Ukraine Must (Eventually) Be a Member of NATO

In Vilnius next week, NATO leaders need to update their thinking based on changing circumstances and new data.

Ukraine has been in limbo regarding its relationship with NATO for fifteen years. That should change when leaders of the NATO alliance meet in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 11-12.

Serious discussion of NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia stalled at the Bucharest NATO summit in May 2008. That summit produced very convoluted messaging: President Bush wanted to send a message of support for NATO expansion to these two countries while other major leaders of the alliance did not. So, they split the difference by sending multiple, contradictory signals. No one was happy.

A few months later, in August 2008, Russia invaded Georgia and declared two regions of the country – Abkhazia and South Ossetia – independent states. These tragic events effectively ended any real momentum for Georgia to join the alliance as NATO leaders did not want to offer membership to a country de facto occupied by Russia. (I was in the Obama administration at the time and recount these policy debates in “Chapter 11: Hard Accounts: Russia’s Neighborhood and Missile Defense” of my book, From Cold War to Hot Peace.) In Ukraine, pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych was elected president in 2010, ending what little momentum Ukraine still had to seek NATO membership. Shortly after the Revolution of Dignity, Russia invaded Ukraine and occupied Crimea in 2014, and two days later Yanukovych fled Ukraine, and then separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, backed by Putin, started their war with Kyiv.   Such a compilation of events provided new excuses for NATO leaders to do little to push for Ukrainian membership. 

From then to now, NATO leaders repeated abstract, flowery phrases about supporting membership aspirations for Ukraine and Georgia but offered few concrete proposals. When President Zelenskyy met President Biden in Washington in September of 2021, he heard nothing new: the same message about aspirations but no specific plans. Since 2008, nothing had changed. I hosted President Zelenskyy at Stanford University the day after his meeting with Biden at the Oval Office; his frustration over the lack of progress regarding Ukraine’s desire to join NATO was palpable.

Source: President of Ukraine. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

I have a confession to make. In the run-up to that Biden-Zelenskyy meeting, I agreed with the Biden administration that accelerating Ukraine’s membership in NATO – specifically, agreeing to a Membership Action Plan (MAP) – was not the most important issue of the moment. Instead, I wrote this in The Washington Post:

On defense, the leaders need to recast their security relations as mutually beneficial. Ukraine’s 200,000-strong active soldiers, several hundreds of tanks and armed vehicles, and robust intelligence presence help to deter Putin’s belligerent actions against Europe more effectively than most NATO allies. Since 2014, Ukrainians have been fighting directly against Putin and his proxies. Biden should celebrate Ukraine as a critical security partner in Europe and announce major new military assistance, enhancing what U.S. officials quietly maintained during the Trump years. This package should focus on defensive weapons, including more antitank Javelins as well as upgraded radars to increase their effectiveness… self-defense for Ukraine must be the focus right now. In return, Zelenskyy should stop asking — for now — to sign a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP). MAPs do not provide security guarantees, and the hard reality is that Ukraine today is not qualified to join NATO. Zelenskyy should focus instead on implementing necessary domestic reforms to prepare Ukraine for NATO membership without formally signing a MAP.

In arguing to kick the can of membership down the road, I was influenced by three concerns – some articulated, some kept private -- on the minds of NATO leaders at the time, including President Biden. First, Ukraine was not ready to join the alliance. They had to implement reforms to qualify. Second, Russia occupied Ukrainian territory at the time. Bringing Ukraine into the alliance under such circumstances might drag the United States and the rest of the alliance into war with Russia. Third, NATO should not take steps that would provoke Russian leader, Vladimir Putin – a concern that even predated the Russian occupation of Ukraine in 2014. Poking the bear might lead to war. That’s what, as some argued, happened after the Bucharest Summit in Georgia. Bush’s encouraging signal for Georgian NATO membership at that summit compelled Putin to invade Georgia a few months later. I was least convinced by this argument, but understood the concern of NATO leaders at the time.

