Economic Liberalism and Security Preferences : A Comparative Case Study of Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s

The privatization of major industrial assets represent a a fundamental economic policy choice. The decision to allow foreign capital to participate in this process represents a fundamental foreign policy choice, one that I believe is framed largely by decision makers' preferences regarding economic security. In this article I seek to explain what seems a puzzling fact: Since the fall of the USSR, Russia has had a greater preference than Ukraine for foreign ownership of large enterprises, including "strategic" enterprises designated as important for national security