UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

16-18th February 2006

Saturday 18 February 2:30 – 4:00: Panel K1: Perceptions of the Nation in Russia and Ukraine

Rasmus Nilsson (UCL - SSEES): ‘Security or self-definition?: Ukrainian perception of Self and Russian Other in the nuclear question’

This paper is concerned with the first years of Ukrainian independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with Ukraine’s search for recognition of its statehood domestically and not least internationally. The paper claims that in order for such recognition to be achieved, it was vital for Ukraine to sort out its relationship with especially Russia, but also with the so-called ‘civilized West’; not so much in terms of security, but more in regards to distinguishing and relating Ukraine to both on the international arena. This was not merely a matter of other international actors fully recognizing and accepting Ukrainian statehood, although this, too, was of importance. More crucial still, however, was the gradual Ukrainian perception of what it meant to be an independent international actor in a new Europe.

Working within the discipline of International Politics, and employing the theory of Positivist Constructivism, the paper focuses on the question of nuclear weapons remaining on Ukrainian soil after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Whereas the majority of scholars working with this question have examined Ukraine’s perceived need for security and security guarantees vis-à-vis Russia, this paper shall instead centre around Ukraine’s wish for international recognition of its statehood. In this hides a fundamental dilemma. On the one hand, threatening to take control with some nuclear weapons on its territory ensured Ukraine that its independent statehood would be acknowledged by surrounding countries and much of the world; that it, so to speak, would be included among the states of the world because it significantly interacted with these. On the other hand, in stating a possible intention to retain nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil, Ukraine stood the risk of breaching the non-proliferation norm regarding nuclear weapons, and thus become a pariah-state; a state, which might be recognized by others as an international actor, but still not belong to the group of responsible, ‘civilized’ states and thus be excluded from a modern Europe.

That Ukraine chose both to contemplate the dilemma of keeping nucclear weapons, and eventually to give them up, is, however, intimately connected to its perception of Russia. Not to Russian intentions or the possibility of a Russian threat, but to a post-empire Russian Federation the nature and extension of which was unknown both to itself and to surrounding countries. The paper claims that the reach, geographical and otherwise, of Ukrainian jurisdiction and legitimacy was far from stable in the aftermath of the Soviet Union, and that it was intimately connected with Russia’s corresponding search for identity. Therefore, Ukraine could either choose to wait for Russian action, thereby jeopardizing an already tenuous understanding of Self not by Russian threat, but by Russian indeterminancy. Or it could choose to act, although such might provoke Russia and other neighboring countries into retalitation, armed or otherwise. In threatening to withhold nuclear weapons, Ukraine forced Russia to recognize a Ukrainian independent state (an Other, so to speak), but also to define its Self in relation to the late Soviet empire and the post-Soviet situation, thereby lessening (albeit not removing) the risk of an internationally unstable Russia.