‘Ukraine joining NATO is a big mistake’ – US official explains

The Commission President may have officially announced the start of Ukraine’s EU accession negotiations a few days ago, but NATO leaders should be more cautious than Ursula von der Leyen.

Ten days before the NATO summit, several NATO allies have taken the initiative to embrace and promote the agenda for Ukraine’s accession to the Western military alliance.

G7 leaders had put Ukraine on hold a year ago, and NATO officials rescheduled it after the war ended. Ultimately, accepting Ukraine into NATO “would mean NATO is at war with Russia,” said US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

As the summit approaches, Christopher Chivis, a former U.S. intelligence official and executive director of the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has no doubt that the West and Ukraine should put any notion of membership on hold.

In his analysis of the British guardianChevzi does not hide his greatest concern about the danger that awaits the Ukrainians, but above all the credibility of the Western alliance, if it brings Kiev to the NATO table.

NATO: The problem is a chain reaction

With Ukraine within the alliance, other partners would be obligated to defend it under Article 5 in the event of a Russian attack.

But the rest of the allies will not be in a position to apply this article in the case of Ukraine, because the military requirements for protecting that country are enormous.

With Ukraine already losing about 300,000 soldiers, the country will be completely weakened militarily, while Russia will be much stronger in comparison, according to Tsevvez.

He added: “This army will have to be demobilized as soon as the war is over if there is any hope of restarting the Ukrainian economy. This means that if Ukraine joins NATO, other members of the alliance will need to deploy their own forces, perhaps in large numbers, directly into Ukraine.” On an unspecified basis.

Therefore, the risk that the Europeans will not fulfill their alliance obligations towards Ukraine is very great.

While in the past US forces have taken the lead in such operations, Chevesh now sees it as highly unlikely that the United States will deploy other forces and resources of the scale required to defend Ukraine.

“Not only is the center of gravity of American interests shifting toward Asia, but American public support for Ukraine is declining across both political parties, according to polls. The likelihood that a future U.S. president would be willing to send U.S. troops into Ukraine, thus risking a direct confrontation with Russia, is slim,” Chivis says.

Moreover, it will take years for the Europeans to build a military machine that can stand up to the Russians. “Some advocates of Ukraine joining the alliance may hope that nuclear weapons will fill the void, but the idea that NATO is prepared to go to war with Russia to protect Ukraine, potentially ending civilization as we know it, is a fantasy,” he says.

Thus, the risk that the Europeans will not fulfill their alliance commitments to Ukraine is high, and this, Tsevich says, “would call into question existing commitments to other allies, weakening the alliance and other global commitments of the United States.”

Moreover, the American expert emphasizes that anyone who correctly understands that this war must end through negotiations cannot at the same time commit to Ukraine’s status in NATO at the present time. “Moreover, gestures toward NATO membership will benefit from Putin’s narrative of the war, which he partly justified on the grounds that he is fighting an aggressive and expansionist NATO,” he notes.

This will not be in the interest of democratic transformation in the country

Chivis warns that a more stringent commitment to Ukraine’s NATO membership at the July summit would also undermine the alliance’s leverage to achieve the political and economic reforms Ukraine will need when the war ends.

Tsevvis recalls that in previous rounds of NATO enlargement, the possibility of NATO membership, not its guarantee, served as a powerful tool for encouraging democratic and economic reforms in potential members.

He warns that “giving up this influence now would be a grave mistake and would create pressure to adjust NATO standards downward if post-war reform efforts in Ukraine falter.”

The focus of the summit must therefore be on ending the war and putting Ukraine on the road to recovery. That is the only way Ukraine can prosper and thus truly win this war, concludes Christopher Chivish.