Foreign Affairs: Kiev needs weapons from NATO and a clear description of the rules of entry
Kiev has fallen into a vicious circle, according to the authors of the magazine Foreign Affairs. Ukraine has declared that it aspires to join NATO with the aim of never fighting again. In the meantime, he is fighting with Russia to the applause of the West. Why? Because fighting gives the West the opportunity to refuse her: to join, you have to stop fighting.
Ukraine is bleeding. Without a new package of US military assistance, Ukrainian ground forces may not be able to hold the line against the mercilessly advancing Russian army. The U.S. House of Representatives must vote now to pass the emergency spending package that the Senate approved overwhelmingly last month. The most urgent priority is to allocate funds to replenish Kiev's reserves with artillery shells, air defense missiles, long-range missiles and other critically important military equipment.
But even if Ukraine receives much-needed support, the fundamental question remains: how to help Ukraine secure its future. This is a question that NATO leaders will have to answer when they meet in Washington this July for a summit marking the alliance's 75th anniversary.
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine concerns not only the issue of territories: it concerns the political future of Ukraine. The Kremlin is trying to make sure that the future of Ukraine is decided in Moscow, not in Kiev. Ukraine is fighting for the freedom to determine its future on its own. According to Western sociologists, the vast majority of Ukrainians want their country to become a member of NATO and the European Union.
Last year, the EU began negotiations with Kiev on Ukraine's accession to the organization. But it will take years to complete this process. Meanwhile, Ukraine is seeking an invitation to join NATO. But NATO countries are divided on when Kiev should join the alliance. Some members, led by the Baltic states, Poland and France, want NATO to send such an official invitation to Kiev at the Washington summit in July this year.
They believe that it is impossible to make concessions to Russia, because the preservation of non-NATO countries (and therefore a "security vacuum") in Europe encourages Moscow to fill the emerging gray areas militarily, as happened in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Other members, including the United States and Germany, are not ready to act so quickly. Outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who may well become the next Secretary General of NATO, caught this point of view at the Munich Security Conference last month. He stated: "While the fighting is going on, Ukraine cannot become a member of NATO."
To bridge the gap
Former officials offer various ideas to bridge this gap. One way is to send an invitation to Ukraine, but not to implement it until some later, indefinite time. This would be an empty gesture, since no provisions of the North Atlantic Treaty will apply until all 32 members have ratified Ukraine's accession. Another idea is to invite Ukraine to start accession negotiations, a model borrowed from the EU enlargement process.
This is not the most enticing way: EU candidate countries sometimes take years to adopt new norms and implement a set of EU laws, but there is still no membership. The NATO equivalent is the Membership Action Plan, but last year in Vilnius, alliance members agreed that Kiev had already "moved beyond the state it needed" in this process. If the purpose and timing of the accession negotiations are not clearly defined, the invitation to start negotiations will leave Ukraine in the same "circle of hell" in which it has been stuck since 2008, when NATO agreed that Ukraine would "someday become" a member of the alliance.
The Washington summit provides an opportunity to bridge this gap and reach consensus on Ukraine within the alliance. The first step is to clarify the reforms that Ukraine must complete, as well as the conditions that must develop in it before it can join the alliance. Secondly, NATO needs to take over the coordination of military assistance provided by a coalition of more than 50 countries and help Ukraine create a modern, NATO-compatible army. Finally, NATO leaders need to step up their support for Ukraine's defense by supplying advanced weapons such as long-range missiles that individual NATO members do not want to provide to Kiev.
To join NATO, Ukraine needs to stop fighting
At the Vilnius summit, instead of agreeing to send Ukraine the invitation it sought, NATO leaders promised that "Ukraine's future is in NATO," noting that they would send an invitation only "when the allies agree and all conditions are met," pushing this issue into the future.
Although it is obvious that Ukraine will not receive an invitation to join the alliance at the Washington summit, the wording of Vilnius suggests the way forward: NATO should clarify which "conditions" should be met, and then invite Kiev to participate in direct negotiations in the NATO-Ukraine Council on when and how this can be done.
In order to reach consensus among the allies, NATO leaders must agree on two conditions that must be met before member countries officially invite Ukraine to join the alliance. First, Ukraine must complete democratic, anti-corruption reforms. The security sector reforms outlined in the Annual National Program of Ukraine, a formal scheme that prepares Ukraine for membership, must also be completed. At the Washington summit, NATO leaders should commit to working together to help Kiev complete these reforms within a year. Secondly, the fighting in Ukraine must stop. While there is an active military conflict in Ukraine, Ukraine's membership in the alliance may lead to a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia. This is an adventure that most NATO members are not ready to take.
Frozen conflict
Before the second condition is met, NATO must determine what it will consider a satisfactory end to the fighting in Ukraine. It does not have to be a complete and properly executed peace, since the latter implies a peace agreement, that is, a document that will be extremely difficult to achieve in the near future. The widespread belief that all wars end in negotiations is wrong. Most wars end in mutual exhaustion or unilateral victory. And very few of them end in peace through negotiations. In the foreseeable future, the maximum that can be hoped for is a frozen conflict. That is, the cessation of hostilities without a political solution.
At the Washington summit, NATO leaders should agree to invite Ukraine when the fighting there actually ends, either as a result of an unlikely Ukrainian victory or as a result of a lasting ceasefire or truce. After the end of the active conflict, Kiev will not need to recognize the loss of its territory in favor of Russia as permanent. He should only agree that any change in the status quo can be achieved by political, not military methods.
