Will America Lose NATO Over Ukraine?
Ukraine Peacemaking: At Stake -- NATO's Future and America's Credibility
On working to end the Ukraine war, it is time to stop the fantasy and to deal with hard truths – however unwelcome.
Negotiations on trying to end the war will not be finished anytime soon. Even with the Trump plan as the basis, there are too many issues still to be bargained, too much overbalancing towards Russian demands, too little for Ukraine’s future security, and many European countries with a stake in the outcome whose interests are only now being considered.
But the hard fact is that, Ukraine is unlikely to regain territories it does not already control.
That “hard fact” is based in major part on the unwillingness of the West, especially the United States, to provide enough of the military tools to help Ukraine shift the balance of advantage more in its direction. That might have been possible in the last two years. But the European allies did only part of what was required, and the United States was inadequate in playing its necessary role in leadership and action – under three presidents in four administrations from 2014 (first Russian invasion) onward.
The hard facts need to be seen in light of history, where Ukraine has been the victim, not just of Russia’s actions, but of Western (especially U.S.) actions and inactions.
The story effectively began in 1997, when NATO negotiated a NATO-Russia Founding Act and a NATO-Ukraine Charter (the latter of which, as US ambassador to NATO, I finalized on behalf of the Alliance with the Ukrainian ambassador in Brussels). NATO and Russia decided to try building cooperation and, in the process, to avoid a new Cold War. Ukraine was ratified as part of the West (e.g., as a potential member of the European Union – indeed, one of the Trump plan’s 28 points); but not in NATO. That would not be acceptable to Russia while, at the same time, Ukraine could not be under the Russian thumb. This was simple geopolitics. Virtually everyone involved understood, for instance, that Ukraine in NATO would not be any more acceptable to Russia than Cuba’s being in the Soviet sphere of influence was to the United States – which led to the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Further, Ukraine would never get the allied consensus needed to join NATO, now 32 allies. Whatever allies say, many of them have made clear that they will never give an “Article 5” NATO commitment to Ukraine’s security. Maybe that is the wrong policy, but it is a fact.
The effort to work with Russia to prevent a new Cold War was set forth by President George H. W. Bush in May 1989, when he proposed a “Europe whole and free” and at peace. Along with other key elements, that meant not stigmatizing the Soviet Union (now Russia) for losing the Cold War, as the Treaty of Versailles’ “War guilt” clause against Germany helped produce the Third Reich.
The Clinton administration built on what Bush had begun.
With the beginning of the George W. Bush administration in 2001, however, hopeful Western efforts with Russia began unraveling. U.S. neocons replaced those officials with an historical sense: the prevailing view became that “Russia is Guatemala with nuclear weapons.” The U.S. abrogated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and later decided to station anti-ballistic missiles in Central Europe – ostensibly against North Korean and Iranian missiles! Both U.S. actions were seen in Russia as taking advantage of its weakness rather than treating it as a country whose legitimate interests the West would take seriously.
It may be that Vladimir Putin all along wanted to reincorporate Ukraine into the Russian empire (redux); but US actions, ritually blessed by NATO allies, certainly did not help in trying to produce a different outcome. Most important, at the 2008 NATO summit meeting in Bucharest, at the behest of the United States the Alliance agreed that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO”— in plain English, the moment of commitment. For most of the allies, these words were a device for brushing off that possibility until the far-distant future, but without slamming the door shut. Most of them didn’t even mean that possibility; the formula was agreed so that President George W. Bush would not go home empty-handed. But it was obvious to all unbiased experts on European security that actual NATO membership would cross a red line for any Russian government.
But instead of pigeon-holing this hastily-drafted geopolitical error, the U.S. (and hence NATO) continued to insist upon it, not just until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 but until a few months ago. Indeed, since Clinton left office, Donald Trump was the first U.S. president to recognize reality regarding Russia’s long-term geopolitical significance: like it or not, it will again one day be a great power affecting a wide range of U.S. (and Westen) interests. Even now, there are purported experts who refuse to accept this truth, and this refusal has helped cause unwillingness to focus on Ukraine’s genuine needs, now and for the future, and the possibilities for ending the current conflict. Some analysts still argue that more military help would not just help Ukraine hold its own (likely) but to achieve victory, in the sense of regaining all its lost territories (a non-starter.)
