During the conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, last year, Kyiv pushed for NATO admittance, but all they received was some discussion. Now that Secretary-General Blinken and other NATO foreign ministers are gathering in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, the topic of discussion is “willing to be a member of NATO” and Ukraine’s accession.
At a joint news conference with French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne in Paris on Tuesday, Blinken stated to reporters, “For us, the problem is having a good and clear route to accomplish this resolution.” “And I think that, in fact, the 75th anniversary NATO summit will be quite specific and focused on how we can create this roadmap.”
Let us dispel some myths and present the evidence.
The first misconception holds that Russia is in danger from NATO. To begin with, the notion of NATO as an aggressive army is absurd. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, three of its most powerful members, have militaries that are dangerously underfunded and sized. And the political truth is that, as you, France, Greece, Turkey, and maybe Italy may recall, there were grave concerns about NATO’s ability to operate as a defensive alliance during warfare, even at the height of Cold War tensions.
The second misconception is that there was never a pledge to refrain from NATO expansion eastward, despite what you may have heard from different Kremlin propagandists and apologists. The specifics were intricate, never codified, and centered on resolving “the German question” during the short time span between our triumph in the Cold War in 1989 and the ultimate disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1990. These are available for reading here.
(I have, however, said publicly for more than 20 years at VodkaPundit that NATO expansion was foolish.)
However, the truth is that NATO has never taken over a single square inch of land. NATO’s expansion is solely attributable to previous, apathetic clients of Moscow who essentially hammered down NATO’s door to gain entry. The brutal Russian occupation left lasting memories.
Russia, on the other hand, has been using military force to grow for the past 16 years.
Russia unlawfully annexed the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine in 2014 after seizing the districts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia in 2008. Russia keeps arming and assisting rebels in Moldova. Russia attempted to annex all of Ukraine in 2022, but ultimately had to resort to a protracted war of attrition to seize control of the country’s eastern and southern regions.
And then there is impoverished Belarus, an even more autocratic and corrupt country than Ukraine. If not exactly de jure, Vladimir Putin has successfully intimidated and bought the nation back into Mother Russia.
Kazakhstan, which was also “fortunate” enough to be dominated by Moscow in the past, must be looking uneasily towards its northern territories, where a couple of million Russian colonists from the 19th century have settled.
Indeed, there are compelling grounds for Ukraine’s strong desire to join NATO, and they all start with the Kremlin.
But there is one unavoidable argument, as well as one smaller one, for why it would be insane to invite Ukraine to join NATO.
The fact that Kyiv is simply too corrupt is a smaller factor. NATO admittance is completely out of reach for the nation, given Western norms. (Turkey does not either, although they are exempt from this because of 1949’s geopolitical requirements.)
The main explanation is that NATO does not import conflicts. Clearly.
Despite its strong desire, Moldova is unable to join NATO because of an ongoing, low-level war with rebel Russian colonists. Georgia would also be thrilled to join, but at least since 2008, it has been formally at war. On a far larger scale, Ukraine is in the same predicament as it was even before 2014.
War is not something that NATO imports. Before a nation may even be considered for admission, it must be completely at peace with both itself and its neighbors. However, Antony Blinken and the other foreign ministers of NATO are casually and recklessly discussing the possibility of integrating the war-torn Ukraine into the alliance.
It is insane.
For as long as they are prepared to fight, the West should support keeping Ukraine armed and engaged in combat. Russia is back in Imperial Expansion Mode, hence, on the Dnipro, it is preferable to have a non-NATO member holding Russia at bay than NATO on the Vistula, Rhine, or Seine. However, we ought to let the Europeans handle keeping Kyiv’s government viable. (Their business, not ours, certainly not the Bidens’.)
To conclude, let me remind you that, in an ideal world, Russia would be a component of NATO, helping to fortify European peace and playing a crucial role in the bloc’s opposition to Communist China’s aggression. Moscow took a different course, and they are accountable for the horrific outcomes.