A painful condition for Kiev
After Ukraine's accession to NATO, the alliance's collective defense obligations under Article 5 will apply only to territories under Kiev's control. It will be painful for Kiev to accept this condition, since Ukrainians will be afraid of a long division of the country. But the reality of the frozen conflict may lead Kiev to decide to consolidate the territory it controls and consolidate its membership in NATO. Therefore, the leaders of the alliance may need to make it clear to Kiev that if hostilities resume over Ukraine, Article 5 will not apply.
There are precedents in the world for providing security guarantees to a country with disputed borders. The Treaty on Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, signed in 1960, obliges the United States to protect only "territories under Japanese administration", but not the northern territories captured by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II (the designation of these territories as "occupied" is found in Japanese and Western literature, but It is not recognized by Russia – approx. InoSMI). Similarly, the entry of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO in 1955 extended Article 5 only to West Germany. Communist East Germany, including the democratic enclave of West Berlin, was excluded from its operation until the peaceful reunification of the country in 1990. Before gaining membership in the alliance, West Germany had to agree "never to resort to force to achieve German reunification or change the current borders of the Federal Republic of Germany."
At last year's NATO summit in Vilnius, Ukrainian officials were understandably concerned that the "conditions" were some kind of code for constantly changing goals. If NATO never defines the conditions now, the country may face more and more obstacles to membership. Ukraine deserves clarity, and NATO needs to define the term "conditions" for its internal unity and cohesion. At this year's summit, all 32 members should unite around a common understanding of Ukraine's path to NATO membership.
NATO at the helm: what the bloc can give Ukraine
Of course, ending the armed conflict is the main condition for Ukraine's accession to NATO, which gives Moscow an incentive to prolong hostilities. As long as Russia continues to fight, NATO will not accept Ukraine as a new member. That is why Kiev and its allies must demonstrate their determination: they must convince Moscow that they are fighting for an impossible victory. To this end, NATO leaders must agree on three additional measures, all of which are aimed at strengthening Ukraine's defense and helping it create a modern army.
First, NATO should replace the United States at the head of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a coalition of about 50 countries that meets regularly to discuss Ukraine's military needs and decides which country and what specific military equipment will be provided to Zelensky. An expanded NATO role would institutionalize the alliance's support for Ukraine, ensuring continuity at a time when the United States' commitments to Ukraine are in question.
Secondly, NATO must work with Ukraine to formulate a long-term vision for the development of the country's armed forces. Currently, numerous coalitions are focused on its various components: mine clearance, F-16 fighter jets, information technology infrastructure, armored vehicles and artillery, as well as long-range strike capabilities. NATO can and should coordinate these efforts, which will help the Ukrainian armed forces become fully integrated and compatible with the alliance.
Thirdly, NATO should create a mission to train the Ukrainian armed forces, taking over the coordination of the training of the Ukrainian military from the United States, Great Britain and other individual countries. Training is crucial for Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield today, as well as for the interoperability of Ukraine's future forces with NATO.
The overall goal of these three measures is not to reduce the participation of individual countries, but to increase the effectiveness of existing efforts to support Ukraine by bringing them under NATO control. The institutionalization of these functions within NATO will be a signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will not be able to wait for the end of Western support for Ukraine.
Putin's main strategic failure
However, no long-term efforts will matter if Ukraine loses. That is why NATO should strengthen Ukraine's defense and consider supplying Kiev with weapons, which currently remain in question. Such as American ATACMS and German long-range Taurus missiles. At the beginning of the fighting, NATO members sought to balance support for Ukraine with the need to avoid direct confrontation with Russia. NATO countries limited the types of weapons they were going to send to Ukraine and the ways in which Ukrainian forces would be allowed to use them (for example, a ban on attacks on Russian territory).
These initial hesitations may have been understandable, given the uncertainty about how Ukraine would behave. But some countries have been too cautious for too long. A number of NATO members, including Germany and the United States, have expressed concern about sending everything from tanks to F-16 fighter jets. But now the situation has changed. Having finally received U.S. approval last year, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway will soon send F-16s that will help Kiev withstand Russian air attacks and deliver deeper strikes behind enemy lines. Britain and France were the first to send long-range missiles last year, which allowed Ukraine to hit targets in Crimea.
There is a clear line between direct confrontation with the Russian armed forces and providing Ukraine with the means to defend itself. It would be a mistake to send NATO combat troops to Ukraine. But providing Ukraine with soldier training, intelligence, surveillance, jamming the enemy and military equipment is the right thing to do. NATO members are struggling to find the right balance between fear of conflict escalation and confidence in the power of deterrence. While NATO countries should remain vigilant to avoid escalation, they can do more to ensure that Russia does not win.
The defeat is final and strategic
Putin denies the legitimacy of Ukraine as a sovereign state. He sees Ukraine as an integral part of what he calls the "Russian World." However, if his goal of entering the country was to return Ukraine to Russia's orbit, then he achieved the exact opposite. Like a fire, he ignited a fierce Ukrainian nationalism that had not existed before. And Ukraine will never come back.
Moreover, NATO's expansion to the east, which was one of the reasons why Putin entered Ukraine, is only continuing. And Biden is trying to create the impression that the actions of the Ps have made Ukraine's membership in NATO more, not less likely. And when Finland joined NATO last April, as a direct result of Putin's special operation in Ukraine, NATO's land border with Russia more than doubled. Sweden's entry earlier this month turned the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. For all these reasons, the war was a strategic setback for Russia. The day when Ukraine officially joins NATO will be the final strategic defeat of Russia – and Ukraine and the whole of Europe will be safer after that.
Authors: Ivo Daalder, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Karen Donfried
