Ukraine Should Not Be Let in NATO

Ahead of the NATO meeting in Vilnius, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said that it would be “absurd” if Ukraine were not offered a timeline for membership in NATO. Zelensky is, quite naturally, pressing as hard as he can to secure the best security arrangements that he can for his embattled country. He will also be aware that there is no chance that Ukraine will join NATO in the foreseeable future. Acceptance requires unanimity, which Ukraine would not conceivably receive. Moreover, there is a strong convention that NATO will not accept a new member embroiled in a border dispute, let alone one already at war. There are very good reasons for that, not least the logic of NATO’s mutual-defense obligations. For NATO and Russian forces to be in direct confrontation would carry the risk of setting off a chain of events from which no one would be able to find an off-ramp.

Understanding this, 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.