Security and Non-proliferation, issue 4 (16) 2006

Download Security and Non-proliferation, issue 4 (16) 2006
Hot Summer 2006

This year’s political summer really proved hot and troublesome. In many regions of the world the political life thermometer and barometer columns have been reaching extremes or sometimes even defying them. Intensified tension around Iran’s nuclear program, escalation of the armed conflict at the Middle East, North Korean ballistic missile launches, bloody terrorist acts in Iraq and India, terrorist threats to transatlantic flights from the United Kingdom. The world seems to have taken a month-long timeout for this year’s World Championships in football only to vigorously plunge back into the whirlwind of economic, religious and political conflicts that had grown so acute someplace that they ended up in military action that always entails sufferings and deaths among civilians above all.
In addition to basically predictable but unscheduled events, political events took place over the period, which, despite being regular, are always a focus of attention for the whole world and which are lively commented on by politicians and analyzed by political reviewers and experts worldwide. Such events certainly include the Saint Petersburg G8 Summit that is paid a great deal of attention to in this issue of Security and Non-Proliferation. The most pressing issues on the Summit agenda included global energy security and war on terrorism, non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The fact of their relevance was vividly demonstrated by those political events that accompanied the annual meeting of the leaders of 8 major world powers.
It is a reality that a great deal of critical issues referred to in the adopted summit documents implicitly or explicitly affect Ukraine, whose geopolitical role in European energy security can hardly be overestimated. Therefore, the political events in our country were also focused on by leading countries of the world. The twists and turns of the complicated process of forming the majority in the parliament and a coalition government based on it during a transition to the parliamentary/presidential rule was eyed by many capital cities worldwide; some concerned, some sympathetic, some maliciously joyful.
The political compromise was born in painful throes. Its outcomes are, no doubt, quite controversial for all the parties. None of the political powers avoided casualties, primarily on the ideological front, now that they had to concede to their ex-“adversaries”, and those forces that once represented “faithful allies” ended up being labeled traitors by some active participants of those events.
The coalition government does not look like a team of like-minded people, serious performance problems can be predicted, but what evokes some optimism is the intent to reach a compromise between the key political forces secured in the Universal, the new government’s declaration on continuity of the foreign policy course. The “barricade” rhetoric and calls for civil disobedience may be justified when people revolt against their suppressors, but not when the West on one side of the barricade is opposed by the East on the other one. It will be fair if Ukrainian people judge Ukrainian government by “its fruits”. The role of Ukraine in assurance of global security will certainly substantially grow when its foreign and domestic policies acquire stability, consistency and predictability. And we, together with you our readers, are hopeful that will be the case.

Deputy Editor-in-Chief Sergiy Kondratov