It is hard to say that the current military situation could have been more favorable to Ukraine. Certainly, however, the United States could have provided far greater assets to Ukraine, and should urgently ramp up military support, now -- including enabling Ukraine to control its own airspace -- far beyond the inadequate support provided by the Biden and Trump administrations. European allies could also have done more. But it didn’t happen, and the fact is that augmenting Western military help to Ukraine may already be too late seriously to change the balance.
Regardless of current diplomacy’s outcome, another element is indispensable to success and has even broader significance. However the Ukraine war ends, there must be unimpeachable U.S. commitment to the security of the NATO allies and of Europe, in general. This does not now exist. There can’t be a single NATO ally which believes in the steadfastness of President Trump’s commitment to the basic NATO security needs. And how could they, given his behavior, not just regarding NATO, but the overall transatlantic relationship? This issue would be particularly pertinent if Putin were thus to miscalculate after a Ukraine peace deal and be emboldened to commit aggression against a NATO ally that would clearly call for the triggering of Article 5. In such a circumstance, if the United States, under Trump or any other US president, would fail to respond with robust leadership, commitment, and force of arms, not only would NATO be rendered nugatory, but also the U.S. security position in Europe (in the broadest sense of the concept) would die with it.
Putin would almost certainly be wrong in judging that the United States would fail to respond “on the day;” but deterrence would have failed. There are precedents. In 1950, after Secretary of State Dean Acheson left Korea out of the US defense perimeter, Stalin provoked an invasion to which the US responded, anyway (Korean War) ; and in 1990, the US told Saddam Hussein that it had no position on Kuwait. Saddam invaded, yet the US responded that time, too (Desert Storm) .
But regarding European security, there can be no such ambiguity, as there is now. Thus no matter what is agreed on regarding Ukraine, the United States, beginning at the top, must both say and show that the U.S. commitment to NATO (and its Article 5) are rock solid, never to be doubted by anyone. While getting allies to bear more of the defense burden is important, that must never be couched in terms, as Trump has more than once said, that, otherwise, the United States might have a diminished interest in protecting the laggard allies if under assault.
Further, despite all the talk of a military concert of European powers to replace a strong U.S. role or even of the EU’s taking a major defense role by itself, there can be no substitute for the United States in dealing with Russia. All serious American and European analysts know this: Russia cannot be contained or otherwise be dealt with by any means that does not include the full engagement of the United States, its leadership, its unitary decision-making, and its “organizing capacity.” That also has to mean the centrality of the NATO integrated military command structure, led by the United States, which could never be replaced by anything the European could do without it – another fantasy.
It is also vitally important that the United States (and Trump) get right the full compass of U.S. engagement in Europe and commitment to it. Transatlantic political, economic, and defense relations are all of a piece Thus Trump’s unpredictability and unilateralism in economic policies, especially tariffs, undercut the absolute requirement that the full compass of transatlantic relations must be dealt with within a shared sense of community and mutual confidence: with hard bargaining, but the basic commitments never in doubt.
Whatever now happens in negotiations to try ending the Ukraine war, the far more important and essential requirement is for Trump to demonstrate that he and the U.S. are unquestionably committed to Europe in all ways that matter, especially in security (writ large), which must include an end to the administration’s stimulating doubts about U.S. commitment to Article 5. Because of what Trump has said and done, that is not now true; but it must be brought into line, or the West – and security more broadly in the world – will be major losers. Indeed, no set of U.S. relationships or interests can rival those with Europe; as Barack Obama once said, that has to be the “pivot” on which the rest of US responsibilities in foreign policy (including with China) must turn.
Sadly, it is not clear that anyone in the Trump administration understands these home truths and the need to act on them.