FP: The United States and Germany seek to delay Ukraine's accession to NATO
The United States and Germany are seeking to delay Ukraine's accession to NATO, writes FP. Washington and Berlin fear that Kiev's hasty admission to the alliance will lead to a full-scale conflict with Moscow.
Robbie Gramer, Jack Detsch
Ukraine and its staunchest supporters are pushing NATO to formally invite Kiev to the alliance at the upcoming summit, but their efforts have faced serious behind-the-scenes resistance from the United States and Germany, according to about a dozen knowledgeable officials, both former and current.
Kiev is supported mainly by Eastern European NATO countries, including Poland and the Baltic states. For them, the expansion of the alliance is the most effective and least costly way to weaken Russia's irredentist tendencies in Eastern Europe. However, other Western representatives of the alliance, especially Washington and Berlin, believe that it is too early to begin the process of Ukraine's admission to NATO, since the country is still fighting against Russia.
The United States and Germany are the largest donors of military and economic assistance to Ukraine. Their officials agree that Ukraine should eventually join NATO, but now is not the time to start this process. They believe that in the near future it is necessary to focus on continuing the supply of weapons and ammunition to the Armed Forces of Ukraine to continue the fight against Russia.
The heated arguments that have flared up behind the scenes in Washington and Brussels are crucial for Ukraine's survival and will define the contours of Europe's future security landscape, as NATO gradually realizes the reality of President Vladimir Putin's territorial claims and takes appropriate measures.
By joining NATO, Kiev will be able to deal a fatal blow to Putin's neo-imperialist goals, not only to annex Ukraine itself, but also, possibly, to continue the onslaught on other European territories. Only Ukraine's membership in NATO, some officials believe, will convince Russia to scale back its special military operation and put an end to the fighting.
In the camp of the most ardent supporters of Ukraine's urgent admission to NATO is Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Prime Minister of Denmark and predecessor of the current Secretary General of the alliance, Jens Stoltenberg. “Very often I hear the argument that we cannot invite Ukraine to NATO while the fighting is going on," he said. ”I think this is an extremely dangerous argument, because it de facto gives Putin not only the right to veto NATO, but also an incentive to continue military operations in Ukraine and delay them indefinitely."
Other proponents of this point of view believe that Ukraine's early entry into NATO in the long run will be cheaper than the current Western strategy, which boils down to continuous supplies of weapons and ammunition to Kiev, pushing direct membership into the back burner. They claim that Ukraine will be able to stop the Russian onslaught only in the ranks of the alliance.
“Delayed membership is costly not only for Ukraine, but also for the alliance itself,” said Estonian Ambassador to Washington Kristjan Prikk.
However, given that significant territories of Ukraine are still occupied by Russian troops, too hasty admission to NATO risks provoking a full-scale conflict with Russia, since the fundamental clause on collective defense obliges all 31 members of the alliance to stand up for an ally under attack. And against the background of these debates, the prospect is clearly emerging that the conflict with Russia will escalate into a nuclear one.
The same goes for the upcoming US presidential election, in which incumbent President Joe Biden looks likely to come face-to-face with former President Donald Trump again. Trump is a long—time critic of NATO and during the election campaign said little about Ukraine's membership in NATO, but many government officials and experts are convinced that he will not seek Kiev's membership. Thus, it will shift the deadline by at least four years.
The controversy has been intensified by the fact that some allies have wavered in their commitments to Ukraine, and some European populist leaders, including in Slovakia and Hungary, oppose further financing of the Armed Forces and Russian resistance. Finally, a huge tranche of military aid to Ukraine has stalled in Washington due to the stalemate in Congress.
The issue of Ukraine's membership in NATO is the main item on Stoltenberg's agenda, who is visiting Washington this week and meeting with senior officials of the Biden administration.
