffering from greater fatigue: the European Union from Ukraine or Ukraine from the European Union?

All or nothing approach offers little room for maneuver

In the past five years since the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has often preferred to adopt an all-or-nothing approach to relations with both EU and NATO: if there is talk of an association agreement with the European Union, it should necessarily include reference to future membership prospects; if there could be a liberalization of the visa regime, then it ought to be accompanied by a promise of further dialogue regarding a full visa-free regime. However, while Kyiv politicians have often been accused of being overly demanding in their dealings with Brussels, they have also adopted what could charitably be described as a minimalist approach to internal reforms.

The EU and NATO have adopted a similarly lopsided approach to relations with Ukraine. If there is a policy of fighting corruption, then both the EU and NATO have insisted that it must be comprehensive and address the entire corruption morass instantly. If there is to be popular support for NATO membership, then it should be majority popular support – something which NATO has previously only expected from candidate countries in the final stages prior to membership. This tough stance has not been balanced by efforts to help the Ukrainian government make genuine progress towards further integration. To borrow from the sporting lexicon once more, it has often seemed that the EU and NATO have taken on the role of high jump trainers who are determined to lower the bar while insisting that it is too early for Ukraine to attempt anything more ambitious.

However, in reality it has often been the EU and NATO who are unprepared to embrace policies involving greater commitment. For example, the bar was clearly lowered when the EU last year dumped Ukraine together with five other former Soviet states as part of the new so-called Eastern Partnership, even though some of the other members of this not-so-illustrious grouping have never even sought EU membership. Rather than provide Kyiv with something that could stimulate the country’s integrationist drive such as pairing Ukraine with countries further down the road to integration, the EU has created an environment where other Eastern Partnership countries will be looking to Ukraine’s modest achievements as a benchmark. This may at first glance appear flattering to Kyiv, but in reality there are few integrationist benefits to be had from bracketing the country with Azerbaijan, Armenia and even Belarus.

Too much stick, not enough carrot

The saga of Ukraine’s NATO application is another case in point. In early 2008 Ukraine’s leaders applied for a NATO Membership Action Plan, but this was refused after extraordinary pressure was applied on individual member states by the Kremlin. However, a Membership Action Plan is first and foremost all about reform and does not represent a commitment to later membership. In other words, for purely geopolitical reasons outside of Ukraine’s control Kyiv was denied the additional stimuli it so desperately needed in order to pursue domestic reforms. Such stimuli could have proven invaluable for a country whose elites have little capacity for consensus and whose state apparatus remains terribly lazy.

On contrast to the hesitant attitudes of the West in general, the desire to push the bar to the highest possible limit has been a noticeable trait of Viktor Yushchenko’s presidency. I have often been asked by international colleagues to explain why the Ukrainian President chooses to announce deadlines for foreign policy tasks publicly. Take, for example, the goal of entry into the World Trade Organization in 2005, obtaining a NATO Membership Action Plan in 2008, or signing the political part of a new EU association agreement in 2009. These public policy declarations have provoked opposition from internal opponents which has weakened the President’s position inside the country and also undermined his credibility among many of the country’s foreign partners. When seen in this light President Yushchenko’s policy statements may seem ill-guided, but his logic is simple enough: mobilizing the Ukrainian state apparatus and stimulating Ukraine’s diplomatic corps is so difficult that if the bar hadn’t been placed as high as possible at the highest level of government then it is doubtful that even a small portion of his administration’s declared goals could have been achieved.

Despite the risks inherent in such tactics, it is important to acknowledge that to certain extent it has been productive. It is certainly hard to imagine how the dialogue regarding a visa-free regime between Ukraine and the EU would ever have been launched if not for energetic promotion of the issue by Ukraine – especially considering the negative disposition of some EU states towards the issue. In the same way, if Kyiv would not have been actively pursuing a visit of US president Barak Obama to Ukraine, vice president Joe Biden may also have skipped the Ukrainian capital. In any case, during the last five years, Ukrainians have learned by experience that, in their case, there could be no sudden advances to the Western direction. Again, it is because of the mutual unpreparedness to proceed from both sides.

Alyona Getmanchuk is director of the Institute of World Policy (Kyiv) and the former editor in chief of Glavred magazine. She has been specialising in Ukrainian foreign policy and international policy for past 11 years