Ukraine Is Never Joining NATO

Ukraine Is Desperate for NATO Membership: It Won’t Ever Happen

“An invitation for Ukraine to join Nato is a necessary thing for our survival,” he said in December.

Last month he offered to yield his office if doing so would win alliance approval. After his clash with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, Zelensky declared: “If we cannot be accepted to NATO, we need some clear structure of security guarantees from our allies in the U.S.”

Trump said no. Nor is he alone. President Joe Biden said no. President Barack Obama said no. The only president who advocated bringing Ukraine into NATO was George W. Bush, whose reckless foreign policy caused thousands of American military and hundreds of thousands of foreign civilian deaths in the Middle East and South Asia. The transatlantic alliance’s resulting promise to include Kyiv, made at Bush’s behest at the 2008 Bucharest NATO Summit, was an essential factor in Moscow’s decision for war nearly 14 years later.

He understood the risks. Fiona Hill, then an intelligence officer, briefed him and Vice President Richard Cheney “that Mr. Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action.” William Burns, most recently CIA director but then US ambassador to Moscow, allowed that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). … I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” Putin launched the war, but Bush and other allied officials fueled the conflict.

No Means No

After three years of combat in which Washington has slowly escalated its proxy war-plus against Moscow, Trump should confirm that no means no. The US should, if possible, end the conflict, and if not, exit the battle. He also should begin bringing American forces home from Europe, working with member governments to enable them to take over responsibility for their own defense.

The United States created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization 76 years ago. The purpose of NATO was to ensure American security by providing a shield behind which war-ravaged European states could recover, unmolested by the Red Army, then entrenching communist regimes across the continent’s east.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the alliance’s first supreme commander and later US president, emphasized that America’s garrison was temporary: “We cannot be a modern Rome guarding the far frontiers with our legions if for no other reason than that these are not, politically, our frontiers. What we must do is to assist these people [to] regain their confidence and get on their own military feet.” Yet the Europeans saw a sucker and almost eight decades later Washington’s legions remain on station across the Atlantic, with another nation, Ukraine, demanding US protection as well.

Allies are not the military equivalent of Facebook Friends. More is not merrier when it comes to issuing security guarantees. War is not an eleemosynary exercise. The US created NATO to advance American security by preventing the Soviets from dominating Eurasia. Starting with 11 other members, Washington only cautiously expanded the alliance during the Cold War. (Although America’s control was not complete, no one had any doubt as to which government was the essential power.) Greece, Turkey, and Germany were added during the 1950s. Just one, newly democratic Spain, entered in the next four decades.

With the dramatic collapse of Moscow’s Eastern European satellites in 1989, the Warsaw Pact dissolved. Then came the end of the Soviet Union. For a time NATO’s very future was in doubt as the State Department developed alternative missions, “to look at how you transform established institutions, such as NATO, to serve new missions that will fit the new era.” Ideas included the sublimely ridiculous, such as promoting student exchanges, combating the illicit drug trade, and advancing environmental amenities.

The alliance also planned to conduct out-of-area activities, which took NATO far beyond its original role. The allies intervened in the Balkans, substituting new political instabilities for old. Later the US dragged Europe into nation-building in Afghanistan and Europe returned the favor in Libya. Even more consequential was the decision for NATO to take on a political role of stabilizing Eastern Europe, a duty that would have been better handled by the European Union.

In 1999 post-Cold War NATO enlargement began, as much in response to US domestic political pressures as international factors. Virtually everyone assumed that the military obligation would never be called. For example, the three Baltic nations, added in 2004, were irrelevant to the continent’s defense and geographically indefensible. The alliance didn’t bother to develop a plan to defend them. Washington continued to add foreign welfare dependents, including postage stamp countries like Montenegro and North Macedonia. The Duchy of Grand Fenwick seemed likely to follow.

Unfortunately, though few are prepared to fight for Ukraine, its membership remains formally on the table. It is time for Washington to issue an official no to any kind of US security guarantee. Moscow has demonstrated that it is ready to go to war over Ukraine. Washington should make clear that it is not.

Ukraine Has Their Own Ideas

Of course, it is understandable that Zelensky believes the US should do so. Europeans have long been willing to fight to the last American. For instance, British columnist Simon Tisdall generously offered to sacrifice the lives of US military personnel: “To be effective, European leaders need to put concerted pressure on the US government to provide credible, long-term security guarantees for Ukraine and a backstop for any force that the UK and Europe deploy to monitor the ceasefire. It’s reasonable to expect the US to support a European peace initiative.” Americans have spent the last eight decades defending Europe, so why not eight more, Tisdall appears to believe.

Unfortunately, Ukraine is in a bad neighborhood. For hundreds of years, it has been dominated by Moscow. That is terrible for Ukrainians but irrelevant to Americans. If tragedy was a justification for war, the US would never be at peace. Americans remain safe and secure despite the many conflicts that have scarred Ukraine. There is no reason for Washington to change policy today. Indeed, with Russia a weakened conventional power which relies on nuclear weapons to even the odds, battling Moscow would be even more reckless than spending years fighting in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq.

Zelensky, along with a gaggle of European officials, unconvincingly predict further Russian attacks on NATO countries if Moscow prevails in Ukraine. Why, then, does Zelensky want to join NATO if Russia’s attacks would continue unabated against NATO? And why would Putin challenge alliance members, having gone “to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders,” in the words of former NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg. If Putin was a serial aggressor, why did he wait more than a quarter century to act, abstaining when countries on NATO’s eastern flank—the Baltic states, Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania—were most vulnerable? In this case, at least, Putin is more believable than Zelensky, having told Tucker Carlson last fall that charges of planned aggression are “just threat mongering.”

Indeed, the collapse in US-Russian relations was tragically unnecessary. Putin never would be confused with a fun-loving democrat. However, he originally looked westward. He was the first foreign leader to call George W. Bush after 9/11. Two weeks later he gave a conciliatory speech to the German Bundestag. He demonstrated no desire for conflict with Europe or the US. Alas, less than six years later he sounded very different, complaining about “ideological stereotypes, double standards and other typical aspects of Cold War bloc thinking,” the flawed “unipolar” model, and “almost uncontained hyper use of force—military force—in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.”

Admittedly, ending the ongoing conflict would not be enough to restore prior ties and enable Uncle Sam to play a reverse Nixon, splitting Russia from China, as well as North Korea and Iran. However, after transferring to Ukraine arms that have killed thousands of Russians, any reduction in Moscow’s hostility would be positive and encourage it to loosen ties with Washington’s adversaries. Restoring civil relations might give the US more leverage in dealing with Russia on other issues that matter, such as Iran’s proclivity to develop nuclear weapons, North Korea’s desire to target the US homeland with nuclear-tipped ICBMs, and embryonic Chinese military cooperation. Moreover, profitable ties with Washington would make Moscow even less likely to confront Europe militarily.

NATO Is Never Going to Admit Ukraine

Vladimir Putin was wrong to invade his nation’s neighbor, but many of his allied critics share blame for the horror that befell Ukraine. The latter has no good options. However, it is not Washington’s responsibility to fight a war on Kyiv’s behalf.

President Trump should make clear that the US will not offer a security guarantee to Ukraine, whether in or out of NATO, or to European governments that provide their own troops in support of Kyiv.