Ukraine Naturally Belongs in NATO

Baseball fans will appreciate this analogy from “61*” – Roger Maris had just missed hitting a historic homerun and sportswriter Milt Kahn sympathetically observes that the Yankee slugger “gave it a helluva shot.” To which his fellow reporter Artie Green mockingly replies that Maris failed because “The pressure got to him.”

Have patience, stay with me on this.

Kahn, with a deadpan expression, looks at Green and asks if he ever played baseball. “No, not really,” he answers.

“That’s what I thought,” the straight-faced Kahn comebacks in a soft-spoken indictment of his buddy’s clueless lack of understanding of the essence of baseball.

Yes, you may know how to write, you may even know baseball, its rules and statistics, but you don’t know the practical tactics and strategies that make up a player’s success or failure, you don’t know the vital contributing emotions, passions and pressures.

In the world of geopolitics and security, NATO members – the free world – would also have to meekly admit “No, not really” when asked if they ever fought in a war against Russia, the acknowledged enemy of democracy.

However, Ukraine has and NATO quite illogically continues to refuse to open its membership to this country with its well-experienced military.

The ancient concept of collective security is not an evil though some pundits and government officials have turned it into a perverted model of global relations by implying that safeguarding some – its members – from global threats and not others is sensible. That way the free world won’t upset or seem to threaten Russia and its allies while paying lip service to the former captive nations of Russian aggression, notably Ukraine.

NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – was formed in 1949 by the United States, Great Britain, France and Canada to protect countries that adhere to their democratic and market principles against aggression by Moscow. A noble and necessary mission then and now. In the course of time, some have argued that the Russian threat has been replaced by radical Islamic countries. While the latter group has emerged as a genuine global threat, Russia has not withered in the noonday sun. Even though it dropped its Communist and Soviet monikers, Russia remains a threat to near and distant countries. The news media are filled with examples of Russian aggression by land, sea, air or cyberspace. Its war against Ukraine continues and Eastern and Western European countries have taken note and are preparing to avert Russian aggression.

For Moscow, Ukraine is its No.1 target that must be returned to its resurfacing prison of nations in order to propel itself to insurmountable global dominance.

Ukraine, finally, has seen the light of day or Russian artillery explosions and has formally and constitutionally established its goal of joining NATO as the Zelenskyy Administration is openly advocating this objective.

On paper, NATO seems to comprehend Ukraine’s dire situation and supports its existence while enunciating an “open-door” policy. In April, it stated that “A sovereign, independent and stable Ukraine, firmly committed to democracy and the rule of law, is key to Euro-Atlantic security. Relations between NATO and Ukraine date back to the early 1990s and have since developed into one of the most substantial of NATO’s partnerships. Since 2014, in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, cooperation has been intensified in critical areas.”

However, its unfortunate choice of the word “conflict” demonstrates its refusal to concede that Ukraine is ground zero of the seven-year Russo-Ukraine War, the only one in contemporary Europe. Calling it a conflict belies NATO’s commitment and tones down the gravity of the situation in hopes of avoiding any direct involvement. The ostrich hides its head in the sand.

NATO is preparing for a summit in Brussels on June 14 but Ukraine wasn’t invited. This doesn’t say much for the alliance’s support for Ukraine.

Predictably, this snub miffed Kyiv. Last week Ukraine decried the lack of progress in NATO’s “open-door” policy to membership and said it could not comprehend why it wasn’t invited when surely the war will be on the agenda.

“We understand the desire of the Allies to hold their own summit to discuss Trans-Atlantic unity. There are examples of such summits, including one in Brussels, in 2017. To be honest though, we don't understand at all how a closed-format NATO summit could be held against the background of the aggressive actions by the Russian Federation targeting Ukraine, in the Black Sea region, as well against the Allies,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba bemoaned, “How can you not invite Ukraine, how can you not find a format for Ukraine’s participation in the current summit?”

