As of: March 10, 2024, 8:33 a.m
From: Foreign Policy
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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (left) and Volodymyr Selenskyj at a press conference in September.
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The five most important reasons why an expansion of the Western alliance would make Kiev even worse off.
Brussels - With the battle lines turned against Ukraine and doubts over whether the U.S. Congress will agree to a new round of aid, influential experts such as former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen and former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, her previous calls for Ukraine to join NATO sooner rather than later.
The move is being touted both as a way to convince Russia that its military campaign cannot keep Ukraine out of the alliance and as a need to provide Ukraine with adequate security once the war ends.
Reasonable people can and will argue about the wisdom of this recommendation because the contending positions are based on predictions about an uncertain future.
Moscow should recognize that further territorial conquests will be expensive
Essentially, we're off all bets on what impact bringing Ukraine into the country would have.
To make my own position clear: if I were a member of the US Congress, I would not hesitate to vote for the additional aid package because I want Ukraine to be able to hold the territory it still controls , and I want Moscow to realize that trying to capture more territory will be costly and difficult.
More aid today will improve Kiev's negotiating position when serious talks begin, most likely after the U.S. presidential election in November.
That being said, admitting Ukraine into NATO now is a bad idea as it would prolong the war and put Kiev in an even worse situation over time.
NATO’s current “open door” policy is a recent development
First, let us recall that the North Atlantic Treaty does not give any country the right to join NATO if it meets certain criteria.
Article 10 simply states: "The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite to accede to this Treaty any other European State capable of promoting the principles of this Treaty and contributing to the security of the North Atlantic area."
NATO’s current “open door” policy is a recent development.
It is sometimes viewed as a formal commitment that any candidate state can join as soon as it meets the criteria for membership in NATO.
In effect, the open door policy shifts responsibility from NATO to the candidate countries;
she tells the latter that the door is open and that you can enter once you have met our standards.
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However, the original treaty implies otherwise: it states that the door is closed until existing members collectively conclude that admitting a new member will “promote the principles of the treaty and contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area.” .
At this point, members may decide to open the door and extend an invitation.
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This distinction is important because the original treaty does not presuppose that the alliance is actively interested in expanding.
Hungary's recent campaign to delay Sweden's accession to NATO for several years reminds us of how this process really works in practice: Sweden had no "right" to join unless all other members agreed .
NATO should not admit Ukraine – for several reasons
As for Ukraine, my belief that it is unwise to admit it into NATO now (or in the near future) is based on several assumptions.
One of them is that Ukraine cannot reverse the situation on the battlefield and retake its lost territory unless it receives significantly more weapons and has time to rearm its armed forces after last year's setbacks.
Ukraine is suffering from a severe (and likely irreversible) personnel shortage, and the combination of drone surveillance, artillery and extensive Russian fortifications will make it difficult if not impossible for Kiev to make major territorial advances.
Ukraine's proponents in the West erred last spring when they made optimistic predictions about the impending counteroffensive, and they are repeating that mistake by claiming that there are still many opportunities for Ukraine to turn the tide.
I wish it were different, but we should base our political decisions on the world as it is, not on how we would like it to be.
Ukraine is more important to Russia than the NATO countries
My second assumption is that the Russian leadership cares more about the fate of Ukraine than the West.
It is of course no more important to them than to the Ukrainians, but it is of more vital interest to them than to the leaders and people of most NATO countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his henchmen were willing to send thousands of soldiers to fight and die in Ukraine, and no NATO country is willing to do anything remotely similar.
When French President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly raised the possibility of sending NATO troops last week, he was immediately rebuked by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.
This is not to say that NATO has no interest in Ukraine's fate, just that Russia is more interested.
Russia's invasion was intended to prevent Ukraine from moving closer to the West
Third, I further assume that one of the main reasons for Putin's illegal invasion in February 2022 was to prevent Ukraine from moving closer to the West and eventually joining the alliance.
Recent revelations about the ever-increasing cooperation between the CIA and Ukrainian intelligence services, the West's post-2014 efforts to bolster Ukraine's defenses, and NATO's oft-repeated commitment to bring Ukraine into the alliance have undoubtedly heightened Moscow's concerns - a classic example of what scholars in the field of international relations call a “security dilemma.”
Putin's actions may also reflect certain beliefs about the cultural unity of Ukrainians and Russians, but the evidence that the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO drove his actions cannot be denied.
Stoltenberg has even openly admitted this on more than one occasion.
Putin may have misunderstood NATO's intentions and exaggerated the threat it posed, but he is hardly the only world leader to have exaggerated a foreign threat.
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The five most important reasons against Ukraine joining NATO
Given these three assumptions: Here are the top five reasons why Ukraine should not join NATO.
It does not meet the accession criteria.
Ukraine is still a weak democracy at best.
Corruption remains widespread, elections have been suspended since the start of the war, and there remain influential elements in Ukrainian society whose commitment to democratic norms is questionable.
