Ukraine's presidential adviser on special military issues, the deputy chief of the Ukrainian General Staff, and a lieutenant general who also serves as a member of Parliament are among 30 top military and civilian officials participating in a program at the Kennedy School of Government aimed at assisting national security efforts in the former Soviet republic.

The first year of a three-year initiative to assist Ukraine's democratic reform efforts, the Harvard Ukrainian National Security Program will support the country's leaders in formulating global strategy and strategic doctrine. The program, which began Dec. 1, will explore policies and issues surrounding the country's civil-military relations.

"There is a small window of opportunity in Ukraine in which a new generation of military and civilian officials, free of the old Soviet constraints, is shaping the form of democracy that will take root there," said Joseph S. Nye Jr., Dean of the Kennedy School.

Underwritten by grants from the Smith Richardson Foundation and the U.S. Institute for Peace, as well as additional support from the U.S. Department of Defense and the Ukrainian National Security Council, the program has grown out of a University-wide initiative to examine how to help emerging democracies not only in scholarly work but in outreach efforts as well. Additional assistance has been provided by Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute.

"With independence in 1991, Ukraine had to establish its own national security structure independent from that of Russia. Ukraine is a major strategic player in Europe and its interactions with Russia, with its neighbors in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and with Western Europe will profoundly affect European security as a whole," said Nancy Huntington, director of the program. "As the first delegation of such high officials attending such a program at an American institution of higher education, the program provides a much-needed opportunity for dialogue between U.S. and Ukrainian policymakers and experts on national security affairs."

In the program's opening session, Catherine Kelleher, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia said, "The program reflects the 'strategic partnership' that the U.S. and Ukraine have forged in the last five years and the future cooperation to which the two countries are mutually committed."

The Harvard Ukrainian National Security Program has also arranged four days of special briefings by Pentagon officials in Washington, following the session at the Kennedy School. And, in a first for a Ukrainian delegation, the program has arranged a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels, as well as stops at the British Defense Ministry and Foreign Office and at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

The program is part of a broad array of executive programs developed by the Kennedy School. These programs seek to deepen understanding of specific policy areas and to help participants incorporate this new understanding into effective policies.