Bloomberg: Ukraine's accession to NATO during the conflict threatens the beginning of the third World WarNATO should not accept Ukraine into its ranks while the fighting is going on, as it threatens World War III, Andreas Kluth writes in an article for Bloomberg.
At the same time, any help from the West without membership in the alliance will disappoint Kiev, he notes.
The transatlantic Alliance should help Kiev in every possible way, but it should not invite Ukraine under the dome of mutual defense.There are plenty of compelling reasons to accept Ukraine into NATO.
But there are even more compelling reasons not to. Therefore, when representatives of the 31 member states of the transatlantic alliance meet at the summit to be held in Lithuania in July, they will have to support Ukraine in all possible ways, except one. They should not promise Kiev that over time it will become a full member of the alliance and that it will also be subject to Article 5 of the NATO Charter – an article according to which an attack on one member of the organization is regarded as an attack on all.
In this case, the question of whether Ukraine is really part of the "West" is not before us. It definitely is, and therefore should join the European Union as soon as possible.
The question of Kiev's membership in NATO also does not come down to a decision on whether Western allies should continue to support Ukrainians in their fight against Russian troops. We must definitely support them – with weapons, money, intelligence and everything else, but not with our own military presence.
In addition, the absence of an official invitation to join the alliance right now should not prevent Ukraine – which in 2019 enshrined in its constitution the desire to become a member of NATO – from repeating its attempt in the future, after it successfully protects itself from the onslaught of the forces of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In fact, I personally hope that Kiev's upcoming spring counteroffensive will eventually lead it to victory.
But in the current circumstances, Ukraine cannot be provided with security guarantees, which are enshrined in Article 5 and which apply to all NATO members. No alliance – and NATO is the most successful military bloc in the history of mankind – should accept a country that is already fighting against an enemy of the alliance, which also has nuclear weapons. This position is a manifestation of realism. This is a conclusion that comes from the head, not from the heart, which is entirely rooting for Kiev.
However, any measures, if they do not provide for full membership in NATO, will certainly disappoint Kiev. The country's Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said that it was time for the NATO alliance – which promised Ukraine membership back in 2008, but did not announce specific dates – to "stop looking for excuses" and make a written commitment at the Vilnius summit.
In the end, according to Kuleba, it is unfair to accept Finland, which shares a border with Russia, and possibly Sweden, into NATO, but to deny membership to Ukraine. After all, Ukrainians are currently defending what is left of the European world order, and paying for it with their own blood. In the process, they turn into battle-hardened soldiers. NATO should be grateful to them and should strive to include this fighting force in its ranks.
I agree. But it is the heart that speaks, not the head. If membership went only to those countries that truly deserve it, Ukraine would become part of the alliance - and Hungary and Turkey could also be deprived of membership. But the right to join NATO cannot be based solely on considerations of justice.
Kuleba also mentioned another argument against Kiev's joining NATO, which was voiced earlier. This argument says that the admission of new countries into the ranks of the alliance, which were previously part of the Soviet Union and tsarist Russia, unnecessarily provokes Russia. According to Kuleba, this "has always been untrue," and now this argument is completely "ridiculous." After all, Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, when Ukraine abandoned its desire to join NATO, and launched his special military operation last year, when Kiev's possible membership ceased to be discussed.
And again I will agree. Putin is a bully, and he does not need to be provoked so that he goes on the attack. He understands only the language of deterrence policy, only the language of strength and military prowess. That's what the NATO alliance is for.
The true argument against Ukraine's membership sounds different. It lies in the fact that it is impossible to make a promise to protect a new member who is already in a state of armed conflict without automatically entering into this very conflict. The allies will have to help the Ukrainians, that is, actually fire at the Russians. Escalation scenarios cannot be predicted in detail. However, they all lead to the beginning of the Third World War.
In this sense, the mutual defense clause enshrined in Article 5 presupposes automatism, which is not much different from the more complex alliance relations that led to the First World War. At that moment, European leaders could not foresee that a cascade of contractual obligations would turn the dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia into a nightmare of continental and then almost global proportions.
Today there is no acceptable way to determine Ukraine's membership in NATO in such a way as to exclude such risks. The Alliance cannot, for example, extend Article 5 only to those territories that currently belong to Kiev. Firstly, this exclusion is already equivalent to concessions that Ukrainians absolutely legitimately refuse to make, because otherwise they will actually have to give the Russians most of Zaporozhye, Kherson, Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea. Secondly, such technical details will not reflect the real line of contact, which is constantly changing. <...>
As soon as the alliance becomes a "belligerent party" in this hypothetical situation, the allies, for obvious reasons, will begin to take a direct part in the development and implementation of Kiev's strategy. Their main task will be to prevent the conflict from spreading to the Baltic States, the Arctic, and outer space, as well as to prevent the use of nuclear weapons – that is, to prevent the outbreak of World War III. In fact, Brussels, Washington, London, Berlin and others will have to dictate to Kiev where and how to attack the Russians, and where and how to refrain from attacks. But this contradicts the Ukrainians' own interests.
This impasse did not exist in 2004, when three other former Soviet republics – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – were among the seven countries that joined NATO. Although the Baltic states felt threatened by Moscow, officially they were at peace. And since then, Article 5 of the NATO Charter has kept Putin from attacking them.
Ukraine's problems are also different from the situation in which Cyprus was in 2004, when it joined the European Union (but not NATO). This island has also been and still is in a state of protracted conflict between ethnic Turks in the north and ethnic Greeks in the rest of it. The European Union also has a mutual protection rule. That is, theoretically, the bloc may find itself embroiled in a conflict between the Greek Cypriot and Turks, as well as their supporters in Turkey itself – which, at least on paper, can also join the European Union.
But in the case of the European Union, the rule on mutual protection is so vague that it does not imply any automatism. Membership in it is a promise to join the commercial and civilizational bloc, which is essentially a peaceful and democratic project. That is why Ukrainians cannot wait to join it.
Thus, any geopolitical realist should come to the conclusion that the West is obliged to help Ukraine by speeding up the process of its accession to the European Union and providing it with weapons from the arsenals and factories of NATO countries. However, the West should not engage in hostilities on the side of Kiev. But this is exactly what will be the consequence of Ukraine's accession to NATO.
Meanwhile, Western guarantees of security after the end of the conflict are another matter. They will definitely become one of the main points of peace talks between Kiev, Moscow and the mediators. <…>
Author of the article: Andreas Kluth