Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits. European Security. Volume 27, Issue 4, 2018.
1. Introduction
Security Sector Reform (SSR) is an important component of the European Union’s (EU) external intervention toolkit. The EU defines SSR as the “process of transforming a country’s security system to gradually enable it to provide individuals and the state with more effective and accountable security, respecting human rights, democracy, the rule of law and the principles of good governance” (EC 2016a, p. 2). The EU understands SSR as a long-term political process which needs to be owned nationally and a commitment from a broad range of stakeholders.
Under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), the EU has been undertaking SSR missions in Asia, Africa and in Eastern Europe, at all stages of the conflict cycle (Jayasundara-Smits and Schirch 2015, p. 3). The EU has launched many overseas peacebuilding missions, most of which include SSR elements (Tardy 2016, p. 1). According to the EU’s Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy (EEAS 2016) and the preparatory documents related to the EU-wide strategic framework for SSR (EEAS), the Union continues to renew its commitments to SSR in general. As the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini asserts, SSR is viewed by the EU as critical to achieving both functional and normative peace imperatives (EEAS 2016). Reaching normative imperatives via SSR is integral to countering external threats, to fostering democratic values and to building rule-based forms of security governance. Also, in terms of global strategy, SSR is featured as an ex-post condition (i.e. as an outcome) of the EU enlargement policy (EEAS 2016). Thus, undertaking EU sponsored SSR is important for countries seeking future EU membership, a condition that applies also Ukraine as a candidate country. On the one hand, timely realisation of these reforms depends on both Ukraine and the EU’s ability to manoeuvre key context-specific challenges in the mission’s immediate and wider operational environment. On the other hand, the EU’s ability to roll out a sustainable reform path respecting normative principles, is equally important to the success of SSR.
In this broader context, this article investigates some unique context-specific challenges faced by EUAM in Ukraine. How do these challenges influence the achievement of the normative-societal imperatives of SSR through EUAM? To operationalise this second question, we focus on how the EUAM has sought to practice key SSR normative principles of coherence and inclusivity in the context of Ukraine.
The article is organised in the following way. In section 2, the paper briefly discusses the methodology, before presenting the context-specific challenges faced by the EUAM in Ukraine. This section mainly analyses two key challenges encountered by EUAM—ongoing multiple armed conflicts and the nature of the EU-Russia relationship. Among other challenges, we find the above two specific challenges are playing a determining role on the planning, implementing and (degree of) success of EUAM, particularly in achieving the SSR normative-societal imperative. In section 4, by exploiting the vertical axis of Whole of Society (WOS) framework, we analyse how EUAM is practicing vertical coherence via local ownership and inclusivity. Section 5 offers some concluding thoughts on EUAM’s overall success in achieving the normative-societal imperative and flag a few broader lessons EUAM could offer for other EU-SSR missions.
The EU is not alone, since a number of external actors provide SSR assistance to Ukraine. They include other multilateral actors such as the OECD, EU, NATO, DCAF, UN, and OSCE, as well as individual EU member states such as The Netherlands, UK, Italy, Germany and non-EU member states like the USA, Japan, Norway and Australia. Our choice to analyse the EU-sponsored SSR programme EUAM in Ukraine specifically, is motivated by two main considerations. First, despite the unique reform environment in Ukraine, marked by a tense and complex geo-political setting, this reform environment seems highly relevant for generating learning experiences for ongoing and future EU-sponsored SSR missions under roughly comparable conditions. By analysing EUAM, we hope to contribute to SSR literature more broadly with an emphasis on the wider reform environment. A second consideration is the critical role EUAM is playing in facilitating Ukraine’s potential future EU membership; given a number of aspiring countries in the region, and others designated as potential candidates, deeper understanding of Ukraine’s SSR reform process could generate important lessons for these countries and the EU as well. A key source of data for this article is sourced from a recently concluded EU-HORIZON2020 project “Whole of Society for Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding (WOSCAP)” which assessed the EU’s capabilities for implementing conflict prevention and peacebuilding interventions through sustainable, comprehensive and innovative civilian means.
2. A whole-of-Society approach to SSR
We apply a Whole of Society (WOS) approach to EU conflict prevention and peacebuilding in Ukraine. This is not only our main analytical framework but also the basis for the EU’s own Comprehensive Approach (CA) to external conflicts and crises (Martin et al. 2016). Modelled on a human security approach, a WOS approach is based on understanding security as a response to a broad spectrum of threats. These range from material and physical harm to threats to personal dignity. The WOS expanded view of security, informed by human security, has remained integral to the EU’s recent evolution from CA to an Integrated Approach (IA), as has repeatedly been emphasised in EU-SSR programming (Faleg et al. 2018, p. 12).
