Ukraine is ready for NATO to make good on its vague promises.
The overarching question hanging over NATO leaders as they gather in Washington to mark the alliance’s 75th anniversary this week is how and when — and perhaps, even if — they will formalize a clear, irreversible pathway to Ukraine’s eventual membership, even while its war with Russia grinds on.
The offer is complicated by the fact that Russia now occupies roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory and Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made clear that Ukrainian membership in NATO is a red line.
White House officials late last week said to expect more commitments from alliance members to provide Kyiv with additional “military, political and financial support,” part of what Biden administration officials described as Ukraine’s “bridge” to NATO membership. The details of that “bridge” aren’t entirely clear. Outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said recently that he wants to see Ukraine join the bloc by 2034, though he, along with the U.S. and other key members, have stressed that Kyiv’s NATO bid cannot move forward until the war with Russia has ended.
The murky timeline for accession to NATO has frustrated Ukrainian officials, particularly after they watched the alliance put Finland and Sweden on a fast track to membership shortly after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Both Scandinavian nations are now full-fledged members of the 32-country alliance.
The three-day summit starting Tuesday will mark a coming-out party of sorts for two key participants: Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, set to take over as NATO secretary-general this fall, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, representing Britain just days after taking office in a landslide election.
But for all of NATO’s talk of bridges and road maps, Ukrainian officials appear frustrated as the Washington summit kicks off. They view NATO membership — or at least a clear path to such membership in the foreseeable future — as the only reliable long-term guarantee against Russian aggression.
Top officials in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government have made clear that they’ve waited long enough and expect clear, definitive action from the alliance this week.
“We would like to see [allies] fixing an irreversible path of Ukraine at NATO membership,” Ukrainian Ambassador to NATO Nataliia Galibarenko told Politico last week. “We are not asking for something extraordinary.”
For Ukraine, the prospect of NATO membership has never been more urgent. Ukrainian officials fear that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump could offer to squash Kyiv’s NATO bid as part of a broader cease-fire deal aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war. Mr. Trump has made clear that he would seek to end the conflict quickly if elected, though he has not explicitly said that he would use Ukraine’s potential NATO membership as a bargaining chip.
Still, Mr. Zelenskyy urged the GOP presidential hopeful to share his ideas now.
“If Trump knows how to end this war, he should tell us today,” Mr. Zelenskyy said in a recent interview with Bloomberg.
Mr. Zelenskyy and his inner circle also have seemed increasingly frustrated with the Biden administration, which often appears motivated by fear when it comes to decisions on support for Ukraine. The White House has repeatedly stressed it does not want to escalate the already tense situation with Russia, nor does it want to see the Russia-Ukraine war spill deeper into Eastern Europe.
The fear of provoking more Russian aggression seems to be at play in deliberations about NATO membership as well. A concrete promise that Ukraine will be welcomed into the alliance would infuriate Mr. Putin, who could respond by trying to seize as much Ukrainian territory as quickly as possible to create something of a buffer zone between Moscow and NATO.
Analysts say that President Biden’s cautious approach to the Ukraine-in-NATO issue raises some fundamental questions about American foreign policy, namely why the U.S. is fearful of a broader NATO-Russia war now but seems willing to pave the way to such a conflict in the future.
“If he is unwilling to risk provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin into a nuclear confrontation, then why are we promising to commit to do just that if necessary to defend Ukraine in the future?” Daniel Treisman, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in a recent analysis for Foreign Policy magazine. “If defeating Russia in Ukraine is a U.S. vital interest, then why are we holding back now? And if it is not, then why should we pledge to risk everything on Ukraine’s behalf later?
There are serious outstanding questions about why the U.S. and its European allies are so reluctant to commit their own troops to a fight with Russia but seem willing to bring Ukraine into the NATO fold. Article 5 of the alliance’s charter says that an attack on one member will be viewed as an attack on all, and that member nations “will take the actions it deems necessary” to aid that country.
“The key question is whether other alliance members — not just their foreign policy elites but general publics as well — are ready, in Biden’s words, to ’fight the third world war’ over Ukraine,” Mr. Treisman said. “If they are not, then inducting Kyiv after the current war ends may actually make both it and the West less secure. It will provoke Putin to prod and probe in the hope of inflaming Western divisions.”
For its part, the Biden administration has tried to cast this week’s NATO summit as a pivotal moment for Ukraine’s path toward alliance membership.
On a conference call with reporters last Friday, a senior White House official said the allies will reaffirm at the summit that Ukraine’s future is with NATO. The U.S. is expected to announce new steps to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses and other military capabilities to help them defend themselves and deter future Russian aggression.
“President Biden will host an event with Zelenskyy and nearly two dozen of our allies and partners who signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine,” the White House official told reporters.
The U.S. and other NATO allies are continuing to flow weapons and ammunition into Ukraine to help them in their short-term efforts to defend against Russian attacks. However, the NATO summit also will focus on long-term support as part of Ukraine’s “bridge to membership” to the alliance. That means better coordination of training and logistics, a focus on developing Ukraine’s defense institutions, and making their military interoperable with NATO, the official said.
• Mike Glenn contributed to this report.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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