Despite excitable speculation, the recent annual North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Summit ( July 11-12) in the Lithuanian capital city, Vilnius, came as a huge disappointment to war-torn Ukraine. Its dream of formally joining the alliance remains unfulfilled yet again. Ahead of the Vilnius Summit, Ukraine demanded that it be immediately inducted into the alliance at the summit, or at least receive a clear invitation to join the alliance within a fixed time frame. But Ukraine got neither of its demands fulfilled except the reaffirmation of the commitment that the alliance had made in 2008 at the Bucharest summit that it would be made a member of Nato.
The final communiqué issued after the Vilnius summit, acknowledged Ukraine’s right to choose its own security arrangements. It stated that while “Ukraine’s future is in Nato”, the formal invitation would only be extended when Kyiv fulfils certain “democratic and security sector reforms” that are required for its path towards future membership. The communiqué promises that Kyiv will become a member state at some point in the future ‘when allies agree and conditions are met.’ It is important to note that Ukraine’s Nato bid is intertwined with the ongoing war with Russia. Nato’s membership carries with it a commitment from all alliance members to protect each other if attacked. It is in fact this guarantee of collective defence enshrined in Article 5 of Nato’s Charter that deters the United States and other member states from granting Ukraine Nato’s membership at this moment, in the middle of a war, as it would draw the rest of the alliance directly into the conflict and risk a military confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia, which they probably do not like.
The United States President, Joe Biden, has said that Ukraine is not yet ready for Nato membership. He insisted that Russia’s war in Ukraine needs to end before Nato can consider adding Kyiv to its ranks. The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, also said that “The door is open a crack, but this is not the time to decide now.”
Irked with the uncertainty over membership, Ukrianian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted the alliance as it was a personal setback for him; he had harboured hopes that the Vilnius summit would culminate in a concrete invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance. In scathing criticism, Zelensky termed this Nato stance ‘unprecedented and absurd’ when there is no time frame set “neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership”.
He was also upset with vague wording about added conditions ‘even for inviting Ukraine’. The frustration of Zelenskyy is understandable, as Ukraine’s Nato membership has not made much headway. The phrasing of the Vilnius communiqué is not far from the 2008 Bucharest Declaration, which stated that Ukraine will become a member of Nato. Although Ukraine may not have been formally invited to become a member at Vilnius as it had hoped, it didn’t return completely empty-handed either.
As part of a package deal, Nato offered at Vilnius an accelerated path to membership by removing the requirement for a Membership Action Plan (MAP), a step in the entry process, setting out targets to be met before joining the military alliance, and continued financial and military support while it is at war with Russia.
The MAP was launched in 1999 at Nato’s Washington Summit to help countries aspiring to membership in their preparations. The creation of the NatoUkraine Council is another significant development, which will act as a dedicated platform for consultation and joint decisionmaking between Kyiv and the alliance’s 31 members.
The Council replaces the erstwhile Nato-Ukraine Commission, which was the decisionmaking body responsible for developing the relationship and directing cooperative activities from 1997 to 2023. The change from commission to council is being viewed as a strengthening of political ties and Ukraine’s increasing integration with Nato. Through this council, Ukraine is expected to receive more specific recommendations on defence and security sector reform, as well as the necessary practical assistance and advice for Nato’s membership.
The most crucial support offered to Ukraine at Vilnius is security guarantees from G7 countries. A joint declaration issued by the G7 members promised to help Ukraine bolster its military over the long term to defend itself now and deter Russian aggression in the future through continued provision of military aid, supply of modern military equipment, such as fighter jets, development of Ukraine’s own defence industry, training for Ukrainian forces, intelligence sharing, and cooperation in cyber-defence. The G7 will also implement a reform agenda that will help provide Kyiv with the “good governance” necessary to advance its aspiration to join Nato. Ukraine’s aspiration to join Nato is fraught with numerous challenges.
One must recall that it was Nato’s eastward expansion towards Russia’s borders over the past two decades and Kyiv’s persistent attempt to join the military alliance that prompted Russia to launch a “special military operation” against Ukraine on 24 February 2022, to eliminate, as President Putin claimed, a serious threat to its security, saying his aim was to demilitarise Russia’s southern neighbour. Many analysts have already been arguing for more than a quarter century that Nato’s eastward expansion would lead to a direct military confrontation with Russia.
They predicted that the continued enlargement of the world’s most powerful military alliance towards another major military power would not end well. George Kennan, who is considered the father of America’s containment policy during the Cold War, warned in May 1998, during the first round of Nato’s expansion, that “the Russians will gradually react quite adversely”. Former United States President Bill Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, rightly pointed out that many Russians see ‘Nato as a vestige of the cold war’, inherently directed against their country. They question the continued existence of Nato after the disbanding of their military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. The Russian government also complained that Nato’s enlargement after the end of the Cold War was a betrayal of a negotiated agreement not to move the alliance’s borders further eastward. The most provocative step from Nato was adding the three Baltic republics ~ Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania ~ to its fold in 2004. Interestingly, while opposing Nato’s eastward enlargement, Russia is using the United States’ own foreign policy doctrine, popularly known as the Monroe Doctrine, which holds any intrusion by foreign powers in the affairs of neighbouring countries as a hostile act against the United States. Russia has also been arguing that it would not allow a major rival power to incorporate a neighbouring state into a military alliance. Ukraine’s prospects to join Nato might have been dashed at Vilnius, but they are not doomed completely.
The United States and other western allies may be interested in Ukraine, as the “geopolitical pivot” of Eurasia, joining Nato, but they cannot also shut their eyes to its immediate consequences and potential implications for global security and stability. Though western support for Kyiv appears to have intensified, its eventual joining of Nato is still far from certain. The decisions at Vilnius may be significant but fall short of the clear pathway with timelines for membership that President Zelenskyy has been demanding for a long time.
(The writer is a professor at Aligarh Muslim University and heads its Strategic and Security Studies Programme)