From a WOS perspective, there are some necessary conditions for any successful SSR programme. The first is a certain degree of political stability in the wider operational context, something not that apparent in Ukraine. A second condition is that pragmatism and idealism should be meaningfully combined in the SSR agenda; I will explore whether this is the case. It is also important that SSR be approached from a medium-to-long-term governance and development perspective, this being central to the so-called normative imperative. Finally, a technical train-and-equip approach is required to fulfil what is termed the functional imperative (Jayasundara-Smits and Schirch 2015). The WOS approach has broad acceptance by academia, policy-makers and practitioners, largely because the WOS approach assumes that SSR activities should adhere to normative principles of inclusivity and coherence, as this will lead to more successful interventions, since the SSR should be more embedded and have greater legitimacy with local elites and the wider society (Martin et al. 2016). Inclusivity and coherence is therefore dependent on embeddedness in the “local”. This implies that local dynamics, local context and local ownership are viewed as critical to influencing the success or failure of SSRs (Donais 2009, Nathan 2007). Given this, since WOS is sometimes viewed from a mainly normative perspective, it is important in this article to shed more light on the practical and functional aspects of how SSR principles are implemented from a WOS perspective.
The WOS framework has two analytical axes—vertical and horizontal. The vertical axis links multiple stakeholders and actors (both active and passive) from the supranational and international, to regional, national, municipal and local, connecting their interests and agendas, between different levels of practice (Martin et al. 2016, p. 17). The ideal on the vertical axis is coherence between multiple actors and stakeholders and between different levels of action in which these stakeholders are involved (Martin et al. 2016, pp. 15-17). The horizontal axis links different fields of policy and praxis, across sectors such as security, development, governance, human rights and even economic and social policies. The aim of the horizontal axis of WOS is coherence between these (interlinked) policies through coordinating the tools, resources, capabilities and actors under each specialised policy area. From a WOS perspective, a successful intervention implies coherence along both horizontal and vertical axes. This article will focus mainly on the vertical axis by privileging an actor-centred rather than a cross-sectoral viewpoint. Focusing on the vertical axis allows us to shed light on how various SSR-related actors organise complex and multiple relationships among themselves, in a highly volatile operational context. It also helps to focus on the importance of how normative SSR goals can be achieved during mission planning and implementation. WOS is also useful as a heuristic lens with which to assess EUAM’s capabilities in SSR, since it requires consideration of the complex mix of challenges arising from contextual, normative and functional realms, all of which can be expected to have a bearing on the life cycle and outcomes of the reform processes involved in SSR.
“Context specificity” is generally considered vital to the success of external security-related interventions (Ekengren and Simons 2016, p. xi). However, the meaning of “context” should be understood in a nuanced manner, since the immediate context may differ from the context of longer-term security measures. The relation between short- and longer-terms contexts, and how they overlap is also of interest. If actors and institutions involved in external interventions can align their programmes to meet both SSR functional and normative goals, they stand a better chance of positive and sustainable impacts (Jayasundara-Smits and Schirch 2016, p. 4). In EUAM, there are two main context-specific challenges that have shaped EUAM’s mandate, its activities, the modalities of programme implementation and the coherence and inclusivity of outcomes. The first is regional geo-strategic challenges. The second is the relationship between the EU and Russia. Each of these is now considered in turn.
3. It is the context stupid! contextual challenges for EUAM
The first challenge is posed by the emerging and complex regional geo-strategic dynamics. These challenges have shaped the overall EUAM mission. Ukraine’s strengthening relationship with the EU reflects in part Ukraine’s interest in building a stronger and more viable democratic state with the assistance of the EU (Litra et al. 2016, p. 9). As was evident from a public opinion survey in September 2015, almost half of Ukrainians, 49 percent of respondents, wanted a more democratic state and closer ties with Europe (IFES, 13 Oct 2015). Reciprocally, the EU regards Ukraine as a priority partner country, and as strategic to EU interests in political terms (DCAF and FBF 2016, p. 45, EEAS 2016). Broad mutual understanding around closer EU-Ukraine relations has been formalised through several agreements, including the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, signed in 1994 and which came into force in 1998. In addition, in 2003, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and in 2009, the Eastern Partnership Programme (EaP) were agreed. Most recently, the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement (AA) was concluded in 2013 and signed in September 2014 (EEAS 2017).