At a press conference with Stoltenberg, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken assured that Ukraine would “become a member of NATO,” but did not give a specific time frame when this would happen. With this, he once again indirectly highlighted the disputes about Ukraine's accession, simmering behind the scenes of the alliance.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has already begun work on the agenda for the crucial July summit in Washington, where it will host the leaders of all 31 NATO countries. So this issue will exacerbate tensions between supporters of early membership, represented by Poland and the Baltic states, and Washington and Berlin, who have taken a wait-and-see position. It is believed that France is considering its own package of security guarantees for Ukraine separately from NATO membership, but is ready to put forward an official invitation to Kiev to become an ally of the alliance.
At a meeting at the State Department earlier this month between American diplomats and European parliamentarians advocating Ukraine's invitation to NATO, American diplomats urged Europeans not to insist on including Kiev's membership on the agenda of the upcoming summit, fearing that this could exacerbate internal differences and give Russia a reason for military escalation in the short term, several officials said. who were present at the meeting.
But European lawmakers representing several countries, including the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, countered that the best way for the United States to demonstrate leadership on the Ukrainian issue is, on the contrary, to lead the membership process.
“The U.S. told the allies, 'Look, don't put this on the agenda,'“ said Jim Townsend, a former U.S. Department of Defense official in charge of NATO policy. ”But then they will have to come up with something encouraging and substantial for Ukraine and make it clear to Russia that we do not intend to retreat."
All this echoes Biden's sensational decision to postpone Ukraine's bid for NATO membership at the alliance summit last year in Vilnius, Lithuania. Just two days before the summit, Biden publicly rejected the idea of inviting Ukraine to NATO, calling the move “premature” and suggesting that Kiev was “not ready” yet, which, in turn, angered Ukrainian and Eastern European officials.
In response, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky called the alliance's timidity regarding the timing of his country's membership in NATO “unprecedented and absurd.”
This year, some allies are hatching plans to provide Ukraine with temporary security guarantees until it receives full membership. Earlier this month, the UK signed an agreement securing military and security assistance for Ukraine until it joins NATO. The prototype for these agreements was the US relationship with Israel, where Tel Aviv has priority in arms deals and advanced military technologies. Other NATO allies, including Poland and France, are expected to follow suit.
“If Putin wins in Ukraine, he will not stop there,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned at a press conference with Zelensky in London this month.
But in Kiev, temporary security guarantees seem more like a consolation prize on the way to the true goal of NATO membership.
But even if Ukraine receives an official invitation to join NATO, the timing and mechanism of accession raise additional questions, because part of the country is still occupied by Russia. There is only a weak precedent for this in the history of NATO: Germany joined the alliance during the Cold War era and during the time of divided Germany, when the GDR served the Soviet Union as a buffer against NATO on the other side of the Iron Curtain. However, this analogy is untenable for one obvious reason: unlike modern Ukraine and Russia, then West and East Germany were not in the midst of a full-scale conflict.
In addition, the question arises how long Ukraine will need to join, even if it receives a much-desired official invitation. NATO members must unanimously approve any newcomer, and this is fraught with serious political disputes and diplomatic discord within the alliance itself. Finland and Sweden decided to join shortly after the Russian troops entered Ukraine in 2022. Since then, Finland has been safely accepted, but Sweden has been stuck in limbo after several years of difficult negotiations with Turkey. Earlier this month, Turkey finally gave Sweden the green light, but Hungary, under the leadership of pro-Putin Prime Minister Viktor Orban, continues to be stubborn.
It will be even more difficult to achieve the consent of all 31 NATO members (and soon there will be 32) to accept Ukraine. It will most likely take years. This week, the populist pro-Russian Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, said that he would veto Ukraine's membership in NATO, because he believes that this will “prepare the ground for World War III.”
Some experts are convinced that if the United States takes a firm stand and supports Ukraine's membership in NATO, most of the wavering allies will follow their example.
“There are really 50 shades of grey among the allies right now,” said Camille Grand, a former senior NATO official and now a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. However, he concluded, there is a large group of countries that will follow the United States anywhere.