But everything changed after Putin’s Russia launched the largest conventional war in Europe since World War II. NATO now must change too.  As NATO leaders meet in Vilnius next week, they cannot simply echo the lofty, abstract, aspirational lines about NATO membership for Ukraine sometime in the very distant future. At a minimum, they must elaborate upon what was said at the 2008 Bucharest summit, and do so concretely, because so much has changed since then.

Most importantly, the “don’t poke the bear” argument should be taken off the table completely. NATO did not expand to Ukraine. The alliance did not even take baby steps toward that objective. For instance, NATO never signed a MAP with Ukraine. But Putin invaded anyway. Since the very creation of NATO, strategists, as prominent as George Kennan, have been worried about provoking Moscow with our alliances in Europe. Kennan opposed the creation of NATO.  But strikingly, from the very beginning of the alliance until today, Kremlin leaders – from Stalin to Putin – have never attacked NATO members. And NATO, of course, has never attacked the Soviet Union and will never attack Russia. War in Europe has only come to where NATO is not.

Second, fifteen years ago, there were valid concerns about whether the Ukrainian military could provide any security to the NATO alliance. That debate is now over too.  As I wrote here recently, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will emerge from this war as one of the best-trained, best-armed fighting forces in all of Europe. They will become net exporters, not importers, of security for the entire alliance. In the long run, especially with the dismantling of its Soviet-era state defense industry, Ukroboronprom,  and the creation of a new joint-stock company, Ukrainian Defense Industry, Kyiv also could become a leader in the production of armaments for the entire alliance, especially if Western defense companies agree to joint-production of weapons and ammunition needed to replenish NATO stockpiles.   

The last concern – dragging the U.S. and other allies into a war with Russia – remains. Other experts have explained why NATO technically has the ability to invite countries at war as well as countries that are partially occupied into the alliance. Most obviously, West Germany joined NATO when Soviet soldiers were stationed in East Germany. Politically, however, this would be a very heavy lift for Biden and many other leaders of the alliance, as their domestic critics – and NATO countries are democracies – would lambast them for dragging NATO into war with Russia. So instead, NATO leaders in Vilnius should spell out a concrete and speedy timetable for Ukraine’s membership in the alliance that starts the day the war ends. Some rightly worry that such a timetable might encourage Putin to continue his war indefinitely as a means to keep Ukraine out of the alliance. But Putin can't fight forever. He does not have the resources to do so. And spelling out a concrete and quick roadmap for membership might also make a negotiated end to the war more likely since Zelenskyy would know that an end of hostilities would enhance his country’s security immediately. Remember, the Kremlin has never attacked a NATO member. 

Most minimally, NATO leaders in Vilnius must do something that signals an improvement over the previously ambiguous posture on membership that has lingered since the Bucharest summit in 2008. As wars in Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, and a dramatic escalation of that war in 2022 revealed, ambiguity did not facilitate peace. To echo the title of James Goldgeier’s excellent history of the first wave of post-Soviet NATO expansion, the message should be Not Whether, But When. In parallel, NATO leaders in Vilnius should announce new pledges to provide better and more weapons to Ukraine – especially longer-range rockets, ATACMs, and F16s fighter aircraft – as these are the best means available to help speed the end of this horrible war. 

Even Henry Kissinger, a critic of NATO expansion in the past, has now recognized that the relationship between Ukraine and NATO has changed forever as a result of Putin’s invasion of  Ukraine. As he said,  

his process [the war] has mooted the original issues regarding Ukraine’s membership in Nato. Ukraine has acquired one of the largest and most effective land armies in Europe, equipped by America and its allies. A peace process should link Ukraine to Nato, however expressed…. The alternative of neutrality is no longer meaningful, especially after Finland and Sweden joined Nato.

If Kissinger, at age 100, can update his thinking on NATO based on changing circumstances and new data, NATO leaders meeting in Vilnius can do the same as well.