The last of these, the AA, serves as the principal reform roadmap for Ukraine’s future relations with the EU and eventual Ukrainian EU membership. It was signed after the EuroMaidan protests in 2013. Initially the pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych (2010-2014) refused to sign the agreement, and then was forced to relinquish power. Amidst the several different interpretations of the EuroMaidan events (Yakushik 2016, p. 108-109), the EU interpreted these events as a sign of widespread popular support for closer association with the EU (EEAS 2015b, p. 1). For others, however, the EuroMaidan reflected Ukrainians’ domestic priorities, expressing the hope of the majority for a better future for their country, and for a more democratic government built on solid economic foundations. In this second view, the role of the EU was mainly to help Ukraine achieve this vision (Litra et al. 2016, p. 4).
Given Ukraine’s geo-strategic importance in its own region, the country’s emerging ties with the EU are entangled with a host of regional political conflicts. Ukraine occupies a pivotal position within Eastern Europe and is located along a fault-line where geo-strategic interests of Russia and the West intersect and sometimes collide (Jalilov and Kelly 2014, p. 8). Ukraine is vulnerable to being caught up in the conflicts between major powers, including many “frozen” ethno-regional conflicts (i.e. Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria). These conflicts arise from competing territorial claims made by state and non-state armed actors over specific territories. Such frozen conflicts mean that there are areas whose legal status is disputed, with no clear means of resolving disputed claims over these areas in terms of sovereignty. Frozen conflicts resist easy resolution, by definition, and imply a situation of stalemate. Such knotty situations preclude meaningful attempts to revolve conflict, to prevent future escalation and to engage in meaningful peacebuilding. These frozen conflicts often involve territorial actors being used as proxies by various state and non-state armed actors. Frozen conflicts also carry the risk of unpredictably being reignited in future, even if they have been frozen for years (Morar 2010, p. 11).
Given such no-win situations, for a long time the EU avoided engaging with these areas of frozen territorial conflicts (Council Report 2009, p. 16). EU non-engagement was interpreted as a sign of EU reluctance to confront Russian interventions and proxy wars in the region (Cornell 2014, p. 118). This “hands off” EU approach changed during the Russian-Georgian war of 2008, when for the first time the EU openly criticised Russia’s disproportionate use of force and their violation of international law in their military engagement in Georgia (Council Report 2009, p. 19 and 24). Overall, complex geo-strategic interests around the frozen conflicts in the region have drawn Russia, Ukraine and the EU into a triangular set of conflicting relationships (Staack 2014, p. 1). Russian backing for separatist armed groups in the eastern regions of Ukraine, in Donbas and Luhansk since 2014, have reinforced this triangular set of conflictual relationships. EU-sponsored reforms and agreements signed by ex-Soviet states with the EU have triggered adverse responses from Russia. This reaction is due to Russian regional and global security dilemmas, and a general fear of losing control over weaker states of the former USSR (Cornell 2014, p. 115). Illegal annexation of Crimea, backing rebel groups in the Donbas region of Ukraine in spring 2014 and Russia threatening with military action if NATO expands eastwards to include its former Soviet neighbours Georgia and Ukraine provided clear evidence that Russia would not ignore the expanded EU presence in the region (Golanski 2016, p. 68).
Ukraine occupies a significant place in Russia’s national history and parts of Ukraine are considered part of historical Russia (Litra et al. 2016, p. 4). Russian president Putin clarified Russian sentiments regarding Ukraine in a statement to President Bush following a NATO summit in Bucharest in Spring 2008 as follows: “You don’t understand George that Ukraine is not even a state. What is Ukraine? Part of its territories is Eastern Europe, but the greater part is a gift from us” [i.e. the Russian nation] (Kommersant cited in Marson 2009). Vulnerable to frequent Russian meddling, Ukraine is viewed by Russian leaders as vital to their ideological, economic and symbolic ambitions in the region. The growing trend towards EU-Ukrainian cooperation is seen as threatening realisation of several Russian regional policy ambitions (Speck 2014, p. n.p.). In relation to Russia’s material and economic ambitions, Ukrainian participation is viewed as essential for the Russian-sponsored proposed custom union project that would cover the wider region and act as a counter-balance to the EU. The danger is that Ukraine and some other remaining non-EU member states in eastern European find an EU-sponsored customs union potentially more attractive than a customs union with Russia (Cornell 2014, p. 118). In this atmosphere of rivalry, Ukraine signed the AA with the EU and appeared to demonstrate that it was intent on distancing Ukraine from the Russian customs union proposals (Golanski 2016, p. 68). On the ideological front, Russia views Ukraine as the cradle of Slavic civilisation, completing the hoped-for recreation of part of Russia’s lost Eurasian empire by reviving the pan-Slavic connections. Russia still plans to include Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states in this cultural enlargement project.
