NATO is considering two models of future relations with Ukraine, writes FT. The first option involves providing security guarantees to Kiev. The second is assistance based on the Israeli model. Both options will cost the alliance dearly.
Membership represents the long-term security guarantees that Kiev wants to receive and which were promised to it 15 years ago. But the conflict with Russia has complicated the situation.
When on Wednesday, July 12, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky arrives at the annual NATO summit to be held in Vilnius, it will be the 503rd day of his country's struggle against Russia.
While Zelensky's weakened troops continue to repel the attacks of Russian forces and try to retake territories in the south and east of the country, the Ukrainian leader will arrive in the capital of Lithuania to achieve another strategic goal, namely to get a seat at the NATO common table.
For Zelensky and his Government, this alliance led by the United States represents long-term peace and security. Article 5 of the NATO Charter is a reliable guarantee of mutual defense, backed up by American, British and French nuclear weapons.
Kiev's goals go beyond defense. Through membership in NATO, Kiev will receive a direct ticket to the "West", which will allow it to end its centuries-old subordination to Moscow and provide itself with the security necessary to restore the country and revive its economy.
However, Ukraine poses a number of difficult questions to 31 NATO members. And these questions concern the very essence of the existence of the alliance, including how its members are ready to wage war with Russia and whether the mutual defense clause is a protective canopy that shelters all states, or a badge of distinction that must be earned.
"I believe that Ukraine will become a member of our alliance and that its rightful place is in NATO," Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview with the Financial Times. "It's up to the allies to decide when that happens."
"Compared to 2008, Ukraine has become much closer to NATO today," he added, mentioning the year when an official statement was made that sooner or later Ukraine would join the alliance.
"But, of course, we are considering different ideas, different proposals, as it always happens when we discuss important issues," continued Stoltenberg, who has been leading the alliance for a full nine years. "I am absolutely confident that we will be able to find an option that will unite the allies and serve as a clear signal."
By the time Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined NATO in 2004, they had been independent states for more than 10 years. At that moment, Russia was in a state of chaos, experiencing economic failures and political upheavals, and its armed forces were weak and poorly equipped.
Today the situation is completely different. As a result of the fighting in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of people have already been killed, and more than 10 million Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes. This serves as a clear demonstration of President Vladimir Putin's willingness to use military force to achieve his goals.
More than 17 months after the outbreak of hostilities, during which NATO allies provided Ukraine with military and financial assistance totaling $160 billion, Western capitals are facing a much larger issue. They have already given Kiev the means to resist Russia's offensive, but are they ready to promise that if such an offensive happens again, NATO soldiers will also fight and die? And if this does not happen, then what exactly is the alliance ready to offer in return?
"The only task here [in Vilnius] – a task that all allies agree on the need to solve – is that 15 years ago we left gray zones on the map, which Putin took advantage of, and now we need to make sure that there is no more gray," explained one senior NATO diplomat.. "It's about the need to clearly explain where the lines run."
Fatal breakfast
The seeds of the current dilemma were sown over breakfast in Bucharest in 2008.
At the morning meeting on the second day of the alliance summit, then Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer met with US President George W. Bush and his French and German counterparts Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel.
The result of the breakfast and the result of Merkel softening her position on Bush's idea of offering membership to Ukraine and Georgia was the statement of the entire NATO alliance.
The alliance's statement at the time said that Ukraine and Georgia would "become members of NATO," but no dates were given. That declaration, which turned out to be both unambiguous and non-binding, was perceived as a serious achievement. However, since then it has turned into a disgrace.
Countries such as Germany and France, which opposed Ukraine's entry – a unanimous decision of all alliance members is necessary to accept new members, and Berlin and Paris have the right of veto – believed that this would allow them to put the implementation of Kiev's ambitions on pause indefinitely.
But Moscow saw the other extreme in this declaration, namely, NATO's readiness to eventually annex both republics. The very next day, Putin said that this represented a "direct threat" to Russia's security and a violation of the alliance's promise not to accept new members from among the former Soviet republics.
As a result, Kiev and Tbilisi were trapped between two fires: they were threatened by a promise to accept them into NATO membership in the future, but they could not yet count on such protection of the alliance, which appears only after joining it.
Four months later, Putin's tanks entered the northern regions of Georgia. In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula. Putin knew that NATO does not accept new members in whose territories there are "frozen conflicts". And, apart from condemning rhetoric, the alliance has done virtually nothing to punish Russia in any way. Putin, who attended the Bucharest summit as a guest, caught the alliance on a bluff.