Speaking at a joint news conference with Helga Schmid, the secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) who was visiting Kyiv, Kuleba expressed gratitude to NATO for its “constant confirmation of the open-door policy,” but added that not a single step had been taken to implement it.
“When we, in Ukraine, are accused of too slow reforms, what can we say about the adoption and implementation of the decisions of the alliance, which have been covered with dust for 13 years?” Kuleba insisted.
U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price recently was guilty of stating the U.S. policy of supporting an “open door” to NATO for countries meeting “the standard for membership” that in his words meant that Ukraine must “implement the ... reforms necessary to build a more stable, democratic, prosperous and free country.”

This bogus issue must be taken off the table and cease being the basis of the free world’s whining against Ukraine. It is a poor excuse for excluding Ukraine from the alliance. To be sure those problems exist but they are being resolved – it’s a work in progress. Consider how much corruption exists in the anointed countries. However, these difficulties won’t be eliminated in an independent Ukraine if NATO dawdles with accession. Moscow will surely allow them to fester.

The prevailing argument that under current circumstances NATO shouldn’t admit Ukraine because it can’t is disingenuous. One point of the reasoning says there’s no consensus among the alliance’s 30-member states to do so, and no prospect of unanimous ratification by their parliaments. Many of those openly hypocritical countries should recall that they are fortunate to exist today after the devastation of World War II due to collective security in defeating a recognized enemy.

The naysayers argue that promising membership can only provide political grist to Russia’s propaganda mill, raise unattainable expectations in Ukraine followed by bitter disappointment, and, eventually, discredit NATO as a whole. First of all, the free world cannot seriously expect that any of its actions will ever be supported by Moscow’s propaganda mill, which is genuinely dedicated to Russia more than NATO’s propaganda mill is to freedom and democracy. Secondly, NATO members cannot be guided by fear of Moscow, which won’t benefit Ukraine nor them. The only unattainable expectation is NATO’s denial which will leave the Armed Forces of Ukraine fighting Russian invaders by themselves while the alliance looks on impassively. Inaction will sooner discredit NATO than anything else.

As many current statesmen have pointed out, Moscow’s belligerence must only be met by strict counter measures and not diplomatic warnings and debates.

Recent history – since Kyiv restored independence and sovereignty three decades ago – is filled with numerous examples of the Ukrainian nation overcoming internal and external threats against its existence as it endeavors to establish an independent, democratic, market-based country. Finally, once it became evident to Putin and the Kremlin that Ukraine can’t be coaxed back into its so-called sphere of influence, Moscow launched in 2014 its latest war against it. For seven years Ukraine has been successfully countering Russian aggression, recording unexpected battle victories, developing modern weapons, while rebuilding its decimated armed forces, and protecting not only itself but the wider region between the Baltic and Black seas. Indeed, all of Eastern and Western Europe. Ukraine has gained invaluable and unique experience deterring greater Russian aggression on the traditional, bloody battlefield and in the realm of hybrid warfare, which extends from cyber to disinformation and beyond. At the same time NATO strategists predict modern warfare on computer-generated battlefields.

Simultaneously, Ukraine has molded a nationally conscious population across all demographic and geographic segments.

The movement of Russian military forces near Ukraine’s border in early April should be a reminder to all members of NATO’s founding and unifying purpose: to safeguard freedom and preserve peace and security. Russia stood down a few weeks ago but the threat persists as tens of thousands enemy troops still bivouac near Ukraine. That mission is now more relevant than ever as NATO’s hopeful close partner Ukraine understands and the world should also that it can lose its freedom and territorial integrity without the strong signal that NATO membership conveys.

To be sure Ukraine’s Membership Action Plan – the first step toward accession – is merely a weak stopgap that will not accomplish anything. It will not keep Moscow at bay. The situation on Ukraine’s border with Russia continues to deteriorate and will not improve anytime soon. Only Ukraine’s immediate acceptance into NATO will declare the following: the free world is committed beyond mere words to Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty and its Euro-Atlantic choice; Moscow must evacuate from Ukraine and withdraw its forces deep into Russia, and the free world has a genuine proactive guardian of its interests on the ramparts of freedom.

These factors make Ukraine a genuine candidate for NATO membership and the United States, the international community and the alliance must support it now to safeguard their own freedom.