The second crucial contextual challenge the EUAM has to navigate emanates from the second leg of this triangular set of relationships—between the EU and Russia. Despite appearances of diverging interests, to a large extent, EU-Russian relations are based on mutual interdependency. Both sides in the relationship benefit economically. Yet strategically, each also considers the other party as an obstacle to realising their own wider ambitions in the wider European region. For the EU, realising its long term ambition of building a secure and democratic neighbourhood in Eastern member states, but without antagonising Russia, remains a key preoccupation, driven in part by the EU’s continuing energy dependency on Russia, and profitable EU-Russia trade relations.
At the heart of Russia’s energy security strategy are uninterrupted gas flows to Europe in return for vital revenues for the Russian state and business sector. In recent years, Russia has been the EU’s third largest trading partner overall (EEAS 2015a), and Russian exports considerable volumes of raw materials to EU member states, especially crude and refined oil and gas. Many EU member states also export a significant share of their industrial exports to Russia. This includes machinery and transport equipment, which make up almost half, 47% of all EU exports to Russia, and are in turn essential to Russia’s infrastructural development and economic growth (EEAS 2015a). In 2013 alone, Germany, as the EU’s largest single economy, exported over €76 billion’s worth of goods to Russia (Schubert et al. 2014). Russian gas supplies remain crucial for both Germany and Italy, both energy-importing countries.
Furthermore, the EU is the single most important investor in Russia; according to EU data, at the end of 2013, EU FDI in Russia was estimated at €154.8 billion (EEAS 2015a). Overall, up to 75% of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in Russia were from EU member states (including Cyprus) (EC 2018). The reciprocity of the relationship is very evident from these figures, and the EU needs Russia as much as Russia needs the EU. Russia in particular lacks a credible alternative to European FDI, and key EU member states need the relatively cheap energy imports that Russia provides.
As Jalilov and Kelly note, under Putin’s leadership, Russia has relied on trade with the EU to balance its external accounts and earn valuable foreign currency to prop up its weakening national economy. Putin’s political survival depends on his economic record, which fuels Putin’s popularity and his perceived success as a leader (2014, p. 9). The EU provided strong support to Russia in the process of securing Russian membership of the WTO, for example. This was further evidence of the pragmatic relationship between Russia and the EU. The EU was alarmed by Russian military intervention in Ukraine, but was unwilling to sacrifice its overall trading relationship with Russia by taking serious military action against the Russia military, or supporting Ukraine militarily. The EU was weakened by the absence of consensus among member states, since some were openly supportive of Ukrainian nationalists, while others were not, depending in part on their own national interests. As EU member states became divided on what position to take, and whether to impose sanctions on Russia, to the disappointment of many Ukrainians, no strong condemnation was publicly issued by the EU concerning Russia’s actions in Ukraine (Bambals 2015, p. 32, Nováky 2015, pp. 249-250).
4. Whole-of-Society analysis of EUAM
On the 22 July 2014, upon the approval of the Council, EUAM Ukraine was established. This is strictly a civilian mission under the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, launched at the request of the Ukrainian authorities. The EUAM targets reforms in the security sector, including policing and the rule of law. It intends to provide strategic advice for the development of effective, sustainable and accountable security services that contribute to strengthening the rule of law in Ukraine, for the benefit of all Ukrainian citizens (EEAS).
Although the initial request from the Ukrainian authorities was for a mission of a larger scope, including assistance to the defence sector and a mission that could help monitor the administrative line between Ukraine and Crimea, the EU delivered a narrower EU-CSDP mission. This was due to a lack of consensus among the EU member states on the form of intervention and the mission’s composition. This lack of consensus alludes to the different nature of relationships between different EU member states with Russia. One such relationship is the preference of conflict avoiding behaviour of some EU member states who wish to have stronger trade relations with Russia. Second is the sympathetic relationship of some EU member states and their societies towards Russia. Third is the hard-line EU member states who are keen on implementing decisive action against Russia (Nováky 2015, p. 249-250, Speck 2014, p. n.p).