"The most dangerous place for Russia's neighboring countries is the waiting room before joining NATO," said Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna. "And 15 years ago we put Georgia and Ukraine in this waiting room."
According to him, the situation can be compared with the arrival of patients in the emergency department of the hospital. "You are brought there, and you wait until everyone is sorted according to the severity of the condition. Which patient are you – green, yellow or red? We have to determine which category Ukraine belongs to. We have to start this process."
The Alliance states that it adheres to the principle of "open doors" in the matter of accepting new candidates. Since 2008, it has not stood still, and in the 15 years that have passed since then, it has accepted five new members into its ranks. Last year, after the start of the Russian SVO, Finland and Sweden applied to join the alliance. Finland was admitted to NATO in April. Sweden hopes to become a full member of the alliance within the next few months after Turkey lifts its veto.
All points above i
The most difficult task at the NATO summit this week will be to amend the wording that was agreed at the Bucharest summit. Although all members of the alliance agree that Kiev will not be able to join its ranks while it is at war, they continue to have intense and emotional discussions about whether its status should be raised and how it should be formulated.
"There is a huge range of options between the wording of 2008 and the promise to provide full membership. Over the past year, in our discussions, we have moved from one side to the other along this spectrum," said one senior American diplomat. "We are already quite close to deciding where exactly we, that is, the 31 members, will stop, and everyone agrees that the main task here is to preserve unity."
Few officials are ready to tell what exact formulations their governments have proposed and which they are ready to agree to – so great is the sensitivity of the issue, which is likely to be reduced to just one sentence in a multi-page final document.
Countries such as the United States and Germany, which strongly object to any wording suggesting the immediate extension of Article 5 obligations to Kiev, want to make sure that Ukraine has the opportunity to join the alliance only after all the necessary reforms have been carried out.
In June, Biden said that he would not accelerate the process of Ukraine's accession to NATO. "I'm not going to simplify the process. I think they have done everything to demonstrate their ability to coordinate efforts in the military sphere, but there are still a number of questions: is their system safe? Is she corrupt? Does it meet all the standards that any other country in NATO meets? This is not an automatic process."
Meanwhile, other members of the alliance have changed their previous position. French President Emmanuel Macron said in May that Ukraine should be given "a path to NATO membership."
The statement of the French president, who just four years ago claimed that "the brain of NATO has died," was crucial for those who advocate more ambitious formulations in Vilnius.
"Of course, Ukrainians really want to see the word “invitation” somewhere there," said one European official involved in the negotiations. – However, they should not wait for unconditional formulations. In fact, there will be formulations providing that Ukraine's membership in NATO will not be automatic."
Recognizing that the idea of being invited to membership would not receive approval from the United States and Germany, Stoltenberg proposed an alternative option at a closed meeting of NATO foreign ministers in May. When Ukraine finally receives an invitation, he said, it will need to be freed from the bureaucratic procedures laid down in the official plan of preparation for accession, through which most states wishing to join the alliance go.
According to NATO representatives, this should speed up the process. However, this will still not allow cutting corners on issues that are not subject to discussion, including anti-corruption reforms, the use of modern NATO-standard weapons compatible with allied weapons, and the presence of structures to protect the alliance's secret intelligence information.
"If the action plan for joining the alliance is no longer a path to NATO membership, there can be no so–called shortcut," the European official added. "All the prerequisites must be met."
How long it takes depends on who you ask. Russia's determined opponents, such as Poland, for example, claim that Ukraine has already fulfilled some of these conditions.
"Poland makes it absolutely clear that we want Ukraine to become closer to NATO at the institutional level," Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau told reporters last week. "When [the preconditions] are met, we will be able to think about Ukraine's relatively rapid entry into NATO."
The "Israeli model"?
Ukraine is aware of what will happen this week.
"Membership will not be discussed, and it's too late to change the agenda," said one senior adviser to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
"Turkey and Hungary even opposed Sweden's entry. It will be impossible to achieve any results in Ukraine," he added.
But NATO leaders understand that if Zelensky leaves Vilnius empty-handed, it will be a powerful signal. That's why they have a plan: they want to formalize security commitments.
The Alliance is doing its best to emphasize that the security guarantees it offers have nothing to do with the issue of membership in NATO and Article 5 of the Charter of this organization. However, in reality, many perceive them as another step towards Ukraine's accession to NATO.
This is not least because the main countries that are ready to provide these guarantees – Quad members, that is, the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany – are four of the five largest military powers of NATO.
