Politico: Western politicians avoid the explosive topic of Ukraine's accession to NATOThe issue of Ukraine's accession to NATO has become so explosive that Western politicians avoid it, writes Politico.
European capitals do not want to provoke Russia once again. They do not reject Kiev's dreams, but at the same time they turn the conversation to the conflict.
Lili BayerMany officials simply do not want to raise this topic.
And when politicians are asked direct questions, they give memorized, concise and mechanical answers.
What is this forbidden topic? Ukraine's potential membership in NATO.
This issue has become so explosive that many NATO members try to avoid it, even when they are forced to talk about this topic. When Ukraine applied to join the alliance on an expedited basis in September, the NATO leadership once again publicly announced an open-door policy, but did not give any concrete answer. And last week, when a meeting of NATO foreign ministers took place, in their final statement there was only a reference to the vague promise of 2008 that one day Ukraine would be able to join the alliance.
In this statement there was not a word about Kiev's recent application, nor about any concrete steps towards membership, nor about any deadlines.
There are many reasons for this behavior. There are serious disagreements within NATO about how and when Ukraine will be able to join its ranks – and whether it will be able at all. Many European capitals also do not want to provoke the Kremlin once again, because they are well aware of Vladimir Putin's hypersensitivity to the issue of NATO expansion to the east. More importantly, if Ukraine becomes part of the alliance, the allies will be obliged to come to the rescue in case of an attack on it – they don't even want to think about such a prospect.
As a result, while Europe and the United States are gradually overcoming one taboo after another – they are sending flows of lethal weapons to Kiev, imposing once unthinkable sanctions against Moscow, abandoning Russian energy carriers – the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO remains an extremely sensitive issue of international politics.
If you carelessly raise this topic, you can face a whole flurry of troubles.
At the weekend, French President Emmanuel Macron provoked a storm of indignation in his address, saying that the West should consider the issue of security guarantees for Russia if she returns to the negotiating table. This gesture angered Kiev. It obviously goes against NATO's open door policy. But behind the scenes, Ukrainian officials themselves faced irritated colleagues from other countries after they publicly called for Kiev to join the alliance in an accelerated manner.
"Some very good friends of Ukraine are more afraid to respond positively to its application for membership in NATO than to provide it with the most modern weapons," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said in an interview with Politico.
"There are still many psychological barriers that we need to overcome," he added. "The idea of Ukraine's membership in NATO is one of them."
"De facto" ally
The leadership of Ukraine claims that in every sense the country is already a member of the Western military alliance and, accordingly, deserves to officially get a place in NATO in an accelerated manner.
"We are de facto allies," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in September when he announced his country's application to join the alliance in an accelerated manner.
"In fact, we have already completed our path to NATO. In fact, we have already proved our compatibility with the standards of the alliance," he continued. "Ukraine is applying to consolidate this de jure."
The statement of the Ukrainian leader caught many of Kiev's closest partners by surprise, and even angered some.
His words threatened to disrupt the plan on which the most influential capitals of the alliance had stopped: weapons – now, and membership negotiations – later. They believed that such an approach would deprive Moscow of an excuse to directly involve NATO in the conflict.
In their statement last week, the ministers promised to step up political and practical assistance to Ukraine, while avoiding specific statements about plans for the future status of Kiev.
Ultimately, only a few allies doubt that Ukraine will ever be able to join the alliance, at least in theory. The disagreements concern rather how and when it will be necessary to start discussing the issue of Kiev's membership.
Several Eastern European allies advocate strengthening political relations between Ukraine and NATO. They want to see more concrete plans that will pave the way for Kiev's membership.
"I think it's almost inevitable. NATO will have to work out a plan to accept Ukraine into its ranks," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said.
Meanwhile, French President Macron calls for Moscow's position to be taken into account.
"One of the most important points that we must take into account – as President Putin has always said – is the fear that NATO will approach right to his door, as well as the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia," Macron said in an interview with French TV channel TF1 on Saturday.
Most other allies try to avoid this topic. They do not reject Ukraine's dreams of NATO, but they invariably repeat the learned words about the need to focus on the current conflict.
Here's what NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said last week: "The most urgent and urgent task is to ensure the victory of Ukraine as a sovereign, independent democratic state in Europe."
And here's how the Dutch Foreign Minister formulated this idea: "The task is to make sure that the main thing remains the main thing: now we need to help Ukraine on the battlefield."
The United States Ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, echoed the same thought in her interview: "Now the focus should be on practical support for Ukraine."
According to analysts, the split line lies mainly between Western European capitals such as Berlin and Paris, which view membership as an extremely sensitive issue that should be avoided at the moment, and several Eastern European capitals that consider Ukraine's accession as a goal for which the alliance can start working.
After the start of the Russian special operation, this gap only "worsened," said Ben Schreer, executive director for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "Some countries don't even want to talk about it, because they think it could further embitter Russia," he said.
Another way
Ukrainian officials admit that their country will not be able to join NATO in the near future, but they are still waiting for some gesture from the alliance.
"The ideal scenario, of course, would be a very simple statement from NATO: “OK, we accept your application and begin the process of considering it.” This would already be a serious milestone, a great achievement," Kuleba said ahead of a meeting of foreign ministers last week.
The US Ambassador to NATO, Smith, said that Ukrainians know that they need to do a lot more before they can join the alliance.
In 2019, Ukraine officially adopted an amendment to the constitution, according to which the country's strategic course should be to join NATO. But, although a number of reforms have been carried out in the country over the past few years, experts and governments of partner countries say that Kiev should make more efforts to integrate into Western institutions.
"There is still a lot of work to be done, I don't think it's a secret for anyone," Smith said. "I think they understand it well themselves."
As a temporary solution, Kiev presented what it called a pragmatic proposal for Western countries to help Ukraine.
"Russia was able to launch its special operation precisely because Ukraine remained in a gray zone – between the Euro–Atlantic world and Russian imperialism," Zelensky said in November when he presented his 10-point plan.
"How can we prevent the repetition of such actions by Russia against us? We need effective security guarantees," he added and called on the participants of the international conference to sign the so–called "Kyiv Security Compact", which was a set of security guarantees for Ukraine.
But it is still unclear whether Ukraine's Western partners will want to provide legally binding guarantees and whether any agreements (not including Article 5 of the NATO Charter on Collective Security) will become a sufficiently powerful deterrent in the future.
"Some of the allied countries will resist strongly," said Schreer of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "Any security guarantee fixed on paper, from their point of view, will entail a powerful reaction from Russia, which at the moment will make them participants in a military conflict."
The victory of the Ukrainians, of course, would change the situation.
"If Ukraine gets stuck at a dead point, then there will be no joining NATO," said Max Bergmann, director of the European program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But if it reclaims its territories and accepts its borders – whatever those borders are, whether Crimea falls into them or not, because this is a fundamental issue for Ukraine – then, I think, the situation can begin to develop very quickly."
When asked whether Kuleba is disappointed in Western partners, he answered quite bluntly.
"I know them too well to be disappointed in them. They're good friends," he said. "Without them, we will not be able to withstand the pressure of Russia and win on the battlefield."
However, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine added that the West needs to overcome "psychological barriers by changing the viewing angle."
According to him, Kiev's partners "need to start considering Ukraine's membership as an opportunity, not as a threat."
