NATO has neither proclaimed a true strategy leading to victory or a political resolution of the war nor granted Ukraine membership. These failures attest to NATO’s continuing strategic incapacity to grasp what is at stake here or act strategically upon its understanding of this war.
Until NATO fully recognizes the fact that all of Europe is under attack from Russia and that Vladimir Putin cannot accept any outcome short of empire to save his autocracy, Putin will not cease his war. The attacks on French railways in July, the threats to assassinate the head of Rheinmetall in Germany, and the sabotage of Baltic energy infrastructure represent only a few of the incessant and targeted attacks now launched by Russia to break Europe’s will to support Ukraine.
And absent any coherent NATO strategy these attacks will continue and grow in intensity. Furthermore, it seems clear in 2024 that Russian public opinion supports the war and that even after Putin we could be confronting an embittered, angry Russia that will continue to believe that its rightful imperial destiny in Eurasia has been thwarted by nefarious Western forces, and act accordingly to restore it.
Indeed, Russian leaders have overtly stated that unless Ukrainian statehood is destroyed, Russia will collapse or argue this is a war for world order. They thus concede the point that Putin’s or any other Russian autocracy cannot survive except as an empire.
Moreover, it is or should be clear that there is no concept of international order or European security that is compatible with a restored Russian empire. Since the concept of empire intrinsically presupposes the diminished sovereignty of that empire’s provinces, any attempt to restore Russia’s imperial domain, whether in Ukraine, the Baltic, Central Asia, or elsewhere, means perpetual war in Europe. This is exactly what we now see, and unless the West prepares now to forestall that outcome, e.g. by making Ukraine a NATO member, then perpetual war is all too likely otherwise.
To date, the main arguments against Ukrainian membership have been that NATO cannot risk taking a country at war into its midst lest this be seen as an escalation that would provoke Russia to expand its kinetic war into more or all of Europe.
Yet the urgent necessity of preventing a Russian victory here plus the fact that Russia is already, and by its own admission, at war with the rest of Europe, if not also Canada and the US, override this argument. Moscow, not Brussels, continues to escalate its offensive actions against Europe as it shelters under its nuclear arsenal. Furthermore, Ukraine’s alliance membership now offers the alliance and Kyiv several vital strategic advantages that go beyond the already well-known moral-political arguments for membership based on the overwhelming evidence of Russian war crimes.
First, it is true that membership represents an escalation in Russian eyes. But it is an escalation that would restore escalation dominance to NATO and deprive Russia’s nuclear threats of any meaning because any attack on NATO triggers a war that everyone knows Russia cannot win. Thus, Ukraine’s membership negates the entire Russian rationale for this war and makes its victory literally inconceivable.
This negation of the war’s raison d’etre will resound throughout the entire Russian elite, undermining morale and support for both the government and its military adventure because it will be clear that the war cannot be won. Membership therefore shifts the terrain of the war to the Russian domestic front and does so under decidedly unfavorable conditions.
Third, membership makes it incontrovertible that Ukrainian security cannot be separated from European security. This provides an enormous impetus to the overall processes of European integration and regeneration.
Fourth, membership will simultaneously provide an enormous spur to reform and democratization not only in Ukraine but across Eastern Europe. Thus fifth, it strengthens European solidarity, one of the key targets of Russia’s permanent war. Sixth membership will give Ukraine a stable, institutionalized vehicle for the arms and technology transfer it needs to win and to reform its military. These outcomes could provide sufficient long-term deterrence should a resentful Russia again seek a military outcome.
And yet a second “Weimar Russia”, driven by a thirst for vengeance, is by no means the only option open to Russia or the West. Historically defeat in major war has been the only reliable pathway in Russia to real reform. And if that defeat does, in fact, close the door to empire, it will also make the revival of autocracy that much more difficult.
Since a Russian victory, including a negotiated settlement leaving Russian forces in the Donbas and Crimea, can only herald new wars in Europe and beyond, victory and a true Western (including US) strategy for achieving the restoration of Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity as of 2013, and security, expressed in its freely chosen membership in both the EU and NATO, emerges as the only viable and sound policy for the West.
But Western leaders must understand this fact and both formulate and execute a war-winning strategy that includes Ukraine’s membership in NATO as part of a victory over Russia.
For too long we have heard that Ukraine’s entry into NATO is “irreversible.” It is long since time that we actually make this membership a reality, for the alternative of perpetual strife is clearly intolerable.
Stephen Blank, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute www.fpri.org.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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