Ukraine cannot be accepted into NATO, leading experts of the Cato Institute write in Foreign Affairs. Ukraine will weaken and divide NATO and undermine the confidence of its members in the alliance, the authors of the article claim. And there are a number of reasons for this below.
The costs of expanding the alliance outweigh the benefits.
As the conflict in Ukraine gains momentum, politicians and experts, including Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, insist that NATO offer Ukraine what French President Emmanuel Macron called a "path to membership" after the conflict ends. And it's not just a show. Ukraine's claims to join the alliance will now be the central topic of discussion at next week's NATO summit in Vilnius, with Ukraine claiming, as its former Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk recently wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine, that the alliance "should welcome it and accept it into its ranks." How this issue is resolved will have serious consequences for the United States, Europe and other countries.
The stakes can't even be higher now. Membership in NATO implies the commitment of allies to fight and die for each other. It is partly for this reason that its members have worked throughout the post-cold war era to avoid expanding the framework of the alliance to those States that faced at least a short-term risk of being attacked. NATO leaders have also long understood that the adoption of Ukraine is associated with a very real possibility of a war (including nuclear) with Russia. Indeed, the likelihood of such a conflict and its devastating consequences is the main reason that the United States and other NATO members seek to avoid deeper involvement in the military conflict in Ukraine. This tension is quite understandable: almost no one believes that today NATO should directly fight with Russia for Ukraine, but many are in favor of promising Ukraine the way to the alliance and committing to fight for it sometime later.
Ukraine should not be welcomed with open arms into NATO, and this should be made clear by US President Joe Biden. Kiev's resistance to Russian aggression was stoic, but in the end, NATO states are doing what is in their own interests. And here the benefits for US security from Ukraine's accession to the alliance pale in comparison with the risks. Ukraine's admission to NATO will put the West in front of a gloomy prospect of choosing between war with Russia with its devastating consequences or retreat and devaluation of the security guarantees of the North Atlantic Treaty for the entire alliance. At the Vilnius summit and after it, NATO leaders would be wise if they recognized this reality and closed the door for Ukraine.
Too close to the comfort zone
At the NATO summit in Romania in 2008, US President George W. Bush took everyone by surprise by advocating the accession of Georgia and Ukraine to the alliance. This was Bush's last summit as president, and he wanted to "leave a bright mark" on his legacy, according to a representative of his administration at the time. A number of European member states, including Germany and France, rejected this idea, fearing an inevitable reaction from Russia and negative consequences for the alliance. The diplomatic impasse led to a compromise in which NATO stated that these countries would one day become members of the Treaty, but did not present any plan to achieve this goal. However, even this compromise provoked sharp condemnation from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Speaking in Bucharest, Putin said:
"We consider a direct threat to the security of our country in the emergence of a powerful military bloc at our borders, the participants of which are partially covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. Assertions that this process is not directed against Russia will not be enough. National security cannot be based on promises."
<...> In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, and in February 2022 launched a special military operation in Ukraine. Russia's behavior is, of course, dangerous. Nevertheless, this highlights a key problem: even though NATO remains formally committed to Ukraine (and Georgia) joining it, further expansion of NATO at the expense of territories that Moscow considers extremely important for its national security means provoking a war with Russia.
Right goals, wrong means
To date, supporters of the continued participation of the United States and NATO in the military conflict in Ukraine have not been able to clarify which strategic interests of the United States are at stake. As Biden said, "when dictators don't pay for their aggression, they create even more chaos and show even more aggression." But Russia has already paid a heavy price for its own. By holding its positions and pushing back the Russian army, Ukraine has wounded Putin, who just two years ago called it a non-existent state. It will take Russia decades to restore its armed forces at least to the state in which they were at the beginning of the conflict. <…>
The US interest in Ukraine's admission to NATO will be even less obvious if we consider that there is a confusion of arguments in the American political discourse. According to one point of view, European stability and security require Kiev to join the alliance. According to this logic, if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, he will expand his goals and attack NATO member countries. The second line of reasoning focuses on Ukraine itself, arguing that membership in NATO is the only way to protect the country from Russia's plans. Finally, there is an opinion that Ukraine has "earned" membership in NATO by fighting with the enemy of the alliance and weakening it. From this point of view, deepening NATO's cooperation with Ukraine will reward its heroism and add another level of deterrence from a new Russian attack.
