Volodymyr Zelensky called the lack of guarantees for Ukraine's accession to NATO «unprecedented and absurd» Photo: Omar Marques/Getty Images
Ukraine's future in NATO , and she will not need to comply with the Alliance Membership Action Plan (MAP) when she enters.
The promise to skip the MAP is essential, and the mere inclusion of the word «invitation» was far from guaranteed.
But these victories are marred by accompanying caveats.
He will only join the alliance «when the allies agree» and «conditions are met» — in other words, it could be today, tomorrow, or 100 years from now.
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To put it mildly, NATO's Vilnius communiqué is the most miserable of documents: a show of force written by the committee.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been less generous. “This is unprecedented and absurd,” he said in a clearly undiplomatic tirade on Twitter.
We value our allies. We value our common security. And we always appreciate an open conversation.
Ukraine will be represented at the NATO summit in Vilnius. Because it is about respect.
But Ukraine also deserves respect. Now, on the way to Vilnius, we received signals that…
— Volodymyr Zelensky (@ZelenskyyUa) July 11, 2023
Any NATO leaders or diplomats offended by his language should be reminded that they have been warned.
Ukraine was first promised future NATO membership in 2008. , but due to concerns about trouble with Russia, no timetable or route was ever offered.
It is clear to many in Kiev that the ambiguity led directly to the Russian invasion in 2014 and 2022.
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Mr. Zelenskiy and his diplomats have spent months trying to explain to NATO leaders that failure to fix the situation will only make another war more likely — and that they will not be polite about new “false promises.”
“We are not we are going to buy into this,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said bluntly for a month.
«We're not going to play the game that's been offered to us — we're going to demand a change in policy, a really significant change in policy.»
He was particularly scathing about diplomatic subtleties that some members say may have masked the lack of progress.
The «NATO-Ukraine Council» announced by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday is a case in point.
It simply replaces the existing «commission», which in diplomatic language implies a little less respect than «advice», but has no practical significance.
Ukraine and NATO: three possible outcomes
Does NATO really plan to use Ukraine's membership bid as a bargaining chip with Russia?
Mr. Zelensky can be forgiven for such thoughts.
When French President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly changed French policy to support British and Polish calls for an early annexation of Ukraine, this was seen as a major shift.
But Le Monde reported that the reflections at the Elysee Palace were «tactical» and «a means of influencing the conflict and putting Moscow and Kiev at the table negotiations.
Do what you want.
Another disappointment for the Ukrainians is the claims that it would be crazy for NATO to accept a member who is in the midst of a firefight.
They didn't ask for anything like that.
asking is a concrete path to membership and fast entry after the end of the war.
This view has great sympathy, especially in the UK, Poland and the Baltic States — and, since June, France.
Podcast Ukraine 11.07.2023
But skeptics in Germany and the US should not be discounted. They have serious points.
Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany, is right — the priority now is to win the war. And until it is clear what the world will look like, the current members of NATO will not be sure of their obligations.
What if the war ends with Russia still holding some occupied territory, or in Korea… a style of peace in which a temporary truce is never followed by a formal cessation of hostilities?
This is why US President Joe Biden and Mr. is nevertheless the beneficiary of iron-clad but uncodified security guarantees.
But Israel also has an (unrecognized) nuclear deterrence that none of its adversaries have.
Ukraine is fighting the world's largest the planet's nuclear power and gave up its own nuclear weapons in 1994 in exchange for security guarantees that proved useless.
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