Do not. With those words, Frits Bolkestein argued in 1997 against the accession of Eastern European countries to NATO. In a high-profile opinion piece the then VVD party leader argued that expanding the military alliance served “no strategic purpose” and would “unnecessarily” disrupt relations with Russia. “A cost/benefit analysis of NATO expansion is heavily negative. […] It evokes the dangers it wishes to avert. Do not.” More than a quarter of a century later, just about everything Bolkestein opposed has become a reality. Not only did Poland, Hungary and other former Eastern Bloc countries become members of NATO (between 1999 and 2004), Finland also recently joined, and Sweden may soon follow – countries that have held back for a long time because of the good peace with Russia. Now Ukraine is even being discussed, including at the NATO summit next week in Vilnius. What was long thought unthinkable suddenly makes sense with Russia’s attack on Ukraine. ‘Don’t’ has become ‘do’.
Yes, making Ukraine a NATO member is wise. That is, if Europe wants to avoid being mercilessly tested every few years by Russian imperialist ambitions from another era. Without secure, guaranteed national borders, Ukraine will continue to face Russian aggression, and Europe will continue to wonder where the madness ends. It already happened once in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea. It happened with flight MH17. And now it’s happening again. The strategy towards Russia of holding back and getting a piece of the pie has failed, and there is as yet no indication that resuming it will make Moscow less belligerent. In order to develop, Ukraine may have to become a kind of South Korea, with a dark cloud always hanging over it, but also a huge security umbrella.
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So much for the theory. In practice, Ukraine’s NATO membership is anything but a foregone conclusion. Eastern European countries, sensing Russia’s proximity, are calling for haste. Western European countries, along with the US, are much more reserved. Sometimes the discussion feels a bit semantic, because in fact NATO is already fully involved in the war. In a recent NRCarticle explains in great detail how closely the US is involved in pinning down Russian targets so that Ukraine can then bomb them. The Americans are fully experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI), an application in which analysts see a military revolution, such as the invention of gunpowder or the atomic bomb.
Yet there is a big difference between NATO membership or not. The fact that there is still so much support for the country from European countries, apart from sympathy and disbelief about so much injustice, is primarily due to the fact that the war is not being fought on NATO territory. A massacre of other people’s blood. That would change if Ukraine became a member immediately. Then ‘article 5’ would apply, the principle that an attack on one is an attack on all. No one in Vilnius worries about that – and even the Ukrainians see it. President Volodymyr Zelensky asks above all for a clear ‘perspective’ on NATO membership.
Finding a compromise in Vilnius is a tough job. In a recent parliamentary debate Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that everyone agrees on the direction: “Ukraine’s future is in NATO.” At the same time, it is also clear to all parties that there can be no membership as long as ‘Ukraine is at war’. According to Rutte, it is also clear that Zelensky must be able to leave the top “with his head held high”. Sending Kyiv to pieces will be celebrated as a victory by Moscow. According to Rutte, it comes down to finding the right words. “The question is what kind of text, what kind of language you will soon have in the conclusions of the NATO summit.”
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The question is also what NATO can offer Ukraine. One of the proposals on the table is the creation of a NATO-Ukraine Council, in which Ukraine could consult on an equal footing with its Western partners. A permanent fund is also being considered to provide additional support to the Ukrainian war effort. Another idea is to have Ukraine already better connected to NATO, with associated equipment, even if it is not yet an actual member. Rutte is right: even in the coming days, hard work will have to be done to find the right words to sell this package to the outside world as a ‘perspective’. Despite all the snags, one message must sound loud and clear in Vilnius: do it, even if it takes a while.
A version of this article also appeared in the July 8, 2023 newspaper.