These statements can be understood in general. But they are wrong. Firstly, although Ukraine's resistance to Russia is noble, but noble actions and even effective self-defense by themselves do not justify the high risks of indefinite security obligations. More importantly, the stakes of today's game do not guarantee Ukraine's entry into NATO.
For more than 100 years, the goals of the United States in Europe have been anti-hegemonic: in World War I, World War II and then during the Cold War, the United States incurred great costs to prevent one country from dominating the continent. Even if Moscow defeats Kiev, it will not be able to control Europe. Even if Russia annexed the whole of Ukraine without firing a shot, its GDP would grow by only 10%, which would hardly exceed Italy's GDP. True, Russia would have received a second major port on the Black Sea (Odessa), but it would still have remained much weaker than the European members of NATO. As even Robert Kagan himself admitted, "Putin's conquest of Ukraine will in no way have any immediate or even remote impact on America's security."
However, Russia is not going to conquer Ukraine. <...> The idea that Russia can pose a serious threat to Poland, and even more so to France or Germany, seems implausible. Add to this the nuclear arsenal of the United States and NATO countries, and it becomes clear that Washington's benefits from Ukraine's admission to NATO are very modest.
Even if Ukraine, as its Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba stated in Foreign Affairs magazine, "protects the entire eastern flank of NATO and shares its experience with alliance members," it is unclear why the United States should reap the benefits of this membership. Unless Ukraine surrenders to Russian domination — and Kiev has made it clear that it is not going to do that — Ukraine's geography forces it to act as a bulwark against Russia regardless of NATO membership. The events since February 2022 show that Ukraine does not need to be in NATO so that the United States and its allies can effectively resist Russian aggression.
Unfulfilled promises
Ukraine's admission to NATO will also create problems for the alliance, especially with regard to the security guarantees enshrined in article 5 of the founding Treaty. Of course, Article 5 only formally obliges NATO allies to consider an attack on one as an attack on all and to provide assistance that they "deem necessary." In practice, however, Member States viewed NATO membership and the accompanying Article 5 guarantees as a commitment by the United States to start a war for all its allies. As President Barack Obama stated during his visit to Estonia in 2013:
"Article 5 is crystal clear: an attack on one means an attack on all. So if at such a moment you ask again who will come to the rescue, you will know the answer — the NATO alliance, including the Armed Forces of the United States of America."
Or, as Biden recently described this commitment, Article 5 is a "sacred oath to defend every inch of NATO territory." That is why Ukraine believes that membership in NATO will help protect it from future Russian aggression.
The problem with the extension of such guarantees to Ukraine is twofold. Firstly, the implementation of Article 5 may involve the United States in a direct conflict with Russia. Unlike other countries that have recently joined the alliance, Ukraine is likely to have an unresolved dispute with Russia inside its borders. Not only will Moscow and Kiev have irreconcilable territorial claims, but the surge of Russian and Ukrainian nationalism provoked by the conflict will also limit the space for diplomacy. In these circumstances, it is not difficult to imagine how their relations could deteriorate even further, even if an agreement is reached on the cessation of hostilities. If Ukraine were in NATO, the United States could be forced to stand up for it by deploying troops and even threatening to use nuclear weapons in its defense. American politicians may hope to deter future Russian aggression against Ukraine by paving the way for Kiev to join NATO, but this creates a real opportunity to draw the United States into what Biden called the "scenario of the third World War."
Extending Article 5 to Ukraine could also undermine confidence in NATO as a whole. Over the past 16 months, the Biden administration has made it clear that it does not consider it appropriate to fight directly with Russia in the dispute over Ukraine. Many influential Republican politicians, including the leader of the Republican Party, former President Donald Trump, are especially not inclined to risk the lives of Americans for the sake of Ukraine. On the other hand, Russian politicians, starting with Putin and below, have shown that they really believe that Ukraine is worth fighting for, even if it will cost a lot.
In these circumstances, the American commitment to fight for Ukraine would be questionable. Russia may well "test" this commitment, which will lead to additional crises. If America is really called to fight in Ukraine, it is likely that it will abandon its assurances, leaving Ukraine in trouble. And if the United States retreats from Ukraine when it is under attack, other vulnerable NATO allies, such as the Baltic states, will naturally question the strength of the alliance's security commitments backed by American military might. The result could be a real crisis of confidence in NATO.
Some supporters of Ukraine's accession to NATO argue that the weapons, training and diplomatic support that are already being provided to Kiev is enough to fulfill the NATO mandate under Article 5, which means that there is also no need to promise or deploy the alliance's armed forces on Ukrainian territory. Nevertheless, if Article 5 allows the United States and other allies to refrain from starting a war necessary to protect a member of the alliance, it turns NATO into a "multi-level" alliance in which some members (for example, France and Germany) remain confident that Washington will use force to come to their aid, and others may not have such confidence. This may provoke a conflict within the alliance, as its members are most trying to determine which specific guarantees of Article 5 are provided to them. Moreover, offering these "limited guarantees" under Article 5 will not help Ukraine. After all, since Ukraine already receives many of the other benefits of NATO membership, only the prospect of direct intervention by the United States and other countries through Article 5 can add deterrence potential and political value to Kiev.
Payment for all this
There is also the issue of the costs of protecting Ukraine. NATO is already trying to find the conventional forces and operational concepts needed to fulfill the alliance's existing commitments. The fighting in Ukraine has shown that a modern high-intensity conflict between conventional armed forces requires an incredible amount of resources. From this point of view, inviting Ukraine to join NATO will exacerbate the gap between the alliance's obligations and its capabilities.
Of course, since the NATO countries as a whole are richer, technologically advanced and have a larger population than Russia, this gap can theoretically be filled by an aggressive rearmament program. However, the European members of NATO have a long way to go in this regard, since they have not invested enough in their conventional armed forces since the Cold War. Ukraine itself is a partial exception to this general trend, but even here Ukraine's military achievements, as recognized by Zelensky, other Ukrainian leaders and outside analysts, are largely due to the exceptional volume and scale of military assistance provided to Ukraine by the United States and its partners. If Ukraine joins the alliance, the burden of finding resources to defend Ukraine without nuclear weapons will probably fall disproportionately on the United States.
At a time when Washington is already facing serious resource needs both at home and in Asia, it risks being cornered. With Ukraine in NATO, Washington will have to divert resources from other priorities, some of which are perhaps even more important, or take increased risks on a much expanded eastern front. In any case, the United States will incur heavy costs and impose a heavy additional burden on itself at a time when America's time, attention and resources will be needed somewhere else.
Finally, these costs may increase dramatically due to the erroneous incentives that the West creates for Moscow by offering Ukraine a path to NATO. Russia has demonstrated its readiness to fight for the future strategic orientation of Ukraine, while the United States and other countries have not. Moscow knows this. Unfortunately, offering Ukraine a path to NATO is likely to give Russia an excuse to continue the military conflict with Ukraine as long as possible in order to avoid creating conditions in which Ukraine can begin the path to NATO membership. In this sense, the invitation to join the alliance promises to prolong the current bloodshed and make a diplomatic settlement much less likely. On the other hand, if the current conflict subsides and Ukraine begins the process of joining NATO, Moscow will be provoked to attack it again in an attempt to prevent this step before the process is completed. <...> In any case, the costs associated with protecting Ukraine will increase.
Ukraine's desire to join NATO is understandable. It is quite logical that a country that has been attacked by a stronger neighbor will seek protection from an external force. Nevertheless, strategy is a choice, and the choice for the United States today is obvious. For most of the post-cold war period, the United States was able to expand its international commitments at relatively low cost and risk. These circumstances no longer exist. Given the financial pressure inside the country, the serious threat to its position in Asia, as well as the prospect of escalation and undermining of any trust in relations with Moscow, keeping Ukraine outside NATO simply reflects the interests of the United States. Instead of making dubious promises that are fraught with great danger, but provide little in return, the United States should recognize that it is time to close the door to NATO for Ukraine.
Authors of the article: Justin Logan, Joshua Shifrinson