For these and other reasons, the Economist Democracy Index classified the country as a “hybrid regime” last year.
In addition, Ukraine has not yet fulfilled the conditions of the Standard Action Plan for NATO membership.
Recognizing this fact, NATO decided to waive this criterion at its annual summit last summer, turning Ukraine's accession process from a two-stage to a one-stage process.
By weakening the standards for joining the alliance, this decision set a potentially bad precedent for the future.
It is not clear that NATO would honor its Article V obligations.
As I have noted previously, Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is not a tripwire requiring members to fight if another member is attacked.
At U.S. urging, Article V simply requires a member state to consider an attack on one member as an attack on all and then “take such measures as it deems necessary.”
Nonetheless, this clause is widely interpreted as a commitment to defend any member who is attacked.
And a failure to come to the aid of a member state in the event of a serious invasion would jeopardize the entire alliance.
Therefore, before admitting a new member, the rest of the alliance should think carefully about its willingness to risk its forces in the event of an attack.
To repeat my earlier point: So far, neither the United States nor any other NATO country has shown a willingness to send troops into the fight for Ukraine.
Weapons and money yes, people no.
If we were willing, we would already have troops there.
Does it make sense to tacitly promise to fight for Ukraine in five, ten or 20 years if you are not ready to do so today?
Furthermore, it is far from certain that the US Senate would ratify Ukraine's membership.
A two-thirds majority is required to ratify a treaty, and gathering enough votes could be difficult.
While 70 senators voted for the latest aid package, that bill also included additional aid to Israel, which may have influenced some votes.
More importantly, de facto GOP leader Donald Trump would likely oppose Ukraine's inclusion, and his opposition could convince enough GOP senators to vote no and put ratification out of reach.
NATO membership is not a magical shield.
The main argument for Ukraine joining soon is that it would deter Russia from resuming the war at a later date.
It's easy to understand why Kiev would want additional protection, but this argument assumes that NATO membership is a magical shield that will reliably deter Russian military action under almost all circumstances.
Proponents simply assumed that the security guarantees provided were checks that would never be cashed.
NATO membership can deter attack in many circumstances, but it is not a magical shield.
In fact, there has recently been an increasing number of voices warning of a possible Russian challenge to NATO in the next few years.
If you really believe that Putin will end the war in Ukraine, take a short break to rebuild his battered armed forces, and then launch a new attack on Finland, Estonia or another NATO member, then you don't really believe that the magical protective shield is so reliable.
And that means current NATO members need to think long and hard about what their vital interests are and which countries they are truly willing to fight to defend.
Which brings us back to reason number two.
Current membership will only prolong the war.
If I am correct that Moscow launched the attack primarily to prevent Kiev from joining NATO, then admitting Ukraine into NATO will only prolong a war that the country has already lost.
Therefore, if Putin has launched his “special military operation,” he is unlikely to end it when his forces are making good progress and Ukraine’s NATO membership is still up for debate.
The result is that Ukraine will suffer even more damage and potentially jeopardize its own long-term future.
Ukraine was already one of the fastest depopulating countries in Europe before the war began, and the effects of the fighting (emigration, declining fertility, deaths on the battlefield, etc.) will exacerbate this problem.
The neutrality might not be so bad after all.
Given the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations (including the events of the last 10 years), one can understand why many Ukrainians do not want to take a neutral position.
But neutrality is not always a bad thing, even for states in close proximity to Russia.
Finland fought a costly and ultimately unsuccessful war against the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1940 and was ultimately forced to cede about nine percent of its prewar territory.
But like Ukraine today, the Finns had fought heroically and made the much larger Soviet Union pay a heavy price for their victory.
The result was that then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin did not incorporate Finland into the USSR after World War II or force it to join the Warsaw Pact.
Instead, Finland remained a neutral country and a democracy with a market economy, trading with both the USSR and the West.
This result was sometimes erroneously derided as “Finlandization,” but it proved to be a fairly successful concept.
If Finland had ever attempted to join NATO during this period, it would almost certainly have triggered a major crisis or even a pre-emptive war.
The two situations are not entirely comparable - especially given Putin's views on the supposed cultural unity of Russians and Ukrainians - but they suggest that formal neutrality need not prevent Ukraine from establishing a solid democracy and establishing comprehensive economic ties western countries.
For all of these reasons, Ukraine joining NATO quickly is not a good idea.
Instead, Ukraine advocates in the West need to think creatively about alternative security arrangements that can provide Ukraine with security as part of a ceasefire or post-war peace agreement.
Kiev must protect itself against Moscow resuming the war;
it cannot agree to disarmament or be forced to accept de facto Russian domination.
It will not be easy to figure out how to ensure adequate protection without provoking Moscow to restart the war.
However, hastily joining NATO is not the best path to a safer Ukraine;
If anything, it would prolong the war and put the long-suffering country in an even worse situation.
To the author
Stephen M. Walt
is a columnist at
Foreign Policy
and the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University.
Twitter (X): @stephenwalt
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com” on March 5, 2024 - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.