Securing Ukraine’s Future: In NATO?
By Robert E. Hunter - June 8
Ukraine
will not join NATO — not now, and most probably not ever. Even
continuing to float the idea has immediate negative consequences.
This
is a basic fact, for at least one reason: Joining NATO takes the
agreement of all 31 current alliance members — a consensus. Several,
including France and Germany, say that they will never agree. The
reasoning is that under Article 5 of the 1949 NATO Treaty, “The Parties
agree that an armed attack against one or more of them … shall be
considered an attack against them all, and consequently they agree that …
if such an armed attack occurs, each of them will assist the Party or
Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert
with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the
use of armed force… .”
Thus, under today’s circumstances, if
Ukraine were a member of NATO, the Alliance — including the United
States — would be formally at war with Russia and not just in today’s
“indirect” or “proxy” war. More consequently, allies would be under
heavy moral/political, if not legal, pressures (“as it deems necessary”)
to become far more engaged militarily against Russia than now. That
would apply especially to the United States, the sine qua non of
everything that NATO stands for, and to whom all NATO allies always look
for leadership in dealing with Moscow.
Thus, if the United
States failed to pursue direct military conflict with Russia, countering
Moscow’s seizure of all of Ukraine’s occupied territories (as a NATO
ally protected by Article 5), the credibility of U.S. guarantees to
other NATO allies would come into question; and so would the credibility
of U.S. commitments to allies elsewhere, notably in Asia. Further, the
Biden administration would have to abandon its calibrated policy of
trying to reduce risks of major escalation of the conflict, with
unforeseen but dangerous consequences. Thus, the U.S. and others are
providing Ukraine with enough military support so that it does not lose
more territory and can contain Russian advances — but apparently not
enough to enable Kyiv, say, to try to recover the Crimean peninsula or
make major military attacks into Russia itself.
It is precisely
this logic that leads President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — and who can blame
him? — to press for an early decision on Ukrainian membership in NATO:
to require the West to provide far greater military support and to make a
moral/political/strategic commitment to recovering all of occupied
Ukrainian territory. It is also the logic that is leading several allies
to try “slow-rolling” the effort to bring Ukraine into NATO. In recent
weeks, the Biden administration also appears to have begun having second
thoughts about the commitment that the George W. Bush administration
(and thus, NATO) made at an Alliance summit in 2008, that “Ukraine and
Georgia will become members of NATO” — a pledge that four U.S.
administrations (and thus, NATO) have continued to make, likely with
little, if any, reflection on the implications.
All of this is
happening against a much broader geopolitical landscape. In 1989,
President George H.W. Bush declared a new grand strategy of a “Europe
whole and free” and at peace. President Bill Clinton followed suit; I
was key negotiator for Clinton as his ambassador to NATO. The concern
was to avoid humiliating the Soviet Union (Russia) for losing the Cold
War and disintegrating. The precedent feared in Washington and in key
European capitals was the War Guilt Clause in the 1919 Treaty of
Versailles, requiring that Germany take full responsibility for World
War I. That clause was exploited by Adolf Hitler to provoke German
revenge. The U.S. insight, supported by allies, was to try avoiding
Russian revanche. It was largely working until about the end of the
1990s, when those in the U.S. government who understood the grand
strategic goal were replaced by people who saw no point in recognizing
Russia’s eventual return to great power status — a failure of historical
and political imagination of stupendous significance.
Vladimir
Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, coupled with atrocities committed by
Russian soldiers and Wagner Group mercenaries, is of far greater import
than all else that has happened in the last two decades. But Putin’s
aggression against Ukraine did not happen “out of the clear blue sky.”
Perhaps he always had the idea of trying to reconstitute the old Soviet
Union, or at least what he argues is the historic unity between Russia
and Ukraine, a highly debatable proposition.
But the West, led
by the United States, was unwittingly active in fueling Putin’s domestic
political propaganda machine, by systematic actions that gave credence
to Putin’s argument that the U.S. was humiliating a weakened Russia and
using NATO to surround it. In many Russian eyes, the latter has been
demonstrated by the extent of NATO enlargement to countries from the old
Warsaw Pact, plus denying the requirement for overall European security
that Ukraine must not be aligned militarily either with NATO or Russia —
as, even long after the end of the Cold War, the United States
continues isolating Cuba.
Further, the U.S. abrogated the 1972
U.S-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the 1987 Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty, citing Russian violations in the latter case. It
deployed anti-ballistic missiles in former Soviet satellite states.
Worse still, a 2014 conversation involving an assistant secretary of
State, about countering Russian influence, was leaked a few weeks before
Putin invaded Crimea that year; he cited a pending “U.S. coup” as his
excuse.
Perhaps it was never possible to reach any practical
agreement with Russia on the future of European security; perhaps Putin
and other Russians who share his view of Russia’s destiny — maybe a
majority of the population — could also never be reconciled to anything
less than equal status with the United States. But that possibility may
now be dead. Both sides share measures of responsibility, with the
relative degree being debated by each side — though nothing can justify
Putin’s invasion and the atrocities that have followed.
The
United States now seems to have bought fully into the view that began to
dominate in the late 1990s that Russia should (and could) be kept weak.
But unless Russia develops in ways that are at odds with its history
and inherent capacities, beginning with geography but extending to other
abilities, confidence that Russia will be a long-term failure is more
hope than analysis.
We need to recognize something else: that
solidification on both sides of a new cold war — hopefully not an open
hot war — will impose costs not just on Russia but also on the United
States. This incipient cold war will usher in a new era of rigidities of
thinking and politics that will be hard to move beyond in the future.
It will require the United States to continue leading in the containment
of Russia, with major U.S. force deployments in Europe. Among other
things, that means fewer resources and less time and
intellectual/political energy for the U.S. to deal with other
challenges, notably the rise of China.
The better part of wisdom,
therefore, is for the United States, beginning at the impending NATO
summit in Vilnius in July, to start backing away from — or at least,
clearly temporizing on — the commitment to bring Ukraine into NATO. We
also should start discussing quietly with allies the post-war security
aspirations for Europe — as the United States and others did during the
Second World War — and to fashion, even if in pectore for now,
negotiating possibilities for ending the Russia-Ukraine war. There is
one possible model, the so-called Minsk II Agreement of 2015, in which
Ukraine would regain sovereignty over all its territory, but areas of
the country with predominantly Russian speakers and adherents of Russian
culture would have a major measure of autonomy. Both Russia and Ukraine
have violated the Minsk II Agreement.
An old saying is that
“wars eventually end.” The Biden administration — and hence, NATO — must
start thinking about what that could mean with regard to Ukraine, and
particularly to Russia’s possible future role with regard to Europe. So
far, there is no evidence that the administration is doing so; it
appears to be betting instead that Russia will remain weak for many
years to come.
In addition to pledging to bolster NATO defenses
and agreeing to provide more weapons to Ukraine, the Vilnius summit can
either be a start of thinking about the future, or the locking in of a
new cold war. Either way, further steps toward Ukraine’s joining NATO
would help foreclose possibilities for the future and make overall
matters worse.
Robert E. Hunter was U.S. ambassador to NATO
under President Clinton (1993-’98), and represented the U.S. to the
Western European Union. He was the principal architect of the “New
NATO,” leading the North Atlantic Council in implementing decisions of
the 1994 and 1997 NATO Summits.