Bureaucratic Partisanship and State Building: the Case of Ukrainian
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Bureaucratic Partisanship and State Building The Case of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Yelena Biberman The bureaucratic recruitment IPLOMATS do not usually make headlines by express- Ding their political views. Yet Ukrainian diplomats policies of Ukraine’s first post- voiced their opinions during the democratic Orange Revolution in late 2004. In an open letter addressed to communist government led to the international community, more than 150 Ukrainian diplomats challenged the victory of the candidate favored the emergence of a firmly pro- by Russia, Viktor Yanukovych. Although Foreign Min- Western, anti-Russian ideological ister Konstiantyn Hryshchenko urged Foreign Ministry employees not to get involved, the institution’s official and policy orientation within the spokesperson released the following statement: Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign At this historic moment, the diplomats of Ukraine think that it is their professional and personal duty to clearly Affairs. Generational dynamics outline their civic stance. We cannot silently watch these developments, when Ukraine’s commitment to democ- and lack of adequate financing racy is put in doubt, and it faces the threat of international have maintained it. isolation.1 The ability of transitioning societies to generate the politically impartial bureaucracies that Max Weber and others have deemed necessary for both economic develop- ment2 and democratic consolidation3 varies substantially. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry represents an unlikely case of bureaucratic partisanship—a formal state institution with deep structural accountability to the executive, multiple institutional linkages to other branches of government, and charged with impartially representing Ukrainian state interests in the international community. Its task is that of YELENA BIBERMAN is a Ph.D. candidate in comparative politics at Brown policy implementation rather than policy-making. How did University. She holds an M.A. in regional studies from Harvard University. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, despite the serious political Research for this article was funded in part by the International Research & divisions and deep social cleavages within Ukrainian soci- Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the U.S. Department of State through the Title VIII program. Neither of these organizations is responsible ety, manage to adopt and hold on to a united, ideologically for the views expressed herein. charged position? What explains the staunchly pro-Western Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 58, no. 2, March/April 2011, pp. 17–27. © 2011 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 1075–8216 / 2011 $9.50 + 0.00. DOI 10.2753/PPC1075-8216580202 Biberman Bureaucratic Partisanship and State Building 17 integration, anti-Russian “imperialism” stance of this bu- and Roman predecessors. However, it was first established reaucratic institution in the face of changing governments as a full-fledged state structure with the creation of the with decidedly divergent approaches to Western integration sovereign Ukrainian People’s Republic on June 10, 1917, and relations with Russia? after the collapse of the Russian empire in March 1917. This article examines the mechanisms by which The Ukrainian government established relations with Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a key state institu- France and Great Britain, and joined the peace negotia- tion implementing the country’s foreign policy, built and tions in Brest, where, on January 27, 1918, the first peace sustained a united ideological front over the past twenty treaty ending World War I was signed. When the German- years. In doing so, it offers a rare glimpse into this largely sponsored government known as the hetmanate came to nontransparent organization. Specifically, the bureaucratic power in April 1918, Ukraine opened diplomatic missions recruitment policies employed by the country’s first post- in ten states, including Romania, Finland, Switzerland, communist government led to the emergence of a firmly and Sweden. A separate delegation for peace negotiations pro-Western, anti-Russian ideological and policy orienta- with Russia was appointed during the hetmanate, and tion within Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry. This orientation the first national consular courses designed to provide was maintained by the generational dynamics inside the the state with diplomatic and consular personnel were ministry and lack of adequate financing.N evertheless, the introduced. institution’s deep structural accountability to the executive After the second republican government (the Direc- and, to a lesser extent, other branches of the government tory) seized power from the hetmanate in December limits its ability to exercise full autonomy and pursue its 1918, it sent diplomatic envoys to even more countries, own policy agenda on the international stage. including the United States, Great Britain, Italy, Greece, This study is based on formal interviews with members and Belgium, and it opened embassies in Estonia, Latvia, of the Ukrainian foreign policy establishment, including Hungary, and the newly formed Czechoslovakia, among diplomats, ambassadors, and a former foreign minister, as others. Meanwhile, the West Ukrainian National Republic, well as leading policy experts.4 The interviews were car- a commonwealth that existed in late 1918 and early 1919 ried out in June and July 2009 in Kyiv, Ukraine.5 Empirical in eastern Galicia, opened its own missions in Austria, evidence for this article also comes from systematic exami- Italy, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. It also nation of secondary sources, including news articles and sent special missions to the United States, Canada, and academic literature in Ukrainian, Russian, and English. Brazil, which were home to a considerable number of Ukrainian emigrants. In January 1919, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist The Path to Independence Republic was officially proclaimed, and subsequently The underpinnings of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s it established diplomatic missions in Warsaw, Berlin, ideological cohesiveness are fairly recent developments. and Prague. In addition, Poland, Austria, Germany, and The contemporary ministry draws on deep historical Czechoslovakia opened their own offices in Ukraine, but traditions, to be sure, but it was in the early 1990s that these focused mostly on trade-related issues and consular the institution achieved its current form as a principal services.7 In December 1922, when the Union of Soviet institution of a sovereign state. Following a brief overview Socialist Republics was established, all Ukrainian for- of the historical evolution of the ministry, the discussion eign political and economic ties became subordinated to focuses on the period when, to use Mark Beissinger’s Moscow, and Ukraine could no longer conduct its own phrase, “history thickened.”6 That is, when structural foreign policy. conditions met with contingent events and leadership The formation of the United Nations in 1945 con- decisions about how quickly and effectively to staff a tributed to the founding of Ukraine’s own (albeit chiefly bureaucracy that was, particularly at that time, critical nominal) foreign policy institution, the People’s Com- to state capacity. This was a time when state capacity in missariat of Foreign Affairs. The general secretary of the the international arena crucially shaped domestic capac- Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s (CPSU’s) Central ity as Ukraine sought allies and, in effect, donors for its Committee, Joseph Stalin, had hoped that all fifteen Soviet state-building project. republics would be individually represented in the UN General Assembly. He eventually reached a compromise Tracing Roots. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry traces its with Britain’s prime minister Winston Churchill and U.S. foreign service tradition to Kievan Rus and its Byzantine president Franklin D. Roosevelt in which only Ukraine 18 Problems of Post-Communism March/April 2011 and Belarus, which had suffered tremendously from the more prosperous Moscow and move with their families Nazi invasion, would have seats in the General Assem- to their newly independent national homeland.13 bly. Between 1944 and 1990, Ukraine’s foreign policy The ministry then turned to the Ukrainian Academy was confined to multilateral settings and coordinated in of Sciences, recruiting accomplished scholars in various Moscow. In addition to its membership in the UN, Ukraine disciplines from history to chemistry who had foreign- participated in a number of international organizations, language skills. These individuals were attracted to including the International Court of Justice (since 1945), diplomatic service by the prospects of traveling abroad the World Health Organization (since 1946), the United and career advancement. About 30 percent of Ukraine’s Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization diplomats in the 1990s were recruited from the Academy (UNESCO) (since 1954), and the International Atomic of Sciences.14 Energy Agency (IAEA) (since 1957). It also served as For its lower- and entry-level positions, the ministry a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council in hired massive numbers of young people. As one high- 1948–49 and 1984–85.8 profile diplomat in the first wave of young recruits recalls, On July 16, 1990, the Verkhovna Rada, the parliament “In the mid-1990, there were many young people work- of the Ukrainian SSR, adopted the Declaration of State ing at the Foreign Ministry. It was fun. [Former foreign Sovereignty