Saturday, April 11, 2026

The USA should not mislead Ukraine with Article 5-like "guarantees"

From UNIAN:

"The US should abandon Article 5 guarantees to Ukraine, according to the Washington Post 

Yaroslav Konoshchuk, December 27, 2025 

The US proposal to provide Ukraine with security guarantees similar to NATO's Article 5, meaning entering into war with Russia in the event of further aggression, is potentially dangerous and empty. 

This opinion was expressed in a column for the Washington Post by Samuel Charap, professor of Russian and Eurasian politics at the Rand Institute, and Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities. 

The authors noted that the US has so far refused to send American troops to Ukraine, and there are reasons for this. 

"If it were necessary to deploy American troops to Ukraine to protect vital U.S. interests, they would have been there long ago," the authors noted. 

Proponents of expanding security guarantees for Ukraine along the lines of Article 5 argue that the lack of treaty obligations is what deters the U.S. government from deploying troops, but historical evidence suggests otherwise. 

"The United States has never hesitated to deploy its military forces abroad," the authors noted, emphasizing that the U.S. reluctance to fight for Ukraine impacts any future commitment to do so...

"Ukraine will need security guarantees under any agreement that ends the war. But the Trump administration should prioritize narrow but credible commitments—more like what the US and its allies have been willing to do for Ukraine over the past four years—over broad commitments that appear generous but are ultimately empty and potentially dangerous," the authors concluded."

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If Ukraine had been given only such "narrow but credible commitments" in 1994, I don't think it would have surrendered its nuclear arsenal.  

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