Priorities of Ukraine’s partnership with the United States in the context of strengthening the defense capabilities of Ukraine

Oksana Osadcha, Ph.D. in Political Sciences.

Abstract

In the article the current priorities of the strategic partnership between Ukraine and the United States of America in the field of security and defense are analysed within the context of a hybrid war conducted by the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The author focuses on the main provisions of U.S. security policy covered in the updated versions of strategic documents adopted in 2015, such as U.S. National Security Strategy and Military Security Strategy. A vision of the key areas in which the Ukrainian-American cooperation is to be developed in order to respond to the modern security challenges is outlined. A necessity of the strengthening of the strategic partnership instruments with the USA is underlined, taking into account the priority of the development of network security guarantees for Ukraine. Various aspects of the U.S. military assistance to Ukraine are presented. It is emphasized that U.S. assistance to support reforms in Ukraine’s security and defence sector has been significantly increased after the annexation of Crimea by Russia and following security crisis in the Eastern regions of Ukraine. Thus, some new content to fill in the framework of Ukrainian-American relations should be suggested, according to the author. These proposals may cover various areas of military and defence cooperation. The experience of widening the format of the bilateral U.S.-Ukrainian Coordination Commission into the Multinational Joint Commission is used as an illustration of the possible approach of establishing new security partnership networks as an effective tool for support of security and defence sector reform in Ukraine

Keywords
Strategic USA–Ukraine Partnership, national security, hybrid warfare, defense capabilities

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DOI http://doi.org/10.17721/2521-1706.2016.02.84-92