This complex web of relationships mostly based on historical ties and strategic foreign policy interests ultimately paved the way for shaping the content and the scope of the final mission by sacrificing the security needs in Ukraine. In other words, the mission largely reflected a strategic compromise among the European political elites which was made acceptable to the Ukrainian authorities. Under the pressing security circumstances, the Ukrainian elites who were in desperate need for the EU’s enhanced presence in the country, accepted the mission. For the EU, EUAM is simply a “conventional” civilian advisory mission with no connection to the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.
In contrast, the Ukrainian authorities expected EUAM to “do more and differently” to enable them to directly address the Russian encroachment and the compelling domestic security conditions (Zarembo 2015, p. 4). The end result is that EUAM is configured and launched as a reaction to the ongoing armed conflict yet it is operationalized separately from it. This approach raises doubts over the relevance and the effectiveness of a “conventional” CSDP-SSR mission launched in the midst of an armed conflict involving a former super power. The divergence of expectations of the two main parties (the EU and Ukrainian authorities) from EUAM thus strained the relationship and exacerbated the vertical incoherencies at the actor level between the EU and the Ukrainian state actors. This patchy start jeopardised an important opportunity for gaining necessary sector wide support for EUAM. Instead, it galvanised previously existing resistance from certain key actors in the state security sector, such as the Prosecutor General’s Office (Litra et al. 2016, p. 39).
When SSR missions follow a peace settlement or are launched in a relatively stable political environment, they are more likely to be successful than when conflict is frozen, latent or persists in the form of open hostilities (Jayasundara-Smits and Schirch 2015, p. 4). Ukraine presents the very reverse of this ideal scenario, because of the geo-strategic dynamics of various conflictual relations, not only between Russia and Ukraine, but between Russia and the EU and within the region around Ukraine in general. Russia factor and EU-Russia dependency relationship have had a major impact on planning and implementation of EUAM and in meeting the normative-societal imperative required for a successful SSR. It is evident from the narrowness of the EUAM mandate, which is strictly formulated as a civilian mission, that EUAM represents a compromise between Ukrainian and the EU elites (Litra et al. 2016, p. 34). On the other hand, the final composition of the mission also represented a compromise among the EU elites themselves (Van der Borgh 2017, p. 37). Some openly supported Russian foreign policy goals, while others were hard-line opponents of Russian ambitions for and in the region.
The ability to manoeuvre context-specific political dynamics and garner the local elite to buy-into SSR need to be present not only locally but also regionally, for SSRs to work well. Whilst the contextual setting was unfavourable to this goal, the EU painted a mainly technocratic and bureaucratic picture of the EUAM, thus avoiding engaging with more controversial domestic and international political realities related to Ukraine, the EU and Russia. The predominantly technocratic-bureaucratic nature of the mission is evident from the way the EUAM programme objectives are spelled out, mostly by using “bureaucratic” jargon. The goals are as follows:
assist in a comprehensive civilian SSR planning process, support rapid preparation and implementation of short term measures of reform, make all arrangements necessary to coordinate and to cooperate with relevant EU and other international actors (EUAM website).
Contrary to the wishes and interests of Ukrainian political elites, EUAM explicitly excluded any assistance to the defence sector.
This approach contrasts with the EU’s tenacious commitment to Mali (via EUCAP Sahel Mali mission) which was undertaken around the same time and under similar conditions of threats to sovereignty and territorial integrity (Djiré et al. 2016, pp. 43-44; Jayasundara-Smits 2018, p. 6). The cautious approach in Ukraine also contrasts with the EU’s swift response in the wake of Georgia’s war with Russia in 2008, where the EU established a monitoring mission explicitly to deal with Russian aggression. Given the EU’s somewhat lacklustre response in Ukraine, by contrast, for many Ukrainians and the Ukrainian authorities, the limited scope of EUAM was a disappointment (Nováky 2015, p. 246). By not being willing to prepare the Ukrainian security sector for major security challenges it is facing, the EU expressed its reservations about entering the geo-strategic struggles pervading the region and further confronting Russia’s leadership in its own “backyard” (Van der Borgh et al 2017, p. 37).
