On the menu today: Both President Biden and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky are in Vilnius, Lithuania, today for the NATO summit. Yesterday, the NATO member countries announced in a communiqué that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” but offered no concrete time frame for the country to join the alliance. This reportedly represents President Biden’s preferences and irritated Zelensky, although it’s likely that the Ukrainian president’s public complaints are somewhat meant to meet his domestic political needs and maximize his leverage. But the editors of National Review, among others, concur. Until the war is won, the issue of Ukraine entering NATO is moot, and if the Ukrainians did formally join NATO during an ongoing shooting war, the resulting alliance and likely invocation of Article Five would work against American interests.
No-Go on NATO
Those who think National Review is full of a bunch of neoconservative hawks — and globalists, and every other name we get called, and that we’re a front for the CIA*,etc. — may be surprised to see the house editorial (meaning, what it says represents the senior editorial staff as a whole) declaring that Ukraine should not be brought into NATO, either now or in the near future.
NATO has rightly agreed at the summit to extend an invitation to Ukraine at an unspecified time and only “when Allies agree and conditions are met.” This is in keeping with its 2008 declaration that Ukraine (and Georgia) “will become members of NATO” while putting no date on that, or even a firm timetable for when the application process would start getting seriously underway. That’s how matters — a welcome in principle, but nothing more concrete in practice — should stay. Even offering a pathway to NATO for Ukraine would, given the war that has been fought on its territory since 2014, be meaningless, and quite possibly counterproductive, raising the possibility of splits within NATO and playing to Russia’s paranoia about the alliance, a paranoia that is shared by a considerable portion of the Russian population. Nothing is to be gained by taking a step that would rally support for the war within Russia, would offer NATO no particular military advantage, and might make a dangerous situation more perilous still. Russia is a nuclear power backed by China and headed by a leader who may well now be feeling uneasy about his own personal security. That calls for some caution. . . .
None of this is to accept that Russia should have a veto over Ukraine’s treaty-making or to suggest that we should weaken our support for Kyiv’s fight for self-determination. Zelensky’s somewhat-undiplomatic complaints may raise hackles, but they are most likely aimed at his domestic audience and designed to maintain the pressure on NATO to maintain or increase the flow of arms and other equipment to Ukraine. And that is something the Atlantic Alliance should be doing. Meanwhile, all NATO’s members, which may soon include Sweden as well as Finland, should demonstrate that they are in this struggle for the long haul by increasing their military spending and taking steps to head off an energy crunch in Europe this winter.
The first point is that if NATO admits a country that is currently in a shooting war, it is hard to see how or why Ukraine would not request that the alliance invoke the treaty’s Article Five: “If a NATO ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the ally attacked.” There are some advocates for Ukraine’s immediate membership, such as Randy Scheunemann and Evelyn Farkas, who argue that it’s not a problem because “Article Five does not mandate a specific response by member states”:
Second, there is concern that even inviting Ukraine to NATO could trigger NATO’s Article Five “an attack on one is an attack on all” clause. In fact, Article Five does not mandate a specific response by member states. NATO members could respond to attacks in a minimal manner, as they have already chosen. Or NATO members could respond to an attack by supplying advanced weaponry, sharing real-time targeting intelligence, and imposing harsh economic sanctions, as they have since February 23, 2022. Full Ukrainian accession to NATO could very well come after the Ukrainian government negotiates a peace agreement on its terms.
This strikes me as a terrible idea. Either we put NATO and Russia into a state of explicit shooting war, as opposed to the current proxy war, or we water down what Article Five means, and its deterrent effect in future conflicts. Right now, what ensures that no one attacks Latvia, Norway, Greece, or Luxembourg is the knowledge that attacking any of those smaller countries is the military equivalent of attacking the U.S., Turkey, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and about two dozen other countries, all at once. We’re the biggest, toughest gang on the block, and picking a fight with us means biting off more than you can chew.
Right now, former Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev can refer to NATO members Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia as “our” provinces, and to Poland as “temporarily occupied,” and we know he’s all bark, no bite. But if Article Five really just means, “We’ll send some aid,” suddenly, the calculations of military aggression against a NATO member state change. If Russian tanks — well, the remaining ones — cross the border into Estonia, will NATO members come rushing to Estonia’s aid, guns blazing? Or will just sending some arms, ammunition, and supplies to Tallinn suffice?
When it comes to fighting a shooting war, you either do it or you don’t. You don’t fight a war a little bit — or at least, history shows the difficulty of achieving a goal when you try to do it halfway. As one of the West’s preeminent philosophers stated, “Do, or do not. There is no try.”
The NATO communiqué offers the vague declaration that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” but it does not satisfy Poland and the Baltic states, which wanted a formal invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance as soon as the war ends. One big problem with that idea is determining when “the war ends.” If Russia and Ukraine agree to a ceasefire, but Putin remains in power, who’s to say the Russian dictator doesn’t attempt a second bite at the apple in six months, or a year, or two years?
If NATO announces, formally, “The moment the war is over, Ukraine gets to join,” what incentive does Putin have to ever end the war?
This puts National Review in the unusual spot of agreement with President Biden, and in opposition to Zelensky. Zelensky is irked that NATO isn’t offering an immediate invitation, and vented his frustrations on Twitter:
We value our allies. We value our shared security. And we always appreciate an open conversation. . . .
But Ukraine also deserves respect. Now, on the way to Vilnius, we received signals that certain wording is being discussed without Ukraine.
It’s unprecedented and absurd when time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership. While at the same time vague wording about “conditions” is added even for inviting Ukraine.
It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance.
This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia. And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror.
Uncertainty is weakness. And I will openly discuss this at the summit.
You can make a strong argument that the question of whether Ukraine should join NATO is moot. If Ukraine wins the war, it means it can control its own destiny and the threat of future Russian military aggression will be greatly reduced. But as NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg observed, “Unless Ukraine prevails, there is no membership to be discussed at all.
Win the war, then we can discuss when Ukraine gets to join the NATO club.
*If we’re a front for the CIA, why are we always asking readers for donations?
ADDENDA: National Review Institute’s Burke to Buckley Fellowship Program is accepting applications for the fall in Chicago and Dallas. Burke to Buckley is intended for mid-career professionals from a wide variety of professions and industries. Over eight sessions, a small cohort gathers to engage in discussions of first principles and their application to current issues. Experts from academia and National Review serve as moderators for each session. To find more information and to apply, click here. Applications close this Saturday, July 15.
Today, I head off to Memphis, Tenn., where I will appear at FreedomFest, in a mock trial of open borders on Friday. If you’re going to the conference, I hope to see you there.