Opinion: Ukraine should hear the truth from Biden at NATO summit

Editor’s note: Daniel R. DePetris is a Defense Priorities fellow and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and other publications. Opinions expressed in this editorial are his own. For more information, please visit CNN Opinion.

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A year ago, NATO leaders gathered in Vilnius, Lithuania, for their annual summit, a gathering designed to send a message to Russian President Putin about NATO’s resolve and commitment, but it was clouded by the issue of Ukraine’s eventual membership.

The statement, released after days of events, reaffirmed the commitment the alliance made at a summit in Bucharest in 2008 and that Ukraine will become a NATO member at a yet to be determined date.

The reaffirmation came as a major disappointment to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who called NATO’s refusal to set a specific deadline for Ukraine’s membership “unprecedented and unreasonable,” upsetting the Biden administration and nearly derailing the summit.

Washington and Kiev have been able to repair the rift, but as NATO leaders visit Washington this week to celebrate the alliance’s 75th anniversary, the issue of Ukraine’s membership continues to hold back the meetings like the humidity of a scorching August heat.

The United States and its allies will continue to insist ad nauseam that it is only a matter of time before Ukraine is granted privileged membership in NATO. Indeed, according to a draft statement from this week’s summit, NATO is preparing to emphasize that Ukraine’s path to NATO membership is “irreversible,” a declaration first made by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in April.

But the reality is that Ukraine is nowhere near membership. NATO doesn’t seem ready to admit Ukraine, and a good argument can be made that granting membership to Kiev is bad policy. It is high time the Biden administration stopped pretending otherwise. The White House should give Zelensky the honesty he deserves.

First, the US should make it clear up front how difficult it will be for aspiring NATO members to join. The NATO Charter clearly states that if a NATO member state comes under attack, member states agree to defend other member states: “Member states agree that an armed attack against one or more of their members in Europe or North America shall be regarded as an attack against all of them.” On paper, Poland is obligated to defend the US, just as the US is obligated to defend Poland.

But some of NATO’s key allies aren’t particularly keen on defending Ukraine. In 2008, when then-President George W. Bush tried to propose a plan to start the membership process for Ukraine (and the former Soviet republic of Georgia), allies like France and Germany opposed it.

When Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 brought the issue back on the table, it was the United States that balked. Then-President Barack Obama said Washington would convene a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Committee, the body that fosters bilateral ties. Biden said just last month that he was “not prepared to support Ukraine joining NATO.” NATO makes decisions by consensus, so any member state can block Ukraine from joining.

As long as the Ukrainian war continues, the idea of ​​Kiev joining NATO is of course fanciful, since it would force NATO allies to fight Russia directly, raising the question of whether it would even be wise to allow Ukraine into NATO, even if it were feasible. Zelensky himself, who has spent a great deal of time lobbying for membership since the Russian invasion, understands this necessary postponement well.

Some foreign policy scholars, such as former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, have recommended extending NATO an invitation to Ukraine to pave the way for an end to the war, which would likely deter Putin in the long term and prevent Moscow from using the ceasefire to rebuild its military and plot a new invasion of Ukraine in the months or years to come.

But even this scenario is problematic. Why would Putin consider a ceasefire or diplomatic solution with Kiev if he knew Ukraine’s NATO membership was on the horizon? Far from fostering reconciliation, this idea could make an end to the war virtually impossible for Putin. Putin has explicitly called for Ukraine to abandon its NATO membership aspirations as a core condition of any peace negotiations. As dozens of foreign policy experts wrote in an open letter last week (which I also signed), “the closer NATO comes to promising Ukraine that it will join the alliance once the war ends, the greater Russia’s incentive to continue the war and kill Ukrainians to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.”

All this aside, it is far from clear that the extension of NATO security guarantees to Ukraine will be fully respected. it is The alliance itself.

NATO countries have repeatedly NATO will not directly wage war on Ukraine. Western hesitation to intervene militarily in Ukraine is understandable. If the time comes, NATO will not go to war with the world’s largest nuclear power. Unreliable NATO security guarantees are just paper promises that Russia may test. This would present NATO with two untenable options: either weaken the collective defense clause and stand by, or start an unwanted war with a country that has more than 5,500 nuclear warheads.

Thus, insisting on Ukraine becoming a member of NATO, even if the practical obstacles are easily foreseeable, would be a disservice to the United States, NATO, and Ukraine: the United States would expose itself as a superpower and give false hope to future clients; NATO would prove divided over Ukraine’s membership; and Ukraine would be forced to endure the humiliation of being tossed around like the proverbial hamster on a wheel unable to reach the block of cheese in front of it.

The best Ukraine could get from NATO would be more air defense artillery and missiles, improved soldier training programs, and a commitment to help maintain Kiev’s defense line. Biden should tell Zelenskyy that NATO membership is a futile endeavor, and, in the meantime, apologize to all Ukrainians for waiting so long to say the obvious.