The initial gap between expectations and the capabilities allowed for in EUAM between local actors and the EU, undermined the degree of commitment of both the Ukrainian elites and Ukrainian social forces to the SSR. This lack of domestic support for the EU’s SSR made it difficult for the mission to navigate through local political dynamics and interests (Tardy 2016, p. 2). Besides, among Ukrainian elites who supported the mission, most were confined to Kyiv, a pro-EU enclave, or from sections of organised pro-Western civil society. A significant challenge to the Kyivian authorities’ ambition to realise EU accession in the longer-term, was their inability to gather wider societal support for this goal (Matsuzato 2017, p. 175, Razumko Centre 2018, p. 120). Meantime, some sections of Ukrainian civil society did welcome EUAM at first, but their support was slowly eroded when they observed the slow implementation of the mission (Hallgren and Solonenko 2015).
Overall, it is fair to conclude that the EUAM fell short of building a normative-societal consensus, or ensuring vertical coherence and inclusivity, from EU elites, down to Ukrainian elites, bureaucrats, Ukrainian civil society and society-at-large. This also meant that the mission was unable to foster a sense of local ownership, which has already been pointed to as a crucial condition for any SSR programme’s eventual success. This lack of consensus is worrying due to divisions within Ukrainian society, divided between an east vs. west orientation, between centre and periphery, and different political ideologies (Jalilov and Kelly 2014, p. 3).
In addition, because the EUAM was launched as a high-profile programme at the invitation of the Ukrainian State, it was finding it difficult to garner the support of high-level state officials in security institutions, who had a track record of being particularly resistant to reforms (Kostanyan 2017, p. 2). At the same time, these high-ranking officials felt distanced from EUAM due to its focus on middle-ranking and operational management-level staff in beneficiary institutions (DCAF and FBF 2016, 52). This led some segments in the security sector, especially at the top level, to see the EUAM as an interventionist threat to their long-guarded bureaucratic and financial powers. Such attitudes jeopardised a local sense of ownership over the SSR process as a whole. As a result, collaboration between the EU, and some key beneficiary institutions targeted by EUAM, was limited. These kinds of problems led to a rapid erosion of trust with some of the local partners.
The majority of local security actors perceived EUAM as just “one among many others” that the EU was doing in Ukraine. More damagingly, they perceived EUAM as a “technical fix to a political problem” (Rieppola 2017, p. 19). Unfortunately, similar views have been found in other contexts where EU SSR initiatives were similarly seen as both too interventionist and inadequate for dealing with local political sensitivities (Jayasundara-Smits and Schirch 2015, p. 1, Djiré et al. 2016, p. 58). Just as damaging was the choice by the EU of a mainly technical and apolitical approach, which compromised the EU’s own SSR principles of embeddedness in the specificities of context, in local ownership and in inclusivity (EEAS 2016, pp. 26-27). Building the technical and institutional capacities of formal security actors, including some that were not perceived as legitimate actors within their own context, EUAM compromised the achievement of vertical coherence. Sacrificing vertical coherence caused major concerns in Ukraine in particular, since state-society relations were already marked by deep divisions and polarisation, where civil society was viewed as a passive recipient of state directives.
From a WOS perspective, the lack of embeddedness in local, context-specific dynamics, an almost unavoidable consequence of EUAM’s top-down approach, meant that building local ownership and local buy-in for SSR from state security actors at different levels and from Ukrainian society-writ-large were compromised. The current state-centric approach of EUAM, and its rather narrow focus have both tended to generate unsustainable, short term “quick and tangible outputs”, paving the way for a new generation of “ceremonial institutions” in the Ukrainian security sector. Overall, EUAM’s ability to address the human security needs of Ukrainian people was also questionable (Jayasundara-Smits and Schirch 2015, p. 18).
