'Grand Strategy' for Ukraine’s Foreign Policy?: A Theoretical Review

• In Event: Ukraine’s Foreign Policy: History, Development, and Prospects

Abstract

Traditionally, the ‘grand strategy’ framework in foreign policy analysis has been applied to a state seeking to establish a long-term vision for its highest priorities, “concerned with all spheres of statecraft (military, diplomatic, and economic)” (Silove 2017). Arguably, until the start of full-scale invasion in 2023, Ukraine’s foreign policy lacked such grand strategy, oscillating between ‘multivektorism’ of Leonid Kuchma, pro-Western or pro-Russian orientations of Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych respectively along with a gradual growth in resistance to the Russian influence in the east and rapprochement with the EU on the west. The current war called into question the necessity to firmly determine Ukraine’s ‘grand strategy’ in foreign policy for the coming years if not, indeed, decades to come. The paper examines the existing conceptual elements that could make up Ukraine’s possible new grand strategy, evaluating it both against the existing theory in foreign policy analysis and Ukraine’s ability to exercise of such strategy aligned with a long-term vision for prosperity, power, principles and peace it pursues.

Author

• Lidiya Zubytska, Ave Maria U