Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.”
A strong, independent Ukraine is vital for the stability of the Euro-Atlantic area, NATO declared. But the question that alliance leaders face when they meet in Vilnius for their annual summit next week is how to ensure a strong, independent Ukraine in the face of Russia’s determination to weaken and dismember it.
Part of the answer will be to continue providing Ukraine with the security support — the equipment, ammunition, intelligence and training — it needs to defend itself both now and in the future. And along these lines, major NATO allies, including the Britain, France, Germany and the United States, are expected to sign detailed memorandums on their commitment to provide such support over the longer term.
But Ukraine wants — and needs — more. It wants an invitation to join NATO as a full member, as well as a timeline to ensure its accession. It’s not enough, argued Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for NATO leaders to simply repeat what they’ve said every year since 2008: That Ukraine “will become a member of NATO.”
And he is right. The case for binding security guarantees — for NATO membership for Ukraine — is unassailable, as I have previously argued. But that still leaves the question of when and how Ukraine would join — and on this there is no agreement among NATO allies.
On one side of the issue stands the so-called “Bucharest Nine” — those who want alliance leaders to agree to Zelenskyy’s terms. And in June, these nine Central and Eastern European NATO leaders called on the alliance to agree, while in Vilnius, to “upgrade our political relations with Ukraine to a new level, and launch a new political track that will lead to Ukraine’s membership in NATO, once conditions allow.”
On the other side stands Germany, which until now has been unwilling to discuss NATO membership for Ukraine, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz stating it is an issue for “after the war.”
Meanwhile, France — which traditionally sided with Germany on this issue — is seeking to strike a middle ground, with President Emmanual Macron noting we need “strong, concrete and tangible security guarantees,” and though military support is essential, we “need something much more substantial and we need a path towards membership.”
Other NATO allies have all expressed views that fall somewhere along this spectrum, but Washington, interestingly, has remained mostly silent on the issue, focusing instead on the immediate need to do as much as possible to support the Ukrainian war effort.
This reluctance to engage in an open discussion on the issue of Ukraine’s NATO membership derives from the difficulty of answering the crucial questions of when and how Ukraine would join — and in this, the U.S. is hardly alone.
Even the Bucharest Nine say Ukraine will join “once conditions allow,” without spelling out what exactly those conditions are. Macron favors a path toward membership, but he, too, is silent on the timeline and conditions. And Germany’s dismissal of the issue until “after the war” leaves the matter of how and when the war will end unresolved.
The problem confronting NATO countries is that as long as the conflict continues, bringing Ukraine into the alliance is tantamount to joining the war — something none of them has been willing to do. And given the reality that Russia and Ukraine are unlikely to negotiate an end to the war anytime soon, the timing of NATO membership remains very much up in the air.
But is there a way out of this dilemma?
Perhaps, but certainly not in time for an agreement in Vilnius. Instead, NATO leaders are likely to repeat their 15-year-old commitment, likely adding that Kyiv has made sufficient progress and won’t need to go through all the steps of the Membership Action Plan — like Finland and Sweden.
However, this leaves the essential problem in place: How can concrete, tangible and binding security guarantees, like NATO’s Article 5, be extended to a country with contested borders and at war with its neighbor?
One option would be to do so once an armistice, or even a durable ceasefire, has been agreed — at least for the territory under Ukraine’s control.
There is ample precedent for this: The U.S. extended South Korea a legally binding security guarantee to aid its defense, despite the absence of durable peace on the Peninsula. Similarly, the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1951 limits the defense guarantee to “territories under the administration of Japan,” thus explicitly excluding the four northern island territories seized by the Soviet Union in 1945 and that remain in Russian hands. And West Germany joined NATO in 1955 even though it still laid claim to East Germany.
But the difference here is that in those conflicts the fighting had ended — and potential territorial changes, if any, would be achieved through diplomatic rather than military means.
In the case of Ukraine and Russia, however, we haven’t reached that point. And predicating security guarantees and NATO membership on the end of fighting would give Moscow an effective veto over this crucial step.
At the same time, the possibility of tangible security guarantees, including potential membership, could motivate Kyiv to pursue a diplomatic resolution to end Russia’s occupation — especially if the ongoing cost of continued fighting is considered too great.
When NATO first promised Ukraine (and Georgia) that they would become members, it didn’t think through how this would come about. But the alliance no longer has the luxury of ignoring the how and when. And leaders in Vilnius must make it a priority to work this out — the stability of the Euro-Atlantic area demands nothing less.