The available evidence suggests that the planning of EUAM was poorly prepared and needed to be more firmly based on the principles of inclusivity and coherence in order to strengthen the horizontal as well as vertical coherence of the mission (Zarembo 2015, p. 7). Even before the Crimean annexation triggered the launch of EUAM, incoherence in EU engagements in Ukraine were already identifiable. Therefore the lack of coherence during EUAM’s planning and implementation cannot be blamed on the “urgency of the situation”, since it predated the crisis. Although various EU institutions and departments periodically undertook security-related assessments, these were heavily focused on identifying and addressing institutional and legal loopholes in the Ukrainian security system. However limited in scope, these assessments had captured some of the compelling needs of the Ukrainian security sector and offered suggestions on the nature of support the Ukrainian security sector needed, in advance. However, the plethora of security sector assessments and analyses the EU has conducted on Ukraine have remained scattered across a number of documents and departments (DCAF and FBF 2016) and were not utilised to gradually build a coherent security picture and predict security scenarios for Ukraine or for taking early preventative actions or offering a meaningful set of reforms matching the needs and realities on the ground. None of these documents were used systematically to prepare the initial Political Framework for Crisis Approach (PFCA) or the Crisis Management Concept (CMC) in preparing EUAM. Instead, the documents needed for conceptualising and planning the EUAM were developed too quickly and exclusively by sacrificing the importance of the process in building a joint understanding of the issues and needs (DCAF and FBF 2016, p. 48). From a WOS perspective, these instances mean a lack of process thus a lack of inclusivity and risk of reproducing the existing institutional weaknesses (Litra et al. 2016, p. 63). For these reasons, EUAM has come under heavy criticism for not practicing indispensable SSR principles during planning and implementation and for being “supply- driven” rather than demand driven (Rieppola 2017, p. 11). For instance, as reported, prior to the mission being set up in Kyiv, the main potential beneficiaries, namely the Ministries of Internal Affairs and Justice, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the State Penitentiary Service, the State Border Guard Service, the State Fiscal Service and the Security Service of Ukraine did not even know they were selected as the mission’s partners or were institutions targeted for reforms (Litra et al. 2016, p. 46).
At the operational level, EUAM’s top down approach has been accentuated by its low profile (Zarembo 2015, p. 8). This low profile endangers the programme’s ability to penetrate communities and gain legitimacy through regular interactions with local people hence building the normative-societal imperative (Jayasundara-Smits 2016, p. 18). EUAM’s low visibility has led people to perceive it as a “Western project” (Rieppola 2017, p. 12). Its distance from society has been further exacerbated by a lack of public information sharing. Information sharing is a minimum criterion in building “local ownership” for SSR (Schirch 2015, p. 23). EUAM shares only a minimum level of information about its activities in the country. Even with the national counterparts, some of the key planning documents where specific objectives or planned activities related to EUAM are mentioned remain classified (DCAF and FBF 2016, p. 52). It is interesting, in this respect, that the EUAM website is limited to sharing documents with basic information such as mission objectives, legal background and a few technical reports and progress reports (EEAS). This makes monitoring of reform implementation by civil society organisations almost impossible. This approach not only violates the EU’s own principles of good governance, it sets a negative example for future interactions between the Ukrainian state and civil society in the wider reform process.
The lack of support to civil society actors so they can make a meaningful and dynamic contribution to SSR in Ukraine is in clear contrast to the EU-SSR missions in Mali, where EU assistance to civil society has included establishing SSR-specific multidisciplinary think tanks and providing funding for a formal civil society oversight mechanism for SSR (Djire et al. 2016, p. 39). EUAM is also less visible than other, comparable European Union programmes, such as the Border Assistance Mission in Ukraine and in Moldova (EUBAM). EUBAM provides far more detailed reporting on the mission’s progress and does a far better job in terms of transparency of information (Zarembo 2017, p. 196 & 200).
It is in the context of specific and unique challenges in Ukraine that the EU seems to have felt itself compelled to focus mainly on short-term mission goals, in line with technical and advisory services (EC 2016b, p. 11). Sadly, this short-term, pragmatic vision of EUAM, conceived as an immediate reaction forced by the annexation of Crimea, seems to have foreclosed the possibility of the EU being able to implement a longer-term, sustainable SSR and conflict resolution plan in Ukraine, or laying a solid foundation for realising the normative-societal imperatives of a WOS approach. This still remains the case even though the EUAM has taken several measures to adjust its initial approach. These new activities include providing hands-on advice and training to local stakeholders who were not originally included in the plans. The National Police, National Anti-Corruption Bureau and Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office have been added as new beneficiaries of EUAM. After the first strategic review of EUAM, its presence was extended to some conflict-affected regions (i.e. Lviv and Kharkiv). Information sharing via the mission’s electronic newsletter now regularly reports on the ongoing activities, albeit their main focus is on “what” EUAM does rather than how the mission conducts activities. In spite of all these efforts, the EUAM mission is still struggling to fully embed itself into the local-regional context, and to respond to local political dynamics and thus adhere to SSR norms and principles (Van der Borgh et al. 2017, p. 36). Given the above, EUAM’s approach remains narrowly confined to a technical fix that lacks a societal governance-development approach to SSR. The weak normative-societal embeddedness of EUAM runs the risk of losing societal legitimacy. As Litra et al. points out (2016), the primacy usually assigned to the civilian aspect of SSR is deeply problematic in Ukraine (by any measure) as boundaries between civil and defence related actions are increasingly disappearing under the current complex geo-strategic dynamics.
