As NATO prepares for its Vilnius summit, an apparent consensus that Ukraine should not join NATO, but rather receive something akin to partnership status analogous to that of Israel, is evidently growing.
However well-intentioned this might be, it is a misconceived decision that reflects Western persistence in error in privileging Russia’s interests above Ukraine’s and its own. Guarantees of assistance and technology transfer, as in Israel’s case, cannot obscure the fact that Israel has had to fight its wars alone. Although Israel has prevailed, for many reasons, this is not a tolerable outcome for Ukraine or for that matter, for Europe.
First, this consensus overlooks several profound truths about this war and Russian security policy. In intention and execution, Russia has launched a genocidal war, according to many experts. As long as Ukraine’s security status is undetermined and Russia remains an autocracy bent on restoring its empire, the threat of a renewed genocidal war or its actuality remains real. Thus, the problem or challenge to European security is not NATO enlargement but Russian revanchism based not on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s delusions but on the structural dynamics of Russia’s eternally imperial autocracy.
Second, more than 70 years of experience demonstrates that NATO remains the only credible guarantee of security in Europe, which is precisely why Ukraine seeks membership. Absent that guarantee, European security becomes — as the interwar years, the invasion of Georgia in 2008, and of Crimea in 2014 show — a misnomer. The same was true for Israel in 1967 and almost in 1973, when only Washington offered support.
Third, failure to offer membership tells Putin he still can split the alliance and keep throwing good money and countless lives after bad. But membership and ensuing guarantees of collective defense negate his strategy and also counter the nuclear threat to Ukraine, forcing him, if not others, to awake from the delusional quest for empire.
While NATO membership might initially stiffen Russia’s resolve to fight, Moscow has long regarded NATO’s very existence as a provocation. Kyiv’s membership will hardly alter this paranoia. But there is nothing more Russia can do to Ukraine short of a nuclear strike. And that option looks increasingly unlikely because the Patriot systems that took down Moscow’s hypersonic Kinzhal missile can also take down Russia’s tactical nuclear missiles, thereby shredding Russia’s nuclear threats and strategy. Opposition due to Ukraine’s incomplete democratization also pales before the fact that Ukraine’s democratic processes today clearly surpass those of Hungary and Turkey, about which NATO has been largely silent.
There are other powerful reasons for admitting Ukraine into NATO as quickly as possible. Granting membership would greatly boost Ukrainian morale, demonstrate NATO’s resolve to deny Russia a victory, and commit NATO to the long-term supply of weapons Ukraine needs to win the war. Second, this action nullifies Putin’s strategy and drives home the insane futility of this war, since victory is unattainable. Thus, it will intensify the visible signs of deteriorating morale and declining cohesion within the armed forces and the overall Russian population.
Third, although NATO should make clear for now that it will not send its forces into the war, Ukrainian membership takes the card of nuclear and other escalations out of Moscow’s hands and gives control of the escalation ladder to NATO, thereby undermining Russia’s overall strategy of controlling escalation through small-scale wars on its periphery to upset the European equilibrium. Any use of chemical or biological weapons, not to mention nuclear strikes, risks a wider war with a vastly superior NATO for no purpose other than to preserve Putin’s kleptocracy at the expense of the rest of Russia.
Fourth, Ukrainian membership in NATO gives the alliance a legal basis for strengthening its position in the increasingly vital Black Sea. Specifically with Ukraine as a NATO member, NATO can place bases around the Black Sea. Or if Turkey, a NATO member approves it, they can actually send ships into the Black Sea, not to fight, but to escort Ukrainian vessels to break Moscow’s illegal blockade of the Ukrainian coastline.
Since Russia’s overall aggression is illegal, so too is the blockade. Therefore, breaking it has many benefits beyond reducing pressure on Ukraine. Breaking the blockade enables Ukraine to make money shipping agricultural and other exports abroad, helps increase its revenues and alleviates foreign grain and food shortages. Equally, if not more importantly, breaking the illegal blockade also upholds the longstanding international principle for which Washington went to war in 1812 and 1917 — the freedom of the seas. Finally, it will also establish a lasting basis for a much-needed full-time presence in the critically important Black Sea. At this point, neither Washington nor NATO has fully utilized its rights under the Montreux Treaty and international law.
These are compelling reasons for NATO to offer Ukraine membership, which simultaneously strengthens deterrence and security until such time as a reformed Russia can recover its true European vocation. Other alternatives will neither achieve these goals nor ensure victory sooner rather than later. On the other hand, sparing Russia’s supposed sensitivities has never made Europe secure, and it will not do so now.
Stephen Blank, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). He is a former professor of Russian national security studies and national security affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College and a former MacArthur fellow at the U.S. Army War College. Blank is an independent consultant focused on the geopolitics and geostrategy of the former Soviet Union, Russia and Eurasia.