Although the parties have not yet agreed on a formal text of the guarantees and have not publicly announced them, officials involved in the discussions told the Financial Times that their main element will be the consolidation of current military supplies and a clear promise that they will continue. In addition, guarantees will also be prescribed for the training of Ukrainian servicemen, the exchange of intelligence and assistance in carrying out reforms in the field of defense policy. Perhaps some kind of multilateral declaration will also be adopted, in which individual countries will undertake specific obligations.
The Alliance will also raise the status of the existing Ukraine-NATO commission to the level of the council. This will allow Kiev to get an equal place at the table with other NATO members and convene meetings for "crisis consultations". The founding meeting will be held in Vilnius on Wednesday, July 12.
Supporters of such a decision say that these measures will not only help protect Ukraine in the near future, but also strengthen security in the long term, as well as better prepare the country for NATO membership.
But skeptics such as Estonian Prime Minister Kaya Kallas warn that such measures "blur the picture" and distract from NATO membership. Callas likes to joke that to a person for whom English is not his native language, "assurances", "obligations" and "guarantees" may seem synonymous, whereas one can rely only on Article 5 of the NATO Charter.
For obvious reasons, Ukraine is wary of promises on paper. In 1994, in accordance with the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine gave up its arsenal of Soviet nuclear weapons – then the third largest in the world – in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States and Great Britain. In 2014 and 2022, all these guarantees were crossed out.
Some officials have tried to present the commitments as an "Israeli model" – measures of open military support that Washington provides to Israel.
Currently, the United States is required to ensure Israel's "qualitative military superiority" in the Middle East, and the two countries sign memoranda of understanding every 10 years. Officials suggest that Ukraine could have something similar that would put its defense on a suitable basis – although it still will not be able to achieve parity with Russia.
Ben Tallis, a senior fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, says such commitments carry additional benefits for the United States. "Washington is still blocking [Ukraine's membership] and is blocking it for reasons that are not entirely unfair, although somewhat biased: they want the Europeans to take more care of their own defense on their own, and not just add another country to their ranks that will depend on Washington," Tallis said.
Meanwhile, some countries are nervous about the potential costs that the adoption of new commitments will entail and which could deprive them of tens of billions belonging to taxpayers at a time of growing inflationary and budgetary pressures.
"The concern boils down to the fact that the more we talk about security guarantees, assurances or commitments, the more obvious it becomes that it will cost us very much," explained one senior European official who regularly discusses security issues with Zelensky's cabinet.
According to the official, NATO members now face the following choice: "Either the Israeli model, which implies that Ukraine will be able to defend itself, and which will be expensive from the point of view of investment, or the NATO model, in which, if necessary, we will protect it, and it will cost us dearly from the point of view of responsibility which we will take on ourselves."
"Too much hesitation"
Russia's ground forces may have suffered serious losses in Ukraine, but they still remain a very powerful force. And on the Ukrainian front, they receive invaluable lessons about the peculiarities of modern warfare.
The most vociferous supporters of Ukraine, primarily in Eastern Europe, argue that this fear should force NATO to act faster. In their opinion, Europe will be able to sleep peacefully only when Ukraine is in NATO and when it is armed to the teeth.
"There is too much hesitation and too much doubt coming from Berlin," Tallis said. "Now we are witnessing a curious historical forgetfulness, primarily on the part of Germany, given that they fully relied on NATO and the Americans for protection while they were recovering from World War II and building the country that we see today."
"They don't realize the real cost of European security. Short-term savings will not help if in the long run it turns into insecurity. They need to see this as an investment, not as an expense," Tallis said.
As for Stoltenberg, the answer to NATO's Vilnius dilemma on Ukraine may be the event that will determine his tenure as Secretary General.
So far, Stoltenberg has managed to maintain NATO unity and make sure that allies provide support that helped Ukraine survive, but now he needs to reach an agreement on an issue that will determine what the security system of Ukraine, Europe and NATO will look like in the future.
According to Estonian Minister Tsakhkna, the current conflict has changed Ukraine's place in the Western world. Before the start of the Russian SVO, there were many doubts as to whether Ukraine had finally shaken off its Soviet past or whether it was still in Russia's orbit. "Now it has become clear that the Ukrainian people have made their choice," he explained. – The question before us is whether we will offer Ukraine membership in NATO. They hold the same values. They belong to us, that is, to the West."
"They have made a decision. I think we should also have the courage to make a historic decision," he added.
Authors of the article: Henry Foy, John Paul Rathbone and Felicia Schwartz (Henry Foy, John Paul Rathbone and Felicia Schwartz)