5. Conclusion
Undertaking security sector reform is a highly politicised affair (Jayasundara-Smits and Schirch 2015, p. 18). At the heart of these political relationships lie connections between the state apparatus—especially the state security apparatus—and state sovereignty (Tardy 2016, p. 2). Altering the existing power balance within the security sector, between particular institutions (police, judiciary, and parliament) and among different branches of government, is highly sensitive, whatever the source of the reform initiative is (Tardy 2016). As shown above, undertaking SSR in Ukraine is an even more complex and politicised affair than usual, due to the ever-unfolding regional political dynamics. Against this background, this article has asked: what unique context-specific challenges are faced by EUAM in Ukraine? How do these challenges influence the achievement of the underlying SSR normative-societal imperative via EUAM?
We found that the EUAM is faced with a number of context-specific challenges, among which the volatile security situation and political context are the main ones. Unresolved regional armed conflicts have a significant impact in restricting the mission’s scope and content. The mission’s currently narrow scope largely excludes citizens’ security needs, their concerns and expectations. Another serious barrier to implementing a fully-fledged SSR mission in Ukraine was the mutually dependent relationship between Russia and the EU. These two obstacles constituted a serious barrier to implementing a fully-fledged SSR mission in Ukraine capable of simultaneously addressing both the functional and normative imperatives of SSR. From a WOS perspective, we find the compromises made at the level of vertical incoherencies at the whole-of-EU level- between the EU and its member states due to fragile elite consensus over the problems, the approach, actions and differences in foreign policy interests are penetrating all the way down. We traced this in the relationship between EUAM and the Ukrainian state security actors and between Ukrainian state actors with the Ukrainian society-writ-large.
To be fair to the EU, the urgency of responding to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the dynamics produced by a mix of historically-rooted complexities involving Russia-Ukraine and the EU, forced the EUAM to opt for a “thinner and top-down SSR approach” in Ukraine. This approach is quite conservative, being mainly aimed at reconstructing the Ukrainian state’s “monopoly of legitimate violence”, even if with some concerns about the legitimacy of its users. Given the current state of affairs of the Ukrainian state captured by its corrupt political elites and a matching bureaucracy, EUAM’s reform effort that only scratches the surface through technical measures with a heavy focus on the functional imperative cannot layout a sustainable reform path capable of addressing the immediate and long term security needs of the state and the society.
Given the above findings, we suggest it is time for the EUAM and the EU-SSR to be rethought “outside the box” so that innovative ways to implement normative-societal imperatives can be tried. This involves paying greater attention to the need for vertical coherence, even amidst pressure to address functional imperatives first. If the EU wishes to support Ukraine in becoming a strong and democratic state, with a resilient and competitive society, then the EU needs to address normative-societal imperatives in its programmes in Ukraine. This would also enable the EU to realise its own goals.
By waging their own home-grown revolution, the majority of Ukrainian people have already demonstrated their desire for reforms and their willingness to embrace new values, and this was what the EU’s roadmap and subsequent policies and programmes apparently promised to deliver. However, at present, the EU appears to be unable to meet these initial commitments or satisfy expectations of active reforms. Given the deteriorating and disturbing geo-political dynamics in the region and fraying normative-societal consensus, the battle for reforms is likely to be an uphill one for the EU and Ukraine for some time to come. A “thicker” approach to SSR’, more firmly embedded in local and regional societal and political dynamics now seems crucial to rebuild trust. Last but not least, owing to the unique conditions in Ukraine and in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood, a more “revolutionary” approach to SSR should be forthcoming from the EU, and should seriously engage with Ukraine’s unique political conditions. To this effect, EUAM can be seen as a learning experience for the EU and presents a unique opportunity to think of a WOS approach to SSR in future. In this way the capacity of the EU to tackle similarly complex security scenarios in future, both in and beyond its immediate neighbourhood, could be strengthened.
Although there are limitations in drawing broader lessons from a single case study, findings of this study reinforce the call for an adequate understanding of the multiple challenges and dilemmas faced in each context and deeper engagement with the politics of SSR. Also as highlighted in this study, it is worthwhile having in mind the trinity of “context matters, politics matters and interests matter”, thus the need for setting realistic expectations (functional and normative) for the EU itself and those who are at the receiving end of SSR by simply asking “what matters the most?”