From the Guardian:
Should Ukraine join NATO?
As Ukrainian doctors, rescue workers and volunteers evacuated child patients, many of them still in hospital gowns and attached to IVs, from the bombed-out hospital, heads of state from NATO’s 32 member countries arrived in Washington DC to discuss Russia’s war in Ukraine and how to strengthen Ukraine’s defense. Although they affirmed that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO”, and that the country’s path to the alliance is “irreversible”, Ukraine’s potential membership was once again deferred: the Washington summit declaration stated that an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO would come “when Allies agree, and conditions are met”.
The allies do not yet agree. NATO membership for Ukraine is supported by some European member states – in particular, the Baltic and Nordic states and Poland. At the same time, key powers like the US and Germany remain opposed. The arguments against Ukraine’s NATO membership, which have been proffered repeatedly since Russia’s attack on Ukraine began in 2014, ultimately reiterate the same concern: that any step, however small, would be seen as threatening Russia’s security, and would therefore provoke greater conflict. In reality, Russia’s calm acceptance of Finland and Sweden, two of its neighbors who joined NATO in 2022, has put the lie to the claim that Russia is on a hair trigger about NATO drawing any closer. It is time to acknowledge that Russia opposes Ukraine’s NATO membership only because it would obstruct Russia’s continued aggression against that country.
The focus on Russia’s alleged “NATO expansion anxiety”, and attempts to appease it, ignore Russia’s genocidal propaganda and systematic war crimes in occupied territory of Ukraine, including massacres, mass rape and torture. Russia’s actions demonstrate a clear intent to destroy Ukraine as a nation, rather than to alleviate its own security concerns. The idea that extending security guarantees to Ukraine would further incentivize Russia’s brutal prosecution of this war is unfounded, since Russia is fully determined to destroy Ukraine and needs no additional motivation to do so.
Secondly, it is a fact that Russia has not attacked a single NATO member. Instead, it has threatened, invaded and occupied non-member countries: Georgia, Moldova and now Ukraine. The territorial boundary between NATO and non-NATO countries has so far proved the only red line that Russia has (however warily) respected, even as it breaks numerous other international treaties and agreements. Russia’s resurrected imperialist militarism can only be contained by the existence of a much stronger military alliance.
Finally, attempts to appease the Kremlin fail to address Russia’s determination to secure anti-western global power. Russia already fully controls Belarus and has been actively forming its own alliances with China, North Korea and Iran, which stand for the destruction of the democratic order. Russia bombed Syrian cities to keep Bashar al-Assad (a dictator who used chemical weapons against civilians) in power. Russia supports terrorist organizations globally, including the Taliban and Hamas, and may soon send missiles to Yemen’s Houthis.
Assuming that appeasing Russia’s demands will resolve the war, or somehow de-escalate it, is naive. Impunity for Russia’s war crimes in Syria, Georgia and Ukraine has only emboldened the Kremlin. The question of Russia’s escalation is thus not “if”, but “how far?” How far will its escalation be allowed to go before democracies muster the political backbone to halt it? Western democracy must stand in unity and determination against the growing threat to global security represented by the Kremlin.
There is still time for the most powerful military alliance in the world to make a historically and politically justified decision to neutralize the existential threat posed to Ukraine by Russia. Sacrificing Ukraine in the interest of avoiding a NATO-Russia war only increases the likelihood of such war, and of further wars, as Russia will conclude that NATO’s vaunted article 5 may be negotiable, if a broader war can be averted.
Inviting Ukraine to join NATO would mark a definitive step away from the politics of appeasement and back to the rule of international law and protection of human rights. A decision to extend security guarantees to Ukraine would not only safeguard the Ukrainian state, via the only means yet shown to be successful, but would also reassert NATO and the western democracies as effective political agents on the world stage.
Victoria Somoff, Dartmouth College
Sarah D Phillips, Indiana University
Sophia Wilson, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, president, AAUS
Oxana Shevel, Tufts University
Maria Popova, McGill University
Vitaly Chernetsky, University of Kansas/University of Basel, president, ASEEES
Amelia Glaser, UC San Diego
Emily Channell-Justice, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University
Yuliya V Ladygina, The Pennsylvania State University
Giovanna Brogi, University of Milan (Italy)
Marci Shore, Yale University
Jaryna Turko Bodrock, Harvard University, Slavic bibliographer
Andreas Umland, analyst, Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies
Natalie Kononenko, University of Alberta, emerita
Ani Kokobobo, University of Kansas
Yuriy Gorodnichenko, University of California, Berkeley
Victoria Donovan, University of St Andrews
Katerina Sviderska, Université de Montréal
Anastasia Fomitchova, University of Ottawa
Otari Gulbani, Central European University
Abigail Scripka, Leibniz Center for Contemporary History, Potsdam
Michael Alpert, US National Heritage fellow
Mayhill Fowler, Stetson University
Kristina Hook, Kennesaw State University
Olga Bertelsen, Tiffin University
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, the Crown Family professor, Northwestern University
John Vsetecka, Nova Southeastern University
Nataliia Goshylyk, University of California, Berkeley
Oksana Lutsyshyna, University of Texas at Austin
Jonathan Stillo, Wayne State University
Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, University of Alberta, Canada
Jessica Robbins-Panko, Wayne State University
Halyna Herasym, University College Dublin
Ivan Kozachenko, University of Warsaw
Polina Vlasenko, University of Oxford
Valeria Sobol, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Anna Chebotarova, University of Oslo
Robert Romanchuk, Florida State University
Oksana Malanchuk, University of Michigan
Sofiya Asher, Indiana University, Bloomington
Olga Kostyrko, independent researcher
Ievgeniia Kopytsia, University of Genoa
Kseniya Oksamytna, City, University of London
Mariya Lesiv, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador
Jars Balan, University of Alberta
Steve Swerdlow, University of Southern California
Jessica Storey-Nagy, Indiana University Bloomington
Marko Pavlyshyn, Monash University
Ilona Solohub, VoxUkraine
Maria Rewakowicz, University of Washington
Yuliya Komska, Dartmouth College
Olena Nikolayenko, Fordham University
Svitlana Melnyk, Indiana University
Markian Dobczansky, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Roman Ivashkiv, University of Alberta
Oleksandra Wallo, University of Kansas
Tatyana Deryugina, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Jurij Dobczansky, Library of Congress
Ana Rewakowicz, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
Serhii Plokhii, Harvard University
Ainsley Morse, University of California, San Diego
Bohdan